The Torc Song
Lanea ap Kerrigan
The solstice flame was burning
The night that we rode forth,
And the bitter winds were turning
To lead us on our course.
The moon’s glow did show brightly
The armor on our backs,
And our kin did follow after
Tears filling up our tracks.
And onward did we ride
To meet our fiercest foe,
And with the strength of ages
The Gods would steer our blows.
We Celts did charge towards them
With battle cries of hate,
And for the torcs around our necks
We swore to meet our fate.
Through day and night and night and day
We traveled through the land,
And we mustered up our every skill
To fill Eremon’s command.
By the fifth day, we reached the shore
To battle for our home,
But all we found were empty ships
And the tracks that tore the loam.
That night we slept along the shore
Wrapped up in wool from home,
And we shivered from the frigid air
And were dampened by sea-foam.
Our dreams were filled with vengeance
And anger for our shame,
The only heat the Gods would give
Was fury in our veins.
Next morn we rose to storm winds
Rising up to call us forth
To the battle that was raging
In our homes off to the north.
We rushed to stop the raping
of our families and our plains,
and we cursed the men who crushed our pride,
and we lusted for their pain.
And onward did we ride
To meet our fiercest foe,
And with the strength of ages
The gods would steer our blows.
We Celts did charge towards them
With battle cries of hate,
And for the torcs around our necks
We swore to meet our fate.
We found their armies pillaging
The sidhe of Gwynedd great,
And we grasped our hilts with newfound strength
As we rushed to save our mates.
The village great was burning,
Our young slain by the score.
‘Twas no hearth that we could save,
Our only home was war.
We gathered up our every force
And charged the bastard foe,
And we tore through every sinew
And we crushed their foreign bones.
Our chief looked down upon the field
Where the bodies laid,
And he blessed the Gods for their help
And for our dead he cried.
For onward did we ride
To meet our fiercest foe,
And with the strength of ages
The Gods did steer our blows.
We Celts did charge towards them
With battle cries of hate,
And for the torcs around our necks
We fell to meet our fate.
Each year around Angleseyan fires
Our battle is retold,
And the bravery of our kinsmen
Is more valuable than gold.
We ask no prayer for safety
in this sidhe under the earth,
we only wish that all do see
great Gwynedd for its worth
And onward will you ride
To meet your fiercest foe,
And with the strength of ages
The Gods will steer your blows.
As Celts do charge towards them
With battle cries of hate,
And for the torcs around your necks
Walk bravely to your fate.
Copyright 1992 Amy Ripton
May be reproduced with the express written permission of the author
(amyripton@aol.com)
A Warning to Rome
Lanea ap Kerrigan (words)/Etaine na
Preachain (music)
It would be wisest to follow your instincts,
Paulinus, flee from these dark rocky coasts.
We’ll soak these cliffs in your
legionnaires blood
In answer to all of your ignorant boasts
We follow the sun wheel throughout all out
lands
Howling like dogs and screeching like birds.
Wherever we find you we’ll rally
against you
And kill you like so many kine in our herds.
If you kill our fathers we’ll see it all
happen
And feed on the barbary of "civilized
war."
We can’t reach your families—we can
keep you trapped here
To languish away from your Gods and your shore.
We follow the sun wheel throughout all out
lands
Howling like dogs and screeching like birds.
Wherever we find you we’ll rally
against you
And kill you like so many kine in our herds.
If you rape our daughters they’ll bear
sons to kill you
To hear their dear mothers laugh as you die.
Our women aren’t like yours, giggling and
sighing.
How their swords clang and how their spears
fly.
We follow the sun wheel throughout all out
lands
Howling like dogs and screeching like birds.
Wherever we find you we’ll rally
against you
And kill you like so many kine in our herds.
Our babes will take joy in splashing around
In the mud soaked fields filled with your
blood,
And the ravens and dogs that follow our camps
Rejoice at the sight of each day’s new red
flood.
We follow the sun wheel throughout all out
lands
Howling like dogs and screeching like birds.
Wherever we find you we’ll rally
against you
And kill you like so many kine in our herds.
Copyright 1999 Amy Ripton and Simone Parrish
May be reproduced with the express written permission of the authors
(amyripton@aol.com)
Na Casan mBan War Chant
Lanea ap Kerrigan
We three born of Lugh’s hottest fires
Were tempered tending kinsmen’s pyres;
The keening that once drained us pale
Now feeds our lust for vengeance.
We weren’t born for this violent life
But gathered strength through untold strife,
Our spears will reap a harvest great
Of countless wailing strangers.
So bow down to the Morrigan,
And stand beside Na Casan mBan,
Unified we’ll clean the land
Of all who try to claim it.
Enumerate the crimes of such
Who rape and kill the likes of us
And every wronged Gael will find
Revenge within our blows.
And as we claim the likes of you
Weak soldiers for the Dagda’s stew,
We cackle at the pleas and cries
That ring around our ears.
So bow down to the Morrigan,
And stand beside Na Casan mBan,
Unified we’ll clean the land
Of all who try to claim it.
Their eyes all glaze with mortal fright
As we rend their hides with spearpoints bright,
They crumple to the blood-soaked earth
To rot away untended.
And in the war-crow’s churning skies
The sounds of frenzied victory rise,
As we clear our shores of every last
Misguided Roman tourist.
So bow down to the Morrigan,
And stand beside Na Casan mBan,
Unified we’ll clean the land
Of all who try to claim it.
For miles around the tale will spread
Of eviscerated Roman dead:
At every last Lughnasadh fire
We claim the warrior’s portion.
So rally now against our foe
Or learn the shame each coward knows,
If you stand with us you’ll know the joy
Of life without a master.
So bow down to the Morrigan,
And stand beside Na Casan mBan,
Unified we’ll clean the land
Of all who try to claim it.
Now bow down to the Morrigan,
And stand beside Na Casan mBan,
Unified we’ll clean the land
Of all who try to claim it.
Copyright 1998 Amy Ripton
May be reproduced with the express written permission of the author
(amyripton@aol.com)
Dán dó Emain Macha (Poem of the Twins
of Macha)
Lanea ap Kerrigan
Crunniuc mac Agnomain, hospitaler,
is father to four fame-bound sons,
each a war hungry hero of the Ulaid.
Father and sons tend hostel and holdings
and host the traveling warriors and bards
on the rocky coast of Moyle’s sea.
But Crunniuc suffers a pain well known among
his kinsmen:
Ulster has need of warriors, and warriors grow
from sons
who sometimes come so strong and stubborn from
the womb
that their earliest resting place sheds two
souls with their birthing.
Thus had Crunniuc’s wife died as she was
delivered of their youngest:
his last vision of the woman saw her taught,
moon-white breast loosen
as she fed their bawling, life-greedy child
once,
until not just her belly but her body was empty
of life.
And for the span of time between his red
son’s birth
and the boy’s second bloodletting
Crunniuc has slept singly.
Crunniuc tends his paling
as he watches a lithe woman approach his
dwelling.
Glistening linen drapes her ripened form,
newly woven strong and dyed deeply.
Red gold hanging from ear and braid,
clinging to nape and wrist,
waist wrapped in bronze chain finely wrought,
ankles flashing under skirt with each step.
Her beauty so great as to still the tongue
and move the groin all in one glance.
The woman strides proudly into Crunniuc’s
hall,
sits at his hearth, and stokes the fire
from smolder to blaze all the while silent.
Bewildered Crunniuc stands dumb,
fearing to blink or breathe, only staring in
wonder.
The sun sets and the woman rises,
picking utensils from the hearth
and preparing the meal as if the kitchen is her
own.
Crunniuc and his sons sit at table, eat the
feast before them,
and hold their tongues for fear she will vanish
and the sixth chair will again sit empty
as it did for so many seasons.
They fill their bellies, and clean their
plates,
and Crunniuc’s sons retreat to their rooms
silently.
The woman walks to Crunniuc’s bed where
she waits.
He approaches cautiously, searching for protest
or rejection
in her eyes or lips.
Finding none, he lays with the woman
as he once laid with his sons’ mother.
In the night, her name comes to him as they
rustle the sheets.
Her lips open and release:
Macha, the breath of love itself.
The sound soothes Crunniuc and he sleeps.
Macha and Crunniuc live thus for several
seasons,
sharing plate, bed, home, and family.
She is wife to Crunniuc, second mother to his
sons,
and wonder to those boatmen who catch glimpses
of her
staring seaward from the high chalk cliffs
above.
Under Macha’s attention Crunniuc’s
corn grows fuller,
his sows and kine fatten, his nets find more
fish,
and his sons grow to be the strongest men of
the Ulaid.
Fortune flocks to Macha and her kin.
Soon, Macha herself grows with the mark of
their bedwork
and her back bows forward with the weight of a
great pregnancy.
Macha’s tongue loosens to sing her bliss,
finding the family she has knitted herself
happy.
Now Bealtaine’s great festival calls
Crunniuc forth
out of their private reverie to Ulster’s
raucous celebration,
anxious to stand among kinsmen and share their
cups.
Macha, wary of the journey, warns Crunniuc
to hold both pride and tongue:
"Speak to no man of me, for if you arouse
the wrath of the Ulaid with boasting and
bravado
we will find no peace, and our home and family
will melt
like so much snow in the spring."
Crunniuc soothes Macha and sets out for the
gathering.
And Macha rests fitfully
under the twinned burdens of pregnancy and
worry.
Arriving at the festival Crunniuc holds his
secret tight
as he greets friends and rivals,
but as the day is passed so are the cups,
and Crunniuc’s bond to Macha fades in his
mind.
Ulster’s king calls for races and his
chariots win handily,
and he bragging all the while that his horses
have the swiftest feet of any beasts living.
Crunniuc, full of spirits, answers
"My bride could outrun your horses
and she full up with my child."
The king rushes forward in anger,
demanding that Crunniuc deliver up his wife
to fulfill the rashly uttered bond.
Crunniuc blanches, recognizing his betrayal of
Macha.
He begs the king’s pardon and his
patience,
but the king will find no peace
and his men fetch Macha from her home.
She, gravid, grave, protests, asking for
patience,
for a stay that lasts the length of her
delivery.
The men pull her from her home with no answer
to her pleas.
Riding forward into the king’s lands
her labor comes on harder than the gallop of
their steeds,
the baby in her belly scrambling for freedom,
a respite from this jarring trek.
The king demands her name on arrival,
and she, red-faced, proclaims
"I am Macha, daughter of Sainraith mac
Imbath.
None of you will escape my curse today,
for each man here was born of woman,
your lives a product of mothers’ toil,
yet neither king nor crowd
will lend me mercy in my time of need."
The scornful king laughs, saying
"Refuse to race and I will rend Crunniuc
to pieces
and drop him into my wallows as food for swine,
and then who will play father to your mewling
babe."
Macha complies and walks to the starting line,
the child squirming in her belly, round as the
fullest moon.
Racing hard, Macha quickly outstrips the horse,
whose heart bears no match to the one in
Macha’s breast.
Crossing the finish line, the water in her
breaks
and the horse’s heart explodes.
Both fall in the dust.
And as Macha rises with two beautiful sons at
her breasts,
the men around her fall, overtaken by a pain
they do not fathom.
"Emain Macha is the name now on this
place,
for the twins borne so well, though without
aid,
surrounded by merciless men.
For as it is here I suffered the indignity of
your trial,
so it is here my sons and I prevail.
Each of you small men and all of your sons
for nine generations will suffer the pangs
for four days and five nights
whenever threat or trial come to the
Ulaid."
And so speaking, Macha turns to rejoin her kin
in the sidhe.
And so it is that the men of Ulster are
crippled
whenever they lands are threatened.
Only the man-child CúChullain is spared this
pain,
and he so loved and hated by Macha and her
sister selves,
Bodb and Anu: three bound as one
in the great queen Morrigan.
Copyright 2000 Amy Ripton
May be reproduced with the express written permission of the author
(amyripton@aol.com)
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