Harmon, Maurice. The Dialogue of the Ancients of Ireland. (Translated with introduction and notes). Dublin: Carysfort Press,2009. 188 pp

Brown, Barbara

English

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101Harmon, Maurice. The Dialogue of the Ancients of Ireland.(Translated with introduction and notes). Dublin: CarysfortPress,2009. 188 pp.Maurice Harmon, the leading Irish scholar of his generation, has for many yearsbeen internationally recognised as a pioneering figure in the field of Irish Studies. Heorganised international conferences and developed and directed the M. Phil programmein Irish Studies at University College Dublin. This inter-disciplinary programme withits varied disciplines –archaeology, folklore, history, and early Irish– reflected the rangeof Harmon’s intellectual and cultural interests and expertise, as well as his own studiesof writers. Realising that there was no guide to Irish Studies, he prepared Modern IrishLiterature: A Reader’s Guide, 1800-1967; a subsequent publication was the SelectBibliography for the Study of Anglo-Irish Literature and its Backgrounds, 1977.Recognising the need for a reliable history of the literature, he wrote with Roger McHughA History of Anglo-Irish Literature from Its Origins to the Present Day, 1984. Notingthat there was no journal specifically for articles on Anglo-Irish Literature, he foundedand edited the Irish University Review for sixteen years, 1970-86, establishing it as thepreeminent journal for Irish Studies. Aware that most attention went to major figures,he advocated that Irish writers be seen in contexts and that lesser figures should not beoverlooked. It was significant of his approach that from the mid-1960s he included thework of contemporary writers in his lectures and conducted seminars in contemporaryfiction, drama, and poetry. It was he who edited with introduction and notes the hugelyinfluential anthology Irish Poetry after Yeats: Seven Poets, which showed thedevelopments in poetry. Throughout his distinguished career he has written studies ofIrish writers, including Seán O’ Faoláin, Patrick Kavanagh, Austin Clarke, Mary Lavin,Francis Stuart, Benedict Kiely, John Montague, Richard Murphy, Thomas Kinsella, andSeamus Heaney, among others. His Selected Essays was published in 2006 and thedefinitive study, Thomas Kinsella: Designing for the Exact Needs in 2008. Harmon isalso a poet. The Mischievous Boy and other poems, his third major collection, also waspublished in 2008.Now he has turned his attention to medieval Irish literature with this translation,The Dialogue of the Ancients of Ireland, of the Acallam na Senórach, medieval Ireland’sgreatest compendium of heroic tales and poems. The Acallam na Senórach [literally theColloquy of the Old Men], dated around A.D. 1200 and probably early thirteenth century,is the most important text of the Fenian Cycle and is, after the Táin Bó Cuilgne (TheCattle Raid of Cooley), the longest surviving work of original medieval Irish literature.The original text, about 8,000 lines, employs the conceit of Caílte and Oisin, survivors102of Finn Mac Cumhaill’s third-century warriors called the Fianna Éireann, meeting andjourneying with a fifth-century Christianising Saint Patrick. Patrick’s mission is to convertthe provincial kings, their nobles and followers; Caílte wants to revisit places associatedwith former comrades. How third-century Caílte and fifth-century Saint Patrick meetand travel together through Ireland’s four provinces is never queried nor explained.Within this peripatetic frame-story are more than 200 other tales told mainly by Caílteabout people, places, and events in Ireland’s legendary past.The Acallam was edited and translated by Standish Hayes O’Grady in SilvaGadelica (1892), vols. 1-11, 1892, and by Whitley Stokes in Irische Texte, 1900; theO’Grady translation left out some of the material, gave prose versions of the poems,and left a number of these untranslated. Harmon’s new version, based on the Stokesedition and published in April 2009, is a free rendering and not a work of textualscholarship. It transfers the medieval text into a contemporary idiom; and this is notonly a matter of bringing it alive in contemporary language but of creating an easyrelationship between its various parts, its multiple voices, and its different rhythms ofspeech. In the case of the prose he has changed the original text from long paragraphsincorporating both narrative and dialogue to the conventions of modern fiction whichmany times separates dialogue from description and narration. In the case of some ofthe poetry that is written in an older form of the language than the prose, he oftenprovides a literal translation. An experienced scholar, a poet of deep literary taste, Harmonis able to respond to the many poetic forms of the text with sensitivity and skill.The scale of the Dialogue’s imaginative narrative whole is remarkable: depictionsof the gigantic and diminutive, the ugly and beautiful, people of different shapes andsizes (dwarfs and giants), the strange and the ordinary, the Otherworld where the ancientgods and goddesses reside. It is told with large comedic elements: a dog who vomitstreasure, another who blows destructive fire from his arse; the woman from The Landof Women so big she must lie down on the side of a hill in order for the Fian to hearwhat she has to say; another, who won’t drink from a vessel unless the rim is gold orsilver; and a beautiful queen, who comes to Finn to offer him her entire wealth andkingdom if he will grant her his sole sexual activity for one year and his quick response:‘I do not give that to any woman in the world.’Equally remarkable is the huge diversity of stories, over 200, reflecting manygenres – romances, mythological tales, enticements, elopements, intrigues,transmorgrifications, sea tales, tales of revenge, of fierce battles and single combats,wonder tales – and equally varied kinds of poems – elegies, prophecies, eulogies,genealogical poems, poems of praise, laments, commemorations, nature poems, formulaiclistings, love poems.As a literary invention, nothing quite like it had appeared before in Irish literarytradition. Behind its evocation of an imaginary landscape lies not only the world of theFianna and of early Christianity but figures and events in Irish sagas, such as the heroicworld of the Táin Bó Cuailnge and the legend of Suibne Geilt (Mad Sweeney). There103are associations with people, places, and events in the Fianaigecht (Adventures of theFian), with Patrician hagiography, and with European romances.Although its shape follows the traditional alternating of prose and poetry, theAcallam is an overwhelmingly new creation. The story-cycle form itself ensures creativeinteraction among the various narrative levels and between the pagan, oral world of theFianna and the literate, Christian world of Patrick. The contrast between Christian valuesand pagan permeates the entire work, Patrick’s miraculous deeds and blessings on theone hand and Caílte’s accounts of heroic adventures and romance on the other. Heroicand Christian values are finely balanced. The potential conflict arising between the twocultures is never an issue, as it often appears to be in other works of this period. Overand over the Dialogue stresses the supremacy of Christianity. For the author, storytellingitself is an important value; the poet-minstrel-storyteller, proficient in both music andpoetry, is praised and liberally rewarded. In addition to Caílte, one of the most attractiveand mysterious figures in the entire work is the poet-minstrel Cas Corach, whom theKing of Ireland appoints Poet of Ireland at the Feis Temrach [Festival of Tara].One of the oldest and most deeply persistent strands in all Irish literature is theDinn-shenchus (place-lore writings). As the old men travel about the countryside, theinterest always is on the naming of places, a hill, a fort, a stone, a ford, a dwelling.Stories are introduced with formulaic patterns of questions and answers which alsoconnect the frame story to place-lore. Saint Patrick asks ‘Tell me, Caílte, why is thiscairn called the Cairn of Fratricide?’ or ‘Why is this place called Rough Washing?’Caílte replies with a story that gives the answer required. Obviously, the question andanswer style would be congenial to the author. He chooses the method which he wouldhave known from ecclesiastical texts, whose intent was instructive or didactic. One ofthe significant effects of these informative narratives is a narrowing of the gap betweenpast and present.In a listing of Fianna leaders for Patrick, for example, Caílte associateseach with a specific quality such as bravery, loyalty, wisdom, generosity, which is alwayspraised, but Finn remains the ideal. When Patrick asks Caílte, ‘Was Finn Mac Cumaill,whom you served, a good lord?’ Caílte responds with a little praise poem:Were but the brown leaf goldthat the wood sheds,were but the white wave silverFinn had given all away.This response prompts Patrick to ask, ‘What values did you live by?’ Caíltemakes the famous reply: ‘Truth in our hearts, strength in our hands, and fulfilment inour tongues.’Often Caílte, in response to a query, recites a poem celebrating a memorableplace. One of the loveliest lyrics in the book, beautifully rendered in Harmon’s translation,is ‘Arran of many stags’:104Arran of many stagsThe sea beats against her cliffsIsland feeder of hunting bandsRidges red with steely spears.Restless stags on the summitsRipe bilberries in thicketsCool water in her streamsMast in her red oaks.. . .Pleasant in fine weatherTrout below the river banksGulls circling the white cliffArran always beautiful.One of the most attractive aspects of the Dialogue is the connection betweenthe visible and the invisible worlds, between the landscape in which Patrick and Caíltetravel and the places under fairy mounds where the Tuatha Dé Danann live. Créde maybe a creature of the Otherworld but lines from her lament for her drowned husband,Cael, at the Battle of Finntrága are as moving as any human elegy:Sad is the cry the thrush makes in Druim Caín,no less sad the blackbird’s voice in Leitir Laíg.Sad the sound the stag makes in Druim dá Léis,for the dead doe of Druim Sílenn the stag roars.Sad the sound the wave makes to the north,hammering the hard rocks, lamenting Cael’s death.Sad the sound the wave makes to the south,my time is done as my appearance reveals.Sad the sound made by Tulcha’s dragging wave.I have no future, since its tidings reached me.The rich diversity of poetic forms and types of stories, its literary, socialand political implications, and the civilising values it espouses make the Dialogue inMaurice Harmon’s superb translation an entertaining and compelling work for readersof all ages.Barbara Brown

Harmon, Maurice. The Dialogue of the Ancients of Ireland

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Harmon, Maurice. The Dialogue of the Ancients of Ireland

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