Mick Moloney, "There Were Roses" from Green Linnet Records: The Twentieth Anniversary Collection (The Last Angry Irishman)
Commentary: "There Were Roses" has a Wikipedia page: Wikipedia-link. 'Tis a beautiful lament of the Troubles, of two innocent friends, Scott & Sean Mcdonald, who became victims of the internecine violence. Methinks this song especially poignant in this, the Year of Our Lord 2017, the five hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, that sad, sacrilegious schism that has been the scandal of Western Christendom for half a millennium. Of course, the denominational differences were not the real cause of the violence—not in the main, not in the late twentieth century; no, the ancient feud was just a sad smokescreen for political posturing & vicious terrorist agendas.
"My song for you this evening it's not to make you sad,
Nor for adding to the sorrows of our troubled northern land…
"Now, Isaac he was Protestant, but Sean was Catholic born,
But it never made a difference for the friendship, it was strong,
And sometimes in the evening when we heard the sound of drums,
We said, 'It won't divide us. We always will be one.'
"For the ground our fathers plowed and the soil, it is the same,
And the places where we say our prayers have just got different names…
"Now, I don't know where the moral is or where this song should end,
But I wondered just how many wars are fought between good friends,
And those who give the orders, they are not the ones to die,
It's Scott and Mcdonald and the likes of you and I.
"There were roses, roses,
There were roses,
And the tears of the people ran together.
There were roses, roses,
There were roses."
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