of discerning between the actual and the imaginary is absent, as it is absent in imaginative children; often, indeed, the illusory quite overpowers the real, as it does in the life of the Irish peasant to-day.
There is, in most literatures, a meeting-place where the Mythological and the Historic stand in close conjunction, the one dying out as the other takes its place. Only in Ireland we never seem to reach this point; we can never anywhere say, "Here ends legend, here begins history." In all Irish writing we find poetry and fact, dreams and realities, exact detail and wild imagination, linked closely hand in hand. This is the Gael as revealed in his literature. At first we are inclined to doubt the accuracy of any part of the story; but, as we continue our examination, we are surprised at the substantial correctness of the ancient records, so far as we are able to test them, whether on the historical or on the social side. The poet is never wholly poet, he is also practical man; and the historian is never wholly chronicler and annalist, he is also at the back of his mind folklorist, lover of nature, dreamer. It is the puzzle and the charm of Ireland.
A good example of this is the very beautiful anonymous Irish poem, rich in poetic imagery, addressed to Ragnall or Reginald, son of Somerled, lord of the Isles from 1164–1204. This poem, written for an historical prince, begins with a description of the joys of the fairy palace, "Emain of the Apples," whence this favoured prince is supposed by the poet to have issued forth:
"Many, in white grass-fresh Emain,
Of men on whom a noble eye gazes
(The rider of a bay steed impetuously)
Through a countenance of foxglove hue,
Shapely, branch-fresh.
"Many, in Emain of the pastures,
From which its noble feast has not parted,
Are the fields ploughed in autumn
For the pure corn of the Lord's Body."
The poet's mind wanders from the ancient Emain, capital of Ulster, to the allegorical Emain, the dwelling of the gods or fairy-hosts, who were thought of as inhabiting the great tumuli on the Boyne; again, he transplants his fairy-land to the home of Ragnall, and seems to place it in Mull or the Isle of Man, which was indeed the especial abode of Manannan, the Ocean-god and Ruler of Fairy-land.
"What God from Brugh of the Boyne,
Thou son of noble Sabia,
Thou beauteous apple-rod
Created thee with her in secret?
"O Man of the white steed,
O Man of the black swan,
Of the fierce band and the gentle sorrow,
Of the sharp blade and the lasting fame.
"Thy fair side thou hast bathed,
The grey branch of thy eyes like summer showers,
Over thy locks, O descendant of Fergus,
The wind of Paradise has breathed."[1]
We recognise that this is fine poetry, but we feel also that it needs a specialised education thoroughly to understand it. The world from which it hails is not our world, and to comprehend it we must do more than translate, we must add notes and glossary at every line; but no poetry, especially poetry under the initial disadvantage of a translation, could retain its qualities under such treatment.
In all the ancient verse we meet with these obstacles. Even much of the most imaginative Ossianic poetry becomes too difficult from this point of view for the untrained reader.
Take the fine poem detailing the history of the Shield of Fionn. Poetic addresses to noted weapons are common enough, and are not confined to Irish literature; but the adventures of this shield pass beyond the ordinary uses of human battles, and enter the realm of mythology. The very name given to it, the "Dripping Ancient Hazel," carries us into a world of poetic imagination.
"Scarce is there on the firm earth, whether it be man or
woman, one that can tell why thy name abroad
is known as the Dripping Ancient Hazel.
"'Twas Balor that besought Lugh before his beheading:
'Set my head above thy own comely head and
earn my blessing.'
"That blessing Lugh Longarm did not earn; he set up
the head above a wave of the east in a fork of hazel
before him.
"A poisonous milk drips down out of that hardened
tree; through the baneful drip, it was not slight,
the tree split right in two.
"For full fifty years the hazel stood, but ever it was a
cause of tears, the abode of vultures and ravens.
"Manannan of the round eye went into the wilderness
of the Mount of White-Hazel; there he saw a
shadeless tree among the trees that vied in beauty.
"Manannan sets workmen without delay to dig it out of
the firm earth. Mighty was the deed!
"From the root of that tree arises a poisonous vapour;
there were killed by it (perilous the consequence)
nine of the working folk.
"Now I say to you, and let the prophecy be sought out:
Around the mighty hazel without reproach was
found the cause of many a woe."
"It was from that shield that Eitheor of the smooth
brown face was called 'Son of Hazel,'—for this was
the hazel that he worshipped."[2]
[Pg xxviii]
Or take again the strange mythological poem of the "Crane-bag," made out of the skin of a wandering haunted crane, which had once been a woman; condemned for "two hundred white years" to dwell in "the house of Manannan," i.e. in the wastes of the ocean, ever seeking and never finding land. When the wanderings came to an end, and the unhappy Crane-woman died, Manannan (the Ocean-god) made of her skin a bag into which he put "every precious thing he had; the shirt of Manannan and his knife, the girdle of Goibniu (the Vulcan of Irish legend); the king of Scotland's shears, the king of Lochlann's helmet, and the bones of the swine of Asal—these were the treasures that the Crane-bag held. … When the sea was full, its treasures were seen in its midst; when the fierce sea was on ebb, the Crane-bag was empty." The story has the impress of great age, and manifold changes; it belongs to the period when the gods were not yet transformed into human beings, but were still primæval elemental
