Lyr Add: All Round Me Hat (Sean O'Casey)

Subject: Lyr Add: All Round Me Hat (Sean O'Casey)
From: GUEST,Bill Kennedy
Date: 12 Nov 02 - 12:58 PM

Sean O'Casey's version as sung on 'The Green Crow Caws', Paul Brady/James(or John?) Kavanagh release. It was originally printed in his 6th volume of autobiography, 'Sunset & Evening Star' 1954

All round me hat I wear a band of green ribbon O,
Careless of what any lofty mind may say;
If anyone should ask me why, I'll tell them Eire wove it
All round me hat, an' there it's destin'd for to stay.

All that she is or was is woven in that ribbon O,
Her chieftains lyin' low in cloister'd Clonmacnoise today;
Th' bugle-call of Finn that shook the mountain high, the valley low,
Cuchullian's chariot-rush that took th' foemen's breath away.

All that her saints have done, her sinners' gay mortality,
Th' time they stood undaunted up, th' time they slipp'd an' fell;
Th' beauty of the oldher books an' all th' songs her poets sung,
Are woven in the ribbon green, an' woven fair an' well.

All th' Ulsther chiefs defendin' Eire from the Norman Law;
Tone tossin' on the sea, an' damnin' all its din;
Emmet takin' Ireland's hope down with him to a grave unknown,
When people had no peace without or gleam of hope within.

Th' rout of priests who ordhered Irish souls away to hell,
Who saw a Chieftain sent from God in Charles Stewart Parnell;
Larkins' apostolic voice that rang the workers out of sleep,
An' made undaunted fighters from a flock of baain' sheep.

An' them comin' lather when daffodils danc'd in th' sun,
When many were th' whispers that poor Ireland's days were done;
When Pearse an' all his comrades beat a roll upon an Irish drum,
A roll that's beatin' still to bring a rally yet to come.

So all round me hat, I wear a band of green ribbon O,
Zone of our faults, our fights, our love an' laghter gay;
All that Eire is or was is woven in that ribbon O,
An' there it stops till life is dead an' time has ebb'd away.