Irish sex

The writer Brendan Behan  said somewhere that an Irishman would crawl across a room of naked women to reach a pint of beer, and the Irish are often considered the least sensual people in Europe, at least. There was a little book available a few years ago; "Great Irish Erotic Literature." When you opened it, the pages were blank. Someone described sexual foreplay in Ireland as 'drinking.'

Things are changing of course, though whether the contemporary commodification and consumption of sex and sensuality marks a real change is up for debate.

So is it the genes? The climate?

In fact, Irish puritanism only goes back to the 19th century.




Richard Stanyhurst was a 16th-century colonial Englishman resident in Dublin. He described the Irish then as "Religious, frank, amorous...many sorcerers...The lewder (ie. common) sorts, both clerks and laymen, are sensual and over-loose in living."

Father William Good, an English Jesuit sent to Ireland in the 1560s, wrote; "And to speak in general of them all...this nation is strong in body and passing (ie. quite) nimble...for wit, quick...given to fleshly lust; kind and courteous to strangers; constant in love; in enmity implacable, and...in all affections most vehement and passionate."

Foreign observers right through the 19th century in the West commented on people's easy affectionate physicality. Mostly the observers were men, so they were talking about women. The problem, as far as a lot of the observers were concerned, was that the women would embrace and kiss unselfconsciously--which the observers weren't used to in their own society--and joke sexually, but they would not sleep with them, which was perplexing.

Love poems and songs in Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and to a lesser extent, Breton, are distinguished by, among other things, a tender clear-eyed passion that is in love forever with the colors, sounds, textures and creatures of this world; with all the invincible fugitive compounds of nature doomed to one day fade and disappear. 'This is our life, our world,' the poems say; 'This flowering tree, this clump of rushes, this dear face. If we bring to these things the love and attention which they silently ask of us always, ten they'll reveal to us their hearts, which are, in themselves, the heart of being.'

The songs offer a clear attentive appreciation of the beauty of man and woman. There are no startling revelations of the absolute; no abstractions; no hysteric choirs of angels bowing before "Love". There are nothing but some very real flowers growing beside the road, caught for a moment by 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. I challenge anyone to read the poems I've translated and then say that the Irish were frigid anti-body puritans.

So was the accusation a baseless slander put out by the evil Saxon conqueror? A gag the Irish played on the rest of the world?

Unfortunately not; in the late 18th and 19th centuries, physical survival meant access to a farm to be rented from a (usually English) landlord whose main concern was maximizing profit. All other concerns Irish country people might have had were sublimated to the attainment and maintenance of respectability, wealth, status...and food. Men often had to wait to marry until their father was ready to give up the farm, which meant late marriage. Marriage was in itself a cold-eyed business arrangement between heads of households whose main goal was to maintain or increase their family standing and wealth. Anyone screwing around would simply not get a husband (or wife.). The only unifying social organization was the Catholic Church which was going through a long long phase of rigid Jansenism and puritanism that considered the world--and women, in particular, except as suffering mothers--as dirty and evil.

In the meantime, please consider the poems made available in this blog as evidence that things were not always that way.

Still, there's 'sensuality' and there's 'sensuality.' You'll find an easy acceptance of sex and of the body in traditional Irish (Gaelic) literature, but no "Fifty Shades of Gray". But then there are no Irish (Gaelic) works entirely focused on the pleasures of eating, say, or jogging either.

And Irish dancing wasn't actually like that either, until the late 19th century. Old style (Sean-nos) dancing only survived in out of the way places until the 1990s, but now it's back and that's an excuse for this video of a group from Abbeyknockmoy parish, my mother's mother's parish, in an All-Ireland talent contest. The dancing starts at about 2:00 minutes, and ends at about 4:30. Never mind the rest after that--fools talking away.

My wife says they look like dancing monkeys, but being from Kerry, she would, wouldn't she?

Tá Buige is Gile

Your body: soft, shining, fair and cool.
Your eyes; passionate, hesitant, joyful, flashing .
Your hair; heavy, twisting, thick-layered, waving.
You’ve bereft me, you’ve thrown me, you’ve left me without sleep tonight.



Ta buige a's gile a's finne a's fuaire i'd chorp;
Mire a's moille a's gluaise gan ghruaim i'd rosg'
Truime a's cuime a's cuise a's cuan i'd fholt'
Do chuiris, do mhilleas, do bhuinis de'm shuan me anocht.

(Synthetic "Munster" verb endings--- 'Chuiris' - 'You put,' etc.)

(It's amhran, so look out for the for those vowel patterns.)

(Original text in: Burduin Bheaga, ed. byThomas F. o"Rahilly, Browne and Nolan, Dublin, 1925.


The author of the Middle Irish poem below playfully protests his innocence in the matter of Gormfhlaith in such a way as to leave little doubt that she and he are in fact very well acquainted.

I translate from the original in Three Middle Irish Poems, ed. by Brian O Cuiv, Eigse, vol. 16(??).

Cinaed, Cá Cin Ro buí Dúinn?

Cinaed, what crime have I been charged with
that I should be banished from the land of Niall?

For I’d never do with anything with a beautiful woman
that I wouldn’t do with my own wife....

 A gray-haired man accused me and his wife--
may God not reward him!
Indeed, I’m not likely to climb under the covers,
until a cat would drink new milk;

Until a deer would leap over a tall fence,
until a salmon would leap up in the stream,
until a woman would engage in magic practices,
until ale would be drunk out of a silver cup.

Even if she were to allow me,
I wouldn’t do it, despite her husband,
until a herd would follow the boar,
until a bear (?) would take a drink of honey.

It's a miserly cause for which I’ve been accused
of lying down with generous Gormfhlaith of Ath da Rinn,
if it's only because of the movement of her two thighs,
while I lay with my right hand under her head.

Or because we were seen together
on the green-surfaced grassy earth:
because her lips were seen on my lips,

that’s a miserly reason for making talk.

It wasn’t proper for gentle Cinaed,
just because she and I shared a drink--even though it was mead--
to accuse me, who’s free of wrong and of crime,
of lying with the king’s daughter of the fringed clothing.

           Another short poem:

 Duibhe id Mhailghibh

Your eyebrows are black, your cheeks are embers,
your eyes are blue, your hair is so smooth,
the wind is caressing your flowing hair;
all the women at the fair are noticing you.

A wife who would never admit to watching you,
is in front of you there, plaiting her hair;
her fingers make a space through the wave of her hair

of a woman who’s watching and looking at you.

Translated from Nua-Dhuanaire, Cuid I.



And lest you think I'm advocating sex, remember:

Is iongna an toisg a's an cor ina bhfuilim i bpein;
Mo thuiscint o'm thoil, 's mo thoil ag druidim o'm cheill;
Ni thuigtear do'm thoil gach locht do'm thuisgint is leir.
s ma thuigtear, ni toil lei ach toil a tuisgeana fein.


It's a wonder, the reason and situation in which I am in pain;
My understanding galloping away from my desire, and my desire from my intelligence;
My desire does not see each fault that to my understanding is clear,
but if it sees, it desires nothing but the desire of its own understanding.

I know, but it makes more sense in Irish....My 'translation' tries to be fairly literal in order to guide you in your own translation

(For 500 extra points, identify the vowel pattern in this amhran stanza. A hint, the first vowel is the 'i' of iongna, tuiscint, tuigtear and tuigtear, and the last is the 'ei' of pein (dative of pian), ceill (dative of ciall), leir and fein.)