Part 9

"To have done this clearly and completely, so that the past lives again and is felt by the instinct of nature to be true and real, free from confusion and extravagance, the imperfections of utterance in a people just learning to express themselves, the alien and antique methods of thought, through the inevitably imperfect knowledge of a language half faded and changed, while preserving not only the terms of expression but the characteristics of thought and feeling, seems a no less difficult task than to trace and interpret the worn letters and half-effaced inscriptions on the Ogham stones, and could only have been done by the genius of the great poet vivifying the labor of the profound scholar. Finally, the impress of the past as it is visible to the present, the effect of the gray cairn and grassy burial mound, and almost the last fading of the tokens of the aboriginal race into the bosom of nature, and the perception of its spirit amid the light and bustle of the day,

The loneliness and awe secure of the forgotten dead,

is the task of the modern poet speaking in his own time and to his own generation of the past."

1 Introduction to popular edition of _Lays of the Western Gael_ Dublin, 1888.

These ballads have a solemnity of measure like the voice of one of the ancient bards chanting of

Old, forgotten, far-off things

And battles long ago,

and they are clothed with the mists of a melancholy age. They include such subjects as The Tain Quest, the search of the bard for the lost lay of the great cattle raid of Queen Maev of Connaught, and its recovery by invocation from the voice of its dead author arising in misty form above his grave; The Healing of Conall Carnach, a story of violated sanctuary and its punishment; The Welshmen of Tyrawly, one of the most spirited and original, and which has been pronounced by Mr. Swinburne as among the finest of modern ballads, telling of a cruel mulct inflicted upon the members of a Welsh colony in Ireland and its vengeance, and other incidents in early Irish history. The verses on Aideen's Grave are a characteristic specimen of the tone and spirit of these ballads. The author's introductory note says:--

"Aideen, daughter of Angus of Ben Edar (now the Hill of Howth), died of grief for the loss of her husband Oscar, son of Ossian, who was slain at the battle of Gavra (Gowra near Tara in Meath) A. D. 284. Oscar was entombed in the rath, or earthen fortress, that occupied part of the field of battle, the rest of the slain being cast in a pit outside. Aideen is said to have been buried on Howth, near the mansion of her father, and poetical tradition represents the Fenian heroes as present at her obsequies. The cromlech in Howth Park is supposed to have been her sepulchre."

AIDEEN'S GRAVE.

They heaved the stones; they heaped the cairn.

Said Ossian, "In a queenly grave

We leave her, 'mong her fields of fern

Between the cliff and wave."

The cliff behind stands clear and bare,

And bare, above, the heathery steep

Scales the clear heaven's expanse, to where

The Danaan Druids sleep.

And all the sands that, left and right,

The grassy isthmus-ridge confine,

In yellow bars lie bare and bright

Among the sparkling brine.

A clear pure air pervades the scene,

In loneliness and awe secure,

Meet spot to sepulchre a Queen,

Who in her life was pure.

Here far from camp and chase removed,

Apart in Nature's quiet room,

The music that alive she loved

Shall cheer her in the tomb.

The humming of the noontide bees,

The lark's loud carol all day long,

And, borne on evening's salted breeze,

The clanking sea-birds' song

Shall round her airy chamber float,

And with the whispering winds and streams,

Attune to Nature's tenderest note

The tenor of her dreams.

And oft at tranquil eve's decline,

When full tides lap the Old Green Plain,

The lowing Moynalty's kine

Shall round her breathe again.

In sweet remembrance of the days

When, duteous in the lowly vale,

Unconscious of my Oscar's gaze,

She filled the fragrant pail.

And, duteous, from the running brook,

Drew water for the bath; nor deem'd

A king did on her labor look,

And she a fairy seemed.

But when the wintry frosts begin,

And in their long-drawn, lofty flight

The wild geese with their airy din.

Distend the ear of night.

And when the fierce De Danaan ghosts,

At midnight from their peak come down.

When all around the enchanted coasts

Despairing strangers drown;

When mingling with the wreckful wail

From low Clontarf's wave-trampled floor,

Comes booming up the burthened gale

The angry Sand Bull's roar;

Or, angrier than the sea, the shout

Of Erin's hosts in wrath combined

When Terror heads Oppression's rout

And Freedom cheers behind:--

Then o'er our lady's placid dream,

When safe from storms she sleeps, may steal

Such joy as may not misbeseem

A queen of men to feel.

Such thrill of free, defiant pride,

As rapt her in her battle car

At Gavra, when by Oscar's side

She rode the ridge of war.

Exulting, down the shouting troops,

And through the thick confronting kings,

With hands on all their javelin loops

And shafts on all their strings;

E'er closed the inseparable crowds

No more to part for me, and show,

As bursts the sun through scattering clouds

My Oscar issuing so.

No more, dispelling battle's gloom,

Shall son to me from fight return;

The great green rath's ten-acred tomb

Lies heavy on his urn.

A cup of bodkin-pencilled clay

Holds Oscar; mighty heart and limb

One handful now of ashes grey:

And she has died for him.

And here, hard by her natal bower

On lone Ben-Edar's side we strive

With lifted rock and sign of power

To keep her name alive.

That, while from circling year to year,

Her Ogham-lettered stone is seen,

The Gael shall say, "Our Fenians here

Entombed their loved Aideen.

The Ogham from her pillar stone

In tract of time will wear away;

Her name at last be only known

In Ossian's echoed lay.

The long-forgotten lay I sing

May only ages hence revive,

(As eagle with a wounded wing

To soar again might strive.)

Imperfect, in an alien speech,

When, wandering here, some child of chance

Through pangs of keen delight shall reach

The gift of utterance,--

To speak the air, the sky to speak,

The freshness of the hill to tell,

When, roaming bare Ben-Edar's peak

And Aide en's briary dell,

And gazing on the Cromlech vast,

And on the mountain and the sea,

Shall catch communion with the past

And mix himself with me.

Child of the Future's doubtful night,

Whate'er your speech, whoe'er your sires,

Sing while you may with frank delight

The song your hour inspires.

Sing while you may, nor grieve to know

The song you sing shall also die;

Atharna's lay has perished so,

Though once it thrilled the sky.

Above us, from his rocky chair

There, where Ben-Edar's landward crest

O'er eastern Bregia bends, to where

Dun-Almon crowns the west:

And all that felt the fretted air,

Throughout the song-distempered clime,

Did droop, till Leinster's suppliant prayer

Appeased the vengeful rhyme.

Ah, me, or e'er the hour arrive

Shall bid my long-forgotten tones,

Unknown One, on your lips revive,

Here, by these moss-grown stones,

What change shall o'er the scene have cross'd

What conquering lords anew have come;

What lore-armed, mightier Druid host

From Gaul or distant Rome!

What arts of death, what ways of life,

What creeds unknown to bard or seer,

Shall round your careless steps be rife,

Who pause and ponder here:

And, haply, where yon curlew calls

Athwart the marsh, 'mid groves and bowers

See rise some mighty chieftain's halls

With unimagined towers:

And baying hounds and coursers bright,

And burnish't cars of dazzling sheen,

With courtly train of dame and knight,

Where now the fern is green.

Or by yon prostrate altar stone

May kneel, perchance, and free from blame,

Hear holy men with rites unknown

New names of God proclaim.

Let change as.may the name of Awe,

Let right surcease and altar fall,

The same one God remains, a law

Forever and for all.

Let change as may the face of earth,

Let alter all the social frame,

For mortal men the ways of birth

And death are still the same.

And still, as life and time wear on,

The children of the waning days

(Though strength be from their shoulders gone

To lift the loads we raise)

Shall weep to do the burial rites

Of lost ones loved; and fondly found

In shadow of the gathering nights

The monumental mound.

Farewell, the strength of men is worn;

The night approaches dark and chill;

Sleep till, perchance, an endless morn

Descend the glittering hill"--

Of Oscar and Aideen bereft

So Ossian sang. The Fenians sped

Three mighty shouts to heaven; and left

Ben-Edar to the dead.

The spirit of Ossian, the woe and desolation of a mortal world, and the resigned but not bitter sense of the vanity of all things, lives in this solemn elegy.

The charming lyrics of the later Irish Celtic poetry, which succeeded that of the bards, and were the voices of the peasant people themselves and of the professional descendants of the bards, the itinerant poets and musicians, who wandered from house to house with their harps, singing the praises of their entertainers, and were not extinct until the end of the last century, have found an adequate interpreter in Sir Samuel Ferguson. As in his reproductions of the bardic poetry, he has been able to seize the very spirit of these songs, their intoxication of love, their breath of hopeless longing and misfortune, the characteristics of the race and the results of their cruel fate at the hands of alien conquerors, and to interpret it in measures as melodious as the sad and sweet old airs, which are the most valuable gift which the intellectual life of Celtic Ireland has bestowed upon posterity. The genuine Irish melodies are to be found in these lyrics, which interpret the spirit as well as the language of the Celtic poets, and not in the rococo songs of Moore, in which artificial sentiment is tricked out in a mechanical melody, and in which the atmosphere of the drawing-room takes the place of the free air of the hillside. Of these Celtic lyrics the greater number have been lost, the airs alone surviving, but those which remain show how strong, sensitive, and impassioned was the poetic spirit of the Irish Celtic people, and which, but for the misfortunes of the nation, might have left as rich a treasury of lyric song as the Scotch. The following is a specimen of the impassioned spirit of these songs, almost an improvisation, the very cry of the heart finding vent at the lips. It is entitled Cean Dubh Deelish--The Dear Black Head.

Put your head, darling, darling, darling,

Your darling black head my heart above;

Oh, mouth of honey, with the thyme for fragrance,

Who with heart in breast could deny you love?

Oh, many and many a young girl for me is pining,

Letting her locks of gold to the cold wind free,

For me the foremost of our gay young fellows;

But I'd leave a hundred, pure love, for thee:

Then put your head, darling, darling, darling,

Your darling black head my heart above;

Oh, mouth of honey, with the thyme for fragrance,

Who, with heart in breast, could deny you love?

The verses entitled The Fair Hair'd Girl express with great sweetness the sense of woe and sorrow which forms the burden of so much of the Celtic poetry, and which is only relieved by occasional flashes of intoxicated merriment with the glass of whiskey for its stimulus and inspiration.

THE FAIR HAIR'D GIRL.

The sun has set, the stars are still,

The red moon hides behind the hill;

The tide has left the brown beach bare,

The birds have fled the upper air;

Upon her branch the lone cuckoo

Is chanting still her sad adieu;

And you, my fair hair'd girl, must go

Across the salt sea under woe.

I through love have learned three things,

Sorrow, sin, and death it brings,

Yet day by day my heart within

Dares shame and sorrow, death and sin;

Maiden, you have aim'd the dart

Rankling in my ruin'd heart;

Maiden, may the God above

Grant you grace to grant me love.

Sweeter than the viol's string,

And the notes that blackbirds sing;

Brighter than the dewdrops rare

Is the maiden, wondrous fair;

Like the silver swans at play

Is her neck, as bright as day;

Woe is me, that e'er my sight

Dwelt on charms so deadly bright.

Among the sweetest and most famous of the old Irish airs is that entitled The Coolun or Head of Clustering Tresses, one of the charming personifications of female beauty of which Irish poetry is full. Several sets of words remain to this air of which Ferguson has translated the following:--

THE COOLUN.

Oh, had you seen the Coolun,

Walking down by the cuckoo's street,

With the dew of the meadow shining

On her milk-white twinkling feet,

My love she is and my _cooleen oge_,

And she dwells at Bal'nagar;

And she bears the palm of beauty bright

From the fairest that in Erin are.

In Bal'nagar is the Coolun,

Like the berry on the bough her cheek;

Bright beauty dwells forever

On her fair neck and ringlets sleek;

Oh, sweeter is her mouth's soft music

Than the lark or thrush at dawn,

Or the blackbird in the greenwood singing

Farewell to the setting sun.

Rise up, my boy, make ready

My horse, for I forth would ride,

To follow the modest damsel,

Where she walks on the green hillside.

For, ever since our youth were we plighted,

In faith, troth, and wedlock true--

She is sweeter to me nine times over

Than organ or cuckoo!

For, ever since my childhood

I loved the fair and darling child;

But our people came between us,

And with lucre our pure love defiled;

Oh, my woe it is, and my bitter pain,

And I weep it night and day,

That the _cooleen bawn_ of my early love

Is torn from my heart away.

Sweetheart and faithful treasure,

Be constant still, and true,

Nor for want of herds and houses

Leave one who would ne'er leave you;

I pledge you the blessed Bible,

Without and eke within,

That the faithful God will provide for us,

Without thanks to kith or kin.

Oh, love, do you remember,

When we lay all night alone,

Beneath the ash in the winter-storm,

When the oak-wood round did groan?

No shelter then from the blast had we,

The bitter blast or sleet,

But your gown to wrap about our heads,

And my coat round our feet.

The main literary work of Sir Samuel Ferguson was devoted to this revivification of the spirit of ancient Celtic poetry, in spite of a highly successful début as an English poet in The Forging of the Anchor, which at once took its place among those poems that are the familiar treasures of the people, and in this he was doubtless governed by something of patriotic spirit as well as by natural predilection. His work is not great in quantity, and he treasured his inspiration and perfected his workmanship with careful pains. Its result is to give a reproduction of the pervading elements of Irish Celtic poetry in English form with almost absolute perfection, and imbued with a spirit of original genius. In his poems, rather than in Macpherson's Ossian or in the literal translations, will the modern reader find the voice of the ancient Celtic bards speaking to the intelligence of to-day in their own tones without false change and dilution, or the confusion and dimness of an ancient language. The value of this work has not yet been fully appreciated by literary critics, but there is no doubt in my mind but that it eventually will be,

WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET.

|One of the most extraordinary and painful lives in literary history was that of William Thom of Inverury,

Scotland. There have been Scottish poets before and since Burns who have been bred in poverty and distress, and in whose lives the flowers of poetry have bloomed amid the most depressing and uncongenial circumstances. There have been crofters, shepherds, farm laborers, tailors, weavers, and shoemakers, servant lassies and old wives, who have given expression to their feelings in verse and song, with more or less skill and success, and testified to the strength of the national genius which has made Scotland so peculiarly the land of song, and filled the lower bed of bracken and furze in which the higher and rarer flowers of Scottish minstrelsy have stood preeminent. And the history of the minor Scottish poets is full of the homely pathos of unrequited toil, of pinching poverty, and of hopeless struggles with life, redeemed by honest virtue, patience, and thrift, or clouded with still deeper misfortune, and absolutely and irredeemably wrecked by dissipation and improvidence. But upon none, in whom the divine spark of genius existed, did the burdens of life fall more heavily than upon William Thom, or the tragedies of existence reach a blacker depth of misery. The story has been told by himself in The Rhymes and Recollections of a Handloom Weaver, his only volume, in nervous and vigorous prose, bearing traits of the declamatory style of Ebenezer Elliot and the radical writers of his school, but marked by native originality and strength. It has more than a personal value, as illustrating the condition of the life of factory hands in Scotland, when machines had multiplied to the complete degradation of labor, and when it was simply a question with the mill owners of extracting the largest amount of work for the smallest wages from the operatives, and before the government had interfered to regulate the hours of labor within endurable limits, and secure some of the conditions of health to the mill hands. A more appalling picture of hopeless poverty and starvation, and physical and moral degradation, has never been given in the annals of the civilized world, and of its truth there is abundant evidence in the writings of contemporary workingmen in England and Scotland, and in the testimony which led to the passage of the Factory Regulation acts by the English Parliament.

William Thom was born in 1798 of parents steeped in poverty, in a tenement in one of the narrow closes of Aberdeen, and at the age of ten began his apprenticeship to life in a cotton factory. At the age of fifteen or sixteen he entered the "School Hill Factory,"--a building since swept away,--as a weaver hand, and remained there for seventeen years. The wages of the best operatives averaged through good and bad times from six to nine shillings weekly, and of the second-class from three to five shillings. The daily hours of labor were fourteen. What that meant, not in poverty, but in absolute want of food, warmth, and the means for the sustenance of life, the degradation of rags, the shutting out of all glimpses of heaven and earth, leaving the only alleviation to the hours of toil at the rattling machines, and the squalid suffering in the reeking tenements, in the cheap and fiery stimulants of the taprooms, can be only faintly imagined. An inheritance of bad habits had also descended to the weaving class. When the factories were first established in 1770, after the invention of the spinning jenny, the wages of skillful workmen were forty shillings a week, and the operatives usually remained drunk from Saturday night until Wednesday morning, wore frilled shirts and powdered hair, sported canes, and quoted Volney in their discussions on the rights of man in the taprooms. The overplus of labor gradually reduced the wages to the starvation point, while the habits of dissipation and recklessness remained as characteristic of the craft. Thom gives a most affecting picture of the lives and thoughts of these men, many of them, strong with native intellect and passion, condemned to a life of unending servitude and degradation, too ragged to dare to enter a church, even if they wished, and getting their only glimpse of nature in the garden of Gordon's Hospital, which was open on the Sunday holiday, while the whiskey shop gave them their only taste of joy and exhilaration; and yet who had a native feeling for poetry, repeating the verses of Burns and particularly of Tannahill, their brother weaver, as they tended their looms, and applauding the poets and singers in their own ranks, whose rude verses expressed their feelings or appealed to their sympathies in the gatherings in the taprooms. The moral influences of such a life, where three or four hundred men and women were herded together in common workrooms was also very bad, and many a young girl dated her ruin in life, bringing additional desolateness to the miserable home, from the promiscuous association, and being barred out into the streets with a heavy fine for failing to be at the factory door at its opening in the early morning. How virtue, morality, or any of the decency and self-respect of humanity could exist at all in such a life may be considered a marvel, and it is a proof of the inherent strength of the Scottish character and its inherited virtues that these factories were not greater plague spots than they actually were, and that honest lives and Tinman affections flourished at all. In a poem, entitled Whisperings to the Unwashed, in the fiercely declamatory style of the Corn Law Rhymer, Thom draws a grim picture of the awakening of the weavers at the call of the town drum, used for that purpose in the smaller burghs, at six o'clock in the bleak and dark Northern mornings.

Rubadub, rnbadub, row-dow-dow!

Hark how he waukens the Weavers now;

Who lie belaired in a dreamy steep--

A mental swither, 'tween death and sleep,

Wi' hungry wame and hopeless heart,

Their food no feeding, their sleep no rest;

Arouse ye, ye sunken, unravel your rags,

No coin in your coffers, no meal in your bags.

Yet cart, barge, and wagon, with load after load,

Creak, mockfully passing your breadless abode.

The stately stalk of Ceres bears,

But not for you the bursting ears.

In vain to you the lark's lov'd note,

For you no summer breezes float,

Grim winter through your hovel pours--

Dull, dim, and breathless vapour yours.

The nobler Spider weaves alone,

And feels the little web his own,

His home, his fortress, foul or fair,

No factory whipper swaggers there.

Should ruffian wasp or taunting fly

Touch his lov'd lair, 't is touch and die!

Supreme in rags, ye weave, in tears,

The shining robe your murderer wears,

Till worn at last to the very "waste,"

A hole to die in at the best;

And, dead, the session saints begrudge ye

The two-three deals in death to lodge ye,

And grudge the grave, wherein to drop ye.

And grudge the very muck to hap ye.

All this bitterness had reason and fact to excuse it, and it is a wonder that such feelings, fermenting in strong minds, did not lead to more serious consequences than taproom talk and the formation of Chartist clubs.