Books from the Attic, page 13
There’s music in my heart all day,
I hear it late and early,
It comes from fields are far away,
The wind that shakes the barley.
Above the uplands drenched with dew
The sky hangs soft and pearly,
An emerald world is listening to
The wind that shakes the barley.
Above the bluest mountain crest
The lark is singing rarely,
It rocks the singer into rest
The wind that shakes the barley.
Oh, still through summers and through springs
It calls me late and early.
Come home, come home, come home, it sings,
The wind that shakes the barley.
Katharine Tynan
This poem meant a lot to me because in the autumn before the harvest was brought in, our long Brake field was a glow of gold. The Brake was the bread-basket of the farm. Walking along the headland and looking up along the field, I was immersed in a sea of waving wonder. The wheat, the oats and the barley each had a different texture. The oats were a peroxide blonde and the wheat had the golden glow of the real deal, but the barley outshone them both because when the wind wafted through the field it gently lifted the barley’s gleaming tresses that sighed in delight at the touch. A field of barley can talk to you and make you aware that we live in a wonderful world. When I first learned this poem I was immediately inside in that field of waving barley and my vivid, lived experience merged forever with the words of the poem.
I remember learning this next poem when I was very young. From an early age we were told to be careful not to get lost in these great big fields of corn, but this never happened because we travelled in convoy, the older ones looking after the younger ones. We often we sat on the ditch of the Brake field from where we could look across the valley at the Kerry mountains – this extended our sense of being involved in a bigger picture and an awareness that though very small we were still part of a wonderful world.
The Wonderful World
Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful world,
With the wonderful water round you curled,
And the wonderful grass upon your breast –
World, you are so beautifully dressed.
The wonderful air is over me,
And the wonderful wind is shaking the tree;
It walks on the water, and whirls the mills,
And talks to itself on the tops of the hills.
You friendly earth! how far do you go,
With the wheat fields that nod and the rivers that flow,
With cities, and gardens, and cliffs, and isles,
And people upon you for thousands of miles?
Ah! you are so great, and I am so small,
I tremble to think of you, world, at all,
And yet, when I said my prayers to-day,
A whisper inside me seemed to say!
‘You are more than the earth, though you are such a dot:
You can love and think, and the earth can not.’
W.B. Rands
Chapter 19
A Terrible Beauty
One of my regrets in life is that I never mastered, or even got a modest handle on, the Irish language. I left school with no seeds of love for it growing within me, but that is really no excuse because I was given another opportunity of which I did not avail. My husband, Gabriel, had a great love and mastery of our language and would have been delighted to share it with me, but by the time he got to me I was beyond redemption. Sometimes when his efforts failed he would smile ruefully and tell me, ‘I married a Sasanach!’ (a Brit!). So my ignorant state continues and his wonderful old books in Irish are ‘pearls cast before swine’; fortunately, one of our sons is following in Gabriel’s footsteps and appreciates his books. So all is not lost!
But as a reluctant teenager the Irish words of the poem ‘Mise Éire’, by Pádraic Pearse, were emblazoned into my memory, never to be forgotten. The occasion was a St Patrick’s night concert in our local hall when three of us teenagers, suitably attired in green and draped with national emblems, were lassoed into opening the performance with what was to be a stirring delivery of the poem. To say that I was terrified is putting it mildly. That terror had many strands, but the overriding one was that of forgetting my lines. So, for weeks in advance of the performance I repeated them all day, every day, last thing at night and first thing in the morning. I had no idea what the words meant, but knew that I was to deliver them in a ringing tone of the utmost conviction. My teacher told me that I was to imagine that I was the author of the poem. Now I blush with shame and humbly apologise to Pearse. But on reading about him recently I have discovered that his educational system was very child-orientated, so hopefully the teacher in him smiled in forgiveness at my ignorance and lack of appreciation. And for you who may, like me, not be blessed with a great knowledge of our native tongue, a translation follows.
Mise Éire
Mise Éire
Sinne mé ná an Chailleach Bhéarra.
Mór mo glóir
Mé a rug Cú Chulain chróga.
Mór mo náir:
Mo chlann féin a dhíol a máthair.
Mise Éire:
Uaigní mé ná an Chailleach Bhéarra.
Pádraic H. Pearse
This poem was extremely important in my school days and every child was expected to learn it. It was one of the few poems that I learned first in Irish and then later in English. Here’s the English version.
I am Ireland:
I am older than the Old Woman of Beare.
Great my glory:
I that bore Cuchulainn the valiant.
Great my shame:
My own children sold their mother.
I am Ireland:
I am lonelier than the Old Woman of Beare.
Pádraic Pearse must be the most iconic figure in all Irish history as he was the leader of the 1916 Rising and its spokesman, with his wonderful abilities as a orator. To many he was a visionary revolutionary and a literary genius who changed the face of Ireland. To us, who grew up and went to school within living memory of the Rising of 1916, his dreams and writings coloured our landscape. When I read his story ‘Eoinín na nÉan’ (Eoineen of the Birds) at school I fell in love with his poetic idealism. His writing was so descriptive and detailed that I could picture Eoinín sadly saying goodbye to the swallows knowing that, due to his ill health, he would not be there to welcome them back the following spring. Running through Pearse’s writing was an undercurrent of great sadness as if in anticipation of what was up ahead of him.
But for some, who like Gandhi believed in a national independence through a peaceful process, he was a bundle of contradictions. My father referred to him as the ‘daft schoolmaster’ who had caused havoc and led many to their deaths, whereas to my republican grandmother he was among the blessed. Uncle Jacky, who had been part of the 1916 upheaval and the subsequent civil war, seldom spoke of those days, almost as if they were too painful to remember. Jacky lived next door to us in Innishannon and we shared the same garden. There is an old expression: ‘If you want to know me, come and live with me.’ We practically lived together and he was a saintly, gentle man whom I loved dearly, and was as far removed from violence as you could possibly imagine. When he died I was surprised to find amongst his books a collection of the complete works of Pádraic Pearse, published in 1917 by The Phoenix Publishing Company. Those books, like all the other old books, were stored up in the attic. Our historical inheritance is complex and complicated.
In one of the old schoolbooks it was intriguing to find the following lesson obviously written by a student of Pearse in Scoil (Sgoil) Eanna, which was founded and run by Pearse in Rathfarnham, Dublin. From this piece we can see that he had a profound influence on his students.
Memories of a School
I remember the closing of Sgoil Eanna before Easter, 1916. I remember the Headmaster speaking quietly to the boys as they said good-bye. He knew it was the last time he would see most of them, but said no word out of the ordinary. He went on undisturbed with his work while the rumbling of the coming storm was audible to him alone.
Ah! such memories of Sgoil Eanna from its beginning! Its traditions are rooted in the first years, which have a glamour and a joyousness known only to the happy ones who shared them. From the first there was a question of something greater than a mere school, than the eternal rages of masters, mechanical programmes, and the pranks of boys. The miracle was achieved of making boys so love school that they hated to leave it. Every boy who came to Sgoil Eanna grew fond of it.
To take Ireland for granted – that was Pearse’s own phrase to explain the spirit which filled staff and pupils. In athletics, in winning scholarships, in the everyday life of each boy, in the use of Irish as the official language, this spirit spoke in plain and appealing deeds.
Some enthusiasts will do anything in reason for the language but learn and speak it. Sgoil Eanna early removed that reproach by conducting the proceedings of the school committees in Irish. These committees had much to do with the running of the school, and were elected with great excitement annually by the boys themselves. One heard the different accents of the five provinces rising and blending in a splendid conflict upon anything from politics to minor details of hurling teams. Comparative newcomers soon followed the fray with a lively, intelligent interest.
No boy heard that English literature was a thing to be avoided; he did hear that Irish literature was one to be cherished and cultivated. No boy was forced to stop speaking English; he did hear Irish around him in all important school business, till he thought no more of asking why he should speak Irish than of inquiring why he should not speak Chinese.
What use, indeed, to write more in Sgoil Eanna’s praise just now, or in praise of the things its Headmaster accomplished? Only those who have had the rare privilege of working with him there could understand aright. Some of us were with him in his last fight; we had seen the beginnings, strivings, adventures, and rejoicings of his greatest experiment.
‘Pearse is the soul of this,’ said one person while the Republican flag flew over Dublin buildings and the noblest thoroughfare in Europe mounted into ruins and ashes. While the street outside roared skywards in leaping and fantastic flames which made every cobble stone distinct, murmuring hideously and lapping the very clouds, inside a doomed building stood Pearse unmoved.
A cordon of soldiery were closing slowly in and around. The deafening riot of noise which rifles, machine guns, and artillery can produce rang in his ears. Upon him, of all men in Dublin, rested the weight of the huge adventure.
Staring unflinchingly at defeat, he walked the last from the darkened, resonant house of flame, down the bullet-swept streets, past the bodies that dotted them, past sombre alleys lighted by the flashes of machine guns, to the house where Connolly lay wounded. There he stayed until he walked thence to surrender and die, the old expression of pride and defiance in his eyes. It was the last glimpse men had of the Headmaster of Sgoil Eanna.
‘The ideal of a dreamer, this college!’ says some one. Oh! never believe it! In this system inspired by a lofty ideal room was found for such practical subjects as carpentry and gardening for boys, needlework and cooking for girls in the sister school Sgoil Ide, and ambulance and first aid for both boys and girls. And the boys and girls who were asked to be ready to emulate Emmet’s or Anne Devlin’s heroism were sent into the university and carried off first prizes in classics, or competed at the Feis Ceoil and were awarded gold medals.
Pearse had told us that the highest thing a man may do is serve. We, his students, have no greater praise for him than this: he showed us Ireland.
Desmond Ryan, The Story of Success
On reading through Uncle Jacky’s copy of the works of Pearse, I came on ‘The Rebel’, a poem in which Pearse outlines his vision of things to come. This poem that I had never read before takes us into the revolutionary mind of Pearse. Reading it in view of all that happened afterwards is now a sobering experience.
The Rebel
I am come of the seed of the people, the people that sorrow,
That have no treasure but hope,
No riches laid up but a memory
Of an Ancient glory.
My mother bore me in bondage, in bondage my mother was born,
I am of the blood of serfs;
The children with whom I have played, the men and women with whom I have eaten,
Have had masters over them, have been under the lash of masters,
And, though gentle, have served churls;
The hands that have touched mine, the dear hands whose touch is familiar to me,
Have worn shameful manacles, have been bitten at the wrist by manacles,
Have grown hard with the manacles and the task-work of strangers,
I am flesh of the flesh of these lowly, I am bone of their bone,
I that have never submitted;
I that have a soul greater than the souls of my people’s masters,
I that have vision and prophecy and the gift of fiery speech,
I that have spoken with God on the top of His holy hill.
And because I am of the people, I understand the people,
I am sorrowful with their sorrow, I am hungry with their desire:
My heart has been heavy with the grief of mothers,
My eyes have been wet with the tears of children,
I have yearned with old wistful men,
And laughed or cursed with young men;
Their shame is my shame, and I have reddened for it,
Reddened for that they have served, they who should be free,
Reddened for that they have gone in want, while others have been full,
Reddened for that they have walked in fear of lawyers and of their jailors
With their writs of summons and their handcuffs,
Men mean and cruel!
I could have borne stripes on my body rather than this shame of my people.
And now I speak, being full of vision;
I speak to my people, and I speak in my people’s name to the masters of my people.
I say to my people that they are holy, that they are august, despite their chains,
That they are greater than those that hold them, and stronger and purer,
They they have but need of courage, and to call on the name of their God,
God the unforgetting, the dear God that loves the peoples
For whom He died naked, suffering shame.
And I say to my people’s masters: Beware,
Beware of the thing that is coming, beware of the risen people,
Who shall take what ye would not give. Did ye think to conquer the people,
Or that Law is stronger than life and than men’s desire to be free?
We will try it out with you, ye that have harried and held,
Ye that have bullied and bribed, tyrants, hypocrites, liars!
Pádraic H. Pearse
I learned so much more about Pearse by revisiting him through Uncle Jacky’s books from the attic. I had only had a smattering of knowledge about him and a very small appreciation of his thinking and his action. ‘The Rebel’ taught me so much about his ideas. It speaks volumes! This led me to search out the poem by W.B.Yeats about 1916, with which I was much more familiar, and I wondered how they would compare. It is from the same period. Pearse came from a different school of thought to Yeats, but the Yeats poem about 1916 gives us a great insight too into the thinking of the time and subsequent events. We have all been taught or heard of the following poem, but when I searched for it in the old schoolbooks it was not to be found. Then I remembered that many years ago, when I was buried in domesticity and business, I had bought a complete copy of the works of Yeats as a Christmas gift for myself. And so up to the attic again for a further search and there I eventually found it with the date of purchase, 1980, recorded on the cover. It was less pristine than when purchased as in the intervening years a splash from a glass of wine or a cup of tea had turned some of its pages to a soft amber.
Nevertheless, I hugged it like an old friend because there had been a period in my life when it was a close companion. And so amongst its pages I searched for the following poem and it took me a while to find it as I had thought that the poem was called ‘A Terrible Beauty Is Born’ as that is the line most familiar to all of us. But I had the wrong name as you can see.
Easter 1916
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
That woman’s days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our wingèd horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
