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    The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IX: Early Art: Uncollected Articles and Reviews Written Between 1886 and 1900
    The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IX: Early Art: Uncollected Articles and Reviews Written Between 1886 and 1900
    The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IX: Early Art: Uncollected Articles and Reviews Written Between 1886 and 1900
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    The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IX: Early Art: Uncollected Articles and Reviews Written Between 1886 and 1900

    By William Butler Yeats

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    The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume IX: Early Articles and Reviews is part of a fourteen-volume series under the general editorship of eminent Yeats scholars Richard J. Finneran and George Mills Harper. This first complete edition includes virtually all of the Nobel laureate's published work, in authoritative texts with extensive explanatory notes.

    Coedited by John P. Frayne and Madeleine Marchaterre, Early Articles and Reviews assembles the earliest examples of Yeats's critical prose, from 1886 to the end of the century -- articles and reviews that were not collected into book form by the poet himself. Gathered together now, they show the earliest development of Yeats's ideas on poetry, the role of literature, Irish literature, the formation of an Irish national theater, and the occult, as well as Yeats's interaction with his contemporary writers. As seen here, Yeats's vigorous activity as magazine critic and propagandist for the Irish literary cause belies the popular picture created by his poetry of the "Celtic Twilight" period, that of an idealistic dreamer in flight from the harsh realities of the practical world.

    This new volume adds four years' worth of Yeats's writings not included in a previous (1970) edition of his early articles and reviews. It also greatly expands the background notes and textual notes, bringing this compilation up to date with the busy world of Yeats scholarship over the last three decades. Early Articles and Reviews is an essential sourcebook illuminating Yeat's reading, his influences, and his literary opinions about other poets and writers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherScribner
    Release dateJun 15, 2010
    ISBN9781451603040
    The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IX: Early Art: Uncollected Articles and Reviews Written Between 1886 and 1900
    Author

    William Butler Yeats

    William Butler Yeats is generally considered to be Ireland’s greatest poet, living or dead, and one of the most important literary figures of the twentieth century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923.

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      The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IX - William Butler Yeats

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      VOLUME IX

      THE COLLECTED WORKS OF W. B. YEATS

      Richard J. Finneran and George Mills Harper, General Editors

      VOLUME I   THE POEMS

      ed. Richard J. Finneran

      VOLUME II   THE PLAYS

      ed. David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark

      VOLUME III   AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

      ed. William H. O’Donnell and Douglas Archibald

      VOLUME IV   EARLY ESSAYS

      ed. Warwick Gould and Dierdre Toomey

      VOLUME V   LATER ESSAYS

      ed. William H. O’Donnell

      VOLUME VI   PREFACES AND INTRODUCTIONS

      ed. William H. O’Donnell

      VOLUME VII   LETTERS TO THE NEW ISLAND

      ed. George Bornstein and Hugh Witemeyer

      VOLUME VIII   THE IRISH DRAMATIC MOVEMENT

      ed. Mary FitzGerald and Richard J. Finneran

      VOLUME IX   EARLY ARTICLES AND REVIEWS

      ed. John P. Frayne and Madeleine Marchaterre

      VOLUME X   LATER ARTICLES AND REVIEWS

      ed. Colton Johnson

      VOLUME XI   MYTHOLOGIES

      ed. Warwick Gould and Dierdre Toomey

      VOLUME XII   JOHN SHERMAN AND DHOYA

      ed. Richard J. Finneran

      VOLUME XIII   A VISION (1925)

      ed. Margaret Mills Harper and Catherine Paul

      VOLUME XIV   A VISION (1937)

      ed. Margaret Mills Harper and Catherine Paul

      Early Articles and Reviews

      UNCOLLECTED ARTICLES

      AND REVIEWS WRITTEN BETWEEN

      1886 AND 1900

      W. B. YEATS

      EDITED BY

      John P. Frayne Madeleine Marchaterre

      Scribner

      NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY

      CONTENTS

      Preface and Acknowledgments

      Abbreviations

      Articles and Reviews by W. B. Yeats

      1. The Poetry of Sir Samuel Ferguson—I, The Irish Fireside, 9 October 1886

      2. The Poetry of Sir Samuel Ferguson—II, The Dublin University Review, November 1886

      3. The Poetry of R. D. Joyce, The Irish Fireside, 27 November and 4 December 1886

      4. Clarence Mangan (1803-1849), The Irish Fireside, 12 March 1887

      5. A fragment of Finn MacCool from The Gael, 23 April 1887

      6. The Celtic Romances in Miss Tynan’s New Book (review of Shamrocks), The Gael, 11 June 1887

      7. Miss Tynan’s New Book (review of Shamrocks), The Irish Fireside, 9 July 1887

      8. The Prose and Poetry of Wilfred Blunt (review of Love Songs of Proteus), United Ireland, 28 January 1888

      9. Irish Fairies, Ghosts, Witches, etc., Lucifer, 15 January 1889

      10. Irish Wonders (review of D. R. McAnally’s book), The Scots Observer, 30 March 1889

      11. John Todhunter, The Magazine of Poetry (Buffalo), April 1889

      12. William Carleton (review of Red-Haired Man’s Wife), The Scots Observer, 19 October 1889

      13. Popular Ballad Poetry of Ireland, The Leisure Hour, November 1889

      14. Bardic Ireland (review of S. Bryant’s Celtic Ireland), The Scots Observer, 4 January 1890

      15. Tales from the Twilight (review of Lady Wilde’s Ancient Cures), The Scots Observer, 1 March 1890

      16. Irish Fairies, The Leisure Hour, October 1890

      17. Irish Folk Tales (review of D. Hyde’s Beside the Fire), The National Observer, 28 February 1891

      18. Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling (review of G. E. Leland’s book), The National Observer, 18 April 1891

      19. Plays by an Irish Poet (review of J. Todhunter’s A Sicilian Idyll), United Ireland, 11 July 1891

      20. Clarence Mangan’s Love Affair, United Ireland, 22 August 1891

      21. A Reckless Century. Irish Rakes and Duellists, United Ireland, 12 September 1891

      22. Oscar Wilde’s Last Book (review of Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime), United Ireland, 26 September 1891

      23. The Young Ireland League, United Ireland, 3 October 1891

      24. A Poet We Have Neglected (review of W. Allingham’s collected poems), United Ireland, 12 December 1891

      25. Poems by Miss Tynan (review of Ballads and Lyrics), Evening Herald (Dublin), 2 January 1892

      26. The New ‘Speranza’ (article on Maud Gonne), United Ireland, 16 January 1892

      27. Dr. Todhunter’s Irish Poems (review of The Banshee), United Ireland, 23 January 1892

      28. Clovis Hugues on Ireland, United Ireland, 30 January 1892

      29. Sight and Song (review of M. Field’s book), The Bookman, July 1892

      30. Some New Irish Books (review of books by G. Savage-Armstrong, W. Larminie, and R. J. Reilly), United Ireland, 23 July 1892

      31. Dublin Scholasticism and Trinity College, United Ireland, 30 July 1892

      32. A New Poet (review of E. J. Ellis’s Fate in Arcadia), The Bookman, September 1892

      33. ‘Noetry’ and Poetry (review of G. Savage-Armstrong’s collected poems), The Bookman, September 1892

      34. Invoking the Irish Fairies, The Irish Theosophist, October 1892

      35. Hopes and Fears for Irish Literature, United Ireland, 15 October 1892

      36. The Death of Oenone (review of Tennyson’s poems), The Bookman, December 1892

      37. The Vision of MacConglinne (review of K. Meyer’s edition), The Bookman, February 1893

      38. The Wandering Jew (review of R. Buchanan’s poem), The Bookman, April 1893

      39. A Bundle of Poets (review of A. H. Hallam’s poems, etc.), The Speaker, 22 July 1893

      40. The Writings of William Blake (review of L. Housman’s selection), The Bookman, August 1893

      41. The Message of the Folk-lorist (article, and review of T. F. Dyer’s The Ghost World), The Speaker, 19 August 1893

      42. Two Minor Lyrists (review of poems by J. D. Hosken and Fenil Haig [F. M. Ford]), The Speaker, 26 August 1893

      43. Old Gaelic Love Songs (review of D. Hyde’s Love Songs of Connacht),The Bookman, October 1893

      44. The Ainu (review of B. D. Howard’s Life with Trans-Siberian Savages), The Speaker, 7 October 1893

      45. Reflections and Refractions (review of C. Weekes’s poems), The Academy, 4 November 1893

      46. Seen in Three Days (review of E. J. Ellis’s poem), The Bookman, February 1894

      47. A Symbolical Drama in Paris (review of Villiers de L’Isle-Adam’s Axël), The Bookman, April 1894

      48. The Evangel of Folk-lore (review of W. Larminie’s West Irish Folk Tales), The Bookman, June 1894

      49. A New Poet (review of AE’s Homeward, Songs by the Way), The Bookman, August 1894

      50. Some Irish National Books (review of books by M. MacDermott, E. M. Lynch, and C. O’Kelly), The Bookman, August 1894

      51. An Imaged World (review of E. Garnett’s prose poems), The Speaker, 8 September 1894

      52. The Stone and the Elixir (review of F. E. Garrett’s translation of H. Ibsen’s Brand), The Bookman, October 1894

      53. Battles Long Ago (review of S. O’Grady’s The Coming of Cuculain), The Bookman, February 1895

      54. An Excellent Talker (review of O. Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance), The Bookman, March 1895

      55. Dublin Mystics (review of AE’s Homeward, Songs by the Way, 2nd ed., and J. Eglinton’s Two Essays on the Remnant), The Bookman, May 1895

      56. The Story of Early Gaelic Literature (review of D. Hyde’s history), The Bookman, June 1895

      57. Irish National Literature, I: From Callanan to Carleton, The Bookman, July 1895

      58. 1. The Three Sorrows of Story-telling (review of D. Hyde’s translation), The Bookman, July 1895

      59. Irish National Literature, II: Contemporary Prose Writers, The Bookman, August 1895

      60. That Subtle Shade (review of A. Symons’s London Nights), The Bookman, August 1895

      61. Irish National Literature, III: Contemporary Irish Poets, The Bookman, September 1895

      62. Irish National Literature, IV: A List of the Best Irish Books, The Bookman, October 1895

      63. The Life of Patrick Sarsfield (review of J. Todhunter’s biography), The Bookman, November 1895

      64. The Chain of Gold (review of S. O’Grady’s book), The Bookman, November 1895

      65. William Carleton (review of Carleton’s autobiography), The Bookman, March 1896

      66. William Blake (review of R. Garnett’s book), The Bookman, April 1896

      67. An Irish Patriot (review of Lady Ferguson’s biography of Sir Samuel Ferguson), The Bookman, May 1896

      68. The New Irish Library (review of books by R. A. King, J. F. Taylor, and C. G. Duffy), The Bookman, June 1896

      69. William Carleton (review of Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry), The Bookman (New York), August 1896

      70. Greek Folk Poesy (review of L. Garnett’s collection), The Bookman, October 1896

      71. The Well at the World’s End (review of W. Morris’s romance), The Bookman, November 1896

      72. Miss Fiona Macleod as a Poet (review of Macleod’s [William Sharp’s] From the Hills of Dream), The Bookman, December 1896

      73. Young Ireland (review of C. G. Duffy’s book), The Bookman, January 1897

      74. Mr. John O’Leary (review of O’Leary’s Recollections of Fenians and Fenianism), The Bookman, February 1897 329

      75. Mr. Arthur Symons’ New Book (review of Amoris Victima), The Bookman, April 1897

      76. Miss Fiona Macleod (review of Macleod’s [William Sharp’s] Spiritual Tales, Tragic Romances and Barbaric Tales), The Sketch, 28 April 1897

      77. The Treasure of the Humble (review of Maeterlinck’s book), The Bookman, July 1897

      78. "Mr. Standish O’Grady’s Flight of the Eagle," The Bookman, August 1897

      79. Bards of the Gael and the Gall (review of G. Sigerson’s book), The Illustrated London News, 14 August 1897

      80. Aglavaine and Sélysette (review of Maeterlinck’s play), The Bookman, September 1897

      81. The Tribes of Danu, The New Review, November 1897

      82. Three Irish Poets (article on AE, Nora Hopper, and Lionel Johnson), The Irish Homestead, December 1897

      83. The Prisoners of the Gods, The Nineteenth Century, January 1898

      84. Mr. Lionel Johnson’s Poems (review of Ireland, with Other Poems), The Bookman, February 1898

      85. "Mr. Rhys’ Welsh Ballads," The Bookman, April 1898

      86. The Broken Gates of Death, The Fortnightly Review, April 1898

      87. "Le Mouvement Celtique: Fiona Macleod" (article with a review of The Laughter of Peterkin), L’Irlande Libre, 1 April 1898

      88. AE’s Poems (review of The Earth Breath), The Sketch, 6 April 1898

      89. "Le Mouvement Celtique: II. M. John O’Leary," L’Irlande Libre, 1 June 1898

      90. Celtic Beliefs About the Soul (review of Meyer’s translation of The Voyage of Bran), The Bookman, September 1898

      91. John Eglinton and Spiritual Art, The Daily Express (Dublin), 29 October 1898, reprinted in Literary Ideals in Ireland, 1899

      92. A Symbolic Artist and the Coming of Symbolic Art, The Dome, December 1898

      93. High Crosses of Ireland, The Daily Express (Dublin), 28 January 1899

      94. Notes on Traditions and Superstitions, Folk-lore, March 1899

      95. The Irish Literary Theatre, Literature, 6 May 1899

      96. The Dominion of Dreams (review of Macleod’s book), The Bookman, July 1899

      97. Ireland Bewitched, The Contemporary Review, September 1899

      98. The Literary Movement in Ireland, The North American Review, December 1899, reprinted in Ideals in Ireland, 1901

      Copy Texts, Emendations, and Notes

      Copy Texts Used in This Edition

      Emendations to the Copy Texts

      Notes

      Index

      PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      This volume collects those articles and reviews which Yeats did not publish in book form, nor were they collected and published by Mrs. Yeats after Yeats’s death. The chronological scope of this volume goes from 1886, the year of the appearance of Yeats’s first prose pieces, to the end of 1899. Articles which appeared after 1899 are collected in the companion volume, Later Articles and Reviews, edited by Colton Johnson.

      Most of the material in this volume was published in Uncollected Prose, vol. 1 (1971), and Uncollected Prose, vol. 2 (1975). Added to the pieces already in print are early articles written for The Gael as well as more recently identified reviews such as those for G. E. Leland’s Gypsy Sorcery and George Sigerson’s anthology Bards of the Gael and Gall.

      Pruned from UP1 and UP2 were a number of pieces which went into other, more appropriate, volumes of The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats. Two pieces for The Providence Sunday Journal went into Letters to the New Island, a few short stories will appear in The Celtic Twilight and The Secret Rose, letters to newspapers went into The Collected Letters, and some accounts of lectures await their fate.

      Yeats expressed great fascination, even enthusiasm when Horace Reynolds collected his American newspaper pieces for publication in 1934. In a letter to Reynolds on 24 December 1932, Yeats expressed some reservations about his early propaganda for the Irish Literary Movement. However, there is evidence that Yeats wished to collect some prose pieces into more permanent form. Irish Rakes and Duelists was to be part of a book on the Irish past in the Adventurers series. His four articles on Irish National Literature for The Bookman were intended to become a pamphlet, but the plan came to nothing. His six articles on Irish folklore (four of which are in this volume, the last two in Later Articles and Reviews) were intended to be part of a collaboration with Lady Gregory which just did not work out. Lady Gregory did publish two volumes, Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, based on the material which she had collected with Yeats, and Yeats contributed two essays and notes to that volume.

      In these articles and reviews, we can trace the development of some of Yeats’s leading ideas on Irish nationalism and literature, on the occult, on folklore, and also on the place where Yeats saw himself and his contemporaries in the evolution of English and European literature as well as in the revival of Irish literature. Yeats’s judgments sometimes bear the marks of youthful rashness and daring. From these qualities comes a certain charm which might have been softened or toned down by revisions had Yeats edited his work later in life.

      In his reviews, we have primary evidence of Yeats’s interaction with his Irish and English contemporaries: Katharine Tynan, AE, Douglas Hyde, John Todhunter, as well as Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons, Lionel Johnson, and Ernest Rhys. To the daily or weekly reviewer does not fall the privilege of the leisurely appraisal of the great literature of the age. He or she must shoot from the hip at whatever targets are offered. Of some of Yeats’s reviews it could be said that what ideas the book inspired in Yeats are of greatly more importance than the original volumes under review.

      The immediate inspiration for these pieces was financial, and there is ample evidence in Yeats’s letters to show how much he needed the money that magazines could pay. Yet at the same time Yeats seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed himself. He loved sounding boards for his idées fixes, and anything having to do with Ireland, Irish literature, or William Blake brought out the evangelist in him. To say that this was hack work obscures the whole truth. To be sure, there were deadlines, odd assignments, restrictions in length and perhaps treatment, but Yeats seemed to welcome occasions which could induce inspiration, rather than the opposite.

      The conventional wisdom is that financial help from Lady Gregory rescued Yeats from the drudgery of journalism. If the purpose of this rescue was to return Yeats’s energies to poetry, the help had a somewhat ironic effect. With Lady Gregory’s collaboration, Yeats’s energies went more and more into the Abbey Theatre, an activity (among others) of which Yeats spoke with exasperation, All things can tempt me from this craft of verse.

      One by-product of these occasional articles and reviews was Yeats’s relationships with his editors. John Kelly has written eloquently of Yeats’s dealings with the short-lived Gael. W. E. Henley, and The Scots Observer, also had an important role in shaping Yeats’s career. It was Yeats’s relationship with The Bookman, however, which was to be the most fruitful in the long run. Of the ninety-eight pieces in this collection, forty-three were written for The Bookman; this line of reviews began with Yeats’s review of Michael Field’s Sight and Song in July 1892 and ended with his review of Lady Gregory’s collection Poets and Dreamers in The Bookman of May 1903.

      Preparing a new edition of UP1 and part of UP2 published in the 1970s had its difficulties and opportunities. Yeats scholarship had massively moved on. As a result, such efforts as The Collected Letters, edited by John Kelly and others, offer treasure troves of information about Yeats and his contemporaries. At the same time, the guidelines for the Collected Edition series have called for a wider range of footnoted information, the listing of emendations, and a consistency in editorial format. We have been able to hunt down many more of Yeats’s literary references, but there remains game to be hunted. We have tried systematically to compare Yeats’s copious quotations of the poetry he was reviewing with the edition under criticism. Yeats’s or his editors’ verbal changes were frequent, the punctuational changes almost automatic.

      We have tried to regularize the spelling of names, particularly Irish ones. As an example, the spelling of Cuchulain is our standard, and the variety of alternate spellings in the original printings may be found in the list of emendations. Regularization has its limits. If Standish O’Grady entitled his book The Coming of Cuculain, then it is left such in the text and in references to it.

      Some of the pieces collected here were not signed by Yeats. In the headnotes for such we have discussed the arguments for Yeats’s authorship to be found in his letters, also from internal evidence, and from the attributions of Alan Wade, Yeats’s bibliographer.

      The copy texts used were from the newspapers or magazines themselves. Two exceptions to this rule are number 91, John Eglinton and Spiritual Art, and number 98, The Literary Movement in Ireland. Yeats later revised these articles when they were published in book form, and we have printed the revised versions. While there are few manuscript versions of these pieces, one exception is MS 122148 in the National Library of Ireland, which contains clippings of some reviews, corrected in Yeats’s hand. We have noted instances when we have incorporated Yeats’s changes into the text.

      The following typographical and format conventions have been adopted for Yeats’s texts, in accord with the general policy for the prose volumes of The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats.

      The presentation of headings is standardized. In this volume, the main headings are set in full capitals (capitals and small capitals for subtitles). Section numbers are in roman capitals. All headings are centered and have no concluding full point.

      The opening line of each new paragraph is indented, except following a displayed heading or section break.

      All sentences open with a capital letter followed by lowercase letters.

      A colon that introduces a quotation does not have a dash following the colon.

      Quotations that are set off from the text and indented have not been placed within quotation marks.

      Titles of stories, essays, and poems have been placed within quotation marks; titles of books, plays, long poems, periodicals, operas, paintings, statues, and drawings have been set in italics.

      Abbreviations such as i.e. have been set in roman type.

      A dash, regardless of its length in the copy text, has been set as an em dash when used as punctuation. When a dash indicates an omission, as in Miss S——, a two-em rule is used.

      Ampersands have been expanded to and.

      When present, the author’s signature is indented from the left margin, set in upper- and lowercase letters, and ends without punctuation (except where the signature appears as initials followed by points).

      When present, the place and date are indented from the left margin, set in italics in upper- and lowercase letters, and end without punctuation.

      British punctuation conventions are observed in the Yeats text, but American conventions are used in the preface, headnotes, and notes.

      First and foremost, the editors would like to thank the University of Illinois Department of English for its assistance in helping to prepare this edition. Also, the University of Illinois Library and its staff have been of incalculable help over many years. Lately, Kathleen Kluegel has been most helpful, and in recent years William Brockman has offered invaluable assistance, especially in acquiring and introducing us to the Chadwyck-Healy CD-ROM edition of Yeats’s works. Our gratitude also goes to Richard J. Finneran for his unstinting help and encouragement over this long haul. Our fellow editors, especially George Mills Harper and William H. O’Donnell, have given helpful advice in answering lists of queries about untraced quotations and other problems. During a research trip to the British Library during 1989, Warwick Gould gave invaluable assistance in tracing down arcane references in the collections there, even to rare manuscript sources. Also, the staff at the National Library of Ireland was enormously helpful in guiding us to Irish sources unique to that collection.

      John Kelly was most generous in allowing us to use the text and his notes for Yeats’s articles for the Gael newspaper as well as his text and notes for the review Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling. Also, Deirdre Toomey kindly allowed us to use the text and notes from her reprinting in Yeats Annual 5, 1987, of Yeats’s review of Sigerson’s Bards of the Gael and Gall. We also thank Colton Johnson for the use of notes that he contributed to Uncollected Prose by W. B. Yeats, vol. 2, 1976, for the articles and reviews of the years 1897-99.

      We would like to thank Michael Yeats for encouraging the preparation of this edition. Anne Yeats in 1989 was very hospitable in allowing John Frayne to examine Yeats’s private collection of books, a privilege that resulted in solving a number of untraced allusions.

      At an earlier stage of research, much valuable work was done by Edward Jacobs, whose efforts as a graduate assistant were financially supported by the Research Board of the University of Illinois. At a later stage of preparation, Madeleine Marchaterre joined the task of completing the necessary revisions and preparing the manuscript for publication.

      Among our English Department colleagues, James Hurt has been most helpful in sharing his extensive knowledge of Irish literature, as well as Julia Saville, Charles Wright, Leon Waldoff, Brian Ó Broin, and August Gering. To Klaus Peter Jochum of the University of Bamberg we owe thanks for the help and advice gained from his years of indefatigable work on the bibliography of the criticism of the works of Yeats. And our special thanks go to Roger Boulter for his help at the National Library of Ireland.

      Lastly, our thanks go to our students, whose enthusiasm for Yeats’s poetry has helped to stoke our enthusiasm for Yeats’s work as a whole, and to our families, who afforded patient support as one more source was tracked down, as one more footnote was revised.

      THE EDITORS

      ABBREVIATIONS

      Articles and Reviews by W.B.Yeats

      1

      THE POETRY OF SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON—I

      This article appeared in The Irish Fireside of 9 October 1886, under the heading Irish Poets and Irish Poetry. Sir Samuel Ferguson had died on 9 August 1886, and the present article was one of two pieces written by Yeats to sum up the achievement of Ferguson. This article may have been written after the longer, more detailed one that appeared in The Dublin University Review of November 1886, pp. 10-27 in this collection. In the present article Yeats writes about Ferguson’s Conary, from Poems (Dublin: W. McGee, 1880), Of this poem’s splendid plot, which I have no space to describe here, I have written somewhat copiously elsewhere.

      Sir Samuel Ferguson (1810-86), Belfast-born poet and antiquary, most heavily influenced Yeats by his attempt to use ancient Irish legends and heroic sagas as subjects for his poems. What Ferguson’s work meant to Yeats is writ large in this and the following article.

      Of old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago.¹

      In the garden of the world’s imagination there are seven great fountains. The seven great cycles of legends—the Indian; the Homeric; the Charlemagnic; the Spanish, circling round the Cid; the Arthurian; the Scandinavian; and the Irish²—all differing one from the other, as the peoples differed who created them. Every one of these cycles is the voice of some race celebrating itself, embalming for ever what it hated and loved. Back to their old legends go, year after year, the poets of the earth, seeking the truth about nature and man, that they may not be lost in a world of mere shadow and dream.

      Sir Samuel Ferguson’s special claim to our attention is that he went back to the Irish cycle, finding it, in truth, a fountain that, in the passage of centuries, was overgrown with weeds and grass, so that the very way to it was forgotten of the poets; but now that his feet have worn the pathway, many others will follow, and bring thence living waters for the healing of our nation, helping us to live the larger life of the Spirit, and lifting our souls away from their selfish joys and sorrows to be the companions of those who lived greatly among the woods and hills when the world was young.

      It was in Ferguson’s later poems that he restored to us the old heroes themselves; in his first work, Lays of the Western Gael,³ he gave us rather instants of heroic passion, as in ‘Owen Bawn’, and ‘Deirdre’s† Lament for the Sons of Usnach’, or poems in which character is subordinated to some dominant idea or event, as in the ‘Welshmen of Tirawley’, and ‘Willy Gilliland’, or tales round which is shed the soft lustre of idyllic thought, as the ‘Fairy Thorn’.

      In other words, he was more lyrical and romantic than dramatic in this first and best known of his books. ‘The Fairy Thorn’, does†the whole range of our rich ballad literature contain a more beautiful ballad of ‘the good people’ than this? I will quote almost the whole of it:

      ‘Get up, our Anna dear, from the weary spinning-wheel,

      For your father’s on the hill, and your mother’s asleep;

      Come up above the crags, and we’ll dance a highland-reel

      Around the fairy thorn on the steep’.

      At Anna Grace’s door ’twas thus the maidens cried—

      Three merry maidens fair, in kirtles of the green;

      And Anna laid the sock and weary wheel aside,

      The fairest of the four, I ween.

      They’re glancing through the glimmer of the quiet eve,

      Away, in milky wavings of neck and ankle bare;

      The heavy sliding stream in its sleepy song they leave,

      And the crags in the ghostly air;

      And linking hand in hand, and singing as they go,

      The maids along the hillside have ta’en their fearless way,

      Till they come to where the rowen trees in lonely beauty grow

      Beside the fairy hawthorne grey.⁴

      …..

      But solemn is the silence of the silvery haze

      That drinks away their voices echoless repose,

      And dreamily the evening has still’d the haunted braes,

      And dreamier the gloaming grows.

      And sinking one by one, like lark-notes from the sky

      When the falcon’s shadow saileth across the open shaw,

      Are hushed the maidens’ voices, as cowering down they lie

      In the flutter of their sudden awe.

      For from the air above, and the grassy ground beneath,

      And from the mountain ashes, and the old whitethorn between,

      A power of faint enchantment doth through their beings breathe,

      And they sink down together on the green.⁵

      …..

      Thus clasped and prostrate all, with their heads together bow’d,

      Soft on their bosoms beating—the only human sound—

      They hear the silky footsteps of the silent fairy crowd,

      Like a river in the air, gliding round.

      No scream can they raise, nor prayer can they say,

      But wild, wild, the terror of the speechless three—

      For they feel fair Anna Grace drawn silently away—

      By whom they dare not look to see.

      They feel their tresses twine with her parting locks of gold,

      And the curls elastic falling, as her head withdraws;

      They feel her sliding arms from their tranced arms unfold,

      But they may not look to see the cause.

      For heavy on their senses the faint enchantment lies

      Through all that night of anguish and perilous amaze;

      And neither fear nor wonder can ope their quivering eyes,

      Or their limbs from the cold ground raise.

      Till out of night the earth has rolled her dewy side,

      With every haunted mountain and streamy vale below;

      When, as the mist dissolves in the yellow morning tide,

      The maidens’ trance dissolveth so.

      Then fly the ghastly three as swiftly as they may,

      And tell their tale of sorrow to anxious friends in vain—

      They pined away,⁶ and died within the year and day;

      And ne’er was Anna Grace seen again.

      You must go to the book itself for that ringing ballad, ‘Willy Gilliland’, or that other, ‘The Welshmen of Tirawley’, which I am told the English poet Swinburne⁷ considers the best Irish poem, for I cannot do them justice by short quotations. I could give no idea of a fine building by showing a carved flower from a cornice.

      His well-known poem, the ‘Lament of Deirdre’,† the Irish. It is one of ‘the things of the old time before’.⁸ The name of him who wrote it has perished, his grave is unknown; and she in whose mouth it is put beheld the dawn from her tent door, and heard the long oars smiting the grey sea, and beheld the hills and the forest, and had her good things long ago, and departed. Well then, perhaps, some one will say, if it has come from so far off, what good can it do us moderns, with our complex life? Assuredly it will not help you to make a fortune, or even live respectably that little life of yours. Great poetry does not teach us anything—it changes us. Man is like a musical instrument of many strings, of which only a few are sounded by the narrow interests of his daily life; and the others, for want of use, are continually becoming tuneless and forgotten. Heroic poetry is a phantom finger swept over all the strings, arousing from man’s whole nature a song of answering harmony. It is the poetry of action, for such alone can arouse the whole nature of man. It touches all the strings—those of wonder and pity, of fear and joy. It ignores morals, for its business is not in any way to make us rules for life, but to make character. It is not, as a great English writer has said, ‘a criticism of life’,⁹ but rather a fire in the spirit, burning away what is mean and deepening what is shallow.

      Sir S. Ferguson’s longest poem, Congal, appeared in 1872. Many critics held this to be his greatest work. I myself rather prefer his Deirdre,† of which more presently.¹⁰ Deirdre† is in blank verse, which, I think, sustains better the dignity of its subject than the somewhat ballad metre of Congal. Nevertheless, Congal is a poem of lyric strength and panther-like speed.

      It is the story of the death in the seventh century, at the battle of Moyra (or Moira) of Congal Claen. Congal was a heathen; his enemy, the arch-King Ardrigh,¹¹ was a Christian. This war was the sunset of Irish heathendom. Across Ireland, eager for the battle, march Congal and his warriors. The demons of field and flood appear to them and prophesy their destruction. Defying heaven and hell, on march the heathen hosts. One morning, in the midst of the ford of Ullarvu, they behold that gruesomest of Celtic demons, ‘the Washer of the Ford’—a grey hag, to her knees in the river, washing the heads and the bodies of men. Congal fearlessly questions her.

      ‘I am the Washer of the Ford’, she answered; ‘and my race

      Is of the Tuath de Danaan line of Magi; and my place

      For toil is in the running streams of Erin; and my cave For sleep is in the middle of the shell-heaped Cairn of Maev,

      High up on haunted Knocknarea,† ¹² and this fine carnage-heap

      Before me, in these silken vests and mantles which I steep

      Thus in the running water, are the severed heads and hands,

      And spear-torn scarfs and tunics of these gay-dressed¹³ gallant

      bands

      Whom thou, O Congal, leadest to death. And this’, the Fury

      said,

      Uplifting by the clotted locks what seemed a dead man’s head,

      ‘Is thine head, O Congal!’

      Still on they go, these indomitable pagans. Surely nothing will resist their onset. Will they not even shake the throne of God in their sublime audacity? No; Congal when he has accomplished deeds of marvellous valour is slain by the hand of an idiot boy who carries a sickle for sword, and the lid of a cauldron for shield. Ah, strange irony of the Celt.

      Notice throughout this poem the continual introduction of the supernatural. I once heard a great English poet,¹⁴ in comparing two existing descriptions of the battle of Clontarf, the Irish and the Danish, say that the Irish narrator turns continually aside to discuss some great problem, or describe some supernatural event, while the Dane records only what affects the result of the battle. This was so, he said, because the Celtic nature is mainly lyrical, and the Danish, mainly dramatic.

      The lyrical nature loves to linger on what is strange and fantastic.

      In 1880, was published Ferguson’s last volume, Poems.

      In England it received no manner of recognition.¹⁵ Anti-Irish feeling ran too high. ‘Can any good thing come out of Galilee’, they thought.¹⁶ How could these enlightened critics be expected to praise a book that entered their world with no homage of imitation towards things Anglican?

      Sir Samuel Ferguson himself, declares the true cause of this want of recognition in English critical centres in a letter published the other day in the Irish Monthly.¹⁷ He sought to lay the foundation of a literature for Ireland that should be in every way characteristic and national, hence the critics were against him.

      In this last book of his are his two greatest poems, Conary, which de Vere ¹⁸ considers the best Irish poem, and Deirdre.†

      In Conary, thus is the king of Ireland described by a pirate’s spy—¹⁹

      One I saw

      Seated apart: before his couch there hung

      A silver broidered curtain; grey he was, Of aspect mild, benevolent, composed.

      A cloak he wore, of colour like the haze

      Of a May morning, when the sun shines warm

      On dewy meads and fresh-ploughed tillage land;

      Variously beautiful, with border broad

      Of golden woof that glittered to his knee

      A stream of light. Before him, on the floor,

      A juggler played his feats;²⁰ nine balls he had,

      And flung them upward, eight in air at once,

      And one in hand: like swarm of summer bees

      They danced and circled, till his eye met mine;

      Then he could catch no more; but down they fell

      And rolled upon the floor. ‘An evil eye

      Has seen me’, said the juggler.

      Of this poem’s splendid plot, which I have no space to describe here, I have written somewhat copiously elsewhere.²¹

      Deirdre†is the noblest woman in Irish romance. Pursued by the love of King Conor,† she flies with her lover and his brethren and his tribe. Who has not heard of their famous wanderings? At last peace is made; but she who has been like a wise elder sister to the sons of Usnach†knows that it is treacherous, and warns Naoise,†her lover. He will not believe her. Sadly she sings upon her harp, as they leave their refuge in Glen Etive—

      Harp, take my bosom’s burthen on thy string,

      And, turning it to sad, sweet melody,

      Waste and disperse it on the careless air.

      Air, take the harp-string’s burthen on thy breast,

      And, softly thrilling soul-ward²² through the sense,

      Bring my love’s heart again in tune with mine.

      Alba,† farewell! Farewell, fair Etive bank!

      Sun kiss thee; moon caress thee; dewy stars

      Refresh thee long, dear scene of quiet days!

      Slowly they are meshed about and entrapped; the sons of Usnach† are slain, and she kills herself that she may escape the power of King Conor.†

      Sir Samuel Ferguson, I contend, is the greatest Irish poet, because in his poems and the legends, they embody more completely than in any other man’s writings, the Irish character. Its unflinching devotion to some single aim. Its passion. ‘The food of the passions is bitter, the food of the spirit is sweet’, say the wise Indians.²³ And this faithfulness to things tragic and bitter, to thoughts that wear one’s life out and scatter one’s joy, the Celt has above all others. Those who have it, alone are worthy of great causes. Those who have it not, have in them some vein of hopeless levity, the harlequins of the earth.²⁴

      One thing more before I cease; if I were asked to characterize, as shortly as may be, these poems, I should do so by applying to them the words of Spenser,† ‘barbarous truth.’²⁵

      2

      THE POETRY OF SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON—II

      This article appeared in The Dublin University Review of November 1886. The death of Sir Samuel Ferguson, the Ulster-born poet and antiquary, on 9 August 1886, called forth a number of appreciations of the man’s life and work. The two principal articles, one by John Pentland Mahaffy in The Athenaeum of 14 August 1886 and the other by Margaret Stokes in The Academy and Literature (London) of 21 August 1886, had both stressed Ferguson’s loyalty to the British crown. Yeats’s article was a reply that Ferguson, whether he meant to be or not, was a true member of that company ÷ That sang to sweeten Ireland’s wrong … and hence was a nationalist whether he wanted to be or not. Although this article is one of Yeats’s earliest published pieces, it is his first major statement of his literary philosophy. In choosing a national literature embodying the ideals of fatherland and song, Yeats declared war on the Anglo-Irish (West-Briton, as he called it) literary establishment in its chief institution—Trinity College—and its chief spokesman, Professor Edward Dowden.

      Yeats declared for an epic literature, one based on ancient Irish sagas, which would enable him to escape what he called the sad soliloquies of a nineteenth-century egoism. Here Yeats expresses one of the central forces of his long career: his love of convictions rather than intellectual reservations, his primitivism, and even a foreshadowing of his self-image in old age. The aged sea-king he admired in Ferguson, he was to aspire to himself.

      One may doubt whether Yeats’s enthusiasm for Ferguson is supported by the passages he quotes from Ferguson’s poems. The appeal to national loyalties is more powerful than the reasons offered to the literary judgment. The arrogant and defiant opening to this essay and its concluding clarion call to a rebirth of the Gael are magnificent and a fitting opening for a man who would sing the indomitable Irishry.

      In the literature of every country there are two classes, the creative and the critical. In Scotland all the poets have been Scotch in feeling, or, as we would call it, national, and the cultured and critical public read their books, and applauded, for the nation was homogeneous. Over here things have gone according to an altogether different fashion.

      It has not paid to praise things Irish, or write on Irish subjects; but the poet, who is, as far as he is a poet at all, by the very nature of his calling a man of convictions and principle, has gone on remaining true to himself and his country, singing for those who cannot reward him with wealth or fame, who cannot even understand what he loves most in his work. This he has done while the Irish critic, who should be a man of convictions, but generally becomes, by the force of circumstances a man of tact, industry, and judgment; who studies the convenances¹ of the literary world and praises what it is conformable to praise, has remained with his ears to the ground listening for the faintest echo of English thought. Meanwhile the poet has become silent or careless, for everywhere the supply ultimately depends on the demand. If Ireland has produced no great poet, it is not that her poetic impulse has run dry, but because her critics have failed her, for every community is a solidarity, all depending upon each, and each upon all. Heaven and earth have not seen the man who could go on producing great work without a sensitive and exacting audience. Why did a writer like Sir Samuel Ferguson publish in a long life so little poetry, and after he had given evidences of such new and vivid power, become no longer vocal, and busy himself mainly with matters of research?

      The greatest of his faculties was killed long ago by indifference.

      It is a question whether the most distinguished of our critics, Professor Dowden, would not only have more consulted the interests of his country, but more also, in the long run, his own dignity and reputation, which are dear to all Irishmen, if he had devoted some of those elaborate pages which he has spent on the much bewritten George Eliot, to a man like the subject of this article.² A few pages from him would have made it impossible for a journal like the Academy to write in 1880, that Sir Samuel Ferguson should have published his poetry only for his intimate friends, and that it did not even ‘rise to the low watermark of poetry’.³ Remember this was not said of a young man, but one old, who had finished his life’s labour. If Sir Samuel Ferguson had written to the glory of that, from a moral point of view, more than dubious achievement, British civilization, the critics, probably including Professor Dowden, would have taken care of his reputation.

      Lately another professor of Trinity appears to have taken most pleasure in writing, not that the author of Congal was a fine poet, nor that he was a profound antiquarian, but in assuring us that he was an ‘orderly citizen’ which, if it means anything, means, I suppose, that unlike Socrates, he never felt the weight of the law for his opinions.⁴

      ‘I would’, said one of the most famous of living English poets to the author of this article, ‘gladly lecture in Dublin on Irish literature, but the people know too little about it.’ ⁵

      The most cultivated of Irish readers are only anxious to be academic, and to be servile to English notions. If Sir Samuel Ferguson had written of Arthur and of Guinevere, they would have received him gladly;⁶ that he chose rather to tell of Congal and of desolate and queenly Deirdre, we give him full-hearted thanks; he has restored to our hills and rivers their epic interest.⁷ The nation has found in Davis a battle call, as in Mangan its cry of despair; but he only, the one Homeric poet of our time, could give us immortal companions still wet with the dew of their primal world.⁸

      To know the meaning and mission of any poet we must study his works as a whole. Sir Samuel Ferguson has himself pointed out how this may best be done in his own case. He tells us that the main poems in his first volume and his last should be read in the following order: ‘Twins of Macha’ (Poems,) ‘The Naming of Cuchullin’ (Poems,) ‘Abdication of Fergus’ (Lays of the Western Gael,) ‘Mesgedra’ (Poems,) Deirdre (Poems,) Conary (Poems,) ‘Healing of Conall Carnach’ (Lays,) ‘The Tain† Quest’ (Lays.)⁹

      ‘The Twins of Macha’ and ‘The Naming of Cuchullin’ give us the keynote of his work—that simplicity, which is force. He is never florid, never for a moment rhetorical. We see at once that he has the supreme gifts of the story-teller—imagination enough to make history read like romance, and simplicity enough to make romance read like history.

      The boy Setanta approaching at night the house of the great smith, Cullan, is attacked by the smith’s gigantic watch dog and kills it. The old man laments the loss of his faithful hound:

      Boy, for his sake who bid thee to my board

      I give thee welcome: for thine own sake, no.

      For thou hast slain my servant and my friend,

      The hound I loved, that, fierce, intractable

      To all men else, was ever mild to me.

      He knew me; and he knew my uttered words,

      All my commandments, as a man might know;

      More than a man he knew my looks and tones

      And turns of gesture, and discerned my mind¹⁰

      Unspoken, if in grief or if in joy.

      He was my pride, my strength, my company, For I am childless; and that hand of thine

      Has left an old man lonely in the world.

      The boy declares that till he has trained the watchdog’s whelp to take the place of the dead hound, he himself will guard the house, remaining at his post by day and by night. Those who are standing by cry out that henceforth his name shall be Cuchulain,† the ‘Hound of Cullan’. All this is told with such simplicity and sincerity that we seem to be no longer in this modern decade, but listening to some simple and savage old chief telling his companions round a forest fire, of something his own eyes have seen.¹¹ There is not much fancy, little of the subtler forms of music. Many a minor English poet whom the world will make haste to forget, has more of these; but here are the very things which he has not, the germinal thoughts of poetry.

      The ‘Abdication of Fergus’ follows next in the cycle. The poet-king, who loves hunting and the freedom of the great wood, far better than the councils is delighted by the wisdom with which his stepson who sits beside him on the judgment seat, arrays in some most tangled case argument against argument—

      As a sheep-dog sorts his cattle,

      As a king arrays his battle.¹²

      He takes from his head the crown and lays it beside him on the bench. Let Fergus tell his own tale.

      And I rose, and on my feet

      Standing by the judgment-seat,

      Took the circlet from my head,

      Laid it on the bench and said:¹³

      ‘Men of Uladh,¹⁴ I resign

      That which is not rightly mine,

      That a worthier than I

      May your judge’s place supply.

      Lo, it is no easy thing

      For a man to be a king,¹⁵

      Judging well, as should behove

      One who claims a people’s love.

      Uladh’s judgment-seat to fill

      I have neither wit nor will. One is here may justly claim

      Both the function and the name.

      Conor is of royal blood:¹⁶

      Fair he is; I trust him good;

      Wise he is we all may say

      Who have heard his words to-day.

      Take him therefore in my room,

      Letting me the place assume—

      Office but with life to end—

      Of his councillor†¹⁷ and friend.’

      So young Conor gained¹⁸ the crown;

      So I laid the kingship down;

      Laying with it as I went

      All I knew of discontent.

      In ‘Mesgedra’, Conall Carnach, after Cuchulain† the greatest of the Red-Branch chieftains, finds his enemy, Mesgedra, with one arm disabled, taking sanctuary under a sacred tree, and, in order that they may fight on equal terms, binds one of his own arms to his side, and when a chance blow releases it, binds it again.

      We now come to Deirdre, which I hold to be the greatest of Sir Samuel Ferguson’s poems. It is in no manner possible to do it justice by quotation. There is an admirable, but altogether trivial, English poet called Edmund Gosse.¹⁹ If fate compelled me to review his work, and to review also some princely ancient Homer or Aeschylus,²⁰ and to do this by the method of short quotations, the admirable Londoner, in the minds of many readers, would rule the roost. For in his works grow luxuriantly those forms of fancy and of verbal felicity that are above all things portable; while the mighty heathen sought rather after breadth and golden severity, knowing well that the merely pretty is contraband of art. With him beauty lies in great masses—thought woven with thought—each line, the sustainer of his fellow. Take a beauty from that which surrounds it—its colour is faded, its plumage is ruffled—it is dead.

      In this Sir Samuel Ferguson was like the ancients; not that he was an imitator, as Matthew Arnold in Sohrab and Rustum,²¹ but for a much better reason; he was like them—like them in nature, for his spirit had sat with the old heroes of his country. In Deirdre he has restored to us a fragment of the buried Odyssey of Ireland.

      In Scotch Glen Etive, Naoise,† Son of Usnach, lives in exile with his two brothers and his bride—his Deirdre, for he has carried her off from a little lonely island in a lake where the king, Conor, had hidden her away in charge of her nurse and an old Druid, that he might make her his mistress when her beauty had grown to full flower. Deirdre is entirely happy, for love is all-sufficient for her; not so her lover—he longs for war, and to sit once more in council with his peers. Suddenly is heard through Glen Etive the hunting-call of ex-king Fergus. He brings a pardon.

      Of all those who return with him Deirdre alone is sad, she knows the peace is treacherous, that Conor is only seeking to bring her once more into his power. None believes her. Are they not safe under the protection of Fergus? But no; she will not place trust in one who gave up his kingdom so lightly. They reach land. Fergus is enticed away by a ruse of King Conor. Their protectors now are the two young sons of Fergus. How beautiful, as they ride across the country, is that talk between Deirdre and the youngest of the two, who afterwards dies for her.²² He does not love the company of warriors:

      I would rather, if I might,²³

      Frequent the open country, and converse

      With shepherds, bunters, and such innocents.

      Then they talk of love, these two, so young, and yet so different; the one on the threshold of life, the other, who has known wandering and weariness. He loves all the world, for in her whom he loves are all the world’s perfections. There is something maternal in her reply:

      Long be thou happy in believing so.

      Then turning to the other son, who afterwards betrays her, she seeks to sound his nature also. He is one of those who apply to all the moral obligations of life the corrosive power of the intellect, and she, who knows only how to feel and believe, murmurs sadly, half to herself:

      Oh yonder see the lake in prospect fair,

      It lies beneath us, like a polished shield.

      Ah, me! methinks I could imagine it Cast down by some despairing deity

      Flying before the unbelief of men.²⁴

      Close by this lake is the ‘Red-Branch’ house,²⁵ where their journey ends.

      I have not space to tell how, point by point, she sees fate drawing near them—how to the very end Naoise,† the simple soldier, sits calmly playing chess²⁶ even when they are surrounded—how Conor comes with his magic shield that was hammered in the sea by fairy smiths, and how there was between it and the seas of Ireland a strange sympathy, so that when it is smitten they all surge. I have not space to tell how the sons of Usnach are slain, but I cannot resist quoting in full the beautiful lament of Deirdre:

      The lions of the hill are gone²⁷

      And I am left alone—alone—

      Dig the grave both wide and deep,

      For I am sick, and fain would sleep!

      The falcons of the wood are flown,

      And I am left alone—alone—

      Dig the grave both deep and wide,

      And let us slumber side by side.

      The dragons of the rock are sleeping,

      Sleep that wakes not for our weeping;

      Dig the grave and make it ready;

      Lay me on my true love’s body.

      Lay their spears and bucklers bright

      By the warriors’ sides aright;

      Many a day the three before me

      On their linkèd bucklers bore me.²⁸

      Lay upon the low grave floor,

      ’Neath each head, the blue claymore;

      Many a time the noble three

      Redden’d these blue blades for me.

      Lay the collars, as is meet,

      Of their greyhounds at their feet;

      Many a time for me have they

      Brought the tall red deer to bay.

      Sweet companions ye were ever—

      Harsh to me, your sister, never;

      Woods and wilds and misty valleys

      Were, with you, as good’s a palace.²⁹

      Oh! to hear my true-love³⁰ singing,

      Sweet as sound of trumpet ringing;³¹

      Like the sway of ocean swelling

      Roll’d his deep voice round our dwelling.

      Oh! to hear the echoes pealing

      Round our green and fairy sheeling,

      When the three, with soaring chorus³²

      Pass’d the silent skylark o’er us.

      Echo, now sleep,³³ morn and even—

      Lark alone enchant the heaven!—

      Ardan’s lips are scant of breath,

      Naoise’s† tongue is cold in death.³⁴

      Stag exult on glen and mountain—

      Salmon leap from loch to fountain—

      Herons³⁵ in the free air warm ye—

      Usnach’s sons no more will harm ye!

      Erin’s stay no more you are,

      Rulers of the ridge of war;

      Never more ’twill be your fate

      To keep the beam of battle straight.³⁶

      Woe is me! By fraud and wrong,

      Traitors false and tyrants strong,

      Fell Clan³⁷ Usnach, bought and sold,

      For Barach’s feast and Conor’s gold!

      Woe to Emain, roof and wall!—

      Woe to Red Branch, hearth and hall!—

      Tenfold woe and black dishonour

      To the foul and false Clan Conor!³⁸

      Dig the grave both wide and deep,

      Sick I am, and fain would sleep!

      Dig the grave and make it ready,

      Lay me on my true-love’s body!

      This is not the version in the text but an earlier and more beautiful one—a version from the Irish, which I have followed Judge O’Hagan’s³⁹ lead in quoting from the Lays of the Western Gael. I know not any lament so piercing.

      No one will deny excellence to the Idylls of the King; no one will say that Lord Tennyson’s Girton⁴⁰ girls do not look well in those old costumes of dead chivalry. No one will deny that he has thrown over everything a glamour of radiant words—that the candelabras shine brightly on the fancy ball. Yet here is that which the Idylls do not at any time contain, beauty at once feminine and heroic. But as Lord Tennyson’s ideal women will never find a flawless sympathy outside the upper English middle class, so this Deirdre will never, maybe, win entire credence outside the limits—wide enough they are—of the Irish race.

      There is a great gap that Sir Samuel Ferguson never filled up between this poem and the next. Here should have come the record of the foiled vengeance of Fergus.⁴¹

      In Conary, a pirate fleet is shown us, lying off Howth, commanded by the banished foster brothers of King Conary and the British pirate Ingcel. Spies have been sent on shore. They return. ‘What saw ye?’ They have seen a line of seventeen chariots—in the first, reverend men, judges or poets; in the second heralds; in the third an aged man, ‘fullgrey, majestical, of face serene’⁴² in the others a numerous household. ‘What heard ye?’ They have heard one within a guest-house lighting a fire for the reception of a king. The pirates land; a spy is sent before them—he approaches the guest-house and hears within—

      A hum as of a crowd of feasting men.

      Princely the murmur, as when voices strong

      Of far-heard captains on the front of war,⁴³

      Sink low and sweet in company of queens.

      On his return he describes one by one the great chiefs of Ireland that he saw within, and Ferragon, foster brother of Conary, declares their names. There is Cormac Condlongas, son of Conor, who in rage for the betrayal of the sons of Usnach, made war on his father and his kin.

      The nine he sat among,

      Were men of steadfast looks, that at his word,

      So seemed it me, would stay not to inquire

      Whose kindred were they he might bid them slay.

      ‘I knew them also,’ answered Ferragon.

      ‘Of them ’tis said they never slew a man

      For evil deed, and never spared a man

      For good deed; but as ordered, duteous slew

      Or slew not. Shun that nine, unless your heads

      Be cased in caskets⁴⁴ made of adamant.’

      There too is Conall Carnach:

      Fair-haired he is,⁴⁵

      And yellow-bearded, with an eye of blue.

      He sits apart and wears a wistful look,

      As if he missed some friend’s companionship.

      Then Ferragon, not waiting question, cried:⁴⁶

      Gods! all the foremost, all the valiantest

      Of Erin’s champions, gathered in one place

      For our destruction, are assembled here!

      That man is Conall Carnach; and the friend

      He looks for vainly with a wistful eye Is great

      Cuchulain†: he no more shall share

      The upper bench with Conall; since the tomb

      Holds him, by hand of Conall well avenged.

      One by one the great chieftains are re-created for us in words like the clang of hammer on anvil in fashioning a sword. The arch-king Conary is there.

      One I saw⁴⁷

      Seated apart: before his couch there hung

      A silver broidered curtain; grey he was,

      Of aspect mild, benevolent, composed.

      A cloak he wore of colour like the haze

      Of a May morning when the sun shines warm

      On dewy meads and fresh ploughed tillage land

      Variously beautiful, with border broad

      Of golden woof that glittered to his knee

      A stream of light. Before him on the floor

      A juggler played his feats; nine balls he had

      And flung

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