Far, in every sense, from such ovations is that desolate island off the Scotch coast, where, in the sixth century, “a grey eye turned ever in vain” towards that Ireland “where the songs of the birds are so sweet, where the clerks sing like birds, where the young are so gentle, the old so wise, and the maidens so fair to wed.” The exile charges his parting pupil to bear his blessing, part to Alba, part to Ireland—“seven times may she be blessed.... My heart is broken in my breast. If death comes to me suddenly, it will be because of the great love I bear the Gael.”
Columba is the first Irish poet of exile—of which our nation has such sad experience since. His poetry, like his life, is instinct with the deepest affection for his native land, whilst his work has been the most fruitful in influence over the intellectual development of Scotland and England. From the island of Iona, chiefly, went forth that persuasive power which carried education over Britain. The majority of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, all the North of England, where English learning and literature took its rise, were bathed in an Irish intellectual atmosphere. Caedmon began his song in this environment, and when later, in the eight century, English Aldhelm first wrote rhymed Latin verse, it was because he had been a pupil of the Irishman Mailduff, the first Abbot of Malmesbury.[10]
To speak of literary relations between the Irish and the Norse may provoke some derision. Were not these the fierce sea-kings the “Danes,” whose delight was in war, and whose avocation in peace was the plunder of shrines? They were, however, paradoxical enough to build Christ Church, and to richly endow it. And it is also a curious fact that, previous to three great invasions of other countries, for which they are severely blamed, they had been appealingly besought for help by their supposed victims. Iarl Hacon went to oppose the aggressions of the Emperor Otho; King Harald Sigurdson to avenge wrongs inflicted by English Harold; and Iarl Sigurd of the Orkneys (whose mother was an Irishwoman) could not resist the appeal of Irish beauty in distress—in the person of Queen Brian Borumha, who was mother of the Norse king of Dublin.
There were, in fact, many and important matrimonial alliances between the Irish and Norse princes, who often joined forces against foes. This happened at Clontarf, where the Irish of Leinster had the alliance of the Dublin and Orkney Norse, whilst Brian brought up the Danes of Limerick. This battle, let me remark, is described in the literature of both countries, and in both descriptions there are omens and spiritual beings such as signalise the epic of Homer. So great was Norse influence over Ireland that three of our provinces retain the Northern name-endings, and many a headland and bay has a Norse appellation. They delighted in the loveliness of the land. Linnæus, in latter days, fell on his knees before the splendour of a furze-bush in blossom, and we can readily imagine how tears came into the eyes of the Arctic rovers when they beheld the fresh green of Ovoca or were dazzled by the crimson and gold of Benn Edair, which they called Howth.[11] Irish music charmed them, and even now some of our old airs awake echoes along the norland fiords.[12]
The latest and most distinguished authorities[13] declare that Irish literature has largely influenced that of the Scandinavians. Their Heroic Age was much later than ours, from the end of the ninth to the eleventh centuries, when the ambition of Harold Haarfagre to imitate the imperial methods of Charlemagne had driven the independent princes to far isles or foreign voyages. They were in close and continuous contact in peace and war with the Irish, “whose ancient civilisation was superior and therefore stronger.” Bergen, the old Norse capital, possessed a church dedicated to St. Columba, and the revered relics of its patron, St. Sunniva, an Irish maiden! As you sail into Rejkiavik, the capital of Iceland, you pass the Westman Isles, so-called because of the Irish who had visited and dwelt there. Now Iceland—that strange attractive island, where cold white snow covers the hot volcanic heart—is the old home of the Sagas. It had been first peopled by some Irish monks. Another settlement took place when Queen Aud—widow of White Olaf, the Norse King of Dublin—went thither on the death of her son. Norsemen and Irishmen, her kinsfolk and dependents, accompanied her. Mr. Vigfusson, himself an Icelander, writes with a generous fairness, characteristic of the race, as follows:
“The bulk of the settlers were men who, at least for one generation, had dwelt among a Keltic population and undergone an influence which an old and strongly marked civilisation invariably exercises among those brought under it—an attraction which in this particular case was of so potent a kind that centuries later it metamorphosed the Norman knights of the foremost European kingdom with startling rapidity into Irish chieftains.” “Moreover,” he adds, “we find among the emigrants of all ranks men and women of pure Irish and Scottish blood, as also as many sprung from mixed marriages, and traces of this crossing survive in the Irish names borne by some of the foremost characters of the Heroic Age of Iceland, especially the poets, of whom it is also recorded that they were dark men.” He considers that this close intercourse with the Celts had to do with heightening and colouring the strong but somewhat prosaic Teuton imagination into that finer and more artistic spirit manifested in the Icelandic Saga. The classic land of the Saga was in West Iceland, and there also the proportion of Irish blood was greatest. On the Norsemen who still remain there the Irish influence was yet more effective and powerful. Mr. Vigfusson makes an observation, which is a touching and keen reproach to those on whom it devolves to publish the manuscript materials of ancient Irish literature. He writes: “Only when it is possible to judge fairly of the remains of the Keltic literature of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, can any definite conception of the influence it exerted on Icelandic, Norse, and English literature be properly estimated.”[14]
With the great Sagas, the fame of which has spread abroad as their strong dramatic character deserves, Northern literature possesses the no less celebrated Eddas. These Eddic poems “discover an ideal of beauty,” writes Mr. York Powell, “an aerial unearthly fairy world, and a love of nature which we do not find in the Saga.” They also reveal that those who composed them were familiar with more southern scenes and manners; and the poems are shown to be the mental offspring of the men “who won Waterford and Limerick and kinged it in York and East England.” “It is well to remark,” he adds, “that among the first poets we have any knowledge of, the majority are of mixed blood with an Irish ancestress not far back in the family tree.... Their physical characteristics, dark hair and black eyes, like Sighvat and Kormack,[15] their reckless passion and wonderful fluency are also non-Teutonic and speak of their alien descent.” In Bragi’s Eddic poem there is a very manifest introduction of a characteristic Irish rhyme-method.
Thus we have it on unquestionable authority that the noble Norse literature, which occupies a position of the greatest importance, dominating as it does the Teutonic world, was itself the offspring, in a certain sense, of our ancient Irish literature. Irish literary training and talent presided over and took part in its composition, gave dramatic vividness to its narrative—grace, method, and myths to its poetry.
With this knowledge in mind you will look with better insight into the story of the Norsemen in Ireland, and see them, no longer as a cloud of barbarians, but as brave adventurous knights whose voyages fringed our seas with a murmur of song, and whose cities, in quiet times, were the favourite resort of Irishmen skilled in letters and all the arts of peace and war. “Why should we think of faring home?” sang King Magnus. “My heart is in Dublin. I shall not return in autumn to the ladies of Nidaros. Youth makes me love the Irish girl better than myself.”
Considering how often and how constantly the prejudice of the ignorant prevents a good understanding between neighbours, whether these be individuals or nations, I have sometimes thought of writing a book to be entitled: “The Good Deeds of our Enemies.” Too often do we find writers stopping at nothing to cover the foe with obloquy. By this they put out their own eyes and blind our moral sight. Proceeding on a different principle, I should show enemies, not in their conflicts, but in their concessions, and the picture would give a truer idea of mankind, for it is surprising how many kind offices were mutually interchanged between foemen—even in this very country—who are always represented as savage, ruthless, and exterminating.