Untitled Document

Lenihan's Big Bazaar

This little gem became a favourite of ours while recording the album. It is written in the same style as 'The Races' and captures a time of innocence when any out-of-town visit was seen as an exciting and colourful experience.
Sigerson's own notes on this reads - Bazaar: a travelling, open-air show. The talkies killed most of them unfortunately. Clawhammer: old-fashioned coat with tails to it.

We had simple ways to pass the days in our village on the hill,
The football and the beagles and the dancing by the Mill.
The night-time was the worst of all the hours dragged slow and lame,
The great diversion that we had was when the Missioners came.
We were only middling sinners with venials to our score
So they blessed our beads and left us and the night flowed back once more.
We talked and yawned and went to bed till eastward by Glencar,
We saw the lights that marked the vans of Lenihan's Big Bazaar.
Then boys o' war the world wheeled bright around the Market House
With the roulette and the rocky-boats and the game of cat and mouse
And the wheel of fortune shining like a rainbow in the sky
With gold too at the end of it for them that paid to try
'Twas fun to aim the shooting gun at the dainty dancing ball
Or to gamble for the trophies in the lovely Chaney stall.
Faith yesterday the pension man came in his motor car
And he took a sup out of the cup I won in the Bazaar.

And then the concert on the stage the fiddle and the fife,
The dancing and reciting and the sketches drawn from life.
We walked the hard road with Parnell; we died in jail with Tone
And we cheered the men who sketched them Seán O'Grady and Malone.
I hear praise on the listening-in for this and that boyo
Sure they wouldn't hold a candle to Tom Storey long ago
With the clawhammer and battered boots, the cane and cigar
He roofed the sky with smiles for slates in Lenihan's Big Bazaar.

And Kathleen O'Reilly now 'tis she had steps galore
In those shiny dawny shoes of hers the times she took the floor
The Blackbird and the Rayhill reel she danced them like a joy
And tripped her way into the heart of one small watching boy.
O she was young and I was young and life was good and sweet
And all my dreams were spancelled to her little twinkling feet
While I wondered would she stick the land my hopes smashed like a jar
When I saw her smile at Boxty Walsh in Lenihan's Big Bazaar.

'Twould do you good to hear the tunes that knocked sparks from the eye
And the fine old all-for-Ireland songs that had no right to die.
The brothers, Matt and Christy, were the best the world had seen
And we loved them as we heard them pay their tribute to the green.
There's grass growing green around the Mill where we danced the Kerry Set
While they're trotting down a jazz-hall through a haze of dust and sweat
They're changed days and altered nights but still shines like a star
The kindly glow of lights long quenched in Lenihan's Big Bazaar.