FOUR CENTURIES OF DECAY
For four centuries after the Anglo-Norman, or more properly the
Cambro-Norman invasion, the literature of Ireland seems to have
been chiefly confined to the schools of the bards, and the bards
themselves seem to have continued on the rather cut-and-dry lines
of tribal genealogy, religious meditations, personal eulogium, clan
history, and elegies for the dead. There reigns during this period a
lack of imagination and of initiative in literature; no new ground is
broken, no fresh paths entered on, no new saga-stuff unearthed, no
new metres discovered. There is great technical skill exhibited, but
little robust originality; great cleverness of execution, but little
boldness of conception. How closely the bards ran in the groove of
their predecessors is evident from the number of poems of doubtful
authorship, ascribed by some authorities to bards of the pre-Norman
or even Danish period, and by others to poets of the thirteenth,
fourteenth, or even fifteenth centuries, the work of the later period
being so very often both in style and language scarcely distinguishable
from the earlier which it imitates.
Another characteristic of these four centuries is the number of
hereditary bards of the same name and family which we find generation
after generation, each one imitating his predecessor, and producing
his inauguration odes, his eulogies, and his elegies, for each
succeeding race of chiefs and patrons.
This period is the post-epic, post-saga period. Probably not one of
the Red Branch stories was even materially altered during it. Stories
of the Fenian cycle, however, continued to be propagated and improved
upon, and no doubt many new ones were invented. But there is little or
no trace of the composition of fresh miscellaneous saga, and the only
poetry that seems to have flourished beside the classic metres of the
bards is the so-called "Ossianic," a good deal of which may, perhaps,
have assumed something of its present form during this period.
Some attempt there was at the careful keeping of annals, but scarcely
any at writing regular history, though the fifteenth century produced
McCraith's "Exploits of Torlough," to be noticed further on. We shall
now briefly glance at this period age by age.
The thirteenth century, that succeeding the coming of the Normans, is
far more barren in literature than the one which preceded them. Only
five or six poets are mentioned as belonging to it, and their surviving
poems amount to only a few hundred lines, with the exception of those
of the great religious bard Donogha Mór O'Daly, who died in 1244 "a
poet," record the "Four Masters," "who never was and never shall be
surpassed." All his poems extant are of a religious character. He was
buried in the abbey of Boyle, in the county of Roscommon, in which
county I have heard, up to a few years ago, verses ascribed to him
repeated by more than one old peasant. It is usually believed that
he was a cleric and abbot of the beautiful monastery of Boyle, but
there is no evidence for this, and he may have been in fact a layman.
Thirty-one poems of his, containing in all some four thousand two
hundred lines, have been preserved, and for their great smoothness
have earned for their author the not very happy title of the Ovid of
Ireland. Here is a specimen of one of his shorter pieces, written on
his unexpectedly finding himself unable to shed a tear after his
arriving at Loch Derg on a pilgrimage:
"Alas, for my journey to Loch Derg, O King of the churches and the
bells; 'I have come' to weep thy bruises and thy wound, and yet from
my eye there cometh not a tear.[1]
"With an eye that moistens not its pupil, after doing every evil, no
matter how great, with a heart that seeketh only (its own) peace,
alas! O king, what shall I do?
"Without sorrowfulness of heart, without softening, without
contrition, or weeping for my faults,--Patrick head of the clergy, he
never thought that he could gain God in this way.
"The one son of Calphurn, since we are speaking of him, 'alas! O
Virgin, sad my state!' he was never seen whilst alive without the
trace of tears in his eye.
"In (this) hard, narrow stone-walled (cell), after all the evil I have
done, all the pride I have felt. Alas! my pity! that I find no tear,
and I buried alive in the grave.
"O one-Son, by whom all were created, and who didst not shun the death
of the three thorns, with a heart than which stone is not more hard,
'tis pity my journey to Loch Derg."
Here is another specimen, a good deal of which I once heard from a poor
beggarman in the County Mayo, but it is also preserved in numerous
manuscripts:
"My son, remember what I _say_,
That on the _Day_ of Judgment's shock,
When men go stumbling down the _Mount_,
The sheep may _count_ thee of their flock.[2]
And narrow though thou find the path
To Heaven's high rath, and hard to gain,
I warn thee shun yon broad white road
That leads to the abode of pain.
For us is many a snare designed,
To fill our mind with doubts and fears.
Far from the land where lurks no sin,
We dwell within our Vale of Tears.
Not on the world thy love bestow,
Passing as flowers that blow and die;
Follow not thou the specious track
That turns the back on God most high.
But oh! let faith, let hope, let love,
Soar far above this cold world's way,
Patience, humility, and awe--
Make them thy law from day to day.
And love thy neighbour as thyself,
(Not for his pelf thy love should be),
But a greater love than every love
Give God above who loveth thee.
* * * * *
The seven shafts wherewith the Unjust
Shoots hard to thrust us from our home,
Canst thou avoid their fiery path,
Dread not the wrath that is to come.
Shun sloth, shun greed, shun sensual fires,
(Eager desires of men enslaved)
Anger and pride and hatred shun,
Till heaven be won, till man be saved.
To Him, our King, to Mary's son
Who did not shun the evil death,
Since He our hope is, He alone,
Commit thy body, soul, and breath.
Since Hell each man pursues each day,
Cleric and lay, till life be done,
Be not deceived as others may,
Remember what I say, my son."[3]
The fourteenth century possesses exactly the same characteristics as
the thirteenth, only the poets are more numerous. O'Reilly mentions
over a score of them whose verses amount to nearly seven thousand
lines. Of these the best known is probably John Mór O'Dúgan of whom
about 2,600 lines survive--important rather for the information they
convey than for their poetry. His greatest, or at least his most
valuable piece, is about the tribes and territories of the various
districts in Meath, Ulster, and Connacht, on the arrival of the
Normans, and the names of the chiefs who ruled them.[4] In this poem
he devotes 152 lines to Meath, 354 to Ulster, 328 to Connacht, and
only 56 to Leinster, death having apparently carried him off (in the
year 1372) before he had finished his researches into the tribes
and territories of that district. But luckily for us his younger
contemporary--Gilla-na-naomh O'Huidhrin [Heerin]--took it up and
completed it,[5] so that the two poems, usually copied together, form
a single piece of 1,660 lines in _deibhidh_ [d'yĕvee] metre, which has
thrown more light upon names and territories than perhaps any other
of the same extent. It is, despite the difficult and recondite verse,
a work mainly of research and not of poetry. The same may be said of
nearly all O'Dugan's poems, another of which called the "Forus Focal,"
is really a vocabulary in verse of obsolete words, which though of
similar orthography have different or even contrary meanings. It was
in this century the great miscellaneous collection called the Book of
Ballymote was compiled.
The fifteenth century differs very little in character from the
preceding one. We find about the same number of poets with about the
same amount of verses--between six and seven thousand lines, according
to O'Reilly--still surviving, or as O'Reilly underrates the number,
probably about ten thousand lines. The poets were now beginning to feel
the rude weight of the prosaic Saxon, and Fergal O'Daly chief poet of
Corcamroe, Maurice O'Daly a poet of Breffhy, Dermot O'Daly of Meath,
Hugh Óg Mac Curtin, and Dubhthach [Duffach] son of Eochaidh [Yohee]
"the learned," with several more, are mentioned as having been cruelly
plundered and oppressed by Lord Furnival and the English. It was in
this century that those most valuable annals usually called the Annals
of Ulster were compiled from ancient books now lost, by Cathal Maguire
who was born in 1438. The great collection called the Book of Lecan was
copied at the beginning of this century, and another most important
work the "Caithréim, or warlike exploits of Turlough O'Brien," was
written about the year 1459 by John Mac Craith, chief historian of
North Munster. This though composed in a far more exaggerated and
inflated style than even the "War of the Gael with the Gaill," which
it resembles, yet gives the most accurate account we have of the
struggles of the Irish against the English in Munster from the landing
of Henry II. till the death of Lord de Clare in 1318. It was at the
very beginning of this century the hagiographical collection called the
Leabhar Breac was made.
The sixteenth century cannot properly be said to mark a transition
period in Irish literature, as it does in the literature of so many
other European countries. It has, indeed, left far more numerous
documents behind it than the preceding one, but this is mainly due to
the fact that less time has elapsed during which they could be lost.
Their style and general contents differ little, until the very close
of the century, from those of their predecessors. O'Reilly chronicles
the names of about forty poets whose surviving pieces amount to over
ten thousand lines. But so many MSS. which were in O'Reilly's time
in private hands, or which, like the Stowe MSS., were unapproachable
by students, have since been deposited in public libraries or become
otherwise accessible, that it would, I think, be safe to add at least
half as much again to O'Reilly's computation. I have even in my own
possession poems by nearly a dozen writers belonging to the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries whose names are not mentioned at all by
O'Reilly; and the O'Conor Don has shown me a manuscript copied at
Ostend, in Belgium, in 1631, for one Captain Alexander Mac Donnell,
from which O'Curry transcribed a thousand pages of poems "of which with
a very few exceptions," he writes, "no copies are known to me elsewhere
in Ireland." A considerable number of these poems, nearly all of them
unknown to O'Reilly, were composed in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and
sixteenth centuries, so that this one manuscript alone would largely
swell O'Reilly's estimate for this period.
Enormous quantities of books however, belonging to the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, have been lost, and are still being lost
every day. It is an accident that Friar O'Gara's[6] and the O'Conor
Don's collection--both compiled abroad--have escaped. If, during the
middle of the sixteenth century, a collector of poetry had gone round
transcribing the classical poems of that age, he would have found large
collections preserved in the houses of almost every scion of the old
Gaelic nobility, with scarcely an exception. On the break-up of the
houses of the Irish chiefs the archives of their families and their
manuscript libraries were lost or carried abroad. An excellent example
of what may be called tribal poetry, such as every great Gaelic house
possessed, is contained in a manuscript in Trinity College, which a
Fellow of the last century, called O'Sullivan, luckily got transcribed
for himself, and which is now in the college library.[7] The collection
thus made, from about 1570 to 1615, goes under the title of the "Book
of the O'Byrnes," and contains sixty or seventy poems made by their
own family bards and by several of the leading bards of Ireland, for
the various members of the O'Byrnes of Ranelagh near Dublin, and of
the O'Byrnes of Wicklow, who for three generations maintained their
struggle with the English, only succumbing in the beginning of the
seventeenth century.
Other family records of this nature, which were once possessed in every
county by the bardic families and by the chiefs, have perished by the
score. A glance at a few typical poems belonging to the O'Byrnes will
give a good idea of the functions of the sixteenth-century bards, and
the nature of their poems. They are composed on all kinds of subjects
connected with the wars, genealogy, and history of the tribe and its
chiefs. Many are eulogiums, some warnings, some political poems, some
elegies. Here are two or three specimens; the first a poem of fifty-six
lines, by Angus O'Daly, on the head of one of the chiefs of the clan
spiked on the battlements of Dublin.
"O body which I see without a head,
It is the sight of thee which has withered up my strength,
Divided and impaled in Ath-cliath [Dublin],
The learned of Banba [Ireland] will feel its loss.[8]
Who will relieve the wants of the poor?
Who will bestow cattle on the learned?
O body, since thou art without a head
It is not life which we care to choose after thee."
Another poem, by John O'Hĭginn asks who[9] will buy nine verses
from him. By his hand he swears, though high the fame of the men of
Leinster, they are all cowed now. The O'Tooles of the once heavy gifts
have consented to the peace of the English, and till they revoke it
they will not give one white groat for twenty-marks-worth of a poem.
The Cavanaghs are as bad, the Fitzgeralds and the O'Mores, too, are
afraid of the foreigners to buy a poem. One man alone is not obedient
to foreign English custom, Aodh [O'Byrne] son of John, the true
sweetheart of the bardic schools of the race of the plain of Conn.
Except him, the grandson of Redmond alone, the poet sees not one who
will buy his nine stanzas--or if such exist, he knows them not.[10]
Another poem of 180 lines by Eochaidh [Yohee] O'Hussey is on the
extreme winsomeness and beauty of a certain lady of the O'Byrnes, Rose
by name, probably the famous wife of Fiach O'Byrne, who, poor thing,
was afterwards captured by the English in 1595 and by them burned alive
in the yard of Dublin Castle. The English statesmen who record this
piece of work in the State Papers, did not in the least understand the
civilisation or customs of Lady Rose, her bards and her clan, and it
is only at the present day that it is possible for the scholar through
the medium of the State Papers on one side and native Irish documents
on the other, to put himself _en rapport_ with both parties; it is
a process both absorbing and painful. "What is troubling the ladies
of the Gael?" asks the poet, "is it want of gold or lack of jewels,
wherefore is the dear troop downcast? Why are the queens of princely
race disquieted? Why rise they up heavy at heart? Why lie they down
discomfited? Why are their spirits troubled? It is because one lady
so excels them all, she is the troubler of the hosts of the men of
Inisfail, the one cause of the sorrow of our ladies. Let me," adds the
poet gallantly, "have the singing of her."[11]
Another is by Maoilsheachlainn [Malachy in English] O'Coffey, on seeing
one of the O'Byrnes' strongholds, probably Ballinacor, occupied by a
stranger.[12] Another by one of the O'Mulconrys warns Fiach O'Byrne,
that whether he likes to hear it or not, the axe of the English is
raised above his head to strike him down.[13] The poet points to the
Leinster septs who had been exterminated or escaped destruction by
making submission, and how is Fiach to escape, and specially how to
escape treachery?
Another poem composed by Donough Mac Eochaidh, or Keogh, with high
political intent, is intended to bring about a closer feeling of
friendship between the sons of Fiach O'Byrne and John son of Redmond
O'Byrne, who had been alienated, designedly, as he intimates, by a
lying story propagated by a foreigner, whereas the O'Byrnes of Ranelagh
ever sought to avoid giving offence, and no evil story calculated to
increase enmity should be believed about one by the other.[14]
Another poet of the Mac Eochaidhs, the household bards of the O'Byrnes,
sings the generosity of Torlagh, son of Fiacha, "their fame is the
wealth of the tribe of Ranelagh, that is the saying of every one who
knows them,[15] the bestowal of their jewels, that is the treasure of
the tribe of Ranelagh, of the numerous incursions." "Small is their
desire to amass treasures, nobler is the thing for which they conceive
a wish; every single man of the blood of Fiach O'Bryne has taken upon
himself to distribute his riches for Fiach!"[16]
Another poem is a splendid war-song by Angus O'Daly on a victory
of the O'Byrnes over the English. "I rejoice that not one was left
of the remnant of the slaughter but the captive who is in hand in
bondage:"[17] "the blaze of the burning country makes day out of
midnight for them."
A remarkable poet of the end of this century was another Angus O'Daly,
the Red Bard, or Angus of the Satires, as he was called. He seems to
have been employed by the English statesmen, Lord Mountjoy and Sir
George Carew, for the deliberate purpose of satirising all the Gaelic
families in the kingdom, and those Anglo-Normans who sympathised with
them. Angus travelled the island up and down on this sinister mission.
It was indeed an evil time. The awful massacres of Rathlin and Clanaboy
in Ulster, the hideous treachery of Mullaghmast in Leinster, the
revolting deeds of Bingham in the west, and the unspeakable horrors
that followed on the Geraldines rebellion in the south, had reduced
the Irish nobles to a condition of the direst poverty. This poverty
and the inhospitality which he connected with it--points on which
the Irish were particularly sore--were the mark at which Angus aimed
his arrows. He usually polished off each house or clan in a single
rann or quatrain. His Irish rhymes are peculiarly happy. Here are
some specimens of his satire. He says of Thomas Fitzgerald, Knight of
Glynn, that he looked so grudgingly at him as he ate his supper that
the piece half-chewed stuck in his throat at the very sight of the
other's eyes. Of Limerick he says the only thing he was thankful for
was the bad roads which would prevent him from ever seeing it again. Of
the Fitzmaurices he says that he will neither praise them nor satirise
them, for they are just poor gentlemen--admirable satire, and it cannot
be doubted that they keenly felt the point of it! Often, however, Angus
is only abusive--thus of Maguire of Enniskillen he says that "he is a
badger for roughness and greyness, an ape for stature and ugliness, a
lobster for the sharpness of his two eyes, a fox for the foulness of
his breath,"[18] a verse in which the happiness of the Irish rhyming
carries off the poverty of the sentiment. He harps on the blindness of
the Mac Ternans,[19] the misanthropy of the Mac Gillycuddy, the inborn
evil of the Fitzgibbons,[20] the poverty of the O'Callaghans, the bad
wines of the O'Sullivans, the decrepitude of the O'Reillys, and so on.
The Red Bard went on with his satires on the men of the four provinces,
with none to say him nay, until he came to Tipperary, where he was
misguided enough to satirise the chief of the O'Meaghers, whose
servant, stung out of all control, forgot that the person of a bard was
sacred, and instantly thrust a knife into his throat, thus putting an
end to him and his satires. Angus, however, even as he died, uttered
one rann in which, for the good of his soul, he revoked all his former
verses: "All the false judgments I have passed upon the men of Munster
I recant them; the meagre servant of the grey Meagher has passed as
much of a false judgment upon me."
So greatly had the literary production of Ireland passed into the hands
of the bards during the period we are now considering, that it will be
well to study the evolution of the bardic body down to the close of the
sixteenth century, in a separate chapter.
[1]
"Truagh mo thuras ar Loch Dearg
A righ na gceall a's na gclog,
Do chaoineadh do chneadh 's do chréacht
'S nach dtig déar thar mo rosg."
_See_ "Gaelic Journal," vol. iv. p. 190.
[2]
"Ná tréig mo theagasg a mhic
Cidh baogh'lach lá an chirt do chách
Ag sgaoileadh dhóib ó an tsliabh
Rachaidh tu le Dia na ngrás."
_See_ my "Religious Songs of Connacht," p. 28.
[3] Literally: "Do not forsake my teaching, my son, and although
dangerous be the Day of Right for all, on their scattering from the
Mount, thou shalt go with God of the graces.
"The road to heaven of the saints though to thee it seem narrow,
slender, hard, yet shun the road of the house of the pains, many a one
has journeyed to it away from us.
"Against us was treachery designed, to bring us down from the artificer
of the elements, in banishment from the land of the living in a Valley
of Tears art thou.
"To the world give not love, is it not transient the blossom of the
branches? do not follow the track of those who are journeying to hell
from God of the Saints.
"Hope, faith, and love, let thee have in God forever, humility, and
patience without anger, truth without deception in thy walk," etc.
[4] It begins--
"Triallam timchioll na Fódhla,
Gluaisid fir ar furfhógra,
As na fóidibh a bhfuileam
Na Cóigeadha cuartuigheam."
The whole has been most ably edited by Dr. O'Donovan for the Irish
Archæological Society.
[5] His poem in continuation begins--
"Tuille feasa ar Erinn óigh,
Ni maith seanchaidh nach seanóir,
Seanchas cóir uaim don feadhain
Na slóigh ó'n Boinn báinealaigh."
"More knowledge on virgin Ireland, not good is an historian unless he
be an elder, proper history from me to the tribe, the hosts from Boyne
of the white cattle."
[6] Made in the Low Countries by an exiled friar of the County Galway,
a great collection of poetry in the classical metres. See "Transactions
of the Gaelic Society," 1808, p. 29.
[7] H. 1. 14, in Trinity College. It is copied unfortunately by one
of the most incompetent of scribes, and is full of mistakes of all
kinds. The poets who wrote for the O'Byrnes were Rory Mac Craith,
Owen O'Coffey, Mahon O'Higinn, Donal Mac Keogh, Niall O'Rooney, Angus
O'Daly, John O'Higinn, Eochaidh O'Hussey, Maoileachlainn O'Coffey,
T. O'Mulconry, Donogha Mac Keogh, and others. A copy of the "Book of
the O'Byrnes" was in possession of the O'Byrnes of Cabinteely, near
Dublin, in the beginning of the century. Hardiman and O'Reilly each
had a copy, but as I have seen the scribe employed by the Royal Irish
Academy engaged for days in writing out of the wretched copy in Trinity
College, it is to be presumed that the Council of that body has assured
itself that these copies have since perished.
[8]
"A cholann do chím gun ceann
Sibh d' fhaicsin, do shearg mo bhrigh,
Rannta ar sparra a n-Athcliath,
D'éigsi Bhanba bhias a dhith."
(H. 1. 14, T. C., D., fol. 84 a.)
[9]
"Cia cheannchas ádhmad naoi rann,
Dá bhfághadh connra ar súd?
Ar Laighnibh cidh 'r b'ard a dteisd
Do m' aithne is cruaidh an cheisd úd."
[10]
"Acht ua Réamainn thuilleas bládh,
Ni h-aithne dham shoir no shiar,
Neach le ceannach [mo] naoi rann,
Ma tá ann, ni fheadar c' iad."
[11]
"Creud ag buaidhreadh ban ngaoidheal
An dith óir no iol-mhaoineadh,
Cuis aith-mheillte an diorma díl,
Ríoghna flaith-fréimhe fuinnidh."
(H. 1. 14, T. C., D., fol. 126 a.)
[12]
"Ni bhfuair mé 'na n-áitibh ann,
Acht lucht gan aithne orom [orm],
Mo chreach geur, mo chrádh croidhe,
An sgeul fá ttáim troithlidhe."
[13]
"Fuath gach fir fuighioll a thuaidhe,
Tuig a Fhiacha, duit is dual,
Má tá nach binn libh mo labhra,
Os cionn do chinn do thárla an tuath."
O'Donovan, in his manuscript catalogue, quotes the last two lines of
the verse in note 12 above, and translates them, "My bitter woe my
heart's oppression is the news for which I grieve." Afterwards he
erased the words "for which I grieve" and wrote instead "it wastes my
vigour," thus showing that he did not understand the original, for one
translation is as bad as the other. The difficult word _troithlidhe_
which perplexed him, is a common one in Roscommon, I have frequently
heard it in the sense of "chilly." The translation is, "the news which
chills me."
[14]
"Fréamh Raghnaill ni rabhadar
Acht ag seachnadh inbhéime
Sgeul meuduighthe faltanais
Doibh nior chreidte ar a chéile."
[15]
"A gelu is ionmhus d'fhuil Raghnaill
Rádh gach eólaigh is é sin."
[16]
"Beag a ndúil a ndéanamh ionmhais
Uaisle an nidh dá dtabhraid toil,
Do ghabh gach aon-fhear d'fhuil Fhiacha
Sgaoileadh a chruidh d'Fiacha, air."
[17]
"Thug gárda láidir mhic Aodha mhic Sheáin
Dochur ar barda (?) a n-aoil-chaisleán,
'S báidh liom nár fágadh neach d'fhuighioll an áir
Acht an bráighe atá fá dhaoirse a[r] láimh."
The second line of this is quite incomprehensible, and runs in the MS.
_do chur ar ar barda_.
[18]
"Broc ar ghairbhe 's ar ghlaise,
Apa ar mhéad 's ar mhio-mhaise,
Gliomach ar ghéire a dhá shúil,
Sionnach ar bhréine, an Bárún."
[19]
"Caoch an inghean, caoch an mháthair,
Caoch an t-athair, caoch an mac,
Caoch an capall bhíos fá 'n tsráthair,
Leath-chaoch an cú, caoch an cat."
[20]
"Ni fhuil fearg nach dtéid ar gcúl
Acht fearg Chriost le cloinn Ghiobun
Beag an t-iongnadh a mbeith mar tá
Ag fás i n-olc gach aon lá."
This rann was often quoted in after days about Fitzgibbon, Lord Clare,
who passed the Union.