The Connemara Fox

(album: Out Of All This Blue - 2017)

There's a man on the run
And he's never been caught
He moves at the speed
Of the power of thought
And he carries the news
In a gleam of his eye
That what you've been told
Is a kind of a lie

His enemies number fallen priests
Men of power and the crooked police
Cynics from the skool of hard knocks
And a motley crowd of mis-matched other old crocks
Who're never ever gonna catch
The Connemara Fox

They chased him in Cong
They missed him in Maam
He was already gone
Never giving a damn
Wanted dead or alive
Up the back of of Dog's Bay
But by the time they arrived
He was leagues away

In an oyster bar playing dominoes
And the only clues he left his foes
Were a fistful of dust, a change of the locks
The words of a Kris Kristoffersen song, a pair of old socks
And graffiti saying so long, suckers
Love, the Connemara Fox

He was in Bunnahown
On the day of the fair
When ship-like clouds
Sailed the summer air
And a bodhran thumped
And a saxophone played
As the people jumped
And danced at the side of the bay

They say he had long elegant fingers
And when he was gone magic lingered
A bolt of love that stopped the clocks
From the village lane where the washing hung to the city blocks
The name on every tongue
Was the Connemara Fox

He left a diktat
On the priest's window sill
It said "Crough Paaaatrick, Sonny
Is the paganest hill
In the whole lump of Ireland
It shone with green light
That's why they buried its power
Under Christian rites

And that bogus name to which it never belonged
That you can't even rhyme in a spell or a song
You're trying to put life back into the box"
And the priest ran out with a yell in the night in his cap and frocks
He never even caught sight
Of the Connemara Fox

He'll be where there is music
He'll be where there is crack
He'll be howling the blues
In the yard out back
He'll be down in the Claddagh
Playing pitch and toss
He says guilt's an imposter, baby
You been double-crossed

And just when you think you've got him pegged
All you'll see are the backs of his legs
A shadow passing way over the rocks
A wisp of hair, a ghostly snatch of the sound of a box
No one's ever gonna catch
The Connemara Fox

The Connemara Fox
The Connemara Fox
The Connemara Fox
The Connemara Fox