A prophet once remarked that the wind blows where it will and you hear the sound, but can’t tell where it comes from or where it goes… And so is everyone who is born of the wind.

Poets are born of the wind, I think.

Enjoyed the blog, Annie! See you back at Wom-Po.
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Larkin my arse, but what a way to go, collapsing in the bog with your gob pressed against the hot pipes and then your last words to one of the three women you’re juggling, *shred the diaries.*

~

Before i go onto the Muse proper, i feel a need to give the full background to it, in the tradition i centre my theatrics in, otherwise the full of it is lost and i cannot honestly proceed gettiong on the wick of others.

~

What is the Muse but Memory of a great tradition, Finnegas and Finn McCool speaking what’s what vis a vis poetry per se, as in the meaning of *éces* – which the modern Irish word for poetry, éigse* routes to.

Éces is an Old Irish word which the word *poetry* as we understand it today doesn’t really capture. In the most basic of sense it means the nuts and bolts of knowledge.

~

Mnemosyne, the original Greek muse, the etymology rooting to house of moon, its essential meaning: Memory.

Her pool in Hades was the opposite of Lethe, which was the pool/river of forgetfulness the dead drank from so they would not remember their past life when being re-incarnated.

The Orphic Mystery rites had initiates drink from Mnemosyne’s pool so they would acquire omniscience and instead of being re-born, go onto the Elysian Fields, which Hesiod in Works and Days refers to as the Isles of the Blessed, far to the west and which in Celtic Mythology are Tír na nÓg, (land of the ever young) the most popular of several Celtic otherworlds in which all is fab – another one called the Isle of Happy is where happiness is found, similar to Avalon.

The poetic Tradition of Gaelic poetry, is called *on coimgne* – which Kuno Meyer translated as *historical knowlege*. Meyer was an early 20C Celticist who, along with Rudolph Thurneyson, Osborn Bergin, D.A. Binchy (uncle of Maeve) and others, first translated Gaelic manuscript and were part of the Dublin milleau of Yeats and his cronies.

On Coimgne breaks down into 350 tales, 250 primary and 100 secondary. Secondary ones were never written down and only learned from grade four cano (whelp) up to seven ollamh (poetry professor), passed from lip to ear.

A list of 187 primary tales in 16 genres appear on folio 189b of the 12C Book of Leinster: Do nemthigud filed, a translation of which is here Of the Qualifications of a Poet.

Destructions (9), and Preyings (11), and Courtships (14), and Battles (9), and Caves (11), and Navigations (7), and Tragedies (13), and Feats (17) and Sieges (9) and Adventures (14) and Elopements (12) and Massacres (38) and Eruptions (2) and Visions (7) and Expeditions (4), and Marches (13).

The maxim following this primer reads: “(s)he is no poet who does not synchronize and harmonize on coimgne” the great knowledge.

~

Which brings us to the Muse in Gaelic poetry.

The otherworldly omphalos, the wet muse of Irish myth, is known by a variety of names: the Well of Segais, Sidhe Nechtan and Connla’s Well.

The mythology surrounding the well states it is a still-pool source of the Boyne river, and informs us how only Nechtan and his three cupbearers were allowed in the vicinity of the well, to perform magical rites, walking round it clockwise and no doubt muttering holy mumbo jumbo to invoke a supreme intelligence they hoped would deal favourably with their wants and wishes.

One day Nechtan’s wife Boand (who gave her name to the river Boyne) broke the taboo or *geisa* of not going near the well, and walked round it counter-clockwise, causing it to erupt in fury and bring the river Boyne into being, whilst scattering Boand’s limb and body parts in places whose toponyms etymologically route to her name and are recorded in another body of lore the poet need learn to qualify, the Dindsenchas.

The dindsenchas are 176 poems and prose commentaries which recount how places got their name. The 23 stanza poem of the dindsenchas which tells how the Boyne got hers, is at the link.

~

The well is surrounded by nine hazel trees, and each nut contains total poetic wisdom, and these nuts are known as *the nuts of knowledge* — cnó coill hEolas which (according the Cauldron of Poesy:

“…cast themselves in great quantities like a ram’s fleece upon the ridges of the Boyne, moving against the stream swifter than racehorses driven in the middle-month on the magnificent day every seven years.

~

Unlike the fruit on the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, there is no sense of the forbidden about them, (indeed they are greatly prized if highly elusive) and the short-cut way to get instantly cleverer than one’s rivals and dispense with the 12 difficult years of hard graft in the bardic curriculum, is to catch a Salmon of Knowledge who has fed on the nuts in the well and eat it, thereby ingesting the full of poetic wisdom seciond hand. The earliest name for the Salmon of wisodm/knowledge is eo fis and the modern name is bradán feasa.

A Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn son of Cumhaill) tale encapsulates this poetic of getting it all at once by eating the Salmon of Knowledge, which appears in the body of lore known as The Boyood Deeds of Finn McCool, found in the Fenian Cycle of Irish myth and which there is some debate as to the era the tales where set in, but in the centuries around the time of Christ, and these started getting written down in the 7C.

There are four cycles in Irish myth, the other three being:

2 – Mythological Cycle – detailing the pagan invasion mythology and featuring a cast
from six races of gods who fight amongst themselves for control of the island.

3 – Historical Cycle – cycle of kings detailing tales of legendary kings

4 – Ulster Cycle set ion the time of king Conchobar mac Nessa, in the time Pliny was writing around the time of Christ and detailing the adventures and battles of of the Uliad and their hero Cúchulainn, with ther rivals in Connacht, led by Maeve and the prime tale being Táin Bó Cúailnge – cattle raid of Cooley.

~

Finn McCool is the name of a person whose birth-name was Demne: (finn means *fair, bright, shining* and with a positive charge on fair) a poet-warrior who was the last chief of the fianna in Irish mythology. The fianna were independant aristocratic bands of young men who lived outside of society and were called upon by various petty kings in times of war to fight their battles amongst themselves, and who went raiding across the sea for thralls and spoil.

Finn’s father Cumhaill, was also a chief of the fianna, killed by his rival for the leadership, Goll mac Morna (goll meaning one eyed, which came about his fight with Cool senior). The fight came about because Cool had abducted Muireann Muncháem (“beautiful neck”) the daughter of Kildare druid Tadg mac Nuadat (Tadg son of Nuada), who appealed to High King Conn Cétchathach (“Con of the Hundred Battles”) who outlawed mister Cool and gave his rivals the perfect excuse to do away with him.

ha ha ha ha ha

But Muireann was already pregnant by Cool by the time they got her back, and her father didn’t want to know after this, so baby Finn — who, remember, at this time was known by his birth name of Demne – was put into the care of his father’s sister, the druidess Bodhmall, and her female warrior companion Liath Luachra, who raised him in the forests of the Slieve Bloom Mountains in Offally and Laois (pron. leesh)

He got the nick-name of Finn in childhood by some boys seeing him swim in the river, because of his pale hair glinting in the sun.

He was brought up trained in the art of warriorship and druidry, andas a youth, entered the service of a number of local kings in the midlands incognito, but such was his skill his true identity was always discovered and he was sent packing because it was too politically sensitive for a minor king to be having the son of Cool in his camp.

At the age of 15, he fell into with Finn Éces, or Finnegas the druid, who had his nemeton (druidic grove) by the banks of the river Boyne, where he had set up hoping to catch a Salmon of Knowledge, and took Finn in as his pupil, teaching him in the poetic craft.

Finnegas is obviously a cipher for bright, good, positive (finn) knowledge Finn Éces, and Finnegas had been told a prophesy, that though he would indeed catch one of the fabled Salmon of Knowledge, but alas he Finnegas would not get to profit intellectually and magically from the nuts of knowledge the fish had feasted on at Segias, as another person, someone called Fionn, would instead.

Now, this tale already has two people called Finn, one of whom is going by a nom de plume and with a real name of Demne and Finn Éces being the original name of Finnegas.

One day after seven yrs waiting by the bank and practicing druidry whilst also instructing his pupil Demne, (seven years being the time it took to enter the ollamh zone) Finnegas caught the fabled fish and naturally, remembering the prophecy – that not he but a person called Finn would get his mind altered by it, recieving the source of all poetry — Finnegas would have no doubt had a look around, checking that no likely candidtae was about for the fish to fall into their hands. Giving the fish to Demne he told him to cook it, but on no account eat any of it, not even a crumb, as the deal was s/he who had the first taste, got the poetic gift all at once.

Demne/Finn was cooking it, and some fish fat accidently splashed onto his thumb, and instinctively sticking it in his mouth, the knowledge from the nuts of wisdom, instantly infused him and when Finnegas came back to the cooking area, could tell straight away by the look on Finn’s face, what had happened.

~

So before i go to part two and talk about the muse of Segais in real terms, that’s the background we need know, in all seriousess, if we are to be a proper bore others moan about for hogging the binary data bits in cyberville mohn..
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I will miss Annie Finch as well, Ellen, but I will miss you too. Because don’t worry, I noticed!

Christopher
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Ellen
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margo
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By the way, at the expense of cross-pollinating blogs, you just answered your own Jeffers quandry: “In other words, it was the land that would feed them. Not greed.” This was Jeffers belief too. This and that humanistic solipsism, as he called it, was the greatest danger to the planet. I know a historian who once told me that, in America, the only freedom left is the choice of which brand names to buy. I suspect Jeffers, were he living today, would come to much the same.

Terreson
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And your re-telling of Maud Gonne’s little stones to freedom, (o, lovely, lovely–that brings a real shiver to me. To be “one little stone”on a such a path is worth more to me than a sky of July 4th invocations!Even as I’m trying to reconsider freedom in Joel Brouwer’s neighboring Harriet post.) Am I rambling? Forgive me.

Your post also brings me to another Hawaiian telling.(I lived in those islands once, long enough to learn its visions.) The last reigning queen there, Liliu’o'kalani, imprisoned in her own palace by desirous-for-land American business men– told her people to “eat stones.” In other words, it was the land that would feed them. Not greed.

This queen is both role model and muse for young activists, there. Pele is protectress and muse for her believers. In my much shorter post above, I was only pausing to see that it matters less to me if the inspiration is “real” or interior, or exterior.We are wealthy for each presence, each inspiration, yes? The wind would be so empty, maybe, without them.

margo
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“Tired but glowing I looked out the window of the train at the dark bog land where now only the tiny lakes gleamed in the fading light. Then I saw a tall beautiful woman with dark hair blown on the wind and I knew it was Cathleen ni Houlihan. She was crossing the bog towards the hills, springing from stone to stone over the treacherous surface,and the little white stones shone, marking a path behind her, then faded into the darkness. I heard a voice say: ‘You are one of the little stones on which the feet of the Queen have rested on her way to Freedom.’ The sadness of the night took hold of me and I cried; it seemed so lonely just to be one of those little stones left behind on the path.

“Being old now and not triumphant I know the blessedness of having been ‘one of those little stones’ on the path to Freedom.”

She also tells the story about a “beautiful dark woman with the sorrowful eyes” she had seen since childhood. The woman would occasionally visit her at night, bending over her bed. She knew the woman belonged to the borderland between the living and the dead. And so she decided once to start evoking the woman as means for working her (political) will. But the more she evoked her the stronger and happier the woman became until finally there was a clash of wills between them and Gonne decided to banish her. A third story she tells of a mysterious woman coming to a village in which the inhabitants are being evicted en masse. The woman brings with her good luck and Gonne and others are able to reverse the evictions. She calls the woman “the woman of the Sidhe.”

The fun part of all this is that, while Gonne was slightly interested in the occult, would follow Willie Yeats’ lead and knew some of the people involved in the Order of the Golden Dawn, she was a very pragmatic, hard-headed, no nonsense political activist and intriguer whose driving passion was Irish Nationalism and the pull down of the British Empire. (The British even suspected her of being a spy working against them during WW 1, the likelihood of which is reasonably high.)

Muse? Goddess? A psychologically interiorized situation? Anyway, the women were real enough for Maud Gonne.

Terreson
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& still musing in it,
margo
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Have you ever tried to control a pot of glue? It can’t be done.

Look, I’m going to glue Jack Spicer to the wall…

And I got glue on myself!

And now my pants, which are quite glue-y, are receiving messages from outer space…

Don’t worry about me, John!

I’m fine.

Thomas
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So it’s Joyce’s term, and is most useful in terms of his particular art.

Perhaps it should be made to carry a warning label!
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Like “High Windows,” how easy it would be to describe what happens at the end of this odd, quirky poem as an “epiphany”—whereas it’s so much richer if the poem can be allowed to conjure up its own, private critical apparatus to suit it’s intimate dynamics. It would be like calling High Windows a “mystical vision,” which would make poor Philip Larkin turn in his grave, of course. “This poem’s a mystical vision, class,” and that’s so good and such a relief for the class that it turns away from its much more urgent, more visceral concern with the pills and the diaphragm, and it forgets what matters. Or for more mature students, the terrifying image of the “outdated combine harvester,” for example. Or for readers that are reading the poem because their life depends upon it what the final image actually describes–which is not easy, because it doesn’t go to heaven or make any escape. It just doesn’t.

In all the posts above, which I have read several times now, I still see no real interest in what this particular poem, The Fish, actually does. When I say the fish is not a gamefish or a trophy, I still haven’t mentioned the fact that the fish didn’t even fight. It’s just hanging there over the side “a grunting weight.” Horrible, a grunting weight (some of those grouper type fish do grunt, though of course that isn’t what the image has to mean).

So what’s the victory? Why the rainbow? Why the release? And above all, what’s the feeling?

Indeed, I would say that if this poem is an example of “epiphanic structure,” then you’re quite right, Martin, it is a failure—and I can understand why it wasn’t a comfortable poem for you to teach in class. It just wouldn’t work that way.

But what if you remove the label and with it the expectation, does that free it up? Does it allow you to consider other dimensions and mechanisms that you might not have had the critical space for before?

Same with High Windows.

And this is a good argument too, because I have no idea really whether I’m right or wrong. The point is the poem is expanding, that it’s still fresh—even for those of us who have known it for 30 years!

Christopher
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When I see a couple of kids
And guess he’s fucking her and she’s
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives—
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That’ll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

Philip Larkin
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If we ascend an ordinary mountain and look around us from its summit, we behold a landscape stretching, say forty miles, in every direction; forming a circle two hundred and fifty miles in circumference; and including an area of five thousand square miles. The extent of such a prospect, on account of the successiveness with which its portions necessarily present themselves to view, can be only very feebly and very partially appreciated; yet the entire panorama would comprehend no more than one forty-thousandth part of the mere surface of our globe. Were this panorama, then, to be succeeded, after the lapse of an hour, by another of equal extent; this again by a third, after the lapse of another hour; this again by a fourth, after lapse of another hour — and so on, until the scenery of the whole Earth were exhausted; and were we to be engaged in examining these various panoramas for twelve hours of every day; we should nevertheless, be nine years and forty-eight days in completing the general survey.

But if the mere surface of the Earth eludes the grasp of the imagination, what are we to think of its cubical contents? It embraces a mass of matter equal in weight to at least two sextillions, two hundred quintillions of tons. Let us suppose it in a state of quiescence; and now let us endeavor to conceive a mechanical force sufficient to set it in motion! Not the strength of all the myriads of beings whom we may conclude to inhabit the planetary worlds of our system, not the combined physical strength of all these beings — even admitting all to be more powerful than man — would avail to stir the ponderous mass a single inch from its position.

What are we to understand, then, of the force which, under similar circumstances, would be required to move the largest of our planets, Jupiter? This is eighty-six thousand miles in diameter, and would include within its surface more than a thousand orbs of the magnitude of our own. Yet this stupendous body is actually flying around the Sun at the rate of twenty-nine thousand miles an hour. The thought of such a phenomenon cannot well be said to startle the mind; it palsies and appalls it. Not unfrequently we task our imagination in picturing the capacities of an angel. Let us fancy such a being at a distance of some hundred miles from Jupiter, a close eye-witness of this planet as it speeds on its annual revolution. Now can we, I demand, fashion for ourselves any conception so distinct of this ideal being’s spiritual exaltation, as that involved in the supposition that, even by this immeasurable mass of matter whirled immediately before her eyes, with a velocity so unutterable, she — an angel — angelic though she be — is not at once struck into nothingness and overwhelmed?
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Speaking as a Goddess worshipper also, don’t you find the world richer, more in-formed and from the inside out, immanent as you say? Speaking as a poet also don’t you find the same?

Terreson
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Paul Veyne writes: “Myth is truthful, but figuratively so. It is not historical truth mixed with lies; it is a high philosophical teaching that is entirely true, on the condition that, instead of taking it literally, one sees in it an allegory.”
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Jung’s gender stereotyping re the unconscious has often been criticized, including often by me over many years. For some reason now things are somewhat changed for me, and these images now have become more like doorways for me than like walls. Still, I totally understand how you could find them restrictive.
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There are ghosts older than the wisest tree
quicker than the shyest bird

and the last three stanzas..

Thank you Jeff.
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It’s not a matter of envy, btw, but of recognizing that, in my case (I’m not speaking for anyone else, mind) the goddess and the muse are one–and it makes me happy to think so many male poets I admire were honoring the goddess in the guise of the muse, sometimes without even knowing it…

I’ve never pretended not to have a childish mind in some ways (I think it’s safe to admit that, now that I’m two decades out of my PhD and have won a scholarly award). I consider it a poetic asset.

I notice that when Christopher Hitchens and the other current crop of atheists knock religion it’s usually not for its apparent silliness (who would bother) but for its ill effects, the pain and torture and exile and genocide it causes. Paganism and goddess religion are not interested in converts and don’t bother anyone, so it’s probably not worth insulting them. There are plenty of other religions that could use some criticism if you’re in that mood.

(and if you have aspirations as a poet, which I think you do, it might be wise not to refer to the muse as “some female” (-:
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