A Literary History of Ireland

From Earliest Times to the Present Day

By

Douglas Hyde, LL.D., M.R.I.A.

[An Craoibhín Aoibhinn]

[1899]

CASE OF MOLAISE'S GOSPELS

DEDICATION.

TO THE MEMBERS OF THE GAELIC LEAGUE, THE ONLY BODY IN IRELAND WHICH APPEARS TO REALISE THE FACT THAT IRELAND HAS A PAST, HAS A HISTORY, HAS A LITERATURE, AND THE ONLY BODY IN IRELAND WHICH SEEKS TO RENDER THE PRESENT A RATIONAL CONTINUATION OF THE PAST,

I DEDICATE

THIS ATTEMPT AT A REVIEW OF THAT LITERATURE WHICH DESPITE ITS PRESENT NEGLECTED POSITION THEY FEEL AND KNOW TO BE A TRUE POSSESSION OF NATIONAL IMPORTANCE.

DO CHONNRADH NA GAELDHEILGE.

A Chonnradh chaoin, a Chonnradh chóir,
Rinn obair mhór gan ór gan cabhair,
Glacaidh an cíos a dlighim daoibh,
Guidhim, glacaidh go caoimh mo leabhar.

A cháirde cléibh is iomdha lá
D'oibrigheamar go breágh le chéile,
Gan clampar, agus fós gan éad,
'S dá mhéad ár dteas', gan puinn di-chéille.

Chuireabhar súil 'san bhfear bhi dall,
Thugabhar cluas don fhear bhi bodhar,
Glacaidh an cíos do bheirim daoibh,
——Guidhim, glacaidh go caoimh mo leabhar.

[Pg ix]

PREFACE

The present volume has been styled—in order to make it a companion book to other of Mr. Unwin's publications—a "Literary History of Ireland," but a "Literary History of Irish Ireland" would be a more correct title, for I have abstained altogether from any analysis or even mention of the works of Anglicised Irishmen of the last two centuries. Their books, as those of Farquhar, of Swift, of Goldsmith, of Burke, find, and have always found, their true and natural place in every history of English literature that has been written, whether by Englishmen themselves or by foreigners.

My object in this volume has been to give a general view of the literature produced by the Irish-speaking Irish, and to reproduce by copious examples some of its more salient, or at least more characteristic features.

In studying the literature itself, both that of the past and that of the present, one of the things which has most forcibly struck me is the marked absence of the purely personal note, the absence of great predominating names, or of great predominating works; while just as striking is the almost universal diffusion of a traditional literary taste and a love of literature in the abstract amongst all classes of the native Irish. The whole history of Irish literature shows how warmly the efforts of all who assisted in its production were appreciated.[Pg x] The greatest English bard of the Elizabethan age was allowed by his countrymen to perish of poverty in the streets of London, while the pettiest chief of the meanest clan would have been proud to lay his hearth and home and a share of his wealth at the disposal of any Irish "ollamh." The love for literature of a traditional type, in song, in poem, in saga, was, I think, more nearly universal in Ireland than in any country of western Europe, and hence that which appears to me to be of most value in ancient Irish literature is not that whose authorship is known, but rather the mass of traditional matter which seems to have grown up almost spontaneously, and slowly shaped itself into the literary possession of an entire nation. An almost universal acquaintance with a traditional literature was a leading trait amongst the Irish down to the last century, when every barony and almost every townland still possessed its poet and reciter, and song, recitation, music, and oratory were the recognised amusements of nearly the whole population. That population in consequence, so far as wit and readiness of language and power of expression went, had almost all attained a remarkably high level, without however producing any one of a commanding eminence. In collecting the floating literature of the present day also, the unknown traditional poems and the Ossianic ballads and the stories of unknown authorship are of greater value than the pieces of bards who are known and named. In both cases, that of the ancient and that of the modern Irish, all that is of most value as literature, was the property and in some sense the product of the people at large, and it exercised upon them a most striking and potent influence. And this influence may be traced amongst the Irish-speaking population even at the present day, who have, I may almost say, one and all, a remarkable command of language and a large store of traditional literature learned by heart, which strongly differentiates them from the Anglicised products of the "National Schools" to the bulk of whom poetry is an unknown term, and amongst[Pg xi] whom there exists little or no trace of traditional Irish feelings, or indeed seldom of any feelings save those prompted by (when they read it) a weekly newspaper.

The exact extent of the Irish literature still remaining in manuscript has never been adequately determined. M. d'Arbois de Jubainville has noted 133 still existing manuscripts, all copied before the year 1600, and the whole number which he has found existing chiefly in public libraries on the Continent and in the British Isles amounts to 1,009. But many others have since been discovered, and great numbers must be scattered throughout the country in private libraries, and numbers more are perishing or have recently perished of neglect since the "National Schools" were established. Jubainville quotes a German as estimating that the literature produced by the Irish before the seventeenth century, and still existing, would fill a thousand octavo volumes. It is hard to say, however, how much of this could be called literature in a true sense of the word, since law, medicine, and science were probably included in the calculation. O'Curry, O'Longan, and O'Beirne Crowe catalogued something more than half the manuscripts in the Royal Irish Academy, and the catalogue of contents filled thirteen volumes containing 3,448 pages. To these an alphabetic index of the pieces contained was made in three volumes, and an index of the principal names, etc., in thirteen volumes more. From a rough calculation, based on an examination of these, I should place the number of different pieces catalogued by them at about ten thousand, ranging from single quatrains or even single sentences to long poems and epic sagas. But in the Academy alone, there are nearly as many more manuscripts which still remain uncatalogued.

It is probably owing to the extreme difficulty of arriving at any certain conclusions as to the real extent of Irish literature that no attempt at a consecutive history of it has ever previously been made. Despite this difficulty, there is no doubt that such a work would long ago have been attempted had it[Pg xii] not been for the complete breakdown and destruction of Irish Ireland which followed the Great Famine, and the unexpected turn given to Anglo-Irish literature by the efforts of the Young Ireland School to compete with the English in their own style, their own language, and their own models.

For the many sins of omission and commission in this volume I must claim the reader's kind indulgence; nobody can be better aware of its shortcomings than I myself, and the only excuse that I can plead is that over so much of the ground I have had to be my own pioneer. I confidently hope, however, that in the renewed interest now being taken in our native civilisation and native literature some scholar far more fully equipped for his task than I, may soon render this volume superfluous by an ampler, juster, and more artistic treatment of what is really a subject of great national importance.

National or important, however, it does not appear to be considered in these islands, where outside of the University of Oxford—which has given noble assistance to the cause of Celtic studies—sympathisers are both few and far between. Indeed, I fancy that anybody who has applied himself to the subject of Celtic literature would have a good deal to tell about the condescending contempt with which his studies have been regarded by his fellows. "I shall not easily forget," said Dr. Petrie, addressing a meeting of the Royal Irish Academy upon that celebrated example of early Celtic workmanship the Tara Brooch, "that when in reference to the existence of a similar remain of ancient Irish art, I had first the honour to address myself to a meeting of this high institution, I had to encounter the incredulous astonishment of the illustrious Dr. Brinkley" [of Trinity College, President of the Academy] "which was implied in the following remark, 'Surely, sir, you do not mean to tell us that there exists the slightest evidence to prove that the Irish had any acquaintance with the arts of civilised life anterior to the arrival in Ireland of the English?' nor shall I[Pg xiii] forget that in the scepticism which this remark implied nearly all the members present very obviously participated." Exactly the same feeling which Dr. Petrie encountered was prevalent in my own alma mater in the eighties, where one of our most justly popular lecturers said—in gross ignorance but perfect good faith—that the sooner the Irish recognised that before the arrival of Cromwell they were utter savages, the better it would be for everybody concerned! Indeed, it was only the other day that one of our ablest and best known professors protested publicly in the Contemporary Review against the enormity of an Irish bishop signing so moderate, and I am sure so reasonable a document, as a petition asking to have Irish children who knew no English, taught through the medium of the language which they spoke. Last year, too, another most learned professor of Dublin University went out of his way to declare that "the mass of material preserved [in the Irish manuscripts] is out of all proportion to its value as 'literature,'" and to insist that "in the enormous mass of Irish MSS. preserved, there is absolutely nothing that in the faintest degree rivals the splendours of the vernacular literatures of the Middle Ages," that "their value as literature is but small," and that "for educational purposes save in this limited sense [of linguistic study] they are wholly unsuited," winding up with the extraordinary assertion that "there is no solid ground for supposing that the tales current at the time of our earliest MSS. were much more numerous than the tales of which fragments have come down to us." As to the civilisation of the early Irish upon which Petrie insisted, there is no longer room for the very shadow of a doubt; but whether the literature which they produced is so utterly valueless as this, and so utterly devoid of all interest as "literature," the reader of this volume must judge for himself. I should be glad also if he were to institute a comparison between "the splendours of the vernacular literatures" of Germany, England, Spain, and even Italy and France, prior to the year 1000, and that of the Irish, for I am[Pg xiv] very much mistaken if in their early development of rhyme, alone, in their masterly treatment of sound, and in their absolutely unique and marvellous system of verse-forms, the Irish will not be found to have created for themselves a place alone and apart in the history of European literatures.

I hardly know a sharper contrast in the history of human thought than the true traditional literary instinct which four years ago prompted fifty thousand poor hard-working Irishmen in the United States to contribute each a dollar towards the foundation of a Celtic chair in the Catholic University of Washington in the land of their adoption, choosing out a fit man and sending him to study under the great Celticists of Germany, in the hope that his scholarship might one day reflect credit upon the far-off country of their birth; while in that very country, by far the richest college in the British Isles, one of the wealthiest universities in the world, allows its so-called "Irish professorship" to be an adjunct of its Divinity School, founded and paid by a society for—the conversion of Irish Roman Catholics through the medium of their own language!

This is the more to be regretted because had the unique manuscript treasures now shut up in cases in the underground room of Trinity College Library, been deposited in any other seat of learning in Europe, in Paris, Rome, Vienna, or Berlin, there would long ago have been trained up scholars to read them, a catalogue of them would have been published, and funds would have been found to edit them. At present the Celticists of Europe are placed under the great disadvantage of having to come over to Dublin University to do the work that it is not doing for itself.

It is fortunate however that the spread of education within the last few years (due perhaps partly to the establishment of the Royal University, partly to the effects of Intermediate Education, and partly to the numerous literary societies which working upon more or less national lines have spontaneously[Pg xv] sprung up amongst the Irish people themselves) has, by taking the prestige of literary monopoly out of the hands of Dublin University, to a great extent undone the damage which had so long been caused to native scholarship by its attitude. It was the more necessary to do this, because the very fact that it had never taken the trouble to publish even a printed catalogue of its Irish manuscripts—as the British Museum authorities have done—was by many people interpreted, I believe, as a sort of declaration of their worthlessness.

In dealing with Irish proper names I have experienced the same difficulty as every one else who undertakes to treat of Irish history. Some native names, especially those with "mortified" or aspirated letters, look so unpronounceable as to prove highly disconcerting to an English reader. The system I have followed is to leave the Irish orthography untouched, but in cases where the true pronunciation differed appreciably from the sound which an English reader would give the letters, I have added a phonetic rendering of the Irish form in brackets, as "Muighmheadhon [Mwee-va-on], Lughaidh [Lewy]." There are a few names such as Ossian, Mève, Donough, Murrough and others, which have been almost adopted into English, and these forms I have generally retained—perhaps wrongly—but my desire has been to throw no unnecessary impediments in the way of an English reader; I have always given the true Irish form at least once. Where the word "mac" is not part of a proper name, but really means "son of" as in Finn mac Cúmhail, I have printed it with a small "m"; and in such names as "Cormac mac Art" I have usually not inflected the last word, but have written "Art" not "Airt," so as to avoid as far as possible confusing the English reader.

I very much regret that I have found it impossible, owing to the brief space of time between printing and publication, to submit the following chapters to any of my friends for[Pg xvi] their advice and criticism. I beg, however, to here express my best thanks to my friend Father Edmund Hogan, S.J., for the numerous memoranda which he was kind enough to give me towards the last chapter of this book, that on the history of Irish as a spoken language, and also to express my regret that the valuable critical edition of the Book of Hymns by Dr. Atkinson and Dr. Bernard, M. Bertrand's "Religion Gauloise," and Miss Hull's interesting volume on "Cuchullin Saga," which should be read in connection with my chapters on the Red Branch cycle, appeared too late for me to make use of.

RÁTH-TREAGH, OIDHCHE SAMHNA

MDCCCXCIX.

[Pg xvii]

CONTENTS

[Pg 1]

Literary History of Ireland

CHAPTER I

WHO WERE THE CELTS?

Who were those Celts, of whose race the Irish are to-day perhaps the most striking representatives, and upon whose past the ancient literature of Ireland can best throw light?

Like the Greeks, like the Romans, like the English, this great people, which once ruled over a fourth of Europe, sprang from a small beginning and from narrow confines. The earliest home of the race from which they spread their conquering arms may be said, roughly speaking, to have lain along both banks of the upper Danube, and in that portion of Europe comprised to-day in the kingdoms of Bavaria and Würtemberg and the Grand Duchy of Baden, with the country drained by the river Maine to the east of the Rhine basin. In other words, the Celtic race and the Celtic language sprang from the heart of what is to-day modern Germany, and issuing thence established for over two centuries a vast empire held together by the ties of political unity and a common language over all North-west and Central Europe.

The vast extent of the territory conquered and colonised by the Celts, and the unity of their speech, may be conjectured from an examination of the place-names of Celtic origin which[Pg 2] either still exist or figure as having existed in European history.[1]

The Celts seem to have been first known to Greek—that is, to European history—under the semi-mythological name of the Hyperboreans,[2] an appellation which remained in force from the sixth to the fourth century before Christ. The name Celt or Kelt[3] first makes its appearance towards the year 500 B.C., in the geography of Hecatæus of Miletum, and is thereafter used successively by Herodotus, Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle, and from that time forward it seems to have been employed by the Greek scholars and historians as a generic term whereby to designate the Celts of the Continent.

Soon afterwards the word Galatian came also into use,[4] and was used as a synonym for Celt. In the first century B.C., however, the discovery was made that the Germans and the Celts, who had been hitherto confounded in the popular estimation, were really two different peoples, a fact which Julius Cæsar was almost the first to point out. Diodorus Siculus,[Pg 3] accordingly, struck by this discovery, translates Cæsar's Gallus or Gaul by the word Celt, and his Germanus or German by the word Galatian, while the other Greek historian, Dion Cassius, does the exact opposite, calling the Celts "Galatians," and the Germans "Celts"! The examples thus set, however, were the result of ignorance and were never followed. Plutarch treats the two words as identical, as do Strabo, Pausanias and all other Greek writers.

The word Celt itself is probably of very ancient origin, and was, no doubt, in use 800 or 1,000 years before Christ.[5] It cannot, however, be proved that it is a generic Celtic name for the Celtic race, and none of the present Celtic-speaking races have preserved it in their dialects. Jubainville derives it, very doubtfully I should think, from a Celtic root found in the old Irish verb "ar-CHELL-aim" ("I plunder") and the old substantive to-CHELL ("victory"); while he derives Galatian from a Celtic substantive now represented by the Irish gal[6] ("bravery"). This latter word "Galatian" is one which the German peoples never adopted, and it appears to have only come into use subsequently to their revolt against their Celtic masters. After the break-up of the Celtic Empire it was employed to designate the eastern portion of the race, while the inhabitants of Gaul were called Celtæ and those of Spain Celtici or Celtiberi, but the Greeks called all indifferently by the common name of Galatians.

The Romans termed the Celts Galli, or Gauls, but they used the geographical term Gallia, or Gaul, in a restricted sense, first for the country inhabited by the Celts in North[Pg 4] Italy upon their own side of the Alps, and after that for the Celtic territory conquered by Rome upon the other side of the Alps.

The Germans appear to have called the Celts Wolah, a name derived from the Celtic tribe the Volcæ, who were so long their neighbours, out of which appellation came the Anglo-Saxon Wealh and the modern English "Welsh."

There is one curious characteristic distinguishing, from its very earliest appearance, the Celtic language from its Indo-European sisters: this is the loss of the letter p both at the beginning of a word and when it is placed between two vowels.[7] This dropping of the letter p had already given to the Celtic language a special character of its own, at the time when breaking forth from their earliest home the Celts crossed the Rhine and proceeded, perhaps a thousand years before Christ, to establish themselves in the British Isles. The Celts who first colonised Ireland said, for instance, atir for pater, but they had not yet experienced, nor did they ever experience, that curious linguistic change which at a later time is assumed to have come over the Celts of the Continent and caused them to not only recover their faculty of pronouncing p, but to actually change into a p the Indo-European guttural q. Their descendants, the modern Irish, to this very day retain the primitive word-forms which had their origin a thousand years before Christ. So much so is this the case that the Welsh antiquary Lhuyd, writing in the last century, asserted, and with truth, that there were "scarce any words in the Irish besides what are borrowed from the Latin or some other language that begin with p, insomuch that in an ancient alphabetical vocabulary I have by me, that letter is omitted."[8] Even with the introduction of Christianity and[Pg 5] the knowledge of Latin the ancient Irish persisted in their repugnance to this letter, and made of the Latin Pasch-a (Easter) the word Cásg, and of the Latin purpur-a the Irish curcur.

But meantime the Continental Celts had either—as Jubainville seems to think—recovered their faculty for pronouncing p, or else—as Rhys believes—been overrun by other semi-Celts who, owing to some strong non-Aryan intermixture, found q repugnant to them, and changed it into p. This appears to have taken place prior to the year 500 B.C., for it was at about this time that they, having established themselves round the Seine and Loire and north of the Garonne, overran Spain, carrying everywhere with them this comparatively newly adopted p, as we can see by their tribal and place-names. They appeared in Italy sometime about 400 B.C.,[9] founded their colony in Galatia about 279 B.C., and afterwards sent another swarm into Great Britain, and to all these places they bore with them this obtrusive letter in place of the primitive q, the Irish alone resisting it, for the Irish represented a first off-shoot from the cradle of the race, an off-shoot which had left it at a time when q represented p, and not p q. Hence it is that Welsh is so full of the p sound which the primitive Irish would never adopt, as a glance at some of the commonest words in both languages will show.

So that even the Irish St. Ciaran becomes Piaran in Wales.[11]

[Pg 6]

The Celts invaded Italy about the year 400 B.C., and stormed Rome a few years later. They were at this time at the height of their power. From about the year 500 to 300 B.C. they appear to have possessed a very high degree of political unity, to have been led by a single king,[12] and to have followed with signal success a wise and consistent external policy. The most important events in their history during this period were the three successful wars which they waged—first against the Carthaginians, out of whose hands they wrested the peninsula of Spain; secondly in Italy against the Etruscans, which ended in their making themselves masters of the north of that country; and thirdly against the Illyrians along the Danube. All of these wars were followed by large accessions of territory. One of the most striking features of their external policy during this period was their close alliance with the Greeks, whose commercial rivalry with the Phœnicians naturally brought them into relations with the Celtic enemies of Carthaginian power in Spain, relations from which they reaped much advantage, since the necessity of making head against the Celtic invaders of Spain must have seriously crippled the Carthaginian power, at the very time when, as ally of the Persians, she attacked the Greeks in Sicily, and lost the battle of Himera on the same day that the Persians lost that of Salamis. Greek writers of the fourth century speak of the Celts as practising justice, of having nearly the same manners and customs as the Greeks, and they notice their hospitality to Grecian strangers.[13] Their war with the Etruscans in North Italy completed the ruin of an hereditary enemy of[Pg 7] the Greeks,[14] and their war with the Illyrians no doubt largely strengthened the hands of Philip, the father of Alexander the Great, and enabled him to throw off the tribute which the Illyrians had imposed upon Macedonia. Nor did Alexander himself embark upon his expedition into Asia without having first assured himself of the friendship of the Celts. He received their ambassadors with cordiality, called them his friends, and received from them a promise of alliance. "If we fulfil not our engagement," said they, "may the sky falling upon us crush us, may the earth opening swallow us up, may the sea overflowing its borders drown us," and we may well believe that these were the very words used by the Celtic chieftains when we find in an Irish saga committed to writing about the seventh century[15] the Ulster heroes swearing to their king when he wished to leave his wing of the battle to repel the attacks of a rival, and saying, "heaven is over us and earth is under us and sea is round about us, and unless the firmament fall with its star-showers upon the face of the earth, or unless the earth be destroyed by earthquake, or unless the ridgy, blue-bordered sea come over the expanse (?) of life, we shall not give one inch of ground."

While the ambassadors were drinking the young king asked them what was the thing they most feared, thinking, says the historian, that they would say himself, but their answer was quite different. "We fear no one," they said; "there is only one thing that we fear, which is, that the heavens may fall upon us; but the friendship of such a man as you we value more than everything," whereat the king, no doubt considerably astonished, remarked in a low voice to his courtiers what a vainglorious people these Celts were.[16]

[Pg 8]

All through the life of Alexander the Celts and Macedonians continued on good terms, and amongst the many envoys who came to Babylon to salute the youthful conqueror of Persia, appeared their representatives also. Some forty years later, however, this good understanding came to an end, and the Celts overthrew and slew in battle the Macedonian ruler Ptolemy Keraunos about 280 B.C.

With the Romans, as with the Greeks, the relations of the Celts were, during the fifth and fourth century B.C., upon the whole friendly, and their hostility to the Etruscans must have tended naturally to render them and the Romans mutual allies. The battle of Allia, fought on the 18th of July, 390 B.C., and the storming of Rome three days later, were a punishment inflicted on the Romans by the Celts in their exasperation at seeing the Roman ambassadors, contrary to the right of nations, assisting their enemies the Etruscans under the walls of Clusium, but these events appear to have been followed by a long peace.[17]

It is only in the third century B.C. that the hitherto victorious and widely-colonising Celts appear to have laid aside their internal political unity and to have lost their hitherto victorious tactics. The Germans, over whom they had for centuries domineered and whom they had deprived of their independence, rise against them about 300 B.C., and drive out their former conquerors from between the Rhine and[Pg 9] the Black Sea, from between the Elbe and the Maine. The Celts fall out with the Romans and are beaten at Sentinum in 295 B.C.; they ally themselves with their former enemies the Etruscans, and are again beaten in 283 B.C. and lose territory. They cease their alliance with the Greeks, and are guilty of the shameful folly of pillaging the temple of Delphi, an act of brigandage from which no good results could come, and from which no acquisition of territory resulted. They established a colony in Asia Minor in 278 B.C., successfully indeed, but absolutely cut off from the rest of the Celtic Empire, and such as in any federation of the Celtic tribes could only be a source of weakness. Again, about the same time, we see Celts driving out and supplanting Celts in the districts between the Rhine, the Seine, and the Marne. In 262 B.C. we find a body of three or four thousand Celts assisting their former foes the Carthaginians at the siege of Agrigentum, where they perish. Many of the Celts now took foreign service. It was at their instigation that the war of mercenaries broke out, which at one time brought Carthage to the very verge of destruction.

Only two centuries and a half, as Jubainville remarks, had elapsed since the Celts had conquered Spain from the Phœnicians, and only a hundred and thirty years since they had taken Rome, but their victorious political unity had already begun to break up and crumble, and now Rome and Carthage commenced that deadly duel in which the victor was destined to impose his sway upon the ruins of the Celtic Empire as well as on that of Alexander—impose it, in fact, upon all the world then known to the Greeks, except only the extreme east.

One of the circumstances which must have helped most materially to break up the Celtic Empire was the successful revolt of the Germans against their former masters. The relation of the German to the Celtic tribes is very obscure and puzzling. The ancient Greek historians of the sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries B.C., who tell us so much about the[Pg 10] Celts, know absolutely nothing of the Germans. As early as the year 500 B.C. Hecatæus of Miletum is able to name three peoples and two cities of India. But of the Germans, who were so much nearer to Marseilles than the nearest point of India is to the most eastern Greek colony, he says not a word. Ephorus, in the fourth century, knows of only one people to the extreme west, and they are the Celts, and their immediate neighbours are the Scythians. He knows of no intermediate state or nation. Where, then, were the Germans?

The explanation lies, according to Jubainville, in this, that even before this period the German had been conquered by the Celt and become subordinated to him. The Greek historians knew of no independent state bordering upon the Scythians except the Celtic Empire alone, because none such existed. In the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., and perhaps as early as the seventh and sixth, the Germans had been subdued and had lost their independence. How and when this took place we can only conjecture, but we have philological reasons for believing that the two races had come into mutual contact at a very early date, probably as early as the eleventh century B.C. The early German name for the Rhine, for instance, Rīno-s, comes directly from the primitive Indo-European form Reino-s and not from the Celtic Rēno-s, which shows that the Germans had reached that river at a time when the Celts who lived along it still called it Reinos, not Rēnos. The Celts afterwards changed the primitive ei into ē, and from their carrying the form réin[18] with them into Ireland, they had probably done this as early as the ninth or tenth century B.C., for, as we have shown, the Celts who inhabited Ireland have preserved the very oldest forms of the Celtic speech.

On the other hand the Celts always called that Germanic tribe who accompanied the Cimbri by the name of Teutoni, thus showing that they first came in contact with them at a[Pg 11] date anterior to the phonetic law which introduced the so-called explosive consonants into German, and which caused the root Teutono (preserved intact by the Celts) to be turned into Theudono. From this it follows that the German and Celtic peoples were in touch with one another at a very remote period.

The long subordination of the German to the Celt has left its marks deeply behind it, for his "language had remained uncultivated during ages of slavery, had been reduced to the condition of a patois, and had forced the explosive consonants to submit to modifications of sound, the analogues of which appear in the Latin and Celtic languages during their decadence many centuries after those modifications of sound had deformed the language of the Germans."[19]

"In fine the Germanic has created for itself a place apart, amongst the other Indo-European languages, though the excessive poverty of its conjugation, which only knows three tenses—the present tense and two past tenses—and which has lost in particular the imperfect or secondary present, the future, and the sigmatic aorist, and which has not had strength to regain those losses by the aid of new composite tenses, with the exception of its dental preterite. The Celtic has preserved the three tenses which the Germanic has lost."[20]

The Celtic language is in a manner allied to that of Italy, as is shown by its grammar, and out of all the circle of Indo-European languages the Latin comes nearest to it, and it and the Latin possess certain grammatical characteristics in common which are absent from the others.[21] To account for these we may[Pg 12] assume what may be called an Italo-Celtic period, prior, probably, to the establishment of the Italian races in Italy, perhaps some twelve hundred years before Christ.

On the other hand such mutual influence as Celtic and German have exercised upon each other is restricted merely to the vocabularies of the languages, for when these races came in contact with each other the two tongues had been already completely formed, and the grammar of the one could no longer be affected by that of the other.

That there existed a kind of Celto-Germanic civilisation is easily proved by the number of words common to each language which are not found in the other Indo-European tongues, or which if they occur in them, are found bearing a different meaning. The two peoples, the dominant Celts and the subject Germans, obeyed the same chiefs and fought in the same armies, and naturally a certain number of words became common to both. It is noticeable, however, that none of the terms relating to either gods or priests or religious ceremonies bear in either language the slightest resemblance to one another. It was probably this difference of religion which preserved the conquered people from being assimilated, and which was ultimately the cause of the successful uprising of the servile tribes.

The words which are common to the Germanic and the Celtic languages belong either to the art of government, political institutions, and law, or else to the art of war. These d'Arbois de Jubainville divides into two classes—those which can be phonetically proved to be of Celtic origin, and those which, though almost certainly of Celtic origin, yet cannot be proved to be so to actual demonstration. Such important German words[22] as Reich and Amt are beyond all doubt Celtic loan-words,[Pg 13] as are probably such familiar vocables as Bann, frei, Eid, Geisel, leihen, Erbe, Werth,[23] all terms relating to law and government, imposed on or borrowed by the conquered Germans. From the Celts come also all such words concerning war and fighting as are common to both nations, such as Held, Heer, Sieg, Beute. From the Celts too come names of domiciles, as Burg, Dorf, Zaun, also of localities as Land, Flur, Furt, and the English wood, and of domestic aids as Pferd, Beil, and the Anglo-Saxon Vîr (a torque). They too seem to have been the first in Northern Europe to have practised the art of medicine, for from the Celtic comes the Gothic lēkeis—English leech.[24] Certain other domestic words, such as Eisen, Loth, and Leder, both races have in common.

Despite the long subjection of the Germans they never lost their language, nor were they assimilated by the conquering race, a fate from which they were probably preserved, as we have said, by the complete difference of their sacred customs. There is hardly one name in all the Teutonic theogony which even faintly resembles a Celtic one.[25] Their funeral rites were different,[Pg 14] the Germans burning, but the Celts burying their dead. Their systems of priesthood were absolutely different, that of the Celts being always an institution distinct from the kingship, while that of the Germans was for centuries vested in the head of the tribe or family. The priests of the Germans, even after the functions of priesthood had been severed from those of kingship, still exercised criminal jurisdiction, and even in the army a soldier could not be punished without their sanction. On the other hand the milder druids of the Celts appear to have never taken part in the judgment of delinquents against the State. Cæsar makes no mention of their ever acting as judges in criminal cases. The culprit guilty or treason was not put to death by them but by the citizens—ab civitate.[26]

It was about the year 300 B.C. that the German tribes, so long incorporated with the Celts, at last rose against their masters and broke their yoke from off their necks. They succeeded in dislodging the Celts from the country which lies between the Rhine and the North Sea, between the Elbe and the basin of the Maine. It was in consequence of this blow that the Celtic Belgæ were obliged to withdraw from the right bank of the Rhine to the left, and to occupy the country between it, the Seine, and the Marne, whilst other tribes settled themselves along the Rhine, and others again marched upon Asia Minor and founded their famous colony of Galatia in the extreme east of Europe, to whom, over three centuries later, St. Paul addressed his epistle, and whose descendants were found by St. Jerome in the fourth century still speaking Celtic.[27]

[Pg 15]

It is no longer necessary to follow the fortunes of the Continental Celts, to trace the history of their Galatian colony, to tell how they lost Spain, to recount the exploits of Marius and Sylla, the wars of Cæsar, the heroic struggle of Vercingetorix, the division of Gaul by Octavius, the oppression of the Romans, and finally the inroads of the barbaric hordes of Visigoths, Burgundians, and Francs. It is sufficient to say that already in the third century of our era Gaul had lost every trace of its ancient Celtic organisation, and in its laws, habits, and civil administration had become purely Roman. The upper classes had, like the Irish upper classes of this and of the last century, thrown aside every vestige of Gaulish nationality, and piqued themselves upon the perfection with which they had Romanised themselves, as the Irish upper classes do upon the thoroughness with which they have become Anglicised. They threw aside their Gaulish names to adopt others more consonant to Latin ears, as the Irish are doing at this moment. Above all they prided themselves upon speaking only the language of their conquerors, and like so many of the Irish of to-day they derided their ancient language as lingua rustica. It, however, banished from the mouths of the nobles and officials, lived on in the villages and rural parts of Gaul, as it has to this day done in Ireland, until the sixth century, when it finally gave ground and retired into the mountains and wastes of Armorica, where it coalesced with the Welsh which the large colony of British brought in with them when flying from the Saxon, and where it, in the[Pg 16] Cymraeg form of it, is still spoken by a couple of million people.[28]

[Pg 17]

CHAPTER II

EARLIEST ALLUSIONS TO IRELAND FROM FOREIGN SOURCES

Of all the tribes of the Celts, and indeed of all their neighbours in the west of Europe, the children of Milesius have been at once blessed and cursed beyond their fellows, for on the shores of their island alone did the Roman eagle check its victorious flight, and they alone of the nations of western Europe were neither moulded nor crushed into his own shape by the conqueror of Gaul and Britain.

Undisturbed by the Romans, unconquered though shattered by the Norsemen, unsubdued though sore-stricken by the Normans, and still struggling with the Saxons, the Irish Gael alone has preserved a record of his own past, and preserved it in a literature of his own, for a length of time and with a continuity which outside of Greece has no parallel in Europe.

His own account of himself is that his ancestors, the Milesians, or children of Miledh,[1] came to Ireland from Spain about the year 1000 B.C.,[2] and dispossessed the Tuatha De Danann who[Pg 18] had come from the north of Europe, as these had previously dispossessed their kinsmen the Firbolg, who had arrived from Greece.

Such a suggestion, however, despite the continuity and volume of Irish tradition which has always supported it, appears open to more than one rationalistic objection, the chiefest being that the voyage from Spain to Ireland would be one of some six hundred miles, hardly to be attempted by the early Irish barks composed of wickerwork covered with hides, fragile crafts which could hardly hope to live through the rough waters of the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic on a voyage from Spain, or through the Mediterranean and the Atlantic on a voyage from Greece.

On the other hand, if we assume that our ancestors passed over from Gaul into Britain and thence into Ireland, we shall find it fit in with many other facts. To begin with, the voyage from Gaul to Britain is one of only some two and twenty miles, and from Britain to Ireland, at its narrowest point, is hardly twelve. The splendid physique, too, of the Irish,[3] which is now alas! sadly degenerated through depression,[Pg 19] poverty, famine, and the rooting out of the best blood, but which has struck during the course of history such numerous foreign observers, seems certainly to connect the Irish by a family likeness with the Gauls, as these have been described to us by the Romans, and not with the Greeks or the swarthy, sun-burnt Iberians. Tacitus also, writing less than a century after Christ, tells us that the Irish in disposition, temper, and habits, differ but little from the Britons, and we find in Britain, North Gaul, and Germany, tribes of the same nomenclature as several of those Irish tribes whose names are recorded by Ptolemy about the year 150.[4]

On the one hand, then, we have the ancient universal Irish traditions, backed up by all the authority of the bards, the annalists and the shanachies, that the Milesians—who are the ancestors of most of the present Irish—came to Ireland direct from Spain; and, on the other hand, we have these rationalistic grounds for believing that Ireland was more probably peopled from Gaul and Britain. The question cannot here be carried further, except to remark that in an age ignorant of geography the term Spain may have been used very loosely, and may rather have implied some land oversea, rather than any particular land.[5]

[Pg 20]

If Ireland were not—thanks to her native annalists, her autochtonous traditions and her bardic histories—to a great extent independent of classical and foreign authors, she would have fared badly indeed, so far as history goes, lying as she does in so remote a corner of the world, and having been untrodden by the foot of recording Greek or masterful Roman. There are, however, some few allusions to the island to be found, of which, perhaps, the earliest is the quotation in Avienus, who writing about the year 380 mentions the account of the voyage of Himilco, a Phœnician,[6] to Ireland about the year 510 B.C., who said in his account that Erin was called "Sacra"[7] by the ancients, that its people navigated the vast sea in hide-covered barks, and that its land was populous and fertile. In the Argonautics of the pseudo-Orpheus, which may have been written about 500 B.C., the Iernian[8]—that is[Pg 21] apparently the Irish—Isle is mentioned. Aristotle knew about it too. Ierne, he says, is a very large island beyond the Celts. Strabo, writing soon after the birth of Christ, describes its position and shape, also calling it Ierne, but according to his account—which he acknowledges, however, that he does not make on good authority—it is barely habitable and its people are the most utter savages and cannibals.[9] Hibernia, says Julius Cæsar, is esteemed half the size of Britain and is as distant from it as Gaul is. Diodorus, some fifty years before Christ, calls it Iris, and says it was occupied by Britons.[10] Pomponius Mela, in the first century of our era, calls Ireland Iverna, and says that "so great was the luxuriance of grass there as to cause the cattle to burst"! Tacitus a little later, about the year 82, telling us how Agricola crossed the Clyde and posted troops in that part of the country which looked toward Ireland, says that Hibernia "in soil and climate, in the disposition, temper, and habits of its people, differed but little from Britain, and that its approaches and harbours were better known through traffic and merchants."[11]

[Pg 22]

Ptolemy, writing about the year 150, unconsciously bears out to some extent what Tacitus had said of Ireland's harbours being better known than those of Britain, for he has left behind him a more accurate account of Ireland than of Britain, giving in all over fifty Irish names, about nine of which have been identified, and mentioning the names of two coast towns, seven inland towns, and seventeen tribes, some of which, as we have said, nearly resemble the names of tribes in Britain and North Gaul. Solinus, about A.D. 238, is the first to tell us that Hibernia has no snakes—observe this curious pre-Patrician evidence which robs our national saint of one of his laurels—saying, like Pomponius Mela, that it has luxurious pastures, and adding the curious intelligence that, "warlike beyond the rest of her sex, the Hibernian mother places the first morsel of food in her child's mouth with the point of the sword." Eumenius mentions the Hibernians about the year 306 in his panegyric on Constantine, saying that until now the Britons had been accustomed to fight only Pictish and Hibernian enemies. In 378 Ammianus Marcellinus mentions the Irish under the name of Scots, saying that the Scotti and Attacotti[12] commit dreadful depredations in Britain, and[Pg 23] Claudian a few years later speaks rather hyperbolically of the Irish invasion of Britain; "the Scot (i.e., the Irishman)," he says, "moved all Ierne against us, and the Ocean foamed under his hostile oars—a Roman legion curbs the fierce Scot, through Stilicho's care I feared not the darts of the Scots—Icy Erin wails over the heaps of her Scots."[13] The Irish expeditions against both Gaul and Britain became more frequent towards the end of the fourth century, and at last the unfortunate Britons, driven to despair, and having in vain appealed to the now disorganised Romans to aid them, sooner than stand the fury of the Irish and Picts threw themselves into the arms of the Saxons.[14]

It is towards the middle or close of the fourth century that we come into much closer historical contact with the Irish, and indeed we know with some certainty a good deal about their internal history, manners, laws, language, and institutions from that time to the present. Of course if we can trust Irish sources we know a great deal about them for even seven or eight hundred years before this. The early Irish annalist, Tighearnach,[15] who died in 1088, and who had of course the[Pg 24] records of the earliest Irish writers—so far as they had escaped extinction by the Danes—before his eyes when he wrote, and who quotes frequently and judiciously from Josephus, St. Jerome, Bede, and other authors, was of opinion, after weighing evidence and comparing Irish with foreign writers, that the monumenta Scotorum, or records of the Irish prior to Cimbaeth (i.e., about 300 B.C.) were uncertain. This means that from that time forwards he at least considered that the substance of Irish history as handed down to us might, to say the least of it, be more or less relied upon. Cimbaeth was the founder of Emania, the capital of Ulster, the home of the Red Branch knights, which flourished for 600 years and which figures so conspicuously in the saga-cycle of Cuchulain.

What then—for we pass over for the present the colonies of Partholan, the Tuatha De Danann, and the Nemedians, leaving them to be dealt with among the myths—have our native bards and annalists to say of these six or seven centuries? As several of the best and greatest of Irish sagas deal with events within this period, we can—if bardic accounts, probably first committed to writing about the sixth or seventh century may at all be trusted—to some extent recall its leading features, or reconstruct them.

[Pg 25]

CHAPTER III

EARLY HISTORY DRAWN FROM NATIVE SOURCES

The allusions to Ireland and the Irish from the third century before to the fourth century after Christ, are, as we have seen, both few and scanty, and throw little or no light upon the internal affairs or history of the island; for these we must go to native sources.

At the period when Emania was founded, that is, at the period when according to the learned native annalist Tighearnach, the records of the early Irish cease to be "uncertain," the throne of Ireland was occupied by a High-king called Ugony[1] the Great, and a certain body of saga, much of which is now lost, collected itself around his personality, and attached itself to his two sons, Cobhthach Caol-mBreagh and Leary[2] Lorc, and around Leary Lorc's grandson, Lowry[3] the mariner. It was this Ugony who attempted to substitute a new territorial division of Ireland in place of the five provinces into which it had been divided by the early Milesians. He exacted an oath by all the elements—the usual Pagan oath—from the men of Ireland that they would never oppose his children or his race, and then he divided the island into twenty-five parts,[Pg 26] giving one to each of his children. He succeeded in this manner in destroying the ancient division of Ireland into provinces and in perpetuating his own, for several generations, when Eochaidh Féidhleach[4] once more reverted to the ancient system of the five provinces—Ulster, Connacht, Leinster, and the two Munsters. This Eochaidh Féidhleach came to the throne about 140 years before Christ, according to the "Four Masters,"[5] and it was his daughter who is the celebrated heroine Mève,[6] queen of Connacht, who reigned at Rathcroghan in Connacht, and who undertook the great Táin Bo or Cattle Raid into Ulster, that has been celebrated for nigh on 2,000 years in poem and annal among the children of the Gael; and her name introduces us to Conor[7] mac Nessa, king of Ulster, to the palace of Emania, to the Red Branch knights, to the tragedy of Déirdre and all the vivid associations of the Cuchulain cycle.

It was thirty-three years before Christ, according to the "Four Masters," that Conairé the Great, High-king of all Ireland, was slain, and he is the central figure of the famous and very ancient saga of the Bruidhean Da Derga.[8]

And now we come to the birth of Christ, which is thus recorded by the "Four Masters": "The first year of the age of Christ and the eighth of the reign of Crimhthan Niadhnair."[9] Crimhthan was no doubt one of the marauding Scots who plundered Britain, for it is recorded of him that "it was this Crimhthan who went on the famous expedition beyond the sea from which he brought home several extraordinary and costly[Pg 27] treasures, among which were a gilt chariot and a golden chess-board, inlaid with three hundred transparent gems, a tunic of various colours and embroidered with gold, a shield embossed with pure silver," and many other valuables. Curiously enough O'Clery's Book of Invasions contains a poem of seventy-two lines ascribed to this king himself, in which he describes these articles. He was fabled to have been accompanied on this expedition by his "bain-leannán" or fairy sweetheart, one of an interesting race of beings of whom frequent mention is made in Irish legend and saga.

The next event of consequence after the birth of Christ is the celebrated revolt led by Cairbré Cinn-cait, of the Athach-Tuatha,[10] or unfree clans of Ireland, in other words the serfs or plebeians, against the free clans or nobility, whom they all but exterminated, three unborn children of noble line alone escaping.[11]

The people of Ireland were plagued—as though by heaven—with bad seasons and lack of fruit during the usurper Cairbré's reign. As the "Four Masters" graphically put it, "evil was the state of Ireland during his reign, fruitless her corn, for there used to be but one grain on the stalk; fishless[Pg 28] her rivers; milkless her cattle; unplenty her fruit, for there used to be but one acorn on the oak." The belief that bad seasons were sent as a punishment of bad rulers was a very ancient and universal one in Ireland, and continued until very lately. The ode which the ollav or head-bard is said to have chanted in the ears of each newly-inaugurated prince, took care to recall it to his mind, and may be thus translated:—

"Seven witnesses there be
Of the broken faith of kings.
First—to trample on the free,
Next—to sully sacred things,
Next—to strain the law divine,
(This defeat in battle brings).
Famine, slaughter, milkless kine,
And disease on flying wings.
These the seven-fold vivid lights
That light the perjury of kings!"[12]

According to the Book of Conquests the people of Ireland, plagued by famine and bad seasons, brought in, on the death of Cairbré, the old reigning families again, making Fearadach king, and the "Athach-Tuatha swore by the heaven and earth, sun, moon, and all the elements, that they would be obedient to them and their descendants, as long as the sea[Pg 29] should surround Ireland." The land recovered its tranquillity with the reign of Fearadach. "Good was Ireland during his time. The seasons were right tranquil; the earth brought forth its fruit. Fishful its river mouths; milkful the kine; heavy-headed the woods."

There was a second uprising of the Athach-Tuatha later on,[13] when they massacred their masters on Moy Bolg. The lawful heir to the throne was yet unborn at the time of this massacre and so escaped. This was the celebrated Tuathal [Too-a-hal, now Toole], who ultimately succeeded to the throne and became one of the most famous of all the pre-Patrician kings. It was he who first established or cut out the province of Meath. The name Meath had always existed as the appellation of a small district near which the provinces of Ulster, Connacht, Leinster, and the two Munsters joined. Tuathal cut off from each of the four provinces the angles adjoining it, and out of these he constituted a new province[14] to be thenceforth the[Pg 30] special estate, demesne, and inheritance of the High-kings of Ireland. He built, or rebuilt, four palaces in the four quarters of the district he had thus annexed, all of them celebrated in after times—of which more later on. It was he also who, under evil auspices and in an evil hour, extorted from Leinster the first Borumha,[15] or Boru tribute,—nomen infaustum—a step which contributed so powerfully to mould upon lines of division and misery the history of our unhappy country from that day until the present, by estranging the province of Leinster, throwing it into the arms of foreigners, and causing it to put itself into opposition to the rest of Ireland. This unhappy tribute, of which we shall hear more later on, was imposed during the reigns of forty kings.

Thirteen years after the death of Tuathal, Cáthaoir [Cauheer], celebrated for his Will or Testament,[16] reigned; he was of pure Leinster blood, and the men of that province have always felicitated themselves upon having given at least this[Pg 31] one great king to Ireland. It is from him that the great Leinster families—the O'Tooles, O'Byrnes, Mac Morroughs or Murphys, O'Conor Falys, O'Gormans, and others—descend. He was slain, A.D. 123, by Conn of the Hundred Battles.[17]

There are few kings during the three hundred years preceding and following the birth of Christ more famous than this Conn, and there is a very large body of saga collected round him and his rival Eoghan [Owen], the king of Munster who succeeded in wresting half the sovereignty from him. As the result of their conflicts that part of Ireland which lies north of the Escir Riada,[18] or, roughly speaking, that lies north of a line drawn from Dublin to Galway, has from that day to this been known as Conn's Half, and that south of the same line as Owen's Half. Owen was at last slain by him of the hundred battles at the fight of Moy Léana.

Owen, as we have seen, was never King of Ireland, but he left behind him a famous son, Oilioll[19] Olum, who was married to Sadhbh,[20] the daughter of his rival and vanquisher, Conn of the Hundred Battles, and it is to this stem that nearly all the ruling families of Munster trace themselves. From his eldest[Pg 32] son, Owen Mór, come the Mac Carthys, O'Sullivans, O'Keefes, O'Callaghans, etc.; from his second son come the Mac Namaras and Clancys; and from his third son, Cian,[21] come the so-called tribes of the Cianachts, the O'Carrolls, O'Meaghers, O'Haras, O'Garas, Caseys, the southern O'Conors, and others. There is a considerable body of romance gathered around this Oilioll and his sons and wife, chiefly connected with the kingship of Munster.

Conn's son, Art the Lonely—so-called because he survived after the slaughter of his brothers—was slain by Mac Con, Sive's son by her first husband, and the slayer ruled in his place, being the third king of the line of the Ithians, of whom we shall read later on, who came to the throne.

He, however, was himself killed at the instigation of Cormac, son of Art, or Cormac mac Art, as he is usually designated. This Cormac is a central figure of the large cycle of stories connected with Finn and the Fenians. He was at last slain in the battle of Moy Mochruime. His advice to a prince, addressed to his son Cairbré of the Liffey, will be noticed later on, and, so far as it may be genuine, bears witness to his reputed wisdom, "as do the many other praiseworthy institutes named from him that are still to be found among the books of the Brehon Laws."[22] This Cormac it was who built the first mill in Ireland, and who made a banqueting-place of the great hall of Mi-Cuarta,[23] at Tara, which was one hundred yards long, forty-five feet high, one hundred feet broad, and which was entered by fourteen doors. The site is still to be seen, but no vestige of the building, which, like all early Irish structures, was of wood.

Cairbré of the Liffey succeeded his father Cormac, and it was he who fought the battle of Gabhra (Gowra) with the Fenians, in which he himself was slain, but in which he broke, and for ever, the power of that unruly body of warriors.

About the year 331 the great Ulster city and palace of[Pg 33] Emania, which had been the home of Conor and the Red Branch knights, and the capital of Ulster for six hundred years, was taken and burnt to the ground by the Three Collas, who thus become the ancestors of a number of the tribes of modern Ulster. From one of them descend the Mac Mahons, the ruling family of Monaghan; the Maguires, barons of Fermanagh; and the O'Hanlons, chiefs of Orior; while another was the ancestor of the Mac Donalds of Antrim and the Isles, of the Mac Dugalds, and the Mac Rories. The old nobility of Ulster, whose capital had been Emania, were thrust aside into the north-east corner of Ulster, whence most of them were expelled by the planters of James I.

We now come to Eochaidh [Yohee] Muigh-mheadhoin [Mwee-va-on] who was father of the celebrated Niall of the Nine Hostages. From one of his sons, Brian, come the Ui [Ee] Briain, that is, the collection of families composed of the seed of Brian—the O'Conors, kings of Connacht; the Mac Dermots, princes of Moylurg, afterwards of Coolavin; the O'Rorkes, princes of Breffny; the O'Reillys, O'Flaherties, and Mac Donaghs. From another son of his, Fiachrach, come the Ui Fiachrach, who were for ages the rivals of the Ui Briain in contesting the sovereignty of Connacht—the O'Shaughnesies were one of the principal families representing this sept.[24]

Eochaidh Muigh-mheadhoin was succeeded in 366[25] by Crimhthan [Crivhan], who was one of those militant Scots at whose hands the unhappy Britons suffered so sorely. He "gained victories," say the annals, "and extended his sway over Alba, Britain, and Gaul," which probably means that he raided all three, and possibly made settlements in South-west Britain. He was poisoned by his sister in the hope that the sovereignty would fall to her favourite son Brian. In this, however, she was disappointed, and it is a noticeable fact in[Pg 34] Irish history that none of the Ui Briain, or great Connacht families, ever sat upon the throne of Ireland, with the exception of Turlough O'Conor, third last king of Ireland, ancestor of the present O'Conor Don, and Roderick O'Conor, the last of all the High-kings of the island.

Brian being set aside, Niall of the Nine Hostages ascended the throne in 379. It was he who first assisted the Dál Riada clans to gain supremacy over the Picts of Scotland. These Dál Riada were descended from a grandson, on the mother's side, of Conn of the Hundred Battles. There were two septs of these Dál Riada, one settled in Ulster and the other in Alba [Scotland]. It was from the conquests[26] achieved by the Scots [i.e. Milesians] of Ireland that Alba was called Lesser Scotia. In course of ages the inconvenient distinction of the countries into Lesser and Greater Scotia died away, but the name Scotia, or Scotland, without any qualifying adjective, clung to the lesser country to the frightful confusion of historians, while the greater remained known to foreigners as Erin, or Hibernia.[27] This Niall was surnamed "of the Nine Hostages," from his having extorted hostages from nine minor kings. He mercilessly plundered Britain and Gaul. The Picts and Irish[Pg 35] Gaels combined had at one time penetrated as far as London and Kent, when Theodosius drove them back.[28] It was probably against Niall that Stilicho gained those successes so magniloquently eulogised by Claudian, "when the Scot moved all Ierne against us and the sea foamed under his hostile oars." Niall had eight sons, from whom the famous Ui [Ee] Neill are all descended. One branch of these, the branch descended from his son Owen, took the name of O'Neill in the eleventh century, not from him of the Nine Hostages, but from King Niall of the Black Knee, a less remote ancestor, of whom more later on. This was the great family of the Tyrone O'Neills. So solidly did the posterity of Niall establish itself, and upon so firm a basis was his power perpetuated, that almost all the following kings of Ireland were descended from him, besides multitudes of illustrious families, "nearly three hundred of his descendants, eminent for their learning and the sanctity of their lives," says O'Flaherty, "have been enrolled in the catalogue of the saints."[29] He it was who, while plundering in Britain or Armorica, led back amongst other captives the youth, then sixteen years old, who was destined, under the title of the Holy Patrick, to revolutionise Ireland.

St. Patrick's own "Confession" and his Epistle to Coroticus[Pg 36] have come down to us—the former preserved in the Book or Armagh, a manuscript copied by a scribe named Ferdomnach in 807 (or 812 according to a truer chronology), apparently from St. Patrick's own copy, for at the end of the Confession the scribe adds this note: "Thus far the volume which Patrick wrote with his own hand."[30] In this ancient manuscript (itself only a copy of older ones so damaged as to be almost illegible[31] to the scribe who copied them in 807, a little more than three hundred years after St. Patrick's death), we find nearly a dozen mentions of Niall of the Nine Hostages, of his son Laeghaire [Leary], and several more who lived before St. Patrick's arrival, and so find ourselves for the first time upon tolerably solid historical ground, which from this out never deserts us. St. Columcille, the evangeliser of the Picts and the founder of Iona, was the great-great-grandson of this Niall, and the great-grandson of Conall Gulban, so celebrated even to this day in Irish romance and history.[32]

Ascertainable authenticated Irish history, then, begins with Niall and with Patrick, but in this chapter we have gone[Pg 37] behind it to see what may be learned from native sources—rather traditional than historical—of Irish life and history, from the founding of Emania three hundred years before Christ down to the coming of St. Patrick. But for all the things which we have recounted we have no independent external testimony, nor have we now any manuscripts remaining of which we could say, "We have here documentary evidence fifteen or twenty centuries old attesting the truth of these things." No; we are entirely dependent for all that pre-Patrician history upon native evidence alone, and that evidence has come down to us chiefly but not entirely in manuscripts copied in the twelfth and in later centuries.

[Pg 38]

CHAPTER IV

HOW FAR CAN NATIVE SOURCES BE RELIED ON?

It must next be considered what amount of reliance can be placed upon the Irish annals and annalists, who have preserved to us our early history. If, in those few cases where we happen to have some credible external evidences of early events, we find our native annalists notoriously at variance with such evidences, our faith in them must of necessity be shaken. If, on the other hand, we find them to coincide fairly well with these other accounts taken from foreign sources, we shall be inclined to place all the more reliance on their accuracy when they record events upon which no such sidelights can be thrown.

Now, from the nature of the case, it is exceedingly difficult, considering how isolated Ireland was while evolving her own civilisation, and considering how little in early ages her internal affairs clashed with those of Europe, to find any specific events of which we have early external evidence. We can, for instance, apart from our own annals and poems, procure no corroborative evidence of the division of Ireland between Conn and Owen, of the destruction of Emania by the Three Collas, or of the battle of Gabhra. But despite the silence upon Irish affairs of ancient foreign writers, we have luckily another class of proof of the highest possible value, brought to light by the discoveries[Pg 39] of modern science, and powerfully strengthening the credibility of our annals. This is nothing less than the record of natural phenomena. If we find, on calculating backwards, as modern science has enabled us to do, that such events as the appearance of comets or the occurrence of eclipses are recorded to the day and hour by the annalists, we can know with something like certainty that these phenomena were recorded at the time of their appearance by writers who observed them, whose writings must have been actually consulted and seen by those later annalists, whose books we now possess. Nobody could think of saying of natural phenomena thus accurately recorded, as they might of mere historical narratives, that they were handed down by tradition only, and reduced to writing for the first time many centuries later. Now it so happens that the Annals of Ulster, annals which treat of Ireland and Irish history from about the year 444, but of which the written copy dates only from the fifteenth century, contain from the year 496 to 884, as many as 18 records of eclipses and comets which agree exactly even to the day and hour with the calculations of modern astronomers. How impossible it is to keep such records unless written memoranda are made of them by eye-witnesses, is shown by the fact that Bede, born himself in 675, in recording the great solar eclipse which took place only eleven years before his own birth is yet two days astray in his date; while, on the other hand, the Ulster annals give not only the correct day but the correct hour—thus showing that Cathal Maguire, their compiler, had access either to the original or to a copy of the original account of an eye-witness.[1]

Again, we occasionally find the early records of the two great[Pg 40] branches of the Celtic race, the Gaelic and the Cymric, throwing a mutual light upon each other. There exists, for instance, an ancient Irish saga, of which several versions have come down to us, a saga well known in Irish literature under the title of the Expulsion of the Dési,[2] which, according to Zimmer—than whom there can be no better authority—was, judging from its linguistic forms, committed to writing in the eighth century. The Dési were a tribe settled in Bregia, in Meath, and the Annals[3] tell us that the great Cormac mac Art defeated them in seven battles, forcing them to emigrate and seek new homes. This composition describes their wanderings in detail. Some of the tribe we are told migrated to Munster, whilst another portion crossed the Irish Sea and settled down in that part of South Wales called Dyfed, under the leadership of one Eochaidh [Yohy], thence called "from-over-sea." There Eochaidh with his sons and grand-children lived and died, and propagated themselves to the time of the writer, who states that they were then—at the time he wrote—ruled over by one Teudor mac Regin, king of Dyfed, who was then alive, and whose pedigree is traced in fourteen generations up to the father of that Eochaidh who had led them over in Cormac mac Art's time. Taking a generation as 33 years, and starting with the year 270, about the time of the expulsion of the Dési, we find that Teudor Mac Regin should have reigned about the year 730, and the Irish saga must have been written at this time, which agrees with Zimmer's reckoning, although his computation is based on purely linguistic grounds. That school of interpreters who decry all ancient Irish history as a mixture of mythology and fiction, and who can see in Cormac mac Art only a sun-god, would probably ascribe the expulsion of the Dési and other records of a similar nature to the creative imagination of the later Irish, who, they hold, invented their genealogies as they did their history. But in this case it happens by the merest accident that we have collateral evidence of these[Pg 41] events, for in a Welsh pedigree of Ellen, mother of Owen, son of Howel Dda, preserved in a manuscript of the eleventh century, this same Teudor is mentioned, and his genealogy traced back by the Welsh scribe; the names of eleven of his ancestors, corresponding—except for inconsiderable orthographical differences—with those preserved in the ancient Irish text.

"When we consider," says Dr. Kuno Meyer, "that these Welsh names passed through the hands of who knows how many Irish scribes, one must marvel that they have preserved their forms so well;" and he adds, "in the light of this evidence alone, I have no hesitation in saying that the settlement of an Irish tribe in Dyfed during the latter half of the third century must be considered a well-authenticated fact."[4]

Dr. Reeves cites another remarkable case of undesigned coincidence which strongly testifies to the accuracy of the Irish annalists. In the Antiphonary of Bangor, an ancient service book still preserved on the Continent, we find the names of fifteen abbots of the celebrated monastery of Bangor—at which the heresiarch Pelagius was probably educated—and these fifteen abbots are recorded by the same names and in the same order as in the Annals; "and this undesigned coincidence," says Reeves, "is the more interesting because the testimonies are perfectly independent, the one being afforded by Irish records which never left the kingdom, and the other by a Latin composition which has been a thousand years absent from the country where it was written."

Another incidental proof of the accuracy of early Irish literary records is afforded by the fact that on the few occasions where the Saxon Bede, when making mention of some Scot, i.e., Irishman, gives also the name of his father, this name coincides with that given by the annals.

We may, then, take it, without any credulity on our part,[Pg 42] that Irish history as drawn from native sources may be very well relied upon from about the middle of the fourth century. Beyond that date, going backwards, we have no means at our disposal for checking its accuracy or inaccuracy, no means of determining the truth of such events as the struggle between Conn and Owen, between the Fenian bands and the High-king, between Ulster under Conor and Connacht under Mève, no means of determining the actual existence of Conairé the Great, or of Cuchulain, or of the heroes of the Red Branch, or of Finn mac Cúmhail [Cool] and his son Ossian and his grandson Oscar. Is there any solid ground for treating these things as objective history?

It has been urged that it is unphilosophic of us and was unphilosophic of the annalist Tighearnach to fix the reign of Cimbaeth[5] [Kimbæ], who built Emania, the capital of Ulster, some three hundred years before Christ, as a terminus from which we may begin to place some confidence in Irish accounts, seeing that the Annals carry back the list of Irish kings with apparently equal certainty for centuries past him, and back even to the coming of the Milesians, which took place at the lowest computation some six or seven hundred years before. All that can be said in answer to this, is to point out that there must have been hundreds of documents existing at the time when Tighearnach wrote, "the countless hosts of the illuminated books of the men of Erin," as his contemporary Angus called them—records of the past which he was able to examine and consult, but which we are not.[Pg 43] Tighearnach was a professed annalist, "a modern but cautious chronicler,"[6] and for his age a very well-instructed man, and it seems evident that he would not have placed the founding of Emania as a terminus a quo if he had not inferred rightly or wrongly that native accounts could be fairly trusted from that forward. It certainly creates some feeling of confidence to find him pushing aside as uncertain and unproven the arid roll of kings so confidently carried back for hundreds of years before his starting-point. The historic sense was well developed in Tighearnach, and he no doubt discredited these far-reaching claims either because he could not find sufficiently early documentary evidence to corroborate them, or more likely because such accounts as he had access to, began to contradict one another and were unable to stand any scrutiny from this time backwards. With him it was probably largely a question of documents. But this brings us at once to the question, when did the Irish learn the use of letters and begin to write, to which we shall turn our attention in a future chapter.

[Pg 44]

CHAPTER V

THE PRE-MILESIAN FABLE AND EARLY PANTHEON

In investigating the very early history of Ireland we are met with a mass of pseudo-historic narrative and myth, woven together into an apparently homogeneous whole, and all now posing as real history. This is backed up, and eked out, by a most elaborate system of genealogy closely interwoven with it, which, together with a good share of the topographical nomenclature of the island, is there to add its entire influence to that of historian and annalist in apparently attesting the truth of what these latter have recorded.

If in seeking for a path through this maze we grasp the skirt of the genealogist and follow his steps for a clue, we shall find ourselves, in tracing into the past the ancestry of any Milesian chief, invariably landed at the foot of some one of four persons, three of them, Ir, Eber, Eremon,[1] being sons of that Milesius who made the Milesian conquest, and the fourth being Lughaidh [Lewy], son of Ith, who was a nephew of the same. On one or other of these four does the genealogy of every chief and prince abut, so that all end ultimately in Milesius.

Milesius' own genealogy and the wanderings of his ancestors[Pg 45] are also recounted for many generations before they land in Ireland, but during this pre-Milesian period there are no side-genealogies, the ancestors of Milesius himself alone are given, traced through twenty-two apparently Gaelic names and thirteen Hebrew ones, passing through Japhet and ending in Adam. It is only with the landing of the three sons and the nephew of Milesius that the ramifications of Irish genealogies begin, and they are backed up by the whole weight of the Irish topographical system which is shot through and through with places named after personages and events of the early Milesian period, and of the period of the Tuatha De Danann.

It will be well to give here a brief résumé of the accounts of the Milesians' wanderings before they arrived in Ireland. Briefly then the Gaels are traced back all the way to Fenius Farsa, a king of Scythia, who is then easily traced up to Adam. But beginning with this Fenius Farsa we find that he started a great school for learning languages. His son was Niul, who also taught languages, and his son again was Gaedhal, from whom the Gaels are so called. This Niul went into Egypt and married Scota, daughter of Pharaoh. This is a post-Christian invention, which is not satisfied without bringing Niul into contact with Aaron, whom he befriended, in return for which Moses healed his son Gaedhal from the bite of a serpent. Since then says an ancient verse—

"No serpent nor vile venomed thing
Can live upon the Gaelic soil,
No bard nor stranger since has found
A cold repulse from a son of Gaedhal."

Gaedhal's son was Esru, whose son was Sru, and when the Egyptians oppressed them he and his people emigrated to Crete. His son was Eber Scot, from whom some say the Gaels were called Scots, but most of the Irish antiquarians maintain that they are called Scots because they once came[Pg 46] from Scythia,[2] to which cradle of the race Eber Scot led the nation back again. Expelled from Scythia a couple of generations later the race plant themselves in the country of Gaethluighe, where they were ruled over by one called Eber of the White Knee. The eighth in descent from him emigrated with four ships to Spain. His son was Breogan, who built Brigantia. His grandson was Golamh, called Miledh Easpáin, i.e., Warrior of Spain,[3] whose name has been universally, but badly, Latinised Milesius, and it was his three sons and his nephew who landed in Ireland and who planted there the Milesian people. Milesius himself never put foot in Ireland, but he seems in his own person to have epitomised the wanderings of his race, for we find him returning to Scythia, making his way thence into Egypt, marrying Scota, a daughter of Pharaoh, and finally returning to Spain.

Much or all of this pre-Milesian account of the race must be unhesitatingly set down to the influence of Christianity, and to the invention of early Christian bards who felt a desire to trace their kings back to Japhet.[4] The native unchristianised[Pg 47] genealogies all converge in the sons and nephew of Milesius. The legends of their exploits and those of their successors are the real race-heritage of the Gael, unmixed with the fanciful Christian allusions and Hebraic adulterations of the pre-Milesian story, which was the last to be invented.

The genuine and early combination of Irish myth and history centres not on foreign but on Irish soil, in the accounts of the Nemedians, the Firbolg, the Tuatha De Danann, and the early Milesians, accounts which have been handed down to us in short stories and more lengthy sagas, as well as in the bold brief chronicles of the annalists. No doubt the stories of the landing of his race on Irish soil, and the exploits of his first chieftains were familiar in the early days to every Gael. They became, as it were, part and parcel of his own life and being, and were preserved with something approaching a religious veneration. His belief in them entered into his whole political and social system, the holding of his tribe-lands was bound up with it, and a highly-paid and influential class of bardic historians was subsidised with the express purpose of propagating these traditions and maintaining them unaltered.

Everything around him recalled to the early Gael the traditional history of his own past. The two hills of Slieve Luachra in Kerry he called the paps of Dana,[5] and he knew that Dana was the mother of the gods Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba, the story of whose sufferings, at the hands of Lugh[Pg 48] the Long-handed, has in later times so often drawn tears from its auditors. When he beheld the mighty barrows piled upon the banks of the Boyne,[6] he knew that it was over the Dagda—an Irish Jupiter—and over his three sons[7] that they were heaped; and one of these, Angus of the Boyne, was, down to the present century, reverenced as the presiding genius of the spot. The mighty monuments of Knock Áine in Limerick, and Knock Gréine, as well as those of Knowth, Dowth, and New Grange, were all connected with his legendary past. It was Lugh of the Tuatha De Danann, he knew, who had first established the great fair of Tailltin,[8] to which he and his friends went from year to year to meet each other, and contract alliances for their grown children. The great funeral mound, round which the games were held, was sacred to Talti, the foster-mother of Lugh, who had there been buried, and in whose honour the games in which he participated were held upon the day which he called—and still calls, though he has now forgotten why—Lughnasa or Lugh's gathering.[9] His own country he called—and still calls—by the various names of Eire, Fódhla [Fola], and Banba, and they, as he knew, were three queens[10] of the Tuatha De Danann. The Gael of Connacht knew that Moycullen, near Galway, was so named from Uillin, a grandson of the Tuatha De Danann king Nuada; and Loch Corrib from Orbsen, the other name of the sea-god Manannán, slain there by this Uillin, and each of the provinces was studded with such memorials.

The early Milesian invaders left their names just as closely[Pg 49] imprinted upon our topography as did their predecessors the Tuatha De Danann. The great plain of Bregia in Meath was so called from Brega, son of that Breogan who built Brigantia. Slieve Cualann in Wicklow—now hideously and absurdly called the Great Sugar Loaf!—is named from Cuala, another son of Breogan; Slieve Bladhma, or Bloom, is called from another son of the same; and from yet another is named the Plain of Muirthemni, where was fought the great battle in which fell Cuchulain "fortissimus heros Scotorum." The south of Munster is called Corca Luighe from Lughaidh, son of Ith, nephew of Milesius. The harbour of Drogheda was called Inver Colpa, from Colpa of the sword, another son of Milesius, who was there drowned when trying to effect a landing. The Carlingford Mountains were called Slieve Cualgni, and a well-known mountain in Armagh Slieve Fuad, from two more sons of Breogan of Brigantia, slain after the second battle with the Tuatha De Danann, while they followed up the chase. The sandhills in the west of Munster, where Donn, the eldest son of Milesius, was shipwrecked and lost his life—as did his whole crew consisting as is said of twenty-four warriors, five chiefs, twelve women, four servants, eight rowers, and fifty youths-in-training—is called Donn's House. So vivid is this tradition even still, that we find a Munster poet as late as the last century addressing a poem to this Donn as the tutelary divinity of the place, and asking him to take him into his sidh [shee] or fairy mound and become his patron. This poem is remarkable, as showing that in popular opinion the early Milesians shared the character of sub-gods, fairies, or beings of supernatural power, in common with the Tuatha De Danann themselves, for the poet treats him as still living and reigning in state, as peer of Angus of the Boyne, and cousin of Cliona, queen of the Munster fairies.[11] Wherever he[Pg 50] turned the Gael was thus confronted with scenes from his own past, or with customs—like the August games at Tailltin—deliberately established to perpetuate them.

In process of time, partly perhaps through the rationalising influences of a growing civilisation, but chiefly through the direct action of Christianity, with which he came into active contact in perhaps the fourth, or certainly in the fifth century, the remembrance of the old Gaelic theogony, and the old Gaelic deities and his religious belief in them became blunted, and although no small quantity of matter that is purely pagan, and an immense amount of matter, but slightly tinged with Christianity, has been handed down to us, yet gods, heroes,[Pg 51] and men have been so far brought to a common level, that it is next to impossible at first sight to disentangle them or to say which is which.

Very probably there was, even before the introduction of Christianity, no sharply-defined line of demarcation drawn between gods and heroes, that, in the words of Pindar, ἓν ἀνδρῶν ἓν θεῶν γένος, "one was the race of gods and men," and when in after times the early mythical history of Ireland came to be committed to parchment, its historians saw in the Irish pantheon nothing but a collection of human beings. It is thus, no doubt, that we find the Fomorians and the Tuatha De Danann posing as real people, whilst in reality it is more than likely that they figured in the scheme of Gaelic mythology as races of beneficent gods and of evil deities, or at least as races of superhuman power.

The early Irish writers who redacted the mythical history of the country were no doubt imbued with the spirit of the so-called Greek "logographers," who, when collecting the Grecian myths from the poets, desired, while not eliminating the miraculous, yet to smooth away all startling discrepancies and present them in a readable and, as it were, a historical series.[12] Others no doubt wished to rationalise the early myths so far as they conveniently could, as even Herodotus shows an inclination to do with regard to the Greek marvels; and the later annalists and poets of the Irish went as far as ever went Euhemerus, reducing gods and heroes alike to the level of common men.

We find Keating, who composed in Irish his Forus Feasa or History, in the first half of the seventeenth century, and who only re-writes or abbreviates what he found before him in the ancient books of the Gaels now lost, distracted between his desire to euhemerise—in other words, to make mere men of the gods and heroes—and his unflinching fidelity[Pg 52] to his ancient texts. Thus he professes to give the names of "the most famous and noble persons of the Tuatha De Danann," and amongst them he mentions "the six sons of Delbaeth, son of Ogma, namely, Fiacadh, Ollamh, Indaei, Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba,"[13] but in another place he quotes this verse from some of his ancient sources—

"Brian Iucharba and the great Iuchar,
The three gods of the sacred race of Dana,
Fell at Mana on the resistless sea
By the hand of Lughaidh, son of Ethlenn."

These whom the ancient verse distinctly designates as gods, Keating makes merely "noble persons," but at the very same time in treating of the De Danann he interpolates amongst his list of their notable men and women this curious sentence:[14][Pg 53] "The following are the names of three of their goddesses, viz., Badhbh [Bive], Macha, and Morighan."[15]

There are many allusions to the old Irish pantheon in Cormac's Glossary, which is a compilation of the ninth or tenth century explanatory of expressions which had even at that early date become obscure or obsolete, and many of these are evidently of pagan origin. Cormac describes Ana as mater deorum hibernensium, the mother of the Irish gods, and he adds, "Well used she to nourish the gods, it is from her name is said 'anæ,' i.e., abundance, and from her name is called the two paps of Ana." Buanann, says Cormac, was the "nurse of heroes," as "Anu was mother of the gods, so Buanann was mother of the 'Fiann.'" Etán was nurse of the poets. Brigit, of which we have now made a kind of national Christian name, was in pagan times a female poet, daughter of the Dagda. Her divinity is evident from what Cormac says of her, namely, that "she was a goddess whom poets worshipped, for very great and very noble was her superintendence, therefore call they her goddess of poets by this name, whose sisters were Brigit, woman of smith-work, and Brigit, woman of healing, namely, goddesses—from whose names Brigit[16] was with all Irishmen called a goddess," i.e., the terms "Brigit" and "goddess" were synonymous (?) The name itself he derives fancifully from the words breo-shaighit, "fiery arrow," as though the inspirations[Pg 54] of a poet pierced like fiery arrows. Diancécht Cormac calls "the sage of the leech-craft of Ireland," but in the next line we read that he was so called because he was "Dia na cécht," i.e., Deus salutis, or god of health. Zeuss quotes an incantation to this god from a manuscript which is, he says, at least a thousand years old. His daughter was Etán, an artificer, one of whose sayings is quoted by Cormac. Néith was the god of battle among the Irish pagans, Nemon was his wife. The euhemerising tendency comes out strongly in Cormac's account of Manannán, a kind of Irish Proteus and Neptune combined, who according to him was "a renowned trader who dwelt in the Isle of Man, he was the best pilot in the West of Europe; through acquaintance with the sky he knew the quarter in which would be fair weather and foul weather, and when each of these two seasons would change. Hence the Scots and Britons called him a god of the sea. Thence, too, they said he was the sea's son—Mac Lir, i.e., son of the sea."

Another ancient Irish gloss[17] alludes to the mysterious Mór-rígan or war-goddess, of whom we shall hear more later on; and to Machæ, another war-goddess, "of whom is said Machæ's mast-feeding," meaning thereby, "the heads of men that have been slaughtered."

From all that we have said it clearly appears that carefully as the Christianised Irish strove to euhemerise their pantheon, they were unable to succeed. If, as Keating acknowledges, Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba were gods, then à fortiori much more so must have been the more famous Lugh, who compassed their death, and the Dagda, and Angus Óg. Keating himself, in giving us a list of the famous Tuatha De Danann has probably given us also the names of a large number of primitive Celtic deities—not that these were at all confined to the De Danann tribes.

It is remarkable that there is no mention of temples nor of[Pg 55] churches dedicated to these Irish gods, nor do we find any of those inscriptions to them which are so common in Gaul, Belgium, Switzerland, and even Britain, but they appear from passages in Cormac's Glossary[18] to have had altars and images dedicated to them.

We are forced, then, to come to the conclusion that the pagan Irish once possessed a large pantheon, probably as highly organised as that of the Scandinavians, but owing to their earlier and completer conversion to Christianity only traces of it now remain.

[Pg 56]

CHAPTER VI

EVIDENCE OF TOPOGRAPHY AND GENEALOGY

The ramifications of early Irish literary history and its claims to antiquity are so multiple, intricate, and inter-connected, that it is difficult for any one who has not made a close study of it to form a conception of the extent it covers and the various districts it embraces. The early literature of Ireland is so bound up with the early history, and the history so bound up and associated with tribal names, memorial sites, patronymics, and topographical nomenclature, that it presents a kind of heterogeneous whole, that which is recognised history running into and resting upon suspected or often even evident myth, while tribal patronymics and national genealogies abut upon both, and the whole is propped and supported by legions of place-names still there to testify, as it were, to the truth of all.

We have already glanced at some of the marks left by the mysterious De Danann race upon our nomenclature. Mounds, raths, and tumuli, called after them, dot all Ireland. It is the same with the early Milesians. It is the same with the men of the great pseudo-historic cycle of story-telling, that of Cuchulain and the Red Branch, not to speak of minor cycles. There is never a camping-ground of Mève's army on their march a century B.C. from Rathcroghan in[Pg 57] Roscommon to the plain of Mochruime in Louth, and never a skirmish fought by them that has not given its name to some plain or camping-ground or ford. Passing from the heroes of the Red Branch to the history of Finn mac Cool and the Fenians, we find the same thing. Finn's seat, the Hill of the Fenians, Diarmuid and Gráinne's bed, and many other names derived from them or incidents connected with them, are equally widely scattered.

The question now arises, does the undoubted existence of these place-names, many of them mentioned in the very oldest manuscripts we have—these manuscripts being only copies of still more ancient ones now lost—mentioned, too, in connection with the celebrated events which are there said to have given them their names, do these and the universally received genealogies of historic tribes which trace themselves back to some ancestor who figured at the time when these place-names were imposed, form credible witnesses to their substantial truth? In other words, are such names as Creeveroe[1] (Red Branch) given to the spot where the Red Branch heroes have been always represented as residing; or Ardee (Ferdia's Ford) where Cuchulain fought his great single fight with that champion—are these to be accepted as collateral evidence of the Red Branch heroes of Ferdia and of Cuchulain? Are See-finn (Finn's seat) or Rath Coole[2] (Cool's rath) to be accepted as proving the existence of Finn and his father Cool?

In my opinion no stress, or very little, can be laid upon the argument from topography, which weighed so heavily with Keating, O'Donovan, and O'Curry, for if it is admitted at all it proves too much. If it proves the objective existence of Finn[Pg 58] and of Cuchulain, so does it that of Dana, "the mother of the gods," and of divinities by the score. Besides the Gaels brought their topographical nomenclature with them to Alba, and places named from Finn and the Fenians, are nearly as plentiful there as in Ireland. Wherever the early Gaels went they took with them their heroic legends, and wherever they settled place-names relating to their legends which were so much a part of their intellectual life, grew up round them too. Something of the same kind may be seen in Greece—a land which presents so many and so striking analogies to that of the Gael; for wherever a Grecian colony settled, east or west, it was full of memorials of the legendary past, and Jasonia, or temples of Jason, and other memorials of the voyage of the Argonauts, are to be found from Abdêra to Thrace, eastward along the coast of the Euxine and in the heart of Armenia and Media, just as memorials of the flight of Diarmuid and of Gráinne from before Finn mac Cool may be found wherever the Gael are settled in Ireland, in Scotland, or the Isles.

Having come to the conclusion that Irish topography is useless for proving the genuineness of past history, let us look at Irish genealogy. When the Mac Carthys, descendants of Mac Carthy Mór, trace themselves through Oilioll Olum, king of Ireland in the second century, to Eber Finn, son of Milesius; when the O'Briens of Thomond trace themselves to the same through Oilioll Olum's second son; when the O'Carrolls of Ely trace themselves to the same through Cian, the third son; when the O'Neills trace themselves back through Niall of the Nine Hostages, and Conn of the Hundred Battles to Eremon, son of Milesius; when the O'Driscolls trace themselves to Ith, who was uncle of Milesius; when the Magennises trace themselves through Conall Cearnach, the Red Branch hero, back to Ir, the son of Milesius; and when every sept and name and family and clan in Ireland fit in, and even in our oldest manuscripts have always fitted in, each in its own place, with universally mutual acknowledgment and unanimity, each man carefully[Pg 59] counting his ancestors through their hundredfold ramifications, and tracing them back first to him from whom they get their surname, and next to him from whom they get their tribe name, and from thence to the founder of their house, who in his turn grafts on to one of the great stems (Eremonian, Eberian, Irian, or Ithian)[3]; and when not only political friendships and alliances, but the very holding of tribal lands, depended upon the strict registration and observance of these things—we ask again do such facts throw any light upon the credibility of early Irish history and early Irish records?

The whole intricate system of Irish genealogy, jealously preserved from the very first, as all Irish literature goes to show,[4] played so important a part in Irish national history and in Irish social life, and is at the same time so intimately bound up with the people's traditions and literature, and throws so much light upon the past, that it will be well to try to get a grip of this curious and intricate subject, so important for all who would attempt to arrive at any knowledge of the life and feelings of the Irish and Scottish Gael, and upon which so much formerly depended in the history and alliances of both races.

All Milesian families trace themselves, as I have said, to one or other of the three sons of Milesius, who were Eremon, Eber, and Ir, or to his uncle Ith, who landed in Ireland at any time between[Pg 60] 1700 and 800 years before Christ according to Irish computation.[5] But while they all trace themselves back to this point, it is to be observed that long before they reach it, in each of the four branches, some place in the long row of ancestors is arrived at, some name occurs, in which all or most of the various genealogies meet, and upon which all the branch lines converge. Thus in the Eberian families it is found that they all spring from the three sons of Oilioll [Ul-yul] Olum, who according to all the annals lived in the second century—in this Oilioll all the Eberian families converge.

Again all, or nearly all, the Irians trace themselves to either Conall Cearnach or Fergus Mac Roy, the great Red Branch champions who lived in the North shortly before the birth of Christ.

The tribes of the Ithians, the least numerous and least important of the four, seem to meet in Mac Con, king of Ireland, who lived in the second century, and who is the hero of the saga called the Battle of Moy Mochruime, where Art, son of Conn of the Hundred Battles, was slain.

In the line of Eremon only, the greatest of the four, do we find two pedigrees which meet at points considerably antecedent to the birth of Christ, for the Dál Riada of Scotland join the same stem as the O'Neills as much as 390 years before Christ, and the O'Cavanaghs at a still more remote period, in the reign of Ugony Mór. But setting aside these two families we find that all the other great reigning houses, as the Mac Donnells of Antrim, Maguires of Fermanagh, O'Kellys of Connacht, and others, either meet in the third century in Cairbré of the Liffey, son of King Cormac mac Art, and grandson of Conn of the Hundred Battles; or else like the O'Neills of Tyrone, O'Donnells of Tirconnell, O'Dogherties of Inishowen, O'Conors of Connacht, O'Flaherties of Galway, they meet in a still later progenitor—the father of Niall of the Nine Hostages.

[Pg 61]

It will be best to examine here some typical Irish pedigree that we may more readily understand the system in its simplest form, and see how families branch from clans, and clans from stems. Let us take, then, the first pedigree of those given at the end of the Forus Feasa, that of Mac Carthy Mór, and study it as a type.

This pedigree begins with Donal, who was the first of the Mac Carthys to be created Earl of Clancare, or Clancarthy, in 1565. Starting from him the names of all his ancestors are traced back to Eber, son of Milesius. Passing over his five immediate ancestors, we come to the sixth. It was he who built the monastery of Irriallach on the Lake of Killarney. The seventh ancestor was Donal, from whose brother Donagh come the families of Ard Canachta and Croc Ornachta. The tenth was Donal Roe, from whom come the Clan Donal Roe, and from whose brother, Dermot of Tralee, come the family of Mac Finneens. The eleventh was Cormac Finn, from whom come also the Mac Carthys of Duhallow and the kings of Desmond; while from his brother Donal come the Mac Carthys Riabhach, or Grey Mac Carthys. The thirteenth was Dermot of Kill Baghani, from whom come the Clan Teig Roe na Sgarti. The fourteenth was Cormac of Moy Tamhnaigh, from whose brother Teig come the Mac Auliffes of Cork. The fifteenth was Muireadach, who was the first of the line to assume the surname of Mac Carthy, which he did from his father Carthach, from whom all the Síol Carthaigh [Sheeol Caurhy], or Seed of Carthach, including the Mac Fineens, Mac Auliffes, etc., are descended. The seventeenth was Saerbhrethach, from whose brother Murrough spring the sept of the O'Callaghans. The nineteenth was Callaghan of Cashel, king of Munster, celebrated in Irish romance for his warfare with the Danes. The twenty-third was Snedgus, who had a brother named Fogartach, from whose son Finguini sprang the Muinntir Finguini, or Finguini's People. The twenty-eighth was Falbi Flann, who was king of Munster from 622 to 633, from whose brother[Pg 62] Finghin sprang the sept of the O'Sullivans. The thirty-second was Angus, from one son of whom Eochaidh [Yohy] Finn are descended the O'Keefes; while from another son Enna, spring the O'Dalys of Munster—he was the first king of Munster who became a Christian, and he was slain in 484. The thirty-fourth was Arc, king of Munster, from whose son Cas, spring the following septs: The O'Donoghue Mór—from whom branched off the O'Donoghue of the Glen—O'Mahony Finn and O'Mahony Roe, i.e., the White and Red O'Mahonys, and O'Mahony of Ui Floinn Laei, and O'Mahony of Carbery, also O'Mullane[6] and O'Cronin; while from his other son, "Cairbré the Pict," sprang the O'Moriarties, and from Cairbré's grandson came the O'Garvans. The thirty-sixth ancestor was Olild Flann Beg, king of Munster, who had a son from whom are descended the sept of O'Donovan, and the O'Coiléains, or Collinses. And a grandson from whom spring the O'Meehans, O'Hehirs, and the Mac Davids of Thomond. The thirty-seventh, Fiachaidh, was well known in Irish romance; the thirty-eighth was Eoghan, or Owen Mór, from whom all the septs of the Eoghanachts, or Eugenians of Munster come, who embrace every family and sept hitherto mentioned, and many more. They are carefully to be distinguished from the Dalcassians, who are descended from Owen's second son Cas. It was the Dalcassians who, with Brian Boru at their head, preserved Ireland from the Danes and won Clontarf. For many centuries the history of Munster is largely composed of the struggles between these two septs for the kingship. The thirty-ninth is the celebrated Oilioll [Ulyul] Olum, king of Munster, whose wail of grief over his son Owen is a stock piece in Irish MSS. He is a son of the great Owen, better known as Mogh Nuadhat, or Owen the Splendid, who wrested half the[Pg 63] kingdom from Conn of the Hundred Battles, so that to this very day Connacht and Ulster together are called in Irish Conn's Half, and Munster and Leinster Owen's Half. The forty-third ancestor is Dergthini, who is known in Irish history as one of the three heirs of the royal houses in Ireland, whom I have mentioned before as having been saved from massacre when the Free Clans or Nobility were cut to pieces by the Unfree or Rent-paying tribes at Moy Cro—an event which is nearly contemporaneous with the birth of Christ. Hitherto there have been nine kings of Munster in this line, but not a single king of Ireland, but the forty-ninth ancestor, Duach Dalta Degadh, also called Duach Donn, attains this high honour, and takes his place among the Reges Hiberniæ about 172 years before Christ, according to the "Four Masters." After this a rather bald catalogue of thirty-six more ancestors are reckoned, no fewer than twenty-four being counted among the kings of Ireland, and at last, at the eighty-sixth ancestor from the Earl of Clancarthy, the genealogy finds its long-delayed goal in Eber, son of Milesius.

It will be seen from this typical pedigree of the Mac Carthys—any other great family would have answered our purpose just as well—how families spring from clans and clans from septs—to use an English word—and septs from a common stem; and how the nearness or remoteness of some common ancestor bound a number of clans in nearer or remoter alliance to one another. Thus all septs of the great Eberian stem had some slight and faint tie of common ancestry connecting them, which comes out most strongly in their jealousy of the Eremonian or northern stem, but was not sufficient to produce a political alliance amongst themselves. Of a much stronger nature was the tie which bound those families descended from Eoghan Mór, the thirty-eighth ancestor from the first earl. These went under the name of the Eoghanachts, and held fairly together, always opposing the Dalcassians, descended from Cas. But when it came to the adoption of a surname, as it did in the eleventh[Pg 64] century, those who descended from the ancestor who gave them their name, were bound to one another by the common ties or a nearer kinship and a common surname.

It will be seen at a glance from the above pedigree, how, taking the Mac Carthys as a stem, and starting from the first earl, the Mac Finneens join that stem at the eleventh ancestor from the earl, the Mac Auliffes at the fifteenth, the O'Callaghans at the eighteenth, the O'Sullivans at the twenty-ninth, the O'Keefes at the thirty-second, the O'Dalys[7] of Munster at the thirty-second, the O'Donoghues, O'Mahonys, O'Mullanes, O'Cronins, O'Garvans, and Moriartys at the thirty-fourth, the O'Donovans, Collinses, O'Meehans, O'Hehirs, and Mac Davids at the thirty-sixth.

Now each of these had his own genealogy equally carefully kept by his own ancestral bardic historian. If, for instance, the Mac Carthys could boast of nine kings of Munster amongst them, the O'Keefes could boast of ten; and an O'Keefe reckoning from Donal Óg, who was slain at the battle of Aughrim, would say that the Mac Carthys joined his line at the thirty-sixth ancestor from Donal.

All the Gaels of Ireland of the free tribes trace back their ancestry, as we have seen, to one or other of the four great stocks of Erimon, Eber, Ir, and Ith. Of these the EREMONIANS were by far the greatest, the EBERIANS coming next. The O'Neills, O'Donnells, O'Conors, O'Cavanaghs, and almost all the leading families of the north, the west, and the east were Erimonian; the O'Briens, Mac Carthys, and most of the leading tribes of the south were Eberians.[8] It was[Pg 65] nearly always a member of one or the other of these two stems who held the high-kingship of Ireland, but so much more powerful were the Eremonians within historical times, that the Southern Eberians, although well able to maintain themselves in the south, yet found themselves absolutely unable to place more than one or two[9] high-kings upon the throne of All-Ireland, from the coming of Patrick, until the great Brian Boru once more broke the spell and wrested the monarchy from the Erimonians. The Irians gave few kings to Ireland, and the Ithians still less—only three or four, and these in very early, perhaps mythic, times.

If now we trace the O'Neill pedigree back as we did that of the Mac Carthys, we find the great Shane O'Neill who fought Elizabeth, traced back step by step to the perfectly historical character Niall of the Nine Hostages, son of Eochaidh Muigh-mheadhoin [Mwee-va-on], who was grandson of Fiachaidh Sreabhtine [Sravtinna], son of Cairbré of the Liffey, son of the great Cormac Mac Art, and grandson or Conn of the Hundred Battles, all of whom are celebrated in history and endless romance; and thence through a list containing in all forty-four High-kings of Ireland back to EREMON, son of Milesius, brother of that Eber from whom the Mac Carthys spring, and from whom he is the eighty-eighth in descent. The O'Donnells join his line at the thirty-sixth ancestor, the O'Gallaghers at the thirty-second, the O'Conor Don and O'Conor Roe and the O'Flaherty at the thirty-seventh. We find too, on examining these pedigrees, the most curious inter-mixtures and crossing of families. Thus, for instance, the two families of O'Crowley[Pg 66] in Munster spring from the Mac Dermot Roe of Connacht, who, with the Mac Donogh, sprang from Mac Dermot of Moylurg in Roscommon, ancestor of the prince of Coolavin; while the O'Gara, former lord of Coolavin in the same county, to whom the "Four Masters" dedicated their annals, was of southern Eberian stock.

The great warriors of the Red Branch, the men of the original kingdom of Uladh [Ulla, i.e., Ulster], were of the third great stock, the IRIANS or race of Ir,[10] but they are perhaps better known as the Clanna Rudhraighe [Rury] or Rudricians, so named from Rudhraighe, a great monarch of Ireland who lived nearly three hundred years before Christ, or as Ulidians because they represented the ancient province of Uladh. But the Three Collas, grandsons of Cairbré of the Liffey, who was himself great-grandson of Conn of the Hundred Battles, and of course of the Eremonian stock, overthrew the Irians in the year 332, and burned their capital, Emania. The Irians were thus driven out by the Eremonians, and forced back into the present counties of Down and Antrim, where they continued to maintain their independence. So bitterly, however, did they resent the treatment they had received at the hands of the Eremonians, and so deeply did the burning of Emania continue to rankle in their hearts, that after a period of nearly 900 years they are said to have stood sullenly aloof from the other Irish, and to have refused to make common cause with them against the Normans at the battle of Downpatrick in 1260, where the prince of the O'Neills was slain.[11] So powerful, on the other hand, did the idea of race-connection remain, that we find one of the bards so late as the sixteenth[Pg 67] century urging a political combination and alliance between the descendants of the Three Collas who had burned Emania over twelve hundred years before, and who were then represented by the Maguires of Fermanagh, the Mac Mahons of Oriel[12] and the far-off O'Kellys of Ui Máine[13] [Ee maana].

As for the fourth great stock, the ITHIANS,[14] they were gradually pushed aside by the Eberians of the south, as the Irians had been by the Eremonians of the north, and driven into the islands and coasts of West Munster. Yet curiously enough the northern Dukes of Argyle and the Campbells and MacAllans of Scotland spring from them. Their chief tribes in Ireland were known as the Corca Laidhi [Corka-lee]; these were the pirate O'Driscolls and their correlatives, but they were pushed so hard by the Mac Carthys, O'Mahonys, and other Eberians, that in the year 1615 their territory was confined to a few parishes, and twenty years later even these are found paying tribute to the Mac Carthy Reagh. There is one very remarkable peculiarity about their genealogies, which is, that, though they trace themselves with great apparent, and no doubt real, accuracy back to Mac Con, monarch of Ireland and contemporary with Oilioll Olum in the end of the second century, yet from that point back to Milesius a great number of generations (some twenty or so) are missing, and no genealogist, so far as I know, in any of the books of pedigrees which I have consulted, has attempted to supply them by filling them up with a barren list of names, as has been done in the other three stems.[15]

[Pg 68]

Let us now consider how far these genealogies tend to establish the authenticity of our early history, saga, and literature. The first plain and obvious objection to them is this—that genealogies which trace themselves back to Adam must be untrue inventions.

We grant it.

But all Gaelic genealogies meet, as we have shown in Milesius or his uncle, Ith. Strike off all that long tale or pre-Milesian names connecting him with Adam, and count them as a late excrescence—a mixture of pagan myth and Christian invention added to the rest for show. This leaves us only the four stems to deal with.

The next objection is that pedigrees which trace themselves back to the landing of the Milesians—a date in the computation of which Irish annalists themselves differ by a few hundred years—must also be untrue, especially as their own annalist, Tighearnach, has expressly said that all their history prior to about 300 B.C. is uncertain.

We grant this also.

What, then, remains?

This remains—namely the points in each of the four great race stems, in which all or the most of the leading tribes and families belonging to that stem converge, and, as we have seen, all of these with a few exceptions take place within reach of the historical period. In the lines of EBER and of ITH, this point is at the close of the second century; in the race of IR it is about the time of Christ's birth,[16] and in the fourth and[Pg 69] perhaps most important stem, that of EREMON, the two main points of convergence are in the historical Niall of the Nine Hostages, who came to the throne in 356, and in Cairbré of the Liffey, who became High-king in 267.[17]

[Pg 70]

CHAPTER VII

DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE

We must now consider whether Irish genealogies were really traced or not to those points which I have mentioned. Is there any documentary evidence in support of such an assertion?

There is certainly some such evidence, and we shall proceed to examine it.

In the Leabhar na h-Uidhre [Lowar na Heera], or Book of the Dun Cow, the existing manuscript of which was transcribed about the year 1100, in the Book of Leinster, transcribed about fifty years later, in the Book of Ballymote and in the Book of Lecan, frequent reference is made to an ancient book now lost called the Cin or Codex of Drom-sneachta. This book, or a copy of it, existed down to the beginning of the seventeenth century, for Keating quotes from it in his history, and remarks at the same time, "and it was before the coming of Patrick to Ireland the author of that book existed."[1] This evidence of Keating might be brushed aside as an exaggeration did it stand alone, but it does not, for in a partially effaced memorandum in the Book of Leinster, transcribed from older books about the year 1150, we read: "[Ernin, son of][Pg 71] Duach,[2] son of the king of Connacht, an ollav and a prophet and a professor in history and a professor in wisdom; it was he that collected the genealogies and histories of the men of Erin into one, and that is the Cin Droma-sneachta." Now there were only two Duachs according to our annals, one of these was great-grandson of Niall of the Nine Hostages, and of course a pagan, who died in 379; the other, who was an ancestor of the O'Flaherties, died one hundred and twenty years later. It was Duach the pagan, whose second son was Ernin; the other had only one son, whose name was Senach. If O'Curry has read the half-effaced word correctly, then the book may have been, as Keating says it was, written before St. Patrick's coming, and it contained, as the various references to it show, a repertoire of genealogies collected by the son of a man who died in 379; this man, too, being great-grandson of that Niall of the Nine Hostages in whose son so large a number of the Eremonian genealogies converge.[3]

There are many considerations which lead me to believe that Irish genealogical books were kept from the earliest introduction of the art of writing, and kept with greater accuracy, perhaps, than any other records of the past whatsoever. The chiefest of these is the well-known fact that, under the tribal system, no one possessed lawfully any portion of the soil inhabited by his tribe if he were not of the same race with his chief. Consequently even those of lowest rank in the tribe traced and recorded their pedigree with as much care as did the highest, for "it was from his own genealogy each man of the tribe, poor as well as rich, held the charter of his civil state, his right of property in the cantred in which he was[Pg 72] born."[4] All these genealogies were entered in the local books of each tribe and were preserved in the verses of the hereditary poets. There was no incentive to action among the early Irish so stimulative as a remembrance of their pedigree. It was the same among the Welsh, and probably among all tribes of Celtic blood. We find the witty but unscrupulous Giraldus, in the twelfth century, saying of his Welsh countrymen that every one of them, even of the common people, observes the genealogy of his race, and not only knows by heart his grandfathers and great-grandfathers, but knows all his ancestors up to the sixth or seventh generation,[5] or even still further, and promptly repeats his genealogy as Rhys, son of Griffith, son of Rhys, son of Teudor, etc.[6]

The poet, Cuan O'Lochain, who died in the year 1024, gives a long account of the Saltair of Tara now lost, the compilation of which he ascribes to Cormac mac Art, who came to the throne in 227,[7] and in which he says the synchronisms and chronology of all the kings were written. The Book of Ballymote too quotes from an ancient book, now lost, called the Book of the Uachongbhail, to the effect that "the synchronisms and genealogies and succession of their kings and monarchs, their battles, their contests, and their antiquities[Pg 73] from the world's beginning down to that time were written in it, and this is the Saltair of Tara, which is the origin and fountain of the historians of Erin from that period down to this time." This may not be convincing proof that Cormac mac Art wrote the Saltair, but it is convincing proof that what were counted as the very earliest books were filled with genealogies.

The subject of tribal genealogy upon which the whole social fabric depended was far too important to be left without a check in the hands of tribal historians, however well-intentioned. And this check was afforded by the great convention or Féis, which took place triennially at Tara,[8] whither the historians had to bring their books that under the scrutiny of the jealous eyes of rivals they might be purged of whatever could not be substantiated, "and neither law nor usage nor historic record was ever held as genuine until it had received such approval, and nothing that disagreed with the Roll of Tara could be respected as truth."[9]

"It was," says Duald Mac Firbis[10]—himself the author of probably the greatest book of genealogies ever written, speaking about the chief tribal historians of Ireland, "obligatory on every one of them who followed it to purify the profession"; and he adds very significantly, "Along with these [historians] the judges of Banba [Ireland] used to be in like manner preserving the history, for a man could not be a judge without being a historian, and he is not a historian who is not a judge in the BRETHADH NIMHEDH,[11] that is the last book in the study of the Shanachies and of the judges themselves."

[Pg 74]

The poets and historians "were obliged to be free from theft, and killing, and satirising, and adultery, and everything that would be a reproach to their learning." Mac Firbis, who was the last working historian of a great professional family, puts the matter nobly and well.

"Any Shanachie," he says, "whether an ollav or the next in rank, or belonging to the order at all, who did not preserve these rules, lost half his income and his dignity according to law, and was subject to heavy penalties besides, so that it is not to be supposed that there is in the world a person who would not prefer to tell the truth, if he had no other reason than the fear of God and the loss of his dignity and his income: and it is not becoming to charge partiality upon these elected historians [of the nation]. However, if unworthy people did write falsehood, and attributed it to a historian, it might become a reproach to the order of historians if they were not on their guard, and did not look to see whether it was out of their prime books of authority that those writers obtained their knowledge. And that is what should be done by every one, both by the lay scholar and the professional historian—everything of which they have a suspicion, to look for it, and if they do not find it confirmed in good books, to note down its doubtfulness,[12] along with it, as I myself do to certain races hereafter in this book, and it is thus that the historians are freed from the errors of others, should these errors be attributed to them, which God forbid."

I consider it next to impossible for any Gaelic pedigree to have been materially tampered with from the introduction of the art of writing, because tribal jealousies alone would have prevented it, and because each stem of the four races was connected at some point with every other stem, the whole clan system being inextricably intertwined, and it was necessary for all the various tribal genealogies to agree, in order that each branch, sub-branch, and family might fit, each in its own place.

I have little doubt that the genealogy of O'Neill, for instance, which traces him back to the father of Niall of the[Pg 75] Nine Hostages who came to the throne in 356 is substantially correct. Niall, it must be remembered, was father of Laoghaire [Leary], who was king when St. Patrick arrived, by which time, if not before, the art of writing was known in Ireland. À fortiori, then, we may trust the pedigrees of the O'Donnells and the rest who join that stem a little later on.

If this be acknowledged we may make a cautious step or two backwards. No one, so far as I know, has much hesitation in acknowledging the historic character of that King Laoghaire whom St. Patrick confronted, nor of his father Niall of the Nine Hostages. But if we go so far, it wants very little to bring us in among the Fenians themselves, and the scenes connected with them and with Conn of the Hundred Battles; for Niall's great-grandfather was that Fiachaidh who was slain by the Three Collas—those who burnt Emania and destroyed the Red Branch—and his father is Cairbré of the Liffey, who overthrew the Fenians, and his father again is the great Cormac son of Art, son of Conn of the Hundred Battles who divided the kingdom with Owen Mór. But it is from the three grandsons of this Owen Mór the Eberians come, and from their half-brother come the Ithians, so that up to this point I think Irish genealogies may be in the main accepted. Even the O'Kavanaghs and their other correlations, who do not join the stem of Eremon till between 500 or 600 years before Christ, yet pass through Enna Cennsalach, king of Leinster, a perfectly historical character mentioned several times in the Book of Armagh,[13] who slew the father of Niall of the Nine Hostages; and I believe that, however we may account for the strange fact that these septs join the Eremonian stem so many hundreds of years before the O'Neills and the others, that up to this point their genealogy too may be trusted.

[Pg 76]

If this is the case, and if it is true that every Gael belonging to the Free Clans of Ireland could trace his pedigree with accuracy back to the fourth, third, or even second century, it affords a strong support to Irish history, and in my opinion considerably heightens the credibility of our early annals, and renders the probability that Finn mac Cool and the Red Branch heroes were real flesh and blood, enormously greater than before. It will also put us on our guard against quite accepting such sweeping generalisations as those of Skene, when he says that the entire legendary history of Ireland prior to the establishment of Christianity in the fifth century partakes largely of a purely artificial character. We must not forget that while no Irish genealogy is traced to the De Danann tribes, who were undoubtedly gods, yet the ancestor of the Dalcassians—Cormac Cas, Oilioll Olum's son—is said to have married Ossian's daughter.

[Pg 77]

CHAPTER VIII

CONFUSION BETWEEN GODS AND MEN

Of that part of every Irish pedigree which runs back from the first century to Milesius nothing can be laid down with certainty, nor indeed can there be any absolute certainty in affirming that Irish pedigrees from the eleventh to the third century are reliable—we have only an amount of cumulative evidence from which we may draw such a deduction with considerable confidence. The mere fact that these pedigrees are traced back a thousand years further through Irish kings and heroes, and end in a son of Milesius, need not in the least affect—as in popular estimation it too often does—the credibility of the last seventeen hundred years, which stands upon its own merits.

On the contrary, such a continuation is just what we should expect. In the Irish genealogies the sons of Milesius occupy the place that in other early genealogies is held by the gods. And the sons of Milesius were possibly the tutelary gods of the Gael. We have seen how one of them was so, at least in folk belief, and was addressed in semi-seriousness as still living and reigning even in the last century.

All the Germanic races looked upon themselves as descended from gods. The Saxon, Anglian, Danish, Norwegian, and[Pg 78] Swedish kings were traced back either to Woden or to some of his companions or sons.[1] It was the same with the Greeks, to whom the Celts bear so close a similitude. Their Herakleids, Asklepiads, Æakids, Neleids, and Daedalids, are a close counterpart to our Eremonians, Eberians, Ithians, and Irians, and in each case all the importance was attached to the primitive eponymous hero or god from whom they sprang. Without him the whole pedigree became uninteresting, unfinished, headless. These beliefs exercised full power even upon the ablest and most cultured Greeks. Aristotle and Hippocratês, for instance, considered themselves descended from Asklêpius, Thucidydes from Æakus, and Socrates from Daedalus; just as O'Neill and O'Donnell did from Eremon, O'Brien from Eber, and Magennis from Ir. It was to the divine or heroic fountain heads of the race, not so much as to the long and mostly barren list of names which led up to it, that the real importance was attached. It is not in Ireland alone that we see mythology condensing into a dated genealogy. The same thing has happened in Persian history, and the history of Denmark by Saxo Grammaticus affords many such instances. In Greece the Neleid family of Pylus traced their origin to Neptune, the Lacedæmonian kings traced theirs to Cadmus and Danaüs, and Hekatæus of Miletus was the fifteenth descendant of a god.

Again we meet with in Teutonic and Hellenic mythology the same difficulty that meets us in our own—that of distinguishing gods from heroes and heroes from men. The legends of the Dagda and of Angus of the Boyne and the Tuatha De Danann, of Tighearnmas and the Fomorians, of Lugh the Long-handed and the children of Tuireann—all evidently mythologic—were treated in the same manner, recited by the same tongues, and regarded with the same unwavering belief, as the history of Conor mac Nessa and Déirdre, of Cuchulain[Pg 79] and Mève, or that of Conn of the Hundred Battles, Owen Mór, Finn mac Cool, and the Fenians. The early Greek, in the same way, treated the stories of Apollo and Artemis, of Arês and Aphroditê, just as he did those of Diomede and Helen, Meleager and Althæa, Achilles, or the voyage of the Argo. All were in a primitive and uncritical age received with the same unsuspicious credulity, and there was no hard-and-fast line drawn between gods and men. Just as the Mórrígan, the war-goddess, has her eye dashed out by Cuchulain, so do we find in Homer gods wounded by heroes. Thus, too, Apollo is condemned to serve Admetus, and Hercules is sold as a slave to Omphalê. Herodotus himself confesses that he is unable to determine whether a certain Thracian god Zalmoxis, was a god or a man,[2] and he finds the same difficulty regarding Dionysus and Pan; while Plutarch refuses to determine whether Janus was a god or a king;[3] and Herakleitus the philosopher, confronted by the same difficulty, made the admirable mot that men were "mortal gods," gods were "immortal men."[4]

In our literature, although the fact does not always appear distinctly, the Dagda, Angus Óg, Lugh the Long-handed, Ogma, and their fellows are the equivalents of the immortal gods, while certainly Cuchulain and Conor and probably Curigh Mac Daire, Conall Cearnach, and the other famous Red Branch chiefs, whatever they may have been in reality, are the equivalent of the Homeric heroes, that is to say, believed to have been epigoni of the gods, and therefore greater[Pg 80] than ordinary human beings; while just as in Greek story there are the cycles of the war round Thebes, the voyage of the Argo the fate of Œdipus, etc., so we have in Irish numerous smaller groups of epic stories—now unfortunately mostly lost or preserved in digests—which, leaving out the Cuchulain and Fenian cycles, centre round such minor characters as Macha, who founded Emania, Leary Lore, Labhraidh [Lowry] the Mariner, and others.

That the Irish gods die in both saga and annals like so many human beings, in no wise militates against the supposition of their godhead. Even the Greek did not always consider his gods as eternal. A study of comparative mythology teaches that gods are in their original essence magnified men, and subject to all men's changes and chances. They are begotten and born like men. They eat, sleep, feel sickness, sorrow, pain, like men. "Like men," says Grimm, "they speak a language, feel passions, transact affairs, are clothed and armed, possess dwellings and utensils." Being man-like in these things, they are also man-like in their deaths. They are only on a greater scale than we. "This appears to me," says Grimm,[5] "a fundamental feature in the faith of the heathen, that they allowed to their gods not an unlimited and unconditional duration, but only a term of life far exceeding that of man." As their shape is like the shape of man only vaster, so are their lives like the lives of men only indefinitely longer. "With our ancestors [the Teutons]," said Grimm, "the thought of the gods being immortal retires into the background. The Edda never calls them 'eylifir' or 'ôdauðligir,' and their death is spoken of without disguise." So is it with us also. The Dagda dies, slain in the battle of North Moytura; the three "gods of the De Danann" die at the instigation of Lugh; and the great Lugh himself, from whom Lugdunum, now Lyons, takes its name, and to whom early Celtic inscriptions are found, shares the same fate. Manannán is[Pg 81] slain, so is Ogma, and so are many more. And yet though recorded as slain they do not wholly disappear. Manannán came back to Bran riding in his chariot across the Ocean,[6] and Lugh makes his frequent appearances amongst the living.

[Pg 82]

CHAPTER IX

DRUIDISM

Although Irish literature is full of allusions to the druids it is extremely difficult to know with any exactness what they were. They are mentioned from the earliest times. The pre-Milesian races, the Nemedians and Fomorians, had their druids, who worked mutual spells against each other. The Tuatha De Danann had innumerable druids amongst them, who used magic. The invading Milesians had three druids with them in their ships, Amergin the poet and two others. In fact, druids are mentioned in connection with all early Irish fiction and history, from the first colonising of Ireland down to the time of the saints. It seems very doubtful, however, whether there existed in Ireland as definitely established an order of druids as in Britain and on the Continent.[1][Pg 83] They are frequently mentioned in Irish literature as ambassadors, spokesmen, teachers, and tutors. Kings were sometimes druids, so were poets. It is a word which seems to me to have been, perhaps from the first, used with great laxity and great latitude. The druids, so far as we can ascertain, do not seem to be connected with any positive rites or worship; still less do they appear to have been a regular priesthood, and there is not a shadow of evidence to connect them with any special worship as that of the sun or of fire. In the oldest saga-cycle the druid appears as a man of the highest rank and related to kings. King Conor's father was according to some—probably the oldest—accounts a druid; so was Finn mac Cool's grandfather.

Before the coming of St. Patrick there certainly existed images, or, as they are called by the ancient authorities, "idols" in Ireland, at which or to which sacrifice used to be offered, probably with a view to propitiating the earth-gods, possibly the Tuatha De Danann, and securing good harvests and abundant kine. From sacrificial rites spring, almost of necessity, a sacrificial caste, and this caste—the druids—had arrived at a high state of organisation in Gaul and Britain when observed by Cæsar, and did not hesitate to sacrifice whole hecatombs of human beings. "They think," said Cæsar, "that unless a man's life is rendered up for a man's life, the will of the immortal God cannot be satisfied, and they have sacrifices of this kind as a national institution."

There appears nothing, however, that I am aware of, to connect the druids in Ireland with human sacrifice, although such sacrifice appears to have been offered. The druids, however, appear to have had private idols of their own. We find a very minute account in the tenth-century glossary of King Cormac as to how a poet performed incantations with his[Pg 84] idols. The word "poet" is here apparently equivalent to druid, as the word "druid" like the Latin vates is frequently a synonym for "poet." Here is how the glossary explains the incantation called Imbas Forosnai:—

"This," says the ancient lexicographer, "describes to the poet whatsoever thing he wishes to discover,[2] and this is the manner in which it is performed. The poet chews a bit of the raw red flesh of a pig, a dog, or a cat, and then retires with it to his own bed behind the door,[3] where he pronounces an oration over it and offers it to his idol gods. He then invokes the idols, and if he has not received the illumination before the next day, he pronounces incantations upon his two palms and takes his idol gods unto him [into his bed] in order that he may not be interrupted in his sleep. He then places his two hands upon his two cheeks and falls asleep. He is then watched so that he be not stirred nor interrupted by any one until everything that he seeks be revealed to him at the end of a nomad,[4] or two or three, or as long as he continues at his offering, and hence it is that this ceremony is called Imbas, that is, the two hands upon him crosswise, that is, a hand over and a hand hither upon his cheeks. And St. Patrick prohibited this ceremony, because it is a species of Teinm Laeghdha,[5] that is, he declared that any one who performed it should have no place in heaven or on earth."

These were apparently the private images of the druid himself which are spoken of, but there certainly existed public idols in pagan Ireland before the evangelisation of the island. St. Patrick himself, in his "Confession," asserts that before his coming the Irish worshipped idols—idola et immunda—and we have preserved to us more than one account of the great gold-covered image which was set up in Moy Slaught[6] [i.e., the[Pg 85] Plain of Adoration], believed to be in the present county of Cavan. It stood there surrounded by twelve lesser idols ornamented with brass, and may possibly have been regarded as a sun-god ruling over the twelve seasons. It was called the Crom Cruach or Cenn Cruach,[7] and certain Irish tribes considered it their special tutelary deity. The Dinnseanchas, or explanation of the name of Moy Slaught, calls it "the King Idol of Erin," "and around him were twelve idols made of stones, but he was of gold. Until Patrick's advent he was the god of every folk that colonised Ireland. To him they used to offer the firstlings of every issue and the chief scions of every clan;" and the ancient poem in the Book of Leinster declares that it was "a high idol with many fights, which was named the Cromm Cruaich."[8]

The poem tells us that "the brave Gaels used to worship it, and would never ask from it satisfaction as to their portion of the hard world without paying it tribute."

[Pg 86]

"He was their God,[9]
The withered Cromm with many mists,
The people whom he shook over every harbour,
The everlasting kingdom they shall not have.

To him without glory
Would they kill their piteous wailing offspring,
With much wailing and peril
To pour their blood around Cromm Cruaich.

Milk and corn
They would ask from him speedily
In return for one-third of their healthy issue,
Great was the horror and scare of him.

To him
Noble Gaels would prostrate themselves,
From the worship of him, with many manslaughters
The Plain is called Moy Sleacht.

    *    *    *    *    *

In their ranks (stood)
Four times three stone idols
To bitterly beguile the hosts,
The figure of Cromm was made of gold.

Since the rule
Of Heremon,[10] the noble man of grace,
There was worshipping of stones
Until the coming of good Patrick of Macha [Ardmagh]."

There is not the slightest reason to distrust this evidence as far as the existence of Crom Cruach goes.

[Pg 87]

"This particular tradition," says Mr. Nutt, "like the majority of those contained in it [the Dinnseanchas] must be of pre-Christian origin. It would have been quite impossible for a Christian monk to have invented such a story, and we may accept it as a perfectly genuine bit of information respecting the ritual side of insular Celtic religion."[11]

St. Patrick overthrew this idol, according both to the poem in the Book of Leinster and the early lives of the saint. The life says that when St. Patrick cursed Crom the ground opened and swallowed up the twelve lesser idols as far as their heads, which, as Rhys acutely observes, shows that when the early Irish lives of the saint were written the pagan sanctuary had so fallen into decay, that only the heads of the lesser idols remained above ground, while he thinks that it was at this time from its bent attitude and decayed appearance the idol was called Crom, "the Stooper."[12] There is, however, no[Pg 88] apparent or recorded connection between this idol and the druids, nor do the druids appear to have fulfilled the functions of a public priesthood in Ireland, and the Introduction to the Seanchas Mór, or ancient Book of the Brehon Laws, distinctly says that, "until Patrick came only three classes of persons were permitted to speak in public in Erin, a chronicler to relate events and to tell stories, a poet to eulogise and to satirise, and a Brehon to pass sentence from precedents and commentaries," thus noticeably omitting all mention of the druids as a public body.

The idol Crom with his twelve subordinates may very well have represented the sun, upon whom both season and crops and consequently the life both of man and beast depend. The gods to whom the early Irish seem to have sacrificed, were no doubt, as I think Mr. Nutt has shown, agricultural powers, the lords of life and growth, and with these the sun, who is at the root of all growth, was intimately connected, "the object of that worship was to promote increase, the theory of worship was—life for life."[13] That the Irish swore by the sun and the moon and the elements is certain; the oath is quoted in many places,[14][Pg 89] and St. Patrick appears to allude to sun-worship in that passage of his "Confession," where he says, "that sun which we see rising daily at His bidding for our sake, it will never reign, and its splendour will not last for ever, but those who adore it will perish miserably for all eternity:" this is also borne out by the passage in Cormac's Glossary of the images the pagans used to adore, "as, for instance, the form or figure of the sun on the altar."[15]

Another phase of the druidic character seems to have been that he was looked upon as an intermediary between man and the invisible powers. In the story which tells us how Midir the De Danann, carries off the king's wife, we are informed that the druid's counsel is sought as to how to recover her, which he at last is enabled to do "through his keys of science and Ogam," after a year's searching.

The druids are represented as carrying wands of yew, but there is nothing in Irish literature, so far as I am aware of, about their connection with the oak, from the Greek for which, δρῦς,[16] they are popularly supposed to derive their name. They used to be consulted as soothsayers upon the probable success of expeditions, as by Cormac mac Art, when he was thinking about extorting a double tribute from Munster,[17] and by Dáthi, the last pagan king of Ireland, when[Pg 90] setting out upon his expedition abroad; they took auguries by birds, they could cause magic showers and fires, they observed stars and clouds, they told lucky days,[18] they had ordeals of their own,[19] but, above all, they appear to have been tutors or teachers.

Another druidic practice which is mentioned in Cormac's Glossary is more fully treated of by Keating, in his account of the great pagan convention at Uisneach, a hill in Meath, "where the men of Ireland were wont to exchange their goods and their wares and other jewels." This convention was held in the month of May,

"And at it they were wont to make a sacrifice to the arch-god, whom they adored, whose name was Bél. It was likewise their usage to light two fires to Bél in every district in Ireland at this season, and to drive a pair of each herd of cattle that the district contained between these two fires, as a preservative, to guard them against all the diseases of that year. It is from that fire thus made that the day on which the noble feast of the apostles Peter and James is held has been called Bealtaine [in Scotch Beltane], i.e., Bél's fire."

Cormac, however, says nothing about a god named Bél—who, indeed, is only once mentioned elsewhere, so far as I know[20]—but explains the name as if it were Bil-tene, "goodly fire," from the fires which the druids made on that day through which to drive the cattle.[21]

[Pg 91]

Post-Christian accounts of the druids as a whole, and or individual druids differ widely. The notes on St. Patrick, in the Book of Armagh, present them in the worst possible light as wicked wizards and augurs and people of incantations,[22] and the Latin lives of the Saints nearly always call them "magi." Yet they are admitted to have been able to prophecy. King Laoghaire's [Leary's] druids prophesied to him three years before the arrival of Patrick that "adze-heads would come over a furious sea,"

"Their mantles hole-headed,
Their staves crook-headed,
Their tables in the east of their houses."[23]

In the lives of the early saints we find some of them on fair terms with the druids. Columcille's first teacher was a druid, whom his mother consulted about him. It is true that in the Lismore text he is called not a druid but a fáidh, i.e., vates or prophet, but this only confirms the close connection between druid, prophet, and teacher, for his proceedings are distinctly druidical, the account runs: "Now when the time for reading came to him the cleric went to a certain prophet[Pg 92] who abode in the land to ask him when the boy ought to begin. When the prophet had scanned the sky, he said 'Write an alphabet for him now.' The alphabet was written on a cake, and Columcille consumed the cake in this wise, half to the east of a water, and half to the west of a water. Said the prophet through grace of prophecy, 'So shall this child's territory be, half to the east of the sea, and half to the west of the sea.'"[24] Columcille himself is said to have composed a poem beginning, "My Druid is the son of God." Another druid prophesies of St. Brigit before she was born,[25] and other instances connecting the early saints with druids are to be found in their lives, which at least show that there existed a sufficient number of persons in early Christian Ireland who did not consider the druids wholly bad, but believed that they could prophecy, at least in the interests of the saints.

From what we have said, it is evident that there were always druids in Ireland, and that they were personages of great importance. But it is not clear that they were an organised body like the druids of Gaul,[26] or like the Bardic body in later times in Ireland, nor is it clear what their exact functions were, but they seem to have been teachers above everything else. It is clear, too, that the ancient Irish—at least in some cases—possessed and worshipped images. That they sacrificed to them, and even offered up human beings, is by no means so certain, the evidence for this resting upon the single passage in the Dinnseanchas, and the poem (in a modern style of metre) in the Book of Leinster, which we have just given, and which though it is evidence for the existence of the idol Crom Cruach, known to us already from other sources, may possibly have had the trait of human sacrifice added as a heightening touch by a Christian chronicler familiar with the[Pg 93] accounts of Moloch and Ashtarôth. The complete silence which, outside of these passages,[27] exists in all Irish literature as to a proceeding so terrifying to the popular imagination, seems to me a proof that if human sacrifice was ever resorted to at all, it had fallen into abeyance before the landing of the Christian missionaries.

[Pg 94]

CHAPTER X

THE IRISH ELYSIUM AND BELIEF IN REBIRTH

Cæsar, writing some fifty years before Christ about the Gauls and their Druids, tells his countrymen that one of the prime articles which they taught was that men's souls do not die—non interire animas—"but passed over after death from one into another," and their opinion is, adds Cæsar, that this doctrine "greatly tends to the arousing of valour, all fear of death being despised."[1] A few years later Diodorus Siculus wrote that one of their doctrines was "that the souls of men are undying, and that after finishing their term of existence they pass into another body," adding that at burials of the dead some actually cast letters addressed to their departed relatives upon the funeral pile, under the belief that the dead would read them in the next world. Timagenes, a Greek who wrote a history of Gaul now lost, Strabo, Valerius Maximus, Pomponius Mela, and Lucan[2] in his "Pharsalia," all have passages upon this vivid belief of the Gauls that the soul lived again. This doctrine must also have been current in Britain, where the Druidic teaching was, to use Cæsar's phrase,[Pg 95] "discovered, and thence brought into Gaul," and it would have been curious indeed if Ireland did not share in it.

There is, moreover, abundant evidence to show that the doctrine of metempsychosis was perfectly familiar to the pagan Irish, as may be seen in the stories of the births of Cuchulain, Etain, the Two Swineherds, Conall Cearnach, Tuan Mac Cairill, and Aedh Sláne.[3] But there is not, in our existing literature, any evidence that the belief was ever elevated into a philosophical doctrine of general acceptance, applicable to every one, still less that there was ever any ethical stress laid upon the belief in rebirth. It is only the mythological element in the belief in metempsychosis which has come down to us, and from which we ascertain that the pagan Irish believed that supernatural beings could become clothed in flesh and blood, could enter into women and be born again, could take different shapes and pass through different stages of existence, as fowls, animals, or men. What the actual doctrinal form of the familiar idea was, or how far it influenced the popular mind, we have no means of knowing. But as Mr. Nutt well remarks, "early Irish religion must have possessed some ritual, and what in default of an apter term must be styled philosophical as well as mythological elements. Practically the latter alone have come down to us, and that in a romantic rather than in a strictly mythical form. Could we judge Greek religion aright if fragments of Apollodorus or the 'Metamorphoses' were all that survived of the literature it inspired?"[4] The most that can be said upon the subject, then, is that the doctrine of rebirth was actually taught with a deliberate ethical purpose—that of making men brave, since on being slain in this life they passed into a new one—amongst the Celts of Gaul, that it must have been familiar to the Britons between whose Druids and those of Gaul so close a resemblance subsisted, and that the idea of rebirth which[Pg 96] forms part of half-a-dozen existing Irish sagas, was perfectly familiar to the Irish Gael, although we have no evidence that it was connected with any ritual or taught as a deliberate doctrine.

In reconstructing from our existing literature the beliefs and religion of our ancestors, we can only do so incompletely, and with difficulty, from passages in the oldest sagas and other antique fragments, mostly of pagan origin, from allusions in very early poems, from scanty notices in the annals, and from the lives of early saints. The relatively rapid conversion of the island to Christianity in the fifth century, and the enthusiasm with which the new religion was received, militated against any full transmission of pagan belief or custom. We cannot now tell whether all the ancient Irish were imbued with the same religious beliefs, or whether these varied—as they probably did—from tribe to tribe. Probably all the Celtic races, even in their most backward state, believed—so far as they had any persuasion on the subject at all—in the immortality of the soul. Where the souls of the dead went to, when they were not reincarnated, is not so clear. They certainly believed in a happy Other-World, peopled by a happy race, whither people were sometimes carried whilst still alive, and to gain which they either traversed the sea to the north-west, or else entered one of the Sidh [Shee] mounds, or else again dived beneath the water.[5] In all cases, however, whatever the mode of access, the result is much the same. A beautiful country is discovered[Pg 97] where a happy race free from care, sickness, and death, spend the smiling hours in simple, sensuous pleasures.

There is a graphic description of this Elysium in the "Voyage of Bran," a poem evidently pagan,[6] and embodying purely pagan conceptions. A mysterious female, an emissary from the lovely land, appears in Bran's household one day, when the doors were closed and the house full of chiefs and princes, and no one knew whence she came, and she chanted to them twenty-eight quatrains describing the delights of the pleasant country.

"There is a distant isle
Around which sea-horses glisten,
A fair course against the white-swelling surge,
Four feet uphold it.[7]

Feet of white bronze under it,
Glittering through beautiful ages.
Lovely land throughout the world's age
On which the many blossoms drop.

An ancient tree there is with blossoms
On which birds call to the Hours.
'Tis in harmony, it is their wont
To call together every Hour.

    *    *    *    *    *

[Pg 98]

Unknown is wailing or treachery
In the familiar cultivated land,
There is nothing rough or harsh,
But sweet music striking on the ear.

Without grief, without sorrow, without death,
Without any sickness, without debility,
That is the sign of Emain,
Uncommon, an equal marvel.

A beauty of a wondrous land
Whose aspects are lovely,
Whose view is a fair country,
Incomparable in its haze.

    *    *    *    *    *

The sea washes the wave against the land,
Hair of crystal drops from its mane.

Wealth, treasures of every hue,
Are in the gentle land, a beauty of freshness,
Listening to sweet music,
Drinking the best of wine.

Golden chariots on the sea plain
Rising with the tide to the sun,
Chariots of silver in the plain of sports
And of unblemished bronze.

    *    *    *    *    *

At sunrise there will come
A fair man illumining level lands,
He rides upon the fair sea-washed plain,
He stirs the ocean till it is blood.

    *    *    *    *    *

Then they row to the conspicuous stone
From which arise a hundred strains.

It sings a strain unto the host
Through long ages, it is not sad,
Its music swells with choruses of hundreds.
They look for neither decay nor death.

[Pg 99]

There will come happiness with health
To the land against which laughter peals.
Into Imchiuin [the very calm place] at every season,
Will come everlasting joy.

It is a day of lasting weather
That showers [down] silver on the land,
A pure-white cliff in the verge of the sea
Which from the sun receives its heat."

Manannán, the Irish Neptune, driving in a chariot across the sea, which to him was a flowery plain, meets Bran thereafter, and chants to him twenty-eight more verses about the lovely land of Moy Mell, "the Pleasant Plain," which the unknown lady had described, and they are couched in the same strain.

"Though [but] one rider is seen
In Moy Mell of many powers,
There are many steeds on its surface
Although thou seest them not.

    *    *    *    *    *

A beautiful game, most delightful
They play [sitting] at the luxurious wine,
Men and gentle women under a bush
Without sin, without crime.

    *    *    *    *    *

A wood with blossom and fruit,
On which is the vine's veritable fragrance;
A wood without decay, without defect,
On which are leaves of golden hue."

Then, prophesying of the death of Mongan, he sang—

"He will drink a drink from Loch Ló,
While he looks at the stream of blood;
The white hosts will take him under a wheel of clouds,
To the gathering where there is no sorrow."

I know of few things in literature comparable to this lovely description, at once so mystic and so sensuous, of the joys of[Pg 100] the other world. To my mind it breathes the very essence of Celtic glamour, and is shot through and through with the Celtic love of form, beauty, landscape, company, and the society of woman. How exquisite the idea of being transported from this world to an isle around which sea-horses glisten, where from trees covered with blossoms the birds call in harmony to the Hours, a land whose haze is incomparable! What a touch! Where hair of crystal drops from the mane of the wave as it washes against the land; where the chariots of silver and of bronze assemble on the plain of sports, in the country against which laughter peals, and the day of lasting weather showers silver on the land. And then to play sitting at the luxurious wine—

"Men and gentle women under a bush
Without sin, without crime!"

I verily believe there is no Gael alive even now who would not in his heart of hearts let drift by him the Elysiums of Virgil, Dante, and Milton to grasp at the Moy Mell of the unknown Irish pagan.

In another perhaps equally ancient story, that of the elopement of Connla, son of Conn of the Hundred Battles,[8] with a lady who is a denizen of this mysterious land, we find the unknown visitor giving nearly the same account of it as that given to Bran.

"Whence hast thou come, O Lady?" said the Druid.

"I have come," said she, "from the lands of the living in which there is neither death, nor sin, nor strife;[9] we enjoy perpetual feasts without anxiety, and benevolence without contention. A large Sidh [Shee, "fairy-mound"] is where we[Pg 101] dwell, so that it is hence we are called the Sidh [Shee] people."

The Druids appear, as I have already remarked, to have acted as intermediaries between the inhabitants of the other world and of this, and in the story of Connla one of them chants against the lady so that her voice was not heard, and he drives her away through his incantation. She comes back, however, at the end of a month, and again summons the prince.

"'Tis no lofty seat," she chanted, "upon which sits Connla amid short-lived mortals awaiting fearful death; the ever-living ones invite thee to be the ruler over the men of Tethra."

Conn of the Hundred Battles, who had overheard her speech, cried, "Call me the Druid; I see her tongue has been allowed her to-day [again]."

But she invisible to all save the prince replied to him—

"O Conn of the Hundred Battles, druidism is not loved, for little has it progressed to honour on the great Righteous Strand, with its numerous, wondrous, various families."

After that she again invites the prince to follow her, saying—

"There is another land which it were well to seek.
I see the bright sun is descending, though far off we shall reach it ere night.
'Tis the land that cheers the mind of every one that turns to me.
There is no race in it save only women and maidens."

The prince is overcome with longing. He leaps into her well-balanced, gleaming boat of pearl. Those who were left behind upon the strand "saw them dimly, as far as the sight of their eyes could reach. They sailed the sea away from them, and from that day to this have not been seen, and it is unknown where they went to."

In the fine story of Cuchulain's sick-bed,[10] in which though[Pg 102] the language of the text is not so ancient, the conceptions are equally pagan, the deserted wife of Manannán, the Irish Neptune, falls in love with the human warrior, and invites him to the other-world to herself, through the medium of an ambassadress. Cuchulain sends his charioteer Laeg along with this mysterious ambassadress, that he may bring him word again, to what kind of land he is invited. Laeg, when he returns, repeats a glowing account of its beauty, which coincides closely with those given by the ladies who summoned Bran and Connla.

"There are at the western door,
In the place where the sun goes down,
A stud of steeds of the best of breeds
Of the grey and the golden brown.

There wave by the eastern door
Three crystal-crimson trees,
Whence the warbling bird all day is heard
On the wings of the perfumed breeze.

And before the central door
Is another, of gifts untold.
All silvern-bright in the warm sunlight,
Its branches gleam like gold."[11]

    *    *    *    *    *

In the saga of the Wooing of Etain we meet with what is substantially the same description. She is the wife of one of the Tuatha De Danann, is reborn as a mortal, and weds the king of Ireland. Her former husband, Midir, still loves her, follows her, and tries to win her back. She is unwilling, and he chants to her this description of the land to which he would lure her.

[Pg 103]

"Come back to me, lady, to love and to shine
In the land that was thine in the long-ago,
Where of primrose hue is the golden hair
And the limbs are as fair as the wreathèd snow.

To the lakes of delight that no storm may curl,
Where the teeth are as pearl, the eyes as sloes,
Which alight, whenever they choose to seek,
On the bloom of a cheek where the foxglove glows.

Each brake is alive with the flowers of spring,
Whence the merles sing in their shy retreat;
Though sweet be the meadows of Innisfail,
Our beautiful vale is far more sweet.

Though pleasant the mead be of Innisfail,
More pleasant the ale of that land of mine,
A land of beauty, a land of truth,
Where youth shall never grow old or pine.

Fair rivers brighten the vale divine,—
There are choicest of wine and of mead therein.
And heroes handsome and women fair
Are in dalliance there without stain or sin.

From thence we see, though we be not seen,
We know what has been and shall be again,
And the cloud that was raised by the first man's fall,
Has concealed us all from the eyes of men.

Then come with me, lady, to joys untold,
And a circlet of gold on thy head shall be,
Banquets of milk and of wine most rare,
Thou shalt share, O lady, and share with me."[12]

[Pg 104]

The casual Christian allusion in the penultimate verse need not lead us astray, nor does it detract from the essentially pagan character of the rest, for throughout almost the whole of Irish literature the more distinctly or ferociously pagan any piece is, the more certain it is to have a Christian allusion added at the end as a make-weight. There is great ingenuity displayed in thus turning the pagan legend into a Christian homily by the addition of two lines suggesting that if men were not sinful, this beautiful pagan world and the beautiful forms that inhabited it would be visible to the human ken. This was sufficient to disarm any hostility to the legend on the part of the Church.

From what we have said it is evident that the ancient Irish pagans believed in the possibility of rebirth, and founded many of their mythical sagas on the doctrine of metempsychosis, and that they had a highly ornate and fully-developed belief in a happy other-world or Elysium, to which living beings were sometimes carried off without going through the forms of death. But it is impossible to say whether rebirth with life in another world, for those whom the gods favoured, was taught as a doctrine or had any ethical significance attached to it by the druids of Ireland, as it most undoubtedly had by their cousins the druids of Gaul.

[Pg 105]

CHAPTER XI

EARLY USE OF LETTERS, OGAM AND ROMAN

We now come to the question, When and where did the Irish get their alphabet, and at what time did they begin to practise the art of writing? The present alphabet of the Irish, which they have used in all their books from the seventh century down, and probably for three hundred years before that, is only a modification—and a peculiarly beautiful one—of the Roman letters. This alphabet they no doubt borrowed from their neighbours, the Romanised Britons, within whose territory they had established themselves, and with whom—now in peace, now in war—they carried on a vigorous and constant intercourse.[1] The general use of letters in Ireland is, however, to be attributed to the early Christian missionaries.

But there is no reason to believe that it was St. Patrick, or indeed any missionary, who first introduced them. There probably were in Ireland many persons in the fourth century, or perhaps even earlier, who were acquainted with the art of[Pg 106] writing. Already, at the beginning of the third century at least, says Zimmer in his "Keltische Studien," British missionaries were at work in the south of Ireland. Bede, in his history, says distinctly that Palladius was sent from Rome in the year 431 to the Irish "who believed in Christ"—"ad Scottos in Christum credentes." Already, at the close of the third century, there was an organised British episcopate, and three British bishops attended the Council of Arles held in 314. It is quite impossible that the numerous Irish colonies settled in the south of England and in Wales could have failed to come into contact with this organised Church, and even to have been influenced by it. The account in the Acta Sanctorum, of Declan, Bishop of Waterford, said to have been born in 347, and of Ailbe, another southern bishop, who met St. Patrick, may be looked upon as perfectly true in so far as it relates to the actual existence of these pre-Patrician bishops. St. Chrysostom, writing in the year 387, mentions that already churches and altars had been erected in the British Isles. Pelagius, the subtle and persuasive heresiarch who taught with such success at Rome about the year 400, and acquired great influence there, was of Irish descent—"habet progeniem Scotticæ gentis de Brittanorum vicinia," said St. Jerome. As St. Augustine and Prosper of Aquitaine call him "Briton" and "British scribe," he probably belonged to one of the Irish colonies settled in Wales or the South-west of England. His success at Rome is a proof that some Irish families at least were within reach of literary education in the fourth century. His friend and teacher, Celestius, has also been claimed as an Irishman, but Dr. Healy has shown that this claim is perhaps founded upon a misconception.[2]

"The influence of the ancient Irish on the Continent," says Dr. Sigerson, "began in the works of Sedulius, whose 'Carmen Paschale,' published in the fifth century,[Pg 107] is the first great Christian epic worthy of the name." Sedulius, the Virgil of theological poetry, flourished in the first half of the fifth century, and seems to have studied in Gaul, passed into Italy, and finally resided in Achaia in Greece, which he seems to have made his home. There are at least eight Irish Siadals (in Latin Sedulius, in English Shiel) commemorated by Colgan. The strongest evidence of Sedulius's Irish nationality is that the Irish geographer Dicuil, in the eighth century, quoting some of his lines, calls him noster Sedulius. John of Tritenheim, towards the close of the fifteenth century, distinctly calls him an Irishman natione Scotus, but attributes to him the verses of a later Sedulius. Dr. Sigerson, by a clever analysis of his verse-peculiarities confirms this opinion.[3]

In the "Tripartite Life of St. Patrick" we read that the druids at the king's court, when St. Patrick arrived there, possessed books, and when, at a later date, St. Patrick determined upon revising the Brehon law code, the books in which it was written down were laid before him. That there has come down to our time no written record earlier than the seventh or eighth century[4] is chiefly due to the enormous destruction of books by the Danes and English. The same causes produced a like effect in Britain, for the oldest surviving British MSS. are not even as old as ours, although the art of writing must have been known and practised there since the Roman occupation.

The Irish had, however, another system of writing which[Pg 108] they themselves invented. This was the celebrated Ogam script, consisting of a number of short lines, straight or slanting,[5] and drawn either below, above, or through one long stem-line, which stem-line is generally the angle between two sides of a long upright rectangular stone. These lines represented letters; and over two hundred stones have been found inscribed with Ogam writing. It is a remarkable fact that rude as this device for writing is, it has been applied with considerable skill, and is framed with much ingenuity. For in every case it is found that those letters which, like the vowels, are most easily pronounced, are also in Ogam the easiest to inscribe, and the simpler sounds are represented by simpler characters than those that are more complex. To account for the philosophical character of this alphabet[6] "than which no[Pg 109] simpler method of writing is imaginable," a German, Dr. Rethwisch, who examined it from this side, concluded that "the natural gifts of the Celts and their practical genius for simplicity and observation ripened up to a certain stage far earlier than those of their Indo-European relations." This statement, however, rests upon the as yet unproved assumption that Ogam writing is pre-Christian and pagan. What is of more interest is that the author of it supposed that with one or two changes it would make the simplest conceivable universal-alphabet or international code of writing. It is very strange that nearly all the Irish Ogam stones are found in the south-west, chiefly in the counties of Cork and Kerry, with a few scattered over the rest of the country—but one in West Connacht, and but one or two at the most in Ulster. Between twenty and thirty more have been found in Wales and Devonshire, and one or two even farther east, thus bearing witness to the colonies planted by the Irish marauders in early Britain, for Ogam writing is peculiar to the Irish Gael and only found where he had settled. Ten stones more have been found in Scotland, probably the latest in date of any, for some of these, unlike the Irish stones, bear Christian symbols. Many Ogams have been easily read, thanks to the key contained in the Book of Ballymote; thanks also to the fact that one or two Ogams have been found with duplicates inscribed in Latin letters. But many still defy all attempts at deciphering them, though numerous efforts have been made, treating them as though they were cryptic ciphers, which they were long believed to be. That Ogam was, as some assert, an early cryptic alphabet, and one intended to be read only by the initiated, is both in face of the numbers of such inscriptions already deciphered and in the face of the many instances recorded in our oldest sagas of its employment, an absurd hypothesis. It is nearly always treated in them as an ordinary script which any one could read. It may, however, have been occasionally used in later times in a cryptic sense, names being[Pg 110] written backwards or syllables transposed, but this was certainly not the original invention. Some of the latest Ogam pillars are gravestones of people who died so late as the year 600, but what proportion of them, if any, date from before the Christian era it is as yet impossible to tell. Certain it is that the grammatical forms of the language inscribed upon most of them are vastly older than those of the very oldest manuscripts,[7] and agree with those of the old Gaulish linguistic monuments.

Cormac's Glossary—a work of the ninth or tenth century—the ancient sagas, and many allusions in the older literature, would seem to show that Ogam writing was used by the pagan Irish. Cormac, explaining the word fé says that "it was a wooden rod used by the Gael for measuring corpses and graves, and that this rod used always to be kept in the burial-places of the heathen, and it was a horror to every one even to take it in his hand, and whatever was abominable to them they (the pagans) used to inscribe on it in Ogam."[8] The sagas also are full of allusions to Ogam writing. In the "Táin Bo Chuailgne," which probably assumed substantially its present shape in the seventh century, we are told how when Cuchulain, after assuming arms, drove into Leinster with[Pg 111] his charioteer and came to the dún or fort of the three sons of Nechtan, he found on the lawn before the court a stone pillar, around which was written in Ogam that every hero who passed thereby was bound to issue a challenge. This was clearly no cryptic writing but the ordinary script, meant to be read by every one who passed.[9] Cuchulain in the same saga frequently cuts Ogam on wands, which he leaves in the way of Mève's army. These are always brought to his friend Fergus to read. Perhaps the next oldest allusion to Ogam writing is in the thoroughly pagan "Voyage of Bran," which both Zimmer and Kuno Meyer consider to have been committed to writing in the seventh century. We are there told that Bran wrote the fifty or sixty quatrains of the poem in Ogam. Again, in Cormac's Glossary[10] we find a story of how Lomna Finn mac Cool's fool (drúth) made an Ogam and put it in Finn's way to tell him how his wife had been unfaithful to him. A more curious case is the story in the Book of Leinster of Corc's flying to the Court of King Feradach in Scotland. Not knowing how he might be received he hid in a wood near by. The King's poet, however, meets him and recognises him, having seen him before that in Ireland. The poet notices an Ogam on the prince's shield, and asks him, "Who was it that befriended you with that Ogam, for it was not good luck which he designed for you?" "Why," asked the prince, "what does it contain?" "What it contains," said the poet, "is this—that if by day you arrive at the Court of Feradach the king, your head shall be struck off before night; if it be at night you arrive your head shall be struck off before morning."[11] This Ogam was[Pg 112] apparently readable only by the initiated, for the prince did not himself know what he was bearing on his shield.

All ancient Irish literature, then, is unanimous in attributing a knowledge of Ogam to the pre-Christian Irish. M. d'Arbois de Jubainville seems also to believe in its pagan antiquity, for when discussing the story of St. Patrick's setting a Latin alphabet before Fiach, and of the youth's learning to read the Psalms within the following four-and-twenty hours, he remarks that the story is just possible since Fiach should have known the Ogam alphabet, and except for the form of the letters it and the Latin alphabet were the same.[12]

St. Patrick, too, tells us in his "Confession" how after his flight from Ireland he saw a man coming as it were from that country with innumerable letters, a dream that would scarcely have visited him had he known that there was no one in Ireland who could write letters.[13]

The Ogam alphabet, however, is based upon the Roman. Of this there can be no doubt, for it contains letters which,[Pg 113] according to the key, represents Q (made by five upright strokes above the stem line), Z, and Y, none of which letters are used in even the oldest MSS., and two of which at least must have been borrowed from the Romans. The most, then, that can at present be said with absolute certainty is, as Dr. Whitley Stokes cautiously puts it, that these Ogam inscriptions and the language in which they are couched are "enough to show that some of the Celts of these islands wrote their language before the fifth century, the time at which Christianity is supposed to have been introduced into Ireland."[14] The presence of these Roman letters never used by the Irish on vellum, and the absence of any aspirated letters (which abound even in the oldest vellum MSS.) are additional proofs of the antiquity of the Ogam alphabet.

The Irish themselves ascribed the invention of Ogam to [the god] Ogma, one of the leading Tuatha De Danann,[15] and although it may be, as Rhys points out, philologically unsound to derive Ogam from Ogma, yet there appears to be an intimate connection between the two words, and Ogma may well be derived from Ogam, which in its early stage may have meant fluency or learning rather than letters. Certainly there cannot be any doubt that Ogma, the Tuatha De Danann, was the same as the Gaulish god Ogmios of whom Lucian, that pleasantest of Hellenes, gives us an account so delightfully graphic that it is worth repeating in its entirety as another proof of what I shall have more to speak about later on, the solidarity—to use a useful Gallicism—of the Irish and the Continental Gauls.

[Pg 114]

"The Celts,"[16] says Lucian, "call Heracles in the language of their country Ogmios, and they make very strange representations of the god. With them he is an extremely old man with a bald forehead and his few remaining hairs quite grey; his skin is wrinkled and embrowned by the sun to that degree of swarthiness which is characteristic of men who have grown old in a seafaring life; in fact, you would fancy him rather to be a Charon or Japetus, one of the dwellers in Tartarus, or anybody rather than Heracles. But although he is of this description he is nevertheless attired like Heracles, for he has on him the lion's skin, and he has a club in the right hand; he is duly equipped with a quiver, and his left hand displays a bow stretched out, in these respects he is quite Heracles.[17] It struck me then that the Celts took such liberties with the appearance of Heracles in order to insult the gods of the Greeks and avenge themselves on him in their painting, because he once made a raid on their territory, when in search of the herds of Geryon he harassed most of the Western peoples. I have not yet, however, mentioned the most whimsical part of the picture, for this old man Heracles draws after him a great number of men bound by their ears, and the bonds are slender cords wrought of gold and amber, like necklaces of the most beautiful make; and although they are dragged on by such weak ties they never try to run away, though they could easily do it, nor do they at all resist or struggle against them, planting their feet in the ground and throwing their weight back in the direction contrary to that in which they are being led. Quite the reverse, they follow with joyful countenance in a merry mood, and praising him who leads them, pressing on, one and all, and slackening their chains in their eagerness to proceed; in fact, they look like men who would be grieved should they be set free. But that which seemed to me the most absurd thing of all I will not hesitate also to tell you: the painter, you see, had nowhere to fix the ends of the cords since the right hand of the god held the club and his left the[Pg 115] bow; so he pierced the tip of his tongue and represented the people as drawn on from it, and the god turns a smiling countenance towards those whom he is leading. Now I stood a long time looking at these things and wondered, perplexed and indignant. But a certain Celt standing by, who knew something about our ways, as he showed by speaking good Greek—a man who was quite a philosopher I take it in local matters—said to me: 'Stranger, I will tell you the secret of the painting, for you seem very much troubled about it. We Celts do not consider the power of speech to be Hermes as you Greeks do, but we represent it by means of Heracles, because he is much stronger than Hermes. Nor should you wonder at his being represented as an old man, for the power of words is wont to show its perfection in the aged; for your poets are, no doubt, right when they say that the thoughts of young men turn with every wind, and that age has something wiser to tell us than youth. And so it is that honey pours from the tongue of that Nestor of yours, and the Trojan orators speak with a voice of the delicacy of the lily, a voice well covered, so to say, with bloom, for the bloom of flowers, if my memory does not fail me, has the term lilies applied to it. So if this old man Heracles (the power of speech) draws men after him, tied to his tongue by their ears, you have no reason to wonder; as you must be aware of the close connection between the ears and the tongue. Nor is there any injury done him by the latter being pierced; for I remember, said he, learning, while among you, some comic iambics to the effect that all chattering fellows have the tongue bored at the tip. In a word, we Celts are of opinion that Heracles himself performed everything by the power of words, as he was a wise fellow, and that most of his compulsion was effected by persuasion. His weapons, I take it, were his utterances, which are sharp and well-aimed, swift to pierce the mind, and you too say that words have wings.' Thus far the Celt."

We see, then, that the Irish legend that it was Ogma (who is also said to have been skilled in dialects and poetry) who invented the Ogam alphabet, so useful as a medium through which to convey language, is quite borne out by the account given to Lucian of the Gaulish god Ogmios, the eloquent old man whose language was endowed with so great a charm that he took his hearers captive. He turns, says Lucian, towards his willing captives with a smiling face, and the Irish Ogma,[Pg 116] too, is called Ogma "of the shining countenance."[18] Nor does the Gaul in dressing Ogma as a Hercules appear to have acted altogether whimsically, because not only is Ogma skilled in poetry and dialects and the inventor of Ogam, but he is also all through the battle of Moytura actually depicted as the strong man of the De Danann, strong enough to push a stone which eighty pair of oxen could not have moved.

The modern Irish names for books, reading, writing, letters, pens, and vellum, are all derived from the Latin.[19] But there seem to have been other names in use to designate the early writing materials of the Irish. These were the Taibhli Fileadh, "poets' tablets," and Tamhlorg Fileadh, which is translated by O'Curry as poets' "headless staves." This latter word, whatever may be the exact meaning of it, is at least pure Gaelic. We read in the "Colloquy of the Ancients" that St. Patrick began to feel a little uneasy at the delight with which he listened to the stories of the ancient Fenians, and in his over-scrupulous sanctity he feared it might be wrong to extract such pleasure from merely mundane narrations. Accordingly he consulted his two guardian angels on the matter, but received an emphatic response from both of them, not only to the effect that there was no harm in listening to the stories themselves, but actually desiring him to get them written down "in poets' támhlorgs and in the words of ollavs, for it will be a rejoicing to numbers and to the good people to the end of time, to listen to those stories."[20] An[Pg 117] ancient passage from the Brehon Laws prescribes that a poet may carry a tábhall-lorg or tablet-staff, and O'Curry acutely suggests that these so-called tablet-staves were of the nature of a fan which could be closed up in the shape of a square stick, upon the lines and angles of which the poet wrote in Ogam. We can well imagine the almost superstitious reverence which in rude times must have attached itself, and which as we know did attach itself, to the man who could carry about in his hand the whole history and genealogy of his race, and probably the catchwords of innumerable poems and the skeletons of highly-prized narratives. It was probably through these means that the genealogies of which I have spoken were so accurately transmitted and kept from the third or fourth century, and possibly from a still earlier period.

Amongst many other accounts of pre-Christian writing there is one so curious that it is worth giving here in extenso.[21]

THE STORY OF BAILE MAC BUAIN, THE SWEET-SPOKEN.

"Buain's only son was Baile. He was specially beloved by Aillinn,[22] the daughter of Lewy,[23] son of Fergus Fairgé—but some say she was the daughter of Owen, son of Dathi—and he was specially beloved not of her only, but of every one who ever heard or saw him, on account of his delightful stories.

"Now Baile and Aillinn made an appointment to meet at Rosnaree, on the banks of the Boyne in Bregia. And he came from Emania in the north to meet her, passing over Slieve Fuad and Muirthuimhne to Tráigh mBaile (Dundalk), and here he and his troops unyoked their chariots, sent their horses out to pasture, and gave themselves up to pleasure and happiness.

"And while they were there they saw a horrible spectral personage coming towards them from the South. Vehement were his steps and his rapid progress. The way he sped over the earth might be compared[Pg 118] to the darting of a hawk down a cliff or to wind from off the green sea, and his left was towards the land [i.e., he came from the south along the shore].

"'Go meet him,' said Baile, 'and ask him where he goes, or whence he comes, or what is the cause of his haste.'

"'From Mount Leinster I come, and I go back now to the North, to the mouth of the river Bann; and I have no news but of the daughter of Lewy, son of Fergus, who had fallen in love with Baile mac Buain, and was coming to meet him. But the youths of Leinster overtook her, and she died from being forcibly detained, as Druids and fair prophets had prophesied, for they foretold that they would never meet in life, but that they would meet after death, and not part for ever. There is my news,' and he darted away from them like a blast of wind over the green sea, and they were not able to detain him.

"When Baile heard this he fell dead without life, and his tomb and his rath were raised, and his stone set up, and his funeral games were performed by the Ultonians.

"And a yew grew up through his grave, and the form and shape of Baile's head was visible on the top of it—whence the place is called Baile's Strand [now Dundalk].

"Afterwards the same man went to the South to where the maiden Aillinn was, and went into her grianan or sunny chamber.

"'Whence comes the man whom we do not know?' said the maiden.

"'From the northern half of Erin, from the mouth of the Bann I come, and I go past this to Mount Leinster.'

"'You have news?' said the maiden.

"'I have no news worth mentioning now, only I saw the Ultonians performing the funeral games and digging the rath, and setting up the stone, and writing the name of Baile mac Buain, the royal heir of Ulster, by the side of the strand of Baile, who died while on his way to meet a sweetheart and a beloved woman to whom he had given affection, for it was not fated for them to meet, in life, or for one of them to see the other living,' and he darted out after telling the evil news.

"And Aillinn fell dead without life, and her tomb was raised, etc. And an apple tree grew through her grave and became a great tree at the end of seven years, and the shape of Aillinn's head was upon its top.

"Now at the end of seven years poets and prophets and visioners cut down the yew which was over the grave of Baile, and they made a poet's tablet of it, and they wrote the visions and the espousals and[Pg 119] the loves and the courtships of Ulster in it. [The apple tree which grew over the grave of Aillinn was also cut down] and in like manner the courtships of Leinster were written in it.

"There came a November eve long afterwards, and a festival was made to celebrate it by Art, the son of Conn [of the Hundred Battles, High-king of Ireland], and the professors of every science came to that feast as was their custom, and they brought their tablets with them. And these tablets also came there, and Art saw them, and when he saw them he asked for them; and the two tablets were brought and he held them in his hands face to face. Suddenly the one tablet of them sprang upon the other, and they became united the same as a woodbine round a twig, and it was not possible to separate them. And they were preserved like every other jewel in the treasury at Tara until it was burned by Dúnlang, son of Enna, at the time he burnt the Princesses at Tara, as has been said

"'The apple tree of noble Aillinn,
The yew of Baile—small inheritance—
Though they are introduced into poems
Unlearned people do not understand them.'

"and Ailbhé, daughter of Cormac, grandson of Conn [of the Hundred Battles] said too

"'What I liken Lumluine to
Is to the Yew of Baile's rath,
What I liken the other to
Is to the Apple Tree of Aillinn.'"

So far this strange tale. But poetic as it is, it yields—unlike most—its chief value when rationalised, for as O'Curry remarks, it was apparently invented to account for some inscribed tablets in the reign of King Art in the second century, which had—as we ourselves have seen in the case of so many leaves of very old manuscripts at this day—become fastened to each other, so that they clung inextricably together and could not be separated.

Now the massacre of the Princesses at Tara happened, according to the "Four Masters," in the year 241, when the tablets were burnt. Hence one of two things must be the case; the story must either have originated before that date to account for the sticking together of the tablets, or else some[Pg 120] one must have invented it long afterwards, that is, must, without any apparent cause, have invented a story out of his own head, as to how there were once on a time two tablets made of trees which once grew on two tombs which were once fastened together before Art, son of Conn, and which were soon afterwards unfortunately burnt. A supposition which, considering there were then, ex hypothesi, no adhering tablets to prompt the invention, appears at first sight improbable.

Brash, who made personal examination of almost every Ogam known to exist, and whose standard work on the subject reproduces most of the inscriptions discovered up to the date of writing, was of opinion that no Ogam monument had anything Christian about it, and that if any Christian symbol were discovered on an Ogam stone, it must be of later date than the Ogam writing. Dr. Graves, however, has since shown that Ogam was in some few cases at least used over the graves of Christians; and he believes that all Ogam writing is really post-Christian, despite the absence of Christian emblems on the stones, and that it belongs to a comparatively modern period—"in fact, for the most part, to a time between the fifth and seventh century."[24] Brash's great work was supplemented by Sir Samuel Ferguson's, and since that time Professor Rhys[25] and Dr. Whitley Stokes have thrown upon the inscriptions themselves all the light that the highest critical acumen equipped with the completest philological training could do, and have, to quote Mr. Macalister, "between them reduced to order the confusion which almost seemed to warrant the cryptical theories, and have thereby raised Ogam inscriptions from the position of being mere learned playthings to a place of the highest philological importance, not only in Celtic but in Indo-European epigraphy."[Pg 121] He himself—the latest to deal with the subject—waves for the present as "difficult—perhaps in some measure insoluble"—all "questions of the time, place, and manner of the development of the Ogham script."[26] Rhys has traced in certain of the inscriptions the influence exercised on the spoken language of the Celtic people by an agglutinating pre-Celtic tongue.[27] This gives us a glimpse at the pre-Aryan languages of the British Isles, which is in the highest degree interesting.

To me it seems probable that the Irish discovered the use of letters either through trade with the Continent or through the Romanised Britons, at any time from the first or second century onward. But how or why they invented the Ogam alphabet, instead of using Roman letters, or else Greek ones like the Gauls, is a profound mystery. One thing is certain, namely, that the Ogam alphabet—at whatever time invented—is a possession peculiar to the Irish Gael, and only to be found where he made his settlements.

[Pg 122]

CHAPTER XII

EARLY IRISH CIVILISATION

It has been frequently assumed, especially by English writers, that the pre-historic Irish, because of their remoteness from the Continent, must have been ruder, wilder, and more uncivilised than the inhabitants of Great Britain. But such an assumption is—to say nothing of our literary remains—in no way borne out by the results of archæological research. The contrary rather appears to be the case, that in point of wealth, artistic feeling, and workmanship, the Irish of the Bronze Age surpassed the inhabitants of Great Britain.

When we read such accounts as that, for example, in the Book of Ballymote, of Cormac mac Art, taking his seat at the assembly in Tara, all covered with gold and jewels, we must not set it down to the perfervid imagination of the chronicler without first consulting what Irish archæology has to say upon the point. The appearance of Cormac (king of Ireland in the third century, and perhaps greatest of pre-Christian monarchs), is thus described. "Beautiful," says the writer, quoting probably from ancient accounts now lost, "was the appearance of Cormac in that assembly, flowing and slightly curling was his golden hair. A red buckler with stars and animals of gold and fastenings of silver upon him. A crimson[Pg 123] cloak in wide descending folds around him, fastened at his neck with precious stones. A torque of gold around his neck. A white shirt with a full collar, and intertwined with red gold thread upon him. A girdle of gold, inlaid with precious stones, was around him. Two wonderful shoes of gold, with golden loops upon his feet. Two spears with golden sockets in his hands, with many rivets of red bronze. And he was himself, besides, symmetrical and beautiful of form, without blemish or reproach." The abundance of gold ornament which Cormac is here represented as wearing, is no mere imagination of the writer's. It is founded upon the undoubted fact that of all countries in the West of Europe Ireland was pre-eminent for its wealth in gold. How much wealthier was Ireland than Great Britain may be imagined from the fact that while the collection in the British Museum of pre-historic gold from England, Scotland, and Wales together amounted a couple of years ago to some three dozen ounces, that in the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin weighs five hundred and seventy ounces. And yet the collection in the Academy contains only a small part of the gold-finds made in Ireland, for before 1861, when the new law about treasure-trove came into force, great numbers of gold objects are known to have been sold to the goldsmiths and melted down. The wealth of Ireland in gold—some of it found and smelted in the Wicklow mountains[1]—must have at an early period determined[Pg 124] continental trade in its direction, and we have seen that Tacitus reported its harbours as being better known through trade than those of Great Britain, or, on the most unfavourable reading of the passage, as being "known by commerce and merchants."[2] This is also borne out by archæologists. Professor Montelius, who has traced a close connection in pre-historic times between Scandinavia and the West of Europe,[3] regards much of the pre-historic gold found in the northern countries as Irish. Speaking of certain gold ornaments found in Fünen, which show, according to him, marked Irish influence, he writes: "Gold ornaments like these have not been discovered elsewhere in Scandinavia, while a great number of similar ornaments have been found in the British Isles, especially in Ireland, whose wealth of gold in the Bronze Age is amazing." Again he writes, "As certain of the gold[Pg 125] objects found in Denmark have been introduced demonstrably from the British Islands, probably from Ireland, the thought is obvious—is not a great part of the other gold objects found in Southern Scandinavia also of Irish origin, and of the Bronze Age there?... for this island [Ireland] was, during the Bronze Age, one of the lands of Europe richest in gold." "No other country in Europe possesses so much manufactured gold belonging to early and mediæval times," writes Mr. Ernest Smith.[4]

It is true that the Irish Celts, despite their mineral wealth, never minted coin, a want which has been adduced to prove a lack of civilisation on their part. But, as Mr. Coffey points out, coinage is a comparatively late invention; the Egyptians—for all their civilisation—never possessed a native coinage, and even such ancient trading cities as Carthage and Gades did not strike coins until a late period. "A little reflection," says Professor Ridgeway, "shows us that it has been quite possible for peoples to attain a high degree of civilisation without feeling any need of what are properly termed coins." "The absence of coinage," adds Mr. Coffey, "does not necessarily imply the absence of a currency system, and Professor Ridgeway has shown that the ancient Irish possessed a system of of currency or values, and a standard of weights."

A most interesting paper by Mr. Johnson, a Dublin jeweller, recently read before the Royal Irish Academy,[5] has[Pg 126] shown with the authority due to an expert, the marvellous skill with which the pre-historic Irish worked their gold, and the wealth of proper appliances which they must have possessed in order to turn out such unique and admirable results.[6]

The workmanship of Irish bronze articles is also very fine, and fully equal to that of Britain, while Greenwell considers their clay urns and food-vessels superior to the British. In Ireland he says the urns, "and especially the food vessels, are of better workmanship, and more elaborately and tastefully ornamented than in most parts of Britain. Many of the food vessels found in Argyleshire, and in other districts in the Southwest of Scotland, as might be perhaps expected, are very Irish in character, and may claim to be equally fine in taste and delicate in workmanship with those of Ireland."[7]

The brilliant appearance of Cormac mac Art when presiding over the assembly at Tara, covered with gold and jewels, receives enhanced credibility from the proofs of early Irish wealth and culture that I have just adduced. Let us glance at Tara itself, as it existed in the time of Cormac, and see whether archæology can throw any light upon the ancient accounts of that royal hill. It was round this hill that the great Féis, or assemblage of the men of all Ireland, took place triennially,[8] with a threefold purpose—to promulgate laws universally binding upon all Ireland; to test, purge, and[Pg 127] sanction the annals and genealogies of Ireland, in the presence of all men, so that no untruth or flaw might creep in; and, finally, to register the same in the great national record, in later times called the Saltair of Tara, so that cases of disputed succession might be peacefully settled by reference to this central authoritative volume. The session of the men of Ireland thus convened took place on the third day before Samhain—November day—and ended the third day after it. We are told that Cormac, who presided over these assemblies,[9] had ten persons in constant waiting upon his person, who hardly ever left him. These were a prince of noble blood, a druid, a physician, a brehon, a bard, a historian, a musician, and three stewards. And Keating tells us that the very same arrangement was observed from Cormac's time—in the third century—to the death of Brian Boru in the eleventh, the only alteration being that a Christian priest was substituted for the druid.

To accommodate the chiefs and princes who came to the great Féis, Cormac built the renowned Teach Míodhchuarta [Toch Mee-coo-ar-ta] which was able to accommodate a thousand persons, and which was used at once for a house of assembly, a banqueting hall, and a sleeping abode. We have two accounts of this hall and of the other monuments of Tara, written, the one in poetry, the other in verse, some nine hundred years ago. The prose of the Dinnseanchus describes accurately the lie of the building, "to the north-west of the eastern mound." "The ruins of this house"—it lay in ruins then as now—"are thus situated: the lower part to the north and the higher part to the south; and walls are raised about it to the east and to the west. The northern side of it is enclosed and small, the lie of it is north and south. It is in the form of a long house with twelve doors upon it, or fourteen, seven to the west and seven to the east. This was the great house of a thousand soldiers."[10] Keating, following[Pg 128] his ancient authorities, graphically describes the Tara assembly.

"The nobles," he writes, "both territorial lords and captains of bands of warriors, were each man of them, always attended by his own proper shield-bearer. Again their banquet-halls were arranged in the following manner, to wit, they were long narrow buildings with tables arranged along both the opposite walls of the hall; then along these side walls there was placed a beam, in which were fixed numerous hooks (one over the seat destined for each of the nobles), and between every two of them there was but the breadth of one shield. Upon these hooks the shanachy hung up the shields of the nobles previously to their sitting down to the banquet, at which they all, both lords and captains, sat each beneath his own shield. However, the most honoured side of the house was occupied by the territorial lords, whilst the captains of warriors[11] were seated opposite to them at the other. The upper end of the hall was the place of the ollavs, while the lower end was assigned to the attendants and the officers in waiting. It was also prescribed that no man should be placed opposite another at the same table, but that all, both territorial lords and captains, should sit with their backs towards the wall, beneath their own shields. Again, they never admitted females into their banquet-halls; these had a hall of their own in which they were separately served. It was likewise the prescribed usage to clear out the banquet-hall previous to serving the assembled nobles therein. And no one was allowed to remain in the building but three, namely, a Shanachy and a bolsgaire [marshal or herald], and a trumpeter, the duty of which latter officer was to summon all the guests to the banquet-hall by the sound of his trumpet-horn. He had to sound his horn three times. At the first blast the shield-bearers of the territorial chieftains assembled round the door of the hall, where the marshal received from them the shields of their lords, which he then, according to the directions of the shanachy, hung up each in its assigned place. The trumpeter then sounded his trumpet a second time, and the shield-bearers of the chieftains of the military bands assembled round the door of the banquet-hall, where the marshal received their lords' shields from them also, and hung them up at the other side of the hall according to the orders of the shanachy, and over the table of the warriors. The trumpeter sounded his trumpet the third time, and thereupon[Pg 129] both the nobles and the warrior chiefs entered the banquet-hall, and then each man sat down beneath his own shield, and thus were all contests for precedency avoided amongst them."

These accounts of the Dinnseanchus and of Keating, taken from authorities now lost, will be likely to receive additional credit when we know that the statements made nine hundred years ago, when Tara had even then lain in ruins for four centuries, have been verified in every essential particular by the officers of the Ordnance Survey. The statement in the Dinnseanchus made nearly nine hundred years ago that there were either six or seven doors on each side, shows the condition into which Tara had then fallen, one on each side being so obliterated that now, also, it is difficult to say whether it was a door or not. The length of the hall, according to Petrie's accurate measurements, was seven hundred and sixty feet, and its breadth was nearly ninety. There was a double row of benches on each side, running the entire length of the hall, which would give four rows of men if we remember that the guests were all seated on the same side of the tables, and allowing the ample room of three feet to each man, this would just give accommodation to a thousand. In the middle of the hall, running down all the way between the benches, there was a row of fires, and just above each fire was a spit descending from the roof, at which the joints were roasted. There is a ground plan of the building, in the Book of Leinster, and the figure of a cook is rudely drawn with his mouth open, and a ladle in his hand to baste the joint. The king sat at the southern end of the hall, and the servants and retainers occupied the northern.

The banqueting-hall and all the other buildings at Tara were of wood, nor is the absence of stone buildings in itself a proof of low civilisation, since, in a country like Ireland, abounding in timber, wood could be made to answer every purpose—as in point of fact it does at this day over the greater part of America, and in all northern countries where forests[Pg 130] are numerous.[12] All or most Irish houses, down to the period of the Danish invasions, were constructed of wood, or of wood and clay mixed, or of clay and unmortared stones, and their strongholds were of wooden pallisades planted upon clay earth-works. This is the reason why so few remains of pre-historic buildings have come down to us, but it is no reason for believing that, as in Cormac's banquet-hall, rude palatial effects were not often produced. An interesting poem in the Dialogue of the Sages, from the Book of Lismore, describes the house of the Lady Credé, said to have been a contemporary of Finn mac Cúmhail in the third century.[13] Though the poem may not itself be very old, it no doubt embodies many ancient truths, and is worth quoting from. A poet comes to woo the lady, and brings this poem with him. Finn accompanies him. When they reached her fortress "girls, yellow-haired, of marriageable age, showed on the balconies of her bowers." The poet sang to her—

"Happy is the house in which she is
Between men and children and women,
Between druids and musical performers,
Between cupbearers and doorkeepers.[14]

[Pg 131]

Between equerries without fear,
And distributors who divide [the fare],
And, over all these, the command belongs
To Credé of the yellow hair.

    *    *    *    *    *

The colour [of her house] is like the colour of lime,
Within it are couches and green rushes (?)
Within it are silks and blue mantles,
Within it are red, gold, and crystal cups.

Of its many chambers the corner stones,
Are all of silver and yellow gold,
In faultless stripes its thatch is spread,
Of wings of brown, and of crimson red.

Two door posts of green I see,
Door not devoid of beauty,
Of carved silver, long has it been renowned,
In the lintel that is over the door.

Credé's chair is on your left hand,
The pleasantest of the pleasant it is,
All over, a blaze[15] of Alpine gold
At the foot of her beautiful couch.

A splendid couch in full array
Stands directly above the chair;
It was made by Tuile in the East,
Of yellow gold and precious stones.

There is another bed on your right hand
Of gold and silver without defect,
With curtains with soft [pillows],
With graceful rods of golden-bronze.

An hundred feet spans Credé's house
From one angle to the other,
And twenty feet are fully measured
In the breadth of its noble door.

Its portico is covered, too,
With wings of birds, both yellow and blue,
Its lawn in front and its well
Of crystal and of Carmogel."

[Pg 132]

The houses of the ancient Irish were either like Cormac's banqueting-hall and Credé's house, built quadrilaterally of felled trees or split planks planted upright in the earth, and thatched overhead, or else, as was most usually the case, they were cylindrical and made of wickerwork, with a cup-shaped roof, plastered with clay and whitewashed. The magnificent dimensions of Cormac's palace, verified as they are by the careful measurements of the Ordnance Survey—a palace certainly erected in pagan times, since Tara was deserted for ever about the year 550—bear evidence, like our wealth of beautifully-wrought gold ornaments, and the superior workmanship of our surviving articles of bronze and clay, to a high degree of civilisation and culture amongst the pre-Christian Irish; I have here adduced them as bearing indirect evidence in favour of the probability that a people so civilised would have been likely to have seized on the invention of writing when they first came in contact with it, and would have kept their annals and genealogies all the more accurately from the very fact that they were evidently so advanced in other matters.

[Pg 133]

CHAPTER XIII

ST. PATRICK AND THE EARLY MISSIONARIES

Even supposing the Ogam alphabet to have been used in pre-Christian times, though it may have been employed by ollavs and poets to perpetuate tribal names and genealogies, still it was much too cumbrous and clumsy an invention to produce anything deserving the name of real literature. It is, so far as we know, only with the coming of Patrick that Ireland may be said to have become, properly speaking, a literary country. The churches and monasteries established by him soon became so many nuclei of learning, and from the end of the fifth century a knowledge of letters seems to have entirely permeated the island. So suddenly does this appear to have taken place, and so rapidly does Ireland seem to have produced a flourishing literature of laws, poems, and sagas, that it is very hard to believe that the inhabitants had not, before his coming, arrived at a high state of indigenous culture. This aspect of the case has been recently strongly put by Dr. Sigerson. "I assert," said he, speaking of the early Brehon laws, at the revision of which in a Christian sense St. Patrick is said to have assisted, "that, speaking biologically, such laws could not[Pg 134] emanate from any race whose brains have not been subject to the quickening influence of education for many generations."[1]

The usual date assigned for St. Patrick's landing in Ireland in the character of a missionary is 432, and his work among the Irish is said to have lasted for sixty years, during which time he broke down the idol Crom Cruach, burnt the books of the druids at Tara, ordained numerous missionaries and bishops, and succeeded in winning over to Christianity a great number of the chiefs and sub-kings, who were in their turn followed by their tribesmen.

St. Patrick did not work alone, nor did he come to Ireland as a solitary pioneer of a new religion; he was accompanied, as we learn from his life in the Book of Armagh, by a multitude of bishops, priests, deacons, readers, and others,[2] who had crossed over along with him for the service. Several were his own blood relations, one was his sister's son. Many likely youths whom he met on his missionary travels he converted to Christianity, taught to read, tonsured, and afterwards ordained. These new priests thus appointed worked in all directions, establishing churches and getting together congregations from amongst the neighbouring heathen. Unable to give proper attention to the teaching of the youths whom he elected as his helpers, so long as he himself was engaged in journeying through Ireland from point to point, he, after about twenty years of peripatetic teaching, established at Armagh about the year 450 the first Christian school ever founded in Ireland, the progenitor of that long line of colleges which made Ireland famous throughout Europe, and to which, two hundred years later, her Anglo-Saxon neighbours flocked in thousands.[3]

[Pg 135]

The equipments of these newly-made priests was of the scantiest. Each, as he was sent forth, received an alphabet-of-the-faith or elementary-explanation of the Christian doctrine, frequently written by Patrick himself, a "Liber ordinis," or "Mass Book," a written form for the administration of the sacraments, a psaltery, and, if it could be spared, a copy of the Gospels.[4] A good-sized retinue followed Patrick in all his journeyings, ready to supply with their own hands all things necessary for the new churches established by the saint, as well as to minister to his own wants. He travelled with his episcopal coadjutor, his psalm-singer, his assistant priest, his judge—originally a Brehon by profession, whom he found most useful in adjudicating on disputed questions—a personal champion to protect him from sudden attack and to carry him through floods and other obstacles, an attendant on himself, a bellringer, a cook, a brewer, a chaplain at the table, two waiters, and others who provided food and accommodation for himself and his household. He had in his company three smiths, three artificers, and three ladies who embroidered. His smiths and artificers made altars, book-covers, bells, and helped to erect his wooden churches; the ladies, one of them his own sister, made vestments and altar linens.[5]

St. Patrick was essentially a man of work and not of letters, and yet it so happens that he is the earliest Irish writer of whom we can say with confidence that what is ascribed to him is really his. And here it is as well to say something about the genuineness of St. Patrick's personality and the authenticity of his writings, for the opinion started by Ledwich has gone abroad, and has somehow become prevalent, that St. Patrick's personality is nearly as nebulous as that of King Arthur or of Finn mac Cúmhail, and at the best is made up of a number of little Patricks lumped into one great one. That[Pg 136] there was more than one Patrick[6] is certain,[7] and that the great Saint Patrick who wrote the "Confession" may have got credit in the early Latin and later Irish lives for the acts of others, is perfectly possible, but that most of the essential features of his life are true, is beyond all doubt, and we have a manuscript 1091 years old, apparently copied from his own handwriting, and containing his own confession and apologia.

How this exquisite manuscript, consisting of 216 vellum leaves, written in double columns, has happily been preserved to us, we shall not lose time in inquiring; but how its exact date has been ascertained through what Dr. Reeves has characterised as "one of the most elegant and recondite demonstrations[Pg 137] which any learned society has on record, is worth mentioning." The Rev. Charles Graves, the present Bishop of Limerick, made a thorough examination of the whole codex when, after many vicissitudes and hair-breadth escapes from destruction, it had been temporarily deposited in the Royal Irish Academy. Knowing, as O'Curry pointed out, that it was the custom for Irish scribes to sign their own names, with usually some particulars about their writing, at the end of each piece they copied, he made a careful search and discovered that this had actually been done in the Book of Armagh, and in no less than eight places, but that on every spot where it occurred it had been erased for some apparently inscrutable reason, with the greatest pains. In the last place but one,[Pg 138] however, where the colophon occurred, the process of erasure had been less thorough than in the others, and after long consideration, and treatment of the erasure with gallic acid and spirits of wine, Dr. Graves discovered that the words so carefully rubbed out were Pro Ferdomnacho ores, "Pray for Ferdomnach." Turning to the other places, he found that the erased words in at least one other place were evidently the same. This settled the name of the scribe; he was Ferdomnach. The next step was to search the "Four Masters," who record the existence of two scribes of that name who died at Armagh, one in 726 and the other in 844. One of these it must have been who wrote the Book of Armagh,—but which? This also Dr. Graves discovered, with the greatest ingenuity. At the foot of Fols. 52-6 he was, with extreme difficulty, able to decipher the words ... ach hunc ... e dictante ... ach herede Patricii scripsit. From these stray syllables he surmised that Ferdomnach had written the book at the bidding of some Archbishop of Armagh whose name ended in ach. For this the Psalter of Cashel, Leabhar Breac, and "Four Masters," were consulted, and it was found that one Archbishop Senaach died in 609; it could not then have been by his commands the book was written by the first Ferdomnach; then came, after a long interval, Faoindealach, who died in 794, Connmach, who died in 806, and Torbach, who held the primacy for one year after him. On examining the hiatus it was found that the letter which preceded the fragment ach could not have been either an l or an m, but might have been a b, thus putting out of the question the names of Connmach and Faoindealach. Besides the vacant space before the ach was just sufficient to admit of the letters Tor, but not Conn, much less Faoindea. The conclusion was obvious: the passage ran, Ferdomnach hunc librum e dictante Torbach herede Patricii scripsit, "Ferdomnach wrote this book at the dictation (or command) of Torbach, Patrick's heir (successor)." Torbach, as we have[Pg 139] seen, became Archbishop in 806 and died in 807. The date was in this way recovered.[8]

I have been thus particular in tracing the steps by which the age of this manuscript came to light, because it contains the earliest piece of certain Irish literature we have, the "Confession of St. Patrick." Now the usually accepted date of St. Patrick's death, as given in the Annals of Ulster, is 492, about three hundred years before that, and Ferdomnach, the scribe, after copying it, added these words: "Huc usque volumen quod patricius manu conscripsit sua. Septimadecima martii die translatus est patricius ad cælos," i.e., "thus far the volume which Patrick wrote with his own hand. On the seventeenth day of March was Patrick translated to the heavens." It would appear highly probable from this that Ferdomnach actually copied from St. Patrick's autograph,[9] which had become so defaced or faded during the three previous centuries, that the scribe has written in many places incertus liber hic, "the book is uncertain here," or else put a note[10] of[Pg 140] interrogation to indicate that he was not sure whether he had copied the text correctly. It will be seen from this that there was not the slightest trace of any concealment on the part of the scribe as to who he himself was, or what he was copying; there was no attempt to antedate his own writing, or to suggest that his copy was an original. But long after the scribe's generation had passed away and the origin of his work been forgotten, the volume which at first had been regarded only as a fine transcript of early documents, became known as "Canon Phádraig," or Patrick's Testament, and popular opinion, relying on the colophon "thus far the book which Patrick wrote with his own hand," set down the work as the saint's autograph. The belief that the volume was St. Patrick's own autograph of course enhanced enormously its value, and with it the dignity of its possessors, and the unscrupulous plan was resolved on of erasing the signature of the actual scribe. The veneration of the public was thus secured by interested persons at the cost of truth, and the deception probably lasted so long as the possession of such a volume brought with it either credit or dignity. This same volume[11] has another interest attaching to it, so that we cannot but felicitate ourselves that out of the wreck of so many thousands of volumes, it has been spared to us—it was brought to Brian Boru, when in the year 1004 he went upon his royal progress through Ireland, the first man of the race of Eber who had attained the proud position of monarch or Ard-righ for many centuries, and he, by the hand of his secretary, made an entry which may still be seen to-day, confirming the primacy of Armagh, and re-granting to it[Pg 141] the episcopal supremacy of Ireland which it had always enjoyed.[12]

It is now time to glance at St. Patrick's "Confession," as it is usually called, though in reality it is much more of the nature of an apologia pro vita sua. The evidence in favour of its authenticity is overwhelming, and is accepted by such cautious scholars as Stokes,[13] Todd, and Reeves, no first-rate critic, with perhaps one exception, having so far as I know ever ventured to question its genuineness. It is impossible to assign any motive for a forgery, and casual references to Decuriones, Slave-traffic, and to the "Brittaniæ," or Britains, bear testimony to its antiquity. Again, the Latin in which it is written is barbarous in the extreme, the periods are rude, sometimes ungrammatical, often nearly unintelligible. He begins by telling us that his object in writing this confession in his old age was to defend himself from the charge of presumptuousness in undertaking the work he tried to perform amongst the Irish. He tells us that he had many toils and perils to surmount, and much to endure while engaged upon it. He never received one farthing for all his preaching and teaching. The people indeed were generous, and offered many gifts, and cast precious things upon the altar, but he would not receive them lest he might afford the unrighteous an occasion to cavil. He was still encompassed about with dangers, but he heeded them not, looking to the success which had attended his efforts, how "the sons of the Scots and the[Pg 142] daughters of their princes became monks and virgins of Christ," and "the number of holy widows and of continent maidens was countless." It would be tedious were he to recount even a portion of what he had gone through. Twelve times had his life been endangered, but God had rescued him, and brought him safe from all plots and ambuscades and rewarded him for leaving his parents, and friends, and country, heeding neither their prayers nor their tears, that he might preach the gospel in Ireland. He appeals to all he had converted, and to all who knew him, to say whether he had not refused all gifts—nay, it was he himself who gave the gifts, to the kings and to their sons, and oftentimes was he robbed and plundered of everything, and once had he been bound in fetters of iron for fourteen days until God had delivered him, and even still while writing this confession he was living in poverty and misery, expecting death or slavery, or other evil. He prays earnestly for one thing only, that he may persevere, and not lose the people whom God has given to him at the very extremity of the world.

Unhappily this "Confession" is a most unsatisfying composition, for it omits to mention almost everything of most interest relating to the saint himself and to his mission. What floods of light might it have thrown upon a score of vexed questions, how it might have set at rest for ever theories on druidism, kingship, social life, his own birthplace, his mission from Rome,[14] his captors. Even of himself he tells us next to nothing, except that his father's name was Calpornus,[15] the son of[Pg 143] Potitus, the son of Odissus, a priest, and that he dwelt in the vicus or township of Benaven Taberniæ; he had also a small villa not far off, where he tells us he was made captive at the age of about sixteen years. Because his Christian training was bad, and he was not obedient to the priests when they admonished him to seek for salvation, therefore God punished him, and brought him into captivity in a strange land at the end of the world. When he was brought to Ireland he tells us that his daily task was to feed cattle, and then the love of God entered into his heart, and he used to rise before the sun and pray in the woods and mountains, in the rain, the hail, and the snow. Then there came to him one night a voice in his sleep saying to him "Your ship is ready," and he departed and went for two hundred miles, until he reached a port where he knew no one. This was after six years' captivity. The master of the ship would not take him on board, but afterwards he relented just as Patrick was about to return to the cottage where he had got lodging. He succeeded at last in reaching the home of his parents in Britannis [i.e., in some part of Britain, including Scotland], and his parents besought him, now that he had returned from so many perils, to remain with them always. But the angel Victor came in the guise of a man from Ireland, and gave him a letter, in which the voice of the Irish called him away, and the voices of those who dwelt near the wood of Focluth called him to walk amongst them, and the spirit of God, too, urged him to return.[16]

[Pg 144]

He says nothing of his training, or his ordination, or his long sojourn in Gaul, or of St. Germanus, with whom he studied according to the "Lives," but he alludes incidentally to his wish to see his parents and his native Britain, and to revisit the brethren in Gaul, and to see the face of God's saints there; but though he desired all this, he would not leave his beloved converts, but would spend the rest of his life amongst them.[17]

From this brief résumé of the celebrated "Confession" it will be seen that it is the perfervid outpouring of a zealous early Christian, anxious only to clear himself from the charges of worldliness or carelessness, and absolutely devoid of those appeals to general interest which we meet with in most of such memoirs, but there is a vein of warm piety running through the whole, and an abundance of scriptural quotations—all, of course, from the ante-Hieronymian or pre-Vulgate version, another proof of antiquity—which has caused it to be remarked that a forger might, perhaps, write equally bad Latin, but could hardly "forge the spirit that breathes in the language which is the manifest outpourings of a heart like unto the heart of St. Paul."[18]

There are two other pieces of literature assigned to St. Patrick, as well as the "Confession"; these are the "Epistle to Coroticus" in Latin, and the "Deer's Cry" in Irish. The[Pg 145] Epistle is not found in the Book of Armagh, but it is found in other MSS. as old as the tenth or eleventh century, and bears such close resemblance in style and language to the "Confession," whole phrases actually occurring in both, that it also has generally been regarded as genuine.[19] There is some doubt as to who Coroticus was, but he seems to have been a semi-Christian king of Dumbarton who, along with some Scots, i.e., Irish, and the Southern Picts who had fallen away from Christianity, raided the eastern shores of Ireland and carried off a number of St. Patrick's newly-converted Christians, leaving the white garments of the neophytes stained with blood, and hurrying into captivity numbers upon whose foreheads the holy oil of confirmation was still glistening. The first letter was to ask Coroticus to restore the captives, and when this request was derided the next was sent, excommunicating him and all his aiders and abettors, calling upon all Christians neither to eat nor drink in their company until they had made expiation for their crimes. Patrick himself had, he here explains, preached the gospel to the Irish nation for the sake of God, though they had made him a captive and destroyed the men-servants and maids of his father's house. He had been born a freedman and a noble, the son of a decurio or prefect, but he had sold his nobility for others and regretted it not. His lament over the loss of his converts is touching: "Oh! my most beautiful and most loving brothers and children whom in countless numbers I have begotten in Christ, what shall I do for you? Am I so unworthy before God and men that I cannot help you? Is it a crime to have been born in Ireland?[20] And have we not the same God as they have? I sorrow for you, yet I rejoice, for if ye are taken from the world ye are believers through me, and are gone to Paradise."

[Pg 146]

The "Cry of the Deer," or "Lorica," as it is also called, is in Irish. The saint is said to have made it when on his way to visit King Laoghaire [Leary] at Tara, and the assassins who had been planted by the king to slay him and his companions thought as he chanted this hymn that it was a herd of deer that passed them by, and thus they escaped. The metre of the original is a kind of unrhymed or half-rhymed rhapsody, called in Irish a Rosg, and is perfectly unadorned. The language, however, though very old, has of course been modified in the process of transcription. Patrick calls upon the Trinity to protect him that day at Tara, and to bind to him the power of the elements.

I bind me to-day[21]
God's might to direct me,
God's power to protect me,
God's wisdom for learning,
God's eye for discerning,
God's ear for my hearing,
God's word for my clearing,
God's hand for my cover,
God's path to pass over,
God's buckler to guard me,
God's army to ward me,
Against snares of the devils,
Against vices, temptations,
[Pg 147]Against wrong inclinations,
Against men who plot evils
To hurt me anew,
Anear or afar with many or few.

    *    *    *    *    *

Christ near, Christ here,
Christ be with me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ within me,
Christ behind me,
Christ be o'er me,
Christ before me,
Christ in the left and the right,
Christ hither and thither,
Christ in the sight,
Of each eye that shall seek me,[22] etc.

In the Book of Armagh, in the last chapter of Tirechan's life, St. Patrick is declared to be entitled to four honours in every church and monastery of the island. One of these honours was that the hymn written by St. Seachnall, his nephew, in praise of himself, was to be sung in the churches during the days when his festival was being celebrated, and another was that "his Irish canticle" was to be always sung,[23] apparently all the year through, in the liturgy, but perhaps only during the week of his festival. The Irish canticle is evidently[Pg 148] this "Lorica," which was, as we see from this notice in the Book of Armagh, believed to be his in the seventh century, and it has been sung under that belief from that day almost to our own.[24]

The other hymn, the singing of which at his festival is alluded to as one of St. Patrick's "honours," was composed by Seachnall [Shaughnal],[25] a nephew of St. Patrick's, in laudation of the saint himself. It is a very interesting piece of rough latinity, and is generally regarded as genuine. The occasion of its composition deserves to be told, for it casts a ray of light on the prudential and self-restrained side of St. Patrick's character, which no doubt contributed largely to his success when working in the midst of his wavering converts. Seachnall said that Patrick's preaching would be perfect if he only insisted a little more on the necessity of giving, for then more property and land would be at the disposal of the Church for pious uses. This remark of his nephew was repeated to St. Patrick, who was very much annoyed at it, and said beautifully, that "for the sake of charity he forbore to preach charity," and intimated that the holy men who should come after him might benefit by the offerings of the faithful which he had left untouched. Then Seachnall, grieved at having thus pained his uncle, and anxious to win his regard again,[Pg 149] composed a poem of twenty-two stanzas each beginning with a different letter, with four lines of fifteen syllables in each verse.[26] When he had done this he asked permission of Patrick to recite to him a poem which he had composed in praise of a holy man, and when Patrick said that he would gladly hear the praises of any of God's household, the poet adroitly suppressing Patrick's name which occurs in the first verse, recited it for him. Patrick was pleased, but interupted the poet at one stanza when he said that the subject of his laudations was maximus in regno cælorum,[27] "the greatest in the kingdom of heaven," asking how could that be said of any[Pg 150] man. Maximus, ingeniously replied Seachnall, does not here mean "greatest," but only "very great." He then disclosed to his uncle that he himself was the object of the poem, and asked—like all bards—for the reward for it, whereupon Patrick promised that to all who recited the hymn piously morning and evening, God in His mercy might give the glory of heaven. "I am content with that award," said the poet, "but as the hymn is long and difficult to be remembered I wish you would obtain the same reward for whosoever recites even a part of it." Whereupon St. Patrick promised that the recitation of the last three verses would be sufficient, and his nephew was satisfied, having proved himself the first poet of Christian Ireland, and having obtained such a reward for his verses as neither bard nor ollav had ever obtained before him. It was probably this same Seachnall who was the author of the much finer hymn of eleven verses which used to be sung in the old Irish churches at communion—

"Sancti venite
Christi corpus sumite,
Sanctum bibentes
Quo redempti sanguinem.

Salvati Christi
Corpore et sanguine,
A quo refecti
Laudes dicamus Deo.

Hoc Sacramento
Corporis et sanguinis
Omnes exuti
Ab inferni faucibus," etc.

The legend in the Leabhar Breac has it that this hymn was first chanted during the holy communion by the angels in his church, on the reconciliation between himself and Saint Patrick, whence the origin of chanting it during the communion service.

The Book of Armagh contains the two earliest lives of the national saint that we have, probably the two earliest[Pg 151] biographies of any size ever composed in Ireland. They are written in rude Latin, with a good deal of Irish place-names and Irish words intermixed, the first by one Muirchu Maccu Machteni,[28] who tells us that he wrote at the instigation of Aed, bishop of Sletty, who, as we know from the "Four Masters," died about 698, and the second by Tirechan, who says he received his knowledge of the saint from the lips and writings of Bishop Ultan,[29] his tutor, who died in 656, and who, supposing him to have been seventy or eighty years old at the time of his death, must have been born only eighty or ninety years after the death of St. Patrick himself. Both of these writers appear to have had older memoirs to draw on, for Muirchu says that many had before them endeavoured to write the history of St. Patrick from what their fathers and those who were ministers of the Word from the beginning had told them, though none had ever succeeded in producing a proper biography,[30] and in Tirechan's life of him in the Book of Armagh—an evident patchwork—we read that all his godly doings had been brought together[31] and collected by the[Pg 152] most skilful of the ancients. The first of these lives consists of two books containing twenty-eight and thirteen short chapters, respectively, the second, Tirechan's, of one book containing fifty-seven chapters, in addition to which there are a number of minor notes referring to St. Patrick in Latin and in Irish, which Ferdomnach, who transcribed the book in 807, appears to have taken from other old lives or memoirs of the saint. The Irish portions of these notes are of peculiar interest, as showing what the Irish language was, as written about the year 800.[32]

If it is genuine the earliest life of Patrick ever written would probably be the brief metrical life ascribed to Fiacc of Sletty, the sixth or seventh in descent from Cáthaoir [Cauheer] Mór, who was king of Leinster at the close of the second century.[33] His mother was a sister of Dubhthach's [Duv-hach], the chief poet and Brehon of Ireland, who, we are told, helped St. Patrick to review and revise the Brehon Laws. Fiacc was a youthful poet in Dubhthach's train at Tara. Afterwards he was tonsured by St. Patrick, became Bishop of Sletty, and on Patrick's death is said to have written his life, and not forgetful of his former training, to have written it in elaborate verse.[34] So famous a critic as Zimmer believed half the poem to be genuine, but Thurneysen rejects[Pg 153] it because it does not fall in with his theories of Irish metre.[35]

But the longest and most important life of St. Patrick is that known as the Tripartite, or Triply-divided Life, which is really a series of three semi-historical homilies, or discourses, which were probably delivered in honour of the saint on the three festival days devoted to his memory, that is, the Vigil, the Feast itself, on March 17th, and the day after, or else the Octave. This Tripartite life, which is a fairly complete one, is written in ancient Irish, with many passages of Latin interspersed. The monk Jocelin, who wrote a life of the saint in the twelfth century, tells us that St. Evin[36]—from whom Monasterevin, in Queen's County, is called, a saint of the early sixth century—wrote a life of Patrick partly in Latin and partly in Gaelic, and Colgan, the learned Franciscan who translated the Tripartite in his "Trias Thaumaturga,"[37] believed that this was the very life which St. Evin wrote. Colgan found the Tripartite life in three very ancient Gaelic MSS., procured for him, no doubt, by the unwearied research of Brother Michael O'Clery in the early part of the seventeenth century, which he collated one with the other, and of which he gives the following noteworthy account:—

"The first thing to be observed is that it has been written by its first author and in the aforesaid manuscript, partly in Latin, partly[Pg 154] in Gaelic, and this in very ancient language, almost impenetrable by reason of its very great antiquity, exhibiting not only in the same chapter, but also in the same line, alternate phrases now in the Latin, now in the Gaelic tongue. In the second place, it is to be noticed that this life, on account of the very great antiquity of its style, which was held in much regard, used to be read in the schools of our antiquarians in the presence of their pupils, being elucidated and expounded by the glosses of the masters, and by interpretations of and observations on the more abstruse words; so that hence it is not to be wondered at that some words—which certainly did happen—gradually crept from these glosses into the texts, and thus brought a certain colour of newness into this most ancient and faithful author, some things being turned from Latin into Gaelic, some abbreviated by the scribes, and some altogether omitted."

Colgan further tells us that, "of the three MSS. above mentioned, the first and chief is from very ancient vellums of the O'Clerys, antiquarians in Ulster; the second from the O'Deorans, of Leinster; the third taken from I know not what codex; and they differ from each other in some respects; one relating more diffusely what is more close in the others, and one relating in Latin what in the others was told in Gaelic; but we have followed the authority of that which relates the occurrences more diffusely and in Latin." O'Curry discovered in the British Museum a copy of this life, made in the fifteenth century, and it has since been admirably edited by Dr. Whitley Stokes, who, however, does not believe for philological and other reasons, that it could have been written before the middle of the tenth century. If so it is no doubt a compilation of all the pre-existing lives of the saint, and it mentions distinctly that six different writers, not counting Fiacc the poet, had collected the events of St. Patrick's life and his miracles, amongst whom were St. Columcille, who died in 592, and St. Ultan, who died in 656.[38] It is hardly[Pg 155] necessary, however, to say that in the matter of all anonymous Gaelic writings like the present, it is difficult to decide with any certainty as to age or date. The occurrence, indeed, of very old forms, shows that the sentences containing those old forms were first written at an early period; the occurrence of more modern forms, however, is no proof that the passages containing them were first written in modern times, for the words may have been altered by later transcribers into the language they spoke themselves; nor are allusions to events which we know were later than the date of an alleged writer, always conclusive proofs that the work which contains them cannot be his work, for such allusions constantly creep into the margin of books at the hands of copyists, especially if those books were—as Colgan says the Tripartite life was—annotated and explained in schools. In cases of this kind there is always considerable latitude to be allowed to destructive and constructive criticism, and at the end matters must still remain doubtful.[39]

So much for the more important lives of St. Patrick, the first known littérateur of Ireland.

[Pg 156]

CHAPTER XIV

ST. BRIGIT

St. Brigit was—after St. Patrick himself—probably the most noted figure amongst Irish Christians in the fifth century. She must have attained her extraordinary influence through sheer ability and intellectuality, for she appears to have been the daughter of a slave-woman,[1] employed in the mansion of a chief called Dubhthach [Duv-hach, or Duffach], who was himself tenth in descent from Felimidh, the lawgiver monarch of Ireland in the second century. The king's wife, jealous of her husband's liking for his slave, threatened him with these words, "Unless thou sellest yon bondmaid in distant lands I will exact my dowry from thee and I will leave thee," and so had her driven from the place and sold to a druid, in whose house her daughter, Dubhthach's offspring, soon afterwards saw the light. She was thus born into slavery, though not quite a slave; for Dubhthach, in selling the mother into slavery, expressly reserved for himself her offspring, whatever it might be. She must have been, at least, early inured to hardship, as St. Patrick had been. The druid, however, did[Pg 157] not prevent her from being baptized. She grew up to be a girl of exceeding beauty, and many suitors sought her in marriage. She returned to her father's house, but refused all offers of matrimony. She aroused the jealousy of her father's wife, as her mother had done before her, and Dubhthach, indignant at her unbounded generosity with his goods, decided upon selling her to the king of North Leinster. Her father's abortive attempt to get rid of her on this occasion is thus quaintly described in her Irish life in the Leabhar Breac.

"Thereafter," says the life, "Dubhthach and his consort were minded to sell the holy Brigit into bondage, for Dubhthach liked not his cattle and his wealth to be dealt out to the poor, and that is what Brigit used to do. So Dubhthach fared in his chariot and Brigit along with him.

"Said Dubhthach to Brigit, 'Not for honour or reverence to thee art thou carried in a chariot, but to take thee, to sell thee to grind the quern for Dunlang mac Enda, King of Leinster.'

"When they came to the King's fortress Dubhthach went in to the king, and Brigit remained in her chariot at the fortress door. Dubhthach had left his sword in the chariot near Brigit. A leper came to Brigit to ask an alms. She gave him Dubhthach's sword.

"Said Dubhthach to the King, 'Wilt thou buy a bondmaid, namely, my daughter?' says he.

"Said Dunlang, 'Why sellest thou thine own daughter?'

"Said Dubhthach, 'She stayeth not from selling my wealth and from giving it to the poor.'

"Said the King, 'Let the maiden come into the fortress.'

"Dubhthach went to Brigit, and was enraged against her because she had given his sword to the poor man.

"When Brigit came into the King's presence the King said to her, 'Since it is thy father's wealth that thou takest, much more wilt thou take my wealth and my cattle and give them to the poor.'

"Said Brigit, 'The Son of the Virgin knoweth if I had thy might, with all Leinster, and with all thy wealth, I would give them to the Lord of the Elements.'

"Said the King to Dubhthach, 'Thou art not fit on either hand to bargain about this maiden, for her merit is higher before God than before men,' and the King gave Dubhthach an ivory-hilted sword (Claideb dét), et sic liberata est sancta Virgo Brigita a captivititate.[2]"

[Pg 158]

She at length succeeded in assuming the veil of a nun at the hands of a bishop called Mucaille, along with seven virgin companions. With these she eventually retired into her father's territory and founded a church at Kildare, beside an ancient oak-tree, which existed till the tenth century, and which gives its name to the spot.[3] Even at this early period Kildare seems to have been a racecourse, and St. Brigit is described in the ancient lives as driving across it in her chariot.

It is remarkable that there is scarcely any mention of St. Brigit in the lives of St. Patrick, although, according to the usual chronology they were partly contemporaries, St. Brigit having become a nun about the year 467, and St. Patrick having lived until 492. About the only mention of her in the saint's life is that which tells how she once listened to Patrick preaching for three nights and days, and fell asleep, and as she dreamt she saw first white oxen in white corn-fields, and then darker ones took their place, and lastly black oxen. And thereafter, she beheld sheep and swine, and dogs and wolves quarrelling with each other, and upon her waking up, St. Patrick explained her dream as being symbolical of the history of the Irish Church present and future. The life of Brigit herself in the Book of Lismore tells the vision somewhat differently:

"'I beheld,' said she, to Patrick, when he asked her why she had fallen asleep, 'four ploughs in the north-east which ploughed the whole island, and before the sowing was finished the harvest was ripened, and clear well-springs and shiny streams came out of the furrows. White garments were on the sowers and ploughmen. I beheld four other ploughs in the north which ploughed the island athwart and turned the harvest again, and the oats which they had sown grew up at once and were ripe, and black streams came out of the furrows, and there were black garments on the sowers and on the ploughmen.'"

[Pg 159]

This vision Patrick explained to her, saying—

"'The first four ploughs which thou beheldest, those are I and thou, who sow the four books of the gospel with a sowing of faith and belief and piety. The harvest which thou beheldest are they who come unto that faith and belief through our teaching. The four ploughs which thou beheldest in the north are the false teachers and the liars which will overturn the teaching which we have sown.'"

St. Brigit's small oratory at Kildare, under the shadow of her branching oak, soon grew into a great institution, and within her own lifetime two considerable religious establishments sprang up there, one for women and the other for men. She herself selected a bishop to assist her in governing them, and another to instruct herself and her nuns. Long before her death, which occurred about the year 525, a regular city and a great school rivalling the fame of Armagh itself, had risen round her oak-tree. Cogitosus, himself one of the Kildare monks, who wrote a Latin life of St. Brigit at the desire of the community, gives us a fine description of the great church of Kildare in his own day, which was evidently some time prior to the Danish invasion at the close of the eighth century,[4] but how long before is doubtful. He tells us that the church was both large and lofty, with many pictures and hangings, and with ornamental doorways, and that a partition ran across the breadth of the church near the chancel or sanctuary:

"At one of its extremities there was a door which admitted the bishop and his clergy to the sanctuary and to the altar; and at the[Pg 160] other extremity on the opposite side there was a similar door by which Brigit and her virgins and widows used to enter to enjoy the banquet of the Body and Blood of Christ. Then a central partition ran down the nave, dividing the men from the women, the men being on the right and the women on the left, and each division having its own lateral entrance. These partitions did not rise to the roof of the church, but only so high as to serve their purpose. The partition at the sanctuary or chancel was formed with boards of wood decorated with pictures and covered with linen hangings which might, it seems, be drawn aside at the consecration, to give the people in the nave a better view of the holy mysteries."[5]

The two institutions—nuns and monks—planted by St. Brigit continued long to flourish side by side, and Kildare is the only religious establishment in Ireland, says Dr. Healy, which down to a comparatively recent period preserved the double line of succession, of abbot-bishops and of abbesses. The annalists always took care to record the names of the abbesses with the same accuracy as those of the abbots, and to the last the abbesses as successors of St. Brigit, were credited with, in public opinion, and probably enjoyed in fact, a certain supremacy over the bishops of Kildare themselves.

Amongst other occupations the monks and scholars of Kildare seem to have given themselves up to decorative art, and a school of metal work under the supervision of Brigit's first bishop soon sprang into existence, producing all kinds of artistically decorated chalices, bells, patens, and shrines; and the impulse given thus early to artistic work and to beautiful creations seems to have long propagated itself in Kildare, as the description of the church by Cogitosus shows, and as we may still conjecture from the exquisite round tower with its unusually ornamented doorway and its great height of over 130 feet, the loftiest tower of the kind in Ireland.

[Pg 161]

No doubt several attributes of the pagan Brigit,[6] who, as we have seen, was accounted by the ancient Irish to have been the goddess of poets, passed over to her Christian namesake, who was also credited with being the patroness of men of learning. On this, her life in the Book of Lismore contains the following significant and rather obscure passage:

"Brigit was once with her sheep on the Curragh, and she saw running past her a son of reading,[7] to wit Nindid the scholar was he.

"'What makes thee unsedate, O son of reading?' saith Brigit, 'and what seekest thou in that wise?'

"'O nun,' saith the scholar, 'I am going to heaven.'

"'The Virgin's son knoweth,' said Brigit, 'happy is he that goeth that journey, and for God's sake make prayer with me that it may be easy for me to go.'

"'O nun,' said the scholar, 'I have no leisure, for the gates of heaven are open now and I fear they may be shut against me. Or, if thou art hindering me pray the Lord that it may be easy for me to go to heaven, and I will pray the Lord for thee, that it may be easy for thee, and that thou mayest bring many thousands with thee, into heaven.'

[Pg 162]

"Brigit recited a paternoster with him. And he was pious thenceforward, and it is he that gave her communion and sacrifice when she was dying. Wherefore thence it came to pass that the comradeship of the world's softs of reading is with Brigit, and the Lord gives them through Brigit every perfect good they ask."[8]

As St. Patrick is pre-eminently the patron saint of Ireland, so is Brigit its patroness, and with the Irish people no Christian name is more common for their boys than Patrick, or for their girls than Brigit.[9] She was universally known as the "Mary of the Gael," and reverenced with a certain chivalric feeling which seems to have been always present with the Gaelic nation in the case of women, for, says her Irish life, her desire "was to satisfy the poor, to expel every hardship, to spare every miserable man.... It is she that helpeth every one who is in a strait or a danger; it is she that abateth the pestilences; it is she that quelleth the anger and the storm of the sea. She is the prophetess of Christ: she is the queen of the south: She is the Mary of the Gael." The writer closes thus in a burst of eloquence:

[Pg 163]

"Her relics are on earth, with honour and dignity and primacy, with miracles and marvels. Her soul is like a sun in the heavenly kingdom, among the choir of angels and archangels. And though great be her honour here at present, greater by far will it be when she shall arise like a shining lamp, in completeness of body and soul at the great Assembly of Doomsday, in union with cherubim and seraphim, in union with the Son of Mary the Virgin, in the union that is nobler than every union, in the union of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."

As of St. Patrick, so of his great co-evangeliser St. Brigit, there exist quite a number of various lives; the most ancient being probably a metrical life in Irish contained in the Book of Hymns, of which there still exists an eleventh century MS. It consists of fifty-three stanzas of four lines each, and is ascribed to St. Broccan or Brogan Cloen, who seems to have lived at the beginning of the seventh century.[10] This life does little more than expatiate upon Brigit's miracles and virtues. The next life of importance is that already mentioned, by Cogitosus, the Kildare monk, whose date is uncertain, but is clearly prior to the Danish invasions. This life, which is in very creditable Latin, and four others, were printed by Colgan. The first of these four is—probably falsely—attributed to St. Ultan, who died in the middle of the seventh century; the next is by a monk who is called Animosus, but of whom[Pg 164] nothing is known, though, as St. Donatus, who became bishop of Fiesole in 824, alludes to his works, he must have been an early author; the third is a twelfth-century work, by Laurence of Durham, an Englishman; and the last is in Latin verse, taken from a MS. which the unwearied Colgan procured from Monte Cassino, and which is attributed to Coelan, a monk of Iniscaltra, who probably lived in the eighth century, while a prologue to this life is prefixed by a later writer, the celebrated Irish bishop of Fiesole, Donatus, who, in the early part of the ninth century, worked with great success in Italy. There is something touching in the language with which this great and successful child of the Gael reverts in his prologue to the home of his childhood:—

"Far in the west they tell of a matchless land,[11] which goes in ancient books by the name of Scotia [i.e., Ireland]; rich in resources this land, having silver, precious stones, vestures and gold, well suited to earth-born creatures as regards its climate, its sun, and its arable soil; that Scotia of lovely fields that flow with milk and honey, hath skill in husbandry, and raiments, and arms, and arts, and fruits. There are no fierce bears there, nor ever has the land of Scotia brought forth savage broods of lions. No poisons hurt, no serpent creeps through the grass, nor does the babbling frog croak and complain by the lake. In this land the Scottish race are worthy to dwell, a renowned race of men in war, in peace, in fidelity."

Whitley Stokes has published the Irish lives of St. Brigit from the Leabhar Breac and the Book of Lismore, and Donatus alludes to other lives by St. Ultan[12] and St. Eleran,[Pg 165] so that Brigit has not lacked biographers. She herself is said to have written a rule for her nuns and some other things, and O'Curry prints one Irish poem ascribed to her—in which she prays for the family of heaven to be present at her feast: "I should like the men of heaven in my own house, I should like rivers of peace to be at their disposal," etc.—which appears to be alluded to in the preface to the Litany of Angus the Culdee, as the "great feast which St. Brigit made for Jesus in her heart."[13]

[Pg 166]

CHAPTER XV

COLUMCILLE

The third great patron Saint of Ireland, the man who stands out almost as conspicuously as St. Patrick himself in the religious history of the Gael, the most renowned missionary, scribe, scholar, poet, statesman, anchorite, and school-founder of the sixth century is St. Columcille.[1] Everything about this remarkable man has conspired to fix upon him the imagination of the Irish race. He was not, like St. Patrick, of alien, nor like St. Brigit, of semi-servile birth, but was sprung from the highest and bluest blood of the Irish, being son of Felemidh, son of Fergus, son of Conall Gulban—renowned to this day in saga and romance—son of Niall of the Nine Hostages, that great monarch of Ireland who ravaged Britain and exacted tributes far and wide from his conquered enemies.

He was born on the 7th of December, 521,[2] twenty-nine years after the reputed death of St. Patrick, and four years[Pg 167] before that of St. Brigit, at Gartan[3] in Donegal, a wild but beautiful district of which his father was the prince. The reigning monarch of Ireland was his half-uncle, while his mother Ethne was the direct descendant of the royal line of Cáthaoir [Cauheer] Mór, the regnant family of Leinster, and he himself would have had some chance of the reversion of the monarchy had he been minded to press his claims. Reared at Kilmacrenan, near Gartan, the place where the O'Donnells were afterwards inaugurated, he received his first teaching at the hands of St. Finnén or Finnian in his famous school at Moville, for already since Patrick's death Ireland had become dotted with such small colleges. It was here at this early age that his school-fellows christened him Colum-cille, or Colum of the Church, on account of the assiduity with which he sought the holy building. At this period the Christian clergy and the bardic order were the only two educational powers in Ireland, and after leaving St. Finnian, Columcille travelled south into Leinster to a bard called Gemmán[4] with whom he took lessons. From him he went to St. Finnén or Finnian of Clonard. While studying at Clonard it was the custom for each of the students to grind corn in his turn at a quern, but Columcille's Irish life in the Book of Lismore tells us naïvely, in true old Irish spirit, "howbeit an angel from heaven used to grind on behalf of Columcille; that was the honour which the Lord used to render him because of the eminent nobleness of his race." St. Ciaran [Keeran] was at this time a fellow-student with him, and Finnian, says the Irish life, saw one night a vision, "to wit, two moons arose from Clonard, a golden moon and a silver moon. The golden moon went into the north[Pg 168] of the island, and Ireland and Scotland gleamed under it. The silver moon went on until it stayed by the Shannon, and Ireland at her centre gleamed." That, says the author, signified "Columcille with the grace of his noble kin and his wisdom, and Ciaran with the refulgence of his virtues and his good deeds."

Leaving Clonard behind him, Columcille passed on to yet another school—this time to that of Mobhí at Glasnevin, near Dublin, where there were as many as fifty students at work, living in huts or cells grouped round an oratory, some of whom were famous men in after-time, for they included Cainnech and Comgall and Ciaran. A curious incident is recorded of these three and of Columcille in the Irish life in the Book of Lismore.

Columcille was driven from Glasnevin by the approach of the great plague which ravaged the country, and of which his teacher Mobhí died.

"Once on a time," says the author, "a great church was built by Mobhí. The clerics were considering what each of them would like to have in the church. 'I should like,' said Ciaran, 'its full of church children to attend the canonical hours.' 'I should like,' said Cainnech, 'to have its full of books to serve the sons of life.' 'I should like,' said Comgall, 'its full of affliction and disease to be in my own body: to subdue me and repress me.' Then Columcille chose its full of gold and silver to cover relics and shrines withal. Mobhí said it should not be so, but that Columcille's community would be wealthier than any community, whether in Ireland or in Scotland."[5]

[Pg 169]

Betaking himself northward with a growing reputation, he was offered by his cousin, then Prince of Aileach, near Derry, and afterwards monarch of Ireland, the site of a monastery on the so-called island of Derry, a rising ground of oval shape, covering some two hundred acres, along the slopes of which flourished a splendid forest of oak-trees, which gave to the oasis its name of Derry or the oak grove. Columcille, like all Gaels—and indeed all Celts—was full of love for everything beautiful in nature, both animate and inanimate, and so careful was he of his beloved oaks that, contrary to all custom, he would not build his church with its chancel towards the east, for in that case some of the oaks would have had to be felled to make room for it. He laid strict injunctions upon all his successors to spare the lovely grove, and enjoined that if any of the trees should be blown down some of them should go for fuel to their own guest-house, and the rest be given to the people.

This was Columcille's first religious institution, and, like every man's firstling, it remained dear to him to the last. Years afterwards, when the thought of it came back to him on the barren shores of Iona, he expressed himself in passionate Irish poetry.

"For oh! were the tributes of Alba mine
From shore unto centre, from centre to sea,
The site of one house, to be marked by a line
In the midst of fair Derry were dearer to me.

That spot is the dearest on Erin's ground,
For the treasures that peace and that purity lend,
For the hosts of bright angels that circle it round,
Protecting its borders from end to end.

The dearest of any on Erin's ground
For its peace and its beauty I gave it my love,
Each leaf of the oaks around Derry is found
To be crowded with angels from heaven above.

[Pg 170]My Derry! my Derry! my little oak grove,
My dwelling, my home, and my own little cell,
May God the Eternal in Heaven above
Send death to thy foes and defend thee well."[6]

Columcille was yet a young man, only twenty-five years of age, when he founded Derry, but both his own genius, and more especially his great friends and kinsfolk, had conspired to make him famous. For the next seventeen years he laboured in Ireland, and during this time founded the still more celebrated schools of Durrow in the present King's County, and of Kells in Meath, both of which became most famous in after years. Durrow,[7] which, like Derry, was named from[Pg 171] the beautiful groves of oak which were scattered along the slope of Druim-caín, or "the pleasant hill," seems to have retained to the last a hold upon the affections of Columcille second only to that of Derry. When its abbot, Cormac the voyager, visited him long years afterwards in Iona, and expressed his unwillingness to return to his monastery again, because, being a Momonian of the race of Eber, the southern Ui Neill were jealous of him, and made his abbacy unpleasant or impossible, Columcille reproached him in pathetic terms for abandoning so lovely an abode—

"With its books and its learning,
A devout city with a hundred crosses."

"O Cormac," he exclaimed—

"I pledge thee mine unerring word
Which it is not possible to impugn,
Death is better in reproachless Erin
Than perpetual life in Alba [Scotland]."[8]

[Pg 172]

And on another occasion, when it strikes him how happy the son of Dima, i.e., Cormac, must be at the approach of summer along the green hillside of Rosgrencha—another name for Durrow—amid its fair slopes, waving woods, and singing birds, compared with himself exiled to the barren shores of rugged Iona, he bursts forth into the tenderest song—

"How happy the son is of Dima! no sorrow
For him is designed,
He is having, this hour, round his own cell in Durrow
The wish of his mind:

The sound of the wind in the elms, like the strings of
A harp being played,
The note of the blackbird that claps with the wings of
Delight in the glade.

With him in Rosgrencha the cattle are lowing
At earliest dawn,
On the brink of the summer the pigeons are cooing
And doves on his lawn," etc.[9]

Columcille continued his labours in Ireland, founding churches and monasteries and schools, until he was forty-two[Pg 173] years of age. He was at this time at the height of his physical and mental powers, a man of a masterful but of a too passionate character, of fine physique, and enjoying a reputation second to that of none in Erin. The commentator in the Féilire of Angus describes his appearance as that of "a man well-formed, with powerful frame; his skin was white, his face was broad and fair and radiant, lit up with large, grey,[10] luminous eyes; his large and well-shaped head was crowned, except where he wore his frontal tonsure, with close and curling hair. His voice was clear and resonant, so that he could be heard at the distance of 1,500 paces,[11] yet sweet with more than the sweetness of the bards." His activity was incessant. "Not a single hour of the day," says Adamnan, "did he leave unoccupied without engaging either in prayer, or in reading, or in writing, or in some other work;" and he laboured with his hands as well as with his head, cooking or looking after his ploughmen, or engaged in ecclesiastical or secular matters. All accounts go to show that he was of a hot and passionate temperament, and endowed with both the virtues and the faults that spring from such a character. Indeed this was, no doubt, why in the "famous vision"[12][Pg 174] which Baithin saw concerning him, he was seated only on a chair of glass; while Ciaran was on a chair of gold, and Molaisse upon a chair of silver. The commentator on the Féilire of Angus boldly states that, "though his devotion was delightful, he was carnal and often frail even as glass is fragile." Aware of this, he wore himself out with fastings and vigils,[13] and no doubt—

"Lenior et melior fit accedente senectu,"

for Adamnan describes him, from the recollections of the monks who knew him, as being angelic in aspect[14] and bright in conversation, and despite his great labours yet "dear to all, displaying his holy countenance always cheerful." A curious story is told in the Leabhar Breac, of the stratagems to which his people resorted to checkmate his self-imposed penance; for having one day seen an old woman living upon pottage of nettles, while she was waiting for her one cow to calve and give her milk, the notion came to him that he too would thenceforward live upon the same, for if she could do so, much more could he, and it would be profitable to his soul in gaining the kingdom of heaven. So, said the writer, he called his servant—

"'Pottage,' saith he, 'from thee every night, and bring not the milk with it.'

"'It shall be done,' said the cook.

"He (the cook) bores the mixing-stick of the pottage, so that it became a pipe, and he used to pour the meat juice into the pipe, down, so that it was mixed through the pottage. That preserves the cleric's (Columcille's) appearance. The monks perceived the[Pg 175] cleric's good appearance, and they talked among themselves. That is revealed to Columcille, so he said, 'May your successors be always murmuring.'

"'Well now,' said Columcille, said he, to his servant, 'what dost thou give me every day?'

"'Thou art witness,' said the cook, 'unless it come out of the iron of the pot, or out of the stick wherewith the pottage is mixed, I know nought else in it save pottage!'"

It was now, however, that events occurred which had the result of driving Columcille abroad and launching him upon a more stormy and more dangerous career, as the apostle of Scotland and the Picts. St. Finnian of Moville, with whom he studied in former days, had brought back with him from Rome a copy of the Psalms, probably the first copy of St. Jerome's translation, or Vulgate, that had appeared in Ireland, which he highly valued, and which he did not wish Columcille to copy. Columcille however, who was a dexterous and rapid scribe, found opportunity, by sitting up during several nights, to make a copy of the book secretly,[15] but Finnian learning it claimed[Pg 176] the copy. Columcille refused it, and the matter was referred to King Diarmuid at Tara. The monarch, to whom books and their surroundings were probably something new, as a matter for legal dispute, could find in the Brehon law no nearer analogy to adjudicate the case by, than the since celebrated sentence le gach boin a boinín, "with every cow her calf," in which terms he, not altogether unnaturally, decided in favour of St. Finnian, saying, "with every book its son-book, as with every cow her calf."[16] This alone might not have brought about the crisis, but unfortunately the son of the king of Connacht, who had been present at the great Convention or Féis of Tara, in utter violation of the law of sanctuary which alone rendered this great meeting possible, slew the son of the king's steward, and knowing that the penalty was certain death, he fled to the lodging of the northern princes Fergus and Domhnall [Donall] who immediately placed him under the protection of St. Columcille. This however did not avail him, for King Diarmuid, who was no respecter of persons, had him promptly seized and put to death in atonement for his crime. This, combined with his unfortunate judgment about the book, enraged the imperious Columcille to the last degree. He made his way northward and appealed to his kinsmen to avenge him. A great army was collected, led by Fergus and Domhnall, two first cousins of Columcille, and by the king of Connacht, whose son had been put to death. The High-king marched to meet this formidable combination with all the troops he could gather. Pushing his way across the island he met their combined forces in the present county of Sligo,[Pg 177] between Benbulbin and the sea. A furious battle was delivered in which he was defeated with the loss of three thousand men.

It was soon after this battle that Columcille decided to leave Ireland. There is a great deal of evidence that he did so as a kind of penance, either self-imposed or enjoined upon him by St. Molaíse [Moleesha], as Keating says, or by the "synod of the Irish saints," as O'Donnell has it. He had helped to fill all Ireland with arms and bloodshed, and three thousand men had fallen in one battle largely on account of him, and it was not the only appeal to arms which lay upon his conscience.[17] He set sail from his beloved Derry in the year 593, determined, according to popular tradition, to convert as many souls to Christ as had fallen in the battle of Cooldrevna. Amongst the dozen monks of his own order who accompanied him were his two first cousins and his uncle.

It was death and breaking of heart for him to leave the land of Erin, and he pathetically expresses his sorrow in his own Irish verses.

"Too swiftly my coracle flies on her way,
From Derry I mournfully turned her prow,
I grieve at the errand which drives me to-day
To the Land of the Ravens, to Alba, now.

    *    *    *    *    *

How swiftly we travel! there is a grey eye
Looks back upon Erin, but it no more
Shall see while the stars shall endure in the sky
Her women, her men, or her stainless shore.

[Pg 178]From the plank of the oak where in sorrow I lie,
I am straining my sight through the water and wind,
And large is the tear of the soft grey eye
Looking back on the land that it leaves behind.

To Erin alone is my memory given,
To Meath and to Munster my wild thoughts flow,
To the shores of Moy-linny, the slopes of Loch Leven,
And the beautiful land the Ultonians know."

He refers distinctly to the penance imposed upon him by St. Moleesha.

"To the nobles that gem the bright isle of the Gael
Carry this benediction over the sea,
And bid them not credit Moleesha's tale,
And bid them not credit his words of me.

Were it not for the word of Moleesha's mouth
At the cross of Ahamlish that sorrowful day,
I now should be warding from north and from south
Disease and distemper from Erin away."

His mind reverts to former scenes of delight—

"How dear to my heart in yon western land
Is the thought of Loch Foyle where the cool waves pour,
And the bay of Drumcliff on Cúlcinnê's strand,
How grand was the slope of its curving shore!

    *    *    *    *    *

O bear me my blessing afar to the West,
For the heart in my bosom is broken; I fail.
Should death of a sudden now pierce my breast
I should die of the love that I bear the Gael!"[18]

[Pg 179]

Columcille is the first example in the saddened page of Irish history of the exiled Gael grieving for his native land and refusing to be comforted, and as such he has become the very type and embodiment of Irish fate and Irish character. The flag in bleak Gartan, upon which he was born, is worn thin and bare by the hands and feet of pious pilgrims, and "the poor emigrants who are about to quit Donegal for ever, come and sleep on that flag the night before their departure from Derry. Columcille himself was an exile, and they fondly hope that sleeping on the spot where he was born will help them to bear with lighter heart the heavy burden of the exile's sorrows."[19] He is the prototype of the millions of Irish exiles in after ages—

"Ruined exiles, restless, roaming,
Longing for their fatherland,"[20]

and the extraordinary deep roots which his life and poetry have struck into the soil of the North was strikingly evidenced this[Pg 180] very year (1898) by the wonderful celebration of his centenary at Gartan, at which many thousands of people, who had travelled all night over the surrounding mountains, were present, and where it was felt to be so incongruous that the life of such a great Irish patriot, prince, and poet, in the diocese, too, of an O'Donnell, should be celebrated in English, that—probably for the first time in this century—Irish poems were read and Irish speeches made, even by the Cardinal-Primate and the Bishop of the diocese.

Of Columcille's life on the craggy little island of Iona, of his splendid labours in converting the Picts, and of the monastery which he established, and which, occupied by Irish monks, virtually rendered Iona an Irish island for the next six hundred years, there is no need to speak here, for these things belong rather to ecclesiastical than to literary history.

Columcille himself was an unwearied scribe, and delighted in poetry. Ample provision was made for the multiplication of books in all the monasteries which he founded, and his Irish life tells us that he himself wrote "three hundred gifted, lasting, illuminated, noble books." The life in the Book of Lismore tells us that he once went to Clonmacnois with a hymn he had made for St. Ciaran, 'for he made abundant praises for God's household, as said the poet,

"Noble, thrice fifty, nobler than every apostle,
The number of miracles [of poems] are as grass,
Some in Latin, which was beguiling,
Others in Gaelic, fair the tale."'

Of these only three in Latin are now known to exist, whilst of the great number of Irish poems attributed to him only a few—half a dozen at the most—are likely to be even partly genuine. His best known hymn is the "Altus," so called from its opening word; it was first printed by Colgan,[21] and[Pg 181] its genuineness is generally admitted. It is a long and rudely-constructed poem, of twenty-two stanzas, preserved in the Book of Hymns, a MS. probably of the eleventh century. Each stanza consists of six lines,[22] and each line of sixteen syllables. There is a pause after the eighth syllable, and a kind of rhyme between every two lines. The first verses run thus with an utter disregard of quantity.

"Altus prosător, vetustus dierum et ingenitus,
Erat absque origine primordii et crepidine,
Est et erit in sæcula sæculorum infinitus,
Cui est unigenitus Christus et Spiritus Sanctus," etc.

The second Latin hymn is a supplement to this one, composed in praise of the Trinity, because Pope Gregory who, as the legend states, perceived the angels listening when the "Altus" was recited to him, was yet of opinion that the first stanza of the original poem, despite its additional line, was insufficient to express a competent laudation of the mystery, consequently Columcille added, it was said, fifteen rude-rhyming couplets of the same character as the "Altus," but it is very doubtful whether they are genuine. The third hymn, the "Noli Pater," is still shorter, consisting of only seven rhyming couplets with sixteen syllables in each line. It was in ancient times considered an efficient safeguard against fire and lightning. Some of his reputed Irish poems we have already glanced at; three that Colgan considered genuine were printed by Dr. Reeves in his "Adamnan;" and another, the touching "Farewell to Ara," is contained in the "Gaelic Miscellany" of 1808; and another on his escape from[Pg 182] King Diarmuid, when the king of Connacht's son was put to death for violating the Féis at Tara, is printed in the "Miscellany" of the Irish Archæological Society.[23] There are three verses, composed by him as a prayer at the battle of Cooldrevna, ascribed to him in the "Chronicon Scotorum;" and there is a collection of fifteen poems attributed to him in the O'Clery MSS. at Brussels, and nearly a hundred more—mostly evident forgeries—in the Bodleian at Oxford.[24] He does not seem to have ever written any work in prose.

There are six lives of Columcille still extant, the greatest of them all being that in Latin by Adamnan,[25] who was one of his successors in the abbacy of Iona, and who was born only twenty-seven years after Columcille's death. This admirable work, written in flowing and very fair Latin, was derived, as Adamnan himself tells us, partly from oral and partly from written sources. A memoir of Columcille had already been written by Cuimine Finn or Cummeneus Albus,[26] as Adamnan calls him, the last Abbot of Iona but one before himself, and that memoir he almost entirely embodied in his third book. He had also some other written accounts before him, and the Irish poems, both of the saint himself and of other bards, amongst them Baithine Mór, who had enjoyed his personal friendship, and St. Mura, who was a little his junior—poems[Pg 183] now lost. He had also constant opportunities of conversing with those who had seen the great saint and had been familiar with him in life, and he was writing on the spot and amidst the associations and surroundings wherein his last thirty years had been spent, and which were inseparably connected with his memory. The result was that he produced a work, which although not ostensibly a history, and dealing only with the life of a single man, and that rather from the transcendental than from the practical side, is nevertheless of the utmost value to the historian on account not only of the general picture of manners and customs, but still more on account of its incidental references to contemporary history. "It is," says Pinkerton, who, as Dr. Reeves remarks, was a writer not over-given to eulogy, "the most complete piece of such biography that all Europe can boast of, not only at so early a period but even through the whole Middle Ages." Adamnan's other great work on Sacred Places is mentioned by his contemporary, the Venerable Bede, but he is silent as to Columcille's life. There is, however, abundant internal evidence of its authenticity. This evidence, however it might satisfy the minds of mere Irish students like Colgan and Stephen White, proved insufficient, however, to meet the exacting claims of certain British scholars. "I cannot agree," said Sir James Dalrymple, in the last century, "that the authority of Adamnanus is equal, far less preferable to that of Bede, since it was agreed on all hands to be a fabulous history lately published in his name, and that he was remarkable for nothing, but that he was the first abbot of that monastery who quit the Scottish institution, and became fond of the English Romish Rites."[27] Dr. Giles, too, who thought of editing it, tells us in his translation of Bede's "Ecclesiastical History," that he had "strong doubts of[Pg 184] Adamnan's having written it."[28] And, finally, Schoell, a German, professed to have convinced himself that Adamnan's preface could not have been written by the same hand which wrote the life, so different did the style of the two appear to him, and wholly rejected it as a work of the seventh century written at Iona.

But it so happened that shortly before the year 1851, when Schoell was impugning the genuineness of this work, the ancient manuscript from which it had been copied by the Irish Jesuit, Stephen White—and, from his copy, printed by Colgan—actually came to light again, discovered by Dr. Ferdinand Keller at the bottom of an old book-shelf in the public library of Schaffhausen, into which it had been turned with some other old manuscripts and books. A close examination of this remarkable text written in a heavy round Irish hand, in nearly the same type of script as the Books of Kells and Durrow, and of a more archaic character than that of the Book of Armagh (written in 807), rendered it certain that here was a codex of great value and antiquity. Nor was the usual colophon containing the scribe's name and asking a prayer for him missing. That name was Dorbene, a most rare one, of which only two instances are known, both connected with Iona, the first of which records the death of Faelcu, son of Dorbene, in 729, but as we know that Faelcu died in his eighty-second year his father could hardly have been the scribe. The other Dorbene was elected abbot of Iona in 713 and died the same year, so that it may be regarded as almost certain that this book was written by him and that this copy is in his handwriting. We have in this codex, then, the actual handwriting[29] of a contemporary of Adamnan himself, the handiwork[Pg 185] of the generation which succeeded Columcille, a volume a hundred years older than even the Book of Armagh, a volume which had been carried over to some of the numerous Irish institutions on the Continent after the break-up of Iona by the Northmen. There are several corrections of the orthography in a different and later hand, the date of which is fixed by Dr. Keller at 800-820, and these are evidently the work of a German monk, who was displeased with the peculiar orthography of the Irish school, and who made these emendations after the MS. had been brought from Iona to the Continent. The following passage describing the last hours of Columcille will both serve as a specimen of Adamnan's style and also afford a minutely particular account of the end of this great man. Its accuracy can hardly be impugned as it is written by one who had every minute particular from eye-witnesses, and as the actual manuscript from which it is printed was copied from the author's own, either during his life or within less than ten years after his death.[30]

Adamnan first tells us of several premonitions which the saint had of his approaching end, how he, "now an old man, wearied with age," was borne in his waggon to view his monks labouring in the fields on the western slope of the island, and intimated to them that his end was not far off, but that lest[Pg 186] their Easter should be one of grief, he would not be taken from them until it was over. Later on in the year he went out with his servant Diarmuid to inspect the granary, and was pleased at the two large heaps of grain which were lying there, and remarked that though he should be taken from his dear monks, yet he was glad to see that they had a supply for the year.

"And," says Adamnan, "when Diarmuid his servant heard this he began to be sad, and said, 'Father, at this time of year you sadden us too often, because you speak frequently about your decease.' When the saint thus answered, 'I have a secret word to tell you, which, if you promise me faithfully not to make it known to any before my death, I shall be able to let you know more clearly about my departure.' And when his servant, on bended knees, had finished making this promise, the venerable man thus continued, 'This day is called in the sacred volumes the Sabbath, which is interpreted Rest. And this day is indeed to me a sabbath, because it is my last of this present laborious life, in which, after the trouble of my toil, I take my rest; for in the middle of this coming sacred Sunday night, I shall to use the Scripture phrase, tread the way of my fathers; for now my Lord Jesus Christ deigns to invite me, to whom, I say, at the middle of this night, on His own invitation, I shall pass over; for it was thus revealed to me by the Lord Himself.' His servant, hearing these sad words, begins to weep bitterly: whom the saint endeavoured to console as much as he was able.

"After this the saint goes forth from the barn, and returning to the monastery sits down on the way, at the place where afterwards a cross let into a millstone, and to-day standing there, may be perceived on the brink of the road. And while the saint, wearied with old age, as I said before, sitting in that place was taking a rest, lo! the white horse, the obedient servant who used to carry the milk-vessels between the monastery and the byre, meets him. It, wonderful to relate, approached the saint and placing its head in his bosom, by the inspiration of God, as I believe, for whom every animal is wise with the measure of sense which his Creator has bidden, knowing that his master was about to immediately depart from him, and that he would see him no more, begins to lament and abundantly to pour forth tears, like a human being, into the saint's lap, and with beslavered mouth to make moan. Which when the servant saw, he proceeds to drive away the tearful mourner, but the saint stopped him, saying, 'Allow him, allow him who loves me, to[Pg 187] pour his flood of bitterest tears into this my bosom. See, you, though you are a man and have a rational mind, could have in no way known about my departure if I had not myself lately disclosed it to you, but to this brute and irrational animal the Creator Himself, in His own way, has clearly revealed that his master is about to depart from him.' And saying this he blessed the sorrowful horse [the monastery's] servant, as it turned away from him.

"And going forth from thence and ascending a small hill, which rose over the monastery, he stood for a little upon its summit, and as he stood, elevating both his palms, he blessed his community and said, 'Upon this place however narrow and mean, not only shall the kings of the Scots [i.e., Irish] with their peoples, but also the rulers of foreign and barbarous nations with the people subject to them, confer great and no ordinary honour. By the saints of other churches also, shall no common respect be accorded it.'

"After these words, going down from the little hill and returning to the monastery, he sat in his cell writing a copy of the Psalms, and on reaching that verse of the thirty-third Psalm where it is written, 'But they that seek the Lord shall lack no thing that is good;' 'Here,' said he, 'we may close at the end of the page; let Baithin write what follows.' Well appropriate for the parting saint was the last verse which he had written, for to him shall good things eternal be never lacking, while to the father who succeeded him [Baithin], the teacher of his spiritual sons, the following [words] were particularly apposite, 'Come, my sons, hearken unto me. I shall teach you the fear of the Lord,' since as the departing one desired, he was his successor not only in teaching but also in writing.[31]

"After writing the above verse and finishing the page, the saint enters the church for the vesper office preceding the Sunday; which finished, he returned to his little room, and rested for the night on his couch, where for mattress he had a bare flag, and for pillow a stone, which at this day stands as a kind of commemorative[Pg 188] monument beside his tomb.[32] And there, sitting, he gives his last mandates to the brethren, in the hearing of his servant only, saying, 'These last words of mine I commend to you, O little children, that ye preserve a mutual charity with peace, and a charity not feigned amongst yourselves; and if ye observe to do this according to the example of the holy fathers, God, the comforter of the good, shall help you, and I, remaining with Him, shall make intercession for you, and not only the necessaries of this present life shall be sufficiently supplied you by Him, but also the reward of eternal good, prepared for the observers of things Divine, shall be rendered you.' Up to this point the last words of our venerable patron [when now] passing as it were from this wearisome pilgrimage to his heavenly country, have been briefly narrated.

"After which, his joyful last hour gradually approaching, the saint was silent. Then soon after, when the struck bell resounded in the middle of the night,[33] quickly rising he goes to the church, and hastening more quickly than the others he entered alone, and with bent knees inclines beside the altar in prayer. His servant, Diarmuid, following more slowly, at the same moment beholds, from a distance, the whole church inside filled with angelic light round the saint; but as he approached the door this same light, which he had seen, swiftly vanished; which light a few others of the brethren, also standing at a distance, had seen. Diarmuid then entering the church, calls aloud with a voice choked with tears, 'Where art thou, Father?' And the lamps of the brethren not yet being brought, groping in the dark, he found the saint recumbent before the altar: raising him up a little, and sitting beside him, he placed the sacred head in his own bosom. And while this was happening a crowd of monks running up with lights, and seeing their father dying, begin to lament. And as we have learned from some who were there present, the saint, his soul not yet departing, with eyes upraised, looked round on each side, with a countenance of wondrous joy and gladness, as though beholding the holy angels coming to meet him. Diarmuid then raises up the saint's right hand to bless the band of monks. But the venerable father himself, too, in so far as he was[Pg 189] able, was moving his hand at the same time, so that he might appear to bless the brethren with the motion of his hand, what he could not do with his voice, during his soul's departure. And after thus signifying his sacred benediction, he straightway breathed forth his life. When it had gone forth from the tabernacle of his body, the countenance remained so long glowing and gladdened in a wonderful manner by the angelic vision, that it appeared not that of a dead man but of a living one sleeping. In the meantime the whole church resounded with sorrowful lamentations."[34]

Besides the lives of Columcille, written by Adamnan and Cummene, at least four more exist; an anonymous life in Latin, printed by Colgan and erroneously supposed by him to be that of Cummene; a life by John of Tinmouth, chiefly compiled from Adamnan, which is also printed by Colgan; the old Irish life contained in four Irish MSS., namely, in the Leabhar Breac, in the Book of Lismore, in a vellum MS. in Edinburgh, and in an Irish parchment volume found by the Revolutionary Commissioners, during the Republic, in a private house in Paris, and by them presented to the Royal Library of that city—

"Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris!"

This life has been printed from the Book of Lismore by Dr. Whitley Stokes. The last and most copious life is a compilation of all existing documents and poems both in Latin and Old Irish, and was made by order of O'Donnell in 1532.

"Be it known," says the preface, "to the readers of this Life that it was Manus, son of Hugh, son of Hugh Roe, son of Niall Garv, son of Turlough of the wise O'Donnell, who ordered the part of this Life which was in Latin to be put into Gaelic; and who ordered the part that was in difficult Gaelic to be modified, so that it might be clear and comprehensible to every one; and who gathered and put together the parts of it that were scattered through the old[Pg 190] Books of Erin; and who dictated it out of his own mouth with great labour and a great expenditure of time in studying how he should arrange all its parts in their proper places, as they are left here in writing by us; and in love and friendship for his illustrious saint, relative, and patron, to whom he was devoutly attached. It was in the Castle of Port-na-tri-námhad [Lifford] that his Life was indited, when were fulfilled 12 years and 20 and 500 and 1000 of the age of the Lord."

This life, written in a large vellum folio, is preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford and has never yet been printed.[35]

The remains of Columcille, which after a three days' wake were interred in Iona, were left undisturbed for close upon a hundred years. They were afterwards disinterred and placed within a splendid shrine of gold and silver, which, in due time, became the prey of the marauding Norsemen. The belief is very general that his remains found their last resting-place in Downpatrick, along with those of St. Patrick and St. Brigit. The present appearance of the spot where they are supposed to lie, may be gathered from the indignant verses[36] of a member of a now defunct literary body, to which I had the honour of belonging some years ago, one of those numerous Irish literary societies which produce verses as thick as leaves in Vallombrosa.

"I stood at a grave by the outer wall
Of the Strangers' Church in Down,
All lorn and lost in neglect, and crossed
By the Church of the Strangers' frown.
All lorn and waste, and with footsteps crossed
The grave of our Patrons Three,
Not a leaf to wave o'er that lonely grave
That seemed not a grave to me!

[Pg 191]But a trench where some traitor was flung of yore—
'Twas "a sight for a foeman's eye"!
Where Patrick still and Saint Columbkille
And the Dove[37] of the Oak Tree lie.

    *    *    *    *    *

Those men who spoke bravely of rending chains
(And never a fetter broke!)
Those men who adored the flashing sword
(When never a tocsin spoke!)
Those little men, who are very great
In marble and bronze, are still
The city's pride, whilst that trench holds Bride
And Patrick and Columbkille!"

[Pg 192]

CHAPTER XVI

THE FIRST SCHOOLS OF CHRISTIAN IRELAND

St. Patrick and the early Christians of the fifth century spent much of their time and labour in the conversion of pagans and the building of churches. Columcille and the leading churchmen of the sixth century, on the other hand, gave themselves up more to the foundation of monastic institutions and the conduct of schools. They belonged to what is well known in Irish ecclesiastical history as the second Order of Saints. The first Order was composed of Patrick and his associates, bishops filled with piety, founders of churches, three hundred and fifty in number, mostly Franks, Romans, and Britons, but with some Scots [i.e. Irish] also amongst them. These worshipped, says the ancient "Catalogue of the Saints," one head—Christ, and followed one leader—Patrick. They had one tonsure, one celebration of the Mass, and one Easter. They mixed freely in the society of women, because they feared not the wind of temptation, and this first Order of Saints, as it is called, is reckoned by the Irish to have lasted during four reigns.

The next Order of Saints had few bishops but many priests, this was the order to which Columcille belonged, and most of the saints who founded the great schools of Ireland which in[Pg 193] the following century became so flourishing and spread their fame throughout Europe, as those of Ciaran and Finnian and Brendan, and a score of others. This Order shunned all association with women, and would not have them in their monasteries.[1] These saints whilst worshipping God as their head, and celebrating one Easter and having one tonsure, yet had different rites for celebrating, and different rules for living. The rite with which they celebrated Mass they are said to have secured from the British saints, St. David, St. Gildas, and others. They also lasted for four reigns, or, roughly speaking, during the last three quarters of the sixth century.

After these came what is called the third Order of Saints who appear in their time to have been pre-eminent amongst the other Christians, and to have been mostly anchorites, who lived on herbs and supported themselves by such alms as they were given, despising all things earthly and all things fleshly. They observed Easter differently, they had different tonsures, they had different rules of life, and different rites for celebrating Mass. They are said to have numbered about a hundred and to have lasted down to the time of the great plague in 664.

This third Order, says the writer of the "Catalogue of Saints," who gives their names, was holy, the second holier, but the first Order was most holy. "The first glowed like the sun in the fervour of their charity, the second cast a pale radiance like the moon, the third shone like the aurora. These three Orders the blessed Patrick foreknew, enlightened by heavenly wisdom, when in prophetic vision he saw at first all Ireland ablaze, and afterwards only the mountains on fire, and at last saw lamps lit in the valleys."

By the middle of the sixth century Ireland had been honeycombed from shore to shore with schools, monasteries, colleges,[Pg 194] and foundations of all kinds belonging to the Christian community, and books had multiplied to a marvellous extent. At the same time the professional bards flourished in such numbers that Keating says that "nearly a third of the men of Ireland belonged, about that period, to the poetic order." Omitting for the present the consideration of the bards and the non-Christian literature of poem and saga—mostly anonymous—which they produced, we must, take a rapid survey of some of the most important of the Christian schools, whose pious professors, whose number, and whose learning, secured for Ireland the title of the Island of Saints. We have already seen how the three patron saints of Ireland established their schools in Armagh, Kildare, and Iona, and their example was followed by hundreds.

St. Enda, the son of a king of Oriel, after having studied at some school in Great Britain (probably with St. Ninian—who is said to have been himself an Irishman—at his noble monastery of Candida Casa in Galloway, built about the year 400), and after travelling through various parts of Ireland, settled down finally about the year 483 in the rocky and inaccessible island of Aran Mór, and was the first of those holy men who have won for it the appellation of Aran of the Saints. "One hundred and twenty-seven saints sleep in the little square yard around Killeany Church"[2] alone, and we are told that the countless numbers of saints who have mingled their clay with the holy soil of Aran will never be known until the day of Judgment. Here most of the saints of the second Order repaired sooner or later, to be instructed by, or to hold converse with St. Enda; amongst them Brendan the Voyager, whose wanderings, under the title of Navigatio Brendani, became so well known in later ages to all mediæval Europe. To him also came St. Finnian of Clonard, who was himself celebrated in later days as the "Tutor of the Saints of Erin." From the remote north came[Pg 195] Finnian of Moville, Columcille's first teacher, and Ciaran, the carpenter's son, the illustrious founder of Clonmacnois. St. Jarlath of Tuam was there too, with St. Carthach the elder, of Lismore, and with St. Keevin of Glendalough. St. Columcille[3] himself was amongst Enda's visitors, and tore himself away with the utmost difficulty, solacing himself by recourse to the Irish muse as was his wont—

"Farewell from me to Ara's Isle,
Her smile is at my heart no more,
No more to me the boon is given
With hosts of heaven to walk her shore.

How far, alas! how far, alas!
Have I to pass from Ara's view,
To mix with men from Mona's fen,
With men from Alba's mountains blue.

Bright orb of Ara, Ara's sun,
Ah! softly run through Ara's sky,
To rest beneath thy beam were sweeter
Than lie where Paul and Peter lie.

O Ara, darling of the West,
Ne'er be he blest who loves not thee,
O God, cut short her foeman's breath,
Let Hell and Death his portion be.

O Ara, darling of the West,
Ne'er be he blest who loves not thee,
Herdless and childless may he go
In endless woe his doom is dree.

O Ara, darling of the West,
Ne'er be he blest who loves thee not,
When angels wing from heaven on high
And leave the sky for this dear spot."[4]

[Pg 196]

Another early school was that founded by St. Finnian at Cluain Eraird, better known under its corrupt form Clonard, a spot hard by the river Boyne, to which students from both north and south resorted in great numbers. Finnian, who was of the Clanna Rury, or Irian race, had been baptized by Bishop Fortchern, who—so quickly did the Christian cause progress—was a grandson of King Laeghaire, who withstood St. Patrick. This Fortchern, too, like Brigit's favourite bishop, was a skilled artificer in bronze and metal, a calling to which many of the early saints evinced a strong bias. Clonard even during Finnian's lifetime became a great school, and three thousand students are said to have been gathered round it, amongst them the so-called Twelve Apostles of Erin. These are Ciaran of Clonmacnois and Ciaran of Saigher, who is patron saint of Ossory; Brendan of Birr, the "prophet," and Brendan of Clonfert, the "navigator"; Columba of Tir-da-glass and Columcille; Mobhí of Glasnevin and—infaustum nomen!—Rodan of Lothra or Lorrha; Senanus of Iniscathy, whose name is known to the lovers of the poet Moore; Ninnidh of Loch Erne; Lasserian, and St. Cainnech of Kilkenny, known in Scotland as Kenneth, and second in that country only to St. Columcille and St. Brigit in popularity. The school of Clonard was founded about the year 520, when, to quote the rather jingling hymn from St. Finnian's office—

"Reversus in Clonardiam
Ad cathedram lecturæ
Opponit diligentiam
Ad studium scripturæ."

[Pg 197]

The numbers who attended his teaching are given in another verse—

"Trium virorum millium
Sorte fit doctor humilis,
Verbi his fudit fluvium
Ut fons emanans rivulis."

Like all the other early Irish foundations which attained to wealth and dignity before the ninth century, Clonard suffered in proportion to its fame. It was after that date plundered and destroyed twelve times, and was fourteen times burnt down either wholly or in part. That being so, it is not much to be wondered at that there only remains a single surviving literary work of this school, which is the "Mystical Interpretation of the Ancestry of our Lord Jesus Christ," by St. Aileran the Wise, one of Finnian's successors, who died of the great plague in 664. This piece, like so many others, was found in the Swiss monastery of St. Gall, whither it had been brought by some monks from Ireland. The editors who printed it for the Benedictines in the seventeenth century say that, although the writer did not belong to their Order, they publish it because he "unfolded the meaning of sacred scripture with so much learning and ingenuity that every student of the sacred volume, and especially preachers of the Divine Word, will regard the publication as most acceptable." The learned editors could have hardly paid the Irish writer a higher compliment. "A Short Moral Explanation of the Sacred Names" is another still existing fragment of Aileran's, and "whether we consider the style of the latinity, the learning, or the ingenuity of the writer," says Dr. Healy, "it is equally marvellous and equally honourable to the school of Clonard." Aileran is said to have also written lives of St. Patrick, St. Brigit, and St. Fechin of Fore, and to be the original author of a litany, part Irish, part Latin, preserved in the Yellow Book of Lecan.

Another great Irish college was Clonfert on the Shannon,[Pg 198] founded about the year 556 by Brendan the Navigator, who, like Finnian, came of the Irian race, being descended from Fergus mac Roy.[5] He was born towards the close of the fifth century, and his school, too, became very famous, having, it is said, produced as many as three thousand monks. The influence of the Navigatio Brendani, by whomsoever written, was immense, and was felt through all Europe, so that in many of the great continental libraries good MS. copies of it, sometimes very ancient, may be found.[6] But perhaps Brendan's grand-nephew and pupil may have indirectly influenced European literature in a still more important manner. This was Fursa, afterwards St. Fursa, whose visions were known all over Ireland, Great Britain, and France. There can be no doubt about the substantial accuracy of St. Fursa's life, for Bede himself, who dedicates a good deal of space to Fursa's visions,[7] refers to it. It must have been written within ten or fifteen years after his death, because it refers to the plague and the great eclipse of the sun which happened last year, that is 664. Now Dante was acquainted with Bede's writings, for he expressly mentions him, and Bede's account of Fursa and Fursa's own life may have been familiar to him, and furnished him with the groundwork of part of the Divine Comedy of which it seems a kind of prototype.[8]

[Pg 199]

Brendan's own adventures and his view of hell, which he was shown by the devil, may also have been known to Dante. Brendan prepared three vessels with thirty men in each, some clerics, some laymen, and with these, says his Irish life in the Book of Lismore, he sailed to seek the Promised Land, which, evidently influenced by the old pagan traditions of Moy Mell[9] and Hy Brassil, he expected to find as an island in the Western Sea, and so says his Irish life poetically—

"Brendan, son of Finnlug, sailed over the wave-voice of the strong-maned sea, and over the storm of the green-sided waves, and over the mouths of the marvellous awful bitter ocean, where they saw the multitude of the furious red-mouthed monsters with abundance of the great sea-whales. And they found beautiful marvellous islands, yet they tarried not therein."

Like Sindbad in the Arabian tales,[10] they land upon the back of a great whale as if it had been solid land. There they celebrated Easter. They endured much peril from the sea. "On a certain day, as they were on the marvellous ocean"—this adjective is strongly indicative of the spirit in which the Celt regards the works of nature—"they beheld the deep bitter streams and the vast black whirlpools of the strong-maned sea, and in them their vessels were being constrained to founder because of the greatness of the storm." Brendan, however, cried to the sea, "It is enough for thee, O mighty sea, to drown me alone, but let this folk escape thee," and on hearing[Pg 200] his cry the sea grew calm. It was after this that Brendan got a view of hell.

"On a certain day," says the Irish Life, "that they were on the sea, the devil came in a form old, awful, hideous, foul, hellish, and sat on the rail of the vessel before Brendan, and none of them saw him save Brendan alone. Brendan asked him why he had come before his proper time, that is, before the time of the great resurrection. 'For this have I come,' said the devil, 'to seek my punishment in the deep closes of this black, dark sea.' Brendan inquired of him, 'What is this, where is that infernal place?' 'Sad is that,' said the devil; 'no one can see it and remain alive afterwards.' Howbeit the devil there revealed the gate of hell to Brendan, and Brendan beheld that rough, hot prison full of stench, full of flame, full of filth, full of the camps of the poisonous demons, full of wailing and screaming and hurt and sad cries and great lamentations and moaning and handsmiting of the sinful folks, and a gloomy, mournful life in hearts of pain, in igneous prisons, in streams of the rows of eternal fire, in the cup of eternal sorrow and death, without limit, without end; in black, dark swamps, in fonts of heavy flame, in abundance of woe and death and torments, and fetters, and feeble wearying combats, with the awful shouting of the poisonous demons, in a night ever-dark, ever-cold, ever-stinking, ever-foul, ever-misty, ever-harsh, ever-long, ever-stifling, deadly, destructive, gloomy, fiery-haired, of the loathsome bottom of hell. On sides of mountains of eternal fire, without rest, without stay, were hosts of demons dragging the sinners into prisons ... black demons; stinking fires; streams of poison; cats scratching; hounds rending; dogs baying; demons yelling; stinking lakes; great swamps; dark pits; deep glens; high mountains; hard crags;... winds bitter, wintry; snow frozen, ever-dropping; flakes red, fiery; faces base, darkened; demons swift, greedy; tortures vast, various."[11]

This is one of the earliest attempts in literature at the pourtrayal of an Inferno.

[Pg 201]

After a seven-years' voyage Brendan returned home to his own country without having found his Earthly Paradise, and his people and his folic at home "brought him," says the Irish Life, "treasures and gifts as if they were giving them to God"!

His foster-mother St. Ita now advised him not to put forth in search of that glorious land in those dead stained skins which formed his currachs, for it was a holy land he sought, and he should look for it in wooden vessels. Then Brendan built himself "a great marvellous vessel, distinguished and huge." He first sailed to Aran to consort with St. Enda, but after a month he heaved anchor and sailed once more into the West.

He reaches the Isle of Paradise after many adventures, and is invited on shore by an old man "without any human raiment, but all his body full of bright white feathers like a dove or a sea-mew, and it was almost the speech of an angel that he had." "O ye toilsome men," he said, "O hallowed pilgrims, O folk that entreat the heavenly rewards, O ever-weary life expecting this land, stay a little now from your labour." The land is described in terms that forcibly record the delights of the pagan Elysium of Moy Mell, and prove how intimately the Brendan legend is bound up with primitive pre-Christian mythological beliefs. "The delightful fields of the land" are described as "radiant, famous, lovable,"—"a land odorous, flower-smooth, blessed, a land many-melodied, musical, shouting-for-joy, unmournful." "Happy," said the old man, "shall he be with well-deservingness and with good deeds, whom Brandan, son of Finnlug, shall call into union with him on that side to inhabit for ever and ever the island whereon we stand."

But better known—at least in ecclesiastical history—than even St. Brendan, is St. Cummian, surnamed "fada" or the Long, who was one of his successors in the school of Clonfert, and who perished in or a little before the great plague of 664.[Pg 202] There are two hymns, one by himself in Latin,[12] and one in Irish by his tutor, Colman Ua Cluasaigh [Clooasy] of Cork, preserved in the "Liber Hymnorum." But his great achievement was his celebrated letter on the Paschal question addressed to his friend Segienus, the abbot of Iona. The question of when to celebrate Easter day was one which long sundered the British and Irish Churches from the rest of Europe, and has, as students of ecclesiastical history know, given rise to all sorts of conjectures as to the independence of these churches. The charge against the Irish was that they celebrated Easter on any day from the fourteenth to the twentieth day of the moon, even on the fourteenth if it should happen to be Sunday, but the fourteenth was a Jewish festival and the Council of Nice had, in 325, declared it to be unlawful to celebrate the Christian Easter on a Jewish festival.[13] The Irish had obtained their own doctrine of Easter from the East, through Gaul, which was largely open to Eastern influence; also the Irish used the old Roman cycle of 84 years, not the newer and more correct Alexandrian one of 19 years. The consequence was the scandal of having different Churches of Christendom celebrating Easter on different days, and some mourning when others were[Pg 203] feasting, a scandal which the Epistle of Cummian was designed to put an end to.

"I call this letter," says Professor G. Stokes,[14] "a marvellous composition because of the vastness of its learning; it quotes besides the Scriptures and Latin authors, Greek writers like Origen, and Cyril, Pachomius the head and reformer of Egyptian monasticism, and Damascius the last of the celebrated neo-Platonic philosophers of Athens, who lived about the year 500, and wrote all his works in Greek. Cummian discusses the calendars of the Macedonians, Hebrews, and Copts, giving us the Hebrew, Greek, and Egyptian names of months and cycles, and tells us that he had been sent as one of a deputation of learned men a few years before to ascertain the practice of the Church of Rome. When they came to Rome they lodged in one hospital with a Greek and a Hebrew, an Egyptian, and a Scythian, who told them that the whole world celebrated the Roman and not the Irish Easter."

Cummian throughout this letter displays the true spirit of a scholar, he humbly apologises for his presumption in addressing such holy men, and calls God to witness that he is actuated by no spirit of pride or contempt for others. When the new cycle of 532 years was first introduced into Ireland he did not at once accept it, but held his peace and took no side in the matter, because he did not think himself wiser than the Hebrews, Greeks, and Latins, nor did he venture to disdain the food he had not yet tasted. So he retired for a whole year into the study of the question, to examine for himself the facts of history, the nature of the various cycles in use, and the testimony of Scripture.

There is another book, "De Mensura Pœnitentiarum," ascribed to Cummian and printed in Migne; and there is a poem on his death by his tutor, St. Colman, who was carried off by the same plague a short time after him.[15]

[Pg 204]

The great institution presided over by St. Cummian was flourishing in full vigour at the time of the first incursions of the Northmen. It is frequently mentioned in the Irish Annals as a place of note and learning. Turgesius the Dane, attracted by so fair a booty, promptly plundered and burnt it to the ground. Again and again it was rebuilt, and again and again the same fate befell it. The monastery and the school survived, however, until the coming of the Normans, and the "Four Masters" under the year 1170 record the death of one of its teachers, Cormac O'Lumlini, whom they pathetically designate "the remnant of the sages of Erin," for by this time Clonfert had been six times burnt and four times plundered.

Even a greater school, however, than Clonfert, was that founded by St. Ciaran [Keeran], the carpenter's son, beside a curve in the Shannon, at Clonmacnois, not far from Athlone, about the year 544. He had himself been educated by St. Finnian of Clonard, and he died at the early age of thirty-three, immediately after laying the foundations of what was destined to become the greatest Christian college in Ireland.[16]

The monastery and cells of St. Ciaran rapidly grew into a city, to which students flocked from far and near. In one sense the College of Clonmacnois had an advantage over all its rivals, for it belonged to no one race or clan. Its abbots and teachers were drawn from many different tribes, and situated as it was, in almost the centre of the island, all the great races, Erimonians, Eberians, Irians, and Ithians, resorted to it impartially, and it became a real university. There the O'Conors, kings of Connacht, had their own separate church; there the Southern Ui Neill reared apart their own cathedral; there the MacDermots, princes of Moylurg, and the[Pg 205] O'Kellys, kings of Hy Mainy, had each their own mortuary chapels; there the Southerns built one round tower, the O'Rorkes another; and there too the Mac Carthys of Munster had a burial-place. Who, even at this day, has not heard of the glories of Clonmacnois, of its ruins, its graves, its crosses; of its churchyard, which possesses a greater variety of sculptured and decorated stones than perhaps all the rest of Ireland put together, and of which the Irish poet beautifully sang so long ago—

"In a quiet watered land, a land of roses,
Stands St. Ciaran's city fair,
And the warriors of Erin in their famous generations,
Slumber there.

There beneath the dewy hill-side sleep the noblest
Of the clan of Conn,
Each below his stone, with name in branching Ogham,
And the sacred knot thereon.

There they laid to rest the seven kings of Tara,
There the sons of Cairbré sleep,
Battle-banners of the Gael that in Ciaran's Plain of Crosses,
Now their final hosting keep.

And in Clonmacnois they laid the men of Teffia,
And right many a lord of Breagh.
Deep the sod above Clan Creidé and Clan Conaill,
Kind in hall and fierce in fray.

Many and many a son of Conn the Hundred-Fighter
In the red earth lies at rest,
Many a blue eye of Clan Colman the turf covers,
Many a swan-white breast."[17]

[Pg 206]

Some of the most distinguished scholars of Ireland, if not of Europe, were educated at Clonmacnois, including Alcuin, the most learned man at the French court, who remembered his alma mater so affectionately that he extracted from King Charles of France a gift of fifty shekels of silver, to which he added fifty more of his own, and sent them to the brotherhood of Clonmacnois as a gift, with a quantity of olive oil for the Irish bishops. His affectionate letter to "his blessed master and pious father" Colgan, chief professor at Clonmacnois, is still extant.

This Colgu, or Colgan, himself wrote a book in Irish, called "The Besom of Devotion," which appears to be now lost. A litany of his still remains. The great eleventh-century annalist, Tighearnach, was an alumnus of Clonmacnois. So, too, was the reputed author of the "Chronicon Scotorum," O'Malone, in 1123. The Annals of Clonmacnois was one of the books in the hands of the "Four Masters," but it is now lost, and a different book called by the same name (the original[Pg 207] of which has also perished) was translated into English by Macgeoghegan in 1627.[18] The celebrated Leabhar na h-Uidhre [Lowar na Heera] or "Book of the Dun Cow," compiled about the year 1100, emanated from this centre of learning. Like Clonfert, and every other home of Irish civilisation, the city of Clonmacnois fell a prey to the barbarians. The Northmen plundered it or burnt it, or both, on ten separate occasions. Turgesius, their leader, set up his wife Ota as a kind of priestess to deliver oracles from its high altar;[19] and some of the Irish themselves, reduced to a state of barbarism by the horrors of the period, laid their sacrilegious hands upon its holy places; and afterwards the English of Athlone stepped in and completed its destruction. It now remains only a ruin and a name.

Another very celebrated school was that of Bangor, on Belfast Loch, founded by Comgall, the friend of Columcille, between 550 and 560. It soon became crowded with scholars, and next to Armagh it was certainly the greatest school of the northern province, and produced men of the highest eminence at home and abroad. Its fame reached far across the sea. St. Bernard called it "a noble institution, which was inhabited by many thousands of monks;" and Joceline of Furness, in the twelfth century, called it "a fruitful vine breathing the odour of salvation, whose offshoots extended not only over all Ireland, but far beyond the seas into foreign countries, and filled many lands with its abounding fruitfulness."

The most distinguished of Bangor's sons of learning were Columbanus, the evangeliser of portions of Burgundy and Lombardy; St. Gall, the evangeliser of Switzerland; Dungal, the astronomer; and later on, in the twelfth century, Malachy[Pg 208] O'Morgair, who, though not known as an author, distinguished himself in the province of Church discipline.

The lives of St. Columbanus and of St. Gall belong rather to foreign than to Irish history, but we may glance at them again in another place. Dungal, poet, astronomer, and theologian, was also like them, for a time, an exile. His identity is uncertain; the "Four Masters" mention twenty-two persons of the same name between the years 744 and 1015, but his Irish nationality is certain, and he calls himself "Hibernicus exul" in his poem addressed to his patron Charlemagne. He appears to have died in the Irish monastery at Bobbio, in North Italy, to which he left his library, and amongst other books the celebrated Antiphonary of Bangor, his possession of which seems to warrant us in supposing that Bangor was his original college. He appears to have been a close friend of Charlemagne's, and in 811 he wrote him his celebrated letter, explanatory of the two solar eclipses which had taken place the year before. The emperor could apparently find at his court no other astronomer of sufficient learning to explain the phenomena. Later on we find Dungal, at the request of Lothaire, Charlemagne's grandson, opening a school at Pavia to civilise the Lombards, to which institution great numbers of students flocked from every quarter. Dungal may, in fact, be regarded as the founder of the University of Pavia. His greatest effort whilst in Pavia was his work against the Iconoclasts. Dungal's attack upon the cultured Spanish bishop, Claudius, who championed them, as it was the first, so it appears to have been the ablest blow struck; and Western iconoclasm seemed to have for the time received a mortal wound from his hand.[20] Besides his long eulogy on his friend and patron Charlemagne, several other smaller[Pg 209] poems of his survive, showing him to have been—like almost all Irishmen of that date—no mere pedant and student.

Like almost all the more famous and attractive of the Irish colleges, Bangor suffered fearfully from the attacks of the northern pirates, who, according to St. Bernard, slew there as many as nine hundred monks. "Not a cross, not even a stone," says Dr. Healy, "now remains to mark the site of the famous monastery, whose crowded cloisters for a thousand years overlooked the pleasant islets and broad waters of Inver Becne." It has shared the fate of its compeers:

etiam periere ruinæ.

It would prove too tedious to enumerate the other Irish colleges which dotted the island in the sixth and seventh centuries. The most remarkable of them besides those that I have mentioned were Moville, at the head of Loch Cuan or Strangford Lough, in the County Down, founded by St. Finnian, who was born before 500, and who afterwards became known as Frigidius, Bishop of Lucca, in Switzerland. Colman, whose hymn is preserved in the "Liber Hymnorum," and Marianus Scotus, the Chronicler, were alumni of Moville.

Cluain Eidnech, or Clonenagh, the "Ivy Meadow," was founded by St. Fintan, near Maryborough, in the present Queen's County. Angus the Culdee, who with its Abbot Maelruain is said to have composed the Martyrology of Tallaght prior to 792, was its greatest ornament. Of his Irish works we shall have more to say later on. Clonenagh suffered so much from the Northmen, that its great foundation had already in the twelfth century dwindled to a parochial church; in the nineteenth it is a green mound.

Glendalough, founded by the celebrated St. Kevin,[21] became also a college of much note. St. Moling, to whom a great[Pg 210] number of Irish poems[22] are ascribed, was one of his successors in the seventh century, and his life seems to have taken peculiar hold upon the imagination of the populace, for he has more poems—many of them evident forgeries—attributed to him than we find ascribed to any of the saints except to Columcille; and he has a place amongst the four great prophets of Erin.[23] It was he who procured the remission of[Pg 211] the Boru tribute from King Finnachta about the year 693. Glendalough was plundered and destroyed by the Danes five times over, within a period of thirty years, yet it to some extent recovered itself, and the great St. Laurence O'Toole, who was Archbishop of Dublin at the coming of the Normans, had been there educated.

Lismore, the great college of the south-east, was founded by St. Carthach in the beginning of the seventh century, who left behind him, according to O'Curry, a monastic rule of 580 lines of Irish verse.[24] Cathal, or Cathaldus, born in the beginning of the seventh century, who afterwards became bishop and patron saint of Tarentum, in Italy, was a student, and perhaps professor in this college. The office of St. Cathaldus states that Gauls, Angles, Irish, and Teutons, and very many people of neighbouring nations came to hear his lectures at Lismore, and Morini's life of him expresses in poetic terms the tradition of Lismore's greatness.[25] St. Cuanna, another member of Lismore, was probably the author of the Book of[Pg 212] Cuanach, now lost, but often quoted in the Annals of Ulster. He died in 650, and the book is not quoted after the year 628, which makes it more than probable that he was the author. Lismore was burnt down by the Danes, but recovered itself in the general revival of native institutions that took place prior to the conquest of the Anglo-Normans. However, when these latter came upon the Irish stage it fared ill with Lismore. Strongbow, indeed, was bought off from burning its churches in 1173 by a great sum of money, but in the following year his son, in spite of this, plundered the place. Four years later the English forces again attacked it, plundered it, and set it on fire. In 1207 the whole town and all about it was finally consumed, so that at the present day not a vestige remains behind of its schools, its cloisters, or its twenty churches.

Cork college was founded by St. Finnbarr towards the end of the sixth century. One of its professors, Colman O'Cluasaigh, who died in 664, wrote the curious Irish hymn or prayer mixed with Latin, preserved in the Book of Hymns.[26] The place was burned four times between 822 and 840, but in the twelfth century the ancient monastery which had fallen into decay was rebuilt by Cormac Mac Carthy, king[Pg 213] of Munster, and builder of the celebrated Cormac's Chapel at Cashel.

The school of Ross was founded by St. Fachtna for the Ithian tribes[27] of Corca Laidhi [Cor-ka-lee] in South-west Munster. Ross is frequently referred to in the Annals up to the tenth century. There is extant an interesting geographical poem in Irish, of 136 lines, written by one of the teachers there in the tenth century, and apparently intended as a kind of simple text to be learned by heart by the students.[28] Ross was plundered by the Danes in 840, but appears to have been flourishing until North-west Munster was laid waste by the Anglo-Normans under FitzStephen, after which no more is heard of its schools or colleges.

Innisfallen was founded upon an exquisite site on the lower lake of Killarney by St. Finan.[29] The well-known "Annals of Innisfallen," preserved in the Bodleian Library, were probably written by Maelsuthain [Calvus Perennis] O'Carroll, the "soul-friend" of Brian Boru, who inserted the famous entry in the Book of Armagh.[30] It is probable that Brian himself was also educated there. This monastery, owing to its secure retreat in the Kerry mountains, appears to have remained unplundered by the Norsemen, and to have been accounted "a paradise and a secure sanctuary."

Iniscaltra is a beautiful island in the south-west angle of Loch Derg, between Galway and Clare, still famous for its splendid round tower. It was here Columba of Terryglass, who died in 552, established a school and monastery which became so famous that in the life of St. Senan seven ships are mentioned as arriving at the mouth of the Shannon crowded with students for Iniscaltra. It was this Columba who, when asked by one of his disciples why the birds that frequented the island were not afraid of him, made the somewhat dramatic answer,[Pg 214] "Why should they fear me? am I not a bird myself, for my soul always flies to heaven as they fly through the sky." Columba had a celebrated successor called Caimin, who died in 653. Ussher, who calls him St. Caminus, tells us that part of his Psalter was extant in his own time, and that he had himself seen it "having a collation of the Hebrew text placed on the upper part of each page, and with brief scholia added on the exterior margin."[31]

A great number of lesser monastic institutions and schools seem to have existed alongside of these more famous ones, and it is hardly too much to say that during the sixth, seventh, eighth, and perhaps ninth centuries Ireland had caught and held aloft the torch of learning in the lampadia of mankind, and procured for herself the honourable title of the island of saints and scholars.

[Pg 215]

CHAPTER XVII

THEIR FAME AND TEACHING

It is very difficult to say what was exactly the curriculum of the early Irish colleges, and how far they were patronised by laymen. Without doubt their original design was to propagate a more perfect knowledge of the Scriptures and of theological learning in general, but it is equally certain that they must have, almost from the very first, taught the heathen classics and the Irish language side by side with the Scriptures and theology. There is no other possible way of accounting for the admirable scholarship of the men whom they turned out, and for their skill in Latin and often also in Irish poetry. Virgil, Ovid, Terence, and most of the Latin poets must have been widely taught and read. "It is sufficient," says M. d'Arbois de Jubainville, talking of Columbanus who was born in 543, and who was educated at Bangor, on Belfast Loch, "to glance at his writings, immediately to recognise his marvellous superiority over Gregory of Tours and the Gallo-Romans of his time. He lived in close converse with the classical authors, as later on did the learned men of the sixteenth century, whose equal he certainly is not, but of whom he seems a sort of precursor." From the sixth to the sixteenth century is a long leap, and no higher eulogium could be passed[Pg 216] upon the scholarship of Columbanus and the training given by his Irish college.[1] All the studies of the time appear to have been taught in them through the medium of the Irish language, not merely theology but arithmetic, rhetoric, poetry, hagiography, natural science as then understood, grammar, chronology, astronomy, Greek, and even Hebrew.

"The classic tradition," sums up M. Darmesteter, "to all appearances dead in Europe, burst out into full flower in the Isle of Saints, and the Renaissance began in Ireland 700 years before it was known in Italy. During three centuries Ireland was the asylum of the higher learning which took sanctuary there from the uncultured states of Europe. At one time Armagh, the religious capital of Christian Ireland, was the metropolis of civilisation."

[Pg 217]

"Ireland," says Babington in his "Fallacies of Race Theories,"[2] "had been admitted into Christendom and to some measure of culture only in the fifth century. At that time Gaul and Italy enjoyed to the full all the knowledge of the age. In the next century the old culture-lands had to turn for some little light and teaching to that remote and lately barbarous land."

When we remember that the darkness of the Middle Ages had already set in over the struggles, agony, and confusion of feudal Europe, and that all knowledge of Greek may be said to have died out upon the Continent—"had elsewhere absolutely vanished," says M. Darmesteter—when we remember that even such a man as Gregory the Great was completely ignorant of it, it will appear extraordinary to find it taught in Ireland alone, out of all the countries of Western Europe.[3] Yet this is capable of complete and manifold proof. Columbanus for instance, shows in his letter to Pope Boniface that he knows something of both Greek and Hebrew.[4] Aileran, who died of the plague in 664, gives evidence of the same in his book on our Lord's genealogy. Cummian's letter to the Abbot of Iona has been referred to before, and, as Professor G. Stokes puts it, "proves the fact to demonstration that in the first half of the seventh century there was a wide range of Greek learning, not ecclesiastical merely, but chronological, astronomical, and philosophical, away at Durrow in the very centre of the Bog of Allen." Augustine, an un-identified Irish monk of the second half of the seventh century, gives many proofs of Greek and Oriental learning and quotes the Chronicles of Eusebius. The later Sedulius, the versatile abbot of Kildare, about the year 820 "makes parade of his Greek knowledge," to quote a French writer in the "Revue Celtique," "employs Greek words[Pg 218] without necessity, and translates into Greek a part of the definition of the pronoun."[5] St. Caimins's Psalter, seen by Bishop Ussher with the Hebrew text collated, convinced Dr. Reeves that Hebrew as well as Greek was studied in Ireland about the year 600. Nor did this Greek learning tend to die out. In the middle of the ninth century John Scotus Erigena, summoned from Ireland to France by Charles the Bald, was the only person to be found able to translate the Greek works of the pseudo-Dionysius,[6] thanks to the training he had received in his Irish school. The Book of Armagh contains the Lord's Prayer written in Greek letters, and there is a Greek MS. of the Psalter, written in Sedulius' own hand, now preserved in Paris. Many more Greek texts, at least a dozen, written by Irish monks, are preserved elsewhere in Europe. "These eighth and ninth century Greek MSS.," remarks Professor Stokes, "covered with Irish glosses and Irish poems and Irish notes, have engaged the attention of palæographers and students of the Greek texts of the New Testament during the last two centuries." They are indeed a proof that—as Dr. Reeves puts it—the Irish School "was unquestionably the most advanced of its day in sacred literature."

This remarkable knowledge of Greek was evidently derived from an early and direct commerce with Gaul, where Greek had been spoken for four or five centuries, first alongside of Celtic, and in later times of Latin also.[7] The knowledge[Pg 219] of Hebrew may have been derived from the Egyptian monks who passed over from Gaul into Ireland. Egypt and the East were more or less in close communication with Gaul in the fifth century, and the Irish Litany, ascribed to Angus the Culdee, commemorates seven Egyptian monks amongst many other Gauls, Germans, and Italians who resided in Ireland. The close and constant intercommunication between Greek-speaking Gaul and Ireland accounts for the planting and cultivation of the Greek language in the Irish schools, and once planted there it continued to flourish more or less for some centuries. There is ample evidence to prove the connection between Gaul and Ireland from the fifth to the ninth century. We find Gaulish merchants in the middle of Ireland at Clonmacnois, who had no doubt sailed up the Shannon in the way of commerce, selling wine to Ciaran in the sixth century. We find Columbanus, a little later on, inquiring at Nantes for a vessel engaged in the Irish trade—quæ vexerat commercium cum Hibernia. In Adamnan's Life of Columcille we find mention of Gaulish sailors arriving at Cantire. Adamnan's own treatise on Holy Places was written from the verbal account of a Gaul. In the Old Irish poem on the Fair of Carman in Wexford—a pagan institution which lived on in Christian times—we find mention of the

"Great market of the foreign Greeks,
Where gold and noble clothes were wont to be;"[8]

the foreign Greeks being no doubt the Greek-speaking Gaulish merchants. Alcuin sends his gifts of money and oil and his letters direct from Charlemagne's court to his friends in Clonmacnois, probably by a vessel engaged in the direct Irish trade, for, as he himself tells us, the sea-route between England and France was then closed. If more proof of the[Pg 220] close communication between Ireland and Gaul were wanted, the fact that Dagobert II., king of France in the seventh century, was educated at Slane,[9] in Ireland, and also that certain Merovingian and French coins have been found here, should be sufficient.

The fame of these early Irish schools attracted students in the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries from all quarters to Ireland, which had now become a veritable land of schools and scholars. The Venerable Bede tells us of the crowds of Anglo-Saxons who flocked over into Ireland during the plague, about the year 664, and says that they were all warmly welcomed by the Irish, who took care that they should be provided with food every day, without payment on their part; that they should have books to read, and that they should receive gratuitous instruction from Irish masters.[10] Books must have already multiplied considerably when the swarms of Anglo-Saxons could thus be supplied with them gratis. This noble tradition of free education to strangers lasted down to the establishment of the so-called "National" schools in Ireland, for down to that time "poor scholars" were freely supported by the people and helped in their studies. The number of scribes whose deaths have been considered worth recording by the annalists is very great, and books consequently must have been very numerous. This plentifulness of books probably added to the renown of the Irish schools. An English prince as well as a French one was educated by them in the seventh century; this was Aldfrid, king of Northumbria, who[Pg 221] was trained in all the learning of Erin, and who always aided and abetted the Irish in England, in opposition to Wilfrid, who opposed them. That the king got a good education in Ireland may be conjectured from the fact that Aldhelm, abbot of Malmesbury, dedicated to him a poetic epistle on Latin metric and prosody, in which, says Dr. Healy, "he congratulates the king on his good fortune in having been educated in Ireland." Aldhelm's own master was also an Irishman, Mael-dubh, and his abbacy of Malmesbury is only a corruption of this Irishman's name Maeldubh's-bury.[11] In another place Aldhelm tells us that while the great English school at Canterbury was by no means overcrowded, the English swarmed to the Irish schools like bees. Aldfrid himself, when leaving Ireland, composed a poem of sixty lines in the Irish language and metre, which he must have learned from the bards, in which he compliments each of the provinces severally, as though he meant to thank the whole nation for their hospitality.[12]

"I found in Inisfail the fair
In Ireland, while in exile there,
Women of worth, both grave and gay men,
Learned clerics, heroic laymen.

[Pg 222]I travelled its fruitful provinces round,
And in every one of the five I found,
Alike in church and in palace hall,
Abundant apparel and food for all."

St. Willibrord, a Saxon noble educated in Ireland about the same time with King Aldfrid, went out thence and ultimately became Archbishop of Utrecht. Another noted scholar of the same period was Agilbert, a Frank by birth, who spent a long time in Ireland for the purpose of study and afterwards became Bishop of Paris.[13] We have seen how the Office of St. Cathaldus states that the school of Lismore was visited by Gauls, Angles, Scotti, Teutons, and scholars from other neighbouring nations. The same was more or less the case with Clonmacnois, Bangor, and some others of the most noted of the Irish schools.

It was not in Greek attainments, nor in ecclesiastical studies, nor in Latin verses alone, that the Irish excelled; they also produced astronomers like Dungal and geographers like Dicuil. Dungal's attainments we have glanced at, but Dicuil's book—de mensura orbis terrarum—written about the year 825, is more interesting, although nothing is known about the author's own life, nor do we know even the particular Irish school to which he belonged.[14] His book was published by a Frenchman because he found Dicuil's descriptions of the measurements of the Pyramids a thousand years ago tallied with his own.

"Antioch," writes Professor G. Stokes, "about A.D. 600, was the centre of Greek culture and Greek erudition, and the chronicle of Malalas, as embodied in Niebuhr's series of Byzantine historians, is a mine of information on many questions; but compare it with the Irish work of Dicuil and its mistakes are laughable."

[Pg 223]

A great deal of his work is founded of course upon Pliny, Solinus, and Priscian, but he shows a highly-developed critical sense in comparing and collating various MSS. which he had inspected to ensure accuracy. What he tells us at first-hand, however, is by far the most interesting. In speaking of the Nile he says that:—

"Although we never read in any book that any branch of the Nile flows into the Red Sea, yet Brother Fidelis told in my presence to my master Suibhne [Sweeny]—to whom under God I owe whatever knowledge I possess—that certain clerics and laymen from Ireland who went to Jerusalem on pilgrimage sailed up the Nile a long way."

They sailed thence by a canal into the Red Sea, and this statement proves the accuracy of Dicuil, for this canal really existed and continued in use until 767, when it was closed to hinder the people of Mecca and Medina getting supplies from Egypt. The account of the Pyramids is particularly interesting. "The aforesaid Brother Fidelis measured one of them and found that the square face was 400 feet in length." The same brother wished to examine the exact point where Moses had entered the Red Sea in order to try if he could find any traces of the chariots of Pharaoh or the wheel tracks, but the sailors were in a hurry and would not allow him to go on this excursion. The breadth of the sea appeared to him at this point to be about six miles. Dicuil describes Iceland long before it was discovered by the Danes.

"It is now thirty years," said he, writing in 825, "since I was told by some Irish ecclesiastics, who had dwelt in that island from the 1st of February to the 1st of August, that the sun scarcely sets there in summer, but always leaves, even at midnight, light enough to do one's ordinary business—vel pediculos de camisia abstrahere"!

Those writers are greatly mistaken, he says, who describe the Icelandic sea as always frozen, and who say that there is day there from spring to autumn and from autumn to spring, for the Irish monks sailed thither through the open sea in a month[Pg 224] of great natural cold, and yet found alternate day and night, except about the period of the summer solstice. He also describes the Faroe Isles:—

"A certain trustworthy monk told me that he reached one of them by sailing for two summer days and one night in a vessel with two benches of rowers.... In these islands for almost a hundred years there dwelt hermits who sailed there from our own Ireland [nostra Scottia], but now they are once more deserted as they were at the beginning, on account of the ravages of the Norman pirates."

This is proof positive that the Irish discovered and inhabited Iceland and the Faroe Islands half a century or a century before the Northmen. Dicuil was distinguished as a grammarian, metrician, and astronomer,[15] but his geographical treatise, written in his old age, is the most interesting and valuable of his achievements.

Fergil, or Virgilius, as he is usually called, was another great Irish geometer, who eventually became Archbishop of Salzburg and died in 785. He taught the sphericity of the earth and the doctrine of the Antipodes, a truth which seems also to have been familiar to Dicuil. St. Boniface, afterwards Archbishop of Mentz, evidently distorting his doctrine, accused him to the Pope of heresy in teaching that there was another world and other men under the earth, and another sun and moon. "Concerning this charge of false doctrine, if it shall be established," said the Pope, "that Virgil taught this perverse and wicked doctrine against God and his own soul, do you then convoke a council, degrade him from the priesthood, and drive him from the Church." Virgil, however, seems to have satisfactorily explained his position, for nothing was done against him.

These instances help to throw some light upon a most difficult subject—the training given in the early Irish Christian schools, and the cause of their undoubted popularity for three centuries and more amongst the scholars of Western Europe.

[Pg 225]

CHAPTER XVIII

CONFLICTS WITH THE CIVIL POWER

The extraordinary and abnormal receptivity of the Irish of the fifth century, and the still more wonderful and unprecedented activity of their descendants in the sixth and following ones had almost bid fair to turn the nation into a land of apostles. This outburst of religious zeal, glorious and enduring as it was, carried with it, like all sudden and powerful movements, an element of danger. It was unfortunately destined in its headlong course to overflow its legitimate barriers and to come into rude contact with the civil power which had been established upon lines more ancient and not wholly sympathetic.

A striking passage in one of Renan's books dwells upon the obvious religious inferiority of the Greeks and Romans to the Jews, while it notes at the same time their immense political and intellectual superiority over the Semitic nation. The inferiority of the Jew in matters political and intellectual the French writer seems inclined to attribute to his abnormally developed religious sense, which, absorbed in itself, took all too little heed of the civic side of life and of the necessities of the state. Nor can it, I think, be denied that primitive Christianity in some cases took over from the Hebrews a certain[Pg 226] amount of this spirit of self-absorption and of disregard for the civil side of life and social polity. "Quand on prend les choses humaines par ce côté," remarks Renan, "on fonde de grands prosélytismes universels, on a des apôtres courant le monde d'un bout à l'autre, et le convertissant; mais on ne fonde pas des institutions politiques, une indépendance nationale, une dynastie, un code, un peuple."

We have already seen how the exaggerated pretensions of St. Columcille had come almost at once into opposition with the established law of the land, the law which enjoined death as the penalty for homicide at Tara, and how the priest unjustifiably took upon himself to override the civil magistrate in the person of the king.

Of precisely such a nature—only with far worse and far more enduring consequences—was the cursing of Tara by St. Ruadhan of Lothra. The great palace where, according to general belief, a hundred and thirty-six pagan and six Christian kings had ruled uninterruptedly, the most august spot in all Ireland, where a "truce of God" had always reigned during the great triennial assemblies, was now to be given up and deserted at the curse of a tonsured monk. The great Assembly or Féis of Tara, which accustomed the people to the idea of a centre of government and a ruling power, could no more be convened, and a thousand associations and memories which hallowed the office of the High-king were snapped in a moment. It was a blow from which the monarchy of Ireland never recovered, a blow which, by putting an end to the great triennial or septennial conventions of the whole Irish race, weakened the prestige of the central ruler, increased the power of the provincial chieftains, segregated the clans of Ireland from one another, and opened a new road for faction and dissension throughout the entire island.

There is a considerable amount of mystery attached to this whole transaction, and all the great Irish annalists, the "Four[Pg 227] Masters," the "Chronicon Scotorum," the Annals of Ulster, Tighearnach, and Keating, are absolutely silent upon the matter.[1] The "Four Masters," indeed, under the year 554 record "the last Féis of Tara,"[2] as does Tighearnach also; but why it was the last, or why Tara was deserted, they do not say. Yet so great a national event was infinitely too important to have been passed over in silence except for some special reason, and I cannot help thinking that it was not alluded to because the annalists did not care to recall it. The authorities for the cursing of Tara are the lost "Annals of Clonmacnois," which were translated into English by Connell Mac Geoghegan in 1627, and which give a very long and full account of the matter;[3] an Irish MS. in Trinity College, Dublin;[4] the Life of St. Ruadhan himself, in the fourteenth century (?) codex the Book of Kilkenny, now in Marsh's Library; and his life as published by the Bollandists; the ancient scholiast on Fiach's hymn on the Life of St. Patrick; a fifteenth century vellum in the British Museum, which professes to copy from the lost Book of Sligo; the Book of Right,[5] and the Book of Lismore, which last, though it turns the story into an úrsgeul, or romance, yet agrees closely in essentials with the lost "Annals of Clonmacnois." The story, as told in this manuscript, is worth producing as a specimen of how the Irish loved to turn every great historical event into an úrsgeul, seasoned with a good spice of the marvellous, and dressed up dramatically. How much of such pseudo-histories is true, how much invented for the occasion, and how much may be stock-in-trade of the[Pg 228] story-teller, is never easily determined. The story runs as follows:—

King Diarmuid's steward and spear-bearer had been ill and wasting away for a year. On his recovery he goes to the King, and asks him whether "the order of his discipline and peace" had been observed during the time of his illness. The King answered that he had noticed no breach or diminution of it. The spear-bearer said he would make sure of the King's peace by travelling round Ireland with his spear held transversely, and he would see whether the door of every liss and fortress would be opened wide enough to let the spear pass—such on the approach of the King's spear seems to have been the law—and "so shall the regimen and peace of Ireland," said he "be ascertained."

"From Tara, therefore, goes forth the spear-bearer,[6] and with him the King of Ireland's herald, to proclaim Ireland's peace, and he arrived in the province of Connacht, and made his way to the mansion of Aedh [Æ] Guairè of Kinelfechin. And he at that time had round his rath a stockade of red oak, and had a new house too, that was but just built [no doubt inside the rath] with a view to his marriage feast. Now, a week before the spear-bearer's arrival the other had heard that he was on his way to him, and had given orders to make an opening before him in the palisade [but not in the dwelling].

"The spear-bearer came accordingly, and Aedh Guairè bade him welcome. The spear-bearer said that the house must be hewn [open to the right width] before him.

"'Give thine own orders as to how it may please thee to have it hewn,' said Aedh Guairè, but, even as he spake it, he gave a stroke of his sword to the spear-bearer, so that he took his head from off him.

"Now at this time the discipline of Ireland was such that whosoever killed a man void of offence, neither cattle nor other valuable consideration might be taken in lieu of the slain, but the slayer must be killed, unless it were that the King should order or permit the acceptance of a cattle-price.

[Pg 229]

"When King Diarmuid heard of the killing he sent his young men and his executive to waste and to spoil Aedh Guairè. And he flees to Bishop Senan, for one mother they had both, and Senan the bishop goes with him to Ruadhan of Lothra, for it was two sisters of Lothra that nursed Bishop Senan, Cael and Ruadhnait were their names. But Aedh Guairè found no protection with Ruadhan, but was banished away into Britain for a year, and Diarmuid's people came to seek for him in Britain, so he was again sent back to Ruadhan. And Diarmuid himself comes to Ruadhan to look for him, but he had been put into a hole in the ground by Ruadhan, which is to-day called 'Ruadhan's Hole.' Diarmuid sent his man to look in Ruadhan's kitchen whether Aedh Guiarè were there. But on the man's going into the kitchen his eyes were at once struck blind. When Diarmuid saw this, he went into the kitchen himself, but he did not find Aedh Guiarè there. And he asked Ruadhan where he was, for he was sure he would tell him no lie.

"'I know not where he is,' said Ruadhan, 'if he be not under yon thatch.'

"After that Diarmuid departs to his house, but he remembered the cleric's word and returns to the recluse's cell, and he sees the candle being brought to the spot where Aedh Guairè was. And he sends a confidential servant to bring him forth—Donnán Donn was his name—and he dug down in the hiding place, but the arm he stretched out to take Aedh withered to the shoulder. And he makes obeisance to Ruadhan after that, and the two servants remained with Ruadhan after that in Poll Ruadhain. After this Diarmuid [himself] carries off Aedh Guairè to Tara."

Upon this, we are told, Ruadhan made his way to Brendan of Birr, and thence to the so-called twelve apostles of Ireland,[7] and they all followed the King and came to Tara, and they fast upon the King that night, and he, "relying on his kingly quality and on the justice of his cause, fasts upon them."[8]

"In such fashion, and to the end of a year they continued before Tara under Ruadhan's tent exposed to weather and to wet, and they were every other night without food, Diarmuid and the clergy, fasting on each other."

After this the story goes on that Brendan the Navigator had in the meantime landed from his foreign expeditions, and[Pg 230] hearing that the other saints of Ireland were fasting before Tara, he also proceeds thither. But King Diarmuid, learning of his coming, was terrified, and consented to give up Aedh Guairè for "fifty horses, blue-eyed with golden bridles." Brendan the Voyager, fresh from his triumphs on the ocean, summons fifty seals and makes them look like horses, and guaranteeing them for a year and a quarter, hands them over to the King and receives Aedh Guairè. But when the time guaranteed was out, they became seals again, and brought their riders with them into the sea. And Diarmuid was very wroth at the deception, "and shut the seven lisses of Tara to the end that the clergy should not enter into Tara, lest they should leave behind malevolence and evil bequests."

It appears that the clerics still continued fasting upon the King, and he fasting upon them,

"And people were assigned [by the King] to wait upon them and to keep watch and ward over them until the clergy should have accomplished the act of eating and consuming food in their presence. But on this night Brendan gave them this advice—their cowls to be about their heads and they to let their meat and ale pass by their mouths into their bosoms and down to the ground, and this they did. Word was brought to the King that the clergy were consuming meat and ale, so Diarmuid ate meat that night, but the clerics on the other hand fasted on him through stratagem.

"Now Diarmuid's wife—Mughain was his wife—saw a dream, which dream was this, that upon the green of Tara was a vast and wide-foliaged tree, and eleven slaves hewing at it, but every chip which they knocked from it would return into its place again and adhere to it [as before], till at last there came one man that dealt the tree but a stroke, and with that single cut laid it low, as the poet spoke the lay—

"'An evil dream did she behold
The wife of the King of Tara of the heavy torques,
Although it brought to her grief and woe
She could not keep from telling it.
A powerful stout tree did she behold,
That might shelter the birds of Ireland,
Upon the hill-side, smitten with axes,
And champions hewing together at it, etc.'
(48 lines more.)

[Pg 231]

"As for Diarmuid, son of Cerbhall [the King], after that dream he arose early, so that he heard the clergy chant their psalms, and he entered into the house in which they were.

"'Alas!' he said, 'for the iniquitous contest which ye have waged against me, seeing that it is Ireland's good that I pursue, and to preserve her discipline and royal right, but 'tis Ireland's unpeace and murderousness which ye endeavour after. For God Himself it is who on such or such a one confers the orders of prince, of righteous ruler, and of equitable judgment, to the end that he may maintain his truthfulness, his princely quality, and his governance. Now that to which a king is bound is to have mercy coupled with stringency of law, and peace maintained in the sub-districts, and hostages in fetters; to succour the wretched, but to overwhelm enemies, and to banish falsehood, for unless on this hither side one do the King of Heaven's will, no excuse is accepted by him on the other. And thou, Ruadhan,' said Diarmuid, 'through thee it is that injury and rending of my mercy and of mine integrity to Godward is come about, and I pray God that thy diocese be the first in Ireland that shall be renounced, and thy Church lands the first that shall be impugned.'

"But Ruadhan said, 'Rather may thy dynasty come to nought, and none that is son or grandson to thee establish himself in Tara for ever!'

"Diarmuid said, 'Be thy Church desolate continually.'

"Ruadhan said, 'Desolate be Tara for ever and for ever.'

"Diarmuid said, 'May a limb of thy limbs be wanting to thee, and come not with thee under ground, and mayest thou lack an eye!

"'Have thou before death an evil countenance in sight of all; may thine enemies prevail over thee mightily, and the thigh that thou liftedst not before me to stand up, be the same mangled into pieces.'

"Said Diarmuid, 'The thing [i.e., the man] about which is our dispute, take him with you, but in thy church, Ruadhan, may the alarm cry sound at nones always, and even though all Ireland be at peace be thy church's precinct a scene of war continuously.'

"And from that time to this the same is fulfilled."[9]

There follows a poem of 88 lines uttered by the King.

The same story in all its essential details is told in the MS.[Pg 232] Egerton 1782, a vellum of the fifteenth century, which professes to follow the lost Book of Sligo. It is quite as unbiassed and outspoken about the result of the clerics' action as the Book of Lismore. It makes Diarmuid address the clerics thus—

"'Evil is that which ye have worked O clerics, my kingdom's ruination. For in the latter times Ireland shall not be better off than she is at this present. But, however it fall out,' said he, 'may bad chiefs, their heirs-apparent, and their men of war, quarter themselves in your churches, and may it be their [read your?] own selves that in your houses shall pull off such peoples' brogues for them, ye being the while powerless to rid yourselves of them.'"

This codex sympathises so strongly with the king that it states that one of Ruadhan's eyes burst in his head when the king cursed him. Beg mac De, the celebrated Christian prophet, is made to prophecy thus, when the king asks him in what fashion his kingdom should be after his death,

"'An evil world,' said the prophet, 'is now at hand, in which men shall be in bondage, woman free; mast wanting; woods smooth; blossom bad; winds many; wet summer; green corn; much cattle; scant milk; dependants burdensome in every country, hogs lean, chiefs wicked; bad faith; chronic killing; a world withered, raths in number.'"

King Diarmuid died in 558, according to the "Four Masters;" it is certain he never retreated a foot from Tara, but it was probably his next successor who, intimidated at the clerics' curse and the ringing of their bells—for they circled Tara ringing their bells against it—deserted the royal hill for ever.[10]

The palace of Cletty, not far from Tara, was also cursed by St. Cairneach at the request of the queen of the celebrated Muircheartach Mór mac Earca, and deserted in consequence.[11]

[Pg 233]

Another, but probably more justifiable, instance of the clergy fasting upon a lay ruler and cursing him, was that of the notorious Raghallach (Reilly), king of Connacht, who made his queen jealous by his infidelity, and committed other crimes. The story is thus recorded by Keating—

"The scandal of that evil deed soon spread throughout all the land and the saints of Ireland were sorrowful by reason thereof. St. Fechin of Fobar [Fore is West Meath] came in person to Raghallach to reprehend him, and many saints came in his company to aid him in inducing the prince to discontinue his criminal amour. But Raghallach despised their exhortations. Thereupon they fasted against him, and as there were many other evil-minded persons besides him in the land, they made an especial prayer to God that for the sake of an example he should not live out the month of May, then next to come on, and that he should fall by the hands of villains, by vile instruments, and in a filthy place; and all these things happened to him,"

as Keating goes on to relate, for he was killed by turf-cutters.

Sometimes the saints are found on opposite sides, as at the Battle of Cooldrevna where Columcille prayed against the High-king's arms, and Finian prayed for them; or as in the well-known case of the expulsion of poor old St. Mochuda[12] and his monks in 631 from the monastery at Rathain, where his piety and success had aroused the jealousy of the clerics of the Ui Neill, who ejected him by force, despite his malediction. It was then he returned to his own province and founded Lismore, which soon became famous.[13]

Led away by our admiration of the magnificent outburst of learning and the innumerable examples of undoubted devotion displayed by Irishmen from the sixth to the ninth century, we are very liable to overlook the actual state of society, and to read into a still primitive social constitution the thoughts and ideas of later ages, forgetting the real spirit of those early times. We must remember that St. Patrick had made no change in the social constitution of the people, and that the new religion[Pg 234] in no way affected their external institutions, and as a natural consequence even saints and clerics took the side of their own kings and people, and fought in battle with as much gusto as any of the clansmen. Women fought side by side with men, and were only exempted from military service in 590, through the influence of Columcille at the synod of Druimceat—of which synod more hereafter, and Adamnan had to get the law renewed over a hundred years later, for it had become inoperative. The monks were of course as liable as any other of the tribesmen to perform military duty to their lords, and were only exempted[14] from it in the year 804. The clergy fought with Cormac mac Culenain as late as 908 at the battle where he fell, and a great number of them were killed.[15] The clergy often quarrelled among themselves also. In 673 the monks of Clonmacnois and Durrow fought one another, and the men of Clonmacnois slew two hundred of their opponents. In 816 four hundred men were slain in a fight between rival monasteries. The clan system, in fact, applied down to the eighth or ninth century almost as much to the clergy as to the laity, and with the abandonment of Tara and the weakening of the High-kingship, the only power which bid fair to override feud and faction was got rid of, and every man drank for himself the intoxicating draught of irresponsibility, and each princeling became a Cæsar in his own community.

The saints with their long-accredited exercises of semi-miraculous powers, formed an admirable ingredient wherewith to spice a historic romance, such as the soul of the Irish story-tellers loved, and they were not slow to avail themselves of it.

A passage in the celebrated history of the Boru tribute, preserved in the twelfth-century Book of Leinster, turns both Columcille and his biographer Adamnan to account in this way, by introducing dialogues between them and their contemporary[Pg 235] kings of Ireland, which are worth giving here, as they preserve some primitive traits, but more especially as an example of how the later medievalists conceived their own early saints. Aedh [Ae], the High-king of Ireland, had asked Columcille how many kings of all whom he himself had come in contact with, or had cognisance of, would win, or had won, to heaven; and Columcille answered:

"'Certainly I know of only three, Daimín King of Oriel, and Ailill King of Connacht, and Feradach of Corkalee, King of Ossory.'

"'And what good did they do,' said Aedh, 'beyond all other kings?'

"'That's easy told,' said Columcille, 'as for Daimín no cleric ever departed from him having met with a refusal, and he never reviled a cleric, nor spoiled church nor sanctuary, and greatly did he bestow upon the Lord. Afterwards he went to heaven, on account of his mild dealing with the Lord's people; and the clerics still chant his litany.

"'As for Ailill, moreover, this is how he found the Lord's clemency; he fought the battle of Cúl Conairé with the Clan Fiacrach, and they defeated him in that battle, and he said to his charioteer, "Look behind for us, and see whether the slaying is great, and are the slayers near us?"

"'The charioteer looked behind him, and 'twas what he said:

"'"The slaying with which your people are slain," said he, "is unendurable."

"'"It is not their own guilt that falls on them, but the guilt of my pride and my untruthfulness," said he; "and turn the chariot for us against [the enemy]," said he, "for if I be slain amidst them (?) it will be the saving of a multitude.'

"'Thereupon the chariot was turned round against the enemy, and thereafter did Ailill earnestly repent, and fell by his enemies. So that man got the Lord's clemency,' said Columcille.

"'As for Feradach,[16] the King of Ossory, moreover, he was a covetous man without a conscience, and if he were to hear that a man in his territory had only one scruple of gold or silver, he would take it to himself by force, and put it in the covers of goblets and crannogues and swords and chessmen. Thereafter there came upon him an unendurable sickness. They collect round him all his treasures, so that he had them in his bed. His enemies came, the Clan Connla, after that, to seize the house on him. His sons,[Pg 236] too, came to him to carry away the jewels with them [to save them for him].

"'"Do not take them away, my sons," said he, "for I harried many for those treasures, and I desire to harry myself on this side the tomb for them, and that my enemies may bring them away of my good will, so that the Deity may not harry me on the other side."

"'After that his sons departed from him, and he himself made earnest repentance, and died at the hands of his enemies, and gains the clemency of the Lord.'

"'Now as for me myself,' said Aedh, 'shall I gain the Lord's clemency?'

"'Thou shalt not gain it on any account,' said Columcille.

"'Well, then, cleric,' said he, 'procure for me from the Deity that the Leinster men [at least] may not overthrow me.'

"'Well, now, that is difficult for me,' said Columcille, 'for my mother was one of them, and the Leinstermen came to me to Durrow,[17] and made as though they would fast upon me, till I should grant them a sister's son's request, and what they asked of me was that no outside king should ever overthrow them; and I promised them that too, but here is my cowl for thee, and thou shalt not be slain while it is about thee.'"

Less clement is Adamnan depicted in his interview, over a century later, with King Finnachta, who had just been persuaded by St. Molling[18] to remit the Boru tribute (then leviable off Leinster), until luan, by which the King unwarily understood Monday, but the more acute saint Doomsday, the word having both significations. Adamnan saw through the deception in a moment, and hastened to interrupt the plans of his brother saint.

"He sought therefore," says the Book of Leinster, "the place where [king] Finnachta was, and sent a clerk of his familia to summon him to a conference. Finnachta, at the instant, busied himself with a game of chess, and the cleric said, 'Come, speak with Adamnan.'

"'I will not,' he answered, 'until this game be ended.'

"The ecclesiastic returned to Adamnan and retailed him this answer. Then the saint said, 'Go and tell him that in the interval[Pg 237] I shall chant fifty psalms, in which fifty is a single psalm that will deprive his children and grandchildren, and even any namesake of his, for ever of the kingdom.'[19]

"Again the clerk accosted Finnachta and told him this, but until his game was played the King never noticed him at all.

"'Come, speak with Adamnan,' repeated the clerk, 'and——'

"'I will not,' answered Finnachta, 'till this [fresh] game, too, shall be finished,' all which the cleric rendered to Adamnan, who said:

"'A second time begone to him, tell him that I will sing other fifty psalms, in which fifty is one that will confer on him shortness of life.'

"This, too, the clerk, when he was come back, proclaimed to Finnachta, but till the game was done, he never even perceived the messenger, who for the third time reiterated his speech.

"'Till this new game be played out I will not go,' said the King, and the cleric carried it to Adamnan.

"'Go to him,' the holy man said, 'tell him that in the meantime I will sing fifty psalms, and among them is one that will deprive him of attaining the Lord's peace.'

"This the clerk imparted to Finnachta, who, when he heard it, with speed and energy put from him the chess-board, and hastened to where Adamnan was.

"'Finnachta,' quoth the saint, 'what is thy reason for coming now, whereas at the first summons thou earnest not?'

"'Soon said,' replied Finnachta. 'As for that which first thou didst threaten against me; that of my children, or even of my namesakes, not an individual ever should rule Ireland—I took it easily. The other matter which thou heldest out to me—shortness of life—that I esteemed but lightly, for Molling had promised me heaven. But the third thing which thou threatenedst me—to deprive me of the Lord's peace—that I endured not to hear without coming in obedience to thy voice.'

"Now the motive for which God wrought this was: that the gift which Molling had promised to the King for remission of the tribute He suffered not Adamnan to dock him of."

It would be easy to multiply such scenes from the writings of the ancient Irish. That they are not altogether eleventh or twelfth-century inventions, but either the embodiment of a[Pg 238] vivid tradition, or else, in some cases, the working-up of earlier documents, now lost, is, I think, certain, but we possess no criterion whereby we may winnow out the grains of truth from the chaff of myth, invention, or perhaps in some cases (where tribal honour is at stake) deliberate falsehood. The only thing we can say with perfect certainty is that this is the way in which the contemporaries of St. Lawrence O'Toole pictured for themselves the contemporaries of St. Columcille and St. Adamnan.

[Pg 239]

CHAPTER XIX

THE BARDIC SCHOOLS

We must now, leaving verifiable history behind us, attempt a cautious step backwards from the known into the doubtful, and see what in the way of literature is said to have been produced by the pagans. We know that side by side with the colleges of the clergy there flourished, perhaps in a more informal way, the purely Irish schools of the Brehons and the Bards. Unhappily however, while, thanks to the great number of the Lives of the Saints,[1] we know much about the Christian colleges, there is very little to be discovered about the bardic institutions. These were almost certainly a continuation of the schools of the druids, and represented something far more antique than even the very earliest schools of the Christians, but unlike them they were not centred in a fixed locality nor in a cluster of houses, but seem to have been peripatetic. The bardic scholars grouped themselves not round a locality but round a personality, and wherever it pleased their master to wander—and that was pretty much all[Pg 240] round Ireland—there they followed, and the people seem to have willingly supported them.

There seems to be some confusion as to the forms into which what must have been originally the druidic school disintegrated itself in the fifth and succeeding centuries, but from it we can see emerging the poet, the Brehon, and the historian, not all at once, but gradually. In the earliest period the functions of all three were often, if not always, united in one single person, and all poets were ipso facto judges as well. We have a distinct account of the great occasion upon which the poet lost his privilege of acting as a judge merely because he was a poet. It appears that from the very earliest date the learned classes, especially the "fĭlès," had evolved a dialect of their own, which was perfectly dark and obscure to every one except themselves. This was the Béarla Féni, in which so much of the Brehon law and many poems are written, and which continued to be used, to some extent, by poets down to the very beginning of the eighteenth century. Owing to their predilection for this dialect, the first blow, according to Irish accounts, was struck at their judicial supremacy by the hands of laymen, during the reign of Conor mac Nessa, some time before the birth of Christ. This was the occasion when the sages Fercertné and Neidé contended for the office of arch-ollav of Erin, with its beautiful robe of feathers, the Tugen.[2] Their discourse, still extant in at least three MSS. under the title of the "Dialogue of the Two Sages,"[3] was so learned, and they contended with one another in terms so abstruse that, as the chronicler in the Book of Ballymote puts it:—

"Obscure to every one seemed the speech which the poets uttered in that discussion, and the legal decision which they delivered was not clear to the kings and to the other poets.

"'These men alone,' said the kings, 'have their judgment and[Pg 241] their skill, and their knowledge. In the first place we do not understand what they say.'

"'Well, then,' said Conor, 'every one shall have his share therein from to-day for ever.'"[4]

This was the occasion upon which Conor made the law that the office of poet should no longer carry with it, of necessity, the office of judge, for, says the ancient writer, "poets alone had judicature from the time that Amairgin Whiteknee delivered the first judgment in Erin" until then.

That the Bardic schools, which we know flourished as public institutions with scarcely a break from the Synod of Drumceat in 590 (where regular lands were set apart for their endowment) down to the seventeenth century, were really a continuation of the Druidic schools, and embodied much that was purely pagan in their curricula, is, I think, amply shown by the curious fragments of metrical text-books preserved in the Books of Leinster and Ballymote, in a MS. in Trinity College, and in a MS. in the Bodleian, all four of which have been recently admirably edited by Thurneysen as a continuous text.[5] He has not however ventured upon a translation, for the scholar would be indeed a bold one who in the present state of Celtic scholarship would attempt a complete interpretation of tracts so antique and difficult. That they date, partially at least, from pre-Christian times seems to me certain from their prescribing amongst other things for the poet's course in one of his years of study a knowledge of the magical incantations called Tenmlaida, Imbas forosnai,[6] and Dichetal do chennaib na tuaithe, and making him in another year learn a certain poem or incantation called Cétnad, of which the text says that—

"It is used for finding out a theft. One sings it, that is to say, through the right fist on the track of the stolen beast" [observe the antique assumption that the only kind of wealth to be stolen is cattle][Pg 242] "or on the track of the thief, in case the beast is dead. And one sings it three times on the one [track] or the other. If, however, one does not find the track, one sings it through the right fist, and goes to sleep upon it, and in one's sleep the man who has brought it away is clearly shown and made known. Another virtue [of this lay]: one speaks it into the right palm and rubs with it the quarters of the horse before one mounts it, and the horse will not be overthrown, and the man will not be thrown off or wounded."

Another Cétnad to be learned by the poet, in which he desires length of life, is addressed to "the seven daughters of the sea, who shape the thread of the long-lived children."

Another with which he had to make himself familiar was the Glam dichinn,[7] intended to satirise and punish the prince who refused to a poet the reward of his poem. The poet—

"was to fast upon the lands of the king for whom the poem was to be made, and the consent of thirty laymen, thirty bishops"—a Christian touch to make the passage pass muster—"and thirty poets should be had to compose the satire; and it was a crime to them to prevent it when the reward of the poem was withheld"—a pagan touch as a make-weight on the other side! "The poet then, in a company of seven, that is, six others and himself, upon whom six poetic degrees had been conferred, namely a focloc, macfuirmedh, doss, cana, clí, anradh, and ollamh, went at the rising of the sun to a hill which should be situated on the boundary of seven lands, and each of them was to turn his face to a different land, and the ollamh's (ollav's) face was to be turned to the land of the king, who was to be satirised, and their backs should be turned to a hawthorn which should be growing upon the top of a hill, and the wind should be blowing from the north, and each man was to hold a perforated stone and a thorn of the hawthorn in his hand, and each man was to sing a verse of this composition for the king—the ollamh or chief poet to take the lead with his own verse, and the others in concert after him with theirs; and each then should place his stone and his thorn under the stem of the hawthorn, and if it was they that were in the wrong in the case, the ground of the hill would swallow them, and if it was the king that was in the wrong, the ground would swallow him and his wife, and his son and his steed, and his robes and his hound. The satire of the macfuirmedh fell on the hound, the satire[Pg 243] of the focloc on the robes, the satire of the doss on the arms, the satire of the cana on the wife, the satire of the clí on the son, the satire of the anrad on the steed,[8] the satire of the ollamh on the king."

These instances that I have mentioned occurring in the books of the poets' instruction, are evidently remains of magic incantations and terrifying magic ceremonies, taken over from the schools and times of the druids, and carried on into the Christian era, for nobody, I imagine, could contend that they had their origin after Ireland had been Christianised.[9] And the occurrence in the poets' text-books of such evidently pagan passages, side by side with allusions to Athairné the poet—a contemporary of Conor mac Nessa, a little before the birth of Christ, Caoilte, the Fenian poet of the third century, Cormac his contemporary, Laidcend mac Bairchida about the year 400, and others—seems to me to be fresh proof for the real objective existence of these characters. For if part of the poets' text-books can be thus shown to have preserved things taught in the pre-Christian times—to be in fact actually pre-Christian—why should we doubt the reality of the pre-Christian persons mixed up with them?

The first poem written in Ireland by a Milesian is said to be the curious rhapsody of Amergin the brother of Eber, Ir, and Erimon, who on landing broke out in a strain of exultation:—

"I am the wind which breathes upon the sea,
I am the wave of the ocean,
I am the murmur of the billows,
I am the ox of the seven combats,
I am the vulture upon the rock,
I am a beam of the sun,
[Pg 244]I am the fairest of plants,
I am a wild boar in valour,
I am a salmon in the water,
I am a lake in the plain,
I am a word of science,
I am the point of the lance of battle,
I am the god who creates in the head [i.e., of man] the fire [i.e., the thought]
Who is it who throws light into the meeting on the mountain?
Who announces the ages of the moon [if not I]?
Who teaches the place where couches the sea [if not I]?"[10]

There are two more poems attributed to Amergin of much the same nature, very ancient and very strange. Irish tradition has always represented these poems as the first made by our ancestors in Ireland, and no doubt they do actually represent the oldest surviving lines in the vernacular of any country in Europe except Greece alone.

The other pre-Christian poets[11] of whom we hear most, and to whom certain surviving fragments are ascribed, are Feirceirtné, surnamed filé, or the poet, who is usually credited with the authorship of the well-known grammatical treatise called Uraicept na n-Éigeas or "Primer of the Learned."[12] It was he[Pg 245] who contended with Neidé for the arch-poet's robe, causing King Conor to decide that no poet should in future be also of necessity a judge. The Uraicept begins with this preface or introduction: "The Book of Feirceirtné here. Its place Emania; its time the time of Conor mac Nessa; its person Feirceirtné the poet; its cause to bring ignorant people to knowledge." There is also a poem attributed to him on the death of Curoi mac Daire, the great southern chieftain, whom Cuchulain slew, and the Book of Invasions contains a valuable poem ascribed to him, recounting how Ollamh Fódla, a monarch who is said to have flourished many centuries before, established a college of professors at Tara.

There was a poet called Adhna, the father of that Neidé with whom Feirceirtné contended for the poet's robe, who also lived at the court of Conor mac Nessa, and his name is mentioned in connection with some fragments of laws.

Athairné, the overbearing insolent satirist from the Hill of Howth, who figures largely in Irish romance, was contemporaneous with these, though I do not know that any poem is attributed to him. But he and a poet called Forchern, with Feirceirtné and Neidé, are said to have compiled a code of laws, now embodied with others under the title of Breithe Neimhidh in the Brehon Law Books.

There was a poet Lughar at the Court of Oilioll and Mève in Connacht about the same time, and a poem on the descendants of Fergus mac Róigh [Roy] is ascribed to him, but as he was contemporaneous with that warrior he could not have written about his descendants.

[Pg 246]

There is a prose tract called Moran's Will,[13] ascribed to Moran, a well-known jurist who lived at the close of the first century.

Several other authors, either of short poems or law fragments, are mentioned in the second and third centuries, such as Feradach king of Ireland, Modan, Ciothruadh the poet, Fingin, Oilioll Olum himself, the great king of Munster, to whom are traced so many of the southern families. Fithil, a judge, and perhaps some others, none of whom need be particularised.

At the end of the third century we come upon three or four names of vast repute in Irish history, into whose mouths a quantity of pieces are put, most of which are evidently of later date. These are the great Cormac mac Art himself, the most striking king that ever reigned in pagan Ireland, he who built those palaces on Tara Hill whose ruins still remain; Finn mac Cúmhail his son-in-law and captain; Ossian, Finn's son; Fergus, Ossian's brother; and Caoilte [Cweeltya] mac Ronáin.

The poetry ascribed to Finn mac Cúmhail, Ossian, and the other Fenian singers we will not examine in this place, but we must not pass by one of the most remarkable prose tracts of ancient Ireland with which I am acquainted, the famous treatise ascribed to King Cormac, and well known in Irish literature as the "Teagasg ríogh," or Instruction of a Prince, which is written in a curious style, by way of question and answer. Cairbré, Cormac's son, he who afterwards fell out with and overthrew the Fenians, is supposed to be learning kingly wisdom at his father's feet, and that experienced monarch instructs him in the pagan morality of the time, and gives him all kinds of information and advice. The piece, which is heavily glossed in the Book of Ballymote, on account of the antiquity of the language, is of some length, and is far too interesting to pass by without quoting from it.

[Pg 247]

THE INSTRUCTION OF A PRINCE.

"'O grandson of Con, O Cormac,' said Cairbré, 'what is good for a king.'[14]

"'That is plain,' said Cormac, 'it is good for him to have patience and not to dispute, self-government without anger, affability without haughtiness, diligent attention to history, strict observance of covenants and agreements, strictness mitigated by mercy in the execution of laws.... It is good for him [to make] fertile land, to invite ships to import jewels of price across sea, to purchase and bestow raiment, [to keep] vigorous swordsmen for protecting his territories, [to make] war outside his own territories, to attend the sick, to discipline his soldiers ... let him enforce fear, let him perfect peace, [let him] give much of metheglin and wine, let him pronounce just judgments of light, let him speak all truth, for it is through the truth of a king that God gives favourable seasons.'

"'O grandson of Con, O Cormac,' said Cairbré, 'what is good for the welfare of a country?'

"'That is plain,' said Cormac, 'frequent convocations of sapient and good men to investigate its affairs, to abolish each evil and retain each wholesome institution, to attend to the precepts of the elders; let every assembly be convened according to law, let the law be in the hands of the nobles, let the chieftains be upright and unwilling to oppress the poor,'" etc., etc.

A more interesting passage is the following:—

"'O grandson of Con, O Cormac, what are the duties of a prince at a banqueting-house?'

"'A Prince on Samhan's [now All Souls] Day, should light his lamps, and welcome his guests with clapping of hands, procure comfortable seats, the cupbearers should be respectable and active in the distribution of meat and drink. Let there be moderation of music, short stories, a welcoming countenance, a welcome for the learned, pleasant conversations, and the like, these are the duties of the prince, and the arrangement of the banqueting-house.'"

After this Cairbré puts an important question which was asked often enough during the period of the Brehon law, and[Pg 248] which for over a thousand years scarce ever received a different answer. He asks, "For what qualifications is a king elected over countries and tribes of people?"

Cormac in his answer embodies the views of every clan in Ireland in their practical choice of a leader.

"From the goodness of his shape and family, from his experience and wisdom, from his prudence and magnanimity, from his eloquence and bravery in battle, and from the number of his friends."

After this follows a long description of the qualifications of a prince, and Cairbré having heard it puts this question:—"O grandson of Con, what was thy deportment when a youth;" to which he receives the following striking answer:

"'I was cheerful at the Banquet of the Midh-chuarta [Mee-cuarta, "house of the circulation of mead"], fierce in battle, but vigilant and circumspect. I was kind to friends, a physician to the sick, merciful towards the weak, stern towards the headstrong. Although possessed of knowledge, I was inclined towards taciturnity.[15] Although strong I was not haughty. I mocked not the old although I was young. I was not vain although I was valiant. When I spoke of a person in his absence I praised, not defamed him, for it is by these customs that we are known to be courteous and civilised (riaghalach).'"

There is an extremely beautiful answer given later on by Cormac to the rather simple question of his son:

"'O grandson of Con, what is good for me?'

"'If thou attend to my command,' answers Cormac, 'thou wilt not[Pg 249] mock the old although thou art young, nor the poor although thou art well-clad, nor the lame although thou art agile, nor the blind although thou art clear-sighted, nor the feeble although thou art strong, nor the ignorant although thou art learned. Be not slothful, nor passionate, nor penurious, nor idle, nor jealous, for he who is so is an object of hatred to God as well as to man.'"

"'O grandson of Con,' asks Cairbré, in another place, 'I would fain know how I am to conduct myself among the wise and among the foolish, among friends and among strangers, among the old and among the young,' and to this question his father gives this notable response.

"'Be not too knowing nor too simple; be not proud, be not inactive, be not too humble nor yet haughty; be not talkative but be not too silent; be not timid neither be severe. For if thou shouldest appear too knowing thou wouldst be satirised and abused; if too simple thou wouldst be imposed upon; if too proud thou wouldst be shunned; if too humble thy dignity would suffer; if talkative thou wouldst not be deemed learned; if too severe thy character would be defamed; if too timid thy rights would be encroached upon.'"

To the curious question, "O grandson of Con, what are the most lasting things in the world?" the equally curious and to me unintelligible answer is returned, "Grass, copper, and yew."

Of women, King Cormac, like so many monarchs from Solomon down, has nothing good to say, perhaps his high position did not help him to judge them impartially. At least, to the question, "O grandson of Con, how shall I distinguish the characters of women?" the following bitter answer is given:

"'I know them, but I cannot describe them. Their counsel is foolish, they are forgetful of love, most headstrong in their desires, fond of folly, prone to enter rashly into engagements, given to swearing, proud to be asked in marriage, tenacious of enmity, cheerless at the banquet, rejectors of reconciliation, prone to strife, of much garrulity. Until evil be good, until hell be heaven, until the sun hide his light, until the stars of heaven fall, women will remain as we have stated. Woe to him, my son, who desires or serves a bad woman, woe to every one who has got a bad wife'"!

This Christian allusion to heaven and hell, and some others of the same sort, show that despite a considerable pagan flavouring[Pg 250] the tract cannot be entirely the work of King Cormac, though it may very well be the embodiment and extension of an ancient pagan discourse, for, as we have seen, after Christianity had succeeded in getting the upper hand over paganism, a kind of tacit compromise was arrived at, by means of which the bards and fĭlès and other representatives of the old pagan learning, were allowed to continue to propagate their stories, tales, poems, and genealogies, at the price of incorporating with them a small share of Christian alloy, or, to use a different simile, just as the vessels of some feudatory nations are compelled to fly at the mast-head the flag of the suzerain power. But so badly has the dovetailing of the Christian and the pagan parts been managed in most of the older romances, that the pieces come away quite separate in the hands of even the least skilled analyser, and the pagan substratum stands forth entirely distinct from the Christian accretion.

[Pg 251]

CHAPTER XX

THE SUGGESTIVELY PAGAN ELEMENT IN IRISH LITERATURE

It is this easy analysis of early Irish literature into its ante-Christian and its post-Christian elements, which lends to it its absorbing value and interest. For when all spurious accretions have been stripped off, we find in the most ancient Irish poems and sagas, a genuine picture of pagan life in Europe, such as we look for in vain elsewhere.

"The Church," writes Windisch, "adopted towards pagan sagas, the same position that it adopted towards pagan law.... I see no sufficient ground for doubting that really genuine pictures of a pre-Christian culture are preserved to us in the individual sagas, pictures which are of course in some places faded, and in others painted over by a later hand."[1]

Again in his notes on the story of Déirdre, he remarks—

"The saga originated in pagan, and was propagated in Christian times, and that too without its seeking fresh nutriment as a rule from Christian elements. But we must ascribe it to the influence of Christianity that what is specifically pagan in Irish saga is blurred[Pg 252] over and forced into the background. And yet there exist many whose contents are plainly mythological. The Christian monks were certainly not the first who reduced the ancient sagas to fixed form, but later on they copied them faithfully, and propagated them after Ireland had been converted to Christianity."

Zimmer too has come to the same conclusion.

"Nothing," he writes, "except a spurious criticism which takes for original and primitive the most palpable nonsense of which Middle-Irish writers from the twelfth to the sixteenth century are guilty with regard to their own antiquity, which is in many respects strange and foreign to them: nothing but such a criticism can, on the other hand, make the attempt to doubt of the historical character of the chief persons of the Saga cycles.[2] For we believe that Mève, Conor mac Nessa, Cuchulain, and Finn mac Cúmhail, are exactly as much historical personalities as Arminius, or Dietrich of Bern, or Etzel, and their date is just as well determined as that of the above-mentioned heroes and kings, who are glorified in song by the Germans, even though, in the case of Irish heroes and kings, external witnesses are wanting.'"

M. d'Arbois de Jubainville expresses himself in like terms. "We have no reason," he writes, "to doubt of the reality of the principal rôle in this [cycle of Cuchulain];"[3] and of the story of the Boru tribute which was imposed on Leinster about a century later; he writes, "Le récit a pour base des faits réels, quoique certains détails aient été créés par l'imagination;" and again, "Irish epic story, barbarous though it is, is, like Irish law, a monument of a civilisation far superior to that of the most ancient Germans; if the Roman idea of the state was wanting to that civilisation, and, if that defect in it was a radical flaw, still there is an intellectual culture to be found[Pg 253] there, far more developed than amongst the primitive Germans.'"[4]

"Ireland, in fact," writes M. Darmesteter in his "English Studies," well summing up the legitimate conclusions from the works of the great Celtic scholars, "has the peculiar privilege of a history continuous from the earliest centuries of our era until the present day. She has preserved in the infinite wealth of her literature a complete and faithful picture of the ancient civilisation of the Celts. Irish literature is therefore the key which opens the Celtic world."

But the Celtic world means a large portion of Europe, and the key to unlock the door of its past history is in the Irish manuscripts of saga and poem. Without them the student would have to view the past history of Europe through the distorting glasses of the Greeks and Romans, to whom all outer nations were barbarians, into whose social life they had no motive for inquiring. He would have no other means of estimating what were the feelings, modes of life, manners, and habits, of those great races who possessed so large a part of the ancient world, Gaul, Belgium, North Italy, parts of Germany, Spain, Switzerland, and the British Isles; who burned Rome, plundered Greece, and colonised Asia Minor. But in the Irish romances and historical sagas, he sees come to light another standard by which to measure. Through this early Irish peep-hole he gets a clear look at the life and manners of the race in one of its strongholds, from which he may conjecture and even assume a good deal with regard to the others.

That the pictures of social life and early society drawn in the Irish romances represent phases not common to the Irish alone, but to large portions of that Celtic race which once owned so much of Europe, may be surmised with some certainty from the way in which characteristics of the Celts barely mentioned by Greek and Roman writers re-appear amongst the Irish in all the intimate detail and fond expansion[Pg 254] of romance. M. d'Arbois de Jubainville has drawn attention to many such instances.

Posidonius, who was a friend of Cicero, and wrote about a hundred years before Christ, mentions a custom which existed in Gaul in his time of fighting at a feast for the best bit which was to be given to the most valiant warrior. This custom, briefly noticed by Posidonius, might be passed by unnoticed by the ordinary reader, but the Irish one will remember the early romances of his race in which the curadh-mir or "heroes' bit" so largely figures. He will remember that it is upon this custom that one of the greatest sagas of the Cuchulain cycle, the feast of Bricriu, hinges. Bricriu, the Thersites of the Red Branch, having built a new and magnificent house, determines to invite King Conor and the other chieftains to a feast, for the house was very magnificent.

"The dining hall was built like that of the High-king at Tara. From the hearth to the wall were nine beds, and each of the side walls was thirty-five feet high and covered with ornaments of gilt bronze. Against one of the side walls of that palace was reared a royal bed destined for Conor,[5] king of Ulster, which looked down upon all the others. It was ornamented with carbuncles and precious stones and other gems of great price. The gold and silver and all sorts of jewellery which covered that bed shone with such splendour that the night was as brilliant as the day."

He had prepared a magnificent curadh-mir for the feast, consisting of a seven-year old pig, and a seven-year old cow that had been fed on milk and corn and the finest food since their birth, a hundred cakes of corn cooked with honey—and every[Pg 255] four cakes took a sack of corn to make them—and a vat of wine large enough to hold three of the warriors of the Ultonians. This magnificent "heroes' bit" he secretly promises to each of three warriors in turn, Laeghaire [Leary], Conall Cearnach, and Cuchulain, hoping to excite a quarrel among them. On the result of his expedient the saga turns.[6]

Again, Cæsar tells us that when he invaded the Gauls they did not fight any longer in chariots, but it is recorded that they did so fight two hundred years before his time, even as the Persians fought against the Greeks, and as the Greeks themselves must have fought in a still earlier age commemorated by Homer. But in the Irish sagas we find this epic mode of warfare in full force. Every great man has his charioteer, they fight from their cars as in Homeric days, and much is told us of both steed, chariot and driver. In the above-mentioned saga of Bricriu's feast it is the charioteers of the three warriors who claim the heroes' bit for their masters, since they are apparently ashamed to make the first move themselves. The charioteer was more than a mere servant. Cuchulain sometimes calls his charioteer friend or master (popa), and on the occasion of his fight with Ferdiad desires him in case he (Cuchulain) should show signs of yielding, to "excite reproach and speak evil to me so that the ire of my rage and anger should grow the more on me, but if he give ground before me thou shalt laud me and praise me and speak good words to me that my courage may be the greater," and this command his friend and charioteer punctually executes.

The chariot itself is in many places graphically[Pg 256] described. Here is how its approach is pourtrayed in the Táin—

"It was not long," says the chronicler, "until Ferdiad's charioteer heard the noise approaching, the clamour and the rattle, and the whistling, and the tramp, and the thunder, and the clatter and the roar, namely the shield-noise of the light shields, and the hissing of the spears, and the loud clangour of the swords, and the tinkling of the helmet, and the ringing of the armour, and the friction of the arms; the dangling of the missive weapons, the straining of the ropes, and the loud clattering of the wheels, and the creaking of the chariot, and the trampling of the horses, and the triumphant advance of the champion and the warrior towards the ford approaching him."

In the romance called the "Intoxication of the Ultonians," it is mentioned that they drave so fast in the wake of Cuchulain, that "the iron wheels of the chariots cut the roots of the immense trees." Here is how the romancist describes the advance of such a body upon Tara-Luachra.

"Not long were they there, the two watchers and the two druids, until a full fierce rush of the first band broke hither past the glen. Such was the fury with which they advanced that there was not left a spear on a rack, nor a shield on a spike, nor a sword in an armoury in Tara-Luachra that did not fall down. From every house on which was thatch in Tara-Luachra it fell in immense flakes. One would think that it was the sea that had come over the walls and over the corners of the world upon them. The forms of countenances were changed, and there was chattering of teeth in Tara-Luachra within. The two druids fell in fits and in faintings and in paroxysms, one of them out over the wall and the other over the wall inside."

On another occasion the approach of Cuchulain's chariot is thus described—

"Like a mering were the two dykes which the iron wheels of Cuchulain's chariot made on that day of the sides of the road. Like flocks of dark birds pouring over a vast plain were the blocks and round sods and turves of the earth which the horses would cast away behind them against the ... of the wind. Like a flock of swans pouring over a vast plain was the foam which they flung before them over the muzzles of their bridles. Like the smoke from a royal[Pg 257] hostel was the dust and breath of the dense vapour, because of the vehemence of the driving which Liag, son of Riangabhra, on that day gave to the two steeds of Cuchulain."[7]

Elsewhere the chariot itself is described as "wythe-wickered, two bright bronze wheels, a white pole of bright silver with a veining of white bronze, a very high creaking body, having its firm sloping sides ornamented with cred (tin?), a back-arched rich golden yoke, two rich yellow-peaked alls, hardened sword-straight axle-spindles." Laeghaire's chariot is described in another piece as "a chariot wythe-wickered, two firm black wheels, two pliant beautiful reins, hardened sword-straight axle-spindles, a new fresh-polished body, a back-arched rich silver-mounted yoke, two rich-yellow peaked alls ... a bird plume of the usual feathers over the body of the chariot."[8]

Descriptions like these are constantly occurring in the Irish tales, and enable us to realise better the heroic period of warfare and to fill up in our imagination many a long-regretted lacuna in our knowledge of primitive Europe.

"Those philosophers," says Diodorus Siculus, a Greek writer of the Augustan age, speaking of the Druids, "like the lyric poets called bards, have a great authority both in affairs of peace and war, friends and enemies listen to them. Also when the two armies are in presence of one another and swords drawn and spears couched, they throw themselves into the midst of the combatants and appease them as though they were charming wild beasts. Thus even amongst the most savage barbarians anger submits to the rule of wisdom, and the god of war pays homage to the Muses."

To show that the manners and customs of the Keltoi or Celts of whom Diodorus speaks were in this respect identical with those of their Irish cousins (or brothers), and to give another instance of the warm light shed by Irish literature upon the early customs of Western Europe I shall convert the abstract[Pg 258] into the concrete by a page or two from an Irish romance, not an old one,[9] but one which no doubt preserves many original traditionary traits. In this story Finn mac Cúmhail or Cool[10] at a great feast in his fort at Allen asks Goll about some tribute which he claimed, and is dissatisfied at the answer of Goll, who may be called the Ajax of the Fenians. After that there arose a quarrel at the feast, the rise of which is thus graphically pourtrayed—

"'Goll,' said Finn, 'you have acknowledged in that speech that you came from the city of Beirbhé to the battle of Cnoca, and that you slew my father there, and it is a bold and disobedient thing of you to tell me that,' said Finn.

"'By my hand, O Finn,' said Goll, 'if you were to dishonour me as your father did, I would give you the same payment that I gave Cool.'

"'Goll,' said Finn, 'I would be well able not to let that word pass with you, for I have a hundred valiant warriors in my following for every one that is in yours.'

"'Your father had that also,' said Goll, 'and yet I avenged my dishonour on him, and I would do the same to you if you were to deserve it of me.'

"White-skinned Carroll O Baoisgne[11] spake, and 't is what he said: 'O Goll,' said he, 'there is many a man,' said he, 'to silence you and your people in the household of Finn mac Cúmhail.'

"Bald cursing Conan mac Morna spake, and 't is what he said, 'I swear by my arms of valour,' said he, 'that Goll, the day he has least men, has a man and a hundred in his household, and not a man of them but would silence you.'

"'Are you one of those, perverse, bald-headed Conan?' said Carroll.

"'I am one of them, black-visaged, nail-torn, skin-scratched, little-strength Carroll,' says Conan, 'and I would soon prove it to you that Cúmhail was in the wrong.'

[Pg 259]

"It was then that Carroll arose, and he struck a daring fist, quick and ready, upon Conan, and there was no submission in Conan's answer, for he struck the second fist on Carroll in the middle of his face and his teeth."

Upon this the chronicler relates how first one joined in and then another, until at last all the adherents of Goll and Finn and even the captains themselves are hard at work. "After that," he adds, "bad was the place for a mild, smooth-fingered woman or a weak or infirm person, or an aged, long-lived elder." This terrific fight continued "from the beginning of the night till the rising of the sun in the morning," and was only stopped—just as Diodorus says battles were stopped—by the intervention of the bards.

"It was then," says the romancist, "that the prophesying poet of the pointed words, that guerdon-full good man of song, Fergus Finnbheóil, rose up, and all the Fenians' men of science along with him, and they sang their hymns and good poems, and their perfect lays to those heroes to silence and to soften them. It was then they ceased from their slaughtering and maiming, on hearing the music of the poets, and they let their weapons fall to earth, and the poets took up their weapons and they went between them, and grasped them with the grasp of reconciliation."

When the palace was cleared out it was found that 1,100 of Finn's people had been killed between men and women, and eleven men and fifty women of Goll's party.

Cæsar speaks of the numbers who frequented the schools of the druids in Gaul; "it is said," he adds, "that they learn there a great number of verses, and that is why some of those pupils spend twenty years in learning. It is not, according to the druids, permissible to entrust verses to writing although they use the Greek alphabet in all other affairs public and private." Of this prohibition to commit their verses to paper, we have no trace, so far as I know, in our literature, but the accounts of the early bardic schools entirely bear out the description here given of them by Cæsar, and again shows the solidarity of custom which seems to have existed between the[Pg 260] various Celtic tribes. According to our early manuscripts it took from nine to twelve years for a student to take the highest degree at the bardic schools, and in many cases where the pupil failed to master sufficiently the subjects of the year, he had probably to spend two over it, so that it is quite possible that some might spend twenty years over their learning. And much of this learning was, as Cæsar notes, in verse. Many earlier law tracts appear to have been so, and even many of the earliest romances. There is a very interesting account extant called the "Proceedings of the Great Bardic Association," which leads up to the Epic of the Táin Bo Chuailgne, the greatest of the Irish romances, according to which this great tale was at one time lost, and the great Bardic Institution was commanded to hunt for and recover it. The fact of it being said that the perfect tale was lost for ever "and that only a fragmentary and broken form of it would go down to posterity" perhaps indicates, as has been pointed out by Sullivan, "that the filling up the gaps in the poem by prose narrative is meant." In point of fact the tale, as we have it now, consists half of verse and half of prose. Nor is this peculiar to the Táin. Most of the oldest and many of the modern tales are composed in this way. In most cases the verse is of a more archaic character and more difficult than the prose. In very many an expanded prose narrative of several pages is followed by a more condensed poem saying the same thing. So much did the Irish at last come to look upon it as a matter of course that every romance should be interspersed with poetry, that even writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who consciously invented their stories as a modern novelist invents his, have interspersed their pieces with passages, in verse, as did Comyn in his Turlough mac Stairn, as did the author of the Son of Ill-counsel, the author of the Parliament of Clan Lopus, the author of the Women's Parliament, and others. We may take it, then, that in the earliest days the romances were composed in verse and learned by heart by the students—possibly[Pg 261] before any alphabet was known at all; afterwards when lacunæ occurred through defective memory on the part of the reciter he filled up the gaps with prose. Those who committed to paper our earliest tales wrote down as much of the old poetry as they could recollect or had access to, and wrote the connecting narrative in prose. Hence it soon came to pass that if a story pretended to any antiquity it had to be interspersed with verses, and at last it happened that the Irish taste became so confirmed to this style of writing that authors adopted it, as I have said, even in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

In spite of the mythological and phantastic elements which are undoubtedly mingled with the oldest sagas,

"the manners and customs in which the men of the time lived and moved, are depicted," writes Windisch,[12] "with a naïve realism which leaves no room for doubt as to the former actuality of the scenes depicted. In matter of costume and weapons, eating and drinking, building and arrangement of the banqueting-hall, manners observed at the feast, and much more, we find here the most valuable information." "I insist upon it," he says in another place, "that Irish saga is the only richly-flowing source of unbroken Celtism."

All the remaining linguistic monuments of Breton, Cornish, and Welsh, "would form," writes M. d'Arbois de Jubainville,

"un ensemble bien incomplet et bien obscur sans la lumière que la littérature irlandaise projette sur ces débris. C'est le vieil irlandais qui forme le trait d'union pour ainsi dire entre les dialectes neo-celtiques de la fin du moyen âge ou des temps modernes, et le Gaulois des inscriptions lapidaires, des monnaies, des noms propres conservés par la littérature grecque et la littérature romaine."[13]

It may, then, be finally acknowledged that those of the great nations of to-day, whose ancestors were mostly Celts, but whose language, literature, and traditions have completely disappeared, must, if they wish to study their own past, turn[Pg 262] themselves first to Ireland. When we find so much of the brief and scanty information given us by the classics, not only borne out, but amply illustrated by old Irish literature, when we find the dry bones of Posidonius and Cæsar rise up again before us with a ruddy covering of flesh and blood, it is not too much to surmise that in other matters also the various Celtic races bore to each other a close resemblance.

Much more could be said upon this subject, as that the four Gallo-Roman inscriptions to Brigantia found in Great Britain are really to the Goddess Brigit;[14] that the Brennus who burned Rome 390 years before Christ and the Brennus who stormed Delphi 110 years later were only the god Brian, under whose tutelage the Gauls marched; and that Lugudunum, Lugh's Dún or fortress, is so-called from the god Lugh the Long-handed, to whom two Celtic inscriptions are found, one in Spain and one in Switzerland, as may be seen set forth at length in the volumes of Monsieur d'Arbois de Jubainville.

[Pg 263]

CHAPTER XXI

THE OLDEST BOOKS AND POEMS

The books of saga, poetry, and annals that have come down to our day, though so vastly more ancient and numerous than anything that the rest of Western Europe has to show, are yet an almost inappreciable fragment of the literature that at one time existed in Ireland. The great native scholar O'Curry, who possessed a unique and unrivalled knowledge of Irish literature in all its forms, has drawn up a list of lost books which may be supposed to have contained our earliest literature.

We find the poet Senchan Torpéist—according to the account in the Book of Leinster, a manuscript which dates from about the year 1150—complaining that the only perfect record of the great Irish epic, the Táin Bo Chuailgne[1] or Cattle-spoil of Cooley, had been taken to the East with the Cuilmenn,[2] or Great Skin Book. Now Zimmer, who made a special and minute study of this story, considers that the earliest redaction of the Táin dates from the seventh century.[Pg 264] This legend about Senchan—a real historical poet whose eulogy in praise of Columcille, whether genuine or not, was widely popular—is probably equally old, and points to the early existence of a great skin book in which pagan tales were written, but which was then lost. The next great book is the celebrated Saltair of Tara, which is alluded to in a genuine poem of Cuan O'Lochain about the year 1000, in which he says that Cormac mac Art drew up the Saltair of Tara. Cormac, being a pagan, could not have called the book a Saltair or Psalterium, but it may have got the name in later times from its being in metre. All that this really proves, however, is that there then existed a book about the prerogatives of Tara and the provincial kings so old that Cuan O'Lochain—no doubt following tradition—was not afraid to ascribe it to Cormac mac Art who lived in the third century. The next lost book is called the Book of the Uacongbhail, upon which both the O'Clerys in their Book of Invasions and Keating in his history drew, and which, according to O'Curry, still existed at Kildare so late as 1626. The next book is called the Cin of Drom Snechta. It is quoted in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, or "Book of the Dun Cow"—a MS. of about the year 1100—and often in the Book of Ballymote and by Keating, who in quoting it says, "And it was before the coming of Patrick to Ireland that that book existed,"[3] and the Book of Leinster ascribes it to the son of a king of Connacht who died either in 379 or 499. The next books of which we find mention were said to have belonged to St. Longarad, a contemporary of St. Columcille. The scribe who wrote the glosses on the Féilĭrè of Angus the Culdee, said that the books existed still in his day, but that nobody could read them; for which he accounts by the tale that Columcille once paid Longarad a visit in order to see his books, but that his host refused to show them, and that Columcille then said, "May your books be of no use after you, since[Pg 265] you have exercised inhospitality about them." On account of this the books became illegible after Longarad's death. Angus the Culdee lived about the year 800, but Stokes ascribes the Féilĭrè to the tenth century; a view, however, which Mr. Strachan's studies on the Irish deponent verb, which is of such frequent occurrence in the Féilĭrè, may perhaps modify. At what time the scholiast wrote his note on the text is uncertain, but it also is very old. It is plain, then, that at this time a number of illegible books—illegible no doubt from age—existed; and to account for this illegibility the story of Columcille's curse was invented. The Annals of Ulster quote another book at the year 527 under the name of the Book of St. Mochta, who was a disciple of St. Patrick. They also quote the Book of Cuana at the year 468 and repeatedly afterwards down to the year 610, while they record the death of Cuana, a scribe, at the year 738, after which no more quotations from Cuana's book occur.

The following volumes, almost all of which existed prior to the year 1100, are also alluded to in our old literature:—The Book of Dubhdaleithe; the Yellow Book of Slane; the original Leabhar na h-Uidhre, or "Book of the Dun Cow"; the Books of Eochaidh O'Flanagain; a certain volume known as the book eaten by the poor people in the desert; the Book of Inis an Dúin; the short Book of Monasterboice; the Books of Flann of Monasterboice; the Book of Flann of Dungiven; the Book of Downpatrick; the Book of Derry; the Book of Sábhal Patrick; the Black Book of St. Molaga; the Yellow Book of St. Molling; the Yellow Book of Mac Murrough; the Book of Armagh (not the one now so called); the Red Book of Mac Egan; the Long Book of Leithlin; the Books of O'Scoba of Clonmacnois; the "Duil" of Drom Ceat; the Book of Clonsost; the Book of Cluain Eidhneach (the ivy meadow) in Leix; and one of the most valuable and often quoted of all, Cormac's great Saltair of Cashel, compiled by Cormac mac Culinan, who was at once king of Munster[Pg 266] and archbishop of Cashel,[4] and who fell in battle in 903, according to the chronology of the "Four Masters." The above are certainly only a few of the books in which a large early literature was contained, one that has now perished almost to a page. Michael O'Clery, in the Preface to his Book of Invasions written in 1631, mentions the books from which he and his four antiquarian friends compiled their work—mostly now perished!—and adds:—

"The histories and synchronisms of Erin were written and tested in the presence of those illustrious saints, as is manifest in the great books that are named after the saints themselves and from their great churches; for there was not an illustrious church in Erin that had not a great book of history named from it or from the saints who sanctified it. It would be easy, too, to know from the books which the saints wrote, and the songs of praise which they composed in Irish that they themselves and their churches were the centres of the true knowledge, and the archives and homes of the manuscripts of the authors of Erin in the elder times. But, alas! short was the time until dispersion and decay overtook the churches of the saints,[Pg 267] their relics, and their books; for there is not to be found of them now [1631] but a small remnant that has not been carried away into distant countries and foreign nations—carried away so that their fate is unknown from that time unto this."

As far as actual existing documents go, we have no specimens of Irish MSS. written in Irish before the eighth century. The chief remains of the old language that we have are mostly found on the Continent, whither the Irish carried their books in great numbers, and unfortunately they are not books of saga, but chiefly, with the exception of a few poems, glosses and explanations of books used evidently in the Irish ecclesiastical schools.[5] A list of the most remarkable is worth giving here, as it will help to show the extraordinary geographical diversity of the Irish settlements upon the Continent, and the keenness with which their relics have been studied by European scholars—French, German, and Italian. The most important are the glosses found in the Irish MSS. of Milan, published by Ascoli, Zeuss, Stokes, and Nigra; those in St. Gall—a monastery in Switzerland founded by St. Gall, an Irish friend of Columbanus, in the sixth century—published by Ascoli and Nigra; those in Wurtzburg, published by Zimmer and Zeuss; those in Carlsruhe, published by Zeuss; those in Turin, published by Zimmer, Nigra, and Stokes in his "Goidelica"; those in Vienna, published by Zimmer in his "Glossæ Hibernicæ" and Stokes in his "Goidelica"; those in Berne, those in Leyden, those in Nancy, and the glosses on the Cambrai Sermon, published by Zeuss.[6] Next in antiquity to these are the Irish parts of the Book of Armagh, the poems in the MSS. of St.[Pg 268] Gall and Milan,[7] and some of the pieces published by Windisch in his "Irische Texte." Next to this is probably the Martyrology of Angus the Culdee. And then come the great Middle-Irish books—the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, the Book of Leinster, and the rest.

From a palæographic point of view the oldest books in Ireland are probably the "Domhnach Airgid," a copy of the Four Gospels in a triple shrine of yew, silver-plated copper, and gold-plated silver, which St. Patrick was believed to have given to St. Carthainn when he told that saint with a shrewd wisdom, which in later days aroused the admiration of Mr. Matthew Arnold, to build himself a church "that should not be too near to himself for familiarity nor too far from himself for intercourse." It probably dates from the fifth or sixth century. The Cathach supposed to have been surreptitiously written by Columcille from Finnian's book[8]—a Latin copy of the Gospels in Trinity College, Dublin; the Book of Durrow, a beautiful illuminated copy of the same; the Book of Dimma, containing the Four Gospels, ritual, and prayers, probably a work of the seventh century; the Book of Molling, of probably about the same date; the Gospels of Mac Regol, the largest of the Old Irish Gospel books, highly but not elegantly coloured, with an interlinear Anglo-Saxon version in a late hand carried through its pages; the Book of Kells, the unapproachable glory of Irish illumination, and some other ecclesiastical books. After them come the Leabhar na h-Uidre and the great books of poems and saga.

Although the language of these sagas and poems is not that of the glosses, but what is called "Middle-Irish," still it does not in the least follow that the poems and sagas belong to the Middle-Irish period. "The old Middle-Irish manuscripts," says Zimmer, "contain for the most part only Old Irish texts re-written."[9] "Unfortunately," says Windisch, "every new[Pg 269] copyist has given to the text more or less of the linguistic garb of his own day, so that as far as the language of Irish texts goes, it depends principally upon the age of the manuscript that contains them."[10] And again, in his preface to Adamnan's vision, he writes: "Since we know that Irish texts were rewritten by every fresh copyist more or less regularly in the speech of his own day, the real age or a prose text cannot possibly be determined by the linguistic forms of its language."[11] It is much easier to tell the age of poetry than prose, for the gradual modification of language, altering of words, shortening of inflexions, and so on, must interfere with the metre, so that when we find a poem in a twelfth-century manuscript written in Middle Irish and in a perfect metrical form, we may—no matter to what age it is ascribed—be pretty sure that it cannot be more than two or three centuries older than the manuscript that contains it. Yet even of the poems Dr. Atkinson writes: "The poem may be of the eighth century, but the forms are in the main of the twelfth."[12] Where poems that really are of ancient date have had their language modified in transcription so as to render them intelligible, the metre is bound to suffer, and this lends us a criterion whereby to gauge the age of verse, which is lacking to us when we come to deal with prose.

This modification of language is not uncommon in literature and takes place naturally, but I doubt if there ever was a literature in which it played the same important part as in Irish. Thus let us take the story of the Táin Bo Chuailgne, of which I shall have more to say later on. Zimmer, after long and careful study of the text as preserved to us in a manuscript of about the year 1100, came to the conclusion from the marks of Old Irish inflexion, and so forth, which still remain in the eleventh-century text, that there had been two recensions of[Pg 270] the story, a pre-Danish, that is, say, a seventh-century one, and a post-Danish, that is a tenth-or eleventh-century one. Thus the epic may have been originally committed to paper in the seventh century, modified in the tenth, transcribed into the manuscripts in which we have it in the eleventh and twelfth, and propagated from that down to the eighteenth century, in copies every one of which underwent more or less alteration in order to render it more intelligible; and it was in fact in an eighteenth-century manuscript, yet one that differed, as I subsequently discovered, in few essentials from the copy in the Book of Leinster that I first read it. As the bards lived to please so they had to please to live. The popular mind only receives with pleasure and transmits with readiness popular poetry upon the condition that it is intelligible,[13] and hence granting that Finn mac Cool was a real historical personage, it is perfectly possible that some of his poetry was handed down from generation to generation amongst the conservative Gael, and slightly altered or modified from time to time to make it more intelligible, according as words died out and inflexions became obsolete. The Oriental philologist, Max Müller, in attempting to explain how myths arose (according to his theory) from a disease of language, thinks that during the transition period of which he speaks, there would be many words "understood perhaps by the grandfather, familiar to the father, but strange to the son, and misunderstood by the grandson." This is exactly what is taking place over half Ireland at this very moment, and it is what has always been at work amongst a people whose language and literature go back with certainty for nearly 1,500 years. Accordingly before the art of writing became common, ere yet expensive vellum MSS. and a highly-paid[Pg 271] class of historians and schools of scribes to a certain extent stereotyped what they set down, it is altogether probable that people who trusted to the ear and to memory, modified and corrupted but still handed down, at least some famous poems, like those ascribed to Amergin or Finn mac Cool. That the Celtic memory for things unwritten is long I have often proved. I have heard from peasants stanzas composed by Donogha Mór O'Daly, of Boyle, in the thirteenth century; I have recovered from an illiterate peasant, in 1890 in Roscommon, verses which had been jotted down in phonetic spelling in Argyleshire by Macgregor, Dean of Lismore, in the year 1512, and which may have been sung for hundreds of years before it struck the fancy of the Highland divine to commit them to paper;[14] and I have again heard verses in which the measure and sense were preserved, but found on comparing them with MSS. that several obsolete words had been altered to others that rhymed with them and were intelligible.[15] For these reasons I should, in many cases, refuse absolutely to reject the authenticity of a poem simply because the language is more modern than that of the bard could have been to whom it is ascribed, and it seems to me equally uncritical either to accept or reject much of our earliest poetry, except what is in highly-developed metre, as a good deal of it may possibly be the actual (but linguistically modified) work of the supposed authors.

This modifying process is something akin to but very different in degree from Pope's rewriting of Donne's satires or Dryden's version of Chaucer, inasmuch as it was probably both unconscious and unintentional. To understand better how this modification may have taken place, let us examine a[Pg 272] few lines of the thirteenth-century English poem, the "Brut" of Layamon:—

"And swa ich habbe al niht
Of mine swevene swithe ithoht,
For ich what to iwisse
Agan is al my blisse."

These lines were, no doubt, intelligible to an ordinary Englishman at the time. Gradually they become a little modernised, thus:—

"And so I have all night
Of min-e sweeven swith ythought,
For I wat to ywiss
Agone is all my bliss."

Had these verses been preserved in folk-memory they must have undergone a still further modification as soon as the words sweeven (dream), swith (much), and ywiss (certainty) began to grow obsolete, and we should have the verse modified and mangled, perhaps something in this way:—

"And so I have all the night
Of my dream greatly thought,
For I wot and I wis
That gone is all my bliss."

The words "I wot and I wis," in the third line, represent just about as much archaism as the popular memory and taste will stand without rebelling. Some modification in the direction here hinted at may be found in, I should think, more than half the manuscripts in the Royal Irish Academy to-day, and just in the same sense as the lines,

"For I wot and I wis
That gone is my bliss,"

are Layamon's; so we may suppose,

"Dubthach missi mac do Lugaid
Laidech lantrait
[Pg 273]Mé ruc inmbreith etir Loegaire
Ocus Patraic,"[16]

to be the fifth century O'Lugair's, or

"Leathaid folt fada fraich,
Forbrid canach fann finn,"[17]

to be Finn mac Cúmhail's.

Of the many poems—as distinguished from sagas, which are a mixture of poetry and prose—said to have been produced from pagan times down to the eighth century, none can be properly called epics or even épopées. There are few continued efforts, and the majority of the pieces though interesting for a great many reasons to students, would hardly interest an English reader when translated. Unfortunately, such a great amount of our early literature being lost, we can only judge of what it was like through the shorter pieces which have been preserved, and even these short pieces read rather jejune and barren in English, partly because of the great condensation of the original, a condensation which was largely brought about by the necessity of versification in difficult metres. In order to see beauty in the most ancient Irish verse it is absolutely necessary to read it in the original so as to perceive and appreciate the alliteration and other tours de force which appear in every line. These verses, for instance, which Mève, daughter or Conan, is said to have pronounced over Cuchorb, her husband,[Pg 274] in the first century, appear bald enough in a literal translation:—

"Moghcorb's son whom fame conceals [covers]
Well sheds he blood by his spears,
A stone over his grave—'tis a pity—
Who carried battle over Cliú Máil.

My noble king, he spoke not falsehood,
His success was certain in every danger,
As black as a raven was his brow,
As sharp was his spear as a razor," etc.

One might read this kind of thing for ever in a translation without being struck by anything more than some occasional curiosa felicitas of phrase or picturesque expression, and one would never suspect that the original was so polished and complicated as it really is. Here are these two verses done into the exact versification of the original, in which interlinear vowel-rhymes, alliterations, and all the other requirements of the Irish are preserved and marked:—

"Mochorb's son of Fiercest FAME,
KNown his NAME for bloody toil,
To his Gory Grave is GONE,
He who SHONE o'er SHouting Moyle.

Kindly King, who Liked not LIES,
Rash to RISE to Fields of Fame,
Raven-Black his Brows of FEAR,
Razor-Sharp his SPEAR of flame," etc.[18]

This specimen of Irish metre may help to place much of our poetry in another light, for its beauty depends less upon the intrinsic substance of the thought than the external elegance[Pg 275] of the framework. We must understand this in order to do justice to our versified literature, for the student must not imagine that he will find long-sustained epics or interesting narrative poems after the manner of the Iliad or Odyssey, or even the Nibelungenlied, or the "Song of Roland;" none such now exist: if they did exist they are lost. The early poems consist rather of eulogies, elegies, historical pieces, and lyrics, few of them of any great length, and still fewer capable of interesting an English reader in a translation. Occasionally we meet with touches of nature poetry of which the Gael has always been supremely fond. Here is a tentative translation made by O'Donovan of a part of the first poem which Finn mac Cúmhail is said to have composed after his eating of the salmon of knowledge:—

"May-Day, delightful time! How beautiful the colour; the blackbirds sing their full lay; would that Laighaig were here! The cuckoos sing in constant strains. How welcome is ever the noble brilliance of the seasons! On the margin of the branching woods the summer swallows skim the stream. The swift horses seek the pool. The heath spreads out its long hair, the weak, fair bog-down grows. Sudden consternation attacks the signs, the planets, in their courses running, exert an influence; the sea is lulled to rest, flowers cover the earth."

The language of this poem is so old as to be in parts unintelligible, and the broken metre points to the difficulties of transmission over a long period of time, yet he would be a bold man who would ascribe with certainty the authorship of it to Finn mac Cúmhail in the third century, or the elegy on Cuchorb to Mève, daughter of Conan, a contemporary of Virgil and Horace. And yet all the history of these people is known and recorded with much apparent plausibility and many collateral circumstances connecting them with the men of their time. How much of this is genuine historical tradition? How much is later invention? It is difficult to decide at present.

[Pg 276]

CHAPTER XXII

EARLY SAGA AND ROMANCE

During the golden period of the Greek and Roman genius no one ever wrote a romance. Epics they left behind them, and history, but the romance, the Danish saga, the Irish sgeul or úrsgeul was unknown. It was in time of decadence that a body of Greek prose romance appeared, and with the exception of Petronius' semi-prose "Satyricon," and Apuleius' "Golden Ass," the Latin language produced in this line little of a higher character than such works as the Gesta Romanorum. In Greece and Italy where the genial climate favoured all kinds of open-air representations, the great development of the drama took the place of novelistic literature, as it did for a long time amongst the English after the Elizabethan revival. In Ireland, on the other hand, the dramatic stage was never reached at all, but the development of the úrsgeul, romance, or novel, was quite abnormally great. I have seen it more than once asserted, if I mistake not, that the dramatic is an inevitable and an early development in the history of every literature, but this is to generalise from insufficient instances. The Irish literature which kept on developing—to some extent at least—for over a thousand years, and of which hundreds of volumes still exist, never evolved a drama, nor so much, as far as I know, as even a miracle play, although these are found in Welsh and even Cornish. What Ireland[Pg 277] did produce, and produce nobly and well, was romance; from the first to the last, from the seventh to the seventeenth century, Irishmen, without distinction of class, alike delighted in the úrsgeul.

When this form of literature first came into vogue we have no means of ascertaining, but the narrative prose probably developed at a very early period as a supplement to defective narrative verse. Not that verse or prose were then and there committed to writing, for it is said that the business of the bards was to learn their stories by heart. I take it, however, that they did not actually do this, but merely learned the incidents of a story in their regular sequence, and that their training enabled them to fill these up and clothe them on the spur of the moment in the most effective garments, decking them out with passages of gaudy description, with rattling alliterative lines and "runs" and abundance of adjectival declamation. The bards, no matter from what quarter of the island, had all to know the same story or novel, provided it was a renowned one, but with each the sequence of incidents, and the incidents themselves were probably for a long time the same; but the language in which they were tricked out and the length to which they were spun depended probably upon the genius or bent of each particular bard. Of course in process of time divergences began to arise, and hence different versions of the same story. That, at least, is how I account for such passages as "but others say that it was not there he was killed, but in," etc., "but some of the books say that it was not on this wise it happened, but," and so on.

It is probable that very many novels were in existence before the coming of St. Patrick, but highly unlikely that they were at that time written down at full length. It was probably only after the country had become Christianised and full of schools and learning that the bards experienced the desire of writing down their sagas, with as much as they could recapture of the ancient poetry upon, which they were built. In the Book of[Pg 278] Leinster, a manuscript of the twelfth century, we find an extraordinary list of no less than 187 of those romances with THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY of which an ollamh had to be acquainted. The ollamh was the highest dignitary amongst the bards, and it took him from nine to twelve years' training to learn the two hundred and fifty prime stories and the one hundred secondary ones along with the other things which were required of him. The prime stories—combinations of epic and novel, prose and poetry—are divided in the manuscripts into the following romantic catalogue:—Destructions of fortified places, Cow spoils (i.e., cattle-raiding expeditions), Courtships or wooings, Battles, Cave-stories, Navigations, Tragical deaths, Feasts, Sieges, Adventures, Elopements, Slaughters, Water-eruptions, Expeditions, Progresses, and Visions. "He is no poet," says the Book of Leinster, "who does not synchronise and harmonise all the stories." We possess, as I have said, the names of 187 such stories in the Book of Leinster, and the names of many more are given in the tenth-or eleventh-century tale of Mac Coisè; and all the known ones, with the exception of one tale added later on, and one which, evidently through an error in transcription, refers to Arthur instead of Aithirne, are about events prior to the year 650 or thereabouts. We may take it, then, that this list was drawn up in the seventh century.

Now, who were the authors of these couple of hundred romances? It is a natural question, but one which cannot be answered. There is not a trace of their authorship remaining, if authorship be the right word for what I suspect to have been the gradual growth of race, tribal, and family history, and of Celtic mythology, told and retold, and polished up, and added to; some of them, especially such as are the descendants of a pagan mythology, must have been handed down for perhaps countless generations, others recounted historical, tribal, or family doings, magnified during the course of time, others again of more recent date, are perhaps fairly accurate accounts of actual[Pg 279] events, but all PRIOR TO ABOUT THE YEAR 650. I take it that so soon as bardic schools and colleges began to be formed, there was no class of learning more popular than that which taught the great traditionary stories of the various tribes and families of the great Gaelic race, and the intercommunication between the bardic colleges propagated local tradition throughout all Ireland.

The very essence of the national life of Erin was embodied in these stories, but, unfortunately, few out of the enormous mass have survived to our day, and these mostly mutilated or in mere digests. Some, however, exist at nearly full length, quite sufficient to show us what the romances were like, and to cause us to regret the irreparable loss inflicted upon our race by the ravages of Danes, Normans, and English. Even as it is O'Curry asserts that the contents of the strictly historical tales known to him would be sufficient to fill up four thousand of the large pages of the "Four Masters." He computed that the tales about Finn, Ossian, and the Fenians alone would fill another three thousand pages. In addition to these we have a considerable number of imaginative stories, neither historical nor Fenian, such as the "Three Sorrows of Story-telling" and the like, sufficient to fill five thousand pages more, not to speak of the more recent novel-like productions of the later Irish.[1]

It is this very great fecundity of the very early Irish in the production of saga and romance, in poetry and prose, which best enables us to judge of their early-developed genius, and considerable primitive culture. The introduction of Christianity neither inspired these romances nor helped to produce them; they are nearly all anterior to it, and had they been preserved to us we should now have the most remarkable body of primitive myth and saga in the whole western world. It is probably this consideration which makes M. Darmesteter say[Pg 280] of Irish literature: "real historical documents we have none until the beginning of the decadence—a decadence so glorious, that we almost mistake it for a renaissance since the old epic sap dries up only to make place for a new budding and bourgeoning, a growth less original certainly, but scarcely less wonderful if we consider the condition of continental Europe at that date." The decadence that M. Darmesteter alludes to is the rise of the Christian schools of the fifth and sixth centuries, which put to some extent an end to the epic period by turning men's thoughts into a different channel.

It is this "decadence," however, which I have preferred to examine first, just because it does rest upon real historical documents, and can be proved. We may now, however, proceed to the mass of saga, the bulk of which in its earliest forms is pagan, and the spirit of which, even in the latest texts, has been seldom quite distorted by Christian influence. This saga centres around several periods and individuals: some of these, like Tuathal and the Boru tribute, Conairé the Great and his death, have only one or two stories pertaining to them. But there are three cycles which stand out pre-eminently, and have been celebrated in more stories and sagas than the rest, and of which more remains have been preserved to us than of any of the others. These are the Mythological Circle concerning the Tuatha De Dannan and the Pre-Milesians; the Heroic, Ultonian, or Red-Branch Cycle,[2] in which Cuchulain is the dominating figure; and the Cycle of Finn mac Cúmhail, Ossian, Oscar, and the High-kings of Ireland who were their contemporaries—this cycle may be denominated the Fenian or Ossianic.

[Pg 281]

CHAPTER XXIII

THE MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE

The cycle of the mythological stories which group themselves round the early invasions of Erin is sparsely represented in Irish manuscripts. Not only is their number less, but their substance is more confused than that of the other cycles. To the comparative mythologist and the folk-lorist, however, they are perhaps the most interesting of all, as throwing more light than any of the others upon the early religious ideas of the race. Most of the sagas connected with this pre-Milesian cycle are now to be found only in brief digests preserved in the Leabhar Gabhála,[1] or Book of Invasions of Ireland, of which large fragments exist in the Books of Leinster and Ballymote, and which Michael O'Clery (collecting from all the ancient sources which he could find in his day) rewrote about the year 1630.

This tells us all the early history of Ireland and of the races that inhabited it before our forefathers landed. It tells us of how first a man called Partholan made a settlement in Ireland, but how in time he and his people all died of the plague, leaving the land deserted; and how after that the Nemedians, or children of Nemed, colonised the island and multiplied in it,[Pg 282] until they began to be oppressed by the Fomorians, who are usually described as African sea-robbers, but the etymology of whose name seems to point to a mythological origin "men from under sea."[2] A number of battles took place between the rival hosts, and the Fomorians were defeated in three battles, but after the death of Nemed, who, like Partholan, died of a plague, the Fomorians oppressed his people again, and, led by a chief called Conaing, built a great tower upon Tory, i.e., Tower Island, off the north-west coast of Donegal. On the eve of every Samhain [Sou-an, or All Hallow's] the wretched Nemedians had to deliver up to these masters two-thirds of their children, corn, and cattle. Driven to desperation by these exactions they rose in arms, stormed the tower, and slew Conaing, all which the Book of Invasions describes at length. The Fomorians being reinforced, the Nemedians fought them a second time in the same place, but in this battle most of them were killed or drowned, the tide having come in and washed over them and their foes alike. The crew of one ship, however, escaped, and these, after a further sojourn of seven years in Ireland, led out of it the surviving remnants of their race with the exception of a very few who remained behind subject to the Fomorians. Those who left Ireland divided into three bands: one sought refuge in Greece, where they again fell into slavery; the second went—some say—to the north of Europe; and the third, headed by a chief called Briton Mael—Hence, say the Irish, the name of Great Britain—found refuge in Scotland, where their descendants remained until the Cruithni, or Picts, overcame them.

After a couple of hundred years the Nemedians who had fled to Greece came back again, calling themselves Firbolg,[3] i.e., "sack" or "bag" men, and held Ireland for[Pg 283] about thirty-five years in peace, when another tribe of invaders appeared upon the scene. These were no less than the celebrated Tuatha De Danann, who turned out to be, in fact, the descendants of the second band of Nemedians who had fled to the north of Europe, and who returned about thirty-six years later than their kinsmen, the Firbolg.

The Tuatha De Danann soon overcame the Firbolg, and drove them, after the Battle of North Moytura,[4] into the islands along the coast, to Aran, Islay, Rachlin, and the Hebrides,[5] after which they assumed the sovereignty of the island to themselves.

This sovereignty they maintained for about two hundred[Pg 284] years, until the ancestors of the present Irish, the Scots, or Gaels, or Milesians, as they are variously called, landed and beat the Tuatha De Danann, and reigned in their stead until they, too, in their turn were conquered by the English. The Book of Conquests is largely concerned with their landing and first settlements and their battles with the De Danann people whom they ended in completely overcoming, after which the Tuatha Dé assume a very obscure position. They appear to have for the most part retired off the surface of the country into the green hills and mounds, and lived in these, often appearing amongst the Milesian population, and sometimes giving their daughters in marriage to them. From this out they are confounded with the Sidhe [Shee], or spirits, now called fairies, and to this very day I have heard old men, when speaking of the fairies who inhabit ancient raths and interfere occasionally in mortal concerns either for good or evil, call them by the name of the Tuatha De Danann.

The first battle of Moytura was fought between the Tuatha De Danann and the Firbolg, who were utterly routed, but Nuada, the king of the Tuatha Dé, lost his hand in the battle. As he was thus suffering from a personal blemish, he could be no longer king, and the people accordingly decided to bestow the sovereignty on Breas [Bras],[6] whose mother was a De Danann, but whose father was a king of the Fomorians, a people who had apparently never lost sight of or wholly left Ireland since the time of their battles with the Nemedians over two hundred years before. The mother of Breas, Eiriu,[7] was a person of authority, and her son was elected to the sovereignty on the understanding that if his reign was found unsatisfactory he should resign. He gave seven pledges of his intention of doing so. At this time the Fomorians again[Pg 285] smote Ireland heavily with their imposts and taxes, as they had done before when the Nemedians inhabited it. The unfortunate De Dannan people were reduced to a state of misery. Ogma[8] was obliged to carry wood, and the Dagda himself to build raths for their masters, and they were so far reduced as to be weak with hunger.

In the meantime the kingship of Breas was not successful. He was hard and niggardly. As the saga of the second battle of Moytura puts it—

"The chiefs of the Tuatha De Danann were dissatisfied, for Breas did not grease their knives; in vain came they to visit Breas; their breaths did not smell of ale. Neither their poets, nor bards, nor druids, nor harpers, nor flute-players, nor musicians, nor jugglers, nor fools appeared before them, nor came into the palace to amuse them."

Matters reached a crisis when the poet Coirpné came to demand hospitality and was shown "into a little house, small, narrow, black, dark, where was neither fire nor furniture nor bed. He was given three little dry loaves on a little plate. When he rose in the morning he was not thankful." He gave vent then to the first satire ever uttered in Ireland, which is still preserved in eight lines which would be absolutely unintelligible except for the ancient glosses.

After this the people of the De Danann race demanded the abdication of Breas, which he had promised in case his reign did not please them. He acknowledged his obligation to them, but requested a delay of seven years, which they allowed him, on condition that he gave them guarantees to touch nothing belonging to them during that time, "neither our houses nor our lands, nor our gold, nor our silver, nor our cattle, nor anything eatable, we shall pay thee neither rent nor fine to the end of seven years." This was agreed to.

But the intention of Breas in demanding a delay of seven years was a treacherous one; he meant to approach his father's[Pg 286] kindred the Fomorians, and move them to reinstate him at the point of the sword. He goes to his mother who tells him who his father is, for up to that time he had remained in ignorance of it; and she gives him a ring whereby his father Elatha, a king of the Fomorians, may recognise him. He departs to the Fomorians, discovers his father and appeals to him for succour. By his father he is sent to Balor, a king of the Fomorians of the Isles of Norway—a locality probably ascribed to the Fomorians after the invasions of the Northmen—and there gathered together an immense army to subdue the Tuatha De Danann and give the island to their relation Breas.

In the meantime Nuada, whose hand had been replaced by a silver one, reascends the throne and is joined by Lugh of the Long-hand, the "Ildana" or "man of various arts." This Lugh was a brother of the Dagda and of Ogma, and is perhaps the best-known figure among the De Danann personalities. Lugh and the Dagda and Ogma and Goibniu the smith and Diancécht the leech met secretly every day at a place in Meath for a whole year, and deliberated how best to shake off the yoke of the Fomorians. Then they held a general meeting of the Tuatha De and spoke with each one in secret.

"'How wilt thou show thy power?' said Lugh, to the sorcerer Mathgen.

"'By my art,' answered Mathgen, 'I shall throw down the mountains of Ireland upon the Fomorians, and they shall fall with their heads to the earth;' then told he to Lugh the names of the twelve principal mountains of Ireland which were ready to do the bidding of the goddess Dana[9] and to smite their enemies on every side.

[Pg 287]

"Lugh asked the cup-bearer: 'In what way wilt thou show thy power?'

"'I shall place,' answered the cup-bearer, 'the twelve principal lakes of Ireland under the eyes of the Fomorians, but they shall find no water in them, however great the thirst which they may feel;' and he enumerated the lakes, 'from the Fomorians the water shall hide itself, they shall not be able to take a drop of it; but the same lakes will furnish the Tuatha De Danann with water to drink during the whole war, though it should last seven years.'

"The Druid Figal, the son of Mamos, said, 'I shall make three rains of fire fall on the faces of the Fomorian warriors; I shall take from them two-thirds of their valour and courage, but so often as the warriors of the De Danann shall breathe out the air from their breasts, so often shall they feel their courage and valour and strength increase. Even though the war should last seven years it shall not fatigue them.'

"The Dagda answered, 'All the feats which you three, sorcerer, cup-bearer, druid, say you can do, I myself alone shall do them.'

"'It is you then are the Dagda,'[10] said those present, whence came the name of the Dagda which he afterwards bore."

Lugh then went in search of the three gods of Dana—Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba (whom he afterwards put to death for slaying his father, as is recorded at length in the saga of the "Fate of the Children of Tuireann"[11]) and with these and his other allies he spent the next seven years in making preparations for the great struggle with the Fomorians.

This saga and the whole story of the Tuatha De Danann contending with the Fomorians, who are in one place in the saga actually called sidhe, or spirits, is all obviously mythological, and has usually been explained, by D'Arbois de Jubainville and others, as the struggle between the gods or good spirits and the evil deities.

[Pg 288]

The following episode also shows the wild mythological character of the whole.

"Dagda," says the saga, "had a habitation at Glenn-Etin in the north. He had arranged to meet a woman at Glenn-Etin on the day of Samhan [November day] just a year, day for day, before the battle of Moytura. The Unius, a river of Connacht, flows close beside Glenn-Etin, to the south. Dagda saw the woman bathe herself in the Unius at [Kesh] Coran. One of the woman's feet in the water touched Allod Eche, that is to say Echumech to the south, the other foot also in the water touched Lescuin in the north. Nine tresses floated loose around her head. Dagda approached and accosted her. From thenceforth the place has been named the Couple's Bed. The woman was the goddess Mór-rígu"—

the goddess of war, of whom we shall hear more in connection with Cuchulain.

As for the Dagda himself, his character appears somewhat contradictory. Just as the most opposite accounts of Zeus are met with in Greek mythology, some glorifying him as throning in Olympus supreme over gods and men, others as playing low and indecent tricks disguised as a cuckoo or a bull; so we find the Dagda—his real name was Eochaidh the Ollamh—at one time a king of the De Danann race and organiser of victory, but at another in a less dignified but more clearly mythological position. He is sent by Lugh to the Fomorian camp to put them off with talk and cause them to lose time until the De Danann armaments should be more fully ready. The following account exhibits him, like Zeus at times, in a very unprepossessing character:—

"When the Dagda had come to the camp of the Fomorians he demanded a truce, and he obtained it. The Fomorians prepared a porridge for him; it was to ridicule him they did this, for he greatly loved porridge. They filled for him the king's cauldron which was five handbreadths in depth. They threw into it eighty pots of milk and a proportionate quantity of meal and fat, with goats and sheep and swine which they got cooked along with the rest. Then they poured the broth into a hole dug in the ground. 'Unless you eat all that's there,' said Indech to him, 'you shall be put to[Pg 289] death; we do not want you to be reproaching us, and we must satisfy you.' The Dagda took the spoon; it was so great that in the hollow of it a man and a woman might be contained. The pieces that went into that spoon were halves of salted pigs and quarters of bacon. The Dagda said, 'Here is good eating, if the broth be as good as its odour,' and as he carried the spoonful to his mouth, he said, 'The proverb is true that good cooking is not spoiled by a bad pot.'[12]

"When he had finished he scraped the ground with his finger to the very bottom of the hole to take what remained of it, and after that he went to sleep to digest his soup. His stomach was greater than the greatest cauldrons in large houses, and the Fomorians mocked at him.

"He went away and came to the bank of the Eba. He did not walk with ease, so large was his stomach. He was dressed in very bad guise. He had a cape which scarcely reached below his shoulders. Beneath that cloak was seen a brown mantle which descended no lower than his hips. It was cut away above and very large in the breast. His two shoes were of horses' skin with the hair outside. He held a wheeled fork, which would have been heavy enough for eight men, and he let it trail behind him. It dug a furrow deep enough and large enough to become the frontier mearn between two provinces. Therefore is it called the 'track of the Dagda's club.'"

When the fighting began, after the skirmishing of the first days, the De Danann warriors owed their victory to their superior preparations. The great leech Diancecht cured the wounded, and the smith Goibniu and his assistants kept the warriors supplied with constant relays of fresh lances. The Fomorians could not understand it, and sent one of their warriors, apparently in disguise, to find out. He was Ruadan, a son of Breas by a daughter of Dagda.

"On his return he told the Fomorians what the smith, the carpenter, the worker in bronze, and the four leeches who were round the spring, did. They sent him back again with orders to kill the smith Goibniu. He asked a spear of Goibniu, rivets of Credné the bronze-worker, a shaft of Luchtainé the carpenter, and they gave him what he asked. There was a woman there busy in sharpening the[Pg 290] weapons. She was Cron, mother of Fianlug. She sharpened the spear for Ruadan. It was a chief who handed Ruadan the spear, and thence the name of chief-spear given to this day to the weaver's beam in Erin.

"When he had got the spear Ruadan turned on Goibniu and smote him with the weapon. But Goibniu drew the javelin from the wound and hurled it at Ruadan; who was pierced from side to side, and escaped to die among the Fomorians in presence of his father. Brig [his mother, the Dagda's daughter] came and bewailed her son. First she uttered a piercing cry, and thereafter she made moan. It was then that for the first time in Ireland were heard moans and cries of sorrow. It was that same Brig who invented the whistle used at night to give alarm signals"—

the mythological genesis of the saga is thus obviously marked by the first satire, first cry of sorrow, and first whistle being ascribed to the actors in it.

In the end the whole Fomorian army moved to battle in their solid battalions, "and it was to strike one's hand against a rock, or thrust one's hand into a nest of serpents, or put one's head into the fire, to attack the Fomorians that day." The battle is described at length. Nuada the king of the De Danann is killed by Balor. Lugh, whose counsel was considered so valuable by the De Danann people that they put an escort of nine round him to prevent him from taking part in the fighting, breaks away, and attacks Balor the Fomorian king.

"Balor had an evil eye, that eye only opened itself upon the plain of battle. Four men had to lift up the eyelid by placing under it an instrument. The warriors, whom Balor scanned with that eye once opened,[13] could not—no matter how numerous—resist their enemies."

When Lugh had met and exchanged some mystical and[Pg 291] unintelligible language with him, Balor said, "Raise my eyelid that I may see the braggart who speaks with me."

"His people raise Balor's eyelid. Lugh from his sling lets fly a stone at Balor which passes through his head, carrying with it the venomous eye. Balor's army looked on." The Mór-rígu, the goddess of war, arrives, and assists the Tuatha De Danann and encourages them. Ogma slays one of the Fomorian kings and is slain himself. The battle is broken at last on the Fomorians; they fly, and Breas is taken prisoner, but his life is spared.

"It was," says the saga, "at the battle of Moytura that Ogma, the strong man, found the sword of Tethra, the King of the Fomorians. Ogma drew that sword from the sheath and cleaned it. It was then that it related to him all the high deeds that it had accomplished, for at this time the custom was when swords were drawn from the sheath they used to recite the exploits[14] they had themselves been the cause of. And thence comes the right which swords have, to be cleaned when they are drawn from the sheath; thence also the magic power which swords have preserved ever since"—

to which curious piece of pagan superstition an evidently later Christian redactor adds, "weapons were the organs of the demon to speak to men. At that time men used to worship weapons, and they were a magic safeguard."

The saga ends in the episode of the recovery of the Dagda's harp, and in the cry of triumph uttered by the Mór-rígu and by Bodb, her fellow-goddess of war, as they visited the various heights of Ireland, the banks of streams, and the mouths of floods and great rivers, to proclaim aloud their triumph and the defeat of the Fomorians.

M. d'Arbois de Jubainville sees in the successive colonisations of Partholan, the Nemedians, and the Tuatha De Danann, an Irish version of the Greek legend of the three successive ages[Pg 292] of gold, silver, and brass. The Greek legend of the Chimæra, otherwise Bellerus, the monster slain by Bellerophon, he equates with the Irish Balor of the evil eye; the fire from the throat of Bellerus, and the evil beam shot from Balor's eye may originally have typified the lightning.[15]

[Pg 293]

CHAPTER XXIV

THE HEROIC OR RED BRANCH CYCLE—CUCHULAIN

The mythological tales that we have been glancing at deal with the folk who are fabled as having first colonised Erin; they treat of peoples, races, dynasties, the struggle between good and evil principles. The whole of their creations are thrown back, even by the Irish annalists themselves, into the dim cloud-land of an unplumbed past, ages before the dawn of the first Olympiad, or the birth of the wolf-suckled twins who founded Rome. There is over it all a shadowy sense of vagueness, vastness, uncertainty.

The Heroic Cycle, on the other hand, deals with the history of the Milesians themselves, the present Irish race, within a well-defined space of time, upon their own ground, and though it does not exactly fall within the historical period, yet it does not come so far short of it that it can be with any certainty rejected as pure work of imagination or poetic fiction. It is certainly the finest of the three greater saga-cycles, and the epics that belong to it are sharply drawn, numerous, clear cut, and ancient, and for the first time we seem, at least, to find ourselves upon historical ground, although a good deal of this seeming may turn out to be illusory. Yet the figures of Cuchulain, Conor mac Nessa, Naoise, and Déirdre, Mève,[Pg 294] Oilioll, and Conall Cearnach, have about them a great deal of the circumstantiality that is entirely lacking to the dim, mist-magnified, and distorted figures of the Dagda, Nuada, Lugh the Long-handed, and their fellows.

The gods come and go as in the Iliad, and according to some accounts leave their posterity behind them. Cuchulain himself, the incarnation of Irish ἀριστέια, is according to certain authorities the son of the god Lugh the Long-handed.[1] He himself, like another Anchises, is beloved of a goddess and descends into the Gaelic Elysium,[2] and the most important epic of the cycle is largely conditioned by an occurrence caused by the curse of a goddess, an occurrence wholly impossible and supernatural.[3] Yet these are for the most part excrescences no more affecting the conduct of the history than the actions of the gods affect the war round Troy. Events, upon the whole, are motivated upon fairly reasonable human grounds, and there is a certain air of probability about them. The characters who now make their appearance upon the scene are not long prior to, or are contemporaneous[Pg 295] with, the birth of Christ; and the wars of the Tuatha De Danann, Nemedians, and Fomorians, are left some seventeen hundred years behind.

This cycle, which I have called the "Heroic" or "Red Branch," might also be named the "Ultonian," because it deals chiefly with the heroes of the northern province. One saga relates the birth of Conor mac Nessa. His mother was Ness and his father was Fachtna Fathach, king of Ulster, but according to what is probably the oldest account, his father was Cathba the Druid. This saga relates how, through the stratagem of his mother Ness, Conor slipped into the kingship of Ulster, displacing Fergus mac Róigh [Roy], the former king, who is here represented as a good-natured giant, but who appears human enough in the other sagas.[4] Conor's palace is described with its three buildings; that of the Red Branch, where were kept the heads and arms of vanquished enemies; that of the Royal Branch, where the kings lodged; and that of the Speckled House, where were laid up the shields and spears and swords of the warriors of Ulster. It was called the Speckled or Variegated House from the gold and silver of the shields, and gleaming of the spears, and shining of the goblets, and all arms were kept in it, in order that at the banquet when quarrels arose the warriors might not have wherewith to slay each other.

Conor's palace at Emania contained, according to the Book of Leinster, one hundred and fifty rooms, each large enough for three couples to sleep in, constructed of red oak, and bordered with copper. Conor's own chamber was decorated with bronze and silver, and ornamented with golden birds, in whose eyes were precious stones, and was large enough for thirty[Pg 296] warriors to drink together in it. Above the king's head hung his silver wand with three golden apples, and when he shook it silence reigned throughout the palace, so that even the fall of a pin might be heard. A large vat, always full of good drink, stood ever on the palace floor.

Another story tells of Cuchulain's mysterious parentage. His mother was a sister of King Conor; consequently he was the king's nephew.

Another again relates the wooing of Cuchulain, and how he won Emer for his wife.

Another is called Cuchulain's "Up-bringing," or teaching, part of which, however, is found in the piece called the "Wooing of Emer." This saga relates how he, with two other of the Ultonians, went abroad to Alba to perfect their warlike accomplishments, and how they placed themselves under the tuition of different female-warriors,[5] who taught them various and extraordinary feats of arms. He traverses the plain of Misfortune by the aid of a wheel and of an apple given him by an unknown friend, and reaches the great female instructress Scathach, whose daughter falls in love with him.

An admirable example occurs to me here, of showing in the concrete that which I have elsewhere laid stress upon, namely, the great elaboration which in many instances we find in the modern versions of sagas, compared with the antique vellum texts. It does not at all follow that because a story is written down with brevity in ancient Irish, it was also told with brevity. The oldest form of the saga of Cuchulain's "Wooing of Emer" contains traces of a pre-Danish or seventh-century text, but the condensed and shortened relation of the saga found in the oldest manuscript of it, is almost certainly not the form in which the bards and ollavs related it. On the contrary, I believe that the stories now epitomised in ancient vellum texts were even then told, though not written down,[Pg 297] at full length, and with many flourishes by the bards and professed story-tellers, and that the skeletons merely, or as Keating calls it, the "bones of the history,"[6] were in most instances all that was committed to the rare and expensive parchments. It is more than likely that the longer modern paper redactions, though some of the ancient pagan traits, especially those most incomprehensible to the moderns, may be missing, yet represent more nearly the manner of the original bardic telling, than the abridgments of twelfth or thirteenth-century vellums.

In this case the ancient recension,[7] founded on a pre-Danish text, merely mentions that Scathach's house, at which Cuchulain arrives, after leaving the plain of Misfortune,

"was built upon a rock of appalling height. Cuchulain followed the road pointed out to him. He reached the castle of Scathach. He knocked at the door with the handle of his spear and entered. Uathach, the daughter of Scathach, meets him. She looked at him, but she spoke not, so much did the hero's beauty make her love him. She went to her mother and told her of the beauty of the man who had newly come. 'That man has pleased you,' said her mother. 'He shall come to my couch,' answered the girl, 'and I shall sleep at his side this night.' 'Thy intention displeases me not,' said her mother."

One can see at a glance how bald and brief is all this, because it is a précis, and vellum was scarce. I venture to say that no bard ever told it in this way. The scribes who first committed this to parchment, say in the seventh or eighth century, probably wrote down only the leading incidents as they remembered them. They may not have been themselves either bards, ollavs, or story-tellers. It is chiefly in the later centuries, after the introduction of paper, when the economising of space ceased to be a matter of importance, that we find our sagas told with all the redundancy of description, epithet, and incident with which I suspect the very earliest bards embellished all those sagas of which we have now only little more[Pg 298] than the skeletons. Compare, for instance, the ancient version which I have just given, with the longer modern versions which have come down to us in several paper manuscripts, of which I here use one in my own possession, copied about the beginning of the century by a scribe named O'Mahon, upon one of the islands on the Shannon.

In the first place this version tells us that on his arrival at Scathach's mansion he finds a number of her scholars and other warriors engaged in hurling outside the door of her fortress. He joins in the game and defeats them—this is a true folk-lore introduction. He finds there Naoise, Ardan, and Ainnlè, the three sons of Usnach, celebrated in perhaps the most touching saga of this whole cycle, and another son of Erin with them. This is a literary touch, by one who knew his literature.[8] Learning that he is come from Erin, they ask news of their native country, and salute him with kisses. They then bring him to the Bridge of the Cliffs, and show him what their work is during the first year, which was learning to pass this bridge.

"Wonderful," says the saga, "was the sight that bridge afforded when any one would leap upon it, for it narrowed until it became as narrow as the hair of one's head, and the second time it shortened until it became as short as an inch, and the third time it grew slippery until it was as slippery as an eel of the river, and the fourth time it rose up on high against you until it was as tall as the mast of a ship."

All the warriors and people on the lawn came down to see Cuchulain attempting to cross this bridge. In the meantime Scathach's grianán or sunny house is described: "It had seven great doors, and seven great windows between every two doors of them, and thrice fifty couches between every two windows of them, and thrice fifty handsome marriageable girls, in scarlet cloaks, and in beautiful and blue attire, attending and waiting upon Scathach."

[Pg 299]

Then Scathach's lovely daughter, looking from the windows of the grianán, perceives the stranger attempting the feat of the bridge, and she falls in love with him upon the spot. Her emotions are thus described: "Her face and colour constantly changed, so that now she would be as white as a little white flowret, and again she would become scarlet," and in the work she was embroidering she put the gold thread where the silver thread should be, and the silver thread into the place where the gold thread should go; and when her mother notices it, she excuses herself by saying beautifully, "I would greatly grieve should he not return alive to his own people, in whatever part of the world they may be, for I know that there is some one to whom it would be anguish to know that he is thus."

This refined reflection of the girl we may with certainty ascribe to the growth of modern sentiment, and it is extremely instructive to compare it with the ancient, and no doubt really pagan version; but I strongly suspect that the bridge over the cliffs is no modern embellishment at all, but part of the original saga, though omitted from the pre-Norse text which only tells us that Scathach's house was on the top of a rock of appalling height.

It was during this sojourn of Cuchulain in foreign lands that he overcame the heroine Aoife,[9] and forced her into a marriage with himself. He returned home afterwards, having left instructions with her to keep the child she should bear him, if it were a daughter, "for with every mother goes the daughter," but if it were a son she was to rear him until he should be able to perform certain hero-feats, and until his finger should be large enough to fill a ring which Cuchulain left with her for him. Then she was to send him into Erin, and bid him tell no man who he was; also he desired[Pg 300] her not to teach him the feat of the Gae-Bulg, "but, however," says the saga, "it was ill that command turned out, for it was of that it came to pass that Conlaoch [the son] fell by Cuchulain."[10]

I know of no prose saga of the touching story of the death of this son, slain by his own father, except the résumé given of it by Keating,[11] but there exists a poem or épopée upon the subject which was always a great favourite with the Irish scribes, and of which numerous but not ancient copies exist. This is the Irish Sohrab and Rustum, the Celtic Hildebrand and Hadubrand. The son comes into Ireland, but in consequence of his mother's command, refuses to tell his name. This is looked upon as indicating hostility, and many of the Ultonians fight with him, but he overcomes them all, even the great Conall Cearnach. Conor in despair sends for Cuchulain, who with difficulty slays him by the feat of the Gae-Bolg, and then finds out when too late that the dying champion is his own son. So familiar to the modern Irish scribes was this piece that in my copy, in the last verse, which ends with Cuchulain's lament over his son—

"I am the bark (buffeted) from wave to wave,
I am the ship after the losing of its rudder,
[Pg 301]I am the apple upon the top of the tree
That little thought of its falling."[12]

instead of the text of the third line stands a rough picture of a tree with a large apple on the top!

Another saga[13] tells of Cuchulain's geasa [gassa] or restrictions. It was geis or tabu to him to narrate his genealogy to one champion, as it was also to his son Conlaoch, to refuse combat to any one man, to look upon the exposed bosom of a woman, to come into a company without a second invitation, to accept the hospitality of virgins, to boast to a woman, to let the sun rise before him in Emania, he must when there rise before it, etc. There is in this saga a graphic description of the pagan king's retinue journeying with him to be fed in the house of a retainer.

"All the Ultonian nobles set out; a great train of provincials, sons of kings and chiefs, young lords and men-at-arms, the curled and rosy youth of the kingdom, and the maidens and fair ringleted ladies of Ulster. Handsome virgins, accomplished damsels, and splendid, fully-developed women were there. Satirists and scholars were there, and the companies of singers and musicians, poets who composed songs and reproofs, and praising-poems for the men of Ulster. There came also with them from Emania historians, judges, horse-riders, buffoons, tumblers, fools, and performers on horseback. They all went by the same way, behind the king."[14]

Dismissing Cuchulain for the present, we pass on now to another personality of the Red Branch saga—the Lady Déirdre.

[Pg 302]

CHAPTER XXV

DÉIRDRE

One of the key-stone stories of the Red Branch Cycle is Déirdre, or the Fate of the Children of Usnach. Cuchulain, though he appears in this saga, is not a prominent figure in it. This piece is perhaps the finest, most pathetic, and best-conceived of any in the whole range of our literature. But like much of that literature it exists in the most various recensions, and there are different accounts given of the death of all the principal characters.

This saga commences with the birth of Déirdre. King Conor and his Ultonians had gone to drink and feast in the house of Felim, Conor's chief story-teller, and during their stay there Felim's wife gives birth to a daughter. Cathba the Druid prophesies concerning the infant, and foretells that much woe and great calamities shall yet come upon Ulster because of her. He names her Déirdre.[1] The Ultonians are smitten with horror at his prophecies, and order her to be instantly put to death. The most ancient text, that of the twelfth-century Book of Leinster, tells the beginning of this saga exceedingly tersely.

[Pg 303]

"'Let the girl be slain,' cried the warriors. 'Not so,' said King Conor, 'but bring ye her to me to-morrow; she shall be brought up as I shall order, and she shall be the woman whom I shall marry.' The Ultonians ventured not to contradict the King; they did as he commanded.

"Déirdre was brought up in Conor's house. She became the handsomest maiden in Ireland. She was reared in a house apart: no man was allowed to see her until she should become Conor's wife. No one was permitted to enter the house except her tutor, her nurse, and Lavarcam,[2] whom they ventured not to keep out, for she was a druidess magician whose incantations they feared.

"One winter day Déirdre's tutor slew a young tender calf upon the snow outside the house, which he was to cook for his pupil. She beheld a raven drinking the blood upon the snow. She said to Lavarcam, 'The only man I could love would be one who should have those three colours, hair black as the raven, cheeks red as the blood, body white as the snow.' 'Thou hast an opportunity,' answered Lavarcam, 'the man whom thou desirest is not far off, he is close to thee in the palace itself; he is Naesi, son of Usnach.' 'I shall not be happy,' answered Déirdre, 'until I have seen him.'"

This famous story "which is known," as Dr. Cameron puts it, "over all the lands of the Gael, both in Ireland and Scotland,"[3] has been more fortunate than any other in the whole range of Irish literature, for it has engaged the attention of, and been edited from different texts by, nearly every great Celtic scholar of this century.[4] Yet I luckily discovered last[Pg 304] year in the museum in Belfast by far the amplest and most graphic version of them all, bound up with some other pieces of different dates. It was copied at the end of the last or the beginning of the present century by a northern scribe, from a copy which must have been fairly old to judge from the language and from the glosses in the margin. I give here a literal translation of the opening of the story from this manuscript, and it is an admirable example of the later extension and embellishment of the ancient texts.

THE OPENING OF THE FATE OF THE SONS OF USNACH,
FROM A MS. IN THE BELFAST MUSEUM.

"Once upon a time Conor, son of Fachtna, and the nobles of the Red Branch, went to a feast to the house of Feidhlim, the son of[Pg 305] Doll, the king's principal story-teller; and the King and people were merry and light hearted, eating that feast in the house of the principal story-teller, with gentle music of the musicians, and with the melody of the voices of the bards and the ollavs, with the delight of the speech and ancient tales of the sages, and of those who read the keenes (?) (written on) flags and books; (listening) to the prognostications of the druids and of those who numbered the moon and stars. And at the time when the assembly were merry and pleasant in general it chanced that Feidhlim's wife bore a beautiful, well-shaped daughter, during the feast. Up rises expeditiously the gentle Cathfaidh, the Head-druid of Erin, who chanced to be present in the assembly at that time, and a bundle of his ancient ...? fairy books in his left hand with him, and out he goes on the border of the rath to minutely observe and closely scrutinise the clouds of the air, the position of the stars and the age of the moon, to gain a prognostication and a knowledge of the fate that was in store for the child who was born there. Cathfaidh then returns quickly to all in presence of the King and told them an omen and prophecy, that many hurts and losses should come to the province of Ulster on account of the girl that was born there. On the nobles of Ulster receiving this prophecy they resolved on the plan of destroying the infant, and the heroes of the Red Branch bade slay her without delay.

"'Let it not be so done,' says the King; 'it is not laudable to fight against fate, and woe to him who would destroy an innocent infant, for agreeable is the appearance and the laugh of the child; alas! it were a pity to quench her (life). Observe, O ye Nobles of Ulster, and listen to me, O ye valiant heroes of the Red Branch, and understand that I still submit to the omen of the prophecies and foretellings of the seers, but yet I do not submit to, nor do I praise, the committing of a base deed, or a deed of treachery, in the hope of quenching the anger of the power of the elements. If it be a fate which it is not possible to avoid, give ye, each of you, death to himself, but do not shed the blood of the innocent infant, for it were not (our) due (to have) prosperity thereafter. I proclaim to you, moreover, O ye nobles of Emania, that I take the girl under my own protection from henceforth, and if I and she live and last, it may be that I shall have her as my one-wife and gentle consort. Therefore, I assure the men of Erin by the securities of the moon and sun, that any one who would venture to destroy her either now or again, shall neither live nor last, if I survive her.'

"The nobles of Ulster, and every one in general listened silent and mute, until Conall Cearnach, Fergus mac Roigh, and the heroes of the Red Branch rose up together, and 'twas what they said, 'O High-king[Pg 306] of Ulster, right is thy judgment, and it is (our) due to observe it, and let it be thy will that is done.'

"As for the girl, Conor took her under his own protection, and placed her in a moat apart, to be brought up by his nurse, whose name was Lavarcam, in a fortress of the Red Branch, and Conor and Cathfaidh the druid gave her the name of Déirdre. Afterwards Déirdre was being generously nurtured under Lavarcam and (other) ladies, perfecting her in every science that was fitting for the daughter of a high prince, until she grew up a blossom-bearing sapling, and until her beauty was beyond every degree surpassing. Moreover, she was nurtured with excessive luxury of meat and drink that her stature and ripeness might be the greater for it, and that she might be the sooner marriageable. This is how Déirdre's abode was (situated, namely) in a fortress of the Branch, according to the King's command, every (aperture for) light closed in the front of the dún, and the windows of the back (ordered) to be open. A beautiful orchard full of fruit (lay) at the back of the fort, in which Déirdre might be walking for a while under the eye of her tutor at the beginning and the end of the day; under the shade of the fresh boughs and branches, and by the side of a running, meandering stream that was winding softly through the middle of the walled garden. A high, tremendous difficult wall, not easy to surmount, (was) surrounding that spacious habitation, and four savage man-hounds (sent) from Conor (were) on constant guard there, and his life were in peril for the man who would venture to approach it. For it was not permitted to any male to come next nor near Déirdre, nor even to look at her, but (only) to her tutor, whose name was Cailcin, and to King Conor himself. Prosperous was Conor's sway, and valiant was the fame (i.e., famous was the valour) of the Red Branch, defending the province of Ulster against foreigners and against every other province in Erin in his time, and there were no three in the household of Emania or throughout all Banba [Ireland] more brilliant than the sons of Uisneach, nor heroes of higher fame than they, Naoise [Neeshă], Ainle, and Ardan.

"As for Déirdre, when she was fourteen years of age she was found marriageable and Conor designed to take her to his own royal couch. About this time a sadness and a heavy flood of melancholy lay upon the young queen, without gentle sleep, without sufficient food, without sprightliness—as had been her wont.

"Until it chanced of a day, while snow lay (on the ground), in the winter, that Cailcin, Déirdre's tutor, went to kill a calf to get ready food for her, and after shedding the blood of the calf out upon the snow, a raven stoops upon it to drink it, and as Déirdre perceives that, and she watching through a window of[Pg 307] the fortress, she heaved a heavy sigh so that Cailcin heard her. 'Wherefore thy melancholy, girl?' said he. 'Alas that I have not yon thing as I see it,' said she. 'Thou shalt have that if it be possible,' said he, drawing his hand dexterously so that he gave an unerring cast of his knife at the raven, so that he cut one foot off it. And after that he takes up the bird and throws it over near Déirdre. The girl starts at once, and fell into a faint, until Lavarcam came up to help her. 'Why art thou as I see thee, dear girl,' said she, 'for thy countenance is pitiable ever since yesterday?' 'A desire that came to me,' said Déirdre. 'What is that desire?' said Lavarcam. 'Three colours that I saw,' said Déirdre, 'namely, the blackness of the raven, the redness of the blood, and the whiteness of the snow.' 'It is easy to get that for thee now,' said Lavarcam, and arose (and went) out without delay, and she gathered the full of a vessel of snow, and half the full of a cup of the calf's blood, and she pulls three feathers out of the wing of the raven. And she laid them down on the table before the girl. Déirdre began as though she were eating the snow and lazily tasting the blood with the top of the raven's feather, and her nurse closely scrutinising her, until Déirdre asked Lavarcam to leave her alone by herself for a while. Lavarcam departs, and again returns, and this is how she found Déirdre—shaping a ball of snow in the likeness of a man's head and mottling it with the top of the raven's feather out of the blood of the calf, and putting the small black plumage as hair upon it, and she never perceived her nurse examining her until she had finished. 'Whose likeness is that?' said Lavarcam. Déirdre starts and she said,'It is a work easily destroyed.' 'That work is a great wonder to me, girl,' said Lavarcam, 'because it was not thy wont to draw pictures of a man, (and) it was not permitted to the women of Emania to teach thee any similitude but that of Conor only.' 'I saw a face in my dream,' said Déirdre, 'that was of brighter countenance than the King's face, or Cailcin's, and it was in it that I saw the three colours that pained me, namely, the whiteness of the snow on his skin, the blackness of the raven on his hair, and the redness of the blood upon his countenance, and oh woe! my life will not last, unless I get my desire.' 'Alas for thy desire, my darling,' said Lavarcam. 'My desire, O gentle nurse,' said Déirdre. 'Alas! 'tis a pity thy desire, it is difficult to get it,' said Lavarcam, 'for fast and close is the fortress of the Branch, and high and difficult is the enclosure round about, and [there is] the sharp watch of the fierce man-hounds in it.' 'The hounds are no danger to us,' said Déirdre. 'Where did you behold that face?' said Lavarcam. 'In a dream yesterday,' said Déirdre, and she weeping, after hiding her face in her nurse's bosom, and shedding tears plentifully. 'Rise up from[Pg 308] me, dear pupil,' said Lavarcam, 'and restrain thy tears henceforth till thou eatest food and takest a drink, and after Cailcin's eating his meal we shall talk together about the dream.' Her nurse raises Déirdre's head, 'Take courage, daughter,' said she, 'and be patient, for I am certain that thou shalt get thy desire, for according to human age and life, Conor's time beside thee is not (to be) long or lasting.'

"After Lavarcam's departing from her, she [Lavarcam] perceived a green mantle hung in the front of a closed-up window on the head of a brass club and the point of a spear thrust through the wall of the mansion. Lavarcam puts her hand to it so that it readily came away with her, and stones and moss fell down after it, so that the light of day, and the grassy lawn, and the Champion's Plain in front of the mansion, and the heroes at their feats of activity became visible. 'I understand, now, my pupil,' said Lavarcam, 'that it was here you saw that dream.' But Déirdre did not answer her. Her nurse left food and ale on the table before Déirdre, and departed from her without speaking, for the boring-through of the window did not please Lavarcam, for fear of Conor or of Cailcin coming to the knowledge of it. As for Déirdre, she ate not her food, but she quenched her thirst out of a goblet of ale, and she takes with her the flesh of the calf, after covering it under a corner of her mantle, and she went to her tutor and asks leave of him to go out for a while (and walk) at the back of the mansion. 'The day is cold, and there is snow darkening in (the air) daughter,' said Cailcin, 'but you can walk for a while under the shelter of the walls of the mansion, but mind the house of the hounds.'

"Déirdre went out, and no stop was made by her until she passed down through the middle of the snow to where the den of the man-hounds was, and as soon as the hounds recognised her and the smell of the meat they did not touch her, and they made no barking till she divided her food amongst them, and she returns into the house afterwards. Thereupon came Lavarcam, and found Déirdre lying upon one side of her couch, and she sighing heavily and shedding tears. Her nurse stood silent for a while observing her, till her heart was softened to compassion and her anger departed from her. She stretched out her hand, and 'twas what she said, 'Rise up, modest daughter, that we may be talking about the dream, and tell me did you ever see that black hero before yesterday?' 'White hero, gentle nurse, hero of the pleasant crimson cheeks,' said Déirdre. 'Tell me without falsehood,' said Lavarcam, 'did you ever see that warrior before yesterday, or before you bored through the window-work with the head of a spear and with a brass club, and till you looked out through it on the warriors of the Branch when they were at[Pg 309] their feats of activity on the Champion Plain, and till you saw all the dreams you spoke of?' Déirdre hides her head in her nurse's bosom, weeping, till she said, 'Oh, gentle mother and nurturer of my heart, do not tell that to my tutor; and I shall not conceal from thee that I saw him on the lawn of Emania, playing games with the boys, and learning feats of valour, and och! he had the beautiful countenance at that time, and very lovely was it yesterday (too).' 'Daughter,' said Lavarcam, 'you did not see the boys on the green of Emania from the time you were seven years of age, and that is seven years ago.' 'Seven bitter years,' said Déirdre, 'since I beheld the delight of the green and the playing of the boys, and surely, too, Naoise surpassed all the youths of Emania.' 'Naoise, the son of Uisneach?' said Lavarcam. 'Naoise is his name, as he told me,' said Déirdre, 'but I did not ask whose son he was.' 'As he told you!' said Lavarcam. 'As he told me,' said Déirdre, 'when he made a throw of a ball, by a miss-cast, backwards transversely over the heads of the band of maidens that were standing on the edge of the green, and I rose from amongst them all, till I lifted the ball, and I delivered it to him, and he pressed my hand joyously.' 'He pressed your hand, girl!' said Lavarcam. 'He pressed it lovingly, and said that he would see me again, but it was difficult for him, and I did not see him since until yesterday, and oh, gentle nurse, if you wish me to be alive take a message to him from me, and tell him to come to visit me and talk with me secretly to-night without the knowledge of Cailcin or any other person.' 'Oh, girl,' said Lavarcam, it is a very dangerous attempt to gain the quenching of thy desire [being in peril] from the anger of the King, and under the sharp watch of Cailcin, considering the fierceness of the savage man-hounds, and considering the difficulty of (scaling) the enclosure round about.' 'The hounds are no danger to us,' said Déirdre. 'Then, too,' said Lavarcam, 'great is Conor's love for the children of Uisneach, and there is not in the Red Branch a hero dearer to him than Naoise.' 'If he be the son of Uisneach,' said Déirdre, 'I heard the report of him from the women of Emania, and that great are his own territories in the West of Alba, outside of Conor's sway, and, gentle nurse, go to find Naoise, and you can tell him how I am, and how much greater my love for him is than for Conor.' 'Tell him that yourself if you can,' said Lavarcam, and she went out thereupon to seek Naoise till he was found, and till he came with her to Déirdre's dwelling in the beginning of the night, without Cailcin's knowledge. When Naoise beheld the splendour of the girl's countenance he is filled with a flood of love, and Déirdre beseeches him to take her and escape to Alba. But Naoise thought that too hazardous, for fear of Conor. But in the course (?) of the night Déirdre won him over, so[Pg 310] that he consented to her, and they determined to depart on the night of the morrow.

"Déirdre escaped in the middle of the night without the knowledge of her tutor or her nurse, for Naoise came at that time and his two brothers along with him, so that he bored a gap at the back of the hounds' den, for the dogs were dead already through poison from Déirdre.

"They lifted the girl over the walls, through every rough impediment, so that her mantle and the extremity of her dress were all tattered, and he set her upon the back of a steed, and no stop was made by them till (they reached) Sliabh Fuaid and Finn-charn of the watch, till they came to the harbour and went aboard a ship and were driven by a south wind across the ocean-waters and over the back-ridges of the deep sea to Loch n-Eathaigh in the west of Alba, and thrice fifty valiant champions [sailed] along with them, namely, fifty with each of the three brothers, Naoise, Ainle, and Ardan."

The three brothers and Déirdre lived for a long time happily in Scotland and rose to great favour and power with the King, until he discovered the existence of the beautiful Déirdre, whom they had carefully kept concealed lest he should desire her for his wife. This discovery drives them forth again, and they live by hunting in the highlands and islands.

It is only at this point that most of the modern copies, such as that published by O'Flanagan in 1808, begin, namely, with a feast of King Conor's, in which he asks his household and all the warriors of Ulster who are present, whether they are aware of anything lacking to his palace in Emania. They all reply that to them it seems perfect. "Not so to me," answers Conor, "I know of a great want which presseth upon you, namely, three renowned youths, the three luminaries of the valour of the Gaels, the three beautiful, noble sons of Usnach, to be wanting to you on account of any woman in the world." "Dared we say that," said they, "long since would we have said it."

Conor thereupon proposes to send ambassadors to them to solicit their return. He takes Conall Cearnach apart and asks him if he will go, and what would he do should the sons of[Pg 311] Usnach be slain while under his protection. Conall answers that he would slay without mercy any Ultonian who dared to touch one of them. So does Cuchulain. Fergus mac Róigh alone promises not to injure the King himself should he touch them, but any other Ultonian who should wrong them must die. Fergus and his two sons sailed to Alba, commissioned to proclaim peace to the sons of Usnach and bring them home. Having landed, Fergus gives forth the cry of a "mighty man of chace." Naoise and Déirdre were sitting together in their hunting booth playing at chess. Naoise heard the cry and said, "I hear the call of a man of Erin." "That was not the call of a man of Erin," said Déirdre, "but the call of a man of Alba." Twice again did Fergus shout, and twice did Déirdre insist that it was not the cry of a man of Erin. At last Naoise recognises the voice of Fergus, and sends his brother to meet him. Then Déirdre confesses that she had recognised the call of Fergus from the beginning. "Why didst thou conceal it then, my queen?" said Naoise. "A vision I had last night," said Déirdre, "for three birds came to us from Emania having three sups of honey in their beaks, and they left them with us, but they took with them three sups of our blood." "And how readest thou that, my queen," said Naoise. "It is," said Déirdre, "the coming of Fergus to us with a peaceful message from Conor, for honey is not more sweet than the peaceful message of the false man."

But all is of no avail. Fergus and his sons arrive and spend the night with the children of Usnach, and despite of all that Déirdre can do, she sees them slowly win her husband round to their side, and inspire him with a desire to return once more to Erin.

Next morning they embark. Déirdre weeps and utters lamentations; she sings her bitter regret at leaving the scenes where she had been so happy.

"Delightful land," she sang, "yon eastern land, Alba, with its wonders. I had never come hither out of it had I not come with Naoise....

[Pg 312]

"The Vale of Laidh, Oh in the Vale of Laidh, I used to sleep under soft coverlet; fish and venison and the fat of the badger were my repast in the Vale of Laidh.

"The Vale of Masan, oh the Vale of Masan, high its harts-tongue, fair its stalks, we used to enjoy a rocking sleep above the grassy verge of Masan.[5]

"The vale of Eiti, oh the vale of Eiti! In it I raised my first house, lovely was its wood (when seen) on rising, the milking-house of the sun was the vale of Eiti.

"Glendarua, oh Glendarua! my love to every one who enjoys it; sweet the voice of the cuckoo upon bending bough upon the cliff above Glendarua.

"Dear is Droighin over the strong shore. Dear are its waters over pure sand; I would never have come from it had I not come with my love."

She ceased to sing, the vessel approached the shore, and the fugitives are landed once more in Erin. But dangers thicken round them. Through a strategy of King Conor's Fergus is placed under geasa or tabu by a man called Barach to stay and partake of a feast with him, and thus detached from the sons of Usnach, who are left alone with his two sons instead. Then Déirdre again uses all her influence with her husband and his brothers to sail to Rathlin and wait there until they can be rejoined by Fergus, but she does not prevail. After that she has a terrifying dream, and tells it to them, but Naoise answered lightly in verse—

"Thy mouth pronounceth not but evil,
O maiden, beautiful, incomparable;
The venom of thy delicate ruby mouth
Fall on the hateful furious foreigners."

Thereafter, as they advanced farther upon their way towards King Conor's palace at Emania, the omens of evil grow[Pg 313] thicker still, and all Déirdre's terrors are re-awakened by the rising of a blood-red cloud.

"'O Naoise, view the cloud
That I see here on the sky,
I see over Emania green
A chilling cloud of blood-tinged red.

I have caught alarm from the cloud
I see here in the sky,
It is like a gore-clot of blood,
The cloud terrific very-thin.'"

And she urged them to turn aside to Cuchulain's palace at Dundalgan, and remain under that hero's safeguard till Fergus could rejoin them. But she cannot persuade the others that the treachery which she herself sees so clearly is really intended. Her last despairing attempt is made as they come in sight of the royal city; she tells them that if, when they arrive, they are admitted into the mansion in which King Conor is feasting with the nobles of Ulster round him, they are safe, but if they are on any pretext quartered by the King in the House of the Red Branch, they may be certain of treachery. They are sent to the House of the Red Branch, and not admitted among the King's revellers, on the pretended grounds that the Red Branch is better prepared for strangers, and that its larder and its cellar are better provided with food and drink than the King's mansion. All now begin to feel that the net is closing over them. Late in the night King Conor, fired with drink and jealousy, called for some one to go for him and bring him word how Déirdre looked, "for if her own form live upon her, there is not in the world a woman more beautiful than she." Lavarcam, the nurse, undertakes to go. She, of course, discloses to Déirdre and Naoise the treachery that is being plotted against them, and returning to Conor she tells him that Déirdre has wholly lost her beauty, whereat, "much of his jealousy abated, and he continued to indulge in feasting and enjoyment a long while, until he thought of Déirdre a[Pg 314] second time." This time he does not trust Lavarcam, but sends one of his retainers, first reminding him that his father and his three brothers had been slain by Naoise. But in the mean time the entrances and windows of the Red Branch had been shut and barred and the doors barricaded by the sons of Usnach. One small window, however, had been left open at the back and the spy climbed upon a ladder and looked through it and saw Naoise and Déirdre sitting together and playing at chess. Déirdre called Naoise's attention to the face looking at them, and Naoise, who was lifting a chessman off the board, hurled it at the head and broke the eye that looked at them. The man ran back and told the King that it was worth losing an eye to have beheld a woman so lovely. Then Conor, fired with fury and jealousy, led his troops to the assault, and all night long there is fighting and shouting round the Red Branch House, and Naoise's brothers, helped by the two sons of Fergus, pass the night in repelling attack, and in quenching the fires that break out all round the house. At length one of Fergus's sons is slain and the other is bought off by a bribe of land and a promise of power from King Conor, and now the morning begins to dawn, but the sons of Usnach are still living, and Déirdre is still untaken. At last Conor's druid, Cathba, consents to work a spell against them if Conor will plight his faithful word that having once taken Déirdre he will not touch or harm the sons of Usnach. Conor plights his word and troth, and the spell is set at work. The sons of Usnach had left the half-burnt house and were escaping in the morning light with Déirdre between them when they met, as they thought, a sea of thick viscid waves, and they cast down their weapons and spread abroad their arms and tried to swim, and Conor's soldiers came and took them without a blow. They were brought to Conor and he caused them to be at once beheaded. It was then the druid cursed Emania, for Conor had broken his plighted word, and that curse was fulfilled in the misery that fell upon the province[Pg 315] during the wars with Mève. He cursed also the house of Conor, and prophesied that none of his descendants should possess Emania for ever, "and that," adds the saga, "has been verified, for neither Conor nor any of his race possessed Emania from that time to this."[6]

As for Déirdre, she was as one distracted; she fell upon the ground and drank their blood, she tore her hair and rent her dishevelled tresses, and the lament she broke forth into has long been a favourite of Irish scribes. She calls aloud upon the dead, "the three falcons of the mount of Culan, the three lions of wood of the cave, the three sons of the breast of the Ultonians, the three props of the battalion of Chuailgne, the three dragons of the fort of Monadh."

"The High King of Ulster, my first husband,
I forsook him for the love of Naoise.

    *    *    *    *    *

That I shall live after Naoise
Let no man on earth imagine.

    *    *    *    *    *

Their three shields and their three spears
Have often been my bed.

    *    *    *    *    *

I never was one day alone
Until the day of the making of the grave,
Although both I and ye
Were often in solitude.

My sight has gone from me
At seeing the grave of Naoise."

[Pg 316]

She remembers now in her own agony another woman who would lament with her could she but know that Naoise had died.

"On a day that the nobles of Alba [Scotland] were feasting,
And the sons of Usnach, deserving of love,
To the daughter of the lord of Duntrone
Naoise gave a secret kiss.

He sent to her a frisking doe,
A deer of the forest with a fawn at its foot,
And he went aside to her on a visit
While returning from the host of Inverness.

But when I heard that
My head filled full of jealousy,
I launched my little skiff upon the waves,
I did not care whether I died or lived.

They followed me, swimming,
Ainnlé and Ardan, who never uttered falsehood,
And they turned me in to land again,
Two who would subdue a hundred.

Naoise pledged me his word of truth,
And he swore in presence of his weapons three times,
That he would never cloud my countenance again
Till he should go from me to the army of the dead.

Alas! if she were to hear this night
That Naoise was under cover in the clay,
She would weep most certainly,
And I, I would weep with her sevenfold."[7]

After her lay of lamentation she falls into the grave where the three are being buried, and dies above them. "Their flag was raised over their tomb, and their names were written in Ogam, and their funeral games were celebrated. Thus far the tragedy of the sons of Usnach."

The oldest and briefest version of this fine saga, that preserved in the Book of Leinster, ends differently, and even more[Pg 317] tragically. On the death of Naoise, who is slain the moment he appears on the lawn of Emania, Déirdre is taken, her hands are bound behind her back and she is given over to Conor.

"Déirdre was for a year in Conor's couch, and during that year she neither smiled nor laughed nor took sufficiency of food, drink, or sleep, nor did she raise her head from her knee. When they used to bring the musicians to her house she would utter rhapsody—

"'Lament ye the mighty warriors
Assassinated in Emania on coming,' etc.

"When Conor would be endeavouring to sooth her, it was then she would utter this dirge—

"'That which was most beauteous to me beneath the sky,
And which was most lovely to me,
Thou hast taken from me—great the anguish—
I shall not get healed of it to my death,' etc.

"'What is it you see that you hate most?' said Conor.

"'Thou thyself and Eoghan [Owen] son of Duthrecht,'[8] said she.

"'Thou shalt be a year in Owen's couch then,' said Conor. Conor then gave her over to Owen.

"They drove the next day to the assembly at Muirtheimhne. She was behind Owen in a chariot. She looked towards the earth that she might not see her two gallants.

"'Well, Déirdre,' said Conor, 'it is the glance of a ewe between two rams you cast between me and Owen.'

"There was a large rock near. She hurled her head at the stone, so that she broke her skull and was dead.

"This is the exile of the sons of Usnach and the cause of the exile of Fergus and of the death of Déirdre."

It was in consequence of Conor's treachery in slaying the sons of Usnach while under Fergus's protection that this warrior turned against his king, burnt Emania, and then seceded into Connacht to Oilioli [Ulyul] and Mève, king and queen of that province, where he took service with about fifteen hundred Ultonians who, indignant at Conor, seceded along with him. "It was he," says Keating, summing up the substance of[Pg 318] the sagas, "who carried off the great spoils from Ulster whence came so many wars and enmities between the people of Connacht and Ulster, so that the exiles who went from Ulster into banishment with Fergus continued seven, or as some say, ten years in Connacht, during which time they kept constantly spoiling, destroying and plundering the Ultonians, on account of the murder of the sons of Usnach. And the Ultonians in like manner wreaked vengeance upon them, and upon the people of Connacht, and made reprisals for the booty which Fergus had carried off, and for every other evil inflicted upon them by the exiles and by the Connacht men, insomuch that the losses and injuries sustained on both sides were so numerous that whole volumes have been written upon them, which would be too long to mention or take notice of at present."

It was with the assistance of Fergus and the other exiles that Mève undertook her famous expedition into Ulster, of which we must now speak.

[Pg 319]

CHAPTER XXVI

THE TÁIN BO CHUAILGNE

The greatest of the heroic sagas and the longest is that which is called the Táin Bo Chuailgne,[1] or "Cattle-Raid of Cooley," a district of Ulster contained in the present county of Louth, into which Oilioll and Méadhbh [Mève], the king and queen of Connacht, led an enormous army composed of men from the four other provinces, to carry off the celebrated Dun Bull of Cooley.

Although there is a great deal of verbiage and piling-up of rather barren names in this piece, nevertheless there are also several finely conceived and well-executed incidents. The saga which, according to Zimmer, was probably first committed to writing in the seventh or eighth century, is partially preserved in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, a manuscript made about the year 1100, and there is a complete copy of it in the Book of Leinster made about fifty years later. I have chiefly translated from a more modern text in my own possession, which differs very slightly from the ancient ones.

The story opens with a conversation between Mève, queen of Connacht, and Oilioll her husband, which ends in a dispute as to which of them is the richest. There was no modern Married Women's Property Act in force, but Irish ladies[Pg 320] seem to have been at all times much more sympathetically treated by the Celtic tribes than by the harder and more stern races of Teutonic and Northern blood, and Irish damsels seem to have been free to enjoy their own property and dowries.[2] The story, then, begins with this dispute as to which, husband or wife, is the richer in this world's goods, and the argument at last becomes so heated that the pair decide to have all their possessions brought together to compare them one with another and judge by actual observation which is the most valuable. They collected accordingly jewels, bracelets, metal, gold, silver, flocks, herds, ornaments, etc., and found that in point of wealth they were much the same, but that there was one great bull called Finn-bheannach or White-horned, who was really calved by one of Mève's cows, but being endowed with a certain amount of intelligence considered it disgraceful to be under a woman, and so had gone over to Oilioll's herds. With him Mève had nothing that could compare. She made inquiry, however, and found out from her chief courier that there was in the district of Cuailgne in Louth (Mève lived at Rathcroghan in Roscommon) a most celebrated bull called the Dun Bull of Cuailgne belonging to a chieftain of the name of Darè. To him accordingly she sends an embassy requesting the loan of the bull for one year, and promising fifty heifers in return. Darè was quite willing, and promised to lend the animal. He was in fact pleased, and treated the embassy generously, giving them good lodgings with plenty of food and drink—too much drink in fact. The fate of nations is said to often hang upon a thread. On this occasion that of Ulster and Connacht depended upon a drop more or less, absorbed by one of the ten men who constituted Mève's embassy. This man unfortunately passed the just limit, and Darè's steward coming in at the moment heard him say that it was small thanks to his[Pg 321] master to give his bull "for if he hadn't given it we'd have taken it." That word decided the fate of provinces. The steward, indignant at such an outrage, ran and told his master, and Darè swore that now he would lend no bull, and what was more, but that the ten men were envoys he swore he would hang them. With indignity they were dismissed, and returned empty-handed to Mève's boundless indignation. She in her turn swore she would have the bull in spite of Darè. She immediately sent out to collect her armies, and invited Leinster and Munster to join her. She was in fact able to muster most of the three provinces to march against Ulster to take the bull from Darè, and in addition she had Fergus mac Roy and about fifteen hundred Ulster warriors who had never returned to their homes nor forgiven Conor for the murder of the sons of Usnach. She crossed the Shannon at Athlone, and marched on to Kells, within a few miles of Ulster, and there she pitched her standing camp. She was accompanied by her husband and her daughter who was the fairest among women. Her mother had secretly promised her hand to every leader in her army in order to nerve them to do their utmost.

At the very beginning Mève is forewarned by a mysterious female of the slaughter which is to come. She had driven round in her chariot to visit her druid and to inquire of him what would come of her expedition, and is returning somewhat reassured in her mind by the druid's promise which was—

"'Whosoever returneth or returneth not, thou shalt return,' and," says the saga, "as Mève returned again upon her track she beheld a thing which caused her to wonder, a single woman (riding) beside her, upon the pole of her chariot. And this is how that maiden was. She was weaving a border with a sword of bright bronze[3] in her right hand with its seven rings of red gold, and, about her, a spotted speckled mantle of green, and a fastening brooch in the[Pg 322] mantle over her bosom. A bright red gentle generous countenance, a grey eye visible in her head, a thin red mouth, young pearly teeth she had. You would think that her teeth were a shower of white pearls flung into her head. Her mouth was like fresh coral? [partaing]. The melodious address of her voice and her speaking tones were sweeter than the strings of curved harp being played. Brighter than the snow of one night was the splendour of her skin showing through her garments, her feet long, fairy-like, with (well) turned nails. Fair yellow hair very golden on her. Three tresses of her hair round her head, one tress behind falling after her to the extremities of her ankles.

"Mève looks at her. 'What makest thou there, O maiden?' said Mève.

"'Foreseeing thy future for thee, and thy grief, thou who art gathering the four great provinces of Ireland with thee to the land of Ulster, to carry out the Táin Bo Chuailgne.'

"'And wherefore doest thou me this?" said Mève.

"'Great reason have I for it,' said the maiden. 'A handmaid of thy people (am I),' said she.

"'Who of my people art thou?' said Mève.

"'Féithlinn, fairy-prophetess of Rathcroghan, am I,' said she.

"'It is well, O Féithlinn, prophetess,' said Mève, 'and how seest thou our hosts?'

"'I see crimson over them, I see red,' said she.

"'Conor is in his sickness[4] in Emania,' said Mève, 'and messengers have reached me from him, and there is nothing that I dread from the Ultonians, but speak thou the truth, O Féithlinn, prophetess,' said Mève.

"'I see crimson, I see red,' said she.

"'Comhsgraidh Meann ... is in Innis Comhsgraidh in his sickness, and my messengers have reached me, and there is nothing that I fear from the Ultonians, but speak me truth, O Féithlinn, prophetess, how seest thou our host?'

"'I see crimson, I see red.'

"'Celtchar, son of Uitheachar, is in his sickness,' said Mève, 'and there is nothing I dread from the Ultonians, but speak truth, O Féithlinn, prophetess.'

"'I see crimson, I see red,' said she.

"' ...?' said Mève, 'for since the men of Erin will be in one place there will be disputes and fightings and irruptions amongst them,[Pg 323] about reaching the beginnings or endings of fords or rivers, and about the first woundings of boars and stags, of venison, or matter of venery, speak true, O Féithlinn, prophetess, how seest thou our host? said Mève.

"'I see crimson I see red,' said she."

After this follows a long poem, wherein "she foretold Cuchulain to the men of Erin."

The march of Mève's army is told with much apparent exactness. The names of fifty-nine places through which it passed are given; and many incidents are recorded, one of which shows the furious, jealous, and vindictive disposition of the amazon queen herself. She, who seems to have taken upon herself the entire charge of the hosting, had made in her chariot the full round of the army at their encamping for the night, to see that everything was in order. After that she returned to her own tent and sat beside her husband Olioill at their meal, and he asks her how fared the troops. Mève then said something laudatory about the Gaileóin,[5] or ancient Leinstermen, who were not of Gaelic race, but appear to have belonged to some early non-Gaelic tribe, cognate with the Firbolg.

"'What excellence perform they beyond all others that they be thus praised?' said Oilioll.

"'They give cause for praise,' said Mève, 'for while others were choosing their camping-ground, they had made their booths and shelters; and while others were making their booths and shelters, they had their feast of meat and ale laid out; and while others were laying out their feasts of bread and ale, these had finished their food and fare; and while others were finishing their food and fare, these were asleep. Even as their slaves and servants have excelled the slaves and servants of the men of Erin, so will their good heroes and youths excel the good heroes and youths of the men of Erin in this hosting.'

"'I am the better pleased at that,' said Oilioll, 'because it was with me they came, and they are my helpers.'[6]

[Pg 324]

"'They shall not march with thee, then,' said Mève, 'and it is not before me, nor to me, they shall be boasted of.'

"'Then let them remain in camp,' said Oilioll.

"'They shall not do that either,' said Mève.

"'What shall they do, then?' said Findabar, daughter of Oilioll and Mève, 'if they shall neither march nor yet remain in camp.'

"'My will is to inflict death and fate and destruction on them,' said Mève."

It is with the greatest difficulty that Fergus is enabled to calm the furious queen, and she is only satisfied when the three thousand Gaileóins have been broken up and scattered throughout the other battalions, so that no five men of them remained together.

Thereafter the army came to plains so thickly wooded, in the neighbourhood of the present Kells, that they were obliged to cut down the wood with their swords to make a way for their chariots, and the next night they suffered intolerably from a fall of snow.

"The snow that fell that night reached to men's legs and to the wheels of chariots, so that the snow made one plain of the five provinces of Erin, and the men of Ireland never suffered so much before in camp, none knew throughout the whole night whether it was his friend or his enemy who was next him, until the rise early on the morrow of the clear-shining sun, glancing on the snow that covered the country."

They are now on the borders of Ulster, and Cuchulain is hovering on their flank, but no one has yet seen him. He lops a gnarled tree, writes an Ogam on it, sticks upon it the heads of three warriors he had slain, and sets it up on the brink of a ford. That night Oilioll and Mève inquire from the Ultonians who were in her army more particulars about this new enemy, and nearly a sixth part of the whole Táin is taken up by the stories which are then and there related about Cuchulain's earliest history and exploits, first by Fergus, and, when he is done relating, by Cormac Conlingeas,[Pg 325] and when he has finished, by Fiacha, another Ultonian. This long digression, which is one of the most interesting parts of the whole saga, being over, we return to the direct story.

Cuchulain, who knows every tree and every bush of the country, still hangs upon Mève's flank, and without showing himself during the day, he slays a hundred men with his sling[7] every night.

Mève, through an envoy, asks for a meeting with him, and is astonished to find him, as she thinks, a mere boy. She offers him great rewards in the hope of buying him off, but he will have none of her gold. The only conditions upon which he will cease his night-slaying is if Mève will promise to let him fight with some warrior every day at the ford, and will promise to keep her army in its camp while these single combats last, and this Mève consents to, since she says it is better to lose one warrior every day than one hundred every night.

A great number of single combats then take place, each of which is described at length. One curious incident is that of the war-goddess, whom he had previously offended, the Mór-rígu,[8] or "great queen," attacking him while fighting with the warrior Loich. She came against him, not in her own figure, but as a great black eel in the water, who wound itself around his legs, and as he stooped to disengage himself Loich wounded him severely in the breast. Again she came against him in the form of a great grey wolf-bitch, and as Cuchulain turned to drive her off he was again wounded. A third time she came against him as a heifer with fifty other heifers round her, but Cuchulain struck her and broke one of her eyes, just as Diomede in the Iliad wounds the goddess[Pg 326] Cypris when she appears against him.[9] Cuchulain, thus embarrassed, only rids himself of Loich by having recourse to the mysterious feat of the Gae-Bolg, about which we shall hear more later on. His opponent, feeling himself mortally hurt, cries out—

"'By thy love of generosity I crave a boon.'

"'What boon is that?' said Cuchulain.

"'It is not to spare me I ask,' said Loich, 'but let me fall forwards to the east, and not backward to the west, that none of the men of Erin may say that I fell in panic or in flight before thee.'

"'I grant it,' said Cuchulain, 'for surely it is a warrior's request.'"

After this encounter Cuchulain grew terribly despondent, and urged his charioteer Laeg again to hasten the men of Ulster to his assistance, but their pains were still upon them, and he is left alone to bear the brunt of the attack as best he may. Mève also breaks her compact by sending six men against him, but them he overcomes, and in revenge begins again to slay at night.

Thereafter follows the episode known in Irish saga as the Great Breach of Moy Muirtheimhne. Cuchulain, driven to despair and enfeebled by wounds, fatigue, and watching, was in the act of ascending his chariot to advance alone against the men of the four provinces, moving to certain death, when the[Pg 327] eye of his charioteer is arrested by the figure of a tall stranger moving through the camp of the enemy, saluting none as he moved, and by none saluted.

"That man," said Cuchulain, "must be one of my supernatural friends of the shee[10] folk, and they salute him not because he is not seen."

The stranger approaches, and, addressing Cuchulain, desires him to sleep for three days and three nights, and instantly Cuchulain fell asleep, for he had been from before the feast of Samhain till after Féil Bhrighde[11] without sleep, "unless it were that he might sleep a little while beside his spear, in the middle of the day, his head on his hand, and his hand on his spear, and his spear on his knee, but all the while slaughtering, slaying, preying on, and destroying, the four great provinces."

It was after this long sleep of Cuchulain's that, awaking fresh and strong, the Berserk rage fell upon him. He hurled himself against the men of Erin, he drove round their flank, he "gave his chariot the heavy turn, so that the iron wheels of the chariot sank into the earth, so that the track of the iron wheels was (in itself) a sufficient fortification, for like a fortification the stones and pillars and flags and sands of the earth rose back high on every side round the wheels." All that day, refreshed by his three days' sleep, he slaughtered the men of Erin.

Other single combats take place after this, in one of which the druid Cailitin and his twenty sons would have slain him had he not been rescued by his countryman Fiacha, one of those Ultonians who with Fergus had turned against their king and country when the children of Usnach were slain.

It was only at the last that his own friend Ferdiad was despatched against him, through the wiles of Mève. Ferdiad[Pg 328] was not a Gael, but of the Firbolg or Firdomhnan race,[12] yet he proved very nearly a match for Cuchulain. Knowing what Mève wanted with him, he positively refused to come to her tent when sent for, and in the end he is only persuaded by her sending her druids and ollavs against him, who threatened "to criticise, satirise, and blemish him, so that they would raise three blisters[13] on his face unless he came with them." At last he went with them in despair, "because he thought it easier to fall by valour and championship and weapons than to fall by [druids'] wisdom and by reproach."

The fight with Ferdiad is perhaps the finest episode in the Táin. The following is a description of the conduct of the warriors after the first day's conflict.

THE FIGHT AT THE FORD.[14]

"They ceased fighting and threw their weapons away from them into the hands of their charioteers. Each of them approached the other forthwith and each put his hand round the other's neck and gave him three kisses. Their horses were in the same paddock that night, and their charioteers at the same fire; and their charioteers spread beds of green rushes for them with wounded men's pillows[Pg 329] to them. The professors of healing and curing came to heal and cure them, and they applied herbs and plants of healing and curing to their stabs, and their cuts, and their gashes, and to all their wounds. Of every herb and of every healing and curing plant that was put to the stabs and cuts and gashes, and to all the wounds of Cuchulain, he would send an equal portion from him, westward over the ford to Ferdiad, so that the men of Erin might not be able to say, should Ferdiad fall by him, that it was by better means of cure that he was enabled to kill him.

"Of each kind of food and of palatable pleasant intoxicating drink that was sent by the men of Erin to Ferdiad, he would send a fair moiety over the ford northwards to Cuchulain, because the purveyors of Ferdiad were more numerous than the purveyors of Cuchulain. All the men of Erin were purveyors to Ferdiad for beating off Cuchulain from them, but the Bregians only were purveyors to Cuchulain, and they used to come to converse with him at dusk every night. They rested there that night."

The narrator goes on to describe the next day's fighting, which was carried on from their chariots "with their great broad spears," and which left them both in such evil plight that the professors of healing and curing "could do nothing more for them, because of the dangerous severity of their stabs and their cuts and their gashes and their numerous wounds, than to apply witchcraft and incantations and charms to them to staunch their blood and their bleeding and their gory wounds."

Their meeting on the next day follows thus:—

"They arose early the next morning and came forward to the ford of battle, and Cuchulain perceived an ill-visaged and a greatly lowering cloud on Ferdiad that day.

"'Badly dost thou appear to-day, O Ferdiad,' said Cuchulain, 'thy hair has become dark this day and thine eye has become drowsy, and thine own form and features and appearance have departed from thee.'

"'It is not from fear or terror of thee that I am so this day,' said Ferdiad, 'for there is not in Erin this day a champion that I could not subdue.'

"And Cuchulain was complaining and bemoaning and he spake these words, and Ferdiad answered:

[Pg 330]

CUCHULAIN.
"Oh, Ferdiad, is it thou?
Wretched man thou art I trow,
By a guileful woman won
To hurt thine old companion.

FERDIAD.
"O Cuchulain, fierce of fight,
Man of wounds and man of might,
Fate compelleth each to stir
Moving towards his sepulchre."[15]

The lay is then given, each of the heroes reciting a verse in turn, and it is very possibly upon these lays that the prose narrative is built up. The third day's fighting is then described in which the warriors use their "heavy hand-smiting swords," or rather swords that gave "blows of size. "[16] The story then continues—

"They cast away their weapons from them into the hands of their charioteers, and though it had been the meeting pleasant and happy, griefless and spirited of two men that morning, it was the separation, mournful, sorrowful, dispirited, of the two men that night.

"Their horses were not in the same enclosure that night. Their charioteers were not at the same fire. They rested that night there.

"Then Ferdiad arose early next morning and went forwards alone to the ford of battle, for he knew that that day would decide the battle and the fight, and he knew that one of them would fall on that day there or that they both would fall.

---

"Ferdiad displayed many noble, wonderful, varied feats on high that day, which he never learned with any other person, neither with Scathach, nor with Uathach, nor with Aife, but which were invented by himself that day against Cuchulain.

"Cuchulain came to the ford and he saw the noble, varied, wonderful, numerous feats which Ferdiad displays on high.

[Pg 331]

"'I perceive these, my friend, Laeg' [said Cuchulain to his charioteer], 'the noble, varied, wonderful, numerous feats which Ferdiad displays on high, and all these feats will be tried on me in succession, and, therefore, it is that if it be I who shall begin to yield this day thou art to excite, reproach, and speak evil to me, so that the ire of my rage and anger shall grow the more on me. If it be I who prevail, then thou shalt laud me, and praise me, and speak good words to me that my courage may be greater.'[17]

"'It shall so be done indeed, O Cuchulain,' said Laeg.

"And it was then Cuchulain put his battle-suit of conflict and of combat and of fight on him, and he displayed noble, varied, wonderful, numerous feats on high on that day, that he never learned from anybody else, neither with Scathach, nor with Uathach, nor with Aife. Ferdiad saw those feats and he knew they would be plied against him in succession.

"'What weapons shall we resort to, O Ferdiad?' said Cuchulain.

"'To thee belongs thy choice of weapons till night,' said Ferdiad.

"'Let us try the Ford Feat then,' said Cuchulain.

"'Let us indeed,' said Ferdiad. Although Ferdiad thus spoke his consent it was a cause of grief to him to speak so, because he knew that Cuchulain was used to destroy every hero and every champion who contended with him in the Feat of the Ford.

"Great was the deed, now, that was performed on that day at the ford—the two heroes, the two warriors, the two champions of Western Europe, the two gift and present and stipend bestowing hands of the north-west of the world; the two beloved pillars of the valour of the Gaels, and the two keys of the bravery of the Gaels to be brought to fight from afar through the instigation and intermeddling of Oilioll and Mève.

"Each of them began to shoot at other with their missive weapons from the dawn of early morning till the middle of midday. And when midday came the ire of the men waxed more furious, and each of them drew nearer to the other. And then it was that Cuchulain on one occasion sprang from the brink of the ford and came on the boss of the shield of Ferdiad, son of Daman, for the purpose of striking his head over the rim of his shield from above. And it was then that Ferdiad gave the shield a blow of his left elbow and cast[Pg 332] Cuchulain from him like a bird on the brink of the ford. Cuchulain sprang from the brink of the ford again till he came on the boss of the shield of Ferdiad, son of Daman, for the purpose of striking his head over the rim of the shield from above. Ferdiad gave the shield a stroke of his left knee and cast Cuchulain from him like a little child on the brink of the ford.

"Laeg [his charioteer] perceived that act. 'Alas, indeed,' said Laeg, 'the warrior who is against thee casts thee away as a lewd woman would cast her child. He throws thee as foam is thrown by the river. He grinds thee as a mill would grind fresh malt. He pierces thee as the felling axe would pierce the oak. He binds thee as the woodbine binds the tree. He darts on thee as the hawk darts on small birds, so that henceforth thou hast nor call nor right nor claim to valour or bravery to the end of time and life, thou little fairy phantom,' said Laeg.

"Then up sprang Cuchulain with the rapidity of the wind and with the readiness of the swallow, and with the fierceness of the dragon and the strength of the lion into the troubled clouds of the air the third time, and he alighted on the boss of the shield of Ferdiad, son of Daman to endeavour to strike his head over the rim of his shield from above. And then it was the warrior gave the shield a shake, and cast Cuchulain from him into the middle of the ford, the same as if he had never been cast off at all.

"And it was then that Cuchulain's first distortion came on, and he was filled with swelling and great fulness, like breath in a bladder, until he became a terrible, fearful, many-coloured, wonderful Tuaig, and he became as big as a Fomor, or a man of the sea, the great and valiant champion, in perfect height over Ferdiad.[18]

"So close was the fight they made now that their heads met above and their feet below and their arms in the middle over the rims and bosses of their shields. So close was the fight they made that they cleft and loosened their shields from their rims to their centres. So close was the fight which they made that they turned and bent and shivered their spears from their points to their hafts. Such was the closeness of the fight which they made that the Bocanachs and Bananachs, and wild people of the glens, and demons of the air screamed from the rims of their shields and from the hilts of their swords and from the hafts of their spears. Such was the closeness of the fight which they made that they cast the river out of its bed and out of its course, so that it might have been a reclining and reposing couch for a king or for a queen in the middle of the ford, so that[Pg 333] there was not a drop of water[19] in it unless it dropped into it by the trampling and the hewing which the two champions and the two heroes made in the middle of the ford. Such was the intensity of the fight which they made that the stud of the Gaels darted away in fright and shyness, with fury and madness, breaking their chains and their yokes, their ropes and their traces, and that the women and youths, and small people, and camp followers, and non-combatants of the men of Erin broke out of the camp south-westwards.

"They were at the edge-feat of swords during the time. And it was then that Ferdiad found an unguarded moment upon Cuchulain, and he gave him a stroke of the straight-edged sword, and buried it in his body until his blood fell into his girdle, until the ford became reddened with the gore from the body of the battle-warrior. Cuchulain would not endure this, for Ferdiad continued his unguarded stout strokes, and his quick strokes and his tremendous great blows at him. And he asked Laeg, son of Riangabhra, for the Gae Bulg. The manner of that was this: it used to be set down the stream and cast from between the toes [lit. in the cleft of the foot], it made the wound of one spear in entering the body, but it had thirty barbs to open, and could not be drawn out of a person's body until it was cut open. And when Ferdiad heard the Gae Bulg mentioned he made a stroke of the shield down to protect his lower body. Cuchulain thrust the unerring thorny spear off the centre of his palm over the rim of the shield, and through the breast of the skin-protecting armour, so that its further half was visible after piercing his heart in his body. Ferdiad gave a stroke of his shield up to protect the upper part of his body, though it was 'the relief after the danger.' The servant set the Gae Bulg down the stream and Cuchulain caught it between the toes of his foot, and he threw an unerring cast of it at Ferdiad till it passed through the firm deep iron waistpiece of wrought iron and broke the great stone which was as large as a millstone in three, and passed through the protections of his body into him, so that every crevice and every cavity of him was filled with its barbs.

"'That is enough now, indeed,' said Ferdiad, 'I fall of that. Now indeed may I say that I am sickly after thee, and not by thy hand should I have fallen,' and he said [here follow some verses]....

"Cuchulain ran towards him after that, and clasped his two arms about him and lifted him with his arms and his armour and his clothes across the ford northward, in order that the slain should lie[Pg 334] by the ford on the north, and not by the ford on the west with the men of Erin.

"Cuchulain laid Ferdiad down there, and a trance and a faint and a weakness fell then on Cuchulain over Ferdiad.

"'Good, O Cuchulain,' said Laeg, 'rise up now for the men of Erin are coming upon us, and it is not single combat they will give thee since Ferdiad, son of Daman, son of Dare, has fallen by thee.'

"'Servant,' said he, 'what availeth me to arise after him that hath fallen by me.'"

Cuchulain is carried away swooning after this fight and is brought by the two sons of Géadh to the streams and rivers to be cured of his stabs and wounds, by plunging him in the waters and facing him against the currents, "for the Tuatha De Danann sent plants of grace and herbs of healing (floating) down the streams and rivers of Muirtheimhne, to comfort and help Cuchulain, so that the streams were speckled and green overhead with them." The Finglas, the Bush, the Douglas, and eighteen other rivers are mentioned as aiding to cure him.

During the period of Cuchulain's leeching many events were happening in Mève's camp, amongst others the tragic death of her beautiful daughter, Finnabra.[20] Isolated bands of the men of Ulster were now beginning to at last muster in front of Mève, and amongst them came a certain northern chief, who was, as her daughter secretly confessed to Mève, her own love and sweetheart beyond all the men of Erin.

The prudent Mève immediately desires her to go to him, if he is her lover, and do everything in her power to make him draw off his warriors. This design, however, got abroad, and came to the ears of the twelve Munster princes who led the forces of the southern province in Mève's army. These gradually make the discovery that the astute queen had secretly promised her daughter's hand to each one of the twelve, as an inducement to him to take part in her expedition. Infuriated at being thus trifled with and at Mève's treachery[Pg 335] in now sending her daughter to the Ultonian, they fall with all their forces upon the queen's battalion and the whole camp becomes a scene of blood and confusion. The warrior Fergus at last succeeds in separating the combatants, not before seven hundred men have fallen. But when Finnabra saw the slaughter that was raging, of which she herself was cause, "a blood-torrent burst from her heart in her bosom through (mingled) shame and generosity," and she was taken up dead.

In the meantime Cuchulain is joined by another great Ultonian warrior, who is also being leeched. He had fallen upon the men of Erin single-handed, and received many wounds, one from Mève herself, who fought, like Boadicea, at the head of her troops. He describes the amazon who wounded him to Cuchulain—

"A largely-nurtured, white-faced, long-cheeked woman, with a yellow mane on the top of her two shoulders, with a shirt of royal silk over her white skin, and a speckled spear red-flaming in her hand; it was she who gave me this wound, and I gave her another small wound in exchange.

"'I know that woman,' said Cuchulain, 'that woman was Mève, and it had been glory and exultation to her had you fallen by her hand.'"

Afterwards Sualtach, father of Cuchulain, heard the groans of his son as he was being cured, and said, "Is it heaven that is bursting, or the sea that is retiring, or the land that is loosening, or is it the groan of my son in his extremity that I hear?" said he. Cuchulain despatches him to urge the Ultonians to his assistance. "Tell them how you found me," he said; "there is not the place of the point of a needle in me from head to foot without a wound, there is not a hair upon my body without a dew of crimson blood upon the top of every point, except my left hand alone that was holding my shield."

And now the Ultonians begin to rally and face the men of Erin. Troops are seen to pour in from every quarter of[Pg 336] Ulster, gathering upon the plains of Meath for the great battle that was impending. Mève sends out her trusted messenger to bring word of what is going on amongst the hostile bands. His first report is that the noise of the Ultonians hewing down the woods before their chariots with the edge of their swords was "like nothing but as it were the solid firmament falling upon the surface-face of the earth, or as it were the sky-blue sea pouring over the superficies of the plain, as it were the earth being rent asunder, or the forests falling [each tree] into the grasp and fork of the other."

Mac Roth, the chief messenger, is again sent out to observe the gathering of the hosts and to bring word of what bands are coming in to the hill where Conor, king of Ulster, has set up his standard. On his return at nightfall there follows a long, minute, and tedious account, something like the list of ships in the Iliad, only broken by the questions of Mève and Oilioll, and the answers of Fergus. It contains, however, some passages of interest. The scout describes the arrival of twenty-nine different armaments around their respective chiefs at the hill where King Conor is encamping. Incidentally he gives us descriptions of characters of interest in the Saga-cycle. As he ends his description of each band and its leaders, Oilioll turns to Fergus, and Fergus from Mac Roth's description recognises and tells him who the various leaders are. In this way we get a glimpse at Sencha, the wise man, the Nestor of the Red Branch, whose counsel was ever good. "That man," said Fergus, "is the speaker and peace-maker of the host of Ulster, and I pledge my word that it is no cowardly or unheroic counsel which that man will give to his lord this day, but counsel of vigour and valour and fight." We see the arrival of Feirceirtné, the arch-ollav of the Ultonians, of Cathbadh the Druid, he who had prophesied of Déirdre at her birth, who was supposed, according to the earliest accounts, to have been the real father of King Conor, he who weakened the children of Usnach by his spells; and we see also Aithirne,[Pg 337] the infamous and overbearing poet of the Ultonians, about whom much is related in other tales. "The lakes and rivers," said Fergus, "recede before him when he satirises them, and rise up before him when he praises them." "There are not many men in life more handsome or more golden-locked than he," said Mac Roth, "he bears a gleaming ivory[-hilted] sword in his right hand." With this sword he amuses himself, something like the Norman trouvère Taillefer at the battle of Hastings, by casting it aloft and letting it fall almost on the heads of his companions but without hurting them. The arch-druid is described as having scattered whitish-grey hair, and wearing a purple-blue mantle with a large gleaming shield and bosses of red brass, and a long iron sword of foreign look. Conor's leech, Finghin, led a band of physicians to the field; "that man could tell," said Fergus, "what a person's sickness is by looking at the smoke of the house in which he is." Another hero whom we catch a glimpse of is the mighty Conall Cearnach, the greatest champion of the north, whose name was till lately a household word around Dunsevrick, he who afterwards so bloodily avenged Cuchulain's death, "the sea over seas, the bursting rock, the furious troubler of hosts," as Fergus calls him.

We also see the youth Erc, son of Cairbré Niafer the High-king, who comes from Tara to assist his grandfather King Conor. It is curious, however, that in this catalogue of the Ultonians quite as much space is given to the description of men whose names are now—so far, at least, as I know—unknown to us, as to those who often and prominently figure in our yet remaining stories.

At last the great battle of the Táin comes off, when the men of Ulster meet the men of Ireland fairly and face to face. Prodigies of valour are performed on both sides, and Fergus—who after Cuchulain is certainly the hero of the Táin—seconded by Oilioll, by Mève, by the Seven Mainès, and by the sons of Magach, drives the Ultonians back on his side of[Pg 338] the battle three times. Conor, who is on the other flank, perceives that the men of his far wing are being broken, and loudly

"he shouts to the Household of the Red Branch, 'hold ye the place in the battle where I am, till I go find who it is who has thrice inclined the battle against us on the north.'

"'We take that upon ourselves,' said they, 'for heaven is over us, and earth is under us, and unless the firmament fall down upon the wave-face of the earth, or the ocean encircle us, or the ground give way under us, or the ridgy blue-bordered sea rise over the expanse[21] of life, we shall give not one inch of ground before the men of Erin till thou come to us again, or till we be slain.'"

Conor hastens northward and finds himself confronted by the man he had so bitterly wronged, whose hand had lain heavy on his province and himself, Fergus, who now comes face to face with him after so many years. Tremendous are the strokes of Fergus.

"He smote his three enemy blows upon Conor's shield 'Eochain' so that the shield screamed thrice upon him, and the three leading waves of Erin answered it.

"'Who,' cries Fergus, 'holds his shield against me in this battle?'[22]

"'O Fergus,' cried Conor, 'one who is greater and younger and handsomer, and more perfect than thyself is here, and whose father and whose mother were better than thine; one who slew the three great candles of the valour of the Gaels, the three prosperous sons of Usnach, in spite of thy guarantee and thy protection, the man who banished thee out of thy own land and country, the man who made of it a dwelling-place for the deer and the roe and the foxes, the man who never left thee as much as the breadth of thy foot of territory in Ulster, the man who drove thee to the entertainment of women,[23] and the man who will drive thee back this day in the presence of the men of Erin, [I] Conor, son of Fachtna Fathach, High-king of Ulster, and son of the High-king of Ireland."

Despite this boasting he would certainly have been slain by his great opponent had not one of his sons clasped his arms in[Pg 339] supplication around Fergus's knees and conjured him not to destroy Ulster, and Fergus, melted by these entreaties, consented to remain passive if Conor retired to the other wing of the battle, which he did.

In the meantime Mève had sent away the Dun Bull with fifty heifers round him and eight men, to drive him to her palace in Connacht, "so that whoever reached Cruachan alive, or did not reach it, the Dun Bull of Cuailgne should reach it as she had promised."

Cuchulain, who had joined the Ultonians, and whose arms had been taken from him, lest in his enfeebled condition he should injure himself by taking part in the fray, unable to bear any longer the look of the battle, the shouting and the war-cries, rushes into the fight with part of his broken chariot for a weapon, and performs mighty feats. At length he ceases to slay at Mève's solicitation, whose life he spares, and the shattered remnants of her host begin slowly to withdraw across the ford. "Oilioll draws his shield of protection behind the host [i.e., covers the rear], Mève draws her shield of protection in her own place, Fergus draws his shield of protection, the Mainès draw their shield of protection, the sons of Magach draw their shield of protection behind the host; and in this manner they brought with them the men of Erin across the great ford westward," nor did they cease their retreat till Mève and her army found themselves at Cruachan in Connacht, whence they had set out.

The long saga ends with a decided anti-climax, the encounter between the Dun Bull, whom Mève had carried off, and her own bull, the White-Horned.[24] These bulls, according to one[Pg 340] of the most curious of the short auxiliary sagas to the Táin, were really rebirths of two men who hated each other during life, and now fought it out in the form of bulls. When they caught sight of each other they pawed the earth so furiously that they sent the sods flying across their shoulders, "they rolled the eyes in their heads like flames of fiery lightning." All day long they charged, and thrust, and struggled, and bellowed, while the men of Ireland looked on, "but when the night came they could do nothing but be listening to the noises and the sounds." The two bulls traversed much of Ireland during that night.[25] Next morning the people of Cruachan saw the Dun Bull coming with the remains of his enemy upon his horns. The men of Connacht would have intercepted him, but Fergus, ever generous, swore with a great oath that all that had been done in the pursuit of the Táin was nothing to what he would do if the Dun Bull were not allowed to return to his own country with his kill. The Dun made straight for his home at Cuailgne in Louth. He drank of the Shannon at Athlone, and as he stooped one of his enemy's loins fell off from his horn, hence Ath-luain, the Ford of the Loin. After that he rushed, mad with passion, towards his home, killing every one who crossed his way. Arrived there, he set his back to a hill and uttered wild bellowings of triumph, until "his heart in his breast burst, and he poured his heart in black mountains of brown blood out across his mouth."

Thus far the Táin Bo Chuailgne.