Ireland has been able to act upon the literature of the Continent and of Britain in three ways: first, directly, next by means of its pupils on the Continent, and finally by means of the Norse literature. The latter affected both Britain and Germany, so that the Irish spirit has had a double influence, be it much or little, upon both. Professor Morley, indeed, admits that “the story of our literature begins with the Gael”; and pointing out the intermixture of blood, he adds: “But for early frequent and various contact with the race which in its half barbarous days invented Oisin’s dialogues with St. Patrick, and that quickened afterwards the Northmen’s blood in France and Germany, England would not have produced a Shakespeare.”
Certain it is, I think, that but for the influence of Irish literature, Shakespeare would not have produced a “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “The Tempest,” and “Macbeth.” The aerial beings which characterise the first two plays are like those delightful melodies which Boiëldieu in “La Dame Blanche,” and Flotow in “Marthe” made popular over the Continent, and which the Irish ear, suddenly attentive, recognises as Irish in spite of their foreign surroundings.[16]
Teutonic poetry, in certain particulars, appears to have germinated from the seed which fell from the ripe Irish harvest. The alliteration found in “Beowulf,” the first Anglo-Saxon epic, A.D. 750 (three centuries after Sedulius), seems a rather crude imitation. Rhyme was introduced into High German a century later, and this was achieved by Otfried, who had acquired the gift in that great monastry of St. Gall to which the illustrious Irishman bequeathed his name, his spirit, and his scholarship, which long guided his many disciples.
The Nibelungen Lied and the Lay of Gudrun have been called the Iliad and the Odyssey of Germany. Both, however, have Norse originals. Now, with respect to the latter it is a remarkable but surely not a surprising thing, after all we know, that the opening scenes of the lay should be placed in Ireland. The fierce King of Ireland, Hagen (? Hacon), had a fair daughter Hilda, and to woo her for their King, Hettel of Denmark, came a number of daring champions, disguised as merchants. The wooing with music, which captures the Irish maiden’s heart, the flight, pursuit, marriage and reconcilement, are told with animation. Gudrun, the daughter of Hettel’s Irish wife, is the second heroine of the tale. In the Arthurian Romance of Tristan and Isolde (as in some others) there are Irish scenes and Irish characters. Isolde herself has bequeathed Dublin her name in Isolde’s Tower and Chapel-isod. I need but remind you that the Arthurian Romances gave origin to Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King.”
The kindred peoples of France and of Spain were naturally not less influenced than the Teutonic races. The Romans did not give them rhyme; their own literature had perished; consequently they borrowed from the islands to which, in Cæsar’s time, the continental Druids were sent for training. Assonant rhyme, found in some Anglo-Norman poems, was common in the Romance of Oc and all related dialects. “It is clearly the Irish Comharda” (correspondence), writes an English authority, Mr. Guest, “though not submitted in the Romance dialects to the nice rules which regulate its assonances in the Gaelic.”
Irish literature has received gifts in return: in the old Anglo-Saxon Mystery Play, found in the Record Office, in the Anglo-Norman Rhyme of Ross, in the Song of Dermott, and in others unfortunately still unpublished. Michael of Kildare is supposed to be our first poet in English, and he is the pioneer-poet of satire in that language.
This postern, which he opened into what has since become the vast empire of literature in English, gave entrance to many. Spenser came to us, through it, and, caught by the glamour of the Gael, gave us the “Faërie Queene,” wherein he immortalises some of our scenery and pays tribute to the ancient renown of our nation:
“Whilome when Ireland flourished in fame
Of wealth and goodness far above the rest
Of all that bear the British Islands name.”
It is noteworthy that the great poem, which marked the revival of English letters after Chaucer, was composed in Ireland. Granting that Spenser found models in Ariosto and Tasso, yet, if he had remained in London, he might never have risen above the standard of the Palace-poets. Shakespeare in London was saved by the drama demanding an environment of popular life. Probably nothing saved Spenser but his immersion in Irish nature, which his verse so faithfully reflects. Not only are the material beauties of our country—mountains, woods, and rivers—mirrored there, but its spiritual world also. The very name of Una is Irish, and our Puca appears in trimmed English as “the Pouke,” whom Shakespeare again introduces as Puck, just as our Gaelic Madb becomes “Queen Mab.”
But it may be said that Spenser was ignorant of the literature of the hostile Irish nation, and so could not be influenced by it. The case is otherwise. When Eudoxus asks: “Have they any art in their compositions, or bee they anything wittie in or well savoured as poems should be?” Spenser (as Irenæus) answers: “Yes, truely, I have caused divers of them to be translated unto me, that I might understand them, and surely they savoured of sweet wit and good invention, but skilled not of the goodly ornaments of poetry” (rather these were lost in a prose translation); “they were sprinkled with some pretty flowers of their naturall device, which gave good grace and comelinesse unto them.”