With Tears In Her Eyes She Reproached Me

Gut Punch At Market Day

There’s a feeling you get from this song before you can even parse the story: a quick warmth that turns sour. The Lismore Turkeys puts you on a lane at dawn with two people who look like they might be laughing together for the rest of the day. Then you follow the small, ordinary betrayals — a slow donkey, a bought round in Cappoquin, a boast about land — and the whole thing tightens into something sharper.

What lands hardest is the human shrinkage when trust is broken. You hear the narrator spinning a life of farms and comfort, and you hear the girl’s sudden exposure: "With tears in her eyes she reproached me." That single moment — not an argument, not a moral — is pure gut. It’s embarrassment, grief, rage and a kind of public humiliation all mixed into one short sentence.

There’s mischief here too. The market, the turkeys, the porter — small-town details that make the song feel lived-in. That makes the betrayal worse, because it’s not some grand tragedy. It’s a moment you could see from across a pier in Dungarvan: neighborly, noisy, very human. When the narrator slips away and she threatens to take him before the recorder, you feel the stakes shift from romantic to legal, from personal hurt to exile and reputation. It’s the way a little lie can grow teeth.

Listen to a good singer tell this one and you’ll notice how a jaunty tune can carry the sting. The melody invites you to sway, the words make you wince. In the singing you get both sides: the charm that lured her, and the raw, small sorrow that follows. That’s why this song still moves people — not because it teaches a grand lesson, but because it compresses a private cruelty into a moment you can feel in your bones.

If you haven’t sat with The Lismore Turkeys lately, give it a play and pay attention to that instant when laughter collapses into tears. It’s as honest and uncomfortable as anything in the songbook, and it stays with you long after the market has emptied.

For more songs like "The Lismore Turkeys", visit Classic Irish Songs — the largest collection of Irish song lyrics and history online.

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