Luyện nghe bài hát Irish ways and Irish Laws

Once a time there were
Irish Ways and Laws
Villages of Irish
Waking to the
to the morning

Then the Vikings came (1)
Turned us up and turned us
Started building and towns
They to change our living
tried to change our

Cromwell and his came (2)
Started centuries of
But they could not us turn (3)
We are a flowing
a river flowing

Again, again the came
Burnt our houses stole our
the farmers in their fields
Working for
for a living

800 years we have down (4)
The secret of the sound
Has kept the of a man
Above the descending
the pain descending

Today the struggle on
I wonder I live so long
To see the gates opened up (5)
To a people and freedom
A people and freedom

Once upon a there was
Irish and Irish Laws
Villages of Irish
to the morning
Waking to the

(1)
The first documented Viking took place in 795. Until the
Anglo-Norman invasion in 1170 the Vikings would an important
role in Ireland, both politically and economically. They trade
routes, founded kingdoms, and built the first in Ireland,
including Dublin, and Limerick.

(2)
Oliver landed in Ireland in August 1649 at the head of a
army, by May 1650 he had crushed opposition in all but the West.
(By 1652 the Irish population had to .7 m. In 1641 it had
been 1.5 m. By 1660 .5 m cattle were being annually to
England.)

(3)
Both Cromwell's and colonisation campaigns used the twin
techniques of "planting" English and settlers and forcing
locals to change or "Turn" their religion to the Protestant
faith. So here he uses the ambiguity of the term "turn" to both
the image of the unbowed Irish peasant and a metaphor for
History flowing a un-turnable river.

(4)
the first English invasion in 1170

(5)
"Gates" here evokes both images of the be-sieged cities of the
17th century and also of the day prison camps in the North
of Ireland at the time the song was being written (in the late
1970's early 1980's) were the subject of much political
Hunger Strikes by the inmates.