Agallamh an Draighin
or
The Colloquy of the Blackthorn
I awoke this morn and said a prayer,
As I breathed in the frosty air.
O how I felt such terrible grief,
In this season of the falling leaf.
For it soon foretold a visitation,
Of winter’s harrowing tribulation,
Where nothing prospers in the land,
Beneath the Cailleach’s frosty hand,
When under the blustery bowers’ reach,
Mercy from Boreas I shall beseech.
My exhausted body I did arise,
To a ceaseless chorus of forlorn sighs,
And bethought myself a skeletal spectre,
A contemptible case to the rent collector.
He saw not in my sunken face,
Any virtues of human grace.
No! for in my jutting joints and parchment skin,
He saw the culmination of Irish sin,
But behold, thought I, in Ireland’s scalpeens,
Stand the victims of England’s squireens.
I shuffled through the freezing grass,
Praying to God not to outlast,
The trials and tribulations of another day,
And to give good St. Michael my soul to weigh.
Yet under Limos’s trance I persisted,
Her piercing pangs my unfed stomach twisted,
Driving me to a purgatorial place,
Where the dead and dying crammed the dreadful space,
And the once noble children of the Gael,
Begged for deliverance to no avail.
I turned my restless, befuddled head,
Refusing to exchange pride for bread.
Westward I went and shuffled by,
More hapless souls condemned to die.
They lay partly green and partly blue,
Motley mummers of a deathly crew.
Here seemed a spot to end my strife,
And finally leave this cruel life,
But as my budding whim to die did creep,
I shuddered to face the eternal sleep.
I wandered on and found a wood,
A relic of what once stood,
In the land that belonged to the great Gael of old,
When honey did flow from the trees in streams of gold!
The soil was rich under the wild thrush’s lay,
And the people were carefree, noble and gay.
Where the sun kissed away the dewy tears of morn,
And sweet apples blushed beside the red rose’s thorn,
And many whispering lovers could,
Enjoy the wildflowers of the wood.
The ashen treetops rocked in the evening breeze,
And starved with the hunger I dropped to my knees.
Amid wreck and sorrow and remorseless disease,
It appeared time to pay the Ferryman his fees.
But yet I was redeemed by chance,
For among the trees I did glance,
A mighty blackthorn; for a fresh stream fed its roots,
Bestowing its black branches with wine-coloured fruits.
And to my joy kind Persephone did overdress,
The banks of the stream with brooklime and watercress.
My empty stomach I did readily swell,
With the plenteous fruits of the wooded dell,
And ere I in the pleasantness lay,
I kneeled in thanks to God to pray.
But in the silence of the eve,
Came an old voice my head to peeve.
‘Thanks to God you should not give;
It was me who let you live.’
I looked directly at the blackthorn,
From it I was sure the voice was borne.
Anon stood nigh the princely shrub of fair aspect and wood sublime,
It queried I — ‘O blackthorn tree — are you a member of the Sídhe?”
When it began — ‘I am the one called old Skahan.
For the Saxon invader my patience is ran.
Centuries I have watched Ireland’s ripened fruitage reaped.
Now I watch skeletal remains in shallow graves heaped.
Not since cruel Cromwell landed on these shores,
Has starvation and woe killed untold scores.
For the children of Míl Espáine I do weep,
To see their bright hopes in despairing darkness seep.’
From the wonderous talking tree,
Surely was I tempted to flee.
I bethought its frank voice my own creation,
A bewildering effect of starvation.
Yet in its unshakeable control I was kept,
And into the otherworld my belief had stepped.
‘There’s nothing we can do,’ responded I,
‘Except emigrate – or lay down and die.
Our time has come, our future is past,
Ireland’s been ruined by the ruling caste.’
Ancient Skahan shook his branchéd head,
Loosing a cry that filled me with dread.
‘Light turns to darkness, woe turns to joy,
So turns the world since the fall of Troy.
Noble are the children of the Gael,
Who in the hopeless hour never fail.
Grasp Justice’s sword in your hand.
Answer the clearance of the land.
Deprive the rack-renting landlord of his hoard.
Stab Major Mahon with the tip of your sword!’
My mind was entranced, my body shaken,
Had I been by the fairy host taken?
Yet to all it said I did concede,
For I was tired of my landlord’s greed.
I tried and tried, but could not rest,
The righteous outrage in my breast.
My memories with gross maltreatments were arrayed.
My hardened heart was to murderous action swayed.
‘You plunderer, you tyrant, you fowl thief!
I will change your fortunes, your joy to grief.’
Leaving old Skahan, my heart on fire,
I took myself to my father’s mire,
And there I undug the instrument of death,
And swore, come eve, Mahon would draw his last breath.
Now I will go to the meads of Carrownalassan,
Where the merciless Mahon will meet his assassin.
O inquisitive reader, to you I confess,
The murderous intentions of a man oppressed.
I bid you farewell, and beg you to accede,
To my bloody action against human greed.
Meascra 