Coll Dhu, you may all call me then,

As I am known throughout Ireland.

In these, the Connemara Mountains,1

My family has stayed for generations.

In our castle, named “The Devil’s Inn,”

I lived among my happy kinsmen,

Until death crept over my parents;

All thanks to Mr. Blake, a Captain.2

One day, between the rocks and trees,

I spied the coward in the glen, his family

Had returned to their ancient residency

Of nothing but perhaps a mere century.

So I decided to repay Blake’s treachery,3

Down the mountain I came, but a deep

Autumn wind blew a soul almost through me,

And invited me in, and there I saw a colleen.4

The Captain claimed to me his life was owed,

As I walked past the entrance of his abode.

Strait to the lass I went and I knelt, I bowed,

And was lost in her pale skin, her cheeks of rose.

I asked for a flower, in her hair it was stowed,

Amid thousands of curls of fire it there flowed.

As she handed petals to me, her hand I groped,

And swore a thousand words, all were oaths.

She spurned my love, remaining without requite.

And I trudged back into the unforgiving night.

Until in the somber shadows I saw a lone light,

Burning from a pub’s window. Here sleep, I might.

And inside I rested as others did make their fight

Of a witch who’d make any love another, despite

The other’s feelings loathing or feelings of fright.

From this I came sitting, straight and upright.

And so I asked the quibblers where I had to go

To find this maker of what they called burragh-bos.5

Past Killarny6 I ventured, until o’Salruck’s7 glow,

There I found a women cackling at the snow.

She said her name was Pexie na Pishrogie, and so

I was to have my purpose states and known.

And having done, my arighad8 was thrown

And the seeds of our plan were then sewn.

In a passing of time, in dodeag9 days,

Evleen and Captain Blake to my home came.

I bid them welcome, and sent them not away,

The burragh-bos resting on Evleen’s frame.

But Evleen had not forgotten her hate.

As I gave her a feast on a fine plate,

“Poison! Poison!” she cried and she claimed,

Running, to the edge of a precipice she stayed.

I could do nothing but follow my sweet

Evleen, sure death stretched before her feet.

The more I’d approach, she’s retreat,

Until I lunged for her in a moment of heat.

There we stood, as the ground began to compete

With unforgiving air, with evil gravity.

Thus we embraced as we flew to eternity,

Where we will rest together, in the sea.10

1. These mountains are located in the western part of Ireland, between Killary Harbour and Kilkieran Bay.

2. Alright, he was a Colonel.

3. Colonel Baker’s father had swindled Coll Dhu’s father in gambling, so on this basis Coll Dhu was going to climb down the mountain and kill Captain Baker, they had never met, so neither knew what the other looked like. Whiskey can be my only explanation.

4. Colleen-girl (Irish Gaelic)

5. This is a talisman, constructed by a witch, made by slicing a corpse’s forehead open, stretching the skin off of the rest of the body without ripping it (if you ripped it you had to begin again), then binding it closely together with herbs and roots inside of it to be placed about the neck of one’s stubborn beloved. Again, whiskey.

6. A county in Ireland.

7. On the eastern side of Ireland, a graveyard for thieves, heretics, etc.

8. Arighad-money(Irish Gaelic)

9.Dodeag-twelve (Irish Gaelic)

10. Supposedly, particularly stormy nights, one can still hear the couple screaming as they plunge to their deaths. However, in the morning after a storm such as the aforementioned, water seeps out of the crags and cliffs of the mountains, creating a sound known as “The Lover’s Song.”