In Love in Tyrone

Post-16th century English, French and German literatures are quite well known, and even the names and dates etc. of Welsh literature are known. Irish literature, though…Well, it is odd in this respect too.

Partly that is because it was a manuscript literature almost entirely up until about 1890.

There was a flurry of Catholic religious books printed on the Continent in the early 17th century in response to the British government enforced Protestantism in Ireland. There were some grammars and dictionaries, and then in the early 19th century, mostly religious works, but also a few general topic books, from English religious societies who wanted to convert the Irish from Catholicism.

The only other thing before the Gaelic League came on the scene were some books in English containing poems and songs in Irish, and then a few editions of old tales from learned societies in the 1830s when it looked like Irish language, literature and the Irish-speaking peasants might have a place in modern Ireland. There was an enormous oral literature, of course, and a flourishing manuscript literature in a few areas (Cork, Limerick, Clare, Leitrim, Fermanagh, Armagh, Louth, Meath, Dublin)

But the peasants fight for access to land, and this to potatoes and to life went against them, the system tightened, then the Famine removed millions of Irish-speaking people from the scene. Those who survived knew or very quickly learned that Irish language was a badge of inferiority, untrustworthiness and stupidity, and in the fight to convince landlords that one was a good candidate to rent a bit of their land, no one could afford to wear that badge.

So nobody knows who composed the long poem translated here. It is attributed to Eoghan Ó Donnghaile who was maybe from county Tyrone, or Derry, but who was definitely a priest who served mostly in county Armagh in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The not very well known (though very common in manuscripts) prose satire Comhairle Mhic Clamha has been ascribed to him (also to somebody else), and then some poems, mostly because the tone is maybe similar to the tale.

Did he compose this poem? I think probably not, but who knows? No one knows.

Uncertainty is what you get when a literature is dependent on poor people in their spare time, and when the official world loathes, despises and mistrusts them and whatever they are up to.

But the poem…Not knowing the context, we might say “Well, that is interesting: this guy meets an Otherworld woman and falls in love with her, but she tells him that first, he’s got to wait a year, but not just sitting around: he’s got to more or less fast and also spend a night on all the “fairy hills” of Ireland without getting scared at whatever he sees and running away. Not so easy, but he is really in love, and he agrees, but he is really worried…

That’s where the story leaves us.

It is entitled “The Vision at/of Beann Buirb” and Beann Buirb is a somewhat imposing hill in south Tyrone that was probably considered an Otherworld (“fairy”) hill, but it is also the place where Eoghan Rua Ó Neill, an Irish soldier of the family of the great Aodh Ó Neil, beat the English in a big battle of the war of the 1641 uprising. For a while, it looked like he was the prophesied one who would lead the Irish to freedom and a good wor;d, but in the end, it did not work out that way. To an early 18th century Ulsterman or woman, the name Benburb suggested a lost world: a better world: the old world.

Late 17th and 18th century oppression there was probably worse than almost anywhere else in Ireland besides north Tipperary and parts of the Midlands, partly because British settlement and dispossession of the native Irish was more thorough than most places, and partly because the Scottish Lowland and English settlers remembered very well about how the Irish rose up in 1641 and it looked like the savages were going to burn them out, so any Teig who looked them in the face was probably plotting midnight murder

That is the world that the man who made this poem lived in: a world in which all powerful invaders had overwhelmed normal life, and a man could not lift his head without risking having it removed. The desperate love and longing in the poem were occasioned by his powerful Otherworld vision, and that is very clear, but they could not help also being inspired by the life he saw around him. In that life, there was no hope, no help: the normal world had been smashed to pieces and waking life was a living nightmare. (For a similar context, see also the post on Aindrias Mac Cruitín’s poem to Donn na Duimhche.)

The places mentioned are all well-known Otherworld locations of various sorts, and by naming them, the poet evokes the old world, and also states his longing to escape from the new world where the “power places” were the big new mansions of the foreign landlords, their army barracks and courthouses.

A few stanzas of the original, then my translation.

Aisling na Binne Buirbe

Tuirseach dhamh (dom) ag éirghe lae

San mBinn Bhuirb mo ghné do mhill:

Aisling oíche do-chonnairc mé—

Táim dá héis go tréathlag tinn. (ina dhiaidh)

Weary as the sun rises,

At Benburb my face all stricken,

A night vision there I saw:

After it, I am exhausted, sorrowful.

An aoinbhean dob áille gné (do ba)

Do-chonnairc mé – miste dhúinn— (a matter of importance)

Ar bhruach inbhir na n-éigne mbán (bradán)

Ag ní a lámh ‘s ag cornadh a cúil.

The most beautiful of women

There I saw – no small matter,

Beside the estuary where silver salmon go,

Washing her arms, brushing her hair.

olt dualach coinnleach cam

Gach lúb ann an lí an óir:

Gruaidh lí-gheal ó ndeallrann grian (from which sun shines)

Do chlóidh mo chiall – fáth mo bhróin.

Heavy hair in curling waves,

Every strand the color of the gold,

A bright countenance from which the sun shines,

My mind was overcome: the reason for my sorrow.

há rosc shuaimhneach shíthe sháimh

mar ghorm-oighre ag snámh ré taobh (taobh leis)

mailghe caol-chama nach léir

mar scríbh ghéir ar mheanram mhaoth.

Two peaceful, placid, quiet eyes

Like blue ice sparkling side by side:

Slender curving, faint eyebrows

Like fine penwork on soft vellum.

Déad dlúth fá dheas-eagra

Cíocha ganna cruinn-gheal corr,

A bél tana nár char meang

A taobh seang tuinn-gheal trom,

Close-set teeth all well set out,

Small, elegantly-curved, pointed breasts.

Slender lips that did not love deceit,

A graceful , white, firm side…

Not translating some stanzas here. Though he fears she is an Otherworld woman, he speaks to her and asks her name./Labhrann leí agus deireann sise leis:

“Faoileann Tuinne m’ainm báistidh

Do-bheir gaiscigh i ndíth céille: (tugann)

Borb na Binne m’athair-se,

‘s í mo mhathair Dealradh Gréne.

Gull of the Waves is the name I was given”

One who makes heroes into fools.

The Rough One of the Height is my father,

And my mother is Brightness of Sun.

“Bím seal san mBinn Bhuirbse,

I Síth Dhuilbh ‘s i mBinn Eadair:

I nDún Lir do-gheibhinn fáilte

Is bím lá in Inbhear Scéine...

I spend a while in Benburb,

In the fairy hill of Dolbh, and Hill of Howth,

I am welcomed in the house of Lir,

And I spend a while at I. S. (Possibly the mouth of the sea near Kenmare, Kerry)

I spend a day at Cnoc Máine (in Tyrone)

That hill famed for beauty,

I spend a day, welcomed fondly,

Among the women of green Eamhain Mhacha

I spend a day an Naoise’s dwelling (lover of Deirdre)

He who holds wide lands under tribute.

I spend a day in fine repose

There in d. E. M. (near Bruree, Co Linmerick

There is no resplendent shining fairy dwelling

In the land of green-treed Ireland,

Nor a shining pleasant dwelling

Where I do not put past the time.

There you have my tidings

(no lies do I tell ever),

I spend a while joyously

With the household of (famous) Tailtiu.

(Skipped verses where he pleads his love and then she says, “Hold on. it’s not so easy…You have to sleep on the summit of every fairy hill, showing no fear of the mysterious hosts there, without food but for water and red berries, every night for a year.”)

After hearing her sweet-voiced words

I cannot sleep at all at night,

And I am seeking her

Or so it seems to me, three seasons.

Ó, ar ghrádh adhbhal uaibhreach

Dá gruaidhibh corcra cuinnleach,

Gan suan, gan codladh sáimhe,

Atáim go támhlag tuirseach.

And with a terrible noble love

For her resplendent, blushing cheeks,

I cannot rest or sleep at all,

And I am exhausted, sorrowful.

(Original text is pp. 58-60, Nua-Dhuanaire, Cuid 1 (de Brún, Pádraig, Breanndán Ó Buachalla, Tomás Ó Concheanainn, Dublin Institite for Advanced Studies

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