Part 2

But I am pre-eminently a reasoning man, in whom the reign of passion is but brief, and discretion had so far recovered its rightful ascendency as I drew nigh the next “picket,” that I began to think it more prudent, more benevolent I mean, to bottle up, or repress I should say, my indignation, and try what the “gentle charities,” a benign demeanour and a pleasant salutation, might avail in the way of securing a peaceful transit. With this aim I threw a prodigious amount of amiability (if somewhat more than I felt, Heaven forgive the hypocrisy) into my countenance, and accompanied a few familiar fillips of my finger with a most honied, and, as I thought, captivating phraseology of address, to a sinister-faced wretch who lay recumbent on the nearest threshold. But it would not do: up bounced the vile ingrate with obstreperous bay; his myrmidons were forthcoming on the instant, and in a jiffey I, a grave, reserved, and middle-aged man, a short, stout, and not very well-winded man, was in the melée once more, yerking my heels out fore and aft, whacking right and left, puffing, blowing, and altogether cutting such uncouth capers as verily it shames me now to think upon. Whether or not it was that my resentment, and proportionably thereto my prowess, were aggravated by the flagrant ingratitude displayed, I distributed my “dissuaders” on this occasion with such distinguished emphasis as well as science, as speedily to create a considerable diversion in my favour, and make more than one repentant sinner yelp out “devil take the hindmost,” in such vigorous style as to bring a bevy of grandam fogies in wrath from their chimney corners. “An what are yees abusin’ the poor craythurs for, that wouldn’t harm nobody in the world at all at all, barrin’ a pig or so? It’s a wonder yees been’t ashamed to treat the poor dumb (!) brutes that way, that niver did an ill hand’s turn to us nor one belonging to us, an’ it’s longer we’re acquaint with them than you. Come here, Trig--come here, Daisy--in there, Snap--down there, Peerie,” and so forth. Recrimination on such opponents was out of the question; and this brush over in rather creditable style, I made all speed from the united clamour of the offended crones and their injured innocents.

The next sore point I happily passed in the company of an iron-nerved, long-thonged carman, whom I providently engaged in conversation at the crisis. This fellow minded them no more than if they had been so many sods of turf, nor in truth did they, having probably tasted erewhile the crusty quality of such a customer, pay much regard to him, although not a few ill-favoured glances were cast askew at my poor self, as under his lee I stoutly stumped along; and some ill-suppressed growls and spiteful grins gave me to understand that I owed my safety solely to my company. A jolly beggarman--alack-a-day! that I should ever stand in need of such a convoy--to whose nimble fictions I gave ear for the nonce with singular philanthropy, was my next protector, and a sixpence paid for the safe conduct, at which rate I am pretty confident, had he seen how matters lay, he would have offered to trudge it at my elbow far enough, for the sturdy rogue cared not a snuff for them had they been twice as numerous; and in a few seconds after, I saw him with a flourish of his duster enter a hut in the midst of them all.

But it is needless to dive any farther into the budget of adventures which then and there befell me, except to mention, as a sort of set-off, a notable retaliation that I right happily achieved on one of my tormentors. After a scuffle, contested on both sides with considerable toughness, I was retiring from a sort of drawn battle, when I espied a short-legged, long-backed, crook-knee’d, lumpish-looking rascal scuttling along through a field at a prodigious pace. He had heard the well-known gathering-note when at a distance with some turf-cutters in a bog, and, eager for sport, namely, a pluck at my inexpressibles, lost no time in making for the scene. The affair was, however, over before he arrived upon the ground; but determined that his “trevally” should not be for nought, he gave me immediate chase up the road, reserving his fire as if intent on close combat alone, and altogether showing such an earnest business-like way with him, as made me set him down as a singularly crabbed customer. On he came at a rate that soon left me nothing for it, was I ever so much disinclined, but to face about and stand at bay. Hereupon, however--so conversant with currish character was I now become--a much increased ostentation of action upon his part, accompanied with a much diminished rate of progression, and a most superfluous discharge of barks, let me into a gratifying little secret. “Ha, my gentleman,” thought I, “Is this the way the land lies? You’re not just so stout a hero as you would fain be thought; and as, i’faith, I have no notion of being made sport of by such small ware as you, I’ll just try if I cannot give you a lesson worth the learning.” With that I again showed him my heels, which relieved him of his rather awkward suspense, and, turning round a corner, dexterously managed in a few moments to have my lad ensconced in a pretty angle, with a deep pool behind him, and a high stone wall on either side. Even in the height of my triumph and wrath, I could not help noticing the extraordinary mutations the outwitted ettercap underwent at this astounding juncture. The last yelp perished incomplete: a dismal wonder-what-ails-him bewilderment, horror, cowardice, despair, supplied a sort of prelibation of “the condign” my injured honour and outraged rights craved in expiation. Before him I flourished my cane in a fashion that made the very thought of contact therewith terrible--behind him lay the expectant plunge-bath of which he, in common with all his tribe, entertained a most hydrophobic horror. Thrice he seemed to contemplate an eruption, and thrice my waving weapon turned him to the watery gulf behind, and in mortal misery he appeared to balance their respective terrors. A cogent persuasive delivered rearward in handsome style, created a partial preponderance in favour of the latter. One paw was passed over the fearful brim; a timely reiteration sent the other after; the avenging rod was upraised to give the grand finale, when his outstretched tail suggested a device, which I rapturously seized on to prevent that gradual fulfilment of inevitable fate which the cowardly caitiff seemed to meditate. In the fervour of my career I even laid hands on this appendage of my once so dreaded foe, and swinging him aloft, to give him a proper elevation, as well as a momentary view of the murky abyss to which a few aërial evolutions were to bring him, dismissed him by a most righteous retribution to his fate. A gurgling yelp announced the crisis of the plump, and a few moments after, snorting and kicking, wriggling and splashing, in a perfect frenzy of amaze, the culprit emerged, and made way like mad for the bank. Tempering justice with mercy, with a noble magnanimity I allowed him to scramble up to the road, which he did with most astonishing alacrity, and, without even a shake to his bedraggled coat, or more than a glance of horror at myself, scurried homeward at a rate with which even his pursuit could not compare: _he_ never troubled me again. With this beautiful illustration of retributive justice--oh, that I could but make it universal!--I will wind up the relation of my misfortunes and feats on this plaguy but memorable day, which I have selected--may my vanity be pardoned--as exhibiting myself, though I say it who shouldn’t say it, in rather a distinguished point of view, as being devoid of certain humiliating circumstances with which on most other occasions my lot was accompanied, and as being at the same time sufficient, without wanton trifling with my own feelings and those of others, to make the resentment of all who are susceptible of sympathy with their kind burn fierce against these pestiferous persecutors of our race. I have said enough to show, that if we care to maintain that native supremacy which these contumacious rebels make but light of questioning, if we wish to rescue our order from the disgrace and contumely from such vile sources cast upon it, the time for action, systematic, conjoint, national action, has now arrived. “Union,” say the sages of the rostrum with admirable discernment, “Union is strength.” Let us act on the profound discovery; let combination be the order of the day; let the cry of “Down with the cynocracy!” ring resistless through the land; let pistol pellets and pounded glass be in every one’s possession; let the legislature be simultaneously bombarded; let the squire whose game is incontinently gobbled up in embryo, the wayfarer whose person and all that hangs thereon is supinely compromised, the philanthropist who would augment human happiness, the humanist who would diminish dumb-brute suffering, the vindicator of the pig, the cat, the donkey, and all the tribe of cur-bebitten animals, ay, even the friends (if such besotted beetleheads there be) of the detested breed themselves, who hold it better “not to be” than “to be” in semi-starvation, in mangy malevolence, in spiteful pugnacity, in the perpetual distribution of snarls, bites, and barks, and receipt of cuffs, kicks, and cudgels--let all and every of these great and various parties agitate, agitate, agitate, petition, petition, petition, that such comprehensive measures as the enormity of the case demands be forthwith adopted for the correction, abatement, or abolition of this national scourge, by taxation, suspension, submersion, decapitation, or deportation, as to the “collective wisdom” may most advisable appear.

A MAN.

LUOIGH NA SEALGA.

POEM OF THE CHASE.

There are many poems of great beauty and interest in the Irish language, several of which have become known to the English reader through the medium of a translation. Of those poems there is a particular class known to Irish scholars by the name of the “Fenian Tales”--an appellation which they derive from Finn, or Fionn, the son of Cumhail (the Fingal of Macpherson), and his heroes the FIONNA EIRONN. Fionn, renowned for his martial exploits, flourished about the beginning of the third century, under Cormac,[1] of whose forces he was the commander-in-chief. He has been to the Milesian bards what King Arthur was to the Britons, the theme of many a marvellous achievement and poetic fiction. Oisin, his son, was equally celebrated as a warrior and a poet; and of him it might be said, as of Achilles, Æschylus, Alfred, Camoens, Cervantes, and many another, that “one hand the sword and one the harp employed.” Numerous poems have been ascribed to him; but there is no proof that he has a legitimate claim to any composition extant. As for the impostures of Macpherson, they have been sufficiently exposed; and no one who has taken pains to investigate the subject, or who has the least knowledge of Irish history, antiquities, or language, will pretend that he is worthy of the slightest credence. The date and origin of the Fenian Tales, from which he drew many of the materials of his centos, are altogether uncertain. It may seem, however, not unreasonable, from slight internal evidence, to conjecture that some of them may have been composed soon after the introduction of Christianity, though they must since have suffered many changes and modifications.[2] In few countries, if in any, did the Christian religion win its way more easily than in Ireland; and yet it can scarcely be supposed that its triumph became universal without some reluctance on the part of the people, whose habits it condemned, and to whose superstitions it was strenuously opposed. It attempted to produce such a complete revolution in their tastes and occupations, that it would be surprising had not various objections been started to its reception. The quiet and devotion of the monastic life formed a melancholy contrast to the spirit-stirring excitements of the chase, and to those games of strength and skill in which the heroes of the Ossianic age delighted. They who rejoiced in the clash of arms, in the music of hounds and horns, and in the feast and the revel, could have small taste for the chiming of bells in the services of religion, for the singing of psalms, and still less for fasting--

----the waster gaunt and grim, That of beauty and strength robs feature and limb.

The bards, it may well be imagined, who were always not only welcome but necessary guests at all the high festivals of the chiefs and princes, would be among the first to lament a change of manners by which their pleasures and honours were abridged or abolished; and to give more effect to their complaint, as well as to conceal its real authors, they put it into the mouth of Oisin, their great master, by poetic licence, though in violation of chronology. They ascribed to him those sentiments which they thought he would have expressed, had he really been the contemporary of Saint Patrick.[3] At the same time it must be admitted, that in the Poem of the Chase at least, such a description of the creative power of the Deity is given by the saint, as is worthy of a Christian missionary, though he is obliged to succumb to the stern indignation of the “Warrior Bard.”

Leaving the further consideration of this subject for the present, I proceed to give an analysis of the Poem of the Chase, from which the reader may be enabled in some degree to judge how far Spenser is justifiable in affirming that the poems of the Irish bards “savoured of sweet wit and good invention.”

The poem commences by Oisin asking St Patrick if he had ever heard the tale of the chase; and on receiving an answer in the negative, accompanied with a request that it may be told truly, he feels indignant at the suspicion that he or any of the Fionna Eironn could ever deviate from the strictest veracity, and retaliates by declaring how much he prized his former friends, whose virtues he records, beyond Patrick and all his psalm-singing fraternity. Patrick, in reply, exhorts him not to indulge a strain of panegyric which borders on blasphemy, and extols the power of that great Being by whom all the Fenian race had been destroyed. The mention of his friends’ extinction calls forth a fresh burst of indignation from Oisin, and leads him to compare the pleasures of the days gone by with the melancholy occupations of psalm-singing and fasting. Patrick requests him to cease, and not incur the impiety of comparing Finn with the Creator of the universe. Oisin replies in a style more indignant, and after reciting a number of the glorious exploits of the Fenians, asks by what achievements of Patrick’s Deity they can be matched. The saint, justly shocked by such daring, accuses him of frenzy, and tells him that Finn and his host have been doomed to hell-fire by that God whom he blasphemes: but this only provokes Oisin to make a comparison between Finn’s generosity and the divine vengeance; and as for himself, it is a sufficient proof of his sanity that he allows Patrick and his friends to wear their heads. Patrick, as if tacitly admitting the validity of his argument, pays him a compliment, and requests him to proceed with the promised tale. Oisin complies, and informs him that while the Fenian heroes were feasting in the tower of Almhuin, Finn having withdrawn from the company and spied a young doe, pursued her with his two hounds Sceolan and Bran as far as Slieve Guillin, where she suddenly disappeared. While he and his hounds are left in perplexity, he hears a sound of lamentation, and looking round espies a damsel of surpassing beauty, whom he accosts, and with friendly solicitude asks the cause of her grief. She replies that she had dropped her ring into the adjoining lake, and adjures him as a true knight to dive into the water to find and restore the lost treasure. He complies, and succeeds; and while handing her the ring, is suddenly metamorphosed into a withered old man.

Mean time the absence of their chief begins to create some fears for his safety in the breasts of the Fenians. Caoilte expresses his apprehension that he is irrecoverably lost, when bald Conan, the Thersites of the Fenian poems, rejoicing at the idea, boasts that he will in future be their chief. The Fenians having indulged in a laugh of scorn to hear such arrogance from one they contemned, proceed in quest of Finn, and discover the old man, who whispers in the ear of Caoilte the story of his strange metamorphosis. Conan, on hearing it, waxes valiant, and utters some bitter reproaches against Finn and the Fenians. He is rebuked by Caoilte; but still continuing to vituperate and boast, he is answered at last by the sword of Osgar. The Fenians interfere, and having put an end to the strife, and learned the cause of Finn’s misfortune, they search the secret recesses of Slieve Guillin, and at length find the enchantress, who presents a cup to Finn, of which he drinks, and is restored to his former strength and beauty.

Miss Brooke, a lady to whose genius and taste Irish literature is greatly indebted, has given a translation of this poem in her “Reliques of Irish Poetry,” published in 1788. Every Irish scholar is bound to speak with respect of her patriotic literary labours, and the present writer would be among the last to pluck a single leaf from the chaplet which adorns her brows--

----neque ego illi detrahere ausim Hærentem capiti multa cum laude coronam.--HOR.

Not from her head shall I presume to tear The sacred wreath she well deserves to wear.--FRANCIS.

To Miss Brooke is due the well-merited praise of having been the first to introduce the English reader to a knowledge of these compositions. But that province of translation into which she led the way is open to all, and no one has a right to claim it as his exclusive property. Chapman translated Homer: he was followed by Hobbes, Hobbes by Pope, Pope by Cowper, Cowper by Sotheby. Who will be the next competitor in this fair field of fame? How many translators have we of Virgil, of Horace, of Anacreon, and of all the most eminent Greek and Latin poets, each advancing a claim to some kind of superiority over his rivals? Would that we had more such honourable rivalship in translations from the Irish! Miss Brooke has been faithful to the sense of her originals; but it appears to the present writer that she not unfrequently errs by being too diffuse, that several passages are weakened by unnecessary expansion, and that the spirit of the whole can be better preserved in a more varied form of versification than in the monotonous quatrains which she adopted. The prevalent fault of most poetical translations is diffuseness or amplification, by which the thoughts are weakened and their spirit lost. Much allowance, however, must be granted to those who attempt to clothe in English verse such compositions as the Irish Fenian tales; and any one who makes the experiment will feel the difficulty of preserving a just medium between a loose paraphrase and a strict verbal translation. It is almost if not altogether impossible to translate into rhyme without an occasional accessory idea or epithet on the one hand, and the omission of some unimportant adjunct on the other. The great object should be to preserve the spirit of the original--to be “true to the sense, but truer to his fame”--_nec verbum verbo reddere fidus_. Some passages could not be understood, others would not be endured by any reader of taste or refinement if rendered word for word.

In my next communication I shall send you a translation of the first part of the Poem of the Chase--namely, the introductory dialogue between Patrick and Oisin. This shall be followed by the succeeding part of the poem, should you deem such compositions suited to the pages of your “Journal,” which I hope will be eminently useful in promoting both the literary and moral taste of the people of Ireland.

D.

[1] Cormac Ulfada, grandson of “Con of the hundred battles.” He reigned forty years, and was honoured as a wise statesman and a philosopher.

[2] The reader who feels an interest in this subject, and in the Ossianic controversy, is referred to the essays by the Rev. Dr. Drummond and Mr O’Reilly in the fifteenth volume of the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy. In the Transactions of the Hiberno-Celtic Society Mr O’Reilly observes, that “many beautiful poems are extant that bear the name of Oisin, but there are no good reasons to suppose that they are the genuine compositions of that bard. If ever they were composed by Oisin, they have since suffered a wonderful change in their language, and have been interpolated so as to make the poet and St Patrick contemporaries, though the latter did not commence his apostolic labours in Ireland until the middle of the fifth century, when by the course of nature Oisin must have lain in his grave about one hundred and fifty years.”

Since this paper was sent to the press, the author has been assured by a most competent Irish scholar that there are manuscript poems attributed to Oisin not less than a thousand years old in the Library of the Dublin University. It is much to be wished, for the honour of ancient Irish literature and for the light which these poems may throw on some dark and disputed topics of Irish history, that they may before long be properly analysed and presented to the public.

[3] Thus Horace exposes the arts of the parasites and fortune-hunters of Rome in a dialogue between Tiresias and Ulysses.

DEAF AND DUMB--A MOUNTAIN SKETCH.

BY MRS S. C. HALL.

It has been a general and certainly a well-founded complaint against Ireland, that the arts, whose influence has extended so much over England and Scotland during the last half century, have made but little progress in “the Emerald Isle.” It “has sent forth painters, but encouraged none.” This I fear is true, though lately I have been delighted to observe some very happy exceptions to the rule.

There are many reasons why art and artists have not flourished in Ireland. The greater number of those who have the means to patronise talent are absentees, spending in foreign lands the produce of the riches bestowed by the Almighty on their own--while the minds of the residents are usually so pre-occupied by religious or political controversies, that they have no time to bestow, or attention to give to anything else. Another reason I would urge, even at the hazard of being charged with national pride, is, the country so overflows with natural beauty, that in the matter of landscape painting the Irish gentry are hard to please. To those who doubt this, I would simply say, come and see; and if any English artist does not discover good cause why they should be fastidious, all I can observe is, that I shall be very much astonished. Even the highways are crowded with antiquarian and picturesque beauty; but road-makers do not seek these so much as convenience; nor are the most-talked-of places those where a “landskipper,” as I heard an artist called in Kerry, will reap the richest harvest.