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.