‘Dark Rosaleen’ by James Clarence Mangan
MEON is proud to re-publish James Clarence Mangan’s Dark Rosaleen. In honour of Mangan, we have included an introductory essay which contextualises Mangan’s poetry in light of the political currents of his day.
Dark Rosaleen by James Clarence Mangan
O my Dark Rosaleen,
Do no sigh, do not weep!
The priests are on the ocean green,
They march along the Deep.
There's wine . . . from the royal Pope
Upon the ocean green;
And Spanish ale shall give you hope,
My Dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
Shall glad your heart, shall give you hope,
Shall give you health, and help, and hope,
My Dark Rosaleen.
Over hills and through dales
Have I roamed for your sake;
All yesterday I sailed with sails
On river and on lake.
The Erne . . . at its highest flood
I dashed across unseen,
For there was lightning in my blood,
My Dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
Oh! there was lightning in my blood,
Red lightning lightened through my blood,
My Dark Rosaleen!
All day long in unrest
To and fro do I move,
The very soul within my breast
Is wasted for you, love!
The heart . . . in my bosom faints
To think of you, my Queen,
My life of life, my saint of saints,
My Dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
To hear your sweet and sad complaints,
My life, my love, my saint of saints,
My Dark Rosaleen!
Woe and pain, pain and woe,
Are my lot night and noon,
To see your bright face clouded so,
Like to the mournful moon.
But yet . . . will I rear your throne
Again in golden sheen;
'Tis you shall reign, shall reign alone,
My Dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
'Tis you shall have the golden throne,
'Tis you shall reign, and reign alone,
My Dark Rosaleen!
Over dews, over sands
Will I fly for your weal;
Your holy delicate white hands
Shall girdle me with steel.
At home . . . in your emerald bowers,
From morning's dawn till e'en,
You'll pray for me, my flower of flowers,
My Dark Rosaleen!
My fond Rosaleen!
You'll think of me through Daylight's hours,
My virgin flower, my flower of flowers,
My Dark Rosaleen!
I could scale the blue air,
I could plough the high hills,
Oh, I could kneel all night in prayer,
To heal your many ills!
And one . . . beamy smile for you
Would float like light between
My toils and me, my own, my true,
My Dark Rosaleen!
My fond Rosaleen!
Would give me life and soul anew,
A second life, a soul anew,
My Dark Rosaleen!
O! the Erne shall run red
With redundance of blood,
The earth shall rock beneath our tread,
And flames wrap hill and wood,
And gun-peal, a slogan cry,
Wake many a glen serene,
Ere you shall fade, ere you shall die,
My Dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
The Judgment Hour must first be nigh,
Ere you can fade, ere you can die,
My Dark Rosaleen!
An Essay on James Clarence Mangan
“I declaim! While taken with delirium,
I do not know what I am saying,
or what I am doing!
Yet it is necessary, I must force myself!
Bah! Are you not a man?
Thou art Pagliacci!” - Vesti La Guibba
For an Island whose renown owes, at least in part, to our purportedly prodigious literary output, our inheritance, if we are to be candid, is dominated by aliens of Anglican confession and Anglo-Irish stock.
It is thus refreshing when one encounters an Irish Catholic amid the mix - a man borne of the people, our people, a group reduced to Spailpín status.
When examined, the Catholic (at least in terms of background) contribution contains a peculiar sub-tradition which contrasts positively with its contemporaneous protestant equivalent - the latter, the standard bearers of which range from W. B. Yeats to Standish O’Grady, suffers from fawning antiquarianism; an aggravating fetishism for Irish twee and its embodiment in the idealised life of the Irish peasantry.
The sub-tradition I speak of is represented by James Clarence Mangan, James Joyce, and Flann O’Brien.
The common denominator betwixt them are as follows: Catholic, confessionally or by background; critical fellow travellers of Irish Nationalism who, due to their individualistic streak, either are outwardly reproachful of it or orient themselves in an unorthodox fashion; ironic prose and poetry, allowing them to skirt the entrenched divides derivative of inherited ethnic and religious baggage — question: if individualism (that is, an expression of one’s person unmediated by society’s expectations and norms, rather than the political, or para-political, creed) may only be expressed in terms insincere, flippant, and glib, what does that say about the Irish nation vis-à-vis the development of personality?
The relationship between fidelity to the cause, on the one hand, and concomitant commitment to not being subsumed in the herd, on the other, is a universal theme. In relation to nationalism, we find this quandary in the thought of Maurice Barrès and Ernst Jünger - their trajectories differed somewhat.
Whereas Barrès was an egoist and sensualist turned nationalist (and later a Catholic), Jünger’s embryonic thought is Nietzschean, nationalistic, and relativist (albeit still rightist). Following a prolonged embrace of Stirner’s philosophy compounded with a disposition of political resignation, Jünger converted to Catholicism in the Winter of his life.
The waxing and waning of their thought bespeaks of the artists’ dilemma, a predicament which afflicts genius more broadly, creative or otherwise: namely, should one be carried forth as a participant in the tumult of history, even at the cost of losing oneself in the tidal wave, or should the artist seek refuge in a vantage point both critical and distant, even at the risk of not speaking to his epoch?
This intellectual impasse afflicted Irish intellectuals too - consider the destinies of the civil war veterans Ernie O’Malley and Seán Ó Faoláin. It also appertains to James Clarence Mangan.
Mangan cut his teeth with what was then Dublin’s most popular newspaper, The Comet, a repealist publication which was insinuated in the polarising debate about tithes; Mangan had penned excoriating pieces aimed at the established church for it. Whilst Catholic emancipation had occurred in 1829, it did not spell dispersal or defeat for Ireland’s conservative, protestant quarters.
Rather, as is the case with many ostensibly “defeated” orientations, 1829 engendered re-vitalisation, manifested in publications such as the Dublin University Magazine, a conservative foe of The Comet. Mangan, despite ideological dissonance with its editiorial line, penned poetry for it after The Comet’s cessation (due to a libel case) in 1832.
As it was recognised that the Dublin University Magazine was the premier publication for Irish poets, his stint there didn’t leave his nationalist contemporaries ill-disposed to him. Already friends, Charles Gavan Duffy, one of the triune behind The Nation, convinced Mangan to submit his poetry to what would prove to be Ireland’s best-selling and most influential publication.
Almost from the beginning, a stand-off ensued between Duffy and Mangan - the former wished for the latter’s poems to be nakedly rousing and patriotic in tone, a veritable creative death sentence. Mangan, equally indirect in his poetry and his personal life, responded to the demand by proffering poor verse intermittently. Duffy, in turn, placed Mangan’s pieces in a section denominated Ancestor’s Columns, which could be found in the recesses of the paper, rather than prominently alongside the other poetic contributions. The addictions which plagued his life is a further explanation for Mangan’s sub-standard efforts - whether it was the black stuff or opium, Mangan was more than flirtatious with it.
Mangan’s reputation revived following The Warning Voice, a poem which, in the roundabout fashion typical of Mangan, deals with the Famine - Duffy praised it as the finest poem to grace the pages of The Nation. Despite the widespread view that Mangan was a-political or a tepid-nationalist, at best, - a view held by James Joyce - he threw his lot in with John Mitchell’s United Irishman. This was the publication which platformed the poem Mangan is perhaps best known for - namely, Dark Rosaleen.
It’s fitting that the poem which secured his legacy was not an original creation. Mangan, who was not an Irish speaker, relied upon Eugene O’Curry, one of Ireland’s greatest antiquarians, to translate the original into rough English prose, and from there he published a version mediated by his own genius.
That Mangan’s ‘Dark Rosaleen’ is a metaphor for Ireland is both transparent and uncontested; its roots as a love-poem and a stand-in for Ireland bespeak of our nation’s unique approach to anthropomorphising our nationality. Instead of being elucidated in maternal or paternal terms, Ireland is enfleshed as a beautiful woman in need of rescue - Freud was right when we said the Irish cannot be psychoanalysed; our nation is non-oedipal. Credit is owed to Irusan for reaching this conclusion:
“Ireland is a beautiful woman and the lover of her rightful sovereign. The relationship of Irish patriots to Ireland has always been erotic, not filial.”
Scholars have fixated on the jocular playfulness undergirding his preference for anonymity, plagiarism, literary hoaxes, and lacerating, savage attacks on work which he secretly penned - a view has taken hold amongst literary critics that the aforesaid mark him as a proto-modernist. The pranks and humorous facets of his vocation would not be discovered for over a century. When Mangan played the fool he did so for a singular audience: himself.
Mangan occupies a fascinating and alluring position in Ireland’s political and cultural life - a path not taken, even. A foe of orthodoxy owing to the heterogeneity, if not contradictions of his personality. A practising Catholic (his confessor, Fr. Charles Meehan, encouraged him to write his auto-biography) whose opium habit and alcoholism spelled a premature death. A nationalist with one eye enamoured with Ireland; the other bewitched by Persian antiquity, bespeaking of a cosmopolitan impulse. Without moralism, with morals; without parochialism, with nationality: this is how James Clarence Mangan ought to be classified.
I leave the last word of this essay to Mangan — on Ireland:
"Think her not a ghastly hag, too hideous to be seen,
Call her not unseemly names, our matchless Kathleen."