The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #42118   Message #610920
Posted By: masato sakurai
16-Dec-01 - 08:20 AM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Hills of Glenswilly
Subject: Lyr Add: GLEN O'LEE
"Glen O'Lee" in Sam Henry's Songs of the People (University of Georgia Press, 1990, p. 212; with music) has a different place name but the lyrics are similar; the note says "Other title: 'The Hills of Glenswilly'".

GLEN O'LEE

Attention pay, my countrymen, and hear my native news,
I own my song is sorrowful, my name you will excuse.
I left my home in Donegal, a foreign land to see,
I bid farewell to all my friends and to sweet Glen O'Lee.

The summer sun was sinking fast behind the mountain gay
When I left my peaceful residence to wander far away,
And as I viewed the grand old glens, I grieved on leaving thee,
For all the happy days I spent around sweet Glen O'Lee.

Some tall men stood around me, my comrades kind and true,
And as I clasped each well-known hand to bid a last adieu,
I says, 'My gallant countrymen, it's soon you shall be free
To raise the sunburst proudly o'er the glens of Glen O'Lee.'

No more at balls or harvest-homes my fiddle I will play,
No more I'll dance the Irish jig among the girls so gay,
My treasured harp I left at home, the rest was dear to me;
It will keep my place when I am gone away from Glen O'Lee.

No more beside the sycamore I hear the blackbirds sing,
No more for me the bright cuckoo shall welcome back the spring,
No more I'll see the fertile fields across the Swilly sea,
On a foreign soil I'm bound to toil far, far from Glen O'Lee.

God bless you, dark old Donegal, my own, my native land,
In dreams I often see yon hill anf towering mountains grand,
But alas! ten thousand miles now lie betwixt those hills and me,
I'm a poor forlorn exile away from Glen O'Lee.

May peace and sweet contentment reign around Lough Swilly shore,
May discord never enter its homesteads any more,
And may the happy time soon come when I return to thee,
And live where my forefathers lived, and die in Glen O'Lee.

~Masato