Introducing our Golden Treasury of Irish Verse Frank O’Connor For some years Professor Greene and I have been playing with the idea of a Golden Treasury of Irish Verse from the eighth to the eighteenth centuries. We put iit off as long as possible because we both realised that it was going to be exceedingly difficult. Irish literature has been mainly a field for linguists, and the texts are scattered through scores of periodicals, French, German, American and Scandanavian. They were never intended to interest the ordinary reader of poetry and they have to be re-edited and re-translated if they are to convey anything to him. A further difficulty is that some of the very best of our poetry was written befor the year 900 by amateurs in monastic towns and it is no use pretending that the Irish of these poems is easy, even for scholars. Ath the same time we have persisted because we believe that educated Irish men and women should have a civilized interest in the masterpieces of their own language, and a civilized interest does not necessarily mean a profound knowledge of the language. A great many people who would find it difficult to sustain a simple conversation in French of German enjoy reading Racine of Goethe merely for the pleasure of seeing how magnificently a poetic thought can be expressed by a master of the language. Thrill Thinking of the circuit court of his own day Shakespeare writes: “When the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past” and thinking of the legal procedings of eighth-century Ireland, a poet of 750 puts into the mouth of an old woman four lines that thrill us in a similar way. Rucad slaim-se mo shúil des Dia reic ar thir mbithdiles; Ocus rucad in tsúil chlé Do fhormach a fhoirdilse. “My right eye has been taken from me, alienated as part of my forfeited estate, and the left eye has been taken to complete its bankruptcy.” You don’t have to be a great Irish scholar to pick out for yourself the old law terms---/reic/, “alienate” or “auction,” /tir/, “immoveables,” and /di-les, “inactionable.”---and realise that here is Irish being used by a master of the language. And the reader who knows some modern Irish has the advantage that almost every word is familiar to him. It is true that you can look at an Old Irish word for half an hour before it dawns on you that it was one you heard your grandmother use. The Irish word for “inactionable” or “beyond legal remedy” is in fact what my grandmother used to call me---a /dhilis/meaning “darling.” You may, if you please, conclude that only a very litigiousrace would so blend the terms of love and law. If the reader is patient and laaows the appeararance and the sound to become familiar, he will find that whole lines and even complete verses, become perfectly straightforward, far more straightforward in fact than Irish poetry of a thousand years later, where the meaning is only too often obscured bu the heaping up of useless words. Obscured As you can see from the first poem we have printed, early Irish poets do not waste words. They say what the have to say succinctly and powerfully. The Editor has already received a request for the Irish text of two poems which appeared in the Christmas issue and we think there must be others with a civilised interest in their own literature. About one thing we are determined. We shall print nothing which does not seem to us to stand comparison with the best poetry in other languages. OUR FIRST POEM FROM ROSCOMMON IN THE TENTH CENTURY By PROFESSOR DAVID GREENE and FRANK O’CONNOR This is one of four poems, apparently written somewhere in Roscommon, in the tenth or eleventh century, in various styles. It is one of the most brilliant poems in Irish, written in a style so simple and direct that, except for an odd word like /aicher/—“bitter”—it can be read as it it were modern Irish, which is how we print it. Winter Fuit, Fuit! Fuar anocht Magh leathan Luirg; Airde an sneachta ionás an sliabh. Nocha roicheann fiadh a gcuid Fuit go bráth! Ro dháil an doineann at chách; Abhann gach eitrighe a bhfán Agus is linn lán gach áth. Is muir mór gach loch bhíos lán Agus is loch lán gach linn; Ni roichid eich tar Ath Rois, Ni mó roichid di chois inn. Siubhladh ar iasc Inse Fáil: Ni fhuil tráigh nach tiobrann tonn; I mbroghaibh nocha tá brogh Ní léir cloch, ní labhair corr. Ni fhaghbhaid coin Choille Cuan Sámh ná suan i n-adbhaidh con; Ni fhaghbhann an dreëan beag Dion da nead i Leithir Lon. Is mairg do mheanbhaigh na n-éan An ghaoth ghéar is an t-oighreadh fuar; Ni fhaghbhann lon droma daoil Díon a thaoibh i Coilltibh Cuan. Sádhail are gcoire dá dhrol, Airstreach lon ar Leitir Cró; Do mhínigh sneachta Coill Ché, Deacair dréim ré Beanna Bó. Cubhar Glinne Ridhe and fhraoigh Ó ngaoith aichir do-gheibh léan; Mór thruaighe agus a phian, An t-oighreadh do shiad ’na bhéal. Éirgh do cholcaidh is do chlúimh Tug dot úidh!—nochan ciall duit; Iomad n-oighridh ar gach n-áth Is é fáth fá n-abraim ‘Fuit!’ Brr! Brr! Wide Moylurg is cold tonight; the snow is higher than the hill, the deer cannot reach it’s food Brr! Hell bells! The storm has spread over everything. Every downhill channel is a river and every ford a flooded lake. Every full lake is a sea and every pool a full lake. Horses cannot reach across Ross Ford, and no more can two feet reach it. The fish of Ireland are in motion. There is no strand the wave does not pound. In the townlands there is no house; no stony path is clear no crane talks. The wolves of Cuan Wood get no rest nor repose in their lairs; the little wren does not find shelter for his nest in Leitir Lon. Pity the young of the birds with the sharp wind and the cold ice! The blackbird of the beetle-dark back finds no shelter for his side in Cuan Woods. Restful our pot on its hook but storm-tossed is the blackbird of Leitir Cro. Snow has smoothed Cia Wood: it is hard to climb up Beanna Bo. The eagle of heathery Glen Rye suffers from the bitter wind. Great is his suffering and pain; the ice blows into his mouth. To get up from quilt and feathers—mind what I say!—is no sense for you. There is a lot of ice on every ford—that is why I say “Brr!” Sunday Independent, 1963-02-24, p.22