The Fairy Fiddler

'Tis I go fiddling, fiddling,

By weedy ways forlorn;

I make the blackbird's music

Ere in his breast 'tis born:

The sleeping larks I waken

'Twixt the midnight and the morn.

No man alive has seen me,

But women hear me play

Sometimes at door or window,

Fiddling the souls away,-

The child's soul and the colleen's

Out of the covering clay.

None of my fairy kinsmen

Makes music with me now:

Alone the raths I wander

Or ride the whitethorn bough,

But the wild swans they know me

And the horse that draws the plough.