Part 2 — NOTES

ANCIENT IRISH AND SCOTTISH

THE MYSTERY OF AMERGIN. PAGE 3

Of this strange pantheistical fragment, Dr Douglas Hyde writes:—“The first poem written in Ireland is said to have been the work of Amergin, who was brother of Evir, Ir, and Eremon, the first Milesian princes who colonised Ireland many hundred of years before Christ. The three short pieces of verse ascribed to Amergin are certainly very ancient and very strange. But, as the whole story of the Milesian invasion is wrapped in mystery and is quite possibly only a rationalised account of early Irish mythology (in which the Tuatha De Danann, Firbolgs, and possibly Milesians, are nothing but the gods of the early Irish euhemerised into men), no faith can be placed in the alleged date or genuineness of Amergin’s verses. They are, however, of interest, because as Irish tradition has always represented them as being the first verses made in Ireland, so it may very well be that they actually do present the oldest surviving lines in any vernacular tongue in Europe except Greek.”

THE SONG OF FIONN. PAGE 4

“The Song of Finn MacCool, composed after his eating of the Salmon of Knowledge.” This, if not the earliest, is almost the earliest authentic fragment of Erse poetry. The translation is after O’Donovan and Dr Douglas Hyde.

CREDHE’S LAMENT. PAGE 5

From The Colloquy of the Ancients (called also “The Dialogue of the Sages,” and by other analogues), translated by Standish Hayes O’Grady (vide The Book of Lismore; Silva Gadelica; etc.). See specific mention in Introduction.

CUCHULLIN IN HIS CHARIOT. PAGE 6

(Source: Hector MacLean’s Ultonian Hero Ballads. See Introduction.)

DEIRDRE’S LAMENT FOR THE SONS OF USNACH. PAGE 8

Of the many Irish-Gaelic and Scottish-Gaelic and English translations and paraphrases, I have selected the rendering of Sir Samuel Ferguson. The original Erse is of unknown antiquity. (See Introduction.)

THE LAMENT OF QUEEN MAEV. PAGE 10

This admirable translation is by Mr T. W. Rolleston (vide Note to p. 166), after the original in The Book of Leinster.

THE MARCH OF THE FAERIE HOST. PAGE 12

This striking poem is given as translated by Professor Kuno Meyer. It and other verses are to be found, in the original, in The Book of Lismore (15th century). The particular narrative therein deals with the visit of Laegaire mac Crimthainn to the land of Faerie. The episodic portion of this narrative has been translated and edited by Mr Standish Hayes O’Grady (see Silva Gadelica); but the general reader may be more interested in the brief and lucid commentary of Professor Kuno Meyer (see The Voyage of Bran—with Essay on the Celtic Elysium, by Mr Alfred Nutt—recently published by D. Nutt). Professor Meyer considers this and the other verses of “Laegaire mac Crimthainn” to be as old as the 10th century period. “The Faerie Host,” as here given, is fragmentary, being part of an episode; but I have further curtailed it by three lines, for the sake of effect and unity of impression. The other three lines are—

VISION OF A FAIR WOMAN. PAGE 13

This characteristic Scoto-Celtic poem is supposed by some scholars to be very ancient. The Gaelic version permits of some doubt on the conjecture, but the text is not in this instance conclusive. The “Aisling” will be found in Smith’s Collection of Ancient Poems, from the Gaelic of Ossian, Ullin, Orran, and others (1780)—the reputed originals of which were published in 1787. See, for easier reference, Nigel MacNeil’s Literature of the Highlanders, p. 218.

THE FIAN BANNERS. PAGE 14

This paraphrase of an ancient poem is modern. The original is supposed to relate to the Scoto-Celtic and Viking wars of the 11th century. (See Nigel MacNeil’s Literature of the Highlanders, p. 117.)

THE RUNE OF ST PATRICK (“THE FAEDH; OR, THE CRY OF THE DEER”). PAGE 17

This translation of the “Faedh,” from The Book of Hymns (11th century), is by Charles Mangan.

COLUMCILLE CECENIT. PAGE 18

The version of Colum’s Hymn here given is the translation of Dr Douglas Hyde, himself a poet, and one of the foremost living Irish folk-lorists. All students of Celtic literature should see his fascinating volume of metrical renderings of the old Erse, The Three Sorrows of Story-Telling. (Vide Notes to p. 126.)

COLUMCILLE FECIT. PAGE 20

This well-known poem is given as translated by Michael O’Curry, from an Irish MS. in the Burgundian Library of Brussels.

THE SONG OF MURDOCH THE MONK. PAGE 22

This “Monastic Shaving Song” is the version of Professor Blackie, as translated from Bishop Ewing’s Book.

DOMHNULL MAC FHIONNLAIDH. “THE AGED BARD’S WISH.” PAGE 23

Although this undoubtedly old Gaelic poem is attributed by its translators, Charles Edward Stuart and John Sobieski, to the early bard Domhnull Mac Fhionnlaidh, there is no certainty (as they admit) either as to authorship or date. This version is taken from Ballads and Songs by Charles Edward Stuart and John Sobieski.

“OSSIAN SANG.” PAGE 28

The original was jotted down in phonetic Gaelic by Dean Macgregor some 380 years ago.

FINGAL AND ROS-CRANA. PAGE 29

This is not part of the text of Macpherson’s Ossian though the Englishing is by Macpherson, who attributes the original to Colgan, an ancient Scoto-Irish bard. It will be found in the Notes to Temora. (See Introduction.)

THE NIGHT-SONG OF THE BARDS. PAGE 31

Macpherson “translated” this, he avers, from an old Gaelic original. His version is to be found in the Notes to Croma.

OSSIAN. “COMALA.” PAGE 35

I have selected this short poem as representative of the semi-mythical Ossian of Macpherson. It is undoubtedly ancient substantially.

THE DEATH-SONG OF OSSIAN. PAGE 41

The close of “The Songs of Selma.” (See foregoing Note.)

ANCIENT CORNISH

THE POOL OF PILATE. PAGE 45

From the ancient Cornish drama, The Resurrection of Christ (vide section: “The Death of Pilate”). See the volume on the subject by Mr Edwin Norris, referred to in Note to “The Vision of Seth.”

MERLIN THE DIVINER. PAGE 46

(Vide Introduction.) This, though it exists in the old Cornish dialect, is really an ancient Breton incantation. The Cornish variant is to be found in that invaluable depository of Armorican legendary lore, the Barzaz Breiz. The translation here given is by Thos. Stephens. (Vide Thos. Stephens: a Memoir. Wm. Rees, Llandovery, 1849.)

THE VISION OF SETH. PAGE 47

This dramatic fragment is from The Ancient Cornish Drama, edited and translated by Edwin Norris, Sec. R.A.S. (Oxford, 1859).

ARMORICAN

THE DANCE OF THE SWORD. PAGE 53

(Vide Introduction.) In Armorican, Gwin ar C‘ Hallaoued: Ha Korol or C‘ Hlezf—i.e. The Wine of the Gauls, and the Dance of the Sword. Supposed to be the fragment of a Song that accompanied the old Celtic sword-dance in honour of the Sun. [This and the following translation by the late Tom Taylor are, by courteous permission of Messrs Macmillan, quoted from Ballads and Songs of Brittany (selections from the Barzaz Breiz of the Vicomte Hersart de la Villemarqué).]

THE LORD NANN AND THE FAIRY. PAGE 55

(By the same, and from the same source.) The “Korrigan” of Breton superstition has his familiar congeners in Celtic Scotland and Ireland; and is identical with the “elf” of Scandinavian mythology and of the Danish ballads. In this English version of “The Lord Nann” the metre and divisions into stanzas of the original Armorican have been adhered to. The triplet indicates antiquity in Cambrian and Armorican compositions.

ALAIN THE FOX. PAGE 58

This and the following poem are from the same Franco-Breton source as their two predecessors, but are translated by Mr F. G. Fleay, M.A. (The Masterpieces of Breton Ballads. Printed for Private Circulation. Halifax, 1870).

BRAN (THE CROW). PAGE 60

See foregoing Note.

EARLY CYMRIC

THE SOUL. PAGE 67

This strange fragment is of unknown antiquity, and may well be, as affirmed, of as remote a date as the 6th or even 5th century. It is from that remarkable depository of early Cymric lore, The Black Book of Caermarthen (1154-1189).

LLYWARC’H HEN. PAGE 68

The “Gorwynion” of Llywarc’h Hên, “Prince of the Cambrian Britons” (if it is really the work of that poet), is one of the most famous productions of early Cymric literature. Llywarc’h Hên’s floreat is by some authorities placed in the middle of the 7th century, by others so early as the beginning of the 6th, and by others as really extending from early in the 6th till the middle of the 7th: the drift of evidence indicates the remoter date as the more probable. The translation here given was made about a hundred years ago by William Owen. It is not easy to find an English equivalent for “Gorwynion,” a plural word which signifies objects that have a very bright whiteness or glare. Perhaps the word glitterings might serve, though, as has been suggested, the nearest term would be Coruscants. The last line of these verses generally contains some moral maxim, unconnected with the preceding lines, except in the metre. It is said that the custom arose through the desire of the bards to assist the memory in the conveyance of instruction by oral means. In the translation the rhymed or assonantal unity of the tercets is lost, with the result that the third-line maxim generally comes in with almost ludicrous inappositeness. According to the Triads of the Isle of Britain, Llywarc’h Hên passed his younger days at the Court of Arthur. In one triad he is alluded to as one of the three free guests at the Arthurian Court; in another, as one of the three counselling warriors. According to tradition, the bones of this princely bard lie beneath the Church of Llanvor, where, as averred, he was interred at the patriarchal age of 150 years. He was not one of the Sacred Bards, because of his military profession as a prince and knight; for these might not carry arms, and in their presence a naked sword even might not be held. The Beirdd were not poets and sages only, but were accounted and accepted as missioners of peace.

LLYWARC’H HEN. PAGE 71

This is another series of “Gorwynion,” attributed to Llywarc’h Hên by Mr Skene, who has translated it from The Red Book of Hergest (MS. compiled in 14th and 15th centuries). The English rendering of The Red Book was issued through Messrs Edmonston & Douglas of Edinburgh in 1868.

TALIESIN. PAGE 73

“Song to the Wind” (Vide Introduction). “The Song about the Wind,” of which only a section is given here, will be found in full in Skene’s Four Ancient Books of Wales, Vol. I., page 535, and is the most famous poem by the most famous of Cymric bards. It was first translated, some forty-five years ago, by Lady Charlotte Guest, whose Englished renderings of the “Mabinogion” attracted the attention of scholars throughout the whole Western world. (Longmans, 1849 and later.) Emerson delighted in the “Song,” and declared it to be one of the finest pieces of its kind extant in any literature. See also the Myvyrian Archaiology.

ANEURIN. PAGE 75

Aneurin was one of the famous warrior bards of ancient Wales. His birth is noted as Circa 500 A.D., and in any case he flourished during the first half of the 6th century. Aneurin—like Taliesin, called “the monarch of the bards”—was a Briton of Manau Gododin, a principality or province of Cymric Scotland, now Mid-Lothian and Linlithgowshire. Manau Gododin stretched from the Carron of to-day (the Carun of Ossian), some miles to the north-west of Falkirk to the river Esk, that now divides Mid-Lothian and East Lothian. Manau Gododin was then much more Celtic (Pictish) than Gododin. “Breatan Cymru” (i.e. the country of the Welsh Britons) then comprised the larger part of southern Scotland—that is, from the north end of Loch Lomond, and from the upper reaches of the Gwruid (the Forth), to the Mull of Galloway on the south-west; eastward to a line drawn from the western Lammermuirs, by Melrose, Kelso, and Jedburgh, and so down by the Cheviots to Hexham, and thence southwesterly by Cumberland. The exception was the Pictish or Celtic province of Galloway—bounded on the west by Carrawg (that part of Ayrshire known as Carrick); on the north by Coel (Kyle); on the east by a line drawn from Sanquhar through Nithsdale and by Dumfries to Locharmoss and the Solway; on the south-west, by Novant (Mull of Galloway); and on the south by the Solway Firth.

Aneurin was a contemporary of the princely poet, Llywarc’h Hên. He was called Aneurin y Coed Awr ap Caw o Gwm Cawlwyd—or, again, Aneurin Gwadrydd—both designations indicative of his greatness. It has been maintained that Aneurin is identical with the celebrated Gildas, “the author of the Latin epistle which Bede so blindly copied,” both Aneurin and Gildas having been sons of Caw. He is supposed to be alluded to as the seventh bard, in a curious fragment preserved in the Myvyrian Archaiology (Vol. III.), which I excerpt here.

“The seven questions put by Catwg the Wise, to the Seven Wise Men of the College of Llanvuthan, and the answers of these men:

1. “What is the greatest wisdom of man?” “To be able to do evil and not to do it,” answered St Tedio.

2. “What is the highest goodness of man?” “Justice,” answered Tahaiarn.

3. “What is the worst principle of man?” “Falsehood,” answered Taliesin, chief of Bards.

4. “What is the noblest action of man?” “Correctness,” answered Cynan, son of Clydno Eddin.

5. “What is the greatest folly of man?” “To desire a common evil, which he cannot do,” answered Ystyvan, the Bard of Teilo.

6. “Who is the poorest man?” “He who is not contented with his own property,” answered Arawn, son of Cynvarch.

7. “Who is the richest man?” “He who does not covet anything belonging to others,” answered Gildas of Coed Awr.

“The Ode to the Months” is given in the translation of William Probert (1820), according to whom the Ode contains moral maxims and observations which were known and repeated long before Aneurin lived, and were put into verse by him as an aid to the memory: “valuable, because they show the modes of thinking and expression which the primitive inhabitants of Britain used nearly 2000 years ago.”

DAFYDD AP GWILYM. PAGE 78

(Fl. 14th century.) In his love of Nature, and in the richness of his poetic imagination (as well, so say those who can read Welsh fluently, as in his poetry), Dafydd ap Gwilym is the Keats of Wales. The romance of his life and wild-wood experiences has yet to be written: and we still await an adequate translator—though, to judge from some recent renderings by Mr Ernest Rhys, in an interesting short study of Dafydd, recently published in The Chap Book (Stone & Kimball, Chicago) we may not have to wait much longer. He was a love-child: of noble parentage, though born under a hedge at Llandaff. His mother wedded after his birth; but he remained the “wilding” throughout his life. He became the favourite of Ivor Hael of Emlyn, with whose daughter Morvydd he fell in love. He wooed and won her “under the greenwood tree,” but only to lose her shortly afterward, when she was forcibly married to a man called Bwa Bach. Dafydd stole her from her legitimate husband, but was captured and imprisoned. His ultimate release was due to the payment of the imposed fine, the sum having been got together by the men of Glamorgan. His most ardent love-poetry is addressed to this fair Morvydd.

RHYS GOCH OF ERYRI. PAGE 82

There are two famous poets of the name of Rhys Goch; probably both belong to the 14th century (and Wilkins certainly disputes the claim of Rhys Goch ap Rhiccart to be of the 12th century). This Ode is an illustration of the sound answering the sense. Rhys was in love with the fair Gwen of Dol, and sent a peacock to her. His rival, also a bard, composed a poem to the Fox, beseeching it to kill his rival’s present, and, singularly enough, the bird was destroyed by a fox, and the rival bard was happy. Stung by this misadventure, Rhys composed the above, which, in the original, so teems with gutturals that Sion Tudor called it the “Shibboleth of Sobriety, because no man, when drunk, could possibly pronounce it.”

RHYS GOCH AP RHICCART. PAGE 83

See foregoing Note.

IRISH (MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY)

A.E. PAGES 87-91

From Homeward Songs by the Way (Whaley, Dublin).

This little book, published in paper covers, and apparently with every effort to avoid rather than court publicity, almost immediately attracted the notice of the few who watch contemporary poetry with scrupulously close attention. The author, who is well known in Dublin literary society, prefers to disguise his identity in public under the initials A.E., though it is no longer a secret that Mr G. W. Russell is the name of this poet-dreamer, who, like Blake, of whom he is a student and interpreter, has also a faculty of pictorial expression of a rare and distinctive kind.

WM. ALLINGHAM. (1824-1889.) PAGES 92-94

Every lover of Irish poetry is familiar with “The Fairies” of the late William Allingham. He is an Irish rather than distinctively a Celtic poet in the strict sense of the word; but every now and again he strikes the genuine Celtic note, as in his well-known “Fairies,” and the little poem called the “Æolian Harp,” by which he is also represented here. Much the best critical summary of his life-work is to be found in the brief memoir by Mr W. B. Yeats in Miles’ Poets and Poetry of the Century, Vol. V., p. 209. Among the innumerable love songs of the Irish peasantry there are few more beautiful than Allingham’s “Mary Donnelly.” As Mr Yeats says, he was “the poet of little things and little moments, and neither his emotions nor his thoughts took any wide sweep over the world of Man and Nature.” His “Laurence Bloomfield” is already practically forgotten; but many of the lighter and often exquisitely deft lyrics of his early life will remain in the memory of the Irish people, and one or two at least in English literature.

THOMAS BOYD. PAGE 95

So far as I know, Mr Thomas Boyd has not published any volume of verse. Some of his poems have appeared in United Ireland, among them the beautiful lines, “To the Lianhaun Shee.”

EMILY BRONTË. (1818-1848.) PAGE 97

It may be as well to explain to those readers who take it for granted that Emily Brontë is to be accounted an English poet, that she was of Irish nationality and birth. The name Brontë, so familiar now through the genius of herself and her sister, was originally Prunty. Everything from her pen has a note of singular distinction; but perhaps she could hardly be more characteristically represented than by the poem called “Remembrance.” The, in quantity, meagre poetic legacy of the author of Wuthering Heights is comprised (under her pseudonym, Ellis Bell) in the volume Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.

STOPFORD A. BROOKE. PAGE 98-100

“The Earth and Man” and “Song” (from the poem called “Six Days”) are from Mr Stopford Brooke’s volume, Poems (Macmillan & Co.). These seem to me fairly representative of the distinctive atmosphere which Mr Brooke conveys in all his poetry. See particularly his Riquet of The Tuft (1880) and Poems (1888).

JOHN K. CASEY. PAGE 101-3

Most of Mr Casey’s poems appeared above the signature “Leo.” Born in 1846, the son of a peasant, his early efforts to make literature his profession were handicapped by inevitable disadvantages. In 1876 he was arrested as a Fenian conspirator, and imprisoned. This, combined with the influence of his unselfish patriotism and the popularity of many of his lyrics, gave him a recognised place in the Irish Brotherhood of Song.

GEORGE DARLEY. (1795-1846.) PAGE 104

This remarkable poet, who has so strangely lapsed from public remembrance, was in his own day greatly admired by his fellow-poets and the most discerning critics of the period. Mrs Browning, and Robert Browning still more, were deeply impressed by what is now his best known production—Sylvia: a Lyrical Drama (1836); and Alfred Tennyson was so struck by the quality of the young poet’s work that he volunteered to defray the cost of publishing his verse. Lord Tennyson frequently, in conversation, alluded to George Darley as one of the “hopelessly misapprehended men”; and we have Robert Browning’s own authority, says Darley’s latest biographer, Mr John H. Ingram, for stating that Sylvia did much to determine the form of his own early dramas. Sylvia, again, charmed Coleridge; and in 1836, Miss Mitford, whom Mr Ingram calls a leading spirit among the literati of her day, writes:—“I have just had a present of a most exquisite poem, which old Mr Carey (the translator of Dante and Pindar) thinks more highly of than any poem of the present day—‘Sylvia, or The May Queen,’ by George Darley. It is exquisite—something between the ‘Faithful Shepherdess’ and the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream.’”

Darley was the eldest child of Arthur Darley, of the Scalp, County Wicklow. The poet, however, was not born there, but in Dublin, in the year 1795. While he was a child, his parents emigrated to the United States; and the boy spent the first ten years of his life at the family home in Wicklow. In due time, and subsequent to the return of his parents from America, he went through the usual scholastic routine, though he did not graduate at Trinity College, Dublin, till his twenty-fifth year—a delay in great part due to what, then and later, he considered a disastrous impediment of speech. From the loss of a scholarship to the social deprivations he underwent in London, this infirmity, he declared, was his evil fortune. His first book, The Errors of Ecstasie, was published (1822) in London, where he had settled. Needless to say, as this volume consists mainly of a dialogue between a Mystic and the Moon, the reading public remained in absolute ignorance of the new poet. His second book (1826) consisted of a series of prose tales and verses, collectively entitled—The Labours of Idleness; or, Seven Nights’ Entertainments—set forth as by “Guy Penseval.” Three years later appeared his chief work, Sylvia. Notwithstanding its divers shortcomings, some of them frankly acknowledged by the author himself, Sylvia is a creation of genuine imagination, and possesses a haunting and quite distinctive charm. Both the merits and demerits of his too often uncontrolled style are adequately indicated in the criticism of Mr Ingram: “[frequently] his wild Celtic fancy breaks its curb and carries him into clouds of metaphor as marvellous as they are musical, although often the flight ends by a hasty and undignified descent to commonplace earth.” There is no commonplace, however, in his exquisite faëry verse, which, in the words of the same critic, “is among the loveliest in the language; at times is even sweeter than Drayton’s, and is as fantastic as Shakespeare’s own.”

For ten years the poet kept silence; but in 1839 he issued his fragmentary and extraordinary Nepenthe—a poem which, with all its brilliant quality and daring richness of imagery, might well be taken as an example of the Celtic genius in extremis—so unreservedly does he give way to an uncontrolled imagination. Perhaps the best thing said about Nepenthe is in a letter from the author himself, wherein he writes:—“Does it not speak a heat of brain mentally Bacchic?”

Nothing that Darley published afterwards enhanced his reputation. Lovers of his best work, however, should read the posthumous volume of his “Poems” edited by R. and M. J. Livingstone—a rare volume, as it was printed for private circulation. It contains some of the songs from an unpublished lyrical drama called The Sea Bride; and it is from this that the “Dirge,” quoted at page 104 in this book, comes. In this posthumous collection also is included the following striking and characteristic lyric:—

THE FALLEN STAR.

After a life of great intellectual activity, but of singular isolation and of misanthropic unhappiness, George Darley died in London on the 23rd of November 1846, in his fifty-first year. For further information as to the personality and writings of this strange, undeservedly neglected, but unbalanced man of genius, the reader may be referred to the delightful edition of Sylvia, with Introduction, by Mr John H. Ingram, published by Mr J. M. Dent (1892).

AUBREY DE VERE. PAGE 105-6

Mr Aubrey De Vere is one of the most scholarly poets of Ireland. All his work is informed with a high and serious spirit; and though the bulk of it is not distinctively Celtic, either in sentiment or utterance, not even distinctively Irish, he has written some poems which are as dear to Nationalists and Celticists as is almost any other verse by contemporary poets. Mr Aubrey De Vere is the younger brother of Sir Stephen De Vere, Bart. (the translator of Horace, and himself a poet of distinction), and son of Aubrey De Vere, the poet friend of Wordsworth. He was born in 1814, and has lived most of his life, with long intervals in London and in several parts of Europe, at his birthplace, Curragh Chase, Adare, Co. Limerick. Among his most noteworthy writings are:—The Waldensees (1842); The Search after Proserpine (1843); Poems (1853); The Sisters (1861); The Infant Bridal: and other Poems (1864); Irish Odes (1869); The Legends of St Patrick (1872); Alexander the Great, a poetical drama (1874); and another drama, St Thomas of Canterbury (1876); Antar and Zara: and other Poems (1877); Legends of the Saxon Saints (1879); and The Foray of Queen Meave, based upon an ancient Irish epic (1882). Since then Mr Aubrey De Vere has published a Selection of his poems and one or two books of a religious nature. His best prose work is to be found in his Essays chiefly on Poetry (1887), and Essays chiefly Literary and Ethical (1889).

FRANCIS FAHY. PAGE 107

Author of Irish Songs and Poems, published under the pseudonym “Dreolin.” Mr Fahy is a member of the group of notable lyrists whose captain is Sir Samuel Ferguson.

SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON. (1810-1886.) PAGE 109

This celebrated poet and archæologist was born in Belfast. He has aptly been called a man of encyclopædic learning; but this learning did not prevent his becoming perhaps the foremost Irish poet of the Middle Victorian period. His most ambitious poetic work is Congal: an Epic Poem (1872)—a work full of lofty imagination and epical music, but unfortunate in its metrical setting. His short poem, “The Forging of the Anchor,” is one of the most celebrated and popular poems of our era. Even yet, the influence of his Lays of the Western Gael (1865) is considerable, and for good. “Cean Dubh Deelish” (darling dark head), of which several able, and one or two good translations have been made, finds its happiest interpreter in Ferguson. How many poets and lovers have repeated these lines—

PAGE 110

“Molly Asthore” is also a paraphrase. The original is ascribed to a celebrated Irish Gaelic bard, Cormac O’Con.

PAGE 112

“The Fair Hills of Holy Ireland,” is familiar to Irish men and women in every part of the world.

ALFRED PERCIVAL GRAVES. PAGE 113

One of the best known names of Ireland of to-day. Mr Graves, born in Dublin in 1846, is thoroughly national, and his delightful work is perhaps as adequately typical of the Irish spirit as that of any one man could be. His lyric faculty—or at any rate his movement, his verve—is unsurpassed by any living Irishman. These few examples of his poetical writings should win him many more readers. His first book, Songs of Killarney, was published over twenty years ago. Since then he has issued Irish Songs and Ballads, Songs of Old Ireland, and (1880) his best known collection, Father O’Flynn: and other Irish Lyrics. Irish Songs and Airs is the title of his promised contribution to Sir Gavan Duffy’s Irish Library.

GERALD GRIFFIN. (1803-1840.) PAGE 121

The author of the lovely song, “Eileen Aroon” (Nellie, my Darling), was born in Limerick. His chief work is his novel, The Collegians, which has been pronounced to be “the most perfect Irish novel published.” I have heard that Tennyson once “went mooning about for days,” repeating with endless gusto, and with frequent expressions of a wish that he was the author of, the closing lines:—

NORA HOPPER. PAGE 123 ETC.

This young Irish poet made an immediate impression by her Ballads in Prose (John Lane). Both in prose and verse she displays the true Celtic note, and often the unmistakable Celtic intensity. The lovely lyrics “April in Ireland,” and “The Wind among the Reeds,” are from Ballads in Prose. “The Dark Man” has not hitherto appeared in print, and I am indebted to Miss Hopper for her permission to quote it here. It is, I understand, to be included in her shortly forthcoming volume, to be published by Mr John Lane.

DOUGLAS HYDE, LL.D. PAGE 126

Dr Hyde, one of the foremost living expositors of Gaelic folklore in Ireland, was born about thirty-five years ago in the Co. Roscommon, where he has since resided. He graduated at Trinity College, Dublin, after an exceptionally brilliant University career. He is now President of the Gaelic League, and one of the acknowledged leaders of the Gaelic wing of the Celtic Renascence; but from the first he was in the front rank of those who are working for the preservation of the ancient Irish language and the rescue of its beautiful fugitive literature. Although best known by his Irish Tales, taken down at first hand from the peasantry, and other Folk-collections, and his invaluable and unique The Love Songs of Connacht (Connaught), he is himself a poet of mark. (See, also, Note XI., supra.) Those who are in a position to judge declare his Gaelic poetry, which appears in the Irish Press above the signature “An Chraoibhin Aoibhinn,” to be of altogether exceptional excellence. The work Dr Douglas Hyde does deserves the most cordial recognition. No man has worked more whole-heartedly, more enthusiastically, and with more far-reaching success for the cause of the Irish-Gaelic language, folk-lore, and literature, and, it may be added, the best interests of the Irish of the soil.

The songs by which he is represented in this volume are from the Love Songs of Connacht (Fisher Unwin, 1893), a book which is not only indispensable to the Celtic scholar, but should be in the hands of every lover of Celtic literature, old-time or new. All are translations, though perhaps paraphrastic rather than metaphrastic. Both in their music and in their intensity—in, also, their peculiar lyric lilt—they are distinctively West Irish. The collection from which these poems are drawn was issued as The Fourth Chapter of the Songs of Connacht. The preceding three appeared in the now defunct Nation. They were all originally written in Irish; but very wisely, or at any rate for us very fortunately, Dr Hyde interpolated translations. In these he has endeavoured to reproduce the vowel-rhymes as well as the exact metres of the original poems. We must hope to see the reprint, in like fashion, of the predecessors of this volume.

LIONEL JOHNSON. PAGE 133

Though come of a Dublin family, and otherwise Irish by descent, Mr Johnson was born at Broadstairs in Kent (1867). He first became known to the reading public, as a poet, by his contributions to The Book of the Rhymers’ Club, notable for their distinction of touch. Since then Mr Johnson has published much in prose and verse, though in book form he has not, I think, produced any other prose work than his admirable study of Thomas Hardy, or any other volume of poetry than his Poems. His work is not characterised by distinctively Celtic quality, though occasionally, as in “The Red Wind” and “To Morfydd,” the Celtic note makes itself audible. No doubt—to judge from internal evidence in his later writings—Mr Johnson’s poetic work, at least, will develop more and more along the line of his racial bent.

DENIS FLORENCE MACCARTHY. (1817-1882.) PAGE 135

Mr Maccarthy, who was a barrister in Dublin, and one of the main supports of the Nation, is best known by his fine translations of Calderon’s Dramas. The “Lament,” by which he is here represented, has always seemed to me his most haunting lyrical achievement. It is necessary to add, however, that this poem is somewhat condensed from the original—which is weakened by diffuseness. The score or so of lines beginning “As fire-flies fade,” have been favourites with many poets of Maccarthy’s own time and later.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. (1803-1849.) PAGE 137

While it is not the case, as sometimes averred, that Mangan was, or is, to Ireland what Burns is to Scotland, it is indisputable that the claim may be made for him rather than for any other Irish poet of the Early Victorian period. In fire and energy his faculty is unsurpassed by any of his poetic countrymen, though we may dispute Sir Charles Gavan Duffy’s assertion that Mangan “has not, and perhaps never had, any rival in mastery of the metrical and rhythmical resources of the English tongue.” Mangan was the child of a small tradesman of Dublin, where, in 1803, he was born. From childhood, fate dealt hardly with him. Abandoned in his early boyhood, he was indebted to a relative for his education; but when, in his fifteenth year, he became a copyist in a lawyer’s office, at a small pittance, his kindred discovered him and compelled him to share his meagre gains with them. For ten years thereafter he toiled in this bitter bondage. In his own words:—“I was obliged to work seven years of the ten from five in the morning, winter and summer, to eleven at night; and during the three remaining years, nothing but a special Providence could have saved me from suicide.” No wonder that, from an early period in his life, he found relief from his misery in drink; but it was misery and unbroken ill-fortune and adversity, much more than the curse of his fatal habit, that really killed him. There is a period in his life which is a blank, “a blank into which he entered a bright-haired youth and emerged a withered and stricken man.” His first chance for a happier life came with his appointment to a minor post in the University Library of Dublin, and it was during this time that most of his best work was done. His highest level is reached in his brilliant free paraphrases of German originals: Anthologia Germania (1845). His later years were darkened by the worst phases of his malady, and he died (as in most part he had lived, in misery and poverty) in Meath Hospital, in his forty-seventh year. He has written one lyric that Irishmen will always account immortal: “Dark Rosaleen”—a wild and passionate rhapsody on Ireland herself. “Dark Rosaleen,” “Silk of the Kine,” “The Little Black Rose,” “Kathleen Ny Houlahan”—these were at one time the familiar analogues of Ireland. Of his Oriental paraphrases the most stirring is “The Karamanian Exile.” Strangely enough, Mangan’s Irish renderings are less happy than those poems which he based upon German and Oriental originals; but sometimes, as in the beautiful “Fair Hills of Eiré, O!” after the Irish of Donough mac Con-Mara, he has bequeathed a memorable lyric. Of poems that are strictly original, nothing seems to me more characteristic of Mangan than “The One Mystery” (see p. 142).

ROSA MULHOLLAND. PAGE 144

This accomplished prose-writer and poet was born in Belfast. Since her Vagrant Verses (1886) she has published many stories and poems, and is a regular contributor to the leading Irish periodicals. Her “Fionnula” is one of the happiest renderings of the legend of the Swan Daughters of Lir; but is too long for quotation in the text. “The Wild Geese,” by which she is represented here, is eminently characteristic. Her latest poem, and one of her best, appears under the title “Under a Purple Cloud” in the autumn number of The Evergreen. It is a vision of Earth personified, and opens thus:

THE HON. RODEN NOËL. (1834-1894.) PAGE 146

Mr Roden Noël was son of the first Earl of Gainsborough, grandson of Lord Roden of Tullymore in Ireland, and nephew to the present Marquis of Londonderry. By birth, descent, training, and sympathy, he considered himself an Irishman: though he was half English by blood, and lived the greater part of his life in England, while his intellectual homage was largely evoked by Hellenic mythology and lore, and by Teutonic mysticism and speculation. It was this confused blending of influences which, perhaps, militated so strongly against the concentration of his brilliant abilities into long-sustained and organic creative effort. With all his shortcomings, he still remains a poet of genuine impulse and occasionally of high distinction; and some of his lyrics and ballads, of a more essentially human interest than his more ambitious work, are likely to be held in honourable remembrance. The “Lament for a Little Child” (see p. 146) has passed into literature; as, indeed, may perhaps be said of the book whence it comes: A Little Child’s Monument (1881). In one of his Cornish poems he begins thus:—

I do not think there is much “glamour of the Kelt” in Roden Noël’s work, but it may be discerned in one or two poems in each of his volumes, and in many of his lyrics and irregular lyrical compositions there is much of Celtic intensity and dream. Few poets have written of the sea with more loving knowledge and profound sympathy; hence it is that he is represented here by one characteristic sea-poem, called “The Swimmer”—as autobiographical as anything of the kind can be. The swimmer’s joy was Roden Noël’s chief physical delight. All who knew the man himself remember him as one of the personalities of his time, and as a man of individual distinction and charm. Besides the book already mentioned, his chief poetic volumes are Beatrice and Other Poems (1868); Songs of the Heights and Deeps (1885); and A Modern Faust (1888). See also the Selection from his poems published in the Canterbury Poets Series (edited, with a Critical Introduction, by Mr Robert Buchanan), and the posthumous volumes My Sea and Selected Lyrics (Elkin Mathews).

CHARLES P. O’CONOR. PAGE 158

Besides this typical Irish song, Mr O’Conor has written other winsome lyrics of the same kind. One of the best is that called “Erinn” beginning—

“O, a lovely place is Erinn, in the summer of the year, Roseen dhu ma Erinn.”

This and “Maura Du of Ballyshannon” are from his Songs of a Life (Kentish Mercury Office, 1875).

JOHN FRANCIS O’DONNELL. PAGE 160

This pretty Spinning Song is characteristic of the always deft and generally delicate and winsome lyrical writing of Mr Francis O’Donnell.

JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY. PAGE 161

This prolific writer, often designated an Irish-American poet, through the accident of his enforced exile to, and long residence in, the United States, is inadequately represented by the brief lyric, “A White Rose”; but it is significant of his best achievement, for he is always at his happiest in brief, spontaneous lyrics, often in a Heinesque vein. John Boyle O’Reilly was born at Dowth Castle in Ireland. In his early manhood he enlisted in a hussar regiment; and it was while as a hussar that he was arrested on the charge of spreading republican principles in the ranks, and was sentenced to be shot. This sentence was commuted to twenty years of penal servitude; when the unfortunate man, victim of that disastrous as well as iniquitous tyranny which has characterised the English official attitude towards the Celtic populations, was taken to the convict settlements of Western Australia. Thence, in time, he escaped, and after hairbreadth escapes reached Philadelphia. From there he went to Boston, where he settled; and in a few years, by virtue of his remarkable gifts as a poet, a prose-writer, and a brilliant journalist, became an acknowledged power in trans-Atlantic literature. A novel of his, Moondyne, is widely and deservedly celebrated. Of his poetical works, the best are Songs of the Southern Seas, Songs, Legends, and Ballads, and In Bohemia.

ARTHUR O’SHAUGHNESSY. (1844-1881.) PAGE 162

O’Shaughnessy is to be ranked as an English rather than as an Irish poet; for the national sentiment played a minor, indeed hardly a perceptible part in his poetic life. The Celtic part of him found its best expression in his translations of the Lays of Marie (particularly the difficult and extraordinary “Bisclaveret”), powerful paraphrases rather than translations. The poem by which he is represented here shows the influence of Edgar Allan Poe, but is founded upon a Celtic legend. In his early youth he was appointed to a subordinate position in the Library of the British Museum, and was afterwards promoted to the Natural History Department. His first literary success was his Epic of Women (1870), a volume of exceptional promise, which, however, was never adequately fulfilled. His Lays of France (1872) was followed by Music and Moonlight (1874) and a posthumous volume, Songs of a Worker (1881). Always delicate, his death without any previous breakdown surprised none of his friends. I recollect that on the Saturday preceding his death, which I think was on a Wednesday, he came into the rooms of his brother-in-law, and fellow-poet and friend, Philip Bourke Marston, and asked me to come to his residence on the following Wednesday, to hear him read from the proofs of his new book. That evening he went to a theatre, came home on the top of an omnibus, caught a chill, and died before any of his friends knew that he was seriously indisposed. The best critical and biographical accounts of this charming if insubstantial poet, are to be found in Dr Garnett’s memoir in Miles’ Poets and Poetry of the Century, Vol. VIII., and in the biographical edition of his poems recently put forth by Mrs Louise Chandler Moulton. Of the poem here given, Dr Garnett speaks as a “miracle of melody,” and as one of the pieces in which “the poet’s inward nature has perhaps most clearly expressed itself.”

FANNY PARNELL. (1855-1883.) PAGE 165

A remarkable poem by a remarkable woman. Frances Isabelle Parnell was the sister of Charles Stewart Parnell, and grand-daughter of Charles Stewart (from whom the great Irish patriot derived his baptismal names), the historic commander of the U.S. Frigate Constitution. Miss Parnell’s poems, which always appeared above the signature of Fanny Parnell, have not yet been published collectively. She was secretary of the Ladies’ Land League, and was as intensely wrought by the fervour of patriotism as was her famous brother.

T. W. ROLLESTON. PAGE 166

The sometime editor of the Dublin University Review, and one of the most valued present members of the Irish Literary Society, was born at Shinrone, King’s County, in 1857. Mr Rolleston has had a cosmopolitan training since he left Trinity College, and has in particular been influenced by his long residence in Germany; but he has remained a Celtic poet and ardent Celticist through every intellectual development. While resident in Germany and in London, he wrote his Life of Lessing and his introductions to Epictetus and Plato. He is now responsibly connected with the Irish Industries Association, but is more and not less engrossed by his Celtic studies. If there were a few more poet-scholars who could translate or paraphrase so beautifully as Mr Rolleston has paraphrased the Irish of Enoch o’ Gillan (see p. 166) and other poems, there would be a wider public in England for the lovely work of early Irish poetry. “The Lament of Queen Maev,” given here in the Ancient Irish section, is also a translation by Mr Rolleston.

DORA SIGERSON. PAGE 167

This young and promising writer comes of poetic stock. Her sister Hester is also a writer of verse, and her father, Dr Sigerson, is one of the foremost workers in the Gaelic Revival. Miss Dora Sigerson’s only published book as yet bears the modest title Verses. It is, perhaps, more significant in its promise than in its achievement; and I find nothing in it so mature as the poem by which she is represented here, taken from a recent issue of the Chap Book (Stone & Kimball, Chicago). The following lines, from Verses, may be given as an example of her poetic first-fruits:—

IN SOUTHERN SEAS.

DR GEORGE SIGERSON. PAGE 168

The distinguished translator and editor of The Poets and Poetry of Munster was born near Strabane, Co. Tyrone, in 1839. Much of his original work has appeared above his Irish pen-name “Erionnach”; and from first to last Dr Sigerson’s name is indissolubly associated with the wide-reaching Celtic Renascence in Ireland.

DR JOHN TODHUNTER. PAGE 170

One of the foremost contemporary poets of Ireland, was born in Dublin in 1839, and, like so many of his literary compatriots, was educated at Trinity. He then pursued his medical studies in Paris and Vienna; returned to Dublin and practised awhile as a physician; succeeded Prof. Dowden as Professor of English Literature in Alexandria College; and, since 1875, has devoted himself exclusively to literature. Some of his lyrical pieces are known to all lovers of poetry—e.g. “The Banshee”; and for the rest he has won a distinctive place for himself by work at once varied in theme and beautiful in treatment. Though he has won deserved reputation as a playwright for the contemporary stage, as well as in the poetic drama, he seems to me to be at his best when most Celtic in feeling and expression. He is represented here, not by pieces so well known as “The Banshee” or any part of The Three Sorrows of Story-Telling, but by two typical Irish poems, and one lovely fragment (see p. 173) from Forest Songs. Personally, I consider the “Love Song” given at page 170 to be one of the finest compositions of its kind in modern Celtic literature. I have regretfully refrained from quoting two other poems by Dr Todhunter, one familiar to every Irishman, “The Shan Van Vocht of ’87,” beginning—

and the other, which I think the strongest of his short lyrical poems, “Aghadoe”—of which I may give the two concluding quatrains—

KATHERINE TYNAN. PAGE 174

The author of Louise de la Vallière (1885), Shamrocks (1887), Ballads and Lyrics (1891), and later volumes in prose as well as verse, is one of the best known representatives of the Irish poetic fellowship. Mrs Hinkson (though best known by her maiden name) is distinctively Irish rather than Celtic, and pre-eminently a Catholicist in the spirit of her work. She has a St Francis-like love of birds and all defenceless creatures and humble things, and has a most happy lyric faculty in dealing with aspects and objects which excite her rhythmic emotion. In lyric quality and in her all-pervading sense of colour, she is, however, characteristically Celtic. Miss Tynan was born in Dublin in 1861, but since her marriage a few years ago to Mr Hinkson (himself one of the Dublin University Young Ireland men) she has resided in or near London. Some of her work has a lyric ecstasy, of a kind which distinguishes it from the poetry of any other woman-writer of to-day.

CHARLES WEEKES. PAGE 179

Mr Weekes is one of the small band of Irish poet-dreamers who may be particularly associated with Mr W. B. Yeats and Mr G. W. Russell (“A.E.”). His book, Reflections and Refractions, contains fine achievement as well as noteworthy promise.

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS. PAGE 181

Born (of an Irish father, and of a Cornish mother come of a family settled in Ireland) at Sandymount, Dublin, in 1866; but early life chiefly spent in Sligo, and on the Connaught seaboard. Of late years, Mr Yeats has passed much of his time in London, but is never absent from Ireland for any long period—

W. B. Yeats is the prince of contemporary Irish poets. While no one is more essentially Celtic, and none is more distinctively national, his poetry belongs to English literature. Mr Yeats himself would be the last man to nail his flag to the mast of parochialism in literature. He is one of the two or three absolutely poetic personalities in literature at the present moment; and in outlook, and, above all, in atmosphere, stands foremost in the younger generation. It is noteworthy that the two most convincingly poetic of all our younger poets, since the giants who (with the exception of George Meredith, A. C. Swinburne, and William Morris) have gone from our midst, are predominantly Celtic; W. B. Yeats and John Davidson—and noteworthy, also, that both are too wise, too clear-sighted, too poetic, in fact, to aim at being Irish or Scoto-Celtic at the expense of being English in the high and best sense of the word. This, fortunately, is consistent with being paramountly national in all else. In the world of literature there is no geography save that of the mind.

Mr Yeats’ poetic work is best to be read, and perhaps best to be enjoyed, in the revised collective edition of his poems, in one volume, published recently by Mr Fisher Unwin. His first volume of verse, The Wanderings of Oisìn, was published in 1889. This was followed (in 1892) by The Countess Kathleen: and Various Legends and Lyrics; The Land of Heart’s Desire, and two short prose tales (in the Pseudonym Library), John Sherman and Dhoya. Two new books are promised in 1896 (through Mr Elkin Mathews), The Shadowy Waters (a poetic play), and The Wind Among the Reeds (poems). He has also published several volumes of selected Irish tales and legendary lore; edited, in conjunction with Mr E. J. Ellis, the Works of William Blake (3 vols., 1893); and A Book of Irish Verse (Methuen, 1895), an interesting rather than an adequately representative anthology of nationalistic Irish poetry. All that is most distinctive in Mr Yeats’ own original work is to be found in his Poems (Collective Edition, in 1 vol., Fisher Unwin, 1895), and the prose volume entitled The Celtic Twilight (Lawrence & Bullen, 1893), one of the most fascinating prose-books by a poet published in our time.

LATER SCOTO-CELTIC

THE PROLOGUE TO GAUL. PAGE 189

Comes from the Sean Dana: vide Dr John Smith’s Collection of Ancient Poems (1780), (vide Note to page 13 supra, and also Introduction).

IN HEBRID SEAS. PAGE 191

This stirring Hebridean poem is given as from the ancient Gaelic. Probably by this is meant merely old Gaelic, mediæval or even later. The translation is by Mr Thomas Pattison, and is included in his Gaelic Bards. He has the following note upon it: “This effusion, although in its original form it is only a kind of wild chant—almost indeed half prose—yet it is the germ of the ballad. It occurs in many of the tales contained in that collection, the repository of old Gaelic lore, the Popular Tales of the West Highlands, sometimes more and sometimes less perfect. The original will be found in the second volume of the Tales.... The vigorous and elastic spirit that pervades these verses must have strung the heart of many a hardy mariner who loved to feel the fresh and briny breeze drive his snoring birlinn bounding like a living creature over the tumbling billows of the inland loch or the huge swell of the majestic main.”

LULLABY. PAGE 193

Supposed to be the composition of the wife of Gregor MacGregor after the judicial murder of her husband.

DROWNED. PAGE 194

This folk-poem, the antiquity of which may be anywhere from a hundred to two hundred years or more, is given in the translation of the Rev. Dr Stewart of Nether Lochaber.

ALEXANDER MACDONALD. PAGE 195

This celebrated Gaelic poet was born in the first half of the 17th century. In the Highlands and Western Isles he is invariably styled Mac Mhaighstir Alastair—i.e. the son of Mr Alexander. Alastair the Elder resided at Dalilea in Moydart of Argyll, and was both Episcopal clergyman and official tacksman. He was a man of immense strength and vigour, and his muscular Christianity may be inferred from the saying current in Moydart that “his hand was heavier on the men of Suainart than on the men of Moydart.” Alexander Macdonald had a good education for his time—first under his father, and later, for a year or so, at Glasgow University. Poverty, however, compelled him to leave Glasgow and retire to Ardnamurchan, where, as his biographer, Mr Pattison, says, he lived, teaching and farming, and composing poetry, until the advent of the year 1745. In this momentous year he left not only his farm and his teaching, but even his eldership in the Established Church, and forsook all to join Prince Charlie, and to take upon him the onus of a change to the detested Roman Catholic faith. He was a Jacobite of the Jacobites, and his fiery and warlike songs were repeated from mouth to mouth throughout Celtic Scotland. It is supposed that he had a commission in the Highland army of the Prince, though whether he served as an officer is uncertain; at any rate, after the battle of Culloden he had to share the privations of his leaders, and he lived in hiding in the woods and caves of the district of Arisaig. On one occasion, when lurking among these caves with his brother Angus, the cold was so intense that the side of Macdonald’s head which rested on the ground became quite grey in a single night. When the troubles were over he went to Edinburgh, where he taught the children of a staunch Jacobite, but soon returned to his beloved West, where he remained till his death. Macdonald’s first published book was a Gaelic and English Vocabulary (1741), nor was it till ten years later that his poems were published in Edinburgh—said to be one of the earliest volumes of original poems ever published in Gaelic. Pattison declares that he is the most warlike, and much the fiercest of the Highland poets; and altogether ranks him as, if not the foremost, certainly second only to the famous Duncan Bàn MacIntyre. His poem called “The Birlinn of the Clan-Ranald” is by this critic, and most others, ranked as the finest composition in Modern Gaelic; certainly many Highlanders prefer it even to the “Coire Cheathaich,” or the still more famous “Ben Dorain” of Duncan Bàn. Assuredly no one could read this poem “Of the hurling of the birlinn through the cold glens of the sea, loudly snoring,” without being stirred by its vigour and power. The portion here given is merely a fragment, for the original is much too long for quotation—indeed, it is said to be the longest poem in Gaelic, except such as are Ossianic. For a full account of Macdonald and his poems, including the translation of the greater part of “The Manning of the Birlinn,” see Pattison’s Gaelic Bards.

ANGUS MACKENZIE. PAGE 201

“The Lament of the Deer” is the work of a favourite Highland poet whose name is particularly familiar in the Northern Highlands. Angus Mackenzie was head forester of Lord Lovat, and most of his poems have the impress of his well-loved profession. “The Cumha nam Fiadh” was composed during the recovery from a severe illness, when the poet’s chief regret was his inability to be with Lovat and his Frasers at the hunting of the stag. The translation here given was made by Charles Edward and John Sobieski Stuart, and is to be found in their Lays of the Deer Forest (Blackwood, 1848).

DUNCAN BÀN MACINTYRE. PAGE 203

A name loved throughout the Highlands and Islands. Even the most illiterate crofters are familiar with Duncan Bàn and much of his poetry, and there are few who could not repeat at least some lines of “Ben Dorain.” The Hunter Bard of Glenorchy, as he is often called—though his best title is the affectionate Gaelic “Duncan of the Songs”—was born on the 20th of March 1724, at Druimliaghart in Glenorchy, Argyll. His first song was composed on a sword with which he was armed at the battle of Falkirk—where he served on the Royalist side as substitute for a gentleman of the neighbourhood. “This sword,” says his biographer, Thomas Pattison, “the poet lost or threw away in the retreat. On his return home therefore, the gentleman to whom it belonged, and whose substitute he had been, refused to pay the sum for which he had engaged Duncan Bàn to serve in his stead. Duncan consequently composed his song on ‘The Battle of the Speckled Kirk’—as Falkirk is called in Gaelic—in which he good-humouredly satirised the gentleman who had sent him to the war, and gave a woful description of ‘the black sword that worked the turmoil,’ and whose loss, he says, made its owner ‘as fierce and furious as a grey brock in his den.’ The song immediately became popular, and incensed his employer so much that he suddenly fell upon the poor poet one day with his walking-stick, and, striking him on the back, bade him ‘go and make a song about that.’ He was, however, afterward compelled by the Earl of Breadalbane to pay the bard the sum of 300 merks Scots (£16, 17s. 6d.), which was his legal due.” Although in his later years he was for a time one of the Duke of Argyll’s foresters, most of his later life was spent in Edinburgh, where he was one of the City Guard. In that city he died in 1812, in his eighty-ninth year, and lies in Greyfriars Churchyard. In all there have been seven editions of his Gaelic Songs. “Ben Dorain” has been translated several times, most successfully by Thomas Pattison and the late Professor Blackie. The version here given is that of the former; while the following poem (“The Hill Water,” page 208) is that of Professor Blackie.

Translations of both “Ben Dorain” (in full) and of “Coire Cheathaich” (The Misty Corrie) are included in Pattison’s Gaelic Bards. Professor Blackie’s version of “Ben Dorain” is in his well-known book, Altavona.

MARY MACLEOD. PAGE 210

The most famous of Hebridean poets was born in Harris of the Outer Hebrides in 1569. She may be regarded either as the last of the poets of the Middle Scoto-Celtic period, or, more properly, as the first of the moderns. She is generally spoken of in the Western Isles as Màiri nighean Alastair Ruaidh (Mary, daughter of Alexander the Red). “Although she could never either read or write, her poetry is pure and chaste in its diction, melodious, though complicated, in its metre, clear and graceful, and frequently pathetic” (Pattison). She died at Dunvegan, in the Isle of Skye, in 1674, at the great age of 105. For some reason, Mary Macleod was banished from Dunvegan by Macleod of Macleod, but his heart was melted by the song here given, and the exile was recalled, and that, too, with honour, and enabled to live in Macleod’s country thenceforth in prosperity and happiness.

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY SCOTO-CELTIC

MONALTRI. PAGE 217

These lines tell their own tale. The translation given is that of Thomas Pattison.

HIGHLAND LULLABY. PAGE 218

This lullaby first appeared in the Duanaire, edited by D. C. Macpherson (1864). It is supposed to be sung by a disconsolate mother whose babe has been stolen by the fairies. In each verse she mentions some impossible task she has performed, but still she has not found her baby. Coineachan is a term of endearment applied to a child. (Quoted by “Fionn” in the Celtic Monthly for September 1893.)

BOAT SONG. PAGE 219

This boat song, so familiar to West Highlanders, is in the rendering of Professor Blackie.

JOHN STUART BLACKIE. (1809-1895.) PAGE 222

The late Professor Blackie was born in Glasgow and brought up for the law. This he forsook for literature, and ultimately, in 1852, was appointed to the Greek Chair in Edinburgh University. All particulars of the brilliant Professor’s life and writings will be found in the recently-published biography by Miss Anna Stoddart. Professor Blackie’s name will always be held in affectionate regard for his unselfish efforts to preserve and cultivate the Gaelic language and literature, and because of his having been mainly instrumental in founding the Chair of Celtic Literature in the University of Edinburgh. His poetical writings are mostly to be found in Lays and Legends of Ancient Greece (1857), Lyrical Poems (1860), and Lays of the Highlands and Islands (1872).

ROBERT BUCHANAN. PAGE 224

The foremost Scoto-Celtic poet of our time, was born in Glasgow, 1841. It would be needless to give particulars concerning the life and work of so eminent a contemporary. Lovers of the Celtic Muse will doubtless be familiar (or if not, ought to be) with Mr Buchanan’s Book of Orm. Much of his early poetry is strongly imbued with the Celtic atmosphere. Those who have read his several volumes of verse need no further guidance, but readers unacquainted with the poetical work of one of the foremost poets of our day should obtain the collective edition of his poems published by Messrs Chatto & Windus. “The Flower of the World” (page 224), “The Dream of the World without Death” (pages 228-234) are from The Book of Orm; “The Strange Country” comes from Miscellaneous Poems and Ballads (1878-1883). No more memorable poem than “The Dream” has been written by an Anglo-Celtic poet.

LORD BYRON. (1788-1824.) PAGES 238-239

Byron is represented in Lyra Celtica by virtue of his Celtic blood and undoubtedly Celtic nature, rather than because there is much trace of Celtic influence in his poetry. The two lyrics given here may be taken as fairly representative of that part of his poetical work which may with some reason be called Celtic, though, of course, there is nothing in them which radically differentiates them from the lyrics of any English poet. More than one eminent critic, foreign as well as British, has claimed for Byron that he was the representative Celtic voice of the early part of the century; but Byron was really much more the voice of his own day and time than anything more restricted.

CRODH CHAILLEAN. PAGE 240

This familiar Highland Milking Song is given in the translation of Dr Alexander Stewart of Nether Lochaber.

MACCRIMMON’S LAMENT. PAGE 241

Perhaps the most famous pipe-tune in the Highlands is the “Cumha mhic Criomein,” composed by Donald Bàn MacCrimmon, on the occasion of the Clan MacLeod, headed by their chief, embarking to join the Royalists in 1746. The Lament is said to have been composed by Donald Bàn under the influence of a presentiment that he as well as many others of the clan would never return; a presentiment fulfilled, for he was killed in a skirmish near Moyhall. The tune and the chorus are old, but it is commonly believed the poem was composed by Dr Norman Macleod; at any rate, they first appeared in a Gaelic article on the MacCrimmons, which he contributed in 1840 to “Cuairtear nan Gleann” (“Fionn,” the Celtic Monthly). The translation here given is that of Professor Blackie.

IAN CAMERON (“IAN MOR”). PAGE 242

Translated from the Gaelic by Miss Fiona Macleod.

JOHN DAVIDSON. PAGE 243

Mr Davidson was born at Barrhead, near Paisley, on April 11th, 1857. After his preliminary education at the Highlanders’ Academy, Greenock, he went to Edinburgh University. For a time he taught in Greenock, and also gained a certain amount of literary experience in occasional contributions to the Glasgow Herald and other papers. In 1886 he published Bruce: a Drama, followed by Smith: a Tragedy (1888), Scaramouch in Naxos: and other Places (1889), In a Music Hall, and other Poems (1891), Fleet Street Eclogues (1893), Ballads and Songs (1894), Second Series of Fleet Street Eclogues (1895), besides several volumes of prose papers and fiction. Although Bruce was Mr Davidson’s first published work, he had begun to write at a much earlier period: his An Historical Pastoral was composed in 1877; A Romantic Farce in 1878; while Bruce was written four years before its publication. Mr Davidson’s later poetical writings have been mainly in the form of songs and lyrical ballads, and these have placed him in the foremost rank of the younger poets of to-day. He has the widest range, the largest manner, and the intensest note of any of the later Victorians. The two poems by which he is represented here are eminently characteristic, and none the less Celtic in their essential quality from the fact that the one deals with a loafer of the London streets and the other with a scenic rendering of an impression gained in Romney Marsh. Mr Davidson’s latest writings are “The Ballad of an Artist’s Wife,” not as yet issued in book form, and the just published second series of the Fleet Street Eclogues (John Lane). Both “A Loafer” and “In Romney Marsh” are from Ballads and Songs.

JEAN GLOVER. (1758-1800.) PAGE 246

The author of “O’er the Muir amang the Heather” was the daughter of a Highland weaver settled in Kilmarnock. She married a strolling actor, and her fugitive songs became familiar throughout the West of Scotland. “O’er the Muir amang the Heather” has become a classic.

GEORGE MACDONALD. PAGE 247

This popular Scottish novelist and poet was born at Huntly, in Aberdeenshire, December 10, 1824. As a novelist he has almost as large an audience as have any of his contemporary romancists. His poems are less widely known, though in them he has expressed himself with great variety and subtlety. The Celtic element is not conspicuous in Dr Macdonald’s work either in prose or verse; but sometimes, as in the little song “Oimè,” quoted here, it finds adequate expression. This song is from his early volume Within and Without.

RONALD CAMPBELL MACFIE. PAGE 249

The author of Granite Dust (Kegan Paul) is one of the most promising of the younger Celtic Scots.

WILLIAM MACDONALD. PAGE 250

One of the band of young writers associated with The Evergreen (Patrick Geddes and Colleagues, Edinburgh). Mr Macdonald has not yet issued his poems in book form.

AMICE MACDONELL. PAGE 251

Miss Macdonell has not, so far as I know, published a volume. “Culloden Moor” appeared in the Celtic Monthly in June 1893.

ALICE C. MACDONELL. PAGE 252

Miss Alice Macdonell of Keppoch has contributed many poems to Scottish and other periodicals. “The Weaving of the Tartan” appeared in the Celtic Monthly for December 1894.

WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY. (1796-1852.) PAGE 254

The author of “The Thrush’s Song” was not a poet, but occasionally indulged in the pleasure of verse-making. He was a well-known Highland ornithologist, and it may be added that his attempt at an onomatopoeic rendering of the song of the thrush has been pronounced by Buckland and other ornithologists to be remarkably close.

FIONA MACLEOD. PAGE 255

Miss Macleod is one of the younger writers most intimately associated with the Celtic Renascence in Scotland. “The Prayer of Women” (see page 255) is from Pharais: a Romance of the Isles (Frank Murray, Derby, 1894); “The Rune of Age” and “A Gaelic Milking Song” are from The Mountain Lovers (John Lane); the “Lullaby” and the two songs of Ethlenn Stuart are from her last volume, The Sin-Eater: and other Tales (Patrick Geddes and Colleagues, Edinburgh). “The Closing Doors” has not been published hitherto. The brief lyric, “The Sorrow of Delight,” was contributed to an as yet unpublished fantastic sketch, The Merchant of Dreams, written in collaboration with a friend. Such of the poems scattered through her several volumes, and others, as she wishes to preserve in connected form, will be published by Miss Macleod early in 1896 (Patrick Geddes and Colleagues), under the title of Lyric Runes and Fonnsheen.

NORMAN MACLEOD. PAGE 266

There is no Highlander held in more affectionate remembrance and admiration than the late Dr Norman Macleod: and with justice; for no one worked more arduously, understandingly, and sympathetically for the cause of the Gaelic language, Gaelic literature, and the Gaelic people than the famous poet-minister, who, to this day, is commonly spoken of as “The Great Norman.” It was, however, Dr Norman the elder who wrote “Fiunary,”—and not, as commonly stated, the late Dr Norman. His “Farewell to Fiunary” is probably the most universally-known modern poem in the West Highlands. (For critical remarks as to the authenticity of this poem, see Dr Nigel M‘Neil’s Literature of the Highlanders, pp. 283-286.)

SARAH ROBERTSON MATHESON. PAGE 267

Mrs Robertson Matheson, some of whose poems in periodicals have attracted the attention of lovers of poetry, is chief secretary and treasurer of the Clan Donnachaidh Society. The fine lyric, “A Kiss of the King’s Hand,” appeared in the Celtic Monthly for May 1894; but I regret that version has inadvertently been followed, for it twice misspells tae for “to,” and in the third line of the third quatrain has a misreading (“jewels” instead of “ruffles”).

It may interest many readers to know that “A Kiss of the King’s Hand” decided the descendant of Flora Macdonald to leave Mrs Robertson Matheson the last heirloom of Scottish romance, the “ring of French gold” given by Prince Charlie to Flora, and holding the lock of hair cut from “the king’s head” by her and her mother.

DUGALD MOORE. PAGE 268

“The First Ship” is so remarkable a poem that it is difficult to understand how it has met with so little recognition, and escaped most, if not all, of the Scottish and British anthologists. Dugald Moore was the son of Highland parents, and was born in Glasgow in 1805. His first book was entitled The Bard of the North, and consisted of a series of poetical tales illustrative of Highland scenery and character (1833). The Hour of Retribution and The Devoted One appeared respectively in 1835 and 1839. Moore died unmarried in the 36th year of his age (Jan. 2, 1841), and was buried in the Necropolis of Glasgow. It is a pity that the poem could not have appeared without its fourth stanza, which is inferior to the others.

LADY CAROLINE NAIRNE. (1766-1845.) PAGE 269

Needless to say anything here concerning the “Flower of Strathearn.” Baroness Nairne was mainly Celtic in blood and wholly Celtic in genius. “The Land o’ the Leal” is now one of the most famous and most loved lyrics in the English language. (Readers may be referred to Life and Songs of Baroness Nairne, 1868.)

ALEXANDER NICOLSON. PAGE 270

Besides this fine poem, “On Skye,” Sheriff Nicolson has translated the “Birlinn” of Alexander Macdonald, and has written many moving verses full of Gaelic sentiment of a robust kind.

SIR NOËL PATON. PAGE 272

Joseph Noël Paton was born at Dunfermline on the 13th of December 1821; and while his father was also of partial Celtic origin, Sir Noël is, through his mother, the descendant of the last of the Scoto-Celtic kings. Of his career as a painter it is not necessary to speak here. His two volumes of poetry are Poems by a Painter (1861) and Spindrift (1867). The best account of the life and work of this distinguished Scot is the monograph recently published by Mr David Croal Thomson, as the “Art-Annual” of The Art Journal. The two poems by which Sir Noël is represented in this book are not to be found in either of his volumes, and their appearance here is due to the courtesy of the author.

WILLIAM RENTON. PAGE 274

Mr Renton was born in Perthshire, of Scoto-Celtic parents. “Mountain Twilight” is taken from his first volume of poems called Oils and Water Colours (Hamilton, Edinburgh, 1876). Mr Renton’s only other volume of verse is his Songs (Fisher Unwin, 1893).

LADY JOHN SCOTT. PAGE 275

The author of “Durisdeer” was of mixed Highland and Lowland descent. Her poem has a permanent place in our literature because of its haunting passion and pain.

EARL OF SOUTHESK. PAGE 276

Lord Southesk (James Carnegie) was bom in 1827. He first made his name in literature by his strange and vigorous Jonas Fisher (1875). This was followed by Greenwood’s Farewell (1876), and The Meda Maiden (1877); though most of the poems contained in these two volumes, with several others, are comprised in The Burial of Isis (1884).

JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP. PAGE 277

This able Scottish writer was of Celtic origin through his mother. Readers unacquainted with the poems of the late Principal Shairp, and ex-Professor of Poetry at Oxford, will do best to turn to the posthumous volume, edited, with a memoir, by Francis Turner Palgrave, entitled Glen Dessary (Macmillan, 1888).

UNA URQUHART. PAGE 279

I know nothing else of Gaelic or English verse by this young writer. “An Old Tale of Three,” as it appears here, is a rendering of the original by Miss Fiona Macleod.

LOST LOVE. PAGE 280

The author of this poem is unknown. The original is in the Gaelic of the Western Isles, and is one of the several fugitive songs rescued by Thomas Pattison. The version given here, however, is not identical with his, the first and last quatrains having been added by another hand.

CONTEMPORARY ANGLO-CELTIC POETS (WALES)

GEORGE MEREDITH. PAGE 283

Mr George Meredith, who recently has been addressed in a dedication as “The Prince of Celtdom,” is rather the sovereign of contemporary English literature. Although of Welsh descent and sympathies, and with a nature pre-eminently Celtic in its distinguishing characteristics, Mr Meredith was born in Hampshire on February 12th, 1828. Part of his early education was received in Germany, and after his return to England it was intended that he should pursue the legal profession: an intention set aside on account of an irresistible bias toward literature. His first published writings were in verse: and now this early little book, Poems, published in his twenty-third year (1851) is one of the rarest treasures for the bibliophile. It is dedicated to Thomas Love Peacock, whose intellectual influence upon the young writer is obvious. In 1850 the poet married the daughter of Peacock, but it was not till a year or two later that he definitely set himself to the profession of literature as also a means of livelihood. It is characteristic of him that his first prose book should be one of his most individual writings; for The Shaving of Shagpat might have been written at almost any period of its author’s career. A fascinating and perplexing production it must indeed have seemed at that time, published as it was in a year which, with the exception of two radically distinct American works of pre-eminent note, Longfellow’s Hiawatha and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, was a singularly barren one. The fantasy has always remained a favourite with staunch Meredithians. It was followed two years later by the somewhat akin Farina; and two years passed again before that first important work appeared which so profoundly affected the minds and imagination of Mr Meredith’s contemporaries—the now famous Ordeal of Richard Feverel, (1859). Since that date Mr Meredith has given us what many consider the greatest literary legacy of our time; and unquestionably he has had no compeer in brilliant delineation of life at white heat. It is unnecessary to specify the works of an author with which all lovers of literature must be familiar; but a word must be added as to the delight which the reading world has known this year in the publication of The Amazing Marriage, one of the most brilliant and vivid of all Mr Meredith’s romances, and, in its display of his characteristic quality at his best, ranking with Harry Richmond, The Egoist, and Diana of the Crossways. As a poet George Meredith is less widely known, or, rather, is less widely accepted. There are, nevertheless, many who regard his poetic achievement as perhaps the most essential part of what he has given us. In depth of thought, in clarity of vision, and in remarkable expressional subtlety,—often, if not invariably, set forth in a lyric utterance whose only fault is that of an occasional apparent incoherence due to rapidity of thought and eagerness of rhythmic emotion—he stands here, as in all else, alone. From that extraordinarily powerful study of contemporary life, expressed emotionally and rhythmically in singularly convincing verse, Modern Love, to his latest volume, The Empty Purse, there is a range of rhythmic and lyric beauty which may well be a challenge to posterity to redeem the relative neglect of the mass of Mr Meredith’s contemporaries. I am not of those who consider Mr Meredith’s least popular poems as mere cryptic utterances in verse; for everywhere I find the lyric spirit,—hampered, at times, it is true, by a wind-rush of images, and by a sudden drove of unshepherded words. But who could read “Love in the Valley,” “The Lark Ascending,” “The Woods of Westermain,” “The South-Wester,” “The Hymn to Colour,” to mention five only, without recognising that here indeed we have one of the great poets of our time. The poems by which, owing to the gracious courtesy of Mr Meredith—who has consented to forego for once his great objection to the appearance of any of his poems in miscellaneous collections—he is here represented, are from his later volumes. The “Dirge in Woods,” “Outer and Inner,” and the superb “Hymn to Colour,” are from A Reading of Earth (1888), the volume which contains “Hard Weather,” “The South-Wester,” “The Thrush in February,” “The Appeasement of Demeter,” “Woodland Peace,” the noble ode “Meditation under Stars,” and that flawless and memorable sonnet, “Winter Heavens.” The “Night of Frost in May” is from the volume entitled The Empty Purse (1892). Mr Meredith’s other volume of poetry, the favourite with most of his readers, is Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth (1883). This book includes “The Woods of Westermain,” “The Day of the Daughter of Hades,” “The Lark Ascending,” “Phœbus with Admetus,” “Melampus,” “Love in a Valley,” and the group of sonnets beginning with “Lucifer in Starlight,” and ending with “Time and Sentiment.” All Mr Meredith’s poetical writings are now published by Messrs Macmillan.

SEBASTIAN EVANS. PAGE 292

Born in 1830, the grandson of the Rev. Lewis Evans, a well-known Welsh astronomer, and the son of the Rev. Arthur Benoni Evans, a linguist, scholar, and author. He was not the only one of this parentage who came to some distinction, for his brother, John Evans, F.R.S., became President of the Society of Antiquaries, and his sister, Anne, had some repute as a poetess and musician. Sebastian Evans won a fair measure of fugitive fame by his Brother Fabian’s Manuscript and Other Poems (Macmillan, 1865). In the early ’70’s Dr Evans published his second volume, In the Studio: a Decade of Poems (Macmillan). The true note of his strangely subtle and illusive muse is not that of either irony or audacity as commonly supposed, but rather a living belief in the passage of the contemporary mind and aspiration from the sureties of the ancient faith to the assurance of a still finer faith to come. Among his short poems perhaps the most indicative is that entitled “The Banners”—

EBENEZER JONES. (1820-1860.) PAGE 293

Of Welsh parentage and descent, Ebenezer Jones was born in Islington, London. Much has been written upon the famous Chartist poet, both in his relation to the socialistic movements in which he participated, and in literary criticism of his two at one time much discussed volumes, Studies of Sensation and Event (1843), and Studies of Resemblance and Consent (1849); but perhaps the best critical summary of his life-work is that of Mr Wm. J. Linton in Miles’ Poets and Poetry of the Century, Vol. V. The two poems by which Ebenezer Jones is represented here are respectively from his second and first volumes.

EMILY DAVIS (MRS PFEIFFER). (1841-1890.) PAGE 296

Mrs Pfeiffer, many of whose poems achieved a wide popularity, was the daughter of a Welsh gentleman settled in Oxfordshire, and an officer in the army. She was born in Wales. Of her several volumes of verse, the first was Gerard’s Monument, etc. (1873), and the best are Sonnets and Other Songs, Under the Aspens (1884), and Sonnets (1887).

ERNEST RHYS. PAGE 297

“The House of Hendra” is not given here intact: for the whole poem, see A London Rose, etc. (Elkin Mathews). Mr Rhys is the most noteworthy of the younger generation of Welsh poets and romancists, and may well be accepted as the leader of the Neo-Celtic movement in Wales. He has in a more marked degree than almost any of his compatriots of his own period the gift of style; and already his enthusiasm, knowledge, and fine and notable work in prose and verse have brought him to the front as the recognised representative of young Wales. Of Welsh parentage, Mr Rhys was born in London in 1860, spent much of his boyhood in South Wales, and his youth and early manhood in the north-country, where he intended to follow the profession of a mining engineer. However, he came to London in the early ’eighties and settled down to literary work. His first publication in book form was The Great Cockney Tragedy (1891). His poems first became known to the outside reading world through his contributions to The Book of the Rhymers’ Club (1893). In the following year he published his first and as yet sole volume of verse: A London Rose: and Other Rhymes, whence comes the fine “House of Hendra” by which he is represented here. Besides other writings, in prose, Mr Ernest Rhys was editor of the “Camelot Series” of popular reprints and translations in 65 volumes (1885-1890), and now is critical editor of The Lyric Poets (Dent), one of the most delightful poets-series extant.

CONTEMPORARY ANGLO-CELTIC POETS (MANX)

THOMAS EDWARD BROWN. PAGE 307

Was born at Douglas, in the Isle of Man, in 1830. After a career of exceptional distinction at Oxford, he was appointed Vice-Principal of King William’s College in the Isle of Man (1855). Since 1863 he has been assistant-master of Clifton College. The book by which Mr Brown is best known is his admirable Fo’c’sle Yarns (Macmillan, 1881 and 1889), though the first of his tales in verse included therein, “Betsy Lee,” appeared in Macmillan’s Magazine in 1873 where it at once attracted wide attention. He has also published The Doctor (1887) and The Manx Witch (1889). The author of Fo’c’sle Yarns is by far the most noteworthy poetic representative of the Isle of Man. In range, depth of insight, dramatic vigour, keen sympathy, and narrative faculty, all transformed by the alchemy of his poetic vision, he is not only the foremost Manx poet, but one of the most notable of living writers in verse. It is probably because most of his poems deal almost wholly with Manx scenes and characters, and are for the most part written in the Manx dialect, that he is so little talked of by literary critics and so little known to the reading world at large. Than “Betsy Lee” (Fo’c’sle Yarns) there is no more moving, human, and beautiful poem, of the narrative kind, written in our time. The fragmentary lines by which the author is represented here were selected from one of his most characteristic Manx poems, and give a good idea of the common parlance of the islanders of to-day. It is from The Doctor: and Other Poems (Swan Sonnenschein, 1887).

HALL CAINE. PAGE 309

This fine Manx ballad of “Graih my Chree” appeared this year in the first number of London Home, to the editor and proprietor of which, as well as to Mr Hall Caine, I am indebted for the permission to include “Love of my Heart” here. Mr Caine, so celebrated as a novelist, has published no volume of poems; but at rare intervals something of his in verse has appeared. I think that his earliest appearance as a poet was in Sonnets of this Century (1886, and later editions), where he is represented by two fine sonnets, “Where Lies the Land to which my Soul would go?” and “After Sunset.” Mr Caine’s own first acknowledged book was an anthology of sonnets (Sonnets of Three Centuries, Stock, 1882), published in the author’s twenty-seventh year. Of his many books, the best known are his Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti; and his romances, The Shadow of a Crime, The Deemster, The Bondman, The Scapegoat, and The Manxman. Mr Hall Caine is himself a Manxman, crossed with a strong strain of Cumberland blood. Both in his strength and weakness he is eminently Celtic, after his own kind; for he could belong to no other Celtic people than either the Manx or the Welsh. He has, and not without good reason, been called the Walter Scott of Man. Certainly, The Deemster and The Manxman alone have revealed Manxland and Manx life and character to the great mass of English readers.

CONTEMPORARY ANGLO-CELTIC POETS (CORNISH)

ARTHUR THOMAS QUILLER COUCH. PAGE 317

So well known as “Q,” was born at Bodwin, in Cornwall, of an old Cornish family, in 1863. He left Trinity College, Oxford, for London; but, after a brief experience of literary life in the metropolis, returned to the “Duchy,” and has since resided there, mainly at Fowey. He is not only the most noteworthy living Cornishman of letters, and the romancer par excellence of contemporary Cornwall and Cornish life, but is acknowledged as one of the best story-tellers of the day. His first book was The Splendid Spur (1889), a stirring romance, which was followed by The Delectable Duchy, Noughts and Crosses, and I Saw Three Ships. He has published little poetry; and even in his slender volume, Green Bays (1893), there are not more than one or two poems, the other verses being for the most part what are called “occasional.” If, however, he had written nothing in verse except the lyric called “The Splendid Spur,” he would be accounted a poet for remembrance. “The White Moth” is the most distinctively Celtic poem he has written. In the main, he is more Cornish than Celtic—in this a contrast to Dr Riccardo Stephens, who is far more distinctively Celtic than Cornish.

ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER. (1804-1875.) PAGE 319

The celebrated vicar of Morwenstow (born at Plymouth) came of an old Cornish family, and spent the greater part of his life in the Duchy. In 1834 he became Vicar of Morwenstow, a remote parish on the Cornish sea-board. His best-known book is Cornish Ballads (1869); but the reader who may not be acquainted with his writings should consult the Poetical Works, and Other Literary Remains, with a Memoir (1879). Hawker has much of the sombre note which is supposed to be characteristic of Celtic Cornwall.

RICCARDO STEPHENS. PAGE 321

Dr Stephens is a Cornishman settled in Edinburgh, where he practises as a physician. He has not, as yet, published any of his poems in book form; but, none the less, has won (if necessarily, as yet, a limited) reputation by his exceedingly vigorous and individual poems. He has written several “Castle Ballads” (of which the very striking “Hell’s Piper” given here is one)—poems suggested by legendary episodes connected with Edinburgh Castle, or perhaps only vaguely influenced by that romantically picturesque and grand vicinage—for Dr Stephens is one of the many workers, thinkers, and dreamers who congregate in the settlement founded by Professor Patrick Geddes on the site of Allan Ramsay’s residence—“New Edinburgh,” as University Hall is sometimes called, an apt name in more ways than one. Dr Stephens is a poet of marked originality, and his work has all the Celtic fire and fervour, with much of that sombre gloom which is held to be characteristically Cornish. “Hell’s Piper” has lines in it of Dantesque vigour, as those which depict, among “the shackled earthquakes,” the “reeking halls of Hell,” and the torture-wrought denizens of that Inferno. “The Phantom Piper” will never be forgotten by any one who has once read and been thrilled by this highly-imaginative poem.

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY BRETON

THE POOR CLERK (IN BRETON, “AR C’HLOAREK PAOUR”) PAGE 331

is rather a mediæval than a modern folk-poem. The translation is that of the late Tom Taylor (Ballads and Lyrics, Macmillan), who has the following note upon it:—“The Klöarek is a seminarist of Tréguier, a peasant who has a turn for books, or shows some vocation for the priesthood. Their miserable life, hard study, and abnegation of family life are provocative of regretful emotion, passionate and mystic asceticism. The Klöarek is the poet and hero of most of the Breton Sônes; Tréguier, therefore, is the nursery of the elegaic and religious popular poetry of Brittany.”

THE CROSS BY THE WAY (KROAZ ANN HENT). PAGE 332

Vide preceding Note. This translation is from the same source as last.

THE SECRETS OF THE CLERK, AND LOVE SONG. PAGES 335-337

See Note to “The Poor Clerk.” The first of these poems was probably composed in the transition period—late mediæval or early modern. Both are given in the rendering of Mr Alfred M. Williams (vide “Folk-Songs of Lower Brittany” in Studies in Folk-Song and Popular Poetry (1895)). “The Love Song” is modern—probably circa 1800, or even 1750.

HERVÉ NOËL LE BRETON. PAGE 338

For all particulars concerning this poet I must refer interested readers to Mr W. J. Robertson’s brief memoir in that most delightful of all books of translation, A Century of French Verse (A. D. Innes & Co., 1895). This is without exception the ablest work of its kind we have. It is the production of one who is unmistakably himself a poet, who has the rare double power to translate literally, and at the same time with subtle art and charm, so that the least possible loss in translation is involved. In addition to these often exquisitely felicitous, and always notably able and suggestive renderings, Mr Robertson has prefixed to each representative selection a brief critical and biographical study of the poet represented—short études of remarkable insight and critical merit. Of Hervé Noël le Breton he gives some interesting particulars. The poet is of the ancient Armorican race, and was born in Nantes in 1851. He has not yet published any volume; and it is from an unpublished collection, Rêves et Symboles, that Mr Robertson has drawn. Strangely enough, neither in Tiercelin’s Breton Anthology nor anywhere else can I find any allusion to Hervé Noël le Breton: and his name is unknown to M. Louis Tiercelin, M. Anatole le Braz, and M. Charles Le Goffic, respectively the most eminent living Breton anthologist, Breton folk-lorist, and Breton poet-romancist and critic. For several reasons I take it that Le Breton is an assumed name; and it is even possible that the Armorican blood is only in the brain, and not in the body of the author of Rêves et Symboles. “The Burden of Lost Souls” is in three parts, of which that given here is the first. Here is the second:

THE BURDEN OF LOST SOULS.

II.