Part 5

The latest and most distinguished authorities[13] declare that Irish literature has largely influenced that of the Scandinavians. Their Heroic Age was much later than ours, from the end of the ninth to the eleventh centuries, when the ambition of Harold Haarfagre to imitate the imperial methods of Charlemagne had driven the independent princes to far isles or foreign voyages. They were in close and continuous contact in peace and war with the Irish, "whose ancient civilisation was superior and therefore stronger." Bergen, the old Norse capital, possessed a church dedicated to St. Columba, and the revered relics of its patron, St. Sunniva, an Irish maiden! As you sail into Rejkiavik, the capital of Iceland, you pass the Westman Isles, so-called because of the Irish who had visited and dwelt there. Now Iceland--that strange attractive island, where cold white snow covers the hot volcanic heart--is the old home of the Sagas. It had been first peopled by some Irish monks. Another settlement took place when Queen Aud--widow of White Olaf, the Norse King of Dublin--went thither on the death of her son. Norsemen and Irishmen, her kinsfolk and dependents, accompanied her. Mr. Vigfusson, himself an Icelander, writes with a generous fairness, characteristic of the race, as follows:

"The bulk of the settlers were men who, at least for one generation, had dwelt among a Keltic population and undergone an influence which an old and strongly marked civilisation invariably exercises among those brought under it--an attraction which in this particular case was of so potent a kind that centuries later it metamorphosed the Norman knights of the foremost European kingdom with startling rapidity into Irish chieftains." "Moreover," he adds, "we find among the emigrants of all ranks men and women of pure Irish and Scottish blood, as also as many sprung from mixed marriages, and traces of this crossing survive in the Irish names borne by some of the foremost characters of the Heroic Age of Iceland, especially the poets, of whom it is also recorded that they were dark men." He considers that this close intercourse with the Celts had to do with heightening and colouring the strong but somewhat prosaic Teuton imagination into that finer and more artistic spirit manifested in the Icelandic Saga. The classic land of the Saga was in West Iceland, and there also the proportion of Irish blood was greatest. On the Norsemen who still remain there the Irish influence was yet more effective and powerful. Mr. Vigfusson makes an observation, which is a touching and keen reproach to those on whom it devolves to publish the manuscript materials of ancient Irish literature. He writes: "Only when it is possible to judge fairly of the remains of the Keltic literature of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, can any definite conception of the influence it exerted on Icelandic, Norse, and English literature be properly estimated."[14]

With the great Sagas, the fame of which has spread abroad as their strong dramatic character deserves, Northern literature possesses the no less celebrated Eddas. These Eddic poems "discover an ideal of beauty," writes Mr. York Powell, "an aerial unearthly fairy world, and a love of nature which we do not find in the Saga." They also reveal that those who composed them were familiar with more southern scenes and manners; and the poems are shown to be the mental offspring of the men "who won Waterford and Limerick and kinged it in York and East England." "It is well to remark," he adds, "that among the first poets we have any knowledge of, the majority are of mixed blood with an Irish ancestress not far back in the family tree.... Their physical characteristics, dark hair and black eyes, like Sighvat and Kormack,[15] their reckless passion and wonderful fluency are also non-Teutonic and speak of their alien descent." In Bragi's Eddic poem there is a very manifest introduction of a characteristic Irish rhyme-method.

Thus we have it on unquestionable authority that the noble Norse literature, which occupies a position of the greatest importance, dominating as it does the Teutonic world, was itself the offspring, in a certain sense, of our ancient Irish literature. Irish literary training and talent presided over and took part in its composition, gave dramatic vividness to its narrative--grace, method, and myths to its poetry.

With this knowledge in mind you will look with better insight into the story of the Norsemen in Ireland, and see them, no longer as a cloud of barbarians, but as brave adventurous knights whose voyages fringed our seas with a murmur of song, and whose cities, in quiet times, were the favourite resort of Irishmen skilled in letters and all the arts of peace and war. "Why should we think of faring home?" sang King Magnus. "My heart is in Dublin. I shall not return in autumn to the ladies of Nidaros. Youth makes me love the Irish girl better than myself."

Considering how often and how constantly the prejudice of the ignorant prevents a good understanding between neighbours, whether these be individuals or nations, I have sometimes thought of writing a book to be entitled: "The Good Deeds of our Enemies." Too often do we find writers stopping at nothing to cover the foe with obloquy. By this they put out their own eyes and blind our moral sight. Proceeding on a different principle, I should show enemies, not in their conflicts, but in their concessions, and the picture would give a truer idea of mankind, for it is surprising how many kind offices were mutually interchanged between foemen--even in this very country--who are always represented as savage, ruthless, and exterminating.

Ireland has been able to act upon the literature of the Continent and of Britain in three ways: first, directly, next by means of its pupils on the Continent, and finally by means of the Norse literature. The latter affected both Britain and Germany, so that the Irish spirit has had a double influence, be it much or little, upon both. Professor Morley, indeed, admits that "the story of our literature begins with the Gael"; and pointing out the intermixture of blood, he adds: "But for early frequent and various contact with the race which in its half barbarous days invented Oisin's dialogues with St. Patrick, and that quickened afterwards the Northmen's blood in France and Germany, England would not have produced a Shakespeare."

Certain it is, I think, that but for the influence of Irish literature, Shakespeare would not have produced a "Midsummer Night's Dream," "The Tempest," and "Macbeth." The aerial beings which characterise the first two plays are like those delightful melodies which Boiëldieu in "La Dame Blanche," and Flotow in "Marthe" made popular over the Continent, and which the Irish ear, suddenly attentive, recognises as Irish in spite of their foreign surroundings.[16]

Teutonic poetry, in certain particulars, appears to have germinated from the seed which fell from the ripe Irish harvest. The alliteration found in "Beowulf," the first Anglo-Saxon epic, A.D. 750 (three centuries after Sedulius), seems a rather crude imitation. Rhyme was introduced into High German a century later, and this was achieved by Otfried, who had acquired the gift in that great monastry of St. Gall to which the illustrious Irishman bequeathed his name, his spirit, and his scholarship, which long guided his many disciples.

The Nibelungen Lied and the Lay of Gudrun have been called the Iliad and the Odyssey of Germany. Both, however, have Norse originals. Now, with respect to the latter it is a remarkable but surely not a surprising thing, after all we know, that the opening scenes of the lay should be placed in Ireland. The fierce King of Ireland, Hagen (? Hacon), had a fair daughter Hilda, and to woo her for their King, Hettel of Denmark, came a number of daring champions, disguised as merchants. The wooing with music, which captures the Irish maiden's heart, the flight, pursuit, marriage and reconcilement, are told with animation. Gudrun, the daughter of Hettel's Irish wife, is the second heroine of the tale. In the Arthurian Romance of Tristan and Isolde (as in some others) there are Irish scenes and Irish characters. Isolde herself has bequeathed Dublin her name in Isolde's Tower and Chapel-isod. I need but remind you that the Arthurian Romances gave origin to Tennyson's "Idylls of the King."

The kindred peoples of France and of Spain were naturally not less influenced than the Teutonic races. The Romans did not give them rhyme; their own literature had perished; consequently they borrowed from the islands to which, in Cæsar's time, the continental Druids were sent for training. Assonant rhyme, found in some Anglo-Norman poems, was common in the Romance of Oc and all related dialects. "It is clearly the Irish _Comharda_" (correspondence), writes an English authority, Mr. Guest, "though not submitted in the Romance dialects to the nice rules which regulate its assonances in the Gaelic."

Irish literature has received gifts in return: in the old Anglo-Saxon Mystery Play, found in the Record Office, in the Anglo-Norman Rhyme of Ross, in the Song of Dermott, and in others unfortunately still unpublished. Michael of Kildare is supposed to be our first poet in English, and he is the pioneer-poet of satire in that language.

This postern, which he opened into what has since become the vast empire of literature in English, gave entrance to many. Spenser came to us, through it, and, caught by the glamour of the Gael, gave us the "Faërie Queene," wherein he immortalises some of our scenery and pays tribute to the ancient renown of our nation:

"Whilome when Ireland flourished in fame Of wealth and goodness far above the rest Of all that bear the British Islands name."

It is noteworthy that the great poem, which marked the revival of English letters after Chaucer, was composed in Ireland. Granting that Spenser found models in Ariosto and Tasso, yet, if he had remained in London, he might never have risen above the standard of the Palace-poets. Shakespeare in London was saved by the drama demanding an environment of popular life. Probably nothing saved Spenser but his immersion in Irish nature, which his verse so faithfully reflects. Not only are the material beauties of our country--mountains, woods, and rivers--mirrored there, but its spiritual world also. The very name of Una is Irish, and our Puca appears in trimmed English as "the Pouke," whom Shakespeare again introduces as Puck, just as our Gaelic Madb becomes "Queen Mab."

But it may be said that Spenser was ignorant of the literature of the hostile Irish nation, and so could not be influenced by it. The case is otherwise. When Eudoxus asks: "Have they any art in their compositions, or bee they anything wittie in or well savoured as poems should be?" Spenser (as Irenæus) answers: "Yes, 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, but skilled not of the goodly ornaments of poetry" (rather these were lost in a prose translation); "they were sprinkled with some pretty flowers of their naturall device, which gave good grace and comelinesse unto them."

It is a strange thing to say that Edmund Spenser, who so deprecates their "rebellious" love of liberty, might well have envied the position and influence of the Irish poets. At the Queen's Court in England he had learned "what hell it is in suing long to bide," to "eat the heart in despair," and all the miseries of dilatory patronage:

"To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run, To spend, to give, to want, to be undone."

In Ireland he saw a different state of things. The poets might almost be described as the patrons, for theirs it was to distribute praise or dispraise in poems, "the which," says Spenser, "are held in so high regard and estimation amongst them that none dare displease them, for feare to runne into reproach through their offence, and be made infamous in the mouths of all men."

Their compositions were sung at all feasts and meetings by other persons, and these also, to his surprise, "receive great rewards and reputation." Certain it is, though strange, that Edmund Spenser, had he been least bard in the pettiest principality of Ireland, instead of being the first poet of the monarch of Great Britain, would not have died of hunger. Neglected and starving in Westminster, may he not have regretted his political efforts to destroy the one national organism which above all others had ever generously encouraged the representatives of literature?[17]

It is a study full of interest to watch the development of the culture of the Anglo-Irish Pale, and the continuance of that of the Irish nation. In Latin, their men of learning had long a common language, but the vernacular was not neglected. In 1600 the literary organisation was still strong, and its strength was shown in the great Bardic Contention. Thirty-two years later an assemblage of historians, antiquaries, and monks was held to collect and collate materials for the great Annals of the Kingdom. Four years the Four Masters laboured at the work, safe by the far shore of Donegall, and fortunate it was, for soon after there was no safety in the "Athens of the West"--the "University of Europe"--for those of its faithful offspring who loved learning and letters. Teacher and pupil were banned. In the midst of morasses, forests, or mountain-glens, they still studied, their bards still sang, and their minstrels played, often with outposted sentinels on the watch.

What wonder if sadness shadowed the land? But disaster may have some compensating gifts to noble natures. The true laurel when crushed yields all its inner fragrance. Deprived of their princes and deposed from their estate, the bards ceased to be learned in the classic forms of literary technic; but they became poets of the people. The sincere voice of their hearts spoke in their song, which is brimful of passionate feeling and glowing with fair ideals. If in other times they had too often confined their efforts to the eulogy of particular princes, now it was otherwise. At the hearths of the people they sang the songs of a Nation.

Perhaps now the first idea of modern nationhood was conceived. Now, at all events, pathos became a character of Irish literature, distinguishing it deeply from that counterfeit of late grotesque, the authors of which resemble those mutilators of men who carved the mockery of laughter upon the face of grief.

What a subject for a painter would be that meeting between the blind and hoary bard Carolan, and the young, bright-eyed child Oliver Goldsmith! The venerable aspect of the ancient Celtic poet he never forgot. "His songs," he says, "in general may be compared to those of Pindar; they have frequently the same flight of imagination." He had composed a concerto "with such spirit and elegance that it may be compared (for we have it still) with the finest compositions of Italy." This reminds us of the time when an enemy, Giraldus Cambrensis, declared that the skill of the Irish in music "was incomparably superior to that of any other nation."

The meeting of Carolan and Goldsmith may fitly typify the meeting of the literatures of the old nation and of the Pale--one venerable by age and glorified by genius, the other young, buoyant, and destined, like it, to be the guardian and the honour of our common country.

Irish literature is of many blends, not the product of one race but of several. It resembles the great oriel of some ancient cathedral, an illumination of many beautiful colours, some of which can never be reproduced, for the art is lost. We possess an unique treasure in that ancient literature which grew up from a cultured people, self-centred, independent of Roman discipline. Were it not for this we should look at the Northern world through Southern eyes, and, taking our view-point from the Capitol, see nothing beyond the light of the empire, but wild woods and wastes made horrid by Cimmerian darkness, and shifting hordes of quarrelsome barbarians. Yet these were the ancestors of most of the modern European peoples, and those who so depicted them were their coercive and uncomprehending foes. Our deliverance from this thraldom of an enemy's judgment abides in the monuments of the ancient Irish.

The magic password of the Arabian bade the rugged mountain open, and admitted him to the midst of glittering jewels. The knowledge of our old literature takes us into the heart of the Cimmerian darkness, and shows it full of glowing light, it takes us into the homes and minds of one of those great nations uncomprehended of the Romans, and through that one, enables us to see the great, passionate, pathetic, wild, and generous humanity of all.

Thus our ancient literature would be invaluable if for this reason alone, that it gives a new view-point and a new vista. Its importance is augmented in this, that its reckless sincerity stands the enduring evidence of a long-vanished stage of social and intellectual development, where the fiercer and finer powers, the softer and sterner emotions of an early mankind strive and commingle with dramatic effect. If such a deposit were not extant, European scholars might well desire to go as pilgrims, like the bereaved bards, to the grave of Fergus, son of Roi, with power to call him again on earth, that he might recite the famous Táin--the lost Epic of a lost World.

It is strange that words, which are such little things--a mere breath trembling for a moment in the air--should survive the mightiest monarch and outlast the lives of empires. The generations who uttered them are silent; the earth has grown over their homesteads, and forests have decayed above their cities. Yet out of the Dead Past speaks still the Living Voice. So, to-day, we may be illumined by the light of a star which perished a thousand years ago.

It has been said that the history of Ireland is dismal, a chronicle of defeats. But that is because writers generally make history a mere record of wars. The shadow of the swordsman obscures all else. The militant monarch or minister is always put in the foremost place and the highest position. The pigmy on a platform looks greater than the giant in his study--but only in the eyes of pigmies. Alexander's Empire died with him, and his satraps shared the spoil. Aristotle's sceptre is over us still.

There is a blindness which is worse than colour-blindness in the eyes which see physical, but which cannot perceive intellectual forces and effects: they will record that Roman power conquered Greece, but fail to recognise that Greek intellect conquered the conqueror. Our nation has had its changes of fortune. It has invaded others, and been itself invaded often--part of the penalty it paid for occupying the fairest isle of the old world, a penalty we might still pay had not a new world opened wide its golden gates in the West. But our defeats have not been always disasters. What seemed to have no other end than the plunder of our wealth has resulted in the enrichment of our literature, the dissemination of our ideas, and the capture of the imagination of other nations. The code, which was devised to accomplish what the most ruthless savage never designed--the annihilation of the intellect of a most intelligent nation--studded the Continent with that nation's colleges and gave to its members the glory of being illustrious leaders of men in the greatest kingdoms of the world.

Last came the great dispersal, when the descendants of those who had taught Europe for three centuries, and generously welcomed all scholars--now made ignorant by law--were driven from their hospitable land by famine. They went forth, as it is said, hewers of wood and drawers of water. In other times and places it had meant extinction as slaves under feudal rule. But mark this!--they entered into the great family of a new people, whose fundamental principle of Democracy made them equal, and whose generous nature made them welcome. They have thus been brought to the very well-spring of the new forces which have been re-shaping human society and preparing the transformation of the world. In this incomparable enterprise they are themselves a foremost force, taking part in the intellectual work with the revived vitality of a race which has found its Land of Youth.

If we had a past of shame--were we members of a nation that had never risen or had deeply fallen--these should be incentives to brave hearts to achieve work for the credit of their race. It is otherwise with us, and we dare not stand still. The past would be our reproach, the future our disgrace. Not foreign force, but native sloth can do us dishonour. If our nation is to live, it must live by the energy of intellect, and be prepared to take its place in competition with all other peoples. Therefore must we work, with earnest hearts and high ideals for the sake of our own repute, for the benefit of mankind, in vindication of this old land which genius has made luminous. And remember that whilst wealth of thought is a country's treasure, literature is its articulate voice, by which it commands the reverence or calls for the contempt of the living and of the coming Nations of the Earth.

THE NECESSITY FOR DE-ANGLICISING IRELAND.

BY DOUGLAS HYDE, LL.D.

THE NECESSITY FOR DE-ANGLICISING IRELAND.[18]

When we speak of "The Necessity for De-Anglicising the Irish Nation," we mean it, not as a protest against imitating what is _best_ in the English people, for that would be absurd, but rather to show the folly of neglecting what is Irish, and hastening to adopt, pell-mell, and indiscriminately, everything that is English, simply because it _is_ English.

This is a question which most Irishmen will naturally look at from a National point of view, but it is one which ought also to claim the sympathies of every intelligent Unionist, and which, as I know, does claim the sympathy of many.

If we take a bird's-eye view of our island to-day, and compare it with what it used to be, we must be struck by the extraordinary fact that the nation which was once, as every one admits, one of the most classically learned and cultured nations in Europe, is now one of the least so; how one of the most reading and literary peoples has become one of the _least_ studious and most _un_-literary, and how the present art products of one of the quickest, most sensitive, and most artistic races on earth are now only distinguished for their hideousness.

I shall endeavour to show that this failure of the Irish people in recent times has been largely brought about by the race diverging during this century from the right path, and ceasing to be Irish without becoming English. I shall attempt to show that with the bulk of the people this change took place quite recently, much more recently than most people imagine, and is, in fact, still going on. I should also like to call attention to the illogical position of men who drop their own language to speak English, of men who translate their euphonious Irish names into English monosyllables, of men who read English books, and know nothing about Gaelic literature, nevertheless protesting as a matter of sentiment that they hate the country which at every hand's turn they rush to imitate.

I wish to show you that in Anglicising ourselves wholesale we have thrown away with a light heart the best claim which we have upon the world's recognition of us as a separate nationality. What did Mazzini say? What is Goldwin Smith never tired of declaiming? What do the _Spectator_ and _Saturday Review_ harp on? That we ought to be content as an integral part of the United Kingdom because we have lost the notes of nationality, our language and customs.