Post by tobias42 on Jan 18, 2014 4:20:49 GMT
THE SIDHE (pronounced shee)
As softly as my guide talks he walks
Between evenly spaced rows of pine
The way I might walk about a sleeping baby
Or down a church aisle as a chorus
To some hymn already in progress is sung.
My guide slaps red bark
As if greeting an old friend
His eyes climb through
Green needled branches to cold gray clouds
"My father planted these pines
In poor meadow to make a seed bed
For oaks and maples which I shall plant
And my children's grandchildren shall harvest."
The pines open onto green meadows
Spotted with sheep and cows
"It's been a hard year,
A year of drought not of rain
But of warm temperatures to grow the grass.
My neighbor's sheep and cows
Might have starved had I not freely spent the pasture
I frugally saved the year before."
A short distance away the land funnels
Into a steep narrow chasm from which a spring emerges
And just above the spring several tons of limestone slab
Heavily rests upon three upright stones.
My guide does not wait
For unspoken questions to be voiced
"Nobody knows why Labby Rock was built here
When by rights it should have been built
In a place of honor not hidden away from sight.
And, no the stone was not quarried nearby
Nor do the plants which blanket the top
Grow for miles about."
He leads me up the slope to a tree
More winter dead than spring alive
" Some folks say a single tree planted in a meadow
Was planted by fairies but it weren't no fairies
It was the sidhe which folks get wrong
As fairies or little people but they are really
Spirits of the land itself and it is said that no man
No matter how much he might suffer
Winter's chill for lack of wood or starve
For the lack of money would dare cut down this tree
Without bringing misfortune down upon himself
And his family for generations to come.
But other folks say in the not too distant
When a baby died without baptism
The priest wouldn't allow
A Christian burial in consecrated ground
So the babe's kin would bury the child
In land consecrated by anger, tears and shame
And the tree was planted
Half as tombstone and half as warning."
From here I was led to a depression
Thirty feet across and ringed
By a fallen rock wall.
My grandfather's father called this place
A fairy circle or a fairy ring
And told tales of men he knew
Who watched at sanity's peril
Fairies singing and dancing about
And he said that a man who strayed too close
Or stayed too long became enchanted
And became worthless for work
And good only for drink.
But with half the imagination
And none the drink
I can see how maybe once long ago
This might have been a corral for sheep
To keep them from straying into a wolf's belly
Or a thief's cooking pot."
I follow my guide's eyes from fairy circle,
To the sidhe planted tree,
To Labby Rock to the meadow
Spotted with sheep and cows,
To the evenly space rows of planted pines
And back to the tree more
Winter dead than spring alive
And when at last he spoke the land
Was in his voice
"When the old tree dies next winter
I'll plant a new tree next spring
Even if I live the poorer for it."
As softly as my guide talks he walks
Between evenly spaced rows of pine
The way I might walk about a sleeping baby
Or down a church aisle as a chorus
To some hymn already in progress is sung.
My guide slaps red bark
As if greeting an old friend
His eyes climb through
Green needled branches to cold gray clouds
"My father planted these pines
In poor meadow to make a seed bed
For oaks and maples which I shall plant
And my children's grandchildren shall harvest."
The pines open onto green meadows
Spotted with sheep and cows
"It's been a hard year,
A year of drought not of rain
But of warm temperatures to grow the grass.
My neighbor's sheep and cows
Might have starved had I not freely spent the pasture
I frugally saved the year before."
A short distance away the land funnels
Into a steep narrow chasm from which a spring emerges
And just above the spring several tons of limestone slab
Heavily rests upon three upright stones.
My guide does not wait
For unspoken questions to be voiced
"Nobody knows why Labby Rock was built here
When by rights it should have been built
In a place of honor not hidden away from sight.
And, no the stone was not quarried nearby
Nor do the plants which blanket the top
Grow for miles about."
He leads me up the slope to a tree
More winter dead than spring alive
" Some folks say a single tree planted in a meadow
Was planted by fairies but it weren't no fairies
It was the sidhe which folks get wrong
As fairies or little people but they are really
Spirits of the land itself and it is said that no man
No matter how much he might suffer
Winter's chill for lack of wood or starve
For the lack of money would dare cut down this tree
Without bringing misfortune down upon himself
And his family for generations to come.
But other folks say in the not too distant
When a baby died without baptism
The priest wouldn't allow
A Christian burial in consecrated ground
So the babe's kin would bury the child
In land consecrated by anger, tears and shame
And the tree was planted
Half as tombstone and half as warning."
From here I was led to a depression
Thirty feet across and ringed
By a fallen rock wall.
My grandfather's father called this place
A fairy circle or a fairy ring
And told tales of men he knew
Who watched at sanity's peril
Fairies singing and dancing about
And he said that a man who strayed too close
Or stayed too long became enchanted
And became worthless for work
And good only for drink.
But with half the imagination
And none the drink
I can see how maybe once long ago
This might have been a corral for sheep
To keep them from straying into a wolf's belly
Or a thief's cooking pot."
I follow my guide's eyes from fairy circle,
To the sidhe planted tree,
To Labby Rock to the meadow
Spotted with sheep and cows,
To the evenly space rows of planted pines
And back to the tree more
Winter dead than spring alive
And when at last he spoke the land
Was in his voice
"When the old tree dies next winter
I'll plant a new tree next spring
Even if I live the poorer for it."
