Wild are thy hills, O'Donegal, that frowning, darkly rise As if to greet the mist that falls upon them from the skies Dark, dark thy hills, and darker still thy mountain torrents flow But none so dark as Maolmuire's heart in his castle hall at Doe
Fair are thy plains, O'Donegal, and calm thy winding streams That gently flow by hut and hall beneath the bright sunbeams But plain or stream or meadow green or flower upon the lea Were not more mild than Maolmuire's child, so sweet and fair was she
Stout grow thy oak, O'Donegal, and straight thy ashen tree And swift and straight thy sons so tall, her country's pride to see But oak or ash or young men all that spring from Irish soil Were not more stout, swift, straight and strong than the chief of Clan O'Boyle
He was the pride of Faughter side from the hills of Ballymore For feats of strength, none equalled him from Fanad to Gaoth Dobhair And he would go through the frost and snow on a merry Christmas Day With ringing cheer to hunt the deer from his haunts in dark Glenveagh
In his little boat O'Boyle would float, a-fishing he would go With hook and line to Lackagh stream that runs by castle Doe High in the castle tower his loved one lay confined And on it's lofty battlements in sorrow deep she pined
At the castle strand two boats lay manned to wait the rising tide Maolmuire there in chief command right cowardly did hide And when O'Boyle his homeward course steered by the Bishop's Isle They were waylaid and a prisoner made of fearless young O'Boyle
They brought him to the castle, in strong irons he was bound And by Maolmuire was confined to a dungeon underground But in a few days after inside the graveyard wall Four stalwart ruffians bore a bier wrapped in a funeral pall
Poor Aileen in her tower above beheld the mournful scene In mute amaze she cast a gaze upon the graveyard green All pale and death beside a mound of freshly risen soil The pall removed, she there beheld the features of O'Boyle
Then with a shriek, she madly leapt from the tower to the ground Where by her faithful waiting maid her corpse in cold was found And in Doe castle graveyard green beneath the moldering soil Maolmuire's daughter sleeps in death with Turlough Óg O'Boyle 1