My heart never gave you liking or love,
Said the Flower of Nut-brown Maids;
Though sweet are your words, there's black famine above,
Said the Flower of Nut-brown Maids;
Will gentle words feed me when need and grim hunger come by?
Better be free than with thee to the woodlands to fly;
What gain to us both if together we famish and die?
Wept the Flower of Nut-brown Maids.
I saw her coming towards me o'er the face of the mountain
Like a star glimmering through the mist;
In the field of furze where the slow cows were browsing
In pledge of our love we kissed;
In the bend of the hedge where the tall trees play with the sun,
I wrote her the lines that should bind us for ever in one;
Had you a right to deny me the dues I had won,
O Flower of Nut-brown Maids?
My grief and my torment that thou art not here with me now,
Flower of Nut-brown Maids!
Alone, all alone, it matters not where or how,
O Flower of Nut-brown Maids;
On a slender bed, O little black head, strained close to thee,
Or a heap of hay, until break of day, it were one to me,
Laughing in gladness and glee together, with none to see,
My Flower of Nut-brown Maids.
[ROISÍN DUBH]
There's black grief on the plains, and a mist on the hills;
There is fury on the mountains, and that is no wonder;
I would empty the wild ocean with the shell of an egg,
If I could be at peace with thee, my Ros geal dubh.
Long is the course I travelled from yesterday to to-day,
Without, on the edge of the hill, lightly bounding, as I know,
I leapt Loch Erne to find her, though wide was the flood,
With no light of the sun to guide my path, but the Ros geal dubh.