Volume I Part 66 (1/2)

This easily agreed, Nessa became queen, while, as Fergus tells the tale:

While in council and debate Conor daily by me sate; Modest was his mien in sooth, Beautiful the studious youth,

Questioning with eager gaze, All the reasons and the ways In the which, and why because, Kings administer the laws.

In this wise a year pa.s.sed, the youth diligently observant, with faculties ripening and brightening as his majesty's grew more consciously rusty and slow; and then a crisis came, which Mr. Ferguson describes in verses of which it is hard to say whether they best deserve the coif or the laurel, for in every line there is the sharp wit of the lawyer as well as the vivid fancy of the poet:

Till upon a day in court Rose a plea of weightier sort, Tangled as a briery thicket Were the rights and wrongs intricate

Which the litigants disputed, Challenged, mooted, and confuted, Till when all the plea was ended Naught at all I comprehended.

Scorning an affected show Of the thing I did not know, Yet my own defect to hide, I said, ”Boy judge, thou decide.”

Conor with unalter'd mien, In a clear sweet voice serene, Took in hand the tangled skein, And began to make it plain.

As a sheep-dog sorts his cattle, As a king arrays his battle, So the facts on either side He did marshal and divide.

Every branching side-dispute Traced he downward to the root Of the strife's main stem, and there Laid the ground of difference bare.

Then to scope of either cause, Set the compa.s.s of the laws, This adopting, that rejecting,-- Reasons to a head collecting,--

As a charging cohort goes Through and over scatter'd foes, So, from point to point he brought Onward still the weight of thought

Through all error and confusion, Till he set the clear conclusion, Standing like a king alone, All things adverse overthrown,

And gave judgment clear and sound:-- Praises filled the hall around; Yea, the man that lost the cause Hardly could withhold applause.

In these exquisite verses, the language is as strict to the point as if it were taken from Mr. Smith's ”Action at Law;” but the reader will remark how every figure reminds him, and yet not in any mere mimetic fas.h.i.+on, of the spirit and ill.u.s.trations of the Ossianic poetry.

Nevertheless each word taken by itself is simple Saxon. Its Celtic character only runs like a vein through the poem, but it colors and saturates it through and through.

The greatest of Mr. Ferguson's poems, however, is undoubtedly ”The Welshmen of Tirawley,” a ballad which, we do not fear to say, is unsurpa.s.sed in the English language, or perhaps in even the Spanish.

Its epic proportion and integrity, the vivid picturesqueness of its phraseology, its wild and original metre, its extraordinary realization of the laws and customs of an Irish clan's daily life, the stern brevity of its general narrative, and the richness of its figures, though all barbaric pearl and gold, give it a pre-eminent place among ballads. Scott would have devoted three volumes to the story, were it not for the difficulty of telling some of its incidents. Mr. Ferguson exhibits no little skill in the way that he hurries his readers past what he could not altogether omit. For the facts upon which the ballad is founded are simply horrible, and they are historically true.

After the time of Strongbow, several Welsh families who had followed his flag settled in Connaught. Among {471} these ”kindly Britons” of Tirawley, were the Walshes or Wallises, the Heils (_a quibus_ MacHale, and, possibly, that most perfect instance of the _Hibernis ipsis Hibemior_, the archbishop of Tuam); also the Lynotts and the Barretts, with whom we are at present more particularly concerned. These last claimed descent from the high steward of the manor of Camelot, and their end is a story fit for the Round Table. The great toparch of the territory was the MacWilliam Burke, as the Irish called the head of the de Burgos, descended from William FitzAdelm de Burgo, conqueror of Connaught, and therein commonly called William Conquer--of whom the Marquis of Clanricarde is the present lineal representative; being to Connaught even still somewhat as the MacCallummore is to Argyle, more especially when he happens to be in the cabinet, and to have the patronage of the post-office. Now the Lynotts were subject to the Barretts, and the Barretts were subject to the Burkes. But when the Barretts' bailiff, Scorna Boy, came to collect the Lynotts' taxes, he so demeaned himself that the whole clan rose as one man, even as Jack Cade, and slew him. Whereupon the vengeful Barretts gave to all mankind among the Lynott clan a terrible choice--of which one alternative was blindness; and the bearded men were all of their own preference blinded, and led to the river Duvowen, and told to walk over the stepping stones of Clochan-na-n'all; and they all stumbled into the flood and were drowned, except old Emon Lynott, of Garranard--whom accordingly the Barretts brought back and blinded over again, by running needles through his eyeb.a.l.l.s.

But with prompt-projected footsteps, sure as ever, Emon Lynott again crossed the river, Though Duvowen was rising fast, And the shaking stones o'ercast, By cold floods boiling past; Yet you never, Emon Lynott, Faltered once before your foemen of Tirawley.

But turning on Ballintubber bank, you stood And the Barretts thus bespoke o'er the flood-- ”Oh, ye foolish sons of Wattin, Small amends are these you've gotten, For, while Scorna Boy lies rotten, I am good For vengeance!”

Sing the vengeance of the Welshmen of Tirawley.

For 'tis neither in eye nor eyesight that a man.

Bears the fortunes of himself and his clan, But in the manly mind These darken'd orbs behind, That your needles could never find, Though they ran Through my heartstrings.

Sing the vengeance of the Welshmen of Tirawley.

But little your women's needles do I reck, For the night from heaven never fell so black, But Tirawley and abroad From the Moy to Cuan-an-fod, I could walk it, every sod, Path and track, Ford and togher, Seeking vengeance on you, Barretts of Tirawley!

And so leaving ”loud-shriek-echoing Garranard,” the Lynott, with his wife and seven children, abandons his home, and takes refuge in Glen Nephin, where, in the course of a year, a son is born to him, whom he dedicates from the first breath to his vengeance. He trains this boy with a.s.siduous care to all the accomplishments of a Celtic cavalier;

And, as ever the bright boy grew in strength and size, Made him perfect in each manly exercise, The salmon in the flood, The dun deer in the wood, The eagle in the cloud, To surprise, On Ben Nephin, Far above the foggy fields of Tirawley.