is difficult to determine the date of this literature. We have no manuscripts antedating the eleventh century. But it is practically certain that many of these are transcriptions of earlier copies going back as far as the eighth and even the seventh century. Moreover, most of the tales were doubtless set down from versions that had been transmitted orally for several centuries earlier. It is possible, therefore, that we may date the original composition of some of this material in pre-Christian times. The authorship of it is quite unknown. There is extant enough of it to fill several thousand pages, and this is only a small fraction of the original quantity. The rest has perished. The Mythological cycle. The saga-romance material falls into three great cycles-the Mythological, the Red Branch, and the Fenian cycle. The stories in the Mythological cycle are relatively few in number. They deal with the vast, remote, shadowy conflicts of the pagan gods. The most important sagas in this cycle are those of the first and the second "Battle of Moytura," of the "Children of Tuireann," and of the "Children of Lir." The substance of the tales is more or less confused, the characters are gigantic, and the characterization is formless and grotesque. The Red Branch cycle is known also as the heroic cycle, as the Ultonian or Ulster cycle, and as the Cuchulain cycle. The events which it chronicles are assumed to have taken place about the beginning of the Christian Era. It is by far the finest of the three cycles. The characterization is much more definite, and the events are more orderly and better connected than in the Mythological cycle. In form the romances in all three cycles are mingled prose and verse. They doubtless consisted originally of detached or loosely connected poems, the gaps between which were in later times filled in with prose. Cuchulain is so great a figure in ancient Irish literature that a brief survey of his adventures and exploits will be in place. We have first a series of separate tales about him. One of these tells of his mysterious birth and parentage (like those of Arthur); another tells of his wooing of Emer; another of his rearing, including his journey to Alba (Scotland) to the palace of the wise woman Scathach, whose daughter Uathach falls in love with him; another of the woman warrior Aoife,1 whom Cuchulain overcomes and forces to marry him, reminding us of the Brynhild story; another of their son Conlaoch, who is slain by his father Cuchulain, being recognized only at the moment of his death-strikingly similar to the stories of Sohrab and Rustum and of Hildebrand. The second group of tales forms part of the loosely connected series known as the "Táin Bo Cualnge" ("Cattle Raid of Cooley"). These tales recount the raising of a vast army by Queen Mève and King Oilioll of Connacht; the day-by-day single combats between Cuchulain and the warriors of Connacht; the final unwilling combat between Cuchulain and his friend Ferdiad, whom Queen Mève has inveigled into the enterprise and who, after a three days' struggle, is slain by Cuchulain; and the great battle on the plains of Meath, in which Mève and Oilioll are defeated. The third group of tales centers in the death of Cuchulain. Queen Mève, his vindictive enemy, makes use of the witchcraft of the three daughters of Calatin. One of the witches, assuming the form and voice of Niamh,3 the sweetheart of Cuchulain, lures him to the field, where, after many exploits of valor, he is slain by Lewy. Conal Cearnach, his friend, afterward avenges him and brings his head, together with those of his enemies, to his wife, Emer, at Emania, who utters her lament: "Love of my soul, O friend, O gentle sweetheart, and O thou one choice of the men of the earth, many is the woman envied me thee until now, and I shall not live after thee'; and her soul departed out of her, and she herself and Cuchulain were laid in one grave by Conal."4 The second great character of the Red Branch cycle is Deirdre.5 The story of Deirdre constitutes the finest flower of early Irish literature. She has been called the Helen of Ireland, and the tragic pathos of her love and death has been almost endlessly rehandled by later writers-Ferguson, Yeats, Russell, and Synge among them. The story recounts the birth of Deirdre, the daughter of the chief bard of King Conchobhar; the prediction by the seer Cathfaidh of evils to come because of her; Conchobhar's careful rearing of her with the idea of making her his wife; the charming episode of her falling in love with Naoise, one of the three sons of Usnach, of their flight to Scotland, and of their happy days there; Conchobhar's embassy under Fergus 1 E'fa. 3 Nē'av. 5 Dar'dra. 6 Nē'sha. 2 Tawn Bo Hool-n'ya. 4 Translation by Douglas Hyde. to offer peace and entreat their return; Deirdre's premonition of foul play, and her touching song of farewell to Scotland; their coming back to Erin, the treacherous slaughter of the three sons of Usnach, and the lament and suicide of Deirdre. The Fenian cycle. The Fenian, or Ossianic, cycle deals with events that are supposed to have happened some two hundred years after those of the Red Branch cycle. The two outstanding figures in this cycle are Finn mac Cumhail1 and his son Ossian, warriors als and poets, the center of the group known as the Fenians, constitut-Cuhul ing a kind of Irish Round Table. The cycle is quite distinct from the Red Branch group of tales and is more popular in its appeal, touching the common life of the people, as the more aristocratic Red Branch stories do not. The Fenian tales have little of the epic sweep, elevation, and mystery to be found in the earlier cycle. They present the curious spectacle of a continued growth—the earliest stories going back probably to the seventh and eighth centuries, and the later material consisting not merely of copies, expansions, and elaborations but actually of new tales built up on minor incidents or suggestions contained in the earlier ones. Down to the eighteenth century Irish narrators were retelling and recreating Fenian stories. For a period of a thousand years, therefore, this cycle has been in process of development, and there are even today circulating in Ireland popular tales of Finn that have never been reduced to writing. We can mention only the most important of the Fenian sagas. The longest is the "Colloquy of the Ancients," which in fragmentary dialogue form represents the bards Ossian and Caoilte in their old leidre age, the last survivors of the Fenian band, narrating to Saint Patrick 1 Cool. retold later. Imp. Shows great interest of Irish the death of Diarmuid by means of a wild boar, and later regains the love of the somewhat changeable Grainne for himself. The three medieval cycles constitute what may properly be called the high-water mark in the history of Irish literature. Their material never reached the point of true epic structure: it is often rather formless and ill organized. Especially in some of its later manifestations, it is long-winded and rhetorical. But in the best tales of the Red Branch and Fenian cycles it possesses in its loftier passages a dignity and elevation of tone, and in its softer moments a charm and delicacy and pathos, that are rarely surpassed in any literature. It is not until we come to the brilliant literary revival at the close of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century that we have anything to record that can approach the excellence of the Red Branch and Fenian cycles. Short religious and devotional poems are scattered throughout the early Christian period, some of them of exquisite fineness and beauty, as shown, for example, in the following typical stanza from the "Song of Manchan the Hermit": "Twelve in the church to chant the hours, kneeling there twain and twain; And I before, near the chapel door, listening their low refrain."1 The bardic schools. It may be well at this point to give some indication of the Irish metrical forms and of the poetic schools which practiced them. In the earliest fragments of Irish poetry there is no rime, but in fragments dating from the seventh century, and even earlier, rime is employed; and certain scholars even go so far as to claim for Ireland the invention of rime. It has always been an important element in Irish versification. The earliest form was assonance. Versification was governed by a very complex system of rules, constituting an intricate metrical code. The bardic schools existed alongside the religious foundations for nearly a thousand years. A bard of the first rank had to spend from fifteen to twenty years in study, master over three hundred types of verse form, and memorize three hundred and fifty stories." 1 Translation by Eleanor Hull. |