"Let the Earth Bear Witness"

[Caution: This video includes graphic images of a state's brutally violent response to its citizens.]

The music is by Mike Scott of The Waterboys. The words are by William Butler Yeats (and George Moore).

A song from the play Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902), sung by the Poor Old Woman:

They shall be remembered for ever,
They shall be alive for ever,
They shall be speaking for ever,
The people shall hear them for ever.

From "The Blood Bond," a song from the play Diarmuid and Grania (1901), by Yeats and Moore, lines sung by Diarmuid:

Let the sea bear witness,
Let the wind bear witness,
Let the earth bear witness,
Let the fire bear witness,
Let the dew bear witness,
Let the stars bear witness!

[Texts from William Butler Yeats, The Poems, ed. Richard J. Finneran (New York: Macmillan, 1983), 537, 538.]