Chapter 6

But these national ballads, though very popular, are, I think, not so good as his more personal poems. I suppose no narrative of what others have done or felt or suffered can move one like a flash from 'that little infinite, faltering, eternal flame that one calls oneself.' Even in my bare prose translation, this poem will, I think, be found to have as distinct a quality as that of Villon or of Heine:--

'There are three fine devils eating my heart-- They left me, my grief! without a thing; Sickness wrought, and Love wrought, And an empty pocket, my ruin and my woe. Poverty left me without a shirt, Barefooted, barelegged, without any covering; Sickness left me with my head weak And my body miserable, an ugly thing. Love left me like a coal upon the floor, Like a half-burned sod, that is never put out, Worse than the cough, worse than the fever itself, Worse than any curse at all under the sun, Worse than the great poverty Is the devil that is called "Love" by the people. And if I were in my young youth again, I would not take, or give, or ask for a kiss!'

The next, in the form of a little folk-song, expresses the thought of the idealist of all time, that makes him cry, as one of the oldest of the poets cried long ago, 'Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird; the birds round about are against her.' Yet, with its whimsical fancies and exaggerations, it could hardly have been written in any but Irish air.

'It's my grief that I am not a little white duck, And I'd swim over the sea to France or to Spain; I would not stay in Ireland for one week only, To be without eating, without drinking, without a full jug.

'Without a full jug, without eating, without drinking, Without a feast to get, without wine, without meat, Without high dances, without a big name, without music; There is hunger on me, and I astray this long time.

'It's my grief that I am not an old crow; I would sit for awhile up on the old branch, I could satisfy my hunger, and I not as I am, With a grain of oats or a white potato.

'It's my grief that I am not a red fox, Leaping strong and swift on the mountains, Eating cocks and hens without pity, Taking ducks and geese as a conqueror.

'It's my grief that I am not a fair salmon, Going through the strong full water, Catching the mayflies by my craft, Swimming at my choice, and swimming with the stream.

'It's my grief that I am of the race of the poets; It would be better for me to be a high rock, Or a stone or a tree or an herb or a flower Or anything at all, but the thing that I am.'

The sympathy of the moods of nature with the moods of man is a traditional heritage that has come to us through the poets, from the old time when the three great waves of the sea answered to a cry of distress in Ireland, or when, as in Israel, the land mourned and the herbs of every field withered, for the wickedness of them that dwelt therein. The sea, and the winds blowing from the sea, can never be very far from the dweller in Ireland; and they echo the loneliness of the lonely listener.

'Cold, sharp lamentation In the cold bitter winds Ever blowing across the sky; Oh, there was loneliness with me!

'The loud sounding of the waves Beating against the shore, Their vast, rough, heavy outcry, Oh, there was loneliness with me!

'The light sea-gulls in the air, Crying sharply through the harbours, The cries and screams of the birds With my own heart! Oh! that was loneliness.

'The voice of the winds and the tide, And the long battle of the mighty war; The sea, the earth, the skies, the blowing of the winds. Oh! there was loneliness in all of them together.'

Here is a verse from another poem of loneliness:--

'It is dark the night is; I do not see one star at all; And it is dark and heavy my thoughts are that are scattered and straying. There is no sound about but of the birds going over my head-- The lapwing striking the air with long-drawn, weak blows And the plover, that comes like a bullet, cutting the night with its whistle; And I hear the wild geese higher again with their rough screech. But I do not hear any other sound, it is that increases my grief-- Not one other cry but the cry and the call of the birds on the bog.'

Here is another, in which the storm outside and the storm within answer to one another:--

'The heavy clouds are threatening, And it's little but they'll take the roof off the house; The heavy thunder is answering To every flash of the yellow fire. I, by myself, within in my room, That is narrow, small, warm, am sitting, I look at the surly skies, And I listen to the wind.

'I was light, airy, lively, On the young morning of yesterday; But when the evening came, I was like a dead man! I have not one jot of hope But for a bed in the clay; Death is the same as life to me From this out, from a word I heard yesterday.'

The next is very simple, and puts into more homely words the feeling of 'lonesomeness' that is looked upon as almost the worst of evils by the Irish countryman, as we see by his proverb: 'It is better to be quarreling than to be lonesome.' 'I would be lonesome in it,' is often the reason given for a refusal to go from bog or mountain cabin to some crowded place 'where there is not heed for one or love.'

'Oh! if there were in this world Any nice little place, To be my own, my own for ever, My own only, I would have great joy--great ease-- Beyond what I have, Without a place in the world where I can say: "This is my own."

It's a pity for a man to know, And it's a pain, That there is no place in the world Where there is heed for him or love; That there is not in the world for him A heart or a hand To give help to him To the mering of the next world.

'It is hard and it is bitter, And a sharp grief, It is woe and it is pity, To be by oneself. It is nothing the way you are, To anyone at all. It is nothing the way you are, To yourself at last!'

I suppose the following may be called a political poem, from its elusive reference to Home Rule. I was not sure on the point myself; for I thought the wearer of the 'blue cloak and birds' feathers,' must be a fine lady, perhaps laying enchantment on the fields. But I heard some one ask the _Craoibhin_ who he meant, and his answer was: 'I suppose I was thinking of an aide-de-camp':--

'I am looking at my cows walking, What are you that would put me out of my luck? Can I not walk, can I not walk, can I not walk in my own fields?

'I will not always be turned backwards. If there is need to be humble to you, great is my grief, If I cannot walk, if I cannot walk, if I cannot walk in my own fields.

'It's little my respect, and it's little my desire, For your blue cloak, and your birds' feathers. Can I not walk, can I not walk, can I not walk in my own fields?

'The day is coming as it's easy to see, When there shall not be among us the ugly like of you. And each one shall be walking, and each one shall be walking, Wherever shall be his will and his own desire.'

There are some love songs in the little volume. But their writer has had, in his beautiful translations of the 'Love Songs of Connacht,' to put such intensity of passion into English, that he must despair of putting any new wings to passion, or any new exaggeration into lovers' words. In one of these Connacht songs, the lover says: 'Blacker is the sun when setting than your features, Mary!' And she answers back: 'Neither star nor sun shows one-third much light as your shadow!' Another lover says of the woman he desires: 'I will write largely of her, because of the thousands who hoped for her, and who have been lost; and a hundred men of these who still live, are in pain and under locks through love. And I myself am not free, but am a bondsman in bonds.' And another boasts of 'a love without littleness, without weakness; love from age till death, love from folly growing, love that shall send me close beneath the clay, love without a hope of the world, love without envy of fortune, love that left me outside in captivity, love of my heart beyond women.' Douglas Hyde's own love songs are quiet and staid in contrast to these; but nevertheless they have a sober charm. Here are the last verses of one of them:--

'Will you be as hard, Colleen, as you are quiet? Will you be without pity On me for ever?

'Listen to me, Noireen, Listen, aroon; Put healing on me From your quiet mouth.

'I am in the little road That is dark and narrow, The little road that has led Thousands to sleep.'

In his preface to the 'Love Songs of Connacht' he says he finds in them 'more of grief and trouble, more of melancholy and contrition of heart, than of gaiety or hope'; and he writes: 'Not careless and light-hearted alone is the Gaelic nature; there is also beneath the loudest mirth a melancholy spirit; and if they let on to be without heed for anything but sport and revelry, there is nothing in it but letting on.' There is grief and trouble, as I have shown, in many of his own songs, which the people have taken to their hearts so quickly; but there is also a touch of hope, of glad belief that, in spite of heavy days of change, all things are working for good at the last.

Here are some verses from a poem called 'There is a Change coming':--

'When that time comes it will come heavily; He will grow fat that was lean; He will grow lean that was fat, Without shelter for the head, without mirth, without help.

'The low will be raised up, says the poet; The thing that was high will be thrown down again; The world will be changed from end to end: When that time comes it will come heavily.

'If you yourself see this thing coming, And the country without luck, without law, without authority, Swept with the storm, without knowledge, without strength, Remember my words, and don't let your heart break.

'This life is like a tree; The top green, branches soft, the bark smooth and shining; But there is a little worm shut up in it Sucking at the sap all through the day.

'But from this old, cold, withered tree, A new plant will grow up; The old world will die without pity, But the young world will grow up on its grave.'

Here is a fine vision of a battle-field:--

'The time I think of the cause of Ireland My heart is torn within me.

'The time I think of the death of the people Who protected Ireland bravely and faithfully.

'They are stretched on the side of the mountain Very low, one with another.

'Hidden under grass, or under tall herbs, Far from friends or help or friendship.

'Not a child or a wife near them; Not a priest to be found there or a friar;

'But the mountain eagle and the white eagle Moving overhead across the skies.

'Without a defence against the sun in the daytime; Without a shelter against the skies at night.

'It's many a good soldier, joyful and pleasant, That has had his laughing mouth closed there.

'There is many a young breast with a hole through it; The little black hole that is death to a man.

'There is many a brave man stripped there, His body naked, without vest or shirt.

'The young man that was proud and beautiful yesterday, When the woman he loved left a kiss on his mouth.

'There is many a married woman, with the child at her breast, Without her comrade, without a father for her child to-night.

'There's many a castle without a lord, and many a lord without a house; And little forsaken cabins with no one in them.

'I saw a fox leaving its den Asking for a body to feed its hunger.

'There's a fierce wolf at Carrig O'Neill; There is blood on his tongue and blood on his mouth.

'I saw them, and I heard the cries Of kites and of black crows.

'Ochone! Is not the only Son of God angry; Ochone! The red blood that was poured out yesterday!'

I do not know who the following poem was written about, or if it is about anyone in particular; but one line of it puts into words the emotion of many an Irish 'felon.' 'It is with the people I was; it is not with the law I was.' For the Irish crime, treason-felony, is only looked on as a crime in the eyes of the law, not in the eyes of the people:--

'I am lying in prison, I am in bonds; To-morrow I will be hanged, Who am to-night so quiet, So quiet; Who am to-night so quiet.

'I am in prison, My heart is cold and heavy; To-morrow I will be hanged, And there is no help for me, My grief; Och! there is no help for me.

'I am in prison, And I did no wrong; I only did the work Was just, was right, was good, I did, Oh, I did the thing was good.

'It is with the people I was, It is not with the law I was; But they took me in my sleep, On the side of Cnoc-na-Feigh; And so To-morrow they will hang me.'

'I am weak in my body, I am vexed in my heart, And to-morrow I will be hanged; Lying beneath the clay, My sorrow, Lying beneath the clay.

'May God give pardon To my vexed, sorrowful soul; May God give mercy To me now and forever, Amen! To me now and forever.'

But translation is poor work. Even if it gives a glimpse of the heart of a poem, too much is lost in losing the outward likeness. Here are the last lines of the lament of a felon's brother:--

'Now that you are stretched in the cold grave May God set you free: It's vexed and sorry and pitiful are my thoughts; It's sorrowful I am to-day!'

I look at them and read them; and wonder why when I first read them, their sound had hung about me for days like a sobbing wind; but when I look at them in their own form, the sob is in them still:

Nois ann san uaigh fhuair ó tá tu sínte Go saoraigh Dia thu Is buaidhcartha, brónach bocht atá mo smaointe Is bronach mé andhiú.

BOER BALLADS IN IRELAND

Yesterday I asked a woman on the Echtge hills, if any of her neighbours had gone to the war. She said: 'No; but I know a great many that went to America when the war began--even boys that had business to do at home; they were afraid of being brought away by the Press.' On another part of the Echtge hills, where a rumour had come that the police were to be sent to the war, an old woman said to a policeman I know: 'When you go out there, don't be killing the people of my religion.' He said: 'The Boers are not of your religion'; but she said: 'They are; I know they must be Catholics, or the English would not be against them.' Others on that wild range think that this is the beginning of the great war that will end in the final rout of the enemies of Ireland. Old prophecies say this war is to come at the meeting of these centuries; and there is an old Irish verse which seems to allude to this, and which has been thus translated:--

'When the Lion shall lose its strength, And the bracket Thistle begin to pine, The Harp shall sound sweet, sweet, at length, Between the eight and the nine.'

Lonely Echtge still keeps old prophecies and old songs and some of the old speech, and but few newspapers are seen there; but on the lowland, sympathy with the Boers, and prophecies of their victory, are put into the doggerel English verse that must be poor in form, because a ballad, more than another song, must have a long tradition of folk-thought and folk-expression behind it; and in Ireland this tradition does not belong to the English language. Even the beautiful air of 'The Wearing of the Green' cannot give poetic charm to such verses as these, which, like the others that follow, have been sung and sold by ballad-singers in market-towns and at fairs, and at country race-meetings, during the last year:--

'Oh! Paddy dear, and did ye hear The news that's going round? No cheers for brave Paul Kruger Must be heard on Irish ground. No more the English tourist at Killarney will be seen, Unless you join the pirate's cause, And chant "God save the Queen."'

Or this other, sung during the siege of Ladysmith:--

'And I met with White the General, And he's looking thin enough; And he says the boys in Ladysmith Are running short of stuff. Faith, the dishes need no washing, Now they're left so nice and clean; Oh! it's anything but pleasant To be starving for the Queen!'

The defender of Ladysmith is treated with greater courtesy than some other generals, for, in spite of sympathy with the besiegers, the singer says:--

'But if he gave in to-morrow, I would not think it right To throw the least disparagement On a man like General White. He is making a bold resistance, As great as could be made, Against their deadly Mauser rifles, And their tremendous cannonade.'

The 'Song of the Transvaal Irish Brigade' has more literary quality:--

'The Cross swings low; the morn is near-- Now, comrades, fill up high; The cannon's voice will ring out clear When morning lights the sky. A toast we'll drink together, boys, Ere dawns the battle's grey, A toast to Ireland, dear old Ireland! Ireland far away! Ireland far away! Ireland far away! Health to Ireland, strength to Ireland! Ireland, boys, hurrah!

'Who told us that her cause was dead? Who bade us bend the knee? The slaves! Again she lifts her head-- Again she dares be free! With gun in hand, we take our stand, For Ireland in the fray: We fight for Ireland, dear old Ireland! Ireland far away! Ireland far away! Ireland far away! We fight for Ireland, die for Ireland-- Ireland, boys, hurrah!

'Oh, mother of the wounded breast! Oh, mother of the tears! The sons you loved, and trusted best, Have grasped their battle spears. From Shannon, Lagan, Liffey, Lee, On Afric's soil to-day, We strike for Ireland, brave old Ireland! Ireland far away! Ireland far away! Ireland far away! We smite for Ireland, brave old Ireland! Ireland, boys, hurrah!'

'The Irish Boy,' which is sung to the air of 'The Minstrel Boy,' is also in honour of the Irish Brigade:--

'While the Irish boy is on the shore, He'll help to crush the stranger; He'll sweep them hence for evermore, And free thy land from danger. And then he'll pray to God above, That his courage ne'er shall falter, To guard him to the land he loves-- To Ireland o'er the water.'

Mayo is the county to which John MacBride, the leader of the Irish Brigade, belongs; but I heard of a ballad-singer at Ballindereen, near my Galway home, the other day, whose refrain was:--

'And Erin watches from afar, with joy and hope and pride, Her sons who strike for liberty, led on by John MacBride!'

At Galway Railway Station, whence the Connaught Rangers set out for the war, I have heard that wives, saying good-bye, begged their husbands 'not to be too hard on the Boers.' Anyhow, a 'Mother's lament for her son gone to the war,' that was sung at Galway Races the other day, shows more impartiality than most of the ballads:--

'When the battle rages fiercely, our boys are in the van; How I do wish the blows they struck were for dear Ireland! But duty calls, they must obey, and fight against the Boer, And many a cheerful Irish lad will fall to rise no more.

'I wish my boy was home again! Oh! how I'd welcome him, With sorrow I'm broken-hearted, my eyes are growing dim; The war is dark and cruel, but whoever wins the fight, I pray to save my noble lad, and God defend the right!'

But it is the small farmers of Ireland who look with special sympathy on their fellows in the Transvaal. They give them a warning:--

'England sends her grabbers, From far across the sea, To rob you of your friends and home, Likewise your liberty.'

And the Boers say in answer:--

'When we came to this country, 'Twas but a barren plain; But the honest hand of labour Was rewarded for its pain. We found the precious metal, And of it we have great store; But Britain came to rob us As she often done before. As she thought to do before, As she thought to do before; But Britain comes to rob us, As she often done before.'

Another ballad explains:--

'Those Boers can't be blamed, as you might understand; They are trying to free their own native land, Where they toil night and day by the sweat of their brow, Like the farmers in Ireland that follow the plough. Farewell to Old Ireland, we are now going away, To fight the brave Boers in South Africa; To fight those poor farmers we are not inclined: God be with you, Old Ireland, we are leaving behind.'

Some verses--'The Boer's Prayer'--that I have not seen on a ballad-sheet, but in a weekly paper, give better expression to this feeling of farmer sympathy:--

'My back is to the wall; Lo! here I stand. O Lord, whate'er befall, I love this land!

'This land that I have tilled, This land is mine; Would, Lord, that Thou hadst willed, This heart were Thine!

'This land to us Thou gave In days of old; They seek to make a grave Or field of gold!

'To us, O Lord, Thy hand, Put forth to save! Give us, O Lord, this land Or give a grave!'

'A New Song for the Boers' says:--

'Hark! to the curses ringing From all smitten lands; In sob and wail, they tell the tale Of England's blood-red hands.

'And wheresoe'er her standard flings Forth its folds of shame, A people's cries to heaven arise For vengeance on her name!'

But for passionate expression, one cannot, as I have already said, look to the comparatively new and artificial English ballad form; one must go to the Irish, with its long tradition. Here is a poem, 'The Curse of the Boers on England,' which I have translated literally from the Irish:--

'O God, we call to Thee, This hour and this day, Look down on this England That has come down in our midst.

'O God, we call to Thee, This day and this hour, Look down on England, And her cold, cold heart.

'It is she was a Queen, A Queen without sorrow; But we will take from her, Quietly, her Crown.

'That Queen that was beautiful Will be tormented and darkened, For she will get her reward In that day, and her wage.

'Her wage for the blood She poured out on the streams; Blood of the white man, Blood of the black man.

'Her wage for those hearts That she broke in the end; Hearts of the white man, Hearts of the black man.

'Her wage for the bones That are whitening to-day; Bones of the white man, Bones of the black man.

'Her wage for the hunger That she put on foot; Her wage for the fever, That is an old tale with her.

'Her wage for the white villages She has left without men; Her wage for the brave men She has put to the sword.

'Her wage for the orphans She has left under pain; Her wage for the exiles She has spent with wandering.

'For the people of India (Pitiful is their case); For the people of Africa She has put to death.

'For the people of Ireland, Nailed to the cross; Wage for each people Her hand has destroyed.