As I Rode by Granard Moat (10 page)

You Gods assist my poor weary notion,

You Inspired Muses lend me your hand,

Till I exhort my quill without blot or blemish,

Till I set forth the praises of this lovely strand

That’s well situated in the North of Ireland,

Being all in the County of sweet Tyrone,

Joining the banks of Lough Neagh’s bright waters,

Is that ancient fabric they call Old Ardboe.

Now I stood in amazement to view the harbour

Where the purling streams they do gently flow,

Where the trout and salmon were nimbly sporting,

Which brings more order to you, Old Ardboe.

Now I’ve travelled Roosia and a part of Proosia,

I have travelled Spain and all along the Rhine,

But in all my rakings and undertakings

Ardboe your equal I never could find.

Once I loved a damsel but, alas, she proved untrue,

I thought to climb those mountains her cottage to view

And whether it was magic or enchantment led the way

Till at length I reached the summit of wild Slieve Gallen Brae.

I thought to view her cottage, as Cupid led my heart,

Or whether ‘twould be better to rise up and to part

Or to walk around with pleasure and let fancy guide the way,

To view the works of Nature, on wild Slieve Gallen Brae.

I viewed the groves and valleys along its rugged side,

Likewise the stoney battery where timid rabbits hide,

And the moorcock he kept crowing, the pleasures of that day

All among the moss and heather on wild Slieve Gallen Brae.

As I sat down my limbs to rest, beyond yon pathless scar,

In view of many an object anear and afar,

The hills of County Antrim and the waters of Lough Neagh,

To me they shone like diamonds bright, from wild Slieve Gallen Brae.

Just over in the heather not very far away

I spied a lovely damsel fair a-stepping on her way,

Said I, ‘My comely damsel what brought you here this day

Among this lonely wilderness of wild Slieve Gallen Brae?’

With slow hesitation her tale she thus began

Saying, ‘Once I was deluded by a very false young man,

He promised he would marry me but he sailed across the say

And left me here to mourn and weep on wild Slieve Gallen Brae.’

July the first in Oldbridge town,

There was a grievous battle,

Where many a man lay on the ground,

By the cannons that did rattle.

King James he pitched his tents between

The lines for to retire;

But King William threw his bomb-balls in,

And set them all on fire.

Thereat engaged they vowed revenge

Upon King William’s forces,

And often vehemently cried

That they would stop their courses;

A bullet from the Irish came,

Which grazed King William’s arm,

They thought His Majesty was slain,

Yet it did him little harm.

Then Duke Schomberg he in friendly care,

His King would often caution

To shun the spot where bullets hot

Retained their rapid motion;

But William said, ‘He don’t deserve

The name of Faith’s Defender,

Who would not venture life and limb

To make a foe surrender.’

When we the Boyne began to cross,

The enemy they descended;

But few of our brave men were lost,

So stoutly we defended;

The horse were the first that marched o’er,

The foot soon followed after;

But brave Duke Schomberg was no more,

By venturing over the water.

When valiant Schomberg he was slain,

King William then accosted

His warlike men for to march on

And he would be the foremost:

‘Brave boys,’ he said, ‘be not dismayed,

For the losing of one Commander,

For God will be our King this day,

And I’ll be the general under.’

Then stoutly we the Boyne did cross,

To give our enemies battle:

Our cannon, to our foe’s great cost,

Like thundering claps did rattle;

In majestic mien our Prince rode o’er,

His men soon followed after,

With blow and shout put foes to the rout

The day we crossed the Water.

The Protestants of Drogheda

Have reason to be thankful,

That they were not to bondage brought,

They being but a handful,

First to the Tholsel they were brought,

And tied at the Millmount after;

But brave King William set them free,

By venturing over the Water.

The cunning French near to Duleek

Had taken up their quarters,

And fenced themselves on every side,

Awaiting for new orders;

But in the dead time of the night

They set the fields on fire,

And long before the morning light

To Dublin they did retire.

Then said King William to his men,

After the French departed,

‘I’m glad indeed that none of ye

Seemed to be faint-hearted;

So sheathe your swords and rest awhile

In time we’ll follow after.’

Those words he uttered with a smile

The day he crossed the Water.

Come let us all with heart and voice

Applaud our lives’ defender,

Who at the Boyne his valour showed

And made his foe surrender.

To God above the praise we’ll give

Both now and ever after;

And bless the glorious Memory

Of William that crossed the Water.

Our half-thought thoughts divide in sifted wisps

Against the basic facts repatterned without pause,

I can no more gather my mind up in my fist

Than the shadow of the smoke of this train upon the grass –

This is the way that animals’ lives pass.

The train’s rhythms never relent, the telephone posts

Go striding backwards like the legs of time to where

In a Georgian house you turn at the carpet’s edge

Turning a sentence while, outside my window here,

The smoke makes broken queries in the air.

The train keeps moving and the rain holds off,

I count the buttons on the seat, I hear a shell

Held hollow to the ear, the mere

Reiteration of integers, the bell

That tolls and tolls, the monotony of fear.

At times we are doctrinaire, at times we are frivolous,

Plastering over the cracks, a gesture making good,

But the strength of us does not come out of us.

It is we, I think, are the idols and it is God

Has set us up as men who are painted wood,

And the trains carry us about. But not consistently so,

For during a tiny portion of our lives we are not in trains,

The idol living for a moment, not muscle-bound

But walking freely through the slanting rain,

Its ankles wet, its grimace relaxed again.

All over the world people are toasting the King,

Red lozenges of light as each one lifts his glass,

But I will not give you any idol or idea, creed or king,

I give you the incidental things which pass

Outward through space exactly as each was.

I give you the disproportion between labour spent

And joy at random; the laughter of the Galway sea

Juggling with spars and bones irresponsibly,

I give you the toy Liffey and the vast gulls,

I give you fuchsia hedges and whitewashed walls.

I give you the smell of Norman stone, the squelch

Of bog beneath your boots, the red bog-grass,

The vivid chequer of the Antrim hills, the trough of dark

Golden water for the cart-horses, the brass

Belt of serene sun upon the lough.

And I give you the faces, not the permanent masks,

But the faces balanced in the toppling wave –

His glint of joy in cunning as the farmer asks

Twenty per cent too much, or a girl’s, forgetting to be suave,

A tiro choosing stuffs, preferring mauve.

And I give you the sea and yet again the sea’s

Tumultuous marble,

With Thor’s thunder or taking his ease akimbo,

Lumbering torso, but finger-tips a marvel

Of surgeon’s accuracy.

I would like to give you more but I cannot hold

This stuff within my hands and the train goes on;

I know that there are further syntheses to which,

As you have perhaps, people at last attain

And find that they are rich and breathing gold.

Grey brick upon brick,

Declamatory bronze

On sombre pedestals –

O’Connell, Grattan, Moore –

And the brewery tugs and the swans

On the balustraded stream

And the bare bones of a fanlight

Over a hungry door

And the air soft on the cheek

And porter running from the taps

With a head of yellow cream

And Nelson on his pillar

Watching his world collapse.

This was never my town,

I was not born nor bred

Nor schooled here and she will not

Have me alive or dead

But yet she holds my mind

With her seedy elegance,

With her gentle veils of rain

And all her ghosts that walk

And all that hide behind

Her Georgian façades –

The catcalls and the pain,

The glamour of her squalor,

The bravado of her talk.

The lights jig in the river

With a concertina movement

And the sun comes up in the morning

Like barley-sugar on the water

And the mist on the Wicklow hills

Is close, as close

As the peasantry were to the landlord,

As the Irish to the Anglo-Irish,

As the killer is close one moment

To the man he kills,

Or as the moment itself

Is close to the next moment.

She is not an Irish town

And she is not English,

Historic with guns and vermin

And the cold renown

Of a fragment of Church latin

Of an oratorical phrase.

But O the days are soft,

Soft enough to forget

The lesson better learnt,

The bullet on the wet

Streets, the crooked deal,

The steel behind the laugh,

The Four Courts burnt.

Fort of the Dane,

Garrison of the Saxon,

Augustan capital

Of a Gaelic nation,

Appropriating all

The alien brought,

You give me time for thought

And by a juggler’s trick

You poise the toppling hour –

O greyness run to flower,

Grey stone, grey water

And brick upon grey brick.

Oh, Dublin City, there is no doubting,

Bates every city upon the say.

’Tis there you’ll hear O’Connell spouting

And see Lady Morgan makin’ tay …

For it is the capital of the finest nation

That ever grew on a fruitful sod,

Fightin’ like divils for Conciliation

And hatin’ each other for the love of God.

To Donnybrook steer, all you sons of Parnassus,

Poor painters, poor poets, poor newsmen and knaves,

To see what the fun is, that all fun surpasses,

The sorrow and sadness of green Erin’s slaves …

O you lads that are witty, from famed Dublin city,

And you that in pastime take any delight,

To Donnybrook fly, for the time’s drawing nigh

When fat pigs are hunted and lean cobblers fight,

When maidens, so swift, run for a new shift,

Men, muffled in sacks, for a shirt they race there,

There jockeys well-booted and horses sure-footed,

All keep up the Humours of Donnybrook Fair.

The mason does come with his line and his plumb,

The sawyer and carpenter, brothers in chips.

There are carvers and gilders and all sorts of builders,

With soldiers from barracks and sailors from ships.

There confectioners, cooks and printers of books,

There stampers of linen and weavers repair,

There widows and maids, and all sorts of trades

Go join in the Humours of Donnybrook Fair.

’Tis there are dogs dancing and wild beasts a-prancing,

With neat bits of painting in red, yellow and gold,

Toss-players and scramblers, and showmen and gamblers,

Pickpockets in plenty, both of young and of old.

There are brewers and bakers and jolly shoe-makers,

With butchers and porters and men that cut hair.

There are mountebanks grinning, while others are sinning

To keep up the Humours of Donnybrook Fair …