🧚 Early Bardic Literature, Ireland., part 4

Educated Irishmen are ignorant of, and indifferent to, their history; yet from the hold of that history they cannot shake themselves free.1 It still haunts the imagination, like Mordecai at Haman's gate, a cause of continual annoyance and vexation.2 An Irishman can no more release himself from his history than he can absolve himself from social and domestic duties.3 He may outrage it, but he cannot placidly ignore.4 Hence the uneasy, impatient feeling with which the subject is generally regarded.5

I think that I do not exaggerate when I say that the majority of educated Irishmen would feel grateful to the man who informed them that the history of their country was valueless and unworthy of study, that the pre-Christian history was a myth, the post-Christian mere annals, the mediaeval a scuffling of kites and crows, and the modern alone deserving of some slight consideration.6 That writer will be in Ireland most praised who sets latest the commencement of our history.7 Without study he will be pronounced sober and rational before the critic opens the book.8 So anxious is the Irish mind to see that effaced which it is conscious of having neglected.9

There are two compositions which affect an interest comparable to that which Ireland claims for her bardic literature, One is the Ossian of MacPherson, the other the Nibelungen Lied.10

If we are to suppose Macpherson faithfully to have written down, printed, and published the floating disconnected poems which he found lingering in the Scotch highlands, how small, comparatively, would be their value as indications of antique thought and feeling, reduced then for the first time to writing, sixteen hundred years after the time of Ossian and his heroes, in a country not the home of those heroes, and destitute of the regular bardic organisation.11 The Ossianic tales and poems still told and sung by the Irish peasantry at the present day in the country of Ossian and Oscar, would be, if collected even now, quite as valuable, if not more so.12 Truer to the antique these latter are, for in them the cycles are not blended.13 The Red Branch heroes are not confused with Ossian's Fianna.14

But MacPherson's Ossian is not a translation.15 In the publications of the Irish Ossianic poetry we see what that poetry really was--rude, homely, plain-spoken, leagues removed from the nebulous sublimity of MacPherson.16

With regard to the other, the Germans, who naturally desire to refer its composition to as remote a date as possible, and who arguing from no scientific data, but only style, ascribe the authorship of the Nibelungen to a poet living in the latter part of the twelfth century.17 Be it remembered, that the poem does not purport to be a collection of the scattered fragments of a cycle, but an original composition, then actually imagined and written.18 It does not even purport to deal with the ethnic times.19 _Its heroes are Christian heroes.20 They attend Mass.21 _ The poem is not true, even to the leading features of the late period of history in which it is placed, if it have any habitat in the world of history at all.22 Attila, who died A.D.23 450, and Theodoric, who did not die until the succeeding century, meet as coevals.24

Turn we now from the sole boast of Germany to one out of a hundred in the Irish bardic literature.25 The Tan-bo-Cooalney was transcribed into the Leabhar na Huidhre in the eleventh century a manuscript whose date has been established by the consentaneity of Irish, French, and German scholarship.26 Mark, it was transcribed, not composed.27 The scribe records the fact:--28

"Ego qui scripsi hanc historian aut vero fabulam, quibusdam fidem in hac historia aut fabula non commodo."29

The Tan-bo-Cooalney was therefore _transcribed_ by an ancient penman to the parchment of a still existing manuscript, in the century before that in which the German epic is presumed, from style only, and in the opinion of Germans, to have been _composed_.30

The same scribe adds this comment with regard to its contents:--31

"Qaedam autem poetica figmenta, quaedam ad delectationem stultorum."32

Such scorn could not have been felt by one living in an age of bardic production.33 That independence and originality of thought, which caused Milton to despise the poets of the Restoration, are impossible in the simple stages of civilisation.34 The scribe who appended this very interesting comment to the subject of his own handiwork must have been removed by centuries from the date of its compilation.35 That the tale was, in his time, an ancient one, is therefore rendered extremely probable, the scribe himself indicating how completely out of sympathy he is with this form of literature, its antiquity and peculiar archaeological interest being, doubtless, the cause of the transcription.36

Again, a close study of its contents, as of the contents of all the Irish historic tales, proves that in its present form, whenever that form was superadded, it is but a representation in prose of a pre-existing metrical original.37 Under this head I have already made some remarks, which, I shall request the reader to re-peruse [Note: Pages 23 to 27]38

Once more, it deals with a particular event in Irish history, and with distinct and definite kings, heroes, and bards, who flourished in the epoch of which it treats.39 In the synchronisms of Tiherna, in the metrical chronology of Flann, in all the various historical compositions produced in various parts of the country, the main features and leading characters of the Tan-bo-Cooalney suffer no material change, while the minor divergencies show that the chronology of the annals and annalistic poems were not drawn from the tale, but owe their origin to other sources.40 Moreover, this epic is but a portion of the great Ultonian or Red Branch cycle, all the parts of which pre-suppose and support one another; and that cycle is itself a portion of the history of Ireland, and pre-supposes other preceding and succeeding cyles, preceding and succeeding kings.41 The event of which this epic treats occurred at the time of the Incarnation, and its characters are the leading Irish kings and warriors of that date.42 Such is the Tan-bo-Cooalney.43

This being so, how have the English literary classes recognised, or how treated, our claim to the possession of an antique literature of peculiar historical interest, and by reason of that antiquity, a matter of concern to all Aryan nations?44 The conquest has not more constituted the English Parliament guardian and trustee of Ireland, for purposes of legislation and government, than it has vested the welfare and fame of our literature and antiquities in the hands of English scholarship.45 London is the headquarters of the intellectualism and of the literary and historical culture of the Empire.46 It is the sole dispenser of fame.47 It alone influences the mind of the country and guides thought and sentiment.48 It can make and mar reputations.49 What it scorns or ignores, the world, too, ignores and scorns.50 How then has the native literature of Ireland been treated by the representatives of English scholarship and literary culture?51 Mr. Carlyle is the first man of letters of the day, his the highest name as a critic upon, and historian of, the past life of Europe.52 Let us hear him upon this subject, admittedly of European importance.53

Miscellaneous Essays, Vol. III., page 136. "54 Not only as the oldest Tradition of Modern Europe does it--the Nibelungen--possess a high antiquarian interest, but farther, and even in the shape we now see it under, unless the epics of the son of Fingal had some sort of authenticity, it is our oldest poem also."55