Description
I was raised on songs and stories; the hardships of my people are ingrained in my armor, and in my writing. When I was 14, I went to Ireland for the first time. Sitting in the back seat of a little car, knees sideways, yet still jammed in to the seat in front of me, I sat stunned as I watched tanks roll, five-year-olds throw rocks at them, and barbed wire fences two stories high cut through, and wrap around the neighborhoods; the criteria for cages was religion.
I remember walking through a huge field, maybe a football length across, and at least as deep. A wall stood sentry at the far side, and a road curved beyond it. We climbed that wall; there were men with rifles, and ski masks; men who had Bobby Sands on their shoulders, in a coffin. Over 100,000 people lined the funeral procession that day.
In just over three months over the summer of 1981, ten Irish men died on Hunger Strike in a Republican campaign for political status, for freedom. The Hunger Strike as a political tool has existed in the Irish weapon foot locker for centuries. So have songs to record the history of the Irish, and their struggle to take their place among the nations of the world. That struggle for fair place burst into the world consciousness in The Easter Rising of 1916, and the brutal aftermath.
The Lyrics of Irish Freedom tells the story and the history behind rebellious bard and ballad, from the beginning of Irish time. The songs linger in our psyche, not just across generations, but across centuries. Who took the battlefields of 1798, 1803, 1916, 1981, and why? Who wrote their song, and why? Tall tales, truth stranger than fiction; the days, demons and dreams, the Lyrics of Irish Freedom, are within.
