Chapter VI (2)

And when I looked through the lately gathered bundle of songs again, and through some old collections of Jacobite songs in Irish, I found they almost all belonged to Munster. And if they are still sung there, it is not, I think, for the sake of the kings, but for the sake of the poets who made them--Red-haired Owen O'Sullivan, potato-digger, harvestman, hedge-schoolmaster, whose poems are still the joy of the Munster people; O'Rahilly, more learned, and as boundlessly redundant; O'Donnell, whose heart was set on translating Homer into Irish; O'Heffernan, the blind wanderer; and many others. For the Munstermen have always been more 'prone to versify' than their leaner neighbours on the bogs and stones of Connaught.

There is a common formula for most of these songs or 'Visions,' _Aislinghe_, as they are called. Just as artists of to-day find no monotony in drawing Ireland over and over again with her harp, her wolf-dog, and her round tower, so the Munster poets found no monotony in representing her as a beautiful woman, white-skinned, with curling hair, with cheeks in which 'the lily and the rose were fighting for mastery.' The poet asks her if she is Venus, or Helen, or Deirdre, and describes her beauty in torrents of alliterative adjectives. Then she makes her complaint against England, or her lament for her own sorrows or for the loss of her Stuart lover, spoken of sometimes as 'the bricklayer,' or 'the merchant's son.' The framework is artificial; but the laments are often very pathetic the love of Ireland, and the hatred of England born of that love, finding expression in them.

John O'Donnell sees her 'like a young queen that is going astray for the king being banished from her, that had a right to come and set her loose.' O'Rahilly, in one of his poems, shows the beautiful woman held to her Saxon lover by some strange enchantment:--

'I met brightness of brightness upon the path of loneliness;
plaiting of plaiting in every lock of her yellow hair. News of news
she gave me, and she as lonely as she was; news of the coming back
of him that owns the tribute of the king.

'Folly of follies I to go so near to her; slave I was made by a
slave that put me in hard bonds. She made away from me then, and I
following after her, till we came to a house of houses made by
Druid enchantments.

'They broke into mocking laughter, a troop of men of enchantments,
and a troop of young girls with smooth-plaited hair. They put me up
in chains; they made no delay about it; and my love holding to her
breast an awkward ugly clown.

'I told her then with the truest words I could tell her, it was not
right for her to be joined with a common clumsy churl; and the man
that was three times fairer than the whole race of the Scots,
waiting till she would come to him to be his beautiful bride.

'At the sound of my words her pride set her crying; the tears were
running down over the kindling of her cheeks. She sent a lad to
bring me safe from the place I was in. She is the brightness of
brightness I met in the path of loneliness.'

Sometimes the Stuart is almost forgotten in the story of sorrows and the indictment of England. O'Heffernan complains in one of his songs that many of the heroes of Ireland have passed away, and their names have never been put in a song by the poets; 'and they even leave their verses without any account of Charles the wanderer, though I promise you they are not satisfied without giving some lines on Seaghan Buidhe' (one of the names for England). Yet he himself, when very downhearted, 'on the edge of the great wood under a harsh cloak of sorrow,' is cheered by the pleasant sound of a swarm of bees in search of their ruler; and with the pleasant thought that 'the harvest will be a bad one and with no joy in it to Seaghan. George will be sent back over the sea, and the tribe that was so high up will be left without gold or townlands; and I not pitying their sorrow.' And he winds up: 'In Shronehill, if I were stretched at rest under a hard flag, and to hear this story moving about so pleasantly, by force and strength of my shoulders I would throw the sod off me; and I coming back leaping to hear the news.'

And another writer, Seaghan Clarach, looks forward to seeing 'timid George tame upon the road, without wine, without meat, without thread for his shoes.' And his last verse, his 'binding,' is, 'I beseech of God, I ask and I pray very hard, to cast out the gluttons that tormented the generous race of the Gael, from the island of the west, under hard bonds, and to banish the foreign devils from us.'

For poets and people found it hard to forget Cromwell; and how 'the sons of the Gael are scorched, tormented, pitchforked, put under the yoke, by boors that are used to doing treachery.'

When the Stuarts come to mind, they are given fair words enough. 'The prince and heart-secret Charles that is sorrowful now and under weariness ... will be under esteem; and the Gael pleasant in the lime-white house.' ... 'It is friendly, fair bright, companionable, loving, brave, Charles will be, with sway, without a mist about him.'

And in one of Red Owen's 'Visions' he is told not to forget James, who is 'persevering, well-tempered, affectionate, stout, sweet, kind, poetical.'

Yet the Stuart seems to be always a faint and unreal image; a saint by whose name a heavy oath is sworn. There are no personal touches such as I find in a song taken down from some countryman, on Patrick Sarsfield, the brave, handsome fighter, the descendant of Conall Cearnach, the man who, after the Boyne, offered to 'change kings and fight the battle again.' This ballad seems to have more of Connaught simplicity than of Munster luxuriance in it:--

'O Patrick Sarsfield, health be to you, since you went to France
and your camps were loosened; making your sighs along with the
king, and you left poor Ireland and the Gael defeated--Och ochone!

'O Patrick Sarsfield, it is a man with God you are; and blessed is
the earth you ever walked on. The blessing of the bright sun and
the moon upon you, since you took the day from the hands of King
William--Och ochone!

'O Patrick Sarsfield, the prayer of every person with you; my own
prayer and the prayer of the Son of Mary with you, since you took
the narrow ford going through Biorra, and since at Cuilenn O'Cuanac
you won Limerick--Och ochone!

'I will go up on the mountain alone; and I will come hither from it
again. It is there I saw the camp of the Gael, the poor troop
thinned, not keeping with one another--Och ochone!

'My five hundred healths to you, halls of Limerick, and to the
beautiful troop was in our company; it is bonfires we used to have
and playing cards, and the word of God was often with us--Och
ochone!

'There were many soldiers glad and happy that were going the way
through seven weeks; but now they are stretched down in
Aughrim--Och ochone!

'They put the first breaking on us at the Bridge of the Boyne; the
second breaking on the Bridge of Slaney; the third breaking in
Aughrim of O'Kelly; and O sweet Ireland, my five hundred healths to
you--Och ochone!

'O'Kelly has manuring for his land, that is not sand or dung, but
ready soldiers doing bravery with pikes, that were left in Aughrim
stretched in ridges--Och ochone!

'Who is that beyond on the hill, Beinn Edair? I a poor soldier with
King James. I was last year in arms and in dress, but this year I
am asking alms--Och ochone!'

There are other symbolic songs besides the 'Visions.' Mangan's fine translation of Kathleen ni Houlihan is well known; and it is likely the king is calling to Ireland in '_Ceann dubh deelish_,' that is beautiful in all translations. This is _An Craoibhin's_:--

'The women of the village are in madness and trouble,
Pulling their hair and letting it go with the wind;
They will not take a boy of the men of the country
Till they go into the rout with the boys of the king.

'Black head, darling, darling, darling,
Black head, darling, move over to me;
Black head brighter than swan and than seagull,
It's a man without heart gives not love to thee.'

But most of the translations have been in the affected style of the early part of the last century twisting the sense to give what was thought to be a romantic turn. A verse of Seaghan Clarach's, for instance, the lament of a farmer 'who has been wrestling with the world': 'The two that belong to me are without shelter, and my yoke of cattle without grass, without growth; there is misery on my people and their elbows without sound clothes,' is turned into:--

'The loved ones my life would have nourished
Are foodless, and bare, and cold.
My flocks by their fountain that flourished
Decay on the mountain wold.'

But there is one mistranslation for whose sake we must forgive many others, for it has given the sad refrain that has often been on Irish lips:--

'Seaghan O'Dwyer a Gleanna,
We're worsted in the game!'

Here are one or two of the many verses sung to the Little Black Rose by her lovers, poor or royal:--

'There is love through and through me for you all the length of a
year; sore love, vexing love, lasting love, love that left me
without health, without a road, without running; and for ever,
ever, without any sway at all over my Fair Black Rose.

'I would travel through Munster with you, and the boundaries of the
hills, if I thought I could find your secret, or a part of your
love. O branch of the tree, it seems to me that you love me; that
the flower of kind women is my Fair Black Rose.'

'My heart leaps up with my bright Stuart!' James and Charles are, I think, the only English kings whose names, as it were by accident, have found their way into Irish song. And it is likely they are the last to find a place there, for the imagination of Ireland still tilts the beam to the national side; and the loyalty the poets of many hundred years have called for, is loyalty to Kathleen ni Houlihan. 'Have they not given her their wills, and their hearts, and their dreams? What have they left for any less noble Royalty?'

1902.

_AN CRAOIBHIN'S_ POEMS

'"I would much rather (and I take every occasion of making this protest) write, so to say, in a dead language and for a dead people, than write in those deaf and stammering (_sorde e mute_) tongues, French and English, notwithstanding they are the fashion with their rules and exercises." This is so with me. Alfieri wrote these words a hundred years ago, and they express what is in my own mind. I would like better to make even one good verse in the language in which I am now writing, than to make a whole book of verses in English. For if there should be any good found in my English verses, it would not go to the credit of my mother, Ireland, but of my stepmother, England.'

I have translated this from Douglas Hyde's preface to his little book of poems, lately published in Dublin, _Ubhla de'n Craoibh_, "Apples from the Branch." _An Craoibhin Aoibhin_, "The delightful little branch," is the name by which he is called all over Irish-speaking Ireland; and a gold branch bearing golden apples is stamped on the cover of his book. The poems had already been published, one by one, in a weekly paper; and a friend of mine tells me he has heard them sung and repeated by country people in many parts of Ireland--in Connemara, in Donegal, in Galway, in Kerry, in the Islands of Aran.

Three or four of the thirty-three poems the book holds are, so to speak, official, written for the Gaelic League by its president; and these, like most official odes, are only for the moment. Some are ballads dealing with the old subjects of Irish ballads--emigration, exile, defeat, and death; for Douglas Hyde, as may be guessed from his preface, has, no less than his fellows--

'Hidden in his heart the flame out of the eyes
Of Kathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.'

But these national ballads, though very popular, are, I think, not so good as his more personal poems. I suppose no narrative of what others have done or felt or suffered can move one like a flash from 'that little infinite, faltering, eternal flame that one calls oneself.' Even in my bare prose translation, this poem will, I think, be found to have as distinct a quality as that of Villon or of Heine:--

'There are three fine devils eating my heart--
They left me, my grief! without a thing;
Sickness wrought, and Love wrought,
And an empty pocket, my ruin and my woe.
Poverty left me without a shirt,
Barefooted, barelegged, without any covering;
Sickness left me with my head weak
And my body miserable, an ugly thing.
Love left me like a coal upon the floor,
Like a half-burned sod, that is never put out,
Worse than the cough, worse than the fever itself,
Worse than any curse at all under the sun,
Worse than the great poverty
Is the devil that is called "Love" by the people.
And if I were in my young youth again,
I would not take, or give, or ask for a kiss!'

The next, in the form of a little folk-song, expresses the thought of the idealist of all time, that makes him cry, as one of the oldest of the poets cried long ago, 'Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird; the birds round about are against her.' Yet, with its whimsical fancies and exaggerations, it could hardly have been written in any but Irish air.

'It's my grief that I am not a little white duck,
And I'd swim over the sea to France or to Spain;
I would not stay in Ireland for one week only,
To be without eating, without drinking, without a full jug.

'Without a full jug, without eating, without drinking,
Without a feast to get, without wine, without meat,
Without high dances, without a big name, without music;
There is hunger on me, and I astray this long time.

'It's my grief that I am not an old crow;
I would sit for awhile up on the old branch,
I could satisfy my hunger, and I not as I am,
With a grain of oats or a white potato.

'It's my grief that I am not a red fox,
Leaping strong and swift on the mountains,
Eating cocks and hens without pity,
Taking ducks and geese as a conqueror.

'It's my grief that I am not a fair salmon,
Going through the strong full water,
Catching the mayflies by my craft,
Swimming at my choice, and swimming with the stream.

'It's my grief that I am of the race of the poets;
It would be better for me to be a high rock,
Or a stone or a tree or an herb or a flower
Or anything at all, but the thing that I am.'

The sympathy of the moods of nature with the moods of man is a traditional heritage that has come to us through the poets, from the old time when the three great waves of the sea answered to a cry of distress in Ireland, or when, as in Israel, the land mourned and the herbs of every field withered, for the wickedness of them that dwelt therein. The sea, and the winds blowing from the sea, can never be very far from the dweller in Ireland; and they echo the loneliness of the lonely listener.

'Cold, sharp lamentation
In the cold bitter winds
Ever blowing across the sky;
Oh, there was loneliness with me!

'The loud sounding of the waves
Beating against the shore,
Their vast, rough, heavy outcry,
Oh, there was loneliness with me!

'The light sea-gulls in the air,
Crying sharply through the harbours,
The cries and screams of the birds
With my own heart! Oh! that was loneliness.

'The voice of the winds and the tide,
And the long battle of the mighty war;
The sea, the earth, the skies, the blowing of the winds.
Oh! there was loneliness in all of them together.'

Here is a verse from another poem of loneliness:--

'It is dark the night is; I do not see one star at all;
And it is dark and heavy my thoughts are that are scattered and
straying.
There is no sound about but of the birds going over my head--
The lapwing striking the air with long-drawn, weak blows
And the plover, that comes like a bullet, cutting the night with its
whistle;
And I hear the wild geese higher again with their rough screech.
But I do not hear any other sound, it is that increases my grief--
Not one other cry but the cry and the call of the birds on the bog.'

Here is another, in which the storm outside and the storm within answer to one another:--

'The heavy clouds are threatening,
And it's little but they'll take the roof off the house;
The heavy thunder is answering
To every flash of the yellow fire.
I, by myself, within in my room,
That is narrow, small, warm, am sitting,
I look at the surly skies,
And I listen to the wind.

'I was light, airy, lively,
On the young morning of yesterday;
But when the evening came,
I was like a dead man!
I have not one jot of hope
But for a bed in the clay;
Death is the same as life to me
From this out, from a word I heard yesterday.'

The next is very simple, and puts into more homely words the feeling of 'lonesomeness' that is looked upon as almost the worst of evils by the Irish countryman, as we see by his proverb: 'It is better to be quarreling than to be lonesome.' 'I would be lonesome in it,' is often the reason given for a refusal to go from bog or mountain cabin to some crowded place 'where there is not heed for one or love.'

'Oh! if there were in this world
Any nice little place,
To be my own, my own for ever,
My own only,
I would have great joy--great ease--
Beyond what I have,
Without a place in the world where I can say:
"This is my own."

It's a pity for a man to know,
And it's a pain,
That there is no place in the world
Where there is heed for him or love;
That there is not in the world for him
A heart or a hand
To give help to him
To the mering of the next world.

'It is hard and it is bitter,
And a sharp grief,
It is woe and it is pity,
To be by oneself.
It is nothing the way you are,
To anyone at all.
It is nothing the way you are,
To yourself at last!'

I suppose the following may be called a political poem, from its elusive reference to Home Rule. I was not sure on the point myself; for I thought the wearer of the 'blue cloak and birds' feathers,' must be a fine lady, perhaps laying enchantment on the fields. But I heard some one ask the _Craoibhin_ who he meant, and his answer was: 'I suppose I was thinking of an aide-de-camp':--

'I am looking at my cows walking,
What are you that would put me out of my luck?
Can I not walk, can I not walk, can I not walk in my own fields?

'I will not always be turned backwards.
If there is need to be humble to you, great is my grief,
If I cannot walk, if I cannot walk, if I cannot walk in my own fields.

'It's little my respect, and it's little my desire,
For your blue cloak, and your birds' feathers.
Can I not walk, can I not walk, can I not walk in my own fields?

'The day is coming as it's easy to see,
When there shall not be among us the ugly like of you.
And each one shall be walking, and each one shall be walking,
Wherever shall be his will and his own desire.'

There are some love songs in the little volume. But their writer has had, in his beautiful translations of the 'Love Songs of Connacht,' to put such intensity of passion into English, that he must despair of putting any new wings to passion, or any new exaggeration into lovers' words. In one of these Connacht songs, the lover says: 'Blacker is the sun when setting than your features, Mary!' And she answers back: 'Neither star nor sun shows one-third much light as your shadow!' Another lover says of the woman he desires: 'I will write largely of her, because of the thousands who hoped for her, and who have been lost; and a hundred men of these who still live, are in pain and under locks through love. And I myself am not free, but am a bondsman in bonds.' And another boasts of 'a love without littleness, without weakness; love from age till death, love from folly growing, love that shall send me close beneath the clay, love without a hope of the world, love without envy of fortune, love that left me outside in captivity, love of my heart beyond women.' Douglas Hyde's own love songs are quiet and staid in contrast to these; but nevertheless they have a sober charm. Here are the last verses of one of them:--

'Will you be as hard,
Colleen, as you are quiet?
Will you be without pity
On me for ever?

'Listen to me, Noireen,
Listen, aroon;
Put healing on me
From your quiet mouth.

'I am in the little road
That is dark and narrow,
The little road that has led
Thousands to sleep.'

In his preface to the 'Love Songs of Connacht' he says he finds in them 'more of grief and trouble, more of melancholy and contrition of heart, than of gaiety or hope'; and he writes: 'Not careless and light-hearted alone is the Gaelic nature; there is also beneath the loudest mirth a melancholy spirit; and if they let on to be without heed for anything but sport and revelry, there is nothing in it but letting on.' There is grief and trouble, as I have shown, in many of his own songs, which the people have taken to their hearts so quickly; but there is also a touch of hope, of glad belief that, in spite of heavy days of change, all things are working for good at the last.

Here are some verses from a poem called 'There is a Change coming':--

'When that time comes it will come heavily;
He will grow fat that was lean;
He will grow lean that was fat,
Without shelter for the head, without mirth, without help.

'The low will be raised up, says the poet;
The thing that was high will be thrown down again;
The world will be changed from end to end:
When that time comes it will come heavily.

'If you yourself see this thing coming,
And the country without luck, without law, without authority,
Swept with the storm, without knowledge, without strength,
Remember my words, and don't let your heart break.

'This life is like a tree;
The top green, branches soft, the bark smooth and shining;
But there is a little worm shut up in it
Sucking at the sap all through the day.

'But from this old, cold, withered tree,
A new plant will grow up;
The old world will die without pity,
But the young world will grow up on its grave.'

Here is a fine vision of a battle-field:--

'The time I think of the cause of Ireland
My heart is torn within me.

'The time I think of the death of the people
Who protected Ireland bravely and faithfully.

'They are stretched on the side of the mountain
Very low, one with another.

'Hidden under grass, or under tall herbs,
Far from friends or help or friendship.

'Not a child or a wife near them;
Not a priest to be found there or a friar;

'But the mountain eagle and the white eagle
Moving overhead across the skies.

'Without a defence against the sun in the daytime;
Without a shelter against the skies at night.

'It's many a good soldier, joyful and pleasant,
That has had his laughing mouth closed there.

'There is many a young breast with a hole through it;
The little black hole that is death to a man.

'There is many a brave man stripped there,
His body naked, without vest or shirt.

'The young man that was proud and beautiful yesterday,
When the woman he loved left a kiss on his mouth.

'There is many a married woman, with the child at her breast,
Without her comrade, without a father for her child to-night.

'There's many a castle without a lord, and many a lord without a house;
And little forsaken cabins with no one in them.

'I saw a fox leaving its den
Asking for a body to feed its hunger.

'There's a fierce wolf at Carrig O'Neill;
There is blood on his tongue and blood on his mouth.

'I saw them, and I heard the cries
Of kites and of black crows.

'Ochone! Is not the only Son of God angry;
Ochone! The red blood that was poured out yesterday!'

I do not know who the following poem was written about, or if it is about anyone in particular; but one line of it puts into words the emotion of many an Irish 'felon.' 'It is with the people I was; it is not with the law I was.' For the Irish crime, treason-felony, is only looked on as a crime in the eyes of the law, not in the eyes of the people:--

'I am lying in prison,
I am in bonds;
To-morrow I will be hanged,
Who am to-night so quiet,
So quiet;
Who am to-night so quiet.

'I am in prison,
My heart is cold and heavy;
To-morrow I will be hanged,
And there is no help for me,
My grief;
Och! there is no help for me.

'I am in prison,
And I did no wrong;
I only did the work
Was just, was right, was good,
I did,
Oh, I did the thing was good.

'It is with the people I was,
It is not with the law I was;
But they took me in my sleep,
On the side of Cnoc-na-Feigh;
And so
To-morrow they will hang me.'

'I am weak in my body,
I am vexed in my heart,
And to-morrow I will be hanged;
Lying beneath the clay,
My sorrow,
Lying beneath the clay.

'May God give pardon
To my vexed, sorrowful soul;
May God give mercy
To me now and forever,
Amen!
To me now and forever.'

But translation is poor work. Even if it gives a glimpse of the heart of a poem, too much is lost in losing the outward likeness. Here are the last lines of the lament of a felon's brother:--

'Now that you are stretched in the cold grave
May God set you free:
It's vexed and sorry and pitiful are my thoughts;
It's sorrowful I am to-day!'

I look at them and read them; and wonder why when I first read them, their sound had hung about me for days like a sobbing wind; but when I look at them in their own form, the sob is in them still:

Nois ann san uaigh fhuair ó tá tu sínte
Go saoraigh Dia thu
Is buaidhcartha, brónach bocht atá mo smaointe
Is bronach mé andhiú.

BOER BALLADS IN IRELAND

Yesterday I asked a woman on the Echtge hills, if any of her neighbours had gone to the war. She said: 'No; but I know a great many that went to America when the war began--even boys that had business to do at home; they were afraid of being brought away by the Press.' On another part of the Echtge hills, where a rumour had come that the police were to be sent to the war, an old woman said to a policeman I know: 'When you go out there, don't be killing the people of my religion.' He said: 'The Boers are not of your religion'; but she said: 'They are; I know they must be Catholics, or the English would not be against them.' Others on that wild range think that this is the beginning of the great war that will end in the final rout of the enemies of Ireland. Old prophecies say this war is to come at the meeting of these centuries; and there is an old Irish verse which seems to allude to this, and which has been thus translated:--

'When the Lion shall lose its strength,
And the bracket Thistle begin to pine,
The Harp shall sound sweet, sweet, at length,
Between the eight and the nine.'

Lonely Echtge still keeps old prophecies and old songs and some of the old speech, and but few newspapers are seen there; but on the lowland, sympathy with the Boers, and prophecies of their victory, are put into the doggerel English verse that must be poor in form, because a ballad, more than another song, must have a long tradition of folk-thought and folk-expression behind it; and in Ireland this tradition does not belong to the English language. Even the beautiful air of 'The Wearing of the Green' cannot give poetic charm to such verses as these, which, like the others that follow, have been sung and sold by ballad-singers in market-towns and at fairs, and at country race-meetings, during the last year:--

'Oh! Paddy dear, and did ye hear
The news that's going round?
No cheers for brave Paul Kruger
Must be heard on Irish ground.
No more the English tourist at
Killarney will be seen,
Unless you join the pirate's cause,
And chant "God save the Queen."'

Or this other, sung during the siege of Ladysmith:--

'And I met with White the General,
And he's looking thin enough;
And he says the boys in Ladysmith
Are running short of stuff.
Faith, the dishes need no washing,
Now they're left so nice and clean;
Oh! it's anything but pleasant
To be starving for the Queen!'

The defender of Ladysmith is treated with greater courtesy than some other generals, for, in spite of sympathy with the besiegers, the singer says:--

'But if he gave in to-morrow,
I would not think it right
To throw the least disparagement
On a man like General White.
He is making a bold resistance,
As great as could be made,
Against their deadly Mauser rifles,
And their tremendous cannonade.'

The 'Song of the Transvaal Irish Brigade' has more literary quality:--

'The Cross swings low; the morn is near--
Now, comrades, fill up high;
The cannon's voice will ring out clear
When morning lights the sky.
A toast we'll drink together, boys,
Ere dawns the battle's grey,
A toast to Ireland, dear old Ireland!
Ireland far away!
Ireland far away! Ireland far away!
Health to Ireland, strength to Ireland!
Ireland, boys, hurrah!

'Who told us that her cause was dead?
Who bade us bend the knee?
The slaves! Again she lifts her head--
Again she dares be free!
With gun in hand, we take our stand,
For Ireland in the fray:
We fight for Ireland, dear old Ireland!
Ireland far away!
Ireland far away! Ireland far away!
We fight for Ireland, die for Ireland--
Ireland, boys, hurrah!

'Oh, mother of the wounded breast!
Oh, mother of the tears!
The sons you loved, and trusted best,
Have grasped their battle spears.
From Shannon, Lagan, Liffey, Lee,
On Afric's soil to-day,
We strike for Ireland, brave old Ireland!
Ireland far away!
Ireland far away! Ireland far away!
We smite for Ireland, brave old Ireland!
Ireland, boys, hurrah!'

'The Irish Boy,' which is sung to the air of 'The Minstrel Boy,' is also in honour of the Irish Brigade:--

'While the Irish boy is on the shore,
He'll help to crush the stranger;
He'll sweep them hence for evermore,
And free thy land from danger.
And then he'll pray to God above,
That his courage ne'er shall falter,
To guard him to the land he loves--
To Ireland o'er the water.'

Mayo is the county to which John MacBride, the leader of the Irish Brigade, belongs; but I heard of a ballad-singer at Ballindereen, near my Galway home, the other day, whose refrain was:--

'And Erin watches from afar, with joy and hope and pride,
Her sons who strike for liberty, led on by John MacBride!'

At Galway Railway Station, whence the Connaught Rangers set out for the war, I have heard that wives, saying good-bye, begged their husbands 'not to be too hard on the Boers.' Anyhow, a 'Mother's lament for her son gone to the war,' that was sung at Galway Races the other day, shows more impartiality than most of the ballads:--

'When the battle rages fiercely, our boys are in the van;
How I do wish the blows they struck were for dear Ireland!
But duty calls, they must obey, and fight against the Boer,
And many a cheerful Irish lad will fall to rise no more.

'I wish my boy was home again! Oh! how I'd welcome him,
With sorrow I'm broken-hearted, my eyes are growing dim;
The war is dark and cruel, but whoever wins the fight,
I pray to save my noble lad, and God defend the right!'

But it is the small farmers of Ireland who look with special sympathy on their fellows in the Transvaal. They give them a warning:--

'England sends her grabbers,
From far across the sea,
To rob you of your friends and home,
Likewise your liberty.'

And the Boers say in answer:--

'When we came to this country,
'Twas but a barren plain;
But the honest hand of labour
Was rewarded for its pain.
We found the precious metal,
And of it we have great store;
But Britain came to rob us
As she often done before.
As she thought to do before,
As she thought to do before;
But Britain comes to rob us,
As she often done before.'

Another ballad explains:--

'Those Boers can't be blamed, as you might understand;
They are trying to free their own native land,
Where they toil night and day by the sweat of their brow,
Like the farmers in Ireland that follow the plough.
Farewell to Old Ireland, we are now going away,
To fight the brave Boers in South Africa;
To fight those poor farmers we are not inclined:
God be with you, Old Ireland, we are leaving behind.'

Some verses--'The Boer's Prayer'--that I have not seen on a ballad-sheet, but in a weekly paper, give better expression to this feeling of farmer sympathy:--

'My back is to the wall;
Lo! here I stand.
O Lord, whate'er befall,
I love this land!

'This land that I have tilled,
This land is mine;
Would, Lord, that Thou hadst willed,
This heart were Thine!

'This land to us Thou gave
In days of old;
They seek to make a grave
Or field of gold!

'To us, O Lord, Thy hand,
Put forth to save!
Give us, O Lord, this land
Or give a grave!'

'A New Song for the Boers' says:--

'Hark! to the curses ringing
From all smitten lands;
In sob and wail, they tell the tale
Of England's blood-red hands.

'And wheresoe'er her standard flings
Forth its folds of shame,
A people's cries to heaven arise
For vengeance on her name!'

But for passionate expression, one cannot, as I have already said, look to the comparatively new and artificial English ballad form; one must go to the Irish, with its long tradition. Here is a poem, 'The Curse of the Boers on England,' which I have translated literally from the Irish:--

'O God, we call to Thee,
This hour and this day,
Look down on this England
That has come down in our midst.

'O God, we call to Thee,
This day and this hour,
Look down on England,
And her cold, cold heart.

'It is she was a Queen,
A Queen without sorrow;
But we will take from her,
Quietly, her Crown.

'That Queen that was beautiful
Will be tormented and darkened,
For she will get her reward
In that day, and her wage.

'Her wage for the blood
She poured out on the streams;
Blood of the white man,
Blood of the black man.

'Her wage for those hearts
That she broke in the end;
Hearts of the white man,
Hearts of the black man.

'Her wage for the bones
That are whitening to-day;
Bones of the white man,
Bones of the black man.

'Her wage for the hunger
That she put on foot;
Her wage for the fever,
That is an old tale with her.

'Her wage for the white villages
She has left without men;
Her wage for the brave men
She has put to the sword.

'Her wage for the orphans
She has left under pain;
Her wage for the exiles
She has spent with wandering.

'For the people of India
(Pitiful is their case);
For the people of Africa
She has put to death.

'For the people of Ireland,
Nailed to the cross;
Wage for each people
Her hand has destroyed.

'Her wage for the thousands
She deceived and she broke;
Her wage for the thousands
Finding death at this hour.

'O Lord, let there fall
Straight down on her head
The curse of the peoples
That have fallen with us.

'The curse of the mean,
And the curse of the small,
The curse of the weak,
And the curse of the low.

'The Lord does not listen
To the curse of the strong,
But He will listen
To sighs and to tears.

'He will always listen
To the crying of the poor,
And the crying of thousands
Is abroad to-night.

'That crying will rise up
To God that is above;
It is not long till every curse
Comes to His ears.

'The crying will be put away;
Tears will be put away,
When they come to God,
These prayers to His kingdom.

'He will make for England
Strong chains, very heavy;
He will pay her wages
With strong, heavy chains.

1901.

A SORROWFUL LAMENT FOR IRELAND

The Irish poem I give this translation of was printed in the _Revue Celtique_ some years ago, and lately in _An Fior Clairseach na h-Eireann_, where a note tells us it was taken from a manuscript in the Gottingen Library, and was written by an Irish priest, Shemus Cartan, who had taken orders in France; but its date is not given. I like it for its own beauty, and because its writer does not, as so many Irish writers have done, attribute the many griefs of Ireland only to 'the horsemen of the Gall,' but also to the faults and shortcomings to which the people of a country broken up by conquest are perhaps more liable than the people of a country that has kept its own settled rule.

A SORROWFUL LAMENT FOR IRELAND.

My thoughts, alas! are without strength;
My spirit is journeying towards death;
My eyes are as a frozen sea;
My tears my daily food;
There is nothing in my life but only misery;
My poor heart is torn,
And my thoughts are sharp wounds within me,
Mourning the miserable state of Ireland,
Without ease, without mirth for any person
That is born on the plains of Emer.
And here I give you the heavy story,
And the tale of all the remnant of her deeds.

She lost her pomp and her strength together
When her strong men were banished across the sea;
Her churches are as holds of pain,
Without altars, without Mass, without bowing of knees;
Stables for horses--this story is pitiful--
Or without a stone of their stones together.

Since the children of Israel were in Egypt
Under bondage, and scarcity along with that,
There was never written in a book or never seen
Hardship like the hardships in Ireland.
They parted from us the shepherds of the flock
That is the flock that is astray and is wounded,
Left to be torn by wild dogs,
And no healing for it from the hand of anyone.
Unless God will look down on our distress
Ireland will indeed be lost for ever!
Every old man, every strong man, every child,
Our young men and our well-dressed women,
Keening, complaining, and reproaching;
Going under the power of the Gall or going across the sea.
Our dear country without any ears of corn,
Without store, without cattle, but only the green grass;
Our fatherless children are wasted and weak,
Famine and sickness travelling over Ireland,
And every other scourge that was ever known,
And the rest of her pain has not yet been told.

Nevertheless, my sharp woe! I see with my eyes
That the High King has a bow ready in His hand,
And His quiver is full of arrows with sharp points,
And every arrow of them for our sore wounding,
From the sole of our feet to the top of our head,
To bruise our hearts and to tear our sinews;
There is no spot of our limbs but is scarred;
Misfortune has come upon us all together--
The poor and the rich, the weak and the strong;
The great lord by whom hundreds were maintained;
The powerful strong man, and the man that holds the plough;
And the cross laid on the bare shoulder of every man.

I do not know of anything under the sky
That is friendly or favourable to the Gael,
But only the sea that our need brings us to,
Or the wind that blows to the harbour
The ship that is bearing us away from Ireland;
And there is reason that these are reconciled with us,
For we increase the sea with our tears,
And the wandering wind with our sighs.

We do not see heaven look kindly upon us;
We do not see our complaint being listened to;
Even the earth refuses us shelter
And the wood that gives protection to the birds;
Every cliff, every cave, every mountain-top,
Every hill, every lough, and every meadow.

Our feasts are without any voice of priests,
And none at them but women lamenting,
Tearing their hair, with troubled minds,
Keening pitifully after the Fenians.
The pipes of our organs are broken;
Our harps have lost their strings that were tuned
That might have made the great lamentations of Ireland;
Until the strong men come back across the sea,
There is no help for us but bitter crying,
Screams, and beating of hands, and calling out.

It is not strength of hosts, not loss of food,
Not the horsemen of the Gall coming from Britain,
Nor want of power, nor want of calling to war,
That has put defeat upon the armies of Ireland,
And has filled the cities with a sad multitude,
Alas! alas! but the greatness of our sins.

See, we are now put in the crucible
In which every worthless metal is tried,
In which gold is cleansed from every tarnish;
The Scripture is true in everything it says;
It says we must suffer before we can be cured;
It is through repentance we shall find forgiveness,
And the restoring of all that we have lost.

Let us put down the sum of our sins;
Oppression of the poor, thieving, robbery,
Great vows held in light esteem;
Giving our soul to the man that is the worst;
The strength of our pride was greater than our life,
The strength of our debts was more than we could pay.

It was with treachery Ireland was lost,
And the ill-will of men one to another.
There was no judge that would give a hearing
To the oppressed people whose life was under hardship.
Outcasts and widows crying aloud
Without right judgment to be had or punishment.

We were never agreed together,
But as one ox bound and one free from the yoke;
No right humility to be found.
All trying for the headship of Ireland
At the time when her enemies were doing their work.
No settlement to be made of any quarrel,
The share of the wheat-ear for the man that was strongest;
It is long that this has been the hurt of Ireland;
It is thus that the battle ended with the Gael.

Let us turn now and change our manners,
Let us make repentance of our sins together--
It is thus that the Israelites came out of Egypt;
Nineveh was given pardon for all its sins,
And even Peter for denying Christ.

O saints of Ireland, arise now together;
O Patrick, who hast care of us, bless this flock;
We who are exiled, we who are forsaken,
This sod is gone out unless thou blow upon it;
Is thy sleep heavy or is thy hearing slow
That thou dost not give an answer to us?
Awake quickly; let it not be as a tale with thee
That there is no help for the fate of the Gael.

This, Patrick, is my own quarrel with thee
That every enemy of thy flock is saying
That thy ears are not ears that listen,
That thou art not troubled by the sight of thy people,
That if they did trouble thee thou wouldst not deny them.
Be with us nevertheless with thy strong power.
Make our enemies to quit Ireland for ever.

1900.

MOUNTAIN THEOLOGY

Mary Glyn lives under Slieve-nan-Or, the Golden Mountain, where the last battle will be fought in the last great war of the world; so that the sides of Gortaveha, a lesser mountain, will stream with blood. But she and her friends are not afraid of this; for an old weaver from the north, who knew all things, told them long ago that there is a place near Turloughmore where war will never come, because St. Columcill used to live there. So they will make use of this knowledge, and seek a refuge there, if, indeed, there is room enough for them all. There is a river by her house that marks the boundary between Galway and Clare; and there are stepping-stones in the river, so that she can cross from Connaught to Munster when she has a mind. But she cannot do her marketing when she has a mind; for the nearest town, Gort, is ten miles away. The roof of her little cabin is thatched with rushes, and a garden of weeds grows on it, and the rain comes through. But she is soon to have a new thatch; for she thinks she won't live long, and she wouldn't like the rain to be coming down on her when she is dead and laid out. There is heather in blow on the hills about her home, and foxglove reddens the clay-banks, and loosetrife the marshy hollows; and rush-cotton waves its little white flags over the bogs. Mary Glyn's neighbours come to see her sometimes, when the sun is going down, and the hurry of the day is over. Old Mr. Saggarton is one of them; he had his learning from a hedge-schoolmaster in the old times; and he looks down on the narrow teaching of the National Schools; and he was once in jail for nine months, having been taken in the very act of making _poteen_. And Mrs. Casey comes and looks at the stepping-stones now and again, for she is a Clare woman; and though she has lived fifty years in Connaught, she is not yet quite reconciled to it, and would never have made it her home if she could have seen it before she came. And some who do not live among the bogs and the heather, but among the green pastures and the grey stones of Aidne, come to Slieve Echtge and learn unwritten truths from the lips of Mary and her friends.

The duty of giving is taught as well as practised by these poor hill-people. 'For,' says Mary Glyn, 'the best road to heaven is to be charitable to the poor.' And old Mrs. Casey agrees, and says: 'There was a poor girl walking the road one night with no place to stop; and the Saviour met her on the road, and He said: "Go up to the house you see a light in; there's a woman dead there, and they'll let you in." So she went and she found the woman laid out, and the husband and other people; but she worked harder than they all, and she stopped in the house after; and after two quarters the man married her. And one day she was sitting outside the door, picking over a bag of wheat, and the Saviour came again, with the appearance of a poor man, and He asked her for a few grains of the wheat. And she said: "Wouldn't potatoes be good enough for you?" and she called to the girl within to bring out a few potatoes. But He took nine grains of the wheat in His hand and went away; and there wasn't a grain of wheat left in the bag, but all gone. So she ran after Him then to ask Him to forgive her; and she overtook Him on the road, and she asked forgiveness. And He said: "Don't you remember the time you had no house to go to, and I met you on the road, and sent you to a house where you'd live in plenty? and now you wouldn't give Me a few grains of wheat." And she said: "But why didn't You give me a heart that would like to divide it?" That is how she came round on Him. And He said: "From this out, whenever you have plenty in your hands, divide it freely for My sake."'

And this is a marvel that might occur again at any time; for Mary Glyn says further:--

'There was a woman I knew was very charitable to the poor; and she'd give them the full of her apron of bread, or of potatoes or anything she had. And she was only lately married; and one day, a poor woman came to the door with her children and she brought them to the fire, and warmed them, and gave them a drink of milk; and she sent out to the barn for a bag of potatoes for them. And the husband came in, and he said: "Kitty, if you go on this way, you won't leave much for ourselves." And she said: "He that gave us what we have, can give more." And the next day when they went out to the barn, it was full of potatoes--more than were ever in it before. And when she was dying, and her children about her, the priest said to her: "Mrs. Gallagher, it's in heaven you'll be at 12 o'clock to-morrow."'

But when death comes, it is not enough to have been charitable; and it is not right to touch the body or lay it out for a couple of hours; for the soul should be given time to fight for itself, and to go up to judgment. And sometimes it is not willing to go; for Mrs. Casey says:--

'The Saviour, one time, told St. Patrick to go and prepare a man that was going to die. And St. Patrick said: "I'd sooner not go; for I never yet saw the soul depart from the body." But then he went, and he prepared the man. And when he was lying there dead, he saw the soul go from the body; and three times it went to the door, and three times it came back and kissed the body. And St. Patrick asked the Saviour why it did that: and He said: "That soul was sorry to part from the body, because it had held it so clean and so honest."'

When the hill-people talk of 'the time of the war,' it is the war that once took place in heaven that is understood. And when '_Those_' are spoken of, the fallen angels are understood, the cloud of witness, the whirling invisible host; and it is only to a stranger that an explanation need be given.