Song has long been a tool of the protest movement. So it's logical that the Lee Valley Protection Campaign has recruited Cork city's foremost balladeer, Jimmy Crowley, in its fight against a proposed motorway through the beautiful valley and hinterland.
The National Roads Authority (NRA) and Cork County Council are now deciding which route out of a possible four should accommodate the super-highway that will run from Ballincollig through Macroom to the Cork-Kerry border.
On Friday next at the Lee Valley Golf Club (9 p.m.) Crowley and his fellow musicians will introduce No Lee Way, a ballad best sung to the air of The Banks of My Own Lovely Lee.
Prof John Maguire, a former head of the Sociology Department at UCC, wrote the ballad.
How awful the thought, that a motorway might/Steal our homes and our wild woods away;
Such loss and destruction: how could it be right/For the sake of a super-highway?
With our farms and communities cut by the blade/Where then would our wild creatures flee,
If we ever betrayed that fine green leafy shade/In the vale of our own lovely Lee?
That's the scene-setter. The next verse proclaims the rights of the people, and the last one is the clarion call:
Now, have they done their duty, to think as the ought/Have they looked at the alternatives,
For the sake of the beauty that nature has brought/To this valley that breathes and that lives?
We are the people, we should have a say/For we know what the true cost would be,
If they got their way, with a super-highway/Through the vale of our own lovely Lee.
Now come city and county, let's all play our part/In protecting this precious resource:
It's our Lakes of Killarney, it's our Phoenix Park/Let's not lose it, and then feel remorse.
We'd never accept such a cold-hearted plan/It's a question of integrity;
United we'll stand for this proud, ancient landIn the vale of our own lovely Lee.