This lengthy thread seems to have taken on a new life, and its too long for some people. So here is part two - and I'll put in a bunch of the recent posts to maintain continuity (for people who can't load the old one.):Subject: RE: Analysis of Raglan Road From: GUEST,Jonny-boy Date: 23-Dec-01 - 11:04 AM Shop: Sally The images drawn up to me by this poem/song have always been so powerful that they stun me. A depiction of the progression of time and place when a new passion unfolds with references to the seasons, earth and sky as time moves on is amazing and universally human. Love imagined, gained and lost with respect to those places and points in time is brilliant and real. A poet, dreamer and admirer, who blinded by the physical beauty of his infatuation, tries to super-impose his own intellectual meanderings on one who seems either unable or unwilling to grasp the depth of his passion ends up frustrated and alone....I think the last line is only sadness.....
Subject: RE: Analysis of Raglan Road From: GUEST,ulysses Date: 23-Dec-01 - 12:52 PMThere was once a great alto sax player - I won't give his secret away by naming him - who was widely praised for his sensitivity in showing the inner meaning of the ballads he played. After he died, his wife confessed that he could never remember lyrics and never knew what the songs he played were about.
Just sing the song.
Subject: RE: Analysis of Raglan Road From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 23-Dec-01 - 04:27 PMNot knowing the words wouldn't necessarily mean he didn't understand what they were about. All depends what you mean by knowing a song. A lot of people sing songs, and are word perfect, without beginning to know them. I'm sure it works the other way too - people who can't remember a line, who know the song inside out
Subject: RE: Analysis of Raglan Road From: derrymacash Date: 23-Dec-01 - 06:44 PM
And the dead arose and appeared to many ... (i.e. the sudden re-emergence of this thread).
Subject: RE: Analysis of Raglan Road From: GUEST,no one important Date: 02-Feb-02 - 09:56 PMit's simply a song about "loss". The beauty in this poem/song is that the more that you read and the more that you analyze, the more you find that it just brings you back to the feelings that you felt when you first heard the song; when you knew nothing of what its "meaning" was. I understand the authors' motivations more clearly and I understand the historical setting/backround more clearly, but the emotion evoked was there before I knew any of this, and it is still there.
Subject: RE: Analysis of Raglan Road From: GUEST,no one important Date: 02-Feb-02 - 10:23 PMSorry to continue on a long deceased thread. Sorry to chime in at all, in fact, but my fingers keep typing.
I look at a sculpture and I say "Wow, that is one stunning sculpture."
As I'm looking, I hear a historian explaining the significance of the subject, the history of the sculptor and a few interesting tidbits of information describing both the subject's and the sculptor's lives at the time that the piece was actually produced.
It's all extremely interesting and I'm very happy to have learned all of this, because it certainly does create an understanding, of certain aspects of the work, that I didn't have before.
But when it's all been said and done, I still look at the sculpture and say "Wow, that is one stunning sculpture."
The work speaks for itself.
Subject: RE: Analysis of Raglan Road From: Bonnie Shaljean Date: 02-Feb-02 - 11:12 PMMy own interpretation of the "queen of hearts" and the "not making hay" lines is that they both reflect the idea of summer, and its symbolism possibly links them. In this bright warm season (of youth?) she is industriously at work, while he by contrast is not - though the sun is shining and the chance may not come again. This idea of passing time that is gone forever also finds resonance in the first line of the poem, which I BELIEVE (though I'm relying solely on memory so please only one person at a time shoot me down if I'm wrong)is that it's not on an "autumn" day but an AUGUST day (check a poetry anthology - songbooks can get it wrong too). If so, it changes the opening season (though in August summer is nearing its end) and the song then progresses through time to late autumn/early winter, as do his hopes. And finally there is no season evoked at all, only ghosts. This could also be an oblique reference to the difference in their ages.
I actually once met a lady (now dead) who had known Hilda, and I'm annoyed now with my younger self for not plying her with questions! All I can remember of our one conversation on the subject (years ago) was that Hilda was a very charismatic character and many people besides the poet were attracted to her. The poem beautifully captures that elusive quality.
Subject: RE: Analysis of Raglan Road From: GUEST,misophist Date: 03-Feb-02 - 12:42 AMTo paraphrase another Irishman, W B Yeats, Poetry is never about what the author puts in, it's about what the reader takes out. If poetry were nothing more that saying exactly what you mean, in the most powerful language at hand, All of Churchill's better speeches would be taught in the Universities. The key to true is ambiguity, mood and mode. Precise understanding? Shit.
Subject: RE: Analysis of Raglan Road From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 03-Feb-02 - 09:15 AMI think you are likely right about that Bonnie, though almost everyone seems to sing autumn - autumn goes more naturally with the fallen leaf, but logically, what'd he be doing making hay (or not making hay) in the autumn?
Dick Gaughan, I note, has it as August, and I think he'd have likely checked with the text. But a rapid trawl through Google seems to indicate that it's been recorded more often as autumn.
Subject: RE: Analysis of Raglan Road From: GUEST Date: 03-Feb-02 - 10:24 AMI don't think the August vs autumn thing is that big of a deal. We know what the poet is getting at--summer is spent, the prospect of youthful love gone, that sort of thing. I do get the sense that the leaves are about to fall, ie that the end is perceived as being near, not yet arrived. So August works better in that sense, because the poet has had an epiphany about the girl--realizes that he is not to win her. The place he is in is one of poignant resignation to the fact that there is no romantic relationship between them. He isn't looking back in bitterness (that would be a winter season), he is still in the warmth of some sort of relationship with her, but knows it won't go beyond the point it has reached.
I believe the "enchanted way" reference may be to the Grand Canal mentioned above, or to St Stephen's Green (Kavanaugh also mentions Grafton street). There is a strong sense of place in the poem, and that part of Dublin is the place. It is the most romantic part of the city really. Trinity is just north of the Grand Canal and Grafton Street ends at St Stephen's Green, and then as you walk through the green towards Leeson St, on the south end it empties out at least in the direction of the Grand Canal, where Kavanaugh's statue is found between Baggot and Leeson Sts.
This is sort of an aisling poem in English, but it also was written more as a song, than a poem. The angel reference would be a reference to the aisling, rather than the speirbhean, I think. Trifling difference to some, but not if you are trying to evoke the aisling convention. Speirbhean would be more of a political allusion, rather than a romantic literary one, in the Irish sense.
I do think the Queen of Hearts is a mawkishly sentimental throw away line. Kavanaugh, like every other poet, wasn't above or beyond a bad line here and there. It is a bit clumsy for the metre of the verse, I think. But he did well putting the verse to the tune, considering he was a much better poet than songwriter.
Subject: RE: Analysis of Raglan Road From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 03-Feb-02 - 11:45 AM Shop: Diana I can't see that, in association with tart-making, there's anything sentimental about the phrase Queen of Hearts. Forget the Princess Diana stuff which may gets in the way of the phrase for a lot of people these days. (And note it's not "queen of my heart" - making it "of hearts" has quite different associations.)I know it's easy to use the term ironic to get away with anything, but in this context I definitely think there's an ironic tinge to it. Sardonic too. And that goes double for the last line, which I'd definitely read as having a self-mocking colouring.
Subject: RE: Analysis of Raglan Road From: Herga Kitty Date: 03-Feb-02 - 01:08 PMI heard,from a friend who knew Kavanagh, that Deirdre Manifold claimed to have been the inspiration for the poem. But he knew a lot of women...
Kitty
Subject: RE: Analysis of Raglan Road From: GUEST Date: 03-Feb-02 - 07:24 PMBTW, the lovely Cantaria website has an MP3 of this by Donal Hegarty, and a lovely reference to this Raglan Road thread on Mudcat here:
http://www.chivalry.com/cantaria/lyrics/raglan-road.html
Subject: RE: Analysis of Raglan Road From: GUEST,Arkie Date: 04-Feb-02 - 01:28 AMWhere I grew up, "making hay" meant you were getting somewhere", you were making progress. Conversely, not making hay, meant "getting nowhere", making no gain. I suspect that's what Kavanaugh intended. Nice to see this thread. I heard this song for the first time about a week ago and have been charmed by it.
The other thread got too long, so I moved some of the later messages over here.
-Joe Offer-