Neddy's Palaver

Vanquished, Vanished

Come, come, come …
Let us ponder the America of our memories:
We sang like the birds of the field; we sang of freedom;
When we sought opportunity, we found it awaiting us.
America was a dream, a vision of seekers;
America was a dream that lasted ten score and thirty years.
The dream that was America encountered the anarchy of liberty;
And was felled by the anarchy of immorality.
We beg forgiveness of our founders, our fathers;
We weep for the blood they shed for us.
The America that was their dream is now our master.
Freemen no longer, we are serfs to toil land that is not ours.
We live the lives of the slaves of old, lives of quiet desperation;
We beat our breasts in despair knowing we sold our posterity into bondage.
We still pray, but not to God; We still sing, but not of freedom.
We tell tales to our children and they laugh,
For, as we recollect our remembrances,
Our children hear fairy tales of long, long ago.
We talk to those who sacrificed for freedom,
And they ask: “Did we win or did we lose?
Was God with us or were we against God, in those days?
Was freedom worth the blood we spilt?
Or was freedom but a mysterious nothing,
A mere longing of our souls?”
We will soon go away too, we who have the memories.
When we are gone, will seekers ever dream that dream again?

I found this musical creation so beautiful that I had to learn more about it and its meaning. I found it on an album at Amazon, which I just ordered: The Irish Tenors / McNamara, McDermott, Kearns, Tynan.

This is what I discovered about the song entitled “Grace.” Give a listen. (The Video)

“As we gather in the chapel here in old Kilmainham jail,
I think about these past few weeks; Oh, will they say we failed?
From our school days they have told us we must yearn for liberty,
Yet all I want in this dark place is to have you here with me.

[Chorus]
Oh Grace just hold me in your arms, and let this moment linger,
They’ll take me out at dawn and I will die.
With all my love I’ll place this wedding ring upon your finger,
There won’t be time to share our love for we must say goodbye.

Now I know it’s hard for you my love to ever understand,
The love I bear for these brave men, my love for this dear land,
But when Padraic called me to his side down in the G.P.O.
I had to leave my own sick bed, to him I had to go.
[Chorus]

Now as the dawn is breaking, my heart is breaking too,
On this May morn, as I walk out, my thoughts will be of you.
And I’ll write some words upon the wall, so everyone will know,
I loved so much that I could see His blood upon the rose.”

Joseph Mary Plunkett was an Irish nationalist, poet and leader and planner of the 1916 Easter rising. It was largely his plan that was followed in 1916, which ended in a military disaster. Plunkett was held in Kilmainham Jail and faced court martial. Hours before his excecution by firing squad, at age 28, he was married in the prison chapel on 4 May 1916, to his sweetheart Grace Gifford, a Protestant convert to Catholicism.

Grace remained loyal to the republican movement while earning a living as a commerical artist.She voted against the treaty which divided Ireland and during the civil war she was imprisoned in Kilmainham jail for three months. She died in 1955.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, Row on Row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Colonel John McCrae, a Canadian physician, also died in France, the same year as my great aunt’s husband, Frank Heming, a casualty of World War I. In 1916 McCrae was Chief of Medical Services at a Canadian Hospital in France, where wounded soldiers from Arras were received. His poem remains one of the most memorable war poems. It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres Salient in the spring of 1915. Poppies sprout best in newly cultivated soil and, when this was written, the entire Western Front was covered with poppies blooming as never before seen on the freshly dug graves.

“On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive, Who remembers that famous day and year….” ~~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.”

In honor of this day and the many American patriots who fought for freedom during the years of the American Revolution, I have created a slideshow of some of those patriots’ graves: Patriots of ‘76.

If you would like to listen to appropriate music while viewing the Patriots’ Graves slideshow, click this little arrow to hear America’s Liberation Song, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, and then open the slideshow in a new tab or page. It is music that expresses the spirit that once motivated America, “a giant filled with a terrible resolve, unleashed against tyrants and oppressors.” It was performed at the funerals of Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan, and at the memorials for the victims of September 11th in Washington, New York and London. This version is sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in the language style of the Old Testament of the Holy Bible.

Chains, Chains, Chains;
How many souls have died in freedom’s name?

Is it true as Eric Bogel sung that “freedom will make slaves of us all?”

This seems at odds with all of the teachings of Christianity and the legacies of British rule and goverment that we Americans perpetuate. Freedom makes us freemen, not slaves. I know from his other songs, such as “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda”, “The Green Fields of France”, that he is obviously anti-war. I am too. However, I believe that freedom makes us free. Am I misguided?

Can anyone explain just what this song is all about? Is “Singing the Spirit Home” a true story?