THE CURLEW MOUNTAINS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XX, Issue 45, 26 August 1892, Page 15

THE CURLEW MOUNTAINS.

(Translated for tbe Pilot from the Irish by An Ohrtoibbio Aoibbinn.) The Curlew Mountains are fine in winter, They are not embedded in ice or snow ; The cuckoo callß from tbe greenwood's centre, The thrash and the corncrake ting below. Tbe hounds are hunting, tbe rocks resounding, They follow the fawn that flies before ; The torrent comes down from the mountain bounding. Sa'mon are leaping beside the Bhore. I think of my mountain late and early, Where blossoms are golden and glad and gay ; Where the wheat springs high and the yellow barley, And birds are piping on every spray. The tips of the rushes are heavy with honey, There's butter and cream fiom the silken kine j No Northern snow on its slopes so sunny, Will trouble its coasts or its harbours fine. Where the bee has a home and is wisely working, And women eat honey from day to day ; But deep in my bosom a care is lurking, The love of my heart is far away. Your fair, thin forehead, tbe wide world's wonder, Your treßses that hang in a golden sheaf, Have torn the strings of my heart asunder, And covered my head with a cloud of grief. I am as a man that is even dying For lack of the jewel his eye would see. Oh I will jou not visit me where I am lying, And take God's blessing and comfort me? Note, — This is a typically Irish song, it changes its tone and shifts its thoughts and illusions so often and abruptly. lam publishing this and ether poems in my " Songs of the Connacht Bards," where I hope to print about forty love songa peculiar to Connacht. Winter and summer, the loch and the mountain, love and the chase are here mixed up in a manner quite characteristic, and peculiar to Gaelic peasant songs.