Thirteen traditional songs in Irish with contemporary guitar accompaniment. Complete texts, translations, and notes supplied.
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‘The Churchyard at Creggan’ by Paul Muldoon from Lamentations (2017) is reproduced with kind permission of the author and The Gallery Press (www.gallerypress.com).
This aisling or vision poem, composed by Art Mac Cumhaigh (1738–1773) of Creggan, County Armagh, is personal rather than political. While Munster poets dreamt of military aid from abroad that will sunder the chains of cruel oppression, here the poet in his reverie is visited by a fairy woman who seeks to entice him to her land of sweet music and honey. She is a leannán sí or fairy lover from the world of the Tuatha Dé Danann. He compares her with Helen of Troy or the Muses of Mount Parnassus. When the poet laments the defeat of the Gaelic chieftains who honoured music and poets, the fairy woman promises him a great welcome in Leinster where there are no foreign enemies. The poet is reluctant to leave his wife and friends, but states as a condition that wherever he dies, he must be laid to rest in the churchyard at Creggan.
In their collection An Duanaire. Poems of the Dispossessed, Sean Ó Tuama and Thomas Kinsella remark that ‘Úirchill an Chreagáin’ ‘in its simple innocence is a more attractive aisling, perhaps, than some more polished vision-songs by the late eighteenth-century Munster poets’.
lyrics
Úirchill an Chreagáin
Ag Úirchill an Chreagáin sea chodail mise aréir faoi bhrón, Is le héirí na maidne tháinig ainnir fá mo dhéin le póg;
Bhí gríosghrua garth’ aici is loinnir ina céibh mar ór,
’S b’é íocshláinte an domhain bheith ag amharc ar an ríon óg.
A fhial-fhir charthanaigh ná caitear thusa i néalta bróin
Ach éirigh go tapaidh agus aistrigh liom siar sa ród,
Go tír dheas na meala nach bhfuair Galla intí réim go fóill,
’S gheobhair aoibhneas ar hallaí do mo mhealladh-sa le siansa ceoil.
A ríon is deise, an tú Hélen faoi’r treaghdadh sló,
Nó ’n de na naoi mná deasa Pharnassus thú bhí déanta i gcló?
Cén tír insa chruinne inar oileadh thú, a réalt gan cheo,
Le’r mhian leat mo shamhailse bheith ag cogarnaigh leat siar sa ród?
Ná fiafraigh an cheist sin óir ní chodlaím ar an taobh seo den Bhóinn; Is síogaí beag linbh mé a oileadh le taobh Ghráinne Óig’;
I mbruíon cheart na n-ollún bím go follas ag dúscadh an cheoil,
Bím san óiche i dTeamhair is ar maidin i lár Thír Eoghain.
A ríon dheas mhilis, más cinniúint dom tú féin mar stór,
Tabhair léasa is gealladh dom ar maidin sula dtéim sa ród;
Is má éagaim faoin tSionainn i gcríoch Mhanann nó san Éigipt mhór Gurb i gCill chumhra an Chreagáin a leagfar mé i gcré faoi fhód.
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The Churchyard at Creggan
In the churchyard at Creggan I slept, sad as sad, last night,
till a young girl came to me with a kiss at first light;
what with her blush-bright cheek and her hair’s golden sheen, it did my heart good to gaze on that lovely young queen.
‘O kind young gentleman, throw off your great sorrow-load and get up and follow me down the road
to one sweet country the English don’t as yet hold in thrall, where music will lull you from hall to pleasure-hall.’
‘O beautiful queen, are you Helen for whom slews were slain or one of the nine Muses of the Parnassian strain?
In what land were you reared, O unclouded star,
that the likes of myself might consort with your avatar?’
‘Don’t ask me that question, for to this side of the Boyne I’m unreconciled, what with having been reared near Grainneog as a fairy child,
I who elicited in their bard-halls the bards’ most lucid tones
of an evening in Tara and by morning in deepest Tyrone.’
‘O beautiful young queen, though falling for you’s been my fate, I won’t go down that road unless you stipulate
that, be it on the Shannon, the Isle of Man, or in Egypt I die,
it’s in my own sweet-smelling churchyard at Creggan I’ll lie.’
Fran O’Rourke is emeritus professor of philosophy. With John Feeley he has given recitals of Irish traditional songs
associated with James Joyce from San Diego to Shanghai.
John is Ireland’s leading classical guitarist. He has performed concerts around the world and recorded many CDs, most recently Bach’s Cello Suites 1-3....more
