By PROFESSOR GEORGES DOTTIN.
[Note.--This chapter was written in French by M. Dottin, who is a
distinguished professor and dean at the University of Renacs, France.
The translation into English has been made by the Editors.]
By the year 1200 of the Christian era, a time at which the other
national literatures of Europe were scarcely beginning to develop,
Ireland possessed, and had possessed for several centuries, a Gaelic
poetry, which was either the creation of the soul of the people or
else was the work of the courtly bards. This poetry was at first
expressed in rhythmical verses, each containing a fixed number of
accented syllables and hemistichs separated by a pause:
_Crist_ lim, | _Crist_ reum, | _Crist_ in degaid
_Crist_ indium | _Crist_ issum | _Crist_ úasum
| _Crist_ dessum | _Crist_ úasum
This versification, one of the elements of which was the repetition
of words or sounds at regular intervals, was transformed about the
eighth century into a more learned system. Thenceforward
alliteration, assonance, rhyme, and a fixed number of syllables
constituted the characteristics of Irish verse:
Mésse ocus Pángur bÁN
cechtar náthar fria sáindAN
bith a _ménma_ sam fri SEILGG
mu _ménma_ céin im sáinchEIRDD.
As we see, the consonants in the rhyme-words were merely related: _l,
r, n, ng, m, dh, gh, bh, mh, ch, th, f_ could rime together just as
could _gg, dd, bb_. Soon the poets did not limit themselves to
end-rhymes, which ran the risk of becoming monotonous, but introduced
also internal rhyme, which set up what we may call a continuous chain
of melody:
is aire caraim DOIRE
ar a reidhe ar a ghlOINE
's ar iomad a aingel fIND
ó 'n CIND go aoich arOILE.
This harmonious versification was replaced in the seventeenth century
by a system in which account was no longer taken of consonantal rhyme
or of the number of syllables.
The rules of Irish verse have nothing in common with classical Latin
metres, which were based on the combination of short and long
syllables. In Low-Latin, indeed, we find occasionally alliteration,
rhyme, and a fixed number of syllables, but these novelties are
obviously of foreign origin, and date from the time when the Romans
borrowed them from the nations which they called barbarous. We cannot
prove beyond yea or nay that they are of Celtic origin, but it is
extremely probable that they are, for it is among the Celts both of
Ireland and of Wales that the harmonizing of vowels and of consonants
has been carried to the highest degree of perfection.
This learned art was not acquired without long study. The training of
a poet (_filé_) lasted twelve years, or more. The poets had a regular
hierarchy. The highest in rank, the _ollamh_, knew 350 kinds of verse
and could recite 250 principal and 100 secondary stories. The
_ollamhs_ lived at the court of the kings and the nobles, who granted
them freehold lands; their persons and their property were sacred;
and they had established in Ireland schools in which the people might
learn history, poetry, and law. The bards formed a numerous class, of
a rank inferior to the _filé_; they did not enjoy the same honors and
privileges; some of them even were slaves; according to their
standing, different kinds of verse were assigned to them as a
monopoly.
The Danish invasions in the ninth century set back for some time the
development of Irish poetry, but, when the Irish had driven the
fierce and aggressive sea-rovers from their country, there was a
literary renascence. This was in turn checked by the Anglo-Norman
invasion in the twelfth century, and thereafter the art of
versification was no longer so refined as it had formerly been.
Nevertheless, the bardic schools still existed in the seventeenth
century, more than four hundred years after the landing of Strongbow,
and, in them, students followed the lectures of the _ollamhs_ for six
months each year, or until the coming of spring, exercising both
their talents for composition and their memory.
A catalogue of Irish poets, which has recently been made out, shows
that there were more than a thousand of them. We have lost many of
the oldest poems, but the Irish scribes often modernized the texts
which they were copying. Hence the language is not always a
sufficient indication of date, and it is possible that, under a
comparatively modern form, some very ancient pieces may have been
preserved. Even if the poems attributed to Amergin do not go back to
the tenth century B.C., as has been claimed for them, they are in any
case old enough to be archaic, and certain poems of the mythological
cycle are undoubtedly anterior to the Christian era.
We have reason to believe that there have been preserved some genuine
poems of Finn macCumaill (third century), a hymn by St. Patrick (d.
461), some greatly altered verses of St. Columcille (d. 597), and
certain hymns written by saints who lived from the seventh to the
ninth century. The main object of the most celebrated of the ancient
poets up to the end of the twelfth century was to render history,
genealogy, toponomy, and lives of saints readier of access and easier
to retain by putting them into verse-form; and it is the names of
those scholars that have been rescued from oblivion, while lyric
poetry, having as its basis nothing more than sentiment, has remained
for the most part anonymous. After the Anglo-Norman invasion, the
best poet seems to have been Donnchadh Mór O'Daly (d. 1244). Of later
date were Teig MacDaire (1570-1652), Teig Dall O'Higinn (d. 1615),
and Eochaidh O'Hussey, who belonged to the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. The new school, which abandoned the old rules and whose
inspiration is now personal, now patriotic, is represented by
_caoine_ (keens or laments), _abran_ (hymns), or _aislingi_
(visions), composed, among others, by Geoffrey Keating (d. c. 1650),
David O'Bruadair (c. 1625-1698), Egan O'Rahilly (c. 1670-c. 1734),
John MacDonnell (1691-1754), William O'Heffernan (fl. 1750), John
O'Tuomy (1706-1775), and Andrew MacGrath (d. c. 1790). The greatest
of the eighteenth century Irish poets was Owen Roe O'Sullivan (c.
1748-1784), whose songs were sung everywhere, and who, in the opinion
of his editor, Father Dinneen, is the literary glory of his country
and deserves to be ranked among the few supreme lyric poets of all
time.
If, in order to study the subjects treated by the poets, we lay aside
didactic poetry and confine ourselves to the ancient poems from the
seventh to the eleventh century, we shall find in the latter a
singular variety. They were at first dialogues or monologues, now
found incorporated with the sagas, of which they may have formed the
original nucleus. Thus, in the _Voyage of Bran_, we have the account
of the Isles of the Blessed and the discourse of the King of the Sea;
in the _Expedition of Loégaire MacCrimthainn_, the brilliant
description of the fairy hosts; in _The Death of the Sons of Usnech_,
the touching farewell of Deirdre to the land of Scotland and her
lamentation over the dead bodies of the three warriors; and in the
_Lay of Fothard Canann_, the strange and thrilling speech of the dead
lover, returning after the battle to the tryst appointed by his
sweetheart. Other poems seem never to have figured in a saga, like
the Song of Crede, daughter of Guaire, in which she extols the memory
of her friend Dinertach, and the affecting love-scenes between Liadin
and Curithir; or like the bardic songs designed to distribute praise
or blame: the funeral panegyric on King Niall, in alternate verses,
the song of the sword of Carroll, and the satire of MacConglinne
against the monks of Cork.
Religious poetry comprised lyric fragments, which were introduced
into the lives of the saints and there formed a kind of Christian
saga, or else were based on Holy Writ, like the _Lamentation of Eve_;
hymns in honor of the saints, like _The Hymn to St. Michael_, by Mael
Isu; pieces such as the famous Hymn of St. Patrick; and philosophic
poems like that keen analysis of the flight of thought which dates
from the tenth century.
At a time when the poets of other lands seem wholly engrossed in the
recital of the deeds of men, one of the great and constant
distinguishing marks of poetry in Ireland, whether we have to do with
a short note set down by a scribe on the margin of a manuscript or
with a religious or profane poem, is a deep, personal, and intimate
love of nature expressed not by detailed description, but more often
by a single picturesque and telling epithet. Thus we have the hermit
who prays God to give him a hut in a lonely place beside a clear
spring in the wood, with a little lark to sing overhead; or we have
Marban, who, rich in nuts, crab-apples, sloes, watercress, and honey,
refuses to go back to the court to which the king, his brother,
presses him to return. Now, we have the description of the summer
scene, in which the blackbird sings and the sun smiles; now, the song
of the sea and of the wind, which blows tempestuously from the four
quarters of the sky; again, the winter song, when the snow covers the
hills, when every furrow is a streamlet and the wolves range
restlessly abroad, while the birds, numbed to the heart, are silent;
or yet again the recluse in his cell, humorously comparing his quest
of ideas to the pursuit of the mice by his pet cat. This deep love of
inanimate and animate things becomes individualized in those poems in
which every tree, every spring, every bird is described with its own
special features.
If we remember that these original poems, which, before the twelfth
century, expressed thoughts that were scarcely known to the
literature of Europe before the eighteenth, are, besides, clothed in
the rich garb of a subtle harmony, what admiration, what respect, and
what love ought we not to show to that ancient Ireland which, in the
darkest ages of western civilization, not only became the depositary
of Latin knowledge and spread it over the continent, but also had
been able to create for herself new artistic and poetic forms!