I don’t know where the world can be buzzing
I don’t know where its whizzing to at all.
I’ve hatched my 13 chickens to the dozen.
Said an old hen sitting on the garden wall.
O the pleasant days are over in the haggard
The days we used to scratch for worms and seed
And the mistress herself’s a cruel hard one
Since she took to reading papers on the breed.
Now that 4 toed rosecomb Dorking hen is perky,
Because she won a premium at a show.
But I fight her or I’d fly her, the ould turkey
And I’d lay her, had I met her years ago.
And now they’ve got a modern incubator
That hatches by machinery I’m towl,
Though its flying straight against the face of nature
T’would bring a blush to common decent fowl.
But I’ll lay eggs as my mother layed before me
And I’ll clock them as my mother used to clock
And I’ll strut round like my father thro the farmyard
With me head as high and proud as Carmen Rock.
O this old world’s changing, changing, changing
And its women and its men are changing too
And the women now are different from their mothers
And the men don’t do the thing men used to do.
Just imagine! now the women’s wearing trousers
And the gentlemen arrayed in women’s frocks
And petticoats, you hardly know the difference
Especially since boys sport beetled locks
And their powder and their lipstick and cosmetics
O I don’t know where they’re heading to at all.
With their rambling and their gambling and their Bingo
Said the old hen sitting on the garden wall.
With the people that I lay for and I clock for
I’m disgusted with such women and such men,
With their high and mighty fashions and ideas
I’m glad I’m just a common clocking hen.

–

Michael Mullin ‘The Bard of Foremass’

Foremass Lower, Sixmilecross, Co. Tyrone.

Why do thy leaves, O Beech, cling on?
When leaves of other trees have gone –
Gone to the dust, gone to their tomb,
‘Mid winter wrath, and autumn gloom.

Thy dead leaves wave like golden shields
O’er straw-roofed cots and snow-clad fields;
Defying rain and hail and frost –
Buffeted, torn, and tempest-tost.

Methinks that Love – the Love of mother,
Love of father, sister, brother –
Of each for all, and all for each,
Lives in thy bosom, gentle Beech!

Love which the God of Love has given,
That Love which binds the earth and heaven,
Abideth in no small degree
Among thy branches, leaves, and thee.

Even in death thy leaves remain
To shield thee from the hurricane –
Thou canst not bear to let them go –
Even in death – thou lovest so.

–

Michael Mullin

‘The Bard of Foremass’

Foremass Lower, Sixmilecross, Co. Tyrone.

I found a  field of  beauty on a mountain –
One lone green field, ‘mid wastes of heather brown;
And long-beaked curlews, pert and pretty peewits
Went strutting up and down.

The sun was beaming down upon the green grass,
And on a host of daisies smiling up,
And on a wealth of dandelion blossoms,
And many a buttercup.

The cooling  bog-breeze passing o’er these beauties
Set them a-nodding gently to and fro;
They all seemed waltzing to some fairy music,
Mysterious and low.

The lark seemed loth to leave this field of beauty,
It took, indeed, its giddy upward track –
But soon the glory of the heav’n below it
Compelled it to come back.

Days passed.  I sought again this field of beauty;
But all the dandelion blooms were gone;
And lonely looked the buttercups and daisies
That still kept smiling on.

The bloom has gone – it saddened me to think it –
The fairest flowers may bow to Fate’s decree.
The  bloom has gone – but Beauty’s memory lingers
Within the soul of me.

–

Michael Mullin

‘The Bard of Foremass’

Foremass Lower, Sixmilecross, Co. Tyrone.