Song of the Green Man

A Translation in Dactylic-Hexameter, C. 2020

I took a course in Irish and translated some medieval fragment I found (and now cannot find) into dactylic hexameter verse. Read it out loud to feel the beat, which is the original rhythm of Homer’s poems, and simulates running or dancing the way iambic pentameter simulates heart rhythm. I wrote a frame story around it during the Tiger King period of quarantine, but I can’t get myself to like it enough to publish the whole thing. I might do something with that later. Here’s the verse anyway: ____________________

Now list to this lay out the emerald isle

Through ages passed down by the tellers of old

And sad voices still sometime sing solemn by shores

West the wet sands of Galway, south Gregory’s Sound

Where wild waters wash weeping stone walls by the sea

Where weird things develop, in pain and in sadness,

The dreadful sea cliffs that remain safe from prayer

With beautiful music, malevolent madness

Still fairies in clusters hold gatherings there.

So dearly admired the village she hailed from

By all who had crossed her wide path in the town,

And not least the jewel of her father’s esteem,

This young and bright daughter awakes to see stars

And descends down those cliffs to collect all the wet

And slippery weeds that grew tall in the deep,

Her every day chore as she knew it to be.

She wandered alone down the safe path once more

Through neighborly beaches and led far astray

Through steep rocky cliffs where waters make roar

A burning soft music had led her away

She carefully stepped ‘round the sharp shells and ragged

Rocks which belong to the foamy green shore

Gathering kelp in a woven straw basket

She’d traveled five miles by height of the sun

Enchanted by music she hardly could savor

She picked up her pace as she followed the sound

And then fell away from the world of our Savior

She fast felt the beat of the rhythm around

The drums beat unholy, his pipers played airs

The secret came to her and worked itself quick

She lost all herself as she danced to it there

The clamoring melody made the air thick.

They found her at sunset the following night

Imprisoned by themes that the verdant king made

Which could not be heard by the people who gathered

To stop her from dancing, now bleeding deep red

The skin on her feet had essentially melted

Away by the friction of hours of tread.

No matter how desp’rate the people around her

She would not stop moving by lock of the charm

But when her dear father much troubled had found her

She fell from exhaustion cold into his arms.

He carried her caref’lly back to their home village

On back of a horse who was acting quite strange

She gazed at the moon with an unbroken stare

And still like a statue with no sense of motion

She laid there until they arrived back in town

All blue by the weather of Erin’s long night

Her skin was as cold as the cliff stone they found her

Out dancing relentless by hours before

Still peaceful she looked in a fine frenzy rolling

Her eyes all around as if seeing some light

In tears her dear father had laid her consoling

Back in her own bed and her blankets that night

The next sun arose and the girl did not waken

Nor would she awaken forever from then

And she, it was known, by the green-man was taken

And never would gather in our world again.

Through ages passed down by the tellers of old

And sad voices still sometime sing solemn by shores

West the wet sands of Galway, south Gregory’s Sound

Where wild waters wash weeping stone walls by the sea.