I'm a big big Fan of
Bukowski
The Doctors found a stint in my heart wasn't working and they had to replace it...
Then I slipped in the ice when I was taking Bart the dog for a walk and ruptured my quad in the left leg. The operation to put it back together is in April, I'm in a leg brace and crutches till then.
In the emergency room
Then, as if the left leg wasn't bad enough, I stepped on a piece of glass with my right heel and had to have that sewn up
Since I busted up my leg and had another stint placed in my hear two weeks ago, I've more or less been stuck in the house so Mary and I went out to a local Turkish place last night....it was great, really truly great, to get out of the house, eat a good meal and relax.
Sculpture this and Sculpture
that
Jacky de Maeyer (1938 Ostende, Belgique)
DON'T YOU JUST LOVE POP ART?
Ushiro Shinohara
GOOD WORDS TO HAVE …………
Uxorial \uk-SOR-ee-ul\ of, relating to, or characteristic of a wife. With help from -ial, -ious, and -icide, the Latin word uxor, meaning "wife," has given us the English words uxorial, uxorious (meaning "excessively fond of or submissive to a wife"), and uxoricide ("murder of a wife by her husband" or "a wife murderer"). Maritus means "husband" in Latin, so marital can mean "of or relating to a husband and his role in marriage" (although maritus also means "married," and the "of or relating to marriage or the married state" sense of marital is far more common). And while mariticide is "spouse killing," it can also be specifically "husband-killing."
Uxorial \uk-SOR-ee-ul\ of, relating to, or characteristic of a wife. With help from -ial, -ious, and -icide, the Latin word uxor, meaning "wife," has given us the English words uxorial, uxorious (meaning "excessively fond of or submissive to a wife"), and uxoricide ("murder of a wife by her husband" or "a wife murderer"). Maritus means "husband" in Latin, so marital can mean "of or relating to a husband and his role in marriage" (although maritus also means "married," and the "of or relating to marriage or the married state" sense of marital is far more common). And while mariticide is "spouse killing," it can also be specifically "husband-killing."
HERE'S SOME NICE ART FOR YOU TO LOOK AT....ENJOY!
MariĆ Fortuny - The Spanish Wedding (1870)
Maurice Sapiro - Moonglow
Mickalene Thomas, Untitled #1, 2014
THE ART OF PULP
HERE'S PLEASANT POEM FOR YOU TO ENJOY................
After Forty Years of Marriage, She Tries a New Recipe For Hamburger Hot Dish
Leo Dangel
“How did you like it?” she asked.
“It’s all right,” he said.
“This is the third time I cooked it this way. Why can’t you ever say if you like something?”
“Well if I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t eat it,” he said.
“You never can say anything I cook tastes good.”
“I don’t know why all the time you think I have to say it’s good. I eat it, don’t I?”
“I don’t think you have to say all the time it’s good, but once in awhile you could say you like it.”
“It’s all right,” he said.
TODAY'S ALLEGED (Irish-American) MOB GUY
Coll, Vincent (far left in the photo above)
AKA The Mad Mick. Gangster The poverty that hung over the Irish ghettos of New
York continued to spew out a whole array of gunmen well into the 20th century
including the Mad Mick, Vincent Coll Coll, was born in New York the son of
Irish immigrant parents. And although his up bringing was working class stable,
Coll's brief 23 years on the planet were marked by deadly violence and
bloodshed. After a series of petty crimes as a teenager, Coll joined up with
the Dutch Schultz gang as a gunman and rumrunner for a salary of $150.00 a
week, a sizeable amount of money in depression racked America.
Coll
and his squad of thugs enforced Schultz will in the Bronx and in Harlem, and
his reign in those places was described as brutal and sadistic.
It was
commonly agreed in both Police and criminal circles that Coll was mentally disturbed.
He seemed to enjoy his ghastly work, just a little to much. Other gangsters
feared him and stayed clear of his path. It was during this time that the
Mafia's Castellammarese war broke out between old boss Salvatore Maranzano and
the young Turks Lucky Luciano and Vito Genovese. Maranzano heard about Coll's
ruthless reputation and hired Coll to kill both Luciano and Geneovese and he
almost got around to it but Maranzona was killed first. Had Coll followed
through on his contract to kill the two legendary crime bosses, there is no
telling what could have happened to organized crime in America, since it was
Luciano and Genovese who honed the Mafia into a more mainstream, business like
criminal organization. In 1931, Coll and his brother Peter decided that they
would go into the bootlegging and loansharking business for themselves. The
brothers had enough. They had excelled at breaking heads, maiming and killing
anyone who stood in Schultz's way, but not everyone feared the Coll brothers.
There
were many gangsters in Harlem who would (and did) shoot back. And for all this
they were earning spare change while Schultz racked in tens of millions of
dollars. The brothers broke off on their own, first enlisting two other Schultz
gunmen.
To
ensure that Schultz understood that Coll was in business for himself, the Mick
set up his headquarters in a speakeasy a block away from Schultz office and
then went about the business of hijacking Schultz's beer trucks and invade his
lucrative policy rackets in Harlem. To regain the upper hand Schultz had Coll
brother followed to Harlem and shot dead.
Desperate
for cash to hire more gunmen in his war against Schultz Coll kidnapped gangster
George "Big Frenchy" Demange, a partner to crime Czar Owny "The
Killer" Madden and held him captive for $35,000. Maden paid the ransom and
Big Frenchy was released un¬harmed, but it was a mistake the Mick should not
have made. Coll's second biggest mistake came in July of 1932 when Coll and
several of his gunman spotted one of Schultz top gunmen, Joey Rao on East 107th
street. It was one of those awful, humid and hot New York summers day and the
streets were filled with playing children. It didn't matter to Coll. He and his
men revved their car to full speed and chased Joey Rao down the street firing
their machine guns and pistols out the window as they drove by. When it was over, Rao was alive and five
innocent children, ages three to four years old lay in a pull of their own
blood, struck down by the Mick's gangs bullets. All of the children would
survive except for five year old Michael Vengalli, whose chest and stomach were
blown apart by several .45 caliber
slugs.
Although
that even to this day it has never been established exactly who fired the
shots, Coll or one of his men, Coll was named as the killer and one of the
cities largest man hunts took place, with hundreds of cops searching for the
Mick across the city.
Coll surrendered to Police, was tried for the shooting, but remarkably was acquitted and set free back on to the streets. To celebrate his short lived good fortune, Coll married the very over weight and homely Lottie Kreisberger. But his legal bills were enormous and to pay them off Coll stupidly decided to once again kidnap one of Owney Maddens gunmen and hold him for $30,000.00 in ransom. That was his third and final mistake. The day after he kidnapped Owney Maddens gun slinger, Dutch Schultz had placed a $50,000.00 price tag on the Mick's head. Two days later, four of Schultz's gunmen tracked Coll down to a pay phone inside a neighborhood drug store. As Coll sat in the stores glass enclosed phone booth, threaten¬ing Owney Madden with more kidnapping unless the ransom was paid, the Schultz gunmen fired 15 slugs into the Mad Mick's head, chest and throat.
Lottie Kreisberger
Coll surrendered to Police, was tried for the shooting, but remarkably was acquitted and set free back on to the streets. To celebrate his short lived good fortune, Coll married the very over weight and homely Lottie Kreisberger. But his legal bills were enormous and to pay them off Coll stupidly decided to once again kidnap one of Owney Maddens gunmen and hold him for $30,000.00 in ransom. That was his third and final mistake. The day after he kidnapped Owney Maddens gun slinger, Dutch Schultz had placed a $50,000.00 price tag on the Mick's head. Two days later, four of Schultz's gunmen tracked Coll down to a pay phone inside a neighborhood drug store. As Coll sat in the stores glass enclosed phone booth, threaten¬ing Owney Madden with more kidnapping unless the ransom was paid, the Schultz gunmen fired 15 slugs into the Mad Mick's head, chest and throat.
Colls burial on Long Island
Madden Owney "The Killer" was a leading English (of Irish extraction) gangster in Manhattan
He also ran the famous Cotton Club and was a leading boxing promoter in the 1930s. Owen "Owney" Madden was born at25 Somerset Street Leeds , England Wigan , England and then to Liverpool , England
He also ran the famous Cotton Club and was a leading boxing promoter in the 1930s. Owen "Owney" Madden was born at
It was Francis' intention to take the family to the United States but he died before this ambition could be fulfilled. In 1901 Mary Madden sailed to New York on the RMS Oceanic (1899) to stay with her widowed sister Elizabeth O'Neil at 352 10th Avenue . Owen Madden and his older brother Martin were left in the care of a children's home at 36 Springfield Terrace Leeds, England until Mary paid passage for them to join her in 1902. Owen maintained a sentimentality for his native Yorkshire and England throughout his life, refusing to give up his British passport until in his 50's when he was threatened with deportation. Unlike his elder brother Martin, who adopted a New York drawl, Owney kept his Northern English accent and saved clippings from the Yorkshire Post up until he died.
On 4 June 1902 Madden, together with Martin and his younger sister Mary, sailed from Liverpool , England New York
During this time Madden enjoyed an opulent lifestyle and he was often accompanied by several women. However, he became known for his violent jealousy when he shot and killed a store clerk named William Henshaw who had asked out one of the girls often seen with Madden, while onboard a trolley. Henshaw initially survived the attack and was able to identify Madden as his assailant. When Henshaw later died of his wounds, police arrested Madden. Despite the attack having happened before dozens of people, the case had to be dismissed after no corroborating witnesses came forward.
Over the next three years, the Gophers reached the height of their power as Madden recruited various gunmen into the gang. As Madden began encroaching into rivals' territory, particularly the Hudson Dusters, he was ambushed and shot eleven times on November 6, 1912 outside of a 52nd Street dance hall by three members of the Dusters. Madden survived the attack, however, and refused to identify his attackers to police, stating "Nothing doing. The boys'll get 'em. It's nobody's business but mine who put these slugs in me !". Within a week of his release, several members of the Hudson Dusters had been killed.
In 1914, Madden became involved in a dispute with Little Patsy Doyle, a prominent member of the Hudson Dusters, over a woman named Freda Horner. In a breach of Irish gangland ethics, Doyle informed police of Madden's operations. Following Doyle's assault on Madden's close friend, Tony Romanello, Madden arranged for Doyle's murder. Madden relayed a message to Doyle through a friend of Freda Horner's named Margaret Everdeane to meet him, supposedly in order to reconcile. As Doyle arrived on November 28, 1914, Madden ambushed Doyle killing him. The police questioned Horner and Everdeane who both confessed to their role. Madden was eventually sentenced to twenty years at Sing Sing Prison.
The 1920s
After serving nine years of his sentence, Madden was released on parole in 1923. The Gopher gang had broken up, and many members of his own faction were either in jail or working for bootlegging gangs. Madden initially became a strikebreaker for a New York taxi company but soon found work under Dutch Schultz in his fight against Jack "Legs" Diamond, Waxey Gordon, and Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll during the struggle to control New York City's bootleg liquor trade. He later opened the Cotton Club, formerly Jack Johnson's Club Deluxe, which became one of the city's most popular nightclubs. Madden also operated legitimate laundry and coal delivery businesses. With the support of Tammany Hall politician Jimmy Hines, he received considerable police protection.
The 1930s
In 1931, shortly before the end of Prohibition, Madden left Shultz's organization and entered into partnership with boxing promoters "Broadway" Bill Duffy and George Jean "Big Frenchie" DeMange. Between them, they controlled the careers of the top five boxing champions including Rocky Marciano, Max Baer, and Primo Carnera. As Primo Carnera's manager, Madden arranged fixed fights which led eventually to Carnera's winning the NBA World Heavyweight Championship in 1933. Carnera held onto the title for nearly a year, until suspicions from reporters about fixed fights led to Madden deserting the Italian strongman, setting up Carnera's famous defeat at the hands of Max Baer on June 14, 1934.
In 1932, Madden was involved in the murder of Vincent Mad Dog Coll who had been extorting several mobsters including DeMange and Madden. After being arrested for a parole violation that same year, Madden began facing greater harassment from police, until he finally left New York
Leaving behind racketeering, Madden settled in Hot Springs , Arkansas US Hot Springs
Madden Owney
Owney Madden was born in 1892 in Liverpool , England United States New York City
At a young age, Owney and his brother joined a group of hoodlums known as the Gopher Gang. He quickly developed a reputation for his fighting skills during battles with rival gangs. Over time, he became a leader in the gang and was soon making about $200 a day from the gang's criminal activities.
In 1910, he shot and killed a man who had asked out one of his many girlfriends. The man was named William Henshaw and he later died of the wounds, but not before identifying Owney as the attacker to police. However, Owney was able to get himself acquitted of charges after threatening all of the twelve witnesses before the trial.
On November 6, 1912, Owney was leaving the Arbor Dance Hall
In late 1914, Owney became involved in a dispute with a man name Patsy Doyle, a member of the Hudson Dusters. Owney had gotten involved with one of Doyle's girlfriends and Doyle took revenge by informing police of many of Owney's criminal actions. Doyle took things even further by attacking one of Owney's friends, Tony Romanello. On November 28, 1914, Owney ambushed Doyle and shot him dead.
The police were able to pin the murder on Owney and he was sentenced to twenty years in prison. He spent the next nine years serving time at Sing Sing Prison before he was released on parole in 1923.
After returning to his neighborhood, Owney found out that the Gopher Gang had been broken up in pursuit of bootlegging ventures. He eventually landed a job working for a taxi company as a strike breaker. He was very unhappy with his pay, however, and sought criminal work once again. He was hired by Dutch Schultz and helped fight Schultz's bootlegging opponents.
After a short time, he opened a popular night club known as the "Cotton Club". He was also able to open laundry facilities and coal delivery businesses citywide. In 1931, he joined a group of boxing promoters to fund the careers of Max Baer, Rocky Marciano, and Primo Carnera. He spent much of his time arranging fights, but also directly managed Primo Carnera.
In 1932, Vincent Mad Dog Coll tried to blackmail Owney, but he was killed by a drive by shooting. Owney was arrested for violating his parole that same year and began shifting himself away from criminal activity.
In 1935, he decided to move to Hot Springs , Arkansas United States
AND HERE'S SOME ANIMALS FOR YOU...................
THE ART OF WAR............
This photo, taken at the end of the war shows a young boy terrified by the sounds of battle. He even wet his pants! You can see he is being told to toughen up!
THE ART AND BEAUTY OF BALLET
Three Shades - Renata Shakirova, Yekaterina Ivannikova and Xenia Ostreikovskaya in La Bayadere
Plato
1.Two
of Plato’s uncles, Critias and Charmides, were members of the Thirty Tyrants of
Athens, a brutal oligarchy that rose to power in 404 BC after the city’s defeat
in the Peloponnesian War.
2.Plato
believed that artists were a corrupting influence on society.
3.In
the Republic, Plato described how the structures of the soul are analogous to
those of the state.
4.Government,
according to Plato, should be controlled by an intellectually-trained elite.
5.According
to Plato, a virtuous person can only be created by a virtuous state.
We could have been the good
guys…..almost..
The Post's View
Why is President Obama
threatening to side with China against the Senate?
By Editorial Board February 19
IN 1984, the U.S. Senate
responded to the persecution of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov by renaming
the site of the Soviet Embassy on 16th Street NW Andrei Sakharov Plaza. It was
a symbolic act, but one that sent a persistent message to Soviet diplomats, who
were unavoidably reminded of Sakharov every time they received a piece of mail.
The dissident’s stepdaughter told us in 2014 that the renaming “definitely made
a difference . . . it
raised the level of awareness.” Two
years after the change, Sakharov was released from internal exile.
Now the Senate has taken a
comparable and equally worthy step by voting overwhelmingly to rename the
location of the Chinese Embassy, on International Place NW, 1 Liu Xiaobo Plaza,
in honor of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning dissident. Mr. Liu, who wrote a 2008
petition calling for an end to China’s totalitarian system, has been imprisoned
by the regime since 2009; he was sentenced to 11 years on charges of inciting
state subversion. His wife, Liu Xia, has been under house arrest since 2010,
even though she has not been charged with or convicted of any offense.
This is a particularly good time
to impress upon China’s diplomats and their masters that Mr. Liu and other
defenders of human rights will not be forgotten. President Xi Jinping is in the
midst of a sweeping crackdown against critics and independent voices of all
kinds, inside and outside China. Lawyers who for years have worked to expand
rights have been jailed on trumped-up charges; five editors at a Hong Kong
publishing house that was to publish a critical book on Mr. Xi were abducted,
in at least two cases outside of mainland China, and detained. Western
governments, many of which have shied away from criticizing these offenses,
need to make clear that they will not be silenced on Beijing’s violations of
human rights.
That’s why it is particularly
disturbing that the State Department has indicated that President Obama will
veto the Senate measure if it reaches his desk. Mr. Obama already has a poor
record of speaking out for Mr. Liu and other Chinese dissidents, despite his
occasional promises to do so. Now he apparently thinks it more important to
avoid offending Mr. Xi than to stand up for a man who will be remembered as the
Sakharov of China, a peaceful advocate for democratic reform.
Of course, the regime is
bristling. “If the relevant bill is passed into law, it will cause serious
consequences,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a news conference. He
went on to “demand the U.S. Senate stop promoting the bill.” Those words ought
only to fortify Congress’s resolve. It’s sickening to think that Mr. Obama
would respond to such crude threats by exercising a veto — or that legislators
would back down. The House should quickly approve the legislation; and if Liu
Xiaobo Plaza must be created as an override of Mr. Obama’s veto, it will be a
sad but accurate reflection of his record on human rights.
MISH MOSH..........................................
Mish Mash: noun \Ėmish-Ėmash, -ĖmƤsh\ A : hodgepodge, jumble “The painting was just a mishmash of colors and abstract shapes as far as we could tell”. Origin Middle English & Yiddish; Middle English mysse masche, perhaps reduplication of mash mash; Yiddish mish-mash, perhaps reduplication of mishn to mix. First Known Use: 15th century
Union steamboat
“Sultana”. Loaded with ex-prisoners from the notorious Confederate prison camp
at Andersonville. The war was over. Lincoln had been assassinated. On April
27, 1865… the
ship’s boiler exploded. 1,800 Union soldiers died.
Morbid traditions
One of the most morbid traditions of the Victorian Era definitely has to be that of memento mori photography. Professional photography was extremely expensive back in that era meaning that many families only got photographs of their loved ones after they had perished. Photographers often attempted to make the subjects of the photographs appear to still be alive, whether by sticking their eyes open or propping them in an upright position. In this day and age such practice would be seen as extremely bizarre and taboo but during this era, it was very normal but still very creepy. Regardless of the fact that these images are extremely creepy, the sentiment was there as they served as mementos of their loved ones who had passed.
Second Class Saloon...The saloon that Wyatt Earp and wife owned in Nome, Alaska between 1887-1901
1976 NASA concept art by Don Davis gives an exterior view of a future toroidal space colony, also known as the Stanford torus. Population 10,000-140,000 humans. (NASA)
A decommissioned Soviet rocket is the centerpiece for this sculptural cast-concrete office
Beautiful Saturn, observed by the Cassini space probe on March 22, 2004.
I LOVE BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOS FROM FILM
Parade, New Orleans, 1960.
Worker charged with faking visits to foster children
At least half of this clowns income came from federal funds. She should be indicted on federal charges. That would set an example that American's take the care of foster children seriously. John William Tuohy
At least half of this clowns income came from federal funds. She should be indicted on federal charges. That would set an example that American's take the care of foster children seriously. John William Tuohy
By The Associated Press
BATON ROUGE — A Louisiana foster care worker faces criminal charges that she faked documents to cover up her failure to visit foster children.
The Advocate reports that Kimberly Deann Lee, a 49-year-old Calhoun resident, faces 20 counts of filing false public records and one count malfeasance in office, according to an arrest warrant filed by the Office of Inspector General in the 19th Judicial District Court on Feb. 10.
Inspector General Stephen Street said Lee is expected to surrender this week at the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison.
He said the misconduct isn't linked to child abuse, but says the case is significant because there is a potential for abuse or other problems when children are not properly supervised.
The warrant says Lee was hired in December 2012 and required to make monthly in-home visits in the Ruston area.
At least 20 times between July 31, 2013 and August 15, 2014, Lee used the state computer system to log fake reports, the warrant says. Foster parents in four foster homes confirmed that Lee did not conduct the visits, according to the document. The investigation started with a complaint from DCFS on Dec. 5, 2014, the warrant says.
Attempts to reach Lee were unsuccessful Monday. Spokespeople for the Department of Family and Children' Services did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.
In an interview with OIG investigators held in Monroe in June, Lee explained her actions by saying she was committed "to getting things done no matter what." She said her supervisors gave her a heavy workload and pressured her to use "buzz words" in her reports, according to the warrant.
"This is the sort of behavior that cannot be tolerated. Matters of child welfare are of the utmost importance and we will seek to hold people criminally accountable whenever we uncover this kind of misconduct," Street said Monday.
Street said he does not expect more arrests in the immediate future linked to this case.
On sale now at Amazon.Com and Barnes and Noble
DON'T YOU WANT TO SEE THE ENTIRE WORLD?
I DO
Zermatt Switzerland
Warwick England
Mannes Norway
On sale now at Amazon.Com and Barnes and Noble
"Is
maith an t-anlann an t-ocras" (Hunger is the best sauce)
Breakfast
Full Irish breakfast
A
typical full Irish breakfast, which can change slightly depending upon the
area, can include sausages, black and white pudding, bacon and fried eggs,
toast, sautƩed, sliced potato, fried tomato and sautƩed mushrooms. (Black pudding may not appeal to the American
senses. Basically, Black Pudding is a type of sausage made by cooking dried blood
with a filler until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled off. White
Pudding is essentially the same thing, but without the blood. Rather, it
(usually) contains bits of pork meat and fat, or suet or bread or oatmeal,
which is then formed into a sausage. Breakfast is usually topped off with tea
(served with milk) and fried potato bread.
Ingredients
needed for this dish
1 link pork
sausage
5-6 slices lean
bacon
1 inch of
thickly sliced disks of white pudding sausage
1 inch of
thickly sliced disks of blood pudding sausage
5 button
mushrooms
4 eggs
1 tablespoon of
butter
Salt and pepper
Irish brown
bread
Heinz ketchup
2 glasses of
freshly squeezed orange juice
Irish tea, 1
pot
Cooking
Instructions
Heat a frying pan with a little oil. Fry the sausages
slowly over a medium heat - keep turning. Add the pudding to the pan and
continue to cook. Put sausages and pudding on a plate and keep warm in the
oven. Place rashers on frying pan and cook until color has darkened and they
crisp - transfer to oven. Add more oil to the frying pan and sautƩ the
mushrooms. Add eggs (Your own preference) and fry in any desired style. Add the
salt and pepper to the mushrooms. Serve all Ingredients on a plate with crusty
French bread. Add ketchup to taste
“A
silent mouth is melodious.” Irish
Proverb
An Ulster Fry
A
full Ulster Fry is the Northern Ireland version of the full Irish breakfast.
The traditional Ulster Fry consists of bacon, eggs, sausages (either pork or
beef) soda bread and/or potato bread, mushrooms, baked beans and/or pancakes.
Egg in Bacon Nests
Ingredients needed
for this dish
4
Rashers back bacon
4
Small Eggs
1oz
Dubliner Cheese
Cooking
Instructions
Remove
the rinds from the bacon and fry the rinds until the fat begins to run.
Fry
the rashers for a few minutes until they are cooked but not crisp.
Remove
from pan, curl each one in to a circle and secure with cocktail sticks.
Place
bacon circles back in pan, crack an egg in to them and cook gently, spooning
fat over the egg to help it cook.
Place
bacon nests on slices of toast, grate Dubliner cheese over them, remove
cocktail sticks.
“The
light heart lives long.” Irish
proverb
Dubliner Flat Omelets
Ingredients
needed for this dish
3
Eggs
50g
cooked diced potatoes
50g
of grated cheese
40g
of cooked shrimp
10g
chopped chives
20g
of Butter
White
Pepper
1
Large Tomato
Cooking Instructions
Chop
the tomato in to small cubes,
Beat
the eggs, season with pepper
In
a large pan, melt the butter
Add
the Potato and Shrimp and cook for 2 minutes
Add
eggs and let cook for a few minutes
Add
tomato and grated cheese
Finish
under the grill
Garnish
with chives
“What butter and whiskey will not cure, there is
no cure for” Irish proverb
Anglo-Irish
Relations
An
old handicapped man lived in the countryside of Northern Ireland and had only
one relative, a son. The son was in prison for revolutionary activities.
The
father wrote the son. “Now that you’re
in prison, I have no one to dig up my garden. How can I plant my potatoes if I
can’t dig up my garden?”
The
son wrote back: “Don’t dig up the garden; that’s where I’ve buried all the
guns.”
The
next day a troop of British soldiers descended on the farm and turned up all
the soil. When they found nothing, the old man was confused. He wrote his son:
“What’s going on? There were no guns.”
The
son wrote back: “Just plant your potatoes.”
Two
Irish guys are making letter bombs.
Pat
say's "Do you think I have put enough explosives in this envelope?"
"Dunno"
says Mick "open it and see"
"But
it will explode" says Pat
Mick
says "Don’t be effing stupid......it's not addressed to you"
In London a homeless Irishman walks up to a
proper Englishman and asks for some spare change. The Englishman says "Neither a
borrower nor a lender be. Shakespeare."
The Irishman man says, "Fuck you. Brendan
Behan"
An
Irishman and an Englishman are hunting out in the woods when the Englishman
falls to the ground. He doesn’t seem to be breathing. His eyes are rolled back
in his head. The Irishman whips out his phone and calls the emergency services.
He gasps to the operator: “My friend is dead! What can I do?” The operator, in
a calm soothing voice says: “Just take it easy. I can help. First, let’s make
sure he’s dead.” There is a silence, a shot is heard. The man’s voice comes
back on the line. He says: “OK, now what?”
A
boastful Englishman said to an Irishman "take away your friendliness, your
wit, your charm and your good looks, your mountains, glens & lochs what
have you got?"
"England"
replied the Irishman.
One
day a priest was walking in Dublin, and he encountered a Protestant minister.
They chatted for a while and then the minister invited the priest to his home
for a cup of tea. When they got to the minister’s home, the priest noticed how
shabby the outside was. Inside, the priest noticed how run down the place
seemed to be. Then the minister introduced the priest to his wife.
“Father
O’Neill,” said the minister, “I’d like you to meet my better half.”
And
so the minister’s missus then made them tea.
A
few days later, the two clergymen met each other again. This time, they went to
the priest’s rectory, which was a fancy well-appointed Georgian mansion. The
minister was very impressed. The priest led him to the kitchen where he began
to make the tea. The kitchen, too, was set up with all the modern conveniences.
Finally the minister commented on the wonderful housing the priest had.
“Well,”
said Father O’Neill, “Here in Ireland, the Protestant ministers have the better
halves, but the Catholic priests have the better quarters.”
IN THEIR
OWN WORDS
THE
STARVING
"No vegetable ever
effected the same amount of influence upon the
physical, moral, social
and political condition of a country as the
potato exercised over Ireland
"Only a handful of
potatoes are left and they were so small that it
took twelve of them to
weigh four and a half ounces the weight of an
average, edible tuber but
even these were poor remnants of little
value, being soft and
watery" IRISH FARMER
"Where no disease
was apparent, a few days ago.. all is now black"
IRISH NEWSPAPER
"The failure this
year is universal, for miles a person may proceed
in any direction without
perceiving an exception to the awful
destruction" IRISH
NEWSPAPER
The disease appears to be
of the most malignant character, the leaves
and stalks appear to be
tainted as if with a corroding mildew or as
if vitriol or some
caustic material had been thrown on them"
IRISH NEWSPAPER
"Fearful progress of
the disease in cork, Mayo and Sligo , the
stench
from the fields was
intolerable, the odor from decaying flesh could
not be more offensive" IRISH NEWSPAPER
“...that within the last
three days the blight has committed dreadful
ravages and is now so decided
that we can no longer flatter ourselves
with even the chance of
escape, it is north south east and west of
us" IRISH
NEWSPAPER
"On the 27th of last
month I passed from Cork to Dublin
doomed plant bloomed in
all the luxuriance of an abundant
harvest.
Returning on the 3rd
instant (the following month) I beheld with
sorrow one wide waste of
putrefying vegetation. In many places the
wretched people were
seated on the fences of their decaying gardens,
wringing their hands and
wailing bitterly the destruction that had
left them foodless" FATHER THEOBALD MATHEW 1848
"God have mercy on
us, there will be nothing left but for us to lie
down and die" IRISH
WOMEN
"If the English
desert us now, God. .in his glory ..they'll never see"
IRISH FARMER,
GALWAY
"I swear by the
broken heart my mother died of, the hand of God is
in this. Its a curse that
has fallen on the land" IRISH
FARMER GALWAY
"Its over there in America
took from me for his
rent. .the passage money was in that pig.. but its
the landlord always has
the bailiff on his side" IRISH
FARMER GALWAY
"A widow with two
children who for a week had eaten nothing but
cabbage...and then
nothing...save water...famine was written in the
faces of this women...and
her children"
AMERICAN
NEWSPAPER REPORTER OUTSIDE GALWAY
"In a very short
time, there was nothing but stillness ,a mournful
silence in the villages,
in the cottages grim poverty and emaciated
faces.. the tinkers..
fled to the cities, the musicians ..disappeared
and.. never to return.
Many of the residents too made their escape
at once, finding
employment or early graves elsewhere.. there were
no more friendly meetings
at the neighbors houses in the afternoons,
no gatherings on the
hillsides on Sundays, no song no merry laugh of
the maidens, not only
were the human beings silent and lonely,
but
the brute creation also,
for not even he bark of a dog or the crowing
of a cock was to be
heard.." HUGH DORIAN, DONEGAL
"Anybody's house you
come into, talk is all of misery and starvation,
there is no fun at all
among them now.. their natural vivacity and
lightheartedness has been
starved out of them" ENGLISH
TRAVELLER
"There, amidst the
chilling damp of a dismal hovel see you famine
stricken fellow creature,
see him extended on his scanty bed of
rotten straw, see his
once manly frame, that labor had strengthened
with vigor, shrink to a
skeleton, see his once ruddy complexion, the
gift of temperance,
changed by hunger and concealment disease to a
sallow ghastly hue. See
him extend his yellow withering arm for assistance; hear how he cries out in
agony for food....for since
yesterday he has not even
moistened his lips!
FATHER
THEOBALD MATTHEW
"In the good years
the beggars shared the farmers potatoes and warmed
themselves at his blazing
turf fires...there are many differences
between the English and
the Irish and one of the most marked is
the
difference in their
attitude towards beggars. The English regard the
beggars as being, if not
exactly criminals, then close to the
criminal class. The
Irish, on the contrary, regard their relief as
a sacred duty that kindly
sympathy enabled these poor outcasts to
exist but now all was
changed and the wolf was at the farmers door,
there was absolutely
nothing to give away"
LANDLORDS DAUGHTER
"Sure this land is
full of barley, wheat’s and oats. The English have
only to distribute
it!" IRISH FARMER
"It could hardly be
possible to conceive; to see the faceless arms
grasping one part of a loaf, whilst the fingers bone handled
forks dug into the other, to supply the mouth. Such mouths too! With an
eagerness as if the bread
were stolen, the thief starving and the
steps of the owner heard;
was a picture, I think neither of us will
easily forget" Rev.
S. Godolphin Osbourbe
"The culminating
point of mans physical degradation seems to have
been reached in Eris..
the population last year was computed at
about
28,000..there is left a
miserable remnant of little more then 20,000
of whom 10,000 at least,
are strictly speaking within forty eight
hours journey of the
metropolis of the world living, or rather
starving upon turnip
toes, sand eels and seaweed, a diet which no one
in England
James H.
Tuke report to the Quakers
"It didn't matter
who you were related to, your friend was who ever
would give you a bite to
put in your mouth. Sports and pastimes
disappeared. Poetry, music
and dancing stopped, they lost and forgot
them all….the famine
killed everything" Irish Farmer
"Food became both a
dream and an obsession, and the scarcer it became
the more degrading and
revolting were the alternatives left to those
trying to survive. In
county down, a beggar women and her two children went to the home of a
comfortable farmer asking for alms .When
they approached the
doorstep, they saw the pigs in the style eating
food. Before the mother
could stop them, or feel that she wanted to
or had a right to, the
children ran over to the trough and, like pigs
themselves, gobbled up
what the pigs had not yet eaten"
Paddy's Lament
A drink precedes a story.
A friend's eye is a good mirror.
A hen is heavy when carried far.
A hound's food is in its legs.
A lock is better than suspicion.
A silent mouth is melodious.
A trade not properly learned is an enemy.
Age is honorable and youth is noble.
As the big hound is, so will the pup be.
Be neither intimate nor distant with the clergy.
Both your friend and your enemy think you will never
die.
Even a small thorn causes festering.
Good as drink is, it ends in thirst.
He who comes with a story to you brings two away from
you.
He who gets a name for early rising can stay in bed
until midday.
If you do not sow in the spring you will not reap in
the autumn.
If you want to be criticized, marry.
Instinct is stronger than upbringing.
It is a bad hen that does not scratch herself.
It is a long road that has no turning.
It is better to exist unknown to the law.
It is not a secret if it is known by three people.
It is sweet to drink but bitter to pay for.
It is the good horse that draws its own cart.
It is the quiet pigs that eat the meal.
It takes time to build castles. Rome wan not built in
a day.
It's not a matter of upper and lower class but of
being up a while and down a while.
Lack of resource has hanged many a person.
Listen to the sound of the river and you will get a
trout.
May you have a bright future - as the chimney sweep
said to his son.
Mere words do not feed the friars.
Nature breaks through the eyes of the cat.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Necessity knows no law.
Need teaches a plan.
Patience is poultice for all wounds.
Youth does not mind where it sets its foot.
You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall
your grandfather was.
People live in each other's shelter.
Put silk on a goat, and it's still a goat.
Quiet people are well able to look after themselves.
The day will come when the cow will have use for her
tail.
The hole is more honorable than the patch.
The light heart lives long.
The man with the boots does not mind where he places
his foot.
The mills of God grind slowly but they grind finely.
The raggy colt often made a powerful horse.
The smallest thing outlives the human being.
The wearer best knows where the shoe pinches.
The well fed does not understand the lean.
The work praises the man.
The world would not make a racehorse of a donkey.
There is hope from the sea, but none from the grave.
There is no fireside like your own fireside.
There is no luck except where there is discipline.
There is no need like the lack of a friend.
There is no strength without unity.
Thirst is the end of drinking and sorrow is the end of
drunkenness.
Three diseases without shame: Love, itch and thirst.
Time is a great story teller.
Two shorten the road.
Two thirds of the work is the semblance.
Walk straight, my son - as the old crab said to the
young crab.
When a twig grows hard it is difficult to twist it.
Every beginning is weak.
When fire is applied to a stone it cracks.
When the apple is ripe it will fall.
When the drop (drink) is inside, the sense is outside.
When the liquor was gone the fun was gone.
Wine divulges truth.
You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
You must live with a person to know a person. If you
want to know me come and live with me.
Youth sheds many a skin.
The steed (horse) does not retain its speed forever.
"Nil aon tintean mar do thintean fein." (There's
no fireside like your own fireside.)
Never bolt the door with a boiled carrot.
Man is incomplete until he marries. After that, he is
finished.
Three things come without asking: fear, jealousy, and
love.
Idleness is a fool's desire.
Good luck beats early rising.
If a cat had a dowry, she would often be kissed.
To the raven her own chick is white.
Everyone praises his native land.
"CoimhƩad fearg fhear na foighde" (Beware of
the anger of a patient man.)
A diplomat must always think twice before he says
nothing.
A heavy purse makes for a light heart.
Those who get the name of rising early may lie all
day.
A lie travels further than the truth.
Marriages are all happy. It's having breakfast
together that causes all the trouble.
A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the
best, but his mother the longest.
A scholars ink lasts longer than a martyrs blood.
If you want an audience start a fight.
Don't break your shin on a stool that is not in your way.
If you dig a grave for others, you might fall into it
yourself.
What will come from the briar but the berry.
"Meallan muilte dƩ go mall ach meallan siad go
mion." (God's mill may grind slowly, but it grinds finely.)
IRISH HISTORY
THE TUATHA DE DANANN
Such a great people were the De Danann, and so uncommonly skilled in the
few arts of the time, that they dazzled even their conquerors and successors,
the Milesians, into regarding them as mighty magicians. Later generations of
the Milesians to whom were handed down the wonderful traditions of the
wonderful people they had conquered, lifted them into amystic realm, their
greatest ones becoming gods and goddesses, who supplied to their successors a
beautiful mythology. Over the island, which was now indisputably De Danann,
reigned the hero, Lugh, famous in mythology. And after Lugh, the still greater
Dagda - whose three grandsons, succeeding him in the sovereignty, were
reigning, says the story, when the Milesians came. The Dagda, was the greatest
of the De Danann. He was styled Lord of Knowledge and Sun of all the Sciences.
His daughter, Brigit, was a woman of wisdom, and goddess of poetry. The Dagda
was a great and beneficent ruler for eighty years.
THE MILESIANS
The sixteenth century scholar, O’Flaherty, fixes the Milesian invasion
of Ireland at about 1000 B.C. - the time of Solomon. It is proven that the
Celts whenceover they came, had, before the dawn of history, subjugated the
German people and established themselves in Central Europe. At about the date
we have mentioned, a great celtic wave, breaking westward over the Rhine,
penetrated into England, Scotland, and Ireland. Subsequently a wave swept over
the Pyrenees into the Spanish Peninsula. Other waves came westward still later.
A celtic cemetery discovered at Hallstatt in upper Austria proves them
to have been skilled in art and industries as far back as 900 B.C. - shows them
as miners and agriculturists, and blessed with the use of iron instruments.
They invaded Italy twice, in the seventh and in the fourth centuries before
Christ. In the latter tie they were at the climax of their power. They stormed
Rome itself, 300 B.C. The rising up of the oppressed Germans against them,
nearly three centuries before Christ, was the beginning of the end of the
Continental power of the celt. After that they were beaten and buffeted by
Greek and by Roman, and even by despised races - broken, and blown like the
surf in al directions, North and South, and East and West. A fugitive colony of
these people, that had settled in Asia Minor, in the territory which from them
(the Gaels) was called Galatia, and among whom Paul worked, was found to be
still speaking a Celtic language in the days of St. Jerome, five or six hundred
years later. Eoin MacNeill and other scientific enquirers hold that it was only
in the fifth century before Christ that they reached Spain - and that it was
not via Spain but via northern France and Britain that they, crushed out from
Germany, eventually reached Ireland. In Caesar’s day the Celts (Gauls) who
dominated France used Greek writing in almost all their business, public or
private.
Of the Milesians, Eber and Eremon divided the land between them - Eremon
getting the Northern half of the Island, and Eber the Southern. The
Northeastern corner was accorded to the children of their lost brother, Ir, and
the Southwestern corner to their cousin Lughaid, the son of Ith. The oft-told
story says that when Eber and Eremon had divided their followers, each taking
an equal number of soldiers and an equal number of the men of every craft,
there remained a harper and a poet. Drawing lots for these, the harper fell to
Eremon and the poet to Eber - which explains why, ever since, that the North of
Ireland has been celebrated for music, and the South for song.
The peace fell upon the land then, and the happiness of the Milesians,
was only broken, when, after a year, Eber’s wife discovered that she must be
possessed of the three pleasantest hills in Eirinn, else she could not remain
one other night in the Island. Now the pleasantest of all the Irish hills was
Tara, which lay in Eremon’s half. And Eremon’s wife would not have the
covetousness of the other woman satisfied at her expense. So, because of the
quarrel of the women, the beautiful peace of the Island was broken by battle.
Eber was beaten, and the high sovereignty settled upon Eremon.
THE CELTS
Long, long ago beyond the misty
space
of twice a thousand years,
In Erin old there dwelt a mighty
race,
Taller than Roman spears,
Like oaks and towers they had a
giant grace,
Were fleet as deers
With winds and waves they made
their ‘biding place,
These western shepherd seers.
Their ocean god was Mannanan
MacLir,
whose angry lips,
In their white foam, full often
would inter
Whole fleets of ships;
Crom was their day god, and their
thunderer,
Made morning and eclipse,
Bride was their queen of song, and
unto her
They prayed with fire-touched lips.
Great were their deeds, their
passions, and their sports;
With clay and stone
They piled on strath and shore
those mystic forts,
Not yet over thrown
On cairn-crowned hills they held
their council courts
While youths alone,
With giant dogs, explored the elks’
resorts,
And brought them down.
SOME NOTABLE MILESIAN ROYALTIES
All the stories say that the greatest king of those faraway times was
the twenty first Milesian king, known to fame as Ollam Fodla who blessed
Ireland in a reign of forty years, some seven or eight centuries before the
Christian Era. His title, Ollam Fodla, Doctor of Wisdom, has preserved his
memory down the ages. The legends indicate that he was a true father to his
people, and an able statesman. He organised the nation for efficiency, dividing
it into cantreds, appointed a chief over every cantred, a brugaid over every
territory, and a steward over every townland. Some traditions say that he
established a School of Learning. And as crowning glory he established the
celebrated Feis of Tara, the great triennial Parliament of the chiefs, the
nobles, and the scholars of the nation, which assembled on Tara Hill once every
three years to settle the nation’s affairs. This great deliverative assembly,
almost unique among the nations in those early ages, and down into Christian
times, reflected not a little glory upon ancient Ireland. One queen, famous and
capable, whom early Ireland boasted was Macha Mong Ruad (the red-haired, who
reigned over the land about three hundred years before Christ. Her father, Aod
Ruad was one of a triumvirate - the others being Dithorba and Cimbaoth - who by
mutual agreement, took seven year turns in reigning. For many, the reign of
Cimbaoth - which synchronises with that of Alexander the Great - marks the
beginning of certainty in Irish history - because of the famed remark of the
trusted eleventh century historian, Tighernach, that the Irish records before
Cimbaoth were uncertain. When Cimbaoth died this able woman took up the reins
of government herself, becoming the first Milesian queen of Ireland.
IRELAND IN THE LORE OF THE ANCIENTS
SCOTIA (A name transferred to Alba
about ten centuries after Christ) was one of the earliest names of Ireland - so
named, it was said, from Scota, the daughter of Pharaoh, one of the ancient
female ancestors of the Milesians - and the people were commonly called Scotti
or Scots - both terms being frequently used by early Latin historians and
poets. One of its ancient titles was Hibernia (used by Caesar) which some trace
from Ivernia, the name, it is said, of a people located in the south of the
Island. But most trace it from Eber or Heber, ther first Milesian king of the
southern half, just as the much later name, Ireland, is by some traced from Ir,
whose family were in the northeastern corner of the island. Though it seems
much more likely that this latter name was derived from the most common title
given to the Island by its own inhabitants, Eire - hence Eireland, - Ireland.
It was first Northmen and then the Saxons, who, in the ninth and tenth century
began calling it Ir-land, or Ir-landa - Ireland.
In the oldest known foreign
reference to Ireland, it was called Ierna. This was the title used by the poet
Orpheus in the time of Cyrus of Persia, in the sixth century before Christ.
Aristotle, in his Book of the World, also called Ierna. It was usually called either
Hibernia or Scotia by the Latin writers. Tacitus, Caesar, and Pliny call it
Hibernia.
"This Isle is sacred named by
all the ancients,
From times remotest in the womb of
Chronos,
This Isle which rises over the
waves of ocean,
Is covered with a sod of rich
luxuriance.
And peopled far and wide by the
Hiberni"
By Rufus Festus Avienus, who wrote
this at beginning of the fourth century.
CONOR MAC NESSA
At the time of Christ, as said,
there reigned over Ulster - residing at Emain Macha (Emania) - a king noted in
ancient song and story, Conor MacNessa. He was the grandson of Rory Mor, a
powerful Ulster ruler who had become monarch of Ireland, and who was the
founder of the Rudrician line of Ulster kings. The memory of Conor MacNessa is
imperishably preserved in the tale of the sons Of Usnach and in the greater
tale of the Tain Bo Cuailgne. His first wife was the Amazonian Medb (Maeve)
just mentioned, a daughter of Eochaid the Ard-Righ of Ireland (High King).
Conor separated from her and she became Queen of Connaught. He found his
happiness with her sister, Ethne, whom he took to wife then, and who proved to
all that was indicated by her name - Ethne, that is "sweet kernel of a
nut". He was a patron of poetry and the arts, and a practical man who is
said to have struck from learning, the oppressive shackles of tradition that
hitherto had cramped and bound it. Till his day the learned professions, both
for sake of monopoly and of effect upon the multitude used an archaic language
that only the initiated understood, and that awed the mass of the people. Conor
ordered that the professions should not henceforth remain in the hereditary
possession of the ancient learned families - but should be thrown open to all,
irrespective of family or rank. Conor’s reverence for poets was such that he
saved them from expulsion, when, once they were threatened with death or exile,
because having grown so vast numbers, and got to be lazy, covetous, tyrannous,
they had become an almost unbearable burden upon the multitude. Conor gathered
twelve hundred poets, it is said, into his dominion, and protected them there
for seven years, till the anger of the people had abated, and they could
scatter themselves over Ireland once more.
Conor died by a brain ball that
sunk into his skull - fired by the hand of Cet MacMagach, the Connaught
champion, whom he had pursued after a Connaught cattle raid. The legend
attached to Conor’s death is curious. The brain ball fired by Cet did not
directly kill him. It sank into his skull - and his doctor, Faith Liag, would
not remove it, because that would cause instant death. With care, Conor might
live long, carrying the brain ball. Henceforth, however, he must be moderate in
all things, avoiding violent emotion, which was rare in those days for kings.
Under his doctor’s wise care he lived for seven years. But one time, his court
was thrown into consternation by finding broad day suddenly turned into
blackest night, the heavens rent by lightning, and the world rocked by thunder,
portending some dread cataclysm. Conor asked his wise men for explanation of
the fearful happening. The druids and wise men told him that there had been in
the East, a singular man, more noble of character, more lofty of mind, and more
beautiful of soul, than the world had ever before known, or ever again would
know - he was the noblest and most beautiful, most loving of men. And now the
heavens and the earth were thrown into agony because on this day the tyrant
Roman, jealous of his power over the people, had nailed him high upon a cross,
and between two crucified thieves, had left the divine man to die a fearful
death. Conor was so fired to rage at this thought, that he snatched his sword
and tried to fiercely hew down a grove of trees. Under the strain of the fierce
passion that held him the brain ball burst from King Conor’s head - and he fell
dead.
CUCHULLAIN
Those days when Conor MacNessa sat
on the throne of Ulster were brilliant days in Ireland’s history. Then was the
sun of glory in the zenith of Eire’s Heroic period - the period of chivalry,
chiefly created by the famous Royal or Red Branch Knights of Emania. Though,
two other famous bands of Irish warriors gave added lustre to the period- the
Gamanraide of the West (who were the Firbolgs) and the Clanna Deaghaid of
Mulster led by Curoi MacDaire. All three warrior bands had their poets and the
seanachies, who chanted their deeds in imperishable song and story which, down
the dim ages, have since held spell bound the clan of the Gael. But the
greatest, the most belauded, and the most dazzling of all the heroes of the
heroic age was undoubtedly Cuchullain, of whose life and wondrous deeds, real
and imaginary, hundreds of stories still exist.
CUCHULLAIN was a foster son of King
Conor. "I am little Setanta, son to Sualtim, and Dectaire your
sister" he told the questioning King, when, as a boy, in whose breast the
fame of the Red Branch warriors had awaked the thirst for glory, he came up to
the court of Emania. When he arrived there and the youths in training were
playing caman upon the green. Having taken with him from home, his red bronze
hurl and his silver ball, the little stranger, going in among them, so
outplayed all the others, that the attention of the court was drawn to him. And
it was then that the little stranger gave the above reply to the question of
the admiring king. The eager attention of the warriors of the Red Branch was
drawn to the lad and they foresaw great things for him, when they heard him
express himself nobly and wonderfully, on the day that, in Emania, in the Hall
of Heroes, he took arms. He stood before the Druids in the Hall of Heroes and
exclaimed "I care not whether I die tomorrow or next year, if only my
deeds live after me". The greatest, most exciting portion of this hero’s
stories is the account of his fight with his friend, Ferdiad, at the ford,
where , single handed, he is holding at bay the forces of Connaught. Ferdiad is
the great Connaught champion, chief, of the Connaught knights of the Sword, the
Fir Domniann and a dear friend and comrade of CUCHULLAIN, since, in their
youth, they were training for the profession of arms. And it is now sore for
CUCHULLAIN to fight the soul friend whom the Connaught host has pitted against
them. He would dissuade Ferdiad from fighting, by reminding him of their comradeship,
when they were together learning the art of war from the female champion,
Scathach, in Alba.
"We were heart companions,
We were companions in the woods,
We were fellows of the same bed,
Where we used to sleep the balmy
sleep.
After mortal battles abroad,
In countries many and far distant,
Together we used to practice, and
go
Through each forest, learning with
Scathach".
But Ferdiad had not the tenderness
of CUCHULLAIN, and would not let fond memories turn him from his purpose. Indeed
lest he might yield to the weakness of temptation, he forced himself to answer
Cuchullain’s tenderness with taunts, so as to provoke the Compat. An fight they
finally did. They fought for four days. On the fourth day, CUCHULLAIN rallies
to the fight more fiercely, more terribly, more overpoweringly than ever, and
at length gives to his friend, Ferdiad, the coup de grace. CUCHULLAIN laid
Ferdiad down then, and a trance, and a faint, and a weakness fell on CUCHULLAIN
over Ferdiad there.
CUCHULLAIN died as a hero should -
on a battlefield, with his back to a rock and his face to the foe, buckler on
arm, and spear in hand. He died standing, and in that defiant attitude
(supported by the rock) was many days dead ere the enemy dared venture near
enough to reassure themselves of his exit - which they only did when they saw
the vultures alight upon him, and undisturbed, peck at his flesh.
CONN OF THE HUNDRED BATTLES
The celebrated Conn of the hundred
Battles was a son of Feidlimid, the son of Tuathal - though he did not
immediately succeed Feidlimid. Between them reigned Cathari Mor, who was father
of thirty sons, among whom and their posterity he attempted to divide Ireland,
and from whom are descended the chief Leinster families. As Conn’s title
suggests, his reign was filled with battling. Conn’s strenuous militancy and
the suggestive title that it won for him, made him famed beyond worthier men -
the greatest pride of some of the noblest families of the land a thousand years
and more after his time trace back their descent to him of the Hundred Battles.
Conn’s life and reign were ended by his assassination at Tara. Fifty robbers
hired by the king of Ulster, came to Tara, dressed as women, and treacherously
despatched the Monarch. Conn’s son in law, Conaire II, who succeeded him as
monarch - for his son Art was then but a child - is famed as father of three
Carbris, namely Carbri Musc, from whom was named the territory of Muskerry,
Carbri Baiscin, whose descendants peopled Corca Baiscin in Western Clare, and most
notable of them, Carbri Riada, who, when there was a famine in the South, led
his people to the extreme Northeast of Ireland, and some of them across to the
nearest part of Scotland, where they settled, forming the first important
colony of Scots (Irish) in Alba, and driving there the edge of the Irish wedge
which was eventually to make the whole country known as the land of the Scots
(Irish).
CORMAC MAC ART
Of all the ancient kings of
Ireland, Cormac, who reigned in the third century, is unquestionably considered
greatest by the poets, the seanachies, and the chroniclers. His father Art was
the son of Conn of the Hundred Battles, and was known as Art the Lonely, as he
had lost his brothers, Connla and Crionna - both slain by their uncles. It was
at the court of Lugaid at Tara, that Cormac first distinguished himself, and
gave token of the ability and wisdom, which were, afterwards, to mark him the
most distinguished of Eirinn’s monarchs.
From his exile in Connaught,
Cormac, a green youth , had returned to Tara, where, unrecognised, he was
engaged herding sheep for a poor widow. Now one of the sheep broke into the
queen’s garden, and ate the queen’s vegetables. And King Lugaid, equally angry
as his queen, after he heard the case, ordered that for penalty on the widow,
her sheep should be forfeit to the queen. To the amazement of Lugaid’s court,
the herd boy who had been watching the proceedings with anxiety, arose, and,
facing the king, said, "Unjust is thy award, O king, for, because thy
queen hath lost a few vegetables, thou wouldst deprive the poor widow of her
livelihood?" When the king recovered from his astoundment, he looked
contemptuously at the lad, asking scathingly: "And what, O wise herd boy
would be thy just award?" The herd boy, not one little bit disconcerted,
answered him "My award would be that the wool of the sheep should pay for
the vegetables the sheep has eaten - because both the wool and the green things
will grow again, and both parties have forgotten their hurt." And the wonderful
wisdom of the judgement drew the applause of the astounded court. But Lugaid
exclaimed in alarm: "It is the judgement of a King." And, the lad’s
great mind having betrayed him, he had to flee. He returned and claimed the
throne when Lugaid was killed, but at a feast which he gave to the princes
whose support he wanted, Fergus Black Tooth of Ulster, who coveted the Ard
Righship, managed, it is said, to singe the hair of Cormac - creating a blemish
that debarred the young man temporarily from the throne. And he fled again from
Tara, fearing designs upon his life. Fergus became Ard Righ for a year - at the
end of which time Cormac returned with an army, and, supported by Taig, the son
of Ciann, and grandson of the great Oilill Olum of Munster, completely overthrew
the usurper in the great battle of Crionna (on the Boyne) where Fergus and his
two brothers were slain - and Cormac won undisputed possession of the monarchy.
Taig was granted a large territory between Damlaig (Duleek) and the River
Liffi, since then called the Ciannachta. He became the ancestor of the
O’Hara’s, O’Gara’s, O’Carroll’s, and other now Northern families. In Cormac’s
time, the world was replete with all that was good and the food and the fat of
the land, and the gifts of the sea were in abundance in this king’s reign.
There were neither woundings nor robberies in his time, but every one enjoyed
his own, in peace. Cormac rebuilt the palace of Tara, with much magnificence.
He built the Teach Mi Chuarta, the great banqueting hall, that was 760 feet by
46 feet, and 45 feet high. Until quite recently, the outline of the foundations
of this great hall with the traces of its fourteen doorways, were still to be
observed on Tara Hill. In the Book of Leinster is related "Three thousand
persons each day is what Cormac used to maintain in tara; besides poets and
satirists, and all the strangers who sought the king; Galls, and Romans, and
Franks, and Frisian, and Longbards, and Albanians and Saxons, and Picts, for
all these used to seek him, and it was with gold and with silver, with steeds
and with chariots, that he presented them. They used all to come to Cormac,
because there was not in his time, nor before him, any more celebrated in
honour, and in dignity, and in wisdom, except only Solomon, the son of David.
The remarkable king died in the year 267 - more than a century and a half
before the coming of St. Patrick. By reason of his extraordinary wisdom, the
righteousness of his deeds, judgements and laws, he is said to have been blest
with the light of the Christian faith seven years before his death. The
traditions about Cormac also state that having been inspired by the faith he
made dying request that he should be buried, not with the other pagan kings at
their famous burying ground, whence would dawn the holy light that should make
Eirinn radiant. Disregarding his dying wish, the Druids ordered that he should
be interred with his ancestors at Brugh of Boyne. But when, in pursuance of
this, the bearers were bearing his body across the river, a great wave swept it
from their shoulders, down the stream, and cast it up at Ros na Riogh, where,
according to his wish, he was then buried.
TARA
Tara, which attained the climax of
its fame under Cormac, is said to have been rounded by the Firbolgs, and been
the seat of kings thenceforth. Ollam Fodla first gave it historic fame by
founding the Feis or Triennial Parliament, there, seven or eight centuries
before Christ. It is said it was under, or after, Eremon, the first Milesian
high king that it, one of the three pleasantest hills in Ireland, came to be
named Tara - a corruption of the genitive form of the compound word, Tea Mur -
meaning "the burial place of Tea" the wife of Eremon, and daughter of
a king of Spain. In its heyday Tara must have been impressive. The great,
beautiful hill was dotted with seven duns, and in every dun were many buildings
- all of them, of course, of wood, in those days - or of wood and metal. The
greatest structure was the Mi Cuarta, the great banqueting hall, which was on
the Ard Righ’s own dun. Each of the provincial kings had, on Tara, a house that
was set aside for him when he came up to attend the great Parliament. There was
a Grianan (sun house) for the provincial queens, and their attendants. The
great Feis was held at Samain (Hallowday). It lasted for three days before
Samain and three days after. But the Aonach or great fair, the assembly of the
people in general, which was a most important accompaniment of the Feis, seems
to have begun much earlier. At this Feis the ancient laws were recited and
confirmed, new laws were enacted, disputes were settled, grievances adjusted,
wrongs righted. And in accordance with the usual form at all such assemblies,
the ancient history of the land was recited, probably by the high king’s seanachie,
who had the many other critical seanachies attending to his every word, and
who, accordingly, dare not seriously distort or prevaricate. This highly
efficient method of recording and transmitting the country’s history, in verse,
too, which was practised for a thousand years before the introduction of
writing, and the introduction of Christianity and which continued to be
practised for long centuries after these events was a highly practical method,
which effectively preserved for us the large facts of our country’s history
throughout a thousand of the years of dim antiquity when the history of most
other countries is a dreary blank.
As from the great heart and centre
of the Irish Kingdom, five great arteries or roads radiated from Tara to the
various parts of the country the Slighe Cualann, which ran toward the present
County Wicklow, the Slighe Mor, the great Western road, which ran via Dublin to
Galway, the Slight Asail which ran near the present Mullingar, the Slighe Dala
which ran southwest, and the Slighe Midluachra, the Northern road. "Great,
noble and beautiful truly was our Tara of the Kings."
THE BREAK OF ULSTER
Of the line of Ir, son of Milesius,
to whom Ulster had been apportioned, that Branch called the Clan na Rory (after
its great founder, Fory, who had been King of Ulster, and also High King of
Ireland) now ruled the province for nearly 700 years, namely, for more than 300
years before the Christian Era, and more than 300 years after. And their
capital city and the king’s seat had been at Emain Macha. During practially all
of ths time, from that fort’s first founding by Queen Macha, the royal Court of
Ulster had been a court of splenour, and ever noted as a centre of chivalry and
the home of poetry. But in the beginning of the fourth century, Ulster’s power
was irrevocably broken, and by far the greater portion of her territory wrested
from her - her people driven into miserably narrow bounds from which, ever
after, they can hardly be said to have emerged.
It was when Muiredeach Tireach, grandson
of Carbri of the Liffey, was High King of Ireland, that Ulster was despoiled
and broken by his nephews, the three Collas, who, on the ruins of the old
kingdom of Uladh, founded a new kingdom - of Oirgialla (Oriel) which was
henceforth for nearly a thousand years to play an important part in the history
of Northern Ireland. The ostensible cause of their attach upon Ulster was the
ancient grudge borne that province because many generations before, the Ulster
king, tiobraide, had sent to Tara fifty robbers discuised as women, who had
slain Conn of the Hundred Battles and because, a generation later, the Ulster
prince, Fergus Blacktooth, had, by setting fire to his hair at a feast, put a
blemish upon Cormac MacArt, which, for a time, debarred him from the throne
which Fergus then usurped. The Collas first went to their kin in Connaught and
there gathered a great army for the invasion of Ulster. On the plain of Farney
in Monaghan they met the Ulstermen under their king, Fergus, and on seven
successive days broke battle upon them, finally slaying Fergus and putting the
Ultach (Ulstermen) to complete rout. Of the conquered portion of Ulster, from
Louth in the south to Derry in the north, and from Loch Neagh to Loch Erne, the
Collas made themselves the new kingdom of Oirgialla (Oriel).
NIALL OF THE NINE HOSTAGES
Niall of the Nine Hostages was the
greatest king that Ireland knew between the time of Cormac MacArt and the
coming of Patrick. His reign was epochal. He not only ruled Ireland greatly and
strongly, but carried the name and the fame, and the power and the fear, of
Ireland into all neighbouring nations. He was, moreover, founder of the
longest, most important, and most powerful Irish dynasty. Almost without
interruption his descendants were Ard Righs of Ireland for 600 years. Under him
the spirit of pagan Ireland upleaped in its last great red flame of military
glory, a flame that, in another generation, was to be superseded by a great
white flame, far less fierce but far more powerful and the bounds of
neighbouring nations to the uttermost bounds of Europe. That is the great flame
that Patrick was to kindle, and which was to expand and grow, ever mounting
higher and spreading farther, year by year, for three hundred years.
Niall was grandson of Muiredeach
Tireach. His father, Eochaid Muig Medon, son of Muiredeach, became Ard Rich mid
way of the fourth century. By his wife, Carthann, daughter of a British king,
Eochaid had the son Niall. By another wife, Mon Fionn, daughter of the King of
Munster, Eochaid had four sons, Brian, Fiachar, Ailill, and Fergus. Mong Fionn
was a bitter, jealous and ambitious woman, who set her heart upon having her
son, Brian, succeed his father as Ard Righ. As Niall was his father’s
favourite, Mong Fionn did not rest until she had outcast him and his mother,
Carthann, and made Carthann her menial, carrying water to the court. The child
was rescued by a great poet of that time, Torna, who reared and educated him.
When he had reached budding manhood, Torna brought him back to court to take
his rightful place - much to his father’s joy. Then Niall, showing strength of
character, even in his early youth, took his mother from her menial task, and
restored her to her place. Of Niall’s youth there are many legends, but one in
particular show the working of his destiny. One day, the five brothers being in
the smith’s forge when it took fire, they were commanded to run and save what
they could. Their father, who was looking on (and who, say some, designedly
caused the fire, to test his sons), observed with interest Neill’s
distinctiveness of character, his good sense and good judgement. While Brian
saved the cariots from the fire, Ailill a shield and a sword, Fiachra the old
forge trough, and Fergus only a bundle of firewood, Niall carried out the
bellows, the sledges, the anvil, and anvil block - saved the soul of the forge,
and saved the smith from ruin. Then his father said: "It is Niall who
should succeed me as Ard Righ of Eirinn".
Niall’s first expedition was into
Alba to subdue the Picts. The little Irish (Scotic) colony in that part of Alba
just opposite to Antrim had gradually been growing in numbers, strength, and
prestige - until they excited the jealousy and enmity of the Picts, who tried
to crush them. Niall fitted out a large fleet and sailed to the assistance of
his people. Joined then by the Irish in Alba, he marched against the Picts,
overcame them, took hostages from them and had Argyle and Cantire settled upon
the Albanach Irish. After obtaining obedience from the Picts, his next foreign
raid was into Britain. When Maximus and his Roman legions were, in consequence
of the barbarian pressure upon the Continental Roman Empire, withdrawing from
Britain, Niall, with his Irish hosts and Pictish allies, treaded upon their
hurrying heels. Yet did the Romans claim victory over Niall. For it is said his
was the host referred to by the Roman poet, Claudian, when in praising the
Roman general, Stilicho, he says Britain was protected by this bold general.
"When Scots came thundering
from the Irish shores,
And ocean trembled stuck by hostile
oars".
Niall must have made many
incursions into Britain and probably several into Gaul. He carried back
hostages, many captives, and great booty from these expeditions. Yet how often
out of evil cometh good. It was in one of these Gallic expeditions that the lad
Succat, destined under his later name of Patrick to be the greatest and noblest
figure Ireland ever knew, was taken in a sweep of captives, carried to Ireland
and to Antrim, there to herd the swine of the chieftain, Milcho. Many and many
a time, in Alba, in Britain, and in Gaul, must Niall have measured his
leadership against the best leadership of Rome, and pitted the courage and wild
daring of his Scotic hosts against the skill of the Imperial Legions. Yet his
fall in a foreign land was to be compassed, not by the strategy or might of the
foreign enemy, but by the treachery of one of his own. He fell on the banks of
the River Loire, in France, by the hand of Eochaid, the son of Enna
Ceannselaigh, King of Leinster, who, from ambush, with an arrow, shot dead the
great king.
PART TWO
Irish Invasions of Britain
In spite of the apparently isolated
position of the Irish, they seemed to have kept up contact with many foreign
countries. Many foreign mercenaries were employed in Irish wars and foreign
matrimonial alliances were common among the Irish royal families. The Irish,
although not a sea going nation were well equipped for sea transit and quite
expert in the art. The Book of Acaill contains sea-laws and defines the rights
and duties of foreign trading vessels.
In the year 222 Cormac’s fleet
sailed the seas for three years. Niall brought his fleet when he invaded
Britain. St Patrick as a slave boy, quit his slavery and arrived at the sea
just in time to find a ship about to sail for foreign lands. When Columbanus is
deported from France, they readily find a ship just about to sail to Ireland.
These happenings imply that there must have been fairly regular travel between
Ireland and other lands.
In pre-Christian days, all Irish
foreign military expeditions were into Alba and Britain.
The Romans never once ventured into
Ireland - it was considered though - the want of a strong and permanent
autocratic central authority in Ireland, commanding the respect and obedience
of the various sub-kingdoms and unifying Irelands power, always left the nation
open to the great danger of foreign conquest. Yet the Romans never attacked
Ireland - their discovery of the fierceness of Irish fighters may have played a
part in dissuading them from the Irish venture. The recklessness and
persistency of Irish fighters taught them to respect Irish fighters and Irish
commanders. The Romans even recruited Irish regiments for Continental service.
Though the Irish nation was weak
for defence, it was strong for offence. It was only the Romans discipline and
numbers that overcame the Irish attacks in Britain. When the Romans were called
home, it was the Irish and Picts who drove them south and eventually out of
Britain. Britain was now left at the mercy of her northern and western neighbours,
and suffered greatly.
The Irish Kingdom of Scotland
Our most ancient poets and
seanachies claim that an early name for Eirinn, Scotia, was derived from Scota,
queen-mother of the Milesians. The poet Egesippus tells how "Scotia which
links itself to no land, trembles at their name" - the term Scotia is, by
Continental writers, applied to Ireland more often than any other name. And
Scot is the term by these writers most constantly applied to a native of
Eirinn. Orosius, the third century geographer, uses "Hibernia the nation
of the Scoti". An Irish exile on the continent, the celebrated Marianus
Scotus referred to his countrymen as Scots.
The modern name of Ireland seems to
have originated with the Northmen, in about the seventh century - being probably
formed from Eire, they called it Ir or Ire, and after that the English called
it Ireland, and its natives Irish. For several centuries longer, however, these
terms were not adopted by Continental writers, who still continued to speak of
Scotia and the Scot, and designated the Irish scholars on the Continent by the
term Scotus. The new name Ireland was on the Continent, first used only in the
eleventh century (by Adam De Breme).
To Alba (the present Scotland) was
transferred the term Scotia, and to its people the term Scot, because the Scoti
of Hibernia, having again and again colonised there, built in it a strong
kingdom, which gave the Scotic (Irish) people dominance there, and soon made
the Scotic kings the kings of the whole country.
The Picts naturally jealous of
these usurpers on their soil, continued exerting the utmost pressure upon them,
in the hope of crushing them out, till Niall of the Nine Hostages, going to
their assistance with an army, overcame and drove back the Picts, establishing
the Scotic kingdom in Alba on a solid foundation, and, it is said, got the
submission of the Picts and the tribute of all Alba. Now that the Scotic people
got complete dominance over all or the main part of the country, it began to be
called Scotia - at first Scotia Minor, in contradistinction to Eire, which was
called Scotia Major - but gradually the title Scotia fell away from Eire, and
solely came to signify Alba.
In the eleventh century a number of
leading English families who fled or were driven from the south, flocked into
southeastern Scotland and came into favour at court. When, at the end of the
eleventh century, Malcolm’s son, Edgar, English both by name and nature, was
crowned king - the Gaelicism of royalty and of the court waned more rapidly,
till in the thirteenth century it went out altogether; and the last of the
Irish royal line became extinct with Alexander the Third, who died without heir
in 1287.
So, though the greater portion of
the country was, and still is, Gaelic - with Gaelic manners, customs, dress and
language, still holding in the Highlands and the Islands - the end of the
thirteenth century saw the end of the Scotic (Irish) rule in Alba
The Centuries of the Saints
The news impetus and aim that
Patrick gave to the Irish nation, turning it from war-love to ideals much
higher, wrought in the island a phenomenal transformation. While foreign
warring and raiding ceased, and internal warring became more rare, tens of
thousands of every rank and class in the nation vied with one another, not, as
formerly, for skill in handling war weapons, but for ease in conning the
Scriptures; not for gaining fame in fighting, but for gathering favour in the
sight of God. The religious development and spiritual revolution were
extraordinary.
Christianity and learning went hand
in hand in Ireland. Almost every one of her multitude of holy men became
scholars, and every holy scholar became a teacher.
Those centuries had three orders of
saints, namely : the Patrician or secular clergy, missionaries who travelled and
preached Christ to all the land during the hundred years succeeding the coming
of Patrick ; the monastic saints, who, during the next hundred years,
cultivated Christianity in, and radiated it from, their monastic establishments
and monastic schools ; and the anchorites, the hermit saints, who, succeeding
the great ones of the second order, cultivated Christ in solitude. On lonely
islands, on wild mountain tops and in the impenetrable wilderness.
One of the most honoured and most
beloved of the second order was Finian of Clonard. For, from his famous school
at Cluain-erard - Clonard, on the river Boyne - went forth the twelve saints
who were styled the Twelve Apostles of Eirinn : the two Ciarans, the two
Brendans, the two Colms, Mobi, Ruadan, Lasserian, Ciannech, Senach and Ninnid
of Loch Erne.
Manner of Living in Ancient Ireland
In very early Ireland practically
all residences were of wood or wicker work and most of them were in circular
from. They were usually thatched with straw, rushes or sedge. Stone was very
seldom used in building residences before the eighth century. The wooden and
wicker work houses were washed with lime on the outside.
Linen sheets and ornamented
coverlets were in use. Small low tables for serving meals were supplied with
knives, cups, jugs, drinking horns, methers and occasionally napkins. Wheat
meal, oat meal, eggs, meat, milk and honey, with some vegetables and few fruits
supplied the table. Light was furnished by candles of tallow or of beeswax,
rushlights, spails of bog fir, and sometimes oil lamps. All of the better class
houses had basins for bathing. After their day’s exertion, and before taking
their evening meal, hunters and warriors treated themselves to a bath. And a
bath was always a common courtesy to which to treat a newly arrived guest.
The women had mirrors made of
highly polished metal. They used cosmetics and had combs. Both sexes devoted
the greatest attention to the care of their hair, which was often elaborately
curled and plaited. Both women and men (of noble rank) wore beautiful wrought
brooches, for fastening their mantle. Other ornaments were bracelets, rings,
neck torques, diadems, crescents of gold and silver - all of which may be seen
in the National Museum in Dublin.
The chief articles of dress were,
in the case of women, one long robe that reached to the ankles, and of the men
a short jacket combined with a sort of kilt. Over these both sexes frequently
wore a cloak or mantle. The substance of the dress was usually either of linen
or wool.
In the poem of the Bruidean de
Derga, the Saxon chief Ingcel, in describing King Conaire Mor as he saw him in
the Bruidean gives a glorified description of a king’s dress in the early days
:
"I saw his many-hued red cloak
of lustrous silk,
With its gorgeous ornamentation of
precious gold bespangled
upon its surface,
With its flowing capes dexterously
embroidered.
"I saw in it a great large
brooch,
The long pin was of pure gold;
Bright shining like a full-moon
Was its ring, all around - a
crimson gemmed circlet
Of round sparkling pebbles -
Filling the fine front of his noble
breast
Atwixt his well proportioned fair
shoulders.
"I saw his splendid line kilt,
With its striped silken borders -
A face-reflecting mirror of various
hues,
The coveted of the eyes of many, -
Embracing his noble neck - enriching
its beauty.
An embroidery of gold upon the
lustrous silk -
(Extended) from his bosom to his
noble knees."
Structural Antiquities
The structural antiquities which we
can still observe in Ireland arrange themselves under five heads : cromlechs, tumuli,
the great duns of the west, ancient churches, and round towers. The cromlechs,
sometimes called dolmen, are each composed of three great standing stones, ten
or twelve feet high with a great flat slab resting on top of them, and always
inclined towards the east. Sometimes these are surrounded by a wide circle of
standing stones. The cromlechs are of such very remote antiquity - ancient - at
the beginning of the Christian era - that all legends of them are lost. The
invariable inclination to the east of the covering slab suggests altars
dedicated to sun-worship. The name cromlech may mean either bent slab or the
slab of the god Crom. And this latter derivation suggests to some that they
were sacrificial altars used in the very ancient worship of that god.
But some of the best authorities
have concluded that they were tombstones - because beneath every one of them
under which excavations were made, were found the bones, or the urns and dust
of the dead. From this, however, we cannot necessarily conclude that they were
erected as tombstones - any more than we should conclude that the various
Christian temples and altars under which honoured ones have been interred were
only intended as monuments to the dead beneath them.
The tumuli or enormous burial mounds
found in the Boyne section of eastern Ireland show the race in a much more
advanced stage of civilisation. These tumuli, as proved by the decorative
designs carved upon their walls, were erected at least before the Christian era
- and maybe many centuries before it. They are great stone roofed royal
sepulchres, buried under vast regularly shaped, artificial mounds. Every one of
the tumuli so far explored has shown urn burial. The greatest, most beautiful,
of these royal tombs are those as Knowth, Dowth and New Grange, on the Boyne.
After the tumuli, the next
structures in order of time are the great duns of the west coast, such as Dun
Angus, and Dun Conor, on the Aran Islands in Galway Bay. The great duns were
erected sometime during the first three centuries of the Christian era. They
consist of enormously thick walls, of stone, which, though built before the
discovery of any kind of cement, are of marvelously fine, firm and impregnable
construction. These great walls, in the interior of which are sometimes
chambers and passages, surround an amphitheatre of about a thousand feet in
diameter. In the amphitheatre are stone huts, the residences of the dun - some
of them are bee-hive shape, some of them are of the shape of an upturned boat.
Tradition says that these great duns were erected by the Firbolgs who
maintained themselves along the western fringe for long centuries after the
Milesians possessed themselves of the land.
About the round towers, the
antiquarians are now pretty generally agreed that they are of Christian origin
always built as adjuncts to churches, and erected after the marauding Danes had
shown the harassed ecclesiastics the need of some immediate, strong, and easily
defended place of refuge for themselves, and of safety for the sacred objects,
and the rich objects of church art which the Northmen constantly sought. The
round towers of Ireland range in height from about a hundred to a hundred and
twenty feet; they are from twelve to twenty feet in external diameter at the
base, and a little narrower at the top. They are of six or seven storeys high;
with one window usually to each floor - except in the upper most storey which
has four. The lowermost of these openings is always about ten feet or more from
the ground - giving good advantage over attackers. The walls are usually three
and a half to four foot thick.
There are still eighty round towers
in Ireland, twenty of them perfect. They are always found in connection with
churches - and almost invariably situated about twenty feet from the north west
corner of the church - and with the door or lowermost window facing the church
entrance. Almost all of the earliest Irish churches were of wood. It was
practically in the tenth century that the use of stone for building the large
churches began. And it was only in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that it
became general. In these last named centuries the Romanesque style was
introduced, and some beautiful churches erected, like that of St Caimin at
Inniscaltra by Brian Boru, and Cormac’s chapel at Cashel. In the decorating of
doorways and windows, sculpture began to show in the churches of the tenth
century. But Irish sculpture is best exemplified probably on the high crosses
of the tenth, eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries. There are some forty
five of these high crosses still remaining, most of them very beautiful There
was an Irish cross, having the circle of the Greek cross placed upon the shafts
of the Latin. The sculpture on the high crosses include carvings of the saints,
scriptural scenes, judgment scenes, royal processions, hunting scenes, stags at
bay, horsemen, chariots etc
The sculpture of the Irish at this
period was infinitely superior to that produced by their neighbours, the Welsh,
the Anglo Saxons and the Scottish. But the soul of the artist breathed through
the work of the Irish sculptor.
Various Arts of Ancient Ireland
Save that of the scribe, there was
no other art in ancient Ireland carried to such beautiful perfection as that of
the metal worker. And we have, still remaining, hundreds of beautiful pieces of
this work. These ancients objects are of various kind; articles of personal
adornment, bell-shrines, cumdachs or shrines for books, croziers etc
Among the personal ornaments we
have brooches, bracelets, rings, necklaces, torques (twisted ribbons of gold or
silver) for wearing around the neck, minns or diadems, crowns, amulets,
ear-rings, beads, balls, crescents, gorgets, the niam-lann (a flexible plate of
burnished gold, silver, or findruine worn around the forehead) etc - a lavish
wealth of beautiful ornaments exquisitely wrought, which, after a long count of
centuries, tell us the story of the rarely skilled, noble artificers of
Ireland, whose genius in metal was not only unsurpassed, but even unequalled,
in western Europe. Of all the many beautiful articles of personal adornment
that remain to us from those ancient times in Ireland, probably the most
luxurious are the delgs or brooches - the size and costliness of some of which
may be judged from the Dal Riada brooch, which was dug up in an Antrim field in
the last century, contained two and one-third ounces of pure gold, was five
inches long, and two and an eighth inches in diameter.
But for beauty none of them all
equals the Tara brooch. Both the face of the brooch and the back are overlaid
with beautiful patterns, wrought in an Irish filigree or formed by amber, glass
and enamel. These patterns of which there are no less than seventy-six
different kinds in this single article are wrought in such minute perfection
that a powerful lens is needed to perceive and appreciate the wonderful
perfection of detail. There are many other handsome brooches, such as the
Ardagh brooch, the Roscrea brooch etc - each with particular beauties of its
own.
Only by a very different kind of
object, the celebrated Ardagh chalice, is the Tara brooch surpassed in richness
and beauty of workmanship.
There are in existence many
wonderful bell shrines, like that of St Patricks bell, St Cualanus bell - and
shrines like the shrine of St Mogue, the cross of Cong, the crozier of St
Dympna, the crozier of Liosmor etc all of them displaying the extraordinary
work of the artist of those days.
The making of beautiful shrines
called cumdachs, for prized books, rarely occurred in any part of the world
except for Ireland. Some of the most finest and most celebrated cumdachs are
those of the Book of Kells, the Book of Armagh, the Book of Durrow and many
more.
The English Invasion
It was in 1171 that Henry the
Second invaded Ireland. He received approval from the newly elected English
Pope, Nicholas Breakspeare, Adrian the Fourth, on the grounds that morals in
Ireland had become corrupt, and religion almost extinct, and his purpose was to
bring the barbarous nation within the fold of the faith and under church
discipline. But if we supposed Ireland to be irreligious then, strange indeed
would be the choice of an apostle in Henry, a man of vicious life, a supporter
of anti-Popes, and reasonably suspected of, and all but excommunicated for,
instigating the murder of the holy Thomas a Becket. Those who contend that the
Bull was an English fabrication for impressing the irreligious Irish and making
easy their conquest point to the fact that the most ancient copies of the
document discovered lack both date and signature.
In May 1169, with a small but
efficient body of thirty knights in full armour, sixty horsemen in half armour
and three hundred archers, Fitz Stephen landed at Bannow, Wexford - and another
Knight Maurice de Prendergast with a company of about three hundred. On
receiving the news of the landing, MacMurrough raised a body of five hundred
from among his Leinster subjects and joined them. And, together they marched
against the Danish city of Wexford, which, after repulsing two assaults,
capitulated to the strange army with its armoured horses and horsemen and its
wonderfully skilled and disciplined army. MacMurrough bestowed the city upon
Fitz Stephen and settled near by lands upon de Prendergast and de Mont Maurice.
The Ard Righ and princes of the
other provinces looked on inactive. Every prince, occupied as usual with his
own problems was not much concerned about what did not immediately affect his
own territory.
Strongbow followed in a few months
with two hundred knights and a thousand men and immediately took over the city
of Waterford. Then they marched into Meath and Breffni laying waste as they
went. Henry hearing of Strongbows successes in Ireland grew jealous and
summoned Strongbow and all his subjects to return to England. Eventually
Strongbow went and laid his successes before Henry. As a result Henry himself
went with five hundred knights and four thousand horse and foot soldiers, and
landed at Waterford. Slowly the Irish chiefs submitted. When Henry left, the
Irish began to wake up to what they had done and slowly began to rise up
against the enemy. Now more familiar with the Norman discipline and equipment
the Irish princes set strategy against skill and discovered that the Normans
were not omnipotent. O’Brien of Thomond inflicted a big defeat upon them at
Thurles. Every Norman chief warred on his own account, for purpose of extending
his power and possessions and of course every Irish chief and prince, when
opportunity offered, warred against the invader. But such demoralisation set
in, that in short time not only was Irish chief warring upon Norman baron, but
Irish chief was warring with Irish chief, Norman baron warring with Norman
baron, and a Norman-Irish alliance would be warring against Normans, or against
Irish. Or against another combination of both. The Normans not only marked
their progress by much slaughtering and many barbarities, but signalised
themselves by robbing and burning churches and monasteries, and oftentimes
slaughtering the inmates. They harried, robbed, ravished and destroyed
wheresoever they went. And against one another, in their own feuds, they
oftentimes exercised as much barbarity as against the Irish. Fearfully true is
the Four Masters’ word that MacMurrough’s treacherous act "made of Ireland
a trembling sod".
Trade in Mediaeval Ireland
In Spain and Portugal, the ‘noble
Irish’, as they were called obtained more valuable privileges than the English.
The great Italian financial houses, the bankers of Lucca, the Ricardi, the
Friscobaldi, the Mozzi were active agents in Mediaeval Ireland. The wine trade,
as shown by the Pipe Roll accounts and other sources was of great dimensions,
with Clan and Town. Bordeaux, Dordogne, Libourne, St Emilian besides Spain,
Portugal and Oporto, traded direct with the Irish ports. With France, the
records of our trade go back to the days of St Patrick. Rouen was the chief
port of Normandy and obtained from Henry II the ‘monopoly of Irish trade’.
Bordeaux had a colony of Irish merchants - as had St Omar, Marseilles, Bayonne,
St Malo, Nantes and other ports - who were importers of Irish wool skins,
hides, fish, woollen cloth, fine linen, leather and corn, and they sent to
Ireland their own manufacturers and products. The enterprising Flemings were
stationed in many of the Irish ports. Their influence on maritime and inland
trade was as beneficent here as it was in England. Irish merchants had their
own settlements in all the leading ports of Flanders. Irish leather goods were
renowned throughout Europe, so it is not a surprise that Irish names should
figure on the Tanners Guild of Liege, then the most extensive and famous body
of this craft on the Continent. Antwerp, too, had its Irish trade, linen being
mentioned amongst other items. Lubeck had commercial intercourse with Ireland
and Irish woollens were carried down the Rhine : Cologne being one of the
marts. Through the Hansen Towns Irish commerce flowed on to Russia. Irish
cloth, mantles, rugs and serges were highly esteemed in Spain and Portugal,
likewise. The Irish merchants traded with the Canaries and pushed their way
into the Land of the Moors. Prince Henry, the Navigator had his own agent in
Galway. There is unimpeachable evidence that agriculture was skilfully and
extensively pursued from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. The
exportation of enormous quantities of wheat, oats, barley, rye and of other
cereals and of flax, beef, mutton, and wool point to intensive land cultivation
and stock raising. To a modern Irishman, the quantities of these products
exported to France, Scotland, Flanders and England seem incredible.
Learning in Mediaeval Ireland
After the defeat of the Norsemen by
King Brian at the Battle of Clontarf (1014) there was a flowering of the
National Mind in literature. So the political freedom of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries saw a re-birth of intellectual, as well as of agricultural
and commercial activity in Ireland. It was a Golden Age of Gaelic Literature.
As the wider gates of Irelands commerce opened on the South and West coasts, so
her scholars, pilgrims. Clerics and craftsmen followed in the wake of her
merchants, through the Gaulish seas into France and Italy. The universities of
these lands knew a long succession of our brilliant scholars. In the knowledge
of Astronomy mediaeval Ireland was in advance of most European lands. All the
greater Lords of the Gaels and Sean Ghalls had their official astronomers. It
was but natural that a nation of rovers and travellers should have maintained a
sound standard of geographical learning in their schools.. In medicine, Europe
could teach the Gaels but little. The King of England had not better
pharmaceutical lore or more adept surgical skill at his command than the
O’Briens’s in Munster or The Mac Cailin Mor in the Western Isles of Scotland.
The Irish Brehon Law Code goes back to a much earlier epoch than the days of St
Patrick. Its interpreters were deeply reverenced by the Irish people because of
their even handed justice. There is not a single instance in recorded history
of a brehon accepting a bribe. The Irish brehons were men of deep learning, of
wide influence and of riches. Three signs marked their abodes, ‘wisdom,
information and intellect’. In the Annals we read of many of them being
professors of new and old laws, Civil and Canon Law. In history, Irelands fame
stands high. She was justly styled a ‘Nation of Annalists’. Each sept, each
province had its own genealogist and chronicler whose business it was to record
the deeds of the clan and its princes and the deaths of its leading personages,
lay and ecclesiastical. Truth and accuracy were regarded as of paramount
importance. ‘To conceal the Truth of History’, ran one saying ‘is the blackest
of infamies’. The scribes travelled throughout the whole country to verify
their references and their facts. The Philosophy of History was unknown in
those ages. The office of scribe and genealogist was usually continued in
certain families, the son succeeding his father as a matter of course. The
Annalists were held in the highest esteem, ranking next to the head of the
clan; they fed at his table and were supported by his bounty. No important
public business was conducted without their presence and their directing
influence. The greater portion of the existing annals have been the resultant
of the Revival of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
The Geraldines
The history of the Gaelicised
Fitzgeralds (the Geraldines) is in a sense the history of the fortunes of
Southern Ireland for an extensive period. In Desmond, South Munster and the
lands adjoining they ruled as absolute monarchs over a hundred miles of
territory. The Geraldines of Kildare held the entire county of Kildare, with
parts of Meath, Dublin and Carlow, while their castles stretched beyond
Strangford Lough on the coast of Down to Adare. They had their own fleet to
patrol the seas. Intermarriages with the great houses in England and with
Norman and Gaelic families in Ireland were at first a settled part of Geraldine
policy. When they tasted of the pure milk of Gaelicism they never forgot its
savour, so they became kindly Irish of the Irish, root and branch. The
Geraldines afford the most numerous instances of mere men of blood, apostles of
the sword, turning, under the influence of Gaeldom into gentle sages and wise
scholars.
The eight Earl of Desmond was the
flower of the Southern Geraldine stock. The Irish people have taken this Thomas
Fitzgerald to their hearts, and enshrined him there as a ‘Martyr of Christ’. He
was the first of a long and fine line of Sean Ghalls to be martyred in the
cause of Irish freedom. Thomas of Desmond tried to re-establish a National
University and for that purpose had an Act of Parliament passed at Drogheda
(1466). By precept and by practice he endeavoured to unify the two races in
Ireland. He was a promoter and a patron of trade and commerce between Ireland
and the Continent. He was murdered by the Earl of Worcester, afterwards known
as ‘The Butcher’.
Gerald the eight Earl of Kildare
(1477-1513) was named by Ireland ‘Gerait Mor’ - Gerald the Great. His mild just
government drew the hearts of his people to him in passionate devotedness. By
lines of blood-relationships he obtained great influence amongst the great
Irish houses. Gerait Og ‘Gerald the Younger’, Ninth Earl of Kildare (1487-1534)
although educated in England was even more Irish than his father. He continued
the policy of intermarriage with the Irish and so consolidated the power of his
house. Maynooth under him was one of the richest earls houses of that time.
‘His whole policy was union in his country, and Ireland for the Irish’. He was
first appointed Lord Deputy by his cousin Henry VIII, in 1513. After seven years
rule he was removed, charged by the English with ‘seditious practices,
conspiracies and subtle drifts’. His cousin, the Earl of Desmond. Had entered
into a solemn league and covenant with Francis I, King of France (1523) to
drive the English out of Ireland, whilst Scotland was to render assistance to
the cause by invading England. But the heart of the leader of the Scottish
army, the Duke of Albany, failed him at the last moment and the gallant Scots
dejectedly turned homewards. Kildare was summoned (1526) to England by Cardinal
Wolsey to answer the charge of complicity in the plot. Wolsey denounced Kildare
as a traitor. Before his departure from Dublin he appointed as vice Deputy his
son, the famous Silken Thomas. Disregarding his fathers advice to be guided by
his elders, he fell an easy prey to the veteran English of Dublin Castle, who
had been secretly mining the foundations of the House of Kildare for
generations. A forged letter was shown round in official circles in Dublin
claiming his father was killed. Lord Thomas, having consulted with the young
bloods, inopportunely raised the standard of revolt - against the entreaties of
all the wisest heads. His enemies rejoiced - his well wishers were in despair.
At first Lord Thomas swept all before him. Then England poured troops lavishly
into Ireland - accompanied by the new invention, the canon, which proved the
young leaders undoing. Eventually he submitted and was sent to the Tower of
London - where his father had already died of a broken heart, on learning of
Thomas’s insurrection. He was hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn (1537). The
extirpation of the Geraldines became policy and the Act of Parliament (1537)
decreed all the Geraldines countries to be forfeited to the Crown.
Henry VIII’s Policies
From the beginning of his reign
(1515) Henry VIII undertook to destroy the basis of Irish resistance. With this
object in view he issued ‘most secret’ instructions to his officials to capture
our trade and commerce, by every subtle device. All the laws against Irish
civilisation, against marriage, fosterage and gossipred, against the use of
native literature and its language, against every phase and aspect of National
life was re-enacted. By a Parliament (May 1536) composed of English colonists
only, and convened by fraud, corruption and terror, Henry was acknowledged as
Head of Church and State; and the Catholic religion, with its ritual and
teachings, declared null and void, ‘corrupt for ever’. Five years later the
same body proclaimed Henry ‘King of Ireland’. The Lord Deputy, St Leger,
preached and acted on this Gospel. The unfortunate result was the submission of
O’Neill, O’Donnell, O’Brien, the MacCarthy, the Burkes, and all the rules of
the Irish, Old and New. They went through the form of acknowledging Henry as
King of Ireland, as Head of Church and State in Ireland, and promised to
substitute English for Brehon Law, and English manners, and customs for Irish.
‘They have turned, and sad is the deed, their back to the inheritance of their
fathers’. Yet in spite of ‘doing knee-homage, they would not get from the King
of England for Ireland a respite from misery’. The people, faithful to Ireland
in woe as in weal, resented, lamented, and even cursed their ‘diplomatic’
chiefs.
Another of Henry’s devices for the
conquest of Ireland was the kidnapping of noblemen’s sons and having them
reared and educated in England, hostile to every tradition and instinct of
their nationality. Chiefs could be ensnared one by one in misleading contracts,
practically void. A false claimant could be put on a territory and supported by
English soldiers in a civil war, till the actual chief was exiled or yielded
the land to the King’s ownership. No chief, true or false, had power to give
away the people’s land, and the king was face to face with an indignant people,
who refused to admit an illegal bargain. Then came a march of soldiers over the
district, hanging, burning, shooting, ‘the rebels’, casting the peasants out on
the hillsides. There was also the way of ‘conquest’. The whole of the
inhabitants were to be exiled, and the countries made vacant and waste for
English peopling: the sovereign’s rule would be immediate and peremptory over
those whom he had thus planted by his sole will, and Ireland would be kept in a
way unknown in England. Henceforth it became a fixed policy to ‘exterminate and
exile the country people of the Irishry’. Henry hoped to have a royal army of
Ireland as ‘a sword and a flay’ to his subjects in England and to his enemies
abroad. His dream seem to be realised when Earl Con O’Neill and other Irish
lords, in the full flush of faith and confidence in English justice, sent an
army to aid Henry’s troops against Francis I, King of France - Ireland’s best
Continental friend - at the siege of Boulogne (1544). The false, disillusioned
Irish did not repeat this experiment.
Also, Henry believed he could raise
a big revenue out of Ireland’s pockets for his sensualities and his political
objects. But this likewise failed, because his ‘cormorants and caterpillars’
were too busy amassing wealth for themselves. The introduction of the
Protestant Reformation principles added sources of fresh outrages, new
oppressions. In Ireland Protestantism was not given a chance to appeal to the
people by any ethical, religious or political ideals. The licentious unpaid
English soldiery who had to maintain themselves by plunder and rapine, were
accompanied by incendiaries who left not a homestead standing. The soul of
Ireland, resurrected through the crucifixion of her body, became the most devoted
daughter of the Catholic Church. Poets and historians were put to the sword,
and their books and genealogies burned, so that no man ‘might know his own
grandfather’. Henry’s well-defined policies were religiously pursued by his
successors, Edward and Mary. The ministers of his, Edward VI, intensified the
vigour of his religious crusade. Religion was to be made sweet to the heretical
Irish - ‘with the Bible in one hand, in the other the Sword’. Mary’s Irish rule
was no less merciless than that of her two predecessors.
The O’Connors of Offaly and the
O’Mores of Leix having dared to defend their lands against the English invaders
were outlawed and their countries forfeited to the Crown. A long and bloody
warfare, conducted with terrible ferocity, was the result. Even in Ireland
there is nothing so heroic, so persistent, so indefatigable as the efforts made
by these two gallant clans to recover their homes and altars. The struggle was
maintained for generations. Even to this day O’More and O’Conor are the
principal families in the district, where their forefathers ruled as just,
munificent princes.
Shane the Proud
Shane was a bad man in private
life, but a born soldier, a sagacious ruler, and a believer in his rights. When
Conn, the Lame, his father, accepted an English title, and became Baron of
Dungannon, Shane went into rebellion. On his father’s death, he slew his half
brother, the next baron, and was inaugurated the O’Neill. Shane the Proud,
Ulster called him. He stood across England’s advance into the province.
Elizabeth and her Lord Deputies tried to cajole him, to deceive him, to defeat
him, to capture him, to murder him. Then when his soldiers had pierced to the
Pale, they recognised him as the O’Neill. Sinner, soldier, chieftain, he was a
strong figure in the century. Shane’s territory was now supposed to be safe
from English interference or invasion. He and England’s queen were friends.
Sussex, the Lord Deputy, wrote offering him his sister in marriage with a safe
conduct to Dublin. His intention was to capture Shane. Later he sent him a
present of wine. Elizabeth knew of the gift; knew what was in it.
Shane and his household drank the
wine - and just escaped death. But Shane knew now forever with whom he had to
deal. It was the second attempt that English statesmen had secretly made to
assassinate him.
Shane flung off his allegiance.
After that draught of wine he thought his sword was his best security. He won a
victory notable of its name. They were three hundred English soldiers, not in
buff but in scarlet coats. So that battle was called the battle of the red
coats. But hard were the strokes of his enemies - ‘Queens’ O’Donnels, ‘Queens’
O’Neills, Elizabeths forces - and the Proud was left the choice of submission
or an appeal to the Scots mercenaries. He choose the latter, freed Sorley Boy
McDonnel, and went to a banquet they gave. To that banquet also went a man whom
the Lord Deputy had maintained privately in Tyrone when he and Shane were in
friendship and peace. The spy waited till the wine had made men drunk and think
of their wrongs. Then O’Neill was slain. The spy hastened to Dublin Castle and
received from Sir Henry Sidney a thousand marks from the public treasury. So
Shanes head went upon the north-west gate of Dublin.
Elizabeth continues the Conquest
The conquest of Ireland had been
going on four centuries. The rock against which every attempt to complete it
had broken was the immemorial laws of Ireland, the Brehon Laws. These bound
Irishmen within the four seas to one social and legal rule. All attempts to
plant the feudal system in Ireland by England went down before them.
The strongest Norman house in Irish
history was the Geraldines. They must be suppressed. The Ormonds were castle
men, guardians of English authority. The Black Earl of Ormond seized Gerald,
Earl of Desmond, and sent him to London, and Elizabeth sent him to the tower. A
little later his brother was seized and sent there too. Their cousin, James
Fitzmaurice, drew his sword to protest against the seizures. They won
victories; they routed a queens army. Then Elizabeth made peace with
Fitzmaurice. And she then directed a plot for the treacherous murder of
himself, his brothers and cousins - which by discovering in time, he escaped.
After a time the new Earl had to fly to Spain for safety and succour. He
visited Rome, too, got Italian mercenaries, fourscore Spaniards, a promise of more
and returned to Ireland, where he vanished out of life in a skirmish. Spain
remembered her promise. Eight hundred Spaniards landed on the coast of Kerry.
Gray sent in his soldiers and massacred seven hundred men. The massacre was
directed by Sir Walter Raleigh and an officer named Wingfield.
The Earl and his kinsmen, fighting
now for their religion and their homes, joined hands with the MacCarthys, the
O’Sullivans and other Munster chiefs. Carew, a Devonshire knight, claimed
Desmond territory, and brought an army to seize it and ‘pacify’ the province.
The Desmond war lasted three more years, altogether five. The Earl, finally
defeated, was at last captured and beheaded.
English Law had made a breach in
Connacht. The head of the Burkes, Clanrickard, a ‘queens’ man, was seized and
sent to Dublin. Then all the Burkes loosened their swords in their scabbards
and sprang into rebellion. The rebellion grew and strengthened, before the
‘strong measures’ of the Lord President. Soon, the disarmed Catholics were taken
and hanged. Surrendered garrisons were put to the sword; a search for rebels in
West Connacht saw women, and boys and old men, and all who came in Binghams
way, slain.
Into Leinster, too, English Law had
driven a wedge. Mary of Englands Deputies had seized Offaly and Leix, the
territories of the O’Conors and the O’Mores. They had planted English settlers
there; abolished the ancient territorial names and in Irish blood rechristened
them Kings and Queens counties. The dispossessed chiefs and their clansmen
bided their time. A noble boy grew up among them, and in manhood became an
avenging sword. This was Ruari Og O’More. After six years of successful
guerilla warfare he fell when reconnoitring a force brought against him. His
soldiers avenged his death and put the army to flight. His name remained an
inspiration to oppressed Irish, down to the present day. ‘God, and Our Lady,
and Rory O’More!’.
Red Hugh
In the North the smouldering fire
had flamed forth again. The predestined boy had come whose advent a Tir-Conaill
seer had long ago foretold. Young Hugh O’Donnell, Aod Ruad, the golden-haired,
minatory, deadly foe to England. The fame and renown of him had reached the
ears of Lord Deputy Perrot, illegitimate son of Henry VIII. The dreaded lad was
being fostered by MacSwiney, Lord of Fanat on the Northern sea’s verge. When
the boy was fourteen a merchant ship sailed into Loch Swilly, and anchored
under the stone castle of MacSwiney. The captain invited MacSwiney and his
family aboard the ship where they were tricked and captured. All but Red Hugh
were released. Red Hugh was carried away to Dublin and placed in the Birmingham
tower of the castle. In Fanat, throughout all Tir-Conaill and indeed through
Eirinn there was weeping, wrath, shame and anger. After three years the boy
made a wonderful and daring escape on a December night - but alas ! was
retaken. After another year, this time spent in irons, in company with Henry
and Art, the sons of Shane O’Neill, both in irons also, he made another daring
attempt - and this time succeeded in freeing all three. Red Hugh’s escape sent
a thrill through Ireland. Messengers rode north and south and east and west
with the joyous word. On a May day the lad was made The O’Donnell. Sir Hugh his
father, gladly gave place to a son so fit to rule. Thus Red Hugh’s star rose
and shone high in the north over Ireland; and still shines in the dark sky of
her history.
The Nine Years War had begun. A
spear darted through Tir-Conaill. The invader was driven out; chiefs who had
given their allegiance to the foreigner were taught that the O’Donnell was
their chief and prince. He swept through Ulster and drove out the English
sheriffs. He entered Connacht and hurled Binghams forces before him. Hugh
O’Neill watched events; waited, held his hand, still uncertain.
So the issue of an independent
Ireland or a conquered country was now to be put to the sword. Almost for the
first time since the invasion Ireland had a statesman who saw the root of her
weakness, and who placed the politics of the nation before the politics of the
clan.
Red Hugh. A spear darted through
Tir-Conaill. The invader was driven out; chiefs who had given their allegiance
to the foreigner were taught that the O’Donnell was their chief and prince. He
swept through Ulster and drove out the English sheriffs. He entered Connacht
and hurled Binghams forces before him. Hugh O’Neill watched events; waited,
held his hand, still uncertain.
So the issue of an independent
Ireland or a conquered country was now to be put to the sword. Almost for the
first time since the invasion Ireland had a statesman who saw the root of her
weakness, and who placed the politics of the nation before the politics of the
clan.
The Ulster Plantation
Within a decade of the ‘Flight of
the Earls’ came the Ulster Plantation. It was the excuse needed for the
wholesale robbing of the clans. That the lands belonged to the whole clan
community was of no consequence to the English. According to English law and
custom it should belong to the lords (chiefs). The English Lord Lieutenant, Sir
Arthur Chichester, and the Attorney General, Sir John Davies, were the
instruments , for giving effect to the great Plantation. The natives were
driven to the bogs and the moors where it was hoped that they would starve to
death. The conditions upon which the new people got their land bound them to
repress and abhor the Irish natives , admit no Irish customs, never to
intermarry with the Irish, and not to permit any Irish on their lands. As a
result many of the Irish starved to death. Many others sailed away and enlisted
under continental armies.
The Rising of 1641
The Irish were not content to
starve and die upon the moors. The Rising of 1641 was the natural outcome of
this great wrong. Rory O’Moore is chiefly credited for this great resurgence of
the Irish race. For years he patiently worked among the leading Irish families,
Irish Generals in the Continental armies, and other Irish representatives in
the European countries. Plans being matured, the Rising broke in Ulster on the
night of the 21st October 1641. Practically in one night they reconquered their
province, having sent the Planters scurrying into the few Ulster cities that they
still could hold. It was Ulster only that had risen that night - the other
quarters remained quiet due to a miscarriage of plans and through a traitor.
For the purpose of inciting the English at home , the English invented stories
of massacres and Irish cruelty - many of which are still believed today. The
fearful cruelties perpetrated by Sir Charles Coote, leader of the English army
in Leinster, and by St Leger, English commander in Munster, combined with fear
for themselves and their estates, drove the Anglo-Irish Catholic lords and
their fellows in Munster to join the Rebellion. When the great and historic
Synod met in Kilkenny in May ’42, the Irish practically owned Ireland, English
power merely clinging by its teeth to some outer corners of the country.
The War of the ‘Forties
The Confederation of Kilkenny
proved to be perhaps more of a curse than a blessing to Ireland. The
establishing of the Confederation was the establishing of a Parliament in Ireland.
In England Charles and his Parliamentary Government were now at bitter odds -
beginning the great civil conflict there. They manacled, and thwarted the great
Irish figure of the Forties - the truly admirable man and signally great
military leader, Owen Roe O’Neill. With Owen Roe’s coming arose Ireland’s
bright star of hope - and with his passing, that star set. Owen Roe was a
nephew of Hugh O’Neill, ‘Earl of Tyrone’, who fled at the century’s beginning,
and had died abroad. Owen Roe was a young man at the time of the Flight of the
Earls, had fought in that last disastrous fight at Kinsale and going abroad
also, had won signal distinction as a military commander in the Spanish
Netherlands. He had never ceased to hope that he would yet be the means of freeing
his Fatherland. And through the years in which his sword had been in the
service of Spain, his heart was ever with Ireland. He came to his own North,
when, close following its first bright burst the clouds of despair had come
down, and begun to sit heavy on it again. On the 6th July 1642, with a hundred
officers in his company, the long wished for saviour stepped off a ship and was
given command of the Northern army. So potent was the name and fame of Owen Roe
that even while his army was still in embryo, Lord Levin from Scotland at the
head of twenty thousand men refused to meet such a formidable battler and
strategist. In June 1646 he fought and won his great pitched battle, the famous
victory of Benburb. Here he met and smashed the Scottish General Monroe, who
then held the British command in Ulster. All remaining Scottish forces were, by
his signal victory sent scurrying into the two strongholds of Derry and
Carrickfergus. The province was Owen Roe’s and Ireland’s.
So would the whole country soon
have been - but unfortunately the Supreme Council, flinging away the golden
opportunity, not only signed a peace with Ormond, acting for King Charles, but
went so far as to put under his command all of the Confederate Catholic Army.
Owen Rose hurried south with his forces to overawe the traitors and try to
counteract the harm they had done. But every move made by Owen Rose, and every
combination, was wisely directed toward the great end. Yet the noble man held
steadily to his task, and when eventually Cromwell came like an avenging angel
Owen Roe was the one great commanding figure to which the awed and wasted
nation instinctively turned.
But, as by God’s will it proved,
their turning to him was in vain.
Cromwell
It was in August of ’40 that
Cromwell landed in Dublin. The great leader of the grim Ironsides, himself, was
destined to leave behind him in Ireland for all time a name synonymous with
ruthless butchery. The first rare taste of the qualities of this agent of God
the Just, and first Friend of the Irish was given to the people at Drogheda.
Only thirty men out of a garrison of three thousand escaped the sword. After
Drogheda, Cromwell in quick succession reduced the other northern strongholds,
then turned and swept southward to Wexford - two thousand were butchered here.
Cromwell reduced the garrisons of Arklow, Inniscorthy and Ross on the way to
Wexford. After Wexford he tried to reduce Waterford, but failing in his first
attempt, and not having time to waste besieging it, passed onward - and found
the cities of Cork an easy prey. He rested at Youghal, getting fresh supplies
and money from England. In January he took the field again, reduced Fethard,
Cashel and eventually got Kilkenny by negotiation. Against his new and powerful
cannon, the ancient and crumbling defences of the Irish cities were of little
avail. The conqueror then - in the end of May - sailed from Youghal for England
after having in eight months, subdued almost of Ireland, destroyed the
effective Irish forces, and left the country prostate at the feet of the
Parliament. He left in command his general, Ireton, who on his death soon
after, was to be succeeded by Cromwells son, Henry. It took his successors
another two years to finish up the remnant of work that he had left unfinished.
Waterford, Limerick and Galway still held out. Scattered bands of fighters here
and there, and an army of the North, under Heber MacMahon, kept Ulster
resistance still alive. The few towns - Waterford, Limerick, Galway - and the
scattered fighting forces were gradually conquered or capitulated. Till on the
12th May ’52, Articles of Kilkenny signed by the Parliamentary Commissioners on
the one hand and the Earl of West Meath on the other - yet fiercely denounced
by the Leinster clergy - practically terminated the longest, the most
appallingly dreadful and inhumane, and the most exhausting, war, with which
unfortunate Ireland was ever visited.
The Cromwellian Settlement
But Irelands sufferings, great and
terrible as they had been, were yet far from ended. "Ireland , in the
language of Scripture, lay void as a wilderness. Five-sixths of her people had
perished. Women and children were found daily perishing in ditches, starved.
The bodies of many wandering orphans, whose fathers had been killed or exiled,
and whose mothers had died of famine, were preyed upon by wolves. In the years
1652 and 1653 the plague, following the desolating wars had swept away whole
counties, so that one might travel twenty or thirty miles and not see a living
creature". In September 1653, was issued by parliament the order for the
great transplanting. Under penalty of death, no Irish man, woman or child was
to be found east of the River Shannon, after the 1st May 1654. Sir William
Petty, in his Political Anatomy of Ireland, estimated that the wars had reduced
the population.
The Later Penal Laws
When fire and sword had signally
failed to suppress the Irish race new means to that end must be found. So the
fertile mind of the conqueror invented the Penal Laws. The object of the Penal
Laws was threefold ;
1) To deprive the Catholics of all
civil life
2) To reduce them to a condition of
most extreme and brutal ignorance
3) To dissociate them from the soil
The Penal Laws enacted or
re-enacted in the new era succeeding the siege of Limerick, when under the
pledged faith and honour of the English crown, the Irish Catholics were to be
"protected in the free and unfettered exercise of their religion",
provided amongst other things that :
The Irish Catholic was forbidden
the exercise of his religion,
He was forbidden to receive
education.
He was forbidden to enter a
profession.
He was forbidden to hold public
office.
He was forbidden to engage in trade
or commerce.
He was forbidden to live in a
corporate town or within five miles thereof.
He was forbidden to own a horse of
greater value than five pounds.
He was forbidden to purchase land.
He was forbidden to lease land.
He was forbidden to vote.
He was forbidden to keep any arms
for his protection.
He was forbidden to hold a life
annuity.
He could not be guardian to a
child.
He could not attend catholic
worship.
He could not himself educate his
child.
The law soon came to recognise an
Irishman in Ireland only for the purpose of repressing him.
The Volunteer movement in the
1780’s first began to take the edge off Protestant prejudice. In the year 1793,
an Act was passed relieving the Catholics of many of their disabilities - in
theory at least. Another thirty-six years were to elapse before the next step
was taken, under compulsion from the O’Connell agitation, and the Act known as
Catholic Emancipation made law.
The Suppression of Irish Trade
In the early centuries of the
Christian Era the highly civilised Celt was inclined to trade and commerce. The
early Irish, were famous for their excellence in the arts and crafts -
particularly for their wonderful work in metals, bronze, silver and gold. By
the beginning of the 14th Century, the trade of Ireland with the Continent of
Europe was important. This condition of things naturally did not suit
commercial England. So at an early period she began to stifle Irish industry
and trade.
The Irish woollen manufacturers
began to rival Englands. So in 1571 Elizabeth imposed restriction upon the
Irish woollen trade that crippled the large Irish trade with the Netherlands
and other parts of the Continent.
Ireland tried its hand at
manufacturing cotton. England met this move with a twenty-five per cent duty
upon Irish cotton imported into England. And next forbade the inhabitants of
England to wear any cotton other than of British manufacture.
Ireland attempted to develop her
tobacco industry. But a law against its growth was passed in the first year of
Charles the Second.
Four and five centuries ago and
upward the Irish fisheries were the second in importance in Europe. Under
careful English nursing they were, a century and a half ago, brought to the
vanishing point. Then the independent Irish Parliament at the end of the
eighteenth century saved them. Here we have set down only examples of the
principal Acts and devices for the suppression of Irish manufacturers and Irish
industries, but yet sufficient to show how England protected her beloved Irish
subjects in the enjoyment of all they have - how Ireland prospered under
English Rule in a material way - and how England in her step-motherly way, took
each toddling Irish industry by the hand, led its childish footsteps to the
brink of the bottomless pit, and gave it a push - thus ending its troubles
forever.
And thus is explained in part why
Ireland, one of the most favoured by nature and one of the most fertile
countries in Europe, is yet one of the poorest. And why it is that, as recent
statistics show, ninety-eight per cent of the export trade of the three kingdoms
is in the hands of Britain and in Ireland’s hands only two per cent.
The Volunteers
The Volunteers needed no special
perspicacity to see that the most formidable enemy even of the English colony
in Ireland was the English trade interest, to which their advantages were
ruthlessly sacrificed. The first invasion they set themselves to repel was that
of English manufacturing goods. Shopkeepers and merchants who imported foreign
goods or tried to impose them on their customers as Irish manufacture, were warned
of the consequences. The Volunteers were there to see that the boycott was duly
observed. When Parliament met in October 1779, Grattan moved his celebrated
amendment to the Address to the Throne, demanding Free Trade for Ireland - that
is the right to import and export what commodities she pleased, unrestrained by
foreign legislation. The amended address was carried by a huge majority, and
next day it was borne to the Castle and dispatched to England. Acts were rushed
through the English Houses of Parliament in a few weeks which restored to the
Irish the trade rights of which they had been robbed. At any moment England
might revoke the concessions she had granted under duress. There still remained
on the Statute Books of the two countries the Acts which gave her this power -
Poyning’s Act , and the Sixth of George 1.
Poyning’s Act
Poyning’s Act bound the Irish Parliament to
legislate only as the British Parliament permitted it. The Sixth of George 1,
also called the Declaratory Act declared that the King had full power and
authority to make or amend laws. The following year, 1783, under pressure from
the Volunteers and Flood a ‘Renunciation Bill’ was carried through the British
parliament. It declared that the ‘right claim by the people of Parliament of
that Kingdom in all cases whatever, and to have all actions and suits at law,
or in equity, which may be instituted in the Kingdom, decided by His majesty’s
courts therein finally, and without appeal from thence, shall be and is hereby
declared to be established and ascertained for ever, and shall at no time
here-after be questionable’.
The United Irishmen
The first general meeting of the
United Irishmen was held on 18th October 1791, and the following resolutions
were proposed and carried ;
1) That the weight of English
influence in the Government of this country is so great as to require a cordial
union among all the people of Ireland, to maintain that balance which is
essential to the preservation of our liberties and the extension of our commerce
2) That the sole constitutional
mode by which this influence can be opposed is by a complete and radical reform
of the people in Parliament
3) That no reform is just which
does not include Irishmen of every religious persuasion.
During the year 1796, events had
moved in Ireland with extraordinary rapidity. On the one hand the Government
had let loose on the country a storm of organised terrorism, and on the other
the country, as a measure of self-protection, if nothing else - had gone
solidly into the ranks of the ‘United’ men. Among the sinister measures adopted
by Government to break the ‘Union’ was the establishment of the Orange Society.
The Rising of 1798
The insurrection long delayed in
the hope of the promised aid from France, now broke out under the worst
possible conditions. for success. Left without leaders, it is astonishing that
it should have been confined to only a portion of the country and that the
efforts of the counties that ‘rose’ were speedily suppressed. Between 24th and
27th May there were engagements with the military at Naas, Clane, Prosperous,
Kilcullen and Monasterevin in Kildare, at Dunboyne and Tara in Meath, at
Baltinglass in Wicklow, at Lucan, Rathfarnham and Tallaght in Dublin. The only
other important engagements in Ulster were at Saintfield and Newtownards, where
the insurgents were successful, and at Ballinahinch where Monroe and his United
Men were defeated by General Nugent. News of those events came in due time to
Tone in France, and made him frantic with anxiety and impatience to be with his
comrades in Ireland. Tone was called to Paris to consult with the Ministers of
War and Marine in the organisation of a small expedition.
Wolfe Tone
Wolfe Tone accompanied eight frigates under
Commodore Bompard and 3000 men under General Hardy to Ireland. However they
were set upon by the English fleet. Tone was not recognised at first but his
disguise was soon upturned. He made a gallant figure as he stood before his
judges in the uniform of a French Colonel, making his last profession of faith
in his principles to which he had devoted all that was his to give. "From
my earliest youth I have regarded the connection between Ireland and Great Britain
as the curse of the Irish nation, and felt convinced, that while it lasted,
this country would never be free or happy. In consequence, I determined to
apply all the powers which my individual efforts could move, in order to
separate the two countries. that Ireland was not able, of herself, to throw off
the yoke, I knew. I therefore sought for aid wherever it was to be
found.......Under the flag of the French Republic. After such sacrifices, in a
cause which I have always considered as the cause of justice and freedom - it
is no great effort at this day to add the sacrifice of my life".
Tone is buried at Bodenstown
alongside his brother who had died for the same glorious cause a few weeks
earlier. And there, side by side, those
two mangled bodies - each broken so cruelly in the conquerors murder machine -
await the Resurrection - in the ‘green grave’ which Ireland cherishes as the
most precious thing she owns.
Robert Emmet
Everybody knew that the war between
France and England, to which the peace of Amiens had put a temporary cessation,
would soon break out again; and it was common belief likewise that when the war
did break out, an invasion by Bonaparte either of England or Ireland would be
attempted. The United Irishmen, both on the continent and in Ireland therefore
were prepared to sacrifice their just resentment against France for her failure
to keep her engagements with them in ’98 and enter into a new alliance with
her. The Agent of the United Irishmen in Paris, was Thomas Addis Emmet, who
left Brussels for the French Capital early in 1803, to act in that capacity on
definite instructions from the Provisional Government in Ireland. In the first
place there was an absolute promise on the part of the French of a large
expeditionary force to aid the Rising in Ireland. In the second there was an
understanding with, and guarantees of co-operation from the revolutionary
societies in England and Scotland. In the third, there were pledges from men of
the highest social, military and political standing in Ireland to aid the
movement with money, moral and other backing. If ever an effort for Irish
Liberty seemed destined to succeed, it was that to which Robert Emmet found
himself committed when he returned to Ireland, after his ‘Grand Tour’ on the
continent, in the Autumn of 1802. His primary object was to get the country
organised and armed, ready to co-operate with the French landing. Emmets own
work was mainly confined to Dublin, but he was in close touch with the men of
Carlow, Wicklow and Wexford. On the 16th July an explosion took place in a
house in Patrick Street, which Emmet had taken as a depot for arms and
explosives. This event, which made him regard the discovery of his plans as
imminent, caused him to fix an early date for the Rising without waiting for
the promised French help. Assurance came from all over the country that if
Dublin rose the rest of Ireland would speedily follow. Saturday, the 23rd July
was the day arranged for the Rising. But on the day appointed it was discovered
that only a small fraction of the men expected to help had turned up.
The romantic sequel of Robert
Emmets story has given to the occurrences of the 23rd July an importance which
the men who organised the conspiracy of which they were only an incident, did
not recognise. One part of the plan, the Rising in Dublin, had miscarried,
through no fault of Robert Emmets; but if the French had been true to their
plighted word the rest of the country would have risen later, according to the
plan, and the dream to which the gallant youth sacrificed fortune, life and
love, might yet have come true. But the French failed their Irish allies once
more, and Thomas Addis Emmet, though he still continued for a time his
negotiations with the agents of the First Consul, had at length to convince
himself that ‘Bonaparte was the worst enemy Ireland ever had’. As for his
brother, Robert, when he saw the blood of Lord Kilwarden, he dispersed his
followers and was determined to do nothing more until the promised French aid
had arrived. To expedite its coming he sent Myles Byrne to France with an
urgent message to his brother, Thomas Addis. Before Myles Bryne had arrived in
Paris, Robert had been arrested at Harolds Cross, to whose dangerous
neighbourhood he had been drawn by an overpowering desire to see once more his
‘bright love’ the exquisite Sarah Curran. On the 20th September the sacrifice
was consummated. The brave youth was publicly beheaded on a Dublin street.
Daniel O’Connell
Throughout almost the first half of
the nineteenth century Irelands history is reflected in the life of Daniel
O’Connell. In Dublin he associated with the United Irishmen and shred their
national sentiments. When the Emmet alarm burst on the country in 1803, he flew
to arms to preserve the Constitution. He was one of the Lawyers Corps that was
formed for defence of the realm against the assault of French principles. It
was in 1808, that O’Connell first got marked prominence in Irish affairs. When
in ’13 those Protestant champions of Catholic Emancipation, Grattan and Plunkett,
had introduced in Parliament a Catholic Relief Bill which had every chance of
passing, and which had the approval of the Irish Catholic aristocratic party
and the English Catholics, O’Connell aroused Ireland against it because it was
saddled with the objectionable veto and also gave to the British the right to
supervise all documents passing between Rome and the Roman Catholic hierarchy
in these islands. The passion of O’Connell, the people, and the prelates had
the desired effect. The rights of the Irish church were no longer to be
considered a negotiable security at Rome.
Catholic Emancipation
O’Connell now had complete control
of the national mind. And his voice was the voice of Ireland. The unquestioning
faith of his multitudinous following put in his hands a power which he
unsparingly wielded to work out the peoples emancipation. The Catholic Board,
under O’Connells direction of course, passed the celebrated
"witchery" resolution, which gave to the scandal-mongering multitude
the tid-bit that it was a bigoted anti-Catholic mistress who had compelled the
Princes anti-Irish attitude. To cap the absurdity, O’Connell was not more
delighted at lavishing servile homage upon his royal master than the royal
master himself was childishly delighted to receive it. O’Connell in organising
the reception so worked upon his faithful people with his lavish eloquence
that, arising out to welcome George with wild delight, they seethed with
enthusiasm during every day of his stay. So touched was George with his
reception by his "beloved Irish subjects", that he bestowed on Lord
Fingall, the ranking Catholic layman, the Order of St Patrick. And immediately
after his return to England he sent to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland a message
of gratitude, and hope for the bright future of his Irish people - which
assured O’Connell and his followers, if assurance were needed, that their
fondest hopes for religious freedom would now at length be satisfied. It is
true that in ’21 the English House of Commons passed the Catholic Relief Bill
which, while proposing to make Catholics eligible for Parliament and for
offices under the Crown was again saddled with the impossible veto, and with
another equally un-acceptable condition, namely, that the Roman Catholic clergy
should take oath to elect only bishops who were loyal to the British Crown. He
found it a particularly good time for agitation because it was a particularly
bad time for the country. The year ’22 and again ’23 brought with them much
want and hardship to the nation. Richard Lalor Shiel, orator and Catholic
leader, who had differed with and separated from O’Connell, now consented to
join forces with him. So O’Connell founded a new Catholic Association and
resolving to bring into politics a new great power that had never before been
systematically enlisted, namely, the priests, organised the Association by
parishes with the priest in each case as natural leader. The Association, too,
was more virile and determined in its demands. So dangerous became the peoples
attitude that the English Government was forced to take a decisive step. The
Catholic Association was suppressed, and an Emancipation Bill brought in.
O’Connell, nothing daunted, started to build anew. Hen the Catholic Association
was suppressed, he penned a valedictory, wherein, still strong with
irrepressible loyalty he urged upon the people ‘attachment to the British
Constitution, and unqualified loyalty to the king’. Though the general election
in England went very happily for the n-popery party, the new no-popery
Government was frightened to discover that the election in Ireland had gone
entirely the other way. The mighty power of combined priest and people was
taking form, and the Irish nation now realise the solidity of their power more
surely and more boldly than ever before. Lecky says that this election of ’26
won Emancipation. But with far more force, it can be said that Emancipation was
won by the epoch making Clare election. That was the first truly golden
milestone met by the Irish people upon their weary march from the centurys
beginning. The Clare election was to Ireland a joyful surprise and a fearful
one to England. County Clare had conquered England. The Emancipation Bill was
brought in - and passed - but not without fierce opposition. The Emancipation
Bill was passed, the commonest citizen rights from which Irish people had
hitherto been debarred, because they were heretics and idolaters, were now
permitted by law. And civil offices from which they had been, for their crime,
shut out, were supposedly thrown open to them. But practically speaking Irish
Catholics continued, for many decades after, to labour under their former
disability. And in many parts of Ireland, even down to a short generation ago,
they were in practice still shut out from all offices except the most menial.
O’Connell’s Power and Popularity
Though it was in his character as
political leader that he was greatest to his people, it was undeniably in his
capacity as lawyer that Daniel O’Connell - "Dan" as they affectionately
called him - got nearest to their hearts. They who had always been condemned
before they were heard, were accorded human rights in the courts of law after
O’Connell had successfully stormed those citadels of injustice. To the regular
Crown prosecutors he made his name a name of fear. And indeed it was not much
less a terror to those irregular Crown prosecutors who, on the Bench,
masqueraded as judges. He was one of the most powerful pleaders that the Bar
ever knew. His enemy, Peel, once said that if he wanted an efficient and
eloquent advocate, he would readily barter all the best of the English Bar for
the Irish O’Connell. In conducting an important case he called into play all of
his wonderful faculties. He went from grave to gay, from the sublime to the
ludicrous. He played with ease upon every human feeling. He carried away the
judge, the jury, the witness that he was handling, and the very prisoner
himself in the dock. He could in a few minutes cross-examination tear the
ablest witness to shreds, and show the pitying court the paltry stuff he was
made of. He might at first play his man, go with him, blarney him, flatter him,
convince him that Dan O’Connell had become his most enthusiastic admirer and
dearest friend. And when he had thus taken him off his guard, led him by hand
into a trap, the Counsellor would come down upon his man with a crash that
stunned and shattered him and left him a piteous victim at the great
cross-examiners feet. And to judge and jury and the whole court it was now the
witness, not the prisoner in the dock who was on trial for his life.
In the years when he was in his
climax his word was to the Irish people electric, and his power was invincible.
With joyous thrill these long-suffering ones felt that when Dan spoke there was
fearful trembling in the seats of the mighty. In him the nation that was dumb
had found a voice. The despised had found a champion and the cruelly wronged an
avenger. He was to them in the ranks of the gods. After Emancipation was won
O’Connell abandoned his law practice to devote himself entirely to the peoples
cause
Through the ‘Thirties
When Emancipation was won, Repeal
of the false and corruptly purchase "Union" of Ireland with England
was the great issue that the Leader started. In 1810, the grand jurors of
Dublin, all of them of course Tories and British-Irish, tried to start the
Repeal movement. Now that Dan was free to throw himself into the repeal
movement, and the Catholics almost to a man were behind him, no support could
be got from their Protestant fellow-countrymen. There were two reasons for this
- the fierceness of the fight for Emancipation had embittered the Protestants
against their Catholic fellows; and besides all the offices and patronage of
the country which had been securely theirs in pre-Emancipation days were
getting shaky in their grasp now that Catholic disabilities were by law
removed, Repeal of the Union would finally break their monopoly; so the
overwhelmingly body of the Protestant population was henceforth as bitterly
anti-Repeal as they had formerly been anti-Union - and more bitterly than they
had been anti-Emancipation. To help the English Whigs in their great fight for
Parliamentary Reform, O’Connell much against the wish of many wise ones,
slackened the Repeal fight, while he let the popular fight against tithes forge
to the front. And he cast all his weight to the English Whigs in their Reform
struggle.
The established Protestant Church
was supported in Ireland by the farmers of all religions paying to it tithes, a
tenth of their products. The tithe war spread like wildfire. The people refused
to pay the iniquitous imposition. Thousands of troops were poured into the
country to protect the tithe proctors and process-servers. The Protestant
clergy, unable to collect the tithes, were now in such real distress that the
Government had to provide a Relief Fund for them. O’Connell wanted the tithe
reduced two-fifths. The tithe-war dragged on, in varying intensity, till in ’38
was passed the Act which reduced the tithe by a fourth, and shifted it to the
landlord. In his desire to help the English Whigs in their Reform struggle,
O’Connell had put Parliamentary Reform temporarily before Repeal, worked for it
with might and main, and with his Irish following finally gave the Whigs the
margin of majority that carried the Reform Bill. When in ’31 he had been warned
against abandoning Irish Repeal for British Parliamentary Reform, he said to
the people: ‘Let no one deceive you and say that I have abandoned
anti-Unionism. It is false. But I am decidedly of opinion that it is only in a
reformed Parliament that the question can properly, truly, and dispassionately,
be discussed’. Throughout the ‘Thirties O’Connell seemed to work in complete
forgetfulness of the one big fact which the agitation of the ‘Twenties should
have stamped indelibly on his mind, namely, that an Ireland lulled by the
opiate of English friendship always proved to be an Ireland fooled; while an
Ireland rebellious was an Ireland successful. It was little wonder that in the
late ‘Thirties the Whig-befooled Dan found his popularity waning, got
down-hearted, depressed, discouraged and in ’39 made retreat in Mt Melleray to
regain his calm.
He came out of his Mount Melleray
retreat - with a mind much calmed - able collectedly to review his position and
make his plans. But only a miracle could rehabilitate him.
The Great Repeal Fight
In 1840 O’Connell founded the
National Association of Ireland for repeal. The name of the Association was in
’41, improved into the Loyal National Repeal Association.
The Repeal movement was undoubtedly
popularised, and materially stimulated by a couple of big happenings in the
Dublin Corporation in these years. In ’41 was elected, for the first time in
history, a Nationalist corporation in Dublin Corporation, citadel of
ultra-Orangeism, was wiped out and replaced by one that was five-sixths
Nationalist. And to the frenzied delight of Dublin, and all Ireland, Dan
O’Connell was elected the first Nationalist Lord Mayor. The second stimulus was
the great Repeal debate in the Dublin Corporation, where the new Lord Mayor made
a Repeal speech, which, to the eager people who in every corner of the land
devoured the report of it, was one of the most wonderful of his career. By
overwhelmingly majority was carried a resolution to present a Repeal petition
to Parliament. Now the Repeal movement was in full swing. And O’Connell filled
the land with the agitation. In wonderful speech after speech bristling with
urge, ringing with hope, and thundering with defiance, he fostered the ferment
in which the populace found itself. The climax of the great Repeal fight came
in ’43. That was the year of the Monster meetings, the year of the sublime hope
and the undaunted resolve, of the mighty welding of two million men into one
solid bulwark of freedom. And yet, alas, it was the sad year of real defeat !
The fighting spirit which stirred the hearts of the people that year expressed
itself at those wonderful gatherings, unique in the cult for Irishmen. A
quarter of a million people in attendance came to be considered moderate. But
the greatest and most memorable of all the great meetings was that at Tara -
when his eye swept over that human sea O’Connell himself must have marvelled at
the spirit that animated the nation. "What", he said, "could
England effect against such a people so thoroughly aroused, if, provoked past
endurance, they rose out in rebellion". The government, now aroused to the
imminent danger of these meetings, forbade the Clontarf meeting. Five regiments
of soldiers, with canon and all the appliances of war, were stationed at vantage
points. The gauntlet was thrown down to O’Connell. The country stood on tip-toe
awaiting "the word" from O’Connell - whatever that word might be. And
tens of thousands of eager ones prayed that it might be a bold one. But, Peace
was the word given by the leader. The people implicitly obeyed. Yet time proved
that on the day of Clontarf was dug the grave of O’Connell’s Repeal.
The End of O’Connell
But the movement and the man had an
Indian summer. But Clontarf and its sequel, the trial and imprisonment, had
marked a great turning point in Dan’s career. He studiously avoided any
statements of future policy. And without giving the country a lead he went home
to Derry, nane to rest and recuperate - to forget politics for a period. He was
nevermore the old Dan, the bold Dan, whose magnetic power had gifted him to
lead a nation. The Nation party, the Young Ireland party were rebelling against
him and the Association and seeking an antidote to the Whigs’ opiate, were
preaching revolution to the country. And henceforward to the sincerely grieved
Daniel O’Connell and his lieutenants in the Association, the Young Ireland
party, more than England were Irelands enemy.
Famine now fastened its clutch on
the country. The potato crop of ’46, which was eagerly expected to cure the
acute distress produced by the ’45 failure, was blighted. And the harvest of
’47 was yet to plunge the people in far deeper distress. The dreadful
sufferings of the poor people now helped to complete the Liberators mental
breakdown. The heart of him sank down into sadness. In the beginning of ’47,
though feeling sick and worn both in body and soul, he set out upon the sore
weeks journey to London to plead, this time, the material cause of the people.
He made his last appearance, and last speech in Parliament, in February of that
year. He was ordered by his physicians to go on a pilgrimage to Rome. At Genoa,
he could go no further. The great mans end came, calm and painless, on May 15th
1847. Having been accorded the greatest funeral that Dublin had ever witnessed,
the remains of Daniel O’Connell were laid under the earth in Glasnevin
cemetery.
By his intimate and personal
friend, O’Neill Daunt, it was truly said of O’Connell: "Well may his
countrymen feel pride in the extraordinary man, who, for a series of years,
could assail and defy a hostile and powerful government, who could knit
together a prostrate, divided, and dispirited nation into a resolute and
invincible confederacy; who could lead his followers in safety through the
traps and pitfalls that beset their path to freedom; who could baffle all the
artifices of sectarian bigotry; and finally overthrow the last strongholds of
anti-Catholic tyranny by the simple might of public opinion".
The Great Famine
The Great Famine, usually known as the
famine of ’47, really began in ’45, with the blighting and failure of the
potato crop, the peoples chief means of sustenance. It is calculated that about
a million people died - either of direct starvation, or of the diseases
introduced by the famines, and about another fled to foreign lands between ’46
and ’50. To relieve the acute situation, their first step was to send over a
shipload of scientists to study the cause of the potato failure. Their second
step was to bring in a new Coercion Bill for Ireland. The third step was -
after they had voted two hundred thousand pounds to beautify Londons Battersea
Park - to vote one hundred thousand pounds for the relief of the two million
Irish people who were suffering keen distress. The simple reader, who knows not
the way of Britain with Ireland, would here naturally come to the conclusion
that the tenderhearted gentlewoman, full of sympathy for the thousands who were
dying of starvation was directing her Parliament to try to save a multitude of
lives. But this would be a mistaken conclusion. She was here referring to the
handful of Anglo-Irish landlords and agents, whose lives must be solicitously
protected whilst in trying times, they were endeavouring to hack and hew their
usual pound of flesh from the walking skeletons in the bogs and mountains of
Ireland. Public committees had been formed in various countries and hundreds of
thousands of pounds were collected for the relief of Irish distress. With the
money thus collected, shiploads of Indian corn were imported to Ireland from
America. As there were in the country hundreds of thousands of people in want
of food, who yet would not accept it in charity, it was proposed that imported
corn should be sold to these people at reduced price - but the paternal Government
forbade the irregular procedure. At length when conditions reached their most
fearful stage, in ’47, and that the uncoffined dead were being buried in
trenches, and the world was expressing itself as appalled at the conditions,
the Government advance a loan of ten million pounds, on half to be spent on
public works, the other half for outdoor relief. And this carried with it the
helpful proviso that no destitute farmer could benefit from that windfall
unless he had first given up to the landlord all his farm except a quarter of
an acre. As the famine sufferings increased, the Government met the more acute
situation by proposing a renewal of the Disarming Act, increase of police and
several other British remedies. True, the Government now shipped in Indian
corn. But there was more corn went out of the country in one month than the
Government sent in, in a year. In those terrible years the people began
flocking from the stricken land in tens and hundreds of thousands - to America,
and to the earths end.
The Passing Of The Gael
They are going, going, going from
the valleys and the hills,
They are leaving far behind them
the heathery moor and mountain rills,
All the wealth of hawthorn hedges
where the brown thrush sways and thrills.
They are going, shy-eyed cailins,
and lads so straight and tall,
From the purple peaks of Kerry,
from the crags of wild Imaal,
From the greening plains of Mayo,
and the glens of Donegal.
They are going, going, going, and
we cannot bid them stay,
Their fields are now the strangers,
where the strangers cattle stray,
Oh! Kathaleen Ni Houlihan, your
ways a thorny way!
Of a certain ninety thousand only,
of the emigrants to Canada in ’47, of which accurate account was kept, it is
recorded that 6100 died on the voyage, 4100 died on arrival, 5200 died in
hospital and 1900 soon died in the towns to which they repaired. And thus was
the flower of one of the finest nations on the face of the earth in swarths
mowed down, and thus in wind-rows did they wither from off earth’s face - under
the aegis of British rule.
The Fenians
Fenianism began in Ireland at the
end of the ‘Fifties - and at the same time in America. James Stephans who had
been a very young man in the ’48 movement, and who had since been a tutor both
in Paris and in Kerry, was the founder and great organiser of Fenianism. And
from that modest beginning sprang, at first slowly, but after a few years with
a rapidity that was magical, one of the greatest of Irish movements, with far
reaching consequences. The Irish People, the Fenian organ, was founded in ’63
with John O’Leary as the editor. The Irish People obtained a large circulation
- but not so great as did The Nation of Young Ireland days. In autumn ’65 the
Government suddenly delivered a great coup - seizing The Irish People, its
editors, Stephans and many of the leading figures in the movement in various
parts of the country. This was truly a disaster, removing as it did from the
direction of the movement some of the wisest heads that guided it. And every
one of the hundreds of thousands of the rank and file severely felt the sad
blow - from which indeed the movement never recovered - even though Stephans
was given back. The other Fenian leaders were tried in December on a charge of
high treason and sentenced to penal servitude. The invasion of Canada, which
would undoubtedly have been a successful action of the American Government,
which, having tacitly encouraged the scheme, and permitted the plans to be
ripened, stepped in at the last moment to prevent it. In Ireland, where
Stephans had been superseded by Colonel John Kelly, the Rising, arranged for
March 5th, ’67, was frustrated by a combination of circumstance. The informer,
Corydon, betrayed the plans; and, strangely, a great snow storm, one of the
wildest and most protracted with which the country was ever visited made
absolutely impossible not only all communications but all movements of men. One
of the greatest Irish movements of the century ended apparently in complete
failure. Apparently only, for though there was not success of arms, other kinds
of success began to show immediately. Within two years after, that terrible
incubus upon Ireland, the Established (English) Church was disestablished, and
within three years the first Land Act of the century, the Act of ’70 was made
law. And Prime Minister Gladstone afterwards confessed that it was the healthy
fear instilled in him by the astonishing spirit of the Fenian movement, which
forced him to these actions. Moreover, the spirit begotten by Fenianism went
forward for future triumph.
Charles Stewart Parnell
From 1865-1870 the English courts
in Ireland were kept busy with the trial of Fenian Prisoners. The leading
counsel for the defence of the prisoners was Issac Butt QC, one of the most
able and eloquent lawyers at the Bar. True, Butts definition of independence
was not that of the Fenians. He invented a new term "Home Rule". The
first meeting of the "Home Government Association" afterwards
re-named the "Home Rule League" was held in a Dublin hotel in 1870. A
resolution was passed "that the true remedy for the evils of Ireland is
the establishment of an Irish Parliament with full control over our domestic
affairs". Charles Stewart Parnell was the squire of Avondale, County Wicklow.
To get elected to Parliament he made two trials - one in Wicklow, another in
Dublin, and was on both occasions defeated. Then in 1875 he replaced John
Martin in Meath. He was regarded as a nice, gentlemanly fellow, who would
create no sensation in the House of Commons, - who might make one speech, but
never another. Parnell remained a while a spectator, not quite sure which
course to pursue. After consideration he decided to adopt Biggars. But Parnells
obstruction was of a new brand. It was not just wanton like Biggars; it was
scientific. The system was this : propose an amendment to practically every
clause of every measure introduced by the Government, and then discuss each
amendment fully, his friends forming relays to keep the discussion going. In
1877 Issac Butt was called into the House to remove Parnell. He did so. Parnell
disposed of him in one short sentence. Parnell and Butt were obviously coming
to blows. On September 1st 1877, the Home Rule Federation of Great Britain held
their annual meeting at Liverpool. Parnell was elected president over Butt.
Butt was annoyed and made no secret of the fact. In 1880, he was elected leader
of the Irish Party. Explanations of his rise to power are somewhat
contradictory. There are two words common to all explanations of his election -
character and personality. Parnell had only a limited belief in the efficiency
of parliamentarianism. He was of opinion that without a well organised public
opinion in Ireland his power in Parliament would be slight. He publicly advised
the Irish people to keep a keen watch on the conduct of their representatives
in the House of Commons. He publicly stated that long association with the
House of Commons would destroy the integrity of any Irish Party. He saw nothing
but disaster in the policy of conciliating the English. Parnells wish for an
energetic movement at home was gratified in an unexpected manner. Michael
Davitt was released from prison. The name of Michael Davitt brings up the Land
Question. Even in Ireland today, it is difficult to understand the condition of
affairs in bygone days. During the year ‘76-’79 the distress of the Irish
tenantry touched the line of famine. The rents were not reduced. The landlord
demanded payment for land which the land never earned. England Parliament would
do nothing to remedy matters. Between 1870 and 1876 fourteen attempts to amend
the Land Laws failed. What wonder that the Irish people got restive. By 1876
their patience was giving out. That year a land agent was shot at in County
Cork. In 1878 Lord Leitrim, whose reputation for rack-renting was notorious was
shot in Donegal. His slayers were never discovered, though the whole population
was supposed to know who they were. A great public meeting was held at
Irishtown. The keynote of the speech was "the land for the people".
The speakers in advocating peasant proprietary broke away notably from the more
moderate land policy of Butt, "the three F’s" ie Fixity of Tenure,
Fair Rents and Free Sale. A land revolution was in progress. Parnell was
naturally, interested in this new movement. Butt had already warned him against
the dangers latent in widespread organisations. He decided to take the risk.
The ‘National Land League" was established at Castlebar. Parnell finally
agreed to recognise the "National Land League" and to become its
president. He did not interfere in the plans of the Irish Republican
Brotherhood, neither did he give himself away. He had espoused
Parliamentarianism and was determined to see what could be got out of it. Any
outside help was all to the good.
The Land Struggle Begins
The following is a list of acts
"at once liberal and prudent" which the British Parliament, with
"almost unanimous sanction", did bestow upon Ireland in those years :
1830 Importation of Arms Act
1831 Whiteboy Act
1831 Stanleys Arms Act
1832 Arms and Gunpowder Act
1833 Suppression of Disturbance
1833 Change of Venue Act
1834 Disturbances Amendment and
Continuance
1834 Arms and Gunpowder Act
1835 Public Peace Act
1836 Another Arms Act
1838 Another Arms Act
1839 Unlawful Oaths Act
1840 Another Arms Act
1841 Outrages Act
1841 Another Arms Act
1843 Another Arms Act
1843 Act Consolidating all Previous
Coercion Acts
1844 Unlawful Oaths Act
1845 Unlawful Oaths Act
1846 Constabulary Enlargement
1847 Crime and Outrage Act
1848 Treason Amendment Act
1848 Removal of Arms Act
1848 Suspension of Habeas Corpus
1848 Another Oaths Act
1849 Suspension of Habeas Corpus
1850 Crime and Outrage Act
1851 Unlawful Oaths Act
1853 Crime and Outrage Act
1854 Crime and Outrage Act
1855 Crime and Outrage Act
1856 Peace Preservation Act
1858 Peace Preservation Act
1860 Peace Preservation Act
1852 Peace Preservation Act
1862 Unlawful Oaths Act
1865 Peace Preservation Act
1866 Suspension of Habeas Corpus
Act
1866 Suspension of Habeas Corpus
1867 Suspension of Habeas Corpus
1868 Suspension of Habeas Corpus
1870 Peace Preservation Act
1871 Protection of Life and
Property
1871 Peace Preservation Con.
1873 Peace Preservation Act
1875 Peace Preservation Act
1875 Unlawful Oaths Act
Fall of Parnell and of
Parliamentarianism
Parnell was now the man of the hour. He had triumphed over all who had
crossed his path. He had broken Forster; he had humbled even Gladstone. Captain
O’Shea who had given what was meant to be damaging proof against him at the
Times Commission, filed a petition for divorce against his wife, naming Parnell
as co-respondent. There was no defence, and no appearance for the defence.
Parnell ignored the whole business as if it were of no importance, whatever.
When the decree was made absolute he promptly married Mrs O’Shea. If others had
taken matters as coolly as Parnell, it might have been better. But a meeting of
the party was called and a resolution of confidence in Parnells leadership was
passed. The Irish Party met. Parnell simply asked them not to sell him without
getting his value. Envoys of the party called on Mr Gladstone and they learned
the nothing which deputation’s learn of Cabinet Ministers. It was a duel
between Parnell and Gladstone. The latter won. Then came the Kilkenny election
and Parnell crossed over to Ireland. That night, Parnell spoke a sentence that
lived for ever in the hearts of those who heard it, and ought to live in the
hearts of their descendants. He said : "I don’t pretend that I had not moments
of trial and of temptation, but I do claim that never in thought, word, or
deed, have I been false to the trust which Irishmen have confided in me".
Irishmen are kind to the memory of
Parnell.
He sinned and he was punished. No other man -
not even O’Connell - always excepting men who had sealed their allegiance to
Dark Rosaleen with their blood - was more dearly beloved by the Irish Catholic
people than this Protestant. The people of Ireland were all Parnellite at
heart. They did not wish to oppose him. If he had only bowed for a time before
the storm he would have come back in triumph. But Parnell was too proud for
compromise. He would lead or break the Irish Party. He tried diplomacy. But in
Ireland, at least, there is a greater force, which sometimes becomes powerful.
It is truth.
Parnells last meeting was at
Creggs, County Galway. He was warned by his medical advisors not to go. This
was on September 27th 1891. There was death in his face, as he delivered his
speech. On October 6th, he died at Brighton. He was buried in Glasnevin
Cemetery, Dublin, close beside O’Connell.
Shortly after Parnells death there
was a General Election. Gladstone had a working majority of about forty-two.
The Home Rule Bill of 1893 was passed in the House of Commons by a majority of
forty-three. It was rejected by the House of Lords. Next year the "Grand
Old Man" resigned and was succeeded by Lord Rosebery. John Redmonds party
(the Parnellites), Dillons party, O’Briens party and Healys party, floundered
rather hopelessly for years, disputing plenty, achieving little.
During the Boer war which broke out
in 1899 the sympathies of the Irish people were, of course, on the side of the
Boers, and no attempt was made to dissemble the delight in Ireland when the
Boers scored a victory over the English. Major John MacBride held command of an
Irish Brigade fighting with the Boer forces.
In 1902 on the initiative of
Captain Shawe-Taylor, representatives of landlords and tenants met in
conference to investigate the possibility of an agreed solution of the Land
Question. An agreement was reached on the basis of long term purchase which
would secure the landlords against loss, and while making the purchase money of
their farms higher to the tenants would enable them to secure money at a low
rate of interest, and secure them their land at a fixed annuity which would be
lower than the actual rent. Mr George Wyndham, Chief Secretary, proceeded to
give effect to these recommendations and the result was the Land Act of 1903.
In 1906, Mr Davitt passed away. He
succeeded; and dear to Irish hearts is that grave in Mayo, which encloses the
mortal remains of a man whose spirit could not be broken.
In 1914 a so-called "Home
Rule" Act was passed - empowering the Irish people to play at a
"Parliament" in Dublin, whose enactment’s could be vetoed by either
the British Lord Lieutenant or the British Parliament. The Irish Parliamentary
Party grasping at any straw that might save it from being finally engulfed,
begged Ireland to believe that this was the nations "great charter of
liberty". When the "Home Rule" Bill became law, it was postponed
on the plea that the war was on - in reality because Sir Edward Carson forbade
its application. The British Government kept postponing it period after period,
till eventually it never went into force. The Irish people most of whom had at
first been deceived into regarding it as a desirable step toward larger
liberty, eventually disillusioned, would not in the end accept it. In the
English House of Commons John Redmond in 1914, unreservedly offered the
services of the manhood of Ireland in one of Englands wars. The Parliamentary
leaders, Redmond, Dillon, Devlin and O’Connor, came out openly as Englands
recruiting sergeants - and their followers in the country, the scales at length
fallen from their eyes, began a wholesales desertion - which in startlingly
short time left the leaders looking in vain to find any followers. They were to
be formally wiped out in the next general election. The Parliamentary Party,
having compromised Irelands every claim to nationhood, and touched the depths
of disgrace, then disappeared from history. And Ireland severed itself from the
bad tradition of British Parliamentarianism.
Sinn Fein
The world is witnessing in Ireland
an extraordinary national renaissance which expresses itself in literature,
art, industry, social idealism, religious fervour and personal self-sacrifice.
Deprived of the means of learning, impoverished and ground down, the Irish
people for 200 years have not known culture or freedom, and their history for
that period is gloomy reading. In the closing years of the 19th century the
untilled field was ploughed up and sown in by the Gaelic League. From this
educational movement which began in 1893 the whole revival of Irish Ireland may
be dated. Recovering some measure of strength at last after the exhaustion of
the famine years, but disheartened and confused by the collapse of the Parnell
movement, Ireland welcomed the Gaelic League as a new and hopeful means of
exerting her national energies. The League spread like fire. The centre of
gravity in national life changed from the anglicised towns to the rural
population, sturdy, unspoilt, patriotic, virile, the offspring and living
representatives of the traditional Gael. Hence Irish politics began forthwith
to reflect the mind of the real Irish race. Extraordinary little newspapers and
magazines began to appear. The most important was the United Irishman edited by
Mr Arthur Griffith. In 1905 Mr Griffith and his friends put before the nation a
new political movement. In a newly founded weekly, Sinn Fein (succeeding the
United Irishman) Mr Griffith proceeded to show how the nation could thus
conduct its won affairs even while the national parliament was denied
recognition by outside powers. Thus, through the Harbour Boards, difficulties
could be imposed in the "dumping" of foreign goods, which would
amount to a system of protection for Irish industries. The public could be
organised for the support of native industry, and capital could be encouraged
by the offer of rate-free sites etc. Arbitration Courts could be set up
everywhere, superseding the British courts in civil matters. National insurance
could be undertaken. National banks could divert from foreign field the Irish
money which could so much more profitably be invested in buying up Irish land,
financing Irish developments and extending Irish control of home resources. A
national mercantile marine could be co-operatively bought and set to carrying
Irish produce to those Continental markets which offered so much better prices
than the English markets to which English ships carried Irish cattle and
manufactured goods. Irish commercial agents - consuls - could be sent to the
great foreign trade centre. Though he alone could not have made Sinn Fein the
power in Ireland that it is, yet those brilliant minds, those fighters and
doers, who brought his movement to its present position, would without him have
been disunited and perhaps conflicting forces. When Easter Week was over, and the
insurgents were crushed, the country was not broken as after ’98 or ’48 or ’67,
because the large fabric of the comprehensive Sinn Fein policy remained, and
the sacrifice of Pearse and his comrades served but as a stimulus to the masses
to carry on the work of industrial revival, language-restoration etc. When in
1910 Mr Redmond secured the Balance of Power in the British Parliament, Mr
Griffith suspended the organising of Sinn Fein as a political party, giving the
Parliamentary leader a free hand to achieve whatever he could achieve for
Ireland with the parliamentary weapon. Unhappily Redmond allowed himself to be
coerced by the threats of Sir Edward Carson, and early in 1914, accepted the
principle of Partition. In Ireland, there was horror and almost despair.
Meanwhile, Nationalists had organised a Volunteer force numbering up to 200,00
to repel the threat of Sir Edward Carson’s Volunteers, who were armed with the
connivance of English military authorities and at the expense of the English
Unionists. But the Great War found the Irish situation under the influence of
another element than Unionism, Parliamentarianism and Sinn Fein - Fenianism or
Republicanism. A Physical Force party, aiming at an independent Irish Republic
exerted an influence on public opinion that was far from being negligible. The
Fenians adopted from Fontana Lalor the motto : "Repeal not the Union, but
the Conquest". These were lean years for Sinn Fein, but these two small
parties of enthusiasts worked side by side without acrimony. Each was equally
devoted to the full Irish-Ireland program of a Gaelicised nation. The Fenians
were the active element in the Volunteers when that extraordinary armed
movement came into being: but they did not at fist control the new development.
Such, then, were the factors in the Irish situation on which the Great War
descended in August 1914.
Easter Rising
Early in 1914 the Carsonite
Volunteers, with the connivance of British sympathisers in high places, ran a
big cargo of arms ashore at Larne. Forthwith the British Government prohibited
the importation of rams into Ireland, lest the Nationalists should secure
weapons too. The Irish Volunteers thus organised an illegal shipment of arms to
Howth from the Continent. A rising had been planned for Easter Sunday. But on
Easter Monday, soon after noon, the Irish Republic was proclaimed in Dublin,
and the insurgent Tricolour suddenly broke on startled eyes from the flagstaff
above the General Post Office in the heart of the Irish capital. The Easter
Monday Rising, however, had no such military prospects of success. There was
always, of course, the chance that a German success on the Western Front would
break Englands defences and allow substantial help to be sent before the Rising
was crushed, but this proved a vain hope. On the morning of Easter Monday,
April 24th 1916, the Dublin battalions paraded, bearing full arms and one days
rations. Shortly after noon, the General Post Office, the Four Courts, three of
the railway termini, and other important points circling the centre of Dublin
were rushed and occupied. The
Proclamation of the Irish Republic
was published in big placards :
Poblacht na hEireann
The Provisional Government of the
Irish Republic
To the People of Ireland
Irishmen and Irishwomen ! In the name of God and of the dead generations
from which she receives the old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us,
summons her children to her flag, and strikes for her freedom …….
We declare the right of the people
of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish
destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible……In every generation the Irish
people have asserted their right to National freedom and sovereignty; six times
during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on
that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world,
we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent Sate, and we
pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades to the cause of its freedom, of
its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations ……
The Republic guarantees civil and
religious liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens,
and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole
nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally,
and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government,
which have divided a minority from the majority in the past …….
We place the cause of the Irish
Republic under the protection of the Most High God, whose blessing we invoke
upon our arms…… In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and
discipline, and by the readiness of its children, to sacrifice themselves for
the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is
called.
Signed on behalf of the Provisional
Government
Thomas J Clarke
Sean MacDiarmada Thomas MacDonagh
P H Pearse Eamon Ceannt
James Connolly Joseph Plunkett
There was little fighting on the
first day of the Rising. Wholly unprepared since it was believed that the
Volunteers had abandoned the project, the British authorities were taken by
surprise and could not immediately muster forces to attack the insurgents
before they had "dug themselves in". It was on Tuesday that a British
force of some 4500 men attacked the rebel strongholds and secured the Castle. A
cordon was then drawn around the north of the city, some
of the rebel outposts being attacked and broken with rifle or artillery. Meanwhile large reinforcements were being hurried into Ireland. On the Thursday the encircling forces pressed closer and penetrated to the central scene of operations. Liberty Hall had been shattered by gunfire from the river, and now shells ignited great buildings in O’Connell Street. The lines of communication between the insurgent strongholds were broken, and the British Forces, concentrated on reducing headquarters, the General Post Office, over which the Republican flag still flew.
of the rebel outposts being attacked and broken with rifle or artillery. Meanwhile large reinforcements were being hurried into Ireland. On the Thursday the encircling forces pressed closer and penetrated to the central scene of operations. Liberty Hall had been shattered by gunfire from the river, and now shells ignited great buildings in O’Connell Street. The lines of communication between the insurgent strongholds were broken, and the British Forces, concentrated on reducing headquarters, the General Post Office, over which the Republican flag still flew.
In Co Galway Liam Mellows led a
large body of insurgents on Galway city. A gunboat in Galway Bay dispersed them
by shellfire. At Athenry, the insurgent camp was surrounded and dispersed when
the hopelessness of resistance became clear.
O Friday, a terrific bombardment
had set the centre of Dublin city wholly ablaze. Banks, churches and business
places were aflame and tottering. The loss of life among non-combatants was
appalling. Commandant Daly had destroyed the Linen hall Barracks but was now
surrounded at the Four Courts. Countess Markievicz, after being driven out of
trenches in Stephens Green, was defending the College of Surgeons. Commandant
McDonagh was surrounded in Jacobs factory. Commandant de Valera, whose men had
so tenaciously resisted the advance from the south, was now holding Bolands
Mills, while Commandant Ceannt held part of the South Dublin Union. On Saturday
at 2pm Pearse surrendered to Sir John Maxwell unconditionally. And so the
Rising ended, the outstanding forces laying down arms on the Sunday. All the
signatories of the Republican declaration were put to death. Some death
sentences were commuted to sentences of imprisonment for life, happily for
Ireland, Commandant de Valera escaping thus. After a year the prisoners were
released for the purpose of English propaganda in America. When one year later
that is, in 1918, England decreed the conscription of Irelands manhood to save
her from the great German advance, it was around deValera that the nation
rallied. His coolness and wisdom saved Ireland from a bloody defeat, and
secured a moral victory. In December, at the General Election, all Nationalist
Ireland declared its allegiance to the Republican ideal, and the Sinn Fein
policy of abstention from Westminster was adopted. In January, the republican representatives
assembled in Dublin and founded Dail Eireann, the Irish Constituent Assembly,
proclaiming the Republic once again. A message was sent to the nations of the
world requesting the recognition of the free Irish Sate, and a national
government was erected.
The Last War?
No sooner had the new Government begun to flourish, established its
Courts, appointed Consuls, started a stock-taking of the country’s undeveloped
natural resources, and put a hundred constructive schemes to work, than Britain
stepped in, with her army of Soldiers and Constabulary, to counter the work,
harassing and imprisoning the workers. This move of Englands called forth a
secretly built-up Irish Republican Army which, early in 1920, began a guerilla
warfare, and quickly succeeded in clearing vast districts of the Constabulary
who were ever Englands right arm in Ireland. Lloyd George met this not only by
pouring into Ireland regiments of soldiers with tanks, armoured cars and all
the other terrorising paraphernalia that had been found useful in the European
War, but also by organising and turning loose upon Ireland an irregular force
of Britons, among the most vicious and bloodthirsty known to history - the
force which quickly became notorious to the world under the title of the Black
and Tans. Yet the well planned campaign for the quick wasting of Ireland, and
breaking of Irelands spirit did not come off on schedule. The atrocities which
were meant to frighten and subdue, only stimulated the outraged nation to more
vigour ; and by the time the fight was expected to end it was found to be only
well begun. More than by anything else, probably, the world was awakened to the
truth of the situation in Ireland through the extraordinary heroism of Terence
MacSwiney, who in protest against the foreign tyranny which seized and jailed
him as a criminal for the guilt of working for his country, refused to eat in
British dungeon, till, after three months of slow and painful starving to
death, with the wondering world literally by his bedside watching his death
agonies, he at length went to join the joyful company of martyrs who had died
that Ireland might live. The world was stirred. The terrible truth about
Britains rape of Ireland began to be realise - and began to call forth muttered
foreign protest. In the spring of 1921 there was galloped through the English
Parliament a "Home Rule Bill" for Ireland - whose object was by
giving the eastern part of Ulster, the Orange corner, a Parliament of its own,
to detach it from the rest of Ireland, thus dividing the nation on sectarian
lines, and by the Orangemens aid strengthening the foreign grip on the whole
country. In deference to his Kings pious wish, the Prime Minister invited Sinn
Fein to a parley. Ireland had proved unconquerable by any other means.
President De Valera for the Irish Republic accepted the invitation. To De
Valera in this parley, offer was made to give Ireland what George called
"Dominion status" - supposedly that amount of freedom under the
British Crown which is the lot of Canada and Australia - but less the control
by Britain of the Irish harbours, seas, skies and some other perquisites -
which offer was promptly and unanimously rejected by An Dail Eireann. Then,
after resorting to threat of a renewed war upon Ireland far more fierce than
had gone before, the English Prime Minister invited Ireland to send delegates
to a peace conference, on the understanding that the idea of separating Ireland
from the British Crown should not be considered. De Valera, for An Dail
Eireann, refused such condition. Lloyd George finally called for a conference
free of conditions to be held in London on October 11th 1921. President De
Valera accepted the invitation. An Irish delegation headed by Arthur Griffith
and Michael Collins met representatives of the British Cabinet in London, and
after six weeks conference, the Irish delegates, compelled by threat of renewed
ruthless warfare on their prostate land, signed a compromise treaty on December
6th. The British Parliament almost unanimously ratified the treaty for Britain.
But in Ireland De Valera fought for a change in the treaty terms - and a change
in the form of oath. He would "externally associate" Ireland with the
British Empire and would have elected Irish representatives swear to "recognize"
the English king as the head of the association of British nations with which
Ireland now joined. An important group of the Irish workers and fighters held
out for the Irish Republic, which had been consecrated by the blood of Pearse,
Connolly, Clarke and their gallant companions, and by a thousand martyrs since.
After long and hot debate, the Dail Eireann, on January 7th 1922, ratified the
treaty by a narrow majority.
An, seemingly an end was put to one
phase of Irelands struggle. But the end was not yet.
After the Treaty
The treaty was signed on behalf of
Ireland by Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins, Robert Barton, Eamon Duggan and
George Gavan Duffy. The first three were Ministers of the Irish Executive
Council. The delegates returned to find the Dail already split - those members
who were in favour of the Treaty on one side and those opposed on the other.
President de Valera heading the opposition, opposed the Treaty because (1) the
Partition clause (2) the inclusion of an oath of allegiance to the King of
England (3) the appointment of a Governor General to represent the British King
in Dublin (4) the retention by the British of certain Irish ports which were to
be used by the British naval fleet as naval bases. The proponents of the Treaty
held it would be madness to reject it because, while Ireland was too exhausted
to continue the fight now, it gave Ireland an immensely greater measure of
independence than had ever been offered in any Home Rule bill, involving
complete control of Local Government, education, customs and excise, police
force and a limited army.
Arthur Griffith believed that the
Boundary clause in the Treaty would end partition. The vote, taken on January
7th 1922, revealed 64 of the deputies in favour of the Treaty and 57 against.
The pro-Treaty party, under Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins, became known
henceforth as the Free State party, the anti-Treaty party as the Republicans. A
provisional government was formed with Arthur Griffith as President, Michael
Collins of Finance, William Cosgrave as Minister for Local Government, George
Gavan Duffy as Minister for Foreign Affairs, Kevin O’Higgins as Minister for
Economic Affairs and Richard Mulcahy as Minister for Defence. On January 14th
the 64 pro-Treaty members met to form a Provisional Government and officially
approve the Treaty. Evacuation of British troops from the twenty-six counties
was begun at once, also disbanding of the disreputable Irish Constabulary and
evacuation of the hated Auxiliaries and bloody-handed Black and Tans. An Irish
police force, the Civic Guard was formed.
During the first six months of 1922
the country gradually drifted into Civil War. Republican troops had occupied
the Four Courts and other public buildings in Dublin in April and were
entrenched there. On June 1926 came what amounted to an ultimatum from Winston
Churchill, speaking for the British Government, demanding that the Provisional
Government should immediately dislodge the Irish Republican Army from these
positions. The Free State troops opened fire on the Four Courts on June 26, the
siege lasted two days and ended in the burning of the building.
The fighting continued
intermittently throughout the country until May 1923, when De Valera called on
the remnant of the Republicans to cease fire - but, despite this, many small
bodies of them perseveringly carried on a harassing guerilla warfare. In August
1922, Arthur Griffith, President of the Dail, died suddenly. A few days later,
Michael Collins, Commander-in-Chief of the Free State forces was killed in an
ambush in Cork. During the succeeding months seventy-seven Republican prisoners
were executed. They included Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellows and Erskine Childers.
The first meeting of the newly elected Dail was held under heavy guard in the
autumn of 1922. In September was begun the formulation of the Free State
Constitution. William Cosgrave, who had been chosen as Vice President by Arthur
Griffith, was President of this Dail. Cabinet members were Kevin O’Higgins,
Richard Mulcahy, Ernest Blythe, Desmond Fitzgerald and Patrick Hogan. The
Republican party did not take their seats in this Dail as they refused to take
the oath of allegiance - so from 1923 to 1927 the Government party functioned
without opposition except from a small Labour group and a few pro-British
Independents.
In 1924, in accordance with terms
of the Treaty, a Boundary Commission was set up - for altering or confirming
the provisional boundary between "Northern" Ireland and the Free
State. The situation was aggravated by the continuing bitterness between the
Government party and the Republicans and by the severe agricultural depression
- which was a part of the prevailing world depression. The second General
Election was held in 1927, showing a decided gain for the Republicans. Fianna
Fail (Republicans) still declined to sit because of the oath of allegiance and
things seemed about to progress as before. But on Sunday July 10th 1927, Kevin
O’Higgins, Vice President was assassinated. Faced with the alternative of
seeing his party denied all power to register the amount of popular support
accorded them, and being determined to embark on a constitutional movement, Mr
De Valera after publicly declaring that he attached no binding power to an oath
that was forced on them, led his party into the Dail and went through the form
of oath-taking on August 12th 1927. Early in 1932 Cosgrave government was
defeated on a vote in the Dail and a General Election was called.
De Valera took 72 of the 151 seats
against Cosgrave’s 65, and assumed office forthwith. Heat once introduced a
bill to remove the oath of allegiance and with the help of the Labour party
carried it through the Dail. From the time the Fianna Fail party took office,
payment of the land annuities to Britain were withheld, leading to a bitter
quarrel between the two countries and developing into an economic war. In 1938
the British government called a halt, and began negotiations for settlement of
the dispute. Mr De Valera refused to enter the negotiations unless the whole
general field of relations between the two counties was brought into review. In
the result, the British accepted the sum of ten million pounds in lieu of the
annuities - a small fraction of their worth - and agreed to hand over the
reserved ports of Cobh, Berehaven and Lough Swilly to the Irish government. The
British refused however, to negotiate on the question of Irelands partition and
that problem remained outstanding. In 1938 came one of the greatest
achievements of the Irish government - the enactment of the new Constitution.
The Constitution asserts that Ireland is a sovereign and democratic state, and
all powers derive under God from the people, who are the final arbiters of any
and every question. The principles of social justice which are set forth in the
Constitution are of the highest order. Shortly after de Valera came to power,
it was the turn of Irelands representative to preside at the League of Nations.
De Valera did so with distinction and pride. Later in 1938 he told the world
through the medium of the League, that civilisation was heading for disaster
and destruction in another world war. He said that if and when that war came
and was over, there would be another "Peace" conference - but why
should not a real peace conference come first ? so that the world might be saved
pain, misery, disillusionment and destruction. His words were not listened to.
The Dawning
The final chapter of the story of
the Irish Race will not be written till, please God, many a long and glorious
Irish day shall yet have come and gone.
