The conditions of life were easier; there was more leisure and more
romance. And the other arts, which stimulate poetry, were more widely
practised than in the earlier ages. Finn's Song to May, here
translated, is of a good type, frank and observant, with a fresh air
in it, and a fresh pleasure in its writing. I have no doubt that at
this time began the lyric poetry of Ireland, and it reached, under
Christian influences, a level of good, I can scarcely say excellent,
work, at a time when no other lyrical poetry in any vernacular existed
in Europe or the Islands. It was religious, mystic, and chiefly
pathetic--prayers, hymns, dirges, regrets in exile, occasional stories
of the saints whose legendary acts were mixed with pagan elements, and
most of these were adorned with illustrations drawn from natural
beauty or from the doings of birds and beasts--a great affection for
whom is prominent in the Celtic nature. The Irish poets sent this
lyric impulse into Iceland, Wales, and Scotland, and from Scotland
into England; and the rise of English vernacular poetry instead of
Latin in the seventh and eighth centuries is due to the impulse given
by the Irish monasteries at Whitby and elsewhere in Northumbria. The
first rude lyric songs of Caedmon were probably modelled on the hymns
of Colman.
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