This is a traditional Irish tune called Brian Boru's March. It is frequently played up tempo, but was originally, I believe, a slow air. I’ve twinned it with words from Mac Liag’s Lamentation after the high king’s death in 1014 AD. He was the chief poet of Brian Boru, and his secretary. I am a little sad that I don't have the proper Irish accent to do them justice.
This sort of lament belongs to the ubi sunt (where are they) tradition, a term taken from the longer Latin phrase, Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt (where are those who were before us)?
Contemplation of mortality and the fleeting nature of life was a popular theme in early medieval poetry. Old English has many such examples like Deor, the scop who lost his patronage to a rival:
Ahte ic fela wintra
folgað tilne,
holdne hlaford,
oþ þæt Heorrenda nu,
leoðcræftig monn,
londryht geþah
þæt me eorla hleo
ær gesealde
I had for many winters
a good position,
a loyal lord,
until Heorrenda now,
a man skilful in songs,
has taken the estate
that the protector of warriors
before gave to me.
The Ruin, too, expresses a sense of loss, in this instance of a greater and more golden time when grand buildings towered amid riches and revelry:
Beorht wæron burgræced, burnsele monige,
heah horngestreon, heresweg micel,
meodoheall monig dreama full,
oþþæt þæt onwende wyrd seo swiþe.
Bright were the halls, many the baths,
High the gables, great the joyful noise,
many the mead-hall full of pleasures.
Until fate the mighty overturned it all.
But likely the most famous example of ubi sunt comes from The Wanderer. Thanks to Tolkien, many will recognise its lines:
Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago?
Where is the horse gone? Where the rider?
Tolkien wrote his own beautiful version of this poem:
Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?
(I could do a post on Tolkien’s prose and poetry alone, but it would just be me fangirling over my favourite lines). Imagining the pathos of the scene where King Théoden stands back-lit, lamenting the fall of his house and contemplating the annihilation of his people always gives me the good shivers. It’s one of my favourite moments in Peter Jackson’s The Two Towers, and Bernard Hill’s delivery is masterful.
Interestingly, ubi sunt is similar to the Japanese concept mono no aware, which acknowledges the sadness and beauty in transience. This theme, so prevalent in medieval poetry, is one of my favourites. The evocative language, which seems to say we were fleeting but glorious, is often epic, filling your mind with sights both wondrous and tragic. Rather like life.
Do you have any favourite poems from this period or elsewhere? I was thinking too that other works invite some critical reflection on this theme and even provide an alternative vision like Percy Shelley’s Ozymandias, an example of hubris nemesis and tonally very different.
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