For the conversion of Prof. Standford

You will all, I hope, be familiar with the latest Irish
shindy. Professor Stanford happened to say that, as a language, Irish
suffered from having no Homer, Dante or Cervantes whose European fame
would attract students to the language—a reasonable enough
proposition, though it could do with a little qualification.

At once he was assailed by correspondents who maintained that not only
had Ireland a Homer, a Dante and a Cervantes, but they were all alive
and kicking in Cork and Dublin and only the ignorance and bigotry of
Professor Stanford kept him from making their acquaintance.

It was a lovely and characteristic shindy, for it left everybody
precisely where he was before he started.


/Handy volume/

I once had a dear English friend who couldn’t stand the Welsh, because
he maintained that Welshmen said when they were Introducing him to the
local school mistress: ‘Mr. S., meet one of the three great mind s of
Europe.’

Since then I have been chary of extravagant claims for Ireland, but I
respectfully suggest that in the eighth and ninth centuries Ireland
had a remarkable literature, which is far from being unknown in
Europe, since to study it properly, you need a good working knowledge
of German.

So ideally, all I should need to do to get Professor Stanford to
qualify his statement is to send him a copy of “Early Irish Poetry,”
edited by James Carney (Mercier Press. 3/-).


/Experts all/

It is another of those handy little booklets of Thomas Davis lectures
on Radio Eireann, which, in the absence of real books by Irish
scholars and writers, fend off complete intellectual starvation.

Professor Dillon writes of ‘Early Lyric Poetry,’ Professor Byrne of
‘Latin Poetry In Ireland’ (an essay that I (found particularly
exciting), Professor Carney himself on ‘The Poems of Blathmac’ which
he both discovered and edited, Mrs. O’Daly on ‘The Metrical
Dindshenchus,’ Professor Greene on ‘The Religious Epic’ and
Mrs. O’Sullivan on Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe, the
thirteenth-century poet of the O’Donnells.

As earlier volumes in this series have shown, Irish scholars make
remarkably good broadcasters—probably because their ordinary work is
so unknown and despised that they throw themselves enthusiastically
Into the task of telling ordinary people about it—and every talk in
this series is readable and re-readable.


/Poetry or verse/

All the same, as a book, I am afraid it is cock-eyed. I don’t know
Latin, so I can’t really tell whether what Professor Byrne quotes is
poetry or not, but Professor Greene will be familiar with my view that
/Saltair na Rann/ is the worst verse ever penned by the hand of man:
Mrs. O’Daly gallantly isolates two pieces that sound like poetry, but
I’m afraid she will never persuade me to read all that dreary
topographical verse; and though Giolla Brighde wrote one fine poem
which Mrs. O’Sullivan makes the most of, he is clearly outside the
period. As a result 95 per cent of what people would recognize as
poetry from the early Irish period — the poetry translated by Kuno
Meyer—is given one-sixth of the book.


/Translation risks/

I can’t see why; and even now if Radio Eireann would run a proper
series in which that brilliant team of scholars would discuss the
early court poetry (which isn’t even mentioned); the nature poetry
(which could make a book in itself); the religious poetry and the
story poetry, we might yet have a book which I could pass on to
Professor Stanford to show him what Irish poetry was like at its
best.

Even then, we are faced with the difficulty of translation.

Meyer used a beautiful prose, every unusual word of which he first
tried out on his friends. Even so, verse in a prose translation
loses its colour, and a poem that in the original reminded us of a
country dance takes on the air of a sermon.


/Apt quatrain/

On the other hand a verse translation is still more dangerous, because
it can not only destroy the colour but the very character of an
original—having myself done some damage in that line, I can speak
with authority.

Most of the translations Professor Dillon uses are verse translations
by Professor Carney, and I cannot help wondering what effect they
would have in the conversion of Professor Stanford.

Some years ago I quoted in these pages four lines an eighth-century
poem to illustrate what Irish at its greatest could do:
  Rucad uaim-se mo shuil des
  Dia reic ar thir mbithdiles;
  Ocus ruead in tsuil chlé
  Do fhormach a fhoirdilse.


/My version/

Because I was unhappy with Professor Murphy’s reading of them as
referring to Heaven on the hire purchase system—"ten shillings
down, the rest in easy monthly instalments"—I made my own guess at
the meaning: “My right eye has been taken from me, alienated as part of
my forfeited estate, and the left eye has been taken to complete its
bankruptcy.” Professor Carney, quoted by Professor Dillon, leans to
the hire purchase interpretation and translates
  For deposit on heaven
    of right eye bereft.
  I concluded the purchase
    with loss of the left.
This is neat. It is spirited, it is scholarly; but I submit that
I could not possibly show it to Profpssor Stanford as an example of
Irish poetry at its greatest.


/Hidden menace/

Whether the /tir bithdiles/ means “the everlasting country” of heaven
as Professor Carney thinks or “the forever forfeited estate” of
youth as I can only guess, it is part of the solemn melancholy of the
Irish, and by sacrificing it we sacrifice the whole character of the
poem and all claim to its greatness.

I regret to say that under the guise of a “lament” by his wife for the
Irish king. Aed Mac Ainmirech, Professor Dillon’s essay contains a
most indecent epigram, but as it seems to be In no danger of being
understood, I shall for the present refrain from sending a copy of
the book to the Irish Censorship Board.

I shall also refrain from sending it to Professor Stanford.

Sunday Independent, 1965-11-28