Famine Lyrics

The song Famine is performed by Sinéad O'Connor in the album named Universal Mother in the year 1994 .

Okay, I want to talk about Ireland
Specifically I want to talk about the 'Famine'
About the fact that there never really was one
There was no 'Famine'

See Irish people were only allowed to eat potatoes
All of the other food, meat, fish, vegetables
Were shipped out of the country under armed guard
To England while the Irish people starved

And then on the middle of all this
They gave us money not to teach our children Irish
And so we lost our history
And this is what I think is still hurting me

See, we're like a child that's been battered
Has to drive itself out of it's head because it's frightened
Still feels all the painful feelings
But they lose contact with the memory

And this leads to ma*sive self-destruction
Alcoholism, drug addiction
All desperate attempts at running
And in it's worst form becomes actual killing

And if there ever is gonna be healing
There has to be remembering and then grieving
So that there then can be forgiving
There has to be knowledge and understanding

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?

An American army regulation
Says you mustn't kill more than ten percent of a nation
'Cause to do so causes permanent 'psychological damage'
It's not permanent but they didn't know that

Anyway, during the supposed 'Famine
We lost a lot more than ten percent of our nation
Through deaths on land or on ships of emigration
But what finally broke us was not starvation
But it's use in the controlling of our education

School go on about 'Black '47'
On and on about 'The Terrible Famine'
But what they don't say is in truth
There really never was one

(Excuse me)
All the lonely people
(I'm sorry, excuse me)
Where do they all come from

(That I can tell you in one word)
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

So let's take a look, shall we?
The highest statistics of child abuse in the EEC
And we say we're a Christian country
But we've lost contact with our history

See we used to worship God as a mother
We're suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Look at all our old men in the pubs
Look at all our young people on drugs

We used to worship God as a mother
Now look at what we're doing to each other
We've even made killers of ourselves
The most child-like trusting people in the Universe

And this is what's wrong with us
Our history books the parent figures lied to us
I see the Irish as a race like a child
That got itself bashed in the face

And if there ever is gonna be healing
There has to be remembering and then grieving
So that there, then can be forgiving
There has to be knowledge and understanding

All the lonely people?
Where do they all come from
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?

We stand on the brink of a great achievement
In this Ireland there is no solution to be found
To our disagreements by shooting each other
There is no real invader here

We are all Irish in all our different kinds of ways
We must not, now or ever in the future
Show anything to each other
Except tolerance, forbearance and neighborly love

Because of our tradition
Everyone here knows how he is
And what God expects him to do

Sinéad O'Connor - Universal Mother

Sep 1994

Famine