The Poem-Book of the Gael. Various
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Take the fine poem detailing the history of the Shield of Fionn. Poetic addresses to noted weapons are common enough, and are not confined to Irish literature; but the adventures of this shield pass beyond the ordinary uses of human battles, and enter the realm of mythology. The very name given to it, the "Dripping Ancient Hazel," carries us into a world of poetic imagination.
"Scarce is there on the firm earth, whether it be man or
woman, one that can tell why thy name abroad
is known as the Dripping Ancient Hazel.
"'Twas Balor that besought Lugh before his beheading:
'Set my head above thy own comely head and
earn my blessing.'
"That blessing Lugh Longarm did not earn; he set up
the head above a wave of the east in a fork of hazel
before him.
"A poisonous milk drips down out of that hardened
tree; through the baneful drip, it was not slight,
the tree split right in two.
"For full fifty years the hazel stood, but ever it was a
cause of tears, the abode of vultures and ravens.
"Manannan of the round eye went into the wilderness
of the Mount of White-Hazel; there he saw a
shadeless tree among the trees that vied in beauty.
"Manannan sets workmen without delay to dig it out of
the firm earth. Mighty was the deed!
"From the root of that tree arises a poisonous vapour;
there were killed by it (perilous the consequence)
nine of the working folk.
"Now I say to you, and let the prophecy be sought out:
Around the mighty hazel without reproach was
found the cause of many a woe."
"It was from that shield that Eitheor of the smooth
brown face was called 'Son of Hazel,'—for this was
the hazel that he worshipped."[2]
[Pg xxviii]
Or take again the strange mythological poem of the "Crane-bag," made out of the skin of a wandering haunted crane, which had once been a woman; condemned for "two hundred white years" to dwell in "the house of Manannan," i.e. in the wastes of the ocean, ever seeking and never finding land. When the wanderings came to an end, and the unhappy Crane-woman died, Manannan (the Ocean-god) made of her skin a bag into which he put "every precious thing he had; the shirt of Manannan and his knife, the girdle of Goibniu (the Vulcan of Irish legend); the king of Scotland's shears, the king of Lochlann's helmet, and the bones of the swine of Asal—these were the treasures that the Crane-bag held. … When the sea was full, its treasures were seen in its midst; when the fierce sea was on ebb, the Crane-bag was empty." The story has the impress of great age, and manifold changes; it belongs to the period when the gods were not yet transformed into human beings, but were still primæval elemental powers, impersonations of fire and light and water, and the wisdom that is above mankind. But the link is lost, and the story remains a suggestion only, vague and indistinct. As an image of the hollow ocean, holding the treasures of the Sea-god, the idea is, however, full of force and beauty.[3]
The second difficulty, which is closely connected with the first, lies in the retention of the ancient and unfamiliar nomenclature; the old geographical and family names, which have dropped out of actual use, being everywhere found in the poetry.
Scotland is still Alba in Irish, as it was in the sixth century; Éire (gen. Érinn) is the ordinary name for Ireland, not only in poetry, as is commonly supposed, but in the living language of the country. But it has besides an abundance of specially poetic names, such as Inisfail, "the island of Destiny," Banba, Fodla, &c., connected with early legends, and these, if we are to understand the poetry, we must accustom ourselves to.
England is still to-day the land of the Saxons to the Gael, and its inhabitants are the "Sassenachs"; the Irishman persists in disregarding the coming of the Angles. We may talk of the extinction of the Gaelic tongue, but in his poetry, as in every place-name of stream or hill or townland all over the country, it is about us still. In the poetry we are back in Gaelic Ireland; the old tribal distinctions, the old clan names, meet us on every page. What does the modern man know of Leth Cuinn or Leth Mogha, the ancient divisions of the North and South, or of the stories which gave them birth? What of Magh Breagh or Magh Murtheimne? What of Emain Macha and Kincora? Who, again, are the Clann Fiachrach or the Eoghanacht, or the Children of Ir or Eiber? Even before the much later titles of Thomond and Desmond, of Tyrconnell and Tyrowen he is somewhat at a loss.
But to the bard the past is always present, the ancient nomenclature is never extinct. The legend which caused the River Boyne to be called "The forearm of Nuada's wife," or the tumuli on its banks to be thought of as the "Elfmounds of the wife of Nechtan," are familiar to him; and to enter into the spirit of the mythological poetry we must know something of Irish folklore and tradition. Many of these expressions have a high imaginative significance, as when the sea is called the "Plain of Ler" (the elder Irish Sea-god), or its waves are "the tresses of Manannan's wife" or the "Steeds of Manannan."
Of the large body of bardic poetry we have been unable to give an adequate representation, partly from considerations of space, but also because we are not yet, until a larger quantity of this poetry has been published, able to estimate its actual poetic value. Much fine poetry by the historic bards undoubtedly exists, but we have as yet only a few published fragments to choose from. The first specimen we give, Teigue Dall O'Higgin's appeal to O'Rourke of the Bulwarks (na murtha), must stand as an example of much similar poetry in and about his own day.
The call to union against England or against some local enemy sounds loud and constant in the bardic poems. There is much anti-English poetry; poetry which has for its object the endeavour to unite for a single purpose the chiefs who had split up the provinces into small divisions under separate leaders, each fighting for his own hand.
To stir up the lagging or too peaceful chief was one of the prime duties of the bard; to address to him congratulations on his accession, or to bewail him when he died, was his official function; and to judge by the quantity of paper covered with these laudatory effusions and elegies, he performed his task with punctilious care. It was likely that he would do so, for the fees for a poem that gave satisfaction were substantial. We miss the family bard in these days; there is no one at hand to praise indifferently all that we do.
The bardic poetry attracted the genius of Mangan, and his "Farewell to Patrick Sarsfield" and O'Hussey's "Ode to the Maguire," are not only fine poetry, but excellent representations of two of the finest of the bardic poems. Elsewhere in his poems, we have usually too much Mangan to feel that the tone of the original is faithfully conveyed. His soaring poem, "The Dark Rosaleen," can hardly be said to represent the Irish "Roisín Dubh," of which, for purposes of comparison, we give a literal rendering; beautiful as Mangan's poem is, it has to our mind lost something of the exquisite grace of the original.
It may be well to indicate here the relations between Mangan's version and the original in the poem in which he keeps most strictly to the words of the bard. "O'Hussey's Ode to the Maguire," that fine address of the Northern bard, O'Hussey, to his young chief, whose warlike foray into Munster in the depth of winter filled his mind with anxiety and distress. A literal translation of the opening passage reads as follows:
"Too cold for Hugh I deem this night, the drops so
heavily downpouring are a cause for sadness;
biting is this night's cold—woe is me that such is
our companion's