Care was taken that the separate little house in which a destitute old person lived should be a fit and proper one; and its dimensions and furniture, as well as the dimensions of the little kitchen-garden, are set forth in the law. The law also specifies three items of maintenance—food, milk, and attendance; and it adds that the old person was to have a bath at regular intervals, and his head was to be washed every Saturday.
From the arrangements here described it will be seen that there was a kindly spirit in the provisions for old age and destitution, and that the most important features of our modern poor-laws were anticipated in Ireland a thousand years ago.
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.” So says the English poet, Keats, in his poem of Endymion, and he enumerates various natural features and artificial creations as things of beauty; among many others, the sun, the moon, “trees old and new,” clear rills, “the mid-forest brake,” “all lovely tales that we have heard or read.” If he had been in Ireland in old times, he would have come across delightful proofs of the truth of his saying everywhere among the people. They loved and had an intense appreciation of all things of beauty, whether natural or artificial; and they were remarkable for their close observation of the natural features of the world around them.
We know all this from their poetry, their tales, and their writings in general, which strongly reflect this pleasing aspect of their character. Everywhere we meet with passages in which are noticed, with loving admiration, not only those features mentioned by Keats, but many others, such as the boom and clash of the waves, the cry of the sea-birds, the murmur of the wind among the trees, the howling of the storm, the sad desolation of the landscape in winter, the ever-varying beauty of Irish clouds, the cry of the hounds in full career among the glens, the beauty of the native music, tender, sad, or joyous, and so forth in endless variety.
The few examples that follow here, as the reader will at once perceive, exhibit vividly this very fine and very attractive characteristic.
The singing of birds had a special charm for the old Irish people. Comgan, a poet of the seventh century, standing on the great rath of Knockgraffon in Tipperary—one of the old Munster royal residences—which was in his time surrounded with woods, uttered the following verse:—
“This great rath on which I stand
Wherein is a little well with a bright silver drinking-cup:
Sweet was the voice of the wood of blackbirds
Round this rath of King Fiacha.”
Among the examples of metre given in an old Irish treatise on prosody is the following verse, selected merely for a grammatical purpose:—
“The bird that calls within the sallow-tree,
Beautiful his beak and clear his voice;
The tip of the bill of the glossy jet-black bird is a lovely yellow;
The note that the merle warbles is a trilling lay.”