The Courtship of Ferb/Preface

PREFACE

THE following translation of The Courtship of Ferb lays no claim to Irish scholarship, though it is, I believe, the first English translation of this very old Irish romance, whose earliest written version is found in the twelfth-century manuscript known as the Book of Leinster. With very few changes the translation follows the German rendering of the tale as given by Professor Windisch in the Irische Texte, III. 2. 462; and some words of explanation are required for the appearance of a version which is a simple translation from the German.

The numerous works which have recently opened up for us the long hidden treasures of Irish literature fall naturally into two groups, one consisting of modern English poems founded on Irish story, such as Sir Samuel Ferguson's poems, Aubrey de Vere's Foray of Queen Maev, The Wanderings of Oisin, by Mr. W. B. Yeats, and Mr. Trench's poem of Deirdre Wed, while in the other group we may place a large number of original Celtic romances, which in their present Irish form are nearly nine hundred years old, and have recently been translated into French, German, and English. From the modern poems some knowledge of the subjects of the Irish stories has been widely diffused, but the poems are really adaptations, coloured by modern ideas and by the poetic fancy of the writers, so that they seldom give a correct representation of the literature from which the subjects are drawn. Literal translations, chiefly foreign, such as that of the present tale by Professor Windisch, have now been made of nearly all the leading romances, but many of these are not readily accessible to the general reader, being published in the transactions of learned societies, or in specialist periodicals; and they do not seem to have attracted sufficient attention among the literary public, if one may judge from the lack of interest in Irish literature, except in that part of it which has been treated in the more attractive poetic form of the modern works.

A remarkable instance of this lack of interest appears in a note on Mr. Andrew Lang's edition of Aucassin and Nicolete, where he discusses examples found in other countries of the cante fable, or interwoven song and story, in which this French romance of the twelfth or thirteenth century is written. Swahili and Arab parallels are noticed, others from Norse and from modern Scottish folk-lore; but he never mentions that many of the Irish romances, such as the story of Deirdre, or The Courtship of Ferb, are notable examples of cante fable;^[1] although these tales, preserved for us in manuscripts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, were certainly composed long before the actual dates of the manuscripts, and are literally centuries older than any other European examples of this style of writing.

Now, although several of these Irish instances of blended story and song have been translated, no attempt has yet been made to reproduce their form in an English version. The literal translations of the poetry found in them often impress by their poetic imagery, but it is more often hard to realise, in face of a too close translation of the Irish idioms, that the translations do really represent verse. In the version here given of The Courtship of Ferb the verse is translated as verse and the prose as prose; and in the verse translations endeavour has been made to add nothing to a literal rendering except scansion and rhyme. The original metres are not reproduced—it is as undesirable to do so as it is to reproduce Homer in hexameters—but few deviations from the sense of the original have been allowed, the few changes made being such as seemed necessary in order to clear up the meaning of passages which, when more literally rendered, seemed too obscure. To make it easy for a reader to test how far the verse translations do give the sense of the Irish, a literal translation of the metrical passages is placed at the end. Further reference may be made to the Irish text, and to the German rendering given by Professor Windisch in the volume of the Irische Texte, already mentioned.

The tale of The Courtship of Ferb belongs to a group of romances which, taken together, tell the story of what has been called the Heroic Age of Ireland. The date of this Heroic Age is traditionally placed in the first century of our era, but no greater reliance need be placed on its actual date than we place on the date of 1184 B.C., which used to be given as the date of the Capture of Troy.^[2] The romances of this group are among the oldest Irish romances which we possess, and were put into their present form at various periods between the seventh and the tenth centuries; but they are based on traditions which are certainly older, and show traces of a pre-Christian origin. The leading idea of the romances is the state of open or concealed warfare between the kingdoms of Ulster and of Connaught; the principal characters being Conachar (or Conor), king of Ulster; Cuchulainn, Conall, and other Ulster champions; Medb (or Maev), queen of Connaught, with her husband Ailill; and Fergus Mac Roy, the exiled king of Ulster, who in many of the stories is a refugee at the Connaught court, while in others he holds a place second only to Conor in the councils of Ulster. A list of ninety-six romances which belong to this period is given by Miss Hull as an appendix to the Cuchullin Saga; but twenty of these are only known by name, the actual tales being lost. Of the remaining seventy-six. Miss Hull mentions translations of twenty-nine; but translations of others have appeared since the publication of the list; extracts from and outlines of many of these romances have appeared in O'Curry's published lectures and elsewhere. The central story of the cycle is the Tain bo Cuailgne, or The Cattle Raid of Kellny, which may be regarded as holding in Irish romance a place similar to that occupied by the Trojan War in early Greek legend; for many of the other tales either lead up to the Tain, or trace the later fortunes of those who took part in it. Other romances, which may be regarded as essential to the full working out of the saga, are The Birth of Cuchulainn, The Debility of the Ultonians, The Fate of the Sons of Usnech, The Death of Cuchulainn, and The Death of Conachar; while important tales which have less reference to the course of the central story are The Destruction of the House of Da Derga, which tells the story of the death of Conary, the high king of Ireland; and The Courtship of Etain, of which tale The Destruction of the House of Da Derga may be regarded as a sequel.

Among these romances the tale of The Courtship of Ferb occupies a secondary place. It may be looked upon as a preface to the Tain bo Cuailgne, and tells us of one of the many provocations which led to that Raid, which commenced just seven years after the events recorded in this tale. In the construction of this story, as well as in the manner of its telling, a straightforward and simple character is shown, which is common to most of the older Irish romances, and must strike the reader at once. Although a supernatural being, the goddess of war, appears in the course of the tale, nothing can be found of the mystical "Celtic spirit," to which such prominence is given in some modern poems, whose incidents are taken from the old romances. It need hardly be said that the introduction of a supernatural element into these old stories does not necessarily imply any craving for mysticism or magic on the part of the writers; for if the ancient Irish had a mythology at all, as they undoubtedly had, divine and semi-divine beings should appear occasionally in their tales, just as the gods and goddesses appear in Homer, or as Odin appears in the Volsunga Saga. But since, on the representations of observers of the western Irish of to-day, the idea that the Celt is necessarily mystical has got firmly rooted, the mere mention of anything supernatural, like the Druidic mist in the tale of Deirdre, is held to be an example of the Celtic love of mysticism and magic; while an apparition of Odin to break Sigmund's sword^[3] in Teutonic legend is not considered to be due to any such craving for mysticism, because the Teutons are supposed to be a practical people.

On the principles of those who maintain the mystical character of the older Irish romances, Homer must surely be held to be the chief of mystics. The change of Apollo into the shape of Agenor^[4] after he had enveloped the youth in a cloud to save him from the wrath of Achilles would certainly have been held to be an instance of "Celtic magic" if it had occurred in an Irish instead of a Greek poem, for it seems that it is hard to grasp the idea that when any race of men believed that their gods did really interest themselves in human affairs, it was perfectly natural that these gods should appear in the tales of the race. That Castor and Pollux should have appeared in the Forum to bring news of the battle of Lake Regillus, was accepted as a natural addition to their old legend by that most unmystical of peoples—the Romans; the goddess of war tells Conor of the approach of his foe in The Courtship of Ferb; Poseidon fights for the Greeks in their struggle to save the ships; and the warrior saint, St. James, rides before the armies of the Christian Spaniards in their battles against the Moors. There is nothing peculiarly Celtic in the instance where, in the Irish tale, divine aid is granted. Again it is not at all certain that a great feeling of awe in presence of the supernatural is a specially Celtic characteristic. The western Irish display, we are told, much caution when speaking of the fairy folk, and seem to stand much in awe of them; but, though it is reasonable to expect a similar feeling in the older romances, it is quite possible that the character of the people has somewhat changed during the thousand years or so that have passed since the romances were written in their present form; or that this feeling of reverence was not present in the particular class who produced the romances, or for whose entertainment they were composed. As a matter of fact, if we look at the tales without preconceived opinions, we shall find that in Irish story the heroes show rather less instead of more reverence for the supernatural than is displayed by the Homeric heroes. In Homer, gods are sometimes attacked with success by men, but the men have in such cases another god to encourage and to aid them; when Diomed attacks Apollo without divine sanction the great difference which separates the mortal from the immortal is at once evident, but in Irish story, when the goddess of war opposed Cuchulainn at the ford,^[5] Cuchulainn boldly trampled that goddess under his feet, and in the original tale of The Courtship of Etain, Eochaidh needs no divine support when, so far from having any eerie feeling about the magic power of his fairy opponent, such as that with which he is credited in a recently published version of the story, he collects his warriors, storms the fairy mound,^[6] and carries off his wife from the disconsolate though divine lover. The well-known boast of Ossian: "Were God and my son Oscar hand to hand together on Knock-na-veen; if I were to see Oscar down, I would then say God was a strong man," seems to give the original Celtic feeling about the power of the supernatural better than can be got from the notion of ever-present magical spell which is now held up to us as the peculiarly Celtic view.

Yet the Ossianic tales, which appear to be of comparatively modern date, cannot really be taken to represent the original Celtic spirit. For, whatever the Irish of a later day may have become after the history of the last thousand years, and the modifications of the race by outside influences which have been made in that time, there is little doubt that if we wish to find the true Celtic ideas, untouched by foreign additions, or by Danish or later influences of race, we must go to the old tales found in the eleventh and twelfth-century manuscripts, or to those which modern scholarship finds to be undoubtedly of equally ancient origin. There we find a mythology, the gods of that mythology appearing from time to time in the stories; but the supernatural is not, in general, the chief concern of the authors of the stories; their concern is with the deeds and griefs of men and of women. Transmigration or re-birth, that element of Celtic belief which drew the attention of the ancient world, is of frequent occurrence; in some tales this idea is the principal motive of the story, but in tales like The Courtship of Ferb the supernatural is a mere incident, the tone of the story is more Homeric than mystical. This feeling about the ancient stories pervades those poems of Sir Samuel Ferguson which are founded on Irish legends; and here, though many ideas, Christian and other, are by him introduced into the legends, we seem to breathe the spirit of the old literature far better than in the more recent versions of it, where the notion of a specially Celtic craving after magic is for ever present. Former enthusiasts have thought that Celtic held a peculiar place among languages—that Welsh was the language of Eden, that Semitic languages drew their roots from Celtic sources; these ideas have been destroyed by philologists, who have brought Irish into its proper place in the great family of languages. Others have maintained that Irish art and architecture had laws of development of its own, so that it was older than similar art and similar architecture in other countries—these ideas have been upset by antiquarians; and the more recent theory, that love of the supernatural and a craving after magic is the special characteristic of the Celtic mind, will be found to rest upon no surer basis than did the older claims. It does not really tend to increase the interest which is felt in Irish literature when it is represented as differing widely in its subject and its interests from all the other literatures of the world; we shall do better if we try to realise the points where it touched upon, modified, and borrowed from other stocks. Possibly Irish romance modified directly or indirectly the romances of the Middle Ages;^[7] perhaps it sprang from the same source whence flowed the far greater music of Homer. As a survival of the ideas of that Celtic race which once spread all over Western Europe, the ancient stories should be of interest in all lands where Celts once ruled, where descendants of the Celtic race to day remain. For there is reason for the belief that, not only in those districts which are now regarded as especially Celtic, but even in countries which like England are spoken of as especially Teutonic, runs the blood of the race which composed the legends on which these Irish tales are founded, if, indeed, some of the mythology and of the incidents of the tales do not point back to that yet earlier date when Teuton and Celt were one.

An interesting point in the tale, as we have it, of The Courtship of Ferb is the difference between the sources from which it is drawn. The ballad version, marked XII in the translation, supposed according to the story to have been composed by Conor's bard Ferchertne, is at the end of the tale as transcribed in the Book of Leinster, and gives what we may call the Ulster version of the story; the prose version, with the poems marked I to XI, gives the incidents as related by one who may be regarded as a sympathiser with Connaught. A manuscript of the fifteenth century in the British Museum, marked Egerton 1782, gives a third account, which in the main agrees with the ballad or Ulster version; but the short poem included in it, although somewhat corrupt, would seem to be an imperfect reproduction of the poem marked IV in the Connaught story, or of a poem similar to it. As to the comparative dates, Windisch appears to hold that the Ulster version is in the main the older, though some of the poems of the Connaught version, such as IV and IX, may be specially ancient. One of the principal tests given by Windisch is the druidical prophecy brod ane in airidig, in the verse marked 22 of the ballad version, with similar expressions in the poem IV, brod in airigid; and in the Egerton manuscript brod ind airdig and brod inn airdich. Windisch is doubtful whether the word brod stands for "meat" or for "drinking cups," but in any case the prophecy that brod should be in the airidig is actually fulfilled when the man Brod, or rather Brod's spear was in it. It appears from Windisch that the Old Irish form of airidig is eridech, a cup or beaker; and that both the ballad version and the version in the Egerton manuscript took this view, so that the prophecy was fulfilled when Brod's spear pierced the cup in Gerg's hand; while the author of the Connaught version having the old word airidig or airigid before him failed to recognise it as meaning a cup, so invented a person called Airidech, the servant of Gerg, through whom the spear passed after killing his master. As the word brod is of doubtful meaning, and is plainly a sort of druidical pun, I have ventured to translate the line in verse 22 of the ballad version as "broth shall in the beaker be," with similar translations of "there's broth in the cup," and "broth in the bowl is found" in the poems marked IV and in the Egerton version. This keeps pretty close to one of the suggested meanings for brod—namely, "meat"—and preserves in English the play on the word brod, and the name of Conor's charioteer who really fulfilled the prophecy. Another apparent evidence of date, which Windisch notes in his preface, is the higher literary quality of the Connaught version. Both versions are apparently, at least, as old as the tenth century, but the Ulster or ballad version and the Egerton one, which in the main agrees with it, tell the story baldly; while the Connaught story-teller seems to have amplified several suggestions in the original tale: in the laments of Nuagel over Gerg, and of Ferb over Mani, also in the dramatic dialogues between Ferb and the two Connaught heroes, Fiannamail and Donnell the Red, much power is shown. The difference of tone between Nuagel's lament over a hero well tried in war and in council, and that of Ferb over a gallant youth, slain in his first fight, is well sustained; and to show the difference with as little change as possible, I have translated the two laments V and VII in the same metre.

For reasons already mentioned, I have not attempted to reproduce the Irish metres, nor have the same metres been kept throughout. The irregular metres of III, IV, and of the Druidic chant in the Egerton version are reproduced in irregular English metres, the long lines of I are reproduced by long lines, but the number of the feet does not correspond to the number in the Irish poem. The Ulster version XII, and the dialogues are all in one metre, the laments in another; and, to break the monotony of the laments, XI has a foot added to each line. The object aimed at is not to prepare a literal translation for the use of scholars, but to take a tale which was put into its present form a thousand years ago in order to interest Irish hearers, and to reproduce it in such an English form as might interest English readers at the present time, keeping, however, as close as possible to the sense and form of the Irish. Thus, while no attempt has been made to introduce the internal rhymes which are a peculiar feature of Irish verse, artifices like the Irish ones are sometimes used to produce the same effect; e.g. the echoing verses 5 and 6 in the lament marked VII correspond to similar echoes in the verses used in the original. To simplify difficulties in the pronunciation of Irish proper names and surnames, the surnames have, as far as possible, been translated, and a list of the proper names with approximate pronunciation is prefixed. In the case of names which occur pretty often I have slightly altered the spelling—thus Maev (pronounced Mayv) is written for Medb, Alill for Ailill, Eman (pronounced Aymen) for Emain, Croghan (pronounced Crowhan) for Cruachan, and Cualgne (pronounced Kell-ny) for Cuailnge. Perhaps attention should be called to the fact that Fiannamail is to be pronounced as Fee-an-ool; and, although I feel that I ought to apologise to Irish scholars for doing so, I have given an approximate pronunciation of Cá-ha for Cathach, and have left out any indication of the final guttural. I have also thought it right to follow Sir Samuel Ferguson in scanning the word "Tain" in the title of the poem Tain bo Cuailgne as rhyming with pain—not with the modern pronunciation of "taw-in."

I must here once for all acknowledge my indebtedness to Professor Windisch's preface to his edition of this tale, and to his exceedingly close translation of the Irish text; and I wish to thank very sincerely all those friends who have assisted me in questions as to pronunciation and translation of the Irish proper names, and with general criticisms on my attempts to render this old Irish story into an English literary form.

The story in the text is plain enough, and would have required no special introduction had not the first few pages in the Book of Leinster version unfortunately been lost. Possibly the "fault" with which Nuagel reproaches her daughter Ferb in the first verse of the lament marked V, and the allusion in the second line of the third verse of the lament marked VII (see literal translation) refer to something in the lost part of the story, but I have not found any other indication of it, and no essential part of the tale seems to be missing. To replace the lost part a short introduction in italics has been added.

University College, Sheffield Dec. 1901-July 1902.

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1. This peculiarity of Irish romance has been pointed out by Windisch (Irische Texte, III. 2. p. 447 seqq.) and by Jacobs (Celtic Fairy Tales, pp. 243, 257), who there expresses his view that the cante fable was the original form of the folk-tale. It is, I think, quite possible that the Irish form of cante fable was, in some measure, the direct parent of the French form. If we recall the statement made by Eric of Auxerre, a little more than a thousand years ago, as to the "crowd of Irish learned men" who came "almost in one body to the shores of France, subjecting themselves to a voluntary exile," it will seem not improbable that the Irish plan of using both prose and verse in the same story—doubtless familiar to these learned men—was generally noticed, and that the form of cante fable in France was thus suggested. It is right, however, to mention that Mr. Alfred Nutt (to whom I wish to express my gratitude for several valuable suggestions both in this preface and the main body of the translation) dissents from this view; holding that, if it were true, direct Irish influence on the matter as well as in the form of the French romances would be found, and that of this direct influence there is no trace.
2. The dates given to this period by early authorities, or by later writers who had access to old records which now are lost, differ widely; and dates given to different events are often inconsistent. The date, for instance, when the father of Queen Maev succeeded to the kingship over all Ireland, is given by the Annals of the Four Masters (a.d. 1630) as 137 b.c., by Flann of Monasterboice (11th century) as 56 b.c., and by O'Flaherty in his Ogygia as 27 b.c. Conor and the other personages in the romances are not mentioned at all in the Annals of the Four Masters; but the date of the death of Conor is given by Tighernach (a contemporary of Flann) as a.d. 48, while his birth is usually assigned to a.d. 1. It is difficult to reconcile these dates with the date of Maev's father, but it is as useless to try to reconcile the dates relating to the Ulster heroes as it would be to explain the different accounts of Helen of Troy, who, according to a very old legend, was carried off by Theseus in the days of the fathers of the men who fought for her under the Trojan walls.
3. Volsunga Saga, Chap, xi.
4. Iliad, xxi. 597.
5. Tain bo Cuailgne, 58. Also see Tain bo Regamna.
6. Tochmarc Etaine (Egerton version), § 20; Irische Texte, vol. i, page 130.
7. We have no evidence of direct Irish influence on continental literature, but this influence was undoubtedly felt in Wales; and the connection between mediaeval romance, Welsh literature, and Breton literature is well known.