Chapter IV: Part 4

Wi' a hundred pipers an' a', an' a'.

Burns, Hogg, and Lady Nairne all wrote songs to the beautiful air of Charlie is my Darling, embodying in each case the first verse of the unknown poet who originated the song. They are all beautiful, but the words of Lady Nairne have conquered in the popular ear, and taken final possession of the air.

CHARLIE IS MY DARLING.

'T was on a Monday morning,

Right early in the year,

When Charlie cam' to our town,

The young Chevalier.

Oh, Charlie is my darling,

My darling, my darling,

Oh, Charlie is my darling,

The young Chevalier.

As he cam' marching up the street

The pipes played loud an' clear,

An' a' the folks cam' running out

To meet the Chevalier.

Wi' Hieland bonnets on their heads,

An' claymores bright an' clear,

They cam' to fight for Scotland's right

An' the young Chevalier.

They 'ye left their bonnie Highland hills,

Their wives and bairnies dear,

To draw the sword for Scotland's lord,

The young Chevalier.

Oh, there were mony beating hearts

An' mony a hope an' fear,

An' mony were the prayers sent up

For the young Chevalier.

Oh, Charlie is my darling,

My darling, my darling,

Oh, Charlie is my darling,

The young Chevalier.

There is one of Lady Nairne's songs not quite perfect, for one forced and faulty line in the refrain, which has a higher touch of the imagination than any of the others. The influence of the magic of nature in the interpretation of human sorrow or gladness, and the wild mystery of the birds' melody upon the heart, which is characteristic of the highest order of the folk-song, and which, in its irregularity and simplicity, not less than the melody, which is nature's own voice, rather than the rhythm of art, is beyond the reach of any deliberate skill. It would be hard to find anything more perfect at once in its picture and its interpretation of the voice of nature in human words than--

And then the burnie's like the sea,

Roarin' an' reamin';

Nae wee bit sangster's on the tree,

But wild birds screamin'.

While the sadness of human despair that follows and emphasizes the passion of the flood strikes the ear like a veritable wail in the loneliness and darkness.

Bonnie ran the burnie down,

Wandrin' an' windin'.

Sweetly sang the birds above,

Care never mindin'.

The gentle summer wind

Was their music saft an' kind,

And it rockit them an' rockit them

All in their bowers sae hie.

Bonnie ran, etc.

The mossy rock was there,

An' the water lily fair,

An' the little trout would sport about

All in the sunny beam.

Bonnie ran, etc.

Tho' summer days be lang,

An' sweet the birdies sang,

The wintry night and chilly light

Keep aye their eerie roun'.

Bonnie ran, etc.

An' then the burnie's like a sea,

Roarin' an' reamin';

Nae wee bit sangster's on the tree,

But wild birds screamin'.

Oh, that the past I might forget,

Wandrin' an' weepin';

Oh, that aneath the hillock green

Sound I were sleepin'.

In one other famous song, heard wherever Scotch music is sung, Lady Nairne interpreted the pathos, hardship, and suffering behind the strong, clear voices of the Newhaven fishwives, which may still be heard in the wynds and closes of Edinburgh as they march on their sturdy limbs with the heavy creels laden with the silvery fishes on their backs, and fill the air with their deep, melodious cry.

CALLER HERRIN'.

Wha 'll buy my caller herrin'?

They 're bonnie fish and halesome farin',

Wha 'll buy my caller herrin',

New drawn frae the Forth.

When ye were sleepin' on your pillows,

Dream'd ye aught o' our fine fellows,

Darkling as they faced the billows

A' to fill the woven willows.

Buy my caller herrin',

New drawn frae the Forth.

Wha 'll buy my caller herrin'?

They 're no bought without brave darin';

Buy my caller herrin',

Haled thro' wind and rain.

Wha 'll buy my caller herrin'? etc.

Wha 'll buy my caller herrin'?

Oh, ye may call them vulgar farm';

Wives and mithers maist despairin'

Ca' them the lives o' men.

Wha 'll buy my caller herrin'?

They 're bonnie fish and halesome farin',

Wha 'll buy my caller herrin',

New drawn frae the Forth.

There are other verses to Caller Herrin', but they were merely occasional, intended to serve as a benefit to Nathaniel Gow, the son of the famous fiddler, Niel Gow, the composer of the air, who was seeking patronage in Edinburgh, and they only injure the effect of the first and perfect stanzas.

The poetical work of Lady Nairne was smaller in bulk than that of her chief contemporaries, even than that of Allan Cunningham. She was without any personal literary ambition whatever, and her inspiration was smothered by domestic grief and an absorbing and narrow piety. A portion of what there is is also imperfect, ephemeral, and careless, but she has written one of the most perfect lyrics in the English language, and a number of others, which, in their melody, their interpretation of simple emotion, their vividness and strength, and their power upon the heart as well as the ear, have a place which few have equaled and none have surpassed in the lyric treasures of a land more rich than all others in the voice of poetry speaking to the heart in song.

SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON AND CELTIC POETRY.

|The great controversy over the genuineness of the Ossianic poems of James Macpherson, which existed during his lifetime and was carried on for a considerable period after his death, has died away without being settled. Opinions of eminent Celtic scholars still differ as to whether the so-called Gaelic originals of his poems, published after his death, were genuine transcripts from ancient poems, or were translations into the Gaelic from Macpherson's English composition made by his friends to conceal the fraud and maintain provincial pride. He himself never produced the originals of his poems, and took refuge in a silence which went far to confirm the impression of fraud and forgery. But whether he had any direct originals or not, and the weight of probability is that he had not, his poems were unquestionably founded on the vast mass of Celtic poetry and legend existing in Ireland and Scotland in tradition and manuscript. The names of his heroes, their characters and their exploits, are to be found in this poetry, and many of his most admired episodes and descriptions, like that of Ossian's address to the sun, and the description of Cuchullin's chariot, were taken directly from it. Whatever the amount of transformation and interpolation, and whatever the change in the literary style, from the plain and simple expressions of primitive poetry to the vague and rhetorical imagery of inflated artifice, were made by Macpherson, he unquestionably preserved the pervading spirit of Celtic poetry, its melancholy, its sensitiveness to the impressions of nature, and its lofty and humane spirit, and was the first to make it known to the world. Critics like Hazlitt and Matthew Arnold, who were impressed simply by its spirit of pure poetry, and the most accomplished Celtic scholars of a later day, have alike agreed upon internal and external evidence as to the faithfulness of the reproduction of the spirit of Celtic poetry by Macpherson, and have regarded the faults of his literary style as those of the age, and his interpretation of the poems of Ossian by the spirit of the eighteenth century as not more faulty or less natural than Chapman's transfusion of Homer into the style of the Elizabethan era, or Pope's into that of Queen Anne. His great drawback was the suspicion of absolute fraud and forgery which attached to him, and which he was unable to dispel, from his mistake in not acknowledging in the beginning that his poems were derived from general tradition instead of being absolute translations from originals. But in spite of this discredit, which was more of a personal literary quarrel than a critical attack upon the quality of the poetry itself, its value was at once instinctively recognized as a new and original revelation, as an appeal to sensibilities in human nature which had been stifled by the narrow and dry reasoning of English and Continental poetry at the time, and as a breath from the wide air of nature itself. It touched the European spirit, then struggling to emancipate itself from the swaddling bands of authority and artificial society, with electric power, and was a powerful influence in the emancipation both of literature and human action. Ossian profoundly affected the intellectual awakening of Goethe and was a favorite with Napoleon, and throughout the whole of Europe its spirit was an inspiring and governing force. In English literature its effect was not less powerful, although less openly acknowledged owing to the discredit created by the charges of forgery, and both Byron's melancholy and Wordsworth's appreciation of the soul of nature were derived from this pervading spirit of ancient Celtic poetry.

So far as the direct study of Celtic poetry was concerned the Ossianic controversy was unquestionably a misfortune. It threw a cloud of suspicion and discredit upon the genuine fragments which remained, and discouraged the study which might otherwise have been given to them, so that, unquestionably, some traditional Celtic poetry has been lost by the decay of the language as a living speech, and it is only in later years that enlightened scholarship and patriotic feeling have led to the careful and appreciative study of the manuscript volumes which have survived time and neglect, for their inherent literary and historical value, and to a consideration of the influence of the Celtic spirit upon English literature. They have been found to be of great value and interest, to possess elements of pure poetry of marked and original quality, and a spirit which has had a strong effect upon English literature. Nevertheless there has not been found in the remains of Celtic literature any single poem which in itself would compare with the Nibelungen Lied or with the Song of Roland, in epic form and constructiveness, in clearness of diction and dramatic strength; nor even any prose legend or narrative history, which would compare with the clear and vigorous character drawing and lucid narration of the Icelandic and Scandinavian Sagas. What would have been the case had the original poems and histories of the sixth century been preserved can only be conjectured. Those which now exist are only in the transcripts of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, greatly transformed, altered, and confused in dates and characters, and bearing the marks of a great deterioration in style, like the degradation of Latin prose in its later era. The passages which competent Celtic scholars have pronounced from philological evidence to be of an earlier construction, are a good deal stronger as well as simpler in expression than those by which they are surrounded, and indicate that, if the earlier poetry had been preserved in its purity without being amplified and weakened by scholastic and artificial phraseology, it might have rivaled the early Teutonic poetry in force, directness and simplicity, and strength of construction. As it is, the Celtic poems and histories are not only confused and prolix with interminable genealogies and proverbial reflections, but are written in a style, with a redundance and complication of epithets, at once weakening and tiresome. Thus in an Irish history of the Triumphs of Turlogh O'Brien, written in the thirteenth century, there is the following description of the dress and arms of a hero:--"His noble garment was first brought to him, viz., a strong, well-formed, close-ridged, defensively-furrowed, terrific, neat-bordered, new-made, and scarlet-red cassock of fidelity; he expertly put on that gold-bordered garment, which covered him as far as from the lower part of his soft, fine, redwhite neck, to the upper part of his expert, snowwhite, round-knotted knee. Over that mantle he put on a full, strong, white-topped, wide-round, gold-bordered, straight, and parti-colored coat of mail, well-fitted, and ornamented with many curious devices of exquisite workmanship. He put on a beautiful, thick, and saffron-colored belt of war, embellished with clasps and buckles set with precious stones, and hung with golden tassels; to this belt was hung his active and trusty lance, regularly cased in a tubic sheath, but that it was somewhat greater in height than the height of the sheath; he squeezed the brilliant, gilt, and starry belt about the coat of mail; and a long, blue-edged, bright-steeled, sharp-pointed, broad-sided, active, whitebacked, half-polished, monstrous, smooth-bladed, small-thick, and well-fashioned dagger was fixed to the tie of that embroidered and parti-colored belt; a white, embroidered, full-wide, strong, and well-wove hood was put on him over his golden mail; he himself laid on his head a strong-cased, spherical, towering, polished-shining, branch-engraved, long-enduring helmet; he took his edged, smooth-bladed, letter-graved, destructive, sharp-pointed, fight-taming, sheathed, gold-guarded, and girded sword, which he tied fast in haste to his side."

The confusion which exists in the transcripts of the ancient poems between the pagan mythology and the Christian faith, and the superposition of

Latin learning and mediaeval thought, is also a great injury to the consecutiveness and vraisemblance of the story, and the effect is as if the tale of the Nibelungen Lied had been told by a monkish chronicler with all the embellishments of a later faith and the ornaments of an artificial style. The poetry has not all perished from the earlier originals, and in many instances there is a vigor of narrative, a poetical power of description, and an elevation of sentiment, which shines through the amplification and verbiage, and redeems the prolixity and tediousness of the story; but, as has been said, the prevailing impression is one of a corrupted and weakened, instead of a strong and original primitive poetry, and a literal translation of an Irish or Scotch Celtic poem or history is not likely to attract the general reader from its purely literary quality. The poetry lies in a heap of dross, and must be painfully smelted out.

The only way in which ancient Celtic poetry can be known and appreciated by the English reader, and have its effect in English literature, is by the presentation of its spirit and atmosphere, its essential elements in local form and color, its characteristic phraseology and tone of thought in English poetry of original power as well as essential faithfulness. The poet who is to do this successfully must have, what Macpherson had not, a thorough knowledge of the language and an appreciation of its method as the expression of thought, be completely saturated with the knowledge of the time, and possess the literary conscience and taste to be completely faithful to the original spirit. The most conspicuous example in our time of an attempt to reproduce the spirit of legendary romance in original poetry is, of course, The Idylls of the King, and the impress of a very thorough study and saturation of the spirit of the ancient chronicles is as visible as the exquisite substance of original poetry. But the stories of The Idylls of the King are based upon, rather than' closely reproduce, the legends of Arthurian romance, and the spirit has been elevated and refined by that of modern poetry and the nature of Tennyson's own genius to essential unreality. They are like the pictures of Madonnas and mediaeval saints done by a modern painter of genius with all the skill and technique of art, but without the sense of devotion which shows through the ruder sketches of the earlier and greatly inferior painters, who were inspired by something more than merely artistic enthusiasm. It is needless to say that for a poet to possess the self-restraint to be entirely faithful to his originals, and aim mainly at reproducing their form as well as spirit, is more rare, and may be said to have less power, than one who creates an original structure of poetry upon the basis of ancient romance; but he has his function also, and may be something more than a mere translator, as he gives his material shape in modern form and with the embellishments of his own genius, while he yet preserves the ancient characteristics. He is like the skillful architect who restores a ruined castle to a habitable dwelling, clearing away the rubbish which has choked its portals and surrounded its walls, while preserving its ancient shape and structure, and blending his new materials with the old so that it seems a harmonious building. This is the work to which Sir Samuel Ferguson has devoted himself in his reproduction of Irish Celtic poetry, both ballad and epic, and particularly in his poem of Congal, which is a recreation of the bardic romance of the Battle of Moyra, and its introductory Pre-Tale of the Banquet of Dunangay, prose versions which have been given by the eminent Celtic scholar, Dr. John O'Donovan, in the publications of the Irish Archaeological Society.

The battle of Moyra was an authentic historic event, and took place A. D. 637 between the forces of Domnal, king of Ireland, and those of Congal, sub-king of Ulster, and his allies, from Scotland, Wales, England, Brittany, and Scandinavia. It is regarded by Celtic historians as the last struggle of the bardic and pagan party in Ireland against the newly established power of Christianity, for which a pretext rather than a cause was found in an alleged slight of Domnal to Congal. The history, which is in prose interspersed with speeches and exhortations in verse in the usual manner of the bardic chronicles, was apparently written in its present form in the latter part of the eleventh century, and from earlier traditionary chronicles, which are now lost. Its style has a good deal of vigor and force, but is marked with the faults of confusion, and the redundance of 'descriptive epithets characteristic of the writers of the time. Its story is that Congal, having been invited by Domnal to a banquet at the royal house at Dunangay, was served with a hen's egg upon a wooden platter, instead of with a goose egg upon a silver dish, as were the remainder of the company, and, denouncing it as an unforgivable insult, departed to seek assistance from his relatives and 'allies in Great Britain and the Continent. Returning with these a great battle was fought on the plains of Moyra, which lasted for six days, and in which the foreign invaders were routed and Congal was killed. The principal heroes of the chronicle were historical personages, but there were others of which there is no definite knowledge, and who probably owed their origin to the imagination of the bards, as in the Iliad and the Nibelungen Lied. Sir Samuel Ferguson's poem of Congal follows the main narrative of events in the original chronicle, but with an addition in the shape of a love episode between Lafinda, a sister of Sweeny, an Irish prince, and Congal, the introduction of several new characters, and of some supernatural episodes derived from the pagan mythology of Ireland. The narrative is made intelligible where it is obscure in the original, and incredible events, such as the chaining together of the warriors lest they should run away from each other, are omitted, while the tautology and verbiage of the language is eliminated. Its faithfulness as the reproduction of an ancient Celtic poem consists in the skill with which the characteristic style of language, its multiplied and doubled epithets, is renewed in English without the effect of archaism, and the reproduction of its heroic and primitive tone and spirit. Its original merits are the force and vigor of the narrative, the vivid descriptions of scenery, the strength and impressiveness of the supernatural figures, the genuine inspiration of battle in the combats, and the easy mastery of the "long, resounding line" in the verse. There is no modern poem which so thoroughly reproduces the ancient form and spirit of a bygone age, and in which so complete and accurate an idea can be obtained of the element of a vanished poetry as in Congal, and, as has been said, it is like a restoration in shape and substance of a ruined castle. The opening lines give a specimen of the style of the verse and the vigorous spirit of the measure:--

The Hosting here of Congal Claen. 'T was loud lark-car

oling May

When Congal, as the lark elate and radiant as the day,

Rode forth from steep Rath-Keltar gate.

Of the felicity with which these double descriptive epithets are used there are a thousand specimens, such as

The white-maned, proud-neck-arching tide;

and they give the dominant characteristic of the style as in the original, with a grace and appropriateness which make them a natural part of the English language. In order to show how the Celtic narrative has been transformed into English poetry without losing its characteristic features, the two accounts of the episode in the battle in which Sweeny becomes smitten with a frenzy of fear by supernatural visitation may be compared. This is the original:--

"Fits of giddiness came over him at _the sight_ of the horrors, grimness, and rapidity of the Gaels; at the looks, brilliance, and irksomeness of the foreigners; at the rebounding, furious shouts and bellowings of the various embattled tribes on both sides, rushing against and coming into collision with one another. Huge, flickering, horrible, aerial phantoms rose up, so that they were in curved, commingled crowds tormenting him; and in dense, rustling, clamorous, life-tormenting hordes, without ceasing; and in dismal, regular, aerial, storm-shrieking, hovering, fiend-like hosts, constantly in motion, shrieking and howling as they hovered about them in every direction, to cow and dismay cowards and soft youths, but to invigorate and mightily rouse champions and warriors; so that from the uproar of the battle, the frantic pranks of the demons, and the clashing of arms, the sound of heavy blows reverberating on the points of heroic spears, and keen edges of swords, and the war-like borders of broad shields, the noble hero Suibne was filled and intoxicated with tremor, horror, panic, dismay, fickleness, unsteadiness, fear, flightiness, giddiness, terror, and imbecility; so that there was not a joint or member of him from foot to head which was not converted into a confused, shaking mass, from the effect of fear and the panic of dismay. His feet trembled as if incessantly shaken by the force of a stream; his arms and various-edged weapons fell from him, the power of his hands having been enfeebled and relaxed around them, and rendered incapable of holding them. The inlets of hearing were quickened and expanded by the horrors of lunacy; the vigor of his brain in the cavities of his head was destroyed by the clamors of the conflict; his heart shrunk within him with the panic of dismay; his speech became faltering from the giddiness of imbecility; his very soul fluttered with hallucination, and with many and various phantoms, for that was the root and true basis of fear itself. He might be compared on this occasion to a salmon in a weir, or to a bird after being caught in the strait prison of a crib."

The following is the way in which this is rendered in Congal, Sweeny's offense having consisted in drowning the hermit Ere in the Boyne:--

To Sweeny as the hosts drew near, ere yet the fight should

join,

Seemed still, as if between them rolled the foam-strewed,

tawny Boyne.

And as the swiftly nearing hosts consumed the narrowing

space,

And arrow flights and javelin casts, and sword strokes came

in place,

Through all the rout of high-raised hands, and wrathful,

glaring eyes,

Erc's look of wrath, and lifted hand before him seemed to

rise,

Through all the hard-rebounding din from breasts of Gaels

and Gauls,

That jarred against the vault of heaven, when clashed the

brazen walls,

Through all the clangorous battle-calls, and death shouts

hoarse and high,

Erc's shriller curse he seemed to hear and Erc's despairing

cry.

Much did the hapless warrior strive to shake from breast

and brain

The illusion and the shameful wish fast-rising; but in vain;

The wish to fly seized all his limbs; the stronger dread of

shame,

Contending with the wish to fly, made spoil of all his frame.

His knees beneath him wavered as if shaken by the stress

Of a rapid running river; his heart, in fear's excess,

Sprang to and fro within him, as a wild bird newly caged,

Or a stream-ascending salmon in a strong weir's trap en

gaged.

Some of the single combats of the heroes, following the details of the narrative, are described with Homeric vigor, and the address of the King of Lochlan to the invading army, disheartened by apparitions, has the fire and spirit, as well as the form, of the Scandinavian runic verse: --

This is my sentence:

Fairy nor Fire-Drake

Keep back the Kemper

At home, in the burg,

Leaves he the maiden

Boon for the bridal;

Abroad, on the holme,

Leaves he the harvest,

Ripe for the reaper;

The bowl, on the board,

In the hall of the banquets,

Leaves he untasted,

When lances uplift

The foe in the field.

Noting the Norsemen

Out on the water-throng,

Hark! how the Eagle

Vaunts to the Vulture.

Spread thy wing, Scald-Neck,

Says she, and screams she;

Seest thou the Sea-Kings

Borne on the gannet-bath,

Going to garner

Every bird's eyrie?

Fell from her fishy-perch

Answers the Bald-Beak,

Scream no more, little cfne,

Feeders are coming.

Hearkening their colloquy,

Grins the grey beast,

The wolf on the wold.

This is my sentence:

These are the Norseman's

Pandect and canon.

Thyrfing is thirsty;

Quern-biter hungers;

Shield-walker wearieth

Shut in the scabbard.

This is my sentence:

Bring us to battle.

Perhaps, however, the greatest strength in Congal will be found in the dealing with the apparitions, the gigantic and malign demons, who haunt the hill and the stream, and represent the primitive imaginings of a race not yet emancipated from the terrors of the supernatural in the forces and forms of nature. These figures of ancient Irish poetry, the Herdsman Borcha, who swept down Finn's fortress with his staff, and counts the kine in the unconquered lands, the Giant Walker, who strides angrily around the hostile camp at night, and the Washer at the Ford, who dabbles with slain men's heads, live again in Ferguson's verse with their original reality and terror, and amid the setting of natural scenery from which their phantoms were created. This is the picture of the Giant Walker, whose apparition presaged doom to Cougal at his first night's camp:--

Around the Mound of Sighs

They filled the woody-sided vale; but no sweet sleep their

eyes

Refreshed that night; for all the night, around their echo

ing camp,

Was heard continuous from the hills a sound as of a tramp

Of giant footsteps; but so thick the white mist lay around

None saw the Walker save the King. He, starting at the

sound,.

Called to his foot his fierce red hound; athwart his shoulders

cast

A shaggy mantle, grasped his spear, and through the moon

light passed

Alone up dark Ben-Boli's heights, towards which, above the

woods,

With sound as when at close of eve the noise of falling floods

Is borne to shepherd's ear remote on stilly upland lawn,

The steps along the mountain-side with hollow sound came on.

Fast beat the hero's heart; and close, down-crouching by his

knee

Trembled the hound, while through the haze, huge as through

mists at sea,

The week-long sleepless mariner descries some mountain

cape,

Wreck-infamous, rise on his lee, appeared a monstrous shape

Striding impatient, like a man much grieved, who walks

alone

Considering of a grievous wrong; down from his shoulders

thrown

A mantle skirted stiff with soil, splashed from the miry

ground,

At every stride against his calves struck with as loud rebound

As makes the mainsail of a ship brought up along the blast,

When with the coil of all its ropes it beats the sounding

mast.

So, striding vast, the giant passed; the King held fast his

breath;

Motionless save his throbbing heart; and still and chill as

death

Stood listening while a second time the giant took his round

Of all the camp; but when, at length, the third time the

sound

Came up, and through the haze a third time huge and dim

Rose out the Shape, the valiant hound sprang forth and

challenged him.

And forth, disdaining that a dog should put him so to shame,

Sprang Congal and essayed to speak.

"Dread shadow, stand! Proclaim

What wouldst thou that thou thus around my camp shouldst

keep

Thy troublous vigil, banishing the wholesome gift of sleep

From all our eyes, who, though inured to dreadful sounds

and sights

By land and sea, have never yet in all our perilous nights

Lain the ward of such a guard."

The Shape made answer none,

But with stern wafture of his hand went angrier striding on,

Shaking the earth with heavier steps. Then Congal on his

track

Sprang fearless.

"Answer me, thou Churl,"he cried, "I bid thee back."

But, while he spoke, the giant's cloak around his shoulders

grew

Like a black-bulged thunder-cloud; and sudden out there

flew.

From all its angry, swelling folds, with uproar unconfined,

Direct against the King's pursuit a mighty blast of wind:

Loud flapped the mantle, tempest-lined, while fluttering

down the gale,

As leaves in Autumn, man and hound were swept into the vale,

And heard through all the huge uproar, through startled

Dalaray,.

The giant went with stamp and clash, departing south away.

A conspicuous feature of the excellence of Congal as an original poem is the vividness and faithfulness with which the natural scenery of Ireland is painted. The dark and barren hills, the tawny and foam-flecked streams, the misty seas, the vast and lonely raths and burial places of heroes, the emerald fields bathed with dew and glittering with sunshine, all the characteristics of Irish scenery, with their soul of meaning, which appeals to the heart as well as the outward form to the eye, are depicted with remarkable power, and make a living element in which the figures move. Almost every page has a touch of this skill, and every aspect of field and sea and sky is enlivened. As fine a specimen as any is this picture of an autumn champaign from a hilltop in Leinster:--

Such as one

Beholds, and thankful-hearted he, who casts abroad his gaze

O'er some rich tillage country-side, when mellow autumn

days

Gild all the sheaf y food-full stooks, and, broad before him

spread,--

He looking landward from the prow of some great sea-cape's

head

Bray or Ben-Edar--sees beneath in silent pageant grand

Slow fields of sunshine spread o'er fields of rich, corn-bearing

land;

Red glebe and meadow-margin green commingling to the

view,

With yellow stubble, browning woods, and upland tracts of

blue;--

Then, sated with the pomp of fields, turns seaward to the

verge

Where, mingling with the murmuring wash made by the

far-down surge,

Comes up the clangorous song of birds unseen, that, low be

neath

Poised off the rock, fly underfoot, and, mid the blossoming

heath,

And mint-sweet herb that loves the ledge rare-aired, at ease

reclined,

Surveys the wide, pale-heaving floor crisped by a curling

wind;

With all its shifty shadowing belts, and chasing scopes of

green,

Sun strewn, foam-freckled, sail-embossed, and blackening

squalls between,

And slant, cerulean-skirted showers, that with a drowsy

sound,

Heard inward, of ebullient waves, stalk all the horizon round.

With its faithfulness to tone and character, its skillful reproduction of style and language, its force and vigor of narrative, its forms of mythologie mysticism and its appreciation of the magic of nature, Congal is the most perfect reproduction of the form and spirit of ancient Celtic poetry in existence, and from it the English reader, who is not a Celtic student, can obtain the best knowledge of its pervading elements.

Congal is not the only contribution made by Sir Samuel Ferguson to Celtic poetry. The Lays of the Western Gael are a series of ballads founded on events in Celtic history and derived from the early chronicles and poems. They are original in form and substance, the ballad form and measure being unknown to the early Celtic poets of Ireland, but they preserve in a wonderful degree the ancient spirit, and give a picture of the ancient times with all the art of truth and verity. As I have said elsewhere 1:--

"To have done this clearly and completely, so that the past lives again and is felt by the instinct of nature to be true and real, free from confusion and extravagance, the imperfections of utterance in a people just learning to express themselves, the alien and antique methods of thought, through the inevitably imperfect knowledge of a language half faded and changed, while preserving not only the terms of expression but the characteristics of thought and feeling, seems a no less difficult task than to trace and interpret the worn letters and half-effaced inscriptions on the Ogham stones, and could only have been done by the genius of the great poet vivifying the labor of the profound scholar. Finally, the impress of the past as it is visible to the present, the effect of the gray cairn and grassy burial mound, and almost the last fading of the tokens of the aboriginal race into the bosom of nature, and the perception of its spirit amid the light and bustle of the day,

The loneliness and awe secure of the forgotten dead,

is the task of the modern poet speaking in his own time and to his own generation of the past."

1 Introduction to popular edition of _Lays of the Western
Gael_ Dublin, 1888.

These ballads have a solemnity of measure like the voice of one of the ancient bards chanting of

Old, forgotten, far-off things

And battles long ago,

and they are clothed with the mists of a melancholy age. They include such subjects as The Tain Quest, the search of the bard for the lost lay of the great cattle raid of Queen Maev of Connaught, and its recovery by invocation from the voice of its dead author arising in misty form above his grave; The Healing of Conall Carnach, a story of violated sanctuary and its punishment; The Welshmen of Tyrawly, one of the most spirited and original, and which has been pronounced by Mr. Swinburne as among the finest of modern ballads, telling of a cruel mulct inflicted upon the members of a Welsh colony in Ireland and its vengeance, and other incidents in early Irish history. The verses on Aideen's Grave are a characteristic specimen of the tone and spirit of these ballads. The author's introductory note says:--

"Aideen, daughter of Angus of Ben Edar (now the Hill of Howth), died of grief for the loss of her husband Oscar, son of Ossian, who was slain at the battle of Gavra (Gowra near Tara in Meath) A. D. 284. Oscar was entombed in the rath, or earthen fortress, that occupied part of the field of battle, the rest of the slain being cast in a pit outside. Aideen is said to have been buried on Howth, near the mansion of her father, and poetical tradition represents the Fenian heroes as present at her obsequies. The cromlech in Howth Park is supposed to have been her sepulchre."

AIDEEN'S GRAVE.

They heaved the stones; they heaped the cairn.

Said Ossian, "In a queenly grave

We leave her, 'mong her fields of fern

Between the cliff and wave."

The cliff behind stands clear and bare,

And bare, above, the heathery steep

Scales the clear heaven's expanse, to where

The Danaan Druids sleep.

And all the sands that, left and right,

The grassy isthmus-ridge confine,

In yellow bars lie bare and bright

Among the sparkling brine.

A clear pure air pervades the scene,

In loneliness and awe secure,

Meet spot to sepulchre a Queen,

Who in her life was pure.

Here far from camp and chase removed,

Apart in Nature's quiet room,

The music that alive she loved

Shall cheer her in the tomb.

The humming of the noontide bees,

The lark's loud carol all day long,

And, borne on evening's salted breeze,

The clanking sea-birds' song

Shall round her airy chamber float,

And with the whispering winds and streams,

Attune to Nature's tenderest note

The tenor of her dreams.

And oft at tranquil eve's decline,

When full tides lap the Old Green Plain,

The lowing Moynalty's kine

Shall round her breathe again.

In sweet remembrance of the days

When, duteous in the lowly vale,

Unconscious of my Oscar's gaze,

She filled the fragrant pail.

And, duteous, from the running brook,

Drew water for the bath; nor deem'd

A king did on her labor look,

And she a fairy seemed.

But when the wintry frosts begin,

And in their long-drawn, lofty flight

The wild geese with their airy din.

Distend the ear of night.

And when the fierce De Danaan ghosts,

At midnight from their peak come down.

When all around the enchanted coasts

Despairing strangers drown;

When mingling with the wreckful wail

From low Clontarf's wave-trampled floor,

Comes booming up the burthened gale

The angry Sand Bull's roar;

Or, angrier than the sea, the shout

Of Erin's hosts in wrath combined

When Terror heads Oppression's rout

And Freedom cheers behind:--

Then o'er our lady's placid dream,

When safe from storms she sleeps, may steal

Such joy as may not misbeseem

A queen of men to feel.

Such thrill of free, defiant pride,

As rapt her in her battle car

At Gavra, when by Oscar's side

She rode the ridge of war.

Exulting, down the shouting troops,

And through the thick confronting kings,

With hands on all their javelin loops

And shafts on all their strings;

E'er closed the inseparable crowds

No more to part for me, and show,

As bursts the sun through scattering clouds

My Oscar issuing so.

No more, dispelling battle's gloom,

Shall son to me from fight return;

The great green rath's ten-acred tomb

Lies heavy on his urn.

A cup of bodkin-pencilled clay

Holds Oscar; mighty heart and limb

One handful now of ashes grey:

And she has died for him.

And here, hard by her natal bower

On lone Ben-Edar's side we strive

With lifted rock and sign of power

To keep her name alive.

That, while from circling year to year,

Her Ogham-lettered stone is seen,

The Gael shall say, "Our Fenians here

Entombed their loved Aideen.

The Ogham from her pillar stone

In tract of time will wear away;

Her name at last be only known

In Ossian's echoed lay.

The long-forgotten lay I sing

May only ages hence revive,

(As eagle with a wounded wing

To soar again might strive.)

Imperfect, in an alien speech,

When, wandering here, some child of chance

Through pangs of keen delight shall reach

The gift of utterance,--

To speak the air, the sky to speak,

The freshness of the hill to tell,

When, roaming bare Ben-Edar's peak

And Aide en's briary dell,

And gazing on the Cromlech vast,

And on the mountain and the sea,

Shall catch communion with the past

And mix himself with me.

Child of the Future's doubtful night,

Whate'er your speech, whoe'er your sires,

Sing while you may with frank delight

The song your hour inspires.

Sing while you may, nor grieve to know

The song you sing shall also die;

Atharna's lay has perished so,

Though once it thrilled the sky.

Above us, from his rocky chair

There, where Ben-Edar's landward crest

O'er eastern Bregia bends, to where

Dun-Almon crowns the west:

And all that felt the fretted air,

Throughout the song-distempered clime,

Did droop, till Leinster's suppliant prayer

Appeased the vengeful rhyme.

Ah, me, or e'er the hour arrive

Shall bid my long-forgotten tones,

Unknown One, on your lips revive,

Here, by these moss-grown stones,

What change shall o'er the scene have cross'd

What conquering lords anew have come;

What lore-armed, mightier Druid host

From Gaul or distant Rome!

What arts of death, what ways of life,

What creeds unknown to bard or seer,

Shall round your careless steps be rife,

Who pause and ponder here:

And, haply, where yon curlew calls

Athwart the marsh, 'mid groves and bowers

See rise some mighty chieftain's halls

With unimagined towers:

And baying hounds and coursers bright,

And burnish't cars of dazzling sheen,

With courtly train of dame and knight,

Where now the fern is green.

Or by yon prostrate altar stone

May kneel, perchance, and free from blame,

Hear holy men with rites unknown

New names of God proclaim.

Let change as.may the name of Awe,

Let right surcease and altar fall,

The same one God remains, a law

Forever and for all.

Let change as may the face of earth,

Let alter all the social frame,

For mortal men the ways of birth

And death are still the same.

And still, as life and time wear on,

The children of the waning days

(Though strength be from their shoulders gone

To lift the loads we raise)

Shall weep to do the burial rites

Of lost ones loved; and fondly found

In shadow of the gathering nights

The monumental mound.

Farewell, the strength of men is worn;

The night approaches dark and chill;

Sleep till, perchance, an endless morn

Descend the glittering hill"--

Of Oscar and Aideen bereft

So Ossian sang. The Fenians sped

Three mighty shouts to heaven; and left

Ben-Edar to the dead.

The spirit of Ossian, the woe and desolation of a mortal world, and the resigned but not bitter sense of the vanity of all things, lives in this solemn elegy.

The charming lyrics of the later Irish Celtic poetry, which succeeded that of the bards, and were the voices of the peasant people themselves and of the professional descendants of the bards, the itinerant poets and musicians, who wandered from house to house with their harps, singing the praises of their entertainers, and were not extinct until the end of the last century, have found an adequate interpreter in Sir Samuel Ferguson. As in his reproductions of the bardic poetry, he has been able to seize the very spirit of these songs, their intoxication of love, their breath of hopeless longing and misfortune, the characteristics of the race and the results of their cruel fate at the hands of alien conquerors, and to interpret it in measures as melodious as the sad and sweet old airs, which are the most valuable gift which the intellectual life of Celtic Ireland has bestowed upon posterity. The genuine Irish melodies are to be found in these lyrics, which interpret the spirit as well as the language of the Celtic poets, and not in the rococo songs of Moore, in which artificial sentiment is tricked out in a mechanical melody, and in which the atmosphere of the drawing-room takes the place of the free air of the hillside. Of these Celtic lyrics the greater number have been lost, the airs alone surviving, but those which remain show how strong, sensitive, and impassioned was the poetic spirit of the Irish Celtic people, and which, but for the misfortunes of the nation, might have left as rich a treasury of lyric song as the Scotch. The following is a specimen of the impassioned spirit of these songs, almost an improvisation, the very cry of the heart finding vent at the lips. It is entitled Cean Dubh Deelish--The Dear Black Head.

Put your head, darling, darling, darling,

Your darling black head my heart above;

Oh, mouth of honey, with the thyme for fragrance,

Who with heart in breast could deny you love?

Oh, many and many a young girl for me is pining,

Letting her locks of gold to the cold wind free,

For me the foremost of our gay young fellows;

But I'd leave a hundred, pure love, for thee:

Then put your head, darling, darling, darling,

Your darling black head my heart above;

Oh, mouth of honey, with the thyme for fragrance,

Who, with heart in breast, could deny you love?

The verses entitled The Fair Hair'd Girl express with great sweetness the sense of woe and sorrow which forms the burden of so much of the Celtic poetry, and which is only relieved by occasional flashes of intoxicated merriment with the glass of whiskey for its stimulus and inspiration.

THE FAIR HAIR'D GIRL.

The sun has set, the stars are still,

The red moon hides behind the hill;

The tide has left the brown beach bare,

The birds have fled the upper air;

Upon her branch the lone cuckoo

Is chanting still her sad adieu;

And you, my fair hair'd girl, must go

Across the salt sea under woe.

I through love have learned three things,

Sorrow, sin, and death it brings,

Yet day by day my heart within

Dares shame and sorrow, death and sin;

Maiden, you have aim'd the dart

Rankling in my ruin'd heart;

Maiden, may the God above

Grant you grace to grant me love.

Sweeter than the viol's string,

And the notes that blackbirds sing;

Brighter than the dewdrops rare

Is the maiden, wondrous fair;

Like the silver swans at play

Is her neck, as bright as day;

Woe is me, that e'er my sight

Dwelt on charms so deadly bright.

Among the sweetest and most famous of the old Irish airs is that entitled The Coolun or Head of Clustering Tresses, one of the charming personifications of female beauty of which Irish poetry is full. Several sets of words remain to this air of which Ferguson has translated the following:--

THE COOLUN.

Oh, had you seen the Coolun,

Walking down by the cuckoo's street,

With the dew of the meadow shining

On her milk-white twinkling feet,

My love she is and my _cooleen oge_,

And she dwells at Bal'nagar;

And she bears the palm of beauty bright

From the fairest that in Erin are.

In Bal'nagar is the Coolun,

Like the berry on the bough her cheek;

Bright beauty dwells forever

On her fair neck and ringlets sleek;

Oh, sweeter is her mouth's soft music

Than the lark or thrush at dawn,

Or the blackbird in the greenwood singing

Farewell to the setting sun.

Rise up, my boy, make ready

My horse, for I forth would ride,

To follow the modest damsel,

Where she walks on the green hillside.

For, ever since our youth were we plighted,

In faith, troth, and wedlock true--

She is sweeter to me nine times over

Than organ or cuckoo!

For, ever since my childhood

I loved the fair and darling child;

But our people came between us,

And with lucre our pure love defiled;

Oh, my woe it is, and my bitter pain,

And I weep it night and day,

That the _cooleen bawn_ of my early love

Is torn from my heart away.

Sweetheart and faithful treasure,

Be constant still, and true,

Nor for want of herds and houses

Leave one who would ne'er leave you;

I pledge you the blessed Bible,

Without and eke within,

That the faithful God will provide for us,

Without thanks to kith or kin.

Oh, love, do you remember,

When we lay all night alone,

Beneath the ash in the winter-storm,

When the oak-wood round did groan?

No shelter then from the blast had we,

The bitter blast or sleet,

But your gown to wrap about our heads,

And my coat round our feet.

The main literary work of Sir Samuel Ferguson was devoted to this revivification of the spirit of ancient Celtic poetry, in spite of a highly successful début as an English poet in The Forging of the Anchor, which at once took its place among those poems that are the familiar treasures of the people, and in this he was doubtless governed by something of patriotic spirit as well as by natural predilection. His work is not great in quantity, and he treasured his inspiration and perfected his workmanship with careful pains. Its result is to give a reproduction of the pervading elements of Irish Celtic poetry in English form with almost absolute perfection, and imbued with a spirit of original genius. In his poems, rather than in Macpherson's Ossian or in the literal translations, will the modern reader find the voice of the ancient Celtic bards speaking to the intelligence of to-day in their own tones without false change and dilution, or the confusion and dimness of an ancient language. The value of this work has not yet been fully appreciated by literary critics, but there is no doubt in my mind but that it eventually will be,

WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET.

|One of the most extraordinary and painful lives in literary history was that of William Thom of Inverury,

Scotland. There have been Scottish poets before and since Burns who have been bred in poverty and distress, and in whose lives the flowers of poetry have bloomed amid the most depressing and uncongenial circumstances. There have been crofters, shepherds, farm laborers, tailors, weavers, and shoemakers, servant lassies and old wives, who have given expression to their feelings in verse and song, with more or less skill and success, and testified to the strength of the national genius which has made Scotland so peculiarly the land of song, and filled the lower bed of bracken and furze in which the higher and rarer flowers of Scottish minstrelsy have stood preeminent. And the history of the minor Scottish poets is full of the homely pathos of unrequited toil, of pinching poverty, and of hopeless struggles with life, redeemed by honest virtue, patience, and thrift, or clouded with still deeper misfortune, and absolutely and irredeemably wrecked by dissipation and improvidence. But upon none, in whom the divine spark of genius existed, did the burdens of life fall more heavily than upon William Thom, or the tragedies of existence reach a blacker depth of misery. The story has been told by himself in The Rhymes and Recollections of a Handloom Weaver, his only volume, in nervous and vigorous prose, bearing traits of the declamatory style of Ebenezer Elliot and the radical writers of his school, but marked by native originality and strength. It has more than a personal value, as illustrating the condition of the life of factory hands in Scotland, when machines had multiplied to the complete degradation of labor, and when it was simply a question with the mill owners of extracting the largest amount of work for the smallest wages from the operatives, and before the government had interfered to regulate the hours of labor within endurable limits, and secure some of the conditions of health to the mill hands. A more appalling picture of hopeless poverty and starvation, and physical and moral degradation, has never been given in the annals of the civilized world, and of its truth there is abundant evidence in the writings of contemporary workingmen in England and Scotland, and in the testimony which led to the passage of the Factory Regulation acts by the English Parliament.