Chords for Historic Introduction to The Fields Of Athenry
Tempo:
100.25 bpm
Chords used:
F
C
Eb
G
D
Tuning:Standard Tuning (EADGBE)Capo:+0fret
Start Jamming...
I'm standing outside Kilmainham jail here [F] in Kilmainham, Inchicore and Dublin, pretty close to where they was born and reared.
[B] I knew this place when I was [N] a kid.
We used to break into it.
We're the only kids I suppose in Inchicore that broke into a [Dm] jail.
But it was derelict at [F] that time.
The roof was fallen in and
it hadn't been used for about 30 years.
[D] And about in the late 50s a group of men got together here in [C] Inchicore and called for volunteers to clean it up [Eb] and
to turn it into a [N] museum, a voluntary museum.
It was a Mr.
Brennan, I can remember him well.
And I went down there on Saturdays
with some of my boyhood friends and we cleaned out the cells.
And I was always intrigued about
the snakes as I taught when I was a kid.
But I found out afterwards
from my good friend Eamon McNamara, they were the five demons of crime.
Now if the British
Authority
numbered Irish patriotism as a [F] crime,
every Irish man and woman that was incarcerated in this Bastille, in this jail,
were guilty of a crime.
But they were guilty of no crime.
Their only crime was the love of their country.
The only crime was the love that their people,
they [D] wanted to see them prosper [F] and that of the conditions that they lived under in this world.
[Eb] All of the men and women who were incarcerated here, who were imprisoned,
going back to the [Bb] 1798, the jail actually was opened in [Fm] 1796.
One of the first people [F] to go into it were the men and women of the [Eb] Great Rebellion of 1798.
Henry Joy McCracken, the Shears [F] Brothers,
Keeling,
[Fm] Thomas Addis Emmett, were all indeed imprisoned in this jail.
[F] It's hard to believe that so many great men
could be [N] accused of crimes and imprisoned
indeed for the love of their country.
[Db] But it didn't stop [F] there.
Indeed in the 1840s, the great man of peace, Dan [A] O'Connell,
he was incarcerated here [F] and what's more he was threatened with murder of his over 1 million to 100,000 people
he was going to assemble in Clontarf in Dublin.
The poor man was taken, imprisoned, his health was broken and he died a [C] broken man in Rome.
[N] Dan O'Connell's treatment was horrific and for a man who abhorred violence
he was threatened with the violence of the British,
the terror of the British Army and Navy that was [Gbm] assembled in Dublin Bay and told that if [G] he assembled his people
here in this city
[F] the [Gb] shots would be fired and the blood would [C] be on his hands.
[N] And of course Dan,
he abhorred violence
and he cancelled the meeting.
During the starvation,
the extermination of the Irish people in the 1840s and 50s,
hundreds of people, this jail became as bustling with people that were stealing food and eat to feed their families.
Many of these young women [F] were sent to Australia.
They were sent to Australia chiefly [C] because there was no women there for menial [N] crimes of rubbing and torn up or an apple or
something small that were sent and torn away from their families and sent to Australia.
This jail is a house of terror for anyone who loved Ireland.
The men who tried to change indeed the system of government in the 1840s and 50s, the Young Ireland Movement,
Thomas Francis Maher, he was imprisoned here.
[F] Terence Bellamy McManus, he was [F] imprisoned here.
All of those men, William Smith O'Brien, he was imprisoned here.
And then we had the great Fenian men who 20 years after in the end of America [Eb] tried to bring some sanity
to the ruling [F] of this country that had seen over 1 million people leave Ireland every 10 years from 1850 [N] to 1920.
We're the only nation in Europe
that lost population in the 19th century.
And sadly,
this country was controlled by a country [F] that was considered the wealthiest and most
[N] the wealthiest nation on the face of the earth, the British Empire.
When I stand here in Kilmainham jail, [F] I think of all the unknown names.
We [N] remember the names of the men and women of the Easter Rebellion who were executed here.
Codrick Pierce, Thomas [F] Macdonagh, Joseph Plunkett, Eamon Ken, Tom Clark, Sean MacDermott and [G] James Connolly who all perished [F] in this country, in this jail.
Who were all murdered.
The crowd of people that stood outside here and knelt as James Connolly was being [A] executed.
[F] We remember all of them here today, but also we should be mindful of all those names [N] that we'll never know.
The names of the young girls who were imprisoned [G] here, of the young boys who were taken off the [F] streets
indeed for stealing an apple and imprisoned here.
We should remember them.
There's [N] no words to express the tyranny that was exercised in this country by British rule in every generation.
And when I come to this place, and as I did when I was a kid,
I was mindful of that fact.
[G]
We're going to sing a song now that reminds us of those who stole food to [N] feed their families,
the fields of Athens Roy.
This is a sad song,
but it's also a song of resistance.
If you're looking at this
video and you have an ounce of Irish blood in you, you are a survivor of Ireland's Holocaust.
You are a survivor of the attempted
extermination of the Irish people.
And as we [D] said in the book that was written by [F] Tim Pat Coogan,
he wrote a great book, The Famine Plot.
He said
that it ticks all the boxes for genocide.
[A] [F] They wanted to rid this country of the most [Db] powerful
opposition [Bb] that they faced, and that was its people.
[N] And they disposed and dispersed the people around the world.
May God forgive them for their rule in the 19th century and the torture and horror they brought on the people of Ireland.
Indeed, they were expelled from this country in the 1840s and 50s.
This song, if you have an ounce of Irish blood in you, sing it out with choir today.
Because it's a wonderful [F] ballad, and it was written by a man who was born up in [N] St.
John,
who was born up in Itchycock here.
And he wrote beautiful music that gave it its popularity around the world,
based on an old traditional song that went back to the 1880s,
The Fields of
[B] I knew this place when I was [N] a kid.
We used to break into it.
We're the only kids I suppose in Inchicore that broke into a [Dm] jail.
But it was derelict at [F] that time.
The roof was fallen in and
it hadn't been used for about 30 years.
[D] And about in the late 50s a group of men got together here in [C] Inchicore and called for volunteers to clean it up [Eb] and
to turn it into a [N] museum, a voluntary museum.
It was a Mr.
Brennan, I can remember him well.
And I went down there on Saturdays
with some of my boyhood friends and we cleaned out the cells.
And I was always intrigued about
the snakes as I taught when I was a kid.
But I found out afterwards
from my good friend Eamon McNamara, they were the five demons of crime.
Now if the British
Authority
numbered Irish patriotism as a [F] crime,
every Irish man and woman that was incarcerated in this Bastille, in this jail,
were guilty of a crime.
But they were guilty of no crime.
Their only crime was the love of their country.
The only crime was the love that their people,
they [D] wanted to see them prosper [F] and that of the conditions that they lived under in this world.
[Eb] All of the men and women who were incarcerated here, who were imprisoned,
going back to the [Bb] 1798, the jail actually was opened in [Fm] 1796.
One of the first people [F] to go into it were the men and women of the [Eb] Great Rebellion of 1798.
Henry Joy McCracken, the Shears [F] Brothers,
Keeling,
[Fm] Thomas Addis Emmett, were all indeed imprisoned in this jail.
[F] It's hard to believe that so many great men
could be [N] accused of crimes and imprisoned
indeed for the love of their country.
[Db] But it didn't stop [F] there.
Indeed in the 1840s, the great man of peace, Dan [A] O'Connell,
he was incarcerated here [F] and what's more he was threatened with murder of his over 1 million to 100,000 people
he was going to assemble in Clontarf in Dublin.
The poor man was taken, imprisoned, his health was broken and he died a [C] broken man in Rome.
[N] Dan O'Connell's treatment was horrific and for a man who abhorred violence
he was threatened with the violence of the British,
the terror of the British Army and Navy that was [Gbm] assembled in Dublin Bay and told that if [G] he assembled his people
here in this city
[F] the [Gb] shots would be fired and the blood would [C] be on his hands.
[N] And of course Dan,
he abhorred violence
and he cancelled the meeting.
During the starvation,
the extermination of the Irish people in the 1840s and 50s,
hundreds of people, this jail became as bustling with people that were stealing food and eat to feed their families.
Many of these young women [F] were sent to Australia.
They were sent to Australia chiefly [C] because there was no women there for menial [N] crimes of rubbing and torn up or an apple or
something small that were sent and torn away from their families and sent to Australia.
This jail is a house of terror for anyone who loved Ireland.
The men who tried to change indeed the system of government in the 1840s and 50s, the Young Ireland Movement,
Thomas Francis Maher, he was imprisoned here.
[F] Terence Bellamy McManus, he was [F] imprisoned here.
All of those men, William Smith O'Brien, he was imprisoned here.
And then we had the great Fenian men who 20 years after in the end of America [Eb] tried to bring some sanity
to the ruling [F] of this country that had seen over 1 million people leave Ireland every 10 years from 1850 [N] to 1920.
We're the only nation in Europe
that lost population in the 19th century.
And sadly,
this country was controlled by a country [F] that was considered the wealthiest and most
[N] the wealthiest nation on the face of the earth, the British Empire.
When I stand here in Kilmainham jail, [F] I think of all the unknown names.
We [N] remember the names of the men and women of the Easter Rebellion who were executed here.
Codrick Pierce, Thomas [F] Macdonagh, Joseph Plunkett, Eamon Ken, Tom Clark, Sean MacDermott and [G] James Connolly who all perished [F] in this country, in this jail.
Who were all murdered.
The crowd of people that stood outside here and knelt as James Connolly was being [A] executed.
[F] We remember all of them here today, but also we should be mindful of all those names [N] that we'll never know.
The names of the young girls who were imprisoned [G] here, of the young boys who were taken off the [F] streets
indeed for stealing an apple and imprisoned here.
We should remember them.
There's [N] no words to express the tyranny that was exercised in this country by British rule in every generation.
And when I come to this place, and as I did when I was a kid,
I was mindful of that fact.
[G]
We're going to sing a song now that reminds us of those who stole food to [N] feed their families,
the fields of Athens Roy.
This is a sad song,
but it's also a song of resistance.
If you're looking at this
video and you have an ounce of Irish blood in you, you are a survivor of Ireland's Holocaust.
You are a survivor of the attempted
extermination of the Irish people.
And as we [D] said in the book that was written by [F] Tim Pat Coogan,
he wrote a great book, The Famine Plot.
He said
that it ticks all the boxes for genocide.
[A] [F] They wanted to rid this country of the most [Db] powerful
opposition [Bb] that they faced, and that was its people.
[N] And they disposed and dispersed the people around the world.
May God forgive them for their rule in the 19th century and the torture and horror they brought on the people of Ireland.
Indeed, they were expelled from this country in the 1840s and 50s.
This song, if you have an ounce of Irish blood in you, sing it out with choir today.
Because it's a wonderful [F] ballad, and it was written by a man who was born up in [N] St.
John,
who was born up in Itchycock here.
And he wrote beautiful music that gave it its popularity around the world,
based on an old traditional song that went back to the 1880s,
The Fields of
Key:
F
C
Eb
G
D
F
C
Eb
I'm standing outside Kilmainham jail here [F] in Kilmainham, Inchicore and Dublin, pretty close to where they was born and reared.
[B] I knew this place when I was [N] a kid.
We used to break into it.
We're the only kids I suppose in Inchicore that broke into a [Dm] jail.
But it was derelict at [F] that time.
The roof was fallen in and
it hadn't been used for about 30 years.
[D] And about in the late 50s a group of men got together here in [C] Inchicore and called for volunteers to clean it up [Eb] and
to turn it into a [N] museum, a voluntary museum.
It was a Mr.
Brennan, I can remember him well.
And I went down there on Saturdays
with some of my boyhood friends and we cleaned out the cells.
_ And I was always intrigued about
the snakes as I taught when I was a kid.
But I found out afterwards
from my good friend Eamon McNamara, they were the five demons of crime.
_ Now if the British
Authority
_ _ numbered Irish patriotism as a [F] crime,
every Irish man and woman that was incarcerated in this Bastille, in this jail,
_ were guilty of a crime.
But they were guilty of no crime.
Their only crime was the love of their country.
The only crime was the love that their people,
they [D] wanted to see them prosper [F] and that of the conditions that they lived under in this world.
_ [Eb] All of the men and women who were incarcerated here, who were imprisoned,
going back to the [Bb] 1798, the jail actually was opened in [Fm] 1796.
One of the first people [F] to go into it were the men and women of the [Eb] Great Rebellion of 1798.
Henry Joy McCracken, the Shears [F] Brothers,
Keeling,
[Fm] Thomas Addis Emmett, were all indeed imprisoned in this jail. _
[F] It's hard to believe that so many great men
could be [N] accused of crimes and imprisoned
indeed for the love of their country.
[Db] But it didn't stop [F] there.
Indeed in the 1840s, the great man of peace, Dan [A] O'Connell,
he was incarcerated here [F] and what's more he was threatened with murder of his over 1 million to 100,000 people
he was going to assemble in Clontarf in Dublin. _
The poor man was taken, imprisoned, his health was broken and he died a [C] broken man in Rome.
[N] Dan O'Connell's treatment was horrific and for a man who abhorred violence
he was threatened with the violence of the British,
the terror of the British Army and Navy that was [Gbm] assembled in Dublin Bay and told that if [G] he assembled his people
here in this city
[F] _ _ the [Gb] shots would be fired and the blood would [C] be on his hands.
_ [N] And of course Dan,
he abhorred violence
and he cancelled the meeting.
_ _ _ _ During the starvation,
the extermination of the Irish people in the _ 1840s and 50s,
hundreds of people, this jail became as bustling with people that were stealing food and eat to feed their families.
Many of these young women [F] were sent to Australia.
They were sent to Australia chiefly [C] because there was no women there for menial [N] crimes of rubbing and torn up or an apple or
something small that were sent and torn away from their families and sent to Australia.
_ This jail is a house of terror for anyone who loved Ireland.
The men who tried to change indeed the system of government in the 1840s and 50s, the Young Ireland Movement,
Thomas Francis Maher, he was imprisoned here.
[F] Terence Bellamy McManus, he was [F] imprisoned here.
All of those men, William Smith O'Brien, he was imprisoned here.
_ And then we had the great Fenian men who 20 years after in the end of America [Eb] tried to bring some sanity
to the ruling [F] of this country that had seen over 1 million people leave Ireland every 10 years from 1850 [N] to 1920.
_ We're the only nation in Europe
that lost population in the 19th century. _
_ And sadly,
_ this country was controlled by a country [F] that was considered the wealthiest and most
[N] the wealthiest nation on the face of the earth, the British Empire. _ _
_ _ When I stand here in Kilmainham jail, [F] I think of all the unknown names.
We [N] remember the names of the men and women of the Easter Rebellion who were executed here.
Codrick Pierce, Thomas [F] Macdonagh, Joseph Plunkett, Eamon Ken, Tom Clark, Sean MacDermott and [G] James Connolly who all perished [F] in this country, in this jail.
Who were all murdered.
The crowd of people that stood outside here and knelt as James Connolly was being [A] executed.
_ _ _ [F] We remember all of them here today, but also we should be mindful of all those names [N] that we'll never know.
The names of the young girls who were imprisoned [G] here, of the young boys who were taken off the [F] streets
indeed for stealing an apple and imprisoned here.
We should remember them.
_ _ There's [N] no words to express the tyranny that was exercised in this country by British rule in every generation.
_ _ And when I come to this place, and as I did when I was a kid,
I was mindful of that fact.
_ _ [G] _ _
We're going to sing a song now that reminds us of those who stole food to [N] feed their families,
the fields of Athens Roy. _
_ This is a sad song,
but it's also a song of resistance.
_ If you're looking at this _ _
video and you have an ounce of Irish blood in you, you are a survivor of Ireland's Holocaust.
You are a survivor of the attempted
extermination of the Irish people.
And as we [D] said in the book that was written by [F] Tim Pat Coogan,
he wrote a great book, The Famine Plot.
He said
that it ticks all the boxes for genocide.
[A] _ [F] They wanted to rid this country of the most [Db] powerful
_ opposition [Bb] that they faced, and that was its people.
[N] And they disposed and dispersed the people around the world.
May God forgive them for their rule in the 19th century and the torture and horror they brought on the people of Ireland.
Indeed, they were expelled from this country in the 1840s and 50s.
_ _ This song, if you have an ounce of Irish blood in you, sing it out with choir today.
Because it's a wonderful [F] ballad, and it was written by a man who was born up in [N] St.
John,
who was born up in Itchycock here.
_ And he wrote beautiful music that gave it its popularity around the world,
based on an old traditional song that went back to the 1880s,
_ _ The Fields of
[B] I knew this place when I was [N] a kid.
We used to break into it.
We're the only kids I suppose in Inchicore that broke into a [Dm] jail.
But it was derelict at [F] that time.
The roof was fallen in and
it hadn't been used for about 30 years.
[D] And about in the late 50s a group of men got together here in [C] Inchicore and called for volunteers to clean it up [Eb] and
to turn it into a [N] museum, a voluntary museum.
It was a Mr.
Brennan, I can remember him well.
And I went down there on Saturdays
with some of my boyhood friends and we cleaned out the cells.
_ And I was always intrigued about
the snakes as I taught when I was a kid.
But I found out afterwards
from my good friend Eamon McNamara, they were the five demons of crime.
_ Now if the British
Authority
_ _ numbered Irish patriotism as a [F] crime,
every Irish man and woman that was incarcerated in this Bastille, in this jail,
_ were guilty of a crime.
But they were guilty of no crime.
Their only crime was the love of their country.
The only crime was the love that their people,
they [D] wanted to see them prosper [F] and that of the conditions that they lived under in this world.
_ [Eb] All of the men and women who were incarcerated here, who were imprisoned,
going back to the [Bb] 1798, the jail actually was opened in [Fm] 1796.
One of the first people [F] to go into it were the men and women of the [Eb] Great Rebellion of 1798.
Henry Joy McCracken, the Shears [F] Brothers,
Keeling,
[Fm] Thomas Addis Emmett, were all indeed imprisoned in this jail. _
[F] It's hard to believe that so many great men
could be [N] accused of crimes and imprisoned
indeed for the love of their country.
[Db] But it didn't stop [F] there.
Indeed in the 1840s, the great man of peace, Dan [A] O'Connell,
he was incarcerated here [F] and what's more he was threatened with murder of his over 1 million to 100,000 people
he was going to assemble in Clontarf in Dublin. _
The poor man was taken, imprisoned, his health was broken and he died a [C] broken man in Rome.
[N] Dan O'Connell's treatment was horrific and for a man who abhorred violence
he was threatened with the violence of the British,
the terror of the British Army and Navy that was [Gbm] assembled in Dublin Bay and told that if [G] he assembled his people
here in this city
[F] _ _ the [Gb] shots would be fired and the blood would [C] be on his hands.
_ [N] And of course Dan,
he abhorred violence
and he cancelled the meeting.
_ _ _ _ During the starvation,
the extermination of the Irish people in the _ 1840s and 50s,
hundreds of people, this jail became as bustling with people that were stealing food and eat to feed their families.
Many of these young women [F] were sent to Australia.
They were sent to Australia chiefly [C] because there was no women there for menial [N] crimes of rubbing and torn up or an apple or
something small that were sent and torn away from their families and sent to Australia.
_ This jail is a house of terror for anyone who loved Ireland.
The men who tried to change indeed the system of government in the 1840s and 50s, the Young Ireland Movement,
Thomas Francis Maher, he was imprisoned here.
[F] Terence Bellamy McManus, he was [F] imprisoned here.
All of those men, William Smith O'Brien, he was imprisoned here.
_ And then we had the great Fenian men who 20 years after in the end of America [Eb] tried to bring some sanity
to the ruling [F] of this country that had seen over 1 million people leave Ireland every 10 years from 1850 [N] to 1920.
_ We're the only nation in Europe
that lost population in the 19th century. _
_ And sadly,
_ this country was controlled by a country [F] that was considered the wealthiest and most
[N] the wealthiest nation on the face of the earth, the British Empire. _ _
_ _ When I stand here in Kilmainham jail, [F] I think of all the unknown names.
We [N] remember the names of the men and women of the Easter Rebellion who were executed here.
Codrick Pierce, Thomas [F] Macdonagh, Joseph Plunkett, Eamon Ken, Tom Clark, Sean MacDermott and [G] James Connolly who all perished [F] in this country, in this jail.
Who were all murdered.
The crowd of people that stood outside here and knelt as James Connolly was being [A] executed.
_ _ _ [F] We remember all of them here today, but also we should be mindful of all those names [N] that we'll never know.
The names of the young girls who were imprisoned [G] here, of the young boys who were taken off the [F] streets
indeed for stealing an apple and imprisoned here.
We should remember them.
_ _ There's [N] no words to express the tyranny that was exercised in this country by British rule in every generation.
_ _ And when I come to this place, and as I did when I was a kid,
I was mindful of that fact.
_ _ [G] _ _
We're going to sing a song now that reminds us of those who stole food to [N] feed their families,
the fields of Athens Roy. _
_ This is a sad song,
but it's also a song of resistance.
_ If you're looking at this _ _
video and you have an ounce of Irish blood in you, you are a survivor of Ireland's Holocaust.
You are a survivor of the attempted
extermination of the Irish people.
And as we [D] said in the book that was written by [F] Tim Pat Coogan,
he wrote a great book, The Famine Plot.
He said
that it ticks all the boxes for genocide.
[A] _ [F] They wanted to rid this country of the most [Db] powerful
_ opposition [Bb] that they faced, and that was its people.
[N] And they disposed and dispersed the people around the world.
May God forgive them for their rule in the 19th century and the torture and horror they brought on the people of Ireland.
Indeed, they were expelled from this country in the 1840s and 50s.
_ _ This song, if you have an ounce of Irish blood in you, sing it out with choir today.
Because it's a wonderful [F] ballad, and it was written by a man who was born up in [N] St.
John,
who was born up in Itchycock here.
_ And he wrote beautiful music that gave it its popularity around the world,
based on an old traditional song that went back to the 1880s,
_ _ The Fields of