When the Moon Rises Over Skibbereen (4:47)
By the banks of the Ilen, the Abbeystrowry graves
10,000 nameless lay
Their faces forgotten, their stories remain
To speak of unbearable pain
Their voices rise up as the wind breaks the silence
The trees all bear witness to shame
A blight comes from nature, starvation from politics
Through history, it’s always the same
When the moon rises over Skibbereen
The most melancholy moon I have seen
Do you think she remembers the sorrow she’s seen
When the moon rises over Skibbereen
Eighteen and forty-five, potatoes first failed
But the people knew hard times before
So they pawned their belongings for food to survive
By late 1846, they were barely alive
Too weak from the fever and hunger and thirst
To properly bury their dead
They were left by the roadside or dropped in the dirt
With hardly a prayer even said
Who takes the blame, for a failure so grand
There’s plenty of guilty to go ‘round
By the time it was known, how bad it would get
Thousands were laid in the ground, in the ground
Some say the workhouse and others the crown
Some say the landlord’s to blame
But by the next world or the new world
Three million were gone, and a county was forever changed
Now the land and her people are thriving today
But there’s a weight on the hills and the glens
And it’s left to the living to remember the famine
And swear to it, never again