Deirdre Remembers A Scottish Glen

Glen of fruit and fish and pools, its peaked hills of loveliest wheat,
it is distressful for me to think of it
- glen of bees, of long-horned wild oxen. 
 

Glen of cuckoos and thrushes and blackbirds, precious in its cover to every fox; 

glen of wild garlic and watercress, of woods, 

of shamrock and flowers, leafy and twisting-crested. 

Sweet are the cries of the brown-backed dappled deer under 

the oak-wood above the bare hill-tops, 

gentle hinds that are timid lying hidden in the great-treed glen. 

 

Glen of the rowans with scarlet berries, 

with fruit fit for every flock of birds;

a slumbrous paradise for the badgers in their quiet burrows with their young. 

Glen of the blue-eyed vigorous hawks, glen abounding in every harvest, 

glen of the ridged and pointed peaks,
glen of blackberries and sloes and apples. 

Glen of the sleek brown round-faced otters that are pleasant and active in fishing; 

many are the white-winged stately swans,
and salmon breeding along the rocky brink. 

Glen of the tangled branching yews, dewy glen with level lawn of kine; 

chalk-white starry sunny glen, 

glen of graceful pearl-like high-bred women. 

Irish, possibly 14th century

from The Celtic Miscellany ed. Kenneth Hurldstone Jackson

The Coming of Winter

I have news for you:
The stag bells, winter snows,
Summer has gone
Wind high and cold,
The sun low, short its course
The sea running high.
Deep red the bracken;
Its shape is lost;
The wild goose has raised its accustomed cry,
Cold has seized the birds' wings;
Season of ice, this is my news

Irish, 9th century
from The Celtic Miscellany ed. Kenneth Hurldstone Jackson

The Hosting of The Sidhe ---William Yeats

The host is riding from Knocknarea

And over the grave of Clooth-na bare;

Caolte tossing his burning hair

And Niamh calling Away, come away:

Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are agleam,
Our arms are waving, our lips are apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.

The host is rushing ’twixt night and day,

And where is there hope or deed as fair?

Caolte tossing his burning hair,

And Niamh calling Away, come away.

William Yeats in The Wind Among the Reeds, 1899