The Coming of Cuculain Part 1

The Coming of Cuculain.

by Standish O'Grady.

PREFACE

There are three great cycles of Gaelic literature. The first treats of the G.o.ds; the second of the Red Branch Knights of Ulster and their contemporaries; the third is the so-called Ossianic. Of the Ossianic, Finn is the chief character; of the Red Branch cycle, Cuculain, the hero of our tale.

Cuculain and his friends are historical characters, seen as it were through mists of love and wonder, whom men could not forget, but for centuries continued to celebrate in countless songs and stories.

They were not literary phantoms, but actual existences; imaginary and fict.i.tious characters, mere creatures of idle fancy, do not live and flourish so in the world's memory. And as to the gigantic stature and superhuman prowess and achievements of those antique heroes, it must not be forgotten that all art magnifies, as if in obedience to some strong law; and so, even in our own times, Grattan, where he stands in artistic bronze, is twice as great as the real Grattan thundering in the Senate.

I will therefore ask the reader, remembering the large manner of the antique literature from which our tale is drawn, to forget for a while that there is such a thing as scientific history, to give his imagination a holiday, and follow with kindly interest the singular story of the boyhood of Cuculain, "battle-prop of the valour and torch of the chivalry of the Ultonians."

I have endeavoured so to tell the story as to give a general idea of the cycle, and of primitive heroic Irish life as reflected in that literature, laying the cycle, so far as accessible, under contribution to furnish forth the tale. Within a short compa.s.s I would bring before swift modern readers the more striking aspects of a literature so vast and archaic as to repel all but students.

STANDISH O'GRADY -- A TRIBUTE BY A. E.

In this age we read so much that we lay too great a burden on the imagination. It is unable to create images which are the spiritual equivalent of the words on the printed page, and reading becomes for too many an occupation of the eye rather than of the mind. How rarely--out of the mult.i.tude of volumes a man reads in his lifetime--can he remember where or when he read any particular book, or with any vividness recall the mood it evoked in him. When I close my eyes, and brood in memory over the books which most profoundly affected me, I find none excited my imagination more than Standish O'Grady's epical narrative of Cuculain.

Whitman said of his Leaves of Gra.s.s, "Camerado, this is no book: who touches this touches a man" and O'Grady might have boasted of his Bardic History of Ireland, written with his whole being, that there was more than a man in it, there was the soul of a people, its n.o.blest and most exalted life symbolised in the story of one heroic character.

With reference to Ireland, I was at the time I read like many others who were bereaved of the history of their race. I was as a man who, through some accident, had lost memory of his past, who could recall no more than a few months of new life, and could not say to what songs his cradle had been rocked, what mother had nursed him, who were the playmates of childhood or by what woods and streams he had wandered.

When I read O'Grady I was as such a man who suddenly feels ancient memories rushing at him, and knows he was born in a royal house, that he had mixed with the mighty of heaven and earth and had the very n.o.blest for his companions. It was the memory of race which rose up within me as I read, and I felt exalted as one who learns he is among the children of kings. That is what O'Grady did for me and for others who were my contemporaries, and I welcome these reprints of his tales in the hope that he will go on magically recreating for generations yet unborn the ancestral life of their race in Ireland. For many centuries the youth of Ireland as it grew up was made aware of the life of bygone ages, and there were always some who remade themselves in the heroic mould before they pa.s.sed on. The sentiment engendered by the Gaelic literature was an arcane presence, though unconscious of itself, in those who for the past hundred years had learned another speech. In O'Grady's writings the submerged river of national culture rose up again, a shining torrent, and I realised as I bathed in that stream, that the greatest spiritual evil one nation could inflict on another was to cut off from it the story of the national soul. For not all music can be played upon any instrument, and human nature for most of us is like a harp on which can be rendered the music written for the harp but not that written for the violin. The harp strings quiver for the harp-player alone, and he who can utter his pa.s.sion through the violin is silent before an unfamiliar instrument. That is why the Irish have rarely been deeply stirred by English literature though it is one of the great literatures of the world. Our history was different and the evolutionary product was a peculiarity of character, and the strings of our being vibrate most in ecstasy when the music evokes ancestral moods or embodies emotions akin to these. I am not going to argue the comparative worth of the Gaelic and English tradition. All I can say is that the traditions of our own country move us more than the traditions of any other. Even if there was not essential greatness in them we would love them for the same reasons which bring back so many exiles to revisit the haunts of childhood. But there was essential greatness in that neglected bardic literature which O'Grady was the first to reveal in a n.o.ble manner. He had the spirit of an ancient epic poet. He is a comrade of Homer, his birth delayed in time perhaps that he might renew for a sophisticated people the elemental simplicity and hardihood men had when the world was young and manhood was prized more than any of its parts, more than thought or beauty or feeling. He has created for us or rediscovered one figure which looms in the imagination as a high comrade of Hector, Achilles, Ulysses, Rama or Yudisthira, as great in spirit as any. Who could extol enough his Cuculain, that incarnation of Gaelic chivalry, the fire and gentleness, the beauty and heroic ardour or the imaginative splendour of the episodes in his retelling of the ancient story. There are writers who bewitch us by a magical use of words, whose lines glitter like jewels, whose effects are gained by an elaborate art and who deal with the subtlest emotions. Others again are simple as an Egyptian image and yet are more impressive and you remember them less for the sentence than for a grandiose effect. They are not so much concerned with the art of words as with the creation of great images informed with magnificence of spirit. They are not lesser artists but greater, for there is a greater art in the simplification of form in the statue of Memnon than there is in the intricate detail of a bronze by Benvenuto Cellini. Standish O'Grady had in his best moments that epic wholeness and simplicity, and the figure of Cuculain amid his companions of the Red Branch which he discovered and refashioned for us is I think the greatest spiritual gift any Irishman for centuries has given to Ireland.

I know it will be said that this is a scientific age, the world is so full of necessitous life that it is waste of time for young Ireland to brood upon tales of legendary heroes, who fought with enchanters, who harnessed wild fairy horses to magic chariots and who talked with the ancient G.o.ds, and that it would be much better for youth to be scientific and practical. Do not believe it, dear Irish boy, dear Irish girl. I know as well as any the economic needs of our people. They must not be overlooked, but keep still in your hearts some desires which might enter Paradise. Keep in your souls some images of magnificence so that hereafter the halls of heaven and the divine folk may not seem altogether alien to the spirit. These legends have pa.s.sed the test of generations for century after century, and they were treasured and pa.s.sed on to those who followed, and that was because there was something in them akin to the immortal spirit. Humanity cannot carry with it through time the memory of all its deeds and imaginations, and it burdens itself only in a new era with what was highest among the imaginations of the ancestors. What is essentially n.o.ble is never out of date. The figures carved by Phidias for the Parthenon still shine by the side of the greatest modern sculpture. There has been no evolution of the human form to a greater beauty than the ancient Greeks saw and the forms they carved are not strange to us, and if this is true of the outward form it is true of the indwelling spirit. What is essentially n.o.ble is contemporary with all that is splendid to-day, and, until the ma.s.s of men are equal in spirit, the great figures of the past will affect us less as memories than as prophecies of the Golden Age to which youth is ever hurrying in its heart.

O'Grady in his stories of the Red Branch rescued from the past what was contemporary to the best in us to-day, and he was equal in his gifts as a writer to the greatest of his bardic predecessors in Ireland. His sentences are charged with a heroic energy, and, when he is telling a great tale, their rise and fall are like the flashing and falling of the bright sword of some great champion in battle, or the onset and withdrawal of Atlantic surges. He can at need be beautifully tender and quiet. Who that has read his tale of the young Finn and the Seven Ancients will forget the weeping of Finn over the kindness of the famine-stricken old men, and their wonder at his weeping and the self-forgetful pathos of their meditation unconscious that it was their own sacrifice called forth the tears of Finn. "Youth," they said, "has many sorrows that cold age cannot comprehend."

There are critics repelled by the abounding energy in O'Grady's sentences. It is easy to point to faults due to excess and abundance, but how rare in literature is that heroic energy and power. There is something arcane and elemental in it, a quality that the most careful stylist cannot attain, however he uses the file, however subtle he is.

O'Grady has noticed this power in the ancient bards and we find it in his own writing. It ran all through the Bardic History, the Critical and Philosophical History, and through the political books, "The Tory Democracy" and "All Ireland." There is this imaginative energy in the tale of Cuculain, in all its episodes, the slaying of the hound, the capture of the Laity Macha, the hunting of the enchanted deer, the capture of the wild swans, the fight at the ford and the awakening of the Red Branch. In the later tale of Red Hugh which he calls "The Flight of the Eagle" there is the same quality of power joined with a shining simplicity in the narrative which rises into a poetic ecstacy in that wonderful chapter where Red Hugh, escaping from the Pale, rides through the Mountain Gates of Ulster, and sees high above him Slieve Mullion, a mountain of the G.o.ds, the birthplace of legend "more mythic than Avernus" and O'Grady evokes for us and his hero the legendary past, and the great hill seems to be like Mount Sinai, thronged with immortals, and it lives and speaks to the fugitive boy, "the last great secular champion of the Gael," and inspires him for the fulfilment of his destiny. We might say of Red Hugh and indeed of all O'Grady's heroes that they are the spiritual progeny of Cuculain. From Red Hugh down to the boys who have such enchanting adventures in "Lost on Du Corrig" and "The Chain of Gold" they have all a natural and hardy purity of mind, a beautiful simplicity of character, and one can imagine them all in an hour of need, being faithful to any trust like the darling of the Red Branch. These shining lads never grew up amid books. They are as much children of nature as the Lucy of Wordsworth's poetry. It might be said of them as the poet of the Kalevala sang of himself,

"Winds and waters my instructors."

These were O'Grady's own earliest companions and no man can find better comrades than earth, water, air and sun. I imagine O'Grady's own youth was not so very different from the youth of Red Hugh before his captivity; that he lived on the wild and rocky western coast, that he rowed in coracles, explored the caves, spoke much with hardy natural people, fishermen and workers on the land, primitive folk, simple in speech, but with that fundamental depth men have who are much in nature in companionship with the elements, the elder brothers of humanity: it must have been out of such a boyhood and such intimacies with natural and unsophisticated people that there came to him the understanding of the heroes of the Red Branch. How pallid, beside the ruddy chivalry who pa.s.s huge and fleet and bright through O'Grady's pages, appear Tennyson's bloodless Knights of the Round Table, fabricated in the study to be read in the drawing-room, as anaemic as Burne Jones' lifeless men in armour. The heroes of ancient Irish legend reincarnated in the mind of a man who could breathe into them the fire of life, caught from sun and wind, their ancient deities, and send them, forth to the world to do greater deeds, to act through many men and speak through many voices.

What sorcery was in the Irish mind that it has taken so many years to win but a little recognition for this splendid spirit; and that others who came after him, who diluted the pure fiery wine of romance he gave us with literary water, should be as well known or more widely read. For my own part I can only point back to him and say whatever is Irish in me he kindled to life, and I am humble when I read his epic tale, feeling how much greater a thing it is for the soul of a writer to have been the habitation of a demiG.o.d than to have had the subtlest intellections.

We praise the man who rushes into a burning mansion and brings out its greatest treasure. So ought we to praise this man who rescued from the perishing Gaelic tradition its darling hero and restored him to us, and I think now that Cuculain will not perish, and he will be invisibly present at many a council of youth, and he will be the daring which lifts the will beyond itself and fires it for great causes, and he will also be the courtesy which shall overcome the enemy that nothing else may overcome.

I am sure that Standish O'Grady would rather I should speak of his work and its bearing on the spiritual life of Ireland, than about himself, and, because I think so, in this reverie I have followed no set plan but have let my thoughts run as they will. But I would not have any to think that this man was only a writer, or that he could have had the heroes of the past for spiritual companions, without himself being inspired to fight dragons and wizardy. I have sometimes regretted that contemporary politics drew O'Grady away from the work he began so greatly. I have said to myself he might have given us an Oscar, a Diarmuid or a Caoilte, an equal comrade to Cuculain, but he could not, being lit up by the spirit of his hero, be merely the bard and not the fighter, and no man in Ireland intervened in the affairs of his country with a superior n.o.bility of aim. He was the last champion of the Irish aristocracy and still more the voice of conscience for them, and he spoke to them of their duty to the nation as one might imagine some fearless prophet speaking to a council of degenerate princes. When the aristocracy failed Ireland he bade them farewell, and wrote the epitaph of their cla.s.s in words whose scorn we almost forget because of their sounding melody and beauty. He turned his mind to the problems of democracy and more especially of those workers who are trapped in the city, and he pointed out for them the way of escape and how they might renew life in the green fields close to Earth, their ancient mother and nurse. He used too exalted a language for those to whom he spoke to understand, and it might seem that all these vehement appeals had failed but that we know that what is fine never really fails. When a man is in advance of his age, a generation unborn when he speaks, is born in due time and finds in him its inspiration. O'Grady may have failed in his appeal to the aristocracy of his own time but he may yet create an aristocracy of character and intellect in Ireland. The political and social writings will remain to uplift and inspire and to remind us that the man who wrote the stories of heroes had a bravery of his own and a wisdom of his own. I owe so much to Standish O'Grady that I would like to leave it on record that it was he who made me conscious and proud of my country, and recalled my mind, that might have wandered otherwise over too wide and vague a field of thought, to think of the earth under my feet and the children of our common mother. There hangs in the Munic.i.p.al Gallery of Dublin the portrait of a man with brooding eyes, and scrawled on the canvas is the subject of his bitter meditation, "The Lost Land." I hope that O'Grady will find before he goes back to Tir-na-noge that Ireland has found again through him what seemed lost for ever, the law of its own being, and its memories which go back to the beginning of the world.

THE COMING OF CUCULAIN

CHAPTER I

THE RED BRANCH

"There were giants in the earth in those days, the same were mighty men which were of yore men of renown."

The Red Branch feasted one night in their great hall at Emain Macha.

So vast was the hall that a man, such as men are now, standing in the centre and shouting his loudest, would not be heard at the circ.u.mference, yet the low laughter of the King sitting at one end was clearly audible to those who sat around the Champion at the other. The sons of Dithorba made it, giants of the elder time, labouring there under the brazen shoutings of Macha and the roar of her sounding thongs.

Its length was a mile and nine furlongs and a cubit. With her brooch pin she ploughed its outline upon the plain, and its breadth was not much less. Trees such as the earth nourished then upheld the ma.s.sy roof beneath which feasted that heroic brood, the great-hearted children of Rury, huge offspring of the G.o.ds and giants of the dawn of time. For mighty exceedingly were these men. At the noise of them running to battle all Ireland shook, and the illimitable Lir [Footnote: Lir was the sea-G.o.d, the Oceanns of the Celt; no doubt the same as the British Lear, the wild, white-headed old king, who had such singular daughters; two, monsters of cruelty, and one, exquisitely sweet, kind, and serene, viz.: Storm, Hurricane, and Calm.] trembled in his watery halls; the roar of their brazen chariots reverberated from the solid canopy of heaven, and their war-steeds drank rivers dry.

A vast murmur rose from the a.s.sembly, for like distant thunder or the far-off murmuring of agitated waters was the continuous hum of their blended conversation and laughter, while, ever and anon, cleaving the many-tongued confusion, uprose friendly voices, clearer and stronger than battle-trumpets, when one hero challenged another to drink, wishing him victory and success, and his words rang round the hollow dome.

Innumerable candles, tall as spears, illuminated the scene. The eyes of the heroes sparkled, and their faces, white and ruddy, beamed with festal mirth and mutual affection. Their yellow hair shone. Their banqueting attire, white and scarlet, glowed against the outer gloom.

Their round brooches and mantle-pins of gold, or silver, or golden bronze, their drinking vessels and instruments of festivity, flashed and glittered in the light. They rejoiced in their glory and their might, and in the inviolable amity in which they were knit together, a host of comrades, a knot of heroic valour and affection which no strength or cunning, and no power, seen or unseen, could ever relax or untie.

At one extremity of the vast hall, upon a raised seat, sat their young king, Concobar Mac Nessa, slender, handsome, and upright. A canopy of bronze, round as the bent sling of the Sun-G.o.d, the long-handed, far-shooting son of Ethlend, [Footnote: This was the G.o.d Lu Lam-fada, i.e., Lu, the Long-Handed. The rainbow was his sling. Remember that the rod sling, familiar enough now to Irish boys, was the weapon of the ancient Irish, and not the sling which is made of two cords.] encircled his head. At his right hand lay a staff of silver. Far away at the other end of the hall, on a raised seat, sat the Champion Fergus Mac Roy, like a colossus. The stars and clouds of night were round his head and shoulders seen through the wide and high entrance of the dun, whose doors no man had ever seen closed and barred. Aloft, suspended from the dim rafters, hung the naked forms of great men clear against the dark dome, having the cords of their slaughter around their necks and their white limbs splashed with blood. Kings were they who had murmured against the sovereignty of the Red Branch. Through the wide doorway out of the night flew a huge bird, black and grey, unseen, and soaring upwards sat upon the rafters, its eyes like burning fire. It was the Mor-Reega, [Footnote: There were three war G.o.ddesses:--(1) Badb (p.r.o.nounced Byve); (2) Macha, already referred to; (3) The Mor-Rigu or Mor-Reega, who was the greatest of the three.] or Great Queen, the far-striding terrible daughter of Iarnmas (Iron-Death). Her voice was like the shouting of ten thousand men. Dear to her were these heroes.

More she rejoiced in them feasting than in the battle-prowess of the rest.

When supper was ended their bard, in his singing robes and girt around the temples with a golden fillet, stood up and sang. He sang how once a king of the Ultonians, having plunged into the sea-depths, there slew a monster which had wrought much havoc amongst fishers and seafaring men.

The heroes attended to his song, leaning forward with bright eyes. They applauded the song and the singer, and praised the valour of the heroic man [Footnote: This was Fergus Mac Leda, Fergus, son of Leda, one of the more ancient kings of Ulster. His contest with the sea-monster is the theme of a heroic tale.] who had done that deed. Then the champion struck the table with his clenched hand, and addressed the a.s.sembly.

Wrath and sorrow were in his voice. It resembled the brool of lions heard afar by seafaring men upon some savage sh.o.r.e on a still night.

"Famous deeds," he said, "are not wrought now amongst the Red Branch.

I think we are all become women. I grow weary of these huntings in the morning and mimic exercises of war, and this training of steeds and careering of brazen chariots stained never with aught but dust and mire, and these unearned feastings at night and vain applause of the brave deeds of our forefathers. Come now, let us make an end of this. Let us conquer Banba [Footnote: One of Ireland's many names.] wholly in all her green borders, and let the realms of Lir, which sustain no foot of man, be the limit of our sovereignty. Let us gather the tributes of all Ireland, after many battles and much warlike toil. Then more sweetly shall we drink while the bards chaunt our own prowess. Once I knew a coward who boasted endlessly about his forefathers, and at last my anger rose, and with a flat hand I slew him in the middle of his speech, and paid no eric, for he was nothing. We have the blood of heroes in our veins, and we sit here nightly boasting about them; about Rury, whose name we bear, being all his children; and Macha the warrioress, who brought hither bound the sons of Dithorba and made them rear this mighty dun; and Combat son of Fiontann; and my namesake Fergus,[Footnote: This was the king already referred to who slew the sea-monster. The monster had left upon him that mark and memorial of the struggle.] whose crooked mouth was no dishonour, and the rest of our hero sires; and we consume the rents and tributes of Ulster which they by their prowess conquered to us, and which flow hither in abundance from every corner of the province. Valiant men, too, will one day come hither and slay us as I slew that boaster, and here in Emain Macha their bards will praise them.

Then in the halls of the dead shall we say to our sires, 'All that you got for us by your blood and your sweat that have we lost, and the glory of the Red Branch is at an end.'"

That speech was pleasing to the Red Branch, and they cried out that Fergus Mac Roy had spoken well. Then all at once, on a sudden impulse, they sang the battle-song of the Ultonians, and shouted for the war so that the building quaked and rocked, and in the hall of the weapons there was a clangour of falling shields, and men died that night for extreme dread, so mightily shouted the Ultonians around their king and around Fergus. When the echoes and reverberations of that shout ceased to sound in the vaulted roof and in the far recesses and galleries, then there arose somewhere upon the night a clear chorus of treble voices, singing, too, the war-chant of the Ultonians, as when rising out of the clangour of brazen instruments of music there shrills forth the clear sound of fifes. For the immature scions of the Red Branch, boys and tender youths, awakened out of slumber, heard them, and from remote dormitories responded to their sires, and they cried aloud together and shouted. The trees of Ulster shed their early leaves and buds at that shout, and birds fell dead from the branches.

Concobar struck the brazen canopy with his silver rod. The smitten bra.s.s rang like a bell, and the Ultonians in silence hearkened for the words of their clear-voiced king.

"No ruler of men," he said, "however masterful and imperious, could withstand this torrent of martial ardour which rolls to-night through the souls of the children of Rury, still less I, newly come to this high throne, having been but as it were yesterday your comrade and equal, till Fergus, to my grief, resigned the sovereignty, and caused me, a boy, to be made king of Ulla and captain of the Red Branch. But now I say, ere we consider what province or territory shall first see the embattled Red Branch cross her borders, let us enquire of Cathvah the Ard-Druid, whether the omens be propitious, and whether through his art he is able to reveal to us some rite to be performed or prohibition to be observed."

That proposal was not pleasing to Fergus, but it pleased the Red Branch, and they praised the wisdom of their king.

Then Cathvah the Ard-Druid [Footnote: High Druid, or Chief Druid.

Similarly we have Ard-Ri or High King.] spake.

"It hath been foretold," he said, "long since, that the Ultonians shall win glory such as never was and never will be, and that their fame shall endure till the world's end. But, first, there are prophecies to be accomplished and predictions to be fulfilled. For ere these things may be there shall come a child to Emain Macha, attended by clear portents from the G.o.ds; through him shall arise our deathless fame. Also it hath been foretold that there shall be great divisions and fratricidal strife amongst the children of Rury, a storm of war which shall strip the Red Branch nigh bare."

Fergus was wroth at this, and spoke words of scorn concerning the diviner, and concerning all omens, prohibitions, and prophecies.

Concobar, too, and all the Red Branch, rebuked the prophet. Yet he stood against them like a rock warred on by winds which stand immovable, let them rage as they will, and refused to take back his words. Then said Concobar:

"Many are the prophecies which came wandering down upon the mouths of men, but they are not all to be trusted alike. Of those which have pa.s.sed thy lips, O Cathvah, we utterly reject the last, and think the less of thee for having reported it. But the former which concerns the child of promise hath been ever held a sure prophecy, and as such pa.s.sed down through all the diviners from the time of Amargin, the son of Milesius, who first prophesied for the Gael. And now being arch-king of the Ultonians, I command thee to divine for us when the coming of the child shall be."

Then Cathvah, the Ard-Druid, put on his divining apparel and took his divining instruments in his hands, and made his symbols of power upon the air. And at first he was silent, and, being in a trance, stared out before him with wide eyes full of wonder and amazement, directing his gaze to the east. In the end he cried out with a loud voice, and prophesying, sang this lay: