Asses

"I KNOW where I'd get

An ass that would do,

If I had the money

A pound or two."

Said a ragged man

To my uncle one day;

He got the money

And went on his way.

And after that time

In market or fair

I'd look at the asses

That might be there.

And wonder what kind

Of an ass would do

For a ragged man

With a pound or two.

O the black and roan horses the street would fill,

Their manes and tails streaming, and they standing still,

And their owners, the men of estate, would be there,

Refusing gold guineas for a colt or a mare.

And one, maybe, riding up and down like a squire

So that buyers from Dublin might see and admire

The hunter or racer come to be sold

And be willing and ready to pay out their gold.

With men slouching beside them and buyers not near

It's no wonder the asses held down head and ear.

They had been sold or in by-ways bought

For a few half-crowns tied up in a knot,

And no one so poor as to buy one might come

To that fair that had horses so well prized at home!

And then it fell out

That at Arva or Scrabbey,

At some down-county fair,

Or Mohill or Abbey,

On two asses I happened

Without duress or dole

They were there in the market,

A dam and her foal.

And the owner, a woman,

Did not slouch or stand,

But in her cart sitting

Was as grand as the grand;

Like a queen out of Connacht

From her toe to her tip,

Like proud Crania Uaile

On the deck of her ship.

And her hair 'twas a mane:

The blackberries growing

Out of the hedge-rows

Have the sheen it was showing,

There kind was with kind

Like the flowers in the grasses

If the owner was fine,

As fine were her asses.

White, white was the mother

As a dusty white road;

Black on back and on shoulders

The cross-marking showed.

She was tall she could carry

A youth stout of limb,

Or bear down from her mountain

The bride decked for him!

Such was the mother

The foal's hide was brown,

All fleecy and curly,

And soft like bog-down;

And it nuzzled its mother,

Its head to her knee,

And blue were its eyes

Like the pools of the sea!

Then I thought all the silver

My uncle could draw

Might not pay for the creatures

That that day I saw;

And I thought that old Damer,

Who had troughs made of gold,

Could not pay for the asses,

The young and the old.

And I think of them still

When I see on the roads

Asses unyoked,

And asses with loads;

One running and trotting,

With harness loose,

And a man striking and hitting

Where his stick has use;

And one with a hide

Like a patched-on sack

And two creels of turf

Upon its back;

And one in the market,

Meek and brown,

Its head to the cart-shafts

That are down;

Eating its forage

A wisp of hay;

In the dust of the highway

Munching away;

Unmarked in the market

As might be a mouse

Behind a low stool

In a quiet house

Then I think of the pair

Horses might not surpass

The dam and her foal,

The white ass and brown ass.