Barraduff's Finest Poem by Francis Duggan

Beauty can be found in unexpected places
The hills around her home were wild and rough
But old people say the finest they remember
To walk the mountain road near Barraduff.

Her eyes were bluer than the sunlit ocean
Her hair was darker than a raven's wing
She was a woman of rare natural beauty
A woman who was fit for any king.

And on her father's small farm by the mountain
Her future there was never meant to be
She dreamt of places miles beyond Sliabh Luachra
And sunlit lands beyond the distant sea.

She dreamt of places distant from east Kerry
And wanderlust kept beckoning her away
And she left her home one bright and breezy morning
When hawthorn wore her blossoms of the May.

She left the cottage by the bracken mountain
And with her suitcase walked the old bohreen
And boarded the bus that took her from east Kerry
The last time in Sliabh Luachra she was seen.

It's been said that she is living in New Zealand
One lucky man has a lovely Irish wife
That she is mother to a teenage son and daughter
In a distant Land a different sort of life.

And in New Zealand in the south Pacific ocean
When chaffinch in the leafy beechwood sing
I wonder does her thoughts go to east Kerry
To the mountains of Sliabh Luachra in the Spring? .

Beauty can be found in unexpected places
The hills around her home were wild and rough
And old people say the finest they remember
To walk the mountain road near Barraduff.