Page:Selections from Ancient Irish Poetry - Meyer.djvu/19

 poems that in none of them do we get an elaborate or sustained description of any scene or scenery, but rather a succession of pictures and images which the poet, like an impressionist, calls up before us by light and skilful touches. Like the Japanese, the Celts were always quick to take an artistic hint; they avoid the obvious and the commonplace; the half-said thing to them is dearest.

Of ancient love-songs comparatively little has come down to us. What we have are mostly laments for departed lovers. He who would have further examples of Gaelic love-poetry must turn to modern collections, among which the Love-Songs of Connaught, collected and translated by Douglas Hyde, occupy the foremost place.

A word on the metrical system of Irish poetry may conclude this rapid sketch. The original type from which the great variety of Irish metres has sprung is the catalectic trochaic tetrameter of Latin poetry, as in the well-known popular song of Cæsar's soldiers:—

'Caesar Gallias subegit,Nicomedes Caesarem, Ecce Caesar nunc triumphatqui subegit Gallias';

or in St. Hilary's Hymnus in laudem Christi, beginning:—

'Ymnum dicat turba fratrum,ymnum cantus
 * personet,

Christo regi concinenteslaudem demus debitam.'

The commonest stanza is a quatrain consisting of four heptasyllabic lines with the rhyme at the end of the couplet. In my renderings I have made no attempt at either rhythm or rhyme; but I