The Irish Language, Fundamental.

 

Weathered, the language

of North Atlantic gales and fleecing rain;

of bare granite, stunted thorns, tongue-red

roan-berries and rugged wild rose.

Of meadows, richly butter-cupped;

rickety fences, bed-end gates, stone walls

and their builders’ hands.

Of sodden bogs, the skies that douse them;

the hands that stacked the turf;

sparks rising into the sooty darkness,

nights by fire-sides,

the stories that kindled there.

Of the waters that plummet down mountainsides

then haul, barge-slow, silt through the midlands;

the hands that guided the tillers,

ploughs,

scattered the seed,

dragged needles through oceans of cloth,

harvested the carrageen and dulse

from freezing seashores.

The language of famine,

of jigs, reels and slow airs,

of high-fielding footballers, deft hurlers;

resistance to occupation;

devotion to saints or saints’ shadows;

myth and legend,

ghosts of ever-changing skies

and a restless earth.

Of flush green hedgerows,

their sudden stirrings and rustlings;

deep shadows, half-light and shade,

the known and unknown that exist together there.

Of orchards and dances,

factions and battles,

weddings and funerals;

the stitch and weave,

the words native to that soil, climate

and people;

the words that give name to it all.