Re: Irish Rebel Songs (Lyrics)
The Legion of the Reaguard
Up the Republic, they raise their battle cry,
Pearse and McDermott will pray for you on high,
Eager and ready, for love of you they die
Proud march the soldiers of the Rearguard.
Legion of the Rearguard, answering Ireland's call,
Hark their martial tramp is heard from Cork to Donegal,
Wolfe Love and Emmett guide you, though your task be hard,
De Valera leads you, soldiers of the Legion of the Rearguard.
Glorious the morning, through flame and shot and shell,
Now rally Ireland, your sons who love you well
Pledged, they'll defend you, through death or prison cell
Wait for the soldiers of the Rearguard.
Crimson the roadside, the prison wall, the cave,
Proof of their valour, go sleep in peace ye brave,
Comrade tread lightly, you're near a hero's grave,
Proud die the soldiers of the Rearguard.
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The traditions of the Irish people are the oldest of any race in Europe north and west of the Alps, and they themselves are the longest settled on their own soil
- Edmund Curtis (A History of Ireland: From Earliest Times to 1922)
The Irish are one of the most ancient nations that I know of at this end of the world, and are from as mighty a race as the world ever brought forth.
For it is certain that Ireland hath had the use of letters very anciently and long before England; that they had letters anciently is nothing doubtful, for the Saxons of England are said to have their letters and learning, and learned men, from the Irish.
- Edmund Spenser (writer, and British Government Official in Ireland, AD 1596).
The renaissance began in Ireland seven hundred years before it was known in Italy. And Armagh, the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland, was at one time the metropolis of civilisation.
- Arsene Darmesteter, Professor of Old French and Literature
Ireland can indeed lay claim to a great past; she can not only boast of having been the birthplace and abode of high culture in the fifth and sixth centuries . . . but also of having made strenous efforts in the seventh and up to the tenth century to spread her learning among the German and Romance peoples, thus forming the actual fountain of our present continental civilisation.
- Heinrich Zimmer, Professor of Celtic and Sanskrit, Member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences
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