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I sing the song of the colony |
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How many years and you're still not free |
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And your mother cries and you ask god why |
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Greed is the knife and the scars run deep |
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How many races with much reason to weep |
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And your children cry |
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And you ask god why |
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Annie, she came from Dunlavin Town |
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The TB came and killed her family all around |
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Population booms |
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Eleven in two rooms |
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Katie she came from down Townsend street |
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Ten in a bed and no shoes on their feet |
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1916 came |
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They played the patriots game |
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Freddy, he came from the Iveagh flats |
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Tenement slums and infested with rats |
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Sleeping on damp straw |
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Trying not to break the law |
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Thomas, he came from Kilmaine in Mayo |
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Semi starvation was the only life you'd know |
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In a two room shack |
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Then jailed in Letterfrack |
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I look to the east, I look to the west |
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To the north and the south, and I'm not too impressed |
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Time after time |
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After crime after crime |
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They raped, robbed, pillaged, enslaved and murdered |
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Jesus Christ was their god and they done it in his name |
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So he could take the blame if it's not all a game |
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With bible in one hand and a sword in the other |
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They came to purify my land of my Gaelic Irish mothers |
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And fathers, and sisters and brothers |
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With our own ancient customs, laws, music, art |
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Way of life and culture |
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Tribal in structure |
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We had a civilisation |
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When they were still neanderthal nations |
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We suffer with the Native American, the Indian in Asia |
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Aboriginal Australia |
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The African people with their history so deep |
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And our children still weep and our lives are still cheap |
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You came from Germany, from France, from England |
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And from Spain |
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From Belgium and from Portugal |
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You all done much the same |
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You took what was not yours |
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Went against your own bible |
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You broke your own laws |
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Just to out do the rival |
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But did you ever apologize |
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For the hundreds and millions of lives |
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You destroyed and terrorised |
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Or have you never realized |
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Did you never feel shame |
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For what was done in your country's name |
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And find out who's to blame and why they were so inhumane |
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And still they teach you in your school |
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About those glorious days of rule |
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And how it's your destiny to be |
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Superior to me |
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But if you've any kind of mind |
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You'll see that all human kind |
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Are the children of this earth |
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And your hate for them will chew you up and spit you out |
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You'll never kill our will to be free, to be free |
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You'll never kill our will to be free, to be free |
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You'll never kill our will to be free, to be free |
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Inside our minds we hold, hold the key |
