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Back Home in Derry

from Johnny Jump Up by DruidSong

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about

For a long time, several European powers addressed the problem of both criminal and political prisoners with the quaint custom of transportation. That means they shipped them off to some chunk of land that wasn’t really fit for much of anything and dumped them there. This is how Australia was originally settled, and that’s what Back Home in Derry talks about.

If the tune sounds familiar, it’s because the collaboration of Bobby Sands and Gordon Lightfoot was responsible for the song. Lightfoot recycled the tune used for “The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald.” I don’t know which was written first.

This song also appears on the album “DruidSong.” This is a new recording, and I like it better than the recording used on the earlier album.

lyrics

In eighteen-oh-three we sailed out to sea, out from the sweet town of Derry
For Australia bound if we didn’t all drown, and the marks of our fetters we carried
In our rusty iron chains, said “Good-bye” to our we’ans, and the sweet wives we left in sorrow
Wild curses we hurled as the mainsails unfurled at the English and thought of tomorrow.

Chorus:

Oh, oh, oh, oh, I wish I were back home in Derry
Oh, oh, oh, oh, I wish I were back home in Derry.


At the mouth of the Foyle, bid farewell to the soil, as down below decks we were lying.
O’Doughterty screamed ‘wakened out of a dream by a vision of bold Robert dying.
The sun served us cruel as we served out the gruel. O’Conner was down with the fever
Sixty rebels today sailed for Botany Bay. How many will reach their receiver?

We cursed them to Hell as our bow fought the swell. Our ship danced like a moth in the fire light
White horses rode high as the Devil passed by, taking souls down to Hades by twilight.
Five weeks out to sea, we were now forty-three. We buried our comrades each morning.
And in our own slime, we were lost in a time, endless night without dawning.

Now Van Dieman’s land is the Hell for a man to live out his whole life in slavery,
Where the climate is raw and the gun makes the law. Neither wind nor rain care for bravery.
Twenty years have gone by, and I’ve ended me bond. My comrade’s ghosts walk behind me.
A rebel I came and I’ll die just the same. On the cold winds of night you will find me.

credits

from Johnny Jump Up, released June 23, 2009
(C) Lyrics Bobby Sands Foundation
(C) Music Gordon Lightfoot

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