Have ye read of the past in folios at Dublin
Of Firwolgs, and of Pechts, and of red-headed Danes,
And Fomors from Tory, who people went troublin’,
Stealing woman and child, binding Irish in chains?
Well, ’tis of these wild times and Ulster romantic,
O’erspread by dark forests through which the elk called,
And of rude pagan tribes, some dwarf, some gigantic,
That I tell in this rhyme so poor and so bald.
In a deep gloomy glen near Muckish’s mountain,
Where the mist rolls in clouds and the waterfalls foam,
From out of the cloud-rack, as out of a fountain;
Himself saw a quare sight as he rode his horse home.
In the glen at the mouth of a black souterrain
(Where Crocknálarágagh looks down upon Tory,
The island where Bálor of the Great Blows did reign)
Shane O’Dugan beheld what I tell in my story.
A woman as lovely as dead Ethné the Fair,
With twelve ladies in waiting all clothed in gold,
The Chief, MacKineely, and a boy with red hair,
Came out the cave-dwelling and walked o’er the fold.
Now the red-pate is changed into Bálor the King,
All bent on the murder of brave MacKineely;
And although through the valley his daughter’s shrieks ring,
He cuts off his head on the stone Clough-an-neely.
Fierce King Bálor would fain kill his young grandsons too,
But the Princess resolves with her children to fly,
And the eldest grows into a young farrier, who
Thrusts a red-heated iron in Bálor’s one eye.
The wounded King calls to his one grandson, “Asthore!”
Whilst forth from the sore wound rushes water like oil,
From Falcarragh the whole way right up to Gweedore,
Till it forms a lough three times as deep as Lough Foyle!