This is a translation into English of a poem originally written in Irish. It is called Caoineadh Airt Ui Laoghaire – A Cry for Art O’Leary. The poem was composed by a woman, Eileen O’Connell. It is a cry of grief, of revenge, of love, of hated, and of a deep, frustrated passion for justice. Art O’Leary was Eileen O’Connell’s husband. He was shot by a man named Morris because he refused to sell his horse to Morris for five pounds. According to the 18th century penal law in Ireland, a Catholic had to sell his horse to a protestant, if the protestant asked him, for five pounds or under. O’Leary refused to sell his horse. Morris shot him. Eileen O’Connell composed her Caoineadh – her cry for her husband This lament was in the oral tradition and spoken on the spot following her husband murder,it is in the form of the traditional "caoineadh" or lament following the death of a loved one
A Cry for Art O’Leary
(from The IRISH OF EIBHLIN NI CHONAILL,Translated by Brendan Kennelly)
My love
The first time I saw you
From the top of the market
My eyes covered you
My heart went out to you
I left my friends for you
Threw away my home for you
What else could I do?
You got the best rooms for me
All in order for me
Ovens burning for me
Fresh trout caught for me
Choice meat for me
In the best of beds I stretched
Till milling-time hummed for me
You made the whole world
Pleasing to me
White rider of love!
I love your silver-hilted sword
How your beaver hat became you
With its band of gold
Your friendly homespun suit
Revealed your body
Your pin of glinting silver
Glittered in your shirt
On your horse in style
You were sensitive pale-faced
Having journeyed overseas
The English respected you
Bowing to the ground
Not because they loved you
But true to their hearts’ hate
They’re the ones who killed you
Darling of my heart
My lover
My love’s creature
Pride of Immokelly
To me you were not dead
Till your great mare came to me
Her bridle dragging ground
Her head with your startling blood
Your blood upon the saddle
You rode in your prime
I didn’t wait to clean it
I leaped across my bed
I leaped then to the gate
I leaped upon your mare
I clapped my hands in frenzy
I followed every sign
With all the skill I knew
Until I found you lying
Dead near a furze bush
Without pope or bishop
Or cleric or priest
To say a prayer for you
Only a crooked wasted hag
Throwing your cloak across you
I could no nothing then
In the sight of God
But go on my knees
And kiss your face
And drink your free blood
My man!
Going out the gate
You turned back again
Kissed the two children
Threw a kiss at me
Saying “Eileen, woman, try
To get this house in order,
Do your best for us
I must be going now
I’ll not be home again.”
I thought that you were joking
You my laughing man.
My man!
My Art O’Leary
Up on your horse now
Ride out to Macroom
And then to Inchigeela
Take a bottle of wine
Like your people before you
Rise up
My Art O’Leary
Of the sword of love
Put on your clothes
Your black beaver
Your black gloves
Take down your whip
Your mare is waiting
Go east by the thin road
Every bush will salute you
Every stream will speak to you
Men and women acknowledge you
They know a great man
When they set eyes on him
God’s curse on you, Morris
God’s curse on your treachery
You swept my man from me
The man of my children
Two children play in the house
A third lives in me
He won’t come alive from me
My heart’s wound
Why as I not with you
When you were shot
That I might take the bullet
In my own body?
Then you’d had gone free
Rider of the grey eye
And followed them
Who’d murdered me
My man!
I look at you now
All I know of a hero
True man with true heart
Stuck in a coffin
You fished the clean streams
Drank nightlong in halls
Among frank-breasted women
I miss you
My man!
I am crying for you
In far derrynane
In yellow-appled Carren
Where many a horseman
And vigilant woman
Would be quick to join
In crying for you
Art O’Leary
My laughing man
O crying women
Long live your crying
Till Art O’Leary
Goes back to school
On a fateful day
Not for books and music
But for stones and clay
My man!
The corn is stacked
The cows are milked
My heart is a lump of grief
I will never be healed
Till Art O’Leary
Comes back to me
I am a locked trunk
The key is lost
I must wait till rust
Devours the screw
O my best friend
Art O’Leary
Son of Conor
Son of Cadach
Son of Lewis
East from wooden glens
West from girlish hills
Yellow nuts budge from branches
Apples laugh like small suns
At once they laughed
Throughout my girlhood
It is no cause for wonder
If bonfires lit O’Leary country
Or holy Gougane Barra
After the clean-gripping rider
The robust hunter
Panting towards the kill
Your own hounds lagged behind you
O horseman of the summoning eyes
What happened you last night?
My only whole belief
Was that you could not die
For I was your protection
My heart! My grief!
My man! My darling!
In Cork
I had this vision
Lying in my bed:
A glen of withered trees
A home heart-broken
Strangled hunting-hounds
Choked birds
And you
Drying on a hillside
Art O’Leary
My one man
Your blood running crazily
Over earth and stone
Jesus Christ knows well
I’ll wear no cap
No mourning dress
No solemn shoes
No bridle on my horse
No grief-signs in my house
But test instead
The wisdom of the law
I’ll cross the sea
To speak to the King
If he ignores me
I’ll come back home
To find the man
Who murdered my man
Morris, because of you
My man is dead
Is there a man in Ireland
To put a bullet through your head?
Women, white women of the mill
I give my love to you
For the poetry you made
For Art O’Leary
Rider of the brown mare
Deep women-rhythms of blood
The fiercest and the sweetest
Since time began
Singing of this cry I woman make
For my man
Take the time to listen to this clip it will give you a feel for the Irish version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F02VhJ_g3xY
