CHAPTER XXXVI DEVELOPMENT OF IRISH POETRY

Some of the very earliest Irish poems—of which we have specimens in the verses attributed to Amergin, son of Milesius, and in the first satire ever uttered in Ireland, and in many more pieces of a like character[1]—appear to have been unrhymed, and to have depended for their effect partly upon rapidity of utterance, partly on a tendency towards alliteration,[Pg 480] and in some cases on a strongly-marked leaning towards dissyllabic words.

Soon after the time of St. Patrick and the first Christian missionaries, the Irish are found for certain using rhyme—how far they had evolved it before the coming of the Latin missionaries is a moot question. The Book of Hymns has preserved genuine specimens of the Latin verses of Columcille and other early saints, which either rhyme, or have a strong tendency towards rhyme, though few of these early verses are found wholly chiming on the accented syllables.[2] It is a tremendous claim to make for the Celt that he taught Europe to rhyme; it is a claim in comparison with which, if it could be substantiated, everything else that he has done in literature pales into insignificance. Yet it has been made for him by some of the foremost European scholars. The great Zeuss himself is emphatic on the point; "the form of Celtic poetry,"[3] he writes, "to judge both from the older and the more recent examples adduced, appears to be more ornate than the poetic form of any other nation, and even more ornate in the older poems than in the modern ones; from the fact of which greater ornateness it undoubtedly came to pass that at the very time the Roman Empire was hastening to its ruin, the Celtic poems—at first entire, afterwards in part—passed over not only into the song of the Latins, but also into those of other nations and remained[Pg 481] in them." In another place he remarks the advance towards rhyme made in the Latin poetry of the Anglo-Saxons, and unhesitatingly ascribes it to Irish influence. "We must believe," he writes, "that this form was introduced among them by the Irish, as were the arts of writing and of painting and of ornamenting manuscripts, since they themselves in common with the other Germanic nations made use in their poetry of nothing but alliteration."[4] Constantine Nigra expresses himself even more strongly in his edition of the glosses in the Codex Taurinensis. He says—

    "The idea that rhyme originated amongst the Arabs must be absolutely rejected as fabulous.... Rhyme, too, could not in any possible way have evolved itself from the natural progress of the Latin language. Amongst the Latins neither the thing nor the name existed. We first meet with final assonance or rhyme at the close of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century in the Latin hymns of the Milanese Church, which are attributed to St. Ambrose and St. Augustine. The first certain examples of rhyme, then, are found on Celtic soil and amongst Celtic nations, in songs made by poets who are either of Celtic origin themselves or had long resided amongst Celtic races. It is most probable that these hymns of Middle Latin were composed according to the form of Celtic poetry which was then flourishing, and which exhibits final assonance in all the ancient remains of it hitherto discovered. It is true that the more ancient Irish and British poems which have come down to us do not appear to be of older date than the seventh or eighth century [Nigra means, in their present form], but it must not be rashly inferred that the Celtic races, who were always tenacious of the manners and customs[Pg 482] of their ancestors, had not employed the same poetic forms already, long before, say in the earliest centuries of our era."[5]

After arguing that the Irish rule of "Slender-with-Slender and Broad-with-Broad," a rule which was peculiar to the Celts alone of all the Aryan races, contained in itself the germ of rhyme, he sums up his argument thus positively: "We must conclude, then, that this late Latin [Romanic] verse, made up of accent, and of an equal number of syllables, may have arisen in a twofold way, first by the natural evolution of the Latin language itself; or secondly, by the equally efficacious example of neighbouring Celtic peoples, but we conclude that final assonance, or rhyme, can have been derived only from the laws of Celtic phonology."[6]

Thurneysen, on the other hand, who has done such good service for the study of Irish metric by his publication of the text of the fragmentary Irish poets' books,[7] is of opinion that the Irish derived their regular metres with a given number of[Pg 483] syllables in each line, from the Latins;[8] and Windisch agrees with him in saying that the Irish verse-forms were influenced by Latin,[9] though he thinks that Thurneysen presses his theory too far. The latter, in opposition to Zimmer,[10] will not for instance allow the genuineness of St. Fiacc's metrical life of St. Patrick because it is in a rhymed and fairly regular metre, a thing which, according to him, the Irish had not developed at that early period. It seems necessary to me, however, to take into account the peculiar prosody of the Irish, especially the tour de force called áird-rinn used in Deibhidh [d'yevvee] metre, which we find firmly established in their oldest poems,[11] and which makes the rhyming word ending the second line contain a syllable more than the rhyming word which ends the first, while if the accent fall in the first line on the ultimate syllable it mostly falls in the second line on the penultimate, if it falls on the penultimate in the first line it generally falls on the antepenultimate in the second, as—

"Though men owe respect to them,
Presage of woe—a poem.

The slender free palms of her
Than gull on sea are whiter.
[Pg 484]
A far greater than ány
Man has killed my Cómpany."[12]

This peculiarly Irish feature was not borrowed from the Latins, but is purely indigenous. The oldest books of glosses on the Continent contain verses formed on this model.[13] According to Thurneysen's theory the Irish learned how to write rhymed verse with lines of equal syllables sometime between, say, the year 500 and 700, but the Deibhidh metre with áird-rinn is found in their oldest verses, bound up with rhyme in their accurate seven-syllable lines. Why should two of these ingredients, the rhyme and the stated number of verses have come from the Romans when the Deibhidh áird-rinn (which apparently implies rhyme) did not? Besides is it credible, on the supposition that the pre-Christian Irish neither counted their syllables nor rhymed, that within less than a couple of hundred years after coming in contact[Pg 485] with the rude Latin verse of Augustin and Ambrose, they had brought rhyming verses to such a pitch of perfection as we see, in, say, the "Voyage of Bran," which according to both Kuno Meyer and Professor Zimmer, was written in the seventh century, the very first verse of which runs—

"Cróib dind abaill a h-Emain
Dofed samaill do gnáthaib
Gésci findarggait fora
Abrait glano co m-bláthaib"?

The whole of this poem, too, is shot through with verses of Deibhidh, and the rhymes are extraordinarily perfect.[14] This at least is clear, that already in the seventh century the Irish not only rhymed but made intricate Deibhidh and other rhyming metres,[15] when for many centuries after this period[Pg 486] the Germanic nations could only alliterate—a thing which though sometimes used in Irish verse is in no way fundamental to it. In England so late as the beginning of the fifteenth century, the virile author of the book of Piers Ploughman used alliteration in preference to rhyme, and, indeed, down to the first half of the sixteenth century English poets, for the most part, exhibit a disregard for fineness of execution and technique of which not the meanest Irish bard attached to the pettiest chief could have been guilty. After the seventh century the Irish brought their rhyming system to a pitch of perfection undreamt of, even at this day, by other nations. Perhaps by no people in the globe, at any period of the world's history, was poetry so cultivated and, better still, so remunerated, as in Ireland. The elaborateness of the system they evolved, the prodigious complexity of the rules, the subtlety and intricacy of their poetical code are astounding.

The real poet of the early Gaels was the filé [fill?]. The bard was nothing thought of in comparison with him, and the legal price of his poems was quite small compared with the remuneration of the filé. It was the bard who seems to have been most affected by Latin influence, and the metres which he used seem to have been of relatively new importation. Where the filé received his three milch cows for a poem the bard only bore away a calf. The bards were divided into two classes, the Saor and Daor bards, or the patrician and[Pg 487] plebeian.[16] There were eight grades in each class, one of the many examples of the love of the Irish for minute classification, a quality with which they are not usually credited, at least, not in modern times. Each of these sixteen classes of bard has his own peculiar metre or framework for his verses, and the lower bard was not allowed to encroach on the metres sacred to the bard next in rank.[17]

The f?lés [fill?s] were, as we have said, the highest class of poets. There were seven grades of Filé,[18] the most exalted[Pg 488] being called an ollamh [ollav], a name that has frequently occurred throughout this book. They were so highly esteemed that the annalists give the obituaries of the head-ollamhs as if they were so many princes. The course of study was originally perhaps one of seven years. Afterwards it lasted for twelve years or more.[19] When a poet had worked his way up after at least twelve but perhaps sometimes twenty years of study, through all the lower degrees, and had at last attained the rank of ollamh, he knew, in addition to all his other knowledge, over three hundred and fifty different kinds of versification, and was able to recite two hundred and fifty prime stories and one hundred secondary ones. The ancient and fragmentary manuscripts from which these details are taken, not only give the names of the metres but have actually preserved examples of between two and three hundred of them taken from different ancient poems, almost all of which have perished to a line, but they give a hint of what once existed. Nearly all the text books used in the career of the poet during his twelve years' course are lost, and with them have gone the particulars of a civilisation probably the most unique and interesting in Europe.

The bardic schools were at no time an unmixed blessing to Ireland. They were non-productive in an economic sense, and as early as the seventh century the working classes felt that these idle multitudes constituted an intolerable drain upon the nation's resources. Keating in his history says that at this time the bardic order contained a third of the men of Ireland, by which he means a third of the free clans or patricians. These quartered themselves from November to May upon the chiefs and farmers. They had also reached an intolerable pitch of insolence. According to the account in the Leabhar[Pg 489] Breac they went about the country in bands carrying with them a silver pot, which the populace named the "pot of avarice," which was attached by nine chains of bronze hung on golden hooks, and which was suspended on the spears of nine poets, thrust through the links at the end of the chains. They then selected some unfortunate victim, and approached in state his homestead, having carefully composed a poem in his laudation. The head poet entering chanted the first verse, and the last poet took it up, until each of the nine had recited his part, whilst all the time the nine best musicians played their sweetest music in unison with the verses, round the pot, into which the unfortunate listener was obliged to throw an ample guerdon of gold and silver. Woe to him indeed, if he refused; a scathing satire would be the result, and sooner than endure the disgrace of this, every one parted to them with a share of his wealth. Aedh mac Ainmirech, the High-king of Ireland, who reigned at the end of the seventh century—the same who afterwards lost his life in the battle of Bolgdún in raising the thrice cursed Boru tribute—"considering them," as Keating puts it, "to be too heavy a burden upon the land of Ireland," determined to banish the whole profession. This was the third attempt to put down the poets, who had always before found a refuge in the northern province when expelled from the others. But now King Aedh [Ae] summoned a great convention of all Ireland at Drum Ceat [Cat] near Limavaddy in the north of Ireland, to deliberate upon several matters of national interest, of which the expulsion of the bards was not the least important. The fate of the Bardic Institution was trembling in the balance, when Columcille, an accomplished bard himself as we have seen, crossed over from Iona with a retinue of 140 clerics, and by his eloquence and great influence succeeded in checking the fury of the exasperated chieftains: the issue of the great convention which lasted for a year and one month, was—so far as the bards were concerned—that their numbers were indeed reduced, but it was[Pg 490] agreed that the High-king should retain in his service one chief ollamh, and that the kings of the five provinces, the chiefs of each territory, and the lords of each sub-district should all retain an ollamh of their own. No other poets except those especially sanctioned were to pursue the poetic calling.

If the bards lost severely in numbers and prestige on this occasion they were in the long run amply compensated for it by their acquiring a new and recognised status in the state. Their unchartered freedom and licentious wanderings were indeed checked, but, on the other hand, they became for the first time the possessors of fixed property and of local stability. Distinct public estates in land were set apart for their maintenance,[20] and they were obliged in return to give public instruction to all comers in the learning of the day, after the manner of university professors. Rathkenry in Meath, and Masree in Cavan are particularly mentioned as bardic colleges then founded, where any of the youth of Ireland could acquire a knowledge of history and of the sciences.[21] The High-king, the provincial kings, and the sub-kings were all obliged by law to set apart a certain portion of land for the poet of the territory, to be held by him and his successors free of rent, and a law was passed making the persons and the property of poets sacred, and giving them right of sanctuary in their own land from all the men of Ireland. At the same time the amount of reward which they were allowed to receive for their poems was legally settled. From this time forward for nearly a thousand years the bardic colleges, as distinct from the ecclesiastical ones, taught poetry, law, and history, and it was they who educated the lawyers, judges, and poets of Ireland.

As far as we can judge the bards continued to flourish in equal power and position with the dignitaries of the Church,[Pg 491] and their colleges must have been nearly as important institutions as the foundations of the religious orders, until the onslaught of the Northmen reduced the country to such a state that "neither bard, nor philosopher, nor musician," as Keating says, "pursued their wonted profession in the land." It was probably at this time that the carefully observed distinction between the bard and the filé broke down, for in later times the words seem to have been regarded as synonymous.

For some time after the Norman conquest the bardic colleges seem to have again suffered eclipse; and, as we have seen, the century that succeeded that invasion appears to have produced fewer poets than any other. But the great Anglo-Norman houses soon became Irishised and adopted Irish bards of their own. There are many incidents recorded in the Irish annals and many stories gathered from other sources which go to show that the importance of the bards as individuals could not have been much diminished during the Anglo-Norman régime. One of them is worth recording. In the beginning of the thirteenth century the steward of the O'Donnell went to Lisadill,[22] near Sligo, to collect rents, and some words passed between him and the great poet Murrough O'Daly, who, unaccustomed to be thwarted in anything, clove the head of the steward with an axe. Then, fearing O'Donnell's vengeance, he fled to Clanrickard and the Norman De Bourgos, and at once addressed a poem to Richard De Burgo, son of William Fitzadelm, in which he states that he, the bard, was used to visit the courts of the English, and to drink wine at the hands of kings and knights, and bishops and abbots. He tells De Bourgo that he has now a chance of making himself illustrious by protecting him, O'Daly of Meath, who now throws himself on his generosity and whose poems demand attention. As for O'Donnell, he had given him small offence.

[Pg 492]

"Trifling our quarrel with the man,
A clown to be abusing me,
Me to kill the churl,
Dear God! Is this a cause for enmity?"

De Bourgo accordingly received and protected him, until O'Donnell, coming in furious pursuit, laid waste his country with fire and sword. Fitzadelm submitted, but passed on the poet to the O'Briens of North Munster. But O'Donnell again pursuing with fury, these also submitted, and secretly dispatched the poet to the people of Limerick who received him. O'Donnell hurried on and laid siege to the city, and its inhabitants in terror expelled the poet once more, who was passed on from hand to hand until he came to Dublin. But the people of Dublin, terrified at O'Donnell's threats, sent him away; and he crossed over into Scotland where his fame rose higher than before, and where his poems remained so popular that when the Dean of Lismore in Argyle jotted down nearly four hundred years ago in phonetic spelling a number of poems just as he heard them, they included a disproportionately large number of this O'Daly's,[23] who was afterward known as Murrough the Scotchman. At last in return for some fine laudatory verses upon O'Donnell he was graciously pardoned by that chieftain and returned to his native country.

The Anglo-Normans not only kept bards of their own, but some of themselves also became poets. The story of Silken Thomas and his bard whose verses urged him on to rebellion, is well known. It is curious, too, to find one of the Norman Nugents of Delvin in the sixteenth century making the most perfect classical Irish verses, lamenting his exile from Ireland, the home of his ancestors, the Land of Fintan, the old Plain of Ir, the country of Inisfail.

"Loth to Leave, my fain eyes swim,
I Part in Pain from Erinn.
[Pg 493]Land of the Loud sea-rollers,
PRide of PRoud steed-controllers."[24]

After a few generations the Anglo-Normans had completely forgotten Norman-French, and as they never, with few exceptions, learned English, they identified themselves completely with the Irish past, so that amongst the Irish poets we find numbers of Nugents, Englishes, Condons, Cusacks, Keatings, Comyns, and other foreign names.

It was only after the Anglo-Norman government had developed into an English one that the bards began to feel its weight. The slaying of the Welsh bards by Edward is now generally regarded as a political fiction. There is no fiction, however, about the treatment meted out to the Irish ones. The severest acts were passed against them over and over again. The nobles were forbidden to entertain them, in the hope that they might die out or starve, and the Act of Elizabeth alleges one of the usual lying excuses of the Elizabethan period: "Item," it says, "for that those rhymours by their ditties and rhymes made to divers lords and gentlemen in Ireland to the commendation and high praise of extortion, rebellion, rape, ravin, and other injustice, encourage those lords and gentlemen rather to follow those vices than to leave them, and for making of the said rhymes rewards are given by the said lords and gentlemen, (let) for abolishing of so heinous an abuse, orders be taken." Orders were taken, and taken so thoroughly that O'Brien, Earl of Thomond, obliged to enforce them against the bards, hanged three distinguished poets, "for which abominable, treacherous act," say the "Four Masters," "the earl was satirised and denounced." I find a northern bard about this time, the close of the sixteenth[Pg 494] century, thus lamenting the absence of his patron, Aedh [Ae] Mac Aonghasa:—

"If a Sage of Song should be
In the wage of Court or King.
HA! the Gallows Guards the WAY.
AH! since AE from port took wing."[25]

Spenser the poet was not slow in finding out what a power his Irish rivals were in the land, and he at once set himself to malign and blacken them. "There are," he writes, "amongst the Irish a certain kind of people called bards, which are to them instead of poets,"—the insinuation is that the bards are not real poets!—"the which are had in so high regard and estimation among them, that none dare displease them for fear to run into reproach through their offence, and to be made infamous in the mouths of all men." On which, Eudoxus, his friend, is made to remark innocently that he had always thought that poets were to be rather encouraged than put down. "Yes," answers Spenser, "they should be encouraged when they desire honour and virtue, but," he goes on, "these Irish bards are for the most part of another mind, and so far from instructing young men in moral discipline, that whomsoever they find to be most licentious of life, most bold and lawlesse in his doings, most dangerous and desperate in all parts of disobedience and rebellious disposition, him they set up and glorify in their rhythmes, him they praise to the people and to young men make an example to follow."

The allegation that the bards praised what was licentious is an untruth on the part of the great poet. Few English Elizabethans, once they passed over into Ireland, seem to have been able to either keep faith or tell truth; there was never[Pg 495] such a thoroughly dishonourable race, or one so utterly devoid of all moral sense, as the Irish "statesmen" of that period. The real reason why Spenser, as an undertaker, blackens the character of the Irish poets is not because their poems were licentious—which they were not—but because, as he confesses later on, they are "tending for the most part to the hurt of the English or [the] maintenance of their owne lewde libertie, they being most desirous thereof."

Spenser's ignorant and self-contradictory criticism on the merits of the Irish bards has often been quoted as if it constituted a kind of hall-mark for them! "Tell me, I pray you," said his friend, "have they any art in their compositions, or be they anything wittie or wellmannered as poems should be?"

"Yea, truly," says Spenser, "I have caused divers of them to be translated unto me, that I might understand them, and surely they savoured of sweet art and good invention, but skilled not in the goodly ornaments of poesie, yet were they sprinkled with some pretty flowers of their natural device, which gave good grace and comeliness unto them; the which it is a great pity to see abused to the gracing of wickedness and vice, which with good usage would serve to adorn and beautify virtue."

The gentle poet is here almost copying the words of the Act, which perhaps he himself helped to inspire, according to which the bardic poems are in praise of "extortion, rebellion, rape, ravin, and other injustice." I have, however, read hundreds of the poems of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but have never come across a single syllable in laudation of either "extortion, rape, ravin, or other injustice," but numerous poems inciting to what the Act calls "rebellion," and what Spenser terms "the hurt of the English and the maintenance of their owne lewde libertie."

It would be difficult to overrate the importance of the colleges of the hereditary bards and the influence they exercised[Pg 496] in the life of the sixteenth century. They fairly reflected public opinion, and they also helped to make it what it was. There is a great difference between their poems and the memoria technicha verses of the ancient ollamhs, whose historical and genealogical poems, which they composed in their official capacity, are crowded with inorganic phrases and "chevilles" of all kinds. The sixteenth-century poet was a man of wit and learning, and frequently a better and more clear-seeing statesman than his chief, who was in matters of policy frequently directed by his bard's advice. They certainly had more national feeling than any other class in Ireland, and were less the slaves of circumstances or of mere local accidents, for they traversed the island from end to end, were equally welcome north, south, east, and west, and had unrivalled opportunities for becoming acquainted with the trend of public affairs, and with political movements.

Most people, owing to their comparative neglect of Irish history, seem to be of opinion that the bards were harpers, or at least musicians of some sort. But they were nothing of the kind. The popular conception of the bard with the long white beard and the big harp is grotesquely wrong. The bards were verse-makers, pure and simple, and they were no more musicians than the poet laureate of England. Their business was to construct their poems after the wonderful and complex models of the schools, and when—as only sometimes happened—they wrote a eulogy or panegyric on a patron, and brought it to him, they introduced along with themselves a harper and possibly a singer to whom they had taught their poem, and in the presence of their patron to the sound of the harp, the only instrument allowed to be touched on such occasions, the poem was solemnly recited or sung. The real name of the musician was not bard—the bard was a verse-maker—but oirfideadh [errh-fid-y?], and the musicians, though a numerous and honourable class, were absolutely distinct from the bards and filés. It was only after the complete[Pg 497] break-up of the Gaelic polity, after the wars of Cromwell and of William, that the verse-maker merges in the musician, and the harper and the bard become fused in one, as was the case with Carolan, commonly called the last of the bards, but whom his patron, O'Conor of Belanagare, calls in his obituary of him, not a bard, but an oirfideadh.

Down to the close of the sixteenth century and during the greater part of the seventeenth, verse, with few exceptions, continued to be made in the classical metres of Ireland, by specially trained poets, who did not go outside these metres. In the ensuing century the classical metres began to be discarded and a wonderful and far-reaching change took place, which shall be made the subject of a future chapter. We must now proceed to examine a species of popular poetry which flourished during all this period side by side with the bardic schools, although no trace remains to-day of its origin or its authors. This is the so-called Ossianic poetry.
********
[1] This is a kind of rhetoric; some of these unrhymed outbursts were called rosg by the Irish. Irish literature is full of such pieces. Some of the Brehon Law though printed in prose seems to have been composed in it. Other examples are the cry of the Mór-rígan, or war-goddess, in the end of the Battle of Moytura.

"Peace to heav'n              "Sith go neim
Heav'n to earth                Neamh go domhan,
Earth neath heav'n            Domhan fá neim
Strength in each," etc.      Neart i gcách," etc.

or the description of the Dun Bull of Cuailgne in the Táin Bo, or part of the first poem attributed to Finn mac Cool, or trie well-known eulogy on Goll the Fenian, or Mac Mhurighs incitement at the battle of Harlaw, or some of the verses in the preface to the Amra. About the last specimen of unrhymed poetry, in a species of Droighneach metre, I find in the Annals of Loch Cé on the death of Mac Dermot as late as 1568.

"Gég iothmar fhineamhna na n-éigeas ocus na n-ollaman,
Craobh cumra cnuais na gcliar ocus na gcerbach,
Dóss díona na ndámh ocus na ndeóraidh
Bile buadha buan fhoscaidh na mbrughaidh ocus na mbiattach."

[2] Thus the nearest approach that Columcille makes to Latin rhyme is in the final unaccented syllable. See his "Altus" beginning

"Altus prosator vetustus    Sed et erit in s?cula
Dierum et ingenitus          S?culorum infinita
Erat absque origine          Cui est unigenitus
Primordii et crepidine.      Christus et sanctus spiritus," etc.

[3] "Formam poesis celtic?, exemplis allatis, tarn vetustioribus quam recentioribus vel hodiernis, magis ornatum esse apparet quam ullius gentis formam poeticam, ac magis ornatam in vetustioribus carminibus ipsis, quam in recentioribus. Quo majore ornatu, haud dubie effectum est, ut jam inde ab illis temporibus quibus ad interitum ruebat Romanum imperium, celtica forma, primum integra, deinde ex parte, non solum in latina sed etiam (aliarum) linguarum carmina transferretur atque in iis permanserit" ("Grammatica Celtica," Ebel's edition, p. 977).

[4] "Magis progressa consonantia, cum frequentiore allitteratione, amplior finalis s?pius trissyllaba invenitur in Anglo-Saxorum carminibus latinis; ad quos, cum ipsi principio cum ceteris Germanis non usi sint nizi allitteratione, ab Hibernis hanc formam esse transgressam putandum est, ut transiit scriptura atque ars pingendi codices et ornandi" (Ibid., p. 946).

In another passage he expresses himself even more strongly; for of rhyme he says: "Hanc formam orationis poetic? quis credat esse ortam primum apud poetas Christianos finientis imperii Romani et transisse ad bardos Cambrorum et in carmina gentilia Scandinavorum" (Editio Ebel, p. 948).

[5] "Origo enim r?m? arabica inter fabulas omnino rejicienda est.... Porro r?ma ex solo naturali processu latin? lingu? explicari nullo modo potest. Apud Latinos nec res extitit nec nomen.... Assonantia finalis vel r?ma, s?culo quarto abeunte et quinto incipiente vulgaris ?vi, primus occurrit in hymnis latinis ecclesi? mediolanensis qui sancto Ambrosio et Sancto Augustino tribuuntur. Prima itaque r?m? certa exempla inveniuntur in solo celtico, apud celticas gentes, in carminibus conditis a poetis, qui vel celtic? originis sunt, vel apud celticas gentes diu commoraverunt. Verosimile ut hosce hymnos medi? latinitatis constructos esse juxta formam celtic? poesis qu? tune vigebat, et qu? jam assonantiam finalem pr?bet in antiquis ejus reliquiis huc-usque detectis. Profecto carmina hibernica et brittanica vetustiora qu? ad nos pervenerunt s?culum octavum vel septimum superare non videntur. Sed temere non est affirmare celticas gentes qu? moris consuetudinisque majorum tertaces semper fuerunt, jam multo antea, primis nempe vulgaris ?vi s?culis, eamdem poeticam formam adhibuisse" ("Gloss? Hibernic? Veteres Codicis Taurinensis." Luteti?. 1869. p. xxxi.).

[6] "Concludendum est igitur versum romanicum, accentu legatum et pari syllabarum numero, oriri potuisse ex duplicis caus? concursu, nempe à naturali explicatione latin? lingu?, et ab exemplo pariter efficaci affinium celticorum populorum; sed r?mam seu assonantiam finalem, a solis celtic? phonologi? legibus derivatam esse" (Ibid., p. xxxii.).

[7] "Mittelirische Verslehren," "Irische Texte," iii. p. 1.

[8] See his article in "Revue Celtique," vi., p. 336.

[9] "Dass die irische Versform von der lateinischen Versform beeinflusst worden ist, scheint mir zweifellos zu sein. Es fragt sich nur was die irischen Barden schon hatten als dieser Einfluss begann. Das was Thurneysen ihnen zugestehen will ist mir etwas zu wenig" ("Irische Texte," iii. 2, p. 448).

[10] "Wir haben," says Zimmer, of this hymn, "ein altes einfaches und ehrwürdiges Monument vor uns, an das eine jüngere Zeit mit ver?ndertem Geschmack, passend und unpassend, an—und eingebaut hat."

[11] Deibhidh, in Old Irish Debide, a neuter word, which Thurneysen translates "cut in two," is not really a rhyme but a generic name for a metre, containing twenty-four species. The essence of the principal Deibhidh, however, is the peculiar manner of rhyming with words of a different length, so that this system has sometimes been loosely called Deibhidh rhyme. In the oldest poetry a trisyllable instead of a dissyllable rhyme could be used as the end word, of the second line when the first line ended with a monosyllable, but in the strictness of later times this was disallowed.

[12] "Tús onóra cidh dual di,
Tuar anshógha an eigsi.

Glac bárr-lag mar chúbhair tonn
Do sháraigh dath na bhfaoilionn.

Gníomh follus fáth na h-eachtra
Fá'r ciorrbadh mo chuideachta."

These specimens are taken from unedited manuscripts in my own possession, copied by O'Curry from I know not what originals.

[13] Thus in the Codex St. Pauli we find these verses:—

"Messe ocus Pangur ban
Cechtar náthar fria saindán
Bith a menma-sunn fri seilgg
Mu menma céin im sain-ceirdd.

Caraim-se fos ferr gach clu
Oc mo lebran leir ingnu
Ni foirmtech frimm Pangur ban
Caraid sesin a macc-dán."

[14] The end rhyming words in verses 6-10 for example are as follows—fóe nóe, bátha hilblátha, bláthaib thráthaib, gnáth tráth, datho moithgretho, chéul Arggutnéul, mrath etargnath, cruais clúais, bás indgás, n-Emne comamre.

[15] Compare, too, the verses that the monk wrote in the margin of the St. Gall MS. which he was copying, on hearing the blackbird sing—

"Dom farcai fidbaidae fál
Fomchain lóid lain luad nad cél
Huas mo lebrán indlinech
Fomchain trírech inna nén;"

the language of which is so ancient as to be nearly unintelligible to a modern, though the metre is common from that day to this. "A thicket of bushes surrounds me, a lively blackbird sings to me his lay, I shall not conceal it, above my many-lined book he sings to me the trill of the birds," etc. Commenting on these verses Nigra says feelingly, "Mentre traduco questi versi amo figurarmi il povero monaco che, or fá più di mille anni, stava copiando il manoscritto, e distratto un istante dal canto dei merli contemplava dalla finestra della sua cella la verde corona di boscaglie che circondava il suo monastero nell Ulster o nel Connaught, e dopo avere ascoltato l'agile trillo degli uccelli, recitava questi strofe, e rapigliava poi più allegro l'interrotto lavoro."

It has often been alleged that the word rhyme is derived from the Irish rím, "number," rímaire, "a reckoner," and rimim, "I count;" but in Anglo-Saxon rím has the same meaning, so that unless the Anglo-Saxons borrowed the word, as they certainly did the thing, from the Irish, this is inconclusive.

In fol. 8a of the "Liber Hymnorum" we read in the preface to the very ancient hymn "In Trinitate spes mea," the following note: "Incertum est hautem in quo tempore factus est, Trerithim dana doronadh ocus xi. caiptell déac ann, ocus dalíni in cech caiptiull, ocus se sillaba déc cechai. Is foi is rithim doreir in ómine dobit ann.," i.e., "in rhyme it was made and eleven chapters thereon and two lines in every chapter, and sixteen syllables in each. It is on i the rhyme is because of the 'omine' that is in it." In the preface to the hymn, "Christus in nostra insula," the scholiast writes, "Trerithim dana dorigned," which Whitley Stokes translates by "in rhythm moreover it was made," but rithim evidently means the same in both passages, namely, rhyme not rhythm, at least if the first passage is rightly translated by Dr. Stokes himself. I doubt, however, if rím or rithim ever meant "rhyme" in Irish.

[16] The various Saor bards were called the Anshruth-bairdne (great stream of poetry?), the Sruth di aill (stream down two cliffs?), the Tighearn-bhard (lord bard), the Adhmhall, the Tuath-bhard (lay bard), the bo-bhard (cow-bard) and the Bard áine. The highest of the Daor bards was called the cúl-bhard (back bard), and after him came the Sruth-bhard (stream-bard), the Drisiuc, the cromluatha, the Sirti-uí, the Rindhaidh, the Long-bhard, and the bard Loirrge.

[17] Thus the head of the patrician bards was entitled to make use of the metres called nath, metres in which the end of each line makes a vowel rhyme or an alliteration with the beginning of the next, the number of syllables in the line and of lines in the verse being irregular. There were six kinds of náth metres, called Deachna. All these the first bard practised with two honourable metres besides, called the great and little Séadna. The ANSHRUTH used the two kinds of metres called Ottbhairdne, the SRUTH DI AILL used Casbhairdne, the TIGHEARN-BHARD used Duanbhairdne, a generic metre of which there were six species called Duan faidesin, duan cenátach, fordhuan, taebh-chasadh, tul-chasadh, and sreth-bhairdne. All the metres which these five employed were honourable ones, and went under the generic name of príomhfódhta. Then came the ADHMHALL with seven measures for himself, bairdne faidessin, btogh-bhairdne, brac-bhairdne, snedh-bhairdne, sem-bhairdne, imard-bhairdne, and rathnuatt. The TUATH-BHARD had all the Rannaigheacht metres and the BO-BARD all the Deibhidh metres, and these two, Rannaigheacht and Deibhidh, though thus lowly thought of in early—probably pre-Danish—days, were destined in later times, like the cuckoo birds, to oust their fellows and reign in the forefront for many hundred years. The Tuath-bhard had also two other metres Seaghdha and Treochair, and the Bo-bhard in addition to Deibhidh had long and short deachubhaidh.

The classification of the Daor bards and their metres is just as minute.

[18] The lowest grade of filé was called the fuctuc (word maker?). In his first year he had to learn fifty ogams and straight ogams amongst them. He had to learn the grammar called Uraicept na ti-éigsine, and the preface to it, and that part of the book called réimeanna, or courses, with twenty dréachts (stories?), six metres and other things. The six metres were the six dians called air-sheang, midh-sheang, iar-sheang, air-throm, midh-throm, and iar-throm.

[19] Each of the twelve years had its own course of the same nature as the above.

[20] I have seen it stated, but I do not know on what authority, that their income derived from land, in what is the present county of Donegal, was equal to ￡2,000 a year.

[21] See Keating's "Forus Feasa" under the reign of Aedh mac Ainmireach.

[22] Lios-an-doill i.e., the "blind man's fort." See the preface to O'Donovan's "Satires of Angus," for this story.

[23] He preserved eight pieces of O'Daly, who is called Muireach Albanach, and in one place Muireach Lessin Dall (i.e., Lios-an-Doill) O'Daly.

[24] "Diombuaidh Triall o Thulchaibh Fáil
Diombuaidh Iath éireann d'fhágbháil,
Iath mhilis na Mbeann Mbeachach,
Inis na N-Eang N-óig-eachach."

Deibhidh metre.      See Hardiman, vol. ii. p. 226.

[25] "Dá ndimghiodh duine re dán
Fá chiniodh don chuire ríogh
Do bhiadh croch roimhe ar gach raon
Och! gan Aodh Doire dar ndíon."

Rannaigheacht Mór metre.      From a MS. poem.