My object in this volume has been to give a general view of the literature produced by the Irish-speaking Irish, and to reproduce by copious2 examples some of its more salient, or at least more characteristic features.
In studying the literature itself, both that of the past and that of the present, one of the things which has most forcibly struck me is the marked absence of the purely3 personal note, the absence of great predominating names, or of great predominating works; while just as striking is the almost universal diffusion4 of a traditional literary taste and a love of literature in the abstract amongst all classes of the native Irish. The whole history of Irish literature shows how warmly the efforts of all who assisted in its production were appreciated.[Pg x] The greatest English bard5 of the Elizabethan age was allowed by his countrymen to perish of poverty in the streets of London, while the pettiest chief of the meanest clan6 would have been proud to lay his hearth7 and home and a share of his wealth at the disposal of any Irish "ollamh." The love for literature of a traditional type, in song, in poem, in saga8, was, I think, more nearly universal in Ireland than in any country of western Europe, and hence that which appears to me to be of most value in ancient Irish literature is not that whose authorship is known, but rather the mass of traditional matter which seems to have grown up almost spontaneously, and slowly shaped itself into the literary possession of an entire nation. An almost universal acquaintance with a traditional literature was a leading trait amongst the Irish down to the last century, when every barony and almost every townland still possessed9 its poet and reciter, and song, recitation, music, and oratory10 were the recognised amusements of nearly the whole population. That population in consequence, so far as wit and readiness of language and power of expression went, had almost all attained11 a remarkably12 high level, without however producing any one of a commanding eminence13. In collecting the floating literature of the present day also, the unknown traditional poems and the Ossianic ballads14 and the stories of unknown authorship are of greater value than the pieces of bards15 who are known and named. In both cases, that of the ancient and that of the modern Irish, all that is of most value as literature, was the property and in some sense the product of the people at large, and it exercised upon them a most striking and potent16 influence. And this influence may be traced amongst the Irish-speaking population even at the present day, who have, I may almost say, one and all, a remarkable17 command of language and a large store of traditional literature learned by heart, which strongly differentiates18 them from the Anglicised products of the "National Schools" to the bulk of whom poetry is an unknown term, and amongst[Pg xi] whom there exists little or no trace of traditional Irish feelings, or indeed seldom of any feelings save those prompted by (when they read it) a weekly newspaper.
The exact extent of the Irish literature still remaining in manuscript has never been adequately determined19. M. d'Arbois de Jubainville has noted20 133 still existing manuscripts, all copied before the year 1600, and the whole number which he has found existing chiefly in public libraries on the Continent and in the British Isles21 amounts to 1,009. But many others have since been discovered, and great numbers must be scattered22 throughout the country in private libraries, and numbers more are perishing or have recently perished of neglect since the "National Schools" were established. Jubainville quotes a German as estimating that the literature produced by the Irish before the seventeenth century, and still existing, would fill a thousand octavo volumes. It is hard to say, however, how much of this could be called literature in a true sense of the word, since law, medicine, and science were probably included in the calculation. O'Curry, O'Longan, and O'Beirne Crowe catalogued something more than half the manuscripts in the Royal Irish Academy, and the catalogue of contents filled thirteen volumes containing 3,448 pages. To these an alphabetic23 index of the pieces contained was made in three volumes, and an index of the principal names, etc., in thirteen volumes more. From a rough calculation, based on an examination of these, I should place the number of different pieces catalogued by them at about ten thousand, ranging from single quatrains or even single sentences to long poems and epic24 sagas25. But in the Academy alone, there are nearly as many more manuscripts which still remain uncatalogued.
It is probably owing to the extreme difficulty of arriving at any certain conclusions as to the real extent of Irish literature that no attempt at a consecutive26 history of it has ever previously27 been made. Despite this difficulty, there is no doubt that such a work would long ago have been attempted had it[Pg xii] not been for the complete breakdown28 and destruction of Irish Ireland which followed the Great Famine, and the unexpected turn given to Anglo-Irish literature by the efforts of the Young Ireland School to compete with the English in their own style, their own language, and their own models.
For the many sins of omission29 and commission in this volume I must claim the reader's kind indulgence; nobody can be better aware of its shortcomings than I myself, and the only excuse that I can plead is that over so much of the ground I have had to be my own pioneer. I confidently hope, however, that in the renewed interest now being taken in our native civilisation30 and native literature some scholar far more fully31 equipped for his task than I, may soon render this volume superfluous32 by an ampler, juster, and more artistic33 treatment of what is really a subject of great national importance.
National or important, however, it does not appear to be considered in these islands, where outside of the University of Oxford—which has given noble assistance to the cause of Celtic studies—sympathisers are both few and far between. Indeed, I fancy that anybody who has applied34 himself to the subject of Celtic literature would have a good deal to tell about the condescending35 contempt with which his studies have been regarded by his fellows. "I shall not easily forget," said Dr. Petrie, addressing a meeting of the Royal Irish Academy upon that celebrated36 example of early Celtic workmanship the Tara Brooch, "that when in reference to the existence of a similar remain of ancient Irish art, I had first the honour to address myself to a meeting of this high institution, I had to encounter the incredulous astonishment37 of the illustrious Dr. Brinkley" [of Trinity College, President of the Academy] "which was implied in the following remark, 'Surely, sir, you do not mean to tell us that there exists the slightest evidence to prove that the Irish had any acquaintance with the arts of civilised life anterior38 to the arrival in Ireland of the English?' nor shall I[Pg xiii] forget that in the scepticism which this remark implied nearly all the members present very obviously participated." Exactly the same feeling which Dr. Petrie encountered was prevalent in my own alma mater in the eighties, where one of our most justly popular lecturers said—in gross ignorance but perfect good faith—that the sooner the Irish recognised that before the arrival of Cromwell they were utter savages39, the better it would be for everybody concerned! Indeed, it was only the other day that one of our ablest and best known professors protested publicly in the Contemporary Review against the enormity of an Irish bishop40 signing so moderate, and I am sure so reasonable a document, as a petition asking to have Irish children who knew no English, taught through the medium of the language which they spoke41. Last year, too, another most learned professor of Dublin University went out of his way to declare that "the mass of material preserved [in the Irish manuscripts] is out of all proportion to its value as 'literature,'" and to insist that "in the enormous mass of Irish MSS. preserved, there is absolutely nothing that in the faintest degree rivals the splendours of the vernacular42 literatures of the Middle Ages," that "their value as literature is but small," and that "for educational purposes save in this limited sense [of linguistic43 study] they are wholly unsuited," winding44 up with the extraordinary assertion that "there is no solid ground for supposing that the tales current at the time of our earliest MSS. were much more numerous than the tales of which fragments have come down to us." As to the civilisation of the early Irish upon which Petrie insisted, there is no longer room for the very shadow of a doubt; but whether the literature which they produced is so utterly45 valueless as this, and so utterly devoid46 of all interest as "literature," the reader of this volume must judge for himself. I should be glad also if he were to institute a comparison between "the splendours of the vernacular literatures" of Germany, England, Spain, and even Italy and France, prior to the year 1000, and that of the Irish, for I am[Pg xiv] very much mistaken if in their early development of rhyme, alone, in their masterly treatment of sound, and in their absolutely unique and marvellous system of verse-forms, the Irish will not be found to have created for themselves a place alone and apart in the history of European literatures.
I hardly know a sharper contrast in the history of human thought than the true traditional literary instinct which four years ago prompted fifty thousand poor hard-working Irishmen in the United States to contribute each a dollar towards the foundation of a Celtic chair in the Catholic University of Washington in the land of their adoption47, choosing out a fit man and sending him to study under the great Celticists of Germany, in the hope that his scholarship might one day reflect credit upon the far-off country of their birth; while in that very country, by far the richest college in the British Isles, one of the wealthiest universities in the world, allows its so-called "Irish professorship" to be an adjunct of its Divinity School, founded and paid by a society for—the conversion48 of Irish Roman Catholics through the medium of their own language!
This is the more to be regretted because had the unique manuscript treasures now shut up in cases in the underground room of Trinity College Library, been deposited in any other seat of learning in Europe, in Paris, Rome, Vienna, or Berlin, there would long ago have been trained up scholars to read them, a catalogue of them would have been published, and funds would have been found to edit them. At present the Celticists of Europe are placed under the great disadvantage of having to come over to Dublin University to do the work that it is not doing for itself.
It is fortunate however that the spread of education within the last few years (due perhaps partly to the establishment of the Royal University, partly to the effects of Intermediate Education, and partly to the numerous literary societies which working upon more or less national lines have spontaneously[Pg xv] sprung up amongst the Irish people themselves) has, by taking the prestige of literary monopoly out of the hands of Dublin University, to a great extent undone49 the damage which had so long been caused to native scholarship by its attitude. It was the more necessary to do this, because the very fact that it had never taken the trouble to publish even a printed catalogue of its Irish manuscripts—as the British Museum authorities have done—was by many people interpreted, I believe, as a sort of declaration of their worthlessness.
In dealing50 with Irish proper names I have experienced the same difficulty as every one else who undertakes to treat of Irish history. Some native names, especially those with "mortified51" or aspirated letters, look so unpronounceable as to prove highly disconcerting to an English reader. The system I have followed is to leave the Irish orthography52 untouched, but in cases where the true pronunciation differed appreciably53 from the sound which an English reader would give the letters, I have added a phonetic54 rendering55 of the Irish form in brackets, as "Muighmheadhon [Mwee-va-on], Lughaidh [Lewy]." There are a few names such as Ossian, Mève, Donough, Murrough and others, which have been almost adopted into English, and these forms I have generally retained—perhaps wrongly—but my desire has been to throw no unnecessary impediments in the way of an English reader; I have always given the true Irish form at least once. Where the word "mac" is not part of a proper name, but really means "son of" as in Finn mac Cúmhail, I have printed it with a small "m"; and in such names as "Cormac mac Art" I have usually not inflected the last word, but have written "Art" not "Airt," so as to avoid as far as possible confusing the English reader.
I very much regret that I have found it impossible, owing to the brief space of time between printing and publication, to submit the following chapters to any of my friends for[Pg xvi] their advice and criticism. I beg, however, to here express my best thanks to my friend Father Edmund Hogan, S.J., for the numerous memoranda56 which he was kind enough to give me towards the last chapter of this book, that on the history of Irish as a spoken language, and also to express my regret that the valuable critical edition of the Book of Hymns57 by Dr. Atkinson and Dr. Bernard, M. Bertrand's "Religion Gauloise," and Miss Hull's interesting volume on "Cuchullin Saga," which should be read in connection with my chapters on the Red Branch cycle, appeared too late for me to make use of.
RáTH-TREAGH, OIDHCHE SAMHNA
MDCCCXCIX.
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1
abstained
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| v.戒（尤指酒），戒除( abstain的过去式和过去分词 )；弃权（不投票） | |
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copious
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| adj.丰富的，大量的 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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diffusion
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| n.流布；普及；散漫 | |
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bard
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| n.吟游诗人 | |
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clan
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| n.氏族，部落，宗族，家族，宗派 | |
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hearth
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| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
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saga
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| n.(尤指中世纪北欧海盗的)故事，英雄传奇 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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oratory
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| n.演讲术；词藻华丽的言辞 | |
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attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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12
remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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eminence
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| n.卓越，显赫；高地，高处；名家 | |
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ballads
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| 民歌，民谣，特别指叙述故事的歌( ballad的名词复数 )； 讴 | |
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bards
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| n.诗人( bard的名词复数 ) | |
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potent
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| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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18
differentiates
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| 区分，区别，辨别( differentiate的第三人称单数 )； 区别对待； 表明…间的差别，构成…间差别的特征 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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isles
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| 岛( isle的名词复数 ) | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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alphabetic
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| adj.照字母次序的，字母的 | |
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epic
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| n.史诗，叙事诗；adj.史诗般的，壮丽的 | |
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sagas
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| n.萨迦（尤指古代挪威或冰岛讲述冒险经历和英雄业绩的长篇故事）( saga的名词复数 )；（讲述许多年间发生的事情的）长篇故事；一连串的事件（或经历）；一连串经历的讲述（或记述） | |
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consecutive
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| adj.连续的，联贯的，始终一贯的 | |
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previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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breakdown
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| n.垮，衰竭；损坏，故障，倒塌 | |
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omission
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| n.省略，删节；遗漏或省略的事物，冗长 | |
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civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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superfluous
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| adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的 | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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condescending
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| adj.谦逊的,故意屈尊的 | |
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celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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anterior
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| adj.较早的；在前的 | |
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savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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bishop
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| n.主教，（国际象棋）象 | |
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41
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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42
vernacular
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| adj.地方的，用地方语写成的；n.白话；行话；本国语；动植物的俗名 | |
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linguistic
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| adj.语言的，语言学的 | |
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winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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devoid
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| adj.全无的，缺乏的 | |
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47
adoption
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| n.采用，采纳，通过；收养 | |
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48
conversion
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| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
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undone
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| a.未做完的，未完成的 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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51
mortified
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| v.使受辱( mortify的过去式和过去分词 )；伤害（人的感情）；克制；抑制（肉体、情感等） | |
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52
orthography
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| n.拼字法，拼字式 | |
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53
appreciably
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| adv.相当大地 | |
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phonetic
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| adj.语言的，语言上的，表示语音的 | |
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55
rendering
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| n.表现，描写 | |
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56
memoranda
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| n. 备忘录, 便条 名词memorandum的复数形式 | |
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hymns
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| n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌( hymn的名词复数 ) | |
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