"A Lamentation" (A Poem)

The details of James Clarence Mangan’s poem “A Lamentation for Sir Maurice Fitzgerald” are contestable: Maurice Fitzgerald was killed in the battle of Rathmines in 1649, not Flanders in 1642 (Edmund Fitzgerald, who was a captain in the Irish army, was killed in battle in 1642).[1] Likewise, the poem, which Mangan claims is an Irish ballad translated from Irish, is actually an imitation translated from German.[2] Despite its inaccuracies, Mangan’s work offers a bevy of haunting imagery, from phantom women to wind-swept screams in the night.

There was lifted up one voice of woe,
One lament of more than mortal grief,
Through the wide South to and fro,
For a fallen Chief.
In the dead of night that cry thrilled through me,
I looked out upon the midnight air?
My own soul was all as gloomy,
As I knelt in prayer.

O’er Loch Gur, that night, once – twice-yea, thrice –
Passed a wail of anguish for the Brave
That half curled into ice
Its moon-mirroring wave.
Then uprose a many-toned wild hymn in
Choral swell from Ogra’s dark ravine,
And Mogeely’s Phantom Women
Mourned the Geraldine!

Far on Carah Mona’s emerald plains
Shrieks and sighs were blended many hours,
And Fermoy in fitful strains
Answered from her towers.
Youghal, Keenalmeaky, Eemokilly,
Mourned in concert, and their piercing keen
Woke wondering life the stilly
Glens of Inchiqueen.

From Loughmoe to yellow Dunanore
There was fear; the traders of Tralee
Gathered up their golden store,
And prepared to flee;
For, in ship and hall from night till morning,
Showed the first faint beamings of the sun,
All the foreigners heard the warning
Of the Dreaded One!

“This,” they spake, “portendeth death to us,
If we fly not swiftly from our fate!
Self-conceited idiots! thus
Ravingly to prate!
Not for base-born higgling Saxon trucksters
Ring laments like those by shore and sea!
Not for churls with souls like hucksters
Waileth our Banshee!

For the high Milesian race alone
Ever flows the music of her woe!
For slain heir to bygone throne,
And for Chief laid low!
Hark! ... Again, methinks, I hear her weeping
Yonder! is she near me now, as then?
Or was but the night-wind sweeping
Down the hollow glen?[3]

Works Referenced

Duffy, Charles Gavan. The Ballad Poetry of Ireland. 5th ed. Dublin: James Duffy, 1845.

Hickson, Mary Agnes. Selections from Old Kerry Records, Historical and Genealogical with Introductory Memoir, Notes, and Appendix. London: Watson and Hazell, 1872.

Mangan, James Clarence. “A Lamentation for Sir Maurice Fitzgerald.” Poems of James Clarence Mangan. Ed. D.J. O’Donoghue. Dublin: M.H. Gill and Son, 1910. 11-13.
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[1] Hickson, 295.
[2] Duffy, 138.
[3] Mangan, 11-13.