I AM THE MOUNTAINY SINGER

I am the mountainy singer— The voice of the peasant’s dream, The cry of the wind on the wooded hill, The leap of the fish in the stream. Quiet and love I sing— The carn on the mountain crest, The cailin in her lover’s arms, The child at its mother’s breast. Beauty and peace I sing— The fire on the open hearth, The cailleach spinning at her wheel, The plough in the broken earth. Travail and pain I sing— The bride on the childing bed, The dark man labouring at his rhymes, The ewe in the lambing shed. Sorrow and death I sing— The canker come on the corn, The fisher lost in the mountain loch, The cry at the mouth of morn. No other life I sing, For I am sprung of the stock That broke the hilly land for bread, And built the nest in the rock!