The Bookfellow.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 143, 18 June 1910, Page 11

The Bookfellow.

(Written for the "Auckland Star" by A. G. Stephens.)

N.Z. ¥ESSE-WEITEKS : REVISIONS. I.—CHARLES BOWEN. Charles Christopher Bowen is the honoured veteran of New Zealand's honourable poetic bund. In August last be was 7!) years old. Nothing need here be said of his long public career since he arrival sixty years ago with the first party of Canterbury settlers. As author of the Education Act, 1577, establishing a national system of primary education, he laid a noble stone to the foundation of New Zealand culture. His single book of "Poems" was published at the old "Union" office in Gloucester-street, Christchurch, in 1861.

That book contains many verses that have served their temporary purpose, and one piece that is destined to a long perpetuity in New Zealand. The patriotic value of the Crimean ■war has fallen to a trifle in 'the historical perspective. The dramatic incident of the charge of the Light Brigade is symbol of the whole campaign—a magnificent blunder, a heroic futility. But it was enough for the Canterbury settlers that England was at war. Their feet were scarcely planted in sTew Zealand soil; the tendrils of their English homes were etill twined most closely round their hearts. They lived at the extremity of the earth, as Jfeiv Zealand seemed in those days; and the long mouths of waiting for news seemed hardly to be borne. Then, for the little community whose ■hearts were all English, and whose tongues .all talked of war, Charles Bowen wrote and published his stirring chant of "The Battle of the Free." To Arms! To Arms! Hear ye not the trumpet's peal? Hear ye not tlie clash of steel, — And the sound of gathering armies in the Island of the sea? , . Hear ye not the voice that calls them to the Battle of tho Free? 'Tis the voice of England calling on the free-boirn and the brave. To defend tho lands of Freedom from the tyrant and the slave. This ig why her navies ride On the bloomy Northern tide; This is why her cannons roar On the distant Buxine shore, And her children haste away To mingle in the bloody fray. No lingering or debating till the deadly i light be won. The maiden sends her lover, —and the mother sends her sou. ( They are gathering, they are gathering, I from the mountain and the lea, * ■To rally round the banner of the Island of the Free. Old England's arms are ringing In hamlet and in hall. And her sous, the sons of freedom, Are coming at her call! They are coming — they are coming— To upraise the banner of the Island of the sea, And to fight in the Battle of the Free! There was a stanza for France and a stanza for Canada, with the same lusty beat and the same melodic emphasis. Then Australia was invoked, and the piece closed with ithese lines, in New Zealand unforgettable. To Arms! To Arms! When the battle rages fierce, And the deadly volleys pierce The small outnumbered army of the Island of the Free; — When her dauntless hearts have chosen either death or victory. Where her warriors are fighting, as the bravest only dare, For the birth-places of freedom and the liberties of man; — Then New Zealand shall be there, — In the van Young New Zealand shall be there, —' Her rifles from the mountain and her horsemen from the plain, Wiien the foemen's ranks are reeling o'er the slain. Few in number — stout of heart— They -will come to take theli , part In the dangers and the glories of the hrave, To share in their triumph or their bloodstained grave. England, exult.

For thy numberless sons are coming o'er the sea, To rally round the banner of the Island of the Free. Oh, England bear thee proudly In the direst need of war; For tkjj sons, — the sons of Freedom, Are sailing from afar. They are coming — they are coming— To surround the banner of the Island of the sea, And to fight In the Battle of the Free. This is the poetry of prophecy. ' The author printed in 1861 an opinion that may be held to express British states 1 manship in 1910. "The following lines were written under the full conviction that in England's colonies, if properly governed—or rather properly let alone—she will eventually find her real strength. The time is fast approaching when our Mother Country will reap the fruits of the far-seeing energy which has peopled the waste places of the earth, whilst other nations have expended their strength in laying waste the civilised hemisphere. . . .

There are 'thousands in the colonies of Great Britain who would be glad to share in*her dangers and difficulties. I myself heard many at the time of the Crimean war express itheir anxiety to return to Europe if they were assured that they would be of any use in the ensuing struggle. It was no idea of any great value attaching to the following lines, which first induced mo 'to publish them, but an anxious wish to give some expression, however feeble, to the feeling which is deeply rooted in the minds of British colonists in every quarter of the globe."

The mode of Tyrtaeus was the only one tlvait Charles Bowen followed with success; hie poetic fire was in the occasion, not in himself. The remainder of his "Poems" have but slight personal and local interest, though a fragment on "Tobacco" is worth the attention of anthologists of that ilk. He found fame in other fields. Yet the inevitable judgment of poetry by the universal standarde of succeeding generations does not exclude apprecia-. tion of the value of temporary virtue. The sun thait warmed us yesterday is fled; but while it shone we were warm, and the memory is grateful. THE WELSH COLUMBUS. Eliot Stock publishes in "The Chronicle of Madog of Gwynedd," by Joan Dane, a story founded on fact, which ought to vary agreeably a Welshman's modest habit. There is everything but a conclusive argument to prove that, for European purposes, a Welshman discovered America in the year 1170.

Half of the inconclusive argument; is legend; half history. Long before Horace Greeley advised young men to go 'West, the Celts were going West from Asia, until they reached the farthest isles of Britain and remained stretching vain ■hands of longing to the Gardens of the Hesperides, the Islands of the Blest— the Land of Heart's Desire, which Brittany and. Scotland and Ireland and Wales saw lying beyond the setting suiv Legend says that a. flood tlrowned the Celtic world, the fabled Atlantis that lies now 'beneath the waves. No doubt, says Miss Joan Dane, some vast seismic disturbance rent the earth, from whose fury only a few 'escaped in barques of various build, to be borne eastward and stranded, perhaps, on Ararat, or on the more lofty mountains of Baetriana. And what more probable than that those human waifs should hand from generation to generation the story of their fathers' land, and that the homing instinct would make them ever long again ■to travel "westward; that, peradventure, I some day they themselves might see the country of which they inherited such happy recollection. WEST-WANDERING CELTS. "From Asia, through Europe, westwards," the legend says, "swept the great Celtic tribes. . . leaving their hallmark in circles of stone (enVbleni, of their sun-god. Baal) upon the plains of Persia. . '. upon Siberian wastes, even on Pisgah's slopes. . . clotting the hills of Europe, the lands of France and Spain

. . . pausing to mark at Horbihan the passing of the years in Car■nak's stones." . . reaching the utmost

confines of a western sea. . . only to find. . . no isthmus to the longed-for land. Their dead alone they launched at Cap de Raz, praying that heaven-sent winds might waft them to the 'Islands of the Blest.' 5 ' If you think of it in a Welshman's spirit, you can believe it. If you think of it da any spirit, you may- agree that it is the best' guess in the realm of guesses that haunts us before history. Take, then, Miss Dane's next step. As man learnt to build better- ships, he tried again to bridge the 'barrier which had so long divided him from his old home; and' the oft-sung legend of the Druida crystallised to truth when Madog, son of Owain Gwynedd, a Prince of Gwallia (the , ancient name for Wales), first sighted America in the year of our Lord 1170. The witness of truth is the Chronicle of Madog, which is no fairy tale, but "a story founded on extracts taken from the manuscripts of the Abbeys oi Strata Florida and Con way; where were kept the records of the chief historical events of the Welsh nation;'records which were ■compared with each ■ other, every three years, by the most influential bards of the country." • Local experience may lead us to distrust the accuracy of enthusiastic bards; but no matter. Miss Dane buttresses her hards with a fragment of fait. ENGLAND'S.MISSED CHANCE. Henry VII. was acquainted with the story. For Guthin Owen (whom he had commissioned to trace the Tudor pedigree) had made a copy of the Strata Florida manuscript. "If unacquainted with it, why, when still insecure upon the ■English -thrdne, should he, parsimonious arid cautious as he is known to have been, have instructed Bartholomew Columbus (who was begging his aid on his brother's 'behalf) to send Christopher to him with his plans and charts when the rest of the world -but jeered at his hare-brained schemes? —unless lie had something better to! go upon than the imaginary vision of a poor sea-captain.

"If fate had not ■ ordained otherwise, it might have 'been English gold and English enterprise that- had fitted out the fleet which discovered the New World

. . . But, alas! Bartholomew, on his return journey with the promise of the English king, was captured by pirates, imprisoned for a long period, reaching Spain only to find that his brother had already sailed."

That is not all the available, evidence. In the year 1477 (fifteen years before Columbus started on his voyage), Sir Meredyth ap Rhys wrote a poem eulogising Madog's expedition; and among other bardic verses may 'be found mention of the same event.

Then there is "American testimony, which is summarised by Miss Dane. The legend—as told to the Spanish by the Aztecs —of their god Quetzaleoatl (Prescott's History of. Mexico), tallies well with what is known of the Welsh prince who came to them from unknown regions three hundred years previously—whose return the Aztecs, confessed themselves still awaiting; for had they not mistaken the Spaniards for him and his retainers? ' Quetzaleoatl, whose emblem was the Bird Serpent (Bird Serpent or Griffin of Wales), had crossed the seas from the land of Tlapallan, leaving again many years -after, homesick for the land of his fathers, 'but promising to return. Quetzaleoatl "is of tall, stature, white skin, long dark liair, and flowing beard . . . he who instructed the natives in the use of metals, agriculture, and the art of government" (Prescott's Mexico). If he were not the Welsh Prince, who was he? LEAENED WELSH INDIANS. There is to-day a tribe of American Indians known as the Madagwys, or Doags, of fair complexion, speaking a language akin to the Welsh, a tribe who aver their progenitors come from Gwynedd —a tribe possessing manuscripts in large cypher, sewn (for preservation) in otter skins. (An inquiry concerning the first discovery of America. J. Williams, 1791.) We—wish Professor Macmillan Brown had dropped across some iISS. Then, in IGG9, one 3T6rgan Jones was captured by Indians, and was about to i>e put to death, when offering his last prayer in his he was over-

heard by one of the chiefs, who, understanding, came and spoke to him, subsequently, offering a ransom to the headman for himself and his companions, and treating. . them with: ';■ great kindness. (British Remains; 177,7.) Then Columbus, Frariciscus, Lopez, and other" of the Spaniards wondered at finding amongst the natives a reverence for the Cross, the use of beads, and many rudiments of the Christian religion. Cor•tez, asking Montezuma the reason, was answered: "Many years ago a strange nation came across the seas, a civil nation from whom (he had heard his father aver) he and most of his chief's descended." (Prescott's Slexico.) Miss Dane has taken the Welsh legends and all the other legends and made them live again in a romantic story, bridging the gaps in the evidence, and acquitting herself in a fashion to gladden the heart of Cymry. WOODEN NUTMEGS. i Personally, I have no use for nutmegs, and the historical indignation of my ancestors at the Dutch monopoly of the Spice Islands does not inflame mc to sympathetic anger. Still, if nutmegs are demanded, they may a3 well he supplied in their natural simplicitj'. O. Henry's are clearly wooden and mechanical, the delusive product of Con* necticut. His last book of "Options" suffers from. the fault of his earlier! books: it is invented, not created. Yet' so very welfare most of the stories invented that a sophisticated palate may relish the polish of the machine almost as much as' the taste of the vegetable. It amuses us to read that "Constable. Hooker had promised a salute of nine guns from Chicago, whom he had arrested that day." Or to read that Burke, in his inquiry into our ideas of the sublime and beautiful, declared thai; the primitive conceptions of beauty aresroundness and smoothness—with !fcLenry's comment: _, "Rotundity is a patent charm; as for smoothness, the more' new wrinkles a woman acquires, the smoother she gets." Or to hear of suctt compliments to a singer that, "if they had been addressed to the morning stars when they- sang together, they would have made that stellar choir explode in a meteoric shower of flaming self-satisfaction.".

There is humour and truth, and a stimulating subtlety in Henry's stories, but the aroma, of wooden nutmegs, the taint of the machine, prevents them from reaching the highest cosmopolitan rank. In their development they are a little too like a conjurer's production of a white rabbit from a hat; their cocktail fillip of surprise is not precisely the best that the conte can do'for us. To America, Henry seems all the better, because his vivid twang of nationality makes him seeem to the rest of tie world a little the worse. And to the right man in the right mood ..Henrymay easily appear peerless. Few beside him are able to tell us of a doubtful lover in face of his lady, that "he did not know whether she wanted whait she said she wanted, or what she knew she deserved." There is an art in the issumfacture of wooden nutmegs., . -