An Bhréadach
O people, a story, if only you'll listen; about a wee river that flows through our town.
Where the trout brown and white in the summer do glisten,
And the winter floods from the mountains rush down.
Above Bredagh glen from springs 'mongst the hillsides
The water seeps out in a leisurely way
Past brambles and rushes and bushes where birds hide
And makes its' sweet music, going past Ballynacre.
Through Noones' Bridge of stone this wee stream it does tumble
Or sometimes does rumble with water so brown
Past hedges and ditches of fields small and humble
It edges and switches its' course ever down
O Duidiorma of Bredagh* crossed over this river
When hunting the fox in years long ago
And Saint Patrick himself, a man who would never
Pass by a stream without blessing its' flow
The monks up at Cooley looked down on the valley
Where the ash and the alder and hazel do grow
With berries and thorns and sweet flowers on the sally
And hawthorn and blackthorn as white as the snow
There are pools, there are falls and wee secret places
And not many houses except Lios a' Ruadh
The foxes and badgers continue their races
In the gorges and thickets their kind ever knew.
The power of this river turned wheels and turned millstones
Eased life for the workers, less sweat on their brow
In scutch mills and corn mills and saw mills, their old bones
Got rest for a while, but look at it now.
The mill ponds are empty and the mill races broken
The dams are forgotten, the wheels long at rest
The weirs for the trout pools, now gone, never spoken
To the fisherman now, the river's a jest.
Now men don't use you, they sadly abuse you
Throw all things into you, from rubbish to scrap
Pollute you and oil you, colour you and spoil you
And don't give a damn if you're wiped off the map.
Gerry Sóna
Written sometime in the late 1960s when the river was still a good wee trout stream but was coming under more pressure from pollution and industrial decline.
* O Duidiorma was the local name of the clan who dominated this area in earlier times but the name is now commonly written as Mc Dermott, although the names are very different.
