A talented and complex writer, scholar and translator, Emily Henrietta Hickey, 1845-1923, was the daughter of a Protestant rector of Goresbridge, County Wexford. She eventually become a lecturer at Cambridge University, and a Catholic convert. Her history of English Catholic literature is still well worth reading for its lucidity and enthusiasm. She translated verse and tales from the Irish, and might seem to belong to the movement known as the Irish Literary Revival; however, she had a wide-ranging interest in languages and literature, and her contribution to the Revival doesn't seem to have had a nationalist motivation. She was a campaigning feminist, yet became, in her later life, primarily a religious writer. Probably her best-known work is her translation of the late Anglo-Saxon poem, The Battle of Maldon.
This week's poem, "The Ship from Tirnanoge" is not, as far as I can tell, one of Hickey's translations. The text is taken from an anthology, The Book of Irish Poetry, whose editor, Alfred P Graves, names the source if a poem is a translation: in this case, no source is given. While Hickey's story makes use of Irish legend, and there is a Hibernian flavour to her language and prosody, especially in the use of parallelism, the narrative style seems closer to that of an English ballad. No Irish poem I've read in reliable English translation resembles it in either tale or tone, so, although unqualified to do more than guess, I'd say this is an original poem.
Hickey does not draw on the heroic tales featuring Tír na nÓg, but seems to adopt that legendary island, with its anglicised name Tirnanoge, to allow the speaker, a young woman, to make sense of the early death of her beloved. There are glimmers of Greek mythology. The ship seems to be crewed by angelic beings, and the land of the eternally young, which in Irish folklore represents an earthly paradise, and not the after-life, nearly merges with the Christian concept of eternity. In some ways this is a typically Victorian poem. What makes it different is the directness of emotion, achieved by plain language, fluent repetition within and across the couplets, and simple, compelling rhythms. Hickey, of course, is using the Irish material she has studied, and some commentators might find that exploitative. Does this English poem give anything back to emergent Ireland or the Irish language? Does it reinforce certain stereotypes? Being sympathetic to the magpie habits of writers, and the illumination that thefts, borrowings and even misinterpretations sometimes shed, I would declare Hickey guilty only of being a poet for whom the muse of her native language must be served first.
There are many strangely memorable passages. The young man's hand is "like a babe's that is just dead" – what a shockingly despondent chill breathes from that image. The description of the inaudible "sweet singing", accompanied by hands "beckoning", prompts a moment of mysterious silent drama. Hands join and gesture throughout the poem. The physical beauty of the young man is conventional enough, but when the "rose-light" appears "about his brow" there is a sense of transfiguration. Why "rose-light"? Has the symbolism of Irish nationhood crept into the poem? Or do we think of the rose-windows of the great cathedrals?
The final couplet makes use of repetition in a startling and beautiful turn: "They sailed away, they sailed away/ Out of the day, into the day." Again, it's almost as if the Christian vision of eternal life had opened up in front of the journeying ship. But Hickey stands her pagan ground. The captain turns out to be the Irish sea-god, Manannan, and the poet clearly relishes her dramatic portrait of him, "With eyes a-change in depth and blee…" ("blee" means colour, and possibly even shape in this context). Manannan's description forms the visual high point of the poem. Perhaps it will call to mind for some readers Christopher Marlowe's "sapphire-visaged Neptune" from another recent poem of the week, Hero and Leander. Dante, too, is surely a presence. Hickey has woven a remarkable lyrical narrative from her various sources, fresh as an Atlantic sea-breeze, even though it may be pastiche. She's a new discovery for me, and I look forward to unearthing more of her poems.
The Ship from Tirnanoge
We two were alone by the sea:
I and the man I loved with me.
Our eyes were glad and our hearts beat high,
As we sat by the sea, my love and I;
Till we looked afar, and saw a ship:
Then white, white grew his ruddy lip;
And strange, strange grew his eyes that saw
Into the heart of some deep awe.
His hand that held this hand of mine
Never a token gave, nor sign;
But lay as a babe's that is just dead:
And I sat still and wondered.
Nearer and nearer the white ship drew:
Who was her captain, whence her crew?
Her crew were men and women bright,
With fair eyes full of unknown light.
From far-off Tirnanoge they came,
Where they had heard my true-love's name:
The name the birds and waves had sung
Of one that must bide for ever young.
Strong white arms let down the boat;
Song rose up from many a throat.
Glad they were who soon had won
A lovely new companion.
They lowered the boat and they entered her;
And rowed to meet their passenger:
Rowed to the tune of a music strange,
That told of joy at the heart of change.
I heard her keel on the pebbles gride,
And she waited there till the turn o' the tide;
While they kept singing, singing clear
A song that was passing sweet to hear:
A song that bound me in a chain
Away from any thought of pain.
They paused at last in their sweet singing,
And I saw their hands were beckoning,
In a rhythm as sweet as the stilled songs,
That passed to the air from their silent tongues.
He rose and kissed me on the face,
And left me sitting in my place,
Quiet, quiet, life and limb,
I, who was not called like him.
Into the boat he entered grave,
And the tide turned, and she rode the wave;
And I saw him sitting at the prow,
With a rose-light about his brow.
The boat drew nigh the ship again,
With all its lovely women and men.
I saw him enter the ship and stand,
His hand held in the captain's hand.
The captain wonderful to see
With eyes a-change in depth and blee;
A-change, a-change for ever and aye,
Blue, and purple, and black, and gray;
And hair like the weed that finds a home
In the depth of a trail of white sea-foam.
I wist he was no mortal man,
But he whose name is Manannan.
They sailed away, they sailed away,
Out of the day, into the day.