Michael

SPOKEN:
The curlew stood silent and unseen in the long damp grass, And he looked down on the road below him that wound its way through Baile na Blath, and he heard the young men shouting and cursing, running backwards and forwards, dodging and weaving and ducking the bullets that rained down on them from the hillside opposite. Just as quickly as it started the firing stopped and a terrible silence hung over the valley. A lone figure lay on the roadside, in the drizzling August rain, Dressed in green great-coat, leggings and brown hob-nailed boots, that would never again set the sparks flying from the kitchen flagstones, as he danced his way through a half-set. A hurried, whispered act of contrition, and the firing breaks out again. The curlew takes to flight, and as he flies out over the empty sad fields of west Cork, with his lonesome call, he must tell the world that the big fellow has fallen, and that Michael is gone.

On a far off august day cold young men in ambush lay
On a roadside by a hill where flowers grow
So much hate for one so young who was right and who was wrong
Though a thousand years may pass we'll never know

Candles dripping blood they placed beside your shoulders
Rosary beads like teardrops on your fingers
Friends and comrades standing by in their grief they wonder why
Michael in their hour of need you had to go

And when evening twighlight came gently fell the autumn rain
Oh but you lay still and silent on the ground
As we hung our heads in prayer in our sorrow and despair
We wondered was it friend or foe who shot you down

Now the flame that you held high when you called out to the sky
To end this senseless killing and this shame
Has now passed to other hands and is carried through the land
By some not fit to even speak your name

Michael, in their hour of need why did you go?

Michael

####.... Johnny McEvoy ....####