Ireland. The Hebrides have been a nest of singers, since Mary Macleod
down to the youngest of the Uist poets of to-day; and though there is
not at present any Alexander Macdonald or Duncan Bàn Macintyre, there
are many singers who have a sweet and fine note, and many writers whose
poems have beauty, grace, and distinction. Perhaps the last fine product
of the pseudo-antique school is the “Sean Dàna”[6] of Dr John Smith,
late in the last century; but occasionally there occurs in our own day a
noteworthy instance of the re-telling of the old tales in the old way.
In “The Celtic Monthly,” and other periodicals, much good Gaelic verse
is to be found, and it is no exaggeration to say that at this moment
there are more than a hundred Gaelic singers in Western Scotland whose
poetry is as fresh and winsome, and, in point of form as well as
substance, as beautiful, as any that is being produced throughout the
rest of the realm. The Gaelic Muse has also found a home in Canada, and
it is interesting to note that one of the longest of recent Gaelic poems
was written by a Highlander in far-away Burmah.
“The Highlander” (and in this and the following passage I quote the
words of Professor Mackinnon, from his Inaugural Address on his
succession to the Celtic Chair at Edinburgh University) “The Highlander
may be truly described as the child of music and song. For many a long
year his language is the language, for the most part, of the uneducated
classes. And yet, amid surroundings which too often are but mean and
wretched, without the advantages of education beyond what his native
glen supplied, he has contrived to enliven his lot by the cultivation of
such literature as the local bards, the traditions of the clan, and the
popular tales of the district supplied. He has attempted, not
unsuccessfully, to live not for the day and hour alone, but, in a true
sense, to live the life of the spirit! He has produced a mass of lyric
poetry which, in rhythmical flow, purity of sentiment, and beauty of
expression, can compare favourably with the literature of more powerful
and more highly-civilised communities.
“In the highest efforts of Gaelic literature, in the prose of Norman
Macleod, in the masterpieces of the lyric poets, in the “Sean Dàna” of
Dr Smith, and above all, in the poems of Ossian, whether composed by
James Macpherson or the son of Fingal, the intellect of the Scottish
Celt, in its various moods and qualities, finds its deepest and fullest
expression. Here we have humour, pathos, passion, vehemence, a rush of
feeling and emotion not always under restraint, and apt to run into
exaggeration and hyperbole--characteristics which enter largely into the
mental and spiritual organisation of the people. But above and beneath
all these, there is a touch of melancholy, a ‘cry of the weary,’
pervading the spirit of the Celt. Ossian gives expression to this
sentiment in the touching line which Matthew Arnold, the most
sympathetic and penetrating critic of the Celtic imagination, with the
true instinct of genius, prefixes to his charming volume, ‘On the Study
of Celtic Literature’:
“‘They went forth to the war, but they always fell.’”
Professor Mackinnon goes on to adduce a familiar legend, which may again
be quoted, for we are all now waiting for that longed-for blast which
shall arouse the spell-bound trance wherein sleeps “Anima Celtica.” The
=Féinn=, he says, were laid spell-bound in a cave which no man knew of. At
the mouth of the cave hung a horn, which if ever any man should come and
blow three times, the spell would be broken, and the =Féinn= would arise,
alive and well. A hunter, one day wandering in the mist, came on this
cave, saw the horn, and knew what it meant. He looked in and saw the
=Féinn= lying asleep all round the cave. He lifted the horn and blew one
blast. He looked in again, and saw that the =Féinn= had wakened, but lay
still with their eyes staring, like those of dead men. He took the horn
again, blew another blast, and instantly the =Féinn= all moved, each
resting on his elbow. Terrified at their aspect, the hunter turned and
fled homewards. He told what he had seen, and, accompanied by friends,
went to search for the cave. They could not find it; it has never again
been found; and so there still sit, each resting on his elbow, waiting
for the final blast to rouse them into life, the spell-bound heroes of
the old Celtic world.
Of the modern and larger section of “Lyra Celtica” I need say little
here. To avoid confusion, the Editor has refrained from representing
poets whose “Celtic strain” is more or less obviously disputable; hence
the wise ignoring of the claims even of Scott and Burns. Byron was more
Celtic in blood than in brain, and is represented really by virtue of
this accidental kinship.
Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Man, Cornwall, and Brittany are all more or
less adequately represented; and among the poets are some whose voices
will be new to most readers. One or two writers, also, have been drawn
upon as representatives of the distinctively Anglo-Celtic section of
England. Finally, “greater Gaeldom”--the realm of the Irish and Scottish
Gaels in the United States, Canada, and Australasia--is also
represented; and one, at any rate, of these outlanders is a poet who has
won distinction on both sides of the Atlantic.
If it be advisable to select one poet, still “with a future,” as
pre-eminently representative of the Celtic genius of to-day, I think
there can be little doubt that W. B. Yeats’ name is that which would
occur first to most lovers of contemporary poetry. He has grace of touch
and distinction of form beyond any of the younger poets of Great
Britain, and there is throughout his work a haunting beauty, and a
haunting sense of beauty everywhere perceived with joy and longing, that
make its appeal irresistible for those who feel it at all. He is equally
happy whether he deals with antique or with contemporary themes, and in
almost every poem he has written there is that exquisite remoteness,
that dream-like music, and that transporting charm which Matthew Arnold
held to be one of the primary tests of poetry, and, in particular, of
Celtic poetry.
As an example of Mr Yeats’ narrative method, with legendary themes, I
may quote this from his beautiful “Wanderings of Oisìn” (rather
affectedly and quite needlessly altered to =Usheen= in the latest
version)--
“Fled foam underneath us, and round us a wandering and milky smoke,
High as the saddle-girth, covering away from our glances the tide;
And those that fled, and that followed, from the foampale distance broke;
The immortal desire of immortals we saw in their faces, and sighed.
I mused on the chase with the Fenians, and Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair,
And never a song sang Neave, and over my fingertips
Came now the sliding of tears and sweeping of mist-cold hair,
And now the warmth of sighs, and after the quiver of lips.
Were we days long or hours long in riding, when rolled in a grisly peace,
An isle lay level before us, with dripping hazel and oak?
And we stood on a sea’s edge we saw not; for whiter than new washed fleece
Fled foam underneath us, and round us a wandering and milky smoke.
And we rode on the plains of the sea’s edge--the sea’s edge
barren and gray,
Gray sands on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees,
Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten away
Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas.
But the trees grew taller and closer, immense in their wrinkling bark;
Dropping--a murmurous dropping--old silence and that one sound;
For no live creatures lived there, no weasels moved in the dark--
Long sighs arose in our spirits, beneath us bubbled the ground.
And the ears of the horse went sinking away in the hollow night,
For, as drift from a sailor slow drowning the gleams of the
world and the sun,
Ceased on our hands and our faces, on hazel and oak leaf, the light,
And the stars were blotted above us, and the whole of the world was one.”
Often, too, there occur in his verse new and striking imagery, as in the
superb epithetical value of the fourth line in the concluding stanza of
“The Madness of King Goll,” one of the most beautiful of his poems--
“And now I wander in the woods
When summer gluts the golden bees,
Or in autumnal solitudes
Arise the leopard-coloured trees;
Or when along the wintry strands
The cormorants shiver on their rocks;
I wander on, and wave my hands,
And sing, and shake my heavy locks.
The gray wolf knows me; by one ear
I lead along the woodland deer;
The hares ran by me growing bold.
=They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me,
the beech leaves old.=”
Indeed, through all his work, “They will not hush; the leaves a-flutter,
the beech leaves old”--the mystic leaves of life, touched by the wind of
old romance. We can imagine him hearing often that fairy lure which his
“Stolen Child” listed and yielded to--
“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a fairy, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”
For him always there is the Beauty of Beauty, the Passion of Passion:
the “Rose of the World.”
“Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,
Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
And Usna’s children died.
We and the labouring world are passing by:
Amid men’s souls, that waver and give place,
Like the pale waters in their wintry race,
Under the passing stars, foam of the sky,
Lives on this lonely face.”
It is the lonely face that haunts the dreams of poets of all races and
ages: that “Lady Beauty” enthroned
“Under the arch of life, where love and death,
Terror and mystery, guard her shrine....”
The vision of which we follow--
“How passionately, and irretrievably,
In what fond flight, how many ways and days!”
And of all races, none has so worshipped the “Rose of the World” as has
the Celt.
“No other human tribe,” says Renan, “has carried so much mystery into
love. No other has conceived with more delicacy the ideal of woman, nor
been more dominated by her. It is a kind of intoxication, a madness, a
giddiness. Read the strange =mabinogi= of ‘Pérédur,’ or its French
imitation, ‘Parceval le Gallois’; these pages are dewy, so to say, with
feminine sentiment. Woman appears there as a sort of vague vision
intermediate between man and the supernatural world. There is no other
literature which offers anything analogous to this. Compare Guinevere
and Iseult to those Scandinavian furies Gudruna and Chrimhilde, and you
will acknowledge that woman, as chivalry conceived her--that ideal of
sweetness and beauty set up as the supreme object of life--is a
creation neither classic, Christian, nor Germanic, but in reality
Celtic.”
And having quoted from Ernest Renan, himself one of the greatest of
modern Celts, and a Celt in brain and genius as well as by blood, race,
and birth, let me interpolate here a paraphrase of some words of his in
that essay on “La Poesie de la Race Celtique,” which was to intellectual
France what Matthew Arnold’s essay was to intellectual England.
If, he says, the eminence of races should be estimated according to the
purity of their blood and inviolability of national character, there
could be none able to dispute supremacy with the Celtic race. Never has
human family lived more isolated from the world, nor less affected by
foreign admixture.
Restricted by conquest to forgotten isles and peninsulas, the Celtic
race has habitually striven to oppose an impassable barrier to all alien
influences. It has ever trusted in itself, and in itself alone, and has
drawn its mental and spiritual nurture from its own resources.
Hence that powerful individuality, that hatred of the stranger, which up
to our day has formed the essential characteristic of the Celtic
peoples. The civilisation of Rome hardly reached them, and left among
them but few traces. The Germanic invasion flowed back on them, but it
did not affect them at all. At the present hour they still resist an
invasion, dangerous in quite another way, that of modern civilisation,
so destructive of local varieties and national types. Ireland in
particular (and there, perhaps, is the secret of her irremediable
weakness) is the sole country of Europe where the native can produce
authentic documents of his remote unbroken lineage, and designate with
certainty, up to pre-historic ages, the race from which he sprang.
One does not enough reflect on how strange it is that an ancient race
should continue down to our day, and almost under our eyes, in some
islands and peninsulas of the West, its own life, more and more diverted
from it, it is true, by the noise from without, but still faithful to
its language, its memories, its ideals, and its genius. We are
especially apt to forget that this small race, contracted now to the
extreme confines of Europe, in the midst of those rocks and mountains
where its enemies have driven it, is in possession of a literature,
which in the Middle Ages exerted an immense influence, changed the
current of European imagination, and imposed upon almost the whole of
Christianity its poetical motifs. It is, however, only necessary to open
authentic monuments of Celtic genius to convince oneself that the race
which created these has had its own original method of thought and
feeling; and that nowhere does the eternal illusion dress itself in more
seductive colours. In the grand concert of the human species, no family
equals this, for penetrating voices which go to the heart. Alas! if it,
also, is condemned to disappear, this fading glory of the West! Arthur
will not return to his enchanted isle, and Saint Patrick was right in
saying to Ossian: “The heroes whom you mourn are dead; can they live
again?”
A strange melancholy characterises the genius of the Celtic race. For
all the blithe songs and happy abandon of so many Irish singers, the
Irish themselves have given us the most poignant, the most
hauntingly-sad lyric cries in all modern literature. Renan fully
recognises this, and how, even in the heroic age, the melancholy of
inappeasible regret, of insatiable longing, is as obvious as in our own
day, when spiritual weariness is as an added crown of thorns. Whence
comes this sadness, he asks? Take the songs of the sixth century bards;
they mourn more defeats than they sing victories. The history of the
Celtic race itself is but a long complaint, the lament of exiles, the
grief of despairing flights beyond the seas. If occasionally it seems to
make merry, a tear ever lurks behind the smile; it rarely knows that
singular forgetfulness of the human state and of its destinies which is
called gaiety. But, if its songs of joy end in elegies, nothing equals
the delicious sadness of these national melodies.
Nevertheless, concludes the most famous of modern Breton writers, we are
still far from believing that the Celtic race has said its last word.
After having exercised all the godly and worldly chivalries, sought with
Pérédur the Holy Graal and the Beautiful, dreamed with Saint Brandan of
mystical Atlantides, who knows what the Celtic genius would produce in
the domain of the intelligence if it should embolden itself to make its
entrance into the world, and if it subjected its rich and profound
nature to the conditions of modern thought? Few races have had a
poetical infancy as complete as the Celtic--mythology, lyricism, epic,
romanesque imagination, religious enthusiasm, nothing have they lacked.
Why should philosophic thought be lacking? Germany, which had begun by
science and criticism, has finished with poetry; why should not the
Celtic races, which began with poetry, not end with a new and vivid
criticism of actual life as it now is? It is not so far from the one to
the other as we are apt to suppose; the poetical races are the
philosophical races, and philosophy is at bottom but a manner of poetry
like any other. When one thinks that Germany fronted, less than a
century ago, the revelation of its genius; that everywhere national
idiosyncrasies, which seemed effaced, have suddenly risen again in our
day more alive than ever, one is persuaded that it is rash to set a law
for the discontinuances and awakenings of races. Modern civilisation,
which seemed made to absorb them, may, perhaps, be but the forcing-house
for a new and more superb efflorescence.
No, it is no “disastrous end”: whether the Celtic peoples be slowly
perishing or are spreading innumerable fibres of life towards a richer
and fuller, if a less national and distinctive existence. From Renan,
the high priest of the Breton faith, to the latest of his kindred of the
Gael, there is a strange new uprising of hope. It is realised that the
Dream is nigh dreamed: and then ...
“Till the soil--bid cities rise--
Be strong, O Celt--be rich, be wise--
But still, with those divine grave eyes,
Respect the realm of Mysteries.”
Let me conclude, then, in the words of the most recent of those many
eager young Celtic writers whose songs and romances are charming the now
intent mind of the Anglo-Saxon. “A doomed and passing race. Yes, but not
wholly so. The Celt has at last reached his horizon. There is no shore
beyond. He knows it. This has been the burden of his song since Malvina
led the blind Oisìn to his grave by the sea. ‘Even the Children of Light
must go down into darkness.’ But this apparition of a passing race is no
more than the fulfilment of a glorious resurrection before our very
eyes. For the genius of the Celtic race stands out now with averted
torch, and the light of it is a glory before the eyes, and the flame of
it is blown into the hearts of the mightier conquering people. The Celt
falls, but his spirit rises in the heart and the brain of the
Anglo-Celtic peoples, with whom are the destinies of the generations to
come.”
WILLIAM SHARP.
_Read these faint runes of Mystery,_
_O Celt, at home and o’er the sea;_
_The bond is loosed--the poor are free--_
_The world’s great future rests with thee!_
_Till the soil--bid cities rise--_
_Be strong, O Celt--be rich, be wise--_
_But still, with those divine grave eyes,_
_Respect the realm of Mysteries._
_The Book of Orm._
I
ANCIENT IRISH
AND SCOTTISH
The Mystery of Amergin.
[Sidenote: ANCIENT ERSE]
I am the wind which breathes upon the sea,
I am the wave of the ocean,
I am the murmur of the billows,
I am the ox of the seven combats,
I am the vulture upon the rocks,
I am a beam of the sun,
I am the fairest of plants,
I am a wild boar in valour,
I am a salmon in the water,
I am a lake in the plain,
I am a word of science,
I am the point of the lance of battle,
I am the God who creates in the head [i.e. of man]
the fire [i.e. the thought].
Who is it who throws light into the meeting on the mountain?
Who announces the ages of the moon [If not I]?
Who teaches the place where couches the sun [If not I]?
The Song of Fionn.
May-day, delightful time! How beautiful the colour!
The blackbirds sing their full lay. Would that Læg were here!
The cuckoos sing in constant strains. How welcome is the noble
Brilliance of the seasons ever! On the margin of the branching woods
The summer swallows skim the stream: the swift horses seek the pool:
The heather spreads out her long hair: the weak fair bog-down grows.
Sudden consternation attacks the signs; the planets, in
their courses running, exert an influence:
The sea is lulled to rest, flowers cover the earth.
Credhe’s Lament.
[Sidenote: ANCIENT ERSE]
The haven roars, and O the haven roars, over the rushing race of
=Rinn-dá-bharc=! the drowning of the warrior of loch dá chonn, that is
what the wave impinging on the strand laments. 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: the wild dog of two colours is
intent upon her nestlings. A woeful note, and O a woeful note, is that
which the thrush in Drumqueen emits! but not more cheerful is the wail
that the blackbird makes in Letterlee. A woeful sound, and O a woeful
sound, is that the deer utters in Drumdaleish! dead lies the doe of
=Druim Silenn=: the mighty stag bells after her. Sore suffering to me, and
O suffering sore, is the hero’s death--his death, that used to lie with
me!... Sore suffering to me is Cael, and O Cael is a suffering sore,
that by my side he is in dead man’s form! That the wave should have
swept over his white body--that is what hath distracted me, so great was
his delightfulness. A dismal roar, and O a dismal roar, is that the
shore-surf makes upon the strand! seeing that the same hath drowned the
comely noble man, to me it is an affliction that Cael ever sought to
encounter it. A woeful booming, and O a boom of woe, is that which the
wave makes upon the northward beach! beating as it does against the
polished rock, lamenting for Cael, now that he is gone. A woeful fight,
and O a fight of woe, is that the wave wages against the southern shore!
As for me my span is determined!... A woeful melody, and O a melody of
woe, is that which the heavy surge of Tullachleish emits! As for me: the
calamity that is fallen upon me having shattered me, for me prosperity
exists no more. Since now Crimthann’s son is drowned, one that I may
love after him there is not in being. Many a chief is fallen by his
hand, and in the battle his shield never uttered outcry!
Cuchullin in his Chariot.
“What is the cause of thy journey or thy story?”
The cause of my journey and my story
The men of Erin, yonder, as we see them,
Coming towards you on the plain.
The chariot on which is the fold, figured and cerulean,
Which is made strongly, handy, solid;
Where were active, and where were vigorous;
And where were full-wise, the noble hearted folk;
In the prolific, faithful city;--
Fine, hard, stone-bedecked, well-shafted;
Four large-chested horses in that splendid chariot;
Comely, frolicsome.
“What do we see in that chariot?”
The white-bellied, white-haired, small-eared,
Thin-sided, thin-hoofed, horse-large, steed-large horses;
With fine, shining, polished bridles;
Like a gem; or like red sparkling fire;--
Like the motion of a fawn, wounded;
Like the rustling of a loud wind in winter;--
Coming to you in that chariot.--
“What do we see in that chariot?”
We see in that chariot,
The strong, broad-chested, nimble, gray horses,--
So mighty, so broad-chested, so fleet, so choice;--
Which would wrench the sea skerries from the rocks.--
The lively, shielded, powerful horses;--
So mettlesome, so active, so clear-shining;--
Like the talon of an eagle ’gainst a fierce beast;
Which are called the beautiful Large-Gray--
The fond, large =Meactroigh=.
[Sidenote: ANCIENT ERSE]
“What do we see in that chariot?”
We see in that chariot,
The horses; which are white-headed, white-hoofed, slender-legged,
Fine-haired, sturdy, imperious;
Satin-bannered, wide-chested;
Small-aged, small-haired, small-eared;
Large-hearted, large-shaped, large-nostriled;
Slender-waisted, long-bodied,--and they are foal-like;
Handsome, playful, brilliant, wild-leaping;
Which are called the =Dubh=-=Seimhlinn=.
“Who sits in that chariot?”
He who sits in that chariot,
Is the warrior, able, powerful, well-worded,
Polished, brilliant, very graceful.--
There are seven sights on his eye;
And we think that that is good vision to him;
There are six bony, fat fingers,
On each hand that comes from his shoulder;
There are seven kinds of fair hair on his head;--
Brown hair next his head’s skin,
And smooth red hair over that;
And fair-yellow hair, of the colour of gold;
And clasps on the top, holding it fast;--
Whose name is Cuchullin, =Seimh=-=suailte=,
Son of Aodh, son of Agh, son of other Aodh.--
His face is like red sparkles;--
Fast-moving on the plain like mountain fleet-mist;
Or like the speed of a hill hind;
Or like a hare on rented level ground.--
It was a frequent step--a fast step--a joyful step;--
The horses coming towards us:--
Like snow hewing the slopes;--
The panting and the snorting,
Of the horses coming towards thee.
Deirdrê’s Lament for the Sons of Usnach
The lions of the hill are gone,
And I am left alone--alone--
Dig the grave both wide and deep,
For I am sick, and fain would sleep!
The falcons of the wood are flown,
And I am left alone--alone--
Dig the grave both deep and wide,
And let us slumber side by side.
The dragons of the rock are sleeping,
Sleep that wakes not for our weeping--
Dig the grave, and make it ready,
Lay me on my true-love’s body.
Lay their spears and bucklers bright
By the warriors’ sides aright;
Many a day the three before me
On their linkèd bucklers bore me.
Lay upon the low grave floor,
’Neath each head, the blue claymore;
Many a time the noble three
Reddened their blue blades for me.
Lay the collars, as is meet,
Of the greyhounds at their feet;
Many a time for me have they
Brought the tall red deer to bay.
In the falcon’s jesses throw,
Hook and arrow, line and bow;
Never again, by stream or plain,
Shall the gentle woodsmen go.
Sweet companions, were ye ever--
Harsh to me, your sister, never;
[Sidenote: ANCIENT ERSE]