Thom Moore lyrics and inspirations Croghan Hill

Croghan Hill

In desert land, the ghosts of all the manly empires

bewail the waste and the women left behind them.

Somewhere in Offaly, you can see the girl, and is she lonely?

Will Slieve Bloom do, or Croghan Hill, the only?

"Hey-ey-ey-ey-ey-ey-ey," they heard the shepherd say.

"Come along down wit' ye now, get yez home to stay."

The young man goes to the mecca-towns of becks and whistles:

inside he knows in his soul there's bog and thistle.

Somewhere in Offaly – Tullamore or Birr, or Banagher? –

No: Slieve Bloom will do, or Croghan Hill, the only.

"Hey-ey-ey-ey-ey-ey-ey," he hears the shepherd say.

"Come along down wit' ye now, get yez home to stay."

Off in the distance, where the sky comes down and clouds come after,

there's rising ground and the only road to master

Somewhere in Offaly, not a million miles from somewhere holy,

Slieve Bloom will do, or Croghan Hill, the only.

"Hey-ey-ey-ey-ey-ey-ey," I'll hear the shepherd say.

"Come along down wit' ye now, get yez home to stay."

words and music © 2007 Thom Moore

Thom MooreThis is possibly my favourite song of all time, for reasons not terribly obvious, but compelling. For starters, I wrote the song as a consequence of feeling bad about having denigrated Co. Offaly when a dear friend of mine, in an access of jealousy or contempt or something, said to me (after hearing my Do Carlow Boys Come Home?) ‘I know what you should do, Thom – write a song about every county in Ireland!’ My response was to laugh and reply, ‘How do you rhyme anything with Offaly?’ in an effort to diffuse whatever bad feeling there was in the sentiment. I was immediately struck with guilt at having ridiculed a county that had never offered me any offense. The guilt festered until I wrote this song. Fecklessly, I had never actually been at or on the eponymous feature … and I made the mistake of Googling it after I had finished the song. First of all, it was not only as similarly sacred to the inhabitants of Ireland as my own beloved Knocknarea in Sligo … it was also linguistically related: all the other prominences in Ireland are known as ‘Knock-something’ … this is the only one with ‘hill’ tacked onto it. Strange, to my linguistic brain. The English name derives from the Irish phrase ‘cruachan bri eile’ … which, aside from the obvious sound input, apparently means ‘the mound on the slope of Eile’ … who happens to be the sister (in Irish mythology) to the very same Maeve whose ‘mound’ graces the top of Sligo’s Knocknarea. The hairs on the back of my neck began to rise … further still as I saw photographs of the ancient volcanic-core looming over the flat Irish bogs of the midlands, incredibly like Knocknarea.Then I read the history of the place: the first plantations of English-speakers into Gaelic Ireland was in this region (not the more famous Ulster plantations of later times). The local Irish places were transformed not only by name (‘Queen’s’ and ‘King’s’ counties, in place of what had gone before) but by ownership: and this was where I received the biggest shock of my life. The county of Offaly had formerly been the tribal property of the O Conor Faly, whose chief was disinherited of his ancient relation to Cruachan Bri Eile at the Plantation by a man who is the first recorded ‘owner’ of the site under English law … a man by the name of Thomas Moore.Croghan Hill, the only … indeed. I climbed the prominence soon after. It was a revelation: Slieve Bloom to the southwest; the depression of Carlow to the southeast; the lumps and bumps of southern Ulster to the north. But everywhere around the flat, bog of intervening Laois, Westmeath, Offaly … the very beating heart of Ireland.