A Literary History of Ireland, from Earliest Times to the Present Day

by Douglas Hyde

Zimmer too has come to the same conclusion.

"Nothing," he writes, "except a spurious criticism which takes for original and primitive the most palpable nonsense of which Middle-Irish writers from the twelfth to the sixteenth century are guilty with regard to their own antiquity, which is in many respects strange and foreign to them: nothing but such a criticism can, on the other hand, make the attempt to doubt of the historical character of the chief persons of the Saga cycles.[2] For we believe that Mève, Conor mac Nessa, Cuchulain, and Finn mac Cúmhail, are exactly as much historical personalities as Arminius, or Dietrich of Bern, or Etzel, and their date is just as well determined as that of the above-mentioned heroes and kings, who are glorified in song by the Germans, even though, in the case of Irish heroes and kings, external witnesses are wanting.'"

M. d'Arbois de Jubainville expresses himself in like terms. "We have no reason," he writes, "to doubt of the reality of the principal rôle in this [cycle of Cuchulain];"[3] and of the story of the Boru tribute which was imposed on Leinster about a century later; he writes, "Le récit a pour base des faits réels, quoique certains détails aient été créés par l'imagination;" and again, "Irish epic story, barbarous though it is, is, like Irish law, a monument of a civilisation far superior to that of the most ancient Germans; if the Roman idea of the state was wanting to that civilisation, and, if that defect in it was a radical flaw, still there is an intellectual culture to be found there, far more developed than amongst the primitive Germans.'"[4]

"Ireland, in fact," writes M. Darmesteter in his "English Studies," well summing up the legitimate conclusions from the works of the great Celtic scholars, "has the peculiar privilege of a history continuous from the earliest centuries of our era until the present day. She has preserved in the infinite wealth of her literature a complete and faithful picture of the ancient civilisation of the Celts. Irish literature is therefore the key which opens the Celtic world."

But the Celtic world means a large portion of Europe, and the key to unlock the door of its past history is in the Irish manuscripts of saga and poem. Without them the student would have to view the past history of Europe through the distorting glasses of the Greeks and Romans, to whom all outer nations were barbarians, into whose social life they had no motive for inquiring. He would have no other means of estimating what were the feelings, modes of life, manners, and habits, of those great races who possessed so large a part of the ancient world, Gaul, Belgium, North Italy, parts of Germany, Spain, Switzerland, and the British Isles; who burned Rome, plundered Greece, and colonised Asia Minor. But in the Irish romances and historical sagas, he sees come to light another standard by which to measure. Through this early Irish peep-hole he gets a clear look at the life and manners of the race in one of its strongholds, from which he may conjecture and even assume a good deal with regard to the others.

That the pictures of social life and early society drawn in the Irish romances represent phases not common to the Irish alone, but to large portions of that Celtic race which once owned so much of Europe, may be surmised with some certainty from the way in which characteristics of the Celts barely mentioned by Greek and Roman writers re-appear amongst the Irish in all the intimate detail and fond expansion of romance. M. d'Arbois de Jubainville has drawn attention to many such instances.

Posidonius, who was a friend of Cicero, and wrote about a hundred years before Christ, mentions a custom which existed in Gaul in his time of fighting at a feast for the best bit which was to be given to the most valiant warrior. This custom, briefly noticed by Posidonius, might be passed by unnoticed by the ordinary reader, but the Irish one will remember the early romances of his race in which the curadh-mir or "heroes' bit" so largely figures. He will remember that it is upon this custom that one of the greatest sagas of the Cuchulain cycle, the feast of Bricriu, hinges. Bricriu, the Thersites of the Red Branch, having built a new and magnificent house, determines to invite King Conor and the other chieftains to a feast, for the house was very magnificent.

"The dining hall was built like that of the High-king at Tara. From the hearth to the wall were nine beds, and each of the side walls was thirty-five feet high and covered with ornaments of gilt bronze. Against one of the side walls of that palace was reared a royal bed destined for Conor,[5] king of Ulster, which looked down upon all the others. It was ornamented with carbuncles and precious stones and other gems of great price. The gold and silver and all sorts of jewellery which covered that bed shone with such splendour that the night was as brilliant as the day."

He had prepared a magnificent curadh-mir for the feast, consisting of a seven-year old pig, and a seven-year old cow that had been fed on milk and corn and the finest food since their birth, a hundred cakes of corn cooked with honey—and every four cakes took a sack of corn to make them—and a vat of wine large enough to hold three of the warriors of the Ultonians. This magnificent "heroes' bit" he secretly promises to each of three warriors in turn, Laeghaire [Leary], Conall Cearnach, and Cuchulain, hoping to excite a quarrel among them. On the result of his expedient the saga turns.[6]

Again, Cæsar tells us that when he invaded the Gauls they did not fight any longer in chariots, but it is recorded that they did so fight two hundred years before his time, even as the Persians fought against the Greeks, and as the Greeks themselves must have fought in a still earlier age commemorated by Homer. But in the Irish sagas we find this epic mode of warfare in full force. Every great man has his charioteer, they fight from their cars as in Homeric days, and much is told us of both steed, chariot and driver. In the above-mentioned saga of Bricriu's feast it is the charioteers of the three warriors who claim the heroes' bit for their masters, since they are apparently ashamed to make the first move themselves. The charioteer was more than a mere servant. Cuchulain sometimes calls his charioteer friend or master (popa), and on the occasion of his fight with Ferdiad desires him in case he (Cuchulain) should show signs of yielding, to "excite reproach and speak evil to me so that the ire of my rage and anger should grow the more on me, but if he give ground before me thou shalt laud me and praise me and speak good words to me that my courage may be the greater," and this command his friend and charioteer punctually executes.