“The Curragh Wrens” by Mael Brigde

The Curragh Wrens     [1]

heroic Fionn MacCumhail

dust now in the sidhe

Brigit’s abbey

crumbled musty ruin

who dwells on the proud Curragh?

pennants fly   bugles sound   gleaming bayonets

barded mounts rumble cross the plain

host of a foreign Queen

outside the troops’

untarnished bone-white tents

clasp close for bare necessities

the Curragh Wrens

shelters burned   commerce refused them

furze their only nest

in starched gowns they huddle   baby at breast

drink with wandering soldiers

by the barrack wall

these your little

neglected night birds   Brigit

following love   selling their lives

flogged in the streets for their sins

Inspired  by “Stoning the Desolate”, by Charles Dickens, from All The Year Round, No. 292 1864.

http://www.kildare.ie/library/ehistory/2012/02/stoning_the_desolate.asp

For James Greenwood’s article in Dickens’ Pall Mall Gazette (1867):

http://www.kildare.ie/library/ehistory/2008/07/the_wrens_of_the_curragh.asp

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[1]    “...the poor wretches of whom we have spoken are called ‘wrens,’ ‘because they live in holes in the banks’...” James Greenwood in Dickens’ newspaper the Pall Mall Gazette, 1867.