Who is Ireland's Enemy?
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The longest-living author of this work died in 1963, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 60 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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Oh, who is Ireland's enemy?
Not Germany, nor Spain,
Not Russia, France nor Austria;
They forged for her no chains,
Nor quenched her hearths,
Nor razed her homes,
Nor laid her altars low,
Nor sent her sons to tramp the hills
Amid the winter snow.
Who murdered kingly Shane O'Neill?
Who poisoned Owen Roe?
Who struck Red Hugh O'Neill down?
Who filled our land with woe
By night and day - a thousand times,
In twice four hundred years -
Till every blade of Irish grass
Was wet with blood and tears
Who spiked the heads of Irish priests
On Dublin Castle's gate?
Who butchered helpless Irish babes,
A lust for blood to sate?
Who outraged Irish maidenhood,
And tortured aged sires,
And spread from Clare to Donegal
The glare of midnight fires?
Who scourged our land in Ninety-Eight,
Spread torment far and wide,
Till Ireland shrieked in woe and pain,
And Hell seemed fair beside?
Who plied the pitch-cap and the sword,
The gibbet and the rack?
Oh God! that we should ever fail
To pay those devils back.
Who slew the three in Manchester,
One grim November dawn,
While 'round them howled sadistically
The Devil's cruel spawn?
Who shattered many a Fenian mind
In dungeons o'er the foam,
And broke the loyal Fenian hearts
That pined for them at home?
Not Germany nor Austria,
Not Russia, France nor Spain
That robbed and reaved this land of ours,
And forged her heavy chains;
But England of the wily words –
A crafty, treacherous foe –
'Twas England scourged our Motherland,
'Twas England laid her low!
Rise up, oh dead of Ireland!
And rouse her living men,
The chance will come to us at last
To win our own again,
To sweep the English enemy
From hill and glen and bay,
And in your name, oh Holy Dead,
Our sacred debt to pay!