Just Irish Music

Who is Ireland's Enemy..Not Russia, France nor Austria — Ireland’s Cry of Wrath and Memory Not Russia, France nor Austria is one of the fiercest patriotic poems ever composed in the Irish tradition — a thunderous indictment of England’s centuries of conquest and cruelty in Ireland. Written in the voice of the dispossessed and the dead, it spares no detail and softens no truth. The poem begins with a striking declaration: Ireland’s suffering did not come from distant empires. “ Not Russia, France nor Austria — they forged for her no chains. ” Her destroyer was closer to home. Across each verse, the poet calls out the long litany of wrongs: the murder of Shane O’Neill , the poisoning of Owen Roe , the slaughter of priests, children, and innocents, and the burning of villages from Clare to Donegal . It’s a roll call of grief stretching over “twice four hundred years,” until, as the poet writes, “every blade of Irish grass was wet with blood and tears.” Yet behind the rage lie...