Nuns 'n Guns

Nuns 'n guns and rosary beads and rockets
The portrait of a patron with nothing in his pockets
The years and years of tryying to describe our own condition
The absence of all worry and the wealth of contradiction
Sticks and poems and songs and stones
Is it really like this at all....like this then

Ireland of the thousand welcomes, ginger kids and comely maidens
Hardy men in Aran sweaters, rolling hills and gentle weather
Jigs and reels and pints of plain, American? we'll trace your name
From Tullamore to Killaloe we'll do our very best for you
We'll put a welcome on the mat, we'll raise our glasses, doff our hat
And laugh at the crack of it all, oh what a country

Celtic tigers, Johhny Logan, Charlie Haughey, Terry Wogan
Pioneers and Fr. Matthew, dancing priests and moving statues
Albert and his passport shop and jumbos landing up in Knock
The General and his boxer shorts, Lisdoonvarna bachelors
Begorah, Jaypers, how's she cuttin' and you tell me that they're putting
Nothing in the drink here at all, oh what a country

Behan, Joyce, McGahern, Yeats, Bolger, Swift, so many greats
Heaney, Doyle, O'Faolainn, Synge, Durcan, Lady Gregory
The list goes on it's simply endless, Kiely, Banville, Keane, McGuinness
Beckett, Wilde, O'Connor, Shaw, Gogarty and Kavanagh
O'Brien, O'Brien and oh O'Casey and they say we're kind of lazy
Generations heaven sent, oh what a country

Christy Moore, The Clancy's, Drew, Moving Hearts and Planxty too
Keane, O'Connell, Black and Shannon, Philip Lynott and U2
Count John, The Bothy, Brady, White, Scullion, Chieftains and the light
Beaming out from Shane McGowan, Ennis and O'Riada
If music makes the world go 'round we've done enough to keep it spinning
Around and around, oh what a country