The Keening of the Three Marys
PREFACE.
I got the following poem from a schoolmaster called O’Kearney, near Belmullet, in West Mayo, who told me that he had taken it down from the recitation of an old man in the neighbourhood. I got another version of it afterwards from Michael Mac Ruaidhri of Ballycastle, Co. Mayo, with quite a different “cur-fa” or refrain, namely ŏch Ōch agus ŏch ūch ān after the first two lines, and ŏch [)o]ch agus Ōch ŏn Ō after the next two. Spelt phonetically in English and giving gh the guttural value of ch in German, and oa the same sound as in English roach and oo the sound of oo in pool, it would run——
Let us go to the mountain
All early on the morrow,
Ugh oagh agus ugh oogh awn.
Hast thou seen my bright darling,
O Peter, good apostle,
Ugh ugh agus oagh on ó.
The agus “and” is pronounced nearly as “oggus.” The story I have not traced, but it may have come from an Irish version of one of the apocryphal gospels.
THE STORY
Let us go to the mountain
All early on the morrow,
(Ochone! agus ochone, O!)
“Hast thou seen my bright darling,
O Peter, good apostle?”
(Ochone! agus ochone, O!)
“Aye! truly O Mother
Have I seen him lately,
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
Caught by his foemen,
They had bound him straitly,”
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
“Judas, as in friendship,
Shook hands, to disarm him,”
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
Oh, Judas! vile Judas!
My love did never harm him.
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
No child has he injured,
Not the babe in the cradle,
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
Nor angered his mother
Since his birth in the stable.
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
When the demons discovered
That she was his mother,
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
They raised her on their shoulders
The one with the other;
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
And they cast her down fiercely
On the stones all forlorn,
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
And she lay and she fainted
With her knees cut and torn,
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
“For myself, ye may beat me,
But, oh, touch not my mother,”
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
“Yourself,—we shall beat you,
But we’ll slaughter your mother.”
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
They dragged him off captive,
And they left her tears flowing,
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
But the Virgin pursued them
Through the wilderness going,
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
“Oh, who is yon woman?
Through the waste comes another,”
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
“If there comes any woman
It is surely my mother,”
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
“Oh John, care her, keep her,
Who comes in this fashion,”
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
“But Oh, hold her from me
Till I finish this passion,”
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
When the Virgin had heard him
And his sorrowful saying,
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
She sprang past his keepers
To the tree of his slaying,
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
“What fine man hangs there
In the dust and the smother?”
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
“And do you not know him,
He is your son, O Mother.”
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
“Oh, is that the child whom
I bore in this bosom,
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
Or is that the child who
Was Mary’s fresh blossom”
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
They cast him down from them
A mass of limbs bleeding,
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
“There now he is for you,
Now go and be keening.”
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
Go call the three Marys
Till we keene him forlorn,
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
O Mother thy keeners
Are yet to be born,
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
Thyself shall come with me
Into Paradise garden,
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)
To a fair place in heaven
At the side of thy darling,
(Ochone agus ochone, O!)