FAREWELL TO TARA
Is it happy I am to find out Australia surely I feel the miss of a turf fire glowin like holly berries on long and lonesome wildwinter nights where the cock of the ashes sings in our wee family cottage tippin the blarney we be and hearin the tellin of fireside tales Saint Brigid bein fostered by Druids and the leanhaun shee and best of all Tirnanog about the Green Isle beyond the waters land of the forever young over a cup of tea yez could trot a mouse on remember the blue willows on the cups and the hum of the spinnin wheel and some melancholy Irish airs sung to the fiddle indeed I do and it brings tears to my eyes it is a shamrock I am colleen come of decent family of course Im after dreamin of Erin old Ireland its grey so grey light softened by shades of green glass on craggy fells of ferns and wildgoose peaks and curraghs bobbin like black beetles on loughs that soughed with the tears of the little people and distant hills fadin into mountains of mizzle and mist then suddenly the ghostly ruins of abbeys in moments of sunlight the stone circles I miss and gallauns the standin stones the monks they haulin up the round towers their precious goldscrolled manuscripts and high Celtic crosses of rubbly rough stone that tell of the ancient people but see that terrible terrible famine was a Protestant herrin our potato patch nobbled and gone to smithers we mustnt have lived without our taters bog oranges to the English nobs bog apples it is and milk sometimes sour not even a pinch of salt in all that damp we were after skinnin a flea for the sake of its skin hoed and hewed we did so with as much intention as the geese slur upon the ice agabblin I seen dead bodies stiff as blackthorn with hoar frost chewed over by rats as wicked as goblins for a keenyin came to our village a dreadful keenyin I sniffed the stinks of death poor people dyin in the ditches dyin in graves they scooped out themselves in peat bogs dyin of a decline exceptin the absentin landlords rackin the rents old Ireland does sure be ailin and grievin dead as a dry potato even the trees sighin in the winds be lamentin the dead those huts on the hillsides and mud cabins fallin in or battered down by landlords and constables Saxon swill aye I feared bein carried off by the scurvy or blackleg wearyworn I was to walk about the houses of the dead silent but for the bitter wind and the howlin of the wickerribbed wildeyed dogs starved except for the measly flesh on their own dead masters the wailins and ravins were properly upon us we must have pegged out with the bellyache but my poor husband a poor honest labourer come of decent people that stood me friend a martyr he was to his family was tried for stealin some geese and hens what was the point of toilin against the stream he says and was redlegged for seven pennorth o bitter the wind through the cannogs in the loughs well what would yez do if your son was scrabblin for nettles a cabbage leaf somethin to eat among the rotted murphies bones tremblin with coul in a peltin rainstorm I heard soup kitchens doled out stirabout in some towns Quakers was it but not in the west whole families were rottin there trampin the boreens to avoid the fever dens and sickly workhouse so much wounded in the heart cruelly wronged and upheaved by strangers those English lords greedy as gannets be gorra have they no heart always I kept in memory the picture on the wall of the Holy Family the Virgin dressed in a kirtle blue as a wide Sydney sky and Jesus wore no pattens