Books: Irish Race in the Past and the Present

A >> Aug. J. Thebaud >> Irish Race in the Past and the Present

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Secondly, we see in the Celtic race a rare and unique outburst
of fancy, so well expressed in the "_Senchus Mor_," their great law
compilation, wherein it is related, that when St. Patrick had
completed the digest of the laws of the Gael in Ireland, Dubtach,
who was a bard as well as a brehon, "put a thread of poetry
round it." Poetry everywhere, even in a law-book; poetry
inseparable from their thoughts, their speech, their every-day
actions; poetry became for them a reality, an indispensable necessity
of life. This feature is also certainly characteristic of the
Celtic nature.

Hence their literature was inseparable from art; and music and
design gushed naturally from the deepest springs of their souls.

Music has always been the handmaid of Poetry; and in our modern
languages, even, which are so artificial and removed from primitive
enthusiasm and naturalness, no composer of opera would consent to
adapt his inspirations to a prose _libretto_. It was far more so
in primitive times; and it maybe said that in those days poetry
was never composed unless to be sung or played on instruments. But
what has never been seen elsewhere, what Plato dreamed, without
ever hoping to see realized, music in Celtic countries became
really a state institution, and singers and harpers were necessary
officers of princes and kings.

That all Celtic tribes were fond of it and cultivated it thoroughly
we have the assertion of all ancient writers who spoke of them.
According to Strabo, the Third order of Druids was composed of
those whom he calls _Umnetai_. What were their instruments is not
mentioned; and we can now form no opinion of their former musical
taste from the rude melodies of the Armoricans, Welsh, and Scotch.

From time immemorial the Irish Celts possessed the harp. Some
authors have denied this; and from the fact that the harp was
unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and that the Gauls of the time
of Julius Caesar do not seem to have been acquainted with it, they
conclude that it was not purely native to any of the British islands.

But modern researches have proved that it was certainly used in
Erin under the first successors of Ugaine Mor, who was monarch.
--Ard-Righ--about the year 633 before Christ, according to the
annals of the Four Masters. The story of Labhraid, which seems
perfectly authentic, turns altogether on the perfection with
which Craftine played on the harp. From that time, at least, the
instrument became among the Celts of Ireland a perpetual source
of melody.

To judge of their proficiency in its use, it is enough to know to
what degree of perfection they had raised it. Mr. Beauford, in
his ingenious and learned treatise on the music of Ireland, as
cultivated by its bards, creates genuine astonishment by the
discoveries into which his researches have led him.

The extraordinary attention which they paid to expression and
effect brought about successive improvements in the harp, which
at last made it far superior to the Grecian lyre. To make it
capable of supporting the human voice in their symphonies, they
filled up the intervals of the fifths and thirds in each scale,
and increased the number of strings from eighteen to twenty-eight,
retaining all the original chromatic tones, but reducing the
capacity of the instrument; for, instead of commencing in the lower
E in the bass, it commenced in C, a sixth above, and terminated
in G in the octave below; and, in consequence, the instrument
became much more melodious and capable of accompanying the human
voice. Malachi O'Morgair, Archbishop of Armagh, introduced other
improvements in it in the twelfth century. Finally, in later times,
its capacity was increased from twenty-eight strings to thirty-three,
in which state it still remains.

As long as the nation retained its autonomy, the harp was a universal
instrument among the inhabitants of Erin. It was found in every house;
it was heard wherever you met a few people gathered together. Studied
so universally, so completely and perfectly, it gave Irish music in
the middle ages a superiority over that of all other nations. It is
Cambrensis who remarks that "the attention of these people to musical
instruments is worthy of praise, in which their skill is, beyond
comparison, superior to any other people; for in these the modulation
is not slow and solemn, as in the instruments of Britain, but the
sounds are rapid and precipitate, yet sweet and pleasing. It is
extraordinary, in such rapidity of the fingers, how the musical
proportions are preserved, and the art everywhere inherent among
their complicated modulations, and the multitude of intricate notes
so sweetly swift, so irregular in their composition, so disorderly
in their concords, yet returning to unison and completing the melody."

Giraldus could not express himself better, never before having
heard any other music than that of the Anglo-Normans; but it is
clear, from the foregoing passage, that Irish art surpassed all
his conceptions.

The universality of song among the Irish Celts grew out of their
nature, and in time brought out all the refinements of art. Long
before Cambrensis's time the whole island resounded with music
and mirth, and the king-archbishop, Cormac McCullinan, could not
better express his gratitude to his Thomond subjects than by
exclaiming--

"May our truest fidelity ever be given
To the brave and generous clansmen of Tal;
And forever royalty rest with their tribe,
And virtue and valor, and music and song!"

Long before Cormac, we find the same mirthful glee in the Celtic
character expressed by a beautiful and well-known passage in the
life of St. Bridget: Being yet an unknown girl, she entered, by
chance, the dwelling of some provincial king, who was at the time
absent, and, getting hold of a harp, her fingers ran over the
chords, and her voice rose in song and glee, and the whole family
of the royal children, excited by the joyful harmony, surrounded
her, immediately grew familiar with her, and treated her as an
elder sister whom they might have known all their life; so that
the king, coming back, found all his house in an uproar, filled
as it was with music and mirth.

Thus the whole island remained during long ages. Never in the
whole history of man has the same been the case with any other
nation. Plato, no doubt, in his dream of a republic, had something
of the kind in his mind, when he wished to constitute harmony as
a social and political institution. But he little thought that,
when he thus dreamed and wrote, or very shortly after, the very
object of his speculation was already, or was soon to be, in
actual existence in the most western isle of Europe.

Before Columba's time even the Church had become reconciled to
the bards and harpers; and, according to a beautiful legend,
Patrick himself had allowed Oisin, or Ossian, and his followers,
to sing the praises of ancient heroes. But Columbkill completed
the reconciliation of the religious spirit with the bardic
influence. Music and poetry were thenceforth identified with
ecclesiastical life. Monks and grave bishops played on the harp
in the churches, and it is said that this strange spectacle
surprised the first Norman invaders of Ireland. To use the words
of Montalembert, so well adapted to our subject: "Irish poetry,
which was in the days of Patrick and Columba so powerful and so
popular, has long undergone, in the country of Ossian, the same
fate as the religion of which these great saints were the apostles.
Rooted, like it, in the heart of a conquered people, and like it
proscribed and persecuted with an unwearying vehemence, it has
come ever forth anew from the bloody furrow in which it was
supposed to be buried. The bards became the most powerful allies
of patriotism, the most dauntless prophets of independence, and
also the favorite victims of the cruelty of spoilers and conquerors.
They made music and poetry weapons and bulwarks against foreign
oppression; and the oppressors used them as they had used the
priests and the nobles. A price was set upon their heads. But
while the last scions of the royal and noble races, decimated
or ruined in Ireland, departed to die out under a foreign sky,
amid the miseries of exile, the successor of the bards, the
minstrel, whom nothing could tear from his native soil, was pursued,
tracked, and taken like a wild beast, or chained and slaughtered
like the most dangerous of rebels.

"In the annals of the atrocious legislation, directed by the
English against the Irish people, as well before as after the
Reformation, special penalties against the minstrels, bards, and
rhymers, who sustained the lords and gentlemen, . . . are to be
met with at every step.

"Nevertheless, the harp has remained the emblem of Ireland, even
in the official arms of the British Empire, and during all last
century, the travelling harper, last and pitiful successor of the
bards, protected by Columba, was always to be found at the side of
the priest, to celebrate the holy mysteries of the proscribed worship.
He never ceased to be received with tender respect under the thatched
roof of the poor Irish peasant, whom he consoled in his misery and
oppression by the plaintive tenderness and solemn sweetness of the
music of his fathers."

Could any expression of ours set forth in stronger light the Celtic
mind and heart as portrayed in those native elements of music and
literature? Could any thing more forcibly depict the real character
of the race, materialized, as it were, in its exterior institutions?
We were right in saying that among no other race was what is
generally a mere adornment to a nation, raised to the dignity of
a social and political instrument as it was among the Celts. Hence
it was impossible for persecution and oppression to destroy it,
and the Celtic nature to-day is still traditional, full of faith,
and at the same time poetical and impulsive as when those great
features of the race held full sway.

Besides music, several other branches of art, particularly
architecture, design, and calligraphy, are worthy our attention,
presenting, as they do, features unseen anywhere else; and would
enable us still better to understand the character of the Celtic
race. But our limits require us to refrain from what might be
thought redundant and unnecessary.

We hasten, therefore, to consider another branch of our
investigation, one which might be esteemed paramount to all others,
and by the consideration of which we might have begun this chapter,
only that its importance will be better understood after what has
been already said. It is a chief characteristic which grew so
perfectly out of the Celtic mind and aptitudes, that long centuries
of most adverse circumstances, we may say, a whole host of contrary
influences were unable to make the Celts entirely abandon it. We
mean the clan system, which, as a system, indeed, has disappeared
these three centuries ago, but which may be said to subsist still
in the clan spirit, as ardent almost among them as ever.

It is beyond doubt that the patriarchal government was the first
established among men. The father ruled the family. As long as he
lived he was lawgiver, priest, master; his power was acknowledged
as absolute. Hiis children, even after their marriage, remained
to a certain extent subject to him. Yet each became in turn the
head of a small state, ruled with the primitive simplicity of
the first family.

In the East, history shows us that the patriarchal government
was succeeded immediately by an extensive and complete despotism.
Millions of men soon became the abject slaves of an irresponsible
monarch. Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, appear at once in history as
powerful states at the mercy of a despot whose will was law.

But in other more favored lands the family was succeeded by the
tribe, a simple development of the former, an agglomeration of
men of the same blood, who could all trace their pedigree to the
acknowledged head; possessing, consequently, a chief of the same
race, either hereditary or elective, according to variable rules
always based on tradition. This was the case among the Jews, among
the Arabs, with whom the system yet prevails; even it seems
primitively in Hindostan, where modern research has brought to
light modes of holding property which suppose the same system.

But especially was this the case among the Celts, where the system
having subsisted up to recently, it can be better known in all its
details. Indeed, their adherence to it, in spite of every obstacle
that could oppose it, shows that it was natural to them, congenial
to all their inclinations, the only system that could satisfy and
make them happy; consequently, a characteristic of the race.

There was a time when the system we speak of ruled many a land,
from the Western Irish Sea to the foot of the Caucasus. Everywhere
within those limits it presented the same general features; in
Ireland alone has it been preserved in all its vigor until the
beginning of the seventeenth century, so rooted was it in the
Irish blood. Consequently, it can be studied better there. What
we say, therefore, will be chiefly derived from the study of
Irish customs, although other Gaelic tribes will also furnish
us with data for our observations.

In countries ruled by the clan system, the territory was divided
among the clans, each of them occupying a particular district,
which was seldom enlarged or diminished. This is seen particularly
in Palestine, in ancient Gaul, in the British islands. Hence their
hostile encounters had always for object movable plunder of any
kind, chiefly cattle; never conquest nor annexation of territory.
The word "preying," which is generally used for their expeditions,
explains their nature at once. It was only in the event of the
extinction of a clan that the topography was altered, and frequently
a general repartition of land among neighboring tribes took place.

It is true, when a surplus population compelled them to send abroad
swarms of their youth, that the conquest of a foreign country became
an absolute necessity. But, on such occasions it was outside of Celtic
limits that they spread themselves, taking possession of a territory
not their own. They almost invariably respected the land of other
clans of the same race, even when most hostile to them; exceptions
to this rule are extremely rare. It was thus that they sent large
armies of their young men into Northern Italy, along the Danube,
into Grecian Albania and Thrace, and finally into the very centre
of Asia Minor. The fixing of the geographical position of each tribe
was, therefore, a rule among them; and in this they differed from
nomadic nations, such as the Tartars in Asia and even the North
American Indians, whose hold on the land was too slight to offer any
prolonged resistance to invaders. Hence the position of the Gallic
_civitates_ was definite, and, so to speak, immovable, as we may see
by consulting the maps of ancient Gaul at any time anterior to its
thorough conquest by the Romans; not so among the German tribes,
whose positions on the maps must differ according to time.

We have already seen that so sacred were the limits of the clan
districts, that one of the chief duties of ollamhs and shanachies
was to know them and see them preserved.

But if territory was defined in Celtic nations, the right of
holding land differed in the case of the chieftain and the
clansman. The head of the tribe had a certain well-defined portion
assigned to him in virtue of his office, and as long only as he
held it; the clansmen held the remainder in common, no particular
spot being assigned to any one of them.

As far, therefore, as the holding of land was concerned, there
were neither rich nor poor among the Celts; the wealth of the
best of them consisted of cattle, house furniture, money, jewelry,
and other movable property. In the time of St. Columba, the
owner of five cows was thought to be a very poor man, although
he could send them to graze on any free land of his tribe. There
is no doubt that the almost insurmountable difficulty of the land
question at this time originated in the attachment of the people
to the old system, which had not yet perished in their affections;
and certainly many "agrarian outrages," as they are called, have
had their source in the traditions of a people once accustomed
to move and act freely in a free territory.

It is needless to call the attention of the reader to another
consequence of that state of things, namely, the persistence of
territorial possessions. As no individual among them could alienate
his portion, no individual or family could absorb the territory to
the exclusion of others; no great landed aristocracy consequently
could exist, and no part of the land could pass by purchase or in
any other way to a different tribe or to an alien race. The force
of arms sometimes produced temporary changes, nothing more. It is
the same principle which has preserved the small Indian tribes
still existing in Canada. Their "reservations," as they are called,
having been legalized by the British Government at the time of
the conquest from the French, the territory assigned to them would
have remained in their occupancy forever in the midst of the
ever-shifting possessions of the white race, had not the Ottawa
Parliament lately "allowed" those reservations to be divided
among the families of the tribes, with power for each to dispose
of its portion, a power which will soon banish them from the
country of their ancestors.

The preceding observations do not conflict in the least with what
is generally said of inheritance by "gavel kind," whereby the
property was equally divided among the sons to the exclusion of
the daughters; as it is clear that the property to be thus divided
was only movable and personal property.

But after the _land_ we must consider the _persons_ under the
clan-system. Under this head we shall examine briefly:

I. The political offices, such as the dignities of Ard-Righ or
supreme monarch, of the provincial kings, and of the subordinate
chieftains.

II. The state of the common people.

III. The bondsmen or slaves.

All literary or civil offices, not political, were hereditary.
Hence the professions of ollamh, shanachy, bard, brehon, physician,
passed from father to son--a very injudicious arrangement apparently,
but it seems nevertheless to have worked well in Ireland. Strange
to say, however, these various classes formed no castes as in
Egypt or in India, because no one was prevented from embracing
those professions, even when not born to them; and, in the end,
success in study was the only requisite for reaching the highest
round of the literary or professional ladder, as in China.

But a stranger and more dangerous feature of the system was that
in political offices the dignities were hereditary as to the
family, elective as to the person. Hence the title of Ard-Righ
or supreme monarch did not necessarily pass to the eldest son of
the former king, but another member of the same family might be
elected to the office, and was even designated to it during the
lifetime of the actual holder, thus becoming _Tanist_ or heir-apparent.
Every one sees at a glance the numberless disadvantages resulting
from such an institution, and it must be said that most of the
bloody crimes recorded in Irish history sprang from it.

At first sight, the dignity of supreme monarch would almost seem
to be a sinecure under the clan system, as the authority attached
to it was extremely limited, and is generally compared in its
relations to the subordinate kings, as that of metropolitan to
suffragan bishops in the Church. Nevertheless, all Celtic nations
appear to have attached a great importance to it, and the real
misfortunes of Ireland began when contention ran so high for the
office that the people were divided in their supreme allegiance,
and no Ard-Righ was acknowledged at the same time by all; which
happened precisely at the period of the invasion under Strongbow.

Some few facts lately brought to light in the vicissitudes of
various branches of the Celtic family show at once how highly all
Celts, wherever they might be settled, esteemed the dignity of
supreme monarch. It existed, as we have said, in all Celtic
countries, and consequently in Gaul; and the passage in the
"Commentaries" of Julius Caesar on the subject is too important
to be entirely passed over.

After having remarked in the eleventh chapter, "De Bello Gallico,"
lib. vi., that in Gaul the whole country, each city or clan, and
every subdivision of it, even to single houses, presented the
strange spectacle of two parties, "factiones," always in presence
of and opposed to each other, he says in Chapter XII.: --at the
arrival of Caesar in Gaul the _Eduans_ and the _Sequanians_ were
contending for the supreme authority--"The latter civitas--clan--
namely, the Sequanians, being inferior in power--because from
time immemorial the supreme authority had been vested in the
Eduans--had called to its aid the Germans under Ariovist by the
inducement of great advantages and promises. After many successful
battles, in which the entire nobility of the Eduan clan perished,
the Sequanians acquired so much power that they rallied to
themselves the greatest number of the allies of their rivals,
obliged the Eduans to give as hostages the children of their
nobles who had perished, to swear that they would not attempt
any thing against their conquerors, and even took possession of
a part of their territory, and thus obtained the supreme command
of all Gaul."

We see by this passage that there was a supremacy resting in the
hands of some one, over the whole nation. The successful tribe
had a chief to whom that supremacy belonged. Caesar, it is true,
does not speak of a monarch as of a person, but attributes the
power to the "civitas," the tribe. It is well known, however,
that each tribe had a head, and that in Celtic countries the
power was never vested in a body of men, assembly, committee, or
board, as we say in modern times, but in the chieftain, whatever
may have been his degree.

The author of the "Commentaries" was a Roman in whose eyes the
state was every thing, the actual office-holder, dictator, consul,
or praetor, a mere instrument for a short time; and he was too apt,
like most of his countrymen, to judge of other nations by his own.

We may conclude from the passage quoted that there was a supreme
monarch in Gaul as well as in Ireland, and modern historians of
Gaul have acknowledged it.

But there is yet a stranger fact, which absolutely cannot be
explained, save on the supposition that the Celts everywhere held
the supreme dignity of extreme if not absolute importance in their
political system.

To give it the preeminence it deserves, we must refer to a subsequent
event in the history of the Celts in Britain, since it happened
there several centuries after Caesar, and we will quote the words
of Augustin Thierry, who relates it:

"After the retreat of the legions, recalled to Italy to protect
the centre of the empire and Rome itself against the invasion
of the Goths, the Britons ceased to acknowledge the power of the
foreign governors set over their provinces and cities. The forms,
the offices, the very spirit and language of the Roman administration
disappeared; in their place was reconstituted the traditional
authority of the clannish chieftains formerly abolished by Roman
power. Ancient genealogies carefully preserved by the poets,
called in the British language _bairdd_ - bards - helped to discover
those who could pretend to the dignity of chieftains of tribes
or families, tribe and family being synonymous in their language;
and the ties of relationship formed the basis of their social
state. Men of the lowest class, among that people, preserved in
memory the long line of their ancestry with a care scarcely known
to other nations, among the highest lords and princes. All the
British Celts, poor or rich, had to establish their genealogy in
order fully to enjoy their civil rights and secure their claim of
property in the territory of the tribe. The whole belonging to a
primitive family, no one could lay any claim to the soil, unless his
relationship was well established.

"At the top of this social order, composing a federation of small
hereditary sovereignties, the Britons, freed from Roman power,
constituted a high national sovereignty; they created a chieftain
of chieftains, in their tongue called _Penteyrn_, that is to say,
a _king of the whole_, in the language of their old annals. And
they made him elective.--It was also formerly the custom in Gaul.
--The object was to introduce into their system a kind of
centralization, which, however, was always loose among Celtic
tribes."--(_Conquete de l'Angleterre_, liv. i.)

It is evident to us that if the Britons _constituted_ a supreme
power, when freed from the Roman yoke, it was only because they
had possessed it before they became subject to that yoke. It is,
therefore, safe to conclude that there was a supreme monarch in
Britain and in Gaul as well as in Ireland; and since the Britons,
after having lost for several centuries their autonomy of government,
thought of reestablishing this supreme authority as soon as they
were free to do so, it is clear that they attached a real
importance to it, and that it entered as an essential element
into the social fabric.