Or take this epitaph of an Irish Celt, Angus the Culdee, whose
Felire, or festology, I have already mentioned; a festology in which,
at the end of the eighth or beginning of the ninth century, he
collected from 'the countless hosts of the illuminated books of Erin'
(to use his own words) the festivals of the Irish saints, his poem
having a stanza for every day in the year. The epitaph on Angus, who
died at Cluain Eidhnech, in Queen's County, runs thus:-
Angus in the assembly of Heaven,
Here are his tomb and his bed;
It is from hence he went to death,
In the Friday, to holy Heaven.
It was in Cluain Eidhnech he was rear'd;
It was in Cluain Eidhnech he was buried;
In Cluain Eidhnech, of many crosses,
He first read his psalms.
That is by no eminent hand; and yet a Greek epitaph could not show a
finer perception of what constitutes propriety and felicity of style
in compositions of this nature. Take the well-known Welsh prophecy
about the fate of the Britons:-
Their Lord they will praise,
Their speech they will keep,
Their land they will lose,
Except wild Wales.
To however late an epoch that prophecy belongs, what a feeling for
style, at any rate, it manifests! And the same thing may be said of
the famous Welsh triads. We may put aside all the vexed questions as
to their greater or less antiquity, and still what important witness
they bear to the genius for literary style of the people who produced
them!
Now we English undoubtedly exhibit very often the want of sense for
style of our German kinsmen.
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