The Muster of the Kingdom men 

Written in 1908 for the Annual picnic of the Kerryman’s P.S &B association, which was to take place at Sulzer’s Harlem River Park on the 15th August 1908. President Buckley and the committee in charge of the annual summer’s night festival of the Kerrymen’s Society were quoted in the press as saying, ‘Many a rosy-cheeked Kerry colleen is looking forward with feelings of delight to that night. Numbers of big-hearted young Kerrymen are counting the days until its arrival; they anticipate an enjoyable night, pouring words of love into the not unwilling ears of their sweethearts or tripping with them on light fantastic toe to the old music of Erin, music that for pathos and sadness, on the one hand, and for life and jollity on the other, has no equal in the wide world.

The song was published in, The Kerryman 1908.

There are gentle streams in Kerry, fair Kerry of the rills:

There are lovely vales in Kerry and nobly wooded hills:

There are olden mounds in plenty and famous deeds galore

Which illuminate its history’s pages of the sainted days of yore.

Oh’ its past is full of glory and its future too looks bright,

For its sons are ever ready, ever eager for the fight.

‘Gainst the wiles of saxon cunning, ‘gainst  its customs, tongue and laws,

And its colleens, too, have joined in to uphold old Erin’s cause.

And its exiled sons and daughters, too, are faithful to the core,

And they long to see their motherland a nation as of yore,

And so each year doth see them meet to live again old days,

To sing old songs, to hear old tales, to speak in Erin’s praise.

And so on August the fifteenth, the boys from Caherciveen,

With Kenmare’s sons and Tralee’s boys at Sulzer’s will be seen.

Killarney, too, will send its band. Listowel will be there.

Ardfert and Dingle, “Puck” and Camp will send their needed share.

And from every nook in Kerry will come angel-faced colleens,

Full of innocence and virtue, of womankind, all queens:

True to motherland, as ever, ready, too, when duty calls,

As were Limerick’s glorious maidens when they stood behind it’s walls.

Kerry’s friends are numerous. From Fair Head to Cape Clear,

Will come fair women and brave men to swell the festive cheer.

And so a record-breaking crowd at Sulzer’s will be seen,

When Kerry holds its picnic ‘neath the wearing of the green.

An energetic committee have got the thing on hand,

And it’s bound to be a credit to the dear old native land.

So Irishmen and women, too, throughout the Empire State,

Just get your duds together and come to Kerry’s date.