An Clár Bog Déil

The Board of Bog-Oak
This is a traditional Irish song arranged by Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh and Frankie Kennedy. It appears on the album Ceol Ad more...

This is a traditional Irish song arranged by Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh and Frankie Kennedy. It appears on the album Ceol Aduaidh (“Music from the North”), the first studio album by Frankie Kennedy and Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh (who would go on to found the Irish band Altan), originally released in 1983 on the Gael-Linn Records label. See another version An Clár Bog Deal by Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill.

From Séamus Mac Mathúna

This fine song, with its intriguing and splendid melody, was widely sung in Munster in the early decades of the 19th century. The reference in O’Daly’s Poets and Poetry of Munster states that the original version of An Clár Bog Déil is better known as Caiseal Mumhan. It suggests further that the song was originally written by an Augustinian friar, the Reverend William English of Newcastle West, Co. Limerick who previous to his taking the Augustinian habit had produced many striking and beautiful songs in his native tongue.

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Irish

English

Today without a cow
Without tuppence dowry
I would lay you beneath me on a dewy morning
At the dawn of the day
My two hands closed without me and you
My darling love
In Caiseal Mumhan with nothing for a bed
But the deal board

A bright woman I'll not praise
And I'll not find fault with
I'll never take a dark woman
As a wife

Because of wealth
But I'll marry my darling
She's the love of my heart

Don't think that I'm not noble
Even though I'm lowly
Don't think that in yonder ditch
I was found
Lie down beside me for a month or so
And try me out
And you'll find written in my right side
That I'm a playboy

There fluency speak Irish
And dialect like hard
After that, I'll write
With the tip of my pen
I'd swim Loch Éirne
On my back
And if I could entice a woman
I'd have won the day

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