Lady Augusta Gregory

by Irish Myths

  the grass."

  OISIN. "It was not in shaping fields and grass that my king took

  his delight, but in overthrowing fighting men, and defending

  countries, and bringing his name into every pan.

  "In courting, in playing, in hunting, in baring his banner at the

  first of a fight; in playing at chess, at swimming, in looking

  around him at the drinking-hall.

  "O Patrick, where was your God when the two came over the

  sea that brought away the queen of Lochlann of the Ships? Where

  was He when Dearg came, the son of the King of Lochlann of the

  golden shields? Why did not the King of Heaven protect them

  from the blows of the big man?

  "Or when Tailc, son of Treon, came, the man that did great

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  slaughter on the Fianna; it was not by God that champion fell,

  but by Osgar, in the sight of all.

  "Many a battle and many a victory was gained by the Fianna

  of Ireland; I never heard any great deed was done by the King of

  Saints, or that He ever reddened His hand.

  "It would be a great shame for God not to take the locks of

  pain off Finn; if God Himself were in bonds, my king would fight

  for His sake.

  "Finn left no one in pain or in danger without freeing him by

  silver or gold, or by fighting till he got the victory.

  "For the strength of your love, Patrick, do not forsake the

  great men; bring in the Fianna unknown to the King of Heaven.

  "It is a good claim I have on your God, to be among his clerks

  the way I am; without food, without clothing, without music,

  without giving rewards to poets.

  "Without the cry of the hounds or the horns, without guarding coasts, without courting generous women; for all that I have suffered by the want of food, I forgive the King of Heaven in

  my will. "

  Oisin said: "My story is sorrowful. The sound of your voice is

  not pleasant to me. I will cry my fill, but not for God, but because

  Finn and the Fianna are not living. "

  CHAPTER IV.

  OISIN'S l.AMENTS

  And Oisin used to be making laments, and sometimes he would

  be making praises of the old times and of Finn; and these are

  some of them that are remembered yet:-

  I saw the household of Finn; it was not the household of a soft

  race; I had a vision of that man yesterday.

  I saw the household of the High King, he with the brown,

  sweet-voiced son; I never saw a better man.

  OISIN AND PATRICK

  423

  I saw the household of Finn; no one saw it as I saw it; I saw

  Finn with the sword, Mac an Luin. Och ! it was sorrowful to see it.

  I cannot tell out every harm that is on my head; free us from

  our trouble for ever; I have seen the household of Finn.

  It is a week from yesterday I last saw Finn; I never saw a braver

  man. A king of heavy blows; my law, my adviser, my sense and my

  wisdom, prince and poet, braver than kings, King of the Fianna,

  brave in all countries; golden salmon of the sea, clean hawk of the

  air, rightly taught, avoiding lies; strong in his doings, a right judge,

  ready in courage, a high messenger in bravery and in music.

  His skin lime-white, his hair golden; ready to work, gentle to

  women. His great green vessels full of rough sharp wine, it is rich

  the king was, the head of his people.

  Seven sides Finn's house had, and seven score shields on

  every side. Fifty fighting men he had about him having woollen

  cloaks; ten bright drinking-cups in his hall; ten blue vessels, ten

  golden horns.

  It is a good household Finn had, without grudging, without

  lust, without vain boasting, without chattering, without any slur

  on any one of the Fianna.

  Finn never refused any man; he never put away any one that

  came to his house. If the brown leaves falling in the woods were

  gold, if the white waves were silver, Finn would have given away

  the whole of it.

  Blackbird of Doire an Chairn, your voice is sweet; I never

  heard on any height of the world music was sweeter than your

  voice, and you at the foot of your nest.

  The music is sweetest in the world, it is a pity not to be listening to it for a while, 0 son of Calphum of the sweet bells, and you would overtake your nones again.

  If you knew the story of the bird the way I know it, you would

  be crying lasting tears, and you would give no heed to your God

  for a while.

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  In the country of Lochlann of the blue streams, Finn, son of

  Cumhal, of the red-gold cups, found that bird you hear now; I

  will tell you its story truly.

  Doire an Chairn, that wood there to the west, where the

  Fianna used to be delaying, it is there they put the blackbird, in

  the beauty of the pleasant trees.

  The stag of the heather of quiet Cruachan, the sorrowful croak

  from the ridge of the Two Lakes; the voice of the eagle of the Valley of the Shapes, the voice of the cuckoo on the Hill of Brambles.

  The voice of the hounds in the pleasant valley; the scream of

  the eagle on the edge of the wood; the early outcry of the hounds

  going over the Strand of the Red Stones.

  The time Finn lived and the Fianna, it was sweet to them to be

  listening to the whistle of the blackbird; the voice of the bells

  would not have been sweet to them.

  There was no one of the Fianna withou t his fine silken

  shirt and his soft coat, without bright armour, without shining

  stones on his head, two spears in his hand, and a shield that

  brought victory.

  If you were to search the world you would not find a harder

  man, best of blood, best in battle; no one got the upper hand of

  him. When he went out trying his white hound, which of us

  could be put beside Finn?

  One time we went hunting on Slieve-nam-ban; the sun was

  beau tiful overhead, the voice of the hounds went east and

  west, from hill to hill. Finn and Bran sat for a while on the hill,

  every man was jealous for the hunt. We let out three thousand

  hounds from their golden chains; every hound of them brought

  down two deer.

  Patrick of the true crozier, did you ever see, east or west, a

  greater hunt than that hunt of Finn and the Fianna? 0 son of Calphum of the bells, that day was better to me than to be listening to your lamentations in the church.

  OISIN AND PATRICK

  425

  There is no strength in my hands to-night, there is no power

  within me; it is no wonder I to be sorrowful, being thrown down

  in the sorrow of old age.

  Everything is a grief to me beyond any other man on the face

  of the earth, to be dragging stones along to the church and the hill

  of the priests.

  I have a little story of our people. One time Finn had a mind

  to make a dun on the bald hill of Cuailgne, and he put it on the

  Fianna of Ireland to bring stones for building it; a third on

  the sons of Moma, a third on myself, and a third on the sons of

  Baiscne.

  I gave an answer to Finn, son of Cumhal; I said I would be

  under his sway no longer, and that I
would obey him no more.

  When Finn heard that, he was silent a long time, the man

  without a lie, without fear. And he said to me then: "You yourself

  will be dragging stones before your death comes to you."

  I rose up then with anger on me, and there followed me the

  fourth of the brave battalions of the Fianna. I gave my own judgments, there were many of the Fianna with me.

  Now my strength is gone from me, I that was adviser to the

  Fianna; my whole body is tired to-night, my hands, my feet, and

  my head, tired, tired, tired.

  It is bad the way I am after Finn of the Fianna; since he is gone

  away, every good is behind me.

  Without great people, without mannerly ways; it is sorrowful I

  am after our king that is gone.

  I am a shaking tree, my leaves gone from me; an empty nut, a

  horse without a bridle; a people without a dwelling-place, I Oisin,

  son of Finn.

  It is long the clouds are over me to-night! it is long last night

  was; although this day is long, yesterday was longer again to me;

  every day that comes is long to me !

  That is not the way I used to be, without fighting, without battles, without learning feats, without young girls, without music,

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  without harps, without bruising bones, without great deeds; without increase of learning, without generosity, without drinking at feasts, without courting, without hunting, the two trades I was

  used to; without going out to battle, Ochone ! the want of them is

  sorrowful to me.

  No hunting of deer or stag, it is not like that I would wish to

  be; no leashes for our hounds, no hounds; it is long the clouds are

  over me to-night!

  Without rising up to do bravery as we were used, without

  playing as we had a mind; without swimming of our fighting men

  in the lake; it is long the clouds are over me to-night!

  There is no one at all in the world the way I am; it is a pity the

  way I am; an old man dragging stones; it is long the clouds are

  over me to-night!

  I am the last of the Fianna, great Oisin, son of Finn, listening

  to the voice of bells; it is long the clouds are over me to-night!

  N O T E S

  I. THE APOLOGY

  The Irish text of the greater number of the stories in this book has

  been published, and from this text I have worked, making my

  own translation as far as my scholarship goes, and when it fails,

  taking the meaning given by better scholars. In some cases the

  Irish text has not been printed, and I have had to work by comparing and piecing together various translations. I have had to put a connecting sentence of my own here and there, and I have fused

  different versions together, and condensed many passages, and I

  have left out many, using the choice that is a perpetual refusing,

  in trying to get some clear outline of the doings of the heroes.

  I have found it more natural to tell the stories in the manner of

  the thatched houses, where I have heard so many legends of Finn

  and his friends, and Oisin and Patrick, and the Ever-Living Ones,

  and the Country of the Young, rather than in the manner of the

  slated houses, where I have not heard them.

  Four years ago, Dr Atkinson, a Professor of Trinity College,

  Dublin, in his evidence before the Commission of Intermediate

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  Education, said of the old literature of Ireland:-"It has scarcely

  been touched by the movements of the great literatures; it is the

  untrained popular feeling. Therefore it is almost intolerably low

  in tone-I do not mean naughty, but low; and every now and

  then, when the circumstance occasions it, it goes down lower

  than low. . . . If I read the books in the Greek, the Latin or the

  French course, in almost every one of them there is something

  with an ideal ring about it-something that I can read with positive pleasure-something that has what the child might take with him as a KTijµa. elr d.el -a perpetual treasure; but if I read the

  Irish books, I see nothing ideal in them, and my astonishment

  that through the whole range of Irish literature that I have read

  (and I have read an enormous range of it) , the smallness of the

  element of idealism is most noticeable . . . . And as there is very little idealism there is very little imagination . . . . The Irish tales as a rule are devoid of it fundamentally."

  Dr Atkinson is an Englishman, but unfortunately not only

  fellow-professors in Trinity but undergraduates there have been

  influenced by his opinion, that Irish literature is a thing to be

  despised. I do not quote his words to draw attention to a battle

  that is still being fought, but to explain my own object in working, as I have worked ever since that evidence was given, to make a part of Irish literature accessible to many, especially among my

  young countrymen, who have not opportunity to read the translations of the chief scholars, scattered here and there in learned periodicals, or patience and time to disentangle overlapping and

  contradictory versions, that they may judge for themselves as to

  its "lowness" and "want of imagination," and the other wellknown charges brought against it before the same Commission.

  I believe that those who have once learned to care for the story

  of Cuchulain of Muirthemne, and of Finn and Lugh and Etain,

  and to recognise the enduring belief in an invisible world and an

  immortal life behind the visible and the mortal, will not be content

  with my redaction, but will go, first to the fuller versions of the

  best scholars, and then to the manuscripts themselves. I believe

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  429

  the forty students of old Irish lately called together by Professor

  Kuno Meyer will not rest satisfied until they have explored the

  scores and scores of uncatalogued and untranslated manuscripts in

  Trinity College Library, and that the enthusiasm which the Gaelic

  League has given birth to will lead to much fine scholarship.

  A day or two ago I had a letter from one of the best Greek

  scholars and translators in England, who says of my "Cuchulain" :

  "It opened up a great world of beautiful legend which, though

  accounting myself as an Irishman, I had never known at all. I am

  sending out copies to Irish friends in Australia who, I am sure,

  will receive the same sort of impression, almost an impression of

  pride in the beauty of the Irish mind, as I received myself. " And

  President Roosevelt wrote to me a little time ago that after he had

  read "Cuchulain of Muirthemne," he had sent for all the other

  translations from the Irish he could get, to take on his journey to

  the Western States.

  I give these appreciative words not, I think, from vanity, for

  they are not for me but for my material, to show the effect our old

  literature has on those who come fresh to it, and that they do not

  complain of its "want of imagination." I am, of course, very proud

  and glad in having had the opportunity of helping to make it

  known, and the task has been pleasant, although toilsome. Just

  now, indeed, on the 6th October, I am tired enough, and I think

  with sympathy of the old Highland piper, who complained that

  he was "wi
thered with yelping the seven Fenian battalions. "

  II. THE AGE AND ORIGIN

  OF THE STORIES OF THE FIANNA

  Mr Alfred Nutt says in Ossian and the Ossianic Literature, No. 3 of

  his excellent series of sixpenny pamphlets, Popular Studies in

  Mythology, Romance, and Folklore:-

  "The body of Gaelic literature connected with the name of

  Ossian is of very considerable extent and of respectable antiquity.

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  The oldest texts, prose for the most part, but also in verse, are

  preserved in Irish MSS. of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and

  go back to a period from one hundred and fifty to two hundred

  and fifty years older at least. The bulk of Ossianic literature is,

  however, of later date as far as the form under which it has come

  down to us is concerned. A number of important texts, prose for

  the most part, are preserved in MSS. of the fourteenth century, but

  were probably redacted in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries.

  But by far the largest mass consists of narrative poems, as a rule

  dramatic in structure. These have come down to us in MSS. written in Scotland from the end of the fifteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century, in Ireland from the sixteenth down to the

  middle of the nineteenth century. The Gaelic-speaking peasantry,

  alike in Ireland and Scotland, have preserved orally a large number of these ballads, as also a great mass of prose narratives, the heroes of which are Ossian and his comrades.

  "Were all Ossianic texts preserved in MSS. older than the

  present century to be printed, they would fill some eight to ten

  thousand octavo pages. The mere bulk of the literature, even if we

  allow for considerable repetition of incident, arrests attention. If

  we further recall that for the last five hundred years this body of

  romance has formed the chief imaginative recreation of Gaeldom,

  alike in Ireland and Scotland, and that a peasantry unable to read

  or write has yet preserved it almost entire, its claims to consideration and study will appear manifest."

  He then goes on to discuss how far the incidents in the stories

  can be accepted as they were accepted by Irish historical writers

  of the eleventh century as authentic history:-

  "Fortunately there is little need for me to discuss the credibility or otherwise of the historic records concerning Finn, his family, and his band of warriors. They may be accepted or rej ected according to individual bent of mind withou t really modifying our view of the literature. For when we tum to the