Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/320

Rh 308 CELTIC LITERATURE Historical Every successive race which peopled Ireland had, we are poems. . tQ id t j tg historian, whose names are given, and in some cases particular verses and even long poems are attributed to them. These are, of course, mythological personages, but this fact is in itself a proof of the antiquity of the system of recording in verse the history of the country. Without going back to Coirlre, the son of the goddess Main, wife of Ogma &quot; of the sun-like face,&quot; a long list of poets beginning with Ailill Olum, a king of Munster in rthe 2d century, the supposed progenitor of the chief Celtic families of the south of Ireland, may be made out. There .are three poems in the Book of Leinster attributed to the A Hill just named. It is needless to say that in their present form these poems could not be the work of a poet who lived a thousand years before the Book of Leinster was written, even if the poet were not, as is probable, only an eponymous ancestor of Munster clans. To the same or a somewhat later period belong several other mythological personages to whom poems still extant are attributed, and of whom we shall have something to say presently, namely, Finn son of Cumall, contemporary of Cormac son of Art, &quot; the lone man,&quot; and a reputed author himself, Oisin the son of Finn (the Ossian of later romance), and his brother Fergus, and his cousin Cailte. In Niall of the Nine Hostages, who was killed on an excursion into Britain in 405, we have probably an undoubted historic personage, and in Torna Eigeas or the learned,&quot; his Fili, a real poet. There are many poems attributed to him still extant, but ia their present form they belong to a period not perhaps earlier than the 1 1 th century. His contemporary Laidcenn was the author of an Art of Poetry which has not reached us. After the conversion of the whole country in the 5th century there cannot be any doubt that the poets whose names occur in the Annals, and to whom poems are attributed in manuscripts, were real personages. Some of the poems attributed to the earlier ones have come down in such an archaic dress that it is probable we have the genuine work of the poet. The works of the poets of the 9th, 10th, and llth centuries are either their genuine pro ductions or at most slightly modernized versions. Between the first of those centuries and the 14th the change in the language was not very great. Among the names of authors of historical poems who lived between the 5th and the llth century the following deserve special mention : Bishop Fiacc, author of a metrical life of St Patrick which survives nearly, if not quite, in its original form; and Dalian Forgaill, a contemporary of St Columcille, and author of an elegy on that saint, which is to be found in the oldest manuscript written wholly in Irish now in Ireland, the Leabhar no. h-Uidhri, or Book of the Dun Cow, which was compiled before 1106. The poem in question is glossed and accompanied by a kind of commentary on the difficult words, so that the language was already so obsolete in the end of the llth century as to be practically unintelligible. In the 7th century the most prominent names are the following. Senchdn Torpcist, the successor of the Dalian just mentioned as chief poet of Ireland, flourished about the year 600. Senchan is one of those to whom the authorship of the existing form of the principal Irish tale, the Tain Bo Cuailnge. is attributed. Finntann, poet of Ragkallach, king of Connaught, killed in 648, has attributed to him the authorship of a very spirited ballad on the deeds and death of his patron. The language of this poem, admitting it to have been written by Finntann, has been modified to some extent in the way above suggested. St Moling was the author of several poems of considerable merit, some of which only come under the present category. Two of St Molina s poems have been found by Mone in the manuscript in the convent of St Paul in Carinthia above mentioned, and scarcely differ in orthography from the copies hich exist in manuscripts in Ireland compiled six hundred years later than the St Paul codex, assuming the latter to be, as Mone suggested, of the 8th century. Cennfadadh &quot; the Learned,&quot; the reputed author of the grammar of the Irish language above men tioned, died in 678. During the 8th century the num ber of writers appears to have been smaller than in the preceding and succeeding centuries. This was no doubt due to the great number who went abroad, for during tliat century, and the early part of the 9th, Irishmen were to be found in every part of Europe. In the latter century Fothadh, Flanagan, and Flann Mac Londin occupied a prominent position as writers of historical poems. Laitheoy, the mother of Flann Mac Lonain, deserves mention also as a poetess, and as showing that women shared in the literary cultivation of the period. In the 10th century the most prominent poets were Cormac &quot; the Learned,&quot; Cinacdh O Hartagan, and Echaid O Flinn ; and in the llth cen tury, Eckaid O Ceirin, surnamed &quot; the Learned,&quot; author of a curious historical poem descriptive of one of the great fairs or OenecJis, held in Ireland ; Mac Liag, Mac Coise, Cnan O Lothcain, and Flann of the Monastery. The historical poems attributed to the writers of the 10th and llth centuries are, as might be expected, much more numerous than those of precding ones. Indeed we might make an epitome of the whole history of the country, especially of the legendary part, from the poems of the writers just mentioned, the poets of one period deriving the materials of their own poems from those of their predecessors. In the llth and 12th century prose came largely into Prose use, as is shown by the large number of prose historic history, tales and romances which were written at this time. It is difficult to draw a line between real history and his torical fiction in an early literature, but in Irish it is especially so, for we find many of the so-called historical tales so free from the miraculous, and so sober in the narrative, that at first sight we could scarcely refuse to accept them as history ; and yet one of them to which this description applies is undoubtedly an account of a war between deities. In general, however, we can follow all the stages from a simple historical narrative up to a full blown romance. The circumstances under which this kind of literature was produced show why this should be so. The business of the Fili, or poet, was to praise his chief, celebrate the achievements of his ancestors, and find him amusement when he regaled his Sabaid, or props, as the chief men of the tribe were called, in his alehouse. For this purpose a simple narrative of a foray or a skirmish required to be embroidered with a little romance ; hence the number of accounts of battles, deaths, feasts, &amp;lt;tc., which though in the main founded on real events belong by their treatment to fiction. There are, however, some produc tions which though not free from invention may yet be classed as attempts at writing prose historical narrative. Perhaps ths earliest of this class of compositions is the History of the Borromean Tribute, or great tribute of cows levied in the province of Leinster by Tuathal, surnamed Teachtmar, or &quot; the Legitimate,&quot; whose death is variously stated to have occurred at from 106 to 160. and who consequently belongs to the dawn of the historic period. This tribute was abolished by the paramount king of Ireland Finnachta, surnamed &quot; the Festive,&quot; at the instance of the St Moling above mentioned, but imposed again in the beginning of the llth century by Brian, surnamed from this circumstance JJoroimke, or &quot; Brian of the Cow Tribute,&quot; as a punishment of Leinster for supporting the Danes. This interesting work is found in the Book of Leinster, and was therefore probably written at the time of the re- imposition of the tribute. Another work of the same period is the Wars of the Gaedhil with the Gaill, or the