The Rose Of Gneeveguilla Village Poem by Francis Duggan

She was the Rose of Gneeveguila Village when I was young so many years ago
With brown hair shiny as October chestnut and bue eyes bluer than the ripened sloe
And winning smile she never failed to win you there was a cheery warmth in her hello
And though many years have passed since I last saw her the memories live of one I used to know.

Back then she was the darling of east Kerry in Gneeveguilla
did she choose to stay
Or did she leave the Village in Sliabh Luachra to live and work in city far away?
Did she like many others move to Dublin or to the Munster capital of Cork
Or overseas to a much bigger city like London, Paris, Sydney
or New York?

The Rose of Gneeveguilla had admirers and there were many I remember well
And she was known beyond Sliabh Luachra's borders and many for her charms and beauty fell
In the dance halls in Millstreet and Killarney she was the first to be asked on the floor
And that is going back to the middle sixties so many days in three decades and eight years or more.

I've often thought about that lovely looker has she been ageing in a gracious way
Or does she use tints and dyes as others do to turn back the years and hide her gray?
For woman like a flower doesn't hold her beauty and flower that bloomed in garden through the May
By June is dying on the stem that fed her and her once bright petals withered to decay.

She was the Rose of Gneeveguilla Village a few miles from the border Town of Rathmore
And in dance halls in Millstreet and Killarney she was the first one asked out on the floor
Did she marry and does she still live in Sliabh Luachra by the Cork and Kerry border did she stay
Or did she move to Cork City or Dublin or to a bigger city far away?