Oh were I at the moss house where the birds do increase, At the foot of Mount Leinster or some silent place, By the streams of Bunclody, where all pleasures do meet, And all I would ask is one kiss from you, sweet.
Ann Byrne wrote to me recently from Melbourne about the lovely song. She wants to know what a moss house is. She can thank the Wexford historian Rory Murphy and a sweet Bunclody lady, Sarah O'Hara, for answering a question that has been bothering myself for years. Sarah tells me that the moss house in question was made in the last century by Lady Lucy Maxwell on the Carrigduff side of the Slaney at Bunclody. It was made from actual growing trees which were bent over and intertwined to form a beautiful living summerhouse. Several low, shrub-like trees decorated the floor, which was carpeted with thick, soft moss. Hence the name.
Does the beautiful moss-house still exist, the arbour where the young man, wounded in love, wanted to die on the bosom of his beloved? Alas, no. Vandalism has seen to that.
Who were they anyway, the young lovers? She, I once heard, was one of the Maxwells. Maybe. It is why my love slights me, as you may understand, That she has a freehold and I have no land; She has great store of riches and a large sum of gold, And everything fitting a house to uphold.
And who was he? Does anybody know? Mary Byrne and I would love to.
Eddie Wymberry from Waterford has sent me an engaging little book of reminiscences called Spring Gardens, and it includes a collection of words. I see that they ate Sally Lunns in Waterford as well as blahs.
The lady who gave her name to this tea-cake was an 18th century Bath pastry cook. She had a portable oven from which she sold the buns for three pence a dozen. She was lovely, was our Sally, and one of her regular customers was a Major Ronald Drew (I'm serious), who published a poem about her cakes in the Bath Chronicle in 1796:
Take thou of luscious wholesome cream What the full pint contains, Warm as the native blood which flows In youthful virgins' veins. It goes on in that vein.
Some poet, some poem; but if you want his recipe I'll send it to you.