Glen Hansard: Raglan Road Patrick Kavanagh The Frames Swell Seasons Once...

Looking up the the ranking of favourite Irish Poems on the Irish Culture and Customs Website which was taken from a survey of Irish Times readers, I noticed that this comes in at number five with W.B. Yeats holding the number one and two spots. Of course there's nothing out there really comes close to this and there are more versions than there are stars in the sky. Luke Kelly who to the best of my knowledge recorded it first and whose version most people would identify with has almost one million hits to it on youtube. There are many others as well. It was written by Patrick Kavanagh about his then girlfriend Hilda Moriarty and first published in The Irish Press on the 3rd of October 1946. Teasing him about only writing poems of rural things he wrote this. She brought him down to Dunsany once looking for patronage and while I don't think they were successful he wrote a poem about it called "Bluebells for Love". I went for Glen Hansard singing the song, just liked the sound. So with thanks to youtube and "Stephen James Smith" for posting. Other sources Wikipedia.