An Comunn Gàidhealach Publications > Deo-gréine > Volume 13, October 1917-September 1918

AN DEO-GREINE.
75
cerning two Scotsmen who were arguing about
their family pedigrees. One said to the other,
sneeringly—“Ye’ll be makin’ oot ye were in
the Ark with Noah ! ” and the other replied
promptly “Deed no, I winna—for we cam’ ower
the watter in a boat o’ our ain.”
Scotsmen claim as kindred Celts the most
ancient peoples of the world. Two thousand
years before the birth of Christ, the Gauls or
Celts were founders of a vast empire which
reached from the Euphrates to the utmost parts
of Spain and Mauretania. The language they
spoke in those far-away days is still used in
Wales and Brittany. Wales, which is so much
in the public eye just now on account of its
having evolved a brilliant Prime Minister from
a simple village lad—Wales, I may say, posi¬
tively hugs itself in the pride of its Celtic tradi¬
tion and history—loving its language and pre¬
serving it jealously in all its integrity. I hardly
think the Scottish people are so keen on the
preservation of their form cf the Gaelic—yet if
some of them were to visit Wales, as I have
done quite recently, and listen to the soft music
of the Welsh language as the natives pronounce
it, it is possible some more united effort might
be made to save the Scottish rendering of the
same original speech. For out of these expres¬
sive words and picturesque phrases came the
“Celtic Spirit”—just as the best forms of Eng¬
lish literature grew out of the first “popular”
translation of the Bible into what was then
called “The vulgar tongue.” The style and fine
diction of the early Elizabethan writers owes
nearly everything to the pithy, forceful utter¬
ances found in the Holy Scriptures. So does
the Celtic spirit owe its strong ideals, its impul¬
sive fervour, its resolute “ carrying on ” through
thick and thin, to the brief, bold, inspiring
words of our far distant Celtic ancestors who
spoke as they thought; even as the prophets of
old were wont to prophesy, without consider¬
ation or care for the outside public who might
criticise or condemn. The Celtic warrior of
olden time called to his men in no uncertain
voice—there was no hesitation in his prepared¬
ness for battle.
“Son of the sea!” he cries, in the poem of
Fingal—“ Put on thine arms ! Lift thy sound¬
ing steel! I behold the chiefs in the prime of
their former deeds ! Their souls are kindled at
the battles of old; at the actions of other times.
Their eyes are flames of fire, in search of the
foes of the land—their mighty hands are on
their swords—lightning pours from their sides
of steel! They come like streams from the
mountains—bright are the chiefs of battle in
the armour of their fathers. Gloomy and dark
their legions follow, like the gathering of the
rainy clouds behind the red meteors of heaven!”
Here is a rush of fervent poetry, translated
directly from the Gaelic of Ossian. Welsh
bards have expressed themselves with the same
picturesqueness and fire—equally so have the
bards of Brittany. There is a devotion, a hero¬
ism, a love of country and an unflinching tena¬
city of soul in every nation where the Celtic
spirit is most predominant, and never was there
any crisis in history where a Celt has not held
a place in the front rank of achievement. In
the throes of this present war, the most hideous
blot ever cast on civilization, a heroic figure
grander than any “sunlit warriors” of Ossian’s
muse, stands for the pride and the glory of
Scotland—a Celt of Celts—Sir Douglas Haig.
Can we at home, even by the most fervent
stretch of imagination, realize what this mag¬
nificent soldier is enduring on the plains of
Flanders'? The strain of mind and body—the
tension of nerve—the firm patience he holds in
the face of such uncivilized treacherous warfare
as the world has never before known—these are
the present-day heritages of the Celtic nature
and temperament, fused from the fire of ancient
beginnings into a bed rock of the strongest
staying-power in man. On the other hand, and
in a different sphere of action we have an
amazing example of Celtic grit in David Lloyd
George Let anyone here put himself in the
Prime Minister’s place and try to realise the
weight of the burden he carries! Surrounded
by intriguers and place hunters, ho has to main¬
tain a level course towards victory, despite the
dragging, greedy hands that would pull him
first this way and then that—he has to turn a
deaf ear to supplications which would move his
heart to tears if he were not conscious that
firmness, and not softness, is needful for the
grip of the reins of State—he whose nature
returns to simple rather than splendid things,
and who himself told me he would rather have
a cottage by the banks of the river in the village
where he spent his boyhood than a place in any
other beauty-spot of the globe, he, even he, has
to meet with the hypocrisy attendant on wealth,
and the snobbery which clings to rank, despite
the life long contempt he has shown for all such
temporary show and glitter. And with the
subtlety as well as with the humour of the Celt,
he takes it all as it comes, but without relaxing
for a moment his hold of the one object on
which he has fixed his ambition—To win the
war! This is a special endowment of the Celtic
spirit—Concentration—the tenacious grip which
never let go Without it all is confusion and
chaos. The man who wills is the man who wins.
And this has been the history of the Celtic
race from the very beginning. Wherever the
Celts have established themselves, they are
proved conquerors—in arms, in commerce, in