There's been some progress on this poem. My friend Mike Kennedy set it to music about a year or so ago and I've been doing some reworking of the lyrics. Here's the way I sing it now (copy and paste into WORD/TIMES/12 to line up chords: Click here for MP3!

Adapted for singing by Mike Kennedy, © 2010
Wording changes by Charles Ipcar 7/1/2011

Rathlin Head-3


Am-C------------------G-------C---------------------------F
We left the murk of Mersey-side, we left the flaring town;
-----C------------------G-Am-----------------F---------------------G
All smouldering red by Spanish Head the storm-y sun went down;
-----Am-----F-------------Am--------C----------------F
We saw the lamp gleam out, in the Mull o' Gallo-way,
--------C--------------G-------Am-----------------F-------------------------G
At the edge of night toward Rathlin Light, we steamed out from the Bay –

-----F------------------G--------Am
Be-fore the light of morning.


Black deep of night without a star, both sky and sea did fill;
So cautious crept we through the dark, our engines near stood still;
All salt like tears on rope and rail, the sea mist clinging grey –
With Rathlin Island close to port, Kintyre to starboard lay – (CHO)

We heard across the blind black tide the lighthouse boom forlorn;
All night we heard a Glasgow barque, blowing the old cow's horn,
And groping slow we passed her by, a bare ship's length away –
"A near thing with that barque, me lad," I heard the Old Man say – (CHO)

And so, good-bye the narrow seas and the forelands roaring foam!
There's many the turning in the road that brings the sailor home;
Full speed once more our engines throbbed, as faint the east grew grey;
And I turned my face to Rathlin Head, and a long good-bye did say –

---F------------------------G---------Am
In the cold grey light of morning.

Notes:

From Songs and Chanties: 1914-1916, edited by Cicely Fox Smith, published by Elkin Mathews, London, UK, © 1919, pp. 95-97.

"Rathlin Light" is located on Rathlin Island, North Channel, Northern Ireland, while "Kintyre" is a peninsula in western Scotland. Rathlin Island is an L-shaped island with the "L" opening to the southwest. The Island therefore has headlands at the southeast point, the northwest point, and where the two legs of the "L" meet to the northeast; there is a lighthouse at each location. A lighthouse is mentioned in the song three times as the ship travels from the Irish Sea through the North Channel and then out into the North Atlantic, each a different lighthouse.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble