The Catholic World Volume I Part 66

This easily agreed, Nessa became queen, while, as Fergus tells the tale:

While in council and debate Conor daily by me sate; Modest was his mien in sooth, Beautiful the studious youth,

Questioning with eager gaze, All the reasons and the ways In the which, and why because, Kings administer the laws.

In this wise a year pa.s.sed, the youth diligently observant, with faculties ripening and brightening as his majesty's grew more consciously rusty and slow; and then a crisis came, which Mr. Ferguson describes in verses of which it is hard to say whether they best deserve the coif or the laurel, for in every line there is the sharp wit of the lawyer as well as the vivid fancy of the poet:

Till upon a day in court Rose a plea of weightier sort, Tangled as a briery thicket Were the rights and wrongs intricate

Which the litigants disputed, Challenged, mooted, and confuted, Till when all the plea was ended Naught at all I comprehended.

Scorning an affected show Of the thing I did not know, Yet my own defect to hide, I said, "Boy judge, thou decide."

Conor with unalter'd mien, In a clear sweet voice serene, Took in hand the tangled skein, And began to make it plain.

As a sheep-dog sorts his cattle, As a king arrays his battle, So the facts on either side He did marshal and divide.

Every branching side-dispute Traced he downward to the root Of the strife's main stem, and there Laid the ground of difference bare.

Then to scope of either cause, Set the compa.s.s of the laws, This adopting, that rejecting,-- Reasons to a head collecting,--

As a charging cohort goes Through and over scatter'd foes, So, from point to point he brought Onward still the weight of thought

Through all error and confusion, Till he set the clear conclusion, Standing like a king alone, All things adverse overthrown,

And gave judgment clear and sound:-- Praises filled the hall around; Yea, the man that lost the cause Hardly could withhold applause.

In these exquisite verses, the language is as strict to the point as if it were taken from Mr. Smith's "Action at Law;" but the reader will remark how every figure reminds him, and yet not in any mere mimetic fas.h.i.+on, of the spirit and ill.u.s.trations of the Ossianic poetry.

Nevertheless each word taken by itself is simple Saxon. Its Celtic character only runs like a vein through the poem, but it colors and saturates it through and through.

The greatest of Mr. Ferguson's poems, however, is undoubtedly "The Welshmen of Tirawley," a ballad which, we do not fear to say, is unsurpa.s.sed in the English language, or perhaps in even the Spanish.

Its epic proportion and integrity, the vivid picturesqueness of its phraseology, its wild and original metre, its extraordinary realization of the laws and customs of an Irish clan's daily life, the stern brevity of its general narrative, and the richness of its figures, though all barbaric pearl and gold, give it a pre-eminent place among ballads. Scott would have devoted three volumes to the story, were it not for the difficulty of telling some of its incidents. Mr. Ferguson exhibits no little skill in the way that he hurries his readers past what he could not altogether omit. For the facts upon which the ballad is founded are simply horrible, and they are historically true.

After the time of Strongbow, several Welsh families who had followed his flag settled in Connaught. Among {471} these "kindly Britons" of Tirawley, were the Walshes or Wallises, the Heils (_a quibus_ MacHale, and, possibly, that most perfect instance of the _Hibernis ipsis Hibemior_, the archbishop of Tuam); also the Lynotts and the Barretts, with whom we are at present more particularly concerned. These last claimed descent from the high steward of the manor of Camelot, and their end is a story fit for the Round Table. The great toparch of the territory was the MacWilliam Burke, as the Irish called the head of the de Burgos, descended from William FitzAdelm de Burgo, conqueror of Connaught, and therein commonly called William Conquer--of whom the Marquis of Clanricarde is the present lineal representative; being to Connaught even still somewhat as the MacCallummore is to Argyle, more especially when he happens to be in the cabinet, and to have the patronage of the post-office. Now the Lynotts were subject to the Barretts, and the Barretts were subject to the Burkes. But when the Barretts' bailiff, Scorna Boy, came to collect the Lynotts' taxes, he so demeaned himself that the whole clan rose as one man, even as Jack Cade, and slew him. Whereupon the vengeful Barretts gave to all mankind among the Lynott clan a terrible choice--of which one alternative was blindness; and the bearded men were all of their own preference blinded, and led to the river Duvowen, and told to walk over the stepping stones of Clochan-na-n'all; and they all stumbled into the flood and were drowned, except old Emon Lynott, of Garranard--whom accordingly the Barretts brought back and blinded over again, by running needles through his eyeb.a.l.l.s.

But with prompt-projected footsteps, sure as ever, Emon Lynott again crossed the river, Though Duvowen was rising fast, And the shaking stones o'ercast, By cold floods boiling past; Yet you never, Emon Lynott, Faltered once before your foemen of Tirawley.

But turning on Ballintubber bank, you stood And the Barretts thus bespoke o'er the flood-- "Oh, ye foolish sons of Wattin, Small amends are these you've gotten, For, while Scorna Boy lies rotten, I am good For vengeance!"

Sing the vengeance of the Welshmen of Tirawley.

For 'tis neither in eye nor eyesight that a man.

Bears the fortunes of himself and his clan, But in the manly mind These darken'd orbs behind, That your needles could never find, Though they ran Through my heartstrings.

Sing the vengeance of the Welshmen of Tirawley.

But little your women's needles do I reck, For the night from heaven never fell so black, But Tirawley and abroad From the Moy to Cuan-an-fod, I could walk it, every sod, Path and track, Ford and togher, Seeking vengeance on you, Barretts of Tirawley!

And so leaving "loud-shriek-echoing Garranard," the Lynott, with his wife and seven children, abandons his home, and takes refuge in Glen Nephin, where, in the course of a year, a son is born to him, whom he dedicates from the first breath to his vengeance. He trains this boy with a.s.siduous care to all the accomplishments of a Celtic cavalier;

And, as ever the bright boy grew in strength and size, Made him perfect in each manly exercise, The salmon in the flood, The dun deer in the wood, The eagle in the cloud, To surprise, On Ben Nephin, Far above the foggy fields of Tirawley.

With the yellow-knotted spear-shaft, with the bow, With the steel, prompt to deal shot and blow, He taught him from year to year, And trained him, without a peer, For a perfect cavalier, Hoping so-- Far his forethought-- For vengeance on the Barretts of Tirawley.

And when mounted on his proud-bounding steed, Emon Oge sat a cavalier indeed; Like the ear upon the wheat, When the winds in autumn beat On the bending stems his seat; And the speed Of his courser Was the wind from Barna-na-gee o'er Tirawley!

Fifteen years have pa.s.sed and the youth is perfected in all the accomplishments of sport and war, and the Lynott thinks it is time to return to the world and work out the scheme of his vengeance. So the father and son quit their mountain solitude, and journey southward to the bailey of Castlebar; and in a few fine touches the picture of Mac William's grandeur, as it strikes {472} the boy's wondering eyes, rises before us; the stone house, strong and great, and the horse-host at the gate and their captain in armor, and the beautiful _Bantierna_ by his side with her little pearl of a daughter. Who should this be but the mighty MacWilliam! Into his presence ride the Lynotts; and, after salutations, the old man declares his business. He has come to claim, as gossip-law allows, the fosterage of MacWilliam's son. Ever since William Conquer's time, his race were wont to place a MacWilliam Oge in the charge of a Briton of Tirawley; and the young Lynott was a pledge for his father's capacity in such tutelage. When MacWilliam saw the young Lynott ride, run, and shoot, he said he would give the spoil of a county to have his son so accomplished. When Lady MacWilliam heard him speak, and scanned his fresh and hardy air, she said she would give a purse of red gold that her Tibbot had such a nurse as had reared the young Briton. The custom was allowed. The young MacWilliam was sent under the guidance of old Lynott into Tirawley, and Emon Oge remained as a hostage in Castlebar. So back to Garranard, no longer the "loud-shriek-echoing," old Lynott returns--

So back to strong-throng-gathering Garranard, Like a lord of the country with his guard, Came the Lynott before them all, Once again o'er Clochan-ua-n'all, Steady-striding, erect, and tall, And his ward On his shoulders; To the wonder of the Welshmen of Tirawley.

And then the young Tibbot was taught all manner of feats of body, to swim, to shoot, to gallop, to wrestle, to fence, and to run, until he grew up as deft and as tough as Emon Oge. But he was taught other lessons as well, which were not in the bond of his foster-father.

The lesson of h.e.l.l he taught him in heart and mind; For to what desire soever he inclined, Of anger, l.u.s.t, or pride, He had it gratified, Till he ranged the circle wide Of a blind Self-indulgence, Ere he came to youthful manhood in Tirawley.

Shame and rage track his pa.s.sage, till one night the young Barretts of the Bac fell upon him at Corna.s.sack and slew him. His body was borne to Castlebar. The Brehons were summoned to judgment; and over the bier of MacWilliam Oge began the plea for an eric to be imposed upon the Barretts for their crime; and the Brehons decreed the mulct, and Lynott's share of it was nine ploughlands and nine score of cattle.

And now the ultimate hour of the blind old man's vengeance had come, not to be sated with land and kine. "Rejoice," he cried, "in your ploughlands and your cattle, which I renounce throughout Tirawley."

But, expert in all the rules and customs of the clans, he asks the Brehons, Is it not the law that the foster-father may, if he please, applot the short eric? And they say it is so. Whereupon, formally rejecting his own share of the mulct, he makes his award--that the land of the Barretts shall be equally divided on every side with the Burkes, and that MacWilliam shall have a seat in every Barrett's hall, a stall in every Barrett's stable, and needful grooming from every hosteler for every Burke who shall ride throughout Tirawley for ever.

And then, in a speech full of barbaric sublimity and tragic concentration of pa.s.sion, he confesses "the patient search and vigil long" of his vengeance. It is almost unjust to break the closely-wrought chain of this speech by a single quotation, and we have been already unduly tempted to extract from this extraordinary poem; but, perhaps, this one verse may be separated from the rest as containing the very culmination of the old man's hideous rage.

I take not your eyesight from you as you took Mine and ours: I would have you daily look On one another's eyes, When the strangers tyrannize By your hearths, and blushes rise That ye brook Without vengeance The insults of troops of Tibbots throughout Tirawley.

Another moment and he has done. "Father and son," says MacWilliam, {473} "hang them high!" and old Lynott they hanged forthwith; but young Lynott had eloped with MacWilliam's daughter to Scotland, and there changed his name to Edmund Lindsay. The judgment of the short eric was, however, held good; and the Burkes rode rough-shod over the Barretts, until, as Mr. Ferguson, almost verbally versifying the Chronicle of Duald Mac Firbis, says:

Till the Saxon Oliver Cromwell, And his valiant Bible-guided Free heretics of Clan London Coming in, in their succession, Rooted out both Burke and Barrett;

a process of eviction which Mr. Ferguson, not merely for the sake of poetical justice, but out of the invincible ignorance of pure puritanical Protestantism, appears on the whole very highly to approve.

This ballad is indeed unique in its order: no Irish ballad approaches its wild sublimity and the thoroughness of detail with which it is conceived and executed. The only Irish narrative ballad which can bear a general comparison with it is Mr. Florence MacCarthy's "Foray of Con O'Donnell," a poem as perfect in its historical reality, in the aptness of all its figures, ill.u.s.trations, and feats of phrase to a purely Celtic ideal, and which even surpa.s.ses "The Welshmen" in a certain easy and lissome grace of melody, that falls on the ear like the delicately drawn notes of Carolan's music. But this grace is disdained by the grim and compressed character which animates every line of Mr. Ferguson's ballad. His other works, fine of fancy and ripe of phrase as they are, fall far below it, "The Tain-Quest" does not on the whole enthral the reader, or magnetize the memory. "The Healing of Conall Carnach," and "The Burial of King Cormac" are poems that will hold their place in many future Books of Irish Ballads; they are unusually spirited versifications of pa.s.sages from the more heroic period of early Irish history; but excepting occasional lines, they only appear to be the versifications of already written legends. The ballad of Grace O'Malley, commonly called _Grana Uaile_, may be advantageously contrasted with these, and it contains some verses of singular power--as, for example, where the poet denies the imputation of piracy against this lady who loved to roam the high seas under her own commission--

But no: 'twas not for sordid spoil Of barque or sea-board borough, She plough'd with unfatiguing toil The fluent-rolling furrow; Delighting on the broad-back'd deep To feel the quivering galley and sweep Strain up the opposing hill, and sweep Down the withdrawing valley.

"Aideen's Grave" is a poem of a different kind, full of an exquisite melancholy grace; and where Ossian is supposed to apostrophise his future imitator, it is as if he thought after the manner of the Fenians, but was withal master of every symphony of the English tongue:

Imperfect in an alien speech When wandering here some child of chance, Through pangs of keen delight shall reach.

The gift of utterance,-- To speak the air, the sky to speak, The freshness of the hill to tell, Who roaming bare Ben Edar's peak, And Aideen's briery dell, And gazing on the Cromlech vast, And on the mountain and the sea, Shall catch communion with the past, And mix himself with me.

There are lines in this poem that a little remind us of Gray, as--

At Gavra, when by Oscar's side She rode _the ridge of war;_

and again in the "Farewell to Deirdre" there is something in the cast and rhythm of the poem, rather than in any individual word or line, that recalls Scott's "Farewell to North Maven." But to say so is not to hit blots. Mr. Ferguson's is beyond question the most thoroughly original vein of poetry that any Irish bard of late days has wrought out; and in laying down this volume we can only regret that the specimens he has thought worthy of collection are so few in comparison not merely with what he might have done, but with what he actually has done. For {474} this modesty, let us hope that the prompt penance of a second and enlarged edition may atone.

We have said that though Mr. Ferguson could hardly be called a Young Irelander in politics, all the elective affinities of his genius tended toward that school of thought. But Lady Wilde, then known if she wrote prose as Mr. John Fanshawe Ellis, and if she wrote verse as Speranza, had an extraordinary influence on all the intellectual and political activities of Young Ireland. It was a favorite phantasy of that time, when Lamartine's book was intoxicating all Young Europe with the idea of a grand coming revolutionary epopoeia, and the atrocities of socialism in France and Mazzinianism in Italy had not yet horrified all Christendom, to find the model men for a modern Plutarch in the ranks of the Girondists. Notably Meagher was supposed to be gifted with all the qualities of Vergniaud, and Speranza to have more than the genius of Madame Roland. But when we come to real comparisons of character, the parallel easily gives way. If Smith O'Brien was like any Frenchman of the first revolution, it was Lafayette. Mitchel had in certain respects a suspicious resemblance to the earlier and milder phases of Robespierre's peculiar intellectual idiosyncrasy. The base of Carnot's character was that faculty for organization which was the mainspring of Gavan Duffy's various and powerful genius. The parallel was, even so far as it went, intrinsically unjust. Lamartine's glowing imagination gave to the Girondists a grandeur largely ideal. It is fair to say that Meagher's oratory was on the whole of a higher order than Vergniaud's; and certainly Madame Roland, great as may have been the influence of her character and her conversation, has left us no example of her talent that will bear comparison with Lady Wilde's poems or prose.

These poems, however, if full justice is to be done to them, ought to be read from first to last with a running commentary in the memory from the history of those few tragic years whose episodes they in a manner mark. One poem is a mournfully pa.s.sionate appeal to O'Connell against the alliance with the Whigs, which was charged as one of the causes of the secession. Another is a ballad of the famine, with lights as ghastly as ever glowed in the imagination of Euripides or Dante, and founded on horrors such as Greek or Italian never witnessed. There is then a picture of "the young patriot leader"-- which an artist would characterize as a decidedly idealized portrait of Meagher--that American general who has since proved his t.i.tle to be called "of the sword." Again, a gloomy series of images recalls to us the awful state of the country--the corpses that were buried without coffins, and the men and women that walked the roads more like corpses than living creatures, spectres and skeletons at once; the little children out of whose sunken eyes the very tears were dried, and over whose bare little bones the hideous fur of famine had begun to grow; the cholera cart, with its load of helpless huddled humanity, on its way to the hospital; the emigrant s.h.i.+p sending back its woeful wail of farewell from swarming p.o.o.p to stern in the offing; and, far as the eye could search the land, the blackened potato-fields, filling all the air with the fetid odors of decay. Again and again such pictures are contrasted with pa.s.sionate lyrics full of rebellious fire, urging the people to die, if die they must, by the sword rather than by hunger--and sometimes, too, with an angry, unreasonable, readily-forgiven reproach to the priesthood, who bore with such n.o.ble fort.i.tude and self-immolating charity the very cross of all the crosses of that terrible time.

It is a curious fact, and reminds one of the myth of Achilles' heel, that O'Connell, who marched among his myriad foes like one clad in panoply of mail from head to foot, with a sort of inexpugnable vigor and endurance, not to be wounded, not to be stunned, with his buckler ready for every {475} thrust, and a blow for every blow that rained on his casque, was weak as a child under the influence of verse. Any one who may count over the number of times his favorite quotations, such as the lines beginning "Hereditary bondsmen" from "Childe Harold" for example, crop up in the course of his speeches, will be inclined to say that his fondness for poetry was almost preposterous. It was always tempting him, indeed, into dangerous ways--for while his prose preached "the ethereal principles of moral force," and the tenet that "no political amelioration is worth the shedding of a single drop of human blood," his favorite quotations were strictly in favor of fighting. The "hereditary bondsmen" were to "strike the blow;" and the Irish are a nation only too well disposed to interpret such a precept literally. Moore's melodies were always at the tip of his tongue; and Moore's "Slave so lowly" is indignantly urged not to pine in his chains, but to raise the green flag forthwith, and do or die. Some verses of O'Connell's own, of which he was at least equally fond, began:

Oh Erin! shall it e'er be mine To see thy sons in battle line?

It was not altogether politic, especially when Young Ireland was gaining the ascendant, to use such quotations habitually; but the temptation seems to have been irresistible. So, on the other hand, may be conceived his excessive sensitiveness to anything sounding like a reproach that reached him through the vehicle of verse. When Brougham or Stanley or Peel struck their hardest, they got in return rather more than they gave--when the whole House of Commons tried to stifle his voice, over all the din Mr. Speaker heard himself with horror called upon to stop this "beastly bellowing." But when Moore wrote those lines--so cruelly touching, so terribly caustic--"The dream of those days," which appeared in the last number of the Melodies, the Liberator was, it is said, so deeply affected that he shed tears. So again, these lines of Speranza, which appeared in the _Nation_ at the time of the secession, stung him to the very heart: