The Coming of Cuculain Read online

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  THE COMING OF CUCULAIN

  By Standish O'grady

  Author of

  "THE TRIUMPH AND PASSING OF CUCULAIN"

  "IN THE GATES OF THE NORTH"

  "THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE"

  ETC.

  PREFACE

  There are three great cycles of Gaelic literature. The first treatsof the gods; the second of the Red Branch Knights of Ulster and theircontemporaries; the third is the so-called Ossianic. Of the Ossianic,Finn is the chief character; of the Red Branch cycle, Cuculain, the heroof our tale.

  Cuculain and his friends are historical characters, seen as it werethrough mists of love and wonder, whom men could not forget, but forcenturies continued to celebrate in countless songs and stories.They were not literary phantoms, but actual existences; imaginary andfictitious characters, mere creatures of idle fancy, do not live andflourish so in the world's memory. And as to the gigantic stature andsuperhuman prowess and achievements of those antique heroes, it must notbe forgotten that all art magnifies, as if in obedience to some stronglaw; and so, even in our own times, Grattan, where he stands in artisticbronze, is twice as great as the real Grattan thundering in the Senate.I will therefore ask the reader, remembering the large manner of theantique literature from which our tale is drawn, to forget for awhile that there is such a thing as scientific history, to give hisimagination a holiday, and follow with kindly interest the singularstory of the boyhood of Cuculain, "battle-prop of the valour and torchof the chivalry of the Ultonians."

  I have endeavoured so to tell the story as to give a general idea ofthe cycle, and of primitive heroic Irish life as reflected in thatliterature, laying the cycle, so far as accessible, under contributionto furnish forth the tale. Within a short compass I would bring beforeswift modern readers the more striking aspects of a literature so vastand archaic as to repel all but students.

  STANDISH O'GRADY -- A TRIBUTE BY A. E.

  In this age we read so much that we lay too great a burden on theimagination. It is unable to create images which are the spiritualequivalent of the words on the printed page, and reading becomes for toomany an occupation of the eye rather than of the mind. How rarely--outof the multitude of volumes a man reads in his lifetime--can he rememberwhere or when he read any particular book, or with any vividness recallthe mood it evoked in him. When I close my eyes, and brood in memoryover the books which most profoundly affected me, I find none excited myimagination more than Standish O'Grady's epical narrative of Cuculain.Whitman said of his Leaves of Grass, "Camerado, this is no book: whotouches this touches a man" and O'Grady might have boasted of his BardicHistory of Ireland, written with his whole being, that there was morethan a man in it, there was the soul of a people, its noblest and mostexalted life symbolised in the story of one heroic character.

  With reference to Ireland, I was at the time I read like many others whowere bereaved of the history of their race. I was as a man who, throughsome accident, had lost memory of his past, who could recall no morethan a few months of new life, and could not say to what songs hiscradle had been rocked, what mother had nursed him, who were theplaymates of childhood or by what woods and streams he had wandered.When I read O'Grady I was as such a man who suddenly feels ancientmemories rushing at him, and knows he was born in a royal house, that hehad mixed with the mighty of heaven and earth and had the very noblestfor his companions. It was the memory of race which rose up within me asI read, and I felt exalted as one who learns he is among the childrenof kings. That is what O'Grady did for me and for others who were mycontemporaries, and I welcome these reprints of his tales in the hopethat he will go on magically recreating for generations yet unborn theancestral life of their race in Ireland. For many centuries the youthof Ireland as it grew up was made aware of the life of bygone ages, andthere were always some who remade themselves in the heroic mould beforethey passed on. The sentiment engendered by the Gaelic literature was anarcane presence, though unconscious of itself, in those who for thepast hundred years had learned another speech. In O'Grady's writings thesubmerged river of national culture rose up again, a shining torrent,and I realised as I bathed in that stream, that the greatest spiritualevil one nation could inflict on another was to cut off from it thestory of the national soul. For not all music can be played upon anyinstrument, and human nature for most of us is like a harp on which canbe rendered the music written for the harp but not that written for theviolin. The harp strings quiver for the harp-player alone, and he whocan utter his passion through the violin is silent before an unfamiliarinstrument. That is why the Irish have rarely been deeply stirred byEnglish literature though it is one of the great literatures of theworld. Our history was different and the evolutionary product was apeculiarity of character, and the strings of our being vibrate most inecstasy when the music evokes ancestral moods or embodies emotions akinto these. I am not going to argue the comparative worth of the Gaelicand English tradition. All I can say is that the traditions of our owncountry move us more than the traditions of any other. Even if there wasnot essential greatness in them we would love them for the same reasonswhich bring back so many exiles to revisit the haunts of childhood. Butthere was essential greatness in that neglected bardic literature whichO'Grady was the first to reveal in a noble manner. He had the spiritof an ancient epic poet. He is a comrade of Homer, his birth delayedin time perhaps that he might renew for a sophisticated people theelemental simplicity and hardihood men had when the world was youngand manhood was prized more than any of its parts, more than thoughtor beauty or feeling. He has created for us or rediscovered one figurewhich looms in the imagination as a high comrade of Hector, Achilles,Ulysses, Rama or Yudisthira, as great in spirit as any. Who could extolenough his Cuculain, that incarnation of Gaelic chivalry, the fire andgentleness, the beauty and heroic ardour or the imaginative splendourof the episodes in his retelling of the ancient story. There are writerswho bewitch us by a magical use of words, whose lines glitter likejewels, whose effects are gained by an elaborate art and who deal withthe subtlest emotions. Others again are simple as an Egyptian image andyet are more impressive and you remember them less for the sentence thanfor a grandiose effect. They are not so much concerned with the art ofwords as with the creation of great images informed with magnificence ofspirit. They are not lesser artists but greater, for there is a greaterart in the simplification of form in the statue of Memnon than thereis in the intricate detail of a bronze by Benvenuto Cellini. StandishO'Grady had in his best moments that epic wholeness and simplicity, andthe figure of Cuculain amid his companions of the Red Branch which hediscovered and refashioned for us is I think the greatest spiritual giftany Irishman for centuries has given to Ireland.

  I know it will be said that this is a scientific age, the world is sofull of necessitous life that it is waste of time for young Ireland tobrood upon tales of legendary heroes, who fought with enchanters, whoharnessed wild fairy horses to magic chariots and who talked withthe ancient gods, and that it would be much better for youth to bescientific and practical. Do not believe it, dear Irish boy, dear Irishgirl. I know as well as any the economic needs of our people. They mustnot be overlooked, but keep still in your hearts some desires whichmight enter Paradise. Keep in your souls some images of magnificenceso that hereafter the halls of heaven and the divine folk may not seemaltogether alien to the spirit. These legends have passed the testof generations for century after century, and they were treasuredand passed on to those who followed, and that was because there wassomething in them akin to the immortal spirit. Humanity cannot carrywith it through time the memory of all its deeds and imaginations, andit burdens itself only in a new era with what was high
est among theimaginations of the ancestors. What is essentially noble is never out ofdate. The figures carved by Phidias for the Parthenon still shine by theside of the greatest modern sculpture. There has been no evolution ofthe human form to a greater beauty than the ancient Greeks saw and theforms they carved are not strange to us, and if this is true of theoutward form it is true of the indwelling spirit. What is essentiallynoble is contemporary with all that is splendid to-day, and, until themass of men are equal in spirit, the great figures of the past willaffect us less as memories than as prophecies of the Golden Age to whichyouth is ever hurrying in its heart.

  O'Grady in his stories of the Red Branch rescued from the past what wascontemporary to the best in us to-day, and he was equal in his giftsas a writer to the greatest of his bardic predecessors in Ireland. Hissentences are charged with a heroic energy, and, when he is telling agreat tale, their rise and fall are like the flashing and falling ofthe bright sword of some great champion in battle, or the onset andwithdrawal of Atlantic surges. He can at need be beautifully tenderand quiet. Who that has read his tale of the young Finn and the SevenAncients will forget the weeping of Finn over the kindness of thefamine-stricken old men, and their wonder at his weeping and theself-forgetful pathos of their meditation unconscious that it was theirown sacrifice called forth the tears of Finn. "Youth," they said, "hasmany sorrows that cold age cannot comprehend."

  There are critics repelled by the abounding energy in O'Grady'ssentences. It is easy to point to faults due to excess and abundance,but how rare in literature is that heroic energy and power. There issomething arcane and elemental in it, a quality that the most carefulstylist cannot attain, however he uses the file, however subtle he is.O'Grady has noticed this power in the ancient bards and we find it inhis own writing. It ran all through the Bardic History, the Criticaland Philosophical History, and through the political books, "The ToryDemocracy" and "All Ireland." There is this imaginative energy in thetale of Cuculain, in all its episodes, the slaying of the hound, thecapture of the Laity Macha, the hunting of the enchanted deer, thecapture of the wild swans, the fight at the ford and the awakening ofthe Red Branch. In the later tale of Red Hugh which he calls "The Flightof the Eagle" there is the same quality of power joined with a shiningsimplicity in the narrative which rises into a poetic ecstacy in thatwonderful chapter where Red Hugh, escaping from the Pale, rides throughthe Mountain Gates of Ulster, and sees high above him Slieve Mullion,a mountain of the Gods, the birthplace of legend "more mythic thanAvernus" and O'Grady evokes for us and his hero the legendary past, andthe great hill seems to be like Mount Sinai, thronged with immortals,and it lives and speaks to the fugitive boy, "the last great secularchampion of the Gael," and inspires him for the fulfilment of hisdestiny. We might say of Red Hugh and indeed of all O'Grady's heroesthat they are the spiritual progeny of Cuculain. From Red Hugh down tothe boys who have such enchanting adventures in "Lost on Du Corrig" and"The Chain of Gold" they have all a natural and hardy purity of mind,a beautiful simplicity of character, and one can imagine them all in anhour of need, being faithful to any trust like the darling of the RedBranch. These shining lads never grew up amid books. They are as muchchildren of nature as the Lucy of Wordsworth's poetry. It might be saidof them as the poet of the Kalevala sang of himself,

  "Winds and waters my instructors."

  These were O'Grady's own earliest companions and no man can find bettercomrades than earth, water, air and sun. I imagine O'Grady's ownyouth was not so very different from the youth of Red Hugh before hiscaptivity; that he lived on the wild and rocky western coast, that herowed in coracles, explored the caves, spoke much with hardy naturalpeople, fishermen and workers on the land, primitive folk, simple inspeech, but with that fundamental depth men have who are much in naturein companionship with the elements, the elder brothers of humanity: itmust have been out of such a boyhood and such intimacies with naturaland unsophisticated people that there came to him the understanding ofthe heroes of the Red Branch. How pallid, beside the ruddy chivalrywho pass huge and fleet and bright through O'Grady's pages, appearTennyson's bloodless Knights of the Round Table, fabricated in the studyto be read in the drawing-room, as anaemic as Burne Jones' lifeless menin armour. The heroes of ancient Irish legend reincarnated in the mindof a man who could breathe into them the fire of life, caught from sunand wind, their ancient deities, and send them, forth to the world todo greater deeds, to act through many men and speak through many voices.What sorcery was in the Irish mind that it has taken so many years towin but a little recognition for this splendid spirit; and that otherswho came after him, who diluted the pure fiery wine of romance he gaveus with literary water, should be as well known or more widely read. Formy own part I can only point back to him and say whatever is Irish in mehe kindled to life, and I am humble when I read his epic tale, feelinghow much greater a thing it is for the soul of a writer to have been thehabitation of a demigod than to have had the subtlest intellections.

  We praise the man who rushes into a burning mansion and brings out itsgreatest treasure. So ought we to praise this man who rescued from theperishing Gaelic tradition its darling hero and restored him to us,and I think now that Cuculain will not perish, and he will be invisiblypresent at many a council of youth, and he will be the daring whichlifts the will beyond itself and fires it for great causes, and he willalso be the courtesy which shall overcome the enemy that nothing elsemay overcome.

  I am sure that Standish O'Grady would rather I should speak of his workand its bearing on the spiritual life of Ireland, than about himself,and, because I think so, in this reverie I have followed no set plan buthave let my thoughts run as they will. But I would not have any to thinkthat this man was only a writer, or that he could have had the heroesof the past for spiritual companions, without himself being inspired tofight dragons and wizardy. I have sometimes regretted that contemporarypolitics drew O'Grady away from the work he began so greatly. I havesaid to myself he might have given us an Oscar, a Diarmuid or a Caoilte,an equal comrade to Cuculain, but he could not, being lit up by thespirit of his hero, be merely the bard and not the fighter, and no manin Ireland intervened in the affairs of his country with a superiornobility of aim. He was the last champion of the Irish aristocracy andstill more the voice of conscience for them, and he spoke to them oftheir duty to the nation as one might imagine some fearless prophetspeaking to a council of degenerate princes. When the aristocracy failedIreland he bade them farewell, and wrote the epitaph of their class inwords whose scorn we almost forget because of their sounding melodyand beauty. He turned his mind to the problems of democracy and moreespecially of those workers who are trapped in the city, and he pointedout for them the way of escape and how they might renew life in thegreen fields close to Earth, their ancient mother and nurse. He usedtoo exalted a language for those to whom he spoke to understand, and itmight seem that all these vehement appeals had failed but that we knowthat what is fine never really fails. When a man is in advance of hisage, a generation unborn when he speaks, is born in due time and findsin him its inspiration. O'Grady may have failed in his appeal to thearistocracy of his own time but he may yet create an aristocracy ofcharacter and intellect in Ireland. The political and social writingswill remain to uplift and inspire and to remind us that the man whowrote the stories of heroes had a bravery of his own and a wisdom of hisown. I owe so much to Standish O'Grady that I would like to leave it onrecord that it was he who made me conscious and proud of my country, andrecalled my mind, that might have wandered otherwise over too wide andvague a field of thought, to think of the earth under my feet and thechildren of our common mother. There hangs in the Municipal Gallery ofDublin the portrait of a man with brooding eyes, and scrawled on thecanvas is the subject of his bitter meditation, "The Lost Land." I hopethat O'Grady will find before he goes back to Tir-na-noge that Irelandhas found again through him what seemed lost for ever, the law of itsown being, and its memories which go back to the beginning of the world.