SUPERSTITIONS OF THE GROVE.
"Oh the Oak, and the Ash, and the bonnie Ivy tree
Flourish best at hame in the North Countrie."
[Sidenote: SUN-WORSHIP IN ARAN.]
In the present chapter we propose to give a few of the legends with
which groves were enriched when the worship of the sun (Baal) was the
religion of the world--legends yet remembered in Aran. In the groves
they offered sacrifices, and "burnt," writes the Prophet Hosea, "incense
under the oak and the poplar and the turpentine tree [the pine], because
the shadow thereof was good."[20] And we are told that "Abraham planted
a grove in Bersabee, and there called upon the Name of the everlasting
God."[21]
[Sidenote: WORSHIP OF BAAL IN ARAN.]
The selection of such places originated, no doubt, in the fact that the
gloom of the forest was calculated to excite awe, and because they
considered that the spirits of the departed hovered over the places
where the bodies were buried; and it was common to bury the dead under
trees, as appears from the eighth verse of the thirty-fifth chapter of
the Book of Genesis, where it is stated that when Deborah, the nurse of
Rebecca, died, she was buried at the foot of Bethel under an oak tree,
and the name of that place was called "The Oak of Weeping;" and when
Saul, the first King of Israel, fell at the battle of Gilboe, his bones
were buried under an oak tree at Jabesh.[22] Amongst the Hebrews it was
common, before the time of Moses, to plant groves. But the idolatrous
nations planted them also; and groves and the places of idol-worship
soon became convertible terms. For the purpose, therefore, of
extirpating idolatry, the Lord thus spoke through Moses: "Thou shalt
plant no grove, nor any tree near the altar of the Lord thy God."[23]
And in after-centuries, when Josias abolished the worship of Baal in
Judah, and destroyed them that offered incense to the sun, and the moon,
and to the twelve signs, he caused the grove to be burnt there.[24]
Whether the groves of Aran were destroyed at the time of the destruction
of the religion of Baal and of the introduction of Christianity, or in
after-ages, it is impossible now to state. That great trees had
existence in the islands in 1618 is certain, as appears by a partly
hereinbefore recited indenture of that date, when Henry Lynch did demise
a moiety of the three islands to William Anderson, his executors, etc.,
for a long term of years, excepting thereout _great trees_.
[Sidenote: NYMPHS OF TREES.]
_The Oak._--The chief object of worship was the oak, which has not
inaptly been called "the king of the forest." With its life was bound up
the life of a nymph, for the nymphs of trees, called in classics
_Hamadryades_, were believed to die together with the trees which had
been their abode, and with which they had come into existence. Those
that presided over woods in general were called _Dryades_, as the
divinities of particular trees were Hamadryades. Not unfrequently has
the axe of the woodman been stayed by the voice of the nymph breaking
from the groaning oak.
[Sidenote: THE OAK.]
That misfortune was believed to follow in the footsteps of those who
wantonly felled an oak is abundantly proved by the soothsayers in the
olden time. Often have oaks become attached to the lords of the house
with whose existence they were bound for hundreds of years. If the
leaves in a living state have prophesied touching the affairs of men, so
did the dried timbers, as in the case of the _Argo_, when they warned
the Argonauts of the misfortunes that awaited them. Not unfrequently has
the falling of a branch of the oak tree warned the protecting family of
coming disasters. The idols in idolatrous times were manufactured from
its wood, though more frequently from that of the ash, and from it was
cut the yule-log which served to maintain the perpetual fire. Once a
year all fires and lights but one were extinguished, and that was the
oaken log, from which every other fire in the islands was with much
ceremony relighted.
The medicinal qualities of the tree, and the charmed life it bore,
prophetic, as we have said, and causing diseases to depart by its spells
and incantations, must have made its existence, if it knew anything at
all about it, a happy one. The Irish of the "oak" is _Dara_, and many an
Aranite bears that name.
Now, there was a blessed Saint, "Mac Dara," who lived in those islands
long ages ago, and there was a renowned statue of him made of oak, which
the people venerated with an idolatrous veneration. It was in vain that
the Catholic clergy called on them to desist from kneeling before the
graven image, and from swearing on it rather than on the Book of the
Gospels, on which all men swore. Malachy O'Queely, Roman Catholic
Archbishop of Tuam, was, however, resolved to put down an exhibition
which he considered a scandal to the Catholic Church, and so, coming to
the islands in 1645, he tore down the statue and flung it into the sea;
but ill luck awaited him. In the same year he was sent by the Supreme
Council of Kilkenny to accompany the confederate troops to Sligo, which
had been lately taken by the Parliamentary forces. He did so, and the
warrior archbishop rushed to the relief of the town, and for a season
dislodged the enemy; but the tide of victory turned, the Irish were
routed, and the body of the prelate was literally cut to pieces. Upon
him was found that treaty with Charles I. which afterwards helped to
bring the unhappy king to the scaffold.
[Sidenote: OAK--ASH.]
Another of the superstitions that attaches to the king of the forest is
that, if his majesty leafs before the ash, the coming season will be
dry; if, however, the ash leafs before the oak, then the coming season
will be wet.
"If the oak's before the ash,
Then you'll only get a splash;
If the ash precedes the oak,
Then you may expect a soak."
Of the Irish oak and of the horror that insects have of that tree, we
may form an estimate from Hall, who, in his Chronicles, says that
"William Rufus builded Westminster Hall, and the oaks with which the
said Hall was roof'd were felled in Oxmanstown Green, near Dublin, and
no spider webbeth and breedeth in that roof of oak even to this day." Of
the remote pedigree of the oak we need not speak further than to remind
those who are curious about such matters that the oak all over the world
is said to be the first created of all trees, and next to it comes the
ash.
The _Ash_ is "the Venus of the forest." On ashen sticks (dreadful in
matters of witchcraft, as appears from the evidence given in the case
of "the Dame Alice Kettler," tried for witchcraft in Kilkenny, in 1324)
witches were wont at night to ride "through the fog and filthy air." To
love-sick maidens the even ash leaf--that is, where the leaflets of the
leaf are even in number--is of priceless value, "and note that if a
youngster meeteth and plucketh an even ash leaffe and a four leaffed
clover [shamrock], they are most certaine to meet their husband or wyfe,
as the case may be, before the day passeth over;" and so runs the old
saw--
"And if you find
An even-leaved ash and a four-leaved clover,
You'll see your true love 'fore the day is over."
[Sidenote: ASH--ROWAN TREE.]
Strange that the mountain ash, the _rowan tree_, should be held in
horror by witches. "Of it whip-handles are made, for the bewitched and
stumbling horses thereby become unbewitched and unstumblers." So also
the housewife should, before turning the cows out to grass for the
summer, tie a switch of mountain ash with a red worsted thread around
the cow's tail. The churn, so often bewitched of its butter, is certain
to withstand the evil eye when the churn-staff is manufactured of the
rowan tree. The roots of the ash or the mountain ash, in Aran, are of
rare occurrence; we shall, therefore, pass on to the _aspen_, of which
it is said that it alone refused to bow, as the other trees did, to the
Redeemer, and that for such conduct the aspen leaf all over the world
trembleth even to this hour.
[Sidenote: ELDER--PINE.]
_The Elder._--The most unlucky of all trees is the elder, now a mere
bush; for out of it was made the cross of Christ, and from one of its
boughs Judas hanged himself. In Scotland this tree is known as the
bourtree, and hence the rhyme--
"Bourtree, bourtree, crooked wrung,
Never straight and never strong;
Ever bush and never tree,
Since our Lord was nailed to thee."
The mushrooms growing in or near the elder are known as Judas's ears, of
wondrous virtue in curing coughs.
"For a cough take Judas' ear,
With the parings of the pear;
And drink this without fear."
The superstitions attached to this tree are many, and to tell them would
fill a volume.
Stumps of _Pine_ and _Fir_ are numerous in the Aran islands. The fir
tree has been ever highly esteemed. It was amongst the materials
employed in the building of Solomon's temple. Together with the pine it
was held in such veneration in France, that St. Martin met with the
strongest possible opposition when he proposed the destruction of the
holy fir groves. The fir grew luxuriantly in Palestine; and the Prophet
Hosea saith that the Lord will make Ephraim flourish "like a green fir
tree."[25] And another prophet, Ezechiel, informs us, in the fifth verse
of the twenty-seventh chapter of his prophecy, that the navy of Tyre was
constructed of this tree, whilst the masts were from the cedars (pines)
of Libanus. It was the timber, too, used for the manufacture of musical
instruments in Israel; for in the Second Book of Samuel (ch. vi. 5) it
is written that "David and all the house of Israel played before the
Lord on all manner of instruments made of _fir wood_, even on harps, and
lutes, and timbrels, and cornets, and cymbals." And when Hiram, King of
Tyre, sent timber to Solomon for the building of the temple, it was the
cedar and the fir[26] he sent, for which he was allowed twenty thousand
measures of wheat. It was, in Palestine, a tall tree, on the tops of
which, we are informed somewhere in the Psalms, the storks built their
nests.
[Sidenote: HOLLY--IVY.]
The _Holly_, or _Holy_, and the _Ivy_ are indigenous in the soil of
Aran. In idolatrous times holly was planted, according to Pliny, in the
neighbourhood of dwelling-houses, to keep away spirits and all manner of
enchantments. There can be no doubt that those who believe dreams to be
other than the wanderings of the fancy can on any night have steady
sensible dreams of a reliable nature if they bring home in their
handkerchief (observing the strictest silence all the time) nine leaves
of thornless holly and place the same under their pillow. Amongst the
conversions of the trees of the forest from the pagan to the Christian
faith, that of the ivy was the most remarkable; it no longer adorns the
brow of a drunken Bacchus, but is now entwined in wreaths over the altar
at the midnight Mass on Christmas night. Nevertheless, they that would
look into futurity can still read in the ivy leaf of what is coming to
pass in after-times. Place a leaf, on New Year's Eve, in a basin of
water, and take it out on the eve of Twelfth Night; if it come out
fresh, health is on the house; but if it come out spotted, sickness and
death are sure to follow.
[Sidenote: HAWTHORN--BLACKTHORN.]
The _Hawthorn_ and _Blackthorn_ grow freely in the islands. Need it be
told that the antipathy between these shrubs is so great that the one is
never found to be growing naturally near the other? Of course, if
planted together, they will struggle on for a time; but one or other
generally sickens and dies; for there is a controversy between them as
to which had the misfortune to supply the crown of thorns to Christ on
the night of the Passion. The peasantry in England, Scotland, and France
believe it was the hawthorn, and they look on it as an outrage to bring
in flowering hawthorn in May to their houses, it being unlucky and
accursed ever since that dreadful night preceding the Crucifixion. So
also the blackthorn in Austria and the south of Europe is considered
unlucky; as it is there insisted on that _it_ supplied the thorns,
wherefore it is doomed to blossom when no other tree of the forest
dares, in the teeth of the poisonous Eurus, so to do. On which side the
truth lies we shall not venture to speculate; but our astonishment is
great when we learn that the walking-stick of Joseph of Arimathaea was of
hawthorn, that in Glastonbury he stuck it accidentally in the ground,
and that ever since it and its descendants bud, blossom, and fade on
Christmas Day!
[Sidenote: THE ROSE--SILENCE.]
_The Rose._--"I am the Rose of Sharon." In the East it is the pride of
flowers for fragrance and elegance. It was used amongst the ancients in
crowns and chaplets at festive meetings and religious sacrifices. A
traveller in Persia describes two rose trees fully fourteen feet high,
laden with thousands of flowers, and of a bloom and delicacy of scent
that imbued the whole atmosphere with the most exquisite perfume.
Originally it was white, and the white moss-rose was suspended over the
door of the Temple of Silence; whence it is that secrets are said to be
told "under the rose." At convivial banquets in Greece the guests not
unfrequently wore chaplets of roses, and anything said by them whilst
wearing the emblem of silence was not to be repeated. The white rose was
the emblem of purity, and the term "Mystical Rose" is applied by the
Catholic Church to the Virgin Mary. Under the cross there grew, amongst
the wild flowers of Calvary, a multitude of white roses, some of which
were reddened with the blood of Christ. From these comes the red rose,
emblematic, not alone of purity, but of martyrdom.
[Sidenote: THE ROSARY--FERNS.]
The tomb of the Virgin (the Rose that never fades) was found by the
apostles to be filled with roses after the Assumption. Her altars ever
after have been decorated with roses, and it was a high privilege in the
Middle Ages to have a garden where no other flower was admitted. These
gardens, called rosaries, may have suggested to St. Dominic the name
given to that collection of prayers which he arranged, and which he
called the Rosary.
The love of the nightingale for this flower is proverbial in the East.
It is unnecessary, of course, for us to remind our readers that the
white and red roses were the badges of the rival houses of York and
Lancaster.
As for the elm and the beech, countless superstitions are attached to
these trees, but as we fail to find that they existed in Aran, so we
shall not prosecute further our inquiries on this head.
_Ferns._--Not the least interesting amongst the botanical curiosities of
Aran are the ferns, that carry their seed on their backs--a seed that
has, it is said, the extraordinary property of making the person in
whose shoes it is placed instantly invisible to all but himself. So
Shakespeare has it, too, in his play of "1 Henry IV.," act ii. scene 1:
"We have the receipt of fern seed, we walk invisible."
[Sidenote: FERNS--INVISIBILITY.]
A painful illustration of this property occurred, it is told, when once
upon a time a man was looking for a foal that had strayed from his
stable. He happened to pass through a meadow just as the fern was
ripened, some of the seeds of which were shaken into his shoes. After a
wearisome and fruitless search during the night he returned all
travel-soiled in the morning, and sat down in his house to join the
family at breakfast. He was amazed to see that neither wife nor children
welcomed him home, nor showed the slightest concern at the night he had
spent, nor even inquired about the result of his search. At length,
breaking silence, he said, "I haven't found the foal." All were
startled, and they looked everywhere to see where he was hiding.
Believing that his family were treating him with contempt, he repeated,
in a towering passion, "I have not found the foal!" They all sprang to
their feet, and his wife called him by name to give over that nonsense,
and to come out from his hiding-place. The creaking of his shoes was
distinctly heard, though the wearer thereof could not be seen. At
length, in a voice of anger, he repeated, as he planted himself opposite
his wife at the foot of the table, "I say, I have not found the foal!"
Need we tell the terrors of the family? But just then he remembered that
he had, on the previous night, crossed a meadow loaded with ferns, and
that some of the seed might have got into his shoes, and that he was
therefore invisible. Flinging them off, he at once became visible to
everybody.
Fern seed has also the valuable property of doubling a man's power in
the working field, several examples of which are given by writers on
this interesting subject.
[Sidenote: FAIRY FLAX--FAIRIES.]
The _Fairy Flax_ of Aran we have frequently spoken of in the preceding
pages, and that flax may be spun from year's end to year's end, and
little realized thereby, unless, indeed, "the good people," as the
fairies are called,[27] take the spinner under their protection. Now,
there was once a man in humble circumstances, who had an only daughter,
the most beautiful creature that ever was seen. She spent much of her
time spinning, but to no purpose. At length a hideous dwarf, lame and
blind of an eye, came to her one day as she was spinning, and presented
her with a distaff full of flax, upon which, he said, there was enough
for her whole life, if she lived a hundred years, provided she did not
spin it quite off. On she went spinning, but never spinning to the end,
and her loom produced the choicest of stuffs, for which she received
prices almost fabulous! Day by day her wealth increased, and after a
time she felt assured that the produce of her labour had now secured so
sure a market that it made little difference whether she spun the fairy
flax right off or not; so, to try what would be the effect, in her
curiosity she spun it to the end. In a moment the wheel stopped, and she
had ever after to repent the curiosity that stripped her of immense
wealth.
[Sidenote: SATURDAY'S SPINNING--HEMP.]
The spinning-wheel in Aran, the old crones say, should never spin on
Saturday. Whence this keeping holy the Saturday I know not; but it does
look as if they who kept the Saturday holy, were of Israelitish
descent--were, perhaps, of the lost tribes carried into Nineveh at the
time of the Captivity by Salamanassar, 730 B.C.![28] Now, there were two
old women indefatigable spinners, whose wheels never stood still, though
they were by the wise men warned not to spin on Saturdays. At length one
of them died, and on the Saturday night following she appeared to the
other, who was as usual busy at the wheel, and showed her her burning
hand, saying--
"See what in hell at last I've won,
Because on Saturdays I've spun."
_Hemp._--I don't remember seeing hemp growing in Aran to any great
extent. Sowing the seed of hemp on All Hallows' Eve in some parts of
the country, and on St. John's Night in others, is described in the
following lines from Gay's "Pastorals":--
"At eve last midsummer no sleep I sought,
But to the field a bag of hemp seed brought:
I scattered round the seed on every side,
And three times in a trembling accent cried,
'This hemp seed with my virgin hand I sow,
Who shall my true love be the crop shall mow.'
I straight looked back, and, if my eyes speak truth,
With his keen scythe behind me came the youth.
'With my sharp heel I three times mark the ground,
And turn me thrice around, around, around!"
[Sidenote: HAZEL--DIVINING-RODS.]
The _Hazel_, one of Thor's trees, is generally used as a divining-rod to
discover mines and lost treasures supposed to be hidden underground. The
person who seeks for the treasure takes a hazel rod with an end in each
hand, and then slowly walks over the ground, keeping the rod in a
horizontal position before him; when passing over the spot it bends down
like a bow in the middle, towards the place as if it were magnetized, as
the needle turns to the pole. Beyond a doubt the hazel is known to
miners, and to those who look for minerals underground, as the
divining-rod.
[Sidenote: FAREWELL INISHMORE.]
And now, bringing our legends to a close, we shall bid farewell to these
lonely and lovely isles, and in bidding them farewell we shall merely
ask how it is that the travelling English public travel not into these
islands, where frosts never wither, where snows never rest? And so
farewell to Inishmore, the island-home of St. Enda--Inishmore--once
"Notissima fama
Insula dives opum, _Hiberniae_ dum regna manebant
Nunc tantum sinus, et statio mala fida carinis."
FOOTNOTES:
[20] Hos. iv. 13.
[21] Gen. xxi. 33.
[22] 1 Chron. x. 12.
[23] Deut. xvi. 21.
[24] 2 Kings xxiii. 5, 6.
[25] Hos. xiv. 9.
[26] 1 Kings v. 10, 11.
[27] Numbers of books treat of the superstitious belief in fairies. The
Irish fancy that they are the "fallen angels" mentioned in Jude 6, and
that on the day of judgment they will be released from their hapless
condition (2 Peter ii. 4). The belief in fairies is universal in
Mahomedan countries.--_Vide_ "Lalla-Rookh," "Paradise and the Peri."
[28] 2 Kings xvii. 6.
APPENDIX A.
"Adorned with honours on their native shore,
Silent they sleep and dream of wars no more."
POPE'S _Iliad_.
[Sidenote: O'BRIENS LORDS OF ARAN.]
We have spoken so much in the foregoing pages of the O'Briens, lords of
Aran, that we feel inclined to say a word as to, who those O'Briens
were, whence they came, and whither they went; and first, let us state
that their pedigree is traced by Irish genealogists to a date earlier
than the Christian era. The O'Briens, lords of Aran, were descended from
Bryan Boroimhe, King of Thomond and monarch of all Ireland, who
conquered and fell at the battle of Clontarf on April 23, 1014, when the
Danish power, all over Ireland, was scattered to the four winds of
heaven. In the third generation after the death of Bryan, his descendant
Dermod sat on the throne of Thomond, and this Dermod had sons and
daughters, and the eldest of the sons was called Turlough, who in 1118
became, on his father's death, King of Thomond, whilst his younger
brother was Mahon, and his youngest brother was Teige; and the clan
MacTeige for 470 years ruled those islands, we have no doubt, with a
very equitable and a very paternal rule, and wholly unhampered with
legislative bodies such as a Witenagemot, or with the parliamentary
institutions of the Normans, where the members then, as now, had the
liberty of speaking, sometimes very plainly, their minds--as, indeed,
the Norman name of our legislative assembly imports: _parler-les-mens_,
a place for "speaking their minds." That the Corporation of Galway
recognized the power of the O'Briens, lords of the isles, is plainly
told in the foregoing pages, where we remember that twelve tuns of wine
were annually paid to the lord for sweeping the sea, as it were with a
broom, clean of the Algerine pirates that then infested the high seas;
and there can be little if any doubt that the O'Briens were ready, from
time to time and at all times, to massacre the foe wherever they met
him, and to convert his ships to their own use and behoof in manner and
form as by their indenture of treaty was provided. It is not for us to
criticize with critical pen the policy of the respected lord of the
isles, who, in 1560, was swallowed up in the deep, near the Great Man's
Bay, when he was returning from Thomond loaded with the booty which, at
the point of the sword, he had won from the subjects of his cousin
O'Brien of Thomond; for it does not appear that ties of blood preserved
his Majesty of Thomond from the vengeance of his lordship the lord of
the isles, or, _mutatis mutandis_, the lord of the isles from the
vengeance of his Majesty. "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,"
was their maxim, and it may have been good law where the antagonists had
each two eyes and two teeth; but the vengeance was dreadful when the
punished party had only one eye and one tooth. He was then blinded and
untoothed out and out; and frequently such dreadful vengeance did await
the conquered. Let us not, however, be too hard on the conquerors when
we remember that David sawed his prisoners in two, and drove harrows
over them in a harrowed field.[29] The O'Flaherties, an equally warlike
race, dispossessed the lords of the isles, and in 1588, the very year of
the Spanish Armada, Queen Elizabeth finally confiscated their
territories, and now the name of O'Brien is forgotten in Aran. Not so on
the mainland; the O'Briens are still in Thomond and elsewhere, as, it is
to be hoped, they will be for centuries yet to come. The lords of the
Isles of Aran are extinct. The last of the male line was John O'Brien of
Moyvanine and Clounties, whose daughter Sarah was married to Stephen
Roche, from whom is descended the present Thomas Redington Roche, of
Ryehill, Esq., J.P., Co. Galway. Amongst the families of this house
still existing in Thomond, are the noble house of Inchiquin and the
O'Briens of Ballynalacken, both of whom trace up, in an unbroken
succession, to Bryan Boroimhe, who, like Leonidas at Thermopylae, fell
fighting the foreign foe for the liberties of his country.
[Sidenote: O'BRIENS LORDS INCHIQUIN.]
The title of Inchiquin dates from the year 1543, but no title was
required to ennoble those who were of the blood of kings, and were
"nobler than the royalty that first ennobled them." The untitled
aristocracy in England are often superior to the titled aristocracy, who
cannot trace back farther than the Wars of the Roses. Now, the last King
of Thomond resigned his royalty to Henry VIII., who in return, by patent
A.D. 1543, bestowed upon Murrough O'Brien, and upon the heirs male of
his body, the title of Baron of Inchiquin. This Murrough had two sons,
the elder Dermot, and the younger Donough, and Dermot on his father's
death became Baron of Inchiquin; and so the title descended from father
to son until the year 1855, when James, the twelfth baron, who was also
seventh Earl of Inchiquin (creation A.D. 1654) and third Marquis of
Thomond (A.D. 1800), died without issue male, when the earldom and
marquisate expired. Thereupon the father of the present baron, who was
also a baronet, and brother to William Smith O'Brien, celebrated as
Member of Parliament and leader of the Irish people, knowing his descent
from Donough, second son of the first baron, instructed his counsel to
bring his case before the Committee of Privileges of the House of Lords,
to whose satisfaction he proved that he was heir male of the body of the
first baron, and thereupon he was confirmed in said barony, and became
thirteenth baron.
[Sidenote: MARSHAL MACMAHON.]
Let us now go back to Dermod, the third generation from Bryan Boroimhe,
which Dermod died, as we said, in 1118, leaving three sons, the eldest
Turlough, King of Thomond, the younger Mahon, and the youngest Teige,
lord of the isles; from Mahon is sprung Marshal MacMahon, whose acts and
deeds are known of by all men.
[Sidenote: O'BRIENS OF BALLYNALACKEN.]
This Turlough, King of Thomond, was ancestor of Teige O'Brien, who
married Annabella, daughter of Ulick McWilliam Burke, of Clanrickarde,
known as "Ulick of the Wine," and by her had, with other sons, Turlough
Don, King of Thomond in 1498, and Donal. Turlough Don was ancestor of
the family of Inchiquin, of which we have spoken, and from Donal sprang
Turlough O'Brien, who was married to a grandniece of Sir Toby Butler,
better known as the jovial Sir Toby, the great luminary of the Connaught
Circuit, Solicitor-General for Ireland under James II., and the
celebrated lawyer who drafted that treaty which will be remembered by
all generations as the broken Treaty of Limerick. Turlough was the
grandfather of John O'Brien, of Ballynalacken, who died in 1855, and of
James O'Brien, Esq., Q.C., who was Member of Parliament for the city of
Limerick from 1854 to 1858, when he was raised to a judgeship in the
Queen's Bench. It is too near our own time to speak of that learned
lawyer further than to say that "he judged not according to appearance,
but judged just judgment;" that in him the prisoner at the bar found a
merciful judge, and at the same time one who held the scales so that
crime could not escape with impunity. Let us hope that when he went to a
higher court he reaped the rewards promised to a just judge; and let us
hope that those who come after him of his name and race may, when their
turn comes, follow in his footsteps, and thus show that the wisdom of
the wise still dwells in the brehons of the Celtic race.
The Ballynalacken O'Briens are now represented amongst the landed gentry
by James O'Brien, J.P., D.L., and they are also represented at the Bar
by his brother, my learned friend, Peter, late Sergeant O'Brien, now
Solicitor-General for Ireland.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] 2 Sam. xii. 31.
APPENDIX B.
STATISTICS OF ISLANDS OF ARAN.
Area, 11,288 acres.
Population--Census 1815, 2400
" " 1871, 3049; increase, 640
" " 1881, 3163 " 114
Inhabited houses, 1815 395
" " 1881 576 " 181
Petty Sessions District, Aran.
Religion of Aranites, 1871, 2993 Roman Catholics
" " " 55 Protestant Episcopalians
" " " 1 Presbyterian
----
Total 3049
Religion of Aranites, 1881, 3118 Roman Catholics; increase, 125
" " " 44 Protestant Episcopalians;
decrease, 11
" " " 1 Presbyterian
----
Total 3163
Number speaking Irish only in Aran, 1871 835
" " English and Irish " 1924
" " Irish only, 1881 889
" " English and Irish, 1881 1829
Constabulary barracks, 1871 1
" " 1881 3
Number of constabulary, 1871 6
" " 1881 18
Coastguard barracks, 1881 2
Quarter Sessions--Galway.
Petty Sessions--Held on the islands.
Roman Catholic churches in Aran 4
Protestant Episcopal church 1
Protestant church accommodation 180
Annual income of parish priest, 1801 L60[30]
" " Protestant incumbent L125[31]
National schools in islands 4
Average attendance, Sept., 1886, to June,
1887 524
Manager, Rev. M. O'Donoghoe, P.P.
Fishing boats on islands, 1st class, 1887 0
" " 2nd " " 34
" " 3rd " " 130
Poor-law valuation L1576
Rent, 1881 L2067
Average poor rate, last ten years 3_s._ in the L
Paupers in workhouse 0
Distance of workhouse from islands 30 miles
Numbers receiving outdoor relief 43
Grand jury works on island, Spring assizes, 1887 0
Grand jury cess " " " L34 12s. 2d.
Crown rent (_sup._, p. 45) 18s. 5-1/2d.
Quit rent (_sup._, p. 45) L14 8s. 4d.
Labourer's wages 1s. _per diem_
" " spring and harvest 1s. 6d., with diet
FOOTNOTES:
[30] Vide return made in 1801 by Most Rev. Edward Dillon, D.D., Roman
Catholic Archbishop of Tuam (Lord Castlereagh's Correspondence, vol. iv.
p. 126). I can find no subsequent return.
[31] Charles's "Irish Church Directory."
THE END.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
End of Project Gutenberg's The South Isles of Aran, by Oliver J. Burke