The Gem of Ireland's Crown

[Wieland Willker <willker@chemie.uni-bremen.de>]

The Gem of Ireland's Crown

In Dungarvan in the County Waterford
one morning last July,
from a boreen green came a sweet Colleen
and smiled as she passed me by.
She looked so sweet from her two bare feet
to the sheen of her nut brown hair.
Such a coaxing elf, sure I shook myself
for to see I was really there.

>From the Bantry Bay up to Derry Quay and
from Galway to Dublin Town,
no maid I've seen like the brown Colleen
that I met in County Waterford.

As she onward sped, sure I scratched my head,
and I looked with a feelin' rare,
and I say's, say's I, to a passer-by,
"Whose the maid with the nut brown hair?"
He smiled at me and he say's, say's he,
"That's the gem of Ireland's crown.
It's Katie Bush from the banks of the Bann,
she's the star of the County Waterford."
...
                        (trad., slightly changed)

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"And please don't call me an elf again, I'm sick of it, I'm not an elf,
 I'm a woman. I'm not the little goody-goody everybody thinks I am."
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KTISGOD.