Changes Poem by Francis Duggan

The Travellers parked at the Shannaknuck cross for the Millstreet Town horse fair
When Clara wore his hat of snow and the hedge rows were bare
Way back there in the fifties when I was a young boy
But time doesn't wait for anyone the years keep ticking by.

The Travellers horse drawn caravans at the crossroads now not seen
And not one sign to even tell that there they'd ever been
Their ways of life too have changed suppose nothing stays the same
To wander till the day they died was their curse on Cromwell's name.

Their ancestors were poor rural people that Cromwell's army had put on the road
To give rise to the wandering race of the no fixed abode
The last proof of the cruelty of Cromwell's ill renown
No longer seen in February at the cross-roads by Millstreet Town.

The World it keeps on changing and time for none does wait
And everything and way of life on it has a use by date
And at the Shannaknuck Cross-road in late February
The vans of the Irish Travellers nowadays you will not see.