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Timothy Hoekman
Timothy Hoekman Music
Bonny Portmore
A lovely Irish lament.
voice, piano
“Bonny Portmore” is an Irish folksong lamenting the loss of Ireland’s old oak and ash forests, specifically the Great Oak of Portmore, also known as the Portmore Ornament Tree, in County Antrim.
Text
O bonny Portmore, I am sorry to see
Such a woeful destruction of your ornament tree,
For it stood on your shore for many’s the long day
Till the long boats from Antrim came to float it away.
O bonny Portmore, you shine where you stand,
And the more I think on you the more I think long
If I had you now as I had once before,
All the lords in Old England would not purchase Portmore.
All the birds in the forest they bitterly weep,
Saying, “Where shall we shelter, where shall we sleep?”
For the Oak and the Ash, they are all cutten down
And the walls of bonny Portmore are all down to the ground.
-Irish traditional
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