Colony

I sing the song of the colony

How many years and you're still not free

And your mother cries and you ask god why

Greed is the knife and the scars run deep

How many races with much reason to weep

And your children cry

And you ask god why

Annie, she came from Dunlavin Town

The TB came and killed her family all around

Population booms

Eleven in two rooms

Katie she came from down Townsend street

Ten in a bed and no shoes on their feet

1916 came

They played the patriots game

Freddy, he came from the Iveagh flats

Tenement slums and infested with rats

Sleeping on damp straw

Trying not to break the law

Thomas, he came from Kilmaine in Mayo

Semi starvation was the only life you'd know

In a two room shack

Then jailed in Letterfrack

I look to the east, I look to the west

To the north and the south, and I'm not too impressed

Time after time

After crime after crime

They raped, robbed, pillaged, enslaved and murdered

Jesus Christ was their god and they done it in his name

So he could take the blame if it's not all a game

With bible in one hand and a sword in the other

They came to purify my land of my Gaelic Irish mothers

And fathers, and sisters and brothers

With our own ancient customs, laws, music, art

Way of life and culture

Tribal in structure

We had a civilisation

When they were still neanderthal nations

We suffer with the Native American, the Indian in Asia

Aboriginal Australia

The African people with their history so deep

And our children still weep and our lives are still cheap

You came from Germany, from France, from England

And from Spain

From Belgium and from Portugal

You all done much the same

You took what was not yours

Went against your own bible

You broke your own laws

Just to out do the rival

But did you ever apologize

For the hundreds and millions of lives

You destroyed and terrorised

Or have you never realized

Did you never feel shame

For what was done in your country's name

And find out who's to blame and why they were so inhumane

And still they teach you in your school

About those glorious days of rule

And how it's your destiny to be

Superior to me

But if you've any kind of mind

You'll see that all human kind

Are the children of this earth

And your hate for them will chew you up and spit you out

You'll never kill our will to be free, to be free

You'll never kill our will to be free, to be free

You'll never kill our will to be free, to be free

Inside our minds we hold, hold the key.