Chapter XIII: Celtic Literary Revivals

Sixth century awakening throughout Celtdom—Illustrious
names—Brittany’s wonderful cycle of song—Charming examples—Dearth
of tenth century—A strange trait of Celtic life—The brilliant
medieval renaissance—Output of Ireland, Wales, and Brittany—The
Cornish dramas—Last speaker of that dialect—Period of inactivity
and decline—Recrudescence—1745–1800 the high-water mark of
Highland production—A galaxy of poets—Splendid lyrical
outburst—New Ossianic cycle—Seana Dana—Caledonian bards—The Welsh
Eisteddfod—Latest Celtic renaissance—Some characteristic features,
results, manifestations—Antiquity, thou wondrous charm!

There comes a time in the history of races when, passing from simplicity to reflection, their deepest nature finds expression in some form of literature. That time for the Celtic people has been the late fifth, but more especially the sixth century of our era. And the remarkable fact confronts us then of a simultaneous poetic awakening in all the chief groups into which the Celtic remnant had been divided. Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Brittany were all involved in this primal literary activity.

A most curious phenomenon to contemplate is this racial renaissance. When the great Celtic empire had crumbled, and its defeated fragments were driven to their last resorts on the outmost confines of Europe, vanquished by the alien who kept them at bay, suddenly the sundered remnants burst into song. Plaintive and sad for the most part has been this utterance, but full of the wealth of sentiment, fancy, and old-time peculiarities of conception so characteristic of this ancient people.

St. Patrick, St. Sechnall, Dubthach, Fiacc, Dallan Forgaill, and others, inaugurated the new time in Ireland; St. Columba and his following accomplished a similar transition for Scotland, opening the pages of literary history with beautiful hymns and lyrics, which have continued to this day. In Wales the pregnant sixth century which gave us Columcille was _the_ great age of bardic literature—the age of such princes of poetry as Aneurin, Taliessin, Llywarch Hên, and Myrddin.

These are among the most illustrious names of the Celtic past. And in Brittany the same period is believed to have produced that wonderful cycle of song, some of which has been taken down from oral recitation so late as last century by the learned and enthusiastic M. de Villemarqué,[30] the Macpherson of Brittany, and published in his delightful _Barzaz-Breiz, Chants populaires de la Bretagne_, a number of which Mr. Tom Taylor has rendered into English. Those entitled—

The Wine of the Gauls,
The Prediction of Gwenc’hlan,
The Lord Nann and the Fairy,
The March of Arthur,
The Plague of Elliant,
The Drowning of Kaer-Is—

are held to belong to the period with which we are dealing, and to have been in existence prior at least to the close of the sixth century. They are all distinguished by the presence of alliteration as well as rhyme, by a more or less complete division into triplets, like the ancient Welsh triads, as well as by a distinctly archaic impress in the manners described, and the feelings of the singer.

The names of the authors have not come down to us, as in the other three countries, but, having already quoted specimens of the fifth and sixth century poetry of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, it might not be uninteresting now to give characteristic examples of the early compositions of Brittany.

The Wine of the Gauls is undoubtedly ancient, so ancient indeed, that