IRISH EAVESDROPPING

POETRY, PROSE AND DIALOGUES

IRISH EAVESDROPPING

Growing up in Ireland as a child and as a teenager spending time North, South, East, and West, listening to conversations between adults was truly an eye-opener, whether it took place by a roaring fire or wandering in the land.

I was swamped in the imagination, spinning the magic of all the tales I heard given in such beautiful metaphorical poetic language. Ireland has its unique poetry ingrained in the language, both in English and in Irish. However, there are unusual twists and turns with a curious wisdom that permeates the stories every day. I do not think there was even one hour that passed that I did not learn something new. It was storytelling and folklore at its finest. No wonder so many writers, artists, poets and musicians hail from this country.

Some of the converse I overheard made its way into my prose poetry:

ERGOT ON THE RYE

“My heart bleeds, Mabel, bleeds with the sin of it all. I can’t get over the way she’s failed since her son Desmond had the ‘call’.”

“Aye, it’s a shame, Mrs. P, and him no more than a brat of a boy. Do you think it was a vision of joy that he had? Though he’s not to blame if that’s the case, for his father was a dreamer for sure and lived life at a very slow pace.”

“A slow pace indeed, Mabel, in McNultie’s pub if the truth be known, hardly a major credit to the human race. I’m told he was the hub of life there but prone to nightmares here that I am sure the home-brew beer caused, beer from the barley his son had sown, beer that my old man always maintained was queer.”

“Is that so? And you reckon Desmond got the ‘call’ from the beer? Sure I hadn’t a notion he’d taken to the drink. Certainly makes you think, doesn’t it?… but I suppose the Good Book calls and reforms can be made, giving up the drink was the price he paid.”

“No, no, you’ve got it all wrong, my friend. It wasn’t the beer that turned his head, you see, the reason the beer was queer was because the barley was dead! Have you never heard of ergot on the rye? It’s the black damp that grows on the seed and if you bake and eat the bread from that batch, it sends you high as the sky. The visions are clear, I hear, full of faeries and God and things, makes you have a need for the church or else turns you insane!”

“But, Mrs. P the ergot is on the rye, not on the barley. I, for one, have never heard of it on any other grain. I’d say at a glance he got Saint Vitus dance, but maybe he isn’t insane, he was the only one left fit to work the farm. I suppose, at first, a vision or two did no harm, then he figured it out that he was hard at work when the father was too full on the stout. No quicker way in my mind to beg for a ‘call’, a ‘call’ that might save his hide and carry him out of it all.”

“Mabel, aw, sure you’re talkin’ of Saint Vitus, an Italian Saint, not even Irish, not even a man but a boy. They beheaded him, you know? That’s a far cry, and to be fair, the fungus on the rye might be different there. It’s a crying shame what Desmond has done to his mother, Mabel. He’s no Saint, is he? Leaving her with all the bother, especially when she’s not able.”

“Poor Saint Vitus! That’s not an easy death to lose your head, is it? Well, maybe then she should change the barley to the rye Mrs. P. Let them all get the ‘call’. It would do no harm, for as I see it, they’ve all lost their heads and none of them is fit to run the farm. They might as well all get the taste of the ergot on the rye and save us from worrying of the wherefore and why.”

“Aye, wasting our time, my friend, we’re losing our own heads, goodbye for now, goodbye, goodbye, enough said about the rye.”

THE STRANGERS

“They started out as visitors, you know?”

“And who might you be referring to, Mick?”

“The strangers in the house, of course, they’re here now for better or worse, it seems, stole my grandfather’s land they did and milked the farms to fatten their purse.”

“Aw, com’n now Mick, you’re gone in the head. All that baloney is long dead. Sure, they liked us that much that they stayed and their wains are now ours… for they wed into our kin and never strayed.”

“They’ve mixed the blood then, Sean, is that what you’re sayin’? Well, I suppose you might be right but don’t you think something has gone? Not a thing that’s in sight, don’t get me wrong, nothin’ I can rightly put my finger on but something that’s under the surface just layin’.”

“Mick, times change in the world… but never here. So keep your thoughts to yourself and harness your fear. They can’t hurt us at all, for they’re caught in our web. Our history is our art, but art is our web and the web never gives. So you see, our strangers in the house have now all become relatives.”

PLOUGHING

Treading the brown-clod fields,

Listening to the piped low-wind song

Like the last whine of the Banshee’s call

Fading into solitariness.

Just you, old man, weathered like an ancient map,

Just you and your horse of pungent flanks,

Treading the brown-clod fields,

Against the wind,

Turning the sod on a rain-mist day.

The clank and slice of a plough

Spitting out soil as you strain a straight line,

Cutting down foes, imaginary, real.

One slash for the great Cuchulainn

Who coveted the Maeve’s white bull,

One cleave for the vengeance of Mrs. B.’s tongue,

One tear for the hymen of McCusker’s bride,

Treading the brown-clod fields,

Unfurling the virgin soil.

Just you and your horse, old man,

Just you and the day and the thoughts of it all.

DWINA ***

I am gathering my early collections of poetry, prose, short stories and dialogues together about growing up in this magical and fierce land.