The Parting Glass

The Parting Glass – an Irish farewell

The Parting Glass is a beautiful example of that particular gift the Irish seem to have in abundance – being able to combine joy and sorrow in a way that is both sad yet wonderfully uplifting at the same time.

Parting Glass

It’s a song of farewell, sung for and to close friends. It conjures up the same feeling as Shakespeare’s “parting is such sweet sorrow”.

It may make you cry, but in a moving and life-affirming way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhJp0W0ku2w    The High Kings sing "The Parting Glass"

Paula Meehan, My favourite poet

Well

 


I know this path by magic not by sight.
Behind me on the hillside the cottage light
is like a star that’s gone astray. The moon

is waning fast, each blade of grass a rune

inscribed by hoarfrost. This path’s well worn.

I lug a bucket by bramble and blossoming blackthorn.
I know this path by magic not by sight.

Next morning when I come home quite unkempt

I cannot tell what happened at the well.

You spurn my explanation of a sex spell

cast by the spirit who guards the source

that boils deep in the belly of the earth,

even when I show you what lies strewn

in my bucket — a golden waning moon,

seven silver stars, our own porch light,

your face at the window staring into the dark.




http://irishwritingblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/paula-meehan-reads-her-poem-well-live-from-the-cuirt-international-festival-of-literature/


Take the time to listen to Paula Meehan read this poem

For my late Mother on Mother's Day

In Memory Of My Mother

I do not think of you lying in the wet clay
Of a Monaghan graveyard; I see
You walking down a lane among the poplars
On your way to the station, or happily

Going to second Mass on a summer Sunday -
You meet me and you say:
'Don't forget to see about the cattle - '
Among your earthiest words the angels stray.

And I think of you walking along a headland
Of green oats in June,
So full of repose, so rich with life -
And I see us meeting at the end of a town

On a fair day by accident, after
The bargains are all made and we can walk
Together through the shops and stalls and markets
Free in the oriental streets of thought.

O you are not lying in the wet clay,
For it is a harvest evening now and we
Are piling up the ricks against the moonlight
And you smile up at us - eternally. 

Patrick Kavanagh

Always loved and never forgotten

A green graveyard in county Wexford

Woodland Burial Poem By Pam Ayres

Don't lay me in some gloomy churchyard shaded by a wall
Where the dust of ancient bones has spread a dryness over all,
Lay me in some leafy loam where, sheltered from the cold
Little seeds investigate and tender leaves unfold.
There kindly and affectionately, plant a native tree
To grow resplendent before God and hold some part of me.
The roots will not disturb me as they wend their peaceful way
To build the fine and bountiful, from closure and decay.
To seek their small requirements so that when their work is done
I’ll be tall and standing strongly in the beauty of the sun.

http://www.greengraveyard.com/

Ireland's only natural burial grounds,sounds just right for me.

Sir Thomas's Bridge Clonmel

Recent floods and storms in Clonmel

Marlfield Lake Clonmel Tipperary : Star Trail

The Stolen Child : W B Yeats

 

THE STOLEN CHILD

By W.B. Yeats

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake

There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake

The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid our faery vats

Full of berries
And the reddest stolen cherries.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest RossesWe foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters of the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping than he can understand. 

 

 

              

In Ireland, the Faerie folk are always treated with respect, but many accusations are hurled at them as well, from making crops wither to milk tuning sour.
One of the most common accusations is that they steal humans and spirit them away to live in the Faerie realm, this person is known as a Changeling.



The humans most at risk though are babies and young children. They are taken and in their place a Faerie child is left, this child is known as a changeling although the term changeling can also refer to someone who has been taken and then returned to the mortal world a few years later.
The Faeries covert human babies as they tend to be happy, healthy, sturdy beings and have no hesitation in swopping them with their own sickly babes. On occasion they have been known to take a child because they believe it is not loved enough by its human parents or sometimes they take the child out of malice or spite, one can never be sure what a Faeries motive is.