Ballads of a Bogman Texts
For those interested in listening to the RTÉ broadcast again (from 14/07/23), here are the texts of the songs that were set to music. The song cycle forms a broad arc of travel, adventure and a final homecoming. The score is published by Peters Edition. (Ignore the ‘not available in your country’). Texts used by permission of the Sigerson Clifford Estate
1. I am Kerry (Introduction)
I am Kerry like my mother before me, And my mother’s mother and her man.
I am Kerry.
My heart is looped around the rutted hills That shoulder the stars out of the sky,
And about the wasp-yellow fields
And the strands where the kelp-streamers lie;
For always I am Kerry...
2. The Ballad of the Tinker’s Son
I was in school, ‘twas the first of May,
The day the tinker came
With his wild wide eyes like a frightened hare’s, And his head with its thatch on flame.
We liked the length of his bare brown legs, The patches upon his clothes,
The grimy strength of his unwashed hands And the freckles about his nose.
The master polished his rimless specs And stared at him hard and long,
Then he called him up on a shaky bench And called in him for a song.
The tinker boy looked at our laughing lips, Then with a voice like a timid bird’s
He followed the master’s bidding
And these are his singing words.
‘My father was jailed for sheep-stealing, My mother is black as a witch,
My sister off-ran with the Sheridan clan, And my brother’s dead-drunk in a ditch.
O. Tralee jail would kill the devil,
But Tralee jail won’t kill my da,
I’ll mend yea kettle for one-and-fourpence And bring porter home to my ma.’
He bowed his head as the schoolhouse shook With the cheers of everyone,
Then the master made me share my desk With the raggedy tinker’s son.
The days dragged by and he sat down there, His brown eyes still afraid,
He heard the scholars’ drowsy hum
And, turning to me, he said...
“Now what would I want with X and Y And I singing the crooked towns,
Or showing a drunken famer
The making of silver crowns?
And what would I want with ancient verse Or the meaning of Latin words
When all the poetry I’ll ever need
Rings the throats of the singing bird?”
But he stayed at school and his flowering mind Grew quick as a swooping hawk;
The came a day when we said goodbye
To the master who smelt of chalk.
He went to the life of the ribbon roads And the lore of the tinkers bands;
They chained my bones to an office stool And my soul to a clock’s cold hands.
But I often thought of my tinker friend And I cursed the smirking luck
That didn’t make me a tinker man Fighting the road to puck.
The years went by and the Trouble came, And I found myself again
Back where I whittled the worn desks, With the mountains and the rain.
They put a trench-coat on my back,
And in my hands a gun,
And up in the hills with the fighting men I found the tinker’s son.
And there on the slopes of the Kerry hills
Our love grew still more strong,
And we watched the wrens on the yellow whins Spill their thimblefuls of song.
Then came a truce and I shook his hand, For a while our fighting done;
But never I spoke a word again
To the red-haired tinker’s son...
‘This many a year since he went away And over the roads the vans
Wheel gaily to horse and cattle fairs With the O’Briens and the Coffey clans.
The tinker’s son should be back again With the roads and the life he knew, But I put a bullet through his brain In nineteen twenty-two.
3. The Old School
That was a gay place they planted your feet, Old School With your window beckoning the mountains in,
So we could watch the hawk’s wings nailed to the sky While the linnet sang on the whin.
Hard on the ye the old books in the summer weather,
And then the Master and hawk swooping out of the blue sky together.
That was a grey day I said goodbye, Old School,
And you wiped the chalk from your hand and wished me joy. Searching ever the mind moves down the dust of years
To see in the lively playground the ghost of a laughing boy. Lingers the longing always for Youth’s green sunlit tracks Now the harsh old world has broken it’s cane on our backs
4. The Boy Remembers His Father
The lips of laburnum drip fire,
Soon do the June days pass,
But always I’ll remember
The swish of your feet through the grass.
The swish of your feet through the grass And my bare toes at your side
When the sunlight left the salles,
And the dancing mayflies died.
When the dancing mayflies died, Their dance was merry and good, You were a man and I was a boy Walking through Carhan wood.
Walking through Carhan wood While the field-mice sang in the hay, And they cloaked their song on silence When I rean to where they lay.
When I ran to where they lay
My bare feet noised like guns,
You laughed and called me away With ‘Don’t frighten the timid ones.’
With ‘Don’t frighten the timid ones.’ And now you have frightened me;
I am always calling your name Between the hill and the sea.
Between the hill and the sea And through the quiet town; They tell me they took you away In a coffin of silver and brown.
In a coffin of silver and brown.
While you lay lonely and still,
But I know you are hiding somewhere Between the sea and the hill.
Between the sea and the hill
I’ll hide in the lushy grass; Where are you, O where are you? I am waiting till you pass.
5. The Kerry Christmas Carol
Brush the floor and clean the hearth, And set the fire to keep,
For they might visit us tonight When all the world’s asleep,
Don’t blow the tall white candle out
But leave it burning bright,
So that they’ll know they’re welcome here This holy Christmas night.
Leave out the bread and meat for them, And sweet milk for the Child,
And they will bless the fire that baked And, too, the hands that toiled.
For Joseph will be travel-tired, And Mary pale and wan,
And they can sleep a little while Before they journey on.
They will be weary of the roads, And rest will comfort them,
For it must be many a lonely mile From here to Bethlehem.
O long the road they have to go, The bad mile with the good, Till the journey ends on Calvary Beneath a Cross of wood.
Leave the door upon the latch,
And set the fire to keep,
And pray they’ll rest with us tonight When all the world’s asleep.
6. The County Mayo
Now spring is primrosing the hazel woods again,
And the days are stretching a cockstep or so,
After the feast of Breeda I’ll hoist my sail for the west, And devil the anchor I’ll drop till I come to county Mayo.
Under thatch in Claremorris I’ll snuggle the first night, In the tavern beyond it I’ll rent a spittoon;
The priest of Kiltimagh I’ll hear for four Sundays, Then for Ballinamore will I trim my Balloon.
My wings work as fast as a cuckoo’s godmother,
Or a droileen’s widow with a score of young,
When I think of the nights with the glasses brimming I’ll spend in the ale-house my friends among.
Song and dance and the ball of laughter
Will bounce and roll on the sanded floor;
Were I there now where the yarns are spinning Youth would come on me and I’d be old no more.
7. 0, Drink your Porter, Tinker man’
0, Drink your porter, tinker man,
And wipe your creamy mouth,
The dust is white upon the roads,
The wind red from the south,
And where’s the sense of footing fast When your throat’s on fire with drought?
Come, perch upon the barrel’s edge
And slug the porter down,
We’ll swop tales of the tinker men, With women lean and brown,
Who sing the roads when old King Puck Reigns in Killorglin town...
8. The Fiddler
A black hat lumped on his skull, A pipe stuck in his mouth,
His fingers fondled a fiddle
And his elbow jerked in and out.
His music was mad and merry,
I pranced like a circus clown,
He called me away and I followed Him out of Cahirsiveen town
The stars swam into the darkness Cut by a curving moon,
The lamps made gold of the windows As I followed the fiddler’s tune
My mother peered out the half-door And wept to see me pass;
I beckoned her follow the fiddler And danced with him over the grass.
My father stood by the graveyard, His eyes were bare of mirth,
Yet I knew my father was sleeping In the heart of the Kerry earth.
Days and nights I followed
The fiddler who played to me, And he fiddled me over the land, And he fiddled me over the sea.
With never an hour for resting Or sleep on a bed of sedge, And after a moon of marching We came to the world’s edge.
And there the fiddler left me
While I wept and shouted his name, And up in the sky the stars danced On little shoes of flame.
The grey gulls mewed like kittens
As the curlews bubbled to sound,
The harps of the trees were wind-fingered On the slopes of the higher ground.
A lapwing cried as it flew
Through the gap in the broken plough, But the fiddler was gone for ever...
And I am lonely now.
And me ears are dull from listening For his voice upon the wind,
My eyes are dim from peering,
And there’s madness in my mind.
I have grown grey with waiting For him to come to me,
To fiddle me over the land
And to fiddle me over the sea.
9. I am Kerry
I am Kerry like my mother before me, And my mother’s mother and her man. Now I sit on an office stool remembering, And the memory of them like a fan Soothes the embers into flame.
I am Kerry and proud of my name.
My heart is looped around the rutted hills That shoulder the stars out of the sky,
And about the wasp-yellow fields
And the strands where the kelp-streamers lie; Where, soft as lovers’ Gaelic, the rain falls, Sweeping into silver the lacy mountain walls.
My grandfather tended the turf fire
And, leaning backward into legend, spoke Of doings old before quills inked history.
I saw dark heroes fighting in the smoke, Diarmuid dead inside his Iveragh cave And Deirdre caoining upon Naoise’s grave.
I see the wise face now with its hundred wrinkles, And every wrinkle held a thousand tales
Of Finn and Oscar and Conawn Maol,
And sea-proud Niall whose conquering sails, Raiding France for slaves and wine,
Brought Patrick to mind Milchu’s swine.
I should have put a noose about the throat of time And choked the passing of the hobnailed years, And stayed young always, shouting in the hills Where life held only fairy fears.
When I was young my feet were bare But I drove the cattle to the fair.
“Twas thus I lived, skin to skin with the earth, Elbowed by the hills, drenched by the billows, Watching the wild geese making black wedges By Skelligs far west and Annascaul of the willows. Their voices came on every little wind Whispering across the half-door of the mind,
For always I am Kerry...