A country,
So strong and mighty.
Screaming always “fight me”.
Yet we are the shadows,
Figures in the night.
Crossing seas just so we might taste freedom.
A freedom fought for!
How many women were lost in our own war?
In 1916,
When women sang free.
If Countess Markievicz,
could see us now.
We won when we got to vote as women,
Not fully in 1918 but in 1922.
When we were classed as the Irish free state.
Funny how we still have no power or control,
Over the body the state says they own.
Cover your eyes, Catholics of the country.
For a rebellion shall start again.
This time will our own people still stand and defend.
Or pretend some how it will blow over, it will end.
What about the women in that rising.
What about the waves of denial.
The laundry rooms,
the babies of Tuam.
If only we could raise,
The 1916 fighters from their graves.
Rose McNamara or Margeret Skinnider.
Would we hit a winner?
Running our battalion to war.
Let me face the no campaign,
Let me knock on their doors.
With images of the children,
That were not aborted...
but were deported,
were abused.
Were used,
For a meal ticket.
Let us show you the scars of the women in our hearts.
Let me walk in your shoes.
And see how you’d choose.
Whose life means more.
The ball of cells,
Or the mother of two, your sister, your daughter even you.
We are the war.
We are that door.
That Ireland closed,
when it pushed us on planes across a sea.
Ireland made its women feel alone.
But we are not alone, for we are we.
And i’ll walk proud,
Facing abuse!
Knowing I don’t just repel for me.
I do it for every women we ignored.
I do it for those we pretended not to see.
Repeal the eight,
Before its too late!
Fight this power.
Show this state!
We are Irish women we will not hide nor run away.
Prove we don’t need to immigrate.
From OUR little island.
Run by a forceful religious state.
We pushed the English out,
you can’t force us to do the same with a child we didnt ask for.
We are the Irish women.
We have been peaceful,
But now we bring our war.
Éire Tá muid.
Beidh muid saor in aisce
(Ireland we are.
We will be free. )