'What ails you, Sister Erin, that your face
Is, like your mountains, still bedewed with tears?
. . . . . . .
Forgive! forget! lest harsher lips should say,
Like your turf fire, your rancour smoulders long,
And let Oblivion strew Time's ashes o'er your wrong.'
Alfred Austin.
At tea-time, and again after our simple dinner--for Bridget Thunder's
repertory is not large, and Benella's is quite unsuited to the Knockcool
markets--we wend our way to a certain house that stands by itself on
the road to Lisdara. It is only a whitewashed cabin with green window
trimmings, but it is a larger and more comfortable one than we commonly
see, and it is the perfection of neatness within and without. The stone
wall that encloses it is whitewashed too, and the iron picket railing at
the top is painted bright green; the stones on the posts are green also,
and there is the prettiest possible garden, with nicely cut borders of
box. In fine, if ever there was a cheery place to look at, Sarsfield
Cottage is that one; and if ever there was a cheerless gentleman, it is
Mr. Jordan, who dwells there. Mrs. Wogan Odevaine commended him to us
as the man of all others with whom to discuss Irish questions, if we
wanted, for once in a way, to hear a thoroughly disaffected, outraged,
wrong-headed, and rancorous view of things.
“He is an encyclopaedia, and he is perfectly delightful on any topic in
the universe but the wrongs of Ireland,” said she; “not entirely sane
and yet a good father, and a good neighbour, and a good talker. Faith,
he can abuse the English government with any man alive! He has a smaller
grudge against you Americans, perhaps, than against most of the other
nations, so possibly he may elect to discuss something more cheerful
than our national grievances; if he does, and you want a livelier topic,
just mention--let me see--you might speak of Wentworth, who destroyed
Ireland's woollen industry, though it is true he laid the foundation
of the linen trade, so he wouldn't do, though Mr. Jordan is likely to
remember the former point and forget the latter. Well, just breathe the
words 'Catholic Disqualification' or 'Ulster Confiscation,' and you will
have as pretty a burst of oratory as you'd care to hear. You remember
that exasperated Englishman who asked in the House why Irishmen were
always laying bare their grievances. And Major O'Gorman bawled across
the floor, 'Because they want them redressed!'”
Salemina and I went to call on Mr. Jordan the very next day after our
arrival at Knockcool. Over the sitting-room or library door at Sarsfield
Cottage is a coat of arms with the motto of the Jordans, 'Percussus
surgam'; and as our friend is descended from Richard Jordan of Knock,
who died on the scaffold at Claremorris in the memorable year 1798, I
find that he is related to me, for one of the De Exeter Jordans married
Penelope O'Connor, daughter of the king of Connaught. He took her
to wife, too, when the espousal of anything Irish, names, language,
apparel, customs, or daughters, was high treason, and meant instant
confiscation of estates. I never thought of mentioning the relationship,
for obviously a family cannot hold grievances for hundreds of years and
bequeath a sense of humour at the same time.
The name Jordan is derived, it appears, from a noble ancestor who was
banner-bearer in the Crusades and who distinguished himself in many
battles, but particularly in one fought against the infidels on the
banks of the River Jordan in the Holy Land. In this conflict he was
felled to the ground three times during the day, but owing to his
gigantic strength, his great valour, and the number of the Saracens
prostrated by his sword, he succeeded in escaping death and keeping
the banner of the Cross hoisted; hence by way of eminence he was called
Jordan; and the motto of this illustrious family ever since has been,
'Though I fall I rise.'
Mr. Jordan's wife has been long dead, but he has four sons, only one of
them, Napper Tandy, living at home. Theobald Wolfe Tone is practising
law in Dublin; Hamilton Rowan is a physician in Cork; and Daniel
O'Connell, commonly called 'Lib' (a delicate reference to the
Liberator), is still a lad at Trinity. It is a great pity that Mr.
Jordan could not have had a larger family, that he might have kept fresh
in the national heart the names of a few more patriots; for his library
walls, 'where Memory sits by the altar she has raised to Woe,' are hung
with engravings and prints of celebrated insurgents, rebels, agitators,
demagogues, denunciators, conspirators,--pictures of anybody, in a word,
who ever struck a blow, right or wrong, well or ill judged, for the
green isle. That gallant Jacobite, Patrick Sarsfield, Burke, Grattan,
Flood, and Robert Emmet stand shoulder to shoulder with three Fenian
gentlemen, names Allan, Larkin, and O'Brien, known in ultra-Nationalist
circles as the 'Manchester martyrs.' For some years after this trio was
hanged in Salford jail, it appears that the infant mind was sadly mixed
in its attempt to separate knowledge in the concrete from the more or
less abstract information contained in the Catechism; and many a bishop
was shocked, when asking in the confirmation service, “Who are the
martyrs?” to be told, “Allan, Larkin, and O'Brien, me lord!”
Francesca says she longs to smuggle into Mr. Jordan's library a picture
of Tom Steele, one of Daniel O'Connell's henchmen, to whom he gave the
title of Head Pacificator of Ireland. Many amusing stories are told
of this official, of his gaudy uniform, his strut and swagger, and his
pompous language. At a political meeting on one occasion, he attacked,
it seems, one Peter Purcell, a Dublin tradesman who had fallen out with
the Liberator on some minor question. “Say no more on the subject, Tom,”
cried O'Connell, who was in the chair, “I forgive Peter from the bottom
of my heart.”
“You may forgive him, liberator and saviour of my country,” rejoined
Steele, in a characteristic burst of his amazingly fervent rhetoric.
“Yes, you, in the discharge of your ethereal functions as the moral
regenerator of Ireland, may forgive him; but, revered leader, I also
have functions of my own to perform; and I tell you that, as Head
Pacificator of Ireland, I can never forgive the diabolical villain that
dared to dispute your august will.”
The doughty Steele, who appears to have been but poorly fitted by nature
for his office, was considered at the time to be half a madman, but as
Sir James O'Connell, Daniel's candid brother, said, “And who the divil
else would take such a job?” At any rate, when we gaze at Mr. Jordan's
gallery, imagining the scene that would ensue were the breath of life
breathed into the patriots' quivering nostrils, we feel sure that the
Head Pacificator would be kept busy.
Dear old white-haired Mr. Jordan, known in select circles as 'Grievance
Jordan,' sitting in his library surrounded by his denunciators,
conspirators, and martyrs, with incendiary documents piled mountains
high on his desk--what a pathetic anachronism he is after all!
The shillelagh is hung on the wall now, for the most part, and faction
fighting is at an end; but in the very last moments of it there were
still 'ructions' between the Fitzgeralds and the Moriartys, and the
age-old reason of the quarrel was, according to the Fitzgeralds, the
betrayal of the 'Cause of Ireland.' The particular instance occurred in
the sixteenth century, but no Fitzgerald could ever afterward meet any
Moriarty at a fair without crying, “Who dare tread on the tail of me
coat?” and inviting him to join in the dishcussion with shticks. This
practically is Mr. Jordan's position; and if an Irishman desires to
live entirely in the past, he can be as unhappy as any man alive. He is
writing a book, which Mrs. Wogan Odevaine insists is to be called The
Groans of Ireland; but after a glance at a page of memoranda pencilled
in a collection of Swift's Irish Tracts that he lent to me (the
volume containing that ghastly piece of irony, The Modest Proposal for
Preventing the Poor of Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents
and Country), I have concluded that he is editing a Catalogue of Irish
Wrongs, Alphabetically Arranged. This idea pleased Mrs. Wogan Odevaine
extremely; and when she drove over to tea, bringing several cheerful
young people to call upon us, she proposed, in the most light-hearted
way in the world, to play what she termed the Grievance Game, an
intellectual diversion which she had invented on the instant. She
proposed it, apparently, with a view of showing us how small a knowledge
of Ireland's ancient wrongs is the property of the modern Irish girl,
and how slight a hold on her memory and imagination have the unspeakably
bitter days of the long ago.
We were each given pencil and paper, and two or three letters of the
alphabet, and bidden to arrange the wrongs of Ireland neatly under
them, as we supposed Mr. Jordan to be doing for the instruction and the
depression of posterity. The result proved that Mrs. Odevaine was a true
prophet, for the youngest members of the coterie came off badly enough,
and read their brief list of grievances with much chagrin at their lack
of knowledge; the only piece of information they possessed in common
being the inherited idea that England never had understood Ireland,
never would, never could, never should, never might understand her.
Rosetta Odevaine succeeded in remembering, for A, F, and H, Absenteeism,
Flight of the Earls, Famine, and Hunger; her elder sister, Eileen, fresh
from college, was rather triumphant with O and P, giving us Oppression
of the Irish Tenantry, Penal Laws, Protestant Supremacy, Poynings' Law,
Potato Rot, and Plantations. Their friend, Rhona Burke, had V, W, X, Y,
Z, and succeeded only in finding Wentworth and Woollen Trade Destroyed,
until Miss Odevaine helped her with Wood's Halfpence, about which
everybody else had to be enlightened; and there was plenty of laughter
when Francesca suggested for V, Vipers Expelled by St. Patrick. Salemina
carried off the first prize; but we insisted C and D were the easiest
letters; at any rate, her list showed great erudition, and would
certainly have pleased Mr. Jordan. C, Church Cess, Catholic
Disqualification, Crimes Act of 1887, Confiscations, Cromwell, Carrying
Away of Lia Fail (Stone of Destiny) from Tara. D, Destruction of Trees
on Confiscated Lands, Discoverers (of flaws in Irish titles), Debasing
of the Coinage by James I.
Mrs. Odevaine came next with R and S. R, Recall of Lord Fitzwilliams
by Pitt, Rundale Land Tenure, Rack-Rents, Ribbonism. S, Schism Act,
Supremacy Act, Sixth Act of George I.
I followed with T and U, having unearthed Tithes and the Test Act for
the first, and Undertakers, the Acts of Union and Uniformity, for the
second; while Francesca, who had been given I, J, K, L, and M, disgraced
herself by failing on all the letters but the last, under which she
finally catalogued one particularly obnoxious wrong in Middlemen.
This ignorance of the past may have its bright side, after all, though
to speak truthfully, it did show a too scanty knowledge of national
history. But if one must forget, it is as well to begin with the wrongs
of far-off years, those 'done to your ancient name or wreaked upon your
race.'
Part Fourth--Connaught.