The Rann of Noma
I am Noma of the nut-brown tresses,
My home is a hut in the heart of the wood,
Where a fairy footfall the green moss presses,
And high in the branches the grey doves brood ;
O sweet comes the wind from the far-off nesses,
Where the sea is a silver and azure flood !
My father is come of Heremon’s stock :
He is soft as flour, he is hard as rock.
His bloou for his friend, his sword for his foe —
Ah, this pagan law ! ‘tis a thing of woe.
How shall we plead for pardon, we
Whose sins are the grains of the sands of the sea,
While the ineffaceable words are writ :
“The judgment ye give, ye are judged by it.”
My mother is born of a bardic race,
Amergin looks through her mystic eyes,
Fergus, the Druid, had such a face.
Or Ollav Fodhla, the mighty and wise,
Lore and love in her heart abide.
She is cunning as Mave and kmd as Bride.
The wood-doves feed from her milken hand,
She passed the were-wolf by without scathe,
That robbed the graves in Emania’s land,
And scattered the bones in its track of death.
Her foster-mother beheld her wraith
Walking the meads on the first of May —
There is in Erin an ancient faith
That whoso is seen hath a long, long day,
If she shall be warm when I am cold,
Blessed be Christ an hundred-fold !
Outside the door of our wattled house
The bee-hives stand in a golden row,
And the hum of the bees is murmurous
From the rose-red dawn till the sun’s last glow.
An hundred kine are milked in the dew,
An hundred maids do spin in our hall,
An hundred flocks on the mountain blue
Gather when that our shepherds call,
And an hundred Fenians guard us all.
I am Noma of the nut-brown tresses,
Cathair, my lover is a prince of Saul.
No red stag roams through the wildernesses
With statelier mien than he treads the hall.
His hair is yellow as a leaf in Autumn,
His eyes are bright as the stars in frost,
Virtue and prayer his mother taught him.
His father learned him to lead a host.
He is slow to anger, he is swift to pardon.
He is loth to meddle in contentious strife,
More kind his mouth is, more rich his guerdon
To him who saves than who takes a life.
He is fearless as Dathi in brawl or battle,
Single-handed he fought with a score
When Brian Mac Art stole Bard Ethell’s cattle
Brian Mac Art, he stole no more.
They say I am not for a warrior’s wife,
That my heart is craven, my spirit weak.
That I shrink from the battle and dread the
strife —
Verily ‘tis a truth they speak,
For my heart doth sicken at the sight of blood,
And the man turned beast in his savage mood.
O Bards, that sing of the clans out-faring,
And laud the might of the steady stroke,
When brother smites brother with axe unsparing
As the hewer hacks at the senseless oak —
Ye hear but the wind in the banners singing,
Ye hear but the rush of the arrows winging.
Ye see but the glint of the shining steel —
Your brain cannot think, your heart cannot feel!
Columcille, in his passionate youth,
Lifted the sword between North and South.
Sinning he stood on the bloody heath,
The vultures darkened the morning light.
Like a wind went the sob of the hard-drawn
breath,
There were ruddy faces gone ashen white,
The hero of the resistless blade
Looked on his work — and was afraid !
Long was his penance, long and sore,
Banished to lone lona’s shore.
Strike for the right, if strike you must.
But glory not in the pride of war ;
The body your stroke hath scattered to dust,
You shall answer to God therefor.
See that your battle-cause be just !
Cathair knows that I am no coward,
The blood of Heremon never ran cold.
I chmbed the hill when the thick snow showered
To find the lamb that forsook the fold.
Waist-high, I forded the roaring river,
To bring the priest to a dying man,
I tended old Maureen in the plague of fever
When she lay forsaken of her own clan.
I am Noma of the nut-brown tresses,
And I love my lover, the prince of Saul.
I would not part with his kind caresses
To hold all Erin in willing thrall.
One enemy in all Erin I have —
The girl who would wile him away from me;
Yet even her (for Christ’s sake) I would save
From death and danger by land or sea.
BY ALICE FURLONG
