  The girl of castlebar T T HE sun was setting in a gloam of purple and gold, as I basked in the grass on the Staball hill one autumn evening, the stirring tuck of the tattoo rolled up the slope from the adjacent barracks; it affected me like a tonic, my blood circulated quicker, the spirit of an amateur ghostly seer took possession of me! I felt as one inspired. A scene of early days of Anglo-foreign strife rose before me like a wraith of second sight. The tramp of sea-bound red coats, fifes and drums, the woe-mongering cries of parting wives. I saw two lovers on the Staball hill, heard their vows. A rhyming fever tingled to my fingers' ends, my only manuscript medium to hand, the stump of a lead pencil, and blank margin of the morning paper. Upon that virgin border I jotted the sketch of the following founded on fact ballad. The reader will perceive in it a beautiful inverse lesson of the mutual commotion of two loving hearts. T HE bugle horn was sounding through the streets of Castlebar,And many a gallant soldier, was bound unto the war, And one upon the Staball hill, his sweetheart by his side Swore many a rounded warlike oath, that she should be his bride. "O Maggie!" cried the Corporal, "There's war across the sea, And when I'm parted from thee, I would you'd pray for me, And I will tell you what you'll do, when I am far away, You'll come up to the Staball, and kneel for me, and pray." And this to him she promised, and this to him she said, "I'll still be ever true to thee, be thou alive, or dead! I'll still be ever true to thee, and O if thou dost fall, Thy soul at eve will find me here, upon the old Staball." And then he swore a clinker oath, of what a vengeful doom, Would him befal, who dared to win her from him, then the bloom Came to her cheek again, "O Jim I'll never love but you," "I'm blowed but I'm the same!" he cried, and then they tore in two! Illustration She saw her soldier leaving, she heard the music sweet, Of "The girl I left behind me" sounding sadly up the street, She saw the shrieking engine, that bore him far away, Then went back to the Staball, to weep for him and pray. And as the summer faded, and gloaming nights came round, A maid anon was kneeling, upon that trysting ground, And fearless of the winter, and of its falling snow, That maiden sweet, and constant, unto her tryst would go. Till on a certain evening, a stranger in the town, Came sauntering up the Staball, and found her kneeling down, He tipped her on the shoulder, and speaking soft, and low, "O what on earth possesses you, to pray upon the snow." She told him all her story then, and why so kneeling there, She told him of her sorrowed heart, the object of her prayer, She told him of her soldier lad, so far across the sea, "I'd like to be a soldier lad, with you to love!" said he. Said he "You're very lonely: If you have need to pray, I'll come agrah! and help you, with 'Amens' if I may, It's very hard acushla! to pray alone each night," And the colleen shyly answered, "She thought perhaps he might." The tryst became more social for while the colleen prayed, The stranger tooted "Amens" unto the kneeling maid, Until at last he muttered "This pantomime must stop, I'll buy the ring to-morrow, I've got a watch to pop!" Illustration At length the war was over, she heard the beaten drum, And up again thro' Castlebar, the scarlet men did come, And her heart grew cold within her, to think how wroth he'd be To learn she had been faithless, while he was o'er the sea. Then, pleading to her husband "O hide yerself!" she said, "Aye even up the chimbledy, or undhernate the bed! For if he ketches howld of you, I don't know what he'll do, It's maybe let his gun go off, an' maybe kill the two! I'll try an' coax the grannies, to brake it to him first, For if he's towld it sudden by me, 'twill be the worst, They'll have to put it softly, I cannot be his bride, So while I'm gone to tell them, do you run off an' hide." "O break it to him, Grannies, the shocking news," she said "That I have wed another, and him I cannot wed! O put it to him gently, for great will be his pain, That we'll never more be meeting on the Staball hill again." They broke it to him softly, 'twas in a public bar, A foaming pint before him, and on his brow a scar, They broke it to him gently, and spoke it to him plain, He needn't think to meet her, on the Staball hill again. He swigged the pint before him, then heaved a bitter sigh, "What? blow me, your a chaffin'!" "O divil a word o' lie!" Then first he took his shako, and tossed it to the roof, Then to each nervous grannie, "Here take the bloomin' loof." "Come, wots yer shout for liquor? It's dooced well!" cried he, "I'm buckled to a blackimoor, I met beyond the sea, "You've taken a load from off of me! my mind is now at par, She wouldn't have left a ribbon on the Girl of Castlebar!" Illustration |
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