The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Celtic Psaltery, by Alfred Perceval Graves

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Title: A Celtic Psaltery

Author: Alfred Perceval Graves

Release Date: December 2, 2004 [eBook #14232]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CELTIC PSALTERY***

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A CELTIC PSALTERY

Being Mainly Renderings in English Verse from Irish & Welsh Poetry

by

ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES

The F. A. Stokes Company
443-449 Fourth Avenue
New York

Published in England by
The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge
68 Haymarket, London

1917

DEDICATION

TO THE

RIGHT HON. DAVID LLOYD GEORGE

PRIME MINISTER OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND

This Psaltery of Celtic Songs
To you by bounden right belongs;
For ere War's thunder round us broke,
To your content its chord I woke,
Where Cymru's Prince in fealty pure
Knelt for his Sire's Investiture.

Nor less these lays are yours but more,
In memory of the Eisteddfod floor
You flooded with a choral throng
That poured God's praise a whole day long.

But most, O Celtic Seer, to you
This Song Wreath of our Race is due,
Since high o'er hatred and division,
You have scaled the Peak and seen the Vision
Of Freedom, breaking into birth
From out an agonising Earth.

PREFACE

I have called this volume of verse a Celtic Psaltery because it mainly
consists of close and free translations from Irish, Scotch Gaelic, and
Welsh Poetry of a religious or serious character. The first half of the
book is concerned with Irish poems. The first group of these starts with
the dawning of Christianity out of Pagan darkness, and the
spiritualising of the Early Irish by the wisdom to be found in the
conversations between King Cormac MacArt--the Irish ancestor of our
Royal Family--and his son and successor, King Carbery. Here also will be
found those pregnant ninth-century utterances known as the "Irish
Triads."

Next follow poems attributed or relating to some of the Irish
saints--Patrick, Columba, Brigit, Moling; La