Page:Cúirt an Ṁeaḋon Oiḋċe (1910).djvu/30

This page has been proofread.
12

Nature is shameless, and so is Brian. There are in the "Cúirt" things that are coarse and repulsive, just as in nature. Nowhere do we find a corrupt mind deliberately dwelling on nasty things. Critics are wont to excuse Rabelais for his hearty, gigantic animalism; to say that his wallowing on a dunghill is a natural act of a natural man. Brian never wallowed on a dunghill. He has suffered at the hands of the scribes who have inserted in his poem pieces of wanton obscenity or scurrility not essential to the theme; but as Professor Ludwig Stern remarked, his art was too inimitable, and the additions are easily detected. Those who see in the "Cúirt" nothing but a piece of low "sculduddery" have grievously misinterpreted the work.

X.

Brian was essentially a moralist. He attacked the vices and evils which, in his opinion, sprang from the suppression of nature. He did not regard marriage as something lofty and spiritual, a question of affinities, but his view of it was certainly that of a moralist. To him celibacy was something unhealthy and unnatural, which only led to vice. Like Ibsen he believed that "the joy of life suppressed, turns to something very ugly." His shots were chiefly directed against the practice of old men marrying young girls. But it is quite clear that he thought the suppression of nature something abhorrent to humanity, and opposed to the will of the Creator.

“Ca ḃfuil na coṁaċta diórduiġ an Dúileaṁ
Is calcaḋ na feóla i gcoróinn na cuṁa so?”

In these lines we find the central idea of the "Cúirt" summed up. Brian pleads for healthy nature, the joy of life, the marriage of young men and women in the prime