OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN
As recorded by Robbie O'Connell on "Never Learned to Dance" (2009)

His story must have started when he was in the First World War.
Many times I've heard that was the bloodiest war of all.
He must have made his mind up that if you saw it to the end,
[You'd/We'd/He'd] have to make some changes [if/when/so] he'd come home again.

And when the war was over, he could never settle down.
He'd work sometimes for farmers and he'd move from town to town.
He never really made a plan; he just lived from day to day.
[He] didn't seem to notice as the years just slipped away.

CHORUS: Old man of the mountain, what happened in the war?
Was something lost forever there that you were searching for?
Was it fear of killing or the fear of being killed
That made you want to live out there alone upon the hill?

When the Second War began in nineteen thirty-nine,
He went into the mountains and he left the world behind.
They only saw him in the town when his army pension came
And he'd stock up his provisions and be on his way again.

And in the Comeragh Mountains he lived for twenty years
Like a hermit in the wilderness in his ragged clothes and beard.
Some say that he was crazy or that he was just afraid.
Some saw quiet dignity in his solitary ways.

CHORUS

I can still remember the day I heard he died.
I was only eight or nine but it touched me deep inside.
Though I never knew him, I still felt I'd lost a friend.
There was something gone forever that I wouldn't find again.

CHORUS

[Words in brackets are sung so softly (if at all) by O'Connell that you really can't make them out; I added them for grammar's sake.]