Last night the missus and I watched Ondine, a selkie-themed movie out of Ireland (and the holy land of Ireland), casting Colin Farrell in the decidedly unglamorous role of Syracuse (aka: Circus), a down-at-his-luck fisherman who drags an unconscious young woman out of his net. The identity of the girl is a mystery until the end, although Syracuse’s daughter Annie – played with elfin grace by young Alison Berry – clearly believes that the eponymous Ondine (the curiously accented and winsome Alicia Bachleda) is indeed a seal woman come to shed seven tears and live seven years with her father, the great majority of that time padding around in Victoria’s Secret underthings, not that your humble scribe objected. Annie also believes that Ondine has the power to heal her from a kidney condition that’s wasting the younger girl away, and although there is indeed healing of many sorts, it’s an Irish movie after all, so not everything ends happily for all involved.
If you’re not already accustomed to following the music of the Irish brogue, you may well miss a quarter of the dialogue, for it’s laid on thick as butter on soda bread. And if there’s anything more poetically beautiful Alicia Bachleda in varying stages of deshabille, it’s the gorgeous Irish countryside lovingly treated by writer and director Neil Jordan. The combination of the two were magical, and I believe the Hobbit even half way agreed, for she said as much herself, albeit at a seaside vista which omitted any portrait of the Polish actress.
It’s funny how chains of associations run through your head, for in reply I offered, “Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry,” which no doubt left the missus a wee bit befuddled, for the one thing had nothing much to do with the other, but this is not so unusual as to be remarkable, for bless her heart she’s known me many years.
Which it’s a line from the second stanza of W.H. Auden‘s “In Memory of W.B. Yeats“:
You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.
In the early 1990s, with the trajectory of my life going forward almost locked in, there was civil unrest in my soul that, for a very brief time, broke out in open rebellion, hurling the little streets upon the great. It was then that I really discovered Yeats, and found that he had been there first in every way, and all of it flashed again through my mind’s eye, his unrequited love for Maud Gonne, his hatred of the brutal Major John MacBride, a rogue even by the Irish standard who Yeats eventually found a way to forgive.
And so I awoke this morning with the afterimages of that kaleidoscope still flashing on the screen of my mind’s eye, and set to research these things linked here and there throughout this post, the kind of thing that took me days at the library to learn in the old days of the early 1990s filling up a Saturday morning indeed until I found this: The National Library of Ireland’s interactive life and works of the poet, and if you’ve got a tenth of the madness in you yourself, abandon all hope ye who enter here.
For it’s lost I am, lost utterly.
(Oh, and for the curious or equally befuddled, it all worked out all right in the end: Horseman pass by.)
Ah me boy-0….It ’tis a damned shame that we couldn’t have time to spend with ye whilst you were here in Bawston…The Irish have been part of her history for years…and such a grand feast we would have had in your honor….
The literary ability of the Irish to enhance the world is renown…My small words would be but a trifle to state the full meaning of what the Irish have contributed….It is for our most famous son to illuminate my thoughts with his great words:
” I am deeply honored to be your guest in a Free Parliament in a free Ireland. If this nation had achieved its present political and economic stature a century or so ago, my great grandfather might never have left New Ross, and I might, if fortunate, be sitting down there with you. Of course if your own President had never left Brooklyn, he might be standing up here instead of me….”
” And so it is that our two nations, divided by distance, have been united by history. No people ever believed more deeply in the cause of Irish freedom than the people of the United States. And no country contributed more to building my own than your sons and daughters. They came to our shores in a mixture of hope and agony, and I would not underrate the difficulties of their course once they arrived in the United States. They left behind hearts, fields, and a nation yearning to be free. It is no wonder that James Joyce described the Atlantic as a bowl of bitter tears. And an earlier poet wrote, “They are going, going, going, and we cannot bid them stay.”
“The world is large,” wrote John Boyle O’Reilly.
“The world is large when its weary
leagues two loving hearts divide,
“But the world is small when your enemy
is loose on the other side.”
The world is even smaller today, though the enemy of John Boyle O’Reilly is no longer a hostile power. Indeed, across the gulfs and barriers that now divide us, we must remember that there are no permanent enemies. Hostility today is a fact, but it is not a ruling law. The supreme reality of our time is our indivisibility as children of God and our common vulnerability on this planet…..”
” This has never been a rich or powerful country, and yet, since earliest times, its influence on the world has been rich and powerful. No larger nation did more to keep Christianity and Western culture alive in their darkest centuries. No larger nation did more to spark the cause of independence in America, indeed, around the world. And no larger nation has ever provided the world with more literary and artistic genius.”
“This is an extraordinary country. George Bernard Shaw, speaking as an Irishman, summed up an approach to life: Other people, he said “see things and . . . say ‘Why?’ . . . But I dream things that never were– and I say: ‘Why not?’”
Address Before the Irish Parliament
President John F. Kennedy
Dublin, Ireland
June 28, 1963
It was his last great summer and he enjoyed a few days on the Old Sod with his kinsmen….Johnny, we hardly knew ye.
In similar circumstances I found Evelyn Waugh’s “A Handful of Dust” instructive, though in a very different fashion, I’m sure.
“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.”
– W. B. Yeats
As an airman yourself, I’m sure that in that period of discovery you stumbled across “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”, a haunting poem I was assigned to memorize when I was a junior in high school. To this day, Yeats remains my favorite poet. I made it a point when I first visited the Ould Sod to visit his grave. On a return trip I made my way to Thoor Ballylee and I hope in the future to visit Coole Park. Great poets from other places may be masters of the epic, or iambic pentameter, or the ability to evoke emotion while versifying upon unrequited love, but (the Psalms aside) only an Irish poet can write a poem which touches the very core of your soul, leaving you with a sort of melancholy contentment. Yeats was (is) a particularly masterful artist in this way.
Thanks Wayward, I have to fly tomorrow! No tumult above the clouds though, it’s VMC in the USCG AUX.
http://www.thebeckoning.com/poetry/yeats/yeats.html
Authors, poets, and warriors too. Oh my!
Of those originally born abroad, the Irish dominate our Medal of Honor list.
MOH recipients were immigrants from thirty-three different counties. But Ireland leads all with 258 native sons having received our highest award, followed by Germany/Prussia with 128 recipients.
“Every cause but our own.” (Wild Geese)
Well written, Lex. You never cease to amaze me with your writing, but you often do surprise me with your choices! It’s one of the reasons I keep coming back! Being a Scot, myself, I tend to favor Bobby Burns or JM Barrie, but I do enjoy a spin through Yeats from time to time.
Well. as I am Scots-Irish on my Father’s maternal side (the McGraths) I can enjoy both sides of the equation, zipper.
Ahhhhhh……Glenlivet OR Bushmills, VX. Nothing like having options!
I will readily admit… I don’t get poetry, other than Robert Service. I seriously can’t think that way and it really makes me feel dumb. The English Lit semester of college english nearly killed me when we got to poetry. I spent most of those weeks banging my head on my desk trying to figure out what everyone was trying to say. I’m too literal. Unfortunately for me, a cigar is always just a cigar…
I betcha you’d like Kipling. Or Tennyson.
Right there with you, Bou. I could get what the poet was trying to say within the confines of the poetic style, I just never understood how that supposedly made it better than, you know, prose.
If you can’t make somebody understand what you mean with the written word, chances are writing it in iambic pentameter or as a haiku isn’t going to make it suddenly clear.
– Max
Badgers consider Rudy Kipling, Theodore Giesel, Richard Armour, and Ogden Nash to be as far as we consider going, into the world of poetry.
Written in your usual enchanting manner, but I must confess to a tin ear for the Irish accent, and find poetry of any sort an instant cure for insomnia, so I will find other diversions whilst those more inclined to enjoy those do so.
In a way, I envy them, but we do not all share the same gifts or interests. Let’s just call it a bit of “diversity” and all celebrate anyway.
I just got back from Divine Services a little while ago, and the flavor of them was distinctly Irish. There was a bunch of Celtic music, and dancing. The pastor is Irish, though Anglican. I stood staid like a proper Sassenach while the wild Irish were hopping and dancing about. When it came time to exchange the Peace, some of those barefoot bogtrotters actually offered to kiss me!
Oliver St. John Gogarty, an often overlooked Irish poet (and a damn fine pubkeeper if only in name, as my liver will attest), a contemporary of Mr. Yeats, penned the following tome. It reads well as an ode to the Irish Soldier, but speaks with more truth if read vertically downward along the left margin.
The Gallant Irish yeoman
Home from the war has come
Each victory gained o’er foeman
Why should our bards be dumb.
How shall we sing their praises
Our glory in their deeds
Renowned their worth amazes
Empire their prowess needs.
So to Old Ireland’s hearts and homes
We welcome now our own brave boys
In cot and Hall; neath lordly domes
Love’s heroes share once more our joys.
Love is the Lord of all just now
Be he the husband, lover, son,
Each dauntless soul recalls the vow
By which not fame, but love was won.
United now in fond embrace
Salute with joy each well-loved face
Yeoman: in women’s hearts you hold the place
Yes, they will indeed be busy. Thanks for that, it’s right clever and amusing.
Bou, my friend … You bring back the days of my youth, when my Dad, an inveterate quoter and unregeneratedly part Irish, would quote Robert W. Service — “now ruthless Ruth was a maid uncouth, with scarlet cheeks and lips, and she sang rough songs to the sailor throngs who came from the whaling ships, etc., etc.” Some might call Service’s verses doggerel. But what’s wrong with doggerel?
Marianne
The Ballad of Yukon Jake? Your *Dad* recited the Ballad of Yukon Jake to you as a kid?
Huh! So did mine.
Note that if one is also familiar with the derivative work The Ballad of Eskimo Nell it is very important not to mix verses from one into the other when reciting in polite company.
A very minor slip-up can garner one some harsh looks from the Spousal Unit.
– Max
Heh!
My parents quoted others. But to our children – and initially to my wife’s dismay (horror?) – I often read to them, some of the “Selected Poems of Robert Service” at their bedtimes.
At their age, Yeats may have been a bit beyond them. But those two munchkins reveled in Service’s outrageous and fun ballads, as I did…they perhaps as much in his stories and poems, as how it also bothered their mother.
But a few years later, their mother was found to be reading Robert Service to her young elementary school students. They especially loved the Ballad of Sam McGee, she tells me now.
Robert Service – a vagabond of many diverse experiences, whose writings live on for our, and our children’s enjoyment… and beyond.
6 of us born in Fairbanks. 5 when it was still a territory. Family reunions still filled with long ago memorized recitations of Robert Service.
Ahhh, “My Madonna”
“I haled me a woman from the street,
Shameless, but, oh, so fair!
I bade her sit in the model’s seat
And painted her sitting there…”
I went to bed with quotes from The Cremation of Sam McGee.
“There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.”
Good grief. I think Dad can quote the entire poem, but that first stanza… we went to bed with. Last year in my son’s freshman lit class, his teacher read them all that poem. I laughed and realized… I truly love his English teacher. My son, literal like me, loved the poem.
Dad’s other fave to read us was Bessie’s Boil, read complete with brogue.
Mom never said anything of Dad’s choice of bedtime stories, all from Service’s Selected Poems book. I actually think Mom encouraged it…
Personally, I prefer limericks…
Kipling, dammit!
Kipling has limericks?
Cool!
Umm, no. Are you some kind of klugscheisser, or what?
They make a salve for that, now.
What’s that Groucho Marx line? Somthing like…
Woman: “Do you enjoy Kipling?”
Groucho: “Why, I don’t know. I’ve never kipeled.”
George V.
Justthisguy …My Dad didn’t neglect Kipling. He loved him too, especially Kipling’s ‘The Ladies’ which ends:
“Yes I’ve taken my fun where I found it,
And now I must pay for my fun,
For the more you have of the many,
The less you have of the One,
And the end of it’s sitting and thinking,
And dreaming Hell’s fires to see,
So be warned by my lot as I know you will not,
And learn about women from me.”
Now, see there. Full of wisdom, even though the poem is politically incorrect. Still, it’s good advice, for both men and women.
Marianne
By the way, all you Kipling lovers, try reading ‘Stalky & Co.’ to your kids, both boys and girls. It’s a barely fictionalized story based on Kipling’s years at United Services College [probably all you smart people already know that the equivalent of our private high schools in Britain are called 'colleges'.] This tale of the adventures of Stalky, Beetle [otherwise known as Kipling] and McTurk is loads of fun to children of both sexes, having some characteristics of recently published The Dangerous Book for Boys, or how to be as bad as you want to be, even though young.
As a sidebar, Stalky was a real person of course, and went on to become a General in the British army. His descendant, G. K. Dunsterville, was also called Stalky by his orchid growing and collecting friends in the American Orchid Society, one of whom was myself. He’s passed on now, but he lived in Brazil, IIRC, and used to come to the Trustees Meetings and tell us great stories about collecting plants from the ‘tepuis’ or mesas on the top of mountains.
Fun stuff. Wish I could have done it.
Marianne