A Stranger In Kilcorney Poem by Francis Duggan

He said I'd be a stranger in Kilcorney now and none there I might know
For I left that place in forty eight more than fifty years ago
And I was only twenty then the years have made me slow
And I show the wear and tear of time my hair as white as snow.

In November in Kilcorney when jack frost was about
At night we lamped the river and we speared salmon and trout
The fish had swum upstream to spawn in river swelled by rain
My boyhood years were happy years the memories remain.

The good memories we can recall and I remember still
When as a six year old with dad I climbed up Mushera hill
The lark above the bracken his song of May did sing
And Aubane looked green and beautiful on that bright day in Spring.

A stranger in Kilcorney is what I well might be
For I doubt that any one back there would even know of me
I left there fifty four years ago and in the lifetime of a man
More than half a century in time is quite a lengthy span.

When I was only twenty years I hit the wandering track
And the ship took me from Ireland and since I've not been back
To Kilcorney in Duhallow thousands of miles away
And I well might be a stranger in the old home place today