I was looking the other day through a collection of poems, lately taken
down from Irish-speaking country people for the _Oireactas_, the great
yearly meeting of the Gaelic League; and a line in one of them seemed
strange to me: '_Prebaim mo chroidhe le mo Stuart glegeal_,' 'my heart
leaps up with my bright Stuart'; for I did not know there was still a
memory of James and Charles among the people. The refrain of the poem
was: 'Och, my grief, my friend stole away from me!' and these are some
of its verses:--
'There are young girls through the whole country would sit
alongside of me through a half-hour, till we would be telling you
the story together of what it was put myself under trouble; I make
my complaints, wanting my comrade. Och, my grief, my friend stole
away from me!
'Where are my people that were wise and learned? Where is the troop
readying their spears, that they do not smooth out this knot for
me? Och, my grief, my friend stole away from me!
'I was for a while airy and beautiful, and all my treasure with my
pleasant James.... On the top of all, my Stuart to leave me. Och,
my grief, my friend stole away from me!
'It is the truth I cannot sleep in the night, fretting for my
comrade; I to be lying down, and he weak under cold. My heart leaps
up with my bright Stuart. Och, my grief, my friend stole away from
me!
'It is hard for me to lie down after that; it is an empty thing to
be crying the loss of my comrade, and I lying down with the mean
people; it is my death the Stuart not to come at all. Och, my
grief, my friend stole away from me!'
I had not heard any songs of this sort in Galway, and I remembered that
our Connaught Raftery, whose poems are still teaching history, dealt
very shortly with the Royal Stuarts. 'James,' he says, 'was the worst
man for habits.... He laid chains on our bogs and mountains.... The
father wasn't worse than the son Charles, that left sharp scourges on
Ireland. When God and the people thought it time the story to be done,
he lost his head.... The next James--sharp blame to him--gave his
daughter to William as woman and wife; made the Irish English, and the
English Irish, like wheat and oats in the month of harvest. And it was
at Aughrim on a Monday many a son of Ireland found sorrow, without
speaking of all that died.'
So I went to ask some of the wise old neighbours, who sit in wide
chimney-nooks by turf fires, and to whom I go to look for knowledge of
many things, if they knew of any songs in praise of the Stuarts. But
they were scornful. 'The Stuarts?' one said; 'no, indeed; they have no
songs about them here in the West, whatever they may have in the South.
Why would they, running away and leaving the country? And what good did
they ever do it?' And another, who lives on the Clare border, said: 'I
used to hear them singing "The White Cockade" through the country.
"King James was beaten, and all his well-wishers; my grief, my boy that
went with them!" But I don't think the people had ever much opinion of
the Stuarts; but in those days they were all prone to versify. But the
famine did away with all that.' And then he also was scornful, and said:
'Sure King James ran all the way from the Boyne to Dublin, after the
battle. There was a lady walking in the street at Dublin when he got
there; and he told her the battle was lost; and she said: "Faith you
made good haste; you made no delay on the road." So he said no more
after that.'
And then he told me of the Battle of Aughrim, that is still such a
terrible memory; and how the 'Danes'--the De Danaan--the mysterious
divine race that were conquered by the Gael, and who still hold an
invisible kingdom--'were dancing in the raths around Aughrim the night
after the battle. Their ancestors were driven out of Ireland before; and
they were glad when they saw those that had put them out put out
themselves, and every one of them skivered.'
And another old man said: 'When I was a young chap knocking about in
Connemara, I often heard songs about the Stuarts, and talk of them and
of the blackbird coming over the water. But they found it hard to get
over James making off after the Battle of the Boyne.' And another says
of James: 'They liked him well before he ran; they didn't like him after
that.'
And when I looked through the lately gathered bundle of songs again, and
through some old collections of Jacobite songs in Irish, I found they
almost all belonged to Munster. And if they are still sung there, it is
not, I think, for the sake of the kings, but for the sake of the poets
who made them--Red-haired Owen O'Sullivan, potato-digger, harvestman,
hedge-schoolmaster, whose poems are still the joy of the Munster people;
O'Rahilly, more learned, and as boundlessly redundant; O'Donnell, whose
heart was set on translating Homer into Irish; O'Heffernan, the blind
wanderer; and many others. For the Munstermen have always been more
'prone to versify' than their leaner neighbours on the bogs and stones
of Connaught.
There is a common formula for most of these songs or 'Visions,'
_Aislinghe_, as they are called. Just as artists of to-day find no
monotony in drawing Ireland over and over again with her harp, her
wolf-dog, and her round tower, so the Munster poets found no monotony in
representing her as a beautiful woman, white-skinned, with curling hair,
with cheeks in which 'the lily and the rose were fighting for mastery.'
The poet asks her if she is Venus, or Helen, or Deirdre, and describes
her beauty in torrents of alliterative adjectives. Then she makes her
complaint against England, or her lament for her own sorrows or for the
loss of her Stuart lover, spoken of sometimes as 'the bricklayer,' or
'the merchant's son.' The framework is artificial; but the laments are
often very pathetic the love of Ireland, and the hatred of England born
of that love, finding expression in them.
John O'Donnell sees her 'like a young queen that is going astray for the
king being banished from her, that had a right to come and set her
loose.' O'Rahilly, in one of his poems, shows the beautiful woman held
to her Saxon lover by some strange enchantment:--
'I met brightness of brightness upon the path of loneliness;
plaiting of plaiting in every lock of her yellow hair. News of news
she gave me, and she as lonely as she was; news of the coming back
of him that owns the tribute of the king.
'Folly of follies I to go so near to her; slave I was made by a
slave that put me in hard bonds. She made away from me then, and I
following after her, till we came to a house of houses made by
Druid enchantments.
'They broke into mocking laughter, a troop of men of enchantments,
and a troop of young girls with smooth-plaited hair. They put me up
in chains; they made no delay about it; and my love holding to her
breast an awkward ugly clown.
'I told her then with the truest words I could tell her, it was not
right for her to be joined with a common clumsy churl; and the man
that was three times fairer than the whole race of the Scots,
waiting till she would come to him to be his beautiful bride.
'At the sound of my words her pride set her crying; the tears were
running down over the kindling of her cheeks. She sent a lad to
bring me safe from the place I was in. She is the brightness of
brightness I met in the path of loneliness.'
Sometimes the Stuart is almost forgotten in the story of sorrows and the
indictment of England. O'Heffernan complains in one of his songs that
many of the heroes of Ireland have passed away, and their names have
never been put in a song by the poets; 'and they even leave their verses
without any account of Charles the wanderer, though I promise you they
are not satisfied without giving some lines on Seaghan Buidhe' (one of
the names for England). Yet he himself, when very downhearted, 'on the
edge of the great wood under a harsh cloak of sorrow,' is cheered by the
pleasant sound of a swarm of bees in search of their ruler; and with the
pleasant thought that 'the harvest will be a bad one and with no joy in
it to Seaghan. George will be sent back over the sea, and the tribe that
was so high up will be left without gold or townlands; and I not pitying
their sorrow.' And he winds up: 'In Shronehill, if I were stretched at
rest under a hard flag, and to hear this story moving about so
pleasantly, by force and strength of my shoulders I would throw the sod
off me; and I coming back leaping to hear the news.'
And another writer, Seaghan Clarach, looks forward to seeing 'timid
George tame upon the road, without wine, without meat, without thread
for his shoes.' And his last verse, his 'binding,' is, 'I beseech of
God, I ask and I pray very hard, to cast out the gluttons that tormented
the generous race of the Gael, from the island of the west, under hard
bonds, and to banish the foreign devils from us.'
For poets and people found it hard to forget Cromwell; and how 'the sons
of the Gael are scorched, tormented, pitchforked, put under the yoke, by
boors that are used to doing treachery.'
When the Stuarts come to mind, they are given fair words enough. 'The
prince and heart-secret Charles that is sorrowful now and under
weariness ... will be under esteem; and the Gael pleasant in the
lime-white house.' ... 'It is friendly, fair bright, companionable,
loving, brave, Charles will be, with sway, without a mist about him.'
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 God 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 God 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 grass, 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 noble 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 fashion 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 shirt,
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 cocks 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 shore,
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.'