Source. The collection of poems here presented follows as
closely as possible the 1882 first edition. I assembled this e-text
over several years, either typing or scanning one poem at a time as the
spirit moved me. Some poems were transcribed either from the 1884
second edition, or from D. F. MacCarthy's earlier publications, depending on
whatever happened to be handy at the time. I have proofread this entire
e-text against the 1882 edition. In many instances there are minor
variations, mostly in punctuation, among the different source
material. In some cases, if the 1882 edition clearly has an error, I
have used the other works as a guide. Where there are variations that
are not obviously errors, I have followed the 1882 edition. It is
certainly possible, where I transcribed from a non-1882 source, that a few
variations may have slipt my notice, and have not been changed.
General. In the printed source the first word of each section
and poem is in SMALL CAPITALS,
which I have removed as per Project Gutenberg standards. Due to HTML
programming reasons associated with text within <pre></pre>
tags (very useful for formatting poetry) instances of
SMALL CAPITALS within the poems
are rendered as ALL CAPITALS. In the printed source the patronymic
prefix "Mac" is always followed by a half space; due to limitations in this
electronic format I have rendered names in ALL CAPITALS with a full space
(MAC CAURA) and names in Mixed Capitals without any space (MacCaura)
throughout. For various reasons the longest line of code in this file
is 79 characters; this means that in some poems I had to wrap the ends of very
long verses to the next line.
Footnotes. In the printed source footnotes are marked with an
asterisk, dagger, et cetera and placed at the bottom of each page. In
this electronic version I have numbered the footnotes and placed them below
each section or poem. Due to HTML programming reasons, note references
within a poem are given in [brackets], elsewhere they are given as
superscript text.
[Contents]. I have removed the page
numbers from the contents list. Text in brackets are my additions,
giving alternate/earlier published titles for the poems.
[Preface]. In the printed source, the
Preface is placed before the Contents, but I have moved it for hypertext
navigation purposes.
[Waiting for the May]. This poem was
published under the title of "Summer Longings" in The Bell-Founder and
Other Poems, 1857.
[Oh! had I the Wings of a Bird]. This poem
was published under the title of "Home Preference" in The Bell-Founder and
Other Poems, 1857.
[Ferdiah]. The ballad between Mave and
Ferdiah includes some long lines of text that would require (due to electronic
publishing line length standards) occasionally breaking a line ending to make
a new line. Because there is an internal rhyme in these verses, and for
more consistent formatting, I have decided to break every verse here at the
internal rhyme, but not capitalizing the beginning of resultant new
line. For example, "Which many an arm less brave than thine, which many
a heart less bold, would claim?" is one line of verse in the 1882 edition, but
I have formatted it as "Which many an arm less brave than thine, / which many
a heart less bold, would claim?" For purposes of recording
[errata] below, I have not numbered these new
pseudo-lines. The phrase "son of Dáman, Daré's son" appears in
the poem a few times, but with inconsistently applied accents. As the
inconsistency is the same in the 1884 edition, and I do not know if there is a
poetic or Gaelic grammatical reason for the changing diacritical marks, I have
presented these just as they appear in the printed source. The word
"creit" is taken directly from the Irish text untranslated—a roughly
equivalent English word is "frame."
[The Voyage of St. Brendan]. Note 56 refers
to a puffin (Anas leucopsis) or girrinna. The bird, at least by
2004 classification, is not a puffin but a barnacle goose (Branta leucopsis)
and I found one reference to its Irish name as gé
ghiúrain. As these birds nest in remote areas of the arctic,
people were quite free to invent stories of their origins.
[The Dead Tribune]. The subject of this poem
is Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), an Irish political leader and Minister of
Parliament. In ill health, his doctor advised he go to a warmer climate;
he died en route to Rome for a pilgrimage. The 1882 edition has the word
"knawing" which is an obsolete variant of "gnawing"; the latter appears in the
1884 edition.
[A Mystery]. The spelling of "Istambol" is
intentional—the current "Istanbul" was not adopted until the twentieth
century. The name probably derives from an old nickname for
Constantinople, but the complexity of this city's naming is beyond the
capacity of a footnote.
[To Henry Wadsworth Longfellow].
MacCarthy's translation of Calderón's The Two Lovers of Heaven:
Chrysanthus and Daria has been released as Project Gutenberg e-text
#12173.
[To Ethna]. This poem was published under
the listing of "Dedicatory Sonnet" and dated 1850 in The Bell-Founder and
Other Poems, 1857.
[O'Connell]. See note a few lines up on "The
Dead Tribune." My correction of the phrase "heaven's high fault" is not
based on any other published edition. It is conjectural, based on the
illogicality of the phrase and MacCarthy's use of the phrase "heaven's high
vault" in his translation of Calderón's The Purgatory of St.
Patrick (Project Gutenberg e-text #6371) published two years before this
poem was written.
[Moore]. The subject of this poem is Thomas
Moore (1779-1852). A collection of his poems has been released as
Project Gutenberg e-text #8187, but note that the biographical sketch therein
mistakenly lists 1780 as his birth year. In this poem "Shakspere" is not
misspelt; it is one of many variants used during and after the bard's lifetime
(my favorite is "Shaxpere" from 1582).
[To Ethna]. This poem bears the same title
as a sonnet that also appears in this collection of poems.
[Spring Flowers from Ireland]. I retained
the format of the name "Gäeta" as originally printed, even though the
rules for placing a diaeresis imply that it should be "Gaëta."
[The Irish Emigrant's Mother]. This poem was
published under the title of "The Emigrants" in The Bell-Founder and Other
Poems, 1857.