Where The Cails Waters Flow

On a naked beech tree the gray hooded crow
Is cawing in the dawn where the Cails waters flow
The morning is cold quite cold enough to snow
And from Caherbarnagh the wintery winds blow

As yesterdays flood subside in the gray of a November dawn
The salmon are swimming upriver to spawn
From the distant Atlantic they have swam all of the way
In the river's gravelly bed their eggs they will lay.

The cattle in farm-yard are bellowing for silage or hay
Many a cold and wet day until April and May
When bluebells bloom on the ditch of the bohreen
And wildflowers in abundance in the old fields are seen.

The Cails from Kippagh in flood waters of brown
From the lake in the mountains it winds it way down
On towards the Finnow in Liscreagh in Millstreet
It is such a quiet place where the rivers do meet.

On down where the bracken and rank rushes grow
An ancient waterway how old none would know
The Duhallow Bards many decades ago
They sang of the places where the Cails waters flow.