U2 Songs - Van Diemen's Land Lyrics

U2 - Van Diemen's Land

U2 - Van Diemen's Land Youtube Music Videos and Lyrics

Album: Rattle And Hum
Released: 1988

Van Diemen's Land Lyrics

Hold me now,
Oh hold me now
'Til this hour
Has gone around
And I'm gone
On the rising tide
For to face
Van Diemen's land

It's a bitter pill
I swallow here
To be rent from one so dear
We fought for justice
And not for gain
But the magistrate
Sent me away

Now kings will rule
And the poor will toil
And tear their hands
As they tear the soil
But a day will come
In this dawning age
When an honest man
Sees an honest wage

Hold me now,
Oh hold me now
'Til this hour
Has gone around
And I'm gone
On the rising tide
For to face Van Diemen's land

Writer/s: ADAM CLAYTON, DAVE EVANS, PAUL HEWSON, LARRY MULLEN
Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind
Van Diemen's Land Song Chart

This song is about John Boyle O'Reilly, the leader of a 1848 Irish uprising after the Great Famine. He was banished to Australia for rebelling against the government.

Van Dieman's Land is the former name for the Australian state of Tasmania. British convicts were sent there for committing crimes and forced to live in the dirty jail cells there. Now in Tasmania at the sites of the jail cells, they are used for ghost stories during the night. (thanks, James - New York, NY)

The Edge sings lead on this song and wrote the lyric. He got the idea after a trip to County Meath in Ireland where the came across a monument to John Boyle O'Reilly.

There is a completely different traditional Irish folk song of the same name.

U2 recorded this at The Point Theater in Dublin and used it in their movie Rattle And Hum.

This is based on an old Irish folk song called "The River is Wide."