The Irish Cycle: 3: Maureen Rua

[dedalus]

Poem 3 of the Irish Cycle
Ardnasilla, 1893

Maureen Rua

Them lands beyond
belong to strangers now
says Maureen Rua
bringing the teapot
here to the table,
the large pot in her
withered shaking hands,
and herself getting on
to a rare old age
with her gentle husband gone,
but with the scraps
of her wild red hair
still showing, with her eyes
undimmed: eyes that had made her
the belle of five counties
back in the days
when the world was young.

Maureen Rua!
Some farmer's sons
sailed close to self-destruction
for the love of you,
restored to their senses
through many a blow
from the sticks of their fathers,
through many a hard sermon
from the parish priest.
All the young men fell away
like worm-eaten apples
dropping down from an unsound tree
and one by one by one
settled for the consoling
smiles and enticements
of local young colleens.

There was the land
and she with no brothers.
It was the land, they said,
but it was never just the land.
It was yourself, Maureen Rua,
and the laughing way
ye would mock them,
antagonise and tantalise them,
showing the bright-eyed feminine scorn
of a woman of ancient and better times
for the prancing, coin-drunk, uncertain meneen
who had lost the run of themselves
and forgotten how to be men.

You, it was, that had them bedazzled,
you, with your sparkling eyes,
your soft full figure,
your tumbling, tangling
wild red hair.

O Maureen Rua!

My heart would have gone out to you
with the song of the lark
in the clear morning air,
and in the bee-buzzing afternoon
my same heart would stumble,
then lazily linger
with sweet honey thoughts,
and in the evening, yes,
would have sung along, softly,
with shy nightingales.

All for you, Maureen Rua.

You are old now, a widow,
saddened, past innocence,
awaiting final repose;
You are, my dear, the finest still
among the Mna na hEireann*,
champing on false teeth
and not so sure of your gamy legs,
as with uncertain steps
you bring the teapot
here, this minute, to the table.

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Maureen Rua, or Mary of the Red Hair (Ruaidh), is a composite of several well-known beauties who lived on into the 1920s and 30s, women who had been much celebrated in story and song among country people in the West of Ireland during the latter part of the 19th century.

* MuNAH na HAY-rinn - (Gaeilge/Irish) - the Women of Ireland. They do a lot of the running of the country these days from the President on down -- not altogether a bad thing.
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I think I will always come back to this one since it encapsulates a dimly remembered world which might have been that of my grandfather when he was a child ... a bit hard to explain.

[David]

Alerted to this by your last posting on Joe McInerney, Brendan - hadn't spotted it until now.

I say this with trepidation, but I'm getting loud echoes of The Quiet Man here. And if that isn't the biggest load of fake Oirishry there ever was, I don't know what is. (Of course, the simple answer is that I don't know what is, which is probably true, but I'd be surprised if it's a film that's in your Top 10. Odd Man Out, now - there's a film!)

She herself sounds very like the Maureen O'Hara character - very like Maureen O'Hara, in fact - after Big John's passed away.

You, it was, that had them bedazzled,
you, with your sparkling eyes,
your soft full figure,
your tumbling, tangling
wild red hair ... there's a bit of Mills and Boonery in there, surely? Or, more kindly, Wuthering Heights.

Also, with the way you describe her effect on the local young men, and how it was discouraged by their fathers and their priests, it comes as a bit of a shock to discover that she married at all. Something about the eventual lucky man might help.

Some nice bits, as ever, but it didn't hit me the same way your other Irish poems have. Maybe that's why you've not had so many responses. I don't know.

Finally, for a bit of cheek, as a non-Hibernian, I'm appending this - more for others than for yourself, of course.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6BjzYoe6Zs

I should say I'm really enjoying the whole series of your Irish poems - this one is the exception so far.

Cheers

David

[dedalus]

OK ... have to think about this. Running in neutral.

[Lia]

I had a sense of Ireland in the poem, Dedalus. I haven’t visited or know enough to criticise the actually content of the poem really. As language goes, I do feel that in places it might be too precious, for instance..

‘Maureen Rua!
Some farmer's sons
sailed close to self-destruction
for the love of you,’ .. and the area that David pointed out.

Maybe it just needs a bit more show rather than tell..? You mention ‘wild red hair’ a few times.. it could be pared down a little. Perhaps, rather than mainly showing this woman as an Irish beauty with red hair (which can be a bit cliché alone) you could show a bit more of her grit and strength of character.. which is a main reason why these women were celebrated. As a reader, I did want to know more about her than you have written so far. I don’t think it would take much to bring a bit more of her character into what you already have here.

I may be way off, so please ignore me if anything here doesn’t suit with what you’re trying to achieve. I’m intrigued about your other Irish poems now so I’m off to read them.

Lia
p.s. David, that Chieftains music is truly beautiful. Glad you put the link up.

[Minstrel]

'Them lands beyond
belong to strangers now'

for me was a hook Bren, and set a look forward from the past scene onward.

I enjoyed this poem regardless of its repetetive words and perhaps what could be seen as a sentimental sojourn in to the historic and uncelebrated beauty of strong women.

I would've married Maureen at the drop of a hat.

What I really enjoyed here was the reference to the weakness of men, and the breakdown therein.

'who had lost the run of themselves
and forgotten how to be men'

How fucking true.

Is it also true that women with red hair are bad tempered?

Problem I had with it was you painted quite a comical scene of her in her old age, which isn't a problem, but jarred to much with the previous sugar.

Minst.

[dedalus]

Thanks, Lia, for the comments. There may indeed have been more than a few 'precious' moments, or 'Quiet Man' moments starring Maureen O'Hara, as David refers to them -- I'd forgotten all about her, the very epitome of all forceful Irish redheads in the minds of cinema-goers everywhere!! (The film was a bomb in Ireland, but exploited ruthlessly to increase tourism in the poverty-stricken 1950s).

Maureen Rua was a composite in my mind of a number of country beauties renowned in song and story in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At the time of the poem she is old and decrepit and it was the contrast between her former ravishing beauty and her present decline that I wanted to emphasize: she had grown old as all former beauties grow old, but her spirit remained undimmed.

There is an indirect parallel to the personification of Ireland in a great deal of Irish literature -- including a famous play by Yeats, which he later worried may have 'sent out men to get shot' in the Easter Rising; you can rest easy, Mr. Yeats, I'd say most of the lads never heard of it! -- as Cathleen niHoulihan, portrayed either as a grieving old woman or as a young and beautiful girl. Minstrel comments on this contrast and finds it a little jarring, although he generally seems to like the poem a bit more than David and Lia (Thanks, Minst. -- next round's on me!).

In another connection, while working on this poem, I had recently replied to a very well-written piece by Wabznasm, entitled "Coda" :

It's all in the reading, isn't it? I thought the poem worked well as a warning about 'The Way of All Flesh' -- aging, decrepitude, the loss of sexual appeal. There's a story told of a great Edwardian beauty going to visit one of the King's first mistresses in Brighton and coming away in floods of tears because this former beauty, famous forty years ago, was now raddled and ugly and ancient, and the present-day belle knew that the same thing would happen to her. Yes, indeed. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.

The main problem in writing poems, I find, is trying to transfer what's in your head on to the page!!!!

Thanks, again, for the comments. I do appreciate criticism (believe it or not) because it helps me to see how others react to any given piece and makes me want to try a little harder the next time.

All the best,
Brendan