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If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Old Irish World - -Author: Alice Stopford Green - -Release Date: September 28, 2016 [EBook #53159] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD IRISH WORLD *** - - - - -Produced by Giovanni Fini, Chris Curnow and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: - -—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected. - - - - - THE OLD IRISH WORLD - - - - - THE OLD IRISH WORLD - - BY - - ALICE STOPFORD GREEN - - _Author of “The Making of Ireland and its Undoing” - “Irish Nationality,” &c._ - - DUBLIN - M. H. GILL & SON, LTD. - LONDON - MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. - - 1912 - - - - -PREFACE - - -SOME Irish friends have asked me to print certain lectures concerning -Ireland to which they had listened with indulgence; and to reprint also -former papers in a manner more convenient for country readers. This -volume is the answer to their request. It will be seen that I have not -attempted to alter the lectures from their first purpose and form. - -The various studies, thus accidentally united, have a connecting link -in such evidences as they may contain of civilisation in the old Irish -world. A hundred years ago, in 1821, Dr. Petrie noted that while the -historians of ancient native origin were unable in their poverty and -degradation to pursue the laborious study of antiquities, there were -others of a different class and origin who had taken up the subject to -bring it into contempt; and these indeed succeeded in the cause for -which they, unworthily, laboured. Forty years later he recognised the -same influences at work. It would appear, he said in a letter written -to Lord Dunraven shortly before his death in 1865, to be considered -derogatory to the feeling of superiority in the English mind to accept -the belief that Celts of Ireland or Scotland could have been equal, not -to say superior in civilisation to their more potent conquerors, or -that they could have known the arts of civilised life till these were -taught them by the Anglo-Normans. After the lapse of half a century we -can still trace the same spirit--so powerful have been the hindrances -to serious and impartial enquiry--so slow has been the decline of -racial prejudice and political complacency. But in these latter days -a great change has silently passed over the peoples. The difficulties -of historical research and instruction do indeed remain as great as -ever; but in the new society which we see shaping itself in Ireland on -natural and no longer on purely artificial lines, there is no reason -to fear truth as dangerous or to neglect it as unnecessary. There is -now a public ready to be interested not only in Danish and Norman -civilisation in Ireland, but also in the Gaelic culture which embraced -these and made them its own. - -I cannot adequately thank Professor Eoin MacNeill for generously -allowing me to embody in my first chapter some of his researches on -the history of the Scot wanderings between Scotland and Ireland; it is -earnestly to be hoped that he will publish before long the results of -his original work. - -I owe my warm thanks also to Mr. F. J. Bigger for his unstinted help -in references and suggestions out of the stores of his topographical -knowledge. I may mention as an instance the grave-stone in Kilclief -churchyard carved with a Celtic cross, which he discovered while these -pages were going through the press, so that I have been able to note it -for the first time among Lecale antiquities. - -Mr. R. I. Best has rendered me more services than I can here tell, -however gratefully I acknowledge them. - -The account of Ardglass has been re-printed with additions, by the kind -permission of the Editor of the _Nation_. I have to thank the Editor of -the _Nineteenth Century_ for leave to add the article on Tradition in -History, which is inserted at the request of readers in Ireland. - -To prevent mistake I may add a word of explanation that the map, or -rather diagram, which is entitled Scandinavian Trade Routes, contains -not only those lines of sea-commerce, but also an indication of the -ways across Europe which were used by Irish travellers from earlier -times. The difference between these routes is clearly indicated in the -text. - - ALICE STOPFORD GREEN. - - _April 25, 1912._ - - - - - IN MEMORY OF - THE IRISH DEAD - - - - - CONTENTS - - - Page - - I. THE WAY OF HISTORY IN IRELAND 1 - - II. THE TRADE ROUTES OF IRELAND 63 - - III. A GREAT IRISH LADY 100 - - IV. A CASTLE AT ARDGLASS 130 - - V. TRADITION IN IRISH HISTORY 168 - - - - - THE OLD IRISH WORLD - - - - -CHAPTER I - -THE WAY OF HISTORY IN IRELAND - - -IN all the countries of Europe the study of history for a citizen of -the State is taken for granted, as the study of tides and currents -might be held necessary for a mariner, or of the winds for an air-man, -or that of the map for a merchant. It is only a dozen years ago, -however, that its study was made compulsory in elementary schools -in England, and in that country men are still discussing, by way of -lectures and so forth, “What is the Use of History.” The historical -instinct among the English people has indeed never been very keen, -so that, as learned men tell us, it would be more difficult to form -a folk-museum in England than in any other country, so few are the -objects of a distinctly national character that have survived. The past -is rapidly overlaid among men who live intensely in the present and -the immediate future. A great gulf separates them from a race like the -Irish, to whom the far past and the far future are part of the eternal -present, the very condition of thought, the furniture without which the -mind is bare. - -The Irish, nevertheless, have by long effort been brought under -authority to the English mind in history, and an Anglicised Ireland -now lies in the wake of England, a laggard in the trough of the wave, -rocked by the old commonplaces of the early Victorian age. The hope -that our people may win out of that trough lies to a great extent in -the new sails set by the National University, if they may at last -catch the fresh breezes of Heaven, and be swept into the open sea of -free knowledge and candid thinking. In Ireland, as in England, history -has been made compulsory in a sense--a sense, we might irreverently -say, of the “United Kingdom.” It has been made a department of English -Grammar, and has further been portioned out to Irishmen as a fragment -of English history, strictly confined within dates fixed for that -history in the schools of England. The Irish story is thus shut up as -it were like criminals of old in the Tower prison of Little Ease--a -narrow place where no man could stand or lie at length. And Irishmen -are still driven to discuss in belated fashion the question that all -Europe settled long ago--Why should we make the History of our country -our serious study? - -The reason of Nature for this study is indeed as profound as the being -of man. There is no other creature on this planet that can create -a history of its kind. To man alone belongs the faculty of looking -“before and after,” and considering the story of his race from the -first human being that walked the earth. Our first forefather brought -with him something new--the power to store up and to celebrate memories -of the great dead. His elemental pieties have become part of the whole -tradition of our humanity; and that history which he began, and to -which we add day by day, is our witness to the separateness of man from -the other creatures of this world. When we cherish this study we are -proclaiming our pre-eminence among all the living beings that we know. -When we let this history fall from us we are sinking to the level of -the dumb beasts. As living men, therefore, “let us enjoy, whenever we -have an opportunity, the delight of admiration, and perform the duties -of reverence.” - -There is a practical reason, too, for the knowledge of history. The -individual man left to himself is helpless to stand against the powers -of the world. Alone he can do nothing. His strength lies in the -generations and associations of man behind him, linked by an endless -tradition, who have made for him his art, religion, science, politics, -social laws. It is only in communion with that company of workers that -he can take a step forward. The soul of a country is bound up with the -heroes who still - - “... people the steep rocks and river banks, - Her natural sanctuaries, with a local soul, - Of independence and stern liberty.” - -Rulers and commanders have known this well. When they have wanted to -exalt peoples or armies under them, they have opened out to them the -glories of their history, and called on them to admit into their souls -the spirit of their fathers. - - “Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed - From dead men to their kind.” - -When they have wished to depress and subjugate a race they have slammed -the doors of their history on them, and left them alone, spiritless and -forlorn, passed by and forgotten by the Ages, despised of themselves -and of their neighbours. - -Whether therefore as men of a reasonable nature, or as members of a -nation, we are bound to make History our all-important study. There is -no question about this in any self-respecting nation in Europe. How -does the case stand with us in Ireland? - -When I first began the study of Irish History, I was dissuaded from it -by a man of exceedingly acute mind and wide reading. His argument, I -imagine, is a common one, and shows the kind of scruples that are set -to bar our way to Irish history--as some primeval race once planted the -slope of Cahir Mor on Aran with a forest of jagged standing-stones, to -forbid all entrance to the fortress uplifted there above the expanse -of the Ocean in its freedom. Why, said my typical objector, should we -turn away from the great highways of the world’s progress, with their -sweeping procession of Empires and great Dominions, to lose ourselves -in the maze where humble and unsuccessful nationalities walk obscurely. -Stimulate the spirit of young men by giving them the examples of heroes -whose fame has sounded through the earth, and societies that have been -adorned by triumph. Let the men of local fame, the guardians of smaller -nationalities, rest in darkness, and let us follow the sun in its -strength. - -We may remember one of the snares laid by the Prince of Evil for the -Son of Man, when he set Him on a high place above the kingdoms of -the world, to bend His soul before their ostentatious glory. From -the mountain Satan displayed the emblems of their pride, palaces and -towers and treasuries, “knowing that it was by those alone that he -himself could have been so utterly lost to rectitude and beatitude. Our -Saviour spurned the temptation, and the greatest of His miracles was -accomplished.” England was just at the outset of her imperial career -when Milton, in his “Paradise Regained,” pictured that tremendous -scene, the passing of the empires in their state before the judgment of -the Divine Reason. The prodigious procession was marshalled from the -very dawn of history, powers and dominions sweeping over the earth, -and disappearing with the suddenness with which they rose. Not one has -survived. In the shifting scene forms of states move and stir dimly -like the fallen angels from “Paradise Lost” as they lay prone, extended -on the flood of ruin and combustion. One scheme of government after -another is lifted up to be cast down--tyranny, oligarchy, slavery, -commercialism, communism, parliaments, theocracies. The great warriors -and the great statesmen are alike entombed in the ruins of their -empires. “Head and crown drop together, and are overlooked.” On the -other hand, when empires have fallen, the nationalities have not always -perished. They die only with the utter extermination of the people. So -long as the old stock lingers on the soil, there is a spirit that can -outlive all empires, form the scourge of conquerors, and set the last -barrier to pride of dominion. We know how peoples enclosed within small -states, fed from deep sources of heritage and tradition, have given -the impress of their local passion to their art. Out of the intensity -of national life have come those high inspirations that have given -to us all that is best of literature, poetry, painting, sculpture, -music, and however deeply the artist has felt the influence of the -world outside, his ultimate power lies in the spirit which has entered -into him from his native state and the race of which he sprang. The -generous influences of local patriotism were recognised by the greatest -political thinker that modern Ireland has sent out: “To be attached,” -said Burke, “to the sub-division, to love the little platoon we belong -to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public -affections.” - -Perhaps, we might also suggest to our objector, the lesser -nationalities are even now, in these days of triumphant Imperialism, -beginning to have their revenge. The study of small societies seems to -become fashionable among the new reformers. Do we not hear from all -sides of the education, discipline, and public spirit of countries -compassed within bounds suited to man’s apprehension? With what -respect do not Unionists extol the industrial success of States such -as Holland and Denmark, for example. Even now do we not hear English -Imperialists crying out that perhaps Switzerland has got the secret -of the democratic mind, or Norway, or New South Wales, or Arizona; -might not England take a lesson from some little self-contained and -thrifty community on the use of the referendum? It would seem that the -influence of small commonwealths is not yet extinct among us. - -It is very certain that Ireland of all countries, if left to itself, -would never of its own will allow history to lie in a backwater among -the flotsam of the current. History was the early study of the Irish, -the inspiration of their poets and writers. Every tribesman of old -knew, not only the great deeds and the famous places of his own clan, -but of the whole of Ireland. In the lowliest cabin the songs of Irish -poets lived on for hundreds of years, and dying fathers left to sons -as their chief inheritance the story of their race. When war, poverty, -the oppression of the stranger, hindered the printing of Irish records, -there was not a territory in all Ireland that did not give men to make -copies of them, hundreds of thousands of pages, over and over again, -finely written after the manner of their fathers. Through centuries of -suffering down to within living memory the long procession of scribes -was never broken, men tilling small farms, labouring in the fields, -working at a blacksmith’s forge. And this among a people of whom Burke -records that in two hundred thousand houses for their exceeding poverty -a candle, on which a tax lay, was never lighted. As we follow the lines -and count the pages of such manuscripts, we see the miracle of the -passion in these men’s hearts. No relics in Ireland are more touching -than these volumes, and none should be more reverently collected and -preserved. They form a singular treasure such as no country in all -Europe possesses. - -But now, in spite of this tradition, history is more backward in -Ireland than in any other country. Here alone there is a public opinion -which resents its being freely written, and there is an opinion, public -or official, I scarcely know which to call it, which prevents its being -freely taught. And between the two, history has a hard fight for life. - -Take the question of writing. History may conceivably be treated as -a science. Or it may be interpreted as a majestic natural drama or -poem. Either way has much to be said for it. Both ways have been nobly -attempted in other countries. But neither of these courses is thought -of in Ireland. Here history has a peculiar doom. It is enslaved in the -chains of the Moral Tale--the good man (English) who prospered, and the -bad man (Irish) who came to a shocking end--the kind of ethical formula -which, for all our tutors and teachers could do, never deceived the -generosity of childhood. The good man in the moral tale of Ireland is -not even a fiction of Philosophy or of History. He is, oddly enough, -the offspring of Grammar alone, and carries the traces of his dry -and uninspired pedigree. He owes his being, in fact, to the English -dislike for a foreign language. The Gael, as we know, ever faithful -to the tradition of his race, while he sang and recited and wrote and -copied his story with an undying passion, did these things in his own -speech. The Norman or “Frank” settlers, true “citizens of the world,” -adopted his tongue, his poetry, and his patriotic enthusiasm. When the -English arrived, however, they according to their constant insular -tradition refused to learn a strange language, so that the only history -of Ireland they could discern was that part of it which was written -in English--that is, the history of the English colonists told by -themselves. On this contracted record they have worked with industry -and self-congratulation. They have laid down the lines of a story in -which the historian’s view is constantly fixed on England. All that the -Irish had to tell of themselves remained obscured in an unknown tongue. -The story of the whole Irish population thus came to be looked on as -merely a murky prelude to the civilizing work of England--a preface -savage, transitory, and of no permanent interest, to be rapidly passed -over till we come to the English pages of the book. Thus two separate -stories went on side by side. The Irish did not know the language -which held the legend of English virtue and consequent wealth. The -English could not translate the subterranean legend of Irish poetry, -passion, and fidelity. Religion added new distinctions. Virtues were -Protestant, the sins of the prodigal were Catholic. Finally, class -feeling had its word. The upper class went to their university, and -their manners and caste instincts entitled them as of course to the -entire credence of their own social world; the lower class were alleged -to be men whose manners were common and their prejudices vulgar. - -In this way there grew up an orthodox history based on sources in the -English tongue alone. The Colonists laid down by authority its dogmas -and axioms. All that agreed with this conventional history was reputed -serious and scholarly: whatever diverged from it was partial, partizan, -or prejudiced. “Impartiality” and “loyalty” became technical terms, -with a special meaning for Ireland. The two words were held also to be -interchangeable. A strictly “impartial” writer must not let his “loyal” -eye swerve from the fixed point, England. As a judicious Englishman -said of his compatriots, they only think a man impartial when he has -gone over to the opposite side. - -The results of this system are conspicuous. A Frenchman may unreproved -write with affection and ardour of France, and an Englishman of -England. An Irishman, however, is in another case. He must have no -patriotic fire for his own people. He must not acclaim their victories -nor mourn their defeats. Take an illustration of this temper. A -clergyman has lately written to the _Church of Ireland Gazette_ to -condemn history readers “written from an anti-English and anti-Church -point of view”; he complains that the writer describes the battle of -the Blackwater in 1598, where the English were routed, as “a glorious -victory for the O’Neill.” Such a phrase as this cannot be allowed to -Irishmen. Or as a writer to the _Irish Times_ puts a similar argument: -“If the Nationalists want for ever to live in the glories of the past -and to harp upon them, why do they not go far enough back ... to the -time when they ate their grandmothers ... and indulged in all sorts of -hellish rites.” - -In fact, as we trudge along the dull beaten road of the orthodox -history we never escape, not for a moment, from the monotonous -running commentary which sounds continually at our side. “Nomadic,” -“primitive,” “wigwam,” “aboriginal,” “savage,” “barbarous,” -“lawless”--the words are always at hand. In the moral tale the -accustomed stream of precept and delation never runs dry. It follows -us through all the strictly “impartial” writers. The Irishman was a -“kerne.” The Irish word cethern (kerne) meaning a troop or company of -soldiers, probably foot soldiers, is as old as the Latin _caterva_ -with which it is cognate, or the Umbrian _kateramu_, and so is of quite -respectable lineage; but being a foreign word to the Englishman, he -used it as a natural term of contempt, as though a Chinese should cry -“sailor” or “merchant” when he meant to say “English devil.” More than -that, the Irishman was a “nomad,” apparently because he sent his cattle -to graze on the hills in summer--a custom which in modern Switzerland -is held to be quite respectable by admirers of Federalism. This “nomad” -idea is familiarly handed about from one writer to another. One of -the most esteemed historians in Dublin was Mr. Litton Falkiner, who -has added some notable pages to later Anglo-Irish history. Yet he was -satisfied to dismiss the Irish population of mediæval times in one -terse phrase: “the pastoral, and in great measure nomadic Celts, who -stood for the Irish people before the 12th century”--in other words, -before the Norman invasion. This absurd sentence seems to pass current; -no objection has been made to it. What would educated Englishmen think -of a leading historian who dismissed the pre-Norman population of that -island as “boorish Low-Dutch, hut-dwellers round a common field cut -into strips after their barbarous manner, _who stood for the English -people before the Norman Conquest_?” Trivialities and ignorances of -this sort are not in fashion in English history, and it is time that -they were out of fashion in Ireland. - -Irishmen of the north still preserved, Mr. Falkiner told us, even to -the end of the 17th century, “all the primitive characteristics of -the scarcely more than nomadic civilisation of Ulster.” With summary -contempt he pretended to dispose of what he fancifully termed “the -lawless banditti who commonly formed the body-guard of an Irish -chief”; and in the orthodox manner confronts “Irish law” and “Irish -lawlessness” under what he called “the English ownership of Ireland.” -The great Hugh of Tyrone is described as looking “on the onward -march of English institutions with feelings not very different from -those with which the aborigines of the American continent beheld the -advance of the stranger from the east.” In the same spirit he informed -Englishmen that Ireland was sadly deficient in the wealth of historical -and literary associations which form the romantic charm of England. -“Cathedral cities, in the sense in which the term is understood in -England, Ireland may be almost said to be without. A few of the towns,” -he generously admitted, “contain, indeed, the remains of ecclesiastical -and monastic buildings. But even where these exist they are, with -one or two exceptions, sadly deficient in human interest.” It is a -cheap method, even if it is one out of date elsewhere, to deny human -interest to a subject which one has learned to ignore, and may desire -to see forgotten. Can no human interest touch the heart in Dromahair -or Donegal or Glendalough? There is a remote and little-known road in -the plains of Mayo where a singular sight may be seen. Near it stand -the ruins of a majestic abbey founded over seven hundred years ago -(1189-1190), by Cathal O’Connor (whose foster-father’s tomb has lately -been found at Knockmoy with its Irish inscription). Nave and transepts -were laid bare and open from their immense gable ends, and the tower -flung from the four splendid arches that supported it, but the old -vaulted roof of the choir still remains; and here, it is said, in this -remoteness, is the only ancient church of the Irish where, amid the -universal destruction and confiscation, they have been able to carry -on their old worship from the old days till now. In this land of the -banished--“to hell or Connacht”--mass was without ceasing celebrated -in the choir; and from the hearts of the worshippers kneeling in the -nave and transepts under the open sky a prophecy arose that when the -church was roofed once more Ireland would be freed. Songs still sung -among Connacht peasants tell of such services amid ruins of their holy -places, the priests wet with the rain, the women’s clothes bedraggled, -the men carrying small stone flags so as to have a dry spot for their -knees. Not in any way was such a place like an English cathedral, but -if brave men’s vows and prayers and tears for seven centuries can -confer human interest the stones of Ballintober are precious. - -The problem remains, however (for insoluble problems beset every false -position) that according to Mr. Falkiner’s theory the history of towns -and cathedrals only began with “the English ownership.” How was it -that these Englishmen left none of their “romantic charm” there? What -strange history lies hidden behind this saying? - -Another historian takes up the same taunt--a true scholar and worker -who has added to our knowledge of the close of Stuart rule in Ireland. -“The Irish,” says Dr. Murray, “are indeed a strange race.... No -monument marks the site where the Irish hero and the Irish thinker -repose.... The graves of a patriot like Owen Roe O’Neill, and of a -statesman like Archbishop King ... are unknown. The thrill that an -Englishman feels in Westminster Abbey when he enters the presence -of the mighty dead is denied an Irishman, for he has not taken care -of the dust of his immortals.” A memorial by the defeated Irish to -Archbishop King of Dublin, ardent supporter of the Dutch conqueror, -passionate worker for the Protestant succession, four times Lord -Justice for the government of Ireland under William in those days of -agony and despair--this is a lofty counsel of perfection, such as we -give to others. The Irish raised no monument to Owen Roe O’Neill--no -monument, with Cromwell’s soldiers abroad in the land, to the general -proclaimed by the English Government “traitor, rebel, disturber of the -common peace”--is that the charge? Alas! I wonder from that day to this -what welcome would have been given in a Protestant churchyard, guarded -by the conquerors, to an Irish memorial over the grave of Owen Roe -O’Neill. The dust of the Irish immortals lies indeed far scattered. Has -Dr. Murray ever stood in the solitary burial places of Rath Croghan, -of Iniscaltra, of Clonmacnois? Has he counted the stones in Athenry -or those heaped up in Burris? Has he seen the bones of the martyrs -strewn from sea to sea? Surely he himself has told us that “the Irish -custom of burying their dead in an old ruined church or monastery -was forbidden,” and that not by the Irish, but by the Church of the -English. From the Reformation until eighty-two years ago every Irish -Catholic was needs carried at death to a Protestant cemetery, and it is -only within the life-time of men now living that, when Catholic prayers -at the grave were denied, the Irish people at last secured in 1829 a -burying place of their own. - -This fiction of a “strange race” has become a kind of special -philosophy which is dragged in to interpret the most ordinary actions -of the Irish. For example, “the march of the soldiery upset the balance -of the excitable Irish farmer, and he neglected his land”--a fact -which in any other country would need no “race” explanation. Through -the story of that war, whose end was to transfer the soil of Ireland, -five-sixths of it, to lords of another race and religion, the old -inhabitants of two thousand years’ possession are made to appear as -“the Irish factions”; their vice is patent, while English crimes are -accidental, inadvertent, or high-spirited. If we want to know why the -Irish people lost faith in the Stuarts who had betrayed and outraged -them at every turn, we are referred to the simple habits of a strange -and childish race. “The Celt wants to see a sovereign regularly in -order to adore him”: “A principle must be set forth by a person, and -the more attractive the person the stronger the hold of the principle.” -As we watch the strong ceaseless current of Irish life such theories -are swept beyond our sight. The Irish poet told his people another tale: - - “It is the coming of King James that took Ireland from us, - With his one shoe English and his one shoe Irish - He would neither strike a blow nor would he come to terms, - And that has left, so long as they shall exist, misfortune - upon the Gaels.” - -In his laborious work on the Norman settlement, Mr. Orpen deals with -the Irish in the usual conventional manner:--“The members of this -family were always killing one another.” “The chieftain ... had no -higher conception of duty than to increase the power of his clan; -with this object in view, he was stayed by no scruples”; as for the -clansman, “the sentiment for ‘country’ in any sense more extended than -that of his own tribal territory, was alike to him and to his chief -unknown.” This description, like the terms “tribal” and “nomad,” has -long been habitual, and accepted with as little enquiry as those words. -Mr. Orpen’s clients, the “Normans,” we may assume to have been nobly -free from any such barbarous notions of individual aggrandisement, -regardless of “their country’s” claims. - -Mr. Bagwell, the leading historian of the English occupation under -Tudors and Stuarts, throws his searchlight on the Irish:--“They were -barbarous, but they could appreciate virtue.” “The Irish were subtle, -fond of license, and ready for anything as long as it was not for -their good.” May we remember the saying of the Irish themselves in -those days:--“Ask for nothing that you would not deem a benefit to -you, and before all praise God.” Again, according to Mr. Bagwell, “the -people had no other idea of trade than to extort exorbitant prices.” -This quality scarcely seems to need a racial explanation; it has -been found elsewhere in time of war. But under all circumstances the -“primeval” theory of Irishmen must be maintained. The character of -the “natives”--using this word with its “savage” implication--plays a -great part in our history. Thus, when a boat load of treasure from the -Armada was washed on shore Mr. Bagwell notes that “such unaccustomed -wares as velvet and cloth of gold, fell into the hands of the natives.” -Cloth of gold and velvet had for centuries been known to the wealthy -Irish; even in England they were not the clothing of the “natives,” -if such a term could be applied to Englishmen. Again we are told that -“the Irish, by being held always at arm’s length, had become more Irish -and less civilised than ever”; _held at arm’s length_ is an ingenious -phrase for evicting a people from their homes, and throwing them out -on bogs and mountains. The hardships of hunted famine-stricken outlaws -hanging round their old homes, is represented in this kind of history -as the life which would be naturally chosen by wild Irish “nomads.” -“True children of the mist, they [the O’Tooles] either bivouacked in -the open or crept into wretched huts to which Englishmen hesitated to -give the name of houses. They cultivated no land.” “Thus one by one -did the chiefs of tribal Ireland devour each other.” As for “the men -of free blood, whose business had always been fighting, and who would -never work ... when the chiefs were gone they had nothing to do but to -plunder, or to live at the expense of their more industrious, but less -noble, neighbours.” “The island was poor and the people barbarous, and -no revenue could be expected.” It is true, indeed, that the wealth did -not go the way of the Crown; officials had other uses for it. - -In the same way Mr. Chart, in his study of Irish life during the -dark years after the Union--years of acute suffering, hunger, -disillusionment and despair--discovers “a sullen discontent which, -as usually happens in Ireland, broke out occasionally into acts of -lawlessness and barbarity,” as if some special form of iniquity had its -home in Ireland. At a time when the whole people in England were in a -turmoil of revolt, on the verge of revolution, he mourns “the fatal -Irish tendency to rush into extremes,” and that magistrates and police -had to accustom “a hot-headed and violent-tempered race to curb itself -within legal limits”--as if this was an unusual fact, peculiar to this -one race of the world, predestinate to evil. It would seem that in -Ireland alone it is not safe to give any man “full and unconstrained -control over his personal and political enemies,” and therefore -“Ireland is no country for a volunteer police.” - -I suppose there is not another history in the world in which this -free slinging of blame and advice is continuously kept up at so fine -a pitch. If a problem in Irish life lifts its head, some puzzling -fact or tendency that demands explanation, a stone is ready in the -orthodox historian’s sling: the dilemma is ended by one of the useful -words--“primitive,” “tribal,” “kerne,” “nomad,” “barbarous,” “Celtic.” -By constant reiteration I fancy writer and reader now scarcely notice -them, so much have they become the symbols of Irish history, and so -deeply have they sunk into the public mind. - -Thus the stream of calumny still flows on. The latest voice from -Trinity College, that of Professor Mahaffy, in his Introduction to the -third volume of the “Georgian Society,” is of the old familiar type. -It should be, he explains, “the interest and duty” of historians to -maintain certain desirable opinions--this, according to Dr. Mahaffy, -adds to their credibility. Once more, therefore, we have from him -“the elements of primeval savagery which still existed in the Irish -people, and which they had in common with almost all primitive races -and societies” (and this by the way, in the 18th century, after six -hundred years of English compulsion). How well we know the old battered -and time-exhausted phrase! Of course we have again our old friend, -the story of O’Cahan sitting with the naked women, served up as the -ever-repeated type of all the generations of Irish in their habitual -squalor. For, we are told, “since the earliest times the greater part -of the Irish ... have not found any discomfort in squalor.” But for -English law this singular people would apparently never put on clothes -at all, winter or summer, good or bad weather, in any northern gale -from the Arctic ice. Ulstermen now-a-days are certainly a degenerate -race in physical endurance. - -It is interesting to follow this story of O’Cahan. - -The story begins with a Bohemian baron, name unknown, whom Foynes -Moryson, an Englishman, saw on one occasion. Here is the exact -tale:--“The foresaid Bohemian baron, coming out of Scotland to us by -the north parts of the wild Irish, told me in great earnestness (when -I attended him at the Lord Deputy’s command), that he coming to the -house of the O’Cane, a great lord among them, was met at the door with -sixteen women, all naked, excepting their loose mantles; whereof eight -or ten were very fair, and two seemed very nymphs; with which strange -sight his eyes being dazzled, they led him into the house, and there -sitting down by the fire with crossed legs like tailors, and so low as -could not but offend chaste eyes, desired him to sit down with them. -Soon after O’Kane, the lord of the country, came in all naked excepting -a loose mantle and shoes, which he put off as soon as he came in, and -entertaining the baron after his best manner in the Latin tongue, -desired him to put off his apparel, which he thought to be a burden to -him, and to sit naked by the fire with his naked company.” - -Now on this tale let me make two or three remarks. - -We may ask, in the first place, why this one story is repeated on every -occasion by historians of what I might call the “savage” type; why, -omitting all other accounts, it is singled out as the typical instance -of daily life in Ireland. Is this one of the views which, according -to Dr. Mahaffy, it should be “the interest and duty” of impartial and -loyal historians to maintain? - -The story originated with a “Bohemian baron,” of whom we know nothing; -it was reported by the English secretary of Mountjoy, whom he praises -for the number of “rebels” he had “brought to their last home”; to both -of them the Irish were nothing more than savages of a low type. We may -remember that this is the only story of the kind cited from Ulster. A -Spanish captain, escaped from the Armada, travelled through Connacht -and Ulster and the O’Cahan country for several months of hiding from -English soldiers; he too talked Latin in the many Irish houses which -gave him shelter, but in the book of his wanderings there is no such -incident as this. - -There would seem to be need of some strictness of enquiry--some caution -in discussing the tale. At the best the outlines of the baron’s story -are vague. What decorations he himself may have introduced into it, -and what further ornaments Fynes Moryson may have added, we do not -know. We may, perhaps, judge by the embellishments which later writers -have introduced. It is possible that the baron and the secretary, -not inferior to their successors in contempt of the Irish, may have -equalled them also in literary skill and the gift of embroidering a -narrative. Let us see, therefore, some of these decorations. - -Froude takes up the tale:--“If Fynes Moryson may be believed, the -daughters of distinguished Ulster chiefs squatted on the pavement -round the hall fires of their father’s castles, in the presence of -strangers, as bare of clothing as if Adam had never sinned.” Here we -see the “women,” who, for all the original story has to tell us, might -be servants, dependants, or refugees gathered in from the war and -pillage by which O’Cahan’s country was then ravaged, are transformed -into “daughters of chiefs,” the “house” turns into “pavements” by the -“hall-fires of castles,” and the incident has become a universal custom. - -Then Professor Mahaffy arrives with a series of versions. “O’Cahan, -though living in a hovel, could speak Latin.” More particularly, it -was a shantie of mud and wattles, without rafters, and the cattle -and swine occupied the same room as the masters; so he explains in a -lecture on “Elizabethan Ireland.” A more circumstantial account appears -in “An Epoch in Irish History.” In this the traveller is received by -the “ladies of the chieftain’s household.” “They brought him into the -thatched cabin which was their residence,” and throwing off their -mantles invited him to do likewise before the chief came in--an -invitation which the unknown “women” of the baron’s tale did not give. -The baron’s “house” has already changed into castles with pavements, -then into a hovel, and a thatched cabin, but the picture of savagery -is not yet lurid enough, and there is a further transformation which, -possibly from its supposed importance, is dragged into a description of -society in the Dublin Georgian houses of the 18th century. “The O’Cahan -in his wigwam, surrounded by his stark naked wives (why not squaws?) -and daughters, addressed the astonished foreign visitor in fluent -Latin.” The “wigwam” and the “wives” show the unimpaired fertility -of Professor Mahaffy’s imagination. His pronouncements, the _Irish -Times_ assures us of this essay, “carry historical value of the highest -degree.” It will be interesting to watch his further adornments of his -favourite tale. It will also be interesting to see how long professors -of Trinity College will still invite Irish students to enter there by -offering this curious bait of conventional insults to their race and -country, and new varieties of old slanders. - -We might remember the scene in Galway a few years later, where -high-born ladies, plundered of all their property by the rapacious -soldiers, sinking with shame before the gaze of the public in their -ragged clothes, covered themselves with embroidered table-covers, -or a strip of tapestry taken from the walls, or lappets cut from -the bed-curtains, or with blankets, sheets, or table-cloths. “You -would have taken your oath,” says the contemporary writer, “that all -Galway was a masquerade, the unrivalled home of scenic buffoons, so -irresistibly ludicrous were the varied dresses of the poor women.” Why -do not the Colonial historians give this scene as showing the habitual -taste and pleasure of the Galway ladies? - -Dr. Mahaffy has some other lights to throw on Irish history. “The -contempt for traders as such ... is,” he says, “like all such -prejudice in Ireland, the survival of the contempt which the meanest -members of any Irish clan felt for any profession save that of arms, -and the preying on the churl.” The despisers of trade whom he is -describing in this passage are the English landowners of the Williamite -settlement, who had finally ousted the Irish from their lands, and -taken them over as Protestant Englishmen, men of “a better race.” This -conquering class naturally felt a contempt for their victims, the -evicted Catholic Irish, who were allowed for the benefit of their lords -and rulers to plough and to trade, while deprived of civil and social -rights. But I do not know how those lordly squires would like to have -heard that they represented the prejudices of “the meanest member of an -Irish clan,” accustomed to prey on “the churl,” whoever he was. As for -the Irish clansman who is supposed to look on traders as outcasts, he -appears to be a fiction of the essayist’s fancy. Where in Irish records -will proofs be found of contempt for a trader? Their story seems to be -quite the other way. It may be convenient, however, for the defaming of -the Irish to despise and ignore those records. Moreover, since Irish -abbeys and cathedrals have been pronounced by Mr. Litton Falkiner not -to be like the English ones, why need an Irish writer stoop into their -ruins to seek out the story written there? No, it is easier to keep -the slander running, to swell its volume, and to increase its violence. -Yet in those ruins any man who will may look upon the countless tombs -of Irishmen who (so long as the conqueror’s law allowed their desolate -companies to enter the ancient shrines) were borne by their friends -to rest in the roofless nave or before the high altar under great -slabs with the signs of their trade, the tailor’s instruments, the -carpenter’s tools, and the mason’s, the labourer’s plough, and the -trader’s ship, deeply graven beside their names--no emblems of shame in -those last sanctuaries of the Irish people. - -Social life in Ireland, through all the ages, Dr. Mahaffy describes as -especially immoral. The young girls, he says, were generally accessible -to the squire and his sons all through Irish history, and suffered -no disgrace, but married all the better for such an adventure. “All -through Irish history” is a liberal and characteristic phrase to use -of English squires and their sons. The tradition of absolute landlord -power still lives in the Irish country-side, when girls were told the -price at which they might save their family from being driven out -of the home held by their ancestors for hundreds of years, and left -to die on the roadside of hunger, or in the coffin-ship of plague. -With security of tenure for the Irish poor such ordeals have passed -into history. As for reports of English tourists, they resemble the -travellers’ tales which everywhere and at all times various countries -have heard on the manners of their neighbours. It is well to remember -Gibbon’s reflection on general charges of this sort. Manuel, Emperor -of the East, visited England in 1400, and coming from Constantinople -was shocked at English conduct:--“The most singular circumstance of -their manners,” he reported, “is their disregard of conjugal honour -and of female chastity. In their mutual visits, as the first act of -hospitality, the guest is welcomed in the embraces of their wives and -daughters; among friends they are lent and borrowed without shame; nor -are the islanders offended at this strange commerce.” “We may smile at -the credulity, or resent the injustice of the Greek,” Gibbon reflects, -“but his credulity and injustice may teach an important lesson; to -distrust the accounts of foreign and remote nations, and to suspend -our belief of every tale that deviates from the laws of nature and the -character of man.” - -English writers have forgotten a grave disadvantage to themselves in -the moral tale of the good and bad man (besides its incredibility -and its dullness). In this version of Irish history the Englishman’s -triumph remains a poor thing, destitute of interest or value, where -the fame of the victor is abased and confounded by the worthlessness -of his foe. The Irish warriors are mostly described as drunkards, -cowards, and barbarians. Dr. Mahaffy likens Shane O’Neill to a Moor -or a Zulu. Hugh of Tyrone “was a polished courtier on the surface, -with a barbarous core.” Here is Mr. Bagwell’s portrait of Shane, -whose organisation and defence of Ulster cost Elizabeth over £147,000 -of English money (in modern money probably over £1,500,000) without -counting the enormous cesses laid on the country, and three thousand -five hundred of her soldiers slain. “He is said to have been a -glutton, and was certainly a drunkard.” The story of drunkenness -seems to have originated in his mud-baths, such as are now commonly -ordered for rheumatism. Once started, the fable was persistent. “That -drunken brain was, nevertheless, clear enough to baffle Elizabeth for -a long time.” His conduct of a war which cost Elizabeth so much is -described:--“Shane, who had been indulging as usual in wine or whisky, -came up at the moment.” “Shane, who was never remarkable for dashing -courage, retired into the wood.” “Shane, whose reputation for courage -is not high, slipped out at the back of his tent.” So, I believe, did -de Wet, instead of waiting to be killed. At the last, “the love of -liquor probably caused his death”; here indeed Mr. Bagwell contradicts -the Lord Deputy Sidney himself, who boasts that Shane was tricked -and murdered by a Scotsman in Sidney’s pay, the last of a series of -attempts at assassination. From the point of view that “barbarians” -are usually childish, Mr. Bagwell tells how the important chiefs, -MacWilliam Burke and MacGillapatrick, were given titles and robes of -Earl and Baron, “in the belief that titles and little acts of civility -would weigh more with these rude men than a display of force.” He -complains that the best-laid English military plans of occupation of -this country, instead of proceeding without interruption from the -natives, might be “frustrated by one of those unexpected acts of -treachery in which Irish history abounds.” However, even in treachery -the Irish were incompetent. “Irish plots are commonly woven in sand.” -“In this, as in so many other Irish insurrections, there was no want of -double traitors; of men who had neither the constancy to remain loyal, -nor the courage to persevere in rebellion.” - -With such a rabble we can only wonder that there was any need of an -English army at all; or how the conflict could last a year (not to -say a few hundreds of them); or why England should have sent over her -very best generals, her stoutest governors, and a prodigious deal -of her gold. It was the bogs, apparently, that swallowed up those -inconceivable hosts and coins. - -Under the “savage” theory military matters lose all interest; but -they are given to us with pitiless detail. Expeditions of soldiers -against famine-stricken peasants without arms, raids of mere slaughter, -the chasing of outlaws from a lake island, are described with the -minuteness of a genuine campaign. These things, no doubt, are in the -books. There are plenty of reports from officials, very humanly anxious -to justify themselves or to magnify their feats. But history after all -claims some revising power, and we need another standard of proportion -than the vanity of a lieutenant. It is impossible to give vitality to -a story in which highly armed and civilised Englishmen are represented -as wiping out with cannon and gunpowder a savage and unarmed crowd -of peasants--in which honour, courage, and progress are supposed to -be eternally confronted with chicanery, barbarity, and treachery. No -one wants to hear that tale. Such a history turns to inconceivable -tediousness, of no use to any living soul. - -Meanwhile vast tracts of history have been set aside as apparently -not worth exploring. Where, for example, shall we find a serious -account, with the guidance of modern scholarship, of the hundred and -fifty years between the battle of Clontarf and the landing of the -Norman barons. The people were no longer in the tribal state. The -change to a kind of feudalism had come. What was the form of that -feudalism? How did it differ from the system that had grown out of -other conditions elsewhere? There is not so much as a chapter in any -book, or a pamphlet, occupied with the land system of the earlier -middle ages, what changes the Norman settlement brought, or what forms -of social life did actually exist. The campaign of Edward Bruce is -usually said to be a central turning point in Irish history, but who -will guide us to any adequate study of it? There are no monographs on -Desmonds, O’Neills, O’Donnells, Fitzgeralds, Butlers, Clanrickards, -and so on. No annals of the provinces or kingdoms have been compiled, -nor chronologies. The work of the two great Earls of Kildare is one -of the most critical periods of Irish history: it still awaits a -historian. Who has examined the history of the schools and education? -Who has worked out the industrial development? How can we learn what -were the negotiations by which Henry VIII. carried the claim to be King -of Ireland? Here are fields too long deserted waiting for workers. -Here are a few of the immense voids, into which our writers fling, -like bundles of dried straw, their vain words--“savage,” “primeval,” -“lawless,” “brutish,” and the rest. In the history of Ireland nothing -has been completed. That which is unknown disturbs, and may overturn -the vulgar conclusions from the fragments known. We are for ever -walking through a country unmapped. To be sure it is full of sign-posts -put up at hazard--“To English Civilisation.” Where every road is marked -to lead to the same inn, why should travellers discuss, debate, and ask -questions? What reason can there be to loiter by the way? The English -fingerpost is always there. - -Some day perhaps the Irish race in this island will no longer seem to -lie beyond the need, and below the honour, of the historical method. -Ireland will have a history like other nations. It is possible to -conceive that out of its peoples, English or Irish, there may arise -some great thinker or poet who will set before us the two civilizations -that have met here; in other words, the efforts by which two highly -endowed races endeavoured to solve the problem that has perplexed -every people that has ever yet appeared in this world--how to shape a -community where men may live in safety, freedom, and happiness. The -Celts had waged the fight for their civilization to the walls of Rome -itself. They had left the valleys of the Danube and the Rhine and the -plains of Gaul red with their blood. Now, on the outermost border of -the world their last conflict awaited them. Within the mountain rim -of Ireland, with silent Nature to keep the lists, two peoples met to -fight out the last issues on that fatal soil. Here, imprisoned by -the Ocean, the antagonists stood for centuries to their battle: every -passion exalted, the splendours of courage, the majesty of despair, -all skill of surprises, all glory of chivalry, triumph and sorrow, -Christian pieties, and the surging up amid the upheaval of human -nature of the mysterious superstitions of elemental man, and of his -ferocities. What affections of race lay behind such a struggle? What -was its meaning? What of beauty, of happiness, or of virtue did each -civilization in fact offer to man? What was gained, what was lost? Here -would have been a history of fire and flame, a new outlook on the fate -of commonwealths, a theme worthy of an English or an Irish patriot. - -In the long task of giving its true balance to the history of Ireland, -by the discovery of all the facts, and the adjudging of their place, -controversy will be lively. Every Irishman for certain will be ready -for a battle of wits. But let us keep our intelligence perfectly -clear on one point. We shall hear a great deal of “impartiality” and -a “judicial mind.” Here we must make no mistake. Impartiality of -intellect need not mean insensibility of heart. Let us suppose that the -intellect should have no pre-possession at all, not even in favour of -English civilization, nor of the idol of the market-place, “the Wealth -of Nations”--its delicate balance should drop now on this side, now on -that, without a shadow of prejudice or a hint of obstinacy, abhorrent -of convention, with never a predilection. But impartiality of the -heart--that is another matter. Who will pretend to comprehend human -life who has no great affection of the soul? The generous heart knows -no balancing hesitation between the man who deserts his country and the -man who defends it; he alone can interpret the hero in whose soul some -answering passion flames; and I suppose that the understanding of a -commonwealth will best come to him who is most responsive to a variety -of human emotions. I think we could do with a change of partialities in -Ireland--fewer orthodox predilections of the head, if it might be so, -and some illumination from the heart. - -A new examination of Irish history is indeed of the utmost importance -to our people. The leading reviews, text-books, and histories in -England with one accord have presented Ireland to the English people -under the “savage” aspect, and their statements have been too -frequently accepted. Hear the common opinion as Tennyson put it: -“Kelts are all made furious fools.... They live in a horrible island, -and have no history of their own worth the least notice. Could not -anyone blow up that horrible island with dynamite and carry it off -in pieces--a long way off?” The same gloomy picture is still spread -before England. Mr. Fletcher, a Fellow of All Souls, records that “it -was quite common to bleed a cow for a refreshing drink of blood,” and -that “there were no exports save the said cow-skins,” though with these -the Irish apparently managed to buy “red seas of claret.” Shane O’Neill -was killed “by his own people whom he was plundering!” Degradation -was universal, as we learn from a sentence absolutely amazing in its -colossal and unscrupulous ignorance--“though his name had once been -FitzNigel or de Burgh, it gradually became O’Neill or O’Bourke!” Mr. -Rudyard Kipling joins Mr. Fletcher in declaring that Irish history -“was all broken heads and stolen cows, as it had been for a thousand -years,” and that Irishmen had no interest or care for their religion -till they discovered a use for it as a warcry against England. Accounts -of Ireland equally contrary to fact and common sense serve in political -controversy. English politicians assert on platforms that Irishmen -of themselves had never any national life or duty at all, that the -first gleam of true patriotism was taught them by England since the -Union, that Ireland had no conception of a Parliament till England -gave it to her people, when the boon was so misused and misunderstood -by an incompetent race (the English in Ireland, be it remembered) -that in the higher interests of man it had to be withdrawn. As for -the desire of self-government, “some people said it was a matter of -historical sentiment. The humour of it was that there never was a real -Irish kingdom at all. The Parliament which it was sought to restore -to Ireland was given to it by England. The historical sentiment and -loyalty which Mr. John Redmond was talking was the greatest humbug that -was ever preached.” There are others who argue, Dr. Mahaffy among them, -that practically there is not any more a Celtic race in Ireland, but -one so mixed in blood that it no longer, if it ever did, contains the -materials of a nation. The Celtic people, to their honour, have never -denied a national brotherhood to Danes, Normans, English, or Palatines, -who loyally entered into the Irish commonwealth. But as to political -theories of the vanishing of the race, we have only to examine them -by known facts, and turn to the Report of the Registrar-General in -1909 for proof that in the mingling of peoples the Celtic is still the -predominant element over all the rest; and if this proof is conclusive, -even in the register of merely Irish names, how enormous would be its -increased weight if we could reckon in Celtic families the change from -Irish names which has gone on ceaselessly since the thirteenth century, -and is still constantly occurring at this moment--a change which, -however lamentable, cannot alter the blood and the inheritance. - -Irishmen are often warned to waste no time in looking back at the past. -But if England draws the moral from her interpretation of history, -we must learn our lesson too--only it must be a lesson more serious, -exact, and worthy of an educated people. We have had experience of -how profound and vicious may be the practical effect of a history -unscientific, irresponsible, prejudiced, and incomplete. Out of -ignorance of the past, what sound policy can grow for the future? I -suppose that in civilized Europe, among the speeches on State affairs -of prominent statesmen, we could find no parallel to historical -verdicts so crude and unsubstantial as those which are given to us by a -certain group of political leaders and writers in England, concerning -the Irish portion of the “Empire” of which they make their boast. -How many are the ignorances and negligences which still do service -unreproved among those who claim to be the chief upholders of a “United -Kingdom,” and exponents of the “Imperial” faith. - -In Ireland we have still indeed a heavy road to travel. When history -has been written, what about the teaching of it, or the learning, in -this country? Who will make the way free for that? - -Let me put this matter before you by way of contrast. You have heard -the fame of Sparta, the land of heroes who won at the Thermopylæ a -far-shining glory that will ever stir the hearts of men. Montaigne -reminds us that in the matchless policy of Sparta to build up a noble -State, it is worthy of great consideration that the education of the -children was the first and principal charge. “And, therefore, was it -not strange,” he says, “if Antipater requiring fifty of their children -for hostages, they answered clean contrary to what we would do, ‘that -they would rather deliver him twice so many men’; so much did they -value and esteem the loss of their country’s education.” Now in this -training up of men to be citizens of the finest quality, the only one -book-study absolutely enforced in Sparta was History--to the mockery -and contempt of neighbouring Doctors of letters and literature of the -time. “Idiots and foolish people,” scoffed the high-class Athenian -professor, adept in polite languages and fine phrasing and the -elegancies of culture, and not neglectful of the profits to be got by -professing them; “idiots and foolish people, who only amuse themselves -to know the succession of kings, and establishing and declination of -estates, and such-like trash of flim-flam tales.” Socrates, you may be -sure, did not join in these sarcasms. Sparta had shown the honour and -manhood that history can teach, and how it can make of men champions of -their country, keepers of their forefathers’ fame, and rivals of their -own ancient heroes. - -Side by side with this ancient instance we may put one of our own day. -There is a country which has suddenly risen to great eminence in war -and organisation, as it had long been famous in the arts, with which -England hastened to make alliance. That country is Japan. In Japan, -when the eldest son comes of age, it is the custom for his father to -take him a tour on foot round the country, visiting every place of fame -in its history, so that the youth may enter on man’s estate as a worthy -citizen of the State that bred him. These honourable pilgrims can be -met on every road. They have known, like the men of Sparta, the power -of history to fortify the mind and expand the soul. Every Japanese man -of character will tell you that in any serious enterprise he is in the -presence, in the company of the great Dead of his people. That by them -his purpose is ennobled, his courage uplifted, his solitude changed -into a great communion. We have seen how that spirit has exalted a -people. - -With such instances in our minds we may ask what we are doing in -Ireland. What kind of citizens are we building up for our own land? - -As in England, so in Ireland, history has in the last dozen years been -made compulsory in the schools. But there is a difference. For Ireland -history is not a subject in itself. In our primary and intermediate -education Irish history is now a department of English language and -literature. At the age when impressions made on a youth’s mind are -certain to become the all-compelling habits of his later life, it is -suggested to him that the history of his country is less important -than the rules of English grammar, and that the achievements of his -father may at the best rank with the model sentences in which English -essayists write of Friendship and Gardens and Christmas. The student -for honours under the Intermediate system may, at his own will, prefer -a continental language to history. A pass-student might choose to gain -all the necessary marks in English grammar and composition alone; if he -has drunk in all that the amiable and unimportant Alexander Smith can -tell him “Of the Importance of a Man to Himself,” he may omit all that -the world can tell him “Of the Importance of a Man to his Country,” or -of his Country to him. Such knowledge may be left to the “idiots and -foolish people, who only amuse themselves to know the succession of -kings, and establishing and declination of estates, and such-like trash -of flim-flam tales.” - -Nor is this the worst of the matter. Suppose that an Irish boy has -been stirred by what he has seen in his country home. There was, -perhaps, beside it a Danes’ Fort, a Giants’ Ring, one of the two -thousand mounds piled up in Ireland by human hands, a Rathcroghan, or -a mighty Ailech of the kings where legendary monarchs sleep on their -horses waiting for the day that shall call them to ride out. He may -have lived by a solemn burial place of great chiefs, by a round tower, -by a high cross deeply carved, by some island of saints rich in ruins -and sculptured slabs. He may have been taken to the Irish Academy and -seen the Psalter of Columcille; or to Trinity College to look on the -book of Kells; or to the National Museum to be turned loose among the -carved rocks, the copper cauldrons, the golden diadems and torques, -the mighty horns of bronze, the heavy Danish swords, the weights for -commerce, the marvels in metal and enamel work, the Tara brooch, the -Ardagh chalice, the Cross of Cong, the long array of crosiers and bells -and shrines and book-covers. He may learn by chance that his country -is the wonder of Europe for the wealth and beauty of its relics of the -past. Desire may come on him to know the story of a land so astonishing -in the visible records left by his ancestors. Descended from a race who -had history in their very blood and the glorious tradition of their -fathers, he may feel that old hereditary passion burn in his heart. He -will add history to his study of the English language and the essays of -Smith. - -But even in that case, once entered on the course of education provided -for him by the Intermediate Board, he will find through the whole of -his pass work or of his honour work not one word to tell him who made -the marvels he has seen. For in Anglicised Ireland it is ordered that -history shall begin in 1066. The Irish annals record a comet in that -year. But it is not for the comet the year is chosen, but because -the date of the Norman Conquest of England is to mark the beginning -of history for Ireland. From the first the student is caught by the -pleasant fiction which is now proclaimed on every Unionist platform -that Ireland “under the English ownership,” has no life save that which -England gives. Irish history is not to be the story of Ireland, but -of the “United Kingdom.” It is to travel with the fortunes of England -step by step. An exact care conducts the student through the centuries. -All dates are ruled by English text-books, never by periods of change -in Ireland. According to the step by step theory, if the Irish student -must begin his story of Ireland with William’s Conquest of England, he -must pause at the end of the English Wars of the Roses. What matter -if that close of a period in England happens in Ireland to be in full -midway of a very extraordinary racial and constitutional movement full -of vital energy? The teacher must by order cut his story in half, -and start again to pull up his next course sharply at the death of -Elizabeth, a merely nominal date in Ireland, which ended or began -nothing. There the next period opens by order, and ended this present -year at a date (1784) when it would be absolutely impossible for an -Irish teacher to call a halt except by stopping in the middle of a -sentence; and for the coming year is to close at 1760, before the first -movement for the emancipation of the Irish Parliament. Not a word will -the Irish youth hear of the Irish kingdoms and schools and craftsmen -and merchants, nor of the Danes and their fleets, nor of the Irish -culture spread over Europe. He would know nothing of Columcille and the -work of Iona, nor of Columbanus and the work of St. Gall and of Bobio. -Nothing will be told of St. Brendan and his sailing to the west; nor -of learned Fergil the Geometer, who in spite of the orthodox theories -of an impassable equator, alone maintained that there were living men -at the antipodes; nor of the Irish goldsmiths and builders. Cormac’s -chapel must go. The very name of Brian Boru is expunged. There can be -no mention of the five hundred years of Irishmen’s fame in Europe as -classical scholars, philosophers, saints, merchants, or travellers. -The centuries of Ireland’s history as a free and independent country -are blotted out, and he may catch no glimpse of his people save in -the various phases of their material subjugation. During his entire -course he can turn no wandering eye on an Ireland that had any art, -literature, or industry of its own--a place where anything may have -happened on its own account, or where any interest may lie detached -from an English book of chronology. - -This disastrous conception of the “Union” as a kind of amalgamation -of countries in which all national limits are submerged and lost -follows the Irishman at home and abroad. He can scarcely set foot in -Europe save in the track of Irish wanderers of every age whose fame -should be his glory. But the shadow of this distorted notion hangs -round him--the shadow of the predominant sharer of all the effort -and fortune of his people. In the published Catalogue of the MSS. in -the Royal Library at Brussels, he must look for the Irish Annals and -historical documents under the one heading _Angleterre_, without even a -sub-heading _Irlande_. In Switzerland, surrounded by relics of the six -hundred and thirteen dependent houses of St. Gall, whence Irish monks -restored civilization to that land, he will be told at S. Beatenberg by -the guide-books that S. Beatus was _British_, and by local tradition -that he was Scotch. At the shrine of San Pellegrino in the Apennines, -he will hear praises of a _Scotch_ king’s son. In Rome he will learn -that _England_ was “the Isle of Saints.” Against these ignorances his -training in Ireland gives him no protection. Similar fallacies pursue -him across the Atlantic. Let him go to America, and Washington Irving -will tell him of the mariner whose story was one of the moving causes -that led Columbus to enquire of the land beyond the Ocean, and will -inform him that this famous St. Brendan was a _Scotch_ monk. Many -others he will find ignorant of history, and above all anxious not to -identify Ireland with any of her children that have done great things. -Mr. Whitelaw Reid will explain to him that the emigrants from Ulster to -America, the Ulster-born leaders who fought for American independence -in counsel, in convention, and in the field; the “Sons of St. Patrick” -who poured out their money and their blood for Washington--that all -these were _Scotchmen_, of no Irish kin or race, whose followers and -descendants have manfully rejected the term “Scotch-Irish” because it -“confused the race with the accident of birth,” and called themselves -“Ulster Scots” to show they had no part or lot with the Irish by blood -(_Celtic Review_, Jan., 1912). He apparently sees in the Presbyterian -religion of the “Ulster Scot” some subtle evidence of a nobler and -more distinguished origin than the “Scotch Irish,” some guarantee of -Low-German or English stock. - -The new school of American Irish, who under the influence of the -“Anglo-Saxon” enthusiasm, or with a desire to be on the winning side, -lay claim to a “Scotch” descent, ignore the historical meaning of the -word “Scot,” or the origin of the name “Scotland.” In vain for them -authentic history may tell of the ceaseless wanderings of the Gaelic -people across the narrow seas. From Ireland the Scots in early times -spread over the Hebrides and western Highlands, and carried their -settlements and speech over the Lowlands of the Picts and Britons -to the very borders of the little English colony of the Lothians, -leaving the western and middle Lowlands the most Celtic region in -Scotland. Irish folk settled freely in Scotland until the confiscation -of Ulster; as for example when the Monroes and Currys crossed the -sea, about 1300, with a number of other noble families who obtained -grants of land. Inter-marriage was very frequent at all times. Back -to Ireland again came streams of immigrants from the “Scot” or Irish -settlements across the water. The mingled race of Celts and Norse from -the Hebrides and the Highlands, all alike talking Irish and claiming -Irish descent, poured colonies into Ireland without ceasing from 1250 -to 1600, forefathers of hundreds of thousands to-day of Irish family. -The western and middle Lowlands (along with the Highlands) sent from -1600 the main body of settlers of the Ulster Plantation, chiefly -of Picto-Celtic stock; most of the first settlers must have been -bi-lingual, speaking not only “Broad Scots” but their native Gaelic, -which in 1589 was still the chief language of Galloway. Scots and Irish -were the same to Henry VIII., whose servant Alen protested in 1549 -against any “liberty” for the Irish, which, he said, was “the only -thing that Scots and wild Irish constantly contended for.” The Scots -of the Isles were known to Elizabeth as “those Yrishe people,” “the -Yrishes”; the “English Scots” whom she employed in her Irish wars were -so called from their political faction and Protestant religion, not -from any difference of blood from their brethren. In 1630 the scholar -Bedell included Irish and Scots in one single group; “and surely it -was a work agreeable to the mind of God that the poor Irish, being a -very numerous nation, besides the greater half of Scotland, and all -those islands called Hebrides, that lie in the Irish Sea, and many of -the Orcades also that speak Irish, should be enabled to search the -Scriptures.” The old Irish of Ulster in 1641 excepted the Scots from -their hostile measures as being of their own race, and this only a -generation after the Plantation, when most of the evicted Irish must -have been still alive. Jeremy Taylor in 1667 describes the Scots and -Irish of north-east Ulster as “_populus unius labii_ and unmingled with -others.” Over whole districts, where half the population at least were -Presbyterian descendants of Scottish immigrants, the speech of the -people even in the eighteenth century was Gaelic. For some fourteen -centuries indeed common schools of learning, a common literature, -common national festivals, maintained the unbroken tradition of unity -of race; it was from Ireland, in an Irish translation, that the Bible -reached the Highlands. The kings of Scotland long kept the remembrance -of their connexion with the remote generations of the race of Gaedhel -Glas. Dr. Norman Moore in his “Medicine in the British Isles,” (149) -has preserved a Highland tradition told him by Field-Marshal Sir -Patrick Grant whose memory was full of the old Gaelic stories and -verses; that at the Scottish coronation of Charles I. ancient Gaelic -phrases of installation were used for the last time. - -Among the men whom Mr. Whitelaw Reid selects to give glory to the -“Scotch” race as distinguished from the Irish, we may take at chance -three examples. President MacKinlay came of the Hebridean race of -Gaelic Scots with a strong infusion of Norse blood, who, Norsemen and -Scots alike, boasted of Irish descent; they settled in Ireland about -1400 A.D., nor did the Antrim MacKinlays in later days ever speak of -themselves save as Irish. President Monroe belonged to an Irish Gaelic -family which had crossed to Scotland with a number of other noble -families about 1300, and obtained grants of land among their kin there. -Patrick Henry, whether he was of old Ulster race or of the Scottish -lowlands, unless clear proof to the contrary can be given by a detailed -pedigree, must be counted as a Celt or a Picto-Celt: one group of -Henrys in Ulster is descended from the MacHenry sept of the O’Neills -who lived on the Bann-side at the time of the Plantation; another -family, more ancient and probably more numerous, O h-Inneirghe, whose -surname is now written Henry, was the ruling sept of a district in the -south of Derry country. No one, unless he proves his case by direct -evidence, could truthfully and with knowledge assert that Patrick -Henry, or President Monroe, or President MacKinlay, were other than -representative Celts by race. - -It would have been a strange doctrine to the Irish emigrants themselves -to tell them that they were Scotch. From 1720 they swarmed over to -people Pennsylvania, as if, men said at the time, Ireland was sending -out all its inhabitants--in one year alone (1729) no less than 5,655 -Irish, to 267 English and Welsh, and 43 Scotch. There was a Scotch -Society of St. Andrew’s in Philadelphia (1749); but the emigrants from -Ireland, Catholic and Presbyterian alike, looked on themselves as plain -Irishmen, not Scotch; they gave to their settlements Irish names; the -wealthier men among them established in 1765 an “Irish Club”; out of -this they formed in 1771 the leading Irish organisation before and -during the Revolution--the famous Society of the “Friendly Sons of St. -Patrick.” There were at first but three Catholics in the Society, but -the Irish Presbyterians and Episcopalians of that day chose for their -patron the Saint of Ireland, not of Scotland, and for their President -a Catholic, Moylan, certainly not a Scotchman; they met on St. -Patrick’s Day; their medal bore figures of _Hibernia_ with a harp, and -_St. Patrick_ carrying a cross and trampling on a snake. The heroic -services of that devoted Society of Irishmen cannot be told here. After -the war it founded and became merged in the _Hibernian_ Society of “the -natives of Ireland or descendants of Irishmen” (so little did they fear -the name), for the relief of emigrants from Ireland. These Irishmen had -not yet learned to despise their race and country, and to invent for -themselves a new nation without any root in history. - -In English history, where certain general lines of knowledge have -been laid down as the common property of educated men, serious lapses -are held a reproach: in Irish history an ambassador from the United -States to Great Britain and Ireland can allow himself to tell us that -an “Ulster Scot” is no more an Irishman than a man would be a horse if -born in a stable. - -The imaginations of a mock “Imperial history,” by which all treasure -found is thrown “impartially” into the common stock of the United -Kingdom, in other words of Great Britain, leaving Ireland bare, belong -not to science but to politics. By such a perverted history the -honourable pride of a people may be transformed into humiliation and -self-distrust. They are made to stand before Europe with the appearance -of defeat, ruin, and rebuke; a race without the dignity of ever having -had a true civilization, incapable of development in the land they -wasted. What vigour or self-respect can grow out of a maimed history -such as this? Or can any promise of material advancement serve as -the substitute for a good reputation, or consolation for spiritual -impoverishment? - -We may take one notable instance of how since the Union ignorance of -Irish history has been officially fostered. In 1828 a lofty enterprise -was opened by Sir Thomas Larcom, director of the central office of -the newly-appointed Irish Ordnance Survey. The Survey maps were to be -constructed on such a scale as to be of use in correcting the unequal -pressure of taxation, and to serve as guides for local improvement. -Enquiry indeed was needed into the resources and conditions of a -country which Petrie describes--“the habitations of the people -miserable and comfortless, and the people themselves the most wretched -in the world. Joy will never brighten the prospect, misery never -disappear.” To carry out these orders Larcom planned a scheme on -noble lines. He held it necessary to complete the maps by making a -study in each parish of the state in which Nature had placed it, the -condition to which it had been brought by art, and the uses now made -by the people of their combination; in other words, there must be an -exact knowledge of the natural products of the country, its history -and antiquities, and its economic state and social condition. In this -scheme of elevated science an enquiry into past history was considered -necessary as a prelude to the proper understanding of the present -state--an enquiry which was to include all monuments of the past, Pagan -and Christian, all the traditions and accounts of them that remained, -the state of society in which they arose, the earliest history of the -people whose descendants might still inhabit the district, and the -changes which led to the present establishments for government. - -The opportunity for carrying out this work was as surprising as its -conception. The great scholar Petrie, who was at the time founding the -museum of the Royal Irish Academy and in great measure founding too -its library, was in 1833 set at the head of the historical department -of the Survey, and charged with the task of collecting the true names -of baronies, townlands, and parishes, and the investigation of ancient -monuments. He gathered round him a staff of Irish scholars--men of the -soil, heirs of the Irish tradition--John O’Donovan, Eugene O’Curry, J. -O’Connor, P. O’Keefe, along with Clarence Mangan, Du Noyer, Wakeman, -and others, all filled with the same spirit, and fired with the -desire of producing a perfect work. Never perhaps had there been such -a combination of talent directed to the one end of restoring Irish -knowledge. For the first time during centuries of exclusion, Irish -students were brought into close and constant communication in their -own country with men of trained intelligence, and encouraged to use -their skill for the benefit of their country. Once more Ireland had -such a school as those which in the periods of her great revivals -in the twelfth and fifteenth centuries gathered up and left to us -all the relics of Irish history that we possess. Once more a kind of -peripatetic University was set up, in the very spirit of the older -Irish life. - -The astonishing enthusiasm of these zealots is shown by the almost -incredible record of their work in half a dozen years. It is such -things as these that reveal to us the soul of Irish Nationality and -the might of its repression. We can but stand astonished before the -unstinted labour, before the miraculous accomplishment, of that -company of workers. The work was new, travel was slow, and hardship -frequent: but every difficulty vanished before their consuming ardour. -Petrie’s band has left, besides maps, sketches, and documents of a -general nature, not less than four hundred and sixty-eight large -volumes of documents relating to Irish topography, language, history, -and antiquities. A collection was made of over sixty thousand names, -of their mutations, their various spellings, their meanings, and -translations in English; when this work was completed a skilled Irish -scholar was sent to every district to learn there from Irish speakers -the vernacular name, and to collect traditions and legends, and note -any antiquities that had been omitted. The traditions of Ireland at -that time had not been wholly broken. In Petrie’s writings we can still -see the Irish multitudes who in the depth of their poverty preserved -the memories of their race and their holy places, and the national -pilgrims gathering round their old shrines “with the utmost fervency -of devotion, and in all their movements an abstracted intensity of -feeling that carries the mind back to remote times.” In spite of much -destruction, in spite of the lamentable absence in the new landlords -of Ireland of proper pride and national feeling, there still remained -a mass of ancient monuments preserved by the pious memories of the -people, crosses, graveyards, old paths, and names and histories; which -have been since swept away in the horrors of famine and emigration and -the devastating land commercialism let loose by the Encumbered Estates -Act. - -The first memoir published by the Ordnance Survey in 1837, the account -of Derry, was hailed with universal enthusiasm. “Irishmen of all sects -and parties felt that in such work as this they would have for the -first time the materials for a true history of their country.” But -the Government interfered. The Topographical Survey was closed, the -staff discharged, and the vast mass of material, comprising among -other things upwards of four hundred quarto volumes of letters and -documents relating to the topography, language, history, antiquities, -productions, and social state of almost every county in Ireland, were -ordered to be kept, idle and useless, in the Survey Office at Mountjoy -barracks. The reason given was the cost. At this time England was -drawing from Ireland to her own use some three millions a year above -her expenditure there. It was shown that the sale of the memoir -was such as would probably defray the whole expense. The Government -objected to treating history and political economy as subjects which -might re-open questions of Irish party divisions: it was answered that -the events of history could not be buried in oblivion, since they had -occurred and their effects continue, and it was well for the public to -have a plain impartial record of bare facts, since on neither side were -the facts yet known. - -In answer to the vehement protests of all Ireland, a Commission -was appointed under a new Government in 1843. It advised that the -work should be continued, and urged the importance of the time, -for monuments and language were alike disappearing: it recommended -that the vast mass of collected material now lying waste should -be published, since “no enquirer until the officers of the Survey -commenced their labours, has ever brought an equal amount of local -knowledge, sound criticism, and accurate acquaintance with the Irish -language to bear upon it.” The Government took no notice. It was -believed by the best-informed that some strong concealed influence -urged on ministers that it was dangerous to open up to the people the -memory of their fathers and their old society, or remind them of the -boundaries of their clans and families. In vain the best Irishmen of -the day, of every race and religion, pleaded for a braver view of -truth and statesmanship. Political influences, the fears of absentee -landlords or of a Protestant ascendancy, prevailed in London. English -rulers dreaded the knowledge of the Irish more than they dreaded their -ignorance; and the door was shut on history, science, and truth, with -the results that we have seen in succeeding generations. - -By this act much knowledge was finally obliterated: no such opportunity -can ever occur again. Much more was set back for a hundred years, and -ignorance still left enthroned. We may still hear men professing, as -though time had stood still, the doctrines Petrie reported in vogue a -century ago: “The history and antiquities of Ireland previous to the -English Invasion, are wholly unworthy of notice, or, at best, involved -in obscurity and darkness such as no sane mind would venture to -penetrate.” Irish history, buried by two Governments, was supposed to -have no resurrection: instead of the serious enquiry inaugurated by the -old Survey, modern statesmen will assure us through Mr. Balfour that -for talk of Irish ideas and institutions, “there is no historic basis -whatever.” - -The Royal Irish Academy applied for the custody of a part of the Survey -records, which were given to its keeping in 1860; and have there been -consulted for local or county histories. Meanwhile the Survey was -continued in an innocuous form without the historic virus. Directed -from Southampton, English “division officers” in Dublin, Belfast and -Cork conduct the Irish Survey. Their maps may serve practical purposes -of buying and selling land, and even present accurately all modern -features, police barracks and the like. But they offer doubtful help to -the curious historian on the road of scientific enquiry. The spirit and -purpose of the older research has been banished. Irish antiquities are -no longer objects of interest or of skilled observation; Irish names -are treated in many cases as an insurmountable difficulty; any ordered -attempt at their right spelling is abandoned. The ancient fort of -Lisnalinchy in Antrim has been allotted the happy name of _Silentia_, -as if to give to a deep-buried Irish history the respectability of a -mock Roman tombstone. Port-na-veadog, the port of the plover, appears -as Dog’s Bay. Professor Macalister, examining the ancient ruins on the -Carrowkeel mountain in Co. Sligo, has reported there the remarkable -site of one of the oldest village settlements in northern Europe, -with remains of over forty-seven structures; and hard by an ancient -cemetery with fourteen carns left by the old builders. The Survey -has been there, and has marked the height of the beacon it erected -on one of the finest of the carns, but has left on the map no record -of this conspicuous and striking carn as an ancient monument. The -most important of the structures, eighty-seven feet in diameter and -twenty-five in height, is marked by an indefinite symbol, and not -as having any character of antiquity. While nearly all the chief -carns were omitted, by some chance or curious scruple of conscience -one or two of the smaller examples have been noted. Of twenty-three -place names in the square mile of country only nine are recorded. -Names here and elsewhere are set down in an Anglicised and phonetic -spelling, often atrocious in form. As Professor Macalister observes, -nothing could more clearly prove than this characteristic effort of -the Ordnance Survey in Ireland the absolute necessity of a thorough -re-survey, under expert superintendence, of the archæology and place -names of the country. All historians, all Irishmen alike, must ardently -join in such an entreaty, for the honour of their land. Is it too much -to hope that this national work may not be for ever left to indifferent -hands, but that Irish scholars may yet be given the patriotic task of -saving what yet remains on Irish soil of the inheritance of her people. - -Of one thing, however, we may be sure. The reform of Irish history -must begin in our own country, among our own people. Since it is -public opinion that at the last decides what our people shall learn of -their father-land, we ourselves must be the keepers of our fame and -the makers of our history. Let us in Ireland therefore remember that -we have an ancestry on which there is no need for us to cry shame. -Chivalry, learning, patriotism, poetry, have been found there, even “in -huts to which an Englishman would have hesitated to give the name of a -house.” No people have ever surpassed them in exaltation or intensity -of spiritual life. The sun has risen and set in that land on lives -of courage, honour, and beauty. The seasons have watched the undying -effort to make Ireland the honoured home of a united people. Not a -field that has not drunk in the blood of men and women poured out for -the homes of their fathers. Why should not we, the sons and daughters -of Ireland, take our rich inheritance? “Let us enjoy, whenever we have -an opportunity, the delight of admiration, and perform the duties of -reverence.” So long as the Spirit of life is over us, I do not know, -and I hope you do not know, why we in this country should not be worthy -of our dead. - -[Illustration: SCANDINAVIAN TRADE ROUTES] - - - - -CHAPTER II - -THE TRADE ROUTES OF IRELAND. - - -A DISCUSSION of the Trade Routes of Ireland may seem to some a -superfluous and barren task. It has long been a fashion to look on the -country as an island, “remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.” Writers -have pictured it as lying through the centuries in primitive barbarism, -an outlying desolation of poverty and disorder. The blame of this -desolation is sometimes laid on the savagery of the people, sometimes -on the position of the island, at the very “ends of the earth.” No -doubt there has been a certain political convenience in the very usual -argument that the geographical position of Ireland, lying so near to -Great Britain, makes it immediately dependent on that country alone, so -that it could by nature have no real converse with Europe, and no door -of civilisation save through England. An island beyond an island--such -is reputed the forlorn position of Ireland. We all naturally believe -that which we constantly hear or frequently repeat: and it is well -from time to time to ask ourselves what reason may lie behind common -tradition--in this special case to enquire what geography and history -may have to tell us of the natural trade routes of Ireland and of -England in former times. - -From the map it is plain that the two islands have a very different -outlook. Michelet has pictured Europe with all her main rivers and -harbours opening to the west, and the island of Great Britain alone -lying as a mighty ship poised on the ocean with her prow fronting the -orient. The Thames opens its harbour to the east, the capital looks to -the east, and the early trading centres, the Cinque Ports, turn to the -sunrising. Thus the natural way of trade and travel from England to -the Continent has always been by the narrow seas--across the Channel -or the North Sea to the convenient river-mouths and harbours of the -north European plain. Ireland was in a different case. If the opposite -British coast, for the most part inhospitable mountain and forest, -offered to her in early times a slender trade and a harsh welcome, she -on her side did not turn to it her best natural ports. Those on the -east coast from Waterford to Belfast are few; Dublin, left to itself, -is a poor harbour; and from thence to Belfast there is only one small -port, Ardglass, where the entrance is safe at low tide. The chief -harbours of Ireland in fact were those that swelled with the waves of -the Atlantic Ocean. Her outlook was across its stormy waters, and her -earliest traffic through the perils of the Gaulish sea. The English -were concerned with the north and east of Europe, the Irish with the -south and west, and their paths did not cross. - -For Ireland, therefore, the road to Europe did not lie across Great -Britain. As far back as we can see into the primitive darkness the -inhabitants of the island were all in turn out on the great seas. An -old myth or legend tells of the ancient Manannan Mac Lir, “Son of the -Sea,” who was the best pilot that was in the west of Europe, and the -greatest reader of the sky and weather: or who in another tale appears -a sea-god triumphant over the ocean as his boat raced under him on the -immensity of the waters like a chariot on the summer fields, while -he sang in his joy--“That is to me a happy plain with a profusion of -flowers, looking from the chariot of two wheels.” Ireland, in times -beyond the reach of history, lay on the high-road of an ancient trade -between the countries we know as Scandinavia and Gaul. Even in the -Stone age its people cut some of their flint arrows after the fashion -of Portugal, or carried them from that peninsula across the Bay of -Biscay; and fragments of stone cups have been found in Ireland, as in -Britain, which are said to have come from the Mediterranean by the -Gaulish sea. As for the northern traffic, we have traces of it more -than a thousand years before the Christian era in burial mounds of the -Bronze age, where there are stones carved with a form of ornament which -in western Europe is only found in Scandinavia and Ireland. - -It was during the Bronze age that the first Gaelic or Goidelic invaders -entered Ireland, coming not through Britain but over-sea from Spain -and Gaul, from the openings of the Garonne and the Loire, or from the -ports of Brittany. And by that open highway sailed also later settlers -from southern and northern Gaul. Some relics of these conquering -tribes, fine rivetted trumpets of bronze made after the fashion of the -continent, of the same pattern as those used in central France about -the Loire, show that they kept up intercourse with their people abroad. -For centuries, in fact, this intercourse can be traced. An invasion -of the Gauls in the third century B.C. left to Leinster its old name -of Laigen, from the broad-headed lances which they carried; and five -hundred years later, in the second century A.D., Irish princes used to -send to Gaul for soldiers to serve in their wars. - -In the time of the Roman Empire therefore Irish trade with Europe was -already well established. Tacitus (A.D. 98) tells that its ports and -harbours were well known to merchants; and in the second century the -geographer Ptolemy of Alexandria gave a list, very surprising for the -time, of the river-mouths, mountains, and port towns of Ireland, and -its sea-coast tribes--a knowledge he may have gained from Marinus -of Tyre, or the Syrian traders who conducted the traffic from Asia -Minor to the Rhone, and thence across the Gaulish Sea. Italy exported -her wine in the second century B.C.; and in the second century A.D., -four hundred years later, when wine was grown on the hill sides of -Provence it may have reached Irish ports, transported by merchants -of Marseilles to the Garonne, or by the valleys of the Rhone and the -Loire, and thence across the sea. They travelled in ships built to -confront Atlantic gales, with high poops standing out of the water -like castles, and great leathern sails--stout hulls that were steered -and worked by the born sailors of the Breton coast. From Brittany the -passage to Ireland could be made in three days. From the Loire it was -two days longer, as we may see from a later Irish story of the sixth -century which tells how a ship-load of strangers, five decades of them, -came sailing from the lands of Latium on pilgrimage to Ireland. Each -decade of pilgrims took with them an Irish saint to guide and protect -the vessel, every one in his turn for a day and a night, which gives a -voyage of five days and nights. As they neared the Irish coast a fierce -storm arose, and St. Senan, who was that day guardian of the company, -rose from dinner with a thigh-bone in his hand, and blessing the air -with the bone brought the pilgrims safe into Cork harbour. The saint -was a practical sailor and pilot, and he had been allotted the best -joint, the portion which by Irish law was given to the king or the high -poet. - -But while traders of the Empire sailed to Ireland, the armies of Rome -never crossed the Irish Sea. Ireland therefore lay outside the Roman -Empire, while it lay within the circle of imperial civilisation and -commerce. Christianity first came from across the Gaulish Sea, and -the art of writing, and new forms of ornament. From Gaul the Irish -learned to divide tribe-land into private property marked by boundary -stones. Roman-Hellenistic learning, which spread from northern Italy -to Marseilles, crossed the Irish seas with the merchants of Aquitaine -carrying the wine of Bordeaux; or it was brought home by Irish scholars -of the fourth century who went to seek learning in Narbonne, where -Greek was spoken as a living tongue. The Irish Pelagius, who went to -Italy in 400, was able to carry on a discussion in Jerusalem in 415 -with Orosius the Spaniard, in which he spoke Greek while Orosius needed -an interpreter: if he had not learned Greek in Ireland, Zimmer reminds -us, he would not have been able to learn it in Rome. Nearly two hundred -years later, in 595, the Irish saint Columbanus and his companions knew -Greek, but Gregory the Great did not know it, though he had twice been -Papal nuncio in Constantinople. Ovid and Vergil were known and read in -Ireland, where scholars seem to have taken all that Rome had to give of -classical culture and philosophy. - -It is often assumed that to share in the benefits of an empire it is -necessary to be a subject country, lying within its police control, and -that the Irish suffered by never having been forced under the authority -of Rome. Perhaps, however, we might learn here another lesson--that -in matters of civilisation what is really needed is not subjection -to force, but free human converse and the willing intercourse of -men. We have the spectacle of an island beyond the military rule, -the police control, the law, of the Roman empire, willingly adopting -all the spiritual good which Rome could give it, and the culture -that the intelligence of its people found to suit them. Free to keep -her own customs, Ireland could gain this new learning without losing -her own civilization and her pride of language, history, and law. It -was in seas of blood that such national pride was wiped out by Roman -conquerors from the plains of Gaul. But for the Irish at that time -there was no violent breach with the traditions of their race, nor any -humiliation or bondage to darken their high spirit; and in the joyful -and brilliant activity of the succeeding centuries they illustrated the -free and peaceful union of two civilizations. - -Ireland had another advantage from her place of freedom on the open -highways of the sea. For lying outside the Empire she was saved from -the economic ruin that fell on all the Roman dominions when, by the -fatal policy of the Empire, enterprise and wealth were sucked to the -centre and capital, draining the provinces bare; so that, for example, -witnesses of that time describe the once wealthy port of Cadiz as a -town of great empty warehouses, silent and deserted, save for a few -poor old men and women creeping about its melancholy streets. Her -position saved her too when the barbarians swept over the Empire. As -she had been unconquered by the Romans so she remained unconquered by -Teuton or English. Her learning did not perish before invaders; and if -on the mainland every old line of communication was closed or broken, -her way of the ocean was still free. It is true that the wars of the -English invaders of Britain for some hundred and fifty years (449-597) -barred all passage through it to the Continent. But that route had -never been of any real consequence. A way to Europe across Britain was -no doubt known to the Irish in Roman times, and some pilgrims journeyed -by that way across the Empire. But this was not the main route for -travellers from Ireland, and it was never the line of their continental -trade. There seems to have been little communication on the whole with -Britain. Settlers went over from Ireland to Scotland, to Wales, to the -Cornish peninsula, and founded Irish colonies. But in the main the -Irish troubled themselves very little about Britain at all. In fact -from the third century onwards they were accustomed to give to all -strangers the name of “Galls,” from Gallos, the people of Gaul, the -chief visitors they knew. - -To the Irish the important thing therefore was that the way of the -sea was still open. Traders from Gaul sailed along the western coast, -and up the Shannon to Roscommon and Loch Cé, and on the eastern side -their ships passed by the Irish Sea to what is now Down and Antrim, to -Iona, and Cantyre. They still as of old carried the wine of Provence in -great wooden tuns, in one of which three men could stand upright; there -still came men speaking Greek, and scholars of the east, and artists of -Gaul. At this time indeed the Irish were no recluse people, living in a -backwater or severed from the great world. An Old Irish poem tells of -the traditions of Leinster under its ancient kings--“The sweet strain -heard there at every hour; its wine-barque upon the purple flood; its -shower of silver of great splendour; its torques of gold from the -lands of the Gaul.” The metropolis of Columcille’s church organization -at Iona, the established centre of Irish learning at Bangor in Down, -both alike lay in the track of the sailing ships, and in frequent -communication with Europe. News of the destruction by earthquake of -Citta Nuova in Istria was brought to Columcille that same year by -Gaulish mariners. Columbanus and his companions could take ship from -Bangor to Nantes on their mission to Europe (589). Northwards Irishmen -sailed to the Hebrides, the Orkneys, the Shetlands. They seem to have -traded and married with Scandinavians a century before the invasion -of Ireland by the Wikings. Moreover Irishmen had travelled as far as -Iceland in 795, where Nadoddr the Norseman heard of them some sixty -years later. - -Thus the old civilization, rudely interrupted elsewhere, was carried -on unbroken in Ireland. Now was the time (500-1000) when the island -began to give back to Europe the treasures of learning which she had -stored up in the time of the Roman Empire, and had kept safely through -the barbarian wars. Missionaries and scholars from Iona and Ireland -carried letters and Christian teaching to every part of England, -while ship-loads of Englishmen went to Ireland for instruction. Other -Irishmen sailed to Brittany, and journeyed east over northern France -beyond the Rhine. A greater number travelled by Nantes, Angers, Tours, -past the monastery of Columbanus at Lisieux, and thence over middle -Europe, or by St. Gall southward through Italy as far as Tarentum, -and to the Holy Land. Occasionally pilgrims and missionaries took -the road to Europe through Britain, when with the settlement of the -English kingdoms and the coming of Augustine (597) a new intercourse -had opened between the English and the continental peoples. That is, -some few travellers went this way, but merchants still kept to the old -sea route, and the greater number of Irish pilgrims and scholars. It -was by that way, for example, according to the old story by a monk of -St. Gall, that two Scots from Ireland sailed to Gaul in the early days -of Charles the Great, and in the market-place, where the merchants -trafficked with the crowds, raised their cry of an Irish trade:--“If -anyone is desirous of wisdom, let him come to us and receive it, for -we have it to sell.” At last they were brought to Charles himself, who -asked what payment they would need; nothing more, they answered, than -convenient situations, ingenious minds, and as living in a foreign -country to be supplied with food and raiment; and the king formed a -school for one of them in France, and set the other at the head of -the great school at Pavia. Irish monasteries, one after another in -rapid order, rose along the main highways of travel, among the ruined -heaps of Roman towns where wild beasts alone found shelter, in forest -and desert and mountain. Every school had Irish teachers and Irish -manuscripts, relics of which still remain in continental libraries. -Ireland became the source of culture to all Germanic nations: indeed -wherever in the seventh and following centuries education or knowledge -is found it may be traced directly or indirectly to Irish influence. -It has been justly said that at the time of Charles the Bald every one -who spoke Greek on the Continent was almost certainly an Irishman, -or taught by an Irishman. By degrees Irish monasteries, built and -supported by Irish money, spread over Europe from Holland to Tarentum, -from Gaul to Bulgaria. - -The Continent was therefore well known to Ireland when about 800 A.D. a -new revolution passed over Europe. - -Continental trade, as we have seen, had perished with the Roman Empire. -Commerce had fallen to its lowest point. There was scarcely any money, -nor in any country, neither England, nor France, nor Germany, a native -class of merchants; wandering Jews and Greeks and Syrians, and later -Italians, carried on what little buying and selling still survived. On -the shores of the North Sea, however, the Frisians had made their town -of Duurstede, near the mouth of the Rhine, a centre for traffic carried -down the river; and in their stout, flat-bottomed, high-boarded sailing -ships traded across the North Sea and the Baltic. Duurstede became for -a time the chief port of western Europe. There Charles the Great coined -money, and the lines along which the Frisian traders carried their -wares may still be traced by the finding of the Duurstede coins. But -even in the time of the Emperor Charles came the change which was to -sweep away the Frisian traders. This was the rise of the new lords of -the sea--the Scandinavians--who were to wrest commerce from Frisians -and Gauls, and open a new trade for northern Europe. - -The Scandinavians got their training in a hard school. They had a -thousand miles of stormy shores to practice seamanship, fishing along -their mountain coasts, and sailing against Arctic tempests round the -North Cape. They had to build better ships than anyone else, and to -sail them better. They invented a new kind of vessel where both oars -and sails were used. And in a short time the Frisians were outdone both -in seamanship and in trade. - -East and west the Scandinavians sailed. As early as the eight century -colonies of Swedes were passing by the Baltic and the gulf of -Finland to settle on the opposite coast about Novgorod and along the -Dnieper--the East way, as they called it. They left Scandinavian names -along the rapids of the river as their travellers pushed forward, -till in 839 they came in contact with the Greeks, and Swedes who had -journeyed by the Dnieper were introduced by the Emperor of the East -to the Western Emperor Louis the Pious. Their ships were soon the -terror of the Black Sea shores--laden with warriors tall like palm -trees, ruddy, fairhaired, who were in turn traders and plunderers, -conquerors and slave-dealers. In 865 two hundred of their vessels -appeared before Constantinople; in 880 they had reached the Sea of -Azof, the Don and the Volga; in 913 they had five hundred ships, each -carrying a hundred men, in the Caspian. Novgorod was the mart of their -vast eastern commerce. There have been found in Sweden nearly twenty -thousand Arabian coins, dating from 698 to 1002 A.D., carried across -the Baltic by home-going merchants. Gothland became the general centre -of exchange for the Eastway trade, where Danes sailed from their -settlements on the Mecklenburg coast and the mouth of the Oder, to buy -Russian furs, Greek and Arabian silks, and Indian spices, and here -have been discovered thirteen thousand coins of the tenth and eleventh -centuries--Byzantine, Arabian, and from central Asia. - -Other adventurers from Norway and Denmark turned towards the Atlantic -Ocean, trading and plundering in every harbour of the west, as far as -Seville and the Spanish coasts. Northward they peopled Iceland and the -Orkneys, and in time rounded the North Cape. They fished the Ocean for -whales, and opened a trade in whale-meat and in the furs and cod of -the White Sea with Normandy and England. The English liked better to -buy than to catch whales. “Can you take a whale?” we read in an old -West-Saxon dialogue. “Many,” says the home-loving Englishman, “take -whales without danger, and then they get a great price, but I dare not -from the fearfulness of my mind.” - -Besides opening out this world-wide trade, the Scandinavians made a -revolution also in the manner of trading. Up to this time buying and -selling had been carried on by travelling dealers, Syrian and Italian. -Now however Norsemen and Danes, who had no towns in their own lands, -planted themselves in their new countries in fortified cities; and, for -example, showed their enterprise by forming in the Five Danish Burghs -in England the earliest federation of towns known outside Italy. -In the new towns a settled class of merchants was established, who -learned to group themselves according to the English system of guilds. -The Scandinavians learned also to strike coins after the manner of -the Frisians. In all these ways, by their new ships, their new trade -routes, their money, their guilds, and their settled merchants in -towns, the Scandinavians won a pre-eminence on the sea, which they were -to hold in their own hands for some two hundred years. - -What was the effect in Ireland of this new peril, an attack on Europe -from the sea? In the first place the highways of the sea, never before -closed, were barred by the Scandinavian free-booters. A few Irish -travellers (even from Leinster) did even in 800 and 850 take the old -accustomed journey to the Loire and so across France to Germany; -but the passage was now dangerous. The terrors of the sea journey -drove travellers to the land route, and the way across England to -the Continent became so important that clerics of the tenth century -could not imagine that any other way had ever been possible. The new -sea-kings, moreover, were not the people to forget the ancient and -profitable trade routes of the wine commerce, or the Irish harbours -into which trading ships from north and south had sailed for the -last two thousand years, or the gold that had been dug from Irish -mines in old days. They seized every harbour, sent their boats up -every creek and river, plundered the monasteries and wealthy houses, -broke into every burial mound for treasure, and put a poll-tax on the -men. Scholars and Christian monks fled from the heathen barbarians, -carrying to Europe their treasures and manuscripts. The time of mere -destruction, however, was not long. The Scandinavians were practical -men of affairs, and Norsemen and Danes had settled in Ireland for -business. The “Great Island,” as they called it, was a natural centre -of their new world-wide commerce; lying within the trade circle -formed by the ships that swept from the Orkneys and Hebrides round -the Atlantic coast to the Loire and the Garonne, or that traversed -the Irish Sea from Cantyre to Devonshire and Brittany. It was the -shelter of voyaging ships, the recruiting ground of raiders, the -winter-quarters of fleets; its commerce fell in naturally with the -traffic of the western world. Danes and Irish were presently to the -full as busy in trading as in fighting. Ireland became a commercial -centre, a meeting place of the peoples. There came Grett with the -Greek hat to buy captives for the Iceland market. A host of Saxons -and Britons were brought over by Olaf and Ivar in 871. Almost every -king of Norway sailed his fleet into Irish harbours, to drive off the -rival Danish merchants, to broaden his traffic, to spy out some new -store of gold, to load up with corn, to sweep the cattle down to the -seashore for the “strand-hewing” that was to provision his crews with -meat, fresh and salt, for their ocean course. Traders bargained then -just as they bargain now. There is a harbour of Ardglass on the coast -of County Down where a castle was built many centuries ago to protect -the commerce of the port. The other day an Irishman repaired its -ruins, and for a sign flew from it the flag of one of the Irish lords -of the country, the Red Right Hand of O’Neill. At that very moment a -light schooner sailed into the offing and at once flew in answer the -Danish flag. The vessel was from Marsthal. Getting into port the crew -bargained for herrings, counting out a hundred and ninety-five barrels -of them by “chequers,” while the Ardglass men checked the number on -notched sticks. Neither knew one word of the other’s tongue. So the -Danes did business and sailed away, exactly as their forefathers had -done a thousand years ago. - -Between plundering and trading and marriages and alliances Norse and -Irish got to know each other well, as we may see by the story of king -Olaf Tryggwason and his dog. Olaf the Magnificent, most glorious and -far-shining of sea-kings, famed beyond all others for the surpassing -perfection of his warships, being married to Gytha sister of Olaf -Kuaran king of Dublin, abode in England and occasionally in Ireland. -“He happened once,” says the Saga, “to be present in Ireland with -a large naval force engaged in war. A foray to get stores being -necessary, the men went on land and drove towards the shore a multitude -of sheep and cattle; and there followed them a yeoman, who begged Olaf -to give him back his cows from among the flock that they were driving -off. King Olaf answered: ‘Take your cows if you know them, and are -able to separate them from the rest without delaying our journey; but, -I think, neither you nor any other man can do that feat among so many -hundred cattle as are in the drove.’ The yeoman had a big cattle dog -with him. So he sent the dog among the herd as they were driven off -together, and the dog ran up and down among them all, and soon picked -out and put aside as many of the man’s cattle as in the yeoman’s -opinion were there. As these were all marked with one and the same -mark, it was evident that the dog must have had a perfect knowledge of -them. Then the King said: ‘Wonderfully clever is your dog, yeoman; will -you give him to me?’ And the man answered: ‘I will gladly do so.’ Then -the King straightway, in return, gave the yeoman a large gold bracelet, -and promised him his friendship therewith. This dog, the best and most -sensible of all dogs, was named Wigi, and Olaf had him for a long time -afterwards.” There came a day later when Olaf was entrapped by his -enemies in the Baltic, sailing with his fleet on the far-famed Long -Serpent--“never warship has been built in Northern lands its equal for -beauty and size.” “Right and proper is it,” said Earl Eric, “that such -a noble ship should belong to Olaf Tryggwason, for he is truly said to -surpass other kings as much as the Long Serpent surpasses other ships.” -The King, with shield and helmet overlaid with gold, and red silken -kirtle, stood on the ship’s prow, a great dragon’s head ornamented so -that it seemed of gold, and when it gleamed far over the sea as the sun -shone upon it, fear and terror were shot into men’s hearts. “Lay the -big ship more in front. My place in this warlike host is not at the -back of all my men,” he called. “I had the Serpent built of greater -length than other ships that she might stretch the more boldly beyond -them in the battle.” The conflict of heroes raged long. As his enemies -poured over the deck King Olaf, blood falling over his face and arm -from under helmet and mail-sleeve, vanished, no man knew how, in the -waters. The Long Serpent, sinking in the sea, was of no use to its -conquerors. His queen was brought from under the deck weeping bitterly -and so sore wounded with grief that she could neither eat nor drink, -and died in nine days. Throughout the battle the dog Wigi lay without -stirring before the castle of the Short Serpent; it carried him home -along with Einar Thambaskelf, the youth of eighteen, hardest shooter -of his time, who stood by the King in the Long Serpent, who when his -own bow was broken stretched the King’s beyond the arrow head and flung -it away (“Too weak, too weak, the great King’s bow”), who had sprung -after the King into the water, and for his courage was given freedom by -the victors. As they touched land Einar “before going on shore, went -to the dog as he lay there, and said, ‘We’ve no master now, Wigi!’ At -these words the dog sprang up growling, and with a loud yell, as if -seized by anguish of heart, he ran on shore with Einar. There he went -and lay down on the top of a mound, and would take no food from anyone, -though he drove away other dogs, beasts and birds from what was brought -to him. From his eyes, tears coursed one another down his nose, and -thus bewailing the loss of his liege-lord, he lay till he died.” From -that day grief and sorrow lay on Einar. And men remembered the prophecy -of the blind yeoman of Moster that in one voyage Norway should lose -its four most noble things--the king, whose like had never been seen, -the queen, best for sense and goodness that ever came into Norway, the -greatest ship ever built in Norway, and the Irish dog, wiser and more -clever than any other dog in the land. - -[Illustration: IRISH TRADE ROUTES] - -In Ireland the power of the Scandinavians was shown in the foundation -of two kingdoms, along the two main lines of sea traffic--Dublin on -the eastern sea, and Limerick on the Atlantic. The Norwegian kingdom -on the Liffey had its centre in the mound raised by the river-side -for its Thing or Moot, near where the Dublin Parliament House rose -nine hundred years later. The kingdom stretched over a narrow strip of -shore, the memory of which was preserved for a thousand years, till -a generation ago, in the jurisdiction of the Dublin Corporation over -a long line of coast from the river Delvin below Drogheda to Arklow. -Four fiords--Strangford and Carlingford to the north, and Wexford and -Waterford to the south--lay outside the actual kingdom of Dublin, but -were closely connected with it. Waterford kings were at times of the -same family as the Dublin kings, and in the ninth and tenth centuries -Waterford was sometimes independent and sometimes united to Dublin. - -Dublin commanded a double line of commerce--from Scandinavia to Gaul, -and by York to Novgorod and the Eastway. The kingdom was in close -connection with the Danish kingdom of Northumbria, with its capital at -York. For Danish Northumbria, opening on the North Sea by the Humber, -formed the common meeting ground, the link which united the Northmen -of Scandinavia and the Northmen of Ireland. A mighty confederation -grew up. Members of the same house were kings in Dublin, in Man, and -in York. Their descendants were among the chief settlers in Iceland. -The Dublin kings married into the chief houses of Ireland, Scotland, -and the Hebrides. The sea was the common highway which bound the powers -together, and the sea was held by fleets of swift long-ships with from -ninety to a hundred and fifty rowers or fighting men on board. The -Irish Channel swarmed with ships of the Dublin kingdom. It became the -mart of the Scandinavian traders, of Icelandic sailors, and men of -Norway, and merchant princes landing from their cruise to sell their -merchandise or their plunder. “You must this summer make a trading -voyage,” said Earl Hakon to his friend Thori Clack, “as is customary -now with many, and go to Dublin in Ireland.” Far-travelled traders -carried from Dublin and York, deep into the inland of Russia, English -coins and weapons and ornaments such as were used in Great Britain and -Ireland. - -“Limerick of the swift ships,” looking out to the Atlantic and the -Gaulish sea, was a rival even to Dublin. The Norwegians first fortified -the town by an earthen or wooden fence, but presently by a wall of -stone, “Limerick of the rivetted stones.” Behind it lay a number of -Norse settlements scattered over Limerick, Kerry, and Tipperary. The -first settlers were from the Hebrides where Irishmen and Norse and -Danes mingled as one people, interchanging names and mingling speech so -that the Norse used Gaelic words for goblets for which they drank their -wine, and the oats for their bread. The name _Maccus_, a later form of -Magnus, was in the tenth century only used by the reigning families -of Limerick, the Hebrides, and the Isle of Man. United by kinship and -by trade, the lords of the Isles and the lords of Limerick constantly -aided one another, and made joint expeditions. Once more the Gaulish -trade was revived, and vessels sailed out from the Shannon to fetch -wine and silks from the harbours of the Loire and the Garonne. From -every bay and river-mouth between Waterford and Lough Foyle streams of -commerce poured into the main current of the Atlantic trade. After a -brief interruption in fact Ireland was once more in the ninth and tenth -century in the full current of European life, and that in a double way. -The lines of merchant vessels carried her trade, while the stream of -her professors and scholars and missionaries brought her fame to every -court in Europe. - -King Ælfred has left his record of the three Irishmen who came “in a -boat without oars from Hibernia, whence they had stolen away because -for the love of God they would be on pilgrimage, they recked not where. -The boat in which they fared was wrought of three hides and a half, -and they took with them enough meat for seven nights.” On the seventh -day they drifted ashore at Cornwall, and were taken on to Ælfred whose -captives they had thus become. Perhaps from them that great-hearted and -far-sighted English king learned to honour the Irish. He sent gifts to -monasteries in Ireland. He noted in his Chronicle the death of Suibhne, -anchorite of Clonmacnois, “the most learned teacher among the Scots,” -said Ælfred. - -From this story some may have supposed that the “primitive” Irishmen -had not yet got beyond the rude fishing-boats of savage life. But we -have here in fact only an instance of the strange contrasts which make -Irish history so full of wonder, so rich in human interest. In the -midst of a world of furious trade and war, Irish poets and mystics, -obedient to the ancient message of their masters, still went down to -the sea-brink abiding there “the revelation of knowledge.” In the vast -solitude of sea and sky beyond which, in which, waited the revelation, -the seen and the unseen were confounded and limits of space and time -fell away in infinity. The everlasting gates were there, the way of the -soul’s escape from imprisonment in shadows, the opening of the Eternal -Reality. Abandoning will and fear, they cast themselves on Nature and -the God immanent in Nature, and summoned by the silent call went out in -faith, “they recked not where.” - -Thus in Ireland old worlds were ever intermixed with new. Pilgrims cast -themselves on the sea in curraghs, and drifted to the Faroes and to -Iceland carrying with them the power of piety and learning. But there -were also Irish traders with business minds. They, like the French, -learned from the Scandinavians to build ships, and like the French, -used Norse words for their new sea-faring vessels, “brown-planked” -warships, and merchant ships, ships large and small, and boats; and -for the planks and sides, bottom-boards, row-benches, taff-rail, -gunwale, the creaking, of the row-bench, the steersman. They learned -too from the Scandinavians their method of raising a navy by dividing -the country into districts, each of which had to equip and man so many -ships which were to assemble at the summons to arms into the united war -fleet--the levy and the fleet both called by Norse words. Sagas of the -Danish time tell of “the fleet of the men of Munster,” of “Munster of -the swift ships,” six or seven score of them ready to sail to Dundalk -or to the Mull of Cantyre at the call of the king of Cashel. - -The Irish had also their fleets of merchant ships. An old poem of about -900 A.D. gives a description of the dwellers on the coast from Carn or -Mizen Head to Cork (the Irish clan of the O’Mahoneys chief among them)-- - - “High in beauty, - Whose resolve is quiet prosperity.” - -a description which has been generally considered quite unsuited to the -Irish and more naturally reserved for Englishmen. The merchant princes -won for their province the name of “Munster of the great riches.” But -the signs of foreign trade, chains and massive links of silver, and -brooches of Scandinavia and the eastern world, are found all over -Ireland--Belfast, Navan, Monaghan, Limerick, Galway, Cavan, King’s and -Queen’s Counties--the patterns wholly unlike Irish work. There were -enamelled glass beads, and silks and satins and stores of silver, -oriental goods from the Caspian and East Mediterranean, which had been -carried across Russia to Swedish and Danish lands and so to Ireland. - -“What is best for a king?” asked an Irish poet of the tenth century. - - “Fish in river-mouths. - Earth fruitful. - Inviting barks into harbour - Importing treasures from over-sea. - - Silken raiment. - - Abundance of wine and mead. - - - Let him foster every science.” - -Thus it was that the Irish wrested some advantage out of the Danish -wars. They profited by the material skill and knowledge of the -invaders. They were willing to absorb the foreigners, to marry with -them, and even at times to share their wars. They learned from them -to build ships, organise naval forces, advance in trade, and live in -towns; they used Scandinavian words for the parts of a ship and the -streets of a town. The Irish gave proof of a real national vigour. In -outward and material civilization they accepted modern Norse methods, -just as in our days the Japanese accepted modern Western inventions. -But in what the Germans call Culture--in the ordering of society and -law, of life and thought, the Irish like the Japanese never for a -moment abandoned their national loyalty to their own country. During -two centuries of Danish wars they did not loosen hold of their old -civilization. “Concealing ancient lore, to hold any new thing fair,” -they said face to face with the new Scandinavian system, “this is the -way of folly.” They maintained their schools, their art and literature. -They preserved their church. Writers of the ninth century describe the -duty of an Irish king: he had to journey over the land and bring each -chief under law: “let him enslave criminals”: “let him perfect the -proper due of every man of whatever is his on sea or land.” On their -side the tribes were to have for their protection not only “a lawful -lord,” but “a meeting of nobles”; “frequent assemblies”; “an assembly -according to rules”; “a lawful synod.” We read of yet larger Assemblies -for the whole country “to make concord between the men of Ireland.” If -the chief places of the people were captured, they went out into the -bog-lands to elect their kings according to their law. Thus when Cashel -was held by the Danes the seventeen tribes of Munster gathered in a -marshy glen, where the nobles sat in assembly on a mound, and decided -to choose one Cennedig as king. But the queen, Cellachan’s mother, -appeared before them, and in a speech and a lay which she made declared -the right of Cellachan. And when the champions of Munster heard these -great words and the speech of the woman they rose up to make Cellachan -king, “and gave thanks to the true magnificent God for having found him -... and put their hands in his hand, and placed the royal diadem round -his head, and their spirits were raised at the grand sight of him.” - -Under the power of this national feeling the Irish learned from the -Danes not only the new trade, but they learned also the new sea -warfare, and understood their lesson so well that they were soon -able to drive back the armies and fleets of the Danes, and to become -themselves the leaders of Danish and Norse troops in war. It was -about 950 A.D. that the Irish won their first famous naval victory. -Cellachan, king of Cashel, had been taken prisoner by the Norse, and -was carried to Sitric’s ship at Dundalk. An army was sent from Munster -across Ireland to rescue him. They demanded to have back their king. -“Give honour to Cellachan in the presence of the men of Munster!” -commanded Sitric in his wrath. “Let him even be bound to the mast! For -he shall not be without pain in honour of them!” “I give you my word,” -said Cellachan, as he was lifted up, “that it is a greater sorrow to me -not to be able to protect Cashel for you, than to be in great torture.” -“It is a place of watching where I am,” he cried, high lifted above -them all. “I see what your champions do not see, since I am at the -mast of the ship.” “Are these your ships that are coming now?” said he. -For on the far horizon rose the masts of his fleet of Munster sailing -into Dundalk harbour, six score of them, the full muster of the ships -gathered from every sea port between Cork and Galway, from the regions -of Bandon and Kinsale, from the land of the O’Driscolls who held the -coast from Bandon across Clear harbour to Crookhaven and the river of -Kenmare, from the Dingle peninsula, from “Kerry of the rushes” on the -Shannon shore, from western Clare, and from Corcomroe and Burren. When -the Irish captains looked on their king bound and fettered to the mast, -their aspect became troubled, their colour changed, and their lips -grew pale. From his place of agony Cellachan watched the onset of his -sailors, and heard the rattle of swords and javelins filling the air, -like the sound that arises from the seashore full of stones trodden by -herds of cattle and racing horses. He saw the Irish fling tough ropes -of hemp over the long prows of the Norse ships to hold them fast, -while the Norsemen threw stout chains of blue iron. He saw his people, -defended only by their “strong enclosures of linen cloth to protect -bodies and necks and noble heads,” as they dashed themselves into -the Norse ships among the mail-clad warriors; he watched the heroic -Failbe springing on the deck of Sitric’s battle-ship, and with a high -and deer-like leap mount on the mast, his right-hand sword swinging -against the crowding enemy, while with the sword in his mighty left -hand he cut the ropes that bound king Cellachan. In the moment of his -king’s salvation Failbe fell dead. As the Norsemen struck off his head -and set it upon the prow of the ship, Failbe’s foster-brother, mad for -revenge, with an eager falcon-like leap sprang into the warship, and -since no weapon of his could pierce the armour of the Norse king, he -fixed his white hands in the bosom of Sitric’s coat of mail and dragged -him down into the water, so that they together reached the gravel and -the sand of the sea and rested there. After six hours’ battle the -remnant of the Scandinavian fleet put out to sea, and, says the old -saga, they carried neither King nor Chieftain with them. - -After that battle came other triumphs; the fleet of the kings of Ailech -that carried off plunder and booty from the Hebrides: Brian Boru’s -expedition of the Norsemen of Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, and of the -men of Munster, and of almost all of the men of Erin such of them as -were fit to go to sea, and they levied tribute from Saxons and Britons -as far as the Clyde and Argyle. The spirit of independence rose high, -and victorious warriors established again the rule of the Irish in -their own land. - -But the Danes had no mind to let Ireland and her harbours and her sea -routes fall out of their hands. The great conflict of the two peoples -came about sixty years after the victory of Cellachan. - -The Danes had now held command of the sea for two hundred years. About -1000 A.D., in the glory of success, their kings, like later monarchs in -Europe, began to think of their “Imperial Destiny.” It seemed time to -perfect the whole business and round off the borders of their State. -So Swein Forkbeard of Denmark proposed to create a Scandinavian Empire -which should extend from the Slavic shores of the Baltic to the rim of -the Atlantic, with the North Sea as a lake of this wide dominion. Swein -overran England, and his son Cnut ruled from the Baltic to the Irish -Channel, lord of Denmark, Norway, England, and the Danes of Dublin -(for he minted coins even there), with London as the chief city of -the new Danish Empire. The imperial plan was not yet complete. Danish -rule was to extend to the outermost land on the Atlantic. But Ireland -blocked the way. The Ireland of King Brian Boru--of men who lived (as -they said) “on the ridge of the world,” men bred in the free air of the -plains and the mountains and the sea--left the Scandinavian Empire with -a ragged edge on the line of the Atlantic commerce. In the spring of -1014 the Danish army gathered in the Bay of Dublin to straighten out -the boundaries of the Empire on the western Ocean. There met a mighty -host under the “Black Raven” of the pagans, woven with heathen spells; -“when the wind blew out the banner it was as though the Raven flapped -his wings for flight.” In that Imperial army there were warriors “from -all the west of Europe,” from Iceland, the Orkneys, the Baltic Islands, -from Norway a thousand men in ringed armour, from Northumbria two -thousand pagans, “not a villain of them who had not polished armour of -iron or brass encasing their bodies from head to foot.” On the night -before the battle Woden himself, the old god of war, rode up through -the dusk men said, on a dapple-grey horse, halbert in hand, to take -counsel with his champions. - -But Woden’s last fight was come. The full tide of the morning carried -the pagan host over the level sands to the landing at Clontarf. The -army of King Brian Boru lay before them. From sunrise to sunset on Good -Friday that desperate battle raged, the hair of the warriors flying in -the wind, says the old chronicler, as thick as the sheaves floating -in a field of oats. The Scandinavian scheme of a Northern Empire was -shattered on that day, when with the evening flood-tide the remnant -of the Danish host put out to sea. The work which had been begun by -the fleet of Cellachan in Dundalk harbour sixty-four years before, was -completed by Brian Boru where the Liffey opens into the Bay of Dublin. -For a hundred, and fifty years to come Ireland kept its independence. -England was once again, as in the time of the Roman dominion, made part -of a continental empire. Ireland, as in the days of Rome, still lay -outside the new imperial system. - -Clontarf marked the passing of an old age, the beginning of a new. We -may see the advent of the new men in the names of adventurers that -landed with the Danes on that low shore at Clontarf--the first great -drops of the coming storm. There were lords from Normandy, Eoghan Barun -or John the Baron, and Richard, with another, perhaps Robert of Melun. -There was Goistilin Gall, a Frenchman from Gaul. There was somewhere -about that time Walter the Englishman, a leader of mercenaries -from England. In such names we see the heralds of the approaching -change. A revolution in the fortunes of the world had in fact opened. -Scandinavian pre-eminence on the sea was even now passing away, as that -of the Frisians had passed away two hundred years before. New lords of -commerce seized the traffic of sea and land when the Normans, “citizens -of the world,” carried their arms and their cunning from the Moray -Firth to the Straits of Messina, from the Seine to the Euphrates. The -Teutonic peoples that now girded the North Sea--Normans, Germans of -the Hanseatic League, English--were to supersede Danes and Norwegians. -Trade moreover had once more spread over the high roads of Europe, as -in the days of the Roman Empire, and the peoples of the south, Italians -and Gauls, had taken up again their ancient commerce. - -In the new commerce as in the old Ireland was to take her full part. -The island lay in the moving life that stirred the great seas, washed -by that whirlpool of activity. From every shore she saw the sails of -busy traffickers bearing the commerce of the known world, and carrying -too its thought and art. The people had not lost their wit. They shared -in the enterprise and the profit of the new commerce. The great routes -were open, from Scandinavia to Gaul, and down the Irish Channel. The -Danish traffic across England was not forgotten, and as the trade of -the German coasts developed, busier lines of commerce were opened from -the Irish harbours of the south eastward to the North Sea and the -Baltic. - -It is an unfinished tale I tell. But it may remind us of one gift of -Nature to Ireland--the freedom of Europe by the sea. We have seen the -dim figures of the flint-men, the Bronze-men, the first Gaels, reaching -out hands to Scandinavia and to the Mediterranean lands. We have seen -Ireland on the borders of the Roman Empire, free and unconquered, -busy in trade, busier still in learning, carrying across the Gaulish -Sea treasures of classical knowledge. Again Ireland appeared when the -barbarians had spread over Europe, still unconquered, sending back -across the Ocean the learning she had stored up, the free distributor -on the Continent of the classics and science and Christian teaching. We -have seen the island again on the fringe of the Scandinavian Empire, -even now unconquered, and still in the mid-stream of European traffic. -When a new revolution came, and trade swelled under the Normans, every -Irish port was full. Irishmen sailed every sea. Their fabrics were -sold in every country as far as Russia and Naples. Through the long -centuries they never lost the habit of the sea and of Europe. In the -middle ages Spanish coin was almost the chief currency in Ireland, so -great was the Irish trade with Spain; and in the eighteenth century -the country was still full of Spanish, Portuguese, and French money -in daily use--the moydore, the doubloon, the pistole, the Louis d’or, -the new Portuguese gold coin. So much so that in the Peninsular war -Ireland was ransacked for foreign coins to send to the army in Spain -and Portugal. - -But that story is over. Ireland at last was swept within the orbit -of an Empire--not as a free member of a federation, but in full -subjection, with every advantage that complete military and police -control could afford. Natural geography gave place to political -geography, and the way of the Empire ruled out the way of the sea. “I -should not presume,” wrote Richard Cox, Esquire, Recorder of Kinsale, -in dedicating to their Majesties William and Mary a History of Ireland -from the Conquest thereof, which he printed at St. Paul’s Churchyard -in 1689. “I should not presume to lay this treatise at your Royal -feet, but that it concerns a noble Kingdom, which is one of the most -considerable branches of your mighty Empire. - -“It is of great Advantage to it, that it is a Subordinate Kingdom of -the Crown of _England_; for it is from that Royal Fountain that the -Streams of Justice, Peace, Civility, Riches and all other Improvements -have been derived to it; so that the Irish are (as Campion says) -beholding to God for being conquered. - -“And yet Ireland has been so blind in this Great Point of its true -Interest, that the Natives have managed almost a continual war with -the English ever since the first Conquest thereof; so that it has cost -your Royal Predecessors an unspeakable mass of Blood and Treasure to -preserve it in true Obedience. - -“But no cost can be too great where the Prize is of such value; and -whoever considers the Situation, Ports, Plenty, and other Advantages -of Ireland will confess, that it must be retained at what rate soever; -because if it should come into an Enemy’s Hands, England would find it -impossible to _flourish_; and perhaps difficult to _subsist_ without it. - -“To demonstrate this assertion, it is enough to say that Ireland lies -in the _Line of Trade_, and that all the English vessels that sail to -the _East_, _West_ and _South_, must, as it were, run the _gauntlet_ -between the Harbours of Brest and Baltimore: and I might add that the -Irish Wool, being transported, would soon ruine the English clothing -Manufacture. - -“Hence it is that all Your Majesties Predecessors have kept close to -this Fundamental Maxim, of retaining Ireland inseperably united to the -Crown of England.” - -The house of Hanover ended what the Tudors had begun. Ireland became an -island beyond an island. But the great deep still gives to the country -an abiding unity. In ancient days the Irish had a noble figure by which -they proclaimed the oneness of the land within its Ocean bounds. The -three waves of Erin they said, smote upon the shore with a foreboding -roar when danger threatened the island. One wave called to Munster at -an inlet of Cork; two of them sounded in Ulster, at the mouth of the -Bann and in the bay of Dundrum. The Ocean bore the same fate to Munster -and to Ulster. And in fact so long as the sea surrounds this island, so -long all its peoples must be linked in a common fortune. The deep that -encompasses Ireland has made this country one, gathering together into -the Irish family all races that have entered within its circuit. By the -might of that encircling Ocean the men of Ireland are bound together in -one inheritance, unchanging amid ceaseless change. - - - - -CHAPTER III - -A GREAT IRISH LADY - - -WE are often told that the civilization of a people is marked by the -place of its women: a rule by which the Irish stand high. In the -fifteenth century, as at all times, their annals record many noble -ladies “distinguished for knowledge, hospitality, good sense and -piety”; “humane and charitable”; “a nurse to all guests and strangers, -and to all the learned men in Ireland.” Of these Margaret, daughter -of O’Carroll lord of Ely, wife of Calvagh O’Connor Faly lord of -Offaly (lands which lie across the boundaries of the modern King’s -and Queen’s Counties and Kildare), was the most illustrious. She came -of a learned race. The O’Carrolls, in the course of little more than -a century (1253-1373), held the See of Cashel for sixty years; and -O’Carroll had been Archbishop of Tuam; and Margaret’s father, lord -of Ely, was “the general patron of all the learned men of Ireland.” -“This Teige was deservedly a man of greate accompt and fame with the -professors of Poetrye and Musicke of Ireland and Scotland, for his -liberality extended towards them, and every of them in generalle.” So -highly was he esteemed among the chiefs that he was forbidden by the -Irish captains of east Munster to carry out his wish of resigning his -lordship of Ely (1396). He made a pilgrimage, however, that year to -the threshold of the apostles, with his companions O’Brien, Gerald, -and Thomas Calvagh MacMurchadh of the royal race of Leinster; and -coming back through England visited Richard II. at Westminster, who -received him graciously, and being then about to cross to Calais for -his marriage with Isabella of France, and the conclusion of a treaty of -peace with the French king, invited O’Carroll to accompany him in his -retinue. Ten years later he was slain by the English, the boy-prince -Thomas of Lancaster, son of Henry IV., being then Viceroy in Ireland, -and under him the Lord Deputy Scrope. The English army fell on him -unawares at Callan; for whose death indeed the sun stood still, said -their account, to light the Deputy and the fierce Prior of Kilmainham -in the evening surprise and the six miles’ ride of slaughter, where -eight hundred, or some said three thousand, of his people fell. Some -time after the massacre Margaret married the most successful leader in -his day of the Irish, Calvagh O’Connor Faly, son of Murchadh, the “Lord -of Offaly, of the cattle-abounding land,” descended from Conchobar of -the race of Cathair Mór, King of Leinster. Brought up amid the perils -and sorrows of constant war, her fortunes were now transferred to a -country where the conflict with the English knew no interlude. To -understand her story it is necessary to show very briefly the situation -of Offaly. - -The land of the O’Connors adjoined that of the O’Carrolls under the -Slieve Bloom mountains. The old Offaly, from Sliabh-Bladhma, now Slieve -Bloom, to the hill of Alenn, and from Sliabh-Cualann in Wicklow to the -Great Heath, is a plain as level as a tranquil sea. On its western -side a long low ridge north of Slieve Bloom had given shelter to the -two St. Sinchealls; a church had risen by the holy well; and the -fair-town of Killeigh on “the field of the long ridge,” profiting by -the traffic from the Shannon to the Liffey. There Murchadh O’Connor -founded for the Franciscans a monastery (1393) said to be the third in -size and importance of the monasteries of Ireland, the burial place -of his race. In what was once the Abbey churchyard, tombstones of the -O’Doynes, deeply sculptured with their armorial bearings, recall a -great family of Offaly. On the eastern side of Offaly Norman settlers -had pushed back the boundary from the Dublin hills to Rathangan, where -a strong fort and church stood at the head of the plain through which -the Barrow and the Slaney flowed south to Waterford and Wexford; and -on that important trade route Thomas O’Connor Faly had founded a -Franciscan monastery (1302), under the walls of Hugh de Lacy’s fort -at Castledermot. To the north lay Meath--“cemetery of the valourous -Gael”--whose colonists had incessant war with Offaly. It was a land -over which the earliest Norman settlers had swept from de Lacy’s fort -of Castledermot to that of Durrow; a land which was again the chief -centre of struggle when the Irish attack drove the English power back -to the plains of Meath, and which in the renewed wars of the English -under the Tudors became the scene of ferocious reprisals and calculated -obliteration of its race and name. From Calvagh’s first battle all his -fighting was on the plains of Meath. Once he made a raid in the land -of the O’Mores; and when his sons grew up they had disputes with Irish -neighbours. But the only war of Calvagh from 1385 to 1458 was a war -against the English. - -[Illustration: LADY CHAPEL OPENING FROM NORTH SIDE OF THE FRANCISCAN -ABBEY, CASTLEDERMOT.] - -The family were bitter Irreconcilables; since the days of an older -Calvagh, the “Great Rebel,” who a hundred years before (1307), had been -invited with thirty of the Offaly chiefs to dine at Castle-Carberry on -Trinity Sunday with “the treacherous baron,” Sir Pierce Bermingham, -the “Hunter of the Irish”; and were deceitfully murdered, the Great -Rebel and all, as they rose from table. This new Calvagh fought the -invaders for over sixty years, from youth to old age, with scarcely a -pause--a man of humour as well as courage. Once when the English troops -with their Irish followers had ridden to the very borders of Killeigh -(1406)--the religious and business centre of Offaly--Calvagh with half -a dozen horsemen came upon a body of plundering kerns, one carrying -off on his back a great cauldron which Calvagh had lent his friend -MacMaoilcorra for brewing beer. “There is your caldron with the kerns,” -cried MacMaoilcorra helplessly, “take it and discharge me of my loan.” -“I accept of it where it is,” mocked Calvagh, and flung “the shot of a -stone” which hit the cauldron straight, at the great noise and report -whereof the plunderers cast away their spoil and fled in consternation. -In the great rout of the English that day the Irish won back from them -the chiefest relic of Connacht, the cap or mitre of S. Patrick stolen -from Elphin. - -In Calvagh’s days the Irish revival had pushed back the rule of Dublin -Castle to a strip of coast land some twenty miles by thirty. There -flew a tale of panic (1385) that the Irish “were confederate with -Spain,” and that “at this next season, as is likely, there will be -made a conquest of the greater part of the land.” Revenue was falling, -English colonists were flying across the water, and prayers for help -were sent over to the English king. The king’s favourite De Vere, -appointed Marquis of Dublin and Duke of Ireland (1386), got no farther -than Wales, and English pretentions over the island under a confused -series of shifting rulers became the mock of Europe. Stung by the -taunt that he who desired to be made head of the Holy Roman Empire -could not even subdue Ireland, Richard II. made his fantastic journey -across the Irish Channel (1394), carrying a wardrobe of untold cost -in which one jewelled coat alone was worth thirty thousand marks, and -with a following of four thousand squires and thirty thousand archers, -a greater army, some said, than Edward III. commanded at Crecy. Thus -Calvagh had the rare opportunity of seeing the arrival in Ireland of -the only king of England who landed there in the five hundred years -between the coming of Henry II. and John (1171 and 1210), and that of -James II. (1689)--all four driven over by personal necessities, not -by any concern whatever for the Irish people or their well-being. The -English troops were flung back from the O’Connor land and from Ely of -the O’Carrolls, with many men slain and many horses captured, and fresh -supplies were sent for from England. But Richard, unlike any other -king that visited Ireland, was moved by the spirit of the country. The -temper he had shown thirteen years before in the Peasant Revolt--“I -am your King and Lord, good people; what will ye?”--manifested itself -again amid the troubles of his Irish lordship. To the Irish people -he showed the first signs of sympathy and respect. Laying aside the -hostile banners of England, he substituted the golden cross and silver -birds of his patron saint, Edward the Confessor--the only King of -England reported to have any connection with an Irish house, if as some -historians say (on what evidence I do not know) his Queen’s sister -Driella was wife of O’Brien, king of Munster. “To Us and our Council,” -he wrote to England, “it appears that the Irish rebels have rebelled -in consequence of the injustice and grievances practised towards them, -for which they have been afforded no redress.” Peace was made with “his -rebel MacMorrough”; and treaties signed with the chiefs, seventy-five -of them, were sent to England in two hampers, while Richard returned to -Westminster leaving Roger Mortimer, heir to the throne, as Viceroy. The -next year, as we have seen, he received O’Carroll of Ely at his palace -with especial honour. - -With his disappearance the policy of peace and reform came to an end. -The meaning of Mortimer’s rule was clear to the Irish. He claimed by -inheritance of Lionel Duke of Clarence, son of Edward III., to be Earl -of Ulster, Lord of Connacht, Trim, Leix, and Ossory, thus threatening -the Ulster chiefs with a war of conquest, and the lord of Offaly and -the middle Irish with the complete encircling of their lands, their -isolation and destruction. Edmund Mortimer, son-in-law of Clarence, had -already appeared as Viceroy (1380-1381), carrying with him the sword -adorned with gold “which had belonged to the good king Edward” the -Confessor, and his great bed of black satin embroidered with the arms -of de Mortimer and Ulster: he sent much spoil and cattle to England, -and died in the midst of his warfare. His son Roger was appointed -Viceroy (1382-1383) a boy of ten; and orders were sent to arrest all -those who by land or water should send or sell horses, salt, armour, -iron, gold, silver, corn, or other provisions, to any of the Irish. -Once more this same Roger Mortimer was Viceroy in 1395, riding to war -for his inheritance in the dress and arms of an Irish chief. Calvagh -captured the earl of Kildare who was held to ransom by his father; and -the Carlow men routed and slew the young Mortimer himself (1398). On -which Richard sent over his half-brother, the Duke of Surrey (1398), -and already forgetful of his Irish compacts of three years before, -granted his favourite lands which by treaty belonged to MacMurchadh. -When war naturally followed the king proposed to subdue the Irish by a -new visit (1399), this time forsaking the tradition of the Confessor -for that of Henry II., and bearing the royal regalia of England and -the miraculous consecrated oil of St. Thomas of Canterbury used at -coronations. Chanting a last collect with the canons of St. George -he set sail for Waterford, bringing with him the Duke of Lancaster -(afterwards Henry V.) a boy of twelve years, to take his first lesson -in war. The army was set to fell MacMurchadh’s woods; a space was -cleared, villages and houses set on fire, and in that scene Richard -made the young Henry knight, even while the Duke of Lancaster was -landing in Yorkshire to seize the English crown. Before July closed -the betrayed king had hurried back to England, there to meet his death -of horror. - -So ended the royal dream of chivalry in Ireland, as it had closed -before in England. Whatever imaginative feeling for the Irish, whatever -memories of their old tradition or visions of a reconciliation of the -two civilizations, had stirred Richard II., these disappeared under the -Lancastrian kings. Stern conquest was their creed, as soon as their -wars in England, Wales, Scotland, and France would allow it. - -The comings and goings of English governors in Ireland during the -French wars read like the wanderings of the Wiking raiders, now on the -Irish side of the sea, now on the French, as the chances of campaign -might open the best prospects of adventure, plunder and ransom. -Viceroys, deputies, lords justices, of a summer or two, each with his -twelve months’ policy of extortion, slaughter, and vain treaties, -headed brief marches and skirmishes, campaigned on the plan that there -was never a battle to be opened on a Monday or after noonday, hunted -or purchased prisoners not for their defeat but for their ransom, and -in succession sailed away for the better ventures of the French war. -“The most cause of destruction,” the English colonists declared to the -king in 1435, arose because “during thirty years past the Lieutenants -and other Governors did not come here but for a sudden journey or -a hosting.” As their power shrank their salaries and armies were -increased. Governors no longer pretended to control the war, but -returning to the lawless practice of the first adventurers, ordered any -man who could to go out and fight however and wherever he pleased; and -the lords about Dublin, freed from all restraints of law, kept troops -of horse and foot against “Irish enemies,” “English rebels,” and their -own personal foes. - -The Lieutenant sent by Henry IV. to rule Ireland (1401) was his son -Thomas of Lancaster twelve years old; and the first in a series of -changing deputies Sir Stephen Scrope, an old soldier trained in French -and Flemish wars, and as ready to serve Henry as Richard. He it was -who slew O’Carroll, Richard’s friend; and against him Murchadh and -Calvagh O’Connor warred victoriously in Meath (1406, 1408). The prior -of Kilmainham being deputy (who had also been on that ride of death -when the sun stood still), the O’Connors captured the sheriff of Meath -(1411) and took a great price for his ransom. The three months’ rule -of Sir John Stanley (1413) first governor of Henry V. was ended by his -death after the curse of the chief bard Niall O’Higgin whom he had -plundered at Usnach--“the second poetical miracle” of this famous bard. -In vain his successor Archbishop Cranley, whose eighty years alone -held him back from battle, gathered his clergy at Castledermot to pray -for English victory: O’Connor and MacGeoghagan routed the English, and -held to ransom prisoners for two thousand six hundred marks besides -other fines (1414). Sir John Talbot Lord Furnival followed (1414), -hovering between Ireland, England, and France--to the English “an -ancient fox and politique captain,” to the French “a very scourge -and daily terror,” to the Irish “a son of curses for his venom and a -devil for his evil.” He called out the troops to active war, slew many -rebels, and gave protection to neither saint nor sanctuary; it was his -policy to “oblige one Irish enemy to serve upon the other,” by forcing -defeated chiefs to swear that they would fight under him against their -countrymen. Still the O’Connors raided Meath for arms, horses, and -prisoners (1417). Calvagh was once treacherously captured by a Meath -lord, from whom Talbot in hope of a ransom purchased him; but the -prisoner escaped that same night. To Talbot succeeded (1420) James the -White Earl of Ormond, back from the French wars. Precepts drawn up to -guide his conduct declared that as “the Irish are false by kind, it -were expedient and a charity to execute upon them wilful and malicious -transgressors the king’s laws somewhat sharply.” He too had been at the -death of O’Carroll, and once again, it was said, the sun miraculously -stood still for three hours, and no pit or bog annoyed horse or man on -his part, while he slaughtered the Irish on “the red moor of Athy.” -Twice every week the clergy of Dublin went in solemn procession praying -for his good success against those disordered persons which now in -every quarter of Ireland had degenerated to their old trade of life, -and repined at the English. The colonists petitioned Henry V. that he -would induce the Pope to proclaim a holy crusade against the Irish, -“in perpetual destruction of those enemies.” It was in the bitterness -of this exasperated conflict that Murchadh O’Connor Faly won a last -victory (1421), before he laid down arms and entered his monastery of -Killeigh to die--“Murchadh of the defeats.” - -For thirty-seven years Calvagh now led his people’s fight against -“the English manner of government,” in other words, the destruction -of the Irish. He seized more lords and officers, won more wealth, and -recovered more Irish territory than any lord in Leinster. At this time -the Desmonds, out of favour under Lancastrian kings, had withdrawn to -Munster to build up their dominion in the south, while the Ormonds -and their cousins and rivals the Talbots fought for power. Passing -strangers appeared in Dublin Castle; but with occasional interruptions -the actual authority swung back, now to Ormond and his half-brother -the prior of Kilmainham, now to Talbot and his brother the Archbishop -of Dublin, till each family had held the chief control many times. -The Talbots stood for pure English rule, and excelled in severity -alike towards colonists and natives. They used for their wars and -their rewards Irish taxes, coyn and livery; but at Westminster they -represented Ormond’s iniquity in levying the like taxes, and his faint -and wavering sympathies for his countrymen, as treason of the darkest -hue; his favouring his Irish friends, keeping Irish soldiers for his -following, letting lands slip into Irish hands, making Irishmen knights -of the shire; with a few additions thrown in of his sloth, violence, -and corruption--“courses ruinous and destructive” to the English. In -the midst of this discord Calvagh seems to have leaned to Ormond. His -wife, apparently by a friendly arrangement, was given tribute from an -Ormond lordship in Kildare. He himself held Talbot’s cousin Thomas to -ransom in his prison at Killeigh: he took “blackrent” or tribute from -the English of Meath. - -Meanwhile both Ulster and Offaly were set aflame by the coming of a -new Mortimer Viceroy (1423) Edmund, son of Roger of the Irish dress. -When he landed with an English army O’Neill and O’Donnell had already -marched over Louth and Meath (1423), compelling the English to give -hostages and guarantees for their pledge that they would be under -tribute for ever. Edmund called O’Neill and some of the leaders to his -Trim Castle, and made arrangements with him; but they had scarcely left -when he died of plague (1424), and Talbot, then Lord Chief Justice, -pursued the chiefs and carried them prisoners to Dublin, demanding -hostages and ransom. Calvagh on his side raided Meath, where he seized -the Marshal of the English army, the Seneschal of the Viceroy’s manor, -and other squires. But it was now the turn of Ormond, who had lately -come to Ireland bringing a host of Saxons, and adding great strength -to the English wars; and Talbot made terms with Calvagh before the -appointment of the new viceroy. But the peace was brief. Calvagh -entered into alliance with the princes of Ulster. He married his -daughter Finola to O’Donnell, “harrasser and destroyer of the English.” -And when O’Neill with O’Donnell marched a great army to Mullingar -(1431), and on the Moat where O’Melaghlin had in old times ruled and -judged Leinster, gathered the chiefs to take his wages and acknowledge -him leader for the war, Calvagh joined his host in the ravaging of -Westmeath till the English paid a heavy price for the sparing of -their country. Later, when his son-in-law O’Donnell was captured and -imprisoned in Dublin Castle (1434), then sent to England (1435), and -finally to the Isle of Man (1439) to die there in prison, Calvagh -marched, year after year, through Meath to avenge his captivity. The -Justiciary or Deputy himself was taken prisoner by Calvagh’s son, and -kept some time till the English of Dublin ransomed him. In the feuds -of the barons he found allies. The son of MacFheorais, chief of the -Berminghams and heir of “the treacherous baron,” suffered “an abuse” -in the great court of Trim, the Governor’s castle. For as he entered -the court (1443) under the safeguard of Ormond, the son of Barnewell, -Treasurer of Meath, beat a _Caimin_--namely, a stroke of his finger on -the nose of Bermingham’s son. On which he stole out of the town, and -went towards O’Connor Faly, and they joined together, and it is hard -to know that ever was such abuse better revenged than the said Caimin. -They burned and preyed Meath and obtained their full demands--that -Calvagh should have his duties from the English during his life as -Lord of his territory, and that the Clan-Feorais should have all their -hostages freely restored; and not only that but they obtained in this -“war of Caimin” all conditions such as they demanded for holding -peaceable quiet with the English. Ever more formidable, Calvagh now -led his kerns to Moyclare beyond Maynooth and to Tara itself (1446). -Talbot, made Earl of Shrewsbury, was called back from the French wars. -He re-built Castle Carberry, the castle of the old massacre, to defend -Meath against Berminghams and O’Connors, caused Calvagh to make peace, -to ransom his son taken in the wars, and deliver many beeves for -the royal kitchen; and made a statute (1447) that English and Irish -should no more be confounded together by their dress, but that every -Englishman who did not shave in the English manner once at least in two -weeks, should be treated as an Irish enemy--a statute which survived -till the reign of Charles I. His last characteristic outrage was the -treacherous capture of Felim O’Reilly who had gone to Trim at his own -invitation, and the like deceitful seizing of the Savadges. Talbot -seems to have been distinguished for his violated pledges among the -crowd of English officials whose broken faith became a byword. “Thy -safe-guarding,” said the poet, “I confide to God; to Mary’s sweet and -only Son; that He may shelter thee from Anglo-word of Englishmen, and -from the gentiles’ act of violence.” The prisoners all died in Trim -Castle, disappointing the Viceroy of his ransom. After which Talbot -disappeared for the last time to France (1447), followed by the curses -of the Irish--“the learned say there came not from the time of Herod -anyone so wicked in evil deeds.” In his stead came Richard Plantagenet, -Duke of York, heir to the English crown, and to all the earldoms and -lordships of the Mortimers. - -No doubt the race of O’Connor Faly was a family of irreconcilables; -men fighting honourably to defend their land and people, each leader -of them in his turn strong to obtain “great rewards from the English -for making peace with them, as had been usual with his predecessors.” -They were the sort of people for whom Dublin Castle for a hundred years -past, and many hundred years to come, had but one name, “the Irish -enemy,” ever bitterly complaining of the “mere Irish, men that are -truly beastly and ignorant,” living under “the wicked and damnable law -called Brehon Law,” “which by reason ought not to be named a law, but -an evil custom.” - -There was a good deal however that Dublin Castle did not know or care -to know. In the midst of this desolating war the story of Margaret, -wife of O’Connor, gives us a glimpse into the life of the Irish clans -behind the fastnesses that screened them from English view. It might -seem that amid centuries of conflict, ever-present danger, preyings -and raidings, statutes to shut them out from learning, trade, or -advancement in their church, and torrents of slander to defile their -name, the Irish might in truth have fallen into the nomad barbarism -and the beastly ignorance of which they were accused by the English -from that time to this. In fact however the people, endowed with -an immense vitality, were busily occupied with commerce and with -learning. Irish princes were lively competitors with the English -merchants of the Pale. In all their territories the places of fairs -were thronged with dealers, English and Irish, who did business -together in peace and amity, while profits poured into Irish coffers. -English statutes forbade any Englishman to deal in an Irish market: -English merchants therefore put on Irish dress, rode on Irish saddles, -talked Irish, and went on trading as before. Towns and monasteries of -the colonists forced from the government charters allowing them to -traffic with Irish dealers. The O’Connors lay at the meeting point -of natural trade-routes, with their fair-town at Killeigh, and their -establishments at Rathangan and Castledermot; and Margaret was a patron -of commerce, as she was of learning and religion. “She was the only -woman,” the Annals tell us, “that has made the most of repairing the -highways and erecting bridges, churches, and Mass books, and of all -manner of things profitable to serve God and her soul, and while the -world stands her many gifts to the Irish and Scottish nations shall -never be numbered.” - -[Illustration: WINDOW OF LADY CHAPEL, FRANCISCAN ABBEY, CASTLEDERMOT. - -(From “Grose’s Antiquities,” 1792; destroyed 1799.)] - -She was a patron too of the schools of the learned, which under -the Irish revival had sprung into new and vigorous life, training -students in every corner of Ireland, and sending out scholars to all -the universities of Europe. “The company that read all books, they of -the church and of the poets both: such of these as shall be perfect -in knowledge, forsake not thou their intimacy ever”--this, according -to an Irish poet, was the high duty of chiefs, of the noble and -wealthy; and Margaret was faithful to the tradition of her people. Her -friendship for the learned, the royal magnificence of her bounty was -long remembered in Ireland. The year 1433 was a year of trouble. Ormond -ravaged the land of Ely and destroyed the fortresses of the O’Carrolls. -Margaret’s daughter Finola--“the most beautiful and stately, the -most renowned and illustrious woman of her time, her own mother only -excepted,” blessed with “the blessing of guests and strangers, of poets -and philosophers”--only saved Tirconail from the enemies of O’Neill -and of MacDonnell and his Scots by herself going, after the fashion -of the strong-hearted and independent women of Ireland, to meet them -at Inishowen, and there “made peace without leave from O’Donnell.” It -was a year terribly named in Irish tradition, “‘the summer of slight -acquaintance,’ because no one used to recognise friend or relative,” -for the greatness of the famine that lay on the land. Such was the -time of Margaret’s great benevolence. “It is she that twice in one -year proclaimed to and commonly invited (_i.e._, in the dark days -of the year, to wit, on the feast day of Da Sinchell [26 March] in -Killachy), all persons, both Irish and Scottish, or rather Albaines, -to two general feasts of bestowing both meat and moneys, with all -manner of gifts, whereunto gathered to receive gifts the matter of two -thousand and seven hundred persons, besides gamesters and poor men, -as it was recorded in a Roll to that purpose, and that accompt was -made thus, _ut vidimus_--viz., the chief _kins_ of each family of the -learned Irish was by Gilla-na-naemh MacÆgan’s hand, the chief Judge to -O’Connor, written in the Roll, and his adherents and kinsmen, so that -the aforesaid number of 2,700 was listed in that Roll with the Arts of -_Dan_, or poetry, Music, and Antiquity. And Maelin O’Maelconry, one of -the chief learned of Connacht, was the first written in that Roll, and -first paid and dieted, or set to supper, and those of his name after -him, and so forth every one as he was paid he was written in that Roll, -for fear of mistake, and set down to eat afterwards. And Margaret on -the garrots of the great church of Da Sinchell clad in cloth of gold, -her dearest friends about her, her clergy and Judges too. Calvagh -himself on horseback by the church’s outward side, to the end that all -things might be done orderly, and each one served successively. And -first of all she gave two chalices of gold as offerings that day on the -Altar to God Almighty, and she also caused to nurse or foster too [two] -young orphans. But so it was, we never saw nor heard neither the like -of that day nor comparable to its glory and solace. And she gave the -second inviting proclamation (to every one that came not that day) on -the feast day of the Assumption of our Blessed Lady Mary in harvest, at -or in the Rath-Imayn, and so we have been informed that that second day -in Rath-Imayn was nothing inferior to the first day.” - -We know something of the manner of these national festivals, for the -Irish were long practised in the organizing of general conventions, -and their poets have left us some curious details. One tells of a -company of the Tyrone poets gathered in 1577 at O’Neill’s house, where -the poets sat ranged along a hall hung with red on either side of the -chief, and standing up beside the host pledged him in ale quaffed from -golden goblets and beakers of horn; and having told their song or story -for a price, took their gifts of honour. Another describes a greater -company, such an assembly as that of Margaret, invited in 1351 to the -castle of William O’Kelly. - -“The chroniclers of comely Ireland, it is a gathering of a mighty host, -the company is in the town; where is the street of the chroniclers? - -“The fair, generous-hearted host have another spacious avenue of white -houses for the bardic companies and the jugglers. - - * * * * * - -“Such is the arrangement of them, ample roads between them; even as -letters in their lines. - -“Each thread of road, bare, smooth, straight, firm, is contained within -two threads of smooth, conical roofed houses. - -“The ridge of the bright-furrowed slope is a plain lined with houses, -behind the crowded plain is a fort, as it were a capital letter.” - -The castle itself was worthy of one born into the Irish inheritance, -of the great lineage of their race: far off it is recognised, the -star-like mass of stone, its outer smoothness like vellum--a castle -which was the standard of a mighty chieftain; bright is the stone -thereof, ruddy its timber. - -“Close is the joining of its timber and its lime-washed stone; there is -no gaping where they touch; the work is a triumph of art. - -“There is much artistic ironwork upon the shining timber: on the smooth -part of each brown oaken beam workmen are carving animal figures. - -“On the smooth wall of the warm mansion--amazing in its beauty--is the -track of a slender, pointed pen; light, fresh, narrow. - -“The bardic companies of pleasant-meadowed Fóla, and those of -Scotland--a distant journey--will be acquainted with one another after -arriving in William’s lofty castle. - -“Herein will come the seven grades who form the shape of genuine -poesy; the seven true orders of poets, their entrance is an omen of -expenditure. - -“Many coming to the son of Donnchadh from the north, no less from the -south, an assembly of scholars: a billeting from west and east, a -company seeking for cattle. - -“There will be jurists, of legal decisions; wizards, and good poets; -the authors of Ireland, those who compose the battle rolls, will be in -his dwelling. - -“The musicians of Ireland--vast the flock--the followers of every craft -in general, the flood of companies, side by side--the tryst of all is -to one house. - -“In preparation for those who come to the house there has been -built--it is just to boast of it--according to the desire of the master -of the place, a castle fit for apple-treed Emain. - -“There are sleeping booths for the company, wrought of woven branches, -on the bright surface of the pleasant hills. - -“The poets of the Irish land are prepared to seek O’Kelly. A mighty -company is approaching his house, an avenue of peaked hostels is in -readiness for them. - -“Hard by that--pleasant is the aspect--a separate street has been -appointed by William for the musicians, that they may be ready to -perform before him. - -“This lofty tower opposite to us is similar to the Tower of Breoghan, -from which the best of spears were cast; from which Ireland was -perceived from Spain. - -“By which the mighty progeny of Mil of Spain--a contentious -undertaking--contested the land with sharp spear points, so that they -became men of Ireland. - - * * * * * - - “From Greece to fair Spain, from Spain to Ireland, such the wanderings - of the mighty progeny of Mil, the host of the seasoned, finely wrought - weapons.” - -Such was the assembly, “the mound of grand convention,” to which -Margaret invited Irish scholars. In such national festivals the passion -of war was exchanged for a nobler pride of life. The chief recognised -his place in the wide commonwealth of the Gaelic people. Each one of -the company of scholars was reminded that whatever lord he served, -Ireland was his country and the fortunes of the race his care. And the -people themselves, sharing the festivities of those joyous assemblies, -and entertained by the best that Ireland could give of music and -literature, could still exult through their successive generations in -the kinship of the whole race, Irish and Scots. Irishmen to-day may -remember that the scholars gathered by Margaret’s munificence were -among those to whom we owe all that we now know of Irish history; -they were of the men who in the Irish revival of the thirteenth and -fourteenth centuries spent their lives in searching out, preserving, -copying, the records, laws, and traditions of their people. They were -the lively translators of books from abroad, the students of the modern -sciences, the band of scholars whose powerful influence was drawing -the inhabitants of Ireland, English and Irish, into one culture. Their -spirit is shewn in many sayings of the time. - -“If you praise one for nobility praise his father likewise. If you -praise one for his wealth, it is from the world it comes. If you praise -one for his strength, know that sickness will render him weak, and if -you praise a person for his fairness or the beauty of his body, know -that the bloom of youth endures but a short while, and that age will -take it away. But if you praise him for manners or learning, praise him -as much as you will ever praise anyone, for this is the thing which -comes not by heredity or through upbringing, but God bestowed it upon -him as a gift.” - -“Wisdom is life and ignorance is death, for of God’s gifts upon earth -there is none which is higher and more comely and pure than wisdom, for -to him who possesses it, wisdom teaches the performance of good things.” - -Such were the people whose culture had to be destroyed and their -energies broken in the name of civilization. Twelve years later -(1445) Margaret with a company of patriots--MacGeoghagans and -others--hardened by long fighting, went on pilgrimage to St. James of -Compostella, the shrine most dear to the Irish people, in the “fair -Spain” whence their race had come. These pilgrimages are interesting, -as showing the travel of Irishmen to Europe. In the _Cambridge Modern -History_ Ireland is described as “a mere _terra incognita_,” cut off -by its barbarism, and by its position from the larger influences of -Europe: “of one Irish chieftain it was placed on record that he had -accomplished the hazardous journey to Rome and back.” In this half -century alone (1396-1452) we read of two companies of chiefs and men -of the poorer sort journeying to Compostella (1445, 1452), and of two -companies who travelled to Rome (1396, 1444); and apparently of yet a -third company, who brought back to Ireland tales they had heard of the -French wars “from prisoners at Rome” (1451). By land and sea traders -and scholars were crossing and re-crossing to the Continent, not only -from one part of Ireland but from every province: “Do not repent,” men -said, “for going to acquire knowledge from a wise man, for merchants -fare over the sea to add to their wealth.” - -Margaret returned to the distractions of a new conflict and the -treacheries of a false peace (1445). Calvagh and the Berminghams were -again making “a great war” with the English, cutting much corn and -taking many prisoners, “and they made peace afterwards;” on which -MacGeoghagan, just home from his pilgrimage, went with others under -protection of the Baron of Delvin “where the English were”--that is to -the Governor’s castle at Trim. “But the English not regarding any peace -took them all prisoners.” MacGeoghagan was after that set at liberty, -his son being given as hostage. “And Margaret, O’Carroll’s daughter, -went to Trim and gave all the English prisoners for MacGeoghagan’s -son and the son’s son of Art, and that unadvised to Calvagh, and she -brought them home.” It was an act as free and brave as that of her -daughter Finola, who had made peace for the O’Donnell land. Such women -of great soul stand out on the stage of Irish history, nobly praised by -the poets. - - “She is sufficiently distinguished from every side - By her checking of plunder, her hatred of injustice, - By her serene countenance, which causes the trees - To bend with fruit; by her tranquil mind.” - -The story of Margaret was closing in sorrow. Finola, “the fairest and -most famous woman in all Ireland beside her own mother,” after the -death of O’Donnell in the fifth year of his captivity in an English -prison, married Aedh Boy O’Neill, “who was thought to be King of -Ireland,” “the most renowned, hospitable, and valourous of the princes -in his time, and who had planted more of the lands of the English in -despite of them than any other man of his day;” he was wounded to death -on Spy-Wednesday (1444), “and we never heard since Christ was betrayed, -on such a day a better man.” A little later Finola, “renouncing all -worldly vanity betook herself into the austere devout life in the -monastery of Killeigh; and the blessing of guests and strangers, and -poor and rich, of both poet-philosophers and archi-poet-philosophers -be on her in that life” (1447). The next year Margaret’s son, Cathal, -was slain by the English of Leinster. Calvagh, leading the Irish of -Leinster in a great army, marched to Killculinn near the hill of Alenn -on the border of the old Offaly, and there, his leg broken, his sword -and helmet torn from him, the English horsemen were about to bring him -into Castlemartin when “Cathal’s son returned courageously and rescued -him forceably.” Another son Felim, heir to the lordship of Offaly, a -man of great fame and renown, lay dying of long decline, on the night -that Margaret herself passed away (1451). “A gracious year this year -was, though the glory and solace of the Irish was set, but the glory of -heaven was amplified and extolled therein.” “The best woman of her time -in Ireland”--such was the Irish record of that lofty and magnanimous -soul. “God’s blessing, the blessing of all saints, and every our -blessing from Jerusalem to Inis Gluair be on her going to Heaven, and -blessed be he that will read and hear this for blessing her soul.” - -Margaret left her husband to the gallant and hopeless struggle for the -saving of Irish civilization. The next year he too made pilgrimage to -Compostella (1452). But disaster gathered round him. MacGeoghagan, the -most famous and renowned among the captains of Ireland, was slain, and -his head carried to Trim and Dublin. Two sons of Calvagh were killed -in war. His daughter Mòr, the wife of Clanricard, died of a fall from -her horse; with her ended the system of alliances by which Calvagh -had fortified himself west of the Shannon and in Ulster (1452). His -old enemy Ormond, the best captain of the English in Ireland, he for -whom the sun of old stood still, had come back to the Irish wars. He -had been called to London in 1447 on a charge of treason, for trial -by battle with his chief foe the Prior of Kilmainham--Ormond by the -King’s leave staying at Smithfield “for his breathing and more ease” -while he trained for the fight; the Prior learning “certain points -of arms” from a fishmonger paid by the King. But the royal favour -prevailed, Ormond made clear his desire to exterminate the Irish, and -without trial or battle was declared “whole and untainted in fame.” -He returned to ravage Kildare and Meath in war with the rival house -of the FitzGeralds, earls of Kildare, and to make a last triumphant -march round the bordering Irish tribes. Calvagh was forced to “come -into his house” and make terms of peace (1452). The peace was made -null by Ormond’s death a month later, and Calvagh “went out into the -wilderness of Kildare” where the new deputy with his cavalry surrounded -him unawares. Teige, his son, “most courageously worked to rescue his -father from the English horsemen; but O’Connor’s horse fell thrice -down to the ground, and Teige put him up twice, and O’Connor himself -would not give his consent the third time to go with him, so that -then O’Connor was taken prisoner.” The same year he was released. But -his wars were practically over. In 1458 he was buried by his father -Murchadh and his wife Margaret in Killeigh; defender of his country for -sixty years, and for thirty-seven years lord of Offaly. Last of all, -Finola, after forty-six years of the religious life (1493), rested also -in the splendid abbey of Killeigh. - -Of the glories of that abbey, of its rich glass, its gold and silver -work, its sculptured tombs, its organs, nothing now remains but a bare -fragment of wall. In the year that Silken Thomas and his five uncles -were hanged at Tyburn (1537), Lord Leonard Grey wasted the land of -O’Connor Faly, who had married the sister of Earl Thomas; making him -“more like a beggar, than he that ever was a captain or ruler of a -country.” Vast quantities of corn stored up at Killeigh were carried to -the Pale; and from the ruined Abbey Grey furnished out the buildings of -Maynooth, which had been stormed and taken from Earl Thomas two years -before; carrying off from its sack a pair of organs and other necessary -things for the King’s College at Maynooth, and as much glass as was -needed to glaze the windows of the College and of His Grace’s Castle -there. The tombs of the great house of O’Connor Faly were utterly -destroyed so that no trace of them remains. - -The destruction of the great abbey was the symbol to the Leinster Irish -of their final desolation, the ruin which submerged the whole people -of Ireland on the fall of the House of Kildare. Then began in the rich -plains of Leinster the ruthless policy of wholesale extirpation of the -Irish old inhabitants, to “plant” the country anew from across the -sea. The fruitful land became to Irish eyes a vast cemetery of their -dead. In their lamentation they remembered that Brian Boru’s grave was -there, and the grave of his son “that bore the brunt of weapon-fight”: -and still the graves were multiplied. “Great are the charges that all -others have against the land of Leinster”--a poet of the O’Byrnes -sang.... “Charges against her all Ireland’s nobles have: that beneath -the salmon-abounding Leinster country’s soil--region of shallow rivers -foamy-waved--there is many a grave of their kings and of their heirs -apparent.” “The red-handed Leinster province” holds the bones of the -long line of O’Connor Faly, men and women who adorned their country -with courage and piety, art and learning. - - “They shall be remembered for ever, - They shall be speaking for ever, - The people shall hear them for ever.” - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -A CASTLE AT ARDGLASS. - - -THE “island of Lecale,” as the Elizabethan English called it, lies in -the County of Down, surrounded on three sides by the sea, and on the -fourth bounded by the Quoile and Blackstaff rivers. The northern coast -of the “island” almost closes the mouth of Lough Cuan, now Strangford -Lough, leaving but a narrow strait for boats to pass. On the south it -bounds the Bay of Dundrum, across which rises the huge granite mass of -the Mourne Mountains. - -[Illustration: THE DEFENCES OF ARDGLASS - -MAP OF LECALE] - -The fruitful plain of Lecale, defended and enriched by the sea, drew to -it inhabitants from the first peopling of Ireland. All Irish history is -reflected there. The in-comers of prehistoric times raised the great -stone circles of Ballyno, that stupendous monument to a great hero and -a solemn worship--none more astonishing in Ireland. On a wide slope, -completely shut off and secluded by the higher ground, the rings of -massive stones lie confronting alone the eminence on which is lifted up -against the heavens the imposing mound of Erenagh, loftiest of the line -of earthworks that surround Dundrum Bay. From the time of an immemorial -Nature worship pilgrims have assembled, even as they gathered down to -our own times, where the streams of Struel pour abundantly from the -rock, to seek cleansing in the bounteous waters on Midsummer Day, and -at the festival of Lughnasadh or Lugh’s fair on the first of August. -The Red Branch of Emain sent its heroes to hold the two main passages -into the “island,” and the inlets of the sea where trade was borne. -On the northern port, known to Ptolemy as Dunum, where the river -Quoile widens to Strangford Lough, Celtchair of the Battles made his -entrenchment of Rath Celtchair or Dun Lethglasse, on a hill rising -from the flat ground and swamps of the river. At the head of Dundrum -Bay, where the sea narrows over a stretch of shoals and shallows to -the inner bay, another Red Branch knight raised on a steep rock his -commanding fort, Dún Rudraidhe, and left his name also to the ocean -tide, Tonn Rudraidhe, whose waters were lifted up into one of the Three -Waves of Ireland that sounded their warning to the land when danger -threatened, or echoed the moan in battle of a dying hero’s shield. -Here, in this place of Celtic legend, relics of bronze and pottery and -stone can still be picked up in plenty on the sand dunes. Round the -circuit of the bay half-a-dozen ancient earthworks may still be seen, -connected with strands or harbours by old paths. - -With the dawn of a new age the wanderings of St. Patrick gave to -Lecale new memories--the wells which he blessed for the new faith; the -wooden barn at Saul where he set up his church on the slope above the -marsh along which the highway ran from Strangford to Down, and where -the angel called him to die; the Dun of Patrick, or Downpatrick, given -him for a Christian settlement on the old rath of Celtchair, where -according to later legend he was buried, and where a great granite -boulder now marks the traditional grave. Amid the majestic monuments of -pagan heroes the lowly pioneers of the new faith raised their little -buildings. The spit of land that separates the bay of Tonn Rudraidhe -from that of Ardglass is fringed with low rocks black and jagged; -and this point of danger to mariners, now marked by a lighthouse, -was in early Christian times sanctified by a church. A tiny harbour -cuts through the keen-edged rocks to a little strand where a couple -of curraghs might lie: and there by the well the little company built -their church--a small stone building twenty feet by thirteen, with the -two narrow windows, one east and one south, to throw on the altar the -light of the rising and the mid-day sun, and the western door for the -departing day and the hour of benediction till the sun should make his -circuit to the east. The name of St. John’s Point recalls that old -dedication, and the early Irish devotion to their special saint, the -beloved disciple of the Lord. Across the bay might be seen the austere -cell of St. Donard lifted high, near 3,000 feet, on the topmost point -of Slieve-Donard, dominating all Lecale, where an inspired solitary -transformed the ancient pagan tradition to a new use, that as mighty -men of old were in death commemorated by carns on the high hills, so on -the mountain a Christian would shew afar the place of his burial to the -world, and the place of his resurrection. - -Lecale was soon filled with religious settlements and schools. Lying -at the entrance to Lough Cuan of the hundred islands, now Lough -Strangford, where a busy population tilled the fertile slopes, and -sent out innumerable boats for the celebrated salmon-fishing, or for -traffic, Lecale was as it were the guardian of their sanctuaries. Close -to Downpatrick lies Crannach Dún-leth-glaisse, “the wooded island of -Dún-leth-glaisse,” now known as Cranny island; there Mochuaróc maccu -Min Semon, whom the Romans called the “doctor” of the whole world, -lived early in the seventh century, and wrote down the calculus -which his master Sinlan, Abbot of Bangor (+610), had first among the -Irish learned from a certain wise Greek. Farther north, some twelve -or fifteen miles from Ardglass, lies Inis-Mahee, where behind the -boulder-strewn shore and the heavy seaweed thrown up by the waters on -meadows and ploughed land over which sea-birds love to hover, past -the harbour and the rude boat-shelter cut in the rock, we enter on a -retreat where the light seems more translucent than elsewhere, the -silence more penetrating and peace more profound, the colour as that -of an everlasting spring--a space of wild wood, resonant with the -song of birds, where the flowers spring thicker than the grass. There -St. Mochaoi (Mahee) raised his wooden church about 450 A.D., first -abbot and bishop. Legend told that as he was cutting wattles for his -building, he heard a bright bird, more beautiful than the birds of the -world, singing on the blackthorn near him, and asked who it was that -made such a song. “A man of the people of my Lord,” answered the bird. -“Hail,” said Mochaoi, “and for why that, oh bird that is an angel?” “I -am come by command to encourage you in your good work, and because of -the love that is in your heart to amuse you for a time with my sweet -singing.” “I am glad of that,” said Mochaoi. One hundred and fifty -years passed as a moment while he listened to the heavenly song; and -when the bird vanished and he lifted up his bundle of wattles to carry -home, a stone church stood there before him, and strange monks. They -made him abbot once more; and there at last “a sleep without decay of -the body Mochaoi slept.” The foundations of the little church with -walls over three feet thick, the remnant of the round tower, the traces -of other buildings on the west of the island hill, the well closed -in, the triple ring of earthen entrenchments faced with stone that -encircled the slopes of the island like a cashel, the port with its -rough stone work into which “ships from Britain” sailed--these still -tell of the days when Inis-Mahee was a school of religion and learning -for all the district, where the famous St. Finian of Moville came to -study. From the round tower the whole lough could be seen as far as -Lecale and the passage to the sea. There must have been then, as there -was later, much intercourse between the sea-going people of Mahee and -Ardglass. For Ardglass was the port of the neighbouring monastery whose -site we may still trace at Dunsford. A Protestant church was planted -over it in Reformation times; but an old cross slab may still be seen, -and from the graveyard there has been rescued an ancient stone font, -and carried to the new church of the older faith; and here too an -ancient Celtic cross from an old cemetery, of the type of those found -at Clonmacnois, has been set over the church door. - -Lecale was a rich land to plunder when the Danes descended on it. Not -a creek that they did not visit. Their raids were followed by later -raids of their Norman kinsmen, when in 1177 de Courcy came marching -to the conquest of Ulster, dreaming himself the knight foretold by -Merlin, and willing “to accommodate himself in dress, in gesture, in -his shield, and even his white horse, to the prophecies; so that he -looked more like a Merry-Andrew than a warrior.” The seizing of Lecale -and Downpatrick was his first adventure; before a year was over (1178) -he had attached Mahee to an English monastery, peopled it with monks -from the other side of the sea, and along with Roger, the new lord of -Dunsford, endowed it with large tracts of land about Dunsford and in -Lecale. In spite of new wealth the spirit and fortunes of Mahee died -for ever under foreign rule. - -[Illustration: CROSS SLAB AT DUNSFORD.] - -By de Courcy and his followers the island of Lecale was ringed with -castles from the great keep of Dundrum (“it is one of the strongest -holds I ever saw,” said Lord Leonard Grey) to Downpatrick at the -passage of the Quoile. The memory of one of his Norman knights is -preserved in Dunsford church, a grave-slab with a fine cross and sword -cut deeply on it, perhaps the tombstone of “Rogerus de Dunsford.” The -strong rush of waters that poured through the narrow neck of Lough -Cuan at every incoming or outgoing tide, once guarded on either side by -earthen entrenchments that may still be seen, was now held by a Norman -keep at Strangford; but the towers of the coast line from Ardglass -to Down--Kilclief, Walsh’s castle, Audley castle, Quoile castle, -and the rest--each set at the head of a little bay, were evidently -planted there for trade; and all probably on the sites of older Irish -communities. Thus at Kilclief, while Norman cross slabs tell of de -Courcy’s plantation, there is in the churchyard a long forgotten -tombstone marked with a Celtic cross of the type of Clonmacnois. How -many were thrown out to build fences, or to be broken on the roads! -The activity of trade along the coast even as late as the eighteenth -century may be seen by the remains at Quoile harbour near Down, the -custom-house, the great stores, the houses of merchants and officials -of the harbour. - -In the 106 miles of coast that lie between Kingstown mole and Belfast -bay, Ardglass is the one harbour where a ship can enter at all stages -of the tide without a local pilot. It must ever have been a chief -harbour of eastern Ulster--a port open at all times of the tide and -sheltered from every wind save one, when boats could take refuge in -the southern port of Killough, “the haven of Ardglass,” linked with -it by an old path along the shore. A wall was thrown round the little -town of Ardglass strengthened by seven towers, four of which may still -be seen; and within these defences a central castle was set on the -rocky edge of the port, where boats could be pulled up to the very -door. The harbour was the outlet for the trade of the rich agricultural -and wool-producing lands of Down, Tyrone, and Armagh, and traffic -was carried on in wines, cloth, kerseys, all kinds of fish, wool, -and tallow. There is evidence of trade with France in the beautiful -altar-vessel found at Bright, of gilt bronze and many shaded enamel, -fine Limoges work of about 1200 A.D. - -With the revival of Irish life in the fourteenth century, and the -gatherings of English merchants to Irish fairs, commerce increased and -flourished. Richard II. gave the port of Ardglass and its trade as -a rich reward to the Gascon commander, Janico d’Artois, his bravest -leader against Art MacMurchadh (1398). It is said that a trading -company with a grant from Henry IV. built the famous “New Works.” Close -to the harbour ran a range of buildings two hundred and fifty feet -long, with three square towers, walls three feet thick, pierced on the -sea-side by only narrow loop-holes, and opening into the “bawn” with -sixteen square windows, and fifteen arched door-ways of cut stone that -gave entrance to eighteen rooms on the ground floor and eighteen above. -It is still possible to trace the line of the New Works, the doors and -windows, and the remains of the towers. There seems to have been a -local school of art continued from the earlier centuries: fragments of -a Virgin and Child of old Dunsford made by Irish hands of Irish stone -from Scrabo at the north end of Strangford Lough, broken and scattered -for ages, have been recovered and pieced together and set on the wall -of the new Dunsford church, where it now stands in its old grace and -dignity as the only example in Ulster, perhaps in Ireland, of such -a pre-Reformation statue not utterly destroyed. All the churches of -Lecale, old men told a traveller about 1643, had before the burnings of -Captain Edward Cromwell been lightly roofed, probably with fine open -wood-carving, and highly adorned with sacred statues and images. - -[Illustration: THE CASTLE OF ARDGLASS, SHOWING THE “NEW WORKS.” - -(From Grose.)] - -From a few fragments we can only guess what wealth was once stored -up in Lecale. Wars of Irish and English raged round a harbour so -important, as the chiefs of Ulster pressed down against the strangers -over a land which had once at Dun Lethglasse held a chief fort of old -Ulster kings. O’Neill burned Ardglass of the d’Artois house in 1433: -in 1453 Henry O’Neill of Clannaboy was driven back from the town by -the help of a Dublin fleet. At the close of the fifteenth century the -English almost disappeared out of Lecale. Garrett the Great, Earl of -Kildare (1477-1513), claimed Ardglass and the lands about it as heir -through his mother to d’Artois, and gained supremacy there--a part -of the far-seeing policy by which the house of Kildare was gradually -widening its influence from sea to sea, from Ardglass to Sligo and -the lower Shannon. His son Garrett Oge had, by grant of Henry VIII. -(1514), the customs of Strangford and Ardglass, to be held by service -of one red rose annually; and still after four centuries heirs of the -Fitzgerald house remain at the entrance of Strangford Lough. After -the revolt of this Garrett’s son, Silken Thomas (1535), the English -marched through the country, burning Lecale. The fall of the Kildares, -allies and relatives of the O’Neills, brought a revival of the O’Neill -wars for Ardglass, and of the English campaigns. Lord Leonard Grey has -left a description in the State Papers (III. 155) of his expedition in -1539: “and so with the host we set forward into the said country and -took all the castles there and delivered them to Mr. Treasurer who hath -warded the same ... the said Lecayll is environed round about with the -sea and no way to go by land into said country but only by the castle -of Dundrome.... I assure your lordship I have been in many places and -countries in my days and yet did I never see for so much a pleasanter -plot of ground than the said Lecayll, for the commodity of the land -and divers islands in the same environed with the sea which were soon -reclaimed and inhabited....” - -It was in this “reclaiming” that the Deputy ravaged the east coast, -took Dundrum, and the castles of Lecale and Ards; profaned S. Patrick’s -Church at Down, turning it into a stable and destroying the monuments -of Patrick, Brigid, and Columcille, and “after plucked it down, and -shipped the notable ring of bells that did hang in the steeple, meaning -to have them sent to England: had not God of his justice prevented his -iniquity by sinking the vessel and passengers.” Queen Mary restored -Ardglass to the next Earl, Gerald, son of Silken Thomas, the boy who at -his father’s capture had escaped “tenderly wrapped” in a turf-basket, -and after long perils and sorrows and exile in Rome, Italy, and France, -had at last returned, an obedient Angliciser under the Catholic queen -(1553). Under Queen Elizabeth, who was in Irish belief illegitimate -and a usurper, Shane O’Neill (1558-1567) cast out the English, and -“forcibly patronised himself in all Lecale.” Ardglass seems to have -come into the hands of the Irish, and trade was busy, for in Shane’s -great cellars at Dundrum he was said to have commonly stored two -hundred tuns of wine. - -Thirty years after Shane’s death (1597), a plan for out-rooting the -Irish and planting an English race was drawn up by a clergyman of “the -Church of Ireland,” James Bell, Vicar of Christ Church in Dublin, and -dedicated by him to Lord Burghley. He was the faithful representative -of a political establishment, deep-stained with the blood and sorrow -of the Irish. Here is his proposal, preserved in the British Museum: -“The Crown should divide the land into lots of 300 acres, at £5 yearly -rent, for _English_ undertakers, who should maintain 10 men (English) -and 10 women, who now live in England by begging and naughty shifts; -while single to have two acres, married, four acres of the 300--which -was to be circumvallated by a deep trench or fosse.... If upon Tirone’s -lands 2,000 English families be planted, her Majesty’s profit would at -once be £10,000; besides, having 4,000 soldiers at hand without pay, -for every two of the ten men should serve in turn three months each -year--the act would be _motherly_ and honourable for her Highness. To -the bishops, there should be given, in fee simple, 1,200 acres, at -£20 a year, upon every 300 acres of which the ten men and women are -to be maintained, upon the like conditions; the inferior clergy, down -to parson and curate, to have 600 acres upon proportionate rent and -service. If her Majesty’s heart be moved by this device, there shall -not be a beggar in England; a work of great profit, great strength, -and great glory to the Queen, great love to her subjects, and singular -mercy towards her meanest subjects, in that she giveth house and -lands in Ireland to those that, in England, have not a hole to hide -their heads in. The trench round about would barr Irish rebels coming -suddenly trotting and jumping upon the good English subjects.” In the -proposed commonwealth no room for sustenance was left for the Irish -people of the land, fenced off from every place of food. Loyal to her -Majesty, James Bell was yet more loyal to the material predominance -of his Church. Among farmers owning three hundred acres with ten -families of labourers, the Church of Ireland was to have a stately -position with its inferior curates owning twice as much as their best -neighbours, and the bishops four times as much. It was but an act of -gratitude. “I will not say as Joshua and Caleb said, if the Lord have -a favour unto us; but I will say, the Lord having a special love unto -us, God hath given Ireland to her Majesty--a country most sweet, most -wholesome, and most fruitful to dwell in; so full of springs, so full -of rivers, so full of lakes, so full of fish, so full of cattle, and -of fowl, that there is not a country upon the face of the earth more -beneficial to the life of man.” - -Thus plans of settlement and plantation were abroad when Mountjoy led -his army over Lecale. The castle of Dundrum surrendered to him (1601). -“His Lordship ... rode to Downpatrick, and thence by St. Patrick’s -Well to Ardglass, being six miles, in which town two castles yielded -to the Queen, and the warders, upon their lives saved, gave up their -arms. A third castle there had been held for the Queen all the time of -the Rebellion, by one Jordan, never coming out of the same for three -years past, till now by his Lordship’s coming he was freed.” This -was the castle on the port, which was evidently provisioned from the -sea, the only stronghold left in Ardglass for the English, and called -Castle Jordan from its defender. After this subjection of Ardglass, -Sir Richard Morrison, with five hundred foot and fifty horse, was left -at Downpatrick as governor of Lecale, while Mountjoy carried on war -against Tyrone. - -A picture of life in a Lecale castle at this time has been left to -us by Captain Josias Bodley, of Mountjoy’s army. From Armagh to -Newry he journeyed through a famished country where for a whole year -Chichester’s and Morrison’s troops had been employed in completely -devastating the land, so that O’Neill should get provision neither -for man nor horse; and the poverty he saw in Newry shows their -success. Thence skirting the Mourne Mountains he stopped at the island -stronghold of Magennis in the lake at Castlewellan, and passing through -a land of ancient cromlechs and souterrains, of earthworks ringed -and conical, and of early Norman castles, entered Lecale. The scene -of the final merry-makings, the Governor’s Castle at Downpatrick, -was probably the fort which stood at the foot of the hill, the last -remains of which, a tall square tower, were removed a few years ago. -It was evidently not unlike the castle at Ardglass, and life was the -same in both of them. The stairs led first to the guard-room, with -its dresser laden with dishes, and a wide fire-place where heavy pots -hung from iron crooks, and cooks were busy with interminable cooking -of the fish and fowls and game for which Lecale was famous, pasties -of marrow and plums, Irish curds, and other dishes from France, there -designated “Quelq’ choses” (“kickshaws”), which were reckoned “vulgar” -by the English officers, as being perhaps too little substantial. -Thence the stairs led to the large hall where in the huge fire-place -logs were burning, even as in Castle Shane of Ardglass to-day, “the -height of our chins, as the saying is.” The hall was comfortable, for -of a night one may sit in the Ardglass room with the unglazed windows -in the thick walls on every side, and the door open to the winding -stairs, and no flicker of candles betrays a draught: the wind seems -carried up the turret staircase through the roof. The company in the -hall amused themselves with smoking, cards, backgammon, and dice. -There was much drinking of healths--many political pledges no doubt as -in modern Ulster, bitter tests to Irish companions when the English -officers might call on a newly-submitted chief such as Magennis to -join in a “loyal” toast: Bodley had apparently taken part in some -scenes of scruple and silence on the part of honourable men, “of all -things the most shameful,” he says. For any special entertainment the -servants crowded into the same room as the masters--the cook’s wife, -the scullion, and all; and played to amuse them a game still common -in the north. There came, too, the Irish Mummers or Rhymers, making -their Christmas rounds with torches and drums, wearing the traditional -pointed caps, and carrying their profits in the base money, one part -of silver to three of brass, which Elizabeth forced upon Ireland in -favour of her avaricious Treasurer there, Sir George Carey. Of this -money, such as it was, the Rhymers were “cleaned out” by the officers -in a game of dice, and sent on their long walk home across Lecale -two hours after the winter midnight, “without money; out of spirits; -out of order; without even saying ‘Farewell’”--a strange contrast to -the old Irish welcome to travellers and wandering players--a gallant -hospitality at the Christmas time of English officers, for whom no -season of mercy was sacred, and no obligation of honour, straight -dealing, or courtesy binding so far as Irishmen were concerned. -The rhymers may have sung as they took their way the fame of the -hero-warrior of their people: “Were but the brown leaf which the wood -sheds from it gold, were but the white billows silver, Finn would have -given it all away.” They may have recalled the lament of the old Irish -poet who saw the havoc made by “outlanders” of the ordered hospitality -of Irish society. “At the end of the final world [there will be] a -refuge to poverty and stinginess and grudging.” They could not see in -the far future the open castle of Ardglass. - -Cards, dice, drinking, and smoking filled up the time of the English -visitors, with strolls of curiosity to the Wells and Chair of St. -Patrick at Struel, or the huge entrenchments of Celtchair of the -Battles. For the night there was a single sleeping-room above the hall, -a bed-chamber “arranged in the Irish fashion” with a good and soft bed -of down for the owner, and thin pallets thrown on the floor for the -company. The dogs of Captain Constable shared the room with the rest, -after the Yorkshire manner, leaping on the down bed and howling at -their rejection. - -When Morrison left Downpatrick there came Captain Edward -Cromwell--descendant of Thomas Cromwell, minister of ill-fame to -Ireland under Henry VIII.--to be Governor of Lecale (1605): “this son -of earth and foul spot on the human race,” by whose army the cathedral -of Down was burned, and in that conflagration sacred monuments and -very ancient writings; and many other churches too, very few of which -have been since then restored. The very tombstones were used in -building houses and fences; while the people watching lamented the -devastation of what had been to them and their fathers “the place of -their resurrection,” so that they might go in the fellowship of their -saints “to the great assembly of Doom.” To Edward Cromwell the people -gave the name “Maol-na-teampull” for his impiety, and numbers of men -born in that terrible year of ruin reckoned their age over sixty years -after from the days of his sacrilege, as if from a national visitation. -In those days perhaps the Irish inhabitants were driven off the fertile -land to the very rim of the sea, to set their cabins, as may still be -seen, on the last refuge of the shingle itself round the Dundrum bay, -or to cluster together on some bare crag. - -After the wars of Mountjoy and of Cromwell and the plantations of their -officers the fortunes of Lecale, as of all Ireland, declined. With -the final ruin of the O’Neills the clouded title of the Fitzgeralds -revived, in a dim shadow of their old pride. A branch of the family -built, in the eighteenth century, a sober mansion over the “New Works” -that had been raised when Ireland claimed her right to trade, and -around the towers that marked ancient centuries of battle. Even there -the old Fitzgerald fires of patriotism and indignation at inhuman -wrong broke out anew. The character of Lord Edward Fitzgerald is as -little comprehended as the spirit of his country. A Protestant brought -up in the days of penal laws and Protestant ascendancy; a member of -the great house of the Duke of Leinster in Ireland and the Duke of -Richmond in England; trained in an army fighting for “the Empire” -against American “rebels”; his life till twenty-seven was chiefly -spent in France, America, and England, amid military and aristocratic -society--conditions that have made many a man cosmopolitan, -denationalised, and indifferent. The liberal traditions of his father, -the first Duke of Leinster, had practically died with him when the -boy was only ten. Ardently devoted to his family, there was not one -of them, or one of his early friends, to whom he could speak of his -national beliefs. And out of all this came the lover of the poor and -the oppressed, the friend of all men, the intrepid martyr to the -freedom of Catholic Ireland, dying alone in prison with a prayer for -the salvation of all who died at the hangman’s hands for the sake of -Ireland. No wonder that the people of Ardglass still show the tower -chamber in the old castle which was searched for Lord Edward, the room -in the great house where he was said to have hidden, the rude bridge -that gave him shelter from the yeomanry, and the desolate site of Bone -castle where he slept for one night, in an ancient possession of his -family. - -[Illustration: VIEW OF ARDGLASS FROM RINGFADD] - -In the course of the gloomy years that followed the old house fell into -decay. Last June (1911) the whole derelict property, long deserted -by its landlords, both land and village, was sold for the benefit of -English mortgagees and bought by local people. Nothing more “loyal” -could be imagined than the apparent community of Ardglass--nothing -more to the heart of the party in Down and Antrim of superiority and -supremacy which claims sole right to a place in the sun. The Imperial -flag flew from a high-lifted residence, on the site of two of the old -forts. The FitzGerald house and demesne were bought by a golf club, -reputed to be faithful above all to English interests. The old castle -was bid for by a spirit-dealer of the right persuasion, as a suitable -storage place for whiskey. Not a breath as to the destiny of Ardglass -and its fishermen disturbed the peace of Orangemen and stalwart -Protestants of the ascendancy. - -It occurred, however, to a good Irishman and antiquary, a Protestant -from Belfast, that there might be a nobler use for the Castle of -Ardglass. He bought the castle. He replaced the vanished floors and -ceilings with beams and boards of Irish timber. A few broken pieces of -masonry were repaired. The inside walls were left in their rough state, -merely dashed with white. At the door was laid the anvil of an Irish -smith to be held between the knees, a stone with the centre cut out -and fitted with iron. The great fire-places were filled with logs from -a local plantation. Over the flaming fires huge pots steamed, hanging -from iron crooks. Old Ulster ironwork for kitchen use hung round the -hearth. A dresser, such as Captain Bodley might have seen, was stocked -with pewter plates and old crockery, brought, like the ironwork, by -willing givers who possessed any relic of Ireland of former days. -Tables of Irish oak, and Irish carved benches of the old fashion, and -Irish cupboards and settles furnished the rooms. They were lighted by -Irish-made candles in the iron taper-holders of over a hundred years -ago, by a very remarkable bronze chandelier of the eighteenth century, -and by a still more striking floreated cross and circle of lights, -made in the penal days by some local metal-worker with the ancient -Irish tradition of ornament still with him. In the chief room a few old -prints and portraits hung on the walls, amid new banners representing -O’Neill, O’Donnell, and the black Raven of the Danes; most prominent -of all, Shane O’Neill himself, standing proud in his full height in -regal saffron kilt and flowing mantle, a fine design by a young Irish -artist of Belfast. A tiny round-apsed oratory opened off this chief -room. It was hung with golden Irish linen; between the lights on the -altar stood a small crucifix of the penal times, and interlaced Irish -patterns hung on the walls. The columbary in one of the towers, perhaps -unique in early castles, with its seventy-five triangular recesses or -resting-places for the pigeons built in the walls, and entries to north -and south--one a square opening with sill inside and alighting slab -outside, the other a space cut below the narrow window exactly the size -through which a bird might pass--was again stocked with pigeons given -by a local admirer, and the tower named after St. Columba. From a pole -flew the flag of O’Neill, the Red Right Hand, in memory of old days. In -three months the deserted ruin was transformed into a dwellinghouse, -where Mr. Bigger and his helpers could sleep and cook and live. The -workmen in a fury of enthusiasm worked as if a master’s eye was on them -at every minute. - -[Illustration: CASTLE SÉAN, ARDGLASS.] - -The design of the new owner was to bring the people of Ardglass and -the Lecale of Down into touch with the Irish past, and give them some -conception of the historic background of their life. For it must be -remembered that through all conquests and plantations the people of -the soil of Lecale have still remained of the old stock, an Irish -people who have a natural country to love. For them there need be none -of the perplexities which must confront those who in their successive -generations of life in Ireland still consent to be designated by _The -Times_ as “the British Colony on the other side of St. George’s -Channel.” I was present on the Saturday night when the ruin was opened -to the people. There was no moon, and a gale was blowing down the -Irish Sea--a wind from the north. A little platform was set against -the sheltered west wall of the castle. A beacon flamed on one of the -towers, and the ceremony began with a display of limelight pictures -on the wall. I was in the middle of an audience packed as tight as -men could stand in the castle yard and across the wide street. There -had been no public announcements and no advertisement. But word had -passed round the people of Lecale, and it seemed as if thousands had -gathered under the resplendent stars. “I do not mean to show you,” -said Mr. Bigger, “China or Japan; I mean to show you Ardglass.” The -audience went wild with delight to see their fishermen and women, their -local celebrities, the boats laden with fish, the piles on the pier, -the Donegal girls packing them, the barrels rolled out to the tramp -steamers. But the delight reached its utmost height at views of the sea -taken from a boat out fishing, the dawn of day, the early flight of -birds, the swell of the great waters. The appeal of beauty brought a -rich answer from the Irish crowd. - -Then there was Irish dancing and singing on the little platform, with -the grey wall of the castle as a background and the waving ivy branches -and tree shadows in the limelight, a scene of marvellous light and -shade. But the great moment of all came when a huge Irish flag was -flung out on the night wind from the Columba tower. I have never seen -so magic a sight. Lights blazed from the castle-roof, rockets flamed -across the sky, and in the midst suddenly appeared like a vision -among the host of stars (for no flag-staff could be seen against the -night-sky) a gleaming golden harp hanging secure in immensity, crossed -and re-crossed by balls and flames of fire, so that it seemed to escape -only by a miracle. - -How did Ardglass and Lecale take this revival of its older fame? That -sight was not less striking than the vision on the tower. Every cottage -in the village had candles set in its windows. The fisher-boats in the -harbour were alight; they flew flags too, and Irish flags, as many -as could get them. For hours crowds climbed and descended the narrow -winding staircase in the castle turret, lighted by candles fixed in old -Ulster iron holders. They thronged the rooms, themselves the guardians -of all the treasures lying on the benches and shelves and suspended on -the walls. When they drew aside the light curtain before the oratory -and entered in, they prostrated themselves, kneeling in prayer, and -came out with tears in their eyes. Young men looked at Shane O’Neill, -and looked again, and took off their hats. As in other Irish gatherings -where I have been, sobriety and good manners distinguished the crowd, -very visible and audible to me from my little hotel fronting the -castle where the visitors flocked for refreshment, under my window -opening on the one street of the village. Strangers dispersed about -eleven o’clock, but men of the village sat round the fire of the old -guard-room for hours after, singing songs of Ireland endlessly. There -was no host, and no master of the ceremonies. The castle was left -absolutely to the people. Anyone who would came in. They sang, and -sang, the sorrowful decadent songs of modern Ireland--songs of famine, -emigration, lamentation, and woe. But still they sang of Ireland. - -The next day was Sunday. The parish priest, many years among his -people, shared in the joy of the festival, in the new interest come to -break the long monotony of their life, and in the widening and lifting -of their emotion. He preached twice on the restoration to them of their -castle, and on their duty to hold it sacred, and to act with courtesy -and good breeding when they entered it. He gave the children freedom -from Sunday School that they might see the Irish flag flown from the -tower at noon; and boys and girls poured laughing down the street. All -that day, from morning till night, without a pause, lines of village -and country folk filed up and down the turret stairs, holding to the -rope, kept taut by its old stone weight, that served as balustrade. -Protestants were intermingled with Catholics, as one could see by the -badges of their societies, in a common enthusiasm for the memories -of the country which was theirs. Two admirable little girls of nine -and fourteen installed themselves as handmaids and hostesses of the -castle, and might be seen all day carrying water to the cauldron, -making tea, giving hospitality to visitors--their first free service -to Ireland. At night, men and women of the village came into the -guard-room and banquet-hall, and sang and sang of Ireland. They did -not even smoke. One after another sang till one o’clock. One or two -sentimental ditties turned up, on Shannon’s shores and Killarney’s -lakes, of the feeble artificial sort favoured by so-called “National -Schools,” but these found little encouragement. Many evenings since, -the guard-room has been filled with villagers, and singing and old-time -lore abound. Many bring presents and leave them with scarce a word; -and the old oratory has not been left without gifts and flowers. -Nowhere has a pin been disturbed, or a trifle broken or injured. The -battlements and the glorious view are a delight to all. They examine -and point out to each other the old devices, the flint weapons and -the bronze, the Celtic emblems and memorials, and the Elizabethan and -Volunteer arms that lie about. The people have a new pride put in them, -and are learning to be their own Conservators and Board of Works. - -The Bishop of Ossory has lately given us all to understand that the -Church of Ireland, boasting itself to be the highest, perhaps the -sole, regenerating force in the country, is at this crisis altogether -absorbed in anxious contemplation of the supposed danger from the -people of Ireland to its property. A material preoccupation, at such -a pitch, induces a multitude of unreasoning timidities, fantastic -safeguards, and voluntary solitudes. It is true, indeed, that it was -only “property” in a spiritual sense which the people of Ardglass had -got that day. But in that higher sense they had been given that which -every Irishman lacks--something of their own. No Englishman can picture -to himself that lack. He has never had it. But with us it is an old -story. If the people ask to learn Irish--“Here is arithmetic; that -will suit you better.” They would like something of Irish history--“I -assure you that it is German grammar which you really wish to ask for.” -If the talk is of schools or fisheries--“The English Treasury will see -that you do not waste money on school-house or steam trawler.” Their -very names are not their own. A Belfast bank the other day refused the -life-long signature on a cheque of a well-known Irish writer because -he signed, in English letters indeed, but with his customary Irish -spelling of Padraic, and required instead the conventional English -Patrick. Who can tell the needless restrictions and trivialities and -imposed fashions that check expansion, experiment, and freedom of -mind? A dreary emptiness has been stretched over the vivid natures of -Irishmen. What is there left for them to love? Is it any wonder they -desire something they may call their own? It may be that “Loyalists” -imagine that a longer continuance of such destitution will end at last -in a lively passion for Englishmen and the Empire. Or, perhaps, it is -the Unionist idea that an enforced apathy indefinitely continued will -produce the fate that comes on men doomed to imprisonment for life in -solitary confinement, when after long years thought and speech are -gone, and idiot prisoners may mingle harmlessly together. - -While the castle was repairing at Ardglass, an Irish visitor watched -the fishermen leaning on the sea-wall. Every half-hour one might drop -a word. They were passing the time as only fishermen know how. As to -the castle, they looked as oblivious to it as to everything else. After -watching for some time, the Irish visitor casually passed one of them, -dropping an indifferent remark: “What’s the meaning of all this?” “It’s -comin’,” said the fisherman. “We’re too long held in chains”--and fell -back into silence. - - -_NOTE._ - - Bodley’s visit to Lecale, preserved in a Latin MSS. in the British - Museum, has been printed with a translation in the Old Ulster Journal - of Archæology II. 73. The account is concerned with six officers of - high rank and fame in the veteran army of Elizabeth. The writer, - Captain Bodley, brother of the founder of the Bodleian Library at - Oxford, was commanding officer at Armagh, commissioned to raise - fortifications or entrenchments for the army--“a very honest fellow - with a black beard,” he describes himself. His companion Captain - Toby Caulfield, who had fought at Carlingford and Kinsale, was the - first Governor in 1602 of the new fort of Charlemont, and Governor in - 1603 of the counties of Armagh and Tyrone, where he made good use of - his opportunities, a skilful appropriator of lands, who secured for - himself grants in nine counties, and the wealth on which the earldom - of Charlemont was established. Captain John Jephson had rescued the - remnant of the British army caught in the pass of the Curlew Mountains - in 1599: he gained the Mallow estate by marriage with the daughter of - Norreys, President of Munster. Captain Adderton, whom they picked up - on the way, had distinguished himself in the Wicklow wars, and was now - Governor of the newly-built fort of Mount-norris, on the road from - Armagh to Newry. - - Their host at Downpatrick, Sir Richard Moryson, one of the chief - friends of Mountjoy, had fought in Leix and at Kinsale, was now - Governor of Lecale, and this same year (1603) was promoted Governor - of Waterford, and later (1607), President of Munster. With him was - Captain Ralph Constable, who had followed all his campaigns from - Kinsale to the Blackwater. - - Four of the six, Moryson, Bodley, Jephson, and Caulfield, had been - comrades in the campaigns of the Low Countries a few years before, and - were among the companies of soldiers which were drafted over from the - Netherlands to Ireland to strengthen the armies of Essex and Mountjoy. - They were men who prospered in Irish wars--keen soldiers, and as keen - dividers of lands and offices in the new country, deeply concerned in - plantations and confiscations. - - - _An Account of a Journey of Captain Josias Bodley into Lecale in - Ulster, in the Year 1602 (properly 1603)._ - - Good God! what have I taken on me to do? Truly I am an ass, otherwise - I would never have undertaken so heavy a burthen; but no matter, I - shall do what I can, like Coppinger’s female dog, who always took her - own way. - - I have taken in hand to recount what happened in a journey which - Captain Caulfield, Captain Jephson, and I made to Lecale, to visit - our friend Sir Richard Morrison, and divert ourselves there. And I - shall narrate everything in due order; for order is a fair thing, - and all love it, except the Irish men-at-arms, who are a most vile - race of men, if it be at all allowable to call them “men,” who live - upon grass, and are foxes in their disposition and wolves in their - actions. But to our business: The aforesaid Master Morrison sent - very kind letters to us, inviting us to keep the Nativity (which the - English call “Christmas”) with him; but as Sir Arthur Chichester, - the Sergeant-Major of the whole army, had convoked us with all our - companies at that very moment to fight with Tyrone, who was then - in the woods of Glenconkein with much cattle and few fighting men; - we could not go at that time to Lecale, but joined the said Sir - Arthur, and remained with him for sixteen or seventeen days in the - field, without doing much harm to Tyrone: for that Tyrone is the - worst rascal, and very wary and subtle, and won’t be beaten except - on good terms. However, we fought him twice in the very woods, and - made him run to his strongholds. So after leaving about that place a - well-provided garrison, we each departed, with full permission and - good will. - - We now remembered the said invitation of Sir Richard and, after - deliberation (for, in the commencement of affairs, deliberation should - be used by those adventuring bold attempts, as Seneca says), we - thought it good to go thither, although it was now eight days after - the Nativity: because we did not doubt our being welcome though it had - been Lent. This was resolved on in the city of Armagh, where there is - a Governor, a very honest fellow with a black beard, who uses everyone - well according to his poor ability, and would use them much better if - he had more of the thing the English call “means.” - - We set out from that city for the town commonly called Newry, which - was one day’s journey. There, to speak the truth, we were not very - well entertained, nor according to our qualities; for that town - produces nothing but lean beef, and very rarely mutton; the very worst - wine; nor was there any bread, except biscuits, even in the Governor’s - house. However, we did our best to be merry and jocund with the bad - wine, putting sugar in it (as the senior lawyers are used to do, - with Canary wine)--with toasted bread, which in English is called “a - lawyer’s nightcap.” There we found Captain Adderton, an honest fellow, - and a friend of ours, who, having nothing to do, was easily persuaded - to accompany us to Lecale. - - So the next morning we four take horse and set out. We had no guide - except Captain Caulfield, who promised he would lead us very well. But - before we had ridden three miles we lost our way and were compelled - to go on foot, leading our horses through bogs and marshes which were - very troublesome; and some of us were not wanting who swore silently - between our teeth, and wished our guide at a thousand devils. At - length we came to some village of obscure name, where for two brass - shillings we brought with us a countryman who might lead us to the - Island of Magennis, ten miles distant from the town of Newry: for - Master Morrison had promised he would meet us there. - - The weather was very cold, and it began to roar dreadfully with a - strong wind in our faces, when we were on the mountains, where there - was neither tree nor house; but there was no remedy save patience. - Captain Bodley alone had a long cloak with a hood, into which he - prudently thrust his head, and laughed somewhat into himself to see - the others so badly armed against the storm. - - We now come to the Island of Magennis, where, alighting from our - horses, we met Master Morrison and Captain Constable, with many - others, whom, for the sake of brevity, I pass by. They had tarried - there at least three hours, expecting our arrival, and, in the - meantime, drank ale and usquebaugh with the Lady Sara, the daughter of - Tyrone, and wife of the aforesaid Magennis; a truly beautiful woman: - so that I can well believe these three hours did not appear to them - more than a minute, especially to Master Constable, who is by nature - very fond, not of women only, but likewise of dogs and horses. We - also drank twice or thrice, and after we had duly kissed her, we each - prepared for our journey. - - It was ten or twelve miles from that island to Downpatrick, where - Master Morrison dwelt; and the way seemed much longer on account of - our wish to be there. At length, as all things have an end and a black - pudding two (as the proverb hath it) we came by little and little to - the said house. And now began that more than Lucullan entertainment, - which neither Cicero, whose style in composition I chiefly imitate, - (although Horace says, “O imitators! a slavish herd”), nor any other - of the Latin or Greek authors, could express in suitable terms. - - When we had approached within a stone’s throw of the house--or rather - palace--of the said Master Morrison--behold! forthwith innumerable - servants! some light us with pine-wood lights and torches because it - is dark; others, as soon as we alight, take our horses, and lead them - into a handsome and spacious stable, where neither hay nor oats are - wanting. Master Morrison himself leads us by wide stairs into a large - hall where a fire is burning the height of our chins, as the saying - is; and afterwards into a bed chamber, prepared in the Irish fashion. - - Here having taken off our boots, we all sit down and converse on - various matters; Captain Caulfield about supper and food, for he was - very hungry; Captain Constable about hounds, of which he had there - some excellent ones, as he himself asserted; and the rest about other - things. Master Morrison ordered a cup of Spanish wine to be brought, - with burnt sugar, nutmeg, and ginger, and made us all drink a good - draught of it, which was very grateful to the palate, and also good - for procuring an appetite for supper, if anyone needed such. - - In an hour we heard some one down in the kitchen calling with a loud - voice “To the Dresser.” Forthwith we see a long row of servants, - decently dressed, each with dishes of the most select meats, which - they place on the table in the very best style. One presents to us a - silver basin with the most limpid water; another hands us a very white - towel; others arrange chairs and seats in their proper places. “What - need of words, let us be seen in action” (as Ajax says in Ovid). Grace - having been said, we begin to fix our eyes intently on the dishes, - whilst handling our knives: and here you might have plainly seen those - Belgian feasts, where, at the beginning is silence, in the middle the - crunching of teeth, and at the end the chattering of the people. For - at first we sat as if rapt and astounded by the variety of meats and - dainties--like a German I once saw depicted standing between two jars, - the one of white wine and the other of claret, with this motto: “I - know not which way to turn.” - - But after a short time we fall to roundly on every dish calling now - and then for wine, now and then for attendance, everyone according to - his whim. In the midst of supper Master Morrison ordered be given to - him a glass goblet full of claret, which measured, (as I conjecture) - ten or eleven inches roundabout, and drank to the health of all, and - to our happy arrival. We freely received it from him, thanking him, - and drinking one after the other, as much as he drank before us. He - then gave four or five healths of the chief men, and of our absent - friends, just as the most illustrious Lord, now Treasurer of Ireland, - is used to do at his dinners. And it is a very praiseworthy thing, and - has, perhaps, more in it than anyone would believe; and there was not - one amongst us who did pledge him and each other without any scruple - or gainsay, which I was very glad to see; for it was a proof of - unanimity and assured friendship. - - For there are many (a thing I can’t mention without great and extreme - sorrow) who won’t drink healths with others; sitting, nevertheless, - in the company of those who do drink, and not doing as they do; which - is of all things the most shameful.... For, at table, he who does not - receive whatsoever healths may be proposed by another, does so, either - because he likes not the proposer, or he to whom they drink, or the - wine itself. Truly I would not willingly have any dealings with him - who under values either me or my friend, or lastly wine, the most - precious of all things under heaven. - - * * * * * - - Let us now return to Lecale, where the supper (which, as I have said, - was most elegant) being ended, we again enter our bedroom, in which - was a large fire (for at the time it was exceedingly cold out of - doors) and benches for sitting on; and plenty of tobacco, with nice - pipes, was set before us. The wine also had begun to operate a little - on us, and everyone’s wits had become somewhat sharper; all were - gabbling at once, and all sought a hearing at once.... Amongst other - things, we said that the time was now happily different, from when - we were before Kinsale at Christmas of last year, when we suffered - intolerable cold, dreadful labour, and a want of almost everything; - drinking the very worst. We compared events, till lately unhoped for, - with the past, and with those now hoped for. Lastly, reasoning on - everything, we conclude that the verse of Horace (Ode 37, Book 1st) - squares exceedingly well with the present time--namely, “that now is - the time for drinking, that now is the time for thumping the floor - with a loose foot.” Therefore, after a little Captain Jephson calls - for usquebaugh, and we all immediately second him with one consent, - calling out “Usquebaugh, usquebaugh”--for we could make as free there - as in our own quarters. - - Besides it was not without reason we drank usquebaugh; for it was the - best remedy against the cold of that night, and good for dispersing - the crude vapours of the French wine; and pre-eminently wholesome in - these regions, where the priests themselves, who are holy men--as the - Abbot of Armagh, the Bishop of Cashel, and others; and also noble - men--as Henry Oge MacMahon, MacHenry--and men and women of every - rank--pour usquebaugh down their throats by day and by night; and that - not for hilarity only, which would be praiseworthy, but for constant - drunkenness which is detestable. - - Therefore, after everyone had drank two or three healths ... what - because of the assailing fumes of the wine which now sought our heads - ... we thought it right, as I have said, to rest for some hours. And - behold, now, the great kindness that Master Morrison shows towards us. - He gives up to us his own good and soft bed, and throws himself upon - a pallet in the same chamber, and would not be persuaded by anything - we could say, to lie in his own bed; and the pallet was very hard and - thin, such as they are wont to have who are called “Palatine” of great - heroes. - - I need not tell how soundly we slept till morning, for that is easily - understood, all things considered; at least if the old syllogism be - true: “He who drinks well sleeps well.” We did not, however, pass the - night altogether without annoyance: for the Captain’s dogs, which were - very badly educated (after the Northern fashion) were always jumping - on the beds, and would not let us alone, although we beat them ever - so often, which the said Captain took in dudgeon, especially when he - heard his dogs howling; but it was all as one for that; for it is not - right that dogs, who are of the beasts, should sleep with men who are - reasoning and laughing animals, according to the philosophers.... - Before we get out of bed they bring to us a certain aromatic of strong - ale, compounded with sugar and eggs (in English “caudle”) to comfort - and strengthen the stomach, they also bring beer (if any prefer it) - with toasted bread and nutmeg, to allay thirst, steady the head, and - cool the liver; they also bring pipes of the best tobacco to drive - away rheums and catarrhs. - - We now all jump quickly out of bed, put on our clothes, approach the - fire, and, when all are ready, walk abroad together to take the air, - which, in that region, is most salubrious and delightful, so that if I - wished to enumerate all the advantages of the place, not only powers - (of description), but time itself would be wanting. I shall therefore - omit that, as being already known, and revert to ourselves, who, - having now had a sufficient walk, returned to our lodging as dinner - time was at hand. But how can we tell about the sumptuous preparation - of everything? How about the dinners? How about the dainties? For we - seemed as if present (as you would suppose) at the nuptial banquet to - which some Cleopatra had invited her Antony; so many varieties of meat - were there, so many kinds of condiments; about every one of which I - would willingly say something, only that I fear being too tedious. I - shall therefore demonstrate from a single dinner, what may be imagined - of the rest. There was a large and beautiful collar of brawn, with - its accompaniments--to wit, mustard and Muscadel wine; there were - well-stuffed geese, ... the legs of which the Captain always laid - hold of for himself; there were pies of venison and of various kinds - of game; pasties also, some of marrow, with innumerable plums; others - of it with coagulated milk; others which they call tarts, of divers - shapes, materials and colours, made of beef, mutton and veal. I do - not mention because they are reckoned vulgar, other kinds of dishes, - wherein France much abounds, and which they designate “Quelq’choses” - [“Kickshaws”]. Neither do I relate anything of the delicacies which - accompanied the cheese, because they would excel all belief. I may say - in one word, that all things were there supplied us most luxuriously - and most copiously. And lest anyone might think that God had sent us - the meat, but the Devil the Cook (as the proverb says), there was - a cook there so expert in his art that his equal could scarce be - found.... - - If you now inquire whether there were any other amusements, besides - those I have related, I say an infinite number, and the very best. For - if we wished to ride after dinner, you would have seen forthwith ten - or twelve handsome steeds with good equipments and other ornaments, - ready for the road. We quickly mount, we visit the Well and Chair of - St. Patrick [Struel], the ancient Fort [Rath-Celtair], or any other - place according to our fancy; and at length returning home, cards, - tables, and dice are set before us, and amongst other things that - Indian tobacco (of which I shall never be able to make sufficient - mention), and of which I cannot speak otherwise. - - * * * * * - - And now once more to our Lecale, where amongst other things that - contributed to hilarity, there came one night after supper certain - maskers belonging to the Irish gentry, four in number (if I rightly - remember). They first sent in to us a letter marked with “the greatest - haste,” and “after our hearty commendations,” according to the old - style, saying that they were strangers, just arrived in these parts, - and very desirous of spending one or two hours with us; and leave - being given, they entered in this order: first a boy, with a lighted - torch; then two, beating drums; then the maskers, two and two; then - another torch. One of the maskers carried a dirty pocket handkerchief, - with ten pounds in it, not of bullion, but of the new money lately - coined, which has the harp on one side, and the royal arms on the - other. - - They were dressed in shirts, with many ivy leaves sewed on here and - there over them; and had over their faces masks of dog-skin; with - holes to see out of, and noses made of paper; their caps were high - and peaked (in the Persian fashion), and were also of paper, and - ornamented with the same (ivy) leaves. - - I may briefly say we play at dice. At one time the drums sound on - their side; at another the trumpet on ours. We fight a long time a - doubtful game; at length the maskers lose, and are sent away cleaned - out. Now whoever hath seen a dog, struck with a stick or a stone, run - out of the house with his tail hanging between his legs, would have - (so) seen these maskers going home: without money; out of spirits; - out of order; without even saying “Farewell”; and they said that each - of them had five or six miles to go to his home, and it was then two - hours after midnight. - - I shall now tell of another jest or gambol, which amongst many, the - domestics of Master Morrison exhibited for us. Two servants sat down - after the manner of women (with reverence be it spoken) when they - “hunker,” only that they (the servants) sat upon the ground: their - hands were tied together in such a manner that their knees were - clasped within them; and a stick placed between the bend of the arms - and the legs, so that they could in no way move their arms; they held - between the thumb and forefinger of either hand a small stick, almost - a foot in length, and sharp at the farther end. Two are placed in - this way: the one opposite the other at the distance of an ell. Being - thus placed they engage; and each one tries to upset his opponent, - by attacking him with his feet; for being once upset, he can by no - means recover himself, but presents himself to his upsetter for attack - with the aforesaid small stick. Which made us laugh so for an hour, - that the tears dropped from our eyes; and the wife of Philip the cook - laughed, and the scullion, who were both present. You would have said - that some barber-surgeon was there to whom all were showing their - teeth. - - But enough of these matters; for there would be no end of writing, - were I to recount all our grave and merry doings in that space of - seven days. - - I shall therefore make an end both of the journey and of my story. For - on the seventh day from our arrival we departed, mournful and sad; - and Master Morrison accompanied us as far as Dundrum; to whom each of - us bid farewell, and again farewell, and shouting the same for a long - way, with our caps raised above our heads, we hasten to our quarters, - and there we each cogitate seriously over our own affairs. - - - - -CHAPTER V - -TRADITION IN IRISH HISTORY. - -_Reprinted from the Nineteenth Century and After, March, 1909._ - - -IN the _Quarterly Review_ of January last there appeared an article by -Mr. Robert Dunlop, dealing in a trenchant manner with a book which I -wrote lately, _The Making of Ireland and Its Undoing_. I regret to take -part personally in a controversy where my own credit is brought into -question, and I am only moved to do so by consideration of the grave -issues which are involved as regards the study of Irish history. - -The appearance of my book has raised two questions of a very different -order--the important question of whether, with the advance of modern -studies, need has arisen for an entire review of the whole materials -for Irish history and of the old conclusions, and the less interesting -problem of my own inadequacy and untrustworthiness. Mr. Dunlop, in some -fifteen pages of discourse, has not so much as mentioned the first. He -has treated the second at considerable length. We may here take them in -order of importance. - -The real difference between Mr. Dunlop and myself lies deeper than the -question of my merits or demerits. It is the old conflict between -tradition and enquiry. For the last 300 years students of medieval -Irish history have peacefully trodden a narrow track, hemmed in by -barriers on either hand. On one side they have been for the most part -bounded by complete ignorance of the language of the country or its -literature. On the other side they have raised the wall of tradition. -Along this secluded lane writers have followed one another, in the -safety of the orthodox faith. A history recited with complete unanimity -takes on in course of time the character of the highest truth. There -have been disputes on one or two points perhaps where theologians -are concerned, as for example the story of St. Patrick; but on the -general current of Irish life there has been no serious discussion nor -any development in opinion. The argument from universal assent has -been sufficient. There is a similarity even of phrase. “We prefer to -think,” writes Mr. Dunlop. “We prefer to abide by the traditional view -of the state of Ireland,” writes another critic from the same school. -Agreement has been general, individual speculation has not disturbed -the peace, and all have joined their voices to swell the general -creed. Under these favouring conditions historians of Ireland speak -with a rare confidence and unanimity. “What are novelties after all?” -cries the sagacious historian imagined by M. Anatole France: “mere -impertinences.” - -It has happened to me to question the received doctrine. Universal -assent of all men of all time is a very useful thing, and for some -positive facts it may be decisive. But in Irish history it is used to -enforce a series of negations--no human progress, no spiritual life, no -patriotism, no development, no activity save murder, no movement but a -constant falling to decay, and a doomed lapse into barbarism of every -race that entered the charmed circle of the island. However universal -the consent, the statements of the tradition are of so extraordinary a -character, that one may fairly desire an inspection of the evidence. I -have ventured to suggest that the time had come to study the sources -anew; to see if any had been omitted, or if in modern research any new -testimony concerning Ireland had been brought to light; to give less -weight to negative assertions than to positive facts; and to enquire -what the whole cumulative argument might imply. Thus the fundamental -problem has been raised. If Mr. Dunlop has not a word to say about -it, it will nevertheless not disappear. The enquiry will need many -scholars and a long time, but I am sure it will be completed, and that -Irish history will then need to be re-written. Meanwhile, as I claim no -infallible authority, to fulminate against me does not get rid of the -essential problem. The discrediting of a doubter of the orthodox faith -is the simplest form of argument and the least laborious. The trouble -is that when it is done the real question is no further advanced. - -A heretic must take his risks. We have an example of their gravity -in this article, in which Mr. Dunlop restores an old custom to -controversy. We had almost come to suppose that it was the privilege of -theologians to settle the respective platforms from which disputations -should be carried on. The higher plane is reserved for the orthodox. -The “querulous” dissentient, on the other hand, is pronounced to be -making mere incursions into what is for him a comparatively unknown -region, his incapacity is obvious and his want of candour deplorable, -and he has forfeited all claim to respect. This is all in the -appropriate manner of those who hold an Irish history handed down by -tradition. - -The permitted belief about Ireland has been summed up dogmatically -by Mr. Dunlop in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, the -_Cambridge Modern History_, and elsewhere. Of the inhabitants of -Ireland “two-thirds at least led a wild and half nomadic existence. -Possessing no sense of national unity beyond the narrow limits of the -several clans to which they belonged, acknowledging no law outside the -customs of their tribe, subsisting almost entirely on the produce of -their herds and the spoils of the chase, and finding in their large -frieze mantles a sufficient protection against the inclemency of the -weather, and one relieving them from the necessity of building houses -for themselves, they had little in their general mode of life to -distinguish them from their Celtic ancestors.” “Outside the pale there -was nothing worthy of being called a Church. To say that the Irish had -relapsed into a state of heathenism is perhaps going too far. The -tradition of a Christian belief still survived; but it was a lifeless, -useless thing.” The country was “cut off by its position, but even -more by the relapse of the greater of its inhabitants into a state of -semi-barbarism, from the general currents of European development.” -Bogs and woods, the lairs of the wild-boar and the wolf, made internal -communications dangerous and difficult, and prevented trade and -intercourse with other nations. Few words, therefore, are needed to -sum up their commerce. “French wines found their way into the country -through Cork and Waterford; the long-established relations between -Dublin and Bristol still subsisted; Spanish traders landed their wares -on Galway quay; the fame of St. Patrick’s purgatory attracted an -occasional pilgrim from foreign lands; and of one Irish chieftain it -was placed on record that he had accomplished the hazardous journey -to Rome and back.” Shane O’Neill, “champion of Celtic civilisation,” -could speak no language but Irish, and could not sign his name. In -the _Quarterly Review_ we have a few more details--that the main part -of the Irishmen’s dress was skins; that this people who lived without -houses when they went on their “marauding expeditions” (excursions of -the full summer time) made to themselves tents of untanned skins to -cover them (here I could almost imagine Mr. Dunlop, in spite of his -aversion to bards, indulging on the sly in a cloudy reminiscence of an -Irish poet); that among the whole of them they had just a few hundred -coracles made of osiers and skins for crossing swollen rivers, for the -O’Malleys and O’Driscolls who had long-boats represented “perhaps the -Iberian element in the _nation_,” suggests Mr. Dunlop, not to give the -Gaels any credit, while he slips by the way into the objectionable word -apparently so hard to avoid; that they made no practical use even of -their inland fisheries, and had no industries, so that even the cloth -was made by Englishmen. - -We would desire to ask Mr. Dunlop for the exact proof he relies on for -any one of these statements, beginning perhaps with “no law outside the -_customs of the tribe_.” Writers who hold Ireland to be, as he says, -“a sort of scrap-heap for Europe,” and who cannot conceive of medieval -Irishmen as ordinary men sharing the faults and virtues of other white -Europeans, are addicted to the word “native”--a word not in common use -among historians for Englishmen in England in the Middle Ages, but -affected by them to indicate Irishmen in Ireland, with the derogatory -sense which their “tradition” requires. The vulgar view received as -it were official recognition half a century ago from Mr. Hamilton in -his preface to the _State Papers_ of 1509-73 (see also references -in my book, 487-8), where he explains that the study of Irish life -till Elizabethan times will be of considerable value in the study of -_Universal History_, Ireland being so remote from the earlier seats of -civilisation that the rude way of living described by Hesiod and the -old poets still lingered there till the sixteenth century; till which -time “most of the wild Irish led a nomade life, tending cattle, sowing -little corn, and rarely building houses, but sheltered alike from -heat and cold, and moist and dry, by the Irish cloak.” The last fifty -years, we see, amid the general shaking of dry bones and the movement -of history elsewhere, have brought no stir in Irish history. That alone -stands like eternal truth fixed and unchangeable. Hence, doubtless, Mr. -Dunlop’s canon (_Quart. Rev._, 1906) forbidding “_a history of Ireland -in more than one volume_.” - -The barbarian legend has got a long start. A first attempt to review -its evidence was made in my book. In a series of social studies I have -endeavoured to discuss, not the whole of Irish history, but definite -matters of trade, social life, and education. I have gathered a body -of facts which indicate that Ireland had considerable manufactures; -that her foreign commerce can be traced throughout Europe; that there -was an orderly society, even a wealthy one; that Irish travellers were -known at Rome and in the Levant; that there was an Anglo-Irish culture -by no means contemptible, in touch with Continental learning; and that -increasing intercourse of the races did not tend to barbarism but to -civilisation. - -In this sketch I have not proposed to myself to draw nice distinctions -between what the Normans precisely did, and what the Irish (or even, -following Mr. Dunlop), what Iberians were doing in the sixteenth -century in the joint work of commerce and culture, because there is as -yet no sufficient material for that discussion; I share this lack of -knowledge with many who have pronounced themselves with no uncertain -voice. Further, I should have been glad to confine these studies to -the cheerful progress of trade and culture; but I was confronted with -two possible objections. The suggestion that if there had been any -considerable trade it would not have vanished by a freak, could only be -answered by indicating how and why the destruction had been wrought. -And to meet the argument that historians would not have let a genuine -story perish, I gave my opinion on how it was that the truth dropped -out of sight. - -My conclusions conflict with the venerable traditions over which -Mr. Dunlop mounts guard. I clearly offend also against the canon -of one volume. It is obvious that he must feel for me the sharpest -disapproval; and this censure is conveyed with no mitigation of phrase -or manner. - -The charge he elaborates against me is briefly that I have no judgment, -and less candour, in the use of documents, and have thus produced a -mass of mischievous fiction. - -I may say in passing that Mr. Dunlop’s severity with regard to -authorities comes somewhat oddly from one who has shown himself fairly -easy in such matters. In his own writings he gives no references, and -in this same article the only authority he quotes independently is Mr. -O’Connor’s _Elizabethan Ireland_. When I have to be silenced, “Turn -we to Mr. O’Connor!” Now Mr. O’Connor has written a slight sketch of -Irish political and social life in some 280 pages. He gives no dates, -no indications of place, and no references. But we have Mr. Dunlop’s -word for it that it is a “scholarly” work. “Mr. O’Connor” quoted by -Mr. Dunlop ends controversy. The tradition is secure. I might envy -Mr. Dunlop this freedom from trammels of references, of date, or of -place. In such wide and impartial survey any statement about Ireland -may appear as true of every place and of all time. Barbarism would seem -to be a fixed and unchanging state, a passive monotony, from the time -of “Lacustrine habitations” and of “Hesiod and the old poets,” till -its characteristic representative in Shane O’Neill. The principle once -assumed, any evidence will suffice to show that the Irish had none of -the attributes of ordinary white Europeans; while evidence that they -made money, traded, built houses, talked Latin, studied medicine and -law, or otherwise behaved like other people of the Middle Ages, is -probably rhodomontade, moonshine, or historical profligacy. - -Mr. Dunlop’s summary method with unfamiliar sources appears in his -asperity towards what he calls my “trivial references” to Mr. Standish -Hayes O’Grady’s _Catalogue of Manuscripts_. - -“We wonder (he says on p. 267) how many of Mrs. Green’s readers -are aware that of this book, from which she has gleaned so much -information--of a sort--only one copy, so far as we know, is accessible -to the public, and that is in the MSS. Department of the British -Museum. The book, we understand, was never published. It is still -incomplete. The official copy consists merely of the bound sheets as -they were printed off for proof.” - -I suppose Mr. Dunlop does not mean to suggest that the value of a book -is in proportion to the number of copies, or that an authority of which -a single copy exists should not be quoted. In any case I can reassure -him. The sheets of this _Catalogue_ have been these many years past for -sale to the public at the Museum, where I got my copy, and I hope many -others did the same. The book can be bought in a London shop to-day. -Mr. Dunlop might consult it in the London Library. The copy placed in -the National Library in Dublin in 1895 has been in frequent use since -then. Possibly Mr. Dunlop knows the inside of the book better than the -outside, but it seems to be a new acquaintance, suddenly introduced and -viewed with distaste. In this brilliant _Catalogue_ we have the work of -a very great authority, unsurpassed in his special learning, far beyond -what O’Donovan could lay claim to; with its “information--of a sort--” -it is the most important book that has appeared for many years with -regard to Irish history. Another critic of Mr. Dunlop’s school, who in -his remarks gives no definite sign of any knowledge of Mr. O’Grady’s -work, has reproached me for referring to it “without further sifting.” -But it is certain that neither of these writers who reprove me will -themselves do much “further sifting” where that admirable scholar has -gone before them. - -May I add that Mr. Dunlop does not appear to follow too closely modern -studies on Irish affairs, or he would surely have known of Mr. Justice -Madden’s _Classical Learning in Ireland_, published last summer--a -little book which he should certainly have been willing to include in -any review of recent Irish writings? - -To return, however, to my own lamentable want of candour and accuracy, -I now give a few of the instances of my deficiencies, and of the -admirable example which Mr. Dunlop sets me in these respects. - -Mr. Dunlop states, “to speak accurately,” that my reference to Shane -O’Neill as “done to death” (so _he_ expresses it) by the English is -“absolutely without foundation.” His own account of Shane’s death in -the _Dictionary of National Biography_ tells us that “possibly if -he could have kept a civil tongue in his head the MacDonnells might -have consented to a reconciliation.” “It is doubtful whether his -assassination was premeditated ... it is probable that when heated -with wine he may have irritated them by his insolent behaviour beyond -endurance.” In the _Cambridge Modern History_ (iii. 592), however, Mr. -Dunlop has attained conviction. “In his wine-cups,” he tells us, “he -began to brawl, and was literally hacked in pieces by his enemies.” -These and some other of his suppositions do not appear to agree with -the story in _Holinshed_, _Campion_, _the Calendar of State Papers_, or -the _Four Masters_. But why does Mr. Dunlop disagree with Lord Deputy -Sidney, the main mover in the matter? Many efforts, it is well known, -had been made to murder Shane. In 1566 Sidney sent to Scotland his -“man,” the English-Scot Douglas, who had come to him from Leicester -himself. Sidney gives us the clue to his mission. “I pray you,” he -wrote to Leicester, “let this bringer (Douglas) receive comfortable -words of you. I have found him faithful, _it was he that brought the -Scots that killed O’Neill_.” Douglas repeated the boast and prayed -a reward from Cecil. Years later Sidney, being maligned by powerful -enemies at Court, reminded the Queen of his old services. “And whereas -he [O’Neill] looked for service at their [the Scots] hands against me, -_for service of me, they killed him_.... But when I came to the Court,” -he added with indignation, “it was told me it was no war that I had -made, nor worthy to be called a war, for that Shane O’Neill was but a -beggar, an outlaw, and one of no force, and _that the Scots stumbled on -him by chance_.” Would Mr. Dunlop, as a means of overthrowing me, join -with Sidney’s enemies to rob him of the deed he boasted of? (_Vide_ -_Sid. Let._ 12, 34-5; _C.S.P._ i. 430; _Car._ ii. 338, 340-1.) - -I have pained Mr. Dunlop by referring to the hoard of Con O’Neill, -Earl of Tyrone, as evidence that Ulster was not penniless. Mr. Dunlop -discovers that Shane O’Neill “robbed his father” of this store, and can -scarcely believe that I adduce this “robbery” to prove the wealth of -Ulster, and that I use it in connection with a passage about plunder of -Ireland by English invaders. This hoard occurs in a list of three pages -containing signs of riches in Ireland (pp. 67-69), a mere glance at -which would show the absurdity of any contention that all the moneys I -mention fell into English hands. As to Con O’Neill’s savings, I see no -objection to an allusion to them as one proof among others of money and -plate in Ulster. I do not know if Mr. Dunlop means not only to suggest -my want of candour, but also to prove that if Shane “robbed” his -father’s treasure, therefore no English soldiers or officials robbed -any Irish chief of his plate or wealth. - -But though in this connection I have really nothing to do with the -ultimate fate of Con’s hoard, I may in passing compare the Lord -Chancellor Cusack’s report at the time with Mr. Dunlop’s “robbery.” -Con O’Neill was thrown into prison in Dublin in 1552, and said to be -threatened with death. The English were prepared with an illegitimate -successor in Tyrone. Shane claimed to be his father’s lawful heir, and -fought the English nominee. A garrison of English soldiers was thrown -into Armagh. Beyond the Blackwater Ford, within a ride of Armagh, lay -the chief fort of Tyrone, on the great hill of Dungannon. Shane, -evidently with the support of his people, “came to Dungannon,” and took -with him “of the chief’s treasure £800 in gold and silver besides plate -and other stuff” [apparently then not the whole of it, but so much -as was needed for the war at the moment] “and retaineth the same as -yet, whereby it appeareth that he and she [the Earl and Countess] was -content with the same; for,” said Cusack, “it could not be perceived -that they were greatly offended for the same.” This was how Shane -O’Neill “robbed his father.” - -Mr. Dunlop quotes a sentence that “Galway ships sailed to Orkney -and to Lübeck,” and gives _one_ only of my references in the note, -which states that a Scottish ship of Orkney was freighted at Galway -for Lisbon. It is evident that by one of the accidental errors of -transcription, which every writer that ever lived has sometimes to -deplore, I transferred the words, and _Orkney_ was used where I meant -to write _Lisbon_. Lübeck is a different matter. Why did Mr. Dunlop -carefully omit the reference in the same note to the page where I -mention goods shipped from Galway to Lübeck in 1416? Was it a generous -effort to make the error take on a more serious character? Or was -it a common inaccuracy? I may inform him that in the _Hansisches -Urkundenbuch_ further references occur to Irish cloth at Lübeck, as -well as to Irish cloth and provisions along the Elbe, and that the name -he throws doubt on appears with good reason in my text. - -Mr. Dunlop also discovers a “most apparent and painful” instance of -my “distorting of evidence” in my reference (which I did not give as -a quotation) to Limerick merchants appeached of treason for _trading_ -with Irish rebels, when the deputy’s words were _victualling and -maintaining_ (p. 170). Mr. Dunlop might perhaps himself suspect some -barter in the business when it attracted eight merchants to traffic -in so dangerous an enterprise. But he conveniently omits the rest of -my story, that within a year of the arrest of the eight merchants the -Limerick corporation prayed to have the city charter confirmed with -a special clause _that they might buy and sell with Irishmen at all -times_. They seem to have had no objection to trade with the Irish, -which was the only point I had there to prove. I willingly alter the -word that seems to Mr. Dunlop so painful a distortion of the truth, and -my argument remains unchanged. - -Mr. Dunlop twice condemns me in “the case of Enniscorthy fair, where -the documents referred to refute the deduction drawn from them.” -“We strongly resent her concealing the fact” that Sidney, with the -Four Masters, deplored the “_destruction_ (n.b.)” of the fair by the -rebellious Butlers at the instigation of James Fitzmaurice. Why should -I not “conceal facts” I do not know to be true? I fancy it is better -than publishing them. The word used by the Four Masters, Sidney, and -a contemporary letter given in Hore’s _Town of Wexford_ (175) is -“spoiling.” Will Mr. Dunlop give his references to “_destruction_ -(n.b.),” and to “the instigation of James Fitzmaurice”? What is the -proof? This day’s raid was not the first attack on the fair after -it had been granted to English officers charged to execute martial -law on the Wexford Irish. I have not space to tell the significant -circumstances. Mr. Dunlop blames me for not giving the founder of the -fair. “We will overlook the omission,” he says in his lofty way of -superior erudition and fidelity to facts. This cheap taunt is surely -absolutely unworthy of a writer who should be aware that no one as yet -knows the origin of the fair. I see no reason against mentioning its -existence, among many others which Mr. Dunlop neglects, as evidence of -trading activity in a region where Irish law and speech prevailed. - -I do not propose to weary the reader by multiplying instances of this -kind. The details of historical controversy interest few readers. Its -personal aspect should interest none. The instances I have given are -true samples of all the rest. I have gone carefully through the long -indictment, and I note half a dozen minor points in which I am glad to -correct an obvious misprint or to amend an error (not one of which, I -would say, affects the drift of my argument). But the great bulk of -these criticisms--grave inaccuracies in themselves, or misstatements -of what I say, or dogmatic assertions which need for their discussion -evidences which there is no attempt to offer--can give me little help. -For an example of historical investigation of medieval Irish history, -of serious use of references and evidences, or of customary fairness in -discussion, I must go elsewhere than to Mr. Dunlop. - -With regard to evidence, I am charged with repudiating the testimony -of Spenser, Davies, Fynes Moryson, Cuellar, Derrick, and official -documents that tell against me. I have drawn very largely from State -Papers and official records of all kinds, sources of information -which have proved invaluable for my purpose. In the shaking bog of -medieval testimony, some firm standing is to be found in statutes, -ordinances, town records, cartularies, and the like. From them we -rapidly come to more perilous regions--State Papers and letters--where -every document needs to be considered as a separate “source” to be -separately discussed. Some were written by strangers newly come to the -country--soldiers, secretaries, adventurers, spies; others by higher -officials struggling in an intricate tangle of intrigues, or by a lower -sort trying to make their way upwards; some by governors zealous to -keep their credit amid the scandal of the Court; others by governors -desperate to recapture a lost reputation. In the medley of partiality, -prejudice, ignorance, despair, and triumph, every one must judge to the -best of his ability as to the value of the testimony; there can be no -scientific accuracy in the measurement. There is the same difficulty -with the reports of a few Continental travellers, Italian or Spanish. -Historians of Ireland have freely used the evidence of men, English or -European, who came not knowing a word of the language, who traversed -the country more or less rapidly under official guidance, or in the -midst of armies occupied in a peculiarly ferocious warfare, or who -attempted an uneasy living on the confiscated lands of the “native” -people--men, in fact, who knew practically nothing but destruction. -From the study of other evidence I have come to think that the view -which has generally been accepted from these gentlemen is imperfect and -often erroneous. They could know nothing of an earlier time and had but -a partial vision of their own. - -Some well-thumbed later authorities have been found to give no -trustworthy guidance for medieval Ireland, and they do not appear in -that customary place of authority which had become their recognised -privilege; on the other hand, some entirely new authorities have been -called in and some have lain unused. - -Among the writers I am accused of neglecting is Captain Cuellar, a -Spaniard from the Armada, knowing no Irish, flying for his life, -sometimes among people who had no good reputation with the Irish -themselves, hiding himself in the wildest and most secret haunts of -districts swept and wasted from end to end by English soldiers--I do -not know why such an experience should be quoted as a fair record of -ordinary Irish life in the plains, in times of peace, and among the -richer and more settled clans. Mr. Orpen, in the _English Historical -Review_, has extracted from this little record every damaging phrase -to the Irish to be found in it and omitted every favourable one. Does -he wonder why I have not done the like? I have not done it because I -do not think it fair dealing or honest history to state as evidence -against the Irish that Cuellar was “robbed of all he possessed, -stripped naked, beaten, and forced by a blacksmith to work”; and not to -mention that the robbing and beating was the work of English troops and -mercenaries from Scotland; that the week he spent at the blacksmith’s -forge was the solitary unkindness he suffered from any native Irishman -in his seven months’ wandering; that the moment an Irish chief heard -of his misfortune he sent to take him to his own house; that in that -seven months of journeyings in the wilds, from the day when cast on -a Connacht beach, he was hidden in pity by gallow-glasses till the -day when men of Ulster secured his escape across the sea, he was -continually succoured by young and old, men and women, clerics and -laymen, who pitied him, wept at his sufferings, showed him every -hospitality and kindness, and guided him from shelter to shelter to -hide him from the English. By what strange tradition, by what long -prejudice is this perversion of evidence fabricated and admitted? - -Besides English and Spanish testimony we have also some from the Irish -themselves. Among Irish witnesses the great Galway scholar Dr. Lynch, -writer of _Cambrensis Eversus_, stands high; no student can afford -to neglect editions and translations made by Mr. Whitley Stokes and -Professor Kuno Meyer in this country, and by Continental scholars; the -translations of Dr. Douglas Hyde; the work of Dr. Norman Moore in the -_Dictionary of National Biography_ and elsewhere; or the collection of -criticisms, translations, and summaries that make up the invaluable -_Catalogue of Manuscripts_ in the British Museum by Mr. S. H. O’Grady. - -Mr. Dunlop does not like poets. “Surely she must know that the very -stock-in-trade of a poet is pure moonshine,” he avers. However that may -be, I may say that Mr. O’Grady’s _Catalogue_ contains a great deal that -is not poetry. “Must we remind her,” says Mr. Dunlop with the loftiest -severity, “that bard and annalist were often the same individual?” -The _Catalogue_ would explain to him how impossible would be such -a conception to the Irish world, where a bard was a mere natural -poet who had not studied in the schools. Will Mr. Dunlop give one -single instance of this frequent fact? A quotation from a blind poet -peculiarly awakens his contempt, as he refers to it twice, repeating -here the criticism of another writer of his school. Teigue Dall -O’Higgin was a man of great eminence in his day; and I see no reason to -believe that a blind man necessarily takes leave of _all_ his senses. I -have no doubt that Teigue was at home in all the gossip of Enniskillen, -and that he could distinguish between the sounds of a smith’s shop, or -of women talking over their embroidery, and of men bringing boats to -the shore. Other references to Fermanagh which I have given in my book, -and indications in the English wars of the importance of water carriage -on the lake, bear out the story of Teigue the Blind. He was right about -the “blue hills.” - -If Mr. Dunlop accuses me of a “partiality for native records” with all -their “rhetorical rhodomontade,” I frankly confess to a regard for -the opinion of people who belong to a country and speak its tongue. I -suppose that contemporary Irish witnesses, even the _Four Masters_, -may be used with the same authority and the same limitations as -English; nor do I know why the opinion of any stray traveller or minor -official from over-sea, intent only on furthering his interests, is -to be accepted without question, while the word of a deeply learned -Anglo-Irish scholar of Galway, or of an eminent Irish poet who had -visited every province of Ireland, is to be wholly suspect. I will give -an illustration by recalling the case of Sir John Davies and of Dr. -Lynch. To Mr. Dunlop the brief writings of Davies represent a very high -authority, while the _Cambrensis Eversus_ of Lynch is dismissed in one -word as a “political pamphlet.” He does not apparently think Davies had -any political leanings. We usually think people impartial who hold our -own opinions. - -In my book I have given definite reasons for thinking that Davies’ -acquaintance with Irish affairs was inadequate--in a short residence -in the country of which he did not know the language, the law, or the -history. My own judgment is that considering his imperfect means of -knowledge, and his very strong bias of prejudice, his statements about -Ireland before his coming there have no particular sanctity, and need -to be tested and corroborated like those of any other writer. That he -is sometimes at fault even a believer such as Mr. Dunlop seems in a -hidden way to admit. Suggesting that my references to the cloth trade -are not so novel as unwary readers might think, “the excellent quality -of Irish wool,” says Mr. Dunlop, “is one of the best attested facts in -Irish commercial history.” Then why has Mr. Dunlop until this moment -excluded any slightest mention of wool in his summary of Irish trade? -Was it too well known? Or was it because of the saying of Sir John -Davies--“for wool and wool-felts were ever of little value in this -kingdom?” We are here shut into a denial of the well-attested commerce -in wool, or to a doubt of the sufficiency of Sir John Davies as a -witness; and we are left without guidance by Mr. Dunlop. On the whole, -it seems judicious to depend on Davies’ evidence only for the things -that lay within his immediate and direct observation. His opinion on -all that he himself saw is worthy of respect, and we may admit the -sound legal maxim that a man’s evidence can always be accepted when it -is given against himself. - -The same distinction may surely be drawn in the case of Dr. Lynch. -Davies was a man of English and Latin learning, Lynch a man of Irish -and Latin learning. The historical criticism of their day was not -perfect in either country, and as Davies leant to the English side of -prejudice, Lynch leant to the Irish. But Lynch, like Davies, was I -believe a just reporter of what he had himself seen or had heard from -firsthand witnesses. And I have therefore quoted him, as I have Davies, -for what had come within the range of his personal knowledge, not for -matters of historical research. His testimony is of extraordinary and -pathetic interest. Born in Galway in the last years of Elizabeth, when -the city still preserved its old culture and the remnants of its old -wealth, Lynch was one of the last scholars who ever saw and knew the -Anglo-Irish civilisation. It is not any single picture that he gives -that is important; it is the host of scattered and chance allusions, as -to things well known to every Irishman in his day, which reveal to us -the society in which he had been brought up. It is touching to remember -that he was the last to say a good word for the medieval civilisation. -After his death a darkness and silence of hundreds of years fell over -that story, and it is across nearly three centuries that Irishmen will -now have to take hands with Lynch and carry on his justification of the -Ireland which was being gradually built up by the work of Gaels, Danes, -Normans, and English in their common country. - -This, however, is just what Mr. Dunlop denies. He “begs leave to -doubt” that the “native Irish” in the fifteenth century developed the -resources of the country. By omitting all contemporary references to -timber, to leather, and to salmon, of course it can be said there was -no medieval trade in these. The plan seems unsatisfactory, and I have -not followed it. Mr. Dunlop, for example, blames me for not quoting an -English poem (no pure moonshine here--perhaps a farthing dip) which -does not mention leather, as proof that there was no leather trade. I -have quoted the _Libel_ elsewhere, but on this point I preferred the -direct evidence of the records of the Bruges Staple; and I have since -added notices in the _Hansisches Urkundenbuch_ for leather sent in -1304, 1327, 1453 to Bruges, Dinant, and Portugal. I would ask which -is the historical method: to close the question once for all with the -negative silence of an anonymous English writer “whom we think,” says -Mr. Dunlop, in one of his easy moods about evidence, “had a pretty -accurate notion of what constituted Irish commerce”; or to pursue -enquiry in business records of the ports and seek to ascertain the -exact facts. - -The art of making linen was known, according to Mr. Dunlop, to the -“native Irish, as it is to most primitive races.” But what they made -in Ireland was “of a very coarse kind, and its use was practically -restricted to the wealthier class--viz., the merchants of the towns.” -What is his proof for all this? Was it the town merchants that Campion -describes wearing linen shirts for wantonness and bravery, “thirty -yards are little enough for one of them”? What about the great linen -rolls on the Irishwomen’s heads, and (is the inference too romantic?) -perhaps on their bodies also? What about the fine linen in which the -Galway women wrapped the Spanish hanged after the Armada? When I read -of 6000 bales of linen cloth sent from Galway to Genoa in 1492, or of -4000 linen cloths mentioned in 1499 in another Galway merchant’s will, -or of the “sardok” of mixed woollen and linen in the Netherland markets -in 1353, or of Henry the Eighth forbidding Galway any more to export -linen, the records of the time seem to conflict with the opinions which -Mr. Dunlop “begs leave” to hold. - -Mr. Dunlop now admits for the first time some trade in cloth, but with -a stipulation of his own that it was all made by Englishmen. He does -not trouble to consider such a clue as we find in the State Papers of -Galway merchants carrying their wine into the country to exchange among -other things for cloth. He has his own theory; “it is pretty clear from -such expressions as Limerick cloak, Galway mantle, Waterford rug, that -the centres of the cloth industry lay within the sphere of English -influence”; the participation of the Irish was excluded by severe guild -regulations, and “it may not be unfair to infer that the reputation -acquired abroad by Ireland in regard to its serges was not due to the -industry of its native population.” This insinuating hypothesis is a -flaming fact on the next page, where it appears the “native Irish” (no -inferring here to dull the conclusion) “took no part in the commercial -development of their country, leaving it to the stranger within their -gate, and thereby earning from the latter the reproach of idleness.” -If there were, as Mr. Dunlop “prefers to think,” some loyal Irishmen -who preferred English civilisation and the chances it offered them -of pushing their way in life to their native customs, he states that -the presence even of such loyal Irishmen “was not always welcome to -citizens of English blood.” Thus the English of the towns must have -toiled day and night to supply the mantles which the English Government -forbade to loyal people, and to provide cloaks and cloth for the -foreign trade, since in their incessant struggle to preserve themselves -intact from Celtic influences they refused the aid of Irish hands to -work for them. It is an idyllic picture of high purpose and endeavour, -of the way to develop a country, and to make an empire. - -We are not, however, shut up to this series of hypotheses. The town -records themselves and English State Papers, as I have shown, give -sufficient proof that the “native population” were not, in fact, -rejected from the town industries. Mr. Dunlop denies this; he thinks -the towns remained pure English. He is sure that all the Galway people -shaved their upper lip weekly. Henry the Eighth was not so sure of it -when, in 1536, he sent orders from Westminster to Galway men to shave -themselves aright. When Mr. Dunlop, to prove that the Galway citizens -consistently desired to keep themselves free from Irish customs, quotes -laws against Irish games and keening, he quotes them without date. My -contention is that, if it was necessary _as late as 1527 and 1625_ to -enact these laws, this, with a number of other indications that I have -mentioned, shows that the citizens’ “desire” was not very effective, -and that there was an Irish population ready to push its way in trade, -but not anxious to drop “their native customs.” No doubt the extent -to which Irish names were changed must be conjectural; but there is -evidence that such change did take place. My suggestion that “White” -may indicate an Irish house gives Mr. Dunlop an opportunity to parade -his knowledge of Gaelic. He informs me, on the authority of O’Donovan, -that there is no such Gaelic name as _Geal_ and imagines that settles -the matter. He has never, then, heard of the name _Fionn_, which has -been anglicised by “White” for centuries, just as a well-known Scotch -writer of our day calls himself Henry White or Fionn indifferently. - -As for intellectual culture, Mr. Dunlop is brevity itself. He has -scarce a page for that chimera. The Irish were barbarous and the -Anglo-Normans contaminated. His method is summary. The evidence of -Mr. Whitley Stokes, of Dr. Norman Moore, of Mr. S. H. O’Grady, of Dr. -Kuno Meyer has too little importance with him to be mentioned, and he -can thus more easily avoid all proof of Irish scientific skill in -medicine, or of the admirable quality of their translations from the -Latin. He necessarily omits all mention of the many Irish scholars on -the Continent, for has he not himself told us only one Irish chieftain -made the perilous journey to Rome and back? He has no reference to -buildings or arts which indicate the intercourse of Irish chiefs with -the Continent. He is silent on the schools from which Irishmen were -able to pass to foreign universities. He seems not to have heard of -evidence of Latin culture collected by Mr. Justice Madden. And most -wonderful to say, he seems entirely unaware of the importance of the -list I have published, for the first time (by the generous kindness -of a great scholar), of Irish translations of Continental works. -Perhaps he felt himself anticipated by the conclusive comment I saw -from a dashing newspaper critic, that “the Irish evidently satisfied -themselves with translations!” In any case, he never hints at this -list or its value as evidence. So astonishing a neglect of the greater -matters of evidence, while every detail that could by any means -discredit me is searched out, is surely a grave abuse of the historical -method. In the matter of culture Mr. Dunlop confines himself with a -singular restraint to a single topic--the list of Irishmen at Oxford. -In this he counts many Anglo-Norman and only seventeen Gaelic names, -and this solitary fact is enough to make him astonished that I “did -not recognise how utterly untenable is her theory of the absorption of -Anglo-Irish culture by the native Irish.” Those readers who will turn -to the chapters on Irish learning in my book will perhaps be astonished -not at the theory that there was culture in Ireland, but at the -travesty of that theory and the suppression of evidence which serves as -historical criticism for Mr. Dunlop. - -Mr. Dunlop meets with a direct negative my statement that Sussex and -Sidney carried off in their train every notable chief’s son they could -lay hands on, but he gives no more than his own authority. My statement -is perhaps too comprehensive, but I have given numerous instances (pp. -425-437) to show that the method certainly used by Sussex and Sidney, -so far as they could, was steadily increased and extended in proportion -as the English power gradually spread over one Irish region after -another. The English took over the Irish system of hostages, but they -developed it in a new way. The Catholic chief’s son was brought up in -London as a Protestant, in English law and language and tradition, with -the avowed purpose of spiritually severing him from his people, and -leaving the clan without a natural leader or defender in the national -conflict; their chiefs, in fact, were to be made the very instruments -for dividing and subjugating their own people. In the words I quoted, -it was a method which “not only rent asunder the bonds of national -loyalty and of natural affection, but which forced parent and child -alike to believe that in this world and in the world to come they -were divided by an impassable abyss.” Surely there is no likeness in -this deliberate plan to the Irish chief’s use of his hostage; it was, -indeed, practised with consummate art by Turkey. - -In this article Mr. Dunlop proposed to prove two facts: first, that -Celtic civilisation is largely a figment of my imagination; and, -secondly, that far from composing one nation, the English element -in Ireland was proud of its origin, and struggled incessantly to -preserve itself intact from Celtic influence. One part of his plan is -destructive, and the second constructive. Unfortunately the work of -destruction has proved so alluring that the constructive scheme is -abandoned. As to the value of the destructive work, I contend that Mr. -Dunlop’s criticisms are not so historically accurate, so reasonable, -or so candid, that they can serve for correction or instruction. I -contend further that even on the generous assumption that the whole of -Mr. Dunlop’s criticisms might happen to be valid, there would still -remain untouched the main body of my evidence and the whole current of -my argument. And I confidently believe that the history of Ireland will -be re-written on truer lines and surer foundations than those sketched -out in the _Cambridge Modern History_ and the _Quarterly Review_. But -perhaps Mr. Dunlop will go farther. It would be pleasant to hear, in -more detail, his views on “the Iberian element in the nation.” - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Old Irish World, by Alice Stopford Green - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD IRISH WORLD *** - -***** This file should be named 53159-0.txt or 53159-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/3/1/5/53159/ - -Produced by Giovanni Fini, Chris Curnow and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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