"Is mé Feargus, file Fhinn
De gnáith-fhéinn Fhinn mhic Cúmhail,
O thásg na bhfear sin nár lag
Trian a ngaisge ni inneósad."
In the library of the Franciscans' Convent in Dublin there is a seventeenth-century collection of Ossianic poems, all in regular classical metres, containing, as I have computed, not less than 10,000 lines. Not one of these poems has been, so far as I know, ever published. The poems printed by the Ossianic Society are not in the classical metres, though I suspect many of them were originally so composed, but they have become corrupted passing from mouth to mouth.
[CHAPTER XXXVIII]
THE LAST OF THE CLASSIC POETS
The first half of the seventeenth century saw an extraordinary re-awakening of the Irish literary spirit. This was the more curious because it was precisely at this period that the old Gaelic polity with its tribal system, brehon law, hereditary bards, and all its other supports, was being upheaved by main force and already beginning to totter to its ruin. This was the period when to aggravate what was already to the last degree bitter—the struggle for the soil and racial feuds—a third disastrous ingredient, polemics, stept in, and inflamed the minds of the opposing parties, with the additional fanaticism of religious hatred. Yet whether it is that their works have been better preserved to us than those of any other century, or whether the very nearness of the end inspired them to double exertions, certain it is that the seventeenth century, and especially the first half of it, produced amongst the Irish a number of most gifted men of letters. Of these the so-called Four Masters, Seathrun or Geoffrey Keating, Father Francis O'Mulloy, Lughaidh [Lewy] O'Clery, and Duald Mac Firbis were the most important of the purely Irish prose writers, whilst Phillip O'Sullivan Beare, Father Ward, and Father Colgan, John Lynch (Bishop of Killala), Luke Wadding, and Peter Lombard (Archbishop of Armagh), reflected credit upon their native country by their scholarship, and elucidated its history chiefly through the medium of Latin, as did Ussher and Sir James Ware, two great scholars of the same period produced by the Pale.
The century opened with an outburst of unexpected vigour on the part of the old school of Irish classical bards, over whose head the sword was then suspended, and whose utter destruction, though they knew it not, was now rapidly approaching. This outburst was occasioned by Teig mac Dairé,[1] the ollamh or chief poet of Donough O'Brien, fourth Earl of Thomond, (whose star, thanks to English influence, was at that time in the ascendant), making little of and disparaging in elaborate verse the line of Eremon,[2] and the reigning families of Meath, Connacht, Leinster, and Ulster, whilst exalting the kings of the line of Eber, of whom the O'Briens were at that time the greatest family. The form this poem took was an attack upon the poems of Torna Eigeas, a poet who flourished soon after the year 400, and who was tutor to Niall of the Nine Hostages, but whose alleged poems I have not noticed, not believing those attributed to him to be genuine, as they contain distinct Christian allusions, and as the language does not seem particularly antique. The bards, however, accepted these pieces as the real work of Torna, and Teig mac Dairé now attacks him on account of his partiality for the Eremonian Niall one thousand two hundred years before, and argues that he had done wrong, and that Eber, as the elder son of Milesius, should have had the precedency over Ir and Eremon, the younger children, and that consequently the princes of Munster, who were Eberians, should take precedency of the O'Nialls, O'Conors, and other Eremonians of the Northern provinces, and of Leinster. Teig asserts that it was Eber or Heber, son of Milesius, from whom Ireland was called Hiber-nia. This poem, which contained about one hundred and fifty lines, began with the words Olc do thagrais a Thorna, "Ill hast thou argued, O Torna," and was immediately taken up and answered by Lughaidh [Lewy] O'Clery, the ollamh of the O'Donnells, in a poem containing three hundred and forty lines, beginning "O Teig, revile not Torna." To this Teig replied in a piece of six hundred and eighty-eight lines, beginning Eist-se a Lughaidh rem' labhradh, "Listen to my speech, O Lewy," and was again immediately answered in a poem of about a thousand lines by O'Clery, beginning, Do chuala ar thagrais a Thaidhg, "I have heard all that thou hast argued, O Teig." In this poem O'Clery collects such facts as he can find in history and in ancient authors, to prove that the Eremonians had always been considered superior to the Eberians in past ages. This called forth another rejoinder from his opponent of one hundred and twenty-four lines, beginning A Lughaidh labhram go séimh, "Let us speak courteously, O Lewy," which was in its turn answered by O'Clery in a poem beginning Ná broisd mise a Mhic Dhaire, "Provoke me not, O son of Dairé."
By this time the attention of the whole Irish literary world had been centred upon this curious dispute, and on the attacks and rejoinders of these leading poets representing the two great races of Northern and Southern Ireland respectively. Soon the hereditary poets of the other great Gaelic houses joined in, as their own descent or inclination prompted. Fearfeasa O'Cainte, Torlough O'Brien, and Art Og O'Keefe were the principal supporters of Teig mac Daire and the Southern Eberians, while Hugh O'Donnell, Robert Mac Arthur, Baoghalach ruadh Mac Egan, Anluan Mac Egan, John O'Clery, and Mac Dermot of Moylurg, defended Lewy and the Northern Eremonians. For many years the conflict raged, and the verses of both parties collected into a volume of about seven thousand lines, is known to this day as "The Contention of the Poets."