A Little Bit Of Culture...

A little bit of Culture... Poetry from soc.culture.irish

Dánta na hÉireann (poems composed in Irish)

Posted by K E Dennis
on: 26 March 1998

As Tony Dermody was good enough to respond to my provocations concerning translation by crafting a fine new English version of "Cúl an Tí," I thought he deserved better than mere words of thanks.

& what could be more appropriate than another poem in Irish, she asks?

This is a great favourite of mine, & the first I ever heard recited in Irish -years ago, by someone living here, one more soul drifting in the Irish diaspora. Altho she had to translate it for us, it wasn't really necessary to understand the words in order to feel their meaning.

Even all this time after, I cannot read this w/o remembering the great longing in her voice. & it has been in my thoughts once more, of late....

Having lost track of it, I was greatly pleased when the poem turned up some years later in An Duanaire: Poems of the Dispossessed [pub. 1981, Bord na Gaelige], translated/ edited by Seán Ó Tuama & Thomas Kinsella.

It's another classified as "traditional" - dating from sometime after 1600 - & the author is Anonymous (her again!).

Is trua gan mise i Sasana Gan ainm	An Duanaire 1600 - 1900 (Poems of the Dispossessed) edited by Sean Ó Tuama Dublin: The Dolmen Press / Bord na Gaeilge, 1981
	*I would I were in England - translation by Thomas Kinsella*

Is trua gan mise i Sasana
agus duine amháin as Éirinn liom,
nó amuigh i lár na farraige
in áit a gcailltear na milte long,

An ghaoth agus an fhearthainn
bheith 'mo sheoladh ó thoinn go tionn -
is, a Rí, go seola tú mise
ins an áit a bhfuil mo ghrá 'na luí.

I would I were in England
and one from Ireland with me
or out in the middle ocean
where a thousand ships are lost

with the tempest and the rain
driven from wave to wave -
o, drive me, King of Heaven,
to where my love lies down...

--- The End ---