the horrors, grimness, and rapidity of the Gaels; at the looks,
brilliance, and irksomeness of the foreigners; at the rebounding,
furious shouts and bellowings of the various embattled tribes on both
sides, rushing against and coming into collision with one another. Huge,
flickering, horrible, aerial phantoms rose up, so that they were in
curved, commingled crowds tormenting him; and in dense, rustling,
clamorous, life-tormenting hordes, without ceasing; and in dismal,
regular, aerial, storm-shrieking, hovering, fiend-like hosts, constantly
in motion, shrieking and howling as they hovered about them in every
direction, to cow and dismay cowards and soft youths, but to invigorate
and mightily rouse champions and warriors; so that from the uproar of
the battle, the frantic pranks of the demons, and the clashing of arms,
the sound of heavy blows reverberating on the points of heroic spears,
and keen edges of swords, and the war-like borders of broad shields, the
noble hero Suibne was filled and intoxicated with tremor, horror, panic,
dismay, fickleness, unsteadiness, fear, flightiness, giddiness, terror,
and imbecility; so that there was not a joint or member of him from foot
to head which was not converted into a confused, shaking mass, from
the effect of fear and the panic of dismay. His feet trembled as if
incessantly shaken by the force of a stream; his arms and various-edged
weapons fell from him, the power of his hands having been enfeebled and
relaxed around them, and rendered incapable of holding them. The inlets
of hearing were quickened and expanded by the horrors of lunacy; the
vigor of his brain in the cavities of his head was destroyed by the
clamors of the conflict; his heart shrunk within him with the panic of
dismay; his speech became faltering from the giddiness of imbecility;
his very soul fluttered with hallucination, and with many and various
phantoms, for that was the root and true basis of fear itself. He might
be compared on this occasion to a salmon in a weir, or to a bird after
being caught in the strait prison of a crib."
The following is the way in which this is rendered in Congal, Sweeny's
offense having consisted in drowning the hermit Ere in the Boyne:--
To Sweeny as the hosts drew near, ere yet the fight should
join,
Seemed still, as if between them rolled the foam-strewed,
tawny Boyne.
And as the swiftly nearing hosts consumed the narrowing
space,
And arrow flights and javelin casts, and sword strokes came
in place,
Through all the rout of high-raised hands, and wrathful,
glaring eyes,
Erc's look of wrath, and lifted hand before him seemed to
rise,
Through all the hard-rebounding din from breasts of Gaels
and Gauls,
That jarred against the vault of heaven, when clashed the
brazen walls,
Through all the clangorous battle-calls, and death shouts
hoarse and high,
Erc's shriller curse he seemed to hear and Erc's despairing
cry.
Much did the hapless warrior strive to shake from breast
and brain
The illusion and the shameful wish fast-rising; but in vain;
The wish to fly seized all his limbs; the stronger dread of
shame,
Contending with the wish to fly, made spoil of all his frame.
His knees beneath him wavered as if shaken by the stress
Of a rapid running river; his heart, in fear's excess,
Sprang to and fro within him, as a wild bird newly caged,
Or a stream-ascending salmon in a strong weir's trap en
gaged.
Some of the single combats of the heroes, following the details of the
narrative, are described with Homeric vigor, and the address of the King
of Lochlan to the invading army, disheartened by apparitions, has the
fire and spirit, as well as the form, of the Scandinavian runic verse:
--
This is my sentence:
Fairy nor Fire-Drake
Keep back the Kemper
At home, in the burg,
Leaves he the maiden
Boon for the bridal;
Abroad, on the holme,
Leaves he the harvest,
Ripe for the reaper;
The bowl, on the board,
In the hall of the banquets,
Leaves he untasted,
When lances uplift
The foe in the field.
Noting the Norsemen
Out on the water-throng,
Hark! how the Eagle
Vaunts to the Vulture.
Spread thy wing, Scald-Neck,
Says she, and screams she;
Seest thou the Sea-Kings
Borne on the gannet-bath,
Going to garner
Every bird's eyrie?
Fell from her fishy-perch
Answers the Bald-Beak,
Scream no more, little cfne,
Feeders are coming.
Hearkening their colloquy,
Grins the grey beast,
The wolf on the wold.
This is my sentence:
These are the Norseman's
Pandect and canon.
Thyrfing is thirsty;
Quern-biter hungers;
Shield-walker wearieth
Shut in the scabbard.
This is my sentence:
Bring us to battle.
Perhaps, however, the greatest strength in Congal will be found in the
dealing with the apparitions, the gigantic and malign demons, who haunt
the hill and the stream, and represent the primitive imaginings of a
race not yet emancipated from the terrors of the supernatural in the
forces and forms of nature. These figures of ancient Irish poetry, the
Herdsman Borcha, who swept down Finn's fortress with his staff, and
counts the kine in the unconquered lands, the Giant Walker, who strides
angrily around the hostile camp at night, and the Washer at the Ford,
who dabbles with slain men's heads, live again in Ferguson's verse
with their original reality and terror, and amid the setting of natural
scenery from which their phantoms were created. This is the picture of
the Giant Walker, whose apparition presaged doom to Cougal at his first
night's camp:--
Around the Mound of Sighs
They filled the woody-sided vale; but no sweet sleep their
eyes
Refreshed that night; for all the night, around their echo
ing camp,
Was heard continuous from the hills a sound as of a tramp
Of giant footsteps; but so thick the white mist lay around
None saw the Walker save the King. He, starting at the
sound,.
Called to his foot his fierce red hound; athwart his shoulders
cast
A shaggy mantle, grasped his spear, and through the moon
light passed
Alone up dark Ben-Boli's heights, towards which, above the
woods,
With sound as when at close of eve the noise of falling floods
Is borne to shepherd's ear remote on stilly upland lawn,
The steps along the mountain-side with hollow sound came on.
Fast beat the hero's heart; and close, down-crouching by his
knee
Trembled the hound, while through the haze, huge as through
mists at sea,
The week-long sleepless mariner descries some mountain
cape,
Wreck-infamous, rise on his lee, appeared a monstrous shape
Striding impatient, like a man much grieved, who walks
alone
Considering of a grievous wrong; down from his shoulders
thrown
A mantle skirted stiff with soil, splashed from the miry
ground,
At every stride against his calves struck with as loud rebound
As makes the mainsail of a ship brought up along the blast,
When with the coil of all its ropes it beats the sounding
mast.
So, striding vast, the giant passed; the King held fast his
breath;
Motionless save his throbbing heart; and still and chill as
death
Stood listening while a second time the giant took his round
Of all the camp; but when, at length, the third time the
sound
Came up, and through the haze a third time huge and dim
Rose out the Shape, the valiant hound sprang forth and
challenged him.
And forth, disdaining that a dog should put him so to shame,
Sprang Congal and essayed to speak.
"Dread shadow, stand! Proclaim
What wouldst thou that thou thus around my camp shouldst
keep
Thy troublous vigil, banishing the wholesome gift of sleep
From all our eyes, who, though inured to dreadful sounds
and sights
By land and sea, have never yet in all our perilous nights
Lain the ward of such a guard."
The Shape made answer none,
But with stern wafture of his hand went angrier striding on,
Shaking the earth with heavier steps. Then Congal on his
track
Sprang fearless.
"Answer me, thou Churl,"he cried, "I bid thee back."
But, while he spoke, the giant's cloak around his shoulders
grew
Like a black-bulged thunder-cloud; and sudden out there
flew.
From all its angry, swelling folds, with uproar unconfined,
Direct against the King's pursuit a mighty blast of wind:
Loud flapped the mantle, tempest-lined, while fluttering
down the gale,
As leaves in Autumn, man and hound were swept into the vale,
And heard through all the huge uproar, through startled
Dalaray,.
The giant went with stamp and clash, departing south away.
A conspicuous feature of the excellence of Congal as an original poem is
the vividness and faithfulness with which the natural scenery of Ireland
is painted. The dark and barren hills, the tawny and foam-flecked
streams, the misty seas, the vast and lonely raths and burial places of
heroes, the emerald fields bathed with dew and glittering with sunshine,
all the characteristics of Irish scenery, with their soul of meaning,
which appeals to the heart as well as the outward form to the eye, are
depicted with remarkable power, and make a living element in which the
figures move. Almost every page has a touch of this skill, and every
aspect of field and sea and sky is enlivened. As fine a specimen as any
is this picture of an autumn champaign from a hilltop in Leinster:--
Such as one
Beholds, and thankful-hearted he, who casts abroad his gaze
O'er some rich tillage country-side, when mellow autumn
days
Gild all the sheaf y food-full stooks, and, broad before him
spread,--
He looking landward from the prow of some great sea-cape's
head
Bray or Ben-Edar--sees beneath in silent pageant grand
Slow fields of sunshine spread o'er fields of rich, corn-bearing
land;
Red glebe and meadow-margin green commingling to the
view,
With yellow stubble, browning woods, and upland tracts of
blue;--
Then, sated with the pomp of fields, turns seaward to the
verge
Where, mingling with the murmuring wash made by the
far-down surge,
Comes up the clangorous song of birds unseen, that, low be
neath
Poised off the rock, fly underfoot, and, mid the blossoming
heath,
And mint-sweet herb that loves the ledge rare-aired, at ease
reclined,
Surveys the wide, pale-heaving floor crisped by a curling
wind;
With all its shifty shadowing belts, and chasing scopes of
green,
Sun strewn, foam-freckled, sail-embossed, and blackening
squalls between,
And slant, cerulean-skirted showers, that with a drowsy
sound,
Heard inward, of ebullient waves, stalk all the horizon round.
With its faithfulness to tone and character, its skillful reproduction
of style and language, its force and vigor of narrative, its forms of
mythologie mysticism and its appreciation of the magic of nature, Congal
is the most perfect reproduction of the form and spirit of ancient
Celtic poetry in existence, and from it the English reader, who is not a
Celtic student, can obtain the best knowledge of its pervading elements.
Congal is not the only contribution made by Sir Samuel Ferguson to
Celtic poetry. The Lays of the Western Gael are a series of ballads
founded on events in Celtic history and derived from the early
chronicles and poems. They are original in form and substance, the
ballad form and measure being unknown to the early Celtic poets of
Ireland, but they preserve in a wonderful degree the ancient spirit,
and give a picture of the ancient times with all the art of truth and
verity. As I have said elsewhere 1:--
"To have done this clearly and completely, so
that the past lives again and is felt by the instinct of nature to be
true and real, free from confusion and extravagance, the imperfections
of utterance in a people just learning to express themselves, the
alien and antique methods of thought, through the inevitably imperfect
knowledge of a language half faded and changed, while preserving not
only the terms of expression but the characteristics of thought and
feeling, seems a no less difficult task than to trace and interpret
the worn letters and half-effaced inscriptions on the Ogham stones, and
could only have been done by the genius of the great poet vivifying the
labor of the profound scholar. Finally, the impress of the past as it is
visible to the present, the effect of the gray cairn and grassy burial
mound, and almost the last fading of the tokens of the aboriginal race
into the bosom of nature, and the perception of its spirit amid the
light and bustle of the day,
The loneliness and awe secure of the forgotten dead,
is the task of the modern poet speaking in his own time and to his own
generation of the past."
1 Introduction to popular edition of _Lays of the Western
Gael_ Dublin, 1888.
These ballads have a solemnity of measure like the voice of one of the
ancient bards chanting of
Old, forgotten, far-off things
And battles long ago,
and they are clothed with the mists of a melancholy age. They include
such subjects as The Tain Quest, the search of the bard for the lost lay
of the great cattle raid of Queen Maev of Connaught, and its recovery by
invocation from the voice of its dead author arising in misty form above
his grave; The Healing of Conall Carnach, a story of violated sanctuary
and its punishment; The Welshmen of Tyrawly, one of the most spirited
and original, and which has been pronounced by Mr. Swinburne as among
the finest of modern ballads, telling of a cruel mulct inflicted upon
the members of a Welsh colony in Ireland and its vengeance, and other
incidents in early Irish history. The verses on Aideen's Grave are a
characteristic specimen of the tone and spirit of these ballads. The
author's introductory note says:--
"Aideen, daughter of Angus of Ben Edar (now the Hill of Howth), died of
grief for the loss of her husband Oscar, son of Ossian, who was slain at
the battle of Gavra (Gowra near Tara in Meath) A. D. 284. Oscar was
entombed in the rath, or earthen fortress, that occupied part of the
field of battle, the rest of the slain being cast in a pit outside.
Aideen is said to have been buried on Howth, near the mansion of her
father, and poetical tradition represents the Fenian heroes as present
at her obsequies. The cromlech in Howth Park is supposed to have been
her sepulchre."
AIDEEN'S GRAVE.
They heaved the stones; they heaped the cairn.
Said Ossian, "In a queenly grave
We leave her, 'mong her fields of fern
Between the cliff and wave."
The cliff behind stands clear and bare,
And bare, above, the heathery steep
Scales the clear heaven's expanse, to where
The Danaan Druids sleep.
And all the sands that, left and right,
The grassy isthmus-ridge confine,
In yellow bars lie bare and bright
Among the sparkling brine.
A clear pure air pervades the scene,
In loneliness and awe secure,
Meet spot to sepulchre a Queen,
Who in her life was pure.
Here far from camp and chase removed,
Apart in Nature's quiet room,
The music that alive she loved
Shall cheer her in the tomb.
The humming of the noontide bees,
The lark's loud carol all day long,
And, borne on evening's salted breeze,
The clanking sea-birds' song
Shall round her airy chamber float,
And with the whispering winds and streams,
Attune to Nature's tenderest note
The tenor of her dreams.
And oft at tranquil eve's decline,
When full tides lap the Old Green Plain,
The lowing Moynalty's kine
Shall round her breathe again.
In sweet remembrance of the days
When, duteous in the lowly vale,
Unconscious of my Oscar's gaze,
She filled the fragrant pail.
And, duteous, from the running brook,
Drew water for the bath; nor deem'd
A king did on her labor look,
And she a fairy seemed.
But when the wintry frosts begin,
And in their long-drawn, lofty flight
The wild geese with their airy din.
Distend the ear of night.
And when the fierce De Danaan ghosts,
At midnight from their peak come down.
When all around the enchanted coasts
Despairing strangers drown;
When mingling with the wreckful wail
From low Clontarf's wave-trampled floor,
Comes booming up the burthened gale
The angry Sand Bull's roar;
Or, angrier than the sea, the shout
Of Erin's hosts in wrath combined
When Terror heads Oppression's rout
And Freedom cheers behind:--
Then o'er our lady's placid dream,
When safe from storms she sleeps, may steal
Such joy as may not misbeseem
A queen of men to feel.
Such thrill of free, defiant pride,
As rapt her in her battle car
At Gavra, when by Oscar's side
She rode the ridge of war.
Exulting, down the shouting troops,
And through the thick confronting kings,
With hands on all their javelin loops
And shafts on all their strings;
E'er closed the inseparable crowds
No more to part for me, and show,
As bursts the sun through scattering clouds
My Oscar issuing so.
No more, dispelling battle's gloom,
Shall son to me from fight return;
The great green rath's ten-acred tomb
Lies heavy on his urn.
A cup of bodkin-pencilled clay
Holds Oscar; mighty heart and limb
One handful now of ashes grey:
And she has died for him.
And here, hard by her natal bower
On lone Ben-Edar's side we strive
With lifted rock and sign of power
To keep her name alive.
That, while from circling year to year,
Her Ogham-lettered stone is seen,
The Gael shall say, "Our Fenians here
Entombed their loved Aideen.
The Ogham from her pillar stone
In tract of time will wear away;
Her name at last be only known
In Ossian's echoed lay.
The long-forgotten lay I sing
May only ages hence revive,
(As eagle with a wounded wing
To soar again might strive.)
Imperfect, in an alien speech,
When, wandering here, some child of chance
Through pangs of keen delight shall reach
The gift of utterance,--
To speak the air, the sky to speak,
The freshness of the hill to tell,
When, roaming bare Ben-Edar's peak
And Aide en's briary dell,
And gazing on the Cromlech vast,
And on the mountain and the sea,
Shall catch communion with the past
And mix himself with me.
Child of the Future's doubtful night,
Whate'er your speech, whoe'er your sires,
Sing while you may with frank delight
The song your hour inspires.
Sing while you may, nor grieve to know
The song you sing shall also die;
Atharna's lay has perished so,
Though once it thrilled the sky.
Above us, from his rocky chair
There, where Ben-Edar's landward crest
O'er eastern Bregia bends, to where
Dun-Almon crowns the west:
And all that felt the fretted air,
Throughout the song-distempered clime,
Did droop, till Leinster's suppliant prayer
Appeased the vengeful rhyme.
Ah, me, or e'er the hour arrive
Shall bid my long-forgotten tones,
Unknown One, on your lips revive,
Here, by these moss-grown stones,
What change shall o'er the scene have cross'd
What conquering lords anew have come;
What lore-armed, mightier Druid host
From Gaul or distant Rome!
What arts of death, what ways of life,
What creeds unknown to bard or seer,
Shall round your careless steps be rife,
Who pause and ponder here:
And, haply, where yon curlew calls
Athwart the marsh, 'mid groves and bowers
See rise some mighty chieftain's halls
With unimagined towers:
And baying hounds and coursers bright,
And burnish't cars of dazzling sheen,
With courtly train of dame and knight,
Where now the fern is green.
Or by yon prostrate altar stone
May kneel, perchance, and free from blame,
Hear holy men with rites unknown
New names of God proclaim.
Let change as.may the name of Awe,
Let right surcease and altar fall,
The same one God remains, a law
Forever and for all.
Let change as may the face of earth,
Let alter all the social frame,
For mortal men the ways of birth
And death are still the same.
And still, as life and time wear on,
The children of the waning days
(Though strength be from their shoulders gone
To lift the loads we raise)
Shall weep to do the burial rites
Of lost ones loved; and fondly found
In shadow of the gathering nights
The monumental mound.
Farewell, the strength of men is worn;
The night approaches dark and chill;
Sleep till, perchance, an endless morn
Descend the glittering hill"--
Of Oscar and Aideen bereft
So Ossian sang. The Fenians sped
Three mighty shouts to heaven; and left
Ben-Edar to the dead.
The spirit of Ossian, the woe and desolation of a mortal world, and the
resigned but not bitter sense of the vanity of all things, lives in this
solemn elegy.
The charming lyrics of the later Irish Celtic poetry, which succeeded
that of the bards, and were the voices of the peasant people themselves
and of the professional descendants of the bards, the itinerant poets
and musicians, who wandered from house to house with their harps,
singing the praises of their entertainers, and were not extinct until
the end of the last century, have found an adequate interpreter in Sir
Samuel Ferguson. As in his reproductions of the bardic poetry, he has
been able to seize the very spirit of these songs, their intoxication
of love, their breath of hopeless longing and misfortune, the
characteristics of the race and the results of their cruel fate at the
hands of alien conquerors, and to interpret it in measures as melodious
as the sad and sweet old airs, which are the most valuable gift which
the intellectual life of Celtic Ireland has bestowed upon posterity. The
genuine Irish melodies are to be found in these lyrics, which interpret
the spirit as well as the language of the Celtic poets, and not in the
rococo songs of Moore, in which artificial sentiment is tricked out in a
mechanical melody, and in which the atmosphere of the drawing-room takes
the place of the free air of the hillside. Of these Celtic lyrics the
greater number have been lost, the airs alone surviving, but those which
remain show how strong, sensitive, and impassioned was the poetic spirit
of the Irish Celtic people, and which, but for the misfortunes of the
nation, might have left as rich a treasury of lyric song as the Scotch.
The following is a specimen of the impassioned spirit of these songs,
almost an improvisation, the very cry of the heart finding vent at the
lips. It is entitled Cean Dubh Deelish--The Dear Black Head.
Put your head, darling, darling, darling,
Your darling black head my heart above;
Oh, mouth of honey, with the thyme for fragrance,
Who with heart in breast could deny you love?
Oh, many and many a young girl for me is pining,
Letting her locks of gold to the cold wind free,
For me the foremost of our gay young fellows;
But I'd leave a hundred, pure love, for thee:
Then put your head, darling, darling, darling,
Your darling black head my heart above;
Oh, mouth of honey, with the thyme for fragrance,
Who, with heart in breast, could deny you love?
The verses entitled The Fair Hair'd Girl express with great sweetness
the sense of woe and sorrow which forms the burden of so much of the
Celtic poetry, and which is only relieved by occasional flashes of
intoxicated merriment with the glass of whiskey for its stimulus and
inspiration.
THE FAIR HAIR'D GIRL.
The sun has set, the stars are still,
The red moon hides behind the hill;
The tide has left the brown beach bare,
The birds have fled the upper air;
Upon her branch the lone cuckoo
Is chanting still her sad adieu;
And you, my fair hair'd girl, must go
Across the salt sea under woe.
I through love have learned three things,
Sorrow, sin, and death it brings,
Yet day by day my heart within
Dares shame and sorrow, death and sin;
Maiden, you have aim'd the dart
Rankling in my ruin'd heart;
Maiden, may the God above
Grant you grace to grant me love.
Sweeter than the viol's string,
And the notes that blackbirds sing;
Brighter than the dewdrops rare
Is the maiden, wondrous fair;
Like the silver swans at play
Is her neck, as bright as day;
Woe is me, that e'er my sight
Dwelt on charms so deadly bright.
Among the sweetest and most famous of the old Irish airs is that
entitled The Coolun or Head of Clustering Tresses, one of the charming
personifications of female beauty of which Irish poetry is full. Several
sets of words remain to this air of which Ferguson has translated the
following:--
THE COOLUN.
Oh, had you seen the Coolun,
Walking down by the cuckoo's street,
With the dew of the meadow shining
On her milk-white twinkling feet,
My love she is and my _cooleen oge_,
And she dwells at Bal'nagar;
And she bears the palm of beauty bright
From the fairest that in Erin are.
In Bal'nagar is the Coolun,
Like the berry on the bough her cheek;
Bright beauty dwells forever
On her fair neck and ringlets sleek;
Oh, sweeter is her mouth's soft music
Than the lark or thrush at dawn,
Or the blackbird in the greenwood singing
Farewell to the setting sun.
Rise up, my boy, make ready
My horse, for I forth would ride,
To follow the modest damsel,
Where she walks on the green hillside.
For, ever since our youth were we plighted,
In faith, troth, and wedlock true--
She is sweeter to me nine times over
Than organ or cuckoo!
For, ever since my childhood
I loved the fair and darling child;
But our people came between us,
And with lucre our pure love defiled;
Oh, my woe it is, and my bitter pain,
And I weep it night and day,
That the _cooleen bawn_ of my early love
Is torn from my heart away.
Sweetheart and faithful treasure,
Be constant still, and true,
Nor for want of herds and houses
Leave one who would ne'er leave you;
I pledge you the blessed Bible,
Without and eke within,
That the faithful God will provide for us,
Without thanks to kith or kin.
Oh, love, do you remember,
When we lay all night alone,
Beneath the ash in the winter-storm,