dwelt among a Keltic population and undergone an influence which an old
and strongly marked civilisation invariably exercises among those brought
under it--an attraction which in this particular case was of so potent a
kind that centuries later it metamorphosed the Norman knights of the
foremost European kingdom with startling rapidity into Irish chieftains."
"Moreover," he adds, "we find among the emigrants of all ranks men and
women of pure Irish and Scottish blood, as also as many sprung from mixed
marriages, and traces of this crossing survive in the Irish names borne by
some of the foremost characters of the Heroic Age of Iceland, especially
the poets, of whom it is also recorded that they were dark men." He
considers that this close intercourse with the Celts had to do with
heightening and colouring the strong but somewhat prosaic Teuton
imagination into that finer and more artistic spirit manifested in the
Icelandic Saga. The classic land of the Saga was in West Iceland, and
there also the proportion of Irish blood was greatest. On the Norsemen who
still remain there the Irish influence was yet more effective and
powerful. Mr. Vigfusson makes an observation, which is a touching and keen
reproach to those on whom it devolves to publish the manuscript materials
of ancient Irish literature. He writes: "Only when it is possible to judge
fairly of the remains of the Keltic literature of the ninth, tenth, and
eleventh centuries, can any definite conception of the influence it
exerted on Icelandic, Norse, and English literature be properly
estimated."[14]
With the great Sagas, the fame of which has spread abroad as their strong
dramatic character deserves, Northern literature possesses the no less
celebrated Eddas. These Eddic poems "discover an ideal of beauty," writes
Mr. York Powell, "an aerial unearthly fairy world, and a love of nature
which we do not find in the Saga." They also reveal that those who
composed them were familiar with more southern scenes and manners; and the
poems are shown to be the mental offspring of the men "who won Waterford
and Limerick and kinged it in York and East England." "It is well to
remark," he adds, "that among the first poets we have any knowledge of,
the majority are of mixed blood with an Irish ancestress not far back in
the family tree.... Their physical characteristics, dark hair and black
eyes, like Sighvat and Kormack,[15] their reckless passion and wonderful
fluency are also non-Teutonic and speak of their alien descent." In
Bragi's Eddic poem there is a very manifest introduction of a
characteristic Irish rhyme-method.
Thus we have it on unquestionable authority that the noble Norse
literature, which occupies a position of the greatest importance,
dominating as it does the Teutonic world, was itself the offspring, in a
certain sense, of our ancient Irish literature. Irish literary training
and talent presided over and took part in its composition, gave dramatic
vividness to its narrative--grace, method, and myths to its poetry.
With this knowledge in mind you will look with better insight into the
story of the Norsemen in Ireland, and see them, no longer as a cloud of
barbarians, but as brave adventurous knights whose voyages fringed our
seas with a murmur of song, and whose cities, in quiet times, were the
favourite resort of Irishmen skilled in letters and all the arts of peace
and war. "Why should we think of faring home?" sang King Magnus. "My heart
is in Dublin. I shall not return in autumn to the ladies of Nidaros. Youth
makes me love the Irish girl better than myself."
Considering how often and how constantly the prejudice of the ignorant
prevents a good understanding between neighbours, whether these be
individuals or nations, I have sometimes thought of writing a book to be
entitled: "The Good Deeds of our Enemies." Too often do we find writers
stopping at nothing to cover the foe with obloquy. By this they put out
their own eyes and blind our moral sight. Proceeding on a different
principle, I should show enemies, not in their conflicts, but in their
concessions, and the picture would give a truer idea of mankind, for it is
surprising how many kind offices were mutually interchanged between
foemen--even in this very country--who are always represented as savage,
ruthless, and exterminating.
Ireland has been able to act upon the literature of the Continent and of
Britain in three ways: first, directly, next by means of its pupils on
the Continent, and finally by means of the Norse literature. The latter
affected both Britain and Germany, so that the Irish spirit has had a
double influence, be it much or little, upon both. Professor Morley,
indeed, admits that "the story of our literature begins with the Gael";
and pointing out the intermixture of blood, he adds: "But for early
frequent and various contact with the race which in its half barbarous
days invented Oisin's dialogues with St. Patrick, and that quickened
afterwards the Northmen's blood in France and Germany, England would not
have produced a Shakespeare."
Certain it is, I think, that but for the influence of Irish literature,
Shakespeare would not have produced a "Midsummer Night's Dream," "The
Tempest," and "Macbeth." The aerial beings which characterise the first
two plays are like those delightful melodies which Boiëldieu in "La Dame
Blanche," and Flotow in "Marthe" made popular over the Continent, and
which the Irish ear, suddenly attentive, recognises as Irish in spite of
their foreign surroundings.[16]
Teutonic poetry, in certain particulars, appears to have germinated from
the seed which fell from the ripe Irish harvest. The alliteration found in
"Beowulf," the first Anglo-Saxon epic, A.D. 750 (three centuries after
Sedulius), seems a rather crude imitation. Rhyme was introduced into High
German a century later, and this was achieved by Otfried, who had acquired
the gift in that great monastry of St. Gall to which the illustrious
Irishman bequeathed his name, his spirit, and his scholarship, which long
guided his many disciples.
The Nibelungen Lied and the Lay of Gudrun have been called the Iliad and
the Odyssey of Germany. Both, however, have Norse originals. Now, with
respect to the latter it is a remarkable but surely not a surprising
thing, after all we know, that the opening scenes of the lay should be
placed in Ireland. The fierce King of Ireland, Hagen (? Hacon), had a fair
daughter Hilda, and to woo her for their King, Hettel of Denmark, came a
number of daring champions, disguised as merchants. The wooing with music,
which captures the Irish maiden's heart, the flight, pursuit, marriage and
reconcilement, are told with animation. Gudrun, the daughter of Hettel's
Irish wife, is the second heroine of the tale. In the Arthurian Romance of
Tristan and Isolde (as in some others) there are Irish scenes and Irish
characters. Isolde herself has bequeathed Dublin her name in Isolde's
Tower and Chapel-isod. I need but remind you that the Arthurian Romances
gave origin to Tennyson's "Idylls of the King."
The kindred peoples of France and of Spain were naturally not less
influenced than the Teutonic races. The Romans did not give them rhyme;
their own literature had perished; consequently they borrowed from the
islands to which, in Cæsar's time, the continental Druids were sent for
training. Assonant rhyme, found in some Anglo-Norman poems, was common in
the Romance of Oc and all related dialects. "It is clearly the Irish
_Comharda_" (correspondence), writes an English authority, Mr. Guest,
"though not submitted in the Romance dialects to the nice rules which
regulate its assonances in the Gaelic."
Irish literature has received gifts in return: in the old Anglo-Saxon
Mystery Play, found in the Record Office, in the Anglo-Norman Rhyme of
Ross, in the Song of Dermott, and in others unfortunately still
unpublished. Michael of Kildare is supposed to be our first poet in
English, and he is the pioneer-poet of satire in that language.
This postern, which he opened into what has since become the vast empire
of literature in English, gave entrance to many. Spenser came to us,
through it, and, caught by the glamour of the Gael, gave us the "Faërie
Queene," wherein he immortalises some of our scenery and pays tribute to
the ancient renown of our nation:
"Whilome when Ireland flourished in fame
Of wealth and goodness far above the rest
Of all that bear the British Islands name."
It is noteworthy that the great poem, which marked the revival of English
letters after Chaucer, was composed in Ireland. Granting that Spenser
found models in Ariosto and Tasso, yet, if he had remained in London, he
might never have risen above the standard of the Palace-poets. Shakespeare
in London was saved by the drama demanding an environment of popular life.
Probably nothing saved Spenser but his immersion in Irish nature, which
his verse so faithfully reflects. Not only are the material beauties of
our country--mountains, woods, and rivers--mirrored there, but its
spiritual world also. The very name of Una is Irish, and our Puca appears
in trimmed English as "the Pouke," whom Shakespeare again introduces as
Puck, just as our Gaelic Madb becomes "Queen Mab."
But it may be said that Spenser was ignorant of the literature of the
hostile Irish nation, and so could not be influenced by it. The case is
otherwise. When Eudoxus asks: "Have they any art in their compositions, or
bee they anything wittie in or well savoured as poems should be?" Spenser
(as Irenæus) answers: "Yes, truely, I have caused divers of them to be
translated unto me, that I might understand them, and surely they savoured
of sweet wit and good invention, but skilled not of the goodly ornaments
of poetry" (rather these were lost in a prose translation); "they were
sprinkled with some pretty flowers of their naturall device, which gave
good grace and comelinesse unto them."
It is a strange thing to say that Edmund Spenser, who so deprecates their
"rebellious" love of liberty, might well have envied the position and
influence of the Irish poets. At the Queen's Court in England he had
learned "what hell it is in suing long to bide," to "eat the heart in
despair," and all the miseries of dilatory patronage:
"To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undone."
In Ireland he saw a different state of things. The poets might almost be
described as the patrons, for theirs it was to distribute praise or
dispraise in poems, "the which," says Spenser, "are held in so high regard
and estimation amongst them that none dare displease them, for feare to
runne into reproach through their offence, and be made infamous in the
mouths of all men."
Their compositions were sung at all feasts and meetings by other persons,
and these also, to his surprise, "receive great rewards and reputation."
Certain it is, though strange, that Edmund Spenser, had he been least bard
in the pettiest principality of Ireland, instead of being the first poet
of the monarch of Great Britain, would not have died of hunger. Neglected
and starving in Westminster, may he not have regretted his political
efforts to destroy the one national organism which above all others had
ever generously encouraged the representatives of literature?[17]
It is a study full of interest to watch the development of the culture of
the Anglo-Irish Pale, and the continuance of that of the Irish nation. In
Latin, their men of learning had long a common language, but the
vernacular was not neglected. In 1600 the literary organisation was still
strong, and its strength was shown in the great Bardic Contention.
Thirty-two years later an assemblage of historians, antiquaries, and monks
was held to collect and collate materials for the great Annals of the
Kingdom. Four years the Four Masters laboured at the work, safe by the far
shore of Donegall, and fortunate it was, for soon after there was no
safety in the "Athens of the West"--the "University of Europe"--for those
of its faithful offspring who loved learning and letters. Teacher and
pupil were banned. In the midst of morasses, forests, or mountain-glens,
they still studied, their bards still sang, and their minstrels played,
often with outposted sentinels on the watch.
What wonder if sadness shadowed the land? But disaster may have some
compensating gifts to noble natures. The true laurel when crushed yields
all its inner fragrance. Deprived of their princes and deposed from their
estate, the bards ceased to be learned in the classic forms of literary
technic; but they became poets of the people. The sincere voice of their
hearts spoke in their song, which is brimful of passionate feeling and
glowing with fair ideals. If in other times they had too often confined
their efforts to the eulogy of particular princes, now it was otherwise.
At the hearths of the people they sang the songs of a Nation.
Perhaps now the first idea of modern nationhood was conceived. Now, at all
events, pathos became a character of Irish literature, distinguishing it
deeply from that counterfeit of late grotesque, the authors of which
resemble those mutilators of men who carved the mockery of laughter upon
the face of grief.
What a subject for a painter would be that meeting between the blind and
hoary bard Carolan, and the young, bright-eyed child Oliver Goldsmith! The
venerable aspect of the ancient Celtic poet he never forgot. "His songs,"
he says, "in general may be compared to those of Pindar; they have
frequently the same flight of imagination." He had composed a concerto
"with such spirit and elegance that it may be compared (for we have it
still) with the finest compositions of Italy." This reminds us of the
time when an enemy, Giraldus Cambrensis, declared that the skill of the
Irish in music "was incomparably superior to that of any other nation."
The meeting of Carolan and Goldsmith may fitly typify the meeting of the
literatures of the old nation and of the Pale--one venerable by age and
glorified by genius, the other young, buoyant, and destined, like it, to
be the guardian and the honour of our common country.
Irish literature is of many blends, not the product of one race but of
several. It resembles the great oriel of some ancient cathedral, an
illumination of many beautiful colours, some of which can never be
reproduced, for the art is lost. We possess an unique treasure in that
ancient literature which grew up from a cultured people, self-centred,
independent of Roman discipline. Were it not for this we should look at
the Northern world through Southern eyes, and, taking our view-point from
the Capitol, see nothing beyond the light of the empire, but wild woods
and wastes made horrid by Cimmerian darkness, and shifting hordes of
quarrelsome barbarians. Yet these were the ancestors of most of the modern
European peoples, and those who so depicted them were their coercive and
uncomprehending foes. Our deliverance from this thraldom of an enemy's
judgment abides in the monuments of the ancient Irish.
The magic password of the Arabian bade the rugged mountain open, and
admitted him to the midst of glittering jewels. The knowledge of our old
literature takes us into the heart of the Cimmerian darkness, and shows it
full of glowing light, it takes us into the homes and minds of one of
those great nations uncomprehended of the Romans, and through that one,
enables us to see the great, passionate, pathetic, wild, and generous
humanity of all.
Thus our ancient literature would be invaluable if for this reason alone,
that it gives a new view-point and a new vista. Its importance is
augmented in this, that its reckless sincerity stands the enduring
evidence of a long-vanished stage of social and intellectual development,
where the fiercer and finer powers, the softer and sterner emotions of an
early mankind strive and commingle with dramatic effect. If such a
deposit were not extant, European scholars might well desire to go as
pilgrims, like the bereaved bards, to the grave of Fergus, son of Roi,
with power to call him again on earth, that he might recite the famous
Táin--the lost Epic of a lost World.
It is strange that words, which are such little things--a mere breath
trembling for a moment in the air--should survive the mightiest monarch
and outlast the lives of empires. The generations who uttered them are
silent; the earth has grown over their homesteads, and forests have
decayed above their cities. Yet out of the Dead Past speaks still the
Living Voice. So, to-day, we may be illumined by the light of a star which
perished a thousand years ago.
It has been said that the history of Ireland is dismal, a chronicle of
defeats. But that is because writers generally make history a mere record
of wars. The shadow of the swordsman obscures all else. The militant
monarch or minister is always put in the foremost place and the highest
position. The pigmy on a platform looks greater than the giant in his
study--but only in the eyes of pigmies. Alexander's Empire died with him,
and his satraps shared the spoil. Aristotle's sceptre is over us still.
There is a blindness which is worse than colour-blindness in the eyes
which see physical, but which cannot perceive intellectual forces and
effects: they will record that Roman power conquered Greece, but fail to
recognise that Greek intellect conquered the conqueror. Our nation has had
its changes of fortune. It has invaded others, and been itself invaded
often--part of the penalty it paid for occupying the fairest isle of the
old world, a penalty we might still pay had not a new world opened wide
its golden gates in the West. But our defeats have not been always
disasters. What seemed to have no other end than the plunder of our wealth
has resulted in the enrichment of our literature, the dissemination of our
ideas, and the capture of the imagination of other nations. The code,
which was devised to accomplish what the most ruthless savage never
designed--the annihilation of the intellect of a most intelligent
nation--studded the Continent with that nation's colleges and gave to its
members the glory of being illustrious leaders of men in the greatest
kingdoms of the world.
Last came the great dispersal, when the descendants of those who had
taught Europe for three centuries, and generously welcomed all
scholars--now made ignorant by law--were driven from their hospitable land
by famine. They went forth, as it is said, hewers of wood and drawers of
water. In other times and places it had meant extinction as slaves under
feudal rule. But mark this!--they entered into the great family of a new
people, whose fundamental principle of Democracy made them equal, and
whose generous nature made them welcome. They have thus been brought to
the very well-spring of the new forces which have been re-shaping human
society and preparing the transformation of the world. In this
incomparable enterprise they are themselves a foremost force, taking part
in the intellectual work with the revived vitality of a race which has
found its Land of Youth.
If we had a past of shame--were we members of a nation that had never
risen or had deeply fallen--these should be incentives to brave hearts to
achieve work for the credit of their race. It is otherwise with us, and we
dare not stand still. The past would be our reproach, the future our
disgrace. Not foreign force, but native sloth can do us dishonour. If our
nation is to live, it must live by the energy of intellect, and be
prepared to take its place in competition with all other peoples.
Therefore must we work, with earnest hearts and high ideals for the sake
of our own repute, for the benefit of mankind, in vindication of this old
land which genius has made luminous. And remember that whilst wealth of
thought is a country's treasure, literature is its articulate voice, by
which it commands the reverence or calls for the contempt of the living
and of the coming Nations of the Earth.
THE NECESSITY FOR DE-ANGLICISING IRELAND.
BY DOUGLAS HYDE, LL.D.
THE NECESSITY FOR DE-ANGLICISING IRELAND.[18]
When we speak of "The Necessity for De-Anglicising the Irish Nation," we
mean it, not as a protest against imitating what is _best_ in the English
people, for that would be absurd, but rather to show the folly of
neglecting what is Irish, and hastening to adopt, pell-mell, and
indiscriminately, everything that is English, simply because it _is_
English.
This is a question which most Irishmen will naturally look at from a
National point of view, but it is one which ought also to claim the
sympathies of every intelligent Unionist, and which, as I know, does
claim the sympathy of many.
If we take a bird's-eye view of our island to-day, and compare it with
what it used to be, we must be struck by the extraordinary fact that the
nation which was once, as every one admits, one of the most classically
learned and cultured nations in Europe, is now one of the least so; how
one of the most reading and literary peoples has become one of the _least_
studious and most _un_-literary, and how the present art products of one
of the quickest, most sensitive, and most artistic races on earth are now
only distinguished for their hideousness.
I shall endeavour to show that this failure of the Irish people in recent
times has been largely brought about by the race diverging during this
century from the right path, and ceasing to be Irish without becoming
English. I shall attempt to show that with the bulk of the people this
change took place quite recently, much more recently than most people
imagine, and is, in fact, still going on. I should also like to call
attention to the illogical position of men who drop their own language to
speak English, of men who translate their euphonious Irish names into
English monosyllables, of men who read English books, and know nothing
about Gaelic literature, nevertheless protesting as a matter of sentiment
that they hate the country which at every hand's turn they rush to
imitate.
I wish to show you that in Anglicising ourselves wholesale we have thrown
away with a light heart the best claim which we have upon the world's
recognition of us as a separate nationality. What did Mazzini say? What is
Goldwin Smith never tired of declaiming? What do the _Spectator_ and
_Saturday Review_ harp on? That we ought to be content as an integral part
of the United Kingdom because we have lost the notes of nationality, our
language and customs.
It has always been very curious to me how Irish sentiment sticks in this
half-way house--how it continues to apparently hate the English, and at
the same time continues to imitate them; how it continues to clamour for
recognition as a distinct nationality, and at the same time throws away
with both hands what would make it so. If Irishmen only went a little
farther they would become good Englishmen in sentiment also.
But--illogical as it appears--there seems not the slightest sign or
probability of their taking that step. It is the curious certainty that
come what may Irishmen will continue to resist English rule, even though
it should be for their good, which prevents many of our nation from
becoming Unionists upon the spot. It is a fact, and we must face it as a
fact, that although they adopt English habits and copy England in every
way, the great bulk of Irishmen and Irishwomen over the whole world are
known to be filled with a dull, ever-abiding animosity against her,
and--right or wrong--to grieve when she prospers, and joy when she is
hurt. Such movements as Young Irelandism, Fenianism, Land Leagueism, and
Parliamentary obstruction seem always to gain their sympathy and support.
It is just because there appears no earthly chance of their becoming good
members of the Empire that I urge that they should not remain in the
anomalous position they are in, but since they absolutely refuse to become
the one thing, that they become the other; cultivate what they have
rejected, and build up an Irish nation on Irish lines.
But you ask, why should we wish to make Ireland more Celtic than it
is--why should we de-Anglicise it at all?
I answer because the Irish race is at present in a most anomalous
position, imitating England and yet apparently hating it. How can it
produce anything good in literature, art, or institutions as long as it is
actuated by motives so contradictory? Besides, I believe it is our Gaelic
past which, though the Irish race does not recognise it just at present,
is really at the bottom of the Irish heart, and prevents us becoming
citizens of the Empire, as, I think, can be easily proved.