The H-Block Song
by Francie Brolly
Dungiven, 1976

I
I am a proud young Irishman.
In Ulster's hills my life began;
A happy boy through green fields ran;
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 convict's uniform
Nor meekly serve my time
That Britain might brand lreland 's fight
Eight hundred years of crime.

II

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 nurtured, passions flamed,
Outrage provoked, right's cause defamed;
That is the conqueror's way.

Chorus

III

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

IV

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