Re: Irish Rebel Songs (Lyrics)
Sean South
'Twas on a dreary New Year's Eve when the shades of night fell down
A lorry load of volunteers approached a border town
There were men from Dublin and from Cork, Fermanagh and Tyrone
But the leader was a Limerick lad, Sean South of Garryowen.
And as they moved along the street up to the barrack door
The scorned the danger they would meet, the fate that lay in store
They were fighting for old Ireland, to save their very own
And the leader of that gallant band was South of Garryowen.
But the sergeant foiled their daring plan, he spied them through the door
From the guns and all the rifles too, a hail of death did pour
And when that awful night was o'er two men lay cold as stone
There was one from near the border and one from Garryowen.
No more he'll hear the seagull cry, or the murmuring Shannon's tide
For he fell beneath a northern sky, brave O'Hanlon by his side
He's gone to join that gallant band of Plunkett, Pierce and Tone
Another martyr for old Ireland, Sean South of Garryowen.
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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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