I’VE no idea if Patrick Kavanagh and Luke Kelly were good friends or not. They certainly met in The Bailey public house in Dublin.
The Monaghan poet was born 120 ago while the flame-haired Kelly first saw light of day in 1940, so there was a difference of 36 years in their ages.
Luke was but a gossoon of six when Kavanagh wrote his poem Raglan Road. In the 1850s, the road was given the name belonging to Somerset Fitzroy, who was awarded the title Lord Raglan after his exploits in the Crimean War.
He gave the dubious order at the Battle of Balaclava in October, 1854, that led to the infamous Charge of The Light Brigade - a military disaster with nearly 300 British casualties.
So, this desirable area of Dublin was given the name which it still bears today.
In the 1940s, Kavanagh had swapped the stony grey soil of his native Inniskeen in Monaghan for the bright lights of Dublin. In lodgings on Raglan Road, he grew infatuated with an attractive young girl also staying on the road. She was. Hilda Moriarty, a medical student from Kerry.
On a daily basis, the Monaghan poet saw Hilda on her way to college. You might say he was old enough to be her father but ‘true love knows no boundaries’. Kavanagh befriended her, asked Hilda to read some of his poetry and give her opinion of it.
They met frequently and she spoke kindly of much of his writing, though kind of scolding him because of his rural idioms and poems of the land and farming.
Coming from a rural county like Kerry, Moriarty was, no doubt, well aware of every aspect of country life, including back-breaking work, poverty and loneliness.
They were friends but presumably Kavanagh wanted more than just a platonic relationship. He obviously had strong romantic feeling for Hilda. The relationship between the poet and the medical student led to Kavanagh writing Raglan Road - first published in 1946, just a year before Hilda married another man.
On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew/That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue
So, from the beginning he realised that, despite his undoubted love, he could be dealing with a ‘femme fatale’ but then love is blind and he persisted.
I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way - he adored the very ground she walked upon!
Kavanagh died in 1967 when I was only ten and in National School. Our teacher Donal O Liathain, a native Irish speaker, taught us lovely songs and poems like Fainne Geal an Lae;
Ar maidin ‘moch do ghabhas amach
Ar bhruacha Locha Léin,
An samhradh ‘ teacht sa chraobh lem’ ais
Agus lonradh te ón ngréin;
Ar thaisteal dom tré bhailte poirt
Agus bánta míne réidh,
Cé gheobhainn lem’ ais ach an chúileann deas
Le fáinne geal an lae!
To be honest, I learned it off by heart and though I knew it was some sort of Irish love-song, ‘twas years later before I got an English translation of the verses which were and are still embedded in the deep recesses of my memory.
One morning early I went out
On the shore of Lough Leinn
The leafy trees of summertime,
And the warm rays of the sun,
As I wandered through the townlands,
And the luscious grassy plains,
Who should I meet but a beautiful maid,
At the dawning of the day
This song might well be written hundreds of years ago, but it’s about unrequited love in much the same fashion as Kavanagh had his heart broken in the 1940s.
I absolutely love Raglan Road, but every time I see it in print I muse on its meaning - always coming up with different ideas or theories!
The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay - O I loved too much and by such, by such, is happiness thrown away.
So, there he is writing about making hay in the second verse - that starts On Grafton Street in November...! Not exactly the season for haymaking is it? Remember, ‘make hay while the sun shines’ but then again ‘and I not making hay’ probably has nothing at all to do with farming.
Kavanagh’s rustic reference may well just be referring to the fact that in matters romantic he wasn’t making much progress! Maybe he was trying too hard to ‘court’ Hilda - O I loved too much.
No matter how many times I read and re-read the third verse, I cannot fully understand the thoughts therein. It’s not that I can’t ‘make head, arse nor tail’ of it, but it’s like a coded message and different people interpret the lines in different ways.
The secret sign that’s known To the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone - now there’s puzzle if ever there was! Is Kavanagh referring to artists of different hues leaving a mark on a picture or statue they have created, a tiny mark, hardly visible except to the eye looking out for it?
Hilda is reputed to have suggested to Kavanagh to broaden the range of subjects dealt with in his poetry - he asked her to evaluate different stanzas he composed. I gave her poems to say With her own name there.
Hilda married future TD and Education Minister Donogh O Malley in 1947 - he died just a few months after Kavanagh, in March, 1968, at of 47.
Decades later, his widow was quizzed about Raglan Road and her friendship with the Monaghan poet. Indeed they were friends and as far as she was concerned that was it, but Kaanaghw truly wanted a deeper and lasting relationship.
On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now Away from me hurriedly… he knows it’s over and regrets that he had wooed not as I should a creature made of clay.
In the last line, does he imagine himself as the angelic figure trying to woo or court a human - and the end of it all results in tragedy with the angel coming to a sad end by losing his wings... at the dawn of day?
Would Raglan Road have ever reached the heights it has achieved in the Irish national psyche were it not for Luke Kelly?
The writer Benedict Kiely, a friend of Kelly and of Kavanagh, spoke of the tripartite marriage - Kavanagh’s words - the Old Irish tune Fainne Gael an Lae, and Luke Kelly’s unique voice.
On Tuesday night, I was judging a GAA Scor na bPaisti talent contest. How fitting I thought that one young girl sang Raglan Road 40 years to the very day since the great Luke Kelly died. He was only 44 years of age when he left us in 1984.
Four decades have passed, but thankfully Kavanagh’s words and Kelly’s voice have not dimmed nor disappeared from the true Irish culture. A son of the stony grey soil of Monaghan and a lad from Sheriff Street in Dublin’s Fair City are united eternally in a song that will be sung forever.
On Raglan Road of an autumn day I saw her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue
I saw the danger, and I passed along the enchanted way
And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day
On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge
Of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion’s pledge
The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay
Oh, I loved too much and by such by such is happiness thrown away
I gave her gifts of the mind, I gave her the secret sign
That’s known to the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone
And word and tint without stint for I gave her poems to say
With her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May
On a quiet street where old ghosts meet, I see her walking now
Away from me so hurriedly, my reason must allow
That I had loved not as I should a creature made of clay
When the angel woos the play, he’d lose his wings at the dawning of the day.
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