Lament for the Woodlands

In the English clearances after 1691 the woodlands were
the first things to be destroyed because they sheltered the
now landless men of Sarsfield’s armies. “The Valley” is
the Glen of Aherlow in Tipperary, and the O’Dwyers
were one of the great Tipperary families.

When once I rose at morning
The summer sun was shining,
I heard the horn awinding
  With the birds’ merry songs;
There was badger and weasel,
Woodcock and plover,
And echo repeated
  The music of the guns.
The winded fox was flying,
The horsemen followed shouting,
Counting her geese on the highway
  Some woman’s heart was sore;
But now the woods are falling,
We must go over the water——
Shaun O’Dwyer of the Valley
  Your pleasure is no more.

‘Tis cause enough for grieving,
Our shelter felled about us,
The north wind freezing
  And death in the sky,
My merry hound tied tightly
From sporting and chasing
That would lift a young lad’s sorrows
  In the noondays gone by.
The stag is on the mountain,
Swift and proud as ever,
He may come up the heather

But our day is o’er,
Let the townsmen cease their watching .
And I’ll take ship from Galway,
Shaun O’Dwyer of the Valley
  Your pleasure is no more.


Source: O'Connor, Frank (tr); Kings, Lords, & Commons: An Anthology
from the Irish; 1962; London; Macmillan & Co; pp.98-99