TRADITION IN IRISH HISTORY.
_Reprinted from the Nineteenth Century and After, March, 1909._
IN the _Quarterly Review_ of January last there appeared an article by
Mr. Robert Dunlop, dealing in a trenchant manner with a book which I
wrote lately, _The Making of Ireland and Its Undoing_. I regret to take
part personally in a controversy where my own credit is brought into
question, and I am only moved to do so by consideration of the grave
issues which are involved as regards the study of Irish history.
The appearance of my book has raised two questions of a very different
order--the important question of whether, with the advance of modern
studies, need has arisen for an entire review of the whole materials
for Irish history and of the old conclusions, and the less interesting
problem of my own inadequacy and untrustworthiness. Mr. Dunlop, in some
fifteen pages of discourse, has not so much as mentioned the first. He
has treated the second at considerable length. We may here take them in
order of importance.
The real difference between Mr. Dunlop and myself lies deeper than the
question of my merits or demerits. It is the old conflict between
tradition and enquiry. For the last 300 years students of medieval
Irish history have peacefully trodden a narrow track, hemmed in by
barriers on either hand. On one side they have been for the most part
bounded by complete ignorance of the language of the country or its
literature. On the other side they have raised the wall of tradition.
Along this secluded lane writers have followed one another, in the
safety of the orthodox faith. A history recited with complete unanimity
takes on in course of time the character of the highest truth. There
have been disputes on one or two points perhaps where theologians
are concerned, as for example the story of St. Patrick; but on the
general current of Irish life there has been no serious discussion nor
any development in opinion. The argument from universal assent has
been sufficient. There is a similarity even of phrase. “We prefer to
think,” writes Mr. Dunlop. “We prefer to abide by the traditional view
of the state of Ireland,” writes another critic from the same school.
Agreement has been general, individual speculation has not disturbed
the peace, and all have joined their voices to swell the general
creed. Under these favouring conditions historians of Ireland speak
with a rare confidence and unanimity. “What are novelties after all?”
cries the sagacious historian imagined by M. Anatole France: “mere
impertinences.”
It has happened to me to question the received doctrine. Universal
assent of all men of all time is a very useful thing, and for some
positive facts it may be decisive. But in Irish history it is used to
enforce a series of negations--no human progress, no spiritual life, no
patriotism, no development, no activity save murder, no movement but a
constant falling to decay, and a doomed lapse into barbarism of every
race that entered the charmed circle of the island. However universal
the consent, the statements of the tradition are of so extraordinary a
character, that one may fairly desire an inspection of the evidence. I
have ventured to suggest that the time had come to study the sources
anew; to see if any had been omitted, or if in modern research any new
testimony concerning Ireland had been brought to light; to give less
weight to negative assertions than to positive facts; and to enquire
what the whole cumulative argument might imply. Thus the fundamental
problem has been raised. If Mr. Dunlop has not a word to say about
it, it will nevertheless not disappear. The enquiry will need many
scholars and a long time, but I am sure it will be completed, and that
Irish history will then need to be re-written. Meanwhile, as I claim no
infallible authority, to fulminate against me does not get rid of the
essential problem. The discrediting of a doubter of the orthodox faith
is the simplest form of argument and the least laborious. The trouble
is that when it is done the real question is no further advanced.
A heretic must take his risks. We have an example of their gravity
in this article, in which Mr. Dunlop restores an old custom to
controversy. We had almost come to suppose that it was the privilege of
theologians to settle the respective platforms from which disputations
should be carried on. The higher plane is reserved for the orthodox.
The “querulous” dissentient, on the other hand, is pronounced to be
making mere incursions into what is for him a comparatively unknown
region, his incapacity is obvious and his want of candour deplorable,
and he has forfeited all claim to respect. This is all in the
appropriate manner of those who hold an Irish history handed down by
tradition.
The permitted belief about Ireland has been summed up dogmatically
by Mr. Dunlop in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, the
_Cambridge Modern History_, and elsewhere. Of the inhabitants of
Ireland “two-thirds at least led a wild and half nomadic existence.
Possessing no sense of national unity beyond the narrow limits of the
several clans to which they belonged, acknowledging no law outside the
customs of their tribe, subsisting almost entirely on the produce of
their herds and the spoils of the chase, and finding in their large
frieze mantles a sufficient protection against the inclemency of the
weather, and one relieving them from the necessity of building houses
for themselves, they had little in their general mode of life to
distinguish them from their Celtic ancestors.” “Outside the pale there
was nothing worthy of being called a Church. To say that the Irish had
relapsed into a state of heathenism is perhaps going too far. The
tradition of a Christian belief still survived; but it was a lifeless,
useless thing.” The country was “cut off by its position, but even
more by the relapse of the greater of its inhabitants into a state of
semi-barbarism, from the general currents of European development.”
Bogs and woods, the lairs of the wild-boar and the wolf, made internal
communications dangerous and difficult, and prevented trade and
intercourse with other nations. Few words, therefore, are needed to
sum up their commerce. “French wines found their way into the country
through Cork and Waterford; the long-established relations between
Dublin and Bristol still subsisted; Spanish traders landed their wares
on Galway quay; the fame of St. Patrick’s purgatory attracted an
occasional pilgrim from foreign lands; and of one Irish chieftain it
was placed on record that he had accomplished the hazardous journey
to Rome and back.” Shane O’Neill, “champion of Celtic civilisation,”
could speak no language but Irish, and could not sign his name. In
the _Quarterly Review_ we have a few more details--that the main part
of the Irishmen’s dress was skins; that this people who lived without
houses when they went on their “marauding expeditions” (excursions of
the full summer time) made to themselves tents of untanned skins to
cover them (here I could almost imagine Mr. Dunlop, in spite of his
aversion to bards, indulging on the sly in a cloudy reminiscence of an
Irish poet); that among the whole of them they had just a few hundred
coracles made of osiers and skins for crossing swollen rivers, for the
O’Malleys and O’Driscolls who had long-boats represented “perhaps the
Iberian element in the _nation_,” suggests Mr. Dunlop, not to give the
Gaels any credit, while he slips by the way into the objectionable word
apparently so hard to avoid; that they made no practical use even of
their inland fisheries, and had no industries, so that even the cloth
was made by Englishmen.
We would desire to ask Mr. Dunlop for the exact proof he relies on for
any one of these statements, beginning perhaps with “no law outside the
_customs of the tribe_.” Writers who hold Ireland to be, as he says,
“a sort of scrap-heap for Europe,” and who cannot conceive of medieval
Irishmen as ordinary men sharing the faults and virtues of other white
Europeans, are addicted to the word “native”--a word not in common use
among historians for Englishmen in England in the Middle Ages, but
affected by them to indicate Irishmen in Ireland, with the derogatory
sense which their “tradition” requires. The vulgar view received as
it were official recognition half a century ago from Mr. Hamilton in
his preface to the _State Papers_ of 1509-73 (see also references
in my book, 487-8), where he explains that the study of Irish life
till Elizabethan times will be of considerable value in the study of
_Universal History_, Ireland being so remote from the earlier seats of
civilisation that the rude way of living described by Hesiod and the
old poets still lingered there till the sixteenth century; till which
time “most of the wild Irish led a nomade life, tending cattle, sowing
little corn, and rarely building houses, but sheltered alike from
heat and cold, and moist and dry, by the Irish cloak.” The last fifty
years, we see, amid the general shaking of dry bones and the movement
of history elsewhere, have brought no stir in Irish history. That alone
stands like eternal truth fixed and unchangeable. Hence, doubtless, Mr.
Dunlop’s canon (_Quart. Rev._, 1906) forbidding “_a history of Ireland
in more than one volume_.”
The barbarian legend has got a long start. A first attempt to review
its evidence was made in my book. In a series of social studies I have
endeavoured to discuss, not the whole of Irish history, but definite
matters of trade, social life, and education. I have gathered a body
of facts which indicate that Ireland had considerable manufactures;
that her foreign commerce can be traced throughout Europe; that there
was an orderly society, even a wealthy one; that Irish travellers were
known at Rome and in the Levant; that there was an Anglo-Irish culture
by no means contemptible, in touch with Continental learning; and that
increasing intercourse of the races did not tend to barbarism but to
civilisation.
In this sketch I have not proposed to myself to draw nice distinctions
between what the Normans precisely did, and what the Irish (or even,
following Mr. Dunlop), what Iberians were doing in the sixteenth
century in the joint work of commerce and culture, because there is as
yet no sufficient material for that discussion; I share this lack of
knowledge with many who have pronounced themselves with no uncertain
voice. Further, I should have been glad to confine these studies to
the cheerful progress of trade and culture; but I was confronted with
two possible objections. The suggestion that if there had been any
considerable trade it would not have vanished by a freak, could only be
answered by indicating how and why the destruction had been wrought.
And to meet the argument that historians would not have let a genuine
story perish, I gave my opinion on how it was that the truth dropped
out of sight.
My conclusions conflict with the venerable traditions over which
Mr. Dunlop mounts guard. I clearly offend also against the canon
of one volume. It is obvious that he must feel for me the sharpest
disapproval; and this censure is conveyed with no mitigation of phrase
or manner.
The charge he elaborates against me is briefly that I have no judgment,
and less candour, in the use of documents, and have thus produced a
mass of mischievous fiction.
I may say in passing that Mr. Dunlop’s severity with regard to
authorities comes somewhat oddly from one who has shown himself fairly
easy in such matters. In his own writings he gives no references, and
in this same article the only authority he quotes independently is Mr.
O’Connor’s _Elizabethan Ireland_. When I have to be silenced, “Turn
we to Mr. O’Connor!” Now Mr. O’Connor has written a slight sketch of
Irish political and social life in some 280 pages. He gives no dates,
no indications of place, and no references. But we have Mr. Dunlop’s
word for it that it is a “scholarly” work. “Mr. O’Connor” quoted by
Mr. Dunlop ends controversy. The tradition is secure. I might envy
Mr. Dunlop this freedom from trammels of references, of date, or of
place. In such wide and impartial survey any statement about Ireland
may appear as true of every place and of all time. Barbarism would seem
to be a fixed and unchanging state, a passive monotony, from the time
of “Lacustrine habitations” and of “Hesiod and the old poets,” till
its characteristic representative in Shane O’Neill. The principle once
assumed, any evidence will suffice to show that the Irish had none of
the attributes of ordinary white Europeans; while evidence that they
made money, traded, built houses, talked Latin, studied medicine and
law, or otherwise behaved like other people of the Middle Ages, is
probably rhodomontade, moonshine, or historical profligacy.
Mr. Dunlop’s summary method with unfamiliar sources appears in his
asperity towards what he calls my “trivial references” to Mr. Standish
Hayes O’Grady’s _Catalogue of Manuscripts_.
“We wonder (he says on p. 267) how many of Mrs. Green’s readers
are aware that of this book, from which she has gleaned so much
information--of a sort--only one copy, so far as we know, is accessible
to the public, and that is in the MSS. Department of the British
Museum. The book, we understand, was never published. It is still
incomplete. The official copy consists merely of the bound sheets as
they were printed off for proof.”
I suppose Mr. Dunlop does not mean to suggest that the value of a book
is in proportion to the number of copies, or that an authority of which
a single copy exists should not be quoted. In any case I can reassure
him. The sheets of this _Catalogue_ have been these many years past for
sale to the public at the Museum, where I got my copy, and I hope many
others did the same. The book can be bought in a London shop to-day.
Mr. Dunlop might consult it in the London Library. The copy placed in
the National Library in Dublin in 1895 has been in frequent use since
then. Possibly Mr. Dunlop knows the inside of the book better than the
outside, but it seems to be a new acquaintance, suddenly introduced and
viewed with distaste. In this brilliant _Catalogue_ we have the work of
a very great authority, unsurpassed in his special learning, far beyond
what O’Donovan could lay claim to; with its “information--of a sort--”
it is the most important book that has appeared for many years with
regard to Irish history. Another critic of Mr. Dunlop’s school, who in
his remarks gives no definite sign of any knowledge of Mr. O’Grady’s
work, has reproached me for referring to it “without further sifting.”
But it is certain that neither of these writers who reprove me will
themselves do much “further sifting” where that admirable scholar has
gone before them.
May I add that Mr. Dunlop does not appear to follow too closely modern
studies on Irish affairs, or he would surely have known of Mr. Justice
Madden’s _Classical Learning in Ireland_, published last summer--a
little book which he should certainly have been willing to include in
any review of recent Irish writings?
To return, however, to my own lamentable want of candour and accuracy,
I now give a few of the instances of my deficiencies, and of the
admirable example which Mr. Dunlop sets me in these respects.
Mr. Dunlop states, “to speak accurately,” that my reference to Shane
O’Neill as “done to death” (so _he_ expresses it) by the English is
“absolutely without foundation.” His own account of Shane’s death in
the _Dictionary of National Biography_ tells us that “possibly if
he could have kept a civil tongue in his head the MacDonnells might
have consented to a reconciliation.” “It is doubtful whether his
assassination was premeditated ... it is probable that when heated
with wine he may have irritated them by his insolent behaviour beyond
endurance.” In the _Cambridge Modern History_ (iii. 592), however, Mr.
Dunlop has attained conviction. “In his wine-cups,” he tells us, “he
began to brawl, and was literally hacked in pieces by his enemies.”
These and some other of his suppositions do not appear to agree with
the story in _Holinshed_, _Campion_, _the Calendar of State Papers_, or
the _Four Masters_. But why does Mr. Dunlop disagree with Lord Deputy
Sidney, the main mover in the matter? Many efforts, it is well known,
had been made to murder Shane. In 1566 Sidney sent to Scotland his
“man,” the English-Scot Douglas, who had come to him from Leicester
himself. Sidney gives us the clue to his mission. “I pray you,” he
wrote to Leicester, “let this bringer (Douglas) receive comfortable
words of you. I have found him faithful, _it was he that brought the
Scots that killed O’Neill_.” Douglas repeated the boast and prayed
a reward from Cecil. Years later Sidney, being maligned by powerful
enemies at Court, reminded the Queen of his old services. “And whereas
he [O’Neill] looked for service at their [the Scots] hands against me,
_for service of me, they killed him_.... But when I came to the Court,”
he added with indignation, “it was told me it was no war that I had
made, nor worthy to be called a war, for that Shane O’Neill was but a
beggar, an outlaw, and one of no force, and _that the Scots stumbled on
him by chance_.” Would Mr. Dunlop, as a means of overthrowing me, join
with Sidney’s enemies to rob him of the deed he boasted of? (_Vide_
_Sid. Let._ 12, 34-5; _C.S.P._ i. 430; _Car._ ii. 338, 340-1.)
I have pained Mr. Dunlop by referring to the hoard of Con O’Neill,
Earl of Tyrone, as evidence that Ulster was not penniless. Mr. Dunlop
discovers that Shane O’Neill “robbed his father” of this store, and can
scarcely believe that I adduce this “robbery” to prove the wealth of
Ulster, and that I use it in connection with a passage about plunder of
Ireland by English invaders. This hoard occurs in a list of three pages
containing signs of riches in Ireland (pp. 67-69), a mere glance at
which would show the absurdity of any contention that all the moneys I
mention fell into English hands. As to Con O’Neill’s savings, I see no
objection to an allusion to them as one proof among others of money and
plate in Ulster. I do not know if Mr. Dunlop means not only to suggest
my want of candour, but also to prove that if Shane “robbed” his
father’s treasure, therefore no English soldiers or officials robbed
any Irish chief of his plate or wealth.
But though in this connection I have really nothing to do with the
ultimate fate of Con’s hoard, I may in passing compare the Lord
Chancellor Cusack’s report at the time with Mr. Dunlop’s “robbery.”
Con O’Neill was thrown into prison in Dublin in 1552, and said to be
threatened with death. The English were prepared with an illegitimate
successor in Tyrone. Shane claimed to be his father’s lawful heir, and
fought the English nominee. A garrison of English soldiers was thrown
into Armagh. Beyond the Blackwater Ford, within a ride of Armagh, lay
the chief fort of Tyrone, on the great hill of Dungannon. Shane,
evidently with the support of his people, “came to Dungannon,” and took
with him “of the chief’s treasure £800 in gold and silver besides plate
and other stuff” [apparently then not the whole of it, but so much
as was needed for the war at the moment] “and retaineth the same as
yet, whereby it appeareth that he and she [the Earl and Countess] was
content with the same; for,” said Cusack, “it could not be perceived
that they were greatly offended for the same.” This was how Shane
O’Neill “robbed his father.”
Mr. Dunlop quotes a sentence that “Galway ships sailed to Orkney
and to Lübeck,” and gives _one_ only of my references in the note,
which states that a Scottish ship of Orkney was freighted at Galway
for Lisbon. It is evident that by one of the accidental errors of
transcription, which every writer that ever lived has sometimes to
deplore, I transferred the words, and _Orkney_ was used where I meant
to write _Lisbon_. Lübeck is a different matter. Why did Mr. Dunlop
carefully omit the reference in the same note to the page where I
mention goods shipped from Galway to Lübeck in 1416? Was it a generous
effort to make the error take on a more serious character? Or was
it a common inaccuracy? I may inform him that in the _Hansisches
Urkundenbuch_ further references occur to Irish cloth at Lübeck, as
well as to Irish cloth and provisions along the Elbe, and that the name
he throws doubt on appears with good reason in my text.
Mr. Dunlop also discovers a “most apparent and painful” instance of
my “distorting of evidence” in my reference (which I did not give as
a quotation) to Limerick merchants appeached of treason for _trading_
with Irish rebels, when the deputy’s words were _victualling and
maintaining_ (p. 170). Mr. Dunlop might perhaps himself suspect some
barter in the business when it attracted eight merchants to traffic
in so dangerous an enterprise. But he conveniently omits the rest of
my story, that within a year of the arrest of the eight merchants the
Limerick corporation prayed to have the city charter confirmed with
a special clause _that they might buy and sell with Irishmen at all
times_. They seem to have had no objection to trade with the Irish,
which was the only point I had there to prove. I willingly alter the
word that seems to Mr. Dunlop so painful a distortion of the truth, and
my argument remains unchanged.
Mr. Dunlop twice condemns me in “the case of Enniscorthy fair, where
the documents referred to refute the deduction drawn from them.”
“We strongly resent her concealing the fact” that Sidney, with the
Four Masters, deplored the “_destruction_ (n.b.)” of the fair by the
rebellious Butlers at the instigation of James Fitzmaurice. Why should
I not “conceal facts” I do not know to be true? I fancy it is better
than publishing them. The word used by the Four Masters, Sidney, and
a contemporary letter given in Hore’s _Town of Wexford_ (175) is
“spoiling.” Will Mr. Dunlop give his references to “_destruction_
(n.b.),” and to “the instigation of James Fitzmaurice”? What is the
proof? This day’s raid was not the first attack on the fair after
it had been granted to English officers charged to execute martial
law on the Wexford Irish. I have not space to tell the significant
circumstances. Mr. Dunlop blames me for not giving the founder of the
fair. “We will overlook the omission,” he says in his lofty way of
superior erudition and fidelity to facts. This cheap taunt is surely
absolutely unworthy of a writer who should be aware that no one as yet
knows the origin of the fair. I see no reason against mentioning its
existence, among many others which Mr. Dunlop neglects, as evidence of
trading activity in a region where Irish law and speech prevailed.
I do not propose to weary the reader by multiplying instances of this
kind. The details of historical controversy interest few readers. Its
personal aspect should interest none. The instances I have given are
true samples of all the rest. I have gone carefully through the long
indictment, and I note half a dozen minor points in which I am glad to
correct an obvious misprint or to amend an error (not one of which, I
would say, affects the drift of my argument). But the great bulk of
these criticisms--grave inaccuracies in themselves, or misstatements
of what I say, or dogmatic assertions which need for their discussion
evidences which there is no attempt to offer--can give me little help.
For an example of historical investigation of medieval Irish history,
of serious use of references and evidences, or of customary fairness in
discussion, I must go elsewhere than to Mr. Dunlop.
With regard to evidence, I am charged with repudiating the testimony
of Spenser, Davies, Fynes Moryson, Cuellar, Derrick, and official
documents that tell against me. I have drawn very largely from State
Papers and official records of all kinds, sources of information
which have proved invaluable for my purpose. In the shaking bog of
medieval testimony, some firm standing is to be found in statutes,
ordinances, town records, cartularies, and the like. From them we
rapidly come to more perilous regions--State Papers and letters--where
every document needs to be considered as a separate “source” to be
separately discussed. Some were written by strangers newly come to the
country--soldiers, secretaries, adventurers, spies; others by higher
officials struggling in an intricate tangle of intrigues, or by a lower
sort trying to make their way upwards; some by governors zealous to
keep their credit amid the scandal of the Court; others by governors
desperate to recapture a lost reputation. In the medley of partiality,
prejudice, ignorance, despair, and triumph, every one must judge to the
best of his ability as to the value of the testimony; there can be no
scientific accuracy in the measurement. There is the same difficulty
with the reports of a few Continental travellers, Italian or Spanish.
Historians of Ireland have freely used the evidence of men, English or
European, who came not knowing a word of the language, who traversed
the country more or less rapidly under official guidance, or in the
midst of armies occupied in a peculiarly ferocious warfare, or who
attempted an uneasy living on the confiscated lands of the “native”
people--men, in fact, who knew practically nothing but destruction.
From the study of other evidence I have come to think that the view
which has generally been accepted from these gentlemen is imperfect and
often erroneous. They could know nothing of an earlier time and had but
a partial vision of their own.
Some well-thumbed later authorities have been found to give no
trustworthy guidance for medieval Ireland, and they do not appear in
that customary place of authority which had become their recognised
privilege; on the other hand, some entirely new authorities have been
called in and some have lain unused.
Among the writers I am accused of neglecting is Captain Cuellar, a
Spaniard from the Armada, knowing no Irish, flying for his life,
sometimes among people who had no good reputation with the Irish
themselves, hiding himself in the wildest and most secret haunts of
districts swept and wasted from end to end by English soldiers--I do
not know why such an experience should be quoted as a fair record of
ordinary Irish life in the plains, in times of peace, and among the
richer and more settled clans. Mr. Orpen, in the _English Historical
Review_, has extracted from this little record every damaging phrase
to the Irish to be found in it and omitted every favourable one. Does
he wonder why I have not done the like? I have not done it because I
do not think it fair dealing or honest history to state as evidence
against the Irish that Cuellar was “robbed of all he possessed,
stripped naked, beaten, and forced by a blacksmith to work”; and not to
mention that the robbing and beating was the work of English troops and
mercenaries from Scotland; that the week he spent at the blacksmith’s
forge was the solitary unkindness he suffered from any native Irishman
in his seven months’ wandering; that the moment an Irish chief heard
of his misfortune he sent to take him to his own house; that in that
seven months of journeyings in the wilds, from the day when cast on
a Connacht beach, he was hidden in pity by gallow-glasses till the
day when men of Ulster secured his escape across the sea, he was
continually succoured by young and old, men and women, clerics and
laymen, who pitied him, wept at his sufferings, showed him every
hospitality and kindness, and guided him from shelter to shelter to
hide him from the English. By what strange tradition, by what long
prejudice is this perversion of evidence fabricated and admitted?
Besides English and Spanish testimony we have also some from the Irish
themselves. Among Irish witnesses the great Galway scholar Dr. Lynch,
writer of _Cambrensis Eversus_, stands high; no student can afford
to neglect editions and translations made by Mr. Whitley Stokes and
Professor Kuno Meyer in this country, and by Continental scholars; the
translations of Dr. Douglas Hyde; the work of Dr. Norman Moore in the
_Dictionary of National Biography_ and elsewhere; or the collection of
criticisms, translations, and summaries that make up the invaluable
_Catalogue of Manuscripts_ in the British Museum by Mr. S. H. O’Grady.
Mr. Dunlop does not like poets. “Surely she must know that the very
stock-in-trade of a poet is pure moonshine,” he avers. However that may
be, I may say that Mr. O’Grady’s _Catalogue_ contains a great deal that
is not poetry. “Must we remind her,” says Mr. Dunlop with the loftiest
severity, “that bard and annalist were often the same individual?”
The _Catalogue_ would explain to him how impossible would be such
a conception to the Irish world, where a bard was a mere natural
poet who had not studied in the schools. Will Mr. Dunlop give one
single instance of this frequent fact? A quotation from a blind poet
peculiarly awakens his contempt, as he refers to it twice, repeating
here the criticism of another writer of his school. Teigue Dall
O’Higgin was a man of great eminence in his day; and I see no reason to
believe that a blind man necessarily takes leave of _all_ his senses. I
have no doubt that Teigue was at home in all the gossip of Enniskillen,
and that he could distinguish between the sounds of a smith’s shop, or
of women talking over their embroidery, and of men bringing boats to
the shore. Other references to Fermanagh which I have given in my book,
and indications in the English wars of the importance of water carriage
on the lake, bear out the story of Teigue the Blind. He was right about
the “blue hills.”
If Mr. Dunlop accuses me of a “partiality for native records” with all
their “rhetorical rhodomontade,” I frankly confess to a regard for
the opinion of people who belong to a country and speak its tongue. I
suppose that contemporary Irish witnesses, even the _Four Masters_,
may be used with the same authority and the same limitations as
English; nor do I know why the opinion of any stray traveller or minor
official from over-sea, intent only on furthering his interests, is
to be accepted without question, while the word of a deeply learned
Anglo-Irish scholar of Galway, or of an eminent Irish poet who had
visited every province of Ireland, is to be wholly suspect. I will give
an illustration by recalling the case of Sir John Davies and of Dr.
Lynch. To Mr. Dunlop the brief writings of Davies represent a very high
authority, while the _Cambrensis Eversus_ of Lynch is dismissed in one
word as a “political pamphlet.” He does not apparently think Davies had
any political leanings. We usually think people impartial who hold our
own opinions.
In my book I have given definite reasons for thinking that Davies’
acquaintance with Irish affairs was inadequate--in a short residence
in the country of which he did not know the language, the law, or the
history. My own judgment is that considering his imperfect means of
knowledge, and his very strong bias of prejudice, his statements about
Ireland before his coming there have no particular sanctity, and need
to be tested and corroborated like those of any other writer. That he
is sometimes at fault even a believer such as Mr. Dunlop seems in a
hidden way to admit. Suggesting that my references to the cloth trade
are not so novel as unwary readers might think, “the excellent quality
of Irish wool,” says Mr. Dunlop, “is one of the best attested facts in
Irish commercial history.” Then why has Mr. Dunlop until this moment
excluded any slightest mention of wool in his summary of Irish trade?
Was it too well known? Or was it because of the saying of Sir John
Davies--“for wool and wool-felts were ever of little value in this
kingdom?” We are here shut into a denial of the well-attested commerce
in wool, or to a doubt of the sufficiency of Sir John Davies as a
witness; and we are left without guidance by Mr. Dunlop. On the whole,
it seems judicious to depend on Davies’ evidence only for the things
that lay within his immediate and direct observation. His opinion on
all that he himself saw is worthy of respect, and we may admit the
sound legal maxim that a man’s evidence can always be accepted when it
is given against himself.
The same distinction may surely be drawn in the case of Dr. Lynch.
Davies was a man of English and Latin learning, Lynch a man of Irish
and Latin learning. The historical criticism of their day was not
perfect in either country, and as Davies leant to the English side of
prejudice, Lynch leant to the Irish. But Lynch, like Davies, was I
believe a just reporter of what he had himself seen or had heard from
firsthand witnesses. And I have therefore quoted him, as I have Davies,
for what had come within the range of his personal knowledge, not for
matters of historical research. His testimony is of extraordinary and
pathetic interest. Born in Galway in the last years of Elizabeth, when
the city still preserved its old culture and the remnants of its old
wealth, Lynch was one of the last scholars who ever saw and knew the
Anglo-Irish civilisation. It is not any single picture that he gives
that is important; it is the host of scattered and chance allusions, as
to things well known to every Irishman in his day, which reveal to us
the society in which he had been brought up. It is touching to remember
that he was the last to say a good word for the medieval civilisation.
After his death a darkness and silence of hundreds of years fell over
that story, and it is across nearly three centuries that Irishmen will
now have to take hands with Lynch and carry on his justification of the
Ireland which was being gradually built up by the work of Gaels, Danes,
Normans, and English in their common country.
This, however, is just what Mr. Dunlop denies. He “begs leave to
doubt” that the “native Irish” in the fifteenth century developed the
resources of the country. By omitting all contemporary references to
timber, to leather, and to salmon, of course it can be said there was
no medieval trade in these. The plan seems unsatisfactory, and I have
not followed it. Mr. Dunlop, for example, blames me for not quoting an
English poem (no pure moonshine here--perhaps a farthing dip) which
does not mention leather, as proof that there was no leather trade. I
have quoted the _Libel_ elsewhere, but on this point I preferred the
direct evidence of the records of the Bruges Staple; and I have since
added notices in the _Hansisches Urkundenbuch_ for leather sent in
1304, 1327, 1453 to Bruges, Dinant, and Portugal. I would ask which
is the historical method: to close the question once for all with the
negative silence of an anonymous English writer “whom we think,” says
Mr. Dunlop, in one of his easy moods about evidence, “had a pretty
accurate notion of what constituted Irish commerce”; or to pursue
enquiry in business records of the ports and seek to ascertain the
exact facts.
The art of making linen was known, according to Mr. Dunlop, to the
“native Irish, as it is to most primitive races.” But what they made
in Ireland was “of a very coarse kind, and its use was practically
restricted to the wealthier class--viz., the merchants of the towns.”
What is his proof for all this? Was it the town merchants that Campion
describes wearing linen shirts for wantonness and bravery, “thirty
yards are little enough for one of them”? What about the great linen
rolls on the Irishwomen’s heads, and (is the inference too romantic?)
perhaps on their bodies also? What about the fine linen in which the
Galway women wrapped the Spanish hanged after the Armada? When I read
of 6000 bales of linen cloth sent from Galway to Genoa in 1492, or of
4000 linen cloths mentioned in 1499 in another Galway merchant’s will,
or of the “sardok” of mixed woollen and linen in the Netherland markets
in 1353, or of Henry the Eighth forbidding Galway any more to export
linen, the records of the time seem to conflict with the opinions which
Mr. Dunlop “begs leave” to hold.
Mr. Dunlop now admits for the first time some trade in cloth, but with
a stipulation of his own that it was all made by Englishmen. He does
not trouble to consider such a clue as we find in the State Papers of
Galway merchants carrying their wine into the country to exchange among
other things for cloth. He has his own theory; “it is pretty clear from
such expressions as Limerick cloak, Galway mantle, Waterford rug, that
the centres of the cloth industry lay within the sphere of English
influence”; the participation of the Irish was excluded by severe guild
regulations, and “it may not be unfair to infer that the reputation
acquired abroad by Ireland in regard to its serges was not due to the
industry of its native population.” This insinuating hypothesis is a
flaming fact on the next page, where it appears the “native Irish” (no
inferring here to dull the conclusion) “took no part in the commercial
development of their country, leaving it to the stranger within their
gate, and thereby earning from the latter the reproach of idleness.”
If there were, as Mr. Dunlop “prefers to think,” some loyal Irishmen
who preferred English civilisation and the chances it offered them
of pushing their way in life to their native customs, he states that
the presence even of such loyal Irishmen “was not always welcome to
citizens of English blood.” Thus the English of the towns must have
toiled day and night to supply the mantles which the English Government
forbade to loyal people, and to provide cloaks and cloth for the
foreign trade, since in their incessant struggle to preserve themselves
intact from Celtic influences they refused the aid of Irish hands to
work for them. It is an idyllic picture of high purpose and endeavour,
of the way to develop a country, and to make an empire.
We are not, however, shut up to this series of hypotheses. The town
records themselves and English State Papers, as I have shown, give
sufficient proof that the “native population” were not, in fact,
rejected from the town industries. Mr. Dunlop denies this; he thinks
the towns remained pure English. He is sure that all the Galway people
shaved their upper lip weekly. Henry the Eighth was not so sure of it
when, in 1536, he sent orders from Westminster to Galway men to shave
themselves aright. When Mr. Dunlop, to prove that the Galway citizens
consistently desired to keep themselves free from Irish customs, quotes
laws against Irish games and keening, he quotes them without date. My
contention is that, if it was necessary _as late as 1527 and 1625_ to
enact these laws, this, with a number of other indications that I have
mentioned, shows that the citizens’ “desire” was not very effective,
and that there was an Irish population ready to push its way in trade,
but not anxious to drop “their native customs.” No doubt the extent
to which Irish names were changed must be conjectural; but there is
evidence that such change did take place. My suggestion that “White”
may indicate an Irish house gives Mr. Dunlop an opportunity to parade
his knowledge of Gaelic. He informs me, on the authority of O’Donovan,
that there is no such Gaelic name as _Geal_ and imagines that settles
the matter. He has never, then, heard of the name _Fionn_, which has
been anglicised by “White” for centuries, just as a well-known Scotch
writer of our day calls himself Henry White or Fionn indifferently.
As for intellectual culture, Mr. Dunlop is brevity itself. He has
scarce a page for that chimera. The Irish were barbarous and the
Anglo-Normans contaminated. His method is summary. The evidence of
Mr. Whitley Stokes, of Dr. Norman Moore, of Mr. S. H. O’Grady, of Dr.
Kuno Meyer has too little importance with him to be mentioned, and he
can thus more easily avoid all proof of Irish scientific skill in
medicine, or of the admirable quality of their translations from the
Latin. He necessarily omits all mention of the many Irish scholars on
the Continent, for has he not himself told us only one Irish chieftain
made the perilous journey to Rome and back? He has no reference to
buildings or arts which indicate the intercourse of Irish chiefs with
the Continent. He is silent on the schools from which Irishmen were
able to pass to foreign universities. He seems not to have heard of
evidence of Latin culture collected by Mr. Justice Madden. And most
wonderful to say, he seems entirely unaware of the importance of the
list I have published, for the first time (by the generous kindness
of a great scholar), of Irish translations of Continental works.
Perhaps he felt himself anticipated by the conclusive comment I saw
from a dashing newspaper critic, that “the Irish evidently satisfied
themselves with translations!” In any case, he never hints at this
list or its value as evidence. So astonishing a neglect of the greater
matters of evidence, while every detail that could by any means
discredit me is searched out, is surely a grave abuse of the historical
method. In the matter of culture Mr. Dunlop confines himself with a
singular restraint to a single topic--the list of Irishmen at Oxford.
In this he counts many Anglo-Norman and only seventeen Gaelic names,
and this solitary fact is enough to make him astonished that I “did
not recognise how utterly untenable is her theory of the absorption of
Anglo-Irish culture by the native Irish.” Those readers who will turn
to the chapters on Irish learning in my book will perhaps be astonished
not at the theory that there was culture in Ireland, but at the
travesty of that theory and the suppression of evidence which serves as
historical criticism for Mr. Dunlop.
Mr. Dunlop meets with a direct negative my statement that Sussex and
Sidney carried off in their train every notable chief’s son they could
lay hands on, but he gives no more than his own authority. My statement
is perhaps too comprehensive, but I have given numerous instances (pp.
425-437) to show that the method certainly used by Sussex and Sidney,
so far as they could, was steadily increased and extended in proportion
as the English power gradually spread over one Irish region after
another. The English took over the Irish system of hostages, but they
developed it in a new way. The Catholic chief’s son was brought up in
London as a Protestant, in English law and language and tradition, with
the avowed purpose of spiritually severing him from his people, and
leaving the clan without a natural leader or defender in the national
conflict; their chiefs, in fact, were to be made the very instruments
for dividing and subjugating their own people. In the words I quoted,
it was a method which “not only rent asunder the bonds of national
loyalty and of natural affection, but which forced parent and child
alike to believe that in this world and in the world to come they
were divided by an impassable abyss.” Surely there is no likeness in
this deliberate plan to the Irish chief’s use of his hostage; it was,
indeed, practised with consummate art by Turkey.
In this article Mr. Dunlop proposed to prove two facts: first, that
Celtic civilisation is largely a figment of my imagination; and,
secondly, that far from composing one nation, the English element
in Ireland was proud of its origin, and struggled incessantly to
preserve itself intact from Celtic influence. One part of his plan is
destructive, and the second constructive. Unfortunately the work of
destruction has proved so alluring that the constructive scheme is
abandoned. As to the value of the destructive work, I contend that Mr.
Dunlop’s criticisms are not so historically accurate, so reasonable,
or so candid, that they can serve for correction or instruction. I
contend further that even on the generous assumption that the whole of
Mr. Dunlop’s criticisms might happen to be valid, there would still
remain untouched the main body of my evidence and the whole current of
my argument. And I confidently believe that the history of Ireland will
be re-written on truer lines and surer foundations than those sketched
out in the _Cambridge Modern History_ and the _Quarterly Review_. But
perhaps Mr. Dunlop will go farther. It would be pleasant to hear, in
more detail, his views on “the Iberian element in the nation.”
End of Project Gutenberg's The Old Irish World, by Alice Stopford Green