For some this may make sense, the people that are aware of the Ballykissangel Television series based on and filmed in Avoca, the tiny ex Copper mining village hidden within the Eastern flanks of the Wicklow mountains, within the Sweet Vale Of Avoca; THE VEIL OF AVOCA Oh wake up Avoca and shake off the shroud Of Ballykissangel, and stand up there proud No need of the pageant that surrounds you now Offered to the world like some surrogate cow Your history is fixed in the annals of mind No greater beauty could ever they find The people that come to gloat and to stare To the heartache of mining are they half aware? The hardship that was within this village so real The visitors miss and don't really feel History remaining as if for all to see In a valley once chained but now is free Of copper shackles did it once provide Now long extinct lets one decide What does this vale really need? A recognition of life or virtual greed? Amongst the hills these stories in stone Bear the engine houses in solace alone Standing proud and majestic in free state An entrance, an invite to review their fate To calculate the demise of this metal trade Where fortunes and failures were daily made But the ones that paid were from a lowlier level Put far from God and nearer the devil Miners once bore Avoca's suffering and trouble Working lives amidst the cruel rubble Their memories remaining and little more But their heritage left for all to explore In wide-open exposure now these secrets lay Stones still tell the story, but in a gentler way A valley enhanced by its coppered history Is it better left in it's own shrouded mystery? Daz Beattie 22nd October 2002