OUR ANCIENT CAPITAL.

The history of Dublin, so admirably narrated by Mr. Gilbert in his

learned and instructive volumes,[12] begins the modern period of

Irish history when Ireland became indissolubly united with the British

Empire—the greatest empire of the world—and legendary lore, like all

the ancient usages and superstitions, began to fade and perish before

advancing civilization, as the luxurious undergrowth of a primeval

forest before advancing culture.

[12] “The History of Dublin.” 3 vols. By J. T. Gilbert, M.R.I.A.

Dublin.

A sketch of the rise of the capital of Ireland, with all the changes

produced in Irish life by the new modes of thought and action

introduced by Norman influence, forms therefore a fitting close to the

legendary and early-historic period, so full of poetry and charm for

the imagination, with its splendour of kings and bards, its shadowy

romance and mist-woven dreams, and its ideal fairy world of beauty

and grace, of music and song; when the people lived the free, joyous

life of the childhood of humanity under their native princes, and the

terrible struggle of a crushed and oppressed nation against a foreign

master had not yet begun; the struggle that has lasted for seven

centuries, and still goes on with exhaustless force and fervour.

The history of cities is the history of nations—the most perfect index

of the social altitude, mental development, physical perfection,

and political freedom, which at any given period a people may have

attained. Every stone within a city is a hieroglyphic of the century

that saw it raised. By it we trace human progression through all its

phases; from the first rude fisher’s hut, the altar of the primitive

priest, the mound of the first nomad warrior, the stone fortalice

or simple fane of the early Christian race, up to the stately and

beautiful temples and palaces which evidence the luxury and refinement

of a people in its proudest excess, or human genius in its climax of

manifestation.

Thus Babylon, Thebes, Rome, Jerusalem, are words that express nations.

The ever-during interest of the world circles round them, for their

ruins are true and eternal pages of human history. Every fallen column

is a fragment of a past ritual, or a symbol of a dynasty. The very dust

is vital with great memories, and a philosopher, like the comparative

anatomist, might construct the entire life of a people—its religion,

literature, and laws—from these fragments of extinct generations—these

fossil paleographs of man.

Statue and column, mausoleum and shrine, are trophies of a nation’s

triumphs or its tragedies. The young children, as they gaze on them,

learn the story of the native heroes, poets, saints, and martyrs,

leaders and lawgivers, who have flung their own glory as a regal mantle

over their country. Spirits of the past, from the phantom-land, dwell

in the midst of them. We feel their presence, and hear their words

of inspiration or warning, alike in the grandeur or decadence of an

ancient city.

Modern capitals represent also, not only the history of the past, but

the living concentrated will of the entire nation. Thus is it with

London, Berlin, and Vienna, while Paris, the _cité verbe_, as Victor

Hugo calls her, represents not only the tendencies of France, but of

Europe.

Dublin, however, differs from all other capitals, past or present, in

this wise—that by its history we trace, not the progress of the native

race, but the triumphs of its enemies; and that the concentrated will

of Dublin has always been in antagonism to the feelings of a large

portion of the nation.

The truth is, that though our chief city of Ireland has an historical

existence older than Christianity, yet this fair _Ath-Cliath_ has no

pretension to be called our ancient mother. From first to last, from a

thousand years ago till now, Dublin has held the position of a foreign

fortress within the kingdom; and its history has no other emblazonment

beyond that of unceasing hostility or indifference to the native race.

“The inhabitants are mere English, though of Irish birth,” wrote

Hooker, three hundred years ago. “The citizens,” says Holingshed,

“have from time to time so galled the Irish, that even to this day the

Irish fear a ragged and jagged black standard that the citizens have,

though almost worn to the stumps.” Up to Henry the Seventh’s reign,

an Englishman of Dublin was not punished for killing an Irishman, nor

were Irishmen admitted to any office within the city that concerned the

government either of the souls or bodies of the citizens. The Viceroys,

the Archbishops, the Judges, the Mayors, the Corporations, were all and

always English, down to the very guild of tailors, of whom it stands

on record that they would allow no Irishman to be of their fraternity.

As the American colonists treated the red man, as the Spaniards of

Cortez treated the Mexicans, as the English colony of India treated

the ancient Indian princes, tribes, and people, so the English race

of Dublin treated the Irish nation. They were a people to be crushed,

ruined, persecuted, tormented, extirpated; and the Irish race, it

must be confessed, retorted the hatred with as bitter an animosity.

The rising of 1641 was like all Irish attempts—a wild, helpless,

disorganized effort at revenge; and seven years later we read that Owen

Roe O’Neil burned the country about Dublin, so that from one steeple

there two hundred fires could be seen at once.

This being the position of a country and its capital, it is evident

that no effort for national independence could gain nourishment in

Dublin. Our metropolis is associated with no glorious moment of a

nation’s career, while in all the dark tragedies of our gloomy history

its name and influence predominate. Dublin is connected with Irish

patriotism only by the scaffold and the gallows. Statue and column

do indeed rise there, but not to honour the sons of the soil. The

public idols are foreign potentates and foreign heroes. Macaulay

says eloquently on this subject, “The Irish people are doomed

to see in every place the monuments of their subjugation; before

the senate-house, the statue of their conqueror—within, the walls

tapestried with the defeats of their fathers.”

No public statue of an illustrious Irishman until recently ever graced

the Irish capital. No monument exists to which the gaze of the young

Irish children can be directed, while their fathers tell them, “This

was to the glory of your countrymen.” Even the lustre Dublin borrowed

from her great Norman colonists has passed away. Her nobility are

remembered only as we note the desecration of their palaces; the most

beautiful of all our metropolitan buildings but reminds us that there

the last remnant of political independence was sold; the stately

Custom-house, that Dublin has no trade; the regal pile of Dublin

Castle, that it was reared by foreign hands to “curb and awe the city.”

It is in truth a gloomy task to awaken the memories of Dublin, even of

this century. There, in that obscure house of Thomas Street, visions

rise of a ghastly night-scene, where the young, passionate-hearted

Geraldine was struggling vainly in death-agony with his betrayers and

captors. Pass on through the same street, and close by St. Catherine’s

Church you can trace the spot where the gallows was erected for

Robert Emmet. Before that sombre prison pile two young brothers,

handsome, educated, and well-born, and many a fair young form after

them, expiated by death their fatal aspirations for Irish freedom.

Look at that magnificent portal, leading now to the tables of the

money-changers; through it, not a century ago, men, entrusted with the

nation’s rights, entered to sell them, and came forth, not branded

traitors, but decorated, enriched, and rewarded with titles, pensions,

and honours.

Yet the anomalous relation between our country and its capital springs

naturally from the antecedents of both. Dublin was neither built by

the Irish nor peopled by the Irish; it is a Scandinavian settlement in

the midst of a southern nation. Long even before the Norman invasion

two races existed in Ireland, as different as the lines of migration

by which each had reached it; and though ages have rolled away since

Scythian and Southern first met in this distant land, yet the elemental

distinctions have never been lost: the races have never blended

into one homogeneous nationality. Other nations, like the English,

have blended with their conquerors, and progression and a higher

civilization have been the result. Roman, Saxon, Dane, and Norman, each

left their impress on the primitive Briton; and from Roman courage,

Saxon thrift, and Norman pride has been evolved the strong, wise, proud

island-nation that rules the world—the Ocean-Rome. A similar blending

of opposite elements, but in different proportions, has produced Scotch

national character—grave, wise, learned, provident, industrious, and

unconquerably independent. But the Irish race remains distinct from

all others, as Jew or Zincali. It has no elective affinities, enters

into no new combinations, forms no new results, attracts to itself no

Scythian qualities of stern self-reliance and the indomitable pride of

independence, but still retains all the old virtues and vices of their

semi-oriental nature, which make the history of Ireland so sad a record

of mere passionate impulses ending mostly in failure and despair. The

English, slow in speech and repellent in manner, are yet able not only

to rule themselves well and ably, but to rule the world; while the

Irish, so fascinating, eloquent, brave, and gifted, have never yet

achieved a distinctive place in the political system of Europe. We

had even the advantage of an earlier education; we taught England her

letters, Christianized her people, sheltered her saints, educated her

princes; we give her the best generals, the best statesmen, the best

armies; yet, withal, we have never yet found the strength to govern our

own kingdom. Ethnologists will tell you this comes of race. It may be

so. Let us then sail up the stream of time to Ararat, and try to find

our ancestry amongst the children of the eight primal gods, as the

ancients termed them, who there stepped forth from their ocean prison

to people the newly baptized world.

A very clever German advises all reviewers to begin from the Deluge, so

that by no possibility can a single fact, direct or collateral, escape

notice connected with the matter in hand. When treating of Ireland this

rule becomes a necessity. Our nation dates from the dispersion, and our

faults and failings, our features and our speech, have an authentic

hereditary descent of four thousand years. Other primitive nations have

been lost by migration, annihilated by war, swallowed up in empires,

overwhelmed by barbarians: thus it was that the old kingdoms of Europe

changed masters, and that the old nations and tongues passed away.

Here only, in this island prison of the Atlantic, can the old race of

primitive Europe be still found existing as a nation, speaking the same

tongue as the early tribes that first wandered westward, when Europe

itself was an unpeopled wilderness.

We learn from sacred record that the first migrations of the human

family, with “one language and one speech,” were _from_ the East; and

every successive wave of population has still flowed from the rising

towards the setting sun. The progression of intellect and science is

ever westward. The march of humanity is opposed to the path of the

planet. Life moves contrary to matter. A metaphor, it may be, of our

spirit exile—this travelling “daily further from the East;” yet, when

at the farthest limit, we are but approaching the glory of the East

again.

Gradually, along the waters of the Mediterranean, the beautiful islands

on its bosom serving as resting-places for the wanderers, or bridges

for the tribes to pass over, the primal families of the Japhetian race

reached in succession the three great Peninsulas of the Great Sea, in

each leaving the germ of a mighty nation. Still onward, led by the

providence of God, they passed the portals of the Atlantic, coasted the

shores of the vine-clad France, and so reached at length the “Isles of

the Setting Sun,” upon the very verge of Western Europe.

But many centuries may have elapsed during the slow progression of

these maritime colonies, who have left their names indelibly stamped on

the earth’s surface, from Ionia to the Tartessus of Spain; and Miriam

may have chanted the death-song of Pharaoh, and Moses led forth the

people of God, before the descendants of the first navigators landed

amidst the verdant solitudes of Ireland.

The earliest tribes that reached our island, though removed so far from

the centre of light and wisdom, must still have been familiar with all

science necessary to preserve existence, and to organize a new country

into a human habitation. They cleared the forests, worked the mines,

built chambers for the dead, after the manner of their kindred left in

Tyre and Greece, wrought arms, defensive and offensive, such as the

heroes of Marathon used against the long-haired Persians; they raised

altars and pillar-stones, still standing amongst us, mysterious and

eternal symbols of a simple primitive creed; they had bards, priests,

and lawgivers, the old tongue of Shinar, the dress of Nineveh, and the

ancient faith whose ritual was prayer and sacrifice.

The kindred races who remained stationary, built cities and temples,

still a world’s wonder, and arts flourished amongst them impossible to

the nomads of the plains, or the wanderers by the ocean islands; but

the destiny of dispersion was still on the race, and from these central

points of civilization, tribes and families constantly went forth to

achieve new conquests over the yet untamed earth.

Whatever wisdom the early island colonizers had brought with them,

would have died out for want of nourishment, had not these new tribes,

from countries where civilization had become developed and permanent,

constantly given fresh impulses to progress. With stronger and more

powerful arts and arms, they, in succession, gained dominion over their

weaker predecessors, and by commerce, laws, arts, and learning, they

organized families into nations, enlightening while they subjugated.

The conquest of Canaan gave the second great impetus to the human

tides ever flowing westward. Irish tradition has even, in a confused

manner, preserved the names of two amongst the leaders of the Sidonian

fugitives who landed in Ireland. Partholan, with his wife Elga, and

Gadelius, with his wife Scota.

“This Gadelius,” say the legends, “was a noble gentleman, right wise,

valiant, and well spoken, who, after Pharaoh was drowned, sailed

for Spain, and from thence to Ireland, with a colony of Greeks and

Egyptians, and his wife Scota, a daughter of Pharaoh’s; and he taught

letters to the Irish, and warlike feats after the Greek and Egyptian

manner.”

These later tribes brought with them the Syrian arts and civilization,

such as dyeing and weaving, working in gold, silver, and brass, besides

the written characters, the same that Cadmus afterwards gave to Greece,

and which remained in use amongst the Irish, it is said, until modified

by Saint Patrick into their present form, to assimilate them to the

Latin.

Continued intercourse with their Syrian kindred soon filled Ireland

with the refinement of a luxurious civilization. From various sources,

we learn that in those ancient times, the native dress was costly and

picturesque, and the habits and modes of living of the chiefs and kings

splendid and Oriental. The high-born and the wealthy wore tunics of

fine linen of immense width, girdled with gold and with flowing sleeves

after the Eastern fashion. The fringed cloak, or _cuchula_, with a

hood, after the Arab mode, was clasped on the shoulders with a golden

brooch. Golden circlets, of beautiful and classic form, confined their

long, flowing hair, and, crowned with their diadems, the chiefs sat at

the banquet, or went forth to war. Sandals upon the feet, and bracelets

and signet rings, of rich and curious workmanship, completed the

costume. The ladies wore the silken robes and flowing veils of Persia,

or rolls of linen wound round the head like the Egyptian Isis, the

hair curiously plaited down the back and fastened with gold or silver

bodkins, while the neck and arms were profusely covered with jewels.[13]

[13] These relics of a civilization three thousand years old, may

still be gazed upon by modern eyes in the splendid and unrivalled

antiquarian collection of the Royal Irish Academy. The golden

circlets, the fibulas, torques, bracelets, rings, &c., worn by the

ancient race, are not only costly in value, but often so singularly

beautiful in the working out of minute artistic details, that modern

art is not merely unable to equal them, but unable even to comprehend

how the ancient workers in metals could accomplish works of such

delicate, almost microscopic minuteness of finish.

For successive centuries, this race, half Tyrian and half Greek, held

undisputed possession of Ireland, maintaining, it is said, constant

intercourse with the parent state, and, when Tyre fell, commercial

relations were continued with Carthage. Communication between such

distant lands was nothing to Phœnician enterprise. Phœnicians in the

service of an Egyptian king had sailed round Africa and doubled the

Cape of Good Hope two thousand years before the Portuguese. The same

people built the navy of King Solomon a thousand years before Christ;

and led the fleet to India for the gold necessary for the Temple. They

cast the brazen vessels for the altar, employing for the purpose the

tin which their merchants must have brought from the British Isles.

Thus, to use the words of Humboldt, there can be no doubt that three

thousand years ago “the Tyrian flag waved from Britain to the Indian

Ocean.”

A king of the race, long before Romulus founded Rome, erected a college

at Tara, where the Druids taught the wisdom of Egypt, the mysteries

of Samothrace, and the religion of Tyre. Then it was that Ireland

was known as _Innis-Alga_—the Holy Island—held sacred by the Tyrian

mariners as the “Temple of the Setting Sun:” the last limit of Europe,

from whence they could watch his descent into the mysterious western

ocean.

But onward still came the waves of human life, unceasing, unresting.

Driven forth from Carthage, Spain, and Gaul, the ancient race fled

to the limits of the coast, then surged back, fought and refought

the battle, conquering and yielding by turns, till at length the

Syrian and the Latin elements blended into a new compound, which laid

the foundation of modern Europe. But some tribes, disdaining such a

union, fled from Spain to Ireland, and thus a new race, but of the old

kindred, was flung on our shores by destiny.

The leaders, brave, warlike, and of royal blood, speedily assumed

kingly sway, and all the subsequent monarchs of Ireland, the O’Briens,

the O’Connors, the O’Neils, the O’Donnels, and other noble races, claim

descent from them; and very proud, even to this day, are the families

amongst the Irish who can trace back their pedigree to these princely

Spaniards.

We have spoken hitherto but of the maritime colonists—that portion

of the primal race who launched their ships on the Mediterranean to

found colonies and kingdoms along its shores; then passing out through

the ocean straits, the human tides surged upon the western limits

of Europe, till the last wave found a rest on the green sward of

ancient Erin. The habits of these first colonists were agricultural,

commercial, and unwarlike; and ancient historians have left us a record

of their temperament; volatile and fickle; passionate in joy and

grief, with quick vivid natures prone to sudden excesses; religious

and superstitious; a small, dark-eyed race, lithe of limb and light of

heart; the eternal children of humanity.

For illustrations we need not here refer to the Royal Irish Academy,

for as they looked and lived three thousand years ago, they may be seen

to this day in the mountains of Connemara and Kerry.

While this race travelled westward to the ocean by the great southern

sea, other families of the Japhetian tribes were pressing westward

also, but by the great northern plains. From Western India, by the

Caspian and the Caucasus, past the shores of the Euxine, and still

westward along the great rivers of Central Europe, up to the rude

coasts of the Baltic, could be tracked “the westward marches of the

unknown crowded nations,” carrying with them fragments of the early

Japhetian wisdom, and memories of the ancient primal tongue brought

from the far East; but, as they removed further from the great lines

of human intercourse, and were subjected to the influence of rigorous

climates and nomadic habits, gradually becoming a rude, fierce people

of warriors and hunters, predatory and cruel, living by the chase,

warring with the wild wolves for their prey, and with each other for

the best pasture-grounds. Driven by the severity of the seasons to

perpetual migration, they built no cities and raised no monuments, save

the sepulchral mound, which can be traced from Tartary to the German

Ocean.

Without the civilizing aids of commerce or literature, their language

degenerated into barbarous dialects; their clothing was the skin

of wild beasts; their religion, confused relics of ancient creeds,

contributed by the wandering colonies of Egypt, Media, Greece, and

Tyre, which occasionally blended with the Scythian hordes, wherein

Isis, Mercury, and Hercules, the symbols of wisdom, eloquence, and

courage, were the objects worshipped, though deteriorated by savage and

sanguinary rites, whose sacrifices were human victims, and whose best

votary was he who had slain most men.

From long wandering through the gloomy regions where the sun is

darkened by perpetual clouds, they called themselves the “Children of

the Night,” and looked on her as the primal mother of all things.

Their pastimes symbolized the fierce daring of their lives. At their

banquets they quaffed mead from the skulls of the slain, and chanted

war-songs to the music of their clashing bucklers, while their dances

were amid the points of their unsheathed swords.

From the influence of climate, and from constant intermarriage amongst

themselves, certain physical and mental types became permanently fixed,

and the gigantic frame, the fair hair and “stern blue eyes”[14] of the

Scythian tribes, along with their bold, free, warlike, independent

spirit, are still the marked characteristic of their descendants. For

amidst these rude races of lion-hearted men, who cleared the forests of

Central Europe for future empires, there were great and noble virtues

born of their peculiar mode of life: a love of freedom, a lofty sense

of individual dignity, bold defiance of tyranny, a fortitude and

courage that rose to heroism—the spirit that brooks no fetter either on

the mind or frame. We see that such men were destined for world-rulers.

To them Europe is indebted for her free political systems; the

chivalry that ennobled warfare and elevated women, and the religious

reformation that freed Christianity from superstition. Every charter of

human freedom dates from the Scythian forests.

[14] The expression of Tacitus.

The great northern concourse of fierce, wild tribes, comprehended

originally under the name of Scythians, or Wanderers, having spread

themselves over the north to the very kingdom of the Frost-Giants,

amidst frozen seas and drifting glaciers, turned southward, tempted by

softer climes and richer lands, and under the names of Goth, Vandal,

Frank, and Norman, devastating tribes of the Scythian warriors poured

their rude masses upon the early and refined civilization of the

Mediterranean nations, conquering wherever they appeared and holding

bravely whatever they conquered.

The Roman empire trembled and vanished before the terrible might of

the long-haired Goths. They sacked Rome and threatened Constantinople:

Africa, Italy, Spain, France, and Germany yielded to the barbaric

power. Before the fifth century the Scythians had conquered the world,

and every kingdom in Europe is ruled by them to this hour.

How strangely contrasted the destinies of the two great Japhetian

races! What vicissitudes of fortune! The refined, lettered, oriental

light-bringers to Europe—the founders of all kingdoms, the first

teachers of all knowledge, the race that peopled Tyre, Carthage,

Greece, Italy, Spain, and Gaul, degraded, humbled, and almost

annihilated; the last poor remnant of them crushed up in the remote

fastnesses of the hills along the coast-line of Europe; step by step

driven backwards to the Atlantic, as the red man of America had been

driven to the Pacific, till, over the whole earth they can be found

nowhere as a nation, save only in Ireland, while the rude, fierce

Scandinavian hordes have risen up to be the mightiest of the earth.

Greece subdued Asia, and Rome subdued Greece, but Scythia conquered

Rome! The children of night and of the dark forests rule the kingdoms

that rule the world.

They have given language and laws to modern empires, and at the present

day are at the head of all that is most powerful, most thoughtful, most

enterprising, and most learned throughout the entire globe.

The story of how the Scythian first came to the British Islands, has

been preserved in the Welsh annals, which date back three thousand

years. The legend runs that their ancestors, the nation of the Cimbri,

wandered long over Europe, forgetting God’s name, and the early wisdom.

At length they crossed “the hazy sea” (the German Ocean) from the

country of the pools (Belgium) and came to Britain, the sea-girt land,

called by them Cambria,[15] or, first mother; and they were the first

who trod the soil of Britain. There their poets and bards recovered

the lost name of God, the sacred I.A.O., and the primal letters their

forefathers had known, called the ten signs. And ever since they

have possessed religion and literature, though the bards kept the

signs secret for many ages, so that all learning might be limited to

themselves.

[15] This is the Latinized form of the original word.

The paramount monarch of the Cimbri nation reigned at London, and

a state of poetry and peace long continued, till the Dragon-Aliens

appeared on their coasts. The ancient Cimbri retreated into Wales,

where they have ever since remained. The Picts seized on Caledonia, and

the Saxons on England, until, in their turn, they were conquered by the

Danes.

Ireland at that period was the most learned and powerful island of

the West. Through all changes of European dynasties she retained her

independence. From the Milesian to the Norman, no conqueror had trod

her soil.[16]

[16] The Danes were never more than a colony in Ireland.

Meanwhile England, who never yet successfully resisted an invading

enemy, passed under many a foreign yoke. For five hundred years the

Romans held her as a province to supply their legions with recruits,

and the abject submission of the natives called forth the bitter

sarcasm, that “the good of his country was the only cause in which a

Briton had forgot to die.”

The acquisition of Ireland was eagerly coveted by the imperial race,

but though Agricola boasted he would conquer it with a single legion,

and even went so far towards the completion of his design as to line

all the opposite coasts of Wales with his troops, yet no Roman soldier

ever set foot on Irish soil.

Rome had enough of work on hand just then, for Alaric the Goth is at

her gates, and Attila, the scourge of God, is ravaging her fairest

provinces. The imperial mother of Colonies can no longer hold her own

or aid her children; England is abandoned to her fate, and the Irish

from the west, the Scythian from the north, the Saxon from the east,

assault, and desolate, and despoil her.

The Scythian Picts pour down on her cities, “killing, burning, and

destroying.” The Irish land in swarms from their _corrahs_, and “with

fiery outrage and cruelty, carry, harry, and make havoc of all.” Thus

bandied between two insolent enemies, the English sent ambassadors to

Rome “with their garments rent, and sand upon their heads,” bearing

that most mournful appeal of an humbled people—“to Ætius, thrice

Consul: the groans of the Britons. The barbarians drive us to the sea,

the sea drives us back to the barbarians; thus, between two kinds of

death, we are either slaughtered or drowned.”

But no help comes, for Rome herself is devastated by Hun and Vandal,

and the empire is falling like a shattered world.

Thus England passed helplessly under the Saxon yoke, and so rested some

hundred years; Ireland the while remaining as free from Saxon thrall as

she had been from Roman rule.

Through all these centuries the current of human life still flowed

westward from the unknown mysterious regions of Central Asia.

It was about the close of the eighth century, when the Scythian

Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of Rome in the city of the Cæsars,

that the fierce children of Thor and Odin, after having swept across

Northern Europe to the limit of the land, flung their fortunes to the

stormy seas, and began to earn that terrible yet romantic renown with

which history and saga have invested the deeds of the Scandinavian sea

kings. The raven on their black banner was the dreaded symbol of havoc

and devastation all along the sea coasts and islands of the Atlantic.

In England, Saxon rule fell helplessly before the power of the new

invaders, as wave after wave of the ruthless sea-ravagers dashed upon

the sluggish masses of the heptarchy.

After two hundred years of protracted agony and strife, Saxon sway was

annihilated for ever, and Canute the Dane reigned in England.

Meanwhile, the well-appointed fleets of Norsemen and Danes were

prowling about the cost of Ireland, trying to obtain a footing on her

yet unconquered soil.

When these pagan pirates first appeared on our shores, Ireland had

enjoyed a Christian civilization of four centuries. The light of the

true faith had been there long before it shone upon rude Saxon England.

The Irish of that early era excelled in music, poetry, and many arts.

They had a literature, colleges for the learned, an organized and

independent hierarchy, churches and abbeys, whose ruins still attest

the sense of the beautiful, as well as the piety which must have

existed in the founders. Their manuscripts, dating from this period,

are older than those of any other nation of Northern Europe; their

music was distinguished by its pathetic beauty, and the ballads of

their bards emulated in force of expression those of ancient Homer.

At the time that the Scots were totally ignorant of letters, and that

the princes of the heptarchy had to resort to Irish colleges for

instruction in the liberal sciences, Ireland held the proud title of

the “Island of Saints and Scholars;” and learned men went forth from

her shores to evangelize Europe.

One Irish priest founded an abbey at Iona; another was the friend

and counsellor of Charlemagne; a third, of equal celebrity, founded

monasteries both in France and England. The Irish of eleven centuries

ago were the apostles of Europe!

The Norsemen, or “white strangers,” as the Irish called them who swept

like a hurricane over this early civilization, were fierce pagans, who

respected neither God nor man. Not till three centuries after their

arrival in Ireland were they converted to the Christian faith. They

pillaged towns, burned churches, destroyed manuscripts of the past

which no future can restore, plundered abbeys of all that learning,

sanctity and civilization had accumulated of the sacred, the costly,

and the beautiful, and gave the Irish nothing in return but lessons of

their own barbarous ferocity. Then it was we hear how Irish mothers

gave their infants food on the point of their father’s sword, and at

the baptism left the right arms of their babes unchristened that they

might strike the more relentlessly. The Syrian and the Scythian, the

children of the one Japhetian race, met at last in this _ultima thule_

of Europe, after a three thousand years’ divergence; and even then,

though they met with fierce animosity and inextinguishable hatred,

yet lingerings of a far-off ancient identity in the language, the

traditions, and the superstitions of each, could still be traced in

these children of the one mighty father.

Great consternation must have been in Ireland when the report spread

that a fleet of sixty strange sail was in the Boyne, and that another

of equal number was sailing up the Liffey. The foreigners leaped from

their ships to conquest. Daring brought success; they sacked, burned,

pillaged, murdered; put a captive king to death in his own gyves at

their ships; drove the Irish before them from the ocean to the Shannon;

till, with roused spirit and gathered force, the confederate kings of

Ireland in return drove back the white foreigners from the Shannon to

the ocean. But they had gained a footing, and inroads, with plunder

and devastation, never ceased from that time till the whole eastern

sea-border of Ireland was their own. There they established themselves

for four centuries, holding their first conquests, but never gaining

more, until they were finally expelled by the Normans.

To these red-haired pirates and marauders Dublin owes its existence

as a city. The _Ath-Cliath_ of the Irish, though of ancient fame, was

but an aggregate of huts by the side of the Liffey, which was crossed

by a bridge of hurdles. The kings of Ireland never made it a royal

residence, even after Tara was cursed by St. Rodan. Their palaces were

in the interior of the island; but no doubt exists that _Ath-Cliath_,

the Eblana of Ptolemy, was a well-known port, the resort of merchantmen

from the most ancient times. There were received the Spanish wines, the

Syrian silks, the Indian gold, destined for the princes and nobles; and

from thence the costly merchandize was transported to the interior.

But Dublin, with its fine plain watered by the Liffey, its noble bay,

guarded by the sentinel hills, at once attracted the special notice of

the bold Vikings. Their chiefs fixed their residence there, and assumed

the title of Kings of Dublin, or Kings of the Dark Water, as the word

may be translated. They erected a fortress on the very spot where

the Norman Castle now rules the city, and, after their conversion, a

cathedral, still standing amongst us, venerable with the memories of

eight hundred years.

Their descendants are with us to this day, and many families might

trace back their lineage to the Danish leaders, whose names have been

preserved in Irish history. Amongst sundry of “these great and valiant

captains” are named Swanchean, Griffin, Albert Roe, Torbert Duff,

Goslyn, Walter English, Awley, King of Denmark, from whom descend the

Macaulays, made more illustrious by the modern historian of their race

than by the ancient pirate king. There are also named Randal O’Himer,

Algot, Ottarduff Earl, Fyn Crossagh, Torkill, Fox Wasbagg, Trevan,

Baron Robert, and others; names interesting, no doubt, to those who can

claim them for their ancestry.

The Norsemen having walled and fortified Dublin, though including

but a mile within its circumference—whereas now the city includes

ten—proceeded to fortify Dunleary, now Kingstown, in order to secure

free passage to their ships. Then, from their stronghold of Dublin,

they made incessant inroads upon the broad rich plains of the interior.

They spread all along Meath, which received its name from them, of

“Fingall” (the land of the white stranger); they devastated as far

north as Armagh, as far west as the Shannon; Wexford, Waterford, and

Limerick became half Danish cities. Everywhere their course was marked

by barbaric spoliation. At one time it is noticed that they carried

off a “great prey of women”—thus the Romans woo’d their Sabine brides;

indeed the accounts in the Irish annals of the shrines they burned,

the royal graves they plundered, the treasures they pillaged, the

ferocities they perpetrated, are as interminable as they are revolting.

When beaten back by the Irish princes they crouched within their walled

city of Dublin, till an opportunity offered for some fresh exercise of

murderous cunning, some act of audacious rapine. Thus the contest was

carried on for four centuries between the colonists and the nation;

mutual hatred ever increasing; the Irish kings of Leinster still

claiming the rights of feudal lords over the Danes; the Danes resisting

every effort made to dislodge them, though they were not unfrequently

forced to pay tribute.

Sometimes the Irish kings hired them as mercenaries to assist in the

civil wars which raged perennially amongst them. Sometimes there were

intermarriages between the warring foes—the daughter of Brian Boro’

wedded Sitric, King of the Danes of Dublin. Occasionally the Irish

kings got possession of Dublin, and ravaged and pillaged in return.

Once the Danes were driven forth completely from the city, and forced

to take refuge upon “Ireland’s Eye,” the lone sea rock, since made

memorable by a tragic history. Malachy, King of Meath, besieged Dublin

for three days and three nights, burned the fortress, and carried off

the Danish regalia; hence the allusion in Moore’s song to “The Collar

of Gold which he won from the proud invader.” But the most terrible

defeat the Danes ever sustained was at Clontarf, when ten thousand men

in coats of mail were opposed to King Brian; but “the ten thousand in

armour were cut in pieces, and three thousand warriors slain besides.”

Even the Irish children fought against the invader. The grandchild of

King Brian, a youth of fifteen, was found dead with his hand fast bound

in the hair of a Dane’s head, whom the child had dragged to the sea.[17]

[17] Hogan, the great historical sculptor of Ireland, has illustrated

this era of Irish history by a fine group, heroic and poetical

in idea, as well as beautiful in execution, like every work that

proceeded from the gifted mind of this distinguished artist.

Still the Danish colony was not uprooted, though after this defeat they

grew more humble, kept within their city of Dublin, and paid tribute to

the kings of Leinster, and to the paramount monarch of Ireland.

Up to this period, therefore, we see that the Irish race had no

relationship whatever with their capital city; they never saw the

inside of their metropolis unless they were carried there as prisoners,

or that they entered with fire and sword; and, stranger still, during

the many centuries of the existence of Dublin as a city, up to the

present time, the Irish race have never ruled there, or held possession

of the fortress of their capital.

But the time of judgment upon the Danes was approaching, though it

did not come by Irish hands. As the Saxons in England fell before

the Danes, so the Danes had fallen before the Normans. The Normans,

a Scythian race likewise, but more beautiful, more brave, more

chivalrous, courtly, and polished, than any race that had preceded

them, came triumphant from Italy and France to achieve the conquest of

England, which yielded almost without a struggle. One great battle, and

then no more. William the Norman, or rather the Scythian Frenchman,

ascends the throne of Alfred. Dane and Saxon fall helplessly beneath

his feet, and his tyrannies, his robberies, his confiscations, are

submitted to by the subjugated nation without an effort at resistance.

His handful of Norman nobles seized upon the lands, the wealth, the

honours, the estates of the kingdom, and retain them to this hour. And

justly; so noble a race as the Norman knights were made for masters.

The Saxons sank at once to the level of serfs, of traders and menials,

from which they have never risen, leaving England divided into a Norman

aristocracy who have all the land, and a Saxon people who have all the

toil; crushed by the final conquerors, they sank to be the sediment of

the kingdom.

The Irish had a different destiny; for five hundred years they fought

the battle for independence with the Normans, nor did their chiefs sink

to be the pariahs of the kingdom, as the Saxons of England, but retain

their princely pretensions to this day. The O’Connors, the O’Briens,

O’Neils, Kavanaghs, O’Donnels, yield to no family in Europe in pride of

blood and ancestral honours; while, by intermarriage with the Norman

lords, a race was founded of Norman Irish—perhaps the finest specimens

of aristocracy that Europe produced—the Geraldines at their head,

loving Ireland, and of whom Ireland may be proud.

A hundred years passed by after the Norman conquest of England. Three

kings of the Norman race had reigned and died, and still the conquest

of Ireland was unattempted; no Norman knight had set foot on Irish soil.

The story of their coming begins with just such a domestic drama as

Homer had turned into an epic two thousand years before. A fair and

faithless woman, a king’s daughter, fled from her husband to the arms

of a lover. All Ireland is outraged at the act. The kings assemble in

conclave and denounce vengeance upon the crowned seducer, Dermot, King

of Leinster.

He leagues with the Danes of Dublin, the abhorred of his countrymen,

but the only allies he can find in his great need. A battle is fought

in which Dermot is defeated, his castle of Ferns is burned, his

kingdom is taken from him, and he himself is solemnly deposed by the

confederate kings, and banished beyond the seas. Roderick, King of all

Ireland, is the inexorable and supreme judge. He restores the guilty

wife to her husband; but the husband disdains to receive her, and she

retires to a convent, where she expiates her crime and the ruin of her

country by forty years of penance. The only records of her afterwards

are of her good deeds. She built a nunnery at Clonmacnoise; she gave a

chalice of gold to the altar of Mary, and cloth for nine altars of the

Church; and then Dervorgil, the Helen of our Iliad, is heard of no more.

Dermot, her lover, went to England, seeking aid to recover his kingdom

of Leinster. In a year he returns with a band of Welsh mercenaries,

and marches to Dublin; but is again defeated by the confederate kings,

and obliged to pay a hundred ounces of gold to O’Rourke of Breffny,

“for the wrong he had done him respecting his wife,” and to give up

as hostage to King Roderick his only son. But while parleying with

the Irish kings, Dermot was secretly soliciting English aid, and not

unsuccessfully.

Memorable was the year 1170, when the renowned Strongbow, Gilbert de

Clare, Earl of Pembroke, and his Norman knights, landed at Wexford to

aid the banished king; and when Dermot welcomed his illustrious allies,

little he thought that by his hand

“The emerald gem of the Western world,

Was set in the crown of a stranger.”

The compact with the foreigners was sealed with his son’s blood. No

sooner did King Roderick hear of the Norman landing, than he ordered

the royal Kavanagh, the hostage of King Dermot, to be put to death; and

henceforth a doom seemed to be on the male heirs of the line of Dermot,

as fatal as that which rested upon the house of Atrides.

Dermot had an only daughter remaining. He offered her in marriage to

the Earl of Pembroke, with the whole kingdom of Leinster for her dowry,

so as he would help him to his revenge. After a great battle against

the Danes, in which the Normans were victorious, the marriage was

celebrated at Waterford.

“Sad Eva gazed

All round that bridal field of blood, amazed;

Spoused to new fortunes.”[18]

[18] The Irish Celt to the Irish Norman, from “Poems,” by Aubrey de

Vere.

No record remains to us of the beauty of the bride, or in what language

the Norman knight wooed her to his arms; this only we know, that

Eva, Queen of Leinster in her own right, and Countess of Pembroke by

marriage, can number amongst her descendants the present Queen of

England. Of the bridegroom, Cambrensis tells us that he was “ruddy,

freckle-faced, grey-eyed, his face feminine, his voice small, his

neck little, yet of a high stature, ready with good words and gentle

speeches.”

The same authority describes Dermot from personal observation—“A tall

man of stature, of a large and great body, a valiant and bold warrior,

and by reason of his continued hallooing his voice was hoarse. He

rather chose to be feared than loved. Rough and generous, hateful unto

strangers, he would be against all men and all men against him.”

From Waterford to Dublin was a progress of victory to Dermot and his

allies, for they marched only through the Danish settlements of which

Dermot was feudal lord. At Dublin King Roderick opposed them with an

army. Three days the battle raged; then the Danes of Dublin, fearing

Dermot’s wrath, opened their gates, and offered him gold and silver

in abundance if he would spare their lives; but, heedless of treaties,

the Norman knights rushed in, slew the Danes in their own fortress,

drove the rest to the sea; and thus ended the Danish dynasty of four

centuries. Never more did they own a foot of ground throughout the

length or breadth of the land. An Irish army, aided by Norman skill,

had effected their complete extinction. The Kingdom of Leinster was

regained for Dermot, and he and his allies placed a garrison in

Dublin. This was the last triumph of the ancient race. The kingdom was

lost even at the moment it seemed regained. That handful of Scythian

warriors, scarcely visible amid Dermot’s great Irish army, are destined

to place the yoke upon the neck of ancient Ireland.

The brave Roderick gathered together another army, and, with sixty

thousand men, laid siege to Dublin, O’Rourke of Breffny aiding him.

They were repulsed. O’Rourke was taken prisoner, and hanged with his

head downwards, then beheaded and the head stuck on one of the centre

gates of the castle, “a spectacle of intense pity to the Irish;” and

Roderick retired into Connaught to recruit more forces.

There is something heroic and self-devoted in the efforts which, for

eighteen years, were made by Roderick against the Norman power. Brave,

learned, just, and enlightened beyond his age, he alone of all the

Irish princes saw the direful tendency of the Norman inroad. All the

records of his reign prove that he was a wise and powerful monarch.

He had a fleet on the Shannon, the like of which had never been seen

before. He built a royal residence in Connaught, the ruins of which

are still existing to attest its former magnificence, so far beyond

all structures of the period, that it was known in Ireland as the

beautiful house. He founded a chair of literature at Armagh, and left

an endowment in perpetuity, to maintain it for the instruction of the

youth of Ireland and Scotland. A great warrior, and a fervent patriot,

his first effort, when he obtained the crown, was to humble the Danish

power. Dublin was forced to pay him tribute, and he was inaugurated

there with a grandeur and luxury unknown before. When Dermot outraged

morality, he deposed and banished him. When Dermot further sinned, and

traitorously brought over the foreigner, Roderick, with stern justice,

avenged the father’s treason by the son’s life. His own son, the heir

of his kingdom, leagued with the Normans, and was found fighting in

their ranks. Roderick, like a second Brutus, unpitying, yet heroically

just, when the youth was brought a prisoner before him, himself ordered

his eyes to be put out. His second son also turned traitor, and

covenanted with the Normans to deprive his father of the kingdom. Then

Roderick, surrounded by foreign foes and domestic treachery, quitted

Connaught, and went through the provinces of Ireland, seeking to stir

up a spirit as heroic as his own in the hearts of his countrymen. Soon

after his unworthy son was killed in some broil, and Roderick resumed

the kingly functions; but while all the other Irish princes took the

oath of fealty to King Henry, he kept aloof beyond the Shannon, equally

disdaining treachery or submission. His last son, the only one worthy

of him, being defeated in a battle by the Normans, slew himself in

despair.

The male line of his house was now extinct; the independence of his

country was threatened; Norman power was growing strong in the land,

and his continued efforts for eighteen years to arouse the Irish

princes to a sense of their danger was unavailing. Wearied, disgusted,

heartbroken, it may be, he voluntarily laid down the sceptre and the

crown, and retired to the monastery of Cong, where he became a monk,

and thus, in penance and seclusion, passed ten years—the weary ending

of a fated life.

He died there, twenty-eight years after the Norman invasion, “after

exemplary penance, victorious over the world and the devil;” and the

chroniclers record his title upon his grave where he is laid—

“Roderick O’Connor,

King of all Ireland, both of the Irish and English.”

Seven centuries have passed since then, yet even now, which of us could

enter the beautiful ruins of that ancient abbey, wander through the

arched aisles tapestried by ivy, or tread the lonely silent chapel,

once vocal with prayer and praise, without sad thoughts of sympathy

for the fate of the last monarch of Ireland, and perchance grave

thoughts likewise over the destiny of a people who, on that grave of

native monarchy, independence, and nationality, have as yet written no

RESURGAM.

Exactly ten months after the Normans took possession of Dublin,

King Dermot, “by whom a trembling sod was made of all Ireland, died

of an insufferable and unknown disease—for he became putrid while

living—without a will, without penance, without the body of Christ,

without unction, as his evil deeds deserved.”

Immediately the Earl of Pembroke assumed the title of King of Leinster

in right of his wife Eva. Whereupon Henry of England grew alarmed at

the independence of his nobility, and hastened over to assert his

claims as lord paramount. To his remonstrances Strongbow answered,

“What I won was with the sword; what was given me I give you.” An

agreement was then made by which Strongbow retained Dublin, while Henry

appointed what nobles he chose over the other provinces of Leinster.

When the first Norman monarch landed amongst us, the memorable 18th day

of October, 1172, no resistance was offered by any party; no battle

was fought. The Irish chiefs were so elated at the Danish overthrow,

that they even volunteered oaths of fealty to the foreign prince who

had been in some sort their deliverer. Calmly, as in a state pageant,

Henry proceeded from Wexford to Dublin; his route lay only through the

conquered Danish possessions, now the property of the Countess Eva;

there was no fear therefore of opposition. On reaching the city, “he

caused a royal palace to be built, very curiously contrived of smooth

wattels, after the manner of the country, and there, with the kings and

princes of Ireland, did keep Christmas with great solemnity,” on the

very spot where now stands St. Andrew’s Church.

King Henry remained six months in Ireland, the longest period which

a foreign monarch has ever passed amongst us, and during that time

he never thought of fighting a battle with the Irish. As yet, the

whole result of Norman victories was the downfall of the Danes, in

which object the Irish had gladly assisted. Strongbow and Eva reigned

peacefully in our capital. Henry placed governors over the other

Danish cities, and in order that Dublin, from which the Danes had been

expelled, might be repeopled, he made a present of our fair city to the

good people of Bristol.

Accordingly a colony from that town, famed for deficiency in personal

attractions, came over and settled here; but thirty years after, the

Irish, whose instincts of beauty were no doubt offended by the rising

generation of Bristolians, poured down from the Wicklow hills upon

the ill-favoured colony, and made a quick ending of them by a general

massacre.

In a fit of penitence, also, for the murdered À Becket, Henry founded

the Abbey of Thomas Court, from which Thomas Street derives its name,

and then the excommunicated king quitted Ireland, leaving it unchanged,

save that Henry the Norman held the possessions of Torkil the Dane, and

Dublin, from a Danish, had become a Norman city. Five hundred years

more had to elapse before English jurisdiction extended beyond the

ancient Danish pale, and a Cromwell or a William of Nassau was needed

for the final conquest of Ireland, as well as for the redemption of

England.

Nothing can be more absurd than to talk of a Saxon conquest of Ireland.

The Saxons, an ignorant, rude, inferior race, could not even maintain

their ascendency in England. They fell before the superior power,

intelligence, and ability of the Norman, and the provinces of Ireland

that fell to the first Norman nobles were in reality not gained by

battles, but by the intermarriage of Norman lords with the daughters

of Irish kings. Hence it was that in right of their wives the Norman

nobles early set up claims independent of the English crown, and the

hereditary rights, being transmitted through each generation, were

perpetually tempting the Norman aristocracy into rebellion. English

supremacy was as uneasily borne by the De Lacys, the Geraldines, the

Butlers, and others of the Norman stock, as by the O’Connors, the

Kavanaghs, the O’Neils, or the O’Briens. The great Richard de Burgho

married Odierna, grand-daughter of Cathal Crovdearg, king of Connaught.

Hence the De Burghos assumed the title of Lords of Connaught.

King Roderick, as we have said, left no male issue. His kingdom

descended to his daughter, who married the Norman knight, Hugo de Lacy.

Immediately De Lacy set up a claim as independent prince in right of

his wife, assumed legal state, took the title of King of Meath, and

appeared in public with a golden crown upon his head, and so early as

twenty-five years after the invasion, John de Courcy and the son of

this De Lacy marched _against_ the English of Leinster and Munster.

Many a romance could be woven of the destiny and vicissitudes of this

great race, half Irish, half Norman; independent princes by the one

side, and English subjects by the other.

The great Earl of Pembroke lived but a few years after his capture of

Dublin. The Irish legends say that St. Bridget killed him. However, he

and Eva had no male heir, and only one daughter, named Isabel, after

the Earl’s mother, who was also aunt to the reigning king of Scotland.

This young girl was sole heiress of Leinster and of her father’s Welsh

estates. Richard Cœur de Lion took her to his court at London, and she

became his ward. In due time she married William Marshall, called the

great Earl, hereditary Earl Marshal of England, and Earl of Pembroke

and Leinster, in right of his wife. High in office and favour with the

king, we read that he carried the sword of state before Richard at his

coronation, and as a monument of his piety, he left Tintern Abbey, in

the County Wexford, erected by him on his wife’s property.

Isabel and Earl William had five sons and five daughters. The five

sons, William, Walter, Gilbert, Anselm, and Richard (Isabel called no

son of hers after the royal traitor Dermot, her grandfather) inherited

the title in succession, and all died childless. We have said there was

a doom upon Dermot’s male posterity.

The inheritance was then divided between the five daughters, each of

whom received a province for a dower. Carlow, Kilkenny, the Queen’s

County, Wexford, and Kildare were the five portions. Maud, the eldest,

married the Earl of Norfolk, who became Earl Marshal of England in

right of his wife.

Isabel, the second, married the Earl of Gloucester, and her

granddaughter, Isabel also, was mother to the great Robert Bruce, who

was therefore great-great-great-grandson of Eva and Strongbow. Eva,

the third daughter, married the Lord de Breos, and from a daughter of

hers, named Eva likewise, descended Edward the Fourth, King of England,

through whose granddaughter Margaret Queen of Scotland, daughter of

Henry the Seventh, the present reigning family of England claim their

right to the throne. Through two lines, therefore, our Most Gracious

Majesty can trace back her pedigree to Eva the Irish princess.

Joan, whose portions were Wexford, married Lord Valentia, half-brother

to King Henry the Third, and the male line failing, the inheritance was

divided between two daughters, from one of whom the Talbots, Earls of

Shrewsbury, inherit their Wexford estates.

From Sybil, the youngest, who married the Earl of Ferrars and Derby,

descended the Earls of Winchester, the Lords Mortimer, and other noble

races. She had seven daughters, who all married Norman lords, so that

scarcely a family could be named of the high and ancient English

nobility, whose wealth has not been increased by the estates of Eva,

the daughter of King Dermot; and thus it came to pass that Leinster

fell by marriage and inheritance, not by conquest, into the possession

of the great Norman families, who, of course, acknowledged the King

of England as their sovereign; and the English monarchs assumed

thenceforth the title of Lords of Ireland—a claim which they afterwards

enforced over the whole country.

The destiny of the descendants of De Lacy and King Roderick’s daughter

was equally remarkable. They had two sons, Hugh and Walter, who,

before they were twenty-one, threw off English allegiance, and set up

as independent princes. To avoid the wrath of King John they fled to

France, and took refuge in an abbey, where, disguised as menials, the

two young noblemen found employment in garden-digging, preparing mud

and bricks, and similar work. By some chance the abbot suspected the

disguise, and finally detected the princes in the supposed peasants.

He used his knowledge of their secret to obtain their pardon from King

John, and Hugh De Lacy was created Earl of Ulster. He left an only

daughter, his sole heir. She married a De Burgho, who, in right of

his wife, became Earl of Ulster, and from them descended Ellen, wife

of Robert Bruce, King of Scotland. It is singular that the mother

of Robert Bruce should have been descended from Eva, and his wife

from King Roderick’s daughter. The granddaughter of Robert Bruce,

the Princess Margery, married the Lord High Steward of Scotland, and

through her the Stuarts claimed the crown. From thence it is easy to

trace how the royal blood of the three kingdoms meet in the reigning

family of England. Another descendant of the Earls of Ulster (an only

daughter likewise) married Lionel, Duke of Clarence, son of Edward the

Third, who, in the right of his wife, became Earl of Ulster and Lord of

Connaught, and these titles finally merged in the English crown in the

person of Edward the Fourth. From all these genealogies one fact may

be clearly deduced, that the present representative of the royal Irish

races of Eva and Roderick, and the lineal heiress of their rights, is

Her Majesty Queen Victoria.

The proud and handsome race of Norman Irish, that claimed descent

from these intermarriages, were the nobles, of whom it was said,

“They were more Irish than the Irish themselves.” The disposition

to become independent of England was constantly manifested in them.

They publicly asserted their rights, renounced the English dress and

language, and adopted Irish names. Thus Sir Ulick Burke, ancestor of

Lord Clanricarde, became MacWilliam Oughter (or upper), and Sir Edmond

Albanagh, progenitor of the Earl of Mayo, became MacWilliam Eighter

(or lower). Richard, son of the Earl of Norfolk, and grandson of Eva,

set up a claim to be independent King of Leinster, and was slain by

the English. We have seen that Walter and Hugh De Lacy, grandsons of

Roderick, were in open rebellion against King John. A hundred years

later, two of the same race, named Walter and Hugh likewise, were

proclaimed traitors for aiding the army of Robert Bruce, who claimed

the crown of Ireland for his brother Edward, and the two De Lacys were

found dead by the side of Edward Bruce at the great battle of Dundalk,

where the Scotch forces were overthrown.

Once, even the Geraldines and the Fitzmaurices took prisoner the

Justiciary of Dublin, as the Lord-Lieutenant of that day was named.

Meanwhile the Irish princes of the West retained their independence;

sometimes at feud, sometimes in amity with the English of the Eastern

coast. We read that “the English of Dublin invited Hugh, King of

Connaught, to a conference, and began to deal treacherously with

him; but William Mareschall, his friend, coming in with his forces,

rescued him, in despite of the English, from the middle of the Court,

and escorted him to Connaught.” Both races were equally averse to

the domination of the English crown. The Geraldines and Butlers, the

De Burghos and De Lacys, were as intractable as the O’Connors of

Connaught, or the O’Neils of Tyrone; even more so. The Great O’Neil

submitted to Elizabeth; but two hundred years later the Geraldines had

still to add the name of another martyr for liberty to the roll of

their illustrious ancestors.

Frequently the Normans fought amongst themselves as fiercely as if

opposed to the Irish. The Earl of Ulster, a De Burgho, the same who

is recorded to have given the first entertainment at Dublin Castle,

took his kinsman, Walter Burke, prisoner, and had him starved to death

in his own castle; a tragedy which might have been made as memorable

as that of Ugolino in the _Torre del Fame_, had there been a Dante in

Ireland to record it. For this act the kinsmen of Walter Burke murdered

the Earl of Ulster on the Lord’s Day, as he was kneeling at his

prayers, and cleft his head in two with a sword.

It was unfortunate for Ireland that her Irish princes were so

unconquerable, and that her Norman lords should have caught the

infection of resistance to the crown. Eight hundred years ago the

Saxons of England peaceably settled down with the Normans to form one

nation, with interests and objects identical.

The Norman conquerors, better fitted, perhaps, for rulers than any

other existing in Europe, established at once a strong, vigorous

government in England. The Kings, as individuals, may have been weak

or tyrannous, but there was a unity of purpose, a sense of justice,

and a vigour of will existing in the ruling class that brought the

ruled speedily under the order and discipline of laws. Not a century

and a half had elapsed from the Conquest before Magna Charta and

representation by Parliament secured the liberty of the people against

the caprices of kings; and the Norman temperament which united in a

singular degree the instincts of loyalty with the love of freedom,

became the hereditary national characteristic of Englishmen. But

Ireland never, at any time, comprehended the word nationality. From of

old it was broken up into fragments, ruled by chiefs whose principal

aim was mutual destruction. There was no unity, therefore no strength.

If, at the time of the Norman invasion, a king of the race had settled

here as in England, the Irish would gradually have become a nation

under one ruler, in place of being an aggregate of warring tribes; but

for want of this chief corner-stone the Norman nobles themselves became

but isolated chiefs—new petty kings added to the old—each for himself,

none for the country. It was contrary to all natural laws that the

proud Irish princes, with the traditions of their race going back two

thousand years, should at once serve with love and loyalty a foreign

king whose face they never saw and from whom they derived no benefits.

And thus it was that five hundred years elapsed, from Henry Plantagenet

to William of Nassau, before Ireland was finally adjusted in her

subordinate position to the English crown.

Meanwhile the Danish Dublin was fast rising into importance as the

Norman city, the capital of the English pale. Within that circle

the English laws, language, manners and religion were implicitly

adopted; without, there was a fierce, warlike, powerful people, the

ancient lords of the soil, but with them the citizens of Dublin had

no affinity; and the object of the English rulers was to keep the two

races as distinct as possible. Amongst other enactments tending to

obliterate any feeling of kindred which might exist, the inhabitants

of the pale were ordered to adopt English surnames, derived from

everything which by the second commandment we are forbidden to worship.

Hence arose the tribes of fishes—cod, haddock, plaice, salmon, gurnet,

gudgeon, &c.; and of birds—crow, sparrow, swan, pigeon; and of trades,

as carpenter, smith, baker, mason; and of colours—the blacks, whites,

browns, and greens, which in Dublin so copiously replace the grand old

historic names of the provinces. Determined also on annihilating the

picturesque, at least in the individual, lest the outward symbol might

be taken for an inward affinity, the long flowing hair and graceful

mantle, after the Irish fashion, were forbidden to be worn within the

pale.

Neither was the Irish language tolerated within the English

jurisdiction, for which Holingshed gives good reason, after this

fashion—“And here,” he says, “some snappish carpers will snuffingly

snib me for debasing the Irish language, but my short discourse tendeth

only to this drift, that it is not expedient that the Irish tongue

should be so universally gagled in the English pale; for where the

country is subdued, there the inhabitants should be ruled by the same

laws that the conqueror is governed, wear the same fashion of attire

with which the victor is vested, and speak the same language which

the victor parleth; and if any of these lack, doubtless the conquest

limpeth.” The English tongue, however, seems to have been held in

utter contempt and scorn by the Irish allies of the pale. After the

submission of the Great O’Neil, the last who held the title of king in

Ireland, which he exchanged for that of Earl of Tyrone, as a mark and

seal of his allegiance to Queen Elizabeth, “One demanded merrilie,”

says Holingshed, “why O’Neil would not frame himself to speak English?

‘What,’ quoth the other in a rage, ‘thinkest thou it standeth with

O’Neil his honour to writhe his mouth in clattering English.’”

As regarded religion, the English commanded the most implicit obedience

to the Pope, under as strict and severe penalties as, five hundred

years later, they enacted against those who acknowledged his authority.

One provision of the ancient oath imposed upon the subjugated Irish

was—“You acknowledge yourself to be of the Mother Church of Rome, now

professed by all Christians.” But, that the Irish of that era little

heeded papal or priestly ordinances may be inferred from the fact that,

during the wars of Edward Bruce, the English complained that their

Irish auxiliaries were more exhausting than the Scots, as they ate

meat all the time of Lent; and it is recorded, that in 1133, when the

Leinster Irish rose against the English, “they set fire to everything,

even the churches, and burned the church of Dunleary, with eighty

persons in it, and even when the priest in his sacred vestments, and

carrying the Host in his hands, tried to get out, they drove him back

with their spears and burned him. For this they were excommunicated

by a Papal Bull, and the country was put under an interdict. But they

despised these things, and again wasted the county of Wexford.”[19]

[19] Grace’s Annals. Rev. R. Butler’s translation.

The energetic and organizing spirit of the Normans was, however,

evidenced by better deeds than those we have named. Courts of law

were established in Dublin, a mayor and corporation instituted, and

Parliaments were convened after the English fashion. Within fifty years

after the Norman settlement, the lordly pile of Dublin Castle rose upon

the site of the old Danish fortress, built, indeed, to overawe the

Irish, as William the Conqueror built the Tower of London to overawe

the English; yet, by Norman hands, the first regal residence was given

to our metropolis. St. Patrick’s Cathedral was next elected by the

colonists, and gradually our fair city rose into beauty and importance

through Norman wealth and Norman skill. From henceforth, the whole

interest of Irish history centres in the chief city of the pale, and

the history of Dublin becomes the history of English rule in Ireland.

For centuries its position was that of a besieged city in the midst

of a hostile country; for centuries it resisted the whole force of

the native race; and finally triumphantly crushed, annihilated, and

revenged every effort made for Irish independence.

In truth, Dublin is a right royal city, and never fails in reverential

respect towards her English mother.

Many great names are associated with the attempt to write a history

of Dublin. The work in all ages was laborious; there were no printed

books to consult, and the records of Ireland, as Hooker complains

three hundred years ago, “were verie slenderlie and disorderlie kept.”

Whitelaw’s work, though it employed two editors ten hours a day for

ten years, yet goes no farther than a description of the public

buildings; but the object of Mr. Gilbert’s history is distinct from

all that precedes it. It is from the decaying streets and houses

that he disentombs great memories, great fragments of past life. It

is not a mere record of Ionic pillars, Corinthian capitals, or Doric

pediments he gives us. Whitelaw has supplied whole catalogues of these;

but records of the human life, that has throbbed through the ancient

dwellings of our city century after century; of the vicissitudes of

families, to be read in their ruined mansions; of the vast political

events which in some room, in some house, on some particular night,

branded the stigmata deeper on the country; or the tragedies of great

hopes crushed, young blood shed, victims hopelessly sacrificed, which

have made some street, some house, some chamber, for ever sacred.

The labours of such an undertaking are manifest; yet none can

appreciate them fully who has not known what it is to spend days,

weeks, months buried in decaying parchments, endless pipe-rolls,

worm-eaten records, dusty deeds and leases, excavating some fact, or

searching for some link necessary for the completion of a tale, or the

elucidation of a truth.

Mr. Gilbert tells us that twelve hundred statutes and enactments of

the Anglo-Irish Parliament still remain unpublished. From these and

such-like decayed and decaying manuscripts, ancient records which

have become almost hieroglyphics to the present age, he has gathered

the life-history of an ancient city; he has made the stones to speak,

and evoked the shadows of the past to fill up the outline of a great

historical picture.

Fifty, even twenty years hence, the production of such a work would

be impossible; the ancient records will probably have perished; the

ancient houses, round which the curious may yet gather, will have

fallen to the ground; and the ancient race, who cherished in their

hearts the legends of the past with the fidelity of priests, and the

fervour of bards, will have almost passed away.

Dublin is fortunate, therefore, in finding a historian endowed with

the ability, the energetic literary industry, the untiring spirit of

research, and the vast amount of antiquarian knowledge necessary for

the production of so valuable a work, before records perish, mansions

fall, or races vanish.

In a history illustrated by human lives and deeds, and localized in

the weird old streets, once the proudest, now the meanest of our city,

many a family will find an ancestral shadow starting suddenly to light,

trailing long memories with it of departed fashion, grandeur, and

magnificence.

Few amongst us who tread the Dublin of the present in all its beauty,

think of the Dublin of the past in all its contrasted insignificance.

True, the eternal features are the same; the landscape setting of the

city is coeval with creation. Tyrian, Dane, and Norman have looked as

we look, and with hearts as responsive to Nature’s loveliness, upon the

emerald plains, the winding rivers, the hills draperied in violet and

gold, the mountain gorges, thunder-riven, half veiled by the foam of

the waterfall, and the eternal ocean encircling all; scenes where God

said a city should arise, and the mountain and the ocean are still, as

of old, the magnificent heritage of beauty conferred on our metropolis.

But the early races, whether from southern sea or northern plain,

did little to aid the beauty of nature with the products of human

intellect. Dublin, under the Danish rule, consisted only of a fortress,

a church, and one rude street. Under the rule of the Normans,

those great civilizers of the western world, those grand energetic

organizers, temple and tower builders, it rose gradually into a

beautiful capital, the chief city of Ireland, the second city of the

empire. At first the rudimental metropolis gathered round the castle,

as nebulæ round a central sun, and from this point it radiated westward

and southward; the O’Briens on the south, the O’Connors on the west,

the O’Neils on the north, perpetually hovering on the borders, but

never able to regain the city, never able to dislodge the brave Norman

garrison who had planted their banners on the castle walls. In that

castle, during the seven hundred years of its existence, no Irishman of

the old race has ever held rule for a single hour.

And what a history it has of tragedies and splendours; crowned and

discrowned monarchs flit across the scene, and tragic destinies,

likewise, may be recorded of many a viceroy! Piers Gravestone,

Lord-Lieutenant of King Edward, murdered; Roger Mortimer—“The Gentle

Mortimer”—hanged at Tyburn; the Lord Deputy of King Richard II.

murdered by the O’Briens; whereupon the King came over to avenge his

death, just a year before he himself was so ruthlessly murdered at

Pomfret Castle. Two viceroys died of the plague; how many more were

plagued to death, history leaves unrecorded; one was beheaded at

Drogheda; three were beheaded on Tower Hill. Amongst the names of

illustrious Dublin rulers may be found those of Prince John, the boy

Deputy of thirteen; Prince Lionel, son of Edward III., who claimed

Clare in right of his wife, and assumed the title of Clarence from

having conquered it from the O’Briens.

The great Oliver Cromwell was the Lord-Lieutenant of the Parliament,

and he in turn appointed his son Henry to succeed him. Dire are the

memories connected with Cromwell’s reign here, both to his own party

and to Ireland. Ireton died of the plague after the siege of Limerick;

General Jones died of the plague after the surrender of Dungarvon; a

thousand of Cromwell’s men died of the plague before Waterford. The

climate, in its effect upon English constitutions, seems to be the

great Nemesis of Ireland’s wrongs.

Strange scenes, dark, secret, and cruel, have been enacted in that

gloomy pile. No one has told the full story yet. It will be a Ratcliffe

romance of dungeons and treacheries, of swift death or slow murder.

God and St. Mary were invoked in vain for the luckless Irish prince

or chieftain that was caught in that Norman stronghold; but that was

in the old time—long, long ago. Now the castle courts are crowded

only with loyal and courtly crowds, gathered to pay homage to the

illustrious successor of a hundred viceroys.

The strangest scene, perhaps, in the annals of vice-royalty, was when

Lord Thomas Fitzgerald (Silken Thomas), son of the Earl of Kildare,

and Lord-Lieutenant in his father’s absence, took up arms for Irish

independence. He rode through the city with seven score horsemen, in

shirts of mail and silken fringes on their head-pieces (hence the name

Silken Thomas), to St. Mary’s Abbey, and there entering the council

chamber, he flung down the sword of state upon the table, and bade

defiance to the king and his ministers; then hastening to raise an

army, he laid siege to Dublin Castle, but with no success. Silken

Thomas and his five uncles were sent to London, and there executed; and

sixteen Fitzgeralds were hanged and quartered at Dublin. By a singular

fatality, no plot laid against Dublin Castle ever succeeded; though to

obtain possession of this foreign fortress was the paramount wish of

all Irish rebel leaders. This was the object with Lord Maguire and his

Catholics, with Lord Edward Fitzgerald and his republicans, with Emmet

and his enthusiasts, with Smith O’Brien and his nationalists—yet they

all failed. Once only, during seven centuries, the green flag waved

over Dublin Castle, with the motto—“NOW OR NEVER! NOW AND FOR EVER!” It

was when Tyrconnel held it for King James.

In the ancient stormy times of Norman rule, the nobility naturally

gathered round the Castle. Skinner’s Row was the “May Fair” of mediæval

Dublin. Hoey’s Court, Castle Street, Cook Street, Fishamble Street,

Bridge Street, Werburgh Street, High Street, Golden Lane, Back Lane,

&c., were the fashionable localities inhabited by lords and bishops,

chancellors and judges; and Thomas Street was the grand prado where

viceregal pomp and Norman pride were oftenest exhibited. A hundred

years ago the Lord-Lieutenant was entertained at a ball by Lord

Mountjoy in Back Lane. Skinner’s Row was distinguished by the residence

of the great race of the Geraldines, called “Carbrie House,” which from

them passed to the Dukes of Ormond, and after many vicissitudes, the

palace from which Silken Thomas went forth to give his young life for

Irish independence, fell into decay, “and on its site now stand the

houses known as 6, 7, and 8 Christ Church Place, in the lower stories

of which still exist some of the old oak beams of the Carbrie House.”

In Skinner’s Row also, two hundred years ago, dwelt Sir Robert Dixon,

Mayor of Dublin, who was knighted at his own house there by the

Lord-Lieutenant, the afterwards unfortunate Strafford. The house has

fallen to ruins, but the vast property conferred on him by Charles

I. for his good services, has descended to the family of Sir Kildare

Burrowes, of Kildare. In those brilliant days of Skinner’s Row, it was

but seventeen feet wide, and the pathways but one foot broad. All its

glories have vanished now; even the name no longer exists; yet the

remains of residences once inhabited by the magnificent Geraldines and

Butlers can still be traced.

Every stone throughout this ancient quarter of Dublin has a history. In

Cook Street Lord Maguire was arrested at midnight, under circumstances

very similar to the capture of Lord Edward Fitzgerald; and “to

commemorate this capture in the parish it was the annual custom, down

to the year 1829, to toll the bells of St. Andrew’s Church at twelve

o’clock on the night of the 22nd of October.”

In Bridge Street great lords and peers of the realm resided. The

Marquis of Antrim, the Duke of Marlborough’s father; Westenra, the

Dutch merchant who founded the family afterwards ennobled, and others.

It was the Merrion Square of the day. In Bridge Street the rebellion

of ’98 was organized at the house of Oliver Bond; and one night Major

Swan, led by Reynolds the informer, seized twelve gentlemen there, all

of whom were summarily hanged as rebels. Castle Street was the focus of

the rebellion of 1641; Sir Phelim O’Neill and Lord Maguire had their

residences there, and concocted together how to seize the Castle,

destroy all the lords and council, and re-establish Popery in Ireland.

But a more useful man than either lived there also—Sir James Ware,

whose indefatigable ardour in the cause of Irish literature caused him

to collect, with great trouble and expense, a vast number of Irish

manuscripts, which, after passing through many vicissitudes, are now

deposited in the British Museum. The French family of Latouche came to

Castle Street about one hundred years ago, and one of them, in 1778,

upheld the shattered credit of the Government by a loan of £20,000

to the Lord-Lieutenant. Fishamble Street has historical and classic

memories, and traditions of Handel consecrate this now obscure locality.

Handel spent a year in Dublin. His “Messiah” was composed there, and

first performed for the benefit of Mercer’s Hospital. How content

he was with his reception is expressed in a letter to a friend. “I

cannot,” he says, “sufficiently express the kind treatment I receive

here, but the politeness of this generous nation cannot be unknown to

you.”

Dublin Quays are likewise illustrated by great names. On Usher’s

Quay may still be seen the once magnificent Moira House, the

princely residence of Lord Moira, afterwards Marquis of Hastings,

Governor-General of India. A hundred years ago it was the Holland House

of Dublin, sparkling with all the wit, splendour, rank, and influence

of the metropolis. The decorations were unsurpassed in the kingdom for

beauty and grandeur. The very windows were inlaid with mother-o’-pearl.

After the Union, the family in disgust quitted Ireland; Moira house

was left tenantless for some years, and then finally was sold for the

use of the pauper poor of Dublin. The decorations were removed, the

beautiful gardens turned into offices, the upper story of the edifice

was taken off, and the entire building pauperized as much as possible

to suit its inmates and its title—“The Mendicity.”

In the good old times the Lord Mayor treated the Lord-Lieutenant to a

new play every Christmas, when the Corporation acted Mysteries upon

the stage in Hoggin Green, where the College now stands. The Mysteries

were on various subjects. In one, the tailors had orders to find Pilate

and his wife clothed accordingly; the butchers were to supply the

tormentors; the mariners and vintners represented Noah. At that period

the Lord-Lieutenants held their court at Kilmainham, or Thomas Court,

for Dublin Castle was not made a viceregal residence until the reign

of Elizabeth. The parliaments, too, were ambulatory. Sometimes they

met in the great aisle of Christ Church, that venerable edifice whose

echoes have been destined to give back such conflicting sounds. What

changes in its ritual and its worshippers! What scenes have passed

before its high altar since first erected by the Danish bishop, whose

body, in pallium and mitre, lay exposed to view but a few years since,

after a sleep of eight hundred years. Irish kings and Norman conquerors

have trod the aisles. There Roderick was inaugurated, the last king

of Ireland; there Strongbow sleeps, first of the Norman conquerors,

and, until the middle of the last century, all payments were made at

his tomb, as if in him alone, living or dead, the citizens had their

strength; there Lambert Simnel was crowned with a crown taken from the

head of the Virgin Mary; there Cromwell worshipped before he went forth

to devastate; there the last Stuart knelt in prayer before he threw

the last stake at the Boyne for an empire; and there William of Nassau

knelt in gratitude for the victory, with the crown upon his head,

forgotten by James in his ignominious flight.

And how many rituals have risen up to heaven from that ancient altar,

each _anathema maranatha_ to the other—the solemn chants of the early

church; the gorgeous ritual of the mass; in Elizabeth’s time, the

simple liturgy of the English Church in the English tongue; this, too,

was prohibited in its turn, and for ten years the Puritans wailed and

howled against kings and liturgies in the ancient edifice; there the

funeral oration for the death of Cromwell was pronounced, entitled,

“_Threni Hibernici_, or Ireland sympathizing with England for the loss

of their Josiah (Oliver Cromwell).” Once again rose the incense of the

mass while King James was amongst us; but William quenched the lights

on the altar, and established once more the English Liturgy in its

simplicity and beauty. But so little, during all these changes, had

the Irish to do with the cathedral of their capital, that by an Act

passed in 1380 no Irishman was permitted to hold in it any situation or

office; and so strictly was the law enforced, that Sir John Stevenson

was the first Irishman admitted, as even vicar-choral.

Many are the themes of interest to be found in Mr. Gilbert’s “History

of Dublin,” concerning those ancient times when Sackville Street was a

marsh, Merrion Square an exhausted quarry, the undulations so beautiful

in its present verdant state being but the accident of excavation; when

St. Stephen’s Green, with its ten fine Irish acres, was a compound

of meadow, quagmire, and ditch; when Mountjoy Square was a howling

wilderness, and North Georges Street and Summer Hill were far away

in the country, and when the Danes, rudely expelled by Norman swords

from the south of the Liffey, were stealing over the river to found a

settlement on the north side.

Our fathers have told us of Dublin in later times, before the Union,

when a hundred lords and two hundred commoners enriched and enlivened

our city with their wealth and magnificence. Dublin was then at the

summit of its glory; but when the colonists sold their parliament

to England, and the Lords and Commons vanished, and their mansions

became hospitals and poorhouses, and all wealth, power, influence,

and magnificence were transferred to the loved mother country, then

the “City of the Dark Water” sank into very pitiable insignificance.

The proud Norman spirit of independence was broken at last, and there

was no great principle to replace it. Having no large sympathies with

the Irish nation, no idea of country, nationality, or any other grand

word by which is expressed the resolve of self-reliant men to be

self-governed, the colonists became petty, paltry, and selfish in aim;

imitative in manners and feelings; apathetic, even antagonistic to all

national advance; bound to England by helpless fear and servile hope;

content so as they could rest under her great shadow, secure from the

mysterious horrors of Popery, preserved in the blessing of a church

establishment, and allowed to worship even the shadow of transcendent

Majesty. Then Dublin ambition was satisfied and happy; for there is

no word so instinctively abhorrent, so invincibly opposed to all the

prejudices of Dublin society, as patriotism.

From this cursory glance over the antecedents of our metropolis, the

cause of her anti-Irishism is plainly deducible from the fact, that

at no epoch was Dublin an Irish city. The inhabitants are a blended

race, descended of Danes, Normans, Saxon settlers, and mongrel Irish.

The country of their affections is England. They have known no other

mother. With the proud old princes and chiefs of the ancient Irish race

they have no more affinity than (to use Mr. Macaulay’s illustration)

the English of Calcutta with the nation of Hindustan, and from this

colonial position a certain Dublin idiosyncrasy of character has

resulted, which makes the capital distinct in feeling from the rest of

Ireland.

Meanwhile the destiny of the ancient race is working out, not in

happiness or prosperity, but in stern, severe discipline. Unchanged

and unchangeable they remain, so far as change is effected by impulses

arising from within. “Two thousand years,” says Moore, “have passed

over the hovel of the Irish peasant in vain.” Such as they were when

the first light of history rested on them, they are now; indolent

and dreamy, patient and resigned as fatalists, fanatical as Bonzees,

implacable as Arabs, cunning as Greeks, courteous as Spaniards,

superstitious as savages, loving as children, clinging to the old home

and the old sod and the old families with a tenderness that is always

beautiful, sometimes heroic; loving to be ruled, with veneration in

excess; ready to die like martyrs for a creed, a party, or the idol

of the hour, but incapable of extending their sympathies beyond the

family or the clan; content with the lowest place in Europe; stationary

amid progression; isolated from the European family; without power or

influence; lazily resting in the past while the nations are wrestling

in the present for the future. Children of the ocean, yet without

commerce; idle by thousands, yet without manufactures; gifted with

quick intellect and passionate hearts, yet literature and art die

out amongst them for want of aid or sympathy; without definite aims,

without energy or the earnestness which is the vital life of heroic

deeds; dark and blind through prejudice and ignorance, they can neither

resist nobly nor endure wisely; chafing in bondage, yet their epileptic

fits of liberty are marked only by wild excesses, and end only in

sullen despair.

Yet it was not in the providence of God that the fine elements of

humanity in such a people should still continue to waste and stagnate

during centuries of inaction, while noble countries and fruitful lands,

lying silent since creation, were waiting the destined toilers and

workers, who, by the sweat of the brow, shall change them to living

empires.

Two terrible calamities fell upon Ireland—famine and pestilence; and

by these two dread ministers of God’s great purposes, the Irish race

were uprooted and driven forth to fulfil their appointed destiny. A

million of our people emigrated; a million of our people died under

these judgments of God. Seventeen millions worth of property passed

from time-honoured names into the hands of strangers. The echoes of

the old tongue—call it Pelasgian, Phœnician, Celtic, Irish, what you

will, still the oldest in Europe, is dying out at last along the stony

plains of Mayo and the wild sea-cliffs of the storm-rent western shore.

Scarcely a million and a half are left of people too old to emigrate,

amidst roofless cabins and ruined villages, who speak that language

now. Exile, confiscation, or death, was the final fate written on the

page of history for the much-enduring children of Ireland. One day they

may reassert themselves in the new world, or in other lands. Australia,

with its skies of beauty and its pavement of gold, may be given to

them as America to the Saxon, but how low must a nation have fallen at

home when even famine and plague come to be welcomed as the levers of

progression and social elevation. Some wise purpose of God’s providence

lies, no doubt, at the reverse side, but we have not yet turned the

leaf.

The ancient race who, thousands of years ago, left the cradle of the

sun to track him to the ocean, are now flung on the coast of another

hemisphere to begin once more their destined westward march; and like

the Israelites of old, they, too, might tell in that new country: “A

Syrian ready to perish was our father!”

They fled across the Atlantic like a drift of autumn

leaves—“pestilence-stricken multitudes”—and the sea was furrowed by the

dead as the plague-ships passed along.

One would say a doom had been laid upon our people—the wandering Io of

humanity—a destiny of weeping and unrest.

Of old the kings at Tara sat throned with their faces to the west: was

it a symbol or a prophecy of the future of their nation? when from

every hill in Ireland could be seen—

“The remnant of our people

Sweeping westward, wild and woful,

Like the cloud-rack of a tempest,

Like the withered leaves of autumn.”

From the Atlantic to the Pacific, where the Rocky Mountains bar like a

portal the land of gold—through the islands of the Southern Ocean to

the great desolate world of Australia, seeking as it were the lost home

of their fathers, and doomed to make the circuit of the earth—still

onward flows the tide of human life—that inexhaustible race which

has cleared the forests of Canada, built the cities and made all the

railroads of the States, given thousands to the red plains of the

Crimea, overran California and peopled Australia—the race whose destiny

has made them the instruments of all civilization, though they have

never reaped its benefits.

Yet we cannot believe that the Irish race is doomed for ever to work

and suffer without the glory of success; for the Celtic element is

necessary to humanity as a great factor in human progress. It is the

subtle, spiritual fire that warms and permeates the ruder clay of other

races, giving them new, vivid, and magnetic impulses to growth and

expansion.

The children of the early wanderers from the Isles of the Sea

will still continue to fulfil their mission as world-workers and

world-movers. Across the breadth of earth they will found new nations,

each a greater and a stronger Ireland, where they will have the

certainty of power, station, and reward denied them at home. But

neither change nor progress nor the severing ocean will destroy the

electric chain that binds them lovingly to their ancient mother in that

true sympathy with country and kinship that ever burns in the Irish

heart.

The new Ireland across the seas, whether in America or in Australia,

will still cherish with sacred devotion the beautiful legends, the

pathetic songs, the poetry and history and the heroic traditions of the

old, well-loved country as eternal verses of the Bible of humanity,

with all the light and music of the fanciful fairy period, such as I

have tried to gather into a focus in these volumes, along with the

holy memories of those martyrs of our race whose names are for ever

associated with the words Liberty and Nationhood, but whose tragic fate

has illustrated so many mournful pages in the history of the Irish

past.