No More Learning

The military rigor of the
Jesuit order sent him forth under marching orders, after a brief
period of service amongst his own people, and he seems to have
passed from house to house in Italy and Germany, according to the
usual plan adopted by the order for the detachment from individuals
of ties of place and comradeship. These ties seem to have been too
strongly secured to the young Irishman, for he was allowed to with-
draw from the schools of the disciples of Loyola, and to complete
his priestly equipment and ordination amongst those not bound by
the rules of monastic life. It is certain that he was made a priest
in Italy, whence he returned to his native city, where for a time he
occupied the position of curate to a gentle pastor, whose useful and
consoling ministry had never extended beyond the charm of the
sound of "Shandon Bells. "
Very little has been told of Father Prout's life while he followed
the course of studies prescribed by the Jesuit schools; but imagina-
tion affords a special delight to those who contemplate that mind
seething with the irrepressible chemistry of wit, vainly striving to
accommodate itself to the tasks imposed upon the young recruits of
that most rigorous and perfect of human institutions for the subjection
of self.
The schoolmaster from Marlborough Street, "Billy" Maginn, was
directly responsible for the introduction of "Father Prout" to the
great world.
When we reflect that the "Wizard of the North" had
so grandly set an example of anonymity to the younger generation,
it is not to be wondered at that so many gems of brilliant thought
first gleamed to the sun of Fame through the rough coating of ficti-
tious authorship, or that O'Mahony sheltered his bantlings under such
a cover.
When the supposed "Frank Cresswell" communicated to wits and
worldlings the beloved contents of Father Prout's strong chest, it was
not long before the youngsters about Grub Street realized that there
was a new pen in town; and, fully equipped as they were for the
enjoyable game of literary hide-and-seek, then so much in vogue
amongst them, they soon brought to their coterie the dearest and
best of that knightly circle of the pen, Father Frank Mahony, priest,
poet, inimitable jester, loving friend, faithful steadfast Irishman, and


## p. 10847 (#55) ###########################################

FRANCIS SYLVESTER O'MAHONY
10847
Christian gentleman. How glorious were the days and nights of
those "Fraserians" no one can be ignorant who looks around that
circle, which, beginning with Maginn and the decanters, is carried on
by Barry Cornwall, Southey, Thackeray, Churchill, Murphy, Ainsworth,
Coleridge, Hogg, Fraser, Crofton Croker, Lockhart, Theodore Hook,
D'Orsay, and Carlyle, to Mahony and Irving. At this time Father
Prout always wrote his name, according to the English method, with-
out the "O'"; but in his last years he returned again to the use of
the dignified prefix of his ancestral family.
In Fraser he poured out the treasure of a heart full of wisdom
and odd conceits, and overflowing with brilliant translations from the
classics of old and new tongues, and rogueries of his own invention
attributed to old and famous or unknown names, for the mystification
of the jolly and mischievous crew which swarmed from royal and
noble drawing-rooms, through the lobbies of Drury Lane and Covent
Garden, to the supper-rooms and convivial resorts which filled the
neighborhood of Printing-House Square.
It was Charles Dickens's idea which made Father Mahony one of
the first, and certainly one of the best, foreign correspondents. The
two met one day as "Prout" was about to depart for Italy; and
"Boz" suggested that the priest should furnish the Daily News with
letters on the state of social affairs in Rome, during those eventful
days which closed the Pontificate of Gregory XVI. and opened that
of Pius IX. Could anything have made "Prout's" name more famous,
it must have been the recognition of his peculiar fitness for this
work, which speedily followed the publication of his letters over the
pseudonym of "Sylvester Savonarola," first given in the News, and
republished in book form under the title of 'Final Reliques of Father
Prout,' by Blanchard Jerrold.
It was during the year 1834 that, in Cork, "Father Prout" began
his literary career. It was in 1866 that, in Paris, under the direction
of Father Lefèvre of the Society of Jesus, he received the last sacra-
ments of his church, and went from the dear neighborhood of the
"New Street of the Little Fields," where he had once cozily settled
his good friends the newly married Thackerays, to the company.
of the comrades of Christ who are mustered out of active service
militant.
Jnalelone


## p. 10848 (#56) ###########################################

10848
FRANCIS SYLVESTER O'MAHONY
FATHER PROUT
From the Reliques'
I
AM a younger son. I belong to an ancient but poor and
dilapidated house, of which the patrimonial estate was barely
enough for my elder; hence, as my share resembled what
is scientifically called an evanescent quantity, I was directed to
apply to that noble refuge of unprovided genius-the bar! To
the bar, with a heavy heart and aching head, I devoted year
after year; and was about to become a tolerable proficient in the
black letter, when an epistle from Ireland reached me in Furni-
val's Inn, and altered my prospects materially. This dispatch
was from an old Catholic aunt whom I had in that country, and
whose house I had been sent to when a child, on the speculation
that this visit to my venerable relative, who to her other good
qualities added that of being a resolute spinster, might deter-
mine her, as she was both rich and capricious, to make me her
inheritor. The letter urged my immediate presence in the dying
chamber of the Lady Cresswell; and as no time was to be lost, I
contrived to reach in two days the lonely and desolate mansion on
Watergrasshill, in the vicinity of Cork. As I entered the apart-
ment, by the scanty light of the lamp that glimmered dimly I
recognized with some difficulty the emaciated form of my gaunt
and withered kinswoman, over whose features, originally thin and
wan, the pallid hue of approaching death cast additional ghast-
liness. By the bedside stood the rueful and unearthly form of
Father Prout; and while the sort of chiaroscuro in which his
figure appeared, half shrouded, half revealed, served to impress.
me with a proper awe for his solemn functions, the scene itself,
and the probable consequences to me of this last interview
with my aunt, affected me exceedingly. I involuntarily knelt;
and while I felt my hands grasped by the long, cold, and bony
fingers of the dying, my whole frame thrilled; and her words,
the last she spoke in this world, fell on my ears with all the
effect of a potent witchery, never to be forgotten! "Frank,"
said the Lady Cresswell, "my lands and perishable riches I have
bequeathed to you, though you hold not the creed of which this
is a minister, and I die a worthless but steadfast votary: only
promise me and this holy man that, in memory of one to whom
your welfare is dear, you will keep the fast of Lent while you


## p. 10849 (#57) ###########################################

FRANCIS SYLVESTER O'MAHONY
10849
live; and as I cannot control your inward belief, be at least in
this respect a Roman Catholic: I ask no more. " How could I
have refused so simple an injunction? and what junior member
of the bar would not hold a good rental by so easy a tenure?
In brief, I was pledged in that solemn hour to Father Prout,
and to my kind and simple-hearted aunt, whose grave is in
Rathcooney and whose soul is in heaven.
During my short stay at Watergrasshill (a wild and romantic
district, of which every brake and fell, every bog and quagmire,
is well known to Crofton Croker for it is the very Arcadia of
his fictions), I formed an intimacy with this Father Andrew Prout,
the pastor of the upland, and a man celebrated in the south of
Ireland. He was one of that race of priests now unfortunately
extinct, or very nearly so, like the old breed of wolf-dogs, in the
island: I allude to those of his order who were educated abroad,
before the French Revolution, and had imbibed, from associating
with the polished and high-born clergy of the old Gallican church,
a loftier range of thought and a superior delicacy of sentiment.
Hence, in his evidence before the House of Lords, "the glorious
Dan" has not concealed the grudge he feels towards those cler-
gymen, educated on the Continent, who having witnessed the
doings of the sans-culottes in France, have no fancy to a rehearsal
of the same in Ireland. Of this class was Prout, P. P. of Water-
grasshill: but his real value was very faintly appreciated by his
rude flock; he was not understood by his contemporaries; his
thoughts were not their thoughts, neither could he commune with
kindred souls on that wild mountain. Of his genealogy nothing
was ever known with certainty; but in this he resembled Mel-
chizedek. Like Eugene Aram, he had excited the most intense
interest in the highest quarters, still did he studiously court
retirement. He was thought by some to be deep in alchemy,
like Friar Bacon; but the gaugers never even suspected him
of distilling "potheen. " He was known to have brought from
France a spirit of the most chivalrous gallantry; still, like Féne-
lon retired from the court of Louis XIV. , he shunned the attrac-
tions of the sex, for the sake of his pastoral charge: but in the
rigor of his abstinence and the frugality of his diet he resem-
bled no one, and none kept Lent so strictly.
Of his gallantry one anecdote will be sufficient. The fashion-
able Mrs. Pepper, with two female companions, traveling through
the county of Cork, stopped for Divine service at the chapel of
XIX-679


## p. 10850 (#58) ###########################################

10850
FRANCIS SYLVESTER O'MAHONY
Watergrasshill (which is on the high-road on the Dublin line),
and entered its rude gate while Prout was addressing his congre-
gation. His quick eye soon detected his fair visitants standing
behind the motley crowd, by whom they were totally unnoticed,
so intent were all on the discourse; when, interrupting the thread
of his homily to procure suitable accommodation for the stran-
gers, "Boys! " cried the old man, "why don't ye give three chairs
for the ladies ? » "Three cheers for the ladies! " re-echoed at once
the parish clerk. It was what might be termed a clerical, but
certainly a very natural, error: and so acceptable a proposal was
suitably responded to by the frieze-coated multitude, whose triple
shout shook the very cobwebs on the roof of the chapel! - after
which slight incident, service was quietly resumed.
He was extremely fond of angling; a recreation which, while
it ministered to his necessary relaxation from the toils of the
mission, enabled him to observe cheaply the fish diet imperative
on fast days. For this, he had established his residence at the
mountain-source of a considerable brook, which, after winding
through the parish, joins the Blackwater at Fermoy; and on its
banks would he be found, armed with his rod and wrapt in his
strange cassock, fit to personate the river-god or presiding genius
of the stream.
His modest parlor would not ill become the hut of one of
the fishermen of Galilee. A huge net in festoons curtained his
casement; a salmon-spear, sundry rods, and fishing-tackle hung
round the walls and over his bookcase, which latter was to him
the perennial spring of refined enjoyment. Still, he would sigh
for the vast libraries of France, and her well-appointed scien-
tific halls, where he had spent his youth in converse with the
first literary characters and most learned divines: and once he
directed my attention to what appeared to be a row of folio vol-
umes at the bottom of his collection, but which I found on trial
to be so many large flat stone-flags, with parchment backs, bear-
ing the appropriate title of CORNELII A LAPIDE Opera quæ extant
omnia; by which semblance of that old Jesuit's commentaries he
consoled himself for the absence of the original.
His classic acquirements were considerable, as will appear by
his Essay on Lent; and while they made him a most instruct-
ive companion, his unobtrusive merit left the most. favorable im-
pression. The general character of a Churchman is singularly
improved by the tributary accomplishments of the scholar, and


## p. 10851 (#59) ###########################################

FRANCIS SYLVESTER O'MAHONY
10851
literature is like a pure grain of Araby's incense in the golden
censer of religion. His taste for the fine arts was more genu-
ine than might be conjectured from the scanty specimens that
adorned his apartment, though perfectly in keeping with his
favorite sport: for there hung over the mantelpiece a print of
Raphael's cartoon, the Miraculous Draught'; here Tobit Res-
cued by an Angel from the Fish,' and there 'St. Anthony
Preaching to the Fishes. '
THE SHANDON BELLS
From The Rogueries of Tom Moore,' in the Reliques >
ITн deep affection
And recollection
I often think on
WITH
Those Shandon bells,
Whose sounds so wild would
In the days of childhood,
Fling round my cradle
Their magic spells.
On this I ponder
Where'er I wander,
And thus grow fonder,
Sweet Cork, of thee;
With thy bells of Shandon,
That sound so grand on
The pleasant waters
Of the river Lee.
I've heard bells chiming
Full many a clime in,
Tolling sublime in
Cathedral shrine,
While at a glib rate
Brass tongues would vibrate-
But all their music
Spoke naught like thine;
For memory dwelling
On each proud swelling
Of the belfry knelling
Its bold notes free,


## p. 10852 (#60) ###########################################

10852
FRANCIS SYLVESTER O'MAHONY
Made the bells of Shandon
Sound far more grand on
The pleasant waters
Of the river Lee.
I've heard bells tolling
Old "Adrian's Mole" in,
Their thunder rolling
From the Vatican,
And cymbals glorious
Swinging uproarious
In the gorgeous turrets
Of Nôtre Dame;
But thy sounds are sweeter
Than the dome of Peter
Flings o'er the Tiber,
Pealing solemnly:
Oh! the bells of Shandon
Sound far more grand on
The pleasant waters
Of the river Lee.
There's a bell in Moscow,
While on tower and kiosk, O!
In Saint Sophia
The Turkman gets,
And loud in air
Calls men to prayer
From the tapering summit
Of tall minarets.
Such empty phantom
I freely grant them;
But there is an anthem
More dear to me,-
'Tis the bells of Shandon,
That sound so grand on
The pleasant waters
Of the river Lee.


## p. 10853 (#61) ###########################################

FRANCIS SYLVESTER O'MAHONY
10853
DON IGNACIO LOYOLA'S VIGIL
IN THE CHAPEL OF OUR LADY OF MONTSERRAT
From Literature and the Jesuits,' in the 'Reliques'
WHE
HEN at thy shrine, most holy maid!
The Spaniard hung his votive blade,
And bared his helmèd brow,
Not that he feared war's visage grim,
Or that the battle-field for him
Had aught to daunt, I trow,-
«< Glory! " he cried, "with thee I've done!
Fame, thy bright theatres I shun,
To tread fresh pathways now;
To track thy footsteps, Savior God!
With throbbing heart, with feet unshod:
Hear and record my vow.
"Yes, thou shalt reign! Chained to thy throne,
The mind of man thy sway shall own,
And to its conqueror bow.
Genius his lyre to thee shall lift,
And intellect its choicest gift
Proudly on thee bestow. "
Straight on the marble floor he knelt,
And in his breast exulting felt
A vivid furnace glow;
Forth to his task the giant sped:
Earth shook abroad beneath his tread,
And idols were laid low.
India repaired half Europe's loss;
O'er a new hemisphere the Cross
Shone in the azure sky;
And from the isles of far Japan
To the broad Andes, won o'er man
A bloodless victory!


## p. 10854 (#62) ###########################################

10854
FRANCIS SYLVESTER O'MAHONY
MALBROUCK
From The Songs of France,' in the Reliques'
M
ALBROUCK, the prince of commanders,
Is gone to the war in Flanders;
His fame is like Alexander's:
But when will he come home?
Perhaps at Trinity Feast, or
Perhaps he may come at Easter.
Egad! he'd better make haste, or
We fear he may never come.
For Trinity Feast" is over,
«<
And has brought no news from Dover;
And Easter is past, moreover:
And Malbrouck still delays.
Milady in her watch-tower
Spends many a pensive hour,
Not well knowing why or how her
Dear lord from England stays.
While sitting quite forlorn in
That tower, she spies returning
A page clad in deep mourning,
With fainting steps and slow.
"O page, prithee come faster!
What news do you bring of your master?
I fear there is some disaster,
Your looks are so full of woe. "
"The news I bring, fair lady,"
With sorrowful accent said he,
"Is one you are not ready
So soon, alas! to hear.
But since to speak I'm hurried,”
Added this page, quite flurried,
"Malbrouck is dead and buried! "
(And here he shed a tear. )
"He's dead! he's dead as a herring!
For I beheld his 'berring,'
And four officers transferring
His corpse away from the field.


## p. 10855 (#63) ###########################################

FRANCIS SYLVESTER O'MAHONY
10855
"One officer carried his sabre,
And he carried it not without labor,
Much envying his next neighbor,
Who only bore a shield.
"The third was helmet-bearer
That helmet which on its wearer
Filled all who saw it with terror,
And covered a hero's brains.
―――――
"Now, having got so far, I
Find that (by the Lord Harry! )
The fourth is left nothing to carry;
So there the thing remains. ”
THE SONG OF THE COSSACK
From The Songs of France,' in the 'Reliques>
C
OME, arouse thee up, my gallant horse, and bear thy rider on!
The comrade thou, and the friend, I trow, of the dweller on
the Don.
Pillage and Death have spread their wings! 'tis the hour to hie thee
forth,
And with thy hoofs an echo wake to the trumpets of the North!
Nor gems nor gold do men behold upon thy saddle-tree;
But earth affords the wealth of lords for thy master and for thee.
Then fiercely neigh, my charger gray! -thy chest is proud and
ample;
Thy hoofs shall prance o'er the fields of France, and the pride of her
heroes trample!
Europe is weak - she hath grown old-her bulwarks are laid low;
She is loath to hear the blast of war- she shrinketh from a foe!
Come, in our turn, let us sojourn in her goodly haunts of joy
In the pillared porch to wave the torch, and her palaces destroy!
Proud as when first thou slack'dst thy thirst in the flow of conquered
Seine,
Aye shalt thou lave, within that wave, thy blood-red flanks again.
Then fiercely neigh, my gallant gray! -thy chest is strong and
ample!
Thy hoofs shall prance o'er the fields of France, and the pride of her
heroes trample!


## p. 10856 (#64) ###########################################

10856
FRANCIS SYLVESTER O'MAHONY
Kings are beleaguered on their thrones by their own vassal crew;
And in their den quake noblemen, and priests are bearded too;
And loud they yelp for the Cossack's help to keep their bondsmen
down,
And they think it meet, while they kiss our feet, to wear a tyrant's
crown!
The sceptre now to my lance shall bow, and the crosier and the
cross
Shall bend alike when I lift my pike, and aloft THAT SCEPTRE toss!
Then proudly neigh, my gallant gray! -thy chest is broad and
ample;
Thy hoofs shall prance o'er the fields of France, and the pride of her
heroes trample!
In a night of storm I have seen a form! - and the figure was a
GIANT,
And his eye was bent on the Cossack's tent, and his look was all
defiant;
Kingly his crest-and towards the West with his battle-axe he
pointed;
And the "form" I saw was ATTILA! of this earth the Scourge
Anointed.
From the Cossack's camp let the horseman's tramp the coming crash
announce;
Let the vulture whet his beak sharp set, on the carrion field to
pounce;
And proudly neigh, my charger gray! -Oh, thy chest is broad and
ample;
Thy hoofs shall prance o'er the fields of France, and the pride of her
heroes trample!
What boots old Europe's boasted fame, on which she builds reliance,
When the North shall launch its avalanche on her works of art and
science?
Hath she not wept, her cities swept by our hordes of trampling
stallions?
And tower and arch crushed in the march of our barbarous battal-
ions?
Can we not wield our father's shield? the same war-hatchet handle?
Do our blades want length, or the reaper's strength, for the harvest
of the Vandal?
Then proudly neigh, my gallant gray, for thy chest is strong and
ample;
And thy hoofs shall prance o'er the fields of France, and the pride of
her heroes trample!


## p. 10857 (#65) ###########################################

10857
JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY
(1844-1890)
BY MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN
Ew men had a more romantic or picturesque life than John
Boyle O'Reilly; and few men have lived more consistent
lives, though consistency is not generally looked upon as an
attribute of romance. From the beginning to the end of his career
he showed high qualities, illumined by that glow which not even the
poet Wordsworth could describe, when he called it the "light that
never was on sea or land. " And at no time
did the actor in so many thrilling incidents
fall below the elevation that one expects
in a hero of romance. His thoughts, his
moods, his quality, his temperament,-all
are thoroughly expressed in the pages of
his poetry. If the essence of literature is
personality and the exact expression of it,
Boyle O'Reilly's work will live when the old
wrongs that wrung his heart are gone, and
the liberty he loved blesses the spots which
to his eyes were made desolate by tyranny.
The effects of that work can never be esti-
mated; they were felt by youth and age, by
men of every religious opinion and none;
they made for righteousness, for peace with honor, for toleration,
sympathy, and the highest patriotism.

BOYLE O'REILLY
He was born June 28th, 1844, at Dowth Castle, near the town of
Drogheda, in Ireland. Mr. James Jeffrey Roche, the closest friend of
the poet, who understood him by experience and intuition, gives in
his Life, Poems, and Speeches of John Boyle O'Reilly' (New York:
Cassell Publishing Co. ), a description of the traditions and surround-
ings of this beautiful spot. They helped to develop the passionate,
chivalrous love of his native country and of liberty in the boy. He
was brought up in an atmosphere of legend and story; and his father,
a schoolmaster of the higher type, joined with a clever mother in
laying the foundation of his literary success. He began his life work
as a compositor in a printing-office in Ireland; and continued it in the


## p. 10858 (#66) ###########################################

10858
JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY
same vocation at Preston, in Lancashire, where he made many warm
friends. His experience in the British army, his connection with the
Fenian movement, his imprisonment, his Australian exile, the thrilling
details of his escape, supplied material for his romance of 'Moondyne,'
and helped to add riches to an imagination which turned all that it
touched into new and rare forms. If there were space here for a
detailed biography, one could not do better than to quote from Mr.
Roche's 'Life'; but this paper must concern itself with the reflection
of that life as expressed in literary form. In the United States, after
adventures by sea and land, and tortures and suffering borne with a
heroism that was both Greek and Christian, he found the spirit of
freedom in concrete form. Our country satisfied his aspirations for
liberty; he loved Ireland not less, but America more; he was exiled
from the land of his birth, yet he found ample consolation in the
country he had chosen. An Irishman and a Catholic, he made an
epoch in the history of his people in the United States; and he was,
as editor of the Boston Pilot, enabled to do this through the support
and encouragement of one of the most eminent prelates of his church,
Archbishop Williams.
In the hundreds of paragraphs and leaders that came from his pen
during his connection with the Pilot (1870-90), there is the plasticity
and strength which show in 'Moondyne' (1878), and in his part of
'The King's Men' (1884).
'The King's Men' was written by him in collaboration with Rob-
ert Grant, "J. S. of Dale," and John F. Wheelwright.
It had as a
precedent Six of One and Half a Dozen of the Other,' done by six
writers, marshaled by the author of The Man Without a Country. '
It appeared in the Boston Globe, and achieved great success. The
plan of the book was a "projection" into the reign of George V.
George, during a revolution of his subjects, had found an asylum in
America, in the thirty-third year of the German Republic and in the
seventieth of the French. O'Reilly's part in this romance is not diffi-
cult to discover in the picture of life in Dartmouth Prison, and in
those luminous touches which the writer's love of liberty and heart-
breaking experience enabled him to give. All O'Reilly's prose, even
in its most careless form, shows the gift of the writer born with the
power of so welding impression and expression that thought and style
become as closely united as soul and body. And as he grew older,
his power as a prose writer increased. As with most poets, his prose
shows qualities entirely different from his verse. In his verse his
forte is not in description; in his prose he describes minutely and
with the keenness of an etcher. His poetry is especially transparent:
the man is plain; he scarcely needs a biographer who can give him-
self as he is to the world.


## p. 10859 (#67) ###########################################

JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY
10859
'Moondyne' has glowing pages; there are things in it that remind
us of the fervor of Victor Hugo. It is not as a writer of prose that
O'Reilly lives, however, but by that lyrical force which obliges us to
retain in our memories the song of the singer, whether we will or
not. He was more than what we call a lyrist; he was a bard in the
Celtic sense, a prophet, a seer, the denouncer of wrong, the inter-
preter of love, the inspirer of valor, of awe, of hope. And he had
the respect of the bard for a mission that was his as his heart was
his; no poet was ever less self-conscious and no poet more personal.
His lines written under a bust of Keats interpret the thought of many
that remember him:
--
"A godlike face, with human love and will
And tender fancy traced in every line;
A godlike face, but oh, how human still!
Dear Keats, who love the gods their love is thine. "
O'Reilly's first volume, 'Songs of the Southern Seas,' was made
up of narrative poems; it appeared in 1873. Songs, Legends, and
Ballads' (1878) contained the 'Songs' with additions. There was a
new flavor in the ballads,- for they were veritable ballads. The
taste of the public for color and the fundamental emotions in stir-
ring musical narrative was fully gratified in these poems. Above all,
they were original in the sense that they contained impressions taken
from a personal view of life. They had the pathos of the mind that
had possessed only itself for years, and the nobility which comes to
a great soul which prison walls help to larger freedom. Critics and
readers recognized the strength and beauty of The Amber Whale,'
'The King of the Vasse,' and 'Ensign Epps'; and though lacking
the depth of thought of his later song, they have kept their place in
the hearts of the people. In remote towns and villages, in places the
most unexpected, the family scrap-book has these swinging poems;
and there are few anthologies arranged for the popular taste without
at least 'The Dukite Snake' or 'The Day Guard. '
Of his lyrics, the singing poems, expressing a reflection, a thought,
a mood,-'In Bohemia' is probably the general favorite. But the
place of a poet is not settled by the one poem read and re-read,
quoted and re-quoted. The surface indications do not manifest the
strength or the grasp of the poet; there are depths into which his
nobler thought sinks. In a time of crisis, if freedom were threatened,
there are poems of O'Reilly's which would serve to fire the hearts in
which they live with the fervor that came at the sound of Julia
Ward Howe's 'Battle Hymn of the Republic' or Father Ryan's 'Con-
quered Banner. ' 'The Cry of the Dreamer,' clinging to the heart
and memory, is not one of these, but it has virility in it,--and this


## p. 10860 (#68) ###########################################

10860
JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY
quality is never lacking in the slightest of his lyrics. O'Reilly's lines
'An Art Master' express his view of merely technical skill in verse:
"He gathered cherry-stones and carved them quaintly
Into fine semblances of flies and flowers;
With subtle skill he even imaged faintly
The forms of tiny maids and ivied towers.
"His little blocks he loved to file and polish;
An ampler means he asked not, but despised.
All art but cherry-stones he would abolish,
For then his genius would be highly prized.
"For such rude hands as dealt with wrongs and passions
And throbbing hearts, he had a pitying smile;
Serene his way through surging years and fashions,
While Heaven gave him his cherry-stones to file. "
His genius and manliness had been recognized by America when
he was cut off from this life, August 10th, 1890.
It seemed to him
and his friends that there was much to do in the sunlight of kindli-
ness which shone about him; but to use his own words in The Dead
Singer,
«The singer who lived is always alive: we hearken and always hear. ”
It is too early to estimate O'Reilly's place among the poets of his
chosen land,—if indeed a poet's place can be settled by the rough
comparisons of the critic. All that can be done is to indicate certain
pieces of his that have acquired the approval of the critics and the
enthusiasm of the people.
W
une Francis Egan
The following poems are copyrighted, and are reprinted by permission of
the Cassell Publishing Co. , publishers.
ENSIGN EPPS, THE COLOR-BEARER
Ε
NSIGN EPPS, at the battle of Flanders,
Sowed a seed of glory and duty,
That flowers and flames in height and beauty
Like a crimson lily with heart of gold,
To-day, when the wars of Ghent are old,
And buried as deep as their dead commanders.
1


## p. 10861 (#69) ###########################################

JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY
10861
Ensign Epps was the color-bearer, -
No matter on which side, Philip or Earl;
Their cause was the shell — his deed was the pearl.
Scarce more than a lad, he had been a sharer
That day in the wildest work of the field.
He was wounded and spent, and the fight was lost;
His comrades were slain, or a scattered host.
But stainless and scatheless, out of the strife,
He had carried his colors safer than life.
By the river's brink, without weapon or shield,
He faced the victors. The thick heart-mist
He dashed from his eyes, and the silk he kissed
Ere he held it aloft in the setting sun,
As proudly as if the fight were won;
And he smiled when they ordered him to yield.
Ensign Epps, with his broken blade,
Cut the silk from the gilded staff,
Which he poised like a spear till the charge was made,
And hurled at the leader with a laugh.
Then round his breast, like the scarf of his love,
He tied the colors his heart above,
And plunged in his armor into the tide,
And there, in his dress of honor, died.
Where are the lessons your kinglings teach?
And what is the text of your proud commanders?
Out of the centuries, heroes reach
With the scroll of a deed, with the word of a story,
Of one man's truth and of all men's glory,
Like Ensign Epps at the battle of Flanders.
THE CRY OF THE DREAMER
AM tired of planning and toiling.
In the crowded hives of men;
Heart-weary of building and spoiling,
And spoiling and building again.
And I long for the dear old river,
Where I dreamed my youth away;
For a dreamer lives forever,
And a toiler dies in a day.


## p. 10862 (#70) ###########################################

10862
JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY
I am sick of the showy seeming,
Of a life that is half a lie;
Of the faces lined with scheming
In the throng that hurries by.
From the sleepless thoughts' endeavor,
I would go where the children play;
For a dreamer lives forever,
And a thinker dies in a day. .
I can feel no pride, but pity
For the burdens the rich endure;
There is nothing sweet in the city
But the patient lives of the poor.
Oh, the little hands too skillful,
And the child-mind choked with weeds!
The daughter's heart grown willful,
And the father's heart that bleeds!
No, no! from the street's rude bustle,
From trophies of mart and tage,
I would fly to the woods' low rustle
And the meadows' kindly page.
Let me dream as of old by the river,
And be loved for the dream alway;
For a dreamer lives forever,
And a toiler dies in a day.
A DEAD MAN
THE
HE Trapper died-our hero-and we grieved;
In every heart in camp the sorrow stirred.
"His soul was red! " the Indian cried, bereaved;
"A white man, he! " the grim old Yankee's word.
So, brief and strong, each mourner gave his best. —
How kind he was, how brave, how keen to track;
And as we laid him by the pines to rest,
A negro spoke, with tears: "His heart was black! "
MY TROUBLES!
WROTE down my troubles every day;
And after a few short years,
When I turned to the heart-aches passed away,
I read them with smiles, not tears.


## p. 10863 (#71) ###########################################

JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY
10863
THE RAINBOW'S TREASURE
HERE the foot of the rainbow meets the field,
And the grass resplendent glows,
The earth will a precious treasure yield,
So the olden story goes.
WHE
In a crystal cup are the diamonds piled,
For him who can swiftly chase
Over torrent and desert and precipice wild,
To the rainbow's wandering base.
There were two in the field at work one day,
Two brothers, who blithely sung,
When across their valley's deep-winding way
The glorious arch was flung!
And one saw naught but a sign of rain,
And feared for his sheaves unbound;
And one is away, over mountain and plain,
Till the mystical treasure is found!
Through forest and stream, in a blissful dream,
The rainbow lured him on;
With a siren's guile it loitered awhile,
Then leagues away was gone.
Over brake and brier he followed fleet;
The people scoffed as he passed;
But in thirst and heat, and with wounded feet,
He nears the prize at last.
It is closer and closer - he wins the race-
One strain for the goal in sight:
Its radiance falls on his yearning face-
The blended colors unite!
He laves his brow in the iris beam
He reaches - Ah woe! the sound
From the misty gulf where he ends his dream,
And the crystal cup is found!
'Tis the old, old story: one man will read
His lesson of toil in the sky;
While another is blind to the present need,
But sees with the spirit's eye.
You may grind their souls in the selfsame mill,
You may bind them heart and brow;
But the poet will follow the rainbow still,
And his brother will follow the plow.


## p. 10864 (#72) ###########################################

10864
JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY
YESTERDAY AND TO-MORROW
OYS have three stages, Hoping, Having, and Had;
J
The hands of Hope are empty, and the heart of Having is sad:
For the joy we take, in the taking dies; and the joy we Had is
its ghost.
Now which is the better-the joy unknown, or the joy we have
clasped and lost?
THE
A WHITE ROSE
HE red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
Oh, the red rose is a falcon
And the white rose is a dove.
But I send you a cream-white rosebud
With a flush on its petal tips;
For the love that is purest and sweetest
Has a kiss of desire on the lips.
THE INFINITE
THE
HE Infinite always is silent:
It is only the Finite speaks.
Our words are the idle wave-caps
On the deep that never breaks.
We may question with wand of science,
Explain, decide, and discuss;
But only in meditation
The Mystery speaks to us.


## p. 10865 (#73) ###########################################

10865
OSSIAN
AND OSSIANIC POETRY
BY WILLIAM SHARP AND ERNEST RHYS
HE old controversy over "Ossian," which once engaged so
many famous disputants from Dr. Samuel Johnson to Mat-
thew Arnold, need no longer trouble the reader on his way.
through the world's literature. Celtic research and the modern sense
of our ancient poetry have changed the venue. We have a whole
cycle of Gaelic tales and poems now on the subject, which have been
gradually unearthed, affording new clues and a clearer outlook. Out
of these fuller materials we may still construct, if we will, an ideal
Ossian, just as Macpherson did. But we must remember, if we do,
that there is no corresponding real Ossian, the actual and undenia-
ble author of these Gaelic sagas or any part of them. Indeed, to be
at all precise in choosing their typical hero, we should have to admit
that a better name than Ossian's for our label would be Finn's*;
while the whole cycle is wider than the names of either Finn or
Ossian would fully suggest.
It is Ossian, however, to whom. by force of habit and by popu-
lar suffrage, we still look and probably shall ever look as the king
in this haunted realm. And Ossian's name, no doubt, will still best
serve to characterize the poetry which fragmentarily but none the
less potently long ago fascinated Macpherson, and through him.
caught the ear of Europe.
Who then was Ossian? †
Ossian, or Oisin, was traditionally the son of Finn; that Finn mac
Cumhool (Cool) whose name is in Celtic literature the beacon round
which all other lesser lights congregate. Oisin may be roughly
assigned in history to the Ireland of the end of the third century.
According to Scottish tradition, Finn, however, was the son of a
Scottish king who came over from Ireland, and of a Scandinavian
* Finn, Fionn, Fin. The Scottish or rather Macphersonian equivalent, Fin-
gal, is not ancient.
Ossian is the Scottish variant, and that most familiar to non-Celtic peo-
ples. Osh-shin is the common pronunciation in the Highlands. The proper
spelling is Oisin; but even in Ireland the name is never so pronounced, but
variably as Usheen, Isheen, Useen, Washeen, and otherwise.
XIX-680


## p. 10866 (#74) ###########################################

10866
OSSIAN
princess; and we may say at once that this mixed Celtic and Norse
origin is significant, not only for the personal history of the hero
himself, but for that of the whole heroic literature to which he and
his son Ossian lend characteristic life, color, and antique circumstance.
It is to the fine fusion of certain Norse with certain Gaelic elements,
in the Aryan past, that we owe the particular genre, at any rate,
which was produced in the Scottish region associated with Ossian.
Some difference is to be found if we turn to the more purely Irish
of our Gaelic originals, and seek in Ireland for the old battle which
is almost always, in Celtic tradition, the beginning of what we may
call epic balladry.
In this case it is the battle of Cnucha (Castleknock), ten miles
from the present city of Dublin, which sets the war-music going.
Here it was that Conn of the Hundred Battles warred with Cool
(Cumhool) Finn's father, and Cool was slain by Aedh, afterwards
known as "Goll," or the Blind, because he lost an eye in the battle.
This gives a leitmotiv to the dramatic episodes that follow, in Finn's
desire for revenge on his father's enemies. Here begins a sort of
tribal warfare between Munster and Connaught, which ends in the
destruction of the followers of Finn, the "Fianna," -a name, by the
way, which, although it so closely resembles Finn's, has no connection
with it; meaning simply the tribal militia, or "Fenians," to use the
modern equivalent that has been too long removed from its original
context to be successfully replaced there. The battle of Gowra is the
last great event of this war. At Gowra, Ossian and his son Oscar
fought disastrously against the descendants of Conn of the Hundred
Battles, and the power of the Fianna was finally broken.
In these battles and their allied and sequent episodes and disas-
ters and tribal intrigues, we arrive at the basis of the Irish tradi-
tions of the Ossianic cycle. And though there is endless variation in
the names and dates and places involved, according as these tradi-
tions were retailed in one country-side, or one century, or another, we
still find that behind them lurks a real fragment of heroic history,
colored perhaps by some earlier Celtic myth, and in any case full
of potential romance, heroic imagination, and a crude but splendid
poetry. It is not only that the subject-matter behind it is so full and
rich, but that the manner and turn of its expression is also so indi-
vidual and sonorous and effective. As for its subject-matter, it may
be said to range over something like thirteen or fourteen centuries,
from first to last. We have already referred to its quasi-historical
first beginnings in the third century, when Fionn's father fought
Conn of the Hundred Battles, and fell by the hand of Goll; and many
critics are content to accept this as the extreme starting-point. But
if we accept the conclusions of such authorities in Celtic folk-lore as


## p. 10867 (#75) ###########################################

OSSIAN
10867
<<
Professor Kuno Meyer and his collaborator Mr. Alfred Nutt, we shall
have to travel much further back into time. Mr. Nutt has stated
very ingeniously and carefully the claim for a mythical prehistoric
origin for the Ossianic cycle. "Every Celtic tribe," he writes, pos-
sessed traditions both mythical and historical.
Myth and his-
tory acted and reacted upon each other, and produced heroic saga,
which may be defined as myth tinged and distorted by history. The
largest element is as a rule suggested by myth, so that the varying
heroic sagas of a race have always a great deal in common. »
Whether we quite accept this or not, in its entirety, we cannot
ignore the distinct mythical coloring of many parts of the Ossianic
cycle; and admitting it to exist, we are at once carried to the remote
pre-Gaelic antiquity of the Aryan peoples, who personified sun, stars,
earth, sea, air, fire, and water, and told the folk-tales which were to
grow into Homeric epics, Norse sagas, and Ossianic ballads, as races
and languages grew and took on a local habitation and a name.
These wild-birds of old tradition found in their flight through
time a congenial resting-place in the mountain regions which we
associate with Ossian, whether in Scotland or Ireland. There they
prospered and their broods grew and spread, century after century.
To drop the figure of speech, the descendants of these first folk-tales,
that grew and turned themselves into little heroic histories, multi-
plied wherever the Gaelic imagination worked on the memories of
the people, and the Gaelic tongue gave it characteristic expression.
Thus we have, in the immense number of MSS. dealing with Ossianic
materials, ballads and stories which date from almost every century
from the tenth to the eighteenth. Successive bards and tale-tellers
shaped them and colored them anew time after time, fitting them to
the need of the period; using them now as a thinly veiled fable of
recent events, now as an allegory of war, and now as a localized and
modified narrative of some Norse invasion or some lingering tribal
feud.
There is nothing more interesting in the whole history of the
world's literature than this passage of the Ossianic tradition through
the centuries until it arrived in the eighteenth at Macpherson, whose
genius gave it new effect and a new set of disguises that still puzzle
many people. At this late hour in our own day it has had a strange
and significant re-birth, though in the spirit rather than in the letter.
We wish here to pursue the tradition in its adventures, and as
much for the entertainment to be had by the way as for its curious
historical and severely literary interest. One or two of its earlier
phases have already been touched upon; but we have said nothing
yet of the exceedingly characteristic way in which the early conflict
in Gaeldom between the old pagan and the new Christian cult is


## p. 10868 (#76) ###########################################

10868
OSSIAN
given dramatic expression in the cycle. One of the richest of its
sections is that devoted to the series of ballad-colloquies between St.
Patrick and Ossian, as the special pleaders respectively of the new
and the old order.
"The spirit of banter," says Dr. Hyde, "with which St. Patrick and the
Church are treated, and in which the fun just stops short of irreverence, is
a mediæval, not a primitive trait;
we all remember the inimitable
felicity with which that great English-speaking Gael, Sir Walter Scott, has
caught this Ossianic tone in the lines which Hector McIntyre repeats for the
Antiquary:-
-
"To which the saint replies:-
ST.
T. PATRICK -
Ossian-
With this grotesque echo we may compare the real text of one of
the actual 'Dialogues' or 'Colloquies,' which we owe to the Irish
Ossianic Society's good offices. The MS. in this case was a com-
paratively modern copy, but the faithfulness of the copy may be
guaranteed from ancient sources:-
«Patrick the psalm-singer,
Since you will not listen to one of my stories
Though you never heard it before,
I am sorry to tell you
You are little better than an ass. '
St. Patrick-
«Upon my word, son of Fingal,
While I am warbling the psalms,
The clamor of your old-woman's tales
Disturbs my devotional exercises. >>>
COLLOQUY OF OSSIAN AND ST. PATRICK
Ossian, long and late thy sleep!
Rise up, and hear the psalm!
Thy strength is gone, thy swiftness flown,
That made thee known,- and thy fierce right arm!
My swiftness and my strength are flown
Since Fionn's swords are swept away!
And no holy priest, since his song has ceased,
Has ever pleased me with his lay.
Thou hast not heard such hymns as mine,
Since the world began until this day!
But your dream is still of the host on the hill,
Though thou art ill and worn and gray!


## p. 10869 (#77) ###########################################

OSSIAN
10869
Ossian-I used to join the host on the hill,
O Patrick of the sombre brow!
And it fits not thee to cast at me
My misery, as thou didst now.
I have heard songs more sweet than these
In praise of priests. At Letterlee
How long I heard the rare blackbird,
Or the Fiann Dord* and its melody.
And the sweet song-thrush of Glenasgael,
And the rush of the boats upon the shore,
And the hounds full-cry, when the deer sweep by,
Than thy psalmody I love much more.
It must be admitted that in these strange 'Colloquies,' it is to
Ossian that all the most lovely lyrical passages are allocated. He de-
feats again and again the solemn monitions of his saintly co-disputant,
by the most tender and impassioned recall of the old delights of the
land he so loved. Now it is the plaintive whistle of the sea-mews,
now the bellow of the oxen and the low of the calves of Glen-
d'-mhael, or the soft, swift gallop of the fawns in the forest glade,
or the murmur of the falling mountain streams. Above all, the
song of the blackbird haunts him; reviving in his old-man's heart all
that was sweetest in the youth and joyous springtime of the Fiann
era, when it was at its most auspicious period. Ossian's ode to the
'Blackbird of Derrycarn,' which is generally found in the Gaelic
MSS. , printed apart from the current Patrick-cum-Ossian text, is one
of the most sweet and haunting of all his lyrical recountings of that
joyous past. Fortunately, it is accompanied as printed first in the
transactions of the Gaelic Society of Dublin by an excellent trans-
lation by William Leahy; which however, excellent as it is, as
excellent as any foreign tongue can make it seem,-yet can render
no full account of the charm and melancholy sweetness and music
of the Gaelic. We have adopted, with some slight modifications, this
version of Leahy's:-
TO THE BLACKBIRD OF DERRYCARN
Ossian Sang
SWEE
WEET bird and bard of sable wing,
Sweet warbler, hid in Carna grove,
No lays so haunting shall I hear
Again, though round the earth I rove.
*The Dord was a hunting or war horn.
-


## p. 10870 (#78) ###########################################

10870
OSSIAN
Cease, son of Alphron, cease thy bells,
That call sick men to church again!
In Carna wood now hark awhile,
And hear my blackbird's magic strain.
Ah, if its plaint thou truly heard,
Its melancholy song of old,
Thou wouldst forget thy psalms awhile,
As down thy cheeks the tears were rolled.
For where it sings, in Carna wood,
That westward throws its sombre shade,
There, listening to its strain too long,
The Fians-noble race- delayed.
That note it was, from Carna wood,
That woke the hind on Cora steep;
That note it was, in the wakeful dawn,
Lulled Fionn yet to sweeter sleep.
It sang beside the weedy pool
That into triple rills divides,
Where, cooling in the crystal wave,
The. bird of silvery feather glides.
It sang again by Croan's heath,
And from yon water-girded hill,
A deeper note, a cry of woe,
-
That lingers— tender, pensive — still.
It sang so once to Fionn's host,
And pleased the heroes with its plaint:
More lore, they deemed, the blackbird knew,
Than lurks in penances, O Saint!
So far we have been drawing chiefly upon the rich Irish store
of these things; but the Fianna of Albin were as rich in saga as
the Fianna of Erin, and the Scottish Ossianic or Fiannic ballads and
stories are fully as interesting. They show certain differences, local
and temporal, from the purely Irish corresponding versions of the
same events in the Fian tribal warfare; but there is no doubt that
the early basis of tradition is the same in both countries. The Norse
coloring is more marked, and much sooner felt, in the Scottish than
in the Irish Ossianic material. We soon come, in fact, as we ransack
the Scottish MSS. , upon the signs of the third stage in the history
of the cycle. Of these stages, it may be well to remind the reader
here that the first is, roughly speaking, the passage of Aryan myth


## p. 10871 (#79) ###########################################

OSSIAN
10871
into definite heroic forms of tradition,-in this case forms which
carry the radiant colors of Fian heroes; the second stage is the use of
the tradition to express the early dramatic conflict between Christian
and pagan Celtdom; the third stage is the vigorous adaptation again
of the same tradition to the moving bardic narrative of the strug-
gle with the Norse invaders; the fourth stage is the slow process
through centuries of comparative peace, by which the bards and
chroniclers, falling back upon the past, spent their art, memory, and
imagination upon the accumulated materials,- selecting from them,
modifying them, inventing too on occasion, or coloring anew the
parts that had become worn, but yet through all this preserving a
certain fidelity to the essentials of the cycle. The fifth stage is that
of the deliberate literary use of the materials, by men of genius
like Macpherson, who are of course fully justified in their doings if
only they make it quite clear what their relation to their original
materials is. There is yet another stage which we might add: that
of the modern patient critical investigation of such a cycle, so as to
clear the ground for its future uses both by science and by poetry.
In tracing these stages, one may find it convenient to treat both
the Irish and Scottish Gaelic contributions to the subject as one;
but in the third which we mentioned, where it is a question of the
Norse invader, we certainly get our best popular illustrations from the
Scottish side. Take for example the ballad of The Fian Banners,'
which shows in so striking a light the combination of archaic and
later material. There is a heroic ring about it which must suffice
here to suggest the fine old Gaelic tune to which it was sung tradi-
tionally as the Gaelic tribes marched to war against the invading
Vikings.
THE
THE FIAN BANNERS
HE Norland King stood on the height
And scanned the rolling sea;
He proudly eyed his gallant ships.
That rode triumphantly.
And then he looked where lay his camp,
Along the rocky coast,
And where were seen the heroes brave
Of Lochlin's famous host.
Then to the land he turned, and there
A fierce-like hero came;
Above him was a flag of gold,
That waved and shone like flame.


## p. 10872 (#80) ###########################################

10872
OSSIAN
*Goll.
"Sweet bard," thus spoke the Norland King,
"What banner comes in sight?
The valiant chief that leads the host,
Who is that man of might ? »
"That," said the bard, "is young MacDoon;
His is that banner bright;
When forth the Féinn to battle go,
He's foremost in the fight. "
"Sweet bard, another comes; I see
A blood-red banner tossed
Above a mighty hero's head
Who waves it o'er a host. "
"That banner," quoth the bard, "belongs
To good and valiant Rayne;
Beneath it, feet are bathed in blood
And heads are cleft in twain. "
"Sweet bard, what banner now I see?
A leader fierce and strong
Behind it moves with heroes brave
Who furious round him throng. "
"That is the banner of Great Gaul:*
That silken shred of gold
Is first to march and last to turn,
And flight ne'er stained its fold. "
"Sweet bard, another now I see,-
High o'er a host it glows:
Tell whether it has ever shone
O'er fields of slaughtered foes? "
―――――
"That gory flag is Cailt's,t" quoth he:
"It proudly peers in sight;
It won its fame on many a field
In fierce and bloody fight. "
"Sweet bard, another still I see;
A host it flutters o'er,
Like bird above the roaring surge
That laves the storm-swept shore. "
+ Cailte.


## p. 10873 (#81) ###########################################

OSSIAN
10873
"The Broom of Peril," quoth the bard,
"Young Oscar's banner, see:
Amidst the conflict of dread chiefs
The proudest name has he. "
The banner of great Finn we raised;
The Sunbeam gleaming far,
With golden spangles of renown
From many a field of war.
The flag was fastened to its staff
With nine strong chains of gold,
With nine times nine chiefs for each chain;
Before it foes oft rolled.
"Redeem your pledge to me," said Finn:
"Uplift your deeds of might,
To Lochlin as you did before
In many a blood-stained fight! "
Like torrents from the mountain heights,
That roll resistless on,
So down upon the foe we rushed,
And victory won.
"The Lochlins," or "the people of Lochlin," was the usual name
given to the Norse invaders by the old Gaels. In fact, the name still
survives in many current proverbs, as well as in Fian fragments of
rhyme and balladry.
The whole history of the Ossianic saga-cycle affords, through all
the five stages we have roughly assigned to it, a curious study of
primitive tradition enriching itself by constant accretions, and adapt-
ing itself to new conditions. The cycle does not even confine itself, in
this process, to purely Celtic colors and heroic devices. It carries us
on occasion back into the far East, where its mythic first beginnings
were, as the late J. F.