Writing the Hard Times

I wrote last week that the unattached poetry linked to the tale of Suibhne survives in only one old manuscript, and that the tale survives in really only one manuscript, that written by Dáibhi Ỏ Duibhgheannain in the late 17^th century. (There is a slightly later copy of his text, and also a summary of the tale, not deriving from Dáibhi’s text, in an Ỏ Cleirigh manuscript.) If Dáibhi had not happened to copy the text or write it down, and had not his manuscript survived, we would only have tantalizing allusions to Suibhne and a few stray poems.

An Laighneach soilbhir solasta súgach sámh:    (merry, bright, merry, peaceful)

Is binn an Connachtach oirfideach, clú na ndámh:   (musical, famous for learning)

Is groí gan sosa in am troda an tUltach grámhach:   (ceaselessly hardy, time of battle, kindly)

I ngníomh ‘s I bhfocal is follas an Mhumhain i mbláth.  (In deed and in word, evident, in bloom)

Like the traditional rann above says, Connacht, and particularly east Connacht, was known for many important hereditary learned families, of whom the Uí Dhuibhgheannain and Uí Maolchonaire were perhaps the most important. Daibhidh was of the old Kilronan (northeast Roscommon) branch, but traditional society had been destroyed by the time he came on the sod, and he spent most of his life in other places. Three of his manuscripts survive, as far as I know: B iv , C iv 1 and 24 p 9 in the Royal Irish Academy. All three are important and preserve unique things.

The manuscripts may have survived because his wife’s family was linked to the O’Connors (the old kings of much of north Roscommon) as retainers, and the manuscripts passed down to Charles O’Connor (1710-1791), a very important scholar who carried traditional learning into the new  colonial world.

Leitrim and north Roscommon were rough country, rugged and forested and not as attractive to colonists as some other places, so some local noble families managed to hold onto something in the margins. There was O’Connor, O’Roddy in Fenagh (Leitrim), the Counselor MacDonagh (east Sligo), O Donaill in Larkfield and Maguire in Tempo (Fermanagh). O Connor and these others provided shelter and encouragement to the survivors of the local learned families, and the manuscripts brought to their houses or generated there tended to survive.

Outside those houses, though, times were bad.

It is difficult for us whose lives have passed in a more or less peaceful world and in more or less stable societies to appreciate the devastating enormity of the tonn-bhriseadh (shipwreck) Irish society experienced between, say, 1602 and, say, 1860. A never-ending horde of big well-equipped  armies disgorged from England, followed by endless crowds of adventurers and entrepreneurs out to turn Ireland and the Irish into money. The native Irish had no recourse: no rights: no help. They could try to play the game the eway the foreigners did and amass money and land, but the English were then much better at it, and most natives eventually lost out.  The whole thing (the Droch-Shaol, literally The Evil Times) came to a conclusion of sorts in the Famine when life for all the then extraneous peasants turned into a nightmare hell. Yes, some families had adapted or been lucky and prospered as market-oriented big farmers in the colonial economy, but they were the minority.

But all that was yet to come.

Dáibhi’s earliest surviving manuscript is 24 P 9 and he wrote it in the house of Tadhg O’Flaherty by Loch Measg, a long way from home. Soon after, he was nearby in east Conamara. The extremely violent, bloody Cromwellian wars were still raging, and both places were probably as safe and  out of the way as he could find. (He was lame in one leg and one hand and was never a warrior.)

All we know of him and most other writers is contained in stray notes in their manuscripts or mentions by later writers who knew something of them, because very few contemporary Irish records survive. There were never the piles of administrative records such as the manorial and state systems  England and France created, but English conquerors regarded what existed as irrelevant trash and pieces of barbarism, and therefore not a priority for preservation. A good many new English records were generated by the process of conquest, assimilation and administration, but Dáibhi managed to elude the net, and we know him only from his own words.

By 1672 when he was writing B iv I, he was back in his own area, in Shanco, County Sligo, just over the border from Roscommon and Leitrim, and still wearing himself out. “Sguirim (I will stop) agus mise ag tuitim im chodladh,” he writes in one place, and “Sguirim agus mo lámh trom tuirseach.” “Atá an sneachta ag fuaradh mo lámh: sguirim go dtrásda.” (for now). “A Dhia, fóir tinneas mo chinn, amen.”  (help the pain in my head), “In Aonach Uí Bhethnachain  domh, agus anfa an locha anall do’m bhuaidhreadh.” (storm: troubling me)

In one place, he mentions the traditional practice where the learned recited tales or poetry for people gatthered, though that is all passed away now, he says: “Beanneacht ar anmhain na ndictóraí maith do mhairids, (on the souls of the good reciters who once were), do beireadh seo síos domhsa gan mo thuirsiú. i.e. without Daibhidh having to write things down.)

(By the way, these notes in the margins of manuscripts provide a vivid picture of the life of those who wrote them. The following note makes more sense if you remember that scribes took turns writing and left messages on the margins of the page for each other. Egerton 88, the manuscript from which this is taken, is full of ancienmt law texts that are written in very difficult language.

“Mise Dónal Ỏ Duibh dhá Bhoirinn. Oíche féile Mhuire anocht agus faoi faoiseamh Múire domh agus atáim diombhacxh do mnai(bh)  an toghe agus ní bhuí(och) mé d’fhir an tighe agus a Dhia, a Dhaibhi, is mairg gan peann uait aige ní beag dhe, ach dar liom féin, is ro-mhaith a dhuiltáim “Mac as Orbád”  agus cé be a bheas ag iarraidh dá dhiultadh, tiocfaidh chugam-sa agus cuirfead ar eolas é…(Volume I, Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the British Library (formerly British Museum), edited by Standish Hayes O’Grady, 1926 pp.115) (spelling modernized)

Or in O’Grady’s translation which cannot be bettered “I am Donal O Davoren.  Tonight is Ladyday-Eve, and under Mary’s safeguard I place myself. I am angry with the woman of the house, in no ways pleased with the man of the house: and, my goodness, David, 'tis a pity but he had a pen from you (i.e. you mend a pen so badly). Enough upon that head, and in my own opinion, it is right well (i.e. justifiably) that I refuse Mac an Orbad (the subject and title of the following section of the manuscript he was copying from)  and if anyone shall be desirous of getting a still further refusal, let him come to me and I will show him where to find it…)

(This and many many more are in Egerton 88, a law manuscript written by Dónal and a few others around 1564 etc in north Clare.)

Weary or not, Dáibhi himself  kept going and it is thanks to him that we have good versions of Buile Shuibhne, The Battle of Magh Raith, Toraíocht Diarmuid agus Grainne, Toraíocht Taise Taoibh-Ghile, and many others. If he and the others like him had taken the easy road, we would now have only rumors of the tales and much else.

 It could easily have happened trhat way, and there is much to be said for traditional virtues like courage and persistence. May we not be called upon to demonstrate them as the men and women of Dáibhi’s generation were.

By the way, there is another version of the quatrain that is  at the beginning of the post: one for the pessimistic or bad-tempered.

 An Laighneach soirbh-ghlic, corach, do lúbfaidh lán:   (avariciously clever,slippery, who twists things)

Is cainnteach Connachtach, conablach clamhach gan cháil: (mangy, trashy person, without virtues)

Bladhmann foclach folamh sa Mhumhain de ghnáth: (wordy empty blather: usually)

Saint a’s formad obair an Ulta, a’s gráin.  (avarice, envy, and anger)

The rann refers obliquely to the ancient division of the provinces according to the three “social functions” of ancient Indo-European society: farmers, fertility and prosperity in Leinster: learning in Connacht: warriors in Ulster, and, well, Munster was a bit weird and borders the Otherworld, doesn’t it? They do talk a lot, though, and sometimes don’t really say a lot, at least in the opinion of outsiders.

(The best assessment of this matter of the traditional division of the provinces is still the Rees brothers “Celtic Heritage.” 1961. The topic was not fashionable and when Dillon and MacCana passed away,  Carney’s students who dominated Irish language scholarship in the nineteen-eighties and after had no interest in it.)