The Miracle [antikvár]

THE MIRACLE I There was a man came all the way from Connemara, wrote a poem in Gaelic about Mary Kirwan. It has been made into stilted English and clumsily fitted perhaps to some tune, for, printed cheaply on sheets of paper, some coloured pink, some green, some blue, it is sold as a song in the streets of Dublin, Limerick and Cork by hucksters trading their wares in the gutter. Amongst the many songs, the words of which are sold like this throughout Ireland, all printed on flimsy sheets of coloured paper, it is not easy to find. Maybe it is out of print by now. The first verse of it, in like character to the rest, runs in this fashion : " One day i'll take my feet down the hard road, the long road, When there are sweet evenings i'll come back again to Ardnashiela Bay, For there's what they would be drinking there and good talk by the peatty fires, And a pale woman, so gentle at the listening, you'd forget what you would say." It continues like this in many verses in praise of Mary Kirwan, in one couplet describing her still more closely : " Light had its way with her eyes and times when she'd be listening Her lips would make your words the way she'd kiss them for their thought-" 9