Patrick Kavanagh
On the North bank of the Grand Canal in Dublin, there is a beautiful statue of one of Ireland's finest poets. The piece consists of a bench where a man sits with his arms and legs crossed, as he watches the canal in front of him. His hat rests on the bench to his left. The statue portrays Patrick Kavanagh, a poet who loved the walks along the canal and wrote several poems about it.
Kavanagh was born in Inniskeen, Co. Monaghan, in 1904 and died in Dublin in 1967. His life was a constant struggle to make a living out of his writing and to champion his vision of poetry and his country. He has been described as 'Ireland's best poet since Yeats' and some of his poems, such as The Great Hunger, are considered major works. However, he was a difficult man and his terrible character caused him a lot of troubles.
Kavanagh had to leave school at the age of twelve to work as an apprentice for his father, who was a shoemaker and a farmer. He experienced the harsh reality of rural life in Ireland that many writers romanticised at the time. In his poetry, he described that reality in a more sober manner. He said: "Although the literal idea of the peasant is of a farm labouring person, in fact a peasant is all that mass of mankind which lives below a certain level of consciousness. They live in the dark cave of the unconscious and they scream when they see the light." He also commented that, although he had grown up in a poor district, "the real poverty was lack of enlightenment [and] I am afraid this fog of unknowing affected me dreadfully".
To fulfil his desire to become a professional writer, he moved to London in 1938 for a short period of time and then to Dublin in 1939. In London he published an autobiographical account of his early life, The Green Fool. Later, he regretted the romantic tone of the book. Dublin's literary scene was a major disappointment for Kavanagh. According to one his biographers, "he realized that the stimulating environment he had imagined was little different from the petty and ignorant world he had left. He soon saw through the literary masks many Dublin writers wore to affect an air of artistic sophistication. To him such men were dandies, journalists, and civil servants playing at art. His disgust was deepened by the fact that he was treated as the literate peasant he had been rather than as the highly talented poet he believed he was in the process of becoming".
In 1942 Kavanagh published The Great Hunger, where he describes the hardships of the rural life he knew so well. This poem is generlly regarded as his finest work. Other works include Come Dance with Kitty Stobling and Other Poems (1960) and the novel Tarry Fynn (1960).
"On Raglan Road" is Kavanagh's most popular poem and its history is very interesting. It was first published in The Irish Press in 1946 as "Dark Haired Miriam Ran Away". The poem describes the failed relationship between the poet and woman who was almost twenty years younger than him. In order to prevent people from identifying the woman's real name, Kavanagh used the name of his brother's girlfriend. Later, the title was changed to "On Raglan Road" and set to the music of a well-known Irish folk ballad, "The Dawning of the Day/Fáinne Geal an Lae". Kavanagh then offered the new song to Luke Kelly, a member of the folk band The Dubliners. Kelly sang the song on TV and recorded it with his band, and it soon became a favourite of the people. Apart from them, there are famous versions by Van Morrison, Dire Straits, Loreena McKennit, Roger Daltrey, Billy Bragg and Sinéad O'Connor. In 2019 in a survey carried out by RTÉ "On Raglan Road" was chosen as "Ireland's Favourite Folk Song". You can read the lyrics here, and you can listen to this beautiful version:
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