Corrymeela - Moira O’Neill

Over here in England I’m helpin’ wi’ the hay,
And I wisht I was in Ireland the livelong day;
Weary on the English hay, an’ sorra take the wheat!
Och! Corrymeela, an’ the blue sky over it.

There’s a deep dumb river flowin’ by beyont the heavy trees,
This livin’ air is moithered wi’ the hummin’ o’ the bees;
I wisht I’d hear the Claddagh burn go runnin’ through the heat,
Past Corrymeela, wi’ the blue sky over it.

The people that’s in England is richer nor the Jews,
There’s not the smallest young gossoon but thravels in his shoes!
I’d give the pipe between me teeth to see a barefut child,
Och! Corrymeela, an’ the low south wind.

Here’s hands so full o’ money an’ hearts so full o’ care,
By the luck o’ love! I’d still go light for all I did go bare.
“God save ye, colleen dhas,” I said; the girl she thought me wild!
Fair Corrymeela, an’ the low south wind.

D’ye mind me now, the song at night is mortial hard to raise,
The girls are heavy goin’ here, the boys are ill to plase;
When ones’t I’m out this workin’ hive, ’tis I’ll be back again—
Aye, Corrymeela, in the same soft rain.

The puff o’ smoke from one ould roof before an English town!
For a shaugh wid Andy Feelan here I’d give a silver crown,
For a curl o’ hair like Mollie’s ye’ll ask the like in vain,
Sweet Corrymeela, an’ the same soft rain.

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Moira O’Neill (pseudonym of Agnes Shakespeare Higginson; also Nesta) (1864 - 1955) Ireland
Source: Anthology of Irish Verse edited by Padraic Colum, New York: Boni and Liveright, 1922