During the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century a miracle
wrought itself. So does the germ of Separation inhere in the soil of
Ireland that the very Cromwellians and Williamites were infected with
it. The Palesmen began to realise themselves as part of the Irish
nation, and in the fulness of time they declared themselves Separatists.
While this process was slowly accomplishing itself, the authentic voice
of Ireland is to be sought in her literature. And that literature is a
Separatist literature. The “secret songs” of the dispossessed Irish are
the most fiercely Separatist utterances in any literature. Not until
Mitchel did Anglo-Irish literature catch up that Irish vehemence. The
poet of the “Roman Vision” sang of the Ireland that was to be:
“No man shall be bound unto England
Nor hold friendship with dour Scotsmen,
There shall be no place in Ireland for outlanders,
Nor any recognition for the English speech.”
The prophetic voice of Mitchel seems to ring in this:
“The world hath conquered, the wind hath scattered like dust
Alexander, Cæsar, and all that shared their sway,
Tara is grass, and behold how Troy lieth low,--
And even the English, perchance their hour will come!”
An unknown poet, seeing the corpse of an Englishman hanging on a tree,
sings:
“Good is thy fruit, O tree!
The luck of thy fruit on every bough!
Would that the trees of Inisfail
Were full of thy fruit every day!”
The poet of the “Druimfhionn Donn Dílis” cries:
“The English I’d rend as I’d rend an old brogue,
And that’s how I’d win me the Druimfhionn Donn Og!”
I do not defend this blood-thirstiness any more than I apologise for it.
I simply point it out as the note of a literature.