The H-Block Song
       by Francie Brolly
           Dungiven ,1976

1
I am a proud young Irishman.
In Ulster's hills my life began;
A happy boy through green fields ras;
I kept God's and Man's laws.
But when my age was barely ten
My country's wrongs were told again.
By tens of thousands marching men
And my heart stirred to the cause.

Chorus:
    
           So I'll wear no convicts uniform
           Nor meekly srve my time
           That Britain might brand Ireland's fight
           Eight hundred years of crime.

2
I learned of centuries of strife,
Of cruel laws, injustice rife;
I saw now in my own young life
The fruits of foreign sway:
Protestors threatened, tortured, maimed,
Divisions nurtures, passions flamed,
Outrage provoked, right's cause defamed:
That is the conqueror's way.

Chorus

3
Descended from proud Connacht clan,
Concannon served cruel Britain's plan;
Man's inhumanity to man
Had spawned a trusty slave.
No strangers are these bolts and locks,
No new design these dark H-Blocks,
Black Cromwell lives while Mason stalks;
The bully taunts the brave.

Chorus

4
Does Britain need a thousand years
Of protest, riot, death and tears,
Or will this past decade of fears
Of eighty decades spell
an end to Ireland's agony,
New hope for human dignity;
And will the last obscenity
Be this grim H-Block cell?

Chorus