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Till fattening the winds of the morning, an odour of new-mown hayCame, and my forehead fell low, and my tears like berries fell down;Later a sound came, half lost in the sound of a shore far away,From the great grass-barnacle calling, and later the shore-weeds brown.
If I were as I once was, the strong hoofs crushing the sand and the shells,Coming out of the sea as the dawn comes, a chaunt of love on my lips,Not coughing, my head on my knees, and praying, and wroth with the bells,I would leave no saint's head on his body from Rachlin to Bera of ships.
Making way from the kindling surges, I rode on a bridle-pathMuch wondering to see upon all hands, of wattles and woodwork made,Your bell-mounted churches, and guardless the sacred cairn and the rath,And a small and a feeble populace stooping with mattock and spade.
Or weeding or ploughing with faces a-shining with much-toil wet;While in this place and that place, with bodies unglorious, their chieftains stood,Awaiting in patience the straw-death, croziered one, caught in your net:Went the laughter of scorn from my mouth like the roaring of wind in a wood.
And because I went by them so huge and so speedy with eyes so bright,Came after the hard gaze of youth, or an old man lifted his head:And I rode and I rode, and I cried out, "The Fenians hunt wolves in the night,So sleep thee by daytime." A voice cried, "The Fenians a long time are dead."
A whitebeard stood hushed on the pathway, the flesh of his face as dried grass,And in folds round his eyes and his mouth, he sad as a child without milk;And the dreams of the islands were gone, and I knew how men sorrow and pass,And their hound, and their horse, and their love, and their eyes that glimmer like silk.
And wrapping my face in my hair, I murmured, "In old age they ceased";And my tears were larger than berries, and I murmured, "Where white clouds lie spread"On Crevroe or broad Knockfefin, with many of old they feast"On the floors of the gods." He cried, "No, the gods a long time are dead."
And lonely and longing for Niam, I shivered and turned me about,The heart in me longing to leap like a grasshopper into her heart;I turned and rode to the westward, and followed the sea's old shoutTill I saw where Maive lies sleeping till starlight and midnight part.
And there at the foot of the mountain, two carried a sack full of sand,They bore it with staggering and sweating, but fell with their burden at length:Leaning down from the gem-studded saddle, I flung it five yards with my hand,With a sob for men waxing so weakly, a sob for the Fenian's old strength.
The rest you have heard of, O croziered one; how, when divided the girth,I fell on the path, and the horse went away like a summer fly;And my years three hundred fell on me, and I rose, and walked on the earth,A creeping old man, full of sleep, with the spittle on his beard never dry.
How the men of the sand-sack showed me a church with its belfry in air;Sorry place, where for swing of the war-axe in my dim eyes the crozier gleams;What place have Caolte and Conan, and Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair?Speak, you too are old with your memories, an old man surrounded with dreams.
S. PATRIC
Where the flesh of the footsole clingeth on the burning stones is their place;Where the demons whip them with wires on the burning stones of wide hell,Watching the blessed ones move far off, and the smile on God's face,Between them a gateway of brass, and the howl of the angels who fell.
USHEEN
Put the staff in my hands; for I go to the Fenians, O cleric, to chauntThe war-songs that roused them of old; they will rise, making clouds with their breathInnumerable, singing, exultant; the clay underneath them shall pant,And demons be broken in pieces, and trampled beneath them in death.
And demons afraid in their darkness; deep horror of eyes and of wings,Afraid their ears on the earth laid, shall listen and rise up and weep;Hearing the shaking of shields and the quiver of stretched bowstrings,Hearing hell loud with a murmur, as shouting and mocking we sweep.
We will tear out the flaming stones, and batter the gateway of brassAnd enter, and none sayeth "No" when there enters the strongly armed guest;Make clean as a broom cleans, and march on as oxen move over young grass;Then feast, making converse of wars, and of old wounds, and turn to our rest.
S. PATRIC
On the flaming stones, without refuge, the limbs of the Fenians are tost;None war on the masters of Hell, who could break up the world in their rage;But kneel and wear out the flags and pray for your soul that is lostThrough the demon love of its youth and its godless and passionate age.
USHEEN
Ah, me! to be shaken with coughing and broken with old age and pain,Without laughter, a show unto children, alone with remembrance and fear;All emptied of purple hours as a beggar's cloak in the rain,As a hay-cock out on the flood, or a wolf sucked under a weir.
It were sad to gaze on the blessed and no man I loved of old there;I throw down the chain of small stones! when life in my body has ceased,I will go to Caolte, and Conan, and Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair,And dwell in the house of the Fenians, be they in flames or at feast.

GLOSSARY AND NOTES

The Pronunciation of the Irish Words.– When I wrote the greater number of these poems I had hardly considered the question seriously. I copied at times somebody's perhaps fanciful phonetic spelling, and at times the ancient spelling as I found it in some literal translation, pronouncing the words always as they were spelt. I do not suppose I would have defended this system at any time, but I do not yet know what system to adopt. The modern pronunciation, which is usually followed by those who spell the words phonetically, is certainly unlike the pronunciation of the time when classical Irish literature was written, and, so far as I know, no Irish scholar who writes in English or French has made that minute examination of the way the names come into the rhythms and measures of the old poems which can alone discover the old pronunciation. A French Celtic scholar gave me the pronunciation of a few names, and told me that Mr. Whitley Stokes had written something about the subject in German, but I am ignorant of German. If I ever learn the old pronunciation, I will revise all these poems, but at present I can only affirm that I have not treated my Irish names as badly as the mediæval writers of the stories of King Arthur treated their Welsh names.

Mythological Gods and Heroes.– I refer the reader for such names as Balor and Finn and Usheen to Lady Gregory's "Cuchulain of Muirthemne" and to her "Gods and Fighting Men."

The Ballad of Father Gilligan.– A tradition among the people of Castleisland, Kerry.

The Ballad of Father O'Hart.– This ballad is founded on the story of a certain Father O'Hart, priest of Coloony, Sligo, in the last century, as told by the present priest of Coloony in his History of Ballisodare and Kilvarnet. The robbery of the lands of Father O'Hart was a kind of robbery which occurred but rarely during the penal laws. Catholics, forbidden to own landed property, evaded the law by giving a Protestant nominal possession of their estates. There are instances on record in which poor men were nominal owners of immense estates.

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