Turlough Óg

Wild are thy hills, O'Donegal, that frowning, darkly rise

As if to greet the mist that falls upon them from the skies

Dark, dark thy hills, and darker still thy mountain torrents flow

But none so dark as Maolmuire's heart in his castle hall at Doe

Fair are thy plains, O'Donegal, and calm thy winding streams

That gently flow by hut and hall beneath the bright sunbeams

But plain or stream or meadow green or flower upon the lea

Were not more mild than Maolmuire's child, so sweet and fair was she

Stout grow thy oak, O'Donegal, and straight thy ashen tree

And swift and straight thy sons so tall, her country's pride to see

But oak or ash or young men all that spring from Irish soil

Were not more stout, swift, straight and strong than the chief of Clan O'Boyle

He was the pride of Faughter side from the hills of Ballymore

For feats of strength, none equalled him from Fanad to Gaoth Dobhair

And he would go through the frost and snow on a merry Christmas Day

With ringing cheer to hunt the deer from his haunts in dark Glenveagh

In his little boat O'Boyle would float, a-fishing he would go

With hook and line to Lackagh stream that runs by castle Doe

High in the castle tower his loved one lay confined

And on it's lofty battlements in sorrow deep she pined

At the castle strand two boats lay manned to wait the rising tide

Maolmuire there in chief command right cowardly did hide

And when O'Boyle his homeward course steered by the Bishop's Isle

They were waylaid and a prisoner made of fearless young O'Boyle

They brought him to the castle, in strong irons he was bound

And by Maolmuire was confined to a dungeon underground

But in a few days after inside the graveyard wall

Four stalwart ruffians bore a bier wrapped in a funeral pall

Poor Aileen in her tower above beheld the mournful scene

In mute amaze she cast a gaze upon the graveyard green

All pale and death beside a mound of freshly risen soil

The pall removed, she there beheld the features of O'Boyle

Then with a shriek, she madly leapt from the tower to the ground

Where by her faithful waiting maid her corpse in cold was found

And in Doe castle graveyard green beneath the moldering soil

Maolmuire's daughter sleeps in death with Turlough Óg O'Boyle

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