The blazing star of Drung, song
Robert Butcher senior, singing in English
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Lyrics
Sure the first time that I saw my love the stormy winds did blow,
The hills and the dales were covered with a heavy frost and snow;
It was too late a friend to treat that causéd me to stray,
There I beheld that charming maid and she stole my heart away.
2
Then the next time that I saw my love she smiled and passed me by,
Says I, – My fair and comelie maid, where does your dwelling lie?
She answered me right modestly with a cute deluding tongue
–Kind sir, my habitation and my dwelling lies in Drung.
3
Then I courted her that leelong night and part of the next day
And I do wish from all my heart I had her on the sea;
I asked her from her father and he said she was too young,
Till the day I die I’ll ne’er deny but I love that maid in Drung.
4
Then farewell to Ballymoney, the place where I was bred,
And likewise sweet Dungiven town, it’s there I got my trade,
Farewell to friends and parents, our good ship’s now going down,
And twice farewell to the bonny wee girl, she’s the blazing star of Drung.
Notes
Drung may be the townland appearing on maps, from the seventeenth century, on the Inishowen shore of Lough Foyle between Redcastle and Whitecastle: see Notes, B and J.H. Andrews in Long Room VII (1973) 20 ‘drong’. Also contending however are ‘Drung’ on the west of the Inishowen peninsula and, plausibly enough in view of the Derry and Antrim places mentioned in v. 4, the townland ‘Drum’ 2–3 ml. NW of Dungiven (Derry). The song is at any rate a local one, commonplace in its description of courtship, love and parting, broad enough in its appeal to have taken root on the margin of Scotland.
