Tune Req: Oh may the fields that hide the hare

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Oh may the fields that hide the hare
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 14 Jun 11 - 03:23 PM

awesome lyrics

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Oh may the fields that hide the hare
From: Thompson
Date: 13 Jun 11 - 08:44 PM

This is also referenced in an article by one Malins in Jstor, a piece on Yeats and the Easter Rising; unfortunately I don't have access to Jstor, which takes a snobbish attitude to non-academics, keeping out those of us who are woorkers.

Subject: Tune Req: Oh may the fields that hide the hare
From: Thompson
Date: 24 Oct 09 - 02:33 PM

Has anyone come across this verse, quoted in the book Ireland 1851-1921, and also in The Conquered by Naomi Mitchison, and would you know its tune?

Oh may the fields that hide the hare
Hide well our hunted men
As scattered rocks conceal the fox
And smallest trees the wren,
And by the cart-wheel's crushing track
The sky-lark knows no fears -
In vain, God grant, may England hunt
The Irish Volunteers.

(It's named as 'From an Irish Song of 1920-21.)

A second verse is quoted in The Conquered:

Oh may the winter be a spring
About them where they hide
Oh may by night the stars be bright
Their silent feet to guide
May streams with fish and boughs with fruit
Be teeming through the years
And every field a harvest yield
To the Irish Volunteers.