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God's Land

from Stretching Skyward by Gnoss

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about

GOD’S LAND - Aidan Moodie

On the 10th December 1679 the 'Crown Of London' was shipwrecked at the Mull Head off the coast of Deerness in Orkney’s East Mainland. The ship’s cargo was all but lost. But The Crown Of London didn’t carry tea or spices. It carried Scottish slaves.

These slaves were from a religious group known as The Covenanters — Scottish Christians who rose up against Charles II to oppose religious reform which enshrined the royal’s divine right to rule. These Covenanters, after violent resistance, were either killed in battle or sold into slavery and shipped across the sea to America. The covenanters this song is about only made it as far as Orkney.

“On the rough rugged cliffs of this far northern isle, Where soar the wild sea birds, the fearless and free,...some bits of grey stone mark their graves who on Earth, Were hunted like wild-beasts, from homestead and hearth.”

lyrics

Can you see the shore?
Maybe ours’ll be the next.
The water’s roar
The clouds turn over me
And we say goodbye
In prayer, in mourning, we say goodbye.

Under city skies
They held us like cattle
On the cold stone of the docks in Leith
Now the flags fly high as the captain sails us West
Some call it God’s Land
Some call it death

Some call it God’s Land, some call it death (x2)
It’s a single strand, all the time that’s left.
Some call it God’s Land, some call it death

Under dead of night
A storm brewed on the water
Our only shelter was the bay
But the anchor didn’t hold us
200 captives felt the hull give way.

And the rocks below
Sung so softly of the future
I found the cargo door
Tried to force it with my hand
But it stood firm against me
My knuckles bruised and bloodied
I heard a stranger pray for the other side

Some call it God’s Land, some call it death (x2)
It’s a single strand, all the time that’s left.
Some call it God’s Land, some call it death

47 men. All that lived from hundreds
The captain said: “Each slave alive will cost me coin”
So we turned and we fled to the village on the island
To carve a life

At night l think on them
How in life they were hunted
And I pray in death they’re free
For there’s nothing left
Save some some graves by the ocean where the cattle tread
Where land meets the sea

credits

from Stretching Skyward, released May 12, 2023

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Gnoss Glasgow, UK

Glasgow based folk band.
~~~
Gnoss: a dynamic four-piece of fiddle, flute, guitar and bodhran that tackle energetic tune sets and driving folk song with a "maturity of ability many of a greater age will envy" (Living Tradition). ... more

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