Re: Irish Rebel Songs (Lyrics)
The Fields of Atnerye
By the lonely prison wall.
I heard a young girl calling.
Michael, they are taking you away, for you
stole Trevelyn's corn
So the young might see the morn.
Now a prisonship lies waiting in the bay.
(Chorus)
Low lie, the Fields of Athenry, where
once we watched the small free birds fly.
Our love was on the wing, we had dreams and songs to sing.
It's so lonely 'round the fields of Athenry.
By a lonely prison wall
I heard a young man calling.
Nothing matters Mary when you're free,
Against the Famine and the Crown
I rebelled, they ran me down.
Now you must raise our child with dignity.
(Chorus repeat)
By a lonely harbour wall
She watched the last star falling.
And that prison ship sailed out against the sky.
Sure she'll wait and hope and pray,
for her love in Botany Bay.
It's so lonely round the fields of Athenry
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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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