Against drowning, against wounding,
So that there may come to me abundance of reward.
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every one who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.
Kuno Meyer
from The Calendar of Oengus
The Downfall of Heathendom
Ailill the king is vanished,
Vanished Croghan’s fort,
Kings to Clonmacnois
Come to pay their court.
In quiet Clonmacnois
About Saint Kieran’s feet
Everlasting quires
Raise a concert sweet.
Allen and its lords
Both are overthrown,
Brigid’s house is full,
Far her fame has flown.
Navan town is shattered,
Ruins everywhere;
Glendalough remains,
Half a world is there.
Ferns is a blazing torch,
Ferns is great and good,
But Beg, son of Owen,
And his proud hosts are dead.
Old haunts of the heathen
Filled from ancient days
Are but deserts now
Where no pilgrim prays.
Little places taken
First by twos and threes
Are like Rome reborn,
Peopled sanctuaries.
Heathendom has gone down
Though it was everywhere;
God the Father’s kingdom
Fills heaven and earth and air.
Sing the kings defeated!
Sing the Donals down!
Clonmacnois triumphant,
Cronan with the crown.
All the hills of evil,
Level now they lie;
All the quiet valleys
Tossed up to the sky.
Frank O’Connor
Patrick’s Blessing on Munster
God’s blessing upon Munster,
Men, women, children!
A blessing on the land
Which gives them fruit!
A blessing on every wealth
Which is brought forth on their marches!
No one to be in want of help:
God’s blessing upon Munster!
A blessing on their peaks,
On their bare flagstones,
A blessing on their glens,
A blessing on their ridges!
Like sand of sea under ships
Be the number of their hearths:
On slopes, on plains,
On mountainsides, on peaks.
Kuno Meyer
Writing Out of Doors
A wall of forest looms above
and sweetly the blackbird sings;
all the birds make melody
over me and my books and things.
There sings to me the cuckoo
from bush-citadels in grey hood.
God’s doom! May the Lord protect me
writing well, under the great wood.
James Carney
Monasticism
ANONYMOUS
The Hermit’s Song (Marbán to Guaire)
A hiding tuft, a green-barked yew-tree
Is my roof,
While nearby a great oak keeps me
Tempest-proof.
I can pick my fruit from an apple
Like an inn,
Or can fill my fist where hazels
Shut me in.
A clear well beside me offers
Best of drink,
And there grows a bed of cresses
Near its brink.
Pigs and goats, the friendliest neighbours,
Nestle near,
Wild swine come, or broods of badgers,
Grazing deer.
All the gentry of the county
Come to call!
And the foxes come behind them,
Best of all.
To what meals the woods invite me
All about!
There are water, herbs and cresses,
Salmon, trout.
A clutch of eggs, sweet mast and honey
Are my meat,
Heathberries and whortleberries
For a sweet.
All that one could ask for comfort
Round me grows,
There are hips and haws and strawberries,
Nuts and sloes.
And when summer spreads its mantle
What a sight!
Marjoram and leeks and pignuts,
Juicy, bright.
Dainty redbreasts briskly forage
Every bush,
Round and round my hut there flutter
Swallow, thrush.
Bees and beetles, music-makers,
Croon and strum;
Geese pass over, duck in autumn,
Dark streams hum.
Angry wren, officious linnet
And black-cap,
All industrious, and the woodpeckers’
Sturdy tap.
From the sea the gulls and herons
Flutter in,
While in upland heather rises
The grey hen.
In the year’s most brilliant weather
Heifers low
Through green fields, not driven nor beaten,
Tranquil, slow.
In wreathed boughs the wind is whispering,
Skies are blue,
Swans call, river water falling
Is calling too.
Frank O’Connor
The Priest Rediscovers His Psalm-Book
How good to hear your voice again,
Old love, no longer young, but true,
As when in Ulster I grew up
And we were bedmates, I and you.
When first they put us twain to bed,
My love who speaks the tongue of Heaven,
I was a boy with no bad thoughts,
A modest youth, and barely seven.
We wandered Ireland over then,
Our souls and bodies free of blame,
My foolish face aglow with love,
An idiot without fear of blame.
Yours was the counsel that I sought
Wherever we went wandering;
Better I found your subtle thought
Than idle converse with some king.
You slept with four men after that,
Yet never sinned in leaving me,
And now a virgin you return –
I say but what all men can see.
For safe within my arms again,
Weary of wandering many ways,
The face I love is shadowed now
Though lust attends not its last days.
Faultless my old love seeks me out;
I welcome her with joyous heart –
My dear, you would not have me lost,
With you I’ll learn that holy art.
Since all the world your praises sings,
And all acclaim your wanderings past
I have but to heed your counsel sweet
To find myself with God at last.
You are a token and a sign
To men of what all men must heed;
Each day your lovers learn anew
God’s praise is all the skill they need.
So may He grant me by your grace
A quiet end, an easy mind,
And light my pathway
with His face
When the dead flesh is left behind.
Frank O’Connor
Straying Thoughts
Shame on these thoughts of mine
that dart every way
they are piling up trouble
for Judgement Day
At Psalms they dander
down unapproved roads
run riot in the face
of all-seeing God
Through bustling crowds
through gaggles of girls
through woods through cities
they swagger and swirl
Along paved highways
they strut in their pride
down desert tracks
insidiously sidle
Without need of a ship
they sail the salt seas
with no springboard in sight
vault to the skies
They follow paths of folly
to east and west
and when tired stravaiging
drop home for a rest
Where I try to restrain them
and hobble their feet
but they run from their shackles
into the street
There knifeblade and horsewhip
can’t bring them to heel
and they slip through stretched fingers
like slithering eels
No firmvaulted dungeon
or lock of hard iron
no fosse or thick fortress
hampers their run
O dear Christ, my darling
forgiver of the weak
send your sevenfold spirit
render them meek
Take over my mind
dear Lord God of All
til my thoughts serve you duly
obeying your call
Your love is perfection
and that is what I seek,
to be like you, not like me –
straying, fickle, weak.
PC
Myself and Pangur
Myself and Pangur, my white cat,
have much the same calling, in that
much as Pangur goes after mice
I go hunting for the precise
word. He and I are much the same
in that I’m gladly ‘lost to fame’
when on the Georgics, say, I’m bent
while he seems perfectly content
with his lot. Life in the cloister
can’t possibly lose its lustre
so long as there’s some crucial point
with which we might by leaps and bounds
yet grapple, into which yet sink
our teeth. The bold Pangur will think
through mouse-snagging much as I muse
on something naggingly abstruse,
then fix his clear, unflinching eye
on our lime-white cell wall, while I
focus, in so far as I can,
on the limits of what a man
may know. Something of his rapture
at his most recent mouse-capture
I share when I, too, get to grips
with what has given me the slip.
And so we while away our whiles,
never cramping each other’s styles
but practising the noble arts
that so lift and lighten our hearts,
Pangur going in for the kill
with all his customary skill
while I, sharp-witted, swift and sure,
shed light on what had seemed obscure.
Paul Muldoon
Celibacy
Little bell,
clinking through the gusty night,
sweeter your call
than a wanton girl’s moan of delight.
PC
EARL ROGNVALD OF ORKNEY
(d.1158)
Irish Monks on a Rocky Island
Sixteen women tripping on the shore –
I’ve seen them: forelocks hanging down,
each chin a field shorn
of stubble, smoother than a grey dragon’s.
We’ll chance a claim
that these insular dames
out west, butt-up to the storm,
are mostly bald as babies’ bums.
Kit Fryatt (Old Norse)
Devotional Poems
ANONYMOUS
Eve
I am Eve, great Adam’s wife,
I that wrought my children’s loss,
I that wronged Jesus of life,
Mine by right had been the cross.
I a kingly house forsook,
Ill my choice and my disgrace,
Ill the counsel that I took
Withering me and all my race.
I that brought winter in
And the windy glistening sky,
I that brought sorrow and sin,
Hell and pain and terror, I.
Thomas MacDonagh
The Massacre of the Innocents
FIRST WOMAN
Why do you tear me from my love,
my body’s fruit,
me who brought him into the world?
mine were the breasts he sucked
mine the womb that carried him
mine the bowels that sheltered him
mine the heart he satisfied
mine the life he glorified
mine the death to lose him
mine the strength that faltered
mine the speech that failed
mine the sight blinded with crying.
SECOND WOMAN
You take my son
who did no wrong –
please slaughter me
and not him;
my breasts run dry
my eyes overflow
my hands tremble
my body crumples
my husband heirless
myself senseless
my life my death
my only son (dear God!)
my work unpaid
my travail without issue
unavenged forever
my breasts crushed
my heart tattered.
THIRD WOMAN
Looking for one
you kill all
you slaughter the children
you maim the fathers
you ruin the mothers
you’ve opened hell
closed heaven
and spilled the blood of the godly without cause.
FOURTH WOMAN
Come to me, Christ
take my life quickly
along with my son’s
and come great Mary
mother of God’s Son
tell me what
I can do
without a son.
For your Son
my soul and mind have been destroyed;
I am astray in the head
surviving my son;
my heart will stiffen
a drying bloodclot
from the killings today
to the end of all.
PC
BLATHMAC, SON OF CÚ BRETTAN (fl.750)
from To Mary and Her Son
May I have from you my three petitions,
beautiful Mary, little white-necked one;
get them, sun amongst women,
from your son who has them in his power.
That I may be in the world till old
serving the Lord who rules starry heaven,
and that then there be a welcome for me
into the eternal, ever-enduring kingdom.
That everyone who uses this as a vigil prayer
at lying down and at rising,
that it may protect him from blemish in the other world
like a breastplate and helmet.
Everyone of any sort who shall recite it
fasting on Friday night,
provided only that it be with full-flowing tears,
Mary, may he not be for hell.
When your son comes in anger
with hi
s cross on his reddened back,
that then you will save
any friend who shall have keened him.
For you, beautiful Mary,
I shall go as guarantor:
anyone who says the full keen,
he shall have his reward.
I call you with true words,
Mary, beautiful queen,
that we may have talk together
to pity your heart’s darling.
So that I may keen the bright Christ
with you in the most heartfelt way,
shining precious jewel,
mother of the great Lord.
Were I rich and honoured
ruling the people of the world to every sea,
they would all come with you and me
to keen your royal son.
There would be beating of hands
by women, children and men,
that they might keen on every hill-top
the king who made every star.
James Carney
ANONYMOUS
from The Metrical Translation of the Gospel of St Thomas
Jesus and the Sparrows
The little lad, five years of age
– Son of the living God –
Twelve puddles blessed he had just coaxed
From water and from mud.
Twelve statuettes he made then;
‘ “Sparrows” shall you be named’
He whispered to those perfect shapes
That Sabbath in his game.
‘Who plays with toys on the Sabbath Day?’
Spoke out an angry Jew
And marched the boy to Joseph,
His foster-father true.
‘What sort of brat have you brought up
That wastes his sacred time
Scrabbling in mud on the Sabbath Day
To make bird-dolls from slime?’
At that the lad clapped two small hands
And with sweet piping words
Called on the dolls before their eyes
To rise as living birds.
No music heard was ever sweeter
Than the music from his mouth
When he told those birds ‘Fly to your homes
To east and west and south.’
The story spread throughout the land
And is heard down to this day
And all who hear it still can hear
The sparrows’ voices pray.
PC
St Ite’s Song
Jesukin
stays with me day out, day in;
no loutish priest-spawned lodger he
but my own dear Jesukin.
The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry Page 9