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THE CABINET

OF

IRISH LITERATURE.

PERIOD A.D. 1550-1730.

GEOFFRY KEATING.

BORN 1570-DIED 1650.

in his native language, and ultimately com-
pleted about the year 1625. It begins from
the earliest period (namely, the arrival of the
three daughters of Cain, the eldest named
Banba, who gave her name to Ireland, which
was called "the Isle of Banba"), and extends
to the Anglo-Norman invasion.
In 1603,
however, Keating was enabled, owing to the
recall of the president, Sir George Carew,
to England, to return to his parish, where
he found a coadjutor, with whom he lived
and laboured peacefully for many years. One
of the joint works of the two men was the
erection of a church in 1644, over the door
of which may yet be seen an inscription speak-
ing of them as founders, and beside which
was placed afterwards the following epitaph
on the poet-historian—

[This celebrated Irish historian and divine, | portant History of Ireland, which was written to whose indefatigable labours Irish history is so deeply indebted, was born at Tubbrid, near Clogheen, in county Tipperary, about the year 1570. Of the details of his life there is left us but a scanty record. At an early age | he was sent to Spain, and in the college of Salamanca he studied for twenty-three years. On his return home he was received with great respect by all classes of his countrymen, and after a tour through the country was appointed to the ministry of his native parish, Tubbrid, in county Tipperary. Here he soon became famous for his eloquence, and crowds came to hear him from the neighbouring towns of Cashel and Clonmel. "Among others," says the editor of Clanricarde's Memoirs, “came a gentleman's wife whom common fame reported to be too familiar with the Lord-president of Munster. The preacher's discourse was on the sin of adultery, and the eyes of the whole congregation being on the lady, she was in great confusion, and, imagining that the doctor had preached that sermon on purpose to insult her, she made loud complaint of him to the president, who was so enraged that he gave orders for apprehending him, intending to punish him with all the rigour of the law." Before, however, the soldiers reached his house, the historian, warned by his friends, had fled for safety into the Galtee Mountains near at hand.

In the solitude of the mountains Keating caused to be brought to him the materials he had been collecting for years, and at once proceeded to write his well-known and im

VOL. I.

"In Tybrid, hid from mortal eye,

A priest, a poet, and a prophet lie;

All these and more than in one man could be
Concentred was in famous Jeoffry."

Keating's writings prove him to have been an eloquent preacher, a ripe scholar, a graceful poet, a skilful writer in Latin and Irish, and a patient enthusiast in the collection and study of the ancient annals and bardic works of his country.

As to Keating's History there are many and very varying opinions. Peter Talbot speaks of it as "an able but extravagantly mad performance." D'Arcy Magee calls it "a semibardic, semi-historic work, full of faith in legends and trust in traditions." He, however, acknowledges that "if it contains improba

bilities or absurdities they are not of his | (Keating's) creation." He further asserts that "ignorance has criticized what it knew not of, and condemned accounts which it had never

I am heart-sick at thought of the races of old, O'er whose plains the red tide of invasion hath rolled.

learn

But, oh! Erin, my heart's love, why will you not
To trust only the old blood Milesian and stern!
For, alas! the fierce Sasenach boar hath ripped deep,
And drained dry the full veins your soft bosom
did keep.

each band of invaders that come through the
tide,

To this land that was once ruled with glory and pride,

Sets its rude chiefs on high in the halls of our great,

examined." O'Curry says of it, "This book is
written in the modified Gaedhilic of Keating's
own time." He also truly says it would be
better for those who extract information
from his writings "to endeavour to imitate
his devoted industry and scholarship, than to
attempt to elevate themselves to a higher posi-See,
tion of literary fame by a display of critical
pedantry and what they suppose to be inde-
pendence of opinion, in scoffing at the pre-
sumed credulity of those whose labours have
laid in modern times the very groundwork of
Irish history." To our thinking, however,
Keating is best defended by himself in his
own lengthy preface to the History. In an
early part of the work itself he also says,
in giving the legend of a settlement in Ire-
land before the flood-"nor have I inserted
it in the beginning of this history with any
desire that it should be believed, but only for
the sake of order, and out of respect to some
records of the kingdom that make mention of
it." Remembering this and other like state-
ments in the history, we cannot join in charg-
ing the author with unbounded credulity.

And its lordlings to ride round the island in state!
In the fields of our race foreign weeds are up-
reared,

And the soil they grow rich in no longer is feared!
The mighty O'Cavanagh chiefs are departed;
Dalcassian, Eugenian, are weak and cold-hearted.

The O'Mores and O'Connors no longer are bold,
Though like thunder their cry in the fierce fights

of old

Mighty reapers in fields that were ripened in

wrath!

Till they turned to the faithless no foe shut their path.

Fitzgeralds of Arney! would ye yet trod the field, That the old crom aboo through our valleys yet pealed,

Dermod O'Connor's translation is not at all as perfect as could be desired, nor is the translation published lately in New York a very great advance upon it in accuracy. We have still room for an accomplished Irish scholar to give us a creditable rendering, and every facility, as the MS. in the original Irish by Soon his cries and lamentings would echo around! O'Mulcoury is to be found at present in the library of Trinity College, Dublin.

Of the other works of Keating many were a few years ago, and possibly still are, well known traditionally to the peasantry of Munster. Among them are "Thoughts on Innisfail," which D'Arcy Magee has translated; "A Farewell to Ireland;" a poem addressed to his harper; "An Elegy on the Death of Lord de Decies;" the "Three Shafts of Death," a treatise in Irish prose, which Irish soldiers, we are told, have long held in admiration. Keating's death is generally supposed to have taken place in 1650.]

THOUGHTS ON INNISFAIL.
(TRANSLATED FROM THE IRISH BY THE EDITOR.)
For the sorrow of Innisfail sleepless I lie,
When I think of the morrow I hopelessly sigh;

By your rivers not long would the waster be found

But oh! it were better, far better, good God!
That the last few were gathered and flying abroad
O'er the wild waves of Cleena, than thus trampled

sore

If the race and the island you favour no more.

HOW THE MILESIANS CAME.1

The Milesian fleet first attempted to land upon the northern coast of Leinster, at a place

then called Inbher Slainge, but now known by the name of the Harbour of Wexford.2 The Tuatha de Danaus, alarmed at the number of the ships, immediately flocked towards the

1 This and the three extracts that follow are from the History of Ireland translated by Dermod O'Connor.

2 Keating states on good authority that the Milesians first landed in Ireland 1300 years before Christ.

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