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Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including any inconsistencies in the original.

THE MOUNTAINY SINGER

BY THE SAME AUTHOR:

• THE GARDEN OF THE BEES
• THE RUSHLIGHT
• THE MAN-CHILD
• THE GILLY OF CHRIST

THE MOUNTAINY SINGER

BY SEOSAMH MacCATHMHAOIL

MAUNSEL AND COMPANY, LTD.
96 MID. ABBEY STREET, DUBLIN
1909

All Rights Reserved

Dedit pauperibus.

Lib. Psalm.

CONTENTS

This book is made up of a selection from the Author’s early books, with many new poems added.

A LINE’S A SPEECH

A line’s a speech;

So here’s a line

To say this pedlar’s pack

Of mine

Is not a book—

But a journey thro’

Mountainy places,

Ever in view

Of the sea and the fields,

With the rough wind

Blowing over the leagues

Behind!

[I AM THE MOUNTAINY SINGER]

I am the mountainy singer—

The voice of the peasant’s dream,

The cry of the wind on the wooded hill,

The leap of the fish in the stream.

Quiet and love I sing—

The carn on the mountain crest,

The cailin in her lover’s arms,

The child at its mother’s breast.

Beauty and peace I sing—

The fire on the open hearth,

The cailleach spinning at her wheel,

The plough in the broken earth.

Travail and pain I sing—

The bride on the childing bed,

The dark man labouring at his rhymes,

The ewe in the lambing shed.

Sorrow and death I sing—

The canker come on the corn,

The fisher lost in the mountain loch,

The cry at the mouth of morn.

No other life I sing,

For I am sprung of the stock

That broke the hilly land for bread,

And built the nest in the rock!

[WHEN ROOKS FLY HOMEWARD]

When rooks fly homeward

And shadows fall,

When roses fold

On the hay-yard wall,

When blind moths flutter

By door and tree,

Then comes the quiet

Of Christ to me.

When stars look out

On the Children’s Path

And grey mists gather

On carn and rath,

When night is one

With the brooding sea,

Then comes the quiet

Of Christ to me.

[I SPIN MY GOLDEN WEB]

I spin my golden web in the sun:

The cherries tremble, the light is done.

A sudden wind sweeps over the bay,

And carries my golden web away!

[CHERRY VALLEY]

In Cherry Valley the cherries blow:

The valley paths are white as snow.

And in their time with clusters red

The scented boughs are crimsonèd.

Even now the moon is looking thro’

The glimmer of the honey dew.

A petal trembles to the grass,

The feet of fairies pass and pass.

By them, I know, all beauty comes

To me, a habitan of slums.

I sing no rune, I say no line:

The gift of second sight is mine!

[DARKNESS]

Darkness.

I stop to watch a star shine in the boghole——

A star no longer, but a silver ribbon of light.

I look at it, and pass on.

[MY FIDIL IS SINGING]

My fidil is singing

Into the air;

The wind is stirring,

The moon is fair.

A shadow wanders

Along the road;

It stops to listen,

And drops its load.

Dreams for a space

Upon the moon,

Then passes, humming

My mountain tune.

[THE GOAT-DEALER]

Did you see the goat-dealer

All in his jacket green?

I met him on the rocky road

’Twixt this and Baile-doirin.

A hundred nannies ran before,

And a she-ass behind,

And then the old wanderer himself,

Burnt red with sun and wind.

He gave me the time-a-day

And doitered over the hill,

Walloping his gay ashplant

And shouting his fill.

I think I hear him yet,

Tho’ it’s a giant’s cry

From where I hailed him first,

Standing up to the sky.

Is that Puck Green I see beyond?

It is, and the stir is there.

By the holy hat, I know then—

He’s making for Puck Fair!

[WHY CRUSH THE CLARET ROSE]

Why crush the claret rose

That blows

So rarely on the tree?

Wherefore the enmity, dear girl,

Betwixt the rose and thee?

Art thou not fair enough

With that dark beauty given thee,

That thou must crush the rose

That blows

So rarely on the tree!

[LAMENT OF PADRAIC MOR MAC CRUIMIN OVER HIS SONS]

I am Padraic Mor mac Cruimin,

Son of Domhnall of the Shroud,

Piper, like my kind before me,

To the household of MacLeod.

Death is in the seed of Cruimin—

All my music is a wail;

Early graves await the poets

And the pipers of the Gael.

Samhain gleans the golden harvests

Duly in their tide and time,

But my body’s fruit is blasted

Barely past the Bealtein prime.

Cethlenn claims the fairest fighters

Fitly for her own, her own,

But my seven sons are stricken

Where no battle-pipe is blown.

Flowers of the forest fallen

On the sliding summer stream—

Light and life and love are with me,

Then are vanished into dream.

Berried branches of the rowan

Rifled in the wizard wind—

Clan and generation leave me,

Lonely on the heath behind.

Who will soothe a father’s sorrow

When his seven sons are gone?

Who will watch him in his sleeping?

Who will wake him at the dawn?

Seven sons are taken from me

In the compass of a year;

Every bone is bose within me,

All my blood is white with fear.

Seven youths of brawn and beauty

Moulder in their mountain bed,

Up in storied Inis-Scathach

Where their fathers reaped their bread.

Nevermore upon the mountain,

Nevermore in fair or field,

Shall ye see the seven champions

Of the silver-mantled shield.

I will play the “Cumhadh na Cloinne”

Wildest of the rowth of tunes

Gathered by the love of mortal

From the olden druid runes.

Wail ye! Night is on the water;

Wind and wave are roaring loud—

Caoine for the fallen children

Of the piper of MacLeod.

[TO A TOWN GIRL]

Violet mystery,

Ringleted gold,

Whiteness of whiteness,

Wherefore so cold?

Silent you sit there—

Spirit and mould—

Darkening the dream

That must never be told!

[A MARCH MOON]

A March moon

Over the mountain crest,

Ceanabhan blowing:

Her neck and breast.

Arbutus berries

On the tree head:

Her mouth of passion,

Dewy and red.

Cold as cold

And hot as hot,

She loves me . . . .

And she loves me not!

[A THOUSAND FEET UP]

A thousand feet up: twilight.

Westwards, a clump of firtrees silhouetted against a bank of blue cumulus cloud;

The June afterglow like a sea behind.

The mountain trail, white and clear where human feet have worn it, zigzagging higher and higher till it loses itself in the southern skyline.

A patch of young corn to my right hand, swaying and swaying continuously, tho’ hardly an air stirs.

A falcon wheeling overhead.

The moon rising.

The damp smell of the night in my nostrils.

O hills, O hills,

To you I lift mine eyes!

I kneel down and kiss the grass under my feet.

The sense of the mystery and infinity of things overwhelms me, annihilates me almost.

I kneel down, and silently worship.

[THE DARK]

This is the dark.

This is the dream that came of the dark.

This is the dreamer who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.

This is the look the dreamer looked who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.

This is the love that followed the look the dreamer looked who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.

This is the breast that fired the love that followed the look the dreamer looked who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.

This is the song was made to the breast that fired the love that followed the look the dreamer looked who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.

This is the sword that tracked the song was made to the breast that fired the love that followed the look the dreamer looked who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.

This is the rope that swung the sword that tracked the song was made to the breast that fired the love that followed the look the dreamer looked who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.

This is the dark that buried the rope that swung the sword that tracked the song was made to the breast that fired the love that followed the look the dreamer looked who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.

This is the dark, indeed!

[REYNARDINE]

If by chance you look for me

Perhaps you’ll not me find,

For I’ll be in my castle—

Enquire for Reynardine!

Sun and dark he courted me—

His eyes were red as wine:

He took me for his leman,

Did my sweet Reynardine.

Sun and dark the gay horn blows,

The beagles run like wind:

They know not where he harbours,

The fairy Reynardine.

If by chance you look for me

Perhaps you’ll not me find,

For I’ll be in my castle—

Enquire for Reynardine!

[SNOW]

Hills that were dark

At sparing-time last night

Now in the dawn-ring

Glimmer cold and white.

[I AM THE GILLY OF CHRIST]

I am the gilly of Christ,

The mate of Mary’s Son;

I run the roads at seeding time,

And when the harvest’s done.

I sleep among the hills,

The heather is my bed;

I dip the termon-well for drink,

And pull the sloe for bread.

No eye has ever seen me,

But shepherds hear me pass,

Singing at fall of even

Along the shadowed grass.

The beetle is my bellman,

The meadow-fire my guide,

The bee and bat my ambling nags

When I have need to ride.

All know me only the Stranger,

Who sits on the Saxon’s height;

He burned the bacach’s little house

On last Saint Brigid’s Night.

He sups off silver dishes,

And drinks in a golden horn,

But he will wake a wiser man

Upon the Judgment Morn!

I am the gilly of Christ,

The mate of Mary’s Son;

I run the roads at seeding time,

And when the harvest’s done.

The seed I sow is lucky,

The corn I reap is red,

And whoso sings the Gilly’s Rann

Will never cry for bread.

[GO, PLOUGHMAN, PLOUGH]

Go, ploughman, plough

The mearing lands,

The meadow lands,

The mountain lands:

All life is bare

Beneath your share,