Of Where The Cails Waters Flow

On a naked beech tree the gray hooded crow Is cawing in the dawn where the Cails waters flow The morning is cold quite cold enough to snow And from Caherbarnagh the wintery winds blow As yesterdays flood subside in the gray of a November dawn The salmon are swimming upriver to spawn From the distant Atlantic they have swam all of the way In the river's gravelly bed their eggs they will lay. The cattle in farm-yard are bellowing for silage or hay Many a cold and wet day until April and May When bluebells bloom on the ditch of the bohreen And wildflowers in abundance in the old fields are seen. The Cails from Kippagh in flood waters of brown From the lake in the mountains it winds it way down On towards the Finnow in Liscreagh in Millstreet It is such a quiet place where the rivers do meet. On down where the bracken and rank rushes grow An ancient waterway how old none would know The Duhallow Bards many decades ago They sang of the places where the Cails waters flow.