father and my mother!

A Connemara schoolmaster tells me: 'At Killery Bay one time, I went into
a house where there was an old man that had just lost his son by
drowning. And he was sitting over the fire with his head in his hands,
making a lament. I remember one verse of it that said: "My curse on the
man that made the boat, that he did not tell me there was death lurking
in it." I asked afterwards what the meaning of that was, and they said
there is a certain board in every boat that the maker gives three blows
of his hammer on, after he is done making it. And he knows someway by
the sound of the blows if anyone will lose his life in that boat.' It is
likely Bridget O'Malley had this idea in her mind when she made her
lament.

Another little emigration song, very simple and charming, tells of the
return of a brother from America. He finds his pretty brown sister, his
'cailin deas donn,' gathering rushes in a field, but she does not know
him; and after they have exchanged words of greeting, he asks where her
brother is, and she says 'beyond the sea'; then he asks if she would
know him again, and she says she she would surely; and he asks by what
sign, and she tells of a mark on his white neck. When she finds it is
her brother who is there and speaking to her, she cries out, 'Kill me on
the moment,' meaning that she is ready to die with joy.

This is the lament of a woman whose bridegroom was drowned as he was
rowing the priest home, on the wedding day:--

'I am widow and maid, and I very young; did you hear my great
grief, that my treasure was drowned? If I had been in the boat
that day, and my hand on the rope, my word to you, O'Reilly, it is
I would have saved you sorrow.

'Do you remember the day the street was full of riders, and of
priests and brothers, and all talking of the wedding feast? The
fiddle was there in the middle, and the harp answering to it; and
twelve mannerly women to bring my love to his bed.

'But you were of those three that went across to Kilcomin, ferrying
Father Peter, who was three-and-eighty years old; if you came back
within a month itself, I would be well content; but is it not a
pity I to be lonely, and my first love in the waves?

'I would not begrudge you, O'Reilly, to be kinsman to a king; white
bright courts around you, and you lying at your ease; a quiet,
well-learned lady to be settling out your pillo