AN OLD POEM FROM THE "BOOK OF LEINSTER."
(NEVER PREVIOUSLY TRANSLATED.)
By T. O'Neill Russell.
THE following is one of the most curious, it might be said extraordinary, poems in ancient Irish. I have attempted its translation for the simple reason that no one else has made the attempt. I do not guarantee translation to be correct in every particular, for there are words in the Irish that cannot be found In any dictionary or vocabulary that I have consulted, and the translations of them are, to a certain extent, guesses.
The poem will be found on page 295 of the fac simile of the Book of Leinster, and on page 63 of my modern Irish version of the Leinster Tribute, or "Boramha Laighean," where it is transcribed but not translated.
A version of the Leinster Tribute has been made by Mr. Stokes in the "Revue Celtique," and by Mr. Standish Hayes O'Grady in "Silva Gadelica," but neither of them has attempted the translation of this curious poem, evidently, it is to be supposed, because they found it so very difficult. It is certain that the poems In many of the tracts and legends in ancient Irish are much more difficult to understand than the prose, because they are often centuries older.
The tract on the Leinster Tribute may have been written hundreds of years before it was copied into the Book of Leinster, about the year 1150. The scribe who copied it could have modernized the prose part of it. and it seems almost certain that he did; but he could hardly have modernized the verse without spoiling the metre and the rhyme.
The prose part of the Leinster Tribute is, to a great extent, the language of Keating and Bedel. In putting it into modern Irish, I had not very much to do beyond modernizing the spelling, and giving modern words instead of some obsolete ancient ones; the construction of the prose had to be altered only in a few places.
I remember having read a whole page of the prose part of the Leinster Tribute for a native Irish speaker, and he understood every word of it, except some of the proper names. He could read and write the modern language well, but he had never before seen an ancient manuscript, or heard one read. This will show the folly of the wild assertion that some who pose as Irish scholars make when they say that the Irish of Keating, Bedel and Donlevy cannot be now understood.
There is only one word of what could be called even a slight difference in language between Bedel's Irish version of the first chapter of Genesis, and Archbishop MacHale's Irish version of the same chapter, and that difference, if it can really be called a difference, consists in the substituting of the preposition "le" by Archbishop MacHale, for the preposition "re" used by Bedel.
Bedel's Irish version of the Bible was made about the year 1640. and Archbishop MacHale's Irish version of the Pentateuch was made more than two hundred years later, yet both versions may be truly said to be in the same language. It seems wrong to dishearten students by telling them that most of the ancient Irish language is so very difficult.
Anyone who has a good grasp of the Irish of Keating will have no great difficulty in understanding what is called "Middle Irish"; that is, the language written between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. "Old Irish" is applied to the language written before the tenth century.
The great poem, the "Feilere of Oengus," is generally considered the longest piece of verse extant in old Irish. Nine-tenths of ancient Irish literature is in Middle Irish. For scholars, the most important part of Old Irish are the Irish glosses in Latin manuscripts preserved in the libraries of St. Gall, Wurtzburg, Milan, and other cities on the Continent. These glosses have the great advantage of orginality; they are not copies; they were written by Irish monks and learned men who were the chief teachers of Christianity and of letters to the then pagan inhabitants of a great part of Continental Europe. Most of the glosses In Irish found in so many of the libraries of Continental Europe are supposed to have been written between the seventh and ninth centuries.
It is only fair for me to say that, imperfect as the following translation may be. it would have been still more imperfect were it not for the help I got from Mrs. M. A. Hutton, of Belfast, who is an excellent Irish scholar, and especially conversant with the old forms of the language. The following copy of the poem on the Leinster Tribute has been very carefully made from the facsimile of the Book of Leinster, and can be guaranteed exact.
The story of the cause of the imposition of the Tribute on the Province of Leinster is the most interesting and pathetic episode in all ancient Irish history. Tuathal Teachtmhar was Over-King of Ireland about the beginning of the second century, A. D. He had two beautiful daughters named Fithir and Darine. A King of Leinster named by annalists both Eochach and Doimlen, married Fithir; but thinking that Darine was the better of the two young ladies, he went to Tara, told Tuathal that Fithir was dead, and that he wished to marry Darine, her sister, and she was given to him. When Darine arrived at the King of Leinster's dun, or dwelling, she found her sister, whom she had thought dead, alive and well. Darine died of shame on finding how she had been treated, and on seeing her sister dead. Fithir died of grief. So Tuathal lost both his beautiful daughters.
On finding how his daughters had been illused, Tuathal summoned his vassals, the Kings of Ulster and Connacht, one of whom had been foster father to Fithir, and the other to Darine. Their forces, along with those of the chief king, Tuathal, invaded Leinster, defeated and killed its King, and imposed the enormous tribute mentioned in the following poem. It was paid on and off for nearly six hundred years, until it was remitted by the Over-King, Finnachta, in the seventh century.
The tribute caused battles beyond number, for the Leinstermen rarely paid it without a fight. It almost totally denationalized the men of the unfortunate province, and
