Celtic Books and Their Future

SIDNEY GUNN

United States Naval Academy

Celtic works have always shown an extraordinary power to arouse interest and an equal power to stir up contention and animosity. Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 12th century published his "Historia Regum Britanniae," and claimed that he had based it on "a very old book in the British tongue." No trace of the alleged Celtic original of Geoffrey's Latin work has ever been found, but the matter he claimed to have taken from it has enjoyed great popularity, and has been a remarkable stimulus to literature, as such developments from it as the Arthurian Legend and Shakespeare's "King Lear" testify.

The suspicion of deception, along with an amazing popular appeal, was also characteristic of the work of James Macpherson, who may be regarded as Geoffrey's successor in the modern world. In 1760 he published what purported to be translations of Ossian, a traditional Celtic bard of the 3rd century, whose poems were said to have been preserved in manuscript and by oral tradition in the Highlands of Scotland. The success of Macpherson's work was marvellous, and its influence was instantaneous and far-reaching, such was the romantic appeal of that mysterious race and remote time. Europe read into it all that it dreamed of the race of bards and druids. Goethe was enraptured by Ossian, and Napoleon took it with him to read on his expedition to Egypt; but a reaction soon set in, and Macpherson came to be looked on as an impostor, while Celtic claims to achievement were treated as ridiculous bombast. The English speaking race prided itself on its Teutonic origin; the French felt themselves to be Latin, and neither had any sympathy or enthusiasm for its Celtic ancestry. Lord Lyndhurst, the son of the painter Copley, summed up the popular attitude of the English speaking world, when he called the Celtic Irish "alien in speech, in religion, and in blood." An attempt was made by Matthew Arnold and others to overcome this prejudice, and a certain interest in things Celtic was developed-an interest which has

increased ever since and has been supplemented by various literary movements having their inspiration in Celtic race consciousness. The interest that has existed is nothing, however, to what it will be in the future. The war has removed from the English all pride in their Teutonic origin, and we may expect to see a compensating enthusiasm for the Celt develop. In fact, even before the war, there were signs of a breaking down of the English tendency to exalt the Teuton, for a distinguished British anthropologist endorsed the theory that Shakespeare's facial characteristics are Celtic, and so, in the name of science, attributed to the formerly reviled and ridiculed race the production of the greatest genius of the English people.

Celtic languages are spoken and unbroken Celtic tradition. exists in four sections of Western Europe; in Ireland, in the Highlands of Scotland, in Wales, and in French Brittany. In all of these regions both scholars and popular writers have been active for the past generation translating or expounding the native literature and tradition or endeavoring to revive the ideals they embody. The scholars, of course, speak to a rather restricted audience, and are also at a disadvantage in dealing with the subtleties of poetry, while the popular writers usually depict their own modern aspirations much more than they do the ideal of the ancient Celts. But the man who loves books for what they contain will find those dealing with Celtic subjects, whether they be the work of scholars or racial enthusiasts, informative, interesting, and stimulating.

Ireland is the most important repository of Celtic tradition. It has preserved the greatest literary monument of the race in a popular epic, the "Tain Bo Cualnge," "The Cattle Raid of Cooley," and in the translation of this masterpiece by Professor Joseph Dunn of the Catholic University, Washington, D. C., we have a book which, while a work of scholarship, is of great interest to the general reader.

This epic has been compared with the "Iliad," and while it is the product of a much less disciplined intellect, it has, in many ways, an interest equal to that of Homer's work. The story is a wildly impossible one, with many ridiculous features. It is, appropriately enough, about bulls, not the verbal kind for

which the Irish people are so famous, but the real flesh and blood variety. It is not, however, without many examples of the verbal kind, and it has numberless instances of the same sort of exaggeration that leads to grotesque impossibilities. Cuchulain, its hero, incurs the charge of cowardice because, when an enemy attacks him and throws nine spears at him in succession, he absent-mindedly jumps up in the air and walks on the flying spears after a flock of birds he is pursuing, unaware that he is being attacked from his absorption in hunting. He is also said to have held back, single handed, the entire army of four-fifths of Ireland, from the beginning of November till spring, and his appearance before battle is thus described:

"Then took place the first twisting-fit and rage of the royal hero Cuchulain, so that he made a terrible, many-shaped, wonderful thing of himself. His flesh trembled about him like a pole against a torrent or like a bull-rush against a stream, every member and every joint and every point and every knuckle of him from crown to ground. He made a mad whirling-feat of his body within his hide. His feet and his shins and his knees slid so that they came behind him. His heels and his calves and his hams shifted so that they came to the front. . . . He gulped down one eye into his head so that it would be hard work if a wild crane succeeded in drawing it out on to the middle of his cheek from the rear of his skull. . . . His lungs and his lights stood out so that they fluttered in his mouth and his gullet," and so on for twice as much more, ending, however, with this: "The Champion's Light stood out of his forehead, so that a black fog

of witchery was made thereof like to the smoke from a king's hostel what time the king comes to be ministered to at nightfall of a winter's day."

This is truly Celtic impulsiveness and lack of restraint. Everything is thrown in helter skelter, and we get crude extravagance beside things of peculiar effectiveness. Even in the extravagance there is a charm, however, for though taste and discrimination may be lacking, spontaneity and vigor never are. The language flows on with a never-slackening impetus, and it has a force and a fitness that even the great dif

ficulty and uncertainity of its translation cannot hide. Synonym follows synonym, epithet follows epithet in effortless profusion, and Celtic fancy, Celtic exuberance, Celtic delicacy, and many other qualities attributed to that mutable and imaginative race are constantly in evidence to make the tale attractive and its telling effective.

It is not in its structure or its language that this tale is most impressive, however, for its spirit makes it far more notable. It has a lofty conception of moral obligation, which is surprising when we consider how our Teutonic prejudices have taught us that the Celt is willful. There is also a clear and unflinching recognition that human fortune is the plaything of circumstance, that human hopes are unavailing against inexorable destiny, which is surprising to us who have been led to think the Celt so sentimental and so given to deluding himself with pleasant beliefs in defiance of fact and experience. Much else is there in the way of delicacy of feeling, tenderness, and chivalry to disturb our preconceptions as to Celtic character, but the most striking thing of all is the impression we get that the semi-historical hero Cuchulain appears in the poem as the personification of the national spirit of Ireland. With infinite courage and unheard-of skill he defends himself against his enemies, who are not invading foreigners but domestic foes; black treachery, willful ignorance, folly, and envy are his opponents, sometimes symbolized by evil spirits appearing in the shape of wild beasts, sometimes represented by human characters. It is as if the tale epitomized the history of Ireland, and when we consider that history, the story does not seem so exaggerated, for what sufferings has not the Irish nation borne as a result of internal dissension! How often has it been betrayed by obstinate ignorance or assailed by insensate folly! As the embodiment of this spirit Cuchulain has his chief appeal, an appeal which is stronger to most people because his ideal is not the narrow and selfish "Sinn Fein," "for ourselves alone," but a noble enthusiasm for universal justice and the brotherhood of all honest

men.

Of the many authors who have sought to popularize the ideals and traditions of ancient Ireland, W. B. Yeats is per

haps the best known, for he has celebrated them in verse, and he has also taken a principal part in the establishment of the Irish Theatre, which has produced some plays-notably those of J. M. Synge-which have scored both as dramatic and literary successes. Associated with him has been Lady Gregory, who has translated some of the Cuchulain legends into housemaid's English, an experiment which robs them somewhat of the vigorous and masculine character natural to them. Eleanor Hull has dealt with the Cuchulain Saga in a more direct and less sentimental way, and the late Whitley Stokes has illuminated Celtic antiquity by his vast scholarship and great industry. Douglas Hyde has written much as a leader of the movement for a revival of the Gaelic language and culture, but his work, and that of most others whose ends are political, suffers from the suspicion of partisanship. To enumerate the other writers who have contributed to make Celtic Ireland known to the world would be impossible in the space available, but the interested reader will find a bibliography in Eleanor Hull's "Text Book of Irish Literature."

In the Highlands of Scotland the remains of Celtic antiquity are much fainter than in Ireland. Macpherson's socalled translations of Ossian have been mentioned, and they are evidence of how fragmentary and uncertain are the vestiges of unmodified Celtic tradition among the Scotch. Celtic Scotland has absorbed the culture of the English speaking world, and we shall have to look for temperamental and intellectual characteristics, even in writers in the native language, for evidence of the qualities of the submerged race. An interesting, but not a wholly convincing, case is that of Fiona Macleod. William Sharp, a writer of Scotch origin and Celtic sympathies, quite late in life suddenly began publishing novels under this feminine pseudonym, and he persisted that she existed in him as a second personality. The works he thus published: "Pharais," "The Sin Eater," and others, are supposed to display unmistakably feminine origin, and to be peculiarly Celtic in their emotional and imaginative character. Dr. Johnson would dispose of a case like this with a few vigorous remarks about cant and lunacy, and some contemporary critics at least would be inclined to agree that the old philistine would