Ancient Irish Poetry Part 1

Ancient Irish Poetry.

by Various.

INTRODUCTION

In offering this collection of translations from early Irish poetry to a wider public I feel that I am expected to give a brief account of the literature from which they are taken--a literature so little known that its very existence has been doubted or denied by some, while others, who had the misfortune to make its acquaintance in ill-chosen or inadequate renderings, have refused to recognise any merit in it. The bias and ignorance of English historians and of many professed students of Irish history, who continue to write without a first-hand knowledge of its sources, have also reacted unfavourably upon the study of Irish literature. Slowly, however, the fact is becoming recognised in ever wider circles that the vernacular literature of ancient Ireland is the most primitive and original among the literatures of Western Europe, and that in its origins and development it affords a most fascinating study.

Whatever may be its intrinsic merit, its importance as the earliest voice from the dawn of West European civilisation cannot be denied.

Time and again in the course of their history the nations of Western and Northern Europe have had to struggle hard for the preservation of their national life against a powerful denationalising influence proceeding from Rome. Those among them who underwent the Roman conquest lost early, together with their liberty, their most precious national possession, their native language and with it their vernacular literature. Less than a century after the slaughter of Vercingetorix Romanised Gauls were carrying off the palm of Roman eloquence. By the fifth century the Gaulish language was everywhere extinct, without having left behind a single record of its literature. The same fate was shared by all Celtic nationalities of the Continent, and by those numerous Germanic tribes that were conquered by Rome, or came within the sphere of the later Roman civilisation. In Britain, where the Roman occupation was only temporary, its denationalising effect may be gauged by the numerous Latin loan-words preserved to the present day in the Welsh language, by the partial Romanisation of British personal proper names, by the early inscribed stones, which, unlike those of Ireland, are all in Latin, and by the late and slow beginnings of a literature in the vernacular.

It was only on the outskirts of the Continental world, and beyond the sway and influence of the Roman Empire, that some vigorous nations preserved their national inst.i.tutions intact, and among them there are only three whom letters reached early enough to leave behind some record of their pagan civilisation in a vernacular literature. These were the Irish, the Anglo-Saxons, and, comparative latecomers, the Icelanders.

Again, when Christianity came with the authority of Rome and in the Latin language, now imbued with an additional sanct.i.ty, there ensued in all nations a struggle between the vernacular and the foreign tongue for obtaining the rank of a literary language--a struggle from which the languages of the Continental nations, as well as of Britain, emerged only slowly and late. It is not till the end of the eleventh century that we find the beginnings of a national literature in France and Germany. In Ireland, on the other hand, which had received her Christianity not direct from Rome but from Britain and Gaul, and where the Church, far removed from the centre of Roman influence and cut off from the rest of Christendom, was developing on national lines, vernacular literature received a fresh impulse from the new faith. A flouris.h.i.+ng primitive Christian literature arose. The national language was employed not only for the purposes of instruction and devotion, in tombstone or other inscriptions, but also in religious prose and poetry, and, still more remarkable, in learned writings. There can, I think, be little doubt that we should hardly have any early records of Anglo-Saxon literature if the English had not in the first instance received Christianity from the Irish. It had been the influence and example of those Irish missionaries who converted Northumberland that taught the Anglian monk to preserve and cultivate his national literature.

Ireland had become the heiress of the cla.s.sical and theological learning of the Western Empire of the third and fourth centuries, and a period of humanism was thus ushered in which reached its culmination during the sixth and following centuries, the Golden Age of Irish civilisation. The charge that is so often levelled against Irish history, that it has been, as it were, in a backwater, where only the fainter wash of the larger currents reaches, cannot apply to this period. For once, at any rate, Ireland drew upon herself the eyes of the whole world, not, as so often in later times, by her unparalleled sufferings, but as the one haven of rest in a turbulent world overrun by hordes of barbarians, as the great seminary of Christian and cla.s.sical learning, 'the quiet habitation of sanct.i.ty and literature,' as Doctor Johnson called her in a memorable letter written to Charles O'Connor. Her sons, carrying Christianity and a new humanism over Great Britain and the Continent, became the teachers of whole nations, the counsellors of kings and emperors. For once, if but for a century or two, the Celtic spirit dominated a large part of the Western world, and Celtic ideals imparted a new life to a decadent civilisation until they succ.u.mbed, not altogether to the benefit of mankind, before a mightier system--that of Rome.

It was during this period that the oral literature, handed down by many generations of bards and story-tellers, was first written down in the monasteries. Unfortunately, not a single tale, only two or three poems, have come down to us from these early centuries in contemporary ma.n.u.scripts. In Ireland nearly all old MSS. were destroyed during the Viking terror which burst upon the island at the end of the eighth century.[1] But, from the eleventh century onward, we have an almost unbroken series of hundreds of MSS. in which all that had escaped destruction was collected and arranged. Many of the tales and poems thus preserved were undoubtedly originally composed in the eighth century; some few perhaps in the seventh; and as Irish scholars.h.i.+p advances, it is not unlikely that fragments of poetry will be found which, from linguistic or internal evidence, may be claimed for the sixth century.

The Celtic nations stand almost alone in this, that they did not employ poetry for epical narrative. There are no ancient Irish epics or ballads.

So much was prose the natural vehicle of expression for Gaelic narrative, that when in later centuries the Arthurian epics were done into Gaelic, they were all turned from poetry into prose. At the same time, most Irish tales and stories are interspersed with lyrics put into the mouth of the princ.i.p.al heroes, after the manner of the _cante fable_, most familiar to modern readers from the French story of _Auca.s.sin et Nicolete_. My collection begins with a few specimens of such poems.

The purely lyrical poetry of ancient Ireland may be roughly divided into two sections--that of the professional bard attached to the court and person of a chief; and that of the unattached poet, whether monk or itinerant bard.

From the earliest times we know the names of many famous bards of ancient Ireland and Scotland. Their songs are interwoven with the history of the dynasties and the great houses of the country whose retainers they were, and whose joys and sorrows they shared and expressed. Thus they became the chroniclers of many historical events. Of the oldest bardic poetry very little has as yet been published, and less translated. But many fine examples of a later age will be found in Standish Hayes O'Grady's _Catalogue of Irish Ma.n.u.scripts in the British Museum_, a book which makes one realise more clearly than any other that the true history of Ireland has never yet been written. My own specimens from the earlier centuries include several laments and a sword-song, a species of bardic composition which the Gaels share with the Norse.

Religious poetry ranges from single quatrains to lengthy compositions dealing with all the varied aspects of religious life. Many of them give us a fascinating insight into the peculiar character of the early Irish Church, which differed in so many ways from the rest of the Christian world. We see the hermit in his lonely cell, the monk at his devotions or at his work of copying in the scriptorium or under the open sky; or we hear the ascetic who, alone or with twelve chosen companions, has left one of the great monasteries in order to live in greater solitude among the woods or mountains, or on a lonely island. The fact that so many of these poems are fathered upon well-known saints emphasises the friendly att.i.tude of the native clergy towards vernacular poetry.

In Nature poetry the Gaelic muse may vie with that of any other nation.

Indeed, these poems occupy a unique position in the literature of the world. To seek out and watch and love Nature, in its tiniest phenomena as in its grandest, was given to no people so early and so fully as to the Celt. Many hundreds of Gaelic and Welsh poems testify to this fact.[2] It is a characteristic of these poems that in none of them do we get an elaborate or sustained description of any scene or scenery, but rather a succession of pictures and images which the poet, like an impressionist, calls up before us by light and skilful touches. Like the j.a.panese, the Celts were always quick to take an artistic hint; they avoid the obvious and the commonplace; the half-said thing to them is dearest.

Of ancient love-songs comparatively little has come down to us. What we have are mostly laments for departed lovers. He who would have further examples of Gaelic love-poetry must turn to modern collections, among which the _Love-Songs of Connaught_, collected and translated by Douglas Hyde, occupy the foremost place.

A word on the metrical system of Irish poetry may conclude this rapid sketch. The original type from which the great variety of Irish metres has sprung is the catalectic trochaic tetrameter of Latin poetry, as in the well-known popular song of Caesar's soldiers:--

'Caesar Gallias subegit, Nicomedes Caesarem, Ecce Caesar nunc triumphat qui subegit Gallias';

or in St. Hilary's _Hymnus in laudem Christi_, beginning:--

'Ymnum dicat turba fratrum, ymnum cantus personet, Christo regi concinentes laudem demus debitam.'

The commonest stanza is a quatrain consisting of four heptasyllabic lines with the rhyme at the end of the couplet. In my renderings I have made no attempt at either rhythm or rhyme; but I have printed the stanzas so as to show the structure of the poem. For merely practical reasons I have, in some cases, printed them in the form of couplets, in others in that of verse-lines.

I must not conclude without recording here also, as I have done elsewhere, my grat.i.tude for the constant help and advice given to me in these translations by my old friend and colleague, Professor J.M. Mackay.

K.M.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The poems referred to have been preserved in Continental ma.n.u.scripts.]

[Footnote 2: See the admirable paper by Professor Lewis Jones on 'The Celt and the Poetry of Nature,' in the _Transactions of the Hon. Society of Cymmrodorion_, Session 1892-93, p. 46 ff.]

MYTH AND SAGA

THE ISLES OF THE HAPPY

Once when Bran, son of Feval, was with his warriors in his royal fort, they suddenly saw a woman in strange raiment upon the floor of the house. No one knew whence she had come or how she had entered, for the ramparts were closed. Then she sang these quatrains to Bran while all the host were listening.

I bring a branch of Evin's[3] apple-tree, In shape alike to those you know: Twigs of white silver are upon it, Buds of crystal with blossoms.

There is a distant isle, Around which sea-horses glisten: A fair course against the white-swelling surge-- Four pedestals uphold it.

A delight of the eyes, a glorious range Is the plain on which the hosts hold games: Coracle contends against chariot In Silver-white Plain[3] to the south.

Pedestals of white bronze underneath Glittering through ages of beauty: Fairest land throughout the world, On which the many blossoms drop.

An ancient tree there is in bloom, On which birds call to the Hours: In harmony of song they all are wont To chant together every Hour.

Colours of every shade glisten Throughout the gentle-voiced plains: Joy is known, ranked around music, In Silver-cloud Plain[3] to the south.

Unknown is wailing or treachery In the homely cultivated land: There is nothing rough or harsh, But sweet music striking on the ear.

Without grief, without gloom, without death, Without any sickness or debility-- That is the sign of Evin: Uncommon is the like of such a marvel.

A beauty of a wondrous land, Whose aspects are lovely, Whose view is wondrous fair, Incomparable is its haze.[4]

Then if Silverland[5] is seen, On which dragon-stones and crystals drop-- The sea washes the wave against the land, A crystal spray drops from its mane.

Wealth, treasures of every hue Are in the Land of Peace[5]--a beauty of freshness: There is listening to sweet music, Drinking of the choicest wine.

Golden chariots on the plain of the sea Heaving with the tide to the sun: Chariots of silver on the Plain of Sports,[5]

And of bronze that has no blemish.

Steeds of yellow gold are on the sward there, Other steeds with crimson colour, Others again with a coat upon their backs Of the hue of all-blue heaven.

At sunrise there comes A fair man illumining level lands: He rides upon the white sea-washed plain, He stirs the ocean till it is blood.

A host comes across the clear sea, They exhibit their rowing to the land: Then they row to the s.h.i.+ning stone From which arises music a hundredfold.

It sings a strain unto the host Through ages long, it is never weary: Its music swells with choruses of hundreds-- They expect neither decay nor death.

Many-shaped Evna by the sea, Whether it be near, whether it be far-- In which are thousands of many-hued women, Which the clear sea encircles.