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.