ballyshannon, donegal, irish newspapers online, ireland, irish history, irish literature, irish famine
 
vindicator.ca - Linking Canada and Ireland vindicator.ca - Linking Canada and Ireland
  
 

Seamus Heaney's "Beacons at Bealtaine"

It is rare that a poet of such eminence as Seamus Heaney agrees to free global publication of one of his works. The poem below, commissioned by the Government of Ireland to celebrate the accession of ten new member states to the European Union at a ceremony in Dublin on Bealtaine, (May Day) 2004, is one exception to the general practice, hence its appearance in this e-zine.

Lest anyone needs reminding, Seamus Heaney is Ireland's foremost living poet. He was born "near hand" Derry in 1939, and his gifted talent won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.

In a prefatory note Heaney explains the significance of Beltaine from earliest times.

"In the Celtic calendar that once regulated the seasons in many parts of Europe, May Day, known in Irish as Bealtaine, was the feast of bright fire, the first of summer, one of the four great quarter days of the year.

The early Irish Leabhar Gabhála (The Book of Invasions), tells us that the first magical inhabitants of the country, the Tuatha Dé Danaan, arrived on the feast of Bealtaine, and a ninth century text indicates that on the same day the druids drove flocks out to pasture between two bonfires.

So there is something auspicious about the fact that a new flocking together of the old European nations happens on this day of mythic arrival in Ireland; and it is even more auspicious that we celebrate it in a park named after the mythic bird that represents the possibility of ongoing renewal.

But there are those who say that the name Phoenix Park is derived from the Irish words, fionn uisce, meaning "clear water" and that coincidence of language gave me the idea for this poem.

It's what the poet Horace might have called a carmen sæculare, a poem to salute and celebrate an historic turn in the sæculum, the age."

Beacons at Bealtaine
Phoenix Park, May Day, 2004

Uisce: water. And fionn: the water's clear.
But dip and find this Gaelic water Greek:
A phoenix flames upon fionn uisce here.

Strangers were barbaroi to the Greek ear.
Now let the heirs of all who could not speak
The language, whose ba-babbling was unclear,

Come with their gift of tongues past each frontier
And find the answering voices that they seek
As fionn and uisce answer phoenix here.

The May Day hills were burning, far and near,
When our land's first footers beached boats in the creek
In uisce, fionn, strange words that soon grew clear;

So on a day when newcomers appear
Let it be a homecoming and let us speak
The unstrange word, as it behoves us here,

Move lips, move minds and make new meanings flare
Like ancient beacons signalling, peak to peak,
From middle sea to north sea, shining clear
As phoenix flame upon fionn uisce here.


The following is a translation of the poem into Irish by Gabriel Rosenstock.

Maoláin na Bealtaine
Páirc an Fhionnuisce, Lá Bealtaine, 2004

Uisce agus fionn. Tá an t-uisce glé.
Ach tum ann is gheobhair Gréagach é:
Féinics ar bharr lasrach ar fhionnuisce é.

Barbarach a thug an Gréagach ar an stróinséir.
Tagadh sliocht na mbarbarach sin go léir
Lena dteangacha a bhí, tráth, doiléir,

Tagaigí anois as gach aon limistéir
Chun macalla a phiocadh as an spéir -
Féinics is fionnuisce - go réidh.

Bhí maoláin ar lasadh i bhfad is i gcéin
Nuair a nocht na chéad bháid as farraige mhéith
Uisce agus fionn go stadach i mbarr a mbéil.

Éirímis inár seasamh, a chlann, de léim
Gach éinne is a theanga nach tafann í ná méil
Chun bríonna nua a chur i gcéill

Beola a bhogadh, is gan stad dár réim
Ach sinn inár maoláin, ó ré go ré,
Ag lonrú amach as broinn an aigéin
Is fionnuisce ann - is sinn fhéin.

(Deireann eagarthóir an e-zine seo, "Molaim an file, molaim an dán, agus molaim an aistrightheóir.")

--30--


Home | About | Canadian Vindicator | Literature | Gallery | History