[16]The genitive ofdrai, the moderndraoi(dhree) isdruad, from whence no doubt the Latindruidis. It was Pliny who first derived the name fromδρῦς. The word with a somewhat altered meaning was in use till recently. The wise men from the East are called druids (draoithe) in O'Donnell's translation of the New Testament. The modern word for enchantment (draoidheacht) is literally "druidism," but an enchanter is usuallydraoidheadóir, a derivation fromdraoi.
[16]The genitive ofdrai, the moderndraoi(dhree) isdruad, from whence no doubt the Latindruidis. It was Pliny who first derived the name fromδρῦς. The word with a somewhat altered meaning was in use till recently. The wise men from the East are called druids (draoithe) in O'Donnell's translation of the New Testament. The modern word for enchantment (draoidheacht) is literally "druidism," but an enchanter is usuallydraoidheadóir, a derivation fromdraoi.
[17]See above, ch. III, note14.
[17]See above, ch. III, note14.
[18]Cathbad, Conor mac Nessa's Druid, foretold that any one who took arms—the Irish equivalent for knighthood—upon a certain day, would become famous for ever, but would enjoy only a brief life. It was Cuchulain who assumed arms upon that day.
[18]Cathbad, Conor mac Nessa's Druid, foretold that any one who took arms—the Irish equivalent for knighthood—upon a certain day, would become famous for ever, but would enjoy only a brief life. It was Cuchulain who assumed arms upon that day.
[19]O'Curry quotes a druidic ordeal from the MS. marked H. 3. 17 in Trinity College, Dublin. A woman to clear her character has to rub her tongue to a red-hot adze of bronze, which had been heated in a fire of blackthorn or rowan-tree.
[19]O'Curry quotes a druidic ordeal from the MS. marked H. 3. 17 in Trinity College, Dublin. A woman to clear her character has to rub her tongue to a red-hot adze of bronze, which had been heated in a fire of blackthorn or rowan-tree.
[20]"Revue Celt.," vol. ii. p. 443. Is Bel to be equated with what Rhys calls in one place "the chthonian divinity Beli the Great," of the Britons, and in another "Beli the Great, the god of death and darkness"? (See"Hibbert Lectures," pp. 168 and 274.)
[20]"Revue Celt.," vol. ii. p. 443. Is Bel to be equated with what Rhys calls in one place "the chthonian divinity Beli the Great," of the Britons, and in another "Beli the Great, the god of death and darkness"? (See"Hibbert Lectures," pp. 168 and 274.)
[21]The Christian priests, apparently unable to abolish these cattle ceremonies, took the harm out of them by transferring them to St. John's Eve, the 24th of June, where they are still observed in most districts of Ireland, and large fires built with bones in them, and occasionally cattle are driven through them or people leap over them. The cattle were probably driven through the fire as a kind of substitute for their sacrifice, and the bones burnt in the fire are probably a substitute for the bones of the cattle that should have been offered up. Hence the fires are called "teine cnámh" (bone-fire) in Irish, and bōne-fire (not bŏnfire) in English.
[21]The Christian priests, apparently unable to abolish these cattle ceremonies, took the harm out of them by transferring them to St. John's Eve, the 24th of June, where they are still observed in most districts of Ireland, and large fires built with bones in them, and occasionally cattle are driven through them or people leap over them. The cattle were probably driven through the fire as a kind of substitute for their sacrifice, and the bones burnt in the fire are probably a substitute for the bones of the cattle that should have been offered up. Hence the fires are called "teine cnámh" (bone-fire) in Irish, and bōne-fire (not bŏnfire) in English.
[22]St. Patrick is there stated to have found around the king "scivos et magos et auruspices, incantatores et omnis malæ artis inventores."
[22]St. Patrick is there stated to have found around the king "scivos et magos et auruspices, incantatores et omnis malæ artis inventores."
[23]This means tonsured men, with cowls, with pastoral staves, with altars in the east end of the churches. The ancient Irish rann is very curious:—-"Ticcat TailcinnTar muir meirceann,A mbruit toillceann.A crainn croimceann.A miasa n-airrter tigeFriscerat uile amen."
[23]This means tonsured men, with cowls, with pastoral staves, with altars in the east end of the churches. The ancient Irish rann is very curious:—-
"Ticcat TailcinnTar muir meirceann,A mbruit toillceann.A crainn croimceann.A miasa n-airrter tigeFriscerat uile amen."
[24]I.e., one half in Ireland, the other in Scotland, alluding to his work at Iona and among the Picts.
[24]I.e., one half in Ireland, the other in Scotland, alluding to his work at Iona and among the Picts.
[25]Stokes, "Lives of the Saints, from the Book of Lismore," p. 183.
[25]Stokes, "Lives of the Saints, from the Book of Lismore," p. 183.
[26]Who were, according to Ammianus Marcellinus, quoting the Greek historian, Timagenes, "sodaliciis adstricti consortiis."
[26]Who were, according to Ammianus Marcellinus, quoting the Greek historian, Timagenes, "sodaliciis adstricti consortiis."
[27]There is one other instance of human sacrifice mentioned in the Book of Ballymote, but this is recorded in connection with funeral games, and appears to have been an isolated piece of barbarity performed "that it might be a reproach to the Momonians for ever, and that it might be a trophy over them." Fiachra, a brother of Niall of the Nine Hostages, in the fourth century, carried off fifty hostages from Munster, and dying of his wounds, the hostages were buried alive with him, round his grave: "ro hadnaicead na geill tucadh a neass ocus siad beo im fheart Fiachra comba hail for Mumain do gres, ocus comba comrama forra." For another allusion to "human sacrifice" see O'Curry's "Manners and Customs," vol. i. p. dcxli and cccxxxiii. The "Dinnseanchas," quoted from above, is a topographical work explaining the origin of Irish place-names, and attributed to Amergin mac Amhalgaidh, poet to King Diarmuid mac Cearbaill, who lived in the sixth century. "There seems no reason," says Dr. Atkinson, in his preface to the facsimile Book of Leinster, "for disputing his claims to be regarded as the original compiler of a work of a similar character—the original nucleus is not now determinable." The oldest copy is the Book of Leinster and treats of nearly two hundred places and contains eighty-eight poems. The copy in the Book of Ballymote contains one hundred and thirty-nine, and that in the Book of Lecan even more. The total number of all the poems contained in the different copies is close on one hundred and seventy. The copy in the Bodleian Library was published by Whitley Stokes in "Folk-lore," December, 1892, and that in the Advocates Library, in Edinburgh, in "Folk-lore," December, 1893. The prose tales, from a copy at Rennes, he published in the "Revue Celtique," vols. xv. and xvi. An edition of the oldest copy in the Book of Leinster is still a desideratum. The whole work is full of interesting pagan allusions, but the different copies, in the case of many names, vary greatly and even contradict each other.
[27]There is one other instance of human sacrifice mentioned in the Book of Ballymote, but this is recorded in connection with funeral games, and appears to have been an isolated piece of barbarity performed "that it might be a reproach to the Momonians for ever, and that it might be a trophy over them." Fiachra, a brother of Niall of the Nine Hostages, in the fourth century, carried off fifty hostages from Munster, and dying of his wounds, the hostages were buried alive with him, round his grave: "ro hadnaicead na geill tucadh a neass ocus siad beo im fheart Fiachra comba hail for Mumain do gres, ocus comba comrama forra." For another allusion to "human sacrifice" see O'Curry's "Manners and Customs," vol. i. p. dcxli and cccxxxiii. The "Dinnseanchas," quoted from above, is a topographical work explaining the origin of Irish place-names, and attributed to Amergin mac Amhalgaidh, poet to King Diarmuid mac Cearbaill, who lived in the sixth century. "There seems no reason," says Dr. Atkinson, in his preface to the facsimile Book of Leinster, "for disputing his claims to be regarded as the original compiler of a work of a similar character—the original nucleus is not now determinable." The oldest copy is the Book of Leinster and treats of nearly two hundred places and contains eighty-eight poems. The copy in the Book of Ballymote contains one hundred and thirty-nine, and that in the Book of Lecan even more. The total number of all the poems contained in the different copies is close on one hundred and seventy. The copy in the Bodleian Library was published by Whitley Stokes in "Folk-lore," December, 1892, and that in the Advocates Library, in Edinburgh, in "Folk-lore," December, 1893. The prose tales, from a copy at Rennes, he published in the "Revue Celtique," vols. xv. and xvi. An edition of the oldest copy in the Book of Leinster is still a desideratum. The whole work is full of interesting pagan allusions, but the different copies, in the case of many names, vary greatly and even contradict each other.
Cæsar, writing some fifty years before Christ about the Gauls and their Druids, tells his countrymen that one of the prime articles which they taught was that men's souls do not die—non interire animas—"but passed over after death from one into another," and their opinion is, adds Cæsar, that this doctrine "greatly tends to the arousing of valour, all fear of death being despised."[1]A few years later Diodorus Siculus wrote that one of their doctrines was "that the souls of men are undying, and that after finishing their term of existence they pass into another body," adding that at burials of the dead some actually cast letters addressed to their departed relatives upon the funeral pile, under the belief that the dead would read them in the next world. Timagenes, a Greek who wrote a history of Gaul now lost, Strabo, Valerius Maximus, Pomponius Mela, and Lucan[2]in his "Pharsalia," all have passages upon this vivid belief of the Gauls that the soul lived again. This doctrine must also have been current in Britain, where the Druidic teaching was, to use Cæsar's phrase,"discovered, and thence brought into Gaul," and it would have been curious indeed if Ireland did not share in it.
There is, moreover, abundant evidence to show that the doctrine of metempsychosis was perfectly familiar to the pagan Irish, as may be seen in the stories of the births of Cuchulain, Etain, the Two Swineherds, Conall Cearnach, Tuan Mac Cairill, and Aedh Sláne.[3]But there is not, in our existing literature, any evidence that the belief was ever elevated into a philosophical doctrine of general acceptance, applicable to every one, still less that there was ever any ethical stress laid upon the belief in rebirth. It is only the mythological element in the belief in metempsychosis which has come down to us, and from which we ascertain that the pagan Irish believed that supernatural beings could become clothed in flesh and blood, could enter into women and be born again, could take different shapes and pass through different stages of existence, as fowls, animals, or men. What the actual doctrinal form of the familiar idea was, or how far it influenced the popular mind, we have no means of knowing. But as Mr. Nutt well remarks, "early Irish religion must have possessed some ritual, and what in default of an apter term must be styled philosophical as well as mythological elements. Practically the latter alone have come down to us, and that in a romantic rather than in a strictly mythical form. Could we judge Greek religion aright if fragments of Apollodorus or the 'Metamorphoses' were all that survived of the literature it inspired?"[4]The most that can be said upon the subject, then, is that the doctrine of rebirth was actually taught with a deliberate ethical purpose—that of making men brave, since on being slain in this life they passed into a new one—amongst the Celts of Gaul, that it must have been familiar to the Britons between whose Druids and those of Gaul so close a resemblance subsisted, and that the idea of rebirth whichforms part of half-a-dozen existing Irish sagas, was perfectly familiar to the Irish Gael, although we have no evidence that it was connected with any ritual or taught as a deliberate doctrine.
In reconstructing from our existing literature the beliefs and religion of our ancestors, we can only do so incompletely, and with difficulty, from passages in the oldest sagas and other antique fragments, mostly of pagan origin, from allusions in very early poems, from scanty notices in the annals, and from the lives of early saints. The relatively rapid conversion of the island to Christianity in the fifth century, and the enthusiasm with which the new religion was received, militated against any full transmission of pagan belief or custom. We cannot now tell whether all the ancient Irish were imbued with the same religious beliefs, or whether these varied—as they probably did—from tribe to tribe. Probably all the Celtic races, even in their most backward state, believed—so far as they had any persuasion on the subject at all—in the immortality of the soul. Where the souls of the dead went to, when they were not reincarnated, is not so clear. They certainly believed in a happy Other-World, peopled by a happy race, whither people were sometimes carried whilst still alive, and to gain which they either traversed the sea to the north-west, or else entered one of the Sidh [Shee] mounds, or else again dived beneath the water.[5]In all cases, however, whatever the mode of access, the result is much the same. A beautiful country is discoveredwhere a happy race free from care, sickness, and death, spend the smiling hours in simple, sensuous pleasures.
There is a graphic description of this Elysium in the "Voyage of Bran," a poem evidently pagan,[6]and embodying purely pagan conceptions. A mysterious female, an emissary from the lovely land, appears in Bran's household one day, when the doors were closed and the house full of chiefs and princes, and no one knew whence she came, and she chanted to them twenty-eight quatrains describing the delights of the pleasant country.
"There is a distant isleAround which sea-horses glisten,A fair course against the white-swelling surge,Four feet uphold it.[7]Feet of white bronze under it,Glittering through beautiful ages.Lovely land throughout the world's ageOn which the many blossoms drop.An ancient tree there is with blossomsOn which birds call to the Hours.'Tis in harmony, it is their wontTo call together every Hour.* * * * *
Unknown is wailing or treacheryIn the familiar cultivated land,There is nothing rough or harsh,But sweet music striking on the ear.Without grief, without sorrow, without death,Without any sickness, without debility,That is the sign of Emain,Uncommon, an equal marvel.A beauty of a wondrous landWhose aspects are lovely,Whose view is a fair country,Incomparable in its haze.* * * * *The sea washes the wave against the land,Hair of crystal drops from its mane.Wealth, treasures of every hue,Are in the gentle land, a beauty of freshness,Listening to sweet music,Drinking the best of wine.Golden chariots on the sea plainRising with the tide to the sun,Chariots of silver in the plain of sportsAnd of unblemished bronze.* * * * *At sunrise there will comeA fair man illumining level lands,He rides upon the fair sea-washed plain,He stirs the ocean till it is blood.* * * * *Then they row to the conspicuous stoneFrom which arise a hundred strains.It sings a strain unto the hostThrough long ages, it is not sad,Its music swells with choruses of hundreds.They look for neither decay nor death.
There will come happiness with healthTo the land against which laughter peals.Into Imchiuin [the very calm place] at every season,Will come everlasting joy.It is a day of lasting weatherThat showers [down] silver on the land,A pure-white cliff in the verge of the seaWhich from the sun receives its heat."
Manannán, the Irish Neptune, driving in a chariot across the sea, which to him was a flowery plain, meets Bran thereafter, and chants to him twenty-eight more verses about the lovely land of Moy Mell, "the Pleasant Plain," which the unknown lady had described, and they are couched in the same strain.
"Though [but] one rider is seenIn Moy Mell of many powers,There are many steeds on its surfaceAlthough thou seest them not.* * * * *A beautiful game, most delightfulThey play [sitting] at the luxurious wine,Men and gentle women under a bushWithout sin, without crime.* * * * *A wood with blossom and fruit,On which is the vine's veritable fragrance;A wood without decay, without defect,On which are leaves of golden hue."
Then, prophesying of the death of Mongan, he sang—
"He will drink a drink from Loch Ló,While he looks at the stream of blood;The white hosts will take him under a wheel of clouds,To the gathering where there is no sorrow."
I know of few things in literature comparable to this lovely description, at once so mystic and so sensuous, of the joys ofthe other world. To my mind it breathes the very essence of Celtic glamour, and is shot through and through with the Celtic love of form, beauty, landscape, company, and the society of woman. How exquisite the idea of being transported from this world to an isle around which sea-horses glisten, where from trees covered with blossoms the birds call in harmony to the Hours, a land whose haze is incomparable! What a touch! Where hair of crystal drops from the mane of the wave as it washes against the land; where the chariots of silver and of bronze assemble on the plain of sports, in the country against which laughter peals, and the day of lasting weather showers silver on the land. And then to play sitting at the luxurious wine—
"Men and gentle women under a bushWithout sin, without crime!"
I verily believe there is no Gael alive even now who would not in his heart of hearts let drift by him the Elysiums of Virgil, Dante, and Milton to grasp at the Moy Mell of the unknown Irish pagan.
In another perhaps equally ancient story, that of the elopement of Connla, son of Conn of the Hundred Battles,[8]with a lady who is a denizen of this mysterious land, we find the unknown visitor giving nearly the same account of it as that given to Bran.
"Whence hast thou come, O Lady?" said the Druid.
"I have come," said she, "from the lands of the living in which there is neither death, nor sin, nor strife;[9]we enjoy perpetual feasts without anxiety, and benevolence without contention. A large Sidh [Shee, "fairy-mound"] is where wedwell, so that it is hence we are called the Sidh [Shee] people."
The Druids appear, as I have already remarked, to have acted as intermediaries between the inhabitants of the other world and of this, and in the story of Connla one of them chants against the lady so that her voice was not heard, and he drives her away through his incantation. She comes back, however, at the end of a month, and again summons the prince.
"'Tis no lofty seat," she chanted, "upon which sits Connla amid short-lived mortals awaiting fearful death; the ever-living ones invite thee to be the ruler over the men of Tethra."
Conn of the Hundred Battles, who had overheard her speech, cried, "Call me the Druid; I see her tongue has been allowed her to-day [again]."
But she invisible to all save the prince replied to him—
"O Conn of the Hundred Battles, druidism is not loved, for little has it progressed to honour on the great Righteous Strand, with its numerous, wondrous, various families."
After that she again invites the prince to follow her, saying—
"There is another land which it were well to seek.I see the bright sun is descending, though far off we shall reach it ere night.'Tis the land that cheers the mind of every one that turns to me.There is no race in it save only women and maidens."
The prince is overcome with longing. He leaps into her well-balanced, gleaming boat of pearl. Those who were left behind upon the strand "saw them dimly, as far as the sight of their eyes could reach. They sailed the sea away from them, and from that day to this have not been seen, and it is unknown where they went to."
In the fine story of Cuchulain's sick-bed,[10]in which thoughthe language of the text is not so ancient, the conceptions are equally pagan, the deserted wife of Manannán, the Irish Neptune, falls in love with the human warrior, and invites him to the other-world to herself, through the medium of an ambassadress. Cuchulain sends his charioteer Laeg along with this mysterious ambassadress, that he may bring him word again, to what kind of land he is invited. Laeg, when he returns, repeats a glowing account of its beauty, which coincides closely with those given by the ladies who summoned Bran and Connla.
"There are at the western door,In the place where the sun goes down,A stud of steeds of the best of breedsOf the grey and the golden brown.There wave by the eastern doorThree crystal-crimson trees,Whence the warbling bird all day is heardOn the wings of the perfumed breeze.And before the central doorIs another, of gifts untold.All silvern-bright in the warm sunlight,Its branches gleam like gold."[11]* * * * *
In the saga of the Wooing of Etain we meet with what is substantially the same description. She is the wife of one of the Tuatha De Danann, is reborn as a mortal, and weds the king of Ireland. Her former husband, Midir, still loves her, follows her, and tries to win her back. She is unwilling, and he chants to her this description of the land to which he would lure her.
"Come back to me, lady, to love and to shineIn the land that was thine in the long-ago,Where of primrose hue is the golden hairAnd the limbs are as fair as the wreathèd snow.To the lakes of delight that no storm may curl,Where the teeth are as pearl, the eyes as sloes,Which alight, whenever they choose to seek,On the bloom of a cheek where the foxglove glows.Each brake is alive with the flowers of spring,Whence the merles sing in their shy retreat;Though sweet be the meadows of Innisfail,Our beautiful vale is far more sweet.Though pleasant the mead be of Innisfail,More pleasant the ale of that land of mine,A land of beauty, a land of truth,Where youth shall never grow old or pine.Fair rivers brighten the vale divine,—There are choicest of wine and of mead therein.And heroes handsome and women fairAre in dalliance there without stain or sin.From thence we see, though we be not seen,We know what has been and shall be again,And the cloud that was raised by the first man's fall,Has concealed us all from the eyes of men.Then come with me, lady, to joys untold,And a circlet of gold on thy head shall be,Banquets of milk and of wine most rare,Thou shalt share, O lady, and share with me."[12]
The casual Christian allusion in the penultimate verse need not lead us astray, nor does it detract from the essentially pagan character of the rest, for throughout almost the whole of Irish literature the more distinctly or ferociously pagan any piece is, the more certain it is to have a Christian allusion added at the end as a make-weight. There is great ingenuity displayed in thus turning the pagan legend into a Christian homily by the addition of two lines suggesting that if men were not sinful, this beautiful pagan world and the beautiful forms that inhabited it would be visible to the human ken. This was sufficient to disarm any hostility to the legend on the part of the Church.
From what we have said it is evident that the ancient Irish pagans believed in the possibility of rebirth, and founded many of their mythical sagas on the doctrine of metempsychosis, and that they had a highly ornate and fully-developed belief in a happy other-world or Elysium, to which living beings were sometimes carried off without going through the forms of death. But it is impossible to say whether rebirth with life in another world, for those whom the gods favoured, was taught as a doctrine or had any ethical significance attached to it by the druids of Ireland, as it most undoubtedly had by their cousins the druids of Gaul.
[1]"De Bello Gallico," vi. 14.
[1]"De Bello Gallico," vi. 14.
[2]See "Voyage of Bran," vol. ii. pp. 107-111, where all these passages have been lucidly collected by Mr. Nutt.
[2]See "Voyage of Bran," vol. ii. pp. 107-111, where all these passages have been lucidly collected by Mr. Nutt.
[3]All of these have been studied by Mr. Nutt, chap. xiv.
[3]All of these have been studied by Mr. Nutt, chap. xiv.
[4]Vol. ii. p. 121.
[4]Vol. ii. p. 121.
[5]In a large collection of nearly sixty folk-lore stories taken down in Irish from the lips of the peasantry, I find about five contain allusions to the belief in another world full of life under water, and about four in a life in the inside of the hills. The Hy Brasil type—that of finding the dead living again on an ocean island—is, so far as I have yet collected, quite unrepresented amongst them. An old Irish expression for dying is going "to the army of the dead," used by Déirdre in her lament, and I find a variant of it so late as the beginning of this century, in a poem by Raftery, a blind musician of the county Mayo, who tells his countrymen to remember that they must go "to the meadow of the dead."SeeRaftery's "Aithreachas," in my "Religious Songs of Connacht," p. 266.
[5]In a large collection of nearly sixty folk-lore stories taken down in Irish from the lips of the peasantry, I find about five contain allusions to the belief in another world full of life under water, and about four in a life in the inside of the hills. The Hy Brasil type—that of finding the dead living again on an ocean island—is, so far as I have yet collected, quite unrepresented amongst them. An old Irish expression for dying is going "to the army of the dead," used by Déirdre in her lament, and I find a variant of it so late as the beginning of this century, in a poem by Raftery, a blind musician of the county Mayo, who tells his countrymen to remember that they must go "to the meadow of the dead."SeeRaftery's "Aithreachas," in my "Religious Songs of Connacht," p. 266.
[6]Admirably translated by Kuno Meyer, who says "there are a large number of [word] forms in the 'Voyage of Bran,' as old as any to be found in the Wurzburg Glosses," and these Professor Thurneysen ascribes unhesitatingly to the seventh century. Zimmer also agrees that the piece is not later than the seventh century, that is, was first written down in the seventh century, but this is no criterion of the date of the original composition.
[6]Admirably translated by Kuno Meyer, who says "there are a large number of [word] forms in the 'Voyage of Bran,' as old as any to be found in the Wurzburg Glosses," and these Professor Thurneysen ascribes unhesitatingly to the seventh century. Zimmer also agrees that the piece is not later than the seventh century, that is, was first written down in the seventh century, but this is no criterion of the date of the original composition.
[7]I give Kuno Meyer's translation: in the original—"Fil inis i n-eterchéinImmataitnet gabra reinRith find fris tóibgel tondatCeitheóir cossa foslongat."In modern Irish the first two lines would run"[Go] bhfuil inis i n-idir-chéinUrn a dtaithnigeann gabhra réin."Réinbeing the genitive ofrian, "the sea," which, according to M. d'Arbois, the Gaels brought with them as a reminiscence of the Rhine, see above p.10.
[7]I give Kuno Meyer's translation: in the original—
"Fil inis i n-eterchéinImmataitnet gabra reinRith find fris tóibgel tondatCeitheóir cossa foslongat."
In modern Irish the first two lines would run
"[Go] bhfuil inis i n-idir-chéinUrn a dtaithnigeann gabhra réin."
Réinbeing the genitive ofrian, "the sea," which, according to M. d'Arbois, the Gaels brought with them as a reminiscence of the Rhine, see above p.10.
[8]Preserved in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, a MS. compiled from older ones about the year 1100. See for this story "Gaelic Journal," vol. ii. p. 306.
[8]Preserved in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, a MS. compiled from older ones about the year 1100. See for this story "Gaelic Journal," vol. ii. p. 306.
[9]"Dodeochadsa for in ben a tirib beó áit inna bi bás na peccad na imorbus, i.e.[go], ndeachas-sa ar san bhean ó tíribh na mbeó, áit ann nach mbionn bás ná peacadh ná immarbhádh."
[9]"Dodeochadsa for in ben a tirib beó áit inna bi bás na peccad na imorbus, i.e.[go], ndeachas-sa ar san bhean ó tíribh na mbeó, áit ann nach mbionn bás ná peacadh ná immarbhádh."
[10]Also contained in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, a MS. transcribed about the year 1100.
[10]Also contained in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, a MS. transcribed about the year 1100.
[11]Literally: "There are at the western door, in the place where the sun goes down, a stud of steeds with grey-speckled manes and another crimson brown. There are at the eastern door three ancient trees of crimson crystal, from which incessantly sing soft-toned birds. There is a tree in front of the court, it cannot be matched in harmony, a tree of silver against which the sun shines, like unto gold is its great sheen."
[11]Literally: "There are at the western door, in the place where the sun goes down, a stud of steeds with grey-speckled manes and another crimson brown. There are at the eastern door three ancient trees of crimson crystal, from which incessantly sing soft-toned birds. There is a tree in front of the court, it cannot be matched in harmony, a tree of silver against which the sun shines, like unto gold is its great sheen."
[12]A Befind in raga lim / I tír n-ingnad hifil rind / Is barr sobairche folt and / Is dath snechtu chorp coind. Literally: "O lady fair wouldst thou come with me to the wondrous land that is ours, where the hair is as the blossom of the primrose, where the tender body is as fair as snow. There shall be no grief there nor sorrow; white are the teeth there, black are the eyebrows, a delight to the eye is the number of our host, and on every cheek is the hue of the foxglove."The crimson of the foxglove is in every brake, delightful to the eye [there] the blackbird's eggs. Although pleasant to behold are the plains of Innisfail, after frequenting the Great Plain rarely wouldst thou [remember them]. Though heady to thee the ale of Innisfail, headier the ale of the great land, a beauty of a land, the land I speak of. Youth never grows there into old age. Warm, sweet streams traverse the country with choicest mead and choicest wine, handsome persons [are there], without blemish, conception without sin, without stain."We see every one on every side, and no one seeth us; the cloud of Adam's wrong-doing has concealed us from being numbered. O lady, if thou comest to my brave land, it is a crown of gold shall be upon thy head, fresh flesh of swine, banquets of new milk and ale shalt thou have with me then, fair lady."Aproposof the Irish liking for swine's flesh, Stanihurst tells a good story: "'No meat,' says he, 'they fansie so much as porke, and the fatter the better. One of John O'Nel's [Shane O'Neill's] household demanded of his fellow whether beefe were better than porke. 'That,' quoth the other, 'is as intricate a question as to ask whether thou art better than O'Nell.'"
[12]A Befind in raga lim / I tír n-ingnad hifil rind / Is barr sobairche folt and / Is dath snechtu chorp coind. Literally: "O lady fair wouldst thou come with me to the wondrous land that is ours, where the hair is as the blossom of the primrose, where the tender body is as fair as snow. There shall be no grief there nor sorrow; white are the teeth there, black are the eyebrows, a delight to the eye is the number of our host, and on every cheek is the hue of the foxglove.
"The crimson of the foxglove is in every brake, delightful to the eye [there] the blackbird's eggs. Although pleasant to behold are the plains of Innisfail, after frequenting the Great Plain rarely wouldst thou [remember them]. Though heady to thee the ale of Innisfail, headier the ale of the great land, a beauty of a land, the land I speak of. Youth never grows there into old age. Warm, sweet streams traverse the country with choicest mead and choicest wine, handsome persons [are there], without blemish, conception without sin, without stain.
"We see every one on every side, and no one seeth us; the cloud of Adam's wrong-doing has concealed us from being numbered. O lady, if thou comest to my brave land, it is a crown of gold shall be upon thy head, fresh flesh of swine, banquets of new milk and ale shalt thou have with me then, fair lady."
Aproposof the Irish liking for swine's flesh, Stanihurst tells a good story: "'No meat,' says he, 'they fansie so much as porke, and the fatter the better. One of John O'Nel's [Shane O'Neill's] household demanded of his fellow whether beefe were better than porke. 'That,' quoth the other, 'is as intricate a question as to ask whether thou art better than O'Nell.'"
We now come to the question, When and where did the Irish get their alphabet, and at what time did they begin to practise the art of writing? The present alphabet of the Irish, which they have used in all their books from the seventh century down, and probably for three hundred years before that, is only a modification—and a peculiarly beautiful one—of the Roman letters. This alphabet they no doubt borrowed from their neighbours, the Romanised Britons, within whose territory they had established themselves, and with whom—now in peace, now in war—they carried on a vigorous and constant intercourse.[1]Thegeneraluse of letters in Ireland is, however, to be attributed to the early Christian missionaries.
But there is no reason to believe that it was St. Patrick, or indeed any missionary, who first introduced them. There probably were in Ireland many persons in the fourth century, or perhaps even earlier, who were acquainted with the art ofwriting. Already, at the beginning of the third century at least, says Zimmer in his "Keltische Studien," British missionaries were at work in the south of Ireland. Bede, in his history, says distinctly that Palladius was sent from Rome in the year 431 to the Irish "who believed in Christ"—"ad Scottos in Christum credentes." Already, at the close of the third century, there was an organised British episcopate, and three British bishops attended the Council of Arles held in 314. It is quite impossible that the numerous Irish colonies settled in the south of England and in Wales could have failed to come into contact with this organised Church, and even to have been influenced by it. The account in the Acta Sanctorum, of Declan, Bishop of Waterford, said to have been born in 347, and of Ailbe, another southern bishop, who met St. Patrick, may be looked upon as perfectly true in so far as it relates to the actual existence of these pre-Patrician bishops. St. Chrysostom, writing in the year 387, mentions that already churches and altars had been erected in the British Isles. Pelagius, the subtle and persuasive heresiarch who taught with such success at Rome about the year 400, and acquired great influence there, was of Irish descent—"habet progeniem Scotticæ gentis de Brittanorum vicinia," said St. Jerome. As St. Augustine and Prosper of Aquitaine call him "Briton" and "British scribe," he probably belonged to one of the Irish colonies settled in Wales or the South-west of England. His success at Rome is a proof that some Irish families at least were within reach of literary education in the fourth century. His friend and teacher, Celestius, has also been claimed as an Irishman, but Dr. Healy has shown that this claim is perhaps founded upon a misconception.[2]
"The influence of the ancient Irish on the Continent," says Dr. Sigerson, "began in the works of Sedulius, whose 'Carmen Paschale,' published in the fifth century,is the first great Christian epic worthy of the name." Sedulius, the Virgil of theological poetry, flourished in the first half of the fifth century, and seems to have studied in Gaul, passed into Italy, and finally resided in Achaia in Greece, which he seems to have made his home. There are at least eight Irish Siadals (in Latin Sedulius, in English Shiel) commemorated by Colgan. The strongest evidence of Sedulius's Irish nationality is that the Irish geographer Dicuil, in the eighth century, quoting some of his lines, calls himnoster Sedulius. John of Tritenheim, towards the close of the fifteenth century, distinctly calls him an Irishmannatione Scotus, but attributes to him the verses of a later Sedulius. Dr. Sigerson, by a clever analysis of his verse-peculiarities confirms this opinion.[3]
In the "Tripartite Life of St. Patrick" we read that the druids at the king's court, when St. Patrick arrived there, possessed books, and when, at a later date, St. Patrick determined upon revising the Brehon law code, the books in which it was written down were laid before him. That there has come down to our time no written record earlier than the seventh or eighth century[4]is chiefly due to the enormous destruction of books by the Danes and English. The same causes produced a like effect in Britain, for the oldest surviving British MSS. are not even as old as ours, although the art of writing must have been known and practised there since the Roman occupation.
The Irish had, however, another system of writing whichthey themselves invented. This was the celebrated Ogam script, consisting of a number of short lines, straight or slanting,[5]and drawn either below, above, or through one long stem-line, which stem-line is generally the angle between two sides of a long upright rectangular stone. These lines represented letters; and over two hundred stones have been found inscribed with Ogam writing. It is a remarkable fact that rude as this device for writing is, it has been applied with considerable skill, and is framed with much ingenuity. For in every case it is found that those letters which, like the vowels, are most easily pronounced, are also in Ogam the easiest to inscribe, and the simpler sounds are represented by simpler characters than those that are more complex. To account for the philosophical character of this alphabet[6]"than which nosimpler method of writing is imaginable," a German, Dr. Rethwisch, who examined it from this side, concluded that "the natural gifts of the Celts and their practical genius for simplicity and observation ripened up to a certain stage far earlier than those of their Indo-European relations." This statement, however, rests upon the as yet unproved assumption that Ogam writing is pre-Christian and pagan. What is of more interest is that the author of it supposed that with one or two changes it would make the simplest conceivable universal-alphabet or international code of writing. It is very strange that nearly all the Irish Ogam stones are found in the south-west, chiefly in the counties of Cork and Kerry, with a few scattered over the rest of the country—but one in West Connacht, and but one or two at the most in Ulster. Between twenty and thirty more have been found in Wales and Devonshire, and one or two even farther east, thus bearing witness to the colonies planted by the Irish marauders in early Britain, for Ogam writing is peculiar to the Irish Gael and only found where he had settled. Ten stones more have been found in Scotland, probably the latest in date of any, for some of these, unlike the Irish stones, bear Christian symbols. Many Ogams have been easily read, thanks to the key contained in the Book of Ballymote; thanks also to the fact that one or two Ogams have been found with duplicates inscribed in Latin letters. But many still defy all attempts at deciphering them, though numerous efforts have been made, treating them as though they were cryptic ciphers, which they were long believed to be. That Ogam was, as some assert, an early cryptic alphabet, and one intended to be read only by the initiated, is both in face of the numbers of such inscriptions already deciphered and in the face of the many instances recorded in our oldest sagas of its employment, an absurd hypothesis. It is nearly always treated in them as an ordinary script which any one could read. It may, however, have been occasionally used in later times in a cryptic sense, names beingwritten backwards or syllables transposed, but this was certainly not the original invention. Some of the latest Ogam pillars are gravestones of people who died so late as the year 600, but what proportion of them, if any, date from before the Christian era it is as yet impossible to tell. Certain it is that the grammatical forms of the language inscribed upon most of them are vastly older than those of the very oldest manuscripts,[7]and agree with those of the old Gaulish linguistic monuments.
Cormac's Glossary—a work of the ninth or tenth century—the ancient sagas, and many allusions in the older literature, would seem to show that Ogam writing was used by the pagan Irish. Cormac, explaining the wordfésays that "it was a wooden rod used by the Gael for measuring corpses and graves, and that this rod used always to be kept in the burial-places of the heathen, and it was a horror to every one even to take it in his hand, and whatever was abominable to them they (the pagans) used to inscribe on it in Ogam."[8]The sagas also are full of allusions to Ogam writing. In the "Táin Bo Chuailgne," which probably assumed substantially its present shape in the seventh century, we are told how when Cuchulain, after assuming arms, drove into Leinster withhis charioteer and came to the dún or fort of the three sons of Nechtan, he found on the lawn before the court a stone pillar, around which was written in Ogam that every hero who passed thereby was bound to issue a challenge. This was clearly no cryptic writing but the ordinary script, meant to be read by every one who passed.[9]Cuchulain in the same saga frequently cuts Ogam on wands, which he leaves in the way of Mève's army. These are always brought to his friend Fergus to read. Perhaps the next oldest allusion to Ogam writing is in the thoroughly pagan "Voyage of Bran," which both Zimmer and Kuno Meyer consider to have been committed to writing in the seventh century. We are there told that Bran wrote the fifty or sixty quatrains of the poem in Ogam. Again, in Cormac's Glossary[10]we find a story of how Lomna Finn mac Cool's fool (drúth) made an Ogam and put it in Finn's way to tell him how his wife had been unfaithful to him. A more curious case is the story in the Book of Leinster of Corc's flying to the Court of King Feradach in Scotland. Not knowing how he might be received he hid in a wood near by. The King's poet, however, meets him and recognises him, having seen him before that in Ireland. The poet notices an Ogam on the prince's shield, and asks him, "Who was it that befriended you with that Ogam, for it was not good luck which he designed for you?" "Why," asked the prince, "what does it contain?" "What it contains," said the poet, "is this—that if by day you arrive at the Court of Feradach the king, your head shall be struck off before night; if it be at night you arrive your head shall be struck off before morning."[11]This Ogam wasapparently readable only by the initiated, for the prince did not himself know what he was bearing on his shield.
All ancient Irish literature, then, is unanimous in attributing a knowledge of Ogam to the pre-Christian Irish. M. d'Arbois de Jubainville seems also to believe in its pagan antiquity, for when discussing the story of St. Patrick's setting a Latin alphabet before Fiach, and of the youth's learning to read the Psalms within the following four-and-twenty hours, he remarks that the story is just possible since Fiach should have known the Ogam alphabet, and except for the form of the letters it and the Latin alphabet were the same.[12]
St. Patrick, too, tells us in his "Confession" how after his flight from Ireland he saw a man coming as it were from that country with innumerable letters, a dream that would scarcely have visited him had he known that there was no one in Ireland who could write letters.[13]
The Ogam alphabet, however, is based upon the Roman. Of this there can be no doubt, for it contains letters which,according to the key, represents Q (made by five upright strokes above the stem line), Z, and Y, none of which letters are used in even the oldest MSS., and two of which at least must have been borrowed from the Romans. The most, then, that can at present be said with absolute certainty is, as Dr. Whitley Stokes cautiously puts it, that these Ogam inscriptions and the language in which they are couched are "enough to show that some of the Celts of these islands wrote their language before the fifth century, the time at which Christianity is supposed to have been introduced into Ireland."[14]The presence of these Roman letters never used by the Irish on vellum, and the absence of any aspirated letters (which abound even in the oldest vellum MSS.) are additional proofs of the antiquity of the Ogam alphabet.
The Irish themselves ascribed the invention of Ogam to [the god] Ogma, one of the leading Tuatha De Danann,[15]and although it may be, as Rhys points out, philologically unsound to derive Ogam from Ogma, yet there appears to be an intimate connection between the two words, and Ogma may well be derived from Ogam, which in its early stage may have meant fluency or learning rather than letters. Certainly there cannot be any doubt that Ogma, the Tuatha De Danann, was the same as the Gaulish god Ogmios of whom Lucian, that pleasantest of Hellenes, gives us an account so delightfully graphic that it is worth repeating in its entirety as another proof of what I shall have more to speak about later on, the solidarity—to use a useful Gallicism—of the Irish and the Continental Gauls.
"The Celts,"[16]says Lucian, "call Heracles in the language of their country Ogmios, and they make very strange representations of the god. With them he is an extremely old man with a bald forehead and his few remaining hairs quite grey; his skin is wrinkled and embrowned by the sun to that degree of swarthiness which is characteristic of men who have grown old in a seafaring life; in fact, you would fancy him rather to be a Charon or Japetus, one of the dwellers in Tartarus, or anybody rather than Heracles. But although he is of this description he is nevertheless attired like Heracles, for he has on him the lion's skin, and he has a club in the right hand; he is duly equipped with a quiver, and his left hand displays a bow stretched out, in these respects he is quite Heracles.[17]It struck me then that the Celts took such liberties with the appearance of Heracles in order to insult the gods of the Greeks and avenge themselves on him in their painting, because he once made a raid on their territory, when in search of the herds of Geryon he harassed most of the Western peoples. I have not yet, however, mentioned the most whimsical part of the picture, for this old man Heracles draws after him a great number of men bound by their ears, and the bonds are slender cords wrought of gold and amber, like necklaces of the most beautiful make; and although they are dragged on by such weak ties they never try to run away, though they could easily do it, nor do they at all resist or struggle against them, planting their feet in the ground and throwing their weight back in the direction contrary to that in which they are being led. Quite the reverse, they follow with joyful countenance in a merry mood, and praising him who leads them, pressing on, one and all, and slackening their chains in their eagerness to proceed; in fact, they look like men who would be grieved should they be set free. But that which seemed to me the most absurd thing of all I will not hesitate also to tell you: the painter, you see, had nowhere to fix the ends of the cords since the right hand of the god held the club and his left thebow; so he pierced the tip of his tongue and represented the people as drawn on from it, and the god turns a smiling countenance towards those whom he is leading. Now I stood a long time looking at these things and wondered, perplexed and indignant. But a certain Celt standing by, who knew something about our ways, as he showed by speaking good Greek—a man who was quite a philosopher I take it in local matters—said to me: 'Stranger, I will tell you the secret of the painting, for you seem very much troubled about it. We Celts do not consider the power of speech to be Hermes as you Greeks do, but we represent it by means of Heracles, because he is much stronger than Hermes. Nor should you wonder at his being represented as an old man, for the power of words is wont to show its perfection in the aged; for your poets are, no doubt, right when they say that the thoughts of young men turn with every wind, and that age has something wiser to tell us than youth. And so it is that honey pours from the tongue of that Nestor of yours, and the Trojan orators speak with a voice of the delicacy of the lily, a voice well covered, so to say, with bloom, for the bloom of flowers, if my memory does not fail me, has the term lilies applied to it. So if this old man Heracles (the power of speech) draws men after him, tied to his tongue by their ears, you have no reason to wonder; as you must be aware of the close connection between the ears and the tongue. Nor is there any injury done him by the latter being pierced; for I remember, said he, learning, while among you, some comic iambics to the effect that all chattering fellows have the tongue bored at the tip. In a word, we Celts are of opinion that Heracles himself performed everything by the power of words, as he was a wise fellow, and that most of his compulsion was effected by persuasion. His weapons, I take it, were his utterances, which are sharp and well-aimed, swift to pierce the mind, and you too say that words have wings.' Thus far the Celt."
"The Celts,"[16]says Lucian, "call Heracles in the language of their country Ogmios, and they make very strange representations of the god. With them he is an extremely old man with a bald forehead and his few remaining hairs quite grey; his skin is wrinkled and embrowned by the sun to that degree of swarthiness which is characteristic of men who have grown old in a seafaring life; in fact, you would fancy him rather to be a Charon or Japetus, one of the dwellers in Tartarus, or anybody rather than Heracles. But although he is of this description he is nevertheless attired like Heracles, for he has on him the lion's skin, and he has a club in the right hand; he is duly equipped with a quiver, and his left hand displays a bow stretched out, in these respects he is quite Heracles.[17]It struck me then that the Celts took such liberties with the appearance of Heracles in order to insult the gods of the Greeks and avenge themselves on him in their painting, because he once made a raid on their territory, when in search of the herds of Geryon he harassed most of the Western peoples. I have not yet, however, mentioned the most whimsical part of the picture, for this old man Heracles draws after him a great number of men bound by their ears, and the bonds are slender cords wrought of gold and amber, like necklaces of the most beautiful make; and although they are dragged on by such weak ties they never try to run away, though they could easily do it, nor do they at all resist or struggle against them, planting their feet in the ground and throwing their weight back in the direction contrary to that in which they are being led. Quite the reverse, they follow with joyful countenance in a merry mood, and praising him who leads them, pressing on, one and all, and slackening their chains in their eagerness to proceed; in fact, they look like men who would be grieved should they be set free. But that which seemed to me the most absurd thing of all I will not hesitate also to tell you: the painter, you see, had nowhere to fix the ends of the cords since the right hand of the god held the club and his left thebow; so he pierced the tip of his tongue and represented the people as drawn on from it, and the god turns a smiling countenance towards those whom he is leading. Now I stood a long time looking at these things and wondered, perplexed and indignant. But a certain Celt standing by, who knew something about our ways, as he showed by speaking good Greek—a man who was quite a philosopher I take it in local matters—said to me: 'Stranger, I will tell you the secret of the painting, for you seem very much troubled about it. We Celts do not consider the power of speech to be Hermes as you Greeks do, but we represent it by means of Heracles, because he is much stronger than Hermes. Nor should you wonder at his being represented as an old man, for the power of words is wont to show its perfection in the aged; for your poets are, no doubt, right when they say that the thoughts of young men turn with every wind, and that age has something wiser to tell us than youth. And so it is that honey pours from the tongue of that Nestor of yours, and the Trojan orators speak with a voice of the delicacy of the lily, a voice well covered, so to say, with bloom, for the bloom of flowers, if my memory does not fail me, has the term lilies applied to it. So if this old man Heracles (the power of speech) draws men after him, tied to his tongue by their ears, you have no reason to wonder; as you must be aware of the close connection between the ears and the tongue. Nor is there any injury done him by the latter being pierced; for I remember, said he, learning, while among you, some comic iambics to the effect that all chattering fellows have the tongue bored at the tip. In a word, we Celts are of opinion that Heracles himself performed everything by the power of words, as he was a wise fellow, and that most of his compulsion was effected by persuasion. His weapons, I take it, were his utterances, which are sharp and well-aimed, swift to pierce the mind, and you too say that words have wings.' Thus far the Celt."
We see, then, that the Irish legend that it was Ogma (who is also said to have been skilled in dialects and poetry) who invented the Ogam alphabet, so useful as a medium through which to convey language, is quite borne out by the account given to Lucian of the Gaulish god Ogmios, the eloquent old man whose language was endowed with so great a charm that he took his hearers captive. He turns, says Lucian, towards his willing captives with a smiling face, and the Irish Ogma,too, is called Ogma "of the shining countenance."[18]Nor does the Gaul in dressing Ogma as a Hercules appear to have acted altogether whimsically, because not only is Ogma skilled in poetry and dialects and the inventor of Ogam, but he is also all through the battle of Moytura actually depicted as thestrong manof the De Danann, strong enough to push a stone which eighty pair of oxen could not have moved.
The modern Irish names for books, reading, writing, letters, pens, and vellum, are all derived from the Latin.[19]But there seem to have been other names in use to designate the early writing materials of the Irish. These were the Taibhli Fileadh, "poets' tablets," and Tamhlorg Fileadh, which is translated by O'Curry as poets' "headless staves." This latter word, whatever may be the exact meaning of it, is at least pure Gaelic. We read in the "Colloquy of the Ancients" that St. Patrick began to feel a little uneasy at the delight with which he listened to the stories of the ancient Fenians, and in his over-scrupulous sanctity he feared it might be wrong to extract such pleasure from merely mundane narrations. Accordingly he consulted his two guardian angels on the matter, but received an emphatic response from both of them, not only to the effect that there was no harm in listening to the stories themselves, but actually desiring him to get them written down "in poets'támhlorgsand in the words of ollavs, for it will be a rejoicing to numbers and to the good people to the end of time, to listen to those stories."[20]Anancient passage from the Brehon Laws prescribes that a poet may carry atábhall-lorgor tablet-staff, and O'Curry acutely suggests that these so-called tablet-staves were of the nature of a fan which could be closed up in the shape of a square stick, upon the lines and angles of which the poet wrote in Ogam. We can well imagine the almost superstitious reverence which in rude times must have attached itself, and which as we know did attach itself, to the man who could carry about in his hand the whole history and genealogy of his race, and probably the catchwords of innumerable poems and the skeletons of highly-prized narratives. It was probably through these means that the genealogies of which I have spoken were so accurately transmitted and kept from the third or fourth century, and possibly from a still earlier period.
Amongst many other accounts of pre-Christian writing there is one so curious that it is worth giving herein extenso.[21]
THE STORY OF BAILE MAC BUAIN, THE SWEET-SPOKEN."Buain's only son was Baile. He was specially beloved by Aillinn,[22]the daughter of Lewy,[23]son of Fergus Fairgé—but some say she was the daughter of Owen, son of Dathi—and he was specially beloved not of her only, but of every one who ever heard or saw him, on account of his delightful stories."Now Baile and Aillinn made an appointment to meet at Rosnaree, on the banks of the Boyne in Bregia. And he came from Emania in the north to meet her, passing over Slieve Fuad and Muirthuimhne to Tráigh mBaile (Dundalk), and here he and his troops unyoked their chariots, sent their horses out to pasture, and gave themselves up to pleasure and happiness."And while they were there they saw a horrible spectral personage coming towards them from the South. Vehement were his steps and his rapid progress. The way he sped over the earth might be comparedto the darting of a hawk down a cliff or to wind from off the green sea, and his left was towards the land [i.e., he came from the south along the shore]."'Go meet him,' said Baile, 'and ask him where he goes, or whence he comes, or what is the cause of his haste.'"'From Mount Leinster I come, and I go back now to the North, to the mouth of the river Bann; and I have no news but of the daughter of Lewy, son of Fergus, who had fallen in love with Baile mac Buain, and was coming to meet him. But the youths of Leinster overtook her, and she died from being forcibly detained, as Druids and fair prophets had prophesied, for they foretold that they would never meet in life, but that they would meet after death, and not part for ever. There is my news,' and he darted away from them like a blast of wind over the green sea, and they were not able to detain him."When Baile heard this he fell dead without life, and his tomb and his rath were raised, and his stone set up, and his funeral games were performed by the Ultonians."And a yew grew up through his grave, and the form and shape of Baile's head was visible on the top of it—whence the place is called Baile's Strand [now Dundalk]."Afterwards the same man went to the South to where the maiden Aillinn was, and went into her grianan or sunny chamber."'Whence comes the man whom we do not know?' said the maiden."'From the northern half of Erin, from the mouth of the Bann I come, and I go past this to Mount Leinster.'"'You have news?' said the maiden."'I have no news worth mentioning now, only I saw the Ultonians performing the funeral games and digging the rath, and setting up the stone, and writing the name of Baile mac Buain, the royal heir of Ulster, by the side of the strand of Baile, who died while on his way to meet a sweetheart and a beloved woman to whom he had given affection, for it was not fated for them to meet, in life, or for one of them to see the other living,' and he darted out after telling the evil news."And Aillinn fell dead without life, and her tomb was raised, etc. And an apple tree grew through her grave and became a great tree at the end of seven years, and the shape of Aillinn's head was upon its top."Now at the end of seven years poets and prophets and visioners cut down the yew which was over the grave of Baile, and they made apoet's tabletof it, and they wrote the visions and the espousals andthe loves and the courtships of Ulster in it. [The apple tree which grew over the grave of Aillinn was also cut down] and in like manner the courtships of Leinster were written in it."There came a November eve long afterwards, and a festival was made to celebrate it by Art, the son of Conn [of the Hundred Battles, High-king of Ireland], and the professors of every science came to that feast as was their custom, and they brought their tablets with them. And these tablets also came there, and Art saw them, and when he saw them he asked for them; and the two tablets were brought and he held them in his hands face to face. Suddenly the one tablet of them sprang upon the other, and they became united the same as a woodbine round a twig, and it was not possible to separate them. And they were preserved like every other jewel in the treasury at Tara until it was burned by Dúnlang, son of Enna, at the time he burnt the Princesses at Tara, as has been said"'The apple tree of noble Aillinn,The yew of Baile—small inheritance—Though they are introduced into poemsUnlearned people do not understand them.'"and Ailbhé, daughter of Cormac, grandson of Conn [of the Hundred Battles] said too"'What I liken Lumluine toIs to the Yew of Baile's rath,What I liken the other toIs to the Apple Tree of Aillinn.'"
"Buain's only son was Baile. He was specially beloved by Aillinn,[22]the daughter of Lewy,[23]son of Fergus Fairgé—but some say she was the daughter of Owen, son of Dathi—and he was specially beloved not of her only, but of every one who ever heard or saw him, on account of his delightful stories.
"Now Baile and Aillinn made an appointment to meet at Rosnaree, on the banks of the Boyne in Bregia. And he came from Emania in the north to meet her, passing over Slieve Fuad and Muirthuimhne to Tráigh mBaile (Dundalk), and here he and his troops unyoked their chariots, sent their horses out to pasture, and gave themselves up to pleasure and happiness.
"And while they were there they saw a horrible spectral personage coming towards them from the South. Vehement were his steps and his rapid progress. The way he sped over the earth might be comparedto the darting of a hawk down a cliff or to wind from off the green sea, and his left was towards the land [i.e., he came from the south along the shore].
"'Go meet him,' said Baile, 'and ask him where he goes, or whence he comes, or what is the cause of his haste.'
"'From Mount Leinster I come, and I go back now to the North, to the mouth of the river Bann; and I have no news but of the daughter of Lewy, son of Fergus, who had fallen in love with Baile mac Buain, and was coming to meet him. But the youths of Leinster overtook her, and she died from being forcibly detained, as Druids and fair prophets had prophesied, for they foretold that they would never meet in life, but that they would meet after death, and not part for ever. There is my news,' and he darted away from them like a blast of wind over the green sea, and they were not able to detain him.
"When Baile heard this he fell dead without life, and his tomb and his rath were raised, and his stone set up, and his funeral games were performed by the Ultonians.
"And a yew grew up through his grave, and the form and shape of Baile's head was visible on the top of it—whence the place is called Baile's Strand [now Dundalk].
"Afterwards the same man went to the South to where the maiden Aillinn was, and went into her grianan or sunny chamber.
"'Whence comes the man whom we do not know?' said the maiden.
"'From the northern half of Erin, from the mouth of the Bann I come, and I go past this to Mount Leinster.'
"'You have news?' said the maiden.
"'I have no news worth mentioning now, only I saw the Ultonians performing the funeral games and digging the rath, and setting up the stone, and writing the name of Baile mac Buain, the royal heir of Ulster, by the side of the strand of Baile, who died while on his way to meet a sweetheart and a beloved woman to whom he had given affection, for it was not fated for them to meet, in life, or for one of them to see the other living,' and he darted out after telling the evil news.
"And Aillinn fell dead without life, and her tomb was raised, etc. And an apple tree grew through her grave and became a great tree at the end of seven years, and the shape of Aillinn's head was upon its top.
"Now at the end of seven years poets and prophets and visioners cut down the yew which was over the grave of Baile, and they made apoet's tabletof it, and they wrote the visions and the espousals andthe loves and the courtships of Ulster in it. [The apple tree which grew over the grave of Aillinn was also cut down] and in like manner the courtships of Leinster were written in it.
"There came a November eve long afterwards, and a festival was made to celebrate it by Art, the son of Conn [of the Hundred Battles, High-king of Ireland], and the professors of every science came to that feast as was their custom, and they brought their tablets with them. And these tablets also came there, and Art saw them, and when he saw them he asked for them; and the two tablets were brought and he held them in his hands face to face. Suddenly the one tablet of them sprang upon the other, and they became united the same as a woodbine round a twig, and it was not possible to separate them. And they were preserved like every other jewel in the treasury at Tara until it was burned by Dúnlang, son of Enna, at the time he burnt the Princesses at Tara, as has been said
"'The apple tree of noble Aillinn,The yew of Baile—small inheritance—Though they are introduced into poemsUnlearned people do not understand them.'
"and Ailbhé, daughter of Cormac, grandson of Conn [of the Hundred Battles] said too
"'What I liken Lumluine toIs to the Yew of Baile's rath,What I liken the other toIs to the Apple Tree of Aillinn.'"
So far this strange tale. But poetic as it is, it yields—unlike most—its chief value when rationalised, for as O'Curry remarks, it was apparently invented to account for some inscribed tablets in the reign of King Art in the second century, which had—as we ourselves have seen in the case of so many leaves of very old manuscripts at this day—become fastened to each other, so that they clung inextricably together and could not be separated.
Now the massacre of the Princesses at Tara happened, according to the "Four Masters," in the year 241, when the tablets were burnt. Hence one of two things must be the case; the story must either have originatedbeforethat date to account for the sticking together of the tablets, or else someone must have invented it long afterwards, that is, must, without any apparent cause, have invented a story out of his own head, as to how there wereonce on a timetwo tablets made of trees whichoncegrew on two tombs which wereoncefastened together before Art, son of Conn, and which were soon afterwards unfortunately burnt. A supposition which, considering there were then,ex hypothesi, no adhering tablets to prompt the invention, appears at first sight improbable.
Brash, who made personal examination of almost every Ogam known to exist, and whose standard work on the subject reproduces most of the inscriptions discovered up to the date of writing, was of opinion that no Ogam monument had anything Christian about it, and that if any Christian symbol were discovered on an Ogam stone, it must be of later date than the Ogam writing. Dr. Graves, however, has since shown that Ogam was in some few cases at least used over the graves of Christians; and he believes that all Ogam writing is really post-Christian, despite the absence of Christian emblems on the stones, and that it belongs to a comparatively modern period—"in fact, for the most part, to a time between the fifth and seventh century."[24]Brash's great work was supplemented by Sir Samuel Ferguson's, and since that time Professor Rhys[25]and Dr. Whitley Stokes have thrown upon the inscriptions themselves all the light that the highest critical acumen equipped with the completest philological training could do, and have, to quote Mr. Macalister, "between them reduced to order the confusion which almost seemed to warrant the cryptical theories, and have thereby raised Ogam inscriptions from the position of being mere learned playthings to a place of the highest philological importance, not only in Celtic but in Indo-European epigraphy."He himself—the latest to deal with the subject—waves for the present as "difficult—perhaps in some measure insoluble"—all "questions of the time, place, and manner of the development of the Ogham script."[26]Rhys has traced in certain of the inscriptions the influence exercised on the spoken language of the Celtic people by an agglutinating pre-Celtic tongue.[27]This gives us a glimpse at the pre-Aryan languages of the British Isles, which is in the highest degree interesting.
To me it seems probable that the Irish discovered the use of letters either through trade with the Continent or through the Romanised Britons, at any time from the first or second century onward. But how or why they invented the Ogam alphabet, instead of using Roman letters, or else Greek ones like the Gauls, is a profound mystery. One thing is certain, namely, that the Ogam alphabet—at whatever time invented—is a possession peculiar to the Irish Gael, and only to be found where he made his settlements.