IN one room my wife was watching a documentary on the American War of Independence, while in another I was listening to Christy Moore singing his version of ‘Only Our Rivers Run Free’.

There must have been something in the ether – it was a night for contemplating self-determination.

Sensitised to the struggle for freedom, all I needed was a glass of whiskey and I’d be crying. There’s nothing as self-indulgent as a maudlin Saturday night.

But the whiskey stayed in its bottle as I needed to stay sober. I had to pick up my daughter later that evening, as she was returning broken but unbowed from three weeks in America with her football-mad Scottish boyfriend.

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Like the Irish, the Scots are conditioned to having their hopes dashed on fields of dreams.

As readers will know, Moore has a way of loading songs with emotion.

The hyper-poetic opening of Michael McConnell’s lament softens you up.

But the line that strikes home is in the remarkable observation of Ireland’s political and cultural predicament. He sings of: “A land that has never known freedom, only her rivers run free.”

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, I’ve been writing about the cause of Irish unity for decades, but it was the word........

© The Irish News