'O wind, O mighty, melancholy wind,
Blow through me, blow!
Thou blowest forgotten things into my mind
From long ago.'
John Todhunter.
No one ever had a better opportunity than we, of breathing in, so far
as a stranger and a foreigner may, the old Celtic atmosphere, and of
reliving the misty years of legend before the dawn of history; when
'Long, long ago, beyond the space
Of twice two hundred years,
In Erin old there lived a race
Taller than Roman spears.'
Mr. Colquhoun is one of the best Gaelic scholars in Ireland, and Dr.
Gerald, though not his equal in knowledge of the language, has 'the full
of a sack of stories' in his head. According to the Book of Leinster, a
professional story-teller was required to know seven times fifty tales,
and I believe the doctor could easily pass this test. It is not easy to
make a good translation from Irish to English, for they tell us there
are no two Aryan languages more opposed to each other in spirit and
idiom. We have heard little of the marvellous old tongue until now,
but we are reading it a bit under the tutelage of these two inspiring
masters, and I fancy it has helped me as much in my understanding of
Ireland as my tedious and perplexing worriments over political problems.
After all, how can we know anything of a nation's present or future
without some attempt to revivify its past? Just as, without some slender
knowledge of its former culture, we must be for ever ignorant of its
inherited powers and aptitudes. The harp that once through Tara's halls
the soul of music shed, now indeed hangs mute on Tara's walls, but for
all that its echoes still reverberate in the listening ear.
When we sit together by the river brink on sunny days, or on the
greensward under the yews in our old garden, we are always telling
ancient Celtic romances, and planning, even acting, new ones.
Francesca's mind and mine are poorly furnished with facts of any sort;
but when the kind scholars in our immediate neighbourhood furnish
necessary information and inspiration, we promptly turn it into dramatic
form, and serve it up before their wondering and admiring gaze. It
is ever our habit to 'make believe' with the children; and just as
we played ballads in Scotland and plotted revels in the Glen at
Rowardennan, so we instinctively fall into the habit of thought and
speech that surrounds us here.
This delights our grave and reverend signiors, and they give themselves
up to our whimsicalities with the most whole-hearted zeal. It is days
since we have spoken of one another by those names which were given to
us in baptism. Francesca is Finola the Festive. Eveleen Colquhoun is
Ethnea. I am the harper, Pearla the Melodious. Miss Peabody is Sheela
the Skilful Scribe, who keeps for posterity a record of all our antics,
in the Speckled Book of Salemina. Dr. Gerald is Borba the Proud, the
Ard-ri or overking. Mr. Colquhoun is really called Dermod, but he would
have been far too modest to choose Dermot O'Dyna for his Celtic
name, had we not insisted; for this historic personage was not only
noble-minded, generous, of untarnished honour, and the bravest of the
brave, but he was as handsome as he was gallant, and so much the idol of
the ladies that he was sometimes called Dermat-na-man, or Dermot of the
women.
Of course we have a corps of shanachies, or story-tellers, gleemen,
gossipreds, leeches, druids, gallowglasses, bards, ollaves, urraghts,
and brehons; but the children can always be shifted from one role to
another, and Benella and the Button Boy, although they are quite unaware
of the honours conferred upon them, are often alluded to in our romances
and theatrical productions.
Aunt David's garden is not a half bad substitute for the old Moy-Mell,
the plain of pleasure of the ancient Irish, when once you have the key
to its treasures. We have made a new and authoritative survey of its
geographical features and compiled a list of its legendary landmarks,
which, strangely enough, seem to have been absolutely unknown to Miss
Llewellyn-Joyce.
In the very centre is the Forradh, or Place of Meeting, and on it is our
own Lia Fail, Stone of Destiny. The one in Westminster Abbey, carried
away from Scotland by Edward I., is thought by many scholars to be
unauthentic, and we hope that ours may prove to have some historical
value. The only test of a Stone of Destiny, as I understand it, is that
it shall 'roar' when an Irish monarch is inaugurated; and that our Lia
Fail was silent when we celebrated this impressive ceremony reflects
less upon its own powers, perhaps, than upon the pedigree of our chosen
Ard-ri.
The arbour under the mountain ash is the Fairy Palace of the Quicken
Tree, and on its walls is suspended the Horn of Foreknowledge, which if
any one looks on it in the morning, fasting, he will know in a moment
all things that are to happen during that day.
The clump of willows is the Wood of the Many Sallows (a willow-tree is
familiarly known as a 'sally' in Ireland). Do you know Yeats's song, put
to a quaint old Irish air?
'Down by the sally gardens my love and I did meet,
She passed the sally gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree,
But I, being young and foolish, with her did not agree.'
The summer-house is the Greenan; that is, grianan, a bright, sunny
place. On the arm of a tree in the Greenan hangs something you might (if
you are dull) mistake for a plaited garland of rushes hung with pierced
pennies; but it really is our Chain of Silence, a useful article
of bygone ages, which the lord of a mansion shook when he wished
an attentive hearing, and which deserved a better fate and a longer
survival than it has met. Jackeen's Irish terrier is Bran,--though
he does not closely resemble the great Finn's sweet-voiced,
gracefully-shaped, long-snouted hound; the coracle lying on the shore of
the little lough--the coracle made of skin, like the old Irish boats--is
the Wave-Sweeper; and the faithful mare that we hire by the day is, by
your leave, Enbarr of the Flowing Mane. No warrior was ever killed on
the back of this famous steed, for she was as swift as the clear, cold
wind of spring, travelling with equal ease and speed on land and sea,
an' may the divil fly away wid me if that same's not true.
We no longer find any difficulty in remembering all this nomenclature,
for we are 'under gesa' to use no other. When you are put under gesa to
reveal or to conceal, to defend or to avenge, it is a sort of charm or
spell; also an obligation of honour. Finola is under gesa not to write
to Alba more than six times a week and twice on Sundays; Sheela is bound
by the same charm to give us muffins for afternoon tea; I am vowed to
forget my husband when I am relating romances, and allude to myself, for
dramatic purposes, as a maiden princess, or a maiden of enchanting and
all-conquering beauty. And if we fail to abide by all these laws of the
modern Dedannans of Devorgilla, which are written in the Speckled Book
of Salemina, we are to pay eric-fine. These fines are collected with all
possible solemnity, and the children delight in them to such an extent
that occasionally they break the law for the joy of the penalty. If you
have ever read the Fate of the Children of Turenn, you remember that
they were to pay to Luga the following eric-fine for the slaying of
their father, Kian: two steeds and a chariot, seven pigs, a hound whelp,
a cooking-spit, and three shouts on a hill. This does not at first seem
excessive, if Kian were a good father, and sincerely mourned; but when
Luga began to explain the hidden snares that lay in the pathway, it is
small wonder that the sons of Turenn felt doubt of ever being able to
pay it, and that when, after surmounting all the previous obstacles,
they at last raised three feeble shouts on Midkena's Hill, they
immediately gave up the ghost.
The story told yesterday by Sheela the Scribe was the Magic Thread-Clue,
or the Pursuit of the Gilla Dacker, Benella and the Button Boy being the
chief characters; Finola's was the Voyage of the Children of Corr the
Swift-Footed (the Ard-ri's pseudonym for American travellers); while
mine, to be told to-morrow, is called the Quest of the Fair Strangers,
or the Fairy Quicken Tree of Devorgilla.