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Mary MacSwiney

by Bob A. Feldman

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A folk song about a militant and uncompromising Irish Republican Movement and Cumann na mBan revolutionary nationalist leader during the first half of the 20th-century, who some folks in the USA during the 1920s regarded as "Ireland's Joan of Arc.".

lyrics

(chorus)
The Brits did not relese her brother
So on hunger strike he died
And Mary MacSwiney
She warned: "Don't Compromise!"
(verses)
In late November 1920
She sailed to the United States
And the thousands who heard her speak there
Were inspired to support Ireland's fight
For 9 months she spoke in cities
In the east, west, north and south
And saw, unlike De Valera
How The Republic could win more U.S. support (chorus)

"What's lost at the conference table
Will be won on the battlefield."
Is what she told the people
Who thought that the Brits would yield
An oath to the British King
Was not acceptable to Mary
And unlike Michael Collins,
She rejected Lloyd George's treaty. (chorus)

For three hours in the Dail chamber
Passionately Mary spoke
Yet despite her brilliant oration
The Free Staters won the vote
The partition of Ireland, she wrote,
Was England's "greatest crime"
So IRA-supporting women
Voted "No!" to the Treaty compromise. (chorus)

Arrested by Free State troops
Mary went on hunger strike
And before she was released
Their firing squad formed inside
Four rebels were executed
And Erskine Childers, too,
Who sacrificed their lives
Resisting Free State rule. (chorus)

After a second hunger strike
Mary gained leadership of Sinn Fein
But in July 1924
Released De Valera returned to the scene
So in 1925
Mary sailed to the USA again
And "Ireland's Joan of Arc"
For 12 months spoke to Ireland's friends. (chorus)

De Valera later
Split off from Sinn Fein
And formed his own party
To join up with the Free State
Then De Valera
Got a newspaper and people were fooled
And repressed the IRA
But Mary called him: "An English tool."

credits

released December 14, 2023

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Bob A. Feldman Boston, Massachusetts

Bob A. Feldman has written public domain protest and biographical folk songs on a non-commercial basis in the Guthrie-Ochs-MacColl-Moore tradition for many years. He also has written a lot of public domain love songs.

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