I have always followed Natalie Merchant from her early days in 10,000 Maniacs (A really great band) she started playing this track live and it was captured on the live album 'Live In New York City' although it was sadly omitted from the DVD of the same title.
It's a cover of a Katell Keineg song an artist I have never heard of who I think appears in this video singing with Natalie. I have never heard the original.
I have no idea what this song is about I have always been draw to how its sounds, there is so much passion in it.
If you could fill a veil with shells from Killineys shore
And sweet talk in a tongue that is no more
If wishful thought could bridge
The gulf of Araby
Between what is
What is
What is
And what can never be
If you could hold the frozen flow of new hope creek
And hide out from the one they said you might meet
If you could unlearn all the words
That you never wanted heard
If you could stall the southern wind
That's whistling in your ears
You could take what is
What is
What is
What is
To what can never be
One man of seventy whispers free at last
Two neighbours who are proud of their massacres
Three tyrants torn away in a winters month
Four prisoners framed by a dirty judge
Five burned with tyres
Six men still inside
And seven more days to shake at the great divide
The gulf, the gulf of Araby
The gulf, the gulf of Araby
Well, we would plough and part the earth to bring you home
And harvest every miracle ever known
If they laid out all the things
That these ten years want to bring
We would gladly give them up
To bring you back to us
O, there is nothing we would not give
To kiss you and believe you can take what is
What is
What is
To what can never be
One man of seventy whispers not free yet
Two neighbours who make up knee-deep in their dead
Three tyrants torn away in the summers heat
Four prisoners lost in the fallacy
Five, on my life
And six, I'm dead inside
And seven more days to shake at the great divide
The gulf, the gulf of Araby
The gulf, the gulf of Araby
And sweet talk in a tongue that is no more
If wishful thought could bridge
The gulf of Araby
Between what is
What is
What is
And what can never be
If you could hold the frozen flow of new hope creek
And hide out from the one they said you might meet
If you could unlearn all the words
That you never wanted heard
If you could stall the southern wind
That's whistling in your ears
You could take what is
What is
What is
What is
To what can never be
One man of seventy whispers free at last
Two neighbours who are proud of their massacres
Three tyrants torn away in a winters month
Four prisoners framed by a dirty judge
Five burned with tyres
Six men still inside
And seven more days to shake at the great divide
The gulf, the gulf of Araby
The gulf, the gulf of Araby
Well, we would plough and part the earth to bring you home
And harvest every miracle ever known
If they laid out all the things
That these ten years want to bring
We would gladly give them up
To bring you back to us
O, there is nothing we would not give
To kiss you and believe you can take what is
What is
What is
To what can never be
One man of seventy whispers not free yet
Two neighbours who make up knee-deep in their dead
Three tyrants torn away in the summers heat
Four prisoners lost in the fallacy
Five, on my life
And six, I'm dead inside
And seven more days to shake at the great divide
The gulf, the gulf of Araby
The gulf, the gulf of Araby
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