Henry's Songbook

In my memory I will always see
The town that I have loved so well
Where our school played ball by the gasyard wall
And we laughed through the smoke and the smell
Going home in the rain, running up the dark lane
Past the jail and down behind the fountain
Those were happy days in so many many ways
In the town I loved so well

In the early morning the shirt factory horn
Called women from Creggan, the moor and the bog
While the men on the dole played a mother's role
Fed the children and then trained the dog
And when times got tough there was just about enough
But they saw it through without complaining
For deep inside was a burning pride
In the town I loved so well

There was music there in the Derry air
Like a language that we all could understand
I remember the day that I earned my first pay
When I played in a small pick-up band
There I spent my youth and to tell you the truth
I was sad to leave it all behind me
For I'd learned about life and I found a wife
In the town I loved so well

But when I returned how my eyes have burned
To see how a town could be brought to its knees
By the armoured cars and the bombed-out bars
And the gas that hangs on to every breeze
Now the army's installed by that old gasyard wall
And the damned barbed wire gets higher and higher
With their tanks and their guns, oh my God what have they done
To the town I loved so well

Now the music's gone but they carry on
For their spirit's been bruised, never broken
They will not forget but their hearts are set
On tomorrow and peace once again
For what's done is done and what's won is won
And what's lost is lost and gone forever
I can only pray for a bright brand-new day
In the town I loved so well

(as sung by The Dubliners)

[1989:] Creggan Estate, an area that has become notorious for battles between the IRA and the British Army. (Denselow, Music 160)

[1994:] But of all the songs of those years [the early seventies] the one which has endured is, of course, The Town I Loved So Well. Coulter wrote it with Luke in mind, not only for his voice, but because, he said, 'Luke would bring to it the integrity that any writer looks for.' Luke's recording to this day has the power to move profoundly a generation hardly born when it was written. The song itself is arguably Coulter's best, but in my opinion far too many singers sadly trivialise it into sentimentality. When Luke sang it, it was a masterpiece because he brought his own heartbreak to the shocked, raw verses relating the destruction of home and childhood.

Like all masterpieces, that song and its singer had universal appeal. Little else did as the '70s unrolled and circumstances became increasingly complex. Daily life in Northern Ireland began to ring with the calamitous echo of Clarence Mangan's apocalyptic translation of Róisín Dubh - 'O! The Erne shall run red with redundance of blood' [...]. The days when The Dubliners could bring huge audiences of Catholics, Protestants and dissenters together in Belfast's King's Hall to join in choruses of both Orange and green songs were suddenly gone - just as, decisively, were the times when the Miami Showband brought the young on to the same dance floor, far from the bigotry and tribalism of the older generations. (Geraghty, Luke Kelly 120)