traditional

“ And none of these warriors had a servant with him save that servant of Conor only, but they had their shields on their backs, and their bright green spears in their hands, and their heavy hard-striking swords at their belts. Yet they were not to be despised on account of their numbers, the pride of their souls was great. And when they had come to such place that the castle of Gerg could be seen by them, they saw a vast and heavy cloud that brooded over the castle. ”

“ Throughout the castle the warriors stood knee deep in blood, and through the surrounding country was heard the splintering of the shields and the bucklers, and the whirr of the bright green lances, and the clash of the sharp hard swords, and the shattering of skulls in the slaughter, and the cries of the warriors who were overcome in a strife that was greater than they could endure. ”

“ And there was a pair of pants where my pants ought to be
I said to my wife, my pretty little wife, explain this thing to me,
What’s these pants here on the chair where my pants ought to be?
You old fool, you blind fool, can’t you plainly see,
It’s nothing but a dish rag my mother gave to me,
Well I’ve travelled this wide world over, ten thousand miles or more,
But cuffs and a zipper on a dish rag I never did see before. ”

“ A-sailing down all on the coasts of High Barbaree.
“Then hail her!” our captain he called all aside,
Blow high ! Blow low ! and so sailed we.
“O are you a pirate or a man o'war?” he cried,
A-sailing down all on the coasts of High Barbaree.
O are you a pirate or man o'war? cried we
Blow high! Blow low! and so sailed we.
O no! I'm not a pirate, but a man o'war, cried he,
A-sailing down all on the coasts of High Barbaree. ”

“ In another part of the palace Buri of the Cruel Speech died at the hand of Mani, who then fell into a wild frenzy, and raged among the Fomorians throughout the palace, thirty falling at his hand. But when that valiant hero Conor, the ever-victorious in war, saw the fury of Mani, he turned to meet him, and Mani awaited him, vigilant in his wrath; and they fought a long time together, and they trampled nine young men under foot. Mani hurled his spear the breadth of a spear-cast with wrath and fury, so that it made a cross passing through the body of Conor. ”

“ Great was the war that Gerg undertook,
a warrior (active) as a youth, white, red with weapons,
a man noble, magnificent, manly,
expert, handsome, truly wise.
Who is the hero that was better than Gerg? ”

“ Each pair of horses was yoked to a chariot of white bronze, whose rim was made of silver and gold; fifty caparisons of purple, with threads of silver run through them, were bound to the bodies of the chariots: they had golden buckles to fasten them, and hung over the rims, marvellous figures were embroidered thereon. Fifty graceful youths with fair countenances stood in these fifty chariots; amongst them there was none who was not the son of a king and a queen, and of a hero and warrior of Connaught. ”

“ A tomb above the dead they raise, and sad the tale will
⁠run:
Badb [1] shall destroy! force wild and dread from Maev
⁠the field shall win;
The slain lie heaped, her host hath fled; how sad the
⁠storm wind's din!
"If ye be obedient to my counsel," said the Druid, "this very night shall ye depart from the castle." And Mani was wroth, and with anger he rebuked the Druid for the words which he had spoken; and "No cause," said Gerg, "is there why ye should be in terror for him of whom he hath warned you, since no muster of heroes or of warriors from Ulster hath Conor with him at all. ”

“ This feeling about the ancient stories pervades those poems of Sir Samuel Ferguson which are founded on Irish legends; and here, though many ideas, Christian and other, are by him introduced into the legends, we seem to breathe the spirit of the old literature far better than in the more recent versions of it, where the notion of a specially Celtic craving after magic is for ever present. Former enthusiasts have thought that Celtic held a peculiar place among languages—that Welsh was the language of Eden, that Semitic languages drew their roots from Celtic sources ”

“ It's you that cause my poor heart to wander,
⁠To give me comfort it is all in vain.
I'll go down into some lonesome valley
⁠No man on earth shall e'er me find;
When the pretty birds shall change their voices,
⁠At every moment shall blow boisterous wind.
Come all you young maids that go courting,
⁠Pray give attention to what I do say,
For there's many a dark & cloudy morning,
⁠Turns out to be a sun-shiny day.
This work was published before January 1, 1928, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. ”

“ I'll be off to California, where instead of digging praties
I'll be digging lumps of gold.
I've courted girls in Blarney, in Kanturk, and in Killarney
In Passage, and in Queenstown—that is, the Cobh of Cork.
But goodbye to all this pleasure, for I'm going to take me leisure
And the next time that you hear t'will be
A letter from New York.
Goodbye to all the boys at home, I'm sailing far across the foam
To try to make me fortune in far America,
For there's silver there aplenty for the poor man and the gentry
And when I do come back again I never more will stray. ”

“ Conor turned him again upon Mani, and over-whelmed him with crushing blows, so that he fell lifeless and dead. Then he began to hew down upon all sides the men that were round him, so that they fell foot to foot and neck to neck throughout the palace. Moreover it so chanced that of the thrice fifty warriors who came with Conor into that house, none escaped alive save himself and Brod, and although these two came out, yet they came not out unhurt. And Cobhtach, the son of Gerg, fled from out of the castle, and Conor chased him. ”

“ It need hardly be said that the introduction of a supernatural element into these old stories does not necessarily imply any craving for mysticism or magic on the part of the writers; for if the ancient Irish had a mythology at all, as they undoubtedly had, divine and semi-divine beings should appear occasionally in their tales, just as the gods and goddesses appear in Homer, or as Odin appears in the Volsunga Saga. ”

“ Conor came to the door, and his foreign warriors, as their custom was, raised their cry of havock round about the castle. And Gerg arose, and with him his two sons—to wit, Conn the victorious and Cobhtach of the fair skin, and they caught hold of their weapons. And Gerg said to Mani, "Do then leave us Ulstermen to ourselves to decide this matter, that thou mayest see which of us is the more valiant. We are all bound in honour to see to thy safety, and it would be no hurt to thee should we all fall here together. ”

“ A din raised by the wind, dreadful the alarm! . . .
Certain is the warning, the man shall triumph!
⁠A spear through Gerg !
The cast of the spear of the charioteer through the loins
⁠of the king, a deed with poison. ”

“ Each of the spears had about it rings of gold purified in the fire, and rested on a socket of carbuncles, which, in like fashion to the spears, had been embellished with many coloured costly stones. They shone in the night like the beams of the sun. At their belts hung fifty long swords; the hilts of the swords were of tooth, adorned with gold and with silver; the scabbards were of white silver. In their hands were fifty whips of white bronze with clasps of gold upon them. ”

“ Literal translations, chiefly foreign, such as that of the present tale by Professor Windisch, have now been made of nearly all the leading romances, but many of these are not readily accessible to the general reader, being published in the transactions of learned societies, or in specialist periodicals; and they do not seem to have attracted sufficient attention among the literary public, if one may judge from the lack of interest in Irish literature, except in that part of it which has been treated in the more attractive poetic form of the modern works. ”

“ All of Ulster would destroy.
No long time had Donnell to wait, for he saw a great host coming towards him, in which were four hundred armed men, and their leader was Feradach of the long hand, who was the son of Conor. Each of these foes set themselves against the other. Then Donnell, finding himself overcome by the numbers against him, fell into a rage; fifty warriors fell at his single hand; and all the men of his following were slain, while he himself twice succeeded in wounding Feradach. ”

“ The change of Apollo into the shape of Agenor [4] after he had enveloped the youth in a cloud to save him from the wrath of Achilles would certainly have been held to be an instance of "Celtic magic" if it had occurred in an Irish instead of a Greek poem, for it seems that it is hard to grasp the idea that when any race of men believed that their gods did really interest themselves in human affairs, it was perfectly natural that these gods should appear in the tales of the race. ”

“ At the end of this night, the same woman who had brought the message to Conor went on her way, and came to Maev, where she lay asleep on her couch at Cruachan Ay, and thus she addressed her: "Hadst thou the gift of prophecy, O Maev," said she, "thou wouldest not be sleeping!"
"What then hath happened?" said the queen.
"Conor," said the woman, "hath all but gained the victory over Mani, and Mani shall fall at his hand. Arise, and thou shalt avenge him."
Then she made the first lines of a poem, and Maev, while she slept, replied to her:—
VI
The Bade. ”

“ There we find a mythology, the gods of that mythology appearing from time to time in the stories; but the supernatural is not, in general, the chief concern of the authors of the stories; their concern is with the deeds and griefs of men and of women. Transmigration or re-birth, that element of Celtic belief which drew the attention of the ancient world, is of frequent occurrence; in some tales this idea is the principal motive of the story, but in tales like The Courtship of Ferb the supernatural is a mere incident, the tone of the story is more Homeric than mystical. ”

“ For, whatever the Irish of a later day may have become after the history of the last thousand years, and the modifications of the race by outside influences which have been made in that time, there is little doubt that if we wish to find the true Celtic ideas, untouched by foreign additions, or by Danish or later influences of race, we must go to the old tales found in the eleventh and twelfth-century manuscripts, or to those which modern scholarship finds to be undoubtedly of equally ancient origin. ”

“ My heart is broken for you, boy!
Then came Fiannamail, the son of Fergus Forderg, to the castle, and three times fifty was the number of the warriors that were with him. And a herald who preceded him gave to Ferb the news of his coming, and to Fiannamail he brought back a sad message to tell him of the deeds which had been done. Fiannamail immediately flew into a rage, and sought eagerly for tidings of where Conor was to be found, and he and Ferb between them made this song:—
VIII
Ferb. ”

“ If you it were, O Donnell Derg,
whom the Ulstermen had slain for the sake of Ferb,
so would the revenge taken for you be glorious
in the tale of Mani, the doer of great deeds.
Donnell.
Since he himself it is who is dead,
Mani Morgor with the greatness of a warrior,
I will not go westwards to my home
while any of the Ulstermen live!
Ferb.
It would be peace for my good heart,
it would be a comfort for my soul,
if all the Ulstermen were destroyed for the deed
⁠they have done,
by your violent hand, O Donnell!
XI
Sorrowful is it, O son of Maev! ”

“ In the construction of this story, as well as in the manner of its telling, a straightforward and simple character is shown, which is common to most of the older Irish romances, and must strike the reader at once. Although a supernatural being, the goddess of war, appears in the course of the tale, nothing can be found of the mystical "Celtic spirit," to which such prominence is given in some modern poems, whose incidents are taken from the old romances. ”