When I’m feeling low I like to pull a book off my poetry shelves and immerse myself in something completely different; as often as not it’s one of Trevor Joyce’s, and just now I was flipping through What’s in Store (see this post) when I was caught by his lovely version of the sorrowful old Irish ballad “Seán Ó Duibhir a’ Ghleanna” (sometimes Englished as “Seán Dwyer of the Glen”). You can see the whole thing in Irish with a literal translation (and some YouTube links) here; I’ll quote the first and last stanzas of Trevor’s version:
Through the early sunshine
of this summer morning
hounds raise up their howling
while the sweet birds sing.
The small beasts and the badger
keep covert with the woodcock,
all lie low from the echo
and the booming of the guns.
Fox red on rock keeps lookout
on the horsemen’s hurly-burly
and the woman by the wayside
lamenting scattered geese.
But now the woods are levelled
let us leave familiar landmarks
since, Séan, my friend, it’s over,
the game is up and gone.
[…]
My one regret this morning
that I did not die reproachless
that time before the scandal
caused by my own kind,
when many the long bright evening
saw apples crowd the branches,
when leaves enclosed the oakwood
and dew was on the grass.
But now I am an outcast,
lonely, far from friendship,
I lodge alone in thickets
and fissures in the rock;
but unless there’s no harassment
from this town’s petty gentry
I’ll leave all my possessions
and so resign my soul.
As a tidbit of linguistic interest I’ll point out that the verbal noun in the second line, “Grian an tsamhraidh ag taitneamh” (The summer sun was shining), is from the verb taitin ‘shine,’ which in combination with the preposition le means ‘to please, be liked by’; it goes back to the Old Irish do·aitni (eDIL), which has the same pair of meanings, and as usual the OIr. verbal prefix has gotten mashed into the original verb to produce an unanalyzable lexeme (see the discussion of Old Irish verbal morphology in this ancient post).
“lonely, far from friendship,
I lodge alone in thickets
and fissures in the rock;”
I’m sorry to say that the first thing that comes to my mind is _At Swim Two Birds_ and the narrative thread of Sweeney and his ever more tortured existence. I think it’s the word “lodge” and “far from friendship” that does it.
Hm. The word “lodge” does not occur in the text; there are three occurrences of “friendship” but none following “far from.”
I am right now looking at my copy.
“A year to last night
I have lodged there in branches
from the flood-tide to the ebb-tide
naked.”
As to far from friendship, I think it’s just that for better or worse the bulk of my limited exposure to this style is from Flann O’Brien burlesquing it. Sorry, I don’t mean to claim anything in particular here, it’s just what popped into my head after a sleepless night and reading this first thing.
(I just checked archive.org, and I think the search doesn’t do partial matches – indeed no hits for “lodge”, but several for “lodged”)
Here is another version of the chorus:
An sionnach rua ar a’ gcarraig, Míle liú ag marcaigh,
Is bean go dúch sa’ mbealach, Ag áireamh a gé.
Anois tá’n choill dá gearra, Triallfaimid thar cala,
‘S a Sheáin Uí Dhuibhir a’ Ghleanna, Chaill tú do chéim.
The red fox on the rock, a thousand shouts from the cavalry,
And a woman sombre on the way, counting her geese.
Now the forest is being cut down, we’ll have a go across the sea,
And Seán Ó Duibhir of the Glen, you’ve lost your rank.
https://tunearch.org/wiki/Annotation:Se%C3%A1n_%C3%93_Duibir_an_Gleanna_(1)
I just checked archive.org, and I think the search doesn’t do partial matches – indeed no hits for “lodge”, but several for “lodged”
My bad — thanks for checking!
I don’t mean to claim anything in particular here, it’s just what popped into my head after a sleepless night and reading this first thing.
No problem at all, I was deeply grateful that you commented on this unloved post.
(Poor post.)
My reaction was that although the second quoted verse could be a translation of a Scottish Gaelic poem (is kind of the epitome of a Gaelic poem, even) the first seemed surprisingly English to me – I don’t really mean linguistically, but in its setting.
But I’ve only ever been in Antrim, which is kind of Argyll-over-the-water (or vice versa), and I suppose the south of Ireland is on a level with the home counties.
I didn’t think it was really linguistic enough to post, though!
There are no requirements — you can say anything that strikes you as interesting (or funny, for that matter)!
I suppose the south of Ireland is on a level with the home counties
As regards landscape? If you squint, much of Leinster, especially what was the English Pale and south Wexford. Further west, not so much.