The Rhyme Rats Hear Before They Die

 

Yeats was a great believer in the power of "poet speech" to change minds and circumstances, and of course he was a master. Opening his Collected Poems at random, I found myself rereading “Parnell’s Funeral", in which he draws from a dream of an Artemis-like goddess on horseback shooting an arrow at a star. He moves on to characterize politicians and phases of Irish history. In a commentary, he said he was versifying things he had spoken in lectures in a recent tour of the United States. I came to the lines

All that was said in Ireland is a lie
Bred out of the contagion of the throng
Saving the rhyme rats hear before they die. [1]

In a previous reading, in the old Macmillan edition I was given as a prize for writing verse in school, I had assumed the reference to “rats” was another example of Yeats’s haughty patrician dismissal of critics and group think he disliked. This time I was using volume one of the Collected Works, which is enriched by the copious scholarly notes of Richard J, Finneran. Thanks to Finneran, I made this fascinating discovery about the reputed power of poetic “rhymes” even on rats.

In “The Proceedings of the Great Bardic Institution” ed. & trans. Professor [Owen] Connellan, Transactions of the Ossianic Society, 5 (1860), the poet Seanchan causes ten mice to die by his satire. In a long note (pp. 76-77), Connellan refers to a paper presented to the Royal Irish Academy in 1853 by James H. Todd “on the subject of the power once believed to be possessed by the Irish Bards of rhyming rats to death or causing them to migrate by the power of rhyme.” [2]

Shakespeare knew something of these things.  In Act III Scene 2 of As You Like It, Rosalind says, “I was never so berhymed since Pythagoras time that I was an Irish rat, which J can hardly remember “. In German folk tradition - which gave us "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" - the rat catcher uses a flute. It seems his Irish counterpart needed no instrument other than his voice box. 

The Irish rhymers often had larger targets than rats and mice. I followed Finneran's lead and read about several instances of Irish bards rhyming to death even Lords Lieutenants of Ireland.

The following is an instance given by the Four Masters at the year 1414 in which an unpopular Lord Lieutenant was rhymed to death by the Irish bards: "John Stanley, Deputy of the King of England, arrived in Ireland, a man who gave neither mercy nor protection to clergy, laity, nor men of science, but subjected as many of them as he came upon to cold, hardship, and famine." Then, after mentioning some particular instances, especially his having plundered Niall, son of Hugh O'Higgin, the annalists proceed to say : "The O'Higgins, with Niall, then satirized John Stanley, who lived after this satire but five weeks, for he died from the virulence of their lampoons." [3]

References

[1] "Parnell's Funeral" in Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume 1 The Poems ed. Richard J. Finneran Second Edtion (New York: Scribner, 1997) p.285

[2] CW vol 1, Explanatory Notes p. 677. n.304.I.28.

[3] Transactions of the Ossianic society, for the year[s] 1853-1858 vol. 5 (Dublin, 1860) p.80.

Looking for Muirthemne

 

First, the dream. Then, the half-dream and the poet speech.

May 7, 2025

dream
Looking for Muirthemne

I'm in a familiar, frustrating dream situation: I have set off from a certain location but now I can't find my way back, because my rambles have taken me into strange territory. Sometimes I find I have forgotten the address and the name of the place where I am staying. Not so this time. Seeking direction, I tell people, "I am going to Muirthemne." They don't understand me. Am I saying "Miercoles", Spanish for Wednesday?

When I return from my dream outing, I recognize the Irish word and my mind goes to Lady Gregory's translation of the old legends of a warrior hero. The book was published in 1902 as Cuchulain of Muirthemne and was in the advance guard of the Irish literary revival. Augusta Gregory described how her friend and protege W.B. Yeats instructed her to take on this task: "I dreamed that I had been writing some article & that W.B.Y. said 'It's not your business to write – Your business is to make an atmosphere'". [1]

Yeats was not faint in his praise for the book he inspired in a dream. He began his Preface to Cuchulain of Muirthemne with these lines: "I think this book is the best that has come out of Ireland in my time. Perhaps I should say that it is the best book that has ever come out of Ireland; for the stories which it tells are a chief part of Ireland’s gift to the imagination of the world - and it tells them perfectly for the first time." 2]

In a Note in the text on the conversation of Cuchulain and Emer he salutes the “poet speech” of early Irish literature that "everywhere brings the odor of the wild woods into our nostrils." He hints that poet speech can lift the veil between the worlds.

So I lay down again, letting my body relax towards the half-dream state, and sang in my mind a poem that came to me long ago in a dream. I knew it to be a wing song when it came, a song that lifts you and gives you the power of flight beyond the body and beyond the world, and may entertain friendly spirits as well. When I first woke with the song, I phoned two musical friends to ask them to record the notes so they were not lost. My friends were out so I sang into their voicemail. I managed to retain the tune, and to record several verses, although one is enough for flight.

On my back in bed this morning, with early light seeping through the drapes, I sang We are sleeping till we're dreaming We are dreaming for awakening We're awakening for our homecoming into the La-and I had vivid sensations of lifting effortlessly from my body in the bed. I felt great wings extend outward and upward from my shoulders. I revelled in the power of ascent. I felt like a sea bird, perhaps a swan. I sported with the winds. I enjoyed the skirl of landscapes and waterscapes far below, and then islands in mist, and long blue ragged hills and at last a broad green plain with tiny tufts of wool that must be grazing sheep and a dolmen arch worthy of a bard or a tribal king or one of the shining ones.

References

1. Judith Hill. Lady Gregory: An Irish Life. Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2005.p.150

2. W. B. Yeats, Preface to Cuchulain of Muirthemne: The History of the Men of the Red Branch of Ulster, arranged and put into English by Lady Gregory. London: John Murray, 1902.

3. Cuchulain of Muirthemne p.23. 

Illustration at Top: "Looking for Muirthemne" RM + AI