“ In the marshland by the river sulks the otter in his den;
While the piping of the peeweet sounds across the distant fen.
On the stormy mere the wild-duck pushes outward from the brake,
With her downy brood beside her seeks the centre of the lake.
In the east the restless roe-deer bellows to his frightened hind;
On thy track the wolf-hounds gather, sniffing up against the wind.
Yet, O Dermuid, sleep a little, this one night our fear hath fled,
Youth to whom my love is given, see, I watch beside thy bed. ”

“ Then another woman said:
"'Tis my own son that from me you wring,
I deceived not the King.
[Pg 154] But slay me, even me,
And let my boy be.
A mother most hapless,
My bosom is sapless,
Mine 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." ”

“ An awful, a tremendous night is this, meseems!
The flood-gates of the rivers of heaven, I think, have been burst wide;
Down from the overcharged clouds, like to headlong ocean's tide,
Descends grey rain in roaring streams.
[Pg 173] Tho' he were even a wolf ranging the round green woods,
Tho' he were even a pleasant salmon in the unchainable sea,
Tho' he were a wild mountain eagle, he could scarce bear, he,
This sharp sore sleet, these howling floods.
O mournful is my soul this night for Hugh Maguire!
Darkly as in a dream he strays. ”

“ And cold, and dumb, and motionless, my heart grew at the sight!
My children, my loved children! do you view my bitter grief?
Look down upon your poor old sire, whose woe knows no relief!
The sunshine of mine eyes is gone, the comfort of my heart;
My life of life, my soul of soul, I've seen from earth depart!
What am I now? an aged man, to earth by sorrow bowed,
I weep within a stranger's home; lone, even in a crowd;
There is no sorrow like to mine, no grief like mine appears,
My once blithe Christmas is weighed down with anguish and with tears. ”

“ It seems to me long till the tide washes up on the strand;
It seems to me long till the night shall fade into day;
It seems to me long till the cocks crow on every hand;
And rather than the world were I close beside my love.
Do not marry the grey old man, but marry the young man, dear;
Marry the lad who loves you, my grief, though he live not out the year;
[Pg 327] Youthful you are, and kind, but your mind is not yet come to sense,
And if you live longer, the lads will be following you.
My woe and my plight! where to-night is the snowdrift and frost? ”

“ The reader who does not know Ireland or know Gaelic, is ready to accept softness, the almost endless iteration of expressions conveying the sense of woman's beauty and of man's affection, in phrases that differ but little from each other; what he is not prepared for is the sudden break into matter-of-fact, the curt tone that cuts across much Irish poetry, revealing an unexpected side of life and character. Even the modern Irishman is tripped up by the swift intrusion of the grotesque ”

“ He is the foolish man, indeed, who would spring at the ditch that is steep,
If close at his hand lay the fence of furze he could take at a single leap;
Though the rowan-berry swings high, it is bitterest out of the top,
While thick from the lowliest shrubs the ripe rasps and the blackberries drop.
O Virgin beloved! I am lost if his face should be now turned away;
What knowledge have I how to reach his house and his kinsfolk this day?
My mother bent double with age, and my father long laid in the tomb,
And mad anger on my people towards me, and my love fled home. ”

“ The minds that produced the touching melodies that wail and croon and sing to us out of Ireland, have not the less expressed themselves in melodious poetry. Here, if anywhere, we may look to find a style unspoiled by imitation, and a sentiment moving because it is perfectly sincere. It is thus that such poems as "Donall Oge" or the "Roísin Dubh" or "My Grief on the Sea" come into existence.
Where the outward distractions of life are few, the grave monotony of sea and moor and bog-land, the swirl of cloud and mist, and the loneliness of waste places sink more deeply into the mind. ”

“ When he and Cathal of the Red Hand, King of Connaught, entered the monastic life together.
Murdoch, whet thy knife, that we may shave our crowns to the Great King,
Let us sweetly give our vow, and the hair of both our heads to the Trinity.
I will shave mine to Mary, this is the doing of a true heart,
To Mary shave thou these locks, well-formed, soft-eyed man.
Seldom hast thou had, handsome man, a knife on thy hair to shave it,
Oftener has a sweet, soft queen, comb'd her hair beside thee. ”

“ Two difficulties face the modern reader in coming for the first time upon genuine Irish literature, whether poetry or prose. The first is the curious feeling that we are hung between two worlds, the seen and the unseen; that we are not quite among actualities, or rather that we do not know where the actual begins or where it ends. Even in dealing with history we may find ourselves suddenly wafted away into some illusory spirit-world with which the historian seems to deal with the same sober exactness as in detailing any fact of ordinary life. ”

“ King above the ocean depths,
King in the South and North, in the West and East,
with whom no contention can be made.
King of the Mysteries, who wast and art,
before the elements, before the ages,
King yet eternal, comely His aspect,
King without beginning, without end.
[Pg 4] King who created lustrous heaven,
who is not arrogant, not overweening,
and the earth, with its multitudinous delights,
strong, powerful, stable.
King who didst make the noble brightness,
and the darkness, with its gloom;
the one, the perfect day,
the other, the very perfect night. ”

“ Whether it came to us from the sixth century or from the sixteenth, the song of Crede for the dead man, whom she had grown to love only when he was dying, would equally move us; the passionate cry of Liadan after Curithir would wring our hearts whatever century produced it. The voice of love is alike in every age. ”

“ March o'er your plains and trample down your land?
[Pg 170] Let Brian, son of Brian, out of Brefney,
Beware the sweetness of their honeyed tongue,
Their greed and need, their indigence and riches,
Two-handed spoil from Ireland's sons have wrung.
Let Brian, son of Brian, son of Eoghan,
Ponder if one man ever came away,—
Who put his trust in England's perjured honour,—
Unscathed by guile, unharmed by treachery?
As waters rising 'neath the snows of winter,
As hamlets flaming from one secret spark,
So shall the chiefs of Erinn rally round him,
When Brian's star arises on the dark. ”

“ When King Guaire of Connaught stands at the door of the hermitage in which his brother Marvan had taken refuge from the bustle of court life, and asks him why he had sacrificed so much, Marvan bursts forth into a poem in praise of his hermit life, and the King is fain to confess that the choice of the recluse was the wiser one; when St. Cellach of Killala is dragged into the forest by his comrades and threatened with death, not even the sight of the four murderers lying at his feet with swords ready drawn in their hands to slay him can prevent him from greeting the Dawn in a beautiful song. ”

“ Through the wild harp of the wood
Making music roars the gale—
Now it settles without motion,
On the ocean sleeps the sail.
Men grow mighty in the May,
Proud and gay the maidens grow;
Fair is every wooded height;
Fair and bright the plain below.
A bright shaft has smit the streams,
With gold gleams the water-flag;
Leaps the fish, and on the hills
Ardour thrills the leaping stag.
Loudly carols the lark on high,
Small and shy, his tireless lay,
Singing in wildest, merriest mood,
Delicate-hued, delightful May.
T. W. Rolleston.
[Pg 85]
THE ISLE OF ARRAN
Arran of many stags! ”

“ There is, in most literatures, a meeting-place where the Mythological and the Historic stand in close conjunction, the one dying out as the other takes its place. Only in Ireland we never seem to reach this point; we can never anywhere say, "Here ends legend, here begins history." In all Irish writing we find poetry and fact, dreams and realities, exact detail and wild imagination, linked closely hand in hand. This is the Gael as revealed in his literature. ”

“ The early poetry, we feel, is on the whole joyous; whether pagan or Christian in tone, it arises from a happy heart. The pagan is more robust, more vigorous; the Christian gentler and more reflective; but alike they are free from the mournful note of despair that throws a settled gloom over much of the later literature.
The Ossianic poems have quite a distinctive tone; in them we catch the abounding energy belonging to the days of the hunt of the wild native boar or stag, when all the country was one open hunting-ground, fit for men whose ideal was that of the sportsman and the warrior. ”

“ While I, who shake with ague and with age,
In Litanies engage.
Amen! and woe is me!
I lie here rotting like a broken tree;
Each acorn has its day and needs must fall,
Time makes an end of all!
I had my day with kings!
We drank the brimming mead, the ruddy wine,
Where now I drink whey-water; for company more fine
Than shrivelled hags, hag though I am, I pine.
The flood-tide thine!
Mine but the low down-curling ebb-tide's flow,
My youth, my hope, are carried from my hand,
Thy flood-tide foams to land.
My body drops
Slowly but sure towards the abode we know ”

“ The poet is never wholly poet, he is also practical man; and the historian is never wholly chronicler and annalist, he is also at the back of his mind folklorist, lover of nature, dreamer. It is the puzzle and the charm of Ireland.
A good example of this is the very beautiful anonymous Irish poem, rich in poetic imagery, addressed to Ragnall or Reginald, son of Somerled, lord of the Isles from 1164-1204. ”

“ But let them come my way, you little red rogue,
'Tis I will betray you to huntsman and dog.
Och, Modereen Rue!
The little red rogue, he's the colour of bracken,
O'er mountains, o'er valleys, his pace will not slacken,
Tantara! Tantara! he is off now, and, faith!
'Tis a race 'twixt the little red rogue and his death.
Och, Modereen Rue!
[Pg 315] Och, Modereen Rue, I've no cause to be grieving
For the little red rogues with their tricks and their thieving.
The hounds they give tongue, and the quarry's in sight,
The hens on the roost may sleep easy to-night. ”

“ Fast-flowing tears above the grave of the rich man are shed,
But they are dried when the cold stone shuts in his narrow bed;
Not so with my heart's faithful love—the dark grave cannot hide
From Morian's eyes thy form of grace, of loveliness, and pride.
Thou didst not fall like the sere leaf, when autumn's chill winds blow—
'Twas a tempest and a storm-blast that has laid my Mary low.
Hadst thou not friends that loved thee well? hadst thou not garments rare?
Wast thou not happy, Mary? wast thou not young and fair? ”

“ Scallcrow, thou paltry fowl, sharp-beaked, grey-coated and cruel,
Full well do I guess thy desire, no friendship hast thou unto Cellach.
[Pg 114] Raven, O Raven, that croakest, from the top of the rath thou art watching,
Wait but awhile, bird of death, and most surely my flesh will suffice thee.
Fiercely the kite of Cluain Eo will take his part in the scramble,
His talons filled with my flesh, flying off to his haunt in the yew-tree.
Swift through the darkling woodland the foxes will scent out my slaughter,
They on the confines trackless my flesh and my blood will devour. ”

“ The visible is less felt than the invisible, and life is surrounded by a network of fears and dreams to which the town-dweller is a stranger. To-day, in the Western Isles of Ireland and Scotland, the huntsman going out to hunt, the fisherman to fish or lay his nets, the agriculturist to sow or reap his harvest, and the weaver or spinner to wind his yarn, go forth to their work with some familiar charm-prayer or charm-hymn, often beautifully called "the Blessings," on their lips. ”

“ And iron thrall.
[Pg 180] Then, daughter of O'Donnell, dry
Thine overflowing eyes, and turn
Thy heart aside,
For Adam's race is born to die,
And sternly the sepulchral urn
Mocks human pride.
Look not, nor sigh, for earthly throne,
Nor place thy trust in arm of clay,
But on thy knees
Uplift thy soul to God alone,
For all things go their destined way
As He decrees.
Embrace the faithful crucifix,
And seek the path of pain and prayer
Thy Saviour trod;
Nor let thy spirit intermix
With earthly hope, with worldly care,
Its groans to God! [108]
And Thou, O mighty Lord! ”