The Glories Of Ireland Part 21

The originals of many of the Tales of the Cuchulainn cycle of romances will be found, usually accompanied by English or German translations, in the volumes of _Irische Texte; Revue Celtique; Zeitschrift fur Celt. Phil.; Eriu_; Irish Texts Society, vol. II; _Atlantis_; Proceed. of the R. Irish Academy (Irish MSS. Series and Todd Lecture Series). English translations: of the Tain Bo Cualnge (LU. and Y.B.L. versions), by Miss Winifred Faraday (1904); (LL.

version with conflate readings), by Joseph Dunn (1914); of various stories: E. Hull, The Cuchulain Saga in Irish Literature (1898); A.

H. Leahy, Heroic Romances of Ireland (1905-6), the Courtship of Ferb (1902). French translations in Arbois de Jubainville's _Epopee celtique en Irlande_; German translations in Thurneysen's _Sagen aus dem alien Irland_ (1901); free rendering by S. O'Grady in The Coming of Cuchullain (1904), and in his History of Ireland, the Heroic Period (1878). For full bibliography, see R. I. Best's Bibliography of Irish Philology and Printed Literature (1913), and Joseph Dunn's _Tain Bo Cualnge_, pp. x.x.xii-x.x.xvi (1914).

IRISH PRECURSORS OF DANTE

By SIDNEY GUNN, M.A.

One of the supreme creations of the human mind is the _Divine Comedy_ of Dante, and undoubtedly one of its chief sources is the literature of ancient Ireland. Dante himself was a native of Florence, Italy, and lived from 1265 to 1321. Like many great men, he incurred the hatred of his countrymen, and he spent, as a result, the last twenty years of his life in exile with a price on his head. He had been falsely accused of theft and treachery, and his indignation at the wrong thus done him and at the evil conduct of his contemporaries led him to write his poem, in which he visits h.e.l.l, Purgatory, and Paradise, and learns how G.o.d punishes bad actions, and how He rewards those who do His will.

To the writing of his poem Dante brought all the learning of his time, all its science, and an art that has never been surpa.s.sed, perhaps never equalled. Of course, he did not know any Irish, but he knew Italian and the then universal tongue of the learned--Latin, in both of which were tales of visits to the other world; and the greater part of these tales, as well as those most resembling Dante's work in form and spirit, were Irish in origin.

All peoples have traditions of persons visiting the realms of the dead. Homer tells of Odysseus going there; Virgil does the same of Aeneas; and the Oriental peoples, as well as the Germanic races, have similar tales; but no people have so many or such finished accounts of this sort as the ancient Irish. In pagan times in Ireland one of the commonest adventures attributed to a hero was a visit to "tir na m-beo," the land of the living, or to "tir na n-og," the land of the young; and this supernatural world was reached in some cases by entering a fairy mound and going beneath the ground to it, and in others by sailing over the ocean.

Of the literature of pagan Ireland, though much has come down to us, we have only a very small fraction of what once existed, and what we have has been transmitted and modified by persons of later times and different culture, who, both consciously and unconsciously, have changed it, so that it is very different from what it was in its original form; but the subject and the main outlines still remain, and we have many accounts of both voyages and underground journeys to the other world.

The oldest voyage is, perhaps, that of Maelduin, which, Tennyson has trans.m.u.ted into English under the t.i.tle _The Voyage of Maeldune_.

This is a voyage undertaken for revenge; but vengeance, as Sir Walter Scott has pointed out in his preface to _The Two Drovers_, springs in a barbarous society from a pa.s.sion for justice; and it is this instinct for justice that inspires the Irish hero to endure and to achieve what he does. Christianity has preserved this legend and added to it its own peculiar quality of mercy; and this ill.u.s.trates one of the characteristics of Ireland's pagan literature--it is imperfectly Christian and can readily be made to express the Christian point of view.

Another voyage of pagan Irish literature is the _Voyage of Bran_. In this tale idealism is the inspiration that leads the hero into the unknown world. A woman appears who is invisible to all but Bran, and whose song of the beauteous supernatural land beyond the wave is heard by none but him; so that, after refusing to go with her the first time she appears, at length he steps into her boat of gla.s.s and sails away to view the wonders and taste the joys of the other world.

In these tales we have two main elements, one real and one ideal. The real element is the fact that the ancient Irish unquestionably made voyages and visited lands which the fervid Celtic imagination and the lapse of time transformed into the wonderful regions of the legends.

The stories are thus early geographies, and they show unmistakably a knowledge of western Europe and of the Canary Islands or some other tropical regions; perhaps also, some have gone so far as to claim, they are reminiscent of voyages to America.

The ideal element is no less important as indicating achievement, for it shows that the Irish poets of pagan times had not only realized, but had succeeded in making their national traditions embody, the fact that love of justice and aspiration for knowledge are the foundations of all enduring human achievement and all perfect human joy. Christianity therefore found moral and spiritual ideas of a highly developed order in pagan Ireland, and it did not hesitate to adopt whatever in the literature of the country ill.u.s.trated its own teachings, and not only were these stories of visits to the other world full of suggestions as to ways of enforcing Christian doctrine, but the Irish church and men of Irish birth were the most active in spreading the faith in the early centuries of its conquest of western Europe.

For these reasons it is not strange that all the earliest Christian visions of the spirit-world were of Irish origin. We find the earliest in the _Ecclesiastical History_ of the "Venerable Bede," who died in 735. It is the story of how an Irishman of great sanct.i.ty, Furseus by name, was taken in spirit by three angels to a place from which he looked down and saw the four fires that are to consume the world: those of falsehood, avarice, discord, fraud and impiety. In this there is the germ of some very fundamental things in Dante's poem, and we know that Dante knew Bede and had probably read his history, for he places him in Paradise and mentions him elsewhere in his works.

In Bede's work there is also another vision, and though in this second case the man who visits the spirit-world is not an Irishman, but a Saxon named Drithelm, yet the story came to Bede through an Irish monk named Haemgils; so it, too, is connected with Ireland, and it also contains much that is developed further in the _Divine Comedy_.

One of the most celebrated of the works belonging to this cla.s.s of so-called "visionary" writings is the _Fis_ or "Vision" which goes under the name of the famous Irish saint, Ad.a.m.nan, who was poetically ent.i.tled the "High Scholar of the Western World." This particular vision, the _Fis Ad.a.m.nain_, is remarkable among other things for its literary quality, which is far superior to anything of the time, and for the fact that it represents "the highest level of the school to which it belonged," and that it is "the most important contribution made to the growth of the legend within the Christian Church prior to the advent of Dante."

Another Irish vision of great popularity all over Europe in the Middle Ages is the _Voyage of Saint Brendan_. This is known as the Irish Odyssey, and it is similar to the pagan tales of Maelduin and Bran, except that instead of its hero being a dauntless warrior seeking vengeance or a n.o.ble youth seeking happiness, he is a Christian saint in quest of peace; and instead of the perils of the way being overcome by physical force or the favor of some capricious pagan deity, they are averted by the power of faith and virtue.

The _Voyage of Saint Brendan_, like its pagan predecessors, has a real and an ideal basis; and in both respects it shows an advancement over its prototypes. It contains some very poetic touches, and is credited with being the source of some of the most effective features of Dante's poem. Its great popularity is shown by the fact that Caxton, the first English printer, published a translation of it in 1483; so that it was among the first books printed in English, and for that reason must have been one of the best-known works of the time. Dante undoubtedly knew it, for he was a great scholar in the learning of his day, and especially in ecclesiastical history and the biography of saints.

Another vision of Irish origin that Dante and other writers have borrowed from is that of an Irish soldier named Tundale. He is said to have been a very wicked and proud man, who refused to a friend who owed him for three horses an extension of time in which to pay for them. For this he was struck down by an invisible hand so that he remained apparently dead from Wednesday till Sat.u.r.day, when he revived and told a story of a visit to the world of the dead that has many features later embodied in the _Divine Comedy_. Tundale's vision is said to have taken place in 1149; Dante probably wrote his poem between 1314 and 1321.

The Irish also produced another legend of this sort that was enormously and universally popular, and became the chief authority on the nature of heaven and h.e.l.l, in the story of _Saint Patrick's Purgatory_. Saint Patrick was said to have been granted a view of heaven and h.e.l.l, and a certain island in Lough Derg in Donegal was reputed to be the spot in which he had begun his journey; and there, it was said, those who desired to purge themselves of their sins could enter as he had entered and come back to the world again, provided their faith was strong enough.

This legend was probably known in Ireland from a very early time, but it had spread over all western Europe by the twelfth century. Henry of Saltrey, a Benedictine monk of the Abbey of that name in England, wrote an account in Latin of the descent of an Irish soldier named Owen into Saint Patrick's Purgatory in 1153; and this story soon became the subject of poetic treatment all over Europe. We have several French versions, one by the celebrated French poetess Marie de France, who lived about 1200; and there are others in all the languages of Europe, besides evidence of its wide circulation in the original Latin. Its importance is shown by the fact that it is mentioned by Matthew Paris, the chief English historian of the thirteenth century, and also by Froissart, the well-known French annalist of the fourteenth while Calderon, the great Spanish dramatist, has written a play based on the legend. Dante undoubtedly knew of Marie de France's version as well as the original of Henry of Saltrey and probably others besides.

From what has been said it will be seen that Dante's masterpiece is largely based on literature of Irish origin; but there are other superlative exhibitions of human genius of which the same is true.

One of these is the story of Tristan and Isolde. Tristan is the paragon of all knightly accomplishments, the most versatile figure in the entire literature of chivalry; while Isolde is an Irish princess.

By a trick of fate these two drink a love potion inadvertently and become irresistibly enamored of each other, although Isolde is betrothed to King Mark of Cornwall, and Tristan is his nephew and amba.s.sador. The story that follows is infinitely varied, intensely dramatic, delicately beautiful, and tenderly pathetic. It has been treated by several poets of great genius, among them Gottfried of Stra.s.sburg, the greatest German poet of his time, and Richard Wagner; but all the beauty and power in the works of these men existed in the original Celtic form of the tale, and the later writers have only discovered it and brought it to light.

The same thing is true of the Arthurian Legend and the story of the Holy Grail. Dante knew of King Arthur's fame, and mentions him in the _Inferno_. To Dante he was a Christian hero, and the historical Arthur may have been a Christian; but much in the story goes back to the pagan Celtic religion. We can find in Irish literature many references that indicate a belief in a self-sustaining, miraculous object similar to the Holy Grail, and the fact that this object was developed into a symbol of some of the deepest and most beautiful Christian truths shows the high character of the civilization and literature of ancient Ireland.

REFERENCES:

Wright: St. Patrick's Purgatory (London, 1844); Krapp: The Legend of St. Patrick's Purgatory (Baltimore, 1900); Becker: Mediaeval Visions of Heaven and h.e.l.l (Baltimore, 1899); Shackford: Legends and Satires (Boston, 1913); Meyer and Nutt: The Voyage of Bran, edited and translated by K. Meyer, with an Essay on the Irish Version of the Happy Other World and the Celtic Doctrine of Rebirth, by A. Nutt, 2 vols. (London, 1895); Boswell: An Irish Precursor of Dante (London, 1908).

IRISH INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH LITERATURE

By E.C. QUIGGIN, M.A.

Among the literary peoples of the west of Europe, the Irish, in late medieval and early modern times, were singularly little affected by the frequent innovations in taste and theme which influenced Romance and Teutonic nations alike. To such an extent is this true, that one is often inclined to think that far-off Iceland was to a greater degree in the general European current than the much more accessible Erin. During the age of chivalry, conditions in Ireland were not calculated to promote the growth of epic and lyric poetry after the continental manner. Some considerable time elapsed before the Norman barons became fully Hibernicised, previous to which their interest may be a.s.sumed to have turned to the compositions of the trouveres.

In the early Norman period, the poets of Ireland might well have begun to imitate Romance models. But, strange to say, they did not, and, for this, various reasons might be a.s.signed. The flowing verses of the Anglo-Norman were impossible for men who delighted in the trammels of the native prosody; and in the heyday of French influence, the patrons of letters in Ireland probably insisted on hearing the foreign compositions in their original dress, as these n.o.bles were doubtless sufficiently versed in Norman-French to be able to appreciate them. But a still more potent factor was the conservatism of the hereditary Irish poet families. A close corporation, they appear to have resented every innovation, and were content to continue the tradition of their ancestors. The direct consequence of this tenacious clinging to the fashions of by-gone days rendered it impossible, nay almost inconceivable, that the literary men of Ireland should have exerted any profound or immediate influence upon England or western Europe. Yet, nowadays, few serious scholars will be prepared to deny that the island contributed in considerable measure to the common literary stock of the Middle Ages.

We might expect to find that direct influence, as a general rule, can be most easily traced in the case of religious themes. Here, in the literature of vision, so popular in Ireland, a chord was struck which continued to vibrate powerfully until the time of the Reformation. In this branch the riotous fancy of the Celtic monk caught the medieval imagination from an early period. Bede has preserved for us the story of Fursey, an Irish hermit who died in France, A.D. 650. The greatest Irish composition of this cla.s.s with which we are acquainted, the _Vision of Ad.a.m.nan_, does not appear to have been known outside the island, but a later work of a similar nature met with striking success. This was the _Vision of Tundale_ (Tnudgal), written in Latin by an Irishman named Marcus at Regensburg, about the middle of the twelfth century. It seems probable that this work was known to Dante, and, in addition to the numerous continental versions, there is a rendering of the story into Middle English verse.

Closely allied to the Visions are the _Imrama_ or "voyages" (Lat.

_navigationes_). The earliest romances of this cla.s.s are secular, _e.g., Imram Maelduin_, which provided Tennyson with the frame-work of his well-known poem. However, the notorious love of adventure on the part of the Irish monks inevitably led to the composition of religious romances of a similar kind. The most famous story of this description, the_ Voyage of St. Brendan_, found its way into every Christian country in Europe, and consequently figures in the South English Legendary, a collection of versified lives of saints made in the neighborhood of Gloucester towards the end of the thirteenth century. The episode of St. Brendan and the whale, moreover, was probably the ultimate source of one of Milton's best known similes in his description of Satan. Equally popular was the visit of Sir Owayn to the Purgatory of St. Patrick, which is also included in the same Middle English Legendary. Ireland further contributed in some measure to the common stock of medieval stories which were used as ill.u.s.trations by the preachers and in works of an edifying character.

When we turn to purely secular themes, we find ourselves on much less certain ground. Though the discussion as to the origins of the "romance of Uther's son", Arthur, continues with unabated vigor, many scholars have come think that the Celtic background of these stories contains much that is derived from Hibernian sources. Some writers in the past have argued in favor of an independent survival of common Celtic features, in Wales and Ireland, but now the tendency is to regard all such coincidences as borrowings on the part of Cymric craftsmen. At the beginning of the twelfth century a new impulse seems to have been imparted to native minstrelsy in Wales under'the patronage of Gruffydd ap Cynan, a prince of Gwynedd, who had spent many years in exile at the court of Dublin. Some of the Welsh rhapsodists apparently served a kind of apprenticeship with their Irish brethren, and many things Irish were a.s.similated at this time which, through this channel, were shortly to find their way into Anglo-French. Thus it may now be regarded as certain that the name of the "fair sword" Excalibur, by Geoffrey called Caliburnus (Welsh _caletfwlch_), is taken from Caladbolg, the far-famed broadsword of Fergus macRoig. It does not appear that the whole framework of the Irish sagas was taken over, but, as Windisch points out, episodes were borrowed as well as tricks of imagery. So, to mention but one, the central incident of _Syr Gawayn and the Grene Knyght_ is doubtless taken from the similar adventure of Cuchulainn in _Bricriu's Feast_. The share a.s.signed to Irish influence in the _matiere de Bretagne_ is likely to grow considerably with the progress of research.

The fairy lore of Great Britain undoubtedly owes much to Celtic phantasy. Of this Chaucer, at any rate, had little doubt, as he writes:

In th' olde dayes of the King Arthour, Of which that Britons speken greet honour, Al was this land fulfild of fayerye; The elf-queen, with hir joly companye, Daunced ful ofte in many a grene med.

And here again there is a reasonable probability that certain features were borrowed from the wealth of story current in the neighboring isle. Otherwise it is difficult to understand why the queen of fayerye should bear an Irish name (Mab, from Irish Medb), and curiously enough the form of the name rathef suggests that it was borrowed through a written medium and not by oral tradition. On the other hand it is incorrect to derive Puck from Irish _puca_, as the latter is undoubtedly borrowed from some form of Teutonic speech.

So all embracing a mind as that of the greatest English dramatist could not fail to be interested in the gossip that must have been current in London at the time of the wars in Ulster. References to kerns and gallowgla.s.ses are fairly frequent. He had evidently heard of the marvellous powers with which the Irish bards were credited, for, in _As You Like It_, Rosalind exclaims:

"I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat, which I can hardly remember."

Similarly, in _King Richard III_, mention is made of the prophetic utterance of an Irish bard, a trait which does not appear in the poet's source. Any statements as to Irish influence in Shakespeare that go beyond this belong to the realm of conjecture. Professor Kittredge has attempted to show that in Syr Orfeo, upon which the poet drew for portions of the plot of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, the Irish story of Etain and Mider was fused with the medieval form of the cla.s.sical tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. Direct influence is entirely wanting, and it is difficult to see how it could have been otherwise.

Even in the case of the Elizabethan poet who spent many years in the south of Ireland, there is no trace of Hibernian lore or legend.

Spenser, indeed, tells us himself that he had caused some of the native poetry to be translated to him, and had found that it "savoured of sweet wit and good invention." But Ireland plays an infinitesimal part in the _Faerie Queene_. The scenery round Kilcolman Castle forms the background of much of the incident in Book V. "Marble far from Ireland brought" is mentioned in a simile in the second Book, where we also read:

As when a swarme of gnats at eventide Out of the fennes of Allan do arise.

But Ireland supplied no further inspiration.

The various plantations of the seventeenth century produced an Anglo-Irish stock which soon a.s.serted itself in literature. As a typical example, we may take the author of _The Vicar of Wakefield_.

At his first school at Lissoy, Oliver Goldsmith came under Thomas Byrne, a regular shanachie, possessed of all the traditional lore, with a remarkable gift for versifying. It was under this man that the boy made his first attempts at verse, and his memory is celebrated in _The Deserted Village_:

There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule, The village master taught his little school.

A man severe he was, and stern to view.

Unfortunately Goldsmith was removed to Elphin at the age of nine, and although he retained an affection for Irish music all his life, his intimate connection with Irish Ireland apparently ceased at this point. "Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain" is doubtless full of reminiscences of the poet's early years in Westmeath, but the sentiments, the rhythm, and the language are entirely cast in an English mould. We may mention, in pa.s.sing, that it has been suggested that Swift derived the idea of the kingdom of Lilliput from the Irish story of the Adventures of Fergus macLeide amongst the leprechauns.

All that can be said is that this derivation is not impossible, though the fact that the tale is preserved only in a single ma.n.u.script rather points to the conclusion that the story did not enjoy great popularity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.