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Spoken:
The curlew stood silent and unseen in the long damp grass. And he looked down on the road below him that wound its way through Bael na mBlath. And he heard the young men shouting and cursing, running backwards and forwards, dodging and weaving and ducking the bullets that rained down on them from the hillside opposite. Just as quickly as it started, the firing stopped and a terrible silence hung over the valley. A lone figure lay on the roadside, in the drizzling August rain, Dressed in green great-coat, leggings and brown hob-nailed boots, that would never again set the sparks flying from the kitchen flagstones, as he danced his way through a half-set. A hurried, whispered act of contrition, and the firing breaks out again. The curlew takes to flight and, as he flies out over the empty sad fields of west Cork, with his lonesome call, he must tell the world that The Big Fellow has fallen, and that Michael is gone.
On a far off August day, cold, young men in ambush lay
On a roadside by a hill where flowers grow;
So much hate for one so young, who was right and who was wrong?
Though a thousand years may pass, we'll never know.
Candles dripping blood they placed beside your shoulders,
Rosary beads like teardrops on your fingers;
Friends and comrades standing by, in their grief they wonder why,
Michael, in their hour of need you had to go.
And when evening twilight came, gently fell the autumn rain,
Oh, but you lay still and silent on the ground;
As we hung our heads in prayer, in our sorrow and despair,
We wondered was it friend or foe who shot you down?
Candles dripping blood they placed beside your shoulders,
Rosary beads like teardrops on your fingers;
Friends and comrades standing by, in their grief they wonder why,
Michael, in their hour of need you had to go.
Now the flame that you held high when you called out to the sky
To end this senseless killing and this shame
Has now passed to other hands and is carried through the land
By some not fit to even speak your name.
Candles dripping blood they placed beside your shoulders,
Rosary beads like teardrops on your fingers;
Friends and comrades standing by, in their grief they wonder why,
Michael, in their hour of need you had to go.
Michael, in their hour of need why did you go?
Note¹: Curlew - Any of several brownish, long-legged shore birds of the genus Numenius, having long, slender, downward-curving bills.
Note²: Bael na mBlath - The small town in County Cork, Ireland, where Michael Collins was shot. It literally means 'mouth of flowers'.
From Wikipedia:
Michael Collins (Irish: Micheál Ó Coileáin; Nickname: The Big Fellow; October 16, 1890 - August 22, 1922) - an Irish revolutionary leader, served as Minister for Finance in the Irish Republic, as a member of the Irish delegation during the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations, as Chairman of the Provisional Government and as Commander-in-Chief of the National Army. He was assassinated during the Irish Civil War when he was thirty-one years old. His memory is held in particular regard by supporters of Fine Gael, Ireland's second largest political party which considers him the founding father of their movement.
