CHRISTMAS IN CORLEA

The stars of Heaven are shining over the Red Hill And a sickle moon is wrapped warm in a soft cloud There are razor blades in the breeze from Bonahill But I am kept warm in a townland of trees And will never feel the winter chill

For Christmas is coming to Corlea. Eddie Moore touches the bow and plays the Coolin And his 22-year-old heart beats faster For he knows his true love Is coming around the valley with her greatest gift A smile that could open Heaven above

There’s music from the byre as Willie milks the grey cow. Standing stately like a queen of the land And the calves are calling quietly from the stable For they know that Joseph, Mary and Jesus are their eternal band

Up in Belleek the pubs are heaving with banter and bile Raised voices, a few broken glasses and even noses and hearts As breast-fed feuds are taken to town. And the men with too much drink slink into Midnight Mass

For Christmas is a terrible time to fall out of love and into hate But my five-year-old heart is waiting on the one with the white beard. The one who will be flying in from Cashelard With all my hopes and dreams on board

Barney Daly, from the blue-eyed breed of the bards Shafted a shovel for Gerry “The Bull” McBride And it was brought back to the “Bull” Wrapped up in the bars of a rhyme

Billy Moore is making some home-made beer And Thomas John Ward is shaking his shoulders Reddened with rum and black and telling all How he spotted the banshee as clear as You would see a white cow in a bog.

And I am watching my mother Rose, who always cried When Eddie Moore played the Coolin. A song of loss and loneliness stealing over icy ash trees Just like Ireland’s eternal story of bright hope Burned black by the Redcoats of the Crown

But Corlea was never cowed by the stranger And there was always something sharper than straw in the thatch And gold whiskey and “white lightning” soon loosened Tongues around the flickering flames as they remembered Major Moore and his mistress Madame Bideau.

They weren’t the worst, but their kind were happy To see the natives pushed back to rushy hills. To see caps doffed in sullen silence And Irish rents to pay the bills for living on their own land

It is later now and the stars of Heaven are still over the Red Hill. And the sickle moon is the wing of an angel. The two big oaks on McCann’s Mountain Are surely the Father and Holy Ghost Watching over the baby Jesus, in the stable of Christmas in Corlea