I am the mountainy singer —
The voice of the peasant's dream,
The cry of the wind on the wooded hill,
The leap of the fish in the stream.
Quiet and love I sing —
The carn on the mountain crest,
The cailin in her lover's arms,
The child at its mother's breast.
Beauty and peace I sing —
The fire on the open hearth,
The cailleach spinning at her wheel,
The plough in the broken earth.
Travail and pain I sing —
The bride on the childing bed,
The dark man labouring at his rhymes,
The ewe in the lambing shed.
Sorrow and death I sing —
The canker come on the corn,
The fisher lost in the mountain loch,
The cry at the mouth of morn.
No other life I sing,
For I am sprung of the stock
That broke the hilly land for bread,
And built the nest in the rock!