Updated 14 Nov 2010

Circuit of Ireland 1990

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Poems used around Ireland

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This poem kept going round my head while cycling in the Wicklow mountains. I first heard it in the 1967 film "Eldorado" with John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and James Caan playing the character Alan "Mississippi" Bourdillon Traherne, who unexpectedly comes out with this vivid poem by Edgar Allen Poe.

       El Dorado 
    
    Gaily bedight,
    A gallant knight
    In sunshine and in shadow,
    Journeyed long,
    Singing a song,
    In search of El Dorado.
    
    But he grew old
    This knight so bold
    And o'er his heart a shadow
    Fell when he found
    No spot of ground
    That looked like El Dorado.
    
    And as his strength
    Failed him at length,
    He spied a pilgrim shadow
    "Shadow," said he,
    "Where can it be
    This place called El Dorado?"
    
    "Over the Mountains
    Of the Moon,
    Through the Valley of the Shadow,   
    Ride, boldly ride,"
    The shade replied
    "If you seek El Dorado."
    

In Connemara, south of Maam Cross, cycling across the wilderness was so lonely that I kept imagining someone or something was behind me all the time that I couldn't see, and this stanza from Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" kept creeping into my mind!

       from Rime of the Ancient Mariner 
    
    Like one, that on a lonesome road
    Doth walk in fear and dread,
    And having once turned round walks on,
    And turns no more his head;
    Because he knows, a frightful fiend
    Doth close behind him tread.
    
    

I was taught this poem by Mildred O'Brian at St Mary's infant school in Worksop in 1945 when I was only 5. Its by William Allingham, and when I go to Ballyshannon in Donegal, I find his grave and repeat all the poem in his respect. The first time I went, in 1961, I noticed a mountain on the map that appears in the poem - Slieveleague - and so discovered one of the great sights of Ireland.

       THE FAIRIES 
    
        Up the airy mountain,
        Down the rushy glen,
        We daren't go a-hunting
        For fear of little men;
        Wee folk, good folk,
        Trooping all together;
        Green jacket, red cap,
        And white owl's feather!
        Down along the rocky shore
        Some make their home,
        They live on crispy pancakes
        Of yellow tide-foam;
        Some in the reeds
        Of the black mountain lake,
        With frogs for their watch-dogs,
        All night awake.
    
        High on the hill-top
        The old King sits;
        He is now so old and gray
        He's nigh lost his wits.
        With a bridge of white mist
        Columbkill he crosses,
        On his stately journeys
        From Slieveleague to Rosses;
        Or going up with music
        On cold starry nights,
        To sup with the Queen
        Of the gay Northern Lights.
    
        They stole little Bridget
        For seven years long;
        When she came down again
        Her friends were all gone.
        They took her lightly back,
        Between the night and morrow,
        They thought that she was fast asleep,
        But she was dead with sorrow.
        They have kept her ever since
        Deep within the lake,
        On a bed of flag-leaves,
        Watching till she wake.
    
        By the craggy hill-side,
        Through the mosses bare,
        They have planted thorn-trees
        For pleasure here and there.
        Is any man so daring
        As dig them up in spite,
        He shall find their sharpest thorns
        In his bed at night.
    
        Up the airy mountain,
        Down the rushy glen,
        We daren't go a-hunting
        For fear of little men;
        Wee folk, good folk,
        Trooping all together;
        Green jacket, red cap,
        And white owl's feather!
    

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