The Mountainy Singer

The gift of second sight is mine!

DARKNESS

Darkness.
I stop to watch a star shine in the boghole —
A star no longer, but a silver ribbon of light.
I look at it, and pass on.

MY FIDIL IS SINGING

My fidil is singing
Into the air;
The wind is stirring,
The moon is fair.

A shadow wanders
Along the road;
It stops to listen,
And drops its load.

Dreams for a space
Upon the moon,
Then passes, humming
My mountain tune.

THE GOAT-DEALER

Did you see the goat-dealer
All in his jacket green?
I met him on the rocky road
’Twixt this and Baile-doirin.

A hundred nannies ran before,
And a she-ass behind,
And then the old wanderer himself,
Burnt red with sun and wind.

He gave me the time-a-day
And doitered over the hill,
Walloping his gay ashplant
And shouting his fill.

I think I hear him yet,
Tho’ it’s a giant’s cry
From where I hailed him first,
Standing up to the sky.

Is that Puck Green I see beyond?
It is, and the stir is there.
By the holy hat, I know then —
He’s making for Puck Fair!

WHY CRUSH THE CLARET ROSE

Why crush the claret rose
That blows
So rarely on the tree?
Wherefore the enmity, dear girl,
Betwixt the rose and thee?
Art thou not fair enough
With that dark beauty given thee,
That thou must crush the rose
That blows
So rarely on the tree!

LAMENT OF PADRAIC MOR MAC CRUIMIN OVER HIS SONS

I am Padraic Mor mac Cruimin,
Son of Domhnall of the Shroud,
Piper, like my kind before me,
To the household of MacLeod.

Death is in the seed of Cruimin —
All my music is a wail;
Early graves await the poets
And the pipers of the Gael.

Samhain gleans the golden harvests
Duly in their tide and time,
But my body’s fruit is blasted
Barely past the Bealtein prime.

Cethlenn claims the fairest fighters
Fitly for her own, her own,
But my seven sons are stricken
Where no battle-pipe is blown.

Flowers of the forest fallen
On the sliding summer stream —
Light and life and love are with me,
Then are vanished into dream.

Berried branches of the rowan
Rifled in the wizard wind —
Clan and generation leave me,
Lonely on the heath behind.

Who will soothe a father’s sorrow
When his seven sons are gone?