The Lament for Yellow-haired Donough

An uneducated Connacht girl, or someone speaking in her name, writes
the classic lament, the poem that would have been understood in the
ninth century as it was in the ninteenth by Yeats.

Ye have seen a marvel in this town,
Yellow-haired Donough and he put down;
In place of his hat a little white cap,
In place of his neck-cloth a hempen rope.

I have come all night without my sleep
Like a little lamb in a drove of sheep,
With naked breast and hair awry
Over Yellow-haired Donough to raise my cry.

I wept the first time by the lake shore,
At the foot of your gallows I wept once more;
I wept again with an aching head
Among the English and you stretched dead.

If only I had you among your kin,
The Ballinrobe or the Sligo men,
They would break the gallows and cut you down
And send you safely among your own.

It was not the gallows that was your due
But to go to the barn and thresh the straw,
And guide your plough-team up and down
Till you had painted the green hill brown.

Yellow-haired Donough, I know your case;
I know what brought you to this bad place:
’Twas the drink going round and the pipes alight
And the dew on the fields at the end of night.
Mullane that brought misfortune on,
My little brother was no stroller’s son
But a handsome boy who was bold and quick
And could draw sweet sounds from a hurling stick.

Mullane, may a son not share your floor
Nor a daughter ever leave your door;
The table is empty at foot and head
And Yellow-haired Donough islying dead.

His marriage portion is in the house,
And it is not horses nor sheep nor cows,
But tobacco and pipes and candles lit—
Not grudging any his share of it.


Source: O'Connor, Frank (tr); Kings, Lords, & Commons: An Anthology
from the Irish; 1962; London; Macmillan & Co; pp.120-121