collection of William Morris o
Gaergybi
yn Mon, who flourished
about 1758.
about 1758.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v06 - Cal to Chr
3428 (#402) ###########################################
3428
CELTIC LITERATURE
in the early period when his record was being written down, it fol-
lows that where Irish memoranda of his true and his legendary his-
tory, his hymns, and so forth, existed, the Scottish chroniclers and
bards would accept them without feeling the need of making a sep-
arate record. Nor must we forget, in speaking of St. Patrick, that
the pre-Christian romantic mythology, with its Firbolgs and ancient
heroic gods, giants, and men, is just as much to be limned into the
background of the picture in the case of early Scottish as in that of
Irish Gaelic tradition and its earliest scriptive forms.
Curiously enough, if Scotland gave Ireland the saint that in course
of time became almost its national symbol,- Patrick,-Ireland in turn
gave Scotland its dearest saint,-Columba. He was born in 521, near
Temple Douglas (Tulach-Dubh-glaise); in 545 founded a church in
Derry; later, the famous church at Kells; and in 563, after some
jealousy had been at work against him, he left for Ireland, and after
pausing at Colonsay, he went on to Ia, now known the world over as
Iona. Iona has become now the locus classici of the Gaelic, not to
say the whole Scottish race. Recently, a writer of profound imagina-
tion, Miss Fiona Macleod, has dated from its lonely shores the ded-
ication of that impressive book 'The Sin-Eater, and Other. Tales,'
showing how it still keeps for those of the true faith its old effect:-
"I mo cridhe, i mo ghraidh,»
(Isle of my heart, isle of my love,)
as Columba is said to have called it. His followers, the little sacred
circle of twelve, the Family of Iona,' had to be militant with a
vengeance: Milesian-or soldiering-as well as cleric, in their work;
and the old traditions are full of references to their fight against the
Féinne and the house of Ossian. But having so far prevailed as
they did, they became in turn the chroniclers of the very things they
had fought against. So in a sense, and a very real one, Iona is the
first centre of the literature of the Scots Gaels to which we can
point.
The total effect of Columba, or Columcill, upon Gaelic life
and literature, Irish and Scots, was immense indeed; to gather whose
force one must read in the Book of Deer' and the old Irish MSS.
on the one hand, and the Latin hymnology of the Celtic church on
the other.
But in speaking of Columba let us not forget the tender and
beautiful figure of St. Bridget,- another of that mysterious train,
including Merlin and St. Patrick, which has associations with Strath-
clyde -
"Bonnie sweet St. Bride of the
Yellow, yellow hair! »
St. Bridget, the St. Mary of the Gael, whose story has been retold
by Miss Fiona Macleod in 'The Washer of the Ford,' may first be
## p. 3429 (#403) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3429
found depicted by the side of Patrick and Columba in the famous
antique relic, the 'Domhnach Airgid,' dating back to the sixth or
seventh century. She appears constantly in Gaelic hagiology, and
with poetic as well as saintly fame casting a halo about her yellow
hair. O'Curry's 'MS. Materials,' and other collections make it pos-
sible, luckily, for other than purely Gaelic students to read of her
as she appeared in early time. She is a peculiarly interesting figure,
because in the Celtic races women have always counted peculiarly:
and there are signs that they will count even more in time to
come. St. Bridget (Brigit, Bride, Breed), then, is the type for all
time of the Celtic womanhood dowered with divine inspiration,
poetry, and charm. The following variant on an old Gaelic poem is
by Miss Fiona Macleod (From the Hills of Dream'): -
ST. BRIDGET'S MILKING SONG
sweet St. Bride of the
Yellow, yellow hair:
Paul said, and Peter said,
And all the saints alive or dead
O
Vowed she had the sweetest head,
Bonnie sweet St. Bride of the
Yellow, yellow hair.
White may my milking be,
White as thee:
Thy face is white, thy neck is white,
Thy hands are white, thy feet are white,
For thy sweet soul is shining bright—
O dear to me,
O dear to see,
St. Bridget white!
Yellow may my butter be,
Soft and round:
Thy breasts are sweet,
Soft, round, and sweet,
So may my butter be:
So may my butter be, O
Bridget sweet!
Safe thy way is, safe, O
Safe, St. Bride:
May my kye come home at even,
None be fallin', none be leavin',
## p. 3430 (#404) ###########################################
3430
CELTIC LITERATURE
Dusky even, breath-sweet even,
Here, as there, where, O
St. Bride, thou
Keepest tryst with God in heaven,
Seest the angels bow,
And souls be shriven --
Here, as there, 'tis breath-sweet even,
Far and wide-
Singeth thy little maid,
Safe in thy shade,
Bridget, Bride!
Passing from the early legendary hagiological chronicles of the
Scots Gaels, we come to a period when the reader must be content
to go again to Irish sources for his knowledge of the continuators of
Gaelic literature. What we have said previously of the Irish may be
referred to here. The mediæval scribes and bards busied themselves
mainly with reproducing the past, though with a vivid coloring out
of their own living present. When we have referred all of their
subject-matter dealing with the saints and heroic figures of primitive
history to its own period, all that remains is curiously little. Unfor-
tunately, it is less than it might have been, if it had not been for
the terrible and often wanton destruction of MSS. which has bereft
us, in Scotland especially, of some of the richest treasures the Celtic
genius has produced. It is only needed to instance the tailor who
was found cutting up an ancient MS. for patterns, to show how
almost inconceivably wholesale the havoc thus done has been in the
last six centuries.
Some of the most interesting and valuable of the Scottish con-
tributions to Gaelic literature are in what we may call ballad form.
Such is the tragic tale of 'Deirdrê,' in the Glen-mason MS. (thirteenth
century), which is preserved in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh.
Others again are versions of poems correspondent to those given,
for instance, in the Book of the Dean of Lismore. ' Of this heroic
poetry much would have been lost if it had not been for the zeal of
collectors, who for the last five centuries have been collecting in old
MSS. or from the mouths of the Highlanders the ballads and tales
of old time. "The last and greatest of the ballad and tale collect-
ors," says Mr. MacNeill, was Mr. Campbell, who in 1859-60 trav-
ersed the whole Gaelic area; and assisted by intelligent Highlanders
formed large collections, of which he has given a considerable quan-
tity to the world in his four volumes of tales. Ali these are gen-
uine productions. " We may quote further what the same writer
says of the uncertain chronology of these ballads: -"They may have
## p. 3431 (#405) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3431
been composed centuries before they were committed to writing.
We have fragments, such as the Glen-mason MS. , written as early as
the twelfth century, in the hand and language common to the learned
in both Albin and Erin at the time. The Book of the Dean of Lis-
more, however, is written phonetically to represent the spoken lan-
guage of his day, and is mainly in the Perthshire dialect. " Cuculain
and many other of the heroes that we mentioned in our Irish article
reappear in these ballads; and in them the Féinne fight out their
ancient battles to the bitter end. A new and rather different color-
ing is lent, too, to the Scottish ballads by the Norse element, and
the constant wars in which the Vikings and the Gaels encountered
time after time lend some of their finest episodes to this poetry.
If we turn from the ballads to the prose tales and romances, we
find the same strong resemblances and the same significant differ-
ences. The Irish have always the more fluent and eloquent a
faculty in prose and verse. Their adjectival energy is greater; they
are more given to extravagances of style, both in point of sentiment
and of humor. The Scotch are on the other hand more simple
and more terse, and they touch the deeper notes of pathos and of
mystery more often. Nothing more instructive can be devised for
the Celtic student than to take the volumes in verse and prose
representing the three Celtic lands, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and to
compare their style, method, and literary idiosyncrasies. For this
comparison Mr. Campbell's wonderful 'Tales of the West Highlands,'
in prose, and in verse his 'Leabhar na Féinne,' may be cited, with
works of Dr. Hyde, Mr. Standish Hayes O'Grady, Dr. Joyce, in
Irish; and in Welsh, the 'Mabinogion' in Lady Guest's exquisite
English version, or the 'Myvyrian Archæology. '
In the fourteenth century, which gave Dafydd ap Gwilym to
Wales, we find Gaelic becoming more definitely a conscious literary
language. But the Dafydd of Scotland came more than a century
earlier, being born at the end of the twelfth century. This was the
famous Muireadach Albannach (Murdoch the Scot), several of whose
poems figure in the Dean of Lismore's book, and whose effect on
succeeding bards was only less powerful than Dafydd's on his Welsh
successors. The Dean's book has poems, too, by two woman poets:
Efric, wife of the last of the famous MacNeills of Castle Sween, and
Isabel, Countess of Argyle. Efric's lament for her husband contains
some touching lines; e. g. : —
"There's no heart among our women;
At the sport, no men are seen;
Like the sky when windless, silent
Is the music of Dun Sween! »
## p. 3432 (#406) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3432
Sir Duncan Campbell, "Duncan Mac Cailem, the good knight,"
son of Sir Colin, is another of the poets in Dean Macgregor's collec-
tion; but perhaps we ought to pause here to say a word of the Dean
himself. "Sailing in among the inner Hebridean Isles," says Mr. Mac-
Neill, "we find in the fertile island of Lismore -'the great garden'
-a man in the fifteenth century often referred to in Gaelic litera-
ture: the Rev. Mr. James Macgregor. A native of Perthshire, .
with a heart filled with the enthusiasm and perfervid spirit of his
countrymen, he and his brother got up the collection of songs and
ballads" to which we have had occasion so often to refer. But we
must pass on now to the later period of Gaelic literature, in which the
modern developments have their beginning. The Scots Gael entered
on a new phase, we are told, with Mary MacLeod (Mairi ni'n Alastair
Ruaidh), who was born at Harris in 1569, and died a centenarian in
Skye in 1674. Mairi was as perfect an example of the folk-minstrel
as Celtic literature can provide; for she could not even write, al-
though her prosody is elaborate, and her metres often intricate and
original to a degree. The first of the distinctively Jacobite bards,
who flourished at the end of the seventeenth and through the eigh-
teenth century, was John MacDonald, whose 'Battle of Inverlochy' has
been vigorously translated by Professor Blackie. Hector Maclean;
Roderick Morrison, called An Clarsair Dall, or the Blind Harper;
John Maclean, whose songs were heard by Dr. Samuel Johnson and
Boswell on their journey to the Hebrides; and John MacCodrum (a
poet whose wit and satiric powers remind us not a little of more than
one of the Welsh satirical bards), are among the poets of this time
who specially deserve note.
In the eighteenth century, Gaelic Scotland produced some remark-
able religious poets, including David MacKellar, author of the well-
known 'MacKellar's Hymn'; John Mackay; Donal Matheson, who had
satirical as well as religious power; Lauchlan Maclauchlan; and
Dugald Buchanan.
The great link between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centu-
ries is Duncan Ban Macintyre, "a name loved throughout the High-
lands and Islands. " The Hunter Bard of Glenorchy, as he is often
called, though his best title is the affectionate Gaelic "Duncan of
the Songs," was born on the 20th of March, 1724, at Druimliaghart
in Glenorchy, Argyll. His first song was composed on a sword with
which he was armed at the battle of Falkirk - where he served on
the Royalist side as substitute for a neighboring gentleman.
"This sword," says his biographer, Thomas Pattison, "the poet lost or
threw away in the retreat. On his return home therefore the gentleman to
whom it belonged, and whose substitute he had been, refused to pay the
sum for which he had engaged Duncan Ban to serve in his stead. Duncan
## p. 3433 (#407) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3433
consequently composed his song on The Battle of the Speckled Kirk’-
-as
Falkirk is called in Gaelic-in which he good-humoredly satirized the gentle-
man who had sent him to the war, and gave a woful description of the black
sword that worked the turmoil,' and whose loss, he says, made its owner
'as fierce and furious as a gray brock in his den. ' The song immediately
became popular, and incensed his employer so much that he suddenly fell
upon the poor poet one day with his walking-stick, and striking him on the
back, bade him 'go and make a song about that. ' He was however after-
ward compelled by the Earl of Breadalbane to pay the bard the sum of 300
merks Scots (£16, 17s. 6d. ), which was his legal due. »
Duncan ended his days in Edinburgh, where he died in 1812,- one
of the last links of the moving record of the early eighteenth century
and its Jacobite associations.
Duncan was a contemporary of Macpherson's, and with Macpher-
son and his 'Ossian,' to which a special article is devoted elsewhere,
we may well leave our chronicle, forbearing to touch on the debat-
able ground of later and contemporary Celtic literature in Scotland.
Enough to say that Duncan Ban Macintyre has no lack of worthy
followers in Gaelic poetry, and that with the Anglo-Celtic develop-
ment, associated with such names as Dr. Norman Macleod, Professor
Blackie, Robert Buchanan, George MacDonald, William Black, and,
among new-comers, Miss Fiona Macleod and Mr. Neil Munro, there
seems every prospect that the Gaelic spirit promises to achieve
greatly in the new centuries to come.
The first selection is from the 'Sean Dana,' or Ancient Poems,
collected, or rather written (from oral legendary lore and ballads), by
Dr. John Smith, late in the eighteenth century.
PROLOGUE TO GAUL
ow mournful is the silence of Night
H
When she pours her dark clouds over the valleys!
Sleep has overcome the youth of the chase:
He slumbers on the heath, and his dog at his knee.
The children of the mountain he pursues
In his dream, while sleep forsakes him.
Slumber, ye children of fatigue;
Star after star is now ascending the height.
Slumber! thou swift dog and nimble-
Ossian will arouse thee not from thy repose.
Lonely I keep watch,—
And dear to me is the gloom of night
When I travel from glen to glen,
With no hope to behold a morning or brightness.
## p. 3434 (#408) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3434
Spare thy light, O Sun!
Waste not thy lamps so fast.
Generous is thy soul as the King of Morven's:
But thy renown shall yet fade;
Spare thy lamps of a thousand flames
In thy blue hall, when thou retirest
Under thy dark-blue gates to sleep,
Beneath the dark embraces of the storm.
Spare them, ere thou art forsaken for ever,
As I am, without one whom I may love!
Spare them, for there is not a hero now
To behold the blue flame of the beautiful lamps!
―
Ah, Cona of the precious lights,
Thy lamps burn dimly now:
Thou art like a blasted oak:
Thy dwellings and thy people are gone
East or west; on the face of thy mountain,
There shall be no more found of them but the trace!
In Selma, Tara, or Temora
There is not a song, a shell, or a harp;
They have all become green mounds;
Their stones have fallen into their own meadows;
The stranger from the deep or the desert
Will never behold them rise above the clouds.
And O Selma! home of my delight,
Is this heap my ruin,
Where grows the thistle, the heather, and the wild grass ?
The following lines of St. Columba are taken from the 'Lyra
Celtica, cited above:-
COLUMCILLE FECIT
(ST. COLUMBA MADE IT)
D
ELIGHTFUL Would it be to me to be in Uchd Ailiun
On the pinnacle of a rock,
That I might often see
The face of the ocean;
That I might see its heaving waves
Over the wide ocean,
When they chant music to their Father
Upon the world's course;
## p. 3435 (#409) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
That I might see its level sparkling strand,
It would be no cause of sorrow;
That I might hear the song of the wonderful birds,
Source of happiness;
That I might hear the thunder of the crowding waves
Upon the rocks;
That I might hear the roar by the side of the church
Of the surrounding sea;
That I might see its noble flocks
Over the watery ocean;
That I might see the sea monsters,
The greatest of all wonders;
That I might see its ebb and flood
In their career;
That my mystical name might be, I say,
Cul ri Erin [Back turned to Ireland];
That contrition might come upon my heart
Upon looking at her;
That I might bewail my evils all,
Though it were difficult to compute them;
That I might bless the Lord
Who conserves all,
3435
Heaven with its countless bright orders,
Land, strand, and flood;
That I might search the books all,
That would be good for my soul;
At times kneeling to beloved Heaven;
At times psalm-singing;
At times contemplating the King of Heaven,
Holy the chief;
At times at work without compulsion,
This would be delightful;
At times plucking duilisc from the rocks;
At times at fishing;
At times giving food to the poor;
At times in a carcair [solitary cell]:
The best advice in the presence of God
To me has been vouchsafed.
The King whose servant I am will not let
Anything deceive me.
The third selection is an example of later Gaelic. This stirring
Hebridean poem is sometimes spoken of as from the ancient Gaelic.
## p. 3436 (#410) ###########################################
3436
CELTIC LITERATURE
Probably by this is meant merely old Gaelic, medieval or even later.
The translation is by Mr. Thomas Pattison, and is included in his
'Gaelic Bards. ' He has the following note upon it:
:-
«This effusion, although in its original form it is only a kind of wild
chant, almost indeed half prose, yet is the germ of the ballad.
It occurs
in many of the tales contained in that collection,— the repository of old Gaelic
lore, the Popular Tales of the West Highlands,' sometimes more and some-
times less perfect. The original will be found in the second volume of the
The vigorous and elastic spirit that pervades these verses
must have strung the heart of many a hardy mariner, who loved to feel
the fresh and briny breeze drive his snoring birlinn bounding like a living
creature over the tumbling billows of the inland loch, or the huge swell of
the majestic main. "
Tales.
―
WⓇ
-
IN HEBRID SEAS
E TURNED her prow into the sea,
Her stern into the shore,
And first we raised the tall tough masts,
And then the canvas hoar;
Fast filled our towering cloud-like sails,
For the wind came from the land,
And such a wind as we might choose
Were the winds at our command:
A breeze that rushing down the hill
Would strip the blooming heather,
Or rustling through the green-clad grove,
Would whirl its leaves together.
But when it seized the aged saugh,
With the light locks of gray,
It tore away its ancient root,
And there the old trunk lay!
It raised the thatch too from the roof,
And scattered it along;
Then tossed and whirled it through the air,
Singing a pleasant song.
:-
It heaped the ruins on the land:-
Though sire and son stood by,
They could no help afford, but gaze
With wan and troubled eye!
## p. 3437 (#411) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
A flap, a flash, the green roll dashed,
And laughed against the red;
Upon our boards, now here, now there,
It knocked its foamy head.
She could have split a slender straw,
So clean and well she went,
As still obedient to the helm
Her stately course she bent.
We watched the big beast eat the small,
The small beast nimbly fly,
And listened to the plunging eels,
The sea-gull's clang on high.
We had no other music
To cheer us on our way:
Till round those sheltering hills we passed
And anchored in this bay.
III
WELSH
THE laws governing the life of languages are as elusive as those
that decide the fate of races and empires. Why is the Welsh tongue
still alive and vigorous, and the Irish (pace Dr. Douglas Hyde) mori-
bund? It is a difficult question, but some light on it may be had by
traversing the early history of Welsh literature.
The like difficulty meets us in both Welsh and Irish: that of
deciding how far the medieval scribes and scholars doctored the
older material which fell into their hands. But in Welsh, the sepa-
element is often even a
-
3437
ration of the primitive from the medieval
more difficult task than in Irish.
In sketching the early course of Welsh literature, we cannot do
better than turn to the striking instance afforded by the name and
fame of Merlin. In legendary Welsh history, Merlin appears under
almost as many guises as he does in the pages of Malory's 'Morte
d'Arthur. ' Merddin Emrys (Ambrosius), Merddin Sylvester (Merlin
the Wild), Merddin ab Morvryn (or Merlin Caledonius),- his name
and fame vary according to the chronicler. Of these, Merlin the son
of Morvryn, the most tangible in the list, was also known as Caledo-
nius, because the Kymry of the sixth century lived in that greater
Wales which ranged as far north as the Caledonian Forest. After
the terrible battle of Arderydd, Merlin, having seen his kindred all
but obliterated, was seized, tradition tells us, with a frenzy, and
## p. 3438 (#412) ###########################################
3438
CELTIC LITERATURE
thereafter his bardic utterances assumed a more and more mystical
and oracular form. This, added to his mysterious and magnetic per-
sonality and wildly impressive personal presence, may well have led
on in process of time, by gradual legendary accretions, to the final
conception of a Merlin miraculous, supernatural, dæmonic! However
this may be, nothing can be more instructive than to compare the
late Merlin with the early Merlin, and to trace his phases in Welsh
folk-tale, and define his poetry finally in the pages of the 'Black
Book of Carmarthen. ’
The 'Black Book of Carmarthen,' in its strikingly decorative
black and red manuscript, makes a wonderful testament of old
Welsh poetry. If we could solve all its problems and read all that
is written between its lines, we should be very near the great secret
of the Druidic religion and of Celtic mythology, as well as the
secret of Merlin's actual and imaginary effect in Welsh literature.
The battle of Arderydd has been cited above as a determining
event in Merlin's history. The opening poem in the 'Black Book of
Carmarthen' is a remarkable rhymed dialogue between Merlin and
Taliesin, some of whose lines are extremely imaginative and touch-
ing in their archaic simplicity. Merlin begins:-
"How sad is Merlin now! how sad!
Keduyf and Kadvan—are they dead?
The furious slaughter filled the field,
And pierced was the Tryrwyd shield! »
Taliesin replies:-
"His house-folk did not falter in the fight! "
So it goes on, telling of the battle and its consequences, until one
reaches at the end that mysterious verse which haunts the imagina-
tion and the ear of the reader. Merlin again speaks:-
"Sevenscore chieftains
Were turned into spirits;
In the wood of Celyddon
Were they transformed.
The wood of Celyddon is the Caledonian Forest. So far as these
excerpts go, they might seem to be the writing of the real Merlin.
There is internal evidence however that this poem, the much dis-
puted poem of the 'Apple-trees,' and others that follow it in the
'Black Book,' were written not earlier than the twelfth century.
Stephens, usually an acute critic, imputes in his 'Literature of the
Kymry these poems to Gwalchmai and other bards of later date.
## p. 3439 (#413) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3439
But even so, these poets evidently founded their poems upon earlier
ones, traditionally handed on as Merlin's.
From such later sources as the 'Myvyrian Archæology,' or Skene's
'Four Ancient Books of Wales,' or the admirable Oxford texts edited
by Professor Rhys and Mr. Gwenogfvyn Evans, one can rehabilitate
at will the Merlin of the 'Black Book of Carmarthen,' much as
Villemarqué has done after a fashion quite his own. Enough will
so be certainly discovered to outline a primitive Merlin, an original
sixth-century Merlin, under the impressive mediæval robes of the
Latin-Welsh romantic chroniclers and poets. Enough too will be
made clear to show a basis of myth and prehistoric legend behind
the remotest recorded name, time, or place that can be counted
historical.
The same is true of Taliesin, who appears, by the poetical remains
attributed to him,- some of them clearly medieval, others just as
clearly primitive, — even more interesting as a poet than Merlin.
Just as there are several Merlins, however, there are two Taliesins:
there is the fifth-century Taliesin, and there is the pseudo-Taliesin
of the twelfth. Both are wonderful in their way, and one knows not
which to admire most -him who wrote the 'Battle of Gwenystrad,' .
which is undoubtedly a primitive war song, or the medieval poet
who chose to take the disguise of Taliesin, and taking too, probably,
some of the traditional fragments of his early poetry, worked them
up afresh with curious mediæval art and mystic imagination. For
comparison let us take an early and a late poem, commonly gath-
ered, as in the 'Myvyrian Archæology,' under one head.
Take first one of the later poems, the mystical Song to the
Wind,' which even in its English dress won Emerson's admiration,
and which, if we allow for all differences between medieval and
modern imagination, is as wonderful a poem of its kind as any litera-
ture is likely to afford. As it is given among our selections, it need
not be quoted here. In point of time it is usual to assign it,
as Stephens does, to the twelfth or thirteenth century. But it
seems to me to bear traces again of being an older, more primitive
poem, retouched certainly, and probably reshaped, by a twelfth-
century poet. And now for a genuine Taliesin, or what at any rate
many critics think to be genuine. This you may have in the famous
'Gwaith Gwenystrad' (Battle of Gwenystrad), one of the most spir-
ited war poems in existence, copied and recopied by a long succession
of Kymric scribes, and which the writer came upon first in the MS.
collection of William Morris o Gaergybi yn Mon, who flourished
about 1758. Here are four lines of Morris's copy literatim, which
will give a better idea than any criticism of mine of the mingled
realism and imagination of the poem:-
## p. 3440 (#414) ###########################################
3440
CELTIC LITERATURE
"Yn nrws rhyd gwelais i wyr lledruddion,
Eirf ddillwng y rhag blawr gofedon,
Unynt tanc gan aethant golludion,
Llaw ynghroes gryd ygro granwynion. »
And here is a rough, vigorous translation of these lines from the
same volume:-
"In the pass of
their arms.
. .
their hands on the
warriors. »
the fort have I seen men, dyed with red, who hurtled
They fell to the ground together when the day was lost,
crucifix. And horror was in the pale face of the dead
A succeeding line,
"A gwyar a uaglei ar ddillad,»
(And the blood was tangled in their clothing),
adds the last touch of dreadful sincerity to the account. And in
other primitive poems that we may ascribe to Taliesin are effects as
convincing and vivid.
But we must leave Taliesin and his difficulties, to sketch briefly
the course of poetry between his actual date in early time and his
poetic resurrection in the Middle Ages. Not so interesting poetically
but more important historically is the next of the Welsh bards,
Aneurin, who wrote the 'Gododin. ' This curious and interesting war
poem tells of a foray made by the Ottadini, an early Kymric tribe,
living in the greater Wales of their time, on the Northumbrian
Mr. Stephens imagines Cattraeth, which figures as a central
scene of the action of the poem, to be Catterick in Yorkshire; and
this we may provisionally accept.
coast.
"The Welshmen went to Cattraeth; and merry marched the host.
But thro' drinking the gray mead, the day-the day was lost. "
The expedition was one of those which show the gradual cession
of greater Wales by the Welsh, and their retreat to the lesser Wales
that is still theirs.
We may pause here to remark that the bardic order was early
constituted among the Welsh, as among the Irish. In he Laws of
Howel Dda (Howel the Good), who flourished in the tenth century,
we find very explicit provision made for the bard:-
:-
"In case of fighting, the Bard shall play the 'Monarchy of Britain'
before the battle!
"His land shall be free; he shall have a horse from the King!
"He shall have a harp from the King, and a gold ring from the Queen,
when he is appointed. The harp he shall never part with. ”
## p. 3441 (#415) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3441
Unless, which is highly probable, we have lost some of the records
of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, we have to conclude that
Welsh poetry made small headway. The remarkable laws of Howel
Dda are the monument of the tenth century. In the eleventh we
come upon the first signs of a revival in Meilir, who is historically
interesting, and in his last poems shows himself a true poet. In the
twelfth we have to mark a distinct further step in Gwalchmai, who
is the first conscious poet of nature, and who may thus claim to be
the founder of one of the finest traditions in all Welsh poetry. Fol-
lowing Gwalchmai comes the princely poet Howel the Tall, son of
Owain Gwynedd by an Irish lady, and who himself wore the crown
of Gwynedd for a brief two years. He died in 1171 at twenty-seven,
after a life of stormiest adventure; but in the intervals of battle he
found time to write some of the loveliest love poems that all Welsh
literature can boast. His death was lamented by Periv ab Kedwoi
in a much less conventional and more moving tone than the official
bards generally troubled to use for such elegies. A century or so
later, and we find Llywarch ab Llywelyn (known as "Prydydd y
Moch," the Poet of the Pigs) writing a still finer and more ample
lament on the last native prince of Wales, Llywelyn ab Gruffydd,
"Llywelyn ewi Llyw Olaf," as he is still fondly called. These two
laments may be taken as typical of a wide section of Welsh poetry,
dealing with the deaths of heroes and princes, and ranging in date
from the fifth or sixth century to the nineteenth. Llywelyn the Last
died in 1282, and thereafter began what has been well termed "The
Great Oppression" (y Gorthrwm Mawr), by which Norman and Saxon
combined to crush the language and expropriate the people of the
country, with the result of calling up at last Owen Glendower's hot
spirit to fight for the national cause.
But it is remarkable that in this disastrous period arose some of
the finest interpreters of her genius that the country was ever to find.
Within its term were, without a doubt, carried to an approximate
perfection those more native romances that we term 'Mabinogion,’—
the most exquisite and exquisitely turned tales, in point of art, that
the Celtic races have produced. The late Lady Charlotte Guest's
edition of the 'Mabinogion' serves very well to convey, in a trans-
lation of extreme felicity, to non-Celtic readers the art and spirit of
these tales. But it must be kept in mind that all she gives are
not strictly 'Mabinogion'; several of them are more properly to be
called romances, as showing strong traces of Norman and French
influence. The 'Mabinogi' originally was a tale to be recited by a
mabinog, i. e. , a 'prentice to the bardic craft who had not yet obtained
his full degree, and with it the right of composing and reciting
poetry. The idea which some critics have, that the 'Mabinogion'
VI-216
## p. 3442 (#416) ###########################################
3442
CELTIC LITERATURE
were boys' tales, or still worse, nursery tales, is quite wrong. Let us
remember that such tales were the delight of most of the princely
halls and winter hearths of mediæval Wales, where they were recited
after the great banquets and on feast nights to the most critical
audience that could be afforded. 'The Dream of Rhonabwy,' ‘Kil-
hwch and Olwen,' and 'Math, Son of Mathonwy,' may be mentioned
as among the tales in Lady Guest's volume which are most natively
original; and we have chosen the portrait of Olwen from the second
of these for our selections, to show the art and charm of the Welsh
romancers in the Middle Ages.
If the 'Mabinogion' are fine as prose, we have an equally fine
expression of this time in poetry, in the poems of Rhys Goch ab
Rhicert (Rhys the Red, son of Rhicert) and the ever delightful
Dafydd ab Gwilym, who will be found treated separately. After
Dafydd, Welsh poetry was to enter upon a new phase, not fortunate
even in its immediate effects, disastrous in its ultimate ones. It
was in the fourteenth century that Welsh prosody, always intricate,
finally waxed proud, so to speak, of its complexity, and formed for
itself a hide-bound code which was to become the bugbear of Welsh
poetry in the following centuries. To give any adequate account
of its complexities of technique and the whole letter of its syntax
would require a long and tedious treatise in itself. Enough to say
that the underlying principle was that of what is termed in Welsh
"Eynghanedd," or "consonancy"; by which rhymes within rhymes.
and echoes within echoes of certain dominant syllables were insisted
upon arbitrarily, until almost every word in every line was subject
to a rigid and invincible rule. Art for art, insisted upon in this way,
could only end in conventionalizing the very thing it was meant to
assist.
Poetry, too carefully nursed and housed, thus fell into a bad way;
but luckily meanwhile a new literature was to begin for Wales,
along quite other lines, with the Reformation. The translation of
the Bible into Welsh by Bishop Morgan in the sixteenth century
marks an epoch in the life of the Welsh people and their literature.
Therewith the history of the princes and the great lords ends, and
the history of the people - and a people mainly peasant, let us
remark - begins. Its profound moral force apart, and judged purely
as a literary force, the Bible, admirably and idiomatically translated,
had an incalculable effect. It set a fine and high and yet simple
standard of prose, much as the English Bible does; and taught the
possibilities of his tongue to the poorest Welsh peasant. One finds
its influence strong in almost every prose work of any note published
in the last three centuries, and in a great proportion of the poetry.
It did more than anything of later time to save the language: and
## p. 3443 (#417) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3443
here is the simple explanation of the extraordinary difference.
between the fortunes of the Welsh and the Irish tongue. Wales-
the Wales of the people became profoundly impressed by the
religious sentiment and the heroic and profound poetry of the
Hebrews, and gained from them a new stimulus to express itself and
its needs and aspirations in its own native way and in its own
tongue.
A characteristic expression of the homelier moral humor of the
Welsh is to be had in the 'Canwyll y Cymry' (Candle of Wales),
by Rhys Pritchard, the famous Elizabethan vicar of Llandovery,
which for two centuries was the most popular book in Wales after
the Bible. Its simple rhymed didactics do not often rise into poetry;
but they are full of human feeling, expressed in a terse and pro-
verbial way, with distinct individuality. The book easily leads one
on to the very remarkable band of hymn writers, from Anne Griffiths
to Williams Pantycelyn, who have flourished in Welsh. These, and
some score beside, really rank by their imaginative fervor and
inspiration as true poets. In quite another vein, but probably a
very ancient and traditional one in Welsh, we have the homely
interludes of Twm O'r Nant, who was born about 1750, of whose life
George Borrow gives a very vigorous account in 'Wild Wales. ' A
greater than Twm O'r Nant, and born a generation earlier, Gronney
Owen, a man of the finest poetic genius, ought to have a special
interest for American readers because he was practically exiled from
his beloved Anglesea by the ungrateful church he served; and died,
poor and broken-hearted, in New Brunswick about the year 1780.
His Cywydd y Faru' (Ode to the Day of Judgment), his touching
lines to his little daughter Elin, or his Hogarthian lines upon the
London garret in which he lived for a time, may be cited as show-
ing the various sides of his poetry, of which unluckily there are no
adequate translations yet forthcoming.
—— -
In prose we must not omit to mention the 'Bardd Cwsg'
(The Sleeping Bard) of Elis Wynne, a very imaginative and idio-
matic prose epic-in-little, describing the bard's vision of a curiously
Welsh Inferno. Wynne's prose style is remarkably fine and pure,
modeled on the best Biblical standard of a Welsh without English
admixture. Welsh prose has been admirably handled too by some
of the divines who have flourished within the past two centuries, and
who have not confined their eloquence to the pulpit. Even when
the State church had no sympathy with the Welsh people and their
language, many of its individual members did much to keep the
spirit of literature alive; while the nonconformist ministers of
Wales have always been vigorously and eminently devoted to the
same cause.
## p. 3444 (#418) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3444
«<
Under happier conditions to-day, the latest expression of this vital
persistence of the Welsh in the quest of spiritual ideals is the move-
ment that has carried the new national university to completion,
and rallied the younger generation under the banner of Cymru
Fydd" (Young Wales). The songs of Ceiriog Hughes, the poems of
Islwyn, the works of scholars like Professor John Rhys, Canon Sil-
vain Evans, and Mr. Gwenogfvyn Evans; the ardent writing and
editing of Mr. Owen M. Edwards in his innumerable magazines and
other adventures; and the novels of Daniel Owen,
- these may be
named as among the influences that count most to the Wales of the
nineteenth century's end.
NOTE. - For citations from Welsh literature see articles on Aneurin, Mabi-
nogion, and Taliesin. The Breton branch of Celtic literature will be treated
under the heading (Villemarqué,' the celebrated collector of Barzaz-Breiz. ›
IV CORNISH
―――――
THE literature of a single county of England is not likely to be
very extensive, and when that literature and its language died for
good and all, a century ago, it becomes still more limited. Until the
reign of Henry VIII. , though for some time English had been very
generally spoken throughout the county, the old Celtic Cornish, hold-
ing a middle position, philologically as well as geographically, between
Welsh and Breton, was the mother tongue of at any rate the peas-
antry as far east as the Tamar. The great ecclesiastical revolution
of that period helped to destroy it. Neither prayer-book nor Bible
was translated into it; and though the ardently Catholic Cornish at
first would have none of the former, saying that it was "but like a
Christinas game," they were overruled by the forcible argument of
"apostolick blows and knocks," and had to submit. Then the lan-
guage receded rapidly. By the time of the Great Rebellion Truro
was its eastern limit; early in the eighteenth century only the two
western claw-like promontories retained it; and though Dolly Pent-
reath, who died in 1778, was not really the last person who spoke it,
it was dead before the present century was born. A few traditional
sentences, the numerals up to twenty, and some stray words lingered
on until our own day,-twenty years ago the present writer took
down a fair collection from the mouths of ancient mariners in
Mount's Bay, and a few words are still mixed with the local dia-
lect of English. But as a language Cornish is dead, though its ghost.
still haunts its old dwelling in the names of villages, houses, woods,
valleys, wells, and rocks, from Tamar to Penwith.
## p. 3445 (#419) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3445
As may be expected, a great proportion of the literature is in
verse, and most of that is in dramatic form. So little is there that
an exhaustive list of what survives is quite possible. It is as fol-
lows:-
1. The Poem of the Passion. A versified account of the Passion of
our Lord, recounting the events from Palm Sunday to Easter, with
the addition of many legendary incidents from the Gospel of Nico-
demus and other similar sources. The earliest MS. (in the British
Museum) is of the fifteenth century, which is probably the date of
its composition. It has been twice printed, once by Davies Gilbert,
with a translation by John Keigwin in 1826, and by Dr. Whitley
Stokes in 1862.
2. The Ordinalia. Three connected dramas, known collectively
under this title. The first recounts the Creation and the history of
the world as far as Noah's Flood. The second act of this gives the
story of Moses and of David and the Building of Solomon's Temple,
ending with the curiously incongruous episode of the martyrdom of
St. Maximilla, as a Christian, by the bishop placed in charge of the
Temple of Solomon. The second play represents the life of our Lord
from the Temptation to the Crucifixion, and this goes on without a
break into the third play, which gives the story of the Resurrection
and Ascension, and the legend of the death of Pilate. The connect-
ing link between the three is the legend of the wood of the cross.
This well-known story, most of which is interwoven with the whole
trilogy, is as follows:- Seth was sent by his dying father to beg the
promised Oil of Mercy to save him; the angel who guarded Paradise
gave him three seeds, or, according to the play, apple-pips; and when
he returned and found his father already dead, he placed them in
Adam's mouth and buried him on Mount Moriah. In process of time
the three seeds grew into three trees, and from them Abraham gath-
ered the wood for the sacrifice of Isaac, and Moses got his rod
wherewith he smote the sea and the rock. Later the three trees, to
symbolize the Trinity, grew into one tree, and David sat under it to
bewail his sin. But Solomon cut it down to make a beam for the
Temple, and since it would in no wise fit into any place, he cast it
out and set it as a bridge over Cedron. Later on he buried it, and
from the place where it lay there sprang the healing spring of Beth-
esda, to the surface of which it miraculously floated up, and the
Jews found it and made of it the Cross of Calvary.
These plays were probably written in the fifteenth century, per-
haps by one of the priests of Glazeney College near Falmouth, and
were acted with others that are now lost in the places called Planan-
Guare (the Plain of the Play), of which several still remain. The
'Ordinalia' were published with a translation by Edwin Norris in 1859.
## p. 3446 (#420) ###########################################
3446
CELTIC LITERATURE
3. The Creation of the World, with Noah's Flood, was a modernized
version of the first act of the first of the Ordinalia' trilogy. It was
written by William Jordan of Helston in 1611; but the author has
borrowed whole passages of considerable length from the older play.
The language represents a later period of Cornish, and occasionally
several lines of English are introduced. Perhaps by a natural Celtic
antipathy to the Saxon, these are generally put into the mouths of
Lucifer and his angels, who furnish a good deal of the comic part of
the piece. This play was published by Davies Gilbert in 1827, and
by Dr. Whitley Stokes in 1864.
4. The Life of St. Meriasek. This play, written in 1504, is per-
haps the most interesting of the batch. The story at least of the
others contains nothing very new to most people, but St. Meriasek
or Meriadoc (to give him his Breton name), the patron of Camborne,
is not a well-known character, and his life, full as it is of allusions
and incidents of a misty period of Cornish history, is most curious
and interesting. It is not perhaps simplified by being mixed up in
the wildest manner with the legend of Constantine and St. Sylvester,
and the scenes shift about from Cornwall or Brittany to Rome, and
from the fourth to the Heaven-knows-what century, with bewildering
frequency. There are also certain other legends interwoven with the
story, and it seems probable that at least three plays have been, as
Dr. Whitley Stokes expresses it, "unskillfully pieced together. " Yet
there are many passages of considerable literary merit. The only
existing MS. of this play is in the Hengwrt collection at Peniarth,
and it was edited and translated by Dr. Stokes in 1872.
5. There were probably many other plays which have perished,
but one other there certainly was, of which a fragment exists.
What it was called or what it was about no one knows, but an actor
in it, setting about to learn his own part in it, wrote that short
piece of thirty-six lines on the back of a title-deed of some land in
the parish of St. Stephen, near Bodmin. The deed drifted eventu-
ally into the British Museum, and the present writer discovered the
Cornish verses on it, not wholly by accident, about nineteen years
ago.
The writing belongs to the latter part of the fourteenth cen-
tury, and is therefore the earliest literary fragment of the language.
6. The rest of the literature of the Cornish language consists of a
few songs, epigrams, mottoes, proverbs, and the like, a short disserta-
tion on the language, and the tale of John of Chy-an-Hur,' a widely
known folk-tale. These are mostly in the latest form of Cornish,
and are contained in the MS. collection of William Gwavas in the
British Museum and in that of Dr. Borlase, until lately in the pos-
session of his descendants. Most of them have been printed by
Davies Gilbert (with the play of the 'Creation'), by William Pryce
## p. 3447 (#421) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3447
in the Archæologia Cornu-Britannica' in 1790, by Mr. W. C. Bor-
lase in the Transactions of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, and
in a fragmentary way in a few other places. They are mostly trans-
lations or adaptations from the English, but a few, such as the
rather doggerel Pilchard Fishing Song,' are originals. Lastly, in
the Church of St. Paul, near Penzance, there is the one solitary epi-
taph in the language; written while it was still just alive, and per-
haps the last composition in it.
[The versions given of these specimens of Cornish literature are founded
on those of Dr. Whitley Stokes and Dr. E. Norris. The phraseology has been
to some extent altered, but the renderings are almost all the same. ]
FROM THE POEM OF THE PASSION >
[The Death of Our Lord on the Cross]
HIS
Is pain was strong and sharp, so that he could not live,
But must yield up his white soul; ever purely had he
lived.
And Christ prayed, as thus in many a place we read,
"My soul I do commend, O Lord, between thy hands! "
For weakly he breathed, being constrained, so that he could not
rest;
On nothing could he lean his head for the garland that he wore.
If he leaned to one side, for his shoulder it grieved him
And the tree did yet worse, if he set it backwards.
Nor could he lean forward for fear of being choked.
Then was it as we read in books as it is written:-
"For the birds to make their nests, places are prepared,
But for Christ where he may lay his head no place is found. "
But now must he needs leave his head to hang,
For his blood was all gone from him, and he could not live.
To the side of the Mother that owned him, his head he would
hold,
And his soul went from him with chilling shriek and shrill cry.
Beside the Cross of Jesus was a man hight Sentury,
And when he saw the wondrous things that happened at Christ's
death,
And how his soul he yielded, against nature, with a cry,
He said without scorning, "This truly was God's Son; "
And many were there with him that testimony bore.
## p. 3448 (#422) ###########################################
3448
CELTIC LITERATURE
Now was it midday in the land, or later, as is written.
Earthquake there was and lightning, and darkness over all;
The Temple Veil was rent in twain, and to the ground it fell,
And likewise broken were the stones so strong and hard.
Graves in many places were opened wide,
And the bodies that were in them were raised up,
And went straightway to the city-by many were they seen-
To bear witness that it was God's Son that was slain.
Water, earth, and fire, and wind, sun, moon, and stars likewise,
At Christ's suffering death knew sorrow.
Nature will cause, I trow, if the good Lord be pained,
All his subjects, even saints, to be grieved for his pain.
FROM ORIGO MUNDI,' IN THE ORDINALIA'
[Seth, being sent to fetch the oil of mercy from Paradise for his dying
father, comes to the guardian cherub. ]
Cherubin-Seth, what is thine errand,
That thou comest so far?
Seth-
Cherubin
Seth-
Tell me anon.
O Angel, I will tell it thee:
My father is old and weary;
He wishes no longer to live;
And through me he prayed thee
To tell the truth
Of the oil of mercy promised
To him at the last day.
Within the gate put thou thy head,
And behold it all, nor fear,
Whatever thou seest.
And look on all sides,
Spy out every detail,
Search out everything carefully.
Very gladly I will do it;
I am glad to have permission
To know what is there
And tell it to my father.
[And he looks and turns round, saying:
Fair field to behold is this;
Hapless he who lost the land.
But for the tree I wonder greatly
That it should be dry.
But I trow that it went dry
## p. 3449 (#423) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3449
Cherubin
Seth
-
Seth-
―――
Seth-
And all was made bare, for the sin
Which my father and mother sinned.
Like the prints of their feet,
They all became dry as herbs,
Alas, when the morsel was eaten.
O Seth, thou art come
Within the gate of Paradise:
Tell me what thou sawest.
All the beauty that I saw
Tongue of man can never tell,
Of good fruits and beauteous flowers,
Of minstrels and sweet song,
Cherubin-Look yet again within,
Cherubin
A fountain bright as silver,
And flowing from it four great streams,
That there is a desire to gaze upon them.
In it there is a tree,
-
High and with many boughs,
But they are bare and leafless.
Bark there is none around it;
From the stem to the head
All its branches are bare.
And below when I looked,
I saw its roots
Even into hell descending,
In the midst of great darkness;
And its branches growing up
Even to heaven high in light.
And it was wholly without bark,
Both the head and the boughs.
And all else thou shalt see
Before thou come from it.
I am happy to have leave;
I will go to the gate at once,
Cherubin - Dost thou see more now
That I may see further good.
[He goes and looks and returns.
Than what there was just now?
There is a serpent in the tree:
Truly a hideous beast is he.
3428
CELTIC LITERATURE
in the early period when his record was being written down, it fol-
lows that where Irish memoranda of his true and his legendary his-
tory, his hymns, and so forth, existed, the Scottish chroniclers and
bards would accept them without feeling the need of making a sep-
arate record. Nor must we forget, in speaking of St. Patrick, that
the pre-Christian romantic mythology, with its Firbolgs and ancient
heroic gods, giants, and men, is just as much to be limned into the
background of the picture in the case of early Scottish as in that of
Irish Gaelic tradition and its earliest scriptive forms.
Curiously enough, if Scotland gave Ireland the saint that in course
of time became almost its national symbol,- Patrick,-Ireland in turn
gave Scotland its dearest saint,-Columba. He was born in 521, near
Temple Douglas (Tulach-Dubh-glaise); in 545 founded a church in
Derry; later, the famous church at Kells; and in 563, after some
jealousy had been at work against him, he left for Ireland, and after
pausing at Colonsay, he went on to Ia, now known the world over as
Iona. Iona has become now the locus classici of the Gaelic, not to
say the whole Scottish race. Recently, a writer of profound imagina-
tion, Miss Fiona Macleod, has dated from its lonely shores the ded-
ication of that impressive book 'The Sin-Eater, and Other. Tales,'
showing how it still keeps for those of the true faith its old effect:-
"I mo cridhe, i mo ghraidh,»
(Isle of my heart, isle of my love,)
as Columba is said to have called it. His followers, the little sacred
circle of twelve, the Family of Iona,' had to be militant with a
vengeance: Milesian-or soldiering-as well as cleric, in their work;
and the old traditions are full of references to their fight against the
Féinne and the house of Ossian. But having so far prevailed as
they did, they became in turn the chroniclers of the very things they
had fought against. So in a sense, and a very real one, Iona is the
first centre of the literature of the Scots Gaels to which we can
point.
The total effect of Columba, or Columcill, upon Gaelic life
and literature, Irish and Scots, was immense indeed; to gather whose
force one must read in the Book of Deer' and the old Irish MSS.
on the one hand, and the Latin hymnology of the Celtic church on
the other.
But in speaking of Columba let us not forget the tender and
beautiful figure of St. Bridget,- another of that mysterious train,
including Merlin and St. Patrick, which has associations with Strath-
clyde -
"Bonnie sweet St. Bride of the
Yellow, yellow hair! »
St. Bridget, the St. Mary of the Gael, whose story has been retold
by Miss Fiona Macleod in 'The Washer of the Ford,' may first be
## p. 3429 (#403) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3429
found depicted by the side of Patrick and Columba in the famous
antique relic, the 'Domhnach Airgid,' dating back to the sixth or
seventh century. She appears constantly in Gaelic hagiology, and
with poetic as well as saintly fame casting a halo about her yellow
hair. O'Curry's 'MS. Materials,' and other collections make it pos-
sible, luckily, for other than purely Gaelic students to read of her
as she appeared in early time. She is a peculiarly interesting figure,
because in the Celtic races women have always counted peculiarly:
and there are signs that they will count even more in time to
come. St. Bridget (Brigit, Bride, Breed), then, is the type for all
time of the Celtic womanhood dowered with divine inspiration,
poetry, and charm. The following variant on an old Gaelic poem is
by Miss Fiona Macleod (From the Hills of Dream'): -
ST. BRIDGET'S MILKING SONG
sweet St. Bride of the
Yellow, yellow hair:
Paul said, and Peter said,
And all the saints alive or dead
O
Vowed she had the sweetest head,
Bonnie sweet St. Bride of the
Yellow, yellow hair.
White may my milking be,
White as thee:
Thy face is white, thy neck is white,
Thy hands are white, thy feet are white,
For thy sweet soul is shining bright—
O dear to me,
O dear to see,
St. Bridget white!
Yellow may my butter be,
Soft and round:
Thy breasts are sweet,
Soft, round, and sweet,
So may my butter be:
So may my butter be, O
Bridget sweet!
Safe thy way is, safe, O
Safe, St. Bride:
May my kye come home at even,
None be fallin', none be leavin',
## p. 3430 (#404) ###########################################
3430
CELTIC LITERATURE
Dusky even, breath-sweet even,
Here, as there, where, O
St. Bride, thou
Keepest tryst with God in heaven,
Seest the angels bow,
And souls be shriven --
Here, as there, 'tis breath-sweet even,
Far and wide-
Singeth thy little maid,
Safe in thy shade,
Bridget, Bride!
Passing from the early legendary hagiological chronicles of the
Scots Gaels, we come to a period when the reader must be content
to go again to Irish sources for his knowledge of the continuators of
Gaelic literature. What we have said previously of the Irish may be
referred to here. The mediæval scribes and bards busied themselves
mainly with reproducing the past, though with a vivid coloring out
of their own living present. When we have referred all of their
subject-matter dealing with the saints and heroic figures of primitive
history to its own period, all that remains is curiously little. Unfor-
tunately, it is less than it might have been, if it had not been for
the terrible and often wanton destruction of MSS. which has bereft
us, in Scotland especially, of some of the richest treasures the Celtic
genius has produced. It is only needed to instance the tailor who
was found cutting up an ancient MS. for patterns, to show how
almost inconceivably wholesale the havoc thus done has been in the
last six centuries.
Some of the most interesting and valuable of the Scottish con-
tributions to Gaelic literature are in what we may call ballad form.
Such is the tragic tale of 'Deirdrê,' in the Glen-mason MS. (thirteenth
century), which is preserved in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh.
Others again are versions of poems correspondent to those given,
for instance, in the Book of the Dean of Lismore. ' Of this heroic
poetry much would have been lost if it had not been for the zeal of
collectors, who for the last five centuries have been collecting in old
MSS. or from the mouths of the Highlanders the ballads and tales
of old time. "The last and greatest of the ballad and tale collect-
ors," says Mr. MacNeill, was Mr. Campbell, who in 1859-60 trav-
ersed the whole Gaelic area; and assisted by intelligent Highlanders
formed large collections, of which he has given a considerable quan-
tity to the world in his four volumes of tales. Ali these are gen-
uine productions. " We may quote further what the same writer
says of the uncertain chronology of these ballads: -"They may have
## p. 3431 (#405) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3431
been composed centuries before they were committed to writing.
We have fragments, such as the Glen-mason MS. , written as early as
the twelfth century, in the hand and language common to the learned
in both Albin and Erin at the time. The Book of the Dean of Lis-
more, however, is written phonetically to represent the spoken lan-
guage of his day, and is mainly in the Perthshire dialect. " Cuculain
and many other of the heroes that we mentioned in our Irish article
reappear in these ballads; and in them the Féinne fight out their
ancient battles to the bitter end. A new and rather different color-
ing is lent, too, to the Scottish ballads by the Norse element, and
the constant wars in which the Vikings and the Gaels encountered
time after time lend some of their finest episodes to this poetry.
If we turn from the ballads to the prose tales and romances, we
find the same strong resemblances and the same significant differ-
ences. The Irish have always the more fluent and eloquent a
faculty in prose and verse. Their adjectival energy is greater; they
are more given to extravagances of style, both in point of sentiment
and of humor. The Scotch are on the other hand more simple
and more terse, and they touch the deeper notes of pathos and of
mystery more often. Nothing more instructive can be devised for
the Celtic student than to take the volumes in verse and prose
representing the three Celtic lands, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and to
compare their style, method, and literary idiosyncrasies. For this
comparison Mr. Campbell's wonderful 'Tales of the West Highlands,'
in prose, and in verse his 'Leabhar na Féinne,' may be cited, with
works of Dr. Hyde, Mr. Standish Hayes O'Grady, Dr. Joyce, in
Irish; and in Welsh, the 'Mabinogion' in Lady Guest's exquisite
English version, or the 'Myvyrian Archæology. '
In the fourteenth century, which gave Dafydd ap Gwilym to
Wales, we find Gaelic becoming more definitely a conscious literary
language. But the Dafydd of Scotland came more than a century
earlier, being born at the end of the twelfth century. This was the
famous Muireadach Albannach (Murdoch the Scot), several of whose
poems figure in the Dean of Lismore's book, and whose effect on
succeeding bards was only less powerful than Dafydd's on his Welsh
successors. The Dean's book has poems, too, by two woman poets:
Efric, wife of the last of the famous MacNeills of Castle Sween, and
Isabel, Countess of Argyle. Efric's lament for her husband contains
some touching lines; e. g. : —
"There's no heart among our women;
At the sport, no men are seen;
Like the sky when windless, silent
Is the music of Dun Sween! »
## p. 3432 (#406) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3432
Sir Duncan Campbell, "Duncan Mac Cailem, the good knight,"
son of Sir Colin, is another of the poets in Dean Macgregor's collec-
tion; but perhaps we ought to pause here to say a word of the Dean
himself. "Sailing in among the inner Hebridean Isles," says Mr. Mac-
Neill, "we find in the fertile island of Lismore -'the great garden'
-a man in the fifteenth century often referred to in Gaelic litera-
ture: the Rev. Mr. James Macgregor. A native of Perthshire, .
with a heart filled with the enthusiasm and perfervid spirit of his
countrymen, he and his brother got up the collection of songs and
ballads" to which we have had occasion so often to refer. But we
must pass on now to the later period of Gaelic literature, in which the
modern developments have their beginning. The Scots Gael entered
on a new phase, we are told, with Mary MacLeod (Mairi ni'n Alastair
Ruaidh), who was born at Harris in 1569, and died a centenarian in
Skye in 1674. Mairi was as perfect an example of the folk-minstrel
as Celtic literature can provide; for she could not even write, al-
though her prosody is elaborate, and her metres often intricate and
original to a degree. The first of the distinctively Jacobite bards,
who flourished at the end of the seventeenth and through the eigh-
teenth century, was John MacDonald, whose 'Battle of Inverlochy' has
been vigorously translated by Professor Blackie. Hector Maclean;
Roderick Morrison, called An Clarsair Dall, or the Blind Harper;
John Maclean, whose songs were heard by Dr. Samuel Johnson and
Boswell on their journey to the Hebrides; and John MacCodrum (a
poet whose wit and satiric powers remind us not a little of more than
one of the Welsh satirical bards), are among the poets of this time
who specially deserve note.
In the eighteenth century, Gaelic Scotland produced some remark-
able religious poets, including David MacKellar, author of the well-
known 'MacKellar's Hymn'; John Mackay; Donal Matheson, who had
satirical as well as religious power; Lauchlan Maclauchlan; and
Dugald Buchanan.
The great link between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centu-
ries is Duncan Ban Macintyre, "a name loved throughout the High-
lands and Islands. " The Hunter Bard of Glenorchy, as he is often
called, though his best title is the affectionate Gaelic "Duncan of
the Songs," was born on the 20th of March, 1724, at Druimliaghart
in Glenorchy, Argyll. His first song was composed on a sword with
which he was armed at the battle of Falkirk - where he served on
the Royalist side as substitute for a neighboring gentleman.
"This sword," says his biographer, Thomas Pattison, "the poet lost or
threw away in the retreat. On his return home therefore the gentleman to
whom it belonged, and whose substitute he had been, refused to pay the
sum for which he had engaged Duncan Ban to serve in his stead. Duncan
## p. 3433 (#407) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3433
consequently composed his song on The Battle of the Speckled Kirk’-
-as
Falkirk is called in Gaelic-in which he good-humoredly satirized the gentle-
man who had sent him to the war, and gave a woful description of the black
sword that worked the turmoil,' and whose loss, he says, made its owner
'as fierce and furious as a gray brock in his den. ' The song immediately
became popular, and incensed his employer so much that he suddenly fell
upon the poor poet one day with his walking-stick, and striking him on the
back, bade him 'go and make a song about that. ' He was however after-
ward compelled by the Earl of Breadalbane to pay the bard the sum of 300
merks Scots (£16, 17s. 6d. ), which was his legal due. »
Duncan ended his days in Edinburgh, where he died in 1812,- one
of the last links of the moving record of the early eighteenth century
and its Jacobite associations.
Duncan was a contemporary of Macpherson's, and with Macpher-
son and his 'Ossian,' to which a special article is devoted elsewhere,
we may well leave our chronicle, forbearing to touch on the debat-
able ground of later and contemporary Celtic literature in Scotland.
Enough to say that Duncan Ban Macintyre has no lack of worthy
followers in Gaelic poetry, and that with the Anglo-Celtic develop-
ment, associated with such names as Dr. Norman Macleod, Professor
Blackie, Robert Buchanan, George MacDonald, William Black, and,
among new-comers, Miss Fiona Macleod and Mr. Neil Munro, there
seems every prospect that the Gaelic spirit promises to achieve
greatly in the new centuries to come.
The first selection is from the 'Sean Dana,' or Ancient Poems,
collected, or rather written (from oral legendary lore and ballads), by
Dr. John Smith, late in the eighteenth century.
PROLOGUE TO GAUL
ow mournful is the silence of Night
H
When she pours her dark clouds over the valleys!
Sleep has overcome the youth of the chase:
He slumbers on the heath, and his dog at his knee.
The children of the mountain he pursues
In his dream, while sleep forsakes him.
Slumber, ye children of fatigue;
Star after star is now ascending the height.
Slumber! thou swift dog and nimble-
Ossian will arouse thee not from thy repose.
Lonely I keep watch,—
And dear to me is the gloom of night
When I travel from glen to glen,
With no hope to behold a morning or brightness.
## p. 3434 (#408) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3434
Spare thy light, O Sun!
Waste not thy lamps so fast.
Generous is thy soul as the King of Morven's:
But thy renown shall yet fade;
Spare thy lamps of a thousand flames
In thy blue hall, when thou retirest
Under thy dark-blue gates to sleep,
Beneath the dark embraces of the storm.
Spare them, ere thou art forsaken for ever,
As I am, without one whom I may love!
Spare them, for there is not a hero now
To behold the blue flame of the beautiful lamps!
―
Ah, Cona of the precious lights,
Thy lamps burn dimly now:
Thou art like a blasted oak:
Thy dwellings and thy people are gone
East or west; on the face of thy mountain,
There shall be no more found of them but the trace!
In Selma, Tara, or Temora
There is not a song, a shell, or a harp;
They have all become green mounds;
Their stones have fallen into their own meadows;
The stranger from the deep or the desert
Will never behold them rise above the clouds.
And O Selma! home of my delight,
Is this heap my ruin,
Where grows the thistle, the heather, and the wild grass ?
The following lines of St. Columba are taken from the 'Lyra
Celtica, cited above:-
COLUMCILLE FECIT
(ST. COLUMBA MADE IT)
D
ELIGHTFUL Would it be to me to be in Uchd Ailiun
On the pinnacle of a rock,
That I might often see
The face of the ocean;
That I might see its heaving waves
Over the wide ocean,
When they chant music to their Father
Upon the world's course;
## p. 3435 (#409) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
That I might see its level sparkling strand,
It would be no cause of sorrow;
That I might hear the song of the wonderful birds,
Source of happiness;
That I might hear the thunder of the crowding waves
Upon the rocks;
That I might hear the roar by the side of the church
Of the surrounding sea;
That I might see its noble flocks
Over the watery ocean;
That I might see the sea monsters,
The greatest of all wonders;
That I might see its ebb and flood
In their career;
That my mystical name might be, I say,
Cul ri Erin [Back turned to Ireland];
That contrition might come upon my heart
Upon looking at her;
That I might bewail my evils all,
Though it were difficult to compute them;
That I might bless the Lord
Who conserves all,
3435
Heaven with its countless bright orders,
Land, strand, and flood;
That I might search the books all,
That would be good for my soul;
At times kneeling to beloved Heaven;
At times psalm-singing;
At times contemplating the King of Heaven,
Holy the chief;
At times at work without compulsion,
This would be delightful;
At times plucking duilisc from the rocks;
At times at fishing;
At times giving food to the poor;
At times in a carcair [solitary cell]:
The best advice in the presence of God
To me has been vouchsafed.
The King whose servant I am will not let
Anything deceive me.
The third selection is an example of later Gaelic. This stirring
Hebridean poem is sometimes spoken of as from the ancient Gaelic.
## p. 3436 (#410) ###########################################
3436
CELTIC LITERATURE
Probably by this is meant merely old Gaelic, medieval or even later.
The translation is by Mr. Thomas Pattison, and is included in his
'Gaelic Bards. ' He has the following note upon it:
:-
«This effusion, although in its original form it is only a kind of wild
chant, almost indeed half prose, yet is the germ of the ballad.
It occurs
in many of the tales contained in that collection,— the repository of old Gaelic
lore, the Popular Tales of the West Highlands,' sometimes more and some-
times less perfect. The original will be found in the second volume of the
The vigorous and elastic spirit that pervades these verses
must have strung the heart of many a hardy mariner, who loved to feel
the fresh and briny breeze drive his snoring birlinn bounding like a living
creature over the tumbling billows of the inland loch, or the huge swell of
the majestic main. "
Tales.
―
WⓇ
-
IN HEBRID SEAS
E TURNED her prow into the sea,
Her stern into the shore,
And first we raised the tall tough masts,
And then the canvas hoar;
Fast filled our towering cloud-like sails,
For the wind came from the land,
And such a wind as we might choose
Were the winds at our command:
A breeze that rushing down the hill
Would strip the blooming heather,
Or rustling through the green-clad grove,
Would whirl its leaves together.
But when it seized the aged saugh,
With the light locks of gray,
It tore away its ancient root,
And there the old trunk lay!
It raised the thatch too from the roof,
And scattered it along;
Then tossed and whirled it through the air,
Singing a pleasant song.
:-
It heaped the ruins on the land:-
Though sire and son stood by,
They could no help afford, but gaze
With wan and troubled eye!
## p. 3437 (#411) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
A flap, a flash, the green roll dashed,
And laughed against the red;
Upon our boards, now here, now there,
It knocked its foamy head.
She could have split a slender straw,
So clean and well she went,
As still obedient to the helm
Her stately course she bent.
We watched the big beast eat the small,
The small beast nimbly fly,
And listened to the plunging eels,
The sea-gull's clang on high.
We had no other music
To cheer us on our way:
Till round those sheltering hills we passed
And anchored in this bay.
III
WELSH
THE laws governing the life of languages are as elusive as those
that decide the fate of races and empires. Why is the Welsh tongue
still alive and vigorous, and the Irish (pace Dr. Douglas Hyde) mori-
bund? It is a difficult question, but some light on it may be had by
traversing the early history of Welsh literature.
The like difficulty meets us in both Welsh and Irish: that of
deciding how far the medieval scribes and scholars doctored the
older material which fell into their hands. But in Welsh, the sepa-
element is often even a
-
3437
ration of the primitive from the medieval
more difficult task than in Irish.
In sketching the early course of Welsh literature, we cannot do
better than turn to the striking instance afforded by the name and
fame of Merlin. In legendary Welsh history, Merlin appears under
almost as many guises as he does in the pages of Malory's 'Morte
d'Arthur. ' Merddin Emrys (Ambrosius), Merddin Sylvester (Merlin
the Wild), Merddin ab Morvryn (or Merlin Caledonius),- his name
and fame vary according to the chronicler. Of these, Merlin the son
of Morvryn, the most tangible in the list, was also known as Caledo-
nius, because the Kymry of the sixth century lived in that greater
Wales which ranged as far north as the Caledonian Forest. After
the terrible battle of Arderydd, Merlin, having seen his kindred all
but obliterated, was seized, tradition tells us, with a frenzy, and
## p. 3438 (#412) ###########################################
3438
CELTIC LITERATURE
thereafter his bardic utterances assumed a more and more mystical
and oracular form. This, added to his mysterious and magnetic per-
sonality and wildly impressive personal presence, may well have led
on in process of time, by gradual legendary accretions, to the final
conception of a Merlin miraculous, supernatural, dæmonic! However
this may be, nothing can be more instructive than to compare the
late Merlin with the early Merlin, and to trace his phases in Welsh
folk-tale, and define his poetry finally in the pages of the 'Black
Book of Carmarthen. ’
The 'Black Book of Carmarthen,' in its strikingly decorative
black and red manuscript, makes a wonderful testament of old
Welsh poetry. If we could solve all its problems and read all that
is written between its lines, we should be very near the great secret
of the Druidic religion and of Celtic mythology, as well as the
secret of Merlin's actual and imaginary effect in Welsh literature.
The battle of Arderydd has been cited above as a determining
event in Merlin's history. The opening poem in the 'Black Book of
Carmarthen' is a remarkable rhymed dialogue between Merlin and
Taliesin, some of whose lines are extremely imaginative and touch-
ing in their archaic simplicity. Merlin begins:-
"How sad is Merlin now! how sad!
Keduyf and Kadvan—are they dead?
The furious slaughter filled the field,
And pierced was the Tryrwyd shield! »
Taliesin replies:-
"His house-folk did not falter in the fight! "
So it goes on, telling of the battle and its consequences, until one
reaches at the end that mysterious verse which haunts the imagina-
tion and the ear of the reader. Merlin again speaks:-
"Sevenscore chieftains
Were turned into spirits;
In the wood of Celyddon
Were they transformed.
The wood of Celyddon is the Caledonian Forest. So far as these
excerpts go, they might seem to be the writing of the real Merlin.
There is internal evidence however that this poem, the much dis-
puted poem of the 'Apple-trees,' and others that follow it in the
'Black Book,' were written not earlier than the twelfth century.
Stephens, usually an acute critic, imputes in his 'Literature of the
Kymry these poems to Gwalchmai and other bards of later date.
## p. 3439 (#413) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3439
But even so, these poets evidently founded their poems upon earlier
ones, traditionally handed on as Merlin's.
From such later sources as the 'Myvyrian Archæology,' or Skene's
'Four Ancient Books of Wales,' or the admirable Oxford texts edited
by Professor Rhys and Mr. Gwenogfvyn Evans, one can rehabilitate
at will the Merlin of the 'Black Book of Carmarthen,' much as
Villemarqué has done after a fashion quite his own. Enough will
so be certainly discovered to outline a primitive Merlin, an original
sixth-century Merlin, under the impressive mediæval robes of the
Latin-Welsh romantic chroniclers and poets. Enough too will be
made clear to show a basis of myth and prehistoric legend behind
the remotest recorded name, time, or place that can be counted
historical.
The same is true of Taliesin, who appears, by the poetical remains
attributed to him,- some of them clearly medieval, others just as
clearly primitive, — even more interesting as a poet than Merlin.
Just as there are several Merlins, however, there are two Taliesins:
there is the fifth-century Taliesin, and there is the pseudo-Taliesin
of the twelfth. Both are wonderful in their way, and one knows not
which to admire most -him who wrote the 'Battle of Gwenystrad,' .
which is undoubtedly a primitive war song, or the medieval poet
who chose to take the disguise of Taliesin, and taking too, probably,
some of the traditional fragments of his early poetry, worked them
up afresh with curious mediæval art and mystic imagination. For
comparison let us take an early and a late poem, commonly gath-
ered, as in the 'Myvyrian Archæology,' under one head.
Take first one of the later poems, the mystical Song to the
Wind,' which even in its English dress won Emerson's admiration,
and which, if we allow for all differences between medieval and
modern imagination, is as wonderful a poem of its kind as any litera-
ture is likely to afford. As it is given among our selections, it need
not be quoted here. In point of time it is usual to assign it,
as Stephens does, to the twelfth or thirteenth century. But it
seems to me to bear traces again of being an older, more primitive
poem, retouched certainly, and probably reshaped, by a twelfth-
century poet. And now for a genuine Taliesin, or what at any rate
many critics think to be genuine. This you may have in the famous
'Gwaith Gwenystrad' (Battle of Gwenystrad), one of the most spir-
ited war poems in existence, copied and recopied by a long succession
of Kymric scribes, and which the writer came upon first in the MS.
collection of William Morris o Gaergybi yn Mon, who flourished
about 1758. Here are four lines of Morris's copy literatim, which
will give a better idea than any criticism of mine of the mingled
realism and imagination of the poem:-
## p. 3440 (#414) ###########################################
3440
CELTIC LITERATURE
"Yn nrws rhyd gwelais i wyr lledruddion,
Eirf ddillwng y rhag blawr gofedon,
Unynt tanc gan aethant golludion,
Llaw ynghroes gryd ygro granwynion. »
And here is a rough, vigorous translation of these lines from the
same volume:-
"In the pass of
their arms.
. .
their hands on the
warriors. »
the fort have I seen men, dyed with red, who hurtled
They fell to the ground together when the day was lost,
crucifix. And horror was in the pale face of the dead
A succeeding line,
"A gwyar a uaglei ar ddillad,»
(And the blood was tangled in their clothing),
adds the last touch of dreadful sincerity to the account. And in
other primitive poems that we may ascribe to Taliesin are effects as
convincing and vivid.
But we must leave Taliesin and his difficulties, to sketch briefly
the course of poetry between his actual date in early time and his
poetic resurrection in the Middle Ages. Not so interesting poetically
but more important historically is the next of the Welsh bards,
Aneurin, who wrote the 'Gododin. ' This curious and interesting war
poem tells of a foray made by the Ottadini, an early Kymric tribe,
living in the greater Wales of their time, on the Northumbrian
Mr. Stephens imagines Cattraeth, which figures as a central
scene of the action of the poem, to be Catterick in Yorkshire; and
this we may provisionally accept.
coast.
"The Welshmen went to Cattraeth; and merry marched the host.
But thro' drinking the gray mead, the day-the day was lost. "
The expedition was one of those which show the gradual cession
of greater Wales by the Welsh, and their retreat to the lesser Wales
that is still theirs.
We may pause here to remark that the bardic order was early
constituted among the Welsh, as among the Irish. In he Laws of
Howel Dda (Howel the Good), who flourished in the tenth century,
we find very explicit provision made for the bard:-
:-
"In case of fighting, the Bard shall play the 'Monarchy of Britain'
before the battle!
"His land shall be free; he shall have a horse from the King!
"He shall have a harp from the King, and a gold ring from the Queen,
when he is appointed. The harp he shall never part with. ”
## p. 3441 (#415) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3441
Unless, which is highly probable, we have lost some of the records
of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, we have to conclude that
Welsh poetry made small headway. The remarkable laws of Howel
Dda are the monument of the tenth century. In the eleventh we
come upon the first signs of a revival in Meilir, who is historically
interesting, and in his last poems shows himself a true poet. In the
twelfth we have to mark a distinct further step in Gwalchmai, who
is the first conscious poet of nature, and who may thus claim to be
the founder of one of the finest traditions in all Welsh poetry. Fol-
lowing Gwalchmai comes the princely poet Howel the Tall, son of
Owain Gwynedd by an Irish lady, and who himself wore the crown
of Gwynedd for a brief two years. He died in 1171 at twenty-seven,
after a life of stormiest adventure; but in the intervals of battle he
found time to write some of the loveliest love poems that all Welsh
literature can boast. His death was lamented by Periv ab Kedwoi
in a much less conventional and more moving tone than the official
bards generally troubled to use for such elegies. A century or so
later, and we find Llywarch ab Llywelyn (known as "Prydydd y
Moch," the Poet of the Pigs) writing a still finer and more ample
lament on the last native prince of Wales, Llywelyn ab Gruffydd,
"Llywelyn ewi Llyw Olaf," as he is still fondly called. These two
laments may be taken as typical of a wide section of Welsh poetry,
dealing with the deaths of heroes and princes, and ranging in date
from the fifth or sixth century to the nineteenth. Llywelyn the Last
died in 1282, and thereafter began what has been well termed "The
Great Oppression" (y Gorthrwm Mawr), by which Norman and Saxon
combined to crush the language and expropriate the people of the
country, with the result of calling up at last Owen Glendower's hot
spirit to fight for the national cause.
But it is remarkable that in this disastrous period arose some of
the finest interpreters of her genius that the country was ever to find.
Within its term were, without a doubt, carried to an approximate
perfection those more native romances that we term 'Mabinogion,’—
the most exquisite and exquisitely turned tales, in point of art, that
the Celtic races have produced. The late Lady Charlotte Guest's
edition of the 'Mabinogion' serves very well to convey, in a trans-
lation of extreme felicity, to non-Celtic readers the art and spirit of
these tales. But it must be kept in mind that all she gives are
not strictly 'Mabinogion'; several of them are more properly to be
called romances, as showing strong traces of Norman and French
influence. The 'Mabinogi' originally was a tale to be recited by a
mabinog, i. e. , a 'prentice to the bardic craft who had not yet obtained
his full degree, and with it the right of composing and reciting
poetry. The idea which some critics have, that the 'Mabinogion'
VI-216
## p. 3442 (#416) ###########################################
3442
CELTIC LITERATURE
were boys' tales, or still worse, nursery tales, is quite wrong. Let us
remember that such tales were the delight of most of the princely
halls and winter hearths of mediæval Wales, where they were recited
after the great banquets and on feast nights to the most critical
audience that could be afforded. 'The Dream of Rhonabwy,' ‘Kil-
hwch and Olwen,' and 'Math, Son of Mathonwy,' may be mentioned
as among the tales in Lady Guest's volume which are most natively
original; and we have chosen the portrait of Olwen from the second
of these for our selections, to show the art and charm of the Welsh
romancers in the Middle Ages.
If the 'Mabinogion' are fine as prose, we have an equally fine
expression of this time in poetry, in the poems of Rhys Goch ab
Rhicert (Rhys the Red, son of Rhicert) and the ever delightful
Dafydd ab Gwilym, who will be found treated separately. After
Dafydd, Welsh poetry was to enter upon a new phase, not fortunate
even in its immediate effects, disastrous in its ultimate ones. It
was in the fourteenth century that Welsh prosody, always intricate,
finally waxed proud, so to speak, of its complexity, and formed for
itself a hide-bound code which was to become the bugbear of Welsh
poetry in the following centuries. To give any adequate account
of its complexities of technique and the whole letter of its syntax
would require a long and tedious treatise in itself. Enough to say
that the underlying principle was that of what is termed in Welsh
"Eynghanedd," or "consonancy"; by which rhymes within rhymes.
and echoes within echoes of certain dominant syllables were insisted
upon arbitrarily, until almost every word in every line was subject
to a rigid and invincible rule. Art for art, insisted upon in this way,
could only end in conventionalizing the very thing it was meant to
assist.
Poetry, too carefully nursed and housed, thus fell into a bad way;
but luckily meanwhile a new literature was to begin for Wales,
along quite other lines, with the Reformation. The translation of
the Bible into Welsh by Bishop Morgan in the sixteenth century
marks an epoch in the life of the Welsh people and their literature.
Therewith the history of the princes and the great lords ends, and
the history of the people - and a people mainly peasant, let us
remark - begins. Its profound moral force apart, and judged purely
as a literary force, the Bible, admirably and idiomatically translated,
had an incalculable effect. It set a fine and high and yet simple
standard of prose, much as the English Bible does; and taught the
possibilities of his tongue to the poorest Welsh peasant. One finds
its influence strong in almost every prose work of any note published
in the last three centuries, and in a great proportion of the poetry.
It did more than anything of later time to save the language: and
## p. 3443 (#417) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3443
here is the simple explanation of the extraordinary difference.
between the fortunes of the Welsh and the Irish tongue. Wales-
the Wales of the people became profoundly impressed by the
religious sentiment and the heroic and profound poetry of the
Hebrews, and gained from them a new stimulus to express itself and
its needs and aspirations in its own native way and in its own
tongue.
A characteristic expression of the homelier moral humor of the
Welsh is to be had in the 'Canwyll y Cymry' (Candle of Wales),
by Rhys Pritchard, the famous Elizabethan vicar of Llandovery,
which for two centuries was the most popular book in Wales after
the Bible. Its simple rhymed didactics do not often rise into poetry;
but they are full of human feeling, expressed in a terse and pro-
verbial way, with distinct individuality. The book easily leads one
on to the very remarkable band of hymn writers, from Anne Griffiths
to Williams Pantycelyn, who have flourished in Welsh. These, and
some score beside, really rank by their imaginative fervor and
inspiration as true poets. In quite another vein, but probably a
very ancient and traditional one in Welsh, we have the homely
interludes of Twm O'r Nant, who was born about 1750, of whose life
George Borrow gives a very vigorous account in 'Wild Wales. ' A
greater than Twm O'r Nant, and born a generation earlier, Gronney
Owen, a man of the finest poetic genius, ought to have a special
interest for American readers because he was practically exiled from
his beloved Anglesea by the ungrateful church he served; and died,
poor and broken-hearted, in New Brunswick about the year 1780.
His Cywydd y Faru' (Ode to the Day of Judgment), his touching
lines to his little daughter Elin, or his Hogarthian lines upon the
London garret in which he lived for a time, may be cited as show-
ing the various sides of his poetry, of which unluckily there are no
adequate translations yet forthcoming.
—— -
In prose we must not omit to mention the 'Bardd Cwsg'
(The Sleeping Bard) of Elis Wynne, a very imaginative and idio-
matic prose epic-in-little, describing the bard's vision of a curiously
Welsh Inferno. Wynne's prose style is remarkably fine and pure,
modeled on the best Biblical standard of a Welsh without English
admixture. Welsh prose has been admirably handled too by some
of the divines who have flourished within the past two centuries, and
who have not confined their eloquence to the pulpit. Even when
the State church had no sympathy with the Welsh people and their
language, many of its individual members did much to keep the
spirit of literature alive; while the nonconformist ministers of
Wales have always been vigorously and eminently devoted to the
same cause.
## p. 3444 (#418) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3444
«<
Under happier conditions to-day, the latest expression of this vital
persistence of the Welsh in the quest of spiritual ideals is the move-
ment that has carried the new national university to completion,
and rallied the younger generation under the banner of Cymru
Fydd" (Young Wales). The songs of Ceiriog Hughes, the poems of
Islwyn, the works of scholars like Professor John Rhys, Canon Sil-
vain Evans, and Mr. Gwenogfvyn Evans; the ardent writing and
editing of Mr. Owen M. Edwards in his innumerable magazines and
other adventures; and the novels of Daniel Owen,
- these may be
named as among the influences that count most to the Wales of the
nineteenth century's end.
NOTE. - For citations from Welsh literature see articles on Aneurin, Mabi-
nogion, and Taliesin. The Breton branch of Celtic literature will be treated
under the heading (Villemarqué,' the celebrated collector of Barzaz-Breiz. ›
IV CORNISH
―――――
THE literature of a single county of England is not likely to be
very extensive, and when that literature and its language died for
good and all, a century ago, it becomes still more limited. Until the
reign of Henry VIII. , though for some time English had been very
generally spoken throughout the county, the old Celtic Cornish, hold-
ing a middle position, philologically as well as geographically, between
Welsh and Breton, was the mother tongue of at any rate the peas-
antry as far east as the Tamar. The great ecclesiastical revolution
of that period helped to destroy it. Neither prayer-book nor Bible
was translated into it; and though the ardently Catholic Cornish at
first would have none of the former, saying that it was "but like a
Christinas game," they were overruled by the forcible argument of
"apostolick blows and knocks," and had to submit. Then the lan-
guage receded rapidly. By the time of the Great Rebellion Truro
was its eastern limit; early in the eighteenth century only the two
western claw-like promontories retained it; and though Dolly Pent-
reath, who died in 1778, was not really the last person who spoke it,
it was dead before the present century was born. A few traditional
sentences, the numerals up to twenty, and some stray words lingered
on until our own day,-twenty years ago the present writer took
down a fair collection from the mouths of ancient mariners in
Mount's Bay, and a few words are still mixed with the local dia-
lect of English. But as a language Cornish is dead, though its ghost.
still haunts its old dwelling in the names of villages, houses, woods,
valleys, wells, and rocks, from Tamar to Penwith.
## p. 3445 (#419) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3445
As may be expected, a great proportion of the literature is in
verse, and most of that is in dramatic form. So little is there that
an exhaustive list of what survives is quite possible. It is as fol-
lows:-
1. The Poem of the Passion. A versified account of the Passion of
our Lord, recounting the events from Palm Sunday to Easter, with
the addition of many legendary incidents from the Gospel of Nico-
demus and other similar sources. The earliest MS. (in the British
Museum) is of the fifteenth century, which is probably the date of
its composition. It has been twice printed, once by Davies Gilbert,
with a translation by John Keigwin in 1826, and by Dr. Whitley
Stokes in 1862.
2. The Ordinalia. Three connected dramas, known collectively
under this title. The first recounts the Creation and the history of
the world as far as Noah's Flood. The second act of this gives the
story of Moses and of David and the Building of Solomon's Temple,
ending with the curiously incongruous episode of the martyrdom of
St. Maximilla, as a Christian, by the bishop placed in charge of the
Temple of Solomon. The second play represents the life of our Lord
from the Temptation to the Crucifixion, and this goes on without a
break into the third play, which gives the story of the Resurrection
and Ascension, and the legend of the death of Pilate. The connect-
ing link between the three is the legend of the wood of the cross.
This well-known story, most of which is interwoven with the whole
trilogy, is as follows:- Seth was sent by his dying father to beg the
promised Oil of Mercy to save him; the angel who guarded Paradise
gave him three seeds, or, according to the play, apple-pips; and when
he returned and found his father already dead, he placed them in
Adam's mouth and buried him on Mount Moriah. In process of time
the three seeds grew into three trees, and from them Abraham gath-
ered the wood for the sacrifice of Isaac, and Moses got his rod
wherewith he smote the sea and the rock. Later the three trees, to
symbolize the Trinity, grew into one tree, and David sat under it to
bewail his sin. But Solomon cut it down to make a beam for the
Temple, and since it would in no wise fit into any place, he cast it
out and set it as a bridge over Cedron. Later on he buried it, and
from the place where it lay there sprang the healing spring of Beth-
esda, to the surface of which it miraculously floated up, and the
Jews found it and made of it the Cross of Calvary.
These plays were probably written in the fifteenth century, per-
haps by one of the priests of Glazeney College near Falmouth, and
were acted with others that are now lost in the places called Planan-
Guare (the Plain of the Play), of which several still remain. The
'Ordinalia' were published with a translation by Edwin Norris in 1859.
## p. 3446 (#420) ###########################################
3446
CELTIC LITERATURE
3. The Creation of the World, with Noah's Flood, was a modernized
version of the first act of the first of the Ordinalia' trilogy. It was
written by William Jordan of Helston in 1611; but the author has
borrowed whole passages of considerable length from the older play.
The language represents a later period of Cornish, and occasionally
several lines of English are introduced. Perhaps by a natural Celtic
antipathy to the Saxon, these are generally put into the mouths of
Lucifer and his angels, who furnish a good deal of the comic part of
the piece. This play was published by Davies Gilbert in 1827, and
by Dr. Whitley Stokes in 1864.
4. The Life of St. Meriasek. This play, written in 1504, is per-
haps the most interesting of the batch. The story at least of the
others contains nothing very new to most people, but St. Meriasek
or Meriadoc (to give him his Breton name), the patron of Camborne,
is not a well-known character, and his life, full as it is of allusions
and incidents of a misty period of Cornish history, is most curious
and interesting. It is not perhaps simplified by being mixed up in
the wildest manner with the legend of Constantine and St. Sylvester,
and the scenes shift about from Cornwall or Brittany to Rome, and
from the fourth to the Heaven-knows-what century, with bewildering
frequency. There are also certain other legends interwoven with the
story, and it seems probable that at least three plays have been, as
Dr. Whitley Stokes expresses it, "unskillfully pieced together. " Yet
there are many passages of considerable literary merit. The only
existing MS. of this play is in the Hengwrt collection at Peniarth,
and it was edited and translated by Dr. Stokes in 1872.
5. There were probably many other plays which have perished,
but one other there certainly was, of which a fragment exists.
What it was called or what it was about no one knows, but an actor
in it, setting about to learn his own part in it, wrote that short
piece of thirty-six lines on the back of a title-deed of some land in
the parish of St. Stephen, near Bodmin. The deed drifted eventu-
ally into the British Museum, and the present writer discovered the
Cornish verses on it, not wholly by accident, about nineteen years
ago.
The writing belongs to the latter part of the fourteenth cen-
tury, and is therefore the earliest literary fragment of the language.
6. The rest of the literature of the Cornish language consists of a
few songs, epigrams, mottoes, proverbs, and the like, a short disserta-
tion on the language, and the tale of John of Chy-an-Hur,' a widely
known folk-tale. These are mostly in the latest form of Cornish,
and are contained in the MS. collection of William Gwavas in the
British Museum and in that of Dr. Borlase, until lately in the pos-
session of his descendants. Most of them have been printed by
Davies Gilbert (with the play of the 'Creation'), by William Pryce
## p. 3447 (#421) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3447
in the Archæologia Cornu-Britannica' in 1790, by Mr. W. C. Bor-
lase in the Transactions of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, and
in a fragmentary way in a few other places. They are mostly trans-
lations or adaptations from the English, but a few, such as the
rather doggerel Pilchard Fishing Song,' are originals. Lastly, in
the Church of St. Paul, near Penzance, there is the one solitary epi-
taph in the language; written while it was still just alive, and per-
haps the last composition in it.
[The versions given of these specimens of Cornish literature are founded
on those of Dr. Whitley Stokes and Dr. E. Norris. The phraseology has been
to some extent altered, but the renderings are almost all the same. ]
FROM THE POEM OF THE PASSION >
[The Death of Our Lord on the Cross]
HIS
Is pain was strong and sharp, so that he could not live,
But must yield up his white soul; ever purely had he
lived.
And Christ prayed, as thus in many a place we read,
"My soul I do commend, O Lord, between thy hands! "
For weakly he breathed, being constrained, so that he could not
rest;
On nothing could he lean his head for the garland that he wore.
If he leaned to one side, for his shoulder it grieved him
And the tree did yet worse, if he set it backwards.
Nor could he lean forward for fear of being choked.
Then was it as we read in books as it is written:-
"For the birds to make their nests, places are prepared,
But for Christ where he may lay his head no place is found. "
But now must he needs leave his head to hang,
For his blood was all gone from him, and he could not live.
To the side of the Mother that owned him, his head he would
hold,
And his soul went from him with chilling shriek and shrill cry.
Beside the Cross of Jesus was a man hight Sentury,
And when he saw the wondrous things that happened at Christ's
death,
And how his soul he yielded, against nature, with a cry,
He said without scorning, "This truly was God's Son; "
And many were there with him that testimony bore.
## p. 3448 (#422) ###########################################
3448
CELTIC LITERATURE
Now was it midday in the land, or later, as is written.
Earthquake there was and lightning, and darkness over all;
The Temple Veil was rent in twain, and to the ground it fell,
And likewise broken were the stones so strong and hard.
Graves in many places were opened wide,
And the bodies that were in them were raised up,
And went straightway to the city-by many were they seen-
To bear witness that it was God's Son that was slain.
Water, earth, and fire, and wind, sun, moon, and stars likewise,
At Christ's suffering death knew sorrow.
Nature will cause, I trow, if the good Lord be pained,
All his subjects, even saints, to be grieved for his pain.
FROM ORIGO MUNDI,' IN THE ORDINALIA'
[Seth, being sent to fetch the oil of mercy from Paradise for his dying
father, comes to the guardian cherub. ]
Cherubin-Seth, what is thine errand,
That thou comest so far?
Seth-
Cherubin
Seth-
Tell me anon.
O Angel, I will tell it thee:
My father is old and weary;
He wishes no longer to live;
And through me he prayed thee
To tell the truth
Of the oil of mercy promised
To him at the last day.
Within the gate put thou thy head,
And behold it all, nor fear,
Whatever thou seest.
And look on all sides,
Spy out every detail,
Search out everything carefully.
Very gladly I will do it;
I am glad to have permission
To know what is there
And tell it to my father.
[And he looks and turns round, saying:
Fair field to behold is this;
Hapless he who lost the land.
But for the tree I wonder greatly
That it should be dry.
But I trow that it went dry
## p. 3449 (#423) ###########################################
CELTIC LITERATURE
3449
Cherubin
Seth
-
Seth-
―――
Seth-
And all was made bare, for the sin
Which my father and mother sinned.
Like the prints of their feet,
They all became dry as herbs,
Alas, when the morsel was eaten.
O Seth, thou art come
Within the gate of Paradise:
Tell me what thou sawest.
All the beauty that I saw
Tongue of man can never tell,
Of good fruits and beauteous flowers,
Of minstrels and sweet song,
Cherubin-Look yet again within,
Cherubin
A fountain bright as silver,
And flowing from it four great streams,
That there is a desire to gaze upon them.
In it there is a tree,
-
High and with many boughs,
But they are bare and leafless.
Bark there is none around it;
From the stem to the head
All its branches are bare.
And below when I looked,
I saw its roots
Even into hell descending,
In the midst of great darkness;
And its branches growing up
Even to heaven high in light.
And it was wholly without bark,
Both the head and the boughs.
And all else thou shalt see
Before thou come from it.
I am happy to have leave;
I will go to the gate at once,
Cherubin - Dost thou see more now
That I may see further good.
[He goes and looks and returns.
Than what there was just now?
There is a serpent in the tree:
Truly a hideous beast is he.
