T. W. Rolleston

“ If aptness for use, it may be asked, is an element in the beauty of an object of use, how are we to account for the strong appeal which the ruin of a noble building certainly makes to the sense of beauty? For my own part I am inclined to think that the taste for ruins is often a sign of a want of taste for art. A beautiful thing is better whole and sound than in decay. Yet the spectacle of the silent struggle of strength and grace with destructive forces has in it a sense of action, of drama, to which beauty cannot be denied. ”

“ Lands where never a ship anchored or trafficker fared,
Comest thou, breathing like flame till the brown earth flames into blossom,
Quick’ning the sap of old woods swayed in thy stormy embrace,
Rousing in depths of the heart wild waves of an infinite longing,
Longing for freedom and life, yearning for Springs that are dead!
Surely the far blue sea, foam-fleck’d with the speed of thy coming
Brighten’d in laughter abroad, sang at the feet of the isles,
Sang in a tumult of joy as my soul sings trembling with passion,
Trembling with passion and hope, wild with the spirit of Spring. ”

“ In the tale of the Sons of Turenn, the stones of the wayside tell to Lugh the story of the death of his father Kian, and the boat of Mananan, indwelt by a spirit, flies hither and thither over the seas, obeying the commands, even the thought, of its steersman. The soul of some famed spears is so hot for slaughter that, when it is not being used in battle, its point must stand in a bath of blood or of drowsy herbs, lest it should slay the host. The swords murmur and hiss and cry out for the battle; the shield of the hero hums louder and louder, vibrating for the encouragement of the warrior. ”

“ The colours live and glow, the forest murmurs in our ears, the breath of that springtime of our modern world is about us, as we follow the lonely rider down the grassy track into an unknown world of peril and delight. While in some respects the Continental tales are greater than the Welsh, more thoughtful, more profound, they do not approach them in the exquisite artistry with which the exterior aspect of things is rendered, the atmosphere of enchantment maintained, and the reader led, with ever-quickening interest, from point to point in the development of the tale. ”

“ As you ride to the kiss of the morning breeze,
And the rose of the morning sky,
And the long brown road, where the tired spirit’s load
Slips off as the leagues go by!
[29]
Miles a hundred you may run from the rising of the sun
To the gleam of the first white star;
You may ride through twenty towns, meet the sun upon the downs
And the wind on the mountain scaur.
Then it’s out to the kiss of the morning breeze
And the rose of the morning sky,
And the long brown road, where the tired spirit’s load
Slips off as the leagues go by! ”

“ No philosopher has here recorded for us the death of a philosopher. Myth and legend have clustered round the great event—the Jewish conception of an expiatory sacrifice—the truer and profounder myth of a slain and re-arisen God—and these have wrapped the Crucifixion in such a cloud of mystical light and colour that the outlines of the historical fact are lost to view. ”

“ At the time at which this monarch lived and reigned, the mist of sixteen centuries hangs between us and the history of Ireland, but through this mist there shine a few great and sunlike figures whose glory cannot be altogether hidden, and of these figures Cormac is the greatest and the brightest. Much that is told about him may be true, and much is certainly fable, but the fables themselves are a witness to his greatness; they are like forms seen in the mist when a great light is shining behind it, and we cannot always say when we are looking at the true light and when at the reflected glory. ”

“ In the fragrant depths of the woodland, and died with the dying day.
No spirits in truth! yet it seem’d, as awhile in dreams I stood,
That a music more than earthly had passed through the dark’ning wood.
And it seemed that the Day to the Morrow bequeathed in that solemn strain
The whole world’s hope and labour, its love, and its ancient pain. ”

“ What art thou? A man. Look at thyself as a solitary creature, and it is according to Nature for thee to live to old age, to grow rich, and to keep good health. But if thou look upon thyself as a man, and as a part of a certain whole, for the sake of that whole it may become thee now to have sickness, now to sail the seas, and run into peril, now to suffer need, and perchance to die before thy time. ”

“ And when he had once made the circuit of the rampart, and the light had now almost quite faded from the summer sky, and the wide low plains around the Hill of Tara were a sea of white mist, he heard far off in the deepening gloom the first notes of the fairy harp. Never such music was made by mortal hand, for it had in it sorrows that man has never felt, and joys for which man has no name, and it seemed as if a man listening to that music might burst from time into eternity and be as one of the Immortals for evermore. ”

“ THE IRISH INVASION MYTHS The Celtic Cosmogony
Among those secret doctrines about the “nature of things” which, as Cæsar tells us, the Druids never would commit to writing, was there anything in the nature of a cosmogony, any account of the origin of the world and of man? There surely was. It would be strange indeed if, alone among the races of the world, the Celts had no world-myth. The spectacle of the universe with all its vast and mysterious phenomena in heaven and on earth has aroused, first the imagination, afterwards the speculative reason, in every people which is capable of either. ”

“ Of all the arts there is none which seems to evade analysis so much as Music; none whose power is at once so mighty and so mysterious. Saying nothing it seems to mean everything. We can think of nothing in the world so lofty, so sweet, so profound as to be the fit embodiment of what Music conveys to us. Closely analogous in its outward form to what in line and colour is called Pattern, we are yet evidently far short of expressing the whole character of Music when we say, what in itself is quite true, that it is beautiful pattern in sound. ”

“ Finn is not a bit surprised when Vivionn the giantess sits beside him on the hill, or Fergus when King Iubdan stands on his hand; or St Patrick when Ethne, out of fairyland, dies on his breast, or when he sees, at his spell, Cuchulain, dead some nine hundred years, come forth out of the dark gates of Sheol, high in his chariot, grasping his deadly spear, driven as of old by his well-loved charioteer, drawn by the immortal steeds through the mist, and finally talking of his deeds and claiming a place in the Christian heaven—a place that Patrick yields to him. ”

“ One day as he was following the chase on Ben Bulban, in Sligo, he heard the musical bay of the dogs change of a sudden to a fierce growling and yelping, as though they were in combat with some beast, and running hastily up he and his men beheld, under a great tree, a naked boy with long hair, and around him the hounds struggling to seize him, but Bran and Skolawn fighting with them and keeping them off. And the lad was tall and shapely, and as the heroes gathered round he gazed undauntedly on them, never heeding the rout of dogs at his feet. ”

“ Taking some aspect of life which he wishes to convey by means of line, colour, or tone, he suppresses, alters, composes, emphasizes, till he has expressed his feeling in its purity, with everything immaterial left out and with the things essential to his conception lifted clearly into view. His work is therefore greater and more vital than nature, that is to say than any fragment of nature, for he is looking at the part he renders sub specie aeternitatis, in the light of the Whole. And living in the conception of a great work of art, we live in the Whole; the individual has sunk from view. ”

“ But Oisín said, "The world of men compared with thy world is like this dreary waste compared with the city of thy father; yet in that city, Niam, none is better or worse than another, and I hunger to tell my tale to ignorant and feeble folk that my words can move, as words of mine have done of old, to wonder and delight. Then I shall return to thee, Niam, and to thy fair and blissful land; and having brought over to mortal men a tale that never man has told before, I shall be happy and at peace for ever in the Land of Youth." ”

“ The second time mac Roth looked he saw a mist that filled the valleys, the hill-tops standing above it like islands. Out of the mist there came thunder and flashes of light, and a wind that nearly threw him off his feet. “What is this?” asks Maev, and Fergus tells her that the mist is the deep breathing of the warriors as they march, and the light is the flashing of their eyes, and the thunder is the clangour of their war-cars and the clash of their weapons as they go to the fight: “They think they will never reach it,” says Fergus. “We have warriors to meet them,” says Maev. ”

“ We are by no means entitled to sit still and expect that the current of evolution will bear mankind along irresistibly to its goal. With the development of the conscious will we are made responsible for the advance of life in the only sphere which we know and which our actions can affect. Man is, as it were, the growing-point of that progressive life. If his strange passion for the perfection which he has never seen should be smothered in the struggle for mere existence, or corrupted by brutal luxury, then growth will be at an end, atrophy or degeneration will set in. ”

“ The gods have lost their dreadful, even their savage character, and have become the Fairies, full often of gentleness, grace, and humour. The mysterious dwelling places of the gods in the sea, in unknown lands, in the wandering air, are now in palaces under the green hills of Ireland, or by the banks of swift clear rivers, like the palace of Angus near the Boyne, or across the seas in Tir-na-n-Óg, the land of immortal youth, whither Niam brings Oisín to live with her in love, as Morgan le Fay brought Ogier the Dane to her fairyland. ”

“ Now, for my own part, I must confess that if mind with all its nobler manifestations such as Will, Love, Duty, and so forth, be a mere rainbow hovering above the cataract of material force, it does not seem to me worth while to discuss anything, for we, mere particles that glimmer for a moment, can never affect anything, and must soon be where nothing can any longer affect us. ”

“ Then the fight raged hither and thither about the wide courtyard, with trampling of feet and clash of steel and ringing of armour and shouts of onset as the heroes closed; Oisín, agile as a wild stag, evading the sweep of the mighty axe and rushing in with flickering blade at every unguarded moment, his whole soul bent on one fierce thought, to drive his point into some gap at shoulder or neck in Fovor's coat of mail. At length, when both were weary and wounded men, with hacked and battered armour, Oisín's blade cut the thong of Fovor's headpiece and it fell clattering to the ground. ”

“ When we fix our minds on life as the goal and depth and fulness of life as the criterion, we come out at once into the clear light where high inspirations are born and justified. But it is not only the conception of life as existing for pleasure that I [Pg 206] think a true ethics will repudiate. We must clear our minds of the idea that life has any goal outside itself—pleasure, moral discipline, or what not. We must fully realize the conception of life as its own goal, its own complete satisfaction and justification. ”

“ This is very pleasant to the imagination, and especially so if the myths, as in Ireland, have some poetic beauty or strangeness, as in the myth I have referred to—of the deep spring of clear water and the nine hazels of wisdom that encompass it. This mingling of the beauty of youth and the honour of ancientry runs through all the Irish tales. Youth and the love of it, of its beauty and strength, adorn and vitalize their grey antiquity. ”

“ But all nature does not equally express life, and much of it, as we have seen, does not express it at all to our perceptions. Beauty arises, then, when we find a certain heightening, a saliency, an intensity in the expression or vitality, whether by external nature or, in art, by man. Thus Life, not Beauty, is the mark of art, but beauty is the signal that the mark has been hit. ”

“ Long ago there dwelt in Ireland the race called by the name of De Danaan, or People of the Goddess Dana. They were a folk who delighted in beauty and gaiety, and in fighting and feasting, and loved to go gloriously apparelled, and to have their weapons and household vessels adorned with jewels and gold. They were also skilled in magic arts, and their harpers could make music so enchanting that a man who heard it would fight, or love, or sleep, or forget all earthly things, as they who touched the strings might will him to do. ”

“ Nothing exists by itself—nor even, permanently, as itself. The living universe of our experience is not a Being but an Acting and a Becoming. It is precisely this fact which, on the one hand, imposes a mysterious limit on the intellect, and, on the other, opens a boundless horizon before the will.
The human brain, the most highly organized form of protoplasm known to us, may be called in one sense a machine through which the personal will, the moral emotions, the æsthetic sense, the faculties of reasoning, have to assert themselves in action. ”

“ Thou shalt be lord of all the Land of Youth,
And lord of Niam of the Head of Gold."
As the magic song ended, the Fians beheld Oisín mount the fairy steed and hold the maiden in his arms, and ere they could stir or speak she turned her horse's head and shook the ringing bridle and down the forest glade they fled, as a beam of light flies over the land when clouds drive across the sun; and never did the Fianna behold Oisín, son of Finn, on earth again. ”

“ Again, Finn lives to be an old man, but the immortal was in him, and either he has been born again in several re-incarnations (for the Irish held from time to time the doctrine of the transmigration of souls) , or he sleeps, like Barbarossa, in a secret cavern, with all his men around him, and beside him the mighty horn of the Fianna, which, when the day of fate and freedom comes, will awaken with three loud blasts the heroes and send them forth to victory. Old as she is, Ireland does not grow old, for she has never reached her maturity. Her full existence is before her, not behind her. ”

“ When the Milesian race invaded Ireland, and after long fighting subdued the Danaans in spite of all their enchantments and all their valour, the Danaans wrought for themselves certain charms by which they and all their possessions became invisible to mortals, and thus they continued to lead their old joyous life in the holy places of the land, and their palaces and dancing-places and folk-motes seem to the human eye to be merely a green mound or rath, or a lonely hillside, or a ruined shrine with nettles and foxgloves growing up among its broken masonry. ”

“ It is true Cuchulain's horses weep tears of blood when he goes forth to his last battle, foreknowing his death; but they are immortal steeds and have divine knowledge of fate. The dogs of Finn are only dogs, and the relation between him and them is a natural relation, quite unlike the relation between Cuchulain and the horses which draw his chariot. Yet Finn's dogs are not quite as other dogs. They have something of a human soul in them. They know that in the milk-white fawn they pursue there is an enchanted maiden, and they defend her from the other hounds till Finn arrives. ”

“ We should not see or feel the landscape of Ireland or its skies, the streams, the woods, the animals and birds, the mountain solitudes, as we feel and see them in the original tales. We should not hear, as we hear in their first form, the stormy seas between Scotland and Antrim, or the great waves which roar on the western isles, and beat on cliffs which still belong to another world than ours. ”

“ In an instant the white steed had vanished from their eyes like a wreath of mist, and that which rose, feeble and staggering, from the ground was no youthful warrior but a man stricken with extreme old age, white-bearded and withered, who stretched out groping hands and moaned with feeble and bitter cries. And his crimson cloak and yellow silken tunic were now but coarse homespun stuff tied with a hempen girdle, and the gold-hilted sword was a rough oaken staff such as a beggar carries who wanders the roads from farmer's house to house. ”

“ In the Heroic Cycle it appears in the longing cry for return to Ireland of Naisi and his brothers, which drives them out of Alba to their death; but otherwise it is rarely expressed. In the Fenian Cycle it exists, not in any clear words, but in a general delight in the rivers, lakes, woods, valleys, plains, and mountains of Ireland. Every description of them, and of life among them, is done with a loving, observant touch; and moreover, the veil of magic charm is thrown over all the land by the creation in it of the life and indwelling of the fairy host. The Fianna loved their country well. ”

“ And Ethne their sister accompanied them, wailing and lamenting, but no words of cheer had they now to say to her, for now they began to comprehend that a mightier and a craftier mind had caught them in the net of fate. And whereas they had deemed themselves heroes and victors in the most glorious quest whereof the earth had record, they now knew that they were but as arrows in the hands of a laughing archer, who shoots one at a stag and one at the heart of a foe, and one, it may be, in sheer wantonness, and to try his bow, over a cliff edge into the sea. ”

“ Finn stared over the sea, to discover, if he might, by what means he had come thither, but nothing could he see there save the sunlit water, and nothing hear but what seemed a low laughter from the twinkling ripples that broke at his feet. Then he looked for his men, who stood there, dazed like himself and rubbing their eyes; and there too stood the Princess Tasha, who stretched out her white arms to him. Finn went over and took her hands. "Shoulder your spears, good lads!" he called to his men. "Follow me now to the Hill of Allen, and to the wedding feast of Tasha and of Finn mac Cumhal." ”

“ But a slave of his, pitying me, once revealed to me that if I could win to thy great Dún of Allen, O Finn, I should be safe from all enchantments and my natural shape would come to me again. But I feared to be torn in pieces by thy dogs, or wounded by thy hunters, till at last I let myself be overtaken by thee alone and by Bran and Sceolaun, who have the nature of man and would do me no hurt." "Have no fear, maiden," said Finn, "we the Fianna, are free and our guest-friends are free; there is none who shall put compulsion on you here." ”

“ We feel, as we read, how deep his sympathy has been with their intensity, their love of wild nature, their desire for beauty, their interest in humanity and in character, their savagery and their tenderness, their fairy magic and strange imaginations that suddenly surprise and charm. Whenever anything lovely emerges in the tale, he does not draw attention to it, but touches it with so artistic a pencil that its loveliness is enhanced. And he has put into English verse the Irish poems scattered through the tales with the skill and the temper of a poet. ”

“ Then Oisín grew wearied of hunting, and as he plunged his sharp black hunting-knife into the throat of the last stag, he thought of the sword of magic temper that hung idle by his side in the City of Youth, or rested from its golden nail in his bed-chamber, and he said to Niam, "Has thy father never a foe to tame, never a wrong to avenge? Surely the peasant is no man whose hand forgets the plough, nor the warrior whose hand forgets the sword hilt." ”

“ Fairer than aught thine eyes have ever seen.
There all the year the fruit is on the tree,
And all the year the bloom is on the flower.
"There with wild honey drip the forest trees;
The stores of wine and mead shall never fail.
Nor pain nor sickness knows the dweller there,
Death and decay come near him never more.
"The feast shall cloy not, nor the chase shall tire,
Nor music cease for ever through the hall;
The gold and jewels of the Land of Youth
Outshine all splendours ever dreamed by man.
"Thou shalt have horses of the fairy breed,
Thou shalt have hounds that can outrun the wind ”

“ And all the art-makers of mankind, and of all arts, have drunk of their waters. Five salmon in the spring ate of the hazel nuts, and some haunted the rivers of Ireland; and whosoever, like Finn, tasted the flesh of these immortal fish, was possessed of the wisdom which is inspiration and poetry. Such was the ancient Irish conception of the art of poetry. ”

“ He threw his arms abroad and shouted the names of Finn and Oscar, but none replied, and he thought that perchance the hounds might hear him, and he cried upon Bran and Sceolaun, and strained his ears if they might catch the faintest rustle or whisper of the world from the sight of which his eyes were holden, but he heard only the sigh of the wind in the whins. Then he rode in terror from that place, setting his face towards the eastern sea, for he meant to traverse Ireland from side to side and end to end in the search of some escape from his enchantment. ”