Temple Lane: Irish Woman Poet

Temple Lane was a pen name of Mary Isabel Leslie (1899-1978) who also published as Jean Herbert. She published novels and poems as both Lane and Herbert. The Fairy Tree, written about a tree in the village of Clogheen, Co. Tipperary where her father served as vicar, was set to music by Vincent O’Brien and recorded by John McCormack.

THE FAIRY TREE

 

All night around the thorn tree,
The little people play,
And men and women passing
Will turn their heads away.
From break of dawn til moonrise,
Alone it stands on high,
With twisted springs for branches,
Across the winter sky.

They’ll tell you dead men hung there,
Its black and bitter fruit,
To guard the buried treasure
Round which it twines its root.
They’ll tell you Cromwell hung them,
But that could never be,
He’d be in dread like others
To touch the Fairy Tree.

But Katie Ryan who saw there
In some sweet dream she had,
The Blessed Son of Mary
And all His face was sad.
She dreamt she heard Him saying:
“Why should they be afraid?”
When from a branch of thorn tree
The crown I wore was made?

From moonrise round the thorn tree
The little people play
And men and women passing
Will turn their heads away.
But if your heart’s a child’s heart
And if your eyes are clean,
You’ll never fear the thorn tree
That grows beyond Clogheen.