Читать книгу Lyra Celtica: An Anthology of Representative Celtic Poetry онлайн

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Of recent years we have had many works of the greatest value in Celtic ethnology, philology, history, archæology, art, legendary ballads and romances, folk-lore, and literature. Of all the Celtic literatures, that which was least known, when Arnold wrote, was the Scoto-Gaelic; but now with books such as Skene’s “Celtic Scotland,” Campbell’s “Popular Tales of the West Highlands,” with its invaluable supplementary matter, Dr Cameron’s “Reliquiæ Celticæ,” and many others, there is no difficulty for the would-be student. Again, it is impossible to overrate the value of popular books at once so able, so trustworthy, and so readily attainable, as Professor Rhys’s “Celtic Britain,” or Dr Douglas Hyde’s “Story of Early Gaelic Literature”; while Breton literature, ancient or modern, has found almost as many, and certainly as able and enthusiastic, exponents as that of Wales or that of Ireland. In Ireland there is, with Mr Standish Hayes O’Grady, Dr Douglas Hyde, Dr Sigerson, and many more, quite an army of workers in every branch of Celtic science and literature; in Scotland one less numerous perhaps, but not less ardent and justly enthusiastic; and in Wales the old Cymric spirit survives unabated, from the Butt of Anglesea to the marches of Hereford. In Brittany there was, till the other day, Hersart de la Villemarqué, and now there are M. de Jubainville, M. Loth, M. Anatole Le Braz, M. Auguste Brizeux, Charles Le Goffic, Louis Tiercelin, and many more philologists and other students, poets, romancists, and critics. Cornwall has not been neglected, nor has Man, and even the outlying fringe of Celtdom has found interpreters and expounders. In France the “Revue Celtique”; in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, Gaelic or Welsh or Anglo-Celtic periodicals and “Transactions,” stimulate a wider and deeper interest, and do inestimable service. The writings of men such as Renan, De Jubainville, Valroger, and other French Celticists: of Windisch, Kuno Meyer, and other Germans: of English specialists such as Mr Whitley Stokes, Mr Alfred Nutt, and others: these, together, and in all their different ways of approach, are, along with the writings of native specialists in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, accomplishing a work greater than is now to be measured or even accurately apprehended.