IRELAND
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IRELAND
copied them faithfully and promulgated them after Ire-
land had been converted to Cliristianity " (il)id., 02).
Irish Literature and Early Europe. — When it is un-
derstood that the ancient Irish sagas record, even
though it be in a more or less distorted fashion, in some
cases reminiscences of a past mj-thology and in others
real historical events, dating from pagan times, then it
needs only a moment's reflection to realize their value.
"Nothing", writes Zimmer, "except a spurious criti-
cism which takes for original and primitive the most
palpable nonsense of which Middle-Irish writers from
the Twelfth to the Sixteenth century are guilty with
regard to their own antiquity, which is in many re-
spects strange and foreign to them, nothing but such a
criticism can on the other hand make the attempt to
doubt of the historical character of the chief persons
of the saga cycles. For we believe that Meve, Conor
MacNessa, Cuchulainn, and Finn MacCumhail (Cool)
are just as much historical personalities as Arminius or
Dietrich of Bern or Etzel, and their date is just as well
determined." (Kelt-Studien. fasc. ii, 189.) The first
three of these lived in the first century b. c, and Finn
in the second or third century. D'Arbois de Juljain-
ville expresses him.self to the same effect. " We have
no reason", he writes, "to doubt of the reality of the
principal rule in this [cycle of Cuchulainn]" (Intro-
duction a I'etudede laJitteratureceltique, 217); and of
the story of the Boru tribute imposed on Leinster in
the first century he writes: "The story has real facts
for a basis though certain details may have been cre-
ated by the imagination"; and again, "Irish epic
story, barbarous though it be, is, like Irish law, a
monument of a civilisation far superior to that of the
most ancient Germans" (L'epopee celtique en Ir-
lande, preface, p. xli). "Ireland, in fact," writes M.
Darmesteter in his "English Studies", summing up
his legitimate conclusions derived from the works of
the great Celtic scholars, "has the peculiar privilege of
a history continuous from the earliest centuries of our
era until the present day. She has preserved in the
infinite wealth of her literature a complete and faithful
picture of the ancient civilisation of the Celts. Irish
literature is therefore the key which opens the Celtic
world" (Eng. tr.. 1S96, 182). But the Celtic world
means a largeportion of Europe, and the key to its past
history can be found at present nowhere else than in
the Irish manuscripts. Without them we would have
to view the past history of a great part of Europe
through that distorting medium, the coloured glasses
of the Greeks and Romans, to whom all cuter nations
were barbarians, into whose social life they had no
motive for inquiriii;,. Apart from Irish literature we
woidd have no means of estimating what were the
feelings, modes of life, manners, and habits of those
great Celtic races who once possessed so large a part
of the ancient world, Gaul, Belgium, North Italy,
parts of Germany, Spain, Switzerland, and the Briti.sh
Isles, who burnt Rome, plundered Greece, and colo-
nized Asia Minor. But in the ancient epics of Ireland
we find another standard by which to measure, and
through this early Irish medium we get a clear view
of the life and manners of the race in one ol its strong-
holds, and we find many characteristic customs of the
Continental Celts, which are just barely mentioned or
alluded to \>y Greek and Roman writers, reappearing
in all the circumstance and expansion of ^iaga-telling.
Of such is the custom of the "Hero's Bit", men-
tioned by Posidonius, upon which one of the most
famous of Irish sagas, " Bricriu's Feast ", is founded.
Again, the chariot, which had become ob.solete even in
Gaul a couple of himdred years before Caesar's inva-
sion, is described repeatedly in the sagas of Ireland,
and in the greatest of the epic cycles the warriors are
always represented as fighting from their chariots.
We find, as Diodunis Siculus mentions, that the bards
had power to make battles cease by interposing with
Bong between the comljatants. Cssar says (Gallic War,
bk. VI, xiv) the Gaulish druids spent twenty years In
studying and learned a great number of verses, but
Irish literature tells us what the arch-poet, probably
the counterpart of the Gaulish druid, actually did
learn. "The manners and customs in which the men
of the time lived and moved are depicted ", writes
Windisch, "with a naive realism which leaves no room
for doubt as to the former actuality of the scenes de-
picted. In matter of co.stume and weapons, eating
and drinking, building and arrangement of the ban-
queting hall, manners ob.served at the feast, and much
more, we find here the most valuable information " (Ir.
Texte, I, 252). "I insist", he says elsewhere, "that
Irish .saga is the only richly-flowing source of unbroken
Celtism." "It is the ancient Irish language", says
d'.\rbois de Jubainville, "that forms the connecting
point between the neo-Celtic languages and the Gaul-
ish of the inscribed stones, coins, and proper names
preserved in Greek and Roman literature." It is evi-
dent, then, that those of the great Continental nations
of to-day whose ancestors were mostly Celts, but
whose language, literature, and traditions have com-
pletely disappeared, must, if they wish to study their
owTi past, turn themselves first to Ireland, and there
they will find the drj' bones of Posidonius and Ca'siir
rise up before them in a ruddy covering of flesh anil
blood, which, for the first time, will enable them to
see what manner of men were their own forbears.
Three Principal Saga Cycles. — There are three great cycles in Irish storj'-telling, two of them very full, but the third, in manj' ways the most interesting, is now but scantily represented. This last cycle is the purely mythological one, dealing with the Tuatha De Danann. the gods of good, and the Fomorians, gods of darkness and evil, and giving us, under the apparent early history of the various races that colonized Ireland, what is really a distorted early Celtic pantheon. According to these accounts the Nemedians first seized on the island and were op- pressed by the Fomorians, who are described as -African sea-robbers; the.se races nearly exterminated each other at the fight round Conning's Tower on Tory Island. Some of the Nemedians escaped to Greece and came back a couple of hundred years later calling themselves Firliolg. Others of the Nemedians who escaped came back later, calling themselves the Tuatha De Danann. These last fought the battle of North Moytura and beat the Firbolg. They fought the battle of South Moj^ura later and beat the Fomorians. They held the island until the Gaels, also called Milesians or Scoti, came in and vanquished them. From these Jlilesians the present Irish are mostly descended. Good sagas about both of these battles are preserved, each exist- ing in only a single copy. Nearly all the rest of this most interesting cycle has been lost or is to be found merely in condensed summaries. These mytholog- ical pieces dealt with peoples, dynasties, and probably the struggle between good and evil principles. There is over it all a sense of v'aguencss and uncertainty.
The heroic cycle (or Red Branch, Cuchulainn, or Ulster cycle, as it is variously called), on the other hand, deals with the historj' of the Milesians themselves within a brief but well-defined period, and we seem here to find ourselves not far removed from his- torical groimd. The romances belonging to this cycle are sharply drawn, numerous, and ancient, many of them are fine both in conception and execu- tion. The time is about the birth of Christ, and the figures of Cuchulainn (CoohuHin), King Conor Mac Nessa, Fergus. Naoi.se (Neesha), Meadhbh (Meve), Deirdre, Conall Cearnach, and their fellows, have far more circumstantiality about them than the dim, mist- magnified, distorted forms of the mysterious Dagda, Nuada of the Silver Hand, Bres, Balor of the Evil Eye, Dana, and the other beings w'hom we find in the mythological cycle. The best known and greatest of
