The Love Songs of Connacht: Being the Fourth Chapter of the Songs of Connacht - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1904. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... PREFACE This little book, the fourth chapter of the still unfinished Songs of Connacht, was the first book that made known to readers that had no Irish, the poetry of the Irish country people. There had been other translators, but they had a formal eighteenth century style, that took what Dr. Hyde would call the 'sap and pleasure' out of simple thought and emotion. Their horses were always steeds and their cows kine, and their rhythms had the formal monotony or the oratorical energy of that middle class literature that comes more out of will and reason than out of imagination and sympathy. Dr. Hyde's prose translations, printed at the end of this book, are I think even better than his verse ones; for even he cannot always escape from the influence of his predecessors when he rhymes in English. His imagination is indeed at its best only when he writes in Irish or in that beautiful English of the country people who remember too much Irish to talk like a newspaper, and I commend his prose comments on the poems to all who can delight in fine prose. He wrote them in Irish first, and they are printed in Irish with the Irish text of the poems in the ordinary editions of his book. W. B. Yeats. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE If I were to go West 3 The Brow of Nefin 5 The Muirnin or Darling of the Fair Hair 7 Little Mary of the Fair Hair 9 The Muirnin of the Fair Hair 11 The Brow of the Red Mountain 14 This Weariness and Grief 16 Long am I Going 17 My Grief on the Sea 20 The Droighnean Donn or The Brown Blackthorn 22 I wish I were in England 25 The Tailoreen of the Cloth 26 There's a Girl in this Town 28 Ringleted Youth of my Love 30 The Young Maiden 31 Una Bhan or Fair-haired Una 44 Darling Black Head 48 The Paistin Fionn or The Fair-haired Chil...