New Ireland

Front matter

HI

V man

V- oS u oo x

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. — Looking Back 7

II. — " The Schoolmaster Abroad " 15

Chapter I. Looking Back

The years that reach from the fifth to the eighth decade of this century cover an eventful time in general history. They have brought great changes on every hand for nations and peoples. Even where no clash of arms has sounded, other forces have effected revolutions ; other causes have been at work to destroy the Old and set up the New. Ancient landmarks have been overthrown; long-treasured customs, habits, and traditions swept away ; and in instances not a few the whole face of society has been altered, for better or for worse. In Ireland this period has witnessed some startling transformations. It may, indeed, be said that the Old Ireland — the Ireland of forty years ago — can now be seen no more.

Revisiting recently the scenes of my early life, I realized more vividly than ever the changes which thirty years had effected. I sailed once more over the blue waters of the bay on which I was, so to say, cradled ; climbed the hills and trod the rugged defiles of Glengariffe and Beara, by paths and passes learned in childhood and remembered still. The material scene in all its wild beauty and savage grandeur was unchanged ; but it was plain that a new order of things had arisen. New faces were around me — new manners, habits, and social usages. The Gaelic salutations were few ; it was in the English tongue that "A fine day, sir," took the place of "God save you " in the Irish. "My foot "was indeed " on my native heath," yet I felt in a sense a stranger. Not there, but in Boston and Milwaukee and San Francisco, could be found the survivors of the hardy fishermen and simple mountaineers among whom I grew to boyhood. Yet, natural regrets apart, I owned that all the change was not disaster. Much indeed had been lost, but much had been gained.

Was all that I saw, all that I missed, a reflection or figure in miniature of what had taken place throughout the island ? Unquestionably this district and its people had long played a typical part, so to speak, in the vicissitudes of our national life. The extreme southwest of Ireland, the Atlantic angle formed by West Cork and Kerry, long has had a peculiar interest for the student of Irish history, social and political. Mr. Froude gives it unusual prominence as the scene of what he considers characteristic incidents in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the last formidable struggle of the Gaelic princes for native sovereignty, this region performed in the south very much the part which Donegal played in the north ; the three men under whom the final campaign of 1595-1599 was fought being Hugh O'Neill, Prince of Tyrone, Hugh O'Donnell, Prince of Tyrconnell, and Donal O'Sullivan, Chieftain of Beara.

In that struggle Spain was the ally of the Irish Chiefs, and the proximity of the Carbery and Beara headlands to the Iberian peninsula — the facilities offered by their deep bays and ready harbors for the landing of expeditions, envoys, arms, and subsidies — gave to the district that importance which it retained down to 1796, when it was the scene of the attempted or rather intended French invasion under Hoche. Declared forfeit in 1607, on the conclusion of the campaign above referred to, confiscated again in 1641, and a third time in 1691, Beara at length passed totally from the O'Sullivans. The last notable member of the disinherited family * entered the service of Franco with the Irish army under Sarsfield, on the capitulation of Limerick.

The clansmen scowled on the new landlords, who, indeed, for very long after never ventured upon even a visit to the place. From 1700 to 1770, as Mr. Froude has very graphically described, Bantry and the surrounding bays were the great outlets through which, in defiance of the utmost power and vigilance of the Government, shiploads of recruits for the Irish Brigade (called " wild geese " in the bills of lading) and cargoes of wool (at the time forbidden to be exported) were dispatched to France, Spain, and the Low Countries.

In the smuggling or exportation of contraband fleeces, and importation of silk, brandy, and tobacco, the population pushed a lucrative and exciting trade down very nearly to the close of the last century, when it may be said to have totally disappeared. Henceforward they devoted themselves exclusively and energetically to a combination of fishing and petty agriculture ; their characters, manners, habits, and traditions, their virtues and their vices, more or less impressed by the antecedent history which I have endeavored thus briefly to sketch.

It is among this class, the rural population, that the most striking changes have been wrought all over Ireland within the present generation. The Irish peasant of forty years ago — his home, his habits, manners, dress, his wit and humor, his tender feeling, his angry passions, his inveterate prejudices^ — all these have been portrayed with more or less of exaggeration a hundred times. Caricature has done its worst with the subject ; but justice has sometimes touched the theme. One of the changes most pleasing in our time is the fact that in England the clumsy "stage Irishman" of former days is no longer rapturously declared to be the very acme of truthful delineation. The Irish are keenly sensitive to ridicule or

* His sister was wife of Colonel MacMahon, of the same service, direct ancestor of Marshal Patrick MacMahon, Duke of Magenta, President of the French Republic. 1* derision ; and to see the national character travestied in miserable novel or brutal farce — the Irish peasant pictured as a compound of idiot and buffoon — for the merriment of the master race, was an exasperation more fruitful of hatred between the peoples than the fiercest invective of those "agitators " whom it has been the fashion to credit with the exclusive manufacture of Irish sedition.

Banim and Griffin, Mrs. Hall and Carleton, have left pictures of Irish life and character which on the whole cannot be surpassed for fidelity and effectiveness. The only class which none of them have photographed for us are the cottier fishermen communities that thirty years ago crowded the coasts of Connaught and Munster. These have almost entirely vanished. The Irish Fishery Commissioners year by year bewail their disappearance ; the royal and mercantile navy miss the hardy and fearless seamen so easily picked up along these harbors, trained from childhood to combat wave and wind. Deep-sea fishing properly so called was hardly attempted, the boats and gear to be found around the western coast being quite inadequate for the purpose. Kinsale and Cape Clear boasted some fine "hookers" engaged in the ling and cod fishery ; but six-oared herring-seine boats were the craft most generally in use. The crews tilled small farms or rocky patches of potato-ground when the moonlight was too bright for fishing ; and on the potatoes thus raised, and a reserve of the fish for home use, they altogether depended for subsistence. Between Cape Clear and Dursey Island a little piloting was sometimes done ; albeit very little knowledge of the compass or quadrant existed among the "pilots." One of them told me how nearly he missed a " splendid job " — five pounds' worth — because he could not "box the compass" for the captain of a West Indiaman homeward bound. " Not box the compass ! " exclaimed the captain. " You a pilot ! "

"Oh, sir, I mean, sir, I cannot do it in English. You, see, sir, we all speak Irish in our village on shore, barrin' a little English that me and the boys picks up, ye see, from being after the ships."

"Well," said the captain, after a pause, "let me hear you do it in Irish." He, correctly enough, reflected that in almost any language one could detect whether the words would follow with such similarity of sound as north, northand-by-east, north-north-east, north-east-by-north, and so on. But old Jack Downing was just as sharp as the captain was keen. Often and often at Mrs. Crowley's public-house on shore he had heard sailors "box the compass;" and though he could not attempt the task, he knew how it sounded to the ear.

"Yes, to be sure, sir ; I'll do it for you in Irish." And he forthwith began in homely Gaelic to recite, "My grandfather — my grandmother — my grandfather's grandmother — my grandmother's grandfather — my great-great-grandfather -my "

" Stop, stop," shouted the captain, perfectly convinced. "I see, my poor fellow, I had wronged you : take charge of the ship."

Few sights could be more picturesque than the ceremony by which, in our bay, the fishing-season was formally opened. Selecting an auspicious day, unusually calm and fine, the boats, from every creek and inlet for miles around, rendezvoused at a given point, and then, in solemn procession, rowed out to sea, the leading boat carrying the priest of the district. Arrived at the distant fishing-ground, the clergyman vested himself, an altar was improvised on the stern-sheets, the attendant fleet drew around, and every head was bared and bowed while the mass was said. I have seen this "mass on the ocean" when not a breeze stirred, and the tinkle of the little bell or the murmur of the priest's voice was the only sound that reached the ear, the blue hills of Bantry faint on the horizon behind us, and nothing nearer beyond than the American shore !

Where are all these now ? The "mass on the ocean" is a thing of the past, heard of and seen no more ; one of the old customs gone apparently forever. The fishermen, — the fine big-framed fellows, of tarry hands and storm-stained faces ? The workhouse or the grave holds all who are not dockside men on the Thames or the Mersey, on the Hudson or the Mississippi. The boats ? I saw nearly all that remains of them when I lasb visited the little cove that in my early days scarce sufficed to hold the fleet, — at low water, skeleton ribs protruding here and there from the sand, or shattered hulks helplessly moldering under the trees that drooped into the tide when at the full.

Off the western coast of Ireland are several islands the inhabitants of which, previous to the present generation, never quitted, never cared to quit, their prison homes. The mainland — Ireland — was to them a vast continent, where astounding marvels were, it was said, to be seen. Tony Island ("Innis-Torragh" — Isle of Towers), off Donegal, retains at the present day, to a large degree, this isolation. It is still governed by a fisherman king, elected by the community of three or four hundred souls. Quite recently, I believe, a police barrack, as well as a coast-guard station, has been placed there ; but the "king" is, after all, the authority most referred to. Strange to say, the present potentate of Torry is a Protestant, and the only professor of that creed (outside the police barrack and the coast-guard lodge) on the island.

Technically, or theoretically, Torry belonged to some barony on the neighboring mainland; but until a couple of years ago no one dreamed of asserting this legal fact by calling on the Torrymen to pay baronial cess for making roads in the country on the other side of "the sound." They made their own roads, they used none other, and for none other would they pay. So spake the "king." The cess collector proceeded to gather a flotilla for an invasion, with purpose as resolute as that of the Norman William assembling his galleys in the roadstead of St. Valery. Happily the authorities, anxious to avoid a conflict with a community so peculiar and so largely recommended to kindly sympathies, devised some compromise which averted hostilities.

Serious crime was, and I believe is, almost unknown among these islanders. In Torry the first illegitimate birth known within the memory of the oldest inhabitant occurred about twenty years ago, and caused much commotion and dismay. A Torry girl had been to farm-service on the mainland, and returned home to import the first moral stain of such a nature ever affixed on the character of her native island. The whole community met, under the presidency of the "king," and with one voice decreed banishment to Ireland for the hapless offender. When strong enough to bear removal, she and the infant were rowed across the sound. The neighbors gave her gifts and presents to help her in the future ; but she was to return to Torry no more.

The present Bishop of Kerry, the Most Rev. Dr. Moriarty, told me he was making a visitation of his diocese, in the neighborhood of the Blasket Islands, in 1856. The opportunity was seized by a young islander, who was desirous of getting married, to cross to the mainland and obtain a dispensation from his lordship, rendered necessary by some circumstance in the case. He had never crossed before, and he was all wonderment at what he saw. The bishop thought it right to assure himself as to the knowledge on the islander's part of, at all events, the cardinal points of the Christian doctrine.

" How many gods are there, my good boy ?" his lordship asked, in Irish.

"Well, great and holy priest," replied the islander, "in Blasketmore we have but one ; but 'tis very likely there may be more than that in this great big world here. " Father Casey was directed to give the Blasketmore man a few days' catechetical instruction, and then admit him to the matrimonial bond.

This class — the Atlantic coast and island men, from Cape

Clear to Malin Head — suffered severely, were almost swept away, by the famine of 1847 ; a brave and hardy race, favorably distinguished in many respects from the peasantry of the midland counties. Their isolation saved them from the conflicts that disorganized the agrarian system in other portions of the kingdom. Their hard lot, their humble life, offered little temptation to envy or cupidity. The ocean was their principal "farm," and on this no landlord could raise a rent. The war of class and race and creed, that betimes raged elsewhere in Ireland, never touched these communities. Every man was their neighbor, and every stranger was a friend. Even at the present day, though greatly weakened by the ordeal of the past thirty years, they present an interesting study, as perhaps the truest relics we now possess of the Celtic peasantry in the Ireland of old times.

Looking back upon those scenes, recalling such memories, I am not Stoic enough to contemplate unmoved the picture presented to my view. Yet it is needful to remember that in these retrospects justice is not always done to the present ; a true value is rarely placed on the advance which, amidst combat and striving that often appear fruitless, and suffering and sacrifice that seem beyond compensation, is nevertheless being well established throughout the world, all along the line of civilization.

Chapter II. "the Schoolmaster Abroad."

Fifty years ago the schoolmaster was not abroad in Ireland. Indeed, in the previous century he had better not have been, if he wished to avoid conviction for felony under the 8th of Anne, cap. iii. sec. 16. In most of the rural parishes of Ireland not half a century ago, the man who could read a newspaper or write a letter was a distinguished individual, a useful and important functionary. He was the philosopher of the district. He wrote the letters for all the parish, and he read the replies for the neighbors who received them. After mass on Sunday, if haply the parish priest was rich enough to take a newspaper, the same public benefactor read from Father Tom's last-but-one weekly or bi-weekly broadsheet the news of what was going on in the world. If the weather was fine, seated on the green sodded fence, — on rainy days perched on the anvil in the neighboring smithy, — he gave forth to the eager and wondering crowd the latest speech of O'Connell or Sheil, Peel or Stanley. Occasionally the parochial letter-writer and public reader was, as in Italy even at the present day, a sort of professional, charging a fee for his services. Some of these practitioners had set forms for letters of a certain classification, whence perhaps arose the idea of the " Complete Letter-Writer " as a publication. *

* One of my colleagues in the Nation office showed me not long since a letter which came from a youthful correspondent in Clare, who wanted " Mr. Editor " to recommend to him " A Complete Letter- Writer on Love or Business ;" adding, by way of postscript, " N. B. Love preferred at present."

In these performances lengthy words, or those strange and new in sound, were highly valued. A word of four syllables was supposed to be twice as powerful as one of two. A parochial letter- writer in Bearhaven who used to boast that he had "broken" — i.e., procured the dismissal of — three gaugers and removed two sub-inspectors was once retained to indite a complaint against a policeman. He read out to his awestruck clients as the finish of a sentence, "he being supereminently obnoxious to the people." "Do you hear that ? " said he, laying down the pen for a moment, and looking around with an air of pride and triumph : " supereminently ! That one word alone is enough to take the jacket off him ! "

That a few of these learned letter- writers survive here and there in Ireland I have had evidence from time to time in the course of my editorial experiences in Dublin. Out of quite a store of such curiosities I quote two communications sent for publication to one of my journals. The first deals with " Sunday-closing : "

" Sra, — It is an indubitable fact, absolutely impervious to the ratiocination of any syllogistic political economist, that the solicitude of British representatives for the auriferous progress of the excise divests them of every sentiment of philanthropy, of all consideration for the social misery, the moral derogation, and the domestic indigence of the infatuated frequenters of public-houses on Sundays. But to deviate from general principles to facts in particular, I think that a moiety of Irish publicans seem to have but little scrupulous regard to the dictates of conscience in deriving benefits from the ruination of their customers. That the publican's till is the receptacle of a large amount of the wealth of the country is clearly demonstrated by the fact of their wives being a vivid panorama of bon ton, and actually living to all appearances in perpetual anticipation of the various vicissitudes of fashion. Indeed some alcoholic venders rather disingenuously carry on a magnetic system of lucrative appropriation through the medium of an exquisite barmaid, whose commercial smile of inexpressible blandiloquence is invariably calculated to stimulate the extravagant propensities of the young and industrious artisan. — Respectfully yours, Satubn."

Of another, from the same correspondent, devoted to the vexed question of " Connemara Proselytism," I quote the opening portion :

" Cong, April 12, 1874.

"Sir, — I sincerely trust I will not be considered an animated definition of the mediocral abilities existing between the sublime and the ridiculous when I say that a Catholic Irishman whoso solicitude for the annibilation of the various considerations appertaining to sectarian animosities may have induced him to entertain a profound repugnance to all kinds of religious discussions, can have no earthly objection to class amongst the most ostensible of Ireland's grievances the odious prevalence in the isolated districts of an accumulation of stipendiary bible-readers, whose terrestrial ideas of the sanctimonious are orthodoxly proved to be by no means diametrical to the dictates of a pecuniary inspiration by their indefatigable efforts to propagate the grand tenet that the celestial felicity of a defunct Papist can only be achieved through the medium of sundry scriptural quotations, and the quondam system of immeasurable doses of infallible broth. Having fortuitously encountered one of these sublunary gentlemen, I, being unable to surmount the difficulties of an analytical excavation of the Scriptures, felt myself under the sternly imperative necessity of having recourse to a perfunctory subterfuge that precipitated his biblical interpolations into a chaotic state of chimerical amalgamation."

These erudite contributions were, alas ! not given to the public eye ; but my colleague, who withheld them from print, was careful to hand them to me for a place in my portfolio of literary treasures.

It was illiteracy, not ignorance in a degrading sense, that prevailed forty years ago in Ireland. The Irish peasant was naturally intelligent, was not deficient in knowledge of things necessary for his avocations, and above all he was, in a simple rustic way, courteous and polite. The great butt of taunt and sarcasm throughout the parish was an " ignoramus," — one who was clumsy, ill-mannered, or stitpid.*

* One of the changes most noticeable in the Irish peasant who has been to America and has returned home, is a disregard of and contempt for little courtesies that he has come to believe were servilities. In a land of liberty and republican equality he learned to reflect with

It was a calamity, the evil effects of which will long outlive even the best efforts to retrieve them, that at the period when in other countries, and especially in England and Scotland, popular education was being developed and extended into a public system, in Ireland the legislature of the day was passing statute after statute to prohibit and punish any acceptable education whatsoever — university, intermediate, or primary — for nine-tenths of the population. That is to say, the bulk of the population being Catholic, penal laws against Catholic schools — laws which made it felony for a Catholic to act as teacher, usher, or monitor, and civil death for a Catholic child to be taught by any such masters — were virtually a prohibition of education to the mass of the people. No useful purpose can be served by a dismal parade in these pages of the enactments that throughout nearly the whole of the last century effected that dreadful proscription. Statute after statute, penalty after penalty, was rained upon the people.

" Still crouching 'neath the sheltering hedge, or stretched on mountain fern, The teacher and his pupils met, feloniously, to learn ! "

The man who thoughtlessly, or unaware of the facts, points blame or scorn at the Irish for their "ignorance" little knows what he is about. In whatever else they may be amenable to reproach or censure, in the matter of education the Irish are not culprits but victims.

shame how he touched his hat to a social superior at home. 'Twas a slavish custom, he thinks, and he throws it off, assuming instead what he means to be an assertive independence and equality, that too often is merely rudeness. No doubt in Ireland there was to be seen downright and painful servility ; cringing, cowering slaves standing on the roadside with bared heads, in falling rain or sleet, while some squireen lashed them with his tongue. But between this and the genuine politeness of the Irish peasant of the better type the difference was wide and plain.

As early as 1783 the legislature commenced repealing the severest of these enactments against Catholic teaching in Ireland ; by 1830 they had nearly all been swept away ; and in the year following, the late Lord Derby, at that time Mr. Stanley, Irish Chief Secretary, proposed and established the present State-school system. By this a Government board of commissioners was established in Dublin to superintend and administer primary education throughout Ireland. No Government schools were set up or newly established ; but local patrons or managers of primary schools were invited to attach themselves to the Board and obtain a yearly grant of funds by conforming to the rules of the new system. To schools so placed under or in connection with their authority the commissioners granted school requisites at reduced price, and a contribution toward the teachers' salaries. On the other hand, such schools were subject to visitation and report on the part of Government inspectors, and any infringement of the fundamental regulations forfeited the grant.

There had not been wanting efforts enough previously to supply Ireland with public schools ; but there were seminaries which the Catholic Irish could not be induced to enter. There were the Royal Free Schools in 1C08, Erasmus Smith's Schools in 1733, the London Hibernian Society Schools in 1811, besides quite a number of others. They all aimed more or less energetically at "weaning the Irish youth from Popery ; " and the Irish youth, still more energetically refusing to be so weaned, stopped away en masse. In the sad choice between loss of school education on the one hand and sacrifice of religious convictions on the other, Irish parents preferred the former for their children. It was not that they cared little for education ; they passionately worshiped it, — yearned for it, as the blind may long to see the wonders of the earth and skies which they hear of but cannot realize. They dared the penalties of the 7 Will. III. cap. iv. sec. 1, — which made it civil death for a Popish child to be sent to a school in foreign parts. Contraband scholars often were the return cargoes of the smuggling craft that nightly ran silk and brandies into Irish creeks and bays in the early part of the last century. The Irish valued education much, but they loved religion more.

Over the Irish national-school system established by Mr. Stanley in 1831 a fierce controversy has raged for some years. In one respect at all events, and indeed in many more respects than one, it has been a marvelous success, despite circumstances which have greatly marred and circumscribed its operations. That is to say, although that scheme rather painfully balked the Irish of that which after such severe suffering and sacrifice they had some reason to expect, — namely, a system of public education as much in accordance with their religious convictions as the Scottish and English systems were with those of the Scotch and English peoples, — they nevertheless " attorned " to it ; and for the first time in Anglo-Irish annals, Irish children in thousands flocked into the Government schools.

Mr. Stanley stands in history as the author of the scheme ; but, as a matter of fact, Lord Cloncurry it was who devised and suggested it, the Irish Secretary coming slowly to espouse the project. When he did undertake the question, however, he dealt with it firmly, and not only went as far toward a complete solution as he might dare at the moment, but even exceeded in boldness what others in his place would probably have proposed. He doubtless reflected that he was doing the best that was practicable at the time, and that in any event his scheme would be welcomed as a blessed boon compared with the pre-existing state of things in Ireland. On the one hand, all previous experiments aimed more or less directly at converting the Irish from Catholicism ; on the other hand, the Irish demanded a public-school system at least as denominational as the English or Scottish system. His proposal was to forbid proselytism, but to exclude all denominationalism : " combined literary and separate religious instruction. " At a fixed or particular hour Scripture lessons, catechism exercises, or other religious instruction might be given by the teacher, or any one else authorized by the parent so to do ; but throughout the rest of the day, during school-hours proper, nothing in the nature of religious instruction was allowed. In the early years of the system (hardly in consonance with the strict letter of its rules) an attempt was made to go some way toward what would be called the teaching of "common Christianity." A scriptural "General Lesson" was framed by order of the commissioners, hung up in every school, and ordered to be read aloud by teacher and pupils every day. In the early manuals portions of Bible history were given ; and the Most Rev. Dr. Whately, Protestant archbishop of Dublin (one of the commissioners), compiled a book of religious instruction, called " Lessons on the Truths of Christianity," which the Board made a class-book in the schools. But soon this ticklish experiment broke down ; the common religious teaching was abandoned, and the system was contracted more and more within its strictly non-religious basis. Secular schools were utterly repugnant to the "denominational" principles of the Catholics. Still, the system was so great a boon, compared with any previous plan or proposal, that the Catholic prelates, with but few exceptions,* decided that to reject it would be wrong, and might, moreover, seem like an obstruction of education on their part. The scheme, no doubt, was not theirs ; the State was acting on its own view, for State reasons and with State funds. They would accept that system under reserve, make the most of it, and hope eventually to have it developed into something nearer to their own convictions.

Lord Derby's experiment had to bear the disadvantages incidental to compromises. Protestant society, and this included very nearly the whole of the landed proprietary, felt

* The Most Rev. Dr. MacHale, Archbishop of Tuam, from the out- Bet resolutely refused to approve or accept the new system.