Into the Woods

 

Into the Woods

"Ginny looked back over her shoulder. She was sure that someone was behind, tracking over the fallen leaves, but she couldn't see them. Probably she shouldn't have come into Dark Wood at night. Maybe Teresa was right and she  have waited until morning to get her sunglasses? The stories about evil werewolves--or was it vampires?--couldn't really be true, of course, but the forest was very dark. Was that something in the tree? Eyes shone right above her there, blazing passionate evil eyes...."

 No, sorry, not that kind of woods.

 Lovers in Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh traditional songs and poems often ask their loved one to come away with them to the woods, where everything will be fine and beautiful, and there will be wild fruits, freedom and blue skies forever.

 (By the way, there are no traditional evil creatures in Celtic woods. Fairies could whip a person away all over the place until morning, but that was only irritation, not evil. The puca was someone you wouldn't want to meet, not if you were a young woman, but pucas were not forest creatures. The Slua would do you in, unless someone else supernatural (a deceased relative?) was on your side and intervened, but the Slua preferred to keep to the roads, it seems.)

 Modern lovers would have trouble finding woods to make love in. Charcoal became big business in early 17th century Ireland and in 16^th century Wales, and in the 18^th century Highlands, when when new English colonial entrepreneurs discovered they could make a killing with iron production. Trees were also useful for ship-building and general export to England. Within a hundred years, Ireland went from being a place known for huge forests, to something like the bare landscape of today, with about 1% of the land in native woodland. Much more land today is in commercial sitka spruce plantations, but whether a thousand acres of unhealthy non-native trees packed shoulder to shoulder, acidifying the soil, and destined to be clearcut as soon as they reach medium size, can be called forest, is another question.

 The story is the same in the Highlands and in Wales. Many old woods were clear-cut to supply material for World Wars I and II, and then in the 1950s almost to the present, huge new “forests’ were planted with fast-growing foreign conifers to supply raw materials for British needs. Welsh poet Gwenallt wrote of graves choked beneath dark woods of saplings planted for the Third War, and of communities destroyed. In the Highlands, in particular, deforestation has meant the degradation of the land, since like in the Amazon, heavy rains wash soil away when the soil is exposed and create a deep hardpan layer that only poor moorland plants can deal with.

 Native woods in Wales are mostly oak and birch. There are pine forests, remnants of the old Forest of Caledonia, in the central Highlands and in Perthshire. (Go to Strathglass, if you want to be impressed.) Other Highland forests are also mostly sessile oak and birch.

Anyway, here are some poems.

 The first one was recorded in versions throughout south Ulster at the beginning of the 20th century. The one I’ve translated here was published in The Bunting Collection Of Irish Folk Music and Songs, edited by D.J. O'Sulivan in The Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society, vol. xxvii, Dublin (1930?).

This is not the Bunting collection of harp music. Bunting sent a county Down Irish scholar,  Padraig O Loinsigh, on an expedition into the West to collect the words to some of the song, the music of which he had collected from harpers at the Belfast Harp Festival. Most of the songs were collected in Leitrim and Mayo, but there's no information on who sang this one for O Loinsigh. Donal O’Sullivan turned O Loinsigh’s and Buntings notebooks into a great big wonderful volume of words, tunes, and hundreds of notes and explanations and fascinating diversions—a desert island book. (I think it's now online.)

 An Triucha/Truagh is the northernmost barony (comparable to an American county) of county Monaghan, and there are two other Irish songs that invite the lover to go live in the woods there. (See Cead de Cheolta Uladh by E O Muireasa, reprinted by Comhaltas Uladh in 1983) South county Monaghan was Irish-speaking into the early 20th century, but mid-Monaghan was heavily colonized by English settlers after the 17th century conquest, so Truagh was an somewhat isolated Irish enclave. The Truagh songs all come from the south Armagh/Louth/south Monaghan area, a place packed with poets up to the mid- 19th century, Though Monaghan is--as everyone knows—a county and people as romantic as can be, I assure you that there is absolutely no reason to go to Truagh today. It is likely that it simply stood for the unknown and the Otherworld, a place where, by definition, tour buses and rental cars do not go.

                        Coillte Glasa (Green Woods)

 

            You with the lovely soft hair in curling strands,

            your eyes are 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.

 

            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.

 

            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.

 Ulstermen are always trying to go somewhere else, it seems. Here is an eighteenth century song by the south Ulster poet Peadar O Doirnin. My translation is hurried and the poet would not be happy with it.

 Ur-Chnoc Chein Mhic Cainte (The Green Hill of Cian mac Cainte).

 

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

 

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 Cian 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 Cian 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 100 things,

(a thing 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 one 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 the 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. In his time, there was 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. The tomb was destroyed for quarrying in 1823, like Carraig Cliona, the rocky hilltop that was the famous dwelling of the elvish queen of West Munster has just been destroyed.

 O Doirnin's work is best collected in Peadar O Doirnin: Amhrain, edited by Breandan O Buachalla, an Clochomhar, 1969. More 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 another song from the same area; a song celebrating the coming of Summer. It was traditionally sung by groups of girls on May Day carrying a symbol of the summer, whether a May branch or a sort of doll adorned with ribbons. Versions were collected from counties Monaghan and Armagh at the beginning of the 20th century, and from pretty much anywhere there were still Irish-speaking people.

 

Samhradh Bui na Noinini Glegheal (Bright Summer of Resplendent Daisies)

  

Samhradh bui na noinini glegheal,

Thugamar fhein an samhradh linn,

O bhaile go baile, is inar mbaile ina dhiaidh sin,

   is thugamar fhein an samhradh linn.

 

Yellow summer with its shining daisies,

 we ourselves have brought the summer in;

from village to village and to our own village after;

   we ourselves have brought the summer in.

 

The May Queen doll and the Summer maiden,

up every hill and down every glen;

stately shining girls all adorned;

   and we ourselves have brought the summer in.

 

The lark sings and swoops in the sky

bees and flies and flowers on the trees;

The cuckoo and the birds sing with pleasure,

   and we ourselves have brought the summer in.

 

The hare has a nest at the edge of the village,

 and the heron nests in the branches of the trees.

There's honey on grasses and larks leaping,

   and we ourselves have brought the summer in.

     Áine Ní Fhoghludha,(Foley in English) was a writer, musician and painter from An Rinn, near Dungarvan in county Waterford, Ireland, active in the Irish cultural movement at the beginning of the twentieth century. She died relatively young in 1932. Her one book of poems, Idir Na Fleadhanna, (1922) combines a sure sense of the older Late Medieval/17th Century poetry, with modern influences. It is great. Here is one poem.

            Da 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.

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.

 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 was planted in around the 16th and 17th centuries, is not particularly rich in species, and also stripped pretty bare these days by red deer and sheep.

 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; Ardnamona, Donegal; Ballyseedy near Tralee in Kerry; Curraghchase in Limerick (near Askeaton); Lismore Woods, Waterford; Aughnaglanny valley in Tipperary (Slievefelim mountains); and Brackloon in Mayo.

A few are mountain or remote woods, but most were preserved by landlords because they became fashionable.