I feel the wind blowing through my doorway,
It's telling me that the summer's gone,
And the winter waits in shadow, waiting with the storm;
I am old and my bones are weary,
And my son he is all I have,
But he has gone to fight for freedom, leaving with my heart;
All my life I have loved this land, worked it with my hands,
But can this freedom send the rain when seed is in the ground,
Can this freedom heal the pain and bring my boy back to me again?
Oh oh oh....
I watched them sail from the rocks below me,
'Twas like the sea in its endless rage,
Many fall on the road to freedom, dying on the stones;
All my life I have loved this land, worked it with my hands,
But can your freedom send the rain when seed is in the ground,
Can your freedom heal the pain and bring my boy back to me again?
Oh oh oh....
Late last night, as the world was sleeping, I dreamed my boy,
He was calling out, 'cos he was lost in some dark forest, and
Snow was falling down, falling on the ground......ooh.....
"A lot of people who have come to the more recent live shows have already heard me performing it, and it's almost immediately become a favourite. Certainly, people have told me via the website that they loved it. It's an extremely powerful song and is very much about a feeling of being in the West of Ireland, or the West of Scotland, in the 17th Century. Times are very hard and a father is grieving for his son, who may not be dead but who has definitely gone off to fight for freedom. The father wants his son back again, and he says "Freedom doesn't change anything. I've lived a long life and I've seen that nothing really happens because of it. Does it make my crops grow? Does it bring the rain and the sun?" He is much more concerned about his crops and losing his son than he is about this slightly nebulous word, freedom. That's his point of view. I did three tracks with orchestra, including this one, and I was absolutely thrilled again to be performing live with an orchestra. It's such a buzz."
The Getaway Gazette, March 2004
Albums
"The Road To Freedom" appears on the following albums:
