Traditional Irish - The Gartan Mother's Lullaby

Sleep, O babe, for the red bee hums

The silent twilight’s fall:

Aibheall from the Grey Rock comes

To wrap the world in thrall.

A leanbhan O, my child, my joy,

My love and heart’s desire,

The crickets sing you lullaby

Beside the dying fire.

Dusk is drawn, and the Green Man’s Thorn

Is wreathed in rings of fog:

Siabhra sails his boat till morn

Upon the Starry Bog.

A leanbhan O, the pale half moon

Hath brimmed her cusp in dew,

And weeps to hear the sad sleep-tune

I sing, O love, to you.

Faintly sweet doth the chapel bell

Ring o’er the valley dim:

Tearmann’s peasant-voices swell

In fragrant evening hymn.

A leanbhan O, the low bell rings

My little lamb to rest

And angel-dreams, till morning sings

Its music in your breast.

      Joseph Campbell (Seosamh MacCathmhaoil) was a Belfast Catholic, born into a family of road-builders in 1879. He was a song collector before he became a poet and playwright, and he supported the Easter Rising as an ardent Republican. He later emigrated to the US, where he died in 1944.

      The Gartan Mother’s Lullaby is one of the most perfect of his collaborations with the composer and folk-song arranger, although perhaps less well known than.