Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Sir Samuel Ferguson. 18101886713. Cashel of Munster FROM THE IRISH
I‘D wed you without herds, without money or rich array, | |
And I’d wed you on a dewy morn at day-dawn gray; | |
My bitter woe it is, love, that we are not far away | |
In Cashel town, tho’ the bare deal board were our marriage-bed this day! | |
O fair maid, remember the green hill-side, | 5 |
Remember how I hunted about the valleys wide; | |
Time now has worn me; my locks are turn’d to gray; | |
The year is scarce and I am poor—but send me not, love, away! | |
O deem not my blood is of base strain, my girl; | |
O think not my birth was as the birth of a churl; | 10 |
Marry me and prove me, and say soon you will | |
That noble blood is written on my right side still. | |
My purse holds no red gold, no coin of the silver white; | |
No herds are mine to drive through the long twilight; | |
But the pretty girl that would take me, all bare tho’ I be and lone, | 15 |
O, I’d take her with me kindly to the county Tyrone! | |
O my girl, I can see ’tis in trouble you are; | |
And O my girl, I see ’tis your people’s reproach you bear! | |
—I am a girl in trouble for his sake with whom I fly, | |
And, O, may no other maiden know such reproach as I! | 20 |