But most of the translations have been in the affected style of the early part of the last century twisting the sense to give what was thought to be a romantic turn. A verse of Seaghan Clarach's, for instance, the lament of a farmer 'who has been wrestling with the world': 'The two that belong to me are without shelter, and my yoke of cattle without grass, without growth; there is misery on my people and their elbows without sound clothes,' is turned into:—
'The loved ones my life would have nourished
Are foodless, and bare, and cold.
My flocks by their fountain that flourished
Decay on the mountain wold.'
But there is one mistranslation for whose sake we must forgive many others, for it has given the sad refrain that has often been on Irish lips:—
'Seaghan O'Dwyer a Gleanna,
We're worsted in the game!'
Here are one or two of the many verses sung to the Little Black Rose by her lovers, poor or royal:—
'There is love through and through me for you all the length of a year; sore love, vexing love, lasting love, love that left me without health, without a road, without running; and for ever, ever, without any sway at all over my Fair Black Rose.
'I would travel through Munster with you, and the boundaries of the hills, if I thought I could find your secret, or a part of your love. O branch of the tree, it seems to me that you love me; that the flower of kind women is my Fair Black Rose.'
'My heart leaps up with my bright Stuart!' James and Charles are, I think, the only English kings whose names, as it were by accident, have found their way into Irish song. And it is likely they are the last to find a place there, for the imagination of Ireland still tilts the beam to the national side; and the loyalty the poets of many hundred years have called for, is loyalty to Kathleen ni Houlihan. 'Have they not given her their wills, and their hearts, and their dreams? What have they left for any less noble Royalty?'
1902.