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 ghettoes 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

Ohh, the women are crying

Ohh, where are the men?

Ohh, it's happening somewhere

Again, again

The planters arrived, they're 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 and armour

And great battleships

A sword in one hand and 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 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

Who's land has been plundered

And people enslaved

That humanities gulf

Will one day fuse and we'll free ourselves of the settlers blues

Ohh, the women are crying

Ohh, where are the men?

Ohh, it's happening somewhere

Again, again