It would be hard to find a more striking or a prettier conception of the power of music in the shape of a bird-song, than the account of Queen Blanid’s three cows with their three little birds which used to sing to them during milking. These cows were always milked into a caldron, but submitted reluctantly and gave little milk till the birds came to their usual perch—on the cows’ ears—and sang for them: then they gave their milk freely till the caldron was filled. This corresponds with the effect of the milking-songs described at [p. 89]. (See also for bird-songs, [p. 83].)
Many students of our ancient literature have noticed these characteristics of the old Irish and their writings. “Another poem,” writes Mr. Alfred Nutt, “strikes a note which remains dominant throughout the entire range of Ossianic Literature: the note of keen and vivid feeling for certain natural conditions. It is a brief description of winter:—
“A tale here for you: oxen lowing: winter snowing: summer passed away: wind from the north, high and cold: low the sun and short his course: wildly tossing the wave of the sea. The fern burns deep red. Men wrap themselves closely: the wild goose raises her wonted cry: cold seizes the wing of the bird: ’tis the season of ice: sad my tale.”
In a certain plain, simple prose narrative in one of our old books, where there is not the least effort at fine writing, it is related how, in the noon of a summer day, a little child fell over a cliff into the sea. The mother ran down shrieking expecting he was dashed to pieces: but she found him quite safe “sitting in the trough of the sea”—to quote the lovely words of the old writer—“playing with the waves. For the waves would reach up to him and laugh round him; and he was laughing at the waves, and putting the palm of his hand to the foam of the crest, and he used to lick it like the foam of new milk.”
In the Life of St. Columkille it is stated that, while residing in Iona, he wrote a poem in Irish, a tender reminiscence of his beloved native land, in which he expresses himself in this manner:—
St. Columkille’s Remembrance of Erin.
“How delightful to be on Ben-Edar before embarking on the foam-white sea; how pleasant to row one’s little curragh round it, to look upward at its bare steep border, and to hear the waves dashing against its rocky cliffs.
“A grey eye looks back towards Erin; a grey eye full of tears.
“While I traverse Alban of the ravens, I think on my little oak grove in Derry. If the tributes and the riches of Alban were mine, from the centre to the uttermost borders, I would prefer to them all one little house in Derry. The reason I love Derry is for its quietness, for its purity, for its crowds of white angels.
“How sweet it is to think of Durrow: how delightful would it be to hear the music of the breeze rustling through its groves.