03-12-2021, 10:40 AM
Van Diemen's Land - U2
Interesting fact...
This song is about John Boyle O'Reilly, the leader of an 1848 Irish uprising after the Great Famine. He was banished to Australia for rebelling against the government.
Van Dieman's Land is the former name for the Australian state of Tasmania. British convicts were sent there for committing crimes and forced to live in the dirty jail cells there. Now in Tasmania at the sites of the jail cells, they are used for ghost stories during the night.
The Edge sings lead on this song and wrote the lyric. He got the idea after a trip to County Meath in Ireland where the came across a monument to John Boyle O'Reilly.
Note: No trees were destroyed in the sending of this contaminant free message. However, I do concede, a significant number of electrons may have been inconvenienced.