The Kiltartan Poetry Book; prose translations from the IrishGregory, Lady
General
The Kiltartan Poetry Book; prose translations from the Irish
Gregory, Lady
Irish literature -- Translations into English
And if you were a year there you would get no rest, only sitting up
at night and forever drinking. The lamb and the sheep are there; the
cow and the calf are there, fine lands are there without heath and
without bog. Ploughing & seed-sowing in the right month, plough and
harrow prepared and ready; the rent that is called for there, they
have means to pay it. There is oats and flax & large eared barley.
There are beautiful valleys with good growth in them and hay. Rods
grow there, and bushes and tufts, white fields are there and respect
for trees; shade and shelter from wind and rain; priests and friars
reading their book; spending and getting is there, and nothing scarce.
I leave it in my will that my heart rises as the wind rises, and as
the fog scatters, when I think upon Carra and the two towns below it,
on the two-mile bush and on the plains of Mayo. And if I were standing
in the middle of my people, age would go from me and I would be young
again.
_His Lament for O'Kelly_
There's no dew or grass on Cluan Leathan. The cuckoo is not to be seen
on the furze; the leaves are withering and the trees complaining of
the cold. There is no sun or moon in the air or in the sky, or no light
in the stars coming down, with the stretching of O'Kelly in the grave.
My grief to tell it! he to be laid low; the man that did not bring
grief or trouble on any heart, that would give help to those that were
down.
No light on the day like there was; the fruits not growing; no children
on the breast; there's no return in the grain; the plants don't blossom
as they used since O'Kelly with the fair hair went away; he that used
to forgive us a great share of the rent. Since the children of Usnach
and Deirdre went to the grave, and Cuchulain, who as the stories tell
us, would gain victory in every step he would take; since he died,
such a story never came of sorrow or defeat; since the Gael were sold
at Aughrim, and since Owen Roe died, the Branch.
_His Vision of Death_
I had a vision in my sleep last night between sleeping and waking.
A figure standing beside me, thin, miserable, sad and sorrowful; the
shadow of night upon his face, the tracks of the tears down his cheeks.
His ribs were bending like the bottom of a riddle; his nose thin that
it would go through a cambric needle; his shoulders hard and sharp
that they would cut tobacco; his head dark and bushy like the top of
a hill; and there is nothing I can liken his fingers to. His poor bones
without any kind of covering; a withered rod in his hand, and he looking
in my face....
Death is a robber who heaps together kings, high princes and country
lords; he brings with him the great, the young, and the wise, gripping
them by the throat before all the people. Look at him who was yesterday
swift & strong, who would leap stone wall, ditch and gap. Who was in
the evening walking the street, and is going under the clay on the
morrow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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