were conquered, and were aware that another struggle was hopeless for
the present. None the less they preserved all their national feelings.
The language of the common people in their daily intercourse was Irish;
their only pride was in Irish tradition, and their only poetry was in
the same melodious tongue. This continued long after English was the
language used for business. It must not be supposed that, although the
Celtic Irish were poor and deprived of all religious and political
rights, they were entirely ignorant or uncultivated. The average Irish
peasant of the last century was likely to have more learning than his
English compeer. The hedge-schoolmaster was abroad in the land, and the
eagerness with which Irish peasant lads sought for knowledge under
difficulties was only second to the fervency of their religious faith
under persecution. The education was not of the most valuable or
practical cast in all particulars, but that it was cultivated so
earnestly is the highest proof of the undegraded character of the
people. The hedge-schoolmasters were more learned in Latin than in
science, and taught their pupils to scan more assiduously than to add.
The traditionary Irish history, the exploits of Con of the Hundred
Battles, and the prophecies of Columbkille were expounded more
particularly than the battles of Wolfe or Marlborough or the speeches
of Chatham. This was but natural. The Irish then felt no share in
English victories or interest in English literature. Poetry was
especially a branch of learning in those days as it has never been
since. The hedge-schoolmasters were often poets as well as pedagogues,
and the amount of verse produced of one sort or another was enormous.
Much of it was naturally worthless, but among the crowd of poetasters
was here and there a poet who had the heart to feel and the tongue to
express the woes of his country and the passions of his own heart in
the language of nature. The hearts of the people answered them, and
their memories treasured their songs. They were no longer bards
entertained in the halls of the great. They were the wandering
minstrels of the poor, but some of them were genuine poets whose power
and grace were visible under every disadvantage.
In considering the fragments of this poetry three things must be kept
in mind: first, that it has been preserved mostly by oral tradition;
secondly, that it is translated from a language whose idiom is
especially hard to be rendered into English; and, thirdly, that the
lyrical form imposes additional difficulties in adequate rendering. By
far the larger number of the productions of the hedge-poets are of an
allegorical cast. The poet in a vision sees a queenly maiden, of
exquisite beauty and grace, sitting lonely and weeping on some fairy
rath by moonlight, by the side of some softly-flowing stream, or by the
wall of some ruined castle of ancient splendor. He is at first
confounded by her beauty. Then he takes courage at her distress, and
asks whether she is Helen of old who caused Troy town to burn, or she
that was the love of Fion, or Deirdre, for whom the sons of Usnach
died. These are the three types of beauty almost invariably used. The
lady replies, in a voice that “pierces the heart of the listener like a
spear,” that she is neither of these three; she is Kathleen ni
Ullachan, or Grauine Maol, Roisin Dubh, the Little Black Rose, or
Sheela na Guira, these being the figurative names for the female
personification of Ireland. She laments to the poet’s ear that her
heroes brave, her Patrick Sarsfield, her John O’Dwyer of the Glens, are
driven across the seas, and that she is the desolate slave of the Saxon
churls. Then she rises into a strain, half-despairing, half-exulting,
that the heroes will soon return with help from the hosts of France and
Spain; that the fires of the Saxon houses shall light every glen, and
the “sullen tribe of the dreary tongue” be driven into the sea; that
God shall soon be worshipped once more on her desolate altars, and the
kingly hero, her noble spouse, her prince of war, shall once more clasp
her to his arms and place three crowns upon her head. This is the
outline of almost every one of these patriotic visions, and it will be
seen at once how beautiful was the conception and how capable of
exhibiting the highest pathos. The Irish minstrels had to sing of their
country in secret, for the ear of the conquering race must not hear of
their hopes and fears. In this disguise they would give voice to their
patriotic passion as to an earthly mistress, and their country’s woes
and hopes could be imparted with a double intensity. This personifying
the country in the form of a beautiful and desolate woman is not
peculiar to Irish poets, but seems the form of expression for the
passionate patriotism of all oppressed countries. It is common to the
Italian, the Polish, and the Servian poets.
In the description of the beauty of the forlorn maiden one poem bears a
great resemblance to another, and those beauties which are peculiar to
Irish girls are her distinguishing features; thus, the long, flowing
tresses, the _coolun_, or head of fair locks, is often most beautifully
painted.
“Her clustering, loosened tresses
Flowed glossily, enwreathed with pearls,
To veil her breast with kisses
And sunny rays of golden curls”
—_Sheela ni Cullenan_, by Wm. Lenane.
“Her curling tresses meet
Her small and gentle feet.
Her golden fleece—the pride of Greece,
Might shame those locks to greet.”
“The dew-drops flow down
Her thick curls’ golden brown.”
—_The Drooping Heart_, by MacColter.
“Sunbright is the neck that her golden locks cover.”
—_The Cuilshon._
“Her hair o’er her shoulders was flowing
In clusters all golden and glowing,
Luxuriant and thick as in meads are, the grass-blades
That the scythe of the mower is mowing.”
—_The Vision of Conor Sullivan._
From these specimens it may be guessed that either blonde beauty was
more common among Irish maidens than now, or that its rarity made it
doubly prized. It appears to have been as much in demand as in these
days, which have witnessed the grand rage for fair locks at the expense
of bleaching-irons and Pactolian dye. It is only occasionally that some
poet dares to express his preference for _cean dubh dheelish_—the dear
black head.
The pure brow of wax in fairness and radiance is not forgotten:
“Whose brow is more fair than the silver bright;
Oh! ’twould shed a ray of beauteous light
In the darkest glen of mists of the south.”
—_The Melodious Little Cuckoo._
Narrow eyebrows finely arched were a peculiar mark of distinction. For
the eyes there is almost a whole new nomenclature of comparison and
compliment. The peculiar and most often repeated color is “green,”
which is the uncompromising English translation of the delicate Irish
epithet which means
“The grayest of things blue,
The greenest of things gray”
—that shade of the most beautiful and brilliant eyes well known to
Spanish as well as Irish poets, and which Longfellow and Swinburne have
not hesitated to describe by the naked and imperfect English adjective.
This is the way in which one of these ignorant minstrels expresses what
he means, and renders it with a new grace:
“I gave you—oh! I gave you—I gave you my whole love;
On the festival of Mary my poor heart you stole, love,
With your soft green eyes like dew-drops on corn that is springing,
the music of your red lips like sweet starlings singing.”
—_Fair Mary Barry._
A beautiful and apt comparison for the sweet, rosy bloom, nowhere found
in such perfect charm as in Ireland, was the apple blossom and the
berry.
“On her cheek the crimson berry
Lay in the lily’s bosom wan.”
—_Sheela ni Cullenan._
“The bloom on thy cheek shames the apple’s soft blossom.”
Among the finest and most delicate comparisons, however, is this:
“Like crimson rays of sunset streaming
O’er sunny lilies her bright cheeks shone.”
The fair one’s bosom is declared to be like to the breast of the
sailing swan, to the thorn blossoms, to the snow, to the summer cloud,
in a variety of beautiful expressions:
“Her bosom’s pearly light
Than summer clouds more bright,
More pure its glow than falling snow
Or swan of plumage white.”
—_Beside the Lee_, by Michael O’Longen.
“Her breast has the whiteness
That thorn-blossoms bore.”
Her hands are pure and white as the snow, and never without being
accomplished in the art of embroidery. There is scarcely a poem in the
whole collection in which the skill of the heroine in this particular
is not mentioned. She does not play upon the harp. That was a manly
profession. Embroidery was the fashionable accomplishment for Irish
ladies, and the maiden who typified Ireland must be pre-eminent in it.
“Her soft, queenly fingers
Are skilful as fair,
While she gracefully lingers
O’er broideries rare.
The swan and the heath-hen,
Bird, blossom, and leaf,
Are shaped by this sweet maid
Who left me in grief.”
The voice was that of the thrush singing farewell to the setting sun,
the cuckoo in the glen, or the lark high in air. Bird-voiced was the
universal epithet. The branch of bloom, the bough of apple-blossoms,
was the whole lovely creature.
Such were the beauties and accomplishments of the heroines of the
hedge-poets, largely, doubtless, derived from the earlier bards, but
often exclusively their own. They were chiefly applied to the ideal
figure who represented in her beauty and her sorrow their forlorn
country, but sometimes to the earthly mistress of flesh and blood whose
smiles they sought. Seldom anything so natural and so delicate is to be
found in any national poetry. The false and artificial compliments of
English amatory poetry, equally with the overstrained comparisons of
Oriental verse, seem tasteless and tawdry beside these simple blossoms
of nature. They give out health and perfume, while the English
love-songs are like wax, and the gorgeous verse of the East is, like
its vegetation, magnificent but often odorless.
Those poems which we have described form much the larger portion of the
remains of the hedge-poets; but there are others, devoted purely to
love, to satire, and to lamentation. There are some which are a sort of
dialogue and courtship in rhyme. The minstrel “soothers” the damsel
with all the arts of his flattering tongue. He calls her by every sweet
name he can think of; tells how deep is his passion and how renowned he
will make her by his verse. The rustic coquette replies with a
recapitulation of all his faults and failings, his poverty, his
fondness for drink, his disgrace with all his relations, and his
general unfitness for the yoke of matrimony, and then very often yields
to his flattery and goes away with him; or else she listens to his
string of endearments without a word, and then dismisses him with
stinging contempt. Sometimes the bard sits down in sorrow, generally in
a tap-room over an empty glass, and details the charms of the fair one
who has wrought his woe; or sometimes, though rarely, it is one of the
opposite sex, who has been driven from home by the curses of her
kindred, and, sitting by the roadside, tells her tale of woe or
despair. Such cases, however, are infrequent, and the general purity of
both theme and verse is worthy of all praise. The number of
lamentations is much less than would naturally be expected among a
people whose vehemence of grief is noted, and where the _keener’s_
extemporaneous mourning reached such a height of impassioned eloquence.
From whatever reason, but few appear to have been preserved. Those that
are, however, are characterized by profound strength and pathos. The
_keen_ of Felix MacCarthy for his children is one of the saddest
lamentations ever put into verse. It is entirely too long for
quotation, but these two verses, describing the mother’s appearance and
grief, will show something of its genuineness and power:
“Woe is me! her dreary pall,
Who royal fondness gave to all,
Whose heart gave milk and love to each—
Woe is me! her ‘plaining speech”
“Woe is me! her hands now weak
With smiting her white palms so meek.
Wet her eyes at noon, and broken
Her true heart with grief unspoken.”
A lament for Kilcash, or rather for its patroness, is also very
powerful.
The romantic love-tales are few in comparison with the number among the
Irish street-ballads of to-day. The rich young nobleman who falls in
love with the pretty girl milking her cow, and the fair lady of great
estate who picks out her lover from the tall young men in her own
service, make but few appearances. The only ballad of this kind in the
collection is not after the usual pattern. The heir to “land and long
towers white” certainly falls in love with a rustic maiden, but,
instead of flying with him on his roan steed and becoming mistress of
his castle, she tells him with great prudence that he will find other
maidens better suited to his degree:
“I’m not used at my mother’s to sit with hosts,
I’m not used at the board to have wines and toasts,
I’m not used to dance-halls with music bold,
Nor to couches a third of them red with gold.”
And, in spite of his fervent and eloquent protestations, she refuses to
go with him.
Such are the themes and characteristics of the last age of Celtic
poetry in Ireland. If we have failed to show that the minstrels who
sang in such poverty and oppression had natural genius of a high order,
we have not accomplished our purpose. We think that true poetry is
visible in almost all that remains of their productions. Like all
sectional and class poets, they resembled each other very much. The
same species of imagery, the same terms of thought and peculiar
epithets, were common to them as to the Troubadours, the Scandinavian
minstrels, and to all other classes of poets singing to a confined
audience and having little or no acquaintance with other forms of
poetry. It is through them alone that the voice of the Irish people of
their day can be heard. All other forms of the expression of the
oppressed race have perished. In the music and poetry of Ireland is
made manifest, so that the dullest ear cannot mistake it, the sorrow of
a nation in bondage, tinging all mirth, all hope, and all love with an
indefinable cadence of melancholy as plainly as in the real outbursts
of lamentation and despairing cries of woe.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
RELIGION ON THE EAST COAST OF AFRICA.
The marvellous success of the indomitable Stanley has attracted the
attention of all to Africa, that region of mystery, marvel, and
malaria. The Catholic would naturally learn something of the work of
the church in that continent, and of the religious condition of its
population. But the subject is too vast for anything less than a large
volume, and it will be more profitable to confine our attention to the
dominions of the Sultan of Zanzibar. This region has a double interest.
Zanzibar is the starting-point of almost every Central African
expedition. Thence Livingstone, Speke and Grant, Cameron, and Stanley
on two occasions, have struck into the interior and made valuable
discoveries. It is also the old centre of the East African slave-trade,
which, though it has received a severe check, is not yet abolished.
Moreover, Zanzibar is a microcosm—a little world in itself. There one
meets with the Arab, the Hindoo, the Persian, the Malagashi, the
Banian, the Goa Portuguese, the negro, and the European.
The most important portion of the Sultan of Zanzibar’s territory is the
islands of which Zanzibar is the chief. The name was once applied to
the whole coast, and it is probable that that must have been the
meaning of Marco Polo when he says (on hearsay evidence) that the
island of Zanzibar is two thousand miles round. The term is supposed to
signify the “Land of the Blacks.” The island is in about 6° south
latitude, 48 miles long by 18 broad. It is separated from the mainland
by a strait only 20 miles in breadth. As one approaches Zanzibar from
the north the coast appears bare, rocky, and surrounded by low cliffs.
Here dwell some wild people, almost completely cut off from the more
civilized portion of the inhabitants, and following debasing and
degrading superstitions. But as we sail southwards, between the island
and the main, the shore becomes low and flat, the beach covered with
sand of silvery whiteness, and the whole backed by rising ground not
more than 300 feet high, on which grow in rich abundance cocoanut and
other feathery-leaved palms. Soft breezes, laden with sweet odors from
the groves of spice-trees, blow from the shore. The island is rich in
fruits; mangos, oranges, limes, pummalos or shaddock, pineapples,
jack-fruit, guavas, bananas, and cashew abound. But about four years
ago a hurricane visited Zanzibar for the first time; almost all the
dhows in the harbor were wrecked, many lives were lost, and the greater
part of the trees were destroyed. On one estate known to the writer
only four per cent. of the trees remained standing, and the ground,
strewn with palms, was a lamentable sight.
At the entrance of Zanzibar harbor are several beautiful islands of
emerald green. One of these, called French Island, is used as a
burial-place for Europeans, and many wooden crosses and boards mark the
last resting-place of seamen of the British navy, cut down by the fever
which is so fatal on this coast. The heat is not excessive, seldom
rising to 90°, but there is a feeling of depression in the atmosphere,
and a short residence in this climate serves to take the energy out of
most people.
Now we arrive at the city of Zanzibar, the most important place in East
Africa. Its name, in the native language, is Unguja. For miles before
reaching the city we have seen large white, square buildings close to
the shore—the country residences of wealthy Arabs. The appearance is
very pleasing, and so is that of the city from the sea, as similar
houses stand near it. These are the English, French, American, and
German consulates, over which wave the flags of their respective
nations; also the sultan’s palace, the custom-house, and residences of
rich Arabs and Hindoos. They are built of coral covered with the
whitest plaster, only relieved by regular rows of windows, the
brightness reflected from these houses being almost blinding. But on
entering the town you cease to wonder at the bad name it has earned.
With scarcely an exception Zanzibar is a heap of rubbish; the narrow
lanes, or paths which do duty for streets, are surrounded by low hovels
formed of earth plastered over wooden frames, roofed with palm-leaves,
and possessing no means of ventilation but the doorway, the interior
being consequently dark, stifling, and filthy. Many buildings have been
allowed to go to utter ruin, and the very mosques are hardly
presentable. But the bazaars form the sight of the city. They are,
perhaps, a little wider than the other thoroughfares, and the fronts of
the houses are occupied by small stalls, on which are piled articles
the most incongruous—soap, fish, plantains, cotton goods, medicine,
oil, etc. In the midst is seated, cross-legged, a fat old Banian,
stripped to the waist, with his naked foot in a basket of grain, or a
pretty dark-eyed girl with a ring in her nose. The market produce of
all kinds is heaped on the ground without any attempt at order, and, as
every one present is screaming at the top of his voice in his own
language, the Babel of tongues is complete.
The government is in the hands of the Arabs. This people have from time
immemorial had trading-stations on the coast, but Vasco da Gama doubled
the Cape of Good Hope in 1499, and the Portuguese soon superseded the
Arabs and held the coast for a couple of hundred years, when the Arabs
succeeded in dislodging them, and they are now confined to Mozambique
and Quilimane, at the mouth of the Zambesi.
Remains of Portuguese forts are scattered up and down the shores of the
mainland, and the writer assisted once in whitewashing Vasco da Gama’s
column at Melinda, which makes an excellent harbor mark. Near the fort
at Zanzibar numerous Portuguese cannon, cast in a European arsenal in
the present century, lie on the ground, a proud trophy for the Arabs
and a humiliating spectacle for Europeans. Fifty years ago Sayid Said,
the Imaum of Muscat, visited Zanzibar and fixed his residence there. At
his death one of his sons succeeded to his African and another to his
Arabian possessions, the former paying an annual tax of forty thousand
dollars to the Imaum. Sayid Barghash, the present sultan, succeeded his
brother Sayid Majid seven years ago. He had previously been exiled to
Bombay at the instance of the English, whose _protégé_ Majid was. His
policy has been one of economy and retrenchment. Though the government
may be called an absolute monarchy, yet it answers rather to the old
feudal constitutions of Europe in the middle ages, the sultan being
checked by members of his own and other powerful families.
The Arab statute-book is the Koran interpreted by what may be called
the priesthood. But witchcraft is a great power, not only with the
heathen but also with Mahometans, in Africa, and, after consulting his
sheiks and sherifs, the sultan often has recourse to the heathen
Mganga. One is reminded of the Witch of Endor, Pharao’s magicians, and
many of the old superstitions which we find recorded in the ancient
Hebrew Scriptures.
The population of the city may be one hundred thousand, and that of the
remainder of the island rather more; but one cannot decide this with
any accuracy, as it is against Moslem principles to take a census. Who
are they to count the favors of God? Of the mongrel population of
Zanzibar the Arab is the dominant race, though there are few, if any,
pure Arabs—sometimes that name being applied to a man as black as a
negro. But the better class of them are fine, handsome men, splendidly
dressed, and very dignified and self-possessed. They are ignorant,
however, bigoted, supercilious, and licentious. They are also very
indolent and have few redeeming features. Lower classes of Arabs there
are, who are soldiers, sailors, traders, and so on, and from them are
drawn the villains who carry on the iniquitous slave-traffic.
There are about seven thousand British subjects—Banians and other
Indian peoples. The commerce of the East African coast is chiefly in
their hands, and they are the bankers and represent the moneyed
interest. Those owning slaves are in danger of losing them, if the
British consul discover the fact; but it is hardly possible for them
not to trade in slaves, as they are always sold with landed properties,
and without them labor could hardly be obtained.
Most of the army, which numbers nine hundred, is composed of Belooches,
who are a motley set of rascals, brutal, lazy, and cowardly. But
somehow they contrive to live, and arm themselves too, on three dollars
a month, and seem to be pretty prosperous. The artillerymen are
Persians—tall, handsome men with black moustaches, high black sheepskin
caps, green tunics, and loose trowsers. But their battery, which is
full of small brass and iron guns overlooking the sea, is a poor
affair, ridiculous from a military point of view, and better adapted
for firing salutes than for purposes of warfare.
There are about two thousand men from the Comoro Islands, but no one
seems to have anything good to say of them.
The mass of the population is composed of blacks from the east coast.
These are almost entirely slaves, and are made to work for the support
of the lazy Arabs. A person acquainted with the country easily
distinguishes members of the different tribes from each other; they may
be known by the tribe marks—mostly punctures in the forehead—and by
their general appearance. The slaves are capable of much endurance; the
writer once paid thirty or forty slave women eight cents each for a
day’s work, which consisted of walking thirty miles, carrying weights
on their heads half the way. They did not seem at all exhausted after
this arduous task. Great cruelties are perpetrated in the capture of
the slaves and in conveying them to Zanzibar, but, as a rule, they are
treated fairly enough when once they are received into a family, being
allowed one day a week to work for themselves, besides other extra
time.
There are only sixty or seventy white people—American, English, Scotch,
French, and German—but without them the commerce of the place would
collapse. The chief exports are spices, ivory, ebony, cocoanuts, and
gum-copal. The imports are cotton fabrics, pocket-handkerchiefs of
bright colors, crockery, etc.