Read As I Rode by Granard Moat Online
Authors: Benedict Kiely
As I Rode by Granard Moat (6 page)
No poet of our time speaks with greater authority and feeling about that corner of Ireland than John Montague. He spent his boyhood and early youth between there and Armagh city, with occasional visits to Sweet Omagh Town.
Like dolmens round my childhood, the old people.
Jamie MacCrystal sang to himself,
A broken song without tune, without words;
He tipped me a penny every pension day,
Fed kindly crusts to winter birds.
When he died, his cottage was robbed,
Mattress and money-box torn and searched.
Only the corpse they didn’t disturb.
Maggie Owens was surrounded by animals,
A mongrel bitch and shivering pups,
Even in her bedroom a she-goat cried.
She was a well of gossip defiled,
Fanged chronicler of a whole countryside;
Reputed a witch, all I could find
Was her lonely need to deride.
The Nialls lived along a mountain lane
Where heather bells bloomed, clumps of foxglove.
All were blind, with Blind Pension and Wireless,
Dead eyes serpent-flicked as one entered
To shelter from a downpour of mountain rain.
Crickets chirped under the rocking hearthstone
Until the muddy sun shone out again.
Mary Moore lived in a crumbling gatehouse,
Famous as Pisa for its leaning gable.
Bag-apron and boots, she tramped the fields
Driving lean cattle from a miry stable.
A by-word for fierceness, she fell asleep
Over love stories, Red Star and Red Circle,
Dreamed of gypsy love rites, by firelight sealed.
Wild Billy Eagleson married a Catholic servant girl
When all his Loyal family passed on:
We danced round him shouting ‘To Hell with King Billy’,
And dodged from the arc of his flailing blackthorn.
Forsaken by both creeds, he showed little concern
Until the Orange drums banged past in the summer
And bowler and sash aggressively shone.
Curate and doctor trudged to attend them,
Through knee-deep snow, through summer heat,
From main road to lane to broken path,
Gulping the mountain air with painful breath.
Sometimes they were found by neighbours,
Silent keepers of a smokeless hearth,
Suddenly cast in the mould of death.
Ancient Ireland, indeed! I was reared by her bedside,
The rune and the chant, evil eye and averted head,
Fomorian fierceness of family and local feud.
Gaunt figures of fear and of friendliness,
For years they trespassed on my dreams,
Until once, in a standing circle of stones,
I felt their shadows pass
Into that dark permanence of ancient forms.
All around, shards of a lost tradition:
From the Rough Field I went to school
In the Glen of the Hazels. Close by
Was the bishopric of the Golden Stone;
The cairn of Carleton’s homesick poem.
Scattered over the hills, tribal
And placenames, uncultivated pearls.
No rock or ruin, dun or dolmen
But showed memory defying cruelty
Through an image-encrusted name.
The heathery gap where the Rapparee,
Shane Barnagh, saw his brother die –
On a summer’s day the dying sun
Stained its colours to crimson:
So breaks the heart, Brish-mo-Cree.
The whole landscape a manuscript
We had lost the skill to read,
A part of our past disinherited;
But fumbled, like a blind man,
Along the fingertips of instinct.
The last Gaelic speaker in the parish,
When I stammered my school Irish
One Sunday after mass, crinkled
A rusty litany of praise:
Tá an Ghaeilge againn arís …
*
Tír Eoghain: Land of Owen,
Province of the O’Niall;
The ghostly tread of O’Hagan’s
Barefoot gallowglasses marching
To merge forces in Dun Geanainn
Push southward to Kinsale!
Loudly the war-cry is swallowed
In swirls of black rain and fog
As Ulster’s pride, Elizabeth’s foemen,
Founder in a Munster bog.
Paddy Tunney, poet, singer and story-teller, although he now lives near Letterkenny, is very much a man of Erne. For he was born and grew up and learned his music in the enchanted land where the Stone Fiddle of Castlecauldwell still stands in memory of the fiddler drowned in the lough.
In his book,
The Stone Fiddle,
you will find the words and music of this song, which Paddy introduces under the title, ‘Gael Meets Gael’:
In the whole corpus of traditional song couched in the borrowed Béarla, there is none to compare with the high-minded effusions of our hedgeschool-master poets. These songs are readily recognizable by the plenitude of classical allusion they contain and by the adaptation of the Gaelic assonantal rhyme, used extensively by the Gaelic Aisling poets of the eighteenth century.
When the classes dispersed and the master roamed, with the great god Pan down in the reeds by the river, then surely it was that his mind took fire and he wrote such a song as ‘Lough Erne Shore’.
One morning as I went a fowling, bright Phoebus adorned the plain,
’Twas down by the shores of Lough Erne, I met with this wonderful dame,
Her voice was so sweet and so pleasing, these beautiful notes she did sing,
The innocent fowl of the forest their love unto her they did bring.
It being the first time I saw her, my heart it did lep with surprise
I thought that she could be no mortal, but an angel who fell from the skies,
Her hair it resembled gold tresses, her skin was as white as the snow,
And her cheeks were as red as the roses that bloom around Lough Erne Shore.
When I found that my love was eloping, these words unto her I did say,
O take me to your habitation, for Cupid has led me astray.
For ever I’ll keep the commandments, they say that it is the best plan,
Fair maids who do yield to mens’ pleasure, the Scripture does say they are wrong.
O Mary don’t accuse me of weakness, for treachery I do disown,
I’ll make you a lady of honour, if with me this night you’ll come home.
O had I the lamp of Great Aladdin, his rings and his genie, that’s more,
I would part with them all for to gain you and live upon Lough Erne Shore.
I find this on an ancient broadsheet presented to me many years ago by that great bibliophile and man of letters, M.J. MacManus:
One morning as I went a fowling,
As Phoebus adorned the plain,
’Twas down by the shades of Lough Gowna,
I met with this lovely young dame.
Her voice was so sweet and so charming,
These beautiful notes she did sing,
The innocent fowls of the forest
My love unto her they did bring.
It being the first time I had seen her,
My heart she had fill’d with surprise,
I thought that she could be no mortal,
But an angel that fell from the skies.
Her hair it resembled gold laces,
Her skin was as white as the snow,
Her cheeks were as red as the roses
That blow upon Lough Gowna’s shore.
I found that my love was eloping,
And this unto her I did say,
Come, bring me to your habitation,
For Cupid has led me astray.
My parents they left me some riches,
Five thousand I have now in store,
And I’ll spend it with you, my dear darling,
In pleasure upon Lough Gowna shore.
Kind sir, I don’t believe in such notions,
I know that you are not sincere,
Although you have done your endeavours
To leave my poor heart in a snare
For ever I’ll keep the commandment,
I’m told that it is the best plan,
For the maid that will yield to man’s pleasure
The Scripture does say she is wrong.
Dear Mary, do not accuse me of weakness,
For treachery I do disown,
I’ll make you a lady of honour,
If with me this night you’ll come home.
For had I the treasures of England,
The East and West Indies, that’s more,
I’d part with it all for to gain you,
And live upon Lough Gowna shore.
Kind sir, I am but a poor female,
For riches indeed I have none,
Besides, we are not one persuasion,
My heart lies in the Church of Rome
Then you would fulfil your desires,
Like Numbers in the days of yore,
And you’d leave me bewailing misfortune
Through grief on Lough Gowna shore.
O, Mary, if you were persuaded,
In wedlock we’d join our hands,
For believe me it was not my notion
To force you to break the commands.
So tell me your mind in a moment,
For you are the one I adore,
My heart it is lodged in your bosom,
This night near Lough Gowna shore.
Now my theme of this female is ended,
A blessing she’ll gain from above,
A fortune she gain’d with her darling,
And that by enchantments of love.
I wish I was able to praise her,
Her equal I ne’er saw before,
So Mary got married to Thomas,
And he brought her from Lough Gowna shore.
Margaret Barry of the travelling people used to wander this country and London and portions of the USA with Michael Gorman, one of the famous men of music from around
Templehouse lake in south Sligo. Michael had learned to play the fiddle at the building of a house near Mucklety Mountain for people by the name of Devaney, relations of my own. Michael was a boy at the time and working at the building was Jamesie Gannon, then a famous fiddler. Jamesie undertook the teaching of Michael, even to the writing of the music on ceiling boards, which were afterwards built into the house. ‘Music built the towers of Troy,’ the poet said.
Here is one of Margaret’s favourite songs, which so often she sang in the old Brazen Head in Dublin.
As I went out a walking one morning in June,
To view the fields and the meadows in full bloom,
I espied a young damsel, she appeared like a queen,
With her costly fine robes and her mantle so green.
I stood with amazement and was struck with surprise,
I thought her an angel that fell from the skies.
Her eyes were like diamonds, her cheeks like the rose,
She is one of the fairest that nature composed.
I said, my pretty fair maid, if you will come with me,
We’ll both join in wedlock, and married we’ll be,
I’ll dress in rich attire, you’ll appear like a queen,
With costly fine robes and your mantle so green.
She answered, young man, you must me excuse,
For I’ll wed with no man, you must be refused,
To the woods I’ll wander to shun all men’s view,
For the lad that I love is in famed Waterloo.
If you won’t marry tell me your love’s name,
For I being in battle I might know the same.
Draw near to my garment and there will be seen,
His name all embroidered on my mantle of green.
In raising her mantle there I did behold
His name and surname were in letters of gold,
Young William O’Reilly appeared to my view,
He was my chief comrade in famed Waterloo.
We fought so victorious where bullets did fly,
In the field of honour your true love does lie,
We fought for three days till the fourth afternoon,
He received his death-summons on the eighteenth of June.
But when he was dying I heard his last cry,
If you were here, lovely Nancy, contented I’d die,
Peace is proclaimed, and the truth I declare,
Here is your love token, the gold ring I wear.
She stood in amazement, the paler she grew,
She flew to my arms with a heart full of woe,
To the woods I’ll wander for the lad I adore.
Rise up, lovely Nancy, your grief I’ll remove,
Oh, Nancy, dearest Nancy, ’tis I won your heart,
In your father’s garden that day we did part …
At this point the broadsheet breaks off abruptly, leaving the voice of the singer, literally, on and in the air.
Padraic Colum used frequently to lament that the custom or style of speaking verse had gone from the world, or from the part of the world we lived in. He was saying what he thought to be the truth, although thirty years ago I did hear and see a man standing, dizzily and high, on a barstool in the old White Horse, on Burgh Quay in Dublin, to tell the intellectual assembly that on the slopes of Killiecrankie all that night our soldiers lay. Such sights and sounds, though, are very rare nowadays, and if I once did know a Dublin lawyer who could speak, well and word-perfect, all the verses of George Meredith’s ‘Love in a Valley’, it must be admitted that he was a most unusual man.
There are schools of elocution, and verse-speaking
groups and societies, but that’s not the same thing as standing up in a room, or a snug, and speaking out spontaneously the verse that is in you. Readings by poets of their own poetry have become quite fashionable, which is a good thing – if what is fashionable is ever good – and proves that people are interested in hearing poetry read out loud. It is to be hoped that when we read poetry we do so out loud even if nobody is listening bar the walls or the wind.