"The Rageous Ossean": Patron-Hero of Synge and O'Casey

"THE RAGEOUS OSSEAN" PATRON-HERO OF SYNGE AND O'CASEY "make the Rageous Ossean, kneel and quaff a lyre!" JAMES JOYCE IN IRELAND TODAY the heroic figure of Cuchulain (Coo-hoolin) remains a memorial symbol of the Irish theater and the nation's fight for independence. A traveler in Dublin can observe this dual tribute to the warrior-hero of Celtic myth at the Abbey Theatre's temporary home in the Queens Theatre, where the familiar drawing of the young Cuchulain and his hound, the original emblem which Yeats and Lady Gregory chose for the Abbey, still graces the cover of the Theatre program , and in the General Post Office on O'Connell Street, where Oliver Shepherd's bronze statue to the dying Cuchulain commemorates the 1916 Easter Rising. In his last play, The Death of Cuchulain, Yeats linked myth and reality when he saw the heroic spirit of Cuchulain in the martyrs of the Rising: What stood in the Post Office With Pearse and Connolly? What comes out of the mountain Where men first shed their blood? Who thought Cuchulain till it seemed He stood where they had stood? An equally symbolic but today less celebrated hero of Celtic myth, the warrior-bard Oisin (variously spelled as Ossian, Oiseen, Usheen, plus Joyce's Ossean, and pronounced Osheen), deserves parallel attention if one is fully to appreciate some of the relationships between myth and reality in modem Irish art and life. In the old sagas and ballads Oisin is one of the most courageous and eloquent of the Fenian heroes, a great poet as well as fighter, and it is more than idle curiosity to inquire why there are few significant memorials to him in present-day Ireland. Recalling Yeats' lines about Cuchulain, it is only natural that one should also ask: where, and with whom, does Oisin stand today? Early in his career, in 1889, Yeats wrote "The Wanderings of Oisin," a long narrative poem about the three hundred year odyssey of the fabulous Oisin in Tir na nOg, the faery Land of Youth; however, in the major and later periods of his life he turned all his attention to Cuchulain , about whom he wrote a number of crucial plays and poems. Be268 1961 "THE RAGEOUS OSSEAN" 269 sides treating Cuchulain as a symbolic national hero, Yeats also, and perhaps more importantly, identified himself with Cuchulain the warrior, and looked upon him as a personal symbol of the passionate life of instinct and action, qualities which Yeats yearned for throughout his life. Now, what I propose to do in this essay is not only to try to answer the above questions about where and with whom Oisin stands today, that is, to give him his due and bring him up to date; but also to examine his mythic background with a view toward illustrating this set of theories in progress: that, just as Cuchulain was Yeats' patronhero , Oisin indirectly served in a similar role for Synge and O'Casey; that these two major playwrights of the Abbey Theatre shared the pagan temperament and values of Oisin; that in their plays, especially their comedies, they dramatized many of the pagan vs. Christian conflicts which can be found in the bardic dialogues between Oisin and St. Patrick; and that, finally, Oisin represents a vital aspect of the Celtic imagination which has languished in modem Ireland, especially the Ireland that finally won its freedom from England. Synge and O'Casey were both fluent in Gaelic and probably read much of the Ossianic literature in the original, as well as in translation. But although Oisin himself does not appear as a character in their plays (his name and its symbolic values are mentioned and help express the theme in O'Casey's Red Roses For Me), they created in their works a vision of life which mirrors the views Oisin expressed when, at the climactic end of his life, he uncompromisingly rejected the proselytizing efforts of St. Patrick: How stood the planets when power was given you, that we should grow pale before your advent. Withered trees are ye, blasted by the red wind. Your hair, the glory of mankind, is shaven away...