Lost Tradition Poem by Francis Duggan

Ireland composer and poet
To you song and music wrote
And Irish dance was all the rage
In the happy bygone age.

Fiddler at cross roads did play
And Irish lads and lassies gay
To the music danced and sang
And merry voice of laughter rang.

But alas those happy days are o'er
And cross road dancing is no more
Nowadays in Ireland you do not see
At cross roads dance and revelry.

It makes me feel a little sad
To think that nowadays Irish lass and lad
Shake their bodies and move their feet
To the sound of foreign beat.

Ireland you are a changed land
Gone are the days of the ceili band
And now left to posterity
Are the memories of what used to be.