

#The Burial of King Cormac


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#### Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition


### Background details and bibliographic information


The Burial of King Cormac
=========================


Author: Samuel Ferguson
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### File Description

Electronic edition compiled and proof-read by Beatrix Färber, Seán Pilcher

Funded by School of History, University College, Cork 1. First draft.Extent of text: 1700 words#### Publication


CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: a project of University College, Cork  
College Road, Cork, Ireland—http://www.ucc.ie/celt

 (2014) Distributed by CELT online at University College, Cork, Ireland.  
Text ID Number: E860001-001Availability [RESTRICTED] 
The works by Sir Samuel Ferguson are in the public domain. This electronic text is available with prior consent of the CELT programme for purposes of private or academic research and teaching.


#### Notes

This poem was first published in the volume *Lays of the Western Gael* in 1864 (Peter Denman, states p. 73, 'it came off the press in the latter part of 1864').

#### Sources


**Life and Work of Sir Samuel Ferguson**2. Mary Catherine Guinness Ferguson, Sir Samuel Ferguson in the Ireland of his Day (Edinburgh/London 1896).
3. Arthur Deering, Sir Samuel Ferguson, Poet and Antiquarian (Philadelphia 1931).
4. Malcolm Brown, Sir Samuel Ferguson (Lewisburg) 1973.
5. Robert O'Driscoll, An ascendancy of the heart: Ferguson and the beginnings of modern Irish literature in English (Dublin 1976).
6. Joseph Th. Leerssen, Mere Irish and Fíor-Ghael: Studies in the idea of Irish nationality, its development and literay expression prior to the nineteenth century (Amsterdam/Philadelphia 1986).
7. Terence Brown and Barbara Hayley (eds), Samuel Ferguson: a centenary tribute (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy 1987).
8. Maurice Harmon, The Enigma of Samuel Ferguson, in: O. Komesu, M. Sekine (eds), Irish writers and politics (Irish Literary Studies 36) (Gerrards Cross 1989) 62–79.
9. Peter Denman, Samuel Ferguson: the literary achievement (Gerrards Cross, Bucks. 1990).
10. Eve Patten, 'Samuel Ferguson: a tourist in Antrim', in: Gerald Dawe and John Wilson Foster, (eds), The poet's place: Ulster literature and society: essays in honour of John Hewitt, 1907–87 (Belfast: Queen's University of Belfast, Institute of Irish Studies, 1991).
11. Gréagóir Ó Dúill, Samuel Ferguson: Beatha agus Saothar (Baile Átha Cliath [=Dublin] 1993.
12. Gréagóir Ó Dúill, Sir Samuel Ferguson (1810–1886), in: Eamon Phoenix (ed), A century of northern life: The Irish News and 100 years of Ulster history, 1890s–1990s (Belfast 1995) 182–186.
13. Sean Ryder, 'The politics of landscape and region in nineteenth-century poetry', in: Leon Litvack, Glenn Hooper (eds), Ireland in the nineteenth century: regional identity (Dublin 2000).
14. Eve Patten, Samuel Ferguson and the culture of nineteenth-century Ireland (Dublin 2004).
15. Peter Denman, William Carleton and Samuel Ferguson: lives and contacts, in: Gordon Brand (ed), William Carleton, the authentic voice (Gerard's Cross 2006) 360–377.
16. Eve Patten, Samuel Ferguson's Hibernian Nights' Entertainments, in: James H. Murphy (ed), The Irish book in English, 1800–1891. The Oxford History of the Irish Book, 4 (Oxford: 2011).
17. Matthew Campbell, 'Samuel Ferguson's Maudlin Jumble', in: Kirstie Blair, Mina Gorji (eds), Class and the canon: constructing labouring-class poetry and poetics, 1780–1900 (Basingstoke 2013).
**Online**2. Poems of Sir Samuel Ferguson are available on www.archive.org.
**The edition used in the digital edition**2. Samuel Ferguson The Burial of King Cormac in , Ed. Alfred Perceval Graves Poems of Sir Samuel Ferguson. Talbot Press, Dublin, (1918) pages 1–5

### Encoding


#### Project Description


CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts


#### Sampling Declaration


The whole poem.


#### Editorial Declaration


##### Correction


The text has been proof-read twice.


##### Normalization


The electronic text represents the edited text.


##### Hyphenation


The editorial practice of the hard-copy editor has been retained.


##### Segmentation


div0= the individual poem, quatrains are marked lg.


##### Interpretation


Names of persons (given names), and places are not tagged. Terms for cultural and social roles are not tagged.


### Profile Description


Created: (1864) #### Use of language


##### Language: [EN] The poem is in English.


### Revision History


* (2014-06-09) Beatrix Färber (ed.)

* Bibliographic details added; file parsed and validated; SGML and HTML files created.
* (2014-06-06) Beatrix Färber (ed.)

* File converted to XML; Provisional TEI header created.
* (2014-06-06) Seán Pilcher (ed.)

* First proofing; structural markup applied according to CELT practice.
* (2014-06) Seán Pilcher (data capture)

* Text and Introductory note captured.




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#### Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition: E860001-001


### The Burial of King Cormac: Author: Samuel Ferguson


### Introductory Note


[Cormac, son of Art, son of Con Cead-Catha (Hundred Battle), enjoyed the sovereignty of Ireland through the prolonged period of forty years, commencing from A.D. 213. During the latter part of his reign, he resided at Sletty on the Boyne, being, it is said, disqualified for the occupation of Tara by the personal blemish he had sustained in the loss of an eye, by the hand of Angus "Dread-Spear," chief of the Desi, a tribe whose original seats were in the barony of Deece, in the county of Meath. It was in the time of Cormac and his son Carbre, if we are to credit the Irish annals, that Finn, son of Comhal, and the Fenian heroes, celebrated by Ossian, flourished. Cormac has obtained the reputation of wisdom and learning, and appears justly entitled to the honour of having provoked the enmity of the Pagan priesthood, by declaring his faith in a God not made by hands of men.]




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p.1


1. "Crom Cruach and his sub-gods twelve,"
  
Said Cormac "are but carven treene;
  
The axe that made them, haft or helve,
  
Had worthier of our worship been.
2. "But He who made the tree to grow,
  
And hid in earth the iron-stone,
  
And made the man with mind to know
  
The axe's use, is God alone."


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p.2

5. Anon to priests of Crom was brought —
  
Where, girded in their service dread,
  
They minister'd on red Moy Slaught —
  
Word of the words King Cormac said.
6. They loosed their curse against the king;
  
They cursesd him in his flesh and bones;
  
And daily in their mystic ring
  
They turn'd the maledictive stones,
7. Till, where at meat the monarch sate,
  
Amid the revel and the wine,
  
He choked upon the food he ate,
  
At Sletty, southward of the Boyne.
8. High vaunted then the priestly throng,
  
And far and wide they noised abroad
  
With trump and loud liturgic song
  
The praise of their avenging God.
9. But ere the voice was wholly spent
  
That priest and prince should still obey,
  
To awed attendants o'er him bent
  
Great Cormac gather'd breath to say, —
10. "Spread not the beds of Brugh for me
  
When restless death-bed's use is done:
  
But bury me at Rossnaree
  
And face me to the rising sun.
11. "For all the kings who lie in Brugh
  
Put trust in gods of wood and stone;
  
And 'twas at Ross that first I knew
  
One, Unseen, who is God alone.


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p.3

14. "His glory lightens from the east; 
  
message soon shall reach our shore;
  
And idol-god, and cursing priest
  
Shall plague us from Moy Slaught no more."
15. Dead Cormac on his bier they laid: —
  
"He reign'd a king for forty years,
  
And shame it were," his captains said,
  
"He lay not with his royal peers.
16. "His grandsire, Hundred-Battle, sleeps
  
Serene in Brugh: and, all around,
  
Dead kings in stone sepulchral keeps
  
Protect the sacred burial ground.
17. "What though a dying man should rave
  
Of changes o'er the eastern sea?
  
In Brugh of Boyne shall be his grave,
  
And not in noteless Rossnaree."
18. Then northward forth they bore the bier,
  
And down from Sletty side they drew,
  
With horsemen and with charioteer,
  
To cross the fords of Boyne to Brugh.
19. There came a breath of finer air
  
That touch'd the Boyne with ruffling wings,
  
It stir'd him in his sedgy lair
  
And in his mossy moorland springs.
20. And as the burial train came down
  
With dirge and savage dolorous shows,
  
Across their pathway, broad and brown
  
The deep, full-hearted river rose;


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p.4

23. From bank to bank through all his fords,
  
'Neath blackening squalls he swell'd and boil'd;
  
And thrice the wondering gentile lords
  
Essay'd to cross, and thrice recoil'd.
24. Then forth stepp'd grey-hair'd warriors four:
  
They said, "Through angrier floods than these,
  
On link'd shields once our king we bore
  
From Dread-Spear and the hosts of Deece.
25. "And long as loyal will holds good,
  
And limbs respond with helpful thews,
  
Nor flood, nor fiend within the flood,
  
Shall bar him of his burial dues."
26. With slanted necks they stoop'd to lift;
  
They heaved him up to neck and chin;
  
And, pair and pair, with footsteps swift,
  
Lock'd arm and shoulder, bore him in.
27. 'Twas brave to see them leave the shore;
  
to mark the deep'ning surges rise,
  
And fall subdued in foam before
  
The tension of their striding thighs.
28. 'Twas brave, when now a spear-cast out,
  
Breast-high the battling surges ran;
  
For weight was great, and limbs were stout,
  
And loyal man put trust in man.
29. But ere they reach'd the middle deep,
  
Nor steadying weight of clay they bore,
  
Nor strain of sinewy limbs could keep
  
Their feet beneath the swerving four.


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p.5

32. And now they slide, and now they swim,
  
And now, amid the blackening squall,
  
Grey locks aloat, with clutching grim,
  
They plunge around the floating pall.
33. While, as a youth with practiced spear
  
Through justling crowds bears off the ring,
  
Boyne from their shoulders caught the bier
  
And proudly bore away the king.
34. At morning, on the grassy marge
  
Of Rossnaree, the corpse was found,
  
And shepherds at their early charge
  
Entomb'd it in the peaceful ground.
35. A tranquil spot: a hopeful sound
  
Comes from the ever youthful stream,
  
And still on daisied mead and mound
  
The dawn delays with tenderer beam.
36. Round Cormac Spring renews her buds:
  
In march perpetual by his side,
  
Down come the earth-fresh April floods,
  
And up the sea-fresh salmon glide;
37. And life and time rejoicing run
  
From age to age their wonted way;
  
But still he waits the risen Sun,
  
For still 'tis only' dawning Day.










