Collected Poems of Moira O'Neill :: :: University of Virginia Library

NEVER MARRIED.

My mother had three daughters, an' the ouldest one was me,
The other two was married in their youth;
'Tis well for them that likes it, but by all that I could see
It 'ud never fit meself, an' there's the truth.

Oh, never think I'm wantin' to miscall the race o' men,
There' not a taste o' harm in them, the cratures!
They're meddlesome, an' quarrelsome, an' troublesome, but then
The Man Above He put it in their natures.

I'd never be uncivil, sure an' marriage must be right,
Or what 'ud bring the childer to the fore?
Wid their screechin' an' their roarin' an' balorin' day an' night,—
Me sister Ann has five, an' Jane has more.

I couldn't work wid childer, an' the men's a bigger kind,
But muddy an' mischeevous like the small;
Ye've got to larn them betther, an' ye've got to make them mind,
An' ye've got to keep them aisy afther all.

I'm betther doin' wi' dumb things, a weeny black-face lamb,
Or the yaller goosey-goslin's on the knowe;
The neighbours think I'm sensible wi' sick ones, so I am,—
Sure 'twas me that saved the life o' Mullen's cow.

Aye, ye'll often hear them say a woman cannot bide her lone,
An' it's fifty years alone that I have bided;
They're very apt to say no woman yet could guide her own,—
But them that God guides is well guided!