Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 08

by Unknown

There was no new development of Irish poetry, such as there was of Welsh poetry in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The bardic schools, which did so much for Irish poetry from the sixth century to the seventeenth, insisted upon its conventions to a degree that was excessive. Geoffrey Keating, who carried on his great work at the same time as the Four Masters, in the first half of the seventeenth century, and who was a poet as well as a historian, still used the bardic prosody, and wrote some delightful poems by its rules; but he lent his influence to aid the new liberty in prose and verse that Irish literature was learning. Keating's name is of first-rate importance in its record, for this very reason. He was the first really to conceive of Irish literature as a literature for the people, and not only for the elect. He was the first to do this; and partly because he did it, he was the last great landmark in the larger Gaelic literature of Ireland. His 'History of Ireland,' the result of an enforced retirement from preaching, was, says Dr. Hyde, "the most popular book ever written in Irish." He marks too the transition, as we pointed out, from the old bardic tradition in Irish poetry. After his coming the bards threw away their superfluous prosody and wrote for the people, and became poets indeed, instead of the most ingenious of schoolmen. The result was the remarkable body of Irish poetry which belongs to the last three centuries, and which contains many of the characteristics of folk-song and culture poetry, in a most tuneful and idiosyncratic fashion quite its own. Let us listen again to Dr. Hyde on this point:—

"What the popular ballads of the folk had been like prior to the seventeenth century we have no means of knowing. No scribe would demean his learned pen by committing them to paper; but from that date down to the beginning of the present century the bards—the great houses being fallen—turned instinctively to the general public, and threw behind them the metres that required so many years of study in the schools, and dropped at a stroke several thousand words which no one understood except the great chiefs or those trained by the poets, while they broke out into beautiful but at the same time intelligible verse, which no one who has once heard and learned is likely to forget. This is to my mind the real glory of the modern Irish nation; this is the sweetest creation of Gaelic literature; this is the truest note of the enchanting Irish siren, and he who has once heard it and remains deaf to its charm has neither heart for song nor soul for music. The Gaelic poetry of the last two centuries is the most sensuous attempt to convey music in words ever made by man. It is absolutely impossible to convey the lusciousness of sound, richness of rhythm, and perfection of harmony in another language."

Discounting what we will in the natural enthusiasm of one who has devoted himself heart and soul to the cause of the Gaelic tongue and of Irish literature, quite enough remains to carry the contention for the continuing interest of native Irish poetry after so many centuries. That such a poetry and such a language should suddenly decay after so noble and enriched a record in the past, is nothing short of a tragedy in the history of tongues.

Dr. Hyde's own collection of the 'Love Songs of Connacht' is the best example that American readers could possibly have of this Irish poetry, the late flowering of so venerable and noble a tree. And with this work, and some of the collections of the folk-tales still current in Erse-speaking Ireland, made by Dr. Hyde, Mr. Jeremiah Curtin, and Mr. Larminie, and Englished for us, we must bring this brief outline of the Irish contribution to Celtic literature to a close. Its modern interpretation is only now beginning to take its due place, let us remember, both at the hands of its scholars and on the lips of its poets. And if any reader should think the scholars still, after all we have said, too difficult to follow, let us recommend them to turn to the poems and tales of Mr. W. B. Yeats and to the romantic pages of Mr. Standish O'Grady, the latest exponents in our more modern tongue of that imagination, and that subtlety and energy of thought, which are characteristically Irish.

Of the three great cycles of Gaelic literature, the third is the (so-called) Ossianic. Of this cycle Finn (Fionn, Fingal) is the central hero. The second great cycle is that which treats of the heroes of the Ultonians, i. e., the Red Branch of Ulster; among this cycle Cuculain (Cuchullin, Cohoolin, Coolin) is the supreme type. No living writer has so well reconstructed the past for us as Mr. Standish O'Grady has done, and nowhere is he so successful as in his vivid and beautiful historical romance, of which Cuculain is the hero. Of the famous "battle-prop of the valor and torch of the chivalry of the Ultonians" Mr. O'Grady has given us an account which deserves to pass into the fixed literature of our race. Apart from its vividness, charm, and power, 'The Coming of Cuculain' affords a general idea of the first great heroic cycle (its predecessor dealing entirely with mythical or mythopœic beings), and of primitive heroic life as reflected in that literature. The excerpts selected are (1) the opening of the romance, and (2) from the chapter telling how Cuculain won his knighthood.

FROM 'THE COMING OF CUCULAIN'

I

The Red Branch feasted one night in their great hall at Emain Macha. So vast was the hall that a man such as men are now, standing in the centre and shouting his loudest, would not be heard at the circumference; yet the low laughter of the King sitting at one end was clearly audible to those who sat around the Champion at the other. The sons of Dithorba made it, giants of the elder time, laboring there under the shoutings of Macha and the roar of her sounding thongs. Its length was a mile and nine furlongs and a cubit. With her brooch-pin she plowed its outline upon the plain, and its breadth was not much less. Trees such as earth nourished then upheld the mossy roof beneath which feasted that heroic brood, the great-hearted children of Rury, huge offsprings of the gods and giants of the dawn of time. For mighty exceedingly were these men. At the noise of their running to battle all Ireland shook, and the illimitable Lir trembled in his watery halls; the roar of their brazen chariots reverberated from the solid canopy of heaven, and their war-steeds drank rivers dry.

A vast murmur rose from the assembly, for like distant thunder or the far-off murmuring of agitated waters was the continuous hum of their blended conversation and laughter, while ever and anon, cleaving the many-tongued confusion, uprose friendly voices, clearer and stronger than battle trumpets, when one hero challenged another to drink, wishing him victory and success, and his words rang round the hollow dome. Innumerable candles, tall as spears, illuminated the scene. The eyes of the heroes sparkled, and their faces, white and ruddy, beamed with festal mirth and mutual affection. Their yellow hair shone. Their banqueting attire, white and scarlet, glowed against the outer gloom. Their round brooches and mantle-pins of gold or silver or golden bronze, their drinking vessels and instruments of festivity, flashed and glittered in the light. They rejoiced in their glory and their might and in the inviolable amity in which they were knit together; a host of comrades, a knot of heroic valor and affection, which no strength or cunning, and no power seen or unseen, could ever release or untie.

At one extremity of the vast hall, upon a raised seat, sat their young king, Concobar Mac Nessa, slender, handsome, and upright. A canopy of bronze, round as the bent sling of the Sun-god, the long-handed, far-shooting son of Ethlend, encircled his head. At his right hand lay a staff of silver. Far away at the other end of the hall, on a raised seat, sat the Champion, Fergus Mac Roy, like a colossus. The stars and clouds of night were round his head and shoulders, seen through the wide and high entrance of the Dûn, whose doors no man has ever seen closed and barred. Aloft, suspended from the dim rafters, hung the naked forms of great men clear against the dark dome, having the cords of their slaughter around their necks and their white limbs splashed with blood. Kings were they, who had murmured against the sovereignty of the Red Branch. Through the wide doorway out of the night flew a huge bird, black and gray, unseen; and soaring upwards sat upon the rafters, its eyes like burning fire. It was the Mór Reega, or Great Queen, the far-striding, terrible daughter of Iarnmas (Iron-Death). Her voice was like the shouting of ten thousand men. Dear to her were these heroes. More she rejoiced in them feasting than in the battle prowess of the rest.