Stories, and a Few Bottles of Wine

 

Culture is not museums, books and cell service. It is that system of understandings and practices which supplies ordinary people with tools with which to live in an imperfect, often heartbreaking, world that never stops challenging us. In a society whose traditional culture has collapsed, as most have today under the pressure of “nothing matters but profit” economies, each individual must figure out their own individual way of understanding and living in the world, and that is no easy task. 

 Many of the people of traditional Irish and Highland communities in the nineteenth, early twentieth, and probably earlier centuries were deeply cultured. They lived gracefully, skillfully, elegantly, sustainably, within the limits of their possibilities. (Possibilities that by modern times were admittedly quite limited.)

 

I’m not claiming this because “The  Backward Look” nostaligia or because “Ireland, Boys, Hurrah!”  Most impartial observers at the time noted the fact. (Those who were afraid that the dark oppressed masses would rise up to cut their throats or decrease their profits…Not so much. They saw barbarians.)

 

“I have wandered amongst the peasantry of many countries,” folk-tale collector J.F. Campbell wrote in 1860, “and…There are few peasants I think so highly of, none that I like so well. Scotch Highlanders have many faults, but they have the bearing of Nature’s own gentlemen--the delicate natural tact that discovers, and the good taste that avoids, all that would hurt or offend a guest. The poorest is ever the readiest to share the best he has with a stranger…I have never found a boor or a churl in a Highland bothy.” (I’m quoting from his introduction to Popular Tales of the West Highlands.”)  The same was true of traditional Ireland.

(Anna Nic a' Luain, Na Cruacha Gorma)

Many of these people were also immensely learned in traditional lore and literature, and took everyday pleasure and delight in language. As poet Maire Mac an tSaoi said; “When a Dingle Peninsula man had time to reflect on what he was about to say, what came out was poetry.” She is not talking about fancy discussions of art and philosophy, but everyday conversation about everyday things. A ceili was originally not manufactured entertainment, but a nightly gathering of neighbors to tell stories, sing songs, discuss history and important current matters.

Mary Macdonald of Garryheillie in South Uist in the Highlands (1897-1977) left school at age fourteen and spent her working life as a maid, then as a crofter’s wife. She knew more than two hundred songs, passed down to her by her mother and other women; many of the songs very old and rare...and great That is not all:  “Even if she had never sung a song, Kate MacDonald would have been memorable--for her humanity, her dignity, her sparkle, her ready wit and her infectious sense of fun,” folk-tale collector Donald Archie MacDonald wrote. She was only one of hundreds in the Highlands and still Irish-speaking parts of Ireland in the early twentieth centuries.

 

George Campbell Hay (1915-1984) was brought up in Tarbert, a small town in the far southwestern Highlands. His father, a minister, died when he was four, so his mother returned to her family’s native area, (Tarbert) where George soon discovered the submerged Gaelic language culture of the community.

 “Och, when I was about six, I started asking them (his two great aunts) what was the Gaelic for this and what was the Gaelic for that, and so on, and that’s how I learned Gaelic.”

 

He also learned the language from fisherman Calum Johnson: “And in front of Dougie Leitch’s shed there used to be a log where they sat down and talked, and I don’t remember when I first met Calum, but he used to go round and sit on the log and talk, you know, and I was small and I sat down beside him and talked to him, and I got to know him that way; and his boat was out there, and I said, “Oh, I’ll go fishing” to him , so I went fishing with Calum.”

 

In 1881, the census noted about 70% of the population of the town as Gaelic-speaking, but by 1921, it was down to 26%, and was only used by older people in situations like “on the log.” Similarly to Douglas Hyde in late nineteenth-century north Roscommon, George Campbell Hay got to know the last representatives of an old world. He absorbed their implicit cultural teaching, and, adding to it a deep self-taught knowledge of Irish and Scottish Gaelic literatures, he went on to become one of the three great twentieth-century Gaelic poets -- writers of world stature. (I will admit that much of the world, and particularly the U.K., has not caught up with the fact yet.) (The other two are Sorley MacLean and Aonghas MacNeacail, both of Skye.)

I’m hoping, after posting The Civilization of Cats, (incoherent and poorly-argued as it is) that I don’t have to go too far explaining why the following poem is not a sentimental exercise in nostalgia: “To My Gran.” The poem takes its place in a large body of Irish, Scots Gaelic and Welsh poetry in praise of a person (or people, in this case). These poems don’t exist because the people who made them were simpering flatterers. Traditional Irish/Gaelic/Welsh culture never went in much for abstractions. Values, ideas and life paradigms were always presented as embodied in person, in story. There are no essays on how to rule a kingdom. Instead, there is the Deirdre story, and others. There are no philosophical treatises on how to live; instead, there are poems like the following, where “The Good” is embodied in a specific person’s doings.

 Cuimhneachain do Ealasaid agus Anna Nic Mhaoileain (Memorial for Elizabeth and Anna MacMillan)

 Is ann ‘nan laighe an Cill Aindreis

Tha dithisd bhan a dh’altrum mi,

Mnài ‘chuir maise air a’ bheatha-s!

Ged bu sean iad, le’n cuid gnìomh;

Ealasaid maraon as Anna,

Bha iad farsuing, caomh, neochrìon.

Thug iad saoghal mòr ri fialachd.

Is thug aon bhliadhna iad do’n chill.

 

It is in the graveyard in Tarbert

that two women who raised me lie;

two women who made life beautiful,

with their deeds, though they were old.

Ealasaid and Anna together;

they were hospitable, gentle and gracious.

They lived a long time giving,

And one year took them both to the grave.

 

Uaisle ghiùlain, cainnt ba chiùne,

Suairceas, sùnnd is crídhe mor,

Có a shaoileadh mnathan aosda

A bhith ‘nan aobhar ionghnaidh leò?

Mar sin bha Ealasaid is Anna,

Le sgairt a fhreadradh do’n aois òig:

Bha sean fharsuingeachd nan Gàidheal

A rìsd ‘nan gnàths a’ tighinn beò.

 

Nobility of bearing, gentle speech,

affable, cheery and great-hearted;

who would think that would be a cause

of wonder in old women?

That is how Ealasaid and Anna were,

with vigour as though they were young.

They had the old Gaelic breadth of spirit,

come alive again in the here and now.

 

An sean saoghal còir bha ‘nochdadh

Riamh tromhaibh ann gach ceum.

Feumaidh sinn a’ ràdh, mo thruaighe.

Gu’m “b’aisling uair éiginn e.”

Is maith a bhiodh sin dheth, a dithisd,

Na’fàgadh sibh mar ghibht ‘nur déidh,

S na’m faigheadh daoine an tsaoghail ghoirt seo

Leth nan sochair bh’annaibh fhén.

 

You called into being the old decent world

In everything you did,

but I must admit to my sorrow,

that this was a thing that was, and now has gone.

We would be better for it, you two,

if you had left a gift behind you,

and the people in this bitter world today

had half the virtues that you two did,

 

Ealasaid, you never bent your head or mind

To any worthless soulless thing.

Anna, who was generous and good-natured,

never closed her hand to others, or her door.

I see you gently smiling, at the head of the table,

sharing with everyone.

If you are still here in the old place,

you are a kindly and welcoming spirit.

 

(I translate from O na Ceithir Airdean, 1952, Oliver and Boyd.)

While MacLean was inspired by the incredibly intense and powerful Gaelic songs of the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries, and MacNeacail by the contemporary, Hays was inspired by the older bardic poetry:

“For models of high artistic skill, one inevitably turns to the work of the bardic schools,” he wrote. “Dan Direach metres can be adapted by substituting a system of stress for the syllabic system, and by disregarding the rules about classes of consonants.” (It is necessary to add that he used caoineadh metre a good bit in his last poems.)

The editor of Collected Poems and Songs speaks of concision and restraint, and richness of ornamentation. (p. 504, 2003 paperback edition) and these are qualities that distinguish Hay's poetry.  The other quality is a lyric passion and intensity. It is altogether great.

His work has been collected in The Collected Poems and Songs of George Campbell Hay, edited by Michael Byrne, Edinburgh University Press, 2000.

 A’ Cheolraidh – Beatha Bun-os-Cionn

Thug mi an oidhche caithriseach                                (sleepless)

Gu camhanachd is fàire                                              (dawn: sun on horizon)

A’ cumadh air an rannaghail,                                      (keeping: poetry)

S’ an aicill  teachd ‘sa ga tàthadh                               (binding together)

Gun chlos on Cheolràidh fhiadhaich                          (respite: feverish Muses)

‘s an norran gnàthach cian uam,                                 (sleep)

Mar chomhachag no iasgair,                                      (owl)

No ialtaig nan sgàile.                                                  (bat: shadows)

 He returned to Tarbert in the 1980s, but Gaelic and the old world were gone. He ended up drinking a lot, and leaving.

His Gaelic, the Gaelic of Kintyre (Tarbert is in mid-Kintyre, and Kintyre is the long finger-like peninsula) is a link between the Irish of east Ulster, and Scottish Gaelic, as was Arran Gaelic, and that of Islay and Jura.  There are still Gaelic speakers in western Islay, but the rest has gone, as has east Ulster Irish.

 If you want to know more, and you like books, Nils Holmer’s The Gaelic of Kintyre (Dublin, 1962), and The Gaelic of Arran (Dublin, 1957), will tell you a lot about phonology, with some texts and grammar. There is also Nils Holmer’s The Irish Dialect Spoken in the Glens of Antrim (Uppsala Universitets Arksskrift, 1940) (about Glenarrif): Sgealtan Rachreann (Stories from Rathlin Island) (1910, Gill) and other collections from Aoidhmhin Mac Greagoir: Seosamh Watson’s edition of Seamus O Duilearga’s Antrim Notebooks, published in Zeitschrift fur Celtische Philologie: and The Rathlin Catechism of the early eighteenth century, which probably was written for Antrim Irish-speakers. There is a recent book that supplies the east Ulster Doegen texts (including Antrim) and situates them in a linguistic context (Ulster Gaelic Voices, Ni Bhaoill, 2010) but I don’t have a copy. O Doibhlin’s online work on the last east Ulster speakers is also very interesting, as is O Dochartaigh's on the Scottish Gaelic/East Ulster dialect area. (I must be thinking of Dialects of Ulster Irish, 1987, Institute of Irish Studies. Another book I have never seen.)

Rathlin was essentially a Scottish Gaelic dialect – in the sixteenth century, everyone there was massacred by the English – but the Glens are a very interesting transitional area, part of a sixteenth century MacDonald lordship that included parts of the Highlands and of Ireland.

The southwest Highlands is a distinctive linguistic area within the Highlands as a whole, and in its  vocabulary, it often agrees with (east) Ulster against the rest of the Highlands. For details, Seumas Grannd's The Gaelic of Islay: A Comparative Study, Department of Celtic, Aberdeen, 2000) provides discussion, and almost a hundred maps that show linguistic features and vocabulary for many points in the west Highlands south of Ardnamurchan, also giving comparative information for other areas and Ireland. It is great!

Antrim, Down, and then Derry/Tyrone (more or less), on the one hand, and Kintyre, Arran, and Islay/Jura, on the other, thus form the unit of transition between dialects in Ireland ("Irish"), and the Highlands of Scotland ("Scottish Gaelic").  One language, be it that society and culture have diverged since the 16th century.

If you’re not so keen on books, there is the Doegen Records site, which supplies recordings of the last speakers from the Glens of Antrim (and many other places), and the Tobar a’ Dualchais site which makes available thousands of tapes from the School of Scottish Studies. A representative Kintyre speaker is Neil MacDougal from Carradale.  Tobar an Dualchais Kist O Riches (By 1880, Carradale was one of the few places outside the English-speaking estate system in Kintyre, and was one of the strongholds of Gaelic in the early twentieth century. (But not now.) There is Adaimh O Broin’s Dalriada project, and another site that has posted recordings of the last mainland south Argyll Gaelic speakers. I thought that I had saved it, but now I can’t find it. I will keep looking

So much good that is gone forever.

Excuse me, I’m going to get a drink. I suspect I’ll be gone a while.

 

Tired and depressed? Do this immediately

Learn, speak and read Irish. Effects guaranteed.

There are many reasons.

Irish literature is uniquely interesting,  the oldest surviving European literature  after Greek and Latin. It is very different from them--a voice from ancient Europe, a voice from beyond the town walls, vessel of at least 2500 years of human experience in the island of Ireland (and in the Highlands). 

Yeah, there are a lot of translations these days, but even the best are chloroformed butterflies. Much of the ‘meaning’ of a piece of literature is embedded in language itself and its patterns. English can’t ‘do’ some of the things Irish does, so what you get in translations from Irish is English language literature inspired by Irish.  Some butterflies look impressive in a glass case, but a live one flying past in the garden is a different experience.

In the late eighteenth and  nineteenth centuries, Irish society underwent a traumatic extended violent break with all that had gone before. In order to find a place in the new economic and social order, people needed to jettison Irish was poverty, powerlessness, ignorance, dirt and darkness.The social structure that resulted from the break in many areas was an unbalanced neurotic one; communities that, for the most part,  could not afford to pay attention to anything except respectability and getting ahead. People who were not able to get ahead descended into poverty and either emigrated, if they could, or eventually died out. Yes, that was long ago, but the world view and social structures that ‘long ago’ engendered are still with us in a mutated form. In the silence when the power is switched off, ghosts still walk. People learn Irish to try to reconnect to the main line of  the development of Irish culture; before.

Irish is a complex, apparently unnecessary language. It’s a language in which there are deep groves of silent trees still, places into which explorers from Google and Apple Corp will never come. It’s a language formed by seasons and weather, by the human mind in face-to-face community, by the necessities of physical existence.  It is part of the Wild.

(Well, yes, it is possible to speak a flattened, denatured, impoverished Irish that is molded on English, but that is still, barely, in the minority) 

And Irish is beautiful and interesting.

On to the songs.

This first song I've taken from D.J. O'Sullivan's edition of the Bunting Collection Of Irish Folk Music and Songs, published in the Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society, vol. xxvii, about 1927. 

After the famous Belfast Harp Festivals, County Down Irish scholar O Loinsigh was dispatched on a journey through Leitrim  and Mayo to procure words to the tunes Bunting had collected from the last traditional harpers. The result was and is great, especially in the form of these volumes--words, tunes, and hundreds of notes and explanations and fascinating diversions. There is no note on who the words of this song were obtained from.

An Triucha is a barony in the north of Monaghan--a county and people, as everyone knows, as romantic as can be. 

Coillte Glasa

            You with the lovely soft hair in curling strands,

            with eyes so fine and beautiful,

            my heart has been twisted like a willow rope,

            a whole great year in longing for you.

            If I could by right stretch out beside you,

            my step would be light and merry;

            and it's my thousand sorrows that you and I are not together, my love,

            in the green woods of Triucha.

           A chúl alainn tais a bhfainni gcas,

          Is brea a's is deas do shúile,

           a's go bhfuil mo chroi á shlad mar a sniomhfai gad
           le blian mhór fhada ag súil leat.
           Dá bhfaighinnse i gceart cead síneadh leat,
           is eadtrom brea gasta a shúilfinn,
           a's sé mo mhile chreach, gan mé a's tú, a shearc,

           faoi choillte brea glasa an Triúcha.

            

            Ah, God, I wish that I and my love of the soft white breasts were together,

            and no other person awake in the land of Ireland;

            all men and women sleeping peacefully

            while my dear and I made love.

            Bright tree of beauty, loveliest of women,

            star of knowledge placed before me,

            I’ll never believe what priests and brothers say,

            that it’s a sin for us to sleep together.

            A Dhia, gan mise a's mo ghrá go bhfuil a brollach min, bán,

             a's gan neach i gCrioch Fáil ine ndúsgadh,
             fir a's mná ina gcodladh go sámh,
             ach mise a's mo ghrá ag súgradh.
             A gheig cailce an áigh, is deise de na mná,
             a realt eolas a thóighear domhsa,
             ni chreidfinn-se go brath ó shagart nó  óbhrathair,

             go bhfuil peaca insan an pháirt á dhúbladh.

            

            My love and my dear, let us go now

            to the fine green woods of Triucha,

            where we’ll find drink and pleasure without doubt,

            and plenty of our proper foods there:

            rowan berries and holly, bunches of cress,    

            sweet apples and nuts;

            great waves of foliage will be under and around us,

            and herbs and grass growing to our knees.

            My secret and my dear, make ready and let us go

            and we’ll leave our native land;

            come to the west where the blackbird is in the woods,

            where the apples grow two by two;

            grass that’s greenest, bird that is sweetest,

            the cuckoo at the top of the green yew tree.

            And never, never  will death come near us

            at the heart of the fragrant wood.

There are three other songs that invite the beloved to run away to Triucha. Before an Bord Failte starts scheming about a new honeymoon destination, I should point out that the old forests are long gone. The Triucha songs all come from the south Armagh/Louth/south Monaghan area, a place packed with poets up to the mid-19th century. Triucha was seperated from it by a large area that had been planted with English and Scottish settlers, so it could be that An Triucha stood in the minds of south Armagh and Louth and south Monaghan people for simply the unknown and the Otherworld, a place where, by definition, tour buses and rental cars cannot go.

The other 'Triucha' songs are in Einri O Muireasa's Cead de Cheoltaibh Uladh, 1915 and 1983, pp. 138-144.

Ulstermen are always trying to go somewhere else, it seems.

Here is an eighteenth century song by the south Ulster poet Peadar O Doirnin, Ur-Chnoc Chein Mhic Cainte (The Green Hill of Cian mac Cainte),  

(I humbly plead forgiveness for the lack of fadas below. The only way I can smuggle them in here involves a huge amount of work. A poor excuse, I know...)

A phluir na maghdean is uire gne,
thug clu le sceimh on Adamhchlainn.
A chul na bpearlai, a run na heigse,
dhublaois feile is failte.
A ghnuis mar ghrein i dtus gach lae ghil,
a mhuchas lean le gaire,
Is e mo chumha gan me is tu a shiur, linn fein
san dun sin Chein Mhic Cainte

Taim bruite i bpein gan suan gan neal,
de do chumha, a gheag is aille;
Is gur tu mo roghain i gCuigibh Eireann--
cuis nach seanaim as de.
Da siulfa, a realt gan smud, liom fein,
ba shugach saor mo shlainte.
Geobhair plur ia mead is cnuasach craobh
san dun sin Chein Mhic Cainte.

A shuaircbhean tseimh na gcuachfholt pearlach,

gluais liom fein ar ball beag,
trath is buailte cleir is tuata i nealtaibh
suan faoi eadai bana;
O thuaidh go mbeam i bhfad uathu araon
teacht nua chruth greine amarach,
gan ghuais le cheile in uaigneas aerach
san uaimh sin Chein Mhic Cainte.

Cluinfir uaill na ngadhar ar luas i ndeidh
Bhriain luaimnigh bhearnaigh mhasaigh,
is fuaim guth beilbhinn cuach is smolach suairc ar gheaga in altaibh'
I bhfuarlinn tseimh chifir sluabhuion eisc
ag ruagadh a cheile ar snamh ann,
is an cuan gur leir dhuit uaid i gcein
o'n Ur-Chnoc Chein Mhic Cainte.

The translation below is rushed and awkward. The poet would not be happy with it, and no insult to him is intended.

Flower of girls, of shining countenance,
known as most beautiful of the Children of Adam;
shining hair, desire of poets,
you who are most generous and kind.
Face like the sun of every bright morning,
You who extinguish sorrow with your laughter,
it is my sorrow, friend, that you and I are not alone together
in that dun of Ciam Mac Cainte.

I am battered in pain, unable to sleep or to rest,
missing you, oh beautiful branch,
and you are my choice in all the provinces of Ireland,
and that is a thing I will not deny.
If you would walk beside me, oh flawless star,
we would be merry and flourish in health.
You will get flour and mead, fruits and nuts
in that dun of Ciam Mac Cainte.

Cheerful gentle girl  with bright winding tresses,
go with me now in a little while
when lay and clergy will both be sound
asleep under white sheets.
Two of us together, far to the north we'll be
when the new sun rises tomorrow,
together without sorrow, cheerfully alone
in that cave of Cian Mac Cainte.

The cry of the hounds will be heard
chasing after the agile handsome fox;
the sound of the sweet-voiced cuckoo and blackbird on branches.
In quiet cold pools, there you'll see
schools of fish swimming through one another,
and the ocean you'll see far away
from the bright hill of Cian Mac Cainte.

(The final verses, in which the girl answers, as it were:)

Get away from me with your plamas, though you've told of a hundred things,
(something that many might be convinced by).
The best thing by far are heaps of jewels;
something you didn't mention at all.
Lands at good rent, cows and sheep,
and stacks of pearls in a mansion.
As a price, I would not accept them from you 
in the night-time when children are made.

O Doirnin was an 18th-century poet from the County Louth/Armagh, and an exceptionally good poet in an area that was known for the cultivation of poetry and literature. Very little reliable information about him survives, except for the date of his death, April 5th, 1769.

He was a love poet who presents himself as almost a Charlie Chaplin Little Tramp, lyrically and enthusiastically courting a succession of young women who have a tendency, in the lines attributed to them in his songs, to point out his faults, in particular his poverty and unrealistic ideas about the invincibility of love and lovers.  O Doirnin is the author of a song that's become well-known (well-known in some places, anyway) today in Sean O Riada's setting of it: Mna na hEireann, translated as The Women of Ireland.

In this poem, O Doirnin invites a young woman to leave the ordinary world of work, spinning wheels and carding wool behind, and to live with him among the sights and sounds of the natural world at the top of what's now called Killen Hill, near the town of Dundalk. There was then a megalithic tomb at the top of the hill, to which he refers as 'an uaimh sin Chein Mhic Cainte,' and this was associated with Cian, the father of the god Lugh in old stories. The poem then is not only an invitation to go dwell in the "Wild", but in the Otherworld.

O Doirnin's work is best collected in Peadar O Doirnin: Amhrain, edited by Breandan O Buachalla, an Clochomhar, 1969, and that's where I took the original words from. Information about this song can also be found in A Hidden Ulster: People, Songs and Traditions of Oriel, by Padraigin Ni hUallachain, Four Courts Press, 2003.

Here's a song from the same area, a song celebrating the coming of Summer, traditionally sung by groups of girls carrying a symbol of the summer, whether a May branch or a sort of doll adorned with ribbons, on May Day. Versions were collected from neighboring counties Monaghan and Armagh at the beginning of the 20th century.

 The singer is Eithne Ni hUallachan, sister of Padraigin who edited the Hidden Ulster book, and I suppose you could say she was the second-to-last native speaker of the dialect, (her sister being the last). They were raised in Irish by their father who learned Irish earlier in the 20th-century from older native Irish-speakers in the area. Gerry O'Connor, Eithne's husband and a great fiddler, plays.

And now on to Connacht....and a translation of a tiny love song

Is Leat

            You have my eternal desire, my prayer, my creed,

            you have the rule of my heart, until I go into the earth,

            you have all that my mouth will ever utter,

            you have this poor wandering fool of Corra-Sratha until his death.

A quatrain I found in Burduin Bheaga (O Rathaile) on page 35. Corr Sratha is a place in Leitrim.

                        

            “The Tormented Brother” below was Tomas O Caiside whose Rabelesian adventures on the continent of Europe he recounted in the tale “Eachtra Thomáis Uí Chaiside.” A number of other songs by this 18th-century county Roscommon man also entered the folk song tradition. He was once a religious brother, but was defrocked "for a foolish marriage," as he said himself.   

It's a version of the song An Casaideach Ban which is an even better song, or at least more sexy.  This one is also spoiled by a lack of fadas.       

            112)                                         An Braithrin Buartha

            In this perverse world, the laws are too narrow,

            and even the Pope wouldn’t let me marry you;

            but if you’ll come with me back behind the garden,

            it's there we’ll take permission to make love.

Ta an saol seo crosta, ta an dli ro-laidir,

a's ni bhfuighinn o'n bPapa tu a phosadh liom

ach da dtagta liomsa ar chuil a ghairdin,

no go bhfaighimis fail ann cead sugartha a's grinn

            There she is passing me, the shining white swan,

            and it's my sorrow that she ever was born,

            for the night she was conceived in her mother’s womb,

            she was destined to be my death.

Siud i tharm i, an eala glegeal,

agus se mo lean gear mar rugadh i

mar an oiche a geineadh i i mbruinn a mathar,

gur le haighaidh mo bhais a cumadh i.

            I never baptized an infant, nor a little child;

            only that lovely woman who’s troubled my heart,

            and, One Son of Mary, and King of Grace,

            isn’t it a wretched thing that I’m in love with a woman?

Nior bhaist me leanbh o, ar bith ariamh na paistin,

ach an peirlin ban ud a cradh mo chroi,

agus, a aoin-Mhic Mhuire agus a Ri na nGrasta,

nach claoite an cas me a bheith i ngra le mnaoi?

            A beguiling dream came to me last night

            while I was there in my sleep.

            The sky-woman came and stretched out beside me

            and her eyes and her gaze were fine to see.

An bhiongloidigh bhreagach a thainig areir o,

agam fein agus me in mo shuan;

go dtainig an speirbhean a's gur shin si taobh liom,

ba dheise a feachaint agus a leagan sul.

            Her body was more radiant than the leaping candle-flame,

            her hair was every bit as beautiful, thick and long;

            her breast was whiter than the snow on the side of the mountain,

            and her face was as lovely as the flower of the apple.

            I’ll make a journey to do the pilgrimage at Cruach Phadraig,

            and I’ll return again back to Sliabh Bághna,

            searching everywhere for my wonderful girl

            who made black coal of the heart in my breast.

            Alas, my shoulders have swollen up to my ears

            and I’ve received an unequivocal notice from Death.

            There’s no person who heard of my plight

            who wouldn’t admit things were bad for Fairhaired Casaide.

            If I was a boatman, it's skillfully I’d sail

            to any place where my love might be.

            I’d sail after her through the pounding tides,

            on and on, from wave to wave.

            I would embrace her in her shift,

            and hold her in my two arms, however long the night;

            The only request I have from the King of Grace

            is a single kiss from my dear beloved.

I translated from Na Caisidigh agus a gCuid Filiochta, edited by Maighread Nic Philibin many years ago for Oifig an tSolathair. She got this version from Padraig O Neill, a singer from Baile An Chlair which is next to, should I mention, Abbeyknockmoy, and also Galway town. You can hear him sing it, if you go to the Doegen records site.

https://www.doegen.ie/LA_1152g1

Darach O Cathain also recorded the song, and I can't find it online. Sorry. 

Maire Ni Scolai (video above) was a Dublin woman who lived most of her life in Galway town, and whose recordings introduced many listeners to sean nos singing, though she sang in a European art-music style, really. 

Here's a translation of the first little bit of Eachtra Thomais Ui Chaiside.

"Reader, I beseech you not to pass hasty judgement on this feeble composition. It's no wonder it's poorly put together because ever since a burning itch for travel came into my head (and it was't

long until the same ailment took possession of my feet), my mind has never been tranquil or at rest. Please do not therefore weigh my words too studiously or ponder over them. Instead, follow me

on my ceaseless travel over the roads I journeyed.After a long excursion through this hamfisted composition, I will wager that you will sleep soundly. At any rate, I leave my best wishes to my friends and relatives for health and long life....

There's not a land or an island or a bit of a fairy fort or village within the circuit of the lovely fruitful island of Ireland that I didn't  seek out and search, looking for my dog, though I didn't know what

color he was. I finally stole away over the sea and I was sold to a French officer and forced to be a soldier...."

He served, always as briefly as possible, in several European armies into which he was pressed. He finally escaped, was shipwrecked in southwestern England and in the end. returned to Ireland.

Munster

So I said there aren't many good love songs from 19th/20th century County Cork. Here's one. The point of it is that instead of hitting on an ordinary young woman, the poet meets a woman from the Otherworld, the fairy lios or bruidhean; or he lets on that he things he has, in order to plamas her.

John Spillane from Cork city recorded it, but I can't find that online either. Instead here is one other things from him, because searching for the song reminded me how good he is.

(No fadas below....You see, to enter them, I need to go to Insert (in Word) which is very very slow on this computer, then select a vowel with a fada, then wait while Word reluctantly mails it to the place I had selected in the document. I did a whole novel that way, and am still traumatized by that experience.)

Reidh-Chnoc Mna Duibhe

            Its long I’ve been wandering, searching for my love,

            through dark lonely glens, as I’m driven along,

            I’ve never found her equal, though I’ve searched far and wide,

            from the streams of An Tuath to the shining banks of the Maigh.

            I happened all alone onto the noble mountain of the Fairy Woman,

            and there I met the long-haired woman, sitting down;

            her hair was waving, thick and beautiful, flowing down in waves,

            down around her shoulders, while the wind it was stirring it. 

            I met my love and I thought it polite to sit down with her,

            I put my hand on her chest and on her breast,

            and she said to me “Leave me! I am not for the likes of you,

            I’m a sad woman from this place who happened into the lios.”   

He:      “What is your land, your place, or are you a native of Ireland?

            Sit down with me if you’re troubled, and defy every enemy.

            Are you the bright woman Blaithnaid who’s sent this arrow through my heart,

            or the fair beautiful maiden that Paris stole to Troy?”

She:     “I’m indeed not one of those people,” she said,

            “only a gentle country girl from the other side of the land,

            who has never yet stretched out her right side by any man in the world.

            Take your hands away from me, for I’m late to the Bruidheann.” 

           

He:      “It's my sorrow and my grief, my dear heart and my first love,

            you with cheeks like the rowan berry, that you are lashed by the storm;

            it's the fairy host of Cnoc Greine that took you in their nets,

            swept you from your people, away to Reidh Chnoc Mna Sí.”

            I’d press you to my heart inside, my lovely hero of a woman,

            and put my arms around you, there’d be nothing more fine;

            her slender pretty black eyebrows were beautiful to see,

            like the moon at night, when its just a day old.

            I put my arms around her slender waist and I held her tight,

            I caressed her from there down to the toes of her feet;

            its my desire to stretch out with her, to lie down by her side,

            but she leaped away from me like a bird on the branch.

Not to leave you in sorrow, here's a Breton dance, a gavotten, from the Pourlet area--the villages around the small town of Guemene.  Yes, it's a performance in folk costume, but it's authentic. People dressed like that up into the 1930s in many parts of western Breton-speaking Brittany, and people still dance like that there.