As I Rode by Granard Moat Read Free

ME DA
    I’m livin’ in Drumlister,
    An’ I’m gettin’ very oul’
    I have to wear an Indian bag
    To save me from the coul’.
    The deil a man in this townlan’
    Wos claner raired nor me,
    But I’m livin’ in Drumlister
    In clabber to the knee.
    Me da lived up in Carmin,
    An’ kep’ a sarvint boy;
    His second wife was very sharp,
    He birried her with joy:
    Now she was thin, her name was Flynn,
    She come from Cullentra,
    An’ if me shirt’s a clatty shirt
    The man to blame’s me da.
    Consarnin’ weemin’ sure it was
    A constant word of his,
    ‘Keep far away from them that’s thin,
    Their temper’s aisy riz.’
    Well, I knew two I thought wud do,
    But still I had me fears,
    So I kiffled back and forrit
    Between the two, for years.
    Wee Margit had no fortune
    But two rosy cheeks wud plaze;
    The farm of lan’ wos Bridget’s,
    But she tuk the pock disayse:
    An’ Margit she wos very wee,
    An’ Bridget she was stout,
    But her face wos like a gaol dure
    With the bowlts pulled out.
    I’ll tell no lie on Margit,
    She thought the worl’ of me;
    I’ll tell the truth, me heart wud lep
    The sight of her to see.
    But I was slow, ye surely know,
    The raison of it now,
    If I left her home from Carmin
    Me da wud rise a row.
    So I swithered back an’ forrit
    Till Margit got a man;
    A fella come from Mullaslin
    An’ left me jist the wan.
    I mind the day she went away,
    I hid one strucken hour,
    An’ cursed the wasp from Cullentra
    That made me da so sour.
    But cryin’ cures no trouble,
    To Bridget I went back,
    An’ faced her for it that night week
    Beside her own thurf-stack.
    I axed her there, an’ spoke her fair,
    The handy wife she’d make me.
    I talked about the lan’ that joined
    – Begob, she wudn’t take me!
    So I’m livin’ in Drumlister,
    An’ I’m gettin’ very oul’.
    I creep to Carmin wanst a month
    To thry an’ make me sowl:
    The deil a man in this townlan’
    Wos claner raired nor me,
    An’ I’m dyin’ in Drumlister
    In clabber to the knee.
    From that same time in the past dates a friendship with a priest, Father Paul McKenna, who brought me one day to the old rectory in the village of Mountfield, where the aged poet Alice Milligan then lived in a dusty grandeur recalling the home of Miss Haversham in Great Expectations . But the garden where she played in her girlhood could still be seen at the end of Omagh town where one road divides to make three: at a place called the Swinging Bars, where there once may have been a toll-gate.
    WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL
    When I was a little girl,
    In a garden playing,
    A thing was often said
    To chide us, delaying:
    When after sunny hours,
    At twilight’s falling,
    Down through the garden’s walks
    Came our old nurse calling –
    ‘Come in! for it’s growing late,
    And the grass will wet ye!
    Come in! or when it’s dark
    The Fenians will get ye.’
    Then, at this dreadful news,
    All helter-skelter,
    The panic-struck little flock
    Ran home for shelter.
    And round the nursery fire
    Sat still to listen,
    Fifty bare toes on the hearth,
    Ten eyes a-glisten.
    To hear of a night in March,
    And loyal folk waiting,
    To see a great army of men
    Come devastating –
    An Army of Papists grim,
    With a green flag o’er them,
    Red-coats and black police
    Flying before them.
    But God (who our nurse declared
    Guards British dominions)
    Sent down a fall of snow
    And scattered the Fenians.
    ‘But somewhere they’re lurking yet,
    Maybe they’re near us,’
    Four little hearts pit-a-pat
    Thought ‘Can they hear us?’
    Then the wind-shaken pane
    Sounded like drumming;
    ‘Oh!’ they cried, ‘tuck us in,
    The Fenians are coming!’
    Four little pairs of hands
    In the cots where she led those,
    Over their frightened heads
    Pulled up the bedclothes.
    But one little rebel there,
    Watching all with laughter,
    Thought ‘When the Fenians come
    I’ll rise and go after.’
    Wished she had been a boy
    And a good deal older –
    Able to walk for miles
    With a gun on her