Gaelic poetry

“ Towards the close of the eighteenth century, when translations of Gaelic poetry brought the genius of the Celtic spirit in contact with the intellectual forces of modern Europe, many who hitherto despised our Gaelic literature, began to look into this neglected field. ”

“ It may be doubted whether, for practical purposes, the Gaelic will ever come again into general use. But the concerted endeavour by a whole nation to win back its ancient, wellnigh forgotten speech is a most interesting social phenomenon. At all events, both by direct translations of the Gaelic hero epics and by original work in which the Gaelic spirit is transfused through English ballad and other verse forms, a lost kingdom of romance has been recovered and a bright green thread of Celtic poetry runs through the British anthology of the century. ”

“ 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 ”

“ After a little more discourse about Ossian the old gentleman asked me if there was any good modern Gaelic poetry. “None very modern,” said I: “the last great poets of the Gael were Macintyre and Buchanan, who flourished about the middle of the last century. The first sang of love and of Highland scenery; the latter was a religious poet. The best piece of Macintyre is an ode to Ben Dourain, or the Hill of the Water-dogs—a mountain in the Highlands. ”

“ Altogether, he concludes, the compositions of the Gaelic bard afford an authentic and unique glimpse into the otherwise unknown history of the Highlands during the decline of the Roman empire in the north.
Enough has been said in the foregoing pages to indicate the various arguments which have been brought to bear upon these translations of Gaelic poetry. It remains with the modern reader, free from the literary jealousies of a hundred years ago, to decide for himself the weight to be attached to each. ”

“ Few of the psychologists who have written about imagination were endowed with it themselves: and here is a poet, the most imaginative of his generation, who has written about his youth and has told us only about external circumstances and nothing about himself, nothing about that flowering of strange beauty in poetry in him where the Gaelic imagination that had sunk underground when the Gaelic speech had died, rose up again transfiguring an alien language until that new poetry became like the record of another mystic voyager to the Heaven-world of our ancestors. ”

“ As previously stated, the use of Gaelic as the only known vernacular, keeps large numbers of poor people ignorant, it usually fixes them to their place of birth, and accordingly excludes them from earning their bread in the general competition of the world. It is very easy for enthusiasts living at a respectful distance to write in glowing terms about the antiquity of Gaelic, about the wonderful beauty of Gaelic poetry, about the philological value of Gaelic phraseology, about the satisfaction of being able to speak Gaelic as well as English. ”

“ We, therefore, find traces of English reading and culture in all the Gaelic poetry that has been produced since the commencement of this era. Even very early last century there is evidence that English thought began to exercise some influence on the compositions of the Highland poets. As already pointed out, English literature contributed not a little to the development of Dugald Buchanan’s sacred muse. The chief Gaelic poets of this period were fairly well educated, and knew the English language well. ”

“ The verses of other Gaelic poets were sung or recited too, and, although certainly not often fine poetry, they had its spirit, its naïveté—that is to say, its way of looking at the world as if it were but an hour old—its seriousness even in laughter, its personal rhythm. ”

“ Among the intelligent natives of the Highlands, it is well known that the Gaelic language contains a quantity of poetry, which, how difficult soever to transfuse into other tongues and idioms, never fails to touch the heart, and excite enthusiastic feelings. ”

“ The fact that so many of these poems are fathered upon well-known saints emphasises the friendly attitude of the native clergy towards vernacular poetry.
In Nature poetry the Gaelic muse may vie with that of any other nation. Indeed, these poems occupy a unique position in the literature of the world. To seek out and watch and love Nature, in its tiniest phenomena as in its grandest, was given to no people so early and so fully as to the Celt. Many hundreds of Gaelic and Welsh poems testify to this fact. ”

“ The Highlands, perhaps for the first time in history, formed a compact whole and settled down to peace and quietude. A remarkable outburst of literary activity ensued, and the latter half of the 18th century is the period which Scottish writers love to call the golden age of Gaelic poetry. But before we attempt to deal with this period in detail, we must examine the scanty literary products of Gaelic Scotland prior to the 18th century. ”

“ In “The Celtic Monthly,” and other periodicals, much good Gaelic verse is to be found, and it is no exaggeration to say that at this moment there are more than a hundred Gaelic singers in Western Scotland whose poetry is as fresh and winsome, and, in point of form as well as substance, as beautiful, as any that is being produced throughout the rest of the realm. The Gaelic Muse has{xliv} also found a home in Canada, and it is interesting to note that one of the longest of recent Gaelic poems was written by a Highlander in far-away Burmah. ”

“ There are no ancient Irish epics or ballads. So much was prose the natural vehicle of expression for Gaelic narrative, that when in later centuries the Arthurian epics were done into Gaelic, they were all turned from poetry into prose. At the same time, most Irish tales and stories are interspersed with lyrics put into the mouth of the principal heroes, after the manner of the cante fable, most familiar to modern readers from the French story of Aucassin et Nicolete. My collection begins with a few specimens of such poems. ”

“ So good a Gael as Professor Magnus Maclean has observed that 'even more remarkable than the dearth of philosophical and dramatic poems, and, we might add, of narrative and pastoral poetry proper, is the scarcity of Gaelic prose.' By all means, however, let a literary knowledge of the Gaelic language be encouraged among Gaelic-speaking children. It is a very different matter to enforce such steps as would lead to the teaching of Gaelic to children that live indeed in Gaelic-speaking districts but yet speak only English. ”

“ Even when Gaelic has gone, and the poetry with it, something of the habit of mind remains in ways of speech and thought and "come-all-ye"s and poetical saying; nor is it only among the poor that the old thought has been for strength or weakness. Surely these old stories, whether of Finn or Cuchulain, helped to sing the old Irish and the old Norman-Irish aristocracy to their end. They heard their hereditary poets and story-tellers, and they took to horse and died fighting against Elizabeth or against Cromwell ”

“ In the first place, it was professedly a prose translation from poetry in another tongue, and could hardly, therefore, influence the verse and diction of English poetry directly. It could not even work upon them as directly as many foreign literatures have worked; as the ancient classical literatures, e.g., have always worked; or as Italian and French and German have at various times worked; for the Gaelic was practically inaccessible to all but a few special scholars. ”

“ It is hard to run counter to long-cherished and in the main amiable feelings. It is hard to find fault with persons and institutions whose motives in encouraging Gaelic have been alike pious and benevolent. But circumstances oblige us to be candid in a matter so momentous to public welfare. The Gaelic language may be as copious and energetic as the Greek; it may be not less suitable for poetry than the Italian; it has strong archæological claims as a relic of the tongue which in its various forms was at one time spoken all over the British Islands, if not over all Europe ”

“ Mr Hector MacLean, of Ballygrant, Islay, an able Gaelic scholar, and a man of real culture and literary talent, helped him in transcribing the Gaelic, while he himself transferred the tales into literal idiomatic English. It has been fortunate for our limited Gaelic literature that Mr Campbell has left us so much of our popular prose in these goodly four volumes, and so much of genuine ballad poetry in his “Leabhar na Féinne.” I give a specimen of these tales in translation. Space will not admit of giving the sgeulachd complete ”

“ England is still to-day the land of the Saxons to the Gael, and its inhabitants are the "Sassenachs"; the Irishman persists in disregarding the coming of the Angles. We may talk of the extinction of the Gaelic tongue, but in his poetry, as in every place-name of stream or hill or townland all over the country, it is about us still. In the poetry we are back in Gaelic Ireland; the old tribal distinctions, the old clan names, meet us on every page. What does the modern man know of Leth Cuinn or Leth Mogha, the ancient divisions of the North and South, or of the stories which gave them birth? ”

“ From this source sprung up a religious literature, which, commencing in the written or Irish Gaelic, gradually approached nearer and nearer to the spoken dialect of the country, and, accompanied by the preaching of the clergy in the vernacular dialect, tended to preserve and stereotype the language spoken in the Highlands in its native form and idiom. ”

“ The academic vogue of metre in the early Middle Ages did not prevent the growth of more natural poetry. The Irish had their Gaelic poems; people of Teutonic speech had their rough verse based on alliteration and the count of the strong syllables. The Romance tongues emerging from the common Latin were as yet poetically untried. But in the proper Latin, which had become as unquantitative and accentual as any of its vulgar forms, there was a tonic poetry that was no longer unequipped with rhyme. ”

“ In the bi-lingual districts there is always a shelf of Gaelic books, such as the original texts of Norman Macleod's exquisite sermons, M'Rury's religious compilations, Macleod's clever poetry The Lyre of the Grove, Campbell's Popular Tales of the West Highlands, and Magnus Maclean's manuals of Celtic Literature. There being a distinct dearth of comely Celtic reading that the ordinary native can understand, arrangements have been made for the translation into Gaelic in several volumes by competent scholars, of extracts from Mr. ”

“ And until this mystic message is interpreted, men cannot discover the secret of Gaelic myth and song in olden or in modern times, they cannot drink at the ever-flowing fountain of Gaelic genius, the perennial source of inspiration which lies behind the new revival of literature and art in Ireland, nor understand the seeming reality of the fairy races. ”

“ Although the English were sung with the greatest art, and in the best possible style, it would neither warm our hearts nor melt our souls like singing in Gaelic. I feel that the great "mistress of art" has a tendency to puff me up, whereas I have no such feelings in my Gaelic. Perhaps one-third of the songs of the Gael are love songs, and the delicacy of feeling which is manifest in most of them is extraordinary. They will not offend the most refined ear; so that we have reason to be proud of our race in that respect. Our songs may be divided into two classes—the cheerful and plaintive. ”

“ If it had not been for Scandinavian burnings and plunderings, mediæval Gaelic literature would, even now, be so immense that it would command the respect of the world at large. Those who say that the bulk of mediæval Gaelic writings has come down to us—and there are those that have the unspeakable hardihood to say so—must be classed as very prejudiced, or very ignorant of Irish history. ”

“ The drama of the Celtic Renaissance is of an ancestry as mixed as is that of the people of Ireland themselves. There is less in it perhaps of the Gael than in them, for Gaelic literature, until to-day, never approached nearer to the drama than the dialogue, the racy give-and-take of two characters, alike of lively imagination, whether gentle or simple. ”

“ In talking once of the emotional element of the Celtic nature, an enthusiastic Irish scholar jocularly remarked to the writer that the Gael was dying away in song. If this turns out to be true, it is evident that his remains will be examined with pious and scientific care.
It is interesting to find that, meagre as Gaelic literature is—and the great wonder is that what we have should have been produced in so unpromising a field—it extends over sixteen centuries. ”

“ Others whom we cannot mention here are known as the authors of one or more songs which have become popular. It is natural to compare the state of affairs at the beginning of the 20th century with that obtaining in 1800. In the dawn of the 19th century every district in the Highlands had its native poet, whilst a century later not a single Gaelic bard of known reputation existed anywhere within its borders. It is only too evident that the new writers prefer English to Gaelic as a medium of literature, partly because they know it better, but also because in it they appeal to a far wider public. ”