Classical Irish Love Poems

There is a particular Irish and Celtic flavor of literature--passionate, playful, skilled, effortlessly lyrical and passionately in love with this passing world.  It's maybe even more specifically Irish and Scottish Gaelic. In few places is it as evident as in what are now called the "Danta Gra"; the love poems of the Late Medieval and Early Modern period....evident at least to me.

But first, a performance on the traditional Irish wire-strung harp to which most poetry was recited  in that period. Siobhan Armstrong is the musician.

And speaking of music....all these poems, but maybe particularly the ones on this post, derive much of their 'meaning' from their aural effects. Recreating that aural aspect in English is a challenge, and a challenge that my translations in this post fail. I did them 20 years ago. I would re-do them now, but I don't have the time to take from current work, and when I did them, I was in love as only maybe a person at that age can be.

Here is something I wrote back then about the matter:

"The images in these poems unfold according to their own rhythm, and the poems in the original languages derive much of their power from the relationship between these patterns of images, and the changing formal sound patterns of the verse. Indeed, the subtle incantatory word music itself builds very definite “meanings” over time, through its often subconscious effect on the listener. It is as essential to the overall effect and meaning of the poem as are the more prominent movements of image and utterance. It works secretly on the listener’s consciousness, in conjunction with the more overt elements of the poem, to subvert the reader/listener’s inattention to our astonishing world."

"The use of strict metrical patterns was no obstacle to the creation of great poetry. It may be that the requirements of these patterns often helped focus and clarify the poet’s discourse. The currents of their hearts’ speech were forced through the narrow channels of metrical requirements in ways that increased the power of the resulting utterance; much as the power of a stream is concentrated when forced through a watermill’s sluice channel. Many of the resulting poems can still turn a mill wheel, after all these years. "

Ioan Gruffudd and Matthew Rhys speak a Welsh folk song, and then part of a medieval love poem by Dafydd ap Gwilym. Yeah, I know they're not Irish, but neither is Bernie Sanders,

"Few poems in the Celtic languages are narrative poems in the standard sense, nor do they fulfill the model of dramatic development that has long been the norm in modern Western literatures. The modern Western artist starts out at point A, where he or she states a theme or scenario. He then goes on to develop the tensions or conflicts inherent in this theme, and eventually arrives at a climax, where the tensions are resolved, or come to rest. The work then stops."

 In Celtic poetry, however, the theme is rarely stated outright. The poem instead orbits around it, and the verses offer a succession of varying perspectives on the unstated theme. It is through the cumulative effect of these shifting illuminations that the “meaning” of the poem is precipitated--rather than announced-- in the reader/listener’s mind. The poet doesn’t presume to say “This is the way it is; no ifs, buts or maybes. This is love; this is the story here.” He or she rather suggests the outlines of something--the human heart, a particular configuration of relationships, a human being--that is perhaps too complex, ambiguous and mysterious for us know directly. This poetry demands that a reader/listener be a collaborator, rather than simple audience, or consumer of poetry. It demands that a reader/listener engage with the poem and bring it his/her own experience. Only then will the poem open for us."

And now back to 2016.

Older oral and minority literatures, as they survive and as we know them today, are more based on the specifics of manuscript transmission than are the literatures of well-established nation states. If I want to know what Gerald Manley Hopkins or Spenser (God preserve us!) actually wrote, and if I want to examine the development of his poetic practice, themes, or whatever, I can--if I'm a scholar with money and a position--examine the manuscripts the poet left, examine a diplomatic edition of them, or read a book about the matter.

Irish and Scottish Gaelic literature was essentially oral. A good bit of material was committed to vellum or paper for various reasons, but few of those reasons involved the 'authors' of the material. So what survives--what we know of as "Irish Gaelic literature--is partial.

If it wasn't for two or three manuscripts that happened to survive the general destruction of manuscripts in the 16th, and again in the 19th centuries, we'd have almost none of the Danta Gra. For example, British Museum Additional manuscript 40766 was written in county Fermanagh in the 17th century by a scholar or poet in the circle of the then surviving Irish lord of the Maguire country--ie. Fermanagh, and of his wife, Maire Ni Raghailligh. A Maguire lord took the manuscript to the continent when he eventually fled there. Later, it made its way back to Ireland (probably not independently) and came into the possession of descendents of a scholarly family associated with the Maguire lords; the O Caiside family. They kept it safe until the mid-19th century, when it was obtained by an early collector of Irish manuscripts. (See Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the British Museum, Volume II, edited by Robin Flower, 1926, p. 161).

Anyway, the Danta Gra are poems by members of hereditary learned families or of lordly families who were well-educated in traditional poetry and literature, and who turned that skill to various unofficial matters, like love. And here's one:

Ní bhFuighe Mise Bás Duit

(It might be worth mentioning that the point of the poem isn't that the poet is not impressed with how lovely the woman was. This was his way of saying that he was. Also, the poem plays on the well-known poetic conceit that the maker of a love song was so in love that he was dying.)

Ni bhfuighe mise bas duit,
a bhean ud an chuirp mar gheis;
daoine leamha ar mharbhais riamh,
ni hionnan iad is me fein.

Cread uma rachainn-se eag
don bheal dearg, don dead mar bhlath,
an crobh miolla, an t-uacht mar aol,
an daibh go-gheabhainn fen bas?


I will not die for love of you,
you whose body is bright as a swan;
those are feeble men whom you’ve killed;
they and I are not the same.

Why should I go and die for you?
For your red mouth, for your teeth like flowers?
For your sweet hand, for your pure white chest?
Is it for them that I should die?

For your joyous spirit, for your noble mind,

oh slender palm, for your side like foam,

oh blue eyes, oh white neck:
I will not die for you.

For your sloping breasts, oh soft skin,
for your scarlet cheeks, your twisting hair:
indeed, I will not die for them, 

if God wills it.

For your slender brows, for your hair like gold,
for your modest nature, for your quiet voice,
for your tidy heel, for your smooth thighs, (?)
they’d only kill a feeble man.

You whose body is bright as the swan,
I was tutored by a learned man:

I know what a woman looks like;
I will not die for love of you!

A second poem.

Soraidh Slan

Soraidh slan don oidhche a-reir,
fada gear ag dul ar gcul;
da ndailti mo chur i gcroich,
is truagh nach i a-nocht a tus.

Ataid dias is tigh-se a-nocht
ar nach ceileann rosg a run;
gion go bhfuilid beal re beal,
is gear gear silleadh a sul.

A passionate farewell to last night,

for all that it seems so far away now.
Though I were fated to be hung for it,
alas, that tonight is not its beginning.

There are two inside here tonight

whose eyes cannot hide their secret;
though they are not mouth to mouth,
their eyes flash a message vehement.

Alas, the gossipers won’t allow

a word from my lips, you with quiet eyes;
Understand then the message of my eyes,
you in the corner over there:

'Hold this night for us,
alas that we cannot be here forever

do not let the morning inside,
get up and force back the day!

Oh, Blessed Mary, graceful foster mother,
since you are patron of every poet,
come to my aid, take my hand,--
a passionate farewell to last night!'

By Niall Mór Mac Muireadhaigh (c1550-post 1613), a Scottish Gaelic bardic poet of Irish family.

Yes, it's an 'alba', but Niall Mor could have taught those Occitan poets a thing or two about the matter.

 

A third poem. 

Na bi dom huaidhreadh, a bhean,
ar ghradh th'éinigh na lean diom;
madh fada, madh gearr mo re,
na buaidhir me tre bhith sior....

Do not be tormenting me, woman;
for love of your honor, do not follow me.
Whether my life is long, whether it is short,
do not torment me by coming here to me.

I will ask a boon of you,
oh radiant one with golden hair;
do not torment me any further,
wherever place we be in.

I have not spent a night or day,
however long or short I am here,
that you are not here with me,
oh slow-pacing foot, oh winding hair.

In my sleep, oh cheek like embers,
no longer come to me in dreams;
when I’m awake, dear slender woman,
do not come to agitate me.

Though it is hard for me to say it to you,
let me see you no longer, do not destroy me:
since I cannot escape from death,
do not come between me and love of God.

You are my one love of all who live,
gentle branch whom God formed;
alas for you that have killed me,
when I myself have killed no person.

Alas that you are not merciful.
enchanting branch with shining eyes;
if I were to be foolish, as you are,
it would be long before I killed you so.

I do not know what I will do;
your mouth like a rowan berry has destroyed me:
my blessing to you, and for the sake of God,
do not trouble me, leave me now.

Oh sweet mouth, oh skin like a flower,
there is many a man in pursuit of you;
in pursuit of me, above all other men,
my dear love, woman, do not come.

Before someone starts talking about Irish puritanism--the point of this is that the poet does not want the woman to go away at all. He is telling her how much he loves--or at least desires--her.

The poem is associated (if I remember correctly) with the historian and poet and priest, Seoffrai Ceitinn, so maybe there is actually something to his plea that she go away (Because he's a priest, you see. It's true, though, that the Irish clergy were notorious for marrying in the late medieval period and living openly as man and wife. The fact sent the English into a frenzy, but only came to an end in the Counter-Reformation when the Catholic Church tried to transform itself into a military organization in order to fight its new competitors, Lutherans and Calvinists.)

I've translated texts published in Danta Gra, ed. Tomas O Rathaile, Clo Ollscoile Chorcai, 1976.

That is one great book.