Ireland and her story

Front matter

IRELAND

AND

HER STORY

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. FOUNTAIN AND ORIGIN - - - I

II. STRUGGLES OF THE DAWN - - II

CHAPTER I Fountain AND Origin

As the child is the father of the man, so the legend is the parent of the history. If we would understand the story of a nation we must begin by a study of its legendary lore. We cannot thoroughly comprehend the character of a people unless we have made ourselves well acquainted with the legendary forms that people has accepted as the pictures of its progenitors. There are severe and scientific expositors of history who insist that every trace of the past should be rejected, unless it has authentic evidence to prove its reality and warrant its place. But no evidence can be of greater importance as to national characteristics than the legends which found common belief in the days when the nation was just beginning to emerge from

2 THE EARLIEST IRISH

the realm of shadows. We could not understand the people who created the Parthenon if we did not take account of the Homeric gods and heroes, nor could we comprehend the race which raised the Pyramids if we were to put out of consideration the stories which came to be embodied in " The Thousand and One Nights."

Especially is this true of the Celtic races in Europe, and still more of the race which has created the story of Ireland. The Celtic races are found for the most part in the Highlands of Scotland, in Wales, in the Isle of Man, in Northern France, and in Ireland. Among all these we find a large accumulation of poetic fable, and the same love for this accumulated treasure of ages. One of the most characteristic legends in the earliest history of Ireland is that which tells us the island was originally peopled by some race who came from an Eastern climate to the small island lying to the west of Great Britain. This theory has nothing inherently improbable in it, seeing that mankind in its earliest and most unsettled days was much given to wandering. Some set of enterprising men who found themselves oppressed in an Eastern land may well have crossed the sea to discover a new home, and at last have come upon the Irish shore. The natives of Phoenicia, on the coast of Syria, were amongst the earliest and most famous navi-

TUATHA DE DANAAN 3

gators and traders known to the antique world, and were always wandering in search of new homes and founding new colonies. Between the nineteenth and the thirteenth century before Christ they established many colonies along the shores of the Mediterranean, and are believed to have spread their settlements so far as the British islands. One of the favourite theories of early Irish history is that they alighted upon Ireland and were the first strangers who made a home there. "

Other legends describe the settlement in Ireland of a race who came from Greece, and are known to Irish story as the Tuatha de Danaan. Their leader is said among his other triumphs to have given his name to Britain itself. The chosen home of this race is believed to have been Ireland, where the story goes that they led a stormy existence for many centuries. We are not bound to examine closely these various legends of the race which created the Irish people. But we may probably accept the theory that some people from a country far-off to the East, whether Greece or Syria, became the first settlers in Ireland. Certainly there is much in the character and in the ways of the Irish, even in our own times, which favours the belief that they owe the birth of their civilization to settlers coming from a far-off Eastern or Southern home. The most ordinary ob-

1—2

4 THE FAIRIES

server can see in the habits of the Irish people indications of such an origin. The ways of the Irish peasantry are still such as might belong to a race whose progenitors lived under skies more favourable to out-door life than those usual in the misty and melancholy climate of Ireland. The Irish peasant lives as much as he can in the open air, using his cottage chiefly as a sleeping-place, and thereby suggests the conditions of a people originally accustomed to a very different atmosphere.

The most cherished legends of the Irish people also suggest this theory of Eastern or Southern origin. For the Irish people the kingdom of the ghosts is easily ripped open, — to adopt the phrase Schiller applies to a different people, also claiming a far foreign origin. All the ballads and stories popular in Ireland seem to tell of a land where the supernatural and the magical make part of everyday life. The fairies are still a reality in Irish imaginings ; the soil is peopled by goblins and wizards and fantastic creatures of all kinds who have nothing to do with the common laws of existence. Every stream, well, and cavern, every indentation of the sea-shore, every valley and mountain peak, has its own stories and memories of beings who do not belong to this earth. A distinguished Englishman once said that whereas in the inland counties of England he had found

AN IMAGINATIVE RACE 5

many a peasant who neither knew the name of the river within sight of his cottage, nor troubled himself about its early history, he never met with an Irish peasant who w^as not ready to give him a whole string of legends and stories about the stream which flowed under his eyes every day. Most of these legends tell of early struggles and calamities which do not belong to the domain of history. They form pictures of a race in perpetual contest not only with the fierce troubles of human life, but with the wizardries of magic and the actual interpositions of embodied fatalities. Many of them are very beautiful and poetic, like those cherished in Wales and among the Bretons, and most of them are set to a melancholy and musical tune.

The general effect of all this is of importance when we are following out the history of the Irish race during the periods which come strictly within the domain of authentic record. They bear testimony to the growth of a people essentially imaginative and endowed with qualities not common to the ordinary ways of peoples grown up to civilization. Lord Beaconsfield once, in a famous speech, ascribed most of the troubles of Ireland to the fact that the island is surrounded by a melancholy ocean. Like many of Beaconsfield's sayings, which at first seemed to be merely fantastic, this had in it something of appropriateness. But Beaconsfield might

6 ONCE IRISH, ALWAYS IRISH

have added that the legends and stories, the poetry and music of early Ireland, played an important part, along with the melancholy ocean, in forming the character which has always belonged to the Celtic inhabitants of Ireland. They help us to understand the story of Ireland. Wherever the Irishman, if he be a genuine Celt, wanders or settles, he never wholly loses his characteristics, and in Lancashire, in Illinois, in France, in South Africa, or in Australasia, he remains an Irishman still, and never quite assimilates himself to the habits of the people with whom he has had to cast in his lot. There was not very long ago a great Spanish Prime Minister whose family, of old descent, had been famous in Ireland, and although many generations had passed since their settlement in Spain, and he himself had never set foot on Irish soil, he still retained so much of ancestral feeling against the State which had forced his people into exile that he positively refused, even for diplomatic purposes, to learn English. I tell the story as it was told to me, and was certainly believed at the time, only as an illustration of my theory, that the genuine Irishman remains at heart an Irishman still.

For the early development of the Celtic Irishman, of the race who, whatever their far foreign origin, settled down in Ireland and made it their home, we have to look to the legends and ballads of the country. Music

POETIC LEGENDS 7

has always been an accompaniment of the growth of that Celtic nationaHty. Whenever we read the story of the brave deeds done by the yellow-vested King or Chieftain for the sake of the beautiful woman we read also of the white-robed harper and his harp. The harp has always been the instrument of Irish song, and even in the memory of men and women not yet old its strains were heard in almost every Irish drawing-room. The songs of Thomas Moore were sung to the harp, as were the ballads of the dim days described in prehistoric legend. " The Three Sorrowful Tales of Erin " are among the most famous of Ireland's poetic legends. To a yet more distant date belongs the Lady Ceasair, who is said to have come to Ireland before the deluge, and settled there with a curious little colony composed of fifty women and only three men. The waters of the deluge swept away this somewhat disproportioned settlement ; and then another race of colonizers occupied the land, according to legendary authority, for some three hundred years. Then came the Firbolgs, who were in their turn dispossessed by the Tuatha de Danaan, who came from Greece, and who are described as profoundly skilled in all manner of wizardry and magic. Their conquest came in due time when the Milesians, a people of Eastern race who had for a time settled in Spain, were inspired to attempt the conquest of the island.

8 POETIC LEGENDS

After a fierce struggle the Milesians defeated the Tuatha de Danaan, and drove them out of the country, or compelled them to seek shelter in the natural fastnesses of the mountains, and the two Milesian leaders divided Ireland between them. As the reader of legendary history will easily imagine, the two Milesian leaders soon quarrelled for supremacy. One of them killed the other and made himself King of the whole country, thus becoming, as a modern historian put it, "a Milesian version of Romulus."

The second sorrowful tale of Erin, which describes the fate of the children of Lir, is associated with this phase of Irish development. This Milesian people is now generally regarded as the parent of the Celtic Irish race. One hundred and eighteen Kings of this stock are said to have ruled over Ireland, and one of the Queens of the race is associated with the third of the sorrowful tales of Erin — the story of Deirdri, the daughter of a bard renowned in Irish fable. We soon come to the legends which have for their hero Finn, the Fingal of Ossian, with the Feni around him, who, as the writer we have already quoted tells us, '* stand in the same relation to him that the twelve peers do to Charlemagne, or the Knights of the Round Table do to Arthur." We need not follow any further this legendary history, but it must be said that for the existence of the legends we have authentic evidence in many ancient

THEIR VALUE 9

books and manuscripts preserved within the reach of students, and translated by modern scholars. It is needless to say that they have a deep and lasting interest for all students of history, not because we must regard them as authentic records of actual lives, but because they illustrate, as well as any established facts could do, the nature and temper of the races which preserved them and believed in them. It would be impossible for modern readers to put entire faith in them, because they are so thoroughly mixed up with the magical and supernatural as to defy the credence even of the most credulous.

Nor is it of the slightest importance to us to know whether the successive kings and chieftains and bards had a real existence. But to deny any historical importance to the fact that such legends were once accepted as history, or to the evidence they give concerning the feelings and habits of the race, would be as unwise as to deny historical value to the Homeric poems because we cannot believe in Zeus or Hera, or to the Arabian Nights because we cannot accept the genii, the winged horses, and the enchanters. Some legendary lore forms the introduction to the authentic history of every people w^hich has risen to civilization, and from that legendary lore w^e may be guided to an understanding of each people's characteristics. I therefore call attention to the literature on which we have to rely for our knowledge of the races lo IRISH LITERARY REVIVAL

occupying Ireland before the age of what we describe as civilization had set in, and for our guidance to a thorough understanding of Ireland's authenticated history.

An energetic and widespread effort has lately begun, and is now going on, for the revival of early Irish literature and for the restoration of the Irish language to its place in the living speech of man. The movement thus far has been entirely successful, and finds enthusiastic support, not merely in Ireland, but in every part of the world where Irishmen have made a home. One of its results has even already been to make it clear to readers everywhere that there is a vast wealth of genuine Irish literature stored, and until lately one might almost say buried, in public and private libraries, in monasteries and in national museums. Only the scholars who made Ireland's early literature a special study knew, for a long time, the value of these buried treasures, but the recent movement has drawn the attention of all who care about books to these long-neglected interpreters of the past. This volume, therefore, opens with the assurance that Ireland had a great literature of her own — legendary, poetic, and historical — in days long before the light of Christianity had shone upon the island. The influence of that literature has to be taken into account by any who would understand the history of Ireland.

chapter ii Struggles of THE Dawn

THE conditions of life prevailing in Ireland before the Gospel of Christianity had reached her shores were very much what might have been expected from a people whose legendary lore inspired and reflected, as I have briefly described, the national temperament. The population lived for the most part on agricultural produce, although there was a certain exportation of its mineral products — gold in some parts — to the nearer shores of the Continent. The social condition of the island approached nearly to a form of communism under the direction of a hierarchy of elected Sovereigns or Chieftains. There was a Druid priesthood who had the care of religious teaching, and the guiding principle of that teaching appears to have been [ II ]

12 POSITION OF WOMAN

the worship of some vague, unknown supreme being whose presence was typified to mortals by the sun. The population of the island was divided into Septs, and each Sept was composed of families who bore the name of the foremost man, the head of the clan. The Chief of each Sept recognised the supreme authority of the chosen head or Sovereign of the whole island. This ruler and all the Chiefs under him were chosen by a form of popular election. The principle of primogeniture was unknown to the islanders, and the successor to each Chief was elected during that Chief's lifetime and bore the title of Tanist, the only condition being that the Tanist must be chosen from the family to which the Chief belonged. The sons w^ere regarded as partners with their father, and after the death of the father his possessions were divided in equal shares among his male children.

The position of woman was very high — was indeed equal to that of man, except where actual service in arms and the necessity of tilling and defending imposed duties on men which could not in the ordinary course of nature have become a task for women. The wife was the equal of her husband, the sisters of the brothers, and there was throughout the whole social system a respect and even a romantic reverence for womanhood more appropriate to the age of chivalry than

THE ROUND TOWERS 13

to the days before the Gospel of Christianity had been preached to the world. Whatever Ireland may have derived from the teachings of the East, she had accepted no ideas involving the subjection of women. The Brehons were the official and hereditary judges and promulgators of the laws. The Brehons, like the Chieftains, were elected to their positions in the commonwealth. The people lived in houses or huts built of wood or made of wattles, and even the palaces, if they may so be called, were only constructions of wood, painted over with coloured and ornamental devices. The wealth of the country consisted in its agricultural productions, its minerals, its fish, and its cattle, horses, pigs, and sheep. Some of the Irish Septs showed much skill in the erection of fortresses for their defence, and displayed reverence for the dead by raising great monuments to their memory.

Every stranger who has visited Ireland must have been impressed by the Round Towers still to be seen in almost all parts of the island — tall, pillar-like erections, which are almost as peculiar to Ireland as the Pyramids are to Egypt. The traveller from Dublin to the south can see more than one of those pillar towers standing, almost unharmed by time, quite near to the rails along which run the steaming and screaming engines of modern locomotion. It is still

14 ART AND LETTERS

disputed whether these Round Towers were built long before or soon after the birth of Christianity, and whether they symboHzed any form of worship, and, if so, what was the form of worship in whose honour they pointed to the sky.

It is enough for my purpose to say that the Round Towers were certainly built before authentic history had to do with Ireland, and that they testify to the existence, from dim unknown days, of a remarkable degree of artistic development. There are many indications of a love for art and skill in artistic ornament among the people of Ireland even in prehistoric times. Abundant specimens of their skilful workmanship in gold can now be seen by anyone in Irish and other museums, and a dispute has quite lately been going on as to whether the ownership of certain treasures of early Irish art ought to be vested in the British Museum, as the treasure-house of the Empire, or in the Dublin institution which represents exclusively the preservation of Ireland's historic relics. The Irish Chieftains and law-makers and Druids appear to have cultivated from days far beyond the reach of history the art of writing, and to have invented an alphabet of their own, innumerable specimens of which are still preserved and made the subjects of much learned discussion.

With the time when Christianity touched

ST. PATRICK 15

the island to take possession of it, what may be regarded as Ireland's authenticated historybegan. St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland, and is identified with the whole development of the Irish since they became known to the outer world. His name is as much reverenced now by the great mass of the Irish as it was at any time since he first set foot on the soil as the teacher of Christianity. Patrick had seen something of Ireland before he came there to teach and preach. In his early youth he was carried from Gaul to Ireland as a slave, and even in his days of slavery he formed an affection for the country and its population. He made his escape from servitude, and found his way to France and then to Rome. He devoted himself in Rome to teaching the Gospel, and soon became a conspicuous figure among those who were spreading the doctrines of Christianity. But he never forgot the island he had seen as a slave, and his heart was filled with a passionate desire to convert the Irish to Christianity.

Somewhere about the year 430 a.d. St. Patrick went back to Ireland and began his work of conversion at once. The work had been tried already by other Christian teachers, but without much success ; and it was left for Patrick to accompUsh a complete triumph. There is a genius for moral conversion as well as for warlike conquest, and Patrick possessed i6 CONVERSION OF IRELAND

it in a supreme degree. No conqueror ever overran a fresh soil with more success than that which St. Patrick won for himself and for Ireland as a preacher of the Gospel. Wherever he made his appearance he gained believers and followers. He achieved as if by some magical spell the conversion of Ireland to Christianity, and the work once done was done for ever. He laboured for some sixty years, and when he died his body was laid to rest in Irish soil. He had found in Ireland a people in whose temperament the spirit of veneration had always played a leading part. That gleam of the poetic which belongs to the mind of the Irish peasant in the ordinary ways of his life was of itself an invitation to the principles of a Faith whose kingdom is not of this world. The Irish Celts have been since the days of St. Patrick, as before his time, peculiarly open to religious teaching, and they had only to learn of Christianity to accept it. The life of St. Patrick is the subject of a great mass of poetic legend of which it is not necessary in this short history to take much account. All that is known for certain of his life and labours is set forth sufficiently in the brief description I have given of him. His work forms a record of his life on which no historical investigation or sceptical analysis can cast any doubt. No such controversy as to the personality and career of St. Patrick

"THE ISLE OF SAINTS" 17

has been raised as that which Gibbon brought up concerning the identity and character of St. George. Even Gibbon could hardly have started any serious question as to the identity and work of the saint who conquered Ireland for Christianity. For a long time the island St. Patrick had converted was regarded throughout Europe as the especial home of Christianity, and was called the " Isle of Saints." Many great foreign historians, who had no particular sympathy with Celtic populations, testified to the position Ireland held in the estimation of educated Europe.

But the internal condition of Ireland began to be visited by many disturbing influences. Perhaps the fame which she had won for enlightenment and religion attracted invaders to her shores. The Danish invasion was the first of these great inroads. The Danes were a people especially given to travel, adventure, and conquest, and the mild softness of the Irish climate, the readiness with which the soil repaid its culture, must have been potent allurements to the inhabitants of a colder region with rougher seas and less temperate skies. Ireland was quite near enough to invite expeditions of conquest, and towards the close of the eighth century the hardy Norsemen effected their first landing upon Irish soil. Ireland was not at the time in a position to offer united resistance to the invaders. The constitution of the country i8 THE DANISH INVASION

had not grown up under circumstances suggesting the necessity of constant defence against incursions from over the seas. On one side lay what was then regarded as the inimitable ocean, and on the other countries from which she had received many friendly visitations, but had no reason to expect conquering inroads.

The island was divided among native Chiefs, who concerned themselves mainly about their local interests, and had, no doubt, their natural rivalries. In the crisis of danger they were not able to form any common league against the invaders. The warlike Danes overran Ireland and held the country for more than a century. Then there came about an event so common in the history of nationalities that any intelligent reader might be able to anticipate it. The native Irish had been conquered and reduced to servitude, not because they were incapable of effective resistance, but because the man had not yet come who was destined to show them how to organize the means and secure the end. At the critical moment the man arose. His name was Brian Boroihme, or Boru, a name ever since familiar to readers in all countries, even to readers who regard it as that of some half-mythical hero, the seriocomic invention of Hibernian imagination.

Brian Boru was brother of the King, or Chief, of Munster, and had already made

BRIAN BORU 19

himself very popular with the people in general. Apparently, he had only been waiting for the opportunity to develop the genius of a warlike commander, and now showed himself capable of turning it to the fullest advantage. He raised and organized an army, attacked the Danes, and inliicted on them some heavy defeats. He brought them to that condition of temporary humiliation which made them willing to remain in the island, provided they consented to live quietly in the seaport towns and make no effort at re-conquest. Then followed what might have been expected in the career of a conqueror. Brian became possessed by the conviction that his country would thrive better and more securely under the reign of a single Sovereign than under the separate rule of the Chiefs, and that he was the man who ought to be supreme ruler. It was the story of Alexander, of Caesar, of the first Napoleon, told at a different time and under different conditions. Many native historians insist that Brian was actuated by purely patriotic motives, that he believed Ireland could only be safe and prosperous under the rule of one Sovereign, and that he best knew how to initiate such a rule. It seems only reasonable, when we survey Brian's whole career, to assume that there must have been some element of the purely patriotic minghng with his natural ambition.

2 — 2

20 BRIAN AS KING

He was not allowed to obtain his place of supremacy without opposition. Some of the Irish Chieftains denounced him as a mere usurper, and rose in arms against him ; but he bore down their opposition. The Irish people, who had seen their country conquered by the Danish invaders because the separate Chieftains could not unite in resistance, might well have believed that the government of a single ruler, and that ruler the man who had just overcome the Danes, would bring about a better era for their native land.

Brian was before long acknowledged as King of all Ireland, and he proved himself a most wise and capable monarch. Under his reign peace prevailed throughout the land ; the laws of property were respected, men and women could make their living in safety and no attempt was made at any uprising, even local, against his beneficent rule. The poems and legends which tell of the perfect order and prosperity prevailing under Brian's rule, although sometimes extravagant in their terms, form a very substantial tribute to the general character of his reign. When the whole minstrelsy and legendary art of a people unite in describing a certain ruler as wise and beneficent, their testimony is not to be classed with the mere eulogy of court poets and flattering pensioners. Brian had still some military work to do before his people could consider themselves free from the enter-

THE DANES CRUSHED 21

prises of the Danes. The Danish residents in Ireland began to chafe at the subordinate position to which Brian had reduced them, and they kept up a constant communication with their kinsmen and friends in the North. The result was that another expedition from the Danish shores was organized against Ireland, and a great fleet, as fleets were then, was sent to make war upon the new Irish Sovereign. Brian was now sinking into age — he had had some twelve years of peaceful reign — but he showed that the courage and capacity of his earlier days had not deserted him. He roused the whole country to a determined resistance. He took command himself. He encountered the Danish army at Clontarf on the Good Friday of 10 14, and inflicted on them a defeat so crushing that it put an end to all likeHhood of further Danish invasion.

The victory of the Irish was not gained without heavy cost, for it brought with it the death of Ireland's great Sovereign. Brian, who took but too little care for the safety of his own person, assumed that the battle was all over when he had seen the Danes defeated and dispersing in utter flight. He returned to his tent, in order, it is supposed, to give directions to oflicers whom he expected to meet there, or, as some say, to offer up a prayer, and was killed by one of the Danish leaders. He may be said to have

22 THE DEATH OF BRIAN

accomplished the one great purpose of his Hfe, for his active career closed that whole volume of Irish history which has to do with Danish invasion. His memory is still cherished in the national sentiment of Ireland as that of King Alfred is in England. No matter what historical criticism may do with many of the stories which glorify the life and deeds of King Brian, his figure must stand out to all time as that of a great soldier, a sincere patriot, and a wise ruler. His death was in every sense a great loss to his country. There are conditions which may justify at some national crisis the usurpation of supreme authority by a master-spirit, but the master-spirit is not always able to bequeath his own genius and authority to his successors. No Sovereign followed King Brian who could continue the work of peace, union, and prosperity he had begun.