Donal Mac Seaghain Na Mallacht Poem by Anna Johnston MacManus

(Donal Mac Shan of the Curses took the garrison of Liscallaghan, October 23rd, 1641.)

'Donal Mac Seaghain Na Mallacht
Sign the cross on your lips and breast
Before you go into the battle
Where, maybe, you'll find your rest.

'And sign it on brow of blackness:
Loved vein of my heart, my son,
That the bitter hate may leave you,
And the bitter words be done.

'For a grief is ever with me–
Dark sorrow without shine–
That Donal Mac Seaghain of the Curses
Should be name on son of mine.'

He took the hands of his mother
And answered in gentle wise
Though his face was a cloud of anger,
And a quenchless flame his eyes.

'For you I have only loving
Who nursed me upon your knee:
Yet, O Mother, you cannot sweeten
The sights that to-day I see.

'I look on our smoking valleys,
I gaze on our wasted lands,
I stand by our grass-grown thresholds
And curse their ruffian hands.

'I curse them in dark and daylight–
I curse them the hours between
The grey dawn and shadowy night time,
For the sights my eyes have seen.

'I curse them awake or sleeping,
I curse them alive or dead,
And, O Christ ! that my words were embers
To fall on each Saxon head.

'They have swept my land with their fury,
It is burnt where their feet have passed:
It is blighted, dishonoured, lowly
In the track of the poisonous blast.

'But Eoghan, God shield him, gathers
The tall spears of the Gael–
And Donal Mac Seaghain Na Mallacht
Goes foremost to win or fail.

'Then stay me not of my curses–
When mountain and fair green glen
Are free as the Lord God meant them,
I shall pray at your bidding then.'