Old Annie From East Kerry

Old Annie from east Kerry her hair is silver gray
And her accent from Sliabh Luachra is still a give away
Though she left the Cork and Kerry border in the year of fifty four
When she boarded the train for Dublin at the station in Rathmore.

She says I've come a long, long way and it's good to be alive
And next april on my birthday I will be seventy five
My eldest grandson past his prime he's almost thirty three
And I will be a great grandmother for the first time in early february.

When old Annie from east Kerry recall her teenage years
For Sliabh Luachra's rugged countryside she doesn't have any tears
I've always loved this land she say and here my bones will lay
And she doesn't pine as others do for mountains far away.

Old Annie from east Kerry I've often heard her quote
A verse from Aoghan O Rathaille the famed Sliabh Luachra poet
I came from a cultural place she said though as my father oft did say
That even in the Sliabh Luachra of his youth culture was in decay.

South east of Melbourne at Ferny Creek old Annie she reside
And all around the wooded hills she is known far and wide
The butcherbird he sing at dawn, the kookaburra call
And grey shrike thrush sing on wattle tree the sweetest song of all.

As a young woman she danced jigs and reels in the old hall in Rathmore
But she left Ireland years ago in nineteen fifty four
And she don't pine for the old fields and mountains far away
I'm happy in this land she says and here my bones will lay.