The Daughter Of Travelling People Poem by Francis Duggan

It was in the last year of the fifties that I saw her at Millstreet Horse Fair
The daughter of an Irish Traveller one with brown eyes and curly dark hair
Without saddle she rode on her pinto pony she trotted the mare up and down
In hope to catch the eye of a buyer in the Town Square of old Millstreet Town.

The first day of March I remember the air had a Wintery chill
And a heavy gray fog had enveloped the bracken face of Clara hill
She rode on her brown and white pinto one of great beauty to behold
A woman in her early twenties she did seem immune to the cold.

She wore a green skirt and a brown cardigan summery clothes appropriate for July
Yet it was a cold enough morning with heavy rain clouds in the sky
But she was one raised in the hard way of a hardy and nomadic race
Without makeup a natural beauty she had such a beautiful face

Her home was the back road and by road that led to the next Country Town
For to live the life she was born into she had forsook all dreams of renown
The Book of Life her book of knowledge she did not spend much time in school
Yet she had the look of brightness about her and she did seem nobody's fool.

Not for her the sedentary existence of the wife of a one address man
This daughter of a Munster Traveller the queen of her race and her clan
She would marry the son of a Traveller the Travellers they stick with their own
She would give birth to the future Travellers and stay with the life she had known.

The first day of Spring though UnSpringlike a Wintery chill was in the air
I saw her ride her pinto pony in Millstreet Town at the March fair
The daughter of Travelling people the memory with me did remain
Of an unconceited young beauty though her I did not see again.