The worth and glory of a nation may well be measured and adjudged by
the typical character of its womanhood: not so much, I would say, by
the eminence attained to by rarely gifted, exceptionally developed
individuals, as by the prevalence of noble types at every period, and
amongst all classes of the community, and by their recurrence from
age to age under varying circumstances of national fortune.
Judged by such a standard, Ireland emerges triumphant and points to
the roll of her chequered history, the story of her ancient race,
with confidence and pride. Gaze into the farthest vistas of her
legendary past, into the remotest eras of which tradition preserves a
misty memory, and the figure of some fair, noble woman stands forth
glimmering like a white statue against the gloom. At every period of
stern endeavor, through all the generations of recorded time, the
pages of our annals are inscribed with the names of mothers, sisters,
wives, not unworthy to stand there beside those of the world-renowned
heroes of the Gael.
In the ancient tales of Ireland we read of great female physicians
and distinguished female lawyers and judges. There were _ban-file_,
or women-poets, who, like the _file_, were at the same time
soothsayers and poetesses, and there are other evidences of the high
esteem in which women were held. There can be no doubt, to judge by
the elaborate descriptions of garments in the saga-texts, that the
women were very skilful in weaving and needlework. The Irish peasant
girls of today inherit from them not a little of their gift for
lace-making and linen-embroidery. Ladies of the highest rank
practiced needlework as an accomplishment and a recreation. Some of
the scissors and shears they used have come to light in excavations.
In the stories of the loves of the ancient Irish, whether immortals
or mortals, the woman's role is the more accentuated, while in
Teutonic tradition man plays the chief part. Again, it has often been
remarked that the feminine interest is absent from the earlier heroic
forms of some literatures. Not so, however, in the earliest
saga-texts of the Irish. Many are the famous women to whom the old
tales introduce us and who stand out and compel attention like the
characters of the Greek drama. Everyone knows of the faithful
Deirdre, the heroine of the touching story of the "Exile of the Sons
of Usnech", and of her death; of the proud and selfish Medb. the
ambitious queen of Connacht, the most warlike and most expert in the
use of weapons of the women of the Gael--far superior in combat and
counsel to her husband, Ailill; of Emer, the faithful wife of
Cuchulainn; of Etain of the Horses (that was her name in Fairyland);
and of many others too numerous to mention.
It is with the introduction of Christianity into Ireland that the
Irish woman came into her rightful place, and attained the
preponderating influence which she, ever since, has held among the
Celtic people. In the period which followed the evangelization of the
island many were the "women of worth" who upheld the honor and glory
of "Inisfail the Fair", and women were neither the less numerous nor
the less ardent who hung upon the lips of the Apostle of Ireland.
Amid the galaxy of the saints, how lustrous, how divinely fair,
shines the star of Brigid, the shepherd maiden of Faughard, the
disciple of Patrick the Apostle, the guardian of the holy light that
burned beneath the oak-trees of Kildare! Over all Ireland and through
the Hebridean Isles, she is renowned above any other. We think of
her, moreover, not alone, but as the centre of a great company of
cloistered maidens, the refuge and helper of the sinful and
sorrowful, who found in the gospel that Patrick preached a message of
consolation and deliverance. Let it be remembered that the shroud of
Patrick is deemed to have been woven by Brigid's hand; that when she
died, in 525, Columcille, the future apostle of Scotland, was a child
of four. So she stands midmost of that trilogy of saints whose dust
is said to rest in Down.
Who that hears of Columcille will forget how He won that name, "dove
of the Church", because of his early piety, and that surely bespeaks
a mother's guiding care. Ethne, mother of Columcille, remains a vague
but picturesque figure, seen against the background of the rugged
heath-clad hills of Tir-Conal by the bright blue waters of Gartan's
triple lake. Her hearth-stone or couch is shown there to this day,
where once in slumber, before the birth of her son, she saw in a
glorious visionary dream a symbol of his future greatness. A vast
veil woven of sunshine and flowers seemed to float down upon her from
heaven: an exquisitely poetic thought, which gives us warrant to
believe that Columcille's poetic skill was inherited from his mother.
Ronnat, the mother of his biographer, St. Adamnan, plays a more
notable part in history, for, according to an ancient Gaelic text
recently published, it was to her that the women of Ireland owed the
royal decree which liberated them from military service. The story
goes that once, as she walked beside the Boyne, after some sanguinary
conflict, she came upon the bodies of two women who had fallen in
battle. One grasped a reaping hook, the other a sword, and dreadful
wounds disfigured them. Horrified at the sight, she brought strong
pressure to bear upon her son, and his influence in the councils of
the land availed to bring about the promulgation of the decree which
freed women from war-service.
Our warrior kings had noble queens to rule their households, and of
these none stands out so distinctly after long lapse of time as
Gormlai, the daughter of Flann Siona, and wife of Nial Glondubh. Her
story has in it that element of romance which touches the heart and
wins the sympathy of all who hear it.
Her father was king of the Meathan branch of the Clan Nial, and
_ard-ri_ of Ireland for thirty-seven years. Nial Glondubh was king of
Tir-Eoghain, and heir of Flann in the high kingship, for at that era
it was the custom for the kings of Meath and of Tyrone to hold the
supreme power alternately. In order to knit north and south, Flann
betrothed his beautiful daughter to Cormac macCuillenan, king of
Cashel, an ideal husband, one would have thought, for a poetess like
Gormlai, for Cormac was the foremost scholar of the day; but his mind
was so set on learning and religion that he took holy orders and
became bishop-king of Cashel, repudiating his destined bride. Gormlai
was then given as wife to Cearbhail, king of Leinster, and war was
waged against Cormac who was killed in the battle of Ballymoon.
Coming home wounded, Cearbhail lay on his couch, and while tended by
Gormlai and her ladies told the story of the battle and boasted of
having insulted the dead body of King Cormac. Gormlai reproached him
for his ignoble conduct in such terms that his anger and jealousy
flamed up, and striking her with his fist he hurled her to the
ground.
Gormlai rose indignant and left his house forever, returning to the
palace of King Flann, and on Cearbhail's death she at last found a
true lover and worthy mate in Nial Glondubh, who brought her
northward to rule over the famous palace of Aileach. In 916 Nial
became high king, but the place of honor was also the place of
danger, and soon he led the mustered hosts of the north against the
pagan foreigners, who held Dublin and Fingal, and he fell in battle
at Rathfarnham.
A poem, preserved for us ever since, tells us that Gormlai was
present at his burial and chanted a funeral ode. Her long widowhood
was a period of disconsolate mourning. At length it is said she had a
dream or vision, in which King Nial appeared to her in such life-like
shape that she spread her arms to embrace him, and thus wounded her
breast against the carven head-post of her couch, and of that wound
she died.
Many saintly, many noble, many hospitable and learned women lightened
the darkness that fell over Ireland after the coming of the Normans.
I pass to the time when a sovereign lady filled the throne of
England, "the spacious days of great Elizabeth," which were also the
period of Ireland's greatest, sternest struggle against a policy of
extermination towards her nobles and suppression of her ancient
faith. Amid all the heroes and leaders of that wondrous age in
Ireland, there appears, like a reincarnation of legendary Medb, a
warlike queen in Connacht, Grace O'Malley, "Granuaile" of the
ballads. Instead of a chariot, she mounts to the prow of a
swift-sailing galley, and sweeps over the wild Atlantic billows, from
isle to isle, from coast to coast, taking tribute (or is it plunder?)
from the clans. First an O'Flaherty is her husband, then a Norman
Burke. In Clare Island they show her castle tower, with a hole in the
wall, through which they say she tied a cable from her ship, ready by
day or night for a summons from her seamen. She voyaged as far as
London town, and stood face to face with the ruffed and hooped
Elizabeth, meeting her offer of an English title with the assertion
that she was a princess in her own land.
The mother of Red Hugh O'Donnell, Ineen-dubh, though daughter of the
Scottish Lord of the Isles, was none the less of the old Irish stock.
Her character is finely sketched for us by the Franciscan chronicler
who wrote the story of the captivity and mighty deeds of her son.
When the clans of Tir-Conal assembled to elect the youthful
chieftain, he writes: "It was an advantage that she came to the
gathering, for she was the head of the advice and counsel of the
Cinel-Conail, and, though she was slow and deliberate and much
praised for her womanly qualities, she had the heart of a hero and
the soul of a soldier." Her daughter, Nuala, is the "woman of the
piercing wail" in Mangan's translation of the bard's lament for the
death of the Ulster chieftains in Rome.
Modern critics like to interpret the "Dark Rosaleen" poem as an
expression of Red Hugh's devotion to Ireland, but I think that Rose,
O'Doherty's daughter, wife of the peerless Owen Roe, deserves
recognition as she whose
"Holy delicate white hands should girdle him with steel."
The record has come down to us that she prompted and encouraged her
husband to return from the low-countries and a position of dignity in
a foreign court to command the war in Ireland, and in her first
letter, ere she followed him over sea, she asked eagerly: "How stands
Tir-Conal?" True daughter of Ulster was Owen's wife, so let us
henceforth acknowledge her as the _Roisin_ dubh, "dark Rosaleen", of
the sublimest of all patriot songs.
In the Cromwellian and Williamite wars, we see the mournful mothers
and daughters of the Gaeldom passing in sad procession to Connacht,
or wailing on Shannon banks for the flight of the "Wild Geese." But
what of Limerick wall, what of the valorous rush of the women of the
beleaguered city to stem the inroads of the besiegers and rally the
defenders to the breach? The decree of St. Adamnan was quite
forgotten then, and when manly courage for a moment was daunted,
woman's fortitude replaced and reinspired it.
And fortitude was sorely needed through the black years that
followed--the penal days, when Ireland, crushed in the dust, bereft
of arms, achieved a sublimer victory than did even King Brian
himself, champion of the Cross, against the last muster of European
heathendom.
Yes, her women have done their share in making Ireland what she is, a
heroic land, unconquered by long centuries of wrath and wrong, a land
that has not abandoned its Faith through stress of direst persecution
or bartered it for the lure of worldly dominion; no--nor ever yielded
to despair in face of repeated national disaster.
It was this fidelity to principle on the part of the Irish Catholic
people which won for them the alliance of all that were worthiest
among the Protestants of north and south in the days of the
Volunteers and the United Irishmen. What interesting and pathetic
portraits of Irishwomen are added to our roll at this period! None is
more tenderly mournful than that of Sarah Curran, the beloved of
Robert Emmet. The graceful prose of Washington Irving, the poignant
verses of Moore, have enshrined the memory of her, weeping for him in
the shadow of the scaffold, dying of heart-break at last in a far-off
land. No more need be said of her, for whom the pity of the whole
world has been awakened by song allied to sweetest, saddest music.
What of Anne Devlin, Emmet's faithful servant, helping in his
preparations for insurrection, aiding his flight, shielding him in
hiding, even when tortured, scourged, half-hanged by a brutal
soldiery, with stern-shut lips refusing to utter a word to compromise
her "Master Robert"?
What of the sister of Henry Joy McCracken, Mary, the friend and
fellow-worker with the Belfast United Irishmen? An independent,
self-reliant business woman, she earned the money which she gave so
liberally in the good cause, or to help the poor and distressed,
through the whole period of a long life. Some still living have seen
Mary passing along the streets of Belfast, an aged woman, clad in
sombre gown, to whom Catholic artisans raised their caps reverently,
remembering how in '98 she had walked hand in hand with her brother
to the steps of the scaffold, and how, in 1803, she had aided Thomas
Russell in his escape from the north after Emmet's failure, had
bribed his captors after arrest, provided for his defence, and
preserved for futurity a record of his dying words. Madden's _History
of the United Irishmen_, as far as it tells of the north, is mainly
the record that she kept as a sacred trust in letters, papers,
long-treasured memories of the men who fought and died to make
Ireland a united nation.
And now a scene in America comes last to my mind. Wolfe Tone, a
political fugitive who has served Ireland well and come through
danger to safety, is busy laying the foundations of a happy and
prosperous future, with a beloved wife and sister and young children
to brighten his home. An estate near Princeton, New Jersey, has been
all but bought, possibilities of a career in the new republic open
before him, when a letter comes from Belfast, asking him to return to
the post of danger, to undertake a mission to France for the sake of
Ireland. Let his own pen describe what happened: "I handed the letter
to my wife and sister and desired their opinion.... My wife
especially, whose courage and whose zeal for my honor and interest
were not in the least abated by all her past sufferings, supplicated
me to let no consideration of her or our children stand for a moment
in the way of my duty to our country, adding that she would answer
for our family during my absence and that the same Providence which
had so often, as it were, miraculously preserved us would not desert
us now."
Inspired by the fortitude of this noble woman, Tone went forth on his
perilous mission, and similarly the Young Ireland leaders, Mitchel
and Smith O'Brien, were sustained by the courage of their nearest and
dearest. "Eva," the poetess of the _Nation_, gave her troth-plight to
one who had prison and exile to face ere he could claim her hand.
Other names recur to me--"Speranza", with her lyric fire; Ellen
O'Leary, fervent and still patient and wise; Fanny Parnell and her
sister.
And what of the women of Ireland today? Shall they come short of the
high ideal of the past, falter and fail, if devotion and sacrifice
are required of them? Never: whilst they keep in memory and honor the
illustrious ones of whom I have written. The name of Irishwoman today
stands for steadfast virtue, for hospitality, for simple piety, for
cheerful endurance, and in a changing world let us trust it is the
will of God that in this there will be no change.