Michael (The Ballad of Michael Collins)

The curlew stood silent and unseen in the long damp grass,

And he looked down on the road bellow him that wound its way through Beal Na mBlath.

And he heard the young men shouting and cursing, running backward and forward, dodging 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 nail 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 fella 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 standin by,

in their grief they wonder why,

Michael in their hour of need you had to go.

And when evening twlight came,

gentle fell the August rain,

Oh but you lay still and silent on the ground,

As we hung our heads in prayer, in our sorrow and dispare,

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 standin 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 standin by,

in their grief they wonder why,

Michael in their hour of need you had to go.

Michael in our hour of need why did you go