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Some Aspects of Irish Literature
Author: Pádraic H. Pearse
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Sources
Select editions- P.H. Pearse, An sgoil: a direct method course in Irish (Dublin: Maunsel, 1913).
- P.H. Pearse, How does she stand?: three addresses (The Bodenstown series no. 1) (Dublin: Irish Freedom Press, 1915).
- P.H. Pearse, From a hermitage (The Bodenstown series no. 2)(Dublin: Irish Freedom Press, 1915).
- P.H. Pearse, The murder machine (The Bodenstown series no. 3) (Dublin: Whelan, 1916). Repr. U.C.C.: Department of Education, 1959.
- P.H. Pearse, Ghosts (Tracts for the Times) (Dublin: Whelan, 1916).
- P.H. Pearse, The Spiritual Nation (Tracts for the Times) (Dublin: Whelan, 1916).
- P.H. Pearse, The Sovereign People (Tracts for the Times) (Dublin: Whelan, 1916).
- P.H. Pearse, The Separatist Idea (Tracts for the Times) (Dublin: Whelan, 1916).
- Pádraic Colum, E.J. Harrington O'Brien (ed), Poems of the Irish revolutionary brotherhood, Thomas MacDonagh, P.H. Pearse (Pádraic MacPiarais), Joseph Mary Plunkett, Sir Roger Casement. (New and enl. ed.) (Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, 1916). First edition, July, 1916; second edition, enlarged, September, 1916.
- Michael Henry Gaffney, The stories of Pádraic Pearse (Dublin [etc.]: The Talbot Press Ltd. 1935). Contains ten plays by M.H. Gaffney based upon stories by Pádraic Pearse, and three plays by Pádraic Pearse edited by M.H. Gaffney.
- Proinsias Mac Aonghusa, Liam Ó Reagain (ed), The best of Pearse (1967).
- Seamus Ó Buachalla (ed), The literary writings of Patrick Pearse: writings in English (Dublin: Mercier, 1979).
- Seamus Ó Buachalla, A significant Irish educationalist: the educational writings of P.H. Pearse (Dublin: Mercier, 1980).
- Seamus Ó Buachalla (ed), The letters of P. H. Pearse (Gerrards Cross, Bucks.: Smythe, 1980).
- Pádraic Mac Piarais (ed), Bodach an chóta lachtna (Baile Átha Cliath: Chonnradh na Gaedhilge, 1906).
- Pádraic Mac Piarais, Bruidhean chaorthainn: sgéal Fiannaídheachta (Baile Átha Cliath: Chonnradh na Gaedhilge, 1912).
- Pádraic Pearse, Collected works of Pádraic H.
Pearse (Dublin: Phoenix Publishing Co. ?1910 1919). 4 vols. v. 1. Political writings and speeches.v. 2. Plays, stories, poems.v. 3. Songs of the Irish rebels and specimens from an Irish anthology. Some aspects of Irish literature. Three lectures on Gaelic topics.v. 4. The story of a success, edited by Desmond Ryan, and The man called Pearse, by Desmond Ryan.
- Pádraic Pearse, Collected works of Pádraic H.
Pearse (Dublin; Belfast: Phoenix, ? 1916 1917). 5 vols. [v. 1] Plays, stories, poems.[v. 2.] Political writings and speeches.[v. 3] Story of a success. Man called Pearse.[v. 4] Songs of the Irish rebels. Specimens from an Irish anthology. Some aspects of irish literature.[v. 5] Scrivinni.
- Pádraic Pearse, Collected works of Pádraic H. Pearse . . . (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company 1917). 3rd ed. Translated by Joseph Campbell, introduction by Patrick Browne.
- Pádraic Pearse, Collected works of Pádraic H. Pearse. 6th ed. (Dublin: Phoenix, 1924 1917) v. 1. Political writings and speeches v. 2. Plays, stories, poems.
- Pádraic Pearse, Collected works of Pádraic H. Pearse (Dublin: Phoenix Pub. Co., 1924). 5 vols. [v. 1] Songs of the Irish rebels and specimens from an Irish anthology. Some aspects of Irish literature. Three lectures on Gaelic topics. [v. 2] Plays, stories, poems. [v. 3] Scríbinní. [v. 4] The story of a success [being a record of St. Enda's College] The man called Pearse / by Desmond Ryan. [v. 5] Political writings and speeches.
- Pádraic Pearse, Short stories of Pádraic Pearse
(Cork: Mercier Press, 1968 1976 1989). (Iosagan, Eoineen of the birds, The
roads, The black chafer, The keening woman).
- Pádraic Pearse, Political writing and speeches (Irish prose writings, 20) (Tokyo: Hon-no-tomosha, 1992). Originally published: Dublin: Maunsel & Roberts, 1922.
- Pádraic Pearse, Political writings and speeches (Collected works of Pádraic H. Pearse) (Dublin and London: Maunsel & Roberts Ltd., 1922).
- Pádraic Pearse, Political writings and Speeches (Collected works of Pádraic H. Pearse) (Dublin: Phoenix 1916). 6th ed. (Dublin [etc.]: Phoenix, 1924).
- Pádraic Pearse, Plays Stories Poems (Collected works of Pádraic H. Pearse) (Dublin, London: Maunsel & Company Ltd., 1917). 5th ed. 1922. Also pubd. by Talbot Press, Dublin, 1917, repr. 1966. Repr. New York: AMS Press, 1978.
- Pádraic Pearse, Filíocht Ghaeilge Pádraig Mhic Phiarais (Áth Cliath: Clóchomhar, 1981) Leabhair thaighde ; an 35u iml.
- Pádraic Pearse, Collected works of Pádraic H. Pearse (New York: Stokes, 1918). Contains The Singer, The King, The Master, Íosagán.
- Pádraic Pearse, Songs of the Irish rebels and specimens from an Irish anthology: some aspects of Irish literature: three lectures on Gaelic topics (Collected works of Pádraic H. Pearse) (Dublin: The Phoenix Publishing Co. 1910).
- Pádraic Pearse, Songs of the Irish rebels (Collected works of Pádraic H. Pearse) (Dublin: Phoenix Pub. Co., 1917).
- Pádraic Pearse, Songs of the Irish rebels, and Specimens from an Irish anthology (Collected works of Pádraic H. Pearse) (Dublin: Maunsel, 1918).
- Pádraic Pearse, The story of a success (The complete works of P. H. Pearse) (Dublin: Phoenix Pub. Co., 1917) .
- Pádraic Pearse, Scríbinní (The complete works of P. H. Pearse) (Dublin: Phoenix Pub. Co., 1917).
- Julius Pokorny, Die Seele Irlands: Novellen und Gedichte aus dem Irish-Gälischen des Patrick Henry Pearse und Anderer zum ersten Male ins Deutsche übertragen (Halle a.S.: Max Niemeyer 1922)
- James Simmons, Ten Irish poets: an anthology of poems by George Buchanan, John Hewitt, Pádraic Fiacc, Pearse Hutchinson, James Simmons, Michael Hartnett, Eilean Ní Chuilleanáin, Michael Foley, Frank Ormsby & Tom Mathews (Cheadle: Carcanet Press, 1974).
- Cathal Ó hAinle (ed), Gearrscéalta an Phiarsaigh (Dublin: Helicon, 1979).
- Ciarán Ó Coigligh (ed), Filíocht Ghaeilge: Phádraig Mhic Phiarais (Baile Átha Cliath: Clóchomhar, 1981).
- Pádraig Mac Piarais, et al., Une île et d'autres îles: poèmes gaeliques XXeme siècle (Quimper: Calligrammes, 1984).
Select bibliography- Pádraic Mac Piarais: Pearse from documents (Dublin: Co-ordinating committee for Educational Services, 1979). Facsimile documents. National Library of Ireland. facsimile documents.
- Xavier Carty, In bloody protestthe tragedy of Patrick Pearse (Dublin: Able 1978).
- Helen Louise Clark, Pádraic Pearse: a Gaelic idealist (1933). (Thesis (M.A.)Boston College, 1933).
- Mary Maguire Colum, St. Enda's School, Rathfarnham, Dublin.
Founded by Pádraic H. Pearse. (New York: Save St. Enda's Committee 1917).
- Pádraic H. Pearse ([s.l.: s.n., C. F. Connolly) 1920).
- Elizabeth Katherine Cussen, Irish motherhood in the drama of William Butler Yeats, John Millington Synge, and Pádraic Pearse: a comparative study. (1934) Thesis (M.A.)Boston College, 1934.
- Ruth Dudley Edwards, Patrick Pearse: the triumph of failure (London: Gollancz, 1977).
- Stefan Fodor, Douglas Hyde, Eoin MacNeill, and Pádraic Pearse of the Gaelic League: a study in Irish cultural nationalism and separatism, 1893-1916 (1986). Thesis (M.A.)Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, 1986.
- James Hayes, Patrick H. Pearse, storyteller (Dublin: Talbot, 1920).
- John J. Horgan, Parnell to Pearse: some recollections and reflections (Dublin: Browne & Nolan, 1948).
- Louis N. Le Roux, La vie de Patrice Pearse (Rennes: Imprimerie Commerciale de Bretagne, 1932). Translated into English by Desmond Ryan (Dublin: Talbot, 1932).
- Proinsias Mac Aonghusa, Quotations from P.H. Pearse, (Dublin: Mercier, 1979).
- Mary Benecio McCarty (Sister), Pádraic Henry Pearse: an
educator in the Gaelic tradition (1939) (Thesis (M.A.)Marquette
University, 1939).
- Hedley McCay, Pádraic Pearse; a new biography (Cork: Mercier Press, 1966).
- John Bernard Moran, Sacrifice as exemplified by the life and writings of Pádraic Pearse is true to the Christian and Irish ideals; that portrayed in the Irish plays of Sean O'Casey is futile (1939). Submitted to Dept. of English. Thesis (M.A.)Boston College, 1939.
- Sean Farrell Moran, Patrick Pearse and the politics of redemption: the mind of the Easter rising, 1916 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1994).
- P.S. O'Hegarty, A bibliography of books written by P. H. Pearse (s.l.: 1931).
- Máiread O'Mahony, The political thought of Padraig H. Pearse: pragmatist or idealist (1994). ThesesM.A. (NUI, University College Cork).
- Daniel J. O'Neill, The Irish revolution and the cult of the leader: observations on Griffith, Moran, Pearse and Connolly (Boston: Northeastern U.P., 1988).
- Mary Brigid Pearse (ed), The home-life of Padraig Pearse as told by himself, his family and friends (Dublin: Browne & Nolan 1934). Repr. Cork, Mercier 1979.
- Maureen Quill, Pádraic H. Pearsehis philosophy of Irish education (1996). ThesesM.A. (NUI, University College Cork).
- Desmond Ryan, The man called Pearse (Dublin: Maunsel, 1919).
- Nicholas Joseph Wells, The meaning of love and patriotism as seen in the plays, poems, and stories of Pádraic Pearse (1931). (Thesis (M.A.)Boston College, 1931).
The edition used in the digital edition- Pádraic Pearse Some Aspects of Irish Literature in Songs of the Irish Rebels and Specimens from an Irish Anthology, Some Aspects of Irish Literature, Three Lectures on Gaelic Topics. , Dublin, Phoenix Publishing Co. Ltd. (n.d.) page 129158
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Created: By Pádraic Henry Pearse (1879-1916).
(9th December, 1912)
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Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition: E900007-014
Some Aspects of Irish Literature: Author: Pádraic H. Pearse
p.131
Now that the libraries have yielded up so
much of the buried treasures of Irish literature
and that so much more which has not yet
seen the light of day has been surveyed and
appraised by competent authorities, one is
better able than one was even so recently as
ten years ago to fix a value and attach a definition
to Ireland's contribution to the world's
vision of beauty. One is able to form some
idea of what distant horizons have been
scanned by Irish-speaking men, what heights
scaled, what depths sounded. And when our
knowledge is just a little wider and deeper
than it is at present it will be found that an
amazing thing has happened. It will be
found that the literary history of the world,
what is commonly accepted as literary history,
has left out of account one of the great literary
peoples. Just as the rediscovery of the buried
p.132
cities of the East has made it necessary for us
to re-write social and political history, so will
the rediscovery of this buried literature of the
West make it necessary for us to re-write
literary history. And it will mean not only
a re-writing of literary history, but a general
readjustment of literary values, a general
raising of literary standards. The world has
had a richer dream of beauty than we had
dreamed it had. Men here saw certain
gracious things more clearly and felt certain
mystic things more acutely and heard certain
deep music more perfectly than did men in
ancient Greece. And it is from Greece that
we have received our standards.
How curiously might one speculate if one
were to imagine that when the delvers of the
fifteenth century unearthed the buried literatures
of Greece and Rome they had stumbled
instead upon that other buried literature which
was to remain in the dust of the libraries for
four centuries longer! Then instead of the
classic revival we should have had the Celtic
revival; or rather the Celtic would have
become the classic and the Gael would have
given laws to Europe. I do not say positively
that literature would have gained, but I am
p.133
not sure that it would have lost. Something
it would have lost: the Greek ideal of perfection
in form, the wise calm Greek scrutiny.
Yet something it would have gained: a more
piercing vision, a nobler, because a more
humane, inspiration, above all a deeper spirituality.
One other result would have followed:
the goodly culture and the fine mysticism of
the Middle Ages would not have so utterly
been lost. And, thinking of the effect of
literature upon men's lives and conduct, one
may add that the world might not have proved
so untrue to so many of its righteous causes.
Now I claim for Irish literature, at its best,
these excellences: a clearer than Greek vision,
a more generous than Greek humanity, a
deeper than Greek spirituality. And I claim
that Irish literature has never lost those excellences:
that they are of the essence of Irish
nature and are characteristic of modern Irish
folk poetry even as they are of ancient Irish
epic and of mediaeval Irish hymns. This
continuity of tradition amid all its changing
moods (and the moods of Irish literature are
as various as the moods of Irish climate) is one
of the striking things about it; the old man
who croons above a Connacht hearthplace the
p.134
songs he made in his youth is as definitely a
descendant of the elder bards as a Tennyson is of a
Chaucer. I propose to illustrate what I mean, and to
show how an attitude characteristic of Irish-speaking
men in the days when they shaped the Táin is
reproduced in the song in which an Irish peasant
woman of to-day reproaches her lover or keens
over her dead child.
What I have called here clearness of vision is part
of a great sincerity, a great feeling for ultimate reality,
which the supreme poets always have. The clear
sheer detection and statement of some naked truth,
the touching of some deep bedrock foundation, the
swift sure stroke at the very heart of a thing: that is
what I mean. There is sometimes a harshness in the
relentlessness of this truth-telling, a pain in the
pleasure of this revelation. The heart shakes,
because for a moment one sees with the awful
clearness with which God sees.
The passage in the tale of The Sickbed of
Cuchulainn and the only Jealousy of Emer in which
Fand and Emer both beg to be rejected by
Cuchulainn, whom they love, because neither will
have half his love, shows this understanding and
this sounding of the
p.135
depths. If thou followest this woman, said Emer,
I shall not refuse thee to her. For indeed everything
red is beautiful, everything new is bright, everything
high is lovely, everything common is bitter,
everything we are without is prized, everything
known is neglected, till all knowledge is known. O
youth, she said, I was at one time happy with thee,
and we should be so again if I were pleasing to
thee. Thou art pleasing to me, said Cuchulainn,
and thou shalt always be pleasing to me. Then said
Fand: Let me be rejected. Nay, it were fitter to
reject me, said Emer. Not so, said Fand, it is I
who shall be rejected, and long have I been in peril
of it. And Fand bade farewell to Cuchulainn, and
went back to her own country.
This seems to me to be the authentic note of great
imaginative psychology. And I find equally authentic,
albeit startling in the audacity of its sincerity, the
psychology and the imagination which in the tale of
the Tragic Fate of Cuchulainn, when the hero is
being drawn forth to his doom by the din of phantasmagoric battles,
make Emer, in the last forlorn hope
of saving him, send to him that
p.136
very Fandthe woman whose power over him
she had such good reason to know. How
differently inferior artists would have imagined
either of these episodes! How a conventional
sentimentality would have baulked at
making Emer capable of that great sacrifice!
Sheer clear naked truth, the great reality
of love and sacrifice, the miracle of the sacrifice
by love of itself, the breaking down of strong
barriers in the presence of some awful issue
again and again through the centuries have
Irish-speaking men seen and described these
things. I will show you what I mean again
in a mediaeval poemthe Parting of Goll
and his Wife. I quote it in Miss Hull's
verse translation in her recently-published
Poem-Book of the Gael, though Mr.
MacNeill's more literal prose-translation in
his Duanaine Finn, where the poem was
first printed, is equally excellent. Goll and
his wife are hemmed in by Fionn on a sea-girt rock without chance of escape.
Goll speaks:
- 1] The end is come; upon this narrow rock
2] To-morrow I must die;
3] Wife of the ruddy cheeks and hair of flame,
4] Leave me to-night and fly.
p.137
- 5] Seek out the camp of Fionn and of his men
6] Upon the westward side;
7] Take there, in time to come, another mate:
8] Here I abide.
Goll's wife replies:
- 9] Which way, O Goll, is my way, and thou perished?
10] Alas! few friends have I!
11] Small praise that woman hath whose lord is gone,
12] And no protector nigh!
- 13] What man should I wed? I whom great Goll cherished
14] And made his wife?
15] Where in the East or West should one be sought
16] To mend my broken life?
- 17] Shall I take Oisin, son of Fionn the Wise,
18] Or Carroll of the blood-stained hand?
19] Shall I make Angus, son of Hugh, my prize?
20] Or swift-foot Corr, chief of the fighting band?
p.138
- 21] I am as good as they; aye, good and better,
22] Daughter of Conall, Monarch of the West,
23] Fostered was I with Conn the Hundred-Fighter,
24] Best among all the best.
- 25] Thee out of all I loved, thee my first master,
26] Gentlest and bravest thou;
27] Seven years we lived and loved, through calm and tumult,
28] And shall I leave thee now?
- 29] From that night till to-night I found thee never
30] Of harsh or churlish mind;
31] And here I vow, no other man shall touch me,
32] Kind or unkind.
- 33] Here on this narrow crag, foodless and sleepless,
34] Thou takest thy last stand;
35] A hundred heroes, Goll, lie rotten round thee,
36] Slain by thy dauntless hand.
- 37] In the wide ocean near us, life is teeming;
38] Yet on this barren rock
39] I sink from hunger, and the wild briny waters
40] My thirst-pangs mock.
- 41] Fierce is our hunger, fierce the five battalions
42] Sent here to conquer thee;
43] But fiercer yet the drought that steals my beauty
44] Midst this surrounding sea.
- 45] Though all my dear loved brothers by one caitiff
46] Lay slaughtered in my sight,
47] That man I'd call my friend, yea, I would love him
48] Could thy thirst ease to-night.
- 49] Eat, son of Morna, batten on these dead bodies,
50] This is my last behest;
51] Feast well, gaunt Goll, then quench thy awful craving
52] Here at my breast.
p.140
- 53] Nought is there more to fear, nought to be hoped for,
54] Of life and all bereft
55] High on this crag, abandoned and forsaken,
56] Nor hope nor shame is left.
Goll speaks:
- 57] Oh! pitiful how this thing hath befallen,
58] Little red mouth!
59] Lips that of old made speech and happy music,
60] Now dry and harsh with drought.
- 61] Ever I feared this end; my haunting terror
62] By wave and land
63] Was to be caught by Fionn and his battalions,
64] On some stark, foodless strand.
- 65] Depart not yet; upon this barren islet,
66] Beneath this brazen sky,
67] Sweet lips and gentle heart, we sit together
68] Until we die.
p.141
And now I ask you to observe the same utter
sincerity, the same stripping bare of the
reality from the surrounding conventions, in
a modern poem of the people. A peasant
girl, betrayed by a lover whom she had trusted,
speaks to her mother:
- O little mother, give myself to him,
Give all that you have in the world to him,
Go yourself asking for alms,
And do not come east or west to seek me.
She would abandon herself altogether to
her betrayer; and she would do it now with
her eyes open, for she says to him:
- You have taken east, and you have taken west from me,
You have taken from me the path before and the path behind me,
You have taken moon, and you have taken sun from me,
And great is my fear that you've taken God from me!
The Irish strength and truth where the
artists of a more sentimental people like the
p.142
English would have carefully provided a lachrymose
ending stand out conspicuously in the
conclusion of that surpassing tale, The
Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne. This
was pointed out in a fine study contributed by
the late Father O'Carroll to the Irish
Ecclesiastical Record a good many years ago.
The unknown novelist (for Diarmuid and
Grainne is in all essentials what we now call
a novel) did not make Grainne die of grief for
Diarmuid. She had wooed Diarmuid and
may have loved him, and his death had come
from that wooing. But love was not the
greatest thing in Grainne, if indeed there was
love in her at all. Irish literature had given
memorable types of woman's love, Deirdre
and Emer and Fand and Leadan and Crede,
enduring types of the love that is faithful even
unto death. But Grainne was no Deirdre or
Emer. She is the Hedda Gabler of Irish
literature, the woman who craved to have her
destinies interwoven with those of a strong
splendid man: when Diarmuid's red cheek was
white in death and his clustering hair had
mingled with the dust Grainne turned to Fionn,
the strong subtle man who had slain him. It
is entirely in keeping with her character as
p.143
conceived by the novelist that after Diarmuid's
death she should purchase power and splendour
by wedding Fionn. I trow, O Fionn,
quoth Oisín, that henceforth thou wilt keep
Grainne safely. Whereat, concludes the
storyteller, Grainne bowed her head in shame.
This grimly ironic note is not struck in European
literature again until the last half of the nineteenth
century.
No great literature has shown a subtler
understanding of women than Irish literature.
Alike in the Táin and in the fugitive love
songs of the manuscripts and of the countrysides
we come upon profound intuitions or
flashes of imagination which reveal more than
many modern novels and much modern poetry.
Some of the passages I have quoted will stand
as illustrations. And take the couplet of a
peasant cradle song which Mr. Yeats has
elaborated into a charming little lullaby. A
mother says to her child:
- Cad déanfaidh mé gan mo ghiolla beag,
Nuair bheidh tu mór is críonna?
What shall I do without my little lad when
p.144
you will be big and grown? Or, as Mr. Yeats has it:
- I kiss you and kiss you,
My pigeon, my own;
Ah! how I shall miss you,
When you have grown!
There is a real poignancy there which one
does not often meet with in poems of motherhood
and childhood. Many mothers must
have thought just that: only a great poet could
have imagined it. One finds the same yearning
of motherhood but in a note of high tragedy
in the mediaeval Lament of the Mothers for
the Slaughtered Innocents. Think of what
obvious things you and I should have made the
mothers say, and then note that the Irish
poet makes them say the things that were not
obvious, but which when we hear them we
yet recognise to be the inevitable things. The
second woman cries (I give Mr. Graves'
translation):
- 'Tis my own son that from me you wring,
I deceived not the King.
But slay me, even me,
And let my boy be.
p.145
A mother most hapless.
My bosom is sapless,
My eyes one tearful river,
My frame one fearful shiver,
My husband sonless ever,
And I a sonless wife
To live a death in life.
- O my son! O God of Truth!
O my unrewarded youth,
O my birthless sicknesses
Until doom without redress.
O my bosom's silent nest,
O the heart broke in my breast.
In an article on The Personal in the New
Poetry contributed to An Macaomh my friend Mr. MacDonagh recently pointed
out that the dramatic lyric is almost as old in
Irish as poetry itself, and that poetry had to
revolve through a whole cycle before the form
came back to Ireland again in modern Anglo-Irish poetry. He quotes the monologue of
Eve published by Dr. Kuno Meyer in Eriu
as a good example of the early Irish dramatic
lyric, telling in those vivid nervous lines of
the dán díreach clear and simple thoughts
of passion or emotionpoems that translate
p.146
so literally into all languages that in translation
they appear almost too simple. Mr.
MacDonagh translates this poem almost word
for word:
- 1] I am Eve, great Adam's wife,
2] I that wrought my children's loss,
3] I that wronged Jesus of life,
4] By right 'tis I had borne the cross.
- 5] I a kingly house forsook,
6] Ill my choice and my disgrace,
7] Ill the counsel that I took,
8] Withering me and all my race.
- 9] I that brought the winter in
10] And the windy glistening sky,
11] I that brought terror and sin,
12] Hell and pain and sorrow, I.
I quote the poem as an example of the Irish
power of clear vivid unadorned statement.
Mr. MacDonagh regards it as typical of the
early Irish dramatic lyriconly modernly, he
thinks, has the dramatic lyric had the intense
human thrill of individual subtle character.
Yet surely that greatest of Irish dramatic
lyrics (and it is as old as the tenth century) has
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that thrill: I mean The Old Woman of
Beare. No doubt that old woman speaks
the universal language of old age; no doubt
she might say to any old sad woman with
memories of a splendid youth what every
poet can in a sense say to every reader:
Unless these words are as much to you as
they are to me they are nothing and less
than nothing. And yet she is not a mere
type. There is an individuality there, a
subtle self-characterisation. We know her;
her sorrow is unforgettable, and the phrases
in which she expresses her sorrow linger in
the mind as do the phrases of Shelley's Flight
of Love or the phrases of Ronsard's Quand
vous serez bien vieille. I would place this
dramatic lyric among the greatest dramatic
lyrics of all literature. Like Deirdre, the Old
Woman of Beare will pass into many literatures,
and poets in many tongues will vie with one
another in giving new breath to her sorrow.
I have spoken of the Irish power of clear
vivid unadorned statement. Some of you,
remembering the rich and royal redundance
of a good deal of later Irish verse, will ask
whether clear vivid unadorned statement is
really an Irish characteristic. It is. It was
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an Irish characteristic from the beginning and
remained an Irish characteristic as long as
Dán Díreach verse ruled, and longer; for it
remains a characteristic of the best of the
peasant poetry. The reserve and severity of
the early Irish I am Eve, great Adam's
wife are as apparent in the seventeenth-century poem of Keating, A bhean lán de stuaim :
- O woman full of subtlety,
Keep from me thy hand.
The strength and brevity of the language
here are as striking as the candour and energy
of the thought. Yet Keating was one of those
who ushered in the new school in poetry.
There is no such thing as sentimentality in
Irish literature. One finds in the later literature,
especially in the later poetry, bad taste of
various kinds, but never that particular kind
of bad taste. The characteristic faults of the
later poetry spring from various causes. First,
the metres which had been elaborated became
a snare. And secondly, Irish poets, most
conservative of races, retained an obsolete
machinery and an outworn set of symbols
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long after the machinery had become unnecessary
and the symbols had ceased to be
convincing. There is a place for symbols in
literature, but there can be no excuse for
using symbols in which you do not yourself
believe. That way lies insincerity, and without
sincerity there can be no literature. Let
me illustrate what I mean by a parallel thing
which has taken place in recent Anglo-Irish
poetry. Either Mr. Russell or Mr. Yeats
discovered a certain symbolism in certain
white birds spoken of in connection with
Angus in one particular passage of early Irish
literature. They straightway let loose those
birds upon Anglo-Irish poetry, and for many
of us since the music of Anglo-Irish poetry
has almost been drowned by the needless
flapping of those white wings. You never
open a new book of Anglo-Irish verse but the
birds of Angus fly out. It almost reminds
one of the nursery rhyme: When the pie
was opened the birds began to sing. When
the book is opened the birds begin to fly.
And the curious thing to us who know Irish literature is that the birds of Angus never
trouble us there at all. They are the most
unobtrusive fowl imaginable.
p.150
Irish poetry has of course its symbols, and
much of the later Irish verse is fully symbolic
Eamonn an Chnuic, for instance, and An Druimfhionn Donn Dilis, and An
Draighnean Donn, and, as I believe, An Bunán Buidhe. But here I am concerned
with the employment of outworn symbols and
the retention of obsolete conventions. So
many of the elegies of the eighteenth-century
poets are insincere and unconvincing on this
account. But there were always poets individual
enough to stand apart from this
tendency: Seán O Neachtain, for instance,
who used the rich and elaborate metres without
allowing himself to be caught in their
snare, and who went back from artificiality
to the joyous artlessness of the first notes of
Irish poetry. And my contention here is
this: that alike in early Irish literature and in
the finest songs of the later peasant poets there
is absolutely nothing of this make-believe,
but always the clear strong expression of a
genuine emotion. The make-believe phase
was merely a phase that affected only two or
three generations, and not all the poets even
of those generations. The style of the
eighteenth-century school has no more right
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to be regarded as nationally characteristic than
the costume of the eighteenth century to be
regarded as a national costume. Both were
phases, and in both Ireland shared to a certain
extent with the Continent.
The aisling and the caoineadhthe vision
and the elegyare the forms in which the dead
conventions are most persistent and most
wearisome. But what noble vision poetry
early Irish literature had produced! And how
reserved, how sincere, how true and right,
how free from false sentiment are such early
elegies asI will not take the supreme ones,
those of Deirdre and Credebut the Dirge of
Congall Claen in the Book of the Dean of
Lismore, or that of Gormley for Niall Glundubh,
or those of Mac Liag and Mac Giolla
Caoimh for Brian Bóroimhe, or the later elegy
on the Irish princes dead at Rome. In these
poems there is no conventional machinery,
no repetition of outworn symbols. And one
finds the same characteristics, the same rightness
and sincerity, in elegies made by peasant
men and women for their dead lovers or their
dead children. Let me quote one at length,
a very recent one, made in America by a poet
still living for a child of his that was drowned.
p.152
He sent it to me several years ago and I
published it in An Claidheamh Soluis,
recently I republished it, with a prose translation,
in the Irish Review. In the Irish
original there is a deep melody and an exquisite
delicacy of phrase, to render which
English prose is wholly inadequate:
- 1] Ochón, O Donough! my thousand whispers stretched under this sod,
2] The sod of sorrow on your little body, my utter anguish!
3] If this sleep were on you in Cill na Dromad, or some grave in the West,
4] 'Twould soften my suffering, though great my hurt, and I would not repine for you!
- 5] Withered and wasted are the flowers they scattered on your narrow bed,
6] They were lovely for a little time, but their radiance is gone, they have no comeliness or life;
7] And the flower I held brightest of all that grew in soil or shall ever grow
8] Is rotting in the ground, and will spring no more to lift up my heart.
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- 9] Alas, beloved! was it not a great pity, the water rocking you,
10] With no strength in your pulses nor anyone near you that might save:
11] No news was brought to me of the peril of my child or the extremity of his need
12] Ah, though I'd gladly go to Hell's deep flag to rescue you!
- 13] The moon is dark, I cannot sleep, all joy has left me:
14] Rough and rude to me the open Gaelic ('tis an ill sign);
15] I hate a while in the company of friends, their merriment tortures me;
16] From the day I saw you dead on the sand, the sun has not shone for me.
- 17] Alas, my grief! what shall I do henceforth, the world wearing me.
18] Without your chalk-white little hand like a breath through trees on my sombre brow,
19] Your little mouth of honey like angels' music in my ears
20] Saying to me gently, dear heart, poor father, be not troubled I!
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- 21] Ah, desolate! I little thought in the time of my hope
22] That this child would not be a swift valiant hero in the midst of the band,
23] Doing deeds of daring and planning wisely for the sake of Fódla,
24] But He who fashioned us of clay on earth not so has ordered!
That elegy is in line with the great elegies
of the early Irish literature; and I would
place it with a poem in Roden Noel's Little
Child's Monument, and with Bridges'
Lines on a Dead Child as the three modern
poems of my acquaintance which most exquisitely
associate the pity of death with the
beauty of childhood.
When I said in the beginning that had Irish
literature been rediscovered four centuries
ago instead of Greek and Latin literature,
modern letters might have received a nobler,
because a more humane, inspiration than they
did actually receive, what I meant to suggest
was this: that the Irish chivalry and the Irish
spirituality which would then have commenced
to percolate the literatures of Europe was a
finer thing than the spirit of the old classic
p.155
literatures, more heroic, more gentle, more
delicate and mystical. And it is remarkable
that the most chivalrous inspiration in modern
literature does in fact come from a Celtic
source: that King Arthur and the Knights of
the Round Table have meant more to modern
men than the heroes who warred at Troy or
than Charlemagne and his Paladins. But how
much richer might European literature have
been had the story of Cuchulainn become a
European possession! For the story of
Cuchulainn I take to be the finest epic stuff
in the world: as we have it, it is not the most
finely-finished epic, but it is, I repeat, the finest
epic stuff. I mean not merely that Conor
and Fergus and Conall and Cuchulainn are
nobler figures, humaner figures, than Agammemnon
and Hector and Ulysses and Achilles;
not merely that Macha and Meadhbh and
Deirdre and Emer are more gracious figures,
more appealing figures, than Hecuba and
Helen; I mean also that the story itself is
greater than any Greek story, the tragedy as
pitiful as any Greek tragedy, yet at the same
time more joyous, more exultant. The theme
is as great as Milton's in Paradise Lost:
Milton's theme is a fall, but the Irish theme
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is a redemption. For the story of Cuchulainn
symbolises the redemption of man by a sinless
God. The curse of primal sin lies upon a
people; new and personal sin brings doom
to their doors; they are powerless to save
themselves; a youth, free from the curse,
akin with them through his mother but through
his father divine, redeems them by his valour;
and his own death comes from it. I do not
mean that the Tain is a conscious allegory: but there is the story in its essence, and it is
like a retelling (or is it a fore-telling?) of the
story of Calvary. Whether you agree with me
or not, you will agree as to the greatness of
the theme, stated thus in its essentials; and
you will no longer, I hope, think of the Tain
as the tale of an ancient Cattle Drive.
In that glorious Anthology The Bards of
the Gael and Gall Dr. Sigerson long ago
pointed out that the story of Deirdre fell
naturally into the five acts of a great tragic
drama. Since then four dramatic poets,
three in English, and one in Irish, have given
us tragedies on the Deirdre story. But the whole
Ulster epic falls just as naturally into a great
trilogy of tragedies, with a prologue and an
epilogue. The Prologue tells of the primal
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sin and the Curse of Macha; the three great
tragedies are, in order, Deirdre, the Tain,
and the Death of Cuchulainn; the Epilogue
is the Death of Conor. Each of the great
tragedies is complete in itself, yet through the
whole cycle unrolls in inevitable sequence the
doom of Ulster.
It may be said of the Homeric gods that they
are too nearly akin to men, but of the Irish
heroes that they have in them always something
of the divine. The unseen powers
have always been very close to Irish-speaking
men. I have known old people who lived in
familiar converse with the unseen; who knew
as it were by sight and by the sound of their
voices Christ and Mary and many familiar
saints. Now that intimacy with spiritual
things is very characteristic of Irish literature.
One finds it in the mystical hymns of the
Middle Ages; one finds it in the folk-tales of
the Western countrysides; one finds it in
many exquisite folk-songs. As Mr. Colum
has pointed out, Christ and Mary have been
incorporated into the Gaelic clan; and Irish
peasant women can keen Christ dead with as
real a grief as they keen their own dead. I
have many times seen women sob as they
p.158
repeated or listened to The Keening of
Mary. The strange intimacy that connects
certain places in Ireland with the scenes of
Christ's birth and life and death, and links
certain Irish saints and heroes with the joy of
the Nativity and the tragedy of the Passion
this is the true Irish mysticism, the mysticism
which recognises no real dividing line between
the seen and the unseen, and to which the
imagined experience is often more vivid than
the real experience. A people so gifted must
bring in their turn a very precious gift to
literature; for is it not the function of literature
by making known the real and imagined
experiences of gifted souls to reveal to common
men all the hidden splendours of the world
and to make vocal its silent music?