Come draw your stools around the fire,
And set yourselves at ease –
For the frost is tight outside tonight,
And bitter is the breeze;
And I will sing you a simple song,
A homely fireside one
Of a spot I love all spots above –
Of Foremass in Tyrone.

Now Foremass is not very wild,
Nor very grand and fair;
Gay tourists seldom visit it –
But it little seems to care.
It is a high  unsheltered hill
That runs from east to west,
And the north winds chill, that strike that hill
In winter are a pest.

But Foremass has its sunny side,
Like many another theme
It has men as bold as the men of old;
Love is no idle dream.
Hospitality and friendship free
Preside on each hearthstone.
And beggars find a “failte” kind
In Foremass in Tyrone.

In Foremass now by many a hearth
Is many a vacant chair –
For emigration’s footsteps made
A deep impression there.
There fathers mourn, and mothers yearn,
For many an absent one,
Who wandered east and wandered west
From Foremass in Tyrone.

Young boys and girls, far o’er the wave,
In many a land and clime,
Sigh for that home across the foam
Where passed youth’s happy time.
Though day by day, ‘mong strangers gay,
They live all sad and lone,
In visions bright they live at night
In Foremass in Tyrone.

There’s many a brave and generous heart
Yet beats on Foremass hill,
And there are brains to think, and hands
To toil for Erin still;
There are men as bold as the men of old,
Who will light, when Freedom’s won,
A beacon bright on the highest height
Of Foremass in Tyrone.

MICHAEL MULLIN, ‘The Bard of Foremass’,
Foremass Lower, Sixmilecross, Co. Tyrone.

NEWSPAPER CUTTING – ULSTER HERALD – 1971

The Bard of Foremass praises his native heath

More than 60 years ago Mr. Michael Mullin “The Bard of Foremass” penned the following lines in praise of his native district.  They were first published in January, 1911.