_The Grief of a Girl's Heart_
O Donall og, if you go across the sea, bring myself with you and do
not forget it; and you will have a sweetheart for fair days and market
days, and the daughter of the King of Greece beside you at night. It
is late last night the dog was speaking of you; the snipe was speaking
of you in her deep marsh. It is you are the lonely bird through the
woods; and that you may be without a mate until you find me.
You promised me, and you said a lie to me, that you would be before
me where the sheep are flocked; I gave a whistle and three hundred
cries to you, and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.
You promised me a thing that was hard for you, a ship of gold under
a silver mast; twelve towns with a market in all of them, and a fine
white court by the side of the sea.
You promised me a thing that is not possible, that you would give me
gloves of the skin of a fish; that you would give me shoes of the skin
of a bird, and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.
O Donall og, it is I would be better to you than a high, proud,
spendthrift lady: I would milk the cow; I would bring help to you;
and if you were hard pressed, I would strike a blow for you.
O, ochone, and it's not with hunger or with wanting food, or drink,
or sleep, that I am growing thin, and my life is shortened; but it
is the love of a young man has withered me away.
It is early in the morning that I saw him coming, going along the road
on the back of a horse; he did not come to me; he made nothing of me;
and it is on my way home that I cried my fill.
When I go by myself to the Well of Loneliness, I sit down and I go
through my trouble; when I see the world and do not see my boy, he
that has an amber shade in his hair.
It was on that Sunday I gave my love to you; the Sunday that is last
before Easter Sunday. And myself on my knees reading the Passion; and
my two eyes giving love to you for ever.
O, aya! my mother, give myself to him; and give him all that you have
in the world; get out yourself to ask for alms, and do not come back
and forward looking for me.
My mother said to me not to be talking with you to-day, or to-morrow,
or on the Sunday; it was a bad time she took for telling me that; it
was shutting the door after the house was robbed.
My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe, or as the black
coal that is on the smith's forge; or as the sole of a shoe left in
white halls; it was you put that darkness over my life.
You have taken the east from me; you have taken the west from me; you
have taken what is before me and what is behind me; you have taken
the moon, you have taken the sun from me; and my fear is great that
you have taken God from me!
_A Lament for Fair-Haired Donough that Was Hanged in Galway_
It was bound fast here you saw him, and wondered to see him,
Our fair-haired Donough, and he after being condemned;
There was a little white cap on him in place of a hat,
And a hempen rope in the place of a neck-cloth.
I am after walking here all through the night,
Like a young lamb in a great flock of sheep;
My breast open, my hair loosened out,
And how did I find my brother but stretched before me!
The first place I cried my fill was at the top of the lake;
The second place was at the foot of the gallows;
The third place was at the head of your dead body
Among the Gall, and my own head as if cut in two.
If you were with me in the place you had a right to be,
Down in Sligo or down in Ballinrobe,
It is the gallows would be broken, it is the rope would be cut
And fair-haired Donough going home by the path.
O fair-haired Donough, it is not the gallows was fit for you;
But to be going to the barn, to be threshing out the straw;
To be turning the plough to the right hand and to the left,
To be putting the red side of the soil uppermost.
O fair-haired Donough, O dear brother,
It is well I know who it was took you away from me;
Drinking from the cup, putting a light to the pipe,
And walking in the dew in the cover of the night.
O Michael Malley, O scourge of misfortune!
My brother was no calf of a vagabond cow;
But a well-shaped boy on a height or a hillside,
To knock a low pleasant sound out of a hurling-stick.
And fair-haired Donough, is not that the pity,
You that would carry well a spur or a boot;
I would put clothes in the fashion on you from cloth that would be
lasting;
I would send you out like a gentleman's son.
O Michael Malley, may your sons never be in one another's company;
May your daughters never ask a marriage portion of you;
The two ends of the table are empty, the house is filled,
And fair-haired Donough, my brother, is stretched out.
There is a marriage portion coming home for Donough,
But it is not cattle or sheep or horses;
But tobacco and pipes and white candles,
And it will not be begrudged to them that will use it.
_Raftery's Praise of Mary Hynes_
Going to Mass by the will of God, the day came wet and the wind rose;
I met Mary Hynes at the cross of Kiltartan, and I fell in love with
her there and then.
I spoke to her kind and mannerly, as by report was her own way; and
she said "Raftery my mind is easy; you may come to-day to Ballylee."
When I heard her offer I did not linger; when her talk went to my heart
my heart rose. We had only to go across the three fields; we had
daylight with us to Ballylee.
The table was laid with glasses and a quart measure; she had fair hair
and she sitting beside me; and she said, "Drink, Raftery, and a hundred
welcomes; there is a strong cellar in Ballylee."
O star of light and O sun in harvest; O amber hair, O my share of the
world! Will you come with me on the Sunday, till we agree together
before all the people?
I would not begrudge you a song every Sunday evening; punch on the
table or wine if you would drink it. But O King of Glory, dry the roads
before me till I find the way to Ballylee.
There is sweet air on the side of the hill, when you are looking down
upon Ballylee; when you are walking in the valley picking nuts and
blackberries, there is music of the birds in it and music of the Sidhe.
What is the worth of greatness till you have the light of the flower
of the branch that is by your side? There is no good to deny it or
to try and hide it; she is the sun in the heavens who wounded my heart.
There was no part in Ireland I did not travel, from the rivers to the
tops of the mountains; to the edge of Lough Greine whose mouth is
hidden, and I saw no beauty but was behind hers. Her hair was shining
and her brows were shining too; her face was like herself, her mouth
pleasant and sweet; She is the pride and I give her the branch; she
is the shining flower of Ballylee.
It is Mary Hynes, the calm and easy woman, has beauty in her mind and
in her face. If a hundred clerks were gathered together, they could
not write down a half of her ways.
_His Lament for O'Daly_
It was Thomas O'Daly that roused up young people and scattered them,
and since death played on him, may God give him grace. The country
is all sorrowful, always talking, since their man of sport died that
would win the goal in all parts with his music. The swans on the water
are nine times blacker than a blackberry since the man died from us
that had pleasantness on the top of his fingers. His two grey eyes
were like the dew of the morning that lies on the grass. And since
he was laid in the grave, the cold is getting the upper hand.
If you travel the five provinces, you would not find his equal for
countenance or behaviour, for his equal never walked on land or grass.
High King of Nature, you who have all powers in yourself, he that
wasn't narrow-hearted, give him shelter in heaven for it!
He was the beautiful branch. In every quarter that he ever knew he
would scatter his fill and not gather. He would spend the estate of
the Dalys, their beer and their wine. And that he may be sitting in
the chair of grace, in the middle of Paradise!
A sorrowful story on death, it's he is the ugly chief that did
treachery, that didn't give him credit, O strong God, for a little
time.
There are young women, and not without reason, sorry and heart-broken
and withered, since he was left at the church. Their hair thrown down
and hanging, turned grey on their head.
No flower in any garden, and the leaves of the trees have leave to
cry, and they falling on the ground. There is no green flower on the
tops of the tufts, since there did a boarded coffin go on Daly.
There is sorrow on the men of mirth, a clouding over the day, and no
trout swim in the river. Orpheus on the harp, he lifted up everyone
out of their habits; and he that stole what Argus was watching the
time he took away Io; Apollo, as we read, gave them teaching, and Daly
was better than all these musicians.
A hundred wouldn't be able to put together his actions and his deeds
and his many good works. And Raftery says this much for Daly, because
he liked him.
_His Praise of the Little Hill and the Plains of Mayo_
After the Christmas, with the help of Christ, I will never stop if
I am alive; I will go to the sharp-edged little hill; for it is a fine
place without fog falling; a blessed place that the sun shines on,
and the wind doesn't rise there or anything of the sort.
And if you were a year there you would get no rest, only sitting up
at night and forever drinking. The lamb and the sheep are there; the
cow and the calf are there, fine lands are there without heath and
without bog. Ploughing & seed-sowing in the right month, plough and
harrow prepared and ready; the rent that is called for there, they
have means to pay it. There is oats and flax & large eared barley.
There are beautiful valleys with good growth in them and hay. Rods
grow there, and bushes and tufts, white fields are there and respect
for trees; shade and shelter from wind and rain; priests and friars
reading their book; spending and getting is there, and nothing scarce.
I leave it in my will that my heart rises as the wind rises, and as
the fog scatters, when I think upon Carra and the two towns below it,
on the two-mile bush and on the plains of Mayo. And if I were standing
in the middle of my people, age would go from me and I would be young
again.
_His Lament for O'Kelly_
There's no dew or grass on Cluan Leathan. The cuckoo is not to be seen
on the furze; the leaves are withering and the trees complaining of
the cold. There is no sun or moon in the air or in the sky, or no light
in the stars coming down, with the stretching of O'Kelly in the grave.
My grief to tell it! he to be laid low; the man that did not bring
grief or trouble on any heart, that would give help to those that were
down.
No light on the day like there was; the fruits not growing; no children
on the breast; there's no return in the grain; the plants don't blossom
as they used since O'Kelly with the fair hair went away; he that used
to forgive us a great share of the rent. Since the children of Usnach
and Deirdre went to the grave, and Cuchulain, who as the stories tell
us, would gain victory in every step he would take; since he died,
such a story never came of sorrow or defeat; since the Gael were sold
at Aughrim, and since Owen Roe died, the Branch.
_His Vision of Death_
I had a vision in my sleep last night between sleeping and waking.
A figure standing beside me, thin, miserable, sad and sorrowful; the
shadow of night upon his face, the tracks of the tears down his cheeks.
His ribs were bending like the bottom of a riddle; his nose thin that
it would go through a cambric needle; his shoulders hard and sharp
that they would cut tobacco; his head dark and bushy like the top of
a hill; and there is nothing I can liken his fingers to. His poor bones
without any kind of covering; a withered rod in his hand, and he looking
in my face....
Death is a robber who heaps together kings, high princes and country
lords; he brings with him the great, the young, and the wise, gripping
them by the throat before all the people. Look at him who was yesterday
swift & strong, who would leap stone wall, ditch and gap. Who was in
the evening walking the street, and is going under the clay on the
morrow.
It is a pity for him that is tempted with the temptations of the world;
and the store that will go with him is so weak, and his lease of life
no better if he were to live for a thousand years than just as if he
had slipped over on a visit and back again.
When you are going to lie down don't be dumb. Bare your knee and bruise
the ground. Think of all the deeds that you put by you, and that you
are travelling towards the meadow of the dead.
_His Repentance_
O King who art in Heaven, I scream to Thee again and aloud, for it
is Thy grace I am hoping for.
I am in age and my shape is withered; many a day I have been going
astray. When I was young my deeds were evil; I delighted greatly in
quarrels and rows. I liked much better to be playing or drinking on
a Sunday morning than to be going to Mass. I was given to great oaths,
and I did not let lust or drunkenness pass me by.
The day has stolen away and I have not raised the hedge, until the
crop in which Thou didst take delight is destroyed. I am a worthless
stake in the corner of a hedge, or I am like a boat that has lost its
rudder, that would be broken against a rock in the sea, and that would
be drowned in the cold waves.
_His Answer When Some Stranger Asked Who He Was_
I am Raftery the poet, full of hope and love; my eyes without light,
my gentleness without misery. Going west on my journey with the light
of my heart; weak and tired to the end of my road.