Up the Hill and Down the Other Side

 

To Dháibhí Ó hIarlaithe (mid-18^th century)

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 Muinntear Uí hIarlaithe were, if I remember correctly, hereditary airchinnigh of the church of St Gobnait in Ballyvourney, west of Macroom, Co Cork, and so were not only responsible for maintaining the shrine and church etc., but were expected to provide hospitality in general. (Line 7 of the poem refers to this aspect of their role.)

Aircheannach was a traditional role in Ireland, originally ecclesiastic, but over the centuries it became laicized and hereditary, The families were still associated with learning and poetry even in later years, though lay learning rather than ecclesiastical. A well-known example was Tadhg Ó Rodaigh in central Leitrim, and he was a very important link in that area in carrying on and transmitting the old learning,

Ballyvourney.Ballingeary etc. was in 1700 an out-of-the-way place and it wasn’t until about 1718 that it got a powerful English landlord determined to make as much money as possible from the place. The old system was dismantled and the Uí hIarlaithe lost their land.

Dáibhí mac Phádraig, the subject of this poem, fled the area and married Doireann Ní Dhonnchú of the family of the lords of Gleann Fleisce, an even more remote place just over the border in Kerrty.

This poem tranmslated here laments that things have really gone to hell in Ballyvourney and the poet (Séamas Ó Muimhneacháin) wishes Dáibhí mac Pádraig was still around and things were back the way they used to be.

A little bit of Gleann Fleisce

 Ursa den Iarl’fhuil riamh do’b acmhainne bang,

Ba churanta triall i ngliadhaibh cath faobhair-lann,

Nár cuireadfh i ndiaidh a riain gur neartaigh dlí Gall,

Lenar clipeadh gach triath i gcian tar fairrigí fann.

 

Is é chruinnigh am liach so i’m chliabh, dá leamaimis labhairt,

Gan duine den triabh in bhur ndiaidh ag seasamh  tís teann,

In ionad na mbiatach bhfiala bhfairsing bhí i bhfabhar,

Conairt dá riar, is fiach ag gasraibh Gall.

 

Tuilleadh le’r liath mo chiabh, tú thaistil faoin nGleann,

Le’r hitheadh na triatha I’d dhiaidh do’b aithnid díbh ann,

Más miste leat iad dá gciapadh in anaithibh namhad,

Lig cumas do bhriathran I’m thriall go dtagair faoin mball.

 

Séamas Ó Muimneacháin (flourished around 1770).

 

Extremely literal and awkward translation

 

“Oh, “supporting beam” of lordly blood whose words were capable.

(also pun om “Iarlaith”)

Who was hero-like in struggle in sharp-edged battle,

Who was not forced back/out of his track until the foreign law became strong,

With which every lord was harassed far over the seas, weak.

 

What gathered sorrow into my breast, if I may speak,

Is that there’s no one of your kin after to stand hospitality for those in hardship,

In the place of the very generous hospitallers who were in favor.

Now dogs are being reared, and the English do hunt.

 

Another reason my hair has greyed, that you have fled to the Gleann,

As a result of which the strong you knew here are now eaten (to the bone).

If you care that they are harassed in terror of the foreigners,

 Set free your skilled words for me, until you come back to the place.

 

Well, that sounds really stupid. It is a very literal translation, but it’s more than that: it is the difference between languages and different traditions.

In Irish, it is very effective poem though. The cadence not only swings hard, but the language is concise and effective, and there is a satisfaction in the skill with which syntax is used to make music and meaning.

It is amhrán. and for the sound pattern in the first verse, I get ú, ia, ia, a, a, Remember that only accented syllables count.

I translate from Cois an Ghaorthaigh, edited by Diarmaid Ó Muirithe for An Clóchomar in 1987. It’s a collection of 18^th and 19 century poetry from the Ballyvourney area, a place that was overrun with poets of many families. The last of Muinntear Uí hIarlaithe was probably Pádraig Ó Crualaoi (1864 – 1949), a tailer in Macroom, one of whose grandparents (great-grandparents?) married a woman of that family.

He composed lots of poetry himself and carried in his head lots and lots more that had been passed down to him. Most of it was of poets from the area, so the book provides a portrait of the literary tradition in one small area. (Very little of this poetry was ever written into manuscript, so that’s not where he got it. A lot of the poems in Cois an Ghairthaidh was obtained from oral tradition from other people besides Pádraig.) Some of Pádraig’s own lore was written down in 1942 and ater published in a big book (Seanchas Phádraig í Chrualaoi) by Comhairle Bhéaloideas Éireann in 1982.l

Sometimes modern people assume that if it wasn’t for writing and computers etc, everything that happened in the past would have soon been forgotten, but that was not  at all true in traditional societies.

Pádraig, for example, knew details of the lives of people (relatives, admittedly) who lived around 1700, and he knew the works of poets who flourished 150 years before he was born, and stories about them. People in the area still remembered in the 1940s the exact location where people dropped and died during the Famine. People in Ballinskelligs, which was also still Irish-speaking in the 1940s, knew details of the battle that happened in the early 17^th century when an English warship unexpectedly  appeared there.

People remembered.

Place names helped, of course, and in many parts of Ireland, a walk to the top of the hill was a walk through local history as recorded in very local place names. That rock is where Seán encountered the púca; that hillock is where Máire (my great-grandmother’s cousin) used to sit: over there was very good for rushes: Ó Súilleabháin Beara passed in the valley there long ago.

Fewer and fewer people walk to the top of the hill today, of course, and the local place names and thus the history and links between place and people are falling away into darkness, as is so much else, including Dáibhí Mac Pádraig, this poem etc. etc.