Celtic Literature
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Matthew Arnold >> Celtic Literature
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10 Transcribed from the 1891 Smith, Elder and Co. edition by David
Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
CELTIC LITERATURE
INTRODUCTION
The following remarks on the study of Celtic Literature formed the
substance of four lectures given by me in the chair of poetry at
Oxford. They were first published in the Cornhill Magazine, and are
now reprinted from thence. Again and again, in the course of them, I
have marked the very humble scope intended; which is, not to treat
any special branch of scientific Celtic studies (a task for which I
am quite incompetent), but to point out the many directions in which
the results of those studies offer matter of general interest, and to
insist on the benefit we may all derive from knowing the Celt and
things Celtic more thoroughly. It was impossible, however, to avoid
touching on certain points of ethnology and philology, which can be
securely handled only by those who have made these sciences the
object of special study. Here the mere literary critic must owe his
whole safety to his tact in choosing authorities to follow, and
whatever he advances must be understood as advanced with a sense of
the insecurity which, after all, attaches to such a mode of
proceeding, and as put forward provisionally, by way of hypothesis
rather than of confident assertion.
To mark clearly to the reader both this provisional character of much
which I advance, and my own sense of it, I have inserted, as a check
upon some of the positions adopted in the text, notes and comments
with which Lord Strangford has kindly furnished me. Lord Strangford
is hardly less distinguished for knowing ethnology and languages so
scientifically than for knowing so much of them; and his interest,
even from the vantage-ground of his scientific knowledge, and after
making all due reserves on points of scientific detail, in my
treatment,--with merely the resources and point of view of a literary
critic at my command,--of such a subject as the study of Celtic
Literature, is the most encouraging assurance I could have received
that my attempt is not altogether a vain one.
Both Lord Strangford and others whose opinion I respect have said
that I am unjust in calling Mr. Nash, the acute and learned author of
Taliesin, or the Bards and Druids of Britain, a 'Celt-hater.' 'He is
a denouncer,' says Lord Strangford in a note on this expression, 'of
Celtic extravagance, that is all; he is an anti-Philocelt, a very
different thing from an anti-Celt, and quite indispensable in
scientific inquiry. As Philoceltism has hitherto,--hitherto,
remember,--meant nothing but uncritical acceptance and irrational
admiration of the beloved object's sayings and doings, without
reference to truth one way or the other, it is surely in the interest
of science to support him in the main. In tracing the workings of
old Celtic leaven in poems which embody the Celtic soul of all time
in a mediaeval form, I do not see that you come into any necessary
opposition with him, for your concern is with the spirit, his with
the substance only.' I entirely agree with almost all which Lord
Strangford here urges, and indeed, so sincere is my respect for Mr.
Nash's critical discernment and learning, and so unhesitating my
recognition of the usefulness, in many respects, of the work of
demolition performed by him, that in originally designating him as a
Celt-hater, I hastened to add, as the reader will see by referring to
the passage, {0a} words of explanation and apology for so calling
him. But I thought then, and I think still, that Mr. Nash, in
pursuing his work of demolition, too much puts out of sight the
positive and constructive performance for which this work of
demolition is to clear the ground. I thought then, and I think
still, that in this Celtic controversy, as in other controversies, it
is most desirable both to believe and to profess that the work of
construction is the fruitful and important work, and that we are
demolishing only to prepare for it. Mr. Nash's scepticism seems to
me,--in the aspect in which his work, on the whole, shows it,--too
absolute, too stationary, too much without a future; and this tends
to make it, for the non-Celtic part of his readers, less fruitful
than it otherwise would be, and for his Celtic readers, harsh and
repellent. I have therefore suffered my remarks on Mr. Nash still to
stand, though with a little modification; but I hope he will read
them by the light of these explanations, and that he will believe my
sense of esteem for his work to be a thousand times stronger than my
sense of difference from it.
To lead towards solid ground, where the Celt may with legitimate
satisfaction point to traces of the gifts and workings of his race,
and where the Englishman may find himself induced to sympathise with
that satisfaction and to feel an interest in it, is the design of all
the considerations urged in the following essay. Kindly taking the
will for the deed, a Welshman and an old acquaintance of mine, Mr.
Hugh Owen, received my remarks with so much cordiality, that he asked
me to come to the Eisteddfod last summer at Chester, and there to
read a paper on some topic of Celtic literature or antiquities. In
answer to this flattering proposal of Mr. Owen's, I wrote him a
letter which appeared at the time in several newspapers, and of which
the following extract preserves all that is of any importance
'My knowledge of Welsh matters is so utterly insignificant that it
would be impertinence in me, under any circumstances, to talk about
those matters to an assemblage of persons, many of whom have passed
their lives in studying them.
'Your gathering acquires more interest every year. Let me venture to
say that you have to avoid two dangers in order to work all the good
which your friends could desire. You have to avoid the danger of
giving offence to practical men by retarding the spread of the
English language in the principality. I believe that to preserve and
honour the Welsh language and literature is quite compatible with not
thwarting or delaying for a single hour the introduction, so
undeniably useful, of a knowledge of English among all classes in
Wales. You have to avoid, again, the danger of alienating men of
science by a blind partial, and uncritical treatment of your national
antiquities. Mr. Stephens's excellent book, The Literature of the
Cymry, shows how perfectly Welshmen can avoid this danger if they
will.
'When I see the enthusiasm these Eisteddfods can awaken in your whole
people, and then think of the tastes, the literature, the amusements,
of our own lower and middle class, I am filled with admiration for
you. It is a consoling thought, and one which history allows us to
entertain, that nations disinherited of political success may yet
leave their mark on the world's progress, and contribute powerfully
to the civilisation of mankind. We in England have come to that
point when the continued advance and greatness of our nation is
threatened by one cause, and one cause above all. Far more than by
the helplessness of an aristocracy whose day is fast coming to an
end, far more than by the rawness of a lower class whose day is only
just beginning, we are emperilled by what I call the "Philistinism"
of our middle class. On the side of beauty and taste, vulgarity; on
the side of morals and feeling, coarseness; on the side of mind and
spirit, unintelligence,--this is Philistinism. Now, then, is the
moment for the greater delicacy and spirituality of the Celtic
peoples who are blended with us, if it be but wisely directed, to
make itself prized and honoured. In a certain measure the children
of Taliesin and Ossian have now an opportunity for renewing the
famous feat of the Greeks, and conquering their conquerors. No
service England can render the Celts by giving you a share in her
many good qualities, can surpass that which the Celts can at this
moment render England, by communicating to us some of theirs.'
Now certainly, in that letter, written to a Welshman and on the
occasion of a Welsh festival, I enlarged on the merits of the Celtic
spirit and of its works, rather than on their demerits. It would
have been offensive and inhuman to do otherwise. When an
acquaintance asks you to write his father's epitaph, you do not
generally seize that opportunity for saying that his father was blind
of one eye, and had an unfortunate habit of not paying his
tradesmen's bills. But the weak side of Celtism and of its Celtic
glorifiers, the danger against which they have to guard, is clearly
indicated in that letter; and in the remarks reprinted in this
volume,--remarks which were the original cause of Mr. Owen's writing
to me, and must have been fully present to his mind when he read my
letter,--the shortcomings both of the Celtic race, and of the Celtic
students of its literature and antiquities, are unreservedly marked,
and, so far as is necessary, blamed. {0b} It was, indeed, not my
purpose to make blame the chief part of what I said; for the Celts,
like other people, are to be meliorated rather by developing their
gifts than by chastising their defects. The wise man, says Spinoza
admirably, 'de humana impotentia non nisi parce loqui curabit, at
largiter de humana virtute seupotentia.' But so far as condemnation
of Celtic failure was needful towards preparing the way for the
growth of Celtic virtue, I used condemnation.
The Times, however, prefers a shorter and sharper method of dealing
with the Celts, and in a couple of leading articles, having the
Chester Eisteddfod and my letter to Mr. Hugh Owen for their text, it
developed with great frankness, and in its usual forcible style, its
own views for the amelioration of Wales and its people. Cease to do
evil, learn to do good, was the upshot of its exhortations to the
Welsh; by evil, the Times understanding all things Celtic, and by
good, all things English. 'The Welsh language is the curse of Wales.
Its prevalence, and the ignorance of English have excluded, and even
now exclude the Welsh people from the civilisation of their English
neighbours. An Eisteddfod is one of the most mischievous and selfish
pieces of sentimentalism which could possibly be perpetrated. It is
simply a foolish interference with the natural progress of
civilisation and prosperity. If it is desirable that the Welsh
should talk English, it is monstrous folly to encourage them in a
loving fondness for their old language. Not only the energy and
power, but the intelligence and music of Europe have come mainly from
Teutonic sources, and this glorification of everything Celtic, if it
were not pedantry, would be sheer ignorance. The sooner all Welsh
specialities disappear from the face of the earth the better.'
And I need hardly say, that I myself, as so often happens to me at
the hands of my own countrymen, was cruelly judged by the Times, and
most severely treated. What I said to Mr. Owen about the spread of
the English language in Wales being quite compatible with preserving
and honouring the Welsh language and literature, was tersely set down
as 'arrant nonsense,' and I was characterised as 'a sentimentalist
who talks nonsense about the children of Taliesin and Ossian, and
whose dainty taste requires something more flimsy than the strong
sense and sturdy morality of his fellow Englishmen.'
As I said before, I am unhappily inured to having these harsh
interpretations put by my fellow Englishmen upon what I write, and I
no longer cry out about it. And then, too, I have made a study of
the Corinthian or leading article style, and know its exigencies, and
that they are no more to be quarrelled with than the law of
gravitation. So, for my part, when I read these asperities of the
Times, my mind did not dwell very much on my own concern in them; but
what I said to myself, as I put the newspaper down, was this:
'Behold England's difficulty in governing Ireland!'
I pass by the dauntless assumption that the agricultural peasant whom
we in England, without Eisteddfods, succeed in developing, is so much
finer a product of civilisation than the Welsh peasant, retarded by
these 'pieces of sentimentalism.' I will be content to suppose that
our 'strong sense and sturdy morality' are as admirable and as
universal as the Times pleases. But even supposing this, I will ask
did any one ever hear of strong sense and sturdy morality being
thrust down other people's throats in this fashion? Might not these
divine English gifts, and the English language in which they are
preached, have a better chance of making their way among the poor
Celtic heathen, if the English apostle delivered his message a little
more agreeably? There is nothing like love and admiration for
bringing people to a likeness with what they love and admire; but the
Englishman seems never to dream of employing these influences upon a
race he wants to fuse with himself. He employs simply material
interests for his work of fusion; and, beyond these, nothing except
scorn and rebuke. Accordingly there is no vital union between him
and the races he has annexed; and while France can truly boast of her
'magnificent unity,' a unity of spirit no less than of name between
all the people who compose her, in England the Englishman proper is
in union of spirit with no one except other Englishmen proper like
himself. His Welsh and Irish fellow-citizens are hardly more
amalgamated with him now than they were when Wales and Ireland were
first conquered, and the true unity of even these small islands has
yet to he achieved. When these papers of mine on the Celtic genius
and literature first appeared in the Cornhill Magazine, they brought
me, as was natural, many communications from Welshmen and Irishmen
having an interest in the subject; and one could not but be painfully
struck, in reading these communications, to see how profound a
feeling of aversion and severance from the English they in general
manifested. Who can be surprised at it, when he observes the strain
of the Times in the articles just quoted, and remembers that this is
the characteristic strain of the Englishman in commenting on
whatsoever is not himself? And then, with our boundless faith in
machinery, we English expect the Welshman as a matter of course to
grow attached to us, because we invite him to do business with us,
and let him hold any number of public meetings and publish all the
newspapers he likes! When shall we learn, that what attaches people
to us is the spirit we are of, and not the machinery we employ?
Last year there was a project of holding a Breton Eisteddfod at
Quimper in Brittany, and the French Home Secretary, whether wishing
to protect the magnificent unity of France from inroads of Bretonism,
or fearing lest the design should be used in furtherance of
Legitimist intrigues, or from whatever motive, issued an order which
prohibited the meeting. If Mr. Walpole had issued an order
prohibiting the Chester Eisteddfod, all the Englishmen from Cornwall
to John o' Groat's House would have rushed to the rescue; and our
strong sense and sturdy morality would never have stopped gnashing
their teeth and rending their garments till the prohibition was
rescinded. What a pity our strong sense and sturdy morality fail to
perceive that words like those of the Times create a far keener sense
of estrangement and dislike than acts like those of the French
Minister! Acts like those of the French Minister are attributed to
reasons of State, and the Government is held blameable for them, not
the French people. Articles like those of the Times are attributed
to the want of sympathy and of sweetness of disposition in the
English nature, and the whole English people gets the blame of them.
And deservedly; for from some such ground of want of sympathy and
sweetness in the English nature, do articles like those of the Times
come, and to some such ground do they make appeal. The sympathetic
and social virtues of the French nature, on the other hand, actually
repair the breaches made by oppressive deeds of the Government, and
create, among populations joined with France as the Welsh and Irish
are joined with England, a sense of liking and attachment towards the
French people. The French Government may discourage the German
language in Alsace and prohibit Eisteddfods in Brittany; but the
Journal des Debats never treats German music and poetry as
mischievous lumber, nor tells the Bretons that the sooner all Breton
specialities disappear from the face of the earth the better.
Accordingly, the Bretons and Alsatians have come to feel themselves a
part of France, and to feel pride in bearing the French name; while
the Welsh and Irish obstinately refuse to amalgamate with us, and
will not admire the Englishman as he admires himself, however much
the Times may scold them and rate them, and assure them there is
nobody on earth so admirable.
And at what a moment does it assure them of this, good heavens! At a
moment when the ice is breaking up in England, and we are all
beginning at last to see how much real confusion and insufficiency it
covered; when, whatever may be the merits,--and they are great,--of
the Englishman and of his strong sense and sturdy morality, it is
growing more and more evident that, if he is to endure and advance,
he must transform himself, must add something to his strong sense and
sturdy morality, or at least must give to these excellent gifts of
his a new development. My friend Mr. Goldwin Smith says, in his
eloquent way, that England is the favourite of Heaven. Far be it
from me to say that England is not the favourite of Heaven; but at
this moment she reminds me more of what the prophet Isaiah calls, 'a
bull in a net.' She has satisfied herself in all departments with
clap-trap and routine so long, and she is now so astounded at finding
they will not serve her turn any longer! And this is the moment,
when Englishism pure and simple, which with all its fine qualities
managed always to make itself singularly unattractive, is losing that
imperturbable faith in its untransformed self which at any rate made
it imposing,--this is the moment when our great organ tells the Celts
that everything of theirs not English is 'simply a foolish
interference with the natural progress of civilisation and
prosperity;' and poor Talhaiarn, venturing to remonstrate, is
commanded 'to drop his outlandish title, and to refuse even to talk
Welsh in Wales!'
But let us leave the dead to bury their dead, and let us who are
alive go on unto perfection. Let the Celtic members of this empire
consider that they too have to transform themselves; and though the
summons to transform themselves he often conveyed harshly and
brutally, and with the cry to root up their wheat as well as their
tares, yet that is no reason why the summons should not be followed
so far as their tares are concerned. Let them consider that they are
inextricably bound up with us, and that, if the suggestions in the
following pages have any truth, we English, alien and uncongenial to
our Celtic partners as we may have hitherto shown ourselves, have
notwithstanding, beyond perhaps any other nation, a thousand latent
springs of possible sympathy with them. Let them consider that new
ideas and forces are stirring in England, that day by day these new
ideas and forces gain in power, and that almost every one of them is
the friend of the Celt and not his enemy. And, whether our Celtic
partners will consider this or no, at any rate let us ourselves, all
of us who are proud of being the ministers of these new ideas, work
incessantly to procure for them a wider and more fruitful
application; and to remove the main ground of the Celt's alienation
from the Englishman, by substituting, in place of that type of
Englishman with whom alone the Celt has too long been familiar, a new
type, more intelligent, more gracious, and more humane.
THE STUDY OF CELTIC LITERATURE
'They went forth to the war, but they always fell.'
OSSIAN
Some time ago I spent some weeks at Llandudno, on the Welsh coast.
The best lodging-houses at Llandudno look eastward, towards
Liverpool; and from that Saxon hive swarms are incessantly issuing,
crossing the bay, and taking possession of the beach and the lodging-
houses. Guarded by the Great and Little Orme's Head, and alive with
the Saxon invaders from Liverpool, the eastern bay is an attractive
point of interest, and many visitors to Llandudno never contemplate
anything else. But, putting aside the charm of the Liverpool
steamboats, perhaps the view, on this side, a little dissatisfies one
after a while; the horizon wants mystery, the sea wants beauty, the
coast wants verdure, and has a too bare austereness and aridity. At
last one turns round and looks westward. Everything is changed.
Over the mouth of the Conway and its sands is the eternal softness
and mild light of the west; the low line of the mystic Anglesey, and
the precipitous Penmaenmawr, and the great group of Carnedd Llewelyn
and Carnedd David and their brethren fading away, hill behind hill,
in an aerial haze, make the horizon; between the foot of Penmaenmawr
and the bending coast of Anglesey, the sea, a silver stream,
disappears one knows not whither. On this side, Wales,--Wales, where
the past still lives, where every place has its tradition, every name
its poetry, and where the people, the genuine people, still knows
this past, this tradition, this poetry, and lives with it, and clings
to it; while, alas, the prosperous Saxon on the other side, the
invader from Liverpool and Birkenhead, has long ago forgotten his.
And the promontory where Llandudno stands is the very centre of this
tradition; it is Creuddyn, THE BLOODY CITY, where every stone has its
story; there, opposite its decaying rival, Conway Castle, is Diganwy,
not decaying but long since utterly decayed, some crumbling
foundations on a crag top and nothing more; Diganwy, where Mael-gwyn
shut up Elphin, and where Taliesin came to free him. Below, in a
fold of the hill, is Llan-rhos, the church of the marsh, where the
same Mael-gwyn, a British prince of real history, a bold and
licentious chief, the original, it is said, of Arthur's Lancelot,
shut himself up in the church to avoid the Yellow Plague, and peeped
out through a hole in the door, and saw the monster and died. Behind
among the woods, is Gloddaeth, THE PLACE OF FEASTING, where the bards
were entertained; and farther away, up the valley of the Conway
towards Llanrwst, is the Lake of Ceirio-nydd and Taliesin's grave.
Or, again, looking seawards and Anglesey-wards you have Pen-mon,
Seiriol's isle and priory, where Mael-gwyn lies buried; you have the
SANDS OF LAMENTATION and Llys Helig, HEILIG'S MANSION, a mansion
under the waves, a sea-buried palace and realm. Hac ibat Simois; hic
est Sigeia tellus.
As I walked up and down, looking at the waves as they washed this
Sigeian land which has never had its Homer, and listening with
curiosity to the strange, unfamiliar speech of its old possessors'
obscure descendants,--bathing people, vegetable-sellers, and donkey-
boys, who were all about me, suddenly I heard, through the stream of
unknown Welsh, words, not English, indeed, but still familiar. They
came from a French nursery-maid, with some children. Profoundly
ignorant of her relationship, this Gaulish Celt moved among her
British cousins, speaking her polite neo-Latin tongue, and full of
compassionate contempt, probably, for the Welsh barbarians and their
jargon. What a revolution was here! How had the star of this
daughter of Gomer waxed, while the star of these Cymry, his sons, had
waned! What a difference of fortune in the two, since the days when,
speaking the same language, they left their common dwelling-place in
the heart of Asia; since the Cimmerians of the Euxine came in upon
their western kinsmen, the sons of the giant Galates; since the
sisters, Gaul and Britain, cut the mistletoe in their forests, and
saw the coming of Caesar! Blanc, rouge, rocher champ, eglise,
seigneur,--these words, by which the Gallo-Roman Celt now names
white, and red, and rock, and field, and church, and lord, are no
part of the speech of his true ancestors, they are words he has
learnt; but since he learned them they have had a worldwide success,
and we all teach them to our children, and armies speaking them have
domineered in every city of that Germany by which the British Celt
was broken, and in the train of these armies, Saxon auxiliaries, a
humbled contingent, have been fain to follow; the poor Welshman still
says, in the genuine tongue of his ancestors, {4} gwyn, goch, craig,
maes, llan, arglwydd; but his land is a province, and his history
petty, and his Saxon subduers scout his speech as an obstacle to
civilisation; and the echo of all its kindred in other lands is
growing every day fainter and more feeble; gone in Cornwall, going in
Brittany and the Scotch Highlands, going, too, in Ireland; and there,
above all, the badge of the beaten race, the property of the
vanquished.
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