With Paddy Ryan 

 

Poems learnt in school, especially at primary level, provide more comfort than we know to people when loneliness and grief strike.

Poems have a way of taking us back to when we first encountered them and eventually managed to master them.

While some of their deeper and more obscure meanings were beyond the innocence of childhood, yet their cascade of words was so deeply embedded that decades later they could be called up and recited at will.

This was particularly so in the generations who left school early but took the comfort of poetry with them.

Some of these poems may now be considered sentimental and full of high moral lessons but the joy of their words and rhymes are a treasure lightly carried through the ups and downs of life.

I really enjoyed compiling this series which, in many cases, took me to a time when the world was young and so was I.

Number one … The Bog Lands, by William Byrne.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own