The Easter song : being the first epic of Christendom

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THE EASTER SONG

THE EASTER SONG

BEING

THE FIRST EPIC OF
CHRISTENDOM

BY

SEDULIUS

THE FIRST SCHOLAR-SAINT OF ERINN

WITH INTRODUCTION, VERSE-TRANSLATION AND APPENDICES
INCLUDING A SCHEDULE OF MILTON S "DEBTS"

BY

GEORGE SIGERSON

M.D. , M.CH. , HON. LITT.D. , HON. F.R.C.P. I.

PROKKSSOR N.O.I. , PRESIDENT OF HISTORY SOCIETY, U.C.D. ;
PRESIDENT OF NATIONAL LITERACY SOCIKTY, IRELAND J
MEMBER NATIONAL ACADEMY, IRELAND . MKMBER OF LA

socifcTE D ANTHROPOLOGIE, OF LA SOCIETE CLINIQUE, AK T D

OF LA SOCIETE DE PSYCHOLOGIE PHVSIULOGIQUE DE PARIS

DUBLIN
THE TALBOT PRESS LIMITED

LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIN LIMITED

I 92Z

Printed i" Ireland at The Tatbot Press, Dublin.

PREFACE

THE Easter Song of Sedulius takes rank as the
First Epic of Christendom, and may be regarded
as the Morning Hymn of the Christian World.
Juvencus, who preceded him, produced but a
metrical and amplified version of the text of the
New Testament. Sedulius conceived the Great
Epic. Beginning with the expulsion of the First
of Man from Paradise, and the intrusion of Death
because of disobedience, he describes the conse
quences of the Fall the darkness of the World
illumined by one only hope and the coming, the
sufferings and the sublime triumph of the
Redeemer of Mankind.

Few works have been held in so high honour,
or have commanded a great audience through so
many generations.

Its earliest Editor was a Roman Consul ; an
Emperor, Theodosius, declared himself grateful
for its dedication ; the First Council of the Church
welcomed it with distinguished praise. From its
appearance in the middle of the fifth century it
became the Christian classic. Before the in
vention of printing the Scriptoria distributed

vi THE EASTER SONG

innumerable copies, many exquisitely illumined
on vellum. After that epoch, the presses of almost
every country of Europe were busy printing it for
the Scholars and Colleges of Christendom. Since
then over seventy-five editions could be reckoned
in 1886, being at the rate of one edition in every
five and a half years. There have been many
more.

In this work appears the first attempt to present
any part of the poem in a modern language.

Chilperic, King of the Franks, paid it the
homage of an imitation, in accentual verse. Pet
rarch, and other true poets acknowledged their
peer and crowned him with the noble laurel.
Not the least, though not the greatest of his glories
is that Milton, adopting his exordium, his style,
and many striking passages, so obscured Sedulius
with the splendour of alien robes that the great
original is forgotten and the creator ignored.

The nationality of Sedulius has been questioned.
But by evidence indisputable, it is here shown that
he bordered each Book of his Five Books, with a
couplet wrought with Irish art, so complex and so
fine that his Latin poem may be likened to a toga
decorated with a band of interlaced embroidery
and not with the lotus clavus or plain purple stripe
of the Roman Senator.

A secret of centuries has been revealed, and
Ireland is shown to have produced an Epic Poem
the First of Christendom.

CONTENTS

PACK

PREFACE v

INTRODUCTION-
PART I. SEDULIUS : LEARNING IN IRELAND AND

ROMANISED GAUL .... 3

II. DRUIDS : SCHOOL AND COLLEGE LIFE

IN GAUL . . . . .10

III. CELTIC SURVIVAL IN ROMANISED GAUL 26
IV. CELTIC REVIVAL IN GAUL, ITS EMPEROR

CROWNED WITH CELTIC RlTES . 34

V. GOLDEN AGE OF CHRISTIAN LITERATURE

IN GREECE, ROME, AND GAUL . 51

VI. IRELAND INTERVENES : SEDULIUS WRITES
HIS DEDICATION : ITS WISDOM AND
KIND WIT 59

VII. THE EASTER SONG: ITS PUBLICATION:
ITS EDITIONS AND MARVELLOUS
POPULARITY . . . . .67

VIII. THE CHRISTIAN EPIC, A CLASSIC : EDITED
BY A ROMAN CONSUL, HONOURED BY
EMPEROR THEODOSIUS, PRAISED BY
THE FIRST GENERAL COUNCIL : VISION
OF ANGELS SINGING A HYMN OF
SEDULIUS . . . . .72
vii

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THE EASTER SONG

THE EASTER SONG-

To THE READER
BOOK I.
BOOK II.
BOOK III. .

BOOK IV.
BOOK V.

SECTION III.
PART I. MILTON S DEBT TO VIRGIL

PAGE

79
81

96
in

120
128

APPENDIX I. THE FIRST AND THE LAST EPIC OF

CHRISTENDOM . . . , . .147

SECTION I.
PART I. PARADISE LOST : MILTON S DEBT TO

SEDULIUS . . . . , 147

PART II. PARADISE REGAINED: MILTON S DEBT

TO SEDULIUS -, . . 4 168

SECTION II.
PART I. MILTON S DEBT TO BLOSSIUS AEMILIUS

DRACONTIUS , . . . 175

PART II. MILTON S DEBT TO CLAUDIUS MARIUS

VICTOR ..... 177
PART III. MILTON S DEBT TO ALCIMUS ECDICIUS

AVITUS : BISHOP AND SAINT . 186

206

APPENDIX II. IRISH METRICAL CHARACTERISTICS

IN SEDULIAN VERSE . . . . .210

APPENDIX III. CELTIC INFLUENCE ON THE EVOLU
TION OF RIMED HYMNS .... 229

APPENDIX IV. ON CERTAIN SPECIAL SENSES AND
DOMINANT QUALITIES OF NATIONS : TIME-METRIC
AND RIME-METRIC . . . . .253

INTRODUCTION

B

PART I

SEDULIUS: LEARNING IN IRELAND AND ROMANISED GAUL

OISIN, the last bard of Paganism, had been dead for a
century, when another poet was born to Erinn the
destined author of the first epic of Christendom. The
fame of the former has spread over the world, that of the
latter has not yet reached his native isle. Who in Ireland
reads the works of Sedulius ? Few know his name. Yet
of all the lights that fell upon her troubled seas, for fifteen
hundred years none gave a clearer radiance or shone from
a loftier sky.

There are not many details relating to his life, and
perhaps so best. He was a man of letters, and we are left
to discover in his work that transfusion of the truer and
higher self which is so often blurred and distorted in the
world-mist. He was by birth one of the " barbarians," *
as the Greeks and Romans termed those who resented
their yoke, but whom I should name the Free Nations.
The oldest Vatican documents, according to Arevalus,
tell us briefly that he was a Gentile, a poet, who taught
philosophy in Italy ; he became a Christian and, by advice

1 Modern usage confounds " barbarian with " savage," but
wrongly, as it primarily meant foreigner, and the repetition of the
syllable bar-bar seems (as a French scholar suggested) an attempt
to represent the " babble " of a foreign language to classic ears. It
must have denoted also splendour of decoration, with gold and ivory,
as Ennius makes Andromache use it in her praise of the palace of
Priam.

3

4 THE EASTER SONG

of one Macedonius, he established a school at Athens
where he explained the art of poetry, teaching the heroic
and other metres. There he wrote his great poem which
was given to the world in the year 430.

Let us remember that he went from a cultured people,
the artistic beauty of whose antique ornaments in gold,
silver, and bronze, corresponds with that of the noble
remnants of their ancient literature and laws. He went,
a poet from an isle of poets.

Some called him a gentile. Gentile in the ecclesiasti
cal dialect meant one outside the classic world. It would
have indicated a native of Ireland, and this should explain
why so little is known about him on the Continent. A
Roman, Greek, Gaul, Spaniard, Syrian, or African of such
eminence would have been registered or recognised.

Poets of less distinction are fully identified. Dicuil,
the famous Irish scientific author of the eighth century,
calls him " Noster Sedulius," c our own Sedulius."

Trithemius, xx the fifteenth century, writes of him
more fully :

" Sedulius, a piiest," he says, " a Scot by nation, a disciple
of Hildebert, 1 Archbishop of the Scots, from youth was a
man well disciplined in divine Scriptures, most erudite in
secular letters, excelling in poetry and in prose ; he left
Scotia through love of learning and came to Gaul ; then he
travelled through Italy and Asia ; finally, having departed
from the confines of Greece, he shone in the city of Rome
distinguished for his admirable instruction."

The writer of this was a German, Johann Trittheim,
and therefore he could not be impeached of partiality in

1 Colgan gives Ailbe as the correct Gaelic name, Germanised by
Trittheim, as Hildebert. Irish Christians must have been many and
fervent, before Palladius, as they had several Bishops, and as their
schools could send forth such missionaries as St. Mansuetus, ist
Bishop of Toul, a century before St. Patrick s arrival.

INTRODUCTION 5

assigning Sedulius to the Irish Celts. As Benedictine
Abbot of Spanheim he took a deep interest in letters ;
composing many works himself, he set his monks to copy
so busily that he got together over two thousand volumes
for a library. Amongst the manuscripts which have
perished he probably found old authority for the general
belief that Sedulius was an Irishman.

For Scotia, of course, was Erinn, and the term Scot
designates a member of the Milesian or Scotic colony
which governed the island. Mistakes about its historical
meaning are mistakes of modern times. Before the birth
of Sedulius Scots had passed from Erinn to Alba, settled
there and brought part of it under the sceptre of Cormac
the first Christian Irish king. Alba became Scotia
minor." There were Picts and Scots in both countries so
that, though sea-divided, the peoples were united in blood.

Erinn had singular advantages in those early centuries.
Untouched by the invading Romans, who passed like a
sand-storm withering all native efforts elsewhere, it was
stimulated by accounts of their daring and by rumours of
their approach. It had developed an independent culture
and become formidable in war.

The last refuge of Druids fleeing from vanquished
Gaul and Britain, it was the Forlorn Hope of the Free
Nations. There could be no greater testimony to its
power, nor any more striking recognition of its prominence
than the fact that, as Tacitus says, 1 Agricola had designed
its conquest so that Liberty might be extinguished.
Surely he saw that the Light of Liberty in Ireland flashed

1 The version which Tacitus gives of the noble speech of Galgacus
shows that, differing from so many modern writers, the Roman under
stood and did justice to nations, fighting for freedom against his own
conquering country. The name of the chief is Gaelic, and it is
significant that Derry got its first name, Doire Calgach, from such a
person, and that many spoils of Roman coins were found near Derry,
known later as Doire-Columcille, and latterly as Londonderry.

6 THE EASTER SONG

on the darkness of subjugated nations, and disturbed their
servile slumbers with dangerous dreams. It is not less
significant that he never made the attempt. On the other
hand the Scots of Erinn joined in common cause with the
native peoples of Britain against the Romans. It would
be easy to deride the accounts given in the Irish Annals
of their warlike expeditions abroad if one were ignorant
that Claudian confirms them in classic hexameters. 1
Culture, too, and all acquaintance with Latin literature,
could be denied them, if, with other things, one could
suppress the fact that St. Jerome, in the fourth century,
had to complain of the criticism of an Irish reviewer of
his Commentaries.

Latin was of course the official language of Roman
Britain ; there must have been Celts in Britain, in Scotland,
and in Erinn, who understood it interpreters innumerable.
There were certainly Latin - speaking prisoner - captives
carried over to the Western Isle before those "many
thousands " (tot rmllia), whose capture is recorded by the
Roman citizen, St. Patrick, when describing his own.
They comprised men of different ranks, some skilled in
classic learning, not a few Christians. For there were
Christians in Erinn, not only before the arrival of St.
Patrick but even before the coming of his predecessor,
St. Palladius, who, in the year 430, was sent by Pope
Celestine to " the Scots believing in Christ." In those
days, in the west, wherever Christianity was, there also
was Latinity, and it is impossible to believe that, whilst
St. Jerome s work reached Erinn, none of the elder classics
entered there, though taught in the schools of Britain
and of Gaul.

Our traditional habit of looking at ancient Europe

1 They are more than confirmed by the numerous discoveries in
Ireland of buried hoards of ancient Roman coins, captured in foreign
forays.

INTRODUCTION 7

from a Roman standpoint and through a Roman atmo
sphere has made us unfair to the Free Nations our
forefathers. They could not have conquered the con
querors had they not been apt and intelligent enough to
learn from them. Opportunities for acquiring the Latin
language and something of its literature were not absent
from the Irish Scots, in the youthful days of Sedulius.
It is quite probable that he made use of them. There
were opportunities also for faring to foreign parts.
Numbers of the Attacoti revolted subjects of the Scots
had taken service under the Eagles and were stationed
in Gaul. The Scotic warriors not only invaded Britain
but also made incursions into Gaul, so that there were
strong currents of intercourse between these countries. 1
Sedulius may have gone to Gaul in the train of Dathi,
Erinn s last pagan king and outland conqueror.

One must not lay over much stress upon his name as
evidence of his western race, for it is found amongst the
Romans, yet here Sedulius may be the latinised form of
Siadal. Other and later Irish scholars have adopted or
adapted it. With more certainty we can appeal to the
intrinsic evidence supplied by his works. There, alike
in his prose and in his verse, is shown a fondness for,
and a familiarity with the sea which well became an
islander. With this goes a delight in woods and streams
-all that fine love of natural beauty, which so distin
guished the ancient Irish poets. Most of all, I would cite
in evidence the remarkable complex peculiarities of verse-
structure (detailed fully in Appendix II.) which, being
identical with those of early Gaelic verse, would of
themselves demonstrate its Irish origin.

The exploits of their countrymen in Britain, when
Stilicho blenched before them and the Roman Eagles

1 In the later part of the sixth century Saxon vessels were at the
mouth of the Loire and Britons raided Rennes.

8 THE EASTER SONG

wavered, must have fired many a young noble to whose
ears these deeds came glorified by the fervid imagination
of the bards. They also would fare forth and seek fame
or fortune beyond the narrow seas.

Sedulius, however, was the type and forerunner of
another class, numerous and daring enough in after days,
whose ambition was higher and more ethereal. Their
weapons were those of the intellect. Wherever know
ledge had lighted her camp-fire, thither they hastened
with passionate zeal until they had warmed their souls
at its flame. They were, indeed, always eager to give as
well as to receive, as many a work of subtle intelligence
can testify. 1 Their camp fires shone like stars in the
firmament of Learning, and their island for three centuries
was the " University of Europe." All comers from all
nations were welcomed, as never elsewhere, to lodging,
living, and learning and all gratuitously, according to
the Venerable Beda, a Saxon. Mosheim declares that
Ireland held the civilisation of Europe for three centuries.

Imagine the sensations of this young Gentile, when,
in the splendid array of an Irish chief, he left behind him
his native isle, with its glamour of mist and minstrelsy,
and came first upon the square Roman camp the strong-
walled cities guarded by the stern Power against which
his far kindred had so often flung themselves, and not
always in vain, but whose literature had always conquered.

In Gaul, there was now a closer union than of old
between the Roman and the Celt ; for, like avalanche
following avalanche, over the Eastern frontier began to
come horde after horde of German f barbarians -the
avenging Free Peoples falling upon their degenerate
conquerors. Though the ruin of some towns made

1 Eric of Auxerre writes (eighth century) of " Almost all Ireland,
despising the perils of the sea, passes over to our shores, with her
crowds of philosophers."

INTRODUCTION 9

desolate the heart of Jerome, 1 there were still schools
where Sedulius could forget all transient outer strife and
life, and continue whatever studies he had entered on at
home, become a naturalised citizen of the Classic World
and heir to the immortal intellects of Greece and Rome.
There was no withstanding the influence of their majesty
Virgil the beloved called him over the Alps, and imperial
Homer to Athens and the windy plain of Troy. All this
new-found region was peopled by hero-phantoms with
mirage-fleets upon the seas, and armies fighting in the air.
In this new atmosphere everything was strange and every
strange thing was possible for the mind had cast off old
moorings and was freed of familiar limits gods and
goddesses, fauns and nymphs might flourish here as well
as the myrtle, the orange grove, and the vine, for the poets
had told of them all. Since their words were true of the
earth s strange produce, why not also of the sky s progeny?
These, however, passed into cloud-shadows when the
pure dawn of Christianity came upon his mind with serene
radiance, showing ideals of infinite beauty.

1 It is too much ignored that the " barbarian hordes " had also
their laws, organisations, culture, in different degrees. The Franks
are stated to have used Greek and Scythian letters. The costume
of some chiefs was picturesque and splendid, according to Sidonius
Apollonius, whose statement that Serenatus had been " extolling the
barbarians and depreciating the Romans," shows that they could
make themselves popular sometimes. Again, Fortunatus spent some
time in German territory later, and found them singing their " leuden "
to the murmuring of the " Arpa." There are many eulogistic
poems by Fortunatus to the new rulers of France, and pleasant pictures
of flowers sent, and the gardens of Ultrogotho s queen with its frag
rance of " paradisial roses." To Queen Radegund, who, he says,
despised the pomp of purple and gold, he offers these in the acceptable
form of purple pansies and golden crocuses.

PART II

DRUIDS: SCHOOL AND COLLEGE LIFE IN GAUL

LOOKING into the clouded past, one is inclined to consider
it difficult, if not impossible, for a native of Ireland to
journey through Gaul to Rome, and still more to imagine
him as Head of a School, teaching there and in Athens.
Yet Pytheas sailed north from Marseilles, and our sea
ports were recognised by Tacitus as more accessible than
those of Britain. Pelagius certainly travelled from this
country (or from Wales) to confer with St. Augustine and
to live, labour, and teach a school in Rome. St. Jerome
found it possible to keep up a correspondence with noble
ladies in remote Armorica and his writings went farther
still, for he discovered that an Irish critic had not only
read but censured a passage of his Commentaries. This
roused his wrath and he declared his censor to be made
stolid by Irish stirabout a fortunate wrath, for without
it we had missed an unimpeachable witness to the Latin
scholarship of an Irish author of the fourth century.
Travellers and written scrolls thus passed with certainty,
if slowly, along the great highways of the Empire, and
when Roman roads ceased, as in Britain, there were sea-
boats which led to the state-controlled roads of Ireland.

Our vessels were familiar with British coasts in peace
and in war, and did not fear to fare to the harbours of
Gaul. There, when Sedulius arrived, he found Roman
civilisation and language overlying the native culture and

10

INTRODUCTION 1 1

customs, like a vast sheet of glittering ice above the un
frozen founts of living water.

For though Julius Caesar had been able to win Gauls,
to make some of them Senators, and to form the Legion
of the Lark, not all the rigour of the penal laws of his
successors could soon extinguish their language, customs,
and faith. The contrary has been stated, but I shall
adduce evidence to prove that, even in the fifth century,
a College of Druids existed, and that so late as the sixth
Avitus, a Gaul, was crowned in Celtic fashion by a
patriotic people ripe for a Celtic revival. Indeed, the
Penal Laws must have failed of activity, or become
obsolete, so early as the fourth century. For we find
that a man who was publicly recognised as a Druid, and
for whom the name held not reproach but honour, could
and did become a professor in the great School of
Bordeaux.

These facts being ascertained, it was reasonable to
expect that some outcropping of native culture and
custom should be discernible even through the covering
of an alien language. To trace the existence of this hidden
mine was a work of extreme interest.

The result has been that, in several instances, the
Celtic ore is shown to gleam through the Latin mould,
and that, in some remarkable examples the mould itself
is Celtic, though the language is Latin. In other words
we find the metrical laws which govern an exceptional and
ancient form of Irish verse-structure exactly reproduced
in a Latin poem by a Gallic Celt.

Sedulius in such a country should have been more or
less at home, or at least felt himself among friends.
Scholarship made the path easy for him, for in those days
it carried far and high. No nation supplies a parallel
except the Great Republic of North America, and even
this is not so generous in its recognition of intellectual

12 THE EASTER SONG

merit. Difficult as it may seem for an insular Celt like
Sedulius to achieve a high position in Rome and in Athens,
the difficulty disappears when we consider the career of a
Gallic scholar born of poor parents, in a provincial town.
A sketch of his life will throw light on the coming career
of the Irish outlander.

When Sedulius came to Gaul, Ausonius had but
recently died, in 394, closing with the fourth century his
life of poetry and of power. If the Irishman came by
long-sea, as his fond familiarity with nautical images does
suggest, then probably he sailed into the spacious harbour
of Burdigala, where Ausonius was born, where he was
educated, where he lectured for thirty years, and whither
he returned, covered with honours, to die at home.

Now his maternal grandfather, Argicius Arborius, was
an Aeduan by race. These Celts, according to Livy,
founded Milan. We know that one of them, Divitiacus, 1
a distinguished Druid was Caesar s friend and was in
correspondence with Cicero whom he instructed in the
religious philosophy of his nation and (as I have ventured
to demonstrate) 2 in the structure of their verse.

Argicius Arborius appears to have been such another.
He was an Aeduan noble, opulent and with high connec
tions. But when Victorinus gained the Empire, both he
and his father were proscribed and had to fly to the south.
That he was an adept in Druid knowledge is clear, for the
poet states (in his Parentalia) that Argicius was skilled in
celestial numbers and in the Stars, the Warders of Man s
Destiny. But this science had to be kept secret at that
time. He had cast the child s horoscope, a favourable
one. Not unknown to him," says Ausonius, " was my
life s career ; he had traced it out on tablets which were

1 Divitiacus is the latinised form of Dubhtac pronounced Duvtac.
8 Bards of the Gael and Gall, Introduction. London. Fisher
Unwin.

INTRODUCTION 13

kept hidden, until a mother s curious hands discovered
them."

How this recalls the coming of the venerable Druid
to St. Columba s cradle in Ireland, and his prediction of
the infant s great future !

After his flight Argicius managed to earn a livelihood
by teaching mathematics and to amass a little wealth by
the secret practice of astrology and divination. There
were many Druids like him, throughout the country, who
in times when persecution was keen, lived by their learn
ing, whilst they practised the mysteries of their belief
among a faithful people, for whom the grosser polytheism
of Rome had no mystic charm.

Now, Arborius, one of the sons of this Druid, be
came an eminent scholar, a rhetor, a professor at the
famous Schools of Bordeaux and Toulouse, and subse
quently the appointed preceptor of a Caesar the son of
the Emperor Constantine at Constantinople ! His sister,
a daughter of the Druid, became a distinguished physician :
her name was Emilia Hilaria, but some used to make it
masculine and call her Hilarius because of the manli
ness of her mind, whilst others, because of her genial
manner, would call her Hilaritas, by way of a gentle
pleasantry.

Dr. Emilia Hilaria was the poet s aunt, for her sister,
Emilia Eonia, attracted also by the profession, had married
Julius Ausonius, a physician of exceptional ability and
high repute a learned philosopher who spoke Greek
even better than Latin, a genuine philanthropist who
preferred the service of the suffering poor, to the prestige
of the Prefecture conferred on him by the State.

Ausonius, his son, was proud of him and began life
poor. But family affection and love of learning are
characteristics of the Celt, and Arborius, his uncle, took
charge of the young lad s education. Quick, clever,

14 THE EASTER SONG

industrious, pleasant, with a latent spark of genius and
the ambition to make it flash, he passed through school
with honour, became a teacher of grammar, then a rhetor
and next a professor.

For thirty years he held the chair, with increasing
credit. Then the Emperor Valentinian L, aware of his
great reputation, invited him to the Court at Treves, the
northern capital of the Empire, to direct the education of
his nephew Gratian, the young Augustus. Thus Arborius
and Ausonius, Gauls both, were both preceptors of
imperial pupils.

Treveri (now Treves) is described by Ausonius, in his
poem on the Moselle, as reposing in the bosom of peace,
because it feeds, clothes, and arms the forces of the Empire.
Its broad walls stretch over a sloping hill. The wide and
tranquil Moselle flows past, bearing hither from afar the
commerce of all countries. Treves fostered art, for else
where the poet describes a remarkable picture on the
palace wall of Cupid crucified by the Heroines. 1 As it
was the imperial capital not only of Gaul, but of Britain,
many natives of the Northern Isles must have visited the
celebrated city.

In his expedition against the Alemanni in 368 Valen
tinian took with him, not only Gratian, but his poet-
preceptor in order that his exploits might not lack the
sacred bard to sing them. And Ausonius sang how the
Danube raises his happy head to salute the two Augusti
and rushes with the news to the Euxine Sea to announce
that the Rhine is no longer the limit of Gaul thence if
sea-law permit the river will rush back with tidings of the
victory of Valens over the Goths !

1 Ausonius writing to Gregorius asks : Have you ever seen
the painted cloud on the wall ? You saw it and remember it."
This picture was coloured in the Eolus Hall at Treves. Ausonius
greatly admired it and sent his friend some charming verses on the
subject.

INTRODUCTION 15

Valentinian died in 375. Then Gratian, in the pleni
tude of power, displayed a gratitude and an affection for
his professor which are rather exceptional in historical
records. The fact that his favours extended to the poet s
aged father and other relatives speaks for the affectionate
heart of Ausonius. In rapid succession, the higher
honours of the State were showered upon him and his
kindred. His father, then nearly ninety, was made Prefect
of Illyria the functions were, of course, discharged
by deputy. His brother-in-law became Pro-consul of
Africa, Ausonius himself and his son Hesperius were
granted the Prefecture of the Gauls, and finally in 379 the
poet was created First Consul.

When Gratian was slain by Maximus the Emperor
Theodosius bestowed his favours on the poet, but Ausonius
had had enough of court greatness, and retired to his
beloved Burdigala, " Nidumque Senectae," the " Nest of
my Age," he said, and there spent the remainder of his
years in lettered leisure and in directing the education of
his grandson. 1

In his Idyll, written to encourage his " honey-grand
son * (mellite nepos), he opens the school-doors to us
and allows us to listen to the murmurs and the moans
of the boys for the Gallic Schools were severe in dis
cipline. Ausonius, in a mock-heroic, half-humorous, and
yet earnest manner, bids his dear boy take courage and
not mind the morning terrors of the master s face, nor
other troubles they had all undergone the same sufferings
and happily survived. It was not to be all work. The
Muses had their playtimes as well as their worktimes
these alternated and the Greeks gave school its name
(skole) because this meant leisure. This was an etymo
logical comfort ! " No teacher should affright you,"

1 It is curious to note that Ausonius preceded Victor Hugo in
VArt d etre Grand-Ptre.

1 6 THE EASTER SONG

Ausonius went on, " he may appear cross and quarrelsome
but you will get accustomed to his looks. Chiron was
half a horse, but he did not frighten young Achilles, nor
did pine-wielding Atlas terrify the son of Amphitryon
they got to like them ! This was truly a mythological
comfort !

Having cheered the little lad by the memories of these
monstrous masters, the poet proceeds with the serene
philosophy of a senior who has forgotten the smart,
" Neither should you fear though the school re-echo with
strokes, and the master look truculent." " Fear argues
a degenerate spirit ; be true to thyself (tibi constd), intrepid,
neither the clamour, the sounding slaps, nor morning
terrors shall agitate thee." What though the sceptre
of the ferula be brandished, the heap of rods be big, and
the tawse have many supple straps never mind their
pomp of place nor that scene of vain terrors."

" Following such advice, in bye-gone days, your
parents," he continues, " have made my old age peaceful
and happy, and do you, first of my grand-children and
first to bear my name, give me joy by hap or hope (vel
re vel spe)" Then reminding the boy of the careers of
his ancestors, so that he also should aspire to the arduous
crown of learning, Ausonius continues : Read thoroughly
whatever is worth remembering ; these I advise unroll
the works of the * Creator of the Iliad and those of pleasant
Menander. Then comes an interesting passage on how
poetry should be read : Produce it," he says, " with rise
and fall of the voice, noting the numbers, with proper
accentuation. Give the meaning when reading. By
distinguishing, the thought is emphasised, and a pause
gives strength even to things inept."

As a suggestion has been made that the ancients read
their poems in a sort of chant, I quote the words of
Ausonius which describe their real method and which, be

INTRODUCTION 17

it noted, is still the classic and best manner of French

recitation :

tu flexu et acumine vocis
in numeros numeros doctis accentibus effer
affectusque impone legens : 1 distinctio sensum
auget, et ignavis dant intervalla vigorem.

" When shall I hear thee read," he exclaims with
feeling. " When shall thy voice recall to life all the old
forgotten songs, all the stories binding age to age, the
Comedian s Sock, the tragic draperies of Kings with all
the melodies of lyre and Song ? Listening to thee, my
child, I shall hear the poems that Horace moulded, and
once more the lofty lines of Virgil, Thee, also, Terence !
of such choice latinity, with well-bound buskin tripping
on the Stage, thy crime, O Catiline, the tumult of
Lepidus, the sequent history of the Twelve Years and the
strange Civil War of banished Sertorius."

Then Ausonius indicates the course of higher educa
tion. It was not, he reminds the boy, an inexperienced
grandsire who spoke. He had had pupils from their
childhood onward. When the age of puberty brought a
beard, he guided them in morals, in the fine arts, and in
vigorous eloquence though their neck disliked the yoke
and their mouth the bridle-bit. Arduous moderation,
gentle censure of indocile youth, were his methods he
had many trials but great success. Until, at last, he was
called to the education of a Prince, and with various
honours could command in a golden palace. Nay, if
Fate and Fortune would pardon the jest, he presided the
Empire, since his pupil Master of the people, the sceptre,
and the throne submitted to his rule and, he said, even
Augustus thought our honours greater than his own :

maioresque putat nostros Augustus honores.

1 Cf. " si vis me flere, flendum est et ipsi tibi."

C

1 8 THE EASTER SONG

Ausonius is his own biographer, and gives a vivid
picture of his surroundings. In Ephemeris he sketches
a day s occupation. The clear morning shines in, the
swallows twitter in their nests ; then, "up, boy ! bring
water to wash, garments to dress, and open the Chapel for
prayer. Next the robes for the town, for the promenade
and visits to friends, by that, it will be near noon and time
to warn and counsel the cook. The dinner must not be
kept waiting : off, boy ! now, and remind the five friends
I mentioned," six (including the host) the proper number :
six is company, more a mob ! (Sex enim convivium . . .
si super, convicium est).

Then he tells of his dreams, some accountable as those
of the forum, of lawsuits, of the stage, some incongruous
and terrifying, as of one caught in a crowd of cavalry,
fighting with wild beasts or in the ensanguined arena
some strange and impossible yet stranger still in that
they so often recur throughout the centuries, as of walking
on the sea after shipwreck and of sudden flights in the air.

Virgil, he says, has spoken of those Illusions which come
through the Ivory Gate, and the true Visions which come
through the Gate of Horn : as to himself, he prefers the
illusory when they are agreeable, for better a phantom
pleasure than fear a fate. 1

Ausonius introduces us to the society of his relatives
(Parentalia) with affectionate descriptions, but more
interesting, from our standpoint, is his account of his
grammar-teachers and of his professors of the higher
grades. If he does not spare eulogy, he does not omit
censure.

His Reminiscences of Professors (at Bordeaux) 2

1 Why dreams should, in ages so different, be so similar is a curious
problem, and this evidence of continuity has been hitherto over
looked. Attempts should be made to collect and compare the dreams
of the different races of mankind.

* Commemoratio Professorum Burdigalensium.

INTRODUCTION 19

naturally begin by the most famous. This was Minervius,
the orator, celebrated by his lectures at Rome and at
Constantinople. In the School he led the fictitious
debates (? law cases) like a Quintilian of the rhetor s
toga. His eloquence was a torrent rolling in its course
not mud but gold. Even more than Demosthenes he had
that quality of action which Demosthenes thrice declared
to be the first quality of an orator. He had a marvellous
memory. 1 Anything he read or heard once, he could
correctly repeat. In the case of a disputed game Ausonius
heard him " ascribe every one of the casts and the number
of marks on each of the dice thrown."

Alcimus also stood prominent the only man whom
that modern age of theirs could oppose to the great men
of the past. Victor in the Forum, Pride of the Muses,
Master of Greek and Latin letters, his services were
the succour of the poor, in Law Court or in Lecture
Hall.

There is a tear for dead Luciolus, the rhetor, once
his School-comrade, next his master, and finally his
colleague.

We now come to a professor of the greatest eminence.
He had predeceased the others, but his noble eloquence
survived him. He was Patera. Ausonius had seen him
when a boy. This master of mighty rhetors (doctor
potentum rhetorum) was a scion of the stock of Druids ;
whose race was consecrate to the Temple of Belenus. 2
None at that time had such knowledge, such fluency, and
such variety in his discourses. Endowed with memory,
elegance, lucidity, culture, and a musical voice, he was
reticent of witticisms, never bitter, abstemious in food

1 It is remarkable that Ausonius lays great stress on memory
which was particularly and exceedingly cultivated by the Celts.

Tu Baiocassis, stirpe Druidarum satus." Baioassis is now
Bayeux.

20 THE EASTER SONG

and drink, yet joyous, modest, and handsome in his age ;
which was that of the eagle or the steed.

This surely is a bright and cheering portrait of a
potential Druid, by one who knew them well, and a
contrast to the gloomy paintings by foes, who knew them
not at all.

Patera, St. Jerome says, taught rhetoric at Rome
* gloriosissime."

Delphidius, another professor, was Patera s son.
Eloquent, learned, quick of wit and word, he was genial
by temperament and a charming companion. He de
lighted in poetry and excelled in oratory. But his
character was independent, and unworldly ; he did not
look after Court patronage, desiring to deserve rather than
to receive honours, meriting more than he won. He
stood forth against tyranny when it was rampant ; but,
engrossed as a rhetor, he was not persistent in teaching.
He conducted the great indictment against Numerius,
Governor of the Narbonese, who was accused of pecula
tion. He was a patriot, not a courtier.

Phoebicius was the aged father of Patera. He had been
the guardian of the Temple of Belenus in remote Armorica,
but he was brought to Bordeaux, and obtained the Chair
of Grammar this was through the influence of Patera, his
famous son, and if it show that the father was not dis
tinguished in Latin letters (though he may have been a
scholar in Celtic), it also proves the great affection of
Patera, for not all eminent men would care to have their
father near them in such a position Ausonius says :

nee reticebo senem
nomine Phoebicium,
qui Beleni aedituus
nil opis inde tulit ;
sed tamen, ut placitum,
stirpe satus Druidum

INTRODUCTION 21

gentis Armoricae,
Burdigala cathedram
nati opera obtinuit.

It appears from this that to be of Druid stock was now
a point in one s favour when seeking advancement, and
that Phoebicius was himself a Druid in active function.
True it brought him little worldly wealth in remote
Armorica at least in the eyes of the wealthy Ausonius.
Perhaps the Druid did not so much value it. Belenus,
according to M. Beugnot, was the chief divinity of some
parts of Gaul and occupied in Celtic Mythology the place
reserved to the sun or Apollo in Roman rites. 1 The
Celtic doctrine of sun-worship could thus have been con
tinued by the Druids, under cover of Apollo s name.

Frankness is a characteristic of Ausonius. In his
Parentalia he grieved for Herculanus, his sister s son, so
lively, convivial, musical, handsome, and swift of foot, his
mother s pride. He adds that he assisted here as gram
marian in his uncle s class, and should have succeeded
him, but did not keep to the right road of Pythagoras.
Other names of little note follow, but the poet desired to
mention all citizens who taught there or elsewhere and
any foreigners who taught in Bordeaux. They were
clearly of one Brotherhood, all natives of the Nation of
Knowledge.

Concordius had been a banished man ; Securus was
the son of a freedman, dissatisfied, of little learning or
repute : he taught grammar elsewhere. Thalassus he
barely remembered. Citarius was a Sicilian, a Greek
grammatist and good poet, who married well. Marcellus
had been driven forth by a cruel mother, but fortune gave
him repute a large class, wealth, and a distinguished wife.
He lost all but his name (Cuncta perisse simul, Non tamen

1 Histoire de la destruction du paganisme, t. ii. p. 152.

22 THE EASTER SONG

et nomen), says Ausonius, which reminds one of the
words of Franfois I. " tout est perdu, fors Phonneur."

To Crispus and Urbicus, Latin and Greek gram
marians, a bitter-sweet elegy. Crispus first taught the
alphabet, the mere elements, afterwards : It used to be
thought that the warmth of wine raised you at times, to
a rivalry with Virgil and Horace." His comrade was a
Greek and should have his eAeAeO. 1 He spoke in prose
and verse with equal force, and recalled the heroes of
Homer and the voice of Nestor, sweeter than honey.
They were both born free : pity they could not give proof
of it. Three other Greek teachers he names, two of
whom gave him to know the meaning and pronunciation
of Greek, but he did not cultivate the language. " Light
lie the turf above you " (vos levis cespes tegat). He com
memorates also five Latin grammaticists or philologists.
Leontius he specially mentions as a jolly, good-natured,
pleasure-loving comrade, with just learning enough to be
named a grammaticist. Jucundus, his brother, was said
to have usurped the chair, but though unequal to the
position, he had been good, simple, and his friend.

Ausonius refers in his Epigrams to grammarians.
Playing on the name of one, Felix (happy), he declared
that Felix could not be a grammarian never was a
grammarian happy :

Felix grammaticus non est, sed nee fuit unquam :
nee quisquam est felix nomine grammaticus.

If ever such a grammarian existed, he existed contrary
to grammar.

Another epigram is inscribed to Auxilius. * How
could he teach rightly who faultily speaks his own name."
He called himself Auxilius, whereas Auxilium is the right

1 There is a curious similarity between the Greek AtXeO and the
Irish word ailliliu, which has much the same meaning.

INTRODUCTION 23

word for assistance. Give the proper case or you will
be a Solecism ! In the third epigram we hear the fate
of a grammaticist, who made an unhappy marriage. It
has the merit of informing us that the grammarians taught
more than grammar : they taught Virgil. 1

Grammarians had (for Glabrio had) the right to defend
clients in the Forum : he had won his chair when Ausonius
became rhetor. Nepolianus was both a grammarian and
a rhetor, a man of the highest distinction. Old with a
soul of youth, genial, gay, witty, pure, honey without
bitterness, Ausonius said he was a sharer in his play and
in his work, the healing of his heart ! 2

Nostri medela, Nepoliane, pectoris !

Silent often, when he spoke Ulysses would have listened.
Honourable, modest, frugal, eloquent, no rhetor surpassed
him in style. A Cleanthes the Stoic for dialectic, having
Scaurus and Probus by heart, he excelled Cinea the
Epirote in memory. He was, says the poet, the " Driver
of my mind (Agitator mentis meae), and had attained
the honour of the Presidency.

Arborius, the uncle who took charge of his education,
had been lamented in Parentalia he is eulogised here
among the professors, but his chair was in Tolosa
(Toulouse). Now is mentioned the curious fact that, at
this time there were in Tolosa, as in a kind of honourable
exile, two young brothers of the Emperor Constantine.
From Tolosa the fame of Arborius went forth to the East
and he was appointed Preceptor of the young Caesar,

1 Arma virumque docens, atque arrna virumque peritus

non duxi uxorern, sed magis arma domum.
Which may be rendered :

Arms and the Man I taught, who founded Rome
Arms and strife, not wife, I found at home.

1 This expression is also in Gaelic, e.g. " For my heart no healing
without thee " in " Eiblin a ruin."

24 THE EASTER SONG

Constantino s son. There he lived in honour and opu
lence, and there he died, but the Emperor nobly restored
his body to the tomb of his ancestors in Bordeaux.

Exuperius was a rhetor, personable and dignified, who
taught at Tolosa and next at Narbo. There the young
sons of Dalmatius 1 (" fatal names of Kings ") paid a vast
price for his lessons in rhetoric. When at last they ob
tained the name of Caesars, they gave him the Presidency
of a tribunal in Spain. His copious eloquence pleased
the ear, but when read showed little solidity. Sedatus
was another native of Bordeaux who was rhetor at Tolosa.
Staphylius, a rhetor of Auch, a stranger, had been like a
father and an uncle, an Ausonius and an Arborius to him.
A learned grammaticist, a clever rhetor, deep in the history
of Livy and Herodotus, he knew the contents of the six
hundred volumes of Varro.

Victorius, a sub-doctor or proscholus (under-master
or Substitute), was perhaps the principal scholar of the
School, though not so placed by Ausonius. He was
absorbed, says the latter, in moth-eaten manuscripts in
questions of Pontifical right, remote history, Castor
on doubtful Kings, Rhodope s publications from her
husband s works, the laws of Draco and of Solon, of
Saleucus to the Locrians, of Minos after Jove, of Themis
before Jove. He preferred all this to our Cicero and
Virgil !

This, in Victorius, evidently revealed the independence
of his character and the originality of his mind. He went
out beyond the beaten path and was engaged in research
work. He ended his days in Rome to which he had
formerly come from Sicily. A scholar, not a rhetor, he
lived without patronage and died without official honours.

1 Dalmatius was one of the brothers of the Emperor, kept in Gaul
out of the way of intrigues. His sons were killed by revolted soldiers
after the Emperor s death.

INTRODUCTION 25 j

In these Reminiscences we have a picture of the
teachers of the lower and higher school or college classes,
and it cannot be gainsaid that the effect is a pleasant one.
The Academical world, with its few weaknesses and fewer
faults, was intellectual and agreeable, friendly and helpful,
social , hospitable , admiring talent, and welcoming strangers .
There appears to have been wonderful activity and move
ment throughout the Empire in those days. Some who
won fame in Rome and Constantinople, Greek and
Sicilian students, came to teach at Bordeaux, natives of
Bordeaux were called to the Imperial Courts at Constan
tinople and at Treves, some gained glory in Rome and
lesser men a livelihood in Poitou and in Spain. The
Emperor Constantine s brothers resided at Narbonne and
his nephews were educated there. St. Jerome had corre
spondents in Armorica and outside the Empire a critic
in independent Ireland, Pelagius taught in Rome.
Lastly, the Latin persecution of the Gauls had ceased, and
it is manifest that to be a Druid or of Druidic extraction
was no longer an impediment but an assistance to a man s
career, it was evidence that he was a member of a dis
tinguished and cultured race. 1

1 It is worth noting that Ausonius places the noble cities of his
time as follows : Golden Rome, the home of the Gods," stands
foremost, of course : the delicate flattery of one line suffices its
description, all others require many.

Prima urbes inter, Divum domus, aurea Roma.

Next come Constantinople and Carthage, rivals ; Antioch and
Alexandria, also rivals, potent Treves, marvellous Milan, Capua,
Aries " little Gallic Rome (Gallula Roma Arelas), Spanish
Merida (surpassing Corduba and Tarraco), Athens ("whose is the
glory of Attic eloquence "), Catunia, Syracuse, Toulouse from which
four cities sprang, Narbonne, first to bear the Latin name, Bordeaux
famed for its river, its wine, its fountain, its streets, its gates, its
climate and manners, its great men, its noble Senate his home.
I love Bordeaux, Rome I adore Citizen of one, Consul in both :
here is my cradle, there my curule chair."

PART III

CELTIC SURVIVAL IN ROMANISED GAUL

AMID such circumstances it would be strange that some
thing of the old Gallic thought, culture, and expression
should not appear through the overlying Latin. It would
be more difficult to understand why it did not appear
than why it did. St. Jerome noticed its presence in
St. Hilary s work when he said that Hilary wore the
Gallic cothurn. 1 It should, of course, be less easy to
discern it in that of Ausonius, expert in Latin as he was,
a rhetor, a poet, and a professor.

In moments of great emotion, however, the flood of
feeling sometimes dissolves the force of artificial habit,
and men will revert to their original dialect, and strangers
to their native tongue. It was a time of great emotion
with Ausonius when the object of his highest ambition
had been gained, and, as Consul designate, he had received
the Fasces. Then his latent Celticism breaks out, and
he apostrophises in joyous verse the New Year, the sun,
the winds, the rain, the seasons, the several stars, Cynthia,
Areas, Saturn, Jupiter, Cytherean Vesper, Cellenius, and

1 Cothurnus was the buskin in use upon the stage in serious
drama. Now an idiomatic version of Jerome s phrase would be that
" Hilary has a Gallic brogue " hence we come to the curious and
interesting discovery that in using the words * an Irish brogue,"
one repeats a classic metaphor, for the Irish word " br6g " (buskin)
is equivalent to cothurnus. Thus we find explained, unexpectedly,
what seemed inexplicable.

26

INTRODUCTION 27

the soil itself to be propitious and grant him a favourable
and hopeful year for his Consulate !

The enumeration of the Stars reminds us that the
Druids were skilled in celestial lore and astronomers.
The appeal to the Sun and all the elements to be propitious
and to favour his Consulate with a fair and fruitful year
has its parallels in the Ancient Irish Annals, where it is
recorded that in the reign of good kings the seasons were
auspicious, the soil prolific, and the trees wonderfully
fruitful. So late as the sixteenth century the bard
O Bruadair warned his king that he would sing no song
of praise until he saw his high precepts adopted then
all nature would rejoice :

Then the Sun of day, the Sky,
Earth and Water, birds on high,
Every Element shall sing
To the praises of the King
On the boughs shall swarm the bees,
Salmon leap from shining seas,
All the fair tribes of the flood
Praise with me the Chieftain good.

An unprosperous season reflected adversely upon the
King.

Take another instance of these relationships. In the
year 457, about a century and a half after the appeal of
Ausonius to the Sun, Stars, Winds, Water, Months,
Seasons, and Soil, King Laegaire of Tara was defeated by
Leinster. Made prisoner, he swore by the Sun and Moon,
Water and Air, Day and Night, Sea and Land to renounce
the unjust Borumean tribute, and was liberated. Having
proved false to his oath, say the Annals of the Four
Masters, he was slain in the following year by the Sun
and Wind.

Appreciation and love of Nature are acknowledged

28 THE EASTER SONG

characteristics of the Celtic temperament. In Irish
poetry this is shown from the earliest verse extant. Here,
again, Ausonius is their kin: in his poem on the River
Mosella he says, and is perhaps the first to express
though not the first to feel admiration for the work of
Nature : Naturae mirabor opus " and he proves it by
devoting nearly five hundred lines to a delicate and delight
ful description of that famous stream, its vine-clad banks,
its crystal waters, its shining, shifting pebbles, its shadowy
wavering water- weeds. The Caledonian Britons know
the picture, he sings, when Ocean ebbing lays bare the
green sea- weed, red coral and shell-germs, pearly berries,
the delight of luxury. In the hot noon, unseen, the
Naiads and the Oreads meet and play. When at evening
the hills and scenes around are mirrored in the stream,
the rowers in their little boats reach forth to pluck the
illusive purple grapes. . . . Then we have the story of
all its fishes, of the Angler with his agile rod, the nets
with cork -floats, the merry races where skiffs and
shadows compete, and the thousand beauties of wood,
water, and sinuous mountain scenery.

But besides these remarkable resemblances is there not
anything more noticeable, if more mechanical, say in the
verse-structure itself ? This is asking much, for it
requires that a poet trained from his youth in Latin metre,
shall under an inherited impulse fail in his art, which is
impossible to suppose, or else that he shall experiment in
his art, by adapting Latin words to Celtic metrical rules.

This may strike the conventional classic scholar as un
thinkable, but on the other hand, consider how, at first,
poets in Italy fitted Latin words to the rules of Greek
metric and say why should not poets in Gaul act in a
similar manner ?

Evidently it was possible, and probable, and in fact it
was accomplished by Ausonius.

INTRODUCTION 29

Take this example : It is known that from of old the
Celtic bards (in Ireland) were experts in the art of rime,
assonantal, consonantal, terminal and inlaid, to mention
some. It may be assumed that the Celtic bards, in Gaul,
had similar qualifications. Now in the following epigram
(intended for a statue of Bacchus in his villa) Ausonius
diverges distinctly from the Latin types, and makes ex
ceptional use of rime and of a rime which has certain
marked Gaelic peculiarities.

These are the verses of Ausonius :

Vowel rimes.

Ogygia me Bacchum vocat o a

Osirin Aegyptus putat u a

Mysi Phanacen nominant i a

Dionyson Indi existimant i i a

Romana Sacra Liberum i e u

Arabica gens Adoneum o e u

Lucaniacus Pantheum a e u

Here the consonantal rimes are obvious, plainly in
tended, and distinguish it from Latin epigrams. But
the more subtle vowel rimes require to be pointed
out. Vowels are divided in Gaelic into two classes : the
broad, a, o, u, which rime with each other as with them
selves and the slender vowels, e, i, which likewise rime
together and with themselves. The permitted difference
of consonants allows a variety otherwise unknown in the
chiming sounds. To a Spanish or a Gaelic ear these rules
need no explaining, but I may add that, c and t being
" corresponding consonantal rimes, the first two end-
words have not only vowel rimes but consonantal corre
spondence.

Now, here is a case in which a Gallic poet, expert in
his art, has produced verses which fulfil the subtle and
difficult requirements of Celtic metric. He could not so
have marred his classic fame by accident nor would he

3 o THE EASTER SONG

have allowed such a thing to appear if the accident had
happened. He must, therefore, have purposely prepared
the verse so as to fit it into the Celtic mould. Just so
did other Latins fill the Greek moulds.

Such an example from the descendant of an Aeduan
Druid should strengthen the statement made in a former
work l that Cicero studied (and imitated) Celtic verse-
methods when he studied Celtic philosophy and religion
with his and Caesar s Aeduan friend Divitiacus the Druid.
Quintilian reproved, whilst other later critics mocked
Cicero s verse, as if it came from a blundering school
boy ; and yet Cicero was a very distinguished poet, as
Professor Tyrrell has justly declared. These are the
lines referred to :

cedant arma Togae,
concedat Laurea Linguae ;
o fortunatam natam
me consule Romam.

They would have seemed discreditable as Latin verse,
and so good a poet could not have been guilty of them,
but as an imitation of a Celtic model, they are correct and
interesting.

There is yet another, a not less searching, and even
a more remarkable test. The Milesians, Scots, or Gael,
invaded Ireland in pre-Christian times, the year of the
world 3500 is the date alleged. Amergin, brother of their
Chief (Miled or Milesius),was their Bard, Druid, and Judge.
In order to abate the storm-winds raised by the Island-
Druids, Amergin composed an Incantation. This singular
poem, whose exact date is not known but which is un
doubtedly pre-Christian, was composed in an intricate
Gaelic metre called Conaclon.

1 Bards of the Gael and Gall. There is one-syllable end-rime in
the first two lines, and two-syllable end-rimes in the last two ; c and
t " correspond " 1 and 1 alliterate.

INTRODUCTION 31

These are the two essential and exceptional charac
teristics of that metrical mode :

i. The last word of each line shall be repeated as the
first word of the line following. And, 2, the final word
of the completed poem shall be a repetition from the first
line of that poem.

The last condition is frequently observed in ancient
Irish poems, the first is exceedingly rare and perhaps
unique.

[There is, indeed, a modified and more modern form
used in elegies (for Conaclon seems associated with
solemn subjects) where it suffices that the last word
of each quatrain shall be the initial word of the quatrain
following. 1 ]

This is the incantation of Amergin :

Ailim iath n erend 2
Ermac muir motach
Motach sliab sreatach
Sreatach coill ciotach
Ciotach ab eascach
Eascach loc lindmar
Lindmar tor tiopra
Tiopra tuath aenach
Aenach righ teamra
Teamair tor tuatach
Tuata mac milead
Mile long libearn
Libearn ard Ere
Ere ard diclass
Eber dond digbas

1 See " An Elegy," in Bards of the Gael and Gall, p. 340.

2 Ossianic Society, vol. v. It is not quite perfect. The editor
and translator, Professor Connellan, remarks : : The Poems
ascribed to Amergin . . . are said to be written in the Bearla Feine,
which was probably the old Celtic tongue of Gaul and Spain as it
was of Ireland in early times."

32 THE EASTER SONG

Diceadal ro gaet
Ro gaet ban breisi
Breissi ban buaich
Righ adbal Eremon
Eremon or tus
hir Eber ailseas
Ailim iath n erend. 1

This is the poem of Ausonius :

Res hominum fragiles alit, et regit, et perimit fors.
fors dubia, aeternumque labans : quam blanda fovet

spes.

spes nullo finita aevo : cui terminus est mors.
mors avida, inferna mergit caligine quam nox.
nox obitura vicem : remeaverit aurea quum lux.
lux dono concessa deum : cui praevius est sol.
sol, cui nee furto Veneris latet armipotens Mars.
Mars nullo de patre satus : quern Thressa colit gens,
gens infrena virum : quibus in scelus omne ruit fas.
fas hominum mactare factis : ferus iste loci mos.
mos ferus audacis populi : quem nulla tenet lex.
lex naturali quam condidit imperio ius.
ius genitum pietate hominum, ius certa dei mens.
mens quae caelesti sensu rigat emeritum cor.
cor vegetum mundi instar habens, animae vigor vis.
vis tamen hie nulla est : verum est iocus et nihil res. 2

In this poem of Ausonius we find repeated the essential
and distinctive characters of that of Amergin : the end-
word of each line is used as the initial word of the follow
ing line and an echo of the first of the poem is found at

1 There is also a Welsh poem, in this metric, of the sixth century,
so that Conaclon links together the literature of Ireland, Gaul, and

Wales.

2 This is entitled " Technopaegnion," Edyll. XII. Collectio
Pisaurensis. Pisauri MDCCLXVI. Ex Amatina Chalcographia.
Publica Auctoritate.

INTRODUCTION 33

its close. 1 Since both poems are formed in the same
Celtic mould it is reasonable to believe that they have the
same Celtic origin, and this belief is confirmed, when we
find that the author of one was a Druid, and the author
of the other a descendant of Druids.

1 It is peculiar and noteworthy that every end-word is a mono
syllable, for in another form of Irish metric the " great metre "
" the last word of each line should be a monosyllable " O Molloy,
De prosodia Hibernica t cvii. (O Flannghaile).

PART IV

THE CELTIC REVIVAL : EMPEROR CROWNED WITH CELTIC
RITES : RELATIONS BETWEEN GAUL, CALEDONIA, BRITAIN
AND IRELAND

IN Treves, that centre of imperial power and far-fetching
commerce, Ausonius must have met natives of Northern
lands. Apparently some were patriotic travellers from
what is now called Scotland, for in praising the Moselle,
he refers to the corals and pearls laid bare by the ebb-tide
in Caledonia, 1 and, again in his ninth epistle, to the fine
Caledonian oysters, which he may perhaps have eaten. 2
There are some who praise them," he remarks.

But certainly he knew the work of at least one British
critic and did not praise him. This was a certain Silvius
Bonus (a latinised Briton clearly) who had had the audacity
to carp at his poems, and for this offence Ausonius ridicules
him in six slight-stinging epigrams and by the preserv
ing properties of that sting Ausonius has given the else
unknown author a quivering immortality.

He is not rude or rough with his British critic : he
lightly satirises him, with Gallic grace, playing on his name.
" This Sylvius is good," he says. " What Sylvius ? "
" This Britisher." " Either Sylvius is not a Briton, or
he is bad." Again, " There is no good Briton : if Sylvius

1 nota Caledoniis tails pictura Britannis, etc., Mosella, v. 68.
8 sunt et Aremorici qui laudent ostrea ponti :

et quae Pictonici legit accola litteris : et quae

mira Caledonius nonnunquam detegit aestus.

34

INTRODUCTION 35

would simply be Sylvius, then simple Sylvius would cease
to be good."

All this raillery falls upon the nation of Sylvius because
that careless critic had censured the poems of Ausonius !
(qui carmina nostra lacessit).

These are the six Epigrams on Sylvius Bonus, a Briton :

Silvius ille Bonus, qui carmina nostra lacessit,
nostra magis meruit disticha Brito Bonus.

Silvius hie Bonus est. Quis Silvius ? iste Britannus,
aut Brito hie non est Silvius, aut malus est.

Silvius iste Bonus fertur, ferturque Britannus :
quis credat civem degenerasse bonum ?

Nemo bonus Brito est : si simplex Silvius esse
incipiat, Simplex desinet esse Bonus.

Silvius hie Bonus est : sed Brito est Silvius idem,
simplicior res est, credite, Brito malus.

Silvi, Brito, Bonus : quamvis homo non bonus esse
ferris nee se quid iungere Brito Bono.

These epigrams do more than sting a Briton, they prove
unexpectedly that there was at least one Briton of Britain
sufficiently skilled in literary latinity to produce a criticism
that required notice. Were there not others ? And this
suggests the question : May not that gifted race which
Beda complains were " ever delighted to hear something
novel, holding firmly to nothing," have produced some
literature in Latin, seeing that, in Wales, they have
achieved great things in the language to which they held
with such admirable fidelity ? If so, who effaced it ?
Not the Romans perhaps the more hostile Saxons.

There is no question that some Irish and Britons dis
played in the Latin language an amount of literary skill
which excelled that of St. Patrick, who came from the
Latin Schools of Gaul with another and a greater gift.

36 THE EASTER SONG

Celestius is regarded as an Irishman by authorities
such as Haddan and Stubbs : he stands in history as a
writer of great piquancy and power and as a pleader of
unfailing eloquence his foes said " loquacity." He was a
follower of Pelagius whose theological error in doctrine
gave rise to Pelagianism, but who, according to St.
Augustine, his great opponent, was personally a good and
holy man, and who as a writer possessed great grace,
acuteness, and eloquence.

Now Pelagius is said to have been a Briton (by birth
or residence) but " a descendant of the Irish nation, in
the vicinity of the British." l He not only travelled to
Rome, but resided there, learned Greek, had a School,
and was very popular until a published work gave rise
to questions of doctrine.

An Irishman it certainly was who had the daring to
criticise a passage in St. Jerome s writings, which evoked
a rough reply from that strenuous scholar and rigid
moralist, for he was touched in a sensitive part accused
of laxity, or leniency, in disciplinary teaching. 2

To assert such a thing, his critic, he said, was " most
stolid and stupefied with the porridge of the Irish."

What follows ? St. Jerome s Commentary appeared
in the year 392, hence we must conclude that, so early as
this date there were Irish Scholars, whose knowledge of
Latin and whose intimacy with its literature enabled them

1 Some think it applies to Celestius. This, however, is the view
taken by Archbishop Healy in his valuable work, Ireland s Ancient
Schools and Scholars, p. 39, 2nd edition. The supposition that
the name Pelagius was a latinised form of Morgan (as both names
indicate the sea), and that therefore he was Welsh, fails, for there are
many Irish names which might serve, e.g. Murcad, Muirceartach,
Connamara, etc.

* ne recordaretur stolidissimus et a Scotorum pultibus
praegravatus, nos in ipso dixisse opere : Non damno digamos,
immo nee trigamos et si fieri possit autogamos, plus aliquid
inferam etiam scortatorum recipio poenitentiam.

INTRODUCTION 37

to occupy a prominent place in the discussion of vital
questions. 1

Thus we have the remarkable fact that nearly forty
years before the coming of St. Patrick and, even before
the coming of his predecessor Palladius, Latin scholar
ship in Ireland had reached a mature condition ! It might
be fairly inferred, since a foreign language is not rapidly
developed, that Latin had been known in some Irish
schools for over a century. When St. Patrick came to
Ireland, he came as St. Paul to Athens, to preach before
a highly civilised people. 2

The rough reply of St. Jerome may be passed over
because it was provoked by criticism. Prosper of Aqui-
taine, praised by Beda, had hot the same excuse for
stigmatising as a viper, some time later, a man whom
St. Augustine (his great but just adversary) had declared
to be good and holy. Polemists defame when too feeble
to discuss. Here we see the distinction between a
petty polemist and a great theologian. The former does
not always confine his abuse to an individual. For the
petty polemist, who assumes he is defending religion
when he violates its precepts, is at his lowest when through
culpable ignorance he darkens a nation s fame by vulgar
vituperation. Such is the reference made to the Scot
(the Irishman) by Prudentius the Spaniard, about the end

1 Mansuetus, of a noble Irish family, was first Bishop of Toul in
France before Palladius came.

a From an anecdote given in the Irish Life of St. Patrick, it appears
that he pronounced Latin differently. Daire, a chieftain, generously
sent Patrick a fine bronze cauldron as a gift. Patrick accepted it
and said, " Deo gratias." " What said he ? asked Daire of his
envoy. He said gratzicum, was the reply. " A small word
for a large present. Bring it back," said Daire. " What said he ? "
again was asked. " He said gratzicum, " was the answer. " That
is a great word which serves for receiving and returning it," and
Daire made friends with Patrick, who apparently pronounced the
" t " soft, not hard, as the Irish would.

38 THE EASTER SONG

of the fourth century (b. 348, d. 410) when writing against
the Sabellians. 1 Prudentius plagiarised his abusive
epithet from Silvius Italicus.

Abuse, no doubt, is a method of warfare, but is outside
the laws of honourable procedure, and often comes from
defiled, not defiling mouths. Silvius Italicus, for instance
(d. 101), who called the gallant Alpine mountaineers
semiferi " (apes) and who libelled the chivalric Gauls,
by declaring that they used to hoop human skulls with
gold and use them as drinking-cups at feasts, 2 was no
doubt a poet and a Consul, but he was also a parasite and
a delator, betraying men to share their spoil. Silvius was
less libellous but still unfair when he wrote :

vaniloquum Celtae genus et mutabile mentis. 3

Juvenal presents a different view, severe satirist though
he was, when he shows Gaul teaching eloquence to the
lawyers of Britain.

Take another charge which is generally attributed to
St. Jerome, whereas the least research would have shown
that he did not make it. The Attacotti were a British
tribe serving as soldiers in the Roman Army, and it is
alleged that when in Gaul they came upon flocks and herds
in the woods they sliced morsels from the herd-people
and ate human flesh. It is plainly preposterous to think
they would forgo the roast lamb or succulent pig at hand
to hunt in the bush for a slice of a lean slave fighting for

1 non recepit, neget ut regimen pollere Supremum.
illud et ipse Numae tacitus sibi sensit aruspex.
semifer et Scotus sentit cane milite peior.

* This may be compared to the later story that the Norsemen
drank blood out of skulls. A poet in a " kenning " had said sym
bolically they drank earth blood from " skull branches," which
simply meant they drank ale out of horns.

3 With which compare the Saxon Beda s complaint of Britain :
" insulae novi semper aliquid audire gaudenti, et nihil certi firmiter
obtinenti infudit," c. viii.

INTRODUCTION 39

his life. 1 St. Jerome did not witness anything of the kind ;
he says, he was a little boy, " adolescentulus," in Gaul at
the time the story was told him and most probably it
was one of the bogey stories invented to keep children
from straying into the woods where wild boars and wolves
were dangers. 2

Those who take it seriously fail to see that it is a gross
and incredible libel on the discipline of the Roman Army
in a friendly province.

The animosity sometimes shown to the Irish by Latin
writers is a compliment. There were special reasons for
not taking Irish criticism placidly. The Irish Nation
had been the First of the Free Nations (or Barbari) in the
West to assail the dominance of Roman rule. They had
encouraged and assisted others. Agricola had thought of
an expedition to conquer Ireland, so as to quench that
Light of Liberty which its free existence threw with dis
turbing ray upon the vassalage of Rome s subjugated
nations. Its Light rendered uneasy the sleep of slaves.

Agricola thought Erinn could be conquered by one
Legion and auxiliaries, say 10,000 men, but the expedi
tions went not to but from the Irish shores. 3 Severus,
in the second century, had to build an earthen wall topped
with stakes, from sea to sea in Britain itself to withstand

1 These are his words : Quid loquar de ceteris nationibus, cum
ipse adolescentulus in Gallis Atticotos gentem Britannicam humanis
vescere carnibus, et cum per silvas porcorum greges et armentorum
pecudumque reperiant, pastorum nates et feminarum papillas
solere abscindere et has solas ciborum delicias arbitrari ? Adversus
lovinianum.

* This may be compared with similar statements, published during
the war in 1914.

3 Many hoards of ancient Roman coins have been found in Ireland
and recorded in the Proceedings of learned societies. They were spoils
or tribute of latinised Britain. Thus in 1830, near the Giant s
Causeway, a hoard of 580 silver coins was found possibly a result
of an expedition by Calgach, whom Tacitus calls Galgacus. See also
F. Haverfield, Ancient Rome and Ireland.

40 THE EASTER SONG

the inroads of the Irish and the Picts which later and
greater ramparts did not prevent.

The Irish were then the Sea-Kings of the West and
ruled the waves. Suppliant Britannia sought safety in
the arms of the Roman General Stilicho, when the Irish
moved all Erinn and the sea foamed under the might of
her menacing oars. So Claudian laments :

inde Caledonio velata Britannia monstro,
ferro picta genas, cuius vestigia vertit
caerulus Oceanique aestum mentitur amictus :
me quoque vicinis pereuntem gentibus " inquit
" me iuvit, Stilico, totam cum Scotus lernen
movit et infesto spumavit remige Tethys.
illius effectum curis ne tela timerem
Scotica." 1

Romanised Britannia veiled and suppliant Britain
was grateful that Stilicho . saved her from dread of the
Irish spears. The Roman poet thought it a famous feat,
and reverts to it, in his poem " De bello Getico " :

Quae Scoto dat frena truci.

The fierce Irish had been curbed, and again Claudian
recalls this matter of mighty moment in his panegyric of
the fourth Consulate of Honorius :

Scotorum cumulos flevit glacialis lerne.

Icy Erinn wept her mounds of Irishmen. But this
vain vaunting did not erase the Roman Wall, nor fortify
the coast, nor remove the suppliant s garb from " velata
Britannia " then the Niobe of nations.

" The groans of the Britains " in that piteous appeal to
Aetius, thrice Consul (A.D. 423), spoke their real state :
" The Irish thrust us to the sea, the sea thrusts us to the

1 Claudian, De laudibus Stiliconis, lib. ii. Collectio Pisaurensis.
Stilicho was father-in-law and war minister to the Emperor Honorius,
and was a Gothic warrior.

INTRODUCTION 41

Irish, between them two kinds of death confront us :
either we are slaughtered or we are drowned."

Of course they call the Irish " barbari." But Rome
was then engaged with Attila, and Beda relates how the
Irish invaders possessed the country for so many years,
and that numbers submitted to them, but others held
out (the latinised forces, no doubt), and had some
success for a time, but only for a little time, as Beda
implies : " The insolent Irish raiders returned home to
come back again after a short time." 2

The Irish invaders were to latinised Britain not
altogether what the Barbari were to latinised Gaul ;
there were two important differences. The Irish went
as a Free Nation to support the remnant of the kindred
free Britons, and again, being a civilised people with
written laws and chronicles, they left their adventure on
record.

On the Continent the fifth century was a century of
barbarian avalanches descending on the breaking ram
parts of Roman power. Is it not remarkable that this
self-same century was also that of the Irish invasion of
Roman-ruled Britain ? It is a curious coincidence per
haps, but may it not have been a concerted one ? There
is often a more intelligent sympathy among conquered
peoples than official writers recognise.

In Gaul, notwithstanding Roman force and favour,
there must have remained masses of the people constant
to their old language, custom, and faith. That they
influenced the speech of their rulers is shown by the
Celtic terms which became loan-words in the Latin
language, such as bardus, braca y bascauda, bardocu-

1 Repellunt Barbari ad mare, repellit mare ad Barbaros : inter
haec oriuntur duo genera funerum, aut iugulamur aut mergimur.

8 Revertuntur ergo impudentes grassatores Hiberni domum post
non lorigum tempus reversuri.

42 THE EASTER SONG

cullus? etc., the latter, being the capote with hood,
was acceptable to the Roman, and is still in use in
France.

It is true that Professor Kuno Meyer, in the Introduc
tion to his valuable work Ancient Irish Poetry , says, " By
the fifth century the Gaulish language was everywhere
extinct, without having left behind a single relic of its
literature."

To the statement that the Gaulish language was
extinct in the fifth century I cannot assent. Would it
not be strange that whilst the Irish, the Caledonians, and
the Welsh retained their speech, under much severer
strain, until the present time, the kindred Gaul should so
rapidly forget it ? Official and fashionable society, and
place-seekers generally, of course, forgot or ignored it.
But as St. Jerome found it spoken in Galatia, it is more
than improbable that it was not spoken in Gaul. When
Phoebicius, the Armorican Druid, became professor at
Bordeaux he addressed his pupils in Latin, but did he
therefore forget the language in which he invoked his
God ?

He lived indeed some time previously, but there are
traces of continuity. The life of St. Eloi bears witness to
the fact that there was, in the fifth century, a College of
Druids in Auvergne near Clermont.

Penal laws do not always abolish rooted principles.
Again, Ireland s history shows that a man might have a
foreign title and yet retain his Gaelic chieftainship with
its greater influence among his people.

So it must have been in Gaul, the native nobles had a
heart for their people, a mind for the potency of ancient
custom, and a memory of great traditions as well as a
policy for the Roman dispenser of dignities.

M. F. Fauriel clearly understood the case, as this
1 Gallia Santonico te vestit bardocucullo. M.

INTRODUCTION 43

translated passage shows : To learn Latin, the Gauls
should forget their ancient languages, and a forgetfulness
of the sort, even with a firm will to succeed, is always for
the mass of the people the slowest and the most difficult
thing in the world. The national terms and idioms should
emerge, at every moment in the Latin of a Celt, a Gaul,
an Aquitanian who had not learned it systematically, but
by use and only of mere necessity."

Perhaps there might have been a Celtic literary
revival had it not been for successive billows of Bar
barians. For it was the Latin language and culture that
were falling out of fashion.

Mamertus Claudian, a distinguished author states that
not only was Latin neglected, but people were ashamed to
speak it ! This was about the year 460. He was ready,
he says, to write the Epitaph of the Sciences but for a
few scholars who were still at work.

Not only is Latin neglected, he proceeds, people are
ashamed to speak it. Grammar is despised; dialectic
feared like an Amazon sword in hand ; music, geometry,
arithmetic are repelled like so many furies. Philosophy
is a bird of ill omen. True rhetoric receives no welcome,
eloquence is crabbed and magniloquent. Poets make
free to change the quantity of syllables, long for short
and short for long. St. Sidonius Apollinaris is cited as an
example.

But if we can only guess at the possibility of a Celtic
literary revival, we have ample proofs of a great Celtic
political revival, which after stormy struggles resulted in
a separation from the Empire.

Evidence of the Gallic upheaval is found in the Pane
gyric on Avitus by Sidonius Apollinaris. This noble
Gallo-Roman was born at Lyons in 431, his father and
grandfather had been Prefects of the Praetorium of the
Gauls, whilst he himself became chief of the Senate,

44 THE EASTER SONG

Prefect of Rome, and a Patrician. He married Papianilla,
daughter of Avitus, in 452. Three years later Sidonius
published his Eulogy, and relates how Avitus was chosen
Emperor of the West.

Owing to the irruptions of the Barbarians and the
decrepitude of the central power the seat of authority had
been removed from Treves to Autun and thence to Aries.
Valentinian III. had died. The Empress Eudoxia had
traitorously called in the help of the Vandals ; Genseric
had sacked Rome. The Official Representatives of
Rome in Gaul had faltered, failed, and fled.

Then it was that the old Gaulish nobility took action ;
gathering from the snowy Cottian Alps, the borders of the
Tyrrhene Sea, the River Rhine, and the long Pyrenean
mountains, their chosen delegates met at Ugernum (now
Beaucaire) on the Rhone. There they held a great de
liberative assembly and resolved to elect an Emperor
worthy of their nation and of the throne. Avitus was
unanimously selected. Now Avitus was himself a
descendant of a famous native family of Auvergne; he
had been Prefect of the Gauls under Valentinian III., and
had governed wisely, honourably, and with indomitable
courage, for he was a famous General.

The historic poem of Sidonius gives a vivid account of
the condition of Gaul under its incapable and transient
rulers.

It is embodied in the appeal to Avitus, by the spokes
man of this great assembly, the most illustrious of its
nobility. He began by declaring that it was needless to
remind Avitus of the miseries they had suffered, for that
he more than all had grieved for the wounds of the
fatherland. 1 Amid such disasters "the Funeral of a
World" to have lived was death (mors vixisse fuit).
Respecting their forefathers* word, they had served the

1 maxima pars fueris, Patriae dum vulnera lugens, etc.

INTRODUCTION 45

Government rule, though ignoble, and thought it a
sacred duty to stand by the old State in its fall. Then,
in memorable phrase, he exclaims : Portavimus
umbram Imperil " " We have upheld the Shadow of
an Empire " content even to bear the vices of a
decrepit ancient race and to tolerate the purple rather
from habit than from conviction of right.

Latterly, Gaul might have displayed her strength
when Maximus occupied the trembling City. Now,
he declared, theirs is a greater opportunity, a more
urgent necessity, corruption, or cowardice must not
prevail, when imminent danger demands the bravest
man. The Emperor is dead, the Empire may be seized

by anyone :

captivus, ut aiunt

orbis in Urbe iacet.

" Tis said: When Rome falls, the world falls.
Accept the tribunal, Avitus, we beseech thee ; rescue us
from ruin No venal gifts have won the centuries. 1
None buys a world s votes (suffragia mundi nullus
emit). Poor, thou art chosen : it suffices that thou art
wealthy in worth. Why delay what the Country desires ?
It commands that thou shalt command (quae iubet
ut iubeas). This is the decision of each of us all :
1 If thou lt be lord, I shall be free (si dominus fis
liber ero)."

This noble, frank, and spirited speech, reported by
Sidonius, declares certainly the poet s own sentiments,
as well as those of the independent Gallic people. It
was, he says, greeted with great enthusiasm. The nobles,
rejoicing, carefully organised the night-guards.

Now we come to the description of the acclamation of
Avitus, as Emperor.

It might be thought one could expect nothing else

1 Companies of an hundred.

46 THE EASTER SONG

after so many centuries of military discipline, that the
ceremonies of Rome should be followed. But here is
the unexpected, the wonderful and yet really the natural
thing the ceremonies adopted were those not of the
Romans, but of the Celts !

They may be compared with the recognition on his
Rath or throning rock of an ancient Irish king. This is
a literal translation of the verse of Sidonius :

When the third dawn had restored the sun, and dispelled
the stars, the Chieftains assembled and placed him on a
prepared mound, surrounded by the army, and crowned
him with the martial Torque and gave him the Symbols of
Sovereignty. 1

Nothing could have been devised more closely Celtic.

This account reads like an extract from ancient Irish
history. We have the assembling of chieftains from all
parts of the region, the selection of a king, the choice of
the third day, the placing of the new chief on a mound
(or rath), the crowning with martial honours, and the
grant of the insignia of the kingdom.

The torques or torquis, now commonly called the
torque, 2 was a distinctively Celtic ornament, being a
circle of gold curiously twisted on itself, sometimes
serving as a collar, sometimes larger as a girdle, and yet
again smaller, perhaps for the head. Virgil, indeed, has
used the term as a synonym for a crown, but even so
this proves that this Celtic ornament was held in high
honour another evidence of the persistence of Gaulish or
Celtic usage. Can it be supposed possible that in that

1 tertia lux refugis Hyperiona fuderat astris :
concurrunt proceres, ac milite circumfuso
aggere composite statuunt, ac torque coronant
castrensi maestum, donantque insignia regni. 576.

2 The finest collection of Torques is to be found in the Museum
of the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin. It is significant that torques
have been noted in Galatia.

INTRODUCTION 47

century, when a Druidic College (perhaps several) still
existed, when the ancient customs of king-choosing and
king-making were so faithfully observed, no word of the
old language was spoken in the enthusiastic crowds ? It
is of all things the most improbable Sidonius himself
the great Gallo- Roman must have known the Gallic
language. 1

Indeed, M. Nisard, commenting on a certain strange
ness in the prose of Sidonius says the classic mould is
broken and asks, To what should we attribute this
change ? Very probably to the vulgar Latin spoken
around him, and itself necessarily much modified by the
Celtic : perhaps to the Celtic itself, which must have been
the language of the great majority of the population, since
the nobility had but very recently given up the use of that
language. 2

But had the nobility quite renounced their ancient
language, even at this period, save for domestic use, and

1 This may be inferred from a passage in his " Farewell to My
Booklet." Directing its course to the homes of his friends he
observes that it will reach a snowy region :

et quantum indigenae volunt putari
sublimem in puteo videbis urbem.

This might be rendered, as M. Nisard notes : " Here the natives
would have it you shall see in a well a magnificent City." But the
poet was playing on the Gaulish word " Puy " (puteus), a hill
" Puteus a Gallico mons, collis." Ducange.

The jest would not have been made if the poet had not an audience
knowing Celtic to appreciate it.

Recently some caverns were discovered in central France, and it
was noted that the natives called them " Avens." Now there is a
district in Cork County, known as the " Ovens," where there are
caverns : both words come from the same Celtic term : " Uamha "
(Uava), a cave.

2 " Peut-e"tre au Celtic lui-me me, qui devait e tre encore la langue
de la plus grande partie de la population, puisque la noblesse n avait
renonce que depuis fort peu de temps a 1 usage de cette langue."
Nisard, fctudes.

48 THE EASTER SONG

occasions ? The statement seems to be based on a
passage in a letter, written by Sidonius to his brother-in-
law, Ecdicius, in the year 474^ that is at the beginning of
the last quarter of the fifth century. Ecdicius, the son of
Avitus, and General-in-chief of cavalry in Gaul, had
just, by a brilliant exploit, driven back the Visigoths, who
were besieging Clermont. With but eighteen mounted
soldiers he charged down upon their thousands with such
dash and daring that, taken by panic, they retreated to a
hill-top. Never, wrote Sidonius, did the Auvernese love
him with such passionate devotion. There were many
reasons, he writes, for their affection from the first, these
he mentions, and passes (till he comes to his exploit), all
the dear claims of one s native place, the happy memories
of childhood, boyhood, youth, games, and college friends.
His education made Clermont a great resort of learned
men, and increased its fame.

Then come these passages : i Mitto istic ob
gratiam pueritiae tuae undique gentium confluxisse
studia litterarum, tuaeque personae quondam debitum,
quod sermonis Celtici squammam depositura nobilitas,
nunc oratoris stylo, nunc etiam camoenalibus modis
imbuebatur.

2 " Ilium in te affectum principaliter universitatis
accendit quod, quos olim Latinos fieri exegeras barbaros
deinceps esse vetuisti."

This may be rendered : I pass here, that it was
because of thy youth men flowed hither from all parts, for
the cultivation of Learning, that it was once owing to
thyself that, on laying aside the shell (or the mail) of
Celtic speech they now began to be imbued with the art
of oratory and even with metrical methods."

There has, I think, been some misapprehension as
regards the expression * sermonis Celtici squammam

1 Epistolae, xc.

INTRODUCTION 49

depositura." M. Nisard translates it de depouiller la
rouille du langage celtique," and Mr. Dalton wrongly
says, " to forsake the barbarous Celtic dialect." Now
" squama " is not " squalor," it means a scale, and here
I believe it is used figuratively for scale-armour, which
might be commendable (as in Virgil : Duplice squama
lorica fidelis et auro "). When they had laid aside the
scale armour of their Celtic speech they could imbibe
Latin rhetoric and verse. Sidonius would certainly not
have insulted his beloved Averni by calling them barbarians.
But what of passage No. 2 : " That which chiefly quickened
the affection of all the people for thee is that those whom
thou had once laboured to make Latins, thou hast hence
forth prevented from being barbarians " ?

What does this passage prove ? Evidently, that the
Averni nobles did speak the Celtic language generally
until late in the fifth century, and next that Ecdicius
induced them (or some of them, not the people) to lay
aside their Celtic prepossessions and to take to the study
of Latin rhetoric and verse.

This Sidonius thought much of, naturally. But how
willingly one would suffer the sacrifice of a score of his
fastidious poems, for one genuine song of the Celt, or
one lay of the Goth, of that time !

But what of the second phrase cited ? Mr. Dalton,
having inexactly rendered " sermonis Celtici squammam
by " barbarous Celtic dialect," thinking the second phrase
refers to the barbarous dialect, turns it as if a " relapse
again were the danger. He translates it : Nothing
so kindled universal regard for you as this, that you first
made Romans of them and never allowed them to relapse
again."

Now that is not the meaning of the words of Sidonius :

That which lights up all men s love for thee is that those

whom thou hadst once laboured to render Latins, thou

50 THE EASTER SONG

hast prevented being barbarians." And he then at once
shows how it was prevented- -by a description of the
victory of Ecdicius over the Visigoths !

There was the danger. This is clearly proved by a
previous letter (xl. 470) where four years before, Sidonius
presses Ecdicius to go to Clermont quickly, as Seronatus
was favouring the barbarians and depreciating the Romans,
" exultans Gothis, insultansque Romanis." Mr. Dalton
saw and translated this : * He cries the Goths up and the
Romans down." He failed to notice that this was the
danger from which Ecdicius delivered them, not from
that of a " relapse."

From the evidence placed before the reader, it is shown
that the Celtic language still existed behind the official
Latin, that it possessed a vitality so vigorous as to modify
the Latin speech, and that consequently it was reasonable
to seek and natural to find traces of its influence in Latin
verse by Celtic authors.

PART V

THE GOLDEN AGE OF CHRISTIAN LITERATURE !
GAUL, GREECE AND ROME

THE fourth century may well be styled the Golden Age
of Christian Literature, and Gaul is brightened in its
radiance. Treves became a centre of Empire. Constantine
Chlorus was already there when the era opened, and gave
encouragement to learning and the Schools. Lactantius,
who had gone to teach rhetoric in Africa, was recalled to
teach in Gaul. Constantine the Great adorned Treves,
and increased the privilege of the professors of the arts
and sciences throughout the land.

The vision of the celestial Cross was seen by Con
stantine in Gaul. His brothers dwelt and his nephews
were educated there.

St. Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria, was banished
to Treves for three years, and in this Celtic city was born
St. Ambrose, whose father was Prefect. To this home
of his youth he returned from Milan on at least two
occasions : once to prevent Maximus from invading Italy,
and to conclude a peace in the name of the child Emperor
Valentinian II., in which he succeeded ; and later to plead
for the slain body of Gratian, in which he failed. Con-
stans resided at Treves, but Julian, as Caesar, preferred
Paris, where the ruins of his great baths still remain in the
Latin Quarter.

He called Oribasius to that newer centre, but St. Hilary,

51

52 THE EASTER SONG

the first Gallic hymn-writer, was banished to far-away
Phrygia, from which place Hilary sent his daughter two
hymns ; he returned free, however, in four or five years.
Arborius, Exuperius, and Ausonius, all three Gauls, were
preceptors of the Emperor Constantine s son, of his
nephews, and of Gratian.

There were also Gallic women of high distinction-
Aemilia Hilaria, an esteemed physician, the aunt of the
poet Ausonius, and Eunomia, daughter of the Orator
Nazarius, who became celebrated for her great eloquence.
With these were the two correspondents in far Armorica
of St. Jerome, who himself spent his youth, as he says
in Gaul, and who evidently knew enough of Celtic to
recognise it when he heard it spoken in Galatia, the
ancient Celtic Settlement in Asia Minor.

Not until the tenth general Persecution of the Christians
was over can we look with fairness for their appearance in
the fields of general learning. When the Theban Legion
had been slaughtered and the Era of Martyrs had con
cluded, their opportunity came, and they used it. At the
beginning of this fourth century the frightful Persecution
drenched the earth with their blood ; at the close of it
they had accomplished so much that this has been named
the Golden Age of Christian Literature.

Nor must we imagine that they stood fanatically aloof
from the instruction of pagan philosophers, intent only
on denouncing them. The esteem in which Plato and
Aristotle have ever been held should teach a different
lesson. But surely no evidence could be more satisfactory
than the kind and constant correspondence kept up
between the steadfast old pagan rhetorician, Libanius of
Antioch and his illustrious pupil, St. Basil the Great, of
Cappadocia.

St. Basil used to send him Cappadocians as pupils, to
his School at Athens, and Libanius was always willing to

INTRODUCTION 53

instruct any poor friend of his friend s gratuitously. One
sent his sermons to be criticised, the other his orations.
The letters of both abound in pleasant interchange of
gentle repartee and play of Attic wit.

The surly separation which some conjure up had no
existence in fact. When the Christians were permitted
to show themselves they poured into the Schools.

At Antioch St. Basil and St. Chrysostome were pupils
of Libanius. At Athens St. Gregory and his brother
Cesarius were fellow-students with Julian afterwards
that Emperor named * the Apostate," who sought to
revive paganism.

In the busy commercial city of Alexandria, so famed
for its Schools and its fine researches and discoveries as
regards the brain and other organs, where the Christians
were more numerous, they established Schools of their
own, but made use of the great Library which was
common to all. It might be that some of the eminent
pagan teachers, like Victorinus, were won to their belief.
Thus by instruction or through conversions the Christians
succeeded to the great heritage of whatever of the arts
and sciences were the possession of the elder world.
Here is a picture illustrative of the time and yet surpris
ing by its unexpectedness :

In the middle of the fourth century, two Cappadocian
brothers, born at Nazianzus, met once again after com
pleting their studies in the imperial city of Constantine.
One came from Athens, the other from Alexandria : the
first was Gregory, now a bishop and an illustrious Chris
tian orator, the second was Cesarius, already renowned as
a philosopher and a physician. This capacity for know
ledge, which would injure his medical practice if he were
now alive (as that of Harvey was injured by his discovery
of the circulation of the blood), did him no hurt but rather
credit in those larger and more liberal times. Nor did

54 THE EASTER SONG

his religion exclude him from recognition. The position
of Senator was pressed upon him, although he was a
Christian, and his attainments were so great that he was
acknowledged to be the first physician in Constanti
nople.

The Emperor Julian the Apostate consulted him pro
fessionally as a physician and was pleased to hold dis
course with him as a philosopher and to number him
amongst his friends. The fact is not less honourable to
Cesarius than creditable to Julian, an Emperor who
stands in need of all our charity, for Cesarius withstood
every effort made to induce him to renounce his faith,
and Julian contented himself with exclaiming, " Happy
father, hapless children." If this were a menace no ill
consequence followed.

By the oration which it was the sad privilege of St.
Gregory to deliver over the bier of his dead brother, we
learn what were some of the elements of this philosophic
physician s education in the fourth century, and how deep
was his brotherly love. This is my translation of the
words of the preacher :

He will never more study the works of Hippocrates, of
Galen and of their adversaries, but he shall never again have
to endure the pain of sickness nor suffer from another s woe.
The writings of Euclid, Ptolemy, and Hieron shall no longer
be explained by him, but neither shall his eyes be offended
by the sight of presumptuous ignorance. Henceforth he
will not comment the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, Pyrrho,
Democritus, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Cleanthus, Epicurus, or
other sages of the Porch or of Academe, but he is set free
from the toil of unravelling their doctrines. . . . Now the
time comes when I shall hear the voice of the Archangel
Michael and the sound of the last trumpet, when heaven and
earth shall be transfigured and the whole world renewed.
Then I shall see Cesarius, not in sorrow, nor in tears, but in

INTRODUCTION 55

radiant splendour and triumphant as thou hast appeared to
me in my dreams, O dearest and fondest of brothers !

With this most beautiful, most pathetic passage, which
moves the human heart after more than a thousand years,
we leave the Eastern world for Rome.

When Christianity came forth from the glorious gloom
of the Catacombs, it next passed into the splendour and
the perils of imperial fosterage. Theodosius the Great
wore the diadem of Constantine, but Arianism had
become powerful in the East and paganism was still
strong in the West. Because the Emperor Gratian had
ventured to remove from its place in the Capital the
Statue of Victory a last remnant of Paganism Maximus
raised aloft its old standard, in the van of its veterans,
encountered and slew him at Lyons, refusing his dead
body to the prayer of Ambrose.

Not until four years later did Theodosius and Maximus
(both Spaniards by birth) meet in conflict, when that
death was avenged and the pagan empire crushed. But
neither this conquest of paganism in the West, nor the
repulse of the Goth in the North, neither the arrest of
the Persian march in the East, nor the annihilation of
Arianism and of idolatry throughout the Roman world
availed Theodosius when, red from massacre of Arians
in Thessalonica, he sought to enter a Christian Church.
Ambrose, unarmed, stood in the portal, and the con
queror, conquered, passed in as a penitent. This was
the triumph of the Spirit over the Sword, which, till then,
had made morality for the masses of mankind.

This sight Sedulius may have witnessed in Milan, but
he came too late to profit by the teaching in the State
School of an African professor of rhetoric, Augustine.
Their lives, however, had certain lines of likeness. Both
had been pagans in their youth, both were foreigners,
both came to Italy and taught philosophy, both became

56 THE EASTER SONG

converts to Christianity, both taught schools and both
died bishops. From St. Augustine s Confessions we get
a vivid picture of southern school-life in those early days,
and of experiences that were more or less common to
both. Boys were boys even then : they sometimes went
unwillingly to school, were chastised when negligent, and
felt keenly the unkind laughter of their elders. Balls and
birds served as playthings, they trafficked in trifles, ran
sacked the pantries, and occasionally left their own goodly
gardens to rob a neighbour s sour pears. In the primary
class, arithmetic had no charm for some young minds like
Augustine s : One and one two ; two and two four *
was an odious chant " ; the rudiments of Latin grammar
were bad and Greek was worse, but how entrancing to
hear the tale of Troy, to watch the wooden horse, to see
the flare of flames, to pale before the shade of Creusa, and
weep the hapless fate of Dido ! What a triumph to
stand up before professors, students, and strangers, and
win first place by the delivery of a spirited oration, showing
how pious Aeneas baffled imperious Juno, and reached
the shores of Italy safe at last. The applause was de
licious, but masters and audience were most particular.
You might hate your neighbour and escape hisses, but
you were disgraced utterly if you dropped your " h "
and said " ominem " for " hominem." 2

From small schools boys went to larger, and thence
again to larger. Thus Augustine went from Tagaste to
Madaura and from Madaura to Carthage, where he
became head scholar in the School of Rhetoric the
object was to excel in oratorical art and artifice so as
to become an expert and unscrupulous advocate. Here

1 lam vero unum et unum duo, duo et duo quatuor odiosa cantio
mihi erat et dulcissimum spectaculum vanitatis equus ligneus plenus
armatis et Troiae incendium atque ipsius umbra Creusae.

2 Its occupation by Romans and by French may account for a
similar defect in London.

INTRODUCTION 57

was a clique of students, the * evertores," whose chief
sport was to delude and bewilder strangers. As all the
school-work was over in the forenoon there was plenty
of time to listen to declamation in the Forum, and to hear
Terence played in the evening.

When his course of study had been concluded, and
some reputation gained in public discourses, Augustine
returned to his own small town as professor of rhetoric.
Then he succeeded in setting up a school in Carthage
itself, but the Carthaginian students were unruly and
turbulent. Bands from one school used to break into
other schools upsetting everything. Rome attracted him.
Hiereus, known as the Syrian, though a Gaul by ex
traction, the renowned orator, was there, and Augustine
had already dedicated a book to him. The young
African was assured that fees and fame awaited his com
ing ; and above all, the students were urbane and orderly.
To Rome he went, but discovered, when he had gathered
pupils to his lodgings, that the urbane and orderly pupils
had, too many of them, the disconcerting habit of studi
ously attending lectures and suddenly disappearing when
fees were payable. 1

This induced him to apply for a vacant professorship
at Milan. Symmachus, Prefect of Rome, had the appoint
ment, as the school was maintained by the State and the
Manichaeans had interest enough with him to secure the
place for a competent candidate. So he obtained it, and
went to teach in Cisalpine Gaul.

Whilst studying oratory, Augustine happened on
Cicero s Hortensius ; this turned his mind to philosophy.
Following wisdom he made an examination of the new
faith which had survived all persecution ; but he, like
many others, was at first repelled by the style of the sacred

In Ireland the law provided for the support of outworn masters
by their pupils.

S 8 THE EASTER SONG

Scriptures, so different from the Ciceronian in which
they had been trained. Still, drawn by spiritual desires,
he came amongst the Manichaeans, but left when he
found that their Bishop Faustus, an eloquent shallow
man, was ignorant of the liberal sciences, then he dabbled
for a while in astrology, until dissuaded by a learned
pagan physician. In this uncertain state was his questing
intellect when he came to Milan, and met Ambrose, who,
overlooking differences of faith, welcomed him with
fatherly kindness. Often the young professor went to
hear him preach, weighing his words and methods as a
study of oratory ; the substance and spirit finally caught
his reason and convinced him. The Bishop s house was
open to all comers, and Augustine frequently came to
confer with him. Sometimes, when there were no
visitors, Augustine would find the old saint so deeply
absorbed in silent reading, that the young scholar quietly
retired, not having the heart to disturb him.

PART VI

IRELAND INTERVENES : SEDULIUS WRITES HIS DEDICATION :
ITS WISDOM AND KIND WIT

AMBROSE was still a living centre of influence when
Sedulius reached Italy, and his works with those of
Augustine and Jerome had rapidly built up a new litera
ture. It was no longer so difficult for a classical scholar
to become a Christian. It may, however, be assumed
that the state of the Schools had varied little, and that, in
Augustine s story we have what Sedulius might have said,
with this difference, that he did not become a Manichaean.
He taught philosophy in Italy, and appears to have given
special attention to poetry. Macedonius was his
Ambrose. Some suppose that Macedonius baptized
him a Christian, but that is uncertain. What is certain
is that this revered friend, having apparently some
position of eminence either as Bishop or as Abbot, invited
Sedulius to Greece, and that Sedulius followed his
counsel, established a School there no doubt, at Athens.
It appears to have been especially renowned for the in
struction given in the art of poetry : in this it differs from
the rhetorical and philosophical Schools of Rome, and
indicates the influence of Irish bards.

The new Eastern Empire was responsible for this
revival. Three score years before, Julian the Apostate
had attempted to re-build the walls of Jerusalem, and,
when we are told that Sedulius travelled in Asia it can

59

60 THE EASTER SONG

scarcely be doubted that he made his way to that Holy
City and the land of wondrous history around it.

He was the first pilgrim from Ireland, if not the first
Jerusalem-farer from Western Europe. Life must have
been more marvellous to him than one can readily con
ceive. Born amidst the seas, his youth spent with nature,
and the aerial wonder-world of Gaelic myths he passes
through stately portals into the sculptured literature of
Rome and Greece the loftiest effort of disciplined art
and then beyond this, and beyond all human things, into
the sacred orient land where, at every step, he finds
memories of divine mysteries and hears the song of
angels from the azure sky.

He pondered these matters in his heart. His ardent
mind and enthusiastic nature impelled him to achieve
something for his faith. Whatever his personal am
bition had been, his position satisfied it. To a man of
culture it must have seemed little to be set on a throne
by the swords of sordid men, as culprits had been, but it
was a high thing for him a stranger from far-off Thule
to be called to teach the art and measures of poetry in
the very fatherland of classic verse in the homestead of
Homer !

Everything his former fame, his present surroundings,
the welcome he was sure to win seemed to command
him to continue in the ways of the great masters. But
the new Christianity had touched and taken his heart ;
his impassioned spirit left him no rest until he had
essayed to do for the True Faith what others had done
for the false. The very success he had obtained would
make him feel a dastard if he shrank now from devoting
his acknowledged talents to divine things.

This purpose could only be entertained by a mind as
original, independent, and adventurous as it was sincere.
What other could conceive a revolt against the suzerainty

INTRODUCTION 61

of Homer, whose imperial sceptre has such control even
now that every day tribute is brought to his feet by
scholars and statesmen, proud to be his subjects ?

Thus came the " Carmen Paschale the Easter
Song " of the world whose very name is a poem.

Sedulius was conscious that his work would be regarded
as an audacious innovation. The fact that Juvencus had
already produced a metrical Christian work was calculated
rather to deter than to encourage, for it was little more
than a versified narration of Scripture-history. It en
cumbered the ground, but did not occupy it. Students
accustomed to the winged ways of pagan verse would not
travel in its low levels. To this subject, however, our
poet does not directly refer, whilst introducing his own
work to his dear old friend Macedonius.

For, fortunately, we hear him still, as he excuses his
boldness and explains its cause, in a grave and charming
dedication. His prose style is somewhat involved, but
its very elaboration adds a piquancy to the gentle humour
and kindly badinage addressed to his friend. It is
unnecessary and it were too long to insert a translation
here where a summary may suffice to show the author s
ideas.

Addressing Macedonius, our poet says, in substance :

Before you judge, Venerable Father, and perhaps con
demn me for this work, since I launch a tiro s skiff on an ocean
feared by mariners, let me explain. Then if you find me
not presuming but devoted, you may give it a harbour in your
heart, safe from shipwreck. Whilst engaged in secular
studies I gave the energies of an eager intellect to an empty
life and my literary skill to fruitless labour. The divine com
passion overtook me. When the cloud had passed from the
eyes of my heart, I found myself in a land of flowers, and my
whole mind was dedicated to God s worship. Not indeed
that I was fit for the work, but Christ s yoke is light, and

62 THE EASTER SONG

silence were a fault if the service of a studious mind which I
had offered to Vanity I should refuse to Truth. Some little
fire was supposed to glow in me, yet the torpid heart was a
flint, barely emitted a spark. Even that gift it were wrong
not to share, like him who kept his talent hid. So, with many
and anxious fears I laid the foundations of this work, feeling
that, whilst calling others to the harvest in the words of truth,
their echoes would reach and remind me too, if needful.

Why I chose a metrical form is simply said. You know
how rarely sacred things are moulded in verse, yet there are
many who, in secular studies most delight in poetry and the
pleasures of song. They follow Rhetoric negligently, caring
nothing for it, but should they see something in the caress of
honeyed verse they catch it up so eagerly that they grave it
deep in memory by frequent iteration. Such habits should
not, I think, be repudiated, but used so that one may be drawn
naturally and won to God by the bent of his mind. These
then are the reasons, eminent Father, and not over-empty,
as you have said, for my work, to which, out of kindness, you
may turn, of a leisure hour. The eagle does not always soar
aloft above the clouds, but sometimes with closed pinions
descends to earth. The veteran warrior sometimes puts
aside his arms and enjoys a game.

So far Sedulius explains the origin of his great work :
Now he comes to the dedication. In order to overcome
the modesty of Macedonius to whom he wishes to dedicate
it, he playfully feigns to believe that his friend objects to
the dedication because he should have to read the poem,
and that he suggests other names in order to avoid this
tedious task :

But perhaps in secret hope of escape from a wearisome
reading you may say, in your most gracious manner : " Why,
affable friend, whom I embrace affectionately, should you by
selecting me offend others, my equals in doctrine, and members
of the same community ? You have the most revered priest
Ursinus, who never deserted the camp of the Eternal King,

INTRODUCTION 63

pious amongst barbarians, peaceful amid wars. You have
Lawrence, who so loved his property that he shared it all
amongst the Churches and the poor. You have my Gallicanus,
not learned in secular books but the kindest of men, teaching
the rule of Catholic discipline rather by deeds than words.
What need I say of the many-yeared patience of the priest
Ursinicus, or of Felix, in every sense felicitous for whom the
world is crucified ? These and many other eminent men
there are well suited for your purpose."

There were women, also, amongst these early Chris
tians, held in high esteem :

Nor should you be ashamed to follow the example of
Jerome, interpreter of the Divine Law, and fosterer of the
Celestial Library, by dedicating a work to noble women,
renowned for their talents, learning, and wisdom. Who
would not choose and endeavour to please the distinguished
mind of Syncletices, a holy virgin and deaconess ? So learned
is she that she might be a professor, if sex permitted, having
a virile mind in a woman s frame. Her sister Perpetua, also,
though of fewer years is her equal in deeds, illustrious because
of her husband s power and yet more illustrious by her
piety.

Having thus introduced the names of others as if by
the voice of Macedonius, and so honoured each of them
by a sub-dedication, Sedulius now in his own name
endorses all the praise, and with fine wit makes it a
crowning compliment to his old friend Macedonius :

All these things are right and proper, and again I reply :
I beseech you, Sir, my father, do not cast off one you profess
to love, nor harshly discountenance one you are wont to
favour. Not one of all you mention do I pass over, in very
truth, I believe in the merits and acquirements of each, but
in you I behold them all ! " (sed in te cunctos aspicio).

Could there be a finer compliment ? Then, having

64 THE EASTER SONG

given a gracious sketch of his friend s influence, he
exclaims :

Cease, I beg, the waste of words, let all the long excuses
end, nor feel it irksome, after the ocean-danger run, to lend
the anchor of your authority to this wave-tossed work.

Sedulius concludes by stating that his poem treats of the
Divine Marvels, and that he gave it the name of the
Paschal Song because of Christ, our immolated Pasch,
to whom be honour and glory, with the Father and Holy
Spirit, for ever and ever. Amen."

In this Dedication, as in a mirror, one sees the mind
of an Irish barbarian of the fourth century ; and it
cannot be denied that the mirrored mind makes a charm
ing picture. It was a kind and loyal act to dedicate his
Epic to Macedonius rather than to some great ones of the
Christian world. The highest would have hailed it as
an honour, for an Emperor accepted the dedication of a
transcribed edition. Little is known of Macedonius, who
was then a priest, possibly an Abbot and perhaps a Bishop
later ; what is known is due chiefly to the mention of his
name by Sedulius. The good old scholar was his friend,
whom fame had not followed ; Sedulius sought to do him
honour by asking as a favour that which, granted, has
made his name immortal.

Could there be anything more graceful than the device
by which the Irish Scot makes Macedonius put forward
other friends, or more gracious than the kindly wit which
turns all into a compliment for his beloved Macedonius ?
Then what genial humour, what pleasant Irish banter is
that which, in his correspondent s modest apologies, dis
covered artful excuses for not reading the Epic ! Clearly
a delightful companion and professor was this poet of
ours, in whose character gravity and gaiety were so
harmoniously combined.

INTRODUCTION 65

His metaphors show how deeply his sea voyages had
impressed him, and there was something of the sea in his
great enthusiastic nature, that sparkles with sunshine, and
darkens with clouds, rages stormily or flows smoothly,
changing often but running deep. Here, one finds the
lines of Irish character at its best ; respect for age, learning,
and leading, loyal comradeship so sacred and so revered
of old, with praise of women, recognition of noble ideals,
playful humour shown even in a grave dedication, and an
ingrained love of conflict directed to the overcoming of an
old friend, to his honour.

Strong as was his preference for the poetic form it did
not hinder him from undertaking the labour of giving a
prose version of his work. This was done at the suggestion
of Macedonius, to whom he likewise dedicates it, under the
title of the " Paschal Work " Paschale Opus. This is
a close but not a servile rendering of the subject matter
of the poem, the author occasionally going more into
details and quoting texts. The Dedication of this work
abounds in nautical metaphors and ocean imagery, so
natural to the natives of an Isle whose ancient poetry
reveals their love of the sea.

He knew what were Wet Sails " 1 (vela madentia),

1 These are some of his sea-references in the second very short
dedication :

" Sanctis tamen iussionibus non resiliens, iniunctam suscepi
prouinciam, et procellosis adhuc imbribus concussae ratis vela
madentia tumentis pelagi rursus fatigationi commisi per emensos
cursus reuoluti discriminis, et Cycladas ingentes, quas praecipitanti
formidine celerius ante transieram longa maris circuitione discurrens,
ut illos portus et litora quae dudum praetereundo lustraui diligentiore
opera nunc viserem." And again : * velut mare fluuiorum penitus
incrementa non sentiens." And yet again : " nauigare rursus in
aequore, nunc in portu iam nauigem. Tandem aliquando post
undas calcare liceat nos arenas : tetigimus montes ex pelago, tangamus
monies ex saxo et infirmos aquis irruentibus gressus nauali positos
statione firmemus." Caelii Sedulii Opera omnia, a Faustina Arevalo.
Romae MDCCXCIIII. From this are taken all Sedulian quotations.

F

66 THE EASTER SONG

the lash of rain-storms and the surge of swelling ocean
smiting the shivering vessel in the long circuit of its
venturous voyage. Anticipating criticism, he cites the
examples of elder writers who gave more than one version
of their work, for which he says they deserved praise
rather than the censure of a rasping tongue. Let those
who carp at others produce their own work. All are
readier to judge than to achieve, and calmly to criticise a
fight from a fortress.

PART VII

THE EASTER SONG : ITS PUBLICATION : ITS EDITIONS AND

MARVELLOUS POPULARITY

WHEN of old the work of an author was finished it was
transferred to professional writers that copies might be
made, multiplied, and published. In after times a great
amount of such labour was done in the scriptoria of
monasteries. Do any of those ancient manuscript editions
of Sedulius still remain ? Happily, the question can be
answered in the affirmative. Arevalus, who made very
careful research, enumerates about seventy ; and he found
traces of others. Fourteen were preserved in the Vatican
Library alone ; almost all are on parchment, only a few
on paper, and some of the former excel in beauty. A few
are most exquisitely produced, adorned with figures, gold
letters, and different colours.

But the most ancient, the most important, and the most
interesting is one preserved in the library of the Royal
Athenaeum of Turin. This copy is on parchment in the
antique square letters of the sixth century, to which period
some authorities assign it. Its beginning is set out in
capitals, and the occasional red letter lines are similarly
shaped. The corrector, Abundantius, secures a little
immortality for his name, by noting that he has revised
the third book to his satisfaction.

The inscription, however, which gives an exceptional
interest to the work is one which appears on the first page,

67

68 THE EASTER SONG

in antique writing, though less ancient than the text. It
stands thus :

Liber Sancti Columbani de Bobio.

" The Book of Saint Columban of Bobio." It is a re
markable thing that the earliest copy extant of the Epic
of one Irish poet-saint should have been preserved for
posterity by the care of another Irish poet-saint one,
too, who revived the fallen classic literature of Europe.

Nor was this the only copy which Bobio preserved.
Its library catalogue (tenth century) gives four books of
Claudian, one of which includes some of Sedulius, and
four books (perhaps separate copies) of Sedulius. One
of these is supposed to be the Turin manuscript. Then
Dungal, king of the Scots, presented to the most blessed
Columban an orthograph of Sedulius amongst other books.

From the sixth to the sixteenth, scarcely a century
passed without leaving behind it a manuscript edition of
Sedulius, whilst, of course, some centuries are more pro
lific than others. In the revival of letters which dis
tinguished the fifteenth century, the works of Sedulius,
and of other ancient Christian writers, were eagerly sought
for and elegantly produced.

It might be supposed that, on the discovery of the art
of printing, Sedulius would be put aside by newer authors.
There could not well be a greater mistake. His works
stand prominent amongst the first few which were chosen
for publicity, in print. Some of the earliest editions bore
no date, and this is the case as regards the great Paris
edition in quarto revised by Nicholas Cappusotus, and
printed by the famous Jehan Pettit, which Arevalus
considers to be the first. Utrecht, however, printed an
edition in the year 1475, which possibly may claim
precedence.

In the succeeding centuries France, Spain, Italy,

INTRODUCTION

69

Germany, Holland, and Switzerland kept up a spirited
rivalry. Edition after edition appeared from the presses
of Paris, Lyons, Tours, Madrid, Saragossa, Venice (the
Aldine edition), Milan, Turin, Rome, Leipzig, Frankfort,
Halle, Cologne, Basle, Antwerp, and other cities. Edin
burgh gave one edition. England and Ireland are missing
from the names of the nations which have honoured him,
and themselves, by publishing his works. Hence, the
present volume has the singular chance of being the first,
in these countries, to reproduce the words of Sedulius,
though not all his words. It is also the first attempt made
to present in another language a partial translation in verse
of the first great Christian epic.

The marvellous and enduring popularity of the poems
of Sedulius will be best appreciated after a glance at the
following table, where I have compiled the result of the
researches of Arevalus, supplemented by my own, in the
British Museum, which add a few editions to those
enumerated by that excellent editor, and supply those
which have appeared since his own, the chief edition of
all. In this table the edition-number is given in Roman
letters, and the dates, so far as known, in Arabic numerals.
There are, no doubt, a considerable number of other
editions, which I have not had time or opportunity to
enumerate :

TABLE OF PRINTED EDITIONS

Edition.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

Date.

Edition.

1475

XIII.

1480

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

*

XVII.

1499

XVIII.

1499

XIX.

1501

XX.

1501

XXI.

1504

XXII.

1509

XXIII.

1509

XXIV.

Date.
1510
1510
1512
ISH
1515
1516

ISI7

1524

1.528

1534
1537
1537

THE EASTER SONG

Edition.

XXV.

XXVI.

XXVII.

XXVIII.

XXIX.

XXX.

XXXI.

XXXII.

XXXIII.

XXXIV.

XXXV.

XXXVI.

XXXVII.

XXXVIII.

XXXIX.

XL.

XLI.

XLII.

XLIII.

XLIV.

XLV.

XLVI.

XLVII.

XLVIII.

XLIX.

L.

Date.
1538
1538
1541
1545
1548
1551
1551
1553
1554
1560

1564
1566
1568

1573
1575
1588
1603

1610
1616
1618

1654
1671
1677
1701
1704
1713

Edition.

LI.

LII.

LIII.

LIV.

LV.

LVI.

LVII.

LVIII.

LIX.

LX.

LXI.

LXII.

LXIII.

LXIV.

LXV.

LXVI.

LXVII.

LXVIII.

LXIX.

LXX.

LXXI.

LXXII.

LXXIII.

LXXIV.

LXXV.

Date.
1721
1724
1736

1739
1747
1751
1754

1754
1761

1765
1766

1773

1794
1844

1866
1868
1869
I8 74

1877
1878

1878
1879

1881
1885
1886

If we analyse this table, we shall find the following
remarkable results :

In the fifteenth century there were seven editions of
Sedulius printed and published.

In the sixteenth century there were thirty-three
editions.

In the seventeenth century there were seven
editions.

In the eighteenth century there were sixteen
editions.

In the nineteenth century there have been twelve
editions.

Hence, since the first printed edition in the year 1475
to the last in 1866, there have been seventy-five editions ;
this gives, on an average, one edition to every five years
and five months of the four hundred and odd years which
have elapsed.

INTRODUCTION 71

Excluding standard professional and collegiate works,
how many books possess such a record of enduring
popularity ? There is not another Christian poet whose
productions have so largely and so long delighted genera
tions of man.

PART VIII

EDITED BY A ROMAN CONSUL I HONOURED BY THE EMPEROR
THEODOSIUS : SIGNALLY PRAISED BY THE FIRST GENERAL
COUNCIL : IMITATED BY KING CHILPERIC : ANGELS
SAID TO SING THE ELEGIA OF SEDULIUS

LET us look a little more closely at some evidence of the
high esteem in which our poet was held, and at some
causes and proofs of his influence.

The first appearance of a great Christian epic made a
profound sensation in the imperial world. At last an
articulate voice had spoken for Christendom, and it was
thrilled by the glorious sound. Here the deities of a
phantom paganism formed no longer the machinery of
epic poetry, marvellous in its beauty, false in its phil
osophy ; here the Christian found the beauty of spiritual
life, and the moving might of the eternal verities.

One of the highest dignitaries of the State, the Consul
Turcius Ruffius Asterius, assumed the honour of being
the first editor of the work. Sedulius," says a very
ancient Vatican manuscript, " left his work dispersed in
certain small documents which were collected, combined,
and most elegantly published by Turcius Ruffius Asterius,
an eminent man, a Patrician and ex-Consul Ordinary."
Asterius was one of the two Consuls who held office in
the year 449. He prefixes a graceful dedication, in elegiac
verse, addressed to some person not named, but supposed

to be the Pope. There is also a dedication in heroic

72

INTRODUCTION 73

verse, of which the author is unknown, addressed to the
Emperor Theodosius. Then comes a Virgilian Cento
forming a poem on the Incarnation ; and, finally, the
poets Belisarius and Liberius celebrate the genius of
Sedulius in double acrostics.

One historic and most significant incident, which took
place in the year 494, proves beyond all things else how
important to Christendom the work appeared, and how
highly it was esteemed. In that year was held the first
Roman Council of the Church, where seventy bishops
sat with Pope Gelasius. They had to consider the vital
question of the authenticity of the Scriptures, to decide
which were genuine, and to eliminate apocryphal writings.
Having determined this grave matter, the Council next
took cognisance of all notable works relating to Christian
ity, discriminating the spurious from the authentic, and
those which it judged unsound from orthodox works.
The Decree, which embodies the memorable decisions
extends to fifty-four paragraphs. The thirty-fourth para
graph reads in English as follows :

34. Also, we distinguish by signal praise the Paschal
Work of the Venerable man, Sedulius, which he has composed
in heroic verse. We do not nevertheless disdain but admire
the laborious work of Juvencus." 1

The distinction which the first Roman Council made
between the works of the two poets has secured the assent
of all succeeding generations. Juvencus made a metrical
history, Sedulius an epic poem.

The Easter Song was welcomed, with such sanction
and on its own merits, in every great school in Christen
dom. The list of its admirers from the days of Asterius

L 34. Item, venerabilis viri Sedulii paschale opus, quod heroicis
descripsit versibus, insigni laude praeferimus. Item luuenci nihilo-
minus laboriosum opus non spernimus sed miramur."

74 THE EASTER SONG

is long and bright with eminent names. Scholars praise
it, age after age ; poets, amongst whom was Petrarch,
extol it in verse ; saints quote it to enforce a moral or to
define a doctrine. Its favour was confined to no nation.
It had some illustrious imitators.

Chilperic, king of the Franks, produced two books of
verse, in imitation of Sedulius ! It is true that Gregory
of Tours critically condemns them as feeble, without feet
to stand on ; long syllables were put for short and short
for long. This doubtless was due to the absence of the
classic metre-sense in the barbarian monarch and to
the growth of the accentual method. But, whatever its
intrinsic merits, the attempt of Chilperic proves the great
popularity of Sedulius, and the respect felt by the
Prankish king for higher things than wars. How few
monarchs, since his reign, have made any signal in the
high latitudes of literature !

Aldhelm, the Anglo-Saxon a pupil of the Irish
scholar, Mailduff * had better training when he, as Bede
tells us, imitated Sedulius by presenting his work on
Virginity, in prose and verse ; though he inverted the
order, as Arevalus notices, having composed the prose
first. The Irish poet appears to have been a special
favourite with the Anglo-Saxons, who were so fond of
flocking to the great Schools of Erinn, where they were
welcomed as friends, and entertained as guests, by the
generous Irish. Alcuin, a pupil of Clonmacnois, master
of the School of Charlemagne, quotes and eulogises
Sedulius ; but an even more certain evidence of his
popularity is found in the unique honour assigned to
one of his hymns, in the Vision of St. Dunstan.

It is related by Eadmer that when Dunstan was at
prayer in St. Mary s Chapel within the Church of St.

1 Mailduff was first Abbot of Malmesbury ; the name of which
place is modified from Mailduf s burgh.

INTRODUCTION 75

Augustine, he beheld in luminous vision the Blessed
Virgin, surrounded by a choir of maidens, all singing a
hymn of Sedulius in praise of Christ. She herself, in a
voice of surpassing sweetness, inviting them, began :
they followed, giving the distichs, alternately, to a
celestial melody. 1

This supplies both an evidence of the renown of this
hymn and an assurance of its increasing favour amongst
the Anglo-Saxons.

But indeed every nation seemed desirous of showing
that Sedulius was its own especial favourite. If his great
epic were composed amid the plaudits of the Greeks, a
Roman Consul was its first editor, a Roman Emperor
accepted the dedication, and Italy produced the most
beautiful copies. Yet let us not forget that the most
ancient copy extant is from an Irish hand, and that
Dungal, king of the Irish, presented an orthograph to
Bobio. The Prankish king appeared in letters as the
poet s pupil ; the Germanic world gave the most numer
ous editions ; the Anglo-Saxons showed the poet unique
and exalted honour, whilst Spain (to whose liberal
Primate the great edition of Faustinus Arevalus was
dedicated) declared its affection by a fervent, though
futile, attempt to claim Sedulius as its son.

His influence over Spanish literature, so far as verse-
structure is concerned, had hitherto been overlooked,
yet it was distinct and notable, as I have shown else
where. 2

Sedulius prefaces his Easter Song by a short metrical
address to the reader, in which he pleads modestly for a

1 The hymn was the Elegia which begins thus :

Cantemus, socii, Domino, cantemus honorem,
dulcis amor Christi personet ore pio.

See Appendix, Irish Metrical Characteristics in Sedulian Verse.
8 Bards of the Gael and Gall. Introduction.

76 THE EASTER SONG

hearing, and pays a splendid tribute to the great Pagan
masters of classic verse. This is a characteristic of him.
A Christian, in an empire yet red with the blood of
martyrs, he felt his great cause demanded great intel
lectual service. He was not of those starveling Christians
who condemn without creating, thinking it enough to
censure men who work in error, whilst they themselves
will not work for truth.

Still moved by the spirit of the Free Nation in which
he was born, he could withstand the Roman yoke, whilst
admiring Roman art. His effort was to break the bonds
which subjugated poetry to paganism, and set free the
literature which he loved. Both classic verse and
Christian faith had been new to him, and he cherished
a passionate love for both. The former appealed to his
bardic training by novel metres, and magnificent epics,
echoing with the clang of arms in which the Celt
delighted, the latter broke down the walls of the material
world and gave to his spiritual nature the luminous
liberty of faith.

A true poet, profoundly convinced of the truth, beauty,
and greatness of his subject, he was the ardent Knight-
champion of a Cause against which all the imperial
traditions of pagan culture strove, as yet unopposed.
Modest as regards his own powers, his invitation to the
reader is at once so gracious and so generous that it should
disarm censure, if censure could exist unarmed. But
when he entered on the subject of his Easter Song the
wonders of the Almighty s love, wrought for man s
redemption, his tone is no longer apologetic nor his
attitude deprecatory ; he, like the stripling Israelite
against the Philistine, stands forth before the mighty men
of Pagandom, alone but undismayed, impassioned, bold,
the great Interpreter of a great Cause.

THE EASTER SONG

77

I

TO THE READER

WOULD ST deign, a guest, unto our Easter fare ?
Refrain, if thou rt a friend, from scornful mood :
Nor hope repast of sumptuous state, but rude,
Content a frugal board, our best, to share.

Thy choice the feast of mind o er feast of food
If caught by sweetness of the rich and rare,
Go, seek the Lords of Lore, whose splendid fare
All dainties yield in countless multitude.

Whatever sea sustains, earth keeps, or air,
Thou lt find it then : in jewelled vessels there
The golden honey gleams in glowing gold.

But ours, a platter of red earthenware,
Doth, with an offered welcome, only hold
The gathered herbs of one poor garden mould.

79

THE EASTER SONG

THE first Epic of Christendom opens in a manner not un
worthy of its lofty theme. The prose literature of the age
was almost exclusively pagan, the great poems embodied
nothing but pagan ideals of. heaven and earth. These, by
their literary power and beauty, kept in thrall the cultured
sense of Christians, whose admiration for the Masters was
not lessened by the adoption of a higher faith. The celestial
machinery of the classic epics to them, as to some indifferent
pagans, was no more than the poetic presentation of an unreal
mythology. Yet there must have been many, on the border
land, whom the splendid verse still affected, and it influenced,
as nothing else could influence, the ideals of heroism and
conduct of life amongst the people. Sedulius beheld this,
and was fired with indignation. The figments of paganism
had called forth all the powers of the human mind, and had
been exalted in the world s noblest verse. With such efforts
and achievements before him, how should a Christian skilled
in the poetic art stand mute, who had a theme ineffably
greater, infinitely beautiful, to inspire his intellect and com
mand his allegiance ?

Thus Sedulius begins his Easter Song :

81

82 THE EASTER SONG

BOOK I

WHEN Gentiles study their vain themes to raise
In sounding words, and pomp of purple phrase,
Assume the tragic mask, or comic mood,
Or what of varied verse may seem them good,
And search the soiled scrolls of traitor Time
For murk memorials of storied crime,
Shall I though standing in the sacred choir
Where song celestial mates with David s lyre
Shall I be mute ? nor striking Judah s string
The wond rous work of Christ the Saviour sing ?
Whom all things vouch on earth, who thunders

Lord

On every sense, by all the heart adored,
Who heart and sense themselves bestowed, and

Whom
All Nature serves !

He, by eternal doom

Supreme, and with His Father One, by right,
Apex of All, Creation s Crown, the Same, in

Light,

In Splendour, Virtue, Power, and Timeless Sway,
Consort of Glory, Kingship, and all Might,
In Majesty Alike ! Behold the Way
Which leads to safety and the Paschal Day !

This theme shall be my song : Turn every mind
And heal, at last, the wounded hearts and blind
Which mortal ill, which Attic thralldom keeps
In fond delusions whilst the venom creeps,

THE EASTER SONG 83

Forsake Cecropian mire at length, and draw
The odorous air of health from Living Law.

It would appear from this that, in the days of Sedulius,
Athens still had great influence over the southern world of
thought. It may also be inferred that the poet composed his
Epic whilst in Greece. Continuing his protest and appeal to
the Athenians he proceeds :

Why, Sons of Theseus ! wander in the maze
Of blind Daedalean caverns, void of rays ?
Why choose the barren, where the good vine

grows,

And for grey lavender neglect the rose,
Give stone and brass in fanes profanely faith
And bond your minds to mute metallic death ?
No more abide in squalid dust of fields
And sterile strands, where arid earth now yields
No fruit ; nor longer tear from gory ground
The bitter herbs that feed ye not but wound
For feast Tartarean fit.

Far rather steer

O er welcome waters that will float you here
To. meads delightful mid the forest s flower,
Where home is blessed by God s supernal power ;
Where sparkling streamlets animate the path
And lave the soil, that never prickle hath,
So that to barns an hundredfold it yields
When brimming harvest fills the happy fields.

This is the first indication of that love of natural scenery
of which we shall meet many and more striking instances.
To me it seems the produce of another civilisation than the
Graeco-Roman, but this question may be deferred. Here,

84 THE EASTER SONG

the great distinction lies between the Christian and the Pagan,
in the matter of the invocation. Sedulius breaks boldly with
classic tradition, from which even Milton could not free
himself in Paradise Lost, and puts aside all appeal to the
Muses, even as poetic fiction. His appeal is to God himself,
eternal, omnipotent, infinite ; and the great and solemn
Invocation speaks the absolute and intense sincerity of the
poet :

Eternal God omnipotent ! The One
Sole Hope of worlds, Author and Guard alone
Of heaven and earth Thou art, whose high behest
Forbids the tempest s billow-bearing breast
The land to whelm which fires the orb of noon,
And fills the crescent of the milder moon ;
Who st meted forth alternate day and night
And numbered all the stars their places bright,
Their signs, times, courses only known to Thee-
Who hast to many forms, most wondrously,
The new earth shaped, and given to dead dust life :
Who hast lost Man restored, for fruit of strife
Forbid, bestown on him a higher food,
And healed the Serpent s sting by sacred blood :

Who hast, when men (save those borne in the

Ark)

Were tombed in floods of whelming waters dark
From one sole stock again the race renewed
(A sign that sin-slain man, through noble wood
Once more should be redeemed), and sent to save
One Fount baptismal all the world to lave !

Ope me the way that to the City bright
Leads forth ; let thy Word s lamp be light
To guide my footsteps through the narrow gate,

THE EASTER SONG 85

Where the Good Shepherd feeds His sheep elate :
There first the Virgin s white Lamb entered
And all His fair flock followed where He led !

With Thee how smooth the way : for Nature all
Thine empire owns ! Thou speak st, her fetters

fall

And all her wonted shows new forms assume :
The frozen fields will into verdure bloom
And winter gild with grain : if Thou but will
Mid budding Spring the swelling grape shall fill,
And sudden labour tread the bursting vine.
All seasons answer to the call Divine !
So ancient Faith attests, so tell the hours
No time can change, no age abate Thy powers 1

Whereof to sing, in little part, afraid
I seek, as entering a great forest-glade
One strives an over-arching bough to reach.
What were an hundred tongues, an iron speech,
Or what were man an hundredfold to show
Things more than all the lucid stars that glow,
And all the sands where all the oceans flow ! l

1 This is an allusion to the passage in the Aeneid (Bk. vi.) where
Aeneas describing the punishment of the wicked, says :

Had I a hundred mouths, a hundred tongues
And throat of brass inspired with iron lungs,
I could not half those horrid crimes repeat
Nor half the punishment those crimes have met.

DRYDEN.

Almost the last and worst of criminals, mentioned just before this
passage, are thus described :

To tyrants others have their country sold
Imposing foreign lords, for foreign gold :
Some have old laws repealed, new statutes made
Not as the people pleased, but as they paid.

86 THE EASTER SONG

It is impossible to remain unmoved by such passages,
and this effect the triumph of poetry is produced not so
much by the art as by the deep feeling of the author. Pope s
Messiah does not so withdraw our attention from admira
tion of the form to sympathy with the substance. It is
exquisitely wrought, but we note too soon the excellence of
the workmanship. This possibly was a result inevitable from
his adoption of Virgil s Pollio as a model a pagan poet
could scarcely efface his art in worship. With Sedulius it
is otherwise : we do not notice the carven stones but the altar
built of them. His invocation is a prayer, from the impressive
opening, with its rapid reference to the illimitable powers of
God, its deliberate enumeration of his acts of beneficence
towards mankind, to the pathetic personal appeal which
humanises all. It is instinct with enthusiasm and all reverence.

Then the poet enters immediately upon the subject matter
of the Easter Song. He has put aside all the figments which
served as scaffolding for the elder edifices of imagination : his
faith is too fresh and pure to admit of that superstructure
which even Milton adopts. He dares impute nothing to the
Divine Being and His angels for which there is no authority in
Holy Writ. However, his genius forbade that his poem should
be a simple versification of sacred history. Hence, he adopts
a new and different plan.

In language of sustained dignity he recalls the chief miracles
contained in the Old Testament, not infrequently assigning
a mystic symbolism. Here is a summary :

Enoch, he cites first, the beloved of God, whose years
outlasted centuries : Earth was entitled to his birth, but Death
was deprived of its heir. Barren age, in the person of Sara,
was endowed with offspring the Hope of the Chosen People
was nourished at her breast. Over this, his only son, the
faithful father at the altar raised the sword of Death, when
the ram was accepted as victim in his stead. This is a symbol
of the future free-will offering of Christ, the gentle Lamb,
whose blood flowed for the deliverance of Man. Lot fled the
chaos of Sodom, but his wife looking back bore the penalty,

THE EASTER SONG 87

for none should revert to evil things, nor turn away from the
plough. The marvellous Bush glowed unharmed, burning
yet unburnt, not yielding fuel to the ascending fire, but all
its foliage fed by the friendly furnace of caressing flames.
The harmless rod changed into a harmful serpent, writhing in
clustered coils, which, with swollen scaly throat and darting
trifid tongue, swallowed the hostile snakes and then, resuming
its form, stiffened once more into a rod. The Sea separated,
and through its divided waters the pilgrim-people passed dry-
shod. To them, suffering in the wilderness, hosts of angels
ministered, with nectar in the dew, manna in the air, food in
every shower, and banquets in the rain. When after long
drought the dry earth sickened, and life lost hope, the parched
soil drank sudden waters, streams flooded the stones, the
barren Rock became a flowing fount. These celestial gifts
are types of Christ, the Bread, the Rock, and the Fountain of
Life.

Again, beholding an angel in the path, the stolid ass stopped,
trembling, and admonished the prophet. At Gabaon, in the
midst of the heavens, the sun stood still, and kept the panting
light with a longer eve, nor did the resting moon run her
course till the sword had consumed the foe. The servitor
stars saw in the herald name l the Jesus who was to come.
Elias, a fugitive, was fed by the ministering raven, which daily
brought him food, untasted, in its beak. True to Elias,
though faithless to Noah, the raven expiated on land its
delinquency on the waters. After many miracles, Elias was
borne away to the golden stars in a flaming chariot. Right
it was that he should outshine the lights of heaven, who was
radiant by works and by name, for by a slight change of
accent and letter Elias in Greek is the Sun. 2 Jonah, fallen
from the ship, did not touch the water, but was borne safe
through the sea in a Living Sepulchre. Cast into the seven
times heated furnace by a Babylonian tyrant, the Three
Youths conquered the penal flame by the mightier fire of the

1 Joshua, the Hebrew form of Jesus.
2 The Greek form of Elias is HXt as, whilst the sun is"HXios.

88 THE EASTER SONG

spirit. Great was the glory of the Believers, but prompt the
doom of the ruthless king who ran raving from the resorts of
man to herd with beasts in the field, and wander in the woods
and hills. So, too, by the despot Darius was Daniel, the
honour of Israel, confined in the lions den : forthwith the
wild beasts grew meek, and rather than injure the just one
they accepted hunger, put away wrath, and kept fury in their
fearful jaws. Then first fierce lions learned to spare their
prey.

These miracles Sedulius first recites, with ample sweep of
phrase, next, with terse recapitulation, he kneads them into
a close and complete argument. Given his premisses, his
conclusion is irresistible. The problem dealt with is one
which apparently every generation re-discovers and thinks
out anew. To-day those who claim for " Nature " or " natural
law " a coercive domination imagine this to be a novel view,
the outcome of progressive centuries. Yet, fifteen hundred
years ago, Sedulius confronted it.

There is great originality and power in the poet s apostrophe
to Nature wherein he blends and condenses his reasons and
these illustrative examples :

Say, Nature ! these beholding, where thy laws ?
Who took these many rights from thee ? What

cause

Bade Death ignore its prey ? What potent breath
Blessed barrenness with fruit, and moved to death
The willing ram ? What changed to statued salt
The peccant spouse ? What told the flames to

halt

At leaves unharmed, the rod to writhe a snake,
The parting sea a pathway dry to make,
Dews manna yield, and arid rocks a stream,
The lowly ass to speak ? What stayed the beam
Of rapid-running hours, made birds delight

THE EASTER SONG 89

A man to feed, and who, in chariot bright
Conveyed him o er the starry heaven s height ?
Who made the dying King live lustres three,
Leviathan a Refuge in the sea,
A Monarch mate with beasts ? Who could

assuage
Th indomitable lions furious rage ?

Who, but The Maker !- -Whose are all things

seen,

All unseen things, whose Word is the machine,
His works obey him, and His empire still
Delights to follow at its Sovereign s will.

Thus he reasons to vindicate the attributes of a Free
Creator not subject to His works, but they to Him.

Having established his position and demonstrated the
claims to respect of the Faith he champions, he makes a rapid
survey of the views opposed to it. Here, he displays not
only subtle analysis but a strength of keen yet genial satire,
more effective than any denunciation. Nothing could well
be seen more modern than his wit, or more recent than his
humour. It is worth noting that he deals most earnestly
with Sun-worship, and this perhaps because of a backward
glance at Erinn, where this as well as some other superstitions
mentioned then prevailed. Of course, many were also found
in the vicinity of the Mediterranean. That the vision of the
Author reached not only to Greece and Rome and Egypt but
beyond may be inferred from his words :

Ah, hapless hearts of men that evermore
Shape out some foolish figment to adore,
Your Maker flee and what you make implore !
What witless folly takes the senses now
That full-grown Man before a bird, a cow,

90 THE EASTER SONG

Half-human hound, or twisted snake shall bow ? l

Some venerate the sun, because tis seen
To shed clear rays upon the earth serene
And light the farther pole itself would show
By change and scattered fires its place to know
A servant, not a God that, ordered right
Must rise and set, and then give way to night,
And is not everywhere, in every clime,
Nor has it always been, throughout all time.

So some the moon adore, whose changing horn
Now fills, now fails ; and some the stars, that

morn

Will put to paling flight : these worship fire
Those founts, but dare not with joined rite con
spire,
The Fount might dry before the Fire- God s

frown,
Or else, if stronger, might the Fire-God drown !

Some, too, build altars at the roots of trees
Bring food, and then beseech the boughs to

please,

Rule o er their homes beloved, their fertile farms,
Keep offspring, wives, and fortunes free from
harms.

O Wooden ! praying wood, to deafness cry !
And seek from dumbness a benign reply !
What god shall govern, when to help the house,
Ye prop the sinking roof with broken boughs,

1 From Prior s Solomon, Part II., we get a passage (imitated from
the xv. Satire of Juvenal) which is a curiously close parallel to this
portion of the Sedulian passage, but without its wit.

THE EASTER SONG 91

Or feed the fire with chips for your carouse ?

Some worship herbs and, planting them, like

pease,

Go water well their dry divinities
Sure, servers of transplanted Gods be these !

I shame to mention more, in sacred song,
Ev n in rebuke, lest brambles so should wrong
The lilies fair, and thistles raise their heads
Amid the purple bloom of violet beds,
Enough we have of follies in the heap
To move a laugh, or rather make us weep.

This reveals the poet s heart. Gifted with satiric power,
he uses it with leniency and grows compassionate, not bitter,
over human errors. He kept thorn and thistle from the white
lilies and the violet fields of his spirit as well as from the fold.
There is no kinship with wrath or warfare in all he wrote,
rather with ideal beauty, luminous with love.

This will be felt in the picture which he next presents
of the Celestial City, the end and object of his pilgrimage on
earth.

And now it joys to journey forth to climb

The shining steps that mount the Hill Sublime,

We haste unto the City of our love

For Freedom : bright, its royal halls above

The gold domes gleam afar ; the gates apart

Do welcome those who come, nor need depart

All portals ope to knocking of a heart !

Behold the corner stone once spurned with slight,
Now set on high, most wondrous to the sight-
How sweet Thy yoke, Thy burthen, Lord, how
light!

93 THE EASTER SONG

The seventh line gives the quintessence of the Sedulius
spirit and of Christian doctrine. In the original Latin it
rolls in good Irish rime. 1

This glimpse of the Desirable City of which Christ is the
corner-stone moves the poet to explain and define his course.
He has shown, by the concordant miracles of the Old Law
what was accomplished by the Father, in conjunction with
the Holy Spirit, and by the associate power of the Son. Now
he will relate what was accomplished by the Son in conjunction
with the Holy Spirit, and by the associate power of the Father
ever remaining One God, wherein the simple is tripled and
the triple simpled. This is the true Faith. With lucid and
subtle eloquence he next explains the doctrine of the Holy
Trinity, and dispels erroneous views.

Having shown the true path of Faith, and warned away
misleading guides, the poet resumes his account of the ascent
of the Hill Sublime, and the vision of the Celestial City.
Before him Virgil had described the entrance to the Elysian
fields, Pluto s palace, the description is brief :

The walls of Pluto s palace are in view
The gate and iron arch above it, stands
On anvils labor d by the Cyclops hands.

Before entering Aeneas, having made ablution, had to fix the
golden bough above the gate.

How different is Sedulius s vision of the Celestial City,
to which he is led, not by a Sibyl, but by Hope and Faith his
fair companions :

Whilst we, discoursing, make our path more

light,

With comrade Hope and Faith we climb the
height :

1 Pervia pulsanti reserantur limina cordi.

There is perfect alliteration of initial consonants (p p c), and dis
syllabic vowel rime, or assonance (in "anti" and "cordi"). See
Appendix, Irish Metrical Characteristics in Sedulian Verse.

THE EASTER SONG 93

The topmost Citadel is reached, and there,
See all the sacred Banners, high in air,
That sparkle with the Cross ! Lo, glittering
How shine the lovely Towers of The King !
The Master-trumpet sounds ; the Gates invite
The soldiers to march in they pass who fight.
On you the Eternal Gate doth call, whose voice
Is Christ s, with golden guerdon to rejoice
In life perpetual, who fought his fight,
His weapons used, and bore His Symbol bright.

Thy Symbol and Thine arms, dear King, IVe

borne,

The least of all Thy hosts I wait, war-worn.
Here, in Thine own abode, within Thy wall,
Grant me a little Home amongst them all ;
That, in Thy holy places I, Thy guest,
May dwell and be on the white roll confest,
Last ranked of all the City of the Blest.

Great things I ask, but Thou dost greatly grant
Whom little hope offends and not large want.

None will fail to be moved by the exceeding tenderness
infused into this appeal and by the beauty of the vision of
the City of his hopes. What Milton has accomplished in a
similar description has the great advantage of appearing in
the author s chosen words ; but, if the question of diction
be waived the passages may be compared. 1 The Celestial

. . . far distant he descries
Ascending by degrees magnificent
Up to the wall of Heaven a structure high,
At top whereof, but far more rich, appeared
The work as of a kingly palace-gate,
With frontispiece of diamond and gold
Embellished : thick with sparkling orient gems

94 THE EASTER SONG

(closed) Gate is presented by Milton as that of a kingly palace,
but "more rich " crudely embellished with diamonds, gold,
and gems. As the only kingly palace known to most of his
readers was that of St. James or Whitehall, their ideal of
Heaven s gate was somewhat humble. His description is
essentially that of Virgil s, being based on material structures,
though transposed and adapted from an infernal to a celestial
castle-gate. He does not give the gleam of the gold domes
seen afar, nor the welcoming portals that open to the knocking
of a heart, he does not see, as Sedulius sees, the flutter of
the sacred banners above shining towers, nor hear the master-
trumpet sound, and the cry of the Gate, whose voice is Christ s,
nor touch the soul with the note of personal appeal.

In sight of the Celestial City, Sedulius implores the favour
of its King for the work undertaken, calls his witnesses and
introduces some of that mystic symbolism in which he delights :

Incline, O Christ ! Thou who, to make, through

love,
A dead world live, descending from above-

The portal shone, inimitable on earth
By model or by shading pencil drawn.
The stairs were such as whereon Jacob saw
Angels ascending and descending . . .

**

Each stair mysteriously was meant nor stood
There always, but drawn up to Heaven sometimes
Viewless ; and underneath a bright sea flowed
Of jasper or of liquid pearl, whereon
Who after came from earth, sailing arriv d,
Wafted by angels, or flew o er the lake
Rapt in a chariot drawn by fiery steeds,
The stairs were then let down, whether to dare
The Fiend by easy ascent, or to aggravate
His sad exclusion from the doors of bliss.

There are jewelled words, no doubt, in profusion, but what an
appalling ideal of a Celestial City, where stairs were let down, and
snatched away, " to dare or aggravate " Satan like the mean trick of
a malicious schoolboy.

THE EASTER SONG 95

To things terrene and human form hast deigned
This nature bearing, yet Thine own retained.

So Matthew, first of men, declares to all :
So Mark, whose voice thrills like the lion s call :
So Luke, a young ox which the ark doth bear :
So John, whose eagle-cry ascends the air ; x
Four chiefs who sing Thy glory with one voice,
As the four seasons bid the world rejoice.
So shine the Twelve, the apex numeral,
As months, as hours, that make the year in all
For Thee, an Army Apostolical.

Recalling now the birth of Ancient Death
I haste with eyes serene, to Life s new breath,
Long joys to reap : who sowed in Adam tears
Shall at Christ s coming put aside our fears,
And walk, exulting, with our harvest-ears. 2

Thus Sedulius nobly concludes his first Book of the
Paschal Song, by showing the glorious conquest of New Life
over Ancient Death the reversal of the Fall the real
Paradise Regained.

1 The Symbols of the four Evangelists are : a man s head, a lion,
an ox, and an eagle.

a Sedulius finishes this Book of his Latin Poem (as he does every
Book) by two Latin lines cast in the Irish Metric, to wit :

semina mittentes, mox Exultabimus Omnes,
Portantes nostros, Christo veniente, maniplos.

In the first line, there are two one- syllable slender vowel end- rimes,
" es," "es," and two internal two-syllable slender rimes " semin," and
" mitten " which interlace with " ente " in the second, and " omnes "
interlaces with " tantes " (broad-slender rime). There is vowel allitera
tion, e and o, for all vowels alliterate, though they rime only in their class
slender with slender, broad with broad. In the last line p c give con
sonant alliteration, whilst broad vowel rime is obtained in " os," " os."
It is remarkable that, according to an ancient Irish custom this ending
of the First Book is echoed or repeated in that of the Last Book.

BOOK II

THE Second Book tells first, the expulsion of the Primal
Parents from Eden, because of their disobedience, and relates
the advent of Death, and the decadence of the human race.
There was no hope for it, had not the Lord, prompt to forgive,
intervened to redeem that fallen race, so that what He had
made in His own image should not be rendered unlike it by
decay and death. He gave it the means of a new birth, and
from the race of Eve, as a gentle rose from a thorny stem came
Mary the Virgin. Having told of the Annunciation and of
the birth of Christ, the poet narrates the incidents of the
Holy Child, the Massacre of the Innocents, the baptism in
the Jordan, His Fast and Temptation in the desert, and
concludes the Book by a description of Christ s choice of the
disciples and His teaching and explanation of the Lord s Prayer.
There are many passages of beauty and feeling throughout
the Book conveyed in stately Latin verse : it gave Milton his
frontal verse for Paradise Lost and the germ of Paradise Regained.

THE first of Man, by ruthless serpent cast
From Eden s flowerful seat, woeful, at last
In lures of pleasant taste drank bitter death ;
Nor he alone, presumptuous cause of wrath,
Fell neath the mortal law, but all of Man
The sequent race, who all in him began. 1

1 Milton thus renders the original more freely, but with fidelity :
Of man s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

96

THE EASTER SONG 97

Ah, guilty spouse who wrought the greater

ill,

Thou, or the loathly snake s perfidious will ?
Guilty the serpent, but not guiltless thou,
Alas, the double crime eternal now !

The growing Race begins, and soon decays
With seed of ruin sown where now the days
Of numerous life ? where now on earth behold
The happy sires of centuries manifold
Whom sons in ten succeeding lines enfold ?

The Race doth know itself no more : by Fate
Irreparable conquered, its estate
Brought low, and through long lapsing times of

strife

Nought may endure, enclosed in shortening life :
Nor Hope bring turning help, for nought could

save

The future nations from the primal grave
Had not the loving Lord, forgiving all
(Lest that His handiwork a ruin fall,
And what was made His image by His breath,
Should be unlikened by the taint of Death)
Redeemed the world and caused the fruit, which

so

Set their sons teeth on edge, its pain forgo,
Where Guilt gave Death now Love would Life

bestow !

Brought death into the world and all our woe
With loss of Eden.

See Appendix I. for the original text and a full account of Milton s
debt to Sedulius.

H

98 THE EASTER SONG

As from sharp thorns there springs, all soft and

pure

The Rose, which doth its mother s self obscure
With honour fair, so sacred Mary came
From stock of Eve and cleansed away her shame.

Man s sullied nature in Death s empire lay
Till, through Christ s birth, new birth all Mankind

may
Secure, and ancient taint put quite away.

Though Sedulius may follow Virgil in showing the rose
blossoming from the briar, yet the greater poetry is in the
fine conception of the flower cancelling and concealing the
hurtfulness of its parent by its own beauty literally, the
faultless rose " obscures its mother with honour." x

Next Sedulius tells of the Annunciation, of the Incarnation
and of the birth of the Redeemer, when the Word was made
flesh and dwelt amongst us. Inspired the poet sings :

What new Light to the World to Heaven what

Grace !

What Splendour, when, through Mary, to our race
Came Christ with glory new, as comes again
The Bridegroom, fairer than the sons of men,
His lips more sweet and graced than ever spoke !
O easy love, for Him who, lest the yoke
Of mastering sin should hold the soul a slave,
Assumed a servant s form even He, who gave

1 et velut e spinis mollis rosa surgit acutis
nil quod laedet habens matremque obscurat honore.

These lines are clearly constructed according to the laws of Irish
metric. There is consonantal alliteration (s, s and h, h), and there
are vowel rimes, in this case of two syllables, inlaid " mollis " with
" habens," and three syllable end-rimes, " acutis " with " honore."

THE EASTER SONG 99

Their every garb to all things that have birth,
Conceals His Majesty in garb of earth :
Whom not the greatness of the mighty deep,
Nor all the land of all the Earth could keep,
Nor spacious vault above, our God confest
Lo, in a manger lies, a child at rest !

Hail, holy Mother, thou who st borne the King
Who Heav n and Earth upholds and everything
Embracing, is Eternal, Infinite !
Thou, with a Virgin s honour, the delight
Of Motherhood hast owned : there hath not

been

Thy like on earth, nor ever shall be seen,
Sole pleasing Christ, incomparable queen !

These last seven lines in the original have had special
favour and vitality. The salutation beginning " Salve,
sancta parens " Hail, holy Mother has been used, and
is at the present time chanted, in Catholic churches over the
world, as an Introit, on six festivals of the Virgin Mother.

Again, St. Bernard, in his sermon on the Assumption
quotes the three verses beginning Thou, with a virgin s
honour " varying the order but not the sense.

The appearing of the Angels to the shepherds, keeping
night-watch in Palestine, and the coming of the Magi, are
thus told :

Then to the simple Shepherds in the night
The Angel Choir sang first the wonder bright
For Lamb He was and Shepherd true, of right,
The while o er Bethlehem such signs appear
The eager Magi came and, with strange fear
Alarmed the Tyrant, ever questioning
Where in Judea was its new-born King ?

ioo THE EASTER SONG

For in the East a Planet shone, and far

Had led where now would shine His radiant Star.

Then Herod, having taken counsel with the high priests
and scribes, sent the Magi to Bethlehem that they might
discover the child-king, and return with the information, so
that he too might adore the while he purposed to slay the
infant. Sedulius vehemently brands such treachery. His
narrative of the mission of the Magi displays his love of
symbolism :

Then sped the Magi, following the light,
In heav n set, that royal Star and bright,
And kept their chosen way, where future law,
To that blest home, adoring hosts should draw.

Their Treasure, open in their hands, they bring
In fealty : this Gold for offering
Is made as gift unto the new-born King,
To God that Incense, for the Tomb that Myrrh.

Why triple gifts ? Because Hope s harbinger,
Our Faith, the triple number doth enfold,
As God doth Future, Present, Past, behold
Is always, ever hath been, will endure,
Triune for aye.

Admonished by a pure
Celestial dream, the faithful Magi spurn
The ord ring Tyrant ; and forthwith return
To Fatherland. So too if we would know
Our Holy Fatherland, to Christ when so
We come, we must no more to evil go.

The massacre of the Innocents evokes the most passionate
indignation of the poet. He questions whether a man, who
lacks justice and cannot govern his rage, can be called a king
of right. This gives us a trace of how the spirit of Christianity

THE EASTER SONG 101

fostered Freedom. Sedulius tells thus of the slaughter of
the Babes of Bethlehem, by order of Herod :

His hope undone, now raves the impious king
In raging wrath if king we call that thing
Who justice lacks nor rules his passions right.

So raves a lion, fierce from hunger s spite,
When from his jaws the tender lamb takes flight.
He rushes on the harmless flock amain
To rend, to mangle : O er the bloody plain
The air is filled with bleating cries in vain.

Thus ruthless Herod, when his prey he lost,
Let loose red Murder on the harmless host
Of Bethlem s babes.

Why die this multitude ?
Their lips, scarce oped to breathe, are choked in

blood !

Not reason, Fury rules the king, who slays
The first weak wail of Life nor slaughter stays
Till guiltless thousands fall. One fearful cry
A thousand Mothers shriek ! assails the sky.
One tears the tresses from her head one rends
Her cheeks one smites her naked chest, one
bends,

Ah, hapless Mother ! tis no mother s breast
Upon the cold lips of thy child thou st prest !

What tragic power in the contrast between the tyrant s
violence and the tender helplessness of opening life, whose
first faint cry is stifled in blood ! We see also the distraught
mothers rushing to save their babes and agonising over their
mangled bodies. Then in the last two lines, what sudden
poignant pathos !

102 THE EASTER SONG

The passage is the more noticeable as there is no special
emphasis given to a display of grief in the Gospels. St.
Matthew is the only Evangelist who mentions the massacre,
and his reference to the bereavement is only implied in a
quotation from Jeremiah, whose prophecy was then fulfilled :
" In Rama there was a voice heard, lamentation and weeping
and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and
would not be comforted because they are not."

It is probable that Sedulius had in his memory the custom
of his own nation. Lamentation for the dead, no doubt,
existed among the Greeks, as amongst the Israelites and other
peoples : but nowhere does the expression of passionate
emotion, by voice and gesture, appear to have been so intense,
so general, and so persistent as amongst the Celts. Even
to-day their wail is uplifted in "caeine" and "coronach" over
the dead, and strangers are startled at " the Irish cry." Some
have been derisive in their ignorance, not knowing that it
recalls the ancient rites of Rome, of Athens, of Troy ; and
that it echoes, through thousands of years, the Lamentation
of Rama.

The supposition that Sedulius was moved by the Celtic
spirit, here, receives distinct and remarkable support from
the fact that other Gaelic poets chose the same theme. In
the " Lebor Breac " for instance, there is a most striking poem
where one Mother after another comes forth to utter wild
laments over her babe slain at Bethlehem. No people were
so profoundly pious and none so little servile in their piety,
so free, and even so bold. The Three Mothers have told
their deep desperate anguish the fourth is made to speak
in fierce raving frenzy, calling on Christ to take her soul
as well as her son calling on " Mary of might," Mother of
God s Son : See sonless am I for thy Son are slaughtered
my mind and my sense, I am made a mad woman for want of
my son. My heart is a death froth." 1

It is remarkable that Sedulius anticipates this cry by declar-

1 See " The Mothers of Bethlehem," in Bards of the Gael and Gall,
London. T. Fisher Unwin. 1897.

THE EASTER SONG 103

ing that Christ was present and suffered himself the wounds
the victims felt. Apostrophising Herod, no monarch but a
butcher, the poet exclaims :

What were thy feelings, butcher, gazing down
From lofty tower upon the slaughtered town ?
What thrilled thee when, through all the shudd ring

sky

Despairing sounds and shrieks arose on high ?
Though absent from the slain, yet Christ was

there

Who all the dangers of His saints doth share
And feels, Himself, each blow that others bear.

We are next shown Christ, at the age of twelve, expounding
the law in the Temple ; and then, at more length, the baptism
in the Jordan, when John, who as an unborn babe had borne
testimony of Him, now salutes Him : Behold the Lamb of
God who cometh to take away the sins of the world."

With the Fast in the desert, the Temptation is described
in animated language : when the Adversary is conquered,
Shining Hosts of Angels are seen ministering to Christ. 1

Now, when twelve years of human life had

passed

He came within the Temple, and was seen
In wisdom older than the Elders ; He
Mid Masters of the Law a Master stood.
Nor did the close of Youth delay. What does
A world, flying through time, know of delay ?
Six lustres nearly, when to peaceful Jordan
He comes to get what He had come to give.

1 This is unquestionably the original of Milton s Paradise
Regained, its brevity expanded by long disputatious discourses.

104 THE EASTER SONG

Him when the Baptist from the stream beheld,
Whom he, within His mother s womb, unborn,
Had recognised, though closed as yet the prophet s
Lips, which now bore witness crying aloud :
Behold the Lamb of God, Who taketh away
The sins of the World."

That which I, not He

Had, that He takes the ill He has not done
But has undone ! As when a brilliant light
Shines through the clouds, and with its ray serene
Undimmed, drives shadows from the unharmed

face,

The Saviour thus, expelling all our faults,
Cleanses and makes each stain to disappear.

Then in the flowing stream He entered, pure,
So washed our lives contagions all away
He naught having of that He lost the torrent
Itself was cleansed by His sacred form,
Its wave made by His presence consecrate.

The elements discerned their God the Sea
Retired back toward its source the River rolled.
So sang the Prophet : " Wherefore fly, O Sea !
And Jordan thou, why draw thy waters back ?

Emerging from the water s mystic gift
He trod the strand, when lo ! the Heav ns oped
To glorify Him came the Holy Ghost
Descending as a dove (which has no gall,
Thus teaching sweetness), and from Heav n came
A Voice, saying : This is My beloved Son
In whom I am well pleased. 3 Thus is declared
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit there

THE EASTER SONG 105

One only God by threefold reason proved.

Then having borne for forty days and nights
The Fast, still with the Holy Spirit filled,
The Tempter came to Him, with art insidious
Armed, and falsely ofFring a phantom feast :
" If thou dst appear the Son of God/ he said,
" Then bid this stone to bread be sudden changed. 3

As though such marvel He did not, all days,
Perform, who to Earth s stony breast gives power
In wheaten grain to fructify, and bread
From rock creates. Then the Redeemer s voice
Repelling said : " Man doth not live by bread
Alone, but by every word of God/ 3

Stricken, the Foe new arms in venom sought
And from a mountain showed Him all the world s
Rich Kingdoms thence outspread. All these/
he said,

I give, if thou lt bow down and worship me/ 3

Perverse the speaker, and perverse the speech,
That He seek honours of frail kingdoms here
Who wins for man Eternity ! that He
Bow down to wretch unspeakable, Whose throne
O ertops the Ether, Earth His footstool is,
Whom none perceives, Whose praise high
Heaven sings !

Christ answered to the Tempter, " It is written :
Thou shalt adore the Lord thy God. Him only
Shalt thou serve/ 3

Defeated still, still he dares
With will superb, to wage the futile fray,
Thrice rising proud to be thrice thrown to earth.

106 THE EASTER SONG

For, next, above the Holy City, he
Placed Christ upon the Temple s highest peak
And said : If thou wouldst seem the Son of God
Cast thyself down, for Scripture has declared
Thou shalt go safe on angels arms upborne
Lest thou shouldst strike thy foot against a stone."
How blind a mind within how black a heart
By its own clouds obscured, to think the height
Of Temple or its lofty pinnacle
Should Him dismay, Who bow d the mighty

members

Of highest Heaven ; and, borne thro all the skies
To Earth s extreme of lowliness, descends
Who sought the low, nor did the lofty leave.
But Satan, by the true Word s glaive trans
pierced,
" Tis writ, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord

thy God,"
Fled, moaning, from the Victor s face. Then

came

All Heaven s Princes, and the Shining Hosts
Of Angels came and ministered to Christ.

Then we are made present at the choosing of the Disciples :

He chose them first from Fishers, apt to fish
For human souls, which slippery joys enmesh,
As buoyant billows that uplift the head
Then bear it down, precipitate, and dead ;
These His Disciples were, these He did teach
Of life eterne, whom windy pride of speech
Filled not, nor vanity of birth : they came

THE EASTER SONG 107

In lowly minds refulgent, and mute fame
Kindred of Heaven ! for He the Weak would

choose
To break the Mighty and the Wise confuse.

His teaching is summarised in the Lord s Prayer, which
he explains with high authority and sweetness, defining God s
sole Will and Man s good Liberty. This is a subject which
seems difficult for a poet to mould into verse, yet the exposition
which Sedulius gives has a peculiar interest and charm,
both because of its subtle strength and of the light it reflects
upon his pure and loving nature :

Now, therefore, showing swift Salvation s way,
The Judge benign His people taught to pray,
To briefly ask that they might quick obtain :
" Our Father saying ours, by baptism s gain,
His own by right : His honour thus He gave,
What He alone possessed this all might have,
Rememb ring God our Father is, in Him
We all should brothers be not through the dim
Sad bond of Flesh original, but flame
Of spiritual Fire, to end our shame-
And don the new man lest we, who have been,
Through Christ, adopted sons of that serene
High Father, fall, degenerate, terrene.

Where hallowed should He be, Who every

part

Has hallowed ? Where, unless in the pure heart !
That we might hallowed by our worship grow
He first Himself permits, and orders so
That we bless Him who blesses all below.

io8 THE EASTER SONG

His Kingdom come : that Kingdom all so fair !
Where end is none, nor Death is anywhere,
Nor changing times deplorable, nor Night
O ermasters Day ; where reigns our Prince of

Light,

And Victor Victims throng rejoicing round,
Their noble brows with crowns eternal crowned !

With constant vows, by noon, we pray, and

night,

His Will be done on Earth as in the light
Of Heaven who nor sin would have, nor fell
Assault of foe, malign, implacable :
Lest bodies now tow rd Heaven drawn, anew
Revoked on Earth, might in the thraldom rue :
Who, all things fostering with love, would even
Preserve the body with the soul twas given
One part of earth we are, and one of Heaven !

We hope the Food of Faith our daily bread
Lest that of Truth our minds be hungered,
And fast from Christ, Who feeds us with His Word
And Body : He, the Food, the Word our Lord !
How cleaves His speech delectable, which comes
More sweet than honey in the honeycombs !

We ask Forgiveness as we do not fail
Ourselves to pardon debts ; He holds us bail,
Our word, His ward more strictly bound if we
(Released ourselves) another will not free.
Should He a thousand pounds forgiving find

THE EASTER SONG 109

We nothing bate, but for a crown will grind
Some wretch ; forthwith the Judgment falls, and

cast

In dungeon dire we bide in bondage fast
Till all be paid, the uttermost and last.

Our Lord the Way of Light, of Peace the

Path-
No tempter s snare will spread, but when He

hath

Our evil left, He leaves us go who loves
The world s soft lures, its pomp and pride,

approves

Perdition s path : the Lover of all Good
Leaves him to go the downward way he would.
Let us step back, and seek ere it be late,
In heart, that rougher path which leads, though

strait,
To climes celestial through the Narrow Gate 1

If man would Evil shun, advancing, we
Must follow Good that fetters, this makes free,
This nourishes, that kills ; remoter far
Than fire from water, light from darkness, star
From Earth, from discords peace, and all
Abounding Life from the sepulchral pall,
Is Good from Evil. Lo, before the eye
Two paths, to right and left diverging, lie :
One calls the Just unto the joys above
Thy welcome, Abram ! and thy breast of love
One takes the guilty to their punishment.
God s Sole Will and good Liberty are meant

no THE EASTER SONG

That all His Flock should, wolf-escaped, keep

tryst
And live in joy amid the meads of Christ. 1

So closes the Second Book.

1 ergo agnis ouibusque Dei est haec sola voluntas
et bona libertas, euadere torua cruenti
ora lupi, vitaque frui per pascua Christi.

The last two lines are in Irish metric : they have two syllable end-
rimes (slender vowels) to wit, enti and isti, preceded by three-syllabled
inlaid rimes (broad vowels) torua and pascua. There are two con
sonants alliterations in each, t c and p c. See Appendix II.

BOOK III

THE Third Book opens with that beginning of Miracles wrought
at the Wedding-feast of Cana. Sedulius relates how Christ
deigned to be present, not to receive but to bestow food.
Having come, He wondrously changed the outpoured waters
into wine. The liquid rejoiced to dismiss its pallid hue, the
happy fluid to assume a flavour not its own. Generously
on all the tables the sweet cups blushed x with the best pure
wine, though not vine-born.

From this until its close the Book is chiefly concerned with
the miracles of the New Testament, which are related with
so much poetic skill as fidelity to the Scriptural text allows.
These need be only briefly enumerated here.

A certain nobleman besought the Lord for his dying son
and Christ, denying nothing to the Believer, not delaying his
boon, said : " Go, thy son liveth." He then passed, with
healing in His hands, through cities, towns, and countries,
hamlets, houses, and forts, curing all who were sick. One
white with leprosy, cried to Him from the crowd and was made
whole. Peter s mother-in-law at the gate of death from fever
was saved, and many another was delivered from sufferings,
whilst devils were cast out from those they tormented.

Then we come to the scene where, the poet having more

mensasque per omnes
dulcia non nato rubuerunt pocula musto.

This does not quite anticipate but it may have suggested Crashaw s
verse :

vidit et erubuit nympha pudica Deum.

The modest water saw its God and blushed.

in

ii2 THE EASTER SONG

freedom, can display more poetic power. This relates to the
sea, which Sedulius knew and loved, as we are shown not only
by this passage but also by other allusions in prose and in verse.
Referring to our Lord he writes :

He sought the sea ; His footsteps press the dry
Shore-weed, and where an oaken skiff lay nigh,
He entered His disciples followed fast
And raised the shivering sail upon the mast ;
The ship ploughed onward and with fav ring

breeze

Soon lost the land and crossed the middle seas.
But then a sudden storm the waters smote
Which surged in fury and o erleaped the boat.
Fear seized His people, deeming all was lost
They stretched their shipwrecked arms towards
the coast.

He peaceful mid the tempest slept, Who keeps
Eternal watch (because He never sleeps
Who Israel guards), so when, tumultuous,
Their terrors cry : ! Be merciful to us,
Lord, help, we perish " naught delayed His will.

The Lord arising bade the Winds be still,
The swelling Waves subsided at His word
Not even Ocean when its deeps are stirred
With fellest rage resists ; nor yet the course
Of storms careering all in furious force.

The happy Sea to Christ in homage brings
Its lofty billows down, the Tempest springs
In joy away on softly wafting wings.

This is in the spirit of one who delighted in waves and
winds. The purpose of the Book, however, commands his

THE EASTER SONG 113

attention. When Christ and His disciples had landed, there
were brought to Him in the country of the Gergesenes, two
insane men exceeding fierce (maniacs) whose violence had
caused them to be bound in chains. They were healed. The
unhappy spirit banished from them did not dare to enter a
man as Christ had assumed man s form and so he took
refuge in a wild swine, " niger, hispidus, horrens," black,
bristly, and horrid.

It is of interest to see that Sedulius, in depicting their
approach, deplores the need of restraint by fetters ; for this
is, perhaps, the first time that any deprecation of manacles
was made. Rigid restraint of the kind remained in force for
over a thousand four hundred years after his time. 1

It is a happy thing for humanity that the poet s vision sees
things in fresh lights and is not controlled by the commonplace
and customary.

Another example of that perceptive power follows. It
relates to one who, the Gospel simply says, was " sick of a
palsy, lying on a bed."

Then sought the Lord, sea-borne, another strand,
His body s birthplace, where His own command
To Him, its Father, made a Father-land,
Behold there come, a living corpse who bear,
Four men : and, on the litter lying there,
One, hardly man, alive, but void of use,
Death s Image he his prostrate limbs lie loose,
Their every service gone, and flaccid all
His joints inert and strengthless sinews fall.

1 In England, patients were still bound in fetters in Bedlam in
Newton s day, and later, Lord Shaftesbury gave an appalling picture
of them. St. Dympna, an Irish saint, was the first to arrange home life
for harmless lunatics, and still her good work survives at Gheel, in
Belgium. Provision was made in the Ancient Brehon Laws, in the
fifth century, in Ireland, for the care of lunatics, for medicinal plant
gardens, physicians, and for hospitals, which should have a stream
flowing through and a door opening to each point of the compass.

I

1 1 4 THE EASTER SONG

Within such brief compass no better description of complete
paralysis could be given, nor is there any more vivid extant.
One might deduce from this passage that Sedulius was a
physician as from others that he was a mariner, if we were to
apply to him some of the methods applied to Shakespeare
with whom, by the way, there are points of contact in that
play on ideas and words in which they both at times take
pleasure. But the fidelity of a poet s description may only
prove his possession of exceptional powers of intensive
observation. He can see not only with the bodily eye, but
with what Shakespeare named the mind s eye," and what
Sedulius long before him called the sight, the vision, the
" light of the heart."

The prayer of the ruler of the Synagogue for the restoration
of his only daughter is given in moving terms, and we have
the incident of the healing of a woman who touched the hem
of Christ s garment. On the arrival of the Redeemer at the
house of Jairus, the sound of lamentation was heard. St.
Mark mentions that Christ saw " the tumult and them that
wept and wailed greatly"; St. Matthew, that He saw "the
people and the minstrels making a noise." Sedulius, recalling
possibly similar lamentations in his native land, depicts the
scene in language which would apply even to the Celtic Ireland
of to-day :

He reached the wailing walls, the House of

Sighs, .

Where smote by doom the death-pale maiden

lies :

A trembling tumult ululates, of groans
And bitter cries, the flute funereal moans,
In weeping dirge, and frequent sound on sound
Of lamentable blows l the place confound.

1 In lamentation, the Irish Gael often smite the palms of the hands
together : this would give the plangorque frequens." Their
minstrels also played the airs of lamentation.

THE EASTER SONG 115

This is a marvellously exact description of the Irish
" caoine " the wailing dirge, with beating together of hands
and mournful music.

The maiden was recalled to life. Two blind men were
enabled again to see the light of day, and a deaf-mute made
to hear and speak.

Then the Redeemer having compassion on the multitude
sent His disciples into the harvest, first empowering them
to teach and to work miracles. Sedulius lays very noble
emphasis on the pure and selfless nature of the service that
should be given by Christ s followers :

Then that His own disciples might achieve
Like deeds, it pleased Him all full power to give :
: Go forth," He said, and to my people tell
(Enlarged not yet the House of Israel)
The Reign of Heav n ; their cruel pests expel,
Cast demons out ; and heal the leprosied ;
Call life unto the chill limbs of the dead ;
Freely receiving, give to all men free."

As though He said : ; I now confide to ye
My flock to guard. I am their Shepherd good,
And largely open all My fields for food ;
Let no man sell my sheep these pastures Mine. 3

Thus taught th Omnipotent the law divine
In apostolic ears, that thence the lore
Through after times should flow for evermore.

As from one crystal fount of Paradise
Four mighty ways of water take their rise,
And spread, diverging, all the world to bless,
Whatever be God s work not selfishness
Of man, but God-confided comes, be sure,
A pure gift, one that shall be given pure,

n6 THE EASTER SONG

As though by Stewards not by Traders held.
So David sang in canticles of eld :
1 I yet shall enter, where my hopes aspire,
My Lord s repose because I know not hire. *

Then the poet relates the healing of the withered hand in
the Synagogue, that of the blind and stammering man, and of
the woman bowed down with infirmities. Moses in the desert,
feeding his people with manna, is taken as a true prophetic
type of Christ, who, in the wilderness, multiplies the loaves
and fishes for the multitude on whom He has compassion.

We come to the time when Christ at eve, having sent His
disciples across the sea, retires apart to pray. Here the
poet gives a beautiful description vivid as a picture of the
approach of night and of the appearance of our Lord upon
the waters :

The dying Day beyond the warm blue wave
Of ocean sinks, that forth may come the grave
Pale Night, and Hesper lead her starry shades.

Leaving their Lord amongst the mountain

glades

The Tw r elve put out upon the lake, where now
The threat ning waters rock the labouring prow
And winds adverse.

As darker grows the air

The Lord walked forth upon the waters there
And trod their fluid fields ; with ripples fleet
The sea, subsiding, kissed His sacred feet.

Th amazed disciples saw the pathway o er
Ship-bearing seas : then Peter, evermore
The first to know his Lord, essayed the wave,
But, sinking in the waters, called, and clave
Unto his Master s hand, outstretched to save.

THE EASTER SONG 117

That hand his haven ! forth he moved and free
O er crystal meads, a Walker of the Sea.

Here, the raging billows change to happy ripples which
kiss His feet, in the other sea-scene the tempest did homage
by fleeing on softly wafting wings. The vessel reached the
farther shore, and the sick at Gennesaret are healed. They
depart to the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, and the beneficence
of the Redeemer is shown in healing the woman of Canaan,
then so abhorred by the Hebrews. The return to Galilee is
followed by the multiplication of the loaves and fishes to feed
the famished multitude.

Then Sedulius relates how, taking with Him three disciples,
Peter, James, and John, the Messiah retires to a high mountain
where they witness the great miracle of

THE TRANSFIGURATION

The mortal vesture, of His mother ta en
With human form, was seen to veil in vain
The Lord divine. No city on a hill
Is ever hid, none neath a bushel will
A lamp enclose, but raising let it light
With spreading beams the darkness of the night.

Upon the mount He stood, made manifest,
His Form in all ethereal Splendour drest :
Sun-bright His Glory was ; His Face excelled
The glowing Day ; His robe such Radiance held,
Its fairness far the whitest snow dispelled !

Sublimely favoured Three, who thus received
On Earth to see what Earth has not believed :
With Moses and Elias to take part
Unknown, they knew them by the seeing heart l

1 Ignotos oculis viderunt lumine cordis.

n8 THE EASTER SONG

That we, with larger faith, might henceforth learn
The first and last of all things to discern,
Alpha and Omega.

At either side

Th adoring Prophets there have testified
One entering Life, and one who never died.
All heard the Voice descending from above
Proclaim the Son and speak the Father s love.

By the prophet who never died Elias, of course, is meant.
In describing Moses as at the threshold of life, Sedulius
refers to the transference of his Soul from Limbo and the
resurrection of his body when Christ arose from the dead,
taking captivity captive.

Next we are told of the healing of one afflicted with (epi
leptic) convulsions, who fell, during his paroxysms, into fire
and water ; of the tribute, and of the take of fish when Peter,
at the Master s command, cast his hook into the water. 1

Finally comes the great lesson taught to mankind, through
the disciples who came disputing as to who should be greatest
in the Kingdom of Heaven :

Soon came disciples asking with debate
Who should in Heaven s kingdom be most great ?
Then He, as God and Doctor Wonderful,

1 Sedulius describes this with the zeal of an angler. He tells in
verse how the hook was thrown, and the fish bit the hanging line.
In his prose work he goes further : " Then," he writes, " the more
active swift inhabitant of the waves devoured the tremulous lures of
the deceiving hook and was lifted from his nocturnal element by the
whipping rod." This is a clear indication that fly-fishing was known
to Sedulius. The " tremulous lures of the deceiving hook " (tremulas
hand decipientis insidias) can mean nothing else when taken in con
junction with the epithet given to the rod from calamo flagellante
we must infer the action of whipping the water, as in fly-fishing.
This form of angling is therefore of high antiquity, and still older
writers show that the use of artificial flies was known.

THE EASTER SONG 119

Replied : " The Humble highest is : he all shall

rule

Who unto all is subject, modest, mild,
Who thinks himself the least -ev n as the child,
Whom in their midst He placed that men, made

wise,

The child-like character might recognise,
Nor years but mind regard :

The youthful heart

No pomp nor honours seeks in worldly mart,
Nor swells superb. A pure life s path though

driven

Most close to earth is yet most nigh to heaven.
For minds aspiring sink from what they seek,
The heart that would descend ascends the peak !
Behold, the Lord exalts the lowly things,
And gives them place among the mighty kings,
But casts the arrogant and haughty Great
To deeps Tartaric down, disconsolate.
Little I say His special acts to trace
Whilst meditating on His general grace. 1

1 The last two lines are not essential nor even required, and are
the more interesting because they appear to me added, in order that
Sedulius might conclude this, like each of his Books, with a distich
fashioned in Irish metric. These are his words :

Parua loquor, sifacta dei per singula Curram,
et speciale bonum, quum sit generale reuoluam.

The last words in the lines, " curram " and " reuoluam " give
perfect double-syllable vowel-rimes, and there is consonantal allitera
tion p c and s s.

There are also four inlaid two-syllable rimes ; " parua," " loquor,"
" facta," bonum," which rime also, by their vowels, with the end-
rimes, whilst " generale" and " speciale" rime in each of the four
syllables. See Appendix II.

BOOK IV

THROUGHOUT the Fourth Book, the poet continues his narration
of the miracles, partly told in the Third. It contains a wonder
ful passage, wherein Christ is shown weeping over the grave
of Lazarus His friend. The Book begins with a scene beside
the Jordan and concludes with the entrance of our Lord into
Jerusalem, amid the acclamations of the people. It opens
thus :

Beyond the placid Jordan s sands, He stood
Where, followed by a nameless multitude
Of human Ills, He, still compassionate,
The stricken healed and sent them home, elate.

For never to those hoping in His ruth
He finds it hard to give, who renders smooth
The rough, and straight the crooked ways.

In sooth

He does, Himself, what Nature does deny.
For, as the Camel through the Needle s Eye
Can never pass, even such would be the fate
Of rich men venturing the Narrow Gate
Had not the Lord of all (the Primal Cause
Who rules by law, yet uncontrolled by laws,
With whom to will is to accomplish, He
All things beholding, whom no eye may see),
Declared His power upon all things that are

120

THE EASTER SONG 121

Impossible to men, and lowered the bar

That stops the burthened Rich. For even they

Do well with riches who their riches lay

In Heaven s store, where rust shall not corrode

Nor busy moth destroy, nor their abode

Shall robbers break. Who feeds the hungered

Gives thirst to drink, receives th unshelter d head,

The naked clothes, comforts the sick, and these

In prison bound who all necessities

Helps well, will for himself his substance sure

In Heaven place : in giving to the poor,

Beneath that semblance he to Christ shall give,

So, losing, gain : and make the dead thing live.

On the way from Jericho, two blind men calling on Christ,
with loud appeal, are restored to sight ; and so giving Light
to the blind and strength to the lame He returned to Bethany.
The unfruited fig-tree is judged and condemned in precept,
not smit by malediction, as Sedulius admirably explains in his
Paschal Work, adding that the incident is not accepted
literally, for the insensible wood could not sin, but as a parable.
Whosoever is unfruitful towards God, like the barren tree
is likened to the wood for burning, whilst the Just shall flourish
like the fair Palm-tree, ever bearing leaves, and shall, like the
Cedar of Lebanon, be multiplied and reach to the stars on
high.

When He has healed one afflicted by insanity and dumbness,
our Lord accepting the invitation of the Pharisee sits down
to eat with him. Then happened that incident of the woman
who was a sinner and repentant, which Sedulius gives in a
passage of pathetic beauty :

Then one, a woman came, all blemished,
Who bowed unto the ground her humble head

122 THE EASTER SONG

And suppliant clasped His feet ; she washed them

fair

With tears incessant, and, with loosened hair
She wiped them dry ; nor ceased the while to kiss
And them with fragrant oils anoint till this
Her happy doom He spoke, whose hand still went
To heal the bruised and raise the penitent :-
Thy faith hath saved thee, Woman, go in peace."
Thus says the Lord. Confess and thou shalt

cease

The carking ill ; the great cure this, indeed :
Who hides, augments, the wounds that inward

bleed.

He fosters hurts who will not bare for cure.
Yet see how one, long sullied, is made pure,
Cleansed by the tresses, when washed clean by

tears.
One moment s grief effaces many years.

From the Synagogue of Capharnaum, where the evil
Spirit acknowledges the Lord, the poet follows to the shores
of Tyre and Sidon, tracing the benefits conferred on suffering
humanity. We are shown the Saviour, seated in Simon
Peter s boat, teaching the people who are in a crowd upon the
shore, and the marvellous draught of fishes when, after a
night s vain labour, the nets are again cast into the water at his
Lord s command. Entering Nain, they are made aware of
the death of the only son of a widow a woman twice bereaved.
There is no long delay, Love Grief s enemy bade the
youth arise, and the funeral gloom is changed to white rejoicing.
Then also the woman tormented by a demon is restored to
health.

In order that naught of the abounding harvest, from the
seed sown, should be lost, Christ called other disciples,

THE EASTER SONG 123

seventy-two in number, upright men. He sent them forth as
lambs amongst sanguinary wolves, giving them power, and
charging them to fear nothing for they should tread over
vipers, scorpions, and all power of the Enemy, and naught
should hurt them. They should not rejoice that spirits
were made subject to them, but that their names were written
in the Book of Life.

It is the law of God which gives life to the dead : for on
the cessation of pure service there is no miracle. Many have
wrought in evil ways, to whom the Almighty shall say : I
know you not, go from me, ye workers of iniquity." So, in
the time of Moses, some in Egypt, with the vain rites of
Memphis, gave signs not of God but false illusions to the
sight.

Sedulius resumes the narration of the miracles. His
reference to those suffering through different ailments are
not confined to generalities but are specifically described.
And this is done with such vivid exactness and detail, in
many instances, that the portraiture identifies the disease,
and might be cited in works of medicine. To give such
faithful pictures he must have been skilled in discerning
symptoms, and have had experience amongst the sick, sure
medical teaching, and an imagination quick to perceive how
the ailment affected the individual. A poet might say of
a dropsical patient, he was * big with unborn death, * an
ordinary observer might depict his increase in bulk, but it
required expert knowledge to detect the hidden atrophy, and
to say that turgid emaciation wastes the inflated sick." *
So also when he relates the healing of the lepers, he gives a
forcible picture of leprosy.

Blind Bartimaeus 2 by the wayside, who refuses to cease
his cries at the bidding of the crowd, until they reach the
ears of our Lord and bring him relief, is compared to one
who through the opaque silence of the night calls a friend in

1 It is evident, I think, that Sedulius had read the works of Hippo
crates and of Galen, and that he probably attended a Medical School.
1 Sedulius has Son of Timaeus, a translation of the Bar-Timaeus.

124 THE EASTER SONG

his closed house, for bread, and ceases not until he obtains
it, by insistent pleading. The incident of the Samaritan
woman who, drawing water from the well, gave Christ to
drink, suggests that He is the true Fountain of the Waters
of Life. The case of the woman taken in adultery is told in
the simple language of the evangelist.

The sightless eyes of one who was born blind, his Redeemer
anointed with native clay and bade him wash in the pool of
Siloam, and he beholds the day. Know that this miracle
is mystical, for we were all born blind ; the offspring of Eve,
and bore through long error our natal shadows ; but God,
deigning to assume human form and substance, is made
through the Virgin our Clay of Healing, which, when we are
laved in the sacred fount, sets free the cleared openings of
renascent light.

The coming to Bethany follows, and that most pathetic
passage, where the Divine Redeemer is seen weeping over the
grave of Lazarus His friend. In these lines we have the great
words, " Flebat et Omnipotens," l " He wept, the Om
nipotent," and the extremely fine and subtle explanation that
as Man He mourned through all that flesh which was itself
about to die with instinctive or innate shrinking from its
own disruption and disintegration.

He came once more to Bethany, and there
Found Lazarus, cold within the sepulchre :

Four days had closed since first the stone was

laid

O er him, now one of the decaying Dead.
His sisters wept, and all the people moan,
He wept, th* Omnipotent ! as man alone,

1 flebant germanae, fiebat populatio praesens,
flebat et Omnipotens, sed corpore non Deitate
exanimesque artus ilia pro parte dolebat
qua moriturus erat, lachrimisque implevit amicum
maiestate Deum.

THE EASTER SONG 125

Not God, through all that flesh which was to die,
He showed as friend His grief with tear and sigh,
As God his majesty.

Why, Mary, weep ?

Why, Martha, stay thy faith ? From caverned deep
Ye doubt that one may rise through Him, by whom
Unnumbered hosts of Earth shall leave the tomb ?
So when the loud Voice of the Lord was heard :
" O Lazarus, come forth/ all broken, bared,
In mighty fear fell Tartarus ; the sound
Oped all of Erebus the dark profound,
And lethal Chaos cowed.

Death s rigid law

Was broke. The Soul resumed its Home again,
The Corpse rose Living to the eyes of men
As though New-born, from out the sepulchre,
Himself His Offspring posthumous, and Heir !

This passage is characteristically Sedulian in subtle and
antithetic thought, the daring paradox in the last lines would
have delighted Shakespeare.

Immediately following this miracle we have the descrip
tion of our Lord s entry into Jerusalem :

Contemning all the passing pomp of Time
To show His power He came, not borne sublime
With mortal pomp, on chariot s flashing speed
Through rolling dust, nor set on lofty steed
With clinking collar bright, and purple fold,
And tossing head that champs the blood- wet gold.
The Ruler s pomp a lowly ass sufficed
With service slow, but nobler, bearing Christ
The burthen marvellous and not unfit

126 THE EASTER SONG

Companion of that ox which stood with it
In Bethlem worshipping.

Behold the crowd

Strew garments in the path : Hosannas loud
Arise. Ye Gentiles ! say, had ever king
On earth such glory ? palms for welcoming
With leafy boughs, and eager crowds who sing
Celestial hymns ? save Christ, our Lord alone,
Who with His Father rules from Heaven s high
throne ! x

There are two points in these verses, which may need
explanation. It seems an error to speak of collars on horses
used for riding, but the collar in question was an ornament
formed by hollow balls of silver or gold worn sometimes by
victors and their steeds, as tokens of honour. The reference
to the worshipping animals alludes to an ancient opinion.
The words of Isaiah : The ox knoweth his owner, and the
ass his master s crib ; but Israel doth not know, my people
doth not consider," were taken by some early writers as having
a mystical meaning. Hence the view that in the stable, at
Bethlehem, the ox and the ass adored the Infant Saviour.
Arevalus gives a print, taken from an old glass anaglyph in
the Museo Borgiano, which represents the stable. St. Joseph
is seated a little apart, near the feet of the half recumbent
figure of the Virgin, above whom is the infant Jesus touched

1 Sedulius, as usual, concludes this Book by two Latin lines
moulded in Irish metric, i.e. :

obuia Turba dedit ? Domino nisi cum Patre Christo,
qui regit aethereum Princeps in Principe resnum.

In the first line are two double-vowel rimes, " ino " and " isto," and three
consonantal alliterations, t p c. In the second line, besides the obvious
alliterations, r r and p p, there are three two-syllable slender rimes,
" regit," " princeps," " princip," and two other slender-broad, " eum,"
"regnum," which interlace with two in the first line, "ino" and
" Christo."

THE EASTER SONG 127

by her raised right hand. Over His head the star of the Magi
sends down a ray upon it, whilst over the head of St. Joseph
is the crescent of the chaste moon. Just above the crib on
which the infant is laid is a frame divided in two (the rack)
through which appear the quaint heads of the ox and the ass
watching over the infant Saviour, the former at His feet, the
latter at His head as destined to more noble service. This
beautiful belief, taken in connection with what is told of the
ravens and the doves in Holy Writ must have deeply impressed
the lesson of kindness to animals on the faithful followers of
the Lamb of God.

BOOK V

HAVING told in the preceding Books, how Christ came amongst
men for their deliverance, how He went about comforting
the afflicted, giving health to the sick, sight to the blind,
strength to the weak, and even life to the dead endowing
all the world with tidings of great joy the poet now proceeds
to relate the betrayal, desertion, false trial, and cruel death of
the Redeemer, His agony intensified by his foreknowledge of
Man s ingratitude. This, the last of the Books of the Easter
Song (which closes with a marvellous description of His
Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven), opens now at
the eve of the Last Passover by recalling the beneficent works
of Christ, and His preparation for the sacrifice :

Amid these gifts munificent, the eve
Of that great Day drew nigh, when He would

leave

The mortal and th undying flesh assume
Not other but the same which should illume
The plenitude of Light, and, raised on high
From the great Deeps, outshine the starry sky !

Then He : " O Father ! save me in this hour
Who in this hour for this have come. 3 In pow r
He spake : " O Father ! glorify Thy name. 3
A Voice descending from the Heavens came,
" I glorified it and will yet again

It glorify. 3

128

THE EASTER SONG 129

How manifest was then
Th excelling evidence of Heaven to men !
But no acceptance met, for some there said :
" An angel spoke " ; and some " It thundered."
O blind of eyes ! O hardest hearts of earth !
No thunder nor no angel e er gave birth
Unto its Maker, Christ, that thus it spoke
When He His Father s name did there invoke.
The Voice divine, which all the people heard
The Word acknowledging, reveals the Word !

The last lines express a very subtle thought. Christ being
the Word of God, when He is answered by a Voice from
Heaven this act reveals the Father in the Son and the Son in
the Father distinct in persons, one in Godhood.

The Passover, it may be recalled, dates from the deliverance
out of Egypt of the oppressed Nation of Israel. For four
hundred and thirty years they had sojourned amongst strangers
and their sufferings appealed to Heaven. Deaf to the demands
of Moses, enforced by many plagues, Pharaoh refused them
freedom. At last the prophet was told of God to make ready
for the day of their deliverance. The month in which this
was announced was to be the beginning of the months, the
first of the year. On the tenth day, each household should
choose out a lamb without blemish ; on the fourteenth day,
it should be killed in the evening by the assembled Israelites,
hyssop should be dipped in its blood and smitted against the
doorposts and lintels, through which none might go forth
that evening. On this night, its flesh should be roast with
fire, and eaten with bitter herbs and unleavened bread, and
the remnants consumed with fire. They should eat it in
haste, prepared for a journey, standing, their loins girded,
shoes on feet, and staff in hand ; for, upon this night the
Lord would pass over the households of the oppressed People,
signed with the blood of the lamb, and smite all the first-

K

1 3 o THE EASTER SONG

born of Egypt with death. Seven days thereafter the Israelites
should eat unleavened bread, and that day was to be kept as a
memorial through all their generations, so that when their
children should say, ; What mean you by this service ?
they should reply, " It is the sacrifice of the Lord s passover,
who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt,
when He smote the Egyptians and delivered our houses."

This, the most wonderful Commemoration of a Nation s
Deliverance and of its Gratitude was that memorial day
now to be kept for the last time by the disciples in Jerusalem
with the Messiah, of Whom the unblemished lamb was a
symbol, and Whose blood was to be shed for the deliverance
of all mankind.

On the first day of the Feast of unleavened bread the
disciples, as directed by their Master, made ready the Passover
in the Holy City, and when evening was come, Jesus sate down
with the Twelve :

Then, in remembered ways, He kept the Feast,
The Passover, and, making Him the least,
He ministered to them, their gracious Guide
Our true Exemplar- -Who, arising, tied
The girded linen ; so that, loving, He
Might first His servants serve, with office free.
Nor yet, when washing His disciples feet,
Passed Judas by, though plotting fell deceit.
But nothing, Traitor ! serves thy washing there
Of feet, whose heart is as a sepulchre ,-
Without, all fair and newly washed in white,
Within, a fetid corpse and blackest night.

His Lord knows his treason and yet gives bread to him
who is to betray the Bread of Life. At the Last Supper,
Christ ordained the two boons of His Body and His Blood,
that the faultless faithful might never know hunger nor thirst of

THE EASTER SONG 131

the soul. Then Judas, moved by an evil spirit, goes out that
he may betray his beneficent Master, the very author of his
being, Whom he had sold for thirty pieces of silver. Christ
and His disciples withdrew from Jerusalem, crossing the
brook Cedron to the Garden of Gethsemane where He was
wont to go : there He prays apart, keeping the vigil of His
agony, and comforts His disciples. Then comes the Great
Betrayal. Judas appears with the chief priests and an armed
multitude, and identifies his Lord, giving poison for honey,
betraying Him by a kiss.

Sedulius, vehement against treachery, delivers a passionate
denunciation of Judas. His verse which conveys the spirit
so characteristic of the Gael in reference to betrayers, repro
duces in Latin a metric style characteristically Celtic. 1

The narrative is resumed. We are told how Peter, who
smote off the ear of the High Priest s servant with his sword,
is admonished to put it up. The servant is healed. Christ,
whom legions of Angels would surround at a wish, did not
come to take the life of any but to lay down His own life for all.
And Peter, who declares his readiness to die for Him, is told
that, ere the cock should crow, he would thrice deny his Master.

The disciples having deserted Him, though Peter follows
at a distance, the Messiah is taken to the Palace of the High
Priest, where the Scribes and Elders are assembled :

They led Him, quite forsaken, to the hall,
Repellent, wherein Caiaphas, chief of all
The priests sat throned, and chief of all in

crime.

For he and they, devising, sought that time
To slay the Just, by witnesses forsworn :
A myriad lies fly out, a moment born,
And die inept as when the withered straw
Takes flame and flares aloft, the very law

1 See Appendix II., Irish Metrical Characteristics in Sedulian Verse.

1 32 THE EASTER SONG

That of its frailty makes a glare outflash
As sudden quenches it in sordid ash.

But when they found no way, through guile, to

pass,

Their fury rose against Him then. Alas !
What tears do hinder when I must recall
The mob s tumultuous rage, the blows, and all
Th affronts that sacrilegous hands have laid
With cruel wrongs upon that Sacred Head !

But He, all patient, did His Body make
Subject to scorn and suffering for our sake :
For of those wounds shall come our healing s fee,
And by those shameful slights we cleansed shall be,
And by those bonds are made for ever free !

As foretold, Peter, when challenged, has thrice denied
knowledge of the captive Christ when the cock crows : then
recovering his senses and recalling his fault, he goes out and
weeps bitterly ; his fault, says the poet, flees in his groans,
his offence passes away in his many tears. Bitter sighs bring
forth sweet succour.

Day comes, gloomier than the night, opening on new
crimes. But Judas, when he sees his Master condemned and
delivered bound to Pilate, casts down the price of treachery
and hangs himself. Once an Apostle, now an apostate.

To Pontius Pilate the Governor (representing the sovereign
power of Pagan Rome over the once free people of Israel)
the chief priests and elders deliver Christ, so that they may
procure His death ; in order to convict One, Whom at least
they considered their own countryman, before their alien
ruler, they servilely framed the charge that their victim had
claimed to be King of Israel.

As lamb unto the slaughter, when they brought
The patient Lord to Pilate s hall, they naught

THE EASTER SONG 133

Of evil could accuse Him, innocent :
" He saith He is a King was their complaint
True King indeed, and Falsehood judges Truth
Condemned as Crime. Nor wonder if the ruth
And rule of God the people should refuse
Barabbas now, as Baal, of old they choose,
Reject the Righteous and the Wretch excuse :
Inverting thus the beam of just award
Who death had given they to life restored
To death they doomed Life s Author and their
Lord !

In vain did Pilate wash his hands before the multitude
declaring himself innocent of the blood of the Just, when,
by his judgment, eternal Justice was outraged and the innocent
condemned to scourging and crucifixion.

When now the Holy One was given, bound,
To suffer doom, rude soldiery around
Arrayed Him in a scarlet robe, the sign
And hue of gory Death ; a Crown they twine
Of thorns and press upon His bleeding Head
Which all our sins hath borne and suffered.
In His right hand with mock they set a reed
A Sceptre, trembling, feeble, frail, indeed,
Then take the alien robe that He His own
Apparel may do on by this be known
His garb of human flesh laid down, He will
Resume once more, and bear immutable,
Undying after death when He shall rise
In fulness of His glory o er the skies.

Nor deem disparate to the Life Divine
That He, when offered mingled gall and wine,

134 THE EASTER SONG

Should taste it, but refuse : this symbol saith
That now, about to taste a time of Death,
The flesh shall shrink before its bitter breath.

The mystic symbolism of Sedulius is not anywhere better
or more beautifully shown than in the following passage
descriptive of the signification of the Crucifixion and of the
Cross :

THE PEACE OF THE CROSS

Upraised upon the spreading wood, He hath
By sacred Love displaced the rule of Wrath :
Peace of the Cross is He, 1 whose burthen there
Illumed its bond, and clothed with honour fair
The penalty of Hate its every line
By torture sanctified and blessed benign,
The Sign of Shame is made Salvation s Sign !

For who but knows the Cross we should revere
Which joyful bore the Lord : He gathered here
The symbolled Quarters of the World s great

Sphere :

The Orient shineth from His Head supreme
Beneath His feet the Vesper planets beam,
And either Pole at either hand shall seem.
All nature lives of its Creator s face
And Christ doth on the Cross the world embrace !

Beside the question of the mystic symbolism, another of
much interest arises in connection with this mode of placing
the cardinal points. Usually, as in English, men speak of
north and south, east and west ; children at school are taught
that by facing the sun at noon-day they look south, with back

1 Pax crucis ipse fuit. For original Latin verses see Irish Metrical
Characteristics in Sedulian Verse, Appendix II.

THE EASTER SONG 135

to the north, and left and right hands to the east and west
respectively.

But, the terms of the Irish language indicate quite a
different position. In Irish, the same word designates both
the right hand and the south ; the left and the north are named
alike ; whilst " behind " and " west " are identical. Hence,
the Irish faced the east : the orient was the chief or capital
point, and the northern and southern poles were indicated
by either hand. Thus the symbolism of the Cross, as given
by St. Sedulius in the fifth century, which seems strange to
modern readers, would appear quite natural and familiar to
the Irish-speaking peasant of to-day.

The poet, continuing, notes that the threefold inscription
on the Cross declares one King, and that the undivided
garment for which lots were cast, is an emblem that forbade
schism. Then he proceeds :

Now, when the Innocent they crucified,
They hung a Murderer at either side,
Thus striving by one sentence and one shame
To make the cause seem as the fate the same,
A common doom, but how unlike the cause !
These, many crimes make forfeit to the laws,
These to the world are guilty, Robbers grim,
To Him the World is guilty, saved by Him !

Nor lost He there, amidst such sufferings,
His right supreme of judgment o er all things,
Impartial, with inerrant balance weighed :
For both beholding, one is chosen made,
And one reproved. Him not ev n in death
Ferocious life forsakes, his latest breath
Assails with savage mock his loving Lord,
As when by boar a tender vine is gored.

The other, suppliant, lowers his pained eyes

136 THE EASTER SONG

Adoring Christ whom Christ did recognise,

As Shepherd gathers, in a desert wide,

His wandering sheep, and leads him by His side

Into thy vales, O Paradise, serene,

Where flowers perennial charm the grasses green,

Where pleasant fruits abound, and flowing floods

With spray of waters feed the Joy of Woods !

There is a world of poetry in the words, " nemorumque
voluptas " the joy or delight of woods ; here speaks a
heart that loved and understood them, as did the ancient
bards of the author s native land, once known as the Isle of
Woods. The Roman poets, on the other hand, seem to have
taken no pleasure in them ; at best they describe woods as
verdant and leafy, but usually as dense, dark, opaque, terrible,
full of horrors, the resort of wild beasts.

The beautiful picture of Paradise glances like a sudden
sunbeam across the gloom ; next, intensified by contrast,
come the phenomena which follow the Crucifixion. These
are described in verse that demonstrate a powerful and poetic
imagination :

Then cloud on dreadful cloud was sudden

hurled,

And Darkness terrible o erspread the World,
Funereal black the day. The sun s great light
Lay hid in shrouding gloom of mournful Night,
Obscuring all with wailing and affright.
Such aspect, God the Father s aid did give
The orphaned Elements (so they might grieve
This death) which gladdened at their Master s

birth,

For as, at birth, Light radiant shone o er earth,
It vanished when H* died, nor vanished long

THE EASTER SONG 137

A mystic sign, through space, that as the throng
Of heav nly stars lay hid three hours in gloom,
So should their Lord three days abide the tomb.
Nor did the Witness, Earth, escape unharmed,
But trembled through its depth, and, all alarmed,
Nature beheld its Author and took dread
Lest He descending Nature s stay and head
Its sequent mass should move, to Chaos led,
But Love unmeasured sought th infernal realm
To save the Lost, and not to overwhelm.

Even these signs did not convert those who had accused
Christ, for they had become as sweet wine changed to sharp
vinegar. A noble passage follows closing with the great
Apostrophe to Death.

When now the end of Agony was come,
Himself His holy Spirit from its home
Corporeal sent, to be assumed again
And live for ever which had died for Men.
The body dying, God undying rives
Returning ways from Death and Hell, whose

gyves

Lie broken : rent the rocks, and of the Just
The Souls re-animate the buried dust,-
And they arose, and from their graves came forth !

This Temple marvellous new-built on Earth
When th elder Temple witnessed, sudden, prone
Its summit falls with noise as twere a groan.
Its Veil is rent in twain : its riven breast
Reveals the inner secrets, long represt,
To future man : so Moses Veil shall fall

138 THE EASTER SONG

From off the Law, by Christ made free to all !

Where now, O Grave, thy Victory ? Where,

Death,

Thy dread sting irresistible, wherewith
Thy penal reign, insatiate of woe,
Was laid on sufFring man ? Thou didst not g
To Christ, but Christ to thee thine Overthrow !
For He alone might deathless die, Whose grasp
Upholds the world. He made not thee of Asp
And Disobedience born : lo, now at length
Thy reign is o er, and stricken all thy strength !

For when upon the Cross the Saviour died,
Wrath came and with a spear did pierce His side,
The Blood and Water from His Body flowed
Behold, three Gifts of Life on us bestowed :
That fount of water laves us with new birth,
These make us Temples of our God on earth,
Which rendered meet for that most high estate
He orders that we keep immaculate.

The Chief Priests and Pharisees seal the sepulchre and set
a watch, suspiciously fearing lest the disciples may deceive
the people by a false rumour of the Resurrection, which had
been predicted.

The sacred Treasure of His Body dead
Within the rock-hewn sepulchre was laid,
Ennobled then, but still more glorious made
When He arose.

Now craft a vigil kept

With sharp suspicion, lest, whilst others slept
His followers remove it, and might say

THE EASTER SONG 139

" He hath arisen on the destined day :
Wherefore the stone they sealed and did enclose
His resting-place with guard of watchful foes.

If after all the Cross s martyrdom,
And wounding spear and burial in the tomb
Ye, Men of Slaughter, think unfinished still
Your gory deed, and deem that He, Whose will
Brought many Souls enfranchised from the grave
Cannot His own recall then Counsel crave
For arms of guile, seal down the sepulchre,
Roll on the stone, and keep your watch a-stir.
Who shall imprison God ? before Whose

might

All matter opes Who rules the Under-night
And thunders, Sovereign, from the starry Light !
Why waste your vigils, Foes ! why strive t achieve
That proof of Faith which, proved, ye dis
believe ?

Sedulius, in treating of the Resurrection, incidentally
points out the abandonment of the Jewish Sabbath, and
describes the institution of the Lord s Day.

This mournful Sabbath past, the dawning came
Of that glad Day which draws its lofty name
From Him, the Lord who gave it, in this wise,
To see the Earth have birth, and Christ arise.

For, as the Sabbath seventh is, this Morn
Is Head of orbed Time, which now adorn
The glories of the King, Whose triumphs bright
Confirm anew its great primatial right.

At dawn, the Virgin Mother came, with her

140 THE EASTER SONG

Came other women to the Sepulchre
With fragrant spice and lamentable sighs,
When lo ! the tomb lay void before their eyes
But full of glory : on the stone rolled nigh
There sate an Angel, missioned from on high,
His Countenance shone like to light ning, bright,
And like the spotless snow his raiment white,
Whose aspect did both joy and fear inspire
For to the hostile guard it flashed as Fire,
As Light to those who wept, who learned with

faith
Their Lord had triumphed o er defeated Death !

The guards, fleeing into the City, bear the witness of
Terror to the Truth ; but, afterwards, bribed by the elders
become forsworn, pretending that the body was removed
whilst they slept. False guards ! exclaims Sedulius, criminal
custodians, if the body were taken, whose were the grave-
cloths by which the Angel sat ? Which were more swiftly
done, as theft would do to unbind all the cerements, or to
bear away the body bound ? Iniquity has lied to itself, but
here also is a symbol, for that has been removed from Israel,
which we cherish in our hearts.

Lament thy priests about to perish ; wail
Thy people for this deed, O Israel !
Thy trump shall please no more, thine oil, nor fane.
How could thy trumpet sound, whose King is

slain ?

Who thine Anointed be, who st cast the True
Anointed forth ? And with what victim sue
Whose hands the martyred Shepherd s veins
imbue ?

THE EASTER SONG 141

The Synagogue shall pass, in self-made gloom,
Christ takes His Church in happy love to
bloom.

Sedulius says that after the Resurrection, our Lord appeared
first to the Virgin-Mother, that she by whom He came on earth
might first announce His re-appearance. The recognition by
the disciples is told, and the evidence of His material presence
given, with the incident of Thomas, whose doubt they dissolve ;
for Christ, says the Paschal Work, encourages with gentle
lenity the soul taken with doubt. He desired to be known
of him the more, being the friend of the doubter. 1 Whosoever
forges fraud does not wish to be known, nor his proofs to be
called for. The simulator abhors investigating friends.

On the sea of Tiberias, Simon Peter and the other disciples
were fishing all the night, but caught nothing ; in the morning,
One is seen standing upon the shore :

To Peter, fishing vainly through the night,
He bade to cast his net upon the right
Into the waters ; forthwith, scarcely they
Could hawl the straining net s wave-wand ring

prey.

Behold a type : for thus the casting line
Shall take, in precepts of our Lord divine,
And these the Apostolic hands shall bring
From the right side to be Christ s following.

Coming to the land, Peter leaps into the water that he may
more speedily reach his Lord whom he has recognised.
There, on the shore, the disciples behold, already prepared
for them, a fire on which is laid a fish, and bread. Christ having
invited them, gives them to eat, and speaks His last recorded
words :

1 Agnitus hinc potius, quod sit amicus dubitantis, L. v. 1. 386.

143 THE EASTER SONG

Nor lacked they glowing fire upon the strand
With fish thereon, and bread ; thence understand :
The fish for water, fire the Holy Ghost
And Christ Himself the bread : in that are lost
Our primal stain, these sanctify and feed.

Then He, their Teacher and their Host indeed,
Bade His disciples to the welcome board,
And all enjoyed the good gifts of the Lord,
And knew their Christ. Their hunger o er, they
rose.

Then Peter questioned He, if more than those
He loved Him : answered Peter, * Yea," then He,
The Shepherd, loving His fair flock to see
Increase, did sheep and lambs to him confide
As to a workman, good in all and tried ;
And thrice He asked, so Peter cleansed might be
Of all the fault of his denials three.

Then taught He, saying : Peace be with you

here,

Receive My Peace : through all the Peoples bear
My quiet Peace with holy counsels spread.
Empty the Earth of ills ; one Fountain-head
Shall lave all men, and therefore shall ye call
From Earth s extremes My scattered Nations all."

Then, and lastly, with the intense reserve of extreme
reverence, Sedulius describes

THE ASCENSION

Thus having spoke His sacred will, the crest
Of Bethany He sought (with those most blest

THE EASTER SONG 143

Who might such triumph see with mortal eyes),
And thence sublimely passed into the skies
Ethereal where, at the Father s right,
He sits and rules Who, governing the height
Of Heav n, descended to the Deep profound,
And from the Deep arose.

All, standing round
Adoring, saw Him rise beyond the bars
Of cloud and tread the luminous path of stars.

His heav nly course in joyful hearts they bear
So all might learn : True Witnesses they were
By strength divine ; though much had met their

sight

They few of acts innumerable write :
For not the world could all the books confine
Were it ordained in Holy Writ to shrine
All things accomplished by our Lord divine. 1

Thus with the impressive words of St. John the Beloved
closes the Fifth and last Book of the Easter Song of Sedulius,
the First Epic of Christendom.

Compare with its serene spiritual beauty of peace and love,
Milton s scene of wrath and revenge. Plagiarising Homer s

1 Faithful to his remarkable rule, Sedulius concludes this Book
and, as it were, signs his great Epic by a couplet in Irish metric, thus :

Facta redemptoris nee Totus Cingere Mundus
sufficeret densos per Tanta volumina libros.

In the first line are three dissyllables with perfect double broad
vowel rimes, re-echoed by an interlaced riming word, " tanta," in the
second line. There are also three consonant alliterations t t c. In
the second line there are two dissyllables, with delicately varied vowel
rimes, now slender-broad densos, libros. Be it observed that the
final riming syllable is in " os," which also is found to be the final
of the First Book (and not elsewhere), a most marked Irish char
acteristic link between first and last.

144 THE EASTER SONG

account of Achilles brutal deed, who dragged dead Hector
round the walls of Troy, Milton thinks to glorify the divine
Redeemer by imputing a similar deed to Him :

Then to the Heaven of Heavens he shall ascend
With victory, triumphing through the air
Over his foes and thine ; there shall surprise
The Serpent, Prince of Air, and drag in chains
Through all his realm, and there confounded leave.

An ineffective conclusion, for the Serpent was not slain,
like Hector. Where Milton diverges from Sedulius he sinks
sadly.

APPENDICES

145

APPENDIX I

THE FIRST AND THE LAST EPIC OF
CHRISTENDOM

SECTION I

PART I

" Paradise Lost " Milton s Debt to Sedulius

IF an architect should desire to raise a great though com
posite edifice, and find materials largely at his disposal in
some ancient temple or stately mansion, what might be his
course ? Possibly he might adopt the general plan, modify it,
add wings, an underground and an overhead story with a sky
line after his manner. Then he would make use of the
materials at hand. No considerable or complete mass of
masonry taken from the old should be embedded in the new
building to declare its origin ; but it might be impossible to
replace and therefore necessary to preserve some examples of
elder art, such as a peerless portal, a noble arch, or many fine
if lesser works of sculptor, carver, or designer. These are
retained accordingly displaced, dissevered, dispersed and
built into the walls of the new edifice, amid other rich spoils,
or masses of material, shaped from the architect s own copious
quarries so that they should not conspire together against
his originality, but rather co-operate to applaud his skill.

This has been Milton s method, and his great epic is,
therefore, a great mosaic of pieces from the works of other

148 THE EASTER SONG

poets, immersed in the profuse products of his own genius.
This might pass, because he has candidly declared that he
considered it justifiable to take the goods of others, if im
proved in the taking. He did not, indeed, always improve
but sometimes in conveying marred them.

The last limit of poetic licence, however, is exceeded when
Milton distinctly states, and deliberately repeats that the
theme of his epic is wholly original, and had never previously
been attempted in prose or verse. There is nothing doubtful
in his declaration, when, in addressing the Heavenly Muse,

he writes :

I thence

Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. 1

Now, Sedulius wrote of them, both in verse and in prose !
Again, and more elaborately, he implores the Spirit, who
led the " glorious Eremite " into the wilderness to

inspire,

As thou art wont, my prompted song, else mute,
And bear through highth or depth of Nature s bounds,
With prosperous wing full summed, to tell of deeds
Above heroic, though in secret done,
And unrecorded left through many an age :
Worthy to have not remained so long unsung. 2

These statements have certainly misled his readers, and
they cannot be excused by a suggestion that Milton was un
aware of the existence of such ancient precedents, for he had
borrowed from them largely even at this moment, when the
ink of his disclaimer lay wet on the page, he was amplifying
and embellishing with ponderous orations the austere and
faithful verse of Sedulius which, thus augmented, became
Paradise Regained !

1 Paradise Lost, Book i. line 12. It is startling (and edifying) to
discover that this repudiation of plagiarism is itself a plagiarism a
direct translation from Ariosto, " Cosa, non detta in prosa mai, ne in
rima," Norman Douglas, Old Calabria, p. 170.

8 Paradise Regained, Bk. i. 1. II et seq.

APPENDIX I 149

The majestic style of Milton, notable in the word structure
of Paradise Lost, was evidently acquired from that of Sedulius,
so clearly manifested, especially in the first Book of his Easter
Song, where, explaining his high purpose and the magnificence
of his theme, he is able to give full liberty to his spiritual
fervour and his soaring genius.

At the entrance to the Second Book of the Easter Song is
the peerless Portal, where Sedulius and Milton meet, or rather
that Portal which Milton has taken, from Sedulius, and set
as a frontispiece to his own Epic. It can be compared with
that of Homer or that of Virgil, and not suffer by the com
parison.

This is a close translation of what, nearly one thousand
five hundred years ago, Sedulius wrote :

The first of Man, by ruthless serpent cast
From Eden s flowerful seat, woeful, at last
In lures of pleasant taste drank bitter death.
Nor he alone, presumptuous cause of wrath,
Fell neath the mortal law, but all of Man
The sequent race, who all in him began. 1

Milton s version, though more free, is still faithful :

Of Man s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden . . .

Expulerat primogenitum saeuissimus anguis
florigera de sede virum, blandique saporis
illecebris lethum misero potarat amarum,
nee solus meritam presumptor senserat iram
mortali sub lege iacens, sed prorsus ab ipso
humanum simul omne genus.

Carmen Paschale, Bk. ii.
The prose version begins thus :

Expulerat serpens ille nequissimus de parodist sede florigera primo
genitum dolosis artibus virum . . . (Opus Paschale, Bk. i.).

This supplied the name of Paradise, and Milton with the title of
his poem.

150 THE EASTER SONG

Besides the manifest identity of thought and form, the
peculiar term " seat " (sedes) is used by both, and in the prose
version Sedulius supplies the very name of Paradise. Follow
ing his system of displacement, Milton delays for nearly
thirty lines of invocation to mention " the infernal serpent,"
as the cause of the expulsion. The cause of his enmity to
Man, the Muse next explains, and describes, at great length,
the revolt, war, and downfall of Lucifer, and this, his
revenge.

Sedulius, with historical directness, avoids all figments.
Having marshalled the evidence in favour of the perfection of
God, he reviews, with reasoning, with ridicule, and with
compassion, Man s errors and idols :

Ah, hapless hearts of men that evermore
Shape out some foolish figment to adore,
Your Maker flee and what you make implore !
What witless folly takes the senses now,
That full-grown Man, before a bird, a cow,
Half-human hound, or twisted snake shall bow ? x

Milton has no compassion on man s errors, because he
makes these part of the infernal revenge " devils adored as
deities." But he annexes the picture from Sedulius, with
little change, but great amplification, after his manner. There
is no mistaking this :

After these appeared

A crew who, under names of old renown
Osiris, Isis, Orus and their train
With monstrous shapes and sorceries abused
Fanatic Egypt and her priests to seek
Their wandering gods disguised in brutish forms
Rather than human. 2

To fix the fact by a word (as in the case of " seat ") we
have Sedulius s mention of " transplanted gods," and Milton s
of " wandering gods." His Second, and much of his First
Book, record the proceedings of Lucifer and the fallen Angels,

1 Sedulius, Bk. i.
8 Milton, Paradise Lost, Bk. i. 1. 476 et seq.

APPENDIX I 151

with much appreciation, and their orations are reported with
such detail and apparent accuracy and at such interminable
length as to add a new and unexpected terror to Hell.

They are not altogether original : some passages and many
ideas in these speeches had appeared already, 1 and several
picturesque horrors were taken from Virgil.

Not until mid-way in his Third Book does Milton recur to
the great theme with which his First Book began the Fall
and the redemption of Man.

Sedulius keeps this theme in due prominence. Immedi
ately after the declarative opening, he proceeds :

The growing Race begins, and soon decays
With seed of ruin sown . . .

The Race doth know itself no more : by Fate
Irreparable conquered, its estate
Brought low, and through long lapsing times of strife
Nought may endure, enclosed in short ning life :
Nor Hope bring turning help, for nought could save
The future nations from the primal grave
Had not the loving Lord, forgiving all
(Lest that His handiwork a ruin fall,
And what was made His image by His breath,
Should be unlikened by the taint of Death)
Redeemed the world, and caused the fruit, which so
Set their sons teeth on edge, its pain forgo,
Where Guilt gave Death now Love would Life bestow !

The system of disseverance and scattering of the ideas and
phrases of the original is visible in what of Milton follows, as
elsewhere, but there are certain lines which seal and stamp the
loan. Thus Sedulius wrote :

Where Guilt gave Death now Love would Life bestow ! 2

Milton makes it :

So Heavenly love shall outdo Hellish hate.

P.L. Bk. iii. 1. 29%.

1 See later, Part II.

2 et unde
culpa dedit mortem pietas daret inde salutem.

Sedulius, Bk. ii. 1. 26.

152 THE EASTER SONG

Again, Sedulius wrote, addressing the Almighty :

Who hast lost Man restored, for fruit of strife
Forbid, bestown on him a higher food,
And heal d the Serpent s sting by sacred blood :
Who hast, when men (save those borne in the Ark)
Were tombed in floods of whelming waters dark
From one sole stock again the race renewed.

Milton repeats the idea, but cautiously niggles at the
number restored. The Father Almighty is supposed to
address the Divine Son, in reference to Adam :

As in him perish all men, so in thee,
As from a second root, shall be restored

As many as are restored.

P.L. Bk. iii. 1. 287.

Part of the passage, quoted above from Sedulius, with
respect to the decadence and doom of Man, is almost literally
taken over by Milton, for instance :

for nought could save
The future nations from the primal grave
Had not the loving Lord, forgiving all

*

Redeemed the world.

Milton has it :

And now without redemption all mankind
Must have been lost, adjudged to Death and Hell
By doom severe, had not the Son of God,
In whom the fulness dwells of love divine,
His dearest mediation thus renewed.

Bk. iii. 1. 222.

Another portion of this passage Milton transfers to the
mediatory speech, attributed to the Divine Son, and certainly
in an incongruous setting. It was a lofty thought that which
Sedulius expressed, when he said that the loving Lord, always
more ready to forgive than to punish, intervened because He
would not that the great Creation of His love should fall a ruin,
and that which He had made like Himself in His own image
should be made unlike to Him, marred by eternal death.

APPENDIX I 153

But it is sad to find that Milton, using this fine passage,
perverts it by venturing to attribute its use to the divine Son,
in order to persuade the Almighty that to do otherwise were to
give pleasure and triumph to the Devil and get blamed Him
self for it " without defence." Surely a miserable motive !

Or wilt thou thyself
Abolish thy creation, and unmake
For him, what for thy glory thou hast made ?
So should thy goodness and thy greatness both
Be questioned and blasphemed without defence.

The mystery of the Incarnation is told by Sedulius, and
this is an excerpt :

As from sharp thorns there springs, all soft and pure
The Rose, which doth its mother s self obscure
With honour fair, so sacred Mary came
From stock of Eve and cleansed away her shame.

Man s sullied nature in Death s empire lay
Till, through Christ s birth, new birth all Mankind may
Secure, and ancient taint put quite away.

Milton makes the Divine Father say to Christ :

Thou, therefore, whom thou only canst redeem,
Their nature also to thy nature join ;
And be thyself Man among men on Earth,
Made flesh, when time shall be, of virgin seed,
By wondrous birth ; be thou in Adam s room

His crime makes guilty all his sons ; thy merit,
Imputed, shall absolve them who renounce
Their own both righteous and unrighteous deeds,
And live in thee transplanted, and from thee
Receive new life.

Milton is always anxious lest the mercy of God should
include all mankind, and Hell be depopulated. Sedulius is
more kind and Christian.

The glory and the joy of the Incarnation is sung by
Sedulius :

What new Light to the World to Heav n what Grace !
What Splendour, when, through Mary, to our race
Came Christ with glory new, as comes again

154 THE EASTER SONG

The Bridegroom, fairer than the sons of men
His lips more sweet and graced than ever spoke !

He, Who, to save mankind, He, the divine Maker of all
things, assumed a servant s garb He, whose majesty the
Heavens and Earth could not contain :

Lo, in a manger lies, a child at rest !
And then comes the salutation :

Hail, holy Mother, thou who st borne the King

Who Heaven and Earth upholds, and everything

Embracing, is Eternal, Infinite

Thou, with a Virgin s honour, the delight

Of Motherhood hast owned : there hath not been

Thy like on earth, nor ever shall be seen,

Sole pleasing Christ, incomparable queen !

Besides that quoted, Milton has two other imitative
references : one, when the Angel comes to dine with Eve in

Eden :

On whom the Angel " Hail ! "
Bestowed the holy salutation used
Long after to blest Mary, second Eve.

Bk. v. 1. 385.

Again, when the Angel had revealed unknown things to
Adam, the latter declares that now he understands :

Why our great Expectation should be called
The Seed of Woman. Virgin Mother, hail !
High in the love of Heaven, yet from my loins
Thou shalt proceed, and from thy womb the Son
Of God most High, so God with Man unites.
Needs must the Serpent now his capital bruise
Expect with mortal pain.

Bk. xii. 1. 378.

These passages, taken from books so remote from each
other as the third, the fifth, and the twelfth, reveal how widely
Milton distributed his originals it is significant that the last
and most remote is most like the Sedulian source.

On the declaration of Christ s Atonement, to which celestial
grace Sedulius refers, Milton says there was " a shout from all
the Angels Heav n rung with jubilee." The flowers and

APPENDIX I 155

rivers of Heav n are mentioned, where with golden harps the
Sacred Song is sung, and the poet praises Christ, who shall be
the theme of his song.

Now, it is significant that these three subjects are also
together in the First Book of Sedulius. The first subject is
most modified. Sedulius implores the Athenians to abandon
their lifeless fanes and barren philosophies :

Why choose the barren, where the good vine grows,
And for grey lavender forsake the rose ? . . .

Far rather steer

O er welcome waters that will float you here
To meads delightful mid the forest s flower,
Where home is blessed by God s supernal power ;
Where sparkling streamlets animate the path
And lave the soil, that never prickle hath. 1

This is the germ-suggestion of Milton s elaborated scene
in Heaven, where the amarant, transferred from Eden,

there grows

And flowers aloft, shading the Fount of Life,
And where the River of Bliss through midst of Heaven
Rolls o er Elysian flowers her amber stream.

As regards the Sacred Song itself there can be no question
or denial : the splendid jewel is taken in its entirety, though
placed in a new setting, according to Milton s method. Its
cumulating epithets mark out the many-faceted gem.

Sedulius, beholding the efforts of Gentiles, exclaims :

Shall I though standing in the sacred choir
Where song celestial mates with David s lyre
Shall I be mute ? nor striking Judah s string
The wondrous work of Christ the Saviour sing ?

1 Again, telling the pardon and reward of the penitent thief,
Sedulius writes :

As shepherd gathers, in a desert wide,

His wandering sheep, and leads him by his side

Into thy vales, O Paradise, serene,

Where flowers perennial charm the grasses green,

Where pleasant fruits abound, and flowing floods

With spray of waters feed the Joy of Woods.

156 THE EASTER SONG

Whom all things vouch on earth, who thunders Lord
On every sense, by all the heart adored,
Who heart and sense themselves bestowed, and whom
All Nature serves !

He, by eternal doom

Supreme, and with his Father One, by right,
Apex of All, Creation s Crown, the Same in Light,
In Splendour, Virtue, Power, and Timeless Sway,
Consort of Glory, Kingship, and all Might,
In Majesty Alike ! Behold the Way
Which leads to safety and the Paschal Day I
This theme shall be my song. 1

In Milton, the Sacred Song, as he calls it, is also sung to
the Harp, now by Angels : though he disperses, dims, and
divides what should be indivisible the splendour of the
original shines irrepressibly forth :

Thee, Father, first they sung, Omnipotent,
Immutable, Immortal, Infinite,
Eternal King ; thee, Author of all being,
Fountain of light, thyself invisible . . .

***

Thee next they sang, of all creation first,
Begotten Son, Divine Similitude,
In whose conspicuous countenance, without cloud
Made visible, the Almighty Father shines.

Bk. iii. 1. 372.

Then, after a disquisition, Milton concludes the passage
in almost the very words of Sedulius slightly amplified :

Hail, Son of God, Saviour of men ! Thy name
Shall be the copious matter of my song.

Bk. iii. 1. 412.

1 These are the last six lines of Sedulius :

Cui iure perenni

Arcibus aethereis una est cum patre potestas,
Par splendor, communis apex, sociale cacumen,
Aequus honor, virtus eadem, sine tempore regnum,
Semper principium, sceptrum iuge, gloria consors,
Maiestas similis ; haec est via namque salutis,
Haec firmos ad dona gradus paschalia ducit.
Haec mihi carmen erit.

Bk. i. 1. 29.

APPENDIX I 157

The scheme of Milton s Epic, awarding great space and
importance to the war of hatred and of revenge between Hell
and Heaven, compels the author to summarise in an imaginary
discourse between the Archangel Michael and Adam the
greater and more glorious work of the Redemption. This is
related as a narrative of things about to happen in the far
future, and the interest naturally diminishes during the telling
of the lengthy tale. Even Adam wearies. 1

The plan of Sedulius, in his Epic, is quite different. He
states his case with direct dignity and avoids all figments,
whilst he summarises ancient history to explain his subject
he devotes nearly all his space and the utmost efforts of his
genius to present a real, faithful, and vivid picture of events,
incomparable on earth. Hence the interest does not diminish
but increase.

Some passages will serve to show how closely Milton
follows Sedulius, and enable the reader to compare the dis
course of his Archangel with that of the Irish poet.

This is Sedulius :

Then to the simple Shepherds in the night
The Angel Choir sang first the wonder bright
For Lamb He was and Shepherd true, of right,
The while o er Bethlehem such signs appear
The eager Magi came, and, with strange fear
Alarmed the Tyrant, ever questioning
Where in Judea was its new-born King ?
For in the East a planet shone, and far
Had led where now would shine His radiant Star.

Then sped the Magi, following the light
In heav n set, that royal Star and bright,
And kept their chosen way, where future law,

1 The Archangel noticed it, and bade him attend :

Much thou hast yet to see ; but I perceive
Thy mortal sight to fail ; objects divine
Must needs impair and weary human sense.
Henceforth what is to come I will relate ;
Thou, therefore, give due audience, and attend.

6k. xii.

158 THE EASTER SONG

To that blest home, adoring hearts should draw.

Their Treasure, open in their hands, they bring
In fealty : this Gold for offering
Is made as gift unto the new-born King,
To God that Incense, for the Tomb that Myrrh.

Why triple gifts ? Because Hope s harbinger,
Our Faith, the triple number doth enfold,
As God doth Future, Present, Past behold. 1

Thus Milton s Archangel Michael speaks :

Yet at his birth a star,

Unseen before in heaven, proclaims him come,
And guides the eastern sages, who inquire
His place, to offer incense, myrrh, and gold :
His place of birth a solemn Angel tells
To simple shepherds, keeping watch by night ;
They gladly thither haste, and by a quire
Of squadroned Angels hear his carol sung.

This might pass as a free yet close translation of the
original. It merely omits to explain the mystic meaning of
the offerings, or the tyrant s alarm, ominous of a future
Massacre of the Innocents. Sedulius describes it with hot
wrath and reprobation. Milton is silent. He is silent also,
save for a casual allusion, as to the wondrous works of Him,
Who, he declared, should be * the copious matter " of his
song, but expands lengthily and repeatedly on prickly points
of dogma and tedious repetitions.

Sedulius tells of Christ s choice of disciples, fishers first,
apt to fish for minds meshed in pleasures :

These His Disciples were, these He did teach
Of life eterne, whom windy pride of speech
Filled not, nor vanity of birth : they came
In lowly minds refulgent, and mute fame
Kindred of Heaven for He the Weak would choose
To break the Mighty and the Wise confuse.

1 The last line is a signature, which Milton borrows, and plants
in Book iii. 1. 78 :

Him God beholding from his prospect high,
Wlierein past, present, future, he beholds.

APPENDIX I 159

Milton adopts the Sedulian Prose where (quoting St. Paul)
the humble and meek of this world are contrasted with the
strong and wise,

by things deemed weak
Subverting worldly-strong, and worldly-wise
By simply meek.

Bk. xii. 1. 567.

In the Easter Song Christ explains the Lord s Prayer :

His Kingdom come : that Kingdom all so fair I
Where end is none, nor Death is anywhere,
Nor changing times deplorable, nor Night
O ermasters Day ; where reigns our Prince of Light,
And Victor Victims throng rejoicing round,
Their noble brows with crowns eternal crowned !

He distinguishes the just from the unjust, and their
rewards, but concludes that :

God s Sole will and good Liberty are meant

That all His Flock should, wolf-escaped, keep tryst

And live in joy amid the meads of Christ.

In other words, God desires the salvation of all, and gives
them free will (bona libertas) in order to achieve it. Milton s
statement of free will is fine and logical.

Christ s teaching is more fully told after the delivery from
death of the daughter of Jairus :

Then that His own disciples might achieve
Like deeds, it pleased Him all full power to give :
" Go forth," He said, " and to my people tell
(Enlarged not yet the House of Israel)
The Reign of Heav n ; their cruel pests expel,
Cast demons out ; and heal the leprosied ;
Call life unto the dull limbs of the dead ;
Freely receiving, give to all men free."

As though He said, " I now confide to ye
My flock to guard. I am their Shepherd good,
And largely open all my fields for food ;
Let no man sell my sheep these pastures Mine."

Thus taught th Omnipotent the law divine
In apostolic ears, that thence the lore

160 THE EASTER SONG

Through after times should flow for evermore.

As from one crystal fount of Paradise
Four mighty ways of water take their rise,
And spread, diverging, all the world to bless,
Whatever be God s work not selfishness
Of Man, but God- confided comes, be sure,
A pure gift, one that should be given pure,
As though by Stewards, not by Traders held.
So David sang in canticles of eld :
" I yet shall enter, where my hopes aspire,
My Lord s repose because I know not hire."

Milton takes the central fact, setting it after the Cruci
fixion :

For the Spirit,

Pours first on his Apostles, whom he sends
To evangelise the nations, then on all
Baptized, shall them with wondrous gifts endue
To speak all tongues, and do all miracles
As did their Lord before them.

Adam is informed that they shall win many in all nations,
live and die well, but be succeeded by wolves, on whose guile
there follows a long digressive disquisition.

Sedulius, after vividly relating many miracles, gives this
beautiful description of evening at sea :

The dying Day beyond the warm blue wave
Of ocean sinks, that forth may come the grave
Pale Night, and Hesper lead her starry shades. 1

Leaving their Lord amongst the mountain glades
The Twelve put out upon the lake, where now
The threat ning waters rock the labouring prow,
And winds adverse.

As darker grows the air

The Lord walked forth upon the waters there
And trod their fluid fields ; with ripples fleet
The Sea, subsiding, kissed His sacred feet.

1 These are the words of the original Latin :

iamque senescentem calidi sub caerula ponti
oceano rapiente diem, quum pallor adesset
noctis, et astriferas induceret Hesperus umbras.

APPENDIX I 161

Sedulius loved the sea, Milton did not a townsman, he
refers to it figuratively and artificially as of " jasper and liquid
pearl."

Here is how Milton adopts and adapts the beautiful passage,
omitting the sea :

Now came still Evening on, and Twilight grey
Had in her sober livery all things clad ;
.

Now glowed the firmament
With living sapphires ; Hesperus, that led
The starry host, rode brightest.

Bk. iv. 1. 598.

This, according to his system of displacement, is removed
from the picture of Christ walking on the waters to serve as
prologue to a nocturnal discourse between Adam and Eve,
where the poet, " blind yet bold," sets forth the whole duty of
wedded woman by the lips of Eve not yet marred by the
guile of the Voltairean Viper :

What thou bidd st

Unargued I obey. So God ordains :
God is thy law, thou mine : to know no more
Is woman s happiest knowledge, and her praise.

This, at least, seems Milton s very own 1 not traceable to
the more chivalrous poet.

With regard to the homage of the subsiding waters, there is
but this passage in Milton : it refers to the Flood, for he does
not love the sea, whilst Sedulius takes every opportunity to
mention it. Here, also, the homage one of fear and flight
is to the hot thirsty Sun which

Gazed hot, and of the fresh wave largely drew,
As after thirst ; which made their flowing shrink
From standing lake to tripping ebb, that stole
With soft foot towards the deep.

In the last Book of Paradise Lost the author seems a little
weary of his recital, or less interested in his subject, for whilst

But no even this was adapted from Salandra s Adamo caduto.
Douglas, Old Calabria, p. 166.

M

1 62 THE EASTER SONG

he still expatiates on the Old Testament he curtly abridges
the New. He begins, with a slight reminiscence of Dante :
" As one who, in his journey, bates at noon, though bent on
speed," so here the Archangel paused " betwixt the world
destroyed and world restored " for Adam to speak. But
Adam did not speak. Then the Archangel changed his mode
of instruction, from the mental pictures to a personal recital.
He said :

I perceive

Thy mortal sight to fail ; objects divine
Must needs impair and weary human sense.
Henceforth what is to come I will relate ;
Thou, therefore, give due audience, and attend.

Yet, at the outset he had removed the film (that came after
the Fall) and purged his visual nerve with euphrasy and rue.

In this Book of nearly 650 verses, not 50 are devoted to
the life and sacrifice of the Redeemer. This theme had from
the first been indicated as the culmination and fulfilment of all
hopes, and now is given in very brief summary.

Sedulius relates the great marvel of the Transfiguration of
Christ on the high mountain whither he went with three
chosen disciples :

The mortal vesture, of His mother ta en
With human form, was seen to veil in vain
The Lord divine. .....

Upon the mount He stood, made manifest,
His Form in all ethereal Splendour drest :
Sun-bright His Glory was, His Face excelled
The glowing Day ; His robe such Radiance held,
Its fairness far the whitest snow dispelled !

Sublimely favoured Three, who thus received
On Earth to see what Earth has not believed :
With Moses and Elias to take part
Unknown, they knew them by the seeing heart *
That we, with larger faith, might henceforth learn
The first and last of all things to discern,
Alpha and Omega.

1 Ignotos oculis viderunt lumine cordis. The Prose has it " by
the inner eyes " (" oculis interioribus ").

APPENDIX I 163

Milton is silent on this subject, but we seem to have here
the original of his address to the Father : l

Fountain of light, thyself invisible
Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sitt st
Throned inaccessible, but when thou shad st
The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud

Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear. 2

In the Fifth and last Book of the Easter Song of Sedulius,
the impressive facts are reverently told, with deep feeling,
and sometimes with evident anguish.

The poem opens at the eve of the Passover by recalling the
beneficent works of Christ, and His preparations for the
sacrifice :

Amid these gifts munificent, the eve
Of that great Day drew nigh, when He would leave
The mortal and th undying flesh assume
Not other but the same which should illume
The plenitude of Light, and, raised on high
From the great Deeps, outshine the starry sky !

Then He : " O Father ! save me in this hour
Who in this hour for this have come." In pow r
He spake : " O Father ! glorify Thy name."
A Voice descending from the Heavens came,
" I glorified it and will yet again
It glorify."

Then follow the keeping of the Passover, the washing of the
disciples feet, the Last Supper, the betrayal of Judas, the
denial of Peter, and the flight of the other disciples. With
scathing indignation the betrayal is told, whilst the desertion,
the trials, the sufferings, and the Crucifixion are recorded with

1 Book iii. 1. 375. Sedulius, Bk. iii. 1. 278.

2 The curious word skirts here represents the " robe " or
vesture, in Sedulius. It would appear, however, that Milton took
this description more from the prose Work, where is mentioned the
Supreme Light, beyond the power of mortal eyes to bear, or of mortal
mind to imagine. Sedulius says the Apostles had to fall prone.
Milton, that the seraphim in His presence covered their faces with
their wings.

164

THE EASTER SONG

very noble pathos. Having related the affronts and injuries
borne at the Hall of Caiaphas, Sedulius says :

But He, all patient, did His Body make
Subject to scorn and suff ring for our sake :
For of those wounds shall come our healing s fee,
And by those shameful slights we cleansed shall be,
And by those bonds are made for ever free.

Milton embodies this and other lessons in scattered pass
ages, and tortuous legal language, studded with qualifications.
The Archangel is made to inform Adam concerning Christ :

The Law of God exact he shall fulfil

Both by obedience and by love, though love

Alone fulfil the Law ; thy punishment .

He shall endure, by coming in the flesh

To a reproachful life and cursed death,

Proclaiming life to all who shall believe

In his redemption, and that his obedience

Imputed becomes theirs by faith his merits

To save them, not their own, though legal, works. 1

For this he shall live hated, be blasphemed,

Seized on by force, judged, and to death condemned,

A shameful and accursed, nailed to the cross

By his own nation, slain for bringing life ; 2

But to the cross he nails thy enemies.

Bk. xii. 1. 402.

Sedulius notes that, though they sought to make Christ s
fate seem that of a criminal by placing a murderer on
either side, they failed He showed His sovereign power by
acting as Judge, and by admitting the penitent to Paradise.
So different and so exalted is the aspect of the Crucifixion
presented by Sedulius where Christ is shown with arms out-

1 Elsewhere, Bk. xii. 1. 427, he qualifies this, writing : " By faith
not void of works."

2 " The mob chose to free Barabbas and not Christ " : but the
city-mob, officials, hirelings, and others were not the Hebrew Nation,
who gave Christ, His Apostles, Disciples, and reverent " multitudes,"
and who have suffered, most unjustly, for the crime of their Rulers.

Sedulius writes :

To death they doomed Life s Author and their Lord !

APPENDIX I 165

spread to embrace the whole world that one can understand
why Milton avoided it, emphasised its disgrace and hate, and
became doubly exact as to the question of qualifications.
Milton makes the crucifixion the Triumph of Hate, Sedulius
makes it the Triumph of Love. He writes :

Upraised upon the spreading wood, He hath
By sacred Love displaced the rule of Wrath :
Peace of the Cross is He. ....
The Sign of Shame is made Salvation s Sign ! * .
Which joyful bore the Lord : He gathered here
The symbolled Quarters of the World s great Sphere :
The Orient shineth from His Head supreme
Beneath His feet the Vesper planets beam,
And either Pole at either hand shall seem.
All Nature lives of its Creator s face
And Christ doth on the Cross the world embrace ! 1

Whilst Sedulius reverently describes in detail the events
which follow, Milton, taking a line or an idea here and there,
rapidly summarises pausing only to iterate and reiterate the
conditions he imposes on the Redemption. Sedulius, telling
of the Elements, which welcomed the birth of Christ by
light, now mourning His death in darkness, says the stars
being three hours so hidden indicated that He would be
three days in the tomb. Milton says the stars shall see Him
rise again. Then proceeds Sedulius :

When now the end of Agony was come,
Himself His holy Spirit from its home
Corporeal sent, to be assumed again
And live for ever which had died for Men.

Milton :

Thy ransom paid, which Man from Death redeems
His death for Man.

More is supplied from Sedulius s great apostrophe :

Where now, O Grave, thy Victory ? Where, Death,
Thy dread sting irresistible, wherewith

1 In the Jansenist crucifixes the arms of Christ were not out
spread, but set closer a significant symbol.

1 66 THE EASTER SONG

Thy penal reign, insatiate of woe,
Was laid on suff ring man ? Thou didst not go
To Christ, but Christ to thee thine Overthrow !
For He alone might deathless die, Whose grasp
Upholds the world. He made not thee of Asp
And Disobedience born : lo, now at length
Thy reign is o er, and stricken all thy strength !

Then referring to Christ s wound, and the blood and water
which flowed from it, Sedulius writes :

Behold, three Gifts of Life on us bestowed :
That fount of water laves us with new birth,
These make us Temples of our God on earth,
Which rendered meet for that most high estate,
He orders that we keep immaculate.

Thus Milton :

This godlike act
Annuls thy doom, the death thou shouldst have died,

*

Defeating Sin and Death,

*

Baptizing in the profluent stream the sign
Of washing them from guilt of sin to life
Pure.

Bk. xii. 1. 427, et seq.

Sedulius shows how the sepulchre was found a void on the
third morning

But full of glory : on the stone rolled nigh
There sate an Angel, missioned from on high
His Countenance shone like to light ning, bright,
And like the spotless snow his raiment white,
Whose aspect did both joy and fear inspire
For to the hostile guard it flashed as Fire,
As Light to those who wept, who learned with faith
Their Lord had triumphed o er defeated Death !

This Angel is more ethereal and spiritual than Milton s
Raphael in his three pairs of wings or his Michael in military

garb. Milton summarises :

So he dies,

But soon revives ; Death over him no power
Shall long usurp. Ere the third dawning light
Return, the stars of morn shall see him rise
Out of his grave, fresh as the dawning light.

APPENDIX I 167

Then Milton, still following the course of Sedulius, but
omitting or abbreviating or qualifying, writes :

Nor after resurrection shall he stay

Longer on Earth than certain times to appear

To his disciples men who in his life

Still followed him : to them shall leave in charge

To teach all nations what of him they learned

And his salvation,

All nations they shall teach

This passage immediately precedes the account of Christ s
ascension into Heaven, precisely as it does in Sedulius.
Milton proceeds :

Then to the Heaven of Heavens he shall ascend
With victory, triumphing through the air
Over his foes and thine ; there shall surprise
The Serpent, Prince of Air, and drag in chains
Through all his realm and there confounded leave ;
Then enter into glory, and resume
His seat at God s right hand, exalted high
Above all names in Heaven.

These are the faithful words of Sedulius concerning the
Last Lesson of the Saviour and His Ascension into Heaven :

Then taught He, saying : " Peace be with you here,
Receive My Peace : through all the Peoples bear
My quiet Peace with holy counsels spread.
Empty the Earth of ills ; one Fountain-head
Shall lave all men, and therefore shall ye call
From Earth s extremes My scattered Nations all."

Thus having spoke His sacred will, the crest
Of Bethany He sought (with those most blest
Who might such triumph see with mortal eyes),
And thence sublimely passed into the skies
Ethereal where, at the Father s right,
He sits and rules Who, governing the height
Of Heav n, descended to the Deep profound,
And from the Deep arose.

All, standing round

Adoring, saw Him rise beyond the bars
Of cloud and tread the luminous path of stars.

1 68 THE EASTER SONG

Here all is peace, serenity, and love, in Milton s account
wrath, revenge, and hatred his latest plagiarism is his worst :
his transference to the self-sacrificing Redeemer of the brutal
act of Achilles, who, Homer tells, dragged the body of Hector
dead round the walls of ruined Troy. It is inept also
for Hector at least was dead, here Lucifer was merely left
" confounded."

SECTION I
PART II

" Paradise Regained " Milton s Debt to Sedulius

When this version of the Easter Song was begun, my sole
motive was to make known the merits and beauty of the
ancient poet, whose work exalted our Nation, and to prove
that Ireland had produced an epic, and that the first of
Christendom. It was not until, wishing to compare Milton s
mode of treatment, that the similarity of many passages
struck me, and the identity of the great exordium. Thence,
came a strictly scientific comparison and the discovery of
Milton s method of borrowing and his deep debt to Sedulius.

Paradise Regained appeared to stand completely apart, and
the numerous interminable orations were not inviting. The
work, too, was prefaced by a solemn invocation which, whether
designedly or not, should make the reader suppose it had no
predecessor in poetry.

He bids the Spirit who led the " glorious Eremite " into the
desert to

inspire,

As thou art wont, my prompted song, else mute,
And bear through highth or depths of Nature s bounds,
With prosperous wing full summed, to tell of deeds
Above heroic, though in secret done,
And unrecorded left through many an age :
Worthy to have not remained so long unsung.

Then the poem opens by the scene at the Jordan, and the
salutation of John the Baptist. In my first version of Sedulius,

APPENDIX I 169

I had merely summarised this passage in prose. Then,
referring to Sedulius in order to compare his description of
the Baptism with Milton s, I found it demanded a full
translation for this astonishing reason :

Here was and is the sketch-model of Paradise Regained !
Here are the very foundations and all the more essential
elements of that poem ! It lacks only the long-winded
speeches of the Devil, and that is a fortunate failure.

For consider the structure of Milton s work. It may be
compared to one of those old " cage- work " houses, built in a
frame-work of artistically shaped and carved oak, of which the
empty interspaces were filled with stone, brick, and mortar,
sometimes with clay or mud. The framework seems least in
bulk, but most in beauty. So it is with respect to the Sedulian
framework, and the Miltonic orations.

Just consider the case :

The First Book contains 500 verses, of which 446 are
speeches.

The Second Book contains 486 verses of which 408 are
speeches.

The Third Book contains 443 verses of which 434 are
speeches.

The Fourth Book contains 639 verses of which 452 are
speeches.

Note also this remarkable, if monotonous, and overwhelm
ing fact :

Satan s speeches occupy more than half of every one of the
first three Books, because he speaks in succession 261, 265,
290 verses. In the last Book only (being closured) he falls
below the half but rises above one-third, so, at examination, he
" compensates," excelling all epic records of elongated oratory i

Milton, in annexing the work of Sedulius, is true to his old
method of dissevering and amplifying and dispersing his
extracts, which was a wise if not a candid system. Here
Sedulius proceeds historically, relating incidents of Christ s
childhood before the Baptism : Milton inverts this, begins

170 THE EASTER SONG

with the Baptism, and inserts those incidents later. Thus
Sedulius :

Now, when twelve years of human life had passed
He came within the Temple, and was seen
In wisdom older than the Elders ; He
Mid Masters of the Law a Master stood.

Milton reserves this for about 200 verses, and then intro
duces it, somewhat expanded, into what purports to be
Christ s meditation in the Wilderness, with loss of delicacy,
for what was praise in Sedulius, appears as self-commendation
in Milton, thus :

Therefore, above my years,

The Law of God I read, and found it sweet ;

Made it my whole delight, and in it grew

To such perfection that, ere yet my age

Had measured twice six years, at our great Feast

I went into the Temple, there to hear

The teachers of our Law, and to propose

What might improve my knowledge, or their own,

And was admired by all.

A comparison of the descriptions of Baptism in the Jordan
is most instructive, and, perhaps, edifying. Sedulius wrote it
in verse, of which what follows is a close version :

Nor did the close of Youth delay. What does
A world, flying through time, know of delay ?
Six lustres nearly, when to peaceful Jordan
He comes to get what He had come to give.
Him when the Baptist from the stream beheld,
Whom he, within His mother s womb, unborn,
Had recognised, though closed as yet the prophet s
Lips, which now bore witness crying aloud :
" Behold the Lamb of God, Who taketh away
The sins of the World."

Then in the flowing stream He entered, pure,
So washed our lives contagions all away
He naught having of that He lost the torrent
Itself was cleansed by His sacred form,
Its wave made by His presence consecrate.

The elements discerned their God the Sea
Retired back toward its source the River rolled.

APPENDIX I 171

So sang the Prophet : " Wherefore fly, O Sea !
And Jordan thou, why draw thy waters back ?

Emerging from the water s mystic gift
He trod the strand, when lo ! the Heav ns oped
To glorify Him came the Holy Ghost
Descending as a Dove (which has no gall,
Thus teaching sweetness), and from Heav n came
A Voice, saying : " This is My beloved Son
In whom I am well pleased." Thus is declared
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit there
One only God by threefold reason proved.

Milton writes :

To his great baptism flocked
With awe the regions round, and with them came
From Nazareth the son of Joseph deemed
To the flood Jordan came as then obscure,
Unmarked, unknown. But him the Baptist soon
Descried, divinely warned, and witness bore
As to his worthier, and would have resigned
To him his heavenly office. Nor was long
His witness unconfirmed ; on him baptized
Heaven opened, and in likeness of a dove
The Spirit descended, while the Father s voice
From Heaven pronounced him his beloved Son.

Satan, roving about, is said to hear this, and hurry off to
call a Council, and relate the scene, in which relation some
points, omitted above from Sedulius, are now reported, for
instance, the flood Jordan is now the " consecrated stream,"
the rising from the water, which he had entered " pure."

Satan speaks.

All come,

And he himself among them was baptized
Not thence to be more pure, but to receive
The testimony of Heaven.

I saw

The Prophet do him reverence ; on him, rising
Out of the water, Heaven above the clouds
Unfold her crystal doors ; thence on his head
A perfect dove descend (whate er it meant) ;
And out of Heaven the sovran voice I heard,
This is my Son beloved in him am pleased."

Bk. i. 1. 75.

c<

172 THE EASTER SONG

Sedulius proceeds in sincere gospel-fashion to tell the retire
ment into the desert and the Temptation. Milton follows the
same course, but dramatises. Satan calls a Council where he
alone speaks, and his purpose is approved. In heaven, the
Most High, with a smile, relates this futile purpose to the angels.

Sedulius proceeds :

Then having borne for forty days and nights
The Fast, still with the Holy Spirit filled,
The Tempter came to Him, with art insidious
Armed, and falsely ofPring a phantom feast :
" If thou dst appear the Son of God," he said,
" Then bid this stone to bread be sudden changed."

Milton develops and amplifies this. Thirty verses are
given to a minute menu of the Feast fish, flesh, game, roast,
boiled, grilled, steamed, and so forth.

Sedulius treats, with high scorn, the Tempter s proposed
test to Christ :

As though such marvel He did not, all days,
Perform, who to Earth s stony breast gives power
In wheaten grain to fructify, and bread
From rock creates.

Take another example. Sedulius writes of Satan :

Stricken, the Foe new arms in venom sought,
And from a mountain showed Him all the world s
Rich Kingdoms thence outspread. " All these," he said,
I give, if thou lt bow down and worship me."

Perverse the speaker, and perverse the speech,
That He seek honours of frail kingdoms here
Who wins for man Eternity ! that He
Bow down to wretch unspeakable, Whoee throne
O ertops the Ether, Earth His footstool is,
Whom none perceives, Whose praise high Heaven sings !

Christ answered to the Tempter, " It is written :
Thou shalt adore the Lord thy God. Him only
Shalt thou serve."

In Milton the perplexed and troubled Tempter tries a new
fraud, and from a mountain shows Him Rome and the World,

APPENDIX I 173

with geographical and political disquisitions, and offers them
conditionally :

" All these, which in a moment thou behold st,

The kingdoms of the world, to thee I give

(For, given to me, I give to whom I please),

No trifle ; yet with this reserve, not else

On this condition, if thou wilt fall down,

And worship me as thy superior lord

(Easily done), and hold them all of me ;

For what can less so great a gift deserve ? >:

Whom thus our Saviour answered with disdain :

" I never liked thy talk, thy offers less ;

Now both abhor, since thou hast dared to utter

The abominable terms, impious condition.

But I endure the time, till which expired

Thou hast permission over me. It is written,

The first of all commandments, Thou shalt worship

The Lord thy God, and only Him shalt serve.

That sufficed for Satan of old, but Milton thought it
required some seventeen other scolding verses of his own
facture, and the Tempter was not dismayed, but remained
and delivered an elegant disquisition on Athenian Art, elo
quence, hospitality, music, and the different philosophic
schools, the Academic, the Peripatetic, the Epicurean, and the
Stoic !

Now comes the last Temptation, thus told by Sedulius :

Defeated still, still he dares
With will superb, to wage the futile fray,
Thrice rising proud to be thrice thrown to earth.
For, next, above the Holy City, he
Placed Christ upon the Temple s highest peak
And said : "If thou wouldst seem the Son of God
Cast thyself down, for Scripture has declared
Thou shalt go safe on angels arms upborne
Lest thou shouldst strike thy foot against a stone."

But Satan, by the true Word s point transpierced,
" Tis writ, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God,"
Fled, moaning, from the Victor s face. Then came
All Heaven s Princes, and the Shining Hosts
Of Angels came and ministered to Christ.

174 THE EASTER SONG

Milton, after a description, proceeds :

There, on the highest pinnacle, he set

The Son of God, and added thus in scorn :

" There stand, if thou wilt stand ; to stand upright
Will ask thee skill. I to thy Father s house
Have brought thee, and highest placed : highest is best.
Now show thy progeny ; if not to stand,
Cast thyself down. Safely, if Son of God ;
For it is written, He will give command
Concerning thee to his Angels ; in their hands
They shall uplift thee, lest at any time
Thou chance to dash thy foot against a stone.

To whom thus Jesus : " Also it is written,
Tempt not the Lord thy God. He said, and stood ;
But Satan, smitten with amazement, fell.

So Satan fell ; and straight a fiery globe
Of Angels on full sail of wing flew nigh,
Who on their plumy vans received Him soft
From his uneasy station, and upbore
As on a floating couch, through the blithe air.

Then there was a banquet, for, after the manner of his
Nation, Milton apparently loved a banquet and gives us
three : one in the Garden of Eden, with Eve, an Angel (and
real fruit), another here, with * a table of celestial food
divine," with "ambrosial fruits," and ambrosial drinks,"
and, surpassing all, that phantom feast, provided by the
Tempter, under a shading tree :

A table richly spread in regal mode,
With dishes piled and meats of noblest sort
And savour beasts of chase, or fowl of game,
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled,
Grisamber-steamed x ; all fish, from sea or shore,
Freshet or purling brook, of shell or fin,
And exquisitest name, for which was drained
Pontus, and Lucrine Bay, and Afric coast.

There was also " a stately sideboard " for the wines !
It is acknowledged that Paradise Regained is a failure, and
several reasons are obvious and have been stated. One, which

1 Steamed ambergris.

APPENDIX I 175

I consider the most important, was unknown, and that is that
Milton had found but one precedent, and consequently had to
fill out the simple and sufficient structure of Sedulius with
interminable speeches, of which Satan s alone formed more
than half the poem.

SECTION II

PART I

Milton s Debt to Dracontius

If for Paradise Regained Milton had no precursor but
Sedulius, he had several beside him for Paradise Lost, and he
made copious use of them, unabashed and undetected. The
noble and stately Sedulian structure was to be decorated, and
a composite edifice formed, with vivid but suitable ornaments
and additions. Virgil supplied the Titanic battle-pictures.
For most of the scenes concerned with the Creation and the
early history of Man, and those especially which we most
admire, they were taken, without acknowledgment, from
three Christian Latin poets of the close of the fifth century,
Dracontius, Victor, and Avitus.

Dracontius, 1 first in point of time, but not in genius, dwelt
in Carthage, 2 a lawyer and poet, who, having satirised the
rapacity of the Vandals, was imprisoned by their King Gul-
thamundus (Gonthamond), and there, appeals being vain, he
gave his mind to spiritual things, and wrote his Hexaemeron, or
the Six Days of the Creation. He describes the great good
ness of God and the exquisite beauties of Nature especially
shown in Paradise, which he calls " hortus Dei " the Garden
of God. His description of the trees and flowers is rather
general, but he notes the variety of colours and the many
fragrant odours, and his pictures of birds are characteristic

1 Blossius Aemilius Dracontius. The Vandal king reigned, it is
stated, from 484 to 496, so that this poem was not written until fifty
years after that of Sedulius.

2 Some call him a native, but the Pisa edition names him
" Toletanus."

176

THE EASTER SONG

and charming. Brightness and Light command his homage
in a peculiar degree, probably because he was a prisoner.
Milton also was a prisoner to darkness in his later days, so
naturally he appreciated, admired, and imitated the intense
and enthusiastic Apostrophe to Light, with which Dracontius
begins his poem. But here Milton more than redeems his
debt by his nobly pathetic reference to his own blindness.

APOSTROPHE TO LIGHT

Light is primal Day the sole death of Darkness, 1
Light, sent ere the sky, Light, the cause of Day,
Light, ether s brilliance, Night s limit, Light,
Light, aspect of elements and all things,
Light, the vigour of all, Light, the Sun s glory,
Light, the stars grace, Light, the Moon s golden horn,
Light, splendour of Heav n, Light, the World s first Law,
Light, flash of Flame, Light, Dial of great Time,
Light, prize of Tillage, Light, rest of the Sick,
Light, first act of God, Light, candour of Souls,
Light, bound of seasons, Light, boundless, eternal,
Which first the world s well-builded order showed.

All bright is God, the author immutable,
Whom densest cloud can ne er in aught obscure,
From whom no deed of darkness lurks concealed,
The Fount of Light, Who first enlightened all,
Who sent Life s herald Light into the world
With precedence o er all the works to come,
Which showed the Sun s path, whose resplendent beams
He bade shine o er the new created orb.

This is Milton s Apostrophe :

Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born !
Or of the Eternal co-eternal beam,
May I express thee unblamed ? Since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from eternity dwelt then in thee
Bright effluence of bright essence increate !

1 Prima dies lux est tetris mors una tenebris,
Lux datur ante polum, lux clari causa diei,
Lux iubar aethereum, lux noctis limes et umbrae,
Lux facies rebus cunctis, lux elementis, etc.

Dracontius, liber i.

APPENDIX I 177

Or hear st thou rather pure Ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell ? Before the Sun,
Before the Heavens, thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest
The rising World of waters dark and deep
Won from the void and formless Infinite !

MILTON, P.L. Bk. iii. 1. i et seq.

SECTION II

PART II

Milton s Debt to Victor

Claudius Marius Victor was born in Provence, and died
about 450, twenty years after the publication of the Easter
Song of Sedulius. He was a man of fine culture, high
imagination, distinguished style, and virile character. His
poem must have been a gold mine to Milton, who has not
attained in his work so perfect and beautiful a description of
Paradise, and whose portrayal of Adam s conduct (where not
borrowed) is weak and puerile compared with the pathetic
and noble portrait set before us by Marius Victor.

In the following passages, the reader will find full evidence
for this judgment.

Here are close versions of the originals, which Milton had
before him, when describing the beauties of Paradise, its loss
and the banishment of Adam and Eve, their exile, despair,
desire for death, and repentance. First then we have this
vivid picture of the loveliness of the Garden of God on
Earth. 1

PARADISE

Eastward lies a happy rich recess, fairest
Of Earth Paradise of pleasant woods

1 Dracontius calls Paradise : " Hortus in orbe Dei, cunctis felicior
hortis the Garden of God on earth, more delightful than all gardens "
which Milton renders : " blissful Paradise of God the garden was, *
Bk. iv. 1. 208.

N

178 THE EASTER SONG

Displays the beauty of its cluster d trees. 1

Here shines the sun with equal rays serene

At all times tempered by the gentle Spring.

Here stand the trees, rich in their hanging fruit,

Where to sweet apples sweeter still succeed,

Whose grateful juice gives mind and member strength,

With fragrance and with flavours doubly fed.

Here glows the varied land with starry hues,

And still brings forth new flowers and novel fruit :

Here breath of cinnamon delights the air

And scents ambrosial melt the slender reeds.

Not such the Mede perfumes, nor thy loose hair

Achaemenius, 2 nor yet Assyrian

Zedoair, nor Mareotic spikenard

Of shrub Sabaean, soft Tarnessid twig

Or plant of Palestine the fragrant tears. 3

All these thou dst fancy, in one garden grown

God gathered here what Nature knew apart.

And when soft zephyrs gently stirred the groves
From all the blended scents one Nectar breathed !
Hence new delight : for when the swaying boughs
Set all their leaves a-tremble, the great Woods
Sounded a Hymn to God, the breeze attuned

1 Compare Milton :

Thus was this place,

A happy rural seat of various view :

Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm ;

Others whose fruit, burnished with golden rind,

Hung amiable Hesperian fables true,

If true, here only and of delicious taste.

Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose, etc.
1 Achaemenius, synonym of Persian (after its King Achaemenes).
Mareotis, a lake near Alexandria in Egypt. Sabaea means Arabia
felix, " Araby the Blest. * Milton takes " Sabean odours," etc., and
generously robs the gardens of Victor and Avitus.

3 Milton imitates this elegant digression, and apparently got his
love for digressions in these writers, but makes them lengthy. Here

his digression begins :

Not that fair field

Of Enna, where Proserpin gathered flowers,
Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis
Was gathered . . .

nor that Nyseian isle,
Nor where Abassin kings . . .

Bk. iv. 1. 268.

APPENDIX I 179

The Songs of Praise, nor shook the air in vain *
For tis not thinkable that He Who, binding
Each thing to each by law, keeps all in one,
Should aught have reckless or have useless made,
And of His works how fair this evidence
Of thrilling forest tree and whispering woods !

Nor doubt that ere the Primal Parents fall
Here pitched their tents and here together dwelt
Glory, Candour, Grace, Wisdom, and pure Love,
Truth, Prudence, Peace, and Thought sublime, Ideals
Of the Soul, with Virtue all resplendent ! 2

Whate er on Earth s most beautiful is there.
But why should I, with failing words, desire
To number gifts so manifold and great ?
Enough, that tis of faith here from glad seed
Sprang up the Tree of Life with fruit on high
And there, diverse, harm-bearing fruit of Knowledge
Hung down, dependent, from the Tree of Law.

Within the bosom of the sacred wood
A Fountain flowed which nobly dow red its young : *
From it, four-cleft, four mighty rivers run.

1 This splendid passage is thus reduced in Milton :

Airs, vernal airs,

Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune
The trembling leaves . . .

2 Milton adopts this description of the Primal Parents :

For in their looks divine,
The image of their glorious Maker shone,
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure.

Bk. iv. 1. 291.

3 Milton s plan of dissevering his original makes his description
very confusing. Taking the Tigris for model, he says it passed
through the shaggy hill, underneath ingulfed, then, up-drawn through
porous veins by thirst, arose a fresh fountain which " with many a
rill watered the garden ; thence united fell and met the nether flood,
which from his darksome passage now appears." Thence the poet is
more faithful :

And now, divided into four main streams,
Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm
And country whereof here needs no account ;
But rather to tell how, if Art could tell
How, from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks,
Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold,

i8o THE EASTER SONG

Richer than ocean, it pours down its floods
Into the deep, which, unswoln, all receives :
Yet less is that which, unswoln, takes the torrents
Than that which gives, with undiminished force.

First of the rivers from the Fountain Blest
Phison exulting hastes with Eden gifts
For Gangic nations and dry Indian lands ;
It, rolling seed and soil, makes labour fruitful
And rude strands sparkle with bright gleams of gold J
Here glows the ruddy Ruby s lightning fire
And here the Emerald s flash of lucid green.

Nor less is Geon, a more placid river
That lifts Nile- waters, and the scorching plains
Protects with pious flood, foiling the skies
It tempers Aethiop with spreading lakes.

Third, Tigris hastes through rough rugged rapids,
Euphrates comrade whose united mass
Earth swallowed first, in hollow cavern hid,
Till in Armenia and Median Tempe
No more restraining, it casts forth the streams.
Then Tigris spurning its deep dark Avernus
Leaps, with mightier motion, through the air,
Till caught in cave again, more strong by hindrance,
It rages, and with waters multiplied
It bursts more fiercely from its dungeon dark
Cutting its course through the Assyrian plain.

Euphrates, gentler, wide, with fertile flood,
Waters its subject Persia s dusty fields,
With softly flowing streams, alike for all
It serves, and lends to man whole-hearted help
Until the drought when, prodigal, it spends
On land itself which to the sea was due.

Here, then, were Nature s Empires all, in germ,
With all the Virtues, and Delights endowed,
The first Possession of the First of Man.

With mazy error under pendent shades
Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed
Flowers worthy of Paradise.

Milton in excusing himself from telling their course through many
famous realms betrays his knowledge of Victor s poem, and more
obviously by substituting " orient pearl and sands of gold," for
strands, sparkling with gold, rubies, and emeralds an unhappy change,
as " orient pearls " are not rolled on by rivers, and suggest molluscs.

APPENDIX I 181

BANISHED

The sorrow of the Primal Parents on their banishment
from Paradise is told by Marius Victor with keenest sym
pathy and understanding and poignant pathos. Milton
annexes much, but the ignominious expulsion is (or seems)
his own. He shows the " hastening Angel," catching them
by either hand, and hurrying them through the gate and down
the cliff (like a constable). They looked back, and their
last sight of Eden is of a Flaming Sword and

the gate

With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms ;
Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon.

Victor writes :

Till now the secrets of the World s creation,
As candid Faith reveals, I ve truly traced,
Whilst yet the happy Earth lacked taint of Death ;
Now ways of Men and mortal things I tell
Grant, God Omnipotent, thy poet power !

When, forced to leave their hallowed home and kingdom, 1

1 Milton gives Adam s anticipatory farewell thus :
Departure from this happy place, our sweet
Recess, and only consolation left
Familiar to our eyes ; all places else
Inhospitable appear, and desolate,
Not knowing us, nor known.

Bk. xi. 1. 303.

In Eve s farewell, Milton is still more influenced by Victor :
O unexpected stroke, worse than of Death !
Must I leave thee, Paradise ? thus leave
Thee, native soil ? these happy walks and shades,
Fit haunt of Gods, where I had hoped to spend,
Quiet, though sad, the respite of that day
That must be mortal to us both ? O flowers
That never will in other climate grow,
My early visitation, and my last
At even, which I bred up with tender hand
From the first opening bud, and gave ye names,
Who now shall rear ye to the Sun, or rank
Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial fount ?

Bk. xi. 1. 268.

1 82 THE EASTER SONG

They reached the frontier of their Native Land
And place of Exile with what stricken looks,
Appalled, they saw the barb rous field of work !

There bloomed no verdant trees of varied fruit,
Nor fost ring soil appeared, but a mixed mass
Of dense and heavy bulk, thrust forth, confused,
Rocks rugged rose, and gloomy forests frowned,
O er grassless plains, bristling with horrid thorns.

Ah, what a scene for eyes, for hearts, to see
In which dwelt Paradise and all its beauty !
What sorrow neath the burthen of all woes !
This miserable wide waste after thy
Delights, O Paradise ! thy pleasant gladness
Thy smiling glades, whose fleeting phantom Presence
Is ever here whose Image wounds the soul !

Now thy woods shine with yet serener splendour
And all the wealth of thy lost blessed groves !
Now sweeter still thy fruit as nectar seems !
Now Earth breathes fragrance from thy living flowers

Alas, the sorrow of these odours fled ! "

In this refined and most touching part, Victor reveals
himself a psychologist of fine perception. His narrative is
followed throughout by Milton, who, whilst imitating,
amplifies, and in some cases coarsens. Victor makes Adam,
unconquered in fair fight, resent Satan s foul deception of his
wife, an unsuspecting woman. Milton annexes the project
of death, and the noble repentance.

Victor proceeds :

" O tis not thus Thou, Paradise ! repayest,
Whose joys make every scene more darkly drear !
Now perishes fair love of Life now bleakness
Suggests twere sweet to die ; lest greater want
Wreak greater woe, for now Earth s very bowels
Are famished, forests yield but barren banquets
And we must wrench malignant roots for food. *

Whilst lacking all things, helpless and forlorn,
Despair taught them to hope their Father s help ;
Prostrate on the ground in tears and in mute
Grief, which banished words, then they solace sought,
And shame their accents querulous subdued ;
But when the gift of gentle speech returned
Arising both, thus Adam suppliant prayed :

APPENDIX I 183

ADAM S PRAYER

" Omnipotent, Author of all, Creator
Of this World ! fallen and by fault insensate,
I, happy once, whilst life itself should last,
Could follow the swift Spirits o er the stars
With vision clear and over all diffused.
Those eyes, which then discerned thy mysteries,
Why have I them no more, 1 or else so minished,
So dimmed by darkness of this earthy prison,
That now I naught of True discern, but flitting
Mortal things, and a world still growing worse ?

And therefore, Thou, Omnipotent, who art
All everywhere, to Thee we fly to Thee
With trembling minds we pray, hear us, unhappy,
Thou who see-est all, Thou who always hearest !

When he, the world s most unrelenting foe,
The Head of 111, desired me with the damned
To link, naught as himself he tried, nor captive
Conquered, but warring on my spouse, a woman,
He gave this wound, achieving our betrayal
By fraud most foul and unforeseen deceit.

Since I, for my offence, am justly doomed,
Stricken with grief I do my fault acknowledge,
I offer me, of me, a sacrifice.
All tears, all murmurings, I put away,
Embracing the sweet solace of my doom
Accepting this too, with all sacred gifts,
In expiation of my sin, nor refusing
What toil Thou mayest add, and if it please Thee,
Best Judge ! hear no prayer against Thy sentence,
Though we with tears and sobbing voices pray
That Thy decision be in aught relaxed.

1 This fine and great idea is annexed by Milton, but merely
presented in this form ; where all the deep pathos is lost :

Michael from Adam s eyes the film removed

Which that false fruit that promised clearer sight

Had bred ; then purged with euphrasy and rue

The visual nerve, for he had much to see,

And from the well of life three drops instilled, (xi. 412.)

Euphrasia or Eye-bright and Rue were both medicinal for dim
sight, the former especially. Rosemary was similarly used to
strengthen the memory.

1 84 THE EASTER SONG

So shall Thy sentence in full force remain.

Thou st ordered me seek food in fallow glebe,
Grain in watered briars, in thistles fruit ;
Hence it shall be done, nor for labour fail.
Give but to know the grain, and how to harvest,
What be the fruitful plants, what forms of labour-
Father Compassionate, help. Teach us to work !
Then, contented and certain of salvation
Eve shall assist me, and taught by fate severe
Shall bear a Race who, suffering by our fault,
Shall, purified of stain, bequeath this Doom
As an eternal Heirloom of the Dead."

The while they prayed by little signs was seen
The shadowy serpent twining through the grass
In sinuous supple folds and silent fear
Crawling to hidden paths, accurst and vile,
Who drew upon them wrath and direst grief.

Then Eve to Adam : " If thee the cause of all
Our Ills can move, take stones, thou now hast power
To give Death s author death ; expert and apt
By his own tortures and by cruel death
Teach him tis sad to die, who me and thee
Destroyed." She said. Their stony missiles flew
Hurtling the rocky ground, where hid the snake.
It chanced that one fierce-thrown, from naked flint
Rebounding, struck sparks, the dry withered grass
Broke into flame, the rapid burning ran,
And soon the forest shone a flashing fire ! x

Astounded, trembling, seeking where to hide,
Amazement held them fast, and threw all prudence
To the unusual flames, which to see
They wished and turning watched some space apart,
Wond ring as from the soil black tresses fell
And day was darkened by the forest fumes,
But most to see the whole land now resplendent
Shine radiant with new light beneath the sun !

Not unafraid they heard the crackling clangour
Of gleaming groves, or saw the glowing globes
Of swaying flame rise upward to the stars ;

1 Milton adopts this where he makes Eve suggest they might get
fire by reflecting sunbeams on dry matter or by collision of two
bodies grind " the air attrite to fire, as lightning "

Kindles the gummy bark of fir or pine. Bk. x.

APPENDIX I 185

Or yet the eating fire force down its roots
Where, conquered by absorbing heat, the Earth
Oped all its veins before the generous warmth,
And, yielding all its fluids, now became
Fluid itself, and soon in streamy metals
Flowed : hence in high honour gleamed yellow gold,
And white as milk the shining silver glittered,
Hard brass dissolved and moved in masses molten. 1

What of the flaming forest yet remains
Its ashes show ring through the dark obscure.
Thus arid Aetna, when with forge broke loose
It pours forth strident sulphur blent with flame,
And then the ground, with roasted glebe enriched
Quickens with new growths, and by fertile rains
Brings forth the swelling crops, and sees elate
The happy harvests undulating ears,
Revealing many kinds as yet unknown
That were not long before they welcome were.

No fate with courage fails. God gave us light
To know all good things, in a lesser world.
What greater is, to see by sacred reason
That if man s given mind remained, unstirred,*
Not apt to err, then neither his own kind
Would it delight, nor varied forms of things,
Nor numbering sands, nor mode of stars on high,
Nor what the outspread space and depth of Earth
Or measured mass, nor what melodious voice
Shall mate the harmony of sevenfold spheres,
Nor aught that we from usage learn, or that
Assiduous studies teach, though use and art
Alike from God, the Ever Giver, come !

1 Milton tells of the early metal worker, who

at the forge

Labouring, two massy clods of iron and brass
Had melted (whether found where casual fire
Had wasted woods, on mountain or in vale,
Down to the veins of earth, thence gliding hot
To some cave s mouth, or whether washed by stream
From underground) ; the liquid ore he drained. Bk. xi. 1. 564.
1 With Marius Victor s happy philosophy Samson s riddle is justified
" out of the eater came forth meat." It must seem marvellous that the
Dark Ages (called dark because of the speaker s mind) should have
been more adventurous than later times.

1 86 THE EASTER SONG

SECTION II
PART III

Milton s Debt to Avitus

Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus, usually known as St. Avitus,
became Bishop of Vienne, in the year 490 sixty years after
the publication of the Epic of Sedulius, and died in 525.
Eminent as a poet, with fine descriptive talent, he excels in
analysis of character, and in dramatic power. In his great
poem Milton found a diamond field. From Victor he
obtained, chiefly, with the picture of Paradise, the better part
of the character and action of Adam, his remorse, despair,
desire for death, repentance, and noble resignation. From
Avitus he took not merely the idyll of the first nuptials, in the
Garden of Eden, but the tremendous figure of Satan, gazing
on their lovely lives and happy home, with humiliation, envy,
rage, and furious resolve to wreck the work of God and hence,
the subtle and dread drama of the Temptation of Eve and the
Fall of Man.

Avitus finds that the wound in Adam s side, from which Eve
was formed, symbolises that of Christ, from which originated
the Church, His Spouse. God united Adam and Eve in mar
riage, and bade them live happy lives in harmony, increase
and replenish the earth with children, and children s children,
and kindred without end. Hence the marriage law, venerable
throughout all time, to be kept by all unstained, hence child
ren shall leave father and mother, and they shall be one flesh,
and none shall put asunder those whom God has joined.

Avitus concludes :

This union by eternal vow was Hymen,

A Festival by Angels purely sung

In choral chant, and heav nly harmony.

Their nuptial couch was Paradise their dower

A World ! stars rejoicing gave them happy light ! *

1 These are the noble words of Avitus :

Taliter aeterno coniungens foedere vota
Festivum dicebat hymen, castoque pudori

APPENDIX I 187

Milton, as usual, divides and disperses dilating and
diluting his extracted subject. In one place, he writes :

And heavenly choirs the hymenaean sung.

Bk. iv. 1. 711.

Elsewhere :

All Heaven,

And happy constellations, on that hour
Shed their selectest influence . . .

the amorous bird of night
Sung spousal, and bid haste the Evening-star,
On his hill- top to light the bridal lamp.

Bk. viii. 1. 511.

Just previous to this, as Avitus, Milton also says, for
this cause he shall forgo father and mother and to his wife
adhere, and they shall be one flesh, one heart, one soul."

Next comes an exquisite picture of Paradise by Avitus,
which may compare with the lovely picture of the same
Garden of Eden by Marius Victor. Both are beautiful with
varied charm. From both Milton has borrowed, with liberal
hand, all his scattered Paradisial scenery. Therefore there is
no need to compare details which every reader can detect.

Here is the ideal of Avitus :

PARADISE

There is in eastern climes a place thy secret
Nature ! whereon, from rise of sun, Aurora s
New-born beams flash back from neighbouring Ind.
Here shade protects against the torrid noon
Whose cloudless splendour dazzles all the air.
Hence comes pure Light, and from a nearer sky
Subserves dark bodies in their native night,
Which then with captured rays resplendent shine
The sparkle makes their shrouded face more dread,
But all things chiefly for our use convene.

Here Nature lavishes the wealth of worlds
Whate er to scent is sweet, to vision fair :

Concinit angelicum iuncto modulamine carmen.
Pro thalamo Paradisus erat, mundusque dabatur
In dotem, et laetis gaudebant sidera flammis.

1 88 THE EASTER SONG

Here branch of pitchy ebony combines
With gleaming ivory from farther Ind,
The beauteous tusk of monstrous elephant.

Now with the Indies overpast, the Head
Of Earth begins, whose borders reach the sky.
Rampired around, there stands a sacred grove
To mortals inaccessible, and closed
For aye since th Author of primeval Crime
Departed guilty from that happy home,
And there, instead, came heav nly hosts to dwell.

Not here, in alternating seasons, come
Winter, nor, after frosts, do Summer heats
Return as the high circle of the year
Revolves, nor chills that make the meadows hoar.
Attentive Spring the clement sky obeys,
No stormy South disturbs, and floating clouds
Dispersing flee beneath the blue serene.

Nor need hath Nature here for frequent rain,
Since all the happy buds with dew are kissed,
The soil is ever green, the face of Earth
Shines fair, plants do the hills adorn,
And trees their tresses * are, with varied flowers
They glow, and are with swift new sap supplied ;
For what with us needs now a long year s growth
Then bloomed and ripened in a fertile month.

Pellucid lilies light the land, unfading,
No touch might violate the violets, 2
The rose s blush would still her face suffuse,
Winter was not, nor torrid Summer heat,
Spring crown d the year with flow rs, Autumn with fruit.

Here (what fame would falsely give Sabaea)
Cinnamons grow, which the long-lived Phoenix
Doth for its pyre collect a Cradle-Grave !
When, from its blazing nest and death desired
Succeeding to itself it springs new-born
Not willing with one birth to be content
It doth the languor of its frame revive,
And oft, its age out-burned, begins anew.

Here, too, the branches, dropping fragrant balm,
Produce from the fat stem a constant flow.
Then should perchance a light wind stir the air
With gentle breath, a soft low whisper runs,

1 Milton s translation is " hairy sides."
* Neither Sedulius nor Avitus disdained a gentle play on words.

APPENDIX I 189

The rich wood s leaves do tremble, and their flow rs
Disperse delicious odours o er the land. 1

There springs a Fount resplendent in the midst,
Naught with such grace in silver gleams, nor such
Cool liquid light in vases crystalline.
The margins glitter with green emeralds,
And a world s wonder of delightful gems
Lie pebbles here, that deck the happy fields
Around, with a natural Diadem !

From the Head Fountain waters are thence drawn
Four great divided rivers, these their names :
Euphrates, Tigris also, whose strong course
Forms the arrowy Parthians long frontier,
Geon, the third, by Latins called the Nile,
Still nobler is, of birth unknown to man,
Whose placid stream throughout all Egypt flows,
Enriching, at fixed seasons, all the land.
For oft the swollen flood o erleaps the banks
And inundates the fields with blackened sands,
Abundance follows, as the water s tax,
What skies refuse, the river-rain supplies.

Then Memphis hides within a spreading lake,
And husbandmen sail o er their vanished farms,
No boundary binds the Flood now levels all
With yearly Peace the elemental strife.

The happy Shepherd sees the grass submerged
And, where his flock fed on the verdant plain,
Flow waters strange, and fishes swimming gay.
Then, having fertilised the parched seeds
And largely quenched with drink the thirsty land,
The Nile retreats, and, gath ring all its waters,
The lake shrinks to a stream, the furrowed bed
Encloses all, its banks its walls become,
Until at last, dividing and dispersed,
Its severed seven currents join the sea.

Yet why is so much said, and everywhere,
Of thy hid source, O Nile ? for who knows not
That from thy birth not sole, but fourth, thou art
Shed from that height which overlooks all streams
Its own, and Father Ocean all surpassing
What mounts and plains, what clouds, and mists produce ?

1 This is Milton s version :

Airs, vernal airs,

Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune
The trembling leaves.

i 9 o THE EASTER SONG

Physon is fourth, which India calls the Ganges,
That, oft unquiet, floods its odorous lands ;
Its waters washing through the beauteous groves
Bear to exile here deciduous wealth :
For thence, from either shore, are wont to come
Papyrus without knots, fine herbs and reeds.
So with rich refuse that itself rejects
Great Ganges doth in truth endow a World !

The Author of All gave the Primal Parents
In this fair land of Paradise to dwell.
As Ruler He pronounced the primal law
" O Chief Work of the Maker whom Our hand
Alone created Life I gave, what else ?
Behold this land, most beautiful and rich
With many gifts, shall serve you ; all is granted,
For every need, repast, and lasting joy :
Take this fair food, and these all- welcome fruits,
In study of fine works abide in peace,
Enjoy delights and live long happy lives.

" There is, however, mid the grove one Tree
Whose seed bears knowledge of the Right and Wrong
Whereof it is forbidden you to touch,
Lest that, perchance, rash eagerness to know
May break the ban : twere better not to know
That which harms when known. I Who made this Globe
Attest that whoso this forbidden fruit
Presume to taste shall be adjudged to Death.
Not great the thing I ask, guard but the Right
And happy Life, which such default would end."

The Youths His words received and gladly followed
Vowing throughout all time to keep the Law,
So ignorant of ill, of fraud unconscious
No fear alarms their unsuspicious minds.

Thus leaving them now taught, in sacred soil,
The Father rose beyond the starry skies.

Avitus depicts Satan contemplating the novel beings, who,
innocent and happy, were enjoying the peaceful delights of
life in Paradise. Rage enters his heart, all the more furious
on seeing others possessing what he had lost. He speaks the
famous speech. Milton annexes the scene in full. The foot
notes show his poly-plagiarism of the speech, whose beginning
he simply translates, thus :

APPENDIX I 191

/

O Hell ! What do mine eyes with grief behold ?
Into our room of bliss thus high advanced
Creatures of other mould Earth-born perhaps.

Bk. iv. 1. 358.
Avitus thus gives

SATAN S SPEECH ON SEEING MAN IN EDEN 1

" O Grief ! this Creature to start up with Us ! a
This Odious Race, to witness our destroyal !
Lofty my state : behold me now, rejected,
Cast out and Clay usurp an Angel s honour ! 3
Earth now grasps Heaven and of vile dust compacted *
Slime rules ! So perishes Our power, transferred,
But not all has perished great part remains
Our proper vigour our all-wrecking courage ! 6

Delay delights not. Haste, sleek, subtle Strife I
Whilst yet there s safety, and simple candour
Unversed in guile is open to the dart.

Better by fraud they should be snared, alone,
Ere they shall plant a race eternal here,
For naught immortal to the Earth belongs.

Perish the source ! the fallen head shall serve

The happy seat
Of some new race called Man.

Bk. ii. 1. 347.
2 A race of upstart creatures, to supply

Perhaps our vacant room. Bk. ii. 1. 834.

8 (He) Determined to advance into our room

A creature formed of earth, and him endow,
Exalted from so base original,
With Heavenly spoils, our spoils . . .
Him Lord pronounced, and oh, indignity I
Subjected to his service Angel- wings.

4 (He) Provokes my envy, this new favourite

Of Heaven, this Man of Clay, son of despite,
Whom, us the more to spite, his Maker raised
From dust : spite then with spite is best repaid.

Bk. ix. 11. 150-178.

5 All is not lost the unconquerable will
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield.

Bk. i. 1. 106.

1 92 THE EASTER SONG

As lethal seed, Life s own origin shall
Engender Death, and all be smote in one !
No spreading branches from a cut root grow. 1

To me at least this solace doth remain,
If I no more may scale the closed heavens
These too shall be shut out misfortune doubled
Lessens, when others also meet like fate,
And come companions to partake the pain,
And share with us the fires which I forbode.

Nor should deception s way prove difficult ;
Tis but to show the path I lately ran
To ruin Ambition, that lost me Heaven,
Shall take the light of Paradise from Man."

He said, a groan his voice of anguish closed.

SATAN AS SERPENT

Than other animals, the supple serpent
Superior showed in ruse, and callous heart.
Him the Transgressor chose, and so endued
His aerial body with surrounding flesh.

Then he immediate changed, a Serpent stretched,
Displayed the spotted splendours of his form
Spiring in folds voluminous, that showed
The shining armour of his scale-clad spine.

As when, in new-come Spring the Summer sends
Warm breezes forward after freezing cold
To change the season with soft quick ning airs,
Displacing barrenness by radiant forms,
So passed the splendid snake ; quitting low haunts
He raised his terrible bright head, and awful
Beauty, with dire darting eyes, 3 which he taught

1 And where their weakness : how attempted best,
By force or subtlety. Though Heaven be shut . . .
Seduce them to our party, that their God
May prove their foe. . . . For whence,
But from the author of all ill, could spring
So deep a malice, to confound the race

Of mankind in one root.

Bk. ii. 1. 357-380.

* Milton makes the serpent move curiously, on a circular base of
towering fold on fold that floated redundant on the grass

his head
Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes ;

APPENDIX I 193

Glad looks, when he approached the place desired,
With air caressing and soft singing sounds
By trifid tongue and tuneful throat produced.

When thus, in fraud maleficent, arrayed
And All-Deception now, he forth proceeds
To that fair grove, where, as it chanced, the youths
Were plucking berries from the verdant vine,
Nor could a serpent with relentless spite
By venom sting their happy hearts to death.
He climbed, with spires enfolding, a tall tree
And drew himself to equal height above ;
Then thus assailed with gentle voice, well heard :

THE TEMPTATION OF EVE

THE SERPENT- SATAN S ADDRESS

(C

Hail, Glory of Earth ! Maid most beautiful 1
Resplendent, with rose modesty adorned,
Thou future Parent of the Race ; a World
Shall call thee Mother. 1 Man s first and firm joy,
His solace, without whom he could not live,
Even thy spouse is made subject to thy love
To whom thou renderest an offspring-race.
Paradise, a fitting seat, is giv n you
Whom Earth s subject-substance trembling doth obey.
Whatever sky or land, or, from its deep,
Great ocean yields, are gather d to your use ;
Nature naught denies, o er all is given power.
I envy not, but wonder what restrains

With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect
Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass
Floated redundant.

Bk. ix. 1. 499.
Milton asserts that his shape was " pleasing and lovely."

1 Since the entire conception of this dramatic scene is due to
Alcimus Avitus, it is unnecessary to point out details of disguised
identity. I note but these :

Empress of this fair World, resplendent Eve !

M., Bk. ix. 1. 568.
Eve rightly called, Mother of all Mankind.

M., Bk. xi. 1. 159.
Sovran of creatures, universal Dame !

M., Bk. ix. 1. 612.
O

i 9 4 THE EASTER SONG

Your choice from one sweet tree ; this cruel law
Who orders it ? Who envies you such gifts,
Imposing Fast mid such rich Festival ? "

These flattering words in lisping voice he spake.
A serpent speak, O woman what amaze !
What shame a beast to have this pow r of words,
A brute presume thy tongue, 1 and still a shock
That thou should st answer to his questioning !
When that the mortal venom filled the ear
Of ductile Eve, she then to ruin harks
And thus the Serpent with vain words addressed :

" O mighty Snake of most delightful speech !
Not, though it seem, does God enjoin us fast
Nor hinder pasture for the body s care.
Lo, these fair banquets which the Earth spreads forth
The Father did, most readily, provide
For use, and freely loosed the reins of life.
This Tree alone, which thou, amid the wood,
Canst see, is interdict, to touch its fruit
Only is forbid, free is all the rest.
For if ill freedom should profane the law,
The Master s awful voice ordains we shall
Be doomed to expiate the guilt by Death !
What sayest thou of Death, most learned Snake ?
Tell all, we ignorant do know it not."

Then did the guileful Snake, the Minister
Of Death, thus teach, addressing captured ears :

" O Woman ! thou fearest Terror s empty name.
No doom of death shall come upon you quick.
The Father did not grant you equal shares,
Nor let you know great things he hath reserved.
What use to see, to own the world adorned,
With blinded minds in darkened dungeon bound ?

" Beasts too he made, with senses similar
And open eyes : one sun serves all alike
The brute from man seems not set far apart !

" Best take my counsel ! share the Mind supreme
And raise your senses up to Heaven erect.

" This fruit forbidden which thou st feared to touch
Makes known the secrets that the Father keeps :
For when thy lips its taste divine have felt,

1 Not unamazed, she thus in answer spake :
" What may this mean ? Language of Man pronounced
By tongue of brute ! " Milton.

APPENDIX I 195

Thy intellect illumed shall make thee God-like.
Then shalt thou Good from Evil know and Wrong
From Right, and then the False from True discern."

The whisp ring promise of delusive gifts
The Woman heard with wonder and bow d head,
And soon began to dally and incline
And ever more give doubting heed to death.

He felt her conquered in the coming strife
And, vaunting still the name and power of God,
He took an apple from the lethal Tree,
Diffused its fragrance and its form displaying
Offer d its sweet to her assenting glance.

Nor spurned ill-trusting Eve the wretched gift
But caught the fatal apple, she raised it
To nostrils and to opening lips more near
And ignorant she played with future Death !

Oh often she withdraws th approaching fruit
Shaking, her hand gives way beneath its weight,
And tremulous she flees th accomplished crime,
Yet she would God-like be, Ambition s ichor
Spreads, her mind by contrary forces torn.
Hence love, thence fear, now pride shall conquer law,
Now law itself gives help, so doubtful rage
The cruel wars of the distracted heart !

Nor does th inciting Serpent cease his guile,
He lauds the apple, and deplores delay,
Hailing the guilt of her impending fall.

At last the stronger sentiment prevailed
Eternal hunger by fair food provoked
Which she already from the snake had ta en :
And, yielding to his wiles, she eager ate,
The sweet juice drank, and her Repast was Death ! l
His joy awhile the murky serpent hid,
Nor showed the savage triumph of his strife.

Unknown the deed to Adam, now returning
Joyful from mid the grasses of far fields
To seek a chaste kiss and his wife s embrace.
She ran to him, now first did boldness blow
Feminine fervour in the frenzied heart :

Thus she began to her mate miserable
Presenting in her hand the fatal fruit :

1 Greedily she ingorged without restraint,
And knew not eating death.

Milton, Bk. ix. 1. 791.

196 THE EASTER SONG

" Take this sweet food of living seed, my husband, 1
That thou mayst like to the High God become
And peer of all the gods. This gift I offer,
Not ignorant, but knowing well : I first
Have tasted it, and proudly broke the bond.
Trust me, twas wrong for thy man s will to doubt
What I a woman could, thou st feared forestall ?
Follow at least, and raise thy prostrate wits.
Why lower thine eyes, why dally with desire ?
Wouldst still filch time from this, thy coming glory ? "

She said and gave the dish of living death
Which he with perishing soul, did crime-fed eat.

BANISHMENT, BABEL, AND EVOLUTION OF NATIONS

Whilst Marius Victor, with exquisite understanding, de
scribes the pains of exile, Avitus states them in more serried
form. Having related the judgment, he continues :

The Father clothed them with skins, and drove
Them both from Paradise s sacred seat.
Together fallen, they an empty World
Entered, and with quick glance, examined all.
Though varied growth it bore, and broidered grass,
And verdant fields, fountains, and flowing rivers,
To them its aspect horrible appeared.
After thine, O Paradise, all was hateful.
Man s wont : what he must leave, he loves the more.
Earth shrank on them, and they, unhappy, now
In world of boundless space felt crampt, confined.
Day dreary grew, and all light seemed to fade
Beneath the sun, the stars mourned dull, remote,
And scarce could any sense discern the sky.

Milton has it that Christ was the judge, and writes :

As father of his family, he clad

Their nakedness, with skins of beasts, or slain.

Bk. x. 1. 216.

Then later, when the Archangel Michael announces their
expulsion, Adam is made to foresee and foretell that exile-

1 Thou, therefore, also taste, etc.

M., Bk. ix. 1. 881, et seq.

APPENDIX I 197

suffering, the poignant reality of which Victor and Avitus

have so well described :

What besides

Of sorrow and dejection and despair
Our frailty can sustain, thy tidings bring
Departure from this happy place, our sweet
Recess, and only consolation left
Familiar to our eyes, all places else
Inhospitable appear and desolate,
Not knowing us nor known.

In the Aeneid, Virgil relates how his hero is taken up to
a lofty mountain that the future of his race might be revealed
to him.

So Milton causes the Archangel Michael to take Adam up
the highest hill in Paradise to reveal what should befall to
him and his offspring. What was but an episode in Virgil
occupies many pages in Milton. It is the history of the
Hebrews. At first sight, I naturally consider it was com
piled, or moulded, from the Biblical record, but it follows
so closely on the descriptions of Victor and Avitus, with
details given by them, and not in the Bible, that it became
plain that Milton mined still in the works of these authors.

Here, in Book iii. of Avitus we find a description of the
luxuries and licence in which man became degenerate, and
on which Milton lays much and lengthy stress, and here again
the horrors of fierce quarrelsome times, when Power was the
only Protector, and Force the only Law.

Avitus makes a vivid, violent picture :

Mortals had then by cruel harshness shown
Their might of mind what each one pleased he deemed
Permitted, and for each his Will was Law.
No Justice was, no difference ever made
Twixt Right and Wrong, no Ward of Virtue stood,
No Judge, no Witness, nor rose any Ruler
Arbiter of action to counsel honour,
Prince he felt who had the power to plunder,
Might not Merit won : the stronger the Man
The better the Man, Self the balance held.
So life of Man and brute became alike
Add but a Mind to savage deeds inclined.

198

THE EASTER SONG

Milton renders it closely thus :

For in those days might only shall be admired,
And valour and heroic virtue called.
To overcome in battle, and subdue
Nations, and bring home spoils with infinite
Manslaughter, shall be held the highest pitch
Of human glory, and, for glory done,
Of triumph to be styled great conquerors,
Patrons of mankind, gods, and sons of gods
Destroyers rightlier called, and plagues of men.
Thus fame shall be achieved, renown on earth,
And what most merits fame in silence hid.

Bk. xi. 1. 689.

Then, after these, its causes, comes the Flood, to which,
its causes and consequences, Avitus devotes a Book. It strikes
one as significant that he begins this Book by a reference to
Deucalion s fabled Flood and the regenerated race stone-born,
and that Milton makes an identical reference on a similar
occasion.

This is the vivid picture of the Iris the Rainbow set in
the heavens after the Flood, with its origin, and a thrilling
statement of its symbolism, according to Avitus :

Three-fourths its course the setting Sun had gone,
When its ray touched, in eastern sky remote,
A cloud, and, thence, forth flashed a mist-born Sign,
That brilliant Bow, which poets call Thaumatis
In Greece, Iris in Rome, which hangs on air
Whilst e er the vapour feels the slanting Sun.
Twofold the splendour of its mingled colours
Innumerate, with play of varied hues :
Glowing sapphire, white, and ocean-green,
Purple from the cloud, from the sky its sheen,
The Sun its radiance, and the Earth its shades ;
Dissevered and diverse as these appear,
The eye a harmony supreme beholds.

God set His Bow upon a cloud in sign
To trembling mortals that from cloud no more
Should fate disastrous fall from Heav n on Earth.

Now, those who would true faith retain may look
Up to that Sign, and know what these betoken.
For Christ, Life-giver, sent these as harbingers,
Foreshowing the Redeemer s twofold substance

APPENDIX I 199,

Earth yields the Brightness of flesh Virginal,
Heaven, the innate Splendour of its Glory ;
Midway on high the Mediator stands
With gifts innumerate, in all refulgent,
The Living Sign of God s celestial Pledge.

Milton makes strangely little of this. Adam, under the
control of the Archangel, sees " the ancient sire," Noah, come
out of the Ark, looking up he beholds over his head

A dewy cloud, and in the cloud a bow
Conspicuous with three listed colours gay,
Betokening peace from God, and covenant new.
....

Adam inquires :

But say what mean those coloured streaks in Heaven :
Distended as the brow of God appeased ?
Or serve they as a flowery verge to bind
The fluid skirts of that same watery cloud,
Lest it again dissolve and shower the earth ?

The Archangel explains the oft-mentioned covenant not again

to drown the world,

but, when he brings
Over the Earth a cloud, will therein set
His triple-coloured bow, whereon to look
And call to mind his covenant.

More interesting than most other passages is that which
concerns the building of the Tower of Babel. The subject is
treated by Victor and by Avitus, and Milton follows the
Bishop, as being the more brief. But that of Marius Victor
displays so much originality, understanding, sympathy, and
science that it is impossible not to give it the higher place.

This is the spirited story of Avitus :

BUILDING OF BABEL

This was the Giant-race of olden Terror,
Whose acts the Greeks in fictive poems sang,
Who still would dare the temerarious strife,
Each man a Rebel, who, when battle bolts
Had failed, raging, devised another war ;
Not that as sung, they mounts on mountains piled,

200 THE EASTER SONG

But, my belief is, these were they who tried
With well-burnt brick and bitumen close joined
To build, if that could be, with their proud hands
The Tower, and raise it to the stars sublime.

Thus men can madden, and with labour vain
And vain cement push upwards still and pierce
The clouds, and seek receding Heav n to gain,
Nor did desist, till Discord, giving tongues
And language various, did all things confound.
Hence was the common bond of reckless Pride
By severance of speech asunder broke.

Then each his own, whom he by words might know,
Assembled, and each speech a People made.
So lacking labour, the great Mole ceased mounting
And th empty Tow r stood idle in the air.

The burthened Earth, since came the whelming Flood,
Grew oft such giant Forts, that still aspired
To mingle with the indignant stars of Heaven,
Which God swept off and silent we condemn.

As Milton has not only " conveyed " from Avitus, but also
from Victor, it is proper to insert here a translation of the
latter s poem. It is really a beautiful and tender psychologic
study, with chivalric sympathies for the gallant daring of a
defeated People. His theory of the Origin of Races shows
scientific talent.

THE BUILDING OF BABEL ORIGIN OF NATIONS

When, after years, their numbers had increased
And outgrown space, the Orient they left,
Compelled to seek new homes, and camped at last
Upon the spreading plain of Sennaar.

Now, when this also they were forced forsake
And their sons made to sever and depart,
These, grieving, raised most sorrowful complaint :

" Ah, how unstable is our Life s estate !
How ignorant if what s prospering shall fail !
How witless that our cherish d Hope may prove
Our Adversary for, dare we say it ?
Ev n that for which our great Forefathers prayed,
A numerous offspring, becomes our hurt !
The crowding hosts must scatter wide and far
Over Earth s surface, Exiles ! from this Land,
Their Native Home, for ever banned !

APPENDIX I 201

And we

Seared by chill poverty unknown, unhonoured
Shall lie in lonely graves, nor build
With seemly rites our Fathers sepulchres.
Nor aught of fair renown outlive our death !

" Therefore, take action, youths, in numbers strong,
Whilst what may hap, or end you, lies unknown,
Bequeath to Future Time resplendent Fame !
Let us a City build, whose rampired Tower
We ll raise, till it shall reach the shining stars,
The sky, and the supreme Olympian sphere.
Then shall posterity, when we are gone,
Believe we entered, Emigrants to Heaven !

Inspired, the youths contemning rocks and crash
Of crumbling cliffs, rove out the conquered earth
And forced by fire the fashioned brick ; resolved
By their own hands to shape the mighty Mole.
The jointed layers with bitumen they built,
Which solid stood, and like a Rampart-rock.
Soon rose the Tower, soon its high head transpierced
The clouds and saw a nearer sky serene !

Then to the Senate of His Angels all
Astonished at such courage and mad pride
A Voice Celestial, the Father s, spake :
" You see advance the daring Troop terrene
Imprudent they, and in adventure reckless
They deem it possible, by mortal means,
The lofty sky to reach, and conquer aether,
Whilst none with form terrene endued ascends
To Heav n, save who shall have from Heav n descended. 1
Yet since they are of common speech and kin,
They do persist, nor will refrain to finish
That Tower which they, by common concert, planned,
So great the folly of the human mind !

1 Therefore go forth, that they may understand
What is forbidden is not possible.
Let us descend, and that bold conjuration
Of overweening pride in speech dissolve.
So what of Concord criminal they sinned
May perish of a Dissonance, more kind."

He said. Then first on their astonished minds
Oblivion came, and unknown tongues were heard,

1 I.e. no earth-born creature can ascend by its own volition, but
may be taken by assumption, as was the prophet Elias.

202 THE EASTER SONG

The Captains clamoured to unheeding men ;
They dallied, labour lagged, and all work stopped.
None answered apt did one attempt, vain sounds
He muttered, or in panting broken phrase
He stammered out : so the great Enterprise
Frustrated hands forsook, none stood by none,
None comrade joined, nor even father followed :
If one another understood, they sought
For others such, formed groups, and these increased.
So came connexions in the parted People.
Language made Nations. These in equal Hosts
Fared forth and under many and strange Stars
Found Foreign Homes afar.

So when the birds

Whom pleasant plain and smiling day invite
To wander and win food in mingled flocks
See Night approach, they seek their leafy roofs,
All following their flocks, with rapid flight,
By Colour companied, or by Cry recalled.

Thus, into several, one People parted,
That Tribes might Races form in lands diverse,
And fill the Globe with Nations manifold.

With these descriptions of the building of Babel compare
that of Milton, who adopts and embodies their ideas, but
diverges, and as usual when he diverges he descends to a lower
plane. Adam is told that after the Flood the chastened but
increasing race should live peaceful and laborious lives, under
paternal rule, in families and in tribes, until one arrogant
Man, rejecting fraternal equality, should impose tyranny
a "mighty hunter before the Lord" but a hunter
of men. Then Milton s Angel continues his forecast to
Adam :

He, with a crew, whom like ambition joins
With him or under him to tyrannise,
Marching from Eden towards the west, shall find
The plain, wherein a black bituminous gurge
Boils out from under ground, the mouth of Hell.
Of brick and of that stuff they cast to build
A city and tower, whose top may reach to Heaven,
And get themselves a name, lest, far dispersed
In foreign lands, their memory be lost
Regardless whether good or evil fame.

APPENDIX I 203

But God, who oft descends to visit men

Unseen, and through their habitations walks,

To mark their doings, them beholding soon,

Comes down to see their city, ere the tower

Obstruct Heaven-towers, and in derision sets

Upon their tongues a various spirit, to rase

Quite out their native language, and, instead,

To sow a jangling noise of words unknown.

Forthwith a hideous gabble rises loud

Among the builders ; each to other calls,

Not understood till, hoarse and all in rage,

As mocked they storm. Great laughter was in Heaven,

And looking down to see the hubbub strange

And hear the din. Thus was the building left

Ridiculous, and the work Confusion named.

It is manifest that for his higher and more noble flights
Milton used the great eagle wings of Sedulius. Raised by
these above the earth, he could catch a glimpse of the celestial
beauty. Apparently, however, this was too ethereal for his
taste, he felt impelled to " humanise " it. The consequence is
that when, laying aside those wings, he diverges from Sedulius,
he descends and pedestrianises in the dust.

Take three examples :

1. When Sedulius describes the delight in Heaven and on
Earth, when God forgives Man, and the Divine Son assumes
human flesh as a free-will Atonement, he writes l Where
Guilt gave Death now Love would Life bestow." Milton takes
his text, writing " So Heavenly love shall outdo Hellish hate."
But he elaborately explains that this came about because the
Son shamed the Father to consent, because otherwise, Satan
would win a triumph over Him, by ruining His created race
and that nobody could defend Him ! How could a writer
on such a subject adduce a motive so unspeakably mean ?

2 . In the second instance, Sedulius brings us to the Celestial
City," seated on a hill, all brightness and all beauty and all
welcoming, its banners fluttering on high, its clarion call an
invitation, its Gate that opens to the knocking of Heart !
Milton also brings us to the gate of his Celestial City or
" Frontispiece " it is " more rich" than that of a king s palace,

204 THE EASTER SONG

studded with gems, and could not be drawn by artist on earth
but it does not open ! Souls, coming in fiery cars or boat
on seas of pearl and jasper, must climb up ladders to get over
the fortifications. And these ladders ! They are not always
there ; they are let down and snatched up, now and again,
to daunt, or taunt, and * aggravate Satan, by seeming to
invite and then excluding the miserable Satan ! How could
this be conceived of Heaven by a noble mind ?

3. We see that Milton also follows Sedulius in his descrip
tion of the Saviour s Ascension into Heaven, which, in
Sedulius, is the consummation of self -sacrificial Love in an
atmosphere of celestial peace : but Milton, diverging, plagiarises
from Homer, and describes the Redeemer as going to " sur
prise the Serpent, Prince of Air, and drag in chains through
all his realm, and there confounded leave." What chivalrous
man could take the dastard deed of Achilles as an example,
or what Christian mind could impute it to his Saviour ?

So, also, with respect to the brilliant works of Marius
Victor, and Alcimus Avitus, where Milton follows them we
move amid the beautiful scenes of Paradise and witness noble
if tragic action, where Milton diverges he descends into the
mire. Take these examples :

i . There is nowhere given so sympathetic or so understand
ing an account of the cause and the consequences of the
building of Babel tower, and its arrest, as that given by
Victor. He feels, as what generous heart could fail to feel,
with a people driven from their kindred, their homes, their
native land no more to build their fathers sepulchres to lie
themselves in far, scattered, lonely graves, leaving behind no
fair name, no record of high renown. It were better for them,
if disappear they must, to go as * emigrants to Heaven ! :
Both Victor and Avitus have displayed a certain admiration
for their adventurous boldness and show that God intervenes
out of loving compassion that they may not break themselves,
in trying to achieve the impossible. He gives them various
languages that so may different nations be evolved. This
is fine and philosophical. But Milton, whilst following

APPENDIX I 205

minutely the statement, diverges and degenerates. His God
is made to walk unseen among their homes, then " in derision
to set their tongues to a " jangling noise," a " hideous gabble, *
" till, hoarse and all in rage, as mocked they storm." Then,
surely there was pity for them ? no, not in Milton s heaven !

Great laughter was in Heaven,
And looking down to see the hubbub strange
And hear the din. Thus was the building left
Ridiculous, and the work Confusion named.

In presence of this scene of sordid spite, so devised and
so enjoyed by the author, one can only say that Milton s
humour is appalling.

2. In another case, Milton, whilst annexing all the
Temptation of Eve, and most of what follows in both writers,
diverges and by diverging degrades Adam by setting him to
scold Eve with base abuse. " Out of my sight, thou Serpent," *
he reviles her as hateful, a snare of hellish falsehood, longing
to be seen if but by the Devil, Satan s ally, vain and deceitful,
knavish, a mere crooked rib, thought to overreach Satan,
Satan overreached her, and she overreached him (Adam) !

3. Lastly, the third instance is perhaps the most Miltonic.
Sedulius and his three successors, more especially Victor and
Avitus, have given most lovely, picturesque, and delightful
descriptions of Paradise the Garden of Eden where the
ever-fertile virgin soil ever produces flowers and fruit of the
fairest, with delightful odours and soft music in the zephyr-
loved woods. To all this, Milton must put his sign-manual,
and by one characteristic touch make it Miltonic, and all his
own. So, apparently recalling his London town-garden,
or that little plot in front of his small house at Chalfont
St. Giles which I have visited he sets Eve to tie up drooping
flowers, 2 and Adam removes fallen blossoms and dropping
gums. Victor and Avitus suggest higher Nature studies.
Milton is more practical and in this ever - fertile virgin
soil makes Adam concerned and anxious about manuring
the Garden of Eden \ To-morrow, ere fresh morning

1 Bk. x. 1. 867. 2 Bk. ix. 1. 430.

206 THE EASTER SONG

streak the east >;| they must be risen to reform things " that
mock our scant manuring." l That is startling, but Milton
must have taken especial pride in this agricultural top-dressing
of the Garden of Eden, for he absolutely introduces it into
Heaven, as a plea in favour of Adam ! In Book xi. the prayers
of the penitents ascend to Heaven.

Them the glad Son
Presenting thus to intercede began :

See, Father, what first-fruits on Earth are sprung
From thy implanted grace in Man these sighs
And prayers, which in this golden censer, mixed
With incense, I, thy priest, before thee bring;
Fruits of more pleasant savour, from thy seed
Sown with contrition in his heart, than those
Which, his own hand manuring, all the trees
Of Paradise could have produced, ere fallen
From innocence.

It has not been my purpose to indicate the sources in later
times, from which Milton has borrowed more or less copiously
Some of these drew from the high head fountains here re
vealed. There have been many workers in these fields, and
much success. If all our results were put together, it would
appear that Milton s great Poem was a great Mosaic of other
men s ideas. Then, one might consider the possibility of the
Iliad being also a compilation or mosaic if only Homer, like
Milton, had greater predecessors; * sed caret sacer vates."
Milton stands unrivalled still, as a Prince of Poets and of
Plagiarists.

SECTION III

PART I
Milton s Debt to Virgil

Virgil or Vergil is Fergil, a Celtic name, as Zeuss has
shown and naturally takes place with his kindred victims.

If we consider the Last Epic of Christendom, as compared
with the First, we shall find that Milton has fallen back upon
the Pagan poetic precedents, from which Sedulius courage-

1 Bk. iv. 1. 628.

APPENDIX I 207

ously stood free. This is not a question of their relative
powers nor of their genius. But if it can be said that Juvencus
did not succeed in doing more than clothing Christ in the
costume of a greater Aeneas, can it be alleged that Milton in
rolling through the skies the tumult of wars has essentially
diverged from ancient examples, and not rather refurbished
the old epic machinery which gave us Jove thundering against
the Titans, and hurling his rebel-rivals to the depths of
Tartarus ? The names are different, the descriptions and dis
courses amplified and diverse, but under all the shining array
and glorious guise of noble words the old machinery moves.

There are even entire passages where not only are the ideas
the same, but where the verbal description might almost
stand as a free translation or paraphrase of passages in the
Aeneid. Thus, when visiting the realm of punishment,
Aeneas asks the Cumaean Sibyl, his guide, who were the
sufferers and what their crimes and tortures were ? She tells,
in Dryden s version, that beyond the dreadful portals lies
the realm of unrelenting hate, and thus proceeds :

The gaping gulf low to the centre lies,

And twice as deep as earth is distant from the skies ;

The Rivals of the Gods, the Titan Race,

Here, singed with lightning, roll within th unfathomed space ;

Here lie the Aloean twins (I saw them both),

Enormous bodies of gigantic growth,

Who dared in fight the Thunderer to defy,

Affect his Heav n, and force him from the Sky :

Salmoneus suffering cruel pains I found,

For emulating Jove with rattling sound

Of mimic thunder, and the glittering blaze

Of pointed lightnings and their forky rays.

9

But he, the King of Heav n, obscure on high,
Bared his right arm, and, launching from the Sky
His writhen bolt, not shaking empty smoke,
Down to the deep abyss the flaming Felon struck.
There Tityus was to see, who took his birth
From Heav n, his nursing from the foodful earth ;
Here his gigantic limbs with large embrace
Infold nine acres of infernal space.

ao8 THE EASTER SONG

Milton, immediately after invoking the heavenly muse,
asks an explanation of the Fall of our great Parents and who
seduced them from their happy state. He is answered That
it was the infernal serpent

what time his pride

Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host
Of rebel Angels, by whose aid, aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equalled the Most High,
If he opposed, and, with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God,
Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud,
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms,
Nine times the space that measures day and night
To mortal men, he, with his horrid crew,
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf.

Virgil s gulf is twice as deep as earth is from the skies,
and Milton s is " as far removed from God and light of Heaven
as from the centre thrice to the utmost pole." Then after an
interchange of long discourse between Satan and Beelzebub,
we come upon verses which close and complete the parallel.
The Titan s gigantic limbs " with large embrace, infold nine
acres of Infernal space."

Satan talks to his nearest mate, with head uplift above the

wave :

his other parts besides

Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian or Earth-born, that warred on Jove, . . .

Then he goes on to amplify by added comparisons with
Briareos or Typhon, or Leviathan.

Not to multiply instances, it may suffice to quote the
description of the Gate of the Infernal Region as given in
Virgil :

APPENDIX I 209

The hero, looking on the left, espied

A lofty Tow r and strong on every side

With treble walls, which Phlegethon surrounds,

Whose fiery flood the burning empire bounds ;

And press d betwixt the rocks the bellowing noise rebounds.

Wide is the fronting Gate and, raised on high,

With adamantine Columns threats the sky.

Vain is the force of Man, and Heav n s as vain,

To crush the Pillars which the Pile sustain.

Sublime on these a Tow r of Steel is rear d ;

And dire Tisiphone there keeps ward,

Girt in her sanguine gown, by night and day,

Observant of the souls that pass the downward way.

*%

Then, of itself, unfolds the eternal door ;
With dreadful sound the brazen hinges roar.

Then Milton, elaborating the theme :

At last appear

Hell-bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof,
And thrice threefold the gates ; three folds were brass,
Three iron, three of adamantine rock,
Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire,
Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat
On either side a formidable Shape.
The one seern d woman to the waist and fair,
But ended foul in many a scaly fold, . . .

She had sprung, " a goddess armed," out of the head of
Lucifer (after a most violent headache), whilst yet in Heaven
(even as Minerva from the head of Jupiter). She was called
Sin, and now, distorted portress of Hell, opened the gate for
Satan s exit. Milton s hideous picture of pollution finds no
parallel in the nobler imagination of the pagan poet of
Mantua.

The terse lines of Virgil, descriptive of the opening gate
are thus expanded :

On a sudden open fly,
With impetuous recoil and jarring sound,
The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom shook
Of Erebus.

APPENDIX II

IRISH METRICAL CHARACTERISTICS IN
" SEDULIAN VERSE

WHEN a foreigner writes Latin, he naturally follows the
classic models. Celts of Gaul, where Roman power pre
dominated for centuries, obeyed its influence in literature,
but as the Roman power diminished its literary absolutism
was less considered, and the old native inherent tendency
toward rime began to display itself in that new domain of
Christian thought and feeling which found expression in
hymns. These were things of another sphere, outside of
classic experience and control, and hence the inherent race-
qualities could show themselves more freely.

An Irish poet of the fifth century stood in a different
position. His nation had not been subject to Roman power,
but retained its independence. The knowledge and influence
of the Latin language and literature did not bear on him with
the practice and prestige of generations. He might write
in subjection to classic models, it is true, but he was more
free of mind and, if trained in his nation s metric, he was
more apt to infuse some of its characteristics into his Latin
verse. If therefore it can be shown that such signs are to be
found in the verse of Sedulius, we shall have intrinsic evidence
of an indisputable quality, that the author was an Irish poet.

These signs must be characteristic of Irish metric. It
will not suffice, for instance, to show the occasional presence
of rime, for sporadic rimes can be found, not only in Ennius,
Ovid, Horace, Virgil, but also in Greek writers, such as

210

APPENDIX II 2ii

Sophocles and Homer, and even in the Hebrew. Such
sporadic rimes were sometimes intended, but in many cases,
I venture to say, they were accidental and probably passed
quite unperceived by ears trained in time-metric. Thus to
ears trained in tone-metric a classic verse may pass unnoted.
How many persons have read the Scriptural text : ; Why do
the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing ?
How few have identified it as a classic hexameter ?

No one can read Sedulius without noticing the occurrence
of similar-end rimes, and the repetition of echoing syllables.
Dr. J. Huemer l has counted twenty-four examples of rime in
caesura semiquinaria, as :

pone supercilium si te cognoscis amicttw
also twelve in caesura hephthemimeri, as :

humana pro gente pius occumberet agnus
three, in caesura trithemimeri, as :

sed modicae contentus adi solemnia mensae.

Then he enumerates fifteen or sixteen cases, where an end-
syllable is repeated in a line, e.g. :

at Dominus, Verbum, Virtus sapientiae, Christws.

Lastly, he notices that lines often have like endings, as,
aev? " and " caeh ," and he mentions that about fifteen lines
end as " creando " and " castro " in one riming syllable as he
imagines.

He fails altogether to see that such endings as " aevi " and
caeli," creando and castro are perfect Gaelic two-
syllabic vowel-rimes. He has examined the Sedulian verse
as a Roman Latinist might have examined it, seen the repeti
tion of sounds similar to what had been noted in classic
authors, counted them (their frequency might have given him
cause for thought), but he had not the Cumaean Golden
Bough and could not enter, explore, and explain.

1 De Sedulii poetae vita, etc., Dr. Johannes Huemer, Vindobonae,
1878.

212 THE EASTER SONG

The Golden Bough for us is the Gaelic metric. Without
some knowledge of this, it is impossible to identify and
understand the true character of Sedulian verse ; possessing
this, it is impossible not to see and affirm that Sedulius was
a poet trained in Irish methods.

SECTION I

DEMONSTRATION OF IRISH METRIC

If it be possible to show that rimed couplets, for instance,
were employed systematically, it should be acknowledged
that rime was used as an art-method or " Kunstmittel," and
that it indicated an Irish source, since it was used system
atically by Irish bards and by no Latin poet. This indication
would be confirmed and the evidence made effective and con
vincing if the rime used was not only consonantal but asson-
antal, so specifically characteristic of Irish verse.

Now this is precisely what can be demonstrated most
readily, though it never has been hitherto suspected.

The Carmen Paschale of Sedulius is composed of five
Books, each Book containing 300 or more lines. Here is the
remarkable characteristic one not known to exist in any
other Latin poem each and every Book of the Carmen
Paschale concludes with a couplet, rimed in the artistic Irish
manner ! They are here given in due order as follows :

BOOK I

semina mittentes, mox Exultabimus Omnes,
Portantes nostros, Christo veniente, maniplo*.

BOOK II

et bona libertas, euadere Torua Cruenti
era lupt, vitaque frui, per Pascua Christi.

BOOK III

pania loquor, Sifacta dei per Singula curram
et Speciale bonum, quum sit generale reuoluam.

APPENDIX II 213

BOOK IV

obvia Turba dedit ? Domino nisi cum Patre Chrwfo
qui regit aether^w/w Princeps in Principe regnum.

BOOK V

Facta redemptoris, nee Totus Cingere mundus
sufficeret densos per Tanta volumina libros.

The first fact manifest to ear and eye is that the final lines
in the first and last Books terminate in the same rime (os) y
whilst those of the other Books end differently. This closing
echo of the earliest rime shows a purposed plan.

Next we come to the Irish structure-characteristics of
these verses. They are very definite : l each Latin line
would be regarded as made of two semi-metres (so two lines
represent the Gaelic quatrain). Now it is ordered that in
certain Gaelic forms the last words of each semi-metre should
rime, which is here distinctly done, in both lines, thus es, es y
and os, os in Book I.

There is yet another and a more subtle, searching, and
decisive characteristic. This is the question of " Concord "
or alliteration the harmonic relations of two initial letters
all vowels may alliterate (though they can rime only within
their classes) ; consonants rime and alliterate only within
their classes. There are two kinds of Concord, which may be

1 It is necessary to remember that the Irish classified the vowels
into two classes : the slender, and e, and the broad, a, o, u (which
must be pronounced as in Italian or Spanish). All vowels serve to
alliterate : but the slender rime with the slender only, and the broad
with the broad. This distinction is scientific, and the extension of
rime to vowels of the same class is artistic, since it prevents the
monotony, so dangerous and limiting in modern verse.

The consonants also were grouped in classes :

1. The letter s stood tlone, the " queen of consonants," riming
and alliterating only with another s.

2. Three soft or noble letters, p, c, t (c is always k), which can
rime and alliterate with each other only.

3 . Three lower or hard : g, b, d, riming and alliterating with each
other only.

4. Five " strong," //, nn, rr, m, ng, with similar powers.

5. Seven " light," b, d, g, m, I, n, r, with similar powers.

O Molloy, De ProsodiA hibernicd. Rome, 1677.

214 THE EASTER SONG

called major and minor : in the first or proper Concord the
alliteration must occur between the initials of the last two
words of the line. Alliteration may, however, take place in an
earlier and less emphatic part, and is then a minor Concord.

BOOK I. Observe, now, that in these two Latin lines,
which conclude Book I. there are: (i) Rimes between the
semi-metres ; (2) there is proper or major Concord between
the initial vowels E, O of the last two words of the first
line, and (3) there is minor Concord between the initials-
P, C of the two earlier words of the second line Portantes
nostros Christo (the intervening word does not count, it
1 neither makes nor mars alliteration). Thus every con
dition demanded by Irish metric is found in this couplet :
there are besides internal slender rimes, semin and mitten,
and ente, and broad-slender interlaced rimes in omnes and
tantes y with pure broad in os, os.

semina mittentes, mox Exultabimus Omnes,
Portantes nostros, Christo veniente, maniples.

It must also be pointed out that it presents an example of
linked or Interlaced Rime, where the rime (in es) noted in the
first line is re-echoed in the second ; this interlacing rime is a
most notable characteristic. Christo and maniplos also rime.

I can conceive nothing more complete or convincing.
The subsequent couplets can do no more than confirm this
demonstration, but they do, one and all, emphatically con
firm it.

BOOK II. The last or rimed couplet of Book II. is different
in structure. Here the lines present assonant or vowel rimes
which are of two syllables (enti, isti) with slender letters
for though slender vowels could alliterate with broad (to
prevent monotony) as in the first example, they can only
rime within their own class as in this example.

Next there is major Concord in each line T, C and P, C
and lastly there is a most remarkable instance of " union,"
linked or interlaced-rime. Take this condition laid down
for a certain Irish metric form : "It is demanded that there

APPENDIX II 215

should be a correspondence (or rime) between two other
words in each couplet (besides the finals), of which one
is to be in the first line of the first couplet and a corresponding
one in the second line, and of these the word in the first line
should be the last but one, or nearly so, of that line, and
should agree with its riming word in the next in number of
syllables, in quantity, in vowels, whether slender and broad,
and in the sound of the vowels. 1

Now, a glance at the Latin lines shows that the last word
but one Torua rimes exactly as required with the last
but one Pascua in the second line.

et bona libertas, euadere Torua Cruenti
ora lupi, vitaque frui, per Pascua Christi.

Here, therefore, we have two instances of major Concord,
assonant or vowel End-rimes, and a perfect specimen of
" Union " linked or interlaced rimes ! A lighter echo of the
Irish metric is found in the riming words bona and ora lupi
and frui with identical vowels.

BOOK III. In Book III. the final couplet is of special
interest because it has no real relevancy to what precedes, and
is obviously added to finish the Book with an Irish rimed
distich. It differs in structure and is rich in rime. The end-
word in the first line is of two syllables, that of the second of
three syllables a curious characteristic of certain Irish
metres. These rime by broad vowels in the two last syllables.

There is abundance of internal rime, as four words in
the first line assonate perfectly parua, loquor, facia, currant
and have their echo or linked rime (bonum) in the second line.
In the latter also there is a four-syllable vowel internal rime,
between speciale and generate. 2 The three letters S represent
Concord. This is the couplet :

1 O Molloy, De prosodid hibernicd, Rome, 1677. Translated by
T. O Flannghaile, Dublin. Gill & Son, 1907.

a A curiously similar polysyllabic internal rime is present (with
alliteration) in Thomas Moore s " Song of Fionnuala " :

While murmuring mournfully Lir s Lonely daughter

See Appendix III.

2i 6 THE EASTER SONG

parua loquor, Si facia del per Singula currant,
et Speciale bonum, quum sit generale reuoluam.

To produce so complex and complete a metrical feat
explains why Sedulius had to select a distich somewhat apart
from the context (which gave me a clue to its secret Celtic
construction).

BOOK IV. The two terminal lines of Book IV. present
major Concord, or alliteration, in the first line, and minor
Concord in the second. There are double internal and end-
rimes this time with a slender and a broad vowel in each line.
Thus:

obvia Turba dedit ? Domino nisi cum Patre Chris to
qui regit aethereum Princeps in Principe regnum.

There is Alliteration of the " noble " consonants, T, P, C ;
and manifest " linked " or interlaced rimes between the lines
in dedit , regit, princeps, princip.

We now come to the last lines of the last Book.

BOOK V. It is curious and of interest to note, that whilst
the Second, Third, and Fourth Books finish by couplets
having double vowel rimes, these appear to have been studi
ously varied : thus the Second Book rimes on two slender
vowels, the Third on two broad vowels, and the Fourth on a
slender and a broad vowel.

In the Fifth Book, whilst the last riming syllable is a
distinct echo of that of the First Book, the structure of the
couplet is varied. There is minor (and interlaced) Concord
in the letters T, C, T, and two internal words facta and totus
rime in the first line with the final word mundus : these find
their echo, link or interlacing rime, in the word tanta of the
next line. In this, the last line, an internal word rimes with
the last word, both ending in os, like the final syllable of Book
I., but here a nice variation is obtained by the introduction of
dissyllabic or double-rimes densos and libros riming on
slender and broad vowels :

Facta redemptoris, nee Totus Cingere mundus
sufficeret densos per Tanta volumina librcs.

There is Alliteration, T, C, T.

APPENDIX II 217

It is manifest that accurate knowledge, great care, and
studious skill must have co-operated to produce such exact
complete and varied examples of the Irish metric in Latin
verse. These were reserved for the finishing lines of each
Book, as finials to an edifice, and are as irresistible evidences
of Irish artistic authorship as would be an interlaced illuminated
illustration from an ancient Irish manuscript.

SECTION II

DISSEMINATED TRACES

The care and curious workmanship devoted to the closing
couplets of the five Books so as to mould them to the Irish
metric could not be given, and should not be expected in the
structure of the great Epic. At most we may expect occasional
instances of alliteration, of internal assonance and of other
rime. These, indeed, are found in unique abundance.

Take first the address To the Reader Ad Lectorem
in elegiac verse. To the Latinist or casual observer the
presence of leonine rimes of one syllable is apparent, and has
been noted. But besides and beyond this, the expert in
Gaelic metric will quickly perceive a remarkable and varied
richness of assonance and double rimes, with alliteration often.

These are the first four lines in the Address :

Paschales Quicunque dopes Conuiua requirts

dignatus nostris zccubitare Tow,
Pone Supercilium, Si te Cognoscis amicum

ne Quaeras Opus hie Codicis ArtiftVw.

The Latinist notes in the first line, but two rimes, (es t
es), the Gaelic metric recognises three, es, es, is, as the slender
vowels rime together. Besides there are obviously two
internal double rimes (ales and dapes). There is also concord
or alliteration of the consonants P, Q, C.

In the second line, where there seemed to be only two thin

2i 8 THE EASTER SONG

single rimes (is, is) the Gaelic metric detects three rich double
rimes, nostris, tare, toris.

In the third line, Dr. J. Huemer noted but two single
riming syllables (urn, um), the Gaelic metric recognises five
double rimes turn, icum, also pone, super, oscis and an
alliteration, S, S.

In the fourth line, where only two single rimes is, is are
noticed, there are two double-rimes ids, ids and two
vowel and two consonantal concords O with A, and Q with C.

It is needless to proceed with further detail. Every line
has been tested in a similar manner, with a somewhat similar
result. Several instances of assonance and alliteration are
to be found scattered throughout the Books. 1 As a rule,
however, he duly adheres to the classic models, diverging
systematically only at Book ends, or in passages of exceptional
emotion. One may take the following passage where the
Gaelic method shows through the Roman mould.

The poet describes how with comrade Hope and Faith,
he ascends the Hill Sublime and beholds the Celestial City.
He is deeply moved, and in moments of emotion native feeling
and training prevail over the later learning, so that the Irish
method appears :

mine coeptam luuat Ire viam, montemque per Altum,
nitentes firmare gradus, properemus in urbem,
libertatis opem, radians ubi Regia fuluis
emicat aula tholis, ubi Dantur Digna Petenti,
quaerenti Spes Certa manet, Claustrisque remotis,
Peruia Pulsanti reserantur limina Cordi. 2

Here the rimes would be overlooked by a Latinist, but in the
first line there are four am, at, am, um with a vowel Concord
I, I, A. In the second there seem to be only two (us, us),

1 For instance :

Turbaret geminas Cumulate Pisce Caritias .

Bk. iv. 1. 121.
and

gaudia nonferimus Propensaque vota Timemus.

Bk. iv. 1. 123.

2 Liber i. v. 282, etc.

APPENDIX II 219

but the end-word of the first line obtains its link or interlaced
rime here in gradus, and the end-word urbem, of the second
finds its internal rime in are and its interlaced rime opem
in the third line. The terminal word -fuluis of the third
rimes with these and is re-echoed by the link or interlaced
rime tholis in the fourth ! Then also the three-syllabled
end-word of the fourth line petenti is re-echoed, interlaced
and rimed by the first word of the fifth line quaerenti. The
end word of the fifth line rimes by its last two syllables
motis with manet, and its interlaced rime-syllables santi
and directly with the terminal of the sixth line cordi.

There is also concord or alliteration obviously present,
and yet a Latinist would not perceive a rime, in a passage
interwoven with a musical network of interlaced assonances !

The next example is not the least important. Having
described Christ as " Pax Crucis," the " Peace of the Cross,"
Sedulius proceeds to explain the symbolism of the Cross :

neue quis ignoret, speciem Crucis esse Colendam
quae dominum Portauit ouans, ratione Potenti
quatuor inde Plagas Quadrati Colligit orbis,
splendidus Auctoris de vertice fulget Eous,
occiduo Sacrae lambuntur Sidere plantae,
arcton dextra tenet, medium laeua Erigit Axem
Cunctaque de membris viuit natura Creantis
et Cruce Complexum Christus regit undique mundum.

This is rich in consonant correspondence, four lines having
three, and the third line four. The end-word of the first
verse, colendam, finds its interlaced rime in Dominum , a
perfect three-syllable rime in the course of the next line,
according to Gaelic custom. The same holds good for
Eous, with iduo. The next three end-words (antae, axem,
antis) rime with each other, in double (broad and slender)
vowel rimes. The last line possesses three-consonant corre
spondence, and in structure seems purposely varied so that
its last syllable rimes with two internal syllables dum, us, um.

Sedulius regards the head of the Cross as representing
the East, and the other limbs as symbolising the other quarters

220 THE EASTER SONG

of the world. This must seem strange to those accustomed
to take the North as the chief point. But by a curious coin
cidence the orientation he gives fits in exactly with Irish
terminology. Thus the Gaelic word soir means the " east "
and also " before " ; the word siar means the " west " and
" behind," whilst deas is the " right " and the " south. *

These terms prove that the East was for the Irish the chief
point : they faced the sunrise mentally so it was before them,
the west behind them, their left hand towards the north and
the right towards the south. This governs the orientation
of churches. Granting that this orientation existed elsewhere
it is still a suggestive fact that Sedulius s symbolism can be
so exactly illustrated by terms of the Irish language.

SECTION III
EVIDENCE BY DEFECTS

Yet another identification mark may be found in the
following passage, taken, like that just cited, from the fifth
and last Book of the Carmen.

Sedulius describes, with deep emotion, the incidents of
the Last Supper, and the most horrid treachery of Iscariot ;
then, in a passion of wrath and indignation, he thus apostro
phises the felon Apostle :

Tune Cruente feroi Audax Insane rebellig
Perfide crudelis fallax Venalia Inique
Traditor Immitis fere Proditor Impie latro
Praeuius horribiles Comitaris signifer enses ?

Here we have the concurrence of the consonants, p, c, t
forming concord, and vowel initials also making concord
according to the strict rules of Irish metric. Then also there
are the numerous assonants of one, two, and three syllables x

1 The collocation of the letters x and s suggests a hissing execra
tion.

APPENDIX II 221

and interlaced rimes, such as rebellis, crudelis, inique,
stgnifer.

These are sufficiently striking characteristics, but there is
another and a most singular identification mark to be found
in the texture of the verses namely in the accumulation of
epithets. This vehement proliferation of the epithets is
also to be observed in the prose text :

Tune igitur audax cruente ferox rebellis et perfide, . . . tune
traditor, latro, fere proditor immitis et impie, praeuius ductor, ac
signifer, hostis comitaris horribilis aciem, etc.

Now, with respect to both verse and prose, this multiplica
tion of epithets may be regarded as an exclusively Irish
peculiarity. It has been repeatedly regretted and denounced
as a fault in some later Irish mediaeval writers or reciters.
In ancient classic Gaelic work it occurs infrequently and may
be an ornament not a blemish. It is noticeable in a.few of the
lines ascribed to Amergin, the pre-Christian bard, it is evident
in the terse quatrains of the sixth-century poet Dalian Forgaill,
in this line for example :

Sgiat breac buarta breon.

It appears also in an ancient poem in praise of Beann Eadair
(called " Hoved " by the Norse, and thence " Howth ") as
follows :

Cnoc longmar lonnmar lionmar

Beann fionmar fonmar agmar.

It is more plentiful in the " Roman Vision," a historical
poem of the middle of the seventeenth century. Just as
Sedulius breaks from his epic reserve into a passion of invective
at the mention of Judas, so does the later Irish bard break
from his historical restraint into a passion of eulogy, when
Eogan Rua O Neill is named, thus :

Dreacac dualac duanac deirceac,
Feasac, fuadrac, fuadac, feastac,
Gaisgeadac gluasda, gruagac gleasda
Lannac, luatmar, luaimneac, leimneac.

222 THE EASTER SONG

There are two other quatrains in this style. As for
prose parallels these are too common to need more than a
reference.

No evidence could be more conclusive and convincing
than this concurrence of intrinsic and extrinsic characteristics,
where not only the peculiar inwoven melodies of the metric
but the very faults of style combine to demonstrate the Irish
nationality of Sedulius.

SECTION IV

THE COUNTER TEST AND CONCLUSION

The lyrical " Hymn of Sedulius " seems to have won all
hearts at once, and to have retained them through all times and
climes. It is now, however, better known by its first line, " A
Solis ortus cardine," because the world has forgotten the
poet s name, whilst enjoying the poet s gift. This lyric consists
of twenty-three strophes, each composed of four lines, like
the ancient Irish quatrains, in each of which the sense should
be complete. This Celtic custom had already been adopted
by Hilary and Ambrose. After the Hebrew fashion, the
poem began with the first letter of the alphabet, and each
stanza that followed took another letter in due succession.
This custom was a favourite not only with ancient Irish
hymn-writers, but with minor bards of the last century.
Another characteristic is alliteration, or what one might term
letter-rime. Consonants are classified, and each finds con
cord within its class. Vowels are classified, and each rimes
only in its class, but alliterates with all vowels. See above,
p. 213, etc.

These are the opening quatrains of the Hymn of Sedulius
and it will be at once seen that they conform to these ancient

Irish rules :

A solis Ortus cardine
Ad Usque terrae Jimitem,

APPENDIX II 223

Christum Canamus Principem
natum Maria Virgine. 1

Two vowels alliterate in each of the first two lines, and two
consonants in the third. Another most interesting fact is
the existence of internal link-rime, as one may call it, which
is an exclusively Irish characteristic, and so passes unperceived
by those not versed in ancient Irish poetry. Thus, cardine
rimes with usque te, and canamus with natum Mar indeed
tu cardine rime, by vowels, with ad usque te whilst canamus
prin also assonate exactly with natum Mart. These rimes
are found precisely where one may find similar rimes in
ancient Irish verse. Finally we have here the great Celtic
character of vowel end-rime, in this case dissyllabic, on the
letters i, e ine, item, ipem, ine. Sometimes the consonants
also rime.

It was exceedingly difficult to cast the Latin into such a
Celtic mould, and one must not expect that subsequent
quatrains should show the same exactness. The second
quatrain reads :

beatus auctor seculi
seruile corpus induit,
ut carne carnem liberans
ne perderet quos condidit.

The final s of the first word, as it precedes a vowel, served
to alliterate with the initial of seculi ; the difficulty is over
come in the same way in the second line. In the third and
fourth lines two consonants, c, c, and q, c, alliterate. As
regards link-rime, seculi rimes with seruile, and nem liberans
with perderet quos. There are trisyllabic e, u, i, and i, u, i
seculi and induit end-rimes closing the first two lines ; the
poet ends the first, second, and last lines by a monosyllabic
echo in i.

1 Which may be thus imitated :

All from the Orient dawning day
Until the Earth s remotest ray,
Sing Christ our King, in harmony,
The Virgin Mary s progeny.

224 THE EASTER SONG

Two other quatrains may be quoted, as examples :

hostis Herodes impie,
Christum venire quid times ?
non eripit mortalia,
qui regna dat caelestia.

There are two letter-rimes in the first line, h, h ; two in
the second, c, q, and two in the fourth, q, c. In the third n
and m belong to the same class. Link-rime is found between
impie and venire, and between pit morta and regna dat ; whilst
there is trisyllabic end-rime in the first couplet on i, i, e, and
dissyllabic in the second on i, a.

The next quatrain gives the triple vowel end-rirnes :
viderant, praeuiam ; famine, munere and the next : perscnat,
pignora ; milia, victimam. In the following quatrain, besides
internal link-rime, there is trisyllabic end-rime in the first
couplet, and dissyllabic in the last. Both the final vowels
and consonants rime in the last couplet :

lauacra puri gurgitis
caelestis agnus attigit,
peccata, quae non detulit,
nos abluendo sustulit.

This tway-letter 1 rime, vowel-and-consonant, now com
monly identified as rime," occurs four or five times in the
hymn. It is found likewise from time to time in ancient
Irish verse ; but the Celts who used it knew how to employ
the more varied assonant, which less fatigues, whilst gratify
ing, the ear. They also were the first to employ blank verse. 2

Having thus tested these quatrains of Sedulius by the
rules of ancient Irish metric, and found them ring right,
the conclusion is obvious. But though this examination is
sufficient in itself, there is fortunately a counter-test possible,
which should set the question of the nationality of Sedulius
at rest for ever. It might, for instance, be fancied (without
foundation) that his method of verse -structure was common

1 " Tway-letter " is used when one letter is a vowel and the other
a consonant.

* See Bards of the Gael and Gall, London, 1897.

APPENDIX II 225

to the Latins and other peoples. To this I answer that every
modification which others made in his Hymn, with a view
to amend it, proves their ignorance of his art, because it
strikes out some Irish characteristic. Every change was an
offence to the Irish ear and method.

Thus Bede and the Mozarabic Breviary read et usque
instead of ad usque ; this alters the full alliteration between
two broad vowels to one less satisfactory (though permissible)
between a slender and a broad vowel.

Again Sedulius wrote :

paruoque lacte pastus est
per quem nee ales esurit.

The distinguished Latinists who revised the Roman
Breviary in the time of Urban VIII. objected to the adjective,
and " amended " the first line thus :

et lacte modico pastus est.

This alteration expunged the alliteration of the con
sonants p, p I Worse happened when the Parisian Latinists
in their Breviary wrote :

et indiget lactis cibo.

Not only was the alliteration lost, but the dissyllabic vowel
end -rimes were destroyed !

Let us look at another quatrain where the Latinist revisers
came into collision with the Irish poet. In the quatrain
which should, in alphabetical order, begin with the letter /?,
Sedulius wrote :

hostis Herodes impie
Christum venire quid times ?

Judged by the Latin ear this seemed erroneous. Instead
of hostis forming, as it should, an iambic foot, or at least a
spondee, which would be permissible in this metre, it was
held to make a trochaic foot. Arevalus fairly pleads that the
aspirated initial of Herodes was equivalent to a consonant,
and left hostis a spondee. Sedulius had clearly the Irish
habit of sounding the h fully, from which the Romans fell

Q

226 THE EASTER SONG

away. However, the revisers thought to set things right by
altering a few words, and this is what they made of it :

crudelis Herodes, Deum
Regem venire quid times ?

How rapidly the Irish characteristics have vanished ! Not
only is the alphabetical order infringed by the omission of
hostis, but the careful alliteration (/*, /z, c, q) is destroyed.
Then the end-rime is spoiled, for the broad u does not rime
with the slender e, in the final syllables, and this is done
gratuitously, not coerced by any exigency of sense or language
to which even the poet should bow.

The Latin ear was gratified by the extinction of a suspected
quantity, but the change would have jarred cruelly upon the
attuned ear of the Irish poet. Nothing could better demon
strate that the characteristics which have been pointed out
were of Irish introduction than the fact that the Latinists
were not conscious of the subtle inlaid rimes which they so
rapidly annihilated.

THE ELEGIA OF SEDULIUS

This poem, which begins with the words Cantemus
Domino," is written in elegiac verse, with this peculiarity,
that the first part of the hexameter is repeated as the second
part of the pentameter, with the meaning modified. Com
posed for singing, it is a song, and as it is also in praise of
God, it is a hymn, according to the definition of Saint August
ine. It has the exceptional character of being a hymn in
classic elegiac metre.

This hymn obtained great celebrity, especially in England,
because of St. Dunstan s Vision, which, according to Eadmer,
he beheld in St. Mary s Chapel of St. Augustine s Church.
In this vision of great beauty he saw the Blessed Virgin,
surrounded by a multitude of fair young maidens who were
chanting this hymn. The Virgin herself began by singing
the first two lines to a most celestial melody, which was con-

APPENDIX II t 227

tinued by the fair choristers singing the subsequent lines, as
they moved around her in choral procession.
These are the opening lines :

Cantemus socii Domino cantemus honorem,

dulcis amor Christi personet ore pio,
primus ad ima ruit magna de luce superbus,

sic homo, quum tumuit, primus ad ima ruit.
vnius ob meritum cuncti periere minores,

saluantur cuncti vnius ob meritum.
sola fuit mulier, patuit qua ianua letho :

et qua vita redit, sola fuit mulier.

These lines (there are 109 in all) may be represented by the
following imitative version :

Come let us sing to the Lord ! come all, let us sing to his honour !

Let our voices arise, chanting the sweet love of Christ !
First Pride fell to the deeps, down far from the splendour of heaven

Thus man grown arrogant down to the deeps also fell.
Then thro the merits of one henceforth his descendants should perish

But men all were redeemed through the high merits of One.
Woman alone oped the gate, giving death to disconsolate mortals,

That which gave again life oped was by woman alone.

This metric mode was not peculiar to Sedulius, but had
been rarely used : the Greeks called it epanalepsis
(repeating) ; it has also been named peracteric, reciprocal,
ophite, or serpentine doubtless from the old symbol of the
serpent with its tail in its mouth (imaging eternity). But
this Elegia of Sedulius gained for this rare and obsolete
mode a new popularity among poets, and it was imitated by
Fortunatus, his admirer, by Sidonius and others, and curiously
enough by Irishmen.

Dr. Shahan acutely observes : * Is it not remarkable
that the peculiar Irish rhyme of the Sedulian distich-hymn
Cantemus should have been imitated in the early Middle Ages
by Irishmen only ? The proof of it is in some letters of
the Irish Colony at Liege published by Dummler, in two
of which we have the perfect Irish refrain. Sedulius Scotus
also frequently used this rhyme " (? metric). These are the
citations :

228 THE EASTER SONG

sumite Scottigenam devota mente benigni
o vos Francigene, sumite Scottigenam.

*

omnia Christus habet, per Christum cuncta reguntur,
mentior baud vobis, omnis Christus habet.

It should confirm the statement, that this metrical mode
was popular among Irish writers, to learn that an example
is extant in the Gaelic, and I think no other non-classic
language possesses a similar example.

Dr. W. K. Sullivan, in his monumental Introduction to
Professor O Curry s great pioneer lectures, says that " possibly
the chanting of psalms, antiphonies, etc., that St. Aldelm
speaks of ... in Glastonbury was introduced by the Irish
monks." Sir Samuel Ferguson, in his erudite Essay on
the Origin of the Harp, quotes the undoubted authority of
Gerbert to the following effect : "To this period we may
refer the Antiphonary of the Monastery of Bangor " (Ireland)
" whence St. Columbanus coming forth, with St. Abbo his
companion, not only imbued our Germany with the light of
the Christian faith, but also with the principles of ascetic
living. . . . Doubtless, the first rule for arranging ecclesi
astical services amongst us, as made up of psalms, canticles,
hymns, collects, and antiphonies, was hence derived."

We shall next consider how and by whom such hymns
were produced.

APPENDIX III

CELTIC INFLUENCE ON THE EVOLUTION
OF RIMED HYMNS

IN the time of Sedulius, the Church, emerging from the
gloom of the Catacombs when the storms of persecution
ceased, began like a bird when sunshine falls on its wings
after a tempestuous night to uplift its voice in joyful songs
of praise.

This was a new sound in the Latin world, and it is signifi
cant to note that it began not in the capital but in Celtic
Gaul and appeared next in Cisalpine Gaul. It is equally
significant that the first two hymn-writers, St. Hilary and
St. Ambrose, were Gauls by birth. Hence as regards the
Western Church we see that hymns passed into its service
from its Celtic frontier.

Nor should it be counted as strange, for, by the reports of
Caesar, Pliny, and Strabo, the bards or poets had long occupied
a position of great dignity, power, and influence amongst this
Celtic nation. They could precipitate wars, and arrest
armies in their march ; they were indispensable to kings,
chiefs, and assemblies. In almost every respect they resembled
the bards of Erinn ; and when we find that, in the Celtic Isle,
the first Christian hymns imitated certain of the peculiarities
of Celtic verse, it is reasonable to infer that a similar course
was followed on the Celtic mainland. The civilisation of
the Celts influenced even the warriors who had defeated them,
and that influence must have been felt by the students of the
flourishing schools of Gaul, many of whom became dis-

229

230 THE EASTER SONG

tinguished as poets, rhetors, orators, teachers, and office
bearers in Rome and the Provinces. In the fifth century,
when hymns began to be heard in the Western Church, Gaul
could count twenty-four of her sons as Latin poets.

We all know that the Eastern Church had a different
history as regards hymns. The great spiritual enthusiasm
of the Hebrew nation was a fount of lyric poetry, from the
triumph-song of Moses to the Magnificat. By St. Paul s
Epistle we find that the Colossian Christians made use of
psalms, hymns, odes, and spiritual songs. The service of
Song, therefore, passed directly into the Eastern Churches.
Pliny found the Bithynian Christians chanting with antiphons,
before day-dawn, to Christ the Lord. The Church of
Antioch adopted it, at the suggestion of St. Ignatius, in the
first century. These examples were multiplied in the East,
and religious songs, in Syriac and in Greek, were sung and
published. The Greeks used several of the classic metres,
and, in the fourth century, St. John Chrysostom had pro
cessional hymn-singing, with lights, in the night hours.

If, as some have conjectured, the Service of Song came to
the Latins from the East, then it should surely have passed
over during early centuries of intimate communion. If,
during three hundred years, there was no such transfusion,
then the presumption bears against the Eastern source.

On the other hand, we have the admitted fact that the first
Christian hymn in Latin was composed by St. Hilary of
Poitiers, known as Hilarius Gallus " Hilary the Gaul
a Celt by race. Now there are distinct traces of the Celtic
metric (or rime-system) in this hymn, as shall be demonstrated
but first, let us see if such a rime-system in hymns can be
traced to any other source.

I. No HEBREW SOURCE

The Hebraic psalm metres did not leave a legacy of rime.
In 1898 the University of Vienna awarded the Lackenbacker
prize to R. Nivard Schloeg O.C. for his work. " De re

APPENDIX III 231

metrica veterum Hebraeorum," which states and criticises
the views held as regards Hebrew metric. The ancient
writers, including St. Jerome, considered it similar to Greek
metres, and recognised (with some peculiarities) iambic,
alcaic, saphic, hexameter, and pentameter verse. Cardinal
Pitra and many others differ, recognising a resemblance, but
noting a structural difference ; so that there are four views
with respect to Hebrew metric. One bases it on quantity,
a second on number, a third on accent ; and a fourth on
quantity and accent. Schloeg, following Zenner, holds it
proved that the Hebrew psalms were composed of strophes and
antistrophes sung by two choirs.

II. No GREEK SOURCE

The oldest extant liturgical manuscripts known went back
no further than the close of the fifth century, until the dis
covery, by Prof. G. Bickell of Innsbruck, of a papyrus of an
earlier date. This document he found among the papyri of
the Archduke Rainer in 1887. It was alleged to be two
centuries earlier than any one previously known, but Wessely,
who notes it as " popular " Greek, regards the writing as of
the fourth century. It is very simple in structure and without
rime :

6 yevv?7$is kv

KCU dvarpafals cv
KO.TO iKYjo-as V rfj FaAtAatot,
et So/xev cr?7/xtov e ovpavov
(TU>) aa-repas </>ai/ei/ras
dypavAoiWes
yowTrecrovres 4 Aeyov
Tto Harpi, d\Xrj\oma
T( Ytw KCU TW atw

Some ten years later Cardinal Pitra discovered, in St,
Petersburg and in Moscow, Greek manuscripts of a much
more recent period, containing hymns, not of classic structure,

232 THE EASTER SONG

but depending on syllabic number, accent, and apparently
rime.

These, however, may have been written after the revival
of Greek in Europe by St. Columbanus, and perhaps by some,
of his disciples.

III. No SYRIAN, NO AFRICAN, NO ROMAN SOURCE

Suppose we go further afield and, searching the confines
of the Roman Empire, take in writers born in Syria and in
Africa.

Strange to say it is here that something may be found
resembling rime as a child s caricature resembles a human
face. Commodianus Afer was born in Gaza, and wrote in
the middle of the third century. The persecution of the
Christians, whose faith he adopted, may partially account for
the imperfection of quantity in his rhythmic hexameters, but
even the best spiritual intentions can hardly excuse the com
position of a poem of twenty-six lines, when every line ends
with the same letter o I

This may by some be called rime the Chinese have a
similar system which pleases them, or their poets but
properly speaking it is no more rime than the reiterated
tapping of one note on the piano is tune. It results in a
monotonous noise painful to any cultured ear, but intensely
odious to a Celtic accustomed to the subtle interwoven
melodies of the Celtic art. Here is a specimen of the verse
of Commodianus :

incolae Caelorum futuri cum Deo Christo,
tenente principium, vidente cuncta de caelo
simplicitas, bonitas, habitet in corpore vestro
irasci nolite sine causa fratri devoto.
recipistis enim quidquid feceritis ab illo.

And so he proceeds, with excellent precepts, to the close
of over two dozen miserable monotones.

Aurelius Augustinus, better known as St. Augustine
(354-430), has sometimes been mentioned as a writer of rimed

APPENDIX III 233

.

verse. This refers to his poem against the Donatists. In
reality it is nothing better than a repetition of the system of
Commodiamis, though here the terminal vowel is not o but
e. These lines may serve as an example :

abundantia peccatorum solet fratrum conturbare,
propter hoc dominus noster voluit nos praemonere.

Verecundus is the only subsequent author who follows
this method of riming long on one syllable. St. Augustine
indeed speaks apologetically of his verses, written that they
might be remembered and sung by the " poor and ignorant,"
not as a literary effort. They do not present the genius of
St. Augustine, but his charity.

A contemporary, Victorinus, an African, who was a
distinguished teacher of rhetoric at Rome, composed some
hymns, when he became a Christian, about the year 372 ;
but they do not rime, though they display more promising
germs of sound-echoes than the verses of Commodian. To
show how remote they are from the methods introduced into
Latin by Hilary, I may quote some examples of Victorinus.
One hymn begins :

Adesto lumen verum, pater omnipotens Deus,
adesto lumen luminis, mysterium et virtus Dei.

Another begins :

Miserere, Domine, miserere Christe, miserere Domine,

quia credidi in te, miserere, Domine, quia misericordia tua cognovt te.

Each strophe opens with similar words, but the strophes are very
irregular as regards length. He seems to have imitated the
psalms. In a third, where a similar irregularity is seen, each
line closes with the words, " o beata Trinitas," and is there
fore an early example of a refrain or burthen-line, but there
is no proper systematic rime, though there is repetition of the
end-syllables of some lines :

Deus Dominus, Sanctus Spiritus : o beata Trinitas,
Pater Filius, Paracletus : o beata Trinitas.
praestator, minister, divisor : o beata Trinitas.
Spiritus operationum, Spiritus ministeriorum,
Spiritus gratiarum : o beata Trinitas.

234 THE EASTER SONG

This may have been intended as a litany, and been used
as such, but could in no manner have served as a model or
precedent for the rimed Latin hymns, which soon came to
be heard throughout the Christian world. The Hebraic,
Grecian, Roman, Syrian, and African sources having been
found empty, we now turn to the abundant Celtic fountain.

IV. THE CELTIC SOURCE

Fortunately the verse-examples of Commodian, Augustine,
and Verecundus fell sterile and dead. It would be a nice
question to decide how great an obstacle to the spread of
Christianity, through musical nations, would have been the
adoption of such methods. Perhaps it would have been the
more welcome in Africa and China, but its divine ceremonies
would have been mute, without service of song, among many
western peoples, had such repellent systems been attempted,
and for sake of these monotonous methods the world would
have lost a treasure of beautiful and noble hymns.

In the face of such a danger, in presence of such a fact,
it seems as strange as it is amazing that the Celtic peoples,
who introduced the system of musical metric, and who
initiated and developed the new hymnology, should have
obtained not merely no gratitude but absolutely no recognition.
Yet without them Commodian might have conquered, and a
great light have never gladdened the Christian world.

The first writer of a hymn in Latin was a Celt, known as
Hilarius Gallus, or Hilary (now St. Hilary) the Gaul. He
was born at Poitiers, became a bishop, and through Arian
influence was banished, in 356, to Asia Minor ; where he
took refuge in Phrygia. The sorrows of exile, which refine
and exalt noble souls, made him a poet, and he sent, a year or
so later, to his daughter Abra, a copy of his new and beautiful
hymn, " Lucis largitor Optime."

Although this hymn is composed in classic metre, it bears,
in my opinion, distinct traces of the bardic system of verse-
structure. I refer not merely to end-rime, which is usually

APPENDIX III 235

alone considered, but also to internal and vowel rime. These
resemblances have not hitherto been noticed because hymnolo-
gists generally were ignorant of Celtic, but I venture to suggest
that St. Jerome (who knew something of Celtic, for he recog
nised it when spoken in Galatia) had some of these character
istics in his mind when he described Hilarius as wearing the
Gallic buskin (cothurnus). 1

Be it noted that the hymn is framed in quatrains, which
was an Irish-Celtic system, and that there are instances of
alliteration (or letter-rime) as well as of syllable-rime. Of two
versions of the first quatrain I take that which more completely
shows the Celtic characteristics :

Lucis Largitor optime,
cuius sereno Lumine
Post Lapsae noctis Tempora
dies refulsus Panditur.

MAJOR CONCORD. Here we find alliteration in the first two
lines, with perfect vowel end-rimes in the last three syllables.
In the second couplet we have internal interlaced rime
between tempora and " refulsus " ; there being one
" slender " vowel and two " broad " vowels 2 in each word.
The concluding word of the quatrain rimes in its last syllable
with the last syllable of the third line, both possessing broad
vowels ra y ur. There is alliteration : /, /, /, /, and p, t, p in
the quatrain.

The second quatrain supplies similar signs, with alliteration
of three : /, /, /.

tu verus mundi Lucifer ,

non is qui parui sidem

venturae Lucis nuntius

augusto fulget Lumine.

1 The cothurnus was the buskin on the classic stage which was

suited to the personage. St. Jerome s phrase solves the mystery of

" the Irish brogue." Foot-wear seemed irrelevant to speech r yet

br6g " is simply a buskin ; hence the phrase, " he uses the Irish

brogue " (br6g) has a classic origin, as already noted, p. 26.

z The slender vowels i and e rime ; the broad vowels a, o, u rime
in Irish metric ; but they must be pronounced as in Italy or Spain.

236 THE EASTER SONG

The final two-syllables of the first, second, and fourth
lines assonate perfectly, and the end-word of the third line
obtains exact internal or interlaced rimes in the fourth line,
fulget lu. There is even five-syllable rime in the last distich.
With internal rime the quatrain is remarkably rich, for mundi,
parui y lucis, fulget all rime in both syllables.

The fourth quatrain is equally noticeable :

adesto return conditor,
paternae lucis gloria,
cuius admota gratia
nostra patescunt corpora.

The rime is carried even further here, as there is trisyllabic
rime with five-syllable internal or interlaced riming, for
mota gratia assonate perfectly with nostra patescunt. All the
last syllables rime by their vowels. There is also alliteration :
c, p, p, c.

The rime-system, which this hymn reveals, is too elaborate
and methodical to be the result of chance, especially as it
closely follows certain principles of verse-structure preserved
in ancient Irish metric.

Another hymn has been questionably assigned to St.
Hilary ; but, though it rimes more obviously, it lacks the
finer finish of the first. We have alliteration (or concord)
between initial consonants and between initial vowels, with
sectional rime :

ad Caeli Clara non sum dignus sidera

leuare meos Infelices Oculos,

graui depresses Peccatorum Pondere ;

PARCE REDEMPTIS.

bonum neglexi facere quod debui,
probrosa gessi sine fine crimina,
scelus patraui nullo clausum termino ;
SUBUENI CHRISTE.

In addition to internal and end-rimes, it will be observed
that the fourth line assonates completely (syllabically) with
the eighth. Thus in these two lines one broad vowel a rimes
with one broad vowel u y while there are four slender rimes
in e and i.

APPENDIX III 237

The rime - system shown in these specimens is more
subtle and refined, and elaborate as in Irish metric than
anything that can be cited from Latin poets, such as the
obvious end-rimes in some verse attributed to Ennius, and
the sporadic leonine rimes noticeable in Ovid and others.
The case is still stronger against the Christian poets, Com-
modianus, Augustine, and Verecundus.

After St. Hilary, St. Ambrose comes next, in point of time,
as a hymn-writer ; greater than his predecessor, no doubt,
but that does not lessen Hilary s glory as a pioneer. Their
verses shine the brighter by contrast with the attempts which
have been mentioned, and both these poets were Gauls by
birth. Ambrose was born, about the year 370, at Treves,
where his father ruled as Praefectus Praetorio Galliarum."
His youth was passed in a Celtic atmosphere. He is sup
posed to have written his treatise, De moribus Brachmanorum,
for Palladius, a Greek, who was afterwards sent by Pope
Celestine to Erinn as bishop to * the Scots believing in
Christ."

When, at the age of thirty-four, Ambrose was chosen
Bishop of Milan, he was still in a Celtic atmosphere, that of
Cisalpine Gaul. Soon after Augustine came to Milan there
came Justina s order for the banishment of Ambrose ; this
caused the faithful to watch, night and day, in the Church,
so that they might protect or die with their beloved
Bishop. Then, it is stated, psalms and hymns were first
sung in the Church to alleviate the anxiety of the people.
The practice so begun, in the year 386, happily continued.
But, although this was the first time that hymns were
sung in a Church in Italy, it does not follow that hymns
had not been previously sung in Churches in song-loving
Gaul. Doubtless hymns of St. Hilary were sung from
earlier days.

St. Ambrose is known to be the author of four hymns, and
others are ascribed to him with more or less certainty.
Archbishop Trench, 1 comparing the former with the mediaeval

1 Sacred Latin Poetry. London and Cambridge, 1864.

238 THE EASTER SONG

hymns of Bernard and Adam of St. Victor, notices their cold
ness and proceeds :

The absence, too, of rhyme, . . . adds to this feeling of dis
appointment. The ear and the heart seem alike to be without their
due satisfaction.

Had this distinguished prelate been as intimately acquainted
with the Irish language as with others, his ear would have
quickly detected traces of Celtic rime in these verses which
seem rimeless to readers in general. Let us take, for example,
the hymn which he quotes from St. Ambrose, and note how
it is enriched by the elusive Celtic vowel rimes and con
sonant correspondence :

veni, Redemptor gentium,
ostende />artum Virginis ;
miretur omne saeculww :
tails decet partus DCMTW.

Taken as a Celtic quatrain, we find that, in the first line,
the vowels, o, e, i, M, rime exactly with the first vowels of the
second line, o, e, e, a. In the last two lines there is also inter
laced rime between omne and talis. There are also three
terminal tway-letter rimes in um. The second quatrain

reads :

non ex virili semine,
sed mystico spiramine,
verbum Dei factum est caro
fructusque ventris floru/Z.

Here there is triple vowel rime in the first line, virili and
semine, in the first distich, two double end-rimes ; in the second
distich, major and interlaced concord, and the quatrain has
three slender end-rimes.
Again observe :

procedit e ihalamo suo,
pudoris aula regia,
geminae gigas substantiae
alacris ut currat viam.

There are here terminal and internal rimes, now, however,

APPENDIX III 239

the end-rimes are on the vowels, z, a. Is it possible not to
perceive the intentional rime, in the entrance-words of the fol
lowing quatrain ? The first two lines rime in every syllable
throughout, and the second two in five syllables :

egressus eius a patre,
regressus eius ad patrem,
excursus usque ad inferos,
recur sus ad sedem Dei.

The rime-method is changed, but this not seldom occurred
as an art-method in ancient Irish Celtic poems ; x however,
we look here only for traces of Celtic influence, not for all its
characteristics.

In other hymns of Ambrose rimes are much more irregular,
accidental, or absent. In the following lines rime is obtained
by repeating syllabic and letter sounds, but also be it noted,
the last syllables of the first, third and fourth lines (or, ra, um)
are perfect vowel rimes in the first quatrain and in the second,
the method is exactly alike (at, us y ans). This shows system.
There are sufficient internal rimes, and alliteration :

aeterne rerum conditor
noctem diemque qui regis,
et temporum das tempora,
lit alleues fastidittm,

praeco diei iam sonat
woctis profundae peruigil,
wocturna lux vianti&ws,
a nocte noctem segregans.

Other Ambrosian verses, printed in the Pisaurensis Col
lection, 1764, supply examples with consonant as well as
vowel rime, and are thus more obvious to moderns, but the
internal and alliterative rimes are liable to be lost. In this
morning hymn however they are present :

somno refectis artubus,
spreto cubili surgimus ;
nobis, Pater, canentibus
adesse te deposcimus.

1 Bards of the Gael and Gall. London, Fisher Unwin, 1897.

240 THE EASTER SONG

Te lingua primum concinat,
Te mentis ardor ambiat,
ut actuum sequentiuw
Tu, Sancte, fis exordium.

Pope St. Damasus, who was born a year before St. Hilary
died, appears to have been distinctly influenced by that
Celtic poet in one of his many short poems. For that to St.
Agatha clearly possesses end-rimes, and others :

martyris ecce dies Agathae
virginis emicat eximiae ;
Christus earn sibique social
et diadema duplex decorat.

stirpe docens, elegans specie
sed magis actibus atque fide,
terrea prospera nil reputans,
iussa Dei sibi corde ligans.

It was at the very Morning- time of Song whilst Milan
Cathedral was still surprised with new melody that the
poems of Sedulius made their appearance. That they were
welcomed, with honour, is plain from the fact that not only
was his Hymn adopted, but also other verses composed in
metres not usually associated with singing.

This was the case as we infer from Eadmer s Latin Life of
St. Dunstan, which mentions the Elegia, beginning " Cantemus
Domino " in alternate hexameters and pentameters. Though
the Greeks employed the heroic metre in Church Service
the Latins seem to have avoided it, as a general rule, to which
there is at least this exception. Another indication of the
great favour shown to the verse of Sedulius is found in the
fact that his Epic, the Carmen Paschale, supplied the " Introit "
on several Festivals. Considering that the Introits are
usually passages from Holy Writ, this exception stands out as
an honour shared, so far as I know, by no other poet.

Two other beautiful and celebrated hymns have the name
of Sedulius associated with their authorship. One is the
hymn for Passion Sunday, Vexilla Regis." Rocca says
that some ascribe this hymn to Ambrose and some to Theo-

APPENDIX III 241

dulphus, some to Fortunatus, 1 and some also to Sedulius.
This is the first quatrain :

Vexilla Regis prodeunt,
fulget crucis mysterium :
qua vita mortem pertulit,
et morte vitam protulit.

What strikes one immediately is that the turn of thought,
the form of phrase, and the system of rime are identical with
those found in the undoubted work of Sedulius. The first
couplet recalls the line in the Carmen Paschale :

en signo sacrata crucis vexilla coruscant,

Bk. i. 1. 337.

and the mystic symbolism of the Fifth Book by which he
shows the Redeemer " Pax Crucis," the Peace of the Cross,
embracing the world, and making what had been the Sign of
Death to be the Sign of Life. If the hymn be not of Sedulius,
it must have been written by a close student of his work.

Antonius Lacharias, an eminent authority, assigns the
noble hymn, Pange Lingua," to Sedulius, with praise ;
another writer would ascribe it to Fortunatus. 2 It begins in
the following manner :

Pange lingua gloriosi
proelium certaminis,
et super crucis trophaeo
die triumphum nobilem.

qualiter Redemptor orbis
immolatus vicerit,
de parentis protoplast!
fraude factor condolens, etc.

In the first couplet there is alliteration between two con
sonants, p, p ; in the second also, t, t ; in the third between

Fortunatus was born a century after Sedulius ; Theodulphus
lived much later, in the days of Charlemagne.

! And to Claudianus Mamertus in Hist, litter, de la France :
Be"ne"dictins de St. Maur.

R

242 THE EASTER SONG

two vowels, o, i. In the last couplet quoted there is
alliteration in each line. Inlaid and end-riming are trace
able likewise.

This hymn passed through the hands of the Latinist
revisers, who substituted * lauream for " proelium,"
whereby they possibly improved the sense, but certainly
destroyed the alliteration, p with c, and so testify to its Celtic
origin. It is rather against the claims for writers later than
Sedulius that the Council of Tours (A.D. 567) desired that
the names of authors of hymns should be stated, whereas this
hymn is anonymous.

St. Patrick was born five years after St. Hilary s death,
and was a contemporary of Ambrose and Damasus ; he
spent much time in Gaul as well as in Ireland. In the Cotton
MSS. a hymn is ascribed to him, which displays triple end-
rimes. But I do not think it belongs to that time. It begins
thus :

Constet quantus honos humanae conditionis
scire volens, huius serie videat rationis
non hominem verbo solo deus effigiavit,
quern facturus erat sic quomodo cuncta creavit.

He was, however, more distinguished, as a poet, in the
Irish than in the Latin language and has the glory of being
the first to write a hymn in a non-classic tongue, and one too
of exceptional vitality, originality, and power.

From a former work l I quote what follows : " The fifth
century, which gave St. Sedulius and St. Patrick to letters,
gave also St. Secundinus, a nephew and contemporary of
the latter. His verses in praise of St. Patrick betray the
influence of the bardic schools. Zeuss drew attention to
some (end) rimes sprinkled through the verses (as omnes
amantes ") but I would point to other and yet more remark
able signs, such as alliteration and internal rime, these are so
characteristically Gaelic that they readily escape general
notice. Take the opening lines [of which the first has

1 From Bards of the Gall and Gael, Introduction. London :
Fisher Unwin.

APPENDIX III 243

.

three initial vowel rimes, and not only two but three
end-rimes, whilst there are three double internal rimes,
Audi, omnes, mantes} :

Audite omnes amantes
Deum sancta merita
uiri in Christi beati
Patricii episcopi,

quomodo bonum ob actum
simulatur angelis
perfectamque propter uitam
aequatur apostolis.

In the first couplet, amant and sancta rime ; in the second,
ati and atri. In the third couplet actum and atur have the
same vowels, and in the fourth vitam and aequa have similar
vowels. Some consonants, too, reappear. The last two
syllables of the first, third, and fourth lines in the first quatrain
rime. In the second quatrain there is alternate monosyllabic
end-rime. The Bards varied the metre, occasionally, in Irish.
" Sancti, Venite the celebrated post-communion hymn,
is attributed to the same bard. Angels are said to have sung
it in his church at Bangor. It is constructed on a Gaelic
model. Here, however, five-syllabled lines alternate with
those of seven syllables. To the ordinary eye or ear, there
must seem little or most imperfect rime in the following
stanza. Once, however, it is tested by the standard of
Irish verse-structure, the perfection of the riming is made
clear :

Sancti Venite,

Christi corpus SUMITE :

sanctum bibentes

quo redempti SANGUINEM. 1

1 The internal and interlaced rimes being always overlooked, I
would invite attention to their completeness here. Thus, we have
" nite " with " Christi," " corpus " with " sanctum," and " bibentes,"
with " redempti." Then there is alliteration and double vowel end-
rimes in all four lines, and triple vowel end-rimes in every alternate
pair a melodious marvel.

244 THE EASTER SONG

There is linked rime in the first couplet, between the two
slender vowel -sounds (ie and it) ; and in the second
between the three similar sounds (iee and eei). The last
words of the second and fourth lines rime with equal com
pleteness each having one broad and two " slender
vowels (uie and aie). Here is another stanza where, at first
glance, there appears to be no rime, except in the letter m of
the second and last lines. It unfolds its perfection to the
Gaelic test :

lucis indultor
et valuator OMNIUM,
praeclaram sanctis
largitus est grATiAM.

It is only necessary to point out that in the last words of
the second and fourth lines there is perfect vowel-rime,
according to the Gaelic rule, between oiu and aia. The
bard was not always so successful, sometimes he ekes out his
rime, and sometimes forgoes it ; but it is so elaborate that its
presence proves purpose.

In the sixth centuiy St. Columbcille, a bilingual bard,
contributed Gaelic and Latin verse. His " Altus," a famous
hymn of old, was composed in trochaic tetrameter as Bede
notes. A writer, in the ancient " Lebor Breac," distinguishing
between " artificialis rhythm, with feet of equal times,
equal divisions, and equal weight, * arsis and thesis,"
and " vulgaris rhythm, where there is correspondence of
syllables in quatrains and half-quatrains, says the hymn is
composed in this popular rhythm. It is noteworthy that
these characters are those of the Gaelic stanza. St. Columb
cille uses trisyllabic rime, well known to the Gael, and occasion
ally obtains internal chimes :

altus prositor uetusfws
dierurn et ingenious
erat absque origine
primordii et crtpidine.

In another octosyllabic hymn he also employs four-
syllable rime, where consonants sometimes chime :

APPENDIX III 245

noli pater indulgere *
tonitrua cum fulgure
ac frangamur formidine
huius atque uridine.

Twenty years later St. Columbanus flourished, a fine
classic scholar, to whose efforts and example the revival of
classical literature, and especially of Greek, on the Continent
was largely due. Though Columbanus composed in classic
metres, he did not fail to introduce Irish alliteration, internal,
and final rimes, e.g. :

dilexerunt Tenebras Tetras magis quam lucem,
imitari Contemnunt vitae Domini T)ucem.

Even his charming poem to Fedolius, so praised for its
pure latinity (quoted in an Appendix to the Bards of the
Gael and Gall), I have shown to possess systematic vowel rime
throughout.

St. Columbanus was educated at the famous Monastery
of Bangor (recte Benchur) in Ulster. Now the Antiphonary
of Benchur, one of the most ancient Manuscripts of the
Universal Church, is still extant in the Ambrosian Library
of Milan, 2 to which it was brought from Bobio, where St.
Columbanus had preserved it. Its date is fixed with certainty
in the period between 580 and 591.

This Antiphonary or Service-Book contains many pieces

of an earlier date, such as St. Hilary s Hymn, and amongst

them is a delightful and most interesting pious Song called

Versiculi Familiae Benchuir," or " Versicles of the Benchur

Family " (or Community).

1 G and c are pronounced hard in Irish .

2 The Antiphonary of Bangor : An Early Irish Manuscript in the
Ambrosian Library at Milan. Henry Bradshaw Society, London,
1 893 , In his Introduction the Editor states he considered it a privilege
and an honour, to be accepted " as the Editor of this priceless monu
ment of ecclesiastical antiquity." " It is one of the oldest Service
Books of Western or indeed of Universal Christendom. Neither
England nor Scotland possesses any liturgical MS. nearly so old as this
relic of the Ancient Celtic Church of Ireland."

246 THE EASTER SONG

*

It has the distinction of being the first of all College Songs
too few in number of which " Gaudeamus " and " Dulce
Domum " are types.

It is also, I think, a Parent-Poem, which has had offspring
characterized by less complexity of structure, greater freedom
and rimes more easy for general recognition and adoption
a model for modern rime. Not that it lacks the correct and
typical characteristics, for it does possess them. Take for
example the first quatrain :

Benchuir Bona regula
recta atque diuina
Stricta sancta sedula
Summa iusta ac mira.

The alternate triple and double syllable end-rimes are
obvious. Not so obvious, but perfectly distinct are the
concord or alliteration of the consonants, bb, rr, sss the
internal interlaced rimes, regula and recta at the concord
in the second couplet of the initial s, s carried on to the last
line, and the crowning internal correspondence of sancta,
summa, and iusta, interwoven rimes.

These finer qualities, including others such as the corre
spondence in classed consonants, were gradually lost among
strangers, whilst the more obvious end-rimes remained, a
permanent though impoverished possession.

VERSICULI FAMILIAE BENCHUIR l

Benchuir bona regula
recta atque diuina
stricta sancta sedula
summa iusta ac mira.

Munther benchuir beata
fide fundata certa
spe salutis ornata
caritate perfecta :

1 " Benchur," a Gaelic name (now Bangor, near Belfast), becomes
Benchuir in the genitive. In the second quatrain we have " Muinter
Benchuir " (the " Family of Benchur ") where the first word is written
phonetically to suit Latin singers.

APPENDIX III 247

nauis nunquam turbata
quamuis fluctibus tonsa
nuptis quoque parata
regi domino sponsa.

domus dilicis plena
super petram constructa
necnon uinea uera
ex aegypto transducta.

certe ciuitas firma
fortis atque munita
gloriosa ac digna
supra montem possita :

Christo regina apta
solis luce amicta
simplex simulque docta
undecumque inuicta

uere regalis aula
uaris gemmis ornata
gregisque christi caula
patre summa seruata.

virgo ualde fecunda
haec et mater, intacta
leta ac tremebunda
uerbo dei subacta :

cui uita beata
cum perfectis futura
deo patre parata
sine fine mansura.

Benchuir bona regula :

I quote once more from the Introduction to the Bards of
the Gael and Gall.

In the seventh century flourished the poet-saints Ultan,
Cummain, and Colman.

The structure of the hymn of St. Ultan, in honour of St.

1 This quatrain, partly illegible, begins :
Area hirubin tecta

248 THE EASTER SONG

Brigit, is exceedingly curious and interesting. The riming
has escaped attention because of its very profusion. The
editor of the Liber Hymnorum saw only " assonances " in the
middle and end of each line, with possible alliteration. 1 Take
the first two lines :

Christus in nostnz insola quae vocatur hibernia
ostensus est hominibus maximis mirabilibws.

This gives but a meagre monosyllabic rime. Rime,
though concealed, is amazingly abundant. In the first line,
for instance, there are three trisyllabic internal rimes, as here

shown :

in-nostra insola quae-voca.

In the second line there are also three :

ostensus 2 homini maximis.

In the first line the rimes run on one " slender " and two
* broad " vowels : in the second this is ingeniously reversed,
and the rimes are formed of one " broad " and two " slender
vowels. In addition, I would point out that the lines terminate
in trisyllabic vowel rime, for hernia and bilibus correspond in
sound. Curiously enough, they supply a third combination,
having two " slender " vowels first and one " broad " vowel.
And there is an extra four-syllabled rime, for hominibus is in
full assonance with abilibus. The third line reads thus :

que perfecit per felicem celestis uite uirginem.

The trisyllabic rimes are five ; but here all are yielded by
the slender vowels :

perfecit per-feli cem-cele tis-uite uirginem.

St. Ultan s hymn may be the source of the popularity
of the verses known as Tripudiantes."

1 His omission is doubtless due to the fact that, following Zeuss,
his attention was only given to the observation of end-rimes. A
new edition of the Liber Hymnorum has since appeared, in which the
editors deal with the matter more minutely.

2 The last syllable preceding a vowel is short, and the vowel is
regarded apparently as sufficiently slender.

APPENDIX III 249

St. Cummain Fota s hymn is noticeable by its alliteration
and trisyllabic rimes :

celebra iuda festa Christi gaudia
apostulorum exultans memoria.

In the eighth century St. Cocuimne (who died A.D. 742)
employed both vowel and consonant rime, with alliteration,
in a manner most dear to the Gaelic bards of Munster a
thousand years later. It is not necessary to italicise the
rimes in such verses as these :

bis per chorum hinc et hide coll and emus Mariarn
ut uox pulset omnem aurem per laudem uicariam,
Maria de tribu iudae summi mater domini
oportunam dedit curam egrotanti homini.

These are even more remarkable :

Maria mater miranda patrem suum ededit
per quern aqua late lotus totus mundus credidit.
tonicam per totum textam Christi mater fecerat
quae peracta Christi morte sorte statim steterat.

If we arrange two lines in the form of the Irish quatrain,
it will be seen how completely they conform to its rules :

Maria miranda mater
patrem suum edidit,
per quern aqua late lotus
totus mundus credidit.

His contemporary St. (Engus, son of Tipraite, makes use
of woven rime with like liberality in his hvmn to St. Martin.
As written the lines are :

Martinus mirus more ore laudavit deum,
puro corde cantavit atque amavit eum.

Here we see the rimes, but not the system, until we arrange
the lines as a Gaelic quatrain :

Martinus mirus more
ore laudavit deum,
puro corde cantavit
atque amavit eum.

250 THE EASTER SONG

These examples suffice to show to what extent, and with
what ingenious skill, Celtic characters were impressed upon
the new art of Christian hymn-writing and also how diversified
were the forms of metric adopted. In the course of time and
in less erudite hands the more subtle and refined Celtic
characters of Concord and Correspondence, restricted allitera
tion and hidden harmonies became effaced, as the lighter lines
of an engraving wear out, and nothing remained but the deeper
and more manifest profiles terminal or end-rimes. These
were occasionally of one syllable but were often of two or more
riming syllables, sometimes riming by the vowels only (asson-
antal) sometimes by the consonants also.

This mode of reduplicated rime still remains a distinctive
character of the verse (even in English) of Irish writers, as
compared with English verse, in general. Thomas Moore
employs it, and has borne reproach for it. He has even been
called un- Celtic in form ! As his words were cast in the music
mould of Irish metric and emerged bearing its imprint, the
rebuke is amusing. 1 Readers whose ears have not been attuned
to classic Gaelic verse might imagine its melody would be
marred by its rules, but the contrary is the case. Fortunately
this can be shown in English. By an amazing and admirable
happening, Thomas Moore, apparently influenced and guided
by the ancient Irish melody to which he wrote words, un-

1 In his Introduction to ancient Irish poetry, Prof. K. Meyer made
the curious statement that " the original type from which the great
variety of Irish metres has sprung is the catalectic trochaic tetrameter
of Latin poetry, as in the well-known popular song of Caesar s
soldiers :

Caesar Gallias subegit, Nicodemes Caesarem:
ecce Caesar nunc triumphal qui subegit Gallias."

Now Caesar found the Gallic Druids well versed and long-trained
in poetry on his arrival, and the Irish bards were not less so ; it is
incredible, therefore, that the native verse of either should have only
then sprung from a type in a foreign tongue, sung by enemies and the
more incredible because it was disreputable and popular with con
quering foes. This statement abides with a preceding assertion
that : "By the fifth century the Gaulish language was everywhere
extinct " which is inexact.

APPENDIX III 251

wittingly produced a quatrain. 1 This is the first in the " Song
of Fionnuala " whose exquisite melodiousness every vocalist
knows :

Silent, O Moyle, be the roar of thy water,
Break not, ye Breezes, your chain of Repose,

While, murmuring mournfully, Lir s Lonely daughter
Tells to the night- wind her Tale of woes.

Vocalists know and appreciate its music, but the cause of that
music is that it is cast in a pure Gaelic mould. This has
never been analysed, until now, when noticed. The first
line contains four internal rimes, on broad vowels, and the
effect of this is relieved and intensified by the slender vowels
of the first word. The second line, has obvious alliteration
(b y b, r,) and internal rime. The third line is very rich ; four
consonants m, m, in the first half, and two more, /, /, in last,
all alliterate, while there is perfect three-syllable-internal
rime in " murmuring mournfully ." In the final line, there is
alliteration of consonants, t, t, and internal rime of vowels
in " night-wind. * But mark in addition, there is not only
varied tway-letter (consonant-vowel) end-rime, but there is
alternate assonantal entrance-rime, for Sile- rimes with
" while " and "Break" with "Tells." No example so
complete as this have I found, but there are remarkable
echoes as in :

The Harp that once through Tara s Hall

The Soul of music Shed
Now Hangs as mute on Tara s Wall

As if that Soul were fled.

Here clearly are alliterative, internal and interlaced rimes.
It has been alleged that Moore s double rimes were unsuitable
for great subjects. Such objections only prove that the
critic has been trained in different methods and has acquired
alien ears, by nature or by education.

This very Irish character of dissyllabic riming has,
strangely enough, been most markedly impressed upon the

1 Moore s father was a native of Kerry, where Irish was generally
spoken and sung

252 THE EASTER SONG

Latin hymns. It seems the very exquisite expression of joy
and delight in the Christmas Hymn " Adeste, Fideles," and
in the exultant Easter hymn :

O filii, et filiae !
rex caelestis, rex gloriae,
e morte surrexit hodie !
Alleluia !

But then, what more stately than this Irish mode, what
more solemn than its sound in the Dies irae with its
alliteration and double end-rimes ;

Dies irae, Dies ilia
Solvet Seclum in favilla
teste David cum Sibylla.

Or what more expressive of sorrow or more replete with
poignant pathos than the Stabat Mater :

stabat Mater dolorosa
iuxta crucem lacrymosa
dum pendebat Filius.

APPENDIX IV
A PHYSIOLOGICAL STUDY

ON CERTAIN SPECIAL SENSES AND DOMINANT QUALITIES
OF NATIONS : TIME-METRIC AND RIME-METRIC

PART I

SPECIAL SENSE CHARACTERS OF MEN AND NATIONS SIGHT
COLOUR SENSE : PARTIAL AND COMPLETE COLOUR-BLIND
NESS FORM-SENSE - - POWER-SENSE SPEECH : PARTIAL
MUTISMS : LETTER-DUMBNESS HEARING . PARTIAL DEAF
NESSES TIME-SENSE TUNE-SENSE TIME-DEAFNESS TONE-
DEAFNESS.

IT is clear that the various races of mankind have not advanced
always along the same lines of progress, nor with equal rapidity.
Some go forward more in one direction, some in another, and
when they lose ground, as seems ordained, this does not
happen in a uniform manner. The evolution of the character
istic qualities of races has consequently, by differentiation,
resulted in their acquisition severally of distinctive and varied
gifts. The environment favours those which most develop :
if it change, some may diminish or even be entirely lost
hence advance in what is called civilisation does not neces
sarily result in perfecting every gift or all qualities. The
Indian, for instance, may have a much superior sense of sight
and of smell to those possessed by citizens of great towns.

253

254 THE EASTER SONG

In each group, on account of special causes and heredity,
there will be variations. This we should expect, to a greater
extent, when two or more races come together and a larger
group is constituted, which we name a nation. Its qualities
become more complex. However, from the influence of
common conditions of life, from intermixture, from greater
numbers of one race, and from the prepotency of more
energising qualities, certain distinctive dominant characters
will attach to the entire nation, though originally composed
of different races.

This granted, we may admit that certain functions of the
human organism develop diversely in different races and
nations, as we know they obviously do in different individuals.
Where, in a given group, certain of these develop more
generally and more prominently than in others, they become a
distinguishing dominant character of that group, race, or
nation. Taking the nation as an entity, this character might
stand to it in the same relation as one of his special senses to
the individual. Thus, the Athenians possessed, in their
appreciation of perfection of form and expression, what we
may call a Beauty-sense ; whilst the Romans, though not
devoid of this, had a predominant Power-sense ; their special
aptitude, as a people, was to organize and govern. Each of
these groups was of course gifted with other national senses,
more or less subordinate, undeveloped, or retrograding.

Adopting and elaborating the theory of a German writer,
Mr. Gladstone once endeavoured to support the view that
mankind, in the early ages, could not distinguish colours.
He grounded his case largely upon adjectives of ancient
writers, such as are seen in Homer and others, where the hues
of flowers, for example, are not described as we would depict
them.

This argument, however, was fallacious, for there is not
one but two faculties involved : perception and expression.
For it is quite possible to perceive differences and yet fail in
expressing them. Even the lower animals may perceive
differences of colour, and there is no reason to suppose that

APPENDIX IV 255

man, however undeveloped, was not so endowed, especially
when the knowledge of different colours in berries, for
instance, meant pleasure or pain, and sometimes life or death
to him.

On the other hand, if Mr. Gladstone had said, as I suggest,
that different races or nations were diversely gifted as regards
a colour sense, then surely our common experience would
assert the accuracy of the proposition. Just as some indi
viduals fail in colour-perception, so there are nations which
have a very imperfect sense of colour as compared with others.
Certain individuals do not discern some colour or colours :
they are colour-blind so far ; but this has not been recorded
as yet of any race or nation.

In the matters of speech and of hearing, we are less at a
loss for exact knowledge. Every one is familiar with the fact
that some individuals cannot pronounce certain letters, such
as "th" or " r." Nations also have different articulation-
powers. Thus, the Chinese cannot utter the letter d nor the
letter r they are therefore " letter-dumb " as respects these
two letters. Sanskrit, like the Finnish, has no /, several
Polynesian languages have no $, and the Hurons no labials.
They are, therefore, " labial-mutes."

Here then are distinctive characters marking out a race,
and even a nation.

The French cannot pronounce th, and substituted z.
The th sound has distinguished the English speech amongst
those of most nations, but it seems beginning to disappear
locally ; in the London dialect it is replaced by v (e.g. " muver
for " mother "), and the letter r is partially lost, as the guttural
gh has been long lost, for the English are a composite nation
of Celts, Norsemen, Angles, Saxons, and Normans. The th
sound was gradually acquired by races which did not originally
possess it, in accordance with the principle laid down of pre
potent characters, which may affect a language as well as a
people.

Russian and Polish have sounds not found in other European
languages. The Hottentot klick is characteristic.

256 THE EASTER SONG

Thus we have it that some nations possess the power of
uttering articulate sounds not in use by others : some are
letter-dumb for certain letters, others for others.

Similar differences are observable as regards perception
of sounds. The range varies very greatly : some lose the
higher notes more quickly and others the bass. There are
some who cannot distinguish the factors of musical tone,
intensity, pitch, and timbre or quality. There are in fact
many persons far more than is generally supposed who
cannot distinguish musical tone from noise.

That means that their hearing-organs cannot discriminate
between periodic vibrations and non-periodic vibrations.
They have no musical ear ; they may indeed be taught to
play the piano mechanically as an automaton could be made
to play it, but they cannot reproduce the notes vocally nor
pick up a tune by ear.

There are many who cannot distinguish one note from
another ; not a few who cannot tell one tune from another,
yet some of these may perceive errors of time. These have
the time-sense, but not the tone-sense.

There are even poets who write excellent verse, quite
perfect in structure, rhythm, metre, and rime, who are devoid
of this perception of tone. It may sometimes happen that
their failure to appreciate the works of another poet, who
enjoyed this faculty, is due to the defect of tone-sense in
themselves. 1

Now all such persons are what I would call tone-deaf.

They are numerous, and it seems probable that not only
individuals, but a race or even races may be similarly defective.
Certainly, the sounds, not to say noises, which some races
rejoice to hear, do not give pleasure to more musical peoples.

Now, let us consider some of the physiological bases of

1 Thus I have heard Thomas Moore who is essentially and
admirably a tone-poet depreciated and scoffed by some who were
absolutely tone-deaf and could not distinguish one tune from
another! One must determine a critic s qualifications. What
weight would attach to the criticism of a picture by a colour-blind
critic ?

APPENDIX IV 257

versification. It is within familiar experience that all persons
are not equally qualified in this art.

There are even some, though they do not boast of it, to
whom it is as alien as music is to others. Not only are they
unfitted by defective organisation to take active part in it,
but they are incapable of appreciating the gratification it
yields to others better endowed by nature. More indeed
are but partially defective. All persons, especially editors,
experienced in the efforts of young versifiers, know how apt
these are to fail in correctness as regards rhythm, time, and
even rime. With untiring zeal critics, with faculties on the
alert, weekly watch for lapses and rarely fail to find or to
point them out. But successive generations of men and maids,
beginning poetry, repeat such errors, not consciously but
inevitably.

Their special verse-senses are imperfect, perhaps from
undevelopment, perhaps from other causes. If we inquire
farther we shall find that just as some can keep time who
cannot keep tune, so some in verse can keep perfect measure
who fail in making perfect rimes, while others who rime well
may find it difficult to make proper measure.

There are, I hold, behind these facts certain special senses,
whose inertness, perfection, greater or less development, are
accountable for the phenomena mentioned.

That is to say, there is a Time-sense, a Rhythm-sense, and
a Rime-sense.

If any be absent or defective, then we shall have more
or less complete Time-deafness, Rhythm-deafness, or Rime-
deafness.

Now my position is that as these Special Senses are
differently distributed amongst individuals, so also are they
differently distributed amongst nations. This opens a great
question, and to show the differences properly would require
vast research and a large volume ; however, enough can be
given to establish our foundations.

Take the Chinese, for example : Masham * says they

1 Masham, Chinese Grammar, 1814, Serampore.

S

258 THE EASTER SONG

have tones and semi-tones, perhaps stress, but rime a long
time on one syllable. In our terminology, they show they
possess the Time-sense, and Rhythm-sense, but not the Rime-
sense. For I would at once point out that the repetition
of a syllable is no more rime proper than the reiteration
of the same note on the piano or the tapping of a tam
tam is tune. The repetition of the same sound would
become odious to any ear but one which was Rime-deaf or
Tune-deaf.

In Sanskrit, Colebrooke 1 notes, there are two kinds of
metre, one governed by the number of syllables, usually
uniform but often arbitrary in passages of the Vedas, the
other by feet, but only one sort is admitted as so regulated.
This is Arya, and is frequently used, e.g. in Nalodaya. There
is rime here, for at the end of each hemistich the four last
syllables are the same in sound though differing in meaning.
In Damayanti s Lament on the desertion of Nala, there is an
example of this :

Tatra, pad vyalfnam

at ha vibhrantam van cha deVya, linam

tanu vunde vyalfnam

Tatin dad han, taya spade vyalfnam.

The next verse rimes upon another word (sit aya) and the
next upon another. We have here vowel and consonant
rime, but no diversity, so that the effect on the ear grows
monotonous, though the wits are kept awake, by the play
upon the words. This mode of versification shows the
possession of comparatively well-developed Time, Rhythm,
and Rime-senses. It is, however, difficult to fix dates, for
Sanskrit works, which were generally supposed to be of great
antiquity, are now held by Continental scholars to date from
after the Christian era.

The Persian verse shows the possession of similar qualities
as in this Ghazel of Hafez : 2

1 Colebrooke, Asiatic Researches, vol. x.
8 Sir W. Jones, Asiatic Researches, vol. i.

APPENDIX IV 259

Run5ki ahdl shebabesli degner bostanra
Miresed muzshdehi gul bulbuli khush elhanra.

Ei seba guer ba juvanani chemen baz resi
Khedmeti ma veresan seru gul ou uhanra.

In this ghazel every beit (or distich) ends with a word
terminating in * anra." The versification displays the
possession of the senses of time and rhythm, but the riming
produces a similar monotonous effect to the Sanskrit from the
reiteration of like dissyllables, which here are repeated ten
times as there are ten beits. Mohammed Shemseddin,
commonly known as Hafez (man of memory), lived and died
so late as the last half of the fourteenth century.

Muratori quotes a few Hebrew lines, where the terminal
syllables coincide in sound.

When we pass from Asia to Europe, we at once confront
two markedly distinct schools of versification : one that of
the Greeks (and after them the Romans) is characterised
by its quality of time or measure.

The construction of verse, based on this principle, became
a fine art, in which the subtlest skill was used to produce the
desired results, whilst combining variety with continuity.
What variety, for instance, in hexameters which linked
together by certain characters are so capable of changing
effects ! But, doubtless, moderns cannot obtain or even
conceive the extreme pleasure which the ancient Greeks and
Latins with their faculties so specially developed then enjoyed.

Their Time-sense must have been equivalent to the Tune-
sense of musical artists, and their verses to us, moderns, are
like flowers whose beauty we admire, but whose fragrance
we barely feel.

The other School of Verse method was that of the Celts.
The Gauls, said a keen observer, most industriously pursue
two things : military matters and polished speaking. Their
Druids, who were also Bards, held the highest place in the
state, they cultivated poetry with extreme assiduity, learning
great quantities by heart ; by their songs they incited armies
to battle, and could stop them in mid-career. They studied

2 6o THE EASTER SONG

in colleges for a score of years. It was thought their institu
tion had come from Britain, and to Britain they at times resorted
for further studies.

Caesar found a similar people in the South of Britain,
when he landed, and the character, appearance, manners, and
the extant remnants of Gaulish language prove them to have
been a people identical in race with some of the ancient Irish.
The position and training of their Bards or Druids were
essentially the same as those of the Irish. Hence we may
legitimately infer that their verse-methods were practically
identical with those of our ancient Bards which by happy
fortune escaped, as theirs did not, obliteration by Roman
domination.

Now the Celtic School of Verse, as shown by the ancient
examples of this island, was pre-eminently a School of Tune-
methods. It knew of Time and Rhythm but these were not
the dominants. The term Rime to modern or foreign ears,
most faintly, most inadequately, indicates the marvellously
refined and intricate methods of interwoven sounds which they
created, not the mere repetition of a sound, but the reiteration
of portions of a sound and semi-similar, semi-dissimilar sound,
so that in a verse, you shall hear in rime fundamental tones and
over-tones, full notes and faint, shadowy, suggestive, and
elusive echoes which nothing resembles, which can be likened
to nothing, if not to the sounds which the hidden bugle calls
from the mountains around Killarney when on a still evening
the echoes roll, recede, swell, faint, and die away in exquisite
aerial melody.

CURIOUS SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

The ancient Celtic poets had a most highly developed
Rime-sense, adapted for the most refined sensations and
exquisite results in rime-picturing. As regards its higher and
more delicate powers, that Rime-sense has been largely lost.
It was, we may assume, developed to its wonderful perfection
by the long training which the bards underwent, but the

APPENDIX IV 261

capacity for subtle analysis and distinction must have been
there, and correctly there, for it must astonish one to discover
that these ancient bards made a classification of letters of the
alphabet which, differing from that of grammarians, corre
sponds with the results of most recent scientific research.

Thus grammarians group the vowels together, the bards
divide them into two classes, the broad a, o, M, and the slender
i and e. Between members of each class they recognised a
certain similarity a correspondence which does not exist
between members of the different classes.

This may seem artificial and groundless to those to whom
a vowel is a vowel. But observe how it harmonizes with
modern science. Von Helmholtz has pointed out that if
you sing the vowels one after another, determining the over
tones by the aid of resonators, one over- tone is specially
characteristic for a, for o, and for M, whilst e and i have each
two special characteristic over-tones ! Thus we find that the
broad vowels a, o, u are musically related, and that e and i
differ from the others and are musically related. This con
firms and justifies the law that i and e can rime together but
not with a, o, u y which rime together.

As regards the classification of consonants which corre
sponded they exhibited equal acuteness ; thus p, b, /, and v
form one group, and Brucke classifying by articulation-
positions, places the first two as explosive labials, and
the second as aspirate labials ; both belong to the first
position.

The bards had another group t and d, and Brucke classes
these two letters as explosives of the second position.

Another Irish group includes k, g, ch, gh, and Brucke for
the third articulation-position gives k and g as " explosives "
and ch as " aspirate."

Surely these parallelisms between the results of recent
research and the analytic methods of the bards are marvellous
and indicate an amazing degree of auditory and mental
keenness.

262 THE EASTER SONG

PART II

TWO GREAT SCHOOLS OF VERSE : THE TIME-METRIC AND
THE RIME-METRIC DOMINANT PRINCIPLES

Two great Schools of Versification, therefore, were con
temporaneous in Europe, one the Greco-Roman, characterised
by its dominant principle of Time-measure, another the
Celtic, characterised by its dominant principle of sound-
echo or rime. The nations had their special senses of Time
and of Rime developed severally, to a predominant degree.

There may have been exceptional instances, but generally
speaking the Greco-Romans were or became rime-deaf, and
the Celts more or less Time-dull not completely deaf for
some exact idea of measure or Rhythm was needed but
comparatively when the highly developed classic system is
in view.

It is no evidence to the contrary that some sound -echoes
are discernible in Greek and Latin verse. Their purposive
character must be proved. Though there are sporadic
instances here and there, it is manifest that rime is never used
as a " Kunstmittel " and essential element of verse-technique.
As to the fact that occasionally words re-echo it would be
practically impossible to prevent it ; in the theory of prob
abilities, where nouns, adjectives, or verbs are used which
have at times similar endings, two of them must sometimes
coincide. But it does not follow that rime was intended, nor
does it follow that the writer was conscious of any chiming.
This suffices for the rare instances to be noted in the works
of Homer and Propertius and Horace.

In illustration, let us take a line from the prose version
of the second Psalm.

1 Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain
thing ? Now here is a perfect hexameter, as has been noted
and I would point out that, as it is certain the translator did
not intend it, the metre passed unperceived by him. He

APPENDIX IV 263

would have detected it at once had it been rime (to which his
ear was attuned), but his time-sense was not so acute. So,
conversely, Greeks and Latins may have accidentally and
unconsciously happened on rimes and passed them un-
perceived. When detected by a critic such as Quintilian
(e.g. " invisae visae," " fortunatam natam ") they were con
demned ; orators and authors, he said, should avoid the
negligence of allowing similar syllables to end one word and
begin the next.

In Greek tragedians such repetitions very rarely occur,
but something may be said for verses in Sophocles cited by
Sir Alexander Croke, which run as follows.:

7rt/3aiVOVTS, TO (jJkv L7TO)[MV

TO $

^ 7J"oXe/iuj//,ei>. Oedip. Col. 189.

y j 5 o /

aiper , OTraooi,

l/xot

TOVT(t)V

jv^v. Trachiniae, 1266.

Similar in some respects, and probably imitative were the
rimed lines of the archaic Latin poet Ennius (b. 239, d. 169 B.C.).
Born in Calabria, he was half Greek half Oscan, but more
Greek than Latin in culture. For he followed immediately
on Livius Andronicus, a Greek of Tarentum, who, taken
captive at its siege, is regarded as the founder of Roman
poetry, drama, and literary language. He translated the
Odyssey of Homer, and his tragedies and comedies were taken
from the Greek. So also Quintus Ennius borrowed from
Euripides, and the rimed passages which follow may well have
been imitated from those of Sophocles. His poetry was
admired by Cato, under whom he made the Sardinian cam
paign, by Scipio also, and it was praised by Cicero in his
Tusculan epistles.

Probably his achievement in transplanting Greek metres

264 THE EASTER SONG

into Latin moved Cicero to give his adaptation of a Celtic
quatrain. Both Virgil and Horace recognised his merit.
He was a pioneer in Latin poetry. Putting away the rude
irregular Saturnian verse (though still occasionally retaining
alliterations) he introduced the hexameter and the Greek
metric and methods generally.

These are the lines which Cicero quotes (Titsc. lib. i.

sect. 28) :

caelum nitescere, arbores frondescere,
vites laetiferi pampinis pubescere,
rami baccarum ubertate incurvescere.

He quotes also the last three lines of the following passage.
To be in proper perspective it must be seen in its place, as
part of his tragedy of Andromacha Aechmalotes . In his
usual (unrimed) verse the widow of Hector deplores her fate :
helpless, hopeless, homeless. The temples of the gods in
flames, her country ravaged, nothing remains but blackened
ruins. Then suddenly comes her most pitiful apostrophe
to her slaughtered Father, her Country, the once glorious
Home of Priam, whose blood now stained Jove s Altar, which
she beheld, and saw the City in flames, and that horrible agony
her dead Hector dragged behind a chariot, and Hector s
Son her Son a child flung down from the ramparts.

In the last lines, the verse changing is rimed like a rimed
Irish dirge. This is the apostrophe :

o pater, O patria, O Priami domus,

saeptum altisono cardine templum !

vidi ego te astante ope barbarica

tectis caelatis lacuatis

auro ebore instructam regifice.

haec omnia videi inflammarei ;

Priamo vi vitam ovitarei,

lovis aram sanguine turparei.

vidi, videre quod sum passa aegerrume,

Hectorem curru quadriiugo raptarier,

Hectoris natum de muro iactarier.

It seemed to me at first sight, that there was a hope that
these rimes were a reminiscence of old native Italic methods,
but nothing justifies it. They are an imitative wail. Naevius,

APPENDIX IV 265

a contemporary, the first really Roman poet, a man of noble
mind, shows no trace of native method. No doubt Niebuhr
did great pioneering work in calling attention to the pre-
existence of native mind-work, and is not entirely shaken by
Taine and Paul Albert, but the remnants discovered the
songs of the Salians and of the Arvales bear no trace of
rime, and little of literature.

In any case the rime-experiment of Ennius (if it were
such) failed of acceptance, and the metric of conquered Greece
conquered the victor Roman and attuned the Latin ear.
Of his successors, it must be remembered that Catullus and
Virgil l belonged to the Cisalpine Gauls (as did Livy and Pliny
the younger). Horace and Ovid, it is true, were southerns ;
but Ovid was long in exile amongst the Scythians, and learned
the language of the Getae and Sarmatians. Virgil, in his
more passionate passages, appears to recall ancestral impulses
in vowel and consonant correspondences. But, all considered,
there was nothing like systematised rime, nothing but a
chance chime. Where, as in Propertius, there seems a pur
posed (and strained) echo, it is evidently artificial, an affecta
tion, or a curious preciosite. The genius of the time-metric
dominated all Latin verse in its great age.

Now, admitting the existence of two great Schools of
Verse-making, of the Time- school and the Rime-school, the
question next arising is Was there any means of contact
between them or any possibility of the Celtic influencing
the Latin verse ?

Every one would of course assume readily the possibility
of the Latin influencing the Celtic. For we are all in our
youth made vassals to Athens and Rome. Each generation
of us goes through their streets to school, and looks with
dismay to the frontiers, where hangs a dark cloud of " bar
barian foes our own Forefathers ! We are even worse
than the Greeks and Romans, for they recognised the valour,
virtue, and intelligence of their occasional adversaries. They

1 Zeuss has pointed out that the name Virgil is Celtic, properly
Fergil ; its later form is Feargal (pr. Farral), meaning a brilliant man.

266 THE EASTER SONG

studied their character, customs, costumes, and rites, borrowed
from them not rarely, whilst we generally imagine there was
no more intercommunion than between day and night.

Remember that, six centuries before the Christian era,
the Greek founded a colony at Marseilles, with Celts as
their friends, a century later Herodotus describes their
territory, yet another century and Aristotle describes their
manners and customs, while Pytheas of Marseilles voyages
north to Britain.

Remember, that, about 590 B.C., a century and a half after
the foundation of Rome, a swarm of Celts crossed the Alps
and founded Cisalpine Gaul. Two centuries later began
that series of Celtic invasions which so imperilled the city.
A portion of the Cisalpine Gauls swept down in 390 upon
Clusium and Rome, which they entered, and^ the Capital
itself would have fallen had it not been for the alarm given
by its classic Geese always hostile to the Gael.

The besieged offered a great ransom in gold it was then
that Brennus (their Brenn or Brehon) threw his sword into
the scale, crying (with due alliteration) : Vae victis."

In 367 the Gauls or Celts invaded Alba ; in 362 came
another invasion, when the tumultus Gallicus was proclaimed,
and every man had to take arms.

Then Manlius (an earlier Malachi, or Maelseaclan of Tara)
got the title of Torquatus, because in single fight he won a
" collar of gold from the proud invader." This was the
Celtic Torque.

The fourth invasion followed in 359, and the fifth in 350.

An unresting race, more adventurous than avid, the Gauls,
sweeping eastwards, sent an Embassy from the Adriatic to
Alexander ; they mortified his pride, for on being asked what
they feared most, they did not reply politely that they feared
him most, but with frank irony, that they " feared nothing
but that the sky might fall on them." x

1 Remembering that the lark was the Gallic symbol one might
ask if the derisive saying, " When the sky falls you shall catch larks, *
be traceable to this speech ?

APPENDIX IV 267

In the third century B.C. they marched into Greece and
menaced Delphi, crossed the Hellespont and made a settlement
in Phrygia, called first Gallo-grecia and afterwards Galatia,
where the Celtic Torque was known and worn, and where
their descendants still spoke Celtic in the days of St. Jerome.

Then came the Roman outflow. Again, the tumultus
Gallicus was proclaimed, every man was called to arms, and
Cisalpine Gaul was subjugated, but the Celts remained.

A century later, the legions go into Transalpine Gaul,
and some fifty years before our era, Caesar had Celtic nobles
in the Roman Senate, and the Gallic Lark flying aloft beside
the Eagles, symbols of pacified peoples. Their merchants
could visit the Celtic lands and Isles, their Geographers map
out our ports, towns and rivers, imperial Caesar, and Cicero
his friend, study the institutions of the Celts and the functions
of their Druids. When wave on wave of these nations had
flowed alternately into each other s territory, it is impossible
not to infer intimate communications between them. Their
learned men were manifestly not ignorant of each other.

If we turn from wars to letters, we shall see that this
inference is more than confirmed by a profusion of instances.
Take the century and a quarter which preceded the Christian
era ; it was a Celt, Lucius Plotius, who was the first, the
earliest teacher of rhetoric at Rome, and Cicero regretted
that he had been too young to hear him. But he (after the
forum) and young Caesar studied under the Celt Gnipho, a
grammarian and rhetor, and they heard the great Celtic actor
Roscius. They both knew and esteemed Divitiacus * who
became a Roman Senator chief Druid-bard of the Aedui
(people of Autun), and with him they studied the knowledge
of the Gauls, their divine mysteries and divination. From
him, as I have shown elsewhere, Cicero may have learned
something of the Celtic art of verse ; for we find that certain
of his verses, which seem ridiculous to the Latin, fall into
regular Gaelic moulds.

W-

1 This is a latinised form of the Celtic name Dubhfac, pronounced
Duvtac.

268 THE EASTER SONG

C. Valerius Priscillus was a Celtic ambassador of Caesar s.
There were also Celtic poets writing in Latin, as Caius Cor
nelius Gallus (who was appointed first Roman Governor of
Egypt), Publius Terentius Varro, Voltienus Montanus, three
distinguished orators and historians, mathematicians, philoso
phers, and rhetors. Germanicus and Claudius were both
born at Lyons, the Roman Capital of Gaul and the latter
made a memorable discourse in favour of Gallic Senators.

The first century of the Christian era was equally crowded
with distinguished names. Many Celtic nobles went to
Rome to hear Livy, and their own great Schools of Autun
and Marseilles and Lyons became famous. Amongst the
poets are the names of Montanus (who won the displeasure of
Tiberius), of Petronius, of Antoninus Primus, who kept up
a correspondence with Martial, and acted as his Maecenas.
There are fifteen other names known of men distinguished as
orators, rhetors, jurisconsults, physicians, or philosophers.

The second century yields about the same number, of
whom one, St. Augurinus, a poet, was raised to the Consulate,
Paulinus became Senator, and Favorinus shone at Athens, a
famous Sophist.

In the third century the state of literature declined, but
about the same number of notable names appear, many of
Christian saints, martyrs and bishops ; amongst them St.
Irenaeus, a Doctor of the Church. The Celt Julianus
Tatianus teaches literature to Maximin, son of the Emperor
Severus, and eloquence at the Schools of Lyons and Besanqon.
Treves now became the usual seat of the Emperors and Pre
fects of the Gauls (which included Britain and Spain).

In the fourth century, the Celtic poets became profuse
panegyrists of the Emperors, as some of our own later terri
torial bards became eulogists of their chiefs.

There is a multitude of names, some of men illustrious
by their works. Of these the most remarkable were St.
Hilary, who was born at Poitiers, in 305. He was exiled
to Phrygia in 356, and the year following sent home
hymns to his daughter. He was allowed to return in 360.

APPENDIX IV 269

He is regarded as the first, hymn-writer of the western
Church.

Ausonius, another poet, was born in 309, four years later ;
his mother was of the Aedui (of Autun), like Divitiacus, and
his father a physician from near Bordeaux. There he began
to teach in 330, and in 345 he held the chair of eloquence,
and so great was his renown that he was called to take charge
of the education of Gratian, by whom he was ultimately
appointed First Consul.

Another and a more eminent contemporary, St. Ambrose,
was a Gaul by birth, having been born in 340 at Treves,
where his father resided as Prefect. In 374, St. Ambrose
became bishop of Milan (the old Capital of Cisalpine Gaul) ;
on two subsequent occasions, at least, he visited Gaul, once
in 383 on a friendly mission to Maximus, whom he stays from
proceeding to Italy, and with whom he makes peace in the
name of the young emperor ; next he came, four years later,
to ask him for the body of Gratian, which was refused him.
Icarius, to whom St. Augustine dedicated his book, may have
been born in Spain, but his father was a Gaul. It is worthy
of note, in conclusion, that St. Athanasius lived for three
years in banishment at Treves.

It is, assuredly, most remarkable that the two poets whose
names are associated with the first Christian Latin hymns
were Gauls by birth, Hilary and Ambrose, and both lived
amid a population of Celtic origin.

THE END