クロンマクノイズの修道院の上に、船が現れた

シェイマス・ヒーニーの詩の一節より。
クロンマクノイズの修道院の上に、船が現れた。
錨が引っ掛かってしまったので、船が動けなくなってしまった。
船員がロープをつたって錨をはずそうとし、修道院の人々も手伝って船は再び動き出した。
という話。

The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise
Were all at prayers inside the oratory
A ship appeared above them in the air.

The anchor dragged along behind so deep
It hooked itself into the altar rails
And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,

A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope
And struggled to release it. But in vain.
'This man can't bear our life here and will drown,'

The abbot said, 'unless we help him.' So
They did, the freed ship sailed, and the man climbed back
Out of the marvellous as he had known it.

『聖ケヴィンとクロウタドリ』 シェイマス・ヒーニー

運良く、シェイマス・ヒーニーの詩を学ぶ機会がありました。
取り上げられたのは、『聖ケヴィンとクロウタドリ』。庵から手を出しているとそこにクロウタドリがやって来て、手のひらの上に巣を作り卵を産むという話です。
アイルランド伝統音楽にBlackbirdという曲がありますが、その曲名はこの逸話に由来するのでしょうか。



St Kevin and the Blackbird

And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird. 
The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside
His cell, but the cell is narrow, so

One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff
As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands
and Lays in it and settles down to nest.

Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked
Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
Into the network of eternal life,

Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand 
Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks
Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.

*

And since the whole thing's imagined anyhow,
Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?
Self-forgetful or in agony all the time

From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms?
Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth

Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?
Alone and mirrored clear in Love's deep river,
'To labour and not to seek reward,' he prays,

A prayer his body makes entirely
For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird
And on the riverbank forgotten the river's name.


Seamus Heaney