Studies in Literature and History
the precious mines of recent traditions. The state of society
described in some Icelandic Sagas, for example, with its hereditary
blood feuds and perpetual assassinations, with its code of honour
making vengeance a pious duty, its tariff of blood money, and its
council for adjusting civil and criminal wrongs, has a close
resemblance to everyday life among the free Afghan tribes beyond the
North-West Frontier of India. But the Saga writers flourished, I
understand, when this state of things had passed or was passing away;
while the Afghans are still a rude illiterate folk who have only
songs, recited by the professional bards. The best collection of these
popular songs has been made by a Frenchman, the late James
Darmesteter, who remarks that 'English people in India care little for
Indian songs'; though one may reply that he has made use of English
writers and collectors of frontier folklore, and indeed he
acknowledges his debt to Mr. Thorburn's excellent book on _Bannu or
our Afghan Frontier_. However that may be, we have here, in these
unwritten lays, the stuff out of which is developed, first, the
established tradition, and, secondly, not only poetry but also the
beginnings of history, for these lays are the oral records of
contemporary events--'c'est le cri meme de l'histoire.' They tell of
the last Afghan War, and of the most famous border forays made by the
English lords on the Afghan marches: they preserve the names and deeds
of English officers and of the leading warriors of the Afghan tribes:
they tell how Cavagnari 'drank the stirrup-cup of the great journey'
when the English mission was slaughtered at Kabul in 1879, and how
General Roberts, his heart shot through with grief, set out in fiery
speed on his avenging march against the Afghan capital. Here then is
for the modern historian a rare opportunity of comparing the
contemporary popular version of events with exact authentic official
record; and the result ought to aid him in deciding, by analogy, what
value is to be placed on similar material that has been handed down
in the ancient songs and stories of other countries. He will be
fortified, I think, in the sound conclusion that all far-sounding
legend has a solid substratum of fact. As poetry, these songs render
forcibly the temper and feelings of the people; they illustrate their
virtues and vices, their worship of courage and devotion to the clan,
their fanaticism and ferocity. The sense of Afghan honour, in the
matter of sheltering a guest, is shown in the ballad which relates how
a son killed his father for violating this law of hospitality. Like
all popular verse, the Afghan songs have their recurrent phrases and
familiar commonplaces; yet, says Darmesteter,
'in spite of the limited range of ideas and interests, and a rather
low ideal, all such defects find their excuse in the passion, the
simplicity, the direct spontaneous outspeaking, that supreme gift
which has been lost in our intellectual decadence.'
The stirring events of the time have been immediately put into verse;
the scenes and feelings are struck off in the die of actual
circumstance; the heated metal takes a clear-cut impression. It is in
rough songs like these that are to be found the germs of the higher
heroic poetry. The ballad, the short stories, the favourite anecdotes
of remarkable men at their exploits, have the luck to fall, later,
into the hands of a skilful reciter or verse-maker; they are enlarged,
knit together, and fashioned according to the ideas of the day, with
an infusion of rhetoric and literary decoration. The heroic ideal, to
use Professor Ker's words, is thus worked up out of the sayings and
doings of great men of the fore-time, who stand forth as the type and
embodiment of the virtues and vices of their age, as it was conceived
by poets who could handle the popular traditions. And we may guess
that all anecdotes, words of might, and feats of arms that were
current before and after him, if they were appropriate to the type,
would cluster round the hero, and be used for bringing his character
into strong relief. We can even discern this tendency in modern
society, where a notable personage, like the Duke of Wellington or
Talleyrand, is credited with any vigorous or caustic saying that suits
the idea of him, and may be passed on in another generation to the
account of the next popular favourite. The literary habit of providing
impressive 'last words' for great men at death's door might be taken
as another example of the magnetic attraction of types.
Of course the perfect samples of heroic verse, of famous songs and
stories woven into an epic poem, are to be found in Homer.[17]
Nowhere, in the whole range of the world's poetry, can we see such
splendid impersonations of primitive life and character treated
artistically. Yet the plot is simple enough. Agamemnon, the chief
commander of the Greek army, has carried off the daughter of a priest
of Apollo, and flatly refuses to give her back; whereupon the priest
appeals to the god, who brings the chief to reason by spreading a
plague in the Grecian camp; and so the girl goes home with apologies.
But Agamemnon indemnifies himself by seizing a captive damsel
belonging to Achilles, who, being justly infuriated, will go no more
to battle, but sits sulkily in his tent, until the Greek army is very
nearly destroyed, for want of his help, by the Trojans.
Here we have at once a picture of manners not unlike those of the
Afghan tribes, though very differently treated. The poet is at no
pains to put on any moral varnish, or to tone down the roughness
romantically; because he is writing, or reciting, for people of much
the same way of thinking as his heroes, who are fierce chiefs
quarrelling over captured women; and the whole plot is developed by
sheer pressure of circumstance and character. Then on the Trojan side
we have the figure of Hector, the true patriotic hero, who is
naturally displeased with Paris for the abduction of Helen, which has
brought a disastrous war upon Troy; yet what is done cannot be undone,
and his clear duty is to fight for his own people. To Helen herself he
is gentle and kind; and the religious men only irritate him when they
interfere in military matters. But although he is far the noblest
character in the whole poem, he is eventually slain by Achilles, for
the plain reason that Achilles is the most terrible warrior of both
armies. It was Hector's fate, which is the poet's way of saying that
the inexorable logic of facts, as he knows them, must always prevail.
With regard to the position of women in Homeric poetry. They are
mainly irresponsible creatures: how could they be otherwise, when
everything depends on the sword, and a woman cannot wield it? As the
equality of sexes implies a high state of civilisation and security,
so in the old fighting times a woman had to stand aside; yet though
she could not take part in a battle, there were incessant battles
about her: the fatal woman, who is the ruin of her country, is
well-known in all legend and romance, from Helen of Troy to La Cava,
whose seduction by King Roderick brought the Moors into Spain.[18] In
the _Iliad_ King Priam treats Helen with delicate consideration, as is
seen in the beautiful passage that describes her sitting by him on the
walls of Troy, and pointing out to him the leaders of the Greek army
marshalled in the plain before them. Nor is any more perfect female
character to be found in poetry than Andromache, Hector's wife,
high-spirited, virtuous, and passionately affectionate. Yet Helen,
the erring woman, is brought home eventually by Menelaus, and appears
again in the _Odyssey_ as a highly respected matron, who has had an
adventure in early life; while Andromache, having seen her husband
slain and dragged round the walls of Troy behind the chariot of
Achilles, is carried off a childless widow into dolorous servitude.
Here one may feel the tragic power of an artist who draws life from
the sombre verities, not as it is seen through the romantic colouring
of a softer moralising age; he never wastes himself on vain
lamentations, never suggests that virtue will save you from bitter
unmerited calamity: he gives the true situation. There is one short
passage in the _Odyssey_ where the poet, merely by the way, and to
illustrate something else, lets us have a glimpse of an incident that
was probably familiar to him and his audience. He wishes to show what
he means by a burst of grief, and this he does, not by a string of
epithets, but by a picture.[19]
From the historic books of the Old Testament, particularly from the
books of Samuel and the Kings, one might take some fine specimens of
the peculiar quality distinguishing the heroic style, in prose that is
very near poetry. Nothing can be more simple than the narrative, it is
cool and quiet: there are whole chapters without an unnecessary
adjective; and yet it is most impressive, both in the drawing of such
characters as Saul, David, and Joab, who stand out dramatically, like
Homeric heroes, and in the stories of their deeds and death.
Professor Ker's essays contain a masterly and luminous survey of the
vicissitudes undergone by the songs and legends of Western and
Northern nations in the course of transmutation from the primitive
heroic stage into deliberate literary composition. The original
material never attained the grand epical form; the process was
interrupted by the advancement of learning, by ecclesiastical
influences, and by vast social changes.
'Even before the people had fairly escaped from barbarism, before
they had made a fair beginning of civilisation and of reflective
literature on their own account, they were drawn within the Empire,
within Christendom.'
A similar fate, it may here be noticed, has overtaken, or awaits, the
heroic songs of the Afghans; for Darmesteter tells us that as the oral
tradition becomes written it falls into the net of translation and
paraphrase, it is absorbed into the elegant literature of Persia,
Arabia, and Hindustan, it becomes theological and romanesque. And
another dangerous enemy has now appeared in the shape of the
Anglo-Indian schools which follow and fix the English dominion; for
the primitive folklore has no more chance against systematic education
than the wild fighting men have against drilled and disciplined
soldiers. In Europe the Sagas of Iceland, which lay furthest from the
civilising influences, had the luck of preserving the true elements of
heroic narrative; and the Anglo-Saxon poem of Beowulf, though it falls
far short of the epic, has a certain Homeric flavour. The chief is the
'folces-hyrde,' his people's shepherd; and we have Beowulf, like
Hector,[20] desiring that after his death a mound may be raised at the
headland which juts out into the sea, 'that seafaring men may
afterward call it Beowulf's Mound, they who drive from far their
roaring vessels over the mists of the flood.'[21]
Let us turn now to the romantic poetry of England, which for some
centuries ruled all our imaginative literature, and annexed, so to
speak, almost the whole field of battles, adventures, and energetic
activity generally. The subjects are much the same: the gallantry of
men, the beauty, virtues, and frailties of women: but the writers have
got a loose uncertain grip upon the actualities of life; they wander
away into fanciful stories of noble knights, distressed damsels, and
marvellous feats of chivalry--in short they are _romancing_. They care
little whether the details accord with natural fact--whether, for
instance, the account of a fight is incredible to any one who knows
what a battle really is; the heroes are chivalrous knight-errants,
noble, pious, devoted to their lady loves; but they are not