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Part V
Part V
When we seek to determine the precise moment in the history of the Celtic
races at which we ought to place ourselves in order to appreciate their genius
in its entirety, we find ourselves led back to the sixth century of our era.
Races have nearly always a pre-destined hour at which, passing from
simplicity to reflection, they bring forth to the light of day, for the first
time, all the treasures of their nature. For the Celtic races the poetic
moment of awakening and primal activity was the sixth century. Christianity,
still young amongst them, has not completely stifled the national cult; the
religion of the Druids defends itself in its schools and holy places; warfare
against the foreigner, without which a people never achieves a full
consciousness of itself, attains its highest degree of spirit. It is the epoch
of all the heroes of enduring fame, of all the characteristic saints of the
Breton Church; finally, it is the great age of bardic literature, illustrious
by the names of Taliessin, of Aneurin, of Liwarc`h Hen.
To such as would view critically the historical use of these
half-fabulous names and would hesitate to accept as authentic, poems that have
come down to us through so long a series of ages, we reply that the objections
raised to the antiquity of the bardic literature - objections of which W.
Schlegel made himself the interpreter in opposition to M. Fauriel - have
completely disappeared under the investigations of an enlightened and
impartial criticism. ^20 By a rare exception sceptical opinion has for once
been found in the wrong. The sixth century is in fact for the Breton peoples a
perfectly historical century. We touch this epoch of their history as closely
and with as much certainty as Greek or Roman antiquity. It is indeed known
that, up to a somewhat late period, the bards continued to compose pieces
under the names - which had become popular - of Aneurin, Taliessin, and
Liwarc`h Hen; but no confusion can be made between these insipid rhetorical
exercises and the really ancient fragments which bear the names of the poets
cited - fragments full of personal traits, local circumstances, and individual
passions and feelings.
[Footnote 20: This evidently does not apply to the language of the poems in
question. It is well known that mediaeval scribes, alien as they were to all
ideas of archaeology, modernised the texts, in measure as they copied them;
and that a manuscript in the vulgar tongue, as a rule, only attests the
language of him who transcribed it.]
Such is the literature of which M. de la Villemarque has attempted to
unite the most ancient and authentic monuments in his Breton Bards of the
Sixth Century. Wales has recognised the service that our learned compatriot
has thus rendered to Celtic studies. We confess, however, to much preferring
to the Bards the Popular Songs of Brittany. It is in the latter that M. de la
Villemarque has best served Celtic studies, by revealing to us a delightful
literature, in which, more clearly than anywhere else, are apparent these
features of gentleness, fidelity, resignation, and timid reserve which form
the character of the Breton peoples. ^21
[Footnote 21: This interesting collection ought not, however, to be accepted
unreservedly; and the absolute confidence with which it has been quoted is not
without its inconveniences. We believe that when M. de la Villemarque comments
on the fragments which, to his eternal honour, he has been the first to bring
to light, his criticism is far from being proof against all reproach, and that
several of the historical allusions which he considers that he finds in them
are hypotheses more ingenious than solid. The past is too great, and has come
down to us in too fragmentary a manner, for such coincidences to be probable.
Popular celebrities are rarely those of history, and when the rumours of
distant centuries come to us by two channels, one popular, the other
historical, it is a rare thing for these two forms of tradition to be fully in
accord with one another. M. de la Villemarque is also too ready to suppose
that the people repeats for centuries songs that it only half understands.
When a song ceases to be intelligible, it is nearly always altered by the
people, with the end of approximating it to the sounds familiar and
significant to their ears. Is it not also to be feared that in this case the
editor, in entire good faith, may lend some slight inflection to the text, so
as to find in it the sense that he desires, or has in his mind?]
The theme of the poetry of the bards of the sixth century is simple and
exclusively heroic; it ever deals with the great motives of patriotism and
glory. There is a total absence of all tender feeling, no trace of love, no
well-marked religious idea, but only a vague and naturalistic mysticism, - a
survival of Druidic teaching, - and a moral philosophy wholly expressed in
Triads, similar to that taught in the half-bardic, half-Christian schools of
St. Cadoc and St. Iltud. The singularly artificial and highly wrought form of
the style suggests the existence of a system of learned instruction possessing
long traditions. A more pronounced shade, and there would be a danger of
falling into a pedantic and mannered rhetoric. The bardic literature, by its
lengthened existence through the whole of the Middle Ages, did not escape this
danger. It ended by being no more than a somewhat insipid collection of
unoriginalities in style, and conventional metaphors. ^22
[Footnote 22: A Welsh scholar, Mr. Stephens, in his History of Cymric
Literature (Llandovery, 1849), has demonstrated these successive
transformations very well.]
The opposition between bardism and Christianity reveals itself in the
pieces translated by M. de la Villemarque by many features of original and
pathetic interest. The strife which rent the soul of the old poets, their
antipathy to the grey men of the monastery, their sad and painful conversion,
are to be found in their songs. The sweetness and tenacity of the Breton
character can alone explain how a heterodoxy so openly avowed as this
maintained its position in face of the dominant Christianity, and how holy
men, Kolumkill for example, took upon themselves the defence of the bards
against the kings who desired to stamp them out. The strife was the longer in
its duration, in that Christianity among the Celtic peoples never employed
force against rival religions, and, at the worst, left to the vanquished the
liberty of ill humour. Belief in prophets, indestructible among these peoples,
created, in despite of faith the Anti-Christian type of Merlin, and caused
his acceptance by the whole of Europe. Gildas and the orthodox Bretons were
ceaseless in their thunderings against the prophets, and opposed to them Elias
and Samuel, two bards who only foretold good; even in the twelfth century
Giraldus Cambrensis saw a prophet in the town of Caerleon.
Thanks to this toleration bardism lasted into the heart of the Middle
Ages, under the form of a secret doctrine, with a conventional language, and
symbols almost wholly borrowed from the solar divinity of Arthur. This may be
termed Neo-Druidism, a kind of Druidism subtilised and reformed on the model
of Christianity, which may be seen growing more and more obscure and
mysterious, until the moment of its total disappearance. A curious fragment
belonging to this school, the dialogue between Arthur and Eliwlod, has
transmitted to us the latest sighs of this latest protestation of expiring
naturalism. Under the form of an eagle Eliwlod introduces the divinity to the
sentiment of resignation, of subjection, and of humility, with which
Christianity combated pagan pride. Heroworship recoils step by step before the
great formula, which Christianity ceases not to repeat to the Celtic races to
sever them from their memories: There is none greater than God. Arthur allows
himself to be persuaded to abdicate from his divinity, and ends by reciting
the Pater.
I know of no more curious spectacle than this revolt of the manly
sentiments of hero-worship against the feminine feeling which flowed so
largely into the new faith. What, in fact, exasperates the old representatives
of Celtic society are the exclusive triumph of the pacific spirit and the men,
clad in linen and chanting psalms, whose voice is sad, who preach asceticism,
and know the heroes no more. ^23 We know the use that Ireland has made of this
theme, in the dialogues which she loves to imagine between the representatives
of her profane and religious life, Ossian and St. Patrick. ^24 Ossian regrets
the adventures, the chase, the blast of the horn, and the kings of old time.
"If they were here," he says to St. Patrick, "thou should`st not thus be
scouring the country with the psalm-singing flock." Patrick seeks to calm him
by soft words, and sometimes carries his condescension so far as to listen to
his long histories, which appear to interest the saint but slightly. "Thou
hast heard my story," says the old bard in conclusion; "albeit my memory
groweth weak, and I am devoured with care, yet I desire to continue still to
sing the deeds of yore, and to live upon ancient glories. Now am I stricken
with years, my life is frozen within me, and all my joys are fleeting away. No
more can my hand grasp the sword, nor mine arm hold the lance in rest. Among
priests my last sad hour lengtheneth out, and psalms take now the place of
songs of victory." "Let thy songs rest," says Patrick, "and dare not to
compare thy Finn to the King of Kings, whose might knoweth no bounds: bend thy
knees before Him, and know Him for thy Lord." It was indeed necessary to
surrender, and the legend relates how the old bard ended his days in the
cloister, among the priests whom he had so often used rudely, in the midst of
these chants that he knew not. Ossian was too good an Irishman for any one to
make up his mind to damn him utterly. Merlin himself had to cede to the new
spell. He was, it is said, converted by St. Columba; and the popular voice in
the ballads repeats to him unceasingly this sweet and touching appeal:
"Merlin, Merlin, be converted; there is no divinity save that of God."
[Footnote 23: The antipathy to Christianity attributed by the Armorican people
to the dwarfs and korigans belongs in like measure to traditions of the
opposition encountered by the Gospel in its beginnings. The korigans in fact
are, for the Breton peasant, great princesses who would not accept
Christianity when the apostles came to Brittany. They hate the clergy and the
churches, the bells of which make them take to flight. The Virgin above all is
their great enemy; she it is who has hounded them forth from their fountains,
and on Saturday, the day consecrated to her, whosoever beholds them combing
their hair or counting their treasures is sure to perish. (Villemarque Chants
populaires, Introduction.)]
[Footnote 24: See Miss Brooke`s Reliques of Irish Poetry, Dublin, 1789, pp. 37
et seq., pp. 75 et seq.]
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