CHAPTER XXXVIII THE LAST OF THE CLASSIC POETS

The first half of the seventeenth century saw an extraordinary re-awakening of the Irish literary spirit. This was the more curious because it was precisely at this period that the old Gaelic polity with its tribal system, brehon law, hereditary bards, and all its other supports, was being upheaved by main force and already beginning to totter to its ruin. This was the period when to aggravate what was already to the last degree bitter—the struggle for the soil and racial feuds—a third disastrous ingredient, polemics, stept in, and inflamed the minds of the opposing parties, with the additional fanaticism of religious hatred. Yet whether it is that their works have been better preserved to us than those of any other century, or whether the very nearness of the end inspired them to double exertions, certain it is that the seventeenth century, and especially the first half of it, produced amongst the Irish a number of most gifted men of letters. Of these the so-called Four Masters, Seathrun or Geoffrey Keating, Father Francis O'Mulloy, Lughaidh [Lewy] O'Clery, and Duald Mac Firbis were the most important of the purely Irish prose writers, whilst Phillip O'Sullivan Beare, Father Ward, and Father Colgan, John Lynch (Bishop of Killala), Luke Wadding,[Pg 515] and Peter Lombard (Archbishop of Armagh), reflected credit upon their native country by their scholarship, and elucidated its history chiefly through the medium of Latin, as did Ussher and Sir James Ware, two great scholars of the same period produced by the Pale.

The century opened with an outburst of unexpected vigour on the part of the old school of Irish classical bards, over whose head the sword was then suspended, and whose utter destruction, though they knew it not, was now rapidly approaching. This outburst was occasioned by Teig mac Dairé,[1] the ollamh or chief poet of Donough O'Brien, fourth Earl of Thomond, (whose star, thanks to English influence, was at that time in the ascendant), making little of and disparaging in elaborate verse the line of Eremon,[2] and the reigning families of Meath, Connacht, Leinster, and Ulster, whilst exalting the kings of the line of Eber, of whom the O'Briens were at that time the greatest family. The form this poem took was an attack upon the poems of Torna Eigeas, a poet who flourished soon after the year 400, and who was tutor to Niall of the Nine Hostages, but whose alleged poems I have not noticed, not believing those attributed to him to be genuine, as they contain distinct Christian allusions, and as the language does not seem particularly antique. The bards, however, accepted these pieces as the real work of Torna, and Teig mac Dairé now attacks him on account of his partiality for the Eremonian Niall one thousand two hundred years before, and argues that he had done wrong, and that Eber, as the elder son of Milesius, should have had the precedency over Ir and Eremon, the younger children, and that consequently the princes of Munster, who were Eberians, should take precedency of the O'Nialls, O'Conors, and other Eremonians of the Northern provinces, and of Leinster. Teig asserts that it[Pg 516] was Eber or Heber, son of Milesius, from whom Ireland was called Hiber-nia. This poem, which contained about one hundred and fifty lines, began with the words Olc do thagrais a Thorna, "Ill hast thou argued, O Torna," and was immediately taken up and answered by Lughaidh [Lewy] O'Clery, the ollamh of the O'Donnells, in a poem containing three hundred and forty lines, beginning "O Teig, revile not Torna." To this Teig replied in a piece of six hundred and eighty-eight lines, beginning Eist-se a Lughaidh rem' labhradh, "Listen to my speech, O Lewy," and was again immediately answered in a poem of about a thousand lines by O'Clery, beginning, Do chuala ar thagrais a Thaidhg, "I have heard all that thou hast argued, O Teig." In this poem O'Clery collects such facts as he can find in history and in ancient authors, to prove that the Eremonians had always been considered superior to the Eberians in past ages. This called forth another rejoinder from his opponent of one hundred and twenty-four lines, beginning A Lughaidh labhram go séimh, "Let us speak courteously, O Lewy," which was in its turn answered by O'Clery in a poem beginning Ná broisd mise a Mhic Dhaire, "Provoke me not, O son of Dairé."

By this time the attention of the whole Irish literary world had been centred upon this curious dispute, and on the attacks and rejoinders of these leading poets representing the two great races of Northern and Southern Ireland respectively. Soon the hereditary poets of the other great Gaelic houses joined in, as their own descent or inclination prompted. Fearfeasa O'Cainte, Torlough O'Brien, and Art Og O'Keefe were the principal supporters of Teig mac Daire and the Southern Eberians, while Hugh O'Donnell, Robert Mac Arthur, Baoghalach ruadh Mac Egan, Anluan Mac Egan, John O'Clery, and Mac Dermot of Moylurg, defended Lewy and the Northern Eremonians. For many years the conflict raged, and the verses of both parties collected into a volume of about seven thousand lines, is known to this day as "The Contention of the Poets."

[Pg 517]

There is something highly pathetic in this last flickering up of the spirit of the hereditary classical bards, who conducted this dispute in precisely the same metre, language, tone, and style, as their forefathers of hundreds of years before would have done it, and who chose for the subject-matter of dispute an hereditary quarrel of twelve hundred years' standing. Just as the ancient history of the Irish began with the distinction between the descendants of the sons of Milesius, of which we read so much at the beginning of this volume, soon the self-same subject does the literary spirit of the ancient time which had lasted with little alteration from the days of St. Patrick, flare up into light for a brief moment at the opening of the seventeenth century, ere it expired for ever under the sword of Cromwell and of William.

It is altogether probable, however, that under the appearance of literary zeal and genealogical fury, the bards who took part in this contest were really actuated by the less apparent motive of rousing the ardour of their respective chiefs, their pride of blood, and their hatred of the intruder. If this, as I strongly suspect, were the underlying cause of the "Contention," their expiring effort to effect the impossible by the force of poetry—the only force at their command—is none the less pathetic, than would have been on the very brink of universal ruin, their quarrelling, in the face of their common enemy, upon the foolish old genealogies of a powerless past.

We know a good deal, however, about this Teig, son of Dairé, the ollamh of the O'Briens, of whose poetry, all written in elaborate and highly-wrought classical metres, we have still about three thousand four hundred lines. He possessed down even to the middle of the seventeenth century a fine estate and the castle of Dunogan with its appurtenances, which belonged to him by right of his office, as the hereditary ollamh of Thomond. He was hurled over a cliff in his old age by a soldier of Cromwell, who is said to have yelled after him with savage exultation as he fell, "Say your rann now, little man."[3][Pg 518] A beautiful inauguration ode to the English-bred Donogh O'Brien, fourth Earl of Thomond, proclaims him a bard of no ordinary good sense and merit.

    "Bring thy case before Him (God) every day, beseech diligently Him from whom nothing may be concealed, concerning everything of which thou art in care, Him from whom thou shalt receive relief.

    "Run not according to thine own desire, O Prince of the Boru tribute, let the cause of the people be thy anxiety, and that is not the anxiety of an idle man.

    "Be not thou negligent in the concerns of each: since it is thy due to decide between the people, O smooth countenance, be easy of access, and diligent in thine own interests.

    "Give not thyself up to play nor wine nor feast nor the delight of music nor the caresses of maidens; measure thou the ill-deeds of each with their due reward, without listening to the intervention of thy council.

    "For love, for terror, for hatred, do not pass (be thou a not-hasty judge) a judgment misbecoming thee, O Donough—no not for bribes of gold and silver."[4]

In another poem, Mac Dairé warns the O'Briens to be advised by him, and not plunge the province into war, and to take care how they draw down upon themselves his animosity. Here are a few of these verses, translated into the exact equivalent of the Deibhidh metre in which they are written. They will give a fair idea of a poet's arrogance.

"'Tis not War we Want to Wage
With THomond THinned by outrage.
SLIGHT not Poets' Poignant spur
Of RIGHT ye Owe it hOnour.

Can there Cope a Man with Me
In Burning hearts Bitterly,
[Pg 519]At my BLows men BLUSH I wis,
Bright FLUSH their Furious Faces.[5]

Store of blister-Raising Ranns
These are my Weighty Weapons,
Poisoned, STriking STRONG through men,
They Live not LONG so stricken.

SHelter from my SHafts or rest
Is not in Furthest Forest,
Far they FALL, words Soft as Snow,
No WALL can Ward my arrow.[6]

    *    *    *    *    *

To QUench in QUarrels good deeds,
To Raise up WRongs in hundreds,
To NAIL a NAME on a man,
I FAIL not—FAME my weapon."

The men who most distinguished themselves in the extraordinary outburst of classical poetry that characterised the early seventeenth century were Teig Dall O'H?ginn, a poet of the county Sligo, brother to the Archbishop of Tuam, and Eochaidh [Yohy] O'Hussey, the chief bard of the Maguire of Fermanagh. Teig Dall O'H?ginn has left behind him at least three thousand lines, all in polished classical metres, and[Pg 520] O'Hussey nearly four thousand. Teig Dall was the author of the celebrated poem addressed to Brian O'Rorke, urging him to take up arms against Elizabeth on the principle "si vis pacem para bellum:" it begins D'fhior cogaidh comhailtear síothchain "to a man of war peace is assured," and it had the desired effect. The verses of these bards throw a great deal of light upon the manners customs and politics of the age. There is a curious poem extant by this Teig Dall, in which he gives a graphic account of a night he spent in the house of Maolmordha Mac Sweeny, a night which the poet says he will remember for ever.[7] He met on that memorable night in that hospitable house Brian mac Angus Mac Namee, the poet in chief to Torlogh Luineach O'Neill, Brian mac Owen O'Donnellan, the poet of Mac William of Clanrickard, and Conor O'H?ginn, the bard of Mac William-Burke. Not only did the chieftain himself, Mac Sweeny, pay him homage, but he received presents—acknowledgment evidently of his admitted genius—from the poets as well. Mac Sweeny gave to him a dappled horse, one of the best steeds in Ireland, Brian mac Angus gave him a wolf-dog that might be matched against any; while from Brian mac Owen he received a book "a full well of the true stream of knowledge,"—in which were writ "the cattle-spoils, courtships, and sieges of the world, an explanation of their battles and progress, it was the flower of the King-books of Erin."[8] Where, he asks, are all those chiefs gone now? Alas! "the like of the men I found before me in that perfect rath of glistening splendour, ranged along the coloured sides of the purple-hung mansion, no eye[Pg 521] ever saw before,"[9] but they are scattered and gone, and the death of four of them in especial seemed a loss from which Banba [Ireland] thought she could never recover. This great poet, in my opinion by far the finest of his contemporaries, came to a tragical end. Six of the O'Haras of Sligo calling at his house, ate up his provisions, and in return he issued against them a special satire. This satire, consisting of twelve ranns in Deibhidh [D'yevvee] metre,[10] stung them to such a pitch that they returned and cut out the tongue that could inflict such exquisite pain, and poor O'H?ginn died of their barbarous ill-treatment some time prior to the year 1617. None of the bardic race had ever thought that such an end could overtake the great poet at the hands of the Gael themselves. It was only a short time before that, when some bard envying him his position at Coolavin in the west, far from the inroads of the murdering foreigner, had sung:—

"Would I Were in Cool-O-vinn
Where Haunteth Teig O Higinn
[Pg 522]There my LEASE of LIFE were free
From STRIFE in PEACE and Plenty."[11]

We find the poet O'Gnive, the author of the well-known poem, "The Stepping-down of the Gael,"[12] bitterly lamenting in Deibhidh metre, the death of O'H?ginn, and that breaking-up of the Bardic schools which was even then beginning.

"Fallen the LAND of Learned men,
The Bardic BAND is fallen;
None now LEARN true SONG to Sing,
How LONG our FERN is Fading!

Fearful your Fates O'Higinn,
And Yohy Mac Melaughlinn,
Dark was the DAY through FEUD Fell
The GOOD, the GAY, the GENTLE.[13]
[Pg 523]
Ye were Masters Made to please
O'Higinnses, O'Dalys;
GLOOMY ROCKS have WRought your fates,
Ye PLUMY FLOCKS of Poets."

O'Hussey, probably the greatest contemporary rival of Teig Dall, is best known through Mangan's translation of his noble ode to Cuchonnacht Maguire, lord of Fermanagh,[14] who was caught by the elements on some warlike expedition and in danger of being frozen and drowned.

"Where is my chief, my master, this black night? movrone!
Oh, cold, cold, miserably cold is this black night for Hugh,
Its showery, arrowy, speary sleet pierceth one through and through,
Pierceth one to the very bone.

    *    *    *    *    *

An awful, a tremendous night is this, meseems,
The floodgates of the rivers of heaven I think have been burst wide,
Down from the overcharged clouds, like unto headlong ocean's tide,
Descends grey rain in roaring streams.

Though he were even a wolf ranging the round green woods,
Though he were even a pleasant salmon in the unchainable sea,
Though he were a wild mountain eagle, he could scarce bear, he,
This sharp sore sleet, these howling floods."[15]

[Pg 524]

When it is remembered that O'Hussey composed this poem in that most difficult and artificial of metres, the Deibhidh, of which we have just given specimens, it will be seen how much Mangan has gained by his free and untrammelled metre, and what technical difficulties fettered O'Hussey's art, and lent glory to his triumph over them.

Both these great poets and their contemporaries had been reared in the bardic colleges, which continued to exist, though with gradually diminishing prestige, until near the close of the seventeenth century. I doubt if a single college survived into the eighteenth, to come under the cruel law which made it penal for a Catholic to teach a school. In the seventeenth century, however, several famous colleges of poetry are still found. They are frequently alluded to by the poets of that century, both in Ireland and Scotland, and always under the generic name of "the schools," by which they mean the bardic institutions. Few or none of those persons who did not themselves come of a bardic tribe were admitted into them, which accounts for the prevalence of the same surnames among the poets for several centuries, O'Dalys, O'H?ginnses, O'Coffeys, Macgraiths, Conmees, Wards, O'Mulconrys,[16] etc. None of the students were allowed to come from the neighbourhood of the college, but only from far-away parts of Ireland, so as not to be distracted by the propinquity of friends and relations.[Pg 525] This produced a certain unity of feeling among the bardic race, and to a great extent broke down all class prejudice, so much so, that the bards were almost the only people in later Ireland who belonged to their country rather than to their lord, or tribe, or territory. It may very well be, however, that the bardic race was not in the long run an advantage to Ireland, and that the elaborate system of pedigrees which they preserved, and their eulogies upon their particular patrons tended to keep the clan spirit alive to the detriment of the idea of a unified nationality, and to the exclusion of new political modes of thought.

However this may be, it is absolutely necessary to study the poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries if one would come to a right understanding of the great transformation scene then being enacted. The feelings, aspirations, and politics of the Irish themselves are faithfully reflected in them, and though no Irish historian, except perhaps O'Halloran, has ever read them, yet no historian can afford to utterly neglect them. It has become common of late years to deny that there was any real national struggle of Ireland against England in the seventeenth century, and my friend Mr. Standish O'Grady, in particular, from a perusal of the English State Papers and other documents, has striven with eloquence and brilliancy to prove that the fight was a social and an economic one, a conflict between the smaller gentry and the great upper lords. But such a view of the case is flatly contradicted, indeed absolutely disproved, by a study of the Irish bards. The names of Erin, Banba, Fódhla, the Plain of Conn, the Land of the Children of Ir and Eber, are in their mouths at every moment, and to the very last they persisted in their efforts to combine the Gael against the Gall. Here, for instance, is a poem, one specimen out of scores, by an unknown poet of the sixteenth century, exhorting the Irish of all the provinces to resistance, and it would be impossible to tell to what tribe or even to what province the poet belonged. I translate the poem here into a modification of the Irish metre,[Pg 526] and one which, it seems to me, could be very well taken over and adapted with a fairly good effect into English.[17]

"Fooboon upon you, ye hosts of the Gael,
For your own Innisfail has been taken,
And the Gall is dividing the emerald lands
By your treacherous bands forsaken.[18]

Clan Carthy of Munster from first unto last
Have forsaken the past of their sires,
And they honour no longer the men that are gone,
Or the song of the God-sent lyres.

The O'Briens of Banba whom Murrough led on,
They are gone with the Saxon aggressor,
[Pg 527]They have bartered the heirloom of ages away
And forgotten to slay the oppressor.

The old race of Brian mac Yohy[19] the stern,
With gallowglass kerne and bonnacht,[20]
They are down on their knees, they are cringing to-day,
'Tis the way through the province of Connacht.

In the valleys of Leinster the valorous band
Who lightened the land with their daring,
In Erin's dark hour now shift for themselves,
The wolves are upon them and tearing.

And O'Neill, who is throned in Emania afar,
And gave kings unto Tara for ages,
For the earldom of Ulster has bartered, through fear,
The kingdom of heroes and sages.[21]

Alas for the sight! the O'Carrolls of Birr
Swear homage in terror, sore fearing,
Not a man one may know for a man, can be found
On the emerald ground of Erin.

And O'Donnell[22] the chieftain, the lion in fight,
Who defended the right of Tirconnell,
(Ah! now may green Erin indeed go and droop!)
He stoops with them—Manus O'Donnell!
[Pg 528]
"Fooboon for the court where no English was spoke,
Fooboon for the yoke of the stranger,
Fooboon for the gun in the foreigner's train,
Fooboon for the chain of danger.

"Ye faltering madmen, God pity your case!
In the flame of disgrace ye are singeing.
Fooboon is the word of the bard and the saint,
Fooboon for the faint and cringing."

The session of the bardic schools began about Michaelmas,[23] and the youthful aspirants to bardic glory came trooping, about that season, from all quarters of the four provinces to offer with trembling hearts their gifts to the ollamh of the bardic college, and to take possession of their new quarters. Very extraordinary these quarters were; for the college usually consisted of a long low group of whitewashed buildings, excessively warmly thatched, and lying in the hollow of some secluded valley, or shut in by a sheltering wood, far removed from noise of human traffic and from the bustle of the great world. But what most struck the curious beholder was the entire absence of windows or partitions over the greater portion of the house.

According as each student arrived he was assigned a windowless room to himself, with no other furniture in it than a couple of chairs, a clothes rail, and a bed. When all the students had arrived, a general examination of them was held by the professors and ollamhs, and all who could not read and write Irish well, or who appeared to have an indifferent memory, were usually sent away. The others were divided into classes, and the mode of procedure was as follows: The students were called together into the great hall or sitting-room, amply illuminated by candles and bog-torches, and we may imagine the head ollamh, perhaps the venerable and patriotic O'Gnive himself, addressing them upon their chosen profession, and finally proposing some[Pg 529] burning topic such as O'Neill's abrogation of the title of O'Neill, for the higher class to compose a poem on, in perhaps the Great or Little Rannaigheacht [Ran-ee-?cht] metre, while for the second class he sets one more commonplace, to be done into Deibhidh [D'yevvee] or Séadna [Shayna], or some other classic measure, and any student who does not know all about the syllabification, quartans, concord, correspondence, termination, and union, which go to the various metres, is turned over to an inferior professor.

The students retired after their breakfasts, to their own warm but perfectly dark compartments, to throw themselves each upon his bed,[24] and there think and compose till supper-hour, when a servant came round to all the rooms with candles, for each to write down what he had composed. They were then called together into the great hall, and handed in their written compositions to the professors, after which they chatted and amused themselves till bed-time.

On every Saturday and the eve of every holiday the schools broke up, and the students dispersed themselves over the country. They were always gladly received by the landowners of the neighbourhood, and treated hospitably until their return on Monday morning. The people of the district never failed to send in, each in turn, large supplies to the college, so that, what between this and the presents brought by the students at the beginning of the year, the professors are said to have been fairly rich.

The schools always broke up on the 25th of March, and the holidays lasted for six months, it not being considered judicious to spend the warm half of the year in the close college, from which all light and air-draughts had been so carefully excluded.

I can hardly believe, however, that the students of law, history, and classics—all the educated classes could speak[Pg 530] Latin, which was their means of communication with the English[25]—were treated as here described, or enjoyed such long holidays. It was probably only a special class of candidates for bardic degrees who were thus dealt with, and the account above given may be somewhat exaggerated; the students probably composed in their dark compartments only on certain days.

In the seventeenth century we find that the three or four hundred metres taught in the schools of the tenth century had been practically restricted to a couple of dozen, and these nearly all heptasyllabic. It is quite probable, as Thurneysen asserts, that the metres of the early Roman hymns—themselves probably largely affected by Celtic models—exercised in their turn a reflex influence upon Irish poetry, and especially on that of the bards, in contradistinction to that of the filés. Indeed, it is pretty certain that if the Roman metres had not before existed in Irish the bards would have made no scruple about copying them; and they may thus have come by these octosyllabic and heptasyllabic lines about which they were in after times so particular. Of the metres chiefly in vogue in the schools of the later centuries, the most popular was the Deibhidh, of which I have already given so many examples.[26] It was, as it were, the official metre—the hexameter of the Gael. All the seven thousand and odd lines of the "Contention of the Bards," for instance, are written in it. Great Rannaigheacht[27] [Ran-ee-?cht] was another prime heptasyllabic favourite. It ran thus—

[Pg 531]

"To Hear Handsome Women WEEP,
In DEEP distress Sobbing Sore,
Or Gangs of Geese scream for FAR,
They sweeter ARE than ARTS snore."[28]

I may observe here that there has been on the part of[Pg 532] Irish Continental scholars an extraordinary amount of discordant theories as to the scansion of the Irish classical metres. None of them seem to be agreed as to how to scan them. Zimmer insists that the word-accent and the metrical accent in Irish are identical, which, as Kuno Meyer has shown, is plainly not the case. He would probably scan—

"Or wíld geese thát scream fróm fàr,"

while Kuno Meyer again would insist on reading—

"ór wild geése that scréam from fár,"

because, as he says, all heptasyllabic lines are to be read as trochaic, a theory which may apply very well to some lines, as to the above, but which is almost certain to break down after a line or two, as in the very next line of this verse which I have taken for a model—

"Théy sweet / ér are / thán Arts / snóre,"

a scansion which does extraordinary violence to the natural pronunciation of the words. I, for my part, do not believe that there was ever any real metrical accent, that is, any real alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables in the classical Irish metres.[29] The one thing certain about them is the fixed number of syllables and the rhyme, but each verse was, as it were, separately scanned, if one may use such a term, on its[Pg 533] own merits. Thus the verse just quoted would be read some way thus—

"To hear handsome
Women weep
In deep distress,
Sobbing sore,
Or gangs of geese
Scream from far,
They sweeter are
Than Arts snore."

I have frequently heard preserved in ranns or proverbs, even to this day, isolated quatrains in these classic metres pronounced by the people,[30] and they never dream of pronouncing them otherwise than according to the natural stress of the voice upon the words themselves, as if they were talking prose,—they never attempt to transform the seven-syllable lines into trochees, as Kuno Meyer would, nor the eight-syllable lines into iambics. Of this old Gaelic prosody there appears to be a[Pg 534] distinct reminiscence in Burns. Take this verse of his for example—

"Blythe, blythe, and merry was she,
Blythe was she but and ben,
Blythe by the banks of Ern,
And blythe in Glenturit glen."

This, supplying, say the syllable "and," in the second and third lines makes a good Rannaigheacht mór quatrain, which the poet evidently pronounced exactly as an old Irish bard would have done.

"Blythe, blythe,
And merry was she,
And blythe was she
But and ben,
Blythe by
The banks of Ern,
And blythe in
Glenturit glen."

Bonaventura O'Hussey was another fine classical poet of the beginning of the seventeenth century. He was educated for a bard, but afterwards became a Franciscan in Louvain, where he wrote and published an Irish work on Christian Doctrine in 1608, which was reprinted in Antwerp three years later. The Irish, having no press of their own in Ireland (though they had some outside it), were obliged to print and set up all their books abroad, chiefly at Louvain, Antwerp, Rome, and Paris. Any attempt to introduce founts of Irish type in the teeth of the English Government would, I think, have been futile, so that except for the works she was able to print in Irish type abroad, and afterwards to smuggle in, Ireland during the seventeenth century was thrown nearly a couple of hundred years out of the world's course, by having to use manuscripts instead of printed books. It is curious to find O'Hussey compressing the Christian doctrine into two hundred and forty lines of the most accurate Deibhidh metre. When leaving for his foreign home he bade farewell to Erin in a poem of great beauty.

[Pg 535]

"Slowly pass my Aching Eye,
Her Holy Hills of beauty
Neath me TOSSING To and fro,
Hoarse CRies the CROSSING billow."[31]

In another poem he laments sorely at leaving the poets and the schools "to try another trade," that of a cleric, which he says he does, not because he thinks less of poetry, or because the glory that was once to be had from it was departing amongst the people of Erin, but from religious motives alone.

"Now I stand to Try a Trade
Mid Bardic Band less famèd
Than the Part of Poet is
Hacked is my Heart in pieces.

'Tis not that I Veer from Verse
So Followed by my Fathers,
Lest the fame it Once did Win
In vain be Asked in Erin."[32]

Fearfeasa O'Cainti was another well-known poet of this period who attempted to rouse the Irish to action. Here are a few of his verses to the O'Driscoll—

"Many a Mulct—requite their sin—
Fetch from them heir of Finnin;
[Pg 536]Spare not to SPURN the brute Gall
To BURN the BEAR and jackal.[33]

Ruthless Rapine leads them on
Slaying CHief CHild CHampion!
BLood they BLINDLY spilt, no law
BINDING their guilt in Banba.

Pour their BLood to BLEND with blood,
Conor HAND of Hardihood,
CALL for ransom not my King;
Slay ALL, be Untransacting.

Lies they Lie! their Love is one
With TReachery and TReason,
Nay! thou Needest NOT my spur;
Revenge is HOT, Remember!"

The quantity of verse composed in these classic metres all through the seventeenth century was enormous, and amounts to at least twenty thousand lines of the known poets not to speak of the anonymous ones. Not more than a dozen of them have ever been published,[34] and yet no one can pretend[Pg 537] to understand the inner history of Ireland at that period without a reference to them. Their chief characteristic is an intense compression which produces an air of weighty sententiousness. This was necessitated by the laws of their composition, which required at the end of every second line a break or suspension of the sense (such as in English would be usually expressed by a semi-colon or colon), and which absolutely forbade any carrying over of the sense from one stanza into another. Hence the thought of the poet had with each fresh quatrain to be concentrated into twenty-eight syllables (thirty syllables in Séadna metre), with a break or pause at the end of the fourteenth (or fifteenth). Accordingly O'Gnive calls the poets the "schoolmen of condensed speech,"[35] and the Scotch bard Mac Muirich in the Red Book of Clanranald speaks of Teig Dall O'H?ginn as putting into less than a half-rann what others would take a whole crooked stanza to express.[36] The classical metres went, in Irish, under the generic name of Dán Direach, or "straight verse;" and O'Molloy, who wrote an Irish prosody in Latin in the seventeenth century, carried away by a contemplation of its difficulties, exclaims that it is "Omnium qu? unquam vidi vel audivi, ausim dicere qu? sub sole reperiuntur, difficilimum."

[Pg 538]

It was during the seventeenth century that the greatest change in the whole poetical system of the Irish and Scotch Gaels was accomplished, and that a new school of versification arose with new ideals, new principles, and new methods, which we shall briefly glance at in the following chapter.
********
[1] His real name was Mac Brodin, "Daré" or Dairé being his father's name.

[2] See above, p. 64.

[3] See O'Flanagan's "Transactions of the Gaelic Society, 1808," p. 29.

[4] "Ar ghrádh ar uamhan, ná ar fhuath
Ná beir (bi ad' bhreitheamh neamh-luath)
Breith nár chóir, a Dhonchadh, dhuit,
Ar chomhthaibh óir ná arguit."

This fine poem, containing in all 220 lines, was published by O'Flanagan in 1808.

[5] "Tig díom da ndearntaoi m'fioghail
Gríosadh bhur ngruadh lasamhail,
Fios bhur gníomh a's gníomh bhur sean
Tig a sgrios díom no a ndidean."

From a MS. of my own; this poem contains a hundred lines.

[6] "Ni bhi díon i ndiamhraibh gleann
Ná i bhfíodh dhlúith uaignach fhairseang,
Ná i múr caomh cneas-aolta cuir,
Ag fear m'easaonta ó'm armuibh.

Múchadh deigh-ghníomh, deargadh gruadh,
Toirmeasg ratha re diombuan,
Cur anma a's eachta ar fhear
Creachta ár n-airm-ne re n-áireamh."

[7] "Tánac oidhche go h-Eas-Caoile
Budh cuimhin liom go lá an bhráith,
Mairfidh choidhche ár ndol do'n dún-sa
Cor na h-oidhche a's cúrsa cháich."
Metre Séadna.

[8] "Tána, Tochmairc, Toghla an bheatha,
Do bhi 'san aiscidh fuair mé,
Mineachadh a gcath, 's a gcéimeann
Sgath rí-leabhar Eireann é."

[9] "Samhail na bhfear fuaireas rómham
'San rath foirththe do b'úr niamh
Ar sleasaibh datha an dúin chorcra
Ni fhaca súil rompa riamh."

See Catalogue of Irish MSS. in British Museum.

[10] It commences:—

"Sluagh seisir tháinig do m' thigh,
Béarfad uaim iúl an tseisir,
Tearc do lacht mé ar na mhárach
O thart na ré selánach (i.e., bitheamhnach);"

and the last verse runs:—

"Guidhim Dia do dhóirt a fhuil
O sé a mbás bheith na mbeathaidh,
(Ni mhairid gar marthain sin!)
Nár marbhthar an sluagh seisir."

I.e., "I pray to God who poured his blood, since it is their death to be in life,—they do not live whose living is that of theirs!—may that crew of six be never slain"! This last poem of the unfortunate Teig Dall is preserved in H. 1. 17 T.C.D. f. 116, 6, whence I copied it, but it has lately been printed in the brilliantly descriptive Catalogue of the Irish MSS. in the British Museum.

[11] I found this poem in a MS. in Trinity College, Dublin, written by one of the Maguires about the year 1700, but I forget its numbering. I quote the verse from memory:—

"Och gan mé i g Cúl O fhFinn
Mar a bhfuil Tadhg O h-Uiginn,
Dfheudfainn suan go seasgar ann
Gan uamhain easgair orom."

[12] See Hardiman's "Irish Minstrelsy," vol. ii. p. 102. But it may not have been the same O'Gneev or O'Gnive, who laments Teig Dall, or if it was, he must have been a very old man, seeing he accompanied Shane O'Neill to London in 1562. His poem on the "Stepping-down of the Gael" has been spiritedly translated by Sir Samuel Ferguson, beginning—

"My heart is in woe,
And my soul is in trouble,
For the mighty are low,
And abased are the noble."

But the metre is the favourite and dignified Deibhidh.

[13] "Oighidh Thaidhg dhuan-sgagtha Dhoill,
Eag Eochaigh mhic Mhaoilsheachlainn,
Tug draoithe Eireann fá oil,
Géibheann maoithe fa mhenmoin."

From a manuscript of my own. i.e., "The tragic-fate of Teig Dall, the Strainer-of-lays, the death of Eochaidh Mac Melaughlin has brought the druids (i.e., learned poets) of Ireland under reproach, and fetters of weakness on [their] spirits."

[14] This prince had also been eulogised by Teig Dall O'H?ginn in a poem of 164 lines, beginning Mairg fheuchas ar Inis Ceithlind, "Alas for him who beholds Enniskillen."

[15] In the original—

"Fuar liom an oidhche-se d'Aodh!
Cúis tuirse troime a cith-bhraon!
Mo thruaighe sin d'ár seise [i.e., caraid!]
Nimh fuaire na h-oidhche-se.

Anocht is nimh lem' chridhe,
Fearthar frasa teinntidhe,
I gcómhdháil na gclá seacta
Mar tá is orgráin aigeanta."

The literal meaning of this last verse, which may be profitably compared with Mangan's translation, is, "This night it is venom to my heart how the fiery showers are rained down, in the company of the frozen spikes; how it is, is a horror to the mind." The next verse is also worth giving.

"Do h-osgladh as ochtuibh neóil
Doirse uisgidhe an aidheóir,
Tug sé minlinnte ann a muir,
Do sgeith an firmiminta hurbhuidh."

"There has been thrown open, out of the bosom of the clouds, the doors of the waters of the air. It has made of little linns a sea; the firmament has belched forth her destructiveness." The metre of the last line in this verse is wrong, for it contains nine not seven syllables.

[16] O'Reilly mentions eight Mac-an-bháirds or Wards, eleven O'Clerys, seven O'Coffeys, eight O'H?ginnses, nine O'Mulconrys and no less than twenty-eight O'Dalys, who were by far the most numerous and perhaps the ablest bardic tribe in all Ireland.

[17] The metre of the original is hepta-syllabic, each line ending in a dissyllable, and there is no regular beat or accentuation in the verse, which though printed as a four-line stanza, would really run some way thus—

"Foobon on ye,
Cringe cowards,
Are your powers
Departed?

Galls your country
Are tearing,
Overbearing,
Flint-hearted."

The Irish themselves, either through the influence of English verse or through the natural evolution of the Irish language, changed this metre in the next century into one not unlike my English verses above.

[18] This piece is taken from a manuscript of my own; I have never met this fine poem elsewhere. The word fooboon, upon which the changes are so rung, is new to me, and is not contained in any Irish or Scotch-Gaelic dictionary, the nearest approach to it is O'Reilly's fúbta, "humiliation"; but I find the words fubub fubub in the sense of "shame," "fy," in the Turner MS., "Reliqui? Celtic?," vol. ii. p. 325. The metre of this poem is Little Rannaigheacht, and the first verse runs thus—

"Fúbún fúibh a shluagh Gaoidheal
Ni mhair aoin-neach agaibh
Goill ag comh-roinn bhur gcríche
Re sluagh sithe mar [i.e. bhur] samhail."

Literally: "Fooboon to you, O host of the Gaels, not a man of you is alive: the Galls are together-dividing your lands, while ye are [unsubstantial] like a fairy host. The Clan Carthy of Leath Mogha [i.e., Southern Ireland], and to call them out down to one man, there is not—and sad is the disgrace—one person of them imitating the [old] Gaels," etc.

[19] Yohy is the pronunciation of the Irish Eochaidh, genitive Eochach, or even Eathach. The Eochaidh here alluded to is Eochaidh Muigh-mhea-dhon [Mwee-va-on], father of Niall of the Nine Hostages. He came to the throne in 356, and from his son Brian the O'Conors, O'Rorkes, O'Reillys, MacDermots, etc., of Connacht are descended, who all went under the generic name of the Ui Briain, as the families descended from his other son, Niall of the Nine Hostages are the Ui Neill. See above, pp. 33 and 34.

[20] Bonnacht is a "mercenary soldier."

[21] "O Néill Oiligh a's Eamhna
Ri Teamhrach agus Tailltean,
Tugsad ar iarlacht Uladh
Ríoghacht go h-úmhal aimhghlic."

I.e., "O'Neill of Aileach and of Emania, King of Tara and of Tailtinn, they have given away for the earldom of Ulster, a kingdom submissively unwisely."

[22] Manus O'Donnell died in 1563, so that this poem must have been composed somewhat earlier.

[23] This account of the later bardic schools is chiefly derived from a curious book, the "Memoirs of Clanrickard," printed in London in 1722.

[24] Hence the bardic expression, "luidhe i leabaibh sgol," i.e., "to lie in the beds of the schools," equivalent to becoming a poet.

[25] Campion, who wrote in 1574, says of the Irish of his day: "They speake Latine like a vulgar language learned in their schooles of Leachcraft and law, whereat they begin children and holde on sixteene or twentie yeares." After the Battle of the Curlew Mountains, MacDermot, anxious to let the Governor know where the body of Sir Conyers Clifford lay, wrote a note to him in Latin.

[26] See above, pp. 518-523.

[27] Of Little Rannaigheacht I gave an example a few pages back in the poem "Fooboon." Séadna [Shayna] was another great favourite, built on the model of the following verse, with or without alliteration—

"Teig of herds the Gallant Giver,
Right receiver of our love,
Teig thy Name shall KNow no ending,
Branch un-Bending, Erin's glove."

This verse runs rhythmically, but that it does so is only an accident. The Irish could always have got their Séadna verses, at least, of eight and seven syllables, to run smoothly if they had wished, but they did not. Here is a more Irish-like stanza in the same metre—

"Of / lowliness / came a / daughter,
And / he who / brought her / was / God,
Noble / her / son and / stately,
Ennobling / greatly / this / sod."

Great Séadna is the same metre as this, except that every verse ends with a word of three syllables. In Middle Séadna the first and third lines end in trisyllables, the second and fourth in dissyllables. Ae-fri-Slighe is like Middle Séadna, except that instead of the first and third lines being octosyllabic, they all have seven syllables, as—

"Ye who bring to slavery
Men of mind and reading,
God bring down your bravery,
Leave you vexed and bleeding."

Little Deachna is a pretty metre with five syllables to each line, as—

"God gives me three things,
Them he brings all three
When the soul is born
Like a corn in me."

Great Deachna contained eight and six syllables, each line ending in dissyllables—

"I believe this wafer holy,
Which is safer surely,
Flesh, blood, Godhead strangely mingled,
In bread bodied purely."

The above metres are a few of the most favourite.

[28] "Mná módhach' go ngoimh ag gul,
Gan árach ar sgur d'á mbrón,
Caoi chadhain an oidhche fhuar
Is binne 'ná fuaim do shrón."

From a manuscript of my own, a comic poem by an anonymous bard, on a snoring companion.

[29] Windisch appears to me to have come closest to the truth: "If we suppose," he says, "that the accented syllable coincides with the natural accent of the word, if we consider that polysyllabic words, besides having an accented syllable, can also have a semi-accented one (neben den Hauptton auch einen Nebenton haben k?nnen), finally, if we take it for granted that the syllables in which rhyme or alliteration appear must also bear the accent or up-beat of the voice (in der Hebung stehen mussen), we then at once come to the conclusion that each half-verse contains a specified number of accented syllables, without, however, any regular interchange of up and down beats of accented and unaccented syllables."—See "Irische Texte," I. i. p. 157.

[30] Thus when O'Carolan, in the last century, made the extempore response to the butler who prohibited his entering the cellar

"Mo chreach a Dhiarmuid Ui Fhloinn
Gan tu ar dorus ifrinn,
'S tu nach leigfeadh neach ad' chó'r
'San áit bheitheá do dhoirseóir."

He spoke (perhaps unwittingly) an excellent Deibhidh stanza, but he never scanned it,

"Mó chreach / á Dhiar / múid Ui / Fhloínn
Gan tu / ár dor / us if / rinn."

He said,

"Mo chreách / a Dhíarmuid / Uí / Fhloínn
Gan tú / ar dórus / ifrinn."

So, too, in a rann I heard from a friend in the county Mayo, and printed in my "Religious Songs of Connacht," p. 232:—

"Ni meisge is miste liom
Acht leisg a feicsint orom [orm],
Gan digh meisge's miste an greann
Acht ni gnáth meisge gan mi-greann,"

which is not spoken as—

"Ní meis / gé is / míste liom,"

but as—

"Ni / méisge / is míste / liom."

[31] "Do chuadar as rinn mo ruisg
Do tholcha is áluinn éaguisg,
Is tuar orcra dá n-éisi
Dromla fhuar na h-aibheisi."
From a manuscript of my own.

[32] "Ni fuath d'ealadhain m' aithreach
Thug fúm aigneadh aithrigheach,
No an ghlóir do gheibhthí dá chionn
Ar neimhuidh ó phór Eirionn."

From a manuscript of my own. This poem appears not to have been known to O'Reilly.

[33] "Iomdha eiric nach í sin
Agad a oighre Fhinghin,
Gan séana ar garbh-amhsaibh Gall
Méala an t-amhgar-soin d'fhulang."

I.e., "Many an eric that is not that, [be] to thee, O heir of Finneen, without refusing [to inflict loss] on the coarse-monsters of Galls: a grief to endure that affliction!" From a manuscript of my own. This poem was also unknown to O'Reilly. It consists of 180 lines, and begins Leó féin cuirid clann Iotha, i.e. "By themselves go the children of the Ithians," of whom the O'Driscolls were the chief tribe. For an account of the little band of Ithians, the fourth division of the Gaelic family see above, p. 67.

[34] Since writing the above a German Celticist, Ludwig Christian Stern, has written a most interesting account of a collection of bardic poems, chiefly of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, now preserved in the Royal Library at Copenhagen. This interesting collection is chiefly dedicated to the praises of the Maguires of Fermanagh, and is the work of a number of accomplished poets, most of whom are unknown to O'Reilly, even by name. The whole collection contains 5,576 lines, of which Herr Julius Stern has printed about a thousand, thus having the honour of being the first to render accessible a fair specimen of the work of the current poetry of the schools in the sixteenth century. The characteristics of this poetry he appraises, very justly as I think, in the following words, "The language is choice and difficult, the poetry is of the traditional type, poor in facts, but elevated, stately, learned, and very artistic." See for this interesting article the "Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie," II. Band, 2 Heft., pp. 323-373, "Eine Sammlung irischer Gedichte in Kopenhagen."

[35] "Ni mhair sgoluidhe sgéil teinn
D'uibh nDálaigh ná d'uibh n-Uiginn."
From a manuscript of my own.

[36] "Reliqui? Celtic?," vol. ii. p. 297. Last stanza.