Across the great divide (Musik & Text: Tim Roderwieser)
Solitary land, crumbling walls, a long and plaintive band, too feeble to walk,
born and raised here, but now on their way,
children alongside, only sheep herds will stay.
Disappeared behind the Highland hills,
now their homeland´s quiet and still, they are gone.
Ships to Canada take the crofters across, the landlords stole their ground,
now everything´s lost.
A cry of grief over the land re-echoes through the empty glens,
hear them cry:
„We are going across the great divide and the people we´re leaving behind us
are the memories of our lives.
We are going across the great devide and the homeland that couldn´t
protect us is now so far aside …“
Children of the Gael famished by the blight,
on a final sail after Balinglass nights.
Broken spirits in tatters and rags get on coffin ships with a pall as a flag.
From the fields of Athenry comes a deep and desperate sigh:
„My children are gone!“
During the times of a worldwide darkness poets and thinkers left their homes,
but these were just a few and most of them were caught.
Albert, Berthold, Marlene, Thomas and Heinrich
fled the brown terror and crossed the Atlantic,
scared by a land that should have been their home.