At this moment, there are more females serving on the United States Supreme Court than there are writing for Late Show with David Letterman, The Jay Leno Show, and The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien
combined. Out of the 50 or so comedy writers working on these programs,
exactly zero are women. It would be funny if it weren’t true.
--Nell Scovell in Vanity Fair, October 2009
The Keen of Kilcash
What shall we do for timber?
The last of the woods is down.
Kilcash and house of its glory
and the bell of the house are gone;
the spot where her lady waited
that shamed all women for grace
when earls came sailing to meet her
and Mass was said in that place.
My cross and my affliction
your gates are taken away,
your avenue needs attention,
goats in the garden stray;
your courtyard's filled with water
and the great earls where are they?
The earls, the lady, the people
beaten into the clay.
Nor sound of duck or of geese there
hawk's cry or eagle's call,
nor humming of the bees there
that brought honey and wax for all,
nor the sweet gentle song of the birds there
when the sun has gone down to the West
nor a cuckoo atop of the boughs there
singing the world to rest.
There's a mist there tumbling from branches
unstirred by night and by day,
and a darkness falling from heaven,
and our fortunes have ebbed away;
there's no holly nor hazel nor ash there
but pastures of rock and stone,
the crown of the forest is withered
and the last of its game is gone.
I beseech of Mary and Jesus
that the great come home again
with long dances danced in the garden
fiddle music and mirth among men,
that Kilcash the home of our fathers
be lifted on high again
and from that to the deluge of waters
in bounty and peace remain.
-- Translation by Frank O'Connor (1903-1966) in The Wild Bird's Nest: Poems From the Irish (publ. Cuala Press, Dubln, 1932).
Not many people today realize that much of Ireland was covered with a vast oak forest until the 1700s. The name elements "derry" or "dare" mean "oak grove" in Irish--dóire; "-kill-" means "forest"-- coill.
Holly, hazel and ash were considered holy or lucky.
During the Penal Laws era, between 1695 and 1800, the British rulers of Ireland cut down most of the trees and shipped them away, both to build ships for the British navy and to prevent native outlaws from hiding in the forests. Most of the trees were cut down within two generations, leaving the bare green sheep-grazed hills that the Irish landscape is known for today.
This poem is an anonymous Irish lament of the era when the native Irish earls had fled, the old aristocracy that had supported Irish bards had been dispossessed by the Anglo-Irish, the old castles were in ruins, and the trees were falling fast. The sale of the Kilcash timbers was announced in 1797 so it is probable that the song dates to about that time. For more information about this poem:
http://ingeb.org/songs/cillchai.html
http://musicanet.org/robokopp/eire/cillchai.htm
The mostly treeless countryside around Kilcash today
Caoine Cill Cháis
Cad a dhéanfaimid feasta gan adhmad?
Tá deireadh na gcoillte ar lár;
níl trácht ar Chill Cháis ná ar a teaghlach
is ní bainfear a cling go bráth.
An áit úd a gcónaiodh an deighbhean
fuair gradam is meidhir thar mhnáibh,
bhíodh iarlaí ag tarraingt tar toinn ann
is an t-aifreann binn á rá.
Ní chluinim fuiaim lachan ná gé ann,
ná fiolar ag éamh sois cuain,
ná fiú na mbeacha chun saothair
thabharfadh mil agus céir don tslua.
Níl ceol binn milis na n-éan ann
le hamharc an lae a dhul uainn,
náan chuaichín i mbarra na ngéag ann,
ós í chuirfeadh an saol chun suain.
Tá ceo ag titim ar chraobha ann
ná glanann le gréin ná lá,
tá smúid ag titim ón spéir ann
is a cuid uisce g léir ag trá.
Níl coll, níl cuileann, níl caor ann,
ach clocha is maolchlocháin,
páirc an chomhair gan chraobh ann
is d' imigh an géim chun fáin.
Anois mar bharr ar gach míghreanni,
chuaigh prionsa na nGael thar sáil
anonn le hainnir na míne
fuair gradam sa bhFrainc is sa Spáinn.
Anois tá a cuallacht á caoineadh,
gheibbeadh airgead buí agus bán;
's í ná tógladh sillbh na ndaoine,
ach cara na bhfíorbhochtán.
Aicim ar Mhuire is ar Iosa
go dtaga sí arís chughainn slán,
go mbeidh rincí fada ag gabháil timpeall,
ceol veidhlín is tinte cnámh;
go dtógtar an baile seo ár sinsear
Cill Chais bhreá arís go hard,
is go bráth nó go dtiocfaidh an díle
ná feictear é arís ar lár.
... Chinese look forward to [old age] as a relaxed time of leisure and high status. The "entering the ancestral hall" ceremony at age 60 celebrates a man's release from the backbreaking slog of field labor.... But whether he actually retires at this point depends on having one son, or better yet two, to slog in his place. I remember seeing a grizzled old peasant at work on a private plot some distance from the village on a dreary winter's day, his hoe rising and falling in a slow, tired rhythm. In his tattered black cotton trousers and coat of coarse cotton burlap, shoeless despite the cold, he made a pathetic figure alone in the fields. I judged him to be nearly 70, and asked my companion in surprise what such an elderly man was doing in the fields. "That's Old Man Wang," he replied. "His wife died several years ago, and his daughters have all married out. He lives alone." Then, after we had gone a few steps farther, he grimly observed, "You see, that is what happens when you have no sons." Wang, dirt-poor and pitied by his neighbors, has no choice but to continue toiling in the fields until he dies.
--Stephen Mosher in Broken Earth: The Rural Chinese (pub. 1983)
Foreign policy does not require the use of any of the good qualities peculiar to democracy but does demand the cultivation of almost all those which it lacks.
--Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1829) in Democracy in America (pub. 1835)
...the world of my Childhood was a tiny oasis in the midst of a vast desert. Since 1914 the desert has swallowed the oasis up.
--Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975).
If you know the source of this quotation, please let me know.
We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there.
--Joseph Conrad (pen name of Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski ) (1857-1924) in Heart of Darkness (pub. 1902)
"Here it is, boys." The mass of equipment that met their eyes vaguely resembled a medico's office x-ray gear. Beyond the obvious fact that it used electrical power, and that some of the dials were calibrated in familiar terms, a casual inspection gave no clue to its actual use.
"What's the principle, Doc?"
He stepped up to one of the reporters. "Suppose we take you as an example. Your name is Rogers, is it not? Very well, Rogers, you are a space-time event having duration four ways. You are not quite six feet tall, you are about twenty inches wide and perhaps ten inches thick. In time, there stretches behind you more of this space-time event, reaching to perhaps nineteen-sixteen, of which we see a cross-section here at right angles to the time axis, and as thick as the present. At the far end is a baby, smelling of sour milk and drooling its breakfast on its bib. At the other end lies, perhaps, an old man someplace in the nineteen-eighties.
"Imagine this space-time event that we call Rogers as a long pink worm, continuous through the years, one end in his mother's womb, and the other at the grave..."
"Now think of our long pink worm as a conductor of electricity. You have
heard, perhaps, of the fact that electrical engineers can, by certain
measurements, predict the exact location of a break in a trans-Atlantic
cable without ever leaving the shore. By applying my instruments to the
cross-section here in this room I can tell where the break occurs, that
is to say, when death takes place."
--Robert Heinlein (1907-1988) in "Life-Line" (1939)
…a bookless, backward, superstitious race which had scarcely emerged from the twilight of mythology….
--Frank O’Connor (1903-1966) describing the Irish of 1916, in The Big Fellow: Michael Collins and the Irish Revolution, p. 16
The Lonely
Lone and forgotten
through a long sleeping,
in the heart of age
a child woke weeping.
No invisible mother
was nigh him there
laughing and nodding
from earth and air.
No elfin comrades
came at his call
and the earth and the air
were blank as a wall.
The darkness thickened
upon him creeping,
in the heart of age
a child lay weeping.
--Æ (pseudonym of George William Russel) (1867-1935), "The Lonely"
