Love

Cashel of Munster

by Sir Samuel Ferguson 1810–1886

From Irish Minstrelsy, ed. H. Halliday Sparling (1888)

Love

I'd wed you without herds, without money, or rich array,
And I'd wed you on a dewy morning at day-dawn grey ;
My bitter woe it is, love, that we are not far away
In Cashel town, though the bare deal board were our
marriage bed this day !

O fair maid, remember the green hill side ;
Remember how I hunted about the valleys wide.
Time now has worn me ; my locks are turned to grey,
The year is scarce and I am poor, but send me not, love,
away !

O deem not my blood is of base strain, my girl,
O think not my birth was as the birth of the churl ;
Marry me, and prove me, and say soon you will,
That noble blood is written on my right side still !

My purse holds no red gold, no coin of the silver white,
No herds are mine to drive through the long twilight,
But the pretty girl that would take me, all bare though I be and lone,
O I'd take her with me kindly to the county Tyrone.

O my girl, I can see 'tis in trouble you are,
And O my girl, I see 'tis your people's reproach you bear.
I am a girl in trouble for his sake for whom I fly,
And, O may no other maiden know such reproach as I.

✦ ✦ ✦

Translated from the Irish

MLA

Ferguson, Samuel. “Cashel of Munster.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/ferguson_s/9/.

Chicago

Ferguson, Samuel. “Cashel of Munster.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/ferguson_s/9/.

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