There's more! It's "by the groves of CARHAN River", not Callan as above, or Carham, as on the Christy Moore album sleevenotes. Its on the north east edge of Cahersiveen. SC learned to swim there as a boy. Also Daniel O'Connell was born there and SC wrote a play about him called "The Great Pacificator". Christy made a few minor changes from the original, which I think actually improved it. Also the hill's name is Beenatee. I believe the wren was hunted because of the legend that its singing led to the capture and execution of St Stephen. As a small child I remember being terrifed by the wren boys coming to our cottage door in Donegal in the early 50s. SC was an amateur ornithologist and his first published piece was about local birdlife. He was a civil servant and spent much of his life stuck in a Dublin office dreaming about happy days in rural Kerry. Apart from "The Ballad of the Tinker's Daughter" (very Yeatsian) his other best known poem is "I Am Kerry". First verse; "I am Kerry like my mother before me,and my mother's mother and her man, now I sit on an office stool remembering, and the memory of them, like a fan, soothes the embers into flame, I am Kerry and proud of my name". Among the wreaths at his funeral was one from Dan Sheehan (London)one of those immortalised in the poet's most famous ballad. For me the song is more about a happy, idyllic childhood than anything else.