In The Old Fields Of Ballydaly

The old fields of Ballydaly as ever looking green But in the cool winds of October few wild flowers to be seen And the gray fog rolling over old Caherbarnagh hill And the dipper is not singing in the flooded mountain rill. To the fields of Ballydaly the Seasons come and go And another generation of boys to young men grow And the young mothers of the future their own mothers turning gray Day dream of love and adventure in places far away. From the high mountain lake of Kippagh the stream down through the bracken flow And in Ballydaly lower into a river grow The home of the proud chieftians and philosophers and seers And the old Gaelic bards whose unrecorded songs were lost in time's lost years. In the old fields of Ballydaly as a Primary school going boy I heard the corncrakes calling in June and in July I heard them late at evening after darkness cloaked the sky Proclaim their territories in the meadows these landrails wild and shy. But the earlier cutting of the grass their nests and eggs destroyed And in the old Duhallow Townland the voice of the corncrake died And something once familiar lost to posterity And in an ageing migrant one more fading memory. From the old fields of Ballydaly the swallows depart once more They fly south to the warmer climes of Africa's sunny shore They will return to Duhallow when the grass growing breezes blow And the hill of Caherbarnagh has lost his hat of snow. On the trees and hedgerows of Ballydaly far north and far away The birds don't sing in October at the dawning of the day And the trees losing their greenery their leaves are turning brown In the old fields by the mountains a few miles west of Millstreet Town.