The Man of Songs

Source: The Stone Fiddle by Paddy Tunney

Location: New Edition, page 114 / 115 (Poem)

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“That day I scored the winning goal”,

The cobbler said, and seized the tongs.

He spat upon the half-burnt coal:

“A stranger, boys, The Man of Songs"!”

He stooped beneath the lintel low,

A troubadour from legend lands,

And settling in the greeshagh glow,

Round blackthorn hasped a harper’s hands.

The mountain marrow braced his bone,

Hard granite set in monarch mould.

His tongue untethered silver tone

Of sweetest sound, well vined with gold.

An urchin from the shadows sprang

And straddle-legged on an upturned creel,

He lilted loud: the rafters rang

With riot of a rousing reel.

A fiddler drew a long bent bow,

And eager dancers couldn’t wait

As fast they rallied heel and toe

And flaked it out to Bonnie Kate.

From flagstones faster fly the splanks,

All fiddle-frenzied fast they flail.

A sudden wheel to face the ranks

Their hobnails bring a handclap hail.

“And now we’ll have the Man of Songs,”

The cobbler said, and silence fell

As if the love the lone heart longs for

Cast before it’s binding spells.

And music bounded in the breeze

By dark trout-throw and salmon-leap,

Where shepherd pined and pressed his cheese,

And moorcrocks cackled in their sleep.

He sang a song the mountains sing

When mating thunders in the blood,

And torrent-torn temples fling

From high the fury of the flood.

The last line spoken and the speed

Of lightening swept us from the peaks

Like Oisín from the famed White Steed.

For spirit sings but mortal speaks.

And as the cobbler raked the fire,

And held once more the flat-toed tongs,

He sought the Land of Heart’s Desure

And lingered with the Man of Songs.

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