Donagh MacDonagh (1912 / 1968), son of Thomas MacDonagh, executed for his role in the 1916 Easter Rising, and Muriel (nee Gifford), who died of a heart attack while swimming in Dublin Bay in 1917, was the subject of a custody battle between the Protestant Gifford family and the Roman Catholic MacDonagh family, which was won by the latter. He went to school in the Jesuit-run Belvedere College, followed by UCD and the King’s Inns, was called to the Bar in 1935, practised on the Western Circuit, and sat as a District Justice in Mayo and Dublin for over twenty years.  He wrote poetic dramas and operas and was a popular radio personality.

 

Dublin Made Me (1941)

Dublin made me and no little town

With the country closing in on its streets

The cattle walking proudly on its pavements

The jobbers, the gombeen men and the cheats

Devouring the fair-day between them

A public house to half a hundred men

And the teacher, the solicitor and the bank-clerk

In the hotel bar drinking for ten.

Dublin made me, not the secret poteen still

The raw and hungry hills of the West

The lean road flung over profitless bog

Where only a snipe could nest

Where the sea takes its tithe of every boat.

Bawneen and currach have no allegiance of mine,

Nor the cute self-deceiving talkers of the South

Who look to the East for a sign.

The soft and dreary midlands with their tame canals

Wallow between sea and sea, remote from adventure

And Northward a far and fortified province

Crouches under the lash of arid censure.

I disclaim all fertile meadows, all tilled land

The evil that grows from it and the good,

But the Dublin of old statutes, this arrogant city

Stirs proudly and secretly in my blood.

The Hungry Grass (1947)

Crossing the shallow holdings high above sea

Where few birds nest, the luckless foot may pass

>From the bright safety of experience

Into the terror of the hungry grass.

Here in a year when poison from the air

First withered in despair the growth of spring

Some skull-faced wretch whom nettle could not save

Crept on four bones to his last scattering;

Crept, and the shrivelled heart which drove his thought

Towards platters brought in hospitality

Burst as the wizened eyes measured the miles

Like dizzy walls forbidding him the city.

Little the earth reclaimed from that poor body;

But yet, remembering him, the place has grown

Bewitched, and the thin grass he nourishes

Racks with his famine, sucks marrow from the bone.

 

A Warning to Conquerors (1969)

This is the country of the Norman tower

The graceless keep, the bleak and slitted eye

Where fear drove comfort out; straw on the floor

Was price of conquering security.

They came and won, and then for centuries

Stood to their arms; the face grew bleak and lengthened

In the night vigil, while their foes at ease

Sang of the strangers and the towers they strengthened.

Ragweed and thistle hold the Norman field

And cows the hall where Gaelic never rang

Melodiously to harp or spinning-wheel.

Their songs are spent now with the voice that sang;

And lost their conquest. This soft land quietly

Engulfed them like the Saxon and the Dane

But kept the jutted brow, the slitted eye-

Only the faces and the names remain.