Cavan Girl - Lyrics by Thom Moore
As I walk the road from Killashandra, weary I sit down.
For it's twelve long miles around the lake to get to Cavan Town.
Though Oughter and the road I go once seemed beyond compare.
Now I curse the time it takes to reach my Cavan girl so fair.
The autumn shades are on the leaves, the trees will soon be bare,
Each red-gold leaf around me seems the color of her hair.
My gaze retreats, defies my feet and once again I sigh,
For the broken pool of sky reminds the colour of her eyes.
At the Cavan Cross each Sunday morning it's there she can be found,
And she seems to have the eye of every boy in Cavan Town.
If my luck will hold I'll have the golden summer of her smile,
And to break the hearts of Cavan men she'll talk to me a while.
So next Sunday evening finds me homeward, Killashandra bound.
To work a week 'til I return to court in Cavan Town.
When asked if she would be my bride at least she'd not said, "no."
So next Sunday morning rouse myself, and back to her I go.
As I walk the road from Killashandra, weary I sit down.
For it's twelve long miles around the lake to get to Cavan Town.
Though Oughter and the road I go once seemed beyond compare.
Now I curse the time it takes to reach my Cavan girl so fair.
A love story that inspired Cavan's most famous song
Inside Story Everyone knows the classic ballad, ‘Cavan Girl’, but did you know it was penned about a Belturbet lady? SEAN MCMAHON spoke with Michael Woods who told him all about his late wife Rita who recently passed away, and who four decades ago inspired the song that won the Cavan Song Contest and a place in the county’s heart.
Belturbet (/bɛlˈtɜːrbət/; Irish: Béal Tairbirt, meaning "mouth of the isthmus")[7] is a town in County Cavan, Ireland. It lies on the N3 road, around 14 km (8.7 mi) north of Cavan town and 123 km (76 mi) from Dublin. It is also located around 4 km (2.5 mi) south of the border with Northern Ireland, between the counties of Cavan and Fermanagh, and 36 km (22 mi) from Enniskillen.
Fate was surely at play when a young Killeshandra man encountered a young woman from Belturbet for the very first time on the streets of their new home city, New York. That evening in 1964, the young Cavan man knew instantly as her hand fell into his, that it would last forever.
“The chat just flowed out of us,” recalls Michael Woods, speaking to the Celt on the phone from his County Sligo home. “I was on top of the world. I knew I had met the one that was meant for me.”
Michael’s soulmate was the beautiful Rita Munday from Belturbet, just only a few miles from his Upper Derries home, yet here they met for the first time thousands of miles across the Atlantic, amongst the millions who thronged the Big Apple shortly after her arrival in 1964.
Not only did Rita steal Michael’s heart, but the Celt can reveal she was ‘The Cavan Girl’ of the ballad, penned by Californian musician, Thom Moore. It won the Cavan Song Contest of 1979, and has long since become synonymous with the Breifne County.
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