Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh: Eileanóir a Rún and how Cearbhall got the Gift (1)

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  • Teideal (Title): Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh: Eileanóir a Rún and how Cearbhall got the Gift (1).
  • Uimhir Chatalóige Ollscoil Washington (University of Washington Catalogue Number): 781512.
  • Uimhir Chnuasach Bhéaloideas Éireann (National Folklore of Ireland Number): none.
  • Uimhir Roud (Roud Number): none.
  • Uimhir Laws (Laws Number): none.
  • Uimhir Child (Child Number): none.
  • Cnuasach (Collection): Joe Heaney Collection, University of Washington, Seattle.
  • Teanga na Croímhíre (Core-Item Language): Irish.
  • Catagóir (Category): song.
  • Ainm an té a thug (Name of Informant): Joe Heaney.
  • Ainm an té a thóg (Name of Collector): Esther Warkov.
  • Dáta an taifeadta (Recording Date): 01/03/1978.
  • Suíomh an taifeadta (Recording Location): University of Washington, United States of America.
  • Ocáid an taifeadta (Recording Occasion): interview.
  • Daoine eile a bhí i láthair (Others present): unavailable.
  • Stádas chóipcheart an taifeadta (Recording copyright status): unavailable.

Now the song is called Eileanóir a Rún. The way that Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh… composed this, and put music to it himself. And the story attributed to Carolan1. I hope you don’t mind listening to this story. This is one of the finest stories ever behind a Gaelic song.

When Carolan was a young man, his job was to do odd jobs for anybody who’d give him work, and he was travelling around the country doing such things until he was about twenty years of age. And one day, he came to this farmer’s house, and the farmer told him he’d give him a job to watch four cows. The rest of the cattle was watched by somebody else. ‘And keep your eye,’ he said, ‘on the white cow, because there’s a legend about the white cow, that she’ll give birth to a calf, and who will ever taste the milk of the mother first will have the gift of all knowledge, master of all trades, and any woman who will ever look at him will fall twice in love with him at the one time.’

So anyway, Carolan took the cattle out grazing, and nothing happened for a couple of months. And this day, he was grazing the cattle beside a huge big rock — like that wall there. And the rock opened up. And out of the rock walked the most beautiful, the most ferocious bull that a man ever laid eyes on. And the bull didn’t look right or left — he walked up to the white cow. Now, whatever they said to one another, the bull and the white cow took off to one corner of the field, and they stayed there all day until the sun was setting. And, you know the myth about something out of the other world, like the banshee — they have to go back before the sun sets, and stay there ’til twelve o’clock at night. Well, anyway, they came back, and the rock opened; the bull gave the cow a little kick with his hind leg, and back he goes into the rock again.

Then Carolan came home and he told the master what happened; and he said ‘Keep an eye on the white cow until she has a calf; and whatever you do, don’t let the calf suck its mother, because whoever tastes the first of that milk is okay for the rest of his life.’

So the day the cow gave birth to the calf, Carolan forgot what the master told him. And he saw the calf about to suck his mother, and went over and he took the milk off the mouth of the calf, and he rubbed his fingers across his mouth, like that. And then he was told: ‘Carolan, you tasted the milk of the white cow and the black bull first. Now, you’re a gifted man. The first thing you do, don’t go home to the farmer and tell him this, because he’ll kill you.’

So he sets off, and he was travelling for three or four months, until one night he came to this shoemaker’s house. And the shoemaker was making a pair of shoes. And Carolan came in and he bid him good evening and he told him to sit down, he’d get him something to eat; but at the moment he was busy trying to finish a pair of shoes for the lady in the big house. The lady in the big house was Eleanor Kavanagh — that was her surname. ‘And I must finish the shoes tonight’, he says, ‘because she’s going to a dance.’ So Carolan says, ‘Could I’, he says, ‘do one of the shoes for you?’ And he said, ‘No, these… have to be perfect. I have to make them myself’. But the poor shoemaker was so tired that he fell asleep; and Carolan took over, and he finished the pair of shoes that was yet untouched. And when the shoemaker woke up, he saw the shoe, and he said ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I hope the shoe that you made,’ he said, ‘fits her like the one I made.’ And he said, ‘Will you bring them up now,’ he says to Carolan, ‘bring them up to… Eleanor, because she’s waiting.’

So when Carolan went up to the door, he saw Eleanor, standing inside the door. And he said in the song — the first thing he said in the song was ‘mo ghrá den chéad fhéachaint thú, Eileanóir a rún’ — ‘my love to you at first sight.’ He brought the shoes in; she tried them on; one shoe fitted her, and the other didn’t. And she said, ‘Whoever made this shoe, I’ll follow him for the rest… of my life’. And that’s when she eloped with Carolan.

Now, there is no English translation to this, either. Not this way. There is, the other way — the way it’s in the book2. And this is the way Carolan did it.

Mo ghrá thú den chéad fhéachaint, is tú Eileanóir a rún
Is ort a bhím ag smaoineamh tráth a mbím im shuain.
A ghrá den tsaol is a chéad-searc
Is tú is deise ná ban Éireann
A bhruinnilín deas óig, is tú is deise milse póig
Chúns mhairfead beo beidh gean a’m ort
Mar is deas mar a sheolfainn gamhnaí leat, a Eileanóir a rún.

Now, Carolan starts praising her. ‘She has a gift’, he says, ‘she could get the birds off the limbs of the trees; she had a gift she could even make the corpse move while laid out on the board3 and she has another gift I’ll never tell anybody until such a time as we get married.’

‘S bhí bua aici go meallfadh sí na héanlaith ón gcrann
‘S ba mhílse blas a póigín ná a chuaichín roimh an lá
Bhí bua eile aici nach ndéarfad
Sí grá mi chroí ‘s mo chead-searc
A bhruinnilín deas óig, is tú is deise milse póig
Chúns mhairfead beo beidh gean a’m ort
Mar is deas mar a sheolfainn gamhnaí leat, a Eileanóir a rún.

Well, Carolan always said, ‘Is deas mar a sheolfainn gamhnaí leat’ — ‘I would love to drive the cattle with you’. Because he was thinking of the white cow that made him the man he was. So he’s always talking about driving the cattle with Eleanor.

Translation

You’re my love at first-sight, Eleanor my secret4.
It’s of you that I am thinking while I lie asleep
My love and my first treasure
You are the best of the women of Ireland
Lovely young maiden, you have the nicest, sweetest kiss
As long as I live I will desire you
For I would love to drive the calves with you, Eleanor my secret.

She had the gift that she could entice the birds from the trees
And the taste of her kiss was sweeter than the cuckoo before day
She had another gift that I will not tell
She is the love of my heart and my first treasure
Lovely young maiden, you have the nicest, sweetest kiss
As long as I live I will desire you
For I would love to drive the calves with you, Eleanor my secret.

Notes

1. Having told his audience that the poet’s name was Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, Joe refers to this person as ‘Carolan’ for the remainder of the tale. Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh was not the same person as the famous harper Toirdhealbhach Ó Cearbhalláin, although Conamara folklore appears to have confused the two names. The legends surrounding Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh are well examined in James Doan, ‘Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh as Archetypal Poet in Irish Folk Tradition’, in Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, Vol. 1 (1981), 95-123; see also L. Ó Laoire, S. Williams and V. S. Blankenhorn, ‘Seosamh Ó hÉanaí agus Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh: Cleasa an Chrosáin san Oileán Úr’ in New Hibernia Review.

2. Here Joe is referring to a song in English, Eileen Aroon, which he says is based upon the same legend. He told Lucy Simpson that he found Eileen Aroon in a book and that while he doesn’t really think much of the song he learned it so that he would have something in English that would go some way towards satisfying his American audiences’ desire for a translation of Eileanór a Rún, which he said he learned at home from his father (UW 853907).

3. As Joe’s translation indicates, there is an alternative second line to the stanza he is about to sing: Bhí bua aici go dtóigfeadh sí an corp fuar ón mbás — ‘She had the gift of being able to raise the cold corpse from death’. In the event, he sings a line comparing the sweetness of Eleanor’s kiss to the song of the cuckoo.

4. The Irish word rún literally means ‘secret’. However, it is also used by lovers in the phrase a rún as a term of endearment. So while the literal meaning is ‘Eileanóir, you secret’ the actual meaning is nearer to ‘Eileanóir, my darling’ or similar. The variant a rúnaigh also exists. Similar affectionate phrases, most of them not limited to romantic usage, include a stór (store; implying thing of (emotional) value), a thaisce (also means ‘store’; Ulster Irish), a chroí (heart), a chumann (does not translate cleanly; romantic union / relationship; a bheith i gcumann le duine: to be going out with someone) and so on…

Normally Joe adds a third verse, in which the poet asks Eleanor to elope with him. Presumably he felt the constraint of time on this occasion. The stanza is, however, included in his commercially-available recordings of this song:

An dtiocfaidh tú nó an bhfanfaidh tú, a Eileanóir a rún?
Nó an aithneofá an té nach gcáinfeadh thú, a chuid den tsaol ‘s a stóir?
Ó, tiocfaidh mé is ní fhanfaidh mé
Is maith a d’aithneoinn an té nach gcáinfeadh mé
A bhruinnilín deas óig, is tú is deise milse póig
Chúns mhairfead beo beidh gean a’m ort
Mar is deas mar a sheolfainn gamhnaí leat, a Eileanóir a rún.

‘Will you come or will you stay, Eleanor my secret?
Or would you recognize the one who would not slander you, my life’s portion and my treasure?’
‘Oh, I will come and I will not stay
It’s well I would recognize the one who would not slander me.’
Lovely young maiden, you have the nicest, sweetest kiss
As long as I live I will desire you
For I would love to drive the calves with you, Eleanor my secret.

Peadar Ó Ceannabháin, a highly-regarded singer from Aill na Brón, Cill Chiaráin, who has studied Joe Heaney’s songs and singing over a long period, believes that Joe learned Eileanór a Rún from his second cousin Colm Ó Caodháin, but says that Colm sang it to a different air; see L. Mac Con Iomaire, Seosamh Ó hÉanaí: Nár fhágha mé bás choíche (Cló Iar-Chonnachta, 2007), 177. Séamas Ennis transcribed some 212 songs from Colm Ó Caodháin for the Irish Folklore Commission. These transcriptions, along with a few sound recordings, are kept in the National Folklore Collection, UCD. At the time of writing, Ríonach uí Ógáin, the current director of the Collection, is at work on an edition of Colm Ó Caodháin’s contributions to the national archive; it will be a very welcome addition to our understanding of the heritage that inspired Joe Heaney and the other singers of his and subsequent generations.

This was recorded while Joe was Artist in Residence at University of Washington.