I am Brian Boy Magee. my father was Eoin Ban,
I was wakened from happy dreams by the shouts of my startled clan,
And I saw through the leaping glare that marked where our homestead stood,
My mother swing by her hair and my brothers lie in their blood.

In the creepy cold of the night, the pitiless wolves came down,
Red troops from that Castle grim, guarding Knockfergus Town,
And they hacked and lashed and hewed with musket and rope and sword,
Till my murdered kin law thick in pools by the Slaughter Ford.

I fought by my father's side and when we were fighting sore,
We saw a line of their steel with our shrieking women before,
The redcoats drove them on to the verge of the Gobbins gray,
Hurried them, God, the sight, as the sea foamed up for its prey.

Oh, tall were the Goblins cliffs and sharp were the rocks, my woe,
And tender the limbs that met such terrible death below,
Mother and babe and maid they clutched at the empty air,
With eyeballs widened in fright, that hour of despair.

I have vowed by pride of my sires, by my mother's wandering ghost,
By my kinsfolk's shattered bones, hurled on the cruel coast,
By the sweet dead face of my love and the wound in her gentle breast,
To follow that murderous band, a sleuth hound who knows no rest.

I shall go to Phelim O'Neill with my sorrowful tale and crave,
A blue bright blade of Spain in the ranks of this soldiers brave,
And God grant me the strength to wield that shining avenger well,
When the Gael shall sweep his foe through the yawning gates of Hell.

I am Brian Boy Magee and my creed is a creed of hate,
Love, peace, I have cast aside but vengeance, vengeance I wait,
Till I pay back the four fold debt for the horrors I witnessed there,
When my brothers moaned in their blood and my mother swung by her hair.