I have called this volume of verse a Celtic Psaltery because it mainly
consists of close and free translations from Irish, Scotch Gaelic, and
Welsh Poetry of a religious or serious character. The first half of the
book is concerned with Irish poems. The first group of these starts with
the dawning of Christianity out of Pagan darkness, and the
spiritualising of the Early Irish by the wisdom to be found in the
conversations between King Cormac MacArt--the Irish ancestor of our
Royal Family--and his son and successor, King Carbery. Here also will be
found those pregnant ninth-century utterances known as the "Irish
Triads."
Next follow poems attributed or relating to some of the Irish
saints--Patrick, Columba, Brigit, Moling; Lays of Monk and Hermit,
Religious Invocations, Reflections and Charms and Lamentations for the
Dead, including a remarkable early Irish poem entitled "The Mothers'
Lament at the Slaughter of the Innocents" and a powerful peasant poem,
"The Keening of Mary." The Irish section is ended by a set of songs
suggested by Irish folk-tunes.
Of the early Irish Religious Poetry here translated it may be observed
that the originals are not only remarkable for fine metrical form but
for their cheerful spirituality, their open-air freshness and their
occasional touches of kindly humour. "Irish religious poetry," it has
been well said, "ranges from single quatrains to lengthy compositions
dealing with all the varied aspects of religious life. Many of them give
us a fascinating insight into the peculiar character of the early Irish
Church, which differed in so many ways from the Christian world. We see
the hermit in his lonely cell, the monk at his devotions or at his work
of copying in the scriptorium or under the open sky; or we hear the
ascetic who, alone or with twelve chosen companions, has left one of the
great monasteries in order to live in greater solitude among the woods
or mountains, or on a lonely island. The fact that so many of these
poems are fathered upon well-known saints emphasises the friendly
attitude of the native clergy towards vernacular poetry."[A]
I have endeavoured as far as possible to preserve in my translations
both the character of these poems and their metrical form. But the
latter attempt can be only a mere approximation owing to the strict
rules of early Irish verse both as regards alliteration and vowel
consonance. Still the use of the "inlaid rhyme" and other assonantal
devices have, it is to be hoped, brought my renderings nearer in vocal
effect to the originals than the use of more familiar English verse
methods would have done.
The same metrical difficulties have met me when translating the Welsh
sacred and spiritual poems which form the second division of this
volume. But they have been more easy to grapple with--in part because I
have had more assistance in dealing with the older Cymric poems from my
lamented friend Mr. Sidney Richard John and other Welsh scholars, than I
had in the case of the early Irish lyrics--in part because the later
Welsh poems which I have rendered into English verse are generally in
free, not "strict," metres, and therefore present no great difficulty to
the translator.
The poems in the Welsh section are, roughly speaking, arranged in
chronological order. The early Welsh poets Aneurin and Llywarch Hen are
represented by two singular pieces, Llywarch Hen's curious "Tercets" and
Aneurin's "Ode to the Months." In both of these, nature poetry and
proverbial philosophy are oddly intermingled in a manner reminiscent of
the Greek Gnomic Poets. Two examples are given of the serious verse of
Dafydd ab Gwilym, a contemporary of Chaucer, who though he did not, like
Wordsworth, read nature into human life with that spiritual insight for
which he was so remarkable, yet as a poet of fancy, the vivid, delicate,
sympathetic fancy of the Celt, still remains unmatched. Amongst
Dafydd's contemporaries and successors, Iolo Goch's noble poem, "The
Labourer," very appropriate to our breadless days, Lewis Glyn Cothi's
touching elegy on his little son John, and Dr. Sion Cent's epigrammatic
"The Noble's Grave" have been treated as far as possible in the metres
of the originals, and I have gone as near as I could to the measures of
Huw Morus' "The Bard's Death-Bed Confession," Elis Win's "Counsel in
view of Death," and the Vicar Pritchard's "A Good Wife."
A word or two about these famous Welsh writers: Huw Morus (Hugh Morris)
was the leading Welsh poet of the seventeenth century and a staunch
Royalist, who during the Civil War proved himself the equal if not the
superior of Samuel Butler as a writer of anti-Republican satire. He was
also an amatory lyrist, but closed his career as the writer of some fine
religious verses, notably this "Death-Bed Confession." Elis Win (Ellis
Wynne) was not only an excellent writer of verse but one of the masters
of Welsh prose. His "Vision of the Sleeping Bard" is, indeed, one of the
most beautifully written works in the Welsh language. Though in many
respects indebted to "Quevedo's Visions," the matter of Elis Win's book
is distinctly original, and most poetically expressed, though he is none
the less able to expose and scourge the immoralities of his age.
The Vicar Pritchard, otherwise the Rev. Rhys Pritchard, was the author
of the famous "Welshmen's Candle," "Cannwyll y Cymry," written in the
free metres, first published in 1646--completed in 1672. This consisted
of a series of moral verses in the metres of the old folk-songs
(Penillion Telyn) and remained dear to the hearts of the Welsh people
for two centuries. Next may be mentioned Goronwy Owen, educated by the
poet Lewis Morris, grandfather of the author of "Songs of Two Worlds"
and "The Epic of Hades." As the Rev. Elvet Lewis writes of him: "Here at
once we meet the true artist lost in his art. His humour is as playful
as if the hand of a stern fate had never struck him on the face. His
muse can laugh and make others laugh, or it can weep and make others
weep." A specimen is given of one of his best known poems, "An Ode on
the Day of Judgment," reproducing, as far as my powers have permitted,
its final and internal rhymes and other metrical effects.
We now reach the most individual of the modern Welsh religious and
philosophical poets, Islwyn (William Thomas), who took his Bardic title
from the hill of Islwyn in his native Monmouthshire. He was greatly
influenced by the poetry of Wordsworth, but was in no sense an imitator.
Yet whilst, in the words of one of the Triads, he possessed the three
things essential to poetic genius, "an eye to see nature, a heart to
feel nature: and courage that dares follow nature"--he steadfastly
refused to regard poetry as an art and, by declining to use the
pruning-knife, allowed the finest fruits of his poetic talents to lie
buried beneath immense accumulations of weedy and inferior growth. Yet
what his powers were may not be ill judged of, even in translation, by
the passage from his blank verse poem, "The Storm," entitled "Behind the
Veil," to be found on p. 94.
Pantycelyn (the Rev. William Williams) was a co-worker with Howel Harris
and Daniel Rowlands in the Methodist revival. Professor W.J. Gruffyd
writes of him: "It is not enough to say he was a hymnologist--he was
much more. He is the National Poet of Wales. He had certainly the
loftiest imagination of all the poets of five centuries, and his
influence on the Welsh people can be gauged by the fact that a good deal
of his idiom or dialect has fixed itself indelibly in modern literary
Welsh." The Hymn, "Marchog Jesu!" which represents him was translated by
me at the request of the Committee responsible for the Institution
Ceremony of the Prince of Wales at Carnarvon Castle.
Of the more modern Welsh poets represented in this volume let it be said
that Ceiriog (John Hughes), so called from his birth in the Ceiriog
Valley, is the Burns of Welsh Poetry. Against the spirit of gloom that
the Welsh Revival cast over the first half of the nineteenth century he
threw himself in sharp revolt. But while the joy of life wells up and
overflows in his song he was also, like all Welshmen, serious-minded,
as the specimens given in my translation from his works go to prove.
According to Professor Lewis Jones, no poem in the strict metre is more
read than Eben Farrd's "Dinistur Jerusalem" ("The Destruction of
Jerusalem"), translated into kindred verse in this volume, unless indeed
its popularity is rivalled by Hiraethog's ode on "Heddwch," ("Peace").
Two extracts from the former poem are dealt with, and Hiraethog is
represented by a beautiful fancy, "Love Divine," taken from his
"Emanuel."
Finally, three living poets are represented in the Welsh section--Elvet
Lewis by his stirring and touching "High Tide"; Eifion Wyn, upon whom
the mantle of Ceiriog has fallen, by two exquisitely simple and pathetic
poems, "Ora pro Nobis" and "A Flower-Sunday Lullaby"; and William John
Gruffydd, the bright hope of "Y Beirdd Newydd" ("The New Poets"), by his
poignant ballad of "The Old Bachelor of Ty'n y Mynydd."
There is no need for me to dwell upon the rest of the verse in this
volume beyond stating that "The Prodigal's Return" is a free translation
from a poem on that theme by an anonymous Scotch Gaelic Bard to be found
in Sinton's "The Poetry of Badenoch"; that "Let there be joy!" is
rendered from a Gaelic poem in Alexander Carmichael's "Carmina
Gadelica," and that, finally, "Wild Wine of Nature" is a pretty close
English version of a poem hardly to have been expected from that far
from teetotal Scotch Gaelic Bard, Duncan Ban McIntyre.