O'CONNELL, JOURNEYMAN TAILOR
THERE was quite a crowd on the platform, that Sunday morning, of
travellers turning their backs on Killarney, and we found ourselves
eventually in a compartment with two Americans, man and wife, who were
plainly in no pleasant humour. The man was especially disgruntled about
something, and I judged from his exclamations that he had got decidedly
the worst of it when it came to settling the bill. It is in some such
mood as this, I fear, that many people leave Killarney.
But the view from the window soon made us forget our fellow-passengers.
The road runs for a time close beside the Flesk, one of the prettiest of
Irish rivers, while away to the south rose the beautiful Killarney
hills, peak upon peak, with mighty Mangerton dominating all of them. And
then came the Paps, two conical elevations separated by a deep ravine;
and then the bleak brown slopes of the Muskerry hills, with a ruined
castle of the McCarthys guarding the only pass into the valley. To the
north a boggy plain stretched away and away, ridged with black pits,
like long earthworks, from which the turf had been cut.
The hills to the south grew gradually less rugged, and presently we
dropped into the beautiful valley of the Blackwater, with many ruined
castles perched on the crags which overshadow it--castles built by the
McCarthys, the O'Callaghans, and I know not what other septs, memorials
of the old days of raid and counter-raid, of warring clans and
treacherous chieftains.
And then we came to Mallow, and had to change into another carriage,
where we found five Americans, who were also coming from Killarney, and
who also believed that they had been held up. Their grievance was
against the hotel at which they had stopped, and they said wildly that
it was no better than a den of thieves. This, of course, was an
exaggeration, and, in any event, I did not pity them much, for it was
soon evident that their visit to Ireland had been a waste of time. They
knew nothing of her history and traditions; her ruins held no meaning
for them; her empty valleys told them nothing of her past; they had
never heard of Cormac, or Finn the Fair, or Ossian, or Conn the Hundred
Fighter, or even of Brian Boru; they had never heard of that old
civilisation which the Danes swept away, and saw nothing very wonderful
in the Cross of Cong or the Book of Kells. So to them Ireland had proved
a disappointment, just as she will to every one who visits her in
ignorance and indifference.
We reached Limerick Junction, at last, and changed thankfully to the
branch which runs to Limerick, twenty miles away. And almost at once we
came upon traces of Patrick Sarsfield, of glorious memory, for a few
miles beyond the Junction, to the left of the line, are the ruins of a
castle, which was held by the English, but which he surprised one night,
on one of those famous raids of his, and captured and blew up. And then
the line mounted the hills which divide the Vale of Tipperary from the
valley of the Shannon, crossed them, and came out upon a land as
beautiful and fertile as any we had seen in Ireland. Such lushness, such
greenness, such calm, quiet loveliness can surely be matched in few
other spots upon this earth.
It was still early afternoon when the train rolled in to the station at
Limerick, and on the platform we met the actor and his wife whom we had
talked with at Blarney a week before. They had come to Limerick, where
their principal was a great favourite, for a three weeks' engagement. I
saw the actor afterwards on the street, and he told me that the theatre
was in terrible shape, for some misguided enthusiasts had attempted to
hold a Unionist meeting there, a few days previously, and the patriotic
Limerickians had nearly torn the place to pieces.
Limerick is by far the most important town of central or western
Ireland; in fact it is surpassed in population only by Belfast, Dublin
and Cork, and it has many amusing points of resemblance to the two
latter. It is divided into two parts by a branch of the Shannon; it has
one long, curving principal street leading to a bridge; the street is
known officially as George Street, after an English king, but to all
Irishmen it is O'Connell Street, in honour of the Liberator whose statue
is its chief adornment; this street is a street of bright and attractive
shops, not in itself interesting, but cross the bridge to the older part
of the town, or turn up any of the little lanes which lead off from it,
and you will find nothing more picturesque anywhere--nor more
distressful.
We walked along George Street, that afternoon, and crossed the bridge
to the island on which Limerick had its birth. The bridge is called
Matthew Bridge, not after the Disciple, but after Ireland's great
apostle of temperance. Beyond the bridge is a maze of narrow, crooked
streets, and we made our way through them to the old cathedral, whose
tower served as guide. We got there just as vespers were over, and we
found the verger very willing to show us about.
I do not imagine there are many Protestants at Limerick; at least, a
very small portion of this impressive old church serves the needs of the
congregation, and the rest of it is bare and empty--and imposing. Rarely
indeed have I seen a more sombre interior, for the walls are very
massive, and the windows small, and there is a surprising number of dark
little chapels--the principal one, of course, being dedicated as a
burial place for the Earls of Limerick. The carved miserere seats are
worth examining, as are also many of the old tombs which clutter the
interior. There is an elaborate one to the Earl of Thomond in the
chancel, and a carved slab covering the grave of Donall O'Brien, King of
Munster, who founded the cathedral in 1179; but among the quaintest is a
slab built into the wall of the nave with this epitaph cut upon it:
MEMENTO MORY
HERE LIETH LITTELL SAMUEL
BARINGTON THAT GREAT UNDER
TAKER OF FAMOUS CITTIES
CLOCK AND CHIME MAKER
HE MADE HIS ONE TIME GOE
EARLY AND LATTER BUT NOW
HE IS RETURNED TO GOD
HIS CREATOR
THE 29 OF NOVEMBER THEN
HE SCEST AND FOR HIS
MEMORY THIS HERE IS PLEAST
BY HIS SON BEN
1693
We spent a very pleasant half hour in the church, and then we wandered
on through the crooked streets to the magnificent Norman castle, set up
here to defend the passage of the Shannon. Most venerable and impressive
it is, with its great drum towers, and curtains ten feet thick. Just in
front of it the Shannon is spanned by a fine modern bridge, replacing
the ancient one which was the scene of so many conflicts, and at the
farther end of it, mounted on a pedestal, is the famous stone on which
Sarsfield signed his treaty with the English in 1691--the treaty which
guaranteed equal rights to Catholics, but which, as every Catholic
Irishman somewhat too vividly remembers, resulted only in a more bitter
persecution. Irish memory, curiously enough, seems always to grow
clearer with the passing years, and the mists of two centuries
accentuate, rather than obscure, the fame of Limerick as "The City of
the Violated Treaty." The story runneth thus:
The River Shannon, with its wide estuary, its many lakes, and its mighty
current flowing between impassable bogs or beetling cliffs, has always
been a formidable barrier between east and west Ireland. In the old
days, the only doors in this barrier was the ford at Athlone, just below
Lough Ree, and another all but impassable one at Killaloe, just below
Lough Derg; but in the ninth century, the Danes sailed up from the sea,
landed on an island at the head of the tideway, fortified it, and so
started the city of Limerick. The current of the river was divided here,
and the invaders managed in time to get a bridge across, and so opened
another door in the Shannon barrier. Brian Boru drove them out, at last,
and then the Normans came and, after their fashion everywhere, rendered
their hold secure by erecting a great round-towered castle to guard the
bridge. Edward Bruce captured it in 1316, and three centuries later,
Hugh O'Neill held it for six months against Cromwell's great general,
Ireton. The Ironsides captured it, finally, and Ireton died of the
plague not long afterwards in a house just back of the cathedral.
But it was in the war against William of Orange that Limerick played its
most distinguished part. I have already told how the Irish chose the
cause of the Stuarts against the Parliament; how they proclaimed Charles
II king as soon as his father's head was off, and of the vengeance
Cromwell took. So it was inevitable that they should espouse the cause
of James II against the Protestant William, whom the English had called
over from the Netherlands to be their king. James came to Ireland to
lead the rebellion, proved himself an idiot and a coward, and ended by
running away and leaving the Irish to their fate.
William's troops swept the country, took town after town and castle
after castle, until Limerick remained nearly the last stronghold in
Irish hands. So William marched against it, at the head of 26,000 men,
but the position was a very strong one, and that ablest of Irish
generals, Patrick Sarsfield, was in command of the town, and William was
beaten back. The next year another great army under General Ginkle
marched against the place, first capturing Athlone, and so getting
across the river. A terrific attack was concentrated on the fortress
guarding the bridge, a breach was made, the fort stormed, and the
garrison put to the sword, only about a hundred out of eight hundred
escaping across the other branch of the river into Limerick.
Sarsfield still held the town, but his men were disheartened by the loss
of the castle. Ginkle, on the other hand, realised that to take the town
would be no easy task. A truce was proposed, negotiations began, both
sides were eager to end the war, and the result was that the famous
Treaty of Limerick was signed by Ginkle and Sarsfield on the third day
of October, 1691, on a stone near the County Clare end of the bridge
over the Shannon.
There were twelve articles in the treaty, and some of them were
kept--the one, for instance, permitting all persons to leave the country
who wished to do so, and to take their families and portable goods
along; but one was not kept, the most important one, perhaps, which
provided that Irish Catholics should enjoy all the religious rights they
possessed under Charles II, and that all Irish still in arms, who should
immediately submit and take the oath of allegiance, should be secured in
the free and undisputed possession of their estates. In a word, the
price of peace was to have been a general indemnity and freedom of
religious worship. It was not an excessive price, but it was never paid.
The Protestant colonists in Ireland protested in great wrath that they
had been betrayed, and the Irish Parliament, which the colonists
controlled, after a bitter fight, repudiated the treaty, or, at least,
confirmed only so much of it as "consisted with the safety and welfare
of his Majesty's subjects in Ireland," and passed a number of new laws
aimed at Catholics, disqualifying them from teaching school, from
sending their children abroad to be educated, from observing any holy
day except those set apart by the Church of Ireland, and many others of
the same sort, some of almost insane malignity. All this was, of course,
quite unjustifiable, but "King Billy" seems to have been in no way
responsible for it. In any event, it happened more than two centuries
ago, all these laws have long since been repealed, and it seems absurd
to keep their memory so fresh and burning.
One word more, and I am done with history. After the surrender of
Limerick, Sarsfield and his men were given the choice of enlisting in
William's army or leaving the country. They chose the latter, and went
to France, where the last Catholic king of England had sought refuge.
He, of course, was unable to maintain them, so they enlisted under the
French king, Louis XIV, and formed the Irish Brigade, which was
afterwards to become so famous, and in which, during the next fifty
years, nearly half a million Irishmen enlisted, as the best means of
avenging themselves on England. The part they played at Landen, at
Barcelona, at Cremona, at Blenheim, at Ramilles, and finally at
Fontenoy--all this is matter of history.
* * * * *
We crossed the bridge again, after a look at the treaty stone--which,
enshrined on its lofty pedestal, is really a monument to English
perfidy--passed the castle, and plunged into the crooked streets of
"English Town," as this oldest part of Limerick is called, with its
tall, foreign-looking, tumbledown houses--as picturesque a quarter as I
have seen anywhere. For Limerick grew into an important city in the
century following its capture by the English, and many wealthy people
put up handsome town-houses, four or five stories high, with wide halls
and sweeping stairs and beautiful doorways and tall windows framed in
sculptured stone. It is these old houses which shadow the narrow lanes
of "English Town," and they are all tenements now, for the well-to-do
people--such of them as are left--have moved over to the newer, more
fashionable, more sanitary quarter. No attempt is made to keep them in
repair, and many of them have fallen down, leaving ragged gaps in the
street. Others seem in imminent danger of falling, and the distressed
look of the place is further heightened by the great fragments of the
old walls which remain here and there.
This part of Limerick is on the island where the town started; the part
just beyond the bridge which leads to the mainland is called Irish Town,
and it, too, was once included in the city walls, a long stretch of
which is still standing back of the ancient citadel. Here too,
especially along the quay, are handsome houses, long since fallen from
their high estate, and now the homes of the poorest of the poor, a
family in every room. It is something of a shock to see these ragged and
distressed people climbing the beautiful stairways, or sitting in the
handsome doorways or leaning out of the carved windows, very much at
home in the place which was once the abode of wealth and fashion, while
the noisy play of dirty and neglected children echoes through the rooms
which once rang with gentle laughter and impassioned toast.
Newtown-Pery, the newer part of the town, built on land reclaimed from
the river by the Pery family, the Earls of Limerick, who still own it,
contrasts strongly with the older part, for its streets are wide and
straight and run regularly at right angles, and it is a bustling place,
but quite without interest to the stranger. The houses are almost
uniformly four stories high, and are built of a peculiar dark-brown
brick, which makes them look much older than they really are. And down
along the water-front are nearly a mile of quays, with floating docks
and heavy cranes, and towering warehouses looking down upon them.
Time was when Limerick fondly hoped to become the greatest port in
Ireland. She had every advantage--a noble situation on the broad estuary
of the Shannon, up which ships from America could sail direct to her
wharves--but in spite of great expenditures to improve her harbour
facilities, not only did no new trade come, but such as she already had
withered and withered, until to-day her tall warehouses are empty, her
quays almost deserted, and in the broad expanse of the Shannon there are
few boats except excursion steamers and pleasure yachts.
The cause of this decay? Irishmen assert that there is only one
cause--unjust and discriminating laws passed by England to protect her
own trade by destroying Irish industry. No doubt this is true; but these
laws have been repealed for many years, and there is little evidence of
the healthy revival of these industries anywhere in Ireland. Such
revival as there is has been carefully fostered by various government
agencies; there has been no great spontaneous revival, and perhaps there
never will be. But it is a melancholy sight--the empty, decaying mills,
the idle factories, the deserted warehouses, the ruined dwellings, which
the traveller sees all up and down the land.
I went out for another stroll about the town, after tea, for I wanted to
see the new Catholic cathedral, whose tall spire dominates the landscape
for many miles around. And as I went, I could not but notice the impress
the English have left on the names of the streets. The principal street,
as I have said already, is George Street; then there is Cecil Street,
and William Street, and Nelson Street, and Catherine Street, and George
and Charlotte Quays opposite each other. There is one, however, named
after a local celebrity whom all Irishmen should delight to
honour--Gerald Griffin, an authentic poet, whose "Eileen Aroon" is one
of the tenderest and most musical of lyrics.
Gerald Griffin Street is one of the most important in Limerick, and it
is by it that one gains the cathedral, an impressive building,
especially as to its interior, dimly lighted through high, narrow lancet
windows. And here again one admires not so much the church itself, as
the indomitable spirit which could undertake the task of building such
an edifice in want-stricken Ireland.
The Sarsfield monument is in the cathedral square, a rampageous figure,
charging with drawn sword off the top of a shaft of stone--perhaps the
most ridiculous tribute to a great soldier and patriot to be seen
anywhere on this earth. I, at least, have never seen any to match it,
unless it be that imperturbable dandy, supposed to represent Andrew
Jackson, who calmly doffs his chapeau from the back of a rearing horse
in front of our own White House!
I walked on, after that, down toward the quays, along little lanes of
thatched houses, and then back into the region of the old mansions, with
their chattering women and sprawling children; and then, suddenly, I
became aware of the girls.
Limerick, like Cork, is supposed to be famous for the beauty of its
women, and the younger generation was out in force, that Sunday evening,
rigged up in its best clothes, evidently ready for any harmless
adventure. There _were_ some nice-looking girls among them, no doubt of
that, with bright eyes and red lips and glowing cheeks, and the advent
of a stranger in their midst filled them with the liveliest interest,
which they were at no pains to dissemble. I know nothing about the
psychology of Irish girls, for I was not in a position to investigate or
experiment; but while they are shy, at first, I should judge that most
of them are not altogether averse to mild flirtation. The glance of
their eye is not, perhaps, as fatal as Kate Kearney's, but it is very
taking.
I wish I could say as much for the boys; but if there were any witty,
invincible Rory O'Mores left in Ireland, I didn't see them. The Irish
young man seems very different indeed from the light-hearted, audacious,
philandering scapegrace so dear to Lover and Lever and scores of lesser
poets, and once so familiar upon the stage. They are not forever
breaking into song, they do not brim with sentiment, they are not, so
far as I could judge, full of heroic emotions and high ambitions. In
fact, they are quite the opposite of all that--matter-of-fact, humdrum,
rather stupid.
Of course there are exceptions, and I was fortunate enough to meet one
that very evening. I stopped in at a tobacconist's to get a paper, and
fell into talk with the proprietor; and presently there entered a man
who bought a pennyworth of tobacco, filled his pipe, and then remained
for a word, seeing that I was a stranger. We were talking about Ireland,
and in a very few minutes the newcomer had the centre of the stage.
O'Connell, journeyman tailor, so he introduced himself, and I wish I
could paint a picture of him that would make him live for you as he
lives for me. He was a faded little man, of indeterminate age, with a
straw-coloured moustache and sallow skin, but his eyes were very bright,
and before long his face was glowing with an infectious enthusiasm. His
clothes were worn and shabby, but one forgot them as he stood there and
talked--indeed they even lent a sort of dignity to his lean, nervous
little figure.
First he told of how Cleeve, the big butter man, was trying to get the
city to close the swing bridge over the Shannon, so that his heavy
trams, which went about the country collecting milk, could cross it. To
close the bridge would shut off permanently about four hundred yards of
quay; but, so Cleeve argued, the quays were little used, and the town
would never need that stretch above the bridge. But O'Connell did not
believe it.
"'Tis true," he said, "that England with her cruel laws, has killed our
trade and brought us all to want; 'tis true that we have no use for the
quay at present. But all that will be changed when we get Home Rule.
Then, sir, you will see our quays crowded with boats from end to end;
you will see our mills and factories humming with life, you will see our
warehouses piled with commodities from every quarter of the world. To
shut off part of them, just because this bloated butter-maker wants it,
would be a crime against the people of this town."
"How is all this to be brought about?" I asked.
"'Tis you Americans will be doing it, sir. The Irish in America, our
brothers, God bless them, will rally to the ould land. Her children will
come home to the Shan Van Vocht, once she is free of England. 'Tis them
ones will set us on our feet again. They will be putting their money
into our industries, till in the whole island there will be not an idle
wheel or a smokeless chimney."
I told him I was afraid his dreams were too rosy; that the American
Irish, like all other Americans, would be governed by dividends, not by
sentiment, in the investment of their money. But nothing could shake his
belief in the good time coming. I asked him what he thought of Ulster,
and he laughed.
"The Protestants have nothing to fear from Home Rule," he said. "'Tis
them will control this government. We Catholics are going to pick the
best and strongest men in this island to man the ship, and there will be
more Protestants than Catholics amongst them. We will need strong arms
at the helm, and what do we care what their religion may be, if only
they're good men and true? You're a Protestant, I take it, sir?"
"Yes," I said; "I am."
"And does that make me think any the less of you? Not a bit of it. 'Tis
the same God we look at, only with different eyes."
"Not even that," I corrected; "with the same eyes--just from a different
angle."
"You've said it, sir. I can't improve on that. Well then, what is it the
Ulster men are afraid of? They say it's the priests. But how silly that
is! Let them look back into history, and see what has happened when the
priests interfered with things that did not concern them. In spiritual
matters I bow to my priest; in everything else, I am independent of him.
It is so with all Irishmen, and has always been. Do you remember what
the great O'Connell said: 'I would as soon,' said he, 'take my politics
from Stamboul as from Rome.' Do you remember what happened when Rome
tried to prevent the Catholics of Ireland from contributing to the
testimonial for the greatest patriot Ireland has ever had, Charles
Stewart Parnell? But of course you don't. I'll just tell you. Why, sir,
the whole country was on fire from end to end. 'Make Peter's Pence into
Parnell's Pounds' was the battle-cry, and the money poured in like rain.
Mr. Parnell's friends had hoped to raise fifteen thousand pounds for
him. When they got the money counted at last, they had near forty
thousand pounds. What do you think of that now?"
"I think it was fine," I said. "But why is it, then, Ulster is so
frightened?"
"Ah, Ulster isn't frightened--it's just a lot of talk from people who
live by talkin'. There's many Catholics who are against Home Rule, and
there's many Protestants who are for it. They'll all be for it, after
they've tried it a while. And we won't let the Protestants stay out--we
can't afford to--we need them too much. Why, sir, our leaders have
always been Protestants, and I'm thinking always will be."
"There was O'Connell," I reminded him.
"I have not forgotten him--I quoted him but a moment since; and 'tis
true he was a great man and a true patriot. But he fell into grievous
error when he chose Catholic emancipation, when he might have got Home
Rule. What did Catholic emancipation mean to me and thousands like me?
It meant just nothing at all. It meant that some Catholics of
O'Connell's own class could hold jobs under government--that was all.
The greatest man this island ever produced, sir, was a Protestant. I
have mentioned him already; his name was Charles Stewart Parnell!"
I wish you could have seen his shining eyes and heard his quivering
voice as he went on to tell me about Parnell; and how, after the scandal
which ruined his life--a scandal prearranged, so many think, by his
political enemies--he had come to Limerick to address a meeting, with
death in his face and a broken heart in his eyes; and there had been
some in the crowd that hissed him and pelted him with mud; and the
little tailor, his chest swelling at the old glorious memory, told how
he had been one of those who rallied around the stricken leader and beat
the crowd back and got him safe away. There were tears in his eyes
before he had ended.
"Ah, woman," he went on, "'twas not only Parnell you ruined then, it was
ould Ireland, too! And not for the first time! Why, sir, 'twas because
of a woman the British first came to this island. Troy had her Helen, as
Homer tells, and so had Erin. 'Twas the same story over again.
Dervorgilla the lady's name was, and she was the wife of Tiernan
O'Rourke, Prince of Breffni, who had his fine castle on the beautiful
green banks of Lough Gill. It was there that Dermot MacMurrough, King of
Leinster, saw her, and after that no other woman would do for him. So he
courted her in odd corners and whispered soft honeyed words into her
ear; and she listened, as women will, and her head was turned by his
flattery. One day her husband, who was a pious man, kissed her good-bye
and started on a pilgrimage to St. Patrick's Purgatory in Lough Derg;
and he was there nine days; and when he came back, what did he find? Ah,
sir, Tom Moore has told it far better than I can:
"'The valley lay smiling before me,
Where lately I left her behind;
Yet I trembled, and something hung o'er me,
That saddened the joy of my mind.
I looked for the lamp which, she told me,
Should shine when her Pilgrim returned;
But, though darkness began to enfold me,
No lamp from the battlements burned!
"'I flew to her chamber--'twas lonely,
As if the loved tenant lay dead;--
Ah, would it were death, and death only;
But no, the young false one had fled.
And there hung the lute that could soften
My very worst pains into bliss;
While the hand, which had waked it so often,
Now throbbed to a proud rival's kiss.'"
I wish I could convey the tremor of the voice with which O'Connell,
journeyman tailor, recited these silly lines. I can see him yet,
standing there, one hand against his heart, his eyes straining up to the
battlements from which no welcoming light gleamed. I can see the
proprietor of the little shop, as he lounged against his counter,
smiling good-naturedly. I can see the two or three other men who had
drifted in, listening with all their ears.
And then O'Connell went on to tell how O'Rourke, finding his wife had
fled with MacMurrough, appealed to his overlord, King Turlough O'Conor,
and how the two of them so harassed MacMurrough that he was compelled to
restore Dervorgilla to her husband and to flee to England, where he went
to Strongbow and persuaded him to bring his Normans to Ireland to help
him in his feud; and how Strongbow, once he got a firm grip on the land,
refused to loosen it, and the curse of English rule had been on Ireland
ever since.
I looked this story up, afterwards, and found that legend tells it much
as O'Connell did, and it is probably true. But, just the same, it is
hardly fair to lay the whole blame for Ireland's woes on Dervorgilla,
for the Normans had been looking longingly across the Irish Sea years
before MacMurrough fled to them, and would no doubt have crossed it,
sooner or later, without an invitation. The tragic point of the story is
that, as usual, the invader found the Irish divided and so unable to
resist. We shall see the castle from which Dervorgilla fled, before our
journey is done, and also the place where she lies buried, at Mellifont,
in the valley of the Boyne.
The quotation from Tom Moore had turned my little tailor's thoughts
toward poetry, and he asked if I knew this poem and that, and when I
didn't, as was frequently the case, he would quote a few lines, or sing
them, if they had been set to music.
"Of course you know 'To the Dead of Ninety-eight'?" he asked.
"Yes," I said; "but that is not Johnson's noblest poem. Do you know his
'Ode to Ireland'?"
"I do not," he answered. "Let us have it, sir."
How sorry I was that I couldn't let them have it, or didn't have a copy
that I could read to them, for it is a stirring poem; I had to confess
that I didn't know it, but I can't resist quoting one splendid stanza
now--
"No swordsmen are the Christians!" Oisin cried:
"O Patrick! thine is but a little race."
Nay, ancient Oisin! they have greatly died
In battle glory and with warrior grace.
Signed with the Cross, they conquered and they fell;
Sons of the Cross, they stand:
The Prince of Peace loves righteous warfare well,
And loves thine armies, O our Holy Land!
The Lord of Hosts is with thee, and thine eyes
Shall see upon thee rise
His glory, and the blessing of His Hand.
"Have you heard Timothy Sullivan's 'Song from the Backwoods'?" he asked
me finally, and when I said I never had, he sang it for the assembled
company, and a splendid song I found it. Here it is:
Deep in Canadian woods we've met,
From one bright island flown;
Great is the land we tread, but yet
Our hearts are with our own.
And ere we leave this shanty small,
While fades the Autumn day,
We'll toast Old Ireland!
Dear Old Ireland!
Ireland, boys, hurray!
We've heard her faults a hundred times,
The new ones and the old,
In songs and sermons, rants and rhymes,
Enlarged some fifty-fold.
But take them all, the great and small,
And this we've got to say:--
Here's dear Old Ireland!
Good Old Ireland!
Ireland, boys, hurray!
As he went on with the song, the others in the shop warmed up to it and
joined in the chorus so lustily that a crowd gathered outside; and the
shopkeeper got a little nervous, fearing, perhaps, a visit from some
passing constable, and he whispered in O'Connell's ear, when the song
was done, and there were no more songs that evening.
But still we sat and talked and smoked and O'Connell told me something
of himself: of the fifteen shillings a week he could earn when he had
steady work; of the three-pence a week he paid out under the insurance
act, and how, if he was sick, he would draw a benefit of ten shillings
a week for six months. He said bitterly that, if he lived in England, he
would get free medical attendance, too, but that had been refused to
Ireland through the machinations of the doctors and their friends. He
told of the blessing the old age pension had been to many people he
knew, and he admitted that England had been trying, of late years, to
atone for her old injustices toward Ireland, and was now, perhaps,
spending more money on the country than she got out of it.
"But there is a saying, sir, as you know," he concluded, rising and
knocking out his pipe, "that hell is paved with good intentions; and
however good England's intentions may be, she can never govern us well,
because she can never understand us. Besides, it's not charity we want,
it's freedom. Better a crust of bread and freedom, than luxury and
chains! We'll have some hard fights, but we'll win out. Come back in ten
years, sir, and you'll see a new Ireland. Take my word for it. It's glad
I am that I came in here this night," he added. "I was feeling downcast
and disheartened; but that is all over now. This talk has been a great
pleasure to me. Good-bye, sir; God save you!" and he disappeared into
the night.