MenoSunday; Life Lived Easy

Runrig is a another band I have listened to on and off over the years. Originally from Skye and set up as a dance band, their talent soon drew attention and the folky-rock style brought them to the British music charts in the 1980's.  Songs often sung in Gaelic, always of the pull of the land, about diaspora and the ache of identity, there is real poetry in their lyrics.  The song I share with you today tells of how migration resulted in other nations rising....Australia, Canada, USA, NZ... You know my point (re this post)...using a non-visual copy of the song, so that you can read the lyrics below without distraction!




ROCKET TO THE MOON

Here hangs an open landscape
A wild and huge frontier
From a harsh and a barren wasteland
Through the grave to the promised field

You came, you trapped, you charted
You laid the railroads and the schemes
And you tamed this land by enterprise
And by the power of your dreams

But you made this Clan great
And you made this nation bloom
And you rose
With your people through the new world
Like a rocket to the moon

From the olden coasts of Ireland
From the Hebridean shores
With the forgotten chosen ones
Running from Europe in droves

But you made this Clan great 
And you made this nation bloom
And you rose
With your people through the new world
Like a rocket to the moon

There's a town in Manitoba
They say the windows touch the sky
But across the brine the shipyards close
In this garden flowers die

Still the homelands divide us
Like your blood red brothers of the plains
But where they grieve a candle still burns
A prayer from a flicker to a flame

But you made this Clan great
And you made this nation bloom
And you rose
With your people through the new world
Like a rocket to the moon