When Kerry played Kildare

This ballad was composed by Sigerson Clifford in 1953, to commemorate the golden jubilee of Kerry’s first All-Ireland triumph in 1903. It was commissioned by Michael O’Ruairc who was secretary of the commemorative committee that was formed by the Kerry County Board.

 

Plough and spade and seine boat shaped them, for the deeds they were to do,

Street and school and mountain heard their victory cry.

Now their memories arch like rainbows o’er the meadows of the mind,

The alive who’ll live forever, and the dead who’ll never die.

 

When the stranger came steel-fisted, and the hounds bayed in the glen,

Oh! My Kingdom of the half-doors and the white wet windowsills;

When the gun smoke wrote in message there, the great footballing men,

Fought the flame-red rearguard battles of the hills.

 

Oh! The gold bells of the old days tinkle wistful in the mind,

And I see the firman dark against the light.

Hear the whistle whimper lonely o’er the dead leaves of the years,

As the ghost train races swiftly through the night.

 

These the men your fathers spoke of in the game your fathers loved,

These the men who blazed the trail and made it fair.

In my dreaming now I see them as I saw them long ago,

Green and gold and white limbs leaping when our Kerry played Kildare.