Visiting Raftery the Poet in the Cemetery of the Poets [Terence Winch]

 

                      Bronze statue by Sally McKenna of the poet Antoine Ó Raifteirí, located in Kiltimagh, County  Mayo 

Many decades ago, my brother Jesse took a beginners’ course in the Irish language. Out of that experience, he memorized a short, beautiful poem by Anthony Raftery, usually called “Mise Raifteirí.” On a visit to Ireland in October of 2016, he suggested that we visit Raftery’s grave, which turns out to be in the vicinity of the town of Loughrea, in county Galway, the same area where our mother was from. So, with our cousin Martin Flynn and our good friend Dominick Murray, we took the short ride from the Flynn household in Cahercrea to the Reilig na Bhfilí (Cemetery of the Poets) in Killeeneen where Raftery is buried.

                               Terence Winch at the poets' cemetery where Raftery is buried in Galway. Oct 2016

As Wikipedia informs us, Raftery (30 March 1779–25 December 1835), who composed in Irish, is often called the last of the wandering bards. He lived almost exactly a century later than the great Turlough O Carolan, the itinerant harper who composed hundreds of gorgeous musical pieces that are still widely played today, just as Raftery's poems, which were never written down in his lifetime, are taught today in Irish schools. Raftery also played the fiddle, and I have a special affection for musician-poets. Both men were blind, a misfortune that had no apparent negative effect on their creative abilities.

I thought I had taken a photo of the signage regarding the other poets buried in the Reilig na Bhfilí, but if I did I can’t find it. One Internet source gives their names as Marcus and Peatsaí Callahan. I believe the signage stated that they were brothers and both rivals of Raftery. I don’t know if any of their poems are extant. In any case, Raftery is without question the top dog in this beautiful, serene little graveyard.

There we were in this place to which the paths of glory but lead, caught up in its eerie, decaying beauty, when my cousin Martin gathers us to show us something. He holds up a white envelope sealed in a plastic cover that he found on the ground. “Someone has left me a check!” he jokes. We all laugh. We debate the propriety of opening this mystery letter, but really there is no other choice but to do so. This place is nearly abandoned, with no office or staff or any other visitors. So Martin opens the envelope. Inside is a card showing a photo of children playing with a homemade little plane, with a real plane in the background, ca. 1940, and a caption reading, “YOU WILL NOT DO INCREDIBLE THINGS WITHOUT AN INCREDIBLE DREAM.” There’s also an indecipherable message in longhand. But here’s the kicker: folded in the card is a €20 bill. Money, after all—graveyard money! We spent it all on caffeine and cake in a coffee shop in Galway City. Thank you, Mr. Raftery.

                                                                          Martin Flynn

Here is his poem, with an English translation.

Mise Raifteirí, an file,

lán dóchais is grá

le súile gan solas,

le ciúineas gan crá

Ag dul siar ar m'aistear,

le solas mo chroí

Fann agus tuirseach,

go deireadh mo shlí

Feach anois mé

is mo chúl le balla,

Ag seinm ceoil

do phocaí folamh.

___________________

I am Raftery, the poet,

full of hope and love

With eyes without light,

silence without torment.

Going back on my journey,

with the light of my heart

Weak and tired,

until the end of my way.

Look at me now

my back to the wall,

playing music

to empty pockets.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

As seems only right, Raftery's great little poem forms the basis for this song, associated with the noted Irish singer Eleanor Shanley. I'm not sure if she composed the song, but you can watch it here:

_________________________________________________________________________________

This post first appeared on 13 February 2018 on the Best American Poetry blog. It had been edited and updated here.

Selected comments from the original post in 2018:

Such a nice story and tribute to the Raifteiri. It resonated because years ago Sharon and I visited the grave of --guess who -- Turlough O'Carolan in County Roscommon. Your description of Raftery's cemetery could equally apply to O'Carolan's-- a very serene, peaceful, beautiful little graveyard with no one else around. As we were leaving, we noticed a structure buried under years of vegetation. It was the ruins of an old stone Victorian teahouse, and wandering through it we could almost hear the whispers of the ladies sipping tea 150 years ago. Your story brought back that memory, so thanks!!
    Peter Kissel | February 13, 2018 at 05:54 PM

Lovely
    Tina | February 13, 2018 at 05:56 PM

There's also his famous poem for this time of the year (tráthúil don am seo den bhliain):

“Anois teacht an Earraigh

beidh an lá dúl chun shíneadh,

Is tar eis na féil Bríde

ardóigh mé mo sheol.

Go Coillte Mach rachad

ní stopfaidh me choíche

Go seasfaidh mé síos

i lár Chondae Mhaigh Eo."

Now with spring coming

The days will be lengthening

And after St. Bridget's Day' (Feb 1)

My sail I will raise

And to Kiltemagh I will go,

I won't ever stop

Till I plant my feet

In the middle of Mayo.

Another piece by him is the slow air lament Anach Cuan (usually translated as Annaghdown) lamenting the drowning death in 1828 of a boatload of people at Anach Cuan (cuan being a bay). We learned these three pieces by heart at school.
    Noel Fahey | February 13, 2018 at 06:13 PM

Thank you for this story, Terence. My kids are fond of complaining about being dragged around to old cemeteries by their grandmother. I've never understood the appeal of going to see Chopin's grave, or Jim Morrison's, at that big cemetery in Paris. But I can see the tug of ancient memory in this story, that the legend of the bards continues into our own time, that you would want to acknowledge and honor a man like Raftery.
    HB | February 13, 2018 at 06:24 PM

YOU WILL NOT DO INCREDIBLE THINGS WITHOUT AN INCREDIBLE DREAM. tpw for precinct alderman 2018!
    tom clark | February 13, 2018 at 06:51 PM

Thanks, Noel. I do know those poems. We are fortunate that his audience remembered his work well enough for these poems to have survived. (One item I forgot to mention in the post: Gabriel Byrne owns [or owned] a little house right behind this cemetery.)    Terence Winch | February 13, 2018 at 07:51 PM

ah, brilliant post terence, thank you eternally for sharing your memories and scholarship about our people...
    michael lally | February 13, 2018 at 11:40 PM

Great story Terence. Now, about the money...three Our Fathers & three Hail Marys. Go in peace.
    Michael O’Keefe | February 14, 2018 at 12:35 AM

I love this Terence. What an experience. The experience sings! May the grass of graves grow over lives of consequence that then whisper past glories into who each of us are.
    Tom Davis | February 14, 2018 at 08:03 AM

A Thraolaigh, A Chara: Greetings from the cold north. I loved your piece about the poet, Antoine Ó Raifteiri (Raftery). In fact, his "neighbour," Peatsaí Ó Callanáin (Patsy Callanan) was one of Ireland's best known Great Famine poets/songwriters, (in the Irish language, of course). His song: Na Fataí Bána --- The White Potatoes, is still sung today, and was recorded by the sean nós singer, Liam Ó Maonlaí. I wrote about Ó Callanáin in 1999 for a collection on the Great Irish Famine. Hope you enjoy it:

http://bit.ly/2sxVss8

And here is a link to Ó Maonlaí's version of the song - from episode one of "The Irish in America: Long Journey Home: The Great Famine," (it starts at marker: 49.52 on the film clip)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xONqZXzQ1yY

Ádh Mór,

Gearóid. Professor Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin, MA, HDE, DUEF, MBA, Ph.D.

Author, Flowing Tides–History and Memory in an Irish Soundscape (2016, Oxford University Press)

La Chaire Johnson en études canado-irlandaises au Québec

Johnson Chair in Quebec and Canadian Irish Studies

School of Irish Studies, Concordia University
    Gearoid OhAllmhurain | February 14, 2018 at 04:48 PM

Gearóid---Thanks so much for this great addition to the post. I kind of suspected you would be able to flesh out the story for us all. I am looking forward to reading your piece on Ó Callanáin and watching the video.
    Terence Winch | February 14, 2018 at 04:58 PM

The musicality of your prose always delights, Terence, and I adore the inscription that serendipity offered you via the gravesite envelope. Never enough examples of the magic that we open to by embarking on a journey.
    Rachel E. Diken | February 14, 2018 at 05:10 PM

Thanks, Rachel. I didn't plan it this way, but on my last trip to Ireland I wound up visiting 8 or 9 graveyards, each one distinct and beautiful in its own way---from Glasnevin in Dublin, where about one million of the departed reside, to Raftery's enchanted final resting place.
    Terence Winch | February 14, 2018 at 09:02 PM

Terence, your piece is very good, eliciting a lot of interesting commentary. The great comic singer, Tadhg Mac Dhonnaagáin, has written a biography (in Irish) about Raftery appropriately titled “Mise Raifterai.” In it he quotes from another book, Amhráin Mhuighe Seola (1923), about the importance of Raftery in Connacht:

“The songs most popular in Connacht are those of the poet Raftery, who died in 1825. It is really wonderful how this poor blind fiddler poet has set all Connacht singing for the past hundred years, and is likely to continue so doing as long as the language lasts.”

BTW, Maigh Seola is an ancient territory between Loughrea and Headford in Co Galway bringing us back to the land of your mother. The book referred to means The Songs of Maigh Seola (and, outside of the lyrics of the songs, is in English).
    Noel Fahey | February 15, 2018 at 01:04 AM

Wonderful post! I've always loved the famous Rafferty poem in English translation, but never seen a picture of him. Great portrait and great picture of you at his grave. The way, where is the cemetery of poets in USA?
    Chris Mason | February 15, 2018 at 05:32 PM

A little off topic, but I remember a Dublin cab driver

spending much of the ride decrying the “terrible state”

of the grave site of John Millington Synge in

Mount Jerome’s Cemetery, Harold’s Cross.

An indication that the Irish take their writers quite

seriously.
    Billy Collins | February 17, 2018 at 09:51 AM

Thanks, Billy. You're absolutely right---it's a bit unkempt, but at least there is a "Cemetery of the Poets" in Ireland. On the other hand, it seems that Yeats's very well-tended grave in Sligo is home to some random bones from France.
    Terence Winch | February 17, 2018 at 11:46 AM

This comment comes from Dublin-born poet Trevor Joyce: "I spent quite a few summers as a kid just about two miles back the road towards Craughwell, and I often passed that little graveyard, but I had no interest in poetry then. These days, every time I drive to or from Galway, I try to visit there, and also stop where there's a good view of Rahasane Turlough. I recall once hearing Michael Hartnett quoting a translation of the last verse of that poem: Here I stand / With my arse to the wall / Singing songs / For sweet fuck all."
    Terence Winch | February 18, 2018 at 04:21 PM

What a charmed piece this is, full of what I didn't know, and the translation of the poem I'm thinking might be yours! I didn't know Raftery's story and am glad to learn about him and have a copy of the song that I might try to imitate in hopes it's genius rubs off. Wonderful writing, good-spirited, high up. Thank you Terence for sending this story to me. Nice photos--you blend right in! Best, Don
    Donald Berger | February 18, 2018 at 08:58 PM

Let me echo the hosannas here for this superb recent post by you, Terence. You realize, of course, that a full memoir containing an expansion of this delightful post is nipping at your cemetery-turfed heels. I also love the fact--"alternative" perhaps?--of an apparent Raftery kerfuffle at the center of this Irish Times article I encountered:

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/eponymous-poem-not-penned-by-raftery-1.690010

Any Irish poet capable of such stirrings about provenance has to be regarded as someone to raise a pint to. Raffish Raftery strikes again from the grave!

Again, this is another great post in a long line of them, Terence. Keep 'em coming.
    Dr. Earle Hitchner | February 19, 2018 at 04:17 PM

Thanks, Earle. I have become a daily communicant of TG4, so I will look for this show in their archives. It's an intriguing theory on the face of it, but I will stay skeptical for now. I do, however, very much appreciate your adding to the information and discussion here, which is always something I shoot for with these posts.
    Terence Winch | February 19, 2018 at 05:58 PM

Great post. Love the poem and the song inspired by the poem.
    Eileen | February 22, 2018 at 10:23 AM

Well, thank you, mo dheirfiúr. You would have had fun had you been with us.
    Terence Winch | February 22, 2018 at 01:55 PM

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