Chapter 5

James Kelly himself, as he sat by the fire declaiming at me, was all browns and greys, like the country outside his door; and his eyes were like brown streams running through that peaty mountain, with their movement and sparkle, and their dark depths. At other times easy, like that of all Irish peasants, his manner changed and grew rough and imperious when the business began. I must not interrupt with questions. I must write down, syllable for syllable, that the song might be got "the right way." It was by no means easy to carry out these directions, for the poem was written in an Irish not spoken to-day, as unlike as the Chaucerian English is to our common speech; and even to write down modern Irish by ear I was poorly qualified. Things were made harder, too, by the manner of recitation, as traditional as the words. He chanted, with a continuous vocalisation, and while he chanted, elbow and knee worked like a fiddler's or piper's marking the time. However, with persistence, I got the thing down, letting him first say a verse fully through, then writing line by line or as near as I could; then going back and asking questions in detail: the son coming to my rescue, when the old man lost patience (as he did once in every ten minutes) and interposing usefully in our discussions.

For there were endless discussions as to the meaning of words, and nothing could be more curious than to see the old man's endeavour to give in English not merely a bare rendering, but the colour of every phrase. It made me realise as nothing else could have done, how fine was his feeling for the shade of a word, and I cannot describe his dissatisfaction with the poor equivalents he could find. He was happy enough when the debate drifted into an exposition--always addressed to his son--of the uses of some rare word in the Irish, the manner of exposition being by citation of passages from other songs, or phrases that might occur in talk. I have listened to many a professor doing the same thing in Greek and Latin, but to none who had a finer instinct for the business. Kelly's vexation came when he had to "put English on" a word for me, and the obvious equivalent was not the right one. Sometimes I could help; sometimes he arrived by himself at what satisfied him, though once at least it was droll enough. We were at the lines where Connlaoch, dying, says to his father: "If I could give my secret to any under the sun, it is to your bright body I would tell it." The trouble was about the phrase "bright body," for the word "cneas" means literally "skin," but is used (just like [Greek: chros] in Homer) to signify "person." What James wanted to convey to me was that the word was not the common one for "body," and at last he smote his thigh. "Carkidge," he cried, "it's carkidge (carcase), 'It is to your clear carkidge I would tell it.'" A man with less instinct for literature would have said "body" at once, and never trouble more; but James knew at once too much and too little, and I give the instance to show how an Irishman unlettered in English may be deeply imbued with the true spirit of letters through a literature of his own.

There were, however, several passages where I could get no clear account of the meaning, and in some I have since found by comparison with the text which O'Halloran provided for Miss Brooke that Kelly had got the words twisted. For instance, the first stanza opens simply:--

"There came to us a stout champion, The hearty champion Connlaoch."

But of the next two lines I could get no clearer rendering than that "he just came in full through these people for diversion and for fun to himself." Then the ballad continues at once--for its method is terse and its transitions abrupt throughout--to give us the words of the men who meet Connlaoch on his landing:--

"Where have you been, O tender gallant, Riding like a noble's son? Methinks by the way of your coming, You are wandering or astray."

And Connlaoch answers the taunt and the challenge implied:--

"My coming is over seas from the land Of the High King of the World, To prove my merry prowess Athwart the high chiefs of Erin."

(It seemed to me characteristic that the stock epithet of valour should be "merry" or "laughing.") The ballad added no reply (though in Miss Brooke's version at this point there is a dialogue of warnings), but went on to tell in the shortest possible words how Conall Cearnach ("the Victorious") rode out from Emain Macha and met the challenger:--

"Out started Conall, not weak of hand, To get news of the noble's son. Bitter and hard was the way of it; Conall was tied by Connlaoch."

"'Bring word from us to Hound's head,' Said the King in fierce sullen tones, To Dundalk sunny and bright, To the Hound, Dog's jaw."

Then Cuchulain (thus described by versions of the nickname won when he broke the jaws of Culann's hound) made answer:--

"Hard for us is hearing of the captivity Of the man whose plight is told; And hard it is to try the venom of blades With the warrior that bound Conall."

But the messenger pleads:--

"Do not think but to go to the rescue Of the destroying keen dangerous warrior, Of the hand that had no fear for any, To loose him, and he fettered."

Then (as Miss Brooke in the majestic manner of the eighteenth century puts it):--

"Then with firm step and dauntless air, Cucullin went and thus the foe addrest, Let me, O valiant knight (he cried), Thy courtesy request, To me thy purpose and thy name confide."

And so on through a sonorous description of dialogue and fight till:--

"At length Cucullin's kindling soul arose, Indignant shame recruited fury lends; With fatal aim his glittering lance he throws, And low on earth the dying youth extends."

Or, as I translate almost literally from James Kelly's version, which is considerably briefer than the text which Miss Brooke has so volubly expanded:--

"Out set the Hound of the keen, smooth blade To see the work that Conall made, Till he pierced with a bitter blow, That hero youth his hardy foe."

That is all we are told of the fighting; the ballad passes straight to a terse dramatic dialogue, which Cuchulain opens:--

"Champion, tell your story, For I see your wounds are heavy; 'Twill be short ere they raise your cairn, So hide your testament no longer."

"That's what he said to the son," said James Kelly, finishing the verse, and beginning afresh,

"Let me fall on my face, For methinks 'tis you are my father, And for fear lest men of Eire should see Me retreating from your fierce grapple."

"Then," said James, "the son spoke for to tell him the reason he couldn't spake at the first":--

"I took pledges to my mother Not to give my story to any single man, If I would give it to any under the sun, It is to your bright body I would tell it."

("Complimenting him, like," said James.) Then he recited the stanza which tells by implication how in the long duel Cuchulain was at last driven to use the irresistible stroke of Sgathach's teaching:--

"I lay my curse on my mother, That she put me under pledge; But if it were not for the feat of magic I had not been got for nothing."

(It is a fine phrase surely, "You had paid dear in blood before you mastered me.")

Cuchulain answers groaning, with a wail for the lineage that is cut off:

"I lay my curse on your mother, For she destroyed a multitude of young ones; And because the treachery that was in her Left your smooth flesh reddened."

Then comes, with the boy's dying word, the revelation of the most tragic moment in the fight.

"Cuchulain, beloved father, Is it not a wonder you did not know me When I cast my spear crooked and feebly Against your bush of blades."

Where will you find a finer stroke of invention? The boy, tongue-tied by his pledge, knows his father and feels his defence failing against the terrible onset; he would not, if he could, be the victor, but he thinks of a way within the honour of his bond which may awaken knowledge of him; and he casts his javelin with a clumsiness not to be looked for in the champion "that tied Conall." It is useless, the battle madness is in Cuchulain, he thinks only of conquest, an end to the supple, quick parrying, and he throws the gaebulg, a spear of dragon's bones bristling with points (his "bush of blades"), with the magic cast that there is no meeting. And now there is nothing left to him but the lamentation,

"Och, och! Great is my madness! I lifting here my young lad! My son's head in my one hand, His arms and his raiment on the other.

"I, the father that slew his son, May I never throw spear nor noble javelin; The hand that slew its son, May it win torture and sharp wounding.

"The grief for my son I put from me never, Till the flagstones of my side crumble, It is in me, and through my heart, Like a sharp blaze in the hoar hill grasses.

"If I and my heart's Connlaoch Were playing our kingly feats together, We could range from wave to shore Over the five provinces of Erin."

The penultimate stanza, with its magnificent closing image and its truly AEschylean hyperbole, is not even suggested in Miss Brooke's version. It is, perhaps, the finest thing in the poem; but I hardly know any ballad finer as a piece of dramatic narrative; and the resonant verse, strongly rhymed (in the Gaelic assonances), and copiously stressed with alliteration, bears out the theme.

These, I trust, are critical opinions. But if the collector would have a special weakness for a vase which his own spade had unearthed, I may be prejudiced in favour of the poem, which I got in the sweat of my brow from very probably the one man living who knew it in that form.

Tellers of old Irish fairy tales about enchanted princes, magic cocks and hens, and the like, are still numerous; but it is very rare to find a man who keeps living the old poetry which was made, perhaps, in the twelfth century. Yet while any survive the tradition is still there; the song still lives, for I did not spend my hours without feeling that this old man could respond to any emotion that the song-maker put into the sound and the meaning and the associations of his words. There are still those to whom the Irish even of the twelfth century is no dead language. Even if it were, no doubt the songs made in it might still be strong in life, as are to-day those of Homer and a hundred others. But in the case of these smaller literatures, once the tongue itself has ceased to be heard, dumbness and paralysis fall upon what might else be so full of vitality. And a song has more than its own life, it has power to quicken, to breed. If any one considers that legend of the son and father (found in many languages, yet in none, I think, more finely shaped), it is easy to see how from age to age it may revive itself in new forms, entering into other shapes, as Helen's figure adorns not her own story only, but the praise of a thousand women. Let it be understood that this legend is only one of a cycle, and that the song which I wrote down was only the barest fraction of James Kelly's repertory. Indeed, he was vexed that I should take it as a specimen, for he himself "had more conceit in" the lays that tell of Finn and his companions, and I could have filled a volume, and maybe several volumes, from his recitations.

These songs may die, the language may die, the Irish race may be swallowed up in England and America. But it is my belief that the strong intellectual life which made of Ireland a home of the arts before the Normans came across channel may, like many another life in nature, spring after centuries of torpor into vigour and fertility again. That is the belief and hope of many of us; but nothing has rendered me so confident in it as to find this work of a strong and fine art not laid aside and neglected, but honoured and current to-day, and, though in a poor man's cottage, living with as full a life as when it was chanted at the feasts of princes.

IRISH EDUCATION AND IRISH CHARACTER.

Education in Ireland has been organised by the State in accordance with English ideas. Had English influence been able to bring about any large measure of conformity between the two countries, there would have been little or no need for a separate paper on moral training in Irish schools. But what conformity there is, is purely superficial; and although free development has been hindered, and Irish institutions for teaching are less characteristic than they would have been if entirely left to themselves, still the moral influences which emerge wherever pupils and teachers are brought together reveal themselves in Ireland, and reveal themselves as Irish. The object of this paper, then, is to illustrate, so far as possible, the nature and the symptoms of these distinctive influences.

First of all, it may be said broadly that no ordinary person in Ireland contemplates the possibility of teaching morality apart from religion; and by religion is meant emphatically this or that particular creed. Almost every school maintained by the State is managed locally by a clergyman, who appoints the teacher, and public feeling is so strong on the matter that in any neighbourhood even a small group of families of any particular denomination is always provided with a separate school of its own. Of late, indeed, opinion has begun to agitate for associating the laity with the clergy in the management of schools; but this does not indicate any desire to lessen the importance given to the part played by religion in education.

Further, so far as Catholic Ireland is concerned, an immense proportion of the teaching both in primary and secondary schools is done by members of religious orders, and in these, of course, there is no conception of separating moral influences from religious. There is, however, no evidence known to me that even in the few Protestant schools which are partly or wholly under lay control any duties, other than those of ordinary school work, are inculcated except as part of a Christian's religious obligations. This entire state of things is due to the fact that positive Christian belief, and the practice of religious observances, are everywhere in Ireland very general, and among the Catholic population almost universal. It is also hardly necessary to point out that in many respects the standard of Irish morality is so high that the example of Ireland may be quoted with confidence in support of the view which makes moral teaching necessarily a part of religion.

But from such broad generalities there is not much to be gathered, and I proceed to examine in some detail the existing institutions--beginning at the top with higher education.

It follows from what has been said that, in the general opinion of Irishmen, there can be no positive moral influence where there is no religious teaching; and for that reason a university without a school of theology or arrangements for corporate worship is, to Irishmen, a university deficient in moral safeguards. This accounts for the fact that Catholic opinion was much less opposed to the Protestant University of Dublin than to the more modern Queen's Colleges, which, designed by England to provide for her wants of Ireland, excluded religion entirely from their purview. This provision satisfied no one, except to some extent the Presbyterians, who accepted Queen's College, Belfast, with some alacrity, though in practice demanding that its head should always be a staunch professor of their own persuasion. But Catholics as a body refused to accept either the University of Dublin with its Protestant atmosphere or the "godless" Queen's Colleges; and since Ireland is mainly a Catholic country, and the National University has not yet created a tradition, it is clear that not much can be gleaned on the subject of Irish ideas of moral training from Irish universities.

Yet Trinity College is well worth study, for in it we have a free growth, typifying both in its virtues and in its defects the ruling Protestant class, landed and professional. Here, unquestionably, the chief moral influence is that of the Church, felt, as at Oxford, directly through the chapel services and sermons, and indirectly through the presence of a large body of theological students. The second of these influences is specially strong in Dublin, because these students have an organisation of their own in the University Theological Society, and also because the work of the Divinity School at Dublin comprises much that is done in England by the training colleges. I should therefore be inclined to put the positive influence of dogmatic religion higher at Dublin than at Oxford.

On the other hand, the vaguer humanitarian enthusiasms which are more or less allied to Socialism, and with which the High Church party willingly allies itself, have, I think, much less hold in Trinity than at the English universities; though the movement which sends so many brilliant young Englishmen into work (temporary or permanent) in the East End of London has its parallel in the recently organised Social Service Society, which attempts something for the reclamation of Dublin slums. Again, in regard to more definitely political aspirations, Irish Protestants are somewhat unfortunately situated. Trinity as a whole has no sympathy with the ideals that appeal to Ireland as a nation, and it always seems to lack first-hand touch with the best English thought, whether Liberal or Tory. This isolation from the main movement of Irish thought and feeling on the one hand, and on the other, this enforced separation from the current of English life, keep the place a little old-fashioned; and to generate enthusiasm, ideals and feelings need a certain freshness. If it be held (as I should hold) that a university's main moral function is to produce enthusiasts rather than merely decent citizens, in this respect, I think, Trinity fails.

In regard to the less direct influences, a good deal may be noted. The general trend of life in Trinity is towards frugality, just as at Oxford it is towards extravagance. Consequently, money is less of an advantage, poverty less of a drawback than at the English universities; the standard of living is more uniform; and in the society of which the university is typical, and which it influences, respect for wealth as wealth is noticeably rare. Again, the idea of education is more disciplinary than in England. Irishmen go to college, not to acquire culture by contact, but to learn certain definite things; and the university, in its anxiety to find out if the task is being learnt, multiplies examinations. The same idea pervades all Irish education--the old-fashioned demand for a positive result in knowledge; and if it leads to an excessive value set upon these tests, it also goes far to discourage idleness.

In another matter Trinity College is typical of Irish ideas generally. Games are simply taken as games, not as a main business of life in which success may even have a marketable value. Everybody recognizes their physical use, and more than that, their use as a means of bringing men together. But nobody in Ireland, save here and there a stray apostle of English notions, talks of the moral lessons to be acquired by fielding out or by patient batting. Compulsory games at school are practically unknown; nobody plays unless he wants to; so that the duffer does not experience the questionable moral advantage of physical discomfort and frequent humiliation, and the naturally painstaking or excellent athlete gets no more than his fair chance of exercising his gifts. And these are less likely to have an undue importance in their possessor's eyes, because they will not of themselves lead him to a position of great distinction in an Irish university.

Unfortunately, Trinity College is the only place in Ireland--unless perhaps a saving clause should be made for Queen's College, Belfast--which offers what is meant by a university life. The National University, whether in Dublin, Cork or Galway, brings young men together only in classes and in one or two debating societies. Yet even so, I question whether, in some ways, life does not beat stronger in it than in Trinity; whether the moral influences proper to a university, the enthusiasm, the contagion of generous ideas, are not here more strongly felt. The reason for this view must be given.

Trinity has never been the University of Ireland. It is ceasing to be the University of Protestant Ireland, for Protestants, who can afford to do so, send their sons increasingly to Oxford or Cambridge, and Trinity, which has not known how to create a true and special function for itself, is becoming merely a cheap substitute for these English institutions. And the reason for this is a moral reason which goes to the root of many questions connected with Irish education. Should Irish schools and colleges seek to educate citizens for the Empire, or citizens for Ireland? During the last half century, while the Imperialist idea has been developing in England, Trinity has thrown all its moral weight into support of that idea. But the Imperialist idea in England is very different from the same idea as viewed in Canada or New Zealand or Australia; and universities in these countries address themselves particularly to local needs. In the section of Ireland which Trinity represents, local patriotism is held to conflict with Imperial patriotism, and one has to observe that Trinity's Imperialism is forwarding tendencies which are leaving her drained. Nationalists may respect the sincerity of convictions so pressed in defiance of a local interest; but a university, whose main emotional appeal is directed towards evoking primarily an enthusiasm for England, cannot be of much use to Nationalist Ireland. Catholics may (and do) respect the thoroughness of the religious teaching, and the strong grip which Protestantism keeps on the university; but a university which inculcates morals through a Protestant religion is not precisely suitable to Catholics. Yet Catholics and Nationalists alike infinitely prefer a university or a college or a school with strong Protestant beliefs, or strong Imperialist patriotism, to an institution with neither beliefs nor patriotism at all. The colourless and merely scholastic ideals of the Queen's Colleges, and the huge examining machinery known as the Royal University, typified in their total lack of moral influences all that was worst in the educational system under which Ireland labours.