CHAPTER XXXI PRE-DANISH POETS

The sagas and historic tales, and the poetry that is mingled with them, are of far greater importance from a purely literary point of view than any of the other known productions during the pre-Norman period. Although in almost every instance, I may say, their authorship is unknown, they are of infinitely greater interest than those pieces whose authorship has been carefully preserved. One of the first poets of renown after St. Patrick's time was Eochaidh [Yohy], better known as Dallán Forgaill. It is to him the celebrated "Amra," or elegy on Columcille, whose contemporary he was, is ascribed,[1] and this poem in the Béarla Feni, or Fenian dialect, has come down to us so heavily annotated that the text preserved is the oldest miscellaneous manuscript we have, the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, is almost smothered in glosses and explanations, and indeed would be perfectly unintelligible without them. The gloss and commentary is really far more interesting than the poem, which indeed, considering the fame of Dallán,[Pg 406] is very disappointing; but no doubt it derived half its importance from being in the Fenian dialect, and hence incomprehensible to the ordinary reader. "He wrote," says the learned Colgan, who published at Louvain the lives of the saints which O'Clery collected for him at the beginning of the seventeenth century, "in the native speech, and in ancient style, several little works which cannot in later ages be easily penetrated by many otherwise well versed in the old native idiom and antiquity, and hence they are illustrated by our more learned antiquaries with scattered commentaries, and as rare monuments of our ancient language and antiquity it is customary to lecture on them and expound them in the schools of antiquaries of our nation. Among these is one panegyric or poem always held in great esteem on the praises of St. Colomb, and entitled 'Amra Choluim cille,'" etc. Colgan adds in a note, "I have in my possession one copy of this work, but putting aside a few scattered commentaries which it contains, it is penetrable to-day to only a few, and these the most learned."

This obscure poem is not, so far as I can see, composed in any metre or rhythm. It, with its gloss, is divided into seven chapters and an introduction. Here is the comment on the first words Dia, Dia, which will show better than anything that could be written, the very high state of independent development which the Irish poets had early attained in the technique of their art. We must remember that the manuscript in which we find this was copied about the year 1100, and the commentary may be much older. Irish is indeed the only vernacular language of western Europe where poetic technique had reached so high a perfection in the eleventh century. Fully to see the significance of this one must remember that the English language had not at this time even begun to emerge. Compare this highly-developed critical commentary with anything of the same age that Germany, France, or Italy has to show.

[Pg 407]

    "Dia, Dia,[2] God, God, etc.," says the commentator, "it is why he doubles the first word on account of the rapidity[3] and avidity of the praising, as Deus, Deus meus, etc. But the name of that with the Gael is 'Return-to-a-usual-sound,' for there be three similar standards of expression with the poets of the Gaels, that is re-return to a usual sound, and renarration mode and reduplication, and this is the mark of each of them. The return indeed is a doubling of one word in one place in the round, without adhering to it from that forth. The renarration mode again is renarrating from a like mode; that means the one word—to say it frequently in the round, with an intervention of other words between them, as this—

    "'Came the foam which the plain filters,[4]
    Came the ox through fifty warriors;
    So came the keen active lad
    Whom brown Cu Dinisc left.'"

    "But 'reduplication' is, namely 'refolding,' that is 'bi-geminating,' as this—

    "I fear fear / after long long /
    Pains strong strong / without peace peace /
    Like each each / until doom doom /
    For gloom gloom / will not cease cease."[5]

    [Pg 408]

    "There are two divisions of these in this fore-speech [to the Amra]; that is, we have the 'Return-to-a-usual-sound' and the 'renarration-mode,' but in the body of the hymn we have the 'renarration-mode' only."

Here is another passage which will show the difficulty that was found so early as the eleventh century in explaining this Fenian dialect.

    "IT IS A HARP WITHOUT A ceis, it is a church without an abbot—i.e., ceis is a name for a small harp which is used as an accompaniment to a large harp in co-playing; or it is a name for the small pin which holds the cord in the wood of the harp; or for the tacklings, or for the heavy cord. Or the ceis in the harp is what holds the side part with its chords in it, as the poet said—it was Ros[6] mac Find who sang it, or Ferceirtné[7] the poet,

    "'The base-chord concealed not music from the harp of Crabtene,
    Until it dropped sleep-deaths upon hosts.

        *    *    *    *    *

    Sweeter than any music, the harp
    Which delighted Labhraidh [Lowry] Lorc the Mariner,
    Though sullen about his secrets was the King,
    The ceis, or base-chord of Craftiné concealed it not.'"

This poem is an allusion to the sagas which grouped themselves round the sons of Ugony the great and Lowry the Mariner, who reigned about 530 years B.C.

In another place he quotes a poem of Finn mac Cúmhail's.

    "'AND SEA-COURSE'—i.e., he was skilful in the art of renis[8] that is 'of the sea,' or it may be rian that would be right in it, as Finn, grandson of Baoisgne [Bweesgna] said—

    "'A tale I have for you. Ox murmurs,
    Winter roars, summer is gone.
    Wind high cold, sun low,
    Cry is attacking, sea resounding.

    [Pg 409] Very red raying has concealed form.
    Voice of geese [Barnacles] has become usual,
    Cold has caught the wings of birds,
    Ice-frost time; wretched, very wretched.[9]
    A tale I have for you.'"

Another verse quoted alludes to the chess-board of Crimhthann Nianáir, who came to the throne eleven years before the birth of Christ.[10]

    "FECHT AFOR NIA NEM—i.e., the time when the champion would come, that is Columcille, for nia means a champion, as is said—

    "'The chessboard of Crimhthann, brave champion,
    A small child carries it not on his arm (?)
    Half of its chessmen are of yellow gold.
    The other half of white bronze.
    One man of its chessmen alone
    Would purchase six married couples.'"

The ancient commentator quotes, thirty-five times in all, from various poems, in explanation of his text, including poems ascribed to Columcille himself, and to Gráinne, the daughter of Cormac mac Art, who eloped from Finn mac Cúmhail. He quotes the satire made on Breas in the time of the Tuatha De Danann, and a verse of St. Patrick (some of whose Irish poetry is also quoted by the "Four Masters"), and a poet called Colman mac Lenene, who was first a poet, but afterwards became a saint, and founded the great school of Cloyne.

[Pg 410]

Dallán wrote two other Amras, one on Senan of Innis Cathaigh, "which," remarks Colgan, "on account of antiqueness of style and gracefulness is amongst those fond of antiquity, always held in great esteem," and another in praise of Conall of Inskeel in Donegal, in one grave with whom he was buried. There has also come down to us in the same inscrutable Fenian dialect a poem of his consisting of eighty-four lines on the shield of Hugh, King of Oriel, which, unlike his Amra, is in perfect rhyme and metre.[11]

It was he who headed the bardic body when they were so nearly banished from the kingdom, and were only saved by the intervention of St. Columcille at the Synod of Drom Ceat [Cat], of which more hereafter. There is a curious specimen of his overbearing truculence in a story preserved in the same manuscript (of about the year 1100) that has preserved his Amra; it is headed "A Story from which it is inferred that Mongan was Finn mac Cúmhail." The poet was stopping with Mongan, King of Ulster.

[Pg 411]

    "Every night the poet would recite a story to Mongan. So great was his lore that they were thus from Halloweve till May-day. He had gifts and food from Mongan. One day Mongan asked his poet what was the death of Fothad Airgdech. Forgoll said he was slain at Duffry in Leinster. Mongan said it was false. The poet [on hearing that] said he would satirise him with his lampoons, and he would satirise his father and his mother and his grandfather, and he would sing [spells] upon their waters, so that fish should not be caught in their river-mouths. He would sing upon their woods so that they should not give fruit, upon their plains so that they should be barren for ever of any produce.

    "Mongan [thereupon] promised him his fill of precious things, so far as [the value of] seven bondmaids, or twice seven bondmaids, or three times seven. At last he offers him one-third, or one-half of his land, or his whole land; at last [everything] save only his own liberty with that of his wife Breóthigernd, unless he were redeemed before the end of three days.

    "The poet refused all except as regards his wife. For the sake of his honour Mongan consented. Thereat his wife was sorrowful, the tear was not taken from her cheek. Mongan told her not to be sorrowful, help would certainly come to them."

Eventually the poet is very dramatically shown to be in the wrong.[12]

Dallán Forgaill was succeeded in the Head Ollamhship of all the Irish bards by his pupil Senchan Torpeist, who was equally overbearing, and whose intolerable insolence is admirably satirised in the story called the "Proceedings of the Great Bardic Association." Only two poems of his have come down to us, one being his elegy on the death of his master Dallán Forgaill.

[Pg 412]

The next great lay poet of importance seems to have been Cennfaeladh, who died in 678, whose verses are constantly cited by the "Four Masters." He was originally an Ulster warrior who was wounded in the battle of Moyrath, which was fought when Adamnan, Columcille's biographer, was eleven years old, and he was brought to be cured to the house of one Brian in Tuaim Drecain, where there were three schools, one of classics,[13] one of law, and one of poetry. He used to attend—apparently during his convalescence—these various schools, and what he heard in the day he would repeat to himself at night, so that "his brain of forgetfulness was extracted from his head after its having been cloven in the battle of Moyrath." "And he put a clear thread of poetry through them, and wrote them on flags and on tables, and he put them into a vellum book." Hence he became a great lawyer as well as a poet, and a considerable part of the celebrated Brehon Law Book, called the Book of Acaill, is ascribed to him.[14]

Angus Céile Dé[15] [Kail-a Day], or the Culdee, is the next poet of note who claims our attention. He flourished about the year 800, and is the author of the well-known Féil?rè, or Calendar. In this work one stanza in rinn áird metre is[Pg 413] devoted to each day of the year, in connection with the name of some saint—an Irish one wherever possible. The Féil?rè is followed by a poem of five or six hundred lines, which with its glosses and commentaries is probably the most extensive piece of Old Irish poetry that we have. Whitley Stokes, who edited it with great care, considers it to be of the tenth rather than the late eighth or early ninth century. If so, this would leave its authorship doubtful, but it has been shown, I think by Kuno Meyer, that the number of deponental forms contained in it might point to a higher antiquity than that which Whitley Stokes allows. It has certainly been always hitherto accepted as the work of Angus, and as it cannot well, in any case, be more than a century or so later, we may let it stand here, as it has always done, under his name. In the ancient and curious Irish notes and commentary on the Féil?rè we find a great number of verses quoted from the poet-saints, and these include St. Patrick, St. Ciaran the elder, St. Comgall with St. Columcille his friend, St. Ité the virgin, St. Kevin of Glendaloch, St. Ciaran of Clonmacnois, St. Molaise [Moleesha] of Devenish (who sent Columcille to banishment), St. Mochuda of Lismore, St. Molling, St. Fechin of Forc, St. Aireran of Clonard, Maelruan of Tallaght, Adamnan (Columcille's biographer), and Angus the Culdee himself, a goodly company of priests and poets; but no one seems to have been anything esteemed in ancient Erin unless he either was or was reputed to be a poet! Of true poetic spirit it contains not much, but it is a wonderful example of technical difficulties overcome. The metre is one of the most difficult, a six-syllable one, with dissyllabic endings. The first stanzas, translated into the metre of the original, run as follows:—

"Bless, O Christ, my speaking,
King of heavens seven,
Strength and wealth and POWER
In this HOUR be given.
[Pg 414]
Given,[16] O thou brightest,
Destined chains to sever,
King of Angels GLORIOUS,
And victORIOUS ever.

Ever o'er us shining,
Light to mortals given,
Beaming daily, NIGHTLY,
BRIGHTLY out of heaven."

The Saltair na Rann has also been usually ascribed to Angus, but it can hardly be, as Dr. Whitley Stokes has shown, earlier than the year 1000,[17] for it mentions apparently as contemporaries Brian king of Munster, and Dub-da-lethe archbishop of Armagh, appointed in 988. It is a collection of one hundred and sixty-two poems in early Middle Irish containing between eight and nine thousand lines, mostly composed in Deibhidh [D'yevvee] metre. These poems are all of a more or less religious cast, and most of them are based (like the Saxon Caedmon's) on Old Testament history, but they also contain a prodigious deal of curious matter. The opening poem begins—

"Mo rí-se rí nime náir."[18]
("My king is the King of noble Heaven.")

[Pg 415]

It tells of the creation of the world, of the sun, of heaven and earth, light and darkness, day and night, of how the earth separated from the primal material, and was surrounded by the firmament, the world being "like an apple, goodly and round"; then the king created the mists, the current of the cold watery air, the four chief winds, and the eight sub-winds, with their colours, "the white, the clear purple, the blue, the great green, the yellow, the red truly-bold, ... the black, the grey, the speckled (?), the dark (?), the dull-black, the dun-coloured."[19] The poet then discusses the distance from the earth to the firmament, the seven planets, the distance from the earth to the moon, from moon to sun, the windless ethereal heaven, the distance between the firmament and the sun, the motionless Olympus or third heaven, the distance from the firmament to heaven and from the earth to the depths of hell, the five zones, the firmament round the earth, like its shell round an egg, the seventy-two windows of the firmament, with a shutter on each, the seventh heaven revolving like a wheel, with the seven planets from the creation, the signs of the zodiac,[20] the time (30 days 10? hours) that the sun is in each, the day of the month on which it enters each, the month in which it is in each, the division of the firmament into twelve[Pg 416] parts, and the five things which every intelligent man should know—the day of the month, age of the moon, height of the tide, day of the week, and saints' festivals![21]

The attribution of colours to the winds in this poem is curious and appears to be Irish. I have met traces of this fancy even amongst the modern peasantry. There is a strange entry in the Great Brehon Law Book, the Seanchas Mór, which quotes the colours of the winds in the same order.

    "The colour of each," says this strange passage, "differs from the other, namely, the white and the crimson, the blue[22] and the green, the yellow and the red, the black and the grey, the speckled and the dark, the ciar (dull black) and the grisly. From the east comes the crimson wind, from the south the white, from the north the black, from the west the dun. The red and the yellow winds are produced between the white and the crimson, the green and the grey between the grisly and the white, the grey and the ciar between the grisly and the jet-black, the dark and the mottled between the black and the crimson. And those are all the sub-winds contained in each and all the cardinal winds."

After thus describing the creation of the world in the first poem, we are introduced in subsequent ones to heaven and the angels, who are named for us, and then shown hell and Lucifer's abode, the description of which, except that it is in verse, reminds us of that given by St. Brendan. Next we are introduced to Adam and Eve, and it is stated that Adam had spent a thousand years in the Garden of Eden. The jealousy of Lucifer is described, and his temptation of Eve, whom he persuades to open the door and let him into the garden. Then he makes her eat the apple, and Adam takes half from[Pg 417] her and eats also. The eleventh poem describes the evil result, and is quite Miltonic and imaginative. It tells us how for a week, after being driven out, Adam and his wife remain without fire, house, drink, food, or clothing. He then begins to lament to Eve over all his lost blessings and admits that he has done wrong. Thereupon Eve asks Adam to kill her, so that God may pity him the more. Adam refuses. He goes forth in his starvation to seek food, and finds nothing but herbs, the food of the lawless beasts. He proposes then to Eve to do penance and adore God in silence, Eve in the Tigris for thirty days, and Adam in the Jordan for forty-seven days, a flagstone under their feet and the water up to their necks. Eve's hair fell dishevelled round her and her eyes were directed to heaven in silent prayer for forgiveness. Then Adam prays the river Jordan "to fast with him against God, with all its many beasts, that pardon may be granted to him." Then the stream ceased to flow, and gathered together every living creature that was in it, and they all supplicate the angelic host to join with them in beseeching God to forgive Adam. They obtain their request, and forgiveness is granted to Adam and to all his seed except the unrighteous. When the devil, however, hears this, he, "like a man in the shape of a white angel," goes to Eve as she stands in the Tigris, and gets her to leave her penance, saying that he had been sent by God. They then go to Adam, who at once recognises the devil, and shows Eve how she has been deceived. Eve falls half dead to the ground and reproaches Lucifer. He, however, defends himself, and repeats to them at length the story of his expulsion from heaven for refusing to worship Adam. He concludes by threatening vengeance on him and his descendants. Adam and his wife then live alone for a year on grass, without fire, house, music, or raiment, drinking water from their palms, and eating green herbs in the shadows of trees and in caverns. Eve brings forth a beautiful boy, who at once proceeds to cut grass for his father, who calls him Cain. God[Pg 418] at last pities Adam and sends Michael to him with various seeds, and Michael teaches him husbandry and the use of animals. Seven years afterwards Eve brings forth Abel. In a vision she sees Cain drinking the blood of Abel.

In this manner, with a free play of the imagination, the writer runs through both Old and New Testaments, down to the denial of Peter and the death of Christ, in 150 poems, to which are appended twelve more, eleven of them in a different and more melodious metre, "rannaigheacht mhór," on the resurrection.

There were a number of other pre-Danish poets, but only occasional pieces of theirs have been preserved. Their obits are often mentioned by the annalists, but the few longer pieces of theirs that have survived to our day being mostly historical or genealogical, and as such devoid of much literary interest, we may neglect them.
********
[1] Mr. Strachan, however, has lately cast doubts upon its genuineness and ascribes it in its present form to a later date.

[2] I follow here O'Beirne Crowe's imperfect rendering. If he translates some words of this difficult piece inaccurately it does not much matter for my purpose.

[3] Ar abela no ar lainni an molta. This word Abél for "quick," "rapid," though neither in O'Reilly's nor Windisch's nor the Scotch Gaelic dictionaries, is a common one in the spoken language of West Connacht. It occurs twice in the "Three Shafts of Death," where it is mistranslated by "awful," but it must be carefully distinguished from M. I. Abdul, Keating's Adhbhal. The word is not known in Waterford, and my friend the late Mr. Fleming, who was the chief authority in the Royal Irish Academy on the spoken language, and who hailed from that county, was, I believe, unacquainted with it.

[4] This translation is evident nonsense, but I cannot better it. The original is "Ric in sithbe sitlas mag."

[5] Is é immoro adíabul, i.e., afhillind, i.e., doemnad, ut est hoc, i.e.,

"águr águr iar céin chéin
Bith i péin, phein ni síth síth,
Amail cách cách, co bráth bráth,
In cech tráth tráth, cid scíth scíth."

My translation is in the exact metre of the original, and conveys in English the manner in which the heptasyllabic Irish lines were pronounced, in which, despite of what some continental scholars have advanced, there is, I believe, no alternation of beat or stress at all, and neither trochee nor iambus. O'Beirne Crowe mistranslates águr by "I ask."

[6] Ros was chief poet of Erin in the time of St. Patrick, and is said to have helped him in redacting the Brehon Law.

[7] Ferceirtné was the poet at Conor mac Nessa's Court in the first century B.C., who contended in the "Dialogue of the Two Sages," see above p. 240.

[8] See above for réin being used for sea, p. 10.

[9] The translation is doubtful. Dr. Sigerson has well versified it in his "Bards of the Gael and Gaul," p. 116. The original has a curious metrical effect not unlike that other piece attributed to Finn, quoted above p. 275. It might be printed thus—

Scél lém duib            Roruad rath
Dordaid dam              Rocleth cruth,
Snigid gaim              Rogab gnath
Rofaith sam.              Giugrand guth.
Gaeth ard huar,          Rogab uacht
Isel grian                  Ete én,
Gair arrith                Aigre ré
Ruthach rían.            E, mosclé.

[10] See above p. 27 for Crimhthann's chess-board.

[11] Published by Professor Connellan, but without a translation, at p. 258 of Vol. V. of Ossianic Society's publications. It, too, is in the Féni dialect. The first verse, in honour of Dubh-Giolla, "the Black Attendant," which was the name of the King's shield will show its abstruseness.

"Dub gilla dub, arm naise,
Eo Rosa raon slegh snaise,
Adeardius daib diupla gainde
d'Aodh do cinn lainne glaise."

It would appear that Dallán could write Irish as well as Béarla Féni from this verse, which is ascribed to him by the "Four Masters." "Dallán Forgaill," they say, "dixit hoc do bhás Choluim Cille."

"Is leigheas legha gan lés
Is dedhail smeara re smuais
Is abhran re cruit gan chéis
Sinne déis ar nargain uais."

"It is the healing of a leech without light [i.e., in the dark]; it is a dividing of the marrow from the bone; it is the song of a harp without a base-string that we are, after being deprived of our noble." This verse does not occur in the Amra, though the expression a "harp without a base-string" does.

[12] See the whole story, carefully edited by Kuno Meyer, in "The Voyage of Bran," p. 45, where the poet is called Forgoll, but this is evidently the same as our Dallán Forgaill, though Kuno Meyer appears not to think so, for he has the following note: "Forgoll seems to have been an overbearing and exacting filé of the type of Athirne and Dallán Forgaill." But as the story synchronises with the life of Dallán Forgaill, and there is, so far as I know, no second poet known as Forgoll, it is evidently the same person. The "Dallán," i.e., the "blind man" (for he lost his eyesight through overstudy), being prefixed to Forgaill appears to inflect it in the genitive case, as An Tighearna easbuig, "the Lord Bishop," i.e., the lord of a bishop, "the blind man of a Forgall."

[13] Scoil "legind."

[14] See one of the poems ascribed to him printed by Professor Connellan from the Book of Ballymote, Ossianic Society, vol. v. p. 268. If it is Cennfealadh's it has been greatly altered during the course of transcription.

[15] Céile Dé, or Culdee, i.e., "Servus Dei," was a phrase used with much latitude, and in general denoted an ascetic, but occasionally also a missionary, monk. We find the Dominicans of Sligo called Culdees in a MS. of the year 1600. They seem to have arisen in the seventh or early eighth century. The Scottish Culdees, becoming lax in later times, married and established a spurious hereditary order. There is, of course, no truth in the fable that they were the pre-Patrician or early Scottish Christians, a notion which Campbell has propagated in his fine poem "Reulura," i.e., "réull-úr":—

"Peace to their souls, the pure Culdees
Were Albyn's earliest priests of God,
Ere yet an island of her seas
By foot of Saxon monk was trod!"

[16] This tour de force, which consists of laying stress in the beginning of each succeeding stanza upon the word which ended the last, is common in Irish and is called conachlonn. It is much used by Angus. It seems to be self-evolved in Irish, whose prosody is full of original terms unborrowed from the Latin, which, to my mind, tells strongly in favour of pre-Christian culture. It is curious that Horace who falls into conachlonn in his second ode, never returned to a form so well adapted to lyric purposes:—

"Dextera sacras jaculatus arces
Terruit urbem.
Terruit gentes," etc.

[17] He has edited the text without a translation from the only MS. that contains it—Rawlinson, B 502, in the Bodleian, in the "Anecdota Oxoniensia" Series. Oxford deserves splendidly of Celtic scholars. If only Dublin would follow her example!

[18] "Mo rí-se rí nime náir
Cen huabur cen immarbáig,
Dorósat domun dualach,
Mo rí bith-beo bith-buadach."

[19] "In gel in corcarda glan,
In glass ind uaine allmar,
In buidi in derg, derb dána,
Nisgaib fergg frisodála,
In dub, ind liath ind alad,
In t-emen in chiar chálad,
Ind odar doirchi datha
Nidat soirchi sogabtha."

The hundred and fifty-second poem, which is a beautiful one, again asks what are the colours of the winds. Line 7,948.

[20] A good example of how Irish assimilates foreign words by cutting off their endings:—

"Aquair, Pisc, Ariet, Tauir, Treb,
Geimin choir, ocus Cancer,
Leo Uirgo, Libru, Scoirp scrus,
Sagitair, Capricornus."

Leo is pronounced L'yo as a monosyllable.

[21] See Whitley Stokes' introduction for the analysis of the 1st, the 11th, and the 12th poem.

[22] "Glas" must be here translated "blue." It is a colour used by the Irish with great latitude, and apparently means yellowish, or light blue, or greenish grey. To this day a grey eye is súil ghlas and green grass is feur glas, yet the colour of grass is not that of a grey or even of a grey-green eye. We want a study on colours and their shades as at present used by the Irish and the Scotch Highlanders.