Brightness of Brightness

I have suppressed this early translation for close on thirty years,
and reprint it merely to complete the picture of O’Rahilly’s
poetry. In Irish the poem is pure music, each line beginning with
assonantal rhymes on the short vowel “i” (like “mistress” and
“bitter”), -which gives it the secretive, whispering quality of
dresses rustling or of light feet scurrying in the distance.

Brightness of brightness lonely met me where I wandered
  Crystal of crystal only by her eyes were splendid,
Sweetness of sweetness lightly in her speech she squandered
  Rose-red and lily-glow brightly in her cheeks contended.

Ringlet on ringlet flowed tress on tress of yellow flaming
  Hair, and swept the dew that glowed on the grass in
	showers behind her,
Vesture her breasts bore, mirror-bright, oh, mirror-shaming
  That her fairy northern land yielded her from birth to
	bind them.

There she told me, told me as one that might in loving
	languish,
  Told me of his coming, he for whom the crown was
	wreathed,
Told me of their ruin who banished him to utter anguish,
  More too she told me I dare not in my song have
	breathed.

Frenzy of frenzy ’twas that her beauty did not numb me,
  That I neared the royal serf, the vassal queen that held
	me vassal,
Then I called on Mary’s Son to shield me, she started from
	me,

And she fled, the lady, a lightning flash to Luachra Castle.

Fleetly too I fled in wild flight with body trembling
  Over reefs of rock and sand, bog and shining plain and
	strand, sure
That my feet would find a path to that place of sad
	assembling,
  House of houses reared of old in cold dark druid
	grandeur.

There a throng of wild creatures mocked me with elfin
	laughter,
  And a group of mild maidens, tall with twining silken
	tresses,
Bound in bitter bonds they laid me there, and a moment
	after
  See my lady laughing share a pot-bellied clown’s
	caresses.

Truth of truth I told her in grief that it shamed her
  To see her with a sleek foreign mercenary lover
When the highest peak of Scotland’s race already thrice
	had named her,
  And waited in longing for his exile to be over.

When she heard me speak, she wept, but she wept for pride
  And tears flowed down in streams from cheeks so bright
	and comely,
She sent a watchman with me to lead me to the
	mountainside—
  Brightness of brightness who met me walking lonely.

Egan O’Rahilly


Source: O'Connor, Frank (tr); Kings, Lords, & Commons: An Anthology
from the Irish; 1962; London; Macmillan & Co; pp.4-105