Thurles Information

They Say It’s Spring.

Lyrics: The late American singer, songwriter, actor and radio and television presenter Bob Haymes (1923–1989) and American obscure songwriter Marty Clarke.
Vocals: American jazz singer, pianist and actress (1924–2009) Margrethe Blossom Dearie.

They Say It’s Spring.

When I was young I lived in a world of dreams,
Of moods and myths and illusionary schemes.
Though now I’m much more grown up,
I fear that I must own up,
To the fact that I’m in doubt of,
What the modern cynics shout of.
They say it’s spring,
This feeling light as a feather,
They say this thing,
This magic we share together,
Came with the weather too.
They say it’s May,
That’s made me daft as a daisy.
It’s May, they say,
That gave this whole world this crazy.
Heavenly, hazy hue,
I’m a lark,
I’m a wing,
I’m a spark of a firefly’s fling.
Yet to me,
This must be,
Something more than a seasonal thing.
They say it’s spring,
Those bells that I can hear ringing,
It may be spring,
But when the robins start singing,
You’re what I’m clinging to.
Though they say it’s spring,
It’s you.
If poets sing,
That when a heart sympathetic,
It’s merely spring,
Then poets plights are pathetic,
Though I’m poetic too.
They say it’s spring,
For lovers, there’s where the lure is.
That evil thing,
For which September the cure is.
This, they are sure is true,
Though I know,
That it’s so,
That my fancy may turn in the spring,
With the right one in sight,
One can find a perpetual thing.
Did I need spring,
To bring the ring that you bought me.
Though it was spring,
That wondrous day that you caught me,
Darling I thought we knew,
That it wasn’t spring,
‘Twas you.

End

Only Our Rivers Run Free.

Lyrics: County Fermanagh Irish musician and songwriter Mickey MacConnell. (Written in 1965)
Vocals: Irish male folk group “Onóir” (Word translated from Irish to English meaning “Honor”).

Only Our Rivers Run Free.

When apples still grow in November,
When blossoms still bloom on each tree,
When leaves are still green in December,
It’s then that our land will be free.
I wander her hills and her valleys,
It’s still through my sorrows I see,
A land that have never known freedom,
Still only her rivers run free.
I drink to the death of her manhood,
For the men who’d rather have died,
Than to live in the cold chains of bondage,
To bring back their rights where denied.
Where are you now when we need you?
What burns where the flame used to be?
Are you gone like the snows of last winter?
Will only our rivers run free.
How sweet is the life for we’re crying,
And how mellow the wine but we’re dry,
How fragrant is the rose but it’s dying,
How gentle the wind but it sighs.
What good is in youth when it’s ageing?
What joy is in eyes that can’t see?
When there’s sorrow in sunshine and in flowers,
And still only our rivers run free.
And still only our rivers run free.

END

“To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
Above quote by South African anti-apartheid activist and politician the late Nelson Mandela, (1918 – 2013).