While firm was thy valour As the rock 'neath a flower. Thy bounty was broader Than Ireland's expanse; And Europe seem'd small In thy fall, is my fall, And great loss I trow. I am dead though alive. Subdued is my spirit The grave ends my career, It's muteness will cover My pride, once so dear! Oh! Phoenix of glory Whose far spreading rays, With destruction's red glare, KEEN, BY FELIX MAC CARTHY, FOR THE LOSS OF HIS FOUR CHILDREN. TRANSLATED FROM THE IRISH, BY THE EDITOR. A translation of this Keen, by Mr. Callanan, appeared in Bolster's Magazine, No. 3 (Cork 1826), but the Editor is inclined to prefer his version (perhaps, with an undue partiality), as more terse. Mr. Callanan, writing with the Editorial we, thus prefaces his translation. "From the enquiries we have made concerning the tragical circumstance that gave rise to the following effusion, we learn that Felix Mac Carthy had been compelled, during a period of disturbance and persecution, to fly for safety to a mountainous region, in the western part of this county [Cork.] He was accompanied in his flight by a wife and four children, and found an asylum in a lone and secluded glen, where he constructed a rude kind of habitation, as a temporary residence. One night, during the absence of himself and his wife, this ill contrived structure suddenly gave way, and buried the four children, who were asleep at the time, in its ruins. What the feelings of the father were will be best learned from the following lamentation. We have been most anxious to give as clear an idea of the original as possible, to the English reader, and for this reason we have rendered some passages verbatim, and have endeavoured, as much as possible, to transfer the powerful feeling and energy of the original, at the expense of those lighter graces of composition which are of very subordinate importance.* In * With this sentiment the Editor perfectly agrees, and in order to contrast, at a glance, Mr.Callanan's translation with his, he gives the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth verses as rendered by that poet, which are rendered by the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth verses of the Editor's translation. "Yes! I will sing this song of woe, 'Tis life's last spark shall glow, point of style the merits of the original are very considerable. It is superior to any specimen of Irish poetry we have seen as yet, both in chasteness of expression and harmony of language. Of these, however, the English reader can form no idea. In speaking of the process of translating Irish poetry into English, we shall not use Alfieri's figure, by saying that it resembles transferring an air from the harp to the hurdy-gurdy, but we think it has been the impression of all who have attempted the matter, that at best they merely succeeded in rendering the energy of the original, to the exclusion of those graces which are peculiar to the Irish tongue, and which form a part of its mechanical structure. The lament which we subjoin, concludes with a fearful curse on the glen where the accident occurred. He prays that the sun and stars may never shed their light on it; that the curse of the Most High may wither it up; that the 'poison of its treachery' towards him may ever adhere to it, and he baptizes it, 'the glen of ruin' from that day forward, because, in one night, it made an old man of him in the bloom of his youth." Felix Mac Carthy appears, like "Ned of the Hills” (Edward Ryan), to have been one of those unfortunate outlaws whom the political struggle between James II and William III compelled to take up arms; and though he was evidently a partizan of the former, few, if any of those whose forefathers supported the latter, will now object to his having espoused "the right cause.” But, to use the words of Sir John Harrington, "Treason can never prosper: what's the reason? The accomplished Miss Brooke, in her "Reliques of Irish Poetry" (Dublin, 1789), speaking of Ryan, states, that concerning him "many stories are still circulated, but no connected account has been obtained, further than that he commanded a company of those unhappy freebooters called Rapparees, who after the defeat of the Boyne, were obliged to abandon their dwellings and possessions, 'hoping' (says Mr. O'Halloran) 'for safety within the precincts of the Irish quarters; but they were too numerous to be employed in the army, and their miseries often obliged them to prey alike upon friend and foe. At length some of the most daring of them formed themselves into independent companies, whose subsistence chiefly arose from depredations committed on the enemy. “It was not choice but necessity, that drove them to this extreme. I have heard ancient people, who were witnesses to the calamities of those days, affirm, that they remembered vast numbers of these poor Irish, men, women, and children, to have no other beds but the ridges of potato gardens, and little other covering than the canopy of heaven; they dispersed themselves over the counties of Limerick, Clare, and Kerry, and the hardness of the times at length shut up all bowels of humanity, so that most of them perished by the sword, cold, or famine.' "* * O'Halloran's Int. to the Hist. and Ant. of Ireland, 382. KEEN, BY FELIX MAC CARTHY. Tho' choaked by tears-I'll try to keen And nature's fullness will o'erflow. Small is my prop, this Easter day, This day that pierces through my breast!From friends, from all I love, away, A lonely wanderer in the West. By bursting pangs compelled to speak, To mine, what is the widow's wail? Or bridegroom's, for his lonely bed?— I face alone the winter's gale A nestless bird-my young ones, dead!— So, like the swan, on stormy waves My Callaghan-O dark downfall- Mary; and Ann, best loved of all— All crushed, a ruined heap within. |