O'Hussey, probably the greatest contemporary rival of Teig Dall, is best known through Mangan's translation of his noble ode to Cuchonnacht Maguire, lord of Fermanagh,[14] who was caught by the elements on some warlike expedition and in danger of being frozen and drowned.
"Where is my chief, my master, this black night? movrone!
Oh, cold, cold, miserably cold is this black night for Hugh,
Its showery, arrowy, speary sleet pierceth one through and through,
Pierceth one to the very bone.
* * * * *
An awful, a tremendous night is this, meseems,
The floodgates of the rivers of heaven I think have been burst wide,
Down from the overcharged clouds, like unto headlong ocean's tide,
Descends grey rain in roaring streams.
Though he were even a wolf ranging the round green woods,
Though he were even a pleasant salmon in the unchainable sea,
Though he were a wild mountain eagle, he could scarce bear, he,
This sharp sore sleet, these howling floods."[15]
When it is remembered that O'Hussey composed this poem in that most difficult and artificial of metres, the Deibhidh, of which we have just given specimens, it will be seen how much Mangan has gained by his free and untrammelled metre, and what technical difficulties fettered O'Hussey's art, and lent glory to his triumph over them.
Both these great poets and their contemporaries had been reared in the bardic colleges, which continued to exist, though with gradually diminishing prestige, until near the close of the seventeenth century. I doubt if a single college survived into the eighteenth, to come under the cruel law which made it penal for a Catholic to teach a school. In the seventeenth century, however, several famous colleges of poetry are still found. They are frequently alluded to by the poets of that century, both in Ireland and Scotland, and always under the generic name of "the schools," by which they mean the bardic institutions. Few or none of those persons who did not themselves come of a bardic tribe were admitted into them, which accounts for the prevalence of the same surnames among the poets for several centuries, O'Dalys, O'Hĭginnses, O'Coffeys, Macgraiths, Conmees, Wards, O'Mulconrys,[16] etc. None of the students were allowed to come from the neighbourhood of the college, but only from far-away parts of Ireland, so as not to be distracted by the propinquity of friends and relations. This produced a certain unity of feeling among the bardic race, and to a great extent broke down all class prejudice, so much so, that the bards were almost the only people in later Ireland who belonged to their country rather than to their lord, or tribe, or territory. It may very well be, however, that the bardic race was not in the long run an advantage to Ireland, and that the elaborate system of pedigrees which they preserved, and their eulogies upon their particular patrons tended to keep the clan spirit alive to the detriment of the idea of a unified nationality, and to the exclusion of new political modes of thought.
However this may be, it is absolutely necessary to study the poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries if one would come to a right understanding of the great transformation scene then being enacted. The feelings, aspirations, and politics of the Irish themselves are faithfully reflected in them, and though no Irish historian, except perhaps O'Halloran, has ever read them, yet no historian can afford to utterly neglect them. It has become common of late years to deny that there was any real national struggle of Ireland against England in the seventeenth century, and my friend Mr. Standish O'Grady, in particular, from a perusal of the English State Papers and other documents, has striven with eloquence and brilliancy to prove that the fight was a social and an economic one, a conflict between the smaller gentry and the great upper lords. But such a view of the case is flatly contradicted, indeed absolutely disproved, by a study of the Irish bards. The names of Erin, Banba, Fódhla, the Plain of Conn, the Land of the Children of Ir and Eber, are in their mouths at every moment, and to the very last they persisted in their efforts to combine the Gael against the Gall. Here, for instance, is a poem, one specimen out of scores, by an unknown poet of the sixteenth century, exhorting the Irish of all the provinces to resistance, and it would be impossible to tell to what tribe or even to what province the poet belonged. I translate the poem here into a modification of the Irish metre, and one which, it seems to me, could be very well taken over and adapted with a fairly good effect into English.[17]
"Fooboon upon you, ye hosts of the Gael,
For your own Innisfail has been taken,
And the Gall is dividing the emerald lands
By your treacherous bands forsaken.[18]
Clan Carthy of Munster from first unto last
Have forsaken the past of their sires,
And they honour no longer the men that are gone,
Or the song of the God-sent lyres.
The O'Briens of Banba whom Murrough led on,
They are gone with the Saxon aggressor,
They have bartered the heirloom of ages away
And forgotten to slay the oppressor.
The old race of Brian mac Yohy[19] the stern,
With gallowglass kerne and bonnacht,[20]
They are down on their knees, they are cringing to-day,
'Tis the way through the province of Connacht.
In the valleys of Leinster the valorous band
Who lightened the land with their daring,
In Erin's dark hour now shift for themselves,
The wolves are upon them and tearing.
And O'Neill, who is throned in Emania afar,
And gave kings unto Tara for ages,
For the earldom of Ulster has bartered, through fear,
The kingdom of heroes and sages.[21]
Alas for the sight! the O'Carrolls of Birr
Swear homage in terror, sore fearing,
Not a man one may know for a man, can be found
On the emerald ground of Erin.
And O'Donnell[22] the chieftain, the lion in fight,
Who defended the right of Tirconnell,
(Ah! now may green Erin indeed go and droop!)
He stoops with them—Manus O'Donnell!
"Fooboon for the court where no English was spoke,
Fooboon for the yoke of the stranger,
Fooboon for the gun in the foreigner's train,
Fooboon for the chain of danger.
"Ye faltering madmen, God pity your case!
In the flame of disgrace ye are singeing.
Fooboon is the word of the bard and the saint,
Fooboon for the faint and cringing."
The session of the bardic schools began about Michaelmas,[23] and the youthful aspirants to bardic glory came trooping, about that season, from all quarters of the four provinces to offer with trembling hearts their gifts to the ollamh of the bardic college, and to take possession of their new quarters. Very extraordinary these quarters were; for the college usually consisted of a long low group of whitewashed buildings, excessively warmly thatched, and lying in the hollow of some secluded valley, or shut in by a sheltering wood, far removed from noise of human traffic and from the bustle of the great world. But what most struck the curious beholder was the entire absence of windows or partitions over the greater portion of the house.
According as each student arrived he was assigned a windowless room to himself, with no other furniture in it than a couple of chairs, a clothes rail, and a bed. When all the students had arrived, a general examination of them was held by the professors and ollamhs, and all who could not read and write Irish well, or who appeared to have an indifferent memory, were usually sent away. The others were divided into classes, and the mode of procedure was as follows: The students were called together into the great hall or sitting-room, amply illuminated by candles and bog-torches, and we may imagine the head ollamh, perhaps the venerable and patriotic O'Gnive himself, addressing them upon their chosen profession, and finally proposing some burning topic such as O'Neill's abrogation of the title of O'Neill, for the higher class to compose a poem on, in perhaps the Great or Little Rannaigheacht [Ran-ee-ăcht] metre, while for the second class he sets one more commonplace, to be done into Deibhidh [D'yevvee] or Séadna [Shayna], or some other classic measure, and any student who does not know all about the syllabification, quartans, concord, correspondence, termination, and union, which go to the various metres, is turned over to an inferior professor.
The students retired after their breakfasts, to their own warm but perfectly dark compartments, to throw themselves each upon his bed,[24] and there think and compose till supper-hour, when a servant came round to all the rooms with candles, for each to write down what he had composed. They were then called together into the great hall, and handed in their written compositions to the professors, after which they chatted and amused themselves till bed-time.