THE DISCOVERY OF THE CELT
“Strange reversals, strange fulfilments may lie on the lap of
the gods, but we have no knowledge of these, and hear neither
the high laughter nor the far voices. But we front a possible
because a spiritual destiny greater than the height of imperial
fortunes, and have that which may send our voices further than
the trumpets of east and west. Through ages of slow westering,
till now we face the sundown seas, we have learned in continual
vicissitude that there are secret ways whereon armies cannot
march. And this has been given to us, a more ardent longing, a
more rapt passion in the things of outward beauty and in the
things of spiritual beauty. Nor it seems to me is there any
sadness, or only the serene sadness of a great day’s end, that,
to others, we reveal in our best the genius of a race whose
farewell is in a tragic lighting of torches of beauty around its
grave.”
FIONA MACLEOD.
Ernest Renan discovered the Celt somewhere about the year 1856; but
in the year 1891 Grant Allen made the far more interesting discovery
that there was such a thing as a Celtic movement in English art. In a
vivacious article in _The Fortnightly Review_ he made it seem as
if the Celtic influence dominated the field of artistic activity. “The
return wave of Celtic influence over Teutonic or Teutonised England has
brought with it many strange things, good, bad, and indifferent.” He
wrote:
“It has brought with it Home Rule, Land Nationalisation,
Socialism, Radicalism, the Reverend Hugh Price Hughes, the
Tithes War, the Crofter Question, the Plan of Campaign. It
has brought fresh forces into political life--the eloquent
young Irishman, the perfervid Highland Scot, the enthusiastic
Welshman, the hard-headed Cornish miner: Methodism, Catholicism,
the Eisteddfod, the parish priest, New Tipperary, the Hebrides,
the Scotland Division of Liverpool; Conybeare, Cunninghame
Graham, Michael Davitt, Holyoake; Co-operation, the Dockers,
_The Star_, the Fabians. Powers hitherto undreamt of surge
up in our parliamentary world in the Sextons, the Healys, the
Atherley Joneses, the McDonalds, the O’Briens, the Dillons,
the Morgans, the Abrahams; in our wider public life in the
William Morrises, the Annie Besants, the Father Humphreys,
the Archbishop Crokes, the General Booths, the Alfred Russel
Wallaces, the John Stuart Blackies, the Joseph Arches, the
Bernard Shaws, the John Burnses; the People’s Palace, the Celtic
Society of Scotland, the Democratic Federation, the Socialist
League. Anybody who looks over any great list of names in any of
the leading modern movements in England--from the London County
Council to the Lectures at South Place--will see in a moment
that the New Radicalism is essentially a Celtic product. The
Celt in Britain, like Mr Burne Jones’s enchanted princess, has
lain silent for ages in an enforced long sleep; but the spirit
of the century, pushing aside the weeds and briars of privilege
and caste, has set free the sleeper at last....”
Sufficiently matter-of-fact in his assertions, Grant Allen’s enthusiasm
was just a little premature. But he was only a year or so too early,
and if he had stayed his pen a little while he would have been able to
announce the real Celtic revival of the Nineties which received its
first strong impetus from the genius of William Butler Yeats.
The Celtic movement as expressed in the various fields of activity
named by Grant Allen was at the dawn of the Eighteen Nineties quite
free of self-consciousness. It was not really a “movement” at all;
and even where Grant Allen correctly indicates Celtic influence, that
influence is the accidental outcome of the fact that those who were
responsible for it happened to have been Celts or to have had Celtic
blood in their veins. In many of his examples it would have been of
equal pertinence to trace Teutonic or Latin influences. The real Celtic
revival, as a revival, began with the Irish Literary movement. W. B.
Yeats published his first book of poems in Dublin in 1885; but it was
not until he issued _The Wanderings of Oisin, and Other Poems_, in
1889, that a new voice singing a song as old as time was recognised.
With the publication of _The Countess Kathleen_, in 1892, and
the _Celtic Twilight_, in 1893, this new voice was hailed as
something more than new; it was hailed as a strong and persuasive
voice that was already attracting to itself affinities in the land of
its origin. Among these were Dr Douglas Hyde, Lady Gregory, George
Russell (A.E.), Lionel Johnson, John Eglinton and, later, and with
less certainty from the Celtic standpoint, George Moore. Dr Douglas
Hyde and Lady Gregory were devoting their attention to the ancient
legends and songs of Ireland, and their studies ultimately resulted in
the publication of books such as the _Love Songs of Connacht_ and
_Gods and Fighting Men_. George Russell and W. B. Yeats linked up
the natural mysticism of the Celt with Theosophy, besides contributing
to the movement poems of rare beauty. John Eglinton worked along lines
of philosophic interpretation which he expressed in _Two Essays on
the Remnant_, published in 1895. George Moore introduced an equally
Celtic sense of fact into a movement which might otherwise have been a
record of dreams.
In 1891 W. B. Yeats founded the National Literary Society, which,
seven years later, brought into existence the Irish Literary Theatre
at Dublin. The object of the Irish Literary Theatre was first and
foremost to create a medium for the production of “something better
than the ordinary play of commerce,” and by so doing to augment the
chances of a native Irish dramatic renaissance. The first performances
of the society took place in 1899, when two plays, _The Countess
Kathleen_, by W. B. Yeats, and _The Heather Field_, by Edward
Martyn, were produced at the Antient Concert Rooms, Dublin. Next year
the Irish Literary Theatre produced five plays at the Gaiety Theatre,
Dublin. These were: _The Bending of the Bough_, by George Moore;
_The Last Feast of the Fraima_, by Alice Milligan; _Mæeve_,
by Edward Martyn. In 1901 at the same theatre were produced _Diarmuid
and Grania_, by W. B. Yeats and George Moore; and a Gaelic play,
_The Twisting of the Rope_, by Douglas Hyde. These performances
closed the first attempt in Ireland to create a national drama. During
its brief life, the Irish Literary Theatre recorded its views and
achievements in an occasional publication called _Beltaine_
(1899–1900), which was the forerunner of _Samhain_, as the Irish
Literary Theatre was of the National Theatre Society Ltd., and its
famous playhouse in Abbey Street, Dublin. The dramatic and literary
awakening in Ireland found expression in the local Press, _The Daily
Express_ of Dublin devoting considerable space to the discussion
of literature and art, to which most of the young Irish writers
contributed.
Side by side with the development of the Celtic revival in Ireland
there were Celtic awakenings of a lesser degree in Scotland and Wales.
The chief activity of the Scottish revival was at Edinburgh, where
Patrick Geddes produced four numbers of a quarterly review called the
_Evergreen_ in 1895 and 1896. The idea seemed to be to make each
number complete in itself and so to arrange the contents that they
should serve as comments on art and life apropos the four seasons.
Among the literary contributors are found the names of Patrick Geddes,
Sir Noel Paton, S. R. Crockett, William Sharp, “Fiona Macleod,” Sir
George Douglas, Riccardo Stephens and Gabriel Setoun. The French
communist, Élisée Reclus, was also a contributor. All the decorations
were in black and white, and the artists included Pittendrigh
Macgillivray, John Duncan, E. A. Hornel and James Cadenhead.
The most important literary product of the Celtic revival in Scotland
was the work of the mysterious personality “Fiona Macleod,” whom we
now know to have been the novelist and critic, William Sharp. “Fiona
Macleod’s” first volume, _Pharais; a Romance of the Isles_, was
published by Moray, of Derby, in 1894; other works from the same pen,
such as _The Washer of the Ford_, were published by Patrick Geddes
and Colleagues, at Edinburgh. The work of “Fiona Macleod” possessed all
the more pronounced characteristics of Celtic art, with an insistence
upon mystical aloofness so deliberate as to suggest a determination to
be Celtic at all costs; a pose carried off successfully only by rare
literary skill.
The movement in Wales was far less definite. There was a decided
quickening of social consciousness among the Celts, which expressed
itself in ardent political activities of a Radical tendency. The
extreme section was represented by the Labour leader, “Mabon,” but
the main current of the national political genius found its fullest
expression in the vigorous personality of a rising young politician,
Lloyd George, who was later to become the chief protagonist of Joseph
Chamberlain during the Jingo outbreak of the final years of the decade.
Literary activity was confined to a renewed interest in national myth
and tradition, an interest aroused by the magnificent collection of
legends made by Lady Charlotte Guest in _The Mabinogian_. But
there was no distinctive modern art or literary production. The Welsh
poetic renaissance, save for such hints as are to be found in the poems
of Ernest Rhys, was unborn, and Wales was still under the impression
that all things associated with the theatre were evil; a view that was
not to be altered until well into the present century.
These various expressions of the Celtic renaissance, rather than those
indicated by Grant Allen, were in the true tradition of that Celtic
spirit first interpreted by Ernest Renan in _The Poetry of the Celtic
Races_. Speaking of that race he says:
“Its history is itself one long lament; it still recalls its
exiles, its flights across the seas. If at times it seems to be
cheerful, a tear is not slow to glisten behind its smile; it
does not know that strange forgetfulness of human conditions
and destinies which is called gaiety. Its songs of joy end as
elegies; there is nothing to equal the delicious sadness of
its national melodies. One might call them emanations from on
high which, falling drop by drop upon the soul, pass through
it like memories of another world. Never have men feasted so
long upon these solitary delights of the spirit, these poetic
memories which simultaneously intercross all the sensation of
life, so vague, so deep, so penetrative, that one might die from
them, without being able to say whether it was from bitterness
or sweetness.... The essential element of the Celt’s poetic
life is the _adventure_--that is to say, the pursuit of
the unknown, an endless quest after an object ever flying from
desire. It was of this that St Brandam dreamed, that Peredur
sought with his mystic chivalry, that Knight Owen asked of his
subterranean journeyings. This race desires the infinite, it
thirsts for it, and pursues it at all costs, beyond the tomb,
beyond hell itself.”
The most profound and the most effective interpreter of that view
of life in modern British literature is W. B. Yeats. It was he who
was the chief figure of the Celtic Renaissance of the Eighteen
Nineties; the artists, writers and politicians named by Grant Allen
were Celts playing the Teutonic game, and winning. In Yeats we have
the fullest expression of the intellectual Celt--poet, mystic and
patriot--expressing himself in an imaginative propaganda which has
affected the thoughts and won the appreciation of the English-speaking
world.
He was born in Dublin in the year 1866, the son of the Irish painter
J. B. Yeats, R.H.A. Educated chiefly in the city of his birth, he
was probably helped in the ripening of his genius by frequent visits
to relatives in County Sligo, where, among a peasantry intimate with
ghosts, fairies and demons, he laid the foundations of a wide knowledge
of the more remote characteristics and traditions of his countrymen.
Ireland was his home until 1887. Later, the Yeats family went to
London, and during the Nineties he lived partly in the English capital
and partly in the Irish. His aim in promoting the Irish Literary
movement was the outcome of the idea that for Ireland “a national
drama or literature must spring from a native interest in life and
its problems, and a strong capacity for life among the people.” So by
studying and translating the Gaelic legends, rescuing and recording in
literary form the folk-tales of the countryside, and inspiring Irish
writers and artists to interpret the national individuality rather
than that of alien lands, he hoped to crystallise the scattered forces
of Gaelic energy, and thus make a literature that would stand towards
Ireland as the literature of the Shakespearean period stands towards
England. To make, in short, the literature and art of Ireland both
national and quick with a life that might be felt not merely by a
select coterie of cultured enthusiasts, but by the whole nation.
Working for this idea, Yeats gathered around him, as we have seen, all
that was most hopeful in modern Irish letters. The result to-day is
that Ireland is no longer a geographical expression with a clamorous
voice; Ireland to-day stands among the nations as a race with a
literature and drama expressing its inmost spiritual, intellectual
and social needs. In all save the fact that this literature and drama
uses a language which Ireland, with the rest of the British Empire and
America, owes to the Anglo-Saxon, it is essentially Irish in aim and
expression. And, incidentally, it has gone a long way towards exploding
the idea that the genius of Ireland found complete expression in the
_Irish Melodies_ of Tom Moore and the melodramatic heroes of Dion
Boucicault. “Our legends,” says W. B. Yeats, “are always associated
with places, and not merely every mountain and valley, but every
strange stone and little coppice has its legend, preserved in written
or unwritten tradition. Our Irish romantic movement has arisen out
of this tradition, and should always, even when it makes new legends
about traditional people and things, be haunted by people and places.
It should make Ireland, as Ireland and all other lands were in ancient
times, a holy land to her own people.”
Yeats, with Maeterlinck, and other foreign symbolists, filled his song
and drama with the possibility of unexpected happenings. These works
are steeped in a different atmosphere from that in which we ordinarily
move. They dare to be unreasonable; to go where Caolte “tosses his
burning hair,” and Niam calls:
“Away, come away;
And brood no more where the fire is bright;
Filling thy heart with a mortal dream;
For breasts are heaving and eyes a-gleam;
Away, come away, to the dim twilight.”
In such imaginative abandon there is possibility of discovery and
adventure. America was not discovered by Columbus sailing into
uncharted seas, but by the imaginative impulse that foretold continents
over the rim of the known world. So it is that the Celtic dreaming,
made articulate by Yeats and others, contains in its suggestive
darknesses more wisdom than subservience to known things and known
experiences have contributed to men. The Celts have realised, by
intuition rather than by reason, what all people of simple imagination
have realised, that life, as Renan says of the Breton, is not a
personal adventure undertaken by each man on his own account, but a
link in a long chain, a gift received and handed on. In addition to
this idea of tradition, the British Celt has realised and reasserted
the further idea of experience by individual adventure. W. B. Yeats
is distinguished among Celtic writers because of this sense of
individuality. His work is not merely pensive and wonder-stricken
in the manner of much traditional Celtic art; it is thoughtful and
joyful, possessing a strength born of personal happiness and individual
wonder. In the retelling of the tales of his nation he has added much
of himself to that which “it has taken generations to invent,” and he
has come nearer towards stimulating the creation of a noble popular
literature than anyone in Ireland since the simple tales and legends of
Finn and Oisin were the commonplaces of the national mind.
There was a wizardry about his songs quite new to contemporary Ireland.
His choice of words was full of a vague glimmering of unknown things,
while his rhythm haunted the mind with the peculiar insistence of songs
which have stood age-long tests of familiarity. But the matter was
strange to customary hearing, it was redolent of
“The dim wisdoms old and deep
That God gives unto men in sleep.”
Celtic dependence upon the intimation of the inner consciousness,
however, did not draw him away from familiar things and more obvious
but none the less profound sensations. He was engaged quite as
often with the simpler concerns of sentiment, with the home and the
affections of the more human among human beings, with “the cry of a
child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, the heavy steps of
the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould.”
His tales, like his verses, are coloured by myth and folklore,
mysticism and magic. All the stories in _The Secret Rose_ and
_The Celtic Twilight_ hinge their interest upon something outside
mundane experiences. Many are little more than simple records of tales
he has been told by the country folk in the more remote districts of
Ireland. “I have written down accurately and candidly,” he says, in
the preface to _The Celtic Twilight_, “as much as I have heard
and seen and, except by way of commentary, nothing that I have merely
imagined. I have been at no pains to separate my own beliefs from those
of the peasantry, but have rather let my men and women, ghouls and
faeries, go their way unoffended or defended by any argument of mine.
The things a man has heard and seen are threads of life, and if he
pulled them carefully from the confused distaff of memory, any who will
can weave them into whatever garment of belief please them best.” The
garment of belief which the poet has woven about these old tales is one
of the most successful expressions of the literary renaissance of the
Nineties.
Anglo-Saxons are not usually interested in a peasant’s vague
experiences in the twilight margin of the West, but they are concerned
as to the nature of such experiences. They appreciate the unreal in the
dullest ghost story. They recognise the thrill in the shallowest yarn
of the ghost-seer, even though the cause be no more mysterious than the
desire of a domestic animal for human society, or some white-smocked
and bibulous peasant mistaking the churchyard for the king’s highway.
But to hear of the doings of Celtic peasants in the language of W.
B. Yeats is to hear something that interests beyond the limits of a
mere tale. Some of his stories deal frankly with the mysterious as it
appeals to the devotee of magic, and some of them have an imaginative
atmosphere recalling Edgar Allan Poe. Such are the stories of Michael
Robartes in _The Secret Rose_ and _The Tables of the Law_.
In the plays, also, similar themes recur, expressed in the drama’s
convention of conflict between experience and idea. Here Yeats is more
akin to Maeterlinck, although there is always that national note which
is nowhere apparent in the work of the Belgian symbolist. _Pelleas
and Mélisande_ belongs to no country and all countries, but _The
Countess Kathleen_ belongs first to Ireland--and then to humanity.