Some Dead People

People die. Parents die, but lovers and spouses also die. Children do.

I'm not the first or the thousandth person to point out that, as a culture, we're terrified of death, unless it is sentimentalized and prettified.

We do our very best to hide it away, but those who have watched ones whom they love die, they  have more trouble pretending it doesn't really exist.

Muireadhach Albanach O Dalaigh, a 13th century bardic poet from Sligo, made this poem for his dead wife. It survives in one 16th century Scottish manuscript, the famous Book of the Dean of Lismore from Perthshire. 

He was called  'Albanach' because he traveled to Scotland after quarreling with the O'Donnell king, and his descendants in the Highlands became a very important bardic family, the 'Mac Vuirichs." They were among the last in Ireland and Scotland to compose poems in the complex old style, in the early 18th century.

              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.

            I mourn for that bed over there,

            my pallet  (unclear in manuscript)

            I saw a glorious and noble form

            with coiling hair lying on you, oh bed.

            I shared my bed, half and half,

            with a woman whose eyes were serene;

            there was no likeness, except the flower of the hazel,

            to the brown haired, womanly, melodious shadow.

            Maol Mheadha of brown eyebrows,

            was my vessel of mead here with me;

            the shadow that parted from me was my very heart;

            a jewel-like flower, exhausted, has bent down.

We interrupt this to bring you a reconstructed performance of another of Muireadhach Albanach's poems. This is a small version of the traditional Irish wire-strung harp, and it plays quite quietly here, though it can be loud and ringing--very very different from gut-strung harps.

He went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and was therefore a 'palmer'.  

            My body has gone from my control,

            and now belongs to her:

            I am a body divided in two parts now

            since the departure of the serene lovely fair one.

            She’s half my feet, half my side;

            oh face like the white thorn flower,   

            no one was truer to her than I;

            she’s half my eyes, half my hand.      

            The maiden like a candle is half my body;

            your judgment is bitter to me, oh King;

            I am weak in longing for her voice--

            she was the true other half of my soul.

            My first love was she of the great serene eyes,

            the white teeth and ringletted hair:

            her beautiful body, her side,

            never lay with another man before.

            We were together for twenty years,

            our conversation together was sweeter every year,

            the fresh sturdy slender-fingered branch

            bore me eleven children.

            Though I am here, I no longer live

            since the curved nut has departed;

            since our great love has been parted,

            the great world is all empty to me.

            Since the day on which a rounded post was erected

            for my house, it was never said to me--

            no guest ever put a spell there,

            on the dark-brown-haired maiden. 

            Don’t anyone try to hush me;

            it’s not forbidden for weeping be heard;

            a a full and terrible devastation has come into my house--

            the radiant brown haired warmth of it has gone away.

            He who took her away in his anger

            is the King of hosts, the King of roads;

            she with winding hair had committed no crime

            that she should die so young and leave her husband.

            Dear to me the soft hand that was here,

            oh King of the bells and churches:

            Och! the hand that was better than any jewel;  

            I am in anguish that it is no longer under my head.

I translate from the text in Irish Bardic Poetry, edited by Osbern Bergin, Dublin Institute for Higher Studies, reprinted 1974

The well-known caoineadh ("keen")  translated below was made by Eibhlín Dubh Ó Conaill from west Kerry, a woman of one of the few surviving 18th-century Irish Gaelic noble families. She defied her family and married Art Ó Laoghaire (O’Leary), another Gaelic nobleman from the wilds of west Cork. Art had spent time among the Gaelic nobility in exile on the continent, and when he returned to Ireland, it wasn’t long until he was in trouble with the English authorities. He was killed by the High Sheriff of Cork’s guards in 1773.

           

Only a few verses of her improvised formal lament over the body of he dead husband is translated here, from Caoineadh Airt ui Laoghaire, edited by Sean O Tuam, An Clochomhar, 1979.

A bit of the caoineadh is recited in the video below from RTE.

Caoineadh Áirt Uí Laoghaire 

            You are my dear love!

            The day that I saw you

            in front of the market house,

            my eyes were drawn to you,

            my heart delighted in you,

            I ran away from my kin,

            far from home with you.

Mo ghra go daingean tu!
La da bhfaca thu
ag ceann ti an mharagaidh
Thug mi shuil aire dhuit,
thug mo chroi taitneamh dhuit.
Déalaios o'm charaid leat,
i bhfad o bhaile leat.

            You are my dear love!

            I recall well in my mind

            that fine spring day;

            a hat suited you well

            with golden bands,

            a silver-hilted sword,

            a brave right hand,

            a formidable hero,

            a man who’d strike fear

            into treacherous enemies.

            You were ready to ride

            on a slender white-headed horse.

            The English would bow before you,

            down to the ground,

            and not out of fondness for you,

            but in utter terror of you,

            though it was they that killed you,

            my soul’s beloved.

Mo chara go daingean thu!
Is cuimhin le'm aigne
an la brea earraigh ud,
gur bhrea thiodh hata dhuit,
faoi bhanda oir tarraingthe,
laoimh cinn airgid,
lamh dheas chalma,
rompsail bhagartach,
fir-chritheagla
ar namhaid chealgach,
Tu i gcoir chun falaracht,
a's each caol ceannann fut....

           

            You are my dear love!

            I never believed you were dead

            until your horse came to me

            his reins dragging the ground,

            your heart’s blood on his side

            and on your fine saddle,

            where you used to sit and stand.

            I made a leap to the threshold,

            a second leap to the gate,

            a third leap up to your horse.

            I struck my hands together

            and took off running

            as fast as was in me,

            until I saw you dead in front of me

            next to a little furze bush,

            with no Pope or bishop,

            with no clerk or priest

            who would read a psalm over you,

            no one but a withered old woman

            who’d spread a corner of her cloak over you--

            your blood was flowing in streams

            and I didn’t stop to clean it,

            I drank it up in my hands.

            You are my dear love!

            Stand up now

            and come back home with me,

            so that I can get a beef slaughtered for you,

            so that I can gather a great company,

            so that we’ll set music dancing,

            so that I can prepare a bed for you,

            with bright sheets,

            with fine multicolored quilts

            that will bring a sweat from you,

            in place of the cold that’s come upon you.

            It will be my everlasting bitter sorrow

            that I wasn’t beside you

            when the bullet was shot at you,

            so I could take it in my right side

            or at the top of my shirt,

            and I’d have thrown  hundred spears for you,

            smooth-palmed horseman.

            You are my love and my dear!

            Your corn stacks are made up.

            your cows are being milked;

            there’s a sorrow in my heart

            that all Munster can’t cure,

            nor all the smiths of Ireland.

            Until Art Ó Laoghaire comes to me,

            my sorrow will never diminish,

            pressing me in the center of my heart

            shut up firmly inside me,

            like a lock on a trunk

            for which the key has been lost.

                                                                                     -Eibhlin Dhubh Ní Chonaill

A caoineadh from Scotland. Seathan probably died several centuries before Art Ó Laoghaire, and this  piece exists in several versions in folk tradition. Only portions are translated here, translated from Carmina Gadelica, Volume V, edited by Alexander Carmichael, Scottish Academic Press, 1987.

The version in Carmina Gadelica is very long and probably spurious in parts, though not the parts I translate here. Why spurious? Carmichael (from Lismore island)  and his collaborator, Kenneth MacLeod from the isle of Eigg wanted make available to the English and Gaelic reading publics, songs, traditional prayers, incantations and charms that would have the same effect when read that the shorter oral versions had had on them when heard. So they added and splendified and convoluted in places. 

Interestingly, 'Seathan' is the old Ulster version of the name Sean. Remember Shane O'Neill in

the 16th century? (Shane is what the English called him, but it reflects Irish 'Seathan.')

Cuil Ao (where the choir in the video below is from) isn't that far from where Art O Laoire was killed.

 Seathan 

            Oh Seathan, Seathan, you are lifeless,

            true son of my king from Tír Chonaill.

            It's often I lay beneath your plaid;

            if I did, it wasn’t at home,

            but in a green hollow of a wooded field,

            under the flanks of the jagged blue mountains,

            the wind of the mountains sweeping over us,

            the wind from the glen calling out, taking

            it's fill of the freshness of spring.

            It's many a glen and summit that we traveled,

            I was in Ile with you, I was in Uibhist with you...

            I was in Cill Donnain of the pines with you,

            I was three years in the hills with you.

            I watched out for a day in the tops of the trees with you,

            I spent a time in the sea-wrack with you,

            I watched out a night on an ocean rock;

            I did, my love, and I don’t regret it,

            I was in the fold of your plaid,

            the sea spray ceaselessly flying over us,

            the pure freezing healthy water of spring.

            My love is Seathan of the quiet eyes,

            I’d lie with you on a rough bed,

            on a bed of heather, my side on the rocks;

            dearer was Seathan lying on a coil of heather rope

            than the son of a king on a bed of linen;

            dearer was Seathan under the boundary dike,

            than a king’s son in silk on a wooden floor,

            though his bed was pleasant,

            having been planed by the wrights,

            having been bespelled by the druids;

            dearer was Seathan in the branchy wood

            than to be in Magh Meall with Airril,

            even with satin and silk under his feet,

            pillows shining with red gold...

            But Seathan tonight is in the upper village;

            Neither gold nor tears can bring him back,

            neither drink nor music can disturb him,

            neither battle nor force can bring him back from his fate,

            neither clamor nor struggle can wake him from his sleep;

            my heart is broken and battered

            my tears run like a well,

            I sleep restlessly on a pillow,

            and you’ve no one to lament for you,

            but me, running to your body, away, and to you again.

            Seathan, my brightness of the sun,

            despite all I could do, death took you,

            and left me behind miserable and weeping,

            desperately yearning after you;

            and if it's true, what the clergy say,

            that there’s a Hell and a Heaven,

            I’d give my own share of Heaven (here’s a welcome to death)

            for one night together with my beloved,

            together with my mate, lovely Seathan.

Gormlaith, in the poem below, was a historical 10th-century Irish queen. A number of poems lamenting the death of her husband, the famous king Niall Glúndub, have been attributed to her. This one is also translated from Irish Bardic Poetry, Bergin.                                  

                          Gormlaith

            Move your foot away, monk;

            move it away from Niall’s side;

            you throw the earth down too heavily,

            onto him with whom I used to lie.

Bheir, a mhanaigh, leat an chois,
toccaibh anos do thaobh Neill;
as rothrom chuireas tu an chre,
ar an te re luighim feain.

            You are too long at it, monk,

            piling earth on top of glorious Niall;

            Time is long to me, with him in a brown coffin,

            where his feet don’t reach the board.

            Against my will that he’s laid under a cross, 

            the son of Aodh Finnleith who held feasts;

            set the flagstone down on his bed;

            move your foot away, monk.

            As I am now, Deirdre once was,

            after the glorious sons of Uisneach--

            her heart swelled up in her breast;

            move your foot away, monk.

            I am Gormlaith, she who makes poems,

            noble daughter of Flann from Dun Rois;

            alas that the flagstone does not cover me too;

            move your foot away, monk.

Two cheerful little Welsh penillion to finish. They are individual traditional verses dating from anywhere from the 16th through 18th centuries. The best collection is still Hen Benillion, edited by Parry-Williams, and that's where I have translated these from. 

Until the end of the 18th century, they were very common in at least northwest Wales. The description below is from Edward Jones' "Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards", based on the description in Thomas Pennant's ""Journey to Snowdon", 1781.

"Numbers of persons of both sexes assemble and sit around the Harp, singing alternately Pennillion, or stanzas, of ancient or modern composition...The young people usually begin the night with dancing; and, when they are tired, assume this species of relaxation. They alternately sing, dance, and drink...Often, like the modern Improvisatori of Italy, they sing extempore verses...Many have their memories stored with several hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Pennillion, some of which they have always ready for answers to every subject that can be proposed; or, if their recollection should ever fail them, they have invention to compose something pertinent and proper for the occasion. The subjects afford a great deal of mirth: some of these are jocular, others satirical, but most of them amorous...They continue singing without intermission, never repeating the same stanza, (for, that would forfeit the honour of being held first of the song,) and, like nightingales, support the contest through the night."

They are still sung in concert today, though very stuffily to a piano-like harp accompaniment. Similar stanzas were sung into the 1970s in the folk tradition in remote parts of Brittany.

I will not go to my bed tonight;

            the one whom I love is not in it.

            I will go and lie down on a rock.

            Break now, if you will, my dear little heart.

My heart is as heavy as a ball of lead

            through love of a young man: I will not name him.

            Since I said farewell to that dearest boy,

            all food and drink tastes like wormwood to me.

But never mind.

Here's Jim Donohue, a whistle player like you've never heard before, as Tony MacMahon says. He was from Ballaghadereen, northwest Roscommon, which not so long ago spoke a very very interesting Irish dialect that combined more or less "Munster" word stress with a vocabulary that begins to show signs of Ulster.