The late Bella McGee, New Row, Killybegs, often sang at local concerts during her earlier years.  In later times she turned to writing poems, which she often sent to the U.S. where they were published.  Here’s one that was to mark St Patrick’s Day, 1950:

          TO AN EXILE.

If I could send a piece of soil

Of the dear old land to you

I would plant a dear wee

Shamrock

Wet with Irish dew.

 

I would send a breeze of Shannon

air,

A drop of Killarney’s lakes

A piece of heather from Donegal,

To plant there in the states.

 

It would be little Ireland to you,

A place you could call your own,

With a little old thatched cottage

Just like ‘Home Sweet Home’.

 

With a spinning wheel outside the

door

A rick of turf close by.

Sure it would be a piece of Ireland

Beneath the U.S. skies.

 

O, if I could do these wonderful things

How happy I would be

To send a piece of Ireland

Across the Atlantic sea

 

I would be pleasing many an Irish

heart

Who once left home to roam

The United States of America

Far away from their Irish homes.

 

As an Irish girl I send this greeting

It’s all I can send to you.

May God bless all the Irish hearts

The Irish hearts so true.