Gods and Fighting Men by Lady I. A Gregory (novels in english TXT) 📖
- Author: Lady I. A Gregory
Book online «Gods and Fighting Men by Lady I. A Gregory (novels in english TXT) 📖». Author Lady I. A Gregory
placid but often cold imagination of the Aryan has been at work on some.
In others we trace the more picturesque fancy, the fierceness and
sensuality, the greater sense of artistic elegance belonging to races
whom the Aryan, in spite of his occasional faults of hardness and
coarseness, has, on the whole, left behind him. But as the greatest
results in the realm of the highest art have always been achieved in the
case of certain blends of Aryan with other blood, I should hardly deem
it extravagant if it were asserted that in the humbler regions of the
folk-tale we might trace the working of the same law. The process which
has gone on may in part have been as follows:--Every race which has
acquired very definite characteristics must have been for a long time
isolated. The Aryans during their period of isolation probably developed
many of their folk-germs into their larger myths, owing to the greater
constructiveness of their imagination, and thus, in a way, they used up
part of their material. Afterwards, when they became blended with other
races less advanced, they acquired fresh material to work on. We have in
Ireland an instance to hand, of which a brief discussion may help to
illustrate the whole race theory.
"The larger Irish legendary literature divides itself into three
cycles--the divine, the heroic, the Fenian. Of these three the last is
so well-known orally in Scotland that it has been a matter of dispute to
which country it really belongs. It belongs, in fact, to both. Here,
however, comes in a strange contrast with the other cycles. The first
is, so far as I am aware, wholly unknown in Scotland, the second
comparatively unknown. What is the explanation? Professor Zimmer not
having established his late-historical view as regards Finn, and the
general opinion among scholars having tended of recent years towards the
mythical view, we want to know why there is so much more community in
one case than in the other. Mr O'Grady long since seeing this
difficulty, and then believing Finn to be historical, was induced to
place the latter in point of time before Cuchulain and his compeers. But
this view is of course inadmissible when Finn is seen not to be
historical at all. There remains but one explanation. The various bodies
of legend in question are, so far as Ireland is concerned, only earlier
or later, as they came into the island with the various races to which
they belonged. The wider prevalence, then, of the Finn Saga would
indicate that it belonged to an early race occupying both Ireland and
Scotland. Then entered the Aryan Gael, and for him henceforth, as the
ruler of the island, his own gods and heroes were sung by his own bards.
His legends became the subject of what I may call the court poetry, the
aristocratic literature. When he conquered Scotland, he took with him
his own gods and heroes; but in the latter country the bardic system
never became established, and hence we find but feeble echoes of the
heroic cycle among the mountains of the North. That this is the
explanation is shown by what took place in Ireland. Here the heroic
cycle has been handed down in remembrance almost solely by the bardic
literature. The popular memory retains but few traces of it. Its
essentially aristocratic character is shown by the fact that the people
have all but forgotten it, if they ever knew it. But the Fenian cycle
has not been forgotten. Prevailing everywhere, still cherished by the
conquered peoples, it held its ground in Scotland and Ireland alike,
forcing its way in the latter country even into the written literature,
and so securing a twofold lease of existence ... The Fenian cycle, in a
word, is non-Aryan folk-literature partially subjected to Aryan
treatment."
The whole problem is extremely complex, and several other writers have
written upon it. Mr Borlase, for instance, has argued in his big book on
the Dolmens that the cromlechs, and presumably the Diarmuid and Crania
legend, is connected with old religious rites of an erotic nature coming
down from a very primitive state of society.
I have come to my own conclusion not so much because of any weight of
argument, as because I found it impossible to arrange the stories in a
coherent form so long as I considered them a part of history. I tried to
work on the foundation of the Annalists, and fit the Fianna into a
definite historical epoch, but the whole story seemed trivial and
incoherent until I began to think of them as almost contemporaneous with
the battle of Magh Tuireadh, which even the Annalists put back into
mythical ages. In this I have only followed some of the story-tellers,
who have made the mother of Lugh of the Long Hand the grandmother of
Finn, and given him a shield soaked with the blood of Balor. I cannot
think of any of the stories as having had a modern origin, or that the
century in which each was written down gives any evidence as to its age.
"How Diarmuid got his Love-Spot," for instance, which was taken down
only a few years ago from some old man's recitation by Dr Hyde, may well
be as old as "Finn and the Phantoms," which is in one of the earliest
manuscripts. It seems to me that one cannot choose any definite period
either from the vast living mass of folk-lore in the country or from the
written text, and that there is as good evidence of Finn being of the
blood of the gods as of his being, as some of the people tell me, "the
son of an O'Shaughnessy who lived at Kiltartan Cross."
Dr Douglas Hyde, although he placed the Fenian after the Cuchulain cycle
in his _History of Irish Literature_, has allowed me to print this
note:--
"While believing in the real objective existence of the Fenians as a
body of Janissaries who actually lived, ruled, and hunted in King
Cormac's time, I think it equally certain that hundreds of stories,
traits, and legends far older and more primitive than any to which they
themselves could have given rise, have clustered about them. There is
probably as large a bulk of primitive mythology to be found in the Finn
legend as in that of the Red Branch itself. The story of the Fenians was
a kind of nucleus to which a vast amount of the flotsam and jetsam of a
far older period attached itself, and has thus been preserved."
As I found it impossible to give that historical date to the stories, I,
while not adding in anything to support my theory, left out such names
as those of Cormac and Art, and such more or less historical personages,
substituting "the High King." And in the "Battle of the White Strand," I
left out the name of Caelur, Tadg's wife, because I had already followed
another chronicler in giving him Ethlinn for a wife. In the earlier part
I have given back to Angus Og the name of "The Disturber," which had, as
I believe, strayed from him to the Saint of the same name.
III. THE AUTHORITIES
The following is a list of the authorities I have been chiefly helped by
in putting these stories together and in translation of the text. But I
cannot make it quite accurate, for I have sometimes transferred a mere
phrase, sometimes a whole passage from one story to another, where it
seemed to fit better. I have sometimes, in the second part of the book,
used stories preserved in the Scottish Gaelic, as will be seen by my
references. I am obliged to write these notes away from libraries, and
cannot verify them, but I think they are fairly correct.
Imprint
Publication Date: 05-09-2015
All Rights Reserved
Comments (0)