The Cromlech on Howth A Poem. By Samuel Ferguson: With Illuminations From the Books of Kells & of Durrow, and Drawings from Nature by MS: With Notes on Celtic Ornamental Art. Revised by George Petrie |
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 | The Cromlech on Howth |  |
THE CROMLECH ON HOWTH
A POEM.
Aideen, daughter of Angus of Ben Edar (now the Hill of Howth), died, according to Irish legend, of grief for the loss of her husband, Oscar, son of Ossian, who was slain at the Battle of Gavra. Oscar was entombed in the Rath, or earthen fortress, that occupied part of the field of battle. Aideen was interred on Howth, and bardic tradition represents Ossian and his renowned companions as present at her obsequies. Drawing No. 1 represents the Cromlech on Howth, which is supposed to be her sepulchre. It is one of those rude stone monuments commonly called Druids' altars, but now recognised as the remains of sepulchral chambers, which, in some cases, were covered by earthen mounds.
The funeral ode is supposed to be pronounced by Ossian.
Said Ossian, In a queenly grave
We leave her, 'mong her fields of fern,
Between the cliff and wave.
The cliff behind stands clear and bare
There is a peculiar freshness and purity in the atmosphere of Howth. So far back as the sixth century, this characteristic of its scenery was felt and beautifully expressed in a poem, which is attributed to St. Columba,—
Before going o'er the white sea;
Delightful the dashing of the wave against its face,
The bareness of its shore and its border.”
In Drawing No. 2 the Cromlech is seen in the middle distance, while the spectator looks back towards the cliff, again referred to in p. 10 as “the rocky chair” from which Atharna hurled his maledictions on the people of Leinster.
And bare above, the heathery steep
Scales the blue heaven's expanse to where
The Danaan druids sleep
The Irish annalists ascribe the introduction of Druidism and Necromancy to a nation from the North of Europe, called the Tuatha De Danaan, who are said to have invaded and occupied the island.
Drawing No. 3 gives the prospect westward, looking down from the cairn-crowned height of Slievemartin, one of the landward summits of Howth, over the plain of Bregia, or Bray, a name now confined to the southern corner of the district. In Irish fabulous topography Bregh and Edar were brothers, who gave their names to the two headlands now known as Bray Head and Howth. Howth (Hoved) is a Norse word, signifying “head.” The presence of the Danish element on this coast of Ireland is observable in the “Naez” and in the “Ey,” or islet of Ireland's Eye. The native Irish still know the hill as Ben Edar, and the island as Inis Meic Nessain, or “Island of the Sons of Nessan.” The cairn which forms the highest point of Slievemartin is a pagan monument, consisting of a sepulchral chamber, over which were piled loose stones in a pyramidal form. Evidence of the use of this ancient mode of sepulture is found in a curious passage, quoted from the Book of Lecan by Dr. Petrie, in reference to a similar monument in the County of Sligo, (vide Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland, p. 107): “Carn Amhalgaidh, i.e. of Amhalgaidh, son of Fiachra Elgaidh, son of Dathi, son of Fiachra. It is by him that this carn was formed, for the purpose of holding a meeting of the Hy-Amhalgaidh around it every year, and to view his ships and fleet going and coming, and as a place of interment for himself.”
And all the sands that, lest and right,
The grassy isthmns ridge confine,
In yellow bars lie bare and bright
among the sparkling brine.
In loneliness and awe secure;
Meet spot to sepulchre a queen
Who in her life was pure.
here far from camp and chase removed,
apart in natures quiet room,
The music that alive she loved
Shall cheer her in the tomb.
The humming of the noontide bees,
The lark's loud carol all day long,
And borne on evenings salted breeze,
The clanking seabirds song.
and with the whispering winds and streams,
Attune to nature's tenderest note
The tenor of her dreams.
and oft at tranquil eve's decline
When full tides lip the Old Green Plain
The plain of Moynalty is that rich tract of tillage and pasture extending from Clontarf, over the northern part of the county of Dublin, and forming part of the more extensive plain of Bregia. It was called by the Irish “the Plain of Flocks”—ealta—from the flocks of birds resorting to it;
The wide-winged wild geese to their pools by Liffey's side repair”);
The lowing of Moynalty's kine
Shall round her breathe again,
In sweet remembrance of the days
When, duteous in the lowly vale
Unconscious of my Oscar's gaze,
She filled the fragrant pail.
Drew water for the bath, nor deemed
a king did on her labour look,
And she a fairy seemed.
But when the wintry frosts begin,
And, in their long-drawn lofty flight,
The wild geese with their airy din
Distend the ear of night;
And when the weird De Danaan ghosts
at midnight from their peak come down,
And all around the enchanted coasts
Despairing strangers drown;
From low Clontarf's wave-trampled floor,
Comes, booming up the burthened gale,
The angry sandbull's roar
The same idea, which led the classical ancients to symbolise a turbulent river under the figure of a bull, has given to the sand-bank forming the bar of the river Liffey, among the Irish, the name of Tarbh, or “Tarv,” the bull, from the bellowing sound of the surf; whence also Clon-tarf, or the Recess of the Bull, the scene of the defeat of the Danes, A.D. 1014. Drawing No. 5 represents the sand-bank and Clontarf in the distance, looking down from the traditionary site of the fortress of the celebrated King Criomhthawn, or Criffan, on the southern heights of Howth.
Orangrier than the sea, the shout
Of Erin's hosts in wrath combined,
When terror heads oppression's rout
And freedom cheers behind:
Then, o'er our lady's placid dream
When safe from storms she sleeps, may steal
Such joy as will not misbeseem
A Queen of men to feel:
As rapt her in her battle car
at Gavra, when, by Oscars side,
She rode the ridge of war,
Exulting, down the shonting troops
And through the thick confronting kings,
With hands on all their javelin loops
And shafts on all their strings;
Ere closed the inseparable crowds,
No more to part for me, and show
As bursts the sun through hurrying clouds
My Oscar issuing so.
Shall son for me from fight return;
The great green rath's ten-acred tomb
Gabhra, pronounced Gavra, has been identified by the learned archæologist, Dr. John O'Donovan, with an extensive, but now almost obliterated, earthen enclosure, lying immediately under, and to the west of, the Hill of Tara, the ancient residence of the Irish kings in Meath.
The Battle of Gavra, fought between the monarch Cairbre and Moghcorb, king of Munster, aided by Ossian, has remained, as Henri Martin, the French historian, observes, “as famous in the histories of Ireland as the struggles of the Couravas and the Pandavas in the traditions of India.” Here the heroes who followed in the train of Ossian were exterminated, and the power of the Fenian military bands was broken. A century later, Christianity penetrated into Ireland, and the historian above quoted adds: “Nous inclinons à penser que Fingal, Ossian, Oscar, ont existé aussi bien que Roland; que Gavra est authentique comme Roncevaux. Le reste est l'œuvre de l'imagination bardique. Un vaste cycle poétique s'est formé sur les Finiens à la fois en Irelande et en Ecosse, absolument dans les mêmes conditions que le cycle d'Arthure et Merlin s'est fait en Galles et en Bretagne.”
In the Irish Ossianic history of the Battle of Gavra is an affecting picture of the death of Oscar and the grief of his father. The distinction was awarded to his remains of being interred within the rath, or fortress, while the graves of the less renowned heroes were dug in the open field.
Was the grave of the mighty Oscar of Baisgné.”
Trans. Ossianic Society of Dublin, vol. i. p. 133.
Drawing No. 6 represents some of the remaining earthworks, which still crown the summit of the Hill of Tara. The spectator, looking westward, has under his eye the slopes of Gavra, once the scene of this destructive combat, now covered with the fruits of peace. The view in the distance ranges over the great plain, extending westward into West Meath. On the summit of the rath, or earthen fortress, in the foreground, is seen the pillar-stone which Irish bardic antiquaries of the twelfth century considered the veritable Lia Fail, or Stone of Destiny.
Lies heavy on his urn,
A cup of bod kin-pencilled clay
Notwithstanding the rudeness of the material, we are often surprised by the degree of elegance exhibited in the ornamentation of some of the sepulchral urns of the Irish. They are either formed of stone or of unglazed pottery, covered with delicate pattern-work, traced with a point on the wet clay. The same type of pattern constitutes the ornament on those clay vases which preceded the glazed earthenware of more cultivated nations. In these urns, sometimes not more than three or four inches in diameter, were preserved the ashes of persons for whom vast sepulchral mounds, inclosing great stone chambers, were erected. Burial by cremation was not wholly disused in Ireland until after the introduction of Christianity.
holds Oscar, mighty heart and limb
One handful nom of ashes grey;
And she has died for him.
and here hard by her natal bower
On lone Ben Edars side we strive
With lifted rock and sign of power,
To keep her name alive.
The Ogham-lettered stone
The Ogham was a species of writing, in which alphabetic letters were represented by equivalent signs, consisting of strokes or notches, generally cut on the corners of stones, or of squared staves of wood.
In some of the oldest Irish historical tales reference is made to the use of Ogham characters by Cuchullin, and other persons of an epoch considerably earlier than that of the Irish Ossian.
The Gael shall say Our Fenians here
Entombed their loved aideen.
her Ogham from her pillar-stone
In tract of time shall wear away:
her name, at last, be only known
In Ossian's echoed lay.
The long-forgotten lay I sing
May only ages hence revive,
As Eagle with a wounded wing
To soar again might strive,
When, wand'ring here, some child of chance
Through panos of keen delight shall reach
The gift of utterance,
To speak the air, the sky to speak,
The freshness of the hill to tell;
Who roaming bare Ben Edar's peak
And Aideen's briary dell,
This rocky, “bosky” hollow, lies between the Cromlech and the Cliff. The descent from above, on which lies the point of view taken in Drawing No. 7, commands a fine prospect of the woods and towers of Howth Castle, and of the island of Ireland's Eye. This beautiful islet, in the days of Ossian, bore the name of Inis-Faithlenn, or Inis-fallen. It was not till three centuries later that it became the abode of the Sons of Nessan,—three holy men, brothers, who here became eminent for piety and learning—and from whom it took its second name of Inis Meic Nessan, above referred to. In the Felire Aengus, a calendar of the Irish saints, it is said of these holy men, “The Sons of Nessan of this island loved the true knowledge of Christ.” The remains of their stone oratory and round tower may still be traced near the beach, on the side of the island towards Howth. Here was preserved, and probably executed, the remarkable manuscript copy of the Gospels called the Garland of Howth, hereafter noticed.
and gazing on the Cromlech vast,
And on the mountain and the sea,
Shall catch communion with the past
and mix himself with me.
Whate'er your speech, whoe'er your sires,
Sing while you may with frank delight
The song your hour inspires.
Sing while you may, nor grieve to know
The song you sing shall also die;
It was the constant belief of the ancient Irish that a bard could, by poetic invective, bring down temporal misfortune on the objects of his satire. It was also believed that a poetic invective, undeserved, would recoil on the satirist. Many tales of this power of the Bards are current: among others, this of the bard Atharna, whose son having been slain by some of the people of the valley of the Liffey, he continued denouncing them from the summits of Ben Edar for the space of an entire year, until all the crops and cattle of Leinster, as far as Dun Almhuin (now the Hill of Allen, and in times subsequent to Atharna the fortress of Finn, the father of Ossian), became blighted and diseased; under the coercion of which visitation the people of Leinster discovered and gave up the offenders.
Though once it thrilled the sky
above us, from his rocky chair,
There, where Ben Edar's landmard crest
Oer Eastern Bregia bends, to where
Dun Almon crowns the west;
Throughout the song-distempered clime,
Did droop, till suppliant Leinster's prayer
appeased the vengeful rhyme.
Ah me, or e'er the hour arrive
Shall bid my long-forgotten tones
Unknown one, on your lips revive
here, by these moss-grown stones,
What change shall o'er the scene have crossed.
What conquering Lords anew have come.
What lore-armed miohtier Druid host
From Gaul or distant Rome.
What creeds unknown to bard or seer
Shall round your careless steps be rife
Who stand and ponder here;
Or, by you prostrate altar stone
Belike, shall kneel, and, free from blame,
hear holy men with rites unknown
New names of God proclaim.
Let change as may the name of awe,
Let rite surcease and altar fall,
The same one God remains, a law
For ever, and for all.
Let alter all the social frame,
For mortal men the ways of birth
And death are still the same.
And still, as life and time wear on,
The children of the waning days,
Though strength be from their shoulders gone
To lift the loads we raise,
Shall weep to do the burial rites
Of lost ones loved, and fondly, found
In shadow of the gathering nights,
The monumental mound.
The night approaches dark and chill.
Sleep, till perchance an endless morn
Descend the glittering hill.
Of Oscar and Aideen bereft,
So Ossian sang. The Fenians sped
Three mighty shouts to heaven: and left
Ben Edar to the dead.
| The Cromlech on Howth | |