Here Endeth the Lesson

Unsurprisingly, in my treatment of Haicéad’s last poem, on being forbidden to write Irish verse, I will be referring to Kinsella’s translation. You will have to forgive my blatant favoritism of this, the last of Haicéad’s work. But it seems to me, unlike his political work or his romantic work, this poem tells the truth of Haicéad. While his use of a battle metaphor is much like most of his other work, however, the end of the poem does not call for victory in those terms, so that if the prayer at the end of #49 to God asks for victory, it does so in moral not temporal terms; Haicead asks for judgement, admittedly a negative one, rather than the death of his enemies.

He begins by learning the news of a ‘decent’ man, which, as I have said, only contrasts with his description of clergy as ‘arrogant’ and ‘malignant,’ not to mention ‘bald.’ Clearly, that last offense is the last straw (also, likely a twice-fold pun, playing with the clerical tonsure and the meaning of bald as bluntly or even rudely honest). On account of this, while the poet would like to do battle, he cannot, for ‘the time is past’ ‘when the edge of [his] intellect was a thing to fear,’ so that the poet ‘will not spring at the flank of their argument,’ unlike so many times before (cf #48, #35, #13). Rather, the poet ‘stitch[s] my mouth up with a twisted string,’ where not only will he ‘say no word about their mean complaining,’ but to the point of stitching his mouth shut, not simply with thread but of heavier, graver sort, that of ‘twisted string.’

And what he beseeches ‘Oh my God’ is not simply death, but to ‘condemn,’ which is not the same thing entirely. Here is the poet’s request for judgement, not merely victory for this side or that. But he has already told of us the weight of this betrayal, that the clerics are a ‘herd of narrow censors,’ where ‘narrow’ is derogatory, particularly compared to the ‘subtle paths’ of Gaelic (consider the difference in ‘paths’ and ‘narrow,’ where the implication of one is way finding, and the other is the opposite) . The moral character of this insult is only eclipsed by his description of them as a ‘herd,’ that they are more akin to a group of animals than to rational men. For a man who would have and did do battle with nothing more than his tongue and his wits, this is probably the greatest retort he could muster, save of course, the last lines of the last poem, of the last prayer he wrote. Clearly, while the pen may be mightier than the sword, the last of Haicéad shows that he well knew—there are things, or rather more truly, beings mightier still indeed.

Every Translator is a Traitor

‘On hearing that it was ordered by the Irish clergy that a brother may not compose Gaelic poetry,’ translated by Michael Hartnett, #49

I heard of late from one easy-going, friendly,
a novel tale that came out of Ireland:
that now the clergy regard as threatening
the incisive Gaelic language—
the great joy of our urbane ancestors!
I, myself, won’t engage in their arguments,
since the time has gone since I could organize
each thought that came from contemplating;
when with a sharp and dangerous intellect
I could shake a fist of magic javelins
that would not lose their cunning energies
right at these overbearing clergymen
down on their bald destructive craniums!

I will sew up my lips with plaited cross-stitching
and not speak of their niggardly pettiness,
but I denounce this pack and their censoring
and their hate, O God, for my fellow-countrymen!

‘On hearing it has been Ordered in the Chapterhouses of Ireland that the Friars make no more Songs or Verses,’ translated by Thomas Kinsella

I heard from a decent man the other day
A piece of news from the ‘spouse of Coron and Corc’:
That the Church condemns our Gaelic’s subtle paths,
The polished pleasures of our noble fathers.

I will not spring at the flank of their argument
Now that the time is past when I could mutter
Each thought erupting from the scope of my mind,
When the edge of my intellect was a thing to fear

Showering with no loss of pliant force
Into the general flank of those arrogant priests
Or down on top of their bald malignant skulls
A hard sharp fistful of accomplished darts.

I will stitch my mouth up with a twisted string
And say no word about their mean complaining
Merely condemn the herd of narrow censors
And the hate they bear my people, O my God.

As I have said previously, in Past and Present, I prefer the subtlety of Kinsella’s version to Hartnett’s, for a number of reasons I will point out later. Firstly though, I wanted to consider the suitability of each translation. Compare the difference in the lines ‘the great joy of our urbane ancestors’ and ‘the polished pleasures of our noble fathers.” Attractive alliterations aside, Hartnett’s use of ‘urbane’ seems ill-suited as compared to Kinsella’s much more fitting ‘noble.’ Or again, what Hartnett translates as ‘a fist of magic javelins,’ Kinsella has as ‘a hard sharp fistful of accomplished darts,’ where the troubling ‘magic’’ is replaced with ‘accomplished.’ Versed in folklore Haicéad may have been, but I much doubt he would debase his skill as a poet or his faith as a priest by ‘magic.’

Kinsella’s extended use of the battle metaphor in stanzas 2-4 gives a more logical whole, as does his separation into quatrains, which I assume mimics Haicéad’s metrical form. I could also pick and choose the parts of Kinsella’s that I like better – his use of ‘decent man’ instead of ‘easy-going, friendly’ as Hartnett does. The two translations are not comparable, if only because the use of ‘decent’ more than implies the treacherous betrayal Haicéad feels.

Lastly though, and perhaps most important, Kinsella’s translation of the last four lines shows a deeper understanding that Hartnett, I believe, lacks. The difference between Hartnett and Kinsella is how the speaker’s ‘hate’ is directed. In Hartnett, the poet says ‘I denounce’ and his ‘O God’ may as well be a curse as an oath. In Kinsella, however, the poet beseeches ‘Oh my God’ to ‘merely condemn,’ that hatred. There can be no comparison between the two, for it is, as you see, a matter of subtlety, but such is the matter.

Confusing the Issue with Facts

Haicéad, as I had said, writes mainly of love. Even so, it make take a reader or two by surprise that a priest should be writing of romantic love for a woman, but we shan’t make the error of conflating narrator with poet. In any case, Hartnett claims that #4—dedicated to Mary Tobin—is a “lovely, if conventional, ‘court of love’ effusion to Mary Tobin and, shortly afterwards, on hearing of her death, write a real and tender poem,” referring to #5 (11-2). I cannot deny his claim that #5 is entirely on a different level than #4, reflecting as it does the gravity of Mary Tobin’s death and sincerity of Haicéad’s belief as a Catholic priest, but it seems to me that they are not so easily separable as Hartnett might like to think.

While #4 does seem little more than a “lovely, if conventional, ‘court of love’ effusion,” it does more than that. Haicead does praise her physical beauty at some length:

“A stroke from a sharpened quill is not more slim
Than her eyebrows black as the beetle’s wing
Above her eyes—two speheres of liquid grey–
The Archetypal rose is in the whiteness of her face;
Her fine and smooth and well-proportioned nose,
Her gentle lips that well-shaped teeth enclose—”

And there may be something almost ridiculous in colouring a woman’s eyebrow ‘black as the beetle’s wing,’ and while Haicéad goes so far as to call her “my virgin of the perfect breasts,” that is not the only level at which he praises her. She is also his “sweet distinguished friend” with “holy hand” and “true-voice” so that when he is with her, the poet’s “heart pours out a gentle peace” (Hartnett 17). There is in #4 not only praise of her physical attributes but her virtues as well, although it must be said that the former greatly exceeds the latter.

That ratio is reversed in #5, ‘After hearing of Mary’s death,’ so that when the poet says “death has not conquered her image in my mind,” he explains that “her beauty stays intact: not a jot is changed; / she is known to be warm, affectionate, / devout and honest, pure and wise, / pleasant, lovely, noble, young and kind” (Harnett 17). If the poet could exchange his life for hers, he would “be a bad exchange” not only on account of her virtue, since she is his “small, pure lamb” but also because the poet has “received the grace to forever suffer pain / in the stinging fire of hurt among the living dead” (Hartnett 17). While this is explicitly religious, the poet’s belief is most firmly stated in the last stanza, which on account of Hopkins I have already quoted, but the last two lines are more than worth quoting again, expressing as they do Haicéad’s faith in such a beautiful and hopeful way:

“My blackbird, take my blessing and embrace your Paradise—
For my virgin girl, this is not death—but life.”

The Facts of the Matter

Haicéad is characterized by his use of alliteration, adjective chains and his puns, and last but certainly not least, his sense of humour.

Firstly, to alliteration. Consider #22, which is dedicated to Roiberd Óg Carrún, and reads thusly:

“I call warm blessings on your head always 

And, beloved, on the sociable pure harp you play:

With a stream of polished playing skilled and sweet

You have banished the spiders out of all our ears!”

                                                              (Hartnett 37)

Secondly, to his accumulation of adjectives. Consider #3, which is a love poem which refers to “Deirdre of the unrevealing eyes” who has told her love “that we must separate, for she intends to wed.” Her love praises Deirdre, saying that it isn’t her fault that she is “slender noble svelte / sweet silvertongued whitetoothed” and “handsome graceful wise with twisting intricate hair, / a white-as-chalk and stately smoothflanked maid” (Hartnett 16). Much of his poetry reads in such a fashion, from describing woman to men and even an odd bishop or two, down to Ireland herself: “poor and fair and swiftspeared Ireland,” “O tender, brightflanked coastline” (Harnett 24).

Thirdly, his puns. Consider #12, which is dedicated to James Butler in Ireland, and says that the poet “send[s] to see you, to the Irish shore, / a darling woman who wears no clothes” (Hartnett 25). The earlier two lines of the poem are a blessing, and so too are the last, for the poet sends a benediction, which in Irish is beannacht (note—this is a female noun). But the pun lies in the fact that “a darling woman who wears no clothes” is bean nocht in Irish. Or we could take #19, which is entitled “Arneis” which is an Irish word meaning ‘cattle’ where the poet adds “a dimunitive,” that of ‘ín’ and he is referring to ‘Caitlín’ (Hartnett 34, 11).

And lastly, his sense of humour. There are many places one could quote, but one need simply quote #1 in full:

“Though I am just a wisp of straw and not a besom—

And not Cearúl—that noble, handsome creature—

I’d sooner have his place in your affections

Than control the whole of Cruachain’s taxes.

 

Take heed—although he’s absent long on trips—

Don’t ignore my love in such hardships;

for it’s commonly said, my girl, whose tight curls thickly fall,

It’s better to be mangy than have no hair at all.”

                                                           (Harnett 15)

Begin at the Beginning

Pádraigín Haicéad OP (aka Patrick Hackett) was a 17th century Irish Dominican Father who was renowned for causing trouble in Ireland generally but specifically during the Rebellion of 1641 and for writing Irish poetry (where those two things are more connected than you would guess).

Born in Tipperary in 1604 to a prominent old English family (which explains his surname – as Haicéad is an unusual Irish surname, because it actually isn’t one, but simply the translation of ‘Hackett’ into Irish), Haicéad was a second son and entered the order of Limerick in 1627, but would spend most of his life in exile in France. In 1638, he returned to Ireland and later brokered peace after the Rebellion of 1641. Between 1641 and 1651, he was made Prior of the Cashel Dominicans, as well as Chief Preacher, but by 1651 he was again obliged to flee to France, where he spent the remaining three years of his life fighting for Ireland, the Irish Dominicans and his poetry, dying in Louvain in November 1654 at the age of fifty.

An educated man (there is much reference to Irish folklore in his poetry, as well as Vergil and Homer), Haicéad wrote his poetry in Irish, with much use of alliteration and assonance, and his adjective chains are quite remarkable, as is his wordplay, for he puns extraordinarily well. Chiefly, his work deals with his relatives and friends, his hope and longing for Ireland, and his sufferings on account of those two things. But truly what Haicéad’s poetry is most fully about is love.

No clearer can this be seen than in the last poem that he writes, on account of being told the clergy are not to write poetry in Irish any longer. “I will stitch my mouth up with a twisted string,” he writes “and say no word about their mean complaining” but then ends with the sort of prayer which is timeless:

“Merely condemn the herd of narrow censors
And the hate they bear my people, O my God.”

Past and Present

In the New Oxford Book of Irish Verse, edited with translations by Thomas Kinsella (1986), he prints one poem from Haicéad, which is #49 in Hartnett, and arguably Haicéad’s most famous. Kinsella’s translation is slightly different from Hartnett’s, and I must say that I prefer Kinsella’s for the subtlety of it, but there will be a separate post on that (cf Every Translator is a Traitor).

But what I really wanted to talk about was Kinsella’s preface where he writes about the previous Oxford Book of Irish Verse that “it was clearly no part of the book’s purpose, as interpreted by its editors, to deal seriously with poetry in the Irish language – a poetry which had served its people, in whatever ways a poetry does, for a thousand years before the curse of Cromwell fell upon them, and it, and which for hundreds of years afterwards flourished in decline. With this interpretation, it appears to me that an opportunity, even an obligation, was missed.”

One wonders how seriously, and how far, we might take Kinsella’s interpretation of the previous Oxford edition, but nevertheless, it seems to me that his comment is not without place. That it is not only an ‘opportunity’ but an ‘obligation’ to consider Irish poetry in Irish, which made and still makes its mark on the Irish consciousness, with, I would say, something of an acute sense of loss. The train-ride home to Dublin from Newbridge, I remember little, save very clearly, a father asking his son, perhaps four or five years of age, ‘What is Portlaoise in Irish?’ and again, when the boy made no response, ‘What is it in Irish?’

Further, Kinsella writes in his introduction (p.xxv) that after the death of Irish bardic poetry “a new poetry had already appeared in Irish, different in character, accentual and open. For the ‘new’ poets the world was just as painful a place, but the pain was directly in the nature of things, not in a fall from a privileged past. In the 17th century, the new poets accompany the old: Céitinn, a priest and historian; Haicéad, a priest who studied on the Continent during the penal times; Ó Bruadair, one of the last to attempt the career of professional poet, and who died in misery.”

Kinsella’s introduction is well put and extremely telling: ‘The pain was directly in the nature of things,’ and in some ways, that hasn’t changed. They may have made peace with the auld Enemy, but they’ve yet to make their country whole; they can speak and learn Irish again, but English is here to stay. And I reminded, as I see American shops and products in O’Connell St, and every tongue of Europe—French, German, Italian, etc—floating down Grafton St, what does it truly mean to be Irish, in this day and age?

~

And finally, after his father’s promptings, the boy made the correct response, and was told ‘Well done.’ And in that, remembering the old as they gain the new, is the future of the Irish and their Ireland.