AN IRISH ANTHOLOGY.

In the articles I have contributed from time to time to this paper I
have tried to interest the ordinary reader in Irish literature, not
from the sentimental or the patriotic or the historical point of view,
but from the point of view of contemporary criticism. We in Ireland
are not so rich in ideas that we can afford to neglect our own
literature of a thousand years; we have not so many Tolstoys and
Dostoevskys amongst us that we can say on picking up an Irish novel,
“Here is a book in which I shall find Ireland and all Ireland, and I
can afford to neglect what came before it and made it possible.”

What of an Irish anthology? Irish poetry would, I think, stand its
chance if only the best of it were once accessible. The Irish
Government has assisted Professor Pokorny in the publication of a
little anthology of his German translations, but you cannot feed
capons so, and German is a difficult language. Besides, the Germans
are not so much in need of intellectual nourishment as we are; to them
the sleeping horsemen must be sorry recruiting. For us there is in
Irish literature the stuff of a new Renaissance; there is, in spite of
the patriots, that non-nationalist outlook which could ease for us the
burden of too much freedom-seeking; there is the daring that our
poets need; there is the humanity and passion and beauty that our
novelists need. When I say this I do not exaggerate its qualities. I
know too well its sorry lack of Hellenic clarity and cohesion, and I
could weep that its genius had not given place at times to mere
talent.

It was in reading through Professor Pokorny’s pleasant book, _Die
alteste Lyrik der grünen Insel_, that I saw the opportunity there is
for a capable anthologist. Professor Pokorny has made his book
entirely from the first phase of Irish poetry, and even this he has
not by any means exhausted. This phase, which I call the Romantic
phase, is, of course, our greatest.

When I use the word romantic I am not thinking of what it might
mean in English or in German literature. Irish verse of the period is
not the literature of an escape from life, for it is mainly dramatic
and objective. Its romanticism lies in its appeal to a fuller life
within the life we live; like Hamlet, bounded by a nutshell, it
counts itself a king of infinite space, and always it will sound this
double note of imagination and precision; it will make an old harlot
say:

  Flood-time!
  Then in flight across the strand
  What to thee the flood had brought
  Ebb-tide sweeps from out thy hand

  Flood-tide!
  And the swifter tides that fall,
  All have reached me, ebb and flow:
  Ay, and now I know them all.

And it will make its greatest imaginative figure, St. Columcille, tell
us of his “well-shaped, brownish hand.” which writes on parchment with
a “beaked pen” and “ink of the green-skinned holly.” Besides its great
vision it will always keep this last, convincing note of precision, a
note that at all times reminds us of the jeweller’s art.

Winter “is cold and gloomy, and all things are full of
smoke; dogs grow pert from gnawing of too many bones; the iron pot
bubbles over the fire the live-long, dark day.”

It loves detail, above all the detail of nature, and it is this
pantheistic delight which gives us _Suibhne Geilt_ with its chaotic,
bothered genius and its endless flickering-up of vignettes.

  The cold wind piercing
  The faint light sinking,
  The one tree’s shelter
  Across the long, level
  Stretch of the mountain...
  The stags’ shouting
  From the wood’s shadow,
  The climb to the deer-pass,
  The song of the white ocean

And again, there is the deeper note as when the King, driven mad by
the sight of his troops’ destruction, breaks into that wonderful lyric
which is our most perfect Irish poem.

  “... True it is, though it is I who say it, that even as these women
  scutch their flax, even so were my people scutched in battle across
  Mogh Rath: yet as I came from Loch Dilair of the cliffs to Derry of
  Columcille it was not strife I heard among the sweet, exultant
  swans: the belling of the desert-stag from the cliffs in the peace
  of the glen, there is no music on all the earth in my soul but its
  sweetness. ...O Christ, hear me! O Christ, Christ without sin! O
  Christ, Christ, love me and sever me not from Thy sweetness, Thy
  sweetness!”

This, unfortunately, is not among the selections from _Suibhne Geilt_
which Professor Pokorny gives us. And, since prose was outside the
range of his anthology, I must apologise for giving yet another
quotation, to show the range of this strange book. This, I think,
captures in prose what Homer captured in poetry, the perfect epic
note.  We must understand that Loingseachan would have the mad king
return from his haunts, and to do this pretends that his family have
lied.

  “Sad it is for you,” said Loingseachan, “to be even as is some poor
  bird that flits about from desert to desert.”

  “Let be. Loingseachan,” said Sweeney, “for so was it ordained for
  us. But have you brought me no tidings of my own country!” said
  he. “Indeed I have,” said Loingseachan, “for your father hath died.”
  “That is a sore blow,” said he. “Your mother also hath died,” said
  his squire. “And all pity for me with her,” said he. “Even as your
  brother,” said Loingseachan. “’Tis that which hath pierced my side.”
  said he. “Your daughter,” said Loingseachan. “A heart’s needle is an
  only daughter,” said Sweeney. “Your little boy that was wont to call
  you ‘papa’ hath died,” said Loingseachan. “True, indeed,” said
  Sweeney, “that is the grip that brings the man to the ground!”

  Thereupon he fell from the tree in which he had taken refuge....

Then the scene changes, and it is a classic poetry which accompanies
the Norman conquest. A note of [repose] is its hallmark, and a certain
pedantry its fault, the beautiful formula appears, and the lyrics
which have been edited for us by Professor O’Rahilly and Professor
Bergin have that high quality or architecture which the early poems
lacked, and which, indeed, is [lacking] in most English poetry. Here
is a very pleasant trifle which Professor Bergin calls “A Hot Friend
Cooling”:

  Morrough’s son is dead, I swear.
    Lies and lies—’twas ever thus!
  If he lived he could not bear
    Any day unseen of us.

  Come and go, come and go,
    ’Twas with other honest men,
  But with him ’twas never so,
    It was come and—come again!

  And if war should come, what then?
    How at all would courage keep?
  Since that hand whose strength was ten
    Death has touched and put to sleep.

  He for whom our tears must fall,
    He would come if life remained;
  Once a welcome in our hall
    Twice a day his step detained.

  But a chill for all our care
    Caught him on the road for lost.
  And he comes no oftener
    Than eight nights a week at most.

  Do not bury Diarmuid yet,
    You who dig his house in clay;
  Tell him this, no luck they get
    Who would drowse all time away.

Once more the double note is sounded, but still we may detect the
accent of repose. It is the elegy on Cathal O’Connor

“Let us make our reckoning now, Cathal, of wealth and of art, though
it be a torment to our soul to do [so], O star of the plain of Calry. It is
an old saying that reckoning is the end of love—to me a sorry
saying...It is time for us to make our reckoning, and yet, O starry
eye, O earnest countenance, dear love of women, yet it should not yet
be time.”

The poet names his gifts, his odes, his lyrics, even his epigrams, but
his patron will not answer. The word death is not mentioned; it is
only in the great restrained close that the realisation comes of
death.

“Often you prayed to God for me that my life might be longer than
yours---your prayer hath betrayed my thought. Your prayer, my grief,
hath been answered by God that I should live and you be here no
more. Little wonder who denied no man his wish that _your_ wish should
be granted. _Your_ prayer, the angel of the Lord, hath left me to my
grief, for all my faith with you through you my ruin hath been
wrought!”

And now the decadence has come, and from

A buoyant gang in armour have left my wits upon the road,
The looped and tightened tresses, the golden curls that fain had flowed,
The arch, alluring glances, the mouth that is our mirth’s abode,
Of sweet Alison Boyton that may command for all an ode!

From an epigram like this the stream of poetry runs down, through
O’Rahilly and then through O’Sullivan till Collins gives us a lyric
which he calls _Tuirse_, and which he might have called
“world-weariness,” so much the old power has gone, and in the end a
doddering folk-poet sings the praises of the “Liberator” who was
first pattern of our great ignorance.

The rest is our story. One picks up a census form and it is printed in
Irish as well as English; an Act of Parliament and it is the
same. The sentiment is good but the result—! Are poets begotten of
sentiment or of Acts of Parliament? Were the gods of Greece
rediscovered in the heavens or in the earth? In a word, can we afford
such attitudinizing when our children have no great books that they
can take pride in, when our artists must find their own roots anyhow,
or by the grace of God, or not at all?

I believe too much in those O’Higgins and Hacketts of ours to think
that their language will end up in the hothouse of sentiment; that the
last we shall hear of Irish literature will be a Dáil debate for which
a kindly outlander will make up a quorum, knowing that no
revolutionary legislation will be passed in the language he does not
understand!

FRANK O’CONNOR.

Irish Statesman, 1926-06-12, pp. 379,380.