Irish Ways Lyrics

	Irish ways and Irish Laws
		by John Gibbs

        Once upon a time there was
        Irish Ways and Irish Laws
        Villages of Irish blood
        Waking to the morning
        
        Then the Vikings came around      (4)
        Turned us up and turned us down
        Started building boats and towns
        They tried to change our living
        They tried to change our living
        
        Cromwell and his soldiers came    (1)
        Started centuries of shame
        But they would not make us turn   (2)
        We are a river flowing
        We're a river flowing
        
        Again, again the soldiers came
        Burnt our houses stole our grain
        Shot the farmers in the fields
        Working for a living
        Working for a living
        
        800 years we have been down       (3)
        The secrets of the water sound
        Has kept the spirit of a man
        Above the pain descending
        Above the pain descending
        
        Today the struggle carries on 
        I wonder will I live so long
        To see the gates being opened up  (4)
        To a people and their freedom
        A people and their freedom
       

Notes
  (1)  	Oliver Cromwell landed in Ireland in August 1649 at the 
	head of a huge army,  by May 1650 he had crushed opposition  
	in all but the West.  (By 1652 the Irish population had 
	fallen to .7 m.  In 1641  it had been 1.5 m.  By 1660 .5 m 
	cattle were being exported annually to England.)

  (2)   Both Cromwell's and subsequent colonisation campaigns used the 
	twin techniques of "planting" English and Scotish settlers and 
	forcing some locals to change or "Turn" their religion to the 
	Protestant faith. So here he uses the ambiguity of the term 
	"turn" to echo both the image of the unbowed Irish peasant and  
	a metaphor for Irish History flowing like a un-turnable river.


  (3)  The first viking invasions were in the 1100's.

  (4)  "Gates" here evokes both images of the be-sieged walled cities of 
	the 17th century and also of the present day prison camps in the 
	North of Ireland which at the time the song was being written
	(in the late 1970's early 1980's) were the subject of much political 
	campaigning including Hunger Strikes by the inmates.

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