AN SPAILPIN FANACH (without fadas)


Never again will I go to Cashel
Selling and trading my health
Nor to the hiring-fair, sitting by the wall
A lounger on the roadside
The bucks of the country coming on their horses,
Asking if I'm hired
"Oh lets go, the journey is long"
Off goes the Spailpin Fanach.

I was left as a Spailpin Fanach
Depending on my health
Walking the dew early in the morning
Catching all the illnesses going around.
You'll not see a hook in my hand for harvesting
A flail or a short spade,
But the flag of France over my bed
And the pike for stabbing

Five hundred farewells to the land of my father
And to the dear island
And to the boys of Cualach because they never
feared in the trouble times of defense,
But now that I'm poor, miserable and alone
In these foreign lands
I'm heart-broken becauseI got the call
To be a Spailpin Fanach.

I well remember my people were at one time
Over at the bridge at Gail
With cattle, with sheep, with little white calves
And plenty of horses
But it was the will of God that we were evicted
And we were left with only our health
And what broke my heart everywhere I went
"Call here, you Spailpin Fanach."


Taken from the liner notes of the Dervish CD, "at the end of the day".

Carol