A Quick Pilgrimage in Search of Oats

 It used to be accepted as an obvious fact that the Irish and the Highlanders were people given to wandering, and that they are all born with an itch in their feet that can only be cured by travel and emigration.

For proof, you only had to look in any big English, American, or more recently, Australian town. There were Irish all over the place! Highlanders were more often out in the countryside and so drew less attention to themselves, but they were there as well. And wasn’t it those crowds of Irish monks that saved civilization or something back in the eighth and ninth centuries? There wasn’t an Italian, French or German monastery where you wouldn’t hear a brogue back then, and they left graffiti in Gaelic in all the manuscripts.

It's obviously something in the genes.

Fewer people care about such things anymore. For one thing, the Irish are less visible in foreign places today, maybe partly because they are less obviously different. (Irish in 19^th century America were apparently only one step above Native Americans, and even in 1950s and early 1960s England they were awkwardly old-fashioned.) Irish or Celtic wanderlust may die an intellectual natural death, like some old writer long gone out of fashion and reduced to boring strangers in late-night bars. Or maybe not.

Since last week was even busier than the one before, and I have still not had time to write about oats and vegetables, I’d like to look at the genesis of the wanderlust idea and do my small part to help it expire.

Fil suil nglais                                                        There is a blue eye

Fégbas Erinn dar a hais:                                       that will look back at Ireland:

Noco n-aceba iarmo-thá                                       never more shall it see

Firu Erenn nach a mná.                                        the men of Ireland or its women.

12^th century: attributed to Colm Cille as he left Ireland in 563 A.D. (“fil” used as the independent verb “to be” in Middle Irish. Lenition not shown.)

 

Robads mellach, a meic mo Dé,                      It would be pleasant, oh son of my God

(dingnaib réimenn)                                          in wondrous voyages

ascnam tar tuinn topur ndílenmnm                  to travel over deluge-fountained waves

dochum nErenn…                                            to Ireland…

 

Rom-lín múich i n-ingnais Eirenn                   Sorrow filled me, away from Ireland

Díamsa coimsech,                                              though I was powerful,

‘san tír ainéoil conam-tharla                              making me in the foreign land

Taideóir tuirsech.                                               Tearful and sad,

Poem from about 100 A.D, also attributed to Colm Cille,

 Perigrinatio, Intentional separation from loved ones and from the world – from everything known – was an important practice of early Irish monks, and this could be effected by going to the continent or setting off west or north into the unknown.

The continent was attractive in some ways since that was where Christianity came from and there were monasteries and manuscripts and relics and so on, besides all the strange, unpleasant, foreign places and people, but it was still considered a kind of martyrdom to leave Ireland.

West and north provided a more immediate break with the known world, since it was mostly ocean. Irish monks trusted to God to steer their tiny boats, and they were in Iceland before the Norse, and on all kinds of tiny islands and rocks, but I suppose others starved or drowned before finding a retreat.  West and north may have had their own lesser, maybe subconscious, attraction though: there were older  traditions of Otherworld islands out there, and these traditions gave rise mostly Christianized tales like that of Bran and Mael Dúin.

The important point was that perigrinatio was intended to be difficult and unpleasant, and leaving Ireland was suffering. There are poems whose whole point is that and the assumed composers talk about how difficult it was and how much they miss Ireland.

Later travelers made the same point.

Diombáidh trial ó thulchaibh Fáil,                             A sorrow to travel from, the hills of Ireland,

Diombháidh iath Eireann d’fhághbháil,                     a sorrow to leave the lands of Ireland.

Iath milis na mbeann mbeachach,                              Sweet lands of bee-filled mountains

Inis na n-eang n-óigheachach.                                    Island of fields of young horses.

 

Cé tá mo thriall tar sál soir,                                              Although I travel east over the sea,

Ar dtabhairt cúil d’iath Fhiontain,                                   When I turned away from Ireland,

Do scar croidhe fan ród rinn—                                        my heart left me as I traveled--                                            

Níor char fód eile acht Eirinn.                                         It loves no land but Ireland,

 

Fód is truime toradh crann,                                            Land of heaviest tree fruit.

Fód is fearuaine fearann:                                                land where grass is greenest:

Sanchar braonach beartach,                                            the ancient plain with its streams and

                                                                                        sheaves

An tír chraobhach chruithneachtach…                           the green-branched land of wheat.

Three verses of seven composed by Uilliam Nuinseann from Delvin, County Westmeath (born 1550) as he was about to go to England in the mid-sixteenth century. He got home again, but lost his lands for having fought with O Neill against Queen Elizabeth and the rest.

(For more about him and his Anglo-Irish family, see Eigse, #6, 1949 , Poems of Exile by Uilleam Nuinseann by Gerard Murphy.

Nineteenth century immigrants didn’t want to leave either, but they had no choice because they could no longer get access to land, and there was no other way to feed themselves and their families.

 From Duanag do’n Mhorbhairbe (A little song to Morvern, Highlands of Scotland)

Tha clann Aonghuis air am fuadach                         The Macleods of Fuinary are                                                                                                     banished

‘s gann tha duine san Leth-uachdraichach,              and hardly a man left in the Upper Part:

 claidhe is ballachan fuara                                        stone wallss and bare house walls are

suaithnicheas na tím chaidh seachad.                       a symbol of the time that has passed.

 

An oidhche roimhe, bha mi bruadar                           I dreamed last night

Bhith mar abhaist an Rathuaidhe.                             That I was in Rahoy as I used to be.

Nuair a dhúusg me  -- fáth mo chruadail –               when I woke – reason for my misery --

E cho fada bhuainn ‘s a’ ghealach,,,                          it was as far from me as the moon.

 

And from Oran úr mu Sgrios nan Croitearan (A new song about the destruction of the crofters.)

Fhad  ‘s bhios cridhe bláth ‘nam chum,                      As long as I have live heart in my chest

Is teanga am bheul gu cainnt,                                     and tongue in mouth with which to speak,

bidh an tír ‘san d’fhuair mi árach óg                          the land in which I was nourished                       young

le sólas  tighinn am chuimhne.                                  Will come with joy in my memory.

Mar is fhaide théid mi om dhuthaich,                        The farther I go from my land

‘s ann as dlúithe an dáimh,                                         Love/loyalty are all the firmer

‘s cha díochuimhnioch mi an taigh dubh                    and I will never forget the little house

‘san d’rugadh me sa ghleann.                                     In which I was born in the glen

                                            

Ged tha ‘n duine bochd fo tháir                                    Though the poor man is despised

Am beachdan árd luchd -uaill,                                      in the opinion of the great and proud,

An inbhe mhór, am bósd ‘s an cliú                               their high rank, their boasts and                   reputation

tha leams’ ‘na mhasladh buan:                                      I think it a great insult

a liuthad gleann ‘s a chuir iad fás                                 considering all the glens they cleared

le feidh an áite an tsluaigh,                                           and put deer in place of the people

san tigh ‘s nach cuireadh iad an coin,                          and the house into which they would not

 put the dogs

tha an croitéir bochd gun truan.                                  There is the poor crofter unpitied.

 

Duncan MacPherson was born in Rahoy in Morvern in the 1830s and ended up in New Zealand. He is one the local poets in The Gaelic Bards of Morvern, self published by Iain Thornber (Morvern), 1985, and no one has ever heard of him.

It might be worth mentioning that today, there is probably no one in Morvern whose family was there a hundred years ago. Everyone who is there is there because work on the estate or tourist trade, etc. etc. brought them.

It wasn’t only going to a foreign land that was horrible: even leaving one’s native village was terrible. The people were part of their place in a way moderners can hardly imagine, and their people before them  had been forever. Leave? Was it even possible?

Maybe not, but they had no choice.

There are many stories about starving people carrying their dead child or spouse who died insan Droch-Shaoil many miles so that the dead one could rest in the graveyard of their native place among their kin and neighbors.

There are many stories of people out at night meeting ghosts who are traveling there. Here are two from Seanchas Amhlaoibhh Uí Luínse, Comhairle Bhéaloideas Eireann, 1980. He was a Mid-Cork storyteller who died in 1947.)

Bhí feirmeoir áirithe n-ar (i.e. gur) ghlaoig fear siúil chuige i gcóir na hoíche. Ach do ráinig gur cailleag (cailleadh) an fear siúil i dtigh an fheirmeora. (There was a particular farmer to whom a begger came for the night. But it happened that the begger died in the farmer’s house.)

An oíche a bhíothas á thórramhj, do bhuail chútha isteach seana-bhean (agus thosnaigh sí ag caoine an fear siúil) (The night he was being waked, a little old woman came in.)

Mo chara thú is mo rún,

Is níl agum bád ná lúng

A bhéarfadh tú chun siúil

Go teampall Acha’n Dúin.

 

(My kinsman and my love,

I am without a boat or ship

To take you away

To the church of A. an D.)

 

The man of the house asks where Acha’n Dúin is. She tells him, but then he asks “Ca bhfios dom canad (ce'n ait) ann go gcuirfí é? (How would I know where in the graveyard he would be buried?)

“Ní ghá dhuit ach é a bhreith  go dtí geata na reilige, agus tógfar dhíot a chúram ansan.” (You only need to carry him to the gate of the cemetary and the matter will be taken off you.)

Bhí sé déanach um thráthnóna nuair a shroiseadar Acha’n Dúin. Nuair a chuadar go geata na reilige, bhí ceathrar fear anso rómpu. Thógadar an chora amach as an dturcail agus riug leo ar a nguaillibh isteach geata na reilge. Níor labhradar  féin…”

 (It was late in the evening when they reached A an D. When they went to the gate of the cemetery, there were four men waiting for them. They took the coffin out of the cart and took it on their shoulders in the gate of the cemetery. They themselves did not speak…”

 (The point is that the old woman and the four men are some of the dead of A an D., probably kin).

The second story concerns a man from the storyteller’s village who was buried in another place, “though he should have been buried in his place.”. He appears to his kin when they are milking out in the pasture and asked them to bring his body to Baile Mhúirne. They don’t bother to do that, thinking it's just a passing thing.

He soon appears to them again and when asked, tells them that in the foreign cemetery, he is “mar a bheadh gé iasachta idir scata géanna: prioc agus giub age gach éinne orm,” (like a foreign goose among a flock of geese: every one of them and a push and a beak at me.”

His relations go and bring his body to his home place.

There were many such stories and I’d leave them here, only it would seem repetitious and, yes, I’m very busy.

At any rate, the renowned Gaelic wanderlust had very specific causes, and in its more modern form, was born of necessity. The Irish and Highlanders left home only when forced to, and dreaded leaving.

The assumed wanderlust is an example of lazy, shoddy thinking of which there is plenty in the world today

However…having dismissed the idea of Gaelic wanderlust, I’ve got to admit that some of the Irish emigration of the 1980s and later was aided by the fact that, despite U2 and James Joyce, a lot of twentieth century Irish knew that America etc and its way of life and culture were much! better than dingy old Ireland, so why not go where life was good?

A Protective Mist, though not of Oats

 

I promised a discussion of oats and vegetables this week and though I understand that the announcement I’m about to make will be a terrible disappointment to you all, the oats must wait until next week, as this past week was very, very busy.

Instead, I offer Ceistireacht Eoghain Baiste, a protective blessing/rann cosanta from Corca Dhuibhne

 

Ceistireacht Eoghain Baiste,                                       Catachism of John the Baptist,

Eilisibheat Naomhtha ‘ ghrinn,                                   of the wise Saint Elisabeth,

Mathair Eoghain Baiste béal binn,                             the mother of eloquent John the B:

Go saoraidh tú sinn                                                    protect us from

Ar cheistni, ar ghoin, ar chrochadh,                           problems, from wounding, from                                                                                               hanging

Ar losgadh, ar bhathadh, ar phláigh,                         from burns, from drowning, from                                                                                               disease

Ar fhiabhras agus ar gach aicíd.                                 From fever and from every illness.

Ar chomharaí na gceithre gcrann dúinn:                   With the sign of the four trees (to us):

Crann fola, crann feóla,                                              tree of blood, tree of flesh,

Crann do cheasadh Críost,                                         tree on which Christ was crucified,

Crann go dtáinig sé beó.                                             tree on/from which he which he came                                                                                             free/safe.

Ar chomharaí na gceithre meádh dhúinn                  with the sign of the four scales(?):

tré cheotharnach, tré cheó.                                       Through mist, through fog.

Píosa a chuir Muire tíompall a hAon-mhic,              Cloth that Mary wrapped around her :                                                                                        son:

Píosa go dtáinig sé beó.                                              cloth because of which he came free.

Críos na catharach fé’ m bhráid.                                Belt of the fortress around my chest.

Nár dheargaid mo charaid ná mo namhaid,              May neither friend or enemy wound me,

Ach fé’m  chorporacht soillse geala.                         but to my body of shining light,

Aingeal dilís Dé go dur’thacht,                                 (may the) true zealous angel of God

Sabháil sprid m’anam                                                save my spirit and soul

Ar an-chomhachta ‘n Diabhail.                                  against the devil’s evil powers.

Pádraig ‘a a bhacaill,                                                  Patrick with his staff,

Mártan ‘as a chochall,                                                Martin with his hood,

Muire ‘s a mac,                                                           Mary and her son,

Brighde ‘s a brat.                                                        Bridget and cloak.

Ag gabháil tre Choill Muire dom,                               As I go through Mary’s Wood,

Hat’ iarrainn ar mo cheann,                                         an iron helmet on my head,

Lutarach iarrainn fé’m chom,                                      an iron breastplate around my body

Bróg iarrainn fé’m bhonn.                                           iron shoes under my feet.

Ceó Muire, ceó Críost,                                                Mary’s mist, Christ’s mist

Ceó ceó ceathair Críost,                                               a mist, a mist of Christ four times,

Ceó sonais agus ceó séimh                                           a mist of good luck, a happy mist

I(n)’s gach áit dá ngeobhfar linn,                                 in every  place into which we happen,

I(n)’s gach cluais dá n-éistfidh linn                             in every ear that hears us,

Ar dhíon agua ar thearmaid   (tearmainn)                   in the protection and sanctuary

Na Tríonóide Naomtha, Amen.                                   of the Blessed Trinity.

 

“Ó’m mathair do chuala é, agus aon duine déarfadh é, níor bhaoghal do aon chinneamhaint (cinniúnt)  I rith a’ lae, deireadh sí. Sin mar a chloisinn-se í á reá, ach go háraithe. Deireadh sí féin gach lá é – na’h (gach) aom mhaidean dá n-éirigheadh sí. Deirim féin é ga’h aon mhaidean. (Timpeall 1834 a rugadh í.) Níor fhág sí Lios Deargáin riamh: is ann a saoghluigheadh (rugadh)í agus phós sí. Ní eolach dom an phaidir sin ag aon duine eile anois...”

 “From my mother I heard it, and anyone who pronounces it, he is in no danger of accident during the day in which he pronounced it. That’s how I heard her tell it, at any rate. She herself pronounced it every morning when she got up. I myself say it every morning. (The mother was born about 1834.) She never left Lios Deargáin. That’s where she was born and married. I don’t know that anyone else has this prayer now.”

It sounds like part of the prayer involved wearing a piece of blessed cloth.

It was taken down from Domhnall Ó Ruairc who was 58 in 1934  in Lios Deargáin, and was printed in  Béalodeas, number ??,  page 342, to fill up an empty bit of a page. (Níl aon Ghaoluinn I Lios Deargáin le fada an lá anois. I bparoiste Lios Póil atá, ó’n Daingean soir.)

Bhí an saghas seo paidir coitianta i measc na ndaoine, tráth dá raibh. Tuilleadh eolais in Orthaí Cosanta sa Chráifeacht Cheiltreach, le Seán Ó Duinn, an Sagart, 1990.

And by the way…Deirtear uaireannta ná raibh tuiscint do rudaí “deasa” nó “maithe” ag an dream a tháinig romhainn-se, a’s gur Heloise a’s Abelard a bhúnaigh “romantic love”, a’s sinne a bhúnaigh nach mór gach aon rud fiúntach eile.

(It's often said that common people in previous times had no appreciation of "nice" or "good" things, and that Abelard and Heloise discovered romantic love, and that we, contemporary people of the right sort, established almost every other worthwhile thing.)

Seo blúirín ó (Here's a bit from) Ireland’s Welcome to the Stranger le Asanath Nicholson, ban-Mheiriceánach  a’s Quaker a shiúil Ėire in 1844-45. (The Lilliput Press, 2002). Laistiar do’n Daingean a bhí an lá so... (D 276) (She was west of Dingle on the day she describes here.)

“When returning, we met a peasant girl, with her dress turned over her head (Baisteach a bhí ann/It was raining) who in the most earnest manner spoke in Irish and beckoned us to go further. We declined, and she changed her laughing look for one of pitiful  endearing disappointment, which prevailed with me, and I said “We will go.” She exultingly bounded away, leading us forward, looking back to encourage us for the way was precipitous and somewhat difficultly, until she places us upon an awfully grand precipice.  Here she stopped, and in the most animated manner pointed us down, then to a mountain across  the channel, then to the golden stripes of the sun upon the water, then to the seagulls , then to the eastern sky which was extremely beautiful ; and when she saw we understood and were pleased, she was delighted....She was pretty in look and graceful in manner, and when we parted and saw her entering a mud-walled cabin...”

A Cheesy Vision

 

Aislinge Meic Con Glinne is an early twelfth-century Middle Irish tale that is funnier than anything else I can think of right now. It has that peculiarly Irish/Highland tongue-in-cheek extravagant humour that lets self-important characters do pompously stupid things: a humour that uses language to intensify the contrast between characters’ self-identified “heroic” behavior and absurd reality. It does not say “Hey, let's laugh at this moron!” but allows the reader or listener to draw their own conclusions, and it does all this while also drawing attention to the poignant reality  of life.

Part of its effect is contingent on the reader being familiar with the literature as a whole. Aislinn Mac Con Glinne and similar texts use many elements from serious literature (preparation for a journey, blessings, battle fury, formal heroic dialogue, etc. etc.), but in mock-heroic ways. Even so, I think something does come through, even if you don’t know the context.

The tale is also a guide to traditional Irish foodways.

Anier Mac Con Glinne is bored studying in a monastery and goes off to be a wandering bard instead, but ends up in a tight place after satirizing the abbot of Cork monastery for niggardly hospitality to strangers. In order to save his life, tells the assembled monks that while tied up overnight, he had an otherworld vision telling him how to banish the demon of gluttony that has possessed the King of Munster province: a demon that is beggaring everyone else as they try to satisfy his hunger.

The abbot is unwilling to believe him, but the monks insist, and Mac Con Glinne tricks the King into agreeing to fast for several days. Mac Con Glinne then describes his vision of a journey to an Otherworld land where everyone and everything is put together from the richest and most tempting foods. The demon is tempted too and half-emerges. Mac Con Glinne captures and banishes it, and everyone solemnly takes up their normal lives once more.

One of the reasons Mac Con Glinne headed to Munster was that he’d heard he could get plenty of “bán bia” there, what English commentators in the 16^th and 17^th centuries called “whitemeats”:  milk and foods made from milk. His Otherworld vision is therefore rich with bán bia. (Other prominent foods in it are bacon, sausages and various pig products, porridge and some vegetables mostly leek-like.)

Like most of the English commentators, Fynes Moryson did not like the Irish at all, but he sometimes describes aspects of Irish life dispassionately. “They feede most on Whitemeates and esteem  for a great daintie sower curds vulgarly called by them Bonneclabbe (bainne clabhair). And for this they watchfully keepe their Cowes, and fight for them as for religion and life; and when they are almost starved, yet they will not kill a Cow, except it bee old and and yeald no Milke.”

Mac Con Glinne describes various types of milk he is offered in the vision (page 100 of Kuno Meyer’s edition, London, 1892): “ass rothècht, ass nát rothecht, ass learthecht, ass eter dáthecht, ass buide bolcachfoloing in slucad chocnumm, lomum daní in slaimegil rèthid od dul darsin m-brágait sis, co n-apraí in bolcum tóisech frisin m-bolcum n-dèdenach: “Fortgillim a charrmatraid,i fiadnaise in dúilemun, cia tís anúas, regutsa súas, ar ní thalla ar mataidecht ar n-dís isin istaduc sa.”

(In modern Irish, from Tomás Ó Floinn’s “translation”, Aisling Mhic Conglinne, Officina Typographica, 1980): “Baiine an-tiubh, bainne nach ró-thiubh, bainne fada-thiubh, bainne idir dhá thiús, bainne buí logánach  ar gá an chogaint chun è a shlogadh, bainne a dhèanann gliogál is sránnmheileach reithe ag duk thar an bhrád síos, I dtreo go n-abrann an bolgam tosaigh leis an mbolgam dèanach, “Geallaim duit, a charrmhadra, i bhfianaise an Dúilimh, má thagann tú anuas, rachadsa suas, ór níl slí dár madraíocht araon san ionad seo.”

Or in Meyer’s English”  “...very thick milk, milk not too thick, milk of long thickness, milk of medium thickness, yellow bubbling milk  the swallowing of which needs chewing, milk that makes the snoring bleat of a ram as it rushes gown the gorge, so that the first draught says to the last draught “I vow, thou mangy cur, before the Creator, if thou comest down, I’ll go up, for there is no room for the doghood of the two of us in this treasure house.”

One method of making curds as described in 1698: “The next morning a greate pott full of new milk was sett over the fire, and when it was hot they pour’d into it a pale full of butter milk, which made a mighty dish of tough curds in the middle of which they places a pound weight of butter.”

There is a long list of common cheeses too and I will list them as A.W. Lucas gives them in his article Irish Food Before the Potato, published in the periodical Gwerin. I don’t have the date of publication, but it is a good article:

Fáiscre grotha   pressed curds (pressed in a bag, maybe, since contexts suggest this was an individual noun and thing, not an amorphous mass)

Tanach/tanag     a harder cheese. “Harder” because in another tale, a person is killed by being hit in the head by one shot from a sling

Maethal               Maoth is soft, but Maethal makes a house wall in Aislinn Meic Con Glinne, and individual Maethal are described as being carried in a woman’s cloak

Grús                      A hard cheese? 

Táth                      A soft cheese?

Millsèn                 A semi-liquid cheese?

Mulcháin             Well, in the History, Topography and Antiquities of the County and City of Waterford, Ryland, 1824, the author says “Cheese, made from skimmed milk, and called Mullahawn, was formerly an article of commerce in Waterford...but it was of such a hard substance that it required a hatchet to cut it.” (reference from Lucas.)

Mulcháin is the only cheese that survived into modern times: all knowledge of the others was lost in the wave of potatoes that swept over Ireland and the Highlands in the late 18^th century, and the cheese that is made in Ireland today derives from a tradition introduced from England in the late 20^th century, or in the case of artisan cheese, from the Netherlands, France etc.

Things were not quite as desperate in the Highlands. Isobel Grant, in her book Highland Folk Ways, Routledge, 1961, comments: “Cheese making was universally carried on. I have been told how it was made on the smaller holdings in the days of older people’s grandmothers—about fifty years ago. The curd, wrapped in a cloth, was put on the top shelf of a cheeser, a round staved vessel with a partition with many small holes bored in it about two-thirds of the way down. A heavy stone was put on top and the whey drained away through the holes. On larger farms, the cheeses were put into cheese presses consisting of heavy blocks of stones in an iron frame...(page 216). She comments later that that has all passes away, though “before the war, one could meet with excellent home-made cheeses.”

This is another instance in which traditional practices lasted in the Highlands a few centuries past their extinction in Ireland. This was not because the Highlanders were more conservative, but because the English and Lowland Scots left them alone a bit longer.

Back to Meic Con Glinne.

Here he arrives at the Wizard Doctor’s house in the Otherworld (In Fáthlega), or in Meyer’s English:

“Then we rowed across the expanse of New-Milk Lake (lemnacht), through seas of broth, past river mouths of mead, over swelling, boisterous waves of buttermilk, by perpetual pools of gravy, past woods dewy with meat juice, past springs of savoury lard, by islands of cheeses (maethal), , by hard rocks of rich tallow, by headlands of old curd (grothal), along strands of dry cheese (tanach), until we reached the firm, level beach between Butter Mount and Milk Lake and Curd Point ( grotha) at the mouth of the pass to the country of O’Early-Eating in front of the hermitage of the Wizard Doctor. Every oar we plied in New Milk lake would send its sea sand  of cheese curds to the surface.”

Well, this is not all that tempting to me, but remember the picture is calculated to excite a starving demon of gluttony. Irish people actually ate a lot more oats and vegetables and milk products than they did broth and tallow, and that is what I will focus on next week.

To finish, here is another snippet from the story.

“Then  he (Mac Con Glinne) sold the little stock he had for two wheaten cakes and a slice of old bacon with a streak across its middle. These he put in his book satchel. And on that night, two pointed shoes of hide, of seven-folded dun leather, he shaped for himself.

He rose early on the morrow and tucked up his shirt over the rounds of his fork (rear end) and wrapped him in the folds of his white cloak, in the front of which was an iron brooch. He lifted his book satchel on the arched slope of his back, In his right hand, he grasped his even-poised knotty staff,  in which there were five hands from one end to the other...”( Meyer, p 8)

He arrives in Cork:

“This was one of the days of the three things, viz. wind and snow and rain about the door: so that the wind left not a wisp of thatch, nor a speck of ashes that it did not sweep with it through the other (opposite)_door, under the beds and couches and screens of that princely house.” (Meyer p 10)

Hil-lathai na teorai in lá sin i. gaeth ocus snechta ocus fleochud ina dorus , coná fárcaib in gaeth sifand tuga nó minda luatha cen scuabad lee dar in dorus aile fo chólbaib ocus fo immdasdaib ocus fo cliathaib in ríthighe.) (Meyer p11)

“Aimsir na trí síon anm lá sin: gaoth agus sneachta agus fleachadh trí an doras isteach, ionas nár fhág  an ghaoth sifín tuí ná cáthnín luaithe gan scuabadh leí tríd  an doras eile faoi cholbhaí agus faoi iomhdhaí agus faoi cleathacha an rí-thighe.” (Ó Floinn, p. 5)

The tale is in Middle Irish, but survives in two later manuscripts: a long version in An Leabhar Breac, written between 1408 and 1411 in one of the MacEgan family school of traditional law in north Tipperary or east Galway: and a short version in Trinity College H.3.18,  a 700 page collection of various manuscripts bound together. The section containing Aislinge Meic Conglinne might have been written about 1700, maybe in Antrim or Roscommon, but the Trinity catalogue was published in 1921 and the editors were not well-informed.

Making goat whey cheese in the mountains of Norway

Apple Tree

 

Craobh nan Ubhal

It’s a well-established cliché: country people are ignorant, dull and uncultured and maybe thuggish. Culture comes from the city where there is opportunity to cultivate the finer things in life. There used to be lots of stories and films about a noble man or woman gone out into the countryside, struggling to overcome the people's stupidity and inability to appreciate culture and goodness.

There aren’t that many stories like that today, probably because country people are an insignificant part of the population now.

There used to be, in the United States, a counter genre. In it, country people are kind and true, and slick immorality comes from the city. There’s not much of that either, these days, for the same reason.

As a matter of fact, though, it used to be that country people did have their own often very old culture, often pretty invisible to authorities and other city people. When outsiders did notice that culture, they usually didn’t think much of it and didn’t care because how could some bundle of ignorant superstitions and clumsy folk songs matter to anybody? Sooner they were abolished, demolished and swept aside, the better for everyone involved.

Ordinary country people in Europe had no power and over the last century or so, the structural bases of European rural communities have been demolished, leaving only a bunch of, yes, ignorant hicks and people who would prefer to live in the city if they could. 

Most people now assume it was always that way, really.

It wasn’t.

Barra is an island in the Outer Hebrides with about 1,000 people today. In the later 1970s, what with television, closer economic integration into British life, a hundred years of English-only schooling and the collapse of community’s self-confidence,  parents stopped speaking Gaelic to their children and often to each other. Today it’s a remote place dependent on exchanging money with Outside for all the necessities of life: dependent on the Outside for culture and meaning. If it wasn’t for subsidies and an influx of city people very aware of the down side of city life, it would be in trouble

Up to the 1970s or so, it had an incredibly rich culture of song, story and music. It was a very civilized community and not because people knew Proust and Dutch painting.

Craobh nan Ubhal is a song that was written down several times. Here are a few verses from a version written down in 1938.

The “sweetheart” of Mackay (McGee) of Islay speaks, praising him as an apple tree:

Chraobh nan ubhal, gheug nan abhal,     (Craobh is “tree” in Scots Gaelic)

Chraobh nan ubhal, gu robh Dia leat,

Go robh Moire ‘S gu robh Criosda,

Gu robh ‘ghealach, gu robh ‘ ghrian leat,

Gu robh gaoth an ear 's an iar leat,

Gu robh m’athair fhín ‘s a thriall leat       (all that he has)

 

Ach ma théid thu dha’n choill iúbhraich  (yew forest)

Aithnich fhéin a’ Chraobh as liúmsa          (know the tree that is mine)

Chrobh as mílse ‘s buig’ úbhlan                 (sweetest: softest apples)
Chraobh mheanganach pheurach úbhlach (branching, precious)

Bun a’ fás, ‘s a bárr a’ lúbadh,                    (roots growing, top bending)

‘S a meangannan air gach túbh dhí           (Branches on each side of her)

Ubhlan toma donna dlúthmhor                 (heavy, dark, thickly-growing apples)

 

(Text from Hebridean Folksongs, Volume Three, John Lorne Campbell, Oxford, 1981., p146 and 148)

I suspect not many heroes today would appreciate being compared to an apple tree.

This was recorded from Ruairi Iain Bháin (Roderick MacKinnon), on the Isle of Barra in March 1938, and was known at that point mostly only in Barra and then only to a few singers. It also appears, in two versions, in Carmina Gadelica, Volume V,  Alexander Carmichael, Scottish Academic Press, 1987 (originally published in 1900). Both versions there are also from Barra.

Here is a link to take you to Tobar a Dualchis site to listen to Flora Macneil, a great old Barra singer who brought the great old songs to our attention (as Joe Heaney did for Carna, Conamara) just before night came down.

Well, it's not actually Flora. There is no recording of her singing it there or anywhere on Youtube, though she did issue it on a cd. This recording is Calum Johnston, also a great singer and maybe even better candidate for the position of "last one." I highly highly recommend the tape/booklet, and cd/booklet that the School for Scottish Studies issues of songs and stories from him and his sister: Calum and Annie Johnston: Songs, Stories and Piping from Barra. It expresses a thousand times better than I can, the essential nobility and humanity of the culture of which he was a part,

https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/track/95720?l=en

Apples were the most common Irish and Highland fruit. Good years for apples are noted in the Annals, and the fruit features in various ways in the Old Irish Laws, but they also have Otherworld associations, and show up in many old tales:

“Then the druid sang a charm against the (Otherworld) woman’s voice, so that no one heard the voice of the woman and Conle did not see the woman at that time. As the woman went away before the overpowering song of the druid, she threw an apple to Conle. For a month after that, Conle was without food or drink, and did not care to eat any victuals but his apple. However much he ate, the apple grw no less, but was still whole.” (A bit from the 8^th century tale Echtrae Conli, translation by Kenneth Jackson, p. 144, Celtic Miscellany, Penguin, 1951.)

They were the most common fruit, but not productions of the human community like the oat crop and milk and milk products were. They carry the scent of the wild with them into ordinary life:

A ninth century hermit describes his forest hermitage:

“There is an apple tree with huge apples such as grow ion fairy dwellings (great are these blessings) and an excellent clustered crop from small-nutted branching green hazels.

(“Aball uball (mára ratha) mbruidnech mbras: barr deas dornach, collán cnòbec, cròebac nglas.”)

...A clutch of eggs, money, mast, and heath-pease (sent by God, sweet apples, red cranberries, whortleberries.

(“Líne ugae: míl, mess, mell  (Dia dod-ròid), ubla milsi, mònainn derca, dercna froích.”)

Beer containing herbs, a patch of strawberries (good to taste in their glory), haws, yew-berries, nut kernels.

(“Coirm co lubaib, loc de shubaib, somlas snò, sílbach sciach, , derca iach, dercna froích...)

These are a selection of stanzas from a thirty-three stanza dialogue between King Gúaire and the hermit Marbán. I quote from Early Irish Lyrics, ed Gerard Murphy, Oxford, 1956, because, as I said once before, his translation cannot be bettered.

Barra and Highland and Irish Gaelic culture had deep roots: enough to sustain a civilization, but by the late 18^th century, those roots were under attack and not only metaphorically.

Sir Walter Raleigh or some less notable new English landlord introduced the potato to Ireland in the 16^th century, they say, but neither the Irish nor Highlanders embraced the spud ecstatically until they discovered you could, in fact, feed yourself from a small plot of land, which was mostly all they had by then.

Still, nobody said they had to like potatoes.

An Irish peasant was called to the witness stand in one of the government surveys held to take evidence about poverty or landholding in Ireland. He had just listened to the preceding witness, a well-meaning minister or landlord, go on about how the potato is so healthful and tasty and how the Irish just love it and they are lucky they’re not poor starving potato-less foreigners.

 “Begging your Honour’s pardon,” the peasant  said, “but you might want to eat nothing but potatoes with no sauce but the rare drop of  milk  for a year, before you talk about how lucky  we are.”

I don’t have the reference handy and I paraphrase, but that is what he said and no lie. There are no lyrical songs featuring the potato.

By the way, I’m not blaming the potato for the state of things. New potatoes fresh from the garden with butter are very nice, and my wife likes potatoes almost any way they’re cooked. (I attribute the fact to her Kerry parents.)

Oats and cheese (and other dairy products) and apples and various other fruits and vegetables green or onionish were the traditional foods, but by the late 18^th century they had been crushed by a massive wave of potatoes in Ireland and increasingly so in the Highlands. I will; talk more about them next week.

Until then, here is a recipe for blackberry and apple sweet.

 4-6 apples

I pound (500 g) blackberries

Honey or sugar

 Wash, peel and core the apples. Mash the blueberries to a pulp and add sugar or honey. Stuff the cored apples with the blackberry mixture. Put in a fireproof dish and add enough water t o prevent fruit from burning. Cover and put in a moderate oven until apples are cooked., Serve with cream,

 This is from Wild and Free by Cyril and Kit O Céirín, The O’Brien Press, 1980, another good book.

 

The Blackthorn Tree

This is my translation of what was a well-known song in Connacht, an Droighneán Donn:

 Every man thinks that it's him I’m in love with, when he begins to swear oaths,

and two-thirds of them drop away from me, when I remember your words;

the snow blows in drifts in the endless storm on Sliabh Ui Fhloinn;

my love’s hair is the color of the sloes that grow on the blackthorn tree.

 

I never thought that my dearest love would haggle over my dowry

or that he would desert me afterwards over a matter of wealth;

it's my desperate despair that I’m not with the man who so troubled my heart

in a little mountain glen far away from them all, with the dew coming down.

 

I have a present from my first love down in my pocket

and all the men of Ireland couldn’t cure my sorrow, alas;                 

when I remember your ways and your lovely brown hair,

I spend a while weeping softly and a while sighing heavily.

 

I wish I had a present on the fair day from my handsome lad,

and sweet conversation after, with the flower of the men:

it's my desperate despair that  we’re not there with a priest in front of us,

to join our lives together, before my love leaves and goes away.

 

 No matter what they think of it, I’ll praise my dearest love;

 no matter what they think of it, I’ll sit down by his side;

 no matter what  they think of it, a thousand arrows through his heart;

 and oh shining star before the people, it's you who’s troubled my heart.

 

Oh dear God, what will I do if you should leave me?

I don’t know the way to your house, your fire or to your hearth.

My mother is frantic, my father’s in the grave,

my people are enraged with me, and my love’s far away.

 

There’s a darkness on my eyes and I didn’t sleep a wink,

thinking about you, my first love, though the night is long.

The way that you denied me in front of the world,

and oh, fragrant branch, why would you bear false witness to me?

 

Its a foolish man who’d be scrambling up a wall that’s high,

when there’s a low wall beside it, on which he could put his hand;

though the rowan tree is tall, its crop it is sour,

while blackberries and strawberries grow on a low little branch.

 

I send you two hundred farewells, my thousand love,

the gossipers have poisoned your mind against me.

I have no little boat to send after your ship

the sea’s rolling high in front of me and I don’t know how to swim.

 

Take my blessing to that village there west among the trees,

towards the village to which I’m wandering, both early and late;

there’s many a wet muddy road and a twisting path

stretching  between me and the village where my sweetheart dwells.

 

There are very few "ballads" in Irish or even songs where the story is told straight out and the listener knows from the start where they're going and what kind of thing, what kind of experience, they've embarked on. In Irish and Highland song, the story is glimpsed instead from multiple perspectives as the different stanzas unfold, and the "story" or core of the song only gradually crystalizes out of these. The listener or reader must thus bring themselves and their own experience to the song in order to complete it, if they seek to understand it. They are required to be a participant in the experience, rather than a passive consumer. They do not merely “listen to it” but co-recreate it (as it were) each time they hear it, and just as the maker of the song originally moved with each additional verse towards establishing the meaning of their experience, so does the hearer participate with them in that process.

Or so it seems to me.

I translate from Nua-Dhuanare, Cuid a 1, Pádraig De Brún et al, Institiúd Ardléinn  Bhaile Atha Cliath, 1975 (School for Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies). It is a great book.

The song was first printed by Charlotte Brooke, an English clergyman’s daughter in County Cavan, in her groundbreaking Reliques of  Irish Poetry in 1789. James Hardiman from east  Mayo was second on the ground, publishing Irish folk songs in 1831, and he has a version as well. So does Seán Ỏ Dálaigh from Waterford in 1871 in Poets of Poetry of Munster. Douglas Hyde from Roscommon published two versions in Abhráin Grádha Chúige Connacht (Love Songs of Connacht) in 1893: one from Roscommon and on from Beacan, Mayo.

It is not in the big Conamara and west Mayo collections of the early 20^th century (Ỏ Maille or Ceol na n-Oileán, or Ỏ Tiománaidhe), but it is in the Tuam, Galway, area Amhráin Mhuighe Seóla collection from Mrs. Costello. Two further east Galway versions are listed as collected in the 20^th century in Clár Amhrán an Achreidh.

This kind of thing is interesting to people like me, a spoiled librarian with an interest in 18^th and 18^th century Irish literature and learning, but it also demonstrates the fact that many of the “big” songs originated in east Connacht. They are known as Conamara songs mainly because Conamara is really all that was left in mid and late 20^th century.

Do I need to know any of this to appreciate the song? Probably maybe not.

So here is the song, or at least recordings of occasions on which it was once sung:

Shílfeadh aonfhear gur dil dó féin mé nuair a luíonn dom mionn,

Is go dtéann dhá dtrian sios díom nuair a smaoinim ar do chomhrá liom.

Sneachta síobhtha ia é á shíor-chur faoin Shliabh Uí Fhloinn

Is go bhfuil mo ghrá-sa mar bhláth na n-airní atá ar an droighneán donn.

Sliabh Uí Fhloinn is near Castlreagh in County Roscommon.

There are actually not many versions at all that are available to post here. The second one I post because it's from two singers who were from near my mother's family.

Good versions are available online if you go to the TG4 sean nós site and search by song title.

And here below is a love song to a river from mid-west Cork:

(Note that he sings some alternate lines and different words or phrases here and there. Also, where the Blackthorn is a "folk" song in which imagery are direct utterance are key, this is poetry in the idiom of 18th century Munster where the thrust and flow and and interplay of sound patterns is important.) 

A shuairc fhile chneasta de ghairm na hÉigse,
D’eascair den tréanfhuil i mBanba dháil.
Ó chúinne Pharnassus cé gur dheacair é éileamh,
Gur raideadar saor dhuitse aiste na mBárd.
Is suairce liom geallaim ná cantaireacht téada,
Greasa dod shaothar nuair a ghlacaim im’ láimh,
Faoi thuairim do theastais, is do tharrach chun téagair,
Ar mhaithimh do ghaolta is ar Abha an tSuláin.

Foinse na habhann ó measaim nach léir duit,
Seo agat gan bhréagnadh go beachtaithe óm’ láimh,
A scaoileann do ghlaise ó Chuma na nÉag,
Agus tuille dá réir sin ó Chúm Uí Chluamháin.
Ó thuaidh leat gan casadh tré Mhullach na Ré,
Mar a ritheann sruth caol dubh go bun an chlocháin,
Is mar lua na dTrí bPearsain á dtarrac chun aondacht
Nuair a thagaid le chéile sin Abha an tSuláin.

Abha bhuí bheag an ghleanna go feargach fraochmhar,
A ritheann gan staonadh go Beannaibh na Trá,
Sruth Oileán a Mhadra is Carraig Chinnéide,
Is sruthaibh ina n-éamais ná gcuirfinn im’ dhán,
Féach an Abha Gharbh lá clagair is sraonmhar
Ná heasaibh go gléigeal gan casadh ar a sáil,
‘S gur thíos i mbun leacan a chailleann sí tréine,
Nuair a chaitheann sí géilleadh do Abha an tSuláin.

Is mín clochar glasrach fairsingeach féarmhar
Fearannaibh taobhaibh na n-abhann sa ráim,
Fá chrainn dhuille ghlasa gan feacadh gan féige,
Le meas ar a ghéagaibh go gcrapaid ‘na mbarr,
Bíonn faoilinn ann, seabhaic, mionchreabhair ‘s naoscaigh.
Sionnaigh ‘s méith-phoic ‘s lachain le fáil,
‘S gach linn de go barra bíonn torrach le héiscibh,
Leathan-bhric mhéithe ‘gus lathairt bhradán.

Text fron TG4 Sean Nós site. This is a song that probably no one from Castlereagh or even Roscommon has ever sung. It is not known much outside one parish.