Settlers Blues

They came in ones and twos at first Then whole families until it got much worse In hundreds and thousands in ships they arrived To claim our land as their rightful prize A Government in a land far away Decided to gift our land one day To an alien race with a different faith Of the land where our fathers lived and prayed The stream turned into a torrent, a storm And with those ships came bullets and guns And the fight for the land hurt everyone As the towns and the cities and the villages burned They torched our houses, shelled our towns Poisoned our wells, cut the olive trees down Exiled us in our own land Cast out like lepers in the desert sands All for profit, all for gain Colonial pawns in the Imperial game Killed our husbands Imprisoned our sons Put us in ghettos when they left their own We lost our country by deceit By European law decrees In the League of Nations our fate was sealed By British law and British steel In the rebel year of '45 The Jacobites once more did rise At Culloden field the dream was crushed As the Red Coats covered it in Highland blood There were crofts on fire across the glens We were put to the sword by Cumberland's men And the lowland mercenary Scots Who raped and plundered for their English Lords For English gold, the auld Clan chiefs Drove the Gaels off the land There was more profit in sheep To America's shores an exiled race Sailed in thousands to escape Oooh oooooh the women are crying Ooooh ooooh where are our men? Ooooh ooooh it's happening somewhere Again... again... The planters arrived with Cromwell's purge We paid in land, we paid in blood Saw us as beasts, to be tamed Banned our language, cursed our faith They took the crops from Irish farms To feed the people of England We emigrated or we starved In the Black '47, the Great Hunger Colonial Master, cracking his whip With his cannon & armour And great battleships A sword in one hand, in another a cross Killing in the name of his vengeful God When the conquered become the conquerors A murderous diaspora They'll stab and shoot and persecute The boot now on the other foot The right to return is our dream To our home that was stolen It remains to be seen As they build more walls And they steal more land We're prisoners still, in our own land Keep your hand on the plough And your eyes on the stars Connolly's vision may yet come to pass That humanities gulf will one day fuse And we'll rid ourselves of the settlers blues Hope grows large in the hearts of the brave Whose land has been plundered And people enslaved That humanities gulf Will one day fuse and we'll free ourselves of the settlers blues Ooooh ooooh the women are crying Oooooh ooooh where are the men? Oooooh Ooooh it's happening somewhere Again... again...