[C]Who is Ireland's enemy? Not [G]Germany nor Spain,
Nor [F]Russia, France nor [C]Austria,
They [G]forged for her no chain.
Nor [C]quenched her hearths, nor robbed
her homes, Nor[G] laid her altars low,
Nor [F]sent her sons across the hills amid the[G] winter's [C]snow.
[C]Who murdered kingly Shane O'Neill?
Who [G]poisoned Owen Roe?
Who [F]struck Red Hugh O'Donnell [C]down?
Who [G]filled our land with [C]woe?
By night
and day a thousand times,
In [G]twice four hundred years,
'Till [F]every blade of [C]Irish grass
Was [G]wet with blood and[C] tears.
Who spiked the heads of Irish Priests on Dublin Castle gate?
Who butchered helpless Irish babes, their lust for blood
to sate? Who outraged Irish maidenhood? Who tortured aged sires?
And spread from Cork to Donegal the glare of midnight
fires? Who plied the pitchcap and the sword, the gibbet and the rack?
Oh God, that we shall ever fail to pay those devils
back.
Who sent in thousands o'er the sea to slavery and shame,
The children of the Irish land to end their race and name?
Who sold them like a herd of sheep?
Who laughed with hellish glee,
When Irish mothers, mad with grief,
Sought
death beneath the sea?
Who robbed our land in '47
Of all its stores of food,
While at its gate with tainted breath,
Gaunt famine grimly
stood?
Who filled the fields with whitened bones,
And sent across the seas
The kindliest hearts in all the land,
The
kin of you and me?
Not Germany or Austria,
Nor Russia, France or Spain,
That robbed or reeved this land of ours,
They forged for her no chain.
But England of the wily word,
That crafty, treacherous foe,
'Twas England robbed
our Motherland, '
Twas England laid her low.
Rise up, oh dead of Ireland, and rouse our living men,
The chance has come to us at last to win our own again.
To sweep the English enemy
From hill and glen and vale,
And in your name, oh holy dead,
Our sacred debt to pay.
