In 1996, two years before the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, Eimear Quinn, as ‘the voice’ of Ireland sang the following words to Europe and the world: ‘I am the voice of the past that will always be, Filled with my sorrows and blood in my fields; I am the voice of the future…bring me your peace… Bring me your peace…and my wounds they will heal.’

This year of 2023, being the 25th Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, the song – Peace Upon This Land – celebrates and commemorates the answer to that earlier calling which the Good Friday Agreement brought to the island of Ireland.

Now Eimear Quinn, with Gavan Ring and the Dublin Brass Ensemble, sings: ‘There is peace upon this land, When we in silence stand When you take my hand… There’s peace upon this land.’ While the song has a personal intimacy as in…’when you take my hand’, it also references the bigger picture of people who, once not at peace, by taking each other’s hands…now finally come together…in peace.

(Brendan Graham – 2023)