The dreaded Vikings—In English waters—Descents on Iona—Monasteries

favourite objects of attack—Destruction of books—Their own eddas

and sagas—Modern discovery of the wonderful Icelandic

literature—The Northmen in a new light—Literary effects of their

invasions—Arrested development—Lamentable dispersion of the

literary classes—Pilgrim Scots—The rise of Scottish

Gaelic—Present-day differences between it and Irish—Introduction

of Norse words—Decay of inflection—Gaelic examples of Viking

beliefs and superstitions—The Norseman still with us.

Britain owes her proud pre-eminence among the nations as much to the sea

as to any other external factor. Her empire seems to sit stable upon the

waves. So far from disconnecting the broadcast parts, it is the ocean

that links them well together into one mighty whole which keeps “the

fretful realms in awe.” Thus as citizens of the British Empire we are

wont to regard the sea as our most powerful ally and friend. We connect

with it the idea of national defence. It is our bulwark. With it we

associate also the spirit of freedom, and pleasure in summer time, when

multitudes frequent the coast and drink in new life and energy there.

And in reflective moments it wafts our thoughts to larger issues, and we

recognise that the sea helps towards the realisation of the brotherhood

of man, for it brings the nations into close touch with one another, and

through the quiet channels of trade and commerce, tends to exorcise old

and distant race antagonisms. And so in this country we are born to view

the ocean with kindly eyes, and to rely upon it almost as our national

foster-parent.

Yet it was not ever thus. We go back to a time in these western lands

when the briny wave was a terror to men, for out there, in storm and

shine, lurked their chief danger. Any morning they awoke, or any evening

they retired to rest, they might see the dragon-prowed galleys of the

wild Norsemen bearing down upon them. And in the night, when the winds

howled or there came a moaning from the deep, they could not be sure but

the dreaded Vikings were upon them. No part of the coast of these

islands or of north or west France was safe from their incursions. The

blue waves and the distant horizon of the watery main were then scanned

with different feelings from ours. A secret fear haunted the imagination

as it saw or fancied it perceived a distant sail on the seascape. The

very children inherited the awe inspired by these ruffians of the deep;

for ruffians they were, many of them, who massacred and laid waste,

sparing not even the peaceful abodes of piety and learning.

Sometimes they bore down upon a reach of coast when the unsuspecting

inhabitants had not the faintest presentiment of peril from the waves. A

medieval writer (Monachi Sangale, Gesta Caroli, II. 14) tells how

Charlemagne himself and his courtiers were thus surprised. They were

seated at a banquet one day in the town of Narbonne, when all of a

sudden some swift barks were seen putting into the harbour. The company

started up, wondering who the strangers might be. Were they Jews, or

Africans, or simply British traders? None could tell. The keen eye of

the king alone hastily divined the situation. “No bales of merchandise,”

said he, “are borne hither by yonder galleys. They are manned by

terrible foes.” And then advancing to the window, he stood for a long

time reflecting, his eyes moist with tears and bent on vacancy. No one

durst ask him the cause of his foreboding, till at length he broached it

himself. “It is not for myself,” muttered he, “that I am weeping, nor

for any harm that yonder barks can do to me; but it grieves me sore to

think that during my lifetime they have made bold to approach these

shores, and greater still is my dejection when I reflect on the evils

they will yet inflict on those who come after me.” And he was right. The

crews that he saw in the offing were plundering Northmen, who were soon

to be followed by kindred sea-rovers bent on conquest. Of little avail

in his own time were his strong forts and garrison towns built to

withstand the foe, and after his death his less imperious successors

hardly dared lift a dagger to stem the tide of invasion that laid waste

their fairest lands and cities. “Take the map,” wrote Sir Francis

Palgrave in his history of _Normandy and England_, “and colour with

vermilion the provinces, districts, and shores which the Northmen

visited, as the record of each invasion. The colouring will have to be

repeated more than ninety times successively before you can arrive at

the conclusion of the Carlovingian dynasty. Furthermore, mark by the

usual symbol of war—the two crossed swords—the localities where the

battles were fought by or against pirates,—where they were defeated or

triumphant, or where they pillaged, burned, or destroyed; and the

valleys and banks of the Elbe, Rhine and Moselle, Scheldt, Meuse, Somme

and Seine, Loire, Garonne and Adour, the inland Allier, and all the

coasts and coastlands between estuary and estuary, and the countries

between the river streams will appear bristling as with _chevaux de

frise_.

“The strongly-fenced Roman cities, the venerated abbeys and their

dependent bourgades, often more flourishing and extensive than the

ancient seats of government, the opulent seaports and trading towns were

all equally exposed to the Danish attacks, stunned by the Northmen’s

approach, subjugated by their fury.”

According to Paul B. du Chaillu, one of the more recent and exhaustive

writers on the subject, the Viking age extended from the second to the

middle of the twelfth century A.D. For a long time—centuries no

doubt—individuals were wont to come as traders, and in that capacity may

have been welcomed. But towards the end of the eighth century an

alarming development took place. Issuing from the viks or bays of Norway

and Denmark, the notorious Vikings appeared as depredators and

conquerors. 787 is given as the date when first their hostile vessels

were seen in English waters. And henceforward concerted attempts were

made to land on our shores and annex our territory. In 793 the work of

plunder was effectively inaugurated by an attack on Lindisfarne and

other points in Northumbria. The monastery on that island was laid

waste, and the Northumbrian kingdom itself so crippled that it lost the

commanding influence it wielded in the days of Adamnan and Bede and

their friend King Aldfrid.

Next year the marauding Norsemen emerged in the Western Isles, which

from this time till the middle of the thirteenth century were destined

to be favourite haunts and special theatres of their operations.

They quickly found and sacked defenceless Iona, and for years took

spoils of the sea between that Island and Erin. The Hebrides and the

Isle of Man were at their mercy in 798, and still insatiate with former

booty, in 802 they revisited Iona and burned its sacred buildings to the

ground. Returning four years later, they put the whole community to the

sword, numbering no fewer than sixty-eight persons.

Iona truly had cause to dread the unceasing attentions of these terrible

strangers, for each visit seemed more appalling than the other. Baulked

in their efforts to get the silver shrines and relics of the departed

Columba, the freebooters made another swift and dire descent upon the

island in 825. Trained by sad experience, the monks on this occasion had

taken the precaution to bury their treasure-trove in a hole in the

earth, covering the surface with sods. And when their fierce assailants

burst upon the unprotected sanctuary, they found the holy St. Blathmac,

who was probably acting-abbot at the time, standing before the altar. Of

him they impetuously demanded the way to the hidden objects of their

pursuit—the precious silver shrines—and when he calmly refused,

insisting that he did not know the place of concealment which his

brethren had selected, they savagely murdered him on the spot. The

Annals of Ulster record the martyrdom, and Walafridus Strabo, a

contemporary on the Continent, gives an interesting metrical account of

the event in Latin, gathered no doubt from one or other of the monks who

had fled to him from these islands through terror of the Norse.

Once more, on Christmas eve in 986, the famous monastery of Hy, ever

rising on its own ashes, was attacked and destroyed by the successors of

these old Danes, and this time the abbot and fifteen monks were put to a

violent death. From Orkney and Shetland, and the coasts of Caithness and

the Hebrides the hardy Norsemen swooped down upon Eastern Scotland as

well as upon the English and Irish seaboards, until at length they made

themselves for a time masters of a great part of the country.

How they went to work may be gathered from their own records. For

example: Harold Fairhair’s saga, c. 22, says, “They ravaged in Scotland

and took possession of Katanes (Caithness) and Sudrland (Sutherland) as

far as Ekkjalsbakki. Sigurd slew the Scotch Jarl, Melbrigdi, and tied

his head to his saddle-straps; the tooth which protruded from the Jarl’s

head wounded the calf of Sigurd’s leg, which swelled and he died

therefrom; he is mounded at Ekkjalsbakki.”

From these details it will be seen that they had much of the Vandal and

the rough buccaneer in their composition. Monasteries were favourite

objects of attack. They contained the richest plunder, and from their

nature, as religious centres, offered the least resistance. And not

content with merely carrying off the loot, the rovers mingled blood with

their depredations. Hence the peculiar fitness of the introduction into

the Litany of the significant petition: “From the fury of the Northmen,

good Lord, deliver us.” And this coarse grain in their character

accounts for their reckless conduct in other directions. They seem to

have had a special aversion to monks and clerics and learning. They made

short work of the books and bells of monasteries. We have contemporary

evidence of their vandalism towards literature in a remarkable book of

the period entitled, _Wars of the Gael with the Gaill_ (Northmen). It is

in Gaelic, and appears in the Book of Leinster, copied about 1150. The

author may have been an eye-witness of many of the scenes, and

particularly of the battle of Clontarf, which he so realistically

describes. His accuracy on matters of fact has been fully attested. We

can, therefore, credit his statement when he affirms regarding the few

men of learning who had survived the Viking ordeal that “their writings

and their books in every church and in every sanctuary where they were,

were burnt and thrown into water by the plunderers from beginning to

end” (of the Norse invasion).

Countless numbers of the illuminated books of the men of Erin and Alba

thus perished. It was a mania with these illiterate rovers to destroy

all learning. Eloquent testimony to this is borne by the historian

Keating also. “It was not allowed,” he says, “to give instruction in

letters.... No scholars, no clerics, no books, no holy relics were left

in church or monastery through dread of them. Neither bard nor

philosopher nor musician pursued his wonted profession in the land.”

And if modern evidence were necessary it might be found in the fact that

while Gaelic MSS. of the Viking age are to be found in almost every

other country of Europe, there is not one to be gleaned in the lands

whence the Norsemen came. From which circumstance it may be inferred

that they set so little value upon these literary acquisitions that they

took no care to preserve them, or even to carry them away to their own

territory. When the tide of invasion had well nigh spent itself,

Ireland, once so rich in native literature, was found to be so depleted

that King Brian Boru had to send delegates abroad, “to buy books beyond

the sea and the great ocean,” as the records affirm, so scarce had they

ultimately become.

Yet even in their roving days the strenuous Norsemen had rare _eddas_

and _sagas_ of their own, to which they were passionately devoted. These

were not then written down, but recited orally, like the Celtic tales,

till they found a literary embodiment in MS. books.

It was only towards the middle of the last century that their wonderful

national sagas burst upon Europe, and thrilled and surprised the learned

quite as much as if they had felt a whiff of the old Viking breath upon

them. Prior to that time historians were largely dependent upon the

English, Irish, and Frankish chronicles for their knowledge of this

northern race and their deeds of spoliation, but since the discovery in

Iceland of the literary remains of their immediate descendants, quite a

fresh light has been cast upon their disposition and habits. And we

recognise that they were not quite the demons and fiends the monkish

scribes believed them to be. It is clear that, having suffered so much

from the hardy invader the latter had the tendency to exaggerate his

ferocity. For example, the author of the _Wars of the Gael with the

Gaill_: “In a word, although there were an hundred sharp, ready, cool,

never-resting brazen tongues in each head, and a hundred garrulous,

loud, unceasing voices for each tongue, they could not recount nor

narrate nor enumerate nor tell what all the Gael suffered in common,

both men and women, laity and clergy, old and young, noble and ignoble,

of hardship and of injury and of oppression in every house from these

valiant, wrathful, foreign, purely pagan people.”

In every war and conquest there are dreadful happenings, and the Viking

was not troubled with sentiment or too much conscience in his

proceedings. He was rough and ready—like his trade, as we should say—as

he needed to be in that age if he meant to be master or even to get a

living.

Great upheavals, we must remember, were taking place in his mother

country and driving him from his home.

To take one example, Harold Fairhair, in bringing the whole of Norway

under his sway effected quite a revolution, changing the old ödal tenure

by which the land was held into a feudal one. Rather than submit to the

new order many nobles and people simultaneously sought freedom

elsewhere. They settled in Shetland, Orkney, and the Hebrides,

occasionally raiding back to harass the king. But by the year 872 the

latter had so far established his rule at home that he was free to

tackle these islands with their Norwegian rebels and annex the territory

to Norway. Whereupon the more daring and independent spirits who had

settled there and in Ireland, and had contracted alliances in marriage

with leading native families, once more hived off, this time sailing

away for Iceland to join friends and relations who had migrated thither

from the mother country. And these were the nucleus of the colony whose

descendants produced the wonderful Icelandic literature which is now

reckoned among the most valuable assets of medieval Europe. Among the

settlers were men who bore Gaelic names and left their impress upon this

Norse heritage. From the parchments lately discovered upon which the

history of the Vikings is written, and which are begrimed by the smoke

of the Icelandic cabin and worn by the centuries that have passed over

them, we learn many things that tend to show the Northmen in a new

light. These men, who held undisputed sway of the seas for more than

nine centuries, were not by any means barbarians. They had a

civilisation rivalling that of the Gael, though of a different warp and

woof, and they were not even without a script or mode of writing. The

characters they used are known as runes, and may have been in use as

early as the second or third century.

In the sagas we are often told that drawings on shields and embroidery

on cloth were made by them to preserve the memory of heroic deeds and

important events. And though the set who invaded our shores, in the

stress of war and sailing were not likely to trouble much with learning

or letters, their nation had doubtless retired _literati_ just like our

own.

To trace the effect of these Norse invasions on Celtic literature will

now be our main endeavour.

I. The first and immediate influence was doubtless to arrest its

progress. After ages of apparent barrenness, the genius of the

Gaelic-speaking peoples had at length produced the germ of a literature

which in the days of St Patrick and St. Columba took root and began to

grow. For well-nigh four centuries it had gone on developing in a most

promising way. The quiet and leisure of the monasteries furnished the

atmosphere most suitable for its inception and subsequent growth. These

religious retreats were then the centres of learning and nurseries of

thought, and many men were arising within their sacred walls who had a

genuine love and taste for writing—a love so great that they were not

merely content with copying books, composing poems, or writing history,

but they embellished them in a way which has excited the admiration of

modern times.

Gaelic literature both in Ireland and Scotland was thus bidding fair to

yield a rich and abundant harvest when the blight of the Norse invasion

fell suddenly upon it, and effectually hindered its farther advance for

several centuries. The history of literary work in every age and country

shows that it is mostly in times of peace that this delicate plant

flourishes. In the stormier periods, when wars are waged, changes

frequent, and a spirit of unrest abroad, production of books is rare or

even non-existent.

When the Celts themselves were a warrior race, living for the most part

by the sword, and migrating from land to land, they had no literature

that we know of. The conditions of life were not such that men could

quietly cultivate the art and practice of writing. Life was too full of

change, too turbulent, and too uncertain.

Similarly the Norsemen during the Viking age, till they gained a

peaceful retreat in Iceland, were no litterateurs. Sailing and fighting

were more exciting, and with these the habits of the scribe or of the

author were not entirely compatible. And so when the tide of invasion

burst upon the monasteries of Ireland and Scotland, when rest from

strife and security from change could no longer be had, authorship, if

it did not entirely cease, became more rare and spasmodic. This is

particularly true of Scotland, for with the exception of the Book of

Deer, with its Latin contents of the ninth century, and its Gaelic

entries written towards the end of the Viking period, we have nothing to

show, of known Scottish origin, from the beginning to the end of these

incursions. Ireland was more fortunate in that in spite of invasion her

literary output was more continuous, especially in the department of

poetry.

II. Contemporary with this arrested development, the sinister influence

of the Norse depredations may be traced in another result, and one which

has left a deep and permanent mark in the history of Celtic literature.

It is the lamentable dispersion of the literary classes—monks and

missionaries—to the Continent with such books and MSS. as they were able

to save from the violence of the invaders. Long before the inroads of

these Norsemen became a terror to the Gael, we know that Irish

missionaries had spread themselves over England, France, Germany,

Switzerland, and Italy. And in addition to their peripatetic preaching,

they had established monasteries and colleges for the diffusion of

Christianity and learning. From MSS. preserved in St. Gall, Switzerland,

we gather that these pilgrim Scots usually travelled in companies,

provided with long walking-sticks, leathern wallets, and water-bottles.

They wore long flowing hair, and were clad in rough garments. Though

thus rude and uncouth in appearance, they were accomplished scholars,

many of them, and easily acquired the languages of the countries through

which they passed, or in which they settled and preached with all the

perfervid eloquence so natural to the Celt. To show the extent of their

wanderings, and the distinguished calibre of the missionaries

themselves, a few names may be given which still live in books and

tradition. St. Columbanus, perhaps the best known of all, died in 615.

His name is perpetuated in the town of San Columbano. It was he who

founded the monasteries of Luxueil in France, and Bobbio among the

Apennines. Almost equally prominent as an evangelist was St. Gall, his

companion, who gave his name not only to the town which subsequently

grew up beside his monastery, but also to a whole canton of Switzerland.

Then there were St. Catald, from the school of Lismore in Ireland; St.

Donnatt his brother, Bishop of Lupice in Naples; St Kilian the apostle

and martyr of Franconia, still annually commemorated at Würzburg. At a

monastery near Strasburg, also founded by an Irish bishop, there is a

charter of date 810, which specifies grants made to that house, to the

poor, and to the pilgrim Scots—the nine of whom therein mentioned are

all bishops except the abbot. In the ninth century there was a convent

of Scots at Mont St. Victor near Feldkirk. Dungall, of the same Scotic

nationality, figures as the author of the famous letter to Charlemagne

on the eclipses of 810, and he held the office of preceptor at the

cathedral school at Pavia. Besides the numerous other places in which

they laboured, from the middle of the seventh to the twelfth century,

Scotic monasteries were founded at Ratisbon, Vienna, Eichstadt,

Würzburg, Erfurt, Kelheim, and Constance.

These earlier retreats served as so many houses of refuge for the poor

monks and scholars flying from the fury of the Norsemen, when life and

property became insecure at home, in Iona, and elsewhere. It is known

that a fresh tide of Gaelic pilgrims set out for the Continent from the

time that the new peril appeared, seeking safe custody for themselves

and their books among their countrymen abroad.

And thus it has come to pass that there are to-day hundreds of Celtic

MSS. in Latin and Gaelic widely scattered throughout Europe, in places

as far apart as Paris, Brussels, Dresden, Berne, Vienna, Rome, Florence,

Milan, Schaffhausen, St. Gall, etc. And while in the British Isles we

have only seven of these with Gaelic writing prior to the eleventh

century, on the Continent there are as many as twenty.

It is surmised that it was in this manner in 825, after the attack on

Iona and murder of St. Blathmac, that the famous _Vita Columbæ_ of

Adamnan found its way to Reichenau on the Rhine, where it remained for

nearly a millennium, till it was ultimately transferred to Schaffhausen.

These are two far-reaching and long-lasting effects of the Viking

troubles—the arrest of the literary development and the dispersion of

the documents, but they by no means exhaust the category.

III. We have now to take into account the severance of Ireland from

Scotland. Anterior to the Norse invasions the language and literature of

both were one. There is no distinction to be made, for they were common

to both countries from the time of St. Columba, and there was constant

coming and going between Scotland and Ireland. But when the Norsemen

came they effectually put a stop to this. For two centuries they kept

the kindred realms apart, and never again was the original unity

restored.

During the period of disjunction the separated parts began to travel on

different lines, and when the Viking sway ceased to sever them, the

language and literature of each had already taken on a character of its

own sufficiently divergent to keep them for ever asunder. The Book of

Deer is the first monument of this departure in Scotland, even as the

Leabhar Na h’Uidhre and _Liber Hymnorum_ are the earliest in Ireland.

The Norse invasions were thus directly responsible for the rise of the

Scottish Gaelic and our native vernacular literature as distinct from

the Irish. Had it not been for their interception there is no knowing

how long the two dialects might have continued as one.

As it was, notwithstanding the growing divergence, the written, though

not the spoken language of both countries might be regarded as still,

for the most part, the same in form till the fourteenth century. After

that they ceased to be even apparently identical, and to-day the chief

differences between the two tongues are these four:—

1. The Irish has a future in the verb, whereas Gaelic uses the present

tense to indicate futurity.

2. Inflection is fuller in written Irish than in written Gaelic.

3. In Irish (south especially) the accent remains on the end syllable,

whereas in Gaelic it is nearly always on the first.

4. In Gaelic every noun outside the _o_ declension forms the plural in

_n_, whereas in Irish _n_ is shown very rarely.

IV. Instead of the parent Irish, there was from henceforth a Norse

linguistic influence upon the language of Scotland. There can be no

doubt that the new element thus imported into the Gaelic is very

considerable. Yet this is a department of philology which has never been

adequately worked. It offers an interesting field for further research

and inquiry, and it is gratifying to know that the study of Irish-Norse

relations, in its various aspects, claims the attention of such eminent

writers as Professor Zimmer, Professor Sophus Bugge, Dr. Alexander

Bugge, Dr. Craigie of Oxford, and Miss Faraday.

We have to reckon with the fact that the Norsemen came in large numbers,

and freely intermarried with the native races, so that to-day the

inhabitants of Orkney, North-east Caithness, North and West Sutherland,

and North Lewis, differ very little in physique and general appearance

from the people of Norway and Iceland. And in Skye, Islay, and Kintyre

there is a large admixture of Viking blood, as well as in the other

Hebridean Islands, though not so marked in Mull and Jura.

As we should expect, the Norse element in the Gaelic is most in evidence

in maritime terms and place names.

As examples of the former, we have _vata_, a boat; _sgoth_, a skiff;

_birlinn_, a yacht; _sgioba_, a crew; _stiuir_, a rudder; _ailm_, a

helm; _sgod_, the sheet of the sail; _rac_, the masthoop; _stagh_, the

stay; _reang_, the rib; _tobhta_, the thwart; _tearr_, tar; _spor_, a

flint.

Then we have _eilean_ for island; _haf_, the open sea; _ob_, a

land-locked bay, as in Oban; _uig_, a creek; _aoi_, an isthmus;

_geodha_, a gully; _sgeir_, a reef; _bodha_ and _roc_, sunken rocks;

_cleit_, a cliff; _grunnd_, the bottom; _bruic_, sea-weed.

Of place names there is no lack. It has been calculated that in Lewis,

Norse are still to Gaelic names as three or four to one; in Skye as

three to two; in Islay as one to two; in Kintyre as one to four; in

Arran and the Isle of Man as one to eight.

The Minch they called Skottlandsfjord. The smaller isles were nearly all

renamed, Eriskay, Eric’s isle; Jura, deer’s isle; Pladda, flat isle;

Staffa, stave isle; Sanda, sand isle. To the larger islands the invaders

left their original names, though these were occasionally sounded in

Norse fashion, as, for example, Sgith (Skye) as Skiō with long vowel.

Personal names were also imported; Rognvald as Raonall or Rao’all,

Ragnhilda as Raonailt, Torcull, Goraidh, etc. The Latin Magnus, which

was common as a personal name in Norway, we borrowed in the Gaelic form

Manus; and such surnames as Macleod, Nicolson, Macaulay, and Macaskill

with the Celtic Mac prefixed.

Other common words of Norse derivation are _traill_, a slave; _nabuidh_,

a neighbour; _sgillinn_, a penny; _mòd_, a court of justice, meeting;

_gadhar_, a greyhound; _toraisgean_, a peat knife, half Norse, half

Gaelic; _suith_, soot; _shearradair_, towel; _mal_, rent; _gleadhraich_,

noise.

The Vikings were called _sumarlidi_, “summer wanderers,” because they

were most abroad at that season, and from this came the name once famous

in the West—“Somerled” of the Isles. To the Norse is also attributed the

insertion of _t_ in words like _struth_ for _sruth_, _stron_ for _sron_.

V. But more important even than the introduction of new words was the

influence upon the structure of the language. And competent authorities

hold that to it we must assign the main share in accelerating the decay

of inflection noticeable in the Scottish Gaelic and Manx as compared

with the Irish. The latter was not so much exposed to Norse influence as

the former. And it is very apparent that the change referred to began to

assert itself soon after the Norse had ostracised the Irish, and taken

its place as a rival language in the West, destined to influence the

local Gaelic.

It is not contended that the Gaelic writers derived any help from the

Norsemen. They were themselves the more advanced of the two. On the

other hand, the Icelandic scholar Viglisson has traced Gaelic rhymes and

measures as well as Gaelic ideas in the old Norse literature, and

Professor Zimmer even suggests that the Icelander owes to the Gael his

prose style. In the Islendinga Book, c. 1., we read that when Iceland

was first settled from Norway in the days of Harold Fairhair there were

Christian men, whom the Norsemen called Papa, but who afterwards went

away because they would not remain with the heathen, and left behind

them Irish books and croziers and bells, from which it could be seen

that they were Irishmen.[26]

VI. How far the Norse ideas have entered into the warp and woof of

Gaelic literature is perhaps the most interesting aspect of the whole

subject, and one that offers a wide field for research. It cannot yet be

said that we have sufficiently differentiated between the two sets of

legends, beliefs, and customs to be able to affirm with certainty that

such and such belong to the one race, and such and such belong to the

other. The mythologies of peoples have so much in common, so much that

seems characteristic of the thinking of the whole human race at certain

stages of its development, that many ideas and legends have no exclusive

value, and cannot be claimed as the original heritage of one people more

than another.

Yet conceptions pass from land to land and folk to folk, like an

epidemic, and become assimilated by each new race that breathes or

imbibes them, and as the Gaels have contributed to the thought of the

Norsemen, so have the Vikings in turn impressed their ideas, especially

their legends and beliefs, upon the imaginative race with whom they

mingled, and by whom they ultimately became absorbed.

When we remember that, in the opinion of the best authorities, even the

very oldest of the Gaelic sagas could hardly have been written down

before the seventh or eighth century, and that many of them are of much

later date, we can well conceive how a Norse element might enter largely

into them.

It is well known that the Lochlanners or Norsemen figure largely in the

Ossianic poems, and “it is quite evident,” says Dr. Hyde, “that most of

them, at least in the modern form in which we now have them, are

post-Norse productions.”

In the Mythological, which is really the latest in point of writing,

while the Fomorians who dwelt in Lochlann, vicious and troublesome

invaders as they were, may in their origin be conceived as none other

than the sea-powers personified—the rough chaotic tumult of the Atlantic

Ocean, against which in the west of Ireland the various settlers had to

contend, they might more literally represent the Viking rovers which

later ages had to encounter, and by whom they were so often harassed and

overcome.

In such stories as The Children of Lir, and more particularly The

Children of Tuireann, we have Gaelic examples of Norse beliefs and

superstitions. Take, for instance, shape-changing, of which there are

many illustrations in the Viking sagas. We are reminded at once of the

unhappy fate of the children of Lir, when we read in the Hrolf Kraki,

cc. 25, 26, that “King Hring of Uppdalir in Norway had a son Björn, and

when his wife died, he married a woman from Tuinmôrk. She changed her

stepson into a bear in this way. She struck him with a wolf-skin glove,

and said that he should become a fierce and cruel lair-bear, and use no

other food than the cattle of his father.” She went on to say, “Thou

shalt kill it for thy food, so much of it that it will be unexampled,

and never shalt thou get out of this spell, and this revenge shall harm

thee.”

Then it is told that the king’s cattle were killed in large numbers, as

a big and fierce grey bear began to attack them. One evening the Bondi’s

daughter (Björn’s sweetheart) happened to see this fierce bear, which

came and fondled her much. She thought she recognised in the animal the

eyes of her lover, and followed him to his den, where, strange to

relate, she saw, not the bear, but a man. And Björn, for he was no

other, told her he was a beast by day and a man by night.

As in this Norse saga we have the marriage, the stepmother, the revenge,

the striking with the wolf-skin glove, the spell, all corresponding to

the similar details in the Gaelic tale, with the exception that in the

latter the objects are usually struck by a magic wand instead of by a

wolf-skin glove. And comparing it with the story of the children of

Tuireann, Cian went into the shape of a pig, while Björn figured as a

bear.

The two Gaelic stories above referred to, though they profess to belong

to the Mythological age, centuries before Christ, were actually written

down much later than the Heroic tales. The Norse story, on the other

hand, is supposed to be laid in the sixth century A.D., and it would be

hard to say, we daresay, which originated first or found the earliest

expression in writing.

Another Viking idea which has found its way into Gaelic literature is

the belief in a Valhalla, or hall of the slain. It was held that to fall

gloriously on the field of battle secured undisputed entrance into this

heaven. In the “Aged Bard’s Wish,” an attractive poem of the Macpherson

period, we find the bard desirous of obtaining entry at death into the

hall where dwell Ossian and Daol. This conception of the future was

evidently adopted from Norse traditions, for the Gael, so far as is

known, had not originally the idea of a Valhalla. Transmigration was

more in his line. And curious was the occupation of the warriors in the

hall of the slain.

“Every day after having dressed, they put on their war clothes, and go

out into the enclosure and fight and slay each other. This is their

game; near day meal they ride home to Valhalla and sit down to drink”

(later edda, c. 40).

The unworthy and fushionless had not this bliss. Their portion was a

region cold, foggy, and cheerless. And it is thought that the author of

Adamnan’s vision may have got his cold and wet imagery of the place of

woe from the pagan invaders. St. Brendan, in his _Navigatio Brendani_, a

book well known in medieval Europe, gives a legend which is one of the

most singular products of Celtic imagination. He found Judas upon a rock

in the midst of the Polar seas. Once a week he passes a day there to

refresh himself from the fires of Hell. A cloak that he had given to a

beggar is hung before him and tempers his sufferings. As St. Brendan

lived in the middle of the sixth century the subject of the legend is

pre-Norse, and it is the heat that is represented as infernal. Dante, it

will be remembered, reserves the ice and cold for the last degree of

torment in the Inferno. And of Highland bards, Duncan Macrae, David

Mackellar, and others, down to the eighteenth century, have introduced

the same idea. Indeed, it has even been hinted that the tendency of the

Highland preacher to dwell upon the sterner aspects of our faith may

well be due to the lingering influence of the northern paganism. But

this we think rather far-fetched and unlikely, for other less ancient

influences, local and potent, have been at work to depress the outlook

of the Gael.

The Norseman, however, is still with us in hidden and often unknown

corners of our life, our literature, and our history. Perhaps to him we

owe our continuance as a race to this day. He has carried with him over

the wave the breath of freedom and strenuous endeavour, and infused them

into the life of this great nation, helping Britain to build up and

maintain a world-wide empire and supremacy upon the seas.

But judging his influence upon Gaelic literature solely, we cannot say

that, so far as it is known, it was of a helpful or even far-reaching

kind. In the first shock of invasion it would rather seem to have been

ruinous and deleterious in its effects, arresting development and

dispersing the rising literary activity.

But what if it could be proved by further research that while distinctly

hostile to the ecclesiastical order in all its manifestations and

productions, and therefore its books, the appearance of the Norsemen in

these islands revived the interest in the native sagas, so that the

scribes were encouraged to write them down and preserve them for future

ages. Then verily it might with strictest veracity be said that to the

Vikings we owe the cream of our literature, for it is a recognised fact

that “the sagas and historic tales, and the poetry that is mingled with

them, are of far greater importance from a purely literary point of

view” than all the ecclesiastical transcriptions and contributions of

the period. But this is a suggestion we offer as not at all improbable,

and, like the whole subject of Norse influence, is worthy of a fuller

investigation than any it has yet received.

CHAPTER XII

THE FOUR ANCIENT BOOKS OF WALES

The _Myvyrian Archaiology_—Oldest texts—The Black Book of

Caermarthen—The Book of Aneurin—The Book of Taliessin—The Red Book

of Hergest—Gildas and Nennius—The ancient Laws and Institutes—A

great dialectic battle—The princes of song—“I Yscolan”—A Welsh

Ossianic poem—Characteristics of the early poetry—The medieval

romances—Their history—Modern translations of the Mabinogion—Two

classes of tales—The legend of Taliessin—His curious odes—Kilhwch

and Olwen—The Lady of the Fountain—Three striking features of the

Arthurian romances—Their influence on Western Europe.

The arrival of James Macpherson marks a great moment in the history of

Celtic literature. It was the signal for a general resurrection. It

would seem as if he sounded the trumpet, and the graves of ancient MSS.

were opened, the books were read, and the dead were judged out of the

things that were written in them.

This is true not only of the Highland and Irish barderie, but also of

the poetry of Wales. The sudden popularity of the Ossianic publications

led to a desire on the part of the Welsh to show that they also were in

possession of a body of native poems not less interesting, and with far

better claims, as they thought, to authenticity. It is significant to

note that though Edward Lhuyd gave an account of the Welsh MSS. in the

_Archæologica Britannica_ as early as 1707, none of the poems were

printed till the era of Macpherson. His famous _Fragments of Ancient

Poetry Collected in the Highlands of Scotland_, 1760, was soon followed

by a succession of rival publications from the sister country, such as

_Specimens of the Poetry of the Ancient Welsh Bards_, 1764; _Musical and

Poetical Relics of the Welsh Bards_, 1784; “Poems of Taliessin,” in the

_Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1789–90; _The Heroic Elegies and other Pieces of

Llywarch Hên_, 1792, and in the year 1801 the text of the whole of the

poems. This latter figures as the now oft-quoted _Myvyrian Archaiology

of Wales_, containing all the chief productions of Welsh literature, and

was published in 1801–1807 by Owen Jones, a wealthy furrier in Thames

Street, London. Interested scholars, among them Aneurin Owen, Thomas

Price, William Rees, and John Jones set themselves to finish the work of

the Myvyrian peasant.

There was no lack of venerable MSS. from which to draw, for many

transcripts had been made from time to time in the past. But the sources

to which we must go for the oldest texts are mainly four, known as _The

Four Ancient Books of Wales_, namely:—

The Black Book of Caermarthen.

The Book of Aneurin.

The Book of Taliessin.

The Red Book of Hergest.

The Black Book of Caermarthen is the oldest. It is a MS. of the twelfth

century in the Hengwrt collection, and contains only poems. It consists

of fifty-four folios of parchment in small quarto, with illuminated

capitals. There are four different handwritings, apparently of the same

period, with the exception of a few insertions made by a subsequent

writer. The MS. belonged originally to the six black Canons of the

priory of Caermarthen. Hence the name. After the dissolution of that

religious house at the Reformation, it passed into the hands of Sir John

Price, a native of Brecnockshire, and before the year 1658 was in the

Hengwrt collection. Last century it changed hands again, when the whole

of the latter most valuable collection was bequeathed to W. W. E. Wynne,

Esq., of Peniarth.

The Book of Aneurin, second in point of antiquity, belongs to the

thirteenth century. It also is a small quarto, consisting of nineteen

folios of parchment. Here we have, perhaps, the most ancient copy now

extant of that truly venerable and illustrious relic of Welsh poetry

called the “Gododin,” as well as the four Gorchanau, not quite so old.

The capitals which mark the beginning of the stanzas are coloured

alternately red and green. This literary monument belonged formerly to

the Hengwrt collection, but in more recent times was bought from Mrs.

Powell of Abergavenny by Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bart., of Middle Hill.

The Book of Taliessin, third in order, is still in the same collection.

A small quarto MS. written on vellum, in one hand throughout, of the

early fourteenth century, it consists now of thirty-eight leaves, and

wants the outer page both at the beginning and at the end. Hence it

begins in the middle of one poem and ends in that of another.

The last, but certainly not the least of this wonderful series, is the

Red Book of Hergest in Jesus College, Oxford. It is a thick folio

containing 360 leaves of vellum, and has been written at different times

from the early part of the fourteenth century till the middle of the

fifteenth. From this valuable codex Lady Charlotte Guest got eleven of

her far-famed stories.

The book takes its name from Hergest Court, a seat of the Vaughans, near

Knighton, Radnorshire, and before it was finally gifted to Jesus College

in 1701, it passed through several hands.

It is written in double columns, in three different handwritings. There

is reason to infer that it was begun in 1318 at the very latest, a date

given in one of the columns, and that it was finished in 1454. The book

is an enormous compilation of Welsh compositions in prose and verse, of

all the periods from the sixth century till the middle of the fifteenth.

Embellished lately in a magnificent binding of red morocco with steel

clasps, and preciously preserved in a case, it is now shown as one of

the curiosities of Oxford.

If we except this codex and others in Jesus College, and those in the

British Museum, most of the Welsh MSS. are in private hands. They used

to belong to the religious institutions, but when these were done away

with in the reign of Henry VIII., the ancient documents were dispersed.

Various leading families of Wales afterwards made collections, thus

helping to preserve the MSS. from destruction, but more than one of

these collections have since been destroyed by fire.

It must be understood that though the four great books of poetry and

romance here considered have been called _The Four Ancient Books of

Wales_, they are not the only compositions of a remote origin. For there

are three other notable works represented in very old MSS. These are,

first, the history and epistle of Gildas, forming one Latin treatise on

the early history of the country, and written by him in the year 560. Of

this work there have been three MSS. The oldest perished, but not before

a printed copy had been taken of it in 1568. The other two, one of the

thirteenth and the other of the fourteenth century, are still extant in

the public library of Cambridge.

Next to this very ancient history of Gildas is that of Nennius—an

edition of the _History of the Britons_ made by him in 858. There are

three MSS. extant of this venerable book dating as early as the tenth

century—one in the Vatican, one in Paris, and one in the British Museum.

Not less celebrated is the great native compilation entitled _The

Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales_. The oldest of them, namely, The

Laws of Howeldda, belong to the tenth century.

Wales thus possesses a literature which for antiquity carries us back as

far as the age of St. Columba. In the sixth century, when the Abbot of

Iona was opening the page of poetic history in Scotland, the little land

in the west had many distinguished bards, such as Aneurin, Taliessin,

Llywarch Hên, Myrddin, Kian, Talhaiarn. For the preservation of their

pieces we are mainly indebted to _The Four Ancient Books_.

As in the case of the Ossianic compositions, a great dialectic battle

was fought over the origin of these Cymric poems, some, such as Malcolm

Laing and John Pinkerton, denying, and others affirming their antiquity,

but the outcome of the controversy has been to establish their genuine

authenticity. While it is freely admitted by the best critics that many

of the pieces traditionally attributed to Taliessin are not older than

the twelfth century, no one now disputes that Aneurin, Taliessin,

Llywarch Hên, and Myrddin were famous bards who lived and composed in

the sixth century, and that we have some of their poems preserved in the

above-mentioned books with the exception, perhaps, of Myrddin’s. The

honour of the title “King of the bards” lies between the first two, both

of whom have been so designated. Stephens, in his _Literature of the

Cymry_, gives the palm to Aneurin. His great poem, the “Gododin,” has

attracted much attention on account of its peculiar character and

recognised historic value. It is practically divided into two parts by

stanza forty-five, where the author speaks in his own name. The first

part is consistent throughout, and Dr. Skene regards it as the original,

as distinguished from the second, which may be a later continuation made

up of other incidents. The poem is found in the Book of Aneurin, and

various theories have been advanced as to the locality and date of the

battle it treats of. One of these assumed that the subject was a

struggle between the tribe Ottadeni and the Saxons in the sixth century.

Another, that it referred, on the contrary, to the traditional slaughter

of the British chiefs at Stonehenge by Hengest in “The Plot of the Long

Knives.” A third would find in it the battle mentioned by Bede as having

been fought between Aidan, King of the Scots of Dalriada, and Ethelfrid,

King of Northumbria, in 603. A fourth theory suggests _that_ between

Oswy and Penda. But the name of the Scottish Donald Brec emerges in the

story, “A phen dyvynwal vrych brein ae cnoyn,” which in English means,

“And the head of Donald Brec the ravens gnawed it.” The scene of the

struggle appears to have been Catraeth and Gododin. And it is

interesting to note that one of the editors of the _Myvyrian

Archaiology_ (Mr. Edward Williams) locates it in Roxburghshire, as the

battle fought between the Cymry and Saxons in 570. Villemarqué, on the

other hand, in his, _Poems des Bardes Bretons_, places the contest on

the banks of the Calder in Lanarkshire in 578. While Dr. Skene is

equally sure that the requirements of the case are met “in that part of

Scotland where Lothian meets Stirlingshire in the two districts of

Gododin and Catraeth, both washed by the sea of the Firth of Forth, and

where the great Roman wall terminates at Caredin, or the Fort of

Eidinn.”

The style of the poem may be gleaned from the following rendering:—

A grievous descent was made on his native place,

The price of mead in the hall, and the feast of wine;

His blades were scattered about between two armies;

Illustrious was the Knight in front of Gododin,

Eithinyn the renowned, an ardent spirit the bull of conflict.

A grievous descent was made in front of the extended riches,

The army dispersed with trailing shields—

A shivered shield before the herd of the roaring Beli,

A dwarf from the bloody field hastened to the fence;

On our part there came a hoary-headed man to take counsel

On a prancing steed bearing a message from the golden-torqued leader.

Twrch proposed a compact in front of the destructive course,

Worthy was the shout of refusal.

We cried, Let Heaven be our protection;

Let his compact be that he should be prostrated by the spear in battle.

The warriors of the far-famed Alclud

Would not contend without prostrating his host to the ground.

Like Ossian, Aneurin appears to have been a warrior-bard. Where he

speaks of himself he says:—

I am not headstrong and petulant.

I will not avenge myself on him who drives me.

I will not laugh in derision.

Under foot for a while,

My knee is stretched,

My hands are bound

In the earthen house,

With an iron chain

Around my two knees.

Yet of the mead from the horn,

And of the men of Catraeth,

I, Aneurin, will compose,

As Taliessin knows,

An elaborate song

Or a strain to Gododin

Before the dawn of the brightest day.

Taliessin, on the other hand, was no warrior, simply a bard. Several of

his pieces possess more real poetry than any part of the “Gododin.” As

Stephens has remarked, they show more skill in composition, finer ideas,

bolder images, and more intense passion than any poet of the same age.

There are seventy-seven pieces attributed to him, twelve of which, this

critic thinks, may be genuine, and as old as the sixth century; among

these the “Battle of Gwenystrad,” the “Battle of Argoed Llwyvain,” the

“Battle of Dyffryn Gwarant,” and some of the Gorchanau. In after life

Taliessin became the bard of Urien Rheged, to whom and to his son Owain

his chief poems are addressed. These contain some passages of exquisite

beauty.

Llywarch Hên does not rival the other two as a prince of song, yet his

poems are not lacking in poetic excellence. They are undoubtedly old,

and valuable from his descriptions of manners, and the incidental

allusions he makes that are strikingly illustrative of the age, and all

the more interesting because we have so few other authorities to

enlighten us as to its manners. His forte lay not so much in heroic

poetry as in elegies and pathetic lamentations. Of the poems attributed

to him in the Red Book of Hergest the following is a specimen:—

Sitting high upon a hill, battle inclined is

My mind, and it does not impel me onward.

Short is my journey, my tenement is laid waste.

Sharp is the gale, it is bare punishment to live,

When the trees array themselves in gay colours

Of summer, violently ill I am this day.

I am no hunter, I keep no animal of the chase,

I cannot move about;

As long as it pleases the cuckoo, let her sing.

The loud-voiced cuckoo sings with the dawn,

Her melodious notes in the dales of Cuawg;

Better is the lavisher than the miser.

At Aber Cuawg the cuckoos sing

On the blossom covered branches;

The loud-voiced cuckoo, let her sing awhile.

At Aber Cuawg the cuckoos sing,

On the blossom covered branches;

Woe to the sick that hears their contented notes.

At Aber Cuawg the cuckoos sing,

The recollection in my mind;

There are that hear them that will not hear them again.

Have I not listened to the cuckoo on the ivied tree?

Did not my shield hang down?

What I loved is but vexation; what I loved is no more.

In such doleful strains the bard continues his parable. The sad note of

the Gael is not lacking in him.

Myrddin is the fourth great poet of the sixth century. Various poems are

reputed his in the _Myvyrian Archaiology_, but they are all probably of

a much later date, as Stephens and others think. One of the most

interesting to us of these traditional Myrddin pieces is the “I

Yscolan.” It appears in the Black Book of Caermarthen. Yscolan is

represented as having held a dialogue with Myrddin. To have done so he

must have lived in the sixth century. Welsh writers, like Davies and

Stephens, identify the name as St. Colan or Columba. “Instead of being

unknown to the Cymry of the Middle Ages, no person was better known than

Yscolan,” says Stephens. From their view Dr. Skene dissents, and

Professor Rhys also holds it utterly impossible that Yscolan was St.

Columba, as the two names cannot be connected, _Columba_ being in Welsh

_Cwlum_. It is not maintained by any of these critics that the poem, as

it stands, is anything like so old as the period of Myrddin. But older

it evidently is than the time of Edward I., and this shows, as the Welsh

writers affirm, the existence among the bards, from an early date, of a

tradition that St. Columba had, in his zeal for Christianity, destroyed

some druidic books. This tradition got mixed up with a later one about

the books of Cambria, which had been sent to the White Tower of London

for security, having been destroyed there by some Vandal of an Yscolan,

who must have lived after the twelfth century.

But whoever the Yscolan of the dialogue was, Myrddin assails him thus

(Stephens’ version):—

Black is thy horse, and black thy cap,

Black thy head, and black thyself,

Black-headed man, art thou Yscolan?

And Yscolan answers:—

I am Yscolan the Scholar,

Light is my Scottish knowledge.

My grief is incurable for making the ruler take offence[27] at thee.

For having burnt a church,[28] destroyed the cattle of a school,

And caused a book to be drowned,

I feel my penance to be heavy.

Creator of all creations,

And greatest of all supporters,

Forgive me my fault.

A full year I have been

At Bangor on the pole of a weir.

Consider thou my sufferings from sea-worms.

If I had known as well as I now do

How clearly the wind blows upon the sprigs of the waving wood,

I should not have done what I did.

Had he known of certain proofs of druidic excellence he would have

refrained. Though the tradition of St. Columba having destroyed some

pagan books may have actually been current among the Welsh bards, it is

very unlikely that he ever met Myrddin. As Dr. Skene suggests, the black

Yscolan may well have been one of the black Canons of Caermarthen

connected with some book-episode in the Tower. For we know from Adamnan

that the dress of Columba was white, and the above sketch hardly fits in

with his history. It is interesting to note that in the book called

Taliessin, there is “The Death-song of Corroi, son of Dayry,” curiously

enough the only specimen of a Welsh Ossianic poem which has come down to

us. It tells the story of Curigh of Munster; and Cuchulinn, the famous

hero of Ulster:—

Tales will be known to me from sky to earth

Of the contention of Corroi and Cocholyn,

Numerous their tumults about their borders.

This poem is fully noticed by Dr. Skene in his edition of the _Book of

the Dean of Lismore_, p. 141.

Taking the Welsh poems as a whole, the difficulty has always been to

differentiate between the historical and the mythological. They are

usually so obscure in themselves, especially the so-called mythological

ones, that some think there lurks in them a system of mystical and

semi-pagan philosophy handed down from the Druids, and which our age

cannot fathom.

Others think that they are nothing but the wild and extravagant

vapourings of bards of the twelfth and subsequent centuries. Referring

to this, Dr. Skene wrote in his edition of the poems, and translations

of the poems, in _The Four Ancient Books of Wales_, vol. i. pp. 15, 16:—

I consider that the true value of these poems is a problem which has

still to be solved. Whether they are genuine works of the bards whose

names they bear, or whether they are the production of a later age, I

do not believe that they contain any such system of Druidism or

Neo-Druidism as Davies, Herbert, and others attempt to find in them,

nor do I think that their authors wrote, and the compilers of these

ancient MSS. took the pains to transcribe, century after century, what

was a mere farago of nonsense and of no historical or literary value.

I think that these poems have a meaning, and that, both in connection

with the history and literature of Wales, that meaning is worth

finding out; and I think further, that if they were subjected to a

just and candid criticism, we ought to be able to ascertain their true

place and value in the literature of Wales.

Renan, on the other hand, held that bardism lasted into the heart of the

Middle Ages under the form of a secret doctrine, with a conventional

language and symbols almost wholly derived from the solar divinity of

Arthur. “This,” he says, “may be termed Neo-Druidism, a kind of Druidism

subtilised and reformed on the model of Christianity, which may be seen

growing more and more obscure and mysterious until the moment of its

total disappearance.”

One remarkable fact in connection with these early poems is how few of

them contain any notice of Arthur. Out of the whole number there are

only five which mention him at all, and then it is the historical

Arthur, the Guledig, to whom the defence of the wall was entrusted, and

who fought the twelve battles in the north, perishing at Camlan.

For accounts of the ideal Arthur we need to turn to the medieval

romances, and this is the part of Welsh literature which has most

fascinated the world and influenced the literatures of Europe. It is

well known how there arose on the Continent in the twelfth and

thirteenth centuries a body of Romance, popular in England, France,

Germany, Norway, Sweden, and even Iceland, down to the Reformation, and

it is equally well known that the origin of these tales may be traced to

Wales through the north-west of France—the modern Brittany.

First appeared the _Historia Britonum_ of Gruffydd ap Arthur, commonly

known as Geoffrey of Monmouth, who was a Welsh priest, born in 1128. In

this book he professed to have translated into Latin from an ancient

Welsh MS. the history of Britain from the days when the fabulous Brut,

the great-grandson of Aeneas, landed on its shores, down through the

whole period of King Arthur and his Round Table to Cadwaladr, a Cymric

king who died in 689. From the Latin the stories were put into French

verse by Gaimar, and getting to France they fell into the hands of

Robert Wace, a native of Jersey (and Norman trouvère), who, with the

help of other independent sources of information, made them into a poem

in 1155, which he called the “Brut.”

In this form the Romance found its way back to England, and about 1205

was told for the first time in English verse by Layamon, an English

priest who dwelt on the banks of the upper Severn, and who was thus,

besides being indebted to Wace, near enough the original source to have

access to the great body of Welsh literature then current on the

subject.

Through these, and French authors, the Cymric tales soon passed to other

Continental lands, and since then have been retouched, paraphrased, and

amplified in all the languages of Europe. They belong to the age, and

breathe the spirit of chivalry.

In modern times these romances have again attracted attention, and

become famous through the publication of Lady Charlotte Guest’s English

translations of the Mabinogion, 1st edition, 1837–49, and reprint, 1877;

Vicomte de la Villemarqué’s French translations of the Welsh poems and

Round Table romances in 1841 and subsequently; and later still,

Professor Loth of Rennes’ translation of the Mabinogion.

As in the case of the Gaelic sagas, traditions had been floating among

the Welsh people for hundreds of years, and when the general awakening

of the twelfth century took place, a natural desire sprung up to have

these collected, arranged, and written down. The Mabinogion were thus

originally tales penned to be repeated at the fireside, to while away

the time of young chieftains and their following, but ultimately they

reacted very powerfully upon the national literature and character. The

name Mabinogion was not at first so generally applied to all the tales

as it is to-day. Only four were so designated.

In point of antiquity these tales sort out into two distinct

classes,—one older, the other less ancient. The latter celebrate heroes

of the Arthurian cycle, and are full of ecclesiastical terms and of

allusions to Norman customs, manners, arts, arms, and luxuries. The

former refer to persons and events of an earlier period, are more

mythological, and contain very few of these later allusions. As

Professor Rhys[29] thinks, they are essentially Goidelic stories, and

their machinery is magic, not the laws of chivalry.

To the older class belong—

The Tale of Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed.

The Tale of Branwen, daughter of Llyr.

The Tale of Manawyddan, the son of Llyr.

The Tale of Math, son of Mathonwy.

These only are the Mabinogion.

The Contention of Llud and Llevelys.

The Story of Kilhwch and Olwen.

The Dream of Rhonabwy.

This last Professor Rhys regards as a hash or after-composition, in

spite of the respectability of the MS.

To the later class—

The Tale of the Lady of the Fountain.

The Story of Peredur, son of Evrawc.

The Story of Geraint, son of Erbin.

The Dream of Macsen Gudelig.

And to these eleven, in her third volume published in 1849, Lady

Charlotte Guest added the Hanes Taliessin, compiled in the fourteenth

century, but, according to Ernest Renan, belonging to the more ancient

of the two classes above mentioned. The great beauty, originality, and

antique flavour of these stories may here be exhibited by means of a few

characteristic extracts.

And the first to be given is from the legend of Taliessin.

“In times past (it begins) there lived in Penllyn a man of gentle

lineage, named Tegid Voel, and his dwelling was in the midst of the lake

Tegid, and his wife was called Caridwen. And there was born to him of

his wife a son named Morvran at Tegid, and also a daughter named

Creirwy, the fairest maiden in the world was she; and they had a

brother, the most ill-favoured man in the world, Avagddu. Now Caridwen

his mother thought that he was not likely to be admitted among men of

noble birth by reason of his ugliness, unless he had some exalted merits

or knowledge. For it was in the beginning of Arthur’s time and of the

Round Table.

“So she resolved, according to the arts of the books of Fferyllt, to

boil a cauldron of Inspiration and Science for her son, that his

reception might be honourable, because of his knowledge of the mysteries

of the future state of the world.

“Then she began to boil the cauldron, which, from the beginning of its

boiling, might not cease to boil for a year and a day, until three

blessed drops were obtained of the Grace of Inspiration.

“And she put Gwion Bach, the son of Gwreang of Llanfair in Caereinion in

Powys, to stir the cauldron, and a blind man named Morda to kindle the

fire beneath it, and she charged them that they should not suffer it to

cease boiling for the space of a year and a day. And she herself,

according to the books of the astronomers, and in planetary hours,

gathered every day of all charm-bearing herbs. And one day towards the

end of the year, as Caridwen was culling plants and making incantations,

it chanced that three drops of the charmed liquor flew out of the

cauldron and fell upon the finger of Gwion Bach. And by reason of their

great heat he put his finger to his mouth, and the instant he put these

marvel-working drops into his mouth he foresaw everything that was to

come, and perceived that his chief care must be to guard against the

wiles of Caridwen, for vast was her skill.

“And in very great fear he fled towards his own land, and the cauldron

burst in two, because all the liquor within it, except the three

charm-bearing drops, was poisonous, so that the horses of Gwyddno

Garanhir were poisoned by the water of the stream into which the liquor

of the cauldron ran, and the confluence of that stream was called the

Poison of the Horses of Gwyddno from that time forth.

“Thereupon came in Caridwen, and saw all the toil of the whole year

lost. And she seized a billet of wood and struck the blind Morda on the

head until one of his eyes fell out upon his cheek. And he said,

‘Wrongfully hast thou disfigured me, for I am innocent. Thy loss was not

because of me.’

“‘Thou speakest truth,’ said Caridwen; ‘it was Gwion Bach who robbed

me.’

“And she went forth after him running. And he saw her and changed

himself into a hare and fled.

“But she changed herself into a greyhound, and turned him. And he ran

towards a river and became a fish. And she in the form of an otter-bitch

chased him under the water until he was fain to turn himself into a bird

of the air. She as a hawk followed him, and gave him no rest in the sky,

and just as she was about to stoop upon him, and he was in fear of

death, he espied a heap of winnowed wheat on the floor of a barn, and he

dropped among the wheat and turned himself into one of the grains. Then

she transferred herself into a high-crested black hen, and went to the

wheat and scratched it with her feet, and found him out and swallowed

him, and, as the story says, she bore him nine months, and when she was

delivered of him she could not find it in her heart to kill him, by

reason of his beauty. So she wrapped him in a leathern bag, and cast him

into the sea, to the mercy of God, on the 29th day of April.”

And, Moses-like, was Taliessin afterwards found in the Weir of Gwyddno

by that prince’s only son Elphin, who took him to the house of his

father. Some of the extraordinary tales which this prodigy of a boy told

in verse are given, and it is related how he bewitched the bards of King

Mælgron by pouting out his lips after them, and playing “Blerwm, blerwm”

with his finger upon his lips as they went to court. His own answers to

the king are always in song. Among the curious odes that he sang are

those known as—

The Excellence of the Bards.

The Reproof of the Bards.

The Spite of the Bards.

One of the Four Pillars of Song.

This latter begins:—

The Almighty made

Down the Hebron Vale,

With his plastic hands

Adam’s fair form.

And five hundred years,

Void of any help,

There he remained and lay

Without a soul.

He again did form,

In calm paradise,

From a left side rib,

Bliss-throbbing Eve.

Seven hours they were

The Orchard keeping,

Till Satan brought strife

With wiles from Hell.

Thence were they driven,

Cold and shivering,

To gain their living

Into this world, etc.

Of the story of Kilhwch and Olwen, which has a particularly antique

character, Renan felicitously says that by its entirely primitive

aspect, by the part played in it by the wild boar in conformity to the

spirit of Celtic mythology, by the wholly supernatural and magical

character of the narration, by innumerable allusions, the sense of which

escapes us, it forms a cycle by itself. Passing by the unique adventures

of Kilhwch, he quotes as a typical sample the remarkable passage on the

finding of Mabon, where his followers said unto Arthur, “Lord, go thou

home; thou canst not proceed with thy host in quest of such small

adventures as these,” and Arthur commissions Gwrhyr, because he knew all

languages, and was familiar with those of the birds and the beasts, to

accompany others, whom he named, in search of the lost cousin. They went

forward first to the ousel of Cilgwi, and got its weird and quaint

answer, then to the stag of Redynvre. From him to the owl of Cwm

Cawlwyd, to the eagle of Gwern Abwy, and, lastly, to the salmon of Llyn

Llyw. Each tells its tale, and passes them on to the next. The speeches

of these ancient denizens of the land are very old-fashioned and

curious, typical of all the primitive extravagance of the Celtic

imagination.

But it is in tales like the “Lady of the Fountain” and “Peredur” that we

tap the later, full-blown, and most characteristic Arthurian romance.

The former begins: “King Arthur was at Caerlleon upon Usk; and one day

he sat in his chamber, and with him were Owain, the son of Urien, and

Kynon, the son of Clydno, and Kai, the son of Kyner, and Gwenhwyvar and

her handmaidens at needlework by the window. And if it should be said

that there was a porter at Arthur’s palace, there was none. Glewlwyd

Gavaelvawr was there, acting as porter to welcome guests and strangers,

and to receive them with honour, and to inform them of the manners and

customs of the court; and to direct those who came to the hall or to the

presence chamber, and those who came to take up their lodgings.

“In the centre of the chamber King Arthur sat upon a seat of green

rushes, over which was spread a covering of flame-coloured satin, and a

cushion of red satin was under his elbow. Then Arthur spoke, ‘If I

thought you would not disparage me,’ said he, ‘I would sleep while I

wait for my repast; and you can entertain one another with relating

tales, and can obtain a flagon of mead and some meat from Kai.’ And the

king went to sleep.”

Kynon tells a tale: “I was the only son of my mother and father, and I

was exceedingly aspiring, and my daring was very great. I thought there

was no enterprise in the world too mighty for me, and after I had

achieved all the adventures in my own country, I equipped myself and set

forth to journey through deserts and distant regions. And at length it

chanced that I came to the fairest valley in the world, wherein were

trees of equal growth, and a river ran through the valley, and a path by

the side of the river. And I followed the path until midday, and

continued my journey along the remainder of the valley until the

evening, and at the extremity of the plain I came to a large and

lustrous castle, at the foot of which was a torrent. And I approached

the castle, and there I beheld two youths.”

He describes the wonderful dress of these, and of a man in the prime of

life clad in a robe and a mantle of yellow satin with band of gold lace,

shoes of variegated leather fastened by two bosses of gold. This man

went with him towards the castle. “And there I saw four-and-twenty

damsels,” he says, “embroidering satin at a window. And this I tell

thee, Kai, that the least fair of them was fairer than the fairest maid

thou hast ever beheld in the island of Britain, and the least lovely of

them was more lovely than Gwenhwyvar, the wife of Arthur, when she has

appeared loveliest at the offering on the day of the Nativity or at the

feast of Easter. They rose up at my coming, and six of them took my

horse and divested me of my armour; and six others took my arms and

washed them in a vessel until they were perfectly bright. And the third

six spread cloths upon the table and prepared meat. And the fourth six

took off my soiled garments, and placed others upon me, namely, an under

vest and a doublet of fine linen, and a robe and a surcoat, and a mantle

of yellow satin with a broad gold band upon the mantle, and they placed

cushions both beneath and around me, with coverings of red linen, and I

sat down. Now, the six maidens who had taken my horse unharnessed him as

well as if they had been the best squires in the Island of Britain.

Then, behold, they brought bowls of silver wherein was water to wash,

and towels of linen, some green and some white; and I washed, and in a

little while the man sat down to the table, and I sat down next to him,

and below me sat all the maidens except those who waited on me.”

After he divulged the object of his journey, the host directed him to a

black man of great stature on the top of a mound, ill favoured, with but

one foot, one eye in the middle of his forehead, a club of iron, and a

thousand wild animals grazing around him.

Next day Kynon set out and found this giant. And when I told him, he

says, “who I was and what I sought, he directed me. ‘Take,’ said he,

‘that path that leads towards the head of the glade, and ascend the

wooden steep until thou comest to the summit; and there thou wilt find

an open space like to a large valley, and in the midst of it a tall

tree, whose branches are greener than the greenest pinetrees. Under this

tree is a fountain, and by the side of the fountain a marble slab, and

in the marble slab a silver bowl attached by a chain of silver, so that

it may not be carried away. Take the bowl and throw a bowlful of water

upon the slab, and thou wilt hear a mighty peal of thunder, so that thou

wilt think that heaven and earth are trembling with fury. With the

thunder there will come a shower so severe that it will be scarce

possible for thee to endure it and live. And the shower will be of

hailstones. And after the shower the weather will become fair, but every

leaf that was upon the tree will have been carried away by the shower.

Then a flight of birds will come and alight upon the tree, and in thine

own country thou didst never hear a strain so sweet as that which they

will sing. And at the moment thou art most delighted with the song of

the birds thou wilt hear a murmuring and complaining coming towards thee

along the valley. And thou wilt see a knight upon a coalblack horse,

clothed in black velvet, and with a pennon of black linen upon his

lance; and he will ride unto thee to encounter thee with the utmost

speed. If thou fleest from him he will overtake thee, and if thou

abidest there, as sure as thou art a mounted knight he will leave thee

on foot, and if thou dost not find trouble in that adventure thou

needest not seek it during the rest of thy life.’”

In these tales the principal part belongs to the women, and here it is

the Lady of the Fountain. In reading the romances we instantly find

ourselves on the top wave of chivalry. Three things strike the modern

reader.

First, the ideal here presented of King Arthur and his Queen Gwenhwyvar,

the pure and homely atmosphere of their Court in that wild and barbarian

age, and the sterling qualities and integrity of the Knights of the

Round Table. Each fights not for any national cause, but to show his

personal excellence and satisfy his taste for adventure. It is an epic

creation representing the dream of medieval times.

Second, not less surprising to us is the _sangfroid_ with which the

warriors carry out their adventures, the supreme indifference to danger,

or to the pain and death they inflict when they set to, to try each

other’s mettle. Knight attacks knight for no other reason than that he

is superior in prowess to himself, and he will risk his life any day to

get the mastery over a rival in arms. They reck nothing of sword cuts.

Enough for them that it is in accordance with the laws of chivalry.

Third, and perhaps most wonderful of all, is the delicacy of the

feminine feeling breathed in these romances. There is nothing sensual in

the love here portrayed. It is angelic. Never an impropriety or gross

word is to be met with in all these pages, never a prurient suggestion

for all the roughness of that rude age. Women figure as divine, the most

charming creatures in the world, to protect whose honour and win whose

love and esteem, danger and even death are freely braved. This was a new

element introduced into European literature—the creation of woman’s

character and the place given her in chivalry. “Nearly all the types of

womankind known to the Middle Ages,—Guinevere, Iseult, Enid,”—says

Renan, “are derived from Arthur’s court.”

The influence of these tales upon the literature, the taste, the social

life of the whole of Western Europe has been immense, and they are still

as fresh and enchanting to the intelligent reader as any Arabian Nights’

Entertainment.

Lady Charlotte Guest’s literary monument is for English readers the

standard classic. There we find a charming translation with luminous

notes of these famous Mabinogion, a collection which Renan has called

“the pearl of Gaelic literature, the completest expression of the Cymric

genius,” and for the early Welsh poetry, both in the original and in

translation, we have the sumptuous edition of Dr. Skene, culled from

_The Four Ancient Books of Wales_, to delight us. The poetry and romance

of the Cymry are really two literatures essentially distinct from each

other. Springing from the same soil, each reflects in its own way the

same national character which had so much in common with that of our own

ancient Gaelic ancestry, so that we feel to-day with regard to that long

past, that “distance only lends enchantment to the view.”

CHAPTER XIII

CELTIC LITERARY REVIVALS

Sixth century awakening throughout Celtdom—Illustrious

names—Brittany’s wonderful cycle of song—Charming examples—Dearth

of tenth century—A strange trait of Celtic life—The brilliant

medieval renaissance—Output of Ireland, Wales, and Brittany—The

Cornish dramas—Last speaker of that dialect—Period of inactivity

and decline—Recrudescence—1745–1800 the high-water mark of

Highland production—A galaxy of poets—Splendid lyrical

outburst—New Ossianic cycle—Seana Dana—Caledonian bards—The Welsh

Eisteddfod—Latest Celtic renaissance—Some characteristic features,

results, manifestations—Antiquity, thou wondrous charm!

There comes a time in the history of races when, passing from simplicity

to reflection, their deepest nature finds expression in some form of

literature. That time for the Celtic people has been the late fifth, but

more especially the sixth century of our era. And the remarkable fact

confronts us then of a simultaneous poetic awakening in all the chief

groups into which the Celtic remnant had been divided. Ireland,

Scotland, Wales, and Brittany were all involved in this primal literary

activity.

A most curious phenomenon to contemplate is this racial renaissance.

When the great Celtic empire had crumbled, and its defeated fragments

were driven to their last resorts on the outmost confines of Europe,

vanquished by the alien who kept them at bay, suddenly the sundered

remnants burst into song. Plaintive and sad for the most part has been

this utterance, but full of the wealth of sentiment, fancy, and old-time

peculiarities of conception so characteristic of this ancient people.

St. Patrick, St. Sechnall, Dubthach, Fiacc, Dallan Forgaill, and others,

inaugurated the new time in Ireland; St. Columba and his following

accomplished a similar transition for Scotland, opening the pages of

literary history with beautiful hymns and lyrics, which have continued

to this day. In Wales the pregnant sixth century which gave us

Columcille was _the_ great age of bardic literature—the age of such

princes of poetry as Aneurin, Taliessin, Llywarch Hên, and Myrddin.

These are among the most illustrious names of the Celtic past. And in

Brittany the same period is believed to have produced that wonderful

cycle of song, some of which has been taken down from oral recitation so

late as last century by the learned and enthusiastic M. de

Villemarqué,[30] the Macpherson of Brittany, and published in his

delightful _Barzaz-Breiz, Chants populaires de la Bretagne_, a number of

which Mr. Tom Taylor has rendered into English. Those entitled—

The Wine of the Gauls,

The Prediction of Gwenc’hlan,

The Lord Nann and the Fairy,

The March of Arthur,

The Plague of Elliant,

The Drowning of Kaer-Is—

are held to belong to the period with which we are dealing, and to have

been in existence prior at least to the close of the sixth century. They

are all distinguished by the presence of alliteration as well as rhyme,

by a more or less complete division into triplets, like the ancient

Welsh triads, as well as by a distinctly archaic impress in the manners

described, and the feelings of the singer.

The names of the authors have not come down to us, as in the other three

countries, but, having already quoted specimens of the fifth and sixth

century poetry of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, it might not be

uninteresting now to give characteristic examples of the early

compositions of Brittany.

The Wine of the Gauls is undoubtedly ancient, so ancient indeed, that

Part II. is regarded as a fragment of the song that accompanied the old

Celtic sword-dance in honour of the sun. It runs thus:—

Blood wine and glee

Sun to thee—

Blood wine and glee.

Fire! Fire! steel, oh! steel!

Fire! fire! steel and fire.

Oak! Oak! earth and waves,

Waves, oak, earth and oak.

Glee of dance and song

And battle throng.

Battle, dance and song.

Fire! fire, etc.

Let the sword blades swing

In a ring,

Let the sword blades swing.

Fire! fire, etc.

Song of the blue steel

Death to feel,

Song of the blue steel.

Fire! fire, etc.

Fight, whereof the sword

Is the Lord,

Fight of the fell sword!

Fire! fire, etc.

Sword, thou mighty King

Of battle ring,

Sword, thou mighty King!

Fire! fire, etc.

With the rainbow’s light

Be thou bright,

With the rainbow’s light.

Fire! fire, etc.

Far more charming is the episode of Lord Nann and the Fairy, and

genuinely typical of the powerful fancy and natural magic of the Celt.

The good Lord Nann and his fair bride,

Were young when wedlock’s knot was tied—

Were young when death did them divide.

But yesterday that lady fair

Two babes as white as snow did bear:

A man-child and a girl they were.

For making him a manchild’s sire, Lord Nann offered to get his bride any

dainty food she liked, “meat of the woodcock from the lake or of the

wild deer from the brake.” She chose the latter, while she grudged

sending him to the wood.

The Lord of Nann when this he heard

Hath gripp’d his oak spear with never a word,

His bonny black horse he hath leap’d upon;

And forth to the greenwood he hath gone.

By the skirts of the wood as he did go,

He was ’ware of a hind as white as snow;

Oh fast she ran and fast he rode,

That the earth it shook where his horse-hoofs trode.

Oh fast he rode, and fast she ran,

That the sweat to drop from his brow began,

That the sweat on his horse’s flanks stood white

So he rode and rode till the fall o’ the night.

When he came to a stream that fed a lawn

Hard by the grot of a Corrigaun.

The grass grew thick by the streamlet brink,

And he lighted down off his horse to drink.

The Corrigaun sat by the fountain fair,

A-combing her long and yellow hair;

A-combing her hair with a comb of gold—

(Not poor, I trow, are those maidens cold)—

Now who’s the bold wight that dares come here

To trouble my fairy fountain clear?

Either thou straight shalt wed with me

Or pine for four long years and three,

Or dead in three days’ space shalt be.

This proposal he spurned, asserting that he was already married, and

would die on the spot ere he would take a Corrigaun to wife. Her spell

she cast, and instantly he feels sick. On return he bids his mother make

his bed, for in three days she would hear his passing-bell, but adjures

her never to tell the tale to his bride. The three days expire, and the

latter inquires of her mother-in-law why the Church bells toll and the

priests chant in the street below, all clad in their white vestments? “A

strange poor man had died,” was the evasive answer. Then she asks

whither her husband had gone, and on being assured he would soon be

back, the unsuspecting lady concerns herself with the kind of gown she

would wear for her churching. Said her mother-in-law:—

“The fashion of late, my child, hath grown,

That women for churching black should don.”

And then:—

As through the churchyard porch she stept

She saw the grave where her husband slept.

And the dialogue proceeds:—

“Who of our blood is lately dead

That our ground is new raked and spread?”

“The truth I may no more forbear,

My son—your own poor lord—lies there.”

She threw herself on her knees amain,

And from her knees ne’er rose again.

That night they laid her, dead and cold

Beside her lord beneath the mould;

When lo!—a marvel to behold!—

Next morn from the grave two oak trees fair

Shot lusty boughs into the air;

And in their boughs—oh wondrous sight—

Two happy doves all snowy white—

That sang as ever the morn did rise

And then flew up—into the skies.

In addition to the songs, Villemarqué published _The Breton Bards of the

Sixth Century_, but Renan preferred the songs as by far the better.

The impulse given by the first literary awakening continued in Ireland,

Scotland, and Wales for two or three centuries, until the confusion and

disintegration of the Norse invasions put an end to it. During this

early and brilliant period the Celt poured forth the richest treasures

of his nature. Before the foe triumphed, many valuable pieces of

literature, including the heroic sagas, had been committed to writing,

and thus preserved for posterity, though it is known that much was

destroyed by the reckless invader. It was a bright morning—this dawn of

letters—too suddenly clouded and overcast.

For a century or two after, the Celtic field in its various parts

remained singularly barren and unproductive. Ireland was not altogether

without poets and scholars, though greatly fallen from her pristine

glory, but in Wales, from the middle of the seventh century till the

year 1080, hardly any poetry of merit was produced, and the same might

be said of Scotland, and, it would appear, of Brittany also.

No illustrious bards or outstanding writers redeemed the general dearth

of the tenth century. That was the darkest hour before another brilliant

dawn.

Ossian, St. Patrick, and Columcille; Dubthach and King Laoghaire; Prince

Arthur and his knights; Taliessin and the Royal Urien, Aneurin, Llywarch

Hên; what were these but memories? vanished heroes and bards of the

past. Already the walls of Balclutha were desolate, the harp hung mute

in Tara’s hall; nay, Tara itself was now a simulacrum,—a ruin, deserted

for ever. And even from Caerleon and Dun-Reged had not the glory

departed? Too soon the sun, late-risen, had sunk upon the unhappy Celts,

defeated in war and now dumb and helplessly inarticulate in literature.

It seemed as if, swan-like, the pathetic remnants of this old race had

at length sung their dying song, and sunk into silent and finished

oblivion.

To such a pass to all appearance, through Carlyle’s “star-fire and

immortal tears,” had Destiny led these hapless peoples by the advent of

the tenth century, that he would be a visionary indeed who should

prophesy any renaissance, and a true seer, for the time being, who

should say—

... Look

Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there.

Yet, phœnix-like, is it not ever the fate of the hidden and precarious

Celtic genius to rearise from its ashes and reassert its vitality? And

so in the eleventh and twelfth centuries there was such a wonderful

literary awakening throughout Celtdom, that it was as when:—

... A sable cloud

Turns forth her silver lining on the night.

And this new activity, be it noted, was not confined to the Gaels of

Ireland and Scotland, but, as in the sixth century, comprehended the

Cymri of Wales and Brittany also.

Herein lies a strange trait of Celtic life, that the great literary

revivals should be thus simultaneous, and common to all the sundered

groups, though these latter are isolated so much linguistically and

locally. Not once or twice in their history has this curious affinity of

genius and sentiment been evinced.

In the case of the Gael, no sooner was the grip of the Vikings relaxed

than the bards and schools began to flourish again. The new Irish king,

the semi-usurper Brian Boru, helped much towards this happy

consummation, as he was a real patron of letters and worked hard to

restore the fallen fortunes of Gaelic literature. Early in the eleventh

century he was on the throne, and that and the following century

witnessed the new and copious revival of art and learning. To this

period belong the great monuments, such as the Leabhar Na h’Uidhre, the

Book of Hymns, the Book of Leinster, as well as the Scottish Book of

Deer.

During these two centuries a host of poets and some annalists lived, the

chief of whom were Flann of Monasterboice and Tighernach. Quite a number

of the names of prominent bards who wrote then are given by Dr. Hyde in

his _Literary History of Ireland_. And we know that from this time the

interest taken in the past gave rise to that rich and abundant medieval

succession of books of saga common to Ireland and Scotland. But though

these latter were compiled, some of them after the twelfth century, the

actual revival did not last beyond the Norman Conquest of Ireland, which

culminated at the close of that same twelfth century, arresting Irish

development and disintegrating Irish life. So that for 300 years after,

Erin produced nothing comparable to her former achievements.

Turning to the Cymri, on the other hand, we find the remarkable

intellectual awakening of the eleventh and twelfth centuries ushered in

in a similar way as in Ireland, by the advent of new rulers. Rhys ap

Tewdwr, who had taken refuge in Brittany, returned in 1077 and ascended

the throne of South Wales, to which he laid claim as true heir. And

Gruffyd ap Kynan, similarly exiled in Ireland, came back to reign in

North Wales in 1080. Uniting their forces in one first great attempt,

these two hereditary princes overthrew the reigning monarch, and were

confirmed on the thrones of their ancestors.

Like Brian in Ireland, they also in their own fatherland were

instrumental in introducing a new era of literature. In North Wales it

showed itself in a revival of poetry, while in South Wales it took the

form of prose. Thomas Stephens mentions no less than seventy-nine bards

who lived between 1080 and 1400, many of whose pieces are still extant

in MSS.

To this period belong the greatest monuments of Welsh genius—_The Four

Ancient Books of Wales_, and the wonderful cycle of romance treasured

for us in the Mabinogion, besides those numerous compositions

traditionally attributed to Taliessin, Myrddinn, and others. Chronicles,

romances, poems, mabinogion, and a large collection of moral and

historical triads—these constitute the result of that extraordinary

outburst of creative energy which dates from the days of Gruffyd ap

Kynan.

Nor was Brittany asleep during this literary activity, for she too had

her share in common with Wales in the origin and dissemination of the

Arthurian romance.

It is one of the problems of criticism to-day, rightly to apportion the

credit between the two countries.

Robert Wace undoubtedly drew from independent Breton sources as well as

from Geoffrey of Monmouth. And from the eleventh century onwards date

the historic and narrative ballads so characteristic of Brittany. A

selection of these have been translated into English by Mr. Taylor, and

all of those he gives came into existence, he assures us, before the end

of the fourteenth century. So we have such medieval titles as, “The Evil

Tribute of Nomenöe,” “Bran,” “The Return from Saxon-land,” “The

Crusader’s Wife,” “The Clerk of Rohan,” “Baron Jauïoz,” “The Battle of

the Thirty,” “Jean of the Flame,” “Du Guesclin’s Vassal,” and “The

Wedding Girdle”—titles not unlike Chaucer’s own.

Bran, the hero of the second ballad, is believed to have been taken

prisoner in the great battle recorded in history as having been fought

in the tenth century near Kerloän, between the Norsemen and the Bretons,

under Ewen the Great.

Sore wounded lies the good knight Bran

On the foughten field of Kerloän.

On Kerloän’s field, hard by the shore,

Lieth the grandson of Bran-Vor.

Maugre our Bretons won the day,

He’s bound and o’er sea borne away.

Borne over sea, shut up, alone,

In Donjon tower he made his moan.

Bran dies in captivity.

On the battlefield of Kerloän

There grows a tree looks o’er the lan’;

There grows an oak in the place of stour, (_i.e._ battle)

Where the Saxon fled from Ewen-Vor.

Upon this oak, when the moon shines bright,

The birds they gather from the night.

Sea-mews, pied-black and white are there

On every forehead a bloodspeck clear.

With them a corbie, ashgrey for eld

And a young crow[31] aye at her side beheld.

Wayworn seem the twain, with wings that dreep,

As birds that flight o’er sea must keep.

So sweetly sing these birds, and clear,

The great sea stills its waves to hear.

And aye their songs one burden hold

All save the young crow’s and the corbie’s old.

And this is ever the crow’s sore cry,

“Sing, little birds, sing merrily.”

“Sing, birds o’ the land, in merry strain,

You died not far from your own Bretayne.”

Besides these narrative ballads, Brittany produced at various periods

idyllic songs and religious canticles.

As for Cornwall, whose dialect is now extinct, she never produced much

of a Celtic literature. What there is still extant is preserved in MSS.

of the fifteenth century, representing possibly all the ancient

literature she ever had, and dates from that or the preceding fourteenth

century. These pieces consist of one poem, entitled “Mount Calvary,” and

three dramas, or miracle plays, with nothing distinctly Celtic about

them save the language. With the exception of these and another drama of

the seventeenth century (1611), and the Lord’s Prayer translated, the

obsolete and defunct Cornish dialect has no literature to show, and

therefore is not concerned in the special Celtic revivals characteristic

of the literature in the other dialects. A translation of the ancient

dramas from the original Cornish has been made and published thirty

years ago by Edwin Norris. Their value now is almost solely linguistic.

“The last survivor of those who spoke in their youth pure Cornish is

said to have been Dolly Pentreath of Mousehole near Penzance, who died

in 1778, aged 102. And even she would not have talked Cornish in her

youth if she had not lived in one of the few parishes along the coasts

of Mount’s Bay and St Ive’s Bay, and a few districts to the west of

those bays, where alone at the beginning of the last century

(eighteenth) the ancient dialect existed.” (Morley’s _English Writers_,

vol. i. p. 750.)

After the brilliant medieval renaissance came another period of

inactivity and decline. From the sixteenth century it is true that a new

series of poets and prose writers began to arrive in the different

Celtic nationalities. In Ireland, during the first half of the

seventeenth century, there was quite a distinguished recrudescence of

national scholarship, associated with the names of Geoffrey Keating, the

Four Masters, and Duald Mac Firbis, all of whom were prose writers of

eminence; and in the Highlands of Scotland flourished Mary Macleod and

her contemporaries.

But we must come down to the period immediately following the Forty-five

to encounter a more general and splendid resuscitation.

And this time the Highlands especially were prominently to the front.

Hitherto, though possessing bards of mark, not since the days of

Columcille did the Scottish Gael burst so richly and abundantly and

tunefully into song. It seemed as if the accumulated and pent-up

sentiments of generations, at last overflowing, had found outlet and

expression. The great Jacobite risings furnished the incentive.

Involving, as they did, the profoundest issues for the individual, the

family life, and the whole structure of society in the Highlands, these

far-reaching events stirred the deepest emotions in the Gaelic breast,

which found utterance on tongues which otherwise might for ever have

remained silent.

Surpassing the story even of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table,

because more near, more real and historical, the romance of Prince

Charlie and the Highland chiefs has taken a lasting hold of the popular

imagination. It has woven itself into deathless song and story. The

poetry and music it has elicited in the Highlands alone are among the

sweetest creations of Celtic genius. They convey a pathos of sound,

richness of rhythm, and perfection of harmony that is captivating even

to foreign ears.

The period between 1745 and 1800 may be regarded as the high-water mark

of Highland poetry. For quality and quantity combined, it has never been

reached in the past, and is not likely now ever to be rivalled in the

future. Never before in Gaelic Scotland had there been such a quick and

splendid succession of bards. In fact, within those fifty years after

Culloden we have nearly all the great names of Highland poetry—certainly

those best known and which rank highest in the national esteem. A mere

list of the more important is sufficient to attest this.

There were living then Alexander Macdonald, better known as Alasdair

Macmhaighstir Alasdair; John Maccodrum, the North Uist bard; Hector

Macleod of South Uist; Dugald Buchanan; David Mackellar; Rob Donn;

Duncan Macintyre, popularly called Donnachadh Bàn; Lauchlan Macpherson,

John Roy Stuart, Kenneth Mackenzie, James Macpherson, Dr. John Smith,

John Clark, Mrs. Grant of Laggan, William Ross, Allan Macdougall, James

Shaw, James Macgregor, Ewan Maclachlan, Alexander MacKinnon, Donald

Macdonald, and Donald Macleod—a goodly number and highly representative

to appear in that single half century.

It is somewhat remarkable that Ireland, too, shared in the Jacobite

poetic reawakening, though she had so partial and distant a hand in the

actual warfare. Without doubt, her people thoroughly sympathised with

the gallant attempt of Prince Charlie. And this is abundantly evidenced

by the popularity and amount of the national poetry. Not only might a

list of names be given, similar to the above, though fewer in number,

but Dr. Hyde assures us that the Jacobite poems of Ireland would, if

collected, fill a large-sized volume. Hardiman printed about fifteen in

the second volume of his _Irish Minstrelsy_, and O’Daly about

twenty-five more in his _Irish Jacobite Poetry_, second edition.

Comparing this splendid lyrical outburst of that period in the two

countries, Dr. Hyde expresses his own opinion in the following

interesting criticism: “There seems to me,” he says, “to be perhaps,

more substance and more simplicity and straightforward diction in the

poems of the Scottish Gaels, and more melody and word-play, purchased at

the expense of a good deal of nebulousness and unmeaning sound in those

of the Irish Gaels; both, though they utterly fail in the ballad, have

brought the lyric to a very high pitch of perfection.”

But the literary revival of the eighteenth century was not by any means

confined to the work of the lyrical poets either in Scotland, Wales, or

Ireland. It was this period, the latter half of the century, that

witnessed the new Ossianic cycle, associated with the name of

Macpherson. Though popularly supposed to be, the latter was not the

earliest pioneer of this movement. In 1756, four years before

Macpherson’s _Fragments_ appeared, Jerome Stone, who was in youth a

packman, and afterwards a teacher at Dunkeld, gave to the public the

first translation of old Gaelic poems ever published. On his death, that

same year at the age of thirty, he left a collection, gleaned by

himself, of ancient Ossianic ballads, which has recently passed into the

possession of Edinburgh University.

Stone undoubtedly had the bardic gift; his rendering of the original is

quite as free as Macpherson’s own. The following may be quoted as an

example of his style. It is taken from “Fraoch’s Death,” published in

the _Scots Magazine_, 1756, shortly before he died:—

But now he’s gone and nought remains but woe

For wretched me; with him my joys are fled;

Around his tomb my tears shall ever flow,

The rock my dwelling, and the clay my bed;

Ye maids and matrons from your hills descend,

To join my moan and answer tear for tear;

With me the hero to the grave attend,

And sing the songs of mourning round his bier,

Through his own grove his praise we will proclaim,

And bid the place for ever bear his name.

Stone did not catch on, like his more brilliant successor.

Before then, except for the fragments that survived, mainly on the lips

of oral tradition throughout the Highlands, the old-time volume of saga

and heroic poetry had well nigh sunk into oblivion. The MSS. lay

neglected in odd and distant corners of the land, hidden and

inaccessible, so that the new generations of Gaels as they appeared were

wholly ignorant of their existence. The stirring events of the times

themselves were not conducive towards the more peaceful study and

pursuit of literature. Hence, with the better known publication of

Macpherson’s contributions there came to the view of modern times, with

startling suddenness, an old deposit of literary wealth, which quite

astonished the age. It was as if by some convulsion, ancient strata of

underlying rock had suddenly upheaved and found access to the surface,

much to the wonder and curiosity of all.

The heather was immediately ablaze. A new enthusiasm was awakened in the

past. Gaelic scholarship was taxed to the uttermost to substantiate the

credit of this new fame. Libraries were scrutinised, ancient houses

searched, memories ransacked, and every remote township and glen scoured

to find material. And when material was not forthcoming in sufficient

amount, the Muses were invoked to supply the deficiency.

It is now well understood that the period was one of abnormal activity

in the production of Ossianic poetry. This might be inferred from the

existing British collections of Gaelic MSS., most of which are posterior

to the age of Macpherson. Many imitators sought to emulate the ancient

bards, and even to palm their modern productions upon the public as part

of the original deposit. So late as the day of Mackenzie of “The

Beauties” such pieces as “Mordubh,” “Collath,” and “The Aged Bard’s

Wish” were regarded as ancient and authentic, though there are few

people now, and certainly no recognised authority on the subject,

prepared to maintain that.

Certain of these eighteenth century creations are of great merit. Though

they lack the antiquity they profess, they are worthy to rank alongside

the poetry of the period. Dr. Smith’s _Seana Dana_ or _Old Lays_, for

example, are reckoned fully as interesting and poetical in the original

Gaelic as Macpherson’s _Ossian_; yet, unlike the latter, his English

translation is a poor substitute for the really fresh and idiomatic

vernacular which he published. One of his finest poems, “Dan an Deirg,”

has been rendered into English, edited, and annotated by an accomplished

Englishman, Mr. C. S. Jerram, a scholar and graduate of Cambridge.

In Mr. Pattison’s _Gaelic Bards_ we have a translation in dainty verses

of another of his poems, entitled “Finan and Lorma.” Here the young

people around the ancient Ossian are represented as addressing the bard

in these lines:—

While on the plains shines the moon, O Bard!

And the shadow of Cona holds;

Like a ghost breathes the wind from the mountain,

With its spirit voice in its folds.

There are two cloudy forms before us,

Where its host the dim night shows;

The sigh of the moon curls their tresses,

As they tread over Alva of roes.

Dusky his dogs came with one,

And he bends his dark bow of yew;

There’s a stream from the side of the sad-faced maid,

Dyes her robe with a blood-red hue.

Hold thou back, O thou wind! from the mountain,

Let their image a moment stay;

Nor sweep with thy skirts from our eyesight,

Nor scatter their beauty away.

O’er the glen of the rushes, the hill of the hinds,

With the vague wandering vapours they go;

O! Bard of the times that have left us,

Aught of their life can’st thou show?

To which Ossian replies:—

The years that have been they come back as ye speak,

To my soul in their music they glide;

Like the murmur of waves in the far inland calm,

Is their soft and smooth step by my side.

Smith’s translation appeared in 1780, and the originals, nominally from

the Gaelic of Ossian, Ullin, and Orran, etc., in 1787. The poems were

fourteen in number, with titles as follow: “The Lay of the Red,” “The

Death of Gaul,” “The Lay of Duhona,” “Diarmad,” “Clan Morni,” or “Finan

and Lorma,” “The War of Linne,” “Cathula,” “The War of Manus,” including

“The Lay of the Great Fool,” “Trahul,” “Dargo,” “Conn,” “The Burning of

Taura,” “Calava,” and “The Death of Art.”

In the lay of Taura there occurs the much admired word-portrait

entitled, “Aisling air dhreach Mna,” or “The Vision of a Fair Woman.”

This is how she looked in the eye of her Gaelic admirer, and one can

judge if her charms match those of Aspasia or of Cleopatra:—

Innseam pàirt do dreach nan reul;

Bu gheal a deud gu h-ùr dlù;

Mar channach an t-sléibh

Bha cneas fa h-eideadh ùr.

Bha a bràighe cearclach bàn

Mar shneachda tlà nam beann;

Bha a dà chich ag eiridh làn;

B’e’n dreach sud miann nan sonn.

Bu shoitheamh binn a gloir;

S’ bu deirge na’n ròs a beul;

Mar chobhar a sios n’a taobh

Sinte gu caol bha gach meur.

Bha a dà chaol mhala mhine

Dûdhonn air liomh an loin.

A da ghruaidh dhreachd nan caoran;

’Si gu iomlan saor o chron.

Bha a gnuis mar bharra-gheuga

Anns a cheud-fhás ûr;

A falt buidhe mar óradh shleibhtean;

’S mar dhearsadh gréine bha sûil.

The Gaelic is not easily translated into felicitous English, but it has

been given by Dr. Macneill, somewhat literally thus:—

Tell us some of the charms of the stars;

Close and well-set were her ivory teeth;

White as the cannach upon the moor

Was her bosom the tartan bright beneath.

Her well-rounded forehead shone

Soft and fair as the mountain snow;

Her two breasts were heaving full;

To them did the hearts of the heroes flow.

Her lips were ruddier than the rose,

Tender and tunefully sweet her tongue;

White as the foam adown her side

Her delicate fingers extended hung.

Smooth as the dusky down of the elk

Appeared her two narrow brows to me;

Lovely her cheeks were like berries red;

From every guile she was wholly free.

Her countenance looked like the gentle buds

Unfolding their beauties in early spring;

Her yellow locks like the gold-browed hills,

And her eyes like the radiance the sunbeams bring.

In the same year, 1780, in which Dr. Smith issued his renderings,

another small volume of translations of so-called ancient Gaelic poetry

appeared under the title _Caledonian Bards_. It was by John Clark,

apparently a very much poorer imitator of Macpherson, and hailing from

the latter’s own native district, Badenoch. Among the poems submitted,

appears the “Mordubh,” already referred to, and which in its vernacular

garb has misled more than one Celtic enthusiast. Of the latter, besides

Mackenzie, Mrs. Grant of Laggan, 1755–1838, was so far deceived that,

taking Clark’s eighteenth century contribution for genuine ancient

poetic material, she set herself to render some of it into more

beautiful verse of her own. A contemporary and friend of Sir Walter

Scott, this lady takes a high place in the Highland English literature

of the period. A third who lived in her time, and who had no mean poetic

gift, was the Rev. Duncan Maccallum of Arisaig, the author of “Collath,”

that other composition which passed for a time as a specimen of ancient

poetry. But enough has been said to show the range of this derived and

imitative activity.

It will be seen that while on the one hand the Jacobite romance gave

rise to a new poetic revival, the Ossianic compositions, on the other

hand, proved also a source of general Celtic inspiration during the

latter half of the eighteenth century, and for two decades, at least, of

the nineteenth. Though the impulse of the Prince Charlie episode did not

carry to Wales as it did to Ireland, that of the Ossianic cycle did, and

issued in a similar enthusiasm in the production and publication of

books of Welsh poetry. This interest became so widespread that in 1819

the national Eisteddfod was revived once more at Caermarthen, and

regained its old place in the hearts of the people. Without discussing

the tradition that ascribes its origin to the sixth century, it is now

fairly well ascertained that it is, at least, as old as the twelfth or

thirteenth century. History shows that Prince Griffith of South Wales

held a great Eisteddfod at Caermarthen in 1451, at which the twenty-four

metres of Welsh poetry were settled for all time. Since then it has had

a chequered career; officially patronised by the Tudors, it seems to

have declined under the Stuarts, and nearly perished under the first

three Hanoverians. But now, since its revival in 1819, nearly every

hamlet in Wales holds its annual Eisteddfod, and the national one has

grown to such a magnitude that it tends not only to keep alive the

Celtic spirit, but also to foster the love of music and poetry in the

Principality.

Like much of our own Highland barderie, the Welsh poetry is the product

of workmen who have never been taught to read or write their own

language in the schools. Yet such is their natural taste and sense of

style that some of their best modern lyrics need not fear comparison

with those of Tannahill or even of Burns. Undoubtedly such poetry has

serious limitations, but it has a charm and beauty of its own, and is as

fresh and limpid as the mountain streams. The fragrance of the heather

is upon it quite as much as it is upon the lyrics of our own bards in

the Highlands. And as these latter felt the charm of the towering

mountain, the gloomy glen, the forest solitude, the lonely mysterious

sea, the bubbling stream, the wildflower, and the changing seasons, and

gave felicitous and sympathetic expression to the emotions these

awakened in their breasts, so did the peasant poets of Wild Wales. All

through last century, both in the Highlands and in that country, there

have been a succession of minor bards who have maintained the native

tongue sweet and warm and tuneful by their lyrics, though in Ireland the

same cannot be said, as the language there until quite recently had not

been fostered so much as in the sister countries.

But to-day we constantly read of ourselves as passing through another

Celtic renaissance, and this is the last which falls to be noticed. It

took its rise half a century ago in the work of the scholars, and

doubtless was the natural sequence of the widespread interest aroused at

home and abroad by the Ossianic compositions. It was recognised that

there was material to work upon, which could be dealt with from a

scientific as well as a literary point of view. And so the renaissance

in the first instance was a revival of interest in the language itself,

and the ancient MS. monuments that contained its oldest forms.

Two sets of scholars interested themselves in this new line of research.

On the one hand, distinguished Irishmen like John O’Donovan and Eugene

O’Curry devoted themselves to the task of bringing to light the

neglected and hidden MS. remains, which had hitherto for centuries lain

in the obscurity of religious or public libraries unread and

uncatalogued. And through these treasures they sought to interpret the

Gaelic past. On the other hand, Continental savants such as Bopp, Zeuss,

and Ebel, deeply absorbed in philological studies, were already at work

on the linguistic problem, which has rescued the Celtic dialects from an

unnatural isolation and equally unmerited contempt.

Zeuss’s book in particular, published in 1853—the Gaelic part of it

founded on the study of Gaelic Continental MSS., illuminated the whole

field, just as much as if the searchlight had been turned on a dark and

hidden landscape. From that day a Celtic renaissance was assured. His

philological results, and the fact that the ancient dialects had now

been proved beyond question to belong to the great Aryan group, and

closely akin to the classic languages of Europe, gave the Celtic a new

importance and fired the enthusiasm of that subsequent galaxy of

scholars, who have made Celtic studies famous.

Surprised and charmed with the prestige their own language and

literature had thus suddenly acquired in the eyes of Europe, and

especially of learned philologists, many of the Celts themselves now

began to look with kindlier interest upon their own literary legacy and

to recognise its value. The attention thus drawn to the past gradually

aroused enthusiasm for every surviving relic of tradition, of

literature, of history, of social custom, and of music. It has led to

the foundation of Celtic chairs for the study of the language and

literature, notably at Oxford, Edinburgh, and Berlin. It has given rise

to the Gaelic Mòd, Irish Text Society, and numerous other Highland,

Irish, and Welsh Associations, and kindred periodicals, British,

American, and Continental. Never before has such a mass of Celtic

tradition and lore been brought to view, and published in book or

magazine, as there has been within the last few decades.

It cannot indeed be said that this renaissance has added any new

masterpieces to the native literatures, either in prose or poetry. A

wonderful outburst of literary activity there has been, and

distinguished authors have arrived; but the remarkable thing is, and it

is worthy of note, that the so-called Celtic renaissance, if we regard

it solely from its literary side and apart from the work of scholars,

has found its fullest expression in English, and addresses itself not so

much to the native Gaels or Cymri as to the English-speaking world in

general. Highland, Welsh, and Irish litterateurs have taken to placing

their wealth of dream, of poetic sentiment and imagination, as well as

their marvellous gift of story-telling, at the service of English

literature, which is accordingly enriched, while the old river dries up

in proportion as the number of readers and writers of the original

tongue declines.

There are some things that we cannot hope to resuscitate. They pass in

the nature of things. Some that we would not wish to recall even if we

might. They have served their day. And if the current Celtic renaissance

has not contributed as much to the vernacular literature as might be

desired, it has certainly immensely enhanced the glories of the past,

and it has otherwise exhibited a revival of Celtic _esprit de corps_

which shows that—

The ancient spirit is not dead—

Old times, methinks, are breathing there.

That this race-feeling survives, this kinship of blood, and is ever and

anon reasserting itself, may be inferred from the recent Pan-Celtic

Congress in Dublin, where representatives of Wales, of Brittany, of the

Highlands, of Ireland, and even of Celtdom beyond the seas, assembled in

all their ancient _tailoring_ to do homage to the past, to reckon with

the present, and formulate afresh their aspirations—to ask, in fact,

what does this latest renaissance mean? and whither tends it?

A truly heterogeneous gathering, and eminently characteristic of the

race, who still look wistfully for the return of Arthur or of the Feinn,

and some new age of magic and romance, and whose forte it is unceasingly

to pursue the unknown, the undefinable, the ideal.

We can picture the bewildered surprise and irrepressible mirth of the

average, unimaginative, unbelieving Sassenach, as he suddenly encounters

the extraordinary Pan-Celtic pageant on the living streets of Dublin.

Whence this resurrection of phantoms—these apparitions of long dead

ancestors? “Nay, good citizen, ’tis no phantasy,” sober reason replies,

“but one of various manifestations, perhaps the most evanescent of the

present Celtic renaissance, which finds little in our modern,

materialistic civilisation answering to its deepest aspirations.” And,

falling into reverie over the unwonted spectacle, we ourselves in our

wonderment musingly repeat the words of Charles Lamb:—

Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that being nothing, art

everything! When thou wert, thou wert not antiquity—then thou wert

nothing, but hadst a remoter _antiquity_, as thou calledst it, to look

back to with blind veneration; thou thyself being to thyself, flat,

jejune, _modern_! What mystery lurks in this retroversion? or what

half Januses are we, that we cannot look forward with the same

idolatry with which we for ever revert? The mighty future is as

nothing, being everything; the past is everything, being nothing.

CHAPTER XIV

HIGHLAND BARDS BEFORE THE FORTY-FIVE

“The Owlet”—Three Macgregor songs—The old bardic system superseded—Era

of modern Gaelic poetry—Mary Macleod—Details of her life—Famous

songs—Iain Lom—Ardent poet and politician—His “Vow”—Eventful

career—Poems—Created Gaelic Poet-Laureate—Influence on Highland

history—Other minor bards and bardesses—Imitations by Sir Walter

Scott—The blind harper, and the blind piper—A comic poet—Two major

bards—Maccodrum’s Muse—Characteristics of the group before the

Forty-five.

The Book of the Dean of Lismore may be regarded as having gathered up

the best of the available, medieval, Gaelic poetry, and as having closed

the old bardic period. After it there came a break of nearly a hundred

years. It is true that there are some pieces which hail from this

interval, but they are isolated and few, with no certain dates.

Of these, the most remarkable is that styled “The Owlet,” and it is

worthy of notice here as being the only composition of the kind in the

language. The poem is attributed to Donald Macdonald, a native of

Lochaber, and perhaps the most expert archer of his day. Withal a famous

wolf-hunter, he appears to have lived in the days before firearms, and

to have composed the verses when old. Their occasion is briefly

summarised by Mackenzie of “The Beauties,” in a footnote. In his

declining years the poet had married a young woman who proved a very

unmeet helpmate. For when he and his dog were worn down with the toils

of the chase, and infirmities rendered them stiff and decrepit, this

“crooked rib” took a pleasure in teasing them. Finding an old feeble owl

one day, she installed it in the house as a more fitting companion than

herself for the aged bard and his dog. The poem is an ingenious

performance in the form of a dialogue between the outraged husband and

the bird.

Three Macgregor songs of that period have likewise a wonderful charm and

pathos. They are entitled “Macgregor’s Lullaby,” “Macgregor’s O’Ruara,”

and “The Braes of the Ceathach.” The authoress of the first laments the

death of her husband, who, with his father and brother, were beheaded at

the instigation of Colin Campbell of Glenorchy; her own sire, Campbell

of Glenlyon; and Menzies of Rannoch. The following verses are from

Pattison’s rendering:—

Early on a Lammas morning,

With my husband was I gay;

But my heart got sorely wounded

Ere the middle of the day.

(chorus) Ochan, Ochan, Ochan uiri,

Though I cry, my child, with thee—

Ochan, Ochan, Ochan uiri,

Now he hears not thee nor me.

Malison on judge and kindred—

They have wrought me mickle woe;

With deceit they came about us,

Through deceit they laid him low.

Had they met but twelve Macgregors,

With my Gregor at their head;

Now my child had not been orphaned,

Nor these bitter tears been shed.

On an oaken block they laid him,

And they spilt his blood around;

I’d have drunk it in a goblet

Largely, ere it reached the ground.

· · · · ·

When the rest have all got lovers

Now a lover have I none;

My fair blossom, fresh and fragrant,

Withers on the ground alone.

While all other wives the night-time

Pass in slumber’s balmy bands;

I, beside my bedside weary,

Never cease to wring my hands.

Far, far better be with Gregor

Where the heather’s in its prime,

Than with mean and Lowland barons

In a house of stone and lime.

· · · · ·