Ronnie McGinn's Poetry Page

Somewhere in the back of my mind there is something about the legend of Oisín. Apparently one day he was out hunting when he saw a beautiful young woman named Niamh, daughter of the King of Tir Na Nóg and she asked Oisín to marry her and to come to her country. He agreed to this. She gave him a fairy horse on which to make his journey. When he got back to Ireland, Oisín realized that 300 years had passed and that all his friends and everything he knew was now gone. On the way back he saw a group of men trying to lift a heavy rock. He bent down to help them but he fell from his horse and immediately turned into an old, blind man and died shortly afterwards but his horse carried on.

Frances O'Keeffe of the Douglas Writers Group in Cork has written an excellent villanelle that brings the legend back to life. Her poem must rate as one of the finest of this format in our time

The villanelle is a form of poem that was originally a song sung by European farm laborers; the name comes from the Latin villa, or farm. The medieval French villanelles were irregular, but in the sixteenth century the form became fixed. In today's world it is very much ignored.

Niamh's Lament

The white horse galloped through the sea.
The horse alone came into sight.
I knew that he was gone from me.

The sun flamed then sank dreamily
As evening softened into night,
The white horse galloped through the sea.

A broken strap was hanging free
He'd fallen from the mare's tall height.
I knew that he was gone from me.

Oisin was claimed by his country,
Made old, no longer young and bright.
The white horse galloped through the sea.

So it's all lost, that used to be
When every day was a delight.
I know that he's gone from me.

Without him, beauty has no light
And endless youth seems endless blight.
The white horse galloped through the sea.
I knew that he was lost to me.

© Frances O'Keeffe