HEROIC ROMANCES OF IRELAND
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH PROSE AND VERSE, WITH PREFACE, SPECIAL
INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES
BY
A. H. LEAHY
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I
PREFACE
At a time like the present, when in the opinion of many the great
literatures of Greece and Rome are ceasing to hold the influence that
they have so long exerted upon human thought, and when the study of the
greatest works of the ancient world is derided as "useless," it may be
too sanguine to hope that any attention can be paid to a literature
that is quite as useless as the Greek; which deals with a time, which,
if not actually as far removed from ours as are classical times, is yet
further removed in ideas; a literature which is known to few and has
yet to win its way to favour, while the far superior literature of
Greece finds it hard to defend the position that it long ago won. It
may be that reasons like these have weighed with those scholars who
have opened up for us the long-hidden treasures of Celtic literature;
despairing of the effort to obtain for that literature its rightful
crown, and the homage due to it from those who can appreciate literary
work for itself, they have been contented to ask for the support of
that smaller body who from philological, antiquarian, or, strange as it
may appear, from political reasons, are prepared to take a modified
interest in what should be universally regarded as in its way one of
the most interesting literatures of the world.
The literary aspect of the ancient literature of Ireland has not indeed
been altogether neglected. It has been used to furnish themes on which
modern poems can be written; ancient authority has been found in it for
what is essentially modern thought: modern English and Irish poets have
claimed the old Irish romances as inspirers, but the romances
themselves have been left to the scholars and the antiquarians.
This is not the position that Irish literature ought to fill. It does
undoubtedly tell us much of the most ancient legends of modern Europe
which could not have been known without it; but this is not its sole,
or even its chief claim to be heard. It is itself the connecting-link
between the Old World and the New, written, so far as can be
ascertained, at the time when the literary energies of the ancient
world were dead, when the literatures of modern Europe had not been
born,[FN#1] in a country that had no share in the ancient civilisation
of Rome, among a people which still retained many legends and possibly
a rudimentary literature drawn from ancient Celtic sources, and was
producing the men who were the earliest classical scholars of the
modern world.
[FN#1] The only possible exceptions to this, assuming the latest
possible date for the Irish work, and the earliest date for others, are
the kindred Welsh literature and that of the Anglo-Saxon invaders of
Britain.
The exact extent of the direct influence of Irish literature upon the
development of other nations is hard to trace, chiefly because the
influence of Ireland upon the Continent was at its height at the time
when none of the languages of modern Europe except Welsh and
Anglo-Saxon had reached a stage at which they might be used for
literary purposes, and a Continental literature on which the Irish one
might have influence simply did not exist. Its subsequent influence,
in the tenth and eleventh centuries, upon Welsh, and through Welsh upon
the early Breton literature (now lost) appears to be established; it is
usually supposed that its action upon the earliest French compositions
was only through the medium of these languages, but it is at least
possible that its influence in this case also was more direct. In
Merovingian and early Carlovingian times, when French songs were
composed, which are now lost but must have preceded the extant chansons
de geste, the Irish schools were attracting scholars from the
neighbouring countries of Europe; Ireland was sending out a steady
stream of "learned men" to France, Germany, and Italy; and it is at
least possible that some who knew the Irish teachers realized the merit
of the literary works with which some of these teachers must have been
familiar. The form of the twelfth-century French romance, "Aucassin
and Nicolete," is that of the chief Irish romances, and may well have
been suggested by them; whilst the variety of the rhythm and the
elaborate laws of the earliest French poetry, which, both in its
Northern and Southern form, dates from the first half of the twelfth
century, almost imply a pre-existing model; and such a model is more
easily traced in Irish than in any other vernacular literature that was
then available. It is indeed nearly as hard to suppose that the
beautiful literature of Ireland had absolutely no influence upon
nations known to be in contact with it, as it would be to hold to the
belief that the ancient Cretan civilisation had no effect upon the liter
ary development that culminated in the poems of Homer.
Before speaking of what the Irish literature was, it may be well to say
what it was not. The incidents related in it date back, according to
the "antiquaries" of the ninth to the twelfth centuries, some to the
Christian era, some to a period long anterior to it; but occasional
allusions to events that were unknown in Ireland before the
introduction of Christianity, and a few to classical personages, show
that the form of the present romances can hardly be pre-Christian, or
even close translations into Old or Middle Irish of Druidic tales. It
has therefore been the fashion to speak of the romances as inaccurate
survivals of pre-Christian works, which have been added to by
successive generations of "bards," a mode of viewing our versions of
the romances which of course puts them out of the category of original
literature and hands them over to the antiquarians; but before they
suffer this fate, it is reasonable to ask that their own literary merit
should be considered in a more serious manner than has yet been
attempted.
The idea that our versions of the romances are inaccurate reproductions
of Druidic tales is not at all borne out by a study of the romances
themselves; for each of these, except for a few very manifestly late
insertions, has a style and character of its own. There were,
undoubtedly, old traditions, known to the men who in the sixth and
seventh centuries may have written the tales that we have, known even
to men who in the tenth and eleventh centuries copied them and
commented upon them; but the romances as they now stand do not look
like pieces of patchwork, but like the works of men who had ideas to
convey; and to me at least they seem to bear approximately the same
relation to the Druid legends as the works of the Attic tragedians bear
to the archaic Greek legends on which their tragedies were based. In
more than one case, as in the "Courtship of Etain," which is more fully
discussed below, there are two versions of the same tale, the framework
being the same in both, while the treatment of the incidents and the
view of the characters of the actors is essentially different; and when
the story is treated from the antiquarian point of view, that which
regards both versions as resting upon a common prehistoric model, the
question arises, which of the two more nearly represents the "true"
version? There is, I would submit, in such cases, no true version. The
old Druidic story, if it could be found, would in all probability
contain only a very small part of either of our two versions; it would
be bald, half-savage in tone, like one of the more ancient Greek myths,
and producing no literary effect; the literary effect of both the
versions that we have, being added by men who lived in Christian times,
were influenced by Christian ideals, and probably were, like many of
their contemporaries, familiar with the literary bequests of the
ancient world.[FN#2]
[FN#2] It seems to be uncertain whether or not the writers of the
Irish romances shared in the classical learning for which Ireland was
noted in their time. The course of study at the schools established
for the training of the fili in the tenth and eleventh centuries was
certainly, as has been pointed out, very different from that of the
ecclesiastical schools (see Joyce, vol. i. p. 430). No classical
instruction was included in this training, but it is not certain that
this separation of studies was so complete before what is called the
"antiquarian age" set in. Cormac mac Cuninan, for example, was a
classical scholar, and at the same time skilled in the learning of the
fili. It should also be observed that the course at the ecclesiastical
schools, as handed down to us, hardly seems to be classical enough to
have produced a Columbanus or an Erigena; the studies that produced
these men must have been of a different kind, and the lay schools as
originally established by Sanchan Torpest may have included much that
afterwards gave place to a more purely Irish training. The tale of
Troy seems to have been known to the fili, and there are in their works
allusions to Greek heroes, to Hercules and Hector, but it has been
pointed out by Mr. Nutt that there is little if any evidence of
influence produced by Latin or Greek literature on the actual matter or
thought of the older Irish work. On this point reference may be made
to a note on "Mae Datho's Boar" in this volume (p. 173), but even if
this absence of classical influence is established (and it is hard to
say what will not be found in Irish literature), it is just possible
that the same literary feeling which made Irish writers of
comparatively late tales keep the bronze weapons and chariots of an
earlier date in their accounts of ancient wars, while they described
arms of the period when speaking of battles of their own time, affected
them in this instance also; and that they had enough restraint to
refrain from introducing classical and Christian ideas when speaking of
times in which they knew these ideas would have been unfamiliar.
It may be, and often is, assumed that the appearance of grotesque or
savage passages in a romance is an indication of high antiquity, and
that these passages at least are faithful reproductions of Druidic
originals, but this does not seem to be quite certain. Some of these
passages, especially in the case of romances preserved in the Leabhar
na h-Uidhri (The Book of the Dun Cow), look like insertions made by
scribes of an antiquarian turn of mind,[FN#3] and are probably of very
ancient date; in other cases, as for example in the "Boar of Mac
Datho," where Conall dashes Anluan's head into Ket's face, the savagery
is quite in 'keeping with the character of the story, and way have been
deliberately invented by an author living in Christian times, to add a
flavour to his tale, although in doing so he probably imitated a
similar incident in some other legend. To take a classical parallel,
the barbarity shown by Aeneas in Aeneid x. 518-520, in sacrificing four
youths on the funeral pyre of Pallas, an act which would have been
regarded with horror in Virgil's own day, does not prove that there was
any ancient tale of the death of Pallas in which these victims were
sacrificed, nor even that such victims were sacrificed in ancient
Latium in Pallas' day; but it does show that Virgil was familiar with
the fact that such victims used in some places to be sacrificed on
funeral pyres; for, in a sense, he could not have actually invented the
incident.
[FN#3] See the exhibition of the tips of tongues in the "Sick-bed of
Cuchulain," page 57.
Thus the appearance of an archaic element in an Irish romance is in
itself no proof of the Druidic origin of that form of the romance, nor
even of the existence of that element in the romance's earliest form:
upon such a principle the archaic character of the motif of the
"Oedipus Coloneus" would prove it to be the oldest of the Greek
tragedies, while as
a matter of fact it seems to be doubtful whether the introduction of
this motif into the story of Oedipus was not due to Sophocles himself,
although of course he drew the idea of it, if not from the original
legend of Oedipus, from some other early legend.
The most satisfactory test of the authorship of an Irish romance, and
one of the most satisfactory tests of its date, is its literary
character; and if we look at the literary character of the best of the
Irish romances, there is one point that is immediately apparent, the
blending of prose and verse. One, the most common, explanation of
this, is that the verse was added to the original tale, another that
the verse is the older part, the prose being added to make a framework
for the verse, but a general view of some of the original romances
appears to lead to a very different conclusion. It seems much more
probable that the Irish authors deliberately chose a method of making
their work at once literary and suited to please a popular audience;
they told their stories in plain prose, adding to them verse, possibly
chanted by the reciters of the stories, so that while the prose told
the story in simple language, the emotions of pity, martial ardour, and
the like were awakened by the verse. They did not use the epic form,
although their knowledge of classical literature must have made them
familiar with it; the Irish epic form is Romance. They had, besides
the prose and what may be called the "regular" verse, a third form,
that of rose, or as it is sometimes called rhetoric, which is a very
irregular form of verse. Sometimes it rhymes, but more often not; the
lines are of varying lengths, and to scan them is often very difficult,
an alliteration taking the place of scansion in many cases. The
rhetoric does not in general develop the story nor take the form of
description, it usually consists of songs of triumph, challenges,
prophecies, and exhortations, though it is sometimes used for other
purposes. It does not conform to strict grammatical rules like the
more regular verse and the prose, and many of the literal translations
which Irish scholars have made for us of the romances omit this
rhetoric entirely, owing to the difficulty in rendering it accurately,
and because it does not develop the plots of the stories. Notable
examples of such omissions are in Miss Faraday's translation of the
Leabhar na h-Uidhri version of the "Great Tain," and in Whitley Stokes'
translation of the "Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel." With all
respect to these scholars, and with the full consciousness of the
difficulty of the task that has naturally been felt by one who has
vainly attempted to make sense of what their greater skill has omitted,
it may be suggested that the total omission of such passages injures
the literary effect of a romance in a manner similar to the effect of
omitting all the choric pieces in a Greek tragedy: the rhetoric indeed,
on account of its irregularity, its occasional strophic correspondence,
its general independence of the action of the tale, and its difficulty
as compared with the other passages, may be compared very closely to a
Greek "chorus." Few of the romances written in prose and verse are
entirely without rhetoric; but some contain very little of it; all the
six romances of this character given in the present volume (counting as
two the two versions of "Etain") contain some rhetoric, but there are
only twenty-one such passages in the collection altogether, ten of
which are in one romance, the "Sick-bed of Cuchulain."
The present collection is an attempt to give to English readers some of
the oldest romances in English literary forms that seem to correspond
to the literary forms which were used in Irish to produce the same
effect, and has been divided into two parts. The first part contains
five separate stories, all of which are told in the characteristic form
of prose and verse: they are the "Courtship of Etain," the "Boar of Mac
Datho," the "Sick-bed of Cuchulain," the "Death of the Sons of Usnach"
(Book of Leinster version), and the "Combat at the Ford" out of the
Book of Leinster version of the "Tain bo Cuailnge." Two versions are
given of the "Courtship of Etain "; and the "Sick-bed of Cuchulain," as
is pointed out in the special preface prefixed to it, really consists
of two independent versions. It was at first intended to add the
better-known version of the "Death of the Sons of Usnach" known as that
of the Glenn Masain MS., but the full translation of this has been
omitted, partly to avoid making the volume too bulky, partly because
this version is readily attainable in a literal form; an extract from
it has, however, been added to the Book of Leinster version for the
purpose of comparison. In the renderings given of these romances the
translation of the prose is nearly literal, but no attempt has been
made to follow the Irish idiom where this idiom sounds harsh in
English; actives have been altered to passive forms and the reverse,
adjectives are sometimes replaced by short sentences which give the
image better in English, pronouns, in which Irish is very rich, are
often replaced by the persons or things indicated, and common words,
like iarom, iarsin, iartain, immorro, and the like (meaning thereafter,
moreover, &c.), have been replaced by short sentences that refer back
to the events indicated by the words. Nothing has been added to the
Irish, except in the Leabhar na h-Uidhri version of "Etain," where
there is a lacuna to be filled up, and there are no omissions. The
translations of the verse and of the rhetoric are, so far as is
possible, made upon similar lines; it was at first intended to add
literal renderings of all the verse passages, but it was found that to
do so would make the volume of an unmanageable size for its purpose.
Literal renderings of all the verse passages in "Etain," the first of
the tales in volume i., are given in the notes to that story; the
literal renderings of Deirdre's lament in the "Sons of Usnach," and of
two poems in "The Combat at the Ford," are also given in full as
specimens, but in the case of most of the poems reference is made to
easily available literal translations either in English or German:
where the literal rendering adopted differs from that referred to, or
where the poem in question has not before been translated, the literal
rendering has been given in the notes. These examples will, it is
believed, give a fair indication of the relation between my verse
translations and the originals, the deviations from which have been
made as small as possible. The form of four-line verse divided into
stanzas has generally been used to render the passages in four-lined
verse in the Irish, the only exception to this rule being in the verses
at the end of the "Boar of Mac Datho": these are in the nature of a
ballad version of the whole story, and have been rendered in a ballad
metre that does not conform to the arrangement in verses of the
original.
The metre of all the Irish four-lined verses in this volume is, except
in two short pieces, a seven-syllabled line, the first two lines
usually rhyming with each other, and the last two similarly
rhyming,[FN#4] in a few cases in the "Boar of Mac Datho" these rhymes
are alternate, and in the extract from the Glenn Masain version of the
"Sons of Usnach" there is a more complicated rhyme system. It has not
been thought necessary to reproduce this metre in all cases, as to do
so would sound too monotonous in English; the metre is, however,
reproduced once at least in each tale except in that of the "Death of
the Sons of Usnach." The eight-lined metre that occurs in five of the
verse passages in the "Combat at the Ford" has in one case been
reproduced exactly, and in another case nearly exactly, but with one
syllable added to each line; the two passages in this romance that are
in five-syllabled lines have been reproduced exactly in the Irish
metre, in one case with the rhyme-system of the original. With the
rhetoric greater liberty has been used; sometimes the original metre
has been followed, but more often not; and an occasional attempt has
been made to bring out the strophic correspondence in the Irish.
[FN#4] An example of this metre is as follows:--
All the elves of Troom seem dead,
All their mighty deeds are fled;
For their Hound, who hounds surpassed,
Elves have bound in slumber fast.
In the first volume of the collection the presentation has then been
made as near as may be to the form and matter of the Irish; in the
second volume, called "Versified Romances," there is a considerable
divergence from the Irish form but not from its sense. This part
includes the five "Tains" or Cattle-Forays of Fraech, Dartaid, Regamon,
Flidais, and Regamna; which in the originals differ from the five tales
in volume i, in that they include no verse, except for a few lines in
Regamna, most of which are untranslatable. The last four of these are
short pieces written in a prose extremely rapid in its action, and
crowded with incident. They are all expressly named as "fore-tales,"
remscela, or preludes to the story of the great war of Cualnge, which
is the central event in the Ulster heroic cycle, and appear suited for
rapid prose recitations, which were apparently as much a feature in
ancient as they are in modern Irish. Such pieces can hardly be
reproduced in English prose so as to bring out their character; they
are represented in English by the narrative ballad, and they have been
here rendered in this way. Literal translations in prose are printed
upon the opposite page to the verse, these translations being much more
exact than the translations in the first volume, as the object in this
case is to show the literal Irish form, not its literal English
equivalent, which is in this case the verse. The "Tain bo Fraich" is
also, in a sense, a "fore-tale" to the Great Raid, but is of a
different character to the others. It consists of two parts, the
second of which is not unlike the four that have just been mentioned,
but the first part is of a much higher order, containing brilliant
descriptions, and at least one highly poetic passage although its Irish
form is prose. Fraech has been treated like the other fore-tales, and
rendered in verse with literal prose opposite to the verse for the
purpose of comparison. The notes to all the five Tana in the second
volume accompany the text; in the first volume all the notes to the
different romances are collected together, and placed at the end of the
volume. The second volume also includes a transcript from the
facsimile of that part of the Irish text of the tale of Etain which has
not before been published, together with an interlinear literal
translation. It is hoped that this arrangement may assist some who are
not Middle Irish scholars to realise what the original romances are.
The manuscript authorities for the eleven different romances (counting
as two the two versions of "Etain") are all old; seven are either in
the Leabhar na h-Uidhri, an eleventh-century manuscript, or in the Book
of Leinster, a twelfth-century one; three of the others are in the
fourteenth-century Yellow Book of Lecan, which is often, in the case of
texts preserved both in it and the Leabhar na h-Uidhri, regarded as the
better authority of the two; and the remaining one, the second version
of "Etain," is in the fifteenth-century manuscript known as Egerton,
1782, which gives in an accurate form so many texts preserved in the
older manuscripts that it is very nearly as good an authority as they.
The sources used in making the translations are also stated in the
special introductions, but it may be mentioned as a summary that the
four "Preludes," the Tana of Dartaid, Regamon, Flidais, and Regamna,
are taken from the text printed with accompanying German translations
by Windisch in Irische Texte, vol. ii.; Windisch's renderings being
followed in those portions of the text that he translates; for the
"Tain bo Fraich" and the "Combat at the Ford" the Irish as given by
O'Beirne Crowe and by O'Curry, with not very trustworthy English
translations, has been followed; in the case of the fragment of the
Glenn Masain version of "Deirdre" little reference has been made to the
Irish, the literal translation followed being that given by Whitley
Stokes. The remaining five romances, the "Boar of Mac Datho," the
Leinster version of "Deirdre," the "Sick-bed of Cuchulain," the Egerton
version of "Etain," and the greater part of the Leabbar na h-Uidhri
version of the same, are taken from the Irish text printed without
translation in Irische Texte, vol. i., the end of the Leabhar na
h-Uidhri version omitted by Windisch being taken from the facsimile of
the manuscript published by the Royal Irish Academy.
I have to acknowledge with gratitude many corrections to O'Beirne
Crowe's translation of the "Tain bo Fraich" kindly given me by
Professor Kuno Meyer; in the case of O'Curry's translation of the
"Combat at the Ford," similar help kindly given me by Mr. E. J.
Quiggin; and in the case of the two versions of "Etain," more
especially for the part taken direct from the facsimile, I have to
express gratitude for the kind and ready help given to me by Professor
Strachan. Professor Strachan has not only revised my transcript from
the facsimile, and supplied me with translations of the many difficult
passages in this of which I could make no sense, but has revised all
the translation which was made by the help of Windisch's glossary to
the Irische Texte of both the versions of "Etain," so that the
translations given of these two romances should be especially reliable,
although of course I may have made some errors which have escaped
Professor Strachan's notice. The three other romances which have been
translated from the Irish in Irische Texte have not been similarly
revised, but all passages about which there appeared to be doubt have
been referred to in the notes to the individual romances.
It remains to add some remarks upon the general character of the tales,
which, as may be seen after a very cursory examination, are very
different both in tone and merit, as might indeed be expected if we
remember that we are probably dealing with the works of men who were
separated from each other by a gap of hundreds of years. Those who
have read the actual works of the ancient writers of the Irish romances
will not readily indulge in the generalisations about them used by
those to whom the romances are only known by abstracts or a
compilation. Perhaps the least meritorious of those in this collection
are the "Tains" of Dartaid, Regamon, and Flidais, but the tones of
these three stories are very different. Dartaid is a tale of fairy
vengeance for a breach of faith; Flidais is a direct and simple story
of a raid like a Border raid, reminding us of the "riding ballads" of
the Scottish Border, and does not seem to trouble itself much about
questions of right or wrong; Regamon is a merry tale of a foray by boys
and girls; it troubles itself with the rights of the matter even less
than Flidais if possible, and is an example of an Irish tale with what
is called in modern times a "good ending." It may be noted that these
last two tales have no trace of the supernatural element which some
suppose that the Irish writers were unable to dispense with. The "Tain
bo Regamna," the shortest piece in the collection, is a grotesque
presentation of the supernatural, and is more closely associated with
the Great Tain than any of the other fore-tales to it, the series of
prophecies with which it closes exactly following the action of the
part of the Tain, to which it refers. Some of the grotesque character
of Regamna appears in the "Boar of Mac Datho," which, however, like
Regamon and Flidais, has no supernatural element; its whole tone is
archaic and savage, relieved by touches of humour, but the style of the
composition is much superior to that of the first three stories. A
romance far superior to "Mae Datho" is the Leinster version of the
well-known Deirdre story, the "Death of the Sons of Usnach." The
opening of the story is savage, the subsequent action of the prose is
very rapid, while the splendid lament at the end, one of the best
sustained laments in the language, and the restraint shown in its
account of the tragic death of Deirdre, place this version of the story
in a high position. As has been already mentioned, parts of the
fifteenth-century version of the story have been added to this version
for purposes of comparison: the character of the Deirdre of the
Leinster version would not have been in keeping with the sentiment of
the lament given to her in the later account.
The remaining five romances (treating as two the two versions of
"Etain") all show great beauty in different ways. Three of the four
tales given in them have "good endings," and the feeling expressed in
them is less primitive than that shown in the other stories, although
it is an open question whether any of them rises quite so high as
Deirdre's lament. "Fraech" has, as has been mentioned before, two
quite separate parts; the second part is of inferior quality, showing,
however, an unusual amount of knowledge of countries lying outside
Celtdom, but the first is a most graceful romance; although the hero is
a demi-god, and the fairies play a considerable part in it, the
interest is essentially human; and the plot is more involved than is
the case in most of the romances. It abounds in brilliant
descriptions; the description of the Connaught palace is of antiquarian
interest; and one of the most beautiful pieces of Celtic mythology, the
parentage of the three fairy harpers, is included in it.
The "Sick-bed of Cuchulain" and the Leabhar na h-Uidhri version of the
"Courtship of Etain" seem to have had their literary effect injured by
the personality of the compiler of the manuscript from which the
Leabhar na h-Uidhri was copied. Seemingly an antiquarian, interested
in the remains of the old Celtic religion and in old ceremonies, he has
inserted pieces of antiquarian information into several of the romances
that he has preserved for us, and though these are often of great
interest in themselves, they spoil the literary effect of the romances
in which they appear. It is possible that both the Leabhar na h-Uidhri
version of "Etain" and the "Sick-bed" might be improved by a little
judicious editing; they have, however, been left just as they stand in
the manuscript. The "Sick-bed," as is pointed out in the special
introduction to it, consists of two separate versions; the first has
plainly some of the compiler's comments added to it, but the second and
longer part seems not to have been meddled with; and, although a
fragment, it makes a stately romance, full of human interest although
dealing with supernatural beings; and its conclusion is especially
remarkable in early literature on account of the importance of the
action of the two women who are the heroines of this part of the tale.
The action of Fand in resigning her lover to the weaker mortal woman
who has a better claim upon him is quite modern in its tone.
The nearest parallel to the longer version of the "Sick-bed" is the
Egerton version of "Etain," which is a complete one, and makes a
stately romance. It is full of human interest, love being its keynote;
it keeps the supernatural element which is an essential to the original
legend in the background, and is of quite a different character to the
earlier Leabhar na h-Uidhri version, although there is no reason to
assume that the latter is really the more ancient in date. In the
Leabbar na h-Uidhri version of "Etain," all that relates to the
love-story is told in the baldest manner, the part which deals with the
supernatural being highly descriptive and poetic. I am inclined to
believe that the antiquarian compiler of the manuscript did here what
he certainly did in the case of the "Sick-bed of Cuchulain," and pieced
together two romances founded upon the same legend by different
authors. The opening of the story in Fairyland and the concluding part
where Mider again appears are alike both in style and feeling, while
the part that comes between is a highly condensed version of the
love-story of the Egerton manuscript, and suggests the idea of an
abstract of the Egerton version inserted into the story as originally
composed, the effect being similar to that which would be produced upon
us if we had got Aeschylus' "Choaphorae" handed down to us with a
condensed version of the dialogue between Electra and Chrysothemis out
of Sophocles' "Electra" inserted by a conscientious antiquarian who
thought that some mention of Chrysothemis was necessary. This version
of the legend, however, with its strong supernatural flavour, its
insistence on the idea of re-birth, its observation of nature, and
especially the fine poem in which Mider invites Etain to Fairyland, is
a most valuable addition to the literature, and we have to lament the
gap in it owing to the loss of a column in that part of the Leabhar na
h-Uidhri manuscript which has been preserved.
The last piece to be mentioned is the extract from the "Tain be
Cuailnge" known as the "Combat at the Ford." This seems to me the
finest specimen of old Irish work that has been preserved for us; the
brilliance of its descriptions, the appropriate changes in its metres,
the chivalry of its sentiments, and the rapidity of its action should,
even if there were nothing to stand beside it in Irish literature, give
that literature a claim to be heard: as an account of a struggle
between two friends, it is probably the finest in any literature. It
has been stated recently, no doubt upon sound authority, that the
grammatical forms of this episode show it to be late, possibly dating
only to the eleventh century. The manuscript in which it appears,
however, is of the earlier part of the twelfth century; no literary
modem work other than Irish can precede it in time; and if it is the
work of an eleventh-century author, it does seem strange that his name
or the name of some one of that date who could have written it has not
been recorded, as MacLiag's name has been as the traditional author of
the eleventh-century "Wars of the Gaedhill and the Gaill," for the
names of several Irish authors of that period axe well known, and the
Early Middle Irish texts of that period are markedly of inferior
quality. Compare for example the Boromaean Tribute which Stokes
considers to take high rank among texts of that period (Revue Celtique,
xiii. p. 32). One would certainly like to believe that this episode of
the "Combat at the Ford" belongs to the best literary period, with
which upon literary grounds it seems to be most closely connected.
But, whether this comparative lateness of the "Combat at the Ford" be
true or not, it, together with all the varied work contained in this
collection, with the possible exception of the short extract from the
Glenn Masain "Deirdre," is in the actual form that we have it, older
than the Norman Conquest of Ireland, older than the Norse Sagas. Its
manuscript authority is older than that of the Volsunga Saga; its
present form precedes the birth of Chretien de Troyes, the first
considerable name in French literature, and, in a form not much unlike
that in which we have it, it is probably centuries older than its
actual manuscript date. The whole thing stands at the very beginning
of the literature of Modern Europe, and compares by no means
unfavourably with that which came after, and may, in part, have been
inspired by it. Surely it deserves to be raised from its present
position as a study known only to a few specialists, and to form part
of the mental equipment of every man who is for its own sake interested
in and a lover of literature.
INTRODUCTION IN VERSE
'Tis hard an audience now to win
For lore that Ireland's tales can teach;
And faintly, 'mid the modern din,
Is heard the old heroic speech.
For long the tales in silence slept;
The ancient tomes by few were read;
E'en those who still its knowledge kept
Have thought the living music dead.
And some, to save the lore from death,
With modern arts each tale would deck,
Inflate its rhymes with magic breath,
As if to buoy a sinking wreck.
They graft new morbid magic dreams
On tales where beating life is felt:
In each romance find mystic gleams,
And traces of the "moody Celt."
Yet, though with awe the grassy mound
That fairies haunt, is marked to-day;
And though in ancient tales are found
Dim forms of gods, long passed away;
Though later men to magic turned,
Inserting many a Druid spell;
And ill the masters' craft had learned
Who told the tales, and told them well;
No tale should need a magic dress
Or modern art, its life to give:
Each for itself, or great, or less,
Should speak, if it deserves to live.
Think not a dull, a scribal pen
Dead legends wrote, half-known, and feared:
In lettered lands to poet men
Romance, who lives to-day, appeared.
For when, in fear of warrior bands,
Had Learning fled the western world,
And, raised once more by Irish hands,
Her banner stood again unfurled;
'Twas there, where men her laws revered,
That Learning aided Art's advance;
And Ireland bore, and Ireland reared
These Eldest Children of Romance.
Her poets knew the Druid creeds;
Yet not on these their thoughts would rest:
They sang of love, of heroes' deeds,
Of kingly pomp, of cheerful jest.
Not as in Greece aspired their thought,
They joyed in battles wild and stern;
Yet pity once to men they taught
From whom a fiercer age could learn.
Their frequent theme was war: they sang
The praise of chiefs of courage high;
Yet, from their harps the accents rang
That taught to knighthood chivalry.
Their heroes praise a conquered foe,
Oppose their friends for honour's sake,
To weaker chieftains mercy show,
And strength of cruel tyrants break.
Their nobles, loving fame, rejoice
In glory, got from bards, to shine;
Yet thus ascends Cuchulain's voice:
"No skill indeed to boast is mine!"
They sang, to please a warlike age,
Of wars, and women's wild lament,
Yet oft, restraining warriors' rage,
Their harps to other themes were bent.
They loved on peaceful pomp to dwell,
Rejoiced in music's magic strains,.
All Nature's smiling face loved well,
And "glowing hues of flowery plains."
Though oft of Fairy Land they spoke,
No eerie beings dwelled therein,
'Twas filled throughout with joyous folk
Like men, though freed from death and sin.
And sure those bards were truest knights
Whose thoughts of women high were set,
Nor deemed them prizes, won in fights,
But minds like men's, and women yet.
With skilful touch they paint us each,
Etain, whose beauty's type for all;
Scathach, whose warriors skill could teach
Emer, whose words in wisdom fall;
Deirdre the seer, by love made keen;
Flidais, whose bounty armies feeds
The prudent Mugain, Conor's queen;
Crund's wife, more swift than Conor's steeds;
Finnabar, death for love who dared;
Revengeful Ferb, who died of grief
Fand, who a vanquished rival spared;
Queen Maev, who Connaught led, its chief.
Not for the creeds their lines preserve
Should Ireland's hero tales be known
Their pictured pages praise deserve
From all, not learned men alone.
Their works are here; though flawed by time,
To all the living verses speak
Of men who taught to Europe rhyme,
Who knew no masters, save the Greek.
In forms like those men loved of old,
Naught added, nothing torn away,
The ancient tales again are told,
Can none their own true magic sway?
PRONUNCIATION OF PROPER NAMES
The following list of suggested pronunciations does not claim to be
complete or to be necessarily correct in all cases. Some words like
Ferdia and Conchobar (Conor) have an established English pronunciation
that is strictly speaking wrong; some, like Murthemne are doubtful; the
suggestions given here are those adopted by the editor for such
information as is at his disposal. It seems to be unnecessary to give
all the names, as the list would be too long; this list contains those
names in the first volume as are of frequent occurrence; names that
occur less commonly, and some of those in the following list, have a
pronunciation indicated in foot-notes. The most important names are in
small capitals.
LIST OF NAMES
Aife (Ee-fa), pp. 117, 129, 1342 141, 148, an instructress of
Cuchulain, Ferdia, and others in the art of war.
Cathbad (Cah-ba), pp. 91, 92, 93, 95, a Druid.
Cualgne (Kell-ny), mentioned in the Preface, Introductions, the
"Combat" and elsewhere; a district corresponding to County Louth.
Cuchulain (Cu-hoo-lin), the hero of the "Sick-bed" and the "Combat,"
and of the Ulster Heroic cycle in general.
Deirdre (Dire-dree), the heroine of the "Exile of the Sons of Usnach."
Dubhtach (Doov-ta), pp. 48, 97, 98, 107, an Ulster hero.
Eochaid Airem (Yeo-hay Arrem), the king in the "Courtship of Etain."
Eochaid Juil (Yeo-hay Yool), pp. 63, 70, 76, 79, a fairy king killed by
Cuchulain.
Eogan mac Durthacht (Yeogan mac Door-ha), pp. 43, 48, 93, 97, 101, 107;
an Ulster hero, the slayer of the sons of Usnach.
Etain (Et-oyn), the heroine of the "Courtship of Etain."
Ferdia (Fer-dee-a), Cuchulain's opponent in the "Combat at the Ford."
The true pronunciation is probably Fer-deed.
Fuamnach (Foom-na), pp. 79 9, 10, 19, 26, a sorceress.
Laeg (Layg), son of Riangabra (Reen-gabra), the charioteer and friend
of Cuchulain, frequently mentioned in the "Sick-bed" and the "Combat at
the Ford."
Laegaire (Leary), pp. 42, 46, 67, an Ulster hero.
Leabhar na h-Uidhri (Lyow-er na hoorie), frequently mentioned, the
oldest Irish manuscript of romance. It means the "Book of the Dun
Cow," sometimes referred to as L.U.
Mac Datho (Mac Da-ho), king of Leinster in the "Boar of Mac Datho," the
word means "son of two mutes."
Murthemne (Moor-temmy), pp. 57, 59, 61, 73, 77, 78, a district in
Ulster, with which Cuchulain is connected in the "Sick-bed" (in the
"Combat" he is "Cuchulain of Cualgne").
Naisi (Nay-see), the hero of the "Exile of the Sons of Usnach."
Scathach (Ska-ha), pp. 117, 129) 131, 134, 141, 149, 151 a sorceress in
the Isle of Skye, instructress of Cuchulain in war.
Uathach (Oo-ha), pp. 117, 129, 134; 141) 149, daughter of Scathach.
Other prominent characters, in the pronunciation of whose names as
given in the text no special assistance is required, are:
Ailill mac Mata (Al-ill), king of Connaught.
Ailill Anglonnach, lover of Etain, in the "Courtship of Etain."
Conall Cernach, Conall the Victorious, second champion of Ulster after
Cuchulain.
Conor (properly spelt Conchobar and pronounced Con-ower), king of
Ulster.
Emer, wife of Cuchulain, appears often in the "Sick-bed." This name is
by some pronounced A-vair, probably from a different spelling.
Fand, the fairy princess, in love with Cuchulain, in the "Sick-bed."
Fergus, son of Rog, prominent in the "Exile of the Sons of Usnach," and
in "Combat"; step-father to King Conor, he appears in most of the
romances.
Ket (spelt Cet), son of Mata, the Connaught champion, appears in the
"Boar of Mac Datho."
Maev (spelt Medb), the great Queen of Connaught.
Mider, Etain's fairy lover, in the "Courtship of Etain."
CONTENTS
THE COURTSHIP OF ETAIN
MAC DATHO'S BOAR
THE SICK-BED OF CUCHULAIN
THE EXILE OF THE SONS OF USNACH
THE COMBAT AT THE FORD
SPECIAL NOTE ON THE COMBAT AT THE FORD
GENERAL NOTES
THE COURTSHIP OF ETAIN
INTRODUCTION
The date which tradition assigns to the events related in the tale of
the "Courtship of Etain" is about B.C. 100, two or, according to some
accounts, three generations before the king Conaire Mor, or Conary,
whose death is told in the tale called the "Destruction of Da Derga's
Hostel." This king is generally spoken of as a contemporary of the
chief personages of what is called more especially the "Heroic Age" of
Ireland; and the two versions of the "Courtship of Etain" given in this
volume at once introduce a difficulty; for the sub-kings who were
tributary to Eochaid, Etain's husband, are in both versions stated to
be Conor, Ailill mac Mata, Mesgegra, and Curoi, all of whom are
well-known figures in the tales of the Heroic Age. As Conary is
related to have ruled sixty years, and several of the characters of the
Heroic Age survived him, according to the tale that describes his
death, the appearance of the names of Conor and Ailill in a tale about
his grandfather (or according to the Egerton version his
great-grandfather) introduces an obvious discrepancy.
It appears to be quite impossible to reconcile the dates given to the
actors in the tales of the Heroic and preceding age. They seem to have
been given in the "antiquarian age" of the tenth and eleventh
centuries; not only do they differ according to different chronologers
by upwards of a hundred years, but the succession of kings in the
accounts given by the same chronologer is often impossible in view of
their mutual relationships. The real state of things appears to be
that the "Courtship of Etain," together with the story of Conary, the
lost tale of the destruction of the Fairy Hill of Nennta,[FN#5] and the
tale of the Bull-Feast and election of Lugaid Red-Stripes as king of
Ireland, forms a short cycle of romance based upon ancient legends that
had originally no connection at all with those on which the romances of
the Heroic Age were built. The whole government of the country is
essentially different in the two cycles; in the Etain cycle the idea is
that of a land practically governed by one king, the vassal kings being
of quite small importance; in the tales of the Heroic Age proper, the
picture we get is of two, if not of four, practically independent
kingdoms, the allusions to any over-king being very few, and in great
part late. But when the stories of Etain and of Conary assumed their
present forms, when the writers of our romances formed them out of the
traditions which descended to them from pro-Christian sources, both
cycles of tradition were pretty well known; and there was a natural
tendency to introduce personages from one cycle into the other,
although these personages occupy a subordinate position in the cycle to
which they do not properly belong. Even Conall Cernach, who is a
fairly prominent figure in the tale of the death of Conary, has little
importance given to him compared with the people who really belong to
the cycle, and the other warriors of the Heroic Age mentioned in the
tale are little but lay figures compared with Conary, Ingcel, and Mac
Cecht. A wish to connect the two cycles probably accounts for the
connection of Lugaid Red-Stripes with Cuchulain, the introduction of
Conor and Ailill into the story of Etain may be due to the same cause,
and there is no need to suppose that the authors of our versions felt
themselves bound by what other men had introduced into the tale of
Conary. The practice of introducing heroes from one cycle into another
was by no means uncommon, or confined to Ireland; Greek heroes' names
sometimes appear in the Irish tales; Cuchulain, in much later times,
comes into the tales of Finn; and in Greece itself, characters who
really belong to the time of the Trojan War appear in tales of the
Argonauts.
[FN#5] A short account of this is in the story of King Dathi (O'Curry
Lectures, p. 286). The tale seems to be alluded to in the quatrain on
p. 10 of this volume.
There are very few corresponding allusions to personages from the small
Etain cycle found in the great cycle of romances that belong to the
Heroic Age, but MacCecht's name appears in a fifteenth-century
manuscript which gives a version of the tale of Flidais; and I suspect
an allusion to the Etain story in a verse in the "Sick-bed of
Cuchulain" (see note, p. 184). It may be observed that the
introduction of Conor and his contemporaries into the story of Conary's
grandparents is an additional piece of evidence that our form of the
story of Etain precedes the "antiquarian age"; for at that time the
version which we have of the story of Conary must have been classical
and the connection of Conor's warriors with Conary well-known. A keen
eye was at that time kept on departures from the recognised historical
order (compare a note by Mr. Nutt in the "Voyage of Bran," vol. ii. p.
61); and the introduction of Conor into our version of the tale of
Etain must have been at an earlier date.