Henry's Songbook

Chorus:
Low lie the fields of Athenry
Where once we watched the small free birds fly
Our love was on the wing
We had dreams and songs to sing
It's so lonely round the fields of Athenry

By a lonely prison wall I heard a young girl calling
Michael they are taking you away
For you stole Trevelyan's corn so the young might see the morn
Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay

By a lonely prison wall, I heard a young man calling
Nothing matters, Mary, when you're free
Against the famine and the Crown I rebelled, they caught me down
Now you must raise our child with dignity

By a lonely harbour wall, she watched the last star falling
As the prison ship sailed out against the sky
For she'll live in hope and pray for her love in Botany Bay
It's so lonely round the fields of Athenry

(as sung by The Dubliners)

[1999:] It's a song about the potato famine in Ireland, it's that simple. I'd gone to Galway and read some Gaelic tracts about how tough life was in those dreadful times. The people were starving and corn had been imported from America to help them but it was Indian corn with a kernel so hard that the mills here in Ireland couldn't grind it. So it lay useless in stores at the docks in Dublin. But nobody trusted the authorities, the Crown, to tell them the truth so hundreds of starving Irish marched on the city to get the grain. Some were arrested and shipped off to Australia in prison ships. I wrote a ballad about it [in 1979], inventing Michael, Mary and a baby - a family torn apart because a husband stole corn to feed his family...all this information came from Galway so I set the song in Athenry, a little Galway village where the potato fields lay empty. [...] It's a song about hard times in Ireland's history, a bit like Flower of Scotland is the same to the Scots. But bigotry? It's about as sectarian as I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles. (Pete St John, interviewed by Daily Record, 19 Feb)

See also F.S.L. Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine

See also
http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=2053
http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=32328#424809 (for Botany Bay)
http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=13511#112298

For the famine see:
http://www.webcom.com/famine/firstpage.htm
http://landow.stg.brown.edu/victorian/history/famine.html
http://www.toad.net/~sticker/nosurrender/PotatCom.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000289242712046&rtmo=33c2968c&atmo=33c2968c&pg=/et/97/6/2/wfam02.html
Fields of Athenry