Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/321

Rh CELTIC LITERATURE 309 history of the invasions of Ireland by the Danes and Norsemen. The only perfect copy of this work known is one in the handwriting of Michael O Clery, chief of the Four Masters, in the National Library at Brussels, but there is a fragment of it in the Book of Leinster, the remainder being lost. The existence of this fragment shows that it was written at latest within a century of the battle of Clontarf ; but from curious incidental evidence it must have been written by an eye-witness of the battle, or by some one who received his information from one who had been there. It is mentioned in the history that the tide in Dublin Bay coincided with sunrise on the 23d of April 1014, the day the battle of Clontarf was fought, and that the returning tide in the evening aided in the defeat of the Danes ; astronomical calculations have shown that ths first part of this statement is quite correct. The style of this work is poor, the descriptions are wanting in precision and accuracy of detail, owing to the redundancy of nearly synonymous adjectives, and it was evidently written by a partizan of Brian. But with all its faults it is a work of some interest even from a literary point of view. The Wars of Turloch, written by John Mac Grath, historian of the Clans of Thomond, now the county of Clare, about the year 1459, is a third example of historic prose, and one which gives us an insight into the nature of the feuds and struggles for power between rival claimants for achieftancy, and the part which the Norman adventurers played in these intestinal contests, which ultimately allowed them to become masters of the country. The immediate subject of the history in question was the war between Turloch O Brian and his uncle Brian Ruadh O Brien, and the sons of the latter, aided by the De Clares ; but it may be said to be a history of Thomond for more than two hundred years, from the Anglo-Norman invasion to the death of Robert de Clare and his son. Like the work last mentioned the style of this history is very redundant, the descriptions being overloaded with adjectives almost identical in meaning, and often incorrectly applied ; it is not, how ever, devoid of skill in the narrative, and many of the incidents are described with vigour and force. Perhaps if we had the original texts of this and the Wars of the Gaedkil with the Gaill, we should find the style purer. One of the ways in which scribes corrupted the texts of the works they copied was by adding meaningless adjectives to give as they thought dignity and ornament to the descriptions. The Book of Munster, though of uncertain date, and not known to exist in any old manuscript, is a work which illustrates very well the peculiarities of Irish historical com pilations. It begins with an account of the Creation taken from Genesis, which serves as an excuse for tacking on the Biblical genealogies to the Irish ones ; then follows the history of the Milesians from Eber, son of Miled, the eponymous ancestor of the Munster tribes, to Brian Boroimhe. The legendary part of the work is to be found in most of the principal Irish manuscripts ; but the part relating to the period from the 7th to the 10th century is of great interest, and contains much not found elsewhere. The ethnic legends just referred to, which form so pro minent a feature in Irish historical compilations, have been all brought together in what is called the Book of Invasions. This work is a link between genealogies and historical narrative proper, and consists of the legendary histories of the successive tribes supposed to have peopled Ireland, and of their eponymous leaders, into which are introduced many curious so-called historical poems, the matter of which, if not the language, is of considerable antiquity. The oldest copy of the Book of Invasions, the author of which is not known, is that in the Book of Leinster ; the one which existed in the Book of the Dun Cow in 1631 has been unfortunately since lost, with much of that valuable manuscript. Michael O Clery, chief of the Four Masters, compiled from the copy just referred to and others, a condensed version, the original of which is now in the possession of Lord Ashburnham. In speaking of the Book of Invasions we are reminded of the first attempt made to write a general history of Ireland, by Geoffrey Keating, a parish priest in the county of Tip- perary, in the beginning of the 17th century. His work, which is written in the spoken Irish of the period, and compiled under very unfavourable circumstances, is an epitome of the copious mixture of legend and fact which is found in Irish manuscripts, and among other things con tains much borrowed from the Book of Invasions. He appears to have had access to many manuscripts since lost, and though he makes no attempt to examine his materials critically, the work has considerable value, and bears com parison with similar attempts made under analogous conditions in other languages. The learning of stories formed, as we have seen, an Different important feature in the course of Filidecht. An OLlamh classes ot Fili, for example, was bound to know two hundred and * ales&amp;gt; fifty prime stories, and one hundred secondary ones. In the llth and 12th centuries the number of stories current must have been very considerable. There is a list of one- hundred and eighty-one tales in the Book of Leinster classified under the heads Destructions, Cow Spoils,. Wooings, Battles, Adventures in Caves, Wanderings and Voyages, Deaths or Tragedies, Feasts, Sieges, Adventures, Abductions, Slaughters, Irruptions of Lakes, &c., Visions. Loves, Expeditions, Marches or Progressions. More that one hundred of these are still extant, and of these nearly one half are to be found in manuscripts as old as the 12tli century, into which they were copied, as in many instances we are distinctly told, from older books. The existing tales belong to six categories : (1) ethnic, or those relating. to the peopling of the country, and the subsequent struggles of the different races ; (2) voyages, expeditions- to Scotland, the Isle of Man, or Britain, and the sieges, battles, adventures, deaths, and abductions which took place there ; (3) mythological stories connected with the Side ; (4) tales forming the heroic cycle of Queen Medb and Cuchul- aind; (5) the tales of the Fennian or Oisianic period ; and (6) miscellaneous tales belonging to pagan and Christian times,, but chiefly to the periods of the 3d and 7th centuries. The Book of Invasions is simply an attempt to put Ethnic the principal stories of the first category into a me- legends, thodical order. The staple of the stories of this class is unquestionably of considerable antiquity, though in the present form they are not much older than the 12th century. Of the existing ones the most important are the accounts of the battle of Mag Tuired Conga, supposed to have been fought between the Firlolgs and the intrusive Tuatha De Danann, and the battle of Mag Tuired of the Fomorians, supposed to have been fought between the latter and the Tuatha De Danann. The first of these tales has the terseness and simplicity of a Norse Saga, and depicts a rude and early state of society wholly unlike that in the later stories. The supernatural is so little developed in them that, notwithstanding the chief personages are the gods of the Irish pantheon, they must represent real ethnic struggles. The stories we would propose to place in the second Legends of category have little in common save that they refer to what earl y iut. fl ; we might call the prehistoric relations of Ireland with Britain. Some relate to personages of the heroic or mythological cycles ; others to Scotic invasions of Britain ; and others again to the Christian Dalriadic kingdom. Of the tales of this second category two are of great value in the history of romance namely, the Abduction of Blathnad