The Kiltartan Poetry Book | Page 4

place that the sun shines on, and the wind does not rise there or
anything of the sort," and where as he says in another poem "logwood
and mahogany" grow in company 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