Paddies Evermore – A Traditional Irish Street Ballad (19th Century)

Описание: Paddies Evermore is a traditional Irish street ballad from the 19th century, expressing endurance, identity, and quiet resolve in the face of centuries of hardship.

This performance follows the original traditional melody and preserves the character of the historic street ballad as it would have been sung and passed from voice to voice.

Sung with restraint and dignity, the song speaks not through spectacle, but through continuity — a people standing, remembering, and remaining.

Lyrics

(Public Domain)

The hour is past to fawn or crouch
As suppliants for our right;
Let word and deed unshrinking vouch
The banded millions’ might;
Let them who scorned the fountain rill
Now dread the torrent’s roar,
And hear our echoed chorus still—
We’re Paddies evermore!

What though they menace? suffering men
Their threats and them despise;
Or promise justice once again?
We know their words are lies;
We stand resolved those rights to claim
They robbed us of before,
Our own dear nation and our name,
As Paddies evermore.

Look round—the Frenchman governs France;
The Spaniard rules in Spain;
The gallant Pole but waits his chance
To break the Russian chain.

The strife for freedom here begun
We never will give o’er,
Nor own a land on earth but one—
We’re Paddies evermore.

That strong and single love to crush,
The despot ever tried—
A fount it was whose living gush
His hated arts defied;
’Tis fresh, as when his foot accursed
Was planted on our shore,
And now and still, as from the first,
We’re Paddies evermore.

What reck we though six hundred years
Have o’er our thraldom rolled?
The soul that roused O’Conor’s spears
Still lives as true and bold.
The tide of foreign power to stem
Our fathers bled of yore,
And we stand here to-day, like them,
True Paddies evermore.

Where’s our allegiance? With the land
For which they nobly died;
Our duty? By our cause to stand,
Whatever chance betide;
Our cherished hope? To heal the woes
That rankle at her core;
Our scorn and hatred? To her foes,
Like Paddies evermore.

Credits
Traditional Irish street ballad (19th century)
Lyrics: Anonymous (Public Domain)
Melody: Traditional Irish air
Arrangement: Irish Longing