O Bonny Portmore Anonymous - traditional song

David E. Ross wrote:

On 5/7/2008 3:53 PM, Way Back Jack wrote:

>  TV documentaries and travelogues reveal a lot of lush "green" in
>  those countrysides but a relative scarcity of trees. Is it climate?
>  Too windy in Ireland? Sheep and/or other livestock?

I read somewhere (I think it might have been in Winston Churchill's
"A History of the English-Speaking Peoples") that a medieval king of
England ordered the planting of oaks so that a later generation might
have the raw materials to build war ships. However, trees take up
land that might instead be used for crops or pastures.

"O bonny Portmore, I am sorry to see
Such a woeful destruction of your ornament tree
For it stood on your shore for many's the long day
Till the long boats from Antrim came to float it away.
"O bonny Portmore, you shine where you stand
And the more I think on you the more I think long
If I had you now as I had once before
All the lords in Old England would not purchase Portmore.
"All the birds in the forest they bitterly weep
Saying, "Where shall we shelter, where shall we sleep?"
For the Oak and the Ash, they are all cutten down
And the walls of bonny Portmore are all down to the ground."
"O bonny Portmore, you shine where you stand
And the more I think on you the more I think long
If I had you now as I had once before
All the Lords of Old England would not purchase Portmore."
 

Portmore Castle was destroyed in 1716. The song dates to about 1745.