Four Green Fields

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"Four Green Fields" is a 1967 folk song by Irish musician Tommy Makem, described in the New York Times as a "hallowed Irish leave-us-alone-with-our-beauty ballad". It is probably Makem's only composition to have truly entered the common repertoire of Irish folk musicians, due to the beauty of the tune as well as the lyrics.

The song tells of an old woman who had four green fields, and how strangers tried to take them from her and how her sons died trying to defend them. Its middle stanza is a moving description of the violence and deprivation experienced by the Irish and Northern Irish people under UK rule, though the British are not explicitly identified. At the end of the song, one of her fields remains out of her hands:

"But my sons have sons, as brave as were their fathers;

My fourth green field will bloom once again," said she

The song is interpreted as a parable of the British colonization of Ireland and the current status of Northern Ireland. The four fields are the provinces of Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connacht, and the old woman is a traditional personification of Ireland herself.

[edit] References

• Tommy Makem press coverage
• Lyrics