Padraic Colum

POLONIUS AND THE BALLAD SINGERS

A gaunt-built woman and her son-in-law—

A broad-faced fellow, with such flesh as shows

Nothing but easy nature—and his wife,

The woman’s daughter, who spills all her talk

Out of a wide mouth, but who has eyes as gray

As Connemara, where the mountain-ash

Shows berries red indeed: they enter now—

Our country singers!

“Sing, my good woman, sing us some romance

That has been round your chimney-nooks so long

’Tis nearly native; something blown here

And since made racy—like yon tree, I might say,

Native by influence if not by species,

Shaped by our winds. You understand, I think?”

“I’ll sing the song, sir.”

To-night you see my face—

Maybe nevermore you’ll gaze

On the one that for you left his friends and kin;

46For by the hard commands

Of the lord that rules these lands

On a ship I’ll be borne from Cruckaunfinn!

Oh, you know your beauty bright

Has made him think delight

More than from any fair one he will gain;

Oh, you know that all his will

Strains and strives around you till

As the hawk upon his hand you are as tame!

Then she to him replied:

I’ll no longer you deny,

And I’ll let you have the pleasure of my charms;

For to-night I’ll be your bride,

And whatever may betide

It’s we will lie in one another’s arms!

“You should not sing

With body doubled up and face aside—

There is a climax here—‘It’s we will lie’—

Hem—passionate! And what does your daughter sing?”

“A song I like when I do climb bare hills—

’Tis all about a hawk.”

No bird that sits on rock or bough

Has such a front as thine;

No king that has made war his trade

Such conquest in his eyne!

I mark thee rock-like on the rock

Where none can see a shape.

I climb, but thou dost climb with wings,

And like a wish escape,

She said—

And like a wish escape!

47No maid that kissed his bonny mouth

Of another mouth was glad;

Such pride was in our chieftain’s eyes,

Such countenance he had!

But since they made him fly the rocks,

Thou, creature, art my quest.

Then lift me with thy steady eyes.

If then to tear my breast,

She said—

If then to tear my breast!

“The songs they have

Are the last relics of the feudal world:

Women will keep them—byzants, doubloons,

When men will take up songs that are as new

As dollar bills. What song have you, young man?”

“A song my father had, sir. It was sent him

From across the sea, and there was a letter with it,

Asking my father to put it to a tune

And sing it all roads. He did that, in troth,

And five pounds of tobacco were sent with the song

To fore-reward him. I’ll sing it for you now—

The Baltimore Exile.”

The house I was bred in—ah, does it remain?

Low walls and loose thatch standing lone in the rain,

With the clay of the walls coming through with its stain,

Like the blackbird’s left nest in the briar!

Does a child there give heed to the song of the lark,

As it lifts and it drops till the fall of the dark,

When the heavy-foot kine trudge home from the paurk,

Or do none but the red-shank now listen?

48The sloe-bush, I know, grows close to the well,

And its long-lasting blossoms are there, I can tell,

When the kid that was yeaned when the first ones befell

Can jump to the ditch that they grow on!

But there’s silence on all. Then do none ever pass

On the way to the fair or the pattern or mass?

Do the gray-coated lads drive the ball through the grass

And speed to the sweep of the hurl?

O youths of my land! Then will no Bolivar

Ever muster your ranks for delivering war?

Will your hopes become fixed and beam like a star?

Will they pass like the mists from your fields?

The swan and the swallows, the cuckoo and crake,

May visit my land and find hillside and lake.

And I send my song. I’ll not see her awake—

I’m too old a bird to uncage now!

“Silver’s but lead in exchange for songs,

But take it and spend it.”

“We will. And may we meet your honor’s like

Every day’s end.”

“A tune is more lasting than the voice of the birds.”

“A song is more lasting than the riches of the world.”

Note. The last stanza in the first ballad sung is a fragment of an old country song; the rest of it, with the other two ballads, is invented. But they are all in the convention of songs still sung by strolling ballad-singers. I have written the common word for pasture-field “paurk” so as not to give a wrong association: it might be written “park,” as Burns, using the word in the same sense, writes it. “Paurk” or “park” is Gaelic for pasture field, and is always used in Irish country speech in that sense. The two last lines spoken are translations of a Gaelic phrase which has been used by Dr. Douglas Hyde as a motto for his collection of Connacht love songs. P. C.

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THE SEA BIRD TO THE WAVE

On and on,

O white brother!

Thunder does not daunt thee!

How thou movest!

By thine impulse—

With no wing!

Fairest thing

The wide sea shows me!

On and on

O white brother!

Art thou gone!

OLD MEN COMPLAINING

First Old Man

He threw his crutched stick down: there came

Into his face the anger flame,

And he spoke viciously of one

Who thwarted him—his son’s son.

He turned his head away.—“I hate

Absurdity of language, prate

From growing fellows. We’d not stay

About the house the whole of a day

When we were young,

Keeping no job and giving tongue!

“Not us in troth! We would not come

For bit or sup, but stay from home

If we gave answers, or we’d creep

Back to the house, and in we’d peep

Just like a corncrake.

“My grandson and his comrades take

A piece of coal from you, from me

A log, or sod of turf, maybe;

50And in some empty place they’ll light

A fire, and stay there all night,

A wisp of lads! Now understand

The blades of grass under my hand

Would be destroyed by company!

There’s no good company: we go

With what is lowest to the low!

He stays up late, and how can he

Rise early? Sure he lags in bed,

And she is worn to a thread

With calling him—his grandmother.

She’s an old woman, and she must make

Stir when the birds are half awake

In dread he’d lose this job like the other!”

Second Old Man

“They brought yon fellow over here,

And set him up for an overseer:

Though men from work are turned away

That thick-necked fellow draws full pay—

Three pounds a week.... They let burn down

The timber yard behind the town

Where work was good; though firemen stand

In boots and brasses big and grand

The crow of a cock away from the place.

And with the yard they let burn too

The clock in the tower, the clock I knew

As well as I know the look in my face.”

Third Old Man

“The fellow you spoke of has broken his bounds—

He came to skulk inside of these grounds:

Behind the bushes he lay down

And stretched full hours in the sun.

He rises now, and like a crane

He looks abroad. He’s off again:

51Three pounds a week, and still he owes

Money in every street he goes,

Hundreds of pounds where we’d not get

The second shilling of a debt.”

First Old Man

“Old age has every impediment

Vexation and discontent;

The rich have more than we: for bit

The cut of bread, and over it

The scrape of hog’s lard, and for sup

Warm water in a cup.

But different sorts of feeding breaks

The body more than fasting does

With pains and aches.

“I’m not too badly off, for I

Have pipe and tobacco, a place to lie,

A nook to myself; but from my hand

Is taken the strength to back command—

I’m broken, and there’s gone from me

The privilege of authority.”

I heard them speak—

The old men heavy on the sod,

Letting their angers come

Between them and the thought of God.

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