Fáilte don Éan or Welcome to the Bird by Séamus Dall Mac Cuarta (1650 – 1733)

I heard the first Cuckoo call this morning, 21st April 2013, echoing across the bogs and lakes at Poll na gCloch, near Barna, in west Galway. Around here the arrival of the Cuckoo and his signature call, is the definite sign of Spring, and although a few weeks late, it is surely better late than never.

Hearing his two note carillon this morning, brought to my mind the three-room national or primary school I attended in Duniry, near to the Sliabh Aughty mountains, between Loughrea and Woodford, in South Galway, where my dad was headmaster. He was a tough task-master, as befitted his time, a proponent of corporal punishment, no nonsense teaching and strict rules, but we all learned and did ok and above all he did instill in me a love of poetry, both in English and Irish. The cuckoo call reminded me of the wonderful poem by Seamus Dall MacCuarta who penned this about 400 years ago in his native Irish, Gaeilge or Gaelic language.

This bitter-sweet tribute to the cuckoo was written by Ulster poet, Séamus Dall Mac Cuarta (1650 – 1733). He was blind, a victim of smallpox or one of the many other debilitating diseases that took more children back then than were spared. His voice echoes like the cuckoo's call across the ages, the easy cadence of his lines and the wonderfully poignant words, well only a blind man could see the beauty of the arrival of spring in this way!

Despite losing his sight at an early age Seamus Dall Mac Cuarta lived to achieve an enduring reputation as one of the masters of poetry in Irish. Don't be put off by the Irish version, the language and words are easy to understand and pronounce. Go on, give it a go, try reading it aloud in Irish first, don't be embarrassed  don't worry about your accent, or pronunciation. Say the poem, hear your voice echo the words of a long-forgotten poet, in a magical, mysterious, still living language, the language of the Celts.

Here is his lovely poem, first in Irish, and then followed by a less-rich version in English. Enjoy!

Fáilte don Éan (Welcome to the bird)

Fáilte don éan is binne ar chraoibh
Labhras ar caoin na dtor le gréin;
Domsa is fada tuirse an tsaoil
Nach bhfeiceann í le teacht an fhéir.

Cluinim, cé nach bhfeicim a gné,
Seinnm an éan darb ainm cuach;
Amharc uirthi i mbarra géag
Mo thuirse ghéar nach mise fuair.

Gach neach dá bhfeiceann cruth an éin,
Amharc Éireann deas is tuaidh,
Blátha na dtulca ar gach taoibh,
Dóibh is aoibhinn bheith dá lua.

An tAmhrán
Mo thuirse nach bhfuaireas bua ar m’amharc d’fháil
Go bhfeicim ar uaigneas uaisle an duilliúir ag fás!
Cuid de mo ghruaim – ní ghluaisim chun cruinnithe le cách
Ar amharc na gcuach ar bhruach na coille go sámh.


Welcome to the Bird

Welcome to the bird, the sweetest in the trees
Who sings the beauty of the shrubs to the sun;
For so long a time I’ve been tired of life
For I cannot see her when the grass is new.

I can hear it, though I cannot see her,
The chant of the bird they call cuckoo;
To look on her in the branches above
‘Tis my bitter grief that I don’t have that gift.

Each one may behold the charm of the bird,
For all Ireland is gazing, north and south,
With all of the flowers on the hills around,
And everyone can speak of such things with delight.

Refrain
My sorrow that I did not receive the gift of sight
So that in my loneliness I could watch the beauty of the leaves as they grow!
Part of my sadness – I’m not along with all those people
As they go at their leisure to watch the cuckoos at the forest’s rim.

Other Cuckoo Poems
Of course many other poets have written about the cuckoo, William Wordsworth among them.

'O blithe new-comer! I have heard,

I hear thee and rejoice:

O cuckoo shall I call thee Bird,

Or but a wandering Voice?

The same whom in my school-boy days

I listen'd to; that cry

Which made me look a thousand ways

In bush, and tree, and sky.

O bless'd Bird! the earth we pace

Again appears to be,

An unsubstantial, fairy place,

That is fit home for Thee!

The Cuckoo; 

The cuckoo is an amazing bird really, with an extraordinary life-cycle. The Cuckoo over-winters in Africa and migrates here and to other northern European countries to mate, in April. 

The cuckoo is one of almost 50 'brood parasite' birds in the world. The male Cuckoo does all the calling, from dawn to dusk, attracting a female mate and also spotting suitable nests for his young. The female cuckoo lays her eggs, not in her own nest, but in that of specific smaller birds. She waits 'til the hen leaves the nest to feed and quick as a flash, the female cuckoo lays one egg in the vacated nest in less than 30 seconds and flies away, taking with her one of the other bird's eggs, before the smaller bird returns. While birds do count their eggs, they do not differentiate among them. After hatching, the fledgling cuckoo baby proceeds to eat all round it and the other chicks (of the surrogate mother) die of starvation or trampling, or eviction.  The demanding young cuckoo chicks do this in order to have all the foster-parent's care and attention showered on themselves, the shameless usurpers.

The male cuckoo stops calling in late June and presumably he and she return to Africa. The young birds follow suit later in the year, after they have fully grown (they look like a small hawk) usually in September, though how they know where to fly to, is anyone's guess.

The cuckoo's journey to Ireland has been summed up very briefly in the following lines of a children's skipping rhyme:-

'The cuckoo comes in April,

He sings his song in May;

He plays his tune in the middle of June,

And then he flies away.'

,First published by Brian Nolan on April 13, 2013

Thanks for visiting; 

First published by Brian Nolan on 13th April 2013. 

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Some of the people some of the time

Economist and Author David McWilliams gathered the best minds of the Irish Diaspora to Farmleigh from September 19-20 for an Irish Economic Crisis Conference.

‘‘a national effort to reach out to the most successful and influential members of Ireland’s diaspora to facilitate their work and contribution to economic recovery’’. 

'And what was the result of this wonderful meeting', you ask?

I  cannot re-seal a vacuum, nor not keep a shared secret...y'see, at Farmeligh, when all the land's intelligentsia had been gathered together from the three corners of the globe, by Royal Summons no less, the talks began and the hot air rose and rose and soon, even the building swelled with their importance and Farmleigh got bigger and bigger and was fit to bust with all the ideas and brainwaves bandying about, pushing at out the doors and windows, suffocating for the lack of air, and all the kings horses and all the kings men couldn't get out of the way fast enough when King Cowan took the microphone, for they knew it was going to blow, or so they thought, but alack, all he did was glare at them, for having sucked them dry of ideas and soaked up their limelight with one fell yawn, he knew, right there and then, that he could fool all of them all of the time, while standing on one leg, and so he said nought (of importance), burped a little, and smiled that knowing, wry little smile, and the whole house settled back down on their hinds and after they were foddered, they all left for the other, bigger house to speak in tongues and relate all they had seen and heard, but they were put under a spell by the wicked witch with the whip and they all forgot the wondrous ideas they'd been told and they fell asleep for forty days, and not long later a handsome prince came among them and kissed Queen Harney on both cheeks, breaking the spell and they awoke, stretched (the truth and our patience), and went off on their holidays for Christmas and they all lived happlily ever after!


The end.....!

Or somewhat loike that I guess! (unless you heard different)

Shattered Crystal, Broken Dreams

How sad is the ongoing Waterford Crystal debacle?

Mind you Waterford were never easy to deal with. It is no secret that they treated shops and outlets who sold their brands in Ireland and in the US, with complete disdain most of the time. Those same shops were selling container-loads of glass annually, one stem at a time, to ordinary moms and pops across America. It is disgraceful really how the shops were treated, but they put up with it because it was 'Waterford' and they were 'privileged' to be allowed to represent it.

World recession aside, how Waterford came to be in such dire finances is beyond me. Anyone there ever heard of dropping prices to compete and trade their way out of trouble? Or would that have undermined such a top-shelf international brand? We will never know now, will we? The boffins in Wall, NJ and the number crunchers in Waterford have co-incided tragically, blinkers on and choked the goose that laid the crystal egg.

I believe the demand for their traditional crystal brands is still there. Lismore is still the market leader. Waterford could have easily appealed to the customer goodwill out there, especially in the US if they had used their heads and their contacts, and maybe admitted that yes, the Irish and the Irish-American public loved them, and made them the success they were.

But no, Waterford had their head in the sand, pun intended, pretending that their success had nothing at all to do with the traditional Irish lace-curtain values, pride in heritage and patriotism. Those same Waterford collectors could yet save them if approached sympathetically.

Pity about this is that the brand is so iconic and so potentially viable in the long term, now to be just a memory, or a trophy traded by Clarion Capital, or some other such opportunistic trader. They got Wedgewood and Royal Doulton as a package with Waterford. thats like getting a latter day Louis Vuioton for a cent on the dollar. Fair play to them I suppose, for siezing the opportunity, but all those skilled folks out of a job, their pensions up in smoke and the shares, worthless. For Shame.

the Irish Government perhaps rightfully refused to be drawn in and offer a rescue package for the factory in Waterford. They saw the O'Reilly consortium plough millions in without arresting the decline...of the group. Waterford Crystal on its own is a different prospect. The skillsets that were built up over generations have now been dumped. yes the apprentice system and the mastercutter class cost a lot of money, but it worked and the product was just fine. Now within a ten-year, we will be bereft of these skills, left without any trace it had ever happened and no control over our patriotic brands, Lismore, Powerscourt, Kenmare, Kilbarry and Hibernia.

Sir Tony O'Reilly may indeed have been at the helm when Waterford's ship struck the reef and he has to regret that role and share the blame, but I would include management (unimpressive and unresponsive) and the unions (irresponsible) equally in the blame-game, for letting things get so out of hand. Pride comes before the fall they say. The Waterford Crystal Ball has well and truly fallen in Times Square, perhaps for the last time.