He was still there after all those centuries. Our informant awoke in a hotel over looking Belfast Lough from the south side, early on last Saturday morning. She put it somewhere midway between three a.m. and three thirty. The moon was shining, she said, making day of all around. Then, from the top of a nearby tree came the sound that had awakened her. The lovely, liquid notes of the blackbird. The song went on and on. She drifted off to sleep once more, Frank O'Connor translated from the Irish the short poem he called The Blackbird by Belfast Lough.
What little throat
Has framed that note?
What gold beak shot
It far away.
A blackbird on
His leafy throne
Tossed it alone
Across the bay.
Across, indeed to Carrickfergus, to the line of lower heights which lead back to the Cave Hill and all those others which make such a shield for Belfast. Someone may say that in those day it was not called Belfast Lough; that it was Cnockfergus, Knockfergus, or whatever. Fair enough. That's not what we call it now. Our listener attached no significance, no omen to the startlingly early call of the bird. She is surrounded by them at home. But the moonlight, the time, was striking. And the hotel. The Culloden, was formerly a Bishop's Palace, not a monk's cell.
Many things change. Be thankful for the eternal blackbird and the enduring poet.