Lyrics: Mike Read
Music: John Betjeman
Released: CD, singel \"Newest Bath Guide\" (1992)
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Through the midlands of Ireland
I journeyed by diesel
And bright in the sun shone
The emerald plain
Though loud sang the birds
On the thorn-bush and teasel
They could not be heard
For the sound of the train
The roll of the railway
Made musing creative
I thought of the colleen
I soon was to see
With her wiry black hair
And grey eyes of the native
Sweet Moira McCavendish
Acushla machree
Her brother's wee cabin
Stands distant from Tallow
A league and a half
Where the Blackwater flows
And the musk and potato
The mint and the mallow
Do grow there in beauty
Along with the rose
'Twas smoothly we raced
Through the open expansion
Of rush-covered levels
And gate-lodge and gate
And the ruined demesne
And the windowless mansion
Where once the oppressor
Had reveled in state
At Castletown Roche
As the prospect grew hillier
I saw the far mountains
To Moira long-known
Till I came to the valley
And town land familiar
With the Protestant church
Standing locked and alone
Oh, vein of my heart
Upon Tallow Road Station
No face was to greet me
So freckled and white
As the diesel slid out
Leaving still desolation
The McCavendish ass-cart
Was nowhere in sight
For a league and a half
To the Blackwater river
I tramped with my bundle
Her cabin to see
And herself by the fuchsias
Her young lips a-quiver
Half-smiling, half-weeping
A welcome to me
Och Moira McCavendish
The fangs of the creeper
Have struck at the thatch
And thrust open the door
The couch in the garden
Grows ranker and deeper
Than musk and potato
Which bloomed there before
Flow on, you remorseless
And salmon-full waters
What care I for prospects
So silvery fair?
The heart in me's dead
Like your sweetest of daughters
And I would that my spirit
Were lost on the air
