fyxntll ItafotMitg ptafg BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Bcnrg m. Sage 1891 &..&.} .Y.&.J..SL !^/3//f°7 7673-2 Cornell University Library PR8851.S571907 Bards of the Gael and Gall; examples of t 3 1924 013 512 524 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013512524 BARDS OF THE GAEL AND GALL WORKS ON IRISH LITERATURE A LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND. By DOUGLAS HYDE, LL.D., M.R.I.A. Demy 8vo, cloth, 12s. td. net THE STORY OF EARLY GAELIC LITERATURE. By Douglas Hyde. Small crown Svo, paper, is. ; cloth, 2s. THE RELIGIOUS SONGS OF CONNACHT. By DOUGLAS Hyde. 2 vols. Crown 8vo, cloth, 10s. net. THE NEED AND USE OF GETTING IRISH LITERA- TURE INTO THE ENGLISH TONGUE. By STOPFORD A. Brooke, M.A. Paper, is. ; cloth, 2s. LONDON : T. FISHER UNWIN Bu&avgd by J Rqgf fru-m.an Gn?,infti FaJEtuie, (SAIR®3LAW B . BARDS OF THE GAEL AND GALL EXAMPLES OF THE POETIC LITERATURE OF ERINN DONE INTO ENGLISH AFTER THE METRES AND MODES OF THE GAEL BY GEORGE SIGERSON, M.D., F.R.U.I. PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL LITERARY SOCIETY OF IRFXAND, CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF LA SOCIETE D'ANTHROPOLOGIE, LA SOCIETE CL1NIQUE, AND LA SOCIETE DE PSYCHOLOGIE PHYSIOLOGIQDE DE PARIS, ETC. SECOND EDITION Revised and Enlarged WITH A NEW FRONTISPIECE LONDON T, FISHER UNWIN ADELPHI TERRACE 1907 [All rights reserved.] TO DOUGLAS HYDE, PRESIDENT OF THE GAELIC LEAGUE OF IRELAND, A DESCENDANT OF THE GALL, AND TO R. BARRY O'BRIEN, PRESIDENT OF THE IRISH LITERARY SOCIETY OF LONDON, A GAEL, tbis book is dedicated BY ONE OF THE GALL-GAEL, PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL LITERARY SOCIETY OF IRELAND. — Eudoxus. But tell me (I pray you) have they any art in their compositions ? or bee they anything wittie or well savoured, as poemes should be ? Irenceus. Yea truely, I have caused divers of them to be translated unto me, that I might understand them, and surely they savoured of sweet wit and good invention, . sprinkled with some pretty flowers of their naturall device, which gave good grace and comelinesse unto them. Edmund Spenser, A View of the State of Ireland, 1596. — Will no one tell me what she sings Perhaps her plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago. Wordsworth. — If thou, as I, but knew the tale It sings to all the Ancient Isle, Thy tears would rise, and thou wouldst fail To mind thy God, a while. Oisin to a Critic. Contents The portrait of O'Carolan, the minstrel bard, is taken from a print engraved by J. Rogers, and published by Joseph Robins, London, in 1831. PAGE Preface • to Second Edition . i Introduction ..... 17 I. Lays of Milesian Invaders. The Incantation .... 109 First Triumph-Song no The First Elegy .... 112 II. The Cuchulainn Period. Fand's Welcome to Cuchulainn 113 Liban's Song ii5 Fand's Farewell to Cuchulainn 116 Cuchulainn's Appeal to Ferdiad 117 Cuchulainn laments Ferdiad 119 Queen Mave's Envoys 120 Deirdre's Farewell to Alba 122 The Cloud over Emain 124 Lament for the Sons of Usnach I2S III. The Fionn Period. Dawn of Summer . 129 Winter's Approach 130 A Warrior's Duties I30 Things Delightful 132 The Cold Night of Innisfail 133 The Fair Fort of Crede 135 The Dirge of Cael 137 Where is the Sweetest Music ? 139 xii CONTENTS CONTENTS PAGE The Fairy Forewarning at Clontarf 204 Holy Spirit .... 206 Deus Meus .... 207 Alexander the Great 208 The Vision of Viands 210 IX. Gael and Norman, etc. In the Heart of Jesus 215 Teach, O Trinity ! . 2l6 The Harp that ransomed . 2l8 The Exiled Head . 220 Lover and Echo 221 Womankind . 224 Eivlin a Ruin (original form) 225 The Failing Art 227 Love Untold 228 A King's Lesson 229 Farewell to Innisfail 232 X. Seventeenth Century. Dirge of Oliver Grace 235 The Flight of the Earls 238 Two Champions of Christendom 240 Lay thine arms aside, Young Maid 243 Lament for Eoghan Rua O'Neill 245 Shaun O'Dwyer of the Glen 247 The Munster Knight 249 The Flower of Maidens Brown 250 Eivlin a Ruin 252 The Fairy Land of Promise 254 Mabel ni Kelly 256 XI. Eighteenth Century : Patriotic. The Fair Hills of Eire 259 The Brightness of Brightness 261 The Dawn of Day . 263 Over the Hills and far away 265 The Spirit of Song . 266 xiv CONTENTS CONTENTS PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION The first edition of this work had the good fortune to attract the attention and obtain the approval of students of literature in these countries and abroad. An Anthology of translated Gaelic poetry, giving in historical series specimens of verse, from the earliest known to that of recent times, it essayed to present them in the exact spirit, form, and structure of the originals. In this way readers could judge how one of the great Free Nations, whom the Greeks and Romans called Barbarians, thought and sang through countless generations. This was an extrinsic cause of interest, for Ireland is the sole representative in literature of that great world, which lived and thrived outside the classic camp, whose thoughts have perished with their lives. So far as the native expression and development of the intellect in these subject nations are concerned, Roman rule meant a massacre of mind. For- tunately one country stood unsubdued, though threatened. Agricola, standing on a hill in Britain looking toward the west, planned an expedition against the one surviving Free Nation, with the avowed purpose of extinguishing the last light of Liberty, whose existence troubled the Empire. It made the subject nations restless and dream dreams in their servile sleep. Had his project been successful, the last light of 2 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION Literature outside the classic world would also have been destroyed, and the once Free Nations left in dumb darkness. For all who are not confined by the golden chains of classic tradition, who can admire alike the stately Parthenon and the picturesque forest, whose intelligence can welcome the novel work of other minds, the Literature of Ancient Erinn has thus a deep and enduring charm. Beside these considerations stand those of its intrinsic claims. The casual inquirer is disappointed at not meeting with epics like those of Greece and of imitative Rome. But this is its distinction 1 It would have been of much less import- ance if it had been more similar. Perhaps I may be allowed to say that the reason why the Celts did not compose rimed epics was because of their extreme mental modernity. They put their epics in prose, in the form of historical or imagi- native romances, and polished, shaped, and set their poetry, not as word-smiths, but as word-jewellers, dealing with gems. The activity and restlessness of our own days were in their blood in all known time. Their contemporaries noticed this trait, and sometimes complained of it. It is vain to blame them for outrunning their age. They were, in truth, the Moderns of the Past—perhaps they are also fated to be the Moderns of the Future.! This quality made them pioneers in poetry. Their artistic skill, which enabled them to produce such admirable effects in gold, silver, and bronze work, and later, illuminations, exquisite in form and colour, was most fully displayed in the art of versification. They introduced rime into European literature, for its sporadic occurrence in Greek and Latin writings counts for nothing ; but they did far more than the word now suggests. They made it the most refined and delicate instrument of artistic structure which the ingenuity of human intelligence could invent to charm, without fatiguing the ear, by the modulation of sound. They avoided in Gaelic PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 3 the tinkle of repeated words regularly recurring at the ends of lines. They had echoes and half-echoes of broad and slight vowels, and of consonants, differentiated into classes so that it was not necessary to repeat even the same letter, and these echoing sounds, now full, now slender—rising, falling, replying, swelling, dying, like the echoes at Killarney—came at varied intervals, not merely at the close, but within and between the lines. They constitute Word-music. None but a trained and tuneful ear could appreciate the full art of the ancient poets, which it is impossible to represent in another language. The sense of hearing must have been exceptionally acute and highly cultivated amongst the bards. It is almost impossible for a modern ear to appreciate their art. It is known that many persons are more or less completely tune-deaf ; others, as I have pointed out elsewhere, are more or less completely rime-deaf ; some are rhythm-deaf. Few, however, except musicians, can now even imagine what powers of delicate perceptions have vanished. They went further, for they invented new forms of grouping verse ; they not only avoided the possibility of monotony by varying the number of riming syllables, but they varied the line-lengths. Thus they were the originators of the "broken stave,'' where a short line is interposed, just as in music they employed the "gapped scale." But their experiments in verse architecture were so numerous and so intricate, as well as so interesting, that Celtic scholars have given essays to the question of Irish metric. In the themes chosen they appeal to the responsive heart of man.