THE LORDS OF IRELAND.
The landlords of Ireland are the lords of Ireland. England makes them
landlords first, and then, to put the brand of her marauding nobility
on them, she makes them English lords. And they do lord it over the
Irish people, and ride rough-shod over every natural and acquired right
belonging to them. Whether born in England or Ireland, they must be
English, and anti-Irish in spirit, in action and in religion. Some of
my readers may say that some of the lords and the landlords in Ireland
at the present day are Catholics. So they are, and so were a few of
them in my day, and so were the whole of them in the days preceding the
time of Henry VIII. But if they were, they were English and anti-Irish
all the same, and the marauding Catholic Englishman, coming over to
Ireland on his mission of murder and plunder during the three hundred
years preceding Martin Luther’s time, murdered Irishmen as mercilessly
and plundered them as ruthlessly as he has done during the last three
hundred years that he is a Protestant. It is not religion, but booty,
the Englishman is after in this world. Of course, religion is very
useful to him. It furnishes him with a pretext to enter a country and
to take soundings in it,
With the Bible on his lips,
But the devil in his deeds.
And what is more than that, neither religion nor nationality ever stood
in the way of his plundering and murdering the children of the English
invader who landed in Ireland a century or so before he landed there.
The Cromwellians plundered the Strongbownians, and the English
transported and murdered the Protestant Mitchels and Fitzgeralds, who
resisted their plunder, as readily as they did the Catholic O’Neills
and O’Donnells.
And, holy Jehoshaphat! how wholly and firmly did these freebooters
plant themselves in Ireland. I stand on the top of that hill where
my schoolhouse stood, and I see the lighthouse of the Fastnet Rock
and Cape Clear, straight out before me in the open sea; I see the
ships sailing between the Cove of Cork and America, every steamer
passing showing a long trail of steam like the tail of a comet. And
what else do I see before me and all around me? I see the imprint of
the invader’s footsteps, the steps he has taken to fortify himself in
possession of his plunder, and to guard himself from assault from the
victims of that plunder--for many of these victims must be wandering
around the locality still. I look to the north, and I see to the right
the Castle of Cahirmore, the residence of the Hungerfords. I go up the
Cahirmore road (as I often went going to the home of my grandfather),
and at my left hand side, for half a mile, is a wall higher than a
man’s height. I cannot see the grounds or anything on the grounds
inside the wall, but I hear the beautiful peacocks crying out to one
another.
I look to the left, and I see the Castle of Derry, the residence of
the Townsends. I walk up the Derry road, and for a half a mile of
that road, to my left, there is built a wall higher than myself that
prevents me from seeing any of the beauties of the demesne inside.
I look to the south, and to my right, at Rowry is the Bleazby
residence, walled around by a wall some fifteen feet high, with the
Smith family at Doneen further south, having another wall around them
equally high.
I look to the south at my left and there is Castle Freke the residence
of Lord Carberry. There is a wall around the castle and demesne here,
that is, I suppose, some two miles in circumference, a high wall, as
around the other places around Ross.
I traveled through England, Scotland, Wales and France, and I did not
see those high walls around the residences and the grounds of any of
the people.
I traveled every county in Ireland and I saw them in every county. In
Monaghan one day I wanted to see James Blaney Rice of Tyholland. I came
out of the railway train at Glaslough station, and walked a bit into
the country, taking a roundabout way to go to the house. At the left
hand side of the road I walked, there was a wall some ten feet high for
a long distance. I got out of humor with that wall, as it shut out from
me a view of the whole country side. When I got to James Rice, I asked
him who lived inside that wall; he said it was Leslie the landlord and
land agent. That’s in Ulster. In Connacht I walked out from Ballinasloe
one day to see the grounds on which the battle of Aughrim was fought.
I had a walk of about three miles, and at my right hand side during a
long distance of that walk there was a wall higher than my head, that
hid from me the castle and the grounds of Lord Clancarty.
In Leinster one day John Powell of Birr took me out for a drive through
Kings County. He drove as far as the banks of the Shannon. There
was the residence of Lord Rosse walled around in the castle of the
O’Carrolls; and the castle of the O’Dempseys, walled around in the
residence of Lord Bernard.
And look at the castle of Kilkenny, the residence of the Butlers, the
lords of Ormond. Around the grounds is a wall twelve feet high. Tom
Doyle of Kilkenny told me yesterday that that wall had a circumference
of four miles and that, in the neighborhood of the city, the wall in
some places was twenty feet, and thirty feet high.
That, no doubt, was to save the plunderer inside from fear from any
missiles being aimed at him by any of the plundered people from the
housetops of the city. Those Butlers--the Ormonds, were often fighting
about boundaries and other matters with the Fitzgeralds, the lords of
Desmond. The two families came in, in the Strongbownian time. It is
said of them that they became more Irish than the Irish themselves.
That transition came on naturally. Ireland became a hunting ground for
marauding Englishmen. The Englishmen of the thirteenth century learned
that the invaders of the twelfth century had got a “soft snap” of it
in Ireland, and they tried their luck there. They trespassed on the
possessions of the Desmonds and the Ormonds; so the Fitzgeralds and
the Butlers planted in Ireland had to fight against the new English
coming in. And thus it came into Irish history that some of these
Butlers and Fitzgeralds have been century after century declared in
rebellion against England.
The old saying has it that a guilty conscience needs no accuser. Those
walls were not built around the castles of Ireland ’til the English
came into Ireland.
Prendergast in his book of the “Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland,” and
Regnault, in his “Criminal History of England,” and other historians
say they were built for the double purpose of securing the claim from
other plunderers who would want to dispute the boundary, and of saving
the plunderer from the chance of getting a bullet or a stone or any
other hostile missile or message from any of the plundered people in
the neighborhood.
Those plunderers know they deserve it, and that is why they try to
shelter themselves against it. That is how it is that England has
passed so many laws to keep arms of all kinds out of the hands of
the Irish people, and how she has passed so many laws to kill the
Irish language out of their tongues. She passed those laws against
the language, because wherever that language is spoken it gives the
name and ownership of the castle to the old Irish owner of it. Lord
Rosse’s castle in Birr is to-day called by the Irish-speaking people
“Caislean ui Carrooil,” the Castle of the O’Carrolls; Castle Bernard,
the residence of the Earl of Bandon, is called Caislean ui Mahoona;
Castle Freke, the residence of the Freke Lord Carbery, is called
“Rath-a-Bharrig,” the Castle of the Barrys, and so on throughout all
Ireland.
The Dublin “Gaelic Journal” for the month of May, 1896, has come
to me as I write this chapter. I look at it and see a few lines
that naturally fit in here. These are they; “Donghall, O’Donngaile,
O’Donnelly, Baile ui-Dhonnghaile, O’Donnelly’s town, now called
Castlecaulfield, County Tyrone.”
The English name or title has not a place in the Irish language, no,
nor has it caught on to the Irish tongue yet. Neither has it a place
in the Irish heart. Notwithstanding all that English laws have done to
blot Irish history, the Irish people, in the Irish language, still hold
their own.
That is why England has tried hard to kill the Irish language. Some of
my readers may think she is encouraging the cultivation of it now. She
is not; she doesn’t mean it; her heart is not in the professions she is
making, no more than was the heart of my hen blackbird Gladstone in the
professions about home rule that he was making for Ireland for the past
twenty years.
Yes, ’tis twenty years now since he made that Mid-Lothian speech, in
which he said “Ireland should be governed according to Irish ideas.”
He was out of office then. But, shortly after, he came into office,
and he put thousands of Irishmen into prison for having them dare to
think they ought to be governed by Irish ideas. And he kicked the Irish
members out of the English House of Commons for having them dare to
think Ireland should be governed according to Irish ideas.
’Tis my mother and father, God be good to them, that had the true
Irish natural feeling about those Englishmen governing Ireland.
I can see now how relieved they felt whenever they’d hear of a landlord
being shot in Tipperary or anywhere else in Ireland.
It was like an instinct with them that an enemy of theirs had been done
away with. That kind of instinct is in the whole Irish race to-day, and
if the power that supports landlordism in Ireland could be stricken
down, there would be a general jubilee of rejoicing in the land. Until
it is stricken down, there is no freedom, no home rule for Ireland.
Going into the town of Bandon one day, I overtook on the road a man
who had a car-load of hay. At the right hand side of the road was the
demesne of Lord Bandon. I was on horseback, and was high enough to
see over the wall, the mansion called Castle Bernard in the demesne.
“Go d’ aon caislean e sin thall ansann?” (what castle is that over
there) said I. “Caislean ui Mhahoona” (O’Mahony’s castle) said he. The
O’Mahonys are out of it, on a tramp through the world; the Bernards are
in it, and are lords of Bandon. And these are the lords that administer
the English laws to the people they have plundered. Take the present
day, and look at the list of grand jurors that are summoned the two
seasons of the year in every county in Ireland. They are the plunderers
who hold the lands and castles of the plundered people, and they sit
in judgment on the children of those to whom the lands and castles
belonged. And these children, in cases of difficulties with the law,
have to be running after the makers of that law for influence to get
them out of the troubles that eternally surround them.
One of the fireside stories that got into my mind when I was a child
was the story of a bill of indictment against my people, the time of
the “White boys.”
These “White boys” came into the bleach-field one night, and washed
their faces in the stream that ran by it, and dried themselves with the
linen that was bleaching in the field. Whatever offence the White boys
were charged with, my people were put into the indictment with them,
either as participants or sympathizers, or as assisting in the escape
of criminals who had committed offences. It was considered they knew
who blackened the linen, and they should be punished as they wouldn’t
tell on them. My grandfather, after using all the influence of all
the friends, had got some letters from the lords and landlords around
to the grand jury of the Cork assizes. He had them one evening, and
he should be in Cork city at ten o’clock next morning. There were no
trains running anywhere at that time. He got on horseback, and galloped
to Rossmore. He got a fresh horse at Rossmore. Then he galloped on to
Ballineen and got another fresh horse there; then another in Bandon,
and another in Ballinhassig that landed him at Cork city courthouse
before ten o’clock in the morning. He gave in his letters to the grand
jury, waited a few hours, and returned home with the news that the
bills were “ignored.” That is; that the grand jury “threw out” the
bills and did not follow up the prosecution of the case against the
people who owned the bleach.
You may think that’s a kind of a make-up of a story about my
grandfather getting three or four relays of horses all in one night. I
don’t wonder you would think so. Perhaps I thought so myself when I was
a child listening to it at the fireside; but, stop awhile; wait till
I come to write my chapter on genealogy, and come to show you how my
grandfather had family relations and connections in every corner of the
county, and then you will not be surprised at what I am saying. You’ll
be more surprised at what I have to say yet.
The White boy indictment was before I was born. Soon after I was born,
my father got into trouble with the head lord of the soil by selling to
Mick Hurley, the carpenter, four tall ash trees that were growing in
the kitchen garden back of the house. Lord Carberry claimed that the
trees belonged to the soil--belonged to him--and that my father had no
right to cut them down and sell them. My father had as much right to
that soil as Lord Carberry had; he had more right to it, in fact.
One of the Irish histories I read in my youth has these words: “The
O’Donovans--a branch of the MacCarthys--had extensive possessions in
the neighborhood of Ross.”
They owned all Ross, and all around it, but the turn in the world came
that turned them and turned many other old Irish families upside down,
and left the Englishmen on top.