Apple Tree

 

Craobh nan Ubhal

It’s a well-established cliché: country people are ignorant, dull and uncultured and maybe thuggish. Culture comes from the city where there is opportunity to cultivate the finer things in life. There used to be lots of stories and films about a noble man or woman gone out into the countryside, struggling to overcome the people's stupidity and inability to appreciate culture and goodness.

There aren’t that many stories like that today, probably because country people are an insignificant part of the population now.

There used to be, in the United States, a counter genre. In it, country people are kind and true, and slick immorality comes from the city. There’s not much of that either, these days, for the same reason.

As a matter of fact, though, it used to be that country people did have their own often very old culture, often pretty invisible to authorities and other city people. When outsiders did notice that culture, they usually didn’t think much of it and didn’t care because how could some bundle of ignorant superstitions and clumsy folk songs matter to anybody? Sooner they were abolished, demolished and swept aside, the better for everyone involved.

Ordinary country people in Europe had no power and over the last century or so, the structural bases of European rural communities have been demolished, leaving only a bunch of, yes, ignorant hicks and people who would prefer to live in the city if they could. 

Most people now assume it was always that way, really.

It wasn’t.

Barra is an island in the Outer Hebrides with about 1,000 people today. In the later 1970s, what with television, closer economic integration into British life, a hundred years of English-only schooling and the collapse of community’s self-confidence,  parents stopped speaking Gaelic to their children and often to each other. Today it’s a remote place dependent on exchanging money with Outside for all the necessities of life: dependent on the Outside for culture and meaning. If it wasn’t for subsidies and an influx of city people very aware of the down side of city life, it would be in trouble

Up to the 1970s or so, it had an incredibly rich culture of song, story and music. It was a very civilized community and not because people knew Proust and Dutch painting.

Craobh nan Ubhal is a song that was written down several times. Here are a few verses from a version written down in 1938.

The “sweetheart” of Mackay (McGee) of Islay speaks, praising him as an apple tree:

Chraobh nan ubhal, gheug nan abhal,     (Craobh is “tree” in Scots Gaelic)

Chraobh nan ubhal, gu robh Dia leat,

Go robh Moire ‘S gu robh Criosda,

Gu robh ‘ghealach, gu robh ‘ ghrian leat,

Gu robh gaoth an ear 's an iar leat,

Gu robh m’athair fhín ‘s a thriall leat       (all that he has)

 

Ach ma théid thu dha’n choill iúbhraich  (yew forest)

Aithnich fhéin a’ Chraobh as liúmsa          (know the tree that is mine)

Chrobh as mílse ‘s buig’ úbhlan                 (sweetest: softest apples)
Chraobh mheanganach pheurach úbhlach (branching, precious)

Bun a’ fás, ‘s a bárr a’ lúbadh,                    (roots growing, top bending)

‘S a meangannan air gach túbh dhí           (Branches on each side of her)

Ubhlan toma donna dlúthmhor                 (heavy, dark, thickly-growing apples)

 

(Text from Hebridean Folksongs, Volume Three, John Lorne Campbell, Oxford, 1981., p146 and 148)

I suspect not many heroes today would appreciate being compared to an apple tree.

This was recorded from Ruairi Iain Bháin (Roderick MacKinnon), on the Isle of Barra in March 1938, and was known at that point mostly only in Barra and then only to a few singers. It also appears, in two versions, in Carmina Gadelica, Volume V,  Alexander Carmichael, Scottish Academic Press, 1987 (originally published in 1900). Both versions there are also from Barra.

Here is a link to take you to Tobar a Dualchis site to listen to Flora Macneil, a great old Barra singer who brought the great old songs to our attention (as Joe Heaney did for Carna, Conamara) just before night came down.

Well, it's not actually Flora. There is no recording of her singing it there or anywhere on Youtube, though she did issue it on a cd. This recording is Calum Johnston, also a great singer and maybe even better candidate for the position of "last one." I highly highly recommend the tape/booklet, and cd/booklet that the School for Scottish Studies issues of songs and stories from him and his sister: Calum and Annie Johnston: Songs, Stories and Piping from Barra. It expresses a thousand times better than I can, the essential nobility and humanity of the culture of which he was a part,

https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/track/95720?l=en

Apples were the most common Irish and Highland fruit. Good years for apples are noted in the Annals, and the fruit features in various ways in the Old Irish Laws, but they also have Otherworld associations, and show up in many old tales:

“Then the druid sang a charm against the (Otherworld) woman’s voice, so that no one heard the voice of the woman and Conle did not see the woman at that time. As the woman went away before the overpowering song of the druid, she threw an apple to Conle. For a month after that, Conle was without food or drink, and did not care to eat any victuals but his apple. However much he ate, the apple grw no less, but was still whole.” (A bit from the 8^th century tale Echtrae Conli, translation by Kenneth Jackson, p. 144, Celtic Miscellany, Penguin, 1951.)

They were the most common fruit, but not productions of the human community like the oat crop and milk and milk products were. They carry the scent of the wild with them into ordinary life:

A ninth century hermit describes his forest hermitage:

“There is an apple tree with huge apples such as grow ion fairy dwellings (great are these blessings) and an excellent clustered crop from small-nutted branching green hazels.

(“Aball uball (mára ratha) mbruidnech mbras: barr deas dornach, collán cnòbec, cròebac nglas.”)

...A clutch of eggs, money, mast, and heath-pease (sent by God, sweet apples, red cranberries, whortleberries.

(“Líne ugae: míl, mess, mell  (Dia dod-ròid), ubla milsi, mònainn derca, dercna froích.”)

Beer containing herbs, a patch of strawberries (good to taste in their glory), haws, yew-berries, nut kernels.

(“Coirm co lubaib, loc de shubaib, somlas snò, sílbach sciach, , derca iach, dercna froích...)

These are a selection of stanzas from a thirty-three stanza dialogue between King Gúaire and the hermit Marbán. I quote from Early Irish Lyrics, ed Gerard Murphy, Oxford, 1956, because, as I said once before, his translation cannot be bettered.

Barra and Highland and Irish Gaelic culture had deep roots: enough to sustain a civilization, but by the late 18^th century, those roots were under attack and not only metaphorically.

Sir Walter Raleigh or some less notable new English landlord introduced the potato to Ireland in the 16^th century, they say, but neither the Irish nor Highlanders embraced the spud ecstatically until they discovered you could, in fact, feed yourself from a small plot of land, which was mostly all they had by then.

Still, nobody said they had to like potatoes.

An Irish peasant was called to the witness stand in one of the government surveys held to take evidence about poverty or landholding in Ireland. He had just listened to the preceding witness, a well-meaning minister or landlord, go on about how the potato is so healthful and tasty and how the Irish just love it and they are lucky they’re not poor starving potato-less foreigners.

 “Begging your Honour’s pardon,” the peasant  said, “but you might want to eat nothing but potatoes with no sauce but the rare drop of  milk  for a year, before you talk about how lucky  we are.”

I don’t have the reference handy and I paraphrase, but that is what he said and no lie. There are no lyrical songs featuring the potato.

By the way, I’m not blaming the potato for the state of things. New potatoes fresh from the garden with butter are very nice, and my wife likes potatoes almost any way they’re cooked. (I attribute the fact to her Kerry parents.)

Oats and cheese (and other dairy products) and apples and various other fruits and vegetables green or onionish were the traditional foods, but by the late 18^th century they had been crushed by a massive wave of potatoes in Ireland and increasingly so in the Highlands. I will; talk more about them next week.

Until then, here is a recipe for blackberry and apple sweet.

 4-6 apples

I pound (500 g) blackberries

Honey or sugar

 Wash, peel and core the apples. Mash the blueberries to a pulp and add sugar or honey. Stuff the cored apples with the blackberry mixture. Put in a fireproof dish and add enough water t o prevent fruit from burning. Cover and put in a moderate oven until apples are cooked., Serve with cream,

 This is from Wild and Free by Cyril and Kit O Céirín, The O’Brien Press, 1980, another good book.

 

The Blackthorn Tree

This is my translation of what was a well-known song in Connacht, an Droighneán Donn:

 Every man thinks that it's him I’m in love with, when he begins to swear oaths,

and two-thirds of them drop away from me, when I remember your words;

the snow blows in drifts in the endless storm on Sliabh Ui Fhloinn;

my love’s hair is the color of the sloes that grow on the blackthorn tree.

 

I never thought that my dearest love would haggle over my dowry

or that he would desert me afterwards over a matter of wealth;

it's my desperate despair that I’m not with the man who so troubled my heart

in a little mountain glen far away from them all, with the dew coming down.

 

I have a present from my first love down in my pocket

and all the men of Ireland couldn’t cure my sorrow, alas;                 

when I remember your ways and your lovely brown hair,

I spend a while weeping softly and a while sighing heavily.

 

I wish I had a present on the fair day from my handsome lad,

and sweet conversation after, with the flower of the men:

it's my desperate despair that  we’re not there with a priest in front of us,

to join our lives together, before my love leaves and goes away.

 

 No matter what they think of it, I’ll praise my dearest love;

 no matter what they think of it, I’ll sit down by his side;

 no matter what  they think of it, a thousand arrows through his heart;

 and oh shining star before the people, it's you who’s troubled my heart.

 

Oh dear God, what will I do if you should leave me?

I don’t know the way to your house, your fire or to your hearth.

My mother is frantic, my father’s in the grave,

my people are enraged with me, and my love’s far away.

 

There’s a darkness on my eyes and I didn’t sleep a wink,

thinking about you, my first love, though the night is long.

The way that you denied me in front of the world,

and oh, fragrant branch, why would you bear false witness to me?

 

Its a foolish man who’d be scrambling up a wall that’s high,

when there’s a low wall beside it, on which he could put his hand;

though the rowan tree is tall, its crop it is sour,

while blackberries and strawberries grow on a low little branch.

 

I send you two hundred farewells, my thousand love,

the gossipers have poisoned your mind against me.

I have no little boat to send after your ship

the sea’s rolling high in front of me and I don’t know how to swim.

 

Take my blessing to that village there west among the trees,

towards the village to which I’m wandering, both early and late;

there’s many a wet muddy road and a twisting path

stretching  between me and the village where my sweetheart dwells.

 

There are very few "ballads" in Irish or even songs where the story is told straight out and the listener knows from the start where they're going and what kind of thing, what kind of experience, they've embarked on. In Irish and Highland song, the story is glimpsed instead from multiple perspectives as the different stanzas unfold, and the "story" or core of the song only gradually crystalizes out of these. The listener or reader must thus bring themselves and their own experience to the song in order to complete it, if they seek to understand it. They are required to be a participant in the experience, rather than a passive consumer. They do not merely “listen to it” but co-recreate it (as it were) each time they hear it, and just as the maker of the song originally moved with each additional verse towards establishing the meaning of their experience, so does the hearer participate with them in that process.

Or so it seems to me.

I translate from Nua-Dhuanare, Cuid a 1, Pádraig De Brún et al, Institiúd Ardléinn  Bhaile Atha Cliath, 1975 (School for Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies). It is a great book.

The song was first printed by Charlotte Brooke, an English clergyman’s daughter in County Cavan, in her groundbreaking Reliques of  Irish Poetry in 1789. James Hardiman from east  Mayo was second on the ground, publishing Irish folk songs in 1831, and he has a version as well. So does Seán Ỏ Dálaigh from Waterford in 1871 in Poets of Poetry of Munster. Douglas Hyde from Roscommon published two versions in Abhráin Grádha Chúige Connacht (Love Songs of Connacht) in 1893: one from Roscommon and on from Beacan, Mayo.

It is not in the big Conamara and west Mayo collections of the early 20^th century (Ỏ Maille or Ceol na n-Oileán, or Ỏ Tiománaidhe), but it is in the Tuam, Galway, area Amhráin Mhuighe Seóla collection from Mrs. Costello. Two further east Galway versions are listed as collected in the 20^th century in Clár Amhrán an Achreidh.

This kind of thing is interesting to people like me, a spoiled librarian with an interest in 18^th and 18^th century Irish literature and learning, but it also demonstrates the fact that many of the “big” songs originated in east Connacht. They are known as Conamara songs mainly because Conamara is really all that was left in mid and late 20^th century.

Do I need to know any of this to appreciate the song? Probably maybe not.

So here is the song, or at least recordings of occasions on which it was once sung:

Shílfeadh aonfhear gur dil dó féin mé nuair a luíonn dom mionn,

Is go dtéann dhá dtrian sios díom nuair a smaoinim ar do chomhrá liom.

Sneachta síobhtha ia é á shíor-chur faoin Shliabh Uí Fhloinn

Is go bhfuil mo ghrá-sa mar bhláth na n-airní atá ar an droighneán donn.

Sliabh Uí Fhloinn is near Castlreagh in County Roscommon.

There are actually not many versions at all that are available to post here. The second one I post because it's from two singers who were from near my mother's family.

Good versions are available online if you go to the TG4 sean nós site and search by song title.

And here below is a love song to a river from mid-west Cork:

(Note that he sings some alternate lines and different words or phrases here and there. Also, where the Blackthorn is a "folk" song in which imagery are direct utterance are key, this is poetry in the idiom of 18th century Munster where the thrust and flow and and interplay of sound patterns is important.) 

A shuairc fhile chneasta de ghairm na hÉigse,
D’eascair den tréanfhuil i mBanba dháil.
Ó chúinne Pharnassus cé gur dheacair é éileamh,
Gur raideadar saor dhuitse aiste na mBárd.
Is suairce liom geallaim ná cantaireacht téada,
Greasa dod shaothar nuair a ghlacaim im’ láimh,
Faoi thuairim do theastais, is do tharrach chun téagair,
Ar mhaithimh do ghaolta is ar Abha an tSuláin.

Foinse na habhann ó measaim nach léir duit,
Seo agat gan bhréagnadh go beachtaithe óm’ láimh,
A scaoileann do ghlaise ó Chuma na nÉag,
Agus tuille dá réir sin ó Chúm Uí Chluamháin.
Ó thuaidh leat gan casadh tré Mhullach na Ré,
Mar a ritheann sruth caol dubh go bun an chlocháin,
Is mar lua na dTrí bPearsain á dtarrac chun aondacht
Nuair a thagaid le chéile sin Abha an tSuláin.

Abha bhuí bheag an ghleanna go feargach fraochmhar,
A ritheann gan staonadh go Beannaibh na Trá,
Sruth Oileán a Mhadra is Carraig Chinnéide,
Is sruthaibh ina n-éamais ná gcuirfinn im’ dhán,
Féach an Abha Gharbh lá clagair is sraonmhar
Ná heasaibh go gléigeal gan casadh ar a sáil,
‘S gur thíos i mbun leacan a chailleann sí tréine,
Nuair a chaitheann sí géilleadh do Abha an tSuláin.

Is mín clochar glasrach fairsingeach féarmhar
Fearannaibh taobhaibh na n-abhann sa ráim,
Fá chrainn dhuille ghlasa gan feacadh gan féige,
Le meas ar a ghéagaibh go gcrapaid ‘na mbarr,
Bíonn faoilinn ann, seabhaic, mionchreabhair ‘s naoscaigh.
Sionnaigh ‘s méith-phoic ‘s lachain le fáil,
‘S gach linn de go barra bíonn torrach le héiscibh,
Leathan-bhric mhéithe ‘gus lathairt bhradán.

Text fron TG4 Sean Nós site. This is a song that probably no one from Castlereagh or even Roscommon has ever sung. It is not known much outside one parish.

Snow

 Cearbhall (Carroll) Ỏ Dálaigh was a late fourteenth century poet in north Clare and also the hero of a well-known tale composed probably in the fifteenth century, and also a poet in mid- seventeenth century Wexford, and also maybe a poet in late seventeenth century Armagh and also maybe your mother-in-law (but probably not).

The Ỏ Dálaigh learned family had spread to many areas by the sixteenth century so there were a lot of Ỏ Dálaighs out there, including logically a number of Cearbhalls. The family originated in Westmeath and may have had links to monastic learning there, but like most medieval learned families, no one really knows. (The best discussion of the origins of the medieval learned families is Proinsias MacCana’s  Rise of the Later Schools of Fileadheacht published in Eriu) By, say, 1400, if an Irishman or woman heard “Ỏ Dálaigh”, he or she probably thought “poetry and learning,” though by then the various branches had only tenuous links with one another.

The late fourteenth century Cearbhall became famous as someone with many skills beyond just  learning, and also as a lover. There is no information as to whether the reputation was justified and how it was earned,  but the well-known tale mentioned above has him in love with Farbhlaidh, the (ahistorical) daughter of the King of Scotland. Her father insists she marry someone more important, so Cearbhall is always having to use his wits to get to see her. Luckily for her, Farbhlaidh has a friend, Dubhghil, who is “glic i gceardaibh draoidheachta” (clever in druidic skills: “ceard” is in the dative plural), and “A bhuime bhúidhe, (Farbhlaidh says to Duibhghil) ó atá gach uile ní for do chumas (because you can do anything), beir meise anocht go neamhfhailleach d’fhéachain an fhir (to see that man who has troubled me so much) sin rom bhuaidhir mé de bhunadh.” (The tale is in Early Modern Irish, but like most such, sometimes uses archaic  forms.)

The two of them go there as magical birds, but Cearbhall only sees two sweet-singing musical birds and puts them in a cage.  After a while, they speak to him and ask to be freed.

“Créad  an logh  do-ghéabhsa as bhur léagain uaim?” ar Cearbhall. (What ransom will I get for letting you go?)

“Do bhreith féin doit  gan díth dúinne,” as iadsan. (Your own choice as long as it doesn’t harm us)

“Éirghidh I bhur gcruthaibh féin im fhiadhnaise,” ol sé. (Take on your own forms before me)

Chomh luath as ro-chonnaircsamh Farbhlaodh, sáithis rinn a deirce ‘na deilbh agus tángadar datha éagsamhla  de agus teabarsain beag for a theangadh , agus níor labhair cách díbh fria ar oile. (As soon as he saw F, he stared at her and different colors came on his face…Nerither of them spoke to the other)

(This is actually his first time seeing her. She saw him in a dream and is pursuing him, as it were.)

“An ar mo shonsa atá an sost mór sion oraibh?” ar Duibhghil. (Is it because of (seeing) me you’re so silent?)

It is a great classical love story shot through with humor and was most recently edited by Síobhán Ní Laoire in 1986 as Bás Cearbhaill agus Farbhlaidhe, published by An Clóchomhar. The earliest text is from about 1610 and was written by Briain Mag Niallghuis in Flanders, but there are many later manuscripts from Ulster and Munster.

The Wexford Cearbhall features in a folk tale that was still very common when tales began to be collected methodically in the 1920s/1930s and it too is a love story and one with more definite historical basis. This Cearbhall fell in love with Eleanor, the daughter of Murchadh Caomhánach, an important lord. Her father also opposed the match for reasons not known to us.

Almost nothing is known about what actually happened there in 17^th century north Wexford/Carlow, and the various folktales mostly recount Cearbhall’s clever attempts to win Eleanor. Some tales have a happy ending: others do not. All are more or less “contaminated” by folktale motifs that originally had nothing to do with this story, but are thought to have been attracted to it because Cearbhall was a proverbial learned, clever, tragic hero.

Seachrán Chearbhaill is one version, anda crosántacht, a literary  form that blends poetry and prose in a particular way. It starts off with poetry as though it is being spoken by the composer, but this is interrupted regularly by wry prose patter that comments on the poem and expands on it by retelling incidents from traditional tales. It was originally an oral performance in ritual contexts and is probably best seen in such pieces as Dáibhí Ỏ Bruadair’s Iomdha Sgéimh ar Chur na Cluana, performed at the wedding of Una de Búrca in mid-seventeenth century in county Limerick. (See The Wedding Poems of Dáibhí Ỏ Bruadair, Margo Griffin-Wilson, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2010).

Seachráin Chearbhaill (seachrán in literary contexts is an Otherworld-inspired wandering) first occurs in a manuscript of the late eighteenth century, but also survives in oral versions collected in early twentieth century west Cork and east and west Conamara. (Joe Heany recorded it on a record.) I have never seen the manuscript version, but here is a bit of one Cork version from Amhlaoibh Ỏ Luínse.

Do thugas-sa sealed ag amharc na ríogan-mhná   (gazing at the queenly woman: “bean in genitive)

Agus b’í siúd annir déid-chailce a’s na mbuí-chocán.  (that was/maiden of chalk-white teeth and yellow tresses)

Níorbh fhada liom sealad ag amharc a buí-chocán (I wouldn’t think it tedious to be…)

Ná a bheith a mealla go maidean, cé gur bhaoth a rá, (than to be courting her…morning, though it is foolish to say so)

 

Agus cá baoithe domh-sa féinig sin a rá ná do Fhionn Mac Cumhaill uí Muair uí Bhaois teacht ar tulaig, ar talaig, ar taitneamh agus ar Chraoibh Rua, ag eisteach le guth gadhairt agus le glas coileán, le gníomh na bhfear sbéimeannach agus le baois na bhfear mbeag, nó le hAogan mhác Aogain, an chéad laoch dá dtáinig go hEirinn ariam ag tabhairt trí léim  na Brice Blaighe i gcontúirt a bháite agus a bhascaithe le grá mná sa Dohan Toir.

Páirt de’m mhearaí, ní aithním an oíche ón lá  (raving)

Ní mór go bhfeadar cadé an rud capall seachas cuíora bhán  (Almost I don’t know…sheep)

Etc. (This is not what's in the video.)

(And how is that crazier of me…coming onto little hills, listening to voices of hounds and young dogs, to the deeds of the strong men and the little men, or to Aogan, the first hero who ever came to Ireland to make the leap of B B, in danger of being drowned and crushed, for the love of a woman of the Eastern World.)

(For more information on Crosántacht, see An Chrosántacht by Alan Harrison, An Clóchomhar, 1979.)

Love poems said to have been composed by Cearbhall survive. Seán Ỏ Súilleabháin, a Munster writer of the Dublin Ỏ Neachtain circle, left the earliest copy of one in a manuscript of 1701 that’s now in Trinity College Library as H 4 26. I was going to quote a bit but it is getting late and I have a lot of work to do still. There are several other poems, but it’s not at all certain that Cearbhall composed them.

We do have a poem definitely from the Wexford Cearbhall himself commenting on his reputation and claiming it is entirely undeserved. Páidrigín Haicéad, a well-known Tipperary poet had written to him, asking if he was the many-skilled Cearbhall Ỏ Dálaigh people said. Cearbhall replied, also in a poem, denying everything, but other people must have thought differently and, like I said, tales were still told of his courtship of Eleanor in the 20^th century.

The point of the two poems here was probably that both men knew tales of the Clare Cearbhall, and Páidrigín was asking, somewhat facetiously, “Hey, are you trying to be that other guy or something?” He would not have asked though, if he wasn’t hearing things about the Wexford Cearbhall. (He was maybe likely to hear things because Eleanor’s mother was the daughter of an important Tipperary lord, Lord Mountgarret, who fought the English, a crowd of whom Páidrigín was not that fond.)

The song “Eibhlín, a ruin” was associated with Cearbhall’s courtship of Eleanor, but no one knows how far back the association goes. It’s been said that it’s a scholar’s mistake from the early 19^th century, but, on the other hand, some folk tales maintain the link, and storytellers from Cork, Kerry and Galway are unlikely all to have read Gratten Flood’s writings. Who knows? Anyway, here is the song.

 The hilariously sad and wonderful tale Mac na Míchomhairle was traditionally sometimes attributed to Cearbhall but that was due to a misunderstanding. The tale begins with a poem which is “ar an bhfonn a cumadh le Cearbhall Ỏ Dálaigh ris a ráidhtear Aiste Chearbhaill” (sung to the tune composed by Cearbhall Ỏ Dálaigh which is called (‘said”) “Cearbhall’s Bit”) and some people who copied the text took that to mean that Cearbhall composed Mac na Míchomhairle.

He didn’t, but you can see why people thought he was an appropriate author: both Mac na Míchomhairle and Seachrán Chearbhaill  are desperately flippant tragicomic tales of mostly unhappy love.

Here is a version of An Caiseadach Bán sung by a great Carna singer. An Caiseadach Bán (fair-haired Cassidy) is Tomás Ỏ Caiside of Roscommon, another real-life lyrical, fast-talking, tragicomic eighteenth century hero.

So what does Cearbhall Ỏ Dálaigh have to do with anything and why am I writing about him?

I will tell you. I was looking at Thomas O’Rahilly’s Irish Poets, Historians, and Judges in English Documents, 1538-1615, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 1922-4  (Vol 36) for mentions of Dáibhí Ỏ Duibhgheannain for last week’s post and noticed O’Rahily’s discussion of the Wexford Ỏ Dálaigh poets and of Cearbhall (Cearbhall shows up in contemporary English government documents, though not as a lover.) That got me thinking, and here we are.

The other thing is this: modern Irish literature (say, 1400 - 1850)  is vast and wonderful: the voice of 2500 years of human experience. The literature is peculiarly Irish and I really don’t know of anything like it, except in the Highlands, of course. It is also not well-known. Texts have been published, of course, and discussed, but outside University College, Cork, there has been little informed, intelligent consideration of the literature in context or as literature. Sure, it’s harder to read than Nós, but challenges are what make life.

(I’m not making any claims for this post, by the way. It may be challenging, but that’s only because it was written in between days at my work and time spent shoveling snow, splitting firewood and feeding animals.)

totally different or somewhat so

Love is the topic here, and not noble, decorous love, but, you know, the carnal type. I would not suggest in any way that the Brythonic peoples have a particular affinity with such, but what we have this week is Welsh and Breton. Back to Irish next week.

 

Dafydd ap Gwilym (fl 1320 – 1370) is the great medieval Welsh poet of love and nature, whose literary persona was something of a blend of Clark Gable and Charlie Chaplin. He was a minor nobleman in the first generations after the Norman English conquest of Wales and pioneered a shift in focus from the somber older poetry and meters to the cywydd.

 

It is a measure of how old-fashioned Ireland and the Highlands were that the comparable shift from Dán Díreach to amhrán only happened really in the 18^th century in Ireland, though, to be fair, cywydd poetry is more complex than amhrán.

 

 

                                    Offeren y Llwyn  (The Mass in the Grove)

 

            I was in a pleasant place today,

            under the mantle of the green hazel wood.

            I was listening, as the day began,

            to the fine and able cock thrush,

            as he sang his skillful learned poem,

            his glorious ceremony and exhortation.

 

            He’s a traveler from afar, his nature is steady,

            this love messenger has come a great distance.

            He’s come here from beautiful Caerfyrddin

            under the command of my bright lover;

            and he’s eloquent, though he carries no license.

            The place he seeks is here, the glen of Nentyrch.

            Morfudd is the one who dispatched him

            with his poetry, this fosterling of May.

            He was wearing a vestment

            of the flowers of the dear branches of May,

            and his chasuble, as you would expect,

            was of wings, green mantles of the wind.

 

            There wasn’t a thing that was there, by great God,

            as roof for the altar that wasn’t of the purest gold.

            I heard there, in an exquisite language,

            a long chant, a chant that did not falter,

            a reading for the parish, not timorous or uncertain,

            of the gospel, clearly and distinctly.

            The communion wafer, a fine green leaf,

            was raised up for us then on a hill.

            The beauteous, fair, eloquent nightingale

            by the borders of the grove  there by us,

            the poet of this glen, she sang for us

            the communion bell, and her descant was loud

            as the sacrament was raised high

            towards the skies over the grove

            in worship of our Lord God,

            a chalice of the love of man and woman.

            I am fond and pleased with this music,

            and with the birch grove, the dear wood that made it.

 

Dafydd says things a bit obliquely. There are plenty of what might be called medieval Welsh “bawdy” poems, but most to me sound a bit too much like a bunch of guys trading stories, and I’ve got to say that I prefer Dafydd’s approach. Apparently only the Irish and Scottish Gaels were able at that point to make luminous, majestic poetry about, well, making love.

 

In the mid-eighteenth century, Alasdair mac Mhaistir Alasdair composed a long piece about lovemaking that is modeled on pibroch (the contemporary, complex classical music of the Highland bagpipe that was probably originally from the harp), but it is too long to post now, so here's a version of the tune.

           

Mererid Puw Davies, the author of Deffroad (below) is a contemporary Welsh woman. The poem is from her book Cerrdi o Pen Draw y Byd (Poems from the End of the World). She was living in the Breton department of Finisterre (Pen ar Bed in Breton) at the time. The book was part of the series Cyfres y Beirdd Answyddogal (Series of Unofficial Poets) (Welsh poetry was more almost all formal and serious at the time.) The publisher, Y Lolfa (the Lounge, or "Place of Nonsense), based in the small village of Talybont, took the lead in the 1970s in making light and even junk reading available in Welsh.

 

                   Deffroad

           

            the world is a chocolate gateau

                            the world is a total holiday

 

            the world is dancing on rocking roads

                   the world is a roman candle

                        difficult books new shoes

 

                        the streets are girls

                                    with golden earrings

                                    and eyes of silver

                                    in a huge gallery of pictures

                        there’s a mirror in every frame

 

                       the world is a chocolate gateau

                           the world is a total holiday

 

                           the buses are running

                             the rain is coming down

                              the coffee is boiling

                           the sun is shining

                           and I marvel, I marvel

 

                       how you can so impudently dare

                                        to promise blasphemously

                                        to mean more even

                                        than all this to me?

           

Naig Rozmor was born in 1923 and died in 2015 near Kastell Pol (Saint Pol de Leon). Her parents were small tenant farmers, like most people in the area, but had the farm sold out from under them by a priest (the area was then very very Catholic) and they had to move to Treboul near Dournenez.

 

She was the first Breton woman poet to speak openly of physical love and such matters, and she also wrote very effective dramas dealing with contemporary life and the situation of women and peasants.

 

Only one very short medieval Breton poem remains. The rest was lost when the nobility and learned poets turned to French.

 

                         Pa Dremen an Askell-Grohenn

 

           

            Now, my love, the magic bell of love has sounded;

            I’ve heard the bat rend the silky sails of night,

            and the owl hoot in answer, there in the distance.

 

            See now, in the gleam of the glass

            my body’s ardent harp stretched out before you

            with all its gardens trembling on edge.

 

            Kneel down before it for a moment,

            before you taste its sweet tunes of music,

            and caress it tenderly.

 

            Drink gently its anguished smile,

            Give ear to its prayer,

            hear my complaint, 

            smooth my yell,

            tremble with it when it shudders between your arms,

            fly on its gossamer wings

            up beyond the highest arch...

 

            For the time of astonishing communion is now,

            come to knot us together, body and soul,

            until morning.

Here is the one medieval Breton poem. (Well, it will be here tomorrow, Monday. It is in a big box with other papers above the garage where there are no lights.)

 

And above is a link to a film about Naig Rozmor. It’s quite interesting, though a lot of it is various people in the last fifty years talking, leading horses and so on  You will learn that her father, who was very religious, threw his rosary in the fire after the landlord priest threw them off the farm they’d been on a long time, and that she herself refused a proposal of marriage from a man she would happily have married, so that she could focus instead on writing.

The Breton of Kastell Pol has always sounded a bit “thin” to me, but the bits with Goulc’han Kervella (in a blue shirt) from further west along the coast give a good idea of the Breton of Leon province, the most classical, and I think, beautiful, of all the dialects. This and Morbihan were the areas that probably received the most British refugees. The dialects may still reflect, though  in very different ways, the long extinct British dialects of west Wessex (Sussex, Somerset, Dorset etc.), though I admit that 1500 years is a long time.

By the way, Goulc'han Kervella has steered the extraordinary Strollad ar Vro Pagan for many many years. It started as a loose group of young people interested in Breton language and culture, but became a theater group creating home-grown spectacles in Breton focused on relevant topics: spectacles that were also fun and enjoyable and were performed all over Brittany. (Bro Pagan was then a poor remote area of small farmers and fishermen sand seaweed-gatherers.)

 

The film also demonstrates the fact that almost all young Bretons raised in French but who have learned Breton seem unable to leave French cadence and phonology behind.  It is a shame.