Analysis of Oíche Shamhna
Oíche Shamhna
John Joseph Sheehy
The night of the dead, halloween, the banshee cries. A Scottish piper, known as the great Archie, was hired to play at a wedding in Ambleside. The house, a great dark king’s mansion, at the foot of the The Great Gable mountain, He had crossed the border, through storm and shale, the day before.
On the eve of halloween, oíche samhain, he played and played and he drank. Leaving the wedding, as halloween’s night was nearing its end, drunk and happy, he wandered into a fairy ring fort. They opened their mouths with wild screams, threw out their arms, welcomed him in. Archie was one of them. The Fairies were celebrating Halloween, tricking and treating. This was their night, a night of carousing, trickery and song.
The piper, Archie, knew numerous tunes and was king piper of Scotland, the King of the fairies was known as chief of England on the violin. He challenged Archie to play, to do battle with the sounds of their sweet instruments.
On this night as these two kings eyed each other, a long gone fiddler appeared, a sudden apparition. Here was Púca.
Púca, knew the highland piper, Fionn, before he departed and he whispered to him, raising his open hand to cover Fionn’s. He told him that the Scottish piper didn't know to play the tune Highland Laddie. A broad grin crept across Fionn’s face.
Fionn challenged the piper to play Highland Laddie. Archie trembled, he couldn't do it. The king and Púca smirked, the piper was beaten. The piper, the great Archie, he put the cork of the bottle in his pocket. A lethal move. No living person is allowed to take any thing out of a Fairy Fort.
He left with the cork in his pocket, a deadly curse, unknown to him.
It wasn’t long that this piper began to tire, sleep taking his tired, drunk limbs.
Archie fell asleep in a ditch.
When he woke up, he felt a chill on his head. He raised a hand to his hair and found it wasn’t there. He was bald. All of his hair, his golden red locks were there before him, spread over pipes. Pipes that had shrivelled to a dry shrunken lump. He was cursed, doomed by the fairy king Fionn. Some say that he was swallowed by a rock in the ditch on Holloween night. The Banshee appeared, wailing, agus an bhean sí ig gol crying and weeping.
© John Joseph Sheehy
Scheme | xA x x x x x x x x x x A |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111 11010 011010100110101011011011011101001010111101011001101011101011010101 1011011111101011100101111101110101100101011110111111111101010111101001000110010111101101010001 01010110010111011001101011111101000111010111110101111100 11111111110011100010100101111 1110101010110100110111011011101111101010101110110101110111 11001011101101011011010111010110010011011011010011001011101010111101110101 11101011001010111 11111100111011011011 10101001 11111101111110111101111111111111011010111101111110110111111010111111110101001111001011011111110010 11010 |
Characters | 2,320 |
Words | 439 |
Sentences | 34 |
Stanzas | 12 |
Stanza Lengths | 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 |
Lines Amount | 13 |
Letters per line (avg) | 136 |
Words per line (avg) | 32 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 148 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 35 |
About this poem
Holloween celebration
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"Oíche Shamhna" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 30 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/143369/o%C3%ADche-shamhna>.
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