Another top Irish poem! This week it is number 46 from the poet Austin Clarke.
Who was Austin Clarke?
Austin Clarke (Irish: Aibhistín Ó Cléirigh) was a famous Irish poet of the age after W. B. Yeats. He was born at 83 Manor Street, Stoneybatter, Dublin, on May 9, 1896, and died on March 19, 1974.
He attended University College Dublin and worked as a journalist in England for 15 years before returning to Dublin in 1937.
As well as poetry, he wrote plays, novels and memoirs. Clarke’s most significant contribution to Irish poetry was the rigour with which he used techniques from ancient Irish language poetry when writing in English.
What is the poem “The Blackbird of Derrycairn” all about?nbsp;
This is a delightful poem. So well composed and with the blend of man, soul and nature together.
I love those words: “But knowledge is found among the branches.”
The poem is about the Catholic church’s control of Ireland’s Government. More precisely, it is a criticism of a priest-ridden Ireland where the Catholic Church dominated the morality of Government, resulting in strict censorship laws leading to the banning of works by prominent Irish writers such as Joyce and Clarke himself.
In Clarke’s version the speaker is the blackbird itself (the old Fenian poem behind it was said to be recited by Oisín), and its major topic is the Fianna’s cheerful, carefree existence, symbolized by the beautiful song of the blackbird, which is contrasted with St. Patrick’s pious austerities, who is persuaded to forego his asceticism in favour of the natural world’s beauty.
The Blackbird Of Derrycairn by Austin Clarke
Stop, stop and listen for the bough top
Is whistling
The Blackbird of Derrycairn is spoken by the blackbird itself. It calls on Saint Patrick to forget his bell and his prayers for a while and listen to the song in the trees, the same song that once drew the great hero Fionn home from across the sea.
The bird remembers the life of the Fianna, their hunting and their love of the wild country around Loch Erne, and sets that bright outdoor world against the gloomy cells of the monks. Its message is that real learning is found in nature as much as in books and bells. Behind the old story you can hear Clarke’s own quarrel with the Church of his day.
Clarke based the poem on an old Fenian lay that tradition says Oisín recited to Patrick. He first used it in his radio verse play As the Crow Flies, broadcast in 1942, and later printed it on its own in Ancient Lights (1955). He copied the sound patterns of Irish verse, weaving assonance and half-rhyme through the lines.
Read the full poem: you will find The Blackbird of Derrycairn in Austin Clarke’s Collected Poems, edited by R. Dardis Clarke (Carcanet Press, 2008).