Updated 14 Nov 2010
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Circuit of Ireland 1990
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Poems used around Ireland |
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.
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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."
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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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