'The time I think of the cause of Ireland
My heart is torn within me.
'The time I think of the death of the people
Who protected Ireland bravely and faithfully.
'They are stretched on the side of the mountain
Very low, one with another.
'Hidden under grass, or under tall herbs,
Far from friends or help or friendship.
'Not a child or a wife near them;
Not a priest to be found there or a friar;
'But the mountain eagle and the white eagle
Moving overhead across the skies.
'Without a defence against the sun in the daytime;
Without a shelter against the skies at night.
'It's many a good soldier, joyful and pleasant,
That has had his laughing mouth closed there.
'There is many a young breast with a hole through it;
The little black hole that is death to a man.
'There is many a brave man stripped there,
His body naked, without vest or shirt.
'The young man that was proud and beautiful yesterday,
When the woman he loved left a kiss on his mouth.
'There is many a married woman, with the child at her breast,
Without her comrade, without a father for her child to-night.
'There's many a castle without a lord, and many a lord without a house;
And little forsaken cabins with no one in them.
'I saw a fox leaving its den
Asking for a body to feed its hunger.
'There's a fierce wolf at Carrig O'Neill;
There is blood on his tongue and blood on his mouth.
'I saw them, and I heard the cries
Of kites and of black crows.
'Ochone! Is not the only Son of God angry;
Ochone! The red blood that was poured out yesterday!'
I do not know who the following poem was written about, or if it is
about anyone in particular; but one line of it puts into words the
emotion of many an Irish 'felon.' 'It is with the people I was; it is
not with the law I was.' For the Irish crime, treason-felony, is only
looked on as a crime in the eyes of the law, not in the eyes of the
people:--
'I am lying in prison,
I am in bonds;
To-morrow I will be hanged,
Who am to-night so quiet,
So quiet;
Who am to-night so quiet.
'I am in prison,
My heart is cold and heavy;
To-morrow I will be hanged,
And there is no help for me,
My grief;
Och! there is no help for me.
'I am in prison,
And I did no wrong;
I only did the work
Was just, was right, was good,
I did,
Oh, I did the thing was good.
'It is with the people I was,
It is not with the law I was;
But they took me in my sleep,
On the side of Cnoc-na-Feigh;
And so
To-morrow they will hang me.'
'I am weak in my body,
I am vexed in my heart,
And to-morrow I will be hanged;
Lying beneath the clay,
My sorrow,
Lying beneath the clay.
'May God give pardon
To my vexed, sorrowful soul;
May God give mercy
To me now and forever,
Amen!
To me now and forever.'
But translation is poor work. Even if it gives a glimpse of the heart of
a poem, too much is lost in losing the outward likeness. Here are the
last lines of the lament of a felon's brother:--
'Now that you are stretched in the cold grave
May God set you free:
It's vexed and sorry and pitiful are my thoughts;
It's sorrowful I am to-day!'
I look at them and read them; and wonder why when I first read them,
their sound had hung about me for days like a sobbing wind; but when I
look at them in their own form, the sob is in them still:
Nois ann san uaigh fhuair ó tá tu sínte
Go saoraigh Dia thu
Is buaidhcartha, brónach bocht atá mo smaointe
Is bronach mé andhiú.