CHAPTER I

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THE IRISH RACE IN THE PAST AND THE PRESENT

by Rev. Aug. J. Thebaud, S.J.

PREFACE

COUNT JOSEPH DE MAISTRE, in his "Principe Generateur des Constitutions

Politiques" (Par. LXI.), says: "All nations manifest a particular

and distinctive character, which deserves to be attentively considered."

This thought of the great Catholic writer requires some development.

It is not by a succession of periods of progress and decay only

That nations manifest their life and individuality. Taking any

one of them at any period of its existence, and comparing it with

others, peculiarities immediately show themselves which give it a

particular physiognomy whereby it may be at once distinguished

from any other; so that, in those agglomerations of men which we

call nations or races, we see the variety everywhere observable

in Nature, the variety by which God manifests the infinite activity

of his creative power.

When we take two extreme types of the human species--the Ashantee

of Guinea, for instance, and any individual of one of the great

civilized communities of Europe-the phenomenon of which we speak

strikes us at once. But it may be remarked also, in comparing

nations which have lived for ages in contiguity, and held constant

intercourse one with the other from the time they began their

national life, whose only boundary-line has been a mountain-chain

or the banks of a broad river. They have each striking peculiarities

which individualize and stamp them with a character of their own.

How different are the peoples divided by the Rhine or by the

Pyrenees! How unlike those which the Straits of Dover run between!

And in Asia, what have the conterminous Chinese and Hindoos in

common beyond the general characteristics of the human species

which belong to all the children of Adam?

But what we must chiefly insist upon in the investigation we are

Now undertaking is, that the life of each is manifested by a

special physiognomy deeply imprinted in their whole history,

which we here call character. What each of them is their history

shows; and there is no better means of judging of them than by

reviewing the various events which compose their life.

For the various events which go to form what is called the

history of a nation are its individual actions, the spontaneous

energy of its life; and, as a man shows what he is by his acts,

so does a nation or a race by the facts of its history.

When we compare the vast despotisms of Asia, crystallized into

forms which have scarcely changed since the first settlement of

man in those immense plains, with the active and ever-moving

smaller groups of Europeans settled in the west of the Old World

since the dispersion of mankind, we see at a glance how the

characters of both may be read in their respective annals. And,

coming down gradually to less extreme cases, we recognize the

same phenomenon manifested even in contiguous tribes, springing

long ago, perhaps, from the same stock, but which have been

formed into distinct nations by distinct ancestors, although they

acknowledge a common origin. The antagonism in their character is

immediately brought out by what historians or annalists have to

say of them.

Are not the cruelty and rapacity of the old Scandinavian race

Still visible in their descendants? And the spirit of organization

displayed by them from the beginning in the seizure, survey, and

distribution of land--in the building of cities and castles--in

the wise speculations of an extensive commerce--may not all these

characteristics be read everywhere in the annals of the nations

sprung from that original stock, grouped thousands of years ago

around the Baltic and the Northern Seas?

How different appear the pastoral and agricultural tribes which

have, for the same length of time, inhabited the Swiss valleys and

mountains! With a multitude of usages, differing all, more or less,

from each other; with, perhaps, a wretched administration of

internal affairs; with frequent complaints of individuals, and

partial conflicts among the rulers of those small communities--with

all these defects, their simple and ever-uniform chronicles reveal

to us at once the simplicity and peaceful disposition of their

character; and, looking at them through the long ages of an obscure

life, we at once recognize the cause of their general happiness in

their constant want of ambition.

And if, in the course of centuries, the character of a nation has

changed--an event which seldom takes place, and when it does is

due always to radical causes--its history will immediately make

known to us the cause of the change, and point out unmistakably

its origin and source.

Why is it, for instance, that the French nation, after having lived

for near a thousand years under a single dynasty, cannot now find

a government agreeable to its modern aspirations? It is insufficient

to ascribe the fact to the fickleness of the French temper. During

ten centuries no European nation has been more uniform and more

attached to its government. If to-day the case is altogether

reversed, the fact cannot be explained except by a radical change

in the character of the nation. Firmly fixed by its own national

determination of purpose and by the deep studies of the Middle

Ages--nowhere more remarkable than in Paris, which was at that

time the centre of the activity of Catholic Europe--the French

mind, first thrown by Protestantism into the vortex of controversy,

gradually declined to the consideration of mere philosophical

utopias, until, rejecting at last its long-received convictions,

it abandoned itself to the ever-shifting delusions of opinions and

theories, which led finally to skepticism and unbelief in every

branch of knowledge, even the most necessary to the happiness of

any community of men. Other causes, no doubt, might also be assigned

for the remarkable change now under our consideration. The one we

have pointed out was the chief.

To the same causes, acting now on a larger scale throughout Europe,

we ascribe the same radical changes which we see taking place in

the various nations composing it: every thing brought everywhere

in question; the mind of all unsettled; a real anarchy of intellect

spreading wider and wider even in countries which until now had

stood firm against it. Hence constant revolutions unheard of

hitherto; nothing stable; and men expecting with awe a more

frightful and radical overturning still of every thing that makes

life valuable and dear.

Are not these tragic convulsions the black and spotted types

wherein we read the altered character of modern nations; are they

not the natural expression of their fitful and delirious life?

These considerations, which might be indefinitely prolonged, show

the truth of the phrase of Joseph de Maistre that "all nations

manifest a particular and distinctive character, which deserves

to be attentively considered."

The fact is, in this kind of study is contained the only possible

philosophy of history for modern times.

With respect to ages that have passed away, to nations which have

run their full course, a nobler study is possible--the more so

because inspired writers have traced the way. Thus Bossuet wrote

his celebrated "Discours." But he stopped wisely at the coming of

our Lord. As to the events anterior to that great epoch, he spoke

often like a prophet of ancient times; he seemed at times to be

initiated in the designs of God himself. And, in truth, he had

them traced by the very Spirit of God; and, lifted by his elevated

mind to the level of those sublime thoughts, he had only to touch

them with the magic of his style.

But of subsequent times he did not speak, except to rehearse

the well-known facts of modern history, whose secret is not yet

revealed, because their development is still being worked out,

and no conclusion has been reached which might furnish the key

to the whole.

There remains, therefore, but one thing to do: to consider

each nation apart, and read its character in its history. Should

this be done for all, the only practical philosophy of modern

history would be written. For then we should have accomplished

morally for men what, in the physical order, zoologists accomplish

for the immense number of living beings which God has spread

over the surface of the earth. They might be classified according

to a certain order of the ascending or descending moral scale.

We could judge them rightly, conformably with the standard of

right or wrong, which is in the absolute possession of the Christian

conscience. Brilliant but baneful qualities would no longer

impose on the credulity of mankind, and men would not be led

astray in their judgments by the rule of expediency or success

which generally dictates to historians the estimate they form and

inculcate on their readers of the worth of some nations, and the

insignificance or even odiousness of others.

In the impossibility under which we labor of penetrating, at

the present time, the real designs of Providence with respect to

the various races of men, so great an undertaking, embracing the

principal, if not all, modern races, would be one of the most

useful efforts of human genius for the spread of truth and virtue

among men.

Our purport is not of such vast import. We shall take in

these pages for the object of our study one of the smallest and,

apparently, most insignificant nations of modern Europe--the

Irish. For several ages they have lost even what generally

constitutes the basis of nationality, self-government; yet they have

preserved their individuality as strongly marked as though they

were still ruled by the O'Neill dynasty.

And we may here remark that the number of a people and the

size of its territory have absolutely no bearing on the estimate

which we ought to form of its character. Who would say that

the Chinese are the most interesting and commendable nation

on the surface of the globe? They are certainly the most ancient

and most populous; their code of precise and formal morality is

the most exact and clear that philosophers could ever dictate,

and succeed in giving as law to a great people. That code

has been followed during a long series of ages. Most discoveries

of modern European science were known to them long before

they were found out among us; agriculture, that first of arts,

which most economists consider as the great test whereby to

judge of the worth of a nation, is and always has been carried by

them to a perfection unknown to us. Yet, the smallest European

nationality is, in truth, more interesting and instructive than

the vast Celestial Empire can ever be--whose long annals

are all compassed within a few hundred pages of a frigid

narrative, void of life, and altogether void of soul.

But why do we select, among so many others, the Irish nation,

which is so little known, of such little influence, whose history

occupies only a few lines in the general annals of the world,

and whose very ownership has rested in the hands of foreigners

for centuries?

We select it, first, because it is and always has been thoroughly

Catholic, from the day when it first embraced Christianity;

and this, under the circumstances, we take to be the best proof,

not only of supreme good sense, but, moreover, of an elevated,

even a sublime character. In their martyrdom of three centuries,

the Irish have displayed the greatness of soul of a Polycarp,

and the simplicity of an Agnes. And the Catholicity which

they have always professed has been, from the beginning, of a

thorough and uncompromising character. All modern European

nations, it is true, have had their birth in the bosom of the

Church. She had nursed them all, educated them all, made

them all what they were, when they began to think of emancipating

themselves from her; and the Catholic, that is, the Christian

religion, in its essence, is supernatural; the creed of the

apostles, the sacramental system; the very history of Christianity,

transport man directly into a region far beyond the earth.

Wherever the Christian religion has been preached, nations

have awakened to this new sense of faith in the supernatural,

and it is there they have tasted of that strong food which made

and which makes them still so superior to all other races of men.

But, as we shall see, in no country has this been the case so

thoroughly as in Ireland. Whatever may have been the cause, the

Irish were at once, and have ever since continued, thoroughly

impregnated with supernatural ideas. For several centuries after

St. Patrick the island was "the Isle of Saints," a place midway

between heaven and earth, where angels and the saints of heaven

came to dwell with mere mortals. The Christian belief was

adopted by them to the letter; and, if Christianity is truth,

ought it not to be so? Such a nation, then, which received such

a thorough Christian education--an education never repudiated

one iota during the ages following its reception--deserves a

thorough examination at our hands.

We select it, secondly, because the Irish have successfully

refused ever since to enter into the various currents of European

opinion, although, by position and still more by religion, they

formed a part of Europe. They have thus retained a character of

their own, unlike that of any other nation. To this day, they

stand firm in their admirable stubbornness; and thus, when Europe

shall be shaken and tottering, they will still stand firm. In

the words of Moore, addressed to his own country:

"The nations have fallen and thou still art young;

Thy sun is just rising when others are set;

And though slavery's cloud o'er thy morning hath hung,

The full noon of freedom shall beam round thee yet."

That constant refusal of the Irish to fall in with the rapid torrent

of European thought and progress, as it is called, is the strangest

phenomenon in their history, and gives them at first an outlandish

look, which many have not hesitated to call barbarism. We hope

thoroughly to vindicate their character from such a foul aspersion,

and to show this phenomenon as the secret cause of their final

success, which is now all but secured; and this feature alone of

their national life adds to their character an interest which we

find in no other Christian nation.

We select it, thirdly, because there is no doubt that the Irish

is the most ancient nationality of Western Europe; and although,

as in the case of the Chinese, the advantage of going up to the

very cradle of mankind is not sufficient to impart interest to

frigid annals, when that prerogative is united to a vivid life

and an exuberant individuality, nothing contributes more to render

a nation worthy of study than hoariness of age, and its derivation

from a certain and definite primitive stock.

It is true that, in reading the first chapters of all the various

histories of Ireland, the foreign reader is struck and almost

shocked by the dogmatism of the writers, who invariably, and with

a truly Irish assurance, begin with one of the sons of Japhet, and,

following the Hebrew or Septuagint chronology, describe without

flinching the various colonizations of Erin, not omitting the

synchronism of Assyrian, Persian, Greek, and Roman history. A

smile is at first the natural consequence of such assertions; and,

indeed, there is no obligation whatever to believe that every thing

happened exactly as they relate.

But when the large quartos and octavos which are now published from

time to time by the students of Irish antiquarian lore are opened,

read, and pondered over, at least one consequence is drawn from

them which strikes the reader with astonishment. "There can be no

doubt," every candid mind says to itself, "that this nation has

preceded in time all those which have flourished on the earth, with

the exception, perhaps, of the Chinese, and that it remains the same

to-day." At least, many years before Christ, a race of men inhabited

Ireland exactly identical with its present population (except that

it did not enjoy the light of the true religion), yet very superior

to it in point of material well-being. Not a race of cannibals, as

the credulous Diodorus Siculus, on the strength of some vague

tradition, was pleased to delineate; but a people acquainted with

the use of the precious metals, with the manufacture of fine tissues,

fond of music and of song, enjoying its literature and its books;

often disturbed, it is true, by feuds and contentions, but, on the

whole, living happily under the patriarchal rule of the clan system.

The ruins which are now explored, the relics of antiquity which

are often exhumed, the very implements and utensils preserved by

the careful hand of the antiquarian--every thing, so different

from the rude flint arrows and barbarous weapons of our North

American Indians and of the European savages of the Stone period,

denotes a state of civilization, astonishing indeed, when we reflect

that real objects of art embellished the dwellings of Irishmen

probably before the foundation of Rome, and perhaps when Greece

was as yet in a state of heroic barbarism.

And this high antiquity is proved by literature as well as by art.

"The ancient Irish," says one of their latest historians, M.

Haverty, "attributed the utmost importance to the accuracy of their

Historic compositions for social reasons. Their whole system of

society--every question as to right of property--turned upon the

descent of families and the principle of clanship; so that it cannot

be supposed that mere fables would be tolerated instead of facts,

where every social claim was to be decided on their authority. A

man's name is scarcely mentioned in our annals without the addition

of his forefathers for several generations--a thing which rarely

occurs in those of other countries.

"Again, when we arrive at the era of Christianity in Ireland, we

find that our ancient annals stand the test of verification by

science with a success which not only establishes their character

for truthfulness at that period, but vindicates the records of

preceding dates involved in it."

The most confirmed skeptic cannot refuse to believe that at the

introduction of Christianity into Ireland, in 432, the whole island

was governed by institutions exactly similar to those of Gaul when

Julius Caesar entered it 400 years before; that this state must

have existed for a long time anterior to that date; and that the

reception of the new religion, with all the circumstances which

attended it, introduced the nation at once into a happy and social

state, which other European countries, at that time convulsed by

barbarian invasions, did not attain till several centuries later.

These various considerations would alone suffice to show the real

importance of the study we undertake; but a much more powerful

incentive to it exists in the very nature of the annals of the

nation itself.

Ireland is a country which, during the last thousand years, has

maintained a constant struggle against three powerful enemies,

and has finally conquered them all.

The first stage of the conflict was that against the Northmen.

It lasted three centuries, and ended in the almost complete

disappearance of this foe.

The second act of the great drama occupied a period of four Hundred

years, during which all the resources of the Irish clans were arrayed

against Anglo-Norman feudalism, which had finally to succumb; so

that Erin remained the only spot in Europe where feudal institutions

never prevailed.

The last part of this fearful trilogy was a conflict of three centuries

with Protestantism; and the final victory is no longer doubtful.

Can any other modern people offer to the meditation, and, we must

say, to the admiration of the Christian reader, a more interesting

spectacle? The only European nation which can almost compete with

the constancy and never-dying energy of Ireland is the Spanish in

its struggle of seven centuries with the Moors.

We have thought, therefore, that there might be some real interest

and profit to be derived from the study of this eventful national

life--an interest and a profit which will appear as we study it

more in detail.

It may be said that the threefold conflict which we have outlined

might be condensed into the surprising fact that all efforts to

drag Ireland into the current of European affairs and influence

have invariably failed. This is the key to the understanding of

her whole history.

Even originally, when it formed but a small portion of the great

Celtic race, here existed in the Irish branch a peculiarity of its

own, which stamped it with features easy to be distinguished. The

gross idolatry of the Gauls never prevailed among the Irish; the

Bardic system was more fully developed among them than among any

other Celtic nation. Song, festivity, humor, ruled there much more

universally than elsewhere. There were among them more harpers and

poets than even genealogists and antiquarians, although the branches

of study represented by these last were certainly as well cultivated

among them as among the Celts of Gaul, Spain, or Italy.

But it is chiefly after the introduction of Christianity among

them, when it appeared finally decreed that they should belong

morally and socially to Europe, it is chiefly then that their

purpose, however unconscious they may have been of its tendency,

seems more defined of opening up for themselves a path of their

own. And in this they followed only the promptings of Nature.

The only people in Europe which remained untouched by what is

called Roman civilization--never having seen a Roman soldier on

their shores; never having been blessed by the construction of

Roman baths and amphitheatres; never having listened to the

declamations of Roman rhetoricians and sophists, nor received the

decrees of Roman praetors, nor been subject to the exactions of

the Roman fisc--they never saw among them, in halls and basilicas

erected under the direction of Roman architects, Roman judges,

governors, proconsuls, enforcing the decrees of the Caesars

against the introduction or propagation of the Christian religion.

Hence it entered in to them without opposition and bloodshed.

But the new religion, far from depriving them of their characteristics,

consecrated and made them lasting. They had their primitive traditions

and tastes, their patriarchal government and manners, their ideas of

true freedom and honor, reaching back almost to the cradle of mankind.

They resolved to hold these against all comers, and they have been

faithful to their resolve down to our own times. Fourteen hundred years

of history since Patrick preached to them proves it clearly enough.

First, then, although the Germanic tribes of the first invasion,

as it is called, did not reach their shore, for the reason that

the Germans, as little as the Celts, never possessed a navy--although

neither Frank, nor Vandal, nor Hun, renewed among them the horrors

witnessed in Gaul, Spain, Italy, and Africa--they could not remain

safe from the Scandinavian pirates, whose vessels scoured all the

northern seas before they could enter the Mediterranean through

the Straits of Gibraltar.

The Northmen, the Danes, came and tried to establish themselves

among them and inculcate their northern manners, system, and

municipal life. They succeeded in England, Holland, the north of

France, and the south of Italy; in a word, wherever the wind had

driven their hide-bound boats. The Irish was the only nation of

Western Europe which beat them back, and refused to receive the

boon of their higher civilization.

As soon as the glories of the reign of Charlemagne had gone down

in a sunset of splendor, the Northmen entered unopposed all the

great rivers of France and Spain. They speedily conquered England.

On all sides they ravaged the country and destroyed the population,

whose only defence consisted in prayers to Heaven, with here and

there an heroic bishop or count. In Ireland alone the Danes found

to their cost that the Irish spear was thrust with a steady and

firm hand; and after two hundred years of struggle not only had

they not arrived at the survey and division of the soil, as wherever

else they had set foot, but, after Clontarf, the few cities they

still occupied were compelled to pay tribute to the Irish Ard-Righ.

Hence all attempts to substitute the Scandinavian social system

for that of the Irish septs and clans were forever frustrated.

City life and maritime enterprises, together with commerce and trade,

were as scornfully rejected as the worship of Thor and Odin.

Soon after this first victory of Ireland over Northern Europe, the

Anglo-Norman invasion originated a second struggle of longer

duration and mightier import. The English Strongbow replaced the

Danes with Norman freebooters, who occupied the precise spots

which the new owners had reconquered from the Northmen, and never

an inch more. Then a great spectacle was offered to the world,

which has too much escaped the observation of historians, and

to which we intend to draw the attention of our readers.

The primitive, simple, patriarchal system of clanship was

Confronted by the stern, young, ferocious feudal system, which

was then beginning to prevail all over Europe. The question was,

Would Ireland consent to become European as Europe was then

organizing herself? The struggle, as we shall see, between the

Irish and the English in the twelfth century and later on, was

merely a contest between the sept system and feudalism, involving,

it is true, the possession of land. And, at the end of a contest

lasting four hundred years, feudalism was so thoroughly defeated

that the English of the Pale adopted the Irish manners, customs,

and even language, and formed only new septs among the old ones.

Hence Ireland escaped all the commotions produced in Europe by

the consequences of the feudal system:

I. Serfdom, which was generally substituted for slavery, never

existed in Ireland, slavery having disappeared before the entry

of the Anglo-Normans.

II. The universal oppression of the lower classes, which caused

the simultaneous rising of the communes all over Europe, never

having existed in Ireland, we shall not be surprised to find no

mention in Irish history of that wide-spread institution of the

eleventh and following centuries.

III. An immense advantage which Ireland derived from her isolation,

on which she always insisted, was her being altogether freed from

the fearful mediaeval heresies which convulsed France particularly

for a long period, and which invariably came from the East.

For Erin remained so completely shut off from the rest of Europe,

that, in spite of its ardent Catholicism, the Crusades were never

preached to its inhabitants; and, if some individual Irishman

joined the ranks of the warriors led to Palestine by Richard Coeur

de Lion, the nation was in no way affected by the good or bad

results which everywhere ensued from the marching of the Christian

armies against the Moslem.

The sects which sprang from Manicheism were certainly an evil

consequence of the holy wars; and it would be a great error to

think that those heresies were short-lived and affected only for

a brief space of time the social and moral state of Europe. It may

be said that their fearfully disorganizing influence lasts to this

day. If modern secret societies do not, in point of fact, derive

their existence directly from the Bulgarism and Manicheism of the

Middle Ages, there is no doubt that those dark errors, which Imposed

on all their adepts a stern secrecy, paved the way for the conspiracies

of our times. Hence Ireland, not having felt the effect of the former

heresies, is in our days almost free from the universal contagion now

decomposing the social fabric on all sides.

But it is chiefly in modern times that the successful resistance

offered by Ireland to many wide-spread European evils, and its

strong attachment to its old customs, will evoke our wonder.

Clanship reigned still over more than four-fifths of the island

when the Portuguese were conquering a great part of India, and

the Spaniards making Central and South America a province of

their almost universal monarchy.

The poets, harpers, antiquarians, genealogists, and students of

Brehon law, still held full sway over almost the whole island,

when the revival of pagan learning was, we may say, convulsing

Italy, giving a new direction to the ideas of Germany, and

penetrating France, Holland, and Switzerland. Happy were the

Irish to escape that brilliant but fatal invasion of mythology

and Grecian art and literature! Had they not received enough of

Greek and Latin lore at the hands of their first apostles and

missionaries, and through the instrumentality of the numerous

amanuenses and miniaturists in their monasteries and convents?

Those holy men had brought them what Christian Rome had purified

of the old pagan dross, and sanctified by the new Divine Spirit.

Virgin Ireland having thus remained undefiled, and never having

even been agitated by all those earlier causes of succeeding

revolutions, Protestantism, the final explosion of them all, could

make no impression on her--a fact which remains to this day the

brightest proof of her strength and vigor.

But, before speaking of this last conflict, we must meet an objection

which will naturally present itself.

To steadily refuse to enter into the current of European thought,

and object to submit in any way to its influence, is, pretend many,

really to reject the claims of civilization, and persist in refusing

to enter upon the path of progress. The North American savage has

always been most persistent in this stubborn opposition to civilized

life, and no one has as yet considered this a praiseworthy attribute.

The more barbarous a tribe, the more firmly it adheres to its

traditions, the more pertinaciously it follows the customs of its

ancestors. They are immovable, and cannot be brought to adopt

usages new to them, even when they see the immense advantages

they would reap from their adoption. Hence the greater number of

writers, chiefly English, who have treated of Irish affairs,

unhesitatingly call them barbarians, precisely on account of their

stubbornness in rejecting the advances of the Anglo-Norman invaders.

Sir John Davies, the attorney-general of James I., could scarcely

write a page on the subject without reverting to this idea.

We answer that the Irish, even before their conversion to

Christianity, but chiefly after, were not barbarians; they never

opposed true progress; and they became, in fact, in the sixth,

seventh, and eighth centuries, the moral and scientific educators

of the greater part of Europe. What they refused to adopt they

were right in rejecting. But, as there are still many men who,

without ever having studied the question, do not hesitate, even

in our days, to throw barbarism in their teeth, and attribute to

it the pitiable condition which the Irish to-day present to the

world, we add a few further considerations on this point.

First, then, we say, barbarians have no history; and the Irish

certainly had a history long before St. Patrick converted them.

Until lately, it is true, the common opinion of writers on Ireland

was adverse to this assertion of ours; but, after the labors of

modern antiquarians--of such men as O'Donovan, Todd, E. O'Curry,

and others--there can no longer be any doubt on the subject. If

Julius Caesar was right in stating that the Druids of Gaul

confined themselves to oral teaching--and the statement may very

well be questioned, with the light of present information on the

subject--it is now proved that the Ollamhs of Erin kept written

annals which went back to a very remote age of the world. The

numerous histories and chronicles written by monks of the sixth

and following centuries, the authenticity of which cannot be denied,

evidently presuppose anterior compositions dating much farther back

than the introduction of our holy religion into Ireland, which the

Christian annalists had in their hands when they wrote their books,

sometimes in Latin, sometimes in old Irish, sometimes in a strange

medley of both languages. It is now known that St. Patrick brought

to Ireland the Roman alphabet only, and that it was thenceforth

used not merely for the ritual of the Church, and the dissemination

of the Bible and of the works of the Holy Fathers, but likewise

for the transcription, in these newly-consecrated symbols of thought,

of the old manuscripts of the island; which soon disappeared, in

the far greater number of instances at least, owing to the favor

in which the Roman characters were held by the people and their

instructors the bishops and monks. Let those precious old symbols

be called Ogham, or by any other name--there must have been something

of the kind.

If any one insists that such was not the case, he must of necessity

admit that the oral teaching of the Ollamhs was so perfect and so

universally current in the same formulas all over the island, that

such oral teaching really took the place of writing; and in this

case, also, which is scarcely possible, however, Ireland had an

authentic history. This last supposition, certainly, can hardly

be credited; and yet, if the first be rejected, it must be admitted,

since it cannot be imagined that subsequent Irish historians,

numerous as they became in time, could have agreed so well

together, and remained so consistent with themselves, and so

perfectly accurate in their descriptions of places and things in

general, without anterior authentic documents of some kind or other,

on which they could rely. Any person who has merely glanced at

the astonishing production called the "Annals of the Four Masters,"

must necessarily be of this opinion.

In no nation in the world are there found so many old histories,

annals, chronicles, etc., as among the Irish; and that fact alone

suffices to prove that in periods most ancient they were truly a

civilized nation, since they attached such importance to the

records of events then taking place among them.

But the Irish were, moreover, a branch of the great Celtic race,

whose renown for wisdom, science, and valor, was spread through

all parts, particularly among the Greeks. The few details we

purpose giving on the subject will convince the reader that among

the nations of antiquity they held a prominent position; and not

only were they possessed of a civilization of their own, not

despicable even in the eyes of a Roman--of the great Julius

himself--but they were ever most susceptible of every kind of

progress, and consequently eager to adopt all the social benefits

which their intercourse with Rome brought them. At least, they

did so as soon as, acknowledging the superior power of the enemy,

they had the good sense to feel that it was all-important to

imitate him. Hence sprang that Gallo-Roman civilization which

obtained during the first five or six centuries of the Christian

era--a civilization which the barbarians of the North endeavored

to destroy, but to which they themselves finally yielded, by

embracing Christianity, and gradually changing their language

and customs.

Everywhere--in Gaul, Italy, Britain, and Ireland--did the Celts

manifest that susceptibility to progress which is the invariable

mark of a state antagonistic to barbarism. In this they totally

differed from the Vandals and Huns, whom it took the Church such

a dreary period to conquer, and whom no other power save the

religion of Christ could have subdued.

These few words are sufficient for our present purpose. We proceed

to show that, in their stubborn opposition to many a current of

European opinion, they acted rightly.

They acted rightly, first of all, in excluding from their course

of studies at Bangor, Clonfert, Armagh, Clonmacnoise, and other

places, the subtleties of Greek philosophy, which occasioned

heresies in Europe and Asia during the first ages of the Church,

and were the cause of so many social and political convulsions.

By adhering strictly---a little too strictly, perhaps--to their

traditional method of developing thought, they kept error far from

their universities, and presented, in the sixth, seventh, and eighth

centuries, the remarkable spectacle in Ireland, France, Germany,

Switzerland, and even Northern Italy, of numerous schools wherein

no wrangling found a place, and whence never issued a single

proposition which Rome found reason to censure. They were at that

time the educators of Christian Europe, and not even a breath of

suspicion was ever raised against any one of their innumerable

teachers. If their mind, in general, did not on that account

attain the acuteness of the French, Italians, or Germans, it was

at all times safer and more guarded. Even their later hostility

to the English Pale, after the eleventh century, was most useful,

from its warning against the teachings of prelates sent from the

English Universities of Oxford and Cambridge; and Rome seems to

have approved of that opposition, by using all her power in

appointing to Irish sees, even within the Pale, prelates chosen

from the Augustinian, Dominican, Franciscan, and Carmelite orders,

in preference to secular ecclesiastics educated in the great seats

of English learning.

Thus the Irish, by opening their schools gratuitously to all Europe,

but chiefly to Anglo-Saxon England, were not only of immense service

to the Church, but showed how fully they appreciated the benefits

of true civilization, and how ready they were to extend it by their

traditional teaching. Nor did they confine themselves to receiving

scholars in their midst: they sent abroad, during those ages, armies

of zealous missionaries and learned men to Christianize the heathen,

or educate the newly-converted Germanic tribes in Merovingian and

Carlovingian Gaul, in Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian England, in

Lombardian Italy, in the very hives of those ferocious tribes

which peopled the ever-moving and at that time convulsed Germany.

II. They were right in refusing to submit to the Scandinavian yoke,

and accept from those who would impose it their taste for city life,

and the spirit of maritime enterprise and extensive commerce. We

shall see that this was at the bottom of their two centuries of

struggle with the Danes; that they were animated throughout that

conflict by their ardent zeal for the Christian religion, which

the Northmen came to destroy. There is no need of dwelling on this

point, as we are not aware that any one, even their bitterest

enemies, has found fault with them here.

III. They were right in opposing feudalism, and steadily refusing

to admit it on their soil. Feudal Europe beheld with surprise the

inhabitants of a small island on the verge of the Western Continent

level to the ground the feudal castles as soon as they were built;

reject with scorn the invaders' claim to their soil, after they

had signed papers which they could not understand; hold fast to

their patriarchal usages in opposition to the new-born European

notions of paramount kings, of dukes, earls, counts, and viscounts;

fight for four hundred years against what the whole of Europe had

everywhere else accepted, and conquer in the end; so that the Irish

of to-day can say with just pride, "Our island has never submitted

to mediaeval feudalism."

And hence the island has escaped the modern results of the system,

which we all witness to-day in the terrible hostility of class

arrayed against class, the poor against the rich, the lower orders

against the higher. The opposition in Ireland between the oppressed

and the oppressor is of a very different character, is we shall see

later. But the fact is, that the clan system, with all its striking

defects, had at least this immense advantage, that the clansmen did

not look upon their chieftains as "lords and masters," but as men

of the same blood, true relations, and friends; neither did the

heads of the clans look on their men as villeins, serfs, or chattels,

but as companions-in-arms, foster-brothers, supporters, and allies.

Hence the opposition which exists in our days throughout Europe

between class and class, has never existed in Ireland. Let a son

of their old chiefs, if one can yet be found, go back to them,

even but for a few days, after centuries of estrangement, and

they are ready to welcome him yet, as a loyal nation would welcome

her long-absent king, as a family would receive a father it esteemed

lost. We knowing what manner a son of a French McMahon was lately

received among them.

All hostility is reserved for the foreigner, the invader, the

oppressor of centuries, because, in the opinion of the natives,

these have no real right to dwell on a soil they have impoverished,

and which they tried in vain to enslave. This, at least, is their

feeling. But the sons of the soil, whether rich or poor, high or

low, are all united in a holy brotherhood. This state of things

they have preserved by the exclusion of feudalism.

IV. The Irish were right in not accepting from Europe what is

known as the "revival of learning;" at least, as carried almost

to the excess of modern paganism by its first promoters.

This "revival" did not reach Ireland. Many will, doubtless,

attribute this fact to the almost total exclusion then supposed

to exist of Ireland from all European intercourse. It would be

a great error to imagine such to have been the cause. Indeed, at

that very time, Ireland was more in daily contact with Italy,

France, and Spain, than had been the case since the eighth century.

If the Irish were right in holding steadfast to the line of their

traditional studies, in rejecting the city life and commercial

spirit of the Danes, in opposing Anglo-Norman feudalism, and,

finally, in not accepting the more than doubtful advantages flowing

from the literary revival of the fifteenth century; if, in all

this, they did not oppose true progress, but merely wished to

advance in the peculiar path opened up to them by the Christianity

which they had received more fully, with more earnestness, and

with a view to a greater development of the supernatural idea,

than any other European nation--then, beyond all other modes, did

they display their strength of will and their undying national

vitality in their resistance to Protestantism--a resistance which

has been called opposition to progress, but the success of which

to-day proves beyond question that they were right.

It was, the reader may remark, a resistance to the whole of

Northern Europe, wherein their island was included. For, the

whole of Northern Europe rebelled against the Church at the

beginning of the sixteenth century, to enter upon a new road of

progress and civilization, as it has been called, ending finally

in the frightful abyss of materialism and atheism which now gapes

under the feet of modern nations--an abyss in whose yawning womb

nullus ordo, sed sempiternus horror habitat. The end of that

progress is now plain enough: political and social convulsions,

without any other probable issue than final anarchy, unless nations

consent at last to retrace their steps and reorganize Christendom.

But this was not apparent to the eyes of ordinary thinkers in the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Only a few great minds saw

the logical consequences of the premises laid down by Protestantism,

and predicted something of what we now see.

The Irish was the only northern nation which, to a man, opposed

the terrible delusion, and, at the cost of all that is dear, waged

against it a relentless war.

"To a man;" for, in spite of all the wiles of Henry VIII., who

brought every resource of his political talent into play, in order

to win over to his side the great chieftains of the nation--in

spite of all the efforts of Elizabeth, who either tried to overcome

their resistance by her numerous armies, or, by the allurements

of her court, strove her best, like her father, to woo to her

allegiance the great leaders of the chief clans, particularly O'Neill

of Tyrone--at the end of her long reign, after nearly a hundred

years of Protestantism, only sixty Irishmen of all classes had

received the new religion.

At first, the struggle assumed a character more political than

religious, and Queen Elizabeth did her best to give it, apparently,

that character. But for her, religion meant politics; and, had the

Irish consented to accept the religious changes introduced by her

father and herself, there would have been no question of

"rebellion," and no army would have been sent to crush it. The

Irish chieftains knew this well; hence, whenever the queen came

to terms with them, the first article on which they invariably

insisted was the freedom of their religion.

But, under the Stuarts, and later on, the mask was entirely thrown

aside, and the question between England and Ireland reduced itself,

we may say, to one of religion merely. All the political

entanglements in which the Irish found themselves involved by their

loyalty to the Stuarts and their opposition to the Roundheads, never

constituted the chief difficulty of their position. They were

"Papists:" this was their great crime in the eyes of their enemies.

Cromwell would certainly never have endeavored to exterminate them

as he did, had they apostatized and become ranting Puritans. One of

our main points in the following pages will be to give prominence to

this view of the question. If it had been understood from the first,

the army of heroes who died for their God and their country would

long ere this have been enrolled in the number of Christian martyrs.

The subsequent policy of England, chiefly after the English

Revolution of 1688 and the defeat of James II., clearly shows the

soundness of our interpretation of history. The "penal code," under

Queen Anne, and later on, at least has the merit of being free from

hypocrisy and cant. It is an open religious persecution, as, in

fact, it had been from the beginning.

We shall have, therefore, before our eyes the great spectacle of

a nation suffering a martyrdom of three centuries. All the

persecutions of the Christians under the Roman emperors pale

before this long era of penalty and blood. The Irish, by numerous

decrees of English kings and parliaments, were deprived of every

thing which a man not guilty of crime has a right to enjoy. Land,

citizenship, the right of education, of acquiring property, of

living on their own soil--every thing was denied them, and death

in every form was decreed, in every line of the new Protestant

code, to men, women, and even children, whose only crime consisted

in remaining faithful to their religion.

But chiefly during the Cromwellian war and the nine years of the

Protector's reign were they doomed to absolute, unrelenting

destruction. Never has any thing in the whole history of mankind

equalled it in horror, unless the devastation of Asia and Eastern

Europe under Zengis and Timour.

There is, therefore, at the bottom of the Irish character, hidden

under an appearance of light-headedness, mutability of feeling--nay,

at times, futility and even childishness--a depth of according to

the eternal laws which God gave to mankind. Nothing else is in

their mind; they are pursuing no guilty and shadowy Utopia. Who

knows, then, whether their small island may not yet become the

beacon-light which, guiding other nations, shall at a future day

save Europe from the universal shipwreck which threatens her?

The providential mission of Ireland is far from being accomplished,

and men may yet see that not in vain has she been tried so long in

the crucible of affliction.

Another part of the providential plan as affecting her will show

itself, and excite our admiration, in the latter portion of the

work we undertake.

The Irish are no longer confined to the small island which gave

them birth. From the beginning of their great woes, they have

known the bitterness of exile. Their nobility were the first to

leave in a body a land wherein they could no longer exist; and,

during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they made the

Irish name illustrious on all the battle-fields of Europe. At the

same time, many of their priests and monks, unable longer to labor

among their countrymen, spent their lives in the libraries, of

Italy, Belgium, and Spain, and gave to the world those immense

works so precious now to the antiquarian and historian. Every one

knows what Montalembert, in particular, found in them. They may be

said to have preserved the annals of their nation from total ruin;

and the names of the O'Clearys, of Ward and Wadding, of Colgan and

Lynch, are becoming better known and appreciated every day, as

their voluminous works are more studied and better understood.

But much more remarkable still is the immense spread of the people

itself during the present age, so fruitful in happy results for

the Church of Christ and the good of mankind. We may say that the

labors of the Irish missionaries during the seventh and eighth

centuries are to-day eclipsed by the truly missionary work of a

whole nation spread now over North America, the West India Islands,

the East Indies, and the wilds of Australia; in a word, wherever

the English language is spoken. Whatever may have been the visible

causes of that strange "exodus," there is an invisible cause clear

enough to any one who meditates on the designs of God over his

Church. There is no presumption in attributing to God himself what

could only come from Him. The catholicity of the Church was to be

spread and preserved through and in all those vast regions colonized

now by the adventurous English nation; and no better, no more

simple way of effecting this could be conceived than the one whose

workings we see in those colonies so distant from the mother-country.

This, for the time being, is the chief providential mission of

Ireland, and it is truly a noble one, undertaken and executed in

a noble manner by so many thousands, nay millions, of men and

women--poor, indeed, in worldly goods when they start on their

career, but rich in faith; and it is as true now as it has ever

been from the beginning of Christianity, that haec est victoria

nostra, fides vestra.

These few words of our Preface would not suffice to prepare the

reader for the high importance of this stupendous phenomenon. We

We purpose, therefore, devoting our second chapter to the subject,

as a preparation for the very interesting details we shall furnish

subsequently, as it is proper that, from the very threshold, an

idea may be formed of the edifice, and of the entire proportions

it is destined to assume.

We have so far sketched, as briefly as possible, what the following

pages will develop; and the reader may now begin to understand

what we said at starting, that no other nation in Europe offers so

interesting an object of study and reflection.

Plato has said that the most meritorious spectacle in the eyes of

God was that of "a just man struggling with adversity." What must

it be when a whole nation, during nine long ages, offers to Heaven

the most sublime virtues in the midst of the extremest trials? Are

not the great lessons which such a contest presents worthy of study

and admiration?

We purpose studying them, although we cannot pretend to render

full justice to such a theme. And, returning for a moment to the

considerations with which we started, we can truly say that, in

the whole range of modern history, it would be difficult, if not

impossible, to find a national life to compare with that of poor,

despised Ireland. Neither do we pretend to write the history itself;

our object is more humble: we merely pen some considerations

suggested naturally by the facts which we suppose to be already

known, with the purpose of arriving at a true appreciation of the

character of the people. For it is the people itself we study;

the reader will meet with comparatively few individual names.

We shall find, moreover, that the nation has never varied. Its

history is an unbroken series of the same heroic facts, the same

terrible misfortunes. The actors change continually; the outward

circumstances at every moment present new aspects, so that the

interest never flags; but the spirit of the struggle is ever the

same, and the latest descendants of the first O'Neills and

O'Donnells burn with the same sacred fire, and are inspired by

the same heroic aspirations, as their fathers.

Happily, the gloom is at length lighted up by returning day. The

contest has lost its ferocity, and we are no longer surrounded

by the deadly shade which obscured the sky a hundred years ago.

Then it was hard to believe that the nation could ever rise; her

final success seemed almost an impossibility. We now see that

those who then despaired sinned against Providence, which waited

for its own time to arrive and vindicate its ways. And it is

chiefly on account of the bright hope which begins to dawn that

our subject should possess for all a lively interest, and fill the

Catholic heart with glowing sympathy and ardent thankfulness to God.

CONTENTS

I The Celtic Race

II The World Under The Lead Of European Races.--Mission Of The

Irish Race In The Movement

III The Irish Better Prepared To Receive Christianity Than Other Nations

IV How the Irish received Christianity

V The Christian Irish and the Pagan Danes

VI The Irish Free-Clans and Anglo-Norman Feudalism

VII Ireland separated from Europe.--A Triple Episode

VIII The Irish and the Tudors.--Henry VIII.

IX The Irish and the Tudors.--Elizabeth.--The Undaunted Nobility.--The

Suffering Church

X England prepared for the Reception of Protestantism--Ireland not

XI The Irish and the Stuarts.--Loyalty and Confiscation

XII A Century of Gloom.--The Penal Laws

XIII Resurrection.--Delusive Hopes

XIV Resurrection.--Emigration

XV The "Exodus" and its Effects

XVI Moral Force all-sufficient for the Resurrection of Ireland

CHAPTER I

The Celtic Race.

Nations which preserve, as it were, a perpetual youth, should be

studied from their origin. Never having totally changed, some of

their present features may be recognized at the very cradle of

their existence, and the strangeness of the fact sets out in bolder

relief their actual peculiarities. Hence we consider it to our

purpose to examine the Celtic race first, as we may know it from

ancient records: What it was; what it did; what were its distinctive

features; what its manners and chief characteristics. A strong light

will thus be thrown even on the Irish of our own days. Our words

must necessarily be few on so extensive a subject; but, few as

they are, they will not be unimportant in our investigations.

In all the works of God, side by side with the general order

resulting from seemingly symmetric laws, an astonishing variety

of details everywhere shows itself, producing on the mind of man

the idea of infinity, as effectually as the wonderful aspect of a

seemingly boundless universe. This variety is visible, first in

the heavenly bodies, as they are called; star differing from star,

planet from planet; even the most minute asteroids never showing

themselves to us two alike, but always offering differences in

size, of form, of composition.

This variety is visible to us chiefly on our globe; in the infinite

multiplicity of its animal forms, in the wonderful insect tribes,

and in the brilliant shells floating in the ocean; visible also

in the incredible number of trees, shrubs, herbs, down to the most

minute vegetable organisms, spread with such reckless abundance

on the surface of our dwelling; visible, finally, in the infinity

of different shapes assumed by inorganic matter.

But what is yet more wonderful and seemingly unaccountable is that,

taking every species of being in particular, and looking at any two

individuals of the same species, we would consider it an astonishing

effect of chance, were we to meet with two objects of our study

perfectly alike. The mineralogist notices it, if he finds in the same

group of crystals two altogether similar; the botanist would express

his astonishment if, on comparing two specimens of the same plant,

he found no difference between them. The same may be said of birds,

of reptiles, of mammalia, of the same kind. A close observer will

even easily detect dissimilarities between the double organs of the

same person, between the two eyes of his neighbor, the two hands

of a friend, the two feet of a stranger whom he meets.

It is therefore but consistent with general analogy that in the moral

as well as in the physical faculties of man, the same ever-recurring

variety should appear, in the features of the face, in the shape of

the limbs, in the moving of the muscles, as well as in the activity

of thought, in the mobility of humor, in the combination of passions,

propensities, sympathies, and aversions.

But, at the same time, with all these peculiarities perceptible in

individuals, men, when studied attentively, show themselves in

groups, as it were, distinguished from other groups by peculiarities

of their own, which are generally called characteristics of race;

and although, according to various systems, these characteristics

are made to expand or contract at will, to serve an _a priori_

purpose, and sustain a preconcerted theory, yet there are, with

respect to them, startling facts which no one can gainsay, and

which are worthy of serious attention.

Two of these facts may be stated in the following propositions:

I. At the cradle of a race or nation there must have been a type

imprinted on its progenitor, and passing from him to all his

posterity, which distinguishes it from all others.

II. The character of a race once established, cannot be eradicated

without an almost total disappearance of the people.

The proofs of these propositions would require long details altogether

foreign to our present purpose, as we are not writing on ethnology.

We will take them for granted, as otherwise we may say that the

whole history of man would be unintelligible. If, however, writers

are found who apply to their notion of race all the inflexibility

of physical laws, and who represent history as a rigid system of

facts chained together by a kind of fatality; if a school has

sprung up among historians to do away with the moral responsibility

of individuals and of nations, it is scarcely necessary to tell

the reader that nothing is so far from our mind as to adopt ideas

destructive, in fact, to all morality.

It is our belief that there is no more "necessity" in the leanings

of race with respect to nations, than there is in the corrupt

instincts of our fallen nature with respect to individuals. The

teachings of faith have clearly decided this in the latter case,

and the consequence of this authoritative decision carries with

it the determination of the former.

According to the doctrine of St. Augustine, nations are rewarded

or punished in this world, because there is no future existence

for them; but the fact of rewards and punishments awarded them

shows that their life is not a series of necessary sequences such

as prevail in physics, and that the manifestations or phenomena

of history, past, present, or future, cannot resolve themselves

into the workings of absolute laws.

Race, in our opinion, is only one of those mysterious forces which

play upon the individual from the cradle to the grave, which affect

alike all the members of the same family, and give it a peculiarity

of its own, without, however, interfering in the least with the moral

freedom of the individual; and as in him there is free-will, so also

in the family itself to which he belongs may God find cause for

approval or disapproval. The heart of a Christian ought to be too

full of gratitude and respect for Divine Providence to take any

other view of history.

It would be presumptuous on our part to attempt an explanation of

the object God proposed to himself in originating such a diversity

in human society. We can only say that it appears He did not wish

all mankind to be ever subject to the same rule, the same government

and institutions. His Church alone was to bear the character of

universality. Outside of her, variety was to be the rule in human

affairs as in all things else. A universal despotism was never

to become possible.

This at once explains why the posterity of Japhet is so different

from that of Sem and of Cham.

In each of those great primitive stocks, an all-wise Providence

introduced a large number of sub-races, if we may be allowed to

call them so, out of which are sprung the various nations whose

intermingling forms the web of human history. Our object is to

consider only the Celtic branch. For, whatever may be the various

theories propounded on the subject of the colonization of Ireland,

from whatever part of the globe the primitive inhabitants may be

supposed to have come, one thing is certain, to-day the race is

yet one, in spite of the foreign blood infused into it by so many

men of other stocks. Although the race was at one time on the verge

of extinction by Cromwell, it has finally absorbed all the others;

it has conquered; and, whoever has to deal with true Irishmen, feels

at once that he deals with a primitive people, whose ancestors dwelt

on the island thousands of years ago. Some slight differences may

be observed in the people of the various provinces of the island;

there maybe various dialects in their language, different appearance

in their looks, some slight divergence in their disposition or manners;

it cannot be other wise, since, as we have seen, no two individuals

of the human family can be found perfectly alike. But, in spite

of all this, they remain Celts to this day; they belong undoubtedly,

to that stock formerly wide-spread throughout Europe, and now almost

confined to their island; for the character of the same race in

Wales, Scotland, and Brittany, has not been, and could not be,

kept so pure as in Erin; so that in our age the inhabitants of

those countries have become more and more fused with their British

and Gallic neighbors.

We must, therefore, at the beginning of this investigation, state

briefly what we know of the Celtic race in ancient times, and examine

whether the Irish of to-day do not reproduce its chief characteristics.

We do not propose, however, in the present study, referring to

the physical peculiarities of the Celtic tribes; we do not know

what those were two or three thousand years ago. We must confine

ourselves to moral propensities and to manners, and for this view

of the subject we have sufficient materials whereon to draw.

We first remark in this race an immense power of expansion, when

not checked by truly insurmountable obstacles; a power of expansion

which did not necessitate for its workings an uninhabited and wild

territory, but which could show its energy and make its force felt

in the midst of already thickly-settled regions, and among adverse

and warlike nations.

As far as history can carry us back, the whole of Western Europe,

namely, Gaul, a part of Spain, Northern Italy, and what we call

to-day the British Isles, are found to be peopled by a race

apparently of the same origin, divided into an immense number of

small republics; governed patriarchally in the form of clans,

called by Julius Caesar, "Civitates." The Greeks called them Celts,

"Keltai." They do not appear to have adopted a common name for

themselves, as the idea of what we call nationality would never

seem to have occurred to them. Yet the name of Gaels in the British

Isles, and of Gauls in France and Northern Italy, seems identical.

Not only did they fill the large expanse of territory we have

mentioned, but they multiplied so fast, that they were compelled

to send out armed colonies in every direction, set as they were

in the midst of thickly-peopled regions.

We possess few details of their first invasion of Spain; but Roman

history has made us all acquainted with their valor. It was in the

first days of the Republic that an army of Gauls took possession

of Rome, and the names of Manlius and Camillus are no better known

in history than that of Brenn, called by Livy, Brennus. His celebrated

answer, "Vae victis," will live as long as the world.

Later on, in the second century before Christ, we see another army

of Celts starting from Pannonia, on the Danube, where they had

previously settled, to invade Greece. Another Brenn is at the head

of it. Macedonia and Albania were soon conquered; and, it is said,

some of the peculiarities of the race may still be remarked in many

Albanians. Thessaly could not resist the impetuosity of the invaders;

the Thermopylae were occupied by Gallic battalions, and that

celebrated defile, where three hundred Spartans once detained the

whole army of Xerxes, could offer no obstacle to Celtic bravery.

Hellas, sacred Hellas, came then under the power of the Gauls, and

the Temple of Delphi was already in sight of Brenn and his warriors,

when, according to Greek historians, a violent earthquake, the work

of the offended gods, threw confusion into the Celtic ranks, which

were subsequently easily defeated and destroyed by the Greeks.

A branch of this army of the Delphic Brenn had separated from

the main body on the frontiers of Thrace, taken possession of

Byzantium, the future Constantinople, and, crossing the straits,

established itself in the Heart of Asia Minor, and there founded

the state of Galatia, or Gallo-Greece, which so long bore their

name, and for several centuries influenced the affairs of Asia

and of the whole Orient, where they established a social state

congenial to their tastes and customs. But the Romans soon after

invading Asia Minor, the twelve clannish republics formerly

founded were, according to Strabo, first reduced to three, then

to two, until finally Julius Caesar made Dejotar king of the

whole country.

The Celts could not easily brook such a change of social relations;

but, unable to cope against Roman power, they came, as usual, to

wrangle among themselves. The majority pronounced for another

chieftain, named Bogitar, and succeeded in forming a party in

Rome in his favor. Clodius, in an assembly of the Roman people,

obtained a decree confirmatory of his authority, and he took

possession of Pessinuntum, and of the celebrated Temple of Cybele.

The history of this branch of the Celts, nevertheless, did not

close with the evil fortunes of their last king. According to

Justinus, they swarmed all over Asia. Having lost their autonomy

as a nation, they became, as it were, the Swiss mercenaries of

the whole Orient. Egypt, Syria, Pontus, called them to their defence.

"Such," says Justinus, "was the terror excited by their name, and

the constant success of their undertakings, that no king on his

throne thought himself secure, and no fallen prince imagined himself

able to recover his power, except with the help of the ever-ready

Celts of those countries."

This short sketch suffices to show their power of expansion in

ancient times among thickly-settled populations. When we have

shown, farther on, how to-day they are spreading all over the

world, not looking to wild and desert countries, but to large

centres of population in the English colonies, we shall be able

to convince ourselves that they still present the same characteristic.

If they do not bear arms in their hands, it is owing to altered

circumstances; but their actual expansion bears a close resemblance

to that of ancient times, and the similarity of effect shows

the similarity of character.

We pass now to a new feature in the race, which has not, to our

knowledge, been sufficiently dwelt upon. All their migrations in

old times were across continents; and if, occasionally, they crossed

the Mediterranean Sea, they did so always in foreign vessels.

The Celtic race, as we have seen, occupied the whole of Western

Europe. They had, therefore, numerous harbors on the Atlantic,

and some excellent ones on the Mediterranean. Many passed the

greater portion of their lives on the sea, supporting themselves

by fishing; yet they never thought of constructing and arming

large fleets; they never fought at sea in vessels of their own,

with the single exception of the naval battle between Julius

Caesar and the Veneti, off the coast of Armorica, where, in one

day, the Roman general destroyed the only maritime armament which

the Celts ever possessed.

And even this fact is not an exception to the general rule; for

M. de Penhouet, the greatest antiquarian, perhaps, in Celtic lore

in Brittany, has proved that the Veneti of Western Gaul were not

really Celts, but rather a colony of Carthaginians, the only one

probably remaining, in the time of Caesar, of those once numerous

foreign colonies of the old enemies of Rome.

Still this strange anomaly, an anomaly which is observable in no

other people living on an extensive coast, was not produced by

ignorance of the uses and importance of large fleets. From the

first they held constant intercourse with the great navigators of

antiquity. The Celtic harbors teemed with the craft of hardy seamen,

who came from Phoenicia, Carthage, and finally from Rome. Heeren,

in his researches on the Phoenicians, proves it for that very early

age, and mentions the strange fact that the name of Ireland with

them was the "Holy Isle." For several centuries, the Carthaginians,

in particular, used the harbors of Spain, of Gaul, even of Erin

and Britain, as their own. The Celtic inhabitants of those countries

allowed them to settle peaceably among them, to trade with them,

to use their cities as emporiums, to call them, in fact,

Carthaginian harbors, although that African nation never really

colonized the country, does not appear to have made war on the

inhabitants in order to occupy it, except in a few instances, when

thwarted, probably, in their commercial enterprises; but they always

lived on peaceful terms with the aborigines, whom they benefited by

their trade, and, doubtless, enlightened by the narrative of their

expeditions in distant lands.

Is it not a strikingly strange fact that, under such circumstances,

the Celts should never have thought of possessing vessels of their

own, if not to push the enterprises of an extensive commerce, for

which they never showed the slightest inclination, at least for

the purpose of shipping their colonies abroad, and crossing directly

to Greece from Celtiberia, for instance, or from their Italian colony

of the Veneti, replaced in modern times by maritime Venice? Yet

so it was; and the great classic scholar, Heeren, in his learned

researches on the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, remarks it with

surprise. The chief reason which he assigns for the success of

those southern navigators from Carthage in establishing their colonies

everywhere, is the fact of no people in Spain, Gaul, or the British

Isles, possessing at the time a navy of their own; and, finding it so

surprising, he does not attempt to explain it, as indeed it really

remains without any possible explanation, save the lack of inclination

springing from the natural promptings of the race.

What renders it more surprising still is, that individually they

had no aversion to a seafaring life; not only many of them

subsisted by fishing, but their _curraghs_ covered the sea all

along their extensive coasts. They could pass from island to

island in their small craft. Thus the Celts of Erin frequently

crossed over to Scotland, to the Hebrides, from rock to rock, and

in Christian times they went as far as the Faroe group, even as

far as Iceland, which some of them appear to have attempted to

colonize long before the Norwegian outlaws went there; and some

even say that from Erin came the first Europeans who landed on

frozen Greenland years before the Icelandic Northmen planted

establishments in that dreary country. The Celts, therefore, and

those of Erin chiefly, were a seafaring race.

But to construct a fleet, to provision and arm it, to fill it with

the flower of their youth, and send them over the ocean to plunder

and slay the inhabitants for the purpose of colonizing the countries

they had previously devastated, such was never the character of

the Celts. They never engaged extensively in trade, or what is

often synonymous, piracy. Before becoming christianized, the Celts

of Ireland crossed over the narrow channel which divided them from

Britain, and frequently carried home slaves; they also passed

occasionally to Armorica, and their annals speak of warlike

expeditions to that country; but their efforts at navigation were

always on an extremely limited scale, in spite of the many inducements

offered by their geographical position. The fact is striking when

we compare them in that particular with the Scandinavian free-rovers

of the Northern Ocean.

It is, therefore, very remarkable that, whenever they got on board

a boat, it was always a single and open vessel. They did so in pagan

times, when the largest portion of Western Europe was theirs; they

continued to do so after they became Christians. The race has always

appeared opposed to the operations of an extensive commerce, and

to the spreading of their power by large fleets.

The ancient annals of Ireland speak, indeed, of naval expeditions;

but these expeditions were always undertaken by a few persons in

one, two, or, at most, three boats, as that of the sons of Ua Corra;

and such facts consequently strengthen our view. The only fact

which seems contradictory is supposed to have occurred during

the Danish wars, when Callaghan, King of Cashel, is said to have

been caught in an ambush, and conveyed a captive by the Danes,

first to Dublin, then to Armagh, and finally to Dundalk.

The troops of Kennedy, son of Lorcan, are said to have been

supported by a fleet of fifty sail, commanded by Falvey Finn, a

Kerry chieftain. We need not repeat the story so well known to

all readers of Irish history. But this fact is found only in the

work of Keating, and the best critics accept it merely as an

historical romance, which Keating thought proper to insert in his

history. Still, even supposing the truth of the story, all that we

may conclude from it is that the seafaring Danes, at the end of

their long wars, had taught the Irish to use the sea as a battlefield,

to the extent of undertaking a small expedition in order to

liberate a beloved chieftain.

It is very remarkable, also, that according to the annals of Ireland,

the naval expeditions nearly always bore a religious character, never

one of trade or barter, with the exception of the tale of Brescan,

who was swallowed up with his fifty curraghs, in which he traded

between Ireland and Scotland.

Nearly all the other maritime excursions are voyages undertaken

with a Christian or Godlike object. Thus our holy religion was

carried over to Scotland and the Hebrides by Columbkill and his

brother monks, who evangelized those numerous groups of small

islands. Crossing in their skiffs, and planting the cross on

some far-seen rock or promontory, they perched their monastic

cells on the bold bluffs overlooking the ocean.

No more was the warrior on carnage bent to be seen on the seaboards

of Ulster or the western coast of Albania, as Scotland was then

called; only unarmed men dressed in humble monastic garb trod those

wave-beaten shores. At early morning they left the cove of their

convent; they spread their single sail, and plied their well-worn

oars, crossing from Colombsay to Iona, or from the harbor of Bangor

to the nearest shore of the Isle of Man.

At noon they may have met a brother in the middle of the strait

in his shell of a boat, bouncing over the water toward the point

they had left. And the holy sign of the cross passed from one

monk to the other, and the word of benison was carried through

the air, forward and back, and the heaven above was propitious,

and the wave below was obedient, while the hearts of the two

brothers were softened by holy feelings; and nothing in the air

around, on the dimly-visible shores, on the surface of the heaving

waves, was seen or heard save what might raise the soul to heaven

and the heart to God.

In concluding this portion of our subject, we will merely refer

to the fact that neither the Celts of Gaul or Britain, nor those

of Ireland, ever opposed an organized fleet to the numerous hostile

naval armaments by which their country was invaded. When the Roman

fleet, commanded by Caesar, landed in Great Britain, when the

innumerable Danish expeditions attacked Ireland, whenever the

Anglo-Normans arrived in the island during the four hundred years

of the colony of the Pale, we never hear of a Celtic fleet opposed

to the invaders. Italian, Spanish, and French fleets came in

oftentimes to the help of the Irish; yet never do we read that the

island had a single vessel to join the friendly expedition. We

may safely conclude, then, that the race has never felt any

inclination for sending large expeditions to sea, whether for

extensive trading, or for political and warlike purposes. They

have always used the vessels of other nations, and it is no

surprise, therefore, to find them now crowding English ships

in their migrations to colonize other countries. It is one of

the propensities of the race.

A third feature of Celtic character and mind now attracts our

attention, namely, a peculiar literature, art, music, and poetry,

wherein their very soul is portrayed, and which belongs exclusively

to them. Some very interesting considerations will naturally flow

from this short investigation. It is the study of the constitution

of the Celtic mind.

In Celtic countries literature was the perfect expression of the

social state of the people. Literature must naturally be so

everywhere, but it was most emphatically so among the Celts. With

them it became a state institution, totally unknown to other

nations. Literature and art sprang naturally from the clan system,

and consequently adopted a form not to be found elsewhere. Being,

moreover, of an entirely traditional cast, those pursuits imparted

to their minds a steady, conservative, traditional spirit, which

has resulted in the happiest consequences for the race, preserving

it from theoretical vagaries, and holding it aloof, even in our days,

from the aberrations which all men now deplore in other European

nations, and whose effects we behold in the anarchy of thought.

This last consideration adds to this portion of our subject a

peculiar and absorbing interest.

The knowledge which Julius Caesar possessed of the Druids and of

their literary system was very incomplete; yet he presents to his

readers a truly grand spectacle, when he speaks of their numerous

schools, frequented by an immense number of the youths of the

country, so different from those of Rome, in which his own mind

had been trained--"Ad has magnus adolescentium numerus disciplinae

causa concurrit:" when he mentions the political and civil subjects

submitted to the judgment of literary men--"de omnibus controversiis

publicis privatisque constituunt. ... Si de hereditate, si de

finibus controversia est, iidem decernunt:" when he states the

length of their studies--"annos nonnulli vicenos in disciplina

permanent:" when he finally draws a short sketch of their course

of instruction-- "multa de sideribus atque eorum motu, de mundi

ac terrarum magnitudine, .... disputant juventutique tradunt."

But, unfortunately, the great author of the "Commentaries" had

not sufficiently studied the social state of the Celts in Gaul

and Britain; he never mentions the clan institution, even when

he speaks of the feuds--factiones--which invariably split their

septs--civitates--into hostile parties. In his eleventh chapter,

when describing the contentions which were constantly rife in

the cities, villages, even single houses, when remarking the

continual shifting of the supreme authority from the Edui to the

Sequani, and reciprocally, he seems to be giving in a few phrases

the long history of the Irish Celts; yet he does not appear to

be aware of the cause of this universal agitation, namely, the

clan system, of which he does not say a single world. How could

he have perceived the effect of that system on their literature

and art?

To understand it at once it suffices to describe in a few words

the various branches of studies pursued by their learned men;

and, as we are best acquainted with that portion of the subject

which concerns Ireland, we will confine ourselves to it. There

is no doubt the other agglomerations of Celtic tribes, the Gauls

chiefly, enjoyed institutions very similar, if not perfectly alike.

The highest generic name for a learned man or doctor was "ollamh."

These ollamhs formed a kind of order in the race, and the

privileges bestowed on them were most extensive. "Each one of

them was allowed a standing income of twenty-one cows and their

grasses," in the chieftain's territory, besides ample refections

for himself and his attendants, to the number of twenty-four,

including his subordinate tutors, his advanced pupils, and his

retinue of servants. He was entitled to have two hounds and six

horses, . . . and the privilege of conferring a temporary sanctuary

from injury or arrest by carrying his wand, or having it carried

around or over the person or place to be protected. His wife also

enjoyed certain other valuable privileges.--(Prof. E. Curry, Lecture I.)

But to reach that degree he was to prove for himself, purity of

learning, purity of mouth (from satire), purity of hand (from

bloodshed), purity of union (in marriage), purity of honesty (from

theft), and purity of body (having but one wife).

With the Celts, therefore, learning constituted a kind of priesthood.

These were his moral qualifications. His scientific attainments

require a little longer consideration, as they form the chief

object we have in view.

They may at the outset be stated in a few words. The ollamh was

"a man who had arrived at the highest degree of historical

learning, and of general literary attainments. He should be an

adept in royal synchronisms, should know the boundaries of all

the provinces and chieftaincies, and should be able to trace the

genealogies of all the tribes of Erin up to the first man.--(Prof. Curry,

Lecture X.)

Caesar had already told us of the Druids, "Si de hereditate, si de

finibus controversia est iidem decernunt." In this passage he gives

us a glimpse of a system which he had not studied sufficiently to

embrace in its entirety.

The qualifications of an ollamh which we have just enumerated, that

is to say, of the highest doctor in Celtic countries, already prove

how their literature grew out of the clan system.

The clan system, of which we shall subsequently speak more at

length, rested entirely on history, genealogy, and topography. The

authority and rights of the monarch of the whole country, of the

so-called kings of the various provinces, of the other chieftains in

their several degrees, finally, of all the individuals who composed

the nation connected by blood with the chieftains and kings,

depended entirely on their various genealogies, out of which grew

a complete system of general and personal history. The conflicting

rights of the septs demanded also a thorough knowledge of topography

for the adjustment of their difficulties. Hence the importance to

the whole nation of accuracy in these matters, and of a competent

authority to decide on all such questions.

But in Celtic countries, more than in all others, topography was

connected with general history, as each river or lake, mountain

or hill, tower or hamlet, had received a name from some historical

fact recorded in the public annals; so that even now the geographical

etymologies frequently throw a sudden and decisive light on disputed

points of ancient history. So far, this cannot be called a literature;

it might be classed under the name of statistics, or antiquarian lore;

and if their history consisted merely of what is contained in the old

annals of the race, it would be presumptuous to make a particular

alllusion to their literature, and make it one of the chief

characteristics of the race. The annals, in fact, were mere

chronological and synchronic tables of previous events.

But an immense number of books were written by many of their authors

on each particular event interesting to each Celtic tribe: and even

now many of those special facts recorded in these books owe their

origin to some assertion or hint given in the annals. There is no

doubt that long ago their learned men were fully acquainted with

all the points of reference which escape the modern antiquarian.

History for them, therefore, was very different from what the Greeks

and Romans have made it in the models they left us, which we have

copied or imitated.

It is only in their detached "historical tales" that they display

any skill in description or narration, any remarkable pictures of

character, manners, and local traditions; and it seems that in many

points they show themselves masters of this beautiful art.

Thus they had stories of battles, of voyages, of invasions, of

destructions, of slaughters, of sieges, of tragedies and deaths, of

courtships, of military expeditions; and all this strictly historical.

For we do not here speak of their "imaginative tales," which give

still freer scope to fancy; such as the Fenian and Ossianic poems,

which are also founded on facts, but can no more claim the title of

history than the novels of Scott or Cooper.

The number of those books was so great that the authentic list of

them far surpasses in length what has been preserved of the old

Greek and Latin writers. It is true that they have all been saved

and transmitted to us by Christian Irishmen of the centuries

intervening between the sixth and sixteenth; but it is also

perfectly true that whatever was handed down to us by Irish monks

and friars came to them from the genuine source, the primitive

authors, as our own monks of the West have preserved to us all

we know of Greek and Latin authors.

So that the question so long decided in the negative, whether

the Irish knew handwriting prior to the Christian era and the

coming of St. Patrick, is no longer a question, now that so much

is known of their early literature. St. Patrick and his brother

monks brought with them the Roman characters and the knowledge of

numerous Christian writers who had preceded him; but he could not

teach them what had happened in the country before his time, events

which form the subject-matter of their annals, historical and

imaginative tales and poems. For the Christian authors of Ireland

subsequently to transmit those facts to us, they must evidently

have copied them from older books, which have since perished.

Prof. E. Curry thinks that the Ogham characters, so often mentioned

in the most ancient Irish books, were used in Erin long before the

introduction of Christianity there. And he strengthens his opinion

by proofs which it is difficult to contradict. Those characters are

even now to be seen in some of the oldest books which have been

preserved, as well as on many stone monuments, the remote antiquity

of which cannot be denied. One well-authenticated fact suffices,

however, to set the question at rest: "It is quite certain," says

E. Curry, "that the Irish Druids and poets had written books before

the coming of St. Patrick in 432; since we find THAT VERY STATEMENT

in the ancient Gaelic Tripartite life of the Saint, as well as in

the "Annotations of Tirechan" preserved in the Book of Armagh, which

were taken by him (Tirechan) from the lips and books of his tutor,

St. Mochta, who was the pupil and disciple of St. Patrick himself."

What Caesar, then, states of the Druids, that they committed every

thing to memory and used no books, is not strictly true. It must

have been true only with regard to their mode of teaching, in that

they gave no books to their pupils, but confined themselves to

oral instruction.

The order of Ollamh comprised various sub-orders of learned men.

And the first of these deserving our attention is the class of

"Seanchaidhe," pronounced Shanachy. The ollamh seems to have been

the historian of the monarch of the whole country; the shanachy

had the care of provincial records. Each chieftain, in fact, down

to the humblest, had an officer of this description, who enjoyed

privileges inferior only to those of the ollamh, and partook of

emoluments graduated according to his usefulness in the state; so

that we can already obtain some idea of the honor and respect paid

to the national literature and traditions in the person of those

who were looked upon in ancient times as their guardians from age

to age.

The shanachies were also bound to prove for themselves the

moral qualifications of the ollamhs.1

(1 "Purity of hand, bright without wounding,

Purity of mouth, without poisonous satire,

Purity of learning, without reproach,

Purity of husbandship, in marriage."

Many of these details and the following are chiefly derived from

Prof. E. Curry

--(Early Irish Manuscripts.) )

A shanachy of any degree, who did not preserve these "purities,"

lost half his income and dignity, according to law, and was

subject to heavy penalties besides.

According to McFirbis, in his book of genealogies, "the historians

were so anxious and ardent to preserve the history of Erin, that

the description they have left us of the nobleness and dignified

manners of the people, should not be wondered at, since they did

not refrain from writing even of the undignified artisans, and of

the professors of the healing and building arts of ancient times

--as shall be shown below, to prove the fidelity of the historians,

and the errors of those who make such assertions, as, for instance,

that there were no stone buildings in Erin before the coming of the

Danes and Anglo-Normans.

"Thus saith an ancient authority: `The first doctor, the first

builder, and the first fisherman, that were ever in Erin were--

Capa, for the healing of the sick,

In his time was all-powerful;

And Luasad, the cunning builder,

And Laighne, the fisherman.'"

So speaks McFirbis in his quaint and picturesque style.

The literature of the Celts was, therefore, impressed with the

character of realistic universality, which has been the great boast

of the romantic school. It did not concern itself merely with the

great and powerful, but comprised all classes of people, and tried

to elevate what is of itself undignified and common in human

society. This is no doubt the meaning of the quotation just cited.

Among the Celts, then, each clan had his historian to record the

most minute details of every-day history, as well as every fact

of importance to the whole clan, and even to the nation at large;

and thus we may see how literature with them grew naturally out

of their social system. The same may not appear to hold good at

first sight with the other classes of literary men; yet it would

be easy to discover the link connecting them all, and which was

always traditional or matter-of-fact, if we may use that expression.

The next SUB-ORDER was that of File, which is generally translated

poet, but its meaning also involves the idea of philosophy or

wisdom added to that of poetry.

The File among the Celts was, after all, only an historian writing

in verse; for all their poetry resolved itself into annals, "poetic

narratives" of great events, or finally "ballads."

It is well known that among all nations poetry has preceded prose;

and the first writers that appeared anywhere always wrote in verse.

It seems, therefore, that in Celtic tribes the order of File was

anterior in point of time to that of Shanachy, and that both must

have sprung naturally from the same social system. Hence the

monarch of the whole nation had his poets, as also the provincial

kings and every minor chieftain.

In course of time their number increased to such an extent in

Ireland, that at last they became a nuisance to be abated.

"It is said that in the days of Connor McNassa--several centuries

before Christ--there met once 1,200 poets in one company; another

time 1,000, and another 700, namely, in the days of Aedh McAinmire

and Columcille, in the sixth century after our Saviour. And

between these periods Erin always thought that she had more of

learned men than she wanted; so that from their numbers and the

tax their support imposed upon the public, it was attempted to

banish them out of Erin on three different occasions; but they

were detained by the Ultonians for hospitality's sake. This is

evident from the Amhra Columcille (panegyric of St. Columba). He

was the last that kept them in Ireland, and distributed a poet to

every territory, and a poet to every king, in order to lighten the

burden of the people in general. So that there were people in their

following, contemporary with every generation to preserve the

history and events of the country at this time. Not these alone,

but the kings, and, saints, and churches of Erin preserved their

history in like manner."

From this curious passage of McFirbis, it is clear that the Celtic

poets proposed to themselves the same object as the historians did;

only that they wrote in verse, and no doubt allowed themselves more

freedom of fancy, without altering the facts which were to them of

paramount importance.

McFirbis, in the previous passage, gives us a succinct account

of the action of Columbkill in regard to the poets or bards of

his time. But we know many other interesting facts connected

with this event, which must be considered as one of the most

important in Ireland during the sixth century. The order of poets

or bards was a social and political institution, reaching back in

point of time to the birth of the nation, enjoying extensive

privileges, and without which Celtic life would have been deprived

of its warmth and buoyancy. Yet Aed, the monarch of all Ireland,

was inclined to abolish the whole order, and banish, or even outlaw,

all its members. Being unable to do it of his own authority, he

thought of having the measure carried in the assembly of Drumceit,

convened for the chief purpose of settling peacefully the relations

of Ireland with the Dalriadan colony established in Western

Scotland a hundred years before. Columba came from Iona in behalf

of Aidan, whom he had crowned a short time previously as King

of Albania or Scotland. It seems that the bards or poets were

accused of insolence, rapacity, and of selling their services

to princes and nobles, instead of calling them to account for

their misdeeds.

Columba openly undertook their defence in the general assembly of

the nation. Himself a poet, he loved their art, and could not

consent to see his native country deprived of it. Such a deprivation

in his eyes would almost have seemed a sacrilege.

"He represented," says Montalembert, "that care must be taken not

to pull up the good corn with the tares, that the general exile

of the poets would be the death of a venerable antiquity, and of

that poetry so dear to the country, and so useful to those who

knew how to employ it. The king and assembly yielded at length,

under condition that the number should be limited, and their

profession laid under certain rules."

Dallan Fergall, the chief of the corporation, composed his "Amhra,"

or Praise of Columbkill, as a mark of gratitude from the whole

order. That the works of Celtic poets possessed real literary merit,

we have the authority of Spenser for believing. The author of the

"Faerie Queene" was not the friend of the Irish, whom he assisted

in plundering and destroying under Elizabeth. He could only judge

of their books from English translations, not being sufficiently

acquainted with the language to understand its niceties. Yet he

had to acknowledge that their poems "savoured of sweet wit and

good invention, but skilled not of the goodly ornaments of poetry;

yet were they sprinkled with some pretty flowers of their natural

device, which gave good grace and comeliness to them."

He objected, it is true, to the patriotism of their verse, and

pretended that they "seldom choose the doings of good men for the

argument of their poems," and became "dangerous and desperate in

disobedience and rebellious daring." But this accusation is high

praise in our eyes, as showing that the Irish bards of Spenser's

time praised and glorified those who proved most courageous in

resisting English invasion, and stood firmly on the side of their

race against the power of a great queen.

A poet, it seems, required twelve years of study to be master of

his art. One-third of that time was devoted to practising the

"Teinim Laegha," by which he obtained the power of understanding

every thing that it was proper for him to speak of or to say. The

next third was employed in learning the "Imas Forosnadh," by which

he was enabled to communicate thoroughly his knowledge to other

pupils. Finally, the last three years were occupied in "Dichedal,"

or improvisation, so as to be able to speak in verse on all subjects

of his study at a moment's notice.

There were, it appears, seven kinds of verse; and the poet was

bound to possess a critical knowledge of them, so as to be a judge

of his art, and to pronounce on the compositions submitted to him.

If called upon by any king or chieftain, he was required to relate

instantly, seven times fifty stories, namely, five times fifty

prime stories, and twice fifty secondary stories.

The prime stories were destructions and preyings, courtships,

battles, navigations, tragedies or deaths, expeditions, elopements,

and conflagrations.

All those literary compositions were historic tales; and they

were not composed for mere amusement, but possessed in the eyes

of learned men a real authority in point of fact. If fancy was

permitted to adorn them, the facts themselves were to remain

unaltered with their chief circumstances. Hence the writers of the

various annals of Ireland do not scruple to quote many poems or

other tales as authority for the facts of history which they relate.

And such also was heroic poetry among the Greeks. The Hellenic

philosophers, historians, and geographers of later times always

quoted Homer and Hesiod as authorities for the facts they related

in their scientific works. The whole first book of the geography

of Strabo, one of the most statistical and positive works of

antiquity, has for its object the vindication of the geography

of Homer, whom Strabo seems to have considered as a reliable

authority on almost every possible subject.

Our limits forbid us to speak more in detail of Celtic historians

and poets. We have said enough to show that both had important

state duties to perform in the social system of the country, and,

while keeping within due bounds, they were esteemed by all as men

of great weight and use to the nation. Besides the field of genealogy

and history allotted to them to cultivate, their very office tended

to promote the love of virtue, and to check immorality and vice.

They were careful to watch over the acts and inclinations of their

princes and chieftains, seldom failing to brand them with infamy

if guilty of crimes, or crown them with honor when they had deserved

well of the nation. In ancient Egypt the priests judged the kings

after their demise; in Celtic countries they dared to tell them

the truth during their lifetime. And this exercised a most salutary

effect on the people; for perhaps never in any other country did

the admiration for learning, elevation of feeling, and ardent love

of justice and right, prevail as in Ireland, at least while enjoying

its native institutions and government.

From many of the previous details, the reader will easily see

That the literature of the Celts presented features peculiar to

Their race, and which supposed a mental constitution seldom found

among others. If, in general, the world of letters gives expression

In some degree to social wants and habits, among the Celts this

expression was complete, and argued a peculiar bent of mind given

entirely to traditional lore, and never to philosophical speculations

and subtlety. We see in it two elements remarkable for their

distinctness. First, an extraordinary fondness for facts and

traditions, growing out of the patriarchal origin of society

among them; and from this fondness their mind received a particular

tendency which was averse to theories and utopias. All things

resolved themselves into facts, and they seldom wandered away into

the fields of conjectural conclusions. Hence their extraordinary

adaptation to the truths of the Christian religion, whose dogmas

are all supernatural facts, at once human and divine. Hence have

they ever been kept free from that strange mental activity of other

European races, which has led them into doubt, unbelief, skepticism,

until, in our days, there seem to be no longer any fixed principles

as a substratum for religious and social doctrines.

Secondly, we see in the Celtic race a rare and unique outburst

of fancy, so well expressed in the "_Senchus Mor_," their great law

compilation, wherein it is related, that when St. Patrick had

completed the digest of the laws of the Gael in Ireland, Dubtach,

who was a bard as well as a brehon, "put a thread of poetry

round it." Poetry everywhere, even in a law-book; poetry

inseparable from their thoughts, their speech, their every-day

actions; poetry became for them a reality, an indispensable necessity

of life. This feature is also certainly characteristic of the

Celtic nature.

Hence their literature was inseparable from art; and music and

design gushed naturally from the deepest springs of their souls.

Music has always been the handmaid of Poetry; and in our modern

languages, even, which are so artificial and removed from primitive

enthusiasm and naturalness, no composer of opera would consent to

adapt his inspirations to a prose _libretto_. It was far more so

in primitive times; and it maybe said that in those days poetry

was never composed unless to be sung or played on instruments. But

what has never been seen elsewhere, what Plato dreamed, without

ever hoping to see realized, music in Celtic countries became

really a state institution, and singers and harpers were necessary

officers of princes and kings.

That all Celtic tribes were fond of it and cultivated it thoroughly

we have the assertion of all ancient writers who spoke of them.

According to Strabo, the Third order of Druids was composed of

those whom he calls _Umnetai_. What were their instruments is not

mentioned; and we can now form no opinion of their former musical

taste from the rude melodies of the Armoricans, Welsh, and Scotch.

From time immemorial the Irish Celts possessed the harp. Some

authors have denied this; and from the fact that the harp was

unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and that the Gauls of the time

of Julius Caesar do not seem to have been acquainted with it, they

conclude that it was not purely native to any of the British islands.

But modern researches have proved that it was certainly used in

Erin under the first successors of Ugaine Mor, who was monarch.

--Ard-Righ--about the year 633 before Christ, according to the

annals of the Four Masters. The story of Labhraid, which seems

perfectly authentic, turns altogether on the perfection with

which Craftine played on the harp. From that time, at least, the

instrument became among the Celts of Ireland a perpetual source

of melody.

To judge of their proficiency in its use, it is enough to know to

what degree of perfection they had raised it. Mr. Beauford, in

his ingenious and learned treatise on the music of Ireland, as

cultivated by its bards, creates genuine astonishment by the

discoveries into which his researches have led him.

The extraordinary attention which they paid to expression and

effect brought about successive improvements in the harp, which

at last made it far superior to the Grecian lyre. To make it

capable of supporting the human voice in their symphonies, they

filled up the intervals of the fifths and thirds in each scale,

and increased the number of strings from eighteen to twenty-eight,

retaining all the original chromatic tones, but reducing the

capacity of the instrument; for, instead of commencing in the lower

E in the bass, it commenced in C, a sixth above, and terminated

in G in the octave below; and, in consequence, the instrument

became much more melodious and capable of accompanying the human

voice. Malachi O'Morgair, Archbishop of Armagh, introduced other

improvements in it in the twelfth century. Finally, in later times,

its capacity was increased from twenty-eight strings to thirty-three,

in which state it still remains.

As long as the nation retained its autonomy, the harp was a universal

instrument among the inhabitants of Erin. It was found in every house;

it was heard wherever you met a few people gathered together. Studied

so universally, so completely and perfectly, it gave Irish music in

the middle ages a superiority over that of all other nations. It is

Cambrensis who remarks that "the attention of these people to musical

instruments is worthy of praise, in which their skill is, beyond

comparison, superior to any other people; for in these the modulation

is not slow and solemn, as in the instruments of Britain, but the

sounds are rapid and precipitate, yet sweet and pleasing. It is

extraordinary, in such rapidity of the fingers, how the musical

proportions are preserved, and the art everywhere inherent among

their complicated modulations, and the multitude of intricate notes

so sweetly swift, so irregular in their composition, so disorderly

in their concords, yet returning to unison and completing the melody."

Giraldus could not express himself better, never before having

heard any other music than that of the Anglo-Normans; but it is

clear, from the foregoing passage, that Irish art surpassed all

his conceptions.

The universality of song among the Irish Celts grew out of their

nature, and in time brought out all the refinements of art. Long

before Cambrensis's time the whole island resounded with music

and mirth, and the king-archbishop, Cormac McCullinan, could not

better express his gratitude to his Thomond subjects than by

exclaiming--

"May our truest fidelity ever be given

To the brave and generous clansmen of Tal;

And forever royalty rest with their tribe,

And virtue and valor, and music and song!"

Long before Cormac, we find the same mirthful glee in the Celtic

character expressed by a beautiful and well-known passage in the

life of St. Bridget: Being yet an unknown girl, she entered, by

chance, the dwelling of some provincial king, who was at the time

absent, and, getting hold of a harp, her fingers ran over the

chords, and her voice rose in song and glee, and the whole family

of the royal children, excited by the joyful harmony, surrounded

her, immediately grew familiar with her, and treated her as an

elder sister whom they might have known all their life; so that

the king, coming back, found all his house in an uproar, filled

as it was with music and mirth.

Thus the whole island remained during long ages. Never in the

whole history of man has the same been the case with any other

nation. Plato, no doubt, in his dream of a republic, had something

of the kind in his mind, when he wished to constitute harmony as

a social and political institution. But he little thought that,

when he thus dreamed and wrote, or very shortly after, the very

object of his speculation was already, or was soon to be, in

actual existence in the most western isle of Europe.

Before Columba's time even the Church had become reconciled to

the bards and harpers; and, according to a beautiful legend,

Patrick himself had allowed Oisin, or Ossian, and his followers,

to sing the praises of ancient heroes. But Columbkill completed

the reconciliation of the religious spirit with the bardic

influence. Music and poetry were thenceforth identified with

ecclesiastical life. Monks and grave bishops played on the harp

in the churches, and it is said that this strange spectacle

surprised the first Norman invaders of Ireland. To use the words

of Montalembert, so well adapted to our subject: "Irish poetry,

which was in the days of Patrick and Columba so powerful and so

popular, has long undergone, in the country of Ossian, the same

fate as the religion of which these great saints were the apostles.

Rooted, like it, in the heart of a conquered people, and like it

proscribed and persecuted with an unwearying vehemence, it has

come ever forth anew from the bloody furrow in which it was

supposed to be buried. The bards became the most powerful allies

of patriotism, the most dauntless prophets of independence, and

also the favorite victims of the cruelty of spoilers and conquerors.

They made music and poetry weapons and bulwarks against foreign

oppression; and the oppressors used them as they had used the

priests and the nobles. A price was set upon their heads. But

while the last scions of the royal and noble races, decimated

or ruined in Ireland, departed to die out under a foreign sky,

amid the miseries of exile, the successor of the bards, the

minstrel, whom nothing could tear from his native soil, was pursued,

tracked, and taken like a wild beast, or chained and slaughtered

like the most dangerous of rebels.

"In the annals of the atrocious legislation, directed by the

English against the Irish people, as well before as after the

Reformation, special penalties against the minstrels, bards, and

rhymers, who sustained the lords and gentlemen, . . . are to be

met with at every step.

"Nevertheless, the harp has remained the emblem of Ireland, even

in the official arms of the British Empire, and during all last

century, the travelling harper, last and pitiful successor of the

bards, protected by Columba, was always to be found at the side of

the priest, to celebrate the holy mysteries of the proscribed worship.

He never ceased to be received with tender respect under the thatched

roof of the poor Irish peasant, whom he consoled in his misery and

oppression by the plaintive tenderness and solemn sweetness of the

music of his fathers."

Could any expression of ours set forth in stronger light the Celtic

mind and heart as portrayed in those native elements of music and

literature? Could any thing more forcibly depict the real character

of the race, materialized, as it were, in its exterior institutions?

We were right in saying that among no other race was what is

generally a mere adornment to a nation, raised to the dignity of

a social and political instrument as it was among the Celts. Hence

it was impossible for persecution and oppression to destroy it,

and the Celtic nature to-day is still traditional, full of faith,

and at the same time poetical and impulsive as when those great

features of the race held full sway.

Besides music, several other branches of art, particularly

architecture, design, and calligraphy, are worthy our attention,

presenting, as they do, features unseen anywhere else; and would

enable us still better to understand the character of the Celtic

race. But our limits require us to refrain from what might be

thought redundant and unnecessary.

We hasten, therefore, to consider another branch of our

investigation, one which might be esteemed paramount to all others,

and by the consideration of which we might have begun this chapter,

only that its importance will be better understood after what has

been already said. It is a chief characteristic which grew so

perfectly out of the Celtic mind and aptitudes, that long centuries

of most adverse circumstances, we may say, a whole host of contrary

influences were unable to make the Celts entirely abandon it. We

mean the clan system, which, as a system, indeed, has disappeared

these three centuries ago, but which may be said to subsist still

in the clan spirit, as ardent almost among them as ever.

It is beyond doubt that the patriarchal government was the first

established among men. The father ruled the family. As long as he

lived he was lawgiver, priest, master; his power was acknowledged

as absolute. Hiis children, even after their marriage, remained

to a certain extent subject to him. Yet each became in turn the

head of a small state, ruled with the primitive simplicity of

the first family.

In the East, history shows us that the patriarchal government

was succeeded immediately by an extensive and complete despotism.

Millions of men soon became the abject slaves of an irresponsible

monarch. Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, appear at once in history as

powerful states at the mercy of a despot whose will was law.

But in other more favored lands the family was succeeded by the

tribe, a simple development of the former, an agglomeration of

men of the same blood, who could all trace their pedigree to the

acknowledged head; possessing, consequently, a chief of the same

race, either hereditary or elective, according to variable rules

always based on tradition. This was the case among the Jews, among

the Arabs, with whom the system yet prevails; even it seems

primitively in Hindostan, where modern research has brought to

light modes of holding property which suppose the same system.

But especially was this the case among the Celts, where the system

having subsisted up to recently, it can be better known in all its

details. Indeed, their adherence to it, in spite of every obstacle

that could oppose it, shows that it was natural to them, congenial

to all their inclinations, the only system that could satisfy and

make them happy; consequently, a characteristic of the race.

There was a time when the system we speak of ruled many a land,

from the Western Irish Sea to the foot of the Caucasus. Everywhere

within those limits it presented the same general features; in

Ireland alone has it been preserved in all its vigor until the

beginning of the seventeenth century, so rooted was it in the

Irish blood. Consequently, it can be studied better there. What

we say, therefore, will be chiefly derived from the study of

Irish customs, although other Gaelic tribes will also furnish

us with data for our observations.

In countries ruled by the clan system, the territory was divided

among the clans, each of them occupying a particular district,

which was seldom enlarged or diminished. This is seen particularly

in Palestine, in ancient Gaul, in the British islands. Hence their

hostile encounters had always for object movable plunder of any

kind, chiefly cattle; never conquest nor annexation of territory.

The word "preying," which is generally used for their expeditions,

explains their nature at once. It was only in the event of the

extinction of a clan that the topography was altered, and frequently

a general repartition of land among neighboring tribes took place.

It is true, when a surplus population compelled them to send abroad

swarms of their youth, that the conquest of a foreign country became

an absolute necessity. But, on such occasions it was outside of Celtic

limits that they spread themselves, taking possession of a territory

not their own. They almost invariably respected the land of other

clans of the same race, even when most hostile to them; exceptions

to this rule are extremely rare. It was thus that they sent large

armies of their young men into Northern Italy, along the Danube,

into Grecian Albania and Thrace, and finally into the very centre

of Asia Minor. The fixing of the geographical position of each tribe

was, therefore, a rule among them; and in this they differed from

nomadic nations, such as the Tartars in Asia and even the North

American Indians, whose hold on the land was too slight to offer any

prolonged resistance to invaders. Hence the position of the Gallic

_civitates_ was definite, and, so to speak, immovable, as we may see

by consulting the maps of ancient Gaul at any time anterior to its

thorough conquest by the Romans; not so among the German tribes,

whose positions on the maps must differ according to time.

We have already seen that so sacred were the limits of the clan

districts, that one of the chief duties of ollamhs and shanachies

was to know them and see them preserved.

But if territory was defined in Celtic nations, the right of

holding land differed in the case of the chieftain and the

clansman. The head of the tribe had a certain well-defined portion

assigned to him in virtue of his office, and as long only as he

held it; the clansmen held the remainder in common, no particular

spot being assigned to any one of them.

As far, therefore, as the holding of land was concerned, there

were neither rich nor poor among the Celts; the wealth of the

best of them consisted of cattle, house furniture, money, jewelry,

and other movable property. In the time of St. Columba, the

owner of five cows was thought to be a very poor man, although

he could send them to graze on any free land of his tribe. There

is no doubt that the almost insurmountable difficulty of the land

question at this time originated in the attachment of the people

to the old system, which had not yet perished in their affections;

and certainly many "agrarian outrages," as they are called, have

had their source in the traditions of a people once accustomed

to move and act freely in a free territory.

It is needless to call the attention of the reader to another

consequence of that state of things, namely, the persistence of

territorial possessions. As no individual among them could alienate

his portion, no individual or family could absorb the territory to

the exclusion of others; no great landed aristocracy consequently

could exist, and no part of the land could pass by purchase or in

any other way to a different tribe or to an alien race. The force

of arms sometimes produced temporary changes, nothing more. It is

the same principle which has preserved the small Indian tribes

still existing in Canada. Their "reservations," as they are called,

having been legalized by the British Government at the time of

the conquest from the French, the territory assigned to them would

have remained in their occupancy forever in the midst of the

ever-shifting possessions of the white race, had not the Ottawa

Parliament lately "allowed" those reservations to be divided

among the families of the tribes, with power for each to dispose

of its portion, a power which will soon banish them from the

country of their ancestors.

The preceding observations do not conflict in the least with what

is generally said of inheritance by "gavel kind," whereby the

property was equally divided among the sons to the exclusion of

the daughters; as it is clear that the property to be thus divided

was only movable and personal property.

But after the _land_ we must consider the _persons_ under the

clan-system. Under this head we shall examine briefly:

I. The political offices, such as the dignities of Ard-Righ or

supreme monarch, of the provincial kings, and of the subordinate

chieftains.

II. The state of the common people.

III. The bondsmen or slaves.

All literary or civil offices, not political, were hereditary.

Hence the professions of ollamh, shanachy, bard, brehon, physician,

passed from father to son--a very injudicious arrangement apparently,

but it seems nevertheless to have worked well in Ireland. Strange

to say, however, these various classes formed no castes as in

Egypt or in India, because no one was prevented from embracing

those professions, even when not born to them; and, in the end,

success in study was the only requisite for reaching the highest

round of the literary or professional ladder, as in China.

But a stranger and more dangerous feature of the system was that

in political offices the dignities were hereditary as to the

family, elective as to the person. Hence the title of Ard-Righ

or supreme monarch did not necessarily pass to the eldest son of

the former king, but another member of the same family might be

elected to the office, and was even designated to it during the

lifetime of the actual holder, thus becoming _Tanist_ or heir-apparent.

Every one sees at a glance the numberless disadvantages resulting

from such an institution, and it must be said that most of the

bloody crimes recorded in Irish history sprang from it.

At first sight, the dignity of supreme monarch would almost seem

to be a sinecure under the clan system, as the authority attached

to it was extremely limited, and is generally compared in its

relations to the subordinate kings, as that of metropolitan to

suffragan bishops in the Church. Nevertheless, all Celtic nations

appear to have attached a great importance to it, and the real

misfortunes of Ireland began when contention ran so high for the

office that the people were divided in their supreme allegiance,

and no Ard-Righ was acknowledged at the same time by all; which

happened precisely at the period of the invasion under Strongbow.

Some few facts lately brought to light in the vicissitudes of

various branches of the Celtic family show at once how highly all

Celts, wherever they might be settled, esteemed the dignity of

supreme monarch. It existed, as we have said, in all Celtic

countries, and consequently in Gaul; and the passage in the

"Commentaries" of Julius Caesar on the subject is too important

to be entirely passed over.

After having remarked in the eleventh chapter, "De Bello Gallico,"

lib. vi., that in Gaul the whole country, each city or clan, and

every subdivision of it, even to single houses, presented the

strange spectacle of two parties, "factiones," always in presence

of and opposed to each other, he says in Chapter XII.: --at the

arrival of Caesar in Gaul the _Eduans_ and the _Sequanians_ were

contending for the supreme authority--"The latter civitas--clan--

namely, the Sequanians, being inferior in power--because from

time immemorial the supreme authority had been vested in the

Eduans--had called to its aid the Germans under Ariovist by the

inducement of great advantages and promises. After many successful

battles, in which the entire nobility of the Eduan clan perished,

the Sequanians acquired so much power that they rallied to

themselves the greatest number of the allies of their rivals,

obliged the Eduans to give as hostages the children of their

nobles who had perished, to swear that they would not attempt

any thing against their conquerors, and even took possession of

a part of their territory, and thus obtained the supreme command

of all Gaul."

We see by this passage that there was a supremacy resting in the

hands of some one, over the whole nation. The successful tribe

had a chief to whom that supremacy belonged. Caesar, it is true,

does not speak of a monarch as of a person, but attributes the

power to the "civitas," the tribe. It is well known, however,

that each tribe had a head, and that in Celtic countries the

power was never vested in a body of men, assembly, committee, or

board, as we say in modern times, but in the chieftain, whatever

may have been his degree.

The author of the "Commentaries" was a Roman in whose eyes the

state was every thing, the actual office-holder, dictator, consul,

or praetor, a mere instrument for a short time; and he was too apt,

like most of his countrymen, to judge of other nations by his own.

We may conclude from the passage quoted that there was a supreme

monarch in Gaul as well as in Ireland, and modern historians of

Gaul have acknowledged it.

But there is yet a stranger fact, which absolutely cannot be

explained, save on the supposition that the Celts everywhere held

the supreme dignity of extreme if not absolute importance in their

political system.

To give it the preeminence it deserves, we must refer to a subsequent

event in the history of the Celts in Britain, since it happened

there several centuries after Caesar, and we will quote the words

of Augustin Thierry, who relates it:

"After the retreat of the legions, recalled to Italy to protect

the centre of the empire and Rome itself against the invasion

of the Goths, the Britons ceased to acknowledge the power of the

foreign governors set over their provinces and cities. The forms,

the offices, the very spirit and language of the Roman administration

disappeared; in their place was reconstituted the traditional

authority of the clannish chieftains formerly abolished by Roman

power. Ancient genealogies carefully preserved by the poets,

called in the British language _bairdd_ - bards - helped to discover

those who could pretend to the dignity of chieftains of tribes

or families, tribe and family being synonymous in their language;

and the ties of relationship formed the basis of their social

state. Men of the lowest class, among that people, preserved in

memory the long line of their ancestry with a care scarcely known

to other nations, among the highest lords and princes. All the

British Celts, poor or rich, had to establish their genealogy in

order fully to enjoy their civil rights and secure their claim of

property in the territory of the tribe. The whole belonging to a

primitive family, no one could lay any claim to the soil, unless his

relationship was well established.

"At the top of this social order, composing a federation of small

hereditary sovereignties, the Britons, freed from Roman power,

constituted a high national sovereignty; they created a chieftain

of chieftains, in their tongue called _Penteyrn_, that is to say,

a _king of the whole_, in the language of their old annals. And

they made him elective.--It was also formerly the custom in Gaul.

--The object was to introduce into their system a kind of

centralization, which, however, was always loose among Celtic

tribes."--(_Conquete de l'Angleterre_, liv. i.)

It is evident to us that if the Britons _constituted_ a supreme

power, when freed from the Roman yoke, it was only because they

had possessed it before they became subject to that yoke. It is,

therefore, safe to conclude that there was a supreme monarch in

Britain and in Gaul as well as in Ireland; and since the Britons,

after having lost for several centuries their autonomy of government,

thought of reestablishing this supreme authority as soon as they

were free to do so, it is clear that they attached a real

importance to it, and that it entered as an essential element

into the social fabric.

But what in reality was the authority of the Ard-Righ in Ireland,

of the Penteyrn in Britain, of the supreme chief in Gaul, whose

name, as usual, is not mentioned by Caesar?

First, it is to be remarked that a certain extent of territory was

always under his immediate authority. Then, as far as we can gather

from history, there was a reciprocity of obligations between the

high power and the subordinate kings or chieftains, the former

granting subsidies to the latter, who in turn paid tribute to

support the munificence or military power of the former.

We know from the Irish annals that the dignity of Ard-Righ was

always sustained by alliances with some of the provincial kings,

to secure the submission of others, and we have a hint of the

same nature in the passage, already quoted, from Caesar, as also

taking place in Gaul.

We know also from the "Book of Rights" that the tributes and stipends

consisted of bondsmen, silver shields, embroidered cloaks, cattle,

weapons, corn, victuals, or any other contribution.

The Ard-Righ, moreover, convened the _Feis_, or general assembly

of the nation, every third year; first at Tara, and after Tara

was left to go to ruin in consequence of the curse of St. Ruadhan

in the sixth century, wherever the supreme monarch established

his residence.

The order of succession to the supreme power was the weakest point

of the Irish constitution, and became the cause of by far the

greatest portion of the nation's calamities. Theoretically the

eldest son--some say the eldest relative--of the monarch succeeded

him, when he had no blemish constituting a radical defect: the

supreme power, however, alternating in two families. To secure

the succession, the heir-apparent was always declared during the

life of the supreme king; but this constitutional arrangement

caused, perhaps, more crimes and wars than any other social

institution among the Celts. The truth is that, after the

heir-apparent, sustained by some provincial king, supplanted the

reigning monarch, one of the provincial chieftains claimed the

crown and succeeded to it by violence.

Yet the general rule that the monarch was to belong to the race

of Miledh was adhered to almost without exception. One hundred

and eighteen sovereigns, according to the moat accredited annals,

governed the whole island from the Milesian conquest to St. Patrick

in 432. Of these, sixty were of the family of Heremon, settled

in the northern part of the island; twenty-nine of the posterity

of Heber, settled in the south; twenty-four of that of Ir; three

issued from Lugaid, the son of Ith. All these were of the race of

Miledh; one only was a _firbolg_, or plebeian, and one a woman.

It is certainly very remarkable that for so long a time--nearly

two thousand years, according to the best chronologists--Ireland

was ruled by princes of the same family. The fact is unparalleled

in history, and shows that the people were firmly attached to their

constitution, such as it was. It extorted the admiration of Sir

John Davies, the attorney-general of James I, and later of Lord Coke.

The functions of the provincial kings of Ulster, Munster,

Leinster, and Connaught, were in their several districts the same

as those which the Ard-Righ exercised over the whole country. They

also had their feuds and alliances with the inferior chieftains,

and in peaceful times there was also a reciprocity of obligations

between them. Presents were given by the superiors, tributes by

the inferiors; deliberations in assembly, mutual agreement for

public defence, wars against a common enemy, produced among them

traditional rules which were generally followed, or occasional

dissensions.

Sometimes a province had two kings, chiefly Munster, which

was often divided into north and south. Each king had his

heir-apparent, the same as the monarch. Indeed, every hereditary

office had, besides its actual holder, its Tanist, with right of

succession. Hence causes of division and feuds were needlessly

multiplied; yet all the Celtic tribes adhered tenaciously to all

those institutions which appeared rooted in their very nature, and

which contributed to foster the traditional spirit among them.

For these various offices and their inherent rights were all

derived from the universally prevailing family or clannish

disposition. Genealogies and traditions ruled the whole, and gave,

as we have seen, to their learned men a most important part and

function in the social state; and thus what the Greek and Latin

authors, Julius Caesar principally, have told us of the Celtic

Druids, is literally true of the ollamhs in their various degrees.

But the clannish spirit chiefly showed itself in the authority and

rights of every chieftain in his own territory. He was truly the

patriarch of all under him, acknowledged as he was to be the head

of the family, elected by all to that office at the death of his

predecessor, after due consultation with the files and shanachies,

to whom were intrusted the guardianship of the laws which governed

the clan, and the preservation of the rights of all according to

the strict order of their genealogies and the traditional rules

to be observed.

The power of the chieftain was immense, although limited on every

side by laws and customs. It was based on the deep affection of

relationship which is so ardent in the Celtic nature. For all the

clansmen were related by blood to the head of the tribe, and each

one took a personal pride in the success of his undertakings. No

feudal lord could ever expect from his vassals the like self-devotion;

for, in feudalism, the sense of honor, in clanship, family affection,

was the chief moving power.

In clanship the type was not an army, as in feudalism, but a

family. Such a system, doubtless, gave rise to many inconveniences.

"The breaking up of all general authority," says the Very Rev. Dean

Butler (Introduction to Clyn's "Annals"), "and the multiplication

of petty independent principalities, was an abuse _incident_ on

feudalism; it was _inherent_ in the very essence of the patriarchal

or family system. It began, as feudalism ended, with small independent

societies, each with its own separate centre of attraction, each

clustering round the lord or the chief, and each rather repelling

than attracting all similar societies. Yet it was not without its

advantages. If feudalism gave more strength to attack an enemy,

clanship secured more happiness at home. The first implied only

equality for the few, serfdom or even slavery for the many; the

other gave a feeling of equality to all."

It was, no doubt, this feeling of equality, joined to that of

relationship, which not only secured more happiness for the Celt,

but which so closely bound the nobility of the land to the inferior

classes, and gave these latter so ardent an affection for their

chieftains. Clanship, therefore, imparted a peculiar character

to the whole race, and its effect was so lasting and seemingly

ineradicable as to be seen in the nation to-day.

Wherever feudalism previously prevailed, we remark at this time

a fearful hatred existing between the two classes of the same

nation; and the great majority of modern revolutions had their

origin in that terrible antagonism. The same never existed, and

could not exist, in Celtic Countries; and if England, after a

conflict of many centuries, had not finally succeeded in destroying

or exiling the entire nobility of Ireland, we should, doubtless,

see to this very day that tender attachment between high and low,

rich and poor, which existed in the island in former ages.

This, therefore, not only imparted a peculiar character to the

people, but also gave to each subordinate chieftain an immense

power over his clan; and it is doubtful if the whole history of

the country can afford a single example of the clansmen refusing

obedience to their chief, unless in the case of great criminals

placed by their atrocities under the ban of society in former

times, and under the ban of the Church, since the establishment

of the Christian religion among them.

The previous observations give us an insight into the state of

the people in Celtic countries. Since, however, we know that

slavery existed among them, we must consider a moment what kind

of slavery it was, and how soon it disappeared without passing,

as in the rest of Europe, through the ordeal of serfdom.

At the outset, we cannot, as some have done, call slaves the

conquered races and poor Milesians, who, according to the ancient

annals of Ireland, rose in insurrection and established a king of

their own during what is supposed to be the first century of the

Christian era. The _attacotts_, as they were called, were not

slaves, but poor agriculturists obliged to pay heavy rents: their

very name in the Celtic language means "rent-paying tribes or

people." Their oppression never reached the degree of suffering

under which the Irish small farmers of our days are groaning. For,

according to history, they could in three years prepare from their

surplus productions a great feast, to which the monarch and all

his chieftains, with their retinue, were invited, to be treacherously

assassinated at the end of the banquet. The great plain of Magh Cro,

now Moy Cru, near Knockma, in the county of Galway, was required

for such a monster feast; profusion of meats, delicacies, and

drinks was, of course, a necessity for the entertainment of such

a number of high-born and athletic guests, and the feast lasted

nine days. Who can suppose that in our times the free cottiers

of a whole province in Ireland, after supporting their families

and paying their rent, could spare even in three years the money

and means requisite to meet the demands of such an occasion? But

the simple enunciation of the fact proves at least that the attacotts

were no slaves, but at most merely an inferior caste, deprived of

many civil rights, and compelled to pay taxes on land, contrary

to the universal custom of Celtic countries.

Caesar, it is true, pretends that real slavery existed among the

Celts in Gaul. But a close examination of that short passage in

his "Commentaries," upon which this opinion is based, will prove

to us that the slavery he mentions was a very different thing from

that existing among all other nations of antiquity.

"All over Gaul," he says, "there are two classes of men who enjoy

all the honors and social standing in the state--the Druids and

the knights. The plebeians are looked upon almost as slaves, having

no share in public affairs. Many among them, loaded with debt,

heavily taxed, or oppressed by the higher class, give themselves

in servitude to the nobility, and then, _in hos eadem omnia sunt

jura quoe dominis in servos_, the nobles lord it over them as, with

us, masters over their slaves."

It is clear from this very passage that among the Celts no such

servile class existed as among the Romans and other nations of

antiquity. The plebeians, as Caesar calls them, that is to say,

the simple clansmen, held no office in the state, were not summoned

to the councils of the nation, and, on that account, were nobodies

in the opinion of the writer. But the very name he gives them -

_plebs_ - shows that they were no more real slaves than the Roman

plebs. They exercised their functions in the state by the elections,

and Caesar did not know they could reach public office by application

to study, and by being _ordained_ to the rank of file, or shanachy,

or brehon, in Ireland, at least: and this gave them a direct share

in public affairs.

He adds that debt, taxation, and oppression, obliged a great many

to give themselves in servitude, and that then they were among

the Celts what slaves were among the Romans.

This assertion of Caesar requires some examination. That there

were slaves among the Gaels, and particularly in Ireland, we know

from several passages of old writers preserved in the various

annals of the country. St. Patrick himself was a slave there in

his youth, and we learn from his history and other sources how

slaves were generally procured, namely, by piratical expeditions

to the coast of Britain or Gaul. The Irish _curraghs_, in pagan

times, started from the eastern or southern shores of the island,

and, landing on the continent or on some British isle, they captured

women, children, and even men, when the crew of the craft was strong

enough to overcome them; the captives were then taken to Ireland

and sold there. They lost their rights, were reduced to the state

of "chattels," and thus became real slaves. Among the presents

made by a superior to an inferior chieftain are mentioned bondsmen

and bondsmaids. We cannot be surprised at this, since the same

thing took place among the most ancient patriarchal tribes of the

East, and the Bible has made us all acquainted with the male and

female servants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are also called

bondsmen and bondswomen. Among the Celts, therefore, slaves were

of two kinds: those stolen from foreign tribes, and those who

had, as it were, sold themselves, in order to escape a heavier

oppression: these latter are the ones mentioned by Caesar.

The number of the first class must always have been very small,

at least in Ireland and Britain, since the piratical excursions

of the Celtic tribes inhabiting those countries were almost

invariably undertaken in curraghs, which could only bring a

few of these unfortunate individuals from a foreign country.

As to the other class, whatever Caesar may say of their number

in Gaul, making it composed of the greatest part of the plebeians

or common clansmen, we have no doubt but that he was mistaken,

and that the number of real slaves reduced to that state by

their own act must have always been remarkably small.

How could we otherwise account for the numerous armies levied by

the Gaulish chieftains against the power of Rome, or by the British

and Irish lords in their continual internecine wars? The clansmen

engaged in both cases were certainly freemen, fighting with the

determination which freedom alone can give, and this consideration

of itself suffices to show that the great mass of the Celtic tribes

was never reduced to slavery or even to serfdom.

Moreover, the whole drift of the Irish annals goes to prove that

slavery never included any perceptible class of the Celtic population;

it always remained individual and domestic, never endangering the

safety of the state, never tending to insurrection and civil disorder,

never requiring the vigilance nor even the care of the masters

and lords.

The story of Libran, recorded in the life of St. Columbkill, is

so pertinent to our present purpose, and so well adapted to give

us a true idea of what voluntary slavery was among the Celtic

tribes, that we will give it entire in the words of Montalembert:

"It was one day announced to Columba in Iona that a stranger

had just landed from Ireland, and Columba went to meet him in

the house reserved for guests, to talk with him in private and

question him as to his dwelliing-place, his family, and the cause

of his journey. The stranger told him that he had undertaken this

painful voyage in order, under the monastic habit and in exile,

to expiate his sins. Columba, desirous of trying the reality of

his repentance, drew a most repulsive picture of the hardships

and difficult obligations of the new life. 'I am ready,' said the

stranger, 'to submit to the most cruel and humiliating conditions

that thou canst command me.' And, after having made confession,

he swore, still upon his knees, to accomplish all the requirements

of penitence. 'It is well,' said the abbot: 'now rise from thy

knees, seat thyself, and listen. You must first do penance for

seven years in the neighboring island of Tirce, after which I

will see you again.' 'But,' said the penitent, still agitated by

remorse, 'how can I expiate a perjury of which I have not yet

spoken? Before I left my country I killed a poor man. I was about

to suffer the punishment of death for that crime, and I was already

in irons, when one of my relatives, who is very rich, delivered me

by paying the composition demanded. I swore that I would serve

him all my life; but, after some days of service, I abandoned him,

and here I am notwithstanding my oath.' Upon this the saint added

that he would only be admitted to the paschal communion after his

seven years of penitence.

"When these were completed, Columba, after having given him the

communion with his own hand, sent him back to Ireland to his patron,

carrying a sword with an ivory handle for his ransom. The patron,

however, moved by the entreaties of his wife, gave the penitent

his pardon without ransom. 'Why should we accept the price sent

us by the holy Columba? We are not worthy of it. The request of

such an intercessor should be granted freely. His blessing will

do more for us than any ransom.' And immediately he detached the

girdle from his waist, which was the ordinary form in Ireland for

the manumission of captives or slaves. Columba had, besides,

ordered his penitent to remain with his old father and mother

until he had rendered to them the last services. This accomplished,

his brothers let him go, saying, 'Far be it from us to detain a

man who has labored seven years for the salvation of his soul with

the holy Columba!' He then returned to Iona, bringing with him the

sword which was to have been his ransom. 'Henceforward thou shaft be

called Libran, for thou art free and emancipated from all ties,' said

Columba; and he immediately admitted him to take the monastic vows."

Servitude, therefore, continued in Ireland after the establishment

of Christianity; but how different from the slavery of other

European countries, which it took so many ages to destroy, and

which had to pass through so many different stages! Although we

cannot know precisely when servitude was completely abolished

among the Celts, the total silence of the contemporary annals on

the subject justifies the belief that the Danes, on their first

landing, found no real slaves in the country; and, if the Danes

themselves oppressed the people wherever they established their

power, they could not make a social institution of slavery. It

had never been more than a domestic arrangement; it could not

become a state affair, as among the nations of antiquity.

In clannish tribes, therefore, and particularly among the Celts,

the personal freedom of the lowest clansman was the rule, deprivation

of individual liberty the exception. Hence the manners of the people

were altogether free from the abject deportment of slaves and

villeins in other nations--a cringing disposition of the lower

class toward their superiors, which continues even to this day

among the peasantry of Europe, and which patriarchal nations have

never known. The Norman invaders of Ireland, in the twelfth century,

were struck with the easy freedom of manner and speech of the

people, so different from that of the lower orders in feudal

countries. They soon even came to like it; and the supercilious

followers of Strongbow readily adopted the dress, the habits, the

language, and the good-humor of the Celts, in the midst of whom

they found themselves settled.

And it is proper here to show what social dispositions and habits

were the natural result of the clan system, so as to become

characteristic of the race, and to endure forever, as long at least

as the race itself. The artless family state of the sept naturally

developed a peculiarly social feeling, much less complicated than

in nations more artificially constituted, but of a much deeper and

more lasting character. In the very nature of the mind of those

tribes there must have been a great simplicity of ideas, and on

that account an extraordinary tenacity of belief and will. There

is no complication and systematic combination of political, moral,

and social views, but a few axioms of life adhered to with a most

admirable energy; and we therefore find a singleness of purpose,

a unity of national and religious feeling, among all the individuals

of the tribe.

As nothing is complicated and systematized among them, the political

system must be extremely simple, and based entirely on the family.

And family ideas being as absolute as they are simple, the political

system also becomes absolute and lasting; without improving, it is

true, but also without the constant changes which bring misery

with revolution to thoughtful, reflective, and systematic nations.

What a frightful amount of misfortunes has not logic, as it is

called, brought upon the French! It was in the name of logical

and metaphysical principles that the fabric of society was destroyed

a hundred years ago, to make room for what was then called a more

rationally-constituted edifice; but the new building is not yet

finished, and God only knows when it will be!

The few axioms lying at the base of the Celtic mind with respect

to government are much preferable, because much more conducive

to stability, and consequently to peace and order, whatever may

have been the local agitation and temporary feuds and divisions.

Hence we see the permanence of the supreme authority resting in

one family among the Celts through so many ages, in spite of

continual wrangling for that supreme power. Hence the permanence

of territorial limits in spite of lasting feuds, although territory

was not invested in any particular inheriting family, but in a

purely moral being called the clan or sept.

As for the moral and social feelings in those tribes, they are

not drawn coldly from the mind, and sternly imposed by the external

law, in the form of axioms and enactments, as was the case chiefly

in Sparta, and as is still the case in the Chinese Empire to-day;

but they gush forth impetuously from impulsive and loving hearts,

and spread like living waters which no artificially-cut stones

can bank and confine, but which must expand freely in the land

they fertilize.

Deep affection, then, is with them at the root of all moral and

social feelings; and as all those feelings, even the national and

patriotic, are merged in real domestic sentiment, a great purity

of morals must exist among them, nothing being so conducive

thereto as family affections.

Above all, when those purely-natural dispositions are raised to

the level of the supernatural ones by a divinely-inspired code, by

the sublime elevation of Christian purity, then can there be found

nothing on earth more lovely and admirable. Chastity is always

attractive to a pure heart; patriarchal guilelessness becomes

sacred even to the corrupt, if not altogether hardened, man.

Of course we do not pretend that this happy state of things is

without its exceptions; that the light has no shadow, the beauty

no occasional blemish. We speak of the generality, or at least of

the majority, of cases; for perfection cannot belong to this world.

Yet mysticism is entirely absent from such a moral and religious

state, on account, perhaps, of the paucity of ideas by which the

heart is ruled, and perhaps also on account of the artless

simplicity which characterizes every thing in primitively-constituted

nations. And, wonderful to say, without any mysticism there is

often among them a perfect holiness of life, adapting itself to

all circumstances, climates, and associations. The same heart of

a young maiden is capable of embracing a married life or of

devoting itself to religious celibacy; and in either case the

duties of each are performed with the most perfect simplicity and

the highest sanctity. Hence, how often does a trifling circumstance

determine for her her whole subsequent life, and make her either

the mother of a family or the devoted spouse of Christ! Yet, the

final determination once taken, the whole after-life seems to

have been predetermined from infancy as though no other course

could have been possible.

There is no doubt that sensual corruption is particularly engendered

by an artificial state of society, which necessarily fosters

morbidity of imagination and nervous excitability. A primitive

and patriarchal life, on the contrary, leads to moderation in all

things, and repose of the senses.

Herein is found the explanation of the eagerness with which the

Celts everywhere, but particularly in Ireland, as soon as

Christianity was preached to them, rushed to a life of perfection

and continence. St. Patrick himself expressed his surprise, and

showed, by several words in his "Confessio," that he was scarcely

prepared for it. "The sons of Irishmen," he says, "and the daughters

of their chieftains, want to become monks and virgins of Christ."

We know what a multitude of monasteries and nunneries sprang up

all over the island in the very days of the first apostle and of

his immediate successors. Montalembert remarks that, according to

the most reliable and oldest documents, a religious house is

scarcely mentioned which contained less than three thousand monks

or nuns. It appeared to be a consecrated number; and this took

place immediately after the conversion of the island to Christianity,

while even still a great number were pagans.

"There was particularly," says St. Patrick, "one blessed Irish girl,

gentle born, most beautiful, already of a marriageable age, whom I

had baptized. After a few days she came back and told me that a

messenger of God had appeared to her, advising her to become a virgin

of Christ, and live united to God. Thanks be to the Almighty! Six

days after, she obtained, with the greatest joy and avidity, what

she wished. The same must be said of all the virgins of God; their

parents--those remaining pagans, no doubt--instead of approving of

it, persecute them, and load them with obloquy; yet their number

increases constantly; and, indeed, of all those that have been

thus born to Christ, _I cannot give the number_, besides those

living in holy widowhood, and keeping continency in the midst of

the world.

"But those girls chiefly suffer most who are bound to service;

they are often subjected to terrors and threats--from pagan

masters surely--yet they persevere. The Lord has given his holy

grace of purity to those servant-girls; the more they are tempted

against chastity, the more able they show themselves to keep it."

Does not this passage, written by St. Patrick, describe precisely

what is now of every-day occurrence wherever the Irish emigrate?

The Celts, therefore, were evidently at the time of their conversion

what they are now; and it has been justly remarked that, of all

nations whose records have been kept in the history of the Catholic

Church, they have been the only ones whose chieftains, princes, even

kings, have shown themselves almost as eager to become, not only

Christians, but even monks and priests, as the last of their clansmen

and vassals. Every where else the lower orders chiefly have furnished

the first followers of Christ, the rich and the great being few at

the beginning, and forming only the exception.

The evident consequence of this well-attested fact is that the

pagan Celts, even of the highest rank, generally led pure lives,

and admired chastity. But there is something more. Morality rests

on the sense of duty; the deeper that sense is imprinted in the

heart of man, the more man becomes truly moral and holy. It can

be almost demonstrated that scarcely any thing gives more solidity

to the sense of duty than a simple and patriarchal life. Their

views of morals being no more complicated than their views of

any thing else; being accustomed to reduce every thing of a

spiritual, moral nature to a few feelings and axioms, as it were,

but at the same time becoming strongly attached to them on account

of the importance which every man naturally bestows on matters of

that sort; what among other nations forms a complicated code of

morality more or less pure, more or less corrupt, for the nations

of which we speak becomes compressed, so to speak, in a nutshell,

and, the essence remaining always at the bottom, the idea of duty

grows paramount in their minds and hearts, and every thing they

do is illumined by that light of the human conscience, which,

after all, is for each one of us the voice of God. False issues

do not distract their minds, and give a wrong bias to the

conscience. Hence Celtic tribes, by their very nature, were

strictly conscientious.

So preeminently was this the case with them that spiritual things

in their eyes became, as they truly are, real and substantial.

Hence their religion was not an exterior thing only. On the contrary,

exterior rites were in their eyes only symbolical, and mere emblems

of the reality which they covered.

It should, therefore, be no matter of surprise to us to find that

for them religion has always been above all things; that they have

always sacrificed to it whatever is dear to man on earth. They all

seem to feel as instinctively and deeply as the thoroughly cultivated

and superior mind of Thomas More did, that eternal things are

infinitely superior to whatever is temporal, and that a wise man

ought to give up every thing rather than be faithless to his religion.

From the previous remarks, we map conclude, with Mr. Matthew

Arnold, who has applied his critical and appreciative mind to the

study of the Celtic character, that "the Celtic genius has sentiment

as its main basis, with love of beauty, charm, and spirituality

for its excellence," but, he adds, "ineffectualness and self-will

for its defects." On these last words we may be allowed to make a

few concluding observations.

If by "ineffectualness" is understood that, owing to their impulsive

nature, the Celts often attempted more than they could accomplish,

and thus failed; or that on many occasions of less import they

changed their mind, and, after a slight effort, did not persevere

in an undertaking just begun, there is no doubt of the truth of

the observation. But, if the celebrated writer meant to say that

this defect of character always accompanied the Celts in whatever

they attempted, and that thus they were constantly foiled and

never successful in any thing; or, still worse, that, owing to

want of perseverance and of energy, they too soon relaxed in their

efforts, and that every enterprise and determination on their

part became "ineffectual"--we so far disagree with him that the

main object of the following pages will be to contradict these

positions, and to show by the history of the race, in Ireland at

least, that, owing precisely to their "self-will," they were never

_ultimately unsuccessful_ in their aspirations; but that, on the

contrary, they have always in the end _effected_ what with their

accustomed perseverance and self-will they have at all times stood

for. At least this we hope will become evident, whenever they had a

great object in view, and with respect to things to which they

attached a real and paramount importance.