Literature and Life.

CLASSIC VERSE.

Reading Irish verse of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and
comparing it with what one knows of early Irish lyric poetry, one is
reminded of that passage in _Marius the Epicurean_ in which Pater
discusses the relationship between classic poetry and its models.
"Certainty," he says, "the most wonderful, the unique point about
the Greek genius, in literature as in everything else, was the entire
absence of imitation in its productions. How had the burden of
precedent, laid upon every artist, increased since then! It was all
around one: that smoothly-built world of old classical taste, an
accomplished fact, with overwhelming authority on every detail of the
conduct of one's work....There might seem to be no place left for
novelty or originality—place only for a patient, an infinite
faultlessness."

How true this is of the relationship between the early poetrv of
Ireland and that other verse which began to be written about the
thirteenth century! "It is a fair inference," says Professor
O'Rahilly, in the notes to his new anthology,* [*“Measgra Dánta,”
edited by Thomas F. O’Rahilly. (Cork University Press. 7/6.)] "that
Irish nature poetry had already passed its heyday by the thirteenth
century. The professional schools, which were dominant from that time
on, seem to have eschewed it....

That the passing of nature poetry as such was not the only loss Irish
literature sustained in the disruption of the monastic schools and the
coming of the so-called bardic schools is not difficult to prove. It
is here, in as vivid a contrast as I know in the whole of literature,
between Suibhne Geilt's wild song on the pity of nature, and another
poem, a bleak, classic epigram on death.

Sweeney, wandering in the hills, cries:

O Christ, Christ, hear me!
  O Christ, Christ, of Thy meekness!
O Christ, Christ, love me
  And sever me not from Thy sweetness!

But this is the thought of the classic poet.

“Three warnings before death you have gotten and care nothing—woe for
the poor soul astride you as a steed! Much your hair is greyed and
little of your eyes unreddened; your teeth have fallen from you, body
of the hundred wiles. Though to horses and kine you had given all
desire, nothing but foul linen shall follow you to the grave. Three
morsels in your mouth—a sorry story—blood and worms and clay your
burden to the dust.”

There it is, and it is not so much a difference in poetic attitude as
in the whole life of poetry. It is a religious loss, an intellectual
loss, a narrowing of the horizons of poetry, and at the same time a gain in
poetic texture, in language construction and style. It is national,
provincial poetry; poetry the secret of which is in language and
tradition, unlike that earlier poetry to which life itself holds the
key.

Of this national poetry Professor O'Rahilly has made himself the
exponent. He has already given us an anthology of love-songs, which
is, some of us would like to think, the most beautiful book that
Ireland has yet produced. He has now made a second anthology, which
does not indeed attempt to repeat the miracle of _Dánta Grádha_ but
continues nobly that revelation of the historical Ireland without
which our art, no matter how distinguished it be, can never create
the "unity of artistic life" that is culture.

Would it be possible to repeat the success of _Dánta Grádha_? I should
have doubted it. The loss of intellectual status which I have tried to
indicate certainy tied up the genius of poetry, and it was passion,
concreteness and universality tnat saved the lovesongs from that fate
which overtook religious verse. Here, in fact, formality and precision
actually strengthened the poetry; it forbade sentiment and
sensuousness and maudlin emotion. Sifted through these finely-knitted
verses passion is pure and intense, as in

  Do ba ghuais dom anam
  Gach ar smuain mo cholann

...“A danger to my soul is all my body has dreamed.”

But Professor O'Rahilly, claiming for his book that there are in it
poems of which any literature might well be proud, draws our attention
to another sort of verse, and reading some of the poems which deal
with Ireland, with the destruction of the great houses, with the
passing of the noble arts, one understands his claim.

Ireland! Perhaps not even love itself could move these courtly poets
as the thought of Ireland moved them. Ireland was to them what it has
never so completely been to others, a home. Ireland, which had been
leader of the early Renaissance, was outcast of the Hellenic
renaissance; its religious thought from being European with Eriugena
had become the religious thought of a province; it knew nothing of
those things which filled the mind of a Leonardo da Vinci. How then
should its men of letters be received abroad? "Though little I earn by
it," says one, "my art is better in Ireland." And here, moans
Pádraicin hAicéad from Flanders, "I am no more than a nobody."

Perhaps it is a good thing for us that Ireland was the world in which
these poets moved. They had so much to regret in the destruction of
their country that they might well have filled Europe with their tears
and been bad poets. But they could find place only "for a patient, an
infinite, faultlessness" in Pater's phrase; they could regret only
the destruction of that great civilisation which had given them birth,
only the decay of manners and the arts; and if for us their work still
retains interest, still has the power to awaken emotion, it is because
of this essential correctness in their attitude to Ireland. Ireland
is never a name, never a sentiment; it is harp-playing (as opposed to
piping), it is syllabic verse, it is generosity; we are made to feel
their passing, and then, almost without our knowing it, the passing of
Ireland.

Take for instance that noble poem which Professor O’Rahilly gives us
on the wandering harper. It might pass for a humorous poem, so
objective it is: the harper, left poor and homeless, loftily
discoursing on the power and significance of music, explaining to his
peasant listener that a church cannot be filled with the music of a
cow's mooing or the tuning of a quern; it must have harp and organ and
choir. Then it is the peasant's turn, and how well we know that
peasant’s voice; his favourite singers are the cuckoo and the
corncrake for they are the bards of bread and milk. How much sweeter,
he thinks, than the chanting of psalms is the bull's call at mating
time, and strings, he would have it, never filled an empty belly.

There are whole pages of it there, all taken off to the life, and yet
it is the peasant whose words drive home the heartbreak of the
song. "Sell your harp!" he cries, "buy a bagpipe! Fling away that
wretched instrument for think how sweet the chanter would sound beside
a hand-mill and how sweet upon the road the drone!"

Then—“Have you not heard how these are in clay; Brian Mac Con, caring
nothing for music, and O'Shaughnessy no longer in Gort?”

"O'Shaughnessy no longer in Gort"...Had the poet been writing for the
ear of Europe would he have written like this? One wonders, and
wondering realises that classic verse depends for its existence upon
a world taken for granted by artist and audience alike, a world in
which the symbol is enough, as it is enough in the plays of Racine
and is not enough in the plays of Shakespeare.

To those others who to-day or to-morrow will be turning the pages of
this admirable book, turning them perhaps as a bad scholar like myself
turns them, slowly, I can offer no better encouragement than to hint
at this, hidden life, for we in Ireland, brought up on a literature
that has lived too long in the market place, English literature, are
likely to remember in our reading much of what we have learned from
Tennyson and be unjust to this poetry of pure culture.

It is because of its culture that it can be acid; you will not find
that quality in English verse though you may find it in Mr. Yeats’
verse. It is an acidity which is none the less poetry because it is
acid; it would seem to have been wrung out of the poet by the
situation in which he has been placed and in style, in handling, might
as well have been a love poem, so much part of a tradition it is.

Take for instance that Poem the “Generous Liar,” how much it draws for
its technique on a different sort of verse!

  For those princely gifts of yours
    Liar's luck returns to pay—
  And you _nevermad a lie
    But you gave the lie away!—

  And since what you give you have,
    Being no poorer when 'tis gone,
  Woe to him that after you
    Puts a bridle on his tongue!

  Woe to him whose thrifty soul
    Ever keeps a falsehood in,
  Since the lie you spun last night
    Once again to-night you spin!

Of the lesser poems one may say that they will commend
themselves. Anybody who cares for wit ana lightness and beautiful
verse will find sufficient for his taste in poems like that delicious
"Epitaph on a Drunkard" in which a Jug and Pipe and Cup discuss their
master's demise, or that equally delicious student song which has
become famous.

  The scholar's life is pleasant,
    And pleasant is his labour,
  Search all Ireland over,
    You'll find none better, neighbour.

  Nor lords nor petty princes
    Dispute the student's pleasure,
  Nor chapter-rent his purse,
    Nor stewardship his leisure.

  Stewardship nor early rising,
    Nor in the fields cow-tending,
  Nor in the street the duties
    Of watchers at day's ending.

  He plays a hand at draughts,
    And plucks a harp-string bravely,
  And takes a turn at courting
    Some golden-haired young lady.

  And when springtime is come,
    The plough that he shall follow,
  His fistful of pens,
    Strikes a deep furrow.

I have left myself but little space to speak of Professor O'Rahilly's
editorship, but this in him is a thing one tends to take for
granted. Of some poems which we have seen elsewhere he has given us
established texts, and as an example of his excellent taste we need
but to see how he has introduced the poems on Ireland in Section II
with a handful of lyrics that hark back to the great exiles, Deirdre
and Colam Cille.

But one of the best things in the book is the announcement that there
are two more books to come!

FRANK O’CONNOR
Irish Statesman, 1927-07-23, pp. 472-476.