Woodland Nationalism

 

 George Campbell Hay’s poetry which was discussed in the last post -- Stories, and a Few Bottles of Wine -- is characterized by the terse lyric precision of bardic poetry. He is not a difficult poet to appreciate, but it is difficult for us today, who are not of that culture, to appreciate bardic poetry.

 

Partly that is a function of what happened to be written down of it, and thus preserved. The poetry was oral, and unless someone had a strong reason to write it down, they didn’t. That means that the family poembooks that preserve formal praise poems to lordly families like the Maguires, Magaurans, O’Haras, etc., are our most important source…Along, of course, with the early 17^th century Book of O’Conor Donn, and the O’Gara manuscript that preserve a similar body of work. There is a wider variety of poems in these last two, and the compilers’ and poets’ focus, in that time of shipwreck and apocalypse, is somewhat different. It's all still very different from what we are used to today as “poetry”, though.

 It’s only in the very incompletely-documented less formal poetry that the virtues of bardic poetry are obvious: in what are now defined as “Na Dànta Grà” , and in the more individual poetry of the early 17^th century, like O Bruadair, Haicèad, Ceitinn, etc – people who had received some traditional bardic learning, but who were not “bards.” Great stuff! ( Filìocht Phàidraigìn Haicèad, edited by Nì Cheallachàin, An Chlòchomhar, 1962, is a good representative introduction to that.)

 

The love poems are very approachable, but the poetry of O Bruadair and the rest is seriously under-appreciated, probably because it is challenging today. It requires a serious knowledge of the language, and a willingness to appreciate a more formal approach to poetic expression than that which we are generally used to. It was composed by members of a society that was fighting for its life, so it is serious and intense – similar, for example, to the best poetry of representatives of modern European “liberal” literary society who were thrown personally into the maelstrom of WWII: Miklos Radnoti, and so on, and so it is often angry.

 That’s not what I wanted to talk about, though.

 

Áine Ní Fhoghludha (1880 – 1932) was a writer, musician and painter from An Rinn, near Dungarvan in county Waterford, active in the Irish cultural movement at the beginning of the twentieth century. She died relatively young, possibly due to the long-term effect on her health of many long bicycle journeys in the cold and rain as a messenger for the then underground Sinn Fèin.

 

Her one book of poems, Idir Na Fleadhanna, (1922, 1930), like George Campbell Hay, combines a sure sense of the older Late Medieval/early 17th Century bardic poetry, with modern influences, though she also uses amhràn metre, and her poems are short lyrics, for the most part, generally slighter than Hay’s work. They do have the same “bardic” direct perception and expression that O Fiannachta pointed out also characterizes Tomàs O Criomhthàin’s prose. He compared that prose to early Irish “nature” poetry, in its starkly-perceptive lyricism, and while it would be a stretch to see that in these poems, they have a similar sort of virtue.

 

Tiobraid Arann, mòr a chlù:

Comhla dùin ghil Eireann gle.

Tobar fìorghlan gaile is gnìomh,

Tearc a lìon, cè mòr a bheadh.

 

Faith na fèile, suainlios niadh,

Clàr an bhidh don laoch ar fàn,

Gleannta meala meas is cnò,

Dìdean cròdha rug craobh ò chàc!

 

(She was in Tipperary during the war of independence (Cashel, Fethard), while her husband was in prison for political activities.)

 Some of the cultural activists of the turn of the 20^th century made careers for themselves in the new Irish government and the cultural apparatus that it fostered, but even many of those that did seemed a bit lost in the new world that was actually mostly a return to the big farmer/shopkeeper society of pre-Revival Ireland, now running a national government. Nì Fhoghludha never quite found a secure place in the new world, though her husband became a policeman.(You can read more in the online entry on Aimn.ie.)

 

Rinn O Gcuanach àrus sìth,

Dùthaigh aoibhinn Gaedheal gan càim,

Riamh thug cùl le siosma an tsaoighil,

‘S tug a chluais le ceolta tràgha,

 

Ucht na mara adhairt a cinn,

Sonasach a luighe annsùd—

Scàil na slèibhte ar a beinn,

‘S cèad-ghà grèine ar a cùl.

 

(Two of five verses)

 

O Bruadair speaks to us from a perspective and a world that are now almost inconceivable to most of us, and so does Nì Fhoghludha. She grew up in a time when life and love were going to remake Ireland, and Irish was then the key to this bright new world, instead of the pointless irrelevancy it is considered today…and is, really.

The Revival (1885? – 1920?) had came about because some people noticed that a whole rich fascinating world existed in Ireland; one that the mainstream culture of money, respectability and Empire did not recognize. This other world spoke of the reality of Ireland, and reality of life altogether, in ways that the mainstream did not. It offered insights, pleasures and meanings that the mainstream culture did not.

 The Revival was an attempt to learn a new world; to make a new world.

 People learned Irish then in order  to explore that other world, and in order to become better and more intensely alive people. Each issue of the Gaelic Journal, each new book of folktales or of ancient texts, carried a cargo of treasures—jewels possessing the power to help these explorers in a journey of social, cultural and self-discovery. It was a quiet revolution, and it must have been an exciting time, for some, to be alive.

 Nationalists?

There are several kinds of nationalism. Gaelic League/Revival nationalism was, at heart, a love of the specifics of Ireland: literature, song, land, and people. Not “people” like some eternal “Irish people” who were better than others and had a special destiny, but “people” like a collection of individual persons. Like the Slavic “matica” scholarship of the late 19^th century, it was an attempt to reconnect to the reality of place, and the “folk” tradition.

 That is very different from flag-waving nationalism “We-are-the-best-and screw-the -rest-of-you:” of “gloire” and the armies of the nation sweeping across Europe; of “You-are-not-me-and-you-are-therefore-vermin-and-I-will-kill-you.”

Yes, the Revival failed, and the faded pamphlets are today embarrassing or merely quaint. The new Anglo-Irish mercantile society was too firmly entrenched in most communities, and it had no time for starry-eyed romanticism, and certainly not for Hyde and the others’ clear-eyed analysis of what would come if Irish society would admit no values but those of the bank ledger and the Sunday pulpit. Pearse and some others judged that without a bolt of lightening to split the heavy pall and gloom of “normality.” the Revival was doomed. We can’t know if he was right or wrong – we were not there – but it is easier to shoot a gun than to think, and the Easter Rising eventually led to war with Britain, and the whole thing turned into a violent struggle for power. People who have a dream of a better world rarely come out on top, in that sort of thing, and the merchants and county councilors were the final victors.

Dà dTiocfá liom Cois Coille (If You’ll Come with Me to the Wood)

 

            If you’ll come with me, love, to the wood,

            if you’ll come with me when the dew is falling,

            I’ll set out for you, in sweet exposition,

            tunes of music that you never have heard before,

                                    if you’ll come with me to the wood.

 

            If you’ll come with me to the borders of the wood,

            when the world’s asleep and the sky is tremulous,

            when there’s no sound anywhere to be heard,

            I’ll tell you my secret, lad,

                                    while we are in the midst of the wood.

                                                                                               

 Irish woodlands did not generally fare any better than light and love in the new Ireland.

 If you are interested, accurate information on Irish woods, ancient and modern, can be found most usefully in Kenneth Nichol's paper Woodland Cover in Pre-Modern Ireland, published in the book Gaelic Ireland c1250-c 1650; Land, Lordship and Settlement, edited by Patrick J. Duffy, David Edwards and Elizabeth FitzPatrick, Four Courts Press, Dublin. Nichols knows 16th and 17th century documents better than anyone alive.

 The Potential Natural Vegetation of Ireland (J.R. Cross), Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (Biology and Environment); Vol 106B, No 2 , 65-116, 2006 is also very informative, and is on-line.

(Garryland, Gort)

 The Irish government sponsored a series of field surveys of old woods that were partly published on-line. This, the National Survey of Native Woodlands 2003-2008, was exhaustive, and ranks individual woods as regards their importance, based on richness of the flora, presence of species indicating an ancient wood, size, etc. Important woods do not include Killarney, which is not particularly rich in species, and also stripped pretty bare these days by red deer and sheep.

 IWM46-ALEW.pdf (botanicalenvironmental.com)

 Woods with very high scores include Dromore in Clare (ash/hazel); Glengarrif, Cork (oak), and the Gearagh, Cork (wet woods); Garryland, Gortnacarnaun and Derryclare, Galway (between Coole and Slieve Aughty);  St. John's Wood in Roscommon; Charleville Wood, Tullamore, Offaly (now partially felled for a road); Ardnamona, Donegal; Ballyseedy near Tralee in Kerry; Curraghchase in Limerick (near Askeaton and being slowly poisoned by industrial pollution); Lismore Woods, Waterford; Aughnaglanny valley in Tipperary (Slievefelim mountains); and Brackloon in Mayo.

(Charleville, Tullamore)

Here is to life and to love; to Aine Ni Fhoghludha and Torna and Garryland and the rest!