A Literary Genius Over The Border -- In Derry.

    For the past two months I have been thinking about the loss of the famous poet and writer who was born eighteen years after me at Castledawson in my adjoining county.   He was only seventy four.  You will all know that his name was Seamus Heaney.    It seems so unfair that his health failed ;  he had so much to give to younger generations.   But we can take consolation from knowing that his words will
never be forgotten.

                                          Northern Ireland 's  Popular Genius With Words

     Seamus grew up on a farm with eight other children and his father was a cattle dealer.  In his later years he lived in Sandymount.   He was educated at St. Columbs catholic college in Derry.   Readers of his poetry considered that he got some of his inspiration from reading the works of Wordsworth.   He was appointed Professor at Oxford and at Harvard  and was awarded the Nobel prize for Literature.    His early poems were considered the best sine those by W.B. Yeats.    In his obituary  the Irish Independent called him one of the best known poets in the world.   The large funeral to Bellaghy was broadcast on television far and wide.

Yeats was born in Dublin in 1865  but was mostly associated with Sligo where his mother came from.  Yeats spent holidays on Howth at Balscadden House.  He was the first Irishman and member of the Senate to receive the Nobel Prize -- in 1923.  He died in France in 1939 and was buried there.   However  he had wished to be dug up after a while -- when he would be forgotten -- and buried again in his beloved Drumcliff.    I have never passed this church without stopping and entering the graveyard to read his epitaph on  the tombstone  -- " Cast a cold eye  on life,  on death   Horseman pass by ".   This was from his poem "Under Benbulben"

Benbulben's Dangerous Face Looking Down On Drumcliff

 This is an example of his mythical writing

We rode in sorrow, with strong hounds three,

Bran, Sgeolan, and Lomair,

On a morning misty and mild and fair.

The mist-drops hung on the fragrant trees,

And in the blossoms hung the bees.

We rode in sadness above Lough Lean,

For our best were dead on Gavra's green.

I climbed this spectacular mountain before I went to the top of  Errigal which was nearer to me.   The opportunity arose when I was at school.   The geography master took about twenty of us on an outing by bus.   We climbed from the easy south side ;  the other is very dangerous.   I still remember the wonderful view while he was telling us that it was formed three hundred million years ago.    He also

told us that the ancient warrior  Fionn Mac Cool lived where we were standing  in the third century.

This is Errigal.  At 751 metres it is the tallest of our Derryveagh mountain range.

This is a photo of myself taken by Jane after we had reached the top in June '76.
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I am pleased to report that at their meeting on November 13 Beverley Council rejected the application to conduct experiments on a further 2,000 beagles.   I would like to have herd the speakers but I was taken ill and had to leave after a few minutes.

               

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