"The Legend of Port Quin"

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I see your pale face at the small cottage window

Your sad eyes always looking far over the sea

Searching the skyline for the fishing boats coming

But there’ll be no more homecomings for you and for me.

Every man in the village was out for the fishing

Every boat in the village was out on the sea

When the weather came storming in from the nor’ west

Now there’ll be no more homecomings for you and for me.

Grandfathers, Fathers and their sons now just learning

The hard ways of fishing and working the sea

In one short afternoon, so suddenly taken

So there’ll be no more homecomings for you and for me.

Every man in the village so suddenly drown-ded

Every wife, every girl now a widow must be

And now every small cottage window is suddenly tear stained

There’ll be no more homecomings for you and for me.

I was young and was strong and was happily married

My young wife would sing her sweet love songs to me

Now I see her in black in the small tear stained window

There’ll be no more homecomings for I’m lost at sea.

I see your pale face at the small cottage window

Your sad eyes still looking far over the sea

For three hundred years still searching the horizon

But there’ll be no more homecomings for you and for me.

I’ve watched as the slates from the roofs began slipping

Watched as the weeds grew where we played happily

But still I see your dear face in the small tear stained window

As I watch from my berth here in the stormy grey sea.

(Fading)

There’ll be no more homecomings for you and for me.

No scones by the fire as you pour me my tea

No singing me love songs as you sit on my knee

There’s no more homecomings for you and for me.

Copyright © Res JFB 26th August 2010.

I wrote this after hearing about the Legend of Port Quin. The legend goes that in 1698 all the men of Port Quin were drowned in a storm that sprang up suddenly one afternoon while they were fishing. All the women of the small village were left widowed or orphaned and had to move away because without any men to fish, the village starved. Port Quin was left abandoned.