CHAPTER XXXV FOUR CENTURIES OF DECAY

For four centuries after the Anglo-Norman, or more properly the Cambro-Norman invasion, the literature of Ireland seems to have been chiefly confined to the schools of the bards, and the bards themselves seem to have continued on the rather cut-and-dry lines of tribal genealogy, religious meditations, personal eulogium, clan history, and elegies for the dead. There reigns during this period a lack of imagination and of initiative in literature; no new ground is broken, no fresh paths entered on, no new saga-stuff unearthed, no new metres discovered. There is great technical skill exhibited, but little robust originality; great cleverness of execution, but little boldness of conception. How closely the bards ran in the groove of their predecessors is evident from the number of poems of doubtful authorship, ascribed by some authorities to bards of the pre-Norman or even Danish period, and by others to poets of the thirteenth, fourteenth, or even fifteenth centuries, the work of the later period being so very often both in style and language scarcely distinguishable from the earlier which it imitates.

Another characteristic of these four centuries is the number of hereditary bards of the same name and family which we find generation after generation, each one imitating his predecessor,[Pg 466] and producing his inauguration odes, his eulogies, and his elegies, for each succeeding race of chiefs and patrons.

This period is the post-epic, post-saga period. Probably not one of the Red Branch stories was even materially altered during it. Stories of the Fenian cycle, however, continued to be propagated and improved upon, and no doubt many new ones were invented. But there is little or no trace of the composition of fresh miscellaneous saga, and the only poetry that seems to have flourished beside the classic metres of the bards is the so-called "Ossianic," a good deal of which may, perhaps, have assumed something of its present form during this period.

Some attempt there was at the careful keeping of annals, but scarcely any at writing regular history, though the fifteenth century produced McCraith's "Exploits of Torlough," to be noticed further on. We shall now briefly glance at this period age by age.

The thirteenth century, that succeeding the coming of the Normans, is far more barren in literature than the one which preceded them. Only five or six poets are mentioned as belonging to it, and their surviving poems amount to only a few hundred lines, with the exception of those of the great religious bard Donogha Mór O'Daly, who died in 1244 "a poet," record the "Four Masters," "who never was and never shall be surpassed." All his poems extant are of a religious character. He was buried in the abbey of Boyle, in the county of Roscommon, in which county I have heard, up to a few years ago, verses ascribed to him repeated by more than one old peasant. It is usually believed that he was a cleric and abbot of the beautiful monastery of Boyle, but there is no evidence for this, and he may have been in fact a layman. Thirty-one poems of his, containing in all some four thousand two hundred lines, have been preserved, and for their great smoothness have earned for their author the not very happy title of the Ovid of Ireland. Here is a specimen of one of his shorter pieces, written on his unexpectedly finding himself[Pg 467] unable to shed a tear after his arriving at Loch Derg on a pilgrimage:

    "Alas, for my journey to Loch Derg, O King of the churches and the bells; 'I have come' to weep thy bruises and thy wound, and yet from my eye there cometh not a tear.[1]

    "With an eye that moistens not its pupil, after doing every evil, no matter how great, with a heart that seeketh only (its own) peace, alas! O king, what shall I do?

    "Without sorrowfulness of heart, without softening, without contrition, or weeping for my faults,—Patrick head of the clergy, he never thought that he could gain God in this way.

    "The one son of Calphurn, since we are speaking of him, 'alas! O Virgin, sad my state!' he was never seen whilst alive without the trace of tears in his eye.

    "In (this) hard, narrow stone-walled (cell), after all the evil I have done, all the pride I have felt. Alas! my pity! that I find no tear, and I buried alive in the grave.

    "O one-Son, by whom all were created, and who didst not shun the death of the three thorns, with a heart than which stone is not more hard, 'tis pity my journey to Loch Derg."

Here is another specimen, a good deal of which I once heard from a poor beggarman in the County Mayo, but it is also preserved in numerous manuscripts:

"My son, remember what I say,
That on the Day of Judgment's shock,
When men go stumbling down the Mount,
The sheep may count thee of their flock.[2]

And narrow though thou find the path
To Heaven's high rath, and hard to gain,
I warn thee shun yon broad white road
That leads to the abode of pain.
[Pg 468]
For us is many a snare designed,
To fill our mind with doubts and fears.
Far from the land where lurks no sin,
We dwell within our Vale of Tears.

Not on the world thy love bestow,
Passing as flowers that blow and die;
Follow not thou the specious track
That turns the back on God most high.

But oh! let faith, let hope, let love,
Soar far above this cold world's way,
Patience, humility, and awe—
Make them thy law from day to day.

And love thy neighbour as thyself,
(Not for his pelf thy love should be),
But a greater love than every love
Give God above who loveth thee.

    *    *    *    *    *

The seven shafts wherewith the Unjust
Shoots hard to thrust us from our home,
Canst thou avoid their fiery path,
Dread not the wrath that is to come.

Shun sloth, shun greed, shun sensual fires,
(Eager desires of men enslaved)
Anger and pride and hatred shun,
Till heaven be won, till man be saved.

To Him, our King, to Mary's son
Who did not shun the evil death,
Since He our hope is, He alone,
Commit thy body, soul, and breath.

Since Hell each man pursues each day,
Cleric and lay, till life be done,
Be not deceived as others may,
Remember what I say, my son."[3]
[Pg 469]

The fourteenth century possesses exactly the same characteristics as the thirteenth, only the poets are more numerous. O'Reilly mentions over a score of them whose verses amount to nearly seven thousand lines. Of these the best known is probably John Mór O'Dúgan of whom about 2,600 lines survive—important rather for the information they convey than for their poetry. His greatest, or at least his most valuable piece, is about the tribes and territories of the various districts in Meath, Ulster, and Connacht, on the arrival of the Normans, and the names of the chiefs who ruled them.[4] In this poem he devotes 152 lines to Meath, 354 to Ulster, 328 to Connacht, and only 56 to Leinster, death having apparently carried him off (in the year 1372) before he had finished his researches into the tribes and territories of that district. But luckily for us his younger contemporary—Gilla-na-naomh O'Huidhrin [Heerin]—took it up and completed it,[5] so that the two poems, usually copied together, form a single piece of 1,660 lines in deibhidh [d'y?vee] metre, which has thrown[Pg 470] more light upon names and territories than perhaps any other of the same extent. It is, despite the difficult and recondite verse, a work mainly of research and not of poetry. The same may be said of nearly all O'Dugan's poems, another of which called the "Forus Focal," is really a vocabulary in verse of obsolete words, which though of similar orthography have different or even contrary meanings. It was in this century the great miscellaneous collection called the Book of Ballymote was compiled.

The fifteenth century differs very little in character from the preceding one. We find about the same number of poets with about the same amount of verses—between six and seven thousand lines, according to O'Reilly—still surviving, or as O'Reilly underrates the number, probably about ten thousand lines. The poets were now beginning to feel the rude weight of the prosaic Saxon, and Fergal O'Daly chief poet of Corcamroe, Maurice O'Daly a poet of Breffhy, Dermot O'Daly of Meath, Hugh óg Mac Curtin, and Dubhthach [Duffach] son of Eochaidh [Yohee] "the learned," with several more, are mentioned as having been cruelly plundered and oppressed by Lord Furnival and the English. It was in this century that those most valuable annals usually called the Annals of Ulster were compiled from ancient books now lost, by Cathal Maguire who was born in 1438. The great collection called the Book of Lecan was copied at the beginning of this century, and another most important work the "Caithréim, or warlike exploits of Turlough O'Brien," was written about the year 1459 by John Mac Craith, chief historian of North Munster. This though composed in a far more exaggerated and inflated style than even the "War of the Gael with the Gaill," which it resembles, yet gives the most accurate account we have of the struggles of the Irish against the English in Munster from the landing of Henry II. till the death of Lord de Clare in 1318. It was at the very beginning of this century the hagiographical collection called the Leabhar Breac was made.

[Pg 471]

The sixteenth century cannot properly be said to mark a transition period in Irish literature, as it does in the literature of so many other European countries. It has, indeed, left far more numerous documents behind it than the preceding one, but this is mainly due to the fact that less time has elapsed during which they could be lost. Their style and general contents differ little, until the very close of the century, from those of their predecessors. O'Reilly chronicles the names of about forty poets whose surviving pieces amount to over ten thousand lines. But so many MSS. which were in O'Reilly's time in private hands, or which, like the Stowe MSS., were unapproachable by students, have since been deposited in public libraries or become otherwise accessible, that it would, I think, be safe to add at least half as much again to O'Reilly's computation. I have even in my own possession poems by nearly a dozen writers belonging to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries whose names are not mentioned at all by O'Reilly; and the O'Conor Don has shown me a manuscript copied at Ostend, in Belgium, in 1631, for one Captain Alexander Mac Donnell, from which O'Curry transcribed a thousand pages of poems "of which with a very few exceptions," he writes, "no copies are known to me elsewhere in Ireland." A considerable number of these poems, nearly all of them unknown to O'Reilly, were composed in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, so that this one manuscript alone would largely swell O'Reilly's estimate for this period.

Enormous quantities of books however, belonging to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have been lost, and are still being lost every day. It is an accident that Friar O'Gara's[6] and the O'Conor Don's collection—both compiled abroad—have escaped. If, during the middle of the sixteenth[Pg 472] century, a collector of poetry had gone round transcribing the classical poems of that age, he would have found large collections preserved in the houses of almost every scion of the old Gaelic nobility, with scarcely an exception. On the break-up of the houses of the Irish chiefs the archives of their families and their manuscript libraries were lost or carried abroad. An excellent example of what may be called tribal poetry, such as every great Gaelic house possessed, is contained in a manuscript in Trinity College, which a Fellow of the last century, called O'Sullivan, luckily got transcribed for himself, and which is now in the college library.[7] The collection thus made, from about 1570 to 1615, goes under the title of the "Book of the O'Byrnes," and contains sixty or seventy poems made by their own family bards and by several of the leading bards of Ireland, for the various members of the O'Byrnes of Ranelagh near Dublin, and of the O'Byrnes of Wicklow, who for three generations maintained their struggle with the English, only succumbing in the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Other family records of this nature, which were once possessed in every county by the bardic families and by the chiefs, have perished by the score. A glance at a few typical poems belonging to the O'Byrnes will give a good idea of the functions of the sixteenth-century bards, and the nature of their poems. They are composed on all kinds of subjects[Pg 473] connected with the wars, genealogy, and history of the tribe and its chiefs. Many are eulogiums, some warnings, some political poems, some elegies. Here are two or three specimens; the first a poem of fifty-six lines, by Angus O'Daly, on the head of one of the chiefs of the clan spiked on the battlements of Dublin.

"O body which I see without a head,
It is the sight of thee which has withered up my strength,
Divided and impaled in Ath-cliath [Dublin],
The learned of Banba [Ireland] will feel its loss.[8]

Who will relieve the wants of the poor?
Who will bestow cattle on the learned?
O body, since thou art without a head
It is not life which we care to choose after thee."

Another poem, by John O'H?ginn asks who[9] will buy nine verses from him. By his hand he swears, though high the fame of the men of Leinster, they are all cowed now. The O'Tooles of the once heavy gifts have consented to the peace of the English, and till they revoke it they will not give one white groat for twenty-marks-worth of a poem. The Cavanaghs are as bad, the Fitzgeralds and the O'Mores, too, are afraid of the foreigners to buy a poem. One man alone is not obedient to foreign English custom, Aodh [O'Byrne] son of John, the true sweetheart of the bardic schools of the race of the plain of Conn. Except him, the grandson of Redmond alone, the poet sees not one who[Pg 474] will buy his nine stanzas—or if such exist, he knows them not.[10]

Another poem of 180 lines by Eochaidh [Yohee] O'Hussey is on the extreme winsomeness and beauty of a certain lady of the O'Byrnes, Rose by name, probably the famous wife of Fiach O'Byrne, who, poor thing, was afterwards captured by the English in 1595 and by them burned alive in the yard of Dublin Castle. The English statesmen who record this piece of work in the State Papers, did not in the least understand the civilisation or customs of Lady Rose, her bards and her clan, and it is only at the present day that it is possible for the scholar through the medium of the State Papers on one side and native Irish documents on the other, to put himself en rapport with both parties; it is a process both absorbing and painful. "What is troubling the ladies of the Gael?" asks the poet, "is it want of gold or lack of jewels, wherefore is the dear troop downcast? Why are the queens of princely race disquieted? Why rise they up heavy at heart? Why lie they down discomfited? Why are their spirits troubled? It is because one lady so excels them all, she is the troubler of the hosts of the men of Inisfail, the one cause of the sorrow of our ladies. Let me," adds the poet gallantly, "have the singing of her."[11]

Another is by Maoilsheachlainn [Malachy in English] O'Coffey, on seeing one of the O'Byrnes' strongholds, probably Ballinacor, occupied by a stranger.[12] Another by one[Pg 475] of the O'Mulconrys warns Fiach O'Byrne, that whether he likes to hear it or not, the axe of the English is raised above his head to strike him down.[13] The poet points to the Leinster septs who had been exterminated or escaped destruction by making submission, and how is Fiach to escape, and specially how to escape treachery?

Another poem composed by Donough Mac Eochaidh, or Keogh, with high political intent, is intended to bring about a closer feeling of friendship between the sons of Fiach O'Byrne and John son of Redmond O'Byrne, who had been alienated, designedly, as he intimates, by a lying story propagated by a foreigner, whereas the O'Byrnes of Ranelagh ever sought to avoid giving offence, and no evil story calculated to increase enmity should be believed about one by the other.[14]

Another poet of the Mac Eochaidhs, the household bards of the O'Byrnes, sings the generosity of Torlagh, son of Fiacha, "their fame is the wealth of the tribe of Ranelagh, that is the saying of every one who knows them,[15] the bestowal of their jewels, that is the treasure of the tribe of Ranelagh, of the numerous incursions." "Small is their desire to amass treasures, nobler is the thing for which they conceive[Pg 476] a wish; every single man of the blood of Fiach O'Bryne has taken upon himself to distribute his riches for Fiach!"[16]

Another poem is a splendid war-song by Angus O'Daly on a victory of the O'Byrnes over the English. "I rejoice that not one was left of the remnant of the slaughter but the captive who is in hand in bondage:"[17] "the blaze of the burning country makes day out of midnight for them."

A remarkable poet of the end of this century was another Angus O'Daly, the Red Bard, or Angus of the Satires, as he was called. He seems to have been employed by the English statesmen, Lord Mountjoy and Sir George Carew, for the deliberate purpose of satirising all the Gaelic families in the kingdom, and those Anglo-Normans who sympathised with them. Angus travelled the island up and down on this sinister mission. It was indeed an evil time. The awful massacres of Rathlin and Clanaboy in Ulster, the hideous treachery of Mullaghmast in Leinster, the revolting deeds of Bingham in the west, and the unspeakable horrors that followed on the Geraldines rebellion in the south, had reduced the Irish nobles to a condition of the direst poverty. This poverty and the inhospitality which he connected with it—points on which the Irish were particularly sore—were the mark at which Angus aimed his arrows. He usually polished off each house or clan in a single rann or quatrain. His Irish rhymes are peculiarly happy. Here are some specimens of his satire. He says of Thomas Fitzgerald, Knight of Glynn, that he looked so grudgingly at him as he ate his supper that the piece half-chewed[Pg 477] stuck in his throat at the very sight of the other's eyes. Of Limerick he says the only thing he was thankful for was the bad roads which would prevent him from ever seeing it again. Of the Fitzmaurices he says that he will neither praise them nor satirise them, for they are just poor gentlemen—admirable satire, and it cannot be doubted that they keenly felt the point of it! Often, however, Angus is only abusive—thus of Maguire of Enniskillen he says that "he is a badger for roughness and greyness, an ape for stature and ugliness, a lobster for the sharpness of his two eyes, a fox for the foulness of his breath,"[18] a verse in which the happiness of the Irish rhyming carries off the poverty of the sentiment. He harps on the blindness of the Mac Ternans,[19] the misanthropy of the Mac Gillycuddy, the inborn evil of the Fitzgibbons,[20] the poverty of the O'Callaghans, the bad wines of the O'Sullivans, the decrepitude of the O'Reillys, and so on.

The Red Bard went on with his satires on the men of the four provinces, with none to say him nay, until he came to Tipperary, where he was misguided enough to satirise the chief of the O'Meaghers, whose servant, stung out of all control, forgot that the person of a bard was sacred, and instantly thrust a knife into his throat, thus putting an end to him and his satires. Angus, however, even as he died, uttered one rann in which, for the good of his soul, he revoked all his former[Pg 478] verses: "All the false judgments I have passed upon the men of Munster I recant them; the meagre servant of the grey Meagher has passed as much of a false judgment upon me."

So greatly had the literary production of Ireland passed into the hands of the bards during the period we are now considering, that it will be well to study the evolution of the bardic body down to the close of the sixteenth century, in a separate chapter.
********
[1] "Truagh mo thuras ar Loch Dearg
A righ na gceall a's na gclog,
Do chaoineadh do chneadh 's do chréacht
'S nach dtig déar thar mo rosg."

See "Gaelic Journal," vol. iv. p. 190.

[2] "Ná tréig mo theagasg a mhic
Cidh baogh'lach lá an chirt do chách
Ag sgaoileadh dhóib ó an tsliabh
Rachaidh tu le Dia na ngrás."

See my "Religious Songs of Connacht," p. 28.

[3] Literally: "Do not forsake my teaching, my son, and although dangerous be the Day of Right for all, on their scattering from the Mount, thou shalt go with God of the graces.

"The road to heaven of the saints though to thee it seem narrow, slender, hard, yet shun the road of the house of the pains, many a one has journeyed to it away from us.

"Against us was treachery designed, to bring us down from the artificer of the elements, in banishment from the land of the living in a Valley of Tears art thou.

"To the world give not love, is it not transient the blossom of the branches? do not follow the track of those who are journeying to hell from God of the Saints.

"Hope, faith, and love, let thee have in God forever, humility, and patience without anger, truth without deception in thy walk," etc.

[4] It begins—

"Triallam timchioll na Fódhla,
Gluaisid fir ar furfhógra,
As na fóidibh a bhfuileam
Na Cóigeadha cuartuigheam."

The whole has been most ably edited by Dr. O'Donovan for the Irish Arch?ological Society.

[5] His poem in continuation begins—

"Tuille feasa ar Erinn óigh,
Ni maith seanchaidh nach seanóir,
Seanchas cóir uaim don feadhain
Na slóigh ó'n Boinn báinealaigh."

"More knowledge on virgin Ireland, not good is an historian unless he be an elder, proper history from me to the tribe, the hosts from Boyne of the white cattle."

[6] Made in the Low Countries by an exiled friar of the County Galway, a great collection of poetry in the classical metres. See "Transactions of the Gaelic Society," 1808, p. 29.

[7] H. 1. 14, in Trinity College. It is copied unfortunately by one of the most incompetent of scribes, and is full of mistakes of all kinds. The poets who wrote for the O'Byrnes were Rory Mac Craith, Owen O'Coffey, Mahon O'Higinn, Donal Mac Keogh, Niall O'Rooney, Angus O'Daly, John O'Higinn, Eochaidh O'Hussey, Maoileachlainn O'Coffey, T. O'Mulconry, Donogha Mac Keogh, and others. A copy of the "Book of the O'Byrnes" was in possession of the O'Byrnes of Cabinteely, near Dublin, in the beginning of the century. Hardiman and O'Reilly each had a copy, but as I have seen the scribe employed by the Royal Irish Academy engaged for days in writing out of the wretched copy in Trinity College, it is to be presumed that the Council of that body has assured itself that these copies have since perished.

[8] "A cholann do chím gun ceann
Sibh d' fhaicsin, do shearg mo bhrigh,
Rannta ar sparra a n-Athcliath,
D'éigsi Bhanba bhias a dhith."
(H. 1. 14, T. C., D., fol. 84 a.)

[9] "Cia cheannchas ádhmad naoi rann,
Dá bhfághadh connra ar súd?
Ar Laighnibh cidh 'r b'ard a dteisd
Do m' aithne is cruaidh an cheisd úd."

[10] "Acht ua Réamainn thuilleas bládh,
Ni h-aithne dham shoir no shiar,
Neach le ceannach [mo] naoi rann,
Ma tá ann, ni fheadar c' iad."

[11] "Creud ag buaidhreadh ban ngaoidheal
An dith óir no iol-mhaoineadh,
Cuis aith-mheillte an diorma díl,
Ríoghna flaith-fréimhe fuinnidh."
(H. 1. 14, T. C., D., fol. 126 a.)

[12] "Ni bhfuair mé 'na n-áitibh ann,
Acht lucht gan aithne orom [orm],
Mo chreach geur, mo chrádh croidhe,
An sgeul fá ttáim troithlidhe."

[13] "Fuath gach fir fuighioll a thuaidhe,
Tuig a Fhiacha, duit is dual,
Má tá nach binn libh mo labhra,
Os cionn do chinn do thárla an tuath."

O'Donovan, in his manuscript catalogue, quotes the last two lines of the verse in note 12 above, and translates them, "My bitter woe my heart's oppression is the news for which I grieve." Afterwards he erased the words "for which I grieve" and wrote instead "it wastes my vigour," thus showing that he did not understand the original, for one translation is as bad as the other. The difficult word troithlidhe which perplexed him, is a common one in Roscommon, I have frequently heard it in the sense of "chilly." The translation is, "the news which chills me."

[14] "Fréamh Raghnaill ni rabhadar
Acht ag seachnadh inbhéime
Sgeul meuduighthe faltanais
Doibh nior chreidte ar a chéile."

[15] "A gelu is ionmhus d'fhuil Raghnaill
Rádh gach eólaigh is é sin."

[16] "Beag a ndúil a ndéanamh ionmhais
Uaisle an nidh dá dtabhraid toil,
Do ghabh gach aon-fhear d'fhuil Fhiacha
Sgaoileadh a chruidh d'Fiacha, air."

[17] "Thug gárda láidir mhic Aodha mhic Sheáin
Dochur ar barda (?) a n-aoil-chaisleán,
'S báidh liom nár fágadh neach d'fhuighioll an áir
Acht an bráighe atá fá dhaoirse a[r] láimh."

The second line of this is quite incomprehensible, and runs in the MS. do chur ar ar barda.

[18] "Broc ar ghairbhe 's ar ghlaise,
Apa ar mhéad 's ar mhio-mhaise,
Gliomach ar ghéire a dhá shúil,
Sionnach ar bhréine, an Bárún."

[19] "Caoch an inghean, caoch an mháthair,
Caoch an t-athair, caoch an mac,
Caoch an capall bhíos fá 'n tsráthair,
Leath-chaoch an cú, caoch an cat."

[20] "Ni fhuil fearg nach dtéid ar gcúl
Acht fearg Chriost le cloinn Ghiobun
Beag an t-iongnadh a mbeith mar tá
Ag fás i n-olc gach aon lá."

This rann was often quoted in after days about Fitzgibbon, Lord Clare, who passed the union.