Thanks.
...Yes, perhaps you're right, perhaps I'm looking
for a deeper meaning which isn't there.

Yet you'd think there'd be something more to it than that...

Eight hundred years we have been down,
The secret of the water sound
Has kept the spirit of the man
Above the pain descending

All the other verses speak directly to the heart,
but I still get the sense that I'm not (perhaps
because I'm not Irish) getting this bit completely.
(love this forum concept, by the way)