KATIE RYAN AND THE FAIRY
TREE
Of all the Irish songs recorded by the celebrated
Irish tenor Count John McCormack, perhaps the best loved, in Ireland
at any rate, is 'The Fairy Tree'. Katie Ryan who lived just outside
the village for most of her eighty seven years, provided the
inspiration for the author of this song, Temple Lane.
Temple Lane was the pen-name of Isabel Leslie,
daughter of the Rev. Canon Leslie, who at one time ministered in St.
Mary's Protestant Church in Clonmel, later at St. Paul's Church of
Ireland in Clogheen, and later still in Lismore where he is buried.
She took her name from the Temple lane that ran near her former home
in Clonmel.
The Fairy Tree
All night around the thorn
tree, the little people play,
And men and women passing will turn their heads away.
They'll tell you dead men hung there, its black and bitter fruit,
To guard the buried treasure round which it twines its root.
They'll tell you Cromwell hung them, but that could never be,
He'd be in dread like others to touch the Fairy Tree.
But Katie Ryan who saw there in some sweet dream she had,
The Blessed Son of Mary and all his face was sad.
She dreamt she heard him say "Why should they be afraid?"
When from a branch of thorn tree the crown I wore was made.
By moonlight round the
thorn tree the little people play
And men and women passing will turn their heads away.
But if your hearts a child's heart and if your eyes are clean,
You'll never fear theThorn tree that grows beyond Clogheen.
