The Wake Of 'Jack Will Bill'

It's been more than fifty years as i remember And many Autumn leaves gone with the flooded rill Since i first saw the face of a dead person The silent remains of old 'Jack Will Bill'. I recall that evening i walked through the fields of Lisnaboy upper With my aunty Mary and my uncle Dan To Jack Will Bill's son's farmhouse where the wake was For to pay our last respects to the old man. His friends and neighbours around his corpse assembled All sad faced they gazed on the face of death In Lisnaboy he farmed his fields and raised his children And in Lisnaboy he drew his final breath. Eyes closed in death he lay upon his death bed A ghostly figure he looked pale and gray His hands joined on his chest as if in prayer And all signs of life from him had gone away. Between his stiff bent fingers was a black rosary bead And of all of life's cares and sufferings he was free And between the spells of silence in the wake room They said a decade of the rosary. Dressed for his coffin in a dark brown habit By Cullen church his final resting place We sat around the waking room in silence Gazing on his pale and lifeless wrinkled face. A tearful old lady wearing a black shawl Whispered to another 'he now is with the angels up above' He was a saint a fly he would not harm And his soul was full of kindness, warmth and love. As we walked home through the moonlit fields in the early morning The freshening winds blew with a rainy chill And my aunty said 'the countless stars were shining' For to light the way to God for Jack Will Bill.