All the way to lovely Kerry,
And all the way back
To the parish of Cullen:
Áthán with its smooth saplings,
Drishane with its high castle,
Far Prothus with its elder-tree,
Rathcoole for good company,
Gortbrack with its headstones,
And Booleymore beside it,
And one I forgot to mention,
So I turn and go back
To the Black Cow’s Ridge.
Dear love and pet,
You’ll come with me
To limewashed Drishane
With its dazzling castle,
The finest in Ireland,
If it only had a harbour.
But even without one,
It has honey and beeswax,
Wheat in thick swathes
Overlapping on the ground,
And besides all that,
The place is a holy one!
My friend and my darling,
I’ll take you with me
To fragrant Drishane
With its four-cornered castle –
With sweet-smelling berries,
Beech-nuts knee high,
Gentle cows lowing
On a fine dewy morning,
Ready for milking.
My love and my dear!
I very much fear
That a low stony cell
In the graveyard’s east side
Is where you’ve chosen to lie.
Angela Bourke
MORIAN SHEHONE
(fl. c.1850?)
Lament of Morian Shehone for Miss Mary Bourke from an Irish keen
‘There’s darkness in thy dwelling-place, and silence reigns above,
And Mary’s voice is heard no more, like the soft voice of love.
Yes! thou art gone, my Mary dear! and Morian Shehone
Is left to sing his song of woe, and wail for thee alone.
O! snow-white were thy virtues – the beautiful, the young,
The old with pleasure bent to hear the music of thy tongue:
The young with rapture gazed on thee, and their hearts in love were bound,
For thou wast brighter than the sun that sheds its light around.
My soul is dark, O Mary dear! thy sun of beauty’s set;
The sorrowful are dumb for thee – the grieved their tears forget;
And I am left to pour my woe above thy grave alone;
For dear wert thou to the fond heart of Morian Shehone.
Fast-flowing tears above the grave of the rich man are shed,
But they are dried when the cold stone shuts in his narrow bed;
Not so with my heart’s faithful love – the dark grave cannot hide
From Morian’s eyes thy form of grace, of loveliness, and pride.
Thou didst not fall like the sere leaf, when autumn’s chill winds blow –
’Twas a tempest and a storm-blast that has laid my Mary low.
Hadst thou not friends that loved thee well? hadst thou not garments rare?
Wast thou not happy, Mary? wast thou not young and fair?
Then why should the dread spoiler come, my heart’s peace to destroy,
Or the grim tyrant tear from me my all of earthly joy?
O! am I left to pour my woes above thy grave alone?
Thou idol of the faithful heart of Morian Shehone!
Sweet were thy looks and sweet thy smiles, and kind wast thou to all;
The withering scowl of envy on thy fortunes dared not fall;
For thee thy friends lament and mourn, and never cease to weep –
O! that their lamentations could awake thee from thy sleep!
O! that thy peerless form again could meet my loving clasp!
O! that the cold damp hand of Death could loose his iron grasp!
Yet, when the valley’s daughters meet beneath the tall elm tree,
And talk of Mary as a dream that never more shall be,
Then may thy spirit float around, like music in the air,
And pour upon their virgin souls a blessing and a prayer.
O! am I left to pour my wail above thy grave alone?’
Then sinks in silence the lament of Morian Shehone!
Anonymous
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
(1824–89)
from Invitation to a Painter (Sent from the West of Ireland)
I
Flee from London, good my Walter! boundless jail of bricks and gas,
Weary purgatorial flagstones, dreary parks of burnt-up grass,
Exhibitions, evening parties, dust and swelter, glare and crush,
Fashion’s costly idle pomp, Mammon’s furious race and rush;
Leave your hot tumultuous city for the breaker’s rival roar,
Quit your small suburban garden for the rude hills by the shore,
Leagues of smoke for morning vapour lifted off a mountain-range,
Silk and lace for barefoot beauty, and for ‘something new and strange’
All your towny wit and gossip. You shall both in field and fair,
Paddy’s cunning and politeness with the Cockney ways compare,
Catch those lilts and old-world tunes maidens at their needle sing,
Peep at dancers, from an outskirt of the blithe applausive ring,
See our petty Court of Justice, where the swearing’s very strong,
See our little plain St Peter’s with its kneeling peasant throng;
Hear the brogue and Gaelic round you; sketch a hundred Irish scenes
(Not mere whisky and shillelagh) – wedding banquets, funeral keens;
Rove at pleasure, noon or midnight; change a word with all you meet;
Ten times safer than in England, far less trammelled in your feet.
Here, the only danger known
Is walking where the land’s your own.
Landscape-lords are left alone.
V
Now I’ve thought of something! mind me, for no artist’s clever sake,
Merely artist, should I dare to sit his comrade at a Wake;
You’re at home with tears and laughter, friend of mine, and bear a heart
Full of sympathetic kindness, taking every brother’s part.
Through the mob that fills the kitchen, clouded with tobacco-fume,
Joking, singing – we have cross’d the threshold of that inside room
Where the seniors and relations sitting gravely by the wall
Speak in murmurs; on a table, lighted candles thick and tall;
Straight the bed-quilt and the curtains; on the pillow calm within
A moveless Face with close-shut eyelids and a cloth about the chin,
Under a crucifix. You see: and sideways through the open door
Laughing looks and odd grimaces, and you hear a blithe uproar
From the youthful merrymakers. Kneeling silent by the bed
Prays a woman; weeps a woman, rocking, sobbing, at its head,
Nigh the Face, which spoke this morning, unregarding, undiscerning.
Louder bursts the lively voices; wearily the candles burning;
Elders gravely on the whisper; Time for ever slowly turning;
Bringing round the book and spade,
Another hillock duly made,
The cottage swept, the grief allayed.
VI
Ere we part at winter’s portal, I shall row you of a night
On a swirling Stygian river, to a ghostly yellow light.
When the nights are black and gusty, then do eels in myriads glide
Through the pools and down the rapids, hurrying to the ocean-tide,
(But they fear the frost or moonshine, in their mud beds coiling close)
And the wearmen, on the platform of that pigmy water-house
Built among the river-currents, with a dam to either bank,
Pull the purse-net’s heavy end to swing across their wooden tank,
Ere they loose the cord about it, then a
slimy wriggling heap
Falls with splashing, where a thousand fellow-prisoners heave and creep.
Chill winds roar above the wearmen, darkling rush the floods below;
There they watch and work their eel-nets, till the late dawn lets them go.
There we’ll join their eely supper, bearing smoke the best we can,
(House’s furniture a salt-box, truss of straw, and frying-pan),
Hearken Con’s astounding stories, how a mythologic eel
Chased a man o’er miles of country, swallowed two dogs at a meal,
To the hissing, bubbling music of the pan and pratie-pot.
Denser grows the reek around us, each like Mussulman a-squat,
Each with victuals in his fingers, we devour them hot and hot;
Smoky rays our lantern throwing,
Ruddy peat-fire warmly glowing,
Noisily the river flowing.
The Abbot of Inisfalen (A Killarney Legend)
I
The Abbot of Inisfalen awoke ere dawn of day;
Under the dewy green leaves went he forth to pray.
The lake around his island lay smooth and dark and deep,
And wrapt in a misty stillness the mountains were all asleep.
Low kneeled the Abbot Cormac when the dawn was dim and gray;
The prayers of his holy office he faithfully ’gan say.
Low kneeled the Abbot Cormac while the dawn was waxing red;
And for his sins’ forgiveness a solemn prayer he said:
Low kneeled that holy Abbot while the dawn was waxing clear;
And he prayed with loving-kindness for his convent-brethren dear.
Low kneeled that blessed Abbot while the dawn was waxing bright;
He prayed a great prayer for Ireland, he prayed with all his might.
Low kneeled that good old Father while the sun began to dart;
He prayed a prayer for all men, he prayed it from his heart.
His blissful soul was in Heaven, though a breathing man was he;
He was out of time’s dominion, so far as the living may be.
II
The Abbot of Inisfalen arose upon his feet;
He heard a small bird singing, and O but it sung sweet!
It sung upon a holly-bush, this little snow-white bird;
A song so full of gladness he never before had heard.
It sung upon a hazel, it sung upon a thorn;
He had never heard such music since the hour that he was born.
It sung upon a sycamore, it sung upon a briar;
To follow the song and hearken this Abbot could never tire.
Till at last he well bethought him; he might no longer stay;
So he blessed the little white singing-bird, and gladly went his way.
III
But, when he came to his Abbey, he found a wondrous wondrous change;
He saw no friendly faces there, for every face was strange.
The strange men spoke unto him; and he heard from all and each
The foreign tongue of the Sassenach, not wholesome Irish speech.
Then the oldest monk came forward, in Irish tongue spake he:
‘Thou wearest the holy Augustine’s dress, and who hath given it to thee?’
‘I wear the holy Augustine’s dress, and Cormac is my name,
The Abbot of this good Abbey by grace of God I am.
I went forth to pray, at the dawn of day; and when my prayers were said,
I hearkened awhile to a little bird, that sung above my head.’
The monks to him made answer, ‘Two hundred years have gone o’er,
Since our Abbot Cormac went through the gate, and never was heard of more.
Matthias now is our Abbot, and twenty have passed away.
The stranger is lord of Ireland; we live in an evil day.’
‘Days will come and go,’ he said, ‘and the world will pass away,
In Heaven a day is a thousand years, a thousand years are a day.’
IV
‘Now give me absolution; for my time is come,’ said he.
And they gave him absolution, as speedily as might be.
Then, close outside the window, the sweetest song they heard
That ever yet since the world began was uttered by any bird.
The monks looked out and saw the bird, its feathers all white and clean;
And there in a moment, beside it, another white bird was seen.
Those two they sang together, waved their white wings, and fled;
Flew aloft, and vanished; but the good old man was dead.
They buried his blessed body where lake and green-sward meet;
A carven cross above his head, a holly-bush at his feet;
Where spreads the beautiful water to gay or cloudy skies,
And the purple peaks of Killarney from ancient woods arise.
from Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland
from Chapter II: Neighbouring Landlords
Unlike this careful management (between
The two, Sir Ulick’s townlands intervene)
Is that of Termon on the river-side,
Domain and mansion of insolvent pride,
Where Dysart, drawing from ancestral ground
One sterling penny for each phantom pound
Of rent-roll, lives, when all the truth is known,
Mere factor in the place he calls his own;
Through mortgages and bonds, one wide-spread maze,
Steps, dances, doubles round by devious ways,
While creditor, to creditor a foe,
Hangs dubious o’er the vast imbroglio.
And thus, minute in bargain where he can,
There, closing quick with ready-money man,
Despised for cunning, and for malice feared,
Yet still by custom and old name endeared
To Celtic minds, who also better like
A rule of thumb than Gough’s arithmetic, –
Dysart has shuffled on, to this good day,
Let creditors and courts do what they may.
The house is wondrous large, and wondrous mean;
Its likeness year by year more rarely seen;
A ragged billiard-table decks the hall,
Abandoned long ago of cue and ball,
With whips and tools and garments littered o’er,
And lurking dogs possess the dangerous floor.
Ghost, from Proconsul Rutland’s time, show in
To this great shabby room, which heard the din
Of bet and handicap, oath, toast, and song,
From squires and younger sons, a vanished throng,
Who drank much wine, who many foxes slew,
Hunted themselves by creditors all through,
And caught at last, or fairly run to earth;
A cold and ghastly room of bygone mirth.
Above the dusty fox’s-brush see hung
Our grandpapa the Major, spruce and young,
In faded scarlet; on that other side
The needy Viscount’s daughter, his fair bride;
And many portraits with once-famous names,
Of ancestors and horses, dogs and dames,
Now damp, or smutched, or dropping from their frames.
Big doleful house it is, with many a leak;
With dingy passages and bedrooms bleak;
With broken window-panes and mildewed walls;
With grass-grown courtyard and deserted stalls
That proudly echoed to the hunting-stud,
Where still one stable shows its ‘bit of blood’.
Tom is not wed; long wed is brother Hugh;
They seldom meet, and quarrel when they do.
Tom is a staunch good Protestant by creed,
But half a Mormon, judged by act and deed;
A dozen wives he has, but underhand,
Sub rosa, not confessed, you understand,
And this makes all the difference, of course.
His pretty little babes, except perforce,
He never knows, and never wants to know;
Yet, clippings of his purse must that way go.
from Chapter V: Ballytullagh
Old Father Flynn and his plain chapel walls
Are both no more; from a great steeple calls
A bell that dins the rival church to shame,
And pseudo-gothic art asserts its claim
For pence and wonder in the unfinished pile,
A dull burlesque on mediaeval style,
Stone nightmare, lumpish, set with eye and horn,
Of architectural indigestion born.
Roofless and ruined each old stately fane,
Or if a living voice in some remain,
The rich usurper’s – now on Irish skies
These new-born proofs of ancient faith arise.
Adair, the zealous, careful parish priest,
Is gentle, smooth, and mild to man and beast,
With comely presence and colloquial skill,
Of secret thoughts, and cool tenacious will;
An Irish mitre is perhaps his hope;
A proper man for cardinal or pope.
Outside the Church, all teaching is a crime,
All strength diabolism: he bides his time
To gain at last the public purse for schools
In strict accordancy with holy rules;
The dark unlawful oath he blames no less
Than Pigot; all must One Great Power confess.
(What Power? – enough! each wandering thought suppress.)
Likes not England’s rule, nor will he curse;
The Church’s children’s oft times please him worse;
Dark oaths and alien bonds are things of sin;
Yet agitation doth concession win;
He favours loyalty of much that kind
Which in a doubtful-tempered dog you find,
That fawns and growls, obeys and shows his teeth, –
Servility with danger underneath;
For so must selfish England understand
That Ireland is not wholly in her hand,
Yet want that old excuse to knit a frown,
Cry ‘rebel!’ and with fury smite her down.
Irish Republic? – Irish Kingdom? – none
Could less desire such thing beneath the sun
Than Father John Adair: your ship may roll,
But will you run her straight on rock or shoal
The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry Page 47