The Ballad of Father O'Hart

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1889from Crossways40 lines

Good Father John O’HartIn penal days rode outTo a shoneen who had free landsAnd his own snipe and trout.

In trust took he John’s lands;Sleiveens were all his race;And he gave them as dowers to his daughters,And they married beyond their place.

But Father John went up,And Father John went down;And he wore small holes in his shoes,And he wore large holes in his gown.

All loved him, only the shoneen,Whom the devils have by the hair,From the wives, and the cats, and the children,To the birds in the white of the air.

The birds, for he opened their cagesAs he went up and down;And he said with a smile, “Have peace now”;And he went his way with a frown.

But if when any one diedCame keeners hoarser than rooks,He bade them give over their keening;For he was a man of books.

And these were the works of John,When weeping score by score,People came into Coloony;For he’d died at ninety-four.

There was no human keening;The birds from KnocknareaAnd the world round KnocknasheeCame keening in that day.

The young birds and old birdsCame flying, heavy and sad;Keening in from Tiraragh,Keening from Ballinafad;

Keening from Inishmurray,Nor stayed for bite or sup;This way were all reprovedWho dig old customs up.

Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.

In brief

Summary

A kindly Sligo priest is cheated of his land and mourned by birds.

In the days of the penal laws, Father John O'Hart leaves his lands in the keeping of a "shoneen", who keeps them for himself and hands them on to his own daughters. The priest lives on in poverty, with holes in his shoes and gown, loved by everyone except the man who robbed him. He frees caged birds and tells the keening women at funerals to stop their wailing. When he dies at ninety-four, no human keens for him: instead the birds of half of County Sligo fly in to do it. The ballad ends with a sly moral about people who try to stamp out old customs.

Lines to remember

And he wore large holes in his gown.

There was no human keening;

Who dig old customs up.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 8The land in trust
In "penal days" Father John rides out to a "shoneen", a grasping upstart with his own "snipe and trout". The shoneen takes John's lands "In trust" and gives them away as dowries, so his daughters marry "beyond their place". The betrayal is told in plain, quick ballad lines, without comment.
Lines 9 to 16Poor and loved
The priest goes "up" and "down" the countryside in worn-out clothes: "small holes in his shoes" and "large holes in his gown", the neat parallel making his poverty almost comic. Everyone loves him, from wives, cats and children to "the birds in the white of the air", except the shoneen, whom "the devils have by the hair".
Lines 17 to 24Freeing birds, stopping keens
The birds love him because he opens their cages, saying "Have peace now" with a smile. Yet he frowns on the loud funeral wailing of "keeners hoarser than rooks" and makes them stop, "For he was a man of books". Gentle with creatures, he is stern about an old country custom.
Lines 25 to 32Death at ninety-four
People come "score by score" into Coloony when he dies at ninety-four. But in a neat reversal there is "no human keening": the mourners he silenced stay quiet, and the birds from Knocknarea and around Knocknashee come to keen in their place.
Lines 33 to 40The birds' lament
Young and old birds fly in "heavy and sad" from Tiraragh, Ballinafad and Inishmurray, too grieved to stop "for bite or sup". The roll-call of Sligo names spreads the mourning across the county. The last two lines deliver the joke: all who "dig old customs up" are reproved this way.

Themes

Goodness and greed

The ballad sets two men side by side. The shoneen takes land held "In trust" and uses it to raise his family's status; the priest loses everything and wears "large holes in his gown". The poem's sympathy is plain: everyone loves Father John, while the shoneen is left in the devils' grip, held "by the hair".

Old customs

Keening, the loud wailing lament over the dead, is an old Irish custom, and the bookish priest tries to stop it. The poem gently mocks him for it: at his own death the birds keen for him from all over Sligo. The closing moral, that those who "dig old customs up" are reproved, treats tradition as something stronger than any one reformer.

Nature's mourning

The priest freed the caged birds, and the birds repay him. The list of places in lines 30 to 37 (Knocknarea, Knocknashee, Tiraragh, Ballinafad, Inishmurray) turns a village funeral into a lament carried by the whole landscape, as in the old heroic tales where nature grieves for a great man.

Context

The ballad first appeared in The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems in January 1889, Yeats's first collection published by Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. He later grouped it with his other early lyrics under the heading "Crossways" in Poems (1895).

It belongs to Yeats's early project of setting down Sligo folklore in simple verse. The "penal days" are the period of the penal laws, when Catholics in Ireland were barred from owning land, which is why a priest would need someone else to hold his property "In trust". Every place named in the poem is in County Sligo, the country of Yeats's childhood.

Form

Ten quatrains in loose ballad metre, with three or four beats to the line and rhymes on the second and fourth lines ("out" and "trout", "down" and "gown"). The repeated "Keening" that opens lines 35 to 37 builds the lament like a chant, and the flat, proverb-like last couplet gives the story its punchline.