The Royal Visit
Source: The Stone Fiddle by Paddy Tunney
Location: New Edition, page 128 / 129
The tinkers tackle and head for town,
With bright shawled women and weechles brown
For fuming farmers with fences down
All threatening a’ lynching and lawing.
In polished harness the piebalds prance,
As goats and greyhounds around their feet dance,
And asses trumpet the clan’s advance
With brashes of lusty heehawing.
They throng the sidewalks and fill the fair,
Great black-eyed boyos with horny hair,
And not a cantman will cry his ware
As long as the tinkermen tarry,
And bashful bachelors glimpse with glee
A curving bosom, an ankle or knee,
And drunken drovers they all shout “Wheeh!
No wonder these hammermen marry!”
Down gaping gullets the porter pours
And bowrans beat at the bar back-doors,
Soon fists are flaying, a farmer roars:
“O why did you sell oul’ Killarney?”
As moutnain stream on a heathery moor
Songs out The Valley of Knockanure
“My life on you, balladman Barney!”
A lisson lassie with eyes like sloes,
To pub or alehouse she seldom goes,
But o-er the threshold her laughter throws
To modier old men in their whiskey,
A peeler spies her, a hard old crust,
His body stiffens with fierce stun of lust.
He craves to plunder, and try he must,
Though mating with her might be risky.
He ventures nearer and vets her well.
Of tinker women she is the belle,
The quiet sort that would never tell.
Her eyes to the archway she raises.
Well-chiselled features, a bit too chaste,
A ripe, round breast and a willowy waist.
The hound within him is howling “Haste,
Let caution and stealth go to blazes!”
The peeler pounces; no scream or call.
He drags his prey to a stable stall.
A panther springs from the darkened wall,
He drops like an ox for the slaughter.
A drink of teeth and a broken jaw
Is just reward for this limb of the law
Who dared his baton to ever draw
In taming the traveller king’s daughter.
The dark man straightens with throaty snarls,
And kicks the copper round empty barrels.
Above, beyond them, a boglark carols,
The clock in the Sqaure’s striking seven.
The old king gathers the leather reins.
The wild blood bucking in Romany veins.
He heads again for the hills and plains,
His castle the high dome of heaven.