part 14

He runs through them like a rough flood, and it was not affection that was woven; he silenced the people of the potatoes, and also the people of the grain.

In Tipper's company, melodiously, came the wise harper from Grange, the lively, swift, stately Henry Kowe, the just and religious one.

They said in an audible voice: "What is this disaster that has come over the Gaels? Isn't it enough to have the English wounding you and no remedy for it.                                              190

"We read in Irish books -- and it was sufficient for us in that composition -- that it was the disunion of the people caused the severe destruction of your tribe.

"Make peace in future," said the strong steady man, "and keep the end object of your treachery for the one-time foreigners."

Then they made friendship, the people of the potato and those of the beans: the grain to be in peaceful partnership with the generous roast potatoes.

And here for you is the agreement that was made willingly and peacefully to give food, bed, and roof habitually to the poor.

The peace was established, and God was the guarantee for it, the grain to be well-beloved like the potato: that is the end of the battle of the gap.                                           195


[No, that is not the end of the poem. The "court jester of the Fianna" has to be granted the last word.]


Matthew Nolan said -- since he is their Conán, their mischief-maker -- "Confusion on them, drink to them, fa la la lara and learo!

"They broke the confounded husbandmen the English -- speaking talkative fools, the growling beggars.

"The half-blind, cowardly, poisonous ones: the criers, mutterers, gloomy ones: the lumpy half-baked insipid ones: the impetuous rough big-bellied ones.

"Thirst on them, stiffness and sickness on them, the cold false cheats; destruction on them, captivity and hunger on them, the rude self-willed beggars.

"Prattlers, gabblers, babblers, rompers, crouching deceivers, the steel of the hole-and-corner fellows is considered dregs by us; may rout be on the lumpy pirates.                                  200

"We got the victory over the churls, the black-mouthed clods went; destructive-rising, slow-rising and filth be on them, the frowning gabblers and handlers."

The Battle of the Gap was fought -- which will not be forgotten -- in the year of the Lord five and seven hundred and a thousand.


[from the Gaelic of Seán Ó Neachtain]

p. 42: "This burlesque poem is from an unpublished MSS. in the British Museum, Egerton 165. Microfilm copy in National Library [Dublin] Negative no. 231, Positive no. 405. The MSS. was in possession of the son of Seán Ó Neachtain in 1741.

"Translation from the Gaelic by Mrs. Nessa Doran."

poem title: Cáth Bearna Chroise Brighde /
            The Battle of the Gap of St. Bridget's Cross

anthology title: An Anthology of the Potato
editor: Robert McKay
publication: Dublin: Allen Figgis & Co., Ltd. for Irish Potato Marketing Company, Ltd. (©?) 1961
pages 24 - 42