Coire Érmai

Cauldron of Motion / Vocation

Coire Érmai — the Cauldron of Motion, sitting at the centre of the body. The poem says it is 'born tipped on its side' in most people: the events of a life — joys and sorrows — gradually turn it upright, or turn it further over. The text gives a famous catalogue of the four sorrows and four joys that turn this cauldron: longing, grief, the sorrows of jealousy and exile, set against sexual joy, the joy of health and prosperity, the joy of poetic-art mastery, and divine joy. It is the vessel of vocation: the chest-cauldron in which a person's calling is shaped by what they have lived through.