Of special interest are Dr. Hyde’s remarks upon the relations which obtain between the modern folk-tale current among the Gaelic-speaking populations of Ireland and Scotland, and the Irish mythic, heroic and romantic literature preserved in MSS., which range in date from the eleventh century to the present day.
In Ireland, more than elsewhere, the line of demarcation between the tale whose genesis is conscious, and that of which the reverse is true, is hard to draw, and students will, for a long while to come, differ concerning points of detail. I may thus be permitted to disagree at times with Dr. Hyde, although, as a rule, I am heartily at one with him.
Dr. Hyde distinguishes between an older stratum of folk-tale (the “old Aryan traditions,” of [p. xix.]) and the newer stratum of “bardic inventions.” He also establishes a yet younger class than these latter, the romances of the professional story-tellers of the eighteenth century, who “wrote them down as modern novelists do their stories.” Of these last he remarks ([p. xxxiv.]), that he has found no remnant of them among the peasantry of to-day; a valuable bit of evidence, although of course, subject to the inconclusiveness of all merely negative testimony. To revert to the second class, he looks upon the tales comprised in it as being rather the inventions of individual brains than as old Aryan folk-tales ([p. xx.]) It must at once be conceded, that a great number of the tales and ballads current in the Gaelic-speaking lands undoubtedly received the form under which they are now current, somewhere between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries; that the authors of that form were equally undoubtedly the professional bards and story-tellers attached to the court of every Gaelic chieftain; and that the method of their transmission was oral, it being the custom of the story-tellers both to teach their tales to pupils, and to travel about from district to district.
The style of these stories and ballads enables us to date them with sufficient precision. Dr. Hyde also notes historical allusions, such as the reference to O’Connor Sligo, in the story of the “Slim Swarthy Champion,” or to the Turks in the story of “Conall Gulban.” I cannot but think, however, that it is straining the evidence to assert that the one story was invented after 1362, or the other after the fall of Constantinople. The fact that “Bony” appears in some versions of the common English mumming play does not show that it originated in this century, merely that these particular versions have passed through the minds of nineteenth century peasants; and in like manner the Connaught fourteenth century chieftain may easily have taken the place of an earlier personage, the Turks in “Conall Gulban,” of an earlier wizard-giant race. If I cannot go as far as Dr. Hyde in this sense, I must equally demur to the assumption ([p. xl.]), that community of incident between an Irish and a Bohemian tale necessarily establishes the pre-historic antiquity of the incident. I believe that a great many folk-tales, as well as much else of folk-lore, has been developed in situ, rather than imported from the outside; but I, by no means, deny importation in principle, and I recognise that its agency has been clearly demonstrated in not a few cases.
The main interest of Irish folk-literature (if the expression be allowed) centres in the bardic stories. I think that Dr. Hyde lays too much stress upon such external secondary matters as the names of heroes, or allusions to historical events; and, indeed, he himself, in the case of Murachaidh MacBrian, states what I believe to be the correct theory, namely, that the Irish bardic story, from which he derives the Scotch Gaelic one, is, as far as many of its incidents go, not the invention of the writer, but genuine folk-lore thrown by him into a new form ([p. xxii.])
Had we all the materials necessary for forming a judgment, such is, I believe, the conclusion that would in every case be reached. But I furthermore hold it likely that in many cases the recast story gradually reverted to a primitive folk-type in the course of passing down from the court story-teller to the humbler peasant reciters, that it sloughed off the embellishments of the ollamhs, and reintroduced the older, wilder conceptions with which the folk remained in fuller sympathy than the more cultured bard. Compare, for instance, as I compared ten years ago, “Maghach Colgar,” in Campbell’s version (No. 36), with the “Fairy Palace of the Quicken Trees.” The one tale has all the incidents in the wildest and most fantastic form possible; in the other they are rationalised to the utmost possible extent and made to appear like a piece of genuine history. I do not think that if this later version was invented right out by a thirteenth or fourteenth century ollamh, it could have given rise to the former one. Either “Maghach Colgar” descends from the folk-tale which served as the basis of the Irish story, or, what is more likely, the folk, whilst appreciating and preserving the new arrangement of certain well-known incidents, retained the earlier form of the incidents themselves, as being more consonant with the totality of its conceptions, both moral and æsthetic. This I hold to be the vital lesson the folk-lorist may learn from considering the relations of Gaelic folk-tale and Gaelic romance (using the latter term in the sense of story with a conscious genesis): that romance, to live and propagate itself among the folk, must follow certain rules, satisfy certain conceptions of life, conform to certain conventions. The Irish bards and story-tellers had little difficulty, I take it, in doing this; they had not outgrown the creed of their countrymen, they were in substantial touch with the intellectual and artistic laws that govern their subject-matter. Re-arrange, rationalise somewhat, deck out with the questionable adornment of their scanty and ill-digested book-learning—to this extent, but to this extent only, I believe, reached their influence upon the mass of folk-conceptions and presentments which they inherited from their fathers, and which, with these modifications and additions, they handed on to their children.
But romance must not only conform to the conventions, it must also fit in with the ensemble of conditions, material, mental and spiritual, which constitute the culture (taking this much-abused word in its widest sense) of a race. An example will make this clear.
Of all modern, consciously-invented fairy tales I know but one which conforms fully to the folk-tale convention—“The Shaving of Shagpat.” It follows the formula as closely and accurately as the best of Grimm’s or of Campbell’s tales. To divine the nature of a convention, and to use its capabilities to the utmost, is a special mark of genius, and in this, as in other instances, whatever else be absent from Mr. Meredith’s work, genius is indubitably present. But I do not think that “The Shaving of Shagpat” could ever be acclimatised as a folk-tale in this country. Scenery, conduct of story, characterisation of personages, are all too distinctively Oriental. But let an Eastern admirer of Mr. Meredith translate his work into Arabic or Hindi, and let the book fall into the hands of a Cairene or Delhi story-teller (if such still exist), I can well imagine that, with judicious cuts, it should win praise for its reciter in market-place or bazaar. Did this happen, it would surely be due to the fact that the story is strictly constructed upon traditional lines, rather than to the brilliant invention and fancy displayed on every page. Strip from it the wit and philosophy of the author, and there remains a fairy tale to charm the East; but it would need to be reduced to a skeleton, and reclothed with new flesh before it could charm the folk of the West.
To bring home yet more clearly to our minds this necessity for romance to conform to convention, let us ask ourselves, what would have happened if one of the Irish story-tellers who perambulated the Western Isles as late as the seventeenth century, had carried with him a volume of Hakluyt or Purchas, or, supposing one to have lingered enough, Defoe or Gil Blas? Would he have been welcomed when he substituted the new fare for the old tales of “Finn and the Fians?” and even if welcomed, would he have gained currency for it? Would the seed thus planted have thriven, or would it not rather, fallen upon rocky places, have withered away?
It may, however, be objected that the real difference lies not so much in the subject-matter as in the mode of transmission; and the objection may seem to derive some force from what Dr. Hyde notes concerning the prevalence of folk-tales in Wicklow, and the nearer Pale generally, as contrasted with Leitrim, Longford, and Meath ([p. xii.]). It is difficult to over-estimate the interest and importance of this fact, and there can hardly be a doubt that Dr. Hyde has explained it correctly. It may, then, be urged that so long as oral transmission lasts the folk-tale flourishes; and only when the printed work ousts the story-teller is it that the folk-tale dies out. But this reasoning will not hold water. It is absurd to contend that the story-teller had none but a certain class of materials at his disposal till lately. He had the whole realm of intellect and fancy to draw upon; but he, and still more his hearers, knew only one district of that realm; and had it been possible for him to step outside its limits his hearers could not have followed him. I grant folk fancy has shared the fortunes of humanity together with every other manifestation of man’s activity, but always within strictly defined limits, to transgress which has always been to forfeit the favour of the folk.