Bonny Portmore

 

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.

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 will we shelter or where will 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.

 

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I learned Bonny Portmore originally from Loreena McKennitt’s recording from 1991. The song is of Irish origin, and laments the loss of the great Irish forests of old. In particular, the song laments the loss of the Great Oak of Portmore, which was felled during a windstorm in 1760. According to Sean O’Boyle’s book The Irish Song Tradition, Portmore itself was a castle on what is now called Lough Beg; it was built in 1644 by Lord Conway, but eventually the estate was broken up and sold, and it is to this event that the song refers (O’Boyle 1997).

The song was first published in Edward Bunting’s Ancient Music of Ireland (1840).