Now that the height of the summer had come, and each day was hotter
than the last, there began an exodus from Dublin of all who had
opportunity, and among the speeding guests was myself. I left my wife
behind and winged a flight to Ulster, being primed that I would have
taken no true stock of Ireland until I had examined the strange race
that moved, and lived, and had its being in the north-east of the
country. It was said that the first half of July was the season to
study these people, as their national fury waxed greatest at that time
of year, reaching its most notable height on the twelfth of the month,
and thereafter abating.
The end of June found me setting out upon my journey.
The train that drew me out of Amiens Street railway station, Dublin,
and disgorged me at Belfast, did undoubtedly take me out of one country
and set me down in another. I left Ireland and came to a Scotland,
not a Scotland identical with that over the sea; but a Scotland that
smacked of the other Scotland in speech, in hardihood, and in the make
of mind that, in the face of a Catholic Ireland, made its sons cherish
the stern old beliefs of Covenanting days. Behold some later race,
vigorous, masculine, most tenacious, had breasted an intervening sea
and found a footing in Ireland. New influences coming upon the fathers
had modified the children; but time had not yet worn out the original
mould.
Go north and you will find the answer to the question, Why are the
Irish always divided? The north-east quarter has the same winds as blow
about the rest of Ireland, has the same roads as those on which the
rest of Ireland walks, grows the same grass; but has another people in
whom it breeds a separate vision. The statement that Ireland absorbs
all who come to her, making them her own, is a poet’s dream or a
politician’s romance.
The two Irish peoples are poles apart--the Orangemen masculine, stern,
uncompromising, when they are spiritual, alight with the steady burning
fire of Puritan days taken out of some old history book, touched with
mediæval narrowness, energetic, clean; Catholic Ireland, feminine and
temperamental, poetical, easy going, lazy, able in dream to conceive
the noblest ideal, unfitted in character to carry it to a conclusion,
broad where the Orangemen are narrow, pliable where the Orangemen are
rigid.
Why did the old Covenanting blood never flow into the Celtic veins as
other blood has done? Have political differences been all the cause? Is
the Orangeman’s love of Empire as uncompromising as he says? Is Celtic
Ireland’s hate of Britain implacable? I for one do not believe that
Ulster’s love is so burning hot; nor am I sure that Celtic Ireland’s
hate of Britain is so undying. The Irish flame burns up now and then,
fanned by a new generation of leaders; but when the bellows cease to
blow there seems to be no fire.
The answer is religion.
It is not strange that these two peoples should be divided in religious
belief, for a man’s temperament leads his beliefs, and the teachings of
the two Churches fit the types of mind. The Protestant Church, offering
a father’s stern love, fits the self-reliant Orange temperament; and
the Catholic Church, which holds out a mother’s universal arms to the
tired spirit, answers the Celtic need.
The religious bigotry of this part of the world was astonishing to a
stranger. It was mediæval in vigour, and it was undeniable that the
Protestants were the real offenders. There was a certain reason for
this state of things, inasmuch as Catholic Ireland greatly outnumbered
Protestant Ireland, and the weak man is always up in arms. At those
seasons when the Protestant God seemed to demand of His devotees
a greater fury of worship than usual, there would come a gust of
religious intolerance, which brought the Middle Ages back again.
How soon will these two poles, which are the complement of each other,
meet? If these two peoples would come together, and the hardy northern
blood flow into the numerous gentler veins of the South, so that a new
race, stiffer than the South, more imaginative and tolerant than the
North, should be bred on the ancient hills, in the old dales, Ireland’s
golden age, which poets have sung about so long, might return again.
They told me in Dublin that the annual fury of these northern people
begins to wax on the first of July, and reaches its height upon the
twelfth of the month; but before the end of June the Orange drummer has
taken his drum from its cover and the canes to beat it off the shelf,
and on the fine evenings, after work, when the summer warmth is heating
his blood, he sets himself to a preliminary drumming, his insistent
summons rolls down the street, and a careless world is reminded that
once upon a time a certain King William of immortal memory crossed the
Boyne River to the sound of drums and fifes. The fifeman has dusted his
fife and blown a preliminary roulade, and those who are not musicians
have cleared their throats to cry the more vigorously “To hell with the
Pope.”
This year, on the eve of the twelfth, greater events were to befall
than the stout Orangemen, in their black and their orange sashes,
dreamed of. The murderer was to come forth, and the world was to
receive him as equal. First, the South full of rumours, then, while
men shook their heads in disbelief, news that peace had come. Out of
the blackest clouds the dove had swooped back into sight, had alighted
after endless flight and folded its wings.
Morning brought news which evening elaborated; evening’s news had
staled at breakfast time. Post-haste the rumours came. Negotiations!
Truce! As if a magician’s wand had waved them forth, the Sinn Fein
leaders became flesh and blood, emerged into the daylight. A pause
in the hunt! An armistice signed! The phantom army have taken their
fingers from the triggers of their guns; the police have switched off
the engines of their motors!
It was said men with beards like goats and with the talons of wild
beasts descended from the hills; the patriots who had gone to bed with
the owls and the rabbits returned like demigods home.
Oh, disillusioned Ulster, whose comrade, whose bigger brother, whose
ally of so many oaths has at this most exalted season of the year,
under your very nose, at your very front door, eaten his words, plucked
the scornful phrase off his tongue, called traitor friend, called
assassin comrade, taken his hand out of yours and thrust it into the
palm of your enemy!
Oh, drummers, roll your drums; oh, fifemen, shrill your fifes: not
all your notes, not all your drumming will bring back your belief in
Britain.
But before you condemn too bitterly, search the hearts of those who
have done this. Pity, then, may take anger’s place. The story has ended
as most human stories end. High speech has worn itself out in Wind,
enemy has met enemy on a common level, each giving something to the
other, each receiving something from the other, as all men must who
rub shoulders on this planet.
If in man’s sight this pact has brought humiliation on Loyalist and
Republican alike, it may not be so in the sight of Heaven. Man’s memory
is short, he remembers the ends of things; but the gods, to whom the
past is the present, and yesterday is to-day, recall the days of
difficulty, the hours of labour and the moments of sacrifice, and do
not look to the result so much as to the making of the result.
On the twelfth of the month a brazen sun climbed up into the sky, and
after an early breakfast we came out of our doors garbed for the fray.
All the world was there, and half the world was wearing orange sashes,
and as a man was of low or high degree in his own Orange lodge, so was
his sash pricked over with fewer or with more silver badges.
The men came forth in dark suits newly lifted from chests of drawers,
with sombre bowlers on their heads; the women, following a happier
tradition, wore frocks that vied with the coloured sashes, but iron
rule demanded gloved hands.
We were a village going by train to a rallying-ground. Our lodge and
our band went with us. The big drummer had his cottage at the end of
the row, and every now and then came such a roll of drumming as I have
heard many a time in an African village. It wakened memories of palms
and fevers and alligators. The fifes were being tested, flights of
notes fell from the air. The ear was tickled and then cheated, and
then another flight tickled it again. Round a bend of the road came
a rolling and a shrilling, and then banners waving in the sun. Other
villages were marching in to join us to the rallying-ground.
The train came in, and I was lifted up on the first wave of a swelling
tide, and sent into a carriage through the gaping door. First me, and
after me the world. There surged in men with pikes, there surged in men
with Bibles upon poles, there surged in children munching sweets, there
surged in women with babies and without babies; and when from my corner
I looked to the door, and wondered when would some one put out a hand
and close it, there followed in other men with drums and other men with
banners, and ever more men with spare drumheads, and ever more children
munching sweets.
The engine jumped from a standing position, the carriages jumped after
it, in our carriage we rolled a single time forward and backward, and
then we were jerking through the country, past birds I could not hear,
past flowers I could not smell, under skies I could not see.
The stations came. We stopped at every one of them. Nobody got out;
but another fife and drum band got in, and other men with Bibles upon
sticks, and other men with pikes, and other men with banners, and other
fluttered women, and other munching children. We left a following on
the platform waving us on our way. Then we jerked over the final
mile or two, and sounds of drum and fife, and glimpses of road where
banners waved and bands played told us of Orange lodges rallying to the
trysting-ground.
The trysting-ground of Ballynahinch was full to the brim, and certain
of the people who had arrived there were also full to the brim. The
day was another of those blazing days this spendthrift summer was so
prodigal of, and many a wise man passed between swing doors, passed
several times between swing doors, before falling into line for the
procession. As there were ever more lodges coming in from the country,
and ever more wise men passing in between swing doors, those who were
already inside could find no way out, and whether they ever got out, or
whether they are sitting there to this day, I am not able to tell.
All things start at last, and the procession moved on its way.
Across the high street, at a spot where a hill began and went winding
up, was an archway, which seemed to be the holiest ground. From the
arch dangled all sorts of symbols, most of which I have forgotten: one
was a wooden ladder; these same symbols the stout Orangemen wore in
silver upon their sashes.
I stood beside this arch, and fifty-seven lodges went drumming up the
hill. Ha, drummer, whip those parchment faces! Where are your long
canes? Whip and whip again, until the veins at your wrists swell and
the blood spouts forth. Was ever Protestant wrist made that grew
tired, for is not the Pope himself within your drum? As the new lodge
approached the arch, the pike men ran before, lifted their pikes on
high, put the heads together, and the rest of the company, lifting
their hats in deference to the arch, passed through. Ha, you, big
drummer, need not lift your hat! Are you not doing enough whipping and
whipping and whipping those two parchment faces between which writhes
His Holiness?
The last lodge went up the hill, the squeal of fifes and the roar of
drums were on ahead. I fell in with the great following which followed
after.
We went up, and up, and up, and so did the sun in the sky. There was
lemonade to buy, but that was not for me. There was beer in the town
behind, and that was for all who fell by the wayside. We licked our
parched lips. Mothers herding small children before them cried as they
came to water, “Hi, Willie, come out of that! There’s a wee Pope in
that pond!”
The ascent was done, we flowed into a large field where people had
rested their banners against the trees, had put their fifes and drums
upon the grass, and were drinking ginger-beer and eating bananas. On a
wooden stand certain speakers were collected, and round there the press
was greatest.
What, is the wound so deep? One after another you stand upon that rough
wooden platform in the fiery sun, and speak as if all old ties were
broken now that Britain holds out a hand to the enemy, and offers it
equality and respectability.
In good time I had had my fill of the speakers, and wandered away,
turning over the history of the last seven years. Surely humour was its
chief ingredient? Ulster had been Celtic Ireland’s best friend. Had
Ulster not made difficulties in the beginning, Ireland would gladly
have accepted a limited measure of self-government, and there would
have been no Sinn Fein to sweep the country like a wind. Seven years
of external and internal difficulties, of irresolution and changing
opinion on the part of the British Government, the steadfast following
of an ideal on the Irish side, had brought two-thirds of Ireland a
wider measure of self-government than it had previously conceived, and
had left Ulster as she was in the beginning, but soured alike with
friend and foe. A story like all human stories--muddled and painful and
ludicrous, and with its patches of splendour.
As I came to the lower end of the field on the way to the railway
station, nine drummers stood drumming in a row. All the exasperation
of those seven years of British half-measures had passed into
those eighteen arms, into the swelling veins of those wrists, into
the eighteen hands which grasped the long canes that whipped so
passionately the eighteen great parchment drumheads. Nine Popes writhed
in those drums as eighteen canes beat on and on and on, lest if they
stopped a moment His Holiness would step from out the Vatican, his
triple crown upon his head, and hearing of Britain’s apostasy and
Ulster’s loneliness, would then and there put out a hand, and gather
every Orangeman upon that green to Rome.