Some of the very earliest Irish poems—of which we have specimens in the verses attributed to Amergin, son of Milesius, and in the first satire ever uttered in Ireland, and in many more pieces of a like character—appear to have been unrhymed, and to have depended for their effect partly upon rapidity of utterance, partly on a tendency towards alliteration, and in some cases on a strongly-marked leaning towards dissyllabic words.
Soon after the time of St. Patrick and the first Christian missionaries, the Irish are found for certain using rhyme—how far they had evolved it before the coming of the Latin missionaries is a moot question. The Book of Hymns has preserved genuine specimens of the Latin verses of Columcille and other early saints, which either rhyme, or have a strong tendency towards rhyme, though few of these early verses are found wholly chiming on the accented syllables. It is a tremendous claim to make for the Celt that he taught Europe to rhyme; it is a claim in comparison with which, if it could be substantiated, everything else that he has done in literature pales into insignificance. Yet it has been made for him by some of the foremost European scholars. The great Zeuss himself is emphatic on the point; "the form of Celtic poetry," he writes, "to judge both from the older and the more recent examples adduced, appears to be more ornate than the poetic form of any other nation, and even more ornate in the older poems than in the modern ones; from the fact of which greater ornateness it undoubtedly came to pass that at the very time the Roman Empire was hastening to its ruin, the Celtic poems—at first entire, afterwards in part—passed over not only into the song of the Latins, but also into those of other nations and remained in them." In another place he remarks the advance towards rhyme made in the Latin poetry of the Anglo-Saxons, and unhesitatingly ascribes it to Irish influence. "We must believe," he writes, "that this form was introduced among them by the Irish, as were the arts of writing and of painting and of ornamenting manuscripts, since they themselves in common with the other Germanic nations made use in their poetry of nothing but alliteration." Constantine Nigra expresses himself even more strongly in his edition of the glosses in the Codex Taurinensis. He says—
"The idea that rhyme originated amongst the Arabs must be absolutely rejected as fabulous.... Rhyme, too, could not in any possible way have evolved itself from the natural progress of the Latin language. Amongst the Latins neither the thing nor the name existed. We first meet with final assonance or rhyme at the close of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century in the Latin hymns of the Milanese Church, which are attributed to St. Ambrose and St. Augustine. The first certain examples of rhyme, then, are found on Celtic soil and amongst Celtic nations, in songs made by poets who are either of Celtic origin themselves or had long resided amongst Celtic races. It is most probable that these hymns of Middle Latin were composed according to the form of Celtic poetry which was then flourishing, and which exhibits final assonance in all the ancient remains of it hitherto discovered. It is true that the more ancient Irish and British poems which have come down to us do not appear to be of older date than the seventh or eighth century , but it must not be rashly inferred that the Celtic races, who were always tenacious of the manners and customs of their ancestors, had not employed the same poetic forms already, long before, say in the earliest centuries of our era."
After arguing that the Irish rule of "Slender-with-Slender and Broad-with-Broad," a rule which was peculiar to the Celts alone of all the Aryan races, contained in itself the germ of rhyme, he sums up his argument thus positively: "We must conclude, then, that this late Latin verse, made up of accent, and of an equal number of syllables, may have arisen in a twofold way, first by the natural evolution of the Latin language itself; or secondly, by the equally efficacious example of neighbouring Celtic peoples, but we conclude that final assonance, or rhyme, can have been derived only from the laws of Celtic phonology."
Thurneysen, on the other hand, who has done such good service for the study of Irish metric by his publication of the text of the fragmentary Irish poets' books, is of opinion that the Irish derived their regular metres with a given number of syllables in each line, from the Latins; and Windisch agrees with him in saying that the Irish verse-forms were influenced by Latin, though he thinks that Thurneysen presses his theory too far. The latter, in opposition to Zimmer, will not for instance allow the genuineness of St. Fiacc's metrical life of St. Patrick because it is in a rhymed and fairly regular metre, a thing which, according to him, the Irish had not developed at that early period. It seems necessary to me, however, to take into account the peculiar prosody of the Irish, especially the tour de force called áird-rinn used in Deibhidh metre, which we find firmly established in their oldest poems, and which makes the rhyming word ending the second line contain a syllable more than the rhyming word which ends the first, while if the accent fall in the first line on the ultimate syllable it mostly falls in the second line on the penultimate, if it falls on the penultimate in the first line it generally falls on the antepenultimate in the second, as—
"Though men owe respect to them, Presage of woe—a poem. The slender free palms of her Than gull on sea are whiter. A far greater than ány Man has killed my Cómpany.
"This peculiarly Irish feature was not borrowed from the Latins, but is purely indigenous. The oldest books of glosses on the Continent contain verses formed on this model. According to Thurneysen's theory the Irish learned how to write rhymed verse with lines of equal syllables sometime between, say, the year 500 and 700, but the Deibhidh metre with áird-rinn is found in their oldest verses, bound up with rhyme in their accurate seven-syllable lines. Why should two of these ingredients, the rhyme and the stated number of verses have come from the Romans when the Deibhidh áird-rinn (which apparently implies rhyme) did not? Besides is it credible, on the supposition that the pre-Christian Irish neither counted their syllables nor rhymed, that within less than a couple of hundred years after coming in contact with the rude Latin verse of Augustin and Ambrose, they had brought rhyming verses to such a pitch of perfection as we see, in, say, the "Voyage of Bran," which according to both Kuno Meyer and Professor Zimmer, was written in the seventh century, the very first verse of which runs—
"Cróib dind abaill a h-Emain Dofed samaill do gnáthaib Gésci findarggait fora Abrait glano co m-bláthaib?
"The whole of this poem, too, is shot through with verses of Deibhidh, and the rhymes are extraordinarily perfect. This at least is clear, that already in the seventh century the Irish not only rhymed but made intricate Deibhidh and other rhyming metres, when for many centuries after this period the Germanic nations could only alliterate—a thing which though sometimes used in Irish verse is in no way fundamental to it. In England so late as the beginning of the fifteenth century, the virile author of the book of Piers Ploughman used alliteration in preference to rhyme, and, indeed, down to the first half of the sixteenth century English poets, for the most part, exhibit a disregard for fineness of execution and technique of which not the meanest Irish bard attached to the pettiest chief could have been guilty. After the seventh century the Irish brought their rhyming system to a pitch of perfection undreamt of, even at this day, by other nations. Perhaps by no people in the globe, at any period of the world's history, was poetry so cultivated and, better still, so remunerated, as in Ireland. The elaborateness of the system they evolved, the prodigious complexity of the rules, the subtlety and intricacy of their poetical code are astounding.
The real poet of the early Gaels was the filé . The bard was nothing thought of in comparison with him, and the legal price of his poems was quite small compared with the remuneration of the filé. It was the bard who seems to have been most affected by Latin influence, and the metres which he used seem to have been of relatively new importation. Where the filé received his three milch cows for a poem the bard only bore away a calf. The bards were divided into two classes, the Saor and Daor bards, or the patrician and plebeian. There were eight grades in each class, one of the many examples of the love of the Irish for minute classification, a quality with which they are not usually credited, at least, not in modern times. Each of these sixteen classes of bard has his own peculiar metre or framework for his verses, and the lower bard was not allowed to encroach on the metres sacred to the bard next in rank.
The f?lés were, as we have said, the highest class of poets. There were seven grades of Filé, the most exalted being called an ollamh , a name that has frequently occurred throughout this book. They were so highly esteemed that the annalists give the obituaries of the head-ollamhs as if they were so many princes. The course of study was originally perhaps one of seven years. Afterwards it lasted for twelve years or more. When a poet had worked his way up after at least twelve but perhaps sometimes twenty years of study, through all the lower degrees, and had at last attained the rank of ollamh, he knew, in addition to all his other knowledge, over three hundred and fifty different kinds of versification, and was able to recite two hundred and fifty prime stories and one hundred secondary ones. The ancient and fragmentary manuscripts from which these details are taken, not only give the names of the metres but have actually preserved examples of between two and three hundred of them taken from different ancient poems, almost all of which have perished to a line, but they give a hint of what once existed. Nearly all the text books used in the career of the poet during his twelve years' course are lost, and with them have gone the particulars of a civilisation probably the most unique and interesting in Europe.
The bardic schools were at no time an unmixed blessing to Ireland. They were non-productive in an economic sense, and as early as the seventh century the working classes felt that these idle multitudes constituted an intolerable drain upon the nation's resources. Keating in his history says that at this time the bardic order contained a third of the men of Ireland, by which he means a third of the free clans or patricians. These quartered themselves from November to May upon the chiefs and farmers. They had also reached an intolerable pitch of insolence. According to the account in the Leabhar Breac they went about the country in bands carrying with them a silver pot, which the populace named the "pot of avarice," which was attached by nine chains of bronze hung on golden hooks, and which was suspended on the spears of nine poets, thrust through the links at the end of the chains. They then selected some unfortunate victim, and approached in state his homestead, having carefully composed a poem in his laudation. The head poet entering chanted the first verse, and the last poet took it up, until each of the nine had recited his part, whilst all the time the nine best musicians played their sweetest music in unison with the verses, round the pot, into which the unfortunate listener was obliged to throw an ample guerdon of gold and silver. Woe to him indeed, if he refused; a scathing satire would be the result, and sooner than endure the disgrace of this, every one parted to them with a share of his wealth. Aedh mac Ainmirech, the High-king of Ireland, who reigned at the end of the seventh century—the same who afterwards lost his life in the battle of Bolgdún in raising the thrice cursed Boru tribute—"considering them," as Keating puts it, "to be too heavy a burden upon the land of Ireland," determined to banish the whole profession. This was the third attempt to put down the poets, who had always before found a refuge in the northern province when expelled from the others. But now King Aedh summoned a great convention of all Ireland at Drum Ceat near Limavaddy in the north of Ireland, to deliberate upon several matters of national interest, of which the expulsion of the bards was not the least important. The fate of the Bardic Institution was trembling in the balance, when Columcille, an accomplished bard himself as we have seen, crossed over from Iona with a retinue of 140 clerics, and by his eloquence and great influence succeeded in checking the fury of the exasperated chieftains: the issue of the great convention which lasted for a year and one month, was—so far as the bards were concerned—that their numbers were indeed reduced, but it was agreed that the High-king should retain in his service one chief ollamh, and that the kings of the five provinces, the chiefs of each territory, and the lords of each sub-district should all retain an ollamh of their own. No other poets except those especially sanctioned were to pursue the poetic calling.
If the bards lost severely in numbers and prestige on this occasion they were in the long run amply compensated for it by their acquiring a new and recognised status in the state. Their unchartered freedom and licentious wanderings were indeed checked, but, on the other hand, they became for the first time the possessors of fixed property and of local stability. Distinct public estates in land were set apart for their maintenance, and they were obliged in return to give public instruction to all comers in the learning of the day, after the manner of university professors. Rathkenry in Meath, and Masree in Cavan are particularly mentioned as bardic colleges then founded, where any of the youth of Ireland could acquire a knowledge of history and of the sciences. The High-king, the provincial kings, and the sub-kings were all obliged by law to set apart a certain portion of land for the poet of the territory, to be held by him and his successors free of rent, and a law was passed making the persons and the property of poets sacred, and giving them right of sanctuary in their own land from all the men of Ireland. At the same time the amount of reward which they were allowed to receive for their poems was legally settled. From this time forward for nearly a thousand years the bardic colleges, as distinct from the ecclesiastical ones, taught poetry, law, and history, and it was they who educated the lawyers, judges, and poets of Ireland.
As far as we can judge the bards continued to flourish in equal power and position with the dignitaries of the Church, and their colleges must have been nearly as important institutions as the foundations of the religious orders, until the onslaught of the Northmen reduced the country to such a state that "neither bard, nor philosopher, nor musician," as Keating says, "pursued their wonted profession in the land." It was probably at this time that the carefully observed distinction between the bard and the filé broke down, for in later times the words seem to have been regarded as synonymous.
For some time after the Norman conquest the bardic colleges seem to have again suffered eclipse; and, as we have seen, the century that succeeded that invasion appears to have produced fewer poets than any other. But the great Anglo-Norman houses soon became Irishised and adopted Irish bards of their own. There are many incidents recorded in the Irish annals and many stories gathered from other sources which go to show that the importance of the bards as individuals could not have been much diminished during the Anglo-Norman régime. One of them is worth recording. In the beginning of the thirteenth century the steward of the O'Donnell went to Lisadill, near Sligo, to collect rents, and some words passed between him and the great poet Murrough O'Daly, who, unaccustomed to be thwarted in anything, clove the head of the steward with an axe. Then, fearing O'Donnell's vengeance, he fled to Clanrickard and the Norman De Bourgos, and at once addressed a poem to Richard De Burgo, son of William Fitzadelm, in which he states that he, the bard, was used to visit the courts of the English, and to drink wine at the hands of kings and knights, and bishops and abbots. He tells De Bourgo that he has now a chance of making himself illustrious by protecting him, O'Daly of Meath, who now throws himself on his generosity and whose poems demand attention. As for O'Donnell, he had given him small offence.
"Trifling our quarrel with the man, A clown to be abusing me, Me to kill the churl, Dear God! Is this a cause for enmity?
"De Bourgo accordingly received and protected him, until O'Donnell, coming in furious pursuit, laid waste his country with fire and sword. Fitzadelm submitted, but passed on the poet to the O'Briens of North Munster. But O'Donnell again pursuing with fury, these also submitted, and secretly dispatched the poet to the people of Limerick who received him. O'Donnell hurried on and laid siege to the city, and its inhabitants in terror expelled the poet once more, who was passed on from hand to hand until he came to Dublin. But the people of Dublin, terrified at O'Donnell's threats, sent him away; and he crossed over into Scotland where his fame rose higher than before, and where his poems remained so popular that when the Dean of Lismore in Argyle jotted down nearly four hundred years ago in phonetic spelling a number of poems just as he heard them, they included a disproportionately large number of this O'Daly's, who was afterward known as Murrough the Scotchman. At last in return for some fine laudatory verses upon O'Donnell he was graciously pardoned by that chieftain and returned to his native country.
The Anglo-Normans not only kept bards of their own, but some of themselves also became poets. The story of Silken Thomas and his bard whose verses urged him on to rebellion, is well known. It is curious, too, to find one of the Norman Nugents of Delvin in the sixteenth century making the most perfect classical Irish verses, lamenting his exile from Ireland, the home of his ancestors, the Land of Fintan, the old Plain of Ir, the country of Inisfail.
"Loth to Leave, my fain eyes swim, I Part in Pain from Erinn. Land of the Loud sea-rollers, PRide of PRoud steed-controllers.
"After a few generations the Anglo-Normans had completely forgotten Norman-French, and as they never, with few exceptions, learned English, they identified themselves completely with the Irish past, so that amongst the Irish poets we find numbers of Nugents, Englishes, Condons, Cusacks, Keatings, Comyns, and other foreign names.
It was only after the Anglo-Norman government had developed into an English one that the bards began to feel its weight. The slaying of the Welsh bards by Edward is now generally regarded as a political fiction. There is no fiction, however, about the treatment meted out to the Irish ones. The severest acts were passed against them over and over again. The nobles were forbidden to entertain them, in the hope that they might die out or starve, and the Act of Elizabeth alleges one of the usual lying excuses of the Elizabethan period: "Item," it says, "for that those rhymours by their ditties and rhymes made to divers lords and gentlemen in Ireland to the commendation and high praise of extortion, rebellion, rape, ravin, and other injustice, encourage those lords and gentlemen rather to follow those vices than to leave them, and for making of the said rhymes rewards are given by the said lords and gentlemen, (let) for abolishing of so heinous an abuse, orders be taken." Orders were taken, and taken so thoroughly that O'Brien, Earl of Thomond, obliged to enforce them against the bards, hanged three distinguished poets, "for which abominable, treacherous act," say the "Four Masters," "the earl was satirised and denounced." I find a northern bard about this time, the close of the sixteenth century, thus lamenting the absence of his patron, Aedh Mac Aonghasa:—
"If a Sage of Song should be In the wage of Court or King. HA! the Gallows Guards the WAY. AH! since AE from port took wing.
"Spenser the poet was not slow in finding out what a power his Irish rivals were in the land, and he at once set himself to malign and blacken them. "There are," he writes, "amongst the Irish a certain kind of people called bards, which are to them instead of poets,"—the insinuation is that the bards are not real poets!—"the which are had in so high regard and estimation among them, that none dare displease them for fear to run into reproach through their offence, and to be made infamous in the mouths of all men." On which, Eudoxus, his friend, is made to remark innocently that he had always thought that poets were to be rather encouraged than put down. "Yes," answers Spenser, "they should be encouraged when they desire honour and virtue, but," he goes on, "these Irish bards are for the most part of another mind, and so far from instructing young men in moral discipline, that whomsoever they find to be most licentious of life, most bold and lawlesse in his doings, most dangerous and desperate in all parts of disobedience and rebellious disposition, him they set up and glorify in their rhythmes, him they praise to the people and to young men make an example to follow."
The allegation that the bards praised what was licentious is an untruth on the part of the great poet. Few English Elizabethans, once they passed over into Ireland, seem to have been able to either keep faith or tell truth; there was never such a thoroughly dishonourable race, or one so utterly devoid of all moral sense, as the Irish "statesmen" of that period. The real reason why Spenser, as an undertaker, blackens the character of the Irish poets is not because their poems were licentious—which they were not—but because, as he confesses later on, they are "tending for the most part to the hurt of the English or maintenance of their owne lewde libertie, they being most desirous thereof."
Spenser's ignorant and self-contradictory criticism on the merits of the Irish bards has often been quoted as if it constituted a kind of hall-mark for them! "Tell me, I pray you," said his friend, "have they any art in their compositions, or be they anything wittie or wellmannered as poems should be?"
Yea, truly, says Spenser, "I have caused divers of them to be translated unto me, that I might understand them, and surely they savoured of sweet art and good invention, but skilled not in the goodly ornaments of poesie, yet were they sprinkled with some pretty flowers of their natural device, which gave good grace and comeliness unto them; the which it is a great pity to see abused to the gracing of wickedness and vice, which with good usage would serve to adorn and beautify virtue."
The gentle poet is here almost copying the words of the Act, which perhaps he himself helped to inspire, according to which the bardic poems are in praise of "extortion, rebellion, rape, ravin, and other injustice." I have, however, read hundreds of the poems of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but have never come across a single syllable in laudation of either "extortion, rape, ravin, or other injustice," but numerous poems inciting to what the Act calls "rebellion," and what Spenser terms "the hurt of the English and the maintenance of their owne lewde libertie."
It would be difficult to overrate the importance of the colleges of the hereditary bards and the influence they exercised in the life of the sixteenth century. They fairly reflected public opinion, and they also helped to make it what it was. There is a great difference between their poems and the memoria technicha verses of the ancient ollamhs, whose historical and genealogical poems, which they composed in their official capacity, are crowded with inorganic phrases and "chevilles" of all kinds. The sixteenth-century poet was a man of wit and learning, and frequently a better and more clear-seeing statesman than his chief, who was in matters of policy frequently directed by his bard's advice. They certainly had more national feeling than any other class in Ireland, and were less the slaves of circumstances or of mere local accidents, for they traversed the island from end to end, were equally welcome north, south, east, and west, and had unrivalled opportunities for becoming acquainted with the trend of public affairs, and with political movements.
Most people, owing to their comparative neglect of Irish history, seem to be of opinion that the bards were harpers, or at least musicians of some sort. But they were nothing of the kind. The popular conception of the bard with the long white beard and the big harp is grotesquely wrong. The bards were verse-makers, pure and simple, and they were no more musicians than the poet laureate of England. Their business was to construct their poems after the wonderful and complex models of the schools, and when—as only sometimes happened—they wrote a eulogy or panegyric on a patron, and brought it to him, they introduced along with themselves a harper and possibly a singer to whom they had taught their poem, and in the presence of their patron to the sound of the harp, the only instrument allowed to be touched on such occasions, the poem was solemnly recited or sung. The real name of the musician was not bard—the bard was a verse-maker—but oirfideadh , and the musicians, though a numerous and honourable class, were absolutely distinct from the bards and filés. It was only after the complete break-up of the Gaelic polity, after the wars of Cromwell and of William, that the verse-maker merges in the musician, and the harper and the bard become fused in one, as was the case with Carolan, commonly called the last of the bards, but whom his patron, O'Conor of Belanagare, calls in his obituary of him, not a bard, but an oirfideadh.
Down to the close of the sixteenth century and during the greater part of the seventeenth, verse, with few exceptions, continued to be made in the classical metres of Ireland, by specially trained poets, who did not go outside these metres. In the ensuing century the classical metres began to be discarded and a wonderful and far-reaching change took place, which shall be made the subject of a future chapter. We must now proceed to examine a species of popular poetry which flourished during all this period side by side with the bardic schools, although no trace remains to-day of its origin or its authors. This is the so-called Ossianic poetry.
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This is a kind of rhetoric; some of these unrhymed outbursts were called rosg by the Irish. Irish literature is full of such pieces. Some of the Brehon Law though printed in prose seems to have been composed in it. Other examples are the cry of the Mór-rígan, or war-goddess, in the end of the Battle of Moytura.
Peace to heav'n Sith go neim
Heav'n to earth Neamh go domhan,
Earth neath heav'n Domhan fá neim
Strength in each," etc. Neart i gcách," etc.
or the description of the Dun Bull of Cuailgne in the Táin Bo, or part of the first poem attributed to Finn mac Cool, or trie well-known eulogy on Goll the Fenian, or Mac Mhurighs incitement at the battle of Harlaw, or some of the verses in the preface to the Amra. About the last specimen of unrhymed poetry, in a species of Droighneach metre, I find in the Annals of Loch Cé on the death of Mac Dermot as late as 1568.
"Gég iothmar fhineamhna na n-éigeas ocus na n-ollaman, Craobh cumra cnuais na gcliar ocus na gcerbach, Dóss díona na ndámh ocus na ndeóraidh Bile buadha buan fhoscaidh na mbrughaidh ocus na mbiattach.
"Thus the nearest approach that Columcille makes to Latin rhyme is in the final unaccented syllable. See his "Altus" beginning
"Altus prosator vetustus Sed et erit in s?cula Dierum et ingenitus S?culorum infinita Erat absque origine Cui est unigenitus Primordii et crepidine. Christus et sanctus spiritus, etc.
""Formam poesis celtic?, exemplis allatis, tarn vetustioribus quam recentioribus vel hodiernis, magis ornatum esse apparet quam ullius gentis formam poeticam, ac magis ornatam in vetustioribus carminibus ipsis, quam in recentioribus. Quo majore ornatu, haud dubie effectum est, ut jam inde ab illis temporibus quibus ad interitum ruebat Romanum imperium, celtica forma, primum integra, deinde ex parte, non solum in latina sed etiam (aliarum) linguarum carmina transferretur atque in iis permanserit" ("Grammatica Celtica," Ebel's edition, p. 977).
"Magis progressa consonantia, cum frequentiore allitteratione, amplior finalis s?pius trissyllaba invenitur in Anglo-Saxorum carminibus latinis; ad quos, cum ipsi principio cum ceteris Germanis non usi sint nizi allitteratione, ab Hibernis hanc formam esse transgressam putandum est, ut transiit scriptura atque ars pingendi codices et ornandi" (Ibid., p. 946).
In another passage he expresses himself even more strongly; for of rhyme he says: "Hanc formam orationis poetic? quis credat esse ortam primum apud poetas Christianos finientis imperii Romani et transisse ad bardos Cambrorum et in carmina gentilia Scandinavorum" (Editio Ebel, p. 948).
"Origo enim r?m? arabica inter fabulas omnino rejicienda est.... Porro r?ma ex solo naturali processu latin? lingu? explicari nullo modo potest. Apud Latinos nec res extitit nec nomen.... Assonantia finalis vel r?ma, s?culo quarto abeunte et quinto incipiente vulgaris ?vi, primus occurrit in hymnis latinis ecclesi? mediolanensis qui sancto Ambrosio et Sancto Augustino tribuuntur. Prima itaque r?m? certa exempla inveniuntur in solo celtico, apud celticas gentes, in carminibus conditis a poetis, qui vel celtic? originis sunt, vel apud celticas gentes diu commoraverunt. Verosimile ut hosce hymnos medi? latinitatis constructos esse juxta formam celtic? poesis qu? tune vigebat, et qu? jam assonantiam finalem pr?bet in antiquis ejus reliquiis huc-usque detectis. Profecto carmina hibernica et brittanica vetustiora qu? ad nos pervenerunt s?culum octavum vel septimum superare non videntur. Sed temere non est affirmare celticas gentes qu? moris consuetudinisque majorum tertaces semper fuerunt, jam multo antea, primis nempe vulgaris ?vi s?culis, eamdem poeticam formam adhibuisse" ("Gloss? Hibernic? Veteres Codicis Taurinensis." Luteti?. 1869. p. xxxi.).
"Concludendum est igitur versum romanicum, accentu legatum et pari syllabarum numero, oriri potuisse ex duplicis caus? concursu, nempe à naturali explicatione latin? lingu?, et ab exemplo pariter efficaci affinium celticorum populorum; sed r?mam seu assonantiam finalem, a solis celtic? phonologi? legibus derivatam esse" (Ibid., p. xxxii.).
"Mittelirische Verslehren," "Irische Texte," iii. p. 1.
See his article in "Revue Celtique," vi., p. 336.
"Dass die irische Versform von der lateinischen Versform beeinflusst worden ist, scheint mir zweifellos zu sein. Es fragt sich nur was die irischen Barden schon hatten als dieser Einfluss begann. Das was Thurneysen ihnen zugestehen will ist mir etwas zu wenig" ("Irische Texte," iii. 2, p. 448).
"Wir haben," says Zimmer, of this hymn, "ein altes einfaches und ehrwürdiges Monument vor uns, an das eine jüngere Zeit mit ver?ndertem Geschmack, passend und unpassend, an—und eingebaut hat."
Deibhidh, in Old Irish Debide, a neuter word, which Thurneysen translates "cut in two," is not really a rhyme but a generic name for a metre, containing twenty-four species. The essence of the principal Deibhidh, however, is the peculiar manner of rhyming with words of a different length, so that this system has sometimes been loosely called Deibhidh rhyme. In the oldest poetry a trisyllable instead of a dissyllable rhyme could be used as the end word, of the second line when the first line ended with a monosyllable, but in the strictness of later times this was disallowed.
"Tús onóra cidh dual di,
Tuar anshógha an eigsi.
Glac bárr-lag mar chúbhair tonn
Do sháraigh dath na bhfaoilionn.
Gníomh follus fáth na h-eachtra
Fá'r ciorrbadh mo chuideachta."
These specimens are taken from unedited manuscripts in my own possession, copied by O'Curry from I know not what originals.
Thus in the Codex St. Pauli we find these verses:—
"Messe ocus Pangur ban Cechtar náthar fria saindán Bith a menma-sunn fri seilgg Mu menma céin im sain-ceirdd. Caraim-se fos ferr gach clu Oc mo lebran leir ingnu Ni foirmtech frimm Pangur ban Caraid sesin a macc-dán.
"The end rhyming words in verses 6-10 for example are as follows—fóe nóe, bátha hilblátha, bláthaib thráthaib, gnáth tráth, datho moithgretho, chéul Arggutnéul, mrath etargnath, cruais clúais, bás indgás, n-Emne comamre.
Compare, too, the verses that the monk wrote in the margin of the St. Gall MS. which he was copying, on hearing the blackbird sing—
"Dom farcai fidbaidae fál Fomchain lóid lain luad nad cél Huas mo lebrán indlinech Fomchain trírech inna nén;
"the language of which is so ancient as to be nearly unintelligible to a modern, though the metre is common from that day to this. "A thicket of bushes surrounds me, a lively blackbird sings to me his lay, I shall not conceal it, above my many-lined book he sings to me the trill of the birds," etc. Commenting on these verses Nigra says feelingly, "Mentre traduco questi versi amo figurarmi il povero monaco che, or fá più di mille anni, stava copiando il manoscritto, e distratto un istante dal canto dei merli contemplava dalla finestra della sua cella la verde corona di boscaglie che circondava il suo monastero nell Ulster o nel Connaught, e dopo avere ascoltato l'agile trillo degli uccelli, recitava questi strofe, e rapigliava poi più allegro l'interrotto lavoro."
It has often been alleged that the word rhyme is derived from the Irish rím, "number," rímaire, "a reckoner," and rimim, "I count;" but in Anglo-Saxon rím has the same meaning, so that unless the Anglo-Saxons borrowed the word, as they certainly did the thing, from the Irish, this is inconclusive.
In fol. 8a of the "Liber Hymnorum" we read in the preface to the very ancient hymn "In Trinitate spes mea," the following note: "Incertum est hautem in quo tempore factus est, Trerithim dana doronadh ocus xi. caiptell déac ann, ocus dalíni in cech caiptiull, ocus se sillaba déc cechai. Is foi is rithim doreir in ómine dobit ann.," i.e., "in rhyme it was made and eleven chapters thereon and two lines in every chapter, and sixteen syllables in each. It is on i the rhyme is because of the 'omine' that is in it." In the preface to the hymn, "Christus in nostra insula," the scholiast writes, "Trerithim dana dorigned," which Whitley Stokes translates by "in rhythm moreover it was made," but rithim evidently means the same in both passages, namely, rhyme not rhythm, at least if the first passage is rightly translated by Dr. Stokes himself. I doubt, however, if rím or rithim ever meant "rhyme" in Irish.
The various Saor bards were called the Anshruth-bairdne (great stream of poetry?), the Sruth di aill (stream down two cliffs?), the Tighearn-bhard (lord bard), the Adhmhall, the Tuath-bhard (lay bard), the bo-bhard (cow-bard) and the Bard áine. The highest of the Daor bards was called the cúl-bhard (back bard), and after him came the Sruth-bhard (stream-bard), the Drisiuc, the cromluatha, the Sirti-uí, the Rindhaidh, the Long-bhard, and the bard Loirrge.
Thus the head of the patrician bards was entitled to make use of the metres called nath, metres in which the end of each line makes a vowel rhyme or an alliteration with the beginning of the next, the number of syllables in the line and of lines in the verse being irregular. There were six kinds of náth metres, called Deachna. All these the first bard practised with two honourable metres besides, called the great and little Séadna. The ANSHRUTH used the two kinds of metres called Ottbhairdne, the SRUTH DI AILL used Casbhairdne, the TIGHEARN-BHARD used Duanbhairdne, a generic metre of which there were six species called Duan faidesin, duan cenátach, fordhuan, taebh-chasadh, tul-chasadh, and sreth-bhairdne. All the metres which these five employed were honourable ones, and went under the generic name of príomhfódhta. Then came the ADHMHALL with seven measures for himself, bairdne faidessin, btogh-bhairdne, brac-bhairdne, snedh-bhairdne, sem-bhairdne, imard-bhairdne, and rathnuatt. The TUATH-BHARD had all the Rannaigheacht metres and the BO-BARD all the Deibhidh metres, and these two, Rannaigheacht and Deibhidh, though thus lowly thought of in early—probably pre-Danish—days, were destined in later times, like the cuckoo birds, to oust their fellows and reign in the forefront for many hundred years. The Tuath-bhard had also two other metres Seaghdha and Treochair, and the Bo-bhard in addition to Deibhidh had long and short deachubhaidh.
The classification of the Daor bards and their metres is just as minute.
The lowest grade of filé was called the fuctuc (word maker?). In his first year he had to learn fifty ogams and straight ogams amongst them. He had to learn the grammar called Uraicept na ti-éigsine, and the preface to it, and that part of the book called réimeanna, or courses, with twenty dréachts (stories?), six metres and other things. The six metres were the six dians called air-sheang, midh-sheang, iar-sheang, air-throm, midh-throm, and iar-throm.
Each of the twelve years had its own course of the same nature as the above.
I have seen it stated, but I do not know on what authority, that their income derived from land, in what is the present county of Donegal, was equal to ￡2,000 a year.
See Keating's "Forus Feasa" under the reign of Aedh mac Ainmireach.
Lios-an-doill i.e., the "blind man's fort." See the preface to O'Donovan's "Satires of Angus," for this story.
He preserved eight pieces of O'Daly, who is called Muireach Albanach, and in one place Muireach Lessin Dall (i.e., Lios-an-Doill) O'Daly.
"Diombuaidh Triall o Thulchaibh Fáil
Diombuaidh Iath éireann d'fhágbháil,
Iath mhilis na Mbeann Mbeachach,
Inis na N-Eang N-óig-eachach."
Deibhidh metre. See Hardiman, vol. ii. p. 226.
"Dá ndimghiodh duine re dán
Fá chiniodh don chuire ríogh
Do bhiadh croch roimhe ar gach raon
Och! gan Aodh Doire dar ndíon."
Rannaigheacht Mór metre. From a MS. poem.
Side by side with the numerous prose sagas which fall under the title of "Fenian," and which we have already examined in Chapter XXIX., there exists an enormous mass of poems, chiefly narrative, of a minor epic type, or else semi-dramatic épopées, usually introduced by a dialogue between St. Patrick and the poet Ossian. Ossian was the son of Finn mac Cúmhail, vulgarly "Cool," and he was fabled to have lived in Tír na n-og , the country of the ever-young, the Irish Elysium, for three hundred years, thus surviving all his Fenian contemporaries, and living to hold colloquy with St. Patrick. The so-called Ossianic poems are extraordinarily numerous, and were they all collected would probably (between those preserved in Scotch-Gaelic and in Irish) amount to some 80,000 lines. My friend, the late Father James Keegan, of St. Louis, once estimated them at 100,000. The most of them, in the form in which they have come down to us at the present day, seem to have been composed in rather loose metres, chiefly imitations of Deibhidh and Rannaigheacht mór, and they were even down to our fathers' time exceedingly popular both in Ireland and the Scotch Highlands, in which latter country Iain Campbell, the great folk-lorist, made the huge collection which he called Leabhar na Féinne, or the Book of the Fenians.
Some of the Ossianic poems relate the exploits of the Fenians, others describe conflicts between members of that body and worms, wild beasts and dragons, others fights with monsters and with strangers come from across the sea; others detail how Finn and his companions suffered from the enchantments of wizards and the efforts made to release them, one enumerates the Fenians who fell at Cnoc-an-áir, another gives the names of about three hundred of the Fenian hounds, another gives Ossian's account of his three hundred years in the Land of the Young and his return, many more consist largely of semi-humorous dialogues between the saint and the old warrior; another is called Ossian's madness; another is Ossian's account of the battle of Gabhra, which made an end of the Fenians, and so on.
The Lochlannachs, or Norsemen, figure very largely in these poems, and it is quite evident that most of them—at least in the modern form in which we now have them—are post-Norse productions. The fact that the language in which they have for the most part come down to us is popular and modern, does not prove much one way or the other, for these small epics which, more than any other part of Irish literature, were handed down from father to son and propagated orally, have had their language unconsciously adjusted from age to age, so as to leave them intelligible to their hearers. As a consequence the metres have in many places also suffered, and the old Irish system, which required a certain number of syllables in each line, has shown signs of fusing gradually with the new Irish system, which only requires so many accented syllables.
It is, however, perfectly possible—as has been supposed by, I think, Mr. Nutt and others—that after the terrible shock given to the island by the Northmen, this people usurped in our ballads the place of some older mythical race; and Professor Rhys was, I believe, at one time of opinion that Lochlann, as spoken of in these ballads, originally meant merely the country of lochs and seas, and that the Lochlanners were a submarine mythical people, like the Fomorians.
The spirit of banter with which St. Patrick and the Church are treated, and in which the fun just stops short of irreverence, is a medi?val, not a primitive, trait, more characteristic, thinks Mr. Nutt, of the twelfth than of any succeeding century. We may remember the inimitable felicity with which that great English-speaking Gael, Sir Walter Scott, has caught this Ossianic tone in the lines which Hector McIntyre repeats for Oldbuck—
"Patrick the psalm-singer, Since you will not listen to one of my stories, Though you have never heard it before, I am sorry to tell you You are little better than an ass;
"to which the saint, to the infinite contempt of the unbelieving antiquary, is made to respond—
"Upon my word, son of Fingal, While I am warbling the psalms, The clamour of your old woman's tales Disturbs my devotional exercises.
"Whereat the heated Ossian replies—
"Dare you compare your psalms To the tales of the bare-armed Fenians, I shall think it no great harm To wring your bald head from your shoulders.
"Here, however, is a real specimen from the Irish, which will give some idea of the style of dialogue between the pair. St. Patrick, with exaggerated episcopal severity, having Ossian three-quarters starved, blind, and wholly at his mercy, desires him to speak no more of Finn or of the Fenians.
"OSSIAN.
"Alas, O Patrick, I did think that God would not be angered thereat; I think long, and it is a great woe to me, not to speak of the way of Finn of the Deeds.
"PATRICK.
"Speak not of Finn nor of the Fenians, for the Son of God will be angry with thee for it, he would never let thee into his court and he would not send thee the bread of each day.
"OSSIAN.
"Were I to speak of Finn and of the Fenians, between us two, O Patrick the new, but only not to speak loud, he would never hear us mentioning him.
"PATRICK.
"Let nothing whatever be mentioned by thee excepting the offering of God, or if thou talkest continually of others, thou, indeed, shalt not go to the house of the saints.
"OSSIAN.
"I will, O Patrick, do His will. Of Finn or of the Fenians I will not talk, for fear of bringing anger upon them, O Cleric, if it is God's wont to be angry."
In another poem St. Patrick denounces with all the rigour of a new reformer.
"PATRICK.
"Finn is in hell in bonds, 'the pleasant man who used to bestow gold,' in penalty of his disobedience to God, he is now in the house of pain in sorrow....
"Because of the amusement the hounds and for attending the (bardic) schools each day, and because he took no heed of God, Finn of the Fenians is in bonds....
"Misery attend thee, old man, who speakest words of madness; God is better for one hour than all the Fenians of Erin.
"OSSIAN.
"O Patrick of the crooked crozier, who makest me that impertinent answer, thy crozier would be in atoms were Oscar present.
"Were my son Oscar and God hand to hand on Knock-na-veen, if I saw my son down it is then I would say that God was a strong man.
"How could it be that God and his clerics could be better men than Finn, the chief King of the Fenians, the generous one who was without blemish?
"All the qualities that you and your clerics say are according to the rule of the King of the Stars, Finn's Fenians had them all, and they must be now stoutly seated in God's heaven.
"Were there a place above or below better than heaven, 'tis there Finn would go, and all the Fenians he had....
"Patrick, inquire of God whether he recollects when the Fenians were alive, or hath he seen east or west, men their equal in the time of fight.
"Or hath he seen in his own country, though high it be above our heads, in conflict, in battle, or in might, a man who was equal to Finn?
"PATRICK.
"(Exhausted with controversy and curious for Ossian's story.)
"'Ossian sweet to me thy voice,
Now blessings choice on the soul of Finn!
But tell to us how many deer
Were slain at Slieve-na-man finn.'
"OSSIAN.
"'We the Fenians never used to tell untruth, a lie was never attributed to us; by truth and the strength of our hands we used to come safe out of every danger.
"'There never sat cleric in church, though melodiously ye may think they chant psalms, more true to his word than the Fenians, the men who shrank never from fierce conflicts.
"'O Patrick, where was thy God the day the two came across the sea who carried off the queen of the King of Lochlann in ships, by whom many fell here in conflict.
"'Or when Tailc mac Treoin arrived, the man who put great slaughter on the Fenians; 'twas not by God the hero fell, but by Oscar in the presence of all.
"'Many a battle victory and contest were celebrated by the Fenians of Innisfail. I never heard that any feat was performed by the king of saints, or that he reddened his hand.'
"PATRICK.
"'Let us cease disputing on both sides, thou withered old man who art devoid of sense; understand that God dwells in heaven of the orders, and Finn and his hosts are all in pain.'
"OSSIAN.
"'Great, then, would be the shame for God not to release Finn from the shackles of pain; for if God Himself were in bonds my chief would fight on his behalf.
"'Finn never suffered in his day any one to be in pain or difficulty without redeeming him by silver or gold or by battle and fight, until he was victorious.
"'It is a good claim I have against your God, me to be amongst these clerics as I am, without food, without clothing or music, without bestowing gold on bards,
"'Without battling, without hunting, without Finn, without courting generous women, without sport, without sitting in my place as was my due, without learning feats of agility and conflict,'" etc.
Many of these poems contain lyrical passages of great beauty. Here, as a specimen, is Ossian's description of the things in which Finn used to take delight. It is a truly lyrical passage, in the very best style, rhyme, rhythm and assonance are all combined with a most rich vocabulary of words expressive of sounds nearly impossible to translate into English. It might be thus attempted in verse, though not quite in the metre of the original. Finn's pursuits as depicted here by Ossian show him to have been a lover of nature, and are quite in keeping with his poem on Spring; his are the tastes of one of Matthew Arnold's "Barbarians" glorified.
"FINN'S PASTIMES. Oh, croaking Patrick, I curse your tale.
"Is the King of the Fenians in hell this night?
The heart that never was seen to quail,
That feared no danger and felt no spite.
Bestowing of food on him, giving of gold?
Finn never refused either prince or drudge;
Can his doom be in hell in the house of cold.
The desire of my hero who feared no foe
Was to listen all day to Drumderrig's sound,
To sleep by the roar of the Assaroe,
And to follow the dun deer round and round.
The warbling of blackbirds in Letter Lee,
The strand where the billows of Ruree fall,
The bellowing ox upon wild Moy-mee,
The lowing of calves upon Glen-da-vaul.
The blast of a horn around Slieve Grot,
The bleat of a fawn upon Cua's plain,
The sea-birds scream in a lonely spot,
The croak of the raven above the slain.
The wash of the waves on his bark afar,
The yelp of the pack as they round Drumliss,
The baying of Bran upon Knock-in-ar,
The murmur of fountains below Slieve Mis.
The call of Oscar upon the chase,
The tongue of the hounds on the Fenians' plain,
Then a seat with the men of the bardic race,
—Of these delights was my hero fain.
But generous Oscar's supreme desire,
Was the maddening clashing of shield on shield,
And the crash and the joy of the stricken field."
In entire accordance with this enthusiastic love of nature is Ossian's delightful address to the blackbird of Derrycarn, a piece which was a great favourite with the scribes of the last century. Interpenetrated with the same almost sensuous delight at the sights and sounds of nature, are the following verses which the Scotsman, Dean Macgregor, wrote down—probably from the recitation of a wandering harper or poet—some three hundred and eighty years ago.
"Sweet is the voice in the land of gold, And sweeter the music of birds that soar, When the cry of the heron is heard on the wold, And the waves break softly on Bundatrore. Down floats on the murmuring of the breeze The call of the cuckoo from Cossahun, The blackbird is warbling amongst the trees, And soft is the kiss of the warming sun. The cry of the eagle at Assaroe O'er the court of Mac Morne to me is sweet; And sweet is the cry of the bird below, Where the wave and the wind and the tall cliff meet. Finn mac Cool is the father of me, Whom seven battalions of Fenians fear, When he launches his hounds on the open lea, Grand is their cry as they rouse the deer.
"Caoilte too, the third great Fenian poet, was as impressionable to the moods of nature as his friends Ossian and Finn. Compare with the foregoing poems his lay on the Isle of Arran, in Scotland.
THE ISLE OF ARRAN.
"Arran of the many stags, the sea inpinges upon her very shoulders! An isle in which whole companies were fed, and with ridges among which blue spears are reddened.
"Skittish deer are on her pinnacles, soft blackberries on her waving heather; cool water there is in her rivers, and musk upon her russet oaks.
"Greyhounds there were in her and beagles, blackberries and sloes of the dark blackthorn, dwellings with their backs set close against her woods, while the deer fed scattered by her oaken thickets.
"A crimson crop grew on her rocks, in all her glades a faultless grass; over her crags affording friendly refuge leaping went on, and fawns were skipping.
"Smooth were her level spots, fat her wild swine, cheerful her fields ... her nuts hung on the boughs of her forest hazels, and there was sailing of long galleys past her.
"Right pleasant their condition, all, when the fair weather set in. Under her river-banks trouts lie; the seagulls wheeling round her grand cliff answer one the other—at every fitting time delectable is Arran!"
In another poem that Caoilte is fabled to have made after he met and consorted with St. Patrick is a vivid description of a freezing night as it appeared to a hunter. A great frost and heavy snow had fallen upon the whole country, so that the russet branches of the forest were twisted together, and men could no longer travel. "A fitting time it is now," said Caoilte, "for wild stags and for does to seek the topmost points of hills and rocks; a timely season for salmons to betake them into cavities of the banks," and he uttered a lay.
"Cold the winter is, the wind is risen, the high-couraged unquelled stag is on foot, bitter cold to-night the whole mountain is, yet for all that the ungovernable stag is belling.
"The deer of Slievecarn of the gatherings commits not his side to the ground; no less than he, the stag of frigid Echtgé's summit who catches the chorus of the wolves.
"I, Caoilte, with Brown Diarmuid, and with keen, light-footed Oscar; we too in the nipping nights' waning end, would listen to the music of the pack.
"But well the red deer sleeps that with his hide to the bulging rock lies stretched, hidden as though beneath the country's surface, all in the latter end of chilly night.
"To-day I am an aged ancient, and but a scant few men I know; once on time, though, on a cold and icebound morning I used to vibrate a sharp javelin hardily.
"To Heaven's King I offer thanks, to Mary Virgin's Son as well; often and often I imposed silence on a whole host, whose plight to-night is very cold ."
It is curious that in the more modern Ossianic pieces, such as the scribes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries delighted in transcribing, there is little mention made of Caoilte, and the complaints about surviving the Fenians and being vexed by the clerics are more usually put into the mouth of Ossian.
Here is one of the moans of Ossian in his old age, when fallen on evil times, and thwarted at every turn by St. Patrick and his monks.
Long was last night in cold Elphin,
More long is to-night on its weary way,
Though yesterday seemed to me long and ill,
Yet longer still was this dreary day.
And long for me is each hour new born,
Stricken, forlorn, and smit with grief
For the hunting lands and the Fenian bands,
And the long-haired, generous, Fenian chief.
I hear no music, I find no feast,
I slay no beast from a bounding steed,
I bestow no gold, I am poor and old,
I am sick and cold, without wine or mead.
I court no more, and I hunt no more,
These were before my strong delight,
I cannot slay, and I take no prey:
Weary the day and long the night.
No heroes come in their war array,
No game I play, there is nought to win;
I swim no stream with my men of might,
Long is the night in cold Elphin.
Ask, O Patrick, thy God of grace,
To tell me the place he will place me in,
And save my soul from the Ill One's might,
For long is to-night in cold Elphin."
There is a considerable thread of narrative running through these poems and connecting them in a kind of series, so that several of them might be divided into the various books of a Gaelic epic of the Odyssic type, containing instead of the wanderings and final restoration of Ulysses, the adventures and final destruction of the Fenians, except that the books would be rather more disjointed. There is, moreover, splendid material for an ample epic in the division between the Fenians of Munster and Connacht and the gradual estrangement of the High-king, leading up to the fatal battle of Gabhra; but the material for this last exists chiefly in prose texts, not in the Ossianic lays. It is very strange and very unfortunate that notwithstanding the literary activity of Gaelic Ireland before and during the penal times, no Keating, or Comyn, or Curtin ever attempted to redact the Ossianic poems and throw them into that epic form into which they would so easily and naturally have fitted. These pieces appear to me of even greater value than the Red Branch sagas, as elucidating the natural growth and genesis of an epic, for the Irish progressed just up to the point of possessing a large quantity of stray material, minor episodes versified by anonymous long-forgotten folk-poets; but they never produced a mind critical enough to reduce this mass to order, coherence, and stability, and at the same time creative enough to itself supply the necessary lacun?. Were it not that so much light has by this time been thrown upon the natural genesis of ancient national epics, one might be inclined to lay down the theory that the Irish had evolved a scheme of their own, peculiar to themselves, and different altogether from the epic, a scheme in which the same characters figure in a group of allied poems and romances, each of which, like one of Tennyson's idylls, is perfect in itself, and not dependent upon the rest, a system which might be taken to be a natural result of the impatient Celtic temperament which could not brook the restraints of an epic.
The Ossianic lays are almost the only narrative poems which exist in the language, for although lyrical, elegiac, and didactic poetry abounds, the Irish never produced, except in the case of the Ossianic épopées, anything of importance in a narrative and ballad form, anything, for instance, of the nature of the glorious ballad poetry of the Scotch Lowlands.
The Ossianic metres, too, are the eminently epic ones of Ireland. It was a great pity, and to my thinking a great mistake, for Archbishop Mac Hale not to have used them in his translation of Homer, instead of attempting it in the metre of Pope's Iliad—one utterly unknown to native Ireland.
I have already observed that great producers of literature as the Irish always were—until this century—they never developed a drama. The nearest approach to such a thing is in these Ossianic poems. The dialogue between St. Patrick and Ossian—of which there is, in most of the poems, either more or less—is quite dramatic in its form. Even the reciters of the present day appear to feel this, and I have heard the censorious self-satisfied tone of Patrick, and the querulous vindictive whine of the half-starved old man, reproduced with considerable humour by a reciter. But I think it nearly certain—though I cannot prove it—that in former days there was real acting and a dialogue between two persons, one representing the saint and the other the old pagan. It was from a less promising beginning than this that the drama of ?schylus developed. But nothing could develop in later Ireland. Everything, time after time, was arrested in its growth. Again and again the tree of Irish literature put forth fresh blossoms, and before they could fully expand they were nipped off. The conception of bringing the spirit of Paganism and of Christianity together in the persons of the last great poet and warrior of the one, and the first great saint of the other, was truly dramatic in its conception, and the spirit and humour with which it has been carried out in the pieces which have come down to us are a strong presumption that under happier circumstances something great would have developed from it. If any one is still found to repeat Macaulay's hackneyed taunt about the Irish race never having produced a great poem, let him ask himself if it is likely that a country, where, for a hundred years after Aughrim and the Boyne, teachers who for long before that had been in danger, were systematically knocked on the head, or sent to a jail for teaching; where children were seen learning their letters with chalk on their father's tombstones—other means being denied them; where the possession of a manuscript might lead to the owner's death or imprisonment, so that many valuable books were buried in the ground, or hidden to rot in walls—whether such a country were a soil on which an epic or anything else could flourish. How, in the face of all this, the men of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries preserved in manuscript so much of the Ossianic poetry as they did, and even rewrote or redacted portions of it, as Michael Comyn is said to have done to "Ossian in the Land of the Ever-Young," is to me nothing short of amazing.
Of the authorship of the Ossianic poems nothing is known. In the Book of Leinster are three short pieces ascribed to Ossian himself, and five to Finn, and other old MSS. contain poems ascribed to Caoilte, Ossian's companion and fellow survivor, and to Fergus, another son of Finn; but of the great mass of the many thousand lines which we have in seventeenth and eighteenth century MSS. there is not much which is placed in Ossian's mouth as first hand, the pieces as I have said generally beginning with a dialogue, from which Ossian proceeds to recount his tale. But this dramatic form of the lay shows that no pretence was kept up of Ossian's being the singer of his own exploits. From the paucity of the pieces attributed to him in the oldest MSS. it is probable that the Gaelic race only gradually singled him out as their typical pagan poet, instead of Fergus or Caoilte or any other of his alleged contemporaries, just as they singled out his father Finn, as the typical pagan leader of their race; and it is likely that a large part of our Ossianic lay and literature is post-Danish, while the great mass of the Red Branch saga is in its birth many centuries anterior to the Norsemen's invasion.
********
In Irish Oisín, pronounced "Esheen," or "Ussheen." However, the Scotch Gaelic form has, thanks to the genius of Macpherson, so overshadowed the Irish one that it may be allowed to remain.
Standish Hayes O'Grady, in the third vol. of the Ossianic Society, gives the names of thirty-five of these poems, amounting to nearly 11,000 lines. The Ossianic Society printed about 6,000 lines. The Franciscans have shown me a MS. with over 10,000 lines, none of which has been printed.
In the original Ossian asks—
"An éagcóir nár mhaith le Dia ór a's biadh do thabhairt do neach? Nior dhiultaigh Fionn treun ná truagh Ifrionn fuar má 's é a theach.
"Irish writers always describe Hell as cold, not hot. This is so even in Keating. The "cold flag of hell."
In the original—
"Glaodh Oscair ag dul do sheilg Gotha gadhar ar leirg na bh Fiann Bheith 'na shuidhe ameasg na ndámh Ba h-é sin de ghnáth a mhian. Mian de mhianaibh Oscair fhéil Bheith ag éisteacht re béim sgiath, Bheith i gcath ag cosgar cnámh Ba h-é sin de ghnáth a mhian.
"Literally: "O Patrick, woful is the tale that the Fenian king should be in bonds, a heart devoid of spite or hatred, a heart stern in maintaining battles.
"Is it an injustice at which God is not pleased to bestow gold and food on any one? Finn never refused either the strong or the wretched, although cold Hell is his house. It was the desire of the son of Cúmhal of the noble mien to listen to the sound of Drumderg, to sleep by the stream of the Assaroe, and to chase the deer of Galway of the bays.
" "The warbling of the blackbird of Letter Lee, the wave of Ruree lashing the shore, the bellowing of the ox of Moy Meen, the lowing of the calf of Glendavaul. The cry of the hunting of Slieve Grot, the noise of the fawns around Slieve Cua, the scream of the seagulls over yonder Irris, the cry of the ravens over the host.
" "The tossing of the hulls of the barks by the waves, the yell of the hounds at Drumlish, the voice of Bran at Knockinar, the murmur of the streams around Slieve Mis. The call of Oscar, going to the chase, the cry of the hounds at Lerg-na-veen—(then) to be sitting amongst the bards: that was his desire constantly.
"A desire of the desires of generous Oscar, was to be listening to the crashing of shields, to be in the battle at the hewing of bones: that was ever his desire. (See Ossianic Society, vol. iv. The Colloquy between Ossian and Patrick.)
Printed by O'Flanagan in the "Transactions of the Gaelic Society," 1808, and translated by Dr. Sigerson in his "Bards of the Gael and Gall." I cannot refrain from the pleasure of quoting the following verses from his beautiful translation:—
"The tuneful tumult of that bird, The belling deer on ferny steep: This welcome in the dawn he heard, These soothed at eve his sleep. Dear to him the wind-loved heath, The whirr of wings, the rustling brake; Dear the murmuring glens beneath, And sob of Droma's lake. The cry of hounds at early morn, The pattering deer, the pebbly creek, The cuckoo's call, the sounding horn, The swooping eagle's shriek.
"See p. 59 of the Gaelic part of the book of the Dean of Lismore. The first verse runs thus in modern Gaelic:—
"Binn guth duine i dtir an óir, Binn an glór chanaid na h-eóin, Binn an nuallan a gnidh an chorr, Binn an tonn i mBun-da-treóir.
"See "Silva Gadelica," p. 109 of the English, p. 102 of the Irish volume. I retain Mr. O'Grady's beautiful translation of this and the following piece.
"Oighe baetha ar a bennaib
Monainn maetha ar a mongaib,
Uisce fuar ina h-aibhnib,
Mes ar a dairghib donnaib."
Note the exquisite metre of this poem of which the above verse is a specimen.
This, like most of the couple of thousand verses scattered throughout the "Colloquy of the Ancients," is in Deibhidh metre, which would thus run in English:—
"Cold the Winter, cold the Wind, The Raging stag is Ravin'd, Though in one Flag the Floodgates cling, The Steaming Stag is belling.
"This was Diarmuid of the Love-spot, who eloped with Gráinne, and was killed by the wild boar, from whom the Campbells of Scotland claim descent, as is alluded to in Flora Mac Ivor's song in "Waverley":—
Ye sons of Brown Diarmuid who slew the wild boar.
"Is fada anocht i n-Ailfinn,
Is fada linn an oidhche aréir,
An lá andhiu cidh fada dham,
Ba leór-fhad an lá andé."
See p. 208 of my "Religious Songs of Connacht" for the original of this poem, which I copied from a MS. in the Belfast Museum. The Dean of Lismore in Argyle jotted this poem down in phonetic spelling nearly four hundred years ago, but the name of Elphin, being strange to him, he took the words to be na neulla fúm, "the clouds round me," ni nelli fiym he spells it. Elphin is an episcopal seat in the county Roscommon, where St. Patrick abode for a while when in Connacht. I often heard in that county the story of Ossian meeting St. Patrick when drawing stones in Elphin, but always thought that the people of Roscommon localised the legend in their own county. But the discovery of the Belfast copy—and I believe there is another one in the British Museum—shows that this was not so, and the Dean of Lismore's book proves the antiquity of the legend. That Ailfinn (Elphin) was the original word is proved by rhyming to linn, sinn and Finn, which Fiym (= fúm) could not do.
I once saw a letter in an Irish-American paper by some one whose name I forget, in which he alleged that in his youth he had actually seen the Ossianic lays thus acted.
Like the Book of Lismore and others. See Sullivan's preface to O'Curry's "Manners and Customs."
"Ich vermuthe," says Windisch ("Irische Texte," I. i. p. 63), "dass Ossin (Ossian) auf dieser Wege zu einer Dichtergestalt geworden ist. Die Gedichte die ihm in der Sage in den Mund gelegt werden, galten als sein Werk und wurden allm?hlig zum Typus einer ganzen Literaturgattung." But the same should hold equally true of Caoilte, in whose mouth an equal number of poems are placed.
The following Ossianic poems have been published in the "Transactions of the Ossianic Society." In vol. iii., 1857, "The Lamentation of Ossian after the Fenians," 852 lines. In vol. iv., 1859, "The Dialogue between Ossian and Patrick," 684 lines: "The Battle of Cnoc an áir," 336 lines; "The Lay of Meargach," 904 lines; "The Lay of Meargach's Wife," 388 lines; "The names of those fallen at Cnoc an áir," 76 lines; "The Chase of Loch Léin," 328 lines; "The Lay of Ossian in the Land of the Ever-Young," 636 lines; and some smaller pieces. Vol. vi., 1861, contains: "The Chase of Slieve Guilleann," 228 lines; "The Chase of Slieve Fuaid," 788 lines; "The Chase of Glennasmóil," 364 lines; "The Hunt of the Fenians on Sleive Truim," 316 lines; "The Chase of Slieve-na-mon," 64 lines; "The Chase of the Enchanted Pigs of Angus of the Boyne" , 280 lines; "The Hunt on the borders of Loch Derg," 80 lines; "The Adventures of the Great Fool" , 632 lines.
I have in my own possession copies of several other Ossianic poems, one of which, "The Lay of Dearg," in Deibhidh metre, consisting of 300 lines, is ascribed to Fergus, Finn's poet, not to Ossian.
"Is mé Feargus, file Fhinn De gnáith-fhéinn Fhinn mhic Cúmhail, O thásg na bhfear sin nár lag Trian a ngaisge ni inneósad.
"In the library of the Franciscans' Convent in Dublin there is a seventeenth-century collection of Ossianic poems, all in regular classical metres, containing, as I have computed, not less than 10,000 lines. Not one of these poems has been, so far as I know, ever published. The poems printed by the Ossianic Society are not in the classical metres, though I suspect many of them were originally so composed, but they have become corrupted passing from mouth to mouth.
The first half of the seventeenth century saw an extraordinary re-awakening of the Irish literary spirit. This was the more curious because it was precisely at this period that the old Gaelic polity with its tribal system, brehon law, hereditary bards, and all its other supports, was being upheaved by main force and already beginning to totter to its ruin. This was the period when to aggravate what was already to the last degree bitter—the struggle for the soil and racial feuds—a third disastrous ingredient, polemics, stept in, and inflamed the minds of the opposing parties, with the additional fanaticism of religious hatred. Yet whether it is that their works have been better preserved to us than those of any other century, or whether the very nearness of the end inspired them to double exertions, certain it is that the seventeenth century, and especially the first half of it, produced amongst the Irish a number of most gifted men of letters. Of these the so-called Four Masters, Seathrun or Geoffrey Keating, Father Francis O'Mulloy, Lughaidh O'Clery, and Duald Mac Firbis were the most important of the purely Irish prose writers, whilst Phillip O'Sullivan Beare, Father Ward, and Father Colgan, John Lynch (Bishop of Killala), Luke Wadding, and Peter Lombard (Archbishop of Armagh), reflected credit upon their native country by their scholarship, and elucidated its history chiefly through the medium of Latin, as did Ussher and Sir James Ware, two great scholars of the same period produced by the Pale.
The century opened with an outburst of unexpected vigour on the part of the old school of Irish classical bards, over whose head the sword was then suspended, and whose utter destruction, though they knew it not, was now rapidly approaching. This outburst was occasioned by Teig mac Dairé, the ollamh or chief poet of Donough O'Brien, fourth Earl of Thomond, (whose star, thanks to English influence, was at that time in the ascendant), making little of and disparaging in elaborate verse the line of Eremon, and the reigning families of Meath, Connacht, Leinster, and Ulster, whilst exalting the kings of the line of Eber, of whom the O'Briens were at that time the greatest family. The form this poem took was an attack upon the poems of Torna Eigeas, a poet who flourished soon after the year 400, and who was tutor to Niall of the Nine Hostages, but whose alleged poems I have not noticed, not believing those attributed to him to be genuine, as they contain distinct Christian allusions, and as the language does not seem particularly antique. The bards, however, accepted these pieces as the real work of Torna, and Teig mac Dairé now attacks him on account of his partiality for the Eremonian Niall one thousand two hundred years before, and argues that he had done wrong, and that Eber, as the elder son of Milesius, should have had the precedency over Ir and Eremon, the younger children, and that consequently the princes of Munster, who were Eberians, should take precedency of the O'Nialls, O'Conors, and other Eremonians of the Northern provinces, and of Leinster. Teig asserts that it was Eber or Heber, son of Milesius, from whom Ireland was called Hiber-nia. This poem, which contained about one hundred and fifty lines, began with the words Olc do thagrais a Thorna, "Ill hast thou argued, O Torna," and was immediately taken up and answered by Lughaidh O'Clery, the ollamh of the O'Donnells, in a poem containing three hundred and forty lines, beginning "O Teig, revile not Torna." To this Teig replied in a piece of six hundred and eighty-eight lines, beginning Eist-se a Lughaidh rem' labhradh, "Listen to my speech, O Lewy," and was again immediately answered in a poem of about a thousand lines by O'Clery, beginning, Do chuala ar thagrais a Thaidhg, "I have heard all that thou hast argued, O Teig." In this poem O'Clery collects such facts as he can find in history and in ancient authors, to prove that the Eremonians had always been considered superior to the Eberians in past ages. This called forth another rejoinder from his opponent of one hundred and twenty-four lines, beginning A Lughaidh labhram go séimh, "Let us speak courteously, O Lewy," which was in its turn answered by O'Clery in a poem beginning Ná broisd mise a Mhic Dhaire, "Provoke me not, O son of Dairé."
By this time the attention of the whole Irish literary world had been centred upon this curious dispute, and on the attacks and rejoinders of these leading poets representing the two great races of Northern and Southern Ireland respectively. Soon the hereditary poets of the other great Gaelic houses joined in, as their own descent or inclination prompted. Fearfeasa O'Cainte, Torlough O'Brien, and Art Og O'Keefe were the principal supporters of Teig mac Daire and the Southern Eberians, while Hugh O'Donnell, Robert Mac Arthur, Baoghalach ruadh Mac Egan, Anluan Mac Egan, John O'Clery, and Mac Dermot of Moylurg, defended Lewy and the Northern Eremonians. For many years the conflict raged, and the verses of both parties collected into a volume of about seven thousand lines, is known to this day as "The Contention of the Poets."
There is something highly pathetic in this last flickering up of the spirit of the hereditary classical bards, who conducted this dispute in precisely the same metre, language, tone, and style, as their forefathers of hundreds of years before would have done it, and who chose for the subject-matter of dispute an hereditary quarrel of twelve hundred years' standing. Just as the ancient history of the Irish began with the distinction between the descendants of the sons of Milesius, of which we read so much at the beginning of this volume, soon the self-same subject does the literary spirit of the ancient time which had lasted with little alteration from the days of St. Patrick, flare up into light for a brief moment at the opening of the seventeenth century, ere it expired for ever under the sword of Cromwell and of William.
It is altogether probable, however, that under the appearance of literary zeal and genealogical fury, the bards who took part in this contest were really actuated by the less apparent motive of rousing the ardour of their respective chiefs, their pride of blood, and their hatred of the intruder. If this, as I strongly suspect, were the underlying cause of the "Contention," their expiring effort to effect the impossible by the force of poetry—the only force at their command—is none the less pathetic, than would have been on the very brink of universal ruin, their quarrelling, in the face of their common enemy, upon the foolish old genealogies of a powerless past.
We know a good deal, however, about this Teig, son of Dairé, the ollamh of the O'Briens, of whose poetry, all written in elaborate and highly-wrought classical metres, we have still about three thousand four hundred lines. He possessed down even to the middle of the seventeenth century a fine estate and the castle of Dunogan with its appurtenances, which belonged to him by right of his office, as the hereditary ollamh of Thomond. He was hurled over a cliff in his old age by a soldier of Cromwell, who is said to have yelled after him with savage exultation as he fell, "Say your rann now, little man." A beautiful inauguration ode to the English-bred Donogh O'Brien, fourth Earl of Thomond, proclaims him a bard of no ordinary good sense and merit.
"Bring thy case before Him (God) every day, beseech diligently Him from whom nothing may be concealed, concerning everything of which thou art in care, Him from whom thou shalt receive relief.
"Run not according to thine own desire, O Prince of the Boru tribute, let the cause of the people be thy anxiety, and that is not the anxiety of an idle man.
"Be not thou negligent in the concerns of each: since it is thy due to decide between the people, O smooth countenance, be easy of access, and diligent in thine own interests.
"Give not thyself up to play nor wine nor feast nor the delight of music nor the caresses of maidens; measure thou the ill-deeds of each with their due reward, without listening to the intervention of thy council.
"For love, for terror, for hatred, do not pass (be thou a not-hasty judge) a judgment misbecoming thee, O Donough—no not for bribes of gold and silver."
In another poem, Mac Dairé warns the O'Briens to be advised by him, and not plunge the province into war, and to take care how they draw down upon themselves his animosity. Here are a few of these verses, translated into the exact equivalent of the Deibhidh metre in which they are written. They will give a fair idea of a poet's arrogance.
"'Tis not War we Want to Wage With THomond THinned by outrage. SLIGHT not Poets' Poignant spur Of RIGHT ye Owe it hOnour. Can there Cope a Man with Me In Burning hearts Bitterly, At my BLows men BLUSH I wis, Bright FLUSH their Furious Faces. Store of blister-Raising Ranns These are my Weighty Weapons, Poisoned, STriking STRONG through men, They Live not LONG so stricken. SHelter from my SHafts or rest Is not in Furthest Forest, Far they FALL, words Soft as Snow, No WALL can Ward my arrow. * * * * * To QUench in QUarrels good deeds, To Raise up WRongs in hundreds, To NAIL a NAME on a man, I FAIL not—FAME my weapon.
"The men who most distinguished themselves in the extraordinary outburst of classical poetry that characterised the early seventeenth century were Teig Dall O'H?ginn, a poet of the county Sligo, brother to the Archbishop of Tuam, and Eochaidh O'Hussey, the chief bard of the Maguire of Fermanagh. Teig Dall O'H?ginn has left behind him at least three thousand lines, all in polished classical metres, and O'Hussey nearly four thousand. Teig Dall was the author of the celebrated poem addressed to Brian O'Rorke, urging him to take up arms against Elizabeth on the principle "si vis pacem para bellum:" it begins D'fhior cogaidh comhailtear síothchain "to a man of war peace is assured," and it had the desired effect. The verses of these bards throw a great deal of light upon the manners customs and politics of the age. There is a curious poem extant by this Teig Dall, in which he gives a graphic account of a night he spent in the house of Maolmordha Mac Sweeny, a night which the poet says he will remember for ever. He met on that memorable night in that hospitable house Brian mac Angus Mac Namee, the poet in chief to Torlogh Luineach O'Neill, Brian mac Owen O'Donnellan, the poet of Mac William of Clanrickard, and Conor O'H?ginn, the bard of Mac William-Burke. Not only did the chieftain himself, Mac Sweeny, pay him homage, but he received presents—acknowledgment evidently of his admitted genius—from the poets as well. Mac Sweeny gave to him a dappled horse, one of the best steeds in Ireland, Brian mac Angus gave him a wolf-dog that might be matched against any; while from Brian mac Owen he received a book "a full well of the true stream of knowledge,"—in which were writ "the cattle-spoils, courtships, and sieges of the world, an explanation of their battles and progress, it was the flower of the King-books of Erin." Where, he asks, are all those chiefs gone now? Alas! "the like of the men I found before me in that perfect rath of glistening splendour, ranged along the coloured sides of the purple-hung mansion, no eye ever saw before," but they are scattered and gone, and the death of four of them in especial seemed a loss from which Banba thought she could never recover. This great poet, in my opinion by far the finest of his contemporaries, came to a tragical end. Six of the O'Haras of Sligo calling at his house, ate up his provisions, and in return he issued against them a special satire. This satire, consisting of twelve ranns in Deibhidh metre, stung them to such a pitch that they returned and cut out the tongue that could inflict such exquisite pain, and poor O'H?ginn died of their barbarous ill-treatment some time prior to the year 1617. None of the bardic race had ever thought that such an end could overtake the great poet at the hands of the Gael themselves. It was only a short time before that, when some bard envying him his position at Coolavin in the west, far from the inroads of the murdering foreigner, had sung:—
"Would I Were in Cool-O-vinn Where Haunteth Teig O Higinn There my LEASE of LIFE were free From STRIFE in PEACE and Plenty.
"We find the poet O'Gnive, the author of the well-known poem, "The Stepping-down of the Gael," bitterly lamenting in Deibhidh metre, the death of O'H?ginn, and that breaking-up of the Bardic schools which was even then beginning.
"Fallen the LAND of Learned men, The Bardic BAND is fallen; None now LEARN true SONG to Sing, How LONG our FERN is Fading! Fearful your Fates O'Higinn, And Yohy Mac Melaughlinn, Dark was the DAY through FEUD Fell The GOOD, the GAY, the GENTLE. Ye were Masters Made to please O'Higinnses, O'Dalys; GLOOMY ROCKS have WRought your fates, Ye PLUMY FLOCKS of Poets.
"O'Hussey, probably the greatest contemporary rival of Teig Dall, is best known through Mangan's translation of his noble ode to Cuchonnacht Maguire, lord of Fermanagh, who was caught by the elements on some warlike expedition and in danger of being frozen and drowned.
"Where is my chief, my master, this black night? movrone! Oh, cold, cold, miserably cold is this black night for Hugh, Its showery, arrowy, speary sleet pierceth one through and through, Pierceth one to the very bone. * * * * * An awful, a tremendous night is this, meseems, The floodgates of the rivers of heaven I think have been burst wide, Down from the overcharged clouds, like unto headlong ocean's tide, Descends grey rain in roaring streams. Though he were even a wolf ranging the round green woods, Though he were even a pleasant salmon in the unchainable sea, Though he were a wild mountain eagle, he could scarce bear, he, This sharp sore sleet, these howling floods.
"When it is remembered that O'Hussey composed this poem in that most difficult and artificial of metres, the Deibhidh, of which we have just given specimens, it will be seen how much Mangan has gained by his free and untrammelled metre, and what technical difficulties fettered O'Hussey's art, and lent glory to his triumph over them.
Both these great poets and their contemporaries had been reared in the bardic colleges, which continued to exist, though with gradually diminishing prestige, until near the close of the seventeenth century. I doubt if a single college survived into the eighteenth, to come under the cruel law which made it penal for a Catholic to teach a school. In the seventeenth century, however, several famous colleges of poetry are still found. They are frequently alluded to by the poets of that century, both in Ireland and Scotland, and always under the generic name of "the schools," by which they mean the bardic institutions. Few or none of those persons who did not themselves come of a bardic tribe were admitted into them, which accounts for the prevalence of the same surnames among the poets for several centuries, O'Dalys, O'H?ginnses, O'Coffeys, Macgraiths, Conmees, Wards, O'Mulconrys, etc. None of the students were allowed to come from the neighbourhood of the college, but only from far-away parts of Ireland, so as not to be distracted by the propinquity of friends and relations. This produced a certain unity of feeling among the bardic race, and to a great extent broke down all class prejudice, so much so, that the bards were almost the only people in later Ireland who belonged to their country rather than to their lord, or tribe, or territory. It may very well be, however, that the bardic race was not in the long run an advantage to Ireland, and that the elaborate system of pedigrees which they preserved, and their eulogies upon their particular patrons tended to keep the clan spirit alive to the detriment of the idea of a unified nationality, and to the exclusion of new political modes of thought.
However this may be, it is absolutely necessary to study the poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries if one would come to a right understanding of the great transformation scene then being enacted. The feelings, aspirations, and politics of the Irish themselves are faithfully reflected in them, and though no Irish historian, except perhaps O'Halloran, has ever read them, yet no historian can afford to utterly neglect them. It has become common of late years to deny that there was any real national struggle of Ireland against England in the seventeenth century, and my friend Mr. Standish O'Grady, in particular, from a perusal of the English State Papers and other documents, has striven with eloquence and brilliancy to prove that the fight was a social and an economic one, a conflict between the smaller gentry and the great upper lords. But such a view of the case is flatly contradicted, indeed absolutely disproved, by a study of the Irish bards. The names of Erin, Banba, Fódhla, the Plain of Conn, the Land of the Children of Ir and Eber, are in their mouths at every moment, and to the very last they persisted in their efforts to combine the Gael against the Gall. Here, for instance, is a poem, one specimen out of scores, by an unknown poet of the sixteenth century, exhorting the Irish of all the provinces to resistance, and it would be impossible to tell to what tribe or even to what province the poet belonged. I translate the poem here into a modification of the Irish metre, and one which, it seems to me, could be very well taken over and adapted with a fairly good effect into English.
"Fooboon upon you, ye hosts of the Gael, For your own Innisfail has been taken, And the Gall is dividing the emerald lands By your treacherous bands forsaken. Clan Carthy of Munster from first unto last Have forsaken the past of their sires, And they honour no longer the men that are gone, Or the song of the God-sent lyres. The O'Briens of Banba whom Murrough led on, They are gone with the Saxon aggressor, They have bartered the heirloom of ages away And forgotten to slay the oppressor. The old race of Brian mac Yohy the stern, With gallowglass kerne and bonnacht, They are down on their knees, they are cringing to-day, 'Tis the way through the province of Connacht. In the valleys of Leinster the valorous band Who lightened the land with their daring, In Erin's dark hour now shift for themselves, The wolves are upon them and tearing. And O'Neill, who is throned in Emania afar, And gave kings unto Tara for ages, For the earldom of Ulster has bartered, through fear, The kingdom of heroes and sages. Alas for the sight! the O'Carrolls of Birr Swear homage in terror, sore fearing, Not a man one may know for a man, can be found On the emerald ground of Erin. And O'Donnell the chieftain, the lion in fight, Who defended the right of Tirconnell, (Ah! now may green Erin indeed go and droop!) He stoops with them—Manus O'Donnell! Fooboon for the court where no English was spoke,
"Fooboon for the yoke of the stranger,
Fooboon for the gun in the foreigner's train,
Fooboon for the chain of danger.
"Ye faltering madmen, God pity your case! In the flame of disgrace ye are singeing. Fooboon is the word of the bard and the saint, Fooboon for the faint and cringing.
"The session of the bardic schools began about Michaelmas, and the youthful aspirants to bardic glory came trooping, about that season, from all quarters of the four provinces to offer with trembling hearts their gifts to the ollamh of the bardic college, and to take possession of their new quarters. Very extraordinary these quarters were; for the college usually consisted of a long low group of whitewashed buildings, excessively warmly thatched, and lying in the hollow of some secluded valley, or shut in by a sheltering wood, far removed from noise of human traffic and from the bustle of the great world. But what most struck the curious beholder was the entire absence of windows or partitions over the greater portion of the house.
According as each student arrived he was assigned a windowless room to himself, with no other furniture in it than a couple of chairs, a clothes rail, and a bed. When all the students had arrived, a general examination of them was held by the professors and ollamhs, and all who could not read and write Irish well, or who appeared to have an indifferent memory, were usually sent away. The others were divided into classes, and the mode of procedure was as follows: The students were called together into the great hall or sitting-room, amply illuminated by candles and bog-torches, and we may imagine the head ollamh, perhaps the venerable and patriotic O'Gnive himself, addressing them upon their chosen profession, and finally proposing some burning topic such as O'Neill's abrogation of the title of O'Neill, for the higher class to compose a poem on, in perhaps the Great or Little Rannaigheacht metre, while for the second class he sets one more commonplace, to be done into Deibhidh or Séadna , or some other classic measure, and any student who does not know all about the syllabification, quartans, concord, correspondence, termination, and union, which go to the various metres, is turned over to an inferior professor.
The students retired after their breakfasts, to their own warm but perfectly dark compartments, to throw themselves each upon his bed, and there think and compose till supper-hour, when a servant came round to all the rooms with candles, for each to write down what he had composed. They were then called together into the great hall, and handed in their written compositions to the professors, after which they chatted and amused themselves till bed-time.
On every Saturday and the eve of every holiday the schools broke up, and the students dispersed themselves over the country. They were always gladly received by the landowners of the neighbourhood, and treated hospitably until their return on Monday morning. The people of the district never failed to send in, each in turn, large supplies to the college, so that, what between this and the presents brought by the students at the beginning of the year, the professors are said to have been fairly rich.
The schools always broke up on the 25th of March, and the holidays lasted for six months, it not being considered judicious to spend the warm half of the year in the close college, from which all light and air-draughts had been so carefully excluded.
I can hardly believe, however, that the students of law, history, and classics—all the educated classes could speak Latin, which was their means of communication with the English—were treated as here described, or enjoyed such long holidays. It was probably only a special class of candidates for bardic degrees who were thus dealt with, and the account above given may be somewhat exaggerated; the students probably composed in their dark compartments only on certain days.
In the seventeenth century we find that the three or four hundred metres taught in the schools of the tenth century had been practically restricted to a couple of dozen, and these nearly all heptasyllabic. It is quite probable, as Thurneysen asserts, that the metres of the early Roman hymns—themselves probably largely affected by Celtic models—exercised in their turn a reflex influence upon Irish poetry, and especially on that of the bards, in contradistinction to that of the filés. Indeed, it is pretty certain that if the Roman metres had not before existed in Irish the bards would have made no scruple about copying them; and they may thus have come by these octosyllabic and heptasyllabic lines about which they were in after times so particular. Of the metres chiefly in vogue in the schools of the later centuries, the most popular was the Deibhidh, of which I have already given so many examples. It was, as it were, the official metre—the hexameter of the Gael. All the seven thousand and odd lines of the "Contention of the Bards," for instance, are written in it. Great Rannaigheacht was another prime heptasyllabic favourite. It ran thus—
"To Hear Handsome Women WEEP, In DEEP distress Sobbing Sore, Or Gangs of Geese scream for FAR, They sweeter ARE than ARTS snore.
"I may observe here that there has been on the part of Irish Continental scholars an extraordinary amount of discordant theories as to the scansion of the Irish classical metres. None of them seem to be agreed as to how to scan them. Zimmer insists that the word-accent and the metrical accent in Irish are identical, which, as Kuno Meyer has shown, is plainly not the case. He would probably scan—
Or wíld geese thát scream fróm fàr,
while Kuno Meyer again would insist on reading—
ór wild geése that scréam from fár,
because, as he says, all heptasyllabic lines are to be read as trochaic, a theory which may apply very well to some lines, as to the above, but which is almost certain to break down after a line or two, as in the very next line of this verse which I have taken for a model—
Théy sweet / ér are / thán Arts / snóre,
a scansion which does extraordinary violence to the natural pronunciation of the words. I, for my part, do not believe that there was ever any real metrical accent, that is, any real alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables in the classical Irish metres. The one thing certain about them is the fixed number of syllables and the rhyme, but each verse was, as it were, separately scanned, if one may use such a term, on its own merits. Thus the verse just quoted would be read some way thus—
"To hear handsome Women weep In deep distress, Sobbing sore, Or gangs of geese Scream from far, They sweeter are Than Arts snore.
"I have frequently heard preserved in ranns or proverbs, even to this day, isolated quatrains in these classic metres pronounced by the people, and they never dream of pronouncing them otherwise than according to the natural stress of the voice upon the words themselves, as if they were talking prose,—they never attempt to transform the seven-syllable lines into trochees, as Kuno Meyer would, nor the eight-syllable lines into iambics. Of this old Gaelic prosody there appears to be a distinct reminiscence in Burns. Take this verse of his for example—
"Blythe, blythe, and merry was she, Blythe was she but and ben, Blythe by the banks of Ern, And blythe in Glenturit glen.
"This, supplying, say the syllable "and," in the second and third lines makes a good Rannaigheacht mór quatrain, which the poet evidently pronounced exactly as an old Irish bard would have done.
"Blythe, blythe, And merry was she, And blythe was she But and ben, Blythe by The banks of Ern, And blythe in Glenturit glen.
"Bonaventura O'Hussey was another fine classical poet of the beginning of the seventeenth century. He was educated for a bard, but afterwards became a Franciscan in Louvain, where he wrote and published an Irish work on Christian Doctrine in 1608, which was reprinted in Antwerp three years later. The Irish, having no press of their own in Ireland (though they had some outside it), were obliged to print and set up all their books abroad, chiefly at Louvain, Antwerp, Rome, and Paris. Any attempt to introduce founts of Irish type in the teeth of the English Government would, I think, have been futile, so that except for the works she was able to print in Irish type abroad, and afterwards to smuggle in, Ireland during the seventeenth century was thrown nearly a couple of hundred years out of the world's course, by having to use manuscripts instead of printed books. It is curious to find O'Hussey compressing the Christian doctrine into two hundred and forty lines of the most accurate Deibhidh metre. When leaving for his foreign home he bade farewell to Erin in a poem of great beauty.
"Slowly pass my Aching Eye, Her Holy Hills of beauty Neath me TOSSING To and fro, Hoarse CRies the CROSSING billow.
"In another poem he laments sorely at leaving the poets and the schools "to try another trade," that of a cleric, which he says he does, not because he thinks less of poetry, or because the glory that was once to be had from it was departing amongst the people of Erin, but from religious motives alone.
"Now I stand to Try a Trade Mid Bardic Band less famèd Than the Part of Poet is Hacked is my Heart in pieces. 'Tis not that I Veer from Verse So Followed by my Fathers, Lest the fame it Once did Win In vain be Asked in Erin.
"Fearfeasa O'Cainti was another well-known poet of this period who attempted to rouse the Irish to action. Here are a few of his verses to the O'Driscoll—
"Many a Mulct—requite their sin— Fetch from them heir of Finnin; Spare not to SPURN the brute Gall To BURN the BEAR and jackal. Ruthless Rapine leads them on Slaying CHief CHild CHampion! BLood they BLINDLY spilt, no law BINDING their guilt in Banba. Pour their BLood to BLEND with blood, Conor HAND of Hardihood, CALL for ransom not my King; Slay ALL, be Untransacting. Lies they Lie! their Love is one With TReachery and TReason, Nay! thou Needest NOT my spur; Revenge is HOT, Remember!
"The quantity of verse composed in these classic metres all through the seventeenth century was enormous, and amounts to at least twenty thousand lines of the known poets not to speak of the anonymous ones. Not more than a dozen of them have ever been published, and yet no one can pretend to understand the inner history of Ireland at that period without a reference to them. Their chief characteristic is an intense compression which produces an air of weighty sententiousness. This was necessitated by the laws of their composition, which required at the end of every second line a break or suspension of the sense (such as in English would be usually expressed by a semi-colon or colon), and which absolutely forbade any carrying over of the sense from one stanza into another. Hence the thought of the poet had with each fresh quatrain to be concentrated into twenty-eight syllables (thirty syllables in Séadna metre), with a break or pause at the end of the fourteenth (or fifteenth). Accordingly O'Gnive calls the poets the "schoolmen of condensed speech," and the Scotch bard Mac Muirich in the Red Book of Clanranald speaks of Teig Dall O'H?ginn as putting into less than a half-rann what others would take a whole crooked stanza to express. The classical metres went, in Irish, under the generic name of Dán Direach, or "straight verse;" and O'Molloy, who wrote an Irish prosody in Latin in the seventeenth century, carried away by a contemplation of its difficulties, exclaims that it is "Omnium qu? unquam vidi vel audivi, ausim dicere qu? sub sole reperiuntur, difficilimum."
It was during the seventeenth century that the greatest change in the whole poetical system of the Irish and Scotch Gaels was accomplished, and that a new school of versification arose with new ideals, new principles, and new methods, which we shall briefly glance at in the following chapter.
********
His real name was Mac Brodin, "Daré" or Dairé being his father's name.
See above, p. 64.
See O'Flanagan's "Transactions of the Gaelic Society, 1808," p. 29.
"Ar ghrádh ar uamhan, ná ar fhuath
Ná beir (bi ad' bhreitheamh neamh-luath)
Breith nár chóir, a Dhonchadh, dhuit,
Ar chomhthaibh óir ná arguit."
This fine poem, containing in all 220 lines, was published by O'Flanagan in 1808.
"Tig díom da ndearntaoi m'fioghail
Gríosadh bhur ngruadh lasamhail,
Fios bhur gníomh a's gníomh bhur sean
Tig a sgrios díom no a ndidean."
From a MS. of my own; this poem contains a hundred lines.
"Ni bhi díon i ndiamhraibh gleann
Ná i bhfíodh dhlúith uaignach fhairseang,
Ná i múr caomh cneas-aolta cuir,
Ag fear m'easaonta ó'm armuibh.
Múchadh deigh-ghníomh, deargadh gruadh,
Toirmeasg ratha re diombuan,
Cur anma a's eachta ar fhear
Creachta ár n-airm-ne re n-áireamh."
"Tánac oidhche go h-Eas-Caoile
Budh cuimhin liom go lá an bhráith,
Mairfidh choidhche ár ndol do'n dún-sa
Cor na h-oidhche a's cúrsa cháich."
Metre Séadna.
"Tána, Tochmairc, Toghla an bheatha,
Do bhi 'san aiscidh fuair mé,
Mineachadh a gcath, 's a gcéimeann
Sgath rí-leabhar Eireann é."
"Samhail na bhfear fuaireas rómham
'San rath foirththe do b'úr niamh
Ar sleasaibh datha an dúin chorcra
Ni fhaca súil rompa riamh."
See Catalogue of Irish MSS. in British Museum.
It commences:—
"Sluagh seisir tháinig do m' thigh, Béarfad uaim iúl an tseisir, Tearc do lacht mé ar na mhárach O thart na ré selánach (i.e., bitheamhnach);
"and the last verse runs:—
"Guidhim Dia do dhóirt a fhuil O sé a mbás bheith na mbeathaidh, (Ni mhairid gar marthain sin!) Nár marbhthar an sluagh seisir.
"I.e., "I pray to God who poured his blood, since it is their death to be in life,—they do not live whose living is that of theirs!—may that crew of six be never slain"! This last poem of the unfortunate Teig Dall is preserved in H. 1. 17 T.C.D. f. 116, 6, whence I copied it, but it has lately been printed in the brilliantly descriptive Catalogue of the Irish MSS. in the British Museum.
I found this poem in a MS. in Trinity College, Dublin, written by one of the Maguires about the year 1700, but I forget its numbering. I quote the verse from memory:—
"Och gan mé i g Cúl O fhFinn Mar a bhfuil Tadhg O h-Uiginn, Dfheudfainn suan go seasgar ann Gan uamhain easgair orom.
"See Hardiman's "Irish Minstrelsy," vol. ii. p. 102. But it may not have been the same O'Gneev or O'Gnive, who laments Teig Dall, or if it was, he must have been a very old man, seeing he accompanied Shane O'Neill to London in 1562. His poem on the "Stepping-down of the Gael" has been spiritedly translated by Sir Samuel Ferguson, beginning—
"My heart is in woe, And my soul is in trouble, For the mighty are low, And abased are the noble.
"But the metre is the favourite and dignified Deibhidh.
"Oighidh Thaidhg dhuan-sgagtha Dhoill,
Eag Eochaigh mhic Mhaoilsheachlainn,
Tug draoithe Eireann fá oil,
Géibheann maoithe fa mhenmoin."
From a manuscript of my own. i.e., "The tragic-fate of Teig Dall, the Strainer-of-lays, the death of Eochaidh Mac Melaughlin has brought the druids (i.e., learned poets) of Ireland under reproach, and fetters of weakness on spirits."
This prince had also been eulogised by Teig Dall O'H?ginn in a poem of 164 lines, beginning Mairg fheuchas ar Inis Ceithlind, "Alas for him who beholds Enniskillen."
In the original—
"Fuar liom an oidhche-se d'Aodh! Cúis tuirse troime a cith-bhraon! Mo thruaighe sin d'ár seise Nimh fuaire na h-oidhche-se. Anocht is nimh lem' chridhe, Fearthar frasa teinntidhe, I gcómhdháil na gclá seacta Mar tá is orgráin aigeanta.
"The literal meaning of this last verse, which may be profitably compared with Mangan's translation, is, "This night it is venom to my heart how the fiery showers are rained down, in the company of the frozen spikes; how it is, is a horror to the mind." The next verse is also worth giving.
"Do h-osgladh as ochtuibh neóil Doirse uisgidhe an aidheóir, Tug sé minlinnte ann a muir, Do sgeith an firmiminta hurbhuidh.
"There has been thrown open, out of the bosom of the clouds, the doors of the waters of the air. It has made of little linns a sea; the firmament has belched forth her destructiveness. The metre of the last line in this verse is wrong, for it contains nine not seven syllables.
O'Reilly mentions eight Mac-an-bháirds or Wards, eleven O'Clerys, seven O'Coffeys, eight O'H?ginnses, nine O'Mulconrys and no less than twenty-eight O'Dalys, who were by far the most numerous and perhaps the ablest bardic tribe in all Ireland.
The metre of the original is hepta-syllabic, each line ending in a dissyllable, and there is no regular beat or accentuation in the verse, which though printed as a four-line stanza, would really run some way thus—
"Foobon on ye, Cringe cowards, Are your powers Departed? Galls your country Are tearing, Overbearing, Flint-hearted.
"The Irish themselves, either through the influence of English verse or through the natural evolution of the Irish language, changed this metre in the next century into one not unlike my English verses above.
This piece is taken from a manuscript of my own; I have never met this fine poem elsewhere. The word fooboon, upon which the changes are so rung, is new to me, and is not contained in any Irish or Scotch-Gaelic dictionary, the nearest approach to it is O'Reilly's fúbta, "humiliation"; but I find the words fubub fubub in the sense of "shame," "fy," in the Turner MS., "Reliqui? Celtic?," vol. ii. p. 325. The metre of this poem is Little Rannaigheacht, and the first verse runs thus—
"Fúbún fúibh a shluagh Gaoidheal Ni mhair aoin-neach agaibh Goill ag comh-roinn bhur gcríche Re sluagh sithe mar samhail.
"Literally: "Fooboon to you, O host of the Gaels, not a man of you is alive: the Galls are together-dividing your lands, while ye are like a fairy host. The Clan Carthy of Leath Mogha , and to call them out down to one man, there is not—and sad is the disgrace—one person of them imitating the Gaels," etc.
Yohy is the pronunciation of the Irish Eochaidh, genitive Eochach, or even Eathach. The Eochaidh here alluded to is Eochaidh Muigh-mhea-dhon , father of Niall of the Nine Hostages. He came to the throne in 356, and from his son Brian the O'Conors, O'Rorkes, O'Reillys, MacDermots, etc., of Connacht are descended, who all went under the generic name of the Ui Briain, as the families descended from his other son, Niall of the Nine Hostages are the Ui Neill. See above, pp. 33 and 34.
Bonnacht is a "mercenary soldier."
"O Néill Oiligh a's Eamhna
Ri Teamhrach agus Tailltean,
Tugsad ar iarlacht Uladh
Ríoghacht go h-úmhal aimhghlic."
I.e., "O'Neill of Aileach and of Emania, King of Tara and of Tailtinn, they have given away for the earldom of Ulster, a kingdom submissively unwisely."
Manus O'Donnell died in 1563, so that this poem must have been composed somewhat earlier.
This account of the later bardic schools is chiefly derived from a curious book, the "Memoirs of Clanrickard," printed in London in 1722.
Hence the bardic expression, "luidhe i leabaibh sgol," i.e., "to lie in the beds of the schools," equivalent to becoming a poet.
Campion, who wrote in 1574, says of the Irish of his day: "They speake Latine like a vulgar language learned in their schooles of Leachcraft and law, whereat they begin children and holde on sixteene or twentie yeares." After the Battle of the Curlew Mountains, MacDermot, anxious to let the Governor know where the body of Sir Conyers Clifford lay, wrote a note to him in Latin.
See above, pp. 518-523.
Of Little Rannaigheacht I gave an example a few pages back in the poem "Fooboon." Séadna was another great favourite, built on the model of the following verse, with or without alliteration—
"Teig of herds the Gallant Giver, Right receiver of our love, Teig thy Name shall KNow no ending, Branch un-Bending, Erin's glove.
"This verse runs rhythmically, but that it does so is only an accident. The Irish could always have got their Séadna verses, at least, of eight and seven syllables, to run smoothly if they had wished, but they did not. Here is a more Irish-like stanza in the same metre—
"Of / lowliness / came a / daughter, And / he who / brought her / was / God, Noble / her / son and / stately, Ennobling / greatly / this / sod.
"Great Séadna is the same metre as this, except that every verse ends with a word of three syllables. In Middle Séadna the first and third lines end in trisyllables, the second and fourth in dissyllables. Ae-fri-Slighe is like Middle Séadna, except that instead of the first and third lines being octosyllabic, they all have seven syllables, as—
"Ye who bring to slavery Men of mind and reading, God bring down your bravery, Leave you vexed and bleeding.
"Little Deachna is a pretty metre with five syllables to each line, as—
"God gives me three things, Them he brings all three When the soul is born Like a corn in me.
"Great Deachna contained eight and six syllables, each line ending in dissyllables—
"I believe this wafer holy, Which is safer surely, Flesh, blood, Godhead strangely mingled, In bread bodied purely.
"The above metres are a few of the most favourite.
"Mná módhach' go ngoimh ag gul,
Gan árach ar sgur d'á mbrón,
Caoi chadhain an oidhche fhuar
Is binne 'ná fuaim do shrón."
From a manuscript of my own, a comic poem by an anonymous bard, on a snoring companion.
Windisch appears to me to have come closest to the truth: "If we suppose," he says, "that the accented syllable coincides with the natural accent of the word, if we consider that polysyllabic words, besides having an accented syllable, can also have a semi-accented one (neben den Hauptton auch einen Nebenton haben k?nnen), finally, if we take it for granted that the syllables in which rhyme or alliteration appear must also bear the accent or up-beat of the voice (in der Hebung stehen mussen), we then at once come to the conclusion that each half-verse contains a specified number of accented syllables, without, however, any regular interchange of up and down beats of accented and unaccented syllables."—See "Irische Texte," I. i. p. 157.
Thus when O'Carolan, in the last century, made the extempore response to the butler who prohibited his entering the cellar
"Mo chreach a Dhiarmuid Ui Fhloinn Gan tu ar dorus ifrinn, 'S tu nach leigfeadh neach ad' chó'r 'San áit bheitheá do dhoirseóir.
"He spoke (perhaps unwittingly) an excellent Deibhidh stanza, but he never scanned it,
"Mó chreach / á Dhiar / múid Ui / Fhloínn Gan tu / ár dor / us if / rinn.
"He said,
"Mo chreách / a Dhíarmuid / Uí / Fhloínn Gan tú / ar dórus / ifrinn.
"So, too, in a rann I heard from a friend in the county Mayo, and printed in my "Religious Songs of Connacht," p. 232:—
"Ni meisge is miste liom Acht leisg a feicsint orom , Gan digh meisge's miste an greann Acht ni gnáth meisge gan mi-greann,
"which is not spoken as—
Ní meis / gé is / míste liom,
but as—
Ni / méisge / is míste / liom.
"Do chuadar as rinn mo ruisg
Do tholcha is áluinn éaguisg,
Is tuar orcra dá n-éisi
Dromla fhuar na h-aibheisi."
From a manuscript of my own.
"Ni fuath d'ealadhain m' aithreach
Thug fúm aigneadh aithrigheach,
No an ghlóir do gheibhthí dá chionn
Ar neimhuidh ó phór Eirionn."
From a manuscript of my own. This poem appears not to have been known to O'Reilly.
"Iomdha eiric nach í sin
Agad a oighre Fhinghin,
Gan séana ar garbh-amhsaibh Gall
Méala an t-amhgar-soin d'fhulang."
I.e., "Many an eric that is not that, to thee, O heir of Finneen, without refusing on the coarse-monsters of Galls: a grief to endure that affliction!" From a manuscript of my own. This poem was also unknown to O'Reilly. It consists of 180 lines, and begins Leó féin cuirid clann Iotha, i.e. "By themselves go the children of the Ithians," of whom the O'Driscolls were the chief tribe. For an account of the little band of Ithians, the fourth division of the Gaelic family see above, p. 67.
Since writing the above a German Celticist, Ludwig Christian Stern, has written a most interesting account of a collection of bardic poems, chiefly of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, now preserved in the Royal Library at Copenhagen. This interesting collection is chiefly dedicated to the praises of the Maguires of Fermanagh, and is the work of a number of accomplished poets, most of whom are unknown to O'Reilly, even by name. The whole collection contains 5,576 lines, of which Herr Julius Stern has printed about a thousand, thus having the honour of being the first to render accessible a fair specimen of the work of the current poetry of the schools in the sixteenth century. The characteristics of this poetry he appraises, very justly as I think, in the following words, "The language is choice and difficult, the poetry is of the traditional type, poor in facts, but elevated, stately, learned, and very artistic." See for this interesting article the "Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie," II. Band, 2 Heft., pp. 323-373, "Eine Sammlung irischer Gedichte in Kopenhagen."
"Ni mhair sgoluidhe sgéil teinn
D'uibh nDálaigh ná d'uibh n-Uiginn."
From a manuscript of my own.
"Reliqui? Celtic?," vol. ii. p. 297. Last stanza.
In poetry the external form, or framework, or setting of the poetic thought—the word-building in which the thought is enshrined—has varied vastly from age to age and from nation to nation. There is the system of the Greeks and Romans, according to which every syllable of every word is, as it were, hall-marked with its own "quantity," counted, that is, (often almost independently of the pronunciation) to be in itself either short or long, and their verse was made by special collocations of these short or long syllables—a form highly artistic and beautiful.
Then there is the principle of the Anglo-Saxon, Icelandic, and Teutonic peoples, which prevailed in England even down to the time of Chaucer, in which verse is marked only by accent and staff-rhyme, in other words is alliterative as in the "Book of Piers Ploughman."
Lastly, there is the rhymed poetry of the later Middle Ages, of which outside of Wales and Ireland there probably exists no example in a European vernacular language older than the ninth century. This system, apparently invented by the Celts, assumed in Ireland a most extraordinary and artificial form of its own, the essence of which was that they divided the consonants into groups, and any consonant belonging to a particular group was allowed to rhyme with any other consonant belonging to the same. Thus a word ending in t could rhyme with a word ending in p or c, but with no other; a word ending in b could rhyme with one ending in g or dy but with no other, and so on. Thus "rap" would have been considered by the Irish to make perfect rhyme with "sat" or "mac" but not with "rag"; and "rag" to make perfect rhyme with "slab" or "mad," but not with "cap," "sat" or "mac."
This classification of the consonants which was taught in the Irish schools for very many hundred years, and which forms the basis of the classical poetry which we spoke of in the last chapter, is to a considerable extent—I do not quite know how far—founded upon really sound phonological principles, and the ear of the Irishman was so finely attuned to it that no mistake was ever made, for while such rhymes as "Flann" and "ram" fell agreeably on his ear, any Irish poet for a thousand years would have shuddered to hear "Flann" rhymed with "raff." This accurate ear for the classification of consonants is now almost a lost sense, but even still traces of it may be found in the barbarous English rhymes of the Irish peasantry, as in such rude verses as this from the County Cavan—
"By loving of a maiD, One Catherine Mac CaBe, My life it was betrayeD, She's a dear maid on me.
"Or this—
"I courted lovely Mary at the age of sixteeN Slender was her waist and her carriage genteeL.
"Or this from the County Dublin—
"When you were an acorn on the tree toP Then was I an aigle coCK, Now that you are a withered ould bloCK Still am I an aigle cock.
"Or this from the County Cork—
"Sir Henry kissed behind the bush Sir Henry kissed the QuaKer; Well and what if he did Sure he didn't aTe her!
"Upon the whole, however, that keen perception for the nuances of sound, and that fine ear which insisted upon a liquid rhyming only with a fellow liquid, and so on of the other classes, may be considered as almost wholly lost.
We now come to the great breaking up and total disruption of the Irish prosody as employed for a thousand years by thousands of poets in the bardic schools and colleges. The principles of this great change may be summed up in two sentences; first, the adoption of vowel rhyme in place of consonantal rhyme; second, the adoption of a certain number of accents in each line in place of a certain number of syllables. These were two of the most far-reaching changes that could overtake the poetry of any country, and they completely metamorphosed that of Ireland.
It was only on the destruction of the great Milesian and Norman families in the seventeenth century, that the rules of poetry, so long and so carefully guarded in the bardic schools, ceased to be taught; and it was the break up of these schools which rendered the success of the new principles possible. A brilliant success they had. Almost in the twinkling of an eye Irish poetry completely changed its form and complexion, and from being, as it were, so bound up and swathed around with rules that none who had not spent years over its technicalities could move about in it with vigour, its spirit suddenly burst forth in all the freedom of the elements, and clothed itself, so to speak, in the colours of the rainbow. Now indeed for the first time poetry became the handmaid of the many, not the mistress of the few; and through every nook and corner of the island the populace, neglecting all bardic training, burst forth into the most passionate song. Now, too, the remnant of the bards—the great houses being fallen—turned instinctively to the general public, and threw behind them the intricate metres of the schools, and dropped too, at a stroke, several thousand words, which no one except the great chiefs and those trained by the poets understood, whilst they broke out into beautiful, and at the same time intelligible verse, which no Gael of Ireland and Scotland who has ever heard or learned it is likely ever to forget. This is to my mind perhaps the sweetest creation of all Irish literature, the real glory of the modern Irish nation, and of the Scottish Highlands, this is the truest note of the enchanting Celtic siren, and he who has once heard it and remains deaf to its charm can have little heart for song or soul for music. The Gaelic poetry of the last two centuries both in Ireland and in the Highlands is probably 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. Scores upon scores of new and brilliant metres made their appearance, and the common Irish of the four provinces deprived of almost everything else, clung all the closer to the Muse. Of it indeed they might have said in the words of Moore—
"Through grief and through danger thy smile has cheered my way Till hope seemed to bud from each thorn that round about me lay.
"It is impossible to convey any idea of this new outburst of Irish melody in another language. Suffice it to say that the principle of it was a wonderful arrangement of vowel sounds, so placed that in every accented syllable, first one vowel and then another fell upon the ear in all possible kinds of harmonious modifications. Some verses are made wholly on the á sound, others on the ó, ú, é, í sounds, but the majority on a wonderful and fascinating intermixture of two, three, or more. The consonants which played so very prominent a part under the old bardic system were utterly neglected now, and vowel sounds alone were sought for.
The Scottish Gaels, if I am not mistaken, led the way in this great change, which metamorphosed the poetry of an entire people in both islands. The bardic system, outside of the kingdom of the Lord of the Isles, had apparently scarcely taken the same hold upon the nobles, in Scotland as in Ireland, and the first modern Scotch Gaelic poet to start upon the new system seems to have been Mary, daughter of Alaster Rua MacLeod, who was born in Harris in 1569, and who appears to have possessed no higher social standing than that of a kind of lady nurse in the chief's family. If the nine poems in free vowel metres, which are attributed to her by Mackenzie in his great collection, be genuine, then I should consider her as the pioneer of the new school. Certainly no Irishman nor Irishwoman of the sixteenth century has left anything like Mary's metres behind them, and indeed I have not met more than one or two of them used in Ireland during that century. No one, for instance, would have dreamt of vowel-rhyming thus, as she does over the drowning of Mac'Illachallun:
"My grief my pain, Relief was vain The seething wave Did leap and rave, And reeve in twain, Both sheet and sail, And leave us bare And FOUNDERING. Alas, indeed, For her you leave Your brothers grief To them will cleave. It was on Easter Monday's feast The branch of peace Went DOWN WITH YOU.
"The earliest intimations of the new school in Ireland which I have been able to come across, occur towards the very close of the sixteenth century, one being a war ode on a victory of the O'Byrnes, and the other being an abhran or song addressed by a bard unknown to me, one John Mac Céibhfinn to O'Conor Sligo, apparently on his being blockaded by Red Hugh in the country of the Clan Donogh in 1599.
As for the classical metres of the schools they were already completely lost by the middle of the eighteenth century, and the last specimen which I have found composed in Connacht is one by Father Patrick O'Curneen, to the house of the O'Conors, of Belanagare, in 1734, which is in perfect Deibhidh metre.
"She who Rules the Race is one SPrung from the sparring Ternon, MARY MILD of MIEN O'Rorke, Our FAIRY CHILD QUEEN bulwark. Let me Pray the puissant one To Mark them in their Mansion, Guard from FEAR their FAME and wed Each YEAR their NAME and homestead.
"In Munster I find the poet Andrew Mac Curtin some time between the year 1718 and 1743, complaining to James Mac Donnell, of Kilkee, that he had to frame "a left-handed awkward ditty of a thing," meaning a poem of the new school; "but I have had to do it," he says, "to fit myself in with the evil fashion that was never practised in Erin before, since it is a thing that I see, that greater is the respect and honour every dry scant-educated boor, or every clumsy baogaire of little learning, who has no clear view of either alliteration or poetry, gets from the noblemen of the country, than the courteous very-educated shanachy or man of song, if he compose a well-made lay or poem." Nevertheless, he insists that he will make a true poem, "although wealthy men of herds, or people of riches think that I am a fool if I compose a lay or poem in good taste, that is not my belief. Although rich men of herds, merchants, or people who put out money to grow, think that great is the blindness and want of sense to compose a duan or a poem, they being well satisfied if only they can speak the Saxon dialect, and are able to have stock of bullocks or sheep, and to put redness on hills—nevertheless, it is by me understood that they are very greatly deceived, because their herds and their heavy riches shall go by like a summer fog, but the scientific work shall be there to be seen for ever," etc. The poem which he composed on that occasion was, perhaps, the last in Deibhidh metre composed in the province of Munster.
In Scotland the Deibhidh was not forgotten until after Sheriffmuir, in 1715. There is an admirable elegy of 220 lines in the Book of Clanranald on Allan of Clanranald, who was there slain. It is in no way distinguishable from an Irish poem of the same period. There are other poems in this book in perfect classical metres, for in the kingdom of the Lord of the Isles the bards and their schools may be said to have almost found a last asylum. Indeed, up to this period, so far as I can see,—whatever may have been the case with the spoken language—the written language of the two countries was absolutely identical, and Irish bards and harpers found a second home in North Scotland and the Isles, where such poems as those of Gerald, fourth Earl of Desmond, appear to have been as popular as they were in Munster. We may, then, place the generation that lived between Sheriffmuir and Culloden as that which witnessed the end of the classical metres in both countries, over all Ireland and Gaelic-speaking Scotland, from Sutherland in the North, to the County Kerry in the South, so that, from that day to this, vowel-rhyming accented metres which had been making their way in both countries from a little before the year 1600, have reigned without any rival.
Wonderful metres these were. Here is an example of one made on the vowels é and ó, but while the arrangement in the first half of the verse is o/é, é/o, é/o, o; the arrangement in the second half is o é, o é, o é, é. I have translated it in such a way as to mark the vowel rhymes, and this will show better than anything else the plan of Irish poetry during the last 250 years. To understand the scheme thoroughly the vowels must not be slurred over, but be dwelt upon and accentuated as they are in Irish.
"The pOets with lAys are uprAising their nOtes In amAze, and they knOw how their tOnes will delight, For the gOlden-hair lAdy so grAceful, so pOseful, So gAElic, so glOrious enthrOned in our sight UnfOlding a tAle, how the sOul of a fAy must Be clOthed in the frAme of a lAdy so bright, UntOld are her grAces, a rOse in her fAce is And nO man so stAid is but fAints at her sight.
"Here is another verse of a different character, in which three words follow each other in each line, all making a different vowel-rhyme.
"O swan brightly GLEAMING o'er ponds whitely BEAMING, Swim on lightly CLEAVING and flashing through sea, The wan night is LEAVING my fond sprite in GRIEVING Beyond sight, or SEEING thou'rt passing from me.
"Here is another typical verse of a metre in which many poems were made to the air of Moreen ni Cullenáin. It is made on the sounds of o, ee, ar—o, ar—o, repeated in the same order four times in every verse, the second and third o's being dissyllables. It is a beautiful and intricate metre.
"AlOne with mE a bARd rOving On guARd gOing ere the dawn, Was bOld to sEE afAR rOaming The stAR MOreen ni Cullenaun. The Only shE the ARch-gOing The dARk-flOwing fairy fawn, With sOulful glEE the lARks sOaring Like spARks O'er her lit the lawn.
"Here is another metre from a beautiful Scotch Gaelic poem. The Scotch Gaels, like the Irish, produced about the same time a wonderful outburst of lyric poetry worthy to take a place in the national literature beside the spirited ballads of the Lowlands. Unlike the Lowlands, however, neither they nor the Irish can be said to have at all succeeded with the ballad.
"To a fAR mountain hARbour Prince ChARlie came flYing, The wInds from the HIghlands Wailed wIld in the air, On his breast was no stAR, And no guARd was besIde him, But a girl by him glIding Who guIded him there. Like a rAy went the mAiden Still fAithful, but mOurning, For ChARlie was pARting From heARts that adOred him, And sIghing besIde him She spIed over Ocean The Oarsmen befOre them ApprOaching their lair.
"These beautiful and recondite measures were meant apparently to imitate music, and many of them are wedded to well-known airs. They did not all come into vogue at the same time, but reached their highest pitch of perfection and melody—melody at times exaggerated, too luscious, almost cloying—about the middle of the eighteenth century, at a time when the Irish, deprived by the Penal laws of all possibility of bettering their condition or of educating themselves, could do nothing but sing, which they did in every county of Ireland, with all the sweetness of the dying swan.
Dr. Geoffrey Keating, the historian, himself said to have been a casual habitué of the schools of the bards, and a close friend of many of the bardic professors, was nevertheless one of the first to wring himself free from the fetters of the classical metres, and to adopt an accented instead of a syllabic standard of verse. We must now go back and give some account of this remarkable man, and of some of his contemporaries of the seventeenth century.
********
Their classification was as follows:—
S stood by itself because of the peculiar phonetic laws which it obeys.
P.C.T. called soft consonants .
B.G.D. called hard consonants ,
F. CH. TH. called rough consonants.
LL. M. NN. NG. RR. called strong consonants.
Bh. Dh. Ch. Mh. L.N.R. called light consonants.
"Diese Klasseneinteilung bekundet einen feinen Sinn für das Wesen der Laute," says Herr Stern, in the article I have just quoted from. See also the prosody in O'Donovan's grammar.
"Eagle." This English rann dramatically denotes the longevity of that bird, as does also a well-known Irish one.
See for her poems "Sár-obair na mbárd Gaelach," by Mackenzie, p. 22. Unfortunately he gives us no full account of where the poems were collected, all he says is, "We have the authority of several persons of high respectability, and on whose testimony we can rely, that Mary McLeod was the veritable authoress of the poems attributed to her in this work." This is, in an important matter of the kind, very unsatisfactory, but Mary's poem, "An talla 'm bu ghná le MacLeód," seems to bear internal evidence of its own antiquity in its allusions to the chief's bow—
"Si do lámh nach robh tuisleach, Dol a chaitheadh a chuspair Led' bhogha cruaidh ruiteach deagh-neóil,
"to which she alludes again in the line—
Nuair leumadh an tsaighead ó do mheoir.
("When the arrow would leap from your fingers.")
There are some poems in the Book of Ballymote in almost the same metre as the well-known "Seaghan O'Duibhir an Ghleanna." This metre was technically called, "Ocht-foclach Corranach beag." O'Curry gives a specimen in "Manners and Customs," vol. iii. p. 393, from the Book of Ballymote which has an astonishingly modern air, and may well give pause to those who claim that Irish accentual poetry is derived from an English source.
This poem, which like O'Daly's war-song, is entirely accentual and vowel-rhyming, begins thus—
"A Bhratach ar a bhfaicim-se in gruaim ag fás Dob' annamh leat in eaglais do bhuan-choimheád, Da mairfeadh fear-seasta na gcruadh-throdán Feadh t'amhairc do bhiadh agat do'n tuaith 'na h-áit. O Flag, upon whom I see the melancholy growing, Seldom was it thy lot to constantly guard the church (shut up there); If there lived the man-who-withstood the hard conflicts Far-as-thy-eye-could-see thou wouldst have of the country in place of it
"(See Catalogue of the MSS. in the British Museum.)
The O'Curneens were, according to Mac Firbis's great Book of Genealogies, the hereditary poets and ollamhs of the O'Rorkes, with whom the O'Conors were closely related. The O'Conors' ollamh was O'Mulchonry.
This poem begins—
"Togha teaghlaigh tar gach tír Beul átha na gcárr gclaidh-mhín Múr is fáilteach re file An dún dáilteach deigh-inigh.
"I.e., "A choice hearth beyond every country, is the mouth of the ford of the cars , the smooth-ditched. A fortress welcome-giving to poet, the bestowing homestead of good generosity." The accented system had now been in vogue for nearly a century and a half, and if O'Curneen had wished to preserve an even rise and fall of accent in his verses (which he does do in his first line) he might have done so. That he did not do so, and that none of the straight-verse or classical poets attempted it, long after they had become acquainted with the other system, seems to me a strong proof that they did not intend it, and that they really possessed no system of "metrical accent" at all.
It is noticeable that O'Curneen wrote this poem in the difficult bardic dialect, so that Charles O'Conor of Belanagare, whose native language was Irish, was obliged in his copy to gloss over twenty words of it with more familiar ones of his own. These uncommon bardic terms were wholly thrown aside by the new school.
His poem with its prose Irish preface is addressed to Sorley Mac Donnell, and Isabel, his wife, who was an O'Brien. They were married in 1718, and Mac Donnell died in 1743. See a collection of poems written by the Clare bards in honour of the Mac Donnells of Kilkee and Killone, in the County of Clare, collected and edited by Brian O'Looney for Major Mac Donnell, for private circulation in 1863.
"Nach léir dó uaim no aisde."
I have since, however, found a poem by Micheál óg O'Longain, written as late as 1800, which goes somewhat close to real Deibhidh. It begins—
"Tagraim libh a Chlann éibhir, Leath bhur lúith nach lán léir libh Méala dhaoibh thar aoin eile A dul d'éag do'n gaoidheilge.
"Cameron's "Reliqui? Celtic?," vol. ii. p. 248.
This is a poem by the Cork bard, Tadhg Gaolach O'Sullivan, who died in 1800. He wrote this poem in his youth, before his muse gave itself up, as it did in later days, to wholly religious subjects. In the original the rhymes are on é and ú.
"Taid éigse 'gus úghdair go trúpach ag pléireacht So súgach, go sgléipeach 's a ndréachta dá snígheam Ar Spéir-bhruinnioll mhúinte do phlúr-sgoth na h-éireann Do úr-chriostal gAOlach a's réiltion na righeacht; Ta fiúnn-lil ag pléireacht mar dhúbha ar an éclips, Go clúdaighthe ag Phoébus, le AOn-ghile gnaoi, 'Sgur'na gnúis mhilis léightear do thúirling Cupid caémh-ghlic Ag múchadh 'sag milleadh lAOchra le trEan-neart a shaoighid.
""D' easgadh an pheacaidh, fóríor,
Do sheól sinn faoi dhlighthibh námhad,
Gan flathas Airt, ag pór Gaoidheal,
Gan seóid puinn, gan cion gan áird,
'Sgach bathlach bracach beól-bhuidhe
De'n chóip chríon do rith thar sáil
I gceannas fla?th 's i gcóimh-thigheas
Le Móirín ni Chuillionáin."
This is a verse from the same poem, but not the one above translated.
See "Eachtraidh a' Phrionnsa le Iain Mac Coinnich," p. 270. The poem is by D. B. Mac Leóid. It looks like a later production, but will exemplify a not uncommon metre.
Gu cladach a' chuàin
Ri fuar-ghaoth an Anmoich
Thriall TeArlach gan deAllradh
Air Allaban 's e sgìth,
Gun reull air a bhroIlleach
No freIceadan a fAlbh leis
Ach ainnir nan gòrm-shul
Bu dealbhaiche lìth.
Mar dhaoimean 'san oidhche
Bha(n) mhaighdean fu thùrsa
Si cràiteach mu Thearlach
Bhi fàgail a dhùthcha;
Bu trom air a h-osna,
S bu ghoirt deòir a sùilean
Nuair chonnaic i 'n iùbhrach
A' dlùthadh re tìr.
During the first half of the seventeeth century, the Irish, heavily handicapped as they were, and deprived of the power of printing, nevertheless made tremendous efforts to keep abreast of the rest of Europe in science and literature. It was indeed an age of national scholarship which has never since been equalled. It was this half century that produced in rapid succession Geoffrey Keating, the Four Masters, and Duald Mac Firbis, men of whom any age or country might be proud, men who amid the war, rapine, and conflagration, that rolled through the country at the heels of the English soldiers, still strove to save from the general wreck those records of their country which to-day make the name of Ireland honourable for her antiquities, traditions, and history, in the eyes of the scholars of Europe.
Of these men, Keating, as a prose writer, was the greatest. He was a man of literature, a poet, professor, theologian, and historian, in one. He brought the art of writing limpid Irish to its highest perfection, and ever since the publication of his history of Ireland some two hundred and fifty years ago, the modern language may be said to have been stereotyped.
Born in Tipperary, not of a native Irish, but of an ancient Norman family, as he takes care to inform us, he was at an early age sent to the Continent to be educated for the priesthood. There in the cloisters of some foreign seminary his young heart was early rent with accounts of robbery, plunder, and confiscation, as chieftain after chieftain was driven from his home and patrimony, and compelled to seek asylum and shelter from the magnanimous Spaniard. "The same to me," cries, in the hexameter of the Gael, some unhappy wanderer contemporaneous with Keating, driven to find refuge where he could, "the same to me are mountain or ocean, Ireland or the West of Spain, I have shut and made fast the gates of sorrow over my heart." And there was scarcely a noble family in any corner of the island whose members might not have repeated the same. At this particular period there were few priests of note who had not received a foreign education, and few of the great houses who had not the most intimate relations with France and Spain: indeed in the succeeding century these two countries, especially France, stood to the Irish Celts in nearly the same familiar relation as England does at present.
After his return from Spain, Keating, now a doctor of divinity, was appointed to a church in Tipperary, where his fame as a preacher soon drew crowds together. Amongst these arrived one day—unluckily for Keating, but luckily for Ireland—a damsel whose relations with the English Lord President of Munster were said not to bear the strictest investigation, and it so chanced that the preacher's subject that day was the very one which, for good reasons, least commended itself to the lady. All eyes were directed against her, and she, returning aggrieved and furious, instigated Carew to at once put the anti-Popery laws in execution against Keating.
The difficulties which the learned men of Ireland had to fight their way through, even from the first quarter of the seventeenth century, have scarcely been sufficiently understood or appreciated, but they are well illustrated in the case of Keating. It is usually assumed that the Penal laws did not begin to operate to the intellectual ruin of the Irish until the eighteenth century. But, in truth, the paths of learning and progress were largely barred by them after the first quarter of the seventeenth century. Already, as early as 1615, King James had issued a commission to inquire into the state of education in Ireland, and the celebrated Ussher, then Chancellor of St. Patrick's, was placed at the head of it. Ussher was far and away the greatest scholar of the Pale in the seventeenth century, and his efforts in the cause of Irish antiquities have received deserved recognition from all native writers, and yet even Ussher appears to have shut up remorselessly the native schools wherever he found them, on the ground that the teachers did not conform to the established religion. Here is how he acted towards the father of the celebrated John Lynch, the learned antiquarian and author of the "Cambrensis Eversus," who was at the head of a native college in Galway.
"We found," says Ussher, "at Galway a publique schoolmaster, named Lynch, placed there by the cittizens, who had great numbers of schollers not only out of the province but (even), out of the 'Pale' and other partes resorting to him. Wee had proofe during our continuance in that citty, how his schollers proffitted under him by the verses and orations which they presented us. Wee sent for that schoolemaster before us, and seriously advised him to conform to the religion established; and not prevailing with our advices, we enjoyned him to forbear teaching; and I, the Chancellour, did take recognizance of him and some others of his relatives in that citty, in the sum of 400 li sterling to his Majesty's use, that from thenceforth he should forbeare to teach any more, without the speciall license of the Lord Deputy."
Twelve years later we find this enlightened and really great scholar lending all his authority to a pronouncement headed: "The judgment of divers of the Archbishops and Bishops of Ireland concerning toleration of Religion," in which he thus delivers himself:—
"The religion of the Papists is superstitious and idolatrous, their faith and doctrine erroneous and heretical; their church in respect of both apostatical. To give them therefore a toleration is to consent that they may freely exercise their religion and profess their faith and doctrine, and is a grievous sin, and that in two respects:
"1. It is to make ourselves accessory not only to their superstitious idolatries and heresies, and in a word to all the abominations of Popery, but also (which is a consequent of the former) to the perdition of the seduced people which perish in the deluge of the Catholick apostacy.
"2. To grant them toleration in respect of any money to be given or contribution to be made by them, is to set religion at sale, and with it the souls of the people whom Christ our Saviour hath redeemed with His most precious blood," etc.
This document was signed by James Ussher, of Armagh, Primate, with eleven other bishops, and promulgated on the 23rd of April, 1627.
It may have been in consequence of the fresh fillip thus given to a policy which had till then been largely in abeyance—for fear of provoking physical resistance—that Carew, already incited against Keating by his lady friend, sent out a force of soldiers to seize him and bring him a prisoner into Cork. Keating, however, received information of the design, and fled into the famous Glen of Aherlow, where he remained for some years effectually hidden. It was at this time, that finding himself unable to continue his priestly labours, he conceived the ambitious design of writing a history of Ireland from the earliest times down to the Norman Conquest. In pursuance of this intention he is said to have travelled in disguise up and down through the island to consult the ancient vellum books, at that time still preserved in the families of the hereditary brehons or in the neighbourhood of the ancient monasteries, which are said to have been everywhere gladly shown to him except in the province of Connacht and parts of Ulster, where some of the old families refused to allow him to inspect their books because he was a Norman by race and not a Gael!
"I conceive," says Keating, in his preface, "that my testimony ought the more readily to be admitted from the fact that I treat therein more particularly of the Gaels, and if any man deem that I give them too much credit, let him not imagine that I do so through partiality, praising them more than is just through love of my own kindred, for I belong, according to my own extraction, to the Old Galls or the Anglo-Norman race. I have seen that the natives of Ireland are maligned by every modern Englishman who speaks of the country. For this reason, being much grieved at the unfairness those writers have shown to Irishmen, I have felt urged to write a history of Ireland myself."
The value of Keating's history is very great to the student of Irish antiquity, not because of any critical faculty on the part of Keating himself, for (perhaps luckily) this was a gift he was not endowed with, but on account of the very lack of it. What Keating found in the old vellums of the monasteries and the brehons, as they existed about the year 1630—they have, many of them, perished since—he rewrote and redacted in his own language like another Herodotus. He invents nothing, embroiders little. What he does not find before him, he does not relate, ο?δε γαρ ο?ν λ?γεται, as is the formula of Herodotus. He composed his history in the south of Ireland, at nearly the same time that the Four Masters in the north of Ireland were collecting the materials for their annals, and though he wrote currente calamo, and is in matters of fact less accurate than they are, yet his history is an independent compilation made from the same class of ancient vellums, often from the very same books from which they also derived their information, and it must ever remain a co-ordinate authority to be consulted by historians along with them and the other annalists.
The opening words of his history may serve as a specimen of his style. It begins thus—
"Whoever sets before him the task of inquiring into and investigating the history and antiquity of any country, ought to adopt the mode that most clearly explains its true state, and gives the most correct account of its inhabitants. And because I have undertaken to write and publish a history of Ireland, I deem myself obliged to complain of some of the wrongs and acts of injustice practised towards its inhabitants, as well towards the Old Galls , who have been in possession of the country for more than four centuries since the English invasion, as towards the Gaels themselves, who have owned it for three thousand years. For there is no historian who has written upon Ireland since the English invasion, who does not strive to vilify and calumniate both Anglo-Irish colonists and the Gaelic natives. We have proofs of this in the accounts of the country given by Cambrensis, Spenser, Stanihurst, Hanmer, Camden, Barclay, Morrison, Davis, Campion, and all the writers of the New Galls who have treated of this country. So much so that when they speak of the Irish one would imagine that these men were actuated by the instinct of the beetle; for it is the nature of this animal, when it raises its head in the summer, to flutter about without stooping to the fair flowers of the meadow or to the blossoms of the garden—not though they be all roses and lilies—but it bustles hurriedly around until it meets with some disgusting ordure, and it buries itself therein. So it is with the above-named writers. They never allude to the virtues and the good customs of the old Anglo-Irish and Gaelic nobility who dwelt in Ireland in their time. They write not of their piety or their valour, or of what monasteries they founded, what lands and endowments they gave to the Church, what immunities they granted to the ollamhs, their bounty to the ecclesiastics and prelates of the Church, the relief they afforded to orphans and to the poor, their munificence to men of learning, and their hospitality to strangers, which was so great that it may be said, in truth, that they were not at any time surpassed by any nation of Europe in generosity and hospitality, in proportion to the abilities they possessed. Witness the meetings of the learned which they used to convene, a custom unheard of amongst other nations of Europe. And yet nothing of all this can be found in the English writers of the time, but they dwell upon the customs of the vulgar, and upon the stories of ignorant old women, neglecting the illustrious action of the nobility, and all that relates to the ancient Gaels that inhabited this island before the invasion of the Anglo-Normans."
Keating's history was perhaps the most popular book ever written in Irish, and, as it could not be printed, it was propagated by hundreds of manuscript copies all over the island. He is the author of two other voluminous books of a theological and moral nature, called the "Key to the Shield of the Mass," and the "Three Shafts of Death." Keating was witty, and very fond of a good story. Here is a specimen which I translate from his latter work. Pirates were a familiar feature in the life of Keating's day, and he tells the following amusing tale of one engaged in this trade, probably an O'Driscoll. Talking of the fruit of this world Keating remarks that though it tastes sweet it ends bitterly.
THE STORY OF MAC RAICíN.
"I think it happens to many a one in this world as it did to the wild and ignorant Kerne from the west of Munster who went aboard a warship to seek spoils on the ocean. And he put ashore in England, and at the first town that they met on land the townspeople came to welcome them and bring them to their houses to entertain them, for the people of the town were mostly innkeepers. And the Kerne wondered at their inviting himself, considering that he did not know any of them. But he himself and some of the people who were with him went to the house of one of them, to the inn, and the people of the house were very kind to them for a week, so that what between the cleanliness of the abode, and the excellence of his bed, food, and drink, the Kerne thought his position a delightful one.
"However, when he and his company were taking their leave the innkeeper called the accountant he had, saying, 'make reckoning' that means in Irish, 'pay your bill,' and with that the accountant came, and he commenced to strip the people so that they were obliged to give full payment for everything they had had in the house while there, and they were left bare when they went away. And, moreover, the Kerne wondered what was the cause of himself and the others being plundered like that, for before this he had never known food to be bought or sold.
"And when he came to Erin his friends began asking him to give an account of England. He began to tell them, and said that he never did see a land that was better off for food and drink, fire and bedding, or more pleasant people, and I don't know a single fault about it, says he, except that when strangers are taking leave of the people who entertain them, there comes down on them an infernal horrid wretch that they call Mac Rakeen (make reckoning) who handles strangers rudely, and strips and spoils them."
Keating then draws the moral in his own way, "that land of England is the world; the innkeepers, the world, the flesh, and the devil; the Kerne, people in general; and Mac Rakeen the Death."
During the time when Keating was in hiding he is said to have visited Cork and to have transcribed manuscripts which he required for the purposes of his history almost under the very eyes of the Lord President himself, and to have visited Dublin in the same manner. After the departure of Carew he reappeared, and seems to have died quietly as parish priest of Tubrid in Tipperary about the year 1650.
Almost every native scholar produced by Ireland during the seventeenth century seems to have been hampered by persecution in the same way as Keating, and loud and bitter were the complaints of the Irish at the policy of the English Government in cutting them off from education. Peter Lombard, the Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, who died in 1625, and who wrote in Latin and published—of course abroad, he would not well do it at home—a "Commentary on the Kingdom of Ireland," assures his countrymen and all Europe that it had been the steady plan of the English Government to cut off education from the Irish, and to prevent them having a university of their own, despite the keen longing which his countrymen had for liberal studies, and the way in which they had always hitherto distinguished themselves in them. Even, he asserts, whilst England was still Catholic, her policy had been the same, and when the question of an Irish university was being debated in the English Council it had no bitterer enemy than a celebrated Catholic bishop. When some one afterwards remonstrated with this dignitary for opposing a work at once so holy and so salutary as the establishment of a Catholic university in Ireland, the answer made him was that it was not as a Catholic bishop he opposed it, but as an English senator. "Well for him," remarks Lombard grimly, "if in the council of God and his saints, when the severe sentence of the Deity is passed upon the bishop, the senator by a like display of nimble wit may escape it."
When the university, so long and so anxiously sought for, was actually founded, "most capacious, most splendid," as Lombard puts it, at their expense, in the shape of Trinity College, Dublin, and they found themselves excluded from its benefits, their indignation, as expressed by Lombard and others, knew no bounds. But their indignation was of little use, because they could not back it by their arms, and when they did so, they were beaten by Cromwell, and their last state rendered twenty times worse than their first.
Mac Firbis was another native Irish author of great learning who wrote in Irish contemporaneously with Keating. He was himself descended from Dathi, the last pagan monarch of Ireland, and his family had been for time out of mind the hereditary historians of North Connacht. The great Book of Lecan was compiled by one of his ancestors. His own greatest surviving work is his Book of Genealogies which contains enough to fill thirteen hundred pages of O'Donovan's edition of the "Four Masters." This he compiled during the horrors of the Cromwellian war, simply as a labour of love, and in the hope that at least the names and genealogies of the nation might be saved to posterity out of what then seemed the ruin of all things. Another book of his was a catalogue of Irish writers. Mac Firbis mentions that even in his own day he had known Irish chieftains who governed their clans according to the "words of Fithal and the Royal Precepts," that is, according to the books of the Brehon law. He also compiled or wrote out the "Chronicon Scotorum," apparently from old manuscripts preserved in his family. He compiled, too, a glossary of the ancients laws, of which only a fragment exists, and made copies of five other ancient glossaries and law tracts. He says himself, in his Book of Genealogies, that he had compiled a dictionary of the Brehon laws in which he had given extensive explanations of them. His genealogical volume is divided into nine books. The first treats of Partholan, the second of the Nemedians, the third of the Firbolg, the fourth of the Tuatha De Danann, the fifth of the Milesians, chiefly the Eremonians, the sixth of the Irians and the Eremonian tribes that went under the generic name of the Dal Fiatach, the seventh of the Eberians and of the Ithians of Munster, the eighth of the Saints of Ireland, and the ninth and last treats ot the families descended from the Fomorians, Danes, Saxons, and Anglo-Normans.
"Here," says Mac Firbis, "is the distinction which the profound historians draw between the three different races which are in Erin. Every one who is white of skin, brown of hair, bold, honourable, daring, prosperous, bountiful in the bestowal of property wealth and rings, and who is not afraid of battle or combats, they are the descendants of the sons of Milesius in Erin.
"Every one who is fair-haired, vengeful, large, and every plunderer, every musical person, the professors of musical and entertaining performances, who are adepts in all druidical and magical arts, they are the descendants of the Tuatha De Danann in Erin.
"Every one who is black-haired, who is a tattler, guileful, tale-telling, noisy, contemptible, every wretched, mean, strolling, unsteady, harsh, and inhospitable person, every slave, every mean thief, every churl, every one who loves not to listen to music and entertainment, the disturbers of every council and every assembly, and the promoters of discord among people, these are of the descendants of the Firbolg, of the Gailiuns, of Liogairné, and of the Fir Domhnann in Erin. But, however, the descendants of the Firbolg are the most numerous of all these.
"This is taken from an old book. And, indeed, that it is possible to identify a race by their personal appearance and dispositions I do not take upon myself positively to say, for it may have been true in the ancient times, until the race became repeatedly intermixed. For we daily see even in our own time, and we often hear it from our old men, that there is a similitude of people, a similitude of form, character, and names in some families of Erin compared with others."
Mac Firbis's book, which is an enlarged continuation down to the year 1650 or so, of the genealogical trees contained in the Books of Leinster, Ballymote, and Lecan, is as O'Curry remarks, perhaps the greatest national genealogical compilation in the world, and it is sad to think that almost every tribe and family of the many thousands mentioned in this great work has either been utterly rooted out and exterminated, or else been dispersed to the four winds of heaven, and the entire genealogical system and tribal polity, kept with such care for fifteen hundred years, has disappeared off the face of the earth with the men who kept it.
Lughaidh O'Clery, the great northern poet, ollamh and historian of the O'Donnells, who, in the "Contention of the Bards" opposed Mac Dairé, lived somewhat earlier than Keating and Mac Firbis. He has left behind him, written in the difficult archaic Irish of the professional ollamhs, an interesting life of Red Hugh O'Donnell, giving the history of the time from 1586 to 1602, with a full account of his hero's birth, his treacherous capture and confinement in Dublin Castle, his escape and recapture, his second escape, and the hardships he underwent in returning to his people in Donegal, his inauguration as the O'Donnell, and his "crowded hour of glorious life," until his death at Simancas in 1608, poisoned as we now know almost to a certainty, from the publication of the State Papers, by an emissary of Mountjoy the Lord Deputy, and Carew the President of Munster. Of this, however, Lughaidh O'Clery had no suspicion, he only tells of the sudden and unexpected sickness which overtook O'Donnell and killed him after sixteen days, to the utter ruin of the cause of Ireland. Here is his account, which I give as a specimen of his style, of O'Donnell's preparations before the Battle of the Curlews:
"The occupation of O'Donnell's forces during the time that he was in this monastery was exercising themselves and preparing for the fight and for the encounter which they were called to engage in. They were cleaning and getting ready their guns, and drying and exposing to the sun their grain powder, and filling their pouches, and casting their leaden bullets and heavy spherical balls, sharpening their strong-handled spears and their war-pikes, polishing their long broadswords and their bright-shining axes, and preparing their arms and armour and implements of war."
O'Donnell's address to his soldiers is quite differently recorded from the way in which O'Sullivan Beare relates it; it is much less ornate and eloquent, but is probably far more nearly correct, for Lughaidh O'Clery may very well have heard it delivered himself, and it had not passed with him through the disfiguring medium of the Latin language.
"We, though a small number," said O'Donnell, "are on the side of the right as it seems to us, and the English whose number is large are on the side of robbery, in order to rob you of your native land and your means of living, and it is far easier for you to make a brave, stout, strong fight for your native land and your lives whilst you are your own masters and your weapons are in your hands, then when you are put into prison and in chains after being despoiled of your weapons, and when your limbs are bound with hard, tough cords of hemp, after being broken and torn, some of you half dead, after you are chained and taken in crowds on waggons and carts through the streets of the English towns through contempt and mockery of you. My blessing upon you, true men. Bear in your minds the firm resolution that you had when such insults and violence were offered to you (as was done to many of your race) that this day is the day of battle which you have needed to make a vigorous fight in defence of your liberty by the strength of your arms and by the courage of your hearts, while you have your bodies under your own control and your weapons in your hands. Have no dread nor fear of the great numbers of the soldiers of London, nor of the strangeness of their weapons and arms, but put your hope and confidence in the God of glory. I am certain if ye take to heart what I say the foreigner must be defeated and ye victorious."
O'Clery's summing up of the effects of the fatal battle of Kinsale, almost the only battle in which the Irish were defeated throughout the whole war, is pathetic.
"Though there fell," he writes, "but so small a number of the Irish in that battle of Kinsale, that they would not perceive their absence after a time, and, moreover, that they did not perceive it themselves then, yet there was not lost in one battle fought in the latter times in Ireland so much as was lost then.
"There was lost there, first, that one island which was the richest and most productive, the heat and cold of which were more temperate than in the greater part of Europe, in which there was much honey and corn and fish, many rivers, cataracts, and waterfalls, in which were calm productive harbours, qualities which the first man of the race of Gaedhal Glas, son of Niall, who came to Ireland beheld in it.... There were lost, too, those who escaped from it of the free, generous, noble-born descendants of the sons of Milesius and of the prosperous, impetuous chiefs, of the lords of territories and tribes, and of the chieftains of districts and cantreds, for it is absolutely certain that there were never in Erin at any time together men who were better and more famous than the chiefs who were then, and who died afterwards in other countries one after the other, after their being robbed of their fatherland and their noble possessions which they left to their enemies on that battlefield. Then were lost besides, nobility and honour, generosity and great deeds, hospitality and goodness, courtesy and noble birth, polish and bravery, strength and courage, valour and constancy, the authority and the sovereignty of the Irish of Erin to the end of time."
An interesting prose work, evidently written by an eye-witness, exists of the wanderings of O'Neill and O'Donnell upon the Continent after they had fled from Ireland in 1607. It describes how they were driven by a storm past Sligo harbour and past the Arran islands, where they were unable to land for fear of the king's shipping then in Galway bay. For thirteen days they were hurried along by a tremendous storm. The narrator notes a curious incident which took place during the rough weather at open sea: two merlin falcons descended and alit upon the ship, which were caught by the sailors who kept and fed them; they were ultimately given by O'Neill to the governor of a French town. After long buffeting by the storm and after hopelessly losing their way they fell in with three Danish ships who informed them that they were in Flemish waters. They were afterwards nearly wrecked on the coast of Guernsey, and finally, after twenty-one days at sea, they managed with the utmost difficulty to put in at "Harboure de Grace," on the French coast, just as their provisions had run out. Their reception by the French king, the machinations of the English ambassador against them, and their journey into Spain are minutely described, evidently by some one who had been in their own company, probably a Franciscan friar. Their life and adventures in Spain are minutely recounted down to the period of O'Donnell's death, who was treacherously poisoned by an emissary from Carew, the President of Munster, with the sanction of Mountjoy, the Lord Deputy. It is noticeable that the Irish biographer entertained no suspicion of this foul crime, which has, as we have said, only come to light through the publication of the State Papers during the last few years.
Another curious piece of historical narrative by a religious is the account given of the Irish wars from November, 1641, to January, 1647, by a northern friar called O'Mellon, who was an eye-witness of much of what he relates.
Of a somewhat similar nature is the interesting account of Montrose's wars in the Book of Clanranald, a manuscript written in pure Irish and in Irish characters, by a Gael from the Islands, Niall Mac Vurich, the hereditary bard and historian of the Clanranald. The Mac Vurichs, who are descended from a celebrated bard, Muireach O'Daly, who fled into Scotland from O'Donnell about the year 1200, enjoyed the farm of Stailgarry and the "four pennies of Drimsdale, in South Uist, down to the middle of the last century, by virtue of their hereditary office." The object of Mac Vurich in writing the history of Montrose's campaign is to vindicate and extol the career of Alaster Mac Donald and the Gael. "Nothing," says the writer, "is here written except of the people whom I have seen myself and with a part of whose deeds I am acquainted from my own recollection." He gives detailed accounts of several of Montrose's battles in which the Gael, Irish and Scottish, were engaged. His account of the fight of Auldearn is an interesting specimen of his style. He tells us how Alaster Mac Donald, son of Coll Ciotach, son of Gillespie, commanded on the right of the army that day, and was in the act of marshalling his foot when
"a gentleman from Lord Gordon came with a message to him and spoke in this manner: 'Mac Donald, we have heard that there was an agreement and a friendship between our ancestors, and that they did not strike a blow against one another, whatever strife might have been between the other Scots and them; neither was the fame of any other tribe for valour greater than theirs; therefore, by way of renewing the agreement, I would wish to receive a favour from you, namely, an exchange of foot on the first day of my service to my earthly king, that is, you taking my foot forces and you sending me your own.
"That (arrangement) was promptly carried out by Alaster, son of Colla. He sent four score and ten of the veteran soldiers who had often been tested in great dangers in many places; and there came in their stead three hundred foot of the men of the Bog of Gight, Strathbogey, and the Braes, who were not accustomed to skirmishing, hard conflict, or the loud, harsh noise of battle. Although that was a bad exchange for Alaster it was good for his men, for they were never in any battle or skirmish from which they came safer—it seemed to them that the cavalry of the Gordons had no duty to perform but to defend the foot from every danger!
"Alaster drew up his men in a garden which they had come to, and he found that there remained with him of his own men but two score and ten of his gentlemen. He put live and twenty of these in the first rank, and five and twenty of them in the rear rank, and drew up his three hundred foot of the Gordons in their midst and marched before them. The men who opposed him were the regiment of the laird of Lawers, well-trained men, and the gentlemen of Lewis along with them. The clamour of the fight began as is usual in every field of battle, which the foot who were behind Alaster son of Colla, could not well endure, for some of them would not hear the sough of an arrow or the whistling of a ball without ducking their heads or starting aside. Alaster's defence was to go backwards, beckoning to his party with his hand to be of good courage and march on quickly while his gentlemen were entirely engaged in keeping their companies in order, but they failed to do it; and I knew men who killed some of the Gordons' foot in order to prevent them from flying. And when the enemy perceived this they prepared to attack them and charge. Alaster ordered his men then to gain the garden which they had forsaken before, but they were attacked with pikes and arrows and many of them were slain on every side of the garden before the party got into it. Alaster's sword broke, and he got another sword into his hand, and he did not himself remember who gave it to him, but some persons supposed it was his brother-in-law, Mac Cáidh of Ardnacross, who gave him his own sword. Davidson , Feardorcha Mackay, and other good gentlemen fell at that time at the entrance of the garden who were waiting to have Alaster in before them."
Mac Vurich goes on to describe what happened to one of Alaster's gentlemen, Ranald Mac Ceanain of Mull, who found himself assailed by numbers of the enemy on the outside of this garden.
"He turned his face to his enemy, his sword was round his neck, his shield on his left arm, and a hand-gun in his right hand. He pointed the gun at them, and a party of pikemen who were after him halted. There happened to be a narrow passage before them, and on that account there was not one of his own party that had been after him but went before him. There was a great slaughter made of the Gordons' foot by the bowmen. It happened at that moment that a bowman was running past Ranald, and he shooting at the Gordons. The bowman looked over his shoulder and saw the halt to which Ranald had brought the pikemen, and he turned his hand from the man that was before him, and aimed his arrow at Ranald, which struck him on the cheek, and he sent a handbreadth of it through the other cheek. Then Ranald fired the shot, but not at the bowman. He threw the gun away and put the hand to his sword, whilst his shield-arm was stretched far out from him in front, to defend himself against the pikes. He made an effort to get the sword, but it would not draw, for the belt turned round, and the sword did not come out. He tried it the second time by laying the shield-hand under his armpit against the scabbard of the sword, and he drew it out, but five pikes were driven into him between the breast and chin on his thus exposing (?) himself. However, not one of the wounds they gave him was an inch deep. He was for a while at this work, cutting at the pikes, and at all that were stuck in the boss of the shield. He set his back against the garden to defend himself, and was with difficulty working his way towards the door. The pikemen were getting daunted by all that were being cut, except one man who was striking at him desperately and fiercely. That man thought that he would keep his pike from being cut, and that his opponent would fall by him. Ranald was listening all the time to Alaster (inside the wall) rating the Gordons for the bad efforts they were making to relieve himself from the position where he was, and he was all the time step by step making for the door of the garden. At last when he thought that he was near the door he gave a high ready spring away from the pikeman, turning his back to him and his face to the door, stooping his head. The pikeman followed him and stooped his own head under the door, but Alaster was watching them and he gave the pikeman a blow, so that though he turned quickly to get back, his head struck against Ranald's thigh, from the blow Alaster gave him, and his body falls in the doorway and his head in the garden, and when Ranald straightened his back and looked behind him to the door, it was thus he beheld his adversary. The arrow that was stuck in Ranald was cut, and it was taken out of him, and he got it drawn away, and he found the use of his tongue all right, and power of speech—a thing he never thought to get again."
This book, which is in pure Irish, was meant to be read not only by the Highland Gaels, but by Irishmen as well, and indeed the Black Book of Clanranald was picked up on a second-hand bookstall in Dublin.
There were several other prose writers during the seventeenth century, whose books, unlike those of Keating, Mac Firbis, O'Clery, and others we have mentioned, had the good fortune to be printed, but their works are mostly religious. Florence Conry published in 1626 at Louvain a book called "the Mirror of the Pious"; Hugh Mac Cathmhaoil, Archbishop of Armagh, published in 1618, also at Louvain, a book called "the Mirror of the Sacrament of Penance"; Theobald Stapleton published at Brussels in 1639, a "Book of Christian Doctrine," one side Latin and the other Irish; Anthony Gernon published at Louvain in 1645, a book called "The Paradise of the Soul"; Richard Mac Gilla Cody printed in 1667, a book on Miracles in Irish and English; Father Francis O'Mulloy published a long book called "The Lamp of the Faithful" in Irish at Louvain in 1676, and in the following year his rare and valuable Irish Grammar in Latin and Irish, one half of which is dedicated to the subject of prosody, and is the fullest, most competent, and most interesting account which we have of the Irish classical metres as practised in the later schools, by one who was fully acquainted both with them and their methods.
Several minor romantic stories, mostly fabulous creations unconnected with Irish history, seem to have been written during this century, and many more were translated from French, Spanish, Latin, and possibly English. Of the more important works of Michael O'Clery, we shall speak in the next chapter.
********
"Ionann dam sliabh a's sáile
Eire a's iarthar Easpáine,
Do chuireas dúnta go deas
Geata dlúth ris an doilgheas."
Copied from a MS. in Trinity College. I forget its number.
Published by the Celtic Society in 1848, in 3 vols., with a translation and copious notes.
Regal Visitation Book, A.D. 1622, MS. in Marsh's Library, Dublin, quoted by D'Arcy McGee in his "Irish Writers of the Seventeenth Century," p. 85; but Hardiman, in his "West Connaught," no doubt rightly gives the date of this visitation as 1615. A writer in the "Dublin Penny Journal," identified this schoolmaster with the author of the "Cambrensis Eversus," but Hardiman shows that it, must have been his father. See "West Connaught," p. 420 note.
Elrington's great edition of Ussher's works in 17 vols., but I have not noted volume or page.
The books of ancient authority which Keating quotes as still existing in his own day, are the Psalter of Cashel, compiled by Cormac mac Culinan; the Book of Armagh, apparently a different book from that now so-called; the Book of Cluain-Aidnech-Fintan in Leix, the Book of Glendaloch, the Book of Rights, the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, the Yellow Book of Moling, the Black Book of Molaga. He also mentions the Book of Conquests, the Book of the Provinces , the Book of Reigns , the Book of Epochs, the Book of Synchronisms , the Dinnseanchus , the Book of the Pedigrees of Women, and a number of others.
"Innus gur ab é nós, beagnach, an phrimpolláin do ghnid, ag scríobhadh ar Eirionchaibh."
The first volume of Keating's History was published in Dublin by Halliday, in 1811, but that brilliant young scholar did not live to complete it. John O'Mahoney, the Fenian Head Centre, published a splendid translation of the whole work from the best MSS. which in his exile he was able to procure, in New York in 1866, but its introduction into the United Kingdom was prohibited on the grounds that it infringed copyright. Dr. Todd remarks on this translation, "notwithstanding the extravagant and very mischievous political opinions avowed by Mr. O'Mahoney, his translation of Keating is a great improvement upon the ignorant and dishonest one published by Mr. Dermod O'Connor more than a century ago,"—a foolish remark of Dr. Todd's, who must have understood that most readers of Keating are to be found amongst men to whom his own political opinions thus unnecessarily vented, were equally "mischievous." Dr. Robert Atkinson published the Text of the "Three Shafts of Death" without a translation, but with a most carefully-compiled and admirable glossary in 1890. Keating's third work has never been published, but I printed some extracts from a good MS. of it lent me by the O'Conor Don in an American paper. My friend Mr. John Mac Neill has pointed me out what is apparently a fourth work of Keating's on the Blessed Virgin.
From the Kerne's, who was of course utterly ignorant of English, mistaking "make" for the Irish "Mac," it is plain that the ancient pronunciation of this word (Anglo-Saxon macian) had not then been lost.
"Cum Hiberni et bene sint affecti, et insigniter idonei ad studia literarum et liberalium artium, utpote ingeniis bonis et acutis passim pr?diti, non potuit hactenus obtineri unquam à pr?fectis Anglis ut in Hibernia Universitas studiorum erigeretur. Imò dum aliquando de ea re etiam, Catholico tempore, in Concilio Angli? propositio fieret, obstitit acerrimé unus e primariis Senatoribus, et ipse quidem celebris episcopus, quem cum postea alius quidam admoneret, mirari se quod is utpote episcopus Catholicus tam sanctum atque salutare opus impediret. Respondit ille se non ut Episcopum Catholic? Ecclesi? sed ut Senatorem regni Angli? sententiam istam in concilio protulisse, qua opus istud impediretur.
Quod bene forte se haberet si in Concilio Dei et Sanctorum ejus quando de Episcopo severior daretur sententia, ab ea, pari posset acumine Senator liberari ("De Hibernia Commentarius." Louvain, 1632).
"Toties requisita studiorum Universitas ante annos aliquot erectum fuit decreto Regin? (tametsi sumptibus Indigenarum) juxta civitatem Dubliniensem, capacissimum et splendidissimum collegium, in quo ordinatum est ut disciplin? omnes liberales traderentur, sed ab h?reticis magistris, quales cùm Hibernia nequaquam subministraret ex Anglia submissi sunt. Qui pro sua etiam propaganda et confirmanda religione, insuper acceperunt, et munus pr?dicandi doctrinam suam Evangelicam in civitate Dublinensi et mandatum exigendi juramentum, suprem? potestatis Regin? in rebus ecclesiasticis, ab adolescentibus quos in literis instituebant," etc.
These extracts show the light in which the native Irish regarded the foundation of Trinity College.
The late Mr. Hennessy I believe discovered and made a transcript of a portion of this book, which is in the Royal Irish Academy, but I have been unable to lay my hands on it.
It must be observed that no Irish family is traced to a Tuatha De Danann ancestry.
O'Curry. MS. Mat. p. 224. For a very different estimate of the Gailiuns or Gaileóins, see above p. 323.
It is a mere accident that this valuable work has survived. The only known copy of it is in the handwriting of Lughaidh's son Cucogry, and the book was unknown to O'Reilly when he compiled his "Irish Writers." It was handed down in the O'Clery family until it came to Patrick O'Clery who lent it to O'Reilly, the lexicographer, some time after 1817, and, O'Reilly dying, the book was sold at his auction in spite of the protests of poor O'Clery. It is now in the Royal Irish Academy and has been edited by the late Father Denis Murphy, S.J., in 1893, whose translation I have for the most part followed. The text of this biography would fill about 150 pages of this book.
This interesting work, though drawn on by Father Meehan, seems to be unknown to Irish scholars. It contains 135 closely written pages. It was discovered in Colgan's cell at Louvain after his death, and is now amongst the uncatalogued manuscripts in the Franciscans' Monastery in Dublin, where it escaped the research of the late Sir John Gilbert, who catalogued their books for the Government, and of M. de Jubainville, who also spent some days in examining their MSS. I owe its discovery to the courtesy of the learned librarian, Father O'Reilly, who has permitted me to make a transcript of it for future publication.
Here is a specimen of the language of this book: "Do rala ambasadoir rig Saxan sa geathraigh in tan sin. Bui ag dénomh a landithill aidhmhillte ocus urchoide do na maithip dia madh eidir leiss. Teid sin a ndimhaoineass ocus a mitharbha, oir ni thug in Ri audiens no eisteacht go feadh tri lá do acht ag dhol dfiadhach gach laithe."
Here is a specimen of the language of this work which is much shorter than the account of O'Neill's and O'Donnell's wanderings; there is a fine copy of it made by O'Curry from the original in the Royal Irish Academy, which fills one hundred pages: "Fagbadh na croidheachta bochta, rugadar leo a ttoil féin diobh, an chuid do imthigh dona croidheachtaibh sios suas sair siar. Ann do marbhadh Cormac Ua Hagan mac Eoghain, oc oc as bocht! S do bhi Sior Feidhlinn a Cill Cainnigh an tan so. Do cuaidh cuid dinn don Breifni, cuid dinn go Conndae Arda Macha, co Conndae Tir Eoghain, co condae Luth," etc.
Published in "Reliqui? Celtic?," vol ii. p. 149, with an interesting introduction, but a most inaccurate translation.
See pp. 491-2 for an account of this O'Daly.
These are the names alluded to by Milton in his famous sonnet, on his Tetrachordon, which name, he says, the public could not understand.
"Cries the stall-reader, 'Bless us! what a word on A title-page is this!' and some in file Stand spelling false while one might walk to Mile- End Green. Why it is harder, sirs, than Gordon, Colkitto or Macdonnel or Galasp!
"Colkitto is for Colla Ciotach, "left-handed Coll or Colla," and "Galasp" is Giolla-easpuig, now Gillespie. Alaster Mac Donald was killed at the battle of Cnoc na ndos by the renegade Murough O'Brien in 1647.
"Do mhuinntir bhug na gaoithe, agus srathabhalgaidh agus bhraighe an mhachuire."
"Do bhi marbhadh tiugh ag lucht bóghadh ga dhénamh ar na coisidhibh Gordonac." Readers of the "Legend of Montrose" will recollect the surprise and scorn with which Major Dugald Dalgetty learns that some of the Highlanders carried bows, but here we see the execution they wrought even in the hands of the Covenanters.
"Sgathán an chrábhaidh."
"Sgathán Sacrameinte na h-Aithrighe."
"Párrthas an Anma."
"Lóchran na gcreidhmheach."
In the MS. marked H. 2. 7. in Trinity College there is a story of Sir Guy, Earl of Warwick and Bocigam , and p. 348 of the same MS. another about Bibus, son of Sir Guy of Hamtuir. These must have been taken from English sources. Of the same nature, but of different dates, are Irish redactions of Marco Polo's travels, the Adventures of Hercules, the Quest of the Holy Grail, Maundeville's Travels, the Adventures of the Bald Dog, Teglach an bhuird Chruinn, i.e., the Household of the Round Table, the Chanson de geste of Fierabras, Barlaam and Josaphat, the History of Octavian, Orlando and Melora, Meralino Maligno, Richard and Lisarda, the Story of the Theban War, Turpin's Chronicle, the Triumphs of Charlemagne, the History of King Arthur, the Adventures of Menalippa and Alchimenes, and probably many others.
We have already at the beginning of this book had occasion to discuss the reliability of the Irish annals, and have seen that from the fifth century onward they record with great accuracy the few events for which we happen to have external evidence, drawn either from astronomical discovery or from the works of foreign authors. We shall here enumerate the most important of these works, for though the documents from which they are taken were evidently of great antiquity, yet they themselves are only comparatively modern compilations mostly made from the now lost sources of the ancient vellum chronicles which the early Christian monks kept in their religious houses, probably from the very first introduction of Christianity and the use of Roman letters.
The greatest—though almost the youngest—of them all is the much-renowned "Annals of the Four Masters." This mighty work is chiefly due to the herculean labours of the learned Franciscan Brother, Michael O'Clery, a native of Donegal, born about the year 1580, who was himself descended from a long line of scholars. He and another scion of Donegal, Aedh Mac an Bháird, then guardian of St. Anthony's in Louvain, contemplated the compilation and publication of a great collection of the lives of the Irish saints.
In furtherance of this idea Michael O'Clery, with the leave and approbation of his superiors, set out from Louvain, and, coming to Ireland, travelled through the whole length and breadth of it, from abbey to abbey and priory to priory. Up and down, high and low, he hunted for the ancient vellum books and time-stained manuscripts whose safety was even then threatened by the ever-thickening political shocks and spasms of that most destructive age. These, whenever he found, he copied in an accurate and beautiful handwriting, and transmitted safely to Louvain to his friend Mac an Bháird, or "Ward" as the name is now in English. Ward unfortunately died before he could make use of the material thus collected by O'Clery, but it was taken up by another great Franciscan, Father John Colgan, who utilised the work of his friend O'Clery by producing, in 1645, the two enormous Latin quartos, to which we have already frequently alluded, the first called the "Trias Thaumaturga," containing the lives of Saints Patrick, Brigit, and Columcille; the second containing all the lives which could be found of all the Irish saints whose festivals fell between the first of January and the last of March. Several of the works thus collected by O'Clery and Colgan still happily survive. On the break-up of the Convent of Louvain, they were transferred to St. Isidore's, in Rome, and in 1872 were restored to Ireland and are now in the Convent of the Franciscans, on Merchant's Quay, Dublin, a restoration which prompted the fine lines of the late poet John Francis O'Donnell.
From Ireland of the four bright seas
In troublous days these treasures came,
Through clouds, through fires, through darknesses,
To Rome of immemorial name,
Rome of immeasurable fame:
The reddened hands of foes would rive
Each lovely growth of cloister—crypt—
Dim folio, yellow manuscript,
Where yet the glowing pigments live;
But a clear voice cried from Louvain
Give them to me for they are mine,
And so they sped across the main
The saints their guard, the ship their shrine.
Before O'Clery ever entered the Franciscan Order he had been by profession an historian or antiquary, and now in his eager quest for ecclesiastical writings and the lives of saints, his trained eye fell upon many other documents which he could not neglect. These were the ancient books and secular annals of the nation, and the historical poems of the ancient bards. He indulged himself to the full in this unique opportunity to become acquainted with so much valuable material, and the results of his labours were two voluminous books, first the "Réim Rioghraidhe," or Succession of Kings in Ireland, which gives the name, succession, and genealogy of the kings of Ireland from the earliest times down to the death of Malachy the Great in 1022, and which gives at the same time the genealogies of the early saints of Ireland down to the eighth century, and secondly the "Leabhar Gabhála," or Book of Invasions, which contains an ample account of the successive colonisations of Ireland which were made by Partholan, the Nemedians, and the Tuatha De Danann, down to the death of Malachy, all drawn from ancient books—for the most part now lost—digested and put together by the friar.
It was probably while engaged on this work that the great scheme of compiling the annals of Ireland occurred to him. He found a patron and protector in Fergal O'Gara, lord of Moy Gara and Coolavin, and with the assistance of five or six other antiquaries, he set about his task in the secluded convent of Donegal, at that time governed by his own brother, on the 22nd of January, 1632, and finished it on the 10th of August, 1636, having had, during all this time, his expenses and the expenses of his fellow-labourers defrayed by the patriotic lord of Moy Gara.
It was Father Colgan, at Louvain, who first gave this great work the title under which it is now always spoken of, that is, "The Annals of the Four Masters." Father Colgan in the preface to his "Acta Sanctorum Hiberni?," after recounting O'Clery's labours and his previous books goes on to give an account of this last one also, and adds:
"As in the three works before mentioned so in this fourth one, three are eminently to be praised, namely, Farfassa O'Mulchonry, Perigrine O'Clery, and Peregrine O'Duigenan, men of consummate learning in the antiquities of the country and of approved faith. And to these was subsequently added the co-operation of other distinguished antiquarians, as Maurice O'Mulconry who for one month, and Conary O'Clery who for many months, laboured in its promotion. But since those annals which we shall very frequently have occasion to quote in this volume and in the others following, have been collected and compiled by the assistance and separate study of so many authors, neither the desire of brevity would permit us always to quote them individually, nor would justice permit us to attribute the labour of many to one, hence it sometimes seemed best to call them the Annals of Donegal, for in our convent of Donegal they were commenced and concluded. But afterwards for other reasons, chiefly for the sake of the compilers themselves who were four most eminent masters in antiquarian lore, we have been led to call them the ANNALS OF THE FOUR MASTERS. Yet we said just now that more than four assisted in their preparation; however, as their meeting was irregular, and but two of them during a short time laboured in the unimportant and later part of the work, while the other four were engaged on the entire production, at least up to the year 1267 (from which the first part and the most necessary one for us is closed), we quote it under their name."
Michael O'Clery writes in his dedication to Fergal O'Gara, after explaining the scope of the work—
"I explained to you that I thought I could get the assistance of the chroniclers for whom I had most esteem in writing a book of annals in which these matters might be put on record, and that should the writing of them be neglected at present they would not again be bound to be put on record or commemorated even to the end of the world. All the best and most copious books of annals that I could find throughout all Ireland were collected by me—though it was difficult for me to collect them into one place—to write this book in your name and to your honour, for it was you who gave the reward of their labour to the chroniclers by whom it was written, and it was the friars of Donegal who supplied them with food and attendance."
The book is also provided with a kind of testimonium from the Franciscan fathers of the monastery where it was written, stating who the compilers were, and how long they had worked under their own eyes, and what old books they had seen with them, etc. In addition to this, Michael O'Clery carried it to the two historians of greatest eminence in the south of Ireland, Flann Mac Egan, of Ballymacegan, in the Co. Tipperary, and Conor mac Brody of the Co. Clare, and obtained their written approbation and signature, as well as those of the Primate of Ireland and some others, and thus provided he launched his book upon the world.
It has been published, at least in part, three times; first down to the year 1171—the year of the Norman Invasion—by the Rev. Charles O'Conor, grandson of Charles O'Conor, of Belanagare, Carolan's patron, with a Latin translation, and secondly in English by Owen Connellan from the year 1171 to the end. But the third publication of it—that by O'Donovan—was the greatest work that any modern Irish scholar ever accomplished. In it the Irish text with accurate English translation, and an enormous quantity of notes, topographical, genealogical, and historical, are given, and the whole is contained in seven great quarto volumes—a work of which any age or country might be proud. So long as Irish history exists, the "Annals of the Four Masters" will be read in O'Donovan's translation, and the name of O'Donovan be inseparably connected with that of the O'Clerys.
As to the contents of these annals, suffice it to say that like so many other compilations of the same kind, they begin with the Deluge: they end in the year 1616. They give, from the old books, the reigns, deaths, genealogies, etc., not only of the high-kings but also of the provincial kings, chiefs, and heads of distinguished families, men of science and poets, with their respective dates, going as near to them as they can go. They record the deaths and successions of saints, abbots, bishops, and ecclesiastical dignitaries. They tell of the foundation and occasionally of the overthrow of countless churches, castles, abbeys, convents, and religious institutions. They give meagre details of battles and political changes, and not unfrequently quote ancient verses in proof of facts, but none prior to the second century. Towards the end the dry summary of events become more garnished, and in parts elaborate detail takes the place of meagre facts. There is no event of Irish history from the birth of Christ to the beginning of the seventeenth century that the first inquiry of the student will not be, "What do the 'Four Masters' say about it?" for the great value of the work consists in this, that we have here in condensed form the pith and substance of the old books of Ireland which were then in existence but which—as the Four Masters foresaw—have long since perished. The facts and dates of the Four Masters are not their own facts and dates. From confused masses of very ancient matter, they, with labour and much sifting, drew forth their dates and synchronisms and harmonised their facts.
As if to emphasise the truth that they were only redacting the Annals of Ireland from the most ancient sources at their command, the Masters wrote in an ancient bardic dialect full at once of such idioms and words as were unintelligible even to the men of their own day unless they had received a bardic training. In fact, they were learned men writing for the learned, and this work was one of the last efforts of the esprit de corps of the school-bred shanachy which always prompted him to keep bardic and historical learning a close monopoly amongst his own class. Keating was Michael O'Clery's contemporary, but he wrote—and I consider him the first Irish historian and trained scholar who did so—for the masses not the classes, and he had his reward in the thousands of copies of his popular History made and read throughout all Ireland, while the copies made of the Annals were quite few in comparison, and after the end of the seventeenth century little read.
The valuable but meagre Annals of Tighearnach, published by the Rev. Charles O'Conor with a rather inaccurate Latin translation, and now in process of publication by Dr. Whitley Stokes, were compiled in the eleventh century. Clonmacnois of which Tighearnach was abbot was founded in 544, and the Annals had probably for their basis, as M. d'Arbois de Jubainville remarks, some book in which from the very foundation of the monastery the monks briefly noted remarkable events from year to year. Tighearnach declares that all Irish history prior to the founding of Emania is uncertain. Tighearnach himself died in 1088.
Another valuable book of Annals is the Chronicon Scotorum, of uncertain origin, edited for the Master of the Rolls in one volume by the late Mr. Hennessy, from a manuscript in the handwriting of the celebrated Duald Mac Firbis. It begins briefly with the legended Fenius Farsa, who is said to have composed the Gaelic language, "out of seventy-two languages." It then jumps to the year 353 A.D., merely remarking "I pass to another time and he who is will bless it, in this year 353 Patrick was born." At the year 432 we meet the curious record, "a morte Concculaind herois usque ad hunc annum 431, a morte Concupair mic Nessa 412 anni sunt." Columcille's prayer at the battle of Cul Dremhne is given under the year 561, and consists of three poetic ranns. Cennfaeladh is another poet frequently quoted, and as in the "Four Masters," we meet with numerous scraps of poems given as authorities. On the murder of Bran Dubh, king of Leinster, which took place in 605, two verses are quoted curiously attributed to "an old woman of Leinster," "de quo anus Laighen locutus rand."
The Annals of Ulster cover the period from the year 431 to 1540. Three large volumes of these have been published for the Master of the Rolls, the first by Mr. Hennessy, the second and third by Dr. Mac Carthy. Some verses, but not many, are quoted as authorities in these annals also, from the beginning of the sixth century onward.
The Annals of Loch Cé begin at 1014 and end in 1590, though they contain a few later entries. They also are edited for the Master of the Rolls in two volumes by Mr. Hennessy. They contain scarcely more than half a dozen poetic quotations.
The Annals of Boyle contained in a thirteenth-century manuscript, begin with the Creation and are continued down to 1253. The fragmentary Annals of Boyle contain the period from 1224 to 1562.
The Annals of Innisfallen were compiled about the year 1215, but according to O'Curry were commenced at least two centuries before that period.
The Annals of Clonmacnois were a valuable compilation continued down to the year 1408. The original of these annals is lost, but an English translation of them made by one Connla Mac Echagan, or Mageoghegan, of West Meath, for his friend and kinsman Torlough Mac Cochlan, lord of Delvin, in 1627, still exists, and was recently edited by the late Father Denis Murphy, S.J.
These form the principal books of the annals of Ireland, and though of completely different and independent origin they agree marvellously with each other in matters of fact, and contain the materials for a complete, though not an exhaustive, history of Ireland as derived from internal sources.
It is very much to be regretted that no Irish writer before Keating ever attempted, with these and the many lost books of annals before him, to throw their contents into a regular and continuous history. But this was never done, and the comparatively dry chronicles remain still the sources from which must be drawn the hard facts of the nation's past, with the exception of those brief periods which have engaged the pens of particular writers, such as the history of the wars of Thomond, compiled about 1459 by Rory Mac Craith, or the Life of Red Hugh written a century and a half later by Lughaidh O'Clery, and the many historical sagas and "lives" dealing with particular periods, which are really history romanticised.
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See above pp. 38-43.
For an account of how these O'Clerys came to Donegal see the interesting preface to Father Murphy's edition of the "Life of Red Hugh O'Donnell."
Copies of the lives of the following saints are still preserved in the Burgundian Library at Brussels, copied by Michael O'Clery, no doubt from vellum MSS. preserved at that time in Ireland. The Life of Mochua of Balla, the Life of St. Baithin (fragmentary), the Life of St. Donatus (fragmentary), the Life of St. Finchua of Bri Gabhan, the Life of St. Finnbharr of Cork, the Life of St. Creunata the Virgin, the Life of St. Moling (see above p. 210), the Life of St. Finian (see p. 196), the Life of St. Ailbhe, the Life of St. Abbanus, the Life of St. Carthach (p. 211), the Life of St. Fursa (see above p. 198), the Life of St. Ruadhan (who cursed Tara, see p. 229), the Life of St. Ceallach (see p. 395), the Life of St. Maodhog or Mogue, the Life of St. Colman, the Life of St. Senanus (see p. 213), the Miracles of St. Senanus after his death, the Life of St. Caimin (see p. 214) in verse, the Life of St. Kevin in prose, another Life of St. Kevin in verse, a third and different Life of St Kevin, the Life of St. Mochaomhog, the Life of St. Caillin, his poems and prophecies, the Poems of St. Senanus, St. Brendan, St. Columcille, and others, the Life of St. Brigid, the Life of St. Adamnan, the Life of St. Berchan, the Life of St. Grellan, the Life of St. Molaise, who banished St. Columcille (see above, p. 177), the Life of St. Lassara the Virgin, the Life of St. Uanlus, the Life of St. Ciaran of Clonmacnois and of St. Ciaran of Saighir, the Life of St. Declan, the Life of St. Benin, the Life of St. Aileran (see p. 197) the Life of St. Brendan. The lives of those saints which I have printed in italics are preserved on vellum elsewhere. Many more lives of saints doubtless exist. The father of the present Mac Dermot, the Prince of Coolavin, who was a good and fluent Irish speaker, had a voluminous Life of St. Atracta, or Athracht, and I believe of other saints' lives, on vellum, but on inquiring for it recently at Coolavin, I found it had been lent and lost. Many other old vellums have doubtless shared its fate.
There are several large fragments of other "Books of Invasions" in the Book of Leinster and other old vellum MSS., but when the Book of Invasions is now referred to, O'Clery's compilation is the one usually meant. It contains (1) the invasion of Ceasair before the flood; (2) the invasion of Partholan after it; (3) the invasion of Nemedh; (4) the invasion of the Firbolg; (5) that of the Tuatha De Danann; (6) that of the Milesians and the history of the Milesian race down to the reign of Malachy Mór.
This great work was not the only one of the indefatigable Colgan. At his death, which occurred at the convent of his order in Louvain in 1658, he left behind him the materials of three great unpublished works which are described by Harris. The first was "De apostulatu Hibernorum inter exteras gentes, cum indice alphabetico de exteris sanctis," consisting of 852 pages of manuscript. The next was "De Sanctis in Anglia in Britannia, Aremorica, in reliqua Gallia, in Belgio," and contained 1,068 pages. The last was "De Sanctis in Lotharingia et Burgundia, in Germania ad sinistrum et dextrum Rheni, in Italia," and contained 920 pages. None of these with the exception of a page or two have found their way back to the Franciscans' establishment in Dublin, nor are they—where many of the books used by Colgan lie—in the Burgundian Library in Brussels. It is to be feared that they have perished.
In Irish Cucoigcriche, which, meaning a "stranger," has been latinised Peregrinus by Ward. I remember one of the l'Estrange family telling me how one of the O'Cucoigrys had once come to her father and asked him if he had any objection to his translating his name for the future into l'Estrange, both names being identical in meaning!
It is noteworthy that no poem is quoted previous to the reign of Tuathal Teachtmhar in the second century. After that onward we find verses quoted at the year 226 on the Ferguses, A.D. 284 on the death of Finn, A.D. 432 a poem by Flann on St. Patrick, at 448 another poem on Patrick, at 458 a poem on the death of King Laoghaire, in 465 a poem on the death of the son of Niall of the Nine Hostages, at 478 on the Battle of Ocha, which gave for five hundred years their supremacy to the House of Niall, and then more verses under the years 489, 493, 501, 503, 504, 506, 507, and so on. The poet-saint Beg mac Dé is frequently quoted, as is Cennfaeladh, but the usual formula used in introducing verses is "of which the poet said," or "of which the rann was spoken," or "as this verse tells."
See above, p. 42.