Flowers For Socrates

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD

Today is Saint Patrick’s Day, and it’s the middle of Women’s History Month, so my choice for this week’s poet was easy: Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory (1852 – 1932). She was even born on March 15, just two days before St. Patrick’s Day.

The hard part is that Lady Gregory wasn’t only a  poet, she was a translator, a forklorist, a major force in the Irish Literary Revival, a dramatist, and co-founder with William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn of Dublin’s famed Abbey Theatre – where she was also the one who ran it in the early years. George Bernard Shaw once described her as “the greatest living Irishwoman.”

Music and poetry go hand-in-hand in Ireland, so I’m also giving you the Chieftains, to set the rhythm going.

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This first poem is one of the legendary stories told about St. Patrick, concerning his “breastplate” – a prayer he said when nearing an ambush, which caused his enemies to see him as a deer with a fawn, so St Patrick and his servant passed by unharmed.

The Deer’s Cry

Blessed Patrick made this hymn one time he was going to preach the
Faith at Teamhuir, and his enemies lay in hiding to make an attack
on him as he passed. But all they could see passing as he himself and
Benen his servant went by, was a wild deer and a fawn.  And the Deer’s
Cry is the name of the hymn to this day.

I bind myself to-day to a strong strength, to a calling on the Trinity.
I believe in a Threeness with confession of a Oneness in the Creator
of the World.

I bind myself to-day to the strength of Christ’s birth and His baptism;
to the strength of His crucifixion with His burial; to the strength
of His resurrection with His ascension; In stability of earth, in
steadfastness of rock, I bind to myself to-day God’s strength to pilot
me;

God’s power to uphold me; God’s wisdom to guide me; God’s eye to look
before me; God’s ear to hear me;

God’s word to speak for me; God’s hand to guard me; God’s path to lie
before me; God’s shield to protect me; God’s host to save me;

Against snares of demons; against the begging of sins; against the
asking of nature; against all my ill-wishers near me and far from me;
alone and in a crowd.

So I have called on all these strengths to come between me and every
fierce and merciless strength that may come between my body and my
soul;

Against incantations of false prophets; against black laws of heathens;
against false laws of heretics; against craft of idolatry; against
spells of women & smiths and druids; against every knowledge forbidden
to the souls of men.

Christ for my protection to-day against poison, against burning,
against drowning, against wounding; that a multitude of rewards may
come to me. Christ with me, Christ before me; Christ behind me, Christ
in me; Christ under me, Christ over me; Christ to the right of me,
Christ to the left of me; Christ in lying down, Christ in sitting,
Christ in rising up;

Christ in the heart of everyone that thinks of me; Christ in the mouth
of everyone that speaks to me; Christ in every eye that sees me; Christ
in every ear that hears me.

I bind to myself to-day a strong strength to a calling upon the
Trinity; I believe in a Threeness with confession of a Oneness in the
Creator of the World.

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