The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry Read online

  A brief historical sketch runs the risk of identifying the mood of the times at the expense of the more various moods of the poems themselves. There is little ‘disappointment’ in some of the strongest writing here: Kavanagh’s celebratory ‘Kerr’s Ass’ and ‘Innocence’, for example, Padraic Fallon’s playful ‘A Flask of Brandy’ or Richard Murphy’s rugged recreation of outdoor struggle and achievement, ‘Sailing to an Island’. If MacNeice’s most brilliant lyrics are obligingly disappointed, the reasons for that are a matter of metaphysics rather than politics. The section ends with short selections from poets whose major work still lay in the future in 1970.

  The extract from Austin Clarke’s amplification of a sex-change scene from Ovid’s Metamorphoses that opens section VIII sets the signature for a corpus of poetry written during a period which began in great turbulence and witnessed a series of radical social and political transformations in both parts of Ireland. Clarke called ‘Tiresias’ a ‘cheerful’ poem, and it is certainly one that treats sexuality in a more carefree manner than did his sometimes morbid earlier work. Sexuality was at the centre of the challenge to the temporal power of the Catholic church in the Republic of Ireland (as the southern polity had been redesignated in 1949). Plebiscites in the 1980s seeking to install and retain Catholic teaching respectively on abortion and divorce in the constitution gave the church victories that proved Pyrrhic a mere decade later when its authority crumbled in the face of clerical and episcopal implication in a series of sex scandals. Women’s groups were to the fore in the political resistance to theocracy, and the rise of feminism in Ireland, north and south, is reflected in section VIII’s high proportion of women poets. Poetry, too, played a role in the process of liberalization: Brendan Kennelly and Paul Durcan became public figures on the basis of media appearances and packed readings of their libertarian satires, which sold in quantities demonstrative of the art’s continuing cultural primacy in Ireland.

  The violence that broke out in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s increased in its intensity over the early part of the following decade, and remained a central fact of life there until the ceasefires of 1994. Thousands fell victim to shootings and bombings by Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries; the agents of the state, too, particularly in the first few years of the conflict, were responsible for the deaths of many civilians. Internment without trial in Northern Ireland and high-profile and belatedly rectified miscarriages of justice against Irish people in Britain added to the passions of the day. The burning of the British Embassy in Dublin on 2 February 1972 by members of a crowd protesting against the killings by paratroopers of thirteen civilians at a march in Derry three days earlier brought Anglo-Irish relations back to a point close to where they had been when Yeats wrote ‘Reprisals’.

  This period of grief and rage provided the unlikely but enabling context for the flowering of poetry by writers born and brought up in Northern Ireland. Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and Derek Mahon had first become prominent towards the end of the previous decade, but now, under pressure of terrible events, the art of all three grew and developed in diverse and surprising ways. They were soon joined by a second generation of gifted Ulster poets that included Paul Muldoon, Ciaran Carson, Tom Paulin and Medbh McGuckian. Poetry became a space for civility in uncivil times, a forum where traditions locked in vicious antagonism in the political sphere could meet and engage with each other. Some poems (‘The Tollund Man’, ‘The Strand at Lough Beg’, ‘Wounds’, ‘The Butchers’) dealt directly with the violence, others (‘Broagh’, ‘Courtyards in Delft’, ‘Dresden’, ‘Aisling’) approached it circumspectly, while others again exercised the prerogative of the art and took their themes as they pleased. If the ambient mayhem added an extra dimension of visibility to the work of the northern writers, the poetry itself was clearly of a moral and aesthetic quality deserving of the attention it attracted.

  One unfortunate consequence of the focus on the new category of ‘Northern Irish poetry’ was the relative lack of interest in develop ments south of the border, where there was also a signifi-cant quickening of poetic energy. Thomas Kinsella’s meditative vari ation on the Big House novel, ‘Tao and Unfitness at Inistiogue on the River Nore’, and Paul Durcan’s exuberant autobiographical narrat ive ‘Give Him Bondi’ join such ‘northern’ pieces as Heaney’s ‘A Sofa in the Forties’, Mahon’s ‘A Disused Shed in County Wexford’ and Muldoon’s ‘Turkey Buzzards’ in challenging comparison with the best poems written anywhere in the anglophone world over the last half century. Purely in terms of poetry, the decades since 1970 are more deserving of the ‘renaissance’ label than the literary movement led by Yeats nearly a century earlier, which produced only one (admittedly very major) poet of international stature.

  The immediately contemporary part of an historical anthology must date more quickly than the others, and must expect to be the subject of controversy. Where poets younger than Paul Muldoon are concerned I have not tried to second-guess posterity but rather to present a selection of work that bears witness to the variety and excellence of current poetic enterprise. Thus ‘modernist’ poets like Maurice Scully, for whom the art is as much a visual as an aural one, appear alongside writers whose sense of poetry is more consciously rooted in the long traditions of lyric in English or Irish, or both. (Antagonism between champions of ‘experimental’ poetry and ‘well-made’ lyrics constitutes a sectarianism as tedious as the religious variety.) Even though the period has been allocated a perhaps disproportionately generous amount of space, it is inevitable that some worthy and promising poets have been omitted and equally inevitable that eyebrows will be raised by one or two inclusions. I have been guided by my sense of the verbal life of the mater ial, and have passed over a good deal of intellectually or otherwise engaging verse that seemed less bracing in its deployment of words than the writing selected.

  The award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Seamus Heaney in 1995 was greeted with joy in Ireland, both for its own sake and because it seemed to mark a new, confident phase in the country’s history. The Troubles in the North appeared to be at an end, while the Republic, where the poet had made his home since 1972, had entered a phase of unprecedented economic growth that would be sustained until the global crash of 2008. At the time of writing the Republic is undergoing adjustment to the unwelcome new conditions, adjustment all the more painful because of its own construction bubble and particular form of over-extended credit, and Northern Ireland, too, has been hit hard by the recession. The long tradition of Irish poetry provides a palliative perspective on current difficulties. Indeed, the grim historical real ities made available to us by the poems in sections III and V, and also by those in the early part of section VIII, highlight the extra ordinary political achievement of the years since Heaney received what Yeats called the bounty of Sweden. Relations between Ireland and Britain have never been so harmonious, and almost all shades of political opinion are represented in the (still somewhat fragile) government of Northern Ireland. How poets will deal with Ireland’s loss of the status of ‘most distressful country’ (conferred by the song ‘The Wearing of the Green’) remains to be seen.

  The songs and ballads of section IX have been arranged thematically. An exception is made at the beginning for Thomas Moore, less to indulge the notion of him as National Poet than to acknow ledge his historical popularity and the coincidence of his chron ology with that of the opening of the section. William Hazlitt’s observation in The Spirit of the Age (1825) that ‘Mr Moore converts the wild harp of Erin into a musical snuff-box’ draws attention to a disabling gentil ity in the songs, certainly, but it misrepresents the weight of their melancholy charm. Moore’s lyrics sigh for an unreachable past, whether the historical past of Brian Boru, the mythological one of the Children of Lir, or the autobiographical one of the author’s student friendship with Robert Emmet (the ‘hero’ of ‘She is Far from the Land’). Their euphony is beautiful but oppressive, and the experience of moving from them to the love songs of t
he next subsection is akin to stepping from a stuffy Dublin drawing room into the fresh air of the West.

  The two pieces by Antoine Ó Raifteirí certainly range the Connaught outdoors. Notable here also are the spirited Cork song ‘I Know My Love’ and Gerald Griffin’s consummately skilful reconstruction of a Gaelic original, ‘Eileen Aroon’, a version admired by Tennyson for the delicacy of its vowel music. The Yeats, Campbell and Colum songs at the end are by now part of folk tradition in Ireland and elsewhere, and ‘My Lagan Love’ has become the anthem of the author’s native Belfast. The extent to which any of the three was indebted to oral sources in the first instance is unclear.

  Many of the anonymous songs at the head of the ‘War, Politics, Prison’ subsection share an exuberant anarchism that may be seen as a strategy for dealing with oppression. ‘Blarney Castle’ – a favourite of James Joyce – and ‘The Cow Ate the Piper’ hover on the border between the humorous and the grotesque. ‘Johnny, I Hardly Knew You’ is one of the great anti-war songs of the world. The limbless state of its tragicomic hero might be taken as justification for the direct action against a recruitment party described in the following piece, ‘Arthur McBride’. ‘The Recruiting Sergeant’ demonstrates that resistance to joining the army had taken on a nationalist colouring by the early twentieth century.

  The solitary Gaelic song in the group appears to have been written around 1801, when the last remaining woods around the Butler castle in Kilcash, County Tipperary, were felled. James Clarence Mangan’s translation is contemporary with the earliest known manuscripts of the lament. The authored songs include two powerful pieces by Patrick MacGill based on his experiences on the Western Front, where he served with the London Irish Rifles. (MacGill is best known for his novel Children of the Dead End, 1914.) Brendan Behan’s are among the wittiest texts here, even if ‘The Captains and the Kings’ tells us a good deal more about Irish nationalist fantasy than about the England it purports to describe.

  The ‘Society’ category of the closing subsection avails of a broad definition. Once again, some of the liveliest work comes from the oral tradition. The richest and most extravagant of the ‘writerly’ songs, James Joyce’s ‘The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly’, draws much of its vigour from that tradition, rather as the author’s fiction did in the later phases of its development. (Our extract from Finnegans Wake is joined by ‘Finnegan’s Wake’.) The selections are more or less self-explanatory and, like those in the rest of the book, combine the familiar with the lesser known.

  While it is a privilege to end the book with ‘Lisdoonvarna’, Christy Moore’s burlesque on 1980s Irish public life, I should have liked to include more material in contemporary rock and folk idioms. I searched hard for it. I found (or already knew) some good and a few magnificent Irish songs from the post-Beatles era, but none of them had life when reduced to mere print. To say this is no slight. ‘Laddie lie near me’ is one of the most touching of all the compositions of Robert Burns, but the words are inert without the melody and the power of the song is revealed only in performance. So it is also with some of the best contemporary songs. Mention of omissions affords an opportunity to conclude with the observation that The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry constitutes an attempt to represent rather than reproduce the huge wealth of poetry and song that has been Ireland’s major contribution to world culture for a millennium and a half. It is a contribution that shows no sign of letting up.

  PATRICK CROTTY

  I

  * * *

  WRITING OUT OF DOORS: EARLIEST TIMES TO 1200

  Dom-farcaí fìdbaidæ fál,

  fom-chain loíd luin – lúad nad cél;

  húas mo lebrán, ind línech,

  fom-chain trírech inna n-én.

  Fomm-chain coí menn – medair mass –

  hí mbrot glass de dindgnaib doss.

  Débrad! non-choimmdiu coíma,

  caín-scríbaimm fo foída ross.

  ‘Writing Out of Doors’

  The Arrival of Christianity

  ANONYMOUS

  Adze-head

  Across the sea will come Adze-head,

  crazed in the head,

  his cloak with hole for the head,

  his stick bent in the head.

  He will chant impiety

  from a table in the front of his house;

  all his people will answer:

  ‘Be it thus. Be it thus.’

  James Carney

  I Invoke the Seven Daughters

  I invoke the seven daughters of the sea

  Who fashion the threads of the sons of long life.

  May three deaths be removed from me,

  Three lifetimes granted to me,

  Seven waves of good fortune conferred on me!

  May phantoms not harm me on my journey

  In S. Laserian’s corslet without hindrance!

  May my name not be pledged in vain!

  May old age come to me!

  May death not come to me until I am old!

  I invoke my Silver Champion

  Who dies not, who will not die;

  May a time be granted me

  Of the excellence of white bronze!

  May my form be arranged,

  May my right be exalted,

  May my strength be increased,

  May my tomb not be readied,

  May I not die on my journey,

  May my return be confirmed!

  May the headless serpent not seize me,

  Nor the hard grey worm,

  Nor the senseless chafer!

  May no thief harm me,

  Nor band of women,

  Nor warrior band!

  May increase of time come to me

  From the King of the Universe!

  I invoke seven-cycled Senach

  Whom fairywomen suckled

  On the paps of mystic lore.

  May my seven candles not be quenched!

  I am an invincible fortress,

  I am an immovable rock,

  I am a precious stone,

  I am the symbol of seven treasures.

  May my wealth be in hundreds,

  My years in hundreds,

  Each hundred after the other!

  My benefits I call to me;

  The grace of the Holy Spirit be upon me!

  Wholeness is the Lord’s.

  Wholeness is Christ’s.

  Bless, O Lord, Your people!

  P. L. Henry

  The Deer’s Cry

  Patrick sang this hymn when the ambuscades were laid against him by King Loeguire (Leary) that he might not go to Tara to sow the faith. Then it seemed to those lying in ambush that he and his monks were wild deer with a fawn, even Benen, following them. And its name is ‘Deer’s Cry’.

  I arise today

  Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,

  Through belief in the threeness,

  Through confession of the oneness

  Of the Creator of Creation.

  I arise today

  Through the strength of Christ’s birth with His baptism,

  Through the strength of His crucifixion with His burial,

  Through the strength of His resurrection with His ascension,

  Through the strength of His descent for the judgment of Doom.

  I arise today

  Through the strength of the love of Cherubim,

  In obedience of angels,

  In the service of archangels,

  In hope of resurrection to meet with reward,

  In prayers of patriarchs,

  In predictions of prophets,

  In preachings of apostles,

  In faiths of confessors,

  In innocence of holy virgins,

  In deeds of righteous men.

  I arise today

  Through the strength of heaven:

  Light of sun,

  Radiance of moon,

  Splendour of fire,

  Speed of lightning,

  Swiftne
ss of wind,

  Depth of sea,

  Stability of earth,

  Firmness of rock.

  I arise today

  Through God’s strength to pilot me:

  God’s might to uphold me,

  God’s wisdom to guide me,

  God’s eye to look before me,

  God’s ear to hear me,

  God’s word to speak for me,

  God’s hand to guard me,

  God’s way to lie before me,

  God’s shield to protect me,

  God’s host to save me

  From snares of devils,

  From temptations of vices,

  From every one who shall wish me ill,

  Afar and anear,

  Alone and in a multitude.

  I summon today all these powers between me and those evils,

  Against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul,

  Against incantations of false prophets,

  Against black laws of pagandom,

  Against false laws of heretics,

  Against craft of idolatry,

  Against spells of women and smiths and wizards,

  Against every knowledge that corrupts man’s body and soul.

  Christ to shield me today

  Against poison, against burning,