Mary Anne's Grave.

I'm sitting in a hotel in London, after a long day of meetings, and this lyric pops into the world.

It's in in the tradition of a lot of Irish songs - so many friends and family left never to return.

Some words need translation - whin ( pronounced h-win ) is a gorse bush, a buck is a young man, and a blade a young woman. The places are all real, all around Cushendall on the Antrim Coast. I'll work on the melody when I get home.

"Mary Anne's Grave.

High on the Hillside,
In a cleft in the cliff wall
The old Church communes
With the South coast of Mull.
And I walked you there often
Along the cliff path
where the stark head of Garron
shelters Glenariffe.

It's there that I led you,
And there that we lay
Across Mary-Anne's gravestone
And consecrated the day.
But youth and all its vigour,
Would brook no return
To the moss and yellow lichen
on Mary-Anne's tomb.

We traveled and I held you
Close all those years
While the little Church at Layde
Stood proud among the trees.
But time it gets the better of us,
Despite what we try.
There are hospitals and sea cures,
But in the end we all die

Now I rolled my wheelchair
Down to Layde Church
Where the green of the sea
and the whin bushes merge
And startled a buck
To rise from his blade
Just as I did from you girl
When our bed we first made.

So I'll sit in McConnell's
In the back kitchen bar
And sing there with old friends
And remember the hours
that we dreamed of returning
To Ireland to stay
and visit that churchyard
And Mary-Anne's grave."