O, go to sleep, you rogue of rogues,
And I'll give you a pair of fairy brogues :
They were clouted under a windy dawn
By the fairy fingers of Leprechaun.
As brown as a withered leaf sat he
Under the shade of a hawthorn tree ;
A weeshy man in an old green coat,
With the voice of a blacksmith in his throat.
He tills no fields and he has no house,
But he's always handy to hawthorn boughs,
While the fairy shoes he makes offends
For he and the hawthorn are faithful friends.
I heard his hammer one morn of May
Over the hills and far away,
And followed after the tinkling tone,
And found my Leprechaun bird--alone.
A fairy gift I had come to choose.
I asked for a pair of fairy shoes.
"I make them out of the autumn leaves,
Whose red drift crackles on frosty eves.
"The feet that wear them shall never tire,
And never be bogged in the oozy mire
If they go star-following night and day
Over the hills and far away."
I took the shoes from his hand, and here
They wait the minute you wake, my dear;
They'll serve by day and they'll serve by night,
Through summer scarlet and winter white.
So colleen dhas or colleeen dhu,
Go dream of the shoes that were made for you
Under the arch of a windy dawn
By the fairy fingers of Leprechaun.
--Nora Chesson
Notes
From the NSW Newspaper The Freeman's Journal 20 Jun 1903 Page 36.
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