A modern Irish folk ballad about the great Irish potato famine of the 1840s. Grosse ile was a quarantine station for Coffin ships full of Irish refugees fleeing starvation.
Lyrics and music written by Belfast Andi MacGabhann
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On a wind swept isle east of Quebec lie the children of the Gael.
Imbraced interred forever where the sea breeze softly wails.
Three thousand miles from hell to here, just another twenty still to the fading view of the promised land from the graveyard on Grosse Ile.
Chorus: To the memory of the thousands whose sorrowfull lives they gave, in search of their last great hope,
instead they found a grave.
They fled their beloved native land bid Eirn's soil farwell,
crammed upon the coffin ships, Death's armada did set sail.
Forced out against an angry swell by John Bull's gloating face.
Remember this to the end of time as England's damned disgrace.
Chorus:
Now the Island is a monument to all God's children here, whose mass migration across the sea from a land they loved so dear,ended so far from their homes so far and yet so near to their mortal salvation and freedom's cry so clear.
Chorus:
We bow our heads in slient prayer as soft tears from heaven fall. The Banshee's croon sweeps around the cross where we gather one and all. In the hearts and minds of Irish clans the sadness echoes still of the thousands who lie ubder Erin's turf and the graveyard on Grosse Ile.
Chorus:
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