Sinead O'connor - Famine lyrics

OK, I want to talk about Ireland Specifically I want to talk about the "famine" About the fact that there never really was one There was no "famine" See Irish people were only allowed to eat potatoes All of the other food Meat fish vegetables Were shipped out of the country under armed guard To England while the Irish people starved And then on the middle of all this They gave us money not to teach our children Irish And so we lost our history And this is what I think is still hurting me See we're like a child that's been battered Has to drive itself out of it's head because it's frightened Still feels all the painful feelings But they lose contact with the memory And this leads to ma**ive self-destruction Alcoholism, drug addiction All desperate attempts at running And in its worst form Becomes actual k**ing And if there ever is gonna be healing There has to be remembering And then grieving So that there then can be forgiving There has to be knowledge and understanding All the lonely people Where do they all come from An American army regulation Says you mustn't k** more than 10% of a nation 'Cause to do so causes permanent "psychological damage" It's not permanent but they didn't know that Anyway during the supposed "famine" We lost a lot more than 10% of our nation Through d**hs on land or on ships of emigration But what finally broke us was not starvation But its use in the controlling of our education School go on about "Black 47" On and on about "The terrible famine" But what they don't say is in truth There really never was one (Excuse me) All the lonely people (I'm sorry, excuse me) Where do they all come from (that I can tell you in one word ²) All the lonely people Where do they all belong So let's take a look shall we The highest statistics of child abuse in the EEC And we say we're a Christian country But we've lost contact with our history See we used to worship God as a mother We're suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder Look at all our old men in the pubs Look at all our young people on d** We used to worship God as a mother Now look at what we're doing to each other We've even made k**ers of ourselves The most child-like trusting people in the Universe And this is what's wrong with us Our history books the parent figures lied to us I see the Irish As a race like a child That got itself bashed in the face And if there ever is gonna be healing There has to be remembering And then grieving So that there then can be forgiving There has to be knowledge and understanding All the lonely people Where do they all come from All the lonely people Where do they all come from JOHN HUME'S VOICE ¹: We stand on the brink of a great achievement In this Ireland there is no solution To be found to our disagreements By shooting each other There is no real invader here We are all Irish in all our Different kinds of ways We must not, now or ever in the future Show anything to each other Except tolerance, forbearance And neighbourly love MAN'S VOICE ²: Because of our tradition everyone here Knows who he is and what God expects him to do