I I

f c I t t I

r r r r r r r r

f c t I t t

€

t

t t

r r r r r f r f f f r f f f r f c I • f f I • 1 1

r f f f r f f r f r r f r f f r f • i i i c if? i

r r r r r r f ft t t « « iff i i i i i < f I rrrrrrff t • i f t f «.».«. i 8 i f i * rrrfrfrft i •_! f i t f %j %i i «

r r r f r r f f r t f 1 1 f i I 1.1 I i 1 f » r r r f r ? f c t I I • i I i J J.8 i « i i

rrrrf rrfrti f i i • i.t.i.l i f t § r r r r r r r r r f i i t I t I • M i f. i

r r r r r r r r f I I • t 1 i i « 1 i • f I i

f r t f £ € r f f 1 • • • • • I I «.• 1 i 11

r r r r f r r f f i ii».i.*.f , •.•.•.•.» •« r r f f t r r A^ji^ij i tit u_i

T { c ( r i: i E

f f r I

c { ft f J

t't't i'lili'd'f f t i

f c c I f r f 1 f c 1 if •,i_0.* 1

c I f f " ■ " "

•^lili-i^i-i^t •

_ , . . « s f t I i 111 « • .O t i.i » 1 c ( f f f c £ i f 1 i.s ^.t^f.f 1 i.f.i.i^i..

f « { i c t t c i.i MjjjtjjjjMjMAji cfifctiff •.».•.! i. I. •.■.i.t ^1^1.1 r

I I I c f % f f 1 f i^i.i.i «.i^«wi.t t t 1 «

Etc I E f.i 1 f.i,t f «.«,•.«,«.*.*«.«.«.»

t % t t t I M f € i t ^JiJJ^^JJJJJk

c c f i f f c 1 i i 8i «.i.i.«.«.».i.i.« « I f I t £ t € 1 i • i i 11 l^i^i^i.*.*.*.*

« If tt M*JAMJtJlJJ§JJJJJ^.^

t 1 s 1 c ff f r «.i.i>^i«i.i.i.t.s.«,t.i • i

t « C f S 1 « a J i t 1 • J.t 1 BJJ J, I f C C t € 1 » 1 1 « 1111 1 1 1 1 IJL J 1

'i^f^'f 71 "dzijciin:

|ri 1 1 » 1^1 ill i 1 1 I _ _ . ., , _J «;• i^i • * i 1 1 « i i i

i X 11 'Jt t jt^s n 11 « i i i y i i 1 1 i < t t

it 1 I 1 t t i: n » i »^t 1 » 8 1 • • • I 1 I 1 XJiAJ^J^ Xjt t 11 111 1 J « i 1 1 1 * M I

ji t txji X 11 m^i .1 1^1 1 1 1 f « f 1 • 1 1 1 a i i i jiJL 1 j1 Jt t i Ji J 1 i 1 1 i i • 1 i t

C% % 11 % % '%JL I f 1 1 « 1^1 1 111 1 1 I 8

t:t t JLi » X * * *ji 1*1 1 1 i 1 11 1 » i

XX t IX til It 1 1 9 X 3 V HI 1 11 1 1 1 1

XX XX X X 1 1 I Mxxxx m i i i i i a i i

Cx X 1 1 4 «. 1 t M MMM% mmji 1 1 1 111 1 I

X. It t t 1 1 t t M 1X111 i 1 1 1 XXI 1 fin

1 1 %'% t X X t t X x^i X 1::» 1 i X i i,x.x ,i i i

X X X X X X X X X jylx.x :xx xjix liliial x i i i't XX XX X t t x;,irx X x,xx t x x -rirlix i i X X X X X XI X X X tx X X 1 X f ;f r f f :t X ax i-xxxxx X t * t x^xjtxx.x X X t 11 t ill ^rx

^X^^K^A'^.'^J^J^iM^r^^ X x,_i xx:i X XX

[ I

n m m M t n m

• # I

7)

U'l

IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

IRELAND'S

LITERARY

RENAISSANCE

BY

ERNEST Ai BOYD

AUTHOR OF "the contemporary IRISH drama"

MAUNSEL & COMPANY, Ltd.

DUBLIN AND LONDON

MCMXVI

<i

'>,hI

Copyright, 1916, by JOHN LANE COMPANY

- /

50

Press of

J. J. Little & Ives Company

New York, U. S. A.

TO

M. E. B.

FOREWORD

The purpose of this book is to give an account of the literature produced in Ireland during the last thirty years, under the impulse of the Celtic Renaissance. The generation which succeeded the Anglicised Irish writers of the eighteenth century was the first conscious expression of national feeling since the passing of Gaelic as a literary medium. But, in spite of such fine personalities as William Carleton and Thomas Davis, the early nineteenth century was associated chiefly with 'Hhe stage Irishism^^ of Charles Lever, and the fierce political nationalism of the patriot poets of *' The Nation. ''^ It was not until the Eighties that nation- alism made way for nationality, and a literature came into existence which bore the imprint of the latter. The rise of the Language Movement, and the return to Celtic sources, gave a colour and tradition to the new litera- ture unknown to the older exponents of Anglicisation or nationalism, and rendered it more akin to the Gaelic than the English genius. Consequently, it was no more related to the political than to the Anglicised liter- ature which had preceded it, for which reason no refer- ence has been made in this work to the later writers who have followed either school. Such names as Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw belong as certainly to the his- tory of English literature as Goldsmith and Sheridan, whereas the term Irish {or Anglo-Irish) can be most properly reserved for that literature which, although not

7

8 FOREWORD

zvritten in Gaelic^ is none the less informed by the spirit of the race.

Given this limitation of the subject^ it will be evident that the estimates and judgments expressed in the course of this history are relative^ and must always be referred to the fundamental condition upon which Anglo-Irish literature exists. As a rule^ studies of Irish writers, whether articles or monographs, are written from an essentially English point of view. The subject is conceived, in other words, as part of English literature, and every effort is made to challenge attention by claiming for some Irish work a place amongst the masterpieces of the English genius. Sometimes these claims are allowed to pass, but more often they are re- sented by susceptible champions of England's literary supremacy. While we may understand the patriotic indig7iation of the latter, we cannot admit the theory that every word of praise bestowed upon Irish poetry is a tribute filched from Keats or Shelley. It is true that certain critics demand recognition for the subject of their enthusiasm upon terms which seem overgenerous to those most predisposed to sympathy, and thereby they render a great disservice to the literature of con- temporary Ireland. The fact is, the same misconcep- tion exists on both sides of the controversy. Irish criti- cism is not interested in such comparisons, being pri- marily concerned in establishing a ratio of national literary values for Irish literature. If comparisons between English and Irish poets are called for, they must be made upon some reasonable basis. It will not do to dismiss Yeats or A, E. by contrasting their achievement with that of the greatest writers in the English language. To us, in Ireland, Yeats may well

FOREWORD 9

be the national counterpart of England^ s Shelley, and as such he claims our attention. In comparative lit- erature his rank may be diferent. We are satisfied that the poetry of the Revival is, to say the least, equal to that written in England during the same period. But needless to say such speculations, however interest- ing to the English historian, have no place in the present volume. The writers have been studied as part of our national literature, and have been estimated accordingly. Their work has been considered solely in so far as it reveals those artistic and racial qualities which consti- tute the raison d'etre of the Celtic Renaissance, and the terms of appreciation are strictly relative to the scope of Anglo-Irish literature.

With few exceptions, the subjects of the following chapters have all placed me under obligations by the kind manner in which they responded to my inquiries concerning matters which absence from Ireland pre- vented me from verifying at first hand. For the same reason, I owe many thanks to my friend. Miss J. T ay- lour, of Dublin, who so patiently elucidated doubtful points of bibliographical interest, and to Mr. John Quinn, of New York, who generously gave me access to his rare collection of Irish books, at a time when no other sources of reference were at my disposal.

E. A. B,

September, 1916.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Precursors. James Clarence Mangan. Sir

Samuel Ferguson 15

II. Sources. The Father of the Revival: Standish

James O'Grady 26

III. Sources. The Translators: George Sigerson.

Douglas Hyde 55

IV. The Transition. William Allingham. The

Crystallisation of the New Spirit: The Irish Literary Societies 80

V. The Revival. Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland. John Todhunter, Katharine Ty- nan, T. W. Rolleston, William Larminie . 94

VI. William Butler Yeats. The Poems . . . i22v

VII. William Butler Yeats. The Plays .... 145

VIII. William Butler Yeats. The Prose Writings . 166

IX. The Revival of Poetry. Lionel Johnson, Nora

Hopper, Ethna Carbery and Others . . i88

X. The Dublin Mystics. The Theosophical Move- ment. George W. Russell (A. E.). John } Eglinton " 212

XI. The Poets of the Younger Generation. New Songs, edited by A. E. : Seumas O'Sullivan, Padraic Colum, James Stephens, Joseph Campbell, James H. Cousins, Thomas Macdonagh and Others 253

XII. The Dramatic Movement. First Phase: The Irish Literary Theatre: Edward Martyn

and George Moore 289

xi

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

XIII. The Dramatic Movement. Second Phase: The

Origins of the Irish National Theatre: W. G. Fay's Irish National Dramatic Com- pany. The Initiators of Folk-Drama: J.

M. Synge and Padraic Colum .... 309

«

XIV. The Dramatic Movement. Third Phase: Pop- ''

ularity and Its Results: "Abbey" Plays and Playv/rights. The Ulster Literary Theatre: Rutherford Mayne .... 344

XV. Fiction and Narrative Prose. The Weak Point of the Revival. Novelists: George Moore, Shan F. Bullock. Other Prose Writers: Lord Dunsany. James Stephens. Lady Gregory. Conclusion 374

Bibliographical Appendix 401

Xll

IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

ireland's literary renaissance"^

CHAPTER I PRECURSORS

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON

THE nineteenth century saw the definite eclipse of the Irish language, and, conse- quently, the beginnings of a genuine Anglo- Irish literature. At first England predom- inated, as in the work of Thomas Moore, whose songs familiarised the English people with Irish conditions, and constituted him our literary ambassador in England. These Irish melodies, which he clothed in the music of his country, are the first flutterings of the Irish spirit in English literature. Moore was followed by Jeremiah Joseph Callanan, who opened up the path along which Mangan was to follow and to out-distance him. Most of Callanan's work is of little value, being an imitation in form and manner of Byron, Scott and Moore. Fortunately, his knowl- edge of Irish gave him access to sources which saved him from the Anglicisation that renders so many of his predecessors and contemporaries negligible. The essentially Irish metre of the Outlaw of Loch Lene, and the passionate Dirge of 0^ Sullivan Bear, are fine Illustrations of Callanan's powers as translator.

15

,y

i6 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

The best of his original poems Is probably Gogaune Barra, with Its characteristically Gaelic rhymes, and its proud consciousness of Irish tradition.

Three years after Callanan's death, In 1842, Sir Charles Gavan Duffy founded The Nation, a news- paper of great Importance In the evolution of Anglo- Irish poetry. Primarily the organ of the Young Ireland Party, The Nation w^as born to awaken the spirit of Irish nationality. The essays of Thomas Davis and others were appeals for national unity, an attempt to revive a sense of history, of pride In the traditions of Ireland, in a people Ignorant and en- slaved, and lost to all consciousness of the past achievement of their race. This propaganda of nationalism was greatly strengthened by Gavan Duffy's proposal to enlist the aid of the poets. Davis's Lament for the Death of Owen Roe O'Neill, probably his finest verse, was the first of the series of national songs and ballads which afterwards became famous as The Spirit of the Nation. A volume of poetry was poured into this channel from all quarters, obscure peasant girls, men well-known in the struggle for political freedom, succeeded one another In the pages of The Nation. All were in- spired by a like fervour of patriotism, while the sincerity of their emotion, and the vigour of its expression, earned for them the appreciation of such unlikely admirers as Lord Jeffrey and Macaulay. There can be little doubt of the influence of these poets upon their contemporaries. The Idea of Irish nationality had become revitalised, and became a living thing to many distinguished Irishmen of the period, whose training and circumstances would ordinarily have directed their minds In another direction. Of these Sir Samuel Ferguson may be mentioned, as he was later to appear as the most

PRECURSORS 17

remarkable poet of this century, and to share with Mangan the claim to be the immediate forerunner of the Literary Revival.

The poets of The Nation, for all their Intensity of patriotic feeling, followed the English rather than the Celtic tradition, their work has a political rather than a literary value, and bears little upon the de- velopment of modern Irish verse. The literature of the Revival is no longer concerned with the political revolt against England. It has lost the passionate cry of aggressive patriotism, the wail of despair, and has entered Into possession of the vast field of Irish legend. Here, in the interpretation of the Celtic spirit. It has found a truer and more stead- fast expression of Irish nationality. The circum- stances propitious to such outbursts as characterised the patriot poets of the mid-nineteenth century have altered. Patriotic revolt Is not a sufficient guar- antee of good poetry, and the Irish Muse has found a quieter and more lasting inspiration. With the exception of Mangan, none of The Nation poets have left work whose appeal Is likely to endure. Mangan was something more than a patriot, he was a poet of genius, and his work has a value transcending that of the writers with whom he was accidentally asso- ciated. In him one can detect the presence of influ- ences which were absent from the work of his con- temporaries, and which make him the true father of the modern poets. Contact with the pure stream of Irish culture, Gaelic literature, so moulded the mind of the poet as to constitute his work the first utterance of Celtic Ireland in the English tongue. Patriot though he was, like Davis, McGee and the others, he required the stimulus of some ancient Gaelic song or legend to bring out the great power that was In him. Even the essentially patriotic and

i8 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

familiar Dark Rosaleen owes its existence to Mangan's reading of Roisin Dubh, the work of an obscure Elizabethan bard. It was not, moreover, until he had produced two less felicitous versions that he attained the perfection of form in which it is now best known.

The existence of these three versions, written at considerable intervals, indicates to what extent Mangan's imagination was haunted by this song. As he brooded over its passionate theme, becoming more deeply stirred by its beauty, his soul vibrated to the music of the Gaelic minstrel, until, carried away by his awakened inspiration, he gave his noble and almost perfect rendering. A comparison of these versions, verse by verse, reveals everywhere the same diiferences; the contrast between transla- tion and inspiration is in every line. As the poem departs more and more from the text, it comes nearer and nearer to the conception of the Gaelic poet, and becomes at the same time an original creation. In exchange for verbal fidelity Mangan oifers such personal contribution as "your holy deli- cate white hands," nowhere to be discovered in the text. In short he treats his subject as the moderns have treated theirs. The latter, absorbing the leg- ends and stories of their country, have identified themselves with the spirit of Ireland's past, and renewed the tradition of Irish literature. Mangan, however, was not always so happily inspired by Gaelic themes, and in many instances his successor, Samuel Ferguson, has surpassed him, without possess- ing more than a tithe of his poetic genius. Fergu- son's profound knowledge of Irish often enables him to succeed, in a measure, where Mangan has failed. Owing to the absence of inspiration to compensate for the lack of scholarship, Mangan's The Fair Hills

PRECURSORS 19

of Ireland is inferior to Ferguson's The Fair Hills of Eire, 0. Mangan has notes which Ferguson could never hope to reach, but his fire is spasmodic, and flickers in a manner utterly incompatible with the steady, if somewhat dead, level of Ferguson's work. His finest achievement is Dark Rosaleen. Noisy and sincere patriotism were then, and have since been, the frequent inspiration of Irish poetry, but that wonderful paraphrase has a beauty and a poignant intensity which have never been equalled.

The squalid shiftlessness of Mangan's own life made him the responsive interpreter of Ireland's sorrowful history of former splendour contrasted with an ever-present misery. Here he could lose himself in the hopes, laments and memories of the Gael, and satisfy the vague longings of his idealism. Weak and purposeless himself, he had not that joy of living which alone can create eternal beauty. It was only when he caught the fervour of some old Irish poet that he became truly inspired. Even then, he could not say yea to life. As in his original work, so in his poems of Gaelic origin, his themes are of sorrow, despair and death. His verse is filled with tears, and seems, as it were, the caoine of an entire race. Apart from Gaelic sources Mangan is as commonplace as Moore. His work is often shallow and arid, filled with rhetoric which not even his unusual command of rhyme and rhythm, his skilful versification, can conceal. He was devoid of the self-control which enables the great artist to select and fashion his material at will. His genuine culture and love of literature constituted him a somewhat unique figure in his time. In him the authentic voice of Celtic Ireland was heard for the first time in Anglo-Irish poetry, and he indicated

v'

20 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

the way of escape from the dominance of England, which his successors have followed.

Unlike Mangan, Ferguson was a distinguished Gaelic scholar. His studies In archaeological re- search gave him direct access to the treasures of Ire- land's ancient history and literature, which were only imperfectly revealed to Mangan In the literal translations from the Gaelic, furnished by his learned friends O'Daly and O'Curry. With the Intuition of genius, Mangan was able to sense the spirit that lay behind these transcriptions. Ferguson infused his verse with that spirit as the reward of years of an- tiquarian labours. His work was not confined to literature, but covered the whole field of Irish culture, history, architecture, law, music and antiquities. The public recognition of his services to Irish scholar- ship was his appointment as Deputy Keeper of the Records, and subsequently his election as President of the Royal Irish Academy. He set himself to lay the foundations of a national literature worthy of Ireland, realising that something more substantial than the aggressive patriotism of The Nation must provide the subject matter of Irish art.

While a young man Ferguson attracted attention as a poet In the pages of BlackwoocTs Magazine, and between the ages of twenty and thirty he contributed to the Dublin University Review the series of historic tales afterwards published as The Hibernian Nights^ Entertainments. These were his first attempts to put the old legends and stories Into circulation. In 1867 he published his first volume of verse, Lays of the Western Gael, which was followed In 1872 by the more ambitious epic, Congal. A volume of collected Poems appeared in 1880, and attached directly to the first book of Lays, by Its treatment of further incidents In the Red Branch legendary cycle. These

PRECURSORS 21

two works gave a strong Impulse to the return to Irish legend which Is so distinctive a feature of the Revival. This rendering In English verse of the Conorlan cycle of the Red Branch history Is the foundation of a new literature. Here, for the first time in Anglo-Irish poetry, Is outlined the tragic history of the House of Usnach, of the loves of Naisi and Deirdre, the Helen and Paris of Ireland's an- tiquity, and the mighty deeds of Cuchulain, who dominates Irish bardic history, as Achilles dominated the Greek epic.

The older, — Conorlan, — legend has always found more favour than the later Ossianlc. The love story of Deirdre, for example, has never ceased, since Fer- guson, to engage the attention of the poets. As early as 1876 the Deirdre of R. D. Joyce awakened popular response, and since 1880, the date of Fer- guson's version, the subject has been treated by Douglas Hyde, John Todhunter, T. W. Rolleston, A.E., J. M. Synge, W. B. Yeats, and others of lesser Importance. On the other hand, the corresponding tale of Diarmuld and Grania from the later legend has attracted comparatively few, none of whom has been quite successful. Ferguson, in his Lays, has treated the pathetic Incident of the death of Diarmuld and his last meeting with Finn. Katharine Tynan, in her second volume of verse. Shamrocks, gave a sympathetic rendering of the story, but It still awaits a worthy Interpretation. The dramatists have simi- larly failed in their treatment. Neither the Diar- muld and Grania due to the strange collaboration of George Moore and W. B. Yeats, nor the recent Grania of Lady Gregory, can be compared with the dramas which have had Deirdre for their subject. The latter, it is true, offers material of a naturally more dramatic quality. The story falls of Its own

22 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

accord into the five acts of classical tragedy, and, involving as it does the destiny of the entire House of Usnach, it is not surprising that it should transcend the more circumscribed interest of the Diarmuid and Grania episode. The Fate of the Sons of Usnach seems from the earliest times to have been sung by the bards, for whom the tragedy had the same fas- cination it has exercised upon the modern poets. Indeed, as Dr. Sigerson has pointed out, there is reason to suppose that Deirdre was the first tragedy, outside of the classic languages, in the literature of Europe.

It was natural that Ferguson, with his ambition to found a national literature, should think of writing an Irish epic. In Lays of the Western Gael he had already adapted to English verse portions of the great Gaelic epic, the Tain-Bo-Cuaigne, but these episodes were never v/elded together, and made no pretence of fufilling the need of Anglo-Irish literature for a work of epical dimensions. For this purpose something more was demanded of the poet than that he should be a translator or adapter. It was necessary to take the material supplied by the trans- scripts of the ancient tales of the bards, to divest it of many of the extravagancies which conceal the true grandeur and poetry of the bardic songs, and to remould it into one of those beautiful, homogeneous narratives with which we identify the great epic poems of literature. In the bardic romance known as The Battle of Moyra, Ferguson believed he had found a subject susceptible of such treatment, and for some years he strove to embody it in a poem of epic quality. The result of his labours was the pub- lication in 1872 of Congal. This, however, was but the partial fulfilment of his original purpose. As he confessed in his preface, the "inherent repugnancies"

PRECURSORS 23

of the subject proved "too obstinate for reconcile- ment." Instead of following the plan of the original story, he was obliged to recast the material, and to concentrate his attention upon Congal, the principal personage in the Gaelic text, while retaining the Battle of Moyra as the culminating incident.

The theme seems, indeed, peculiarly adapted to epic treatment, possessing, as it does, breadth of sig- nificance and unity and continuity of action. The struggle between the forces of Congal and Domnal transcend the interest of simple warfare, and the battle at Moyra marks the last stand of bardic and pagan Ireland against the forces of Christianity and clericalism. In spite of having abandoned his first project, Ferguson succeeded in imparting to Congal some of the qualities which his original conception would naturally have possessed. He peoples his narrative of the expedition of Prince Congal against Domnal, king of Erin, with the terrible, gigantic figures of Celtic mythology. Mananan mac Lir, the great sea-god of Irish antiquity, strides through these pages with giant steps, while the ghastly Washer of the Ford, most horrible of banshees, is evoked with the vividness of reality.

Ferguson's work is valuable as representing a defi- nite stage in the development of Anglo-Irish litera- ture. It must be judged by its relative rather than by its absolute merits. As we have seen, he was more than a poet, he was an antiquarian whose man- ifold activities, though all directed towards the reconstruction of the Gaelic past, could not but in- terfere with his efforts in the field of pure literature. He did not bring to poetry that concentration of purpose and jealous care for perfection of finish, which are necessary to the creation of great verse. The most effective passages in Congal are marred by

24 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

metrical weaknesses, the clashing of consonants and awkward csesurae, all indicating a certain roughness of composition also visible in the shorter poems. Frequently, on the other hand, there is a vigour and freshness which enable Ferguson to achieve his effects, in spite of poor craftmanship. It is neces- sary to remember the difficulties with which he had to contend.

We are now so familiar with the material that we forget how strange it was in Ferguson's time. To the natural difficulties of all pioneer work must be added the problem of finding euphonious equiva- lents for the old Gaelic names and of grappling in English with the redundant fluency of the old lan- guage. In his notes to Congal Ferguson refers to these "word-cataracts," where such orgies of descrip- tive epithet abound as the following:

The deep-clear-watered, foamy crested, terribly-resounding, Lofty leaping, prone-descending, ocean-calf-abounding, Fishy fruitful, salmon-teeming, many-coloured, sunny beaming, Heady-eddied, horrid thund'ring, ocean-prodigy-engend'ring, Billow-raging, battle waging, merman-haunted, poet-vaunted, Royal, patrimonial, old torrent of Eas-Roe.

That he should have risen so successfully to the exigencies of his task must weigh with us in esti- mating the defects and qualities of Ferguson's verse. If we miss the more delicate verbal effects to which many of his successors have attained, we find in him a grasp of subject, a simple grandeur, with frequent passages of genuine inspiration, which compensate the absence of a more perfect technique. At times, especially in his longer works, we are more sensible of the hand of the scholar than of the poet. It was fortunate that, sometimes, at least, scholarship and poetry were combined. The disappearance of Gaelic

PRECURSORS 25

from the mainstream of Irish Hfe was so complete that it seemed condemned to exist obscurely in the libraries of the learned societies. Once having lapsed into the domain of scholarship, the annals and achievement of Gaelic Ireland could only be restored through the intervention of a scholar, but a scholar who would reach the ear of the unlearned.

The work of restoration demanded the co-opera- tion of learning and imagination, and in Ferguson a man was found who combined the necessary quali- fications. He was able to see the past with the eyesi of a scholar and to Interpret it with the mind of a poet. It was thus his privilege to possess the key that unlocked the gates through which the stream of m.odern Irish literature was to pass. He set free the Celtic spirit, Imprisoned in the shell of an almost extinct language, and obscured by the dust of political turmoil. It is significant that Ferguson obtained immediate recognition from Aubrey de Vere, Wil- liam Allingham, and such of his contemporaries as were to prepare the way of the new poetic revival. The year of his death, 1886, saw the publication of Mosada, the first book of W. B. Yeats, who has since been so completely identified with the Celtic spirit in Irish literature. As indicating the relation of Ferguson to the young generation, and, consequently, his influence upon the Literary Revival, Yeats's criticism of that date may be quoted: "The author of these poems is the greatest poet Ireland has pro- duced, because the most central and the most Celtic. Whatever the future may bring forth in the way of a truly great and national literature . . . will find its morning in these three volumes of one who was made by the purifying flame of national sentiment, the one man of his time who wrote heroic poetry."

CHAPTER II

SOURCES

the father of the revival! standish james

o'grady

MANGAN and Ferguson may be rightly regarded as the precursors of the Lit- erary Revival, for their work contains more in common with that of their successors than with that of the poets who preceded them, under the leadership of Thomas Davis. Patriotic as was The Nation group, it cannot in the proper sense of the word be described as national. Davis and his followers expressed too narrow a phase of Irish life to merit so comprehensive a term. Mangan and Ferguson, on the other hand, were the interpreters of a wider and purer nationalism, exist- ing independent of political sentiment. They lifted national poetry out of the noisy clamour of politics, and thereby effected that dissociation of Ideas which was most essential to the existence of national lit- erature, and which remains the characteristic of all the best work of the modern Irish poets. The substi- tution of a sense of nationality for aggressive nation- alism is the factor in the poetry of Mangan and Ferguson which distinguishes them from all their predecessors, and brings them nearer to our own time than to theirs.

While thus Introducing a new element into Irish

26

SOURCES 27

literature, they lacked, nevertheless, the qualifica- tion which we shall find in those who were the true initiators of the Revival. Something more powerful than intermittent flashes of Mangan's wayward genius, something more ardent than the conscious scholarship of Ferguson, was needed to produce the extraordinary awakening known as the Irish Literary Revival. The occasion demanded a writer who, combining the imaginative intensity of the former, with the scholarly attainments of the latter, would illumine the entire field of Ireland's antiquity with the vivifying flame of romance and poetry. It so happened that, about the year 1872, a young student of Dublin University was obliged to spend a wet day indoors at a country house where he was visiting. While exploring the bookshelves he came upon the three volumes of O'Halloran's History of Ireland, where he made the discovery that his country had a great past — an interesting, but awkward fact, which had been well hidden from him, in accordance with the current precepts of Irish Protestant education. His interest and excitement kindled, this youth re- turned to Dublin and plunged into the records of his newly discovered country, preserved in the Royal Irish Academy. A few years later he introduced himself to the public as Standlsh O'Grady, a name which has ever since been familiar by its constant association with every form of literary, political and economic activity, that called for noble enthusiasm and lofty idealism. To this accidental contact with O'Halloran we owe a most remarkable renascence of Irish literature. The publication in 1878 ofli -^ O'Grady's History of Ireland: Heroic Period, marked Ji the advent of a new spirit, and this work, with itsii concluding volume in 1880, must be regarded as the|i starting-point of the Literary Revival. ''

^

28 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

That a great stream of poetry should have its fountain-head in a work of prose, and a prose history, moreover, may be sufficiently unusual to explain the prevailing ignorance of the authentic origin of the poetic renascence in Ireland. It is a commonplace of literary evolution that prose should issue from poetry, and that the latter should be concerned in its beginnings with historical themes. The reversal of the process in the present instance was all the more calculated to escape the notice of criticism, inasmuch as the existence of the preceding generations of Irish poets indicated them as the obvious source from which to trace their successors. To do so, however, is to assume that the Literary Revival is merely a continuation of the Anglicised Irish literature of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, whereas it is, in reality, the creation of a national literature in the English language. But the growth of this literature has necessarily been a departure from the normal process of evolution. Ireland already pos- sessed the literary forms perfected and handed down both by English and Gaelic writers, so that it was not a question of evolving the framework of literature, but of renewing the substance which was to be poured into the existing moulds. In the circum- stances, therefore, we need no longer be surprised that two volumes of historical prose should prove the starting point of a rich vein of poetry. It was not the form but the matter and spirit of literature that were changed, in order that Ireland might be adequately expressed in the language which had supplanted her own tongue. We have seen that neither Mangan nor Ferguson was sufficiently equipped for such a task, still less their predecessors. What the older poets were unable to achieve in verse was accom- plished by the prose of Standish O'Grady. This

SOURCES 29

poet, disguised in the mantle of an historian, in- fused the new spirit which was to revitalise Irish literature.

Nothing further from the ordinary conception of historical writing can be imagined than these two] volumes relating the history of Ireland's heroic age. That they should differ from the manner of Keatinge, O'Curry, and other orthodox historians, was neces- sary and inevitable, if we view them In the light of their ultimate destiny, for how otherwise could a young and comparatively unknown barrister achieve such extraordinary results in a field already laboured by recognised authorities? But it did not require the confirmation of subsequent events to emphasise the fact that with Standish O'Grady a new method of treating Irish history was inaugurated. In his Preface the author himself clearly Indicated his own attitude towards history, and the faults of his prede- cessors which he proposed to remedy. Nowhere more than In Ireland had the historian of antiquity been content to accumulate names and dates, and to tabulate events, solely with a view to presenting as exhaustive a mass of antiquarian research as possible. The ignorance of Irish laws, customs and traditions, resulting from the desuetude Into which the language had fallen, explains to some extent the character of Irish history. So many facts had become obscured, so much literature was threatened with oblivion by the spread of Angliclsatlon, that the work of translation and excavation seemed at once the most Imperative and the most Important. But, as Standish O'Grady pointed out, a generation of workers had laboured patiently at this task, the bardic writings had been largely translated, the remains of ancient Ireland had been investigated, and a large quantity of material now lay within easy

30 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

reach of the true historian. At the same time, a precedent had unfortunately been created, with the result, as he says, that "the province of archseology has so extended its frontiers as to have swallowed up the dominion of pure history altogether." The antiquarians have unearthed "mounds of ore," to be smelted and converted into current coin of the realm, but they stand "in their gaunt uselessness," awaiting literary exploitation.

It was O'Grady who came with the fire of imagina- tion which transmuted this ore into gold. Leaving aside all the preoccupations of archaeology, the in- quiries and investigations, the balancing of state- ments and probabilities, he undertakes "the recon- struction by imaginative processes of the life led by our ancestors in this country." Taking the material furnished by the antiquarians, he remoulds and absorbs it, reducing to its artistic elements the entire history of the heroic period as revealed in bardic literature. To Standish O'Grady these great figures of an age of heroes are something more than the vague and remote shadows that strive to live in the pages of the Publications of the Gaelic and Ossianic Societies. He so immerses himself in the past that he identifies himself with his heroes and heroines, they cease to be legendary and become for him. living men like himself, moving about the same country, treading the same earth — his ances- tors, as they are the ancestors of every Irishman. As he ponders over the bardic tales he catches their note of epic grandeur, and the spaciousness of dic- tion which characterised the bards of old is reflected in his own style. Thus he describes heroic Ireland as he sees it in the dazzling light of the bardic imagination:

SOURCES

"But all around, in surging, tumultuous motion, come and go tl gorgeous, unearthly beings that long ago emanated from bardl minds, a most weird and mocking world. Faces rush out of the darkness, and as swiftly retreat again. Heroes expand into giants and dwindle into goblins, or fling aside the heroic form and gam- bol as buffoons; gorgeous palaces are blown asunder like smoke wreaths; kings with wands of silver and ard-roth of gold, move with all their state from century to century; puissant heroes, whose fame reverberates through battles, are shifted from place to pLce . . . buried monarchs reappear. . . . The explorer visits an enchanted land where he is mocked and deluded. Everything is blown loose from its fastenings. All that should be most stable is whirled round and borne away like foam or dead leaves in a storm."

As befits a work destined to be the source of a liter- ature, O'Grady's History has a certain primitive energy, a naive amplitude such as we expect in epic narrative. Not content with the vast uncharted territory before him, in which the annals of the bards are but stepping stones " set at long distances in some quaking Cimmerian waste," he must begin with the Pleistocene epoch, and briefly trace the transforma- tions which preceded the Inhabitation of Ireland by the human species! One feels that he is attracted to these periods by the Immensity of the events which they cover and by the gigantic creatures to which they gave birth. We see him linger with the delight of Homeric simplicity over mastodon and megatherium, plelseosauros and trogatherlum, the size of these monsters fills him with the same satis- faction as he experiences when describing Ireland, sinking beneath the slowly descending glaciers that covered Europe, or submerged by the waters of the ocean, "as with a vast millennial susplratlon, the earth's bosom fell." But these chapters are merely the preliminary exercises of a mind enamoured of greatness, whether material or spiritual. They

32 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

hardly bear more reLition to scientific accuracy, than the geology and geography of the Iliad. The historian soon reaches the borders of the vast dominion, where the legendary and the historical mingle in a shadowy confusion, which he has under- taken to survey. Here he pauses for a moment, arrested by the thought of separating the facts of history from the visions of the bards, but his scruples vanish as he recollects the beauties of the legend and their significance in the life of a people. "They are that kind of history a nation desires to possess. They betray the ambition and ideals of the people, and, in that respect, have a value beyond the tale of actual events and duly recorded deeds." In his eyes "Achilles and Troy appear somehow more real than Histioeus and Miletus; Cuculain and Emain Macha than Brian Boromh and Kincorah."

\ Standish O'Grady sees the gods and demigods, the heroes and kings of Irish history, with the eyes of an epic imagination. He is not concerned with deciding the exact point at which the legends merge into history, but embraces the whole epoch, assimi- lating all that is best and most lordly in the bardic compositions with the knowledge gleaned from all manner of sources, contemporary documents and recent commentaries. The result is an astonishingly vigorous narrative, which rolls along with a mighty sweep, carrying the reader into the very midst of the great life of the heroic period. The past lives again in these pages, lit up by the brilliance of a mind stored with a wealth of romantic vision.

The first volume of the History begins, properly speaking, with the foundation of Emain Macha, and relates mainly to the incidents of the Cattle Spoil of

/^Coolney, or Tain Bo-Cuailgne. Incidentally the story of Deirdre is told, and the whole work is inter-

SOURCES 33

woven with numerous myths and charming snatches of Celtic folk-lore. Valuable as they are In creating atmosphere and In renewing tradition, they do not constitute the greatest merit of the book. Its real distinction lies In the wonderful series of graphic pictures which the author has drawn of the great spoil. This, the chief of the epic romances of Irish literature, Is conceived In truly epical spirit. The protagonists, Maeve, Fergus, Ferdia, on the one side, Conchobar, Laeg and, above all Cuculain, on the other — these stand out In fine relief. tVe move between the camps of the contending hosts, we attend their councils of war, we hear their cries of joy and grief, we sit amid their feasts. As he nar- rates the events of this struggle between Maeve and the Red Branch, Standlsh O'Grady attains to some- thing of the style of the Greek historians. His manner of rendering the speeches of the chieftains and warriors reminds us, sometimes of the sim- plicity— so penetrating and effective — of Herodotus, sometimes of the terse word-painting of Thucydldes. When he leaves the main course of events to evoke some picture of contemporary manners, the feasting of the heroes, the domestic employments of the women, the games of the children, the contests of the youths, he achieves, at his best, the naivete and simple grandeur of Homer. He has the truly Celtic love of the sonorous phrase, but his style bears traces of his classical scholarship.

The finest qualities of the historian are revealed by his treatment of the story of Cuculain. Step by step this heroic and lordly nature Is unfolded before us with the skill and sympathy which come of deep understanding coupled with a power of vision and expression. We feel that there is a har- mony between the author and his subject to which

34 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

we owe this great and spirited re-creation. We see the child, his eager mind filled with the stories of his country's heroes, meditate his escape to the martial life of Emain Macha. A charming picture he presents, this child of ten years old, as he eludes his mothers anxious vigilance and sets out for Emain, armed with his wooden shield and little sword of lath. In his first trial of strength with his contemporaries we are made to feel the promise of his future exploits, the incident is all the more real, too, because of the natural way In which It Is de- scribed as arising out of a quarrel between a group of Ultonian boys, playing at hurling, and the Intrud- ing stranger. Similarly, the legend of the naming of Cuculain, so remote and colourless in Ferguson's poem, is impressed upon the reader by an equal freshness and vivacity of narrative. In the glow of his enthusiasm and Imagination, Cuculain lives as he could never have lived in the cold precision of Ferguson's Lays. With what skill he evokes Cuculain's life at Emain, his military training under Fergus, his ever-increasing prowess at arms, and finally his knighthood, preparatory to his entry upon the great stage which he was to dominate — the battlefields of heroic Ireland. Cuculain submits all the proofs of strength and military science exacted by his judges, and at last receives the chariot which is to be his aid and witness in the mighty deeds which he subsequently performed on behalf of Ultonla.

"Like a hawk swooping along the face of a cliff when the wind is high, or like the rush of the March wind over the smooth plain, or like the fleetness of the stag roused from his lair by the hounds, and covering his first field, was the rush of those steeds when they had broken through the restraint of the charioteer as though they galloped over fiery flags, so that the earth shook and trembled with the velocity of their motion, and all the time the great car

SOURCES 35

brayed and shrieked as the wheels of solid and glittering bronze went round, for there were demons that had their abode in that car.

We enter now upon the most significant and Illus- trious phase of Cuculaln's career. With the breath- less Interest of romance the History carries us along from one scene to another In the dramatic struggle of Maeve against the Ultonlans. The long series of single combats In which the champions of Maeve, in their turn, stand against Cuculain, the sole guardian of his clan, alternate with the plots and schemes of the Queen to remove by some trick this youth who bars the path of her march northward. Admiration Is divided between the vigorous Intensity with which these great duels are described and the telling effect of the descriptions of Maeve's relations with her soldiers and advisers. In the former, with all the attendant circumstances of supernatural phenomena, demons and gods who participate only to heighten the fierceness and terror of the struggle, the gigantic figures of the combatants are as near to us and as real as though they were men of to-day. In the latter, we learn to know Maeve, not merely as the warrior-queen and rival of Conchobar, but as a woman, spiteful, unscrupulous and headstrong, and of a temper so quick that when her counsellor Fergus remonstrated at her Imprudence, she hurled a spear at him. "But ere she could seize another," we are told, "he ran to her, and seized her with his strong hands and forced her back into her throne, and held her still, and she spat at him." In their strength and weakness these semi-legendary figures are wonderfully near to common humanity as they move across the pages of Standlsh O'Grady's history.

The finest chapters are those of the latter portion of the book In which we find Cuculain forsaken, but

36 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

unconquerable, as he holds the ford against his adversaries. Day after day he struggles with a new champion, and emerges a victor from the encounter, but in his lonely mountain hiding-place his mind is torn with grief and wonder at the con- tinued absence of his kinsmen. The arrival of his father serves to settle his doubts, for now he learns of the spell that has been cast upon the Red Branch, so that they are unconscious of the peril of Cuculain and of his valour on their behalf. The pathos of this scene, the old man powerless to assist his son, the latter's tender care for his father in spite oi exhaustion and danger, these are the traits which help us to realise the nobility of Cuculain. With consummate insight Standish O'Grady contrives to give the necessary light and shade to the portrayal of this heroic being. While bringing into promi- nence the terrible strength, the extraordinary skill and endurance of Cuculain, he never fails to illus- trate his contrasting qualities of gentleness and kindness which excite the love and admiration of his enemies. Thus we see Cuculain conquer Maeve herself, in a moment of truce, by the loveliness of his disposition, we hear his touching conversation with Fergus who, forgetting his ofhce of Councillor and General to Maeve, steals off at night to the mountains to comfort his former pupil, whom he is debarred from assisting by the rules of warfare. Especially beautiful is the account of the final en- counter which closes the first volume. Using the most unscrupulous means Maeve persuades Ferdia to engage with Cuculain, his old friend and comrade at arms. When Cuculain sees this new adversary, he is overcome by emotion, the fierce warrior that is in him is subdued for a moment by the voice of memory and friendship. The combatants appeal to

i

SOURCES 37

one another in the name of their aflFection, each entreating the other to surrender, that he may be spared the pain of inflicting death to one beloved. Skilfully the dialogue passes from affectionate en- treaty to sterner remonstrance, then to reproaches and upbraidings, taunt follows taunt, until the irreparable words are spoken and the two mighty champions are engaged.

"Then drew Fardia his mighty sword that made a flaming cres- cent as it flashed most bright and terrible, and rushed headlong upon Cuculain, and they met in the midst of the ford. But straightVi'ay there arose a spray and a mist from the trampling of the heroes, and through the mist their forms moved hugely, like two giants of the Fomoroh contending in a storm. But the war- demons too, contended around them fighting, the Bocanah and Bananahs, the wild people of the glens and the demon of the air, and the fiercer and more blood-thirsty of the Tuatha de Danan. . . . But the warriors of Maeve turned pale, and the war-steeds brake loose and flew through the plain with the war-cars, and the women and camp-followers brake forth and fled, and the upper water of the divine stream gathered together for fear, and reared itself aloft like a steed that has seen a spectre, with jags of torn water and tossing foam."

Fierce and bloody the horrible struggle continues, accompanied by the dreadful shouts of the people of Ferdia, only restrained from aiding their chief by the forcible intervention of Fergus. At last Cucu- lain is victorious, his friend lies torn and mutilated at his feet, dead like all the other champions who tried to force the gates of the north. But soon the war-demons pass out of him, and he joins the enemy in lamenting the dead. The narrative concludes:

"He took off the cath-barr from the head of Fardia, and un- wound his yellow hair, tress after bright tress, most beautiful, shedding many tears, and he opened the battle-dress and took out the queen's brooch — that for which his friend had come to slay him — and he cursed the lifeless metal, and cast it from him into the air, southwards over the host, and men saw it no more."

38 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

Then Cuculain strides to his resting-place in the mountains where Laeg comes to his assistance. The book closes upon the scene of the hero resting under the care of his faithful friend who in a vision had seen his plight, and roused the spellbound men of the Red Branch from their unnatural inertia. In a magnificent closing chapter we see Cuculain vis- ited by the gods throughout Erin, the Sidh from the bright land of Tir-na-noge, the Tuatha de Danaan, all come to pay homage to, and comfort, the brave warrior who was able to converse with them, "being noble of heart like themselves."

II

The second part of the History of Ireland did not appear until 1880. Meanwhile, in 1879, appeared the interesting essay on Early Bardic Literature, ^ which provided an instructive exegesis on the entire History, and was subsequently reprinted as an Introduction to the concluding volume. Here Stand- ish O'Grady makes an eloquent plea on behalf of the bardic remains of Ireland, pointing out their value as historical documents, and vindicating them against the neglect of the English-speaking literary world. Ancient Irish literature "with its hundred epics" is relegated to the care of pure scholarship, whereas its great antiquity should give it a peculiar interest to all Aryan nations. The Nibelungen- lied, a modern production beside some of the bardic tales, secures attention, even MacPherson's Ossian is familar to the literary classes, as O'Grady indig- nantly observes, but the wonderful epic cycles of Ireland are unknown or ignored. In thus asserting the claims of bardic literature, he is obviously pro- claiming the intention of his own work and, as we

SOURCES 39

know, his appeal was not In vain, so far as his own countrymen are concerned. Circumstances have since rendered most of his arguments inapplicable to present conditions, but without under-estimating labours of recent writers in the same field, we cannot but recognise in Standish O'Grady the pioneer. By an unusual combination of scholarly precept with literary practice he succeeded In dispersing the clouds of prejudice and ignorance that obscured a glittering source of inspiration from the eyes of the poets.

Valuable as this essay is as the preliminary mani- festo of the Literary Revival, and as a succinct state- ment of the main facts relating to the ancient liter- ature of Ireland, it derives an incidental interest as a sort of apologia for the author's conception of history as revealed in his first book. This latter, it goes without saying, possessed none of the charms of the usual, and the critics, with one or two exceptions, accorded it the traditional reception extended to innovators. In the course of a remarkably appre- ciative criticism. The Spectator, it is true, displayed unique foresight and sympathy by enquiring why the Irish poets have left unwrought "this rich mine of the virgin poetry of their country." "Why does not some one arise among them," the reviewer asks, "aspiring to do for these legends what Tennyson has done for the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.?"

This solitary instance of a genuine insight into the author's purpose was nevertheless not sufficient to allay the fears awakened in him by the hostile refer- ences to his naive geology, his fantastic geography and the general incoherence of his want of historical method. It is evidently with such faultfinders in his mind that he emphasises the difficulties of the

40 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

historian who has to deal with the bardic material; the impossibility of distinguishing between truth and fiction as evidenced by the presence or absence of the marvellous, the enormous mass of literature to be considered, and the necessity for considering every document. Thus he is led to declare that the only effective method of treating this heroic literature in connection with the history of Ireland would be to print it exactly as it is without excision or condensation, adopting the order determined by the bards themselves. Such a task, however, is beyond the power of any single individual, and must be performed under the supervision of the Royal Irish Academy. Having thus suggested the ideal history, he rapidly dismisses as out of the question the familiar method of tabulating names and dates, and falls back upon his own plan, on the ground of its being justified by the circumstances explained. Admitting that his mode of writing history is open to "many obvious objections," he once again formu- lates his intention, this time in words curiously prophetic of his ultimate success:

" I desire to make this heroic period once again a portion of the imagination of the country, and its chief characters as familiar in the minds of our people as they once were, ... If I can awake an interest in the career of even a single ancient Irish king, I shall establish a train of thoughts, which will advance easily from thence to the state of society in which he lived, and the kings and heroes v.'ho surrounded, preceded or followed him. Attention and interest once fully aroused, concerning even one feature of this landscape of ancient history, could be easily widened and extended in its scope."

In spite of this confession of faith, when the con- cluding volume of the History appeared in 1880, it was prefaced by a chronological sketch of the entire period covered by the two volumes. This was

SOURCES 41

clearly a concession to the demand for definite out- lines and precise facts. Without it, the author feared his History might be referred "to a different order of romantic composition than that to which it really belongs." While admitting that this sketch is not without its utility, most readers will wish that it had been an appendix, rather than that It should interrupt the narrative which is here continued to the death of Cuculain. The insertion of both the introductory essay on bardic literature and this preface, between the points at which the story breaks off in the first volume and begins in the second, constitutes a blunder in form which might easily have been avoided.

Nevertheless these defects do not seriously detract from the merits of this final portion of the History, in which the Cuculain epic reaches its apogee, losing none of Its sublime grandeur and weird terror in the process of reconstruction. When the narrative is resumed the hero Is still lying weak and in the care of Laeg after the last great duel with Ferdla. While he thus remains in the background the history is concerned with Maeve and her followers. A succes- sion of striking pictures explains the course of events in the camp of the Queen, who has invaded and plundered Ultonla during the temporary cessation of Cuculain's activities, while incidentally enabling the reader to obtain a vivid insight into the life and cus- toms of the heroic age. The great feast at which Maeve and her courtiers celebrate their Invasion of Ultonla, the songs of the bard, as he entertains the warriors with the incidents of the Tain from earliest days of the Red Branch down to the events in which his hearers had just participated, the visions and portents that strike fear into the hearts of the revel- lers, the prophecies of the Druid Cailitin, and finally,

42 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

the hurried preparations to meet the host of Concobar approaching to intercept the retreat of the invaders — these are the preHminary graphic touches filling In the foreground of the canvas upon which the artist is to evoke the apotheosis of heroic Ireland.

The ensuing battle of Gaura is related with that spirit and extraordinary power of visualisation which have endowed the work of Standish O'Grady with such a special significance In the revival of Irish lit- erature. We see the great plain filled with mighty hosts of the Four Provinces of Erin and the men of the Red Branch; the shouts of the warriors, the rattle of the chariots, are the roar of this sea of giant humanity. The chieftains move before us with their men, and each is made to stand out by some deft touch which heightens the relief, so that. Im- mense as the picture Is, It is not blurred or con- fused, but is a clear visualisation. In contrast to the swaying, struggling masses on the plain, we are shown Cuculain asleep In his tent, his strength visibly returning as he slumbers and dreams, unconscious of the peril of the Red Branch. In his sleep comes a vision, the god Lu appears summoning him to the battle, and promising him divine aid to overcome the supernatural forces he will have to encounter. Cucu- lain arises, goes into the field and surpasses in strength, valour, magnanimity all that men had imagined. Surrounded by tutelary gods and demons of slaughter, he sweeps the armies of Maeve before him; his form is now seen in the mist of panic and terror, gigantic, invulnerable. Invincible. Cuculain here enters upon the greatest and last phase of his career where, with- out ceasing to be human, he has taken on the attri- butes of divinity.

"Out of his countenance there went as it were lightnings, showers of deadly stars rained forth from the dark western clouds above his

SOURCES 43

head, and there was a sound as of thunder round him, and cries not of his own coming from unseen mouths, and dreadful faces came and went upon the wind, and visages not seen in Erin for a thousand years were present around the hero that day."

Thus he is shown to us as he goes forth to battle against the Four Provinces, and so he appears throughout many fine pages of the History.

In the end, however, the forces of his divine pro- tectors are unable to withstand the powers of evil, he loses his magic attributes and Is vanquished in the final downfall of the Ultonians. In describing the last hosting of the Four Provinces against Cu- culain O'Grady loses none of his effective power. The concluding chapters relating the distress of Cuculain as he fights against the demons and in- visible hosts of darkness, the hero's farewell to his wife Emer, his desperate struggles when, shorn of his glory, he goes to war "like one who has devoted himself to death," and finally his death from the spear which passed first through his body before piercing that of Laeg — these chapters sustain the lofty note which characterises the whole History. There is the same evidence of imagination and sympathy in the picture of Cuculain as he leaves his wife, with his little son clinging to him and asking when he will return, as in this tragic scene when the hero falls mortally wounded:

" Thereat the sun darkened, and the earth trembled, and a wail of agony from immortal mouths shrilled across the land and a pale panic smote the host of Maeve when, with a crash, fell that pillar of heroism, and that flame of the warlike valour of Erin was extinguished."

The book closes upon the mighty figure as he stands on an eminence, sword In hand and with the rays of the setting sun upon his helmet, for he has bound himself to a pillar that he may die neither

44 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

sitting or lying, as was prophesied. From a dis- tance It seems to the host of Maeve that he Is Im- mortal, so that even In the agony of death he strikes terror into the hearts of his enemies.

Ill

As we have seen, Standlsh O'Grady's method of writing history drew upon him the adverse criticism of those who held to the orthodox conception of historiography, so much so, In fact, that in his second volume he felt called upon to make certain conces- sions to such critics and to enter a defence of his own style. Not content with this, he published in 1881 the first volume of a Critical and Philosophical His- tory, which was by way of redeeming his former errors, and offering to the public a more conventional study of the same period traversed by his earlier work. This History, however, was never completed, and now serves only to bear witness to the soundness of the instinct which prompted the author to abandon himself In the first Instance to the visualisation of a naturally epic Imagination. Perhaps It may be profitably regarded as a commentary or appendix to the Bardic History. O'Grady strives earnestly to conform to the traditional manner, quoting dates, citing authorities, and explaining legends, but be- neath the array of facts Is felt the throb of romance and of poetry. At times this restraint is relaxed and the bardic note Is heard again. Sometimes he interpolates passages from the earlier history, and even elaborates them, as In the famous dialogue between Ossian and St. Patrick, sometimes he sim- ply follows the bent of his mind, forgetting the critics he would placate, and once more the material |

of heroic Ireland glows with the life breathed into

SOURCES 45

It by the epic spirit. The following description of Cuculain on the field of battle might well be mistaken for a passage from the Bardic History:

"Fear and Panic go out before him; from his eyes glare vivid lightnings; the lips shrink away from his mouth, and between his crashing teeth a voice like near thunder bellows. . . . Black clouds gather round him pouring forth showers of deadly stars, the blood starts from his hair which lashes the wind with gory whips, and all the demons that exult in carnage and in blood roar around him, while like the sound of a mighty drum his heart beats."

The imaginative element is too strong to be long held in check, and in the pages of this volume it fre- quently preponderates at the expense of the critical and philosophical Intentions of the author. Un- fortunately such passages derive an inevitable in- congruity from their juxtaposition with matter of a purely prosaic and historic nature, and seem curi- ously out of place In a work of this kind. It is easy, therefore, to understand why the second volume was never published. The first remains, odd and Incon- clusive, to emphasise the essentially epical and poetic quality of Standish O'Grady's genius and to illustrate his Inability to break the mould of his mind.

Unable or unwilling to adopt the conventional historical methods, O'Grady was forced to find some other medium by which to give expression to his peculiar talent for historic reconstruction. Given the preponderance of the romantic and Imaginative In his work, it was clear that the most obvious path must lead him to the novel. Henceforward we shall find him employing his activities, almost exclusively in the field of romance. It Is true that he did not altogether forsake pure history, but his editorship of Pacata Hihernia In 1897 does not call for considera- tion in a study of the Literary Revival In Ireland.

46 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

Similarly, his political writings, The Crisis in Ireland (1882), Toryism and the Tory Democracy (1889) and All Ireland (1898) need only be mentioned in pass- ing. They all possess unusual qualities and have more claim to be considered as literature than might be anticipated from their original scope and purpose. Toryism and the Tory Democracy, in particular, is an interesting instance of the application of O'Grady's method to history somewhat less remote than that of heroic Ireland, to the period preceding and cover- ing the first years of the union of the English and Irish Parliaments. Most remarkable is the section Ireland a7id the Hour, in which, continuing The Crisis in Ireland, the author addresses the Irish land- owners. This eloquent indictment of a worthless aristocracy, lost to all sense of its duties, clinging fearfully to the protection of England, and devoid of those intellectual and spiritual qualities which alone could justify its privileges or excuse its inso- lence— this indictment is one of the finest pieces of political writing in Irish literature. The pen that wrote the Bardic History is easily recognisable, whether it be in the passages that so remorselessly sum up the continued years of incompetence and neglect, or those in which the glories of the great Irish aristocracies of the past are evoked in forcible contrast. It is surely the mark of genius that a work written for the moment should endure by its intrinsic worth. Like the pamphlets of Swift, O'Grady's Tory Democracy possesses those qualities of style and emotion which enable such writings to retain their interest when their object has long since been accomplished, or has ceased to engage public attention. The landed aristocracy is no longer a factor in Irish life, other economic problems have taken the place of that which exercised the scorn,

SOURCES 47

the eloquence and the intelligence of Standish O'Grady. As indicating how his influence has transcended the occasion of its immediate exercise, It Is significant that, in indicating the class which has replaced the landowners In the economic struggle, the poet, A. E., has been inspired to renew the eloquent tradition of Ireland and the Hour.

The series of historical romances which followed the publication of the histories fall into two groups, the one dealing with heroic age, the other with the Elizabethan Ireland. Contrary to what might be expected. It was not from the bardic material that O'Grady's first novel was fashioned, fresh as this material must have been In his mind. Perhaps, Indeed, the comprehensive studies he had already given of heroic Ireland, induced him to break new ground by turning to the Elizabethan period, and to come forward as a novelist in 1889 with Red Hugh's Captivity. In describing this work as a novel, advantage has been taken of the proverbial amorphousness of the genre. Red Hughs Captivity hesitates between the history and the novel, and might almost Indifferently be attributed to either, particularly in view of the author's conception of history. From the Introduction it Is evident that O'Grady Intends to do for Irish history in the six- teenth century what he had previously done for the heroic period. Now, however, instead of the bardic literature, contemporary State papers and subse- quent histories provide him with a vast field in which his restless imagination and inventive genius are given free play.

In selecting the Elizabethan era Standish O'Grady found himself in the presence of conditions somewhat analogous to those that gave birth to his Bardic History. The work of the various historians, excel-

48 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

lent as it was from the technical standpoint, could never hope to bring the period vividly home to the minds of the vast general public. The Annals of the Four Masters, O'Clery's Bardic Life of Hugh Roe, or the more recent works of Froude and others, were no more likely to reach the uninitiated than the writ- ings of the ancient bards or the studies of Keatinge and O'Curry. If the fruit of their researches and labours was to become part of the national inheri- tance, it was essential that some one should appear with sufficient energy, enthusiasm and literary ability to remould this material and throw it into common circulation. As O'Grady had lighted up the obscure region of Irish legend and mythology with the flashes of a brilliant imagination, so he undertook to illumine the gloomy waste of six- teenth-century Irish history.

This century is one of vital interest to Irishmen, for it witnessed the struggle of Gaelic Ireland against her assimilation by England, resulting in the incor- poration of the Irish with the English-speaking race. The age was crowded with remarkable personalities, the Irish chiefs and petty kings whose resistance to England constituted the last stand of the old Gaelic and feudal order against English civilisation. Natu- rally, however, the more general histories of the time could not do justice to these figures, and the events in which they were concerned, so, as a rule, they were hastily sketched in as very minor detail in a large picture. While recognising this as inevitable in the circumstances, Standish O'Grady determined to devote a series of smaller pictures to filling in pre- cisely this detail, so important to Irishmen, and so neglected in the comprehensive studies of the pro- fessional historians. Shane O'Neill, Feagh mac- Hugh O'Byrne, Red Hugh O'Donnell — all the great

SOURCES 49

chieftains are rescued from what he describes so aptly as "the sombre immortality of the bookshelf." . They and their followers are presented in the setting of their own stirring times, a background filled with patiently elaborated sketches of feudal life and customs.

In Red Hugh's Captivity, as has been suggested, O'Grady does not seem quite sure of his style, which oscillates between pure history and romance. The narrative is too frequently obscured or interrupted by the clumsy interposition of historical data, as though the author were overburdened with the re- sults of his researches in the archives. Conscious, apparently, of the Ineffectiveness of his attempt, he returned in 1897 to the same story of Red Hugh's escape from Dublin Castle, and in The Flight of the Eagle gave to Irish literature one of its most spirited and beautifully written romances. Here the skele- ton of history is concealed by a vesture of fine prose, the spoils of the Record Office no longer obtrude themselves, but are discreetly added for reference in an appendix, and the whole episode is welded into a harmonious narrative. The episode of Red Hugh's capture and flight is the most famous and significant of the dramas enacted in Elizabethan Ireland, mark- ing, as it did, the beginning of the Nine Years' War which proved to be the greatest obstacle to the estab- lishment of English rule, and might have changed the destiny of the Irish people. The Flight of the Eagle is a fascinating picture of the social and politi- cal life of the time, and is probably the only work at all worthy of the picturesque and daring young rebel whose story is related. Its many beautiful passages entitle it to rank with the Bardic History. The magnified apostrophe of Lough Liath towards the end, when the young hero's successful flight has

50 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

brought him safe to his mountain home, is justly celebrated. This lonely lake, high upon the moun- tain-top of Slieve Gullion, is identified with the greatest periods of Gaelic history, with the druidic mysteries of earliest antiquity, with Finn, Cuculain and all the heroic mythological figures of Irish legend. In an eloquent rhapsody O'Grady evokes the great deeds and personages grouped around this cradle and keystone of Celtic Ireland, and closes his narrative with the picture of Red Hugh O'Donnell at the foot of this historic mountain, the last cham- pion of the old ideals with which Lough Liath is inseparably and so intimately connected.

If The Flight of the Eagle represents such an ad- vance upon Red Hugh's Captivity, and is the finest work O'Grady has done outside of the heroic period, it is doubtless because the years intervening between the two had seen the publication of almost all his work in the field of historic romance. The charm- ing volume of Elizabethan stories, The Bog of Stars, in 1893 enabled him to add to his saga of Red Hugh by the addition of incidents in the life of the hero and his associates, not directly part of the events with which the two main narratives are concerned. At the same time he extended the scope of his his- toric reconstructions by the elaboration of various important phases of the struggle against the Tudor dynasty. The appearance of Ulrick the Ready in 1896 marked the last stage of his advance in the art of narration. The manner in which he handles his historical material has lost all the clumsiness of his first effort at long narrative, the odour of the archives no longer hangs about his pages, and the ease and fluency of the story Indicates a complete mastery of detail. Indeed he is now threatened with the dangers of this facility and succumbs to

SOURCES 51

the extent of writing In the Wake of King James. Here he reveals all the faults of a certain type of popular pseudo-historical novel, In which an his- torical setting Is exploited as a pretext for the telling of some banal tale of love and adventure. Fortu- nately, instead of continuing in this direction O'Grady bethought himself of his first work, and returned to the half-accomplished task of Red Hugh's Captivity with the fortunate results already described.

In considering the group of stories based upon bardic literature little can be added to what has been said of the history of the heroic period. With the exception of Finn and His Companions (1892), a sim- ple retelling of some of the principal Incidents of the Osslanic cycle addressed to children, the remain- ing works are adaptations from the histories. The Coming of Cuculain was published In 1894, and con- sisted almost entirely of a literal transcription of the earlier chapter relating to the childhood and youth of Cuculain, in the first volume of the History of Ireland. At that date, as we have seen, O'Grady was practising his skill as a novelist, and this book may be regarded as an exercise, for he has taken his earlier material and elaborated and rearranged It to form a continuous narrative. Some years later, in 1901, he remodelled similarly the concluding chapters of the same volume, and In the Gates of the North presented the story of Cuculaln's manhood, concluding with the hero's splendid defence of Ulster, single-handed, against the champions of Maeve. These accounts of Cuculain thus pre- sented in the form of historic romance lose nothing in the process, and are, therefore, significant as indi- cating the essentially imaginative, romantic quality of ^'Grady's mind. In this form, moreover, they

52 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

must have reached a public not likely to be attracted to a work ostensibly of pure history, and conse- quently they have helped materially to attain the chief end their author had in view: to rehabilitate the bardic literature of Ireland and to place the Irish people in possession of their lost national heritage.

It is, however, as an historian that Standish O'Grady exercised the greatest influence upon the Literary Revival. With a fine sense of what was needed to give nerve and backbone to Irish literature he turned in succession to the two epochs in the his- tory of Ireland when the national spirit was most strongly and truly defined; the heroic age, when the Celtic soul had reached its plenitude, the Eliza- bethan age, when the last sunset glow of the old ideals flared up to show the final rally and dispersion of Gaelic civilisation. His History of Ireland oflPends against most of the accepted canons of historical writing, his novels are marred by faults of construc- tion at which the most commonplace "circulationist" would smile, but all these faults are redeemed by the inner quality which they derive from burning ideal- ism and epic grandeur of the mind that conceived these works. The Bardic History, in particular, was a veritable revelation. Here at last was heard the authentic voice of pagan and heroic Ireland; in the story of Cuculain, modern Irish literature had at length found its epic. How pale is Ferguson's Congal beside this glowing prose, where poetry springs from the very power and beauty of the imagination as it conceives the life and struggles of the divine being. With his proud affirmations of belief in the ancient deities, and his wonderful evo- cation of the past, Standish O'Grady revealed to his countrymen the splendour of their own idealism,

SOURCES 53'

and restored to them their truly national tradition. All eyes were now turned towards the shining land of heroic story and legend, the footsteps of all were directed upon the path which led back to the sources of Irish nationality.

There is not an important writer of the Revival but has acknowledged his debt to Standish O'Grady, more particularly the generation just springing up wnen his best work appeared. A. E., whose mind; and work are perhaps most akin to his, shows con- tinual traces of O'Grady's influence, and has re- peatedly testified to the importance of the Bardic History; Todhunter's Three Bardic Tales are the direct result of the contact thus afforded with Irish legend, while W. B. Yeats has directly and indirectly admitted his obligation to the same source. It was further given to O'Grady to foster the growth of Irish literature both as a publisher and an editor. He founded in 1900, and conducted for some six years. The All Ireland Review, which was, at the time, ^^ the only journal in Ireland devoted to letters. This periodical became in due course a real centre of culture and ideas, and was the soil from which some of the best fruits of the Literary Revival sprang.

It was not the least of his achievements that, as a publisher, O'Grady was responsible for the appear- ance of a volume of essays unique in the history of the Revival, Pebbles from a Brook, the best work of John Eglinton, that subtle essayist who alone up- holds the traditions of this genre in contemporary Irish literature. Historian, dramatist, novelist, edi- tor, publisher, poet and even economist, Standish O'Grady was, above all, and always, an idealist, and in every phase of his activities he has never failed to champion the great ideals which first at- tracted him to the noblest period in the story of his

54 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

race. As a personality he has exerted a profound influence upon the literary generation whose ardour he had already kindled by his re-creation of heroic Ireland. As he was the first to reveal a truly noble tradition, it was fitting that he should create, and for a time watch over, the medium through which so much was expressed that was the direct outcome of his own teaching and example, and that he should finally become sponsor for some of the children of his own literary offspring. It Is with a peculiar sense of appropriateness, therefore, that we may salute in Standish James O'Grady the father of the Literary Revival in Ireland.

CHAPTER III SOURCES

THE translators: GEORGE SIGERSON. DOUGLAS

HYDE

WHILE Standish O'Grady revealed the wonders of Irish bardic literature, and sent the poets to the heroic age for the themes of a new song more truly expres- sive of the national spirit, it was left to others to explore fields hardly less rich In unexploited treasures of the Celtic imagination. The Literary Revival has been characterised, not only by the resuscitation of the great historical figures and events of Irish an- tiquity, but also by the restoration to letters of the beautiful songs and stories of folk-lore, which were being rapidly obliterated by the Increasing Angliclsa- tlon of the countryside. The work of the transla- tors and folklorists who collected, transcribed and translated these folk tales and songs, in which the old Celtic traditions still lived, was an Important element In the forces that went to the formation of modern Anglo-Irish literature. It Is true, how- ever, that this work did not give so direct an Impulse to the literary renascence as that of Standish James O'Grady, and belongs more properly to the history of the Gaelic movement, which has done so much to preserve the Irish language, literature and customs. Nevertheless, certain of these writers have exercised a greater influence upon Anglo-Irish letters than

55

56 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

others, an influence beyond that which might be expected from mere translation, and cannot, there- fore, be omitted from a consideration of the Literary Revival. Aloreovcr, as the language movement was coincident with the Revival, and has undoubtedly strengthened it, the interaction of the two may best be studied in those writers who belonged to both, while primarily concerned with the restoration of Gaelic.

In the field of translation George Sigerson may be said to occupy a position somewhat similar to that of Standish O'Grady in the history of Anglo-Irish lit- erature proper, and to share the honours with him as doyen of the Revival. Born in 1839, he is not only O'Grady's senior in years, but as a poet he had become known some twenty years before the Bardic History was published. As far back as 1855 he was a contributor to The Harp, and much of his early verse appeared in Davis' paper, The Nation, during the last phase of its existence. Under the pseu- donym "Erionnach," Sigerson was familiar to read- ers of Irish periodicals, but excellent as is much of his original verse. It has never been collected, and is only accessible in the various anthologies, of which there is rather an unfortunate profusion in Ireland. Apart from his activities on behalf of the National Literary Society, which we shall notice later, his influence has been strongest as a translator of the old Gaelic poets, and it is upon his achievement in this direction that his claim to distinction must rest.

Sigerson's first permanent contribution to litera- ture was the publication, in i860, of the second part of the Poets and Poetry of Munster, the first series of which had been contributed by Mangan, and was published posthumously in 1850. Thus, by an inter- esting coincidence, George Sigerson serves as a living

SOURCES 57

link between the precursors of the Revival and its initiators, joining up the age of Mangan and Fer- guson with that of the new Hterature whose seed was germinating In their work. The Poets and\ ^ Poetry of Munster, which contained the text of about fifty very beautiful Irish poems, with those metrical translations which were to become the special study of the author, was the first eifectlve contribution to the Gaelic movement. It marks the beginning of the Celtic Revival which subsequently made such headway under the leadership of Douglas Hyde. Indeed, the later vigour to which the language movement attained would certainly have been re- tarded. If not rendered absolutely impossible, had it not been for the work of SIgerson and of John O'Daly, the editor of both series of Munster Poets. For many years these two fought alone against the indifference of the public towards Gaelic literature, the repository of Irish nationality.

The justification of their faith, and the measure of their success, were demonstrated by the very dif- ferent conditions in which SIgerson presented his second work dealing with the poets and poetry of ancient Ireland. When Bards of the Gael and Gall ^ appeared, in 1897, It was not the offering of an enthusiastic young student to an apathetic public, but the contribution of a ripe scholar to a subject for which an appreciative audience had In the mean- time developed. The National Literary Society in Dublin and the Irish Literary Society in London had come into being, and it was as President of the former that SIgerson was able to dedicate the volume to Gavan Duffy, the President of the sister society, and to Douglas Hyde, the President of the Gaelic League. This dedication is, so to speak, a synthesis of the various activities of literary Ireland since the

S8 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

publication of the second series of Poets and Poetry of Munster. It is a sign-post whereon are inscribed the names which point out the two directions taken by the national current in literature. On the one hand are evoked the struggles of those who strove to restore the language and letters of the Gael, and on the other, the crystallisation of the efforts to create a national literature in English by the absorp- tion and remoulding of the Gaelic material.

Bards of the Gael and Gall was addressed to both the Gaelic and the Anglo-Irish sections by the dual nature of its appeal. To the one it offered the inter- est of its extraordinarily faithful, and metrically skilful, renderings of the original texts; to the other it presented an imposing anthology of Irish poetic literature, enhanced by a scholarly history of Gaelic verse and a vindication of the greatness of Celtic culture. Dispensing with the original texts, which had become more accessible since the days when he translated the Munster poets, Sigerson was able to bring together eight times as many poems as in his first collection. These range from earliest lays of the Milesian invaders to folk-songs of the eight- eenth century, and extend over a period of some two thousand years. All the great epochs of Irish history are represented, the age of Cuculain, the age of Finn, the age of Ossian, the dawn of Christianity and the Gaelic-Norse period, the whole constituting an almost unparalleled poetic lineage, which could not but strengthen the growing sense of Irish na- tionality in literature. With such an ancestry, the poets were emboldened to proclaim themselves as voicing something more than a mere province of ij England. The material of Gaelic literature and history had been released by the magic touch of O'Grady; Sigerson, Hyde and others were kindling

SOURCES 59

the torch of Gaelic civilisation, and had drawn to the service of the Irish language many of the younger writers. A literature was In the process of for- mation, which attached itself directly to the original stem of national culture. This new branch, though its outer covering was of a different texture from the parent tree, derived its sap from the same roots. The spirit was Celtic, If the form was English. Even the form, however, has inevitably taken on some- thing of the colour of its environment. Thus, while in Ireland some critics have questioned the possibility of an Irish literature in the English language. In England the contrary criticism has been raised. So successfully have Irish writers adopted English to the expression of national characteristics, so deeply have they marked It with the Gaelic imprint, that they have been accused of deforming the English language.

Such critics will find nothing to reassure them in Bards of the Gael and Gall. At a first glance they might, perhaps, be misled into believing that the book contained nothing dangerous to the Integrity of English. They will not find any words, phrases or turns of speech of an emphatically Gaelic complex- ion, none of these flamboyant, exotic passages with which Synge, particularly, startled the unaccustomed ear. Nevertheless SIgerson is. In their sense, a more serious source of danger than most of his successors. His metrical translations are, in fact, a unique In- stance of the adaptation of a foreign language to the needs of the user. It Is not very difficult for an Irish poet to catch the spirit of a Gaelic text; so far we have seen that it was done to a varying extent both by Ferguson and Mangan. SIgerson, however, | succeeds in achieving the far more difficult feat of ■ rendering the music of the original, In addition to its ,

6o IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

spirit. The popular hcptasyllabic measure of Gaelic poetry is essentially alien to the nature of English, which falls more readily into line of eight syllables. With few exceptions Sigerson's versions successfully reproduce this measure, whenever the text so re- quires. The perfection and diversity of the Gaelic verse forms precluded their illustration In every case, but the volume contains many examples of this elaborate verse structure, with its Internal rhymes and alliterations, its consonant and assonant rhymes. This complicated technique is abundantly displayed in the course of translation, and testifies to the age and development of Gaelic culture.

In this connection reference must be made to the Introduction, which displays Sigerson's mastery of his subject and his wide scholarship, and, being in the form of a commentary, adds so much to the value and interest of his work. He discusses, for example, the claim of Irish literature to have created a system of versification absolutely different from that of Greece and Rome, and is able to illustrate his thesis by the first poem of the anthology, the extremely ancient incantation of the Druid-poet Amergln. The translation brings out exactly the rhyme of the text, which demonstrates the existence of rhyming verse in Ireland at a time when such forms were, so far as we know, undreamt of in other countries. Then follows the Triumph Song of Amergin, which appears to be an early instance of blank-verse, whose invention must also be ascribed to the Gaelic genius. The poems representing the Cuculain period deal entirely with those incidents and stories whose beauty and significance had been revealed by the sympathetic Imagination of Standish O'Grady. Deirdre^s Lament for the Sons of Usnach, the relations of Cuculain and Ferdlal, and other features of the

SOURCES 6i

Red Branch History had become part of the mate- rial of a new generation of poets, since the pubHcation of the Bardic History. It is interesting, therefore, to study in Sigerson's versions the technique of the contemporary poetry relating to this subject. O'Grady had given the content and the spirit of bardic literature, it remained for Sigerson to analyse its form, and reproduce its structural characteristics. In Cuculain's Lament for Ferdial for example, we see how the bards employed the burthen, a form which only came into English verse at a late date. Simi- larly with many other metrical inventions generally believed to be of comparatively recent origin. These admirable translations reproduce the numer- ous metrical characteristics of Gaelic literature, whose diversity indicates how highly developed was the art of versification in ancient Ireland.

Bards of the Gael and Gall, while emphasising the technical achievement of Irish poetry, does not sacrifice the poetic substance to the metric shadow. When the bards had obtained such command over the instruments of their craft, they were necessarily tempted at times to Indulge in soulless exercises in technique, the metrical gymnastics which we asso- ciate with the poetry of the Precieux and the fash- ionable ruelles of seventeenth-century Paris. Some of the effects cited by Sigerson remind us of the pointes and concetti beloved of the Hotel Rambouillet, but as a rule he concerns himself only with such forms as were destined to be permanent factors in the development of European poetry. At the same time he traces the growth of those traits which have since been identified so completely with Celtic verse. From Amergin's Chant to the present day, the same feeling for nature, with its underlying sug- gestion of pantheistic sympathy, is noticeable, and

I

M

62 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

this unity of sentiment is rightly emphasised and illustrated in the comprehensive sweep of Sigerson's anthology.

Interesting, too, is the manner In which he ex- plains the origin of the melancholy that pervades Irish poetry, and has so long been accepted as its dominant characteristic. In the dirges of Oisin lamenting the death of the Fianna we hear for the first time the note of "Celtic sadness" of which so much has been written. Oisin, the last of the great pagans, mourns the departure of his companions, and the disappearance of all they stood for, in the rising influence of Christianity. The dialogues of Oisin and Patrick remain as the expression of the eternal conflict between the heroic and the Christian ideal. If the mournful note was first heard in the lamentation of paganism when displaced by asceti- cism, it is to the same cause that we must ascribe the prevalence of a certain tone of sadness in more recent times. The most distinguished of the modern Irish poets have all been on the side of Oisin, they have made the same protest, and their work is tinged by regret for the joylessness of an age unfit to be compared with the great age of which the bards sang. They have been transported by the force of imagination and sympathy to this heroic world peopled with the noble figures and lordly ideals of Celtic civilisation. Filled with the beauties of this dream-world, once a reality, their minds dwell in sadness upon the altered destiny of the race, whom they ceaselessly exhort to return to the path which will lead, as of old, to the unfolding of the perfect flower of national and spiritual greatness.

From the fifth to the ninth century Ireland was the guardian of European civilisation, fostering the arts, and sending teachers to all parts of the Conti-

SOURCES 63

nent. Sigerson's work in Bards of the Gael and Gall possesses, therefore, an interest extending far be- yond his immediate hearers. Those who have studied European Hteratures may learn through his exact versions from the Gaehc the precise nature of the debt of other nations to Irish culture. He shows how the verse forms of Gaelic filtered through to the Continent, as a result of their introduction into the Latin hymns and the Carmen Paschale of Sedulius, the first great Christian epic. The early saints whose hymns, for all their Latin, betrayed the Gaelic influence in the vowel end-rhymes, and sys- tematic alliteration, were the disseminators of a new literary tradition, a system of versification entirely independent of Greek and Roman influences. While many of the Gaelic verse-forms proved immediately adaptable to the exigencies of the Latin language, and in due course to its derivatives, others have always remained the peculiar possession of the tongue in which they were originally conceived. Few poets in English have habitually exercised all the forms that Sigerson has used in the illustration of his text. The diversity of these, however, shows how far an Irish writer can succeed in expressing native forms in a foreign language. At the same time, they afford an explanation of the metrical characteristics and peculiarities of all Anglo-Irish poetry. The love of recurrent and interwoven vowel sounds, and the assonances of the modern poets, are simply the survival in the English-speaking Irishman of the verse traditions of his race. In Bards of the Gael and Gall, George Sigerson has com- bined an anthology which, while substantiating the claim of Ancient Ireland to be the "Mother of Lit- ^ eratures," vindicates, above all, the right of her own sons to turn to her for their literary education.

64 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

Other nations have at one time regarded Ireland as their teacher, and preserve in their Hterature some of the fruits of her instruction. All the more, there- fore, may we expect to find the Irish nation cherish- ing her teaching, imitating her models, and striving to produce a literature in harmony with the great traditions she created.

DOUGLAS HYDE

It will be the duty of the historian of the Gaelic Movement in Ireland to render justice to the achieve- ment of Douglas Hyde, whose life has been devoted to the restoration of the Gaelic language and liter- ature. In a study of the Literary Revival, con- cerning itself solely with Anglo-Irish literature, there can be no question of even attempting to give ade- quate consideration to his work. In a sense, Hyde represents a tendency opposed in principle, if not in fact, to the creation of a national literature in the English language. In a famous lecture delivered to the Irish National Literary Society in Dublin, shortly after its foundation, he pleaded for "the necessity of de-Anglicising Ireland," and his con- stant purpose has been to effect the object which he defined on that occasion. He has been the organiser of a vast propaganda on behalf of all that is Irish, music, literature, games and customs of every kind. He was careful in 1892 to explain that work of de- Anglicisation was not "a protest against imitating what is best in the English people," but was "to show the folly of neglecting what Is Irish, and hastening to adopt, pell-mell, and indiscriminately, everything that is English, simply because it is English." Since then, however, his more enthusi- astic disciples have swept away these limits, and

SOURCES 65

have championed everything that is Irish, simply because it is Irish. Consequently, they incline to view with suspicion the growth of Anglo-Irish litera- ture, on the ground that it is written in an alien language, and has. In some cases, been primarily addressed to the British, rather than the Irish public. Language, it is argued, is the sign and symbol of nationality, and there can be no literature expressive of Irish nationality which is not composed in the Irish language.

Whether Hyde himself is entirely in agreement with this application of his teaching, It is Impossible to say. If we may accept the statements of com- petent critics, his best work, plays, poems, and fairy tales, has been in Gaelic, while such of it as has been conceived in English is devoted to the history and vindication of the claims of Gaelic literature. Ex- ception must be made of the three original poems published in 1895, together with some verse transla- tions, under the title The Three Sorrows of Story- telling. The first of these, Deirdre, was a prize poem, which obtained the Vice-Chancellor's prize in Dub- lin University, and possesses all the merits and de- fects peculiar to that order of composition. The same may be said of the other two stories. The Children of Lir, and The Fate of the Children of Tuireann, which were written about the same time. Perhaps the most significant feature of Deirdre is that a poem upon an essentially Irish theme should have been presented and found favour in a University which, at that time, was definitely hostile to de-Anglicised Ireland and. In the person of two of its most distinguished professors, had publicly expressed its contempt for the ancient literature of the country. In the same year, how- ever, Hyde published his Story of Gaelic Literature,

66 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

an admirable sketch, which was elaborated and ulti- mately appeared in 1899 as The Literary History of Ireland. This is Hyde's most important original work in English. For the first time a connected and adequate survey had been made of literary evolution of Gaelic Ireland. Hitherto Gaelic litera- ture had only secured a few incidental pages or chapters in the works of such Irish antiquarians as O'Curry, for the necessarily rough and imperfect catalogues of Bishop Nicholson in the early part of the eighteenth century, and of Edward O'Reilly at the beginning of the nineteenth, can hardly be described as histories in the proper sense of the term. Hyde's book was the first of its kind and, apart from its value to the student of Gaelic literature, was a fine piece of propaganda. With such a demon- stration of the diversity and importance of the old literature, it was no longer possible to dismiss the claims of the Language Movement. Hyde answered, once and for all, the objection of his more educated opponents that the Irish language did not repay study because it had no literature. The Literary History of Ireland placed within the reach of the general public the facts which had previously been vaguely admitted, or denied from hearsay. After its publication very little was heard about the "bar- barians" who were supposed to have constituted Gaelic Ireland, and whose literature was alleged to be disgusting or negligible.

Against the specific claim of many of Hyde's adherents, that Anglo-Irish literature is a con- tradiction in terms, we may set the fact that their leader was one of the early vice-presidents of the National Literary Society, which he worked so hard, with many others, to found, and that neither this Society nor the Irish Literary Society in London,

SOURCES ey

was created solely with a view to fostering Gaelic literature. At the same time, it must be admitted, the principle of the Language Movement certainly seems to authorise the conclusions which enthusiasts have drawn from It. If language be accepted as the criterion of nationality, then the Literary Revival Is condemned as un-national, and Anglo-Irish litera- ture becomes simply a phase of English literature. T^hls view represents the point at which two extremes of criticism meet. The English critics who refuse to admit the claim of Anglo-Irish literature to speak for a distinct and separate tradition from that of England, and the Irish critics who are so possessed by a sense of nationality that they cannot allow their English-speaking countrymen to come forward as representing the national spirit. On both sides there Is an over-emphasis of the Importance of the English language, as if that were the determining factor. But those who persist In regarding literary Ireland as a province of England are no less mis- taken than those who believe that Ireland loses her Identity once she accepts the English language. The striking difference between the Anglo-Irish literature of the Revival, and the Anglicised Irish literature which has always existed outside It, is sufficient proof that both views are mistaken. Ire- land has produced writers whose work reveals noth- ing of their country but a certain note of pro- vinciality; they have been simply imitators of Eng- land. She has also given to English literature writers like Burke and Swift who have been lost to Ireland, who have been no more hers than have any of the great names in the literary history of England. In neither case Is there any justification for the gen- eralisations of the two classes of critics already mentioned.

68 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

So long as Irish legends and stones, traditions and customs are cherished, so long will the feeling of nationality endure. It was precisely the desire to rescue and preserve these things which gave birth to the Revival. It Is, therefore, absurd to pretend that the new literature, which has done so much In this direction, is not national. It Is, however, equally true that the Gaelic Movement, which has coincided to a great extent with the Revival, has played a very Important part In the development of Anglo-Irish literature. Many of the younger poets have been drawn into the Language Movement, while those who have not directly participated, have been Indirectly Influenced by It. The general Im- pulse towards Irish sources has been greatly strength- ened by the propaganda of Douglas Hyde and the Gaelic League, of which he Is President. So long as the League exists we may be sure that no effort will be wanting to protect all that is most truly Irish in the life of the country. Whether It can do more than postpone for a while the ultimate disap- pearance of the Gaelic language Is a question which we are not now called upon to discuss.

For many reasons It Is to be hoped that the energy and optimism of Hyde will be justified. The endurance of Gaelic constitutes, as it were, a reserve of literary vitality, where our writers may renew themselves, by imbibing afresh from the very sources of the national spirit and tradition. The obliteration of all Gaelic traces would probably weaken the forces of Anglo-Irish literature and leave it open to the process of Anglicisation. Where there is no national spirit capable of moulding the liter- ature of the country In its own image, no tradition springing up from the roots of the nation, resistance is impossible. The race whose language is used

SOURCES 69

inevitably dominates. It is highly probable that the general public is quite uncertain which of its favourite novelists and poets are English and which are American, — the difference is not always obvious.

In this respect Ireland Is In a position somewhat similar to that of Belgium. If some French critics prefer to consider Brussels as the centre of a pro- vincial literature, others have recognised the literary nationality of Belgium. They see in the work of a Verhaeren the presence of elements entirely dlflFerent from those that characterise French poetry. The spirit of Belgian literature expresses a tradition far removed from that of France. The presence of Walloon and Flemish are sufficient to guarantee the immunity of Belgian traditions, and to safeguard the nationality of those who write and speak French. Like Gaelic In Ireland, they exercise an influence upon Franco-Belgian literature which cannot be overlooked. Yet Belgium also has her champions of nationality, who fear that the French language is incompatible with the national spirit. In both countries the obvious solution of the difiiculty Is the recognition that they are bl-llngual. There is no necessary conflict between Gaelic and Anglo-Irish literature, they are complementary, not antagonistic. Whatever reproaches the more ardent Gaels have made against those Irish writers whose medium is English, the latter have never retaliated. They admit to the full all the claims of the older language, and they have constantly acknowledged their obli- gations to Gaelic literature. They only plead for the right of co-existence.

In addition to the material derived from the old Gaelic literature, the Revival has found in the folk- lore and folk-songs of the peasantry a valuable

yo IRELAND'S LITERi\RY RENAISSANCE

deposit of literary ore which was in danger of being lost owing to the disappearance of Gaelic. This vast unwritten literature was cherished solely by the Irish-speaking country folk, and the diminution of the latter threatened it with oblivion. It was natural that Douglas Hyde, having set himself to restore the Gaelic language, should have been keenly sensible of the value of these songs and stories, which contained, as it were, the sparks of the tradition which he was endeavouring to fan into flame. He began at an early date to collect Gaelic folk-lore, and rapidly established a reputation as the foremost authority in this branch of Irish literature. As a folklorist he has exercised a very special influ- ence upon the Literary Revival. Like his first vol- ume of folktales, Leahhar Sgeuluigheachta, published in 1889, most of his work has been written in Gaelic, for the force of personal example has been conspicu- ous in his propaganda on behalf of the Language Movement. In order, however, to reach those less proficient than himself, he adopted in many cases the plan of giving parallel versions, Irish on the one side and the English translation on the other. Beside the Fire, the Love Songs of Connacht and the Religious Songs of Co7inacht were published in this fashion, and it is these three works which must directly affect the development of Anglo-Irish litera- ture. This is not the place to consider Hyde's achievement in Gaelic, but his translations in the three volumes referred to have a significance which must command attention in any study of the Lit- erary Revival.

Prior to 1890 various efforts had been made to preserve something of Irish folk-lore, but it was not until the appearance in that year of Beside the Fire, that any serious contribution in the English Ian-

SOURCES 71

guage was made to the subject. As far back as 1825, Crofton Croker had published Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland^ a work whose literary charm has been widely recognised, but whose scientific value is as slight as that of the collections of Kennedy, Lady Wilde and Curtin, which suc- ceeded it. In none of these is it possible to discover the sources from which the stories have been col- lected, nor can one be certain how far the originals have been followed, and to what extent the ground- work has been elaborated by the- authors. The folk-tales suffered in many ways by this treatment. Their origins were lost, and they became dissociated from the soil from which they sprang by the fact that interest inevitably shifted from the stories themselves to the manner and style of their narra- tion. As Hyde pointed out, it was essential that folk-lore should not be divorced from its original expression in language. It is easy, therefore, to understand why his first Book of Folk Stories (Leabhar Sgeuluigheachta) should have appeared in Irish, for it is in the old language that the folk-tales and songs are remembered. Except in those districts where Eng- lish displaced Irish at such an early date that edu- cation and reading had not time to thrust themselves between the people and their spoken literature, the Gaelic stories did not pass into the new language. Consequently the rapidly declining population of native Irish speakers constituted the source of Hyde's researches.

In Beside the Fire he gives, in addition to trans- lations of portions of Leabhar Sgeuluigheachta, a number of Connacht folk-tales, in the original Irish of the narrators, with a parallel version in English. In this way Hyde initiated a new method of collect- ing and preserving Gaelic folk-lore. His stories are

72 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

not at all modified by him, but are transcribed as he heard them, the circumstances under which each tale was obtained being included in an appendix. The same treatment was adopted by William Lar- minie, whose West Irish Folk-Tales and Romances was published in 1893, and did for the coast of Connacht and Donegal what Hyde had done for the inland portion of the first-mentioned province. Larminie did not always give the Irish text, but in the cases where he did so, his work had the addi- tional value to students of Gaelic, of reproducing phonetically the dialect of the speaker.

The desire for accuracy which prompted Hyde to reproduce the original language of the Gaelic folk- tales, and the consequent method of giving parallel translations, are factors of greater significance than might at first sight be imagined. This constant juxtaposition of Irish and English has profoundly affected the form of modern Anglo-Irish literature. Instead of the haphazard, and usually quite false, idioms and accent which at one time were the con- vention in all reproductions of English as spoken In Ireland, the Literary Revival has given us the true form of Anglo-Irish, so that our literature represents perfectly the old Gaelic spirit in Its modern garb. This great change has been brought about by two complementary Influences. The restoration of the Irish language has reaffirmed the hold of Gaelic upon the mind of the people, and emphasised the modifications of English as moulded by the Irish Idiom. At the same time the scientific care with which Hyde and the translators have sought to render exactly the Anglo-Irish equivalents of their texts has tended to fix more effectively and more precisely the language of an English-speaking, but essentially Gaelic race. Beside the Fire, so far as It is

SOURCES 73

written In English, is a careful study of that language as it is used under the limitations and modifications imposed by the older tongue. In the preface Hyde expresses his desire to avoid literal translation, and his determination to introduce only such Gaelic idioms as are ordinarily introduced Into their Eng- lish by the people. Within these limits he has suc- ceeded in giving the true Irish flavour to his transla- tions, he avoids all tenses not found in Irish, and by using those similarly wanting in English, as well as the phrases commonly substituted for the unfa- miliar tenses, he produces a pleasant sense of reality. This book Is as far from the Imaginary and ludicrous English of the traditional Irishman, as from the stilted and artificial, or too literary, style of its predecessors. It Is the first attempt to render the folk-literature of Ireland in the true Anglo-Irish idiom, and marks the beginning of an influence which Hyde's later work has done so much to strengthen.

The Introduction of Anglo-Irish speech into lit- ^ erature dates from an earlier period than that which saw the birth of the Celtic renascence and the Literary Revival. The early nineteenth-century novelists, Charles Lever, Samuel Lover, Gerald Grlflin and the Banlms, had used this speech, mainly as the vital part of the equipment of the "stage Irishman," whom they invented. In this respect, however, exception must be made of Wil- '^ Ham Carleton, that Isolated and distinguished figure In the literary history of Ireland. He looked upon his country with the eyes of a true Celt, and If his fine studies of country life have constituted him the greatest novelist In Irish literature. It Is because they are characterised by a degree of verisimilitude and penetration far beyond that attained by his contemporaries just mentioned. The completeness

74 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

and realism of Carleton's work naturally Involved the proper use of the language of the people whom he described so faithfully. Nevertheless, the more popular writings of Lever and Lover predominated in the public mind, — for Carleton has never received his due measure of appreciation — and Anglo-Irish became associated with comic situations and cheap buffoonery. It has been the distinction of the lit- erature of the Revival that it has here effected a complete dissociation of ideas. It has killed the traditional stage Irishman — although some of our novelists, as will be seen, are intent upon reviving him — and with him has disappeared his language. In freeing Anglo-Irish from the vulgarities and absurdities which clung to it, and restoring it to the dignity of normal human speech, Douglas Hyde per- formed a service no less valuable to literature than his work for the preservation of Gaelic. For there can be little doubt that this great change is due, for the most part, if not entirely, to the example of Hyde. He was responsible for the methodical asso-' ciation of the ancient language with the English that has accompanied or replaced it in the mouth of the people. This constant conjunction, in addi- tion to emphasising the influence of the one language upon the other, tended to make the reproduction of the Anglo-Irish idiom more accurate. Less at- tention was paid to the more superficial matter of variations in vowel sounds, which to the older writers was the beginning and end of peasant speech, and more care was taken to note the structural differences, the grammar and rhythm of English as passed through the Gaelic mould.

Beside the Fire, while it showed the author's pre- occupation with the scientific use of Anglo-Irish, did not contain the elements necessary for so complete

SOURCES 75

a transfiguration of this speech as the Literary Revival has witnessed. What was there suggested, and very cautiously outlined, did not wait long for complete realisation. In 1893, The Love Songs of Connacht came as a double revelation, first, of the ' "^ beauties of folk-poetry, and, secondly, of the charm of Gaelicised English. Adopting the same methods as when collecting the prose-tales published three years before, Hyde had obtained from the lips of the Connacht peasantry, and from old manuscripts hitherto neglected, a number of charming folk-songs in danger of being lost. The Songs of Connacht originally appeared in serial form in The Nation, and later, in The Weekly Freeman, the first chapter being published in 1890. There were seven chapters en- titled, respectively, Carolan and his Contemporaries, So7igs in Praise of Women, Drinking Songs, Love Songs, Songs Ascribed to Raftery and two chapters of Religious Songs. Of these, only Chapters IV, V, VI and VII were translated and published in book form. A concluding chapter containing Keenes and La- ments was to have completed the work, but so far it has never been published. This work attaches to that of Sigerson's Poets and Poetry of Munster, in that it performs for Connacht the same service as the older work did for Munster. Continuing the' method initiated by Sigerson, Hyde attempts in more than half of these translations to reproduce the rhyme and metres of the original Gaelic. His verse renderings are frequently very beautiful, and, although his best poetry has been written in Gaelic, these translations prove that he can use the English language with real skill and delicacy. The Love Songs of Connacht were supplemented some years later by Songs Ascribed to Raftery In 1903 and in 1906 by The Religious Songs of Connacht. These volumes

^6 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

represent a most valuable treasury of folk-poetry, and will rank with the work of Mangan and Sigerson as the repository of the best that could be saved of the old Gaelic tradition while still living. The gathering of these portions of a great heritage was the saving of the still smouldering ashes from which a new flame could be kindled.

Important, however, as is this aspect of Hyde's work, these Connacht songs have a special signifi- cance for the student of contemporary Anglo-Irish literature. Here he will find the source of what has come to be regarded as the chief discovery, and most notable characteristic, of the drama of the Literary Revival, the eflfectlve employment of the Anglo- Irish idiom. In his verse Hyde approximates, in spite of himself, to the style of the orthodox trans- lators who preceded him, and excellent as is this part of his work. It is not to be compared, either in beauty or importance, with the prose translations, which are frequently substituted for rhymed ver- sions, and sometimes accompany them. These are his finest and most original contributions to Anglo- Irish literature, and have proved to be the starting point of a new literary language. Casting aside the hesitations which restricted him in his English ren- dering of Beside the Fire, Hyde translated his Songs of Connacht, not into formal English, with here and there a Gaellcism, but Into the language nearest the form and spirit of the original, the English of the country people, in whose speech the old Gaelic influ- ences predominate. Both his own prose commentary and the text are rendered in this idiom, and the freshness and vigour of the one, coupled with the poetic charm of the other, demonstrated at once that a new medium of great strength and flexibility lay to the hand of Irish literature:

SOURCES 77

"If I were to be on the Brow of Nefin and my hundred loves by my side, it is pleasantly we would sleep together like the little bird upon the bough. It is your melodious wordy little mouth that increased my pain and a quiet sleep I cannot get until I shall die, alas!"

"If you were to see the star of knowledge and she coming in the mouth of the road, you would say that it was a jewel at a distance from you who would disperse fog and enchantment." {Love Songs of Connacht.)

Such passages abound in these translations, and are obviously the forerunners of the eloquent, rhythmic phrasing now identified with the style of J. M. Synge. Under Hyde's guidance, he achieved in this speech effects which have consecrated the Anglo-Irish idiom as a vehicle of the purest poetry. The extravagant, amorous speeches of The Playboy of the Western World are obviously contained, in their essence, in Hyde's versions.

"If you were to see the sky- woman and she prepared and dressed Of a fine sunny day in the street, and She walking, And a light kindled out of her shining bosom That would give sight to the man without an eye. There is the love of hundreds in the forehead of her face, Her appearance is as it were the Star of Monday, And if she had been in being in the time of the gods It is not to Venus the apple would have been delivered up."

If we did not know the above to be a verse from the Songs of Raftery we might easily imagine that it was a fragment of The Playboy, Christy Mahon's, elo- quence.

The nam.e of Douglas Hyde has naturally been more prominently associated with the Gaelic Move- ment than with the Literary Revival. As a Gaelic writer he has attained a distinction which consider- ably enhances the force and value of his propaganda. The Revival, however, must always count him a

\y'

78 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

powerful iniiuence. It has derived strength and support from the collateral effect of Hyde's labours for the restoration of Gaelic, and to his direct collaboration it owes in part, if not entirely, some of its most fortunate achievements. The fundamental importance of the Songs of Connacht in the evolu- tion of our contemporary literature has been insuffi- ciently understood by the general public. Once Hyde had set the example, the possibilities of Gaelic- English were realised by the other writers, and greater credit has fallen to the better-known work of his successors. Lady Gregory, notably, employed his method in Cuchulain of Muirthemne and The Book of Saints and Wonders, with such effect that it is frequently forgotten how O'Grady preceded her by a quarter of a century. In the field of legend, and Hyde by ten years, in the use of Anglo-Irish idiom. It is interesting, therefore, to refer to the testimony of W. B. Yeats, who wrote some fifteen years ago, when Douglas Hyde was helping to create an Irish theatre :

" These plays remind me of my first reading of The Love Songs of Connacht. The prose parts of that book were to me, as they were to many others, the coming of a new power into literature. ... I would have him keep to that English idiom of the Irish-thinking people of the West. ... It is the only good English spoken by any large number of Irish people to-day, and one must found good literature on a living speech."

If peasant speech has now become an accepted convention of the Irish theatre, it is because the younger dramatists have confined themselves almost exclusively to the writing of peasant plays, both these mutually dependent facts being due to the prestige conferred upon the genre by Synge. His plays removed this speech from all the associations of low comedy and buffoonery which clung to it, and

SOURCES 79

established the dignity and beauty of Anglo-Irish. While he consummated the rehabilitation of the idiom, the process had been definitely inaugurated by Douglas Hyde. The Love Songs of Connacht were the constant study of the author of The Play- hoy, whose plays testify, more than those of any other writer, to the influence of Hyde's prose. In thus stimulating the dramatist who was to leave so deep a mark upon the form of the Irish Theatre, Douglas Hyde must be counted an important force in the evolution of our national drama. Without injustice to the labours of W. B. Yeats, it may be said that the success of his efforts would not have been complete but for Synge. Had it not been for Hyde, the latter's most striking achievement might never have been known.

CHAPTER IV THE TRANSITION

WILLIAM ALLINGHAM. THE CRYSTALLISATION OF THE NEW spirit: the IRISH LITERARY SOCIETIES

DURING the first half of the nineteenth century, the intellectual energies of Ire- land were so absorbed by the political- struggle that literature had no existence, except in so far as It ministered to the cause of nationalism in politics. The writers of The Nation were, as has been stated, patriots first and poets- after, although Davis's writings reveal in him the desire to effect an awakening of the Irish spirit which would be Intellectual and literary as well as political. In time the Young Ireland movement »• was succeeded by the Fenians, whose journal The Irish People became a centre of politico-literary activity analogous to The Nation. Its editor, John O'Leary, had a fine feeling for letters, but the cir- cumstances of the period Inevitably favoured the production of literature in which political values were substituted for artistic. The poetry of the Fenian movement Is at its best In the work of Charles J. Kickham, John Keegan Casey and Ellen O'Leary. It has a special Interest In the history of the Revival, for instead of the vehement rhetorical passion of the Young Irelanders we find a plaintlveness, a sad Idyllic note, which suggest the transition to the man- ner of the contemporary Irish poets. It Is not with-

80

THE TRANSITION 8i

out a certain significance that O'Leary, on his return from exile, should hkve actively supported the revolt of the new generation, against the political and ora- torical vehemence of the Young Ireland tradition.

It was not until the last quarter of the century - that there was any concerted literary activity entirely independent of political purposes. We have seen that prior to that time individual poets had worked apart from the popular literary movements of their day, and, while avoiding the political nationalism of the latter, had contrived to give to their work the imprint of Irish nationality, in the deepest sense. The most important of these was Ferguson, who - was not identified with either The Nation group or the poets of the Fenian movement. The position of his contemporaries Aubrey de Vere and William Allingham was somewhat similar; they too were working upon Irish themes, and ultimately found in the Gaelic legends some of the material of their art. Their work, however, is English rather than Celtic ► in spirit, and hardly belongs to the new literature. For that reason Ferguson, not de Vere, is the herald of the Revival, although the latter's Inisfail was published four years earlier than Lays of the Western Gael, and his Legends of St. Patrick coincided with the appearance of Congai, in 1872. Allingham at times came nearer to the Irish tradition than de Vere who, though he survived both Ferguson and Allingham, and lived to witness the first fruits of the renascence, remained fundamentally an English poet of the Wordsworthian line. As early as 1864, one year before Ferguson's Lays, Allingham had published Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland, for whose "flat decasyllabics" the author had justly but little hope of success. It is said that this poem first awakened Gladstone's interest in the agrarian prob-

82 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

lem, as it existed in Ireland. But the "epic of the Irish Land Question" gains nothing by reference to the judgment of one whose enthusiasms, so far as contemporary Hterature was concerned, must often have been a shock to his admirers. More successful were the songs and ballads which at once became popular with the people of Allingham's native Bally- shannon. Some of these appeared in The Music Master in 1855, and from the preface it appears that certain of them were actually printed and circulated in the traditional ballad-sheet form. Such songs as The Winding Batiks of Erne and Kate of Bally shanny are far more perfect of their kind than any of the author's longer Irish poems. The proof of their success resides in the fact that they have become familiar throughout the countryside.

Allingham wavered always between the two tra- ► ditions, and were it not for his ballads, he would not find a place in the history of Anglo-Irish literature. He had an entirely English distrust for the Anglo- Irish idiom, in spite of his desire to write popular songs. He recorded his pleasure at hearing his songs sung by the girls at their cottage doors in Bally- shannon, nevertheless he shrank from using the phraseology natural to that form of composition. He actually complains that "the choice of words for poetry in Irish-English is narrowly limited," without realising that this absence of variety was due solely to his own fear of departing from the con- ventional diction of literary English. Now that Hyde, Synge and the younger poets have shown the effects that may be obtained by the use of that idiom, it is difficult to sympathise with Allingham's apolo- gies for the occasional employment of it. His fail- ure to perceive the beauties of a medium he had evi- dently tried to wield stamps him as quite out of

THE TRANSITION 83

touch with the current of modern Irish Hterature. He could, however, hardly have been otherwise. As editor of Eraser's Magazine he was more inti- mately associated with the literary life of England than of Ireland. His close friendship with Carlyle, v Tennyson, and with the Pre-Raphaelites, influenced him more than anything in his own country. There was then no centre of literary activity in Ireland to which he might turn. He was the last of the scat- tered, isolated, Irish poets, who essayed to cultivate something of the national tradition, while unable to join the politico-literary groups of their time. That Allingham did not succeed in this respect as Fergu- son succeeded, was natural. He had none of the latter's knowledge of Gaelic antiquity, and had not deliberately renounced the chance of securing recog- nition as an English poet by devoting himself to Irish legendary and historical themes. In spite of a typically West Briton fear that an Irish Parlia- ment would make Ireland not so " homely as Devon- shire," Allingham was attached to his country. Whenever he was inspired by the love of his native home, Ballyshannon, his verse revealed the tempera- ment and spirit of his race. Neither his political and religious alienation, nor his English milieu could obliterate these. It is by such songs that he is remembered in the history of Anglo-Irish literature.

The death of William Allingham in 1889 coincided - with the beginning of a new phase in the literary evolution of Ireland. The collapse of the Parnell movement brought about a slackening of political pressure which enabled the intellectual forces to emerge that had been germinating and gathering strength during the early Eighties. The first volumes of various young poets had just been published (Katharine Tynan's Louise de la Valliere and Sham-

84 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

rocks, W. B. Yeats's Mosada and The Wanderings of Oisin and William Larminie's Glanlua) and had secured an amount of attention that would have been impossible in the years of strenuous politics. Both in Dublin and in London groups of writers ► were forming for the purpose of fostering Irish lit- erature, and the idea of literary, as distinct from political, nationalism was taking shape in the minds of a new generation. The example and enthusiasm of O'Grady had turned the poets to the sources of nationality, and for the first time there was a deliber- ate concentration of effort upon the founda4:ion of a new literature which would carry on the traditions of the old. At last the time had come when a con- certed move was possible, by joining the two ele- ments which had heretofore remained apart. So far, the division of Irish writers has been into two cate- gories. On the one hand those who banded together- for political purposes, with patriotic verse as an accidental or incidental accompaniment. On the other, the more or less isolated individuals who strove to renew the Celtic spirit, but whose common endeavour failed to bring them together, although it excluded them from the existing politico-literary groups. Now we enter upon a new period when, with the elimination of purely political partisanship, - and the substitution of a broad sense of nationality, there came a conscious unity of purpose. Associa- tions were formed of a non-political, intellectual, yet national, kind. This co-operation of nationalism and literature, outside of politics, resulted in the renascence known as the Irish Literary Revival.

The definite crystallisation of the movement of cohesion was the creation in 1892 of the Irish Literary - Society in London and the Irish National Literary Society in Dublin. The first steps were taken in

THE TRANSITION 85

London, where the Southwark Irish Literary Club was founded in 1883. During the time of poHtical stress this club had contented itself, like others of its kind, with attending to the education of the Irish children of South London. As the years went on it became evident that a more direct preoccupation with literature would have some chance of success, and the Club organised itself on lines more similar to those afterwards adopted by the Literary Socie- ties. Lectures were delivered on Irish subjects, the work of Irish poets was collected and published, and a general effort was made to stimulate the interest and activities of Irish readers and writers. New talent was encouraged by the institution of "orig- inal nights," when members had to contribute mate- rial from their own resources. Some of the mem- bers subsequently presented their work to the pub- lic and met with a favourable reception. Probably the most important of these was F. A. Fahy, whose Irish Songs and Poems appeared in 1887, after having served as his contributions to many "orig- inal nights." As popular poetry this book has enjoyed wide success, but the author is more import- ant to the present history as being the pioneer who prepared the way for the Irish Literary Society. It was he who worked so hard in the early days of the Southwark Junior Literary Club, and effected the various transformations which made of that modest institution a literary centre for Irishmen in London, until the transition to the Irish Literary Society was inevitable and almost imperceptible.

The Southwark Literary Club had been in exist- ence some years while a corresponding group was forming in Dublin. In 1888, the Pan-Celtic Society • was created, but its membership was more restricted than that of the London Club, for only those could

86 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

join who had made some original contribution to Irish Hterature, or who had a Hterary acquaintance with the Irish language. Douglas Hyde, George Sigerson, John Todhunter and A. P. Graves, may be mentioned as the more important of those who initi- ated the Society, together with a number of writers of varying note, from Rose Kavanagh, Ellen O'Leary and John O'Leary to Gerald C. Pelly, A. F. Downey and M. D. Wyer, the three real founders, whose names have lapsed into obscurity. Most of these early members contributed to Lays and Lyrics of the Pan-Celtic Society, an undistinguished volume which appeared in 1889 and was far from revealing the promise of the literature at that time In preparation. The Pan-Celtic Society is interesting because of its Intentions rather than of its actual achievement. The conditions of membership Indicated a more deliberate attempt to carry on the work of the Revival, by uniting only those who were actively aiding the creation of a new literature. The inclu- sion of those possessing a knowledge of Irish may be regarded as part of this Intention, inasmuch as the tapping of Gaelic sources was an essential. At the same time It may be considered as the germ of the Idea afterwards elaborated by Douglas Hyde in the foundation of the Gaelic League.

Now that the same current was working simultane- ously In Dublin and London, the principle of co- operation for literary objects was definitely and practically established. There was a constant inter- change of men and ideas between the societies in both capitals. In London the Southwark Club was attracting the young writers; W. B. Yeats had lec- tured, and Katharine Tynan, John Todhunter, Douglas Hyde, and others, had found their way to the meetings. This Influx of original talent led to

THE TRANSITION 87

certain changes and modifications. Lecturing ceased to be the mainstay of the Club, there was a growing conviction that more attention should be given to the production of new work, and the publication of older writers whose names were being forgotten by a generation unfamiliar with the periodicals to which they contributed. In 1 891, a meeting took place at - the house of W. B. Yeats. T. W. Rolleston, Todhunter and other members of the Southwark Club were present, and a scheme was discussed whereby the- Club might be transformed into a more efficient medium for the cultivation and spread of Irish lit- erature. The result was seen in the following year 'S : when the Irish Literary Society and the Irish Na- tional Literary Society came into existence. The London Society soon gathered together the best of the Irish poets, Lionel Johnson, Stopford Brooke, Alice Milligan, Katharine Tynan, John Todhunter. To these we may add the names of some of the better-known members of the Dublin Society: Siger- son, Hyde, Standish O'Grady, Yeats and William Larminie. A glance at these names is sufficient to show that in the year 1892 the two Societies were representative of contemporary Anglo-Irish Litera- ture, and that they contained the forces to which we owe the Literary Revival. For a few years after the inauguration of the Irish Literary and Irish National Literary Societies, it was permissible to speak of a literary "movement" in Ireland. This unity and homogeneity of Irish intellectual activity lasted long enough to Impose the conception of a national Anglo-Irish literature, but the process of disintegration was too rapid to justify the applica- tion of the word movement to its later phases.

The main purposes of these Societies was to foster the new growth of Irish literature by means of lee-

88 IRELAND'S LITER.\RY RENAISSANCE

tures on Celtic subjects, and by the publication of the work of writers hitherto neglected, as well as of the younger men who were beginning to make them- selves heard. Some of these early lectures are most excellent propaganda, and constitute, in their printed form, documents of some importance in the history '^ of contemporary literature In Ireland. In Dublin, the Inaugural address, Irish Literature: its Origin, Environment a?id Influence, was delivered by George Sigerson, who gave In brief outline a survey of the material which he developed and Illustrated later In Bards of the Gael and Gall. This fine resume was particularly well chosen in the circumstances, for It was at once a reminder of Ireland's past literary greatness and an indication of the direction In which her future must evolve. The following year, 1893, saw the Inauguration of the London Society by a lecture from Stopford Brooke on The Need and Use of Getting Irish Literatiire into the English Tongue. While estimating the Importance of ancient litera- ture, the lecturer vindicated the right of Anglo- Irish literature to be regarded as its successor. As he pointed out, the use of the English language need not necessarily hamper the expression of the Celtic spirit nor interfere with the continuance of Gaelic traditions. In order, however, that this might be so, it was Imperative that Anglo-Irish writers should work upon the material bequeathed to them by their Gaelic ancestors. Amplifying this point, the lecturer demonstrated the Importance of the work of translation and popularisation by which the legendary and historical past could be brought before the public. He defined the most essential tasks, as the translation of the Gaelic texts, the moulding of the various mythological and historical cycles Into an Imaginative unity, after the fashion of Malory, the

4

THE TRANSITION 89

treatment in verse of the Isolated episodes and tales relating to the heroes of the supernatural and heroic world, and, finally, the collection of the folk-stories of Ireland. In these four branches he predicted that the sources of a literary renascence would be found. The results which are now traceable to the efforts of O'Grady, Sigerson and Hyde are proofs of the wisdom of Stopford Brooke's recommendations. Indeed, at the present time, it is difficult to re-read his lecture without feeling that it is a complete mani- festo of the principles and aims of the Literary Re- vival.

While lectures from Standish O'Grady, Douglas Hyde, W. B. Yeats, Lionel Johnson and others, made this part of the programme a success, the Societies were less fortunate with the other important branch of their undertaking. It will be remembered that when Yeats and his friends reconstituted the South- wark Literary Club the publishing of Irish books was a most essential feature of their plans. This idea was ultimately half realised, but not until it had provoked a scission in the newly-formed ranks of Irish literature. The early lectures must be counted - as among the most useful contributions to the Lit- erary Revival, and those that have been preserved are valuable documents to the student of its history. To the addresses already mentioned may be added Hyde's Necessity of De-Anglicising the Irish Nation, and Lionel Johnson's Poetry and Patriotism, which have been given to the public in book form. Not so successful, however, was the series of books for which the Irish Literary Society was indirectly, at least, responsible. Published as "The New Irish Library," under the editorship of the first President of the Society, these books by no means corresponded to the needs of Irish writers as originally and rightly

90 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

defined by those who met at Yeats's house In 1891. There was no attempt to encourage unknown talent and consequently none of the works chosen represent new names that have since become famous. In fact, apart from O'Grady's Bog of Stars and Hyde's Story of Early Gaelic Literature, the "New Irish Library" contains no new work of any significance in the Literary Revival. Ferguson's Lays of the Red Branch was available in another form, and the remaining volumes bear no relation to the new lit- erature that was being written.

The cause of this failure was the conflict which v. arose out of the difference of opinion between two generations as to what national literature really should be. On the one side were the young writers of whom Yeats was the spokesman, representing the future; on the other was Sir Gavan Duffy, who belonged to the past. The friend of Davis, and one who had, consequently, participated in the only pre- vious attempt to effect an intellectual awakening in Ireland, Gavan Duffy was, of course, an exponent of the ideas of The Nation school, of which he was the survivor. His election to the Presidency of the Irish Literary Society was doubtless imposed by the pres- tige attaching to one who had helped to make Irish history. His young admirers had the superstitious respect of youth for old age. Generous as were their sentiments, they inevitably redounded to the discom- fort of a Society bent upon innovation. The Presi- dent's conception of Irish literature was exactly op- posed to that of the new generation, his standards were those of the politico-literary groups of his- youth. In the Irish press, W. B. Yeats fought on behalf of his contemporaries, and in various articles and lectures defined the claims and principles ofv nationality, as opposed to political nationalism, in

THE TRANSITION 91

letters. The controversy over the publication of "The New Irish Library" is a specific incident in the continuous fight of the younger writers against the literary ideals of the old school. It is only neces- sary to re-read the contemporary utterances, such for example as Lionel Johnson's Poetry and Patriot- ism, to see how sharp was the conflict between the new and the old. It was the eternal clash of youth and old age with the usual results. At first defer- ence to years, actually or supposedly fruitful of experience, the incurable optimism which makes the young hopeful of the co-operation of their elders, and finally, the realisation of an abyss between the two, into which one or other falls in the attempt to cross the bridge of compromise.

So far as "The New Irish Library" was con- cerned, Gavan Duffy's ideas carried the day. In- stead of work which might now be considered as the first offerings of the Revival, he selected, for the most part, waifs and strays of the Young Ireland Move- ment, or writers of slight interest beyond the genera- tion of 1848. Those who should have been included published their work elsewhere, aflirming the new spirit, and confirming the tendencies which are now recog- nised as the basis of national literature. At the same time this early split has had a decided effect. It is probably because of this rift that Irish literary effort never attained for long a sufficient degree of con- certed action to warrant its being termed a "move- ment." Without underestimating the work accom- plished by the Irish Literary and the Irish National Literary Societies, it may be said that they have not fulfilled the role originally assigned to them.

The "spirit of The Nation^^ element has somehow preponderated, and the best work of the Revival

92 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

has been created outside of them. Many of the ^ finest writers are not associated with either Society, unless purely formally, in the case of some of the older names. While they have not remained strangers to any manifestation of intellectual ac- tivity, they have usually been witnesses after the fact. With a huge membership they make no pre- tence of having a majority creatively interested in literature. The dramatic movement, though begun- under the auspices of the Irish Literary Society, soon drifted away as a separate organisation, as, before it, the Gaelic Movement had engendered the Gaelic League. Thus neither Gaelic nor Anglo- Irish literature centres about these Societies, which are content to be informed of what is happening in either branch by the lecturers whom they invite from time to time. Nevertheless they have adapted themselves to the moderate part circumstances have called upon them to play. In London particularly the Irish Literary Society still subserves its most useful and original purpose, as a meeting place for all concerned with Irish literature. In Dublin the pres- ence of smaller groups of writers makes this need of a common centre less felt. In both cities the So- cieties maintain the necessary current of sympathy between those at the head of the literary stream and those who are nearer the mouth. If they do not constitute a "movement," they idnicate, at all events, a consciousness of literary identity. "A literary movement," says a well-known Irish poet, "consists of five or six people who live in the same town and hate each other cordially." This boutade provoked by the constant references to "the Irish Literary Movement," is as close to the facts of Irish experience as the exaggeration of paradox will per- mit. So long, however, as our Literary Societies

THE TRANSITION 93

exist they will supply a register of our belief that there is an Irish, as distinct from an English, liter- ature, though it cannot be enclosed in the terms of a movement.

CHAPTER V THE REVIVAL

POEMS AND BALLADS OF YOUNG IRELAND. J. TOD- HUNTER, KATHARINE TYNAN, T. W. ROLLESTON, WILLIAM LARMINIE

RELIEF from politics has been the condition precedent of intellectual, as well as of economic, progress in Ireland. Then only has it been possible to divert intellectual energies into the broader channels of social recon- struction. The "first lull in politics" postulated by W. B. Yeats, slight though it was, proved sufficient to permit a certain intellectual expansion, whose out- ward and more material manifestations have been noticed in the last chapter. This sense of unity and cohesion, which resulted in the creation of the Lit- erary Societies, was, of course, for some years a strong undercurrent awaiting a propitious moment to rise to the surface. This period of waiting, wliile the seeds of a new literary ideal were germinating and spreading, was not barren of fruit of a certain maturity. Under the editorship of T. W. Rolleston, The Dublin University Review was publishing work ^^ of a distinctive kind, notably that of W. B. Yeats, while The Irish Mo7ithly was for some time the*' meeting place of many young poets since promi- nently identified with the Literary Revival. Apart, however, from these individual activities must be considered Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland, ^ which in 1888 announced the co-operative, con-

94

THE REVIVAL" 95

certed nature of the effort of the younger generation to give a new impulse to Irish poetry.

This sHm Httle book, in its white buckram covers, will always be regarded with special affection by lovers of Irish literature, for it was the first offering - of the Literary Revival. Here are associated as collaborators the names of those who have estab- hshed the claim of Ireland to be adequately ex- pressed in the English language. George Sigerson contributed one poem, as the representative of the pioneers, but the bulk of the volume is the work of the younger writers — Douglas Hyde, T. W. Rolles- ton, W. B. Yeats, Katharine Tynan, Rose Kavanagh and John Todhunter. The last-mentioned, though a contemporary of Sigerson, must be regarded as a newcomer so far as Irish poetry is concerned, his earlier work deriving no inspiration from national sources. Some crudities of rhyme are noticeable in a few of the poems, though principally in those of the minor contributors, who have never taken a very high place among the poets of the Revival. The ma- jority of the contributions show a singular sureness of grip and a maturity of talent, remarkable in the verse of beginners. Such poems as Yeats's King Goil and The Stolen Child, Todhunter's Aghadoe and The Coffin Ship, possessed qualities of emotion and execution which have since entitled them to rank with the best that these writers have done.

Whatever be the merits and defects of each poem, the volume as a whole represents a high level of workmanship. But it is not so much for that reason, as on account of its freshness and promise, that Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland must be counted as an historical document. Here and there are verses inspired by the old spirit of rhetoric and aggressive patriotism, but the book is essentially a harbinger

96 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

of the new tradition in Irish poetry. Douglas Hyde's From the Irish and St. Colum-Cille mid the Heron have their basis in those Gaelic songs whose revelation has become our debt to him; in The Flight of 0^ Don- mil, T. W. Rolleston's theme was that which had seized about the same time the imagination of O'Grady, and gave us the spirited romances, Red Hugh's Captivity and The Flight of the Eagle. Yeats showed at once his preoccupation with the legends and fairy stories of the countryside, while Tod- hunter even advanced to the point of making Anglo- Irish the effective and pathetic medium of tragic speech. Titles such as BresaVs Bride and The Dead at Clonmacnoisj were indicative of the return to the heroic age and to the legendary material in which Standish O'Grady had stimulated such an interest. In short, the themes of this first non-political asso- ciation of Irish writers are Intensely Irish, yet, with two or three exceptions, they are entirely dis- similar from those that inspired the singers of the '48 movement, or the Fenians, who are here repre- sented by Ellen O'Leary. Even her contributions have more of the plalntiveness than of aggressive- ness which have been noted as the characteristics of the school to which she belonged. Poems and Ballads^ of Young Ireland is patriotic, but patriotism in the old sense did not inspire these writers. For political-' history they substituted legends, fairy tales, the spiritism of the Irish countryside, and so doing they indicated broadly the lines upon which contemporary poetry has developed.

JOHN TODHUNTER

Of those who collaborated In Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland Todhunter was, with SIgerson, the ^

THE REVIVAL 97

representative of an older generation. Although born in the same year as the latter, he was the oldest and most experienced writer of the group. While Sigerson's first book, Poets and Poetry of Munster, appeared in i860, it was not until 1897 that Bards of the Gael and Gall, his second contribution to litera- ture, appeared. Todhunter, on the other hand, though he began later, in 1876, with Laurella and other Poems, had half a dozen volumes to his name when Poems arid Ballads of Young Ireland was pub- lished. His Study of Shelley in 1880, followed by Forest Songs in 1881, had established his position as a poet and critic of some importance, and three trage- dies, Alkestis, Rienzi and Helena in Troas, had secured him the approbation of competent judges of classical literature. None of this work, however, bore any trace of the author's nationality, and it was not until he was caught in the movement which created the Irish Literary Society, that Todhunter turned his attention to Ireland. Later he was one of the Irish ►- poets with W. B. Yeats, Lionel Johnson and T. W. Rolleston, who joined the gatherings at the " Cheshire Cheese," and shared in the production of the Book of the Rhymers'' Club.

John Todhunter's first book of verse upon Irish themes. The Banshee and other Poems, was pub- lished in 1888, and was dedicated "To Standish*- O'Grady, whose epic History of Ireland first gave me an interest in our bardic tales." This is probably the -" earliest public record of the position of O'Grady in the Revival, and it expresses the obligation not only of Todhunter, but of all the Irish poets who followed him. It is, perhaps, of special significance coming from one whose mind had been moulded by very different influences. That a writer whose talent had already matured should have been influenced by the

98 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

Bardic History to the extent of discovering in himself an entirely new vein of poetry, is no slight evidence of the fascination exercised by O'Grady upon the poets of that time. In Todhunter's case it was hardly to be expected that his work should be com- pletely transformed, he could only react to the new stimulus within the limits permitted by previous formative influences. The younger men, however, whose minds were fresh, succumbed more completely to the contact with this epic imagination.

The Banshee a7id other Poems is undoubtedly Tod- hunter's most successful book of Irish verse. It is the most important, for the later volume. Three Bardic Tales, which appeared in 1896, is simply a reprint of The Doom of the Children of Lir and The Lamentation for the Three Sons of Turann, supplemented by the third "sorrow of storytelling," The Fate of the Sons of Usna. In their last form these poems have a homogeneity that was absent from the previous col- lection. On the first occasion the symmetry and harmony of the book were disturbed by the addition of "other poems," mostly of a commonplace, English type, whose banality only added to the incongruity of their appearance in such surroundings. Contrary to what would appear to be the popular assumption of many critics, no claim has ever been made for the perfection of Irish verse as such. It is merely sug- gested that Irish poetry should be Irish, whether it be good or bad. The banal poems of many West British Irishmen are exasperating to their country- men, not because Irish banality is superior to the English variety, but because the latter, in the work of another nation, becomes doubly feeble and imitative.

The finest of Todhunter's Irish poems is that which - gave its name to the volume of 1888. The Banshee,

THE REVIVAL 99

though less ambitious than any of the bardic versions, together with the verses reprinted from Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland, will be remembered by- many who have failed to enjoy the poems derived from legendary sources. The latter, in spite of occa- sional passages, leave the reader cold. The Three Bardic Tales correspond in substance to Hyde's Three Sorrows of Storytelling, which dates from about the same time, though two of Todhunter's versions were published before Hyde's little book appeared in 1895. In many respects Hyde's renderings are more pleasing than those of the older poet. Tod- hunter's rhymeless alexandrine quatrains in The Doom of the Children of Lir are, for example, more tiresome than the "orthodox English Iambics" of Hyde's poems on the same subject. The Fate of the Sons of Usna, a very lengthy, elaborate treatment of the greatest of the old romances, will not bear comparison with Ferguson's less complete rendering of the Deirdre saga, nor with the numerous poems which this popular theme has given the Revival. Here again Todhunter's rejection of rhyme, even in the lyrical passages with which the narrative is in- terspersed, militates against the enjoyment of the poem; Deirdre's Farewell to Alba and Lament for the Sons of Usna are infinitely more touching in Fer- guson than in Todhunter. In the preface to The Banshee the author was able to claim a certain novelty for his Lamentation for the Sons of Turann. Of the "three sorrows of storytelling" this has proved the least attractive to the Irish poets, and in 1888 Todhunter was the first to make it the subject of a poem in English. When he reprinted it, how- ever, in 1896, its isolation had been challenged in the previous year by Douglas Hyde's volume al- ready mentioned. Like the Story of the Children of

loo IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

Lir, that of the Childre^i of Turann belongs to the mythological cycle, and Is separated by several hundred years from the heroic cycle of which Delrdre is a part. Hyde alone among the poets has sought to give an adequate account of this interesting mythus. He relates how Lugh, while endeavouring to free the Tuatha De Danaan from the levies of the Formorians, sent his father to his death at the hands of the three sons of Turann. Upon the latter he therefore Imposed an eightfold blood-fine, or eric, as It was called, six parts of which they were able to obtain. Lugh's last two demands, however, they forgot, because of a spell he cast upon them. Having secured the greater part of the ransom, Lugh sent the three to fulfil the remaining conditions, and In accomplishing this they lost their lives. Turann, on learning the fate of his sons, made a great lamenta- tion over their bodies and then fell dead beside them. While Hyde recounts the whole story. Tod- hunter takes it up at the point where the father stands by the corpses of his sons. His poem relates briefly the circumstances of their death, but is really an elaborate caoine of the typical Irish kind. That Is to say. It is typical so far as Its division Into elegiac strophes was suggested by the form of the Ulster caoine^ and In Its recapitulation of the life and virtues of the dead. In manner and spirit, on the other hand, the poem Is not Celtic, and does not reach the note of tragic intensity of The Coffin Ship. Here the wail of the mourner Is caught and rendered with fine pathetic realism.

Todhunter's greatest success has been In these- shorter poems, which first appeared In Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland. His versions of the bardic tales, though they testify to the influence of O'Grady upon the literature In formation, do not in them-

THE REVIVAL loi

selves constitute a very notable contribution to Anglo-Irish verse. The absence of rhyme in his lyrical measures, his frequent lapses into purely prosaic diction, are defects in his longer poems which are not compensated by the occasional lines showing something of the wild energy befitting the heroic stories. This lack of rhythm is all the more notice- able in a poet who has shown himself particularly susceptible to melody and has, in Sounds and Sweet Airs, for example, transferred into verbal music the emotions awakened by the hearing of Chopin, Bee- thoven and other composers. The fact is that the last-mentioned book probably represents more truly Todhunter's poetic faculty. He was drawn to Ire- . land too late, when his talent had already ripened, and he could not break away from the influences that had moulded him^ during fifty years. Although he was one of those who helped to make the Irish Lit- erary Society, his participation in the Literary Re- vival was deliberate rather than instinctive. In support of this, it is only necessary to observe that since the publication of The Banshee in 1 888 and the creation of the Literary Societies in 1892, Tod- hunter's work has not been related to Ireland or inspired by the Irish spirit. His Life of Sarsfield in 1895 can scarcely be regarded as creative literature, while two of the Three Bardic Tales were reprinted from the first collection of Irish poems, and the third, though not published in 1888, dated from that time. In short, once the first inspiration and. enthusiasm of the Revival had spent themselves^ in him, Todhunter reverted to the tradition in which he had been educated. He wrote in England for the English public, and ceased to be any more rep- resentative of his country than George Bernard Shaw, with whom, indeed, he shared the honours in 1893,

I02 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

when The Black Cat was produced by the Independ- ent Theatre Society, shortly after the production of JJ^idowers^ Houses. It is true that The Land of Ilearfs Desire was performed a year later under the same auspices, but while Yeats's play was Irish, and owed its appearance in England to circumstances which the Irish National Theatre has since altered, Todhunter's was a work which naturally called for the attention of those inter- ested in fostering English literary drama. The one play was transplanted, the other was In Its native element.

It is greatly to the credit of Todhunter that, in ■ spite of his surroundings and training, he should have understood the new spirit that was at work In Anglo-Irish literature, and which tended to elimi- nate the Anglicised Irish poets of which he was a sur- vivor. He might easily have remained indifferent, like his friend, Professor Dowden, whose abstention from all demonstrations of sympathy was open to the suspicion of parti pris — a suspicion confirmed since the publication of his correspondence. Nothing could have been more natural than that Todhunter, like Dowden, should have become imbued with the distrust of everything un-English In Irish life, once so prevalent In the University at which both were educated. Instead, however, of boasting that he had never allowed Irish ideals to interfere with his devotion to those of England, Todhunter placed him- self in contact with the stream of Ideas that was flowing into Anglo-Irish literature from the very sources of national culture. He did not — he could not — wholly de-Anglicise himself, but at all events he succeeded for a time In seeing Ireland with the eyes of an Irishman.

THE REVIVAL 103

KATHARINE TYNAN

Very different were the results of the Influence exercised by the Revival upon Katharine Tynan. Although one of the youngest of those who collabo- rated In Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland, she was already the author of two books of verse which had Indicated her as a poet of more than average promise. Seldom has the first effort of a beginner met with such encouragement as greeted Katharine Tynan's Louise de la Valliere a7id other Poems In 1885. Until the publication of this little volume, the author was known principally to the literary circles In Dublin where the new spirit was stirring. She was a con- stant contributor to The Irish Monthly, a review whichj In the Eighties and early Nineties, afforded an opening to a surprising variety of Irish poetry, from seml-patrlotic, seml-devotlonal verse, of a very minor, local kind, to the work of W. B. Yeats, and even of Oscar Wilde, and Including between these extremes, such writers as Katharine Tynan, Alice Furlong and Rose Kavanagh. With Louise de la Valliere, Katharine Tynan attained at once to a popularity which she has never ceased to enjoy, but which has not been entirely to her advantage.

It Is not easy to understand why what she herself describes as a "very-much derived little volume'* should have had a fate so different from that of the first work of so many young poets. The Dead Spring, Joan of Arc, King Cophetua^s Queen and many of the other poems, are obviously Inspired by the Pre- Raphaelite movement, and cannot be said to reveal anything of the poet's personality. On the other hand, two sonnets on Fra Angelico at Fiesole, though perhaps derived from the same source, are more characteristic of Katharine Tynan's later manner.

I04 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

They have something of the innocent tenderness, the devotional sensitiveness to external beautv which are associated with her best work. These elements are more clearly present in such a poem as An Answer, which, in its absence of word-painting after Rossetti, foreshadows more precisely the style of much of her subsequent poetry. The promise of this volume would have been imperfect, however, had the note of nationality been absent. Beautiful as are some of the poems already mentioned, they could not have warranted the general recognition of Katharine Tynan as the singer of a distinctively Irish song. The Pre-Raphaelite tinge of Louise de la Valliere made the book one which might have been written by a young disciple of Rossetti, were it not for the five poems — the most stirring of all — whose theme was patriotic or national. The best of all these is Waiting, in which the legend is related of Finn and his warriors, who lie in a frozen sleep in a cavern of the Donegal mountains biding the time when they shall come forth to do battle for Ireland, at the hour of her redemption. The element of mystery is here combined with a living patriotism which give to this poem a thrill of reality contrasting with the rather imitative echoes of the verses of more common- place inspiration. The lines on the death of A. M. Sullivan, entitled The Dead Patriot and The Flight of the Wild Geese, though less remote in their subjects, are not more intensely felt than this poem of legend. They, too, are infused with the emotion which Is necessary to the creation of genuine poetry.

In her second volume. Shamrocks, published In 1887, we find Katharine Tynan occupied more fre- quently with Celtic themes. The first and longest poem, The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne, was one of the earliest attempts to make use of the

THE REVIVAL 105

Ossianic material In Anglo-Irish poetry. Though it is spoiled by rather conventional diction, there are many charming pictures which give to it an interest other than that necessarily attaching to the early poetry derived from legendary and historical sources. The Story of Aibhric and The Fate of King Feargus also witness to the poet's Increased attention to Gaelic subjects since the publication of Louise de la Valliere. The religious feeling so noticeable in Katharine Tynan's work comes out very definitely in this volume. St. Francis to the Birds is one of her best and most characteristic impressions of that simple piety which imbues so much of her verse, and has again and again drawn her to the gentle figure of Assisi. Ballads and Lyrics^ which followed in 1 891, contained several poems relating to St. Francis, but none of these is superior to the first. This book, however, represents more adequately all the phases of the poet's talent, and shows a great advance upon its predecessors. There is a more pronounced individuality in this work than hereto- fore, and many of her previous themes are here rehandled with a surer touch. The opening verses. The Children of Lir, are far superior to the prelim- inary treatment of the same subject In The Story of Aibhric, already mentioned. Christian and pagan folk-lore are the basis of most of this volume. Our Lady's Exile, The Hiding-Away of Blessed Angus, The Fairy Foster-Mother and The Witch are typical poems of a kind Katharine Tynan has familiarised in many later books. They combine those two striking traits of Irish peasant character: an un- limited faith In the possibilities of witchcraft together with a profound belief In the more picturesque legends of Catholicism.

Ballads and Lyrics is Katharine Tynan's most

io6 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

representative, and probably her best volume, as It is certainly that which bears most distinctly the Celtic imprint. Cuckoo Songs, published in 1894, suffers, by comparison, owing to a certain monotony due to the predominance of the devotional element, nor did the author recover the variety of Ballads and Lyrics in the four years' Interval that preceded the publication of The Wind in the Trees. Here, the sub-title, "A Book of Country Verse," announced a certain limitation of scope. The entire volume Is devoted to a series of Intimate Impressions of ex- ternal nature, of the beauties of leaf and flower, all conceived in the vein of simple, loving admiration which has made her the sympathetic interpreter of mediaeval Catholicism. In spite of the charm of such pictures as Leaves, The Grey Mornings, the volume can hardly be said to mark any progress, unless it be In a more careful technique. This halt in the development of Katharine Tynan's talent may be due to the fact that she has been too prolific for one whose gift Is manifestly of slender propor- tions. Had she written but three volumes, they would easily have held the best of her Inspiration. Using the word in Its best sense, we may describe her as an essentially minor poet, though a minor poet of the first rank. Narrative verse was not her forte arid " she abandoned It early for lighter forms. Her themes have constantly been those of minor poetry, the birds and flowers of the countryside, the green fields and in general the simpler emotions derived from nature. She has treated these subjects with frequent delicacy and skill, and to them she owes her greatest successes. Nevertheless, she has con- tinued to publish regularly books of this unsophisti- cated verse, each resembling Its predecessor, alike In form and content. This Inability to understand how

THE REVIVAL 107

rapidly such a vein becomes exhausted has resulted in the swamping of much good work by such volumes as New Poems, to mention one of the more recent, where there is hardly a line that could not have been written by the average young lady and gentleman with a facility for rhyme. It Is difficult, when reading her later verse, to remember that until the arrival of W. B. Yeats, Katharine Tynan was held to be the young poet of the greatest promise in Ire- land. In her first three or four volumes she did respond to the reasonable hopes which were rightly entertained of the author of Louise de la Falliere, even though she could never wholly justify the laudatory phrases with which that little book was received.

If her poetry has suffered by being subjected to the same exploitation as her prose, Katharine Tynan is none the less an interesting figure in contemporary literature. She is almost unique in that she is the only writer of any importance whose Catholicism has found literary expression. Reference has pre- viously been made to the famous discussion of Oisin and St. Patrick, the clash of Paganism and Chris- tianity, and to the fact that the Irish poets have almost unanimously declared themselves on the side of the former. It is certainly remarkable how com- pletely the better Catholic writers have effaced their religion from their work. That is not to say they have deliberately suppressed their beliefs, or that the others have openly declared their hostility to the Catholic Church. The fact is simply that one class has been frankly pagan, and, as a rule, mystic, while the other has in no way been Inspired or in- fluenced by the teaching to which it assents. It is significant, for example, that so precious an anthology of Catholic folk-poetry as The Religious Songs of

io8 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

Co7inacht should have been compiled by a Prot- estant. One would naturally expect that a task of this kind would have appealed to one of the Catholic poets, whose identity of belief and sym- pathy would specially qualify him to act as an interpreter. But apart from the most minor poets, Katharine Tynan alone reflects that attitude of Catholic Ireland In her verse. Outside of Ireland, Catholicism has been an aesthetic influence. Conti- nental critics have come to regard the Catholic Church as a fosterer of the arts, and many ingenious conclusions have been drawn from the contrast between the artistic imaginativeness of the Latin and Catholic races, and the joyless materialism and ugliness of the Teutonic and Protestant countries. France, especially, has afforded interesting instances of the intimate artistic relations between the Catholic Church and literature. The French Protestant has invariably a certain heaviness, a lack of suppleness and vivacity which distinguish his writing from that of the majority who are untouched by the Lutheran heresy.

Ireland presents a problem for the champions of neo-Catholicism, for there they will find little to support their enthusiasm for the older Church, as a refuge from the democratic mediocrity, and intol- erant freedom, of the most Protestant sections of Protestantism. It is impossible to conceive of a Huysmans or a Verlaine being converted to Irish Catholicism. The ^^ grands convertis''^ had a con- ception of religion entirely remote from the phil- osophy of Catholic Ireland, whose artistically barren soil could never produce a Chartres Cathedral, while its inhabitants would view with horror such a "con- vert" as the author of La Cathedrale. Irish ecclesi- astical architecture is, as a rule, as unrelievedly

THE REVIVAL 109

dull as that which we associate with the extremer forms of Protestantism.

The externals of Irish life immediately demonstrate how slight is the artistic influence of Catholicism in Ireland. Irish Catholics have none of the easy toler- ance and freedom of religious majorities elsewhere, but have the narrowness and hardness of a small sect. All the repressive measures of puritanism are heartily enforced, in emulation of the efforts of the Protestant minority. In short, the Protestantism of the Irish Catholic is such as to deprive the Church of pre- cisely those elements which are favourable to literary and intellectual development, and have rallied so many artists to her support. Nor have those pe- culiar qualities of genuine Protestantism been sub- stituted, to which the Northern races owe their most characteristic virtues. As a result, the Catholic Irishman does not find in his religion the spiritual emotion and the aesthetic stimulant necessary to the creation of a work of art. Consequently, his inspir- ation has been drawn from sources independent of his religious beliefs.

The foregoing may seem to preclude the possibility of there being even one truly Catholic poet, and to be completely disproved by the existence of such an anthology as The Religious Songs of Connacht. The contradiction Is, however, more apparent than real; the old antagonism of bard and saint, of which the historians have written, still lingers obscurely In Ire- land, and it has been seriously contended that the Catholic Church is an exotic. Nevertheless the people, and more particularly the peasantry, have associated the bardic divinities and heroes with the saints and wonders of Christianity. Sacred and pro- fane legends have become so identical a part of the belief of the rural population that the one has in-

no IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

fused the other with a certain breath of poetry. In the large cities a dehberate effort has been made to find a spiritual background for Irish life, and, as we shall see in a later chapter, with most interesting results. In the country towns, unfortunately, this has not been the case, and the spiritual death that hangs over them is obviously due in part to this failure of Catholicism to become properly assimi- lated. In the remoter Irish-speaking districts, how- ever, what was conscious in the cities has been instinctive, and a certain folk-poetry has grown up. The presence of the Gaelic language guaranteed the survival of the bardic tradition, and the heroic fig- ures of antiquity naturally amalgamated with those of sacred history. Where the Celtic flame had not been extinguished poetry was possible. The ancient tongue had the associations lacking in the speech of the provincial towns, and only recovered by the concerted move of a few more cultivated groups in the cities. The latter, being more deliberate, were naturally more radical in their return to the origins of nationality and of national literature, and quickly dissociated the fundamental traits of the Celtic spirit from the extraneous agglomerations of Cathol- icism. Hence on the one hand. The Religious Songs of Connacht, and on the other, the poetry of A. E., W. B. Yeats and the writers associated with them.

Katharine Tynan, though also associated, to some extent, with the group of poets last mentioned, re- mained uninfluenced by the revolt which led them to the very sources of Celtic spirituality. She re- mained undisturbed in her acceptation of the simple teaching of the Catholic Church, and it is just in so far as she approximates to the attitude of the coun- try people that she is a Catholic poet. One does not find her expressing the profounder aspects of Cathol-

THE REVIVAL in

icism, the exaltation and rapture of belief, for these belong to a more emotional and intellectual religion than that of the Irish Catholic. In Ireland the folk-lore conception of Catholicism is the most prevalent, as they know who have essayed to raise the theological level to that of France or Italy. Modernism is a problem which we have not yet faced. In the realm of folk-lore, at all events, is wit- nessed a certain reconciliation of the antagonistic bardic and Christian elements. Katharine Tynan's verse, therefore, voices that naive faith, that com- plete surrender to the simpler emotions of wonder and pity, which characterise the religious experiences of the plain man.

Her delight In St. Francis is typical of her general manner. She never touches the speculative depths of such Catholics as Pascal, the doubts and ecstasies of the great believers are not hers. She sees nature with the eyes of devout reverence, and In her tender descriptions of all the small creatures of God, her love for the old or the helpless, she excels In convey- ing a sense of child-like admiration for and confi- dence in the works of an Almighty Power. Her Rhymed Life of St. Patrick accurately reproduces the popular view of the saint, widely different as that is from the facts. The little book of six miracle plays published in 1895 Is another of her best-known works devoted entirely to religious subjects. Here, how- ever, there is a rather too careful simplicity, giving an air of artificiality not usual, for spontaneity Is a noticeable feature of her devotional outpourings. But it must be said that here also she has failed to exercise any restraint. Her numerous contributions to magazines of piety are rarely suitable for republi- cation. The devotional side of Katharine Tynan's work is quite adequately represented by a selection

112 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

from her religious verse, such as that which has recently appeared under the title, The Flower of Peace.

Interesting though she may be as the only import- ant Catholic poet in Ireland, Katharine Tynan will hardly rank with the best writers of the Literary Revival. For the reasons we have seen, Irish Catholicism is necessarily a shallow vein of inspira- tion, and even at best, it has not created, and cannot create, great poetry. In the special circumstances just described, it has inspired folk-poetry that has many beauties, but the power of The Religious Songs of Connacht loses by transposition. There Is more of the poetic essence In Douglas Hyde's collection than In Katharine Tynan's many volumes. Never- theless, she has written more verse than any of her contemporaries, with the possible exception of W. B. Yeats, and this, notwithstanding the incredible list of fiction with which she has endowed the circulating libraries. In Yeats's case the volume of writing is distributed over a wide range of subject and has been constantly revised. When Katharine Tynan, with a fraction of the poetic material, has spread it over so many pages. It Is not surprising her work should be thin. Irish Poems ^ published in 191 3, contains a selection from the best of her more recent poetry. If we are to judge her by this volume, we must forget all the inferior verse, all the book-making, which is doubtless inevitable, so long as commercial- ism is the master Instead of the servant of art. This Is all the more easy, as she has here collected a suffi- cient number of beautiful poems to ensure her re- membrance by all who care for the unassuming songs of a poet whose voice has so often sung the fragrance of the country, and the charm of natural beauty.

THE REVIVAL 113

T. W. ROLLESTON

There is a certain similarity between the position «■ of T. W. Rolleston and that of John Todhunter in the history of the Revival. Both were already well- known in a different sphere of literature when they joined the group of Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland, and neither continued very long to write poetry of a distinctively Irish character. Like Tod- hunter, Rolleston was attracted to Irish literature - by the example of Standish O'Grady, although he was definitely engaged upon work of a very different kind, having become known prior to 1888, as a critic of Walt Whitman and Epictetus. He did not, how- ever, publish an independent volume of verse until comparatively recently, when Sea Spray: Verses and Translations appeared in 1909. While it con- tains some of Rolleston's early verse, this book can hardly be described as a typical collection of modern Irish poetry. With Todhunter and Yeats, he col- laborated in both series of The Book of the Rhymers^ Club, and this association seems to have Anglicised his verse as effectively as it did that of Todhunter, for, of the Irish poets who met at the " Cheshire Cheese," Yeats alone preserved his national identity.

The Dead at Clanmacnois and The Grave of Rury are poems which awake a regret that their author should have so soon forsaken Celtic sources, but it is certainly better that he should have done so, than have continued to write when the freshness of in- spiration had left him. He has preferred to give the anthologists a few verses whose charm is undeniable rather than to submerge his talent in a mass of feeble poetry. It is as a prose writer that he has rendered - most service to the literature of his country, which is indebted to him for Imagination and Art in Gaelic

114 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

Literature (1900), The High Deeds of Finn and Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race (191 1). For the pres- ent we may note that Rolleston's failure to realise such hopes as were raised by his contributions to Poems a7id Ballads of Young Ireland does not in any way lessen the value of his work at this early period. He worked energetically with those who created the Irish Literary Society, of which he was the first Secretary, and whose success was due in a great measure to his help.

At an earlier date he had established a claim upon - lovers of Irish poetry by his editorship of The Dublin University Review. He was responsible for the growth of that periodical Into something very differ- • ent from what might have been expected from its title. The review, however, was not connected with the institution after which It was named, and became, in Rolleston's hands, a centre of national ideas and Irish culture. These pages saw the pub- lication of the first important poems of W. B. Yeats, The Island of Statues in 1885 and Mosada, the fol- lowing year. In addition to several shorter poems by the same writer. The Dublin University Review died shortly afterwards of that pecuniary malnutrition which has so often been the lot of Irish reviews, however well nourished they may have been in- tellectually. In the present instance Rolleston was able to face extinction in the satisfaction of knowing that he had done well by the new literature in Ire- land. By sheltering the work of W. B. Yeats he - assisted the Revival more materially than any original effort could possibly have done. Rolleston's work about this time was not confined to the liter- ature of the future. He was responsible for the ap- pearance of a volume of Ellen O'Leary's poems, and also a selection from the work of Thomas Davis,

THE REVIVAL 115

which has been re-issued in more elaborate form, as one of the recently instituted series, "Every Irish- man's Library." In thus rendering accessible some of the better work of the older school he increased the obligation of Irish readers to his editorial activi- ties. It is, therefore, for his practical and critical services that he is remembered in the history of the Irish Literary Revival. As joint editor of the Treasury of Irish Poetry he has helped to produce an Anthology which is still indispensable to the study of Anglo-Irish literature. Since its publication in 1900 our poetic "treasury" has been enriched by many new names. But were a new, enlarged, edition to be brought out, this book would^trengthen a position as yet unchallenged by any of the numerous collections of Irish poetry that have followed it.

WILLIAM LARMINIE

Although he did not contribute to Poems and Bal- lads of Young Ireland, William Larminie may be counted as one of those early poets whom we have de- scribed as the vanguard of the Revival. Glanlua and other Poems appeared in 1889, a date marking, as we have seen, the beginnings of modern Irish poetry. Larminie was unlike the contemporary poets we have mentioned in that he neither belonged to the young generation of Katharine Tynan and W. B. Yeats, nor had he the literary experience of Todhunter or Rolleston, to whom his years approximated him. He began to write at an age considerably in advance of that of the other beginners, for he was forty when Glanlua was published. This fact is a testimony to the potency of the influences that stirred the in- tellectual waters of Ireland during the early years of the Revival. Todhunter furnished us with an in-

ii6 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

stance of an older writer having been led to alter both the form and content of his work by the spell of nationality. Larminie, however, is more inter- esting, inasmuch as he seems to have discovered himself in the general literary awakening of the time. It was, perhaps, not easy for a writer of some ma- turity like Todhunter to cultivate a new style, and to abandon, even temporarily, the traditions he had followed with success. It must have been even more difficult for Larminie to answer suddenly the call to letters.

What was re-creation in Todhunter was a veritable creation in Larminie, whose literary faculties had Iain dormant. This quickening of the poetic spirit was due, once again, to the revelation of bardic lit- erature. Larminie's verse is informed throughout by the Celtic spirit of legend and mysticism, and few of his poems find their inspiration outside of Ire- land. The title-poem of his second volume, Fand and other Poems, published in 1892, was, like Glanlua, derived from the history of the Red Branch. While the former book contained only three poems in addi- tion to Glanlua, the latter is more substantial, and more representative of the author's talent. Besides Fand, It contains Moytura, equally based upon bardic material, and Larminie's most ambitious effort. Unlike the younger poets of the time, he was at- tracted to narrative rather than lyric poetry, for the bulk of his verse Is contained In the three long poems named, Glanlua, Fand and Moytura. At the same time he has written some lyrics of great charm; Sunset at Malinmore, Consolation and The Finding of Hy Brasil may be cited amongst the best of the very few shorter poems Larminie has left.

Fand and Moytura possess an interest for the stu- dent of Anglo-Irish poetry not shared by Glanlua,

THE REVIVAL 117

While the latter is written in regular rhymed verse, the former are in the nature of a metrical experiment. Larminie had devoted some time to the study of the development of metrics and, although it was not until a couple of years later that he publicly formu- lated his theor)^, he experimented in this volume of 1892. Briefly his contention was that assonance, being prior to rhyme, as is evident from early Gaelic poetry, might be substituted, especially where the rhyme is either purely visual or inaudible. In Fand and other Poems assonance is systematically em- ployed, in both regular and irregular forms. This tradition of Gaelic literature has left its mark upon the verse of many living Irish poets. Whether con- sciously or unconsciously, the work of W. B. Yeats and A. E. is frequently assonantal, but Larminie is the only poet, apart from the translators, who deliberately had recourse to this form. It is not merely occasionally, but throughout an entire vol- ume, that he uses assonance.

The experimental character of his verse undoubt- edly contributed to his failure to secure popular recognition. The story of Cuchulain and Fand, which corresponds and contrasts so interestingly with the legend of Venus and Tannhauser, is a theme which should naturally engage the attention of a poet sensible of the beauties of Celtic literature. In Fand, Larminie handled the subject with great sym- pathy, but the irregularity of his verse precluded him from reaching the imagination of the general public. Moytura similarly was limited in its effectiveness, though to a lesser extent, by the strangeness of its forms. Here the great struggle between the Tuatha de Danaan and the Formorians lends itself more easily to popular treatment. There are more oppor- tunities for achieving those effects of language, those

ii8 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

pictures evoked by words full of colour and music, which are generally held to constitute poetry. This legendary battle of the Celtic deities, symbolising the victory over darkness of the powers of light, is unfolded in a narrative of great imaginative strength. The reader is caught by an excitement which enables him to forget the unfamiliar metres, elsewhere more noticeable, because unrelieved by any verbal charm.

Without subcribing to Verlaine's ^''de la musique avant toute chose,''^ we may reasonably demand that poetry possess some musical quality. The frequent error of mistaking mere sound for poetic beauty springs from the just and instinctive belief that verse should strike the ear by some obvious, artistic quality absent from prose. It is claimed for English poetry that it does not rely upon the ear for its effects, but is addressed primarily to the mind and to the spirit. This seems to be the point of departure of that criti- cism which constantly assures us of the superiority of English over French verse. The^superstition that French is the language of prose, and English the language of poetry, has gained wide acceptance from the authority of Matthew Arnold. His well-known dictum has been repeated by all English-speaking critics of French poetry, although it was a generalisa- tion as hasty as that in which he belauded the excel- lence of the so-called "journeyman work of litera- ture" in France.

Arnold's theory regarding French poetry has no apparent basis beyond the fact that the latter must be, above all things, musical; no elevation of thought, nor depth of spirituality being sufficient to make inharmonious verse pass for poetry. Because of the manifest beauties of French prose Arnold as- sumes it must be the medium in which the French language attains its highest achievements. But the

THE REVIVAL 119

prose of France is the direct outcome of her verse, the beauty of Pascal being intimately related to the beauty of Racine. It is strange, moreover, that Arnold's generalisation has been accepted precisely by those who hold that the English Bible is unique. The existence of the Authorised Verson is surely an external vindication of the claims of English prose, and a fundamental invalidation of Arnold's theory, in the absence of any French prose surpassing that of the Bible a doubt is permissible as to the neces- sary inequality of the claims of English and French poetry.

This digression has not led us as far away from our subject as may appear, for Larminie supplies, in a minor way, an illustration of the point at issue. If a philosophy and a spiritual message are more essen- tial to poetry than verbal music, then the author of Moytura should have secured the attention bestowed upon his contemporaries. It would be wrong to suggest that he lacks charm, for few will deny, once they have mastered his rhythms, that he has skill and imagination enough to hold the attention. But by no means can he be described as a master of fine language, he is far too often preoccupied by the thought itself to elaborate scrupulously its expression. There is a dignity and elevation, rather than beauty, in his verse, while its originality is evident. These . qualities, however, were inadequate to the task he had undertaken, and to which he probably sacrificed a measure of success. In order to impose his theory of assonance as a substitute for rhyme, something more was required.

Plausibly as he argued, in The Development of English Metres, against the use of worn-out or use- less rhymes, the ultimate test of his case was his verse. Could he in practise show any pleasing and

I20 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

acceptable improvement upon the forms he wished to displace? Here, unfortunately, he demonstrated, not that hackneyed rhymes were desirable, but that disagreeable assonance was not preferable. His pro- posals might have had more success had they come from a poet skilled in the use of language, and in command of a perfect technique. Larminie's poems lack artistry, they are often harsh, and while their spiritual worth attracts, their form repels. It is, nevertheless, an interesting commentary upon the alleged English predilection for substance rather than form in poetry that, when the essentially musi- cal, unreflective work of many contemporary Irish poets was greeted in England with enthusiasm, Lar- minie was hardly known outside his own country.

An early death prevented Larminie from realising his literary powers to their full extent. Whether he would have continued to write verse, and ulti- mately have given us a volume of poetry adequately representative of its legendary sources, must remain a matter of conjecture. Reference has been made in a former chapter to his West Irish Folk Tales and RomanceSy a work which shows how deep was his interest in the remnants of Ireland's Gaelic heritage. A poet who added a wide acquaintance with the Irish language to the living Celtic tradition preserved in it, clearly enjoyed an advantage shared by none of his contemporaries. Here, if ever, was a combina- tion that might have given Anglo-Irish literature an epic. But indications seem to point to a deter- mination in Larminie to forsake poetry. His first prose work, above referred to, was published in 1893, a year after Fand, and from that date until his death in 1900, he was engaged principally in critical work. This changed activity during the last years of his life, having regard to the fact that he

THE REVIVAL 121

died leaving an unfinished study of Scotus Erigena, suggests that he intended to seek in prose the success his poetry had denied him. In sharp contrast to WilHam Larminle stands the poet who now claims attention and whose first important volume, The Wanderings oj Oisin, appeared the same year as Glanlua.

CHAPTER VI WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS: THE POEMS

FOR many years W. B. Yeats was the most widely-known name In contemporary Irish literature, and it was not until the success of J. M. Synge that his predominance was challenged. Even then, however, the great differ- ence in the work and manner of the two writers re- sulted in there being but a slight modification in the popular estimate of Yeats's importance. To many people he was, and is, synonymous with the Irish Literary Revival, of which they believe him to be the beginning and the end. As we have seen, not Yeats, but O'Grady, was the beginning of the Re- vival, and, as will be shown, very little of the work done by Irish writers during the past decade, or more, is traceable to the former. In attempting to delimit the influence of Yeats there is no intention to belittle what he has done, nor to deny that such an influence exists. He has certainly affected the course of the Revival, more especially in the first years of its existence, and is mainly responsible for the ultimate development of the Irish Theatre, but in neither instance has his role been that popularly attributed to him. At first his influence upon his contemporaries was undeniable. He induced them to abandon their politico-literary idols, and his own example served at once to enforce his arguments. His work not only exposed the weakness of the popu- lar models, but at the same time attracted serious

122

W. B. YEATS: THE POEMS 123

attention to the poetic awakening in Ireland. But this direct impulse was not sufficiently enduring to substantiate the claim that all our modern poetry comes from Yeats. In the theatre he has not at all moulded the form of Irish drama, for his plays have found no imitators, and remain separate and utterly distinct from the work of the other playwrights. Nevertheless, his presence has been a factor of some weight in the evolution of the Revival. Poet, dramatist, storyteller and essayist, he commands attention in almost every department of literature, and the mere bulk and diversity of his writings, apart from their intrinsic excellencies, are sufficient to ensure him a position of the first importance in any survey of Ireland's literary activities during the past quarter of a century. But he began as a poet, and a poet he remained essentially and at all times. His poetry will, therefore, be the first and main subject of our consideration, for by that his position must be estimated in the world of Irish letters.

LYRICAL AND NARRATIVE POEMS

It is only necessary to compare the four poems contributed by Yeats to Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland with those of his collaborators, to realise how vastly superior he was both to his young contem- poraries and to the older writers represented. The Madness of King Goll and The Stolen Child, the former one of the finest poems Yeats has written, show a remarkable delicacy and maturity of crafts- manship in a young man of twenty-two. Their respective themes, drawn from legend and fairy i /

lore, presage, moreover, the lines along which the poet developed his greatest successes. They have that glamour and sense of mysterious reality which

124 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

are peculiar to Yeats's verse at Its best, and haunt the memory Hke a subtle, Intellectual perfume. The legend of King Goll Is one which the poet Is able to interpret in the spirit of true Celtic mysticism. The old king who, In his madness, hears the voices of superhuman presences In the crying of the wind and the rolling of the waters, who feels the breath of the elemental powers, and the tramping feet of super- \ human beings — all the mystery of nature as sensed ' by the Celt is rendered with extraordinary skill and verbal felicity. The refrain:

"They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beach leaves old."

is not easily forgotten. This poem, and those that accompanied it, are the true forerunners of the poetry which has established the position of W. B. Yeats in contemporary literature. Their publi- cation, however, did not represent the first appear- ance of his work in book form. Yeats began w4th Mosada, a twelve-page brochure, published in 1886, but neither this, nor The Islarid of Statues^ its prede- cessor In the pages of the Dublin University Review, can be regarded as announcing the poet we have come to know. They are not so closely related to his maturer and characteristic work as the contribu- tions to Poe^ns and Ballads of Young Ireland. They were written while the poet was still searching for the direction In which lay the finest flowering of his talent. "When I first wrote," he says, "I went here and there for my subjects as my reading led me, and preferred to all other countries Arcadia and the India of romance." To this period of uncertainty belong The Island of Statues, Mosada, and The Seeker, three poems which have not been Included in any volume of Yeats's collected works since 1889, when he re-

W. B. YEATS: THE POEMS 125

published them in The Wanderings of Oisin. They were written at a time when the poet had not yet reahsed that Ireland was to be the source from which he would derive his surest inspiration. Neither the mediaeval Spain of Mosada, nor the Arcady of The Island of Statues, gave him the setting and atmosphere in which his genius could find its char- acteristic expression. Yeats was still too young to shake off the domination of Spenser and Shelley, whom he admired so deeply that he had to complain of his verses being "too full of the reds and yellows Shelley gathered in Italy." Hence we find Ire- land completely absent from these early poems, though their themes were not such as to preclude the hope of finding equivalents in the world of Irish romance. It is to the best of the three. The Island of Statues, that he probably alluded when he said: "I had read Shelley and Spenser, and had tried to mix i their styles together in a pastoral play which I have not come to dislike much." This "Arcadian Faery Tale in Two Acts," with its reminiscences of Shelley, and its Spenserian mould, certainly corresponds to Yeats's reference. In spite of this frank admission of imitation, an imitation which would in any case be expected in a young writer of nineteen years. The Island of Statues is far from being weakly imitative. It has an originality which is not weakened by the poet's consciousness of his models, and which indicates undoubted power. As has been stated, this early work does not reveal the poet we now know Yeats to be. That is to say, the national element is not pronounced in the three poems, which date from a time when he was as yet uncertain of the direction to which he should turn. The statement obviously does not imply that it is impossible to recognise in Mosada, or its predecessors, the author

126 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

of The Wanderings of Oisin. His first verses have many qualities in common with those of later years; \ the differences are of degree and of subject, rather ithan of manner and form. They have, above all, that music and beauty which were ultimately so exquisitely heightened when the voice of Celtic Ire- land sang in his verse:

Thou shalt outlive thine amorous happy time,

And dead as are the lovers of old rime

Shall be the hunter-lover of thy youth.

Yet ever more, through all thy days of ruth,

Shall grow thy beauty and dreamless truth

Such lines as these bear the imprint of the spirit by which Yeats's best work is informed. But the only part of The Island of Statues that he has preserved is that little lyric The Cloak, the Boat and the Shoes, and even this he has slightly emended, with that fastidiousness which has prevented him from reprint- ing many of his early poems, and has effected such great changes in the later editions of all his works.

When, after four years of poetical activity, Yeats offered his first collection of verse to the public, in 1889, he was evidently progressing towards the real- isation of his powers. Both in choice of subject and in style The Wanderings of Oisin and other Poems marks an advance sufficient to warrant its being described as a representative volume. In essence most of his later work is here, and, as the book con- tained all his poetry up to that date, it is usually regarded as the beginning of W. B. Yeats. It has, indeed, been made by many the point of departure of the Revival, but there is evidence that this is not the case. Granted that Standish O'Grady is the source, it will easily be seen that The Wanderings of Oisin was not the first stream of poetry to issue from him. Larminie's Glanlua, and Todhunter's Banshee

W. B. YEATS: THE POEMS 127

were the contemporaneous products of the same im- pulse as gave birth to Yeats's volume. Since O'Grady had sent the young generation to the roots of national culture a number of new writers were at / work, and the year 1889 saw their emergence from obscurity. Hyde's Leabhar Sgeuluigheachta, which heralded the Gaelic Movement, appeared in the same years as The Wanderings of Oisin, and 1889 is, there- fore, a date of some interest to students of contem- porary Irish literature. The time had come for the realisation of various ideas and ideals which were stirring in Ireland, hence the almost simultaneous appearance of a number of writers representing or emphasising new tendencies. But neither Yeats nor Larminie nor Todhunter can be regarded as origi- nating any movement, inasmuch as they themselves were the outcome of a movement already initiated. Without admitting the wider claims made on behalf of The Wanderings of Oisin, we may justly consider it as the beginning of Yeats's career. The title poem itself sufficiently indicates a definite orientation towards national poetry, instead of the vague romances of Arcady and Spain with which the poet was at first engaged. The latter, it is true, find here their first and only republication, but the volume, in the main, is distinctly Irish. Yeats was an early champion of Ferguson against the rhetorical school and, during the first years of the Literary Societies, he had constantly to assail the theory that The Nation poets were unimpeachable models for all who desired to write Irish poetry. As far back as 1886 he wrote in the Dublin University Review, urging the merits of Ferguson, whom he recognised as the true precursor of the new spirit. This disciple- ship explains in some measure The Wanderings of Oisin. Although there is no trace of Ferguson in

128 IRELAND'S LITERARY RENAISSANCE

Yeats's style, he played, nevertheless, an important part In the literary education of the young poet. It was doubtless his study of Ferguson that prompted him to essay an epic poem upon an Irish subject, and to give, in The Wanderings of Oisin, the measure of his genius. From Ferguson and Allingham Yeats learned what Irish poetry could be made, once the political note was softened or entirely silenced. "If somebody could make a style," he wrote, "which would not be an English style, and yet would be musical and full of colour many others would catch fire from him." This was the thought which turned Yeats from Spain and Arcady to Ireland, and in his volume of 1889, we find him in the act of realising his ideal of national poetry. An artist in words, he had an advantage over Ferguson, whose conception and aims were lofty, but whose craftsmanship was unequal. Having been roused by O'Grady's prose, Yeats was able to bring to the old legends an admir- ation equal to Ferguson's, but a sense of artistry and a temperament unknown to the older writer. He constantly exhorted his contemporaries to chasten thel?:; enthusiasm for the crude outbursts of aggres- sive patriotism, for, as he pointed out, "if more of them would write about the beliefs of the people like Allingham, or about old legends like Ferguson, they would find it easier to get a style."

The first edition of The Wmiderings of Oisin differs materially from the version published in the collected volume Poems, of 1895. The latter, though subse- quently emended here and there, is substantially the poem as it appeared in its final form in later editions. Even in its original form the poem could not but be a revelation of the poetical possibilities of the new Irish literature. Starting from the idea of the clash of Paganism and Christianity, which had appealed

W. B. YEATS; THE POEMS 129

so often to the poets of old, Yeats succeeded in creating something which was as truly In harmony with the Celtic spirit as It was expressive of himself and the generation he announced. The tale relates Olsin's departure for the magic faery land, where with NIamh he dwells for three centuries, first In the Island of Dancing, then in the Island of Victories, and finally In the Island of Forgetfulness ; the frame- work of legend Is preserved, but the content is an expression of personality, where the past Is blended subtly with the present. Ferguson, familiar as he was with the legends and mythology of Ireland, failed somehow to Infuse the warmth of reality Into his reconstructions of antiquity; his poems, like those of Todhunter, and others who have treated of the legendary subjects, do not give the sense of intimacy needed to transport the reader. Their efforts