A music video I made for the song "Isle Of Hope, Isle Of Tears" originally written by Brendan Graham, and performed here by Tommy Fleming. Interspersed with clips from three different films, "Far And Away", "Black 47" and "Gangs Of New York" all of which are centred around the story of the Irish potato famine of 1845 - 1849, and the subsequent mass migration of Irish to the new world.
The song tells the story of the first person to enter America through Ellis Island, a young Irish girl named Annie Moore and talks about leaving everything behind and starting over in a new place. It compares Ireland, "the isle of tears" and the Isle of Manhattan, " the isle of hope".
LYRICS:
All her past and history,
And her dreams for the future
In the land of liberty.
And courage is the passport
When your old world disappears
But there's no future in the past
When you're fifteen years
When they closed down Ellis Island
In nineteen forty-three,
Seventeen million people
Had come there for sanctuary.
And in springtime when I came here
And I stepped onto its piers,
I thought of how it must have been
When you're fifteen years.
Isle of hope, isle of tears,
Isle of freedom, isle of fears,
But it's not the isle you left behind.
That isle of hunger, isle of pain,
Isle you'll never see again
But the isle of home is always on your mind.
The isle of home is always on your mind.
15 сен 2024
