Only three Irish poems left to cover on my top 100 Irish list from the Irish times. This Irish poem comes in at number 94 by the Irish poet Máirtín Ó Direáin(29 November 1910 – 19 March 1988). Máirtín Ó Direáin was an Irish poet from the Aran Islands Gaeltacht.
So, of course, it is no surprise that this poem is written in Irish. It was translated into English by Eileen Herlihy and Sr. Maeve McAllister. My notes on the poem are below, with where to find it in full. Six of Máirtín Ó Direáin’s poems, this one among them, have been put to music by Colm Ó Snodaigh.nbsp;
Enjoy this wonderful Irish poem.
An tEarrach Thiar(Irish version)
Fear ag glanadh cré / De ghimseán spáide
An tEarrach Thiar, The Western Spring, is a string of small, calm pictures of island life on Aran: work on the land, seaweed hauled up from the shore, women wading at low tide, and a currach coming home with its catch at the end of the day.
Every verse closes on the same refrain, and the sounds and colours are soft and slow. The poem first appeared in his collection Rogha Dánta in 1949, years after he had left Aran to work in Dublin. The peace he paints is the island of memory, a way of life he felt the city had lost.
It is one of the best-loved poems in Irish and is studied for the Leaving Cert. It is also one of six Ó Direáin poems set to music by Colm Ó Snodaigh of Kíla.
You will find the full poem in Máirtín Ó Direáin: Na Dánta (Cló Iar-Chonnacht), which gathers all his poems in one volume.