Heroic Romances of Ireland | Page 3

of the ancient
world.[FN#2]
[FN#2] It seems to be uncertain whether or not the writers of the Irish
romances shared in the classical learning for which Ireland was noted
in their time. The course of study at the schools established for the
training of the fili in the tenth and eleventh centuries was certainly, as
has been pointed out, very different from that of the ecclesiastical
schools (see Joyce, vol. i. p. 430). No classical instruction was included
in this training, but it is not certain that this separation of studies was so
complete before what is called the "antiquarian age" set in. Cormac
mac Cuninan, for example, was a classical scholar, and at the same
time skilled in the learning of the fili. It should also be observed that
the course at the ecclesiastical schools, as handed down to us, hardly
seems to be classical enough to have produced a Columbanus or an
Erigena; the studies that produced these men must have been of a
different kind, and the lay schools as originally established by Sanchan

Torpest may have included much that afterwards gave place to a more
purely Irish training. The tale of Troy seems to have been known to the
fili, and there are in their works allusions to Greek heroes, to Hercules
and Hector, but it has been pointed out by Mr. Nutt that there is little if
any evidence of influence produced by Latin or Greek literature on the
actual matter or thought of the older Irish work. On this point reference
may be made to a note on "Mae Datho's Boar" in this volume (p. 173),
but even if this absence of classical influence is established (and it is
hard to say what will not be found in Irish literature), it is just possible
that the same literary feeling which made Irish writers of comparatively
late tales keep the bronze weapons and chariots of an earlier date in
their accounts of ancient wars, while they described arms of the period
when speaking of battles of their own time, affected them in this
instance also; and that they had enough restraint to refrain from
introducing classical and Christian ideas when speaking of times in
which they knew these ideas would have been unfamiliar.
It may be, and often is, assumed that the appearance of grotesque or
savage passages in a romance is an indication of high antiquity, and
that these passages at least are faithful reproductions of Druidic
originals, but this does not seem to be quite certain. Some of these
passages, especially in the case of romances preserved in the Leabhar
na h-Uidhri (The Book of the Dun Cow), look like insertions made by
scribes of an antiquarian turn of mind,[FN#3] and are probably of very
ancient date; in other cases, as for example in the "Boar of Mac Datho,"
where Conall dashes Anluan's head into Ket's face, the savagery is
quite in 'keeping with the character of the story, and way have been
deliberately invented by an author living in Christian times, to add a
flavour to his tale, although in doing so he probably imitated a similar
incident in some other legend. To take a classical parallel, the barbarity
shown by Aeneas in Aeneid x. 518-520, in sacrificing four youths on
the funeral pyre of Pallas, an act which would have been regarded with
horror in Virgil's own day, does not prove that there was any ancient
tale of the death of Pallas in which these victims were sacrificed, nor
even that such victims were sacrificed in ancient Latium in Pallas' day;
but it does show that Virgil was familiar with the fact that such victims
used in some places to be sacrificed on funeral pyres; for, in a sense, he
could not have actually invented the incident.

[FN#3] See the exhibition of the tips of tongues in the "Sick-bed of
Cuchulain," page 57.
Thus the appearance of an archaic element in an Irish romance is in
itself no proof of the Druidic origin of that form of the romance, nor
even of the existence of that element in the romance's earliest form:
upon such a principle the archaic character of the motif of the "Oedipus
Coloneus" would prove it to be the oldest of the Greek tragedies, while
as a matter of fact it seems to be doubtful whether the introduction of
this motif into the story of Oedipus was not due to Sophocles himself,
although of course he drew the idea of it, if not from the original legend
of Oedipus, from some other early legend.
The most satisfactory test of the authorship of an Irish romance, and
one of the most satisfactory tests of its date, is its literary character; and
if we look at the literary character of the best