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

The Stolen Child

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 scare 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,
For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand.


By William Butler Yeats



I love that poem, passionately. I've always been a great lover of Irish mythology, music, culture and language. I have been a traditional Irish musician, I've sung ballads and played reels, I've caressed the skin of my bodhrán with with a soft Cipín to most most haunting of tunes. The heroes of my childhood were not Jack Charlton, Maradona, Pele, or Ray Houghton, the giants I adored and sought to emulate were Cúchulain, Fionn, Lúgh, Fergus, the heroes of Irish mythology. How many times I lived through the Táin in my imagination. I hunted with the Red Branch Knights, and raced through the forests with the Fianna ne'er a twig cracking under foot.

I have a great CD at home of the Waterboys, it's the Fisherman Blues album, and I tended to listen mostly to only a handful of songs on it, until recently in a friends house (Thanks Sibylle) I heard the last track played in a candle lit room, The Stolen Child. The music is perfect, the voice narrating the poem through it is so Irish, so nostalgic and mystic, I believe it is the voice of the Traditional Irish Singer Tomas McKeown, I may be wrong. If you have never heard that song, buy it, go to Itunes or wherever and get a copy. Sit in a darkened room, preferably dimly lit by a single small candle or just the flames dancing in the hearth.... and play that song.. It is haunting, and the best rendition of Yeats works I have yet to hear.

The poem itself is reminiscent of a part of Ireland that many Irish are leaving behind, in a countries hunger for money, progress and opportunity it has forgotten something, something that has been a part or our culture, our history for millenia. The mystic, the magic and wonder, the Sidhe, the Good People, the tales and legends that built a proud people into a proud nation. Oh I know, that these tales and stories, these songs and poems aren't exactly the stuff of biology class, you won't learn of them in any factual subject in schools now. Do they exist? Did they ever? Well, who knows. I'd like to believe they do, I think it would make the world a more wonderful place to live in, sometimes I think the world could do with a little less science and a little more magic.


The Hosting Of The Sidhe


The host is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare;
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving our eyes are agleam,
Our arms are waving our lips are apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.
The host is rushing 'twixt night and day,
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away.

By William Butler Yeats


Slán Leat,

Concúbhair