I booked a holiday earlier this year when the Autumn seemed like a very long time away. It’s been a long and full Summer and now that the month of October is almost here, I’m ready for a break and a change of scene! I won’t be posting while I’m away so you’ll hear from me again, revived and refreshed on Monday October 8th.

I’ll leave you with a song from The Dubliners who played here last week for the Clifden Arts festival. This one’s a favourite of mine and I think the perfect blend of writing and melody, with words by Patrick Kavanagh and music from the traditional song ‘The Dawning of the Day‘. As the story goes, the song was born when Luke Kelly of the Dubliners met Kavanagh in a pub in Dublin and it was agreed that Raglan Road should be sung as a ballad.

On Raglan Road

On Raglan  Road on an Autumn day I met her first and knew

That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;

I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,

And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.

On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge

Of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion’s

pledge,

The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay –

O I loved too much and by such, by such, is happiness thrown

away.

I gave her gifts of the mind, I gave her the secret sign that’s known

To the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone

And words and tint. I did not stint for I gave her poems to say

With her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over

fields of May.

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now

Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow

That I had wooed not as I should a creature made of clay –

When the angel woos the clay he’d lose his wings at the dawn of

day.

Patrick Kavanagh  (1904-1967)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19qdV2vgM-o

Cover image taken from a thrifty mrs.