mercy! God of peace!
Make this mad confusion cease;
O’er the mental chaos move,
Through it speak the light of love.
Monstrous and unhappy sight!
Brothers’ blood will not unite;
Holy oil and holy water
Mix, and fill the world with slaughter.
Who is she with aspect wild?
The widowed mother with her child –
Child new stirring in the womb
Husband waiting for the tomb!
Angel of this sacred place,
Calm her soul and whisper peace –
Cord, or axe, or guillotine,
Make the sentence – not the sin.
Here we watch our brother’s sleep:
Watch with us, but do not weep:
Watch with us thro’ dead of night –
But expect the morning light.
To balance one Ulster voice against another, let us hear that great, gracious and highly related lady, Charlotte Elizabeth, singing the Pride of Londonderry on the banks of the Foyle. The politics of what now follows and of Drennan’s poem may seem to get a little bit entangled; but the words, even in our time, are worth remembering:
THE MAIDEN CITY
Where Foyle his swelling waters rolls northward to the main,
Here, Queen of Erin’s daughters, fair Derry fixed her reign:
A holy temple crowned her, and commerce graced her street,
A rampart wall was round her, the river at her feet;
And here she sate alone, boys, and looking from the hill,
Vowed the maiden on her throne, boys, would be a Maiden still.
From Antrim crossing over, in famous Eighty-Eight,
A plumed and belted lover came to the Ferry Gate:
She summoned to defend her, our sires – a beardless race –
Who shouted No Surrender! and slammed it in his face.
Then, in a quiet tone, boys, they told him ’twas their will
That the maiden on her throne, boys, should be a Maiden still.
Next, crushing all before him, a kingly wooer came
(The royal banner o’er him, blushed crimson deep for shame);
He showed the Pope’s commission, nor dreamed to be refused,
She pitied his condition, but begged to stand excused.
In short, the fact is known, boys, she chased him from the hill,
For the maiden on her throne, boys, would be a Maiden still.
On our brave sires descending, ’twas then the tempest broke,
Their peaceful dwellings rending, ’mid blood, and flame, and smoke,
That hallowed grave-yard yonder, swells with the slaughtered dead –
Oh brothers! pause and ponder, it was for us they bled;
And while their gift we own, boys – the fane that tops our hill,
Oh, the maiden on her throne, boys, shall be a Maiden still.
Nor wily tongue shall move us, nor tyrant arm affright,
We’ll look to One above us who ne’er forsook the right;
Who will, may crouch and tender the birthright of the free,
But, brothers, no surrender, no compromise for me!
We want no barrier stone, boys, no gates to guard the hill,
Yet the maiden on her throne, boys, shall be a Maiden still.
When in the early 1940s Thomas MacGreevy came back to Ireland from Paris, where he had been the friend of James Joyce and T.S. Eliot, et alibi aliorum sanctorum martyrum et confessorum, the first place I had the honour of seeing him was at a meeting of the English Literature Society of University College, Dublin, when everything, or nearly everything, happened in Earlsfort Terrace. (Somewhere else at that time there was, I have heard, a war going on.)
At that meeting of great minds Thomas MacGreevy was in the chair, I was in the mob. The matter under discussion was: ‘That Shakespeare was a nineteenth-century myth.’ The high moment in the proceedings came when another member of the mob made a precise, well-calculated speech describing his own personal relationship with William Shakespeare, and some of the things they had been up to together, in all sorts of places from Strabane to Stratfordupon-Avon. The speaker was Kevin, a brother of BrianO’Nolan: Kevin, a man of infinite jest, went on to be a Professor of Classics.
We worried for a bit as to how the learned and distinguished chairman might, or might not, accept such flippancy. But he
Make this mad confusion cease;
O’er the mental chaos move,
Through it speak the light of love.
Monstrous and unhappy sight!
Brothers’ blood will not unite;
Holy oil and holy water
Mix, and fill the world with slaughter.
Who is she with aspect wild?
The widowed mother with her child –
Child new stirring in the womb
Husband waiting for the tomb!
Angel of this sacred place,
Calm her soul and whisper peace –
Cord, or axe, or guillotine,
Make the sentence – not the sin.
Here we watch our brother’s sleep:
Watch with us, but do not weep:
Watch with us thro’ dead of night –
But expect the morning light.
To balance one Ulster voice against another, let us hear that great, gracious and highly related lady, Charlotte Elizabeth, singing the Pride of Londonderry on the banks of the Foyle. The politics of what now follows and of Drennan’s poem may seem to get a little bit entangled; but the words, even in our time, are worth remembering:
THE MAIDEN CITY
Where Foyle his swelling waters rolls northward to the main,
Here, Queen of Erin’s daughters, fair Derry fixed her reign:
A holy temple crowned her, and commerce graced her street,
A rampart wall was round her, the river at her feet;
And here she sate alone, boys, and looking from the hill,
Vowed the maiden on her throne, boys, would be a Maiden still.
From Antrim crossing over, in famous Eighty-Eight,
A plumed and belted lover came to the Ferry Gate:
She summoned to defend her, our sires – a beardless race –
Who shouted No Surrender! and slammed it in his face.
Then, in a quiet tone, boys, they told him ’twas their will
That the maiden on her throne, boys, should be a Maiden still.
Next, crushing all before him, a kingly wooer came
(The royal banner o’er him, blushed crimson deep for shame);
He showed the Pope’s commission, nor dreamed to be refused,
She pitied his condition, but begged to stand excused.
In short, the fact is known, boys, she chased him from the hill,
For the maiden on her throne, boys, would be a Maiden still.
On our brave sires descending, ’twas then the tempest broke,
Their peaceful dwellings rending, ’mid blood, and flame, and smoke,
That hallowed grave-yard yonder, swells with the slaughtered dead –
Oh brothers! pause and ponder, it was for us they bled;
And while their gift we own, boys – the fane that tops our hill,
Oh, the maiden on her throne, boys, shall be a Maiden still.
Nor wily tongue shall move us, nor tyrant arm affright,
We’ll look to One above us who ne’er forsook the right;
Who will, may crouch and tender the birthright of the free,
But, brothers, no surrender, no compromise for me!
We want no barrier stone, boys, no gates to guard the hill,
Yet the maiden on her throne, boys, shall be a Maiden still.
When in the early 1940s Thomas MacGreevy came back to Ireland from Paris, where he had been the friend of James Joyce and T.S. Eliot, et alibi aliorum sanctorum martyrum et confessorum, the first place I had the honour of seeing him was at a meeting of the English Literature Society of University College, Dublin, when everything, or nearly everything, happened in Earlsfort Terrace. (Somewhere else at that time there was, I have heard, a war going on.)
At that meeting of great minds Thomas MacGreevy was in the chair, I was in the mob. The matter under discussion was: ‘That Shakespeare was a nineteenth-century myth.’ The high moment in the proceedings came when another member of the mob made a precise, well-calculated speech describing his own personal relationship with William Shakespeare, and some of the things they had been up to together, in all sorts of places from Strabane to Stratfordupon-Avon. The speaker was Kevin, a brother of BrianO’Nolan: Kevin, a man of infinite jest, went on to be a Professor of Classics.
We worried for a bit as to how the learned and distinguished chairman might, or might not, accept such flippancy. But he
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