Rambling ...

I'm an Irish Girl, A Dubliner, with the 'Gift of the Gab' ... I like to talk & to tell you things. In Celtic times news, views and comment were carried from place to place by wandering Seanachaí ~ Storytellers ~ who relied on their host's hospitality and appreciation. I will need that from you too, as I venture to share Politics, Poetry, Laughter, Love, Life & everything in-between ... from Bog to Blog!!


Sunday, November 14, 2010

The Stolen Child !!


Sunday Morning.  Sweet Images.  Soothing Sounds.  Softly flows the day away.  So, a Story for Sunday.  In Seanachaí Verse .....

The picture is of Glencar Waterfall, County Leitrim, Ireland.  It provided the inspiration for Irish Poet William Butler Yeats  (Ireland's Poet Laureate) to pen "The Stolen Child",  which was published in 1889 in 'The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems'.  This poem is based on Irish legend and concerns faeries beguiling a child to come away with them. Yeats had a great interest in Pagan Irish legend about Faeries resulting in his publication of 'Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry' in 1888 and 'Fairy Folk Tales of Ireland' in 1892. The places mentioned in the poem are in Leitrim and Sligo where Yeats spent much of his childhood. 

The poem reflects the early influence of Romantic literature and Pre-Raphaelite Verse & is considered to be one of Yeats' more notable early poems.


Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand.
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.


Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.


Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed ~
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest
For he comes the human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
From a world more full of weeping than he can understand


Even as a 'wee one' I understood that the world was full of Weeping & Woe & I spent my early childhood wanting to be a stolen child …. A Foundling Found by the Fairies!!

I Always believed in Magic .... still do!   Maybe that's my Misanthrope .....

Anyways, enjoy the Pictures below .... they are all of Ireland.  I miss the Soft Rains of Sunday Morning at home.  (I am more than a year away now!)  And, the Music is provided by Galway band, The Waterboys, Irish Lads!!!


4 comments:

  1. "While the world is full of troubles
    And anxious in its sleep.
    Come away, O human child!"

    For those of you who actually know me will understand implicitly why I posted this.

    For those who don't ... my sleep pattern has been affected of late. And by the light of the half moon I recited this in the 'wee' hours as I awaited the first Slivers of Silvery Dawn.

    I remembered my Childhood, when my greatest desire was to be taken, & I remembered that someone I thought important once said to me "I have half a Moon, do you have the other half??". They were half a world away at the time ..... & I miss Ireland on Sunday Morning!

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  2. Oh! & just to add .... that All Drowned Children are considered 'Stolen' in Irish folklore. This poem just reiterates such Irish Legendary tales as The Children of Lir!!

    I wonder how many actually considered going "to the waters" as I did???

    Just a thought ... Enjoy the Music.

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  3. Magical and delightful are definitely 2 words that come to mind!

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  4. Oh! Pana what a perfect poem & a beautiful tale to boot. I've always loved Yeats & the Irish Poets ^ Pre-Rapehlite verse & art, just like yourself. However, your childhood frightens me if the greatest desire you had was to 'drown' & become part of the Kingdom of the faeries. Where was your happiness & delight in the things of childhood??

    I know the world has not been kind to you but do not be so despairing .... gothic can be good & is not always 'Poe etic' ~ Pun intended!!

    Pursue that Romance ... is that what made you Roam halfway accross the world????

    He sounds so much like the suffering & sentitive type that draws gothic girls.

    A picture for the next blog perhaps ??????

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