THE COLLECTED WORKS OF “FIONA MACLEOD"
(WILLIAM SHARP)
I. Pharais; The Mountain Lovers.
II. The Sin-Eater; The Washer of the Ford, Etc.
III. The Dominion of Dreams; Under the Dark Star.
IV. The Divine Adventure; Iona; Studies in Spiritual History.
V. The Winged Destiny; Studies in the Spiritual History of the
Gael.
VI. The Silence of Amor; Where the Forest Murmurs.
VII. Poems and Dramas.
The Immortal Hour--_In paper covers._
SELECTED WRITINGS OF WILLIAM SHARP
I. Poems.
II. Studies and Appreciations.
III. Papers, Critical and Reminiscent.
IV. Literary, Geography, and Travel Sketches.
V. Vistas: The Gipsy Christ and other Prose Imaginings.
_Uniform with above, in two volumes_
A MEMOIR OF WILLIAM SHARP
(FIONA MACLEOD)
COMPILED BY MRS WILLIAM SHARP
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
_The Celtic
Library_
LYRA CELTICA
FIRST EDITION 1896
SECOND EDITION (_Revised and Enlarged_) 1924
LYRA CELTICA
AN ANTHOLOGY OF REPRESENTATIVE
CELTIC POETRY
EDITED BY
E. A. SHARP AND J. MATTHAY
_WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES_
By WILLIAM SHARP
ANCIENT IRISH, ALBAN, GAELIC, BRETON,
CYMRIC, AND MODERN SCOTTISH AND
IRISH CELTIC POETRY
EDINBURGH: JOHN GRANT
31 GEORGE IV. BRIDGE
1924
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
OLIVER AND BOYD EDINBURGH
CONTENTS
“ ... _a troubled Eden, rich
In throb of heart_ ...”
GEORGE MEREDITH
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION xvii
ANCIENT IRISH AND SCOTTISH
The Mystery of Amergin 3
The Song of Fionn 4
Credhe’s Lament 5
Cuchullin in his Chariot 6
Deirdrê’s Lament for the Sons of Usnach 8
The Lament of Queen Maev 10
The March of the Faërie Host 12
Vision of a Fair Woman 13
The Fian Banners 14
The Rune of St Patrick 17
Columcille cecenit 18
Columcille fecit 20
The Song of Murdoch the Monk 22
Domhnull Mac Fhionnlaidh: “The Aged
Bard’s Wish” 23
Ossian Sang 28
Fingal and Ros-crana 29
The Night-Song of the Bards 31
The Death-Song of Ossian 41
ANCIENT CORNISH
The Pool of Pilate 44, 45
Merlin the Diviner 46
The Vision of Seth 47
EARLY ARMORICAN
The Dance of the Sword 53
The Lord Nann and the Fairy 55
Alain the Fox 58
Bran 60
EARLY CYMRIC AND MEDIÆVAL WELSH
The Soul 67
LLYWARC’H HÊN
The Gorwynion 68
The Tercets of Llywawrc’h 72
TALIESIN
Song to the Wind 73
ANEURIN
Odes of the Months 75
DAFYDD AP GWILYM
The Summer 78
To the Lark 81
RHYS GOCH (of ERYRI)
To the Fox 82
RHYS GOCH AP RHICCART
The Song of the Thrush 83
IRISH (MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY)
“A.E.”
Sacrifice 87
The Great Breath 88
Mystery 89
By the Margin of the Great Deep 90
The Breath of Light 91
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
Æolian Harp 92
The Fairies 93
THOMAS BOYD
To the Lianhuan Shee 95
EMILY BRONTË
Remembrance 97
STOPFORD A. BROOKE
The Earth and Man 98
Song 99
JOHN K. CASEY
Maire, my Girl 101
Gracie Og Machree 103
GEORGE DARLEY
Dirge 104
AUBREY DE VERE
The Little Black Rose 105
Epitaph 106
FRANCIS FAHY
Killiney Far Away 107
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON
Cean Dubh Deelish 109
Molly Asthore 110
The Fair Hills of Ireland 112
ALFRED PERCIVAL GRAVES
Herring is King 113
The Rose of Kenmare 115
The Song of the Pratee 118
Irish Lullaby 120
GERALD GRIFFIN
Eileen Aroon 121
NORA HOPPER
The Dark Man 123
April in Ireland 124
The Wind among the Reeds 125
DOUGLAS HYDE
My Grief on the Sea 126
The Cooleen 127
The Breedyeen 128
Nelly of the Top-Knots 130
I shall not Die for Thee 132
LIONEL JOHNSON
The Red Wind 133
To Morfydd 134
DENIS FLORENCE MACCARTHY
A Lament 135
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN
The Fair Hills of Eiré, O! 137
Dark Rosaleen 139
The One Mystery 142
ROSA MULHOLLAND
The Wild Geese 144
RODEN NOËL
Lament for a Little Child 146
The Swimmer 148
The Dance 151
From “The Water-Nymph and the Boy” 152
A Casual Song 154
The Pity of it 155
The Old 157
CHARLES P. O’CONOR
Maura Du of Ballyshannon 158
JOHN FRANCIS O’DONNELL
A Spinning Song 160
JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY
A White Rose 161
ARTHUR O’SHAUGHNESSY
The Fountain of Tears 162
FANNY PARNELL
After Death 165
T. W. ROLLESTON
The Dead at Clonmacnois 166
DORA SIGERSON
Unknown Ideal 167
GEORGE SIGERSON
Mo Cáilin Donn 168
JOHN TODHUNTER
An Irish Love Song 170
The Sunburst 171
Song 173
KATHERINE TYNAN
Winter Sunset 174
Shamrock Song 176
Wild Geese 178
CHARLES WEEKES
Dreams 179
Poppies 180
W. B. YEATS
They went forth to the Battle, but they always fell 181
The White Birds 183
The Lake of Innisfree 184
SCOTO-CELTIC (MIDDLE PERIOD)
Prologue to “Gaul” 187
In Hebrid Seas 189
Cumha Ghriogair Mhic Griogair 191
Drowned 194
ALEXANDER MACDONALD
The Manning of the Birlinn 195
ANGUS MACKENZIE
The Lament of the Deer 201
DUNCAN BÀN MACINTYRE
Ben Dorain 203
The Hill-Water 208
MARY MACLEOD
Song for Macleod of Macleod 210
MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY SCOTO-CELTIC
Monaltri 217
An Coineachan--A Highland Lullaby 218
A Boat Song 219
JOHN STUART BLACKIE
The Old Soldier of the Gareloch Head 222
ROBERT BUCHANAN
Flower of the World 224
The Strange Country 225
The Dream of the World without Death 228
The Faëry Foster-Mother 235
LORD BYRON
When we Two Parted 238
Stanzas for Music 239
Colin’s Cattle 240
MacCrimmon’s Lament 241
IAN CAMERON
Song 242
JOHN DAVIDSON
A Loafer 243
In Romney Marsh 245
JEAN GLOVER
O’er the Muir amang the Heather 246
GEORGE MACDONALD
Song 247
RONALD CAMPBELL MACFIE
Song 249
WILLIAM MACDONALD
A Spring Trouble 250
AMICE MACDONELL
Culloden Moor 251
ALICE C. MACDONELL
The Weaving of the Tartan 252
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
The Thrush’s Song 254
FIONA MACLEOD
The Prayer of Women 255
The Rune of Age 257
A Milking Song 259
Lullaby 261
The Songs of Ethlenn Stuart 262
The Closing Doors 264
The Sorrow of Delight 265
NORMAN MACLEOD
Farewell to Fiunary 266
SARAH ROBERTSON MATHESON
A Kiss of the King’s Hand 267
DUGALD MOORE
The First Ship 268
LADY CAROLINE NAIRNE
The Land o’ the Leal 269
ALEXANDER NICOLSON
Skye 270
SIR NOËL PATON
Midnight by the Sea 272
In Shadowland 273
WILLIAM RENTON
Mountain Twilight 274
LADY JOHN SCOTT
Durisdeer 275
EARL OF SOUTHESK
November’s Cadence 276
JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP
Cailleach Bein-y-Vreich 277
UNA URQUHART
An Old Tale of Three 279
ANON.
Lost Love 280
CONTEMPORARY ANGLO-CELTIC POETS
(WALES)
GEORGE MEREDITH
Dirge in Woods 283
Outer and Inner 284
Night of Frost in May 286
Hymn to Colour 289
SEBASTIAN EVANS
Shadows 292
EBENEZER JONES
When the World is Burning 293
The Hand 294
EMILY DAVIS
A Song of Winter 296
ERNEST RHYS
The Night Ride 297
The House of Hendra 298
CONTEMPORARY ANGLO-CELTIC POETS
(MANX)
T. E. BROWN
The Childhood of Kitty of the Sherragh Vane 307
HALL CAINE
Graih my Chree 309
CONTEMPORARY ANGLO-CELTIC POETS
(CORNISH)
A. T. QUILLER COUCH
The Splendid Spur 317
The White Moth 318
STEPHEN HAWKER
Featherstone’s Doom 319
Trebarrow 320
RICCARDO STEPHENS
Witch Margaret 321
A Ballad 323
Hell’s Piper 325
MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY BRETON
The Poor Clerk 331
The Cross by the Way 333
The Secrets of the Clerk 335
Love Song 336
HERVÉ-NOËL LE BRETON
Hymn to Sleep 338
The Burden of Lost Souls 340
VILLIERS DE L’ISLE-ADAM
Confession 342
Discouragement 343
LECONTE DE LISLE
The Black Panther 344
The Spring 346
LEO-KERMORVAN
The Return of Taliesen 348
LOUIS TIERCELIN
By Menec’hi Shore 351
THE CELTIC FRINGE
BLISS CARMAN
Song 355
The War-Song of Gamelbar 356
Golden Rowan 359
A Sea Child 360
ELLEN MACKAY HUTCHINSON
The Quest 361
Moth Song 362
June 363
HUGH M‘CULLOCH
Scent o’ Pines 364
DUNCAN CAMPBELL SCOTT
The Reed-Player 365
THOMAS D’ARCY M‘CGEE
The Celtic Cross 366
MARY C. G. BYRON
The Tryst of the Night 368
ALICE E. GILLINGTON
The Doom-Bar 369
The Seven Whistlers 371
SHANE LESLIE
Requiem 373
PADRAIC COLUM
An Old Woman of the Roads 374
A Cradle Song 375
JAMES STEPHENS
The Coolun 376
The Clouds 377
ELEANOR HULL
The Old Woman of Beare 378
THOMAS MACDONAGH
From a “Litany of Beauty” 381
SEOSAMH MACCATHMHAOIL
I will go with my Father a-ploughing 383
A Northern Love Song 384
PATRICK MACGILL
Fairy Workers 385
FRANCIS LEDWIDGE
The Shadow People 386
My Mother 387
GORDON BOTTOMLEY
Lyric from “The Crier by Night” 388
JAMES H. COUSINS
The Quest 389
PADRAIC H. PEARSE
The Fool 390
LORD DUNSANY
The Return of Song 392
KENNETH MACLEOD
Dance to your Shadow 393
Sea Longing 394
The Reiving Ship 395
MARJORY KENNEDY-FRASER
Land of Heart’s Desire 396
Ossian’s Midsummer Day-Dream 397
Kishmul’s Galley 398
AGNES MURE MACKENZIE
Aignish on the Machair 399
NEIL MUNRO
Fingal’s Weeping 400
NOTES 403-450
INTRODUCTION
In this foreword I must deal cursorily with a great and fascinating
subject, for “Lyra Celtica” has extended beyond its original limits, and
Text and Notes have absorbed much of the space which had been allotted
for a preliminary dissertation on the distinguishing qualities and
characteristics of Celtic literature.
For most readers, the interest of an anthology is independent of any
introductory remarks: the appeal is in the wares, not in the running
commentary of the hawker. For those, however, who have looked for a
detailed synthesis, as well as for the Celticists who may have expected
an ample, or, at least, a more adequately representative selection from
the older Celtic literatures, I have a brief word to say before passing
on to the matter in hand.
In the first place, this volume is no more than an early, and, in a
sense, merely arbitrary, gleaning from an abundant harvest. For “Lyra
Celtica” is not so much the introduction to a much larger, more organic,
and more adequately representative work, to be called “Anthologia
Celtica,” but is rather the outcome of the latter, itself culled from a
vast mass of material, ancient, mediæval, and modern. It is, moreover,
intentionally given over mainly to modern poetry. “Anthologia Celtica”
may not appear for a year or two hence, perhaps not for several years;
for a systematic effort to compile a scholarly anthology, on
chronological and comparative lines, of the ancient poetry of Irish and
Scottish Gaeldom, of the Cymric, Armorican, and other Brythonic bards,
is a task not to be lightly undertaken, or fulfilled in anything like
satisfactory degree without that patience and care which only
enthusiastic love of the subject can give, and for which the extrinsic
reward is payable in rainbow-gold alone.
In the second place, all that was intended to be written here, will be
given more fully and more systematically in a volume to be published
later: “An Introduction to the Study of Celtic Literature.” Therein an
effort is made to illustrate the distinguishing imaginative qualities of
the several Celtic races; to trace the origins, dispersion, interfusion,
and concentration of the early Celtic, Picto-Celtic, and later Goidelic
and Brythonic peoples, and to reflect Celtic mythopœic and authentic
history through Celtic poetry and legendary lore. Concurrently there is
an endeavour to relate, in natural order, the development of the
literature of contemporary Wales, Brittany, Ireland, and Celtic
Scotland, from their ancient Cymric, Armorican, Erse, and Alban-Gaelic
congeners.
* * * * *
It is not yet thirty years ago since Matthew Arnold published his
memorable and beautiful essay on Celtic Literature, so superficial in
its knowledge, it is true, but informed by so keen and fine an
interpretative spirit; yet already, since 1868, the writings of Celtic
specialists constitute quite a library.
Of recent years we have had many works of the greatest value in Celtic
ethnology, philology, history, archæology, art, legendary ballads and
romances, folk-lore, and literature. Of all the Celtic literatures, that
which was least known, when Arnold wrote, was the Scoto-Gaelic; but now
with books such as Skene’s “Celtic Scotland,” Campbell’s “Popular Tales
of the West Highlands,” with its invaluable supplementary matter, Dr
Cameron’s “Reliquiæ Celticæ,” and many others, there is no difficulty
for the would-be student. Again, it is impossible to overrate the value
of popular books at once so able, so trustworthy, and so readily
attainable, as Professor Rhys’s “Celtic Britain,” or Dr Douglas Hyde’s
“Story of Early Gaelic Literature”; while Breton literature, ancient or
modern, has found almost as many, and certainly as able and
enthusiastic, exponents as that of Wales or that of Ireland. In Ireland
there is, with Mr Standish Hayes O’Grady, Dr Douglas Hyde, Dr Sigerson,
and many more, quite an army of workers in every branch of Celtic
science and literature; in Scotland one less numerous perhaps, but not
less ardent and justly enthusiastic; and in Wales the old Cymric spirit
survives unabated, from the Butt of Anglesea to the marches of Hereford.
In Brittany there was, till the other day, Hersart de la Villemarqué,
and now there are M. de Jubainville, M. Loth, M. Anatole Le Braz, M.
Auguste Brizeux, Charles Le Goffic, Louis Tiercelin, and many more
philologists and other students, poets, romancists, and critics.
Cornwall has not been neglected, nor has Man, and even the outlying
fringe of Celtdom has found interpreters and expounders. In France the
“Revue Celtique”; in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, Gaelic or Welsh or
Anglo-Celtic periodicals and “Transactions,” stimulate a wider and
deeper interest, and do inestimable service. The writings of men such as
Renan, De Jubainville, Valroger, and other French Celticists: of
Windisch, Kuno Meyer, and other Germans: of English specialists such as
Mr Whitley Stokes, Mr Alfred Nutt, and others: these, together, and in
all their different ways of approach, are, along with the writings of
native specialists in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, accomplishing a work
greater than is now to be measured or even accurately apprehended.
To all who would know something authentic concerning the history of the
Celtic race since its occupation of these Isles, and of a large section,
and latterly of a corner, of Western Europe, I would recommend
Professor Rhys’s admirable little book, “Celtic Britain,” a volume
within the reach of all. In the Irish National Library, the volumes of
which are sold at a trifling sum, may be had Dr Douglas Hyde’s lucid and
excellent exposition of early Gaelic literature; and, among valuable
popular contributions to Anglo-Celtic Literature, mention should be made
of the Rev. Nigel MacNeill’s “Literature of the Highlanders.” These
three books alone, each priced at a moderate sum, will give a reader,
hitherto ignorant of the subject, much trustworthy information on the
history, ethnology, and literature of the Irish and Scottish Gael. I
know of no “popular” book on early Welsh literature, and certainly none
that, in trustworthiness, has superseded Stephens’s “Literature of the
Cymri.” Mr Norris has introduced us to much ancient Cornish writing
which it would have been a pity to let lapse uncollected: and of MM.
Villemarqué, De Jubainville, Valroger, Le Braz, and other Breton
specialists I have already spoken.
It would seem reserved for this coming century, says Dr Hyde, unless a
vigorous, sustained, and national effort at once be made, to catch the
last tones of “that beautiful, unmixed Aryan language which, with the
exception of that glorious Greek which has now renewed its youth like
the eagle, has left the longest, most luminous, and most consecutive
literary track behind it of any of the vernacular tongues of Europe.”
But, alas, a stronger law than that which man can make or unmake, or
nations can resolve, is slowly disintegrating the subsoil wherefrom the
roots of the Celtic speech draw the sole nurture which can give it the
beauty and fragrance of life.
Some idea of the vastness of the mass of the as yet untranslated Celtic
literature may be had from the notes in books by Dr Douglas Hyde, J. F.
Campbell, Alfred Nutt, and other specialists. In the National Libraries
in Great Britain alone it is estimated that, if all the inedited MSS.
were printed, they would fill at least twelve hundred or fourteen
hundred octavo volumes. Those who would realise more adequately the
extent and importance of this early literature should, besides the
authorities already mentioned, consult Eugene O’Curry’s invaluable
“Manners and Customs,” and in particular the section of 130 pp. devoted
to Education and Literature in Ancient Erinn, which deals with the most
important Irish-Gaelic poets from the earliest times down to the
eleventh century: the likewise invaluable “Myvyrian Archaiology,” which
sets forth an imposing list of Cymric poets, with much information
concerning life in Ancient Wales: and books such as Campbell’s “Leabhar
na Féinne,” and “Tales of the West Highlands,” MacNeill’s “Literature of
the Highlanders,” and (though for students rather than the general
reader) the writings of Skene, Anderson, Whitley Stokes, Nutt, and many
others.
Modern Irish-Celtic literature may be said to date from O’Donovan’s
superb redaction and amplification of “The Annals of the Four Masters,”
one of the monumental achievements in world-literature, on the side of
scholarship; and from Keating’s “History of Ireland,” on the side of
popular writing. Since O’Donovan and Keating, the literary activity of
Ireland has again and again re-asserted itself, and is once more so much
in evidence, in Celtic scholarship and in Anglo-Celtic romance and
poetry, that the not over-ready attention of England is perforce drawn
to it.
The contemporary Anglo-Celtic poetry of Ireland has a quality which no
other English poetry possesses in like degree: the quality which Matthew
Arnold defined as natural magic--“Celtic poetry drenched in the dew of
natural magic.” Obviously, the lover of poetry may at once object that
Shakespere, Milton, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, are English, and Byron,
Burns, and Scott are Scottish, and not distinctively Anglo-Celtic. Well,
of Shakespere’s ancestry we know little; and if Celtic enthusiasts
maintain that he must have had a strong Celtic strain in his blood,
they may be innocent blasphemers, but do not deserve crucifixion for
their iniquity. Milton was of Welsh blood through his maternal descent;
and Keats is a Celtic name. Keats’ mother’s name is Welsh of the Welsh,
while his genius is as convincingly Celtic in its distinguishing
qualities as though he were able to trace his descent from Oisìn or
Fergus Honey-Mouth of “the Fingalians.” Keats, born a Cockney, is
pre-eminently a Celtic poet, by virtue of the nationality of the brain
if for no other authentic reason; while Moore, born in Ireland of Celtic
ancestry, is the least Celtic of all modern poets of eminence. So far as
we know, Coleridge and Shelley are of unmixed English blood, though who
can say there was nothing atavistic in their genius, and that the wild
lyricism of the one and the glamour and magic of the other were not in
part the expression of some “ancestral voice”?
Of the three great modern Scots, it is still a debatable point if Burns
was not more Celtic than “Lowland,” that is, by paternal as well as by
maternal descent; and it surely is almost unquestionable that, in the
geography of the soul, Burns’ natal spot must be sought in the Fortunate
Isles of Celtdom. Byron, of course, though far more British than
Scottish, and again more Scottish than Celtic, had a strong Celtic
strain in his blood; and Scott, as it happens, was of the ancient stock,
and not “the typical Lowlander” he is so often designated.[1]
The truth is, that just as in Scotland we may come upon a type which is
unmistakably national without being either Anglo-Saxon or Celtic or
Anglo-Celtic, but which, rightly or wrongly, we take to be Pictish (and
possibly a survival of an older race still), so, throughout our whole
country, and in Sussex and Hampshire, as well as in Connemara or Argyll,
we may at any moment encounter the Celtic brain in the Anglo-Saxon
flesh. In Scotland, in particular, it may be doubted if there are many
families native to the soil who have not at least a Celtic strain.
People are apt to forget that Celtic Scotland does not mean only the
Western Isles and the Highlands, and that the whole country was at one
time Celtic (Goidelic), and before that was again Celtic, when Brythonic
or Cymric Scotland and the Dalriadic Scoto-Irish of Argyll, and the
northern Picts, who were probably Gaels, or of kindred Celtic origin,
held the land, and sowed the human seed whence arose much of the finest
harvest of a later Scotland.
Here I may conveniently quote a significant passage from “Celtic
Britain”:--
“This means, from the Celtic point of view, that the Goidelic race of
history is not wholly Celtic or Aryan, but inherits in part a claim to
the soil of these islands, derived from possession at a time when, as
yet, no Aryan waggoner had driven into Europe; and it is, perhaps, from
their Kynesian ancestry that the Irish of the present day have inherited
the lively humour and ready wit, which, among other characteristics,
distinguish them from the Celts of the Brythonic branch, most of whom,
especially the Kymry, are a people still more mixed, as they consist of
the Goidelic element of the compound nature already suggested, with an
ample mixture of Brythonic blood, introduced mostly by the Ordovices.
And as to Welsh, it is, roughly speaking, the Brythonic language, as
spoken by the Ordovices, and as learned by the Goidelic peoples they
overshadowed in the Principality of Wales. To this its four chief
dialects still correspond, being those, respectively, of Powys, Gwent
or Siluria, Dyved or Demetia, and Venedot or Gwynedd.
“Skulls are harder than consonants, and races lurk when languages slink
away. The lineal descendants of the neolithic aborigines are ever among
us, possibly even those of a still earlier race. On the other hand, we
can imagine the Kynesian impatiently hearing out the last echoes of
palæolithic speech; we can guess dimly how the Goidel gradually silenced
the Kynesian; we can detect the former coming slowly round to the
keynote of the Brython; and, lastly, we know how the Englishman is
engaged, linguistically speaking, in drowning the voice of both of them
in our own day. Such, to take another metaphor, are some of the lines
one would have to draw in the somewhat confused picture we have
suggested of one wave of speech chasing another, and forcing it to dash
itself into oblivion on the western confines of the Aryan world; and
that we should fondly dream English likely to be the last, comes only
from our being unable to see into a distant future pregnant with untold
changes of no less grave a nature than have taken place in the dreary
wastes of the past.”
To return: among the great English and Scottish writers of to-day two
may be taken as examples of this brain-kinship with a race physically
alien. Much of the poetry of Algernon Charles Swinburne is distinctively
Celtic, particularly in its lyric fire and wonderful glow and colour, as
well as its epithetical luxuriance; but, indeed, this is hardly a good
instance after all, for Mr Swinburne’s north-country ancestry is not
without definite Celtic admixture. “Tristram of Lyonesse” is, in its own
way, as Celtic as “The Voyage of St Brendan,” and with more of innate
inevitableness than in those lovely Celtic reflections in the
essentially English brain of Tennyson, “The Dream” and “The Voyage of
Maelduin.”
As for Robert Louis Stevenson, come of Lowland stock, and, as he said
himself once, “made up o’ Lallan dust, body and soul,” there is not, so
far as I know, any proof that a near paternal or maternal ancestor was
of Celtic blood. But who, that has studied his genius, can question the
Celtic strain in him, or who believe that, though “the Lallan dust” may
have been unadulterate for generations, the brain which conceived and
wrought “The Merry Men” and “Thrawn Janet” was not attuned to Celtic
music? There is a poem of his which seems to me typically Celtic in its
indescribable haunting charm, its air of I know not what rare music, its
deep yearning emotion, and its cosmic note--
“In the highlands, in the country places,
Where the old plain men have rosy faces,
And the young fair maidens
Quiet eyes;
Where essential silence cheers and blesses
And forever in the hill-recesses
Her more lovely music
Broods and dies,
O to mount again where erst I haunted;
Where the old red hills are bird-enchanted,
And the low green meadows
Bright with sward;
And when even dies, the million tinted,
And the night has come, and planets glinted,
Lo, the valley hollow
Lamp-bestarred!
O to dream, O to awake and wander
There, and with delight to take and render,
Through the trance of silence,
Quiet breath;
Lo! for there, among the flowers, and grasses,
Only the mightier movement sounds and passes;
Only winds and rivers,
Life and death.”
Of course there is a certain poignant note common to all poetry, and he
might be a zealous Celticist, but a poor worshipper of Apollo, who would
try to limit this charm of exquisite regret and longing to Celtic
poetry. It is an unfrontiered land, this pleasant country in the
geography of the soul which we call Bohemia; and here all parochial and
national, and even racial distinctions fall away, and Firdausi and
Oisìn, Omar the Tentmaker and Colum the Saint, and all and every
“Honey-Mouth” of every land and time, move in equal fellowship. Even in
one of the most haunting quatrains by any modern Anglo-Celtic poet--
“O wind, O mighty melancholy wind,
Blow through me, blow!
Thou blowest forgotten things into my mind,
From long ago”--
we must not forget the elder music of one who is among the truest of the
poets of Nature whom the world has seen: though neither in brain nor, so
far as we know, in blood, had Wordsworth any kinship with the Celt--the
music “Of old, unhappy, far-off things.”
By a natural association, “Ossian” comes to mind. It is pleasant to
think that a book like “Lyra Celtica” appears just at the centenary of
James Macpherson. Macpherson died in 1796, but long before his death his
reputed “Ossian” had become one of the most vital influences in
literature. This is not the occasion to go into the “Ossian” dispute. It
must suffice to say that the concensus of qualified opinion decides--(1)
That Macpherson’s “Ossian” is not a genuine rendering of ancient
originals; (2) that he worked incoherently upon a genuine but
unsystematised, unsifted, and fragmentary basis, without which, however,
he could have achieved nothing; (3) that inherent evidence disproves
Macpherson’s sole or even main authorship as well as “Ossian’s,” and
that he was at most no more than a skilful artificer; (4) that, if he
were the sole author, he would be one of the few poetic creators of the
first rank, and worthy of all possible honour; (5) that no single work
in our literature has had so wide-reaching, so potent, and so enduring
an influence.
Much of the tragic gloom, of which “Ossian” is a true mirror, colours
even contemporary Scoto-Celtic poetry; and though in Gaelic there is
much humorous verse, and much poetry of a blithe, bright, and even
joyous nature, the dominant characteristic is that of gloom, the gloom
of unavailing regret, of mournful longing, a lament for what cannot be
again. True, in a Gaelic poem by Mary Mackellar, a contemporary Highland
poet, we hear of
Spioraid aosmhoir tìr nan Gàidheal,
Ciod an diugh a’s fàth do ’n ghàirich
’Dhùisg thu comhdaichte le aighear,
As an uaigh ’s an robh thu’d ’chadal?
(Spirit of the Gaelic earth
Wherefore is this mirth unwonted
That hath waked thee from the tomb,
And to triumph turned thy gloom?)--
but, alas! that fine line, “Spioraid aosmhoir tìr nan Gàidheal” is not
an invocation to the Gaelic muse to arouse herself to a new and blither
music, but is simply part of some congratulatory lines of a “Welcome to
the Marquis of Lorne on his union with the Princess Louise”![2]
The “Spirit of the Gaelic earth” does not make for mirth, as a rule, at
least in the Highlands, save in verse of a frankly Bacchanalian or
satiric kind.
In this, there is a marked contrast with the Irish-Gaelic, whose muse
is laughter-loving though ever with “dewy dark eyes.”
If, however, the blithe and delightful peasant poetry of Mr Alfred
Percival Graves, and that so beautifully translated and paraphrased by
Dr Douglas Hyde, be characteristically Irish, so also is such typically
Celtic poetry as this lyric by the latest Irish singer, Miss Moira
O’Neill--
“SEA WRACK.”
The wrack was dark an’ shiny where it floated in the sea,
There was no room in the brown boat but only him an’ me;
Him to cut the sea wrack--me to mind the boat,
An’ not a word between us the hours we were afloat.
The wet wrack,
The sea wrack,
The wrack was strong to cut.
We laid it on the grey rocks to wither in the sun;
An’ what should call my lad then to sail from Cushendun?
With a low moon, a full tide, a swell upon the deep,
Him to sail the old boat--me to fall asleep.
The dry wrack,
The sea wrack,
The wrack was dead so soon.
There’s a fire low upon the rocks to burn the wrack to kelp;
There’s a boat gone down upon the Moyle, an’ sorra one to help.
Him beneath the salt sea--me upon the shore--
By sunlight or moonlight we’ll lift the wrack no more.
The dark wrack,
The sea wrack,
The wrack may drift ashore.
When we come to examine the literature of the four great divisions of
the Celtic race, a vast survey lies before us, with innumerable vistas.
A lifetime might well be given to the study of any one of the ancient
Erse, Alban-Gaelic, Cymric, and Armorican literatures: a lifetime that
would yet have to leave much undiscovered, much unrelated. There is room
for every student. In old Irish literature alone, though so many
enthusiasts are now working towards its greater elucidation and the
transference of the better part of it into Anglo-Celtic literature,
there remain whole tracts, and even regions, of unexploited land. In a
score of ways, pioneers have been clearing the ground for us:
philologists like Windisch, Loth, Kuno Meyer, Whitley Stokes; literary
scholars like S. Hayes O’Grady, Campbell of Islay, Cameron of Brodick,
Dr Douglas Hyde; folklorists innumerable, in Scotland, Wales, and
Ireland; romancists like Standish O’Grady, who write across the angle of
the historic imagination, and romancists like W. B. Yeats, who write
across the angle of the poetic imagination; and poets, an ever-growing
band of sweet singers, who catch for us the fugitive airs, the exquisite
fleeting cadences, the haunting, indefinable music of an earlier day.
From Ireland the Neo-Celtic Renascence has extended through Gaeldom. The
concurrent Welsh development may be independent of this Irish influence,
and probably is: largely because the poetic imagination of the Cymri of
to-day was stirred from within, by the stimulus to the national genius
through the world-wide attention drawn by the publication of the
“Mabinogion,” as in turn the Gaelic imagination was stirred by the
incalculable influence of “Ossian”--an influence so great, so deep, so
wide-reaching, that, as already said, were Macpherson to be proved the
sole author, were it convincingly demonstrable that he was, not a more
or less confused and unscholarly interpreter, but himself a creator,
himself “Ossian,” he would deserve to rank with the three or four great
ancients and moderns who have dug, deep and wide, new channels for the
surging flow of human thought. Possibly, at any rate, this may prove to
be one good reason for the independence of the Welsh development from
any Irish stimulus--an impulse from within always being more potent and
enduring than one from without; but, fundamentally, this independence is
due to an organic difference. In a word, the Celtic genius is broadly
divisible, even at this day, into two great sections: the Goidelic and
the Brythonic or Cymric--let us say, is represented by the Welsh Celt
and the Gaelic Celt. Those readers or students who approach the
literature of either, ancient or modern, but particularly the latter,
and expect to find identity both of sentiment and in method of
expression, will ultimately be as disappointed as one who should, with
the same idea, approach Spanish and Portuguese, or Dutch and German, or
Provençal and French. In every respect, save that of ancient kinship,
the Welsh and the Gaels differ materially. There is, perhaps, more
likeness between the Highlander and the Welshman than between the latter
and the Irishman; but even here the distinctions are considerable, and
the Gaelic islesman of Barra or Uist is as different a creature from the
native of Glamorgan or Caermarthen as though no racial cousinship united
them. But, in the instance of Welsh and Irish, the unlikeness is so
marked that the best analogue is that of the Frenchman and the German.
The Irish are the French of the Celtic races, the Welsh the Germans. The
two people are distinct in their outer and inner life as well as in
their literature; and for a Connaught man or a Hebridean to go through
Wales would be as foreign an experience as for a Welshman to find
himself among the Catholic islesmen of South Uist, or among the moorside
villages of Connemara.
To-day the Gael and Cymri are foreigners. Strangely enough, the section
of the Celtic race most akin to the Welsh is the Manx--a Goidelic
people, and with a Gaelic dialect. The Gael himself, however, does not
stand out distinctly. Although there is a far greater likeness between
the Scoto-Celt and the Irish-Celt than between either and the Welshman,
there are traits which unmistakably distinguish them. In Ireland itself,
the Celt of the south-east and south differs in more respects than mere
dialect from his kinsman by the Connaught shore or of the hills of
Connemara; as, in Scotland, there is a marked distinction between the
“Tuathach” (North Highlander) and the “Deasach” (the South and West
Highlander). A Farquharson or a Gordon from Aberdeenshire has to shake
hands across the arms of many a Mackenzie and Macgregor, many a Cameron
and Macpherson, before he can link in brotherly grip with a MacNeill of
Barra, a Macdonald of Skye, a Macleod of the Lewis. These distinctions,
of course, are in their nature parochial rather than racial; but they
are highly indicative of a fundamental weakness in the Celtic nature,
and suggest a cogent reason for the failure of the race to cohere into
one compact and indispersable nation, as the central Teutonic races
merged into “Germany,” as Gauls, Normans, and Provençals merged into
“France,” and as the Brythons, the Teutonic outlanders (Frisians,
Angles, Jutes, &c.), Saxons, Danes, Normans, and Anglo-Celts merged into
“England,” and, later, into “Great Britain,” into the “British Empire.”
The most marked Celtic national homogeneity is to be found in Wales.
Wales has ever persisted, and still persists in her moat and her
drawbridge. In the preservation of her language is her safeguard.
Without Welsh, Wales would be as English as Cumberland or Cornwall. In
this way only, knit indissolubly to the flank of England as she is, and
without any natural eastern frontier of mountain range or sea, can she
isolate herself; and I am convinced that herein we have one main reason
for the passionate attachment of the Cymri of to-day to their ancient
language--an attachment as strong among the unlettered as among ardent
scholars, and even among those who have no heed for the beauty of
traditional literature or, indeed, heed of any kind other than for the
narrow personal interests of domesticity.
But this very isolation of Wales, through her language, has, no doubt,
interfered materially with the development of her Anglo-Celtic
literature. Contrasted with that of Ireland or that of Scotland, how
astonishingly meagre it is. All Ireland is aflame with song; Scotland is
again becoming the land of old romance. Here and there are a few
writers, a poet-romancist like Mr Ernest Rhys, a poet like the late
Emily Davis, a few novelists who are Welsh by the accident of birth
rather than by the nationality of the brain. For, of course, Mr George
Meredith stands so far above all localisation of this kind that it would
be out of place to rank him merely as the head of contemporary Wales. He
is the foremost Anglo-Celtic voice of to-day; so emphatically foremost,
by the distinguishing qualities of his genius, that if to-morrow he were
proved to be come of a stock of long unmixed Saxon ancestry never
dissociated from that southern country of which he is by birth a native,
we should be justified in abiding by the far more significant and
important lineage of the brain.
But this great exception apart, the difference alluded to is
extraordinary. Wales is so animated by national enthusiasms, pride, and
incalculable hereditary uplift, that her silence--in English, that
is--can hardly be accounted for away from the supposition that, in
closing her ears against English, she has also set her lips against
utterance in that tongue.
The Scoto-Celtic writers of to-day, both in prose and poetry, have
produced more Anglo-Celtic literature than Wales has done since the
beginning of the century, and with a range, a vitality, a beauty, far
beyond anything that has come forth from modern Cymru; and Ireland,
again, in poetry at any rate, has given us even more than Scotland.
The Celtic Renascence, of which so much has been written of late--that
is, the re-birth of the Celtic genius in the brain of Anglo-Celtic poets
and the brotherhood of dreamers--is, fundamentally, the outcome of
“Ossian,” and, immediately, of the rising of the sap in the Irish
nation.
Of the immense and never yet approximately defined Irish-Celtic
influence in literature a fine and true word has been said by one of the
ablest of the Irish fellowship; and I would strongly urge every reader
to obtain Mr Stopford Brooke’s admirable and stimulating little essay
“On the Need and Use of getting Irish Literature into the English
Tongue.”[3] With its conclusion, every lover of English poetry and
romance will agree.
“When we have got the old [Celtic] legendary tales rendered into fine
prose and verse, I believe we shall open out English poetry to a new and
exciting world, an immense range of subjects, entirely fresh and full of
inspiration. Therefore, as I said, get them out into English, and then
we may bring England and [Celtdom] into a union which never can suffer
separation, and send another imaginative force on earth which may (like
Arthur’s tale) create Poetry for another thousand years.”
These are inspiring words, and should find an eager response.
More and more we may hope that the beautiful poetry of Ireland, ancient
and modern, with its incommunicable charm and exquisite spontaneity;
that the strange, elemental, sombre imagination of the West Highlander
and of the Gael of the Isles; and that the vivid spell of the old Welsh
bards, will, before long, become a still greater, a still more
regenerating, and a lasting force and influence in our English
literature.
* * * * *
In the Notes I have something to say concerning each of the many ancient
and modern writers drawn upon for this representative anthology, so need
not here enter into further detail of the kind.
Obviously, it would be impossible to make a work of this nature as
welcome to the Celtic scholar as to the general reader. No one in the
least degree acquainted with ancient Gaelic and Cymric literature could
fail to note how merely superficial this section of “Lyra Celtica” is.
Therefore, let me again aver that this anthology has been compiled, not
for the specialist, but for the lover of poetry; and to serve, for the
many who have no knowledge of “Anglo-Celtic” as distinct from
“Anglo-Saxon” poetry, as a small Pisgah whence to gain a glimpse into a
strange and beautiful land, a land wherein, as in a certain design by
William Blake, the sun, the moon, and the morning star all shine
together, and where the horizons are spanned by fugitive rainbows ever
marvellously dissolving and more marvellously re-forming.
The effort of the Editor has been to give, not always the finest or most
unquestionably authentic examples of early Celtic poetry, but the most
characteristic. Thus only could some idea be conveyed of the physiognomy
of this ancient literature.
In the first section, that representative of Early Gaelic, a long period
of time is covered. A whole heroic age lies between that strange
pantheistic utterance of Amergin, who is now accepted as the earliest
Erse poet of whom we have authentic record, and the hymns of Columba:
and the quaint “Shaving Hymn” of Murdoch the Monk, though it precedes
the Ossianic fragments, relates to a much nearer period of history than
they do. Of these Ossianic fragments, it is not needful to say more here
than that, in their actual form, they are no more genuinely old than,
for example, are many of the lovely fantasias on old themes by modern
Irish poets. They are, at most, fundamentally ancient, and are given
here on this plea, and not as the translations of Macpherson. The day is
gone when the stupid outcry against Macpherson’s “Ossian,” as no more
than a gigantic fraud, finds a response among lovers of literature. We
all know, now, that Macpherson’s “Ossian” is not a genuine translation
of authentic =Dana Oisìn mhic Fhionn=, but, for all its great and enduring
beauty, a clumsily-constructed, self-contradictory, and sometimes
grotesquely impossible rendering of disconnected, fugitive, and, for the
most part, oral lore. Of the genuineness of this legendary lore there is
no longer any doubt in the minds of those native and alien students, who
alone are qualified to pronounce a definite verdict on this long
disputed point. It would have been easy to select other Ossianic
fragments; but as, in this anthology, the spirit and not the letter was
everything, it was considered advisable to make as apt a compromise with
Macpherson’s “Ossian” as practicable. Ancient poetry of the nature of
pieces such as “The Song of Fionn” (page 4) convey little to the
ordinary reader, not only on account of their puzzling allusions to
events and persons of whom the Englishman is not likely to have heard,
or from the strangeness of their style, as because of the remoteness of
the underlying sentiment and mental standpoint. And of this there can be
no question: that the ancient poetry, the antique spirit, breathes
throughout this eighteenth-century restoration, and gives it enduring
life, charm, and all the spell of cosmic imagination. It may well be,
indeed, that the literary historian has another signal discovery to
make, and, in definitively dissociating Oisìn of the Féinn and Ossian of
Badenoch, prove convincingly that James Macpherson was not even the
author (of the greater part at any rate) of the matter that has been
interpolated into the original, inchoate, traditional bardic lore.
However much or little appeal “Ossian” may have for English readers of
to-day, there can surely be no doubt that all who have the spirit of
poetry must recognise the charm of the ancient Celtic imagination in
compositions such as “Credhe’s Lament” (page 5). This lovely haunting
lament, from the “Book of Lismore,” comes in its English form from that
invaluable work of Mr S. Hayes O’Grady, “Silva Gadelica.” Of how much
Celtic poetry, modern as well as ancient, is not this, though variously
expressed, the refrain: “Melodious is the crane, and O melodious is the
crane, in the marshlands of Druim-dá-thrén! ’tis she that may not save
her brood alive!”
For the remarkable continuity of both expression and sentiment which
characterises Celtic poetry, ancient and modern, let the student turn,
for example, to the most famous Gaelic poem in Scotland to-day, Duncan
Bàn Macintyre’s “Ben Dorain,” and compare it with this “Lay of Arran” by
Caeilte, the Ossianic bard--Arran, no longer Arran of the many stags,
but still one of the loveliest of the Scottish isles, and touched on
every headland and hill with the sunset glamour of the past.
CAEILTE--LAY OF ARRAN.[4]
“Arran of the many stags--the sea impinges on her very shoulders!
an island in which whole companies were fed--and with ridges among
which blue spears were reddened! Skittish deer are on her
pinnacles, soft blackberries upon her waving heather; cool water
there is upon her rivers, and mast upon her russet oaks! Greyhounds
there were in her, and beagles; blaeberries and sloes of the
blackthorn; dwellings with their backs set close against her woods,
and 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--her wild swine they were
fat; cheerful her fields (this is a tale that may be credited), her
nuts hung on her forest hazel’s boughs, and there was sailing of
long galleys past her! Right pleasant their condition all when the
fair weather sets in: under her rivers’ brinks trouts lie; the
sea-gulls wheeling round her grand cliff answer one the other--at
every fitting time delectable is Arran!”
Again, most readers will be able to apprehend the delight of the
barbaric outlook in compositions such as “Cuchullin in His Chariot,”
which has been excerpted from Hector MacLean’s “Ultonian Hero Ballads”;
or the fantastic beauty of “The March of the Faerie Host,” as rendered
by Prof. Kuno Meyer after the original in “The Book of Lismore”; or the
lovely portrait of a beautiful woman, by a Highland poet of old, the
“Aisling air Dhreach Mna; or, Vision of a Fair Woman.” Possibly, too,
even Celtic scholars may not be displeased to read here English metrical
paraphrases, such as Sir Samuel Ferguson’s “Lament of Deirdrê for the
Sons of Usnach,”[5] or Mr T. W. Rolleston’s haunting “The Lament of
Queen Maev”; or, again, in dubiously authentic fragments such as “Fingal
and Ros-crana,” to have an opportunity to trace the “inner self” of many
a familiar ballad or legend.
The Breton section, also, is represented equally slightly, though
perhaps not inadequately, all things considered. “The Dance of the
Sword” is, probably, fundamentally one of the most ancient of Celtic
bardic utterances. In the modern selection, it will be a surprise to
many readers to encounter names so familiar to lovers of French poetry
as Leconte de Lisle and Villiers de l’Isle-Adam. There are many
contemporary Breton poets of distinction, but it was feasible to select
no more than one or two. Auguste Brizeux and Charles Le Goffic may be
taken as typical exemplars of the historically re-creative and the
individually impressionistic methods. Unfortunately neither is
represented here. It was desirable to select at least one poet who still
uses the old Armorican tongue; but in my translation from
Leo-Kermorvan’s “Taliesen” (as again in that of Tiercelin’s “By Menec’hi
Shore”), I have not attempted a rhymed version, as in the original, or
in the French version published in the “Anthologie.” There are very few
translators who can be faithful both to the sound and sense, in the
attempt concurrently to reproduce identity of form, music, and
substance; and, as a rule, therefore, rhythmic prose, or an unrhymed
metrical version, is likely to prove more interesting as well as more
truly interpretative.
Out of the rich garth of ancient and mediæval Welsh poetry, the Editor
has culled only a few blossoms. They contain, at least, something of
that lyric love of Nature which is so distinctively Celtic, and is the
chief charm of the poetic literature of Wales. It is earnestly to be
hoped that some poet-scholar will give us before long, in English, an
anthology of the best contemporary Welsh poetry.