Eighty years
ago, on 1st July 1937, Bunracht na hÉireann was enacted by the Irish
people. In the following year, under
this new constitution, Douglas Hyde was elected unopposed as the first
president of Ireland.
The Central
Catholic Library holds a rich collection of works by Hyde, reflecting the
importance he had for the founder Stephen Brown. Brown belonged to the first
generation that benefited fully from Hyde’s pioneering work on Irish language
and literature. Linguist, poet, translator and scholar, Hyde restored to
national memory the annals, romances, folktales and mythological cycles lost because of the historical circumstances which had effected Irish language and culture .Stephen Brown collected for
the library Hyde’s poems in both English and Irish. He also acquired works such
as Hyde’s Study of Early Gaelic
Literature, published in London in 1894 by T. Fisher Unwin (who would be the future publishers of Tolkien).
As well as
writing in Irish, Hyde translated into English tales such as the “Three
Sorrows, or Pities, of Irish storytelling”. These three Gaelic tragedies
comprise Déirdre, (based on love), the Children of Lir, (based on jealousy),
and the Children of Tuireann, (based on murder). Hyde's translation was published in one volume in 1895 (again by T. Fisher Unwin).
However the stories were reprinted by Dublin’s Talbot Press in three individual
volumes, (1939, 1940 and 1941), following Hyde’s election to the
presidency. Our copies of these three translations
are each inscribed in Irish by Hyde.
The passage
below comes from Hyde’s translation of The Children of Lir. It captures the
moment when the four children of King Lir are transformed into swans by their
jealous stepmother, Queen Aoife.
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| Cover design by Una Hyde |
Then spreading wide their strong white
wings, the swans
Rose off the water in the sight
of all,
Beating the air beneath them,
till at length
The men of Erin saw them but as
specks
High overhead...
Then for the north they started,
flying straight ;
And all men watched them till
they passed from sight
And vanished utterly ; and then
there fell
A great distress and sadness over
all,
So that the men of Erin made a
law
From that day forth that none
should kill a swan.”
