Paudeen
INDIGNANT at the fumbling wits, the obscure spite
Of our old paudeen in his shop, I stumbled blind
Among the stones and thorn-trees, under morning light;
Until a curlew cried and in the luminous wind
A curlew answered; and suddenly thereupon I thought
That on the lonely height where all are in God's eye,
There cannot be, confusion of our sound forgot,
A single soul that lacks a sweet crystalline cry.
Paudeen and Biddy are seen as a derogatory and demeaning names for Irish Catholics who in the 1880s and 1890s might have been called "the children of the Gael". Paudeen's actially meaning is little Padraig or Patrick and comes from the Larin Patrician or nobleman.JS
