Amazing tho it may seem, there is in fact a poem on the subject of Irish/Welsh relations. Proving yet again, should any of ye ever have doubted it, that there is nothing under the sun about which the Irish have failed to write poetry.
I’r Hen Iaith A’i Chaneuon
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Modern Irish Poetry: An Anthology
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When I go down to Wales for the long bank holiday
to visit my wife’s grandfather who is teetotal,
who is a non-smoker, who does not approve
of anyone who is not teetotal and a non-smoker,
when I go down to Wales for the long. long bank holiday
with my second wife to visit her grandfather
who deserted Methodism for the Red Flag,
who won’t hear a word against Stalin,
who despite my oft-professed socialism
secretly believes I am still with the Pope’s legions,
receiving coded telegrams from the Vatican
specifying the dates, times and positions I should adopt
for political activity and sexual activity,
who in his ninetieth year took against boxing
which was the only thing I could ever talk to him about,
when I visit my second wife’s surviving grandfather,
and when he listens to the football results in Welsh
I will sometimes slip out to the pub.
I will sometimes slip out to the pub
and drink pint upon pint of that bilious whey
they serve there, where the muzak will invariably be
The Best of the Rhosllanerchrugog Male Voice Choir
and I will get trapped by some brain donor from up the valley
who will really talk about ‘the language so strong and so beautiful
that has grown out of the ageless mountains,
that speech of wondrous beauty that our fathers wrought’,
who will chant to me in Welsh his epileptic verses
about Gruffudd ap Llywellyn and Daffydd ap Llywellyn,
and who will give me two solid hours of slaver
because I don’t speak Irish and who will then bring up religion,
then I will tell him I know one Irish prayer about a Welsh king
on that very subject, and I will recite for him as follows:
‘Ná thrácht ar an mhinistéir Ghallda
Nár ar a chreideimh gan bheann gan bhrí,
Mar ní’l mar bhuan-chloch dá theampuill
Ach magairle Annraoi Rí.’ ‘Beautiful,’
he will say, as they all do, 'It sounds quite beautiful.’
Patrick Crotty writes, in an editorial introduction:
"An author’s note on ‘I’r Hen Iaith A’i Chaneuon’ reads:
‘The title is Welsh and means ‘To the Old Tongue & Its Songs.’
The Irish* translates roughly as:
Speak not to me of the foreign prelate/
Nor of his creed with neither truth nor faith/
For the foundation stone of its temple/
Is the bollocks of King Henry the Eighth."
[* the quoted poem is Antaine Ó Raifteirí's An Eaglais Ghallda]
