Green Among the Gold - Seán Keane

Dusty plains and iron chains met Erin’s sons and daughters

Cast upon a barren land, a far off distant shore.

They dreamed of misty mountains in their home across the water,

They sang of Connemara and the home they’d see no more.

Now limestone walls are all that’s left of times of pain and failure,

This country yields the secrets of the beauty that it holds

And the tunes of Erin’s isle are now the music of Australia,

For Irish hands have woven strands of green among the gold.

And so beneath the Southern cross

They sang their songs of Ireland,

They sent her sons and daughters there in the hungry days of old,

They played their jigs and reels

Beneath the skies of their new homeland,

For Irish hands have woven strands of green among the gold.

Nowadays when times are hard at home,

Some people take a notion

To start a brand new life upon the far side of the globe,

And now they find their hearts are stranded somewhere in mid-ocean,

Though their days are full of sunshine and their future’s full of hope.

Their children sing a broken life of

Shearers and bush rangers,

They learn to play our music and to dance

The steps of old.

Though their hearts are in Australia,

They never will be strangers

To the land they left behind them,

They’re the green among the gold.