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Some Aspects of Irish Literature

Author: Pádraic H. Pearse

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Sources

Select editions
1. P.H. Pearse, An sgoil: a direct method course in Irish (Dublin: Maunsel, 1913).
2. P.H. Pearse, How does she stand?: three addresses (The Bodenstown series no. 1) (Dublin: Irish Freedom Press, 1915).
3. P.H. Pearse, From a hermitage (The Bodenstown series no. 2)(Dublin: Irish Freedom Press, 1915).
4. P.H. Pearse, The murder machine (The Bodenstown series no. 3) (Dublin: Whelan, 1916). Repr. U.C.C.: Department of Education, 1959.
5. P.H. Pearse, Ghosts (Tracts for the Times) (Dublin: Whelan, 1916).
6. P.H. Pearse, The Spiritual Nation (Tracts for the Times) (Dublin: Whelan, 1916).
7. P.H. Pearse, The Sovereign People (Tracts for the Times) (Dublin: Whelan, 1916).
8. P.H. Pearse, The Separatist Idea (Tracts for the Times) (Dublin: Whelan, 1916).
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. Proinsias Mac Aonghusa, Liam Ó Reagain (ed), The best of Pearse (1967).
12. Seamus Ó Buachalla (ed), The literary writings of Patrick Pearse: writings in English (Dublin: Mercier, 1979).
13. Seamus Ó Buachalla, A significant Irish educationalist: the educational writings of P.H. Pearse (Dublin: Mercier, 1980).
14. Seamus Ó Buachalla (ed), The letters of P. H. Pearse (Gerrards Cross, Bucks.: Smythe, 1980).
15. Pádraic Mac Piarais (ed), Bodach an chóta lachtna (Baile Átha Cliath: Chonnradh na Gaedhilge, 1906).
16. Pádraic Mac Piarais, Bruidhean chaorthainn: sgéal Fiannaídheachta (Baile Átha Cliath: Chonnradh na Gaedhilge, 1912).
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. 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.
20. 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.
21. 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.
22. 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).
23. Pádraic Pearse, Political writing and speeches (Irish prose writings, 20) (Tokyo: Hon-no-tomosha, 1992). Originally published: Dublin: Maunsel & Roberts, 1922.
24. Pádraic Pearse, Political writings and speeches (Collected works of Pádraic H. Pearse) (Dublin and London: Maunsel & Roberts Ltd., 1922).
25. Pádraic Pearse, Political writings and Speeches (Collected works of Pádraic H. Pearse) (Dublin: Phoenix 1916). 6th ed. (Dublin [etc.]: Phoenix, 1924).
26. 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.
27. Pádraic Pearse, Filíocht Ghaeilge Pádraig Mhic Phiarais (Áth Cliath: Clóchomhar, 1981) Leabhair thaighde ; an 35u iml.
28. Pádraic Pearse, Collected works of Pádraic H. Pearse (New York: Stokes, 1918). Contains The Singer, The King, The Master, Íosagán.
29. 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).
30. Pádraic Pearse, Songs of the Irish rebels (Collected works of Pádraic H. Pearse) (Dublin: Phoenix Pub. Co., 1917).
31. Pádraic Pearse, Songs of the Irish rebels, and Specimens from an Irish anthology (Collected works of Pádraic H. Pearse) (Dublin: Maunsel, 1918).
32. Pádraic Pearse, The story of a success (The complete works of P. H. Pearse) (Dublin: Phoenix Pub. Co., 1917) .
33. Pádraic Pearse, Scríbinní (The complete works of P. H. Pearse) (Dublin: Phoenix Pub. Co., 1917).
34. 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)
35. 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).
36. Cathal Ó hAinle (ed), Gearrscéalta an Phiarsaigh (Dublin: Helicon, 1979).
37. Ciarán Ó Coigligh (ed), Filíocht Ghaeilge: Phádraig Mhic Phiarais (Baile Átha Cliath: Clóchomhar, 1981).
38. Pádraig Mac Piarais, et al., Une île et d'autres îles: poèmes gaeliques XXeme siècle (Quimper: Calligrammes, 1984).

Select bibliography
1. Pádraic Mac Piarais: Pearse from documents (Dublin: Co-ordinating committee for Educational Services, 1979). Facsimile documents. National Library of Ireland. facsimile documents.
2. Xavier Carty, In bloody protest—the tragedy of Patrick Pearse (Dublin: Able 1978).
3. Helen Louise Clark, Pádraic Pearse: a Gaelic idealist (1933). (Thesis (M.A.)—Boston College, 1933).
4. Mary Maguire Colum, St. Enda's School, Rathfarnham, Dublin. Founded by Pádraic H. Pearse. (New York: Save St. Enda's Committee 1917).
5. Pádraic H. Pearse ([s.l.: s.n., C. F. Connolly) 1920).
6. 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.
7. Ruth Dudley Edwards, Patrick Pearse: the triumph of failure (London: Gollancz, 1977).
8. 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.
9. James Hayes, Patrick H. Pearse, storyteller (Dublin: Talbot, 1920).
10. John J. Horgan, Parnell to Pearse: some recollections and reflections (Dublin: Browne & Nolan, 1948).
11. Louis N. Le Roux, La vie de Patrice Pearse (Rennes: Imprimerie Commerciale de Bretagne, 1932). Translated into English by Desmond Ryan (Dublin: Talbot, 1932).
12. Proinsias Mac Aonghusa, Quotations from P.H. Pearse, (Dublin: Mercier, 1979).
13. Mary Benecio McCarty (Sister), Pádraic Henry Pearse: an educator in the Gaelic tradition (1939) (Thesis (M.A.)—Marquette University, 1939).
14. Hedley McCay, Pádraic Pearse; a new biography (Cork: Mercier Press, 1966).
15. 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.
16. 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).
17. P.S. O'Hegarty, A bibliography of books written by P. H. Pearse (s.l.: 1931).
18. Máiread O'Mahony, The political thought of Padraig H. Pearse: pragmatist or idealist (1994). Theses—M.A. (NUI, University College Cork).
19. 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).
20. 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.
21. Maureen Quill, Pádraic H. Pearse—his philosophy of Irish education (1996). Theses—M.A. (NUI, University College Cork).
22. Desmond Ryan, The man called Pearse (Dublin: Maunsel, 1919).
23. 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
1. 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 129–158

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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

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

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

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

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

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 poem—the 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. 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:

1. 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:

1. 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:

1. 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:

1. 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

p.143

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:

1. Cad déanfaidh mé gan mo ghiolla beag,
   Nuair bheidh tu mór is críonna?

‘What shall I do without my little lad when

p.144

1. 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):

1. '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 emotion—poems that translate

p.146

1. 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 lyric—only 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

p.147

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

p.148

1. 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

p.149

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

p.151

The aisling and the caoineadh—the vision and the elegy—are 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 as—I will not take the supreme ones, those of Deirdre and Crede—but 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

1. 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.

---

p.153

• 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

p.156

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

p.157

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