In truth this is no longer “new”; it was published in 1986.
There are some things which ideally should be at least newish: fish, Burke’s Peerage, and the leaf one turns over. However, there is no need to listen to pop music post circa 1970, to own a new car or read post-1986 poetry whether Irish or not.
If I still have your attention, because the word poetry often induces somnolence, particularly among the students at the back of the class after lunch, turn your attention to the cover picture. It is a view of Upper Mount Street from Merrion Square. This is more or less the view from WB Yeats’s house in the 1920s; near Leinster House, the Senate and Trinity College and across the road from Wilde’s home. This was most convenient because he served two terms in the Senate at the time of the Irish Free State.
Yeats, as you know, was a towering figure in Irish literature, poetry and a wider cultural context. He was awarded the Nobel prize for Literature in 1923. If I may digress, his younger brother, Jack B Yeats, is equally celebrated as an artist. He is a local lad to the extent he studied down the road at the Chiswick School of Art in Bedford Park. It often happens a family throws up two brothers distinguished in different fields. This is the case in my family today.
Who are the three greatest Irish poets of the nineteenth century? Yeats thought Davis, Mangan and Ferguson in his poem To Ireland in the Coming Times. To be truthful I had never heard of them but there is a selection of their ripest in Kinsella’s anthology. Incidentally, he modestly includes some of his own poems and concludes with some by Seamus Heaney. It is a terrific book if you are in the mood for poetry, something the Irish are particularly good at. Hitherto I intended to choose Burke’s Peerage to take to a BBC Desert Island because I wanted to draw lineages in the sand. I have changed my mind and will take The New Oxford Book of Irish Verse.
“When boyhood’s fire was in my blood
I read of ancient freemen
For Greece and Rome who bravely stood,
THREE HUNDRED MEN AND THREE MEN.
And then I prayed I yet might see
Our fetters rent in twain,
And Ireland, long a province, be
A NATION ONCE AGAIN.
And, from that time, through wildest woe,
That hope has shone, a far light;
Nor could love’s brightest summer glow
Outshine that solemn starlight:
It seemed to watch above my head
In forum, field and fane;
Its angel voice sang round my bed,
‘A NATION ONCE AGAIN.’
It whispered, too, that ‘freedom’s ark
And service high and holy,
Would be profaned by feelings dark
And passions vain or lowly:
For freedom comes from God’s right hand,
And needs a godly train;
And righteous men must make our land
A NATION ONCE AGAIN.’
So, as I grew from boy to man,
I bent me to that bidding-
My spirit of each selfish plan
And cruel passion ridding;
For, thus I hoped some day to aid-
Oh! can such hope be vain? –
When my dear country shall be made
A NATION ONCE AGAIN.
(A Nation Once Again, Thomas Davis, 1814 – 1845 )
This comment is nothing to do with the post (although I enjoyed it), and apologies in advance for the off topic nature of it.
I’m a Moore who has lived in Ireland all my life and has traced my male ancestor line to Co. Louth to a man who worked for Speaker Foster on his estate as a herd, and previously fought for Wellington at Waterloo. Anyway, he and all his descendants appear to have been Catholics. I know that the original Barmeath castle was built by Moores but I can’t find out anything much about them. Through a DNA test I appear to be linked to Irish people in Leinster, the likes of Diarmuid McMurrough. Would you happen to know anything about the origins of these Moore’s – my hypothesis is that they might have been native Irish that fought with the Normans that McMurrough invited over but this is pure speculation.
I would be interested if you had any further insight.