The Irish standard., 1916-01-15
BY J. M. Flood, in The Irish Rosary.

MF. 0tOQIOrQ BROOKE mas three dis.
tinctive elements in modern Irish pc.
etry-Nationality, Religion and Rebel.
lion.
Nationality, as the deepest thing in
Ireland, naturally finds expression in
her songs. The literature written in
Ireland that ignores it is bound to
be inferior in life and originality to
that which is inspired by it. Rebel
lion, the protest of the weak against
the strong, independence against tute-
lage, the love of ones own land in her
hour of sorrow and danger, also finds
frequent expression, for it is always a
poetic motive The third distinctive
note is Religion.
In Ireland, religion has always been
closely allied with nationality, and
has undergone the same sufferings.
The note of this poetry is nearly al
ways Catholic, and Catholic with the
pathos, the patience and the passion
of persecution added to it's religious
fervor. Persecution has deepened its
music into a cry. From persecution
the song writer's of Ireland have gained
a passionate love of the Catholic
church, and record that love expressed
with an intensity and devotion which,
though it has often but little art, has
much of nature. Even the courtly
and artificial Moore is stirred to a
deeper feeling when he comes to i'm
age in "The Irish Peasant and His
Mistress probably the sincerest and
best of his songs-the love and honor
in which his countrymen held the
Martyred Church.
Things have changed since Moore's
time, and persecution has ceased; yet
the old SAVIOR clings to, and the old
passion rings in, the modern poems.
"The memories of martyrdom are as
powerful in song as it's realities" The
church which had been endeared to
the hearts of the people by suffering
was invested with an imagined per-
sonality. AS the Lady of Ireland, the
Ozark Rosaleen," the Little Black
Rose" the "Silk of the Kine," was
created by the poets; SO, too, was
the Lady of the Church. "She sits,'
writes Mr.. Brooke, ION the shores of
Irish Romance, hand in hand with her
who personifies Ireland as nation,
and two more pathetic figures-in their
indomitable resistance to oppression,
in their sorrow and their hope, in
their claim to the love of their peo-
pie because of their own undying love,
in their eternal youth, to which no
oppression has given one stain of age
do not exist in the world of litera-
ture. They are clothed with the beau
ty of their land, and the martyrdom
of their people is their crown of light.
A thousand poems are hidden as yet
in this conception"
The religious feeling is strongly
marked in the songs of the people of
Ireland. There is not in the litera-
ture of Europe collection of popular
poetry which breathes so great a de-
votional fervor is the Religious Songs
of Connacht," that DR.. Douglas Hyde
collected amongst the Irish-speaking
peasantry of the western province.
These hymns and rams could only
have been composed for people who
had absorbed the essential spirit of
Christianity. They are the express
sion of the "Anima Naturaliter Chris
tiana."
The Irish Gael is, as DR.. Hyde re-
marks, pious by nature. He sees the
hand of God in every place and in
every thing. The spirit, and the
things of the spirit, affect him more
powerfully than the body and the
things of the body. In the things he
does not see he does not believe the
less because he does not see them,
and in the things he sees he will see
more than the man of any other race.
What is invisible for other people is
visible to him. The belief with him
of the evidence of Gods providence
in all the events of his life, in his
happiness or sorrows, in his good or
bad fortune, is assured and unques-
tioning. He feels invisible powers at
his side throughout the day, and in
the darkness of the night.
OF the poets who have treated of
religious themes, Aubrey de We're is
the first both in genius and achieve
ment. He finds but little inspiration
in the life of his own day, and seeks
his ideals in the early history of Ire
land, and the traditions of the medic
val church. The old Irish stories, as
treated by him, have always a spirit
ual significance. and in his poems on
the past glories of the church one
seems to breathe a purer air-"the
very air of that old world of uncon-
scious saintliness and glad romance"
Often, says a critic, in reading his
poetry we seem to be talking to one
of Giotto's frescoed saints who has
made himself at home amidst the eager
and spasmodical interests of the age