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Celtic Literature: The grave of March is this, and this the grave of Gwythyr; Here is the grave of Gwgawn Gleddyfreidd; But unknown is the grave of Arthur.

The grave of March is this, and this the grave of Gwythyr; Here is the grave of Gwgawn Gleddyfreidd; But unknown is the grave of Arthur.

That comes from the Welsh Memorials of the Graves of the Warriors, and if we compare it with the familiar memorial inscriptions of an English churchyard (for we English have so much Germanism in us that our productions offer abundant examples of German want of style as well as of its opposite):-

Afflictions sore long time I bore, Physicians were in vain, Till God did please Death should me seize And ease me of my pain -

if, I say, we compare the Welsh memorial lines with the English, which in their Gemeinheit of style are truly Germanic, we shall get a clear sense of what that Celtic talent for style I have been speaking of is.

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.