Part 12

"I know them, but I cannot describe them. Their counsel is foolish, they are forgetful of love, most headstrong in their desires, fond of folly, prone to enter rashly into engagements, given to swearing, proud to be asked in marriage, tenacious of enmity, cheerless at the banquet, rejectors of reconciliation, prone to strife, of much garrulity. Until evil be good, until hell be heaven, until the sun hide his light, until the stars of heaven fall, women will remain as we have declared. Woe to him, my son, who desires or serves a bad woman, woe to him who has a bad wife."

Was there some thought of his daughter Grania in Cormac's mind, behind these keen-edged; words?--of Grania, beloved of Diarmuid? When the winters of the years were already white on Find, son of Cumal, when Ossin his son had a son of his own, Oscur the valiant, the two old men, Cormac the king and Find leader of the warriors, bethought them to make a match between Find and Grania, one of the famous beauties of the olden time. A banquet was set in the great House of Mead, and Find and his men were there, Diarmuid son of Duibné being also there, best beloved among Find's warriors. There was a custom, much in honor among the chieftains, that a princess should send her goblet to the guests, offering it to each with gentle courtesy. This grace fell to the lady Grania, whose whole heart rose up against her grey-bearded lover, and was indeed set on Diarmuid the son of Duibné. Grania compounded a dreamy draught to mix with the mead, so that all the chieftains and warriors, with Cormac and Find himself, even while praising the drink, fell straightway a-nodding, and were soon in silent sleep, all except Ossin and Diarmuid, whom Grania had bidden not to drink.

Then Grania, her voice all tremulous with tears, told to Ossin the fate that awaited her, looking at him, but speaking for Diarmuid; bewailing bitterly the misery of fair youth in the arms of withered eld, and at last turning and openly begging Diarmuid to save her from her fate. To carry away a king's daughter, betrothed to the leader of the warriors, was a perilous thing, and Diarmuid's heart stood still at the thought of it; yet Grania's tears prevailed, and they two fled forth that night to the hills and forests. Dire and ruinous was the wrath of Cormac and of Find when they awoke and found that these two were fled; and whatever might was in the king's hand, whatever power in the hosts of Find, was straightway turned against them in pursuit. Yet the two fled as the deer might fly, visiting with their loves every wood and valley in Erin, till the memory of them lingers throughout all the hills. Finally, after a year's joyful and fearsome fleeing, the Fian warriors everywhere aiding them for love of Diarmuid, swift death came upon Diarmuid, and Grania was left desolate.

But Angus the Ever-Young, guardian Genius of the pyramid-shrine of Brugh by the Boyne, De Danaan dweller in the secret house, Angus of the Immortals received the spirit of Diarmuid, opening for him the ways of the hidden world.

But enmity grew between Find with his warriors and Cormac the king, till at last a battle was fought where Find's men fell, and Cairbré, the well-instructed son of Cormac also fell. Thus passed away the ruling spirits of that age, the flowering time of the genius of Erin.

VIII.

THE MESSENGER OF THE NEW WAY.

A.D. 410-493.

The valor of Fergus and Cuculain, the rich imaginative life of Find and Ossin, were the flower of heroic centuries. Strong men had fought for generations before Concobar reigned at Emain of Maca. Poets had sung their deeds of valor, and the loves of fair women, and the magical beauty of the world, through hardly changing ages. The heroes of fame were but the best fruit in the garden of the nation's life. So ripe was that life, more than two thousand years ago, that it is hard to say what they did not know, of the things which make for amenity and comity. The colors of the picture are everywhere rich, yet perfectly harmonized.

The earliest forms of Irish writing seem to have come from the Baltic runes, and these, in their turn, from an old Greek script of twenty-five hundred years ago. The runes spread as far as the Orkneys, and there they were well within the horizon of Ireland's knowledge. Nothing would be more natural than the keeping of written records in Erin for three or four hundred years before Cuculain's birth, nineteen hundred years ago.

The arts of life were very perfect; the gold-work of that time is unsurpassed--has never been surpassed. At a far earlier time there were beautifully moulded and decorated gold-bronze spears, that show what richness of feeling and imagination, what just taste and fine skill were there. All our knowledge goes to show that the suitor of Credé has drawn a true picture of her house and the generous social life belonging to it. We know, too, that the great dining-hall of Tara has been faithfully celebrated by the bards; the picture of the king in his scarlet cloak is representative of the whole epoch.

The story of Credé also shows the freedom and honor accorded to women, as does the queenship of Meave, with the record of her separate riches. The tragedies of Deirdré and Grania would never have been remembered, had not the freedom and high regard of women been universal. Such decorative skill as is shown in the metal-work and pottery that have come down to us must have borne fruit in every realm of social life, in embroideries, tapestries, well-designed and beautifully adorned homes. Music is everywhere spoken of in the old traditions, and the skill of the poets we can judge for ourselves.

In all that concerns the natural man, therefore, a very high perfection had been reached. A frame of life had grown habitual, which brought out the finest vigor and strength and beauty. Romantic love added its riches to valor, and dignity was given by the ever-present memory of the heroic past, merging on the horizon with the divine dawn of the world. Manhood and womanhood had come to perfect flower. The crown rested on the brow of the nation's life.

When the life of the natural man is perfected, the time comes to strike the note of the immortal, to open the door of our real and enduring destiny. Sensual success, the ideal of unregenerate man, was perfectly realized in Concobar and ten thousand like him. The destiny of triumphant individual life, the strong man victorious over nature and other men, was fulfilled. Individual prowess, individual accomplishment, could go no further.

Nor should we overlook the dark shadows of the picture. Glory is to the victor, but woe to the vanquished. The continual warfare between tribe and tribe, between chief and chief, which made every valley a home of warriors dominated by a rath-fortress, bore abundant fruits of evil. Death in battle need not be reckoned, or may be counted as pure gain; but the fate of the wounded, maimed and miserable, the destitution of women and children left behind, the worse fate of the captives, sold as they were into exile and slavery,--all these must be included in the total.

Nor are these material losses the worst. The great evil of the epoch of tribal war is its reaction on the human spirit. The continual struggle of ambition draws forth egotism, the desire to dominate for mere domination, the sense of separation and antagonism between man and man, tribe and tribe, province and province.

But our real human life begins only when these evil tendencies are abated; when we learn to watch the life of others as if it were our own,--as being indeed a part of our own life,--and in every act and motion of our minds do only that which shall be to the best advantage of both ourselves and our neighbor. For only thus, only by the incessant practice of this in imagination and act, can the door of our wider and more humane consciousness be opened.

Nor is this all. There are in us vast unexplored tracts of power and wisdom; tracts not properly belonging to our personal and material selves, but rather to the impersonal and universal consciousness which touches us from within, and which we call divine. Our personal fate is closed by death; but we have a larger destiny which death does not touch; a destiny enduring and immortal. The door to this larger destiny can only be opened after we have laid down the weapons of egotism; after we have become veritably humane. There must be a death to militant self-assertion, a new birth to wide and universal purposes, before this larger life can be understood and known.

With all the valor and rich life of the days of Cuculain and Ossin, the destructive instinct of antagonism was very deeply rooted in all hearts; it did endless harm to the larger interests of the land, and laid Ireland open to attack from without. Because the genius of the race was strong and highly developed, the harm went all the deeper; even now, after centuries, it is not wholly gone.

The message of the humane and the divine, taught among the Galilean hills and on the shores of Gennesaret, was after four centuries brought to Ireland--a word of new life to the warriors and chieftains, enkindling and transforming their heroic world. Britain had received the message before, for Britain was a part of the dominion of Rome, which already had its imperial converts. Roman life and culture and knowledge of the Latin tongue had spread throughout the island up to the northern barrier between the Forth and Clyde. Beyond this was a wilderness of warring tribes.

Where the Clyde comes forth from the plain to the long estuary of the sea, the Messenger of the Tidings was born. His father, Calpurn, was a Roman patrician; from this his son, whose personal name was Succat, was surnamed Patricius, a title raised by his greatness into a personal name. His letters give us a vivid picture of his captivity, and the stress of life which gradually aroused in him the inspiration of the humane and divine ripened later into a full knowledge of his apostolate.

"I Patricius, a sinner," he writes, "and most unlearned of believers, looked down upon by many, had for my father the deacon Calpurn, son of the elder Potitus, of a place called Bannova in Tabernia, near to which was his country home. There I was taken captive, when not quite sixteen. I knew not the Eternal. Being led into captivity with thousands of others, I was brought to Ireland,--a fate well deserved. For we had turned from the Eternal, nor kept the laws of the Eternal. Nor had we heeded the teachers who urged us to seek safety. Therefore the Eternal, justly wroth, scattered us among unbelievers, to the uttermost parts of the earth; here, where my poor worth is now seen among strangers, where the Eternal liberated the power hid in my unenkindled heart, that even though late I should recognize my error, and turn with all my heart to the Eternal....

"I have long had it in mind to write, but until now have hesitated; for I feared blame, because I had not studied law and the sacred writings,--as have others who have never changed their language, but gone on to perfection in it; but my speech is translated into another language, and the roughness of my writing shows how little I have been taught. As the Sage says, 'Show by thy speech thy wisdom and knowledge and learning.' But what profits this excuse? since all can see how in my old age I struggle after what I should have learned as a boy. For then my sinfulness hindered me. I was but a beardless boy when I was taken captive, not knowing what to do and what to avoid; therefore I am ashamed to show my ignorance now? because I never learned to express great matters succinctly and well;--great matters like the moving of the soul and mind by the Divine Breath.... Nor, indeed, was I worthy that the Master should so greatly favor me, after all my hard labor and heavy toil, and the years of captivity amongst this people,--that the Master should show me such graciousness as I never knew nor hoped for till I came to Ireland.

"But daily herding cattle here, and aspiring many times a day, the fear of the Eternal grew daily in me. A divine dread and aspiration grew in me, so that I often prayed a hundred times a day, and as many times in the night. I often remained in the woods and on the hills, rising to pray while it was yet dark, in snow or frost or rain; yet I took no harm. The Breath of the Divine burned within me, so that nothing remained in me unenkindled.

"One night, while I was sleeping, I heard a voice saying to me, 'You have fasted well, and soon you shall see your home and your native land.' Soon after, I heard the voice again, saying, 'The ship is ready for you.' But the ship was not near, but two hundred miles off, in a district I had never visited, and where I knew no one. Therefore I fled, leaving the master I had served for six years, and found the ship by divine guidance, going without fear....

"We reached the land after three days' sail; then for twenty-eight days we wandered through a wilderness.... Once more, after years of exile, I was at home again with my kindred, among the Britons. All welcomed me like a son, earnestly begging me that, after the great dangers I had passed through, I would never again leave my home.

"While I was at home, in a vision of the night I saw one who seemed to come from Ireland, bringing innumerable letters. He gave me one of the letters, in which I read, 'The voices of the Irish ...;' and while I read, it seemed to me that I heard the cry of the dwellers by the forest of Foclut, by the Western Ocean, calling with one voice to me, 'Come and dwell with us!' My heart was so moved that I awoke, and I give thanks to my God who after many years has given to them according to their petition.

"On another night, whether within me or without me I know not, God knows, One prayed with very wonderful words that I could not comprehend, till at last He said, 'It is He who gave His soul for you, that speaks!' I awoke for joy. And once in a vision I saw Him praying within me, as it were; I saw myself, as it were, within myself; and I heard Him praying urgently and strongly over the inner man; I being meanwhile astonished, and wondering who thus prayed within me, till at the end He declared that I should be an overseer for Him....