Poets and Dreamers Part 6

And in one of Red Owen's 'Visions' he is told not to forget James, who is 'persevering, well-tempered, affectionate, stout, sweet, kind, poetical.'

Yet the Stuart seems to be always a faint and unreal image; a saint by whose name a heavy oath is sworn. There are no personal touches such as I find in a song taken down from some countryman, on Patrick Sarsfield, the brave, handsome fighter, the descendant of Conall Cearnach, the man who, after the Boyne, offered to 'change kings and fight the battle again.' This ballad seems to have more of Connaught simplicity than of Munster luxuriance in it:--

'O Patrick Sarsfield, health be to you, since you went to France and your camps were loosened; making your sighs along with the king, and you left poor Ireland and the Gael defeated--Och ochone!

'O Patrick Sarsfield, it is a man with G.o.d you are; and blessed is the earth you ever walked on. The blessing of the bright sun and the moon upon you, since you took the day from the hands of King William--Och ochone!

'O Patrick Sarsfield, the prayer of every person with you; my own prayer and the prayer of the Son of Mary with you, since you took the narrow ford going through Biorra, and since at Cuilenn O'Cuanac you won Limerick--Och ochone!

'I will go up on the mountain alone; and I will come hither from it again. It is there I saw the camp of the Gael, the poor troop thinned, not keeping with one another--Och ochone!

'My five hundred healths to you, halls of Limerick, and to the beautiful troop was in our company; it is bonfires we used to have and playing cards, and the word of G.o.d was often with us--Och ochone!

'There were many soldiers glad and happy that were going the way through seven weeks; but now they are stretched down in Aughrim--Och ochone!

'They put the first breaking on us at the Bridge of the Boyne; the second breaking on the Bridge of Slaney; the third breaking in Aughrim of O'Kelly; and O sweet Ireland, my five hundred healths to you--Och ochone!

'O'Kelly has manuring for his land, that is not sand or dung, but ready soldiers doing bravery with pikes, that were left in Aughrim stretched in ridges--Och ochone!

'Who is that beyond on the hill, Beinn Edair? I a poor soldier with King James. I was last year in arms and in dress, but this year I am asking alms--Och ochone!'

There are other symbolic songs besides the 'Visions.' Mangan's fine translation of Kathleen ni Houlihan is well known; and it is likely the king is calling to Ireland in '_Ceann dubh deelish_,' that is beautiful in all translations. This is _An Craoibhin's_:--

'The women of the village are in madness and trouble, Pulling their hair and letting it go with the wind; They will not take a boy of the men of the country Till they go into the rout with the boys of the king.

'Black head, darling, darling, darling, Black head, darling, move over to me; Black head brighter than swan and than seagull, It's a man without heart gives not love to thee.'

But most of the translations have been in the affected style of the early part of the last century twisting the sense to give what was thought to be a romantic turn. A verse of Seaghan Clarach's, for instance, the lament of a farmer 'who has been wrestling with the world': 'The two that belong to me are without shelter, and my yoke of cattle without gra.s.s, without growth; there is misery on my people and their elbows without sound clothes,' is turned into:--

'The loved ones my life would have nourished Are foodless, and bare, and cold.

My flocks by their fountain that flourished Decay on the mountain wold.'

But there is one mistranslation for whose sake we must forgive many others, for it has given the sad refrain that has often been on Irish lips:--

'Seaghan O'Dwyer a Gleanna, We're worsted in the game!'

Here are one or two of the many verses sung to the Little Black Rose by her lovers, poor or royal:--

'There is love through and through me for you all the length of a year; sore love, vexing love, lasting love, love that left me without health, without a road, without running; and for ever, ever, without any sway at all over my Fair Black Rose.

'I would travel through Munster with you, and the boundaries of the hills, if I thought I could find your secret, or a part of your love. O branch of the tree, it seems to me that you love me; that the flower of kind women is my Fair Black Rose.'

'My heart leaps up with my bright Stuart!' James and Charles are, I think, the only English kings whose names, as it were by accident, have found their way into Irish song. And it is likely they are the last to find a place there, for the imagination of Ireland still tilts the beam to the national side; and the loyalty the poets of many hundred years have called for, is loyalty to Kathleen ni Houlihan. 'Have they not given her their wills, and their hearts, and their dreams? What have they left for any less n.o.ble Royalty?'

1902.

_AN CRAOIBHIN'S_ POEMS

'"I would much rather (and I take every occasion of making this protest) write, so to say, in a dead language and for a dead people, than write in those deaf and stammering (_sorde e mute_) tongues, French and English, notwithstanding they are the fas.h.i.+on with their rules and exercises." This is so with me. Alfieri wrote these words a hundred years ago, and they express what is in my own mind. I would like better to make even one good verse in the language in which I am now writing, than to make a whole book of verses in English. For if there should be any good found in my English verses, it would not go to the credit of my mother, Ireland, but of my stepmother, England.'

I have translated this from Douglas Hyde's preface to his little book of poems, lately published in Dublin, _Ubhla de'n Craoibh_, "Apples from the Branch." _An Craoibhin Aoibhin_, "The delightful little branch," is the name by which he is called all over Irish-speaking Ireland; and a gold branch bearing golden apples is stamped on the cover of his book.

The poems had already been published, one by one, in a weekly paper; and a friend of mine tells me he has heard them sung and repeated by country people in many parts of Ireland--in Connemara, in Donegal, in Galway, in Kerry, in the Islands of Aran.

Three or four of the thirty-three poems the book holds are, so to speak, official, written for the Gaelic League by its president; and these, like most official odes, are only for the moment. Some are ballads dealing with the old subjects of Irish ballads--emigration, exile, defeat, and death; for Douglas Hyde, as may be guessed from his preface, has, no less than his fellows--

'Hidden in his heart the flame out of the eyes Of Kathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.'

But these national ballads, though very popular, are, I think, not so good as his more personal poems. I suppose no narrative of what others have done or felt or suffered can move one like a flash from 'that little infinite, faltering, eternal flame that one calls oneself.' Even in my bare prose translation, this poem will, I think, be found to have as distinct a quality as that of Villon or of Heine:--

'There are three fine devils eating my heart-- They left me, my grief! without a thing; Sickness wrought, and Love wrought, And an empty pocket, my ruin and my woe.

Poverty left me without a s.h.i.+rt, Barefooted, barelegged, without any covering; Sickness left me with my head weak And my body miserable, an ugly thing.

Love left me like a coal upon the floor, Like a half-burned sod, that is never put out, Worse than the cough, worse than the fever itself, Worse than any curse at all under the sun, Worse than the great poverty Is the devil that is called "Love" by the people.

And if I were in my young youth again, I would not take, or give, or ask for a kiss!'

The next, in the form of a little folk-song, expresses the thought of the idealist of all time, that makes him cry, as one of the oldest of the poets cried long ago, 'Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird; the birds round about are against her.' Yet, with its whimsical fancies and exaggerations, it could hardly have been written in any but Irish air.

'It's my grief that I am not a little white duck, And I'd swim over the sea to France or to Spain; I would not stay in Ireland for one week only, To be without eating, without drinking, without a full jug.

'Without a full jug, without eating, without drinking, Without a feast to get, without wine, without meat, Without high dances, without a big name, without music; There is hunger on me, and I astray this long time.

'It's my grief that I am not an old crow; I would sit for awhile up on the old branch, I could satisfy my hunger, and I not as I am, With a grain of oats or a white potato.

'It's my grief that I am not a red fox, Leaping strong and swift on the mountains, Eating c.o.c.ks and hens without pity, Taking ducks and geese as a conqueror.

'It's my grief that I am not a fair salmon, Going through the strong full water, Catching the mayflies by my craft, Swimming at my choice, and swimming with the stream.

'It's my grief that I am of the race of the poets; It would be better for me to be a high rock, Or a stone or a tree or an herb or a flower Or anything at all, but the thing that I am.'

The sympathy of the moods of nature with the moods of man is a traditional heritage that has come to us through the poets, from the old time when the three great waves of the sea answered to a cry of distress in Ireland, or when, as in Israel, the land mourned and the herbs of every field withered, for the wickedness of them that dwelt therein. The sea, and the winds blowing from the sea, can never be very far from the dweller in Ireland; and they echo the loneliness of the lonely listener.

'Cold, sharp lamentation In the cold bitter winds Ever blowing across the sky; Oh, there was loneliness with me!

'The loud sounding of the waves Beating against the sh.o.r.e, Their vast, rough, heavy outcry, Oh, there was loneliness with me!

'The light sea-gulls in the air, Crying sharply through the harbours, The cries and screams of the birds With my own heart! Oh! that was loneliness.

'The voice of the winds and the tide, And the long battle of the mighty war; The sea, the earth, the skies, the blowing of the winds.

Oh! there was loneliness in all of them together.'

Here is a verse from another poem of loneliness:--

'It is dark the night is; I do not see one star at all; And it is dark and heavy my thoughts are that are scattered and straying.

There is no sound about but of the birds going over my head-- The lapwing striking the air with long-drawn, weak blows And the plover, that comes like a bullet, cutting the night with its whistle; And I hear the wild geese higher again with their rough screech.

But I do not hear any other sound, it is that increases my grief-- Not one other cry but the cry and the call of the birds on the bog.'