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BARD ETHELL, SELS., by             Poem Explanation         Poet's Biography
First Line: I am ethell, the son of conn


Ireland in the Thirteenth Century




I am Ethell, the son of Conn:
Here I bide at the foot of the hill:
I am clansman to Brian, and servant to none:
Whom I hated, I hate: whom I loved, I love still.
Blind am I. On milk I live,
And meat, God sends it, on each Saint's Day;
Though Donald Mac Art-may he never thrive-
Last Shrovetide drove half my kine away.


At the brown hill's base by the pale blue lake
I dwell and see the things I saw:
The heron flap heavily up from the brake;
The crow fly homeward with twig or straw
The wild duck a silver line in wake
Cutting the calm mere to far Bunaw.
And the things that I heard, though deaf, I hear,
From the tower in the island the feastful cheer;
The horn from the wood; the plunge of the stag,
With the loud hounds after him down from the crag.
Sweet is the chase, but the battle is sweeter,
More healthy, more joyous, for true men meeter!


My hand is weak! it once was strong:
My heart burns still with its ancient fire.
If any man smites me he does me wrong,
For I was the bard of Brian Mac Guire.
If any man slay me-not unaware,
By no chance blow, nor in wine and revel,
I have stored beforehand, a curse in my prayer
For his kith and kindred; his deed is evil.


There never was king, and never will be,
In battle or banquet like Malachi!
The seers his reign had predicted long;
He honoured the bards, and gave gold for song
If rebels arose, he put out their eyes;
If robbers plundered or burned the fanes,
He hung them in chaplets, like rosaries,
That others beholding might take more pains!
There was none to women more reverent-minded,
For he held his mother, and Mary, dear;
If any man wronged them, that man he blinded,
Or straight amerced him of hand or ear.
There was none who founded more convents-none;
In his palace the old and poor were fed;
The orphan might walk, or the widow's son,
Without groom or page to his throne or bed.
In his council he mused, with great brows divine,
And eyes like the eyes of the musing kine,
Upholding a sceptre o'er which men said,
Seven spirits of wisdom like fire-tongues played.
He drained ten lakes, and he built ten bridges;
He bought a gold book for a thousand cows;
He slew ten princes who brake their pledges;
With the bribed and the base he scorned to carouse.
He was sweet and awful; through all his reign
God gave great harvests to vale and plain;
From his nurse's milk he was kind and brave;
And when he went down to his well-wept grave,
Through the triumph of penance his soul arose
To God and the saints. Not so his foes.


The King that came after, ah woe, woe, woe!
He doubted his friend, and he trusted his foe,
He bought and he sold: his kingdom old
He pledged and pawned, to avenge a spite:
No Bard or prophet his birth foretold:
He was guarded and warded both day and night:
He counselled with fools and had boors at his feast:
He was cruel to Christian and kind to beast:
Men smiled when they talked of him far o'er the wave:
Well paid were the mourners that wept at his grave.
God plagued for his sake his people sore:
They sinned; for the people should watch and pray,
That their prayers like angels at window and door,
May keep from the King the bad thought away!


The sun has risen: on lip and brow,
He greets me-I feel it-with golden wand:
Ah, bright-faced Norna! I see thee now:
Where first I saw thee I see thee stand!
From the trellis the girl looked down on me:
Her maidens stood near; it was late in spring;
The grey priest laughed, as she cried in glee,
'Good Bard, a song in my honour sing.'
I sang her praise in a loud-voiced hymn,
To God who had fashioned her face and limb,
For the praise of the clan, and the land's behoof:
So she flung me a flower from the trellis roof.
Ere long I saw her the hill descending,
O'er the lake the May morning rose moist and slow,
She prayed me, her smile with the sweet voice blending,
To teach her all that a woman should know.
Panting she stood; she was out of breath;
The wave of her little breast was shaking;
From eyes still childish, and dark as death,
Came womanhood's dawn through a dew-cloud breaking.
Norna was never long time the same;
By a spirit so strong was her slight form moulded,
The curves swelled out from the flower-like frame
In joy; in grief to a bud she folded:
As she listened, her eyes grew bright and large,
Like springs rain-fed that dilate their marge.
So I taught her the hymn of Patrick the Apostle,
And the marvels of Bridget and Columbkille;
Ere long she sang like the lark or the throstle,
Sang the deeds of the servants of God's high will:
I told her of Brendan, who found afar
Another world 'neath the western star;
Of our three great bishops in Lindisfarne isle;
Of St. Fursey the wondrous, Fiacre without guile;
Of Sedulius, hymn-maker when hymns were rare;
Of Scotus the subtle, who clove a hair
Into sixty parts, and had marge to spare.
To her brother I spake of Oisin and Fionn,
And they wept at the death of great Oisin's son.
I taught the heart of the boy to revel
In tales of old greatness that never tire;
And the virgin's, up-springing from earth's low level,
To wed with heaven like the altar fire.
I taught her all that a woman should know,
And that none should teach her worse lore, I gave her
A dagger keen, and taught her the blow
That subdues the knave to discreet behaviour.
A sand-stone there on my knee she set,
And sharpened its point-I can see her yet
I held back her hair and she sharpen'd the edge,
While the wind piped low through the reeds and sedge.
She died in the convent on Ina's height:-


I saw her the day that she took the veil:
As slender she stood as the Paschal light,
As tall and slender and bright and pale!
I saw her: and dropped as dead: bereaven
Is earth when her holy ones leave her for heaven.
Her brother fell in the fight at Begh,
May they plead for me both on my dying day!
All praise to the man who brought us the Faith!
'Tis a staff by day and our pillow in death!


All praise I say to that blessed youth,
Who heard in a dream from Tyrawley's strand
That wail, 'Put forth o'er the sea thy hand:
In the dark we die: give us hope and Truth!'
But Patrick built not on Iorras' shore
That convent where now the Franciscans dwell:
Columba was mighty in prayer and war:
But the young monk preaches as loud as his bell,
That love must rule all, and all wrongs be forgiven,
Or else he is sure we shall reach not heaven!
This doctrine I count right cruel and hard,
And when I am laid in the old churchyard,
The habit of Francis I will not wear:
Nor wear I his cord or his cloth of hair
In secret. Men dwindle: till psalm and prayer
Had softened the land no Dane dwelt there!


I forgive old Cathbar who sank my boat:
Must I pardon Feargal who slew my son:
Or the pirate, Strongbow, who burned Granote,
They tell me, and in it nine priests, a nun,
And worse-St. Finian's old crozier staff?
At forgiveness like that, I spit and laugh!
My chief in his wine-cups forgave twelve men:
And of these a dozen rebelled again.
There never was chief more brave than he!
The night he was born Loch Gar up-burst:
He was bard-loving, gift-making, fond of glee,
The last to fly, to advance the first.
He was like the top spray upon Uladh's oak,
He was like the tap-root of Argial's pine:
He was secret and sudden: as lightning his stroke:
There was none that could fathom his hid design.
He slept not: if any man scorned his alliance
He struck the first blow for a frank defiance,
With that look in his face, half night, half light,
Like the lake just blackened yet ridged with white!
There were comely wonders before he died:
The eagle barked, and the Banshee cried,
The witch-elm wept with a blighted bud,
The spray of the torrent was red with blood:
The chief returned from the mountains bound,
Forgot to ask after Bran his hound.
We knew he would die: three days were o'er,
He died. We waked him for three days more:
One by one, upon brow and breast,
The whole clan kissed him: In peace may he rest!
I sang his dirge, I could sing that time
Four thousand staves of ancestral rhyme:
To-day I can scarcely sing the half:
Of old I was corn, and I now am chaff!
My song to-day is a breeze that shakes
Feebly the down on the cygnet's breast;
'Twas then a billow the beach that rakes,
Or a storm that buffets the mountain's crest.
Whatever I bit with a venomed song,
Grew sick, were it beast, or tree, or man:
The wronged one sued me to right his wrong
With the flail of the Satire and fierce Ode's fan.


I sang to the chieftains: each stock I traced,
Lest lines should grow tangled through fraud or haste.
To princes I sang in a loftier tone
Of Moran the just who refused a throne;
Of Moran, whose torque would close, and choke
The wry-necked witness that falsely spoke.
I taught them how to win love and hate,
Not love from all; and to shun debate.
To maids in the bower I sang of love:
And of war at the feastings in bawn or grove.


Great is our Order: but greater far
Were its pomp and power in the days of old,
When the five Chief Bards in peace or war
Had thirty bards each in his train enrolled:
When Ollave Fodla in Tara's hall
Fed bards and kings; when the boy King Nial
Was trained by Torna; when Britain and Gaul
Sent crowns of laurel to Dallan Forgial.
To-day we can launch the clans into fight;
That day we could freeze them in mid career!
Whatever man knows was our realm by right:
The lore without music no Gael would hear.
Old Cormac the brave blind king was bard
Ere fame rose yet of O'Daly and Ward.
The son of Milesius was bard-'Go back
My People,' he sang, 'ye have done a wrong!
Nine waves go back o'er the green sea track,
Let your foes their castles and coasts make strong.
To the island you came by stealth and at night:
She is ours if we win her, in all men's sight;'
For that first song's sake let our bards hold fast
To Truth and Justice from first to last!
'Tis over! some think we erred through pride,
Though Columba the vengeance turned aside.
Too strong we were not: too rich we were:
Give wealth to knaves: 'tis the true man's snare.


But now men lie: they are just no more;
They forsake the old ways; they quest for new;
They pry and they snuff after strange false lore,
As dogs hunt vermin: it never was true:-
I have scorned it for twenty years-this babble,
That eastward and southward, a Saxon rabble
Have won great battles and rule large lands,
And plight with daughters of ours their hands.
We know the bold Norman o'erset their throne
Long since. Our lands! let them guard their own.


How long He leaves me-the great God-here!
Have I sinned some sin, or has God forgotten?
This year, I think, is my hundredth year;
I am like a bad apple unripe and rotten!
They shall lift me ere long, they shall lay me-the clan,-


By the strength of men on Mount Cruachan!
God has much to think of! How much He hath seen,
And how much is gone by that once hath been!
On sandy hills where the rabbits burrow,
Are Raths of Kings' men, named not now;
On mountain-tops I have tracked the furrow,
And found in forests the buried plough.
For one now living the strong land then
Gave kindly food and raiment to ten.
No doubt they waxed proud and their God defied:
So their harvest He blighted and burned their hoard;
Or He sent them plagues, or He sent the sword,
Or He sent them lightning and so they died,
Like Dathi the King on the dark Alp's side.
Ah me! that man who is made of dust,
Should have pride towards God! 'Tis a demon's spleen!
I have often feared lest God the All-just,
Should bend from heaven and sweep earth clean:
Should sweep us all into corners and holes,
Like dust of the house-floor both bodies and souls!
I have often feared He would send some wind
In wrath; and the nation wake up stone blind.
In age or in youth we have all wrought ill:
I say not our great King Nial did well,
Although he was Lord of the Pledges Nine,
Where besides subduing this land of Eire,
He raised in Armorica banner and sign,
And wasted the British coast with fire.
Perhaps in His mercy the Lord will say,
'These men, God's help, 'twas a rough boy-play!'
He is certain, that young Franciscan Priest-
God sees great sin where men see least;
Yet this were to give unto God the eye-
Unmeet the thought, of the humming fly!
I trust there are small things He scorns to see
In the lowly who cry to Him piteously.
Our hope is Christ: I have wept full oft,
He came not to Eire in Oisin's time;
Though love and those new monks would make men soft,
If they were not hardened by war and rhyme.
I have done my part: my end draws nigh:
I shall leave old Eire with a smile and sigh,
She will miss me not as I missed my son,
Yet for her and her praise were my best deeds done.
Man's deeds! Man's deeds! they are shades that fleet,
Or ripples like those that break at my feet.
The deeds of my chief and the deeds of my king
Grow hazy, far seen, in the hills in spring.
Nothing is great save the death on the cross!
But Pilate and Herod I hate, and know
Had Fionn lived then he had laid them low,
Though the world thereby had sustained great loss.
My blindness and deafness and aching back
With meekness I bear for that suffering's sake;
And the Lent-fast for Mary's sake I love,
And the honour of Him, the Man Above!
My songs are all over now:-so best!
They are laid in the heavenly Singer's breast,
Who never sings but a star is born:
May we hear His song in the endless morn!
I give glory to God for our battles won
By wood or river, on bay or creek:
For Norna-who died; for my father, Conn:
For feasts, and the chase on the mountains bleak:
I bewail my sins, both unknown and known,
And of those I have injured forgiveness seek.
The men that were wicked to me and mine
(Not quenching a wrong, nor in war nor wine),
I forgive and absolve them all, save three:
May Christ in His mercy be kind to me!






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