The Kiltartan Poetry Book | Page 4

with its wind twisted beech and storm bent sycamore. Even my own home "sweet Coole demesne" has been transfigured in songs of the neighbourhood; and a while ago an old woman asking alms at the door while speaking of a monastery near Athenry broke into a chant of praise that has in it perhaps some memory of the Well of Healing at the world's end that helped the gods to new strength in their great battle at Moytura. "Three barrels there are with water, and to see the first barrel boiling it is certain you will get a cure. Water there does be rushing down; you to stop you could hear it talking; to go there you would get cured of anything unless it might be the stroke of the Fool."
VII
In translating these poems I have chosen to do so in the speech of the thatched houses where I have heard and gathered them. _An Craoibhin_ had already used this Gaelic construction, these Elizabethan phrases, in translating the Love Songs of Connacht, as I have used it even in my creative work. Synge had not yet used it when he found in my Cuchulain of Muirthemne "the dialect he had been trying to master," and of which he afterwards made such splendid use. Most of the translations in this book have already been printed in Cuchulain of Muirthemne_, _Gods and Fighting Men, Saints and Wonders_, and _Poets and Dreamers. When in the first month of the new year I began to choose from among them, it seemed strange to me that the laments so far outnumbered any songs of joy. But before that month was out news was brought to me that made the keening of women for the brave and of those who are left lonely after the young seem to be but the natural outcome and expression of human life.
AUGUSTA GREGORY.
COOLE, May, 1918.
CONTENTS
The Grief of a Girl's Heart?A Lament for Fair-Haired Donough that Was Hanged in Galway?Raftery's Praise of Mary Hynes?His Lament for O'Daly?His Praise of the Little Hill and the Plains of Mayo?His Lament for O'Kelly?His Vision of Death?His Repentance?His Answer when Some Stranger Aske Who He Was?A Blessing on Patrick Sarsfield?An Aran Maid's Wedding?A Poem Written in Time of Trouble by an Irish Priest Who Had Taken
Orders in France?The Heart of the Wood?An Croaibhin Complain Because He Is a Poet?He Cries Out Against Love?He Meditates on the Life of a Rich Man?Forgaill's Praise of Columcille?The Deer's Cry?The Hymn of Molling's Guest, the Man Full of Trouble?The Hag of Beare?The Seven Heavens?The Journey of the Sun?The Nature of the Stars?The Call to Bran?The Army of the Sidhe?Credhe's Complaint at the Battle of the White Strand?A Sleepy Song that Grania Used to Be Singing Over Diarmuid the Time
They Were Wandering and Hiding From Finn?Her Song to Rouse Him from Sleep?Her Lament for His Death?The Parting of Goll and His Wife?The Death of Osgar?Oisin's Vision?His Praise of Finn?Oisin after the Fenians?The Foretelling of Cathbad the Druid?At Deidre's Birth?Deirdre's Lament for the Sons of Usnach?Emer's Lament for Cuchulain
THE KILTARTAN POETRY BOOK
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