I never asked them why
I just presumed
The reason why they called it ‘Dublin Hill’
Standing in Glencullen
Looking out due east
Tuiscean on my left
Carraful on the right
The river meandering
Till it’s out of sight
And Dublin Hill
A rise of ground
That meets the sky above
In that direction Dublin
But there’s no road right enough
Out that way is blanket bog
For miles and miles and miles
Until you come to Ballina
Civilisation style
You have to cross a wilderness
Whenever you go west
Not a house or road not one
The journey was a test
How did people live here?
What brought them to this place?
So poor and backward isolated
Cromwell’s disgrace
The sea was then a highway
Folk settled near the strand
But inland in Glencullen?
The need I suppose for land
And living by a river
A life source every day
People turned the bogland
Into a place for hay
And long before the roads were made
On horses they got around
And the famine decimated them
No one heard a sound
But stepping back in history
A hundred years no more
My mother a child in Erris
Poverty at the door
But people made a life there
And I can sing with pride
The song they made to cheer them on
Down by Glencullen side
Brian Fahy
7 October 2021
Erris Poetry 