Luyện nghe bài hát Irish ways and Irish Laws

Once a time there were
Irish and Irish Laws
of Irish blood
Waking to the
Waking to the

Then the Vikings around (1)
Turned us up and us down
Started boats and towns
tried to change our living
tried to our living

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

Again, again the soldiers
Burnt our houses our grain
Shot the farmers in their
for livings
Working for a

800 years we have down (4)
The of the water sound
Has the spirit of a man
Above the descending
Above the descending

the struggle carries 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 time was
Irish Ways and Laws
of Irish blood
Waking to the
Waking to the

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

(2)
Oliver Cromwell landed in Ireland in 1649 at the head of a
huge army, by May 1650 he had crushed in all but the West.
(By the Irish population had fallen 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 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 he uses the ambiguity of the term "turn" to echo both
the image of the unbowed Irish peasant and a metaphor for
flowing like a un-turnable river.

(4)
Since the English invasion in 1170

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