The Old Bog Road.

Lyrics: Irish republican and poet, the late Teresa Brayton (1868–1943), born Teresa Coca Boylan, pen name T.B. Kilbrook.
Vocals: Irish singer and entertainer of the country and Irish genre Johnny McEvoy.

The song “The Old Bog Road” is one of those great Irish songs that carries a whole life inside it. The song is written about the longing of someone far from Ireland, thinking back to the place, the people, and the simple road that once meant everything to them.
“The Old Bog Road,” is often thought of as an emigrant’s song, the story of someone far away, longing for home. But that same feeling can sometimes come over elderly people who never crossed an ocean at all; people who left the quiet of the countryside for work in the noise and bustle of a large town/city, and found that something inside them still longed for the fields, the lanes and the old familiar roads.
Anglo-Irish poet Oliver Goldsmith also captured that same feeling beautifully in his poem ‘The Deserted Village’ when he wrote:

“And, as an hare whom hounds and horns pursue,
Pants to the place from whence at first she flew,
I still had hopes, my long vexations past,
Here to return, and die at home at last.”

Same is a powerful image of the heart being driven through life, yet still turning back towards home. And that is the feeling singer Johnny McEvoy brings so tenderly to “The Old Bog Road”; that ache for a place that may be behind us, but is never really gone from us, as I experienced on a visit to Wexford last weekend.

The Old Bog Road.

My feet are here on Broadway,
This blessed harvest morn,
But oh! the ache that’s in them,
For the place where I was born.
My weary hands are blistered,
From working cold and heat,
But oh! to swing a scythe again,
In a field of Irish wheat.
Had I the chance to journey back,
Or own a king’s abode.
I’d rather see the hawthorn tree,
And the Old Bog Road.

My mother died last Spring time,
When Ireland’s fields were green.
The neighbours said her waking,
Was the finest ever seen.
There were snowdrops and primroses,
Piled high beside her bed,
And Ferran’s Church was crowded,
When her funeral Mass was read.
But here was I on Broadway,
Just building bricks by load,
When they carried out her coffin,
Down the Old Bog Road.

Now life’s a weary puzzle,
Past finding out by man,
I take the day for what it’s worth,
And do the best I can.
Since no one cares a rush for me,
What need for me to mourn.
I’ll go my way and draw my pay,
And smoke my pipe alone.
Each human heart must know its grief,
Though bitter be the load.
So God be with you, Ireland,
And the Old Bog Road.

END.