shall perceive that it contains a lesson greater than has been hitherto
noticed. Open the Book of Kells and look at one of the initial letters,
with its wonderful intricacy of interwoven lines, its exquisite grace of
form, and marvellous delicacy of tint. The first glance shows it to be a
beautiful work of art, and at once we recognise that it must have been
produced by men whose minds, eyes, and hands had been cultivated to the
highest degree. It is not the product of the training and refining of an
individual or of a generation, but of a series of successive individuals
in many generations. Than some of these initial letters nothing of the
kind seems to have ever been made so beautiful before, nor anything since.
Thus human skill in particular departments may ascend progressively till
it reach its zenith and then gradually decline. Mankind acquires, but
loses also; its advance in one direction may mean retreat in another. And
as works such as these are indices to the development of refinement, and
to the co-operation of certain qualities and senses in man, these also
must have their time of rise and fall.
Now the form-and-colour picture presented by one of these fine initials
is, in another department, the sound-picture presented by Gaelic verse. A
little examination shows that, besides possessing the sounds we recognise,
and those which other Europeans nations have noticed, the ancient Irish
composers noted, identified and employed other and more subtle shades of
sound. Consider this question for a moment, for it has a physiological as
well as a literary interest. We all know what the term rhyme now means in
English: the sound-echo of vowels and consonants in two or more terminal
words.[3] It has many charms, but tends to become monotonous in long
poems; hence authors sometimes abandon it completely for blank verse, or,
using it, endeavour to evade the danger of monotony by alternating the
rhyme, carrying over the sense, or varying the length of line. Now this
comes of narrowing the conditions. There is no cause, save custom and
imperfect audition, why only the last vowel and consonant should be
echoed. The ear recognises the echo of the initial letter, or of initial
consonant and vowel, in concord or alliteration. Readers of Spanish dramas
and of Irish street ballads notice also the chime of the accented vowel,
the vowel-rhyme, or _assonante_, although the consonants differ. But the
ancient Irish, in addition to these, had also other varieties, such as the
correspondence between letters of the same class. This avoided the
monotony produced by a reiteration of exactly the same letter, whilst it
repeated the sound with a harmonious variation, and maintained a delicate
airy phantom-chime which must have been delightful to the educated ear.
In connection with this question of sound-echo I have a proposition to put
forward which may well seem startling. Of all the literary possessions of
the human race, the wide world over, nothing now seems to us so constant,
so universal, so eternal as rhyme. Now the fact is that rhyme was quite
unknown to all the dialects of Europe, with one exception, for some
centuries after the Christian era. The Greeks and the Romans wrote much
poetry, but never rhymed it.[4] Their metrical system was elaborate,
satisfactory, and pleasing, but it did not recognise the concordant chime
of syllables. Again, there is no recognition of rhyme, as the term is now
understood, in any of the Gothic dialects previous to the ninth century.
Now, what are we to infer from all this? Here I state my proposition,
which is, that the human ear had not then acquired the power of
distinguishing and taking pleasure in these sound-echoes or repetitions
which we call rhymes. That these would have been adopted, could they have
been discriminated, must be inferred from their quick-extending popularity
when introduced, and their subsequent universal prevalence.
Some years ago, a German professor introduced, and Mr. Gladstone, with the
characteristic vigour of his many-sided mind, supported the theory that
primitive man was partially colour-blind, that he could not discriminate
well between differing hues. Many passages from the classic authors were
adduced in support of this hypothesis, and the argument is based largely
on the paucity or descriptive incompleteness of the colour-epithets. But,
I venture to think that both these eminent authors would have considered
their case strengthened beyond cavil had there been an entire absence of
colour-epithets. That is my case: there is an entire absence of rhyme from
the classic compositions and from the Gothic dialects, in the early ages,
and therefore we must infer that the producers were deaf to the nice
distinctions of chiming sounds. In other words, they were rhyme-deaf.
Whence, then, came this new faculty with which mankind has been endowed?
There can be no doubt that all the European races, spread as they now are
over the world, are indebted for this great gift, which has quickened,
delighted, elevated, and ennobled them for ages, to the Celts, and
demonstrably to the ancient Irish. That seems a great claim to make--so
great that when an Irishman makes it, one might suppose exaggeration; but
foreign scholarship confesses it in part, and the facts render its
acceptance imperative. In our most ancient poems, such as that assigned to
Lugad, son of Ith (who flourished long before the Christian era), where
the language is archaic, full end-rhymes (of consonants and of vowels) are
found amongst other examples of perfect correspondence.[5]
Granting that the ancient Irish possessed the gift of discerning and
composing rhymes before other European nations, as well as a highly
developed metric machinery, another question may arise. It might be
alleged that, confined apart in an island remote from the Continent,
Irish methods could in no way affect the literature of the central and
southern peoples, whilst as regards the northern, it might be urged that
the Irish had no points of contact with them except where sword met sword.
And for this contention, which, I shall prove erroneous, support may
indeed be found in some of our chroniclers and others who seem to imagine
that fighting, not thinking, is the glory of nations, and so exaggerate
the first and show a practical contempt for the last.
Before entering on that topic, let me add another observation. The earlier
development of auditory power in the ancient Irish, their keen
discrimination of subtle sound-agreements and differences, did not stand
alone. It must have been correlated with a corresponding evolution of the
faculty of articulation, and, as this process went on, language as well as
literature was consequently influenced. Other senses evidently shared in
the development. In those initial letters, already mentioned, there is
overflowing evidence of acute visual perception of colour, whilst
appreciation of grace of outline and form is proved also from the writing
of our oldest manuscripts, the finely wrought implements of metal, and the
admirable shape of some of the flint arrow-heads, fashioned before metal
was supposedly known. Mankind may lose what it has acquired (though not
necessarily the inner aptitude), and with the ancient language is passing
away some of the articulation-gains, as with our ancient civilisation have
disappeared some of the educated powers of eye, and ear, and hand.
It occurs to me that from the mechanism of a people's literature, the
composition of its metric especially, we can deduce conclusions as to the
qualities and capacities in social and governmental matters. Building up
verse may be correlated with the building up of a State, for it is an
index of constructive power. The rhythmical tramp of the hexameter of
Hellas and Rome, and the sustained strength of their great epics,
re-appear in the disciplined tread of phalanx and legion, and the
long-continued control of their rule. In the ancient Irish metric there
was less of the rhythmic tread, and probably, as a consequence, much less
sustained power exhibited, whilst there is a great capacity for detail, a
special aptitude for fine arrangements and nice distinctions. Our ancient
laws and history reveal the existence of great capacity for complex social
mechanism with a minor grasp of dominating and sustained control. The
character of our metric might have changed had the race developed a strong
central authority. In support of this speculation, I think it may be said
that in France and England the classic form, borrowed from Rome, ruled
with autocracy and disappeared with the theory of the right divine. The
Revolution revolutionised poetry as well as politics.
It was a splendid idea of the bards to conjure back Oisin from the land of
Youth, and present him and St. Patrick--types of Paganism and
Christianity--in dramatic debate. The great passionate character of Oisin,
his vivid love of battle and the chase, his generous spirit, his pathetic
regret for lost kin and comrades, with his fiery flashes of revolt,
constitute a creation in literature. No wonder that, even though amplified
and altered in the garb of another language, the great conception left its
impress on a later age. But I cite it here for a special reason, because
it may also be taken as typifying the meeting and interaction of ancient
Irish and Roman literatures. Christianity gave the Irish that cohesive
organisation which their political system lacked, and the great schools
took new vigour and vitality. Their rapid and wide-extended reputation
shows that this must have been a pre-cultured people who could thus throw
themselves so alertly into new study and so quickly conquer fame. The
island became the University of Europe, whither students came from many
foreign lands, and where they were warmly welcomed, supplied with food and
books, and all gratuitously. But never in any land had learning such an
explosive power upon a people as upon the Irish. Elsewhere it merely gave
limited impulses. Here, no sooner had scholars trained themselves in
academic studies than all the old adventurous spirit of the nation
revived, and, ignoring minor ambitions, they swarmed off, like bees from a
full hive, carrying with them the honey of knowledge and the ability to
create other centres that should be celebrated for all times.
They are known to have been the first settlers in Iceland. They penetrated
to Athens, and helped potently to revive or establish the study of Greek
in Europe. Some lines of their influences only may be noticed here, but
these are remarkable. St. Sedulius (Siadal), A.D. 430, introduced from the
Irish the terminal sound-echo or rhyme into Latin verse. This innovation
was made in hymns, and as some of these, on account of their beauty and
style, were adopted and chanted in the Church (as some till this day are
sung), their influence in educating the ear and popularising rhyme over
Christendom was incalculable. Take this example of interwoven echoes:
"A solis =o=rtus car_dine_, =a=dusque terræ limi_tem_,
=C=hristum =c=anamus princi_pem_, natum Maria vir_gine_."[6]
Sedulius also produced a work of sustained power in hexameter verse,
consisting of five books of nearly 1,800 lines, entitled Carmen Paschale,
or The Paschal Song. It was the first great Christian Epic, and opened the
way for all which came after.
Now, in this great poem, characterised by so much originality and dramatic
power, Sedulius impresses certain marked Irish peculiarities upon the
classic hexameter. Thus, in the following passage, we find not only
examples of "concord" in the alliterated letters, but also of
"correspondence" in the terminal rhymes:
"Neve quis ignoret, speciem =c=rucis esse =c=_olendam_,
Quæ Dominum =p=ortavit ovans, ratione, =p=_otenti_
=Q=uattuor inde plagas =q=uadrati colligit _orbis_.
Splendidus =a=uctoris de vertice fulget =E=_ous_,
Occiduo =s=acræ lambuntur =s=idere pl_antæ_
=A=rcton dextra tenet, medium læva =e=rigit =a=_xem_."
The influence of this remarkable epic, read as it was in all the Irish
(and all the Christian) schools on the Continent and in Britain, must have
been immense. The systematic adoption by its author of rhyme, assonant and
consonant, and of alliteration, must have moulded the forms of subsequent
literary production in all the nascent languages of Europe, north and
south, as it taught them the art of alliteration, of assonant, and of
consonant rhymes.
The influence of St. Brendan was not less vast. If the tale of his voyage
to the West, and his arrival in a land of fair birds and great rivers be
true, he discovered America a thousand years before Columbus. In any case,
this voyage to the Land of the Blessed stimulated the imagination of
generations. It has been termed a prelude to the "Divina Commedia," and,
taken with other mystical visions, which, starting from Ireland,
circulated over the Continent, it doubtless helped to direct the great
genius of Dante. In a similar manner an Irish visionary tale of St.
Patrick's Purgatory, transferred into the Continental languages, gave
origin to one of Calderon's Spanish dramas.
This voyage of Brendan was influential in another direction--in the
discovery of America. Columbus studied the narrative. Hrafn of Limerick,
the Norse voyager, thoroughly knew it, as did others of his nation, such
as Leif and his friends. But there is direct proof of its coercive power.
As you sail into Bristol, you must pass under a high hill which is known
to this day as St. Brendan's Hill.[7] There was a little chapel to St.
Brendan on its summit, because of the reverence which all seamen, whether
Norse, Saxon, or Celt, professed for the sailor-saint. Now, in 1480 two
British merchants equipped two ships to sail to the Isle of Brasylle in
the west of Ireland, but after nine weeks' vain voyaging they put into an
Irish port. The Bristol men (who were largely of Norse blood) were not
discouraged. In 1498, the Spaniard De Ayala informed his sovereign that
for seven years they had every year sent out two, three, or four light
ships in search of the Island of Brazil (_i.e._, the Irish "Hy-Breasail")
and the Seven Cities. The adventure was under the direction of Cabot, the
Genoese, who discovered the northern shore of America a year before
Columbus reached its more inviting isles. Thus, either St. Brendan's
voyage is a fact, and then he was the true First Discoverer; or it is a
fiction, and then it was the direct cause of that discovery. This were a
remarkable result of the power of the imaginative literature of the
ancient Irish. No other people on earth can claim the discovery of a
Continent as the result of a romance.
Whilst some of the early Christians deprecated the study of the pagan
classics, the Irish held large and more liberal views. This was
peculiarly true of St. Columbanus. Authoritative, inflexible, a daring
missionary, his royal mind embraced the wide domain of letters. His
eloquence is confessed. His monastic maxims are described as fit for a
brotherhood of philosophers, whilst his wit is shown in his lighter poems,
his culture in the adoption of old Greek metre, and his Irish training in
the terminal rhymes in the alliteration of many of his verses. The
following show both final rhymes and concordant initials:
"Dilexerunt =t=enebras =t=etras magis quam l_ucem_,
=I=mitari contemnunt vitæ =D=ominum =d=_ucem_:
=V=elut in somnis =r=egnent una hora læt_antur_,
Sed =æ=terna tormenta =a=dhuc =i=llius par_antur_."[8]
His national characteristics were impressed on the great School of Bobbio,
which he created, in which he died, and whence his influence long radiated
over Italy and the North.
Entering the old Cathedral of Aachen, or Aix-la-Chapelle, you will be
shown the great marble chair in which, cold as the marble, Charlemagne sat
enthroned, sceptre in hand, robed in imperial purple, and with diadem on
brow, dead. So he sate when, a century and a half later, Otho and his
riotous courtiers broke open the vault and stood sobered and appalled
before the majesty of death. On that same chair he sate, in similar
apparel, but with the light of life in his eyes, the new Augustus of a new
Empire, when two Irish wanderers were brought before him. In the streets
of the city in which he hoped to revive the glory of Athens and the
greatness of Rome, they had been heard to cry out: "Whoso wants wisdom,
let him come to us and receive it, for we have it for sale." Their terms
were not onerous--food and raiment. Their claims stood the test. One,
Albinus, was sped to Pavia in Italy; the other, Clement, had the high
honour of superseding the learned Anglo-Saxon Alcuin in the Palatine
school of the Imperial city. Here, he taught the _trivium_ and
_quadrivium_--grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, and arithmetic, music,
geometry, and astronomy--the seven arts. In his school sate Charlemagne
under the school-name of David, the members of his family each under an
academic name, and with these the members of the cortége, the Palatins or
Paladins, destined to power and feats of fame. The teaching of the Irish
professors here must have had considerable influence on the literature
(_e.g._, the _Chansons de Geste_) which afterwards took its heroes from
their scholars. Their authority was enhanced by the fact that Charlemagne
himself worked with his Irish professors at a revision of the Gospels on
the Greek and on the Syriac text.[9]
In the crash and chaos which followed soon after his death, when feudal
vassals, strong as their nominal suzerain, lived an isolated war-like life
and forgot letters, in the confusion caused by the shifting about of
nations from the east and north--partly a rebound from imperial
coercion--certain Irish names shine with especial splendour. The first is
that of Johannes Scotus Erigena. Of unquestioned learning, versed in
Greek, he was the founder of Scholastic Philosophy. This affects us still,
for in Scholasticism, as in a forge, the intellect of the Middle Ages was
fired, tempered, and made supple, keen, and trenchant. Hence, with all
its powers awakened and under alert control, it was rendered fit for the
production of the new sciences of modern times. Nor should it be forgotten
that Fearghal the Geometer had but recently died, whose daring scientific
speculations as to the Antipodes had shocked the stiff-minded Saxon
Boniface. Dicuil brought exact science to bear on a cognate subject, in
his work on the measurement of the earth--a work which has been
republished in several foreign countries, but never in his native land.
The multitudes of students who flocked to Paris to hear Erigena, contented
with couches of straw in the Rue de la Fouarre and old halls of the
University, were not the last who invaded it to hear an eloquent Irishman.
Four hundred years later, in the very beginning of the fourteenth century,
another, and perhaps a still more illustrious, representative of Irish
thought, in the person of Duns Scotus the Subtle Doctor, throned it over
the minds of men. So great was his renown that when in 1308 he came to
Cologne the city accorded him a triumphal entry, more splendid than a
king's.
Far, in every sense, from such ovations is that desolate island off the
Scotch coast, where, in the sixth century, "a grey eye turned ever in
vain" towards that Ireland "where the songs of the birds are so sweet,
where the clerks sing like birds, where the young are so gentle, the old
so wise, and the maidens so fair to wed." The exile charges his parting
pupil to bear his blessing, part to Alba, part to Ireland--"seven times
may she be blessed.... My heart is broken in my breast. If death comes to
me suddenly, it will be because of the great love I bear the Gael."
Columba is the first Irish poet of exile--of which our nation has such sad
experience since. His poetry, like his life, is instinct with the deepest
affection for his native land, whilst his work has been the most fruitful
in influence over the intellectual development of Scotland and England.
From the island of Iona, chiefly, went forth that persuasive power which
carried education over Britain. The majority of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms,
all the North of England, where English learning and literature took its
rise, were bathed in an Irish intellectual atmosphere. Caedmon began his
song in this environment, and when later, in the eight century, English
Aldhelm first wrote rhymed Latin verse, it was because he had been a pupil
of the Irishman Mailduff, the first Abbot of Malmesbury.[10]
To speak of literary relations between the Irish and the Norse may provoke
some derision. Were not these the fierce sea-kings the "Danes," whose
delight was in war, and whose avocation in peace was the plunder of
shrines? They were, however, paradoxical enough to build Christ Church,
and to richly endow it. And it is also a curious fact that, previous to
three great invasions of other countries, for which they are severely
blamed, they had been appealingly besought for help by their supposed
victims. Iarl Hacon went to oppose the aggressions of the Emperor Otho;
King Harald Sigurdson to avenge wrongs inflicted by English Harold; and
Iarl Sigurd of the Orkneys (whose mother was an Irishwoman) could not
resist the appeal of Irish beauty in distress--in the person of Queen
Brian Borumha, who was mother of the Norse king of Dublin.
There were, in fact, many and important matrimonial alliances between the
Irish and Norse princes, who often joined forces against foes. This
happened at Clontarf, where the Irish of Leinster had the alliance of the
Dublin and Orkney Norse, whilst Brian brought up the Danes of Limerick.
This battle, let me remark, is described in the literature of both
countries, and in both descriptions there are omens and spiritual beings
such as signalise the epic of Homer. So great was Norse influence over
Ireland that three of our provinces retain the Northern name-endings, and
many a headland and bay has a Norse appellation. They delighted in the
loveliness of the land. Linnæus, in latter days, fell on his knees before
the splendour of a furze-bush in blossom, and we can readily imagine how
tears came into the eyes of the Arctic rovers when they beheld the fresh
green of Ovoca or were dazzled by the crimson and gold of Benn Edair,
which they called Howth.[11] Irish music charmed them, and even now some
of our old airs awake echoes along the norland fiords.[12]
The latest and most distinguished authorities[13] declare that Irish
literature has largely influenced that of the Scandinavians. Their Heroic
Age was much later than ours, from the end of the ninth to the eleventh
centuries, when the ambition of Harold Haarfagre to imitate the imperial
methods of Charlemagne had driven the independent princes to far isles or
foreign voyages. They were in close and continuous contact in peace and
war with the Irish, "whose ancient civilisation was superior and therefore
stronger." Bergen, the old Norse capital, possessed a church dedicated to
St. Columba, and the revered relics of its patron, St. Sunniva, an Irish
maiden! As you sail into Rejkiavik, the capital of Iceland, you pass the
Westman Isles, so-called because of the Irish who had visited and dwelt
there. Now Iceland--that strange attractive island, where cold white snow
covers the hot volcanic heart--is the old home of the Sagas. It had been
first peopled by some Irish monks. Another settlement took place when
Queen Aud--widow of White Olaf, the Norse King of Dublin--went thither on
the death of her son. Norsemen and Irishmen, her kinsfolk and dependents,
accompanied her. Mr. Vigfusson, himself an Icelander, writes with a
generous fairness, characteristic of the race, as follows: