to be Finn mac Cúmhail's.
Of the many poems—as distinguished from sagas, which are a mixture of poetry and prose—said to have been produced from pagan times down to the eighth century, none can be properly called epics or even épopées. There are few continued efforts, and the majority of the pieces though interesting for a great many reasons to students, would hardly interest an English reader when translated. Unfortunately, such a great amount of our early literature being lost, we can only judge of what it was like through the shorter pieces which have been preserved, and even these short pieces read rather jejune and barren in English, partly because of the great condensation of the original, a condensation which was largely brought about by the necessity of versification in difficult metres. In order to see beauty in the most ancient Irish verse it is absolutely necessary to read it in the original so as to perceive and appreciate the alliteration and other tours de force which appear in every line. These verses, for instance, which Mève, daughter or Conan, is said to have pronounced over Cuchorb, her husband, in the first century, appear bald enough in a literal translation:—
"Moghcorb's son whom fame conceals [covers]
Well sheds he blood by his spears,
A stone over his grave—'tis a pity—
Who carried battle over Cliú Máil.
My noble king, he spoke not falsehood,
His success was certain in every danger,
As black as a raven was his brow,
As sharp was his spear as a razor," etc.
One might read this kind of thing for ever in a translation without being struck by anything more than some occasional curiosa felicitas of phrase or picturesque expression, and one would never suspect that the original was so polished and complicated as it really is. Here are these two verses done into the exact versification of the original, in which interlinear vowel-rhymes, alliterations, and all the other requirements of the Irish are preserved and marked:—
"Mochorb's son of Fiercest FAME,
KNown his NAME for bloody toil,
To his Gory Grave is GONE,
He who SHONE o'er SHouting Moyle.
Kindly King, who Liked not LIES,
Rash to RISE to Fields of Fame,
Raven-Black his Brows of FEAR,
Razor-Sharp his SPEAR of flame," etc.[18]
This specimen of Irish metre may help to place much of our poetry in another light, for its beauty depends less upon the intrinsic substance of the thought than the external elegance of the framework. We must understand this in order to do justice to our versified literature, for the student must not imagine that he will find long-sustained epics or interesting narrative poems after the manner of the Iliad or Odyssey, or even the Nibelungenlied, or the "Song of Roland;" none such now exist: if they did exist they are lost. The early poems consist rather of eulogies, elegies, historical pieces, and lyrics, few of them of any great length, and still fewer capable of interesting an English reader in a translation. Occasionally we meet with touches of nature poetry of which the Gael has always been supremely fond. Here is a tentative translation made by O'Donovan of a part of the first poem which Finn mac Cúmhail is said to have composed after his eating of the salmon of knowledge:—
"May-Day, delightful time! How beautiful the colour; the blackbirds sing their full lay; would that Laighaig were here! The cuckoos sing in constant strains. How welcome is ever the noble brilliance of the seasons! On the margin of the branching woods the summer swallows skim the stream. The swift horses seek the pool. The heath spreads out its long hair, the weak, fair bog-down grows. Sudden consternation attacks the signs, the planets, in their courses running, exert an influence; the sea is lulled to rest, flowers cover the earth."
The language of this poem is so old as to be in parts unintelligible, and the broken metre points to the difficulties of transmission over a long period of time, yet he would be a bold man who would ascribe with certainty the authorship of it to Finn mac Cúmhail in the third century, or the elegy on Cuchorb to Mève, daughter of Conan, a contemporary of Virgil and Horace. And yet all the history of these people is known and recorded with much apparent plausibility and many collateral circumstances connecting them with the men of their time. How much of this is genuine historical tradition? How much is later invention? It is difficult to decide at present.
[1] Pronounced "Taun Bo Hoo-il-n'ya." The "a" in Táin is pronounced nearly like the "a" in the English word "Tarn."