Page images
PDF
EPUB
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small][subsumed][graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]
[graphic][merged small][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]
[blocks in formation]

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION.

REVISED

SIMPLE LESSONS IN IRISH

GIVING

The Pronunciation of Each Word.

BY THE LATE

REV. EUGENE O'GROWNEY,
M.R.I.A.

With Appendix Containing & Complete and Exhaustive Glossary of Every Irish Word used in the Text.

IN presenting to the public "Revised Simple Lessons in Irish" we are endeavoring to carry into effect the expressed wishes of the late lamented Rev. Eugene O'Growney.

These revised Lessons are the last literary production of that great Gaelic scholar and lover of Ireland and her language

To the student of Irish this little work will be found a most useful and helpful compen dium. Great care has been given to the com piling of the "Phonetic Key" system. By following instructions, every word given in the book can be pronounced according to the usages of the best modern speakers of the vernacular. The author's chief aim was sim plicity and clearness of expression.

[blocks in formation]

How to Write Irish.

The Irish Copy Book,

Giving the Most Improved Method
of Writing the

GAELIC CHARACTERS.

A BEAUTIFUL MANUAL OF CELTIC PENMANSHIP. EVERY IRISH SCHOLAR NEEDS ONE Price, 10 Cents. Sent free by mail. For Sale at the office of THE GAEL,

140 Nassau Street, New York.

RIPANS

The simplest remedy for indigestion, constipation, biliousness and the many ailments arising from a disordered stomach, liver or bowels is Ripans Tabules. They go straight to the seat of the trouble relieve the distress, cleanse and cure the affected parts, and give the system a general toning up.

At druggists. The Five-Cent packet is enough for an ordinary occasion. The family bottle, 60 cents. contains a supply for a year.

When writing to Advertisers please mention THE GAEL.

[graphic]

(The Gael.)

A MONTHLY BI-LINGUAL MAGAZine Devoted To The Promotion of The LANGUAGE, Literature, music, And Arc of Ireland.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic]

"The Ceoil of Sorley Crutach."

HERE were many O'Hagans lived in Quilly, the time of the big fighting, but never a pair like Seamus and Sorley, the brothers who kept house alone together in the last cabin up the hill. They were twins, in that they were born at one birth, and the music ran out of them both at their lips and their finger tips. But Seamus was a well-favored, big young fellow, clean-limbed and clear-complexioned; and Sorley was but a misshapen little cripple.

And

For working, for dancing, for hurling, for courting, or for fighting, there was not the match of Seamus O'Hagan in the townlands round about. wake nor wedding, fair nor pattern, was complete without Sorley's quick tongue and easy wit.

For music, now, it took themselves to beat each other. Seamus played mostly the old airs, though he played them as the old folk in Quilly had never heard them played before. But when Sorley took the fiddle, and he out among the hills of a Summer even

* Ceoil-Music.

By Florence Davidson, Belfast. ing, or sitting with Seamus in the reek and glow of their good turf fire, he had melodies of his own to play on it. Quaint and unseizable things they were; hauntingly sweet and mournful, or uncannily merry.

If he played to any one but Seamus, it was the latter he generally chose; and then the young folks looked blithely at each other, and the middle-aged men and women forgot their cares, and the old people all smiled to think of merry doings in their youth. The very children laughed and rolled on the outskirts of the circle, in pure delight. It was God's gift for his misfortune, the neighbors said, this music that was in him. But no one, not the cleverest harpers and pipers who traveled the countryside, could ever play after him a tune of Sorley O'Hagan's.

When the bad times grew to worse, and the great Rebellion was beginning to take form through the country, men from Quilly were not slow to join the movement, and Seamus was with the first of them.

Brave hearts and strong arms, all that there was of stalwart manhood in the little mountain village, drilled and waited, pledged to the cause. When they took the field at last, that terrible Summer, after the Quilly boys there came a little lame man with the face

of a saint and the body of a gnome, the wit of a leprehaun and the heart of a hero-and that was Sorley O'Hagan. Because they had another of the name with them, they called him sometimes Sorley Bacach or Sorley Crutach; oftenest, remembering what that must be to him, it was Sorley-anFear-ceoil that they gave him.

Like a lame dog he circled round the pikemen, now dropping behind, now gaining on them by ways and means of his own, till they joined the big camp near Enniscorthy. Hardy in spite of his infirmity, keen-eyed and quick at expedients, he scouted for them well. There was hardly a halt or a camping where he failed to turn up, light-hearted and confident, full of news, with his fiddle in the bundle slung across his poor hunched back. "Such as me," thought Sorley, stoutly, "it's not by fighting we were meant to help. If we strive to keep the heart in the boys that can fight, maybe God and the country's all as well pleased."

There was a night that June of '98, when Seamus O'Hagan played long and liltingly to a crowd of his comrades. Great happenings were for the morrow, and every man's thoughts were by some hearth of happy memories, or in some self-sacred spot of the green hills. There was no stir among them.

The moon, newly up in a steely, starless sky, showed outlines dimly, wrapped in a ghostly softness.

Seamus played them the tunes they had grown up with, planxties and rigs, laments and lullabies, till with his last note every head was bent, and his own hand shook upon the bow.

Then suddenly Sorley started up, and gathered the fiddle lovingly in his arms. The silver light was like a glory on his face, his eyes flashed dark as mountain-loughs in a storm.

"Listen!" said Sorley Crutach. "Listen, now, what I play you." Solemn and glorious came his melody, a stately theme garlanded with those weird rhythms and cadences that his soul loved. Twined indistinguishably among it were snatches of airs his hearers knew but could not name, with here a ficrce clang of battle or a militant heroism, and there, in all its inconsequent sweetness, the music of the sidhe.

"It is of the Past," said Sorley, as he played, "of the times when Ireland was the Glory of the West."

He spoke straight to Seamus, and Seamus nodded; Sorley had played to him like that before.

Imperceptibly almost, without a change of melody, everything but the weirdness died away from it, and a wail of desolation came creeping in. Sorrow, and shame, and helpless fury, ran riot through that music. "The Past that will be soon, please God," said Sorley. Now his Coeil changed again. Still there was that piteous keen, but the heroism was coming back to it, the battle-note was rising. had no need to tell them what he meant this time, it was the dawning Future of that Ireland for which any one of them might die next day.

He

Seamus, caught soul to soul with his brother, leaned forward eagerly, with parted lips.

The music swelled out upon the spacicus silence, prouder, nobler, soul-inspiring. Strong hands were clenched, full hearts beat high, every face was turned expectantly upon the grotesque Iwielder of this mighty power. But in the full swell the melody waveredstumbled, sunk, ended in piteous discord.

An uneasy thrill ran through the company brought so suddenly down to earth. Seamus sat dazed, white-lipped, incredulous. Sorley, fiddle in arms, crept off among the shadows, like a wounded animal hiding with its hurt.

"But it won't be so," he told himself a hundred times, "it can't be so. There will come a good ending to all the trouble. I have heard it already. My fingers will know it, if I live, when the time comes." But Seamus kept the heaviest heart of all, with those doleful discords ringing in his head. For he believed that a spirit of prophecy had been in Sorley's strings that night.

Next day was fought the battle of Vinegar Hill. Many a brave son Ireland lost that bloody day, and Seamus with the rest. When the moon came up that night, to be God's taper at their lonely wake, a little crooked shadow

came searching reverently among the dead. Close among friends and foes lay Seamus, when Sorley found him there. He made no motion to touch him or to move him, only crouched patiently beside him through the short Summer night, till the stars were dimmed in the cool gray light of dawn. Then he stretched his long arms with a shudder, and took out his fiddle to play to Seamus for the last time. And it was the sad music of the night before, that he played him. Again there came a swell of hopeful promise, and again the pitiful break, but this time no sudden ending. For the melody itself rose again from chaos, sweet and clear, triumphant as it had been in the beginning, nobler even, broader, and with a new serenity of peace.

"It was what you wanted, Seamus," said Sorley, tenderly; "I give it to you for your burying, brother of my soul."

So then he laid the fiddle for a pillow beneath his brother's head, and went desolately away. If any living creature heard the glorious requiem, they made no sign.

Some soldiers of the government troops found Sorley wandering near the place next day, and brought him to their officer for a suspect; they had heard much of the hunchbacked scout.

So when he cursed them bitterly in thunderous Irish and in an English which they understood little better, they took him and hanged him for a spy, the little lame man with the wonderful gift in him, without any great formality in the matter.

[ocr errors]

OMEWHERE in the course of the "Confessions" which Mr. George Moore recently contributed to "Lippincott's Magazine," he spoke of the pleasure of detaching himself from the composition of a long novel and unburdening his mind on all sorts of topics. Apparently, the call of fiction has been too strong for him, and he has returned to novel writing. At all, events, it is announced that he has completed a new story of modern life, "dealing with an interesting problem, which has seldom been touched upon in fiction."

Industrial School for Girls.

ADY CASTLEROSSE has founded a school of industry at Killarney for girls, with the object of teaching the girls how to raise the standard of comfort in their own homes. In this school the students are taught cooking, laundry and needlework, and they receive training as servants, should they desire to become such.

The school is also a charming residence, lying just outside the walls of the Kenmare demesne. Twenty-four girls can be received as boarders and receive tuition for the modest sum of 4s. 6d. per week each. The house is daintily furnished and full of brightness, with cozy sleeping rooms and homelike sitting rooms, while a pretty the garden completes the charm of place.

A

Robert Burns.

CORRESPONDENT of the "Spectator" of London gives some interesting infomation concerning Robert Burns's name:

"When a certain Walter Campbell moved from Argyllshire to Glenbervie in the Mearns (Kincardineshire) early in the seventeenth century, he assumed the name of Burnhouse or Burness. From him the fourth in descent was William Burness, the father of the poet.

"The family Bible records the marriage of William Burness and Agnes Brown' in 1757, and I myself copied the name of 'William Burness' from the old gravestone in Alloway kirkyard more than forty years ago, which has since been replaced by a new one.

"The poet signed himself 'Robert Burness' in his letters for about two years after his father's death in 1784, the last extant letter with that signature being one addressed to Mr. Aiken, April 3, 1786. After this he appears to have adopted the spelling with which we are all familiar-Robert Burns.''

Eighth Century Irish Relics In Switzerland.

A

MONG the treasures of the Cathedral of Coire at St. Lucius in Switzerland is a little box with sharply sloped top and rings in the gable end, such as the early medievals used for relics of saints, religious books, or other precious things.

It is of wood, carved in low relief and covered with thin plates of stamped and gilt copper. The main decoration consists of ribbon or interlacing designs, with birds and sea monsters. The date assigned this reliquary is the eighth century.

From its decoration and the fact that Irish missionaries from Iona and Lindisfarne reached Switzerland in that century, it is probable that the Coire reliquary is of Irish provenance; so M. Moliner argues in his work on this cathedral, just published in Paris.

Other objects in this treasure collection much later than the eighth century, such as a box carved of bone and a wooden frame of the twelfth, retain a good deal of the spirit of the older work, the curving bands, animal forms and grotesques. At St. Lucius art remained to a large degree untouched by the changes elsewhere in Europe.

Among the fifteenth century carvings on the altars are works by Jacob Russ and Stephen Klain. A painting by Lukts Cranach represents a bust view of Herodias carrying the head of St. John on a platter. There are triptychs by old German painters and a great store of curious church furniture.— New York Times.

[blocks in formation]
« PreviousContinue »