In translating these poems I have chosen to do so in the speech of the thatched houses where I have heard and gathered them. An Craoibhin had already used this Gaelic construction, these Elizabethan phrases, in translating the Love Songs of Connacht, as I have used it even in my creative work. Synge had not yet used it when he found in my Cuchulain of Muirthemne “the dialect he had been trying to master,” and of which he afterwards made such splendid use. Most of the translations in this book have already been printed in Cuchulain of Muirthemne, Gods and Fighting Men, Saints and Wonders, and Poets and Dreamers. When in the first month of the new year I began to choose from among them, it seemed strange to me that the laments so far outnumbered any songs of joy. But before that month was out news was brought to me that made the keening of women for the brave and of those who are left lonely after the young seem to be but the natural outcome and expression of human life.

Augusta Gregory.
Coole, May, 1918.

Contents

• The Grief of a Girl’s Heart
• A Lament for Fair-Haired Donough that Was Hanged in Galway
• Raftery’s Praise of Mary Hynes
• His Lament for O’Daly
• His Praise of the Little Hill and the Plains of Mayo
• His Lament for O’Kelly
• His Vision of Death
• His Repentance
• His Answer when Some Stranger Aske Who He Was
• A Blessing on Patrick Sarsfield
• An Aran Maid’s Wedding
• A Poem Written in Time of Trouble by an Irish Priest Who Had Taken Orders in France
• The Heart of the Wood
• An Croaibhin Complain Because He Is a Poet
• He Cries Out Against Love
• He Meditates on the Life of a Rich Man
• Forgaill’s Praise of Columcille
• The Deer’s Cry
• The Hymn of Molling’s Guest, the Man Full of Trouble
• The Hag of Beare
• The Seven Heavens
• The Journey of the Sun
• The Nature of the Stars
• The Call to Bran
• The Army of the Sidhe
• Credhe’s Complaint at the Battle of the White Strand
• A Sleepy Song that Grania Used to Be Singing Over Diarmuid the Time They Were Wandering and Hiding From Finn
• Her Song to Rouse Him from Sleep
• Her Lament for His Death
• The Parting of Goll and His Wife
• The Death of Osgar
• Oisin’s Vision
• His Praise of Finn
• Oisin after the Fenians
• The Foretelling of Cathbad the Druid at Deidre’s Birth
• Deirdre’s Lament for the Sons of Usnach
• Emer’s Lament for Cuchulain

THE KILTARTAN POETRY BOOK