XXXI. PRE-DANISH POETS…

XXXI. PRE-DANISH POETS

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 any of the other known productions during the pre-Norman period. Although in almost every instance, I may say, their authorship is unknown, they are of infinitely greater interest than those pieces whose authorship has been carefully preserved. One of the first poets of renown after St. Patrick's time was Eochaidh [Yohy], better known as Dallán Forgaill. It is to him the celebrated "Amra," or elegy on Columcille, whose contemporary he was, is ascribed,[1] and this poem in the Béarla Feni, or Fenian dialect, has come down to us so heavily annotated that the text preserved is the oldest miscellaneous manuscript we have, the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, is almost smothered in glosses and explanations, and indeed would be perfectly unintelligible without them. The gloss and commentary is really far more interesting than the poem, which indeed, considering the fame of Dallán, is very disappointing; but no doubt it derived half its importance from being in the Fenian dialect, and hence incomprehensible to the ordinary reader. "He wrote," says the learned Colgan, who published at Louvain the lives of the saints which O'Clery collected for him at the beginning of the seventeenth century, "in the native speech, and in ancient style, several little works which cannot in later ages be easily penetrated by many otherwise well versed in the old native idiom and antiquity, and hence they are illustrated by our more learned antiquaries with scattered commentaries, and as rare monuments of our ancient language and antiquity it is customary to lecture on them and expound them in the schools of antiquaries of our nation. Among these is one panegyric or poem always held in great esteem on the praises of St. Colomb, and entitled 'Amra Choluim cille,'" etc. Colgan adds in a note, "I have in my possession one copy of this work, but putting aside a few scattered commentaries which it contains, it is penetrable to-day to only a few, and these the most learned."

This obscure poem is not, so far as I can see, composed in any metre or rhythm. It, with its gloss, is divided into seven chapters and an introduction. Here is the comment on the first words Dia, Dia, which will show better than anything that could be written, the very high state of independent development which the Irish poets had early attained in the technique of their art. We must remember that the manuscript in which we find this was copied about the year 1100, and the commentary may be much older. Irish is indeed the only vernacular language of western Europe where poetic technique had reached so high a perfection in the eleventh century. Fully to see the significance of this one must remember that the English language had not at this time even begun to emerge. Compare this highly-developed critical commentary with anything of the same age that Germany, France, or Italy has to show.

"Dia, Dia,[2] God, God, etc.," says the commentator, "it is why he doubles the first word on account of the rapidity[3] and avidity of the praising, as Deus, Deus meus, etc. But the name of that with the Gael is 'Return-to-a-usual-sound,' for there be three similar standards of expression with the poets of the Gaels, that is re-return to a usual sound, and renarration mode and reduplication, and this is the mark of each of them. The return indeed is a doubling of one word in one place in the round, without adhering to it from that forth. The renarration mode again is renarrating from a like mode; that means the one word--to say it frequently in the round, with an intervention of other words between them, as this--

"'Came the foam which the plain filters,[4] Came the ox through fifty warriors; So came the keen active lad Whom brown Cu Dinisc left.'"

"But 'reduplication' is, namely 'refolding,' that is 'bi-geminating,' as this--

"I fear fear / after long long / Pains strong strong / without peace peace / Like each each / until doom doom / For gloom gloom / will not cease cease."[5]

"There are two divisions of these in this fore-speech [to the Amra]; that is, we have the 'Return-to-a-usual-sound' and the 'renarration-mode,' but in the body of the hymn we have the 'renarration-mode' only."

Here is another passage which will show the difficulty that was found so early as the eleventh century in explaining this Fenian dialect.

"IT IS A HARP WITHOUT A ceis, it is a church without an abbot--i.e., ceis is a name for a small harp which is used as an accompaniment to a large harp in co-playing; or it is a name for the small pin which holds the cord in the wood of the harp; or for the tacklings, or for the heavy cord. Or the ceis in the harp is what holds the side part with its chords in it, as the poet said--it was Ros[6] mac Find who sang it, or Ferceirtné[7] the poet,

The base-chord concealed not music from the harp of Crabtene, Until it dropped sleep-deaths upon hosts.

* * * * *

Sweeter than any music, the harp Which delighted Labhraidh [Lowry] Lorc the Mariner, Though sullen about his secrets was the King, The ceis, or base-chord of Craftiné concealed it not."

This poem is an allusion to the sagas which grouped themselves round the sons of Ugony the great and Lowry the Mariner, who reigned about 530 years B.C.

In another place he quotes a poem of Finn mac Cúmhail's.

"'AND SEA-COURSE'--i.e., he was skilful in the art of renis[8] that is 'of the sea,' or it may be rian that would be right in it, as Finn, grandson of Baoisgne [Bweesgna] said--

'A tale I have for you. Ox murmurs, Winter roars, summer is gone. Wind high cold, sun low, Cry is attacking, sea resounding.

Very red raying has concealed form. Voice of geese [Barnacles] has become usual, Cold has caught the wings of birds, Ice-frost time; wretched, very wretched.[9] A tale I have for you.'"

Another verse quoted alludes to the chess-board of Crimhthann Nianáir, who came to the throne eleven years before the birth of Christ.[10]

"FECHT AFOR NIA NEM--i.e., the time when the champion would come, that is Columcille, for nia means a champion, as is said--

"'The chessboard of Crimhthann, brave champion, A small child carries it not on his arm (?) Half of its chessmen are of yellow gold. The other half of white bronze. One man of its chessmen alone Would purchase six married couples.'"

The ancient commentator quotes, thirty-five times in all, from various poems, in explanation of his text, including poems ascribed to Columcille himself, and to Gráinne, the daughter of Cormac mac Art, who eloped from Finn mac Cúmhail. He quotes the satire made on Breas in the time of the Tuatha De Danann, and a verse of St. Patrick (some of whose Irish poetry is also quoted by the "Four Masters"), and a poet called Colman mac Lenene, who was first a poet, but afterwards became a saint, and founded the great school of Cloyne.

Dallán wrote two other Amras, one on Senan of Innis Cathaigh, "which," remarks Colgan, "on account of antiqueness of style and gracefulness is amongst those fond of antiquity, always held in great esteem," and another in praise of Conall of Inskeel in Donegal, in one grave with whom he was buried. There has also come down to us in the same inscrutable Fenian dialect a poem of his consisting of eighty-four lines on the shield of Hugh, King of Oriel, which, unlike his Amra, is in perfect rhyme and metre.[11]

It was he who headed the bardic body when they were so nearly banished from the kingdom, and were only saved by the intervention of St. Columcille at the Synod of Drom Ceat [Cat], of which more hereafter. There is a curious specimen of his overbearing truculence in a story preserved in the same manuscript (of about the year 1100) that has preserved his Amra; it is headed "A Story from which it is inferred that Mongan was Finn mac Cúmhail." The poet was stopping with Mongan, King of Ulster.

"Every night the poet would recite a story to Mongan. So great was his lore that they were thus from Halloweve till May-day. He had gifts and food from Mongan. One day Mongan asked his poet what was the death of Fothad Airgdech. Forgoll said he was slain at Duffry in Leinster. Mongan said it was false. The poet [on hearing that] said he would satirise him with his lampoons, and he would satirise his father and his mother and his grandfather, and he would sing [spells] upon their waters, so that fish should not be caught in their river-mouths. He would sing upon their woods so that they should not give fruit, upon their plains so that they should be barren for ever of any produce.

"Mongan [thereupon] promised him his fill of precious things, so far as [the value of] seven bondmaids, or twice seven bondmaids, or three times seven. At last he offers him one-third, or one-half of his land, or his whole land; at last [everything] save only his own liberty with that of his wife Breóthigernd, unless he were redeemed before the end of three days.

"The poet refused all except as regards his wife. For the sake of his honour Mongan consented. Thereat his wife was sorrowful, the tear was not taken from her cheek. Mongan told her not to be sorrowful, help would certainly come to them."

Eventually the poet is very dramatically shown to be in the wrong.[12]

Dallán Forgaill was succeeded in the Head Ollamhship of all the Irish bards by his pupil Senchan Torpeist, who was equally overbearing, and whose intolerable insolence is admirably satirised in the story called the "Proceedings of the Great Bardic Association." Only two poems of his have come down to us, one being his elegy on the death of his master Dallán Forgaill.

The next great lay poet of importance seems to have been Cennfaeladh, who died in 678, whose verses are constantly cited by the "Four Masters." He was originally an Ulster warrior who was wounded in the battle of Moyrath, which was fought when Adamnan, Columcille's biographer, was eleven years old, and he was brought to be cured to the house of one Brian in Tuaim Drecain, where there were three schools, one of classics,[13] one of law, and one of poetry. He used to attend--apparently during his convalescence--these various schools, and what he heard in the day he would repeat to himself at night, so that "his brain of forgetfulness was extracted from his head after its having been cloven in the battle of Moyrath." "And he put a clear thread of poetry through them, and wrote them on flags and on tables, and he put them into a vellum book." Hence he became a great lawyer as well as a poet, and a considerable part of the celebrated Brehon Law Book, called the Book of Acaill, is ascribed to him.[14]

Angus Céile Dé[15] [Kail-a Day], or the Culdee, is the next poet of note who claims our attention. He flourished about the year 800, and is the author of the well-known Féilĭrè, or Calendar. In this work one stanza in rinn áird metre is devoted to each day of the year, in connection with the name of some saint--an Irish one wherever possible. The Féilĭrè is followed by a poem of five or six hundred lines, which with its glosses and commentaries is probably the most extensive piece of Old Irish poetry that we have. Whitley Stokes, who edited it with great care, considers it to be of the tenth rather than the late eighth or early ninth century. If so, this would leave its authorship doubtful, but it has been shown, I think by Kuno Meyer, that the number of deponental forms contained in it might point to a higher antiquity than that which Whitley Stokes allows. It has certainly been always hitherto accepted as the work of Angus, and as it cannot well, in any case, be more than a century or so later, we may let it stand here, as it has always done, under his name. In the ancient and curious Irish notes and commentary on the Féilĭrè we find a great number of verses quoted from the poet-saints, and these include St. Patrick, St. Ciaran the elder, St. Comgall with St. Columcille his friend, St. Ité the virgin, St. Kevin of Glendaloch, St. Ciaran of Clonmacnois, St. Molaise [Moleesha] of Devenish (who sent Columcille to banishment), St. Mochuda of Lismore, St. Molling, St. Fechin of Forc, St. Aireran of Clonard, Maelruan of Tallaght, Adamnan (Columcille's biographer), and Angus the Culdee himself, a goodly company of priests and poets; but no one seems to have been anything esteemed in ancient Erin unless he either was or was reputed to be a poet! Of true poetic spirit it contains not much, but it is a wonderful example of technical difficulties overcome. The metre is one of the most difficult, a six-syllable one, with dissyllabic endings. The first stanzas, translated into the metre of the original, run as follows:--

"Bless, O Christ, my speaking, King of heavens seven, Strength and wealth and POWER In this HOUR be given.

Given,[16] O thou brightest, Destined chains to sever, King of Angels GLORIOUS, And victORIOUS ever.

Ever o'er us shining, Light to mortals given, Beaming daily, NIGHTLY, BRIGHTLY out of heaven."

The Saltair na Rann has also been usually ascribed to Angus, but it can hardly be, as Dr. Whitley Stokes has shown, earlier than the year 1000,[17] for it mentions apparently as contemporaries Brian king of Munster, and Dub-da-lethe archbishop of Armagh, appointed in 988. It is a collection of one hundred and sixty-two poems in early Middle Irish containing between eight and nine thousand lines, mostly composed in Deibhidh [D'yevvee] metre. These poems are all of a more or less religious cast, and most of them are based (like the Saxon Caedmon's) on Old Testament history, but they also contain a prodigious deal of curious matter. The opening poem begins--

"Mo rí-se rí nime náir."[18] ("My king is the King of noble Heaven.")

It tells of the creation of the world, of the sun, of heaven and earth, light and darkness, day and night, of how the earth separated from the primal material, and was surrounded by the firmament, the world being "like an apple, goodly and round"; then the king created the mists, the current of the cold watery air, the four chief winds, and the eight sub-winds, with their colours, "the white, the clear purple, the blue, the great green, the yellow, the red truly-bold, ... the black, the grey, the speckled (?), the dark (?), the dull-black, the dun-coloured."[19] The poet then discusses the distance from the earth to the firmament, the seven planets, the distance from the earth to the moon, from moon to sun, the windless ethereal heaven, the distance between the firmament and the sun, the motionless Olympus or third heaven, the distance from the firmament to heaven and from the earth to the depths of hell, the five zones, the firmament round the earth, like its shell round an egg, the seventy-two windows of the firmament, with a shutter on each, the seventh heaven revolving like a wheel, with the seven planets from the creation, the signs of the zodiac,[20] the time (30 days 10½ hours) that the sun is in each, the day of the month on which it enters each, the month in which it is in each, the division of the firmament into twelve parts, and the five things which every intelligent man should know--the day of the month, age of the moon, height of the tide, day of the week, and saints' festivals![21]

The attribution of colours to the winds in this poem is curious and appears to be Irish. I have met traces of this fancy even amongst the modern peasantry. There is a strange entry in the Great Brehon Law Book, the Seanchas Mór, which quotes the colours of the winds in the same order.

"The colour of each," says this strange passage, "differs from the other, namely, the white and the crimson, the blue[22] and the green, the yellow and the red, the black and the grey, the speckled and the dark, the ciar (dull black) and the grisly. From the east comes the crimson wind, from the south the white, from the north the black, from the west the dun. The red and the yellow winds are produced between the white and the crimson, the green and the grey between the grisly and the white, the grey and the ciar between the grisly and the jet-black, the dark and the mottled between the black and the crimson. And those are all the sub-winds contained in each and all the cardinal winds."

After thus describing the creation of the world in the first poem, we are introduced in subsequent ones to heaven and the angels, who are named for us, and then shown hell and Lucifer's abode, the description of which, except that it is in verse, reminds us of that given by St. Brendan. Next we are introduced to Adam and Eve, and it is stated that Adam had spent a thousand years in the Garden of Eden. The jealousy of Lucifer is described, and his temptation of Eve, whom he persuades to open the door and let him into the garden. Then he makes her eat the apple, and Adam takes half from her and eats also. The eleventh poem describes the evil result, and is quite Miltonic and imaginative. It tells us how for a week, after being driven out, Adam and his wife remain without fire, house, drink, food, or clothing. He then begins to lament to Eve over all his lost blessings and admits that he has done wrong. Thereupon Eve asks Adam to kill her, so that God may pity him the more. Adam refuses. He goes forth in his starvation to seek food, and finds nothing but herbs, the food of the lawless beasts. He proposes then to Eve to do penance and adore God in silence, Eve in the Tigris for thirty days, and Adam in the Jordan for forty-seven days, a flagstone under their feet and the water up to their necks. Eve's hair fell dishevelled round her and her eyes were directed to heaven in silent prayer for forgiveness. Then Adam prays the river Jordan "to fast with him against God, with all its many beasts, that pardon may be granted to him." Then the stream ceased to flow, and gathered together every living creature that was in it, and they all supplicate the angelic host to join with them in beseeching God to forgive Adam. They obtain their request, and forgiveness is granted to Adam and to all his seed except the unrighteous. When the devil, however, hears this, he, "like a man in the shape of a white angel," goes to Eve as she stands in the Tigris, and gets her to leave her penance, saying that he had been sent by God. They then go to Adam, who at once recognises the devil, and shows Eve how she has been deceived. Eve falls half dead to the ground and reproaches Lucifer. He, however, defends himself, and repeats to them at length the story of his expulsion from heaven for refusing to worship Adam. He concludes by threatening vengeance on him and his descendants. Adam and his wife then live alone for a year on grass, without fire, house, music, or raiment, drinking water from their palms, and eating green herbs in the shadows of trees and in caverns. Eve brings forth a beautiful boy, who at once proceeds to cut grass for his father, who calls him Cain. God at last pities Adam and sends Michael to him with various seeds, and Michael teaches him husbandry and the use of animals. Seven years afterwards Eve brings forth Abel. In a vision she sees Cain drinking the blood of Abel.

In this manner, with a free play of the imagination, the writer runs through both Old and New Testaments, down to the denial of Peter and the death of Christ, in 150 poems, to which are appended twelve more, eleven of them in a different and more melodious metre, "rannaigheacht mhór," on the resurrection.

There were a number of other pre-Danish poets, but only occasional pieces of theirs have been preserved. Their obits are often mentioned by the annalists, but the few longer pieces of theirs that have survived to our day being mostly historical or genealogical, and as such devoid of much literary interest, we may neglect them.

[1] Mr. Strachan, however, has lately cast doubts upon its genuineness and ascribes it in its present form to a later date.

[2] I follow here O'Beirne Crowe's imperfect rendering. If he translates some words of this difficult piece inaccurately it does not much matter for my purpose.

[3] Ar abela no ar lainni an molta. This word Abél for "quick," "rapid," though neither in O'Reilly's nor Windisch's nor the Scotch Gaelic dictionaries, is a common one in the spoken language of West Connacht. It occurs twice in the "Three Shafts of Death," where it is mistranslated by "awful," but it must be carefully distinguished from M. I. Abdul, Keating's Adhbhal. The word is not known in Waterford, and my friend the late Mr. Fleming, who was the chief authority in the Royal Irish Academy on the spoken language, and who hailed from that county, was, I believe, unacquainted with it.

[4] This translation is evident nonsense, but I cannot better it. The original is "Ric in sithbe sitlas mag."

[5] Is é immoro adíabul, i.e., afhillind, i.e., doemnad, ut est hoc, i.e.,

"Águr águr iar céin chéin Bith i péin, phein ni síth síth, Amail cách cách, co bráth bráth, In cech tráth tráth, cid scíth scíth."

My translation is in the exact metre of the original, and conveys in English the manner in which the heptasyllabic Irish lines were pronounced, in which, despite of what some continental scholars have advanced, there is, I believe, no alternation of beat or stress at all, and neither trochee nor iambus. O'Beirne Crowe mistranslates águr by "I ask."

[6] Ros was chief poet of Erin in the time of St. Patrick, and is said to have helped him in redacting the Brehon Law.

[7] Ferceirtné was the poet at Conor mac Nessa's Court in the first century B.C., who contended in the "Dialogue of the Two Sages," see above p. 240.

[8] See above for réin being used for sea, p. 10.

[9] The translation is doubtful. Dr. Sigerson has well versified it in his "Bards of the Gael and Gaul," p. 116. The original has a curious metrical effect not unlike that other piece attributed to Finn, quoted above p. 275. It might be printed thus--

Scél lém duib Roruad rath Dordaid dam Rocleth cruth, Snigid gaim Rogab gnath Rofaith sam. Giugrand guth. Gaeth ard huar, Rogab uacht Isel grian Ete én, Gair arrith Aigre ré Ruthach rían. E, mosclé.

[10] See above p. 27 for Crimhthann's chess-board.

[11] Published by Professor Connellan, but without a translation, at p. 258 of Vol. V. of Ossianic Society's publications. It, too, is in the Féni dialect. The first verse, in honour of Dubh-Giolla, "the Black Attendant," which was the name of the King's shield will show its abstruseness.

"Dub gilla dub, arm naise, Eo Rosa raon slegh snaise, Adeardius daib diupla gainde d'Aodh do cinn lainne glaise."

It would appear that Dallán could write Irish as well as Béarla Féni from this verse, which is ascribed to him by the "Four Masters." "Dallán Forgaill," they say, "dixit hoc do bhás Choluim Cille."

"Is leigheas legha gan lés Is dedhail smeara re smuais Is abhran re cruit gan chéis Sinne déis ar nargain uais."

"It is the healing of a leech without light [i.e., in the dark]; it is a dividing of the marrow from the bone; it is the song of a harp without a base-string that we are, after being deprived of our noble." This verse does not occur in the Amra, though the expression a "harp without a base-string" does.

[12] See the whole story, carefully edited by Kuno Meyer, in "The Voyage of Bran," p. 45, where the poet is called Forgoll, but this is evidently the same as our Dallán Forgaill, though Kuno Meyer appears not to think so, for he has the following note: "Forgoll seems to have been an overbearing and exacting filé of the type of Athirne and Dallán Forgaill." But as the story synchronises with the life of Dallán Forgaill, and there is, so far as I know, no second poet known as Forgoll, it is evidently the same person. The "Dallán," i.e., the "blind man" (for he lost his eyesight through overstudy), being prefixed to Forgaill appears to inflect it in the genitive case, as An Tighearna easbuig, "the Lord Bishop," i.e., the lord of a bishop, "the blind man of a Forgall."

[13] Scoil "legind."

[14] See one of the poems ascribed to him printed by Professor Connellan from the Book of Ballymote, Ossianic Society, vol. v. p. 268. If it is Cennfealadh's it has been greatly altered during the course of transcription.

[15] Céile Dé, or Culdee, i.e., "Servus Dei," was a phrase used with much latitude, and in general denoted an ascetic, but occasionally also a missionary, monk. We find the Dominicans of Sligo called Culdees in a MS. of the year 1600. They seem to have arisen in the seventh or early eighth century. The Scottish Culdees, becoming lax in later times, married and established a spurious hereditary order. There is, of course, no truth in the fable that they were the pre-Patrician or early Scottish Christians, a notion which Campbell has propagated in his fine poem "Reulura," i.e., "réull-úr":--

"Peace to their souls, the pure Culdees Were Albyn's earliest priests of God, Ere yet an island of her seas By foot of Saxon monk was trod!"

[16] This tour de force, which consists of laying stress in the beginning of each succeeding stanza upon the word which ended the last, is common in Irish and is called conachlonn. It is much used by Angus. It seems to be self-evolved in Irish, whose prosody is full of original terms unborrowed from the Latin, which, to my mind, tells strongly in favour of pre-Christian culture. It is curious that Horace who falls into conachlonn in his second ode, never returned to a form so well adapted to lyric purposes:--

"Dextera sacras jaculatus arces Terruit urbem. Terruit gentes," etc.

[17] He has edited the text without a translation from the only MS. that contains it--Rawlinson, B 502, in the Bodleian, in the "Anecdota Oxoniensia" Series. Oxford deserves splendidly of Celtic scholars. If only Dublin would follow her example!

[18]

"Mo rí-se rí nime náir Cen huabur cen immarbáig, Dorósat domun dualach, Mo rí bith-beo bith-buadach."

[19]

"In gel in corcarda glan, In glass ind uaine allmar, In buidi in derg, derb dána, Nisgaib fergg frisodála, In dub, ind liath ind alad, In t-emen in chiar chálad, Ind odar doirchi datha Nidat soirchi sogabtha."

The hundred and fifty-second poem, which is a beautiful one, again asks what are the colours of the winds. Line 7,948.

[20] A good example of how Irish assimilates foreign words by cutting off their endings:--

"Aquair, Pisc, Ariet, Tauir, Treb, Geimin choir, ocus Cancer, Leo Uirgo, Libru, Scoirp scrus, Sagitair, Capricornus."

Leo is pronounced L'yo as a monosyllable.

[21] See Whitley Stokes' introduction for the analysis of the 1st, the 11th, and the 12th poem.

[22] "Glas" must be here translated "blue." It is a colour used by the Irish with great latitude, and apparently means yellowish, or light blue, or greenish grey. To this day a grey eye is súil ghlas and green grass is feur glas, yet the colour of grass is not that of a grey or even of a grey-green eye. We want a study on colours and their shades as at present used by the Irish and the Scotch Highlanders.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXXII. THE DANISH PERIOD

The first onfall of the Danes seems to have been made about the year 795, and for considerably over two centuries Erin was shaken from shore to shore with ever-recurring alarms, and for many years every centre of population lived in a state of terror, not knowing what a day might bring forth. Monasteries and colleges were burnt again and again, and built again and again, only to be reburnt. Numbers of invaluable books were destroyed, gold and silver work was carried off in quantities, and a state of unrest produced, which must have made learning in many parts of the island well-nigh impossible.

Strange to say, despite the troubled condition of Ireland during these two or three centuries, she produced a large number of poets and scholars, the impulse given by the enthusiasm of the sixth and seventh centuries being still strong upon her. Unquestionably the greatest name amongst her men of learning during this period is that of the statesman, ecclesiastic, poet and scholar, Cormac mac Culinan, who was at once king and bishop of Cashel,[1] and one of the most striking figures in both the literary and political history of these centuries.

To him we owe that valuable compilation, so often quoted already under the title of "Cormac's Glossary," which is by far the oldest attempt at a comparative vernacular dictionary made in any language of modern Europe.[2] Of course it has been enlarged by subsequent writers, but the idea and much of the matter remains Cormac's. In its original conception, it was meant to explain and interpret words and phrases which in the ninth century had become obscure to Irish scholars, and as might be expected, it throws light on many pagan customs, on history, law, romance, and mythology. Cormac's other literary effort was the compilation of the Saltair of Cashel, now most unhappily lost, but it appears to have been a great work. In it was contained the Book of Rights,[3] drawn up for the readjustment of the relations existing between princes and tribes, and still preserved. St. Benignus was said to have originally composed in verse a complete statement of the various rights, privileges, and duties of the High-king, the provincial kings, and the local chieftains. This, like so much of ancient and primitive law, was drawn up in verse so as to be thus stereotyped for the future, and easily remembered at a time when books were scarce. Cormac seems to have enlarged, modified, and brought it up to date to suit the changing times, and it was subsequently redacted again in Brian Boru's day in a sense favourable to Munster.[4] The king-bishop was a most remarkable man and an excellent scholar. He appears to have known Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Danish, and to have been one of the finest Old Gaelic scholars of his day, and withal an accomplished poet, though his verses are now lost. He was slain in battle in the year 908,[5] under circumstances so curiously described in the fragmentary annals edited by O'Donovan that it may be worth repeating here. He was, as we know from other sources, betrothed to the Princess Gormfhlaith or Gormly, daughter of Flann Sionna [Shinna], king of Meath and High-king of Ireland, but determining to enter the Church he returned her with her dowry to her father without consummating the marriage; after this he took orders, and rose in time to be archbishop of Cashel as well as king of Munster. Gormly, however, was married against her will to Cearbhall [Caroll], king of Leinster. It was in the year 908 that Flann, the High-king, with Caroll king of Leinster, now his son-in-law, prepared to meet Munster and to assert by arms his right to the presentation of the ancient church of Monasterevan, but it seems probable that he also bore the king-archbishop a grudge for his treatment of his daughter Gormly. Here is the annalistic account of the sequel:--

DEATH OF CORMAC MAC CULINAN.[6]

"The great host of Munster was assembled by the same two, that is, Flaherty,[7] [abbot of Scattery Island, in the Shannon], and Cormac [mac Culinan], to demand hostages of Leinster and Ossory, and all the men of Munster were in the same camp.... And noble ambassadors came from Leinster from Caroll, son of Muirigan [king of that province], to Cormac first, and they delivered a message of peace from the Leinstermen, i.e., one peace to be in all Erin until May following (it being then the second week in autumn), and to give hostages into the keeping of Maenach, a holy, wise, and pious man, and of other pious men, and to give jewels and much property to Cormac and Flaherty.

"Cormac was much rejoiced at being offered this peace, and he afterward went to tell it to Flaherty and how he was offered it from Leinster. When Flaherty heard this he was greatly horrified, and 't was what he said, 'This shows,' said he, 'the littleness of thy mind and the feebleness of thy nature, for thou art the son of a plebeian,' and he said many other bitter and insulting words, which it would be too long to repeat.

"The answer which Cormac made him was, 'I am certain,' Cormac said, 'of what the result of this [obstinacy of yours] will be, a battle will be fought, O holy man,' said he, 'and [I] Cormac shall be under a curse for it, and it is likely that it will be the cause of death to thee [also].' And when he had said this he came into his own tent, afflicted and sorrowful. And when he sat down he took a basketful of apples and proceeded to divide them amongst his people and said, 'My dear people,' he said, 'I shall never give you apples again from this out for ever.' 'Is it so, O dear earthly lord?' said his people; 'why art thou sorrowful and melancholy with us; it is often thou hast boded evil for us?' 'It is,' [said Cormac,] 'as I say, and yet, dear people, what melancholy thing have I said, for though I should not distribute apples to you with my own hand, yet there shall be some one of you in my place who will.' He afterwards ordered a watch to be set, and he called to him the holy, pious, and wise man, Maenach, son of Siadhal [Shiel], the chief co-arb or successor of Comhghall, and he made his confession and will in his presence, and he took the body of Christ from his hand, and he resigned the world in the presence of Maenach, for he knew that he would be killed in battle, but he did not wish that many others should know it. He also ordered that his body should be brought to Cloyne if convenient, but if not to convey it to the cemetery of Diarmuid, [grand]son of Aedh Roin, where he had studied for a long time. He was very desirous, however, of being interred at Cloyne of Mac Lenin. Maenach, however, was better pleased to have him interred at Disert Diarmada, for that was one of [Saint] Comhghall's towns, and Maenach was Comhghall's successor. This Maenach, son of Shiel, was the wisest man of his time, and he now exerted himself much to make peace, if it were possible, between the men of Leinster and Munster.

"Many of the forces of Munster deserted unrestrained. There was great noise, too, and dissension in the camp of the men of Munster at this time, for they heard that Fiann, son of Malachy [High-king of Ireland], was in the camp of the Leinster men [helping them] with great forces of foot and horse. It was then Maenach said, 'Good men of Munster,' said he, 'you ought to accept of the good hostages I have offered you to be placed in the custody of pious men till May next, namely, the son of Caroll, king of Leinster, and the son of the king of Ossory.' All the men of Munster were saying that it was Flaherty [the abbot], son of Inmainên alone who compelled them to go [to fight] into Leinster.

"After this great complaint which they made, they came over Slieve Mairgé from the west to Leithglinn Bridge. But Tibraidé, successor of Ailbhé [of Emly], and many of the clergy along with him tarried at Leithglinn, and also the servants of the army and the horses which carried the provisions.

"After this trumpets were blown and signals for battle were given by the men of Munster, and they went forward till they came to Moy-Ailbhé.[8] Here they remained with their back to a thick wood awaiting their enemies. The men of Munster divided themselves into three equally large battalions, Flaherty, son of Inmainên, and Ceallach, son of Caroll, king of Ossory, over the first division; Cormac mac Culinan, king of Munster, over the middle division; Cormac, son of Mothla, King of the Deisi, and the King of Kerry, and the kings of many other tribes of West Munster, over the third division. They afterwards came on in this order to Moy-Ailbhe. They were querulous on account of the numbers of the enemy and their own fewness. Those who were knowledgeable, that is those who were amongst themselves, state that the Leinstermen and their forces amounted to three times or four times the number of the men of Munster or more. Unsteady was the order in which the men of Munster came to the battle. Very pitiful was the wailing which was in the battle--as the learned who were in the battle relate--the shrieks of the one host in the act of being slaughtered and the shouts of the other host exulting over that slaughter. There were two causes for which the men of Munster suffered so sudden a defeat; for Céileachar, the brother of Cingégan, suddenly mounted his horse and said, 'Nobles of Munster,' said he, 'fly suddenly from this abominable battle, and leave it between the clergy themselves who could not be quiet without coming to battle,' and afterwards he suddenly fled accompanied by great hosts. The other cause of the defeat was: When Ceallach, son of Caroll, saw the battalion in which were the chieftains of the King of Erin cutting down his own battalion he mounted his horse and said to his own people, 'Mount your horses and drive the enemy before you.' And though he said this, it was not to really fight he said so but to fly. Howsoever it resulted from these causes that the Munster battalion fled together. Alas! pitiful and great was the slaughter throughout Moy-Ailbhe afterwards. A cleric was not spared more than a layman, there they were all equally killed. When a layman or a clergyman was spared it was not out of mercy, it was done but out of covetousness, to obtain a ransom from them, or to bring them into servitude. King Cormac, however, escaped in the van of the first battalion, but the horse leaped into a trench and he fell off it. When a party of his people who were flying perceived this, they came to the King and put him up on his horse again. It was then he saw a foster son of his own, a noble of the Eoghanachts, Aedh by name, who was an adept in wisdom and jurisprudence and history and Latin; and the King said to him, 'Beloved son,' said he, 'do not cling by me, but take thyself out of it as well as thou canst; I told thee that I should be killed in this battle.' A few remained along with Cormac, and he came forward along the way on horseback, and the way was besmeared throughout with much blood of men and horses. The hind feet of his horse slipped on the slippery way in the track of blood, and the horse fell right back and [Cormac's] back and neck were both broken, and he said, when falling, 'In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum,' and he gave up the ghost; and the impious sons of malediction came and thrust spears through his body, and cut off his head.

"Although much was the slaying on Moy-Ailbhe to the east of the Barrow, yet the prowess of Leinster was not satiated with it, but they followed up the rout westwards across Slieve Mairgé, and slew many noblemen in that pursuit.

"In the very beginning of the battle Ceallach, son of Caroll, king of Ossory, and his son were killed at once. Dispersedly, however, others were killed from that out, both laity and clergy. There were many good clergymen killed in this battle, as were also many kings and chieftains. In it was slain Fogartach, son of Suibhne [Sweeny], an adept in philosophy and divinity, King of Kerry, and Ailell, son of Owen, the distinguished young sage and high-born nobleman, and Colman, Abbot of Cenn-Etigh, Chief Ollav of the judicature of Erin, and hosts of others also, quos longum est scribere....

"Then a party came up to Fiann, having the head of Cormac with them, and 't was what they said to Fiann, 'Life and health, O powerful victorious king, and Cormac's head to thee from us; and as is customary with kings raise thy thigh and put this head under it and press it with thy thigh.' Howsoever Flann spoke evil to them, it was not thanks he gave them. 'It was an enormous act,' said he, 'to have taken off the head of the holy bishop, but, however, I shall honour it instead of crushing it.' Fiann took the head into his hand and kissed it, and carried thrice round him the consecrated head of the holy bishop and martyr. The head was afterwards honourably carried away from him to the body where Meaenach, son of Shiel, successor of Comhghall, was, and he carried the body of Cormac to Castledermot, where it was honourably interred, and where it performs signs and miracles.

"Why should not the heart repine and the mind sicken at this enormous deed; the killing and the mangling with horrid arms of this holy man, the most learned of all who came or shall come of the men of Erin for ever? The complete master in Gaedhlic and Latin, the archbishop most pious, most pure, miraculous in chastity and prayer, a proficient in law and in every wisdom, knowledge, and science, a paragon of poetry and learning, a head of charity and every virtue, a sage of education, and head-king of the whole of the two Munster provinces in his time!"

Gormly, the betrothed, but afterwards repudiated wife of Cormac, was also a poet, and there are many pieces ascribed to her. She was, as I mentioned, married to Caroll king of Leinster, who was severely wounded in this battle. He was carried home to be cured in his palace at Naas, and Gormly the queen was constant in her attendance on him. One day, however, as Caroll was becoming convalescent he fell to exulting over the mutilation of Cormac at which he had been present. The queen, who was sitting at the foot of his bed, rebuked him for it, and said that the body of a good man had been most unworthily desecrated. At this Caroll, who was still confined to bed, became angry and kicked her over with his foot in the presence of all her attendants and ladies.

As her father, the High-king, would do nothing for her when she besought him to wipe out the insult, and procure her reparation from so unworthy a husband, her young kinsman Niall Glún-dubh, or the Black-Kneed, took up her cause, and obtained for her a separation from her husband and restoration of her dowry. When her husband was killed, the year after this, by the Danes, she married Niall, who in time succeeded to the throne as High-king of all Ireland, and who was one of the noblest of her monarchs. He was slain in the end by the Danes, and the monarchy passed away from the houses both of her father and her husband, and she, the daughter of one High-king, the wife of another, bewails in her old age the poverty and neglect into which she had fallen. She dreamt one night that King Niall stood beside her, and she made a leap forwards to clasp him in her arms, but struck herself against the bed-post, and received a wound from which she never recovered.[9] Many of her poems are lamentations on her kinsman and husband Niall. They seem to have been current amongst the Highland as well as the Irish Gaels, for here is a specimen jotted down in phonetic spelling by the Scotch Dean Macgregor about the year 1512:

"Take, grey monk, thy foot away, Lift it off the grave of Neill! Too long thou heapest up the clay On him who cannot feel.[10]

Monk, why must thou pile the earth O'er the couch of noble Neill? Above my friend of gentle birth Thou strik'st a churlish heel.

Let him be, at least to-night, Mournful monk of croaking voice, Beneath thee lies my heart's delight, Who made me to rejoice.

Monk, remove thy foot, I say! Tread not on the sacred ground Where he is shut from me away, In cold and narrow bound!

I am Gormly--king of men Was my father, Flann the brave. I charge thee, stand thou not again, Bald monk, upon his grave."

Another poet of the ninth century was Flanagan, son of Ceallach, king of Bregia. He is quoted by the "Four Masters."[11] One poem of his, of 112 lines, on the deaths of the kings of Ireland, is preserved in the Yellow Book of Lecan.

Mailmura, of Fahan, whom the "Four Masters" call a great poet, was a contemporary of his, and wrote a poem on the Milesian Migrations.[12]

Several other poets lived in the ninth century, the chief of whom was probably Flann mac Lonáin, for the "Four Masters" in recording his death style him "the Virgil of the Scottic race, the chief ollamh of all the Gaels, the best poet that was in Ireland in his time." Eight of his poems, containing about one thousand lines, have survived. He was from the neighbourhood of Slieve Echtgé, or Aughty, in South Connacht. One of his poems records how Ilbrechtach the harper was travelling over these barren mountains along with the celebrated poet Mac Liag, and, as they paused to rest on Croghan Head, Mac Liag surveyed the prospect beneath him, and said, "Many a hill and lake and fastness is in this range; it were a great topographical knowledge to know them all." "If Mac Lonáin were here," said the harper, "he could name them all, and give the origin of their names as well." "Let this fellow be taken and hanged," said Mac Liag. The harper begged respite till next day, and in the meantime Mac Lonáin comes up and recites a poem of one hundred and thirty-two lines beginning--Aoibhinn aoibhinn Echtgé árd.

Amongst other things, he relates that he met a Dalcassian--i.e., one of Brian Boru's people from Clare--at Moy Finé in Galway, who had just finished serving twelve months with a man in that place, from whom he had received a cow and a cloak for payment. On his way home to the Dalcassians with his cloak and his cow he met the poet, and said to him--

"'Sing to me the history of my country, It is sweet to my soul to hear it.

Thereupon I sang for him the poem, Nor did he show himself the least loath: All that he had earned--not mean nor meagre-- To me he gave it without deduction.

The upright Dalcassians heard of this, They received him with honour in their assembly; They gave to him--the noble race-- Ten cows for every quarter of his own cow.'"

Mac Lonáin was the contemporary of Cormac mac Culinan, whom he eulogises.

Some other poets of great note flourished during the Danish period, such as Cormac "an Eigeas," who composed the celebrated poem to Muircheartach, or Murtagh of the Leather Cloaks,[13] son of the Niall so bitterly lamented by Gormly, on the occasion of his marching round Ireland, when he set out from his palace at ancient Aileach near Derry, and returned to it again after levying tribute and receiving hostages from every king and sub-king in Ireland. This great O'Neill well deserved a poet's praise, for having taken Sitric, the Danish lord of Dublin, Ceallachan of Munster, the king of Leinster, and the royal heir of Connacht as hostages, he, understanding well that in the interests of Ireland the High-kingship should be upheld, positively refused to follow the advice of his own clan and march on Tara, as they urged, to take hostages from Donagh the High-king. On the contrary, he actually sent of his own accord all those that had been given him during his circuit to this Donagh as supreme governor of Ireland. Donagh, on his part, not to be out-done in magnanimity, returned them again to Murtagh with the message that he, into whose hands they had been delivered, was the proper person to keep them. It was to commemorate this that Cormac wrote his poem of two hundred and fifty-six lines:--

"A Mhuircheartaigh Mheic Néill náir Ro ghabhais giallu Inse-Fáil."[14]

But the names of the poets Cinaeth or Kenneth O'Hartigan, and Eochaidh O'Flynn, are the most celebrated amongst those of the tenth century. Allusions to and quotations from the first, who died in 975, are frequent, and nine or ten of his poems, containing some eight hundred lines, have been preserved perfect for us. Of O'Flynn's pieces, fourteen are enumerated by O'Reilly, containing in the aggregate between seventeen and eighteen hundred lines. In them we find in verse the whole early and mythical history of Ireland. We have, for instance, one poem on the invasion of Partholan; one on the invasion of the Fomorians; another on the division of Ireland between the sons of Partholan; another on the destruction of the tower of Conaing and the battles between the Fomorians and the Nemedians; another on the journey of the Nemedians from Scithia and how some emigrated to Greece and others to Britain after the destruction of Conairé's tower; another on the invasion of the sons of Milesius; another on the history of Emania built by Cimbaeth some three hundred years before Christ, up to its destruction by the Three Collas in the year 331. This poet in especial may be said to have crystallised into verse the mythic history of Ireland with the names and reigns of the Irish kings, and to have thrown them into the form of real history. O'Clery, in his celebrated Book of Invasions, has drawn upon him very largely, quoting, often at full length, no less than twelve of his poems. Hence many people believe that he was one of the first to collect the floating tribe-legends of very early Irish kings, and the race-myths of the Tuatha De Danann and their contemporaries, and that he cast them into that historical shape in which the later annalists record them, by fitting them into a complete scheme of genealogical history like that of the Old Testament. But whether all these things had taken solid shape and form before he versified them anew we cannot now decide. According to O'Reilly and O'Curry this poet died in 984, nine years after O'Hartigan; but M. d'Arbois de Jubainville remarks that he has been unable to find out any evidence for fixing upon this date.

A little later lived Mac Liag, whom Brian Boru elevated to the rank of Arch-Ollamh of Erin, and who lived at his court at Kincora in the closest relationship to him and his sons. He has been credited--erroneously according to O'Curry--with the authorship of a Life of Brian Boru, which unfortunately has perished, only a single ancient leaf, in the hand-writing of the great antiquary Mac Firbis, surviving. Several of his poems, however, are preserved,[15] containing between twelve and thirteen hundred lines in all, and are of the highest value as throwing light both on the social state and the policy of Ireland under Brian. One of his poems gives a graphic description of the tribute of Ireland being driven to Brian at his palace in Kincora in the present county of Clare. The poet went out from the court to have a look at the flocks and herds, and when he returned he said to the King, "Here comes Erin's tribute of cows to thee, many a fat cow and fat hog on the plain before thee." "Be they ever so many," said the King, "they shall be all thine, thou noble poet." Amongst the other part of the tribute which the poet describes as coming in to Brian were one hundred and fifty butts of wine from the Danes of Dublin, and a tun of wine for every day in the year from the Danes of Limerick. He describes Brian as sitting at the head of the great hall of Kincora,[16] the king of Connacht sat on his right hand and the king of Ulster on his left; the king of Tir-Eóghain [Tyrone] sat opposite to him. At the door-post nearest to Brian sat the king of Leinster, and at the other post of the open door sat Donough, son of Brian, and Malachy,[17] king of Meath. Murrough, the king's eldest son who died so valiantly at Clontarf, sat in front of his father with his back turned to him, with Angus, a prince of Meath, and the king of Tirconnell on his left. One of his poems ends with two complimentary stanzas to Brian Boru, his son Murrough, his nephew Conaing, and Tadhg [Teig] O'Kelly, the king of Ui Máine--all four of whom a short time afterwards were left stiff and stark upon the field of Clontarf.

The shadow of the bloody tragedy there enacted hangs heavily over all Mac Liag's later poems and those of his contemporaries, and there are few more pathetic pieces in the language than his wail over Kincora left desolate by the death of almost every chieftain who had gone forth from it to meet the Danes.

"Oh where, Kincora, is Brian the great! Oh, where is the beauty that once was thine! Oh, where are the princes and nobles that sate At the feast in thy halls, and drank the red wine.[18] Where, oh, Kincora?

* * * * *

And where is the youth of majestic height, The faith-keeping prince of the Scots? Even he As wide as his fame was, as great as his might, Was tributary, oh, Kincora, to me! Me, oh, Kincora.

They are gone, those heroes of royal birth, Who plundered no churches, who broke no trust; 'Tis weary for me to be living on earth When they, oh, Kincora, lie low in the dust! Low, oh, Kincora."[19]

In the same strain does Mac Gilla Keefe,[20] another contemporary poet, lament, in a piece which, according to a manuscript quoted by Hardiman, called the "Leabhar Oiris," he composed when in the north of Greece, whither he had travelled in the itinerant Milesian manner on his way to try if he could find the site of Paradise. The poem begins:--

"Mournful night! and mournful WE! Men we BE who know no peace. We no GOLD for STRAINS of PRIDE HOLD this SIDE the PLAINS of Greece."[21]

"'I remember my setting my face to pay a visit to Brian (Boru) and he at that time feasting with Cian, the son of Mulloy,[22] and he thought it long my being absent from him.'

"'God welcome you back to us,' cried Cian, 'O learned one, who comest [back from the north] from the House of O'Neill. Poet, your wife is saying that you have almost altogether forsaken your own house.'

"'You have been away for three quarters of year, except from yesterday to to-day.' 'Why that,' said Murrough, son of Brian, 'is the message of the raven from the ark!'

"'[Come now] tell us all the wealth you have brought from the north,' said Brian, the High-king of the host of Carn i Neid, 'tell the nobles of the men of Innisfail, and swear by my hand that you tell no lie.'

"'By the King who is above me,' [said I], 'this is what I brought from the north, twenty steeds, ten ounces of gold, and ten score cows of cattle.'

"'[Why] we, the two of us, shall give him more steeds and more cattle [than that] without speaking of what Brian will give,' said Cian, the son of Mulloy.

"'[And] by the King of Heaven who has brought me into silence this night, and who has darkened my brightness, I got ten times as much as that at the banquet before Brian lay down.

"'I got seven town-lands, Oh, King of the Kings, who hast sent me from the west, and a half town-land [besides] near every palace in which Brian used to be.'

"Said Murrough, good son of Brian, 'To-morrow'--and it was scarce sensible for him--'as much as you have got last night you shall get from me myself, and get it with my love.'"[23]

Mag Liag was not at Clontarf himself, but his friend and fellow-poet, Errard mac Coisé [Cŭsha] was in the train of Malachy, king of Meath, to whom he was then attached. This poet gave Mac Liag a minute account of the battle, and Mac Liag himself visited the spot before the slain had been interred, as we see from another of his poems. In a kind of dialogue between him and Mac Coisé he makes the latter relate to him the names of the fallen, and describe the positions in which their dead bodies were found upon the battlefield. It is exceedingly probable that it was Mac Liag, perhaps with Mac Coisé's aid, who compiled that most valuable chronicle called the "Wars of the Gael with the Gaill," i.e., of the Irish with the Northmen.[24] This narrative bears both external and internal evidence of its antiquity, for there is a portion of it preserved in the Book of Leinster, a MS. of about the year 1150. "The author," says Dr. Todd, who has edited it,[25] "was either himself an eye-witness of the battle of Clontarf, or else compiled his narrative from the testimony of eye-witnesses." It is edited in 121 chapters, and is sufficiently long to fill over a hundred of these pages. Beginning with the earliest Danish invasion at the close of the eighth century, it traces the progress of the Northmen in forty chapters up to the time when Mathgamhain [Mahon] and Brian were ruling over the Dalcassians. After that the book concerns itself chiefly with the history of Brian, describing the deaths of his brother Mahon, and the revenge he took, and his gradual but irregular attainment of the High-kingship, he being the first of the race of Eber who had reached this dignity for hundreds of years. The distress suffered by the Irish at the hands of the white foreigners (the Norwegians) and the black foreigners (the Danes)--who, by the way, were bitter enemies and often fought with each other, even on Irish soil--is graphically described. The Northmen put, says the writer,

"a king [of their own] over every territory, and a chief over every chieftaincy, and an abbot over every church, and a steward over every village, and a soldier in every house, so that none of the men of Erin had power to give even the milk of his cow, or as much as the clutch of eggs of one hen in succour or in kindness to an aged man or to a friend, but was forced to preserve them for this foreign steward or bailiff or soldier. And though there were but one milk-giving cow in the house, she durst not be milked for an infant of one night, nor for a sick person, but must be kept for the steward or bailiff or soldier of the foreigners. And however long he might be absent from the house his share or his supply durst not be lessened: although there were in the house but one cow, it must be killed for the meal of one night, if the means of supply could not be otherwise procured....

"In a word," continues the writer in a strain of characteristic hyperbole, "although there were an hundred sharp, ready, cool, never-resting, brazen tongues in each head, and a hundred garrulous, loud-unceasing voices from 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.

"And though numerous were the oft-victorious clans of the many-familied Erin," yet could they do nothing against the "untamed, implacable hordes by whom that oppression was inflicted, because of the excellence of their polished, ample, treble-heavy, trusty, glittering corslets, and their hard, strong, valiant swords, and well-rivetted long spears, and ready brilliant arms of valour, besides; and because of the greatness of their achievements and of their deeds, their bravery, their valour, their strength, their venom, and their ferocity, and because of the excess of their thirst and their hunger for the brave, fruitful, nobly-inhabited, smooth-plained, sweet-grassy land of Erin, full of cataracts, rivers, bays."

The book ends with the battle of Clontarf and the "return from Fingall," i.e., the march of the Dalcassians to their homes in Munster. The death of Brian in this great battle fought on Good Friday, the 23rd of April,[26] 1014, is thus described:--

DEATH OF BRIAN BORUMHA AT CLONTARF.

"As for Brian, son of Cenneidigh [Kennedy], when the battalions joined arms in the battle, his skin was spread for him, and he opened his psalter and joined his hands, and began to pray after the battle had commenced, and there was no one with him but his own attendant, whose name was Latean (from whom are the O'Lateans still in Munster.)[27] Brian said to the attendant, 'Look thou at the battalions and the combat whilst I sing the psalms.' He sang fifty psalms and fifty prayers and fifty paternosters, and after that he asked the attendant how were the battalions. And the attendant answered, 'Mixed and closely confronted are the battalions, and each of them has come within the grasp of the other, and not louder on my ears would be the echo of blows from Tomar's wood if seven battalions were cutting it down, than the thud-blows on heads and bones and sculls between them.' And he asked how was Murchadh's [Murrough's son's] standard, and the attendant said, 'It stands, and many of the banners of the Dál Cais [North Munster, i.e., Brian's own men] around it, and many heads thrown to it, and a multitude of trophies and spoils with heads of foreigners are along with it.' 'That is good news indeed,' said Brian.

"His skin cushion was readjusted beneath him, and he sang the psalms and the prayers and the paters as before, and he again asked the attendant how the battalions were, and the attendant answered and said, 'There is not living on earth the man who could distinguish one from the other, for the greater part of the hosts on each side are fallen, and those who are alive are so covered with spatterings of crimson blood and armour, that a man could not know his own son--they are so intermingled.' He then asked how was Murchadh's standard. The attendant said it was far from him, and that it passed through the battalions westward, and was still standing. Brian said, 'The men of Erin will be well,' said he, 'so long as that standard stands, for their courage and valour shall remain in them all, so long as they can see that standard.'

"His cushion was readjusted under Brian, and he sang fifty psalms and fifty prayers and fifty paters, and all that time the fighting continued. After that he again asked the attendant how went the battalions, and the attendant answered, 'It is like as if Tomar's wood were after burning its undergrowth and young trees, and that seven battalions had been for six weeks cutting them down, and it with its stately trees and huge oaks still standing, just so are the battalions on both sides, after the greater part of them have fallen leaving but a few valiant heroes and great chieftains still standing. So are the battalions on both sides pierced and wounded and scattered, and they are disorganised all round like the grindings of a mill turning the wrong way; and the foreigners are now defeated, and Murchadh's standard is fallen.' 'That is piteous news,' said Brian; 'by my word,' said he, 'the generosity and valour of Erin fell when that standard fell; and truly Erin has fallen of that, for there shall never come after him a champion like him. And what the better were I though I should escape this, and though it were the sovereignty of the world I should attain, after the fall of Murchadh and Conaing and the other nobles of the Dál Cais.'

"'Woe is me,' said the attendant, 'if thou wouldst take my advice thou wouldst get thee to thy horse, and we would go to the camp and remain there amongst the gillies, and every one who comes out of the battle will come to us, and round us they will rally, for the battalions are now mixed in confusion, and a party of the foreigners have rejected the idea of retreating to the sea, and we know not who shall come to us where we now are.'

"'Oh God; boy,' said Brian, 'flight becomes me not, and I myself know that I shall not go from here alive, and what should it profit me though I did, for Aoibheall [Eevil][28] of Craig Liath [Lee-a], came to me last night,' said he, 'and she told me that the first of my sons whom I should see this day would be he who should succeed me in the sovereignty, and that is Donough,[29] and go thou OLatean,' said he, 'and take these steeds with thee, and receive my blessing and carry out my will after me, that is to say, my body and soul to God and to St. Patrick, and that I am to be carried to Armagh, and my blessing to Donough for discharging my last bequests after me, that is to say, twelve score cows to be given to the co-arb of Patrick and the Society of Armagh, and their own proper dues to Killaloe and the Churches of Munster, and he knows that I have not wealth of gold or silver, but he is to pay them in return for my blessing and for his succeeding me. Go this night to Sord [Swords] and desire them to come to-morrow early for my body, and to convey it thence to Damhliag of Cianan, and then let them carry it to Lughmhagh [Loo-wā, i.e., Louth], and let Maelmuiré mac Eochadha, the co-arb of Patrick and the Society of Armagh come to meet me at Lughmhagh.'

"While they were engaged in this conversation the attendant perceived a party of the foreigners approaching them. The Earl Brodar was there and two warriors along with him.

"'There are people coming towards us here,' said the attendant.

"'What kind of people?' said Brian.

"'Blue stark-naked people,' said the attendant.

"'My woe,' said Brian, 'they are the foreigners of the armour, and it is not for good they come.'

"While he was saying this he arose and stepped off his cushion and unsheathed his sword. Brodar passed him by and noticed him not. One of the three who were there and who had been in Brian's service said 'Cing, Cing!' said he, that is, 'This is the king.' 'No, no! but príst príst,' says Brodar, 'not he,' said he, 'but a noble priest.' 'By no means,' said the soldier, 'but it is the great king Brian.' Brodar then turned round and appeared with a bright gleaming battle-axe in his hand, with the handle set in the middle [of the head]. When Brian saw him he looked intently at him, and gave him a sword-blow that cut off the left leg at the knee and the right leg at the foot. The foreigner gave Brian a stroke which crushed his head utterly, and Brian killed the second man that was with Brodar, and they fell mutually by each other.

"There was not done in Erin, since Christianity--except the beheading of Cormac mac Culinan--any greater deed than this. He was, in sooth, one of the three best that ever were born in Erin, and one of the three men who most caused Erin to prosper, namely, Lugh the Long-handed, and Finn mac Cúmhail [Cool], and Brian, son of Kennedy; for it was he that released the men of Erin and its women from the bondage and iniquity of the foreigners and the pirates. It was he that gained five-and-twenty battles over the foreigners, and who killed them and banished them.... In short, Erin fell by the death of Brian."

The "War of the Gael with the Gaill" appears to me to be a book which throws a strong light upon the genesis and value of the historical saga of Ireland. Here is a real historical narrative of unquestionable authority, and of the very highest value for the history of these countries, which is contemporaneous,[30] or almost so, with the events which it relates. Its accuracy on matters of fact have been abundantly proved from Danish as well as from Irish sources. And yet the whole account is dressed up and bedizened in that peculiarly Irish garb which had become stereotyped as the dress of Irish history. It contains the exaggeration, the necessary touch of the marvellous, and above all the poetry, without which no Irish composition could hope for a welcome.

First as to the exaggeration: the whole piece is full of it. A good example is the description of the armies meeting on Clontarf:--

"It will be one of the wonders of the day of judgment to relate the description of this tremendous onset. There arose a wild, impetuous, precipitate, furious, dark, frightful, voracious, merciless, combative, contentious vulture, screaming and fluttering over their heads. There arose also the Bocanachs and the Bananachs and the wild people of the glens, and the witches and the goblins and the ancient birds, and the destroying demons of the air and firmament, and the feeble demoniac phantom host, and they were screaming and comparing the valour and combat of both parties."

The reader expected some traditional flourish such as this, and the essential truth of the narrative is no whit impaired by it.

Nor does the miraculous episode of Dunlang O'Hartigan, fresh from the embraces of the fairy queen, foretelling to Murrough that he must fall, detract from the truth that he does fall. Dunlang had promised Murrough not to abandon him, and he appears beside him on the very eve of the battle. Murrough gently reproaches him and says:--

"'Great must be the love and attachment of some woman for thee which has induced thee to abandon me.' 'Alas, O King,' answered Dunlang, 'the delight which I have abandoned for thee is greater, if thou didst but know it, namely, life without death,[31] without cold, without thirst, without hunger, without decay, beyond any delight of the delights of the earth to me, until the judgment, and heaven after the judgment, and if I had not pledged my word to thee I would not have come here, and, moreover, it is fated for me to die on the day that thou shalt die.'

"'Shall I receive death this day then?' said Murrough.

"'Thou shalt, indeed,' said Dunlang, 'and Brian and Conaing shall receive it, and almost all the nobles of Erin, and Turlough thy son.'

"'That is no good encouragement to fight,' said Murrough, 'and if we had had such news we would not have told it to thee, and moreover,' said Murrough, 'often was I offered in hills, and in fairy mansions, this world and these gifts, but I never abandoned for one night my country nor mine inheritance for them.'"

Some such touch as this, of the weird and the miraculous, the reader also expected.

As for poetry, the whole piece is full of it. It contains over five hundred lines of verse, in poems attributed to Brian Boru himself and his brother Mahon, to Maelmhuadh or Molloy, who so treacherously slew Mahon, to the sister of Aedh Finnliath [Finleea], king of Ireland in 869;[32] to Cormac mac Culinan, the king-bishop; to Cuan O'Lochain, a great poet who died in 1024; to Beg mac Dé the prophet, and to Columcille, his contemporary; to Colman mac Lenin, the poet-saint; to Gilla Mududa O'Cassidy, a poet contemporaneous with Mac Liag; to Mac Liag himself; to Gilla Comgaill O'Slevin, inciting O'Neill against Brian; to a poet called Mahon's blind man; to St. Bercan the prophet; to an unnamed cleric, and to at least six anonymous poets.

I have dwelt at some length upon these peculiarities of composition, because I wish to lay stress on the fact that the narrative form and the romantic dress in which the early history of Ireland is preserved (through the medium of sagas) need not detract from its substantial veracity. We can prove the minute accuracy of the Clontarf story and there seems scarcely more reason to doubt that of the battle of Moyrath, fought in Adamnan's time, or possibly the substantial accuracy of the battles of Cnoca, or of Moy Léana; we must, however, remember that with each fresh redaction, fresh miraculous agencies, and fresh verbiage were added.

The battle of Clontarf put an end to the dream of a Danish kingdom in Ireland, and though numerous bodies of the Northmen remained in their sea-coast settlements, and continued for many years after this to give much trouble, yet it put a stop to all further invasion from their mother country, and once more the centres of Irish learning and civilisation could breathe freely.

[1] It was not he, however, who built Cormac's Chapel at Cashel, but Cormac Mac Carthy, in the twelfth century. I am not sure whether Cashel had been formed into an archiepiscopal see at this time, but he is certainly called bishop of Cashel.

[2] The celebrated Vocabularius S. Galli was, according to Zimmer, the work of an Irish monk.

[3] Leabhar na gCeart.

[4] It has been most carefully edited and translated in a large volume by O'Donovan for the Celtic Society, in 1847.

[5] 903 according to the "Four Masters."

[6] From the fragment copied by Duald Mac Firbis in 1643 from a vellum MS. of Mac Egan of Ormond, a chief professor of the old Brehon Law, a MS. which was so worn as to be in places illegible at the time Mac Firbis copied it; published by O'Donovan for the Archæological Society. I have altered O'Donovan's translation very slightly.

[7] In Irish, "Flaithbheartach."

[8] The plain where this battle of Bealach Múghna or Ballaghmoon was fought is in the very south of the county Kildare, about 2½ miles to the north of the town of Carlow.

[9] So it is stated in Mac Echagain's Annals of Clonmacnois, but O'Curry thinks this is a mistake and that she did recover.

[10] The first verse runs thus in modern Gaelic:

"Beir a mhanaigh leat do chos Tóg anois i de thaoibh Néill Is ró mhór chuiris de chré Ar an té le' luidhinn féin."

See p. 75 of the Gaelic part of the book of the Dean of Lismore.

Literally: "Monk, remove thy foot, lift it off the grave of Niall, too long heapest thou the earth on him by whom I fain would lie!

"Too long dost thou, O monk there, heap the earth on noble Niall. Go gently, brown friend, press not the earth with thy sole.

"Do not firmly close the grave; sorrowful, cleric, is thy office; lift [thy foot] off the bright Niall Black-knee; monk, remove thy foot!

"The son of the descendant of Niall of the white gold, 'tis not of my will that he is bound [in the grave]; let his grave and stone be left: monk, remove thy foot!

"I am Gormly, who compose the verse; daughter of hardy Flann. Stand not upon his grave! Monk, remove thy foot!"

[11] One of his pieces, quoted by the "Four Masters," shows he was a true poet. It is on the death of the king, Aedh Finnliath, who died in 877, and runs thus:--

"Long is the wintry night, With fierce gusts of wind, Under pressing grief we have to encounter it, Since the red-speared king of the noble house lives no longer.

It is awful to observe The waves from the bottom heaving, To these may be compared All those who with us lament him."

See O'Curry's "Manners and Customs," vol. ii. p. 96, and "Four Masters" sub anno.

[12] Published by the Irish Archæological Society in the "Irish Nennius," in 1847.

[13] Na gcochal croicinn.

[14]

"O Muircheartach, son of noble Niall, Thou hast taken hostages of Inisfail."

[15] The "Four Masters" thought so highly of Mac Liag's poetry that they actually go out of their way to record both the first verse he ever composed and the last. An extraordinary compliment!

[16] Or Kancora, in Irish Ceann Coradh--i.e., "the head of the weir."

[17] In Irish "Maelsheachlainn," often contracted into the sound of "M'louglinn," and now always Anglicised Malachy.

[18] Thus Mangan; in the original--

"A Chinn-Choradh, caidhi Brian, No caidhi an sciamh do bhi ort; Caidhi maithe no meic righ Ga n-ibhmís fín ad port?"

[19] Literally: "O Kincora, where is Brian? or where is the splendour that was upon thee? Where are the nobles and the sons of kings with whom we used to drink wine in thy halls.... Where is the man most striking of size, the son of the king of Alba who never forsook us? Although great were his valour and his deeds, he used to pay tribute to me (the poet), O Kincora.... They have gone, side by side, the sons of kings who never plundered church; there shall never be their like in the world again, so in my wisdom I testify, O Kincora."

See Hardiman's "Irish Minstrelsy," vol. ii. p. 196, where the text of this poem is published, with a fearful metrical translation which, under the influence of Macpherson, calls the Dalcassian princes "the flower of Temora"! which, however, is advantageously used to rhyme with Kincora!

[20] In Irish: "Mac Giolla Caoimh."

[21] This verse is an imitation of the original, which runs--

"Uathmhar [i] an oidhche anocht A chuideacht [fhíor-]bhocht gan bhréig, Crodh ni SA[O]ILTÎ dh[ao]ibh air DHUAN Air an TTAOIBHSI THUAIDH do'n nGréig."

See Hardiman's "Irish Minstrelsy," vol. ii. p. 202, where a poetical version of this lyric is given in the metre of Campbell's "Exile of Erin"! He does not say from what MS. he has taken this poem. O'Curry is silent on Mac Gilla Keefe, but O'Reilly mentions another poem of his on the provinces of Munster.

[22] In Irish, "Maolmhuadh."

[23] I am not sure that I have translated this correctly.

"Do rádh Murchadh deagh-mhac Bhriain Air na mhárach, 's níor chiall uaidh Uiriod a bhfuairís aréir Geabhair uaim féin's ni air th-fhuath."

[24] Charles O'Conor ascribes it to him, but neither Keating, the "Four Masters," nor Colgan, who all make use of it, mention a word about the author.

[25] In the "Master of the Rolls" Series, in 1867. "That the work was compiled from contemporary materials," says Dr. Todd, "may be proved by curious incidental evidence. It is stated in the account given of the Battle of Clontarf that the full tide in Dublin Bay on the day of the battle (23rd April, 1014) coincided with sunrise, and that the returning tide at evening aided considerably in the defeat of the enemy. It occurred to the editor, on considering this passage, that a criterion might be derived from it to test the truth of the narrative and of the date assigned by the Irish Annals to the Battle of Clontarf. He therefore proposed to the Rev. Samuel Haughton, M.D., Fellow of Trinity College, and Professor of Geology in the University of Dublin, to solve for him this problem: 'What was the hour of high water at the shore of Clontarf in Dublin Bay on the 23rd of April, 1014.' The editor did not make known to Dr. Haughton the object he had in view in this question, and the coincidence of the result obtained with the ancient narrative is therefore the more valuable and curious."

Dr. Haughton read a paper on the mathematics of this complex and difficult question before the Royal Irish Academy, in May, 1861, in which he proved that the tide--a neap tide--was full along the Clontarf shore at about 5h. 30m. a.m., and that the evening tide was full in about 5h. 55m. p.m. "The truth of the narrative," says Dr. Todd, "is thus most strikingly established. In the month of April the sun rises at from 5h. 30m. to 4h.30m. The full tide in the morning therefore coincided nearly with sunrise; a fact which holds a most important place in the history of the battle, and proves that our author if not himself an eye-witness, must have derived his information from those who were. 'None others,' as Dr. Haughton observes, 'would have invented the fact that the battle began at sunrise and that the tide was then full in. The importance of the time of tide became evident at the close of the day, when the returned tide prevented the escape of the Danes from the Clontarf shore to the north bank of the Liffey.'"

[26] An ancient Irish missal preserved in the Bodleian contains this petition for the Irish king and his army, in its Litany for Easter Eve: "Ut regem Hibernensium et exercitum ejus conservare digneris--ut eis vitam et sanctitatem atque victoriam dones." If this missal is posterior to 1014 it must have been the reminiscence of Clontarf which inspired the prayer for the day following the battle. If the missal is older than the battle, then the coincidence is curious. The prayer was just a day late. The same missal mentions in its Litanies the names Patrick, Brendan, Brigit, Columba, Finnian, Ciaran, and St. Fursa, and contains collect, secret and post communion pro rege [for the Irish king].

[27] Evidently the interpolation of a copyist.

[28] The family banshee of the Royal house of Munster.

[29] In Irish, Donnchadh, pronounced "Dunnăχa," as Murchadh is pronounced "Murrăχa," in English Murrough.

[30] It is edited from the Book of Leinster, a MS. which was copied about 1150, which contains the first 28 chapters, from a vellum of about two centuries later, which wants five chapters at the beginning and eight at the end, and from a perfect transcript made by the indefatigable Brother Michael O'Clery in 1635 "out of the book of Cuconnacht O'Daly," who died according to the "Four Masters," in 1139.

[31] I.e., Beside his fairy lover. This incident is greatly expanded in the modern MS. story of the Battle of Clontarf, of which there exist numerous copies; in these the gliding of history into romance is very apparent. In the modern version the fairy Aoibheall is introduced begging O'Hartigan not to fight and promising him life and happiness for two hundred years if he will put off fighting for only one day.

"A Dhunlaing seachain an cath Gus an mhaidin amárach. Geobhair da chéad bliadhan de ré Agus seachain cath aon-laé."

[32] This is genuine, and is also quoted by the "Four Masters" and O'Clery in his Book of Invasions. Probably all the poems are genuine except the prophecies and the pieces put into the mouths of the actors, that is of Brian, Mahon, Molloy, and the cleric. These were probably composed by the writer of the history.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXXIII. FROM CLONTARF TO THE NORMAN CONQUEST

Brian, semi-usurper though he was, was in every sense a great statesman as well as a great warrior. He found almost every seat of learning in ruins, and every town and palace in Ireland a shattered wreck. Before he died he had gone far towards restoring them. He rebuilt the monasteries, re-erected the churches, refounded the schools. "He sent professors and masters to teach wisdom and knowledge," says the history from which we have been quoting; but the schools had been hopelessly broken up, the scribes had perished, the books--"the countless hosts of the illuminated books of the men of Erin"--had been burned and "drowned." Hence he found himself obliged to despatch his emissaries and the few men of learning who had survived that awful time, "to buy books beyond the sea and the great ocean, because," says the history,

"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 their invasions], and Brian himself gave the price of learning, and the price of books, to every one separately who went on this service." "By him were erected also noble churches and sanctuaries in Erin ... many works also, and repairs were made by him. By him were erected the church of Cell Dálua[1] and the church of Inis Cealtra, and the round tower of Tuam Gréine, and many other works in like manner. By him were made bridges and causeways and high roads. By him were strengthened also the dúns and fortresses and islands and celebrated royal forts of Munster.... The peace of Erin was proclaimed by him, both of churches and people, so that peace throughout all Erin was made in his time. He fined and imprisoned the perpetrators of murders, trespass, robbery, and war. He hanged and killed and destroyed the robbers and thieves and plunderers of Erin.... After the banishment of the foreigners out of all Erin and after Erin was reduced to a state of peace, a single woman came from Torach in the north of Erin to Clíodhna in the south of Erin, carrying a ring of gold on a horse-rod, and she was neither robbed nor insulted."[2]

The bardic schools began to revive again, for the bards too had felt the full pressure of the invasion, their colleges had been broken up, and many of themselves been slain. One aim of the Norsemen was to destroy all learning. "It was not allowed," writes Keating, "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."

The eleventh and twelfth centuries, however, witnessed a great revival of art and learning. Indeed, from the reign of Brian until the coming of the Normans, Irish metal-work, architecture, and letters flourished wonderfully. It is from this brief period of comparative rest that the three most important relics of Celtic literature now in the world date, the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, the Book of Leinster, and the Book of Hymns. The eleventh and twelfth centuries produced also many men of literature, including the annalist Tighearnach who was Abbot of Clonmacnois and died in 1088; and Dubdaléithe, Archbishop of Armagh, who died in 1065, who wrote Annals of Ireland which are now lost, but which are quoted both in the Annals of Ulster and in the "Four Masters." The greatest scholar, chronologist, and poet of this period is unquestionably Flann, the fear-léighinn or head-teacher of the school of Monasterboice, who died in 1056. Though he is called Flann Mainstreach, or Flann of the Monastery, he was really a layman--one proof out of many, that the schools and colleges which grew up round religious institutions were as much secular as theological. He composed a valuable series of synchronisms, in which he synchronised the kings of the Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Greeks, and the Roman emperors, with the kings of Ireland, in parallel columns century by century, and sums up the most important portions of his teaching in a poem of some twelve hundred lines intended evidently as a class-book for his pupils. A piece of more value is one which synchronises the reigns of the Irish monarchs with those of the Irish provincial kings and the kings of Scotland, from the time of King Laeghaire who received St. Patrick, down to the death of Murtough O'Brien in 1119, these later years having been completed by some other hand.

No fewer than two thousand lines of Flann's poetry were copied into the Book of Leinster less than a hundred years after his own death, and there are nearly as many more in other manuscripts. They are, however, though composed in elaborate metres, anything but creative and imaginative poems. The most of them consist of annals or history versified, evidently with the intention of being committed to memory, because the great ollamhs like Flann were really rather historians and philosophers than what we call poets, and they used their metrical art, very often though not always, to enshrine their knowledge. There is, however--except to the historian--nothing particularly inspiriting in a poem of 204 lines on the monarchs of Erin and kings of Meath who are descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages, giving the names, length of reign, and manner of death of each, despite the undoubted skill with which the technical difficulties of a thorny metre are overcome.[3] Some of his pieces, however, are of more living interest, as his poem on the history of Oileach or Ailech, the palace of the O'Neills near Derry, in which he takes us to the time of the Tuatha De Danann, and in his poem on the battles fought by the Kinel Owen. Indeed as O'Curry well puts it,

"Many a name lying dead in our genealogical tracts and which has found its way into our evidently condensed chronicles and annals, will be found in these poems connected with the death or associated with the brilliant deeds of some hero whose story we would not willingly lose; while, on the other hand, many an obscure historical allusion will be illustrated and many an historical spot as yet unknown to the topographer will be identified, when a proper investigation of these and other great historical poems preserved in the Book of Leinster, shall be undertaken as part of the serious study of the history and antiquities of our country."[4]

This summing-up of O'Curry's as to the poems of Flann, is one which may be also applied to several of his contemporaries and successors, such as Coleman O'Seasnan who died in 1050, one of whose poems on the kings of Emania and of Ulster contains 328 lines; Giolla Caomhghin [Gilla Keevin], who died in 1072, some thirteen or fourteen hundred lines of whose poetry has been preserved; Tanaidhe O'Mulconry, who died in 1136; Giolla Moduda O'Cassidy, who died in 1143, and whose poems, still extant, amount to nearly nine hundred lines; and Giolla-na-naomh O'Dunn who died in 1160, and of whom we still possess fourteen hundred verses.[5]

The compositions of two rather earlier poets, Erard mac Coisé [Cŭsha] and Cuan O'Lochain possess more interest. They died in 1023 and 1024 respectively. Mac Coisé's four surviving poems and his prose allegory are all of great interest. As for Cuan O'Lochain, he was chief poet of Erin in his day, and according to Mac Echagain's "Annals of Clonmacnois" and an entry in the Book of Leinster, he and a cleric named Corcran were elected to govern Ireland during the interregnum which succeeded the death of King Malachy, who quietly reassumed, after the death of Brian Boru, the High-kingship of which that monarch had deprived him. This is a convincing proof of the honour attached to the office of "ollamh of all Ireland."

One of O'Lochain's pieces is of special value, because it describes and names every chief building, monument, rath, and remarkable spot in and around Tara, both those erected in Cormac mac Art's time and those added afterwards; both those which were in ruins when the poet wrote, and those which had been described by former authors from the time of Cormac till his own.[6] Another poem of his is on the geasa [gassa] or tabus of the king of Ireland, and on his prerogatives. It was tabu for him to let the sun rise on him when in bed in the plains of Tara, or for him to alight on a Wednesday on the plain of Bregia, or to traverse the plain of Cuillenn after sunset, or to launch his ship on the first Monday after May Day, etc. Another is a beautiful poem on the origin of the river Shannon, called from a lady Sinann, who ventured near Connla's well, a thing tabu to a female--to steal the nuts of knowledge. There grew nine splendid mystical hazel trees around this well, and they produced the most beautiful nuts of rich crimson colour, and as these lovely nuts, filled full with all that was loveliest and most refined in literature, poetry, and art, dropped off their branches into the well, they raised a succession of red shining bubbles. The salmon at the sound of the falling nuts darted forward to eat them and afterwards made their way down the river, their lower side covered with beautiful crimson spots from the effect of the crimson nuts. Whoever could catch and eat these salmon were in their turn filled with the knowledge of literature and art, for the power of the nuts had to some extent passed into the fish that eat them. These were the celebrated "eó feasa" [yo fassa], or salmon of knowledge, so frequently alluded to by the poets. To approach this well was tabu to a woman, but Sinann attempted it, when the well rose up and drowned her, and carried her body down in a torrent of water to the river which was after her called Shannon.

Altogether about 1,200 lines of Cuan O'Lochain's poetry have been preserved.[7] It would be useless for our purpose to go more minutely into the history of those pre-Norman poets. It is not the known poetry of early Irish poets which, as a rule, is of most interest to the purely literary student, but rather the unknown and the traditional.

We must now take a glance at the Irish of this later period upon the Continent.

Those brilliant names in the history of European scholarship who distinguished themselves under Charlemagne, his son, and his grandsons, Clemens, Dicuil, and Scotus Erigena, who all taught in the Court schools, Dungal who taught in Pavia, Sedulius who worked in Lüttich, Fergal, or Virgil who ruled in Salzburg, and Moengal, the teacher of St. Gall, were not altogether without successors. It is true that Ireland's great mission of instruction and conversion came to a close with the eleventh century, yet for two centuries more, driven by that innate instinct for travel and adventure which was so strong within them, that it resembled a second nature, we find Irish monks creating new foundations on the Continent, especially in Germany. One of the most noteworthy of these was a monk from the present Donegal, Muiredach mac Robertaigh, who assumed the Latin name of Marianus Scotus, or Marian the Irishman. In 1076 he had succeeded in establishing an Irish monastery at Ratisbon, or, as the Germans call it, Regensburg, the fame of which rapidly spread, and attracted to it many of his countrymen from Ulster, so many, that the parent monastery failed to accommodate them; and a branch house, that of St. Jacob, was completed in 1111. From these points Irish monks penetrated in all directions. Frederick Barbarossa, in 1189, on his way from the Crusades, founded even at Skribentium, in what is now Bulgaria, a monastery with an Irish abbot. About the same time the Irish abbots of Ratisbon are found writing to King Wratislaw of Bohemia to facilitate the passage of their emissaries into Poland. Under the influence of these two Irish houses, St. James of Ratisbon and St. Jacob, quite a number of other Irish monasteries were founded, that of Wurzburg in 1134, Nürnberg in 1140, Constanz in 1142, St. George in Vienna in 1155, Eichstädt in 1183, St. Maria in Vienna in 1200.

These Irish monks who, in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries left the north of Ireland and thus planted themselves in Germany, were, says Zimmer, worthy successors of those apostles and scholars who laboured from the seventh to the tenth century in France, Switzerland, and Burgundy, "full of religious zeal, piety, sobriety, and a genuine love of earning."[8] A chronicle of the monastery of Ratisbon, written in 1185, states that the greater part of all the existing documents belonging to the different Irish monasteries which sprang from it had been written by Marianus Scotus himself. A specimen, writes Zimmer, of his beautiful script and the remarkable rapidity of his work may be seen at the Court Library of Vienna, where is preserved a copy of St. Paul's Epistles in 160 sheets, written by him in 1079, between March 23rd and May 17th. Very many of the monks--Malachias, Patricius, Maclan, Finnian, and others--who came to these monasteries from Ireland brought books with them which they presented to the German monasteries. The century which succeeded the Battle of Clontarf was the most flourishing period of the Irish monks in Germany. In the thirteenth century their influence visibly declines. Once the English had commenced the conquest of Ireland the monasteries ceased to be recruited by men of sanctity and learning, but were resorted to by men who sought rather material comfort and a life of worldly freedom.[9] The result was that towards the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century most of the Irish establishments in Germany came to an end, being either made over to Germans, like of those of Vienna and Würzburg, or else altogether losing their monastic character like that of Nuremberg.

As for the parent monastery, that of St. James of Ratisbon, its fate was most extraordinary, and deserves to be told at greater length. It had, of course, always been from its foundation inhabited by Irish monks alone, and was known as the Monasterium Scotorum, or Monastery of the Irishmen. But when in process of time the word Scotus became ambiguous, or, rather, had come to be almost exclusively applied to what we now call Scotchmen,[10] the Scotch prudently took advantage of it, and claimed that they, and not the Irish, were the real founders of Ratisbon and its kindred institutions, and that the designation monasterium Scotorum proved it, but that the Irish had gradually and unlawfully intruded themselves into all these institutions which did not belong to them. Accordingly it came to pass by the very irony of fate--analogous to that which made English writers of the last century claim Irish books and Irish script as Anglo-Saxon--that the great parent monastery of St. James of Ratisbon was actually given up to the Scotch by Leo X. in 1515, and all the unfortunate Irish monks there living were driven out! The Scotch, however, do not seem to have made much of their new abode, for though the monastery contained some able men during the first century of its occupation by them--

"It exercised," says Zimmer, "no influence worth mentioning upon the general cultivation of the German people of that region, and may be considered but a small contributor towards mediæval culture in general, for the only share the Scotch monks can really claim in a monument like that of the Church of St. James of Ratisbon, is the fact of their having collected the gold for its erection from the pockets of the Germans. In comparison with these how noble appear to us those apostles from Ireland, of whom we find so many traces in different parts of the kingdom, of the monks from the beginning of the seventh to the end of the tenth century"!

This monastery was finally secularised in 1860.

[1] Killaloe, Inniscaltra, and Tomgraney.

[2] On this episode Moore wrote his melody, "Rich and rare were the gems she wore." An Irish poet contemporaneous with this event celebrated it less poetically--

"O Thoraigh co Clíodna cais Is fail óir aice re a h-ais I ré Bhriain taoibh-ghil nár thim Do thimchil aoin-bhen Eirinn."

[3] Compare the first verse in Deibhidh metre--

"Midhe Maigen Chlainne Cuind, Cáin-fhorod Clainne Neill Neart-luind, Cride [Cain] Banba Bricce, Mide Magh na Mór-chipe."

I.e., "Meath, the place of the children of Conn, beautiful house of the children of Niall, strength-renowned. The heart of celebrated Erin, Meath, the place of the great battalions."

[4] O'Curry's "Manners and Customs," vol. ii, p. 156.

[5] There are a great number of other poets of whom only one or two poems survive, and others are mentioned as great poets by the annalists, of whom not a line has come down to us.

[6] This piece has been published at full length in Petrie's "History and Antiquities of Tara."

[7] There are two different etymologies of the name in a poem on the river Shannon of several hundred verses, made by a native of the county Roscommon in the eventful year 1798. There is also a different version of the origin of the river in a folk tale which I recovered this year from a native of the same county.

[8] "Sie waren noch würdige Epigonen jener Glaubensboten und Gelehrten des 7-10 Jahrhunderts, die wir im Frankreich kennen lernten; voll Glaubenseifer, Frömmigkeit, Enthaltsamkeit und Sinn für Studien" ("Preussisches Jahrbuch," January, 1887).

[9] "Propter abundantiam et propter liberam voluntatem vivendi," quotes Zimmer.

[10] F. F. Warren, quoted by Miss Stokes in her "Six Months in the Apennines," gives a list of twenty-nine Irish monasteries in France, and eighteen in Germany and Switzerland, with many more in the Netherlands and in Italy. Numberless others founded by the Irish passed into foreign hands.

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XXXIV. SUDDEN ARREST OF IRISH DEVELOPMENT

The semi-usurpation of Brian Boru, which broke through the old prescriptional usage (according to which the High-kings of Ireland had, for the preceding five hundred years, been elected only from amongst the northern or southern Ui Neill, that is, from the descendants of Niall of the Nine Hostages), produced no evil effects, but much good so long as Brian himself lived; yet his action was destined to have the worst possible influence upon the future of Ireland, an evil influence comparable only to that caused by the desertion of Tara four centuries and a half before. The High-kingship being thus thrown open, as it were, to any Irish chief sufficiently powerful to wrest it from the others, became an object of constant dispute and warfare, the O'Neills kings of Ulster, the O'Conors of Connacht, the O'Briens of Munster, and the princes of Leinster, all contended for it, so that from the death of Malachy, Brian Boru's successor, there was scarcely a single High-king who was not, as the Irish annalists call it, "a king with opposition."[1] Hence despite the immediate revival of art and literature which followed the defeat of the Northmen, the country was in many ways politically weakened, the inherent defects of the clan system accentuated, and the land, already much exhausted by the Danish wars,[2] was left open to the invasion of the Normans.

It was in May, 1169, that the first force of these new invaders landed, and, aided by the incompetence of a particularly feeble High-king, they had so thoroughly established themselves in Ireland by the close of the century, that they succeeded in putting an end to the Irish High-kingship, under which Ireland had subsisted for over a thousand years. Then began that permanent war--very different, indeed, from what the Irish tribes waged among themselves--which, almost from its very commencement, thoroughly arrested Irish development, and disintegrated Irish life.

It is not too much to say that for three centuries after the Norman Conquest Ireland produced nothing in art, literature, or scholarship, even faintly comparable to what she had achieved before. With the Normans came collapse;

"Red ruin and the breaking up of laws,"

and all the horrors of chronic and remorseless warfare.

We must now examine the history of Irish art, as displayed in metal-work, buildings, and illuminated manuscripts.

That peculiar class of design which Irish artists developed so successfully in "the countless hosts of the illuminated books of the men of Erin," is not really of Irish origin at all. It is not even Celtic. The late researches of M. Solomon Reinach and others into the genuine remains of the Celts of Gaul and the Continent have discovered in their ornamentation scarcely a trace at all of the so-called Irish patterns. They are in truth not Irish, but Eastern. They seem to have started from Byzantium, spread over Dalmatia and North Italy, and finally found their way into Ireland. The early forms of pre-Christian Irish art show no trace whatsoever of those peculiar interlaced patterns and convoluted figures which are usually associated with the name of Celtic design. The engraved patterns on the tumulus of New Grange, dating from probably about 800[3] years before the Christian era, and the similar scribings upon sepulchral chambers at Louchcrew, Telltown, and other places, do not show a particle of interlaced work, but consist for the most part of circles with rays, arrangements of concentric circles, patterns of double and triple spirals, and lozenges. Indeed, it is the spiral, in countless forms and applications, which seems to have been really indigenous to the earliest inhabitants of Ireland, and with it the interlaced and convoluted figures of non-Irish post-Christian art became blended, gradually driving it out. These in their turn perished, degraded and abased by admixture with Gothic forms introduced by the Normans, whose invasion soon put an end to the development of all art in Ireland save that of architecture.

The so-called Celtic design of Ireland, with its interlaced bands, its convolutions, its knots, its triquetras, is really a survival of what once, starting from the East, spread over a large portion of western and northern Europe, but which soon died out there overwhelmed by Gothic and other influences; whilst in Ireland, where it was applied with far truer artistic feeling and far finer elaboration than elsewhere, it has been preserved in countless works of stone, bronze, and parchment. A scrutiny of early Scandinavian art and of the architectural styles of Italy known as the Latino-Barbaro and Italo-Bizantino, with portions of the art of other countries, have revealed traces of the so-called Celtic designs in places and under circumstances which prove that they cannot be--as used to be generally supposed--the work of exiled Irishmen. Nevertheless, there is a certain individuality in the working out of these designs when brought to perfection by Irish hands, which sufficiently distinguishes Irish art from that of other countries. For in Ireland the interlaced decoration was grafted on to the more archaic and pre-Christian style.

"The peculiar spirals found on these bronzes of that [pre-Christian] time," says Miss Stokes,[4] "the trumpet pattern, the even more archaic single-line spirals, zigzags, lozenges, circles, dots, are all woven in with interlaced designs, with marvellous skill and sense of beauty and charm of varied surface, added to which is an unsurpassed feeling for colour where the style admits of colour, as in enamels and illumination. Besides all this, the interlacings, taken by themselves, gradually undergo a change in character under the hand of an Irish artist. They become more inextricable, more involved, more infinitely varied in their twistings and knottings, and more exquisitely precise and delicate in execution than they are ever seen to be on continental work, so far as my experience goes."

The original pre-Christian art of the Irish Celts, that known to Cuchulain and Conor mac Nessa and the heroes of the Red Branch, survives only upon a few bronzes and upon the stones of a few sepulchral mounds. The tracings upon the sepulchral mounds are rude--though we find in some instances evidences of designs deliberately worked out to cover a given surface--and they mostly consist of recognisable symbols of Sun and Fire worship. The bronze sword-sheaths of Lisnacroghera, which are magnificent specimens of early Irish art, are a development of these patterns, but bear no trace of that interlaced work which was introduced with Christianity. There are several other bronze ornaments, evidently pre-Christian, which exhibit the same kind of designs, notably what appear to be two horns of a radiated crown exquisitely decorated by spiral lines in relief, and which, said Mr. Kemble, "for beauty of design and execution may challenge comparison with any specimen of cast bronze-work that it has ever been my fortune to see." Miss Stokes, however, has shown that these pieces were not cast, but repoussé, and consequently, she writes--

"If not the finest pieces of casting ever seen, yet as specimens of design and workmanship they are perhaps unsurpassed. The surface is here overspread with no vague lawlessness, but the ornament is treated with fine reserve, and the design carried out with the precision and delicacy of a master's touch. The ornament on the cone flows round and upwards in lines gradual and harmonious as the curves in ocean surf, meeting and parting only to meet again in lovelier forms of flowing motion. In the centre of the circular plate below--just at the point or hollow whence all these lines flow round and upwards, at the very heart, as it might seem, of the whole work--a crimson drop of clear enamel may be seen."

These beautiful fragments are almost certainly pre-Christian, and may even have been worn by Conairé the Great or Conor mac Nessa. They represent a variety of design which stands midway between the stone engravings and the art of the early Christians. It is a remarkable fact, amply proven and universally acknowledged, that the bronze-work of the pre-Christian Irish was never surpassed by their post-Christian metal-work. Indeed, while the pagan Irish are proved to have attained great skill in the art of design, in working of metals, and especially in the art of enamelling by various processes, the specimens of the earliest Christian metal-work, such as St. Patrick's bell, are exceedingly rude and barbarous--possibly because the skilled pagan workmen did not turn their hands to such business, and the Christian converts had themselves to do the best they could.

Many of the monks, however, appear to have given themselves up to metal-work, and reached a very high pitch of excellence in it, as may be seen at a glance by the inspection of such master works as the two-handed Ardagh chalice, the cross of Cong, and numerous shrines, cúmhdachs [coodachs], or book-cases, and croziers. The ornamental designs upon the later Christian metal-work reached their highest perfection in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and the work of this period exhibits about forty different varieties of design, in which animal forms are only sparingly used, and in which there is no trace of foliate pattern. Indeed, these are not found in Irish metal-work before the period of decadence in the thirteenth century. Although the best specimens of Christian art in metal-work belong to the tenth and eleventh centuries, we are not to assume from this that the metal-work of the earlier Christian artists did not keep pace with the work of the early Christian scribes, who produced such magnificent specimens of penmanship and colour in the seventh and eighth centuries. They may have done so, but no relics of their work are left. According to Dr. Petrie, few, if any, of the more distinguished churches of Ireland were destitute of beautiful metal-work in the shape of costly shrines at the coming of the Norseman, as the frequent allusions in the Irish annals show; but scarcely one of these escaped their destructive raids, and hence the finest surviving specimens are of a much later date than the finest surviving manuscripts,[5] which were only destroyed whenever met with, but were not, like the costly metal-work, an object of eager and unremitting pursuit.

In sculpture the Irish never produced anything finer than their tall, shapely, richly but not over-richly ornamented Celtic crosses. The Ogam-inscribed stones, of which over a couple of hundred remain, are perfectly plain and undecorative. Some of the later inscribed tombstones (of which some two hundred and fifty remain), contain, it is true, fine chisel-work, but the numerous high Celtic crosses, covered many of them with elaborate sculpture in relief, with undercutting, and ornamented with the divergent and interlaced spiral pattern, show the finest artistic instinct. Most of these beautiful works of art are later than the year 900, but hardly one is posterior to the Norman invasion, which soon put a stop to such artistic luxuries.

The Irish were not a nation of builders. Most of the early Irish houses, even at Tara, were, as we have seen, of wood. The ordinary dwelling-house was either a cylindrical hut of wicker-work with a cup-shaped roof, plastered with clay and thatched with reeds, or else a quadrilateral house built of logs or of clay. The so-called city of Royal Tara was, in fact, a vast enclosure, containing quite a number of different raths, and houses inside the raths. The buildings seem to have been constructed of the timbers of lofty trees planted side by side, probably carved into fantastic shapes upon the outside, while the inside walls were closely interwoven with slender rods, over which a putty or plaster of loam was smoothly spread, which, when even and dry, was painted in bright colours, chiefly red, yellow, and blue. The roofs were formed of smooth joists and cross-beams, and probably thatched with rods and rushes, much in the same manner as the houses of the peasantry to-day. The floors appear to have been of earth, carefully hardened and beaten down, and then covered with a coat of some kind of hard and shiny mortar. No doubt some very fine barbaric effects were realised in these buildings, some of which, as is evidenced by the description of Cormac's Teach Midhchuarta, must have been immense. There were as many as seven dúns, or raths, round Tara, each containing within it many houses, and each surrounded by a mound, or vallum, planted with a stockade like a Maori pah.[6] The finest house of all, painted in the gayest colours, planted in the sunniest spot, and provided overhead with a balcony, was reserved for the ladies of the place, and was called the grianán [greeanawn], or sunny house.

Stone, however, was used in places, at a very early date, long before the first century, as may be seen from the stone forts of western and south-western Ireland, huge structures of which one of the best known is Dún-Angus, in the Isle of Arran, but there was no knowledge of mortar. Masonry was also used occasionally by the early monks in constructing their little clocháns, or beehive cells, and their oratories, with rounded roofs, built without a vestige of an arch, the whole surrounded by an uncemented stone wall, or cashel.

The Irish do not seem to have done much in stone-work until the Danish invasions forced them to construct the round towers in which to take shelter when the enemy was upon them, saving thus their jewels, books, and shrines. The Danes, who made rapid marches across the country, could not burn these towers nor throw them down, nor could they spend the time necessary to reduce them by famine, lest the country should be roused behind them, and their retreat to their ships cut off. The idea and form of the round tower the Irish almost certainly derived from the East. In Lord Dunraven's "Notes on Irish Architecture" the path of these buildings from Ravenna across Europe and into Ireland is distinctly shown; but while only about a score of examples survive in the rest of Europe, Ireland alone possesses a hundred and eighteen of these curious structures. There are three well-marked styles of towers. The doors and windows of the earlier ones are primitive and horizontal, but in the later ones the rude entablature of the earlier towers has given way to the decorated Romanesque arch, and the beauty and number of the arched windows is greatly increased.

The transition from the horizontal to the round-arched style is shown in the Church of Iniscaltra, erected two years after the battle of Clontarf, and many years before the true Romanesque appeared in England. From that time till the coming of the Normans, Irish ecclesiastical architecture--the only kind practised, for the Irish did not live in or build castles--progressed enormously, and several fine specimens belonging to the twelfth century still survive.

"The remains," writes Miss Stokes, "of a great number of monuments belonging to the period between the fifth and twelfth centuries of the Christian era, have survived untouched by the hand either of the restorer or of the destroyer, and in them, when arranged in consecutive series, we can trace the development from an early and rude beginning to a very beautiful result, and watch the dovetailing, as it were, of one style into another, till an Irish form of Romanesque architecture grew into perfection. The form of the Irish Church points to an original type which has almost disappeared elsewhere--that of the Shrine or Ark, not of the Basilica."

The Norman invasion, however, put a complete stop to the natural development of Irish Romanesque, and changed the building of churches into that of castles, in which the Irish only copied, so far as they built at all, the pattern of the invader.

The art, however, in which the Irish earliest excelled, and in which they have really no rivals in Europe, was in that of writing and illuminating manuscripts. The most recent authority on the subject, Johan Adolf Brunn in his "Inquiry into the Art of Illuminated MSS. of the Middle Ages," acknowledges that the fame of the Celtic school, "dating from the darker centuries of the Middle Ages, excels that of any of its rivals." Westwood, the great British authority, declares that were it not for Irishmen these islands would contain no primitive works of art worth mentioning, and asserts that the Book of Kells is "unquestionably the most elaborately executed manuscript of so early a date, now in existence." Even Giraldus Cambrensis, who came in with the early Normans, was struck dumb with admiration of the exquisite book shown him at Kildare, which of all the miracles with which Kildare was credited was to him the greatest. Here, he writes, "you may see the visage of majesty divinely impressed, on one side the mystic forms of the evangelists having now six, now four, now two wings, on one side the eagle, on another the calf, on one side the face of a man, on the other of a lion, and an almost infinite quantity of other figures.... A careless glance at the whole," he goes on to say, "reveals no particular excellence, but if, looking closer at it, the spectator examined the work in detail he would see how extraordinarily subtle and delicate were the knots and lines, how bright and fresh the colours remained, how interlaced and bound together was the whole, so that we would feel inclined to believe that it could hardly be a human composition but the works of angels. In fact," writes Cambrensis, "the oftener and closer I inspect it,[7] the more certain I am to be struck with something new, with something ever more and more wonderful." Indeed, the story ran, that such figures and such colouring were due to no mere mortal invention, but that an angel had appeared to the scribe in his sleep and taught him how to make these wondrous drawings, "and thus," adds Cambrensis, "through the revelation of the angel, the prayer of Brigit, and the imitation of the scribe, that book was written."

Now Giraldus Cambrensis, as Johan Adolf Brunn observes, "knew to perfection the master-achievements of the non-Celtic schools of art of contemporary date," and "although referring to a particular work of especial merit," says Brunn, "the testimony of this mediæval writer may well be placed at the head of an inquiry into the art in general of the Celtic illuminated manuscripts, emphasising as it does the salient characteristics of the style followed by this distinguished school of illumination, its minute and delicate drawing, its brilliancy of colouring, and, above all, that amazing amount of devoted and patient labour, which underlies its intricate composition, and creates the despair of any one who tries to copy them."

Between six and seven centuries later Westwood expresses himself in terms not unlike those of Cambrensis, of the now scanty remains of ancient Irish illumination--

"Especially deserving of notice," he writes, "is the extreme delicacy and wonderful precision, united with an extraordinary minuteness of detail with which many of these ancient manuscripts were ornamented. I have examined with a magnifying glass the pages of the Gospel of Lindisfarne, and the Book of Kells, for hours together, without ever detecting a false line or an irregular interlacement; and when it is considered that many of these details consist of spiral lines, and are so minute as to be impossible to have been executed without a pair of compasses, it really seems a problem not only with what eyes but also with what instruments they could have been executed.... I counted in a small space, measuring scarcely three quarters of an inch by less than half an inch in width, in the Book of Armagh, not fewer than one hundred and fifty-eight interlacements of a slender ribbon pattern formed in white lines edged with black ones upon a black ground."[8]

The Book of Armagh, as we have seen, was written in 807, or perhaps, as the "Four Masters" antedate at this period, in 812, while the Book of Kells is ascribed, according to the best judges, to the close of the seventh century.

The seventh and eight centuries, before the island was disturbed by the Danes, were the most flourishing period of the Irish illuminator and scribe. But their schools continued to turn out very fine work as late as the twelfth century, and Gilbert, in his "Facsimiles of the National Manuscripts of Ireland," states that there are perhaps no finer specimens of minute old writing extant than those in the margins and interlineations of a copy of the Gospels written by Maelbrigte Ua Maelruanaigh [Mulroony], in Armagh, in 1138, that is, seventeen years after that city had for the last time been burnt and plundered by the Danes.

Like all the other arts of civilised life, that of the illuminator and decorative scribe was brought to a standstill by the Norman warriors, nor do the Irish appear after this period to have produced a single page worth the reproduction of the artistic palæographer. The reason of this, no doubt, was that the Irish artist in former days could--no matter how septs fell out or warring tribes harried one another--count upon the sympathy of his fellow countrymen even when they were hostile. Under the new conditions caused by the Norman settlements in each of the four provinces, he could count on nothing, not even on his own life. All confidence was shaken, all peace of mind was gone, the very name of so-called government produced a universal terror, and Ireland became, to use a graphic expression of the Four Masters, a "trembling sod." "No words," writes Mrs. Sophie Bryant, with perfect truth, "could describe that arrest of development so eloquently or so lucidly as the facts of Irish art-history." "Since then" [i.e., since the Norman invasion], writes Miss Stokes, one of the highest living authorities upon this subject, "the native character of Ireland has best found expression in her music. No work of purely Celtic art, whether in illumination of the sacred writings, or in gold, or bronze, or stone, was wrought by Irish hands after that century and as we shall now see this decay of Irish art is reflected in the falling off" of Irish literature, which continued languishing until the great revival which took place about the year 1600.

[1] After Malachy reigned Donough O'Brien, son of Brian Boru; after him Diarmuid of Leinster, of the race of Cáthaoir Mór; after him two other O'Briens, then an O'Lochlainn king of Ulster, then O'Conor of Connacht, then another O'Lochlainn, and then another O'Conor, King Roderick, in whose time the Normans landed.

[2] Although the backbone of the Danish power was broken at Clontarf, desultory warfare with them did not cease for long after. Even so late as 1021 they were able to penetrate into the city of Armagh for the seventeenth time during two hundred years, and burnt the whole city to the ground, with its churches and books. Within two years of the battle of Clontarf they burned Glendalough and Clonard.

[3] This is the minimum date assigned them by Mr. George Coffey in his admirable monograph upon the subject.

[4] "Six Months in the Apennines," Introductory Letter.

[5] The earliest surviving book-shrine, that of Molaise's Gospels, was made between the year 1001 and 1025; the earliest dated crozier is 967; the earliest bell-shrine may be assigned to 954. The Cross of Cong dates from about 1123. That the earlier Christian craftsmen must have made good work, if only it had survived, may be inferred from the fine silver chalice of Kremsmünster, in Lower Austria, dating from between the years 757 and 781.

[6] This was the case with most of those earthen circumvallations, called in different parts of Ireland raths and lisses, and in Hibernian English forts or forths. The houses were inside the embankment, which was in most cases protected by a wall of stakes planted round its summit.

[7] The whole passage is worth transcribing in the original. "Inter numerosa Kildariæ miracula nihil mihi miraculosius occurrit quam liber ille mirandus, tempore Virginis [he means St. Brigit] ut aiunt, angelo dictante, consumptus. Hic Majestatis vultum videas divinitus impressum, hinc mysticas Evangelistarum formas, nunc senas, nunc quaternas, nunc binas alas habentes: hinc aquilam, inde vitulum, hinc hominis faciem, inde leonis, aliasque figuras fere infinitas. Quas si superficialiter et usuali more minus acute conspexeris, litura potius videbitur quam ligatura, nec ullam prorsus attendes subtilitatem. Sin autem ad perspicacius intuendum oculorum aciem invitaveris, et longe penitius ad artis arcana et transpenetraveris, tam delicatas et subtiles tam arctas et artitas, tam nodosas et vinculatim colligatas, tam que recentibus adhuc coloribus illustratas, notare poteris intricaturas, ut veré hæc omnia potius angelica quam humana diligentia jam asseveraveris esse composita. Hæc equidem quanto frequentius et diligentius intueor semper quasi novis obstupeo semper magis ac magis admiranda conspicio." Master of the Rolls series, vol. v., p. 123.

[8] "The Miniatures and Ornaments of Anglo-Saxon and Irish MSS."

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XXXV. FOUR CENTURIES OF DECAY

For four centuries after the Anglo-Norman, or more properly the Cambro-Norman invasion, the literature of Ireland seems to have been chiefly confined to the schools of the bards, and the bards themselves seem to have continued on the rather cut-and-dry lines of tribal genealogy, religious meditations, personal eulogium, clan history, and elegies for the dead. There reigns during this period a lack of imagination and of initiative in literature; no new ground is broken, no fresh paths entered on, no new saga-stuff unearthed, no new metres discovered. There is great technical skill exhibited, but little robust originality; great cleverness of execution, but little boldness of conception. How closely the bards ran in the groove of their predecessors is evident from the number of poems of doubtful authorship, ascribed by some authorities to bards of the pre-Norman or even Danish period, and by others to poets of the thirteenth, fourteenth, or even fifteenth centuries, the work of the later period being so very often both in style and language scarcely distinguishable from the earlier which it imitates.

Another characteristic of these four centuries is the number of hereditary bards of the same name and family which we find generation after generation, each one imitating his predecessor, and producing his inauguration odes, his eulogies, and his elegies, for each succeeding race of chiefs and patrons.

This period is the post-epic, post-saga period. Probably not one of the Red Branch stories was even materially altered during it. Stories of the Fenian cycle, however, continued to be propagated and improved upon, and no doubt many new ones were invented. But there is little or no trace of the composition of fresh miscellaneous saga, and the only poetry that seems to have flourished beside the classic metres of the bards is the so-called "Ossianic," a good deal of which may, perhaps, have assumed something of its present form during this period.

Some attempt there was at the careful keeping of annals, but scarcely any at writing regular history, though the fifteenth century produced McCraith's "Exploits of Torlough," to be noticed further on. We shall now briefly glance at this period age by age.

The thirteenth century, that succeeding the coming of the Normans, is far more barren in literature than the one which preceded them. Only five or six poets are mentioned as belonging to it, and their surviving poems amount to only a few hundred lines, with the exception of those of the great religious bard Donogha Mór O'Daly, who died in 1244 "a poet," record the "Four Masters," "who never was and never shall be surpassed." All his poems extant are of a religious character. He was buried in the abbey of Boyle, in the county of Roscommon, in which county I have heard, up to a few years ago, verses ascribed to him repeated by more than one old peasant. It is usually believed that he was a cleric and abbot of the beautiful monastery of Boyle, but there is no evidence for this, and he may have been in fact a layman. Thirty-one poems of his, containing in all some four thousand two hundred lines, have been preserved, and for their great smoothness have earned for their author the not very happy title of the Ovid of Ireland. Here is a specimen of one of his shorter pieces, written on his unexpectedly finding himself unable to shed a tear after his arriving at Loch Derg on a pilgrimage:

"Alas, for my journey to Loch Derg, O King of the churches and the bells; 'I have come' to weep thy bruises and thy wound, and yet from my eye there cometh not a tear.[1]

"With an eye that moistens not its pupil, after doing every evil, no matter how great, with a heart that seeketh only (its own) peace, alas! O king, what shall I do?

"Without sorrowfulness of heart, without softening, without contrition, or weeping for my faults,--Patrick head of the clergy, he never thought that he could gain God in this way.

"The one son of Calphurn, since we are speaking of him, 'alas! O Virgin, sad my state!' he was never seen whilst alive without the trace of tears in his eye.

"In (this) hard, narrow stone-walled (cell), after all the evil I have done, all the pride I have felt. Alas! my pity! that I find no tear, and I buried alive in the grave.

"O one-Son, by whom all were created, and who didst not shun the death of the three thorns, with a heart than which stone is not more hard, 'tis pity my journey to Loch Derg."

Here is another specimen, a good deal of which I once heard from a poor beggarman in the County Mayo, but it is also preserved in numerous manuscripts:

"My son, remember what I say, That on the Day of Judgment's shock, When men go stumbling down the Mount, The sheep may count thee of their flock.[2]

And narrow though thou find the path To Heaven's high rath, and hard to gain, I warn thee shun yon broad white road That leads to the abode of pain.

For us is many a snare designed, To fill our mind with doubts and fears. Far from the land where lurks no sin, We dwell within our Vale of Tears.

Not on the world thy love bestow, Passing as flowers that blow and die; Follow not thou the specious track That turns the back on God most high.

But oh! let faith, let hope, let love, Soar far above this cold world's way, Patience, humility, and awe-- Make them thy law from day to day.

And love thy neighbour as thyself, (Not for his pelf thy love should be), But a greater love than every love Give God above who loveth thee.

* * * * *

The seven shafts wherewith the Unjust Shoots hard to thrust us from our home, Canst thou avoid their fiery path, Dread not the wrath that is to come.

Shun sloth, shun greed, shun sensual fires, (Eager desires of men enslaved) Anger and pride and hatred shun, Till heaven be won, till man be saved.

To Him, our King, to Mary's son Who did not shun the evil death, Since He our hope is, He alone, Commit thy body, soul, and breath.

Since Hell each man pursues each day, Cleric and lay, till life be done, Be not deceived as others may, Remember what I say, my son."[3]

The fourteenth century possesses exactly the same characteristics as the thirteenth, only the poets are more numerous. O'Reilly mentions over a score of them whose verses amount to nearly seven thousand lines. Of these the best known is probably John Mór O'Dúgan of whom about 2,600 lines survive--important rather for the information they convey than for their poetry. His greatest, or at least his most valuable piece, is about the tribes and territories of the various districts in Meath, Ulster, and Connacht, on the arrival of the Normans, and the names of the chiefs who ruled them.[4] In this poem he devotes 152 lines to Meath, 354 to Ulster, 328 to Connacht, and only 56 to Leinster, death having apparently carried him off (in the year 1372) before he had finished his researches into the tribes and territories of that district. But luckily for us his younger contemporary--Gilla-na-naomh O'Huidhrin [Heerin]--took it up and completed it,[5] so that the two poems, usually copied together, form a single piece of 1,660 lines in deibhidh [d'yĕvee] metre, which has thrown more light upon names and territories than perhaps any other of the same extent. It is, despite the difficult and recondite verse, a work mainly of research and not of poetry. The same may be said of nearly all O'Dugan's poems, another of which called the "Forus Focal," is really a vocabulary in verse of obsolete words, which though of similar orthography have different or even contrary meanings. It was in this century the great miscellaneous collection called the Book of Ballymote was compiled.

The fifteenth century differs very little in character from the preceding one. We find about the same number of poets with about the same amount of verses--between six and seven thousand lines, according to O'Reilly--still surviving, or as O'Reilly underrates the number, probably about ten thousand lines. The poets were now beginning to feel the rude weight of the prosaic Saxon, and Fergal O'Daly chief poet of Corcamroe, Maurice O'Daly a poet of Breffhy, Dermot O'Daly of Meath, Hugh Óg Mac Curtin, and Dubhthach [Duffach] son of Eochaidh [Yohee] "the learned," with several more, are mentioned as having been cruelly plundered and oppressed by Lord Furnival and the English. It was in this century that those most valuable annals usually called the Annals of Ulster were compiled from ancient books now lost, by Cathal Maguire who was born in 1438. The great collection called the Book of Lecan was copied at the beginning of this century, and another most important work the "Caithréim, or warlike exploits of Turlough O'Brien," was written about the year 1459 by John Mac Craith, chief historian of North Munster. This though composed in a far more exaggerated and inflated style than even the "War of the Gael with the Gaill," which it resembles, yet gives the most accurate account we have of the struggles of the Irish against the English in Munster from the landing of Henry II. till the death of Lord de Clare in 1318. It was at the very beginning of this century the hagiographical collection called the Leabhar Breac was made.

The sixteenth century cannot properly be said to mark a transition period in Irish literature, as it does in the literature of so many other European countries. It has, indeed, left far more numerous documents behind it than the preceding one, but this is mainly due to the fact that less time has elapsed during which they could be lost. Their style and general contents differ little, until the very close of the century, from those of their predecessors. O'Reilly chronicles the names of about forty poets whose surviving pieces amount to over ten thousand lines. But so many MSS. which were in O'Reilly's time in private hands, or which, like the Stowe MSS., were unapproachable by students, have since been deposited in public libraries or become otherwise accessible, that it would, I think, be safe to add at least half as much again to O'Reilly's computation. I have even in my own possession poems by nearly a dozen writers belonging to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries whose names are not mentioned at all by O'Reilly; and the O'Conor Don has shown me a manuscript copied at Ostend, in Belgium, in 1631, for one Captain Alexander Mac Donnell, from which O'Curry transcribed a thousand pages of poems "of which with a very few exceptions," he writes, "no copies are known to me elsewhere in Ireland." A considerable number of these poems, nearly all of them unknown to O'Reilly, were composed in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, so that this one manuscript alone would largely swell O'Reilly's estimate for this period.

Enormous quantities of books however, belonging to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have been lost, and are still being lost every day. It is an accident that Friar O'Gara's[6] and the O'Conor Don's collection--both compiled abroad--have escaped. If, during the middle of the sixteenth century, a collector of poetry had gone round transcribing the classical poems of that age, he would have found large collections preserved in the houses of almost every scion of the old Gaelic nobility, with scarcely an exception. On the break-up of the houses of the Irish chiefs the archives of their families and their manuscript libraries were lost or carried abroad. An excellent example of what may be called tribal poetry, such as every great Gaelic house possessed, is contained in a manuscript in Trinity College, which a Fellow of the last century, called O'Sullivan, luckily got transcribed for himself, and which is now in the college library.[7] The collection thus made, from about 1570 to 1615, goes under the title of the "Book of the O'Byrnes," and contains sixty or seventy poems made by their own family bards and by several of the leading bards of Ireland, for the various members of the O'Byrnes of Ranelagh near Dublin, and of the O'Byrnes of Wicklow, who for three generations maintained their struggle with the English, only succumbing in the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Other family records of this nature, which were once possessed in every county by the bardic families and by the chiefs, have perished by the score. A glance at a few typical poems belonging to the O'Byrnes will give a good idea of the functions of the sixteenth-century bards, and the nature of their poems. They are composed on all kinds of subjects connected with the wars, genealogy, and history of the tribe and its chiefs. Many are eulogiums, some warnings, some political poems, some elegies. Here are two or three specimens; the first a poem of fifty-six lines, by Angus O'Daly, on the head of one of the chiefs of the clan spiked on the battlements of Dublin.

"O body which I see without a head, It is the sight of thee which has withered up my strength, Divided and impaled in Ath-cliath [Dublin], The learned of Banba [Ireland] will feel its loss.[8]

Who will relieve the wants of the poor? Who will bestow cattle on the learned? O body, since thou art without a head It is not life which we care to choose after thee."

Another poem, by John O'Hĭginn asks who[9] will buy nine verses from him. By his hand he swears, though high the fame of the men of Leinster, they are all cowed now. The O'Tooles of the once heavy gifts have consented to the peace of the English, and till they revoke it they will not give one white groat for twenty-marks-worth of a poem. The Cavanaghs are as bad, the Fitzgeralds and the O'Mores, too, are afraid of the foreigners to buy a poem. One man alone is not obedient to foreign English custom, Aodh [O'Byrne] son of John, the true sweetheart of the bardic schools of the race of the plain of Conn. Except him, the grandson of Redmond alone, the poet sees not one who will buy his nine stanzas--or if such exist, he knows them not.[10]

Another poem of 180 lines by Eochaidh [Yohee] O'Hussey is on the extreme winsomeness and beauty of a certain lady of the O'Byrnes, Rose by name, probably the famous wife of Fiach O'Byrne, who, poor thing, was afterwards captured by the English in 1595 and by them burned alive in the yard of Dublin Castle. The English statesmen who record this piece of work in the State Papers, did not in the least understand the civilisation or customs of Lady Rose, her bards and her clan, and it is only at the present day that it is possible for the scholar through the medium of the State Papers on one side and native Irish documents on the other, to put himself en rapport with both parties; it is a process both absorbing and painful. "What is troubling the ladies of the Gael?" asks the poet, "is it want of gold or lack of jewels, wherefore is the dear troop downcast? Why are the queens of princely race disquieted? Why rise they up heavy at heart? Why lie they down discomfited? Why are their spirits troubled? It is because one lady so excels them all, she is the troubler of the hosts of the men of Inisfail, the one cause of the sorrow of our ladies. Let me," adds the poet gallantly, "have the singing of her."[11]

Another is by Maoilsheachlainn [Malachy in English] O'Coffey, on seeing one of the O'Byrnes' strongholds, probably Ballinacor, occupied by a stranger.[12] Another by one of the O'Mulconrys warns Fiach O'Byrne, that whether he likes to hear it or not, the axe of the English is raised above his head to strike him down.[13] The poet points to the Leinster septs who had been exterminated or escaped destruction by making submission, and how is Fiach to escape, and specially how to escape treachery?

Another poem composed by Donough Mac Eochaidh, or Keogh, with high political intent, is intended to bring about a closer feeling of friendship between the sons of Fiach O'Byrne and John son of Redmond O'Byrne, who had been alienated, designedly, as he intimates, by a lying story propagated by a foreigner, whereas the O'Byrnes of Ranelagh ever sought to avoid giving offence, and no evil story calculated to increase enmity should be believed about one by the other.[14]

Another poet of the Mac Eochaidhs, the household bards of the O'Byrnes, sings the generosity of Torlagh, son of Fiacha, "their fame is the wealth of the tribe of Ranelagh, that is the saying of every one who knows them,[15] the bestowal of their jewels, that is the treasure of the tribe of Ranelagh, of the numerous incursions." "Small is their desire to amass treasures, nobler is the thing for which they conceive a wish; every single man of the blood of Fiach O'Bryne has taken upon himself to distribute his riches for Fiach!"[16]

Another poem is a splendid war-song by Angus O'Daly on a victory of the O'Byrnes over the English. "I rejoice that not one was left of the remnant of the slaughter but the captive who is in hand in bondage:"[17] "the blaze of the burning country makes day out of midnight for them."

A remarkable poet of the end of this century was another Angus O'Daly, the Red Bard, or Angus of the Satires, as he was called. He seems to have been employed by the English statesmen, Lord Mountjoy and Sir George Carew, for the deliberate purpose of satirising all the Gaelic families in the kingdom, and those Anglo-Normans who sympathised with them. Angus travelled the island up and down on this sinister mission. It was indeed an evil time. The awful massacres of Rathlin and Clanaboy in Ulster, the hideous treachery of Mullaghmast in Leinster, the revolting deeds of Bingham in the west, and the unspeakable horrors that followed on the Geraldines rebellion in the south, had reduced the Irish nobles to a condition of the direst poverty. This poverty and the inhospitality which he connected with it--points on which the Irish were particularly sore--were the mark at which Angus aimed his arrows. He usually polished off each house or clan in a single rann or quatrain. His Irish rhymes are peculiarly happy. Here are some specimens of his satire. He says of Thomas Fitzgerald, Knight of Glynn, that he looked so grudgingly at him as he ate his supper that the piece half-chewed stuck in his throat at the very sight of the other's eyes. Of Limerick he says the only thing he was thankful for was the bad roads which would prevent him from ever seeing it again. Of the Fitzmaurices he says that he will neither praise them nor satirise them, for they are just poor gentlemen--admirable satire, and it cannot be doubted that they keenly felt the point of it! Often, however, Angus is only abusive--thus of Maguire of Enniskillen he says that "he is a badger for roughness and greyness, an ape for stature and ugliness, a lobster for the sharpness of his two eyes, a fox for the foulness of his breath,"[18] a verse in which the happiness of the Irish rhyming carries off the poverty of the sentiment. He harps on the blindness of the Mac Ternans,[19] the misanthropy of the Mac Gillycuddy, the inborn evil of the Fitzgibbons,[20] the poverty of the O'Callaghans, the bad wines of the O'Sullivans, the decrepitude of the O'Reillys, and so on.

The Red Bard went on with his satires on the men of the four provinces, with none to say him nay, until he came to Tipperary, where he was misguided enough to satirise the chief of the O'Meaghers, whose servant, stung out of all control, forgot that the person of a bard was sacred, and instantly thrust a knife into his throat, thus putting an end to him and his satires. Angus, however, even as he died, uttered one rann in which, for the good of his soul, he revoked all his former verses: "All the false judgments I have passed upon the men of Munster I recant them; the meagre servant of the grey Meagher has passed as much of a false judgment upon me."

So greatly had the literary production of Ireland passed into the hands of the bards during the period we are now considering, that it will be well to study the evolution of the bardic body down to the close of the sixteenth century, in a separate chapter.

[1]

"Truagh mo thuras ar Loch Dearg A righ na gceall a's na gclog, Do chaoineadh do chneadh 's do chréacht 'S nach dtig déar thar mo rosg."

See "Gaelic Journal," vol. iv. p. 190.

[2]

"Ná tréig mo theagasg a mhic Cidh baogh'lach lá an chirt do chách Ag sgaoileadh dhóib ó an tsliabh Rachaidh tu le Dia na ngrás."

See my "Religious Songs of Connacht," p. 28.

[3] Literally: "Do not forsake my teaching, my son, and although dangerous be the Day of Right for all, on their scattering from the Mount, thou shalt go with God of the graces.

"The road to heaven of the saints though to thee it seem narrow, slender, hard, yet shun the road of the house of the pains, many a one has journeyed to it away from us.

"Against us was treachery designed, to bring us down from the artificer of the elements, in banishment from the land of the living in a Valley of Tears art thou.

"To the world give not love, is it not transient the blossom of the branches? do not follow the track of those who are journeying to hell from God of the Saints.

"Hope, faith, and love, let thee have in God forever, humility, and patience without anger, truth without deception in thy walk," etc.

[4] It begins--

"Triallam timchioll na Fódhla, Gluaisid fir ar furfhógra, As na fóidibh a bhfuileam Na Cóigeadha cuartuigheam."

The whole has been most ably edited by Dr. O'Donovan for the Irish Archæological Society.

[5] His poem in continuation begins--

"Tuille feasa ar Erinn óigh, Ni maith seanchaidh nach seanóir, Seanchas cóir uaim don feadhain Na slóigh ó'n Boinn báinealaigh."

"More knowledge on virgin Ireland, not good is an historian unless he be an elder, proper history from me to the tribe, the hosts from Boyne of the white cattle."

[6] Made in the Low Countries by an exiled friar of the County Galway, a great collection of poetry in the classical metres. See "Transactions of the Gaelic Society," 1808, p. 29.

[7] H. 1. 14, in Trinity College. It is copied unfortunately by one of the most incompetent of scribes, and is full of mistakes of all kinds. The poets who wrote for the O'Byrnes were Rory Mac Craith, Owen O'Coffey, Mahon O'Higinn, Donal Mac Keogh, Niall O'Rooney, Angus O'Daly, John O'Higinn, Eochaidh O'Hussey, Maoileachlainn O'Coffey, T. O'Mulconry, Donogha Mac Keogh, and others. A copy of the "Book of the O'Byrnes" was in possession of the O'Byrnes of Cabinteely, near Dublin, in the beginning of the century. Hardiman and O'Reilly each had a copy, but as I have seen the scribe employed by the Royal Irish Academy engaged for days in writing out of the wretched copy in Trinity College, it is to be presumed that the Council of that body has assured itself that these copies have since perished.

[8]

"A cholann do chím gun ceann Sibh d' fhaicsin, do shearg mo bhrigh, Rannta ar sparra a n-Athcliath, D'éigsi Bhanba bhias a dhith." (H. 1. 14, T. C., D., fol. 84 a.)

[9]

"Cia cheannchas ádhmad naoi rann, Dá bhfághadh connra ar súd? Ar Laighnibh cidh 'r b'ard a dteisd Do m' aithne is cruaidh an cheisd úd."

[10]

"Acht ua Réamainn thuilleas bládh, Ni h-aithne dham shoir no shiar, Neach le ceannach [mo] naoi rann, Ma tá ann, ni fheadar c' iad."

[11]

"Creud ag buaidhreadh ban ngaoidheal An dith óir no iol-mhaoineadh, Cuis aith-mheillte an diorma díl, Ríoghna flaith-fréimhe fuinnidh." (H. 1. 14, T. C., D., fol. 126 a.)

[12]

"Ni bhfuair mé 'na n-áitibh ann, Acht lucht gan aithne orom [orm], Mo chreach geur, mo chrádh croidhe, An sgeul fá ttáim troithlidhe."

[13]

"Fuath gach fir fuighioll a thuaidhe, Tuig a Fhiacha, duit is dual, Má tá nach binn libh mo labhra, Os cionn do chinn do thárla an tuath."

O'Donovan, in his manuscript catalogue, quotes the last two lines of the verse in note 12 above, and translates them, "My bitter woe my heart's oppression is the news for which I grieve." Afterwards he erased the words "for which I grieve" and wrote instead "it wastes my vigour," thus showing that he did not understand the original, for one translation is as bad as the other. The difficult word troithlidhe which perplexed him, is a common one in Roscommon, I have frequently heard it in the sense of "chilly." The translation is, "the news which chills me."

[14]

"Fréamh Raghnaill ni rabhadar Acht ag seachnadh inbhéime Sgeul meuduighthe faltanais Doibh nior chreidte ar a chéile."

[15]

"A gelu is ionmhus d'fhuil Raghnaill Rádh gach eólaigh is é sin."

[16]

"Beag a ndúil a ndéanamh ionmhais Uaisle an nidh dá dtabhraid toil, Do ghabh gach aon-fhear d'fhuil Fhiacha Sgaoileadh a chruidh d'Fiacha, air."

[17]

"Thug gárda láidir mhic Aodha mhic Sheáin Dochur ar barda (?) a n-aoil-chaisleán, 'S báidh liom nár fágadh neach d'fhuighioll an áir Acht an bráighe atá fá dhaoirse a[r] láimh."

The second line of this is quite incomprehensible, and runs in the MS. do chur ar ar barda.

[18]

"Broc ar ghairbhe 's ar ghlaise, Apa ar mhéad 's ar mhio-mhaise, Gliomach ar ghéire a dhá shúil, Sionnach ar bhréine, an Bárún."

[19]

"Caoch an inghean, caoch an mháthair, Caoch an t-athair, caoch an mac, Caoch an capall bhíos fá 'n tsráthair, Leath-chaoch an cú, caoch an cat."

[20]

"Ni fhuil fearg nach dtéid ar gcúl Acht fearg Chriost le cloinn Ghiobun Beag an t-iongnadh a mbeith mar tá Ag fás i n-olc gach aon lá."

This rann was often quoted in after days about Fitzgibbon, Lord Clare, who passed the Union.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXXVI. DEVELOPMENT OF IRISH POETRY

Some of the very earliest Irish poems--of which we have specimens in the verses attributed to Amergin, son of Milesius, and in the first satire ever uttered in Ireland, and in many more pieces of a like character[1]--appear to have been unrhymed, and to have depended for their effect partly upon rapidity of utterance, partly on a tendency towards alliteration, and in some cases on a strongly-marked leaning towards dissyllabic words.

Soon after the time of St. Patrick and the first Christian missionaries, the Irish are found for certain using rhyme--how far they had evolved it before the coming of the Latin missionaries is a moot question. The Book of Hymns has preserved genuine specimens of the Latin verses of Columcille and other early saints, which either rhyme, or have a strong tendency towards rhyme, though few of these early verses are found wholly chiming on the accented syllables.[2] It is a tremendous claim to make for the Celt that he taught Europe to rhyme; it is a claim in comparison with which, if it could be substantiated, everything else that he has done in literature pales into insignificance. Yet it has been made for him by some of the foremost European scholars. The great Zeuss himself is emphatic on the point; "the form of Celtic poetry,"[3] he writes, "to judge both from the older and the more recent examples adduced, appears to be more ornate than the poetic form of any other nation, and even more ornate in the older poems than in the modern ones; from the fact of which greater ornateness it undoubtedly came to pass that at the very time the Roman Empire was hastening to its ruin, the Celtic poems--at first entire, afterwards in part--passed over not only into the song of the Latins, but also into those of other nations and remained in them." In another place he remarks the advance towards rhyme made in the Latin poetry of the Anglo-Saxons, and unhesitatingly ascribes it to Irish influence. "We must believe," he writes, "that this form was introduced among them by the Irish, as were the arts of writing and of painting and of ornamenting manuscripts, since they themselves in common with the other Germanic nations made use in their poetry of nothing but alliteration."[4] Constantine Nigra expresses himself even more strongly in his edition of the glosses in the Codex Taurinensis. He says--

"The idea that rhyme originated amongst the Arabs must be absolutely rejected as fabulous.... Rhyme, too, could not in any possible way have evolved itself from the natural progress of the Latin language. Amongst the Latins neither the thing nor the name existed. We first meet with final assonance or rhyme at the close of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century in the Latin hymns of the Milanese Church, which are attributed to St. Ambrose and St. Augustine. The first certain examples of rhyme, then, are found on Celtic soil and amongst Celtic nations, in songs made by poets who are either of Celtic origin themselves or had long resided amongst Celtic races. It is most probable that these hymns of Middle Latin were composed according to the form of Celtic poetry which was then flourishing, and which exhibits final assonance in all the ancient remains of it hitherto discovered. It is true that the more ancient Irish and British poems which have come down to us do not appear to be of older date than the seventh or eighth century [Nigra means, in their present form], but it must not be rashly inferred that the Celtic races, who were always tenacious of the manners and customs of their ancestors, had not employed the same poetic forms already, long before, say in the earliest centuries of our era."[5]

After arguing that the Irish rule of "Slender-with-Slender and Broad-with-Broad," a rule which was peculiar to the Celts alone of all the Aryan races, contained in itself the germ of rhyme, he sums up his argument thus positively: "We must conclude, then, that this late Latin [Romanic] verse, made up of accent, and of an equal number of syllables, may have arisen in a twofold way, first by the natural evolution of the Latin language itself; or secondly, by the equally efficacious example of neighbouring Celtic peoples, but we conclude that final assonance, or rhyme, can have been derived only from the laws of Celtic phonology."[6]

Thurneysen, on the other hand, who has done such good service for the study of Irish metric by his publication of the text of the fragmentary Irish poets' books,[7] is of opinion that the Irish derived their regular metres with a given number of syllables in each line, from the Latins;[8] and Windisch agrees with him in saying that the Irish verse-forms were influenced by Latin,[9] though he thinks that Thurneysen presses his theory too far. The latter, in opposition to Zimmer,[10] will not for instance allow the genuineness of St. Fiacc's metrical life of St. Patrick because it is in a rhymed and fairly regular metre, a thing which, according to him, the Irish had not developed at that early period. It seems necessary to me, however, to take into account the peculiar prosody of the Irish, especially the tour de force called áird-rinn used in Deibhidh [d'yevvee] metre, which we find firmly established in their oldest poems,[11] and which makes the rhyming word ending the second line contain a syllable more than the rhyming word which ends the first, while if the accent fall in the first line on the ultimate syllable it mostly falls in the second line on the penultimate, if it falls on the penultimate in the first line it generally falls on the antepenultimate in the second, as--

"Though men owe respect to t=hem=, Presage of woe--a =poe=m.

The slender free palms of =her= Than gull on sea are =whi=ter.

A far greater than ány Man has killed my Cómpany."[12]

This peculiarly Irish feature was not borrowed from the Latins, but is purely indigenous. The oldest books of glosses on the Continent contain verses formed on this model.[13] According to Thurneysen's theory the Irish learned how to write rhymed verse with lines of equal syllables sometime between, say, the year 500 and 700, but the Deibhidh metre with áird-rinn is found in their oldest verses, bound up with rhyme in their accurate seven-syllable lines. Why should two of these ingredients, the rhyme and the stated number of verses have come from the Romans when the Deibhidh áird-rinn (which apparently implies rhyme) did not? Besides is it credible, on the supposition that the pre-Christian Irish neither counted their syllables nor rhymed, that within less than a couple of hundred years after coming in contact with the rude Latin verse of Augustin and Ambrose, they had brought rhyming verses to such a pitch of perfection as we see, in, say, the "Voyage of Bran," which according to both Kuno Meyer and Professor Zimmer, was written in the seventh century, the very first verse of which runs--

"Cróib dind abaill a h-Emain Dofed samaill do gnáthaib Gésci findarggait fora Abrait glano co m-bláthaib"?

The whole of this poem, too, is shot through with verses of Deibhidh, and the rhymes are extraordinarily perfect.[14] This at least is clear, that already in the seventh century the Irish not only rhymed but made intricate Deibhidh and other rhyming metres,[15] when for many centuries after this period the Germanic nations could only alliterate--a thing which though sometimes used in Irish verse is in no way fundamental to it. In England so late as the beginning of the fifteenth century, the virile author of the book of Piers Ploughman used alliteration in preference to rhyme, and, indeed, down to the first half of the sixteenth century English poets, for the most part, exhibit a disregard for fineness of execution and technique of which not the meanest Irish bard attached to the pettiest chief could have been guilty. After the seventh century the Irish brought their rhyming system to a pitch of perfection undreamt of, even at this day, by other nations. Perhaps by no people in the globe, at any period of the world's history, was poetry so cultivated and, better still, so remunerated, as in Ireland. The elaborateness of the system they evolved, the prodigious complexity of the rules, the subtlety and intricacy of their poetical code are astounding.

The real poet of the early Gaels was the filé [fillă]. The bard was nothing thought of in comparison with him, and the legal price of his poems was quite small compared with the remuneration of the filé. It was the bard who seems to have been most affected by Latin influence, and the metres which he used seem to have been of relatively new importation. Where the filé received his three milch cows for a poem the bard only bore away a calf. The bards were divided into two classes, the Saor and Daor bards, or the patrician and plebeian.[16] There were eight grades in each class, one of the many examples of the love of the Irish for minute classification, a quality with which they are not usually credited, at least, not in modern times. Each of these sixteen classes of bard has his own peculiar metre or framework for his verses, and the lower bard was not allowed to encroach on the metres sacred to the bard next in rank.[17]

The fĭlés [fillăs] were, as we have said, the highest class of poets. There were seven grades of Filé,[18] the most exalted being called an ollamh [ollav], a name that has frequently occurred throughout this book. They were so highly esteemed that the annalists give the obituaries of the head-ollamhs as if they were so many princes. The course of study was originally perhaps one of seven years. Afterwards it lasted for twelve years or more.[19] When a poet had worked his way up after at least twelve but perhaps sometimes twenty years of study, through all the lower degrees, and had at last attained the rank of ollamh, he knew, in addition to all his other knowledge, over three hundred and fifty different kinds of versification, and was able to recite two hundred and fifty prime stories and one hundred secondary ones. The ancient and fragmentary manuscripts from which these details are taken, not only give the names of the metres but have actually preserved examples of between two and three hundred of them taken from different ancient poems, almost all of which have perished to a line, but they give a hint of what once existed. Nearly all the text books used in the career of the poet during his twelve years' course are lost, and with them have gone the particulars of a civilisation probably the most unique and interesting in Europe.

The bardic schools were at no time an unmixed blessing to Ireland. They were non-productive in an economic sense, and as early as the seventh century the working classes felt that these idle multitudes constituted an intolerable drain upon the nation's resources. Keating in his history says that at this time the bardic order contained a third of the men of Ireland, by which he means a third of the free clans or patricians. These quartered themselves from November to May upon the chiefs and farmers. They had also reached an intolerable pitch of insolence. According to the account in the Leabhar Breac they went about the country in bands carrying with them a silver pot, which the populace named the "pot of avarice," which was attached by nine chains of bronze hung on golden hooks, and which was suspended on the spears of nine poets, thrust through the links at the end of the chains. They then selected some unfortunate victim, and approached in state his homestead, having carefully composed a poem in his laudation. The head poet entering chanted the first verse, and the last poet took it up, until each of the nine had recited his part, whilst all the time the nine best musicians played their sweetest music in unison with the verses, round the pot, into which the unfortunate listener was obliged to throw an ample guerdon of gold and silver. Woe to him indeed, if he refused; a scathing satire would be the result, and sooner than endure the disgrace of this, every one parted to them with a share of his wealth. Aedh mac Ainmirech, the High-king of Ireland, who reigned at the end of the seventh century--the same who afterwards lost his life in the battle of Bolgdún in raising the thrice cursed Boru tribute--"considering them," as Keating puts it, "to be too heavy a burden upon the land of Ireland," determined to banish the whole profession. This was the third attempt to put down the poets, who had always before found a refuge in the northern province when expelled from the others. But now King Aedh [Ae] summoned a great convention of all Ireland at Drum Ceat [Cat] near Limavaddy in the north of Ireland, to deliberate upon several matters of national interest, of which the expulsion of the bards was not the least important. The fate of the Bardic Institution was trembling in the balance, when Columcille, an accomplished bard himself as we have seen, crossed over from Iona with a retinue of 140 clerics, and by his eloquence and great influence succeeded in checking the fury of the exasperated chieftains: the issue of the great convention which lasted for a year and one month, was--so far as the bards were concerned--that their numbers were indeed reduced, but it was agreed that the High-king should retain in his service one chief ollamh, and that the kings of the five provinces, the chiefs of each territory, and the lords of each sub-district should all retain an ollamh of their own. No other poets except those especially sanctioned were to pursue the poetic calling.

If the bards lost severely in numbers and prestige on this occasion they were in the long run amply compensated for it by their acquiring a new and recognised status in the state. Their unchartered freedom and licentious wanderings were indeed checked, but, on the other hand, they became for the first time the possessors of fixed property and of local stability. Distinct public estates in land were set apart for their maintenance,[20] and they were obliged in return to give public instruction to all comers in the learning of the day, after the manner of university professors. Rathkenry in Meath, and Masree in Cavan are particularly mentioned as bardic colleges then founded, where any of the youth of Ireland could acquire a knowledge of history and of the sciences.[21] The High-king, the provincial kings, and the sub-kings were all obliged by law to set apart a certain portion of land for the poet of the territory, to be held by him and his successors free of rent, and a law was passed making the persons and the property of poets sacred, and giving them right of sanctuary in their own land from all the men of Ireland. At the same time the amount of reward which they were allowed to receive for their poems was legally settled. From this time forward for nearly a thousand years the bardic colleges, as distinct from the ecclesiastical ones, taught poetry, law, and history, and it was they who educated the lawyers, judges, and poets of Ireland.

As far as we can judge the bards continued to flourish in equal power and position with the dignitaries of the Church, and their colleges must have been nearly as important institutions as the foundations of the religious orders, until the onslaught of the Northmen reduced the country to such a state that "neither bard, nor philosopher, nor musician," as Keating says, "pursued their wonted profession in the land." It was probably at this time that the carefully observed distinction between the bard and the filé broke down, for in later times the words seem to have been regarded as synonymous.

For some time after the Norman conquest the bardic colleges seem to have again suffered eclipse; and, as we have seen, the century that succeeded that invasion appears to have produced fewer poets than any other. But the great Anglo-Norman houses soon became Irishised and adopted Irish bards of their own. There are many incidents recorded in the Irish annals and many stories gathered from other sources which go to show that the importance of the bards as individuals could not have been much diminished during the Anglo-Norman régime. One of them is worth recording. In the beginning of the thirteenth century the steward of the O'Donnell went to Lisadill,[22] near Sligo, to collect rents, and some words passed between him and the great poet Murrough O'Daly, who, unaccustomed to be thwarted in anything, clove the head of the steward with an axe. Then, fearing O'Donnell's vengeance, he fled to Clanrickard and the Norman De Bourgos, and at once addressed a poem to Richard De Burgo, son of William Fitzadelm, in which he states that he, the bard, was used to visit the courts of the English, and to drink wine at the hands of kings and knights, and bishops and abbots. He tells De Bourgo that he has now a chance of making himself illustrious by protecting him, O'Daly of Meath, who now throws himself on his generosity and whose poems demand attention. As for O'Donnell, he had given him small offence.

"Trifling our quarrel with the man, A clown to be abusing me, Me to kill the churl, Dear God! Is this a cause for enmity?"

De Bourgo accordingly received and protected him, until O'Donnell, coming in furious pursuit, laid waste his country with fire and sword. Fitzadelm submitted, but passed on the poet to the O'Briens of North Munster. But O'Donnell again pursuing with fury, these also submitted, and secretly dispatched the poet to the people of Limerick who received him. O'Donnell hurried on and laid siege to the city, and its inhabitants in terror expelled the poet once more, who was passed on from hand to hand until he came to Dublin. But the people of Dublin, terrified at O'Donnell's threats, sent him away; and he crossed over into Scotland where his fame rose higher than before, and where his poems remained so popular that when the Dean of Lismore in Argyle jotted down nearly four hundred years ago in phonetic spelling a number of poems just as he heard them, they included a disproportionately large number of this O'Daly's,[23] who was afterward known as Murrough the Scotchman. At last in return for some fine laudatory verses upon O'Donnell he was graciously pardoned by that chieftain and returned to his native country.

The Anglo-Normans not only kept bards of their own, but some of themselves also became poets. The story of Silken Thomas and his bard whose verses urged him on to rebellion, is well known. It is curious, too, to find one of the Norman Nugents of Delvin in the sixteenth century making the most perfect classical Irish verses, lamenting his exile from Ireland, the home of his ancestors, the Land of Fintan, the old Plain of Ir, the country of Inisfail.

"Loth to Leave, my fain eyes swim, I Part in P_ain_ from Erinn. Land of the L_oud_ sea-rollers, PRide of PR_oud_ steed-controllers."[24]

After a few generations the Anglo-Normans had completely forgotten Norman-French, and as they never, with few exceptions, learned English, they identified themselves completely with the Irish past, so that amongst the Irish poets we find numbers of Nugents, Englishes, Condons, Cusacks, Keatings, Comyns, and other foreign names.

It was only after the Anglo-Norman government had developed into an English one that the bards began to feel its weight. The slaying of the Welsh bards by Edward is now generally regarded as a political fiction. There is no fiction, however, about the treatment meted out to the Irish ones. The severest acts were passed against them over and over again. The nobles were forbidden to entertain them, in the hope that they might die out or starve, and the Act of Elizabeth alleges one of the usual lying excuses of the Elizabethan period: "Item," it says, "for that those rhymours by their ditties and rhymes made to divers lords and gentlemen in Ireland to the commendation and high praise of extortion, rebellion, rape, ravin, and other injustice, encourage those lords and gentlemen rather to follow those vices than to leave them, and for making of the said rhymes rewards are given by the said lords and gentlemen, (let) for abolishing of so heinous an abuse, orders be taken." Orders were taken, and taken so thoroughly that O'Brien, Earl of Thomond, obliged to enforce them against the bards, hanged three distinguished poets, "for which abominable, treacherous act," say the "Four Masters," "the earl was satirised and denounced." I find a northern bard about this time, the close of the sixteenth century, thus lamenting the absence of his patron, Aedh [Ae] Mac Aonghasa:--

"If a S_age_ of Song should be In the wage of C_ourt_ or King. HA! the Gallows Guards the WAY. AH! since AE from port took wing."[25]

Spenser the poet was not slow in finding out what a power his Irish rivals were in the land, and he at once set himself to malign and blacken them. "There are," he writes, "amongst the Irish a certain kind of people called bards, which are to them instead of poets,"--the insinuation is that the bards are not real poets!--"the which are had in so high regard and estimation among them, that none dare displease them for fear to run into reproach through their offence, and to be made infamous in the mouths of all men." On which, Eudoxus, his friend, is made to remark innocently that he had always thought that poets were to be rather encouraged than put down. "Yes," answers Spenser, "they should be encouraged when they desire honour and virtue, but," he goes on, "these Irish bards are for the most part of another mind, and so far from instructing young men in moral discipline, that whomsoever they find to be most licentious of life, most bold and lawlesse in his doings, most dangerous and desperate in all parts of disobedience and rebellious disposition, him they set up and glorify in their rhythmes, him they praise to the people and to young men make an example to follow."

The allegation that the bards praised what was licentious is an untruth on the part of the great poet. Few English Elizabethans, once they passed over into Ireland, seem to have been able to either keep faith or tell truth; there was never such a thoroughly dishonourable race, or one so utterly devoid of all moral sense, as the Irish "statesmen" of that period. The real reason why Spenser, as an undertaker, blackens the character of the Irish poets is not because their poems were licentious--which they were not--but because, as he confesses later on, they are "tending for the most part to the hurt of the English or [the] maintenance of their owne lewde libertie, they being most desirous thereof."

Spenser's ignorant and self-contradictory criticism on the merits of the Irish bards has often been quoted as if it constituted a kind of hall-mark for them! "Tell me, I pray you," said his friend, "have they any art in their compositions, or be they anything wittie or wellmannered as poems should be?"

"Yea, truly," says Spenser, "I have caused divers of them to be translated unto me, that I might understand them, and surely they savoured of sweet art and good invention, but skilled not in the goodly ornaments of poesie, yet were they sprinkled with some pretty flowers of their natural device, which gave good grace and comeliness unto them; the which it is a great pity to see abused to the gracing of wickedness and vice, which with good usage would serve to adorn and beautify virtue."

The gentle poet is here almost copying the words of the Act, which perhaps he himself helped to inspire, according to which the bardic poems are in praise of "extortion, rebellion, rape, ravin, and other injustice." I have, however, read hundreds of the poems of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but have never come across a single syllable in laudation of either "extortion, rape, ravin, or other injustice," but numerous poems inciting to what the Act calls "rebellion," and what Spenser terms "the hurt of the English and the maintenance of their owne lewde libertie."

* * * * *

It would be difficult to overrate the importance of the colleges of the hereditary bards and the influence they exercised in the life of the sixteenth century. They fairly reflected public opinion, and they also helped to make it what it was. There is a great difference between their poems and the memoria technicha verses of the ancient ollamhs, whose historical and genealogical poems, which they composed in their official capacity, are crowded with inorganic phrases and "chevilles" of all kinds. The sixteenth-century poet was a man of wit and learning, and frequently a better and more clear-seeing statesman than his chief, who was in matters of policy frequently directed by his bard's advice. They certainly had more national feeling than any other class in Ireland, and were less the slaves of circumstances or of mere local accidents, for they traversed the island from end to end, were equally welcome north, south, east, and west, and had unrivalled opportunities for becoming acquainted with the trend of public affairs, and with political movements.

Most people, owing to their comparative neglect of Irish history, seem to be of opinion that the bards were harpers, or at least musicians of some sort. But they were nothing of the kind. The popular conception of the bard with the long white beard and the big harp is grotesquely wrong. The bards were verse-makers, pure and simple, and they were no more musicians than the poet laureate of England. Their business was to construct their poems after the wonderful and complex models of the schools, and when--as only sometimes happened--they wrote a eulogy or panegyric on a patron, and brought it to him, they introduced along with themselves a harper and possibly a singer to whom they had taught their poem, and in the presence of their patron to the sound of the harp, the only instrument allowed to be touched on such occasions, the poem was solemnly recited or sung. The real name of the musician was not bard--the bard was a verse-maker--but oirfideadh [errh-fid-yă], and the musicians, though a numerous and honourable class, were absolutely distinct from the bards and filés. It was only after the complete break-up of the Gaelic polity, after the wars of Cromwell and of William, that the verse-maker merges in the musician, and the harper and the bard become fused in one, as was the case with Carolan, commonly called the last of the bards, but whom his patron, O'Conor of Belanagare, calls in his obituary of him, not a bard, but an oirfideadh.

Down to the close of the sixteenth century and during the greater part of the seventeenth, verse, with few exceptions, continued to be made in the classical metres of Ireland, by specially trained poets, who did not go outside these metres. In the ensuing century the classical metres began to be discarded and a wonderful and far-reaching change took place, which shall be made the subject of a future chapter. We must now proceed to examine a species of popular poetry which flourished during all this period side by side with the bardic schools, although no trace remains to-day of its origin or its authors. This is the so-called Ossianic poetry.

[1] This is a kind of rhetoric; some of these unrhymed outbursts were called rosg by the Irish. Irish literature is full of such pieces. Some of the Brehon Law though printed in prose seems to have been composed in it. Other examples are the cry of the Mór-rígan, or war-goddess, in the end of the Battle of Moytura.

"Peace to heav'n "Sith go neim Heav'n to earth Neamh go domhan, Earth neath heav'n Domhan fá neim Strength in each," etc. Neart i gcách," etc.

or the description of the Dun Bull of Cuailgne in the Táin Bo, or part of the first poem attributed to Finn mac Cool, or trie well-known eulogy on Goll the Fenian, or Mac Mhurighs incitement at the battle of Harlaw, or some of the verses in the preface to the Amra. About the last specimen of unrhymed poetry, in a species of Droighneach metre, I find in the Annals of Loch Cé on the death of Mac Dermot as late as 1568.

"Gég iothmar fhineamhna na n-éigeas ocus na n-ollaman, Craobh cumra cnuais na gcliar ocus na gcerbach, Dóss díona na ndámh ocus na ndeóraidh Bile buadha buan fhoscaidh na mbrughaidh ocus na mbiattach."

[2] Thus the nearest approach that Columcille makes to Latin rhyme is in the final unaccented syllable. See his "Altus" beginning

"Altus prosator vetustus Sed et erit in sæcula Dierum et ingenitus Sæculorum infinita Erat absque origine Cui est unigenitus Primordii et crepidine. Christus et sanctus spiritus," etc.

[3] "Formam poesis celticæ, exemplis allatis, tarn vetustioribus quam recentioribus vel hodiernis, magis ornatum esse apparet quam ullius gentis formam poeticam, ac magis ornatam in vetustioribus carminibus ipsis, quam in recentioribus. Quo majore ornatu, haud dubie effectum est, ut jam inde ab illis temporibus quibus ad interitum ruebat Romanum imperium, celtica forma, primum integra, deinde ex parte, non solum in latina sed etiam (aliarum) linguarum carmina transferretur atque in iis permanserit" ("Grammatica Celtica," Ebel's edition, p. 977).

[4] "Magis progressa consonantia, cum frequentiore allitteratione, amplior finalis sæpius trissyllaba invenitur in Anglo-Saxorum carminibus latinis; ad quos, cum ipsi principio cum ceteris Germanis non usi sint nizi allitteratione, ab Hibernis hanc formam esse transgressam putandum est, ut transiit scriptura atque ars pingendi codices et ornandi" (Ibid., p. 946).

In another passage he expresses himself even more strongly; for of rhyme he says: "Hanc formam orationis poeticæ quis credat esse ortam primum apud poetas Christianos finientis imperii Romani et transisse ad bardos Cambrorum et in carmina gentilia Scandinavorum" (Editio Ebel, p. 948).

[5] "Origo enim rîmæ arabica inter fabulas omnino rejicienda est.... Porro rîma ex solo naturali processu latinæ linguæ explicari nullo modo potest. Apud Latinos nec res extitit nec nomen.... Assonantia finalis vel rîma, sæculo quarto abeunte et quinto incipiente vulgaris ævi, primus occurrit in hymnis latinis ecclesiæ mediolanensis qui sancto Ambrosio et Sancto Augustino tribuuntur. Prima itaque rîmæ certa exempla inveniuntur in solo celtico, apud celticas gentes, in carminibus conditis a poetis, qui vel celticæ originis sunt, vel apud celticas gentes diu commoraverunt. Verosimile ut hosce hymnos mediæ latinitatis constructos esse juxta formam celticæ poesis quæ tune vigebat, et quæ jam assonantiam finalem præbet in antiquis ejus reliquiis huc-usque detectis. Profecto carmina hibernica et brittanica vetustiora quæ ad nos pervenerunt sæculum octavum vel septimum superare non videntur. Sed temere non est affirmare celticas gentes quæ moris consuetudinisque majorum tertaces semper fuerunt, jam multo antea, primis nempe vulgaris ævi sæculis, eamdem poeticam formam adhibuisse" ("Glossæ Hibernicæ Veteres Codicis Taurinensis." Lutetiæ. 1869. p. xxxi.).

[6] "Concludendum est igitur versum romanicum, accentu legatum et pari syllabarum numero, oriri potuisse ex duplicis causæ concursu, nempe à naturali explicatione latinæ linguæ, et ab exemplo pariter efficaci affinium celticorum populorum; sed rîmam seu assonantiam finalem, a solis celticæ phonologiæ legibus derivatam esse" (Ibid., p. xxxii.).

[7] "Mittelirische Verslehren," "Irische Texte," iii. p. 1.

[8] See his article in "Revue Celtique," vi., p. 336.

[9] "Dass die irische Versform von der lateinischen Versform beeinflusst worden ist, scheint mir zweifellos zu sein. Es fragt sich nur was die irischen Barden schon hatten als dieser Einfluss begann. Das was Thurneysen ihnen zugestehen will ist mir etwas zu wenig" ("Irische Texte," iii. 2, p. 448).

[10] "Wir haben," says Zimmer, of this hymn, "ein altes einfaches und ehrwürdiges Monument vor uns, an das eine jüngere Zeit mit verändertem Geschmack, passend und unpassend, an--und eingebaut hat."

[11] Deibhidh, in Old Irish Debide, a neuter word, which Thurneysen translates "cut in two," is not really a rhyme but a generic name for a metre, containing twenty-four species. The essence of the principal Deibhidh, however, is the peculiar manner of rhyming with words of a different length, so that this system has sometimes been loosely called Deibhidh rhyme. In the oldest poetry a trisyllable instead of a dissyllable rhyme could be used as the end word, of the second line when the first line ended with a monosyllable, but in the strictness of later times this was disallowed.

[12]

"Tús onóra cidh dual =di=, Tuar anshógha an =eig=si.

Glac bárr-lag mar chúbhair =ton=n Do sháraigh dath na bh=faoi=lionn.

Gníomh follus fáth na h-=each=tra Fá'r ciorrbadh mo =chuid=eachta."

These specimens are taken from unedited manuscripts in my own possession, copied by O'Curry from I know not what originals.

[13] Thus in the Codex St. Pauli we find these verses:--

"Messe ocus Pangur =ban= Cechtar náthar fria =sain=dán Bith a menma-sunn fri =seil=gg Mu menma céin im =sain=-ceirdd.

Caraim-se fos ferr gach =clu= Oc mo lebran leir =ing=nu Ni foirmtech frimm Pangur =ban= Caraid sesin a =macc=-dán."

[14] The end rhyming words in verses 6-10 for example are as follows--fóe nóe, bátha hil_blátha_, bláthaib thráthaib, gnáth tráth, datho moith_gretho, chéul_ Arggut_néul, mrath_ etar_gnath_, cruais clúais, bás ind_gás_, n-Emne com_amre._

[15] Compare, too, the verses that the monk wrote in the margin of the St. Gall MS. which he was copying, on hearing the blackbird sing--

"Dom farcai fidbaidae fál Fomchain lóid lain luad nad cél Huas mo lebrán ind_linech_ Fomchain trírech inna nén;"

the language of which is so ancient as to be nearly unintelligible to a modern, though the metre is common from that day to this. "A thicket of bushes surrounds me, a lively blackbird sings to me his lay, I shall not conceal it, above my many-lined book he sings to me the trill of the birds," etc. Commenting on these verses Nigra says feelingly, "Mentre traduco questi versi amo figurarmi il povero monaco che, or fá più di mille anni, stava copiando il manoscritto, e distratto un istante dal canto dei merli contemplava dalla finestra della sua cella la verde corona di boscaglie che circondava il suo monastero nell Ulster o nel Connaught, e dopo avere ascoltato l'agile trillo degli uccelli, recitava questi strofe, e rapigliava poi più allegro l'interrotto lavoro."

It has often been alleged that the word rhyme is derived from the Irish rím, "number," rímaire, "a reckoner," and rimim, "I count;" but in Anglo-Saxon rím has the same meaning, so that unless the Anglo-Saxons borrowed the word, as they certainly did the thing, from the Irish, this is inconclusive.

In fol. 8a of the "Liber Hymnorum" we read in the preface to the very ancient hymn "In Trinitate spes mea," the following note: "Incertum est hautem in quo tempore factus est, Trerithim dana doronadh ocus xi. caiptell déac ann, ocus dalíni in cech caiptiull, ocus se sillaba déc cechai. Is foi is rithim doreir in ómine dobit ann.," i.e., "in rhyme it was made and eleven chapters thereon and two lines in every chapter, and sixteen syllables in each. It is on i the rhyme is because of the 'omine' that is in it." In the preface to the hymn, "Christus in nostra insula," the scholiast writes, "Trerithim dana dorigned," which Whitley Stokes translates by "in rhythm moreover it was made," but rithim evidently means the same in both passages, namely, rhyme not rhythm, at least if the first passage is rightly translated by Dr. Stokes himself. I doubt, however, if rím or rithim ever meant "rhyme" in Irish.

[16] The various Saor bards were called the Anshruth-bairdne (great stream of poetry?), the Sruth di aill (stream down two cliffs?), the Tighearn-bhard (lord bard), the Adhmhall, the Tuath-bhard (lay bard), the bo-bhard (cow-bard) and the Bard áine. The highest of the Daor bards was called the cúl-bhard (back bard), and after him came the Sruth-bhard (stream-bard), the Drisiuc, the cromluatha, the Sirti-uí, the Rindhaidh, the Long-bhard, and the bard Loirrge.

[17] Thus the head of the patrician bards was entitled to make use of the metres called nath, metres in which the end of each line makes a vowel rhyme or an alliteration with the beginning of the next, the number of syllables in the line and of lines in the verse being irregular. There were six kinds of náth metres, called Deachna. All these the first bard practised with two honourable metres besides, called the great and little Séadna. The ANSHRUTH used the two kinds of metres called Ottbhairdne, the SRUTH DI AILL used Casbhairdne, the TIGHEARN-BHARD used Duanbhairdne, a generic metre of which there were six species called Duan faidesin, duan cenátach, fordhuan, taebh-chasadh, tul-chasadh, and sreth-bhairdne. All the metres which these five employed were honourable ones, and went under the generic name of príomhfódhta. Then came the ADHMHALL with seven measures for himself, bairdne faidessin, btogh-bhairdne, brac-bhairdne, snedh-bhairdne, sem-bhairdne, imard-bhairdne, and rathnuatt. The TUATH-BHARD had all the Rannaigheacht metres and the BO-BARD all the Deibhidh metres, and these two, Rannaigheacht and Deibhidh, though thus lowly thought of in early--probably pre-Danish--days, were destined in later times, like the cuckoo birds, to oust their fellows and reign in the forefront for many hundred years. The Tuath-bhard had also two other metres Seaghdha and Treochair, and the Bo-bhard in addition to Deibhidh had long and short deachubhaidh.

The classification of the Daor bards and their metres is just as minute.

[18] The lowest grade of filé was called the fuctuc (word maker?). In his first year he had to learn fifty ogams and straight ogams amongst them. He had to learn the grammar called Uraicept na ti-éigsine, and the preface to it, and that part of the book called réimeanna, or courses, with twenty dréachts (stories?), six metres and other things. The six metres were the six dians called air-sheang, midh-sheang, iar-sheang, air-throm, midh-throm, and iar-throm.

[19] Each of the twelve years had its own course of the same nature as the above.

[20] I have seen it stated, but I do not know on what authority, that their income derived from land, in what is the present county of Donegal, was equal to £2,000 a year.

[21] See Keating's "Forus Feasa" under the reign of Aedh mac Ainmireach.

[22] Lios-an-doill i.e., the "blind man's fort." See the preface to O'Donovan's "Satires of Angus," for this story.

[23] He preserved eight pieces of O'Daly, who is called Muireach Albanach, and in one place Muireach Lessin Dall (i.e., Lios-an-Doill) O'Daly.

[24]

"Diombuaidh Triall o Thulchaibh Fáil Diombuaidh Iath Éireann d'fhágbháil, Iath mhilis na Mbeann Mbeachach, Inis na N-Eang N-Óig-eachach."

Deibhidh metre. See Hardiman, vol. ii. p. 226.

[25]

"Dá ndimghiodh duine re dán Fá chiniodh don chuire ríogh Do bhiadh croch roimhe ar gach raon Och! gan Aodh Doire dar ndíon."

Rannaigheacht Mór metre. From a MS. poem.

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