Boring Places

 In the video below, Julie Folwis refers to “the deep connection between people and their landscapes,” and says “ I think this is celebrated in Gaidhlig song every day,  to the point that you almost forget about it, it becomes such a big part of it …I’m hard pushed to think of a single Gaidhlig song that doesn’t mention the landscape or  mention the wildlife, and is deeply connected to it in some way”

This is true about Irish songs and poetry as well, and I’d like to look at at the "why" of that here. There is a slight apparent detour to begin, but I'll soon return to the topic of Nature etc.

Much  personal expression today, whether song, poetry, fiction or whatever, exists in an overall online and public context that push that expression toward a very self-conscious, performative sensibility. Many people singing about seals or whatever are on stage in a way that they would not be in other times. 

People today know implicitly that almost all communication means stepping up on a stage and presenting oneself for judgement by the others and for verification as an admirable, good person. The song, poem or whatever is implicitly if not explicitly self-referential, and it points back at the person presenting it, hopefully strengthening their successful presentation of self.

This is not always true, of course, and no judgement is implied here. These are the times we live in.

This self-referentiality does “flavor” much creation and expression, though, and the results are often subtly different from old stuff.

Here’s part of a poem in which Diarmait who has gone off to the wilderness with Grainne, talking her (at her urging) from her important husband, replies to her, telling her that it is not time to rest yet and that they are in danger of being caught.

:

Ní cotail in damso sair

Ní scuireann do búurfedaig:

Cia beith im dairib na lon

Ní fuil ‘na menmain cotlad.

The stag does not sleep, eastwards there,

            he doesn’t cease from his calling;

                        though he’s by the blackbirds’ oak grove;

                        in his mind he has no thought of sleep.

            The bare-headed doe does not sleep;

            she calls out to her speckled fawn;

                        she leaps over the tops of the bushes;

                        she doesn’t sleep in her resting place.

            The nimble linnet does not sleep,

            above the boughs of the fair tangled  trees;

                        they make a great clamor there;

                        not one of the thrushes sleeps.

            The graceful duck does not sleep,

            it puts its strength into graceful swimming;

                        it neither rests nor pauses there;

                        in its resting place it does not sleep.

            Tonight the curlew does not sleep;

            high over the sound of the storm’s anger,

                        the sound of its fair voice is sweet;

                        between the streams, it does not sleep.  

Diarmaid, or rather  the poet, uses the lives and doings of creatures that he has shared the world with all his life: uses them to express what he needs to say. They are a the grammar of his speech, and they and these images come naturally to the tongue. They are not in the poem because he thought “Wow, I bet it would be effective to refer to animals here, since, you know, they’re off in the wilderness, and it would provide an effective ambiance. Wilderness has a certain cachet, and I can use it to make my poem effective for more people._

Really? I get tall hat from this one poem?

Well, I guess  not, but there are many many similar things in Irish and Scottish Gaelic literature, and their voice is very like Diarmait's here.

Here is a tiny bit from a poem attributed to Suibhne Geilt about 1150. (He is the character in the story and in this poem. No one knows who made the poem.)

Cairche ciuil at-chluainimse

’sin Gairb go glúir geimrid:

Ra muirn móir con-tuilimsw

I n-aidhche adúair eigrid.

I hear melodious music

of the Garbh River in its winter splendor;

I sleep to the sound of great revelry

on a very cold icy night.

The call of the birds on the shore,

their never-ceasing cry is sweet music to me.

Melancholy longing has taken me,

hearing them chant the hours.

Here is a well-known quatrain from the 19th century love song Donal Óg.

My love is the colour of the blackberries,

the colour of the sloe, and of the sun shining;

the color of the whortleberry dark on the moor,

and it's often there was a dark head on a shining white body.

There is an intense awareness of the world, its creatures, forms and colours here that runs all through Irish and Scots Gaidhlig literature, and its dominant note had always been its particular sensuous concreteness. It is in love with the world, with the world's colours, textures, sounds and creatures; with reality, you might say. Its open-eyed embrace of the compounds of nature (including people) that are always doomed to finally fade and finally go out, gives rise to remarkably strong effective literature.

A late Medieval Irishman in the Highlands laments his dead wife:

 M’Anam Do Sgar Riomsa 

            My soul left me last night,

            a fair dear body is in the grave;

            a sweet gentle bosom was taken from us

            with a single linen sheet around it.

M'anam do sgar riomsa a-raoir,

calann ghlan dob ionnsa i n-uaigh;

rugadh bruinne maordha min

is aonbhla lin uime uainn.

            A beautiful fine flower was taken

            away from the weak fragile stem:

            my heart’s treasure has bent down;

            the fruitful branch of that house yonder.

Do togbhadh sgath aobhdha fhionn

a-mach ar an bhfaongha bhfann;

laogh mo cridhise do chrom,

craobh throm an tighise thall.

            I am alone tonight, oh God;

            this is an evil crooked world I see;

            lovely was the weight of the young body

            that was here last night, oh King.

(Two quatrains of a long poem)

Below, a quatrain from the song Thig Tri Nithean, made by Nighean Fhir na Reilig, the daughter of the Lord of Reelik, maybe in Argyll:

Nam faicinn thu tighinn

Is fios domh gur tusa bhiodh ann,

Gun éireadh mo Chridhe

Mar atail na grein’ thar nam bean,

‘s go tugainn mo bhriathran

Gach gaoisdean tha liath ‘na mo cheann,

Gun fásadh iad buidhe

Mar dhithein  am bruthaich  nan al;lt.

            If I saw you coming,

            and if I knew for certain that it was you,

            my heart would leap up

            like the sun coming up over the mountains.

            I give you my word

            that every hair that’s gray on my head

            would turn yellow,

            like the flowers on the banks of the streams.

(I can't find the song online, but the subject of this documentary below used to sing it.)

Here is my translation of an earlyish text that was published in Early Irish Literature by Myles Dillon, University of Chicago Press, 1948.

 Mac Rig Muaide

Mac ríg Múaid mid samhraidh

Fúair I fid úaine ingin;

Tucc dó mss ndub a dráignib

Tuc airib sub for sidnib.

 The son of the King of Muaide, in the midsummer,

 found a girl in the green wood;

 She gave him black fruit from the blackthorn tree;

 she gave him a handful of strawberries on rushes.

By the way, I have not gone looking for “Nature” poems or Nature bits here. These are just things that were at hand. I could take bits from bardic poems, a category of literature often considered the most dry and uninteresting of all, and I’d have found good examples.

In fact…

An fhearthainn nach bhfaictear  fóibh

Do haithneadh  ar thealcaibh túir:

Néll ceatha fan madh ós Mhuaidhj

Do an ‘n-a bhuaidh bhuaidh eatha an úir.

(Rain is not seen falling on thy country

Yet its effects are to be seen on plowed hillsides:

A rain cloud, while keeping above rghe plain over the Muaidh (river):

Continues to produce in wonderous wise corn on the earth.)

This is from Leabhar Ủí Eadhra/The Book of O’Hara, a collection of bardic poetry about the O’Haras of County Sligo, put together in 1597. It was the book of bardic poetry easiest to reach on the bookshelf, and I opened it at random. (The translation is by the editor,  Fr. Lambert  McKenna.)

And continuing to be random, here is a verse from the song Tha Mo Chadal Luaineach/My sleep Is Fitful:

            Like the topmost grain of the crop,

            like a sapling in the verdant wood,

            like the sun that conceals the stars,

            beside you, all women fade away.

Irish, now below.

Líne uga

Mil, mess, melle,

(Día did róid),

Ubhla milsi

Mónainn derca,

Dercna froích.

Coirm co lubaib,

Loc di sibaib,

Som;as snó,

Sílbach scíach,

Derca iach,

Áirní chnó.

A clutch of eggs,

Honey, mast and heathpease

(sent by God),

Sweet apples,

Red cranberries,

Whortleberries.

Beer and herbs,

A patch of strawberries,

Good to taste in their plenty,

Haws,,

Yew berries,

Nut kernels.

This above was not a random choice. It is a very small part of a 9th century supposed  dialogue between the hermit Marbán and his brother the famous 7th century king Gúaire. Marbán is explaining why he prefers being a woodland hermit to being a king. It is poem #8 in Early Irish Lyrics, Gerard Murphy, Oxford University Press, 1956.

Below is an early poem, also from Dillon’s book

Fégaid úaib

Sair fo thúaid

In muair múid

Míleach.

Adba róin,

Rebach rán,

Ro gab lán

Línath.

Look out

To the northeast.

Over the mighty sea,

Alive with fish.

Home of seals,

Sporting in splendor,

It’s tide

Is full.

The countryside around Strokestown, County Roscommon, Ireland is the kind of place you’ll drive through without noticing: there are pastures, houses, sky and, um, well, but Donegal is quite nice and that’s where I’m actually headed. Roscommon is just on the way.

In 1848, the two hundred or so peasants of the townland of Ballykilcline lost their years’ long struggle against the landlord and authorities and were evicted and shipped to the United States. Same sort of thing happened in many many other places, but these people were officially tenants of the British crown, so the details of their struggle were recorded with bureaucratic efficiency, and you can read about them, thanks to Robert James Scally in his 1995 book The End of Hidden Ireland (Oxford University Press).

Scally describes two worlds that co-existed in the place: the first was the official, well-documented world of lawyersm landlords and investigators: the second was the place itself and its people characterized by “throughotherness:” (as Scally described it) where individuals assumed many different roles (small farmer, subletter, friend or relative using someone else’s land because the others didn’t currently need it, etc. in the community, but were mostly themselves, indefinable) and where things like lands that in the official world were completely separate, were in fact all mixed up together so that everyone was assured a share.

The people fought ferociously for many years to be able to stay in Ballykilcline, even though they were offered passage to America where gold lay in the streets and so on. Their ancestors had probably been in the townland for centuries, so maybe their unwillingness to clear out was simply due to lethargy or lack of vision or initiative?

Their resistance arose from love. Sure there are more attractive places in the world, and people with any sense would work to get to one of them (to Donegal maybe?), but when one stays in one (rural) place for a long time (generations), every stream, every tree and hillock shines in affectionate splendor, and it begins to seem that one can glimpse the very heart of the world through these specifics: heart of being, maybe.

So the Irish and Gaidhlig poems that refer to “nature” don’t focus on special “beautiful” places and things. They focus on common everyday things loved both for themselves and because they shine with the light of reality and of being: loved for being here. Men and women and these things move together.

The literature now sometimes seems to us to focus on beautiful things mainly, but that’s because what were ordinary things (trees, streams, flowers etc.) are less common than they were. People didn’t make literature about them because they are cool things whose presence in my writing will look good and therefore make me look good. They made this literature because they were in love with the world

This is our life, our world, right here and now, the poems tell us: this flowering tree, this clump of rushes, this dear face. If we can bring to these things the love and attention which they silently ask of us always, then they’ll reveal to us their individual hearts--which are, in themselves,  the very heart of life. 

There are no startling revelations of eternal truths in these poems, no hysteric choirs of angels bowing before the doors of the absolute: nothing except some very real flowers growing by the road, caught for a moment in the passing light. Nothing except some very real men and women, pausing for a moment in the dance of love to turn to speak to us. Nothing but all the world.

Before

 

Why was Ireland so odd?

It could be argued that it’s simply because it’s an island off in the west and had no easily-procurable resources, unless you’re a Viking out for portable monastic gold and silver and slaves. It’s true that it wasn’t until the 16th-century English wanted colonies and also worried about keeping rival Spain at arms’ length, that Ireland, odd or not, mattered much to anyone else, Soon, though, the traditional slightly odd Irish disorganization or at least lack of the types of organization that could have produced a strong unified state able to fight off newly-efficient hordes of English soldiers and entrepreneurs, mattered quite a lot.

Irish oddity was not much valued by the English conquerors who, after all, were there because they valued clear hierarchical systems, efficiency and profit. In such a context, oddity could only last as long as it didn’t get in the way of important things.

Oddity…I’m not talking about things like inadequately-developed awareness of the importance of clock time,  chattiness and sense of humor. Such things have, in the 20th and 21st centuries,  sold films, airline seats and bed and breakfast bookings, but they are not really odd.

I’m talking about deviant odd

Ireland is really the only place in Europe where the traditional vernacular traditions were cultivated both by traditional hereditary  learned families and also within structures of everyday life. (What do I mean by “vernacular “? I mean they were not based on late Roman Empire Christian religious structures or learning.) It is the only place, for example, where, in his inauguration, a king symbolically married the goddess of that place. It is the only place where people knew of the specific goddess of their locality and something about her. It is the only place where people still knew the traditions of their local place and their history going back hundreds of years.

(I’m not saying that the traditional learned families were closet pagans or anything like that. They were very Christian and very familiar with Latin ecclesiastical learning, but Christianity in Ireland was not imposed by conquerors: it was adapted by the Irish themselves and in certain ways,  the new religion incorporated some aspects of fundamental pre-existing Irish ideology and social practice.)

For example, there is a trio of West Cork/Kerry saints, Latiaran, Crobhdhearg (sometimes Iníon Buí instead) and Gobnait, believed to be sisters. They are now patronesses of local churches. Gobnait’s feast day is close to St. Bridget ‘s Day/Imbolg, traditional beginning of Spring: Iníon Buí and Crobhdhearg’s feast day May 1st/Béaltaine, beginning of Summer, and Latiaran’s feast is close to August 1st/Lughnasa, the beginning of Autumn and Harvest.

There is a healing well associated with each of these saints, and a traditional gathering there on their feast day: the usual thing. Each saint is associated with specific  farming tasks logically enough. For example, farmers from a wide area brought their cows to Cathair Crobhdhearg, an old rath (circular enclosure) that contains the well. (”Cathair” is usually a stone-built one.) The visit brought the cows health for the season.

(Crobhdhearg is translated in one of the videos as “Red Claw” but that is wrong. “Crobh” can mean a claw, but in names in usually means hand,)

Statues of trios of goddesses are very common finds from Celtic Gaul, and they often carry things like cornucopias, babies and agricultural implements that suggest a connection with the earth. Trios are very common in older Irish literature.

There were probably other, even many, such trios of saints about whom knowledge did not last or which was never noted, but these three saints happen to be associated with Sliabh Luachra, an upland area now mostly known for a style of music. The region is therefore considered the villages associated with that music in the late 20th century. but it was originally larger, extending from west Limerick south to…well, nobody is sure where, because south of Knocknagree etc, you’re into mountains and mountain valleys from Killarney and Glen Flesk southwest to Beara and Bantry etc.

This larger traditional Sliabh Luachra appears regularly in medieval tales as “the wilderness.  and it was still known as wild unprofitable country to 16th and 17th century English conquerers. It was for sure rough country and out of the way, and some of the last formal aristocratic resistance to the English appeared there, ranging from Art Ó Laoire (see his wife Eibhlín’s famous keen for him) to the O’Donoghue lords of Glen Flesk, to the Ó Súlleabháin lords of the Kilgarvan area, and those of Beara.

One traditional learned family, Ó Dálaigh, associated with the important FitzGerald lords and with the MacCarthaigh lords of West Cork, had two seats in Sliabh Luachra, and two of the great learned poets of the 17th century – the last ones – are believed to have been partly educated there, although Áodhgán Ó Rathaile is more likely associated with the seat of his mother’s family, the Mac Aodhgáns, another traditional learned family there.

Latiaran and Iníon Buí are saints of two parishes on the Blackwater river that is known in Irish as Abhainn Mór na Mumhain. This is usually translated as Big River of Munster, but probably actually refers to Mór, a goddess associated with Cluain in east Cork not too far from where the river meets the sea.  Crobhdhearg’s seat is also on the river just over the border in Kerry (Rathmore). Gobnait is the exception and her seat is to the south of a mountain mass and separated from the others, though not too far from Na Cíochanna, the Paps mountains that were traditionally Dhá Chíoch nAnann, the Two Breast of Anú. (Anú was another goddess, an important one.)

Just as the Celts apparently considered a calendar date to begin with what we would consider the night before, the Irish considered Samhain/Nov 1 (the New Year) to begin with what we would say was the night before. There are many indications that they also thought that all fundamental things had their beginning in and arose out of  night: out of “darkness”, the wild and the unorganized/uncivilized. 

The Fianna, for example, the quintessential defenders of ancient Ireland against invaders and against hostile eruptions of the Otherworld into the cultivated “daylight” world, were able to defend the human community because the Fianna were partially situated in the Wild themselves and were nourished by it. 

Many male heroes in the old stories have to leave the known daylight world and go into the unknown and Otherworld to face strange ordeals, and (hopefully) the fundamentals (like the Fianna were required to do), thus to return whole and adult. There is a corresponding corpus of tales of female heroes who are also expelled from the daylight world and go into the darkness where they endure strange trials before they return to the daylight world as grown women.

An example is Gobnait who was forced to leave her home in (it is said) Clare and take refuge first in Inisheer (Aran) and then wander southern Ireland alone until she would see nine white deer together. This only finally happened in Baile Mhuirne (Ballyvourney, Co Cork). There she established her church and has protected the local people since against outside violence and harm.

Suithchearn, in the old tale Suithchearn and Ronán Diacolla, is forced from her home and wanders Ireland impoverished and alone until she becomes a servant at the court of the king of the Uí Liatháin in east Cork, The Queen challenges the king to sleep with her, apparently the ugliest woman in Ireland. The king, shamed,  unwillingly does so, and in the morning, when Suithchern cleans herself, her actual beauty is revealed and she becomes queen in place of her somewhat morally challenged and certainly  not very perceptive predecessor.

There may have been a similar element of Iníon Buí’s lost tale: “Buí” often translates as swarthy-skinned, implying a life out under the elements, lack of cleanliness etc., and it may be that she underwent her own wanderings before finding her place. (Suitchchern rubbed rye flour on her face to disguise herself, (maybe to counterfeit the effects of a hard life) and I think if anyone in Irish history earned the nickname Swarthy, someone with a layer of old rye flour on their face would.

Sliabh Luachra was thus not simply a place with lots of trees and animals, It was formally the Wild, the Night, the Darkness out of which all things arise: a source. It was where the Mother Goddess of Munster, Anu, was seated. It was where families of hereditary poets who took pver the druids' non-religious functions had their seats. It was where heroes and heroines ventured in order to pass on into knowledge and adulthood.

These are the kinds of things that made Ireland really odd.

Notice, though, that nobody was saying "Oh yes, we're keeping up this archaeic worldview and these practices because we are committed to The Old Faith, Would you like me to explain our beliefs and tell you why we are right?" No, it was simply that old patterns made sense to people on the ground, and life and practice tended to return always to such patterns despite formal changes in formal religion, and while such things in European peasant communities were considered weird and heretical by the authorities, and suppressed, in Ireland, the authorities for the most part didn't see anything wrong with them.

Books

Early Irish Lyrics: Eighth to Twelfth Century, Gerard Murphy

If I could save only two books from the conflagration, this would be one of them. (The other is not the Bible.).

Murphy knew and loved this literature (as I do, so I am prejudiced). He gives a good selection with full scholarly apparatus. The vocabulary can teach you a lot about Early Irish. The translations are EXCELLANT. The old Oxford Press edition is solid enough that it might make it through a conflagration without any help from me.

The King of Elfland's Daughter, Lord Dunsany

Wonderful book, and the specific glory is in the language. Some Edwardian languor there, but mostly just a restatement of an oral style, and one must let yourself go into it. You will not be moving at internet speed, but there are stories can only be told at a slower pace.

Dunsany was an old (Anglo) Irish Meath family, but he was English in education and tradition. The Irish stuff still suffuses the book, though not overtly.

Early Irish Literature, Myles Dillon

Originally published in 1948, but there is still nothing comparable. It easy-to-read a popular introduction of 192 pages

The Fenian Cycle in Irish and Scots Gaelic Literature, Joseph Flahive

A scholarly survey published in 2017 that notes most of the texts, touches on current trends in scholarly interpretation and gives a completer bibliography. Note that this is not a collection of texts. It is part of a University College, Cork series of shortish (110 pages here) popular introductions to topics in Irish literature. and is modeled in an earlier series that Myles Dillon organized and (Irish literature topics) wrote.

The Year in Ireland, Kevin Danaher

A pretty complete description of Irish calendar customs, synthesizing earlier and often obscure accounts. Danaher was the Folklore Commission's Physical Culture man, so don't look for knowledge of Irish literature or comparative religion or any that high-falutin' theory here.

The Festival of Lughnasa, Maire MacNeill

A unique book from Eoin MacNeill's daughter that does reflect knowledge of Irish literature and comparative religion, combined with a massive questionnaire that the Folklore Commission organized when there were old people in many parts of Ireland who still knew about old stuff.

Lughnasa was August 1, the harvest festival and focused on the very important god Lugh

Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture, E.P. Thompson

A compilation of long essays on various topics in 18th century English history, not a unified book, but the essays are on key topics and one can gain a clear understanding of the late 18th century forced shift from a custom-based society in which ordinary people had at least some say, to a market-based society.

One can also gain a clear understanding of how to do and how to write history. No one else has had Thompson's mastery of the archives and therefore of the particular and of the human, as well as his ability to synthesize, to draw theoretical models from the particular and the general, and also to write clearly and well.

The field of history has recently (like other academic disciplines) become often a mere vehicle for individual scholars' aggrandizement or playgrounds of theory. This book shows it needn't be so.

Tales of the Fairies and of the Ghost World Collected from Oral Tradition in Southwest Munster, Jeremiah Curtin, 1895

These short stories are real people in 1890s Ireland (when people dealt every day with the world as it is and never saw a computer) telling about things that happened to them or to others in the community, in their own time or before. The stories are fascinating and well-told with the Munster directness. Not every modern reader will appreciate that or the lack of filtering and fluff, but some will,

Eigse Chairbre. Filiocht o Chairbreacha I gCo. Chorcai Agus On Gceantar Maguaird 1750-1850, Blathnaid Ui Chathain

The author skillfully shows the reader a world that is unfortunately lost and lets us hear voices otherwise almost completely lost.

She has gone through all the manuscripts and gathered songs and poems made in the area of County Cork extending from roughly Timoleague to Drimoleague/Bantry, gathered information on the makers, supplied notes and vocabulary, 533 pages' worth. It is great. (No English translations though).

Irish 18th century poetry, by the way, is also great. Not every poem here is among the best, but all are good. No translations.

 

The Wedding Poems of Dáibhí Bruadair, Margo Griffin-Wilson (Editor)

A very good entry point to understanding the 17th century Irish world and its literature. A nice rainy day book too.

 

Literature in Irish, Proinsias MacCana

A short book written by still the best and wisest and most discerning of Iris=h language scholars. Still the best introduction too.

 

Blackcock's Feather, Maurice Walsh

A good novel and engrossing read.

Walsh didn't really know much about 16th century Ireland, and grew up reading circa 1900 popular adventure fiction, but when his heart was in it, he wrote well and truly.

Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, Lady Gregory, 

A remarkably good 365-page book published in 1920, the fruit of many years conversations with the then Irish-speaking small farmers of south Galway and nearby north Clare. Lady Gregory was a landlord, but one long involved in the Gaelic revival, and , for some reason, people talked fairly openly to her. Certainly her own predilictions and personality filtered what she heard, but there is not a lot of author-speak or of the author in the stories. They are clear prose; basically, she says, "the very words in which the story had been told." Gregory was a mentor to Yeats, and it is interesting to compare her writing to his gushy, fulsome, ill-informed and self-centered writing on similar topics.

Sections of the book include Seers and Healers ; Away: Herbs, Charms and Wise Women: Astray, and Treasure: Banshees and Warnings: The Fighting of the Friends: Appearances: Butter: The Fool of the Forth; Forths and Sheoguey Places. There have been almost no similar books, in Irish or English. Books of individual storytellers' stories include some similar stories, but there is no collections (intelligent and well-informed) on these topics.

 

Amhrain Chuige Uladh, Muireadach Meith

A great collection, mostly from Omeath, County Louth, originally published in 1927. Includes forty songs. This modern edition (in modern type) includes sheet music as well, and almost a hundred pages of great notes about other versions of the songs, places published, the singers, etc.

Padraigin ni hUallachain's book A Hidden Ulster, sheds a lot of light on many of these songs, as well, besides being a great book in itself, and much motre accessible to contemporary people, with lots of photographs, translation, noters etc..

Mac na Michomhairle, Seosamh Watson

A great and very engaging and entertaining, probably 17th century, Irish tale (Leitrim? Roscommon? Oriel?) of about 20 pages that hovers on the margin of the novel, dealing with love, longing and the Otherworld. The book is 200 pages, and the editor investigates the background, themes, sources (including a list of known manuscripts), possible authors and so on. Includes also an oral version taken down in 1842 in Leitrim,

The kind of book that I love. No translations, though.

Seanachas Phádraig Í Chrualaoi, Padraig O Crualaoi

Two hundred pages of traditional poems of the 18th and early 19th century Musgrai and central county Cork, taken down from the memory of a contemporary poet in 1943. A fascinating illustration of the literary history of a mostly oral tradition. (Very few of these poets wrote manuscripts.) Also contains lore about the poets, and anecdotes. Can be usefully read beside Cois an Ghaorthaidh, Diarmuid O Muirithe's edition of a more "scholarly" selection of 18th and early 19th century poems from the area (33 poems), taken from manuscripts and from oral tradition, with shortish biographies.

 

Foamy Sky: The Major Poems of Miklós Radnóti, Miklós Radnóti

Incredible poems, particularly the later ones.  Direct clear utterance from a man who did not wither under the horror. Total absence of posturing and bullcrap. Shows why writing matters.

The English translations are very skilled. None of it has anything to do with Ireland. 

Seana-Chaint na nDeise II, Risteard B. Breatnach

If you love language, and know a fair bit of Irish, this is a book for you. It's basically a dictionary of 450 pages (regular print size) of words heard from native speakers of Waterford and south Tipperary Irish between 1908 and 1922, illustrated by many phrases that illustrate the range of meanings, and also the incredible richness and vigor of Irish idiom. (Myles na gCopaleen once commented that if scholars had calculated that ordinary speakers of English used a vocabulary of 3000 (300?) words, then ordinary traditional Irish speakers used 300,000, and often took pride in never using the same word twice in their lifetime. He was joking, but you see the point.) The editor provides pronunciation in international phonetic script for a good many, taken from speakers alive in the 1970s. It is, physically, a good solid book that will not fall apart unless you use it to prop up a junked car all winter.

The People of the Sea, David Thomson

An enjoyable book, structured as reminiscences and retellings of stories from the west coasts  of Scotland and Ireland (and Orkneys) that focus on the interactions of seals as magical or at least also human beings; their interactions with humans. The author has a warm sympathy for human societies now vanished, and for seals, and writes well. As someone who lived years in those societies, though, he does sometimes indulge in some fey mush, as well.

"Fey mush"? It is a question of the style, though that style arises from the person.

Though it will not be obvious to a reader who doesn't know the communities and stories, Thomson is too present in the book. Not overtly, and not so much in the stories themselves, but in the descriptions of his travels and interactions, where his identity as a member of a superior society (British middle class) traveling among the natives -- in this case picturesque "natural" Gaels -- and also his "personality", flavor the interactions that he describes in sometimes uncomfortable ways. I'm thinking of the encounters with the Hebridean girl; and various children, in particular. (These encounters are illuminated by his other book (Woodbrook House?). At the risk of being an idiot, I might say that Thomson as a person was an outsider who wanted very much to be part of the warm close human communities that he describes here, but that something in him prevented that. I'm probably overstating it, and, again, it won't be an issue to most readers.

By the way, versions of most of the Mayo stories can be found in the book The Living Landscape: Kilgalligan, County Mayo (1975).

Young Art and Old Hector: A Novel, Neil M. Gunn

This is one of those unassuming books where the craft skill of the writer creates a medium so utterly clear that the reader simply experiences the story. It is a good story, too. Gunn was an eloquent spokesman for the Highland (Gaelic) ethos of the early 20th century, and also interested in Zen. The wisdom and humanity of the old community, as well as the clear loving attention of Zen etc., shine through here, so that, though nothing that noteworthy happens in the book, but there are few better reads. It is a sad commentary on what we have lost in literature and in society since. (He also perfectly catches the Gaelic approach to life and language in this book, though in English.)

Ireland, Irishmen, and revolutionary America, 1760-1820, David Noel Doyle

This is a remarkably good book (published around 197 or 1980) from an Irish historian who specialized in American  and Irish American history, and who therefore, it may be, had a much clearer and more accurate view of the nature of 18th century colonial Ireland than did Irish historians specializing in that period of Irish history. The book can be read as a guide to that society.

There's a good bit of original research embodied here on topics like indentured servants and Irish/North American shipping. Doyle also looks at topics like the nature of the various strands of emigration to America, 1715 - 1776; the role of the Scots Irish and native Irish in pre-revolutionary society; their respective roles in the revolution' the impact of the American Revolution on various elements in Irish society, and the evolution of American society up until 1800. A lot of this is based on his own research, and focuses on specifics of person, place and event, rather than on generalities.

The book is not used to hang an argument on or to advance a career, but rather to explicate the past, and the author brings intelligence, organization and good sense to that task. He writes well, and it is an enjoyable book to read.

Rob Roy MacGregor: His Life and Times, W.H. Murray

Remarkably well-informed, intelligent and well-written.

When the Mountain Fell Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz

A simple story of French Switzerland in powerful language. Very skillfully done, though, and a breath of fresh air in this time when stories are conceived of and read as commodities, rather than communications about this beautiful perplexing world. Nothing at all to do with Ireland...

Travel Light, Naomi Mitchison

Well, she's Scottish and lived many years in the last Gaelic-speaking community in Kintyre...

It at first seems just another apparently inconsequential British fantasy (like Diane Wynne Jones, Harry Potter, etc.), but the clarity and strength of the language, and of the story itself, take this book to a level that Wynne Jones, H. Potter, etc, are unaware of.  The book is one of those paradoxical classics, like D' Angulo's Indian Tales, where the not-terribly-spectacular narrative transpires in some utterly clear medium that gradually becomes utterly gripping, and thrrough which wisdom shines.

Riobard Bheldon, ed  Amhrain agus Danta, ed.Padraig O Machain

This is a minor classic, that is, in its quiet way, quite major, and it is difficult to express exactly why that is. 

The book itself is a beautifully put-together object; well laid-out, well-printed.  The editor's language in the Forward and notes is supple, effective and quietly eloquent, as good Irish often is. He has tracked down all sorts of interesting information about the poet, the songs, and people associated with the poet, and includes many evocative photographs.  He sets the poet in his time and place very effectively, yet also communicates the poet's individuality.

Riobard Bheldon, by the way,  was a minor poet who lived in Co Waterford, c. 1835 - 1914. His songs deal with episodes of everyday life in a fairly typical way, and also with the matter of the Gaelic Revival. Why do they come across as so effective here? It may be that placing any material in a beautiful container will make that material also beautiful, but that is not it. These poems live in that specifically traditional Irish-language poetry intersection of wry intelligence, passionate restrained emotion, exaltation/intoxication of patterned language, and resonant language that evokes 2000 years of previous poetry. Altogether, these afford glimpses into the heart of Ireland. (No translations) 

The Roots of Dependency: Subsistance, Environment, and Social Change among the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos, Richard White

A thoughtful, well-written book with application far beyond the study of American Indian societies.

Using a sophisticated nuanced version of dependency theory, it examines in detail the processes by which three Indian societies--Choctaw (Mississippi), Pawnee and Navaho--were incorporated as dependent minorities within the expanding American state. Neither the Choctaw nor Pawnee were ever defeated militarily, yet the decisions they made in relation to trade with American society, and the ways that those decisions gradually restructured (distorted? wrecked?) their societies and relationship with their specific environments, meant in the end that they could not only no longer feed and clothe themselves from their own land and resources, but were left with almost no choices but those Americans made for them. 

This is how domination happened.

On Another Man's Wound, Ernie O'Malley

A great book by a very intelligent and insightful man. You'll learn more about early 20th century Ireland and the Irish uprising from it than from a box load of others.

Well-written and gripping.

Guerilla Days in Ireland: A Personal Account of the Anglo-Irish War, Tom Barry

A great leader, I imagine, but not a great writer. Ernie O'Malley's books are much much better.

The Land and People of County Meath, 1750-1850m Peter Connell

.

A great great book of scholarship and restrained (com)passion. There is no better on early 19th century Ireland. A good read too.

Maps and figures to your heart's content, clearly-developed argument, and good writing

The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845 - 1849, Cecil Woodham-Smith

A well-researched, passionate, skillfully-written account that cares more about humanity than academic fashions.  

It's just slightly episodic, so it misses one or two important themes and developments, and it ends before the Famine did, but a very important book for all that.  

Information has become more readily available since this was written, and the understanding of the structure of Irish society is more solid now than then. The Famine was an industry for a few years around 1996, so there are a lot of Famine books now, but this is still probably the best one to begin with.

Underground Tales

 The tale  Cas Ó Cein is a reminder of the importance of the oral tradition in Gaelic literature. Only one manuscript text of the tale survives, and it's little more than a garbled summary, written in County Cavan, Ireland in 1484m and it’s been suggested that it's really just a crib sheet from someone who heard the tale told and wanted to remember the plot. At any rate, another copy was made in 1671, in county Mayo. Then the tale disappears from view, until the 19th century.

 The version that's translated here was collected in 1870, from Lachlainn Mac Neill, a shoemaker on the island of Islay in the southwestern Highlands of Scotland. There are other oral versions from both Scotland and Ireland, reminders of a once flourishing tradition that's since disappeared.

Here is a translation of the first little bit.

There was a king in Ireland long ago. He was a just man and a good king, and the people of his kingdom were very fond of him. But for all that, he wasn't happy. None of the children that were born to him ever lived, and it seemed as if he was fated to die without ever having had children.

He asked the nobles of the kingdom for advice, in the hope that they could give him some explanation of why his children were dying. But none of the advice or the explanations that he got made any difference.

There was a wise old man who'd been with the king's father since he was a young man. He went to the king and said: "I'm sorry to see you so unhappy, and I'm sorry about the cause of it, as well. I'm going to give you some advice now. If you have a child again, put him out to nurse far from here, and don't even think of him again. Leave him there until he's nineteen years old, and then send for him. If he's alive, fine and good. If he isn't, well, then you won't feel as much pain, since you won't have seen him in the meantime."

It happened that the queen became pregnant again. When she gave birth, what did she have but a boy?

The king sent for the old man who'd given him the advice,  and told him that he was thinking of doing what he'd suggested. They searched for a nurse for the child, far away from the king's court. But because the king's children had always died before, people were afraid to take the young prince, for fear that he would die too.

In the end, they found an old man and woman named O Croileagan, who didn't have a family of their own. The two of them came to fetch the prince,  and when they did, they got a lot of gold and silver too, and everything else they might need. They were forbidden to tell anyone else who the child was, or even to suggest to anyone that he wasn't their own child--until he was nineteen years old. If he was still alive then, they were to bring him back to his father's court, and show the signs that would prove he was the king's son.

They took the child. When he wasn't growing in the day, he was growing at night, and it looked as if he'd be a fine lad. His foster-father and mother loved him as much as if he'd been their own, and twenty times more. O Croileagan was only a poor man living in a turf bothy, so the people around him was amazed at the fine education and upbringing he gave the lad, who they thought was his own son. When the boy became old enough, he learned all the skills he'd need for the battlefield. He was a wonderful and able boy, and so it continued until he was almost nineteen. His foster-mother died then, and there was only him and his foster-father left.

On the day he was nineteen, his foster-father said to him; "It's time for me to let you go home to your own place now. I've fulfilled the contract, and you're no longer mine."

The lad just stared at him, with no idea what to say.  

"Oh, father, who am I?  Who are my people?" he said after a while. "I thought I was yours, and I've never wanted to leave you."

"It'd be better for you to leave me. You're the King of Ireland's son," said O Croileagan.

The young man was so shocked at the sudden news, and at having to leave his foster-father, that he didn't know where he was.

They got ready and set off for the king's court. When they were close, they heard that the king had died.

The king's folk knew that there was a young prince who'd been sent out in fosterage, but they didn't know where he'd been sent, or where they should go looking for him. The king had only two or three people whom he'd trusted, in addition to the old man who'd given him the advice, and they were the only ones who knew where the child had gone to be nursed, and where he'd be found if he lived. (The king hadn't told any others because) he didn't want anyone to know that his son had been nursed in such a poor place, for fear the people wouldn't respect him. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCm--cH4fQk&t=6007s