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THE CELTIC REVIEW
THE
''^OELTIC REVIEW
PUBLISHED QUARTERLY
Consulting Editor : PROFESSOR MACKINNON Acting Editor: MISS E. C. CARMICHAEL
VOLUME VI JULY 1909 TO APRIL 1910
EDINBURGH : T. & A. CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO HIS MAJESTY.
LONDON : DAVID NUTT, 57-59 LONG ACRE, W.C.
DUBLIN : HODGES, FIGGIS & CO., LTD., 104 GRAFTON ST
y
1033789
Kdlnbargh : T. and A. Cokutablb, Printew to His Mi^Mty
CONTENTS
Accents, Apostrophes, and Hy- phens in Scottish Gaelic,
A New Solution of the Fairy Problem,
An Outline of Breton History,
Aspiration in Scottish Gaelic,
Battle of Raith and its Song Cycle,
Bas Bhrain Agus Dhiarmaid,
Buchanan, Dugald,
Conn, Son of the Red,
Dermaid and Grainn^,
Druids and Mound-Dwellers,
Duatharachd na Mara,
Jubainville, M. d'Arbois de,
Landavensium Ordo Chartarum, .
Moore, Mr. A. W., .
Morrison, John, of Harris, .
Note, . . . .
O ! 's tu 's gura tu th' air m'aire, .
On the Orthography of Scottish Gaelic, ....
Professor MacJcinnon, . 193
David MacRitchie, . 160
Yvonne Josee, . . 30
Professor Mackinnon, . 97
E. W. B. Nicholson, . 214
Donald MacDonald, 131
William Jolly . .147
Donald A. Mackenzie, . 150
Donald A. Mackenzie, . 348
David MacRitchie, . .257
Goinneach MacLeoid, . 241
. 384 Alfred Anscomhe, 123, 272, 289
. 283 Rev. M. N. Munro, . 135
By Niall D. Campbell, . 190 Miss F. M. Morrison, . 130
Professor Mackinnon, . 1
VI
THE CELTIC REVIEW
Pan-Celtic Notes, Reply,
Reviews of Books :
Die Kultur des Gegenwart, Drs. {reviewed by Julitis Pokomy) ; (reviewed by A. 0, A.), .
PAQB
85, 176, 287, 375 288
Zimmer, Stern, and Kuno Meyer, Zeitschrift fiir Celtische Philologie
93
Handbuch des Altirischen, Professor Thuraeysen {reviewed by A. 0. A.) ; The Bretons at Home, Mrs. Frances M. Gostling {reviewed by G. M. Golvin) ; (Jaelic Songs for Schools, C. H. Mackay and M. Macfarlane {revie^wed by Rev. M. N. Munro) ; Musical Instruments, Ft. II., R. B. Armstrong {reviewed by Rev. M. N. Munro) ; Songs of the Hebrides, Mrs. Kennedy- Fraser {reviewed by Rev. M. JV. Munro) ; An Introduction to Early Welsh, by the late John Strachan, LL.D. {reviewed by Professor E. Anwyl) ; Welsh Medioeval Law, Rev. A W. Wade-Evans {reviewed by Professor E. Anwyl\ .
The Norse Influence on Celtic Scotland, Rev. George Henderson {reviewed by W. A. Craigie, LL.D.) ; Old Ross-shire and Scotland, W. MacgiU {reviewed by W. J. Watsm, LL.D.) ; Alt-Celtischer Sprachschatz, Alfred Holder {reviewed by W. J. Watson, LL.D.) ; Duthil, Past and Present, Rev. Donald Maclean ; Reminiscences and Reflections of an Octogenarian Highlander, Duncan Campbell, .
181
Righ Eirionn 's a dha mhac,
Some Unrecorded Incidents of the Jacobite Risings,
The Connection of the Isle of Man with Ireland,
The Fians of Knockfarrcl, .
The Macneills of Argyllshire,
The Relative Clause in Scotch Gaelic, ....
Late Rev. J. 0. GampheU of Tires,
378
364
Aleocander LL.L.,
Garmichael,
. 278,334
A. W. Moore, Speaker of the House of Keys, . .110
Donald A. Mackenzie, . 18
Rev. A. Maclean Sinclair, 65
John Fraser, M.A., . 356
tl
CONTENTS vii
PAGE
The Scottish Race and Kingdom, . James Ferguson, K.G., . 304
Topographical Varia, . , W. J. Watson, LL.D., . 236
Traces of Neuter Gender in Scottish
Gaelic, .... Professor Mackinnon, . 296
Welsh Folk-Song Collections, . Alfred Perceval Graves
and Dr. Lloyd Williams, 207
Welsh Note, 377
Whitley Stokes, . . . Richard Henebry, . 65
Who is the Heir of the Duchy of
Brittany ? . . . Henry Jenner, . . 47
- THE CELTIC REVIEW
JULY 15, 1909
ON THE OETHOGEAPHY OF SCOTTISH GAELIC
Professor Mackinnon
Among the nations who have made use of the Roman Alphabet in writing their language the Celts, and especially the Gaels, were from the first placed, or placed themselves, at a disadvantage. The most copious Alphabet, it need hardly be said, is incapable of adequately indicating the almost infinite variety of word-sounds, and the Latin Alphabet possesses only a very limited number of char- acters. And here it may be remarked once for all that words are sounds, and not, as we have fallen into the habit of writing, an arbitrary combination of vowels and con- sonants. In the matter of vowel-sounds the several peoples stood pretty much upon a level. They borrowed all the Latin vowel - characters, and endeavoured to represent their sounds by writing these singly, doubly, or in com- bination. The case was different with respect to the consonant-sounds. The Celtic dialects, as is well known, differ from the Teutonic and Romance dialects in having their consonant-sounds infected or modified in a remark- able manner. The fact makes the need for additional characters more clamant in their case. But, to our sur- prise, the Gaels did not adopt into their Alphabet the whole of the consonants available. This is all the more astonishing when we remember that the people were in the habit of writing their language in a copious Alphabet of
VOL. VI. A
2 THE CELTIC REVIEW
their own before they came into literary communication with the Romans. This was the Ogham Alphabet, which consisted of a series of straight lines arranged with reference to a base stem thus :
X d t e q m g ng X r a o u e i
l„lullnllll. 'I'"""""" /////////////// lllllllllllll!!
Other and more elaborate graphs were used later for diphthongs, triphthongs, p and z, A witty Frenchman once remarked that this peculiar script must have been invented for the convenience of stone-cutters, and he might have added that it is quite possible the inventor was a stone- cutter. We hear of its having been used on wooden tablets, but specimens have disappeared. Apart from explanations of the characters and of their values preserved in old MSS., examples of the actual use of the Ogham script now remain only in inscriptions on stone. It may be added that the value of these inscriptions is linguistic rather than literary or historical. They prove to us, among other things, that Gaelic declension was, in the fifth century, written with nearly the fulness of form of Gaulish declension four hundred years earlier, or of Latin declension of the same period. But such a clumsy mode of writing was not destined to survive.
Whatever the reason, our early Gaelic authors in making use of the Latin Alphabet for writing their language borrowed only eighteen of its characters, the five vowels and thirteen consonants. They did indeed make occasional use of a few others — y and z are met with once or twice in the oldest of the MSS. ; they wrote k occasionally as a contraction for ca, or for cath * battle,' q for cu, and x for cs. This last they retained permanently in their numeration to express, as in Latin, ten. They seem never to have used j or v, and the Romans themselves did not have w. The Gaels attached to the characters they borrowed the values which they represented in Latin as closely as the sounds of the two languages permitted. They spelled, in a rough and ready
mTHOGEAPHY OF SCOTTISH GAELIC
way, phonetically. There were dialects then as now, and these account no doubt for some of the anomalies in ortho- graphy which meet us even in the best written MSS. But the fruitful source of discrepancies in spelling, before the invention of printing and for long after, was due to the fact that there was no careful proof-reading in those days, and that authors and scribes were not so much impressed with the importance of uniformity in orthography as we have become.
Our ancestors who founded our orthographical system thus hampered it by limiting the number of characters adopted from the Latin Alphabet. They further loaded it by endeavouring to preserve in their orthography the etymological relations of words. And the peculiar phonesis of the Celtic dialects necessitated recognition which constitutes the most distinctive feature of our orthography. For example: the pointed dental sound represented in English by t and d is practically uniform, so that the characters always indicate the sounds. But in Gaelic t and d stand each for two different sounds. We indicate these in writing by attaching a broad vowel (a, o, or u) in the one case to these consonants, and a small vowel (e or i) in the other. The sound of small-f, which is like the English ch or rather tch, it would be difficult to represent; but the sound of small-^Z would be fairly indicated by j, if only that character had been in the Gaelic Alphabet. Again the common personal name popularly pronounced Do' all was in its full form Domnovalos, ' world-chief.' By the time the word was first written in Gaelic the terminal -os had dis- appeared, the V had vocalised, and the name was written Domnall, although sounded DovnalL It was written in Latin Dovenald, hence the final d in the English form Donald. We now write in Gaelic Domhnall, thus preserving so far the evidence of the original form of the name. But we do so in this case, as in numberless other cases, by writing legions of now silent consonants. Such is the tribute we pay to etymology in our orthography.
4 THE CELTIC REVIEW
The more peculiar features of our Gaelic mode of spelling are due to the phonesis of the language. In the Celtic dialects the consonant-sounds are modified to a much larger extent than in the neighbouring European tongues. They become in certain well-defined positions infected, so to speak, in a remarkable way. One of these we call Aspira- tion. This feature of our language, although, perhaps, not so all-pervading when the language first came to be written as it now is, was in active operation, but the earliest scribes recognised it in the case of two consonants only — c and L They wrote these, when aspirated, in one of two ways, either cA, th, as we write them in Scotland now, or by placing a graph over them somewhat like a bisected h thus — c, i. But that the other consonants had their aspirated sounds, although the MSS. take no note of the fact, we have con- vincing proof. The sounds of radical b and m, and of d and g, are quite different, and do not become confused. But the infected or aspirated sounds of the same pairs of consonants are so nearly identical that in phonetic writing they fre- quently interchange — e.g. bh and mh as in ria6h for riamh ; dh and gh as in deacQi for dea^h. We find the confusion in the oldest writings. In the Zeussian glosses, e.g, claideft, ' sword,' is the all but universal form. But occasionally cloidem is met with. Later, cloidem became the common script, and now we write invariably claidheamh in Scotland and cloideam in Ireland. The Latin word memoria was early borrowed into Gaelic. We write the word correctly meo7nAair, but in old MSS. the more common form was meftuir. The explanation of this interchange of b and m in these as in many other instances is that the real inter- change is not between b and m but between bh and mh. Similarly with respect to d and gr, the confusion of which in the old as in the modern orthography is so common that illustration is hardly necessary, e.g. deac^h-ghean, ' goodwill,' for dea^h-ghean ; an deigh. so, ' after this,' for an deidh so.
At a later date, Gaelic writers, observing that aspirated 8 sounded only as a breathing and that aspirated / was
ORTHOGEAPHY OF SCOTTISH GAELIC 5
altogether silent, noted these facts in their script. But instead of adopting the marks of aspiration of c and t, they used the punctum delens of Latin scribes and placed a dot (.) over these consonants to indicate their aspiration, thus /, s. The oldest of the great Gaelic MSS., Leabhar na h-Uidhre, the scribe of which was killed by a party of robbers in A.D. 1106, is written with marks of aspiration placed on these four consonants only — c, t, s, and /. Gradually, in later MSS., the other consonants came to be marked when aspirated like s and /, the consonants c and t still retaining their old signs. As it happened it was John Carsewell of Argyll who, in 1567, had the distinction of being the first to print a Gaelic book. He was quite familiar with MSS. and the practice of Gaelic scribes. But he indicated the aspiration of consonants, not by putting the dot over the infected letter, but by placing h alongside of it. Although I, n, and r, the only consonants which we double now in writing, have their aspirated sounds like the others Carse- well somehow ignored these three and left them unmarked. His example has since been followed in Scotland. The editors of the quarto edition of the Gaelic Scriptures of 1826 felt the anomaly of leaving aspirated I, n, r unmarked, but instead of writing h after these letters to indicate their aspiration they printed them thus : i, n, r. This method was followed in the Highland Society's Dictionary, in an edition of the Scriptures printed in very small type, and in one or two minor publications, but was not generally adopted. In Irish print, on the other hand, the placing of a dot over the consonant to mark aspiration has been followed.
Another phase of infection which appears in our spelling is what is called Nasal Infection, due to the operation of the sound which n represents. In individual words n in Gaelic affects the adjacent consonant in a remarkable way. Before t, e.g., it regularly disappeared. The original Aryan word which the Romans wrote iTi^er we write eacZar. Even in modern loans the same result is seen — ParliameTif
6 THE CELTIC EEVIEW
becomes Parlamaid Again, at the present day, the combination ng is hardly ever sounded in full among us. The one element or the other gives way. We write fuilingr, but we say either f uilinn or fuiligr. But it is with respect to initial sounds that the operation of the nasal mainly concerns us here. It is well known that in Gaelic when two words in close grammatical relation are sounded together under one accent they are treated phonetically as one word. The phonetic processes that rule in the individual word govern this Unit, as it is sometimes called. In the case of Vocalic Infection, initial Aspiration is explained in this way. We say, e.g., that the t in mdthair is aspirated, because it is a single consonant jflanked by vowels. If we place a word like mo, 'my,' which originally ended in a vowel, before mdthair, the m of mdthair is now temporarily flanked by vowels as the t is permanently, and the m, while in this position, aspirates like the t, and for the same reason. Similarly with respect to the initial aspiration which follows certain cases of the Article, certain Prepositions, and the like. A similar influence is exerted on the following word in the case of an Unit, of which the final sound of the first word was an original nasal — such words as gu^n, ' that ' ; an, the Interrogative particle ; an {n), the Preposition, and many others. The nasal in such an Unit operates as in individual words. The old Grammarians formulated the Rule of the Nasal thus : ' The Nasal stands firm before vowels ; it disappears before s and / ; it assimilates with I, m, n, and r ; it disappears before the tenues c, p, t, reducing these to their corresponding mediae, g, h, d ; and it eclipses (in their Gaelic phrase "drowns") the mediae,^ 1 do not know whether there ever has been, over a wide area, rigid adherence to the rule of the Grammarians in the speech of the people ; but in Ireland there was at any rate large adherence, and the language has been written in terms of the rule. In Scotland there has been only partial adherence in writing, while in speaking some districts follow the rule more closely than others. The early editors of the Scrip-
OETHOGRAPHY OF SCOTTISH GAELIC 7
tures pretty uniformly observed the clause regarding assimilation of the nasal with I, m, n, r — they wrote as a rule gu (not gu^n) leag, gu mair, gu naomhaich, gu ruig, forms which we would do well to follow. But neither they nor the Scottish grammarians took note of the part of the rule relating to tenues and mediae. In Scotland we give only a very limited obedience to this part. We almost aU say A71 deid thu learn ? ' Will you go with me ? ' but no one says, much less writes, A d-teid thu learn ? Some say ane, ' yesterday,' but much the greater number say, as we all write, an de. In common speech we expel the nasal oftener than not before s and / ; in writing we do exactly the reverse. In Scotland as in Ireland the nasal always stands firm before vowels.
The cases mentioned derive their validity mainly from the operation of the clause accent or stress. But these by no means exhaust the influence of the accent upon our pronunciation, or even upon our orthography, although the grammarians and lexicographers take little or no notice of the fact. Some words have developed two forms under its sway — la and laiha^ hidh and bithidh, thuirt and thuhhairt, with many more. An dara latha, ' the second day,' but an dara la deug, ' the twelfth day ' ; hidh mi falbh, ' I will be going,' but hithidh, gun teagamh, ' Yes, certainly.' Mdthair is a word of two syllables, the first being long. Attach ceile, ' spouse,' as a qualifying epithet, and you have mathdir-cheile as we write the compound noun. The stress is strong on the second element ceile, and under its influence the first word mdthair becomes a monosyllable, and short at that. We say MUr-cheile. In the same way in the cases where sounds of strong assimilative force — I and d, n and d, c and ch or gr, s and d or t, d and t and others — meet in a phrase, aspiration is checked through the influence of the accent : thus — gun fhios da, ' unknown to him,' but gun fhios dhd-san ; mac Ghriogair (under even accent), ' Gregor's son,' but MaC'Griogair (under one strong accent), ' Mac- Gregor.' Ignorant of the part which the accent plays in
8 THE CELTIC REVIEW
such phrases good writers are frequently misled. Even the translators of the Scriptures wrote facal De, a phrase under even accent, as equivalent to ' the word of God.' The true equivalent is * the word of (a) god.' To check the aspiration of the proper name, the phrase would require to have one strong stress, on the first syllable or on the last. The meaning meant to be conveyed is properly expressed in Scottish Gaelic by facal Dhe.
Because of the poverty of oiu* Alphabet the early Gaelic writers were, like others, obliged to use certain devices to indicate the different timbre of the consonants. In English, e.g,y the different shades of the g sound are indicated by the quality of the following vowel in got and get. The same plan was followed in Gaelic. The timbre of the consonants, except 6, /, m, and p, whose sounds hardly vary, is indicated by the quality of the vowel, broad or small, which follows them. But when, through the decay of flexion or otherwise, no vowel followed, a difficulty arose which had to be over- come. Our word bard, e.g., is what we call a noun of the masculine o-stem group, and was declined in old Gaelic like dominus in Latin, with its genitive singular and nominative plural alike. The Gaelic forms would be — Nominative singular bard-05. Genitive bard-^. The flex- ional syllables disappeared very probably before the language was written, but the sound of the truncated word did not change. The nominative case presented no difficulty. The d was followed by a broad vowel when the word had its full form, and preceded by a broad vowel in its docked form, so that its proper sound was sufficiently guarded to the eye. But what of the genitive ? Its sound was barj-i, and bard-i represented that sound. When the -i syllable was dropped, the sound still remaining was barj. Could bard represent this sound ? It clearly could not. That was the sound of the nominative case. Had the j been adopted into the Gaelic Alphabet, the proper spelling would have been an easy matter — barj. As things were, the only possible solution of the difficulty was resorted to, viz. to introduce into the
f
OETHOGEAPHY OF SCOTTISH GAELIC 9
truncated word the dropped vowel of flexion in order to safeguard to the eye the proper sound of the d, and to write baM. The same plan was afterwards adopted in the case of final consonants which, so far as known to the scribes, never had a flexional syllable. S followed by a broad vowel is sibilant ; s followed by a small vowel sounds like English sh. But what of sis, ' downwards,' fis, ' knowledge,' and such like ? Frequently the doubling of the ambiguous consonant was resorted to, as in fiss, but latterly a broad or a small vowel, as the case required, was inserted before the final consonant so as to indicate its timbre to the eye — sios, fios, and so forth. The plan adopted carried far-reach- ing consequences which remain with us. It has provided us with a number of spurious diphthongs for one thing. It is also, I believe, accountable for our famous orthographi- cal Rule known as Leathann ri leathann is caol ri caol, ' Broad to broad and small to small,' i.e. the vowels flanking consonants must be of the same quality. In some of its aspects the rule is merely an illustration in Gaelic of a tendency in most languages to the assimilation of the vowels. In others the rule has, in our system, a phonetic justification. Take, e.g., the -idh of our future tense. The suflix can attach simply enough to verbs which have a small vowel already in the stem — cuir, buin, with many others. But what of a large number of those whose final sound is broad — fag, fas, etc. ? If simple -idh be added to these the broad sound of g and s is no longer represented. Fagidh and idsidh would indicate small g and sh. Gaelic ortho- graphy would thus demand in the large majority of cases that we should spell according to the rule. And it is not at all improbable that the old scholars who formulated it looked upon the comparatively few cases that deviated from it as errors of spelling, and that they substituted for a phonetic rule of wide sway an arbitrary law of universal application. The Fourth Syllogism in Logic is supposed to have been framed upon analogous reasoning. Be this as it may, the Gaelic rule is on the face of it open to many
10 THE CELTIC REVIEW
objections, and in one or two special cases is absolutely indefensible. The ending of the past participle passive of Gaelic verbs has always sounded te. But the rule compels us to write ta after a broad vowel — togta for togte. Similar observations might be made regarding other suffixes, e.g, -an, -agy -ail and others. The reader will find a powerful and exhaustive criticism of the rule by Dr. Stewart in his Grammar, p. 32 et seq. (ed. 1811), but is so far nugatory because the able and sagacious author unfortunately overlooked the fact that in polysyllabic words the sound of a consonant in Gaelic is indicated by the vowel which follows it, not by that which precedes.
The only one of the vowels of which special note need be taken in connection with our orthography is e. A, o, and u have always been broad, and i has always been small. But, especially in monosyllabic words, e was ambiguous. It showed the small sound of the preceding consonant uniformly, but the consonant following was as often as not broad. Thus sen, ' old ' ; cet, ' first,' ' hundred ' ; nel, ' cloud,' with hundreds more. Hence it was found necessary to write a broad vowel in such cases after e to remove the ambiguity : sean, ceud, neul. Later, even when a small consonant sound followed e, i was added ; so that, except in the case of one or two words such as leth, a con- sonant does not now immediately follow e. It is always ea, eiy eo, or eu with us.
Such are the main principles upon which our system of orthography was framed by capable and, for their day, learned men, and developed by their successors, scholars who made the structure of the language a subject of close study for a thousand years. It had its imperfections, due partly to the poverty of the Alphabet, partly to the laudable desire to preserve evidence of the origin of the vocables, and largely to the phonesis of the language. But carefully-written MSS. of the sixteenth century and Carse- well's translation of Knox's Liturgy are about as correctly written and printed as English MSS. and books of the period.
OETHOGEAPHY OF SCOTTISH GAELIC 11
On Scottish ground Gaelic scholarship, and especially the practice of writing the language in the traditional orthography, was, §o far as one can gather, pretty much confined to Argyll and the Isles. Thus, even in the Book of Deer, we find some marked divergencies from Irish MSS. of the same date. There is a greater tendency to suppress silent consonants, and in one or two cases aspiration (of c, e.g,) is indicated by doubling the letter, a device of spelling common in Welsh, but unknown in Gaelic. And when the Dean of Lismore, on the eve of the Reformation, made his collection of Gaelic verse, his brother and amanu- ensis, a native of Fortingall, discarded the Gaelic hand and Gaelic orthography, and wrote phonetically, using all the char- acters of the Alphabet as well as the handwriting current in southern Scotland in his day, all which innovations help to make that MS. so difficult to read and understand now. Similarly Duncan Macrae wrote in 1688-93 the Fernaig MS. phonetically in the dialect of the west of Ross-shire, and in the Alphabet and handwriting of the south of Scotland.
After the Reformation, and mainly because of it, to- gether with the fall of the Macdonalds of Islay and Kintyre and the Plantation of Ulster, the knowledge and practice of the Gaelic hand and orthography gradually died out in Scotland. By 1750, while many spoke the old tongue with greater power and purity than we do now, few could write it according to the traditional way. Besides, the literary orthography had in course of time become more and more unsuitable for Highland needs. The number of silent letters had accumulated. Orthographical forms, such as the use of the nasal with the tenues and mediae, misrepresented as often as not the sounds of Scottish Gaelic. Our diction and idioms demanded fuller recognition. A great Reform of the traditional orthography became essential, if literature was to flourish among us. This reform fell into the hands of capable and scholarly men who worked, in a conservative manner, upon the old lines, so far as they knew and under- stood them — Macfarlane of Kilmelford, Dr. Smith of
12 THE CELTIC REVIEW
Campbeltown, the Stewarts of Killin, Luss, and Dingwall, Robert Armstrong, Ewen M'Lachlan, and the editors of the Highland Society's Dictionary, with others. Through the labours of these men we had by 1828 a fairly uniform standard of orthography, based upon the old, but modified to suit Scottish requirements.
Hitherto we in Scotland had been free from the plague of what the Irish call coigeachas, ' provincialism,' in our orthography. We had our dialects, but the scholars I have named ignored them in writing their native Gaelic. Dr. Mackintosh Mackay was a native of Sutherland, but not only in the Highland Society's Dictionary but even in his edition of Rob Donn that scholar was content to abide by the standard orthography of his predecessors. Ewen M'Lachlan was from Lochaber, but no one would know the fact from the 1818 edition of Ossian, the proofs of which were corrected by him. Later on we had the misfortune of falling under the sway of very excellent men in their way, but smaller, as I cannot help thinking — such as Neil M*Alpine, James Munro, and John Mackenzie. The two first were good grammarians, and the last had a wide knowledge of Gaelic dialects. But so far as I can judge they did not always use their knowledge for the clearer exposition of the language and the enrichment of its vocabulary and idiom. One cannot help the feeling that they had too often a desire to criticise rivals and to advance particular fads and fancies, while they confidently decided questions of etjmiology and orthography without having the materials necessary to entitle them to form even an opinion on such matters. M 'Alpine can hardly quote Skye usage with- out adding a point of exclamation, and James Munro would find difficulty in tolerating an idiom which did not pass muster in Lochaber. Of John Mackenzie as a reformer of Gaelic orthography it is enough to say that in his time the knowledge necessary for the task was not available, even allowing that he was in other respects a competent man to make proper use of it.
II
ORTHOGEAPHY OF SCOTTISH GAELIC 13
It is not, however, to these men that we chiefly owe the tendency to the excessive use of locaHsm in the orthography of Scottish Gaelic which threatens to bring our limited literature into disrepute. Irish coigeachas can say some- thing for itself. The provinces are, after all, somewhat wide. Every one has read the saying framed, no doubt, in Connaught : —
Td bias gan heart ag an Muimneac ;
Td ceart gan hlas ag an JJlltac ;
Ni fuil ceart nd bias ag an Laigneac ;
Td ceart agus bias ag an g-Connactac.
i,e, 'Munster has the accent but not the idiom, Ulster has the idiom but not the accent, Leinster has neither the one nor the other, while Connaught has both.' The coigeachas of Ireland becomes not provincialism among us, for we have only one province. It becomes parochial or insular, and as such contemptible. What gave it stimulus in Scotland in recent years was mainly the example of two men who were in many ways different from those formerly named — men to whom Gaelic literature owes a great debt, and who could by no manner of means be spoken of as small men — John F. Campbell and Sheriff Nicolson. When Mr. Camp- bell began to collect his Popular Tales it was a sound literary instinct that suggested the presentment of them in dialectal form. And he had at least one coadjutor — the late Mr. Hector Maclean — as fit for this work as any available at the time. But even in Maclean's hands the dialects came to grief. The shibboleths of Colonsay — sean and neis for sin and nis — are duly set forth. But another phonetic peculiarity of that island — the tendency to gutturalise dh — issues in a ludicrous blunder. Maclean wrote the name of the Hero of the Hed Shield phonetically from the reciter, Mac an Earraioh (for Earraidh) Uaine ri Gaisge, which Mr. Campbell rendered, a la Tattersall, ' Son of Green Spring by Valour,' instead of ' The green-clad Youth at his daring deeds.' Curiously enough some of the most distinctive localisms of Campbell and Maclean's native Islay are
14 THE CELTIC REVIEW
overlooked — ddmh for Idmh ; uichce for uisge ; rlche and leiche for rithe and leatha. Many of the Tales were written down by men who were incapable of writing Gaelic correctly on any standard, phonetical or literary, and Mr. Campbell printed them as they came to him. They are thus no reliable guide for the scientific study of Gaelic dialects. There is still less excuse for the plan upon which Leahhar na Feinne is printed. To the historical student of Gaelic and Gaehc orthography specimens of carefully- written MSS. of various dates are essential. But in Leahhar na Feinne, apart from the extracts from the Dean of Lismore's MS., the unsightly orthography of the MSS. quoted from is of no earthly value except to show the infinite variety and range of bad spelling.
And what of Sheriff Nicolson's admirable Collection of Proverbs ? Surely the Proverbs which came to the editor from all quarters and from all ages ought to be presented in the literary form. But no. The learned Sheriff excuses divergency in Gaelic orthography on the plea * that William Shakespeare spelled his own great name in several ways, and that even Samuel Johnson's English spellings are not all followed now ' — a plea which should have been addressed to Englishmen, not to Highlanders. For several of his deviations from the norm in spelling and accent he leans on this authority or that, as if one could possibly frame an original permutation in Gaelic script. For two innovations the author enters a special defence: 'seo is chosen for so because it more correctly represents the sound sho, the common pronunciation of the word in the Highlands. For the same reason I have invariably substituted sid for snd, and dhsiibh for dhoibh, the former being the pronunciation of Inverness-shire, which I naturally preferred to that of Argyllshire.' The genial Sheriff ought to have remembered the shrewd advice of the old judge, ' Give your decision, but not your reasons for it.' As it happens, dhoibh is not heard in Argyll or Inverness, while sid and sud are used in both counties. And surely if it was necessary to add fifty per
t
OETHOGEAPHY OF SCOTTISH GAELIC 15
cent, to the length of so, in order to represent properly the sound of s, thirty per cent, might be ceded to sid to secure the same privilege for d, for sid sounds by our system si/ ; the proper sound would be spelled siod.
There is no doubt but that the influence and example of these two men, capable, educated, cultured, of great charm of mind and manner, and of position in society, are largely responsible for recent eccentricities in Gaelic orthography which would have covered us with ridicule if our language was read by educated foreigners and considered worthy of notice. So far as I have observed, the Rev. A. Maclean Sinclair, our most capable and fertile author beyond the seas, is the only writer among the reformers of Gaelic orthography who has advocated phonetic spelling on a large scale. It is, I think, safe to say that had he lived in this country Mr. Sinclair would not be so sanguine. A phonetic system was powerfully advocated for English a few years ago ; and a strong committee to reform English orthography has recently been set up, with what result it would be profitless to anticipate. But a change in Eng- lish orthography on a phonetic or other basis would be much easier of accomplishment than in Gaelic. For one thing, there is among educated men a pretty close approach to uniformity of pronunciation in English. Besides, the most ardent reformer of English orthography knows the present norm, and is content to abide by it until a change is agreed upon. Neither of these conditions obtains among us. Mr. Maclean Sinclair might find a competent Gaelic speller, but not a representative speaker whose sounds would be accepted by his neighbours. Take, e,g,, the sound of small-r. Over a wide field ir or ri fairly represents it. But in Tiree and the Outer Isles the sound is rather that of initial y. Over the half of Lewis it is a lisped z, while in St. Kilda the small-r becomes small-ZZ. Not only so. Mr. Sinclair, as it seems to me, has forgotten, like Dr. Stewart before him, that in polysyllabic words the exact sound of a consonant is in Gaelic indicated by
16 THE CELTIC REVIEW
the vowel that follows it, not by that which precedes. He writes, e,g,, the personal name Lachlan, Lachinn, The broad ch sound, unless we overturn our whole system, is here no longer indicated. Further, even Lach(a)inn is not the nominative form, but an oblique case, of which the proper nominative, Lachann, is not only alive but kicking. More- over, as the English form shows, Lachann itself is but a degraded form of Lachlann, also a living form. And, finally, Lsichlann is but the modern form of the still older, but now disused, Lochlann,
No. The way of reform of Gaelic orthography, if it ever comes, does not point in that direction. But pending its arrival each of us can do somewhat to remove the discredit that attaches to present-day usage. Is it too much to ask Gaelic authors to master the present standard before they begin to print? They spell English correctly, pronounce it as they may. Why not be equally accurate in Gaelic ? The standard is theirs, framed at least fifteen hundred years ago, and with specimens still preserved from 700 a.d. downwards. It is surely worthy of our regard, if not of our reverence. Is it too much to ask them to adhere to it, at least in those cases where we all pronounce alike ? And even when our sounds differ, should we not write in the normal way when the norm has living usage to back it ? If we agree to do so, we effect a great deal. For example :
(1) The word maith is sounded math over a wide dis- trict, and one sees it often written so. But maith is an t-stem, and is sounded meath over an equally wide area. The literary form is here the correct form. Tigh has in- variably the broad-^ sound, and in some localities an a sound follows. In other districts the sound is o rather than a — toigh rather than taigh. One would say of tigh as of 5o, leave ill alone. It is common knowledge that rd becomes rr among us, so we write nadurra for nadurc^a, with many others. But how many would be ready to extend the pho- netic form into such phrases as da-orr-eug for da uair dheug, urr h-aia for air fais, and so forth ?
OETHOGEAPHY OF SCOTTISH GAELIC 17
(2) We have in Gaelic, because of external influences, raised the oblique case of a large number of nouns and adjectives permanently into the nominative. Where we have all done so, tliere is no difficulty. We write beinn, cill and many more instead of the older be(a)nn, ce(a)ll, just as we write cas and that group for the older cos, and properly so. But some districts have advanced in this direction farther than others. Fallain is the oblique case of fallan ; gobhainn of gobha ; and gnothaich of gnothach. The old nominatives of these, as of many others, are still in living use, and ought to be so written.
(3) A comparatively easy sound -str- has been substituted, • where Norse and English influences predominated, for the
more difficult Gaelic sr, — struih for sruth and even strdin for srdn. The Gaelic forms ought surely to be preferred.
(4) In several cases we have mis-spellings, owing to ignorance of old forms or from false etymologies. In nearly all such cases. Dr. MacBain's Dictionary wiU help to keep us right.
The only limitations of importance that occur to me are these two :
(1) In writing lyric verse the ring of the line must be preserved. The poet wiU use, and ought to use, not only such double forms as eun and ian, beul and bial, but all local sounds that lend grace and melody to his rhymes.
(2) When illustrating dialect, or registering dialectal material for linguistic and historical purposes, not only the words and idioms but the sounds to their minutest shades ought to be recorded with strict accuracy. This is a very different thing from writing down and printing every sound which one hears from an old cailleach's mouth in one form, to be followed by the same sound when heard the next time in a different form, as the untrained invariably do.
If our writers would follow some such mode of procedure as this, the reformers of Gaelic orthography could wait for their Millennium with composure.
VOL. VT. B
18 THE CELTIC REVIEW
THE FIANS OF KNOCKFAREEL
(A Ross-shire Legend) Donald A. Mackenzie.
On steep Knockfarrel had the Fians made,
For safe retreat, a high and strong stockade
Around their dwellings. And when Winter fell
And o'er Strathpeffer laid its barren spell —
When days were bleak with storm, and nights were drear
And dark and lonesome, well they loved to hear
The songs of Ossian peerless and sublime —
Their blind grey bard, grown old before his time
Lamenting for his son — the young, the brave
Oscar who fell beside the western wave
In Gavra's bloody and unequal fight.
Round Ossian would they gather in the night,
Beseeching him for song . . . And when he took
His clarsach, from the magic strings he shook
A maze of trembling music, falling sweet
As mossy waters in the summer heat.
And soft as fainting moor-winds when they leave
The fume of myrtle, on a dewy eve,
Round flushed and teeming tarns that all night hear
Low elfin pipings in the woodlands near —
'Twas thus he sang of love, and in a dream
The fair maids sighed to hear. But when his theme
Was the long chase that Finn and all his men
Followed with lightsome heart from glen to glen —
His song was free as morn, and clear and loud
As skylarks carolling below a cloud
In sweet June weather . . . And they heard the fall
Of mountain streams, the huntsman's windy call
Across the heaving hills, the baying hound
Among the rocks, while echoes answered round —
They heard, and shared the gladness of the chase.
He sang the glories of the Fian race, Whose fame is flashed through Alba far and wide — Their valorous deeds he sang with joy and pride, . . . When their dark foemen from the west came o'er The rugged hills, and when on Croumba's shore
THE FIANS OF KNOCKFAREEL 19
The Viking hordes descending, fought and fled — And when in single combat Conn the Red By one-eyed GoU was slain. Of Finn he sang And Dermaid, while the clash of conflict rang In billowy music through the heroes' hall — And many a Fian gave the battle-call When Ossian sang.
Haggard and old, with slow And falt'ring steps, went Winter through the snow As if its dreary round would ne'er be done — The last long winter of their days — begun Ere yet the latest flush of falling leaves Had faded in the breath of chilling eves ; Nor ended in the days of longer light, When dawn and eve encroached upon the night — A weary time it was ! The long strath lay Snow-wreathed and pathless, and from day to day The tempests raved across the low'riug skies. And they grew weak and pale, with hollow eyes, The while their stores shrank low, waiting the dawn Of that sweet season when through woodlands wan Fresh flowers flutter and the wild birds sing — For winter on the forelock of the spring Its icy fingers laid. The huntsmen pined In their dim dwellings, wearily confined, While the loud, hungry tempest held its sway — The red-eyed wolves grew bold and came by day, And birds fell frozen in the snow.
Then through The trackless strath a balmy south-wind blew To usher lusty spring. Lo ! in a night The snows 'gan shrinking upon plain and height. And morning broke in brightness to the sound Of falling waters, while a peace profound Possessed the world around them and the blue Bared heaven above. . . . Ah ! then with joy each one Made meek obeisance to the rising sun.
Three days around Knockfarrel they pursued The chase across the hills and through the wood. Round Ussie Loch and Dingwall's soundless shore ; But meagre were the burdens that they bore At even to their dwellings. To the west They hastened on a drear and bootless quest — ' But sorrow not,' said Finn, when all dismayed
20 THE CELTIC REVIEW
With weary steps they turned to their stockade, ' To-morrow will we hunt towards the east To high Dunskaith, and then make gladsome feast By night when we return.'
Or ever morn Had broken, Finn arose, and on his horn Blew loud the huntsman's blast that round the ben Was echoed o'er and o'er. . . . Then all his men Gathered about him in the dusk, nor knew What dim forebodings filled his heart and drew His brows in furrowed care. His eyes agleam Still stared upon the horrors of a dream Of evil omen that in vain he sought
To solve. . . . His voice came faint from battling thought As he to Garry spake — ' Be thou the ward, Strong son of Morna : who, like thee, can guard Our women from all peril ! . . . Garry turned From Finn in sullen silence, for he yearned To join the chase once more. In stature he Was least of all the tribe, but none could be More fierce in conflict, fighting in the van, Than that grim, wolfish, and misshapen man !
Then Finn to Caoilte spake and gave command
To hasten forth before the Fian band —
The King of Scouts was he ! And like the deer
He sped to find if foemen had come near —
Fierce, swarthy hillmen, waiting at the fords
For combat eager, or red Viking hordes
From out the northern isles. ... In Alba wide
No runner could keep pace by Caoilte's side.
And ere the Fians, following in his path,
Had wended from the deep and dusky strath,
He swept o'er Clyne, and heard the awesome owls
That hoot afar and near in woody Foulis.
And he had reached the slopes of fair Rosskeen
Ere Finn by Fyrish came.
The dawn broke green — For the high huntsman of the morn had flung His mantle o'er his back : stooping, he strung His silver bow ; then rising, bright and bold, He shot a burning arrow of pure gold That rent the heart of Night.
As far behind The Fians followed, Caoilte, like the wind.
THE FIANS OF KNOCKFAKREL 21
Sped on — yon son of Konan — o'er the wide
And marshy moor, and 'thwart the mountain-side, —
By Delny's shore far-ebbed, and wan, and brown,
And through the woods of beauteous Balnagown,
The roaring streams he vaulted on his spear.
And foaming torrents leapt, as he drew near
The sandy slopes of Nigg. He climbed and ran
Till high above Dunskaith he stood to scan
The outer ocean for the Viking ships.
Peering below his hand, with panting lips
Agape, but wide and empty lay the sea
Beyond the barrier crags of Cromarty,
To the far sky-line lying blue and bare —
For no red pirate sought as yet to dare
The gloomy hazards of the fitful seas,
The gusty terrors, and the treacheries
Of fickle April and its changing skies —
And while he scanned the waves with curious eyes.
The sea-wind in his nostrils, who had spent
A long bleak winter in Knockfarrel pent
Over the snow-wreathed strath and buried wood,
A sense of freedom tingled in his blood —
The large life of the ocean, heaving wide.
His heart possessed with gladness and with pride.
And he rejoiced to be alive. . . . Once more
He heard the drenching waves on that rough shore
Raking the shingles, and the sea-worn rocks
Sucking the brine through bared and lapping locks
Of bright brown tangle, while the shelving ledges
Poured back the swirling waters o'er their edges ;
And billows breaking on a precipice
In spouts of spray, fell spreading like a fleece.
Sullen and sunken lay the reef, with sleek And foaming lips, before the flooded creek. Deep-bunched with arrowy weed, its green expanse Wind-wrinkled and translucent. ... A bright trance Of sun-flung splendour lay athwart the wide Blue ocean swept with loops of silvern tide Heavily heaving in a long slow swell.
A lonely fisher in his coracle
Came round a headland, lifted on a wave
That bore him through the shallows to his cave,
Nor other being he saw.
22 THE CELTIC REVIEW
The birds that flew Clamorous about the cliffs, and diving drew Their prey from bounteous waters, on him cast Cold beady eyes of wonder, wheeling past And sliding down the wind.
II
The warm sun shone On blind, grey Ossian musing all alone Upon a knoll before the high stockade. When Oscar's son came nigh. His hand he laid On the boy's curls, and then his fingers strayed Over the face and round the tender chin — 'Be thou as brave as Oscar, wise as Finn,' Said Ossian with a sigh. ' Nay, I would be A bard,' the boy made answer, ' like to thee.' ' Alas ! my son,' the gentle Ossian said. My song was born in sorrow for the dead ! . . . 0 may such grief as Ossian's ne'er be thine ! — If thou wouldst sing, may thou below the pine Murmuring, thy dreams conceive, and happy be Nor hear but sorrow in the breaking sea And death-sighs on the gale. Alas ! my song That rose in sorrow must survive in wrong — My life is spent and vain — a day of thine Were better than a long dark year of mine. . . . But come, my son — so lead me by the hand — To hear the sweetest harper in the land — The wild, free wind of spring ; all o'er the hills And under let us go, by tuneful rills We '11 wander, and my heart shall sweetened be With echoes of the moorland melody, — My clarsach wilt thou bear.' And so went they Together from Knockfarrel. Long they lay Within the woods of Brahan, and by the shore Of silvery Conon wended, crossing o'er The ford at Achilty, where Ossian told The tale of Finn who there had slain the bold Black Arky in his youth. And ere the tale Was ended they had crossed to Tarradale, Where dwelt a daughter of an ancient race, Deep-learned in lore and with the gift to trace The thread of life in the dark web of fate. And she to Ossian cried, * Thou comest late, Too late, alas ! this day of all dark days—
p
THE FIANS OF KNOCKFAEREL 23
Knockfarrel is before me all ablaze — A fearsome vision flaming to mine eyes — 0 beating heart that bleeds ! I hear the cries Of those that perish in yon high stockade — 0 many a tender lad, and lonesome maid, Sweet wife and sleeping babe and hero old — ■ 0 Ossian, couldst thou see — 0 child, behold Yon ruddy closing clouds ... so falls the fate Of all the tribe . . . alas ! thou comest late.' . . .
Ill
When Ossian from Knockfarrel went, a band Of merry maidens, trooping hand in hand. Came forth, with laughing eyes and flowing hair, To share the freedom of the morning air ; Adown the steep they went, and through the wood Where Garry splintered logs in sullen mood — Pining to join the chase ! His wrath he wrought Upon the trees that morn, as if he fought Against a hundred foemen from the west, Till he grew weary and was fain to rest.
The maids were wont to shower upon his head Their merry taunts, and oft from them he fled ; For of their quips and jests he had more fear Than e'er he felt before a foeman's spear — And so he chose to be alone.
The air Was heavily laden with the odour rare Of deep wind-shaken fir-trees, breathing sweet, As through the wood the maids with silent feet Went treading needled sward, in light and shade. Now bright, now dim, like flow'rs that gleam and fade, And ever bloom and ever pass away. . . .
Upon a fairy hillock Garry lay
In sunshine fast asleep : his head was bare,
And the wind rippling through his golden hair
Laid out the seven locks that were his pride.
Which one by one the maids securely tied
To tether-pins, while Garry, breathing deep.
Moaned low and moved about in troubled sleep.
Then to a thicket all the maidens crept.
And raised the Call of Warning. . . . Garry leapt
24 THE CELTIC REVIEW
From dreams that boded ill, with sudden fear
That a fierce band of foemen had come near —
The seven fetters of his golden hair
He wrenched off as he leapt, and so laid bare
A shredded scalp of ruddy wounds that bled
With bitter agony. . . . The maidens fled
With laughter through the wood, and climbed the path
Of steep Knockfarrel. Fierce was Garry's wrath
When he perceived who wrong'd him. With a shriek,
That raised the eagles from the mountain peak,
He shook his spear, and ran with stumbling feet,
And sought for vengeance speedy and complete —
The lust of blood possessed him, and he swore
To slay them. . . . But they shut the oaken door
Ere he had reached that high and strong stockade —
From whence, alas ! nor wife, nor child, nor maid
Came forth again.
IV
Soft-couched upon a bank Lay Caoilte on the cliff-top, while he drank The sweetness of the morning air, that brought A spell of dreamful ease and pleasant thought, With mem'ries from the deeps of other years When Dermaid, unforgotten by his peers, And Oscar, fair and young, went forth with mirth A-hunting o'er the hills around the firth On such an April morn. . . .
He leapt to hear The Fians shouting from a woodland near Their hunting-call. Then swift he sped apace. With bounding heart, to join the gladsome chase ; Stooping he ran, with poised, uplifted spear. As through the woods approached the nimble deer That swerved beholding him. With startled toss Of antlers down the slope it fled, to cross The open vale before him. ... To the west, The Fians, merging from the woodland, pressed To head it shoreward. ... All the fierce dogs bayed With hungry ardour, and the deer, dismayed. With foaming nostrils leapt, and strove to flee Towards the deep, dark woods of Calrossie, . But Caoilte, fresh from resting, was more fleet,
THE TIANS OF KNOCKFAREEL 25
Than deer or dogs, and sped with naked feet,
Until upon a loose and sandy bank,
Plunging his spear into the smoking flank,
Its flight he stayed. ... He stabbed it as it sank,
The life-blood spurting ; and he saw it die
Or ever dog or huntsman had come nigh.
Then eager feast they made ; and after long And frequent fast of winter, they grew strong As they had been of old. And of their fare The lean and scrambling hounds had ready share.
Nor over-fed they in their merry mood,
But set to hunt again, and through the wood
Scattered with eager pace, ere yet the sun
Had climbed to highest noon ; for lo ! each one
Had mem'ry of the famished cheeks and white
Of those who waited their return by night.
In steep Knockfarrel's desolate stockade —
Oh, many a beauteous and betrothed maid
And mothers nursing babes, and warriors lying
In winter-fever's spell, the old men dying.
And slim fair lads who waited to acclaim,
With gladsome shout, the huntsmen when they came
With burdens of the chase. ... So they pursued
The hunt till eve was nigh. In Geanies wood
Another deer they slew. . . .
Caoilte who stood On a high ridge alone . . . with eager eyes Scanning the prospect wide ... in mute surprise Saw rising o'er Knockfarrel a dark cloud Of thick and writhing smoke. . . . Then fierce and loud Upon his horn he blew the warning blast — From out the woods the Fians hastened fast — Lo ! when they stared towards the western sky. They saw their winter-dwelling blazing high.
Then fear possessed them for their own, and grief
Unutterable. And thus spake their wise chief.
To whom came knowledge and the swift sure thought —
' Alas ! alas ! An enemy hath wrought
Black vengeance on our kind. In yonder gleam
Of fearsome flame, the horrors of my dream
Are now accomplished — all we loved and cherished,
And sought, and fought for, in that pyre hath perished !
26 THE CELTIC REVIEW
White-lipped they heard. . . . Then, wailing loud, they ran,
Following the nimble Caoilte man by man.
Towards Knockfarrel ; leaping on their spears
O'er marsh and stream. MacReithin, blind with tears,
Tumbled or leapt into a swollen flood
That swept him to the sea. But no man stood
To help or mourn him, for the eve grew dim —
And some there were indeed who envied him.
As snarls the wolf at bay within the wood
Or huntsmen and their hounds, so Garry stood
Raging before the women who had made
Secure retreat within the high stockade ;
He cursed them all, and their loud laughter rang
More bitter to his heart than e'en the pang
Of his fierce wounds. Then while his streaming blood
Half blinded him, he hastened to the wood,
And a small tree upon his shoulders bore.
And fixed it fast against the oaken door.
That none might issue forth.
Then once again Towards the wood he turned, but all in vain The women waited his return till they Grew weary, for in pain and wrath he lay In a close thicket, brooding o'er his shame, And panting for revenge.
Then Finn's wife came To set the women to the wheel and loom. With angry chiding ; and a heavy gloom Fell on them all. ' Who knoweth,' thus she spake, • What evil may the Fian men o'ertake This day of evil omens. Yester-night I saw the pale ghost of my sire with white And trembling lips. ... At morn before my sight A raven darted from the wood and slew A brooding dove. . . . What fear is mine ! ... for who Would us defend if our fierce foemen came — When Garry is against us. . . . Much I blame Your wanton deed.' . . . The women heard in shame Nor answer made.
THE FIANS OF KNOCKFAEEEL 27
The sun with fiery gleam Scattered the feath'ry clouds, as in a dream The spirits of the dead are softly swept From severed visions sweet. A low wind crept Around with falt'ring steps, and, pausing, sighed — Then fled to murmur from the mountain-side Amid the pine-tree shade ; while all aglow Ben Wyvis bared a crest of shining snow In barren splendour o'er the slumbering strath ; While some sat trembling, fearing Garry's wrath. Some feared the coming of the foe, and some Had vague forebodings and were brooding dumb, And longed to greet the huntsmen. Mothers laid Their babes to sleep, and many a gentle maid Sighed for her lover in that lone stockade ; And one who sat apart with pensive eye, Thus sang to hear the peewee's plaintive cry : —
■ Feewee, joeewee, crying sweet, #
Crying early, crying late — Will your voice be never weary
Crying for your mate ? Other hearts than thine are lonely, Other hearts must wait.
Peewee, peewee, I'd be flying
O'er the hills and o'er the sea, Till I found the love I long for,
Wlieresoe'er he 'd be — Peewee crying, I'd be flying,
Co^ild I fly like thee I
When Garry, who had stanched his wounds, arose He seized his axe, and 'gan with rapid blows To fell down fir-trees. Through the silent strath The hollow echoes rang. With fiendish wrath He made resolve to heap the splintered wood Against the door, and burn the hated brood Of his tormentors one and all. He hewed An ample pyre, then piled it thick and high. While the sun sloping to the western sky Proclaimed the closing of that fateful day. But the doomed women little dreamed that they Would have such fearsome end. ... As Garry lay
28 THE CELTIC REVIEW
Rubbing the fire-sticks till they 'gan to glow- He heard a Fian mother singing low —
Skep, 0 sUep, I'll sing to thee —
Moolachie, 0 moolachie, Sleep, 0 sleep, like yon grey stone,
Moolachie, mine own.
Sleep, 0 sleep, nor sigh nor fret ye, And the goblins mil not get ye,
I will shield ye, I will pet ye — Moolachie, mine own.
The mother sang ; the gentle babe made moan — And Garry heard them with a heart of stone. . . . With fiendish laugh, he saw the leaping flames Possess the pyre ; and heard the shrieking dames And maids and children, wailing in the gloom Of smothering smoke, e'er they had met their doom. Then when the high stockade was blazing red, Ere yet their cries were silenced, Garry fled And westward o'er the shouldering hills he sped.
VI
A broad faint twilight lingered to unfold The sun's slow-dying beams of tangled gold. And the long, billowy hills, in gathering shade. Their naked peaks and ebon crags displayed Sharp-rimmed against the tender heaven and pale ; And misty shadows gathered in the vale — When Caoilte to Knockfarrel came, and saw Amid the dusk, with sorrow and with awe. The ruins of their winter dwelling laid In smouldering ashes ; while the high stockade Around the rocky wall, like ragged teeth, Was crackling o'er the melting stones beneath. Still darting flame, and flickering in the breeze.
He sped towards the wood, and through the trees Called loud for those who perished. On his fair And gentle spouse he called in his despair. His sweet son, and his sire, whose hair was white As Wyvis snow, he called for in the night. Full loud and long across the Strath he cried — The echoes mocked him from the mountain-side.
THE FIANS OF KNOCKFAREEL 29
Ah ! when his last hope faded like the wave
Of twilight ebbing o'er the hills, he gave
His heart to utter grief and deep despair ;
And the cold stars peered down with pitiless stare.
While sank the wind in silence on its flight
Through the dark hollows of the spacious night ;
And distant sounds seemed near. In his dismay
He heard a Fian calling far away.
The night-bird answered back with dismal cry,
Like to a wounded man about to die —
But Caoilte's lips were silent. . . . Once again
And nearer, came the voice that cried in vain,
Then swift steps climbed Knockfarrel's barren steep,
And Alvin called, with trembling voice and deep,
To Caoilte, crouching low with bended head,
* Who liveth ?'...'! am here alone,' he said. . . .
Thus Fian after Fian came to share
Their bitter grief, in silence and despair.
All night they kept lone watch, until the dawn
With stealthy fingers o'er the east had drawn
Its dewy veil and dim. Then Finn arose
From deep and sleepless brooding oer his woes,
And spake unto the Fians, ' Who shall rest
While flees our evil foeman farther west 1 —
Arise !'...' But who hath done this deed ? ' they sighed.
And Finn made answer, 'Garry.' . . . Then they cried
For vengeance swift and terrible and leapt
To answer Finn's command.
A cold wind swept From out the gates of morning, moaning loud. As swift they hastened forth. A ragged shroud Of gathering tempest o'er Ben Wyvis cast A sudden gloom, and round it, falling fast. It drifted o'er the darkened slopes and bare. And snow-flakes swirled in the chill morning air.— r- Then o'er the sea the sun leapt large and bright. Scattering the storm. And moor and crag lay white As westward o'er the hills the Fians all In quest of Garry sped.
At even-fall They found him. ... On the bald and rocky side Of steep Scour Vullin Garry lay to hide Within a cave, which, backward o'er the snow.
30 THE CELTIC REVIEW
He entered, that his steps might seem to show He had fled eastward by the path he came. All day he sought to flee them in his shame, Watching from lofty crag or deep ravine. And crouching in the heath with haggard mein — He sought in vain to hide till darkness cast Its blinding cloak betwixt them.
When at last Finn cried, * Come forth thou dog of evil deeds, Nor respite seek ! ' . . . His limbs like windy reeds Trembled and bent beneath him, as he rose And came to meet his friends who were his foes. Then unto Finn he spake with accents meek, * One last request I of the Fians seek, Whom I have loved in peace and served in strife.'— 'Tis thine,' said Finn, 'but ask not for thy life. For thou art 'mong the Fians.' . . . 'I would die,' Said Garry, ' with my head laid on thy thigh ; And let young Alvin take thy sword that he May give the death that will mine honour be.* 'Twas so he lay to die. . . . But as the blade Swept bright, young Alvin, keen for vengeance, swayed And slipped upon the sward. . . . And his fierce blow That Garry slew, the Fian chief laid low. — A grievous wound was gaping on his thigh And poured his life-blood forth. ... A low, weird cry The great Finn gave as he fell back and swooned. — In vain they strove to stanch the fearsome wound. — His life ebbed slowly with the sun's last ray In gathering gloom. . . . And when in death he lay, The glory of the Fians passed away.
AN OUTLINE OF BRETON HISTORY
Yvonne Josse
After the French of M. de Calan
Brittany is a peninsula surrounded on three side^ by the sea. It is the sea that has made the Breton type. It is the sea that, from time to time, has given trade, and through trade a little wealth, to a eoimtry whose granitic and
AN OUTLINE OF BRETON HISTORY 31
schistous soil, of but moderate fertility, adapted itself only bo a pastoral agriculture none too lavish in its return for labour. One could almost say that it is incessant contact with the sea that has* turned the aspirations of the Breton soul towards the wide and limitless realm of imagination. In any case nothing can better picture our generally quiet and sometimes passionate race than the great deep which, under a deceptive calm, so often hides violent commotion. At a time the date of which is not known, our country was inhabited by savages living on fishing and hunting, and having splintered stones for their only tools and arms. Little by little strangers came from the eastern countries — people who reared cattle and understood agriculture. Their arms and tools were mostly of polished stone. Later on, foreign trade brought them a few metal articles, either of bronze or of gold. Nothing is known about the history of those men — not even their name and the language they spoke. We can say, however, that if they were not civilised they were not savages. They buried their dead in funeral chambers made of flat stones — dolmens — and covered with sand or gravel so as to form tumuli. On the tombs and in places where notable events had taken place, where we now put up crosses, they erected huge stones — the menhirs — in homage to the gods ; more than one thousand of these monuments are to be seen in Brittany. Four or five hundred years B.C., Brittany, with the whole of Gaul, was conquered by the Celts. These were warriors organised in bands or clans, at the heads of which were the chiefs or kings. They knew iron, and used it to make their arms and tools. At regular intervals of time the land belonging to each clan was divided among the families of the clan, but the parts of the kings and nobles were nearly always the same. No people of antiquity believed in the immortality of the soul more firmly than the Celts. In religious matters they obeyed the members of an organisation which had the monopoly of science and instruction, and in case of war interposed between the rival clans between which the
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country was divided. These Celts spoke nearly the same tongue as that the Irish, Welsh and Bretons are now speaking.
In the year 57 B.C. the Romans invaded Gaul. Brittany was then inhabited by several elans called Armoricans — people living near the sea. Part of Maine and Normandy was also inhabited by the Amoricans ; their capital was Vannes. Those clans were related to the Celts who lived in the part of Gaul situated between the Seine and the Rhine, and also to the Celts who were in Britain. In 56, Caesar, at the head of the Romans, made a victorious expedition against them. Their confederate fleet was destroyed near Vannes. Notwithstanding, they went on with the fight for five years, and were the very last to submit to the Romans. The Celtic tongue disappeared as a result of the Roman conquest. Four centuries afterwards the inhabitants spoke only Latin. The Romans substituted the individual property of the rich landowners for the collective property of the clan. The country had no roads, and they made some ; there were no towns, and they built some. At that time Nantes, Vannes, Rennes were created. In the third century a.d., Christianity was preached to the Armoricans. Nantes was the first town to be evangelised. Two brothers, Tonatien and Rogatien, were martyred during the first persecution. When Constantine gave the Christians liberty for their religion, bishoprics were founded in Brittany at Nantes, Rennes and Vannes.
Towards the middle of the fifth century, when Gaul was invaded and conquered by barbarians of Germanic race, Armorica on the contrary received emigrants of Celtic race. They came from the island of Britain, and had been con- quered by the Romans, but not Latinised by them as were the Celts of Gaul. The Britons had kept their habits, their traditions, and their language. Armorica became Celtic again, and was called Brittany. The emigrations of the Britons were caused by the ravages of the Angles and Saxons, pagan barbarians of Germanic race, who, after
^
AN OUTLINE OF BRETON HISTORY 33
oTany centuries of war, conquered and subdued the whole island of Britain. Many of the Britons who wanted to keep their Faith and^ their independence were obliged to seek refuge elsewhere. They had been defeated, but these vanquished ones were courageous and did not accept the consequences of their defeat. They were neither rejected nor absorbed by the inhabitants of the country to which they had fled. Instead, the Britons gave them their own political and religious organisation, and also their traditions. One part of the territory, even, was so Brythonicised that the Breton language took the place of Latin. For more than a century these emigrants continued to land in Armorica in small bands, having at their heads either laymen or religious chiefs. The territories in which the former settled took the names of the bands, and were called ' pious ' or ' trefs ' ; or the religious chiefs took them as dominions, and they were then called ' lans.' The Breton emigrants did not inhabit all the country now called Brittany. Towards the west they did not go farther than a line running from the mouth of the Couesnon to the mouth of the Loire, through Roz, Combourg, Tinteniae and Montfort — where it follows the Meu and the Vilaine up to* the confluence of the Semnon, only taking in the right side of the river — Pleuchatel and Messac. From there by Guemene, Guenrouet and Cambon the line goes to Montoir and the banks of the river. At the west of that line some cantons, specially Vannes and its neighbourhood, did not submit to the invaders. On the left bank of the Loire, Paim- bceuf, Corsept, Pornic, St. Brevin, St. Viaud, there are most certain evidences of the Breton colonisation that went as far as the Anglo-Norman islands (Jersey, Guernsey, etc.), the Norman canton of St. Hilaire du Harcouet, and the Manceau canton of Landivy. In the Middle Ages Mont St. Michel was looked upon as Breton territory.
Armorica, consequently, was inhabited both by the Bretons and the Gallo-Romans ; the last were faithful subjects of the Prankish, Merovingian, or Carlo vingian
VOL. VI. c
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kings, who were reigning in Gaul. The others were divided into small kingdoms made by the union of ' pious ' or ' lans.' — In the north, Domnonee ; in the west, Leon, Poher, Comouailles ; and in the south, Broerec'h. The chiefs of these small dominions were quite independent, and were frequently at war with one another. They recognised in a certain measure the authority of the Frankish kings, and irregularly paid them some sort of tribute, although from time to time they were at war with them. Conomor of Poher was defeated and killed by Judicael of Domnonee, whom he had driven away from his kingdom, and who got it back by the help of the Frankish king Childebert. Cono- bert de Broerec'h was defeated and killed by the troops of the Frankish king Clotaire (560). Waroch made war upon Chilperic, and Judicael upon Dagobert. Charlemagne's armies made three victorious expeditions into Brittany — 786, 799, and 811 — and his son, Louis le Debonnaire, re- pressed the two revolts of Morvon and Guiomarc'h — 812 and 824. The Bretons, who had- no share in the revolts, took a great part in the wars of Charlemagne with the Armoricans. It was with soldiers of our country that Ogier Roland and Oondeboeuf became illustrious. The older Armoricans and the Bretons had quite different religious organisations. The former obeyed a secular clergy. Their great saints were bishops — Clair and Similien at Nantes, Patern at Vannes, Melaine at Rennes. The Bretons obeyed regular clergy living in abbeys formed of small cells, where each monk spent the greatest part of his time in solitude. Their great saints were abbots — Brieuc, Gu6nole, and Armel — or, less frequently, hermits, Hke Efflam, Ronan, Goneri.
Brittany, as we know it to-day, was constituted by the Breton chief Nomenoe towards the middle of the ninth century. Nomenoe was at first an imperial functionary entrusted by Louis le Debonnaire with the command of his countrymen ; but in 840, when he saw the sons of the late king divide the Frankish empire between themselves, he thought he was no longer obliged to respect a unity others
I
1^^]
N OUTLINE OF BEETON HISTORY 35
d not respect. In 843, consequently, he took arms. I: is victories, and the victories of his son Erispoe and his n jphew Salomon, obliged Charles le Chauve to recognise' t" le independence of Brittany, and to give the Breton kings a 1 the country round Nantes, Rennes, Avranches and ( outances, as well as parts of Maine, Anjou and Poitou. i t Redon, and at Lehon near Dinan, new monasteries were f )unded. Like the Frankish monasteries, those of Brittany, eld and new, obeyed Saint Benedict's rule, and eventually tbe Breton church adopted the religious organisation of the Frankish church, with clearly defined dioceses and parishes principally ministered to by secular clergy. There were at that time nine bishoprics in Brittany — Nantes, Rennes, ^k^annes, Quimper, Saint Pol, Treguier, Saint Brieuc, Saint IVEalo and Dol. The Breton kings tried to make an arch- bishopric of Dol, but without success.
Brittany at that time was independent and prosperous, and arts and belles-lettres began to make rapid advance. They had progressed but little, however, before they began to wither beneath the ravages of the Northmen. Those pagan pirates from Denmark and Norway sailed up the rivers, burning everything on their way, and generally falling upon the monasteries, whose riches tempted their cupidity. The Bretons were unable to defend themselves successfully, for upon Salomon's death in 847 Brittany was again divided into petty kingdoms, independent of each other and weakened by civil wars. In vain did Alain, Comte de Vannes, win a great victory in 890. At the very beginning of the tenth century, a few years after the settle- ment of a band of Northmen in the part of the country which, after them, was named Normandy, another band settled at the mouth of the Loire, and from there oppressed the whole of Brittany. Many noble families sought shelter in France and in England. The monks deserted their abbeys, and fled with the relics of their saints to Paris, Picardy, Burgundy, and everywhere where a shelter was offered them. The dominion of the pirates lasted more than
36 THE CELTIC REVIEW
twenty-five years. The first attempt at enfranchisement did not succeed. It was only in 936 that emigrants return- ing to Brittany united their efforts with those of the Bretons who had remained in their country, and after a war which lasted for some three years the Northmen were completely driven out. Alain Barbe Torte, Comte de Nantes, and Berengier, Comte de Rennes, were the heroes of the deliver- ance of their country.
After the Northmen had been expelled, war broke out between Alain and Berengier, each of them wanting the other to recognise him as sovereign. Their successors continued that war for more than a century. The neigh- bouring princes availed themselves of the unrest to try to impose their suzerainty upon the Breton chiefs. Robert, Duke of Normandy, obliged Alain, Comte de Rennes, to do him homage, and the Comtes d'Anjou obtained a similar mark of dependence from the Comtes de Nantes.
The unity of Brittany was only re-established when Havoise, heiress to the Comtes de Rennes, married Hoel, Comte de Cornouailles et de Nantes. But the invasion and the civil wars had favoured the ambition of the neigh- bours of Brittany, and had allowed them to extend them- selves at her expense. Only the territories of Rennes and Nantes, and parts of Poitou and the Pays de Retz were left to the Bretons of all their conquests of the ninth century. In that part, at least, the existence of a nobility of Breton race preserved for the country the Breton spirit if not the Breton tongue and customs. Alain Fergent (1084-1112), son of Hoel and Havoise, was a strong monarch : he repressed the revolts of the great lords ; he defeated the Duke of Normandy who had invaded Brittany ; and he had a great share in the recovery of the Holy Land from the Saracens. He died, a monk, in the monastery at Redon. Brittany was then a feudal country ; that is to say, the land belonged to great lords on whom depended a numerous gentry having free peasants as farmers — for Brittany is one of the provinces of France where villainage was most promptly abolished.
AN OUTLINE OF BRETON HISTORY 37
I: usbandry was the greatest resource of the inhabitants. ]V anufactures had not as yet been developed very extensively, t lOugh several small towns carried on a very considerable t ade with foreign countries.
After the Northmen had been expelled, many old abbeys r )se up from their ruins — Landevennec, Saint Gildas, Redon, € be. Others were founded in the twelfth century, to clear the uncultivated lands, such as those of the Cistercians at ] Jegar, St. Aubin de Bois, etc. ; and others to help the secular clergy in the parishes, such as those of the Augustins ^.nd Premontres at Beauport, Beaulieu, etc. More than forty abbeys for men and two for women were thus founded. ' Brittany had then great literary importance. Abelard, ohe greatest French philosopher of the Middle Ages ; Adam de Saint Victor, the greatest poet in the Romance language ; and GuiUaume le Breton, one of the greatest epic poets in the same language, were all Bretons. The laments our poets had composed for the Armorican bishops, companions of Charles Martel — Amile, Moran, etc. — for the companions in arms of Pepin and Charlemagne — Ogier, Roland ; about the heroes of the war of independence — Erispoe, Salomon, etc. — served as topics for the great poems the French called ' Chansons de Geste,^ The marvel- lous tales of King Arthur, his knights and the prophet Merlin, which the Bretons had brought back from their stay in Britain in the tenth century, and made so popular all over France, were the beginning of the ' Romans de la Table Eonde,^
Brittany thus became a country of legends — the scene of fantastic or edifying stories, but never of those humorous or obscene tales called ' Fabliaux.^ That did not prevent the French of that time from laughing at the Bretons, whom they liked to represent as a foolish and clownish people.
Towards the middle of the twelfth century, the inde- pendence of Brittany was seriously threatened. Henry, Comte d'Anjou, had become King of England, Comte de
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Poitou, and Due de Gascogne, and his dominions surrounded Brittany on all sides. He insisted on the marriage of his son GeofiFrey to Constance, heiress to Conan the Fourth, who, too weak to refuse, gave his consent. Henry governed Brittany very roughly till his son's coming of age, but the prince died young ; and his son Arthur, hope of the Bretons, was made a prisoner by his uncle, John Lackland, King of England, in 1202, when he was but fifteen years old. He died in prison, and it is almost certain he was murdered. His sister Alix married a relation of the French King — Pierre, second son to the Comte de Dreux.
The Dreux dynasty gave Brittany four princes, who in 1297 received the title of Duke : they wore the closed crown like kings, and swore fidelity to the Kings of France standing and without bowing. Under their reign the country had a century of prosperity and peace. The love of learning spread throughout Brittany, and several colleges were founded in Paris for the Bretons who went there to study. Saint Ives lived at that time, and his knowledge and virtue edified and were the admiration of everybody. New religious orders — the Dominicans, the Franciscans and the Carmelites — settled themselves in our province — not in the country, like the other orders, but in the towns, where they gave themselves up to preaching and charitable works.
In 1341, at the death of Jean in., a terrible civil war broke out between Jeanne, the daughter of his second brother, and his third brother Jean, Comte de Montfort, who both pretended to the right to succeed him. The war lasted more than twenty years, and covered Brittany with blood and ruin. Jeanne had married Charles de Blois, nephew to Philippe vi.. King of France ; and as Charles was helped by his uncle, Jean de Montfort called the English king to his assistance. The strife was desperate. The successive captivity of the two chiefs (Jean was made prisoner at Nantes, Charles at the battle of Auray) did not discourage their followers. The English ravaged the country so much that a Breton leader, Jean de Beaumanoir,
AN OUTLINE OF BRETON HISTOEY 39
c aallenged thirty of their knights to a pitched combat, and •\ ith twenty-nine of his companions utterly vanquished them. '^ 'hat was the ever-famous ' Combat des Trente.' At last (yharles de Blois was defeated and killed at the battle of . ^uray, and all Brittany recognised Jean iv., son of Jean de tlontfort, as its duke.
That prince cared only for England. When the Bretons ound that he wanted to go to war with France they sent aim away, but when they saw that the French wanted to bake advantage of their action in order to take Brittany for themselves, they all agreed to call their Duke back again. His son, Jean v., profited by the lesson. He was neither French nor English, but Breton, and while war ravaged France, Brittany (being at peace and well governed) became rich with the fruits of industry, and the trade in cloth and linen. Churches and castles were built everywhere. A university was created at Nantes in 1461, and Brittany became one of the countries where printing found its earliest home.
The awful civil war that had just taken place in Brittany had made the Bretons the best soldiers of their time. The Kings of France took them into their service and gave them high places. Duguesclin, Clisson, Richemont were Con- netables, Coetivy was an Admiral, and Duch^tel Grand Maitre de la Maison du Roi. The English, who at two different times had conquered half of France, were ex- pelled in the fourteenth century by Duguesclin and in the fifteenth by Richemont.
Frangois ii., nephew of Jean v., blundered into all the intrigues against France that were set afoot during the reign of Louis xi. and the minority of Charles viii. The Breton nobility, whose sympathy and interests were bent towards France, were discontented with his anti-French policy, and in the end he found himself alone, without friends or help and deserted by his subjects. He left his daughter Anne, but twelve years old, a contested authority and an invaded territory.
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The patriots entreated the princess to marry a great lord, Breton or French, who would have become the head of a new dynasty. The anti-French party who surrounded her succeeded in engaging her to the German Emperor, Maxi- milian, but he did not send the Duchess any help, and Brittany was soon entirely in the hands of the French. The king, Charles vm., very well understood that to make his conquest a lasting one he had to make it legal in the eyes of the Bretons. In 1491 he asked the Duchess Anne to marry him, and she accepted.
Charles vm. died without children, and, as had been arranged, Anne married his successor. When she died in 1514, having only two daughters — the eldest of whom, Claude, was married to Frangois i., successor of Louis xn. — Brittany was united to France, but only in a provisional manner. As the laws governing the succession to the throne were not the same in the two countries, it was possible that the heir to one might not be the heir to the other. Consequently it was advantageous for the French to change that provisional and personal imion into a lasting one. On their side, the Bretons had the advantage that the French king could not now pretend to regard himself as the proprietor of Brittany ; he no longer held his right from his ancestors, but from the will of the representatives of the people. He was bound by a contract, the clauses of which he was under obligation to respect. The union was thus voted by the States of Brittany meeting at Vannes in 1532, and the king promised, among other things, never to change any of the customs of Brittany without the consent of the deputies.
Though now a French province, Brittany retained the sentiment of her historical and social originality, thanks to the works of her historians and jurisconsults, of whom the most renowned was D'Argentr6. Brittany, once joined to France, took her part in the glories and misfortunes of the Italian wars. At the sea-battle of the 10th of August 1512, the Breton captain, Porzmoguer, rendered himself illustrious
ip'
AN OUTLINE OF BEETON HISTOEY 41
»y his heroic death. During those wars the Spanish and the ]3nglish several times came to ravage our coasts. In 1522 he English plundered Morlaix, and in 1558 they were lefeated on the sands of the Conquet. The Bretons played I preponderating part in the geographical discoveries of the sixteenth century. In 1504 a fleet, chiefly composed of Breton ships, discovered Newfoundland, and a Breton sailor, Jean Cartier, discovered Canada in 1534.
Protestantism made but few recruits in Brittany — a hundred noble families, a few magistrates, and some gentry. The Catholics were very tolerant towards them, and the Protestants suffered few vexations: they were not the victims of any massacre, even at the feast of Saint Bar- thelemy, 1572. They consequently revolted only in one or two districts, and for the most part the religious wars that desolated France spared Brittany.
Everything changed when Henry iii. died in 1589. His successor, Henry iv., was a Protestant. He was helped by his co-religionists and by those among the Catholics who thought a difference of religion was not sufficient to exclude the rightful heir from the throne. The Bretons, however. Catholics before everything else, united to resist the new king, with the Duke of Mercoeur, governor of the province, at their head. Some among them, who wanted to be governed only by descendants of their former dukes, and who would not accept Henry iv. for that reason, sought to establish as their duchess the daughter of the King of Spain, niece to Henry iii., and great-granddaughter of the Duchess Anne. The war lasted more than nine years. It was a succession of petty battles, of taking and re-taking of towns and castles, that did all the more harm to the country because several commanders on both sides, such as the Protestant Du Liscouet and the Catholic La Fontenelle, were sheer brigands, who, under the pretence of religion, sought only to release friends and to hold enemies to ran- som. And the foreigners called in to help the two parties — the Spanish by the Catholics and the English by the
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Protestants — followed their example without scruple. When Henry iv. renounced Protestantism in 1593 many Ligueurs joined him, but Mercoeur and his partisans submitted to him only in 1598.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Bretons continued to take their part in the events of French life. Guebriant and Coetlogon were made Marechaux de France ; but above all the Breton sailors — Duguay-Trouin, Cassard, Guichen, Cornic, La Motte-Picquet, etc. — distinguished themselves by their ability and intrepidity. Enemies made several attempts to carry war into Brittany, but none of their attempts to land succeeded. The English were defeated in 1694 at Camaret, and in 1758 at Saint Cast. New religious congregations came to settle in Brittany during these centuries — the Jesuits, Ursulines, etc. They were nearly all teaching orders. Brittany was, in fact, the cradle of several of these congregations — les Filles du Saint Esprit, for example. Thanks to the apostolic zeal of Le Nobletz, Maunoir, etc., and to the missions and retreats they organised, religious sentiment attained extraordinary intensity in our country. As in the other provinces, there were then in Brittany artists and learned men. Le Sage was one of the greatest French novelists. Freron, creator of journalism, was one of the few writers who dared to pit himself against Voltaire.
Our country was then governed by a military functionary called the Gouverneur-General or Commandant-en-Chef, and by a civil functionary, I'lntendant. The taxes were voted by the * Etats de Bretagne,' composed of the three orders : the clergy, that is to say, the bishops, the abbots, and deputies of the canons ; the nobility, that is, the lords ; and the Tiers-Etat, composed of representatives of about forty towns. The parish clergy and the peasants were not represented. Between the Government, who always wanted money, and the States, who did their best to give the least possible, the conflicts were unceasing. The nobility, the most independent of the three orders, were the leaders of
AN OUTLINE OF BEETON HISTOEY 43
the opposition. Very seldom did a session end without the exclusion or the imprisonment of one of the members. Things grew worse in the eighteenth century, when the magistrates of Brittany aided the States in their resistance. In 1719, the alliance of the malcontents with the King of Spain against the French Eegent, brought about proceedings against Pontcallec and several other gentlemen, and later on — in 1720 — their execution. In 1765 the coalition of the States and the Parliament against the Commandant-in-Chief , the Duke d'Aiguillon, exasperated the Government so much that the king imprisoned six magistrates, Procureur- General la Chalotais amongst them. They were dragged from jurisdiction to jurisdiction without anjrthing being proved against them, and the Government ended by ordering them to live in different towns and keeping close watch on them.
In the seventeenth century the States had contented themselves with discussing in the utmost detail the amount of the taxes voted by them. In the eighteenth they decided to profit by the distress of the Government to estab- lish, in opposition to it, an administration belonging to themselves, and to vote taxes only on condition that they would be gathered in by their agents, and used by the latter under their superintendence. It was thus that the * Commissions Intermediaires ' were created.
These conflicts between the French Government and the Breton nation seldom resulted in riots. In 1665, however, a tax upon tobacco and tin plates and the ' papier timbre,' having been established without the approval of the States, brought about serious disturbances in several towns. The peasants of CornouaiUes rose in a body ; and as the gentry were not willing to take the lead they turned their anger against them, and the insurrection became a ' jacquerie,' promptly and severely repressed.
The States of Brittany were strongly imbued with national feeling, and they helped the Benedictine Lobineau to write a history of Brittany which served as a model for
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those written later on in the diiBferent provinces. Up to the end of the eighteenth century the three orders were united for the defence of the privileges of Brittany, but in 1788, when the burst of civil, political and social unrest that ended with the Revolution appeared in France, the Breton townsmen, finding their influence in the States too small, claimed representation according to their proportionate number among the population. It was a throwing over of the old principles by which it was not the men but the general interests, the group, that were represented. The clergy and nobility refused to make any concessions. The townsmen grew excited. Fighting took place in the streets at Rennes, and the Government dissolved the States, never to call them together again.
In their place the ' Assemblee Nationale,' made up of all the French deputies, met in Paris, and departments took the place of the provinces. Brittany was divided into five departments : lUe-et-V ilaine, Loire-Inferieure, Cotes- du-Nord, Morbihan, Finistere. The departments were divided into districts and communes governed by elected assemblies like the departments themselves. The Breton deputies played a great part at the beginning of the Revolu- tion. One of them, Chapelier, was made president of the ' Assemblee Nationale.' Once they had obtained a measure of liberal and democratic reform they tried to prevent the movement from degenerating into the bloody anarchy of La Terreur, The greater part of them voted against Louis XVI. 's death, but they were overruled. Some of them were put in prison ; others, like Le Hardy, had their heads cut off ; and others, like Languinois and Kervelegan, escaped only with the greatest difficulties.
The ' Assemblee Constituante ' now voted a law on the organisation of the clergy that ignored the rights of the Pope, and in the eyes of the faithful tainted the French Church with schism. Most of the bishops and priests re- fused to obey that law. The Government expelled them from their dioceses and parishes, and finally exiled them
AN OUTLINE OF BEETON HISTOEY
from France. The revolutionary citizens of the towns organised themselves into gardes nationales, and ran all over the country hunting up priests and arresting them. In many places the peasants took up arms to defend the ministers of their religion, and the year 1791 saw the beginning of the ' Chouanerie.' A Breton gentleman, La Eouerie, tried to unite all the insurgent factors. He died before having succeeded; but in the beginning of 1793 a general insurrection broke out. It was repressed in a few weeks, except to the south of the Loire, where the insurgents were helped by the ' Vendeens,' but it soon began again in several Breton parishes. The heads of the insurrection were gentlemen like Charette, citizens like Le Oris du Val, and peasants like Cadoudal. It resulted in a succession of petty battles between the insurgents and the garrisons of the towns, out of which neither of them gained real advantage. The Eepublicans killed all their prisoners, and Carrier, the Eevolutionary deputy at Nantes, had several hundreds of people shot and drowned without any trial whatever. The Chouans slaughtered all those they suspected of being spies. In 1795 a corps of emigrants landed on the peninsula of Quiberon to help the Chouans. They were hemmed in by the Eepublican army and obliged to surrender. They were nearly all shot, including even the servants who accompanied their masters in a merely menial capacity. The Chouannerie ended only with the religious persecution of 1800.
The Bretons of the nineteenth century were not lesser men than their ancestors, and Brittany may justly be proud of the glory she acquired through them. In this country many generals, admirals, artists and learned men were born. At the beginning of the nineteenth century a Breton, Chateaubriand, gave new life to French literature, and it is he whom all the great writers of the first half of last century recognise as their father and master. The mother of one of the finest poets of the nineteenth century, Victor Hugo, was a Breton. Other Bretons — Caro, Eenan, Jules Simon —
46 THE CELTIC EEVIEW
were also renowned for their literary talents. Another, Lamennais, though he, later on, wrote against the teaching of the Church, contributed more than any of his contem- poraries to dissipate the inertia of the Catholics. Brittany not only gave several of her children to the revival of religion that took place in the nineteenth century, but two of the most popular orders, the Freres de 1' Instruction Chretienne and the Petites Soeurs des Pauvres, were foimded in Brittany.
But what distinguished the Bretons of the nineteenth century above all was the steady increase in the clearness with which they recognised their original and distinct nationality. Brizeux sang the poetry of our scenery and the charm of our old picturesque habits ; La Villemarque, Souvestre, and Luzel made our popular songs and marvellous fairy stories known, and the world was astonished at their literary merit. Thanks to the works of many writers, at whose head M. de la Borderie, by the accuracy of his erudition and the extent of his studies, takes an assured position, our history got rid of the falsehoods that had previously disfigured it, and the past of our country now appears to us in its true physiognomy of glory and poetry. In our large towns and departments numerous learned societies have been organised. In a larger circle, the ' Association Bretonne,' founded in 1843, and the ' Union Regionaliste,' established in 1898, endeavour to unite all Bretons who, according to the noble expression of the Marquis de I'Estourbeillon, wish to make of our small motherland, ' la plus prospere des Bretagnes dans la plus glorieuse des Frances.'
L
THE HEIK OF THE DUCHY OF BEITTANY 47
WHO IS THE HEIH OF THE DUCHY OF BEITTANY?
Henry Jenner
N'oun na da Vleiz na da Vontfort, n'oun nemet servicher d'an Itroun Fari. — Salaun Folgoat.i
It is with much diffidence and with many apologies to the Bretons that I, though I only belong by birth to the nation which is more nearly related to them than any other, presume to attempt an answer to this question. Possibly my conclusions are not new to them, though to me they undoubtedly are new. Certainly much that is contained in this paper can only be mere commonplace to them. The conclusions are sufficiently startling, but I must disclaim at once any political arriere pensee, which is not my business in the affairs of another nation. All I claim to do is to state what I believe to be an unquestionable genealogical fact, and to give my reasons for the belief. I do not know, nor, if I did, is it for me to say whether it has any bearings beyond the quartering of coats-of-arms.
Brittany was once an independent state, and its inde- pendence differed materially from that of aU the other states, with the possible exception of Navarre, which were ultimately united into one kingdom, but were virtually independent at a time when ' omnis Gallia ' was divided into a good many more than ' tres ^partes ' and ' France ' was only a geographical expression, or was applied to a comparatively small country. When Armorica was practic- ally derelict, it was settled by emigrants from Great Britain, who preserved their own Celtic speech and imposed it, instead of broken-down Latin, upon whatever ' fragments of forgotten peoples ' they found there. They were governed by rulers of their own race, not by Frankish nobles upon
^ I am neither for Blois nor for Montfort ; I am but a servant of the Lady Mary. — Salaun of Folqoat.
48 THE CELTIC REVIEW
whom fiefs had been conferred by Merovingian or Carlovin- gian kings. The Kings of France from time to time at- tempted to annex the country. They held it for a while in the eighth and ninth centuries. It was freed by Nominoe. The Normans ravaged it and more or less subdued it, till the * chas a bel bro ' (dogs of a far land) were driven away by Alan al Louarn. Over and over again France or England tried to make it French or English, but stubborn Armorica remained ' bepred Breiz ' (always Breton) until the marriage of the Duchess Anne to two successive French kings and of her elder daughter to a third united the two crowns de facto until the fall of the French monarchy, and, if Anne was the legitimate duchess, de jure also, at least until a king arose, Henry of Navarre, who succeeded to France in accordance with the Salic Law of absolute male succession, but was not in any way the genealogical representative of the Dukes of Brittany.
A separation under such circumstances is not without precedent. When the crowns of France and Navarre had been united by the marriage of Philip iv. and Joan of Navarre, they continued united until, on the death of Charles iv., the male line of Philip and Joan became extinct. Then Philip of Valois, who was not descended from the House of Navarre, inherited France under the Salic Law, while Navarre, in which succession by or through a female was not barred, went to Joan, daughter of Louis x., the senior female heir. The two crowns were not united again until Henry, King of Navarre, succeeded to France in right of his paternal descent.
When George, Elector of Hanover, became King of Great Britain in 1714, by virtue of an Act which, whether validly or not, excluded Roman Catholics from the crown, no change was made in the laws of succession except the importation of a religious disqualification. Thus it was that on the death of William iv. in 1837, the crowns which had been united for a hundred and twenty-three years were disunited again. This was a stronger case than those
THE HEIR OF THE DUCHY OF BEITTANY 49
of Navarre and Brittany, for Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, was quite as much a descendant of three out of the five Hanoverian kings as Victoria was, and under almost any rule of succession but the British and Portuguese would have succeeded to the joined crowns, whereas Henry iv. of France was not a descendant of the House of Brittany any more than Philip of Valois was a descendant of that of Navarre. Thus it is seen that the right of Henry iv. to the Duchy of Brittany is not at all obvious, and must depend upon the validity of a settlement made by Francis i., King of France, widower of Claude, daughter of Duchess Anne, in or about 1532, and an alleged resignation of rights to the French king by the heirs of the House of Penthievre. As a rule such settlements and resignations are valueless as against future heirs, but on the political validity of these particular arrangements I am not qualified to express any opinion. To genealogy, and that is what I am discussing, they can make no sort of difference.
The Salic Law did not apply to Brittany, but there, as in almost every non-Salic constitution, except in England after the accession of Henry ii. in 1154, Scotland after that of Robert i. in 1306, and Portugal after the Council of Lamego in 1148, male agnates, brothers, nephews, or even those more distant, often succeeded in preference to daughters, who frequently only came in when there were no male agnates of reasonable proximity. No doubt this, when all descended from the original ' purchaser ' (as the laws of Real Property would say), was quite as consistent as the succession of all the sons before all the daughters instead of that of all children in order of seniority irrespective of sex ; and it had its value, like the Salic rule, in days when the principal duty of a king was to lead his army to battle. But, unlike the Salic Law, and its opposite as understood in Britain and Portugal, about which there can be no mistake, it constantly led to disputed successions, with or without bloodshed — generally with — and rival claimants tended to become puppets in the hands of greater powers who had
VOL. VI. D
50 THE CELTIC REVIEW
axes of their own to grind. Also, as time and civilisation went on and war-lords could perform the fighting part of their duty by deputy, the natural right of a daughter to succeed to her father, failing sons, got more and more to be recognised, though even now, as instance the true foundation of the claim of Don Carlos to the throne of Spain, its recognition is not everyivhere complete. It was the conflict of the two ideas of succession that was at the bottom of the great dynastic struggle of Blois and Montfort. Daughters had succeeded to their fathers in Brittany before, with or without opposition, though it generally happened that their sons or husbands reigned instead of them. In this case the question was the less simple one, whether, on the death of John in. in 1341, his nephew, John of Montfort, son of his half-brother John, or his niece, Joan, daughter of his whole brother Guy of Penthievre (or her husband Charles of Blois in her right), should succeed him. Guy was the elder brother, but the ' male agnate ' theory came in, and after a long and very important war, John of Montfort eventually got the best of it. Yet one would have said at first sight that the right was on the other side, and that the descendants of Joan were the rightful line. This does not necessarily follow, for the exact succession was not sufficiently settled in those days, and the dispute resembles so closely the leading case of Bruce versus Balliol some fifty years earlier, that unless one is prepared to support the rights of the descendants of Balliol to the Scottish throne one cannot consistently dogmatise in favour of those of Joan of Penthievre. But whether the Blois side were right or the Montfort, there can be no doubt that the true Heir of Line of the Dukes of Brittany must descend from one or the other of the two claimants. There are no others possible.
John of Montfort had a son, John v. (1399-1442), who was succeeded by his eldest son, Francis i. (1442-1450), who left a daughter Margaret, a child of only seven or eight. She did not succeed, if at all, until after her uncle, Peter ii.
THE HEIR OF THE DUCHY OF BEITTANY 51
(1450-1457), and her great-uncle, Arthur iii. (1457-1458), had both reigned. Meanwhile she had married the next heir, Francis, son of Richard of fitampes, third son of John IV. Margaret died childless in 1469, and Francis ii. married again. By his second wife he had a daughter, the renowned Duchess Anne. Anne was recognised as her father's heir in 1486, and succeeded him at his death in 1488. There were no male agnates to oppose her right, and she was undoubtedly Heiress of Line of the House of Montfort, and, saving the rights of the House of Penthievre, whatever they may have been, Heiress of Line of Nominoe and the ancient kings.
The first question now is : Who is the Heir of Duchess Anne ? This is not difficult to answer. Anne married, first, Maximilian of Austria, afterwards Emperor. This was only a betrothal by proxy, and nobody, not even the parties themselves, took any notice of it ; second, Charles viii., King of France, by whom she had no children ; third, Louis XII., King of France, by whom she had two daughters, Claude and Renee. Renee, the younger of the two, married Hercules ii. of Ferrara, and her daughter Anne married Francis of Lorraine, Duke of Guise. Her succession passed through the House of Bourbon-Conti to that of Orleans, so that if the line of the elder sister had failed, the Duke of Orleans, who claims the French crown, might have had a real right to the genealogical heirship of the House of Brittany. The line of another daughter of Renee passed through the House of La Rovere to that of Medici, and ended with the last Medici Grand-Duke of Tuscany in 1737. But the line of the elder daughter, Claude, has not failed. She married Francis i.. King of France, and had a son, Henry ii., who succeeded to her rights in Brittany and to his father's in France. She also had two other sons, Francis and Charles, who both died without issue, and two daughters, Magdalen, who married James v. of Scotland and died childless, and Margaret, who married Emmanuel Phili- bert, Duke of Savoy. Henry ii.'s three sons, Francis ii.,
52 THE CELTIC REVIEW
Charles ix., and Henry in. reigned successively over France and Brittany and left no children, the last dying in 1589. Then it was that the crown of France went, under the Salic Law, to Henry of Bourbon, King of Navarre, whose nearest male ancestor in common with Henry in. was St. Louis ix. (1226-1270). But the line of Anne and Claude was not yet extinct. Henry ii. had also three daughters, Elizabeth, who married Philip ii. of Spain, and died in 1568, leaving two daughters : Claude, who married Charles ii., Duke of Lorraine ; and Margaret, who married Henry iv. of France, and had no children. On the death of Henry ni., the Heir of Line of the Duchess Anne was certainly Isabel, elder daughter of Elizabeth, Queen of Spain. She married Albert of Austria, and died childless in 1633. Her sister, Catherine, had died in 1597, but she had married Charles Emmanuel i., Duke of Savoy, who through his mother, Margaret, daughter of Francis i. of France, was also descended from Anne of Brittany. Her son Victor Amadeus i. succeeded to his aunt, Isabel of Spain, as heir of the Duchess Anne, and was succeeded in 1637 by his eldest son Francis, who died unmarried in 1638. The second son, Charles Emmanuel ii., succeeded, and died in 1675. Then follows a line of Dukes of Savoy and Kings of Sardinia: Victor Amadeus n. (1675-1732), who was the first King of Sardinia and by his marriage with Anne Maria of Orleans, daughter of Henrietta, daughter of our Charles i., brought the eventual heirship of the House of Stuart into his family ; Charles Emmanuel in. (1730-1773) ; Victor Amadeus ni. (1773-1796) ; Charles Emmanuel iv. (1796-1819), who died childless and was succeeded by his next brother, Victor Emmanuel i. On the death of Victor Emmanuel i., in 1824, it is possible that his brother, Charles Felix, would have succeeded to the Duchy of Brittany, on the ' male agnate ' principle, but as he died without children in 1831, it made no difference. The crown of Sardinia, under strict Salic Law, then passed to the House of Savoy-Carignan, descended from Thomas, second son of Charles Emmanuel i. and
THE HEIE OF THE DUCHY OF BEITTANY 53
Catherine of Spain, but this was far too distant to apply to Brittany on the ' male agnate ' theory. Victor Emmanuel i. left four daughters,* the eldest of whom, Mary Beatrice, married Francis iv., Duke of Modena, and to her the Heirship of Line of Brittany undoubtedly passed, either on the death of her father or of her uncle. She, dying in 1840, left two sons, Francis v. of Modena, who succeeded her, and Ferdinand, and two daughters, Theresa, who married Henry v.. King of France, and had no children, and Mary Beatrice, who married John of Spain, and was the mother of Don Carlos of Spain. Francis v. of Modena died childless in 1875. His brother Ferdinand was already dead, but he had left a daughter, the Archduchess Maria Theresa, Princess Louis of Bavaria, who is beyond all question the Heiress of Line of Anne of Brittany.
The second question is : Who is the Heir of Joan of Penthievre, wife of Charles of Blois ? In tracing out this one must necessarily proceed on strict genealogical lines. It came to much the same result in the case of the descend- ants of Anne, but since the House of Penthievre claimed on principles of descent like those of Britain, it is unquestionable that the ' male agnate ' theory cannot apply to them. They cannot have it both ways. But again it makes no difference. Guy of Penthievre, second son of Arthur ii., as we have seen, left a daughter, Joan, whose husband, Charles of Blois, disputed the Duchy with John of Montf ort, son of the third son of Arthur ii. She had two sons, John and Henry, and two daughters, Margaret and Mary. Henry died childless ; John succeeded to his mother, and died in 1403, leaving, besides daughters, four sons: Oliver, who died without issue in 1433 ; John, who died, also without issue, in 1454 ; Charles, who died in 1434, leaving one daughter; and William, who died in 1455 leaving three daughters. Thus ended the male line of Joan of Penthievre. Of the four great-grand- daughters, the heiress was Nicole, daughter of Charles. She married John of Brosse, and died in 1454, leaving a son, also John, and several daughters. This John died in 1502,
54 THE CELTIC REVIEW
leaving a son, Rene, and four daughters. The only son of Rene, John, died without issue in 1564, and Charlotte, daughter of Rene, who married Francis n. of Luxemburg, became his heiress. She had an elder son, Charles, who had died childless in 1553, and a second son, Sebastian, who died in 1569, leaving an only daughter, Mary, who married Philip of Lorraine, Duke of Mercoeur. Her daughter Frances married Caesar, Duke of Vend6me, natural son of Henry iv. Frances had two sons, both of whom died before her, Francis without issue in 1669 and Louis in 1668, and a daughter, Elizabeth. Louis had two sons, Louis Joseph, who died in 1712, and Philip, who died in 1719, both without issue. The daughter, Elizabeth, married Charles Amadeus of Savoy, Duke of Nemours, and left a daughter, Mary, who married Charles Emmanuel n., Duke of Savoy. Their son, Victor Amadeus ii., united in his own person the heirship of line of both Blois and Montfort, and from him the com- bined inheritance descended, as already detailed, to his present representative, the Archduchess Maria Theresa of Modena, consort of Prince Louis of Bavaria, who is beyond all question the Heiress of Line of Joan of Penthievre.
Thus it is that whether one holds by Blois or by Montfort, and whether one traces according to the ordinary rules of genealogy or admits the claims of proximate male agnates before female heirs, the result is the same, namely, that the Heiress of Line of the ancient Ducal House of Brittany can be no other than her Royal Highness Princess Maria Theresa of Modena, Princess Louis of Bavaria. Another Salaun might say, ' Mi azo da Vleiz ha da Vontfort ho daou ' [I am for both Blois and Montfort], and leave the rest of his sentence unchanged.
It is interesting to note that, going by genealogy, not by Acts of Settlement, the same exalted lady is also, through her descent from Charles i., as is well known. Heiress of Line of the House of Stuart, and therefore of Tudor and Planta- genet, of Rollo, of Alfred and Cerdic, and of the ancient Scottish and Pictish and perhaps Irish and British Royal
If-
THE MACNEILLS OF ARGYLLSHIRE 55
Houses. It is a wonderful pedigree that includes the heirship of all Celtia, with Saxondom and Normandy thrown in !
THE MACNEILLS OF ARGYLLSHIRE
Rev. a. Maclean Sinclair
GiLLEOiN NA TuAiGHE, progenitor of the Macleans, had three sons, Gilchrist or Cristin, GiUebride and Gillise. Gillemoire Maclean, a grandson of Gilleoin, and probably a son of Gilchrist, held lands in the county of Perth in 1296. As the district of Lorn belonged to the county of Perth in 1296, and as the Macleans had their early home in Lorn, it may be regarded as a fact that Gillemoire lived in Lorn. John Mac Molmari appears on record in 1354. He was one of the principal followers of Macdougall of Lorn and had a son old enough to be given as a hostage. As Molmairi or Maolmoire and Gillemoire are the same name, it is probable that the John who was to give his son as a hostage was the son of Gillemoire Maclean. At the same time it is possible that he was not a Maclean at all ; he may have been a Macdougall.
Gillise, youngest son of Gillean of the Battle-axe, settled in Kintyre. Malcolm, his son, appears there as a landlord in 1296. Malcolm married Reena, daughter of Donald, son of Eric Mac Kennedy, Lord of Carrick, and had by her Donald, Neil, and John Dubh. Lachlan Mor, progenitor of the Maclachlans, married a sister of Donald's wife and had by her Patrick, his successor. In the Skene MS. the name of Malcolm Maclean's father-in-law is given as Gamail, but Gamail is a misreading for Domnall.
Donald Maclean, eldest son of Malcolm, was married and had four children, Gillise or Malise, John, Beatrice, and Eifreta. Neil, the second son of Malcolm, was married and had two sons, Dermid and Malcolm. John Dubh, the third son of Malcolm, married, apparently, a daughter of
56 THE CELTIC REVIEW
Lachlan, son of Hector, son of Alexander of Loup, and had two sons by her, Lachlan Lubanach and Hector Reaganach, Lachlan Lubanach married in 1366 Mary, daughter of John, Lord of the Isles. As Mary and himself were third cousins, it was necessary for them to obtain from Rome a dispensation for their marriage.
The groundless statement has sometimes been made that Hector Reaganach of Lochbuie was an older son than Lachlan Lubanach of Duart. According to the Skene MS., which was compiled about 1383, John Dubh had two good sons, Lachlan and Hector. If Hector had been older than Lachlan the words of the MS. would certainly be — John Dubh had two good sons, Hector and Lachlan. As, how- ever, the MS. names Lachlan as the first son and Hector as the second son, it is of no use to fly in the face of it at the present day and declare that the writer of it was in error in making Lachlan older than Hector. Whilst, however, it is true that Lachlan was older than Hector, it is also true that neither of them had a particle of hereditary right to the chiefship of the Macleans. It was not right but might — the might of the Lord of the Isles — ^that gave to Lachlan the lands of Duart and placed him at the head of the Clan Gillean. It was the same might that gave the lands of Lochbuie to Hector Reaganach and made an important chieftain of him. The representative of the Gillemoire Maclean, who lived in Lorn in 1296, would be the hereditary chief of the Macleans. But as the Macleans of Lorn were followers of the Macdougalls, they could expect no favours from the Lords of the Isles. The two sons of Donald Maclean in Kintyre, and the two sons of Neil Maclean, Donald's brother, had a much better hereditary right to the chiefship of the Macleans than Lachlan Lubanach had, but as neither of them had the powerful Lord of the Isles for his father-in-law none of them could obtain the chiefship of the Macleans. Whilst, however, Lachlan Liibanach was indebted for his lands and chiefship to the fact that his wife was a daughter of the Lord of the Isles, it is tolerably certain
THE MACNEILLS OF ARGYLLSHIRE 57
9i
■ ^Triat, so far as intellect, worldly wisdom, and capacity for
i P business were concerned, he was the best qualified man
for the position of chief among the Macleans of his day.
It is possible that the descendants of Gillemoire Maclean made Morisons of themselves, and that the Morisons who, along with the Macinnises, carried the body of Hector Roy of Duart from Harlaw to lona, were really Macleans.
There is no connection between the Macneills of Argyll- shire and the Macneils of Barra. They are not descended from the same Neil, and are consequently two distinct clans. The Macneils of Barra were originally known as the Clan Gilladamnan. It was only about the year 1400 that they ■ began to call themselves Macneils. Gilladamnan or Gille- onan still exists among them as a personal name. The Macneills of Argyllshire had their earliest home in Kintyre, and are evidently descended from Neil, second son of Malcolm Maclean in Kintyre.
I. Neil, progenitor of the Macneills of Argyllshire, was born about the year 1305. He was appointed by King Robert Bruce, shortly after 1325, constable of the castle of Scraburg. We find it on record that he received in 1329 the sum of ten pounds in part payment for keeping the castle of Scraburg. It is certainly possible that there was a castle of that name in Scotland. At the same time, the probability is that Scraburg is a misreading for Cairnburg, Tarbert, or some other known stronghold.
II. Malcolm, son of Neil, was known as Calum Mac Neill, and was the first of the Argyllshire Macneills. He had a better hereditary right to the chiefship of the Macleans than his cousin Lachlan Lubanach, and consequently could have little or no inclination to follow Lachlan as his chief. By dropping the name Maclean and calling himself Macneill he could be the founder of a new clan ; he had a perfect right to call himself Malcolm Macneill, and he would exercise that right.
III. Neil, son of Malcolm, was probably known as Niall Og, and may have been constable of Castle Sween.
58 THE CELTIC EEVIEW
Indeed, Castle Sween or Sweenburg may have been the same place as Scraburg.
IV. Torquil, son of Neil, fought under Alexander, third Lord of the Isles, in the battle in which the latter was defeated in Lochaber by King James i. in 1429. Among the prisoners taken by the King were Alexander of the Isles, Lachlan Bronnach Maclean of Duart, Torquil Macneill, Terlach Maclean of Glenurchart, and Duncan Person, chief of the Macphersons. They were all closely related, except perhaps Duncan Person. They were confined in Tantallon Castle and kept there until October 1431. Torquil was captain of Castle Sween. He was also toiseachdoir of Knapdale, an office to which he had been appointed by the Lord of the Isles. He had two sons : Neil, his successor, and Hector, ancestor of the Macneills of Taynish.
V. Neil, eldest son of Torquil, received in 1455 from John, fourth Lord of the Isles, a charter of confirmation of the office of toiseachdoir of Knapdale. Hector, second son of Torquil, appears on record in 1463, and is described as Hector, son of Torquil, son of Neil. He appears again on record in 1472 and was then keeper of Castle Sween.
VI. Malcolm, son of Neil, witnessed a charter in 1472, and was at that time laird of Gigha. He witnessed another charter in 1492. He seems to have been the first Macneill who owned Gigha. He had, apparently, two sons, Neil and Torquil.
In 1476 John of the Isles was deprived of the lands of Knapdale and Kintyre. In 1478 Donald Gorm, Neil Macneill, and others were in possession of Castle Sween and refused to surrender it to the Government. In 1481 Castle Sween, together with certain lands in Knapdale, passed into the hands of Colin, first Earl of Argyll. Donald Gorm was probably a Macdonald, Neil Macneill was the son and successor of Hector Macneill, constable of Castle Sween in 1472. He was the subject of an elegy by Effric Nic Corquodale, who was a very good poetess. It is certainly possible that Effric was his second wife, but there
THE MACNEILLS OF ARGYLLSHIEE 59
is no ground for concluding that such was the case. The warm expressions of a poetess do not necessarily imply affection as a wife.
VII. Neil, son oi Malcolm, was slain, together with a number of his followers, in 1530, by Allan Maclean, the accomplished plunderer who was known as Ailein nan Sop. Allan seized the island of Gigha and kept possession of it during his life. The only way to dispossess him would be to catch him and put him to death. But as he was the best admiral in Scotland and had a strong fleet under his com- mand, and as his brother. Hector Mor of Duart, Macdonald of Islay, and the Earl of Argyll were on friendly terms with him, it would be both a difficult and hazardous matter to attempt to catch him. Shortly after he had made himself master of Gigha, he slew Maclean of Torloisk and seized his estate. He was then laird of both Gigha and Torloisk.
In January 1531 King James v. gave to Torquil Macneill, chief and principal of the clan and surname of Macneill, a gift of the rents and duties of all the lands that had belonged to Malcolm Macneill of Gigha until the entry of the lawful and right heir thereto. — Collectanea de Rebus Albanicis, p. 22. As Torquil had thus been appointed guardian to the heir of Neil Macneill, it is probable that he was a brother of Neil. The fact that he is styled chief and principal of the clan and surname of Macneill does not prove that he was chief of the Macneils of Barra ; it merely proves that he was chief of the Clan Neill of Gigha, or the Clan Neill in whose interest he was appointed guardian.
Neil of Gigha had two children — a lawful daughter named Annabell, and a natural son named Neil. Annabell inherited her father's lands, and, like a sensible and dutiful sister, made them over to her brother Neil, who was known as Neil Og.
VIII. Neil Og was laird of Gigha only in name. Although he had obtained a lawful claim to it from his sister it was of little or no value to him, as he could not obtain possession of it.
60 THE CELTIC REVIEW
In 1538 there was a feud between the Macalisters of Loup and the Maedonalds of Largie, on the one hand, and the Macneills on the other hand. Alexander Macalister of Loup and John and Archibald Macdonald of the Largie family slew Malcolm Macneill, John Macquarrie, and others, while Donald Balloch Macneill and his accomplices slew Finlay Carach Mac Dunsleibhe, Ewen Mac Lachlan, and others — all followers of the Macalisters of Loup or the Maedonalds of Largie. The Macalisters and the Maedonalds seem to have been the aggressors.
In July 1539 King James v. gave to Allan Maclean, Ailein nan Sop, a gift of the non-entry of Gigha, Camera voch, Tarbert, and other lands, for all the terms since the death of Malcolm Macneill, the last possessor thereof, and until the entry of the rightful heir. He appointed him at the same time toiseachdoir of all Kintyre from the Mull to Altasynach or AUt nan Sionnach. As Neil of Gigha had not been served heir to his father, Malcolm was the last person who was in legal possession of Gigha. In 1542 King James appointed Neil Og toiseachdoir of the same district in Kintyre over which he had appointed Ailean nan Sop in 1539. Allan died in 1551 and was succeeded by his son Hector. In 1552 Hector obtained a gift of the non-entry of Gigha and all the other lands that had been held by his father. As Neil Og could not possibly wrest his lands from Hector Maclean he sold them to James Macdonald of Islay, who received a charter of them from Queen Mary in April 1554. They consisted of the twenty pound lands of Gigha, sixteen mark lands of Kintyre, five mark lands in Islay, and eight mark lands in Knapdale. Neil Og died unmarried some time after 1566. In 1590 Angus Macdonald of Islay sold the island of Gigha for 3000 marks to Sir John Campbell of Calder.
The Macneills of Taynish
I. Hector, second son of Torquil, chief of the Clan Neill, was born probably about 1430. He witnessed a charter in
THE MACNEILLS OF ARGYLLSHIBE 61
^463, and is described as Hector, son of Torquil, son of Neil. In 1472 he was keeper of Castle Sween in Knapdale, and also laird of Taynish.
II. Neil, son of Hector, succeeded his father in Taynish. He was married and had three sons — Hector, Donald Balloch, and Malcolm.
In 1476 John, fourth Lord of the Isles, was deprived of the lands of Knapdale and Kintjrre. In 1478 Donald Gorm, Neil Macneill, and others were in possession of Castle Sween and would not surrender it to the Government. Donald Gorm was possibly a natural son of Donald Balloch Mac- donald. Neil Macneill, who was undoubtedly Macneill of Taynish, was probably married to a daughter of Donald Gorm. In 1481 Castle Sween, together with certain lands in Knapdale, passed into the hands of Colin, first Earl of Argyll. The connection of the MacneiUs with Castle Sween was now at an end.
The names of the third, fourth, and fifth MacneiUs of Taynish may have been Hector, Neil, and Hector, but what they really were I do not know.
VI. Neil Macneill of Taynish appears as a witness in 1603. Malcolm, his brother, and Hector, his son, appear as witnesses at the same time.
VII. Hector, son of Neil, was fiar of Taynish in 1603. He became a vassal of the Earl of Argyll in 1607. In 1620 we find him labouring with all earnestness to expel the Macleans from Jura, and to plant Campbells, or other loyal followers of the Earl of Argyll, in their place. He was in possession of the island of Gigha in 1626.
The Macneills of Gallochallie
I. Donald Balloch, son of Neil second of Taynish, was the progenitor of the Macneills of Gallochallie.
In 1538 the Macalisters of Loup and the Macdonalds of Largie slew Malcolm MacneiU, John Macquarrie, and others. In the same year, or perhaps early in 1539, Donald Balloch
62 THE CELTIC EEVIEW
Macneill slew a number of the followers of the Macdonalds of Largie. It is probable that Malcolm Macneill was a brother of Donald Balloch and that he lived in Kintyre.
II. Hector, son of Donald Balloch, had two sons, John Balloch and Hector Boydach.
III. John Balloch had at least one son, John Og.
IV. John Og had two sons : Donald, who succeeded him in GallochalHe, and Malcolm Beg of Arichonan.
V. Donald was succeeded by his son, whose name was probably John.
VII. Donald, son of the son of Donald, was a strong Jacobite, as the following extracts show :
' Carnassary Castle belonged to Sir Duncan Campbell of Achinbreck, who joined the Earl of Argyll in support of the Duke of Monmouth in 1685. After the defeat of Argyll Lachlan Maclean of Torloisk, Lachlan Maclean of Coll, Maclean of Ardgour, Maclean of Kinlochaline, Maclean of Lochbuie, Donald Macneill of Callochallie, Archibald Mac- lachlanof Craigentarve and Maceachern in Kintyre captured, plundered and burnt the castle of Carnassarie.' — Statistical Account of the Parish of Kilmartin.
' Sir John of Duart, understanding that his friend and neighbour, Macneill of Calachailie, was surrounded by some English men-of-war at the Island of Gighalum, sent a de- tachment of men under the command of Sir Alexander Maclean, who brought off Calachailie safe, with the loss of only one man's arm shot off by a cannon ball.' — Ardgour Manuscript, page 44.
The Macneills of Colonsay
I. Malcolm Beg, son of John Og of Callochallie, was noted for his strength, activity, and determination.
II. Neil Og, only son of Malcolm Beg, had three sons : Malcolm of Arichonan, who died young ; John, who succeeded his brother in Arichonan, and Donald of Crerar and Drumdrishaig.
i
THE MACNEILLS OF AEGYLLSHIRE 63
III. Donald of Crerar exchanged his lands with the Duke of Argyll, in 1700, for Colonsay and Oronsay. He married Mary, daughter of Lachlan Macneill of Tirfergus, and had Malcolm hi's successor.
IV. Malcolm, second of Colonsay, married Barbara, daughter of Campbell of Dunstaffnage, and had two sons, Donald of Colonsay and Alexander of Oronsay. Donald of Colonsay acquired the estate of Ardlussa in Jura. He was succeeded in his possessions by Archibald his son.
V. Alexander of Oronsay married Mary, daughter of Alexander Macdougall, chief of the Clan Dougall, and had by her John, Malcolm, James, Donald, Alexander, and Archibald.
VI. John, eldest son of Alexander, was born in 1767. He succeeded his father in Oronsay, and purchased Colonsay and Ardlussa from his cousin Archibald, son of Donald. He married Hester, daughter of Duncan Macneill of Dun- more, and had by her Alexander, Duncan, John, Malcolm, Archibald, and Forbes — all of whom knew Gaelic as well as English. Alexander succeeded his father in Colonsay ; Duncan, who was born in 1795, was one of the clearest- headed lawyers that Scotland has ever produced. He was raised to the Bench, as Lord Colonsay, in 1851, and ap- pointed President of the Court of Session in 1852. He died unmarried in 1874. John won distinction as a diplomatist, Malcolm was a lieutenant-colonel in the Army, Archibald was a Writer to the Signet, and Forbes a merchant in London.
VII. Alexander of Colonsay purchased the island of Gigha in 1836. He was drowned in the steamer Orion in 1850. He left four sons: John Carstairs, born in 1831, Alexander, Duncan, and Malcolm.
The Macneills of Carskeay
In 1594 Hector Macneill of Carskeay; Donald Dubh Macneill, son of Ewen ; Lachlan Mor Macneill ; John, son of
64 THE CELTIC EEVIEW
Hector Macneill ; and John, son of Malcolm Macneill, gave a bond of manrent to James Macdonald, son and heir of Angus of Islay. In 1618 Hector of Carskeay was placed in charge of the castle of Kilkerran.
The Macneills of Tirfergus Among the witnesses to the bond of manrent given in 1594 by the Macneills of Carskeay to James Macdonald were the following persons : Neil Buie Macneill, Tormod Macneill, and Donald Maddir Macneill ; Neil Buie was the representative of the Macneills of Tirfergus, and was succeeded by his son Lachlan. Tormod Macneill and Donald Maddir Macneill were relatives of Neil Buie.
THE DYING BARD
How long before the night gives way to day 1 How long before these glowing embers die away ?
Like this poor fire, that, all but spent,
Flickers and fades again ; so old and bent, I know that I must die. An hour is left : then when away across the sky
The great black clouds have rolled,
The morn will see me cold.
One hour before the paling day has broke ! One hour before these smould'ring embers cease to smoke ! Come, Harp, and in the last red glow. The melancholy harmonies shall flow ; For when the night is dead No elegy will sound to mourn this snowy head. No one is left behind To moan, except the wind.
So let thy voice, joined with my parting breath, Tell of the tragic majesty of Death.
With tragic chords the heavy Hand of Fate Strikes the sobbing Lyre of Life — too late My weary spirit seems To wake again ; too late there rise those idle dreams The harmonies recall Of Love, the greatest tragedy of all.
WHITLEY STOKES 65
Farewell, my loveless life, my lifeless love ! The daylight grows, the world begins to move. Farewell, 0 Harp : now we have hurled Our great death-chords across the world, 'Twere best thou never ring To lesser hand ; with mine I snap the string And throw the broken lyre To smoulder on the fire.
H. Priestley Smith.
WHITLEY STOKES
Richard Henebry
Death has been sadly decimating the little rank of Keltic scholars of late years. Count Nigra of Italy passed away almost with Dr. Ascoli of Milan and Dr. Bugge of Christiania. Then a thrill of sorrow passed over the learned world at the totally unexpected announcement that John Strachan of the Victoria University, Manchester, had been cut down in his prime, to be renewed all too soon by the mournful news that added the name of Whitley Stokes to the tally of the lamented dead. I wish to write this short notice of the life and labours of Stokes as a tribute to the pure friendship that joined us for nigh twenty years and in some slight discharge of the many obligations I owe him.
Whitley Stokes, C.S.I., CLE., D.C.L., LL.D., Honorary Member of the German Oriental Society, and Foreign Associate of the Institute of France, who died in London the 13th of April of the present year, was born in Dublin in 1830. He was of Protestant and English stock, but of a family that, like many others, threw in their lot with the people amongst whom they lived, and are tenderly revered in Irish memory for their emulation of the practice of the early Norman settlers in becoming ipsis Hihernis Hiberniores, The first of his name to come to Ireland was Gabriel Stokes, who is on record as having been an Engineer and Deputy Surveyor in 1735. His son, Gabriel Stokes, D.D., was a distinguished
VOL. VI. E
66 THE CELTIC REVIEW
churchman in Ireland, being a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, Prebendary of Elphin, Chancellor of Waterford and Rector of Desertmartin in the Diocese of Derry. His son, Whitley Stokes the elder, was born in 1763 and became a Fellow of Trinity in his twenty-fifth year. He was a man of sterling probity and rectitude, who was forced into rebellion through witnessing the iniquitous governmental methods of his day. Upon a visitation of Trinity by Lord Clare in 1798 he was convicted of complicity in the revolutionary movement of the United Irishmen and suffered suspension from the exercise of all College functions for a period of three years. He was an intimate friend and associate of Wolfe Tone, and the latter often refers to him in his cele- brated Diary in terms of the deepest respect. He regarded Stokes as ' the fitting head of a system of National Educa- tion ' in case Ireland should succeed in recovering her independence. Under date 1790 he mentions ' Whitley Stokes, a Fellow of Trinity College, a man the extent and variety of whose knowledge is only to be exceeded by the number and intensity of his virtues.' He says further of him, ' With regard to Whitley Stokes, his political opinions approach nearer to mine than those of either Knox or Burrowes. I mention this, for in these days of unbounded discussion politics unfortunately enter into everything, even into our private friendships. We, however, differ on many material points, and we differ on principles which do honour to Stokes's heart. With an acute feeling of the degradation of his country, and a just and generous indigna- tion against her oppressors, the tenderness and humanity of his disposition is such that he recoils from any measures to be attempted for her emancipation which may terminate in blood ; in this respect I have not the virtue to imitate him. I must observe that, with this, perhaps extraordinary, anxiety for the lives of others, I am sure in any cause which satisfied his conscience, no man would be more prodigal of his own life than Whitley Stokes, for he is an enthusiast in his nature, but " what he would highly that would he
i
WHITLEY STOKES ^7
holily," and I am afraid that in the present state of affairs that is a thing impossible. I love Stokes most sincerely. With a most excellent and highly-cultivated mind, he possesses the distinguishing characteristic of the best and most feeling heart, and I am sure it will not hurt the self-love of any of the friends whose names I have recorded, when I say that in the full force of the phrase I look upon Whitley Stokes as the very best man I have ever known.' He also says of him in recording the incidents of a journey to Belfast, ' Stokes returned from Scotland. Had a narrow escape of being drowned, the ship he came in being wrecked on the northern coast. A million of pities if it had been so. Stokes is one of the best heads and hearts that I know, and a man whom I regard as much as any other living.' This Whitley Stokes died in 1845.
His son was WiUiam Stokes, M.D. In his profession he was regarded by Sir George Edward Paget as the most distinguished physician at the time in Europe. His statue by Foley may be seen in the Hall of the College of Physicians, DubUn. He graduated in Edinburgh in 1825, and was elected physician to the Meath Hospital. In 1843 he was appointed Regius Professor of Medicine at Trinity College. He enjoyed an extensive practice, and wrote a valuable treatise on diseases of the heart that still finds a place in the libraries of medical men. The name of the terrible symptom called ' Cheyne-Stokes breathing ' is a testimony to his success in pioneer research work. But though celebrated as a physician he is chiefly remembered now for his interest in Irish Antiquities, Music and Language, and for his enthusi- astic patronage of those and kindred studies. While residing in York Street, Dublin, and later in Merrion Square, his house became on Saturday nights the salon for all that was intellectual and cultured in the city. O' Donovan, O' Curry, the Fergusons, Todd, Burton and Petrie were regular visitors and found there, and there only, an environ- ment congenial to their tastes and studies. Petrie, the veteran artist, antiquary and musician, was a special friend.
68 THE CELTIC EEVIEW
Dr. William Stokes sometimes led his friends upon archaeo- logical and scientific excursions into the Irish districts of Ireland, going as far afield once as to the Isles of Aran on the western coast. In his book, The Life and Labours in Art and Archceology of George Peirie, which he wrote in 1866-7, he gives a vivid description of a music collecting scene in a western island cottage. Petrie hastily sketched the air from the singer and afterwards reproduced it on the fiddle. He was accustomed to play such airs at the meet- ings in Dublin seated in a dark corner of the room with his face to the wall. I happened to play some Irish airs and a few reels for Whitley Stokes at Camberley in Surrey on the occasion of a visit to him some time ago, and he paid me the compliment of saying that he had not heard the fiddle speak with that voice since he last heard Petrie play in his father's house fifty years before. Foreigners who wished to see what was best and most enlightened in Dublin naturally found their way to York Street. In the journal of his visit to Ireland Thomas Carlyle describes a dinner-party to which he was invited there, and gives some account of the com- pany. He makes mention of Whitley Stokes as a young man who carved. This used to be afterwards laughingly characterised by Dr. Stokes as a slight misstatement, because it happened that carving was just the accomplish- ment he could never lay claim to. Unfortunately, Carlyle was displeased with his visit to Ireland, and the description of what he saw is conceived in a petulant key. And considering that he had eaten salt upon the occasion, his bad temper seems but a poor excuse for bad manners. See the place referred to in his collected works.
Thus did Dr. William Stokes and his band of savants, by constant, earnest and rationally directed labour, make the first beginnings of a work that has nowadays assumed national proportions. It must be remembered, too, that they wrought in an age when their efforts were not appreci- ated, and had to await recognition from a generation at the time unborn. Even those who shared in their tastes were
WHITLEY STOKES -^
opposed to them. For that was the period of bogus Philology and Archaeology, when persons wrote laboured works in Dublin iru support of the thesis that Gaelic was spoken by Adam, or that the Round Towers were of Oriental origin and dated from prehistoric times. Stokes and his school insisted, on the other hand, that theory must not precede but follow on a calm discussion of ascertained facts, historical, linguistic and archaeological. An examination of Petrie's celebrated ' Essay on the origin and uses of the Round Towers ' will reveal for us the scientific temper with which he and his associates were imbued, while the outcry raised against that epoch-making book will give us the battle march of the misguided hosts that were leagued against them. It is impossible to calculate the total influ- ence of Dr. William Stokes upon the movement that is now reinspiring Ireland. His influence reached even myself. For my father, having occasion to consult him when I was very young, was eagerly questioned if he spoke Irish and whether he used it habitually in the family. Upon his answering both questions in the affirmative. Dr. Stokes thanked him with a heartiness that he never forgot. That happened at a time when nobody dreamt of suggesting that Irish should be preserved as a spoken tongue. The children on our farm and those next door learned to speak Irish, whereas not one single child reared on any of the surrounding farms can either speak or understand it. In after years when helping Whitley Stokes to interpret many a difficult passage in Middle Irish texts he never suspected that the seed of the knowledge which I displayed was sown when his father once spoke a kindly and thoughtful word in his office in Dublin.
Whitley Stokes, the subject of my paper, was a son of Dr. William Stokes. It is easy to understand how he, having been born into such surroundings and brought up in them, should have his tastes fixed for him at an early period in life. Very probably the little boy who heard O'Donovan jocosely lampoon 0' Curry in bad poetry for a
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style of translation that carefully concealed ignorance even if it failed to retain the sense, never thought that he should one day have a deeper knowledge of Irish lore than either of them, and be able kindly to indulge the mistakes of both. He was born in 1830, as already stated, and studied in Trinity College, Dublin,where he gained high honours in Mathematics. It is remarkable that a man who was destined to become one of the foremost of modern philologists should have been subjected for so long to a strenuous course of exclusively legal training. It is certain that he owed his great philo- logical knowledge to the very same cause to which I refer whatever little modicum of skill I possess in that science, viz. an interest in Irish. He brought his love for Irish from his father's household, and he continued to cherish the study of it during all the years of his professional course. He was called to the English Bar in 1855, having studied with such gi:eat jurists as H. M. Cairns, T. Chitty and A. Cay ley. From that year until 1862 he practised as an equity draughtsman and conveyancer, publishing during the period a work on the Liens of Legal Practitioners, and another on Powers of Attorney, In the latter year he went to India and became a member of the Madras Bar. Thence- forward his promotion in his profession was very rapid. He was reporter to the High Court at Madras and Act- ing Administrator-General in 1863-64, Secretary to the Governor-General's Legislative Council and to the Govern- ment of India in the Legislative Department from 1865 to 1867, and Law Member of the Governor-General's Council from 1877 to 1882. He was also President of the Indian Law Commission in 1879. His skill as a draughtsman of legal enactments was noticed very early in his Indian career, and from beginnings then made he continued for many years until he had performed the truly herculean task of draughting and codifying practically the whole of the codes of civil and criminal procedure at present in use. Those include many Indian Consolidation Acts and the legal texts dealing with transfer of property, trusts, easements, specific
WHITLEY STOKES 71
^nef, and limitation. In the meantime he issued several works deaUng with Indian legal subjects, including The Indian Succession Acts, The Indian Companies Acts, The Anglo-Indian Codes, and The Older Statutes in Force in India, Proof of his activity in Keltic scholarship at the same time is afforded by the publication of his works, Ooidelica in Calcutta in 1866 ; Middle Breton Hours, Calcutta, 1876 ; Three Middle-Irish Homilies, Calcutta, 1877 ; and Togail Troi, Calcutta, 1881. His care for Indian classics is shown also by a scheme which he devised for discovering, collecting, cataloguing, and preserving Sanskrit manuscripts. In 1882 he returned home and lived sometimes in London and sometimes in Camberley, with occasional visits to Dublin for research work amidst the great manuscript collections there, and some winterings in the south of France. Being entirely free from legal cares he devoted himself almost exclusively to the science of Keltics. In that domain his patient industry, his energy and his genius are without parallel. He published books, he filled all the learned journals appertaining to his study, and wrote numerous articles in popular publications, such as the Saturday Review, The Academy, and Fraser's Magazine. In truth his loss means that many of the scientific Keltic journals must make their appearance in a very emaciated and anaemic condition until some one or more than one are found to take his place. His interests embraced not only the philological, the grammatical and the literary aspects of his study, and he was foremost in each of those, but extended also into the cognate realms of Religion, Medicine, Law, Folk- lore and Anthropology. The apparatus criticus of Intro- duction, Notes, Glossary and Indices with which his works are edited display a marvellous acquaintance with little- known sources, and a truly encyclopaedic knowledge of contemporary sciences. The wonder is that one man could find time to read and write so much. Indeed, it is entirely owing to his industry that we can nowadays enjoy a sectional view of Middle Irish literature without being under the
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necessity of grubbing it laboriously from MSS. and fac- similes, and of course the aids to an understanding of texts afforded by his translations, notes and glossarial matter are priceless. If the results of his labours are excluded, then there remains but very little Irish accessible to ordinary readers. In editing and translation he always aimed at rigid scientific accuracy. His translations are in a peculiarly limpid, pliable and nervous English style that was all his own, and that one could see reflected a great deal of the pure white classic glow of his originals. His knowledge of Middle English enabled him often to find an equivalent for an Irish term that is wanting in modern English. In such cases he never scrupled to use the obsolete word. This fact and an acquaintance with the idiom and tune of Middle English helped to contribute a savour of archaism that blent with his style and added to it some of the charm of the olden times when English was written in words and not in phrases. I once accused him in fun of being the heresiarch of the Keltic Note, for the sectaries of that cult, having been started by Arnold, had perforce to turn to the beautiful translations of Stokes as the only Keltic intellectual pabulum accessible to them, for they themselves knew no Keltic language. He admitted I was right, and added it was highly curious how they had evolved a style and spirit from the material that was diametrically opposed to Kelticism. For whereas they were all befogged, and lived by preference in the loneliness of twilight bogs, seeing for ever that which was purposely indefinite on a flitting grey background, Irish literature (now, with the possible exception of a small quantity of early Welsh poetry, the only reflex of Keltic thought and feeling) is strong, manly, purposeful, sharply defined in outline, frankly realistic and pitiless in logic. He said that the modem French style was not more accurate, more orderly, or of clearer definition than Irish prose. In editing texts he always consistently relegated scribal errors and palpably wrong forms to a footnote, and substituted the correct form in the text. Some objected to that procedure
WHITLEY STOKES 73
as interfering with the exact rendering of the MS. But the MS. reading was always given at the bottom of the page, and furthermore Stokes's system, besides giving the MS. text, presented in addition a critical emendation of errors. The opposite practice of putting the corrected form in a foot- note and leaving the MS. reading stand is the more usual. However, that is a matter of very trivial moment.
Of slightly graver significance is a charge that has been pretty generally alluded to in the newspaper notices of Stokes's death, viz. that he was over-trenchant and scathing in literary controversy. If in that article he exhibited a little of the perfervidum genus Scottorum it must be admitted that he got as good as he gave, and often from those who had no racial excuse for a choleric temperament. Perhaps Keltists generally have shown more anger and jealousy than persons engaged in other studies. The fact is they are known to each other mostly through their writings and not personally. And it is a well-known fact that many men give but a poor presentment of their intimate person- alities in their published works, especially when it is con- sidered that those are not always formally of an auto- biographical nature. Stokes's controversies were chiefly, if not entirely, concerned with Dr. B. McCarthy, a priest of the Diocese of Cloyne, with Professor Atkinson of Dublin, both now deceased, and with Professor H. Zimmer, at present Professor of Keltic Languages in the University of Berlin. I knew all of those, with the exception of Professor Atkinson, and so far as I could see they did not succeed in externating their individualities in prose treatises that dealt mostly with questions of Irish Grammar and Philology. Stokes's pure and classic style, with his ever-rigid exactness, con- jured up an imaginary vision of a very thin man, greatly stooped in the shoulders, with a very aquiline nose, piercing eyes, and a corrugated brow. What a surprise to those who met him in the flesh for the first time, with his well-over six feet of portly humanity, straight as a whip, with his broad shoulders, his fine face and Napoleon beard, with his un-
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furrowed brow, and his kindly, laughing eye as he discoursed of the humours of great men in Dublin long ago, or recounted jokes from the Indian jungle, or incidents from the Tain ho Cvxdnge made whimsical by modern contrasts, or shook his sides in laughter at some folly or foible of some one or other of the whole of us. And withal he was gentle-mannered as a child and kindly with the considerateness of the true gentleman. Or take Zimmer. Once during a week in Harvard, where I was the guest of Fred N. Robinson, the Professors there showed a great interest in Zimmer, and in me as a past pupil of his. I said he was the mildest- mannered man I ever knew. Some one remarked that his idea of him was as the Royal Tiger of Greifswald, the path- way to whose den was strewn with the bones of his enemies. ' Why,' said I, hurling a terrible secret upon an innocent and totally unprepared audience, ' Zimmer wears Dundreary whiskers ! ' And I then explained that he had the brain of an angel, the simplicity of a child, and the hospitality of King Guaire of Connaught. Or Thurneysen. Who never says a word too much, who is always exact, always right, always as hard and impassive as blue steel, but whom I grieve to have to report as an abandoned joker. How his laugh used to resound in the Schlossberg over Freiburg, or in the deeps of the Schwartzwald, or again those nights at his house when we used to begin to read in the Wilrzhurg Glosses with the most exemplary of intentions, but finding something at the start which we were foolishly pleased to regard as funny, we lost aU grip of our faces and gave way to the most unseemly laughter until the bell rang for supper. As a matter of fact the great want amongst Keltic scholars is an annual congress to be held, say, in New York City (for American colleges are bringing the Keltic centre of gravity every day further to the west), at which they could see and learn to know each other, and plan work and apportion its performance in an organised and orderly manner. The relations between individual workers would be all the easier and it would conduce to the noteworthy gain of Keltic letters.
WHITLEY STOKES 75
But though mighty in debate Whitley Stokes never harboured resentment. There was an ancient literary feud between him and Zimmer, the exact rights of which I never knew. In the spring of 1898 Dr. Zimmer was stricken by a very dangerous illness, and lay for about ten days in a highly serious condition. I was his pupil at the time in Greif swald, and being very much attached to such a kind and generous master, I visited his sick chamber every day. Meantime I kept some Keltist friends in various countries daily informed of the progress of his malady. I remember receiving, practically every day, a letter from Whitley Stokes full of the kindest inquiries and the tenderest solicitude for Zimmer. Those I used to read at the bedside. I think Zimmer and Stokes never met. I make no doubt they would have been great friends — both men of single motives, both gentle souls adverse to the causing of pain, and with minds endowed beyond what is given to common men.
I shall set down here a list of the principal works of Whitley Stokes. This list I owe to the kindness of his daughter. Miss A. M. Stokes. There is no account taken here of the more occasional pieces contributed to publica- tions of an ephemeral kind, as their exhaustive inclusion would need a very long and trying search out of proportion to the requirements of the present paper. The first issue of this magazine contained a paper by Whitley Stokes on * Ancient Irish Riddles,' and probably the last article he contributed to any periodical was that which appeared in the April number of The Celtic Review,
List of Philological Publications
1860. Irish Glosses. Published by the Irish Archaeological and Celtic Society. 1862. Three Irish Glossaries. London, Williams & Norgate. 1862. The Middle-English Play of the Sacrament. Published by Ascher & Company, Berlin, for the Philological Society.
1862. The Passion. A Middle-Cornish poem. Ascher & Company, for the
Philological Society.
1863. The Creation of the World. A Cornish Mystery.
1877. Three Middle-Irish Homilies. Calcutta. (Dated 1871 in Wlio's Who.)
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1872. (Joidelioa (2nd Edition). London, Triibner & Company. 1st Edition,
Calcutta, 1866. 1872. The Life of Saint Meriasek. A Cornish Drama. London, Triibner
& Company. 1876. Middle-Breton Hours. Calcutta.
1880. The Calendar of Oengus. Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy.
1881. Togail Troi. Calcutta.
1883. Saltair na Rann. Anecdota Oxoniensa, Clarendon Press.
1887. The Tripartite Life of St. Patrick. Master of the Rolls Series,
London. 1887. The Old-Irish Glosses at Wiirzburg and Carlsruhe. The Philological
Society. 1890. Lives of Saints from the Book of Lismore. Anecdota Oxoniensa.
Clarendon Press.
1894. Urkeltischer Sprachschatz (in collaboration with Prof. Bezzenberger),
Gottingen.
1895. The Martyrology of Gorman. London, Henry Bradshaw Society.
1896. The Rennes Dindsenchus. Revue Celtique, xvi.
1897. The Annals of Tigernach. Revue Celtique, xvi.-xvill.
1898. The Gaelic Marco Polo, Maundeville and Fierabras. Zeitschrift f.
Celt. Phil. I., II., and Revue Celtique, xix.
1899. The Eulogy of St. Columba. Revue Celtique, XX. 1901. Da Derga's Hostel. Revue Celtique, xxii,
1905. The Martyrology of Oengus. London, Henry Bradshaw Society. 1909. In Cath Catharda (not yet published). Irische Texte, Leipzig.
Papers in Beitrage zur vergl. Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete DER Arischen, Celtischen und Slavischen Sprachen. Kuhn u. Schleicher, 8 vols., Berlin, 1858-1876
Vol. I. Bemerkungen iiber die irische Declination. W. S. (dated Merrion
Square, Dublin, October 24th, 1857). Vol. IL (1) Gallische Inschriften. W. S., March 1859.
(2) Die Endung der 1 pers. sg. praes. indie, act. in neu-irischen.
W. S., March 1859.
(3) Zur vergleichenden Syntax. 1860.
Vol. III. (1) Bemerkungen iiber das altirische verbum. 1860.
(2) Ueber die Inschrift Todi. 1860.
(3) Cornisches, 1861.
Vol. IV. Die Glossen und Verse in dem Codex des Juvencus zu Cambridge.
1864. Vol. v. Die Mittelbretonischen unregelmassigen Verba. 1866. Vol. vl (1) Miscelanea Celtica von dem verstorbenen R. T. Siegfried. W. S.
(2) Endliches Glossar. 1867.
(3) Das Altirische Verbum.
WHITLEY STOKES 11
'oL. VII. (1) Das Altirische Verbum.
(2) Der Accusativ pluralis in den britischen Sprachen. 1869.
(3) The Old- Welsh Glosses on Martianus Capella.
(4) The Old- Welsh Glosses on Juvencus, 1872.
(5) Zum keltischen Passivum. 1872.
Vol. VIII. (1) On the Celtic Additions to Curtius' Greek Mythology. 1874.
Papers in Bezzenberger Beitrage zur Kunde der Indogermanischen Sprachen
Vol. XI. 1886. Celtic Declension.
Vol. XVI. 1890. On Professor Atkinson's Edition of the Passions and
Homilies in the Lebar Brecc. Vol. XVII. 1891. Glosses from Turin and Eome. Vol. XVIII. 1892. On the Linguistic Value of the Irish Annals. Vol. XIX. 1893. On the Metrical Glossaries of the Mediaeval Irish. Vol. XXI. 1896. Celtic Etymologies. Vol. XXIII. 1897. Celtic Etymologies. Vol. XXV. 1899. Fifty Irish Etymologies. Vol. XXIX. 1905. Celtica.
Papers in Zeitschrift fur Vergleichende Sprachforschung, ed. by A. Kuhn
VoK XXXVI. 1883. The Breton Glosses at Orleans. The Irish Passages in the Stowe Missal (both printed privately originally in Calcutta, 1880).
Vol. XXVIII. 1887. The Old- Irish Verb-substantive.
Vol. XXIX. 1888. Irish Glosses and Notes on Chalcidius. Irish stems in S.
Vol. XXX. 1890. The Old-Irish Glosses in Regina, 215.
Vol. XXXI. 1892. Hibernica.
Vol. XXXIII. 1895. Hibernica, viii. ix. x.
Old Irish Glosses on the Bucolics.
Vol. XXXV. 1899. Hibernica, xi.-xiv.
Vol. XXXVI. 1900. Hibernica, xviii.-xxiii.
Vol. XXXVII. 1904. Hibernica, xxiv.-xxvi.
Vol. XXXVIII. 1905. Hibernica, xxvii.
Vol. XXXIX. 1906. Hibernica, xxviii.
Vol. XL. 1907. Irish Etymologies.
Vol. xli. 1907. Irish Etyma.
Papers in Indogermanischen Forschungen
Vol. II. On the assimilation of pretonic N in Celtic suffixes. Vol. XII. Irish Etymologies. Vol. XXII. S-presents in Irish.
78 THE CELTIC REVIEW
Papers in Folk-Lork
Vol. III. The Bodleian Dinnsenchas. Vol. IV. The Edinburgh Dinnsenchas.
Papers in the Revue Celtique Vol. I. 1870-72.
(1) Mythological Notes.
(2) The Manumissions in the Bodmin Gospels.
(3) Le Catholicon de J. Lagaduc. Vol. II. 1873-75.
(1) Mythological Notes.
(2) A Middle-Irish Homily on St. Martin of Tours.
(3) The Klosterneuberg Incantation.
(4) A conjectural emendation of Pliny.
(5) The Ancient Irish Goddess of War. Vol. in. 1876-78.
(1) On the Celtic comparisons in Bopp's Comparative Grammar.
(2) Cuchulainn's Death abridged from the Book of Leinster.
(3) On the Gaelic Names in the Landanamabok and Runic
Inscriptions.
(4) Cornica.
(5) A parallel.
(6) Leabhar Breac.
(7) Review of O'Curry's book On the Manners and Customs of
the Ancient Irish. Vol. IV. 1879-80.
(1) Tidings of Doomsday.
(2) Cornica.
(3) Old Breton Glosses. Vol. v. 1881-83.
(1) On the Calendar of Oengus.
(2) Four new Gaulish Inscriptions.
(3) Irish Folklore.
(4) Another parallel. Vol. vl 1883-85.
(1) On the Metre Rinnard and the Calendar of Oengus as
illustrating the Irish Verbal Accent.
(2) Criticism of Atkinson's Lecture on Irish Metric.
(3) Remarks on Mr. Fitzgerald's Early Celtic History and
Mythology.
(4) Extracts from the Franciscan Liber Hymnorum.
(5) Mythological Notes. Vol. vn. 1886.
(1) Find and the Phantoms.
(2) Early Middle Irish Glosses.
WHITLEY STOKES 79
'oi" vm. 1887.
(1) The Siege of Howth.
(2) The Irish Verses, Notes, and Glosses in Harl. 1802. 'Vol. IX. 1888.
(1) The Voyage of Snedguss and Mac Riagla.
(2) On the Materia-Medica of the Mediaeval Irish.
(3) The Voyage of Maelduin.
(4) Zimmeriana.
(5) Corrections of a recent edition of the Wiirzburg Glosses.
(6) Note on the personal appearance and death of Christ, His
Apostles, and other
(7) Notes on the Wiirzburg Glosses. Vol. X. 1889.
The Voyage of Maelduin. Vol. XL 1890.
A Note about Fiacha Muillethan. Vol. xil 1891.
(1) The second battle of Moytura.
(2) Life of St. Fechin of Fore.
(3) Adamnan's second Vision. Vol. xiil 1892.
(1) The Boroma.
(2) The Battle of Mag Mucrime. Vol. XIV.
(1) The Voyage of the Hui Corra.
(2) Old Irish Glosses on the Bucolics from a MS. in the Bibl.
National.
(3) The violent deaths of GoU and Garb. Vol. XV. 1894.
The Prose Tales in the Rennes Dindsenchas. Vol. XVI.
(1) The Prose Tales in the Rennes Dindsenchas.
(2) The Annals of Tigernach. Vol. XVII.
The Annals of Tigernach. Vol. XVIII.
(1) The Annals of Tigernach.
(2) On the Dublin edition of the Annals of Ulster.
(3) The Dublin fragments of Tigernach's Annals. Vol. XIX. 1898.
The Irish Version of Fierabras. Vol. XX. 1899.
The Bodleian Amra Choluimb chille. Vol. XXI. 1900.
(1) The Bodleian Amra Choluimb chille.
(2) Da Choca's Hostel.
80 THE CELTIC REVIEW
Vol, XXII. 1901.
The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel. Vol. xxin. 1902.
(1) Notes on the Martyrology of Oengus.
(2) On the death of some Irish Heroes.
(3) The death of Muirchertach mac Erca. Vol. xxiv. 1903.
(1) The Battle of Allen.
(2) The death of Crimthann son of Fidach and the adventure of
the sons of Eochaid Muigmedon.
(3) The wooing of Luaine and death of Atherne.
(4) On Dr. Atkinson's Glossary to Vols. I. and v. of the Ancient
Laws Ireland. Vol. XXV. 1904.
(1) The Songs of Buchet's House.
(2) Tidings of the Resurrection.
(3) The Life of Fursa. Vol. xxvi. 1905.
(1) The Colloquy of the two Sages.
(2) The Adventure of St. Columba's Clerics.
(3) Three Legends from the Brussels MS. 5100-4. Vol. XXVII. 1906.
(1) Irish Etymologies.
(2) The Birth and Life of St. Moling. Vol. xxviii. 1907.
(1) Notes on the Birth and Life of St. Moling.
(2) The Fifteen Tokens of Doomsday. Vol. XXIX. 1908.
(1) The Training of Cuchulainn.
(2) Old Irish Glosses at Laon.
(3) Addenda and Corrigenda.
Papers in the Zeitschrift fur Celtische Philologie
Vol. i. 1897.
(1) A Celtic Leechbook.
(2) Cuimmin's Poem on the Saints of Ireland.
(3) The Gaelic abridgement of Ser Marco Polo. Vol. II. 1899.
(1) The Gaelic Maundeville.
(2) Notes on the St. Gallen Glosses. Vol. in. 1901.
(1) The destruction of Dind Rig.
(2) A list of ancient Irish Authors.
(3) The Battle of Cam Conaill.
WHITLEY STOKES 81
(4) Amra Senain.
(5) Irish Etymologies.
(6) On a passage in Cath Cairn Chonaill. 'OL. IV. 1903.
On the Copenhagen fragments of the Brehon Laws. Vol. VI. 1908.
Notes on the 2nd edition of the Martyrology of Oengus, London, 1905.
Papers in the Archiv fur Celtische Lexikographie
Vol. I. 1900.
(1) A list of Welsh Plantnames.
(2) The Lecan Glossary.
(3) A Glossary to the Cornish Drama Bennan and Meriasek.
(4) A Collation of the Cartulary of QuimperleN
(5) A Collation of Norris' Ancient Cornish Drama.
(6) O'Mulconry's Glossary.
(7) Three Irish Medical Glossaries.
(8) A Collation of the second edition of O'Clery's Irish Glossary.
(9) Suum cuique. Vol. il 1904.
(1) A Collation of Skene's edition of the Book of Aneurin.
(2) O'Davoren's Glossary. Vol. m. 1907.
(1) Glossed extracts from the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick.
(2) The Glossary in Egerton 158.
(3) Note on the Glossary in Egerton 158.
(4) The Stowe Glossaries.
(5) Notes on the Glossary in Egerton 158 Archiv iii. 145-214,
Papers in Eriu Vol. II. 1905.
(1) The Eulogy of Curoi.
(2) The Evernew Tongue. Vol. in. 1907.
(1) On two Irish expressions for ' Eight Hand ' and ' Left Hand."
(2) Notes on the Evernew Tongue. Vol. IV. Parti. 1908.
Tidings of Conchobar mac Nessa.
List of Legal Publications
1860. Treatise on the Liens of Legal Practitioners.
1861. On Powers of Attorney. 1865. Hindu Law Books, Madras.
VOL. VI. F
82 THE CELTIC REVIEW
1865. The Indian Succession Act with Commentary, Calcutta.
1866. The Indian Companies' Act, with Notes.
1874. The Older Statutes in Force in India, with Notes.
1887-8. The Anglo-Indian Codes, 2 vols.
1889-91. Supplements to Anglo-Indian Codes.
Also draughtsman of many Indian Consolidation Acts, the Codes of Civil and Criminal Procedure, 1882, and the Acts dealing respectively with Transfer of Property, Trusts, Easements, Specific Relief, and Limitation.
Stokes was, besides, joint editor with his lifelong friend, Dr. Windiseh, of the Irische Texte series, published in Leipzig, of the Archiv fur Celtische Lexikographie (1900-1907) and with John Strachan of the Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus, published between 1901 and 1903 by the Cambridge Uni- versity. This work, in two splendid volumes, contains all the Old Irish extant both in gloss material and in texts with a Translation, Introduction, Notes, and Indices. The plan to add an Old-Irish Glossary as volume three fell through, owing to the death of Strachan. The production of the Thesaurus was a very onerous undertaking, and one entailing an infinity of arduous labour. The whole of the matter it contains had been published previously, but in rare and scattered journals, so that there was a crying need for a uniform and compendious issue of the material in which later accessions to Keltic knowledge might be embodied in a new translation and notes. By the completion of this very heavy task they have conferred an inestimable boon on scholars of Old Irish. The whole book is furnished with a literal English translation, except where an Irish word is a mere rendering for a Latin word, in which cases the Latin was deemed to indicate the meaning sufficiently. Wherever the editors differed on questions of interpretation the opinions of both are appended in a footnote. It will be noticed in the preceding list that Dr. Stokes edited the Feliere Oengusso twice ; first in 1880 for the Royal Irish Academy, and again in 1905 for the Henry Bradshaw Society. The first edition reproduced three MS. versions with transla- tion, the second presented a critically reconstructed text from the materials afforded by ten MSS., an emended
WHITLEY STOKES 83
translation, besides an Introduction, Notes, Glossary, and Indices. The Togail Troi, or Destruction of Troy, was a difficult and very important text brought out in Calcutta in 1881. From the numerous citations from it in Windesch's edition of the Tain B6 Cualnge one can judge of its high value as an aid to the interpretation of the difficult language of the Cuchulainn Sagas. The Saltair na Rann, edited in 1883, was a weighty document in early Middle-Irish verse that has not yet been fully examined. The Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, so called from the fact that it takes the form of three homilies, in addition to the Life itself, embodied all the Patrician documents of any importance both in Irish and in Latin. The edition of the Wiirzhurg Glosses, published for the Archseological Society in 1887, was the first appear- ance of such a work with an English translation. Its material, of course, was embodied later in the Thesaurus, The Lives of Saints from the Book of Lismore (1890) was a valuable addition to Middle-Irish hagiology and literature. In the Urkeltischer Sprachschatz, produced conjointly with Professor Bezzenberger, Dr. Stokes laid the foundations for a Keltic Etymological Dictionary that marvellously holds its place still in spite of the numerous discoveries that have been made since its issue. And of such discoveries many were made by himself. The Martyr ology of Gorman (1895), with the Felire Oengusso above, comprise the whole of our Festological books, with the exception of the Martyrology of Donegal, which was published before his time by the Dublin Archaeological Society. In editing the Rennes Dindsenchas (1896), and the Annals of Tigernach (1897), besides inter- preting his texts he has made important additions to our knowledge of history and topography. He published some of the minor Sagas, and many of his works are in a high degree useful in furnishing keys to the difficulties by which that class of literature is still beset, and the Homilies, Lives of Saints, and Martjn^ologies are indispensable to the Irish Church historian.
Broadly, then, his work embraced scientific criticism.
84 THE CELTIC REVIEW
lexicography, philology, exact grammar, history, hagiology, folklore, topography, homiletic and ecclesiological work, metric and mythology, not to mention other departments of research. He was, before all, the great publisher of Middle- Irish literature. In that particular nobody even approached him in amount of matter or in the quality of the work. His publications cover the whole period of historical Irish, and it will be seen that his philological and grammatical explorations extended from Gaulish inscriptions to the endings of the modern Irish verb. He combined the scientific sense for linguistic with a keen feeling for the canons of literary taste. He exemplified his possession of this latter quality by his oft expressed appreciation of the beauty of his text and by the flawless and charming English into which he rendered it. His country, Ireland, owes him a debt for a long and laborious life spent in doing her the highest possible service, a debt she owed to nobody since the death of the scribes that compiled the great books from which he worked. Ferguson, when writing to a friend about Whitley Stokes when a young man, said ' the noisy Irish ' did not know of his existence. Indeed, the same may be truly said to-day after the lapse of long years, when the library shelves of the learned are groaning with the rich harvests he gleaned with much daily toil and protracted nightly vigils. But there are others now in Ireland besides *the noisy.' And the new species is bound to multiply. For many are now eagerly reading his works and learning to give honour where honour is due, so that Whitley Stokes will one day come into his own.
It is but fitting to add that the best traditions of his family were also nobly upheld by his sister, Miss Margaret Stokes. She was a noted artist, antiquary, and a specialist in Church history research. She was the author of a splendid little handbook on Irish Art and Architecture ; she edited the Petrie Collection of Irish Inscriptions with illustrations, and the two sumptuous quarto volumes of Lord Dunraven, dealing with the earlier examples of Irish architecture.
PAN CELTIC NOTES ^^^ 85
She also wrote Six Months in the Apennines, a Pilgrimage in Search of Vestiges of Irish Saints in Italy, and Three Months in the Forests of Frai^ce, Her tastes had been fostered and directed by Petrie, and she followed faithfully in his foot- steps, leaving an honourable legacy to her country as became one of her name.
The qualities of cheerfulness of demeanour, suavity of manner, gentleness of voice, and sweetness of temper that distinguished Whitley Stokes in the family were appreciated by all who had the good fortune to witness them. He was honoured and admired by strangers, by his own he was adored. He was devoted to his family with all the tender- ness of a father's heart, drawing pathetically closer to them as the time for departure approached. In the death of Whitley Stokes Ireland lost a friend, Keltic scholars a leader, his family mourns for a presence that was the household treasure but which now has passed. I shall conclude by citing a translation of the Old-Irish colophon by which himself and Strachan brought their great labours on the Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus to a close : whoso reads this book let him bestow a blessing upon the soul of R. A. Neill and upon our own souls, Whitley Stokes an Irishman and John Strachan a Scotsman.
PAN CELTIC NOTES
The long fight to secure for Irish a place among the essentials for matriculation in the national university goes on without either side gaining much definite advantage. To one watching from a distance, it seems that the anti-Irish forces are entrenched so securely in the strongholds of office that the shot and shell of the patriotic party — eloquent orations, enthusiastic meetings, resolutions of public bodies, convincing newspaper articles — pass over their heads, for the most part wasted and ineffective. Can the leaders of the Gaelic League find among themselves no strategist capable of evolving a plan of campaign which
86 THE CELTIC REVIEW
shall make better use of the loyalty and zeal of the rank and file ? If not, the chances of victory are slight.
Since assuming its new but historic name of The Irish Nation, our old friend The Peasant has printed a good deal more Irish than was its wont theretofore, and has gone in, moreover, for a suit of Gaelic type. In one small way this latter change may occasion regret. I know several Scottish Gaels who used to take delight in deciphering the Irish articles when they appeared in Roman type, and who lament that the new dress disguises the affinity between Irish and their native tongue.
It is certainly a good plan on the part of the Oireachtas Committee to authorise Coiste na mBan to organise an ' Irish Historical Character Dance for Children ' in connec- tion with the Irish national festival. The dance, which was held in the Rotunda, Dublin, on August 2, constitutes, I believe, the first attempt to associate children with the Oireachtas ; one hopes it may institute in hundreds of cases a life-long affection for the festival. An Claidheamh Soluis, by the way, points out that ' the Oireachtas causes a big drain on the Language Fund.' It would be an excellent thing if the departure to be initiated by Coiste na mBan should point the way towards making the festival a help instead of a hindrance even in matters financial.
This year's summer course of the School of Irish Learning is of more than usual interest. Mr. Osborn J. Bergin is lecturing on ' Old Irish,' ' Middle Irish Manuscripts,' and
* Old Irish Texts ' ; Professor Kuno Meyer on ' Old and Middle Irish Poetry ' ; and Mr. J. Glyn Davies on ' Elemen- tary Welsh Grammar,' with a continuation course, and
* Mediaeval Welsh Texts.' The session began on July 1st at 33 Dawson Street, Dublin. Practically all the lectures are given in the evening, and the fees are almost ridiculously small.
A long overdue measure of justice is done to the memory of a gifted Gaelic scholar by an article which appears in The Celtic Monthly for May. It is from the pen of Mr.
PAN CELTIC NOTES 87
J. P. Anderson, and deals with one of his predecessors in the office of University Librarian of Aberdeen — Ewen Maclachlan. Many errors in and omissions from the Dictionary of National Biography and the catalogue of the British Museum are corrected, and much interesting in- formation is given regarding Maclachlan' s work as bard, translator, and lexicographer. The same magazine con- tains a full-page photograph of a well-known Scottish personality, Mr. Theodore Napier, with a detailed descrip- tion of the Highland costume he wears so consistently.
Manxmen everywhere should accord a hearty welcome to Part II. of Mr. W. H. Gill's Songs of my Fatherland — an unpretentious but extremely interesting collection of Manx music, ancient and modern. Three of the four songs which make up this part have Manx as well as English words. I venture to quote the last verse of ' Ny Lomarcan ' (* Alone '), since the words, apart from their pathetic beauty, cannot fail to interest speakers of Scots and Irish Gaelic : —
' Ven aeg, ere hon t'ou nish dobberan,
Ec oirr yn cheayn gorm ec shee "? ' ' Sole son dy door my ghraih deyr e vaase ; Soie son dy door my ghraih deyr e vasse ;
Blaik Ihiu mish ve aitt ? ' dooyrt ee.
The Songs may be had from the Manx Sun stationery store, Douglas.
On the whole, the Welsh National Eisteddfod for this year, held in London on June 15-18, must be considered successful. When, in 1907, the Committee sent a deputa- tion to Swansea with a petition that the Welsh festival might visit the English Metropolis, a promise was given that the Eisteddfod should be thoroughly Cymric in char- acter. That promise was faithfully redeemed. Competi- tors and visitors who came up from Wales expecting to find the gatherings Anglicised out of all recognition were pleasantly surprised. Welsh was the language employed whenever possible — even the militant suffragists who invaded the Albert Hall found themselves using it before
88 THE CELTIC REVIEW
the festival was over — and a special tribute should be paid to the magnificent loyalty of Mr. Lloyd George in this matter. The example of the Chancellor of the Exchequer was followed by all the Welsh Members of Parliament present, and the result is that many hundreds of young people who came up from the Principality to take part in the musical competitions have gone back with renewed faith in the future of their nation and her language.
In one respect it was certainly well worth while for the Eisteddfod to revisit London after its twenty-two years' absence ; the London Committee produced its list of subjects, and its two-hundred page programme, in a style which deserves imitation at all future Eisteddfodau. Too often the local committees, in their natural desire to make the festivals ' pay their way,' crowd these publications with advertisements in the most incongruous and unsightly fashion. A terrible example is furnished by the list of subjects for competition at next year's National Eisteddfod in Colwyn Bay. Though in choice of subjects the list is in many respects one of the best that has been seen for some years, it is, in the matter of ugly and annoying advertise- ments, one of the very worst. One sincerely hopes that London's example will shame the Committee into avoiding this sin when the programme of the daily sessions comes to be produced.
Nothing is more exasperating to the patriotic Welshman than the supercilious smile with which the average English- man receives any mention of the wealth of Welsh literature. Walled in by his ignorance of the language, and secure in his conviction that it contains little but a few poems of doubtful age and still more doubtful excellence, the Englishman remains persuaded, whatever one may say, that on this point the Welsh are the victims of a self-deception that is harmless to them and a little amusing to so superior a person as himself. At long last it has been made possible to put into the hands of such people a little book which constitutes an unanswerable argument. It is published by
PAN CELTIC NOTES 89
[essrs. Jarvis & Foster of Bangor, at the low price of half a crown, and is called A Manual of Welsh Literature. In it the Rev. J. C. Morrice deals with the lives and works of some two hundred writers* of Welsh prose and poetry from the sixth century to the end of the eighteenth. Despite the slipshod — no doubt hurried — English in which it is written, the Manual is a most valuable piece of work. Its illustrative extracts are enough to lure the least poetical Welshman to the study of the bards, and to impress any thoughtful stranger with the remarkable continuity of Welsh literature through centuries of conquest, oppression, and neglect.
From the same publisher as the work just mentioned comes a delightful volume entitled Deffynniad Ffydd Eglwys Loegr. It is a facsimile reproduction of the original black-letter edition (1595) of Bishop Jewel's Apologia Ecdesice Anglicanoe, as translated into Welsh by Maurice Kyffin. The book is number five in the series of reprints of Welsh classics issued by the Guild of Graduates of the University of Wales, which has been fortunate enough to secure in Mr. W. Prichard Williams an editor of quite unusual gifts. In addition to annotating the text and add- ing a collection of the author's poetry, Mr. Prichard has succeeded, at immense pains, in removing the mystery which has hitherto surrounded the personality of Maurice Kyffin. He proves to have been one of those dashing Eliza- bethan Welshmen of the type Shakespeare has drawn for us — quick of wit and of temper, ready with sword and with pen, learned in the classics, in the Continental languages, and in English, but all the while cherishing Welsh and the ability to speak and write it. Apart altogether from the value of the Deffynniad as a masterpiece of Welsh prose, the book is well worth getting for the sake of the introduc- tion in which Mr. Prichard Williams enables one to make the acquaintance of so charming a character.
The Welsh Folk-song Society is to be congratulated on the excellence of the first number of its Journal. It is plain that the activities of the Society have come along
90 THE CELTIC REVIEW
* in the nick of time ' to rescue many a gem that must other- wise have vanished, with a passing generation, into the darkness of things forgot. The Journal is clearly destined to be a delight to lovers of music and of Welsh lore. In the same connection, it should be mentioned that Messrs. Boosey & Co. have brought out the second part of their Welsh Melodies, This admirable production differs from many compilations professedly of the same kind, not only by reason of really competent musical editorship, but also because the songs have Welsh and English words which suit the times and are genuine counterparts one of the other. I believe the main reason why Welsh songs are practically unknown to the English musical public, while the Scots and Irish ones are deservedly so popular with them, is that the tunes have generally been presented in association with utter rubbish by way of English words. One remembers, for instance, a very weU-known volume, still regarded as authoritative, in which Ceiriog's magnificent poem ' Yn Nyffryn Clwyd ' is accompanied by some balderdash about a ship which sets out ' manned by a captain and his men ! ' In the case of Welsh Melodies most of the translations are from the pen of Mr. A. P. Graves, and they include some delightful specimens of his work. Wales has reason to thank Mr. Graves for lending his genius to the setting forth of her songs so that English-reading musicians may have opportunity to appreciate them at their full worth.
Learned and painstaking though it be, Professor L. C. Stern's article on Dafydd ab Gwilym in the latest number of the Zeitschrift fur Geltische Philologie is not to be considered the final pronouncement as to the dates of the great Welsh poet's birth and death. Mr. Ivor Williams, M.A., of Bangor University College, contributes to the May Traeihodydd an article which should not be overlooked by any one interested in these points or in the persons mentioned in Dafydd's poems. Mr. Williams gives, too, a clear and dispassionate statement of the evidence available regarding some of the cywyddau of which the authenticity has been disputed.
PAN CELTIC NOTES 91
M. Frangois Vallee, to whom the Breton language movement owes more than to any other man Hving, has done Brittany another great service by the publication of La Langue Bretonne en 40 Lecons, This admirable handbook is based on a plan entirely different from that of the same author's Lecons EUmentaires de Grammaire Bretonne, and it is evident that M. Vallee has been studying the method of Father O'Growney. The mutations are not introduced until some progress has been made with the vocabulary, and illustrative sentences are numerous. Indeed, the student who knows something of any one of the Celtic languages, though nothing of Breton, will find himself immediately interested by the passages in which the Celtic is accompanied by an interlined French translation. The book is published at I'lmprimerie Saint-Guillaume, Boule- vard Charner, Saint Brieuc. I should add that it contains, by way of supplement, a complete statement of the accord recently arrived at by representative Breton writers with regard to the spelling of the language and the modification of differences in the matter of dialect. This is a subject of prime importance to the future of Breton, and one is glad to notice that the number of writers who have signified their adhesion to the accord is steadily increasing.
Another interesting item of Breton bibliography is the announcement that a second volume of Barzaz Taldir may be expected before long. M. Jaffrennou is certainly the most gifted of living Breton poets. When one glances again through the pages of the splendid volume he issued in 1903, indeed, one is tempted to write that no living Celtic poet surpasses him in genius. Should his second volume manifest any substantial advance on the best work in the first, it will no longer be possible to deny Taldir even that high tribute.
L' Union Regionaliste Bretonne holds its eleventh annual congress from September 9 to 15, at Pontrieux. The pro- gramme does not differ materially from those of the con- gresses of recent years, excepting that it includes the erection of a memorial to Le Brigand, friend of La Tour d'Auvergne. Advantage will be taken of the local fair to endeavour to
92 THE CELTIC REVIEW
awaken the sentiment of Breton nationality among the peasantry of the surrounding district, whom it would other- wise be difficult to reach.
An interesting discussion has been going on in the Franco -Breton press as to the game called la soule (in Breton, ar veil) and the possibility of its revival as a national pastime. It must have been a fairly vigorous form of re- creation, to judge from the description given by a corre- spondent of Le Pays Breton, who remembers it being played in the college of Redon about 1870. Says he : * Une grosse boule de cuir etait depose en milieu de la cour de recreation, les joueurs, di vises en deux camps, et armes de batons recourbes, s'effor9aient d'attirer la soule, chacun vers le mur oppose, et quand celle-ci avait touche le mur la partie etait gagn6e. Ce jeu avait tou jours un tres grand succes, et on s'y livrait avec une ardeur qui n' etait pas toujours sans laisser des traces, bien qu'il n'y ait jamais eu a ma connaissance de suites facheuses.' From this it seems that la soule was closely allied to the hurling of Ireland and Cornwall. Another writer, however (Monsieur Prosper Hemon, of Saint Brieuc), makes it appear that la soule resembled rather the fierce inter-parochial games of ' foot- ball ' described in Owen's Pembrokeshire. According to him, the ball was often of wood, the contestants represented parishes or parts of parishes, and ' le jeu . . . est tres ancien, et offre toute la brutalite des temps primitifs et barbares.'
I should be glad to believe that there is justification for the hopeful view taken by Ar Barz Tangwall (M. P. Diverres) with regard to the Celtic situation in Cornwall. ' A rheure actuelle,' he says in a Franco-Breton weekly, * il existe un certain nombre de Cornouailles qui ont appris le Cornique et qui le parlent. . . . Ces ardents patriotes, estiment que tout n'est pas encore perdu, luttent du mieux qu'ils peuvent pour la renaissance de leur idiome national. Esperons que bientot la reussite viendra couronner leurs efforts, car, maintenant encore, 1' anglais vulgaire parle dans le Cornwall contient une foule de mots et d' expressions comiques, et leur entreprise n'est pas chimerique.'
BOOK EEVIEWS 93
All who have had experience of the unfair treatment sometimes meted to Celtic-speaking witnesses by monoglot English magistrates will be interested in the conduct of an important trial at Carpentras during May. The majority of the witnesses appealed to the President of the Court for permission to give evidence in Provengal, saying that it was the only language of which they had complete command. Parisian advocates engaged in the case objected on the ground that they did not understand Provengal; but the President replied that they could avail themselves of the services of an interpreter, and that, in the interests of exact truth, the request of the witnesses would be granted.
S. R. J.
BOOK REVIEWS
Die Kultur der Gegenwart, ed. Paul Hinneberg. Tell i., Abteilung XL, i. * Die romanischen Litteraturen und Sprachen mit Einschluss des Keltischen.'
Almost one third of this stately volume is occupied by a history of Celtic literature. It may be said without hesitation, that this is the best scientific and at the same time popular account we possess of Celtic literature. Three eminent German scholars have contributed to the task : Professor Zimmer and Dr. Stern of Berlin and Professor Kuno Meyer of Liverpool.
Professor Zimmer deals with the Celtic languages and literatures in general, and gives a very good history of the language movements. In the introduction he speaks of the great influence the Celts have ever exercised upon the peoples of Europe, how in the first centuries before Christ they transmitted to the Teutonic race the Mediterranean culture, how during the middle ages they were the only nation which preserved the treasures of classical civilisation and handed them over to the Teutonic and Romance nations, and how later on the Arthurian legend came to the poets of these nations like a mighty new revelation which filled their brains and hearts with the burning inspiration of the Celtic genius, an inspiration that has not ceased even in our day.
Speaking of the history of the Celtic languages, the learned Professor says that according to his opinion the first Celts did not reach the British Islands before the fifth century B.C. He does not tell us anything about the detailed history of the Celtic invasions, but I understand he is work- ing at these problems.
The most interesting chapters are those concerning the language move- ments, and as the book may not be accessible to every reader of this Beview, I propose to give some striking passages in full. He shows that in 1801, when the severe penal laws, that had been oppressing the Irish
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language for more than three hundred years, were removed, Irish-Gaelic was yet the language of the people, that of the 5,200,000 inhabitants, about 4,000,000 spoke their native tongue. From this it would seem that the most dangerous enemies of the Irish language are not to be found in England, but amongst the Irish themselves. For what continual attacks for so many centuries could not effect, happened in less than one century : the Irish people themselves abandoned their native tongue. The deadly blow to the Irish language was given by the Catholic Church. In vain thousands and thousands of Irishmen had shed their blood for their religion and offered their lives upon the altars of the Catholic faith. The truest and most faithful children of the Holy Father were robbed of their most sacred possession through the ignorance of their priests, who thought themselves too good to speak the language of their people. When in 1778 the Catholic Church was freed from its bonds and the English government offered a sum for founding a clerical college, it seemed but natural that this new free institution— subject to only the Catholic Church — would have been organised according to the real wants of the Catholic Irish population, nine-tenths of which understood Irish and more than half of which could not speak English. But nothing of this kind was done, Maynooth was organised as a Catholic missionary station for the English-speaking population, like any English college. Not only that : in the very time when the clergy took up the teaching in the Catholic schools, English was made the language of public instruction ; there was plenty of Catholic teaching, but Irish was not even taught as a modern foreign language, like French, but was totally ignored up to the end of the nineteenth century. Laymen and clergymen, instead of regenerating the native literature, turned to the English language, where they could enjoy themselves without any great exertion. The people, when they saw how their college-bred brethren began to show contempt for their native tongue, grew ashamed of their own mother-tongue, and this shame, combined with the ever-increasing emigration from purely Irish districts, resulted in the old beautiful Irish language melting away like snow in the heat of the summer sun. At last came the revival, and heroic efforts were made to save the sacred legacy of a great past. Professor Zimmer concludes his spirited remarks on the Irish movement by saying that all efforts to preserve the Irish language will be in vain if the peasantry cannot be induced to throw off the stupid shame of their own mother- tongue, and if a stop is not put to the ever-increasing flood of emigration from the Irish-speaking districts. We earnestly hope that the heroic efforts of the Gaelic League will turn out a brilliant success, and that once more a shining radiance may emanate from the West and overflood the whole of Europe with the burning light of Celtic genius ! In Scotland, though the reasons were different, the result is the same. But though to-day the number of Gaelic speakers is much smaller than in Ireland, the position of the Gaelic language ought to be much stronger, because the Protestant religion with its preaching, Bible, sacred songs and
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I rich religious literature, is a wonderful support for the national language. On the other hand, neither the Church nor An Comunn Gaidhealach can be regarded as doing their full duty by the Gaelic language. Zimmer thinks^ that the old language of the Isle of Man is hopelessly lost, the chief reasons being that the Gaelic inhabitants have been emigrating since 1823, while the island is becoming more and more a holiday resort for English speakers, especially for the inhabitants of Manchester and Liverpool. In 1770 the number of Manx speakers was yet so considerable that Bishop Dr. Hildesley thought it necessary to translate the whole Bible into Manx and to print it.
The position of the Welsh language is firmly established, but Professor Zimmer utters a serious warning to all patriotic Welshmen, and I should wish that no Gymro would close his ear to the warning voice of the great Celtic scholar. For the end of the nineteenth century has brought to Wales institutions that must become in time as fatal to the Welsh nationality as Maynooth and the Catholic education have been for Ireland. Regular intermediate schools and even Universities have been established, but this whole ' national ' education is founded on ' English ' as the national language, the lectures in the Universities and intermediate schools are delivered in English, the Welsh language is treated as a foreign language and is not even compulsory. In the elementary schools Welsh can be taught only if the local government allow or wish it. Though there are many things strengthening the Welsh language — a beautiful book-literature (since 1801 more than eight thousand five hundred different works have been published), a rich periodical literature, not forgetting the Bible, preaching, and Sunday school, the danger is very great and Professor Zimmer has very serious doubts if the position of the Welsh language will be as strong at the end of the twentieth century as it is to-day.
The Celtic speakers in Brittany are threatened by serious dangers, for not only the public elementary schools but also the private Catholic schools have been totally denationalised, so that one may often meet, as in Ireland and in Scotland, the sad fact that the children cannot converse with their grandparents except only by means of gestures.
After giving a short survey of the history of the Celtic languages from the philological point of view. Professor Zimmer proceeds to deal with the characteristics of the Celtic literatures. First, he speaks of literary classes. He says the reason storytellers were so highly esteemed in Ireland, while in Wales they did not compare with the bards, is explained through the different social conditions. Ireland was comparatively quiet from the fifth century to the Viking period, therefore lyrical poets had not much material and the people enjoyed themselves by listening to wonderful stories. But the Welshmen had to fight an everlasting war with Gaelic pirates and Saxons, and every fresh battle gave impetus for fresh songs, and the chiefs — eager for glory — despised the foolish fairy tales and delighted rather in the praise of their own feats. That is doubtless one reason for the fact, that Wales has preserved so little of epic literature,
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but other reasons were at work too. For the same reason the greater bulk of Welsh literature is rhymed poetry, while the older Irish literature is almost exclusively written in prose, for prose is the Celtic form for the epic (foreign poetical works are rewritten by the Celts in the form of prose epics). The introduction of strophical ballads is due, according to Zimmer, to the influence of Norse poetry, while the Norsemen learned from the Celts the epic form, or saga, and the origin of the prose romances of the middle ages has to be ascribed to Celtic (Breton) influence. Then he points out the virtues and faults of Celtic literature, the latter consisting chiefly in the inability to produce really great results. Professor Zimmer is very sceptical as to the Celtic renaissance, and reproaches the Celts with dream- ing too much, and doing too little.
I wish with all my heart that he may be wrong therein, and that the Celts may at least show to the world that they are able to fight for their own individuality, and that they will remember always, that ' the people that cannot fight must die ! ' Though the new century has already brought much success to the Celtic movements, the dangers have never been greater than now, and the times require strong men and strong characters.
Professor Meyer gives an excellent account of Irish-Gaelic literature, while Dr. Stern does the same for the other Celtic literatures. I have already occupied so much space that I may only say that they have fulfilled their tasks in the best possible way. Julius Pokorny.
The Zeitschrift fur celtische Fhilologie, vol. vii. part 1, is almost entirely devoted to a monograph by L. C. Stern upon 'Davydd ab Gwilym, a Welsh Minne-singer.' Professor Stern gives and translates selections from the great bard. Professor Lindsay of St. Andrews communicates {ibid., pp. 266-267) his reading of 'Irish Glosses from Ambr. F 60,' a Milan MS. of the Sententiae Patrum, to be found in the Tliesaurus, vol. ii. p. 234 ; and proposes the extension Augvstin of a contraction in the Codex of St. Paul (pp. 290-291). Professor Kuno Meyer gives some Old Irish verse proverbs (pp. 268-269), and other contributions. Professor Zimmer replies to a criticism of Whitley Stokes, and discusses at length the Old Irish woi*ds allied to the modern urnaigh, prayer. * Gaelic Surnames from Galloway ' are contributed by W. E. Crum. A letter of W. J. Thorns to Jacob Grimm in 1848 is published.
C. Sarauw has an interesting article upon the sound-values of Irish /, w, r, in the Zeitschrift fur vergleichende Sprachfarschung, vol. xlii. pp. 53-61.
In the Anzeiger appended to the Indogermanische Faischungen, vol. xxiii., there is a valuable Celtic bibliography for 1905 (pp. 451-456). Whitley Stokes points out three s-presents in Irish (^ssiniy I ask ; gdssim, I cry ; Ussaim, I beat violently, whence English Mace' in /. F., vol. xxii. pp. 335- 336). Some Celtic words appear in the index of the same volume, pp. 426- 427. To Professor Thurneysen is due an obituary notice (in Anzeiger, vol. xxii. pp. 79-80) of John Strachan, whose light still burns among us.
A. 0. A.
THE CELTIC REVIEW
OCTOBER 15, 1909
ASPIHATION IN SCOTTISH GAELIC Professor Mackinnon
In the last number of the Celtic Review (p. 4) reference was made to the phase of Consonantal Mutation popularly known as Aspiration, in connection with Gaelic Orthography. It is now proposed to consider this feature of Celtic Phon- ology more in detail, especially as it manifests itself in Scottish Gaelic. The term was not perhaps happily chosen. But it is well known, and in this respect possesses some advantage over the more accurate and descriptive Vocalic Infection sometimes substituted for it. The phonetic process thus named is one of many by means of which we strive unconsciously after ease of utterance, and is, like all such, ultimately governed by the law of least effort in the production of speech-sounds. Aspiration is thus met with in all languages, and singularly enough, although it has come to be regarded as a special feature of the Celtic dialects, the original tongue seems to have been more free of it than its sisters of the Aryan family. But long before any branch of Celtic was committed to writing the people appear to have aspirated their consonants freely, and to have practised the habit in their use of a foreign language. Thus while Gaelic, like English, has been satisfied with simply aspirating the t in the old nouns of kindred — a^^air, ' father,' ma^^air ' mother,' etc., the French language, which phonetically may be regarded as vulgar Latin operated upon by Celtic vocal chords, changed ^ater and wMer, or rather patrem
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and matrenif not merely into paf^er and ma^/ter, but even into pere and mere.
Among the living Celtic dialects Aspiration is fully as active in the Brythonic group as in the Goidelic. In the latter this mutation proceeds on the same lines, and is subject to the same general law, in Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx. But in the written page Irish frequently preserves vocalised consonants which Scottish Gaelic drops — the sufl&x -amhaily e.g. written in full in Irish, is with us reduced to -ail. Again Manx, which is written more phonetically than Scottish Gaelic, suppresses a still greater number of silent consonants which we preserve — our pathadh, 'thirst,' is in Manx written paagh, our gobhar, *goat,' is goayr.
Within the Gaelic-speaking area in Scotland, there is considerable divergence, with respect to the aspiration of individual words, in the various localities, a full account of which will be found in the valuable papers on the 'Gaelic Dialects' contributed by the Rev. C. M. Robertson to vols, iii., iv., and v. of the Celtic Review. Speaking generally, it may be said that the northern districts show on the whole a greater tendency to aspirate than the southern. More especially northern Gaelic is readier to vocalise aspirated sounds than southern Gaelic. Thus while all over the area such words as domhain, 'deep,' tabhairt, * giving,' with many more, are sounded do'ain, to'irt, hundreds of others, such as abhainn, 'river,' gamhainn, 'stirk,' the class of verbal nouns ending in -adh, which retain the aspirated sounds of the consonants in the south, are vocalised in the north. On the other hand, in a few cases, notably in -ibh of the dative plural, the north preserves the syllable in vocalised form -iu, while the south either preserves it in aspirated form or drops it altogether. North, ris na daoiniu ; south, ris na daoinibh (rarely), ris na daoine ' to the men.'
All the consonants have their aspirated sounds, although in Scotland it is not the practice to mark in writing the
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aspiration of the liquids I, n, r. The aspirated sound may occupy the initial, medial, or final position in the word — one or all. We have thus Initial, Medial, and Final Aspira- tion to consider, and for convenience we take them in the following order : Medial, Final, Initial.
I. Medial Aspiration. — The Rule is that a single con- sonant (or a consonant followed by a liquid) stand- ing between two vowels aspirates. We say that the t in the old words athair, mdihair, aspirates because it is a single consonant sound, and is and always has been flanked by vowels. So of the numeral ceithir, ' four.' The rule holds with respect to words borrowed into the language as well as to native words. Gaelic has borrowed from Latin from very early times, especially ecclesiastical and military terms. Take the following. We do not well know why the early Gaelic missionaries did not accept the native word cin, now cionta, to express the theological conception conveyed by peccatum. Anyhow they borrowed this word. The Gael also borrowed sagitta