The Old Glasheen Rill Will Be Babbling On

Poem by Francis Duggan

Through fields of Inchaleigh and Claraghatlea, by ditch and hedgerow

Toward Finnow River with gurgle and babble it goes in full flow

The Journeys apace with tongue never still

That wee waterway we knew as old Grasheen rill

There long before ticking of time became foe

We hunted for elvers those decades ago

With jam jars attached to the bit of a string

As the life of our youth had its innocent fling

To leave poignant memories that are drifting away

As the boys of the fifties, the ageing men of today

And long after misty memory, amorphous, then gone

The old Glasheen Rill will be babbling on

To the Finnow, and Blackwater and on to the shore

Of the Atlantic, the old rill flows ever-more.