Luyện nghe bài hát Irish ways and Irish Laws

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

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

and his soldiers came (2)
Started of shame
But they could not us turn (3)
We are a river
We're a flowing

Again, again the soldiers
Burnt our houses stole our
Shot the in their fields
for livings
Working for a

800 years we been down (4)
The secret of the water
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 being up (5)
To a people and their
A people and freedom

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

(1)
The documented Viking landing took place in 795. Until the
Anglo-Norman in 1170 the Vikings would play an important
in Ireland, both politically and economically. They created trade
routes, founded kingdoms, and the first towns in Ireland,
Dublin, Cork and Limerick.

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

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

(4)
Since the first English invasion in

(5)
"Gates" here evokes images of the be-sieged walled cities of the
17th and also of the present 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 political campaigning
including Hunger by the inmates.