Scottish Muid

by Lajos Áprily (1887-1967)


Haar on the watter, haar in the parks,
River and white haar o the north.
- O wha has hushed wi her ain milk
This lown earth?

There’s tides that swurl ayont aa sicht
Ablow the black craig o the ness.
The drookit sheep hae couried doun,
Dovin on the weet gress.

There’s unco dreamin in this airt,
Whaur the birks greet throu the souch:
The echo o an auld-warld ballant
In ilka castle-neuk.

And the daurk fisher’s boat
Growes ti a ghaist-ship on the seas:
And faddoms deep, Sir Patrick Spens
Lies in a dwam o young leddies.

The sea-maws stoiter i the lift,
Blinly they faa ti the grey earth.
Belike I’m dreamin nou myself,
That here I’m daunerin i the north.

And at Sanct-Aundraes, bi the haar
Raither nor bi the müne convoyit,
There walks in sleep thon braw Scots queen,
Her doo’s-neck splattert ower wi bluid.

Transcreated from the Hungarian by TOM HUBBARD with ATTILA DÓSA

Northern Roses

by Lajos Áprily (1887-1967)

It was no dream: colours and fragrances,
Not eastern spell, but north’s reality.
It was late autumn, and yet the roses
Bloomed in St Andrews, above the sea.

'The Gulf Stream,' said my professorial friend,
'Is known to visit these our Scottish shores.
Fresh lawns and sumptuous flower-beds, end to end,
Reach inland from the East Sands to The Scores.'

But my own land is trembling with the blight,
The coming of the European Frost:
Oh that the Gulf could hold us, cure us quite,
Before we shrivel up and sink almost,

So we’d ignite a colour or two, going down,
And even greet the winter florally,
Just like those gardens in that snod wee town,
St Andrews, there above the northern sea.

Transcreated by TOM HUBBARD with ATTILA DÓSA

(snod: comfortable, neat, well-ordered)