An Bonnán Buí

Setting the record straight on the poem which inspired the restaurant

I owe a lot to Traolach Ó Buachalla for inspiring me to write this little piece on the poem which our restaurant is named after. His father, Breandan Ó Buachalla, wrote a book on the poem’s author, Cathal Buí Mac Giolla Gunna. Since we have opened, Traolach has brought me various books on his visits to the restaurant as well as his usual cheer, enthusiasm for good food and wine, and boundless charm. One book he brought me recently is the wonderful Archipelgo which includes a new translation of the poem and a short essay by the brilliant Lillis Ó Laoire, who in turn, as it happens, helped me name my first restaurant project, a workers’ cooperative called Na Croisbhealaí in Belfast back in around 2010 or so.

In the many articles written about our restaurant, almost no one has bothered to research properly the origins of the name. Most attribute it to the authors of the English language translations but the poem was originally written some time between the late 17th and early 18th century by the wandering poet Cathal Buí Mac Giolla Gunna. Cathal Buí was from Ulster, where I am from. More specifically from the area once known as Oirialla or Oriel in English. The area is no longer recognised on the map but ran from modern day Fermanagh’s Lough Erne and Cavan to Louth and the Cooley Mountains.

The poet wryly describes the death of a bird, a yellow bittern, from “lack of drink” rather than lack of food. Lurking in the background of the text is the poet’s own admissions of excess and his knowledge that one day his fondness for the drink may kill him. He concludes by saying “friends and neighbours, wet your mouths, for after death you won’t see another drop.”

The sentiment of the poem has of course heavily influenced my attitude to drink. Something to be praised and celebrated, but never without a dark humour lurking behind what we all know has been tragically fatal to many of us.

When I was growing up, I spent a year in the Donegal Gaeltacht of Gaoth Dobhair in my early 20s. The song tradition of the area, called ‘sean nós’ (old style) had a profound effect on me and to this day I still sing some of the songs I learned there. More still, I regard that rugged part of north west Donegal, nestled between sea and mountain, as the most culturally rich place I have ever lived. One of the songs sung from time to time in the bars and cottages was An Bonnán Buí, most memorably by the poet, short story writer and film maker Eoghan Mac Giolla Bhríde. Later, my other close friend, since passed away, Rónán Mac Aodha Bhuí, told me the story of Caitlín Maud’s Irish language club in Dublin named after the poem. It has always stuck with me. The wit of the poem, the sentiment towards drink and the history of the poet and political activist from Connemara Caitlín Maud, who was associated with the club of the same name. (Caitlín Maud who met the poet Micheal Harnett in Euston Station in the early 1960s and began a brief affair with the Munster laureate).

When I moved to England, I thought that I might like to call my restaurant after this grand history and these memories of mine. Not only does it connect me to where I came from, but in those moments of loneliness when I sit and listen to English accents shouting and balling in a pub about this and that tedious conversation, I think of Donegal and the rich song tradition and conversation and music that I left behind and I remind myself that another way of life exists. I am only sorry that I chose the translation to make things more palatable and didn’t call the place An Bonnán Buí, like Rónán would have told me to do, and let them try to get their colonial minds around it.

Lillis Ó Laoire rightly points out in his essay that the bird in question has been extinct in Ireland for 150 years. The death of the bird can also be viewed in the context of the slow death of Gaelic culture and language since the poem was written through colonialism and the environmental destruction it promoted. It is a lament not only for the bird, but in today’s context for the death of our culture, nature and heritage. All a legacy of British rule in Ireland.

But the bittern has been spotted on Irish soil again. And some say that it lives in spirit and in body. There are those who resist its demise still, and more so hope to revive it and bring it back from the brink of an early death.

So there you are. The history once and for all. You heard it here first. Sláinte mhór, agus bás i nÉireann.