The home of youth with most of us is still the favourite home.
And youth’s impressions are the deepest still;
The ways of youth are haunting ways – and fain am I to roam
A road around the hip of Foremass hill.

O’er many roads I’ve wandered in my pilgrimage through life;
On better roads and broader I have been.
Oft’times I longed to mingle in the city’s din and strife;
And oft’ I longed to see and to be seen.

But the farther that I wandered and the more that I beheld,
And the longer that I stayed away from home:
The stronger grew the longing, and the more my bosom swelled
With love for one old road I used to roam.

The road I roamed in childhood and the road I roamed to school,
The road I roamed to see the friends I loved.
The road on which my boyhood dreamt the visions beautiful,
The road from which my heart has never roved.

The road to home, with most of us is still the favoured track,
The old home road is calling, calling still –
The old Culnaheena road that ever takes me back
To a wee house at the hip of Foremass hill.

MICHAEL MULLIN, ‘THE BARD OF FOREMASS’
Foremass Lower, Sixmilecross, Tyrone.

There’s a high hill in Tyrone,
A high hill in Tyrone,
And as often as I think of it makes me sigh ochon!
For it brings a scene before me, from the
Dead sad past to bore me.
Yet the though of it is company when I am all alone.

There’s a steep hill in Tyrone,
A steep hill in Tyrone,
And its western side was then, and is, with wild furze overgrown;
And the furze were all ablooming – but they
Left my heart in glooming,
For I lost my heart among them – it was skillfully o’erthrown.

To this furze hill in Tyrone
This furze hill in Tyrone,
Love was stealthily in sunshine by the gentle breezes blown,
O! There was a face whose smiling, and
Soft dimples were beguiling,
And sweet laughter that sent ecstasy through me with every tone.

But that high hill in Tyrone,
That high hill in Tyrone,
Stands a monument o’er all those airy castles overthrown –
For grim Fate then came in and said No,
And my sad heart sighing read so;
O! how sad yet sweet to turn to youth’s bright love and fancies flown.

MICHAEL MULLIN

‘THE BARD OF FOREMASS’
FOREMASS LOWER, SIXMILECROSS, CO. TYRONE

O, Mullaghcairn! I love you,
With your great crown of stone,
And from gigantic, guarding
The valleys of Tyrone.

O, Mullaghcairn! I love you
When north winds fiercely blow;
Then, like true Gaelic chieftain,
You shield us here below.

O, Mullaghcairn! I love you
When all in vestments white
The king of winter robes you,
As for some mystic rite.

O, Mullaghcairn! I love you
When hands of morning fair
Hang up your misty nigh-cap
Upon a rack in air.

O, Mullaghcairn! I love you
Because the tyrants dread
Your proud defiant figure,
And high unbending head.

O, Mullaghcairn! I love you
For you are Freedoms shrine,
Where Freedom lovers worship
A cause that is divine.

Michael Mullin
‘The Bard of Foremass’
Foremass Lower, Sixmilecross, Co. Tyrone.