The Wild Bird's Nest: Poems from the Irish (1932)

THE OLD WOMAN OF BEARE REGRETS LOST YOUTH

(The Hag of Beare [Cailleach Bérri], a mythological female divinity often associated with the Beare peninsula in Counties Cork and Kerry, is represented in this eighth-or ninth-century poem as an old woman who, having outlived her friends and lovers, takes the veil [caille], and spends her remaining years among nuns. The poem conflates the pagan conception of this figure, expressing lament for a lost way of life, with a more Christian sense of 'cailleach', which can mean a nun as well as an old woman or hag. For Irish-language source and literal translation, see pp. 200-4.)

I, the old woman of Beare,

Once a shining shift would wear,

Now and since my beauty's fall

I have scarce a shift at all.

I am ebbing like the seas,

Ebbtide is all my grief;

Plump no more I sigh for these,

Bones bare beyond belief.

It is pay

And not men ye love today,

But when we were young, ah then

We gave all our hearts to men.

Men most dear,

Horseman, huntsman, charioteer.

We gave them love with all our will

But the measure did not fill;

When today men ask you fair,

And get little for their care,

And the mite they get from you

Leaves their bodies bent in two.

And long since the foaming steed,

And the chariot with its speed,

And the charioteer went by -

God be with them all, say I.

Luck has left me, I go late

To the dark house where they wait,

When the Son of God thinks fit

Let him call me home to it.

For my hands when they are seen

Are but bony wasted things,

Hands that once would grasp the hand

Clasp the royal neck of kings.

Oh, my hands when they are seen

Are so bony and so thin

That a boy might start in dread

Feeling them about his head.

Girls are gay

When the year draws on to May,

But for me, so poor am I,

Sun will never light the day.

And for me no tongue is sweet,

For me no marriage feast is set,

No raiment bought, rags must bind

My white locks up from the wind -

Though I care

Nothing now to bind my hair;

I had headgear bright enough

When the kings for love went bare.

'Tis not age that makes my pain

But the eye that sees so plain

That when all I love decays

Femon's1 ways are gold again.

Femon, Bregon,2 sacring stone,

Sacring stone and Ronan's throne

Storms have sacked so long that now

Tomb and sacring stone are one.

And the oceans wasteful seas

Fret the princes' promontories,

So I may not hope today

Faramuid3 will come my way.

Where are they? Ah! well I know

Old and toiling bones that row

Alma's flood, or by its deep

Sleep in cold that slept not so.

Welladay

Every child outlives its play,

Year on year has worn my flesh

Since my fresh sweet strength went grey.

And, my God,

Once again for ill or good

Spring will come and I shall see,

Everything but me renewed.

Summer sun and autumn sun,

These I knew and these are gone,

And the winter time of men

Comes and these come not again.

And 'Amen'! I cry and 'Woe'

That the boughs are shaken bare,

And that candle-light and feast

Leave me to the dark and prayer.

I that had my day with kings,

And drank deep of mead and wine

Drink whey-water with old hags,

Sitting in their rags, and pine.

'That my cups be cups of whey!'

'That Thy will be done,' I pray,

But the prayer Oh Living God,

Stirs up madness in my blood.

And I shout 'Thy locks are grey!'

At the mantle that I stroke,

Then I grieve and murmur 'Nay

I am grey and not my cloak.'

And of eyes that loved the sun

Age my grief has taken one,

And the other too will take

Soon for good proportion's sake.

Floodtide!

Flood or ebb upon the strand?

What to thee the flood had brought

Ebbtide sweeps from out thy hand.

Floodtide!

And the swifter tides that fall,

All have reached me ebb and flow,

Ay, and now I know them all.

Floodtide!

Not a man my cell shall reach,

Nor in darkness seek my side,

Cold the hand that lies on each.

Happy island of the sea,

Tide on tide shall come to thee,

But to me no waters fare

Though the beach is stark and bare.

Passing I can scarcely say

'Here is such a place'. Today

What was water far and wide

Changes with the ebbing tide.

Ebbtide.4

LULLABY OF ADVENTUROUS LOVE

(The original belongs to the Fionn cycle of heroic tales and songs. The two lovers, Gráine and Diarmuid, are fleeing from the wrath of the leader of the Fianna, Fionn mac Cumhaill, to whom Gránia had been pledged as his wife. Gerard Murphy has suggested that the first ten stanzas are spoken by Gránia, urging sleep on her lover, and the last five by Diarmuid, arguing that this is no night for sleep. The original was probably composed in the first half of the twelfth century. In a note to the version published in Kings, Lords, and Commons, O'Connor says that Gráine is 'the original Iseult of the Tristan legend', and that she 'sings Diarmuid to sleep with memories of the great lovers of Irish history'. He also says that W.B. Yeats wrote his poem 'A Faery Song' after reading this translation. For a translation by O'Connor of another poem based on the story of Diarmuid and Gráinne, see 'There is one', under A Short History of Irish Literature. For other translations by O'Connor based on material from the Fionn cycle, see 'The Starkness of Earth' and 'Poet and Priest' in The Wild Bird's Nest,'The Praise of Fuinn' in Three Old Brothers, and 'Oisin' and 'May' in Lords and Commons. For Irish-language source and literal translation, see pp. 204-6.)

Sleep a little little yet,

Little one, who needs may fret.

You I give my heart to keep

Now as ever, therefore sleep.

Sleep! Until this night be past

I shall watch and you shall rest,

You shall rest as I have done -

Sleep and bid all fear begone.

Blessings on you, sleep-beguiled

Be tonight but as a child

In this land above the lake

Where the darkened torrents wake.

Sleep thou then the southern sleep

Of that great voice whose songs we keep,

Who from Lord Conall for his prey

Took Morann's lovely child away.5

As in the northern land sleep sound

The sleep that starry Fioncha found

Who from the house of Falvey won

The bright-eyed Slaney for his own.6

Or that fair western sleep he slept

Who from the narrow causeway stept

In Dernish, guiding in the night

His lady by the torches' light.7

Or Daga's sleep who in the east

Lay with head on Coinchenn's breast,

All-forgetting as the dead

In that sleep what arm he fled.8

Light beyond the light of Greece,

I am watching, sleep in peace.

Were we parted, for your sake

What should the heart do but break?

Were we parted, all should part,

Children of one home and heart,

And the soul and body too,

Were we parted, I and you.

Now that the hounds are up and out,

And the watchful spears about,

Thee no deathly love come near,

Nor in the long sleep hold thee dear.

The stag lays not his side to sleep

For bellowing from his mountain keep;

He walks the woods and yet no glade

Lures him to sleep within its shade.

Sleep comes not unto the deer

That calls and calls her young to her;

From crag to crag she may go leap,

And climb her hills, she will not sleep.

Nor sleep will they within their house

Who flutter through the twining boughs,

And start from branch to branch and peep;

Among the leaves they will not sleep.

The duck that bears her brood tonight

May furrow the wide waters bright

Or e'er to any nest she creep;

Among the reeds she will not sleep.

The curlew cannot rest at all

Within his wide, wind-haunted hall;

His cry is shrill; upon the steep,

Among the streams he will not sleep -

Sleep a little.9

THE STARKNESS OF EARTH

(The original is part of Acallamh na Senórach [Colloquy of the Ancients], a medieval compilation of materials from the Fionn cycle in which Oisín and the warrior Caoilte mac Rónáin, having survived into the fifth century, tell St Patrick of the exploits of the third-century Fianna. The Acallamh has been dated to the twelfth century. In a prefatory note to this translation in Kings, Lords, and Commons, O'Connor describes Caoilte as 'another of the revenant figures who return to Ireland where, because of St Patrick, everything seems to have become cheapened and diminished'. For...