THE
POEM-BOOK OF THE GAEL
The Poem Book
of the Gael
by
Eleanor Hull.
1913
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
at Paul's Work, Edinburgh
[Illustration: Opening passage of the "Saltair na Rann."
from the MS. in the Bodleian Library.]
THE POEM-BOOK OF
THE GAEL
Translations from Irish Gaelic Poetry into
English Prose and Verse
SELECTED AND EDITED BY
ELEANOR HULL
AUTHOR OF "THE CUCHULLIN SAGA IN IRISH LITERATURE,"
"A TEXT-BOOK OF IRISH LITERATURE," ETC.
[Illustration: Decoration]
WITH A FRONTISPIECE
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1913
A NEW IMPRESSION
_All rights reserved_
CONTENTS
(_Where not otherwise indicated, the translation or
poetic setting is by the author._)
PAGE
INTRODUCTION XV
THE SALTAIR NA RANN, OR PSALTER
OF THE VERSES
I. The Creation of the Universe 3
II. The Heavenly Kingdom 11
III. The Forbidden Fruit 20
IV. The Fall and Expulsion from Paradise 22
V. The Penance of Adam and Eve 31
VI. The Death of Adam 43
ANCIENT PAGAN POEMS
The Source of Poetic Inspiration (founded on translation
by _Whitley Stokes_) 53
Amorgen's Song (founded on translation by _John
MacNeill_) 57
The Song of Childbirth 59
Greeting to the New-born Babe 61
What is Love? 62
Summons to Cuchulain 63
Laegh's Description of Fairy-land 65
The Lamentation of Fand when she is about to
leave Cuchulain 69
Mider's Call to Fairy-land 71
The Song of the Fairies _A. H. Leahy_ 73
The great Lamentation of Deirdre for the Sons of
Usna 74
OSSIANIC POETRY
First Winter-Song _Alfred Percival Graves_ 81
Second Winter-Song 82
In Praise of May _T. W. Rolleston_ 83
The Isle of Arran 85
The Parting of Goll from his Wife 87
Youth and Age 91
Chill Winter 92
The Sleep-song of Grainne over Dermuid 94
The Slaying of Conbeg 97
The Fairies' Lullaby 98
Song of the Forest Trees _Standish Hayes O'Grady_ 99
EARLY CHRISTIAN POEMS
St. Patrick's Breastplate _Kuno Meyer_ 105
Patrick's Blessing on Munster _Alfred Perceval Graves_ 107
Columcille's Farewell to Aran _Douglas Hyde_ 109
St. Columba in Iona _Eugene O'Curry_ 111
Hymn to the Dawn 113
The Song of Manchan the Hermit 117
A Prayer 119
The Loves of Liadan and Curithir 121
The Lay of Prince Marvan 125
The Song of Crede, daughter of Guare
_Alfred Perceval Graves_ 130
The Student and his Cat _Robin Flower_ 132
The Song of the Seven Archangels _Ernest Rhys_ 134
The Féilire of Adamnan _P. J. McCall_ 136
The Feathered Hermit 138
An Aphorism 138
The Blackbird 139
Deus Meus _George Sigerson_ 140
The Soul's Desire 142
Tempest on the Sea _Robin Flower_ 144
The Old Woman of Beare 147
Gormliath's Lament for Nial Black-knee 151
The Mother's Lament at the Slaughter of the
Innocents _Alfred Perceval Graves_ 153
Consecration 156
Teach me, O Trinity 157
The Shaving of Murdoch _Standish Hayes O'Grady_ 159
Eileen Aroon 161
POEMS OF THE DARK DAYS
The Downfall of the Gael _Sir Samuel Ferguson_ 165
Address to Brian O'Rourke "of the Bulwarks" to
arouse him against the English 169
O'Hussey's Ode to the Maguire
_James Clarence Mangan_ 172
A Lament for the Princes of Tyrone and Tyrconnell
_James Clarence Mangan_ 176
The County of Mayo _George Fox_ 182
The Outlaw of Loch Lene _Jeremiah Joseph Callanan_ 184
The Flower of Nut-brown Maids 186
Roisín Dubh 188
My Dark Rosaleen _James Clarence Mangan_ 190
The Fair Hills of Éire _George Sigerson_ 194
Shule Aroon _(Traditional)_ 196
Love's Despair _George Sigerson_ 198
The Cruiskeen Lawn _George Sigerson_ 200
Eamonn an Chnuic, or "Ned of the Hill"
_P. H. Pearse_ 202
O Druimin donn dilish 204
Do you Remember that Night? _Eugene O'Curry_ 206
The Exile's Song 208
The Fisherman's Keen (_Anonymous_) 210
Boatman's Hymn _Sir Samuel Ferguson_ 213
Dirge on the Death of Art O'Leary 215
The Midnight Court (_Prologue_) 224
RELIGIOUS POEMS OF THE PEOPLE
Hymn to the Virgin Mary 229
Christmas Hymn _Douglas Hyde_ 231
O Mary of Graces _Douglas Hyde_ 232
The Cattle-shed 233
Hail to Thee, O Mary 234
O Mary, O blessed Mother 235
I rest with Thee, O Jesus 236
Thanksgiving after Food 236
The Sacred Trinity 237
O King of the Wounds 237
Prayer before going to Sleep 238
I lie down with God 239
The White Paternoster 240
Another Version 241
A Night Prayer 243
Mary's Vision 243
The Safe-guarding of my Soul be Thine 244
Another Version 244
The Straying Sheep 246
Before Communion 246
May the sweet Name of Jesus 247
O Blessed Jesus 248
Another Version 248
Morning Wish 249
On Covering the Fire for the Night 249
The Man who Stands Stiff _Douglas Hyde_ 250
Charm against Enemies _Lady Wilde_ 252
Charm for a Pain in the Side _Lady Wilde_ 252
Charm against Sorrow _Lady Wilde_ 253
The Keening of Mary _P. H. Pearse_ 254
LOVE-SONGS AND POPULAR POETRY
Cushla ma Chree _Edward Walsh_ 259
The Blackthorn 260
Pastheen Finn _Sir Samuel Ferguson_ 263
She 265
Hopeless Love 266
The Girl I Love _Jeremiah Joseph Callanan_ 267
Would God I were _Katharine Tynan-Hinkson_ 268
Branch of the Sweet and Early Rose
_William Drennan_ 269
Is truagh gan mise I Sasana _Thomas MacDonagh_ 270
The Yellow Bittern _Thomas MacDonagh_ 271
Have you been at Carrack? _Edward Walsh_ 273
Cashel of Munster _Sir Samuel Ferguson_ 275
The Snowy-breasted Pearl _George Petrie_ 277
The Dark Maid of the Valley _P. J. McCall_ 279
The Coolun _Sir Samuel Ferguson_ 281
Ceann dubh dhileas _Sir Samuel Ferguson_ 283
Ringleted Youth of my Love _Douglas Hyde_ 284
I shall not Die for You _Padraic Colum_ 286
Donall Oge 288
The Grief of a Girl's Heart 291
Death the Comrade 294
Muirneen of the Fair Hair _Robin Flower_ 296
The Red Man's Wife _Douglas Hyde_ 298
Another Version 299
My Grief on the Sea _Douglas Hyde_ 302
Oró Mhór, a Mhóirín _P. J. McCall_ 304
The little Yellow Road _Seosamh Mac Cathmhaoil_ 306
Reproach to the Pipe 308
Lament of Morian Shehone for Miss Mary Bourke
_(Anonymous)_ 311
Modereen Rue _Katherine Tynan-Hinkson_ 314
The Stars Stand Up 316
The Love-smart 318
Well for Thee 319
I am Raftery _Douglas Hyde_ 320
Dust hath Closed Helen's Eye _Lady Gregory_ 321
The Shining Posy 324
Love is a Mortal Disease 326
I am Watching my Young Calves Sucking 328
The Narrow Road 329
Forsaken 332
I Follow a Star _Seosamh Mac Cathmhaoil_ 334
LULLABIES AND WORKING SONGS
Nurse's Song (_Traditional_) 337
A Sleep Song _P. H. Pearse_ 339
The Cradle of Gold _Alfred Perceval Graves_ 340
Rural Song 341
Ploughing Song 342
A Spinning-wheel Ditty 344
NOTES 349
INTRODUCTION
"An air is more lasting than the voice of the birds, A word is more
lasting than the riches of the world."
The truth of this Irish proverb strikes us forcibly as we glance
through any such collection of Gaelic poetry as this, and consider how
these lays, the dates of whose composition extend from the eighth to
the present century, have been preserved to us.
On the border of some grave manuscript, such as a Latin copy of St.
Paul's Epistles or a transcript of Priscian, a stray quatrain may be
found jotted down by the tired scribe, recording in impromptu verse
his delight at the note of a blackbird whose song has penetrated his
cell, his amusement at the gambols of his cat watching a mouse, or his
reflections on a piece of news brought to him by some wandering monk,
about the terror of the viking raids, or a change of dynasty "at home
in Ireland."
Several of our Ossianic poems are taken from a manuscript of lays
collected in 1626-27 in and about the Glens of Antrim, and sent out
to while away the tedium of camp life to an Irish officer serving in
the Low Countries, who wearied for the poems and stories of his youth.
The religious hymns of Murdoch O'Daly (Muredach Albanach), called "the
Scot" on account of his affection for his adopted country, though he
was born in Connaught, are preserved in a collection of poems gathered
in the Western Highlands, many Irish poems, even from so great a
distance as Munster, being found in it.
The Saltair na Rann or "Psalter of the Verses," the most important
religious poem of ancient Ireland, is preserved in one copy only. It
seems as though a miracle had sometimes intervened to guard for later
generations some single version of a valuable tract at home or abroad;
but it is a miracle which we could have wished to have taken place more
often, when we reflect upon the large number of manuscripts forever
lost to us.
Many of the most beautiful of the ancient poems, as well as of the
popular songs, are anonymous; they are frequently found mixed up
with material of the most arid description, genealogies, annals, or
miscellaneous matter. It is easier to guess from the tone of the poems
under what mood of mind they were composed than to tell exactly who
wrote them. Even when they come down to us adorned with the name of
some well-known saint or poet, we have an uncertain feeling about the
accuracy of the ascription, when we find a poem whose language cannot
be earlier than the tenth or eleventh century confidently connected
with a writer who lived two or three centuries earlier. In some cases,
no doubt, the versions we possess, though modernised in language and
rhythm, are in reality old; in others the ascription probably bears
witness to the desire of the author or his public to win esteem for
his work by adorning it with some famous name. Some of these poems,
of which only one copy has come down to us, were, however, well known
in an earlier day, and are quoted in old tracts on Irish metric as
examples of the metres used in the bardic schools. It is evident that
though standards of taste may change, the recognition of what is really
beautiful in poetry remains as a settled instinct in man's nature. Many
of those poems which now appeal most strongly to ourselves took rank as
verses of acknowledged merit nearer to the time of their composition.
This we can deduce from their use as examples worthy of imitation in
these mediaeval Irish text-books, where the names of songs we still
admire are quoted as specimens of good poetry.
It is remarkable that a very large proportion of fine poetry comes
to us from the period of the Norse invasions, a time which we are
accustomed to think of as one continuous series of wars, raids, and
burnings; but which, if we may judge by what has come down to us of
its verse, shows us that the Irish gentleman of that day had ideas of
refinement that raise him far above the mere fighting clansman; his
critical view of literature was a severe one. The fine freedom shown
in many of these poems is surprising, both as regards the sentiments
and the metres. They possess a mastery of form that argues a high
cultivation, not only of the special art of poetry, but of the whole
intellectual faculties of the writers.
Some of these poems are strangely modern, even _fin de siècle_ in their
tone. The poem of the "Old Woman of Beare" has often been compared to
Villon's "Regrets de la Belle Heaulmière ja parvenue à viellesse," or
to Béranger's "Grand'mère." But the Irish poem is far more artistically
wrought than either of these comparatively modern poems. For in the
ancient verses, the old woman is set, a lonely and forsaken figure,
against the background of the ebbing tide, and the slow throbs of her
heart, worn with age and sin, beat in unison with the retreating
motion of the wave. There is also a further significance in the
poem which we must not miss. It is the earliest of the long series
of allegorical songs in which Ireland is depicted under the form of
a woman; though, unlike her successors of a later day, she is here
represented, not as a fair maiden, a Grainne Mhaol, or Kathleen ni
Houlahan, or Little Mary Cuillenan, but as an aged joyless hag,
forlorn and censorious, bemoaning the loss of bygone pleasures, and
the gravity of her nun's veil. The "Cailleach Bheara," the "Hag" or
"Nun of Beare" is known in many place-names in Ireland. It is on Slieve
na Callighe, or the "Hill of the Hag" or "Nun," in Co. Meath that the
great cairns and tumuli of Lough Crew are found; it was evidently, like
the neighbourhood of the Boyne, a place of pagan sanctity; and such
names as Tober na Callighe Bheara, the "Well of the Hag of Beare,"
are found in different parts of the country. The "Hag of Beare" seems
to be symbolic of pagan Ireland, regretting the stricter regime of
Christianity, and the changes that time had brought about. The curious
legend which prefaces the poem suggests the same idea. She is said to
have seen seven periods of youth, and to have outlived tribes and races
descended from her. For a hundred years of old age she wore the veil
of a nun. "Thereupon old age and infirmity came upon her." We catch
the same note of regret for the days of paganism through many legends
and poems. It is mystical and veiled in such stories as that of "King
Murtough and the Witch-woman"; it is fierce, but also often touched by
the grotesque, in the innumerable colloquies between Patrick and Oisín
(Ossian), the last of the ancient pagan heroes. But in all this there
is a note of apology. It is not so outspoken in its revolt against
the new system of life and thought as are the Norse chronicles and the
Icelandic Sagas. After all, Christianity was an accomplished thing;
quietly but persistently it took its place, sweeping into its fold
chiefs and common folk alike. No resistance could stop this universal
progress. And the literary man or the peasant, dwelling on his early
legends, the outcome of a state of thought passed or passing away,
dared only half-heartedly bemoan the former days, when wars and raids,
the "Creach" and the "Táin" were the highest way of life for a brave
man, and no Christian doctrine of forgiveness of enemies and charity to
foes had come in to perplex his thoughts and confuse their issues. The
Raid remained, it was an essential part of actual life; and burnings
and wars went on as before, but they were no longer, theoretically, at
least, matters to win praise and honour, they were condemned beforehand
by the Christian ethic. A chief, to hold his own, must still throw
open doors of hospitality to his tribe, must dispense largesse to
all-comers, must gather about his board the neighbours and dependents
in riotous assemblies and festivals. But all this the Christian monk
and priest looked upon with suspicion; they bade him fill his thoughts
with a future Kingdom, rather than with the earthly one to which he
had been born, and to keep his soul in humble readiness by prayers and
fastings, by seclusion and self-sacrifice. The great disjointure is
everywhere apparent; chiefs are seen flying from their plain duties to
their clans in order to win a heavenly chiefdom, not of this world;
kings retire into hermitages, and whole villages take on the aspect
and system of life of the monastery. To escape a network of religious
service so closely spread throughout the country was impossible; all
that the half-convinced could do was to relieve his soul in legend and
song and jest. Hence the large amount of this literature of protest,
coming to us curiously side by side with poems breathing the very
spirit of religious devotion, the work of peaceful recluse or retired
monk.
For the movement had its other aspect. If the warrior or chief resigned
much in becoming a Christian monk, there is no doubt that he gained as
well. Contemporaneous religious poetry in the Middle Ages is elsewhere
overshadowed by the cast of theologic thought. The "world" from which
the saint must flee is no mere symbol, denoting the perils of evil
courses; it is the actual visible earth, its hills and trees and
flowers, and the beauty of its human inhabitants that are in themselves
a danger and a snare. St. Bernard walking round the Lake of Geneva,
unconscious of its presence and blind to its loveliness, is a fit
symbol of the tendency of the religious mind in the Middle Ages. Sin
and repentance, the fall and redemption, hell and heaven, occupied the
religious man's every thought; beside such weighty themes the outward
life became almost negligible. If he dared to turn his mind towards it
at all, it was in order to extract from it some warning of peril, or
some allegory of things divine. In essence, the "world" was nothing
else than a peril to be renounced and if possible entirely abandoned.
But the Irish monk showed no such inclination, suffered no such
terrors. His joy in nature grew with his loving association with her
moods. He refused to mingle the idea of evil with what God had made
so good. If he sought for symbols, he found only symbols of purity
and holiness. The pool beside his hut, the rill that flowed across
his green, became to his watchful eye the manifestation of a divine
spirit washing away sin; if the birds sang sweetly above his door,
they were the choristers of God; if the wild beasts gathered to their
nightly tryst, were they not the congregation of intelligent beings
whom God Himself would most desire? The friendly badgers or foxes of
the wood that came forth, undismayed by the white or brown-robed figure
who seemed to have taken up his lasting abode amongst them, became to
his mind fellow-monks, authorised members of his strange community.
Amongst his feathered and furred associates, he read his Psalms and
Hours in peace; sang his periodic hymn to St. Hilary or St. Brigit, and
performed his innumerable genuflexions and "cross-vigils." Here, from
time to time, he poured forth in spontaneous song his joy in the life
that he had elected as his own. When King Guaire of Connaught stands at
the door of the hermitage in which his brother Marvan had taken refuge
from the bustle of court life, and asks him why he had sacrificed so
much, Marvan bursts forth into a poem in praise of his hermit life,
and the King is fain to confess that the choice of the recluse was the
wiser one; when St. Cellach of Killala is dragged into the forest by
his comrades and threatened with death, not even the sight of the four
murderers lying at his feet with swords ready drawn in their hands to
slay him can prevent him from greeting the Dawn in a beautiful song.
The saint who, like St. Finan, lived shut up within his cell, in many
cases lost his mental balance, and degenerated into a mere Fakir,
winning heaven by the miseries of his self-imposed mortifications; but
the monk who trusted himself to untrammelled intercourse with nature,
preserved his underlying sanity. For whether or no the hundreds of
daily genuflexions were performed, the patch of ground around the
solitary's cell must be ploughed or sown or reaped; the apples must
be gathered or the honeysuckles twined. The salmon or herring must be
netted or angled for. Thus nature and its needs kept the hermit on the
straight and simple paths of physical and mental healthfulness, however
he might try to escape into a wilderness of his own imaginings.
The early poetry, we feel, is on the whole joyous; whether pagan or
Christian in tone, it arises from a happy heart. The pagan is more
robust, more vigorous; the Christian gentler and more reflective; but
alike they are free from the mournful note of despair that throws a
settled gloom over much of the later literature.
The Ossianic poems have quite a distinctive tone; in them we catch the
abounding energy belonging to the days of the hunt of the wild native
boar or stag, when all the country was one open hunting-ground, fit
for men whose ideal was that of the sportsman and the warrior. Besides
romantic tales, we have a whole body of poetry, loosely strung together
under the covering name of Oisín, or Ossian, and usually ascribed to
him or to Fionn mac Cumhall, his father and chief, dealing with the
themes of war and of the chase. They are often in the nature of the
protest of the fighting and hunting-man against the claims of religion.
He is perpetually proclaiming that the sounds and sights of the forest
and seashore are more dear to him than any others, and when he is
called upon to give the first place to the duties of religion, placed
before him, as it usually is, in its most enfeebling aspect, he raises
the stout protest that the hunting-horn has greater attractions for him
than the tinkling bell which calls to prayer.
"I have heard music sweeter far
Than hymns and psalms of clerics are;
The blackbird's pipe on Letterlea,
The Dord Finn's wailing melody.
"The thrush's song of Glenna-Scál,
The hound's deep bay at twilight's fall,
The barque's sharp grating on the shore,
Than cleric's chants delight me more."
There is the ring of the obstinate pagan about such verses; and
many poems are wholly occupied by an unholy wrangling between the
representative of the old order, Oisín, and the representative of the
new, St. Patrick. The poems themselves probably date from a far later
period than either.
More healthy are the true hunting songs. Many of these are in praise
of the Isle of Arran, in the Clyde, a favourite resort during the
sporting-season both for the Scottish and Irish huntsman. In the poem
we have called "The Isle of Arran," from the "Colloquy of the Ancient
Men," the charm of the Isle is well described. We have in it the same
pure joy in natural scenery that we find in the poems of the religious
hermits, but the tone is manlier and more emphatic.
Occasionally a fiercer note creeps into the hunter's mood. The chase
of the boar and deer was not without its dangers. Winter, and the
unfriendly clan hard by, or the lean prowling wolf at night, were real
terrors to the small companies encamped on the open hill-side or in the
forest. Though the warrior in peaceful times loved the chase of swine
and stag, his hand had done and was always ready to do sterner work
when opportunity offered. The poem "Chill Winter" has a note of almost
savage exultation; the old fighter turns from his present perils and
discomforts to remember the warrior onslaughts which had left the
glen below him silent, and its once happy inhabitants cold in death;
colder, as he gladly reflects, than even he himself feels on this chill
winter's night. It is the voice of the ancient warrior, who thought no
shame of slaying, but thanked God when he had knocked down his fellow.
Whether he, in his turn, were the undermost man, or whether he escaped,
he cared not at all.
Two difficulties face the modern reader in coming for the first time
upon genuine Irish literature, whether poetry or prose. The first is
the curious feeling that we are hung between two worlds, the seen and
the unseen; that we are not quite among actualities, or rather that we
do not know where the actual begins or where it ends. Even in dealing
with history we may find ourselves suddenly wafted away into some
illusory spirit-world with which the historian seems to deal with the
same sober exactness as in detailing any fact of ordinary life. The
faculty of discerning between the actual and the imaginary is absent,
as it is absent in imaginative children; often, indeed, the illusory
quite overpowers the real, as it does in the life of the Irish peasant
to-day.
There is, in most literatures, a meeting-place where the Mythological
and the Historic stand in close conjunction, the one dying out as
the other takes its place. Only in Ireland we never seem to reach
this point; we can never anywhere say, "Here ends legend, here begins
history." In all Irish writing we find poetry and fact, dreams and
realities, exact detail and wild imagination, linked closely hand in
hand. This is the Gael as revealed in his literature. At first we
are inclined to doubt the accuracy of any part of the story; but,
as we continue our examination, we are surprised at the substantial
correctness of the ancient records, so far as we are able to test them,
whether on the historical or on the social side. The poet is never
wholly poet, he is also practical man; and the historian is never
wholly chronicler and annalist, he is also at the back of his mind
folklorist, lover of nature, dreamer. It is the puzzle and the charm of
Ireland.
A good example of this is the very beautiful anonymous Irish poem, rich
in poetic imagery, addressed to Ragnall or Reginald, son of Somerled,
lord of the Isles from 1164-1204. This poem, written for an historical
prince, begins with a description of the joys of the fairy palace,
"Emain of the Apples," whence this favoured prince is supposed by the
poet to have issued forth:
"Many, in white grass-fresh Emain,
Of men on whom a noble eye gazes
(The rider of a bay steed impetuously)
Through a countenance of foxglove hue,
Shapely, branch-fresh.
"Many, in Emain of the pastures,
From which its noble feast has not parted,
Are the fields ploughed in autumn
For the pure corn of the Lord's Body."
The poet's mind wanders from the ancient Emain, capital of Ulster, to
the allegorical Emain, the dwelling of the gods or fairy-hosts, who
were thought of as inhabiting the great tumuli on the Boyne; again, he
transplants his fairy-land to the home of Ragnall, and seems to place
it in Mull or the Isle of Man, which was indeed the especial abode of
Manannan, the Ocean-god and Ruler of Fairy-land.
"What God from Brugh of the Boyne,
Thou son of noble Sabia,
Thou beauteous apple-rod
Created thee with her in secret?
"O Man of the white steed,
O Man of the black swan,
Of the fierce band and the gentle sorrow,
Of the sharp blade and the lasting fame.
"Thy fair side thou hast bathed,
The grey branch of thy eyes like summer showers,
Over thy locks, O descendant of Fergus,
The wind of Paradise has breathed."[1]
We recognise that this is fine poetry, but we feel also that it needs a
specialised education thoroughly to understand it. The world from which
it hails is not our world, and to comprehend it we must do more than
translate, we must add notes and glossary at every line; but no poetry,
especially poetry under the initial disadvantage of a translation,
could retain its qualities under such treatment.
In all the ancient verse we meet with these obstacles. Even much of the
most imaginative Ossianic poetry becomes too difficult from this point
of view for the untrained reader.
Take the fine poem detailing the history of the Shield of Fionn. Poetic
addresses to noted weapons are common enough, and are not confined to
Irish literature; but the adventures of this shield pass beyond the
ordinary uses of human battles, and enter the realm of mythology. The
very name given to it, the "Dripping Ancient Hazel," carries us into a
world of poetic imagination.
"Scarce is there on the firm earth, whether it be man or
woman, one that can tell why thy name abroad
is known as the Dripping Ancient Hazel.
"'Twas Balor that besought Lugh before his beheading:
'Set my head above thy own comely head and
earn my blessing.'
"That blessing Lugh Longarm did not earn; he set up
the head above a wave of the east in a fork of hazel
before him.
"A poisonous milk drips down out of that hardened
tree; through the baneful drip, it was not slight,
the tree split right in two.
"For full fifty years the hazel stood, but ever it was a
cause of tears, the abode of vultures and ravens.
"Manannan of the round eye went into the wilderness
of the Mount of White-Hazel; there he saw a
shadeless tree among the trees that vied in beauty.
"Manannan sets workmen without delay to dig it out of
the firm earth. Mighty was the deed!
"From the root of that tree arises a poisonous vapour;
there were killed by it (perilous the consequence)
nine of the working folk.
"Now I say to you, and let the prophecy be sought out:
Around the mighty hazel without reproach was
found the cause of many a woe."
* * * * *
"It was from that shield that Eitheor of the smooth
brown face was called 'Son of Hazel,'--for this was
the hazel that he worshipped."[2]
Or take again the strange mythological poem of the "Crane-bag," made
out of the skin of a wandering haunted crane, which had once been a
woman; condemned for "two hundred white years" to dwell in "the house
of Manannan," _i.e._ in the wastes of the ocean, ever seeking and never
finding land. When the wanderings came to an end, and the unhappy
Crane-woman died, Manannan (the Ocean-god) made of her skin a bag into
which he put "every precious thing he had; the shirt of Manannan and
his knife, the girdle of Goibniu (the Vulcan of Irish legend); the king
of Scotland's shears, the king of Lochlann's helmet, and the bones of
the swine of Asal--these were the treasures that the Crane-bag held....
When the sea was full, its treasures were seen in its midst; when the
fierce sea was on ebb, the Crane-bag was empty." The story has the
impress of great age, and manifold changes; it belongs to the period
when the gods were not yet transformed into human beings, but were
still primaeval elemental powers, impersonations of fire and light and
water, and the wisdom that is above mankind. But the link is lost, and
the story remains a suggestion only, vague and indistinct. As an image
of the hollow ocean, holding the treasures of the Sea-god, the idea is,
however, full of force and beauty.[3]
The second difficulty, which is closely connected with the first, lies
in the retention of the ancient and unfamiliar nomenclature; the old
geographical and family names, which have dropped out of actual use,
being everywhere found in the poetry.
Scotland is still Alba in Irish, as it was in the sixth century; Éire
(gen. Érinn) is the ordinary name for Ireland, not only in poetry,
as is commonly supposed, but in the living language of the country.
But it has besides an abundance of specially poetic names, such as
Inisfáil, "the island of Destiny," Banba, Fodla, &c., connected with
early legends, and these, if we are to understand the poetry, we must
accustom ourselves to.
England is still to-day the land of the Saxons to the Gael, and its
inhabitants are the "Sassenachs"; the Irishman persists in disregarding
the coming of the Angles. We may talk of the extinction of the Gaelic
tongue, but in his poetry, as in every place-name of stream or hill or
townland all over the country, it is about us still. In the poetry we
are back in Gaelic Ireland; the old tribal distinctions, the old clan
names, meet us on every page. What does the modern man know of Leth
Cuinn or Leth Mogha, the ancient divisions of the North and South,
or of the stories which gave them birth? What of Magh Breagh or Magh
Murtheimne? What of Emain Macha and Kincora? Who, again, are the Clann
Fiachrach or the Eoghanacht, or the Children of Ir or Eiber? Even
before the much later titles of Thomond and Desmond, of Tyrconnell and
Tyrowen he is somewhat at a loss.
But to the bard the past is always present, the ancient nomenclature
is never extinct. The legend which caused the River Boyne to be called
"The forearm of Nuada's wife," or the tumuli on its banks to be thought
of as the "Elfmounds of the wife of Nechtan," are familiar to him;
and to enter into the spirit of the mythological poetry we must know
something of Irish folklore and tradition. Many of these expressions
have a high imaginative significance, as when the sea is called the
"Plain of Ler" (the elder Irish Sea-god), or its waves are "the tresses
of Manannan's wife" or the "Steeds of Manannan."
Of the large body of bardic poetry we have been unable to give an
adequate representation, partly from considerations of space, but also
because we are not yet, until a larger quantity of this poetry has been
published, able to estimate its actual poetic value. Much fine poetry
by the historic bards undoubtedly exists, but we have as yet only a few
published fragments to choose from. The first specimen we give, Teigue
Dall O'Higgin's appeal to O'Rourke of the Bulwarks (_na murtha_), must
stand as an example of much similar poetry in and about his own day.
The call to union against England or against some local enemy sounds
loud and constant in the bardic poems. There is much anti-English
poetry; poetry which has for its object the endeavour to unite for a
single purpose the chiefs who had split up the provinces into small
divisions under separate leaders, each fighting for his own hand.
To stir up the lagging or too peaceful chief was one of the prime
duties of the bard; to address to him congratulations on his accession,
or to bewail him when he died, was his official function; and to judge
by the quantity of paper covered with these laudatory effusions and
elegies, he performed his task with punctilious care. It was likely
that he would do so, for the fees for a poem that gave satisfaction
were substantial. We miss the family bard in these days; there is no
one at hand to praise indifferently all that we do.
The bardic poetry attracted the genius of Mangan, and his "Farewell
to Patrick Sarsfield" and O'Hussey's "Ode to the Maguire," are not
only fine poetry, but excellent representations of two of the finest
of the bardic poems. Elsewhere in his poems, we have usually too much
Mangan to feel that the tone of the original is faithfully conveyed.
His soaring poem, "The Dark Rosaleen," can hardly be said to represent
the Irish "Roisín Dubh," of which, for purposes of comparison, we give
a literal rendering; beautiful as Mangan's poem is, it has to our mind
lost something of the exquisite grace of the original.
It may be well to indicate here the relations between Mangan's version
and the original in the poem in which he keeps most strictly to the
words of the bard. "O'Hussey's Ode to the Maguire," that fine address
of the Northern bard, O'Hussey, to his young chief, whose warlike foray
into Munster in the depth of winter filled his mind with anxiety and
distress. A literal translation of the opening passage reads as follows:
"Too cold for Hugh I deem this night, the drops so
heavily downpouring are a cause for sadness;
biting is this night's cold--woe is me that such is
our companion's lot.
In the clouds' bosoms the water-gates of heaven are
flung wide; small pools are turned by it to seas,
all its destructiveness hath the firmament spewed
out.
A pain to me that Hugh Maguire to-night lies in a
stranger's land, 'neath lurid glow of lightning-bolts
and angry armed clouds' clamour;
A woe to us that in the province of Clann Daire (Southwest
Munster) our well-beloved is couched, betwixt
a coarse cold-wet and grass-clad ditch and the
impetuous fury of the heavens."[4]
But it is not, after all, the verses of the bards, even of the best
of them, that will survive. It is the tender religious songs, the
passionate love-songs, the exquisite addresses to nature; those poems
which touch in us the common ground of deep human feeling. Whether
it came to us from the sixth century or from the sixteenth, the song
of Crede for the dead man, whom she had grown to love only when he
was dying, would equally move us; the passionate cry of Liadan after
Curithir would wring our hearts whatever century produced it. The voice
of love is alike in every age. It has no date.
Having written so far, we begin to wonder whether it was wise or
necessary to set so much prose between the reader and the poems
which, as we hope, he wishes to read. In an ordinary anthology, the
interruption of a long preface is a mistake and an intrusion, for,
more than any other good art, good poetry must explain itself. The
mood in which a poem touches us acutely may be recorded, but it cannot
be reproduced in or for the reader. He must find his own moment. For
the most part, these Irish poems need no introduction. We need no one
to explain to us the beauty of the lines in the "Flower of Nut-brown
Maids":
"I saw her coming towards me o'er the face of the mountain,
Like a star glimmering through the mist";
or to remind us of the depth of Cuchulain's sorrow when over the dead
body of his son he called aloud:
"The end is come, indeed, for me;
I am a man without son, without wife;
I am the father who slew his own child;
I am a broken, rudderless bark
Tossed from wave to wave in the tempest wild;
An apple blown loose from the garden-wall,
I am over-ripe, and about to fall;"
or to tell us that the "Blackthorn," or "Donall Oge," or "Eileen
Aroon," are exquisite in their pathos and tenderness. But there are,
besides these enchanting things, which we are prepared to expect from
Irish verse, also things for which we are not prepared; unfamiliar
themes, treated in a new manner; and to judge of these, some help from
outside may be useful. The reader who does not know Ireland or know
Gaelic, is ready to accept softness, the almost endless iteration
of expressions conveying the sense of woman's beauty and of man's
affection, in phrases that differ but little from each other; what he
is not prepared for is the sudden break into matter-of-fact, the curt
tone that cuts across much Irish poetry, revealing an unexpected side
of life and character. Even the modern Irishman is tripped up by the
swift intrusion of the grotesque; the cold, cynical note that exists
side by side with the most fervent religious devotion, especially in
the popular poetry, displeases him. He resents it, as he resents the
tone of the "Playboy of the Western World"; yet it is the direct modern
representative of the tone of mind that produced the Ossianic lays.
We find it in all the popular poetry; as an example take the argument
of the old woman who warns a young man that if he persists in his
evil ways, there will be no place in heaven for such as he. The youth
replies:
"If no sinner ever goes to Paradise,
But only he who is blessed, there will be wide empty places in it.
If all who follow my way are condemned
Hell must have been full twenty years and a year ago,
And they could not take me in for want of space."
The same chill, almost harsh tone is heard in the colloquy between
Ailill of Munster and the woman whom he has trysted on the night after
his death,[5] or in the poem, "I shall not die for you" (p. 286), or
in the verses on the fairy-hosts, published by Dr. Kuno Meyer, where,
instead of praise of their ethereal loveliness, we are told:
"Good are they at man-slaying,
Melodious in the ale-house,
Masterly at making songs,
Skilled at playing chess."[6]
Could anything be more matter-of-fact than the clever chess-playing of
the shee-folk and their pride in it?
A collection of translations must always have some sense of
disproportion. It is natural that translators should, as a rule,
have been attracted, not only to the poems that most readily give
themselves to an English translation, but to those which are most
easily accessible. The love-songs, such as those collected by Hardiman
and Dr. Douglas Hyde, have been attempted with more or less success
by many translators, while much good poetry, not so easily brought to
hand, has been overlooked. Dr. Kuno Meyer's fine translations of a
number of older pieces, which came out originally either in separate
publications,[7] or in the transactions of the Arts Faculty of
University College, Liverpool, have now been rendered more accessible
in a separate collection; but the English ear is wedded to rhyme, and
a prose translation, however careful and choice, often misses its mark
with the general reader. Long ago, Miss Brooke (in her _Reliques of
Irish Poetry_) and Furlong (in Hardiman's _Irish Minstrelsy_) essayed
the translation of a number of the longer "bardic remains"; and these
earlier collectors and translators will ever retain the gratitude of
their countrymen for rescuing and printing, at a time when little value
was placed upon such things, these stores of Irish song.
But the translations suited better the taste of their own day than
of ours; we cannot read them now, nor do they in the slightest way
represent the verse they are intended to reproduce. Naturally, too, it
is easier to give the spirit and language of a serious poem than that
of a humorous one in another tongue, so that the more playful verse has
been neglected.
It may be thought that this book is overweighted by religious and love
poems; but in a collection essentially lyrical, religion and love must
ever be the two chief themes. In Ireland, the inner spirit of the
national genius ever spoke, and still speaks, through them.
Among the people of the quiet places where few strangers come, and
where night passes into day and day again to night with little change
of thought or outward emotion, simple sorrows and simple pleasures
have still time to ripen into poetry. The grief that came to-day will
not pass away with a new grief to-morrow; it will impress its groove,
straight and deep, upon the heart that feels it, lying there without
hope of a summer growth to hide its furrow. The long monotonous days,
the dark unbroken evenings are the nurseries of sorrow; the white open
roads are the highways of hope or the paths for the wayfaring thoughts
of despair. The stranger who came one day comes again no more, though
we watch the long white track never so earnestly; the boy or girl who
went that way to foreign lands has not thrown his or her shadow across
the road again. Where the turf fire rises curling and blue into the
air, where the young girl stands waiting by the winding "boreen," where
the old woman croons over the hearth, there we shall surely find, if
we know how to draw it forth, that a well of poetry has been sunk, and
that half-unconsciously the thought of the heart has expressed itself
in simple verse, or in rhythmic prose almost more beautiful than verse.
The minds that produced the touching melodies that wail and croon and
sing to us out of Ireland, have not the less expressed themselves
in melodious poetry. Here, if anywhere, we may look to find a style
unspoiled by imitation, and a sentiment moving because it is perfectly
sincere. It is thus that such poems as "Donall Oge" or the "Roísin
Dubh" or "My Grief on the Sea" come into existence.
Where the outward distractions of life are few, the grave monotony
of sea and moor and bog-land, the swirl of cloud and mist, and the
loneliness of waste places sink more deeply into the mind. The visible
is less felt than the invisible, and life is surrounded by a network
of fears and dreams to which the town-dweller is a stranger. To-day,
in the Western Isles of Ireland and Scotland, the huntsman going out
to hunt, the fisherman to fish or lay his nets, the agriculturist to
sow or reap his harvest, and the weaver or spinner to wind his yarn,
go forth to their work with some familiar charm-prayer or charm-hymn,
often beautifully called "the Blessings," on their lips. The milkmaid
calling her cows or churning her butter, the young girl fearful of
the evil-eye, and the cottager sweeping up her hearth in the evening,
laying herself down to sleep at night, or rising up in the morning,
soothe their fears or smooth their way by some whispered _paider_ or
_ortha_, a prayer or a verse or a blessing. The deep religious feeling
of the Celtic mind, with its far-stretching hands groping towards the
mysterious and the infinite, comes out in these spontaneous and simple
ejaculations; I have therefore endeavoured to bring together a few
others to add to the groups gathered by Dr. Hyde in the west of Ireland
and by Dr. Carmichael in the Western Hebrides; but in their original
Gaelic they are the fruit of others' collections, not of my own.[8]
They are the thoughts of such humble people as the poor farm-servant
who "had so many things to do from dark to dark" that she had no time
for long prayers, and knew only a little prayer taught her by her
mother, which laid "our caring and our keeping and our saving on the
Sacred Trinity."
I desire to inscribe here my sincere gratitude to the living authors
and authoresses who have kindly given me permission to use their work,
and my gratitude to those authors who have gone, that they have left us
so much good work to use. Especially I desire to thank my friends, Mr.
Alfred Perceval Graves and Mr. Ernest Rhys, for permitting the use of
unpublished poems.
Many friends have given a ready helping hand in elucidating difficult
words and phrases, and it is a pleasant task to thank them here. Dr. D.
Hyde, Rev. Michael Sheehan, Rev. P. S. Dinneen, Mr. Tadhg O'Donoghue,
Mr. R. Flower, Miss Hayes, especially, have always readily come to my
assistance; to Miss Eleanor Knott I am indebted for valuable help in
the translation of the "Saltair na Rann," and to Dr. R. Thurneysen for
suggesting some readings in this difficult poem.
I gratefully acknowledge permission accorded to me by the following
publishing houses to include poems or extracts from books published by
them:--
Messrs. Constable & Co., _Ancient Irish Poetry_, by Professor Kuno
Meyer. T. Fisher Unwin, _Bards of the Gael and Gall_, by Dr. George
Sigerson, F.N.U.I. Maunsel & Co., _Irish Poems_, by Alfred Perceval
Graves; _Sea-Spray_, by T. W. Rolleston; _The Gilly of Christ_, by
Seosamh mac Cathmhaoil. David Nutt, _Heroic Romances of Ireland_, by
A. H. Leahy. Herbert & Daniel, _Eyes of Youth_, for a poem by Padraic
Colum. Sealy, Bryers and Walker, _Lays of the Western Gael_, by Sir
Samuel Ferguson; _Irish Nóinins_, by P. J. McCall. H. M. Gill & Son,
_Irish Fireside Songs_ and _Pulse of the Bards_, by P. J. McCall.
Williams & Norgate, _Silva Gadelica_, by Standish Hayes O'Grady. Chatto
& Windus, _Legends, Charms, and Cures of Ireland_, by Lady Wilde.
I also desire to acknowledge the courtesy of His Majesty's Stationery
Department in permitting the use of drawings taken from initial letters
in Sir John T. Gilbert's _Facsimiles of Irish National MSS_. Others
of the initial letters used in the book are drawn from the _Book of
Lindisfarne_ and other Celtic manuscripts in the British Museum. I
have to thank the Librarian of the Bodleian Library for permitting the
reproduction of the photograph of the initial lines from the "Saltair
na Rann" as a frontispiece to the book.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Printed in Skene's _Celtic Scotland_, iii. Appen. 2, p.
410, from a seventeenth century copy belonging to William Hennessy,
compared with the copy in the _Book of Fermoy_.
[2] _Duanaire Finn_, edited by John MacNeill, pp. 34, 134
(Irish Texts Society, 1904).
[3] For this poem see _Duanaire Finn_, edited by John MacNeill
(Irish Texts Society, 1904), pp. 21, 118.
[4] O'Grady's _Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the British
Museum_, p. 451.
[5] Dr. Kuno Meyer's _Ancient Irish Poetry_ (Constable, 1911),
p. 9.
[6] _Ancient Irish Poetry_, p. 19.
[7] _King and Hermit_ (1901); _Liadan and Curithir_ (1902);
_Four Songs of Summer and Winter_ (1903); all published by D. Nutt.
[8] Chiefly of Dr. Michael Sheehan's collections in Co.
Waterford, and those made by Mr. Fionan M'Collum and others in West
Kerry (see Notes).
THE SALTAIR NA RANN, OR PSALTER
OF THE VERSES
THE SALTAIR NA RANN, or Psalter of the Verses, so-called because it
is divided into 150 poems in imitation of the Psalms of David, is
undoubtedly the most important religious poem of early Ireland. It
may justly be regarded as the Irish _Paradise Lost_ and _Paradise
Regained_, for it opens with an account of the Creation of the
Universe, the founding of Heaven and Hell, the fall of Lucifer, the
creation of the Earthly Paradise and of man, the temptation and fall
and the penance of Adam and Eve. After this it sketches the Old
Testament History, leading up to the birth and life of Christ and
closing with His death and resurrection. Though in general it follows
the Bible narrative, it is peculiarly Irish in tone, and its additions
and variations are of the greatest interest to students of mediaeval
religious literature. The conception of the universe in the first poem,
with its ideas of the seven heavens, the coloured and fettered winds,
and the sun passing through the opening windows of the twelve divisions
of the heavens, is curious; the earth, enclosed in the surrounding
firmament, "like a shell around an egg," being regarded as the centre
of the universe.
In the portions which relate the life of Adam and Eve, the author
evidently had before him the Latin version of the widely known _Vita
Adae et Euae_, which he follows closely, introducing from it several
Latin words into his text; but even here the colouring is purely Irish.
The poem is ascribed to Oengus the Culdee, who lived early in the ninth
century; but its language is later, probably the end of the tenth
century.