A Thread For Talking About Irish Things

[Laudate_Dominum]

This is a great Irish song:

The Wind That Shakes The Barley

I sat within a valley green

I sat me with my true love

My sad heart strove the two between

The old love and the new love

The old for her, the new

That made me think on Ireland dearly

When soft the wind blew down the glen

And it shook the golden barley

'Twas hard the woeful words to frame

'Twas worse the tie that bound us

But harder still to bear the shame

Of foreign chains around us

And so I said, "The mountain glen

I'll seek it morning early

And join the bold United Men

While soft wind shakes the barley"

While sad I kissed away her tears

My fond arms around her flinging

The foeman's shot burst on our ears

From out the wild wood ringing

The bullet pierced my true love's side

In life's young spring so early

And on my breast in blood she died

While soft wind shakes the barley

Then blood for blood without remorse

I've taken to Oulard Hollow

I laid my true love's clay cold corpse

Where I full soon will follow

And 'round her grave I wander here

Now night and morning early

With a breaking heart whene'er I hear

The wind that shakes the barley

[Laudate_Dominum]

Another favorite!

Tá Mo Chleamhnas A Dhéanamh

Tá mo chleamhnas á dhéanamh inniu agus inné

'S ní mó ná go dtaitníonn an bhean udaí liom féin

Ach fuígfidh mé mo dhiaidh í, is rachaidh mé leat féin

Síos fána coille craobhaigh

A match was a-making here last night

And it isn't with the girl that I love the best

I'll leave her behind and I'll go along with you

Down by the banks of the ocean

'Mo codladh go h-eadarshuth b'aite liom féin

Leabaí luachair a bheith faoi mo thaobh

Buideal brandaí a bheith faoi cheann

'S mo chailín deas óg 'bheith ar lámh' liom

Sleeping to milking time is my delight

A bed of green rushes underneath my side

A bottle of brandy underneath my head

And a charming young maid in my arms

Shiúil mise thoir agus shiúil mise thiar

Shiúil mise Corcaigh 'gus sraideanna Bhaile' Cliath

Macasamhail mo chailín ní fhaca mise riamh

'Sí 'n bhean í a d'fhág mo chroí cráite

Oh I walked east and I walked west

I walked Cork and Dublin's streets

An equal to my love I didn't meet

She's the wee lass that's left my heart broken

[Thomas]

Cool!

I recently did some research about my heritage, turns out that I'm half Irish!

Anyway, my computer time is up so I best be going.

Peace,

-Thomas

[the_rev]

I'm irish!!

What a great way to end the night.

This is my 1800th post!

Rock on Irish lads!

St. Patrick Pray for us!!!!!!!!

[Laudate_Dominum]

Cool!

I recently did some research about my heritage, turns out that I'm half Irish!

Anyway, my computer time is up so I best be going.

Peace,

-Thomas

Cool! Congratulations Thomas! Maybe we are from the same clan. ;)

[Laudate_Dominum]

I'm irish!!

What a great way to end the night.

This is my 1800th post!

Rock on Irish lads!

St. Patrick Pray for us!!!!!!!!

Perfect! And St. Patrick is now the official patron Saint of this thread!

[Laudate_Dominum]

And the patroness is St. Brigid, whom I love.

[cmotherofpirl]

scribbled in the margin of St pauls Epistles, by a 8th century Irish monk....

Pangur Bán

I and Pangur Bán, my cat

'Tis a like task we are at;

Hunting mice is his delight

Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men

'Tis to sit with book and pen;

Pangur bears me no ill will,

He too plies his simple skill.

'Tis a merry thing to see

At our tasks how glad are we,

When at home we sit and find

Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray

In the hero Pangur's way:

Oftentimes my keen thought set

Takes a meaning in its net.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye

Full and fierce and sharp and sly;

'Gainst the wall of knowledge I

All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den,

O how glad is Pangur then!

O what gladness do I prove

When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our tasks we ply,

Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;

In our arts we find our bliss,

I have mine and he has his.

Practice every day has made

Pangur perfect in his trade;

I get wisdom day and night

Turning darkness into light.

Edited February 23, 2004 by cmotherofpirl

[Laudate_Dominum]

Cool Cmom! Keep 'em coming.

Does anyone here play the Irish tinwhistle? I just got a new tinwhistle yesterday and it's cool, it's a $5 cheapo but it's the official Guinness tinwhistle and I ordered it from Ireland so I'm pretty happy about it. I've been jamming!

Here is some Seamus Heaney:

We have no prairies

To slice a big sun at evening--

Everywhere the eye concedes to

Encrouching horizon,

Is wooed into the cyclops' eye

Of a tarn. Our unfenced country

Is bog that keeps crusting

Between the sights of the sun.

They've taken the skeleton

Of the Great Irish Elk

Out of the peat, set it up

An astounding crate full of air.

Butter sunk under

More than a hundred years

Was recovered salty and white.

The ground itself is kind, black butter

Melting and opening underfoot,

Missing its last definition

By millions of years.

They'll never dig coal here,

Only the waterlogged trunks

Of great firs, soft as pulp.

Our pioneers keep striking

Inwards and downwards,

Every layer they strip

Seems camped on before.

The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.

The wet centre is bottomless.

[Laudate_Dominum]

Some more Seamus:

I

Some day I will go to Aarhus

To see his peat-brown head,

The mild pods of his eye-lids,

His pointed skin cap.

 

 

In the flat country near by

Where they dug him out,

His last gruel of winter seeds

Caked in his stomach,

 

 

Naked except for

The cap, noose and girdle,

I will stand a long time.

Bridegroom to the goddess,

 

 

She tightened her torc on him

And opened her fen,

Those dark juices working

Him to a saint's kept body,

 

 

Trove of the turfcutters'

Honeycombed workings.

Now his stained face

Reposes at Aarhus.

 

 

II

 

 

I could risk blasphemy,

Consecrate the cauldron bog

Our holy ground and pray

Him to make germinate

 

 

The scattered, ambushed

Flesh of labourers,

Stockinged corpses

Laid out in the farmyards,

 

 

Tell-tale skin and teeth

Flecking the sleepers

Of four young brothers, trailed

For miles along the lines.

III

 

 

Something of his sad freedom

As he rode the tumbril

Should come to me, driving,

Saying the names

Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,

Watching the pointing hands

Of country people,

Not knowing their tongue.

Out here in Jutland

In the old man-killing parishes

I will feel lost,

Unhappy and at home.

[Laudate_Dominum]

I met Desmond Egan a couple years ago and got to hear him read. He was very cool! Anyway, here is a simple poem of his:

FOR A DEAD CHILD (To the memory of Eimear Cullen)

I

your memorial card on my desk

whispers to us sad adults its own

child's secret

the field where you kneel

in a flowery dress is crowded with

watching poppies

and it seems in a way little girl that

you and they are the world's unnoticed beauty

and all that you are

plays in the crimson bloom for which you reach

in the space about the few

human years

your head disturbs

the dark mysterious woods

I can see your parents in your face

X

and since the spirit alone is real

we shall all meet again in

some other Monasterevin

summer will be rising along the Barrow

with trees and high fields

poppies a lark's song climbing

and you in your favourite dress

slides and butterfly ribbons in your

long shiny hair

and your smile will explain to us

the meaning of the whole universe

Edited February 23, 2004 by Laudate_Dominum

[Laudate_Dominum]

This one is my favorite:

PEACE (For Seán MacBride)

just to go for a walk out the road

just that

under the deep trees

which whisper of peace

to break the bread of words

with someone passing

just that

four of us round a pram

and baby fingers asleep

just to join the harmony

the fields the blue everyday hills

the puddles of daylight and

you might hear a pheasant

echo through the woods

or plover may waver by

as the evening poises with a blackbird

on its table of hedge

just that

and here and there a gate

a bungalow's bright window

the smell of woodsmoke of lives

just that!

but Sweet Christ that

is more than most of mankind can afford

with the globe still plaited in its own

crown of thorns

too many starving eyes

too many ancient children

squatting among flies

too many stockpiles of fear

too many dog jails too many generals

too many under torture by the impotent

screaming into the air we breathe

too many dreams stuck in money jams

too many mountains of butter selfishness

too many poor drowning in the streets

too many shantytowns on the outskirts of life

too many of us not sure what we want

so that we try to feed a habit for everything

until the ego puppets the militaries

mirror our own warring face

too little peace

[Laudate_Dominum]

Stanza 1 and 5 from famine.

FAMINE

I

the stink of famine

hangs in the bushes still

in the sad celtic hedges

you can catch it

down the lines of our landscape

get its taste on every meal

listen

there is famine in our music

famine behind our faces

it is only a field away

has made us all immigrants

guilty for having survived

has separated us from language

cut us from our culture

built blocks around belief

left us on our own

ashamed to be seen

walking out beauty so

honoured by our ancestors

but fostered now to peasants

the drivers of motorway diggers

unearthing bones by accident

under the disappearing hills

V

took away our great forests

took our cattle away

took away our farming

our wool our linen our glass

grabbed the very plots

from under our hungry eyes

starved our language

tried our religion too

tumbled a nation’s destiny,

drove us

into the ditches of Europe

and onto the sad tides

one thousand years of murder

one thousand years of plunder

one thousand years of rape

the curse of Raleigh on you

the curse of Cromwell too

one thousand years in cells

one thousand years climbing

the gallows the gibbet the wooden triangle

and the disciplined army lash

beginning at 500 strokes

one thousand years

one thousand years

of war and famine and plague

one thousand years on the run

one thousand years of dying

instead of being alive

took away our childhood

took our parents away

sisters brothers families

took away our heroes

too bitter too bitter a list

knotted our future into a past

to whip us with

gave us Pax Britannica

slavery beneath the slavery

of the slaving capital of the world

gave us plenty to die for

gave us their neuroses

the nervous tics of empire

their need to be admired

and threw in as a bonus

their honest astonishment at

our refusal to be improved

[immaculata]

:wub: Notre Dame Fighting Irish :wub:

[Thy Geekdom Come]

I'm half Irish! One-quarter Orangeman (Irish Anglican descent) and one-quarter Greenman (Irish Catholic descent). Go Micks!!!

My father changed his name to Mick to reflect his Irish descent, and I think I will later.

Fr. Mick would be a cool name.

My mother used to sing me to sleep with Tura Lura Lu:

Over in Killarney

Many years ago,

Me Mither sang a song to me

In tones so sweet and low. Just a simple little ditty,

In her good ould Irish way,

And l'd give the world if she could sing

That song to me this day.

Chorus:

"Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, Too-ra-loo-ra-li,

Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, hush now, don't you cry!

Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, Too-ra-loo-ra-li,

Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, that's an Irish lullaby.".

Oft in dreams I wander

To that cot again,

I feel her arms a-huggin' me

As when she held me then.

And I hear her voice a -hummin'

To me as in days of yore,

When she used to rock me fast asleep

Outside the cabin door.

Chorus:

"Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, Too-ra-loo-ra-li,

Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, hush now, don't you cry!

Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, Too-ra-loo-ra-li,

Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, that's an Irish lullaby."

To hear the tune:

http://www.fiftiesweb.com/stpats/toora.htm

Here's my coat of arms:

My paternal descendants were from County Cork on the far south of Eire, the Clan O'Murchadha, now called "Murphy". My maternal descendents were from County Armaugh in Northern Ireland, the Clan "Parks".