This is the text and layout of Clifford's "The Ballad of the Tinker's Daughter" as published in his collection "Ballads of a Bogman" first published in 1955.

THE BALLAD OF THE TINKER'S DAUGHTER
(Sigerson Clifford)

When rooks ripped home at eventide
And trees pegged shadows to the ground
The tinkers came to Carhan Bridge
And camped beside the Famine mound.

With long-eared ass and bony horse,
And blue-wheeled cart and caravan
And she the fairest of them all,
The daughter of the tinker clan.

The sun flamed in her red, red hair
And in her eyes danced stars of mirth
Her body held the willow's grace
Her feet scarce touched the springing earth.

The night spread its star-tasseled shawls
The river gossiped to her stones,
She sat beside the leaping fire
And sang the songs the tinker owns.

The songs as old as turning wheels
And sweet as bird-throats after rain
Deep wisdom of the wild wet earth
The pain of joy, the joy of pain.

A farmer going by the road
And tend his cattle in the byre
He saw her like some fairy queen
Between the river and the fire.

Her beauty stirred his brooding blood,
Her magic mounted all in his head,
He stole her from the tinker clan
And on the morrow they were wed.

And when the sunlight swamped the hills
And bird-song drowned the river's bells
The tinkers quenched their hazel fires
And climbed the windy road to Kells.

And from his house she watched them fade
And vanish in the yellow furze;
A cold wind blew across the sun
And silenced all the singing birds.

She saw the months run on and on,
And heard the river fret and foam
At break of day the roosters called
At dim of dusk the cows came home.

The crickets strummed their heated harps
In hidden halls behind the hob
And told of distant waterways
where the black moorhens dive and bob.

And shoot the glassy bubbles up
To smash their windows on the stones;
And brown trout hide their spots of gold
Among the river's pebbly bones.

And, too, the ebbing sea that flung
A net of sound about the stars,
Set strange hills dancing in her dreams
And meshed her to the wandering cars.

She stole out from her sleeping man
She fled the fields that tied her down.
Her face moved towards the rising sun
Her back was to the tired town.

She climbed the pallid road to Kells
Against the hill, against the wind
In Glenbeigh of the mountain-streams
She came upon her tinker-kind.

They bedded her between the wheels
And there her son was born
She heard the tinker-woman's praise
Before she died that morn…

The years flew by like frightened birds
That spill a feather and are gone
The farmer walked his weedful fields
And made the tinkers travel on.

No more they camped by Carhan Bridge
And coaxed their fires to fragrant flame
They saw him with his dog and gun
They spat and cursed his name.

And when May hid the hawthorn trees
With stars she stole from out the skies
There came a barefoot tinker lad
With red, red hair and laughing eyes.

He left the road, he crossed the fields
The farmer shot him in the side
The smile went from his twisting lips
He told his name and died.

And that evening when the neighbours came
They found the son laid on the floor
And saw the farmer swinging low
Between the window and the door.

They placed the son upon a cart
And they cut the swaying farmer down
They swear a tinker woman came
With them all the way to town.

The sun flamed in her red, red hair
And in her eyes danced stars of mirth
Her body held the willow's grace
Her feet scarce touched the springing earth.

They buried them in Keelvarnogue
And eyes were moist and lips were wan
And when the mound was patted down
The tinker maid was gone.

These things were long before my day
I only speak with borrowed words.
But that is how the story goes
In Iveragh of the singing birds.


Regards