The Old Woman of Beare
O'Connor, Frank
561 The Old Woman of Beare Translation of Frank O'Connor. (The Old Woman of Beare has been called "the greatest of Irish poems." Written somewhere about the tenth century, 500 years before...
...Her lovers did not regret their gifts...
...Her lovers, the kings, are buried there...
...Gold, not men, ye love today...
...Take your pay...
...Padraig O'Donnell, M.A., of Cork.—Frank O'Connor...
...Men indeed...
...Autumn brings gold to the fields but does not bring back the gold to her hair...
...And the fretted ocean cries, Winter's call accompanies, So I may not hope today Feramuid will come my way...
...Ocean ebbs and ebbs with me, Age and shame have come, these two, Now grief makes me slim I see Plumpness might have pleasure too...
...Then, calling suddenly to her mind a flood of terrific images, she thinks of her own misery and the darkness which has swallowed up her dead lovers...
...Lethe...
...Where are they...
...These my hands, when they are seen, Bony things and shriveling, 111 it seems their like, I ween, Round a comely lad to cling...
...When God's Son shall deem it meet Let Him call me home to it...
...Winter will ruin her and break open the tombs of her lovers, but will not touch Bregon or Femon where they are buried...
...She thinks of the plain of Femon...
...No sweet speech for me, no slaying Wethers for my marriage-morning, Mean veils hold my hair from straying, Hair that's white and whiter turning...
...For our mirth they lashed the steed, Nor would all that we could grant them Break them, so we did not scant them...
...They will not come...
...I complain of nothing old Save of Femon...
...But when we were young—ah, then We gave all our hearts to men...
...Many a colored veil I wore When I drank good ale of yore...
...The Irish of the poem is difficult and it seems probable that, in some verses, another and more pious hand has been at work...
...Written somewhere about the tenth century, 500 years before Villon wrote ha Belle Heaulmiere, as Thomas McDonagh reminds us, by some poet whose very name we do not know, it had lain unnoticed up to our own day when Kuno Meyer published the original text...
...She thinks of death...
...Girls are gay When the year draws on to May, I, a hag, a wretched one, I must shun the light of day...
...Then the theme of the ebbing sea comes back and the poem ends on a note of absolute despair which forms a magnificent contrast to the Christian setting...
...These my hands, if they were seen Are but bony, wasted things, Hands that once would grasp the hand, Clasp the royal neck of kings...
...She sees the ebb-tide...
...grey and cold Here I sit while autumn yields Femon's fields their crown of gold...
...Tis "My day...
...I that am the hag of Beare Once a shining shift would wear, Now and since my beauty's fall I can wear no shift at all...
...Now my drooping limbs must go To the house that all men know...
...In the translation from the Middle-Irish, here printed, I have departed from Kuno Meyer's reading of the poem to some extent, and for one emendation to the text I am indebted to Mr...
...Ah, I care Nought for veils to bind my hair...
...Now, methinks, they ask you fair, Win small wages for their care, And the mite that love affords Breaks their body as with swords...
...Her youth is over...
...Never child lives on to play...
...She speaks to the younger women...
...Ah, well I know To and fro they row and row Alma Ford, and by its deep Cold they sleep, that slept not so...
...Looking out on the ebbing sea she remembers with regret her days of feasting and chides the girls' of today that they do not love as she loved...
...Foaming steed, And the chariot with its speed, Their bright day was surely ever Blessed with their royal giver...
...Now my lords old Femon keeps, Bregon too where Ronan sleeps, There the storms have reached and broken Only mortal tomb and token...
...Disposing from the start^ of the legendary setting, the story is obviously this: A woman who has lived the life of a courtesan with some of the Irish tribal kings, one of whom, Feramuid Mac Mogha, she names, is forced by poverty and old age to enter a convent where she does penance for her early sins...
Vol. 2 • October 1925 • No. 23
