In order to give some idea of the enormous extent of Irish MS. material we may quote some calculations made by O’Curry, who states that if the five oldest vellum MSS. were printed the result would be 9400 quarto pages. Other vellum MSS. ranging in date from 1300 to 1600 would fill 9000 pages of the same size, whilst the innumerable paper MSS. belonging chiefly to the early 18th century would cover no less than 30,000 pages. The well-known French scholar, D’Arbois de Jubainville, published in 1883 a tentative catalogue of Irish epic literature. His work is by no means complete, but his figures are instructive. He mentions 953 Irish MSS. containing epic matter preserved in Irish and English libraries. To these have to be added another 56 in continental libraries. Of this mass of material 133 Irish and British MSS. and 35 continental MSS. were written before 1600. It should, however, be stated that the same subject is treated over and over again, and much of the later material is absolutely valueless.
Before we pass on to the consideration of the literature itself, it will be well to make a few preliminary observations on the nature of the language in which the pieces are written and on the status of the poet in medieval Ireland. Character of Middle Irish. The language in which the huge miscellaneous codices enumerated above are contained is called by the general name of Middle Irish, which is a very wide term. Irish scribes often copied their original somewhat mechanically, without being tempted to change the language to that of their own time. Thus in many parts of LU. we find a thin Middle Irish veneer on what is largely Old Irish of the 8th or 9th century. Hence such a MS. often preserves forms which had been current several centuries before, and it may even happen that a 14th or 15th century MS. such as YBL. contains much older forms than a corresponding passage in LL. Of recent years several scholars—notably Strachan—have devoted much attention to the Old Irish verb-forms, so that we have now safe criteria for establishing with some degree of certainty the age of recensions of stories and poems preserved in late MSS. In this way a number of compositions have been assigned to the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries, though actual written documents belonging to this period are comparatively rare.
It remains for us to say a few words about the fili, the professional literary man in Ireland. The fili (from the stem vel-, “to see,” Welsh, Breton, gwelet, “to see”) appears to have been originally a diviner and magician, and corresponds The “fili.” to the vates, οὐάτεις, of the ancient Gauls mentioned by classical writers. In Ireland he is represented as sole possessor of three methods of divination: the imbas forosnai, teinm lóida and díchetal di chennaib cnáime. The first two of these were forbidden by Patrick, but they seem to have survived as late as the 10th century. Part of the tremendous influence exercised by the fili was due to the belief in his powers of satire. By reciting a satirical poem or incantation he was able to raise blotches on the face of and so disfigure any person who aroused his displeasure. Numerous cases of this occur in Irish literature. The origin of the science of the fili is sometimes traced back to the Dagda, one of the figures of the Irish pantheon, and they were held in such esteem that the annalists give the obituaries of the head-ollams as if they were so many princes. With the introduction of Christianity they seem to have gradually superseded the druid, and their functions are therefore very wide. We are told that they acted in three capacities: (i) as story-tellers (fer comgne or scélaige); (2) as judges (brithem), including the professions of arbiters, legislators and lawyers; (3) as poets proper (fercerte). We are here only concerned with the fili in his capacity of story-teller and poet. In accordance with the minute classification of the various ranks of society in early Ireland, the social status of the literary man was very carefully defined. The degrees vary slightly in different documents, but the following list of ten from the Senchus Mór is very instructive: (1) The highest degree is the ollam (ollave), who knows 350 stories; (2) the ánruth, 175 stories; (3) the clíí, 80 stories; (4) the cana, 60 stories; (5) the doss, 50 stories; (6) the macfuirmid, 40 stories; (7) the fochlocon, 30 stories; (8) the drisac, 20 stories; (9) the taman, 10 stories; (10) the oblaire, 7 stories. In LL. we are told that the stories (scél) are divided into primary and secondary, and that the latter are only obligatory on the first four of the grades enumerated. Again, certain styles of composition seem to have been the monopoly of certain grades. Thus the poem which was most highly rewarded and demanded the highest technical skill was called the anomain, and was the exclusive right of the ollam. A notable instance of this kind of composition is the Amra of Columba, attributed to Dallán Forgaill. The higher grades were allowed a number of attendants, whom the kings had to support along with the poet himself. Thus the fochlocon had two and the doss four attendants. In the 6th century Dallán Forgaill, the chief fili of Ireland, claimed the right to be attended by thirty filid, which was the number of the train allowed to the supreme king. The reigning monarch, Aed MacAinmirech, weary of the pretensions of the poets, attempted to banish them, which led to the famous assembly of Druim Ceta, where Columba intervened and reduced the number to twenty-four (the train of a provincial king). In the plan of the hall of Tara, preserved in LL. and YBL., the sui littre or doctor in theology has the seat of honour opposite the king. The ollam brithem or supreme judge or lawyer ranks with the highest rank of nobility, whilst the ollam fili is on a footing with the nobleman of the second degree.
We have already stated that the stories which formed the stock-in-trade of the poets were divided into primary and secondary stories. Of the latter there were 100, but little is known of them. However, several more or less complete lists of the primary stories have come down to us. The oldest catalogue (contained in LL.) gives the titles of 187 of these tales arranged under the following heads—destructions, cow-spoils, courtships, battles, caves, navigations, violent deaths, expeditions, elopements and conflagrations; together with the following, which also reckon as prime-stories—irruptions, visions, loves, hostings and migrations. Of these stories sixty-eight have been preserved in a more or less complete form. The tales enumerated in these catalogues, which in their substance doubtless go back to the 8th or even to the 7th century, fall into four main categories: (1) the mythological cycle, (2) the Cúchulinn cycle, (3) the Finn cycle, (4) pieces relating to events of the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries. Meyer has estimated that of the 550 titles of epic tales in D’Arbois’s Catalogue about 400 are known to us, though many of them only occur in a very fragmentary state; and about 100 others have since been discovered which were not known in 1883.
The course of training undergone by the fili was a very lengthy one. It is commonly stated to have extended over twelve years, at the end of which time the student was thoroughly versed in all the legendary, legal, historical and topographical lore of his native country, in the use of the innumerable and excessively complicated Irish metres, in Ogam writing and Irish grammar. The instruction in the schools of poetry seems to have been entirely oral, and the course consisted largely in learning by heart the verses in which the native lore was enshrined. These schools of learning existed in one form or another down to the 17th century. In the early days the fili is represented as employing a mysterious archaic form of speech—doubtless full of obscure kennings—which was only intelligible to the initiated. An instance of this bérla féine, as it was termed, is the piece entitled Acallam an Dá Shuad (Colloquy of the Two Sages, Rev. celt. xxvi. 4 ff.). In this piece two filid of the 1st century a.d. are represented as contending in this dialect for the office of chief ollam of Ireland, much to the chagrin of King Conchobar, to whom their speeches were unintelligible. It was in consequence of this that Conchobar ruled that the office of fili should no longer carry with it of necessity the office of judge (brithem). It ought to be observed that the church never showed itself hostile to the filid, as it did to the druids. Dubthach, chief fili of Ireland in the time of St Patrick, is represented as the saint’s constant companion, and the famous Flann Mainistrech (d. 1056), though a layman and fili, was head of the monastery school at Monasterboice.
Before leaving the subject of the literary classes, we must notice an inferior grade of poet—the bard. Like the official filid, the bards were divided into grades. There were both patrician and plebeian bards, each subdivided into The bard. eight degrees, having their own peculiar metres. Like the fili the bard had to go through a long course of study, and he was generally attached to the house of some chieftain whose praises he had to sing. In course of time the office of fili became extinct, owing to a variety of causes, and from the 13th to the 16th century we find the hitherto despised family bard stepping into the place of the most influential literary man in Ireland. His importance was fully realized by the English government, which did its best to suppress the order.
The medieval romances form by far the most attractive part of Irish literature, and it is to them that we shall first turn our attention. Two main groups of stories have to be distinguished. The one is the Ulster cycle, with Medieval romances. Conchobar and Cúchulinn as central figures. The other is the Southern or Leinster-Munster cycle, revolving round Finn and Ossian. Further stories dealing with mythological and historical personages will be mentioned in their turn.
The Ulster cycle may be regarded as Ireland’s most important contribution to the world’s literature. The chief and at the same time the lengthiest romance in which the heroes of this group figure is the great epic, the Táin Bó Cualnge or the Ulster cycle. Cattle-raid of Cooley (Co. Louth). Here we find ourselves in a world of barbaric splendour, and we are constantly reminded of the Iliad, though the Irish epic from a purely literary point of view cannot bear comparison with the work of Homer. The main actors in the drama are Conchobar, king of Ulster, the great warrior Cúchulinn (see [Cúchulinn]), Ailill and Medb, king and queen of Connaught, The “Táin.” and Fergus, Conchobar’s predecessor as king of Ulster, now in exile in Connaught. These persons may or may not have actually lived, but the Irish annalists and synchronists agree in placing them about the beginning of the Christian era. And there cannot be any doubt as to the antiquity of the state of civilization disclosed in this great saga. It has been repeatedly pointed out that the Irish heroes are equipped and conduct themselves in the same manner as the Gauls described by the Greek traveller Posidonius, and Prof. W. Ridgeway has shown recently that several articles of dress and armour correspond exactly to the La Tène types of the continent. To mention a few primitive traits among many—the Irish champions of the Táin still fight in chariots, war-dogs are employed, whilst the heads of the slain are carried off in triumph and slung round the necks of the horses. It may also be mentioned that Emain Macha, Conchobar’s residence, is reported by the annalists to have been destroyed in a.d. 323, and that portions of Meath, which is stated to have been made into a separate province in the 2nd century a.d., are in the Táin regarded as forming part of Ulster. Noteworthy is the exalted position occupied by the druid in the Ulster sagas, showing how little the romances were influenced by Christianity. No Roman soldier ever set foot in Ireland, and this early epic literature is of supreme value as a monument of primitive Celtic civilization. Ireland has always been a pastoral country. In early times no native coins were in circulation: the land belonged to the tribe. Consequently a man’s property consisted mainly of cattle. Cattle-raids were an event of daily occurrence, and Sir Walter Scott has made us familiar with similar expeditions on the part of the Scottish Highlanders in the 18th century. Hence it is not a matter for surprise that the theme of the greatest Irish epic is a cattle-raid. At the time there were two wonderful bulls in Ireland, the Bond or Brown Bull of Cualnge, and the Findbennach or White-horn, belonging to Medb. These two animals are of no ordinary nature. Other stories represent them as having existed under many different forms before they were reborn as bulls. First they appear as swineherds belonging to the supernatural people of the síd of fairy mounds; then they are metamorphosed successively as ravens, warriors, sea-monsters and insects. It was Queen Medb’s ambition to gain possession of the Brown Bull of Cualnge, and for this purpose she collected the united hosts of Ireland to raid the province of Ulster and carry him off. Medb chooses the season when she knows the Ulstermen are all incapacitated as the result of a curse laid upon them by a fairy woman. Cúchulinn alone is exempt from this debility.
The story is divided into a number of sections, and has been summarized by Miss Hull as follows:—(1) the prologue, relating, in the form of a night dialogue between Ailill and Medb, the dispute between them which brought about the raid; (2) the collecting of Medb’s hosts and the preliminary movements of the army, during which period she first became aware of the presence and powers of Cúchulinn. Her inquiry of Fergus as to who this formidable foe is leads to a long section called (3) Cúchulinn’s boy-deeds, in which Fergus relates the remarkable prodigies of Cúchulinn’s youth, and warns Medb that, though the hero is but a beardless youth of seventeen, he will be more than a match for all her forces. (4) A long series of single combats, of which the first part of the tale is made up; they are at first gay and bombastic in character, but become more grave as they proceed, and culminate in the combat of Cúchulinn with his old companion, Fer Diad. This section contains the account of Cúchulinn’s “distortion” or frenzy, which always occurred before any great output of the hero’s energy, and of the rout of the hosts of Medb which followed it. (5) The general awakening of the warriors of Ulster from their lethargy, and their gathering by septs upon the Hill of Slane, clan by clan being described as it comes up in order. (6) The final Battle of Gairech and Ilgairech, followed (7) by the rout of Medb’s army and (8) the tragic death of the bulls.
The text of the Táin has come down to us as a whole or in part in nearly a score of MSS., most of which, however, are modern. The most important MSS. containing the story are LU., LL. and YBL. Of these LU. and YBL. are substantially the same, whilst LL. contains a longer and fuller text later in both style and language. LL. attempts to give a complete and consistent narrative in more polished form. In ancient times there were doubtless other versions now lost, but from the middle of the 12th century the scribes seem to have taken few liberties with the text, whilst previously the filid were constantly transforming the material and adding fresh matter. The YBL. version preserves a number of forms as old as the O. Ir. glosses (i.e. 8th century or earlier), and a curious story contained in LL. seems to point to the fact that the Táin was first committed to writing in the 7th century. Senchán Torpeist, who lived in the first half of the 7th century and succeeded Dallán Forgaill as chief ollam of Ireland, summoned the filid to inquire which of them knew the Táin in its entirety. As they were only familiar with fragments he despatched them to discover it. One of them seated himself at the grave of Fergus MacRoig, who appeared to him in a mist and dictated the whole story to him in three days and three nights.