The city has always expressed its soul in verse.
Derry mine! My small oak grove
Little cell, my home, my love!
Attributed to St. Colmcille
The saint's story is told as St Columb in the Cathedral and as St Colmcille in Long Tower Church.
The purple headed mountains,
The river running by,
The sunset and the morning
That brightens up the sky.'
Mrs Cecil Frances Alexander
The 19th century hymn writer was inspired by the view of the Creggan Hills.
'My heart besieged by anger, my mind a gap of danger,
I walked among their old haunts, the home ground where they bled;
And in the dirt lay justice like an acorn in the winter
Till its oak would sprout in Derry where the thirteen men lay dead.'
Seamus Heaney
The poet expressed his reaction to the events of Bloody Sunday, 30th January, 1972 in 'The Road to Derry'.
'But when I've returned, how my eyes have burned
To see how a town could be brought to its knees
By the armoured cars and the bombed-out bars,
And the gas that hangs on to every breeze.
Now an Army's installed by that old Gas-yard wall
And the damned barbed wire gets higher and higher.
With their tanks and their guns, Oh my God, what have they done.
To the Town I Loved So Well.'
Phil Coulter
The Town I Loved So Well
The singer-songwriter summed up how many people felt during the Troubles.
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