Free As I Rode by Granard Moat by Benedict Kiely

and death I sing –
    The canker come on the corn,
    The fisher lost on the mountain loch,
    The cry at the mouth of morn.
    No other life I sing,
    For I am sprung of the stock
    That broke the hilly land for bread,
    And built the nest in the rock!
    Bertie responded with that most moving tribute to Belfast from the scholar Maurice Craig:
    BALLAD TO A TRADITIONAL REFRAIN
    Red brick in the suburbs, white horse on the wall,
    Eyetalian marbles in the City Hall:
    O stranger from England, why stand so aghast?
    May the Lord in His mercy be kind to Belfast.
    This jewel that houses our hopes and our fears
    Was knocked up from the swamp in the last hundred years;
    But the last shall be first and the first shall be last:
    May the Lord in His mercy be kind to Belfast.
    We swore by King William there’d never be seen
    An All-Irish Parliament at College Green,
    So at Stormont we’re nailing the flag to the mast:
    May the Lord in His mercy be kind to Belfast.
    O the bricks they will bleed and the rain it will weep,
    And the damp Lagan fog lull the city to sleep;
    It’s to hell with the future and live on the past:
    May the Lord in His mercy be kind to Belfast.
    Then back we went, in our faraway talk, to Marshall, the Reverend, of Sixmilecross, recalling his epic in two poems about a tough old farmer by the name of Wee Robert:
    SARAH ANN
    I’ll change me way of goin’, for me head is gettin’ grey,
    I’m tormented washin’ dishes, an’ makin’ dhraps o’ tay;
    The kitchen’s like a midden, an’ the parlour like a sty,
    There’s half a fut o’ clabber on the street outby:
    I’ll go down agane the morra on me kailey to the Cross
    For I’ll hif to get a wumman, or the place’ll go to loss.
    I’ve fothered all the kettle, an’ there’s nothin’ afther that
    But clockin’ roun’ the ashes wi’ an oul’ Tom cat;
    Me very ears is bizzin’ from the time I light the lamp,
    An’ the place is like a graveyard, bar the mare wud give a stamp,
    So often I be thinkin’ an’ conthrivin’ for a plan
    Of how to make the match agane with Robert’s Sarah Ann.
    I used to make wee Robert’s of a Sunday afther prayers,
    – Sarah Ann wud fetch the taypot to the parlour up the stairs;
    An’ wance a week for sartin I’d be chappin’ at the dure,
    There wosn’t wan wud open it but her, ye may be sure;
    An’ then – for all wos goin’ well – I got a neighbour man
    An’ tuk him down to spake for me, an’ ax for Sarah Ann.
    Did ye iver know wee Robert? Well, he’s nothin’ but a wart,
    A nearbegone oul’ divil with a wee black heart,
    A crooked, crabbit crathur that bees nether well nor sick,
    Girnin’ in the chimley corner, or goan happin’ on a stick;
    Sure ye min’ the girl for hirin’ that went shoutin’ thro’ the fair,
    ‘I wunthered in wee Robert’s, I can summer anywhere.’
    But all the same wee Robert has a shap an’ farm o’ lan’,
    Ye’d think he’d do it dacent when it came to Sarah Ann,
    She bid me axe a hundther’d, an’ we worked him up and down,
    The deil a hate he’d give her but a cow an’ twenty poun’;
    I pushed for twenty more forbye to help to build a byre,
    But ye might as well be talkin’ to the stone behind the fire.
    So says I till John, me neighbour, ‘Sure we’re only lossin’ time,
    Jist let him keep his mollye, I can do without her prime,
    Jist let him keep his daughter, the hungry-lukin’ nur,
    There’s jist as chancy weemin, in the countryside as her.’
    Man, he let a big thravalley, an’ sent us both – ye know,
    But Sarah busted cryin’, for she seen we maned till go.
    Ay she fell till the cryin’, for ye know she isn’t young,
    She’s nearly past her market, but she’s civil with her tongue.
    That’s half a year or thereaways, an’ here I’m sittin’ yit,
    I’ll change me way of goin’, ay I’ll do it while I’m fit,
    She’s a snug welldoin’ wumman, no better in Tyrone,
    An’ down I’ll go the morra, for I’m far too long me lone.
    The night the