THE KNOWTH TROWELER
(Tom Delaney)

Come list to the lay of the mound disemboweller,
'Tis of the Knowth troweler the legend I tell,
Cut down in his beauty while doing his duty,
To serve his director he strove and he fell.

The passage was shaking, the orthostats quaking,
An excavation was ordered in haste.
But some fool left the level 'mid all the upheaval,
And only remembered when it seemed too late.

George lost his good humour when he heard the rumour
Of the terrible bloomer the youth had performed.
He rushed to the passage when he got the message,
His passion to assuage he strutted and stormed.

Back in the fool scrambled, 'neath lintel he ambled
While orthostats trembled, the level to get.
He knew it was risky but he swallowed his whiskey
And his footstep was frisky as he strode to his death.

For a boulder came crashing, a megalith mashed him
When up through the entrance the level he threw.
His corpse out we carried while life it yet tarried,
To hear his last words we lined up in a queue.

"Oh send my expenses back home to my mother,
Tell her I died with a trowel in my hand.
Assure her my sections will need no corrections,
Send her some soil from the sites I have planned.

Oh make me a 'secondary crouched inhumation',
Put my knees to my nose and my arse to my heels.
With a beaker of Guinness to hearten my finish,
At last I'll know how a cist-burial feels.

Or else raise a pyre and set it on fire,
The future can date me by dating the fuel.
I'd hoped to be famous but fate often shames us,
The past is misleading and fortune is cruel."

From the passage we scraped him, with trowels re-shaped him
And taped up his face till it seemed that he smiled.
And the very last words that the Knowth troweler spoke us
Were "Mother! Director!" and "Vere Gordon Childe!".

Then half we cremated and half inhumated
Where the grass waves above and the Boyne wanders by.
Now with a new level he surveys the heavens,
His celestial trowel scrapes a hole in the sky.

He lies 'neath the spoil-heap beside the new office,
Each barrow-load added increases his name.
And sorrowing maidens with soil and tears laden,
Diminish their grief as they add to his fame.

So if ever you wander from Slane to Drogheda,
Consider this youth and the mound where he sagged.
The whole of creation's a vast excavation,
By his duty he's labelled, by God he's been bagged.

Tune: The Bard of Armagh

Notes: level - a surveying instrument
TC