The Revival of Irish Literature Part 2

They are known to have been the first settlers in Iceland. They penetrated to Athens, and helped potently to revive or establish the study of Greek in Europe. Some lines of their influences only may be noticed here, but these are remarkable. St. Sedulius (Siadal), A.D. 430, introduced from the Irish the terminal sound-echo or rhyme into Latin verse. This innovation was made in hymns, and as some of these, on account of their beauty and style, were adopted and chanted in the Church (as some till this day are sung), their influence in educating the ear and popularising rhyme over Christendom was incalculable. Take this example of interwoven echoes:

"A solis =o=rtus car_dine_, =a=dusque terrae limi_tem_, =C=hristum =c=anamus princi_pem_, natum Maria vir_gine_."[6]

Sedulius also produced a work of sustained power in hexameter verse, consisting of five books of nearly 1,800 lines, ent.i.tled Carmen Paschale, or The Paschal Song. It was the first great Christian Epic, and opened the way for all which came after.

Now, in this great poem, characterised by so much originality and dramatic power, Sedulius impresses certain marked Irish peculiarities upon the cla.s.sic hexameter. Thus, in the following pa.s.sage, we find not only examples of "concord" in the alliterated letters, but also of "correspondence" in the terminal rhymes:

"Neve quis ignoret, speciem =c=rucis esse =c=_olendam_, Quae Dominum =p=ortavit ovans, ratione, =p=_otenti_ =Q=uattuor inde plagas =q=uadrati colligit _orbis_.

Splendidus =a=uctoris de vertice fulget =E=_ous_, Occiduo =s=acrae lambuntur =s=idere pl_antae_ =A=rcton dextra tenet, medium laeva =e=rigit =a=_xem_."

The influence of this remarkable epic, read as it was in all the Irish (and all the Christian) schools on the Continent and in Britain, must have been immense. The systematic adoption by its author of rhyme, a.s.sonant and consonant, and of alliteration, must have moulded the forms of subsequent literary production in all the nascent languages of Europe, north and south, as it taught them the art of alliteration, of a.s.sonant, and of consonant rhymes.

The influence of St. Brendan was not less vast. If the tale of his voyage to the West, and his arrival in a land of fair birds and great rivers be true, he discovered America a thousand years before Columbus. In any case, this voyage to the Land of the Blessed stimulated the imagination of generations. It has been termed a prelude to the "Divina Commedia," and, taken with other mystical visions, which, starting from Ireland, circulated over the Continent, it doubtless helped to direct the great genius of Dante. In a similar manner an Irish visionary tale of St.

Patrick's Purgatory, transferred into the Continental languages, gave origin to one of Calderon's Spanish dramas.

This voyage of Brendan was influential in another direction--in the discovery of America. Columbus studied the narrative. Hrafn of Limerick, the Norse voyager, thoroughly knew it, as did others of his nation, such as Leif and his friends. But there is direct proof of its coercive power.

As you sail into Bristol, you must pa.s.s under a high hill which is known to this day as St. Brendan's Hill.[7] There was a little chapel to St.

Brendan on its summit, because of the reverence which all seamen, whether Norse, Saxon, or Celt, professed for the sailor-saint. Now, in 1480 two British merchants equipped two ships to sail to the Isle of Brasylle in the west of Ireland, but after nine weeks' vain voyaging they put into an Irish port. The Bristol men (who were largely of Norse blood) were not discouraged. In 1498, the Spaniard De Ayala informed his sovereign that for seven years they had every year sent out two, three, or four light ships in search of the Island of Brazil (_i.e._, the Irish "Hy-Breasail") and the Seven Cities. The adventure was under the direction of Cabot, the Genoese, who discovered the northern sh.o.r.e of America a year before Columbus reached its more inviting isles. Thus, either St. Brendan's voyage is a fact, and then he was the true First Discoverer; or it is a fiction, and then it was the direct cause of that discovery. This were a remarkable result of the power of the imaginative literature of the ancient Irish. No other people on earth can claim the discovery of a Continent as the result of a romance.

Whilst some of the early Christians deprecated the study of the pagan cla.s.sics, the Irish held large and more liberal views. This was peculiarly true of St. Columba.n.u.s. Authoritative, inflexible, a daring missionary, his royal mind embraced the wide domain of letters. His eloquence is confessed. His monastic maxims are described as fit for a brotherhood of philosophers, whilst his wit is shown in his lighter poems, his culture in the adoption of old Greek metre, and his Irish training in the terminal rhymes in the alliteration of many of his verses. The following show both final rhymes and concordant initials:

"Dilexerunt =t=enebras =t=etras magis quam l_ucem_, =I=mitari contemnunt vitae =D=ominum =d=_ucem_: =V=elut in somnis =r=egnent una hora laet_antur_, Sed =ae=terna tormenta =a=dhuc =i=llius par_antur_."[8]

His national characteristics were impressed on the great School of Bobbio, which he created, in which he died, and whence his influence long radiated over Italy and the North.

Entering the old Cathedral of Aachen, or Aix-la-Chapelle, you will be shown the great marble chair in which, cold as the marble, Charlemagne sat enthroned, sceptre in hand, robed in imperial purple, and with diadem on brow, dead. So he sate when, a century and a half later, Otho and his riotous courtiers broke open the vault and stood sobered and appalled before the majesty of death. On that same chair he sate, in similar apparel, but with the light of life in his eyes, the new Augustus of a new Empire, when two Irish wanderers were brought before him. In the streets of the city in which he hoped to revive the glory of Athens and the greatness of Rome, they had been heard to cry out: "Whoso wants wisdom, let him come to us and receive it, for we have it for sale." Their terms were not onerous--food and raiment. Their claims stood the test. One, Albinus, was sped to Pavia in Italy; the other, Clement, had the high honour of superseding the learned Anglo-Saxon Alcuin in the Palatine school of the Imperial city. Here, he taught the _trivium_ and _quadrivium_--grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, and arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy--the seven arts. In his school sate Charlemagne under the school-name of David, the members of his family each under an academic name, and with these the members of the cortege, the Palatins or Paladins, destined to power and feats of fame. The teaching of the Irish professors here must have had considerable influence on the literature (_e.g._, the _Chansons de Geste_) which afterwards took its heroes from their scholars. Their authority was enhanced by the fact that Charlemagne himself worked with his Irish professors at a revision of the Gospels on the Greek and on the Syriac text.[9]

In the crash and chaos which followed soon after his death, when feudal va.s.sals, strong as their nominal suzerain, lived an isolated war-like life and forgot letters, in the confusion caused by the shifting about of nations from the east and north--partly a rebound from imperial coercion--certain Irish names shine with especial splendour. The first is that of Johannes Scotus Erigena. Of unquestioned learning, versed in Greek, he was the founder of Scholastic Philosophy. This affects us still, for in Scholasticism, as in a forge, the intellect of the Middle Ages was fired, tempered, and made supple, keen, and trenchant. Hence, with all its powers awakened and under alert control, it was rendered fit for the production of the new sciences of modern times. Nor should it be forgotten that Fearghal the Geometer had but recently died, whose daring scientific speculations as to the Antipodes had shocked the stiff-minded Saxon Boniface. Dicuil brought exact science to bear on a cognate subject, in his work on the measurement of the earth--a work which has been republished in several foreign countries, but never in his native land.

The mult.i.tudes of students who flocked to Paris to hear Erigena, contented with couches of straw in the Rue de la Fouarre and old halls of the University, were not the last who invaded it to hear an eloquent Irishman.

Four hundred years later, in the very beginning of the fourteenth century, another, and perhaps a still more ill.u.s.trious, representative of Irish thought, in the person of Duns Scotus the Subtle Doctor, throned it over the minds of men. So great was his renown that when in 1308 he came to Cologne the city accorded him a triumphal entry, more splendid than a king's.

Far, in every sense, from such ovations is that desolate island off the Scotch coast, where, in the sixth century, "a grey eye turned ever in vain" towards that Ireland "where the songs of the birds are so sweet, where the clerks sing like birds, where the young are so gentle, the old so wise, and the maidens so fair to wed." The exile charges his parting pupil to bear his blessing, part to Alba, part to Ireland--"seven times may she be blessed.... My heart is broken in my breast. If death comes to me suddenly, it will be because of the great love I bear the Gael."

Columba is the first Irish poet of exile--of which our nation has such sad experience since. His poetry, like his life, is instinct with the deepest affection for his native land, whilst his work has been the most fruitful in influence over the intellectual development of Scotland and England.

From the island of Iona, chiefly, went forth that persuasive power which carried education over Britain. The majority of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, all the North of England, where English learning and literature took its rise, were bathed in an Irish intellectual atmosphere. Caedmon began his song in this environment, and when later, in the eight century, English Aldhelm first wrote rhymed Latin verse, it was because he had been a pupil of the Irishman Mailduff, the first Abbot of Malmesbury.[10]

To speak of literary relations between the Irish and the Norse may provoke some derision. Were not these the fierce sea-kings the "Danes," whose delight was in war, and whose avocation in peace was the plunder of shrines? They were, however, paradoxical enough to build Christ Church, and to richly endow it. And it is also a curious fact that, previous to three great invasions of other countries, for which they are severely blamed, they had been appealingly besought for help by their supposed victims. Iarl Hacon went to oppose the aggressions of the Emperor Otho; King Harald Sigurdson to avenge wrongs inflicted by English Harold; and Iarl Sigurd of the Orkneys (whose mother was an Irishwoman) could not resist the appeal of Irish beauty in distress--in the person of Queen Brian Borumha, who was mother of the Norse king of Dublin.

There were, in fact, many and important matrimonial alliances between the Irish and Norse princes, who often joined forces against foes. This happened at Clontarf, where the Irish of Leinster had the alliance of the Dublin and Orkney Norse, whilst Brian brought up the Danes of Limerick.

This battle, let me remark, is described in the literature of both countries, and in both descriptions there are omens and spiritual beings such as signalise the epic of Homer. So great was Norse influence over Ireland that three of our provinces retain the Northern name-endings, and many a headland and bay has a Norse appellation. They delighted in the loveliness of the land. Linnaeus, in latter days, fell on his knees before the splendour of a furze-bush in blossom, and we can readily imagine how tears came into the eyes of the Arctic rovers when they beheld the fresh green of Ovoca or were dazzled by the crimson and gold of Benn Edair, which they called Howth.[11] Irish music charmed them, and even now some of our old airs awake echoes along the norland fiords.[12]

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

"The bulk of the settlers were men who, at least for one generation, had dwelt among a Keltic population and undergone an influence which an old and strongly marked civilisation invariably exercises among those brought under it--an attraction which in this particular case was of so potent a kind that centuries later it metamorphosed the Norman knights of the foremost European kingdom with startling rapidity into Irish chieftains."

"Moreover," he adds, "we find among the emigrants of all ranks men and women of pure Irish and Scottish blood, as also as many sprung from mixed marriages, and traces of this crossing survive in the Irish names borne by some of the foremost characters of the Heroic Age of Iceland, especially the poets, of whom it is also recorded that they were dark men." He considers that this close intercourse with the Celts had to do with heightening and colouring the strong but somewhat prosaic Teuton imagination into that finer and more artistic spirit manifested in the Icelandic Saga. The cla.s.sic land of the Saga was in West Iceland, and there also the proportion of Irish blood was greatest. On the Nors.e.m.e.n who still remain there the Irish influence was yet more effective and powerful. Mr. Vigfusson makes an observation, which is a touching and keen reproach to those on whom it devolves to publish the ma.n.u.script materials of ancient Irish literature. He writes: "Only when it is possible to judge fairly of the remains of the Keltic literature of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, can any definite conception of the influence it exerted on Icelandic, Norse, and English literature be properly estimated."[14]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is noteworthy that the great poem, which marked the revival of English letters after Chaucer, was composed in Ireland. Granting that Spenser found models in Ariosto and Ta.s.so, yet, if he had remained in London, he might never have risen above the standard of the Palace-poets. Shakespeare in London was saved by the drama demanding an environment of popular life.

Probably nothing saved Spenser but his immersion in Irish nature, which his verse so faithfully reflects. Not only are the material beauties of our country--mountains, woods, and rivers--mirrored there, but its spiritual world also. The very name of Una is Irish, and our Puca appears in trimmed English as "the Pouke," whom Shakespeare again introduces as Puck, just as our Gaelic Madb becomes "Queen Mab."

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

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

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

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

Their compositions were sung at all feasts and meetings by other persons, and these also, to his surprise, "receive great rewards and reputation."

Certain it is, though strange, that Edmund Spenser, had he been least bard in the pettiest princ.i.p.ality of Ireland, instead of being the first poet of the monarch of Great Britain, would not have died of hunger. Neglected and starving in Westminster, may he not have regretted his political efforts to destroy the one national organism which above all others had ever generously encouraged the representatives of literature?[17]

It is a study full of interest to watch the development of the culture of the Anglo-Irish Pale, and the continuance of that of the Irish nation. In Latin, their men of learning had long a common language, but the vernacular was not neglected. In 1600 the literary organisation was still strong, and its strength was shown in the great Bardic Contention.

Thirty-two years later an a.s.semblage of historians, antiquaries, and monks was held to collect and collate materials for the great Annals of the Kingdom. Four years the Four Masters laboured at the work, safe by the far sh.o.r.e of Donegall, and fortunate it was, for soon after there was no safety in the "Athens of the West"--the "University of Europe"--for those of its faithful offspring who loved learning and letters. Teacher and pupil were banned. In the midst of mora.s.ses, forests, or mountain-glens, they still studied, their bards still sang, and their minstrels played, often with outposted sentinels on the watch.

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

At the hearths of the people they sang the songs of a Nation.

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

What a subject for a painter would be that meeting between the blind and h.o.a.ry bard Carolan, and the young, bright-eyed child Oliver Goldsmith! The venerable aspect of the ancient Celtic poet he never forgot. "His songs,"

he says, "in general may be compared to those of Pindar; they have frequently the same flight of imagination." He had composed a concerto "with such spirit and elegance that it may be compared (for we have it still) with the finest compositions of Italy." This reminds us of the time when an enemy, Giraldus Cambrensis, declared that the skill of the Irish in music "was incomparably superior to that of any other nation."

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