Pearl Songtext
von Sounds From the Ground

Sometimes, some friends of mine and I
Would drive about five miles to where I′m from
And, uh, we'd walk up the banks of the river
It′s, it's really quite gloomy
Everything's covered in moss
And it′s green and dripping

The rocks are always very slippy
But if you know the way you can hang in beside the edge of the cliff
There′s trees hanging over the river
And, if you climb up all the way
You can find a waterfall
It's really cold
But the water runs very clear


So we sometimes go swimming in the pool by the waterfall
And sometimes climb up behind it
Up the edge of the cliff, behind the waterfall
Where there′s branches hanging out over it
It's about 40 or 50 feet high
And the water isn′t very deep below
But if you jump in, it's a great feeling

And then the flow of the waterfall takes you down the river
And you asked me earlier what I′d like
I suppose that's what I'd like right now
I′d like to be there, or else I′d like to be on the Éirinn Isles

There's, there′s a legend about, about the three islands
They're called Tír na nÓg
I suppose it′s the Irish equivalent of your Hy-Brasil
And, um, they say that, years and years ago
Oisin, who was one of the ancient warriors of, of Ireland
He fell in love with a spirit woman from that land
She came riding across the sea on a white horse
And her name was Niaṁ Cinn-Óir, Niaṁ of the Go, of the Golden Hair


And, um, she took him back to Tír na nÓg
And he felt like he'd only been there three days
But he′d been there 300 years
Because it was the land of youth and no one ever changed
After that time, he became homesick and he asked her
Could he go home? So she gave him his horse and-
But she made him promise that he would never
Ever set foot on Irish soil again
Because something terrible would happen

So, he rode back over the sea, and he came back onto Irish soil
And he saw three men trying to lift a rock
And he couldn't believe that they couldn't lift it
Because they were really weak
But, 300 years had passed and the men had become quite debilitated
And he knew he could lift it without any, any problem
So he leaned over to give them a hand
But, the girth of the, the saddle broke
And he fell onto Irish soil and
And died without ever seeing Pearl or Niaṁ again