Barraduff's Finest

Beauty can be found in unexpected places The hills around her home were wild and rough But old people say the finest they remember To walk the mountain road near Barraduff. Her eyes were bluer than the sunlit ocean Her hair was darker than a raven's wing She was a woman of rare natural beauty A woman who was fit for any king. And on her father's small farm by the mountain Her future there was never meant to be She dreamt of places miles beyond Sliabh Luachra And sunlit lands beyond the distant sea. She dreamt of places distant from east Kerry And wanderlust kept beckoning her away And she left her home one bright and breezy morning When hawthorn wore her blossoms of the May. She left the cottage by the bracken mountain And with her suitcase walked the old bohreen And boarded the bus that took her from east Kerry The last time in Sliabh Luachra she was seen. It's been said that she is living in New Zealand One lucky man has a lovely Irish wife That she is mother to a teenage son and daughter In a distant Land a different sort of life. And in New Zealand in the south Pacific ocean When chaffinch in the leafy beechwood sing I wonder does her thoughts go to east Kerry To the mountains of Sliabh Luachra in the Spring? . Beauty can be found in unexpected places The hills around her home were wild and rough And old people say the finest they remember To walk the mountain road near Barraduff.