THE IRISH HEDGE-POETS.
The music of the ancient Irish has been preserved because no interpreter was needed to translate its beauties into another tongue. The poetry which accompanied the music has well-nigh perished, and what remains attracts but little attention. For this there are two reasons: the students of Celtic literature have been few, and of those who have endeavored to translate its poetry into English there are but one or two who have succeeded in any fortunate degree in retaining the spirit and beauty of the original. The best as well as earliest collection of Irish poetry is Hardiman’s Minstrelsy of Ireland, but it is accompanied by feeble and conventional translations. A literal translation of the poetry would make this a most valuable collection for the general reader; as it stands, it is only of worth to those who can read the original Irish. Several other collections, smaller and of less value, are in existence, but a real and full collection of Irish poetry has yet to be made. We are aided in the present article by two small volumes entitled Munster Poetry, collected by John O’Daly, a well-known Dublin bookseller and antiquarian, and translated, the first series by the unfortunate James Clarence Mangan, and the second by Dr. George Sigurson. They do not attempt to deal with the general subject, but only profess to be a collection of popular poetry current in Munster from eighty to one hundred years ago, and composed by the last of the Irish bards who sang in their native tongue, and were called “hedge-poets.”
The race of bards or hedge-poets—whichever title may be preferred—who sang in their native language virtually became extinct at the beginning of the present century. The history of their lives, as well as most of their poetry, exists only in tradition, and, but for a few incomplete collections, would soon vanish for ever. It is not too late, however, to form some picture of them, and the value of their poetry is such as to make us deeply regret that no more has been preserved. And, even without intrinsic merit, the national poetry of a people is always worth preserving.
During the eighteenth century, as is well known, the Celtic Irish were at a very low stage of political fortune. The entire subjugation of Ireland, for the time, occurred at the battle of Limerick. The flower of the army of Sarsfield followed its gallant leader to the plains of Minden, and made the reputation of their race as soldiers under the French banners. Those who remained in Ireland were crushed into outward subjection. The tyranny of the conquerors, exasperated by the doubtful and desperate struggle, placed no bounds to the humiliation which it endeavored to inflict. The penal laws were cruel and barbarous beyond those of any nation on record. All intellectual as well as religious education was denied the Irish people, and it was only by stealth that they could gratify their thirst for either.
The spirit of the Celtic population was crushed, but not degraded. They were conquered, and were aware that another struggle was hopeless for the present. None the less they preserved all their national feelings. The language of the common people in their daily intercourse was Irish; their only pride was in Irish tradition, and their only poetry was in the same melodious tongue. This continued long after English was the language used for business. It must not be supposed that, although the Celtic Irish were poor and deprived of all religious and political rights, they were entirely ignorant or uncultivated. The average Irish peasant of the last century was likely to have more learning than his English compeer. The hedge-schoolmaster was abroad in the land, and the eagerness with which Irish peasant lads sought for knowledge under difficulties was only second to the fervency of their religious faith under persecution. The education was not of the most valuable or practical cast in all particulars, but that it was cultivated so earnestly is the highest proof of the undegraded character of the people. The hedge-schoolmasters were more learned in Latin than in science, and taught their pupils to scan more assiduously than to add. The traditionary Irish history, the exploits of Con of the Hundred Battles, and the prophecies of Columbkille were expounded more particularly than the battles of Wolfe or Marlborough or the speeches of Chatham. This was but natural. The Irish then felt no share in English victories or interest in English literature. Poetry was especially a branch of learning in those days as it has never been since. The hedge-schoolmasters were often poets as well as pedagogues, and the amount of verse produced of one sort or another was enormous. Much of it was naturally worthless, but among the crowd of poetasters was here and there a poet who had the heart to feel and the tongue to express the woes of his country and the passions of his own heart in the language of nature. The hearts of the people answered them, and their memories treasured their songs. They were no longer bards entertained in the halls of the great. They were the wandering minstrels of the poor, but some of them were genuine poets whose power and grace were visible under every disadvantage.
In considering the fragments of this poetry three things must be kept in mind: first, that it has been preserved mostly by oral tradition; secondly, that it is translated from a language whose idiom is especially hard to be rendered into English; and, thirdly, that the lyrical form imposes additional difficulties in adequate rendering. By far the larger number of the productions of the hedge-poets are of an allegorical cast. The poet in a vision sees a queenly maiden, of exquisite beauty and grace, sitting lonely and weeping on some fairy rath by moonlight, by the side of some softly-flowing stream, or by the wall of some ruined castle of ancient splendor. He is at first confounded by her beauty. Then he takes courage at her distress, and asks whether she is Helen of old who caused Troy town to burn, or she that was the love of Fion, or Deirdre, for whom the sons of Usnach died. These are the three types of beauty almost invariably used. The lady replies, in a voice that “pierces the heart of the listener like a spear,” that she is neither of these three; she is Kathleen ni Ullachan, or Grauine Maol, Roisin Dubh, the Little Black Rose, or Sheela na Guira, these being the figurative names for the female personification of Ireland. She laments to the poet’s ear that her heroes brave, her Patrick Sarsfield, her John O’Dwyer of the Glens, are driven across the seas, and that she is the desolate slave of the Saxon churls. Then she rises into a strain, half-despairing, half-exulting, that the heroes will soon return with help from the hosts of France and Spain; that the fires of the Saxon houses shall light every glen, and the “sullen tribe of the dreary tongue” be driven into the sea; that God shall soon be worshipped once more on her desolate altars, and the kingly hero, her noble spouse, her prince of war, shall once more clasp her to his arms and place three crowns upon her head. This is the outline of almost every one of these patriotic visions, and it will be seen at once how beautiful was the conception and how capable of exhibiting the highest pathos. The Irish minstrels had to sing of their country in secret, for the ear of the conquering race must not hear of their hopes and fears. In this disguise they would give voice to their patriotic passion as to an earthly mistress, and their country’s woes and hopes could be imparted with a double intensity. This personifying the country in the form of a beautiful and desolate woman is not peculiar to Irish poets, but seems the form of expression for the passionate patriotism of all oppressed countries. It is common to the Italian, the Polish, and the Servian poets.
In the description of the beauty of the forlorn maiden one poem bears a great resemblance to another, and those beauties which are peculiar to Irish girls are her distinguishing features; thus, the long, flowing tresses, the coolun, or head of fair locks, is often most beautifully painted.
“Her clustering, loosened tresses
Flowed glossily, enwreathed with pearls,
To veil her breast with kisses
And sunny rays of golden curls”
—Sheela ni Cullenan, by Wm. Lenane.
“Her curling tresses meet
Her small and gentle feet.
Her golden fleece—the pride of Greece,
Might shame those locks to greet.”
“The dew-drops flow down
Her thick curls’ golden brown.”
—The Drooping Heart, by MacColter.
“Sunbright is the neck that her golden locks cover.”
—The Cuilshon.
“Her hair o’er her shoulders was flowing
In clusters all golden and glowing,
Luxuriant and thick as in meads are, the grass-blades
That the scythe of the mower is mowing.”
—The Vision of Conor Sullivan.
From these specimens it may be guessed that either blonde beauty was more common among Irish maidens than now, or that its rarity made it doubly prized. It appears to have been as much in demand as in these days, which have witnessed the grand rage for fair locks at the expense of bleaching-irons and Pactolian dye. It is only occasionally that some poet dares to express his preference for cean dubh dheelish—the dear black head.
The pure brow of wax in fairness and radiance is not forgotten:
“Whose brow is more fair than the silver bright;
Oh! ’twould shed a ray of beauteous light
In the darkest glen of mists of the south.”
—The Melodious Little Cuckoo.
Narrow eyebrows finely arched were a peculiar mark of distinction. For the eyes there is almost a whole new nomenclature of comparison and compliment. The peculiar and most often repeated color is “green,” which is the uncompromising English translation of the delicate Irish epithet which means
“The grayest of things blue,
The greenest of things gray”
—that shade of the most beautiful and brilliant eyes well known to Spanish as well as Irish poets, and which Longfellow and Swinburne have not hesitated to describe by the naked and imperfect English adjective. This is the way in which one of these ignorant minstrels expresses what he means, and renders it with a new grace:
“I gave you—oh! I gave you—I gave you my whole love;
On the festival of Mary my poor heart you stole, love,
With your soft green eyes like dew-drops on corn that is springing,
the music of your red lips like sweet starlings singing.”
—Fair Mary Barry.
A beautiful and apt comparison for the sweet, rosy bloom, nowhere found in such perfect charm as in Ireland, was the apple blossom and the berry.
“On her cheek the crimson berry
Lay in the lily’s bosom wan.”
—Sheela ni Cullenan.
“The bloom on thy cheek shames the apple’s soft blossom.”
Among the finest and most delicate comparisons, however, is this:
“Like crimson rays of sunset streaming
O’er sunny lilies her bright cheeks shone.”
The fair one’s bosom is declared to be like to the breast of the sailing swan, to the thorn blossoms, to the snow, to the summer cloud, in a variety of beautiful expressions:
“Her bosom’s pearly light
Than summer clouds more bright,
More pure its glow than falling snow
Or swan of plumage white.”
—Beside the Lee, by Michael O’Longen.
“Her breast has the whiteness
That thorn-blossoms bore.”
Her hands are pure and white as the snow, and never without being accomplished in the art of embroidery. There is scarcely a poem in the whole collection in which the skill of the heroine in this particular is not mentioned. She does not play upon the harp. That was a manly profession. Embroidery was the fashionable accomplishment for Irish ladies, and the maiden who typified Ireland must be pre-eminent in it.
“Her soft, queenly fingers
Are skilful as fair,
While she gracefully lingers
O’er broideries rare.
The swan and the heath-hen,
Bird, blossom, and leaf,
Are shaped by this sweet maid
Who left me in grief.”
The voice was that of the thrush singing farewell to the setting sun, the cuckoo in the glen, or the lark high in air. Bird-voiced was the universal epithet. The branch of bloom, the bough of apple-blossoms, was the whole lovely creature.
Such were the beauties and accomplishments of the heroines of the hedge-poets, largely, doubtless, derived from the earlier bards, but often exclusively their own. They were chiefly applied to the ideal figure who represented in her beauty and her sorrow their forlorn country, but sometimes to the earthly mistress of flesh and blood whose smiles they sought. Seldom anything so natural and so delicate is to be found in any national poetry. The false and artificial compliments of English amatory poetry, equally with the overstrained comparisons of Oriental verse, seem tasteless and tawdry beside these simple blossoms of nature. They give out health and perfume, while the English love-songs are like wax, and the gorgeous verse of the East is, like its vegetation, magnificent but often odorless.
Those poems which we have described form much the larger portion of the remains of the hedge-poets; but there are others, devoted purely to love, to satire, and to lamentation. There are some which are a sort of dialogue and courtship in rhyme. The minstrel “soothers” the damsel with all the arts of his flattering tongue. He calls her by every sweet name he can think of; tells how deep is his passion and how renowned he will make her by his verse. The rustic coquette replies with a recapitulation of all his faults and failings, his poverty, his fondness for drink, his disgrace with all his relations, and his general unfitness for the yoke of matrimony, and then very often yields to his flattery and goes away with him; or else she listens to his string of endearments without a word, and then dismisses him with stinging contempt. Sometimes the bard sits down in sorrow, generally in a tap-room over an empty glass, and details the charms of the fair one who has wrought his woe; or sometimes, though rarely, it is one of the opposite sex, who has been driven from home by the curses of her kindred, and, sitting by the roadside, tells her tale of woe or despair. Such cases, however, are infrequent, and the general purity of both theme and verse is worthy of all praise. The number of lamentations is much less than would naturally be expected among a people whose vehemence of grief is noted, and where the keener’s extemporaneous mourning reached such a height of impassioned eloquence. From whatever reason, but few appear to have been preserved. Those that are, however, are characterized by profound strength and pathos. The keen of Felix MacCarthy for his children is one of the saddest lamentations ever put into verse. It is entirely too long for quotation, but these two verses, describing the mother’s appearance and grief, will show something of its genuineness and power:
“Woe is me! her dreary pall,
Who royal fondness gave to all,
Whose heart gave milk and love to each—
Woe is me! her ‘plaining speech”
“Woe is me! her hands now weak
With smiting her white palms so meek.
Wet her eyes at noon, and broken
Her true heart with grief unspoken.”
A lament for Kilcash, or rather for its patroness, is also very powerful.
The romantic love-tales are few in comparison with the number among the Irish street-ballads of to-day. The rich young nobleman who falls in love with the pretty girl milking her cow, and the fair lady of great estate who picks out her lover from the tall young men in her own service, make but few appearances. The only ballad of this kind in the collection is not after the usual pattern. The heir to “land and long towers white” certainly falls in love with a rustic maiden, but, instead of flying with him on his roan steed and becoming mistress of his castle, she tells him with great prudence that he will find other maidens better suited to his degree:
“I’m not used at my mother’s to sit with hosts,
I’m not used at the board to have wines and toasts,
I’m not used to dance-halls with music bold,
Nor to couches a third of them red with gold.”
And, in spite of his fervent and eloquent protestations, she refuses to go with him.
Such are the themes and characteristics of the last age of Celtic poetry in Ireland. If we have failed to show that the minstrels who sang in such poverty and oppression had natural genius of a high order, we have not accomplished our purpose. We think that true poetry is visible in almost all that remains of their productions. Like all sectional and class poets, they resembled each other very much. The same species of imagery, the same terms of thought and peculiar epithets, were common to them as to the Troubadours, the Scandinavian minstrels, and to all other classes of poets singing to a confined audience and having little or no acquaintance with other forms of poetry. It is through them alone that the voice of the Irish people of their day can be heard. All other forms of the expression of the oppressed race have perished. In the music and poetry of Ireland is made manifest, so that the dullest ear cannot mistake it, the sorrow of a nation in bondage, tinging all mirth, all hope, and all love with an indefinable cadence of melancholy as plainly as in the real outbursts of lamentation and despairing cries of woe.