Newry News and Irish Fun
That winter night round the blazing turf,
The children on the hobs, the talk ran on
Most from the farmer and his sister Kitty
His wife not holding much with superstitions,
To rhyme and ramble through familiar stories
Of ghosts and fairies, witches, blinks and spells.
I sat aloft on Slieve Mor hill
Watched in silence the valley round
Slieve Gullion rising to the sky
The Cowans sweeping to the ground.
When they found out that it was a cod, like
They wouldn’t admit they’d been had!
They built a big plant outside of
Turnin’ out Steam Traps like mad!
My black hills have never seen the sun rising,
Eternally they look north towards
Incurious as my black hills that are happy
When dawn whitens Glassdrummond chapel.
Now the ship was the finest ever seen
An’ they sent it away off to the Turks
An’ they toul’ them, that Steam Trap’s a secert
We’re the on’y ones know how it works!’
Now they built a big ship down in Bell-Fast
Construed for till sell to the Turks
And they called on the Yard’s chief designers
To test all the engines and works
An’ finally the engines were ready
And they screwed on the very last part
An’ yer man says, ‘Let’s see how she runs, lads’,
It was close to Christmas, the season of goodwill, and at the height of our ‘Troubles’ but like the great majority of Northern Ireland’s citizens, I – relatively unfazed and unscathed – was going about my normal life and business.
That was the question asked by our bus driver as we were about to set off from the AOH Club in Newry to go on one of our early trips to
‘In one of his ancestor’s rooms
Young Charles now sits alone
Without a spot, save those old walls,
He now can call his own: