I cannot find Broken Vows, an Irish poem translated by Lady Gregory and quoted in teh The Dead, by James Joyce. Can anyone help?

It is late last night the dog was speaking of you;
the snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh.
It is you are the lonely bird through the woods;
and that you may be without a mate until you find me.

You promised me, and you said a lie to me,
that you would be before me where the sheep are flocked;
I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you,
and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.

You promised me a thing that was hard for you,
a ship of gold under a silver mast;
twelve towns with a market in all of them,
and a fine white court by the side of the sea.

You promised me a thing that is not possible,
that you would give me gloves of the skin of a fish;
that you would give me shoes of the skin of a bird;
and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.

When I go by myself to the Well of Loneliness,
I sit down and I go through my trouble;
when I see the world and do not see my boy,
he that has an amber shade in his hair.

It was on that Sunday I gave my love to you;
the Sunday that is last before Easter Sunday.
And myself on my knees reading the Passion;
and my two eyes giving love to you for ever.

My mother said to me not to be talking with you today,
or tomorrow, or on the Sunday;
it was a bad time she took for telling me that;
it was shutting the door after the house was robbed.

My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe,
or as the black coal that is on the smith's forge;
or as the sole of a shoe left in white halls;
it was you that put that darkness over my life.

You have taken the east from me; you have taken the west from me;
you have taken what is before me and what is behind me;
you have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me;
and my fear is great that you have taken God from me!

just in case you want to read more about it :

[www.cs.rice.edu]

One of the great love poems in English. I wonder whether the original Gaelic ballad was as good. An Irish poet once told me it has many more stanzas besides those that Lady Gregory chose to translate. It's interesting to compare some of the other 'Donal Og' translations in use as modern song lyrics. See for example:

[www.rootsreview.co.uk]
[www.barbaradickson.net]

Though the poem expresses a young girl's unhappiness at being abandoned by her lover, 'Young Donald' (or 'Young Daniel' as some would have it), the anomalously pedestrian title 'Broken Vows' is not one I have seen used for it before. Where does that come from? It looks like something a timid American sub-editor would substitute for 'Donal Og' for marketing reasons.

Some detailed information about the Gaelic folksong origins of this poem, and the texts of many different song lyric versions of it in English, including stanzas not included by Lady Gregory in her famous translation, can be found in postings on the following websites:
[www.mudcat.org] /> [www.mudcat.org] /> [www.mudcat.org] /> [www.mudcat.org] /> [www.mudcat.org]

Is this where Radclyffe Hall got the title of her book the Well of Loneliness from, d'you think?

I suppose reading the extra stanzas is like the first time you read the full version of Milton's translation of Psalm CXXXVI, Let us with a gladsome mind, after singing it in church for years.

Which do you think is the best verse. I'm torn between:-
He foiled bold Seon and his host,
That ruled the Amorrean coast:

and:-
And large limbed Og He did subdue,
With all his over-hardy crew.

Well the second one might win in the howler category: treating the Gaelic descriptive suffix 'og' [= the young] as a standalone name.



Post Edited (10-31-03 23:56)