"BARNEY" - melody = "True Love Knows No Season"

Barney was born on a Donegal hillside, three years before the Great War began,
And spending his boyhood midst green fields and clear streams, he learned there a life-lasting love for the land,
But came the great sickness of nineteen and eighteen that carried his hard-working father away,
And left his poor mother with five hungry children to struggle to clothe and feed every day.

His family was taken and scattered to the four winds, each of those children had to work to survive,
So Barney's work started at the tender age of eight years and only very rarely stopped til he died,
On a Protestant farm in the green glens of Antrim, he worked hard his food and board for to pay,
But happy to find there some good honest people, at the cutting of the corn and the baling of the hay.

At the age of 18 he crossed over to Britain, to work with his hands and the sweat of his brow,
And somehow, somewhere there between Yorkshire and Glasgow, he mastered the fine craftsman's art of the trowel,
With hands that were skilled and with long working hours and with his young Glasgow bride by his side,
He set up his first home in a wee room and kitchen and settled down to raise a family with pride.

In the next seven years along came four children, each of them strong and strapping young lads,
And Barney worked overtime, Saturday, Sunday, for food for their bellies and clothes for their backs,
And the boys grew up quickly with good Glasgow accents and they had to be strong and hard to survive,
But though they were rough and ready on the outside, inside their true Irish souls stayed alive.

And Barney kept working and striving and saving, enjoying a few pints of beer now and then,
For his sons had all grown and were earning a living, at last there was time and the money to spend,
And the day came around on his 65th birthday to return once again to his sweet Donegal,
And though 58 long years had passed since he left it, he still loved Lough Foyle and the land best of all.

His last years were spent at the foot of the green hill that's called in the old Irish language Crockglass,
Happy again there midst green fields and clear streams, though deep in his heart knew that all things must pass,
Now Barney you've gone to your vision of Heaven, but we'll always love and remember you well,
And God, he knows maybe, some day we'll see you, where all the good people of earth go to dwell.

I wrote this a some kind of consolation for my mother when my father Barney died in 1990.