THE NORTH
Between Dublin and Newry there is not much to see or to remember except
that Cromwell sacked Drogheda with a thoroughness, and that at Dundalk
Edward Bruce, the brother of Robert, was crowned King of Ireland. The
Mourne Mountains and Carlingford Lough bring us back to characteristic
Ireland. Beyond them one enters the manufacturing districts--that
north-east corner of Ireland which no Celt looks upon as Ireland at all.
In speech, in character, in looks, the people become Scotch and not
Irish. One has crossed the border and Celtic Ireland is left behind.
In the north-east corner of Ulster they are all busy money-making and
money-getting. The North of Ireland has admirable qualities--thrift,
energy, industry, ambition, capacity. In other parts of Ireland you find
these qualities here and there; they are mainly, but not altogether, the
qualities of the Anglo-Irish--that is, in so far as they are a business
asset. The Celt has no real capacity for money-making, though at the
wrong end of the virtue of thrift--that dreariest of the virtues--he may
accumulate it. He will put an enormous deal of energy into something
that does not pay him in hard cash. Honorary positions are greedily
sought after by the Irish everywhere. They will run any number of
societies for nothing, will do the business of Leagues, of the Poor Law,
of the County Councils. The energy shown by the Celt in doing the public
business would enrich him if applied to his own. He has a large capacity
for public business, and an extraordinary readiness to do it, which is,
I suppose, the reason why he does the public business of America, while
non-Irish Americans sit by and grumble at his way of doing it.
In Ireland and in America he does hard manual labour, but somehow the
genius of finance is not his. His hard work is on the land in one form
or another. Now and again he may build up quite a considerable fortune
in petty shop-keeping--the big traders are nearly all Anglo-Irish--but
when he does, his sons become professional men and the business ceases
to be. One can hardly imagine in Celtic Ireland what occurs every day in
English business life, where the son of a successful business man may be
a public-school man, a University man, and have had all the advantages
of wealth, and yet succeed his father in the business. And his son
succeeds him, and so on. This, in Celtic Ireland, would, I fear, be
taken as indicative of a pettifogging spirit. The Anglo-Irishman, on the
contrary, succeeds to the business his father has made, even though he
be a University man; and the Grafton Street shops are often run by men
who are graduates and honourmen of the University, and yet do not
disdain to be seen in their shops.
There is nothing Irish about North-East Ulster except the country
itself, which does not materially alter its character, because it is
studded with factories. From the streets of Belfast you see the Cave
Hill, as from easy-going Dublin you see the Dublin Mountains. Perhaps
there is something of exuberance caught from the Celt in the
paraphernalia and ceremonial of the Orange Society. Who can say how much
of poetry it may not mean, that crowded hour of glorious life which
comes about mid-July, when men who have worked side by side in amity all
the rest of the year suddenly become bitter enemies, when the wearing of
an Orange sash and the sight of an Orange lily stir a fever in the
blood?
Apart from such occasions, they are given in Belfast to minding their
own business, and minding it very well. The Belfast man is very shrewd,
but he has a great simplicity withal. He has none of the uppish notions
of the Celt, and though he makes money he does not make it to display
it. He is blunt and brusque in his speech and manner, and so not unlike
his Lancashire brother. He lives simply. In public matters he has the
priceless advantage, in Ireland, of knowing what he wants; and he
usually gets it, unless his demands be too outrageous. He is a hard man
of business, but in his human relationships he is kind and sincere. I
have known exiles of Dublin who went to Belfast in tears, and for the
first months or years of their residence were always sighing after
Dublin. When, however, they came to know the man of the North--he takes
a good deal of knowing--nothing would induce them to return to Dublin.
Like his Scottish progenitors, he stands by the Bible. There is as much
Bible-reading in the fine red-brick mansions of Belfast as there is in
Scotland. He does not produce literature. The more artistic parts of
Ireland look down on him as one to whom "boetry and bainting" are as
unacceptable as they were to the Second George. But he encourages solid
learning, and he endows seats of learning as generously as does the
American millionaire, who in this respect offers an example to his
English brother. The Belfast man has the Scottish love of education. He
has many of the homespun Scottish virtues, and much less than the
Scottish love of money.
At the very gates of Belfast you find the Irish country. The Glens of
Antrim are as Irish as Limerick or Clare. They are very beautiful, and
not much exploited. There is also the Giant's Causeway to see. The
legend of its construction is that Finn, the Irish giant, invited a
Scotch giant over to fight him, and generously provided the Causeway for
him to cross by; but he played a nasty trick on him, for he pretended to
the Scottish giant when he came that he was his own little boy. "If you
are the little son, what must your father be?" the Scottish giant is
reported to have said before taking to his heels.
I do not believe the story. I believe that the Scottish giant came and
stayed. You see his children all over North-East Ulster.
There are women-poets whom one associates with the North--Moira O'Neill
of the Glens, and Alice Milligan, a daughter of Belfast. They are both
"Kindly Irish of the Irish
Neither Saxon nor Italian,"
nor Scottish.
[Illustration: THE RIVER LEE.]
Cork and Thereabouts