It’s a long, winding road from Galway to Cloonfush
Through wasteland filled with wails and rasping teeth.
If you stop your market cattle and bid them hush,
You can hear a fairy-woman laughing on the heath.
Years ago a drover camped in the early dark
And ate his bread; his herd munched road-brush.
He fueled the fire and hummed “The Red Lark;”
Thirteen horses flew by in a headlong rush.
As the riders thundered by, a woman shrilly laughed—
The kind of laugh that wives and parsons fear,
Which drives a steady sane man daft.
The night wore on but her voice lingered in his ear.
Down off the high road the hapless fairy-mad
Gibbered, and ground their rotting teeth;
The lowing cattle began to freely gad,
And the fairy-woman still laughed wildly over the heath.
Out in the dark echoed the glassy trill
Of the unseelie woman’s ghastly glee:
He shook with a fearful, sinful thrill
And joined the dead in the high road’s shadowed lee.
It’s a long, winding road from Galway to Cloonfush
Through wasteland filled with wails and rasping teeth.
If you stop your market cattle and bid them hush,
You can hear that drover screaming on the heath.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The road from Galway to Cloonfush is actually quite nice.
