--- title: Early Bardic Literature, Ireland., part 1 — Early Bardic Literature, Ireland. · full text with trees · page 2 description: Early Bardic Literature, Ireland., part 1, «Early Bardic Literature, Ireland.» by Standish O'Grady: the whole chapter, every sentence with its dependency tree and pragmatics. It begins: By Standish O'Grady --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8109/1/page/2/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Early Bardic Literature, Ireland.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8109/) / Early Bardic Literature, Ireland., par… # Early Bardic Literature, Ireland., part 1 · page 2 [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8109/1/) **2** Pre-historic narrative is of two kinds--in one the imagination is at work consciously, in the other unconsciously.[40](../../40/ "tree and pragmatics") Legends of the former class are the product of a lettered and learned age.[41](../../41/ "tree and pragmatics") The story floats loosely in a world of imagination.[42](../../42/ "tree and pragmatics") The other sort of pre-historic narrative clings close to the soil, and to visible and tangible objects.[43](../../43/ "tree and pragmatics") It may be legend, but it is legend believed in as history never consciously invented, and growing out of certain spots of the earth's surface, and supported by and drawing its life from the soil like a natural growth.[44](../../44/ "tree and pragmatics") Such are the early Irish tales that cling around the mounds and cromlechs as that by which they are sustained, which was originally their source, and sustained them afterwards in a strong enduring life.[45](../../45/ "tree and pragmatics") It is evident that these cannot be classed with stories that float vaguely in an ideal world, which may happen in one place as well as another, and in which the names might be disarrayed without changing the character and consistency of the tale, and its relations, in time or otherwise, with other tales.[46](../../46/ "tree and pragmatics") Foreigners are surprised to find the Irish claim for their own country an antiquity and a history prior to that of the neighbouring countries.[47](../../47/ "tree and pragmatics") Herein lie the proof and the explanation.[48](../../48/ "tree and pragmatics") The traditions and history of the mound-raising period have in other countries passed away.[49](../../49/ "tree and pragmatics") Foreign conquest, or less intrinsic force of imagination, and pious sentiment have suffered them to fall into oblivion; but in Ireland they have been all preserved in their original fulness and vigour, hardly a hue has faded, hardly a minute circumstance or articulation been suffered to decay.[50](../../50/ "tree and pragmatics") The enthusiasm with which the Irish intellect seized upon the grand moral life of Christianity, and ideals so different from, and so hostile to, those of the heroic age, did not consume the traditions or destroy the pious and reverent spirit in which men still looked back upon those monuments of their own pagan teachers and kings, and the deep spirit of patriotism and affection with which the mind still clung to the old heroic age, whose types were warlike prowess, physical beauty, generosity, hospitality, love of family and nation, and all those noble attributes which constituted the heroic character as distinguished from the saintly.[51](../../51/ "tree and pragmatics") The Danish conquest, with its profound modification of Irish society, and consequent disruption of old habits and conditions of life, did not dissipate it; nor the more dangerous conquest of the Normans, with their own innate nobility of character, chivalrous daring, and continental grace and civilisation; nor the Elizabethan convulsions and systematic repression and destruction of all native phases of thought and feeling.[52](../../52/ "tree and pragmatics") Through all these storms, which successively assailed the heroic literature of ancient Ireland, it still held itself undestroyed.[53](../../53/ "tree and pragmatics") There were still found generous minds to shelter and shield the old tales and ballads, to feel the nobleness of that life of which they were the outcome, and to resolve that the soil of Ireland should not, so far as they had the power to prevent it, be denuded of its raiment of history and historic romance, or reduced again to primeval nakedness.[54](../../54/ "tree and pragmatics") The fruit of this persistency and unquenched love of country and its ancient traditions, is left to be enjoyed by us.[55](../../55/ "tree and pragmatics") There is not through the length and breadth of the country a conspicuous rath or barrow of which we cannot find the traditional history preserved in this ancient literature.[56](../../56/ "tree and pragmatics") The mounds of Tara, the great barrows along the shores of the Boyne, the raths of Slieve Mish, and Rathcrogan, and Teltown, the stone caiseals of Aran and Innishowen, and those that alone or in smaller groups stud the country over, are all, or nearly all, mentioned in this ancient literature, with the names and traditional histories of those over whom they were raised.[57](../../57/ "tree and pragmatics") There is one thing to be learned from all this, which is, that we, at least, should not suffer these ancient monuments to be destroyed, whose history has been thus so astonishingly preserved.[58](../../58/ "tree and pragmatics") The English farmer may tear down the barrow which is unfortunate enough to be situated within his bounds.[59](../../59/ "tree and pragmatics") Neither he nor his neighbours know or can tell anything about its ancient history; the removed earth will help to make his cattle fatter and improve his crops, the stones will be useful to pave his roads and build his fences, and the savant can enjoy the rest; but the Irish farmer and landlord should not do or suffer this.[60](../../60/ "tree and pragmatics") The instinctive reverence of the peasantry has hitherto been a great preservative; but the spread of education has to a considerable extent impaired this kindly sentiment, and the progress of scientific farming, and the anxiety of the Royal Irish Academy to collect antiquarian trifles, have already led to the reckless destruction of too many.[61](../../61/ "tree and pragmatics") I think that no one who reads the first two volumes of this history would greatly care to bear a hand in the destruction of that tomb at Tara, in which long since his people laid the bones of Cuculain; and I think, too, that they would not like to destroy any other monument of the same age, when they know that the history of its occupant and its own name are preserved in the ancient literature, and that they may one day learn all that is to be known concerning it.[62](../../62/ "tree and pragmatics") I am sure that if the case were put fairly to the Irish landlords and country gentlemen, they would neither inflict nor permit this outrage upon the antiquities of their country.[63](../../63/ "tree and pragmatics") The Irish country gentleman prides himself on his love of trees, and entertains a very wholesome contempt for the mercantile boor who, on purchasing an old place, chops down the best timber for the market.[64](../../64/ "tree and pragmatics") And yet a tree, though cut down, may be replaced.[65](../../65/ "tree and pragmatics") One elm tree is as good as another, and the thinned wood, by proper treatment, will be as dense as ever; but the ancient mound, once carted away, can never be replaced any more.[66](../../66/ "tree and pragmatics") When the study of the Irish literary records is revived, as it certainly will be revived, the old history of each of these raths and cromlechs will be brought again into the light, and one new interest of a beautiful and edifying nature attached to the landscape, and affecting wholly for good the minds of our people.[67](../../67/ "tree and pragmatics") Irishmen are often taunted with the fact that their history is yet unwritten, but that the Irish, as a nation, have been careless of their past is refuted by the facts which I have mentioned.[68](../../68/ "tree and pragmatics") A people who alone in Europe preserved, not in dry chronicles alone, but illuminated and adorned with all that fancy could suggest in ballad, and tale, and rude epic, the history of the mound-raising period, are not justly liable to this taunt.[69](../../69/ "tree and pragmatics") Until very modern times, history was the one absorbing pursuit of the Irish secular intellect, the delight of the noble, and the solace of the vile.[70](../../70/ "tree and pragmatics") [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8109/1/) **2** - ← previous: [page 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8109/1/) - next →: [Early Bardic Literature, Ireland., part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8109/2/) - ↑ back to [Early Bardic Literature, Ireland.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8109/)