Forgotten Ground Regained

Samhain at the Graveyard

(in the Irish meter of Rannaigheacht Mhor)
The sun sets behind the hill.Dull through clouds the moon is cloaked‘Cross welkin wide scant stars fail,Their frail glimmering is choked.
Below, the graveyard stones are dark,Stark silhouettes. Somber sceneThe umbrai of trees’ shadows mark.Harken! Shades that once were men!
Out from graves beneath this loam,Their final home, come forth ghosts!Ghastly horrors! Now’s the time— Samhain Night frees phantom hosts.
Now is torn the hazy VeilBetween Our Realm and the Next.Boundaries betwixt worlds fallFor all this night we are vexed.
We who glory ‘neath the sun, We’ve been blessed with Life’s sweet breath,After nightfall’s bell has rung,May meet some who’ve met their death.
So, on Samhain wary be;Wear masks, set balefires, altars make.Some from Beyond you might seeThose who from their deep sleep wake.
Author’s Note
This poem is written roughly according to the rules for the Old Irish verse form Rannaigheact Mhor (pron. “ron-a-yach voor”) ["The Great Versification", literally "Versification Great"], perhaps the most frequent of the five major types of Irish syllabic meters.
Each stanza is a quatrain consisting of four seven-syllable lines.
Alliteration
  • At least two words alliterate in every line
  • As in Germanic alliterative verse, syllables starting with vowels alliterate
Rhyme
  • Every line ends with a rhyming monosyllable. The basic rhyme scheme is ABaB. That is, the 2nd and 4th lines should rhyme perfectly (though rhymes with very similar vowels, like scene/men are allowed). However, the 1st and 3rd lines can be linked using looser (slant) rhymes, such as hill/fail, loam/time, Veil/fall, or sun/rung.
  • A key word in line 1 must display rhyme or consonance with a word in line 2 (hill/dull, dark/stark, loam/home, Veil/Realm, sun/sweet, be/balefires).
  • The last word of line 3 must rhyme at least loosely or show consonance with a word in line 4 (fail/frail, mark/harken, time/night, fall/all, rung/some, see/sleep)
Loose rhymes follow the rules of Commharda or “Correspondence”, which allow rhymes to end with consonants from the same equivalence group. That is why veil/realm and sun/rung count as rhymes. The Irish equivalence classes don’t exactly work in English, but their flavor shows up in this poem in loose rhymes like rung/some and time/night.
Published in Forgotten Ground Regained: A Quarterly Journal of Alliterative Verse, New Series, Issue 6, Spring, 2025.
Copyright © Frank Coffman, 2025
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