Lyr Req/ADD: A Drover (poem by Padraic Colum)

Subject: The Drover
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 11:45 AM

Not a song but a poem. Has anyone got an online source for this poem, which starts:

"From Meath of the pastures
To wet hills by the sea
Through Leitrim and Longford
Go my cattle and me"

I just can't track it down.

Subject: Lyr Req: The Drover
From: Sorcha
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 11:58 AM

Is this all of it?

The Drover
Padraic Colum

To Meath of the pastures,
From wet hills by the sea
Through Leitrim and Longford,
Go my cattle and me.

I hear in the darkness
Their slipping and breathing--
I name them the by-ways
They're to pass without heeding;

Then the wet, winding roads,
Brown bogs with black water,
And my thoughts on white ships
And the King o' Spain's daughter.

(That's all I could find)

Subject: ADD: A Drover (poem by Padraic Colum)
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 07 Apr 01 - 04:06 AM

Found it! Sorry for the different heading, but the Digitrad SEarch wasn't working.

I love this poem, and wonder why no one's ever put it to music; it is so evocative of the feeling of a man for his animals, and the landscape of Ireland - and every Celt who ever breathed will identify with the love of cattle.

I remember as a child walking on a country road and wrinkling my nose to sneeze. The old man who was walking with me thought I was wrinkling it against the smell of cowpats we were following, and snatched at my arm. "Draw in your breath, child, and smell that smell," he said in his hoarse old voice (I still remember his smell of turf smoke, beasts and Sweet Afton cigarettes), "That's the smell of riches, for where you have cattle you have riches."

A DROVER
(Padraic Colum)

To Meath of the pastures,
From wet hills by the sea,
Through Leitrim and Longford,
Go my cattle and me.

I hear in the darkness
Their slipping and breathing -
I name them the bye-ways
They're to pass without heeding;

Then, the wet, winding roads,
Brown bogs with black water;
And my thoughts on white ships
And the King o' Spain's daughter.

O! farmer, strong farmer!
You can spend at the fair;
But your face you must turn
To your crops and your care.

And soldiers - red soldiers!
You've seen many lands;
But you walk two by two,
And by captain's commands.

O! the smell of the beasts,
The wet wind in the morn;
And the proud and hard earth
Never broken for corn;

And the crowds at the fair,
The herds loosened and blind,
Loud words and dark faces
And the wild blood behind.

(O! strong men; with your best
I would strive breast to breast,
I could quiet your herds
With my words, with my words.)

I will bring you, my kine,
Where there's grass to the knee;
But you'll think of scant croppings
Harsh with salt of the sea.

Padraic Colum [1881-1972]

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: The Drover
From: GUEST,Erin Hart
Date: 28 Jan 12 - 11:21 AM

Pat Egan of Chulrua recorded a song version of this poem on THE SINGING KETTLE (http://www.paddyobrien.net/chulrua-the-singing-kettle/)

Erin Hart

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: The Drover
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Jan 12 - 11:22 AM

Meant to make the link live...

http://www.paddyobrien.net/chulrua-the-singing-kettle/

Subject: RE: Lyr Req/ADD: A Drover (poem by Padraic Colum)
From: GUEST,Rory
Date: 11 Jan 22 - 06:43 AM

A Drover

Poem by Padraic Colum 1902.
(1881-1972)

First printed in: The United Irishman, 1902 or 1903.

Printed in his publication:
Wild Earth: A Book of Verse, 1907, pp.3-4.

A Drover [A Wild Earth]


Also printed in:
New songs. A lyric selection made by A.E. From poems by Padraic Colum, [and others], by George William Russell (Æ), 1904, pp. 42-43.

A Drover [New Songs]


Born Patrick Collumb in Longford, Ireland in 1881, poet, editor, children’s writer, folklorist, and playwright Padraic Colum was the oldest of eight siblings.

After finishing school at 17, he took a job as a clerk for the Irish Railway Clearing House until 1903, and during this period began to write seriously; he had joined the Irish Republican Army and the Gaelic League and taken the name Padraic Colum by the time he was 20. Living in Dublin during the Celtic Revival and a member of both the National Theatre Society and the Abbey Theatre, he met and became close friends with writers James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and George Russell (Æ). With James Stephens and Thomas MacDonagh, Colum founded the Irish Review.

Colum wrote his first play, The Saxon Shillin’, in 1902 and it won a prize from The Society of Gaels, a political party that was interested in a free state of Ireland. Producing plays and getting to know the likes of Arthur Griffith, whom later founded the political party Sinn Féin, Colum helped in the founding of the Abbey Theatre where a number of his early works were performed.

His relationship with Griffith also led to the publication of some of his first poetry. Griffith edited the United Irishman and Coolum's poems appeared in the weekly paper in 1902, as well as the daily paper the Irish Independant. Many of the poems that were initially found in the paper were later gathered for the collection Wild Earth that was published in 1907 and was dedicated to Æ (George Russell). 

Colum said, “I wrote my first poems for Arthur Griffith’s and A.E.’s (George Russell) journals and was immediately welcomed by people who took trouble to show a young writer how to form himself.”

Coolum features in James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), itself inspired by Homer’s Odyssey. One character says, “I liked Colum’s Drover. Yes, I think he has that queer thing genius”.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req/ADD: A Drover (poem by Padraic Colum)
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 11 Jan 22 - 06:46 AM

And when someone met him after an absence of years he said:

"It's been a while, Drover!"


Sorry! I'll get my coat.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req/ADD: A Drover (poem by Padraic Colum)
From: Thompson
Date: 13 Jan 22 - 01:55 PM

Joyce was rather catty about Colum elsewhere. In his The Holy Office*, which Ellman describes as a "scabrous broadside", Ellman describes how "With quick thrusts he disposes, more or less thoroughly, of his contemporaries. Yeats has allowed himself to be led by women; Synge writes of drinking but never drinks; Gogarty is a snob, Colum a chameleon, Roberts an idolater of Russell, Starkey a mouse, Russell a mystical ass.
But all these men of whom I speak
Make me the sewer of their clique
That they may dream their dreamy dreams
I carry off their filthy streams
For I can do those things for them
Through which I lost my diadem.

Interesting commentary on the poem here.
* In this poem 'Hazelpatch' should be 'Hazelhatch'