THE WOMEN OF SCOTLAND AND IRELAND
The women of Scotland are remarkable for the strength of their
domestic sentiments and for their loyalty to the land of the heather.
The stream of national life, by its merging and mingling with that of
England, has never lost the individuality which has been the pride
of the Scotch people in all their periods. Like two rivers meeting
in confluence,--the one slow and clear, but steady and strong in its
flow, the other, dashing and foaming its turbulent flood over the
breakers in its rough channel,--refusing for a long time to do other
than divide their common course until after long periods of associated
flow they finally merge, still showing in their different shadings the
mark of their diverse origin, so was it with England and Scotland. The
union is complete, but national characteristics remain.
Not so, however, with unhappy Ireland. Fundamental differences
in life, in temperament, in religion, in ideals, have served to
perpetuate the alienation of a people whose connection with England
might seem to depend on the power of but one principle--that of force.
Not strange is it that among a people which considers itself deprived
of a future the influence of the past should be predominant, and that
in the recital of the mighty deeds of the Irish chieftains of yore
should be found the chief delight of those who mingle their tears at
the shrine of such a representative of their national defeat as the
patriot O'Connell.
With the curious contradiction of nature which infusion of Celtic
blood effects, no livelier or more light-hearted race of women exists
upon the earth than that of Erin, yet, at the same time, none which
can be plunged so deeply into melancholy and feel so profoundly
the pangs of sorrow. Not to original contributions of race
characteristics, however, is this contradictory temperament solely to
be attributed, but to the long years of denationalization which have
made Ireland the wailing place of women whose traditions are glorious
with the deeds of mighty queens and amazons like Macha, Meave,
Dearbhguill and Eva; the dawn of whose cycles of religious glory is
marked by the life and deeds of a Bridget.
To write a history of the women of Great Britain and not speak of the
differences which the names Scot and Irish connote would be as grave
an error as to describe the flora of the islands and omit mention of
the shamrock and the thistle. Not that the flora of the island group
is essentially distinctive any more than that the differences in
society, in manners and customs of the separate peoples, are radical.
It is not that there is much of diverse interest in the broad aspects
of the life of the women that the recital of the history of the women
of Scotland and Ireland is to have separate treatment, but to throw
in strong light upon the pages of history the figures of women who
belonged not to Great Britain, as such, but to Scotland or to Ireland,
and who, if they date after the cementing of the union of the peoples,
still perpetuate that which is distinctive in quality of life and of
character.
To figure forth the famous women of these peoples will serve as
sufficient commentary upon the effect of difference of life and of
customs. All else has entered into the story of the women of Great
Britain as it has been told, for, after all, there is a real oneness
between them.
The tribal influence in both Ireland and Scotland continued to be the
predominant force of patriotic purpose long after the welding of its
various elements had eliminated this influence in English life. In the
earlier history of both the Scotch and Irish peoples, we have to
do with the force in society of this family idea, centred in
great chieftains and kings, but none the less a fact of prevailing
influence, an idea incarnate that served to quell the strife of
warring factions in the face of a common enemy. The patriotism of both
peoples has been the patriotism of the family and the fireside. The
love of the tartan among the Scotch and the perpetuation of the Irish
clans attest this fact to-day.
Many are the pages of British history rendered glorious by the deeds
of the women of Scotland. In those early days, when the light of
history is too faint to show clearly their characters or their deeds,
the women of Caledonia went forth to battle with men at the sound
of the pibroch. Some of the noblest of them reigned as queens, were
hailed as deliverers, or gave their blood in martyrdom to warm the
soil of their country. The Scotch-Irish tribes accorded their women
place in the deliberative bodies, and listened to their counsel. The
magnificent virility which they displayed was not different from that
of British women generally. The noble Boadicea was no more valorous
than the Irish Meave. From the dim shadow land of the past must some
of the characters of this recital be called up, but the Middle Ages
and modern periods will be most largely drawn upon to tell the story
of the Celtic woman, as a part of the chronicle of a country where, as
we have fully seen, women have always counted as factors. Macha of the
Red Tresses is the first of the Irish queens whose figure stands out
with sufficient boldness to fix it upon the pages of history. Would
one marvel at her beauty or her prowess, let him have recourse to the
praises of the early bards and the laudations of the chroniclers.
We can well believe that, to her countrymen, she appeared as the
incarnation of some divinity as she rode at the head of her body of
stalwart warriors; her auburn tresses floating loose in the wind,
her mantle flung carelessly over her shoulder, her neck and arms
and ankles girdled with massive gold ornaments, her eyes flashing
determination as she pointed the advance to the foray with her lance
directed toward the foe drawn up in battle line to receive the charge.
A quarrel as to the succession to the throne or to the headship of
the tribe, which was precipitated by the death of her father without
posterity excepting this intrepid daughter, was the occasion of her
appearance upon the page of national affairs, or rather of tribal
history. She gained the victory over her adversaries, and ruled her
people for seven years. The romantic annals of this valorous lady
relate how she pursued the sons of her adversary to effect their
destruction; and the more certainly to accomplish her purpose, she
disguised herself as a leper, by rubbing her face with rye dough. Away
in the depths of a dense forest she finds them cooking the wild boar
they had just slain. Having successfully used her disguise to achieve
her end, she rid herself of the leprous-looking splotches. With
honeyed words and the judicious flashing of love-light from a pair
of wondrous eyes, the supposed leper charms her enemies. One brother
follows her into a remote part of the forest, where by guile she
effects the binding of him hand and foot. Returning to the camp, she
successively lures the remaining brothers into the woods in the same
manner and with the same result. She brought them "tied together" to
Emhain. There, in a council of the tribe, womanly sentiment prevailed
over sanguinary counsels, and, instead of being condemned to death,
the prisoners were given over to slavery in the queen's following; and
with the romantic ideas common to her sex, she had them build her a
fortress "which shall be forever henceforth the capital city of this
province." With her golden brooch she measured the bounds of the
future castle, and it received the name "the Palace of Macha's
Brooch." So runs the legend, and so is fixed by the brooch of Macha
the first date in Irish history, at a period, however, when dates have
little significance, for time meant but duration, and not economy or
expenditure of force.
The romance of another of Ireland's early queens centres about the
possession of a bull whose marvellously good points had awakened the
queen's envy; the pastoral relates the contest which arose therefrom.
This queen was the daughter of the King of Connaught, Ecohaidh by
name, and her mother was the handmaid of his wife, the Lady Edain, who
herself was a leader of great beauty and courage. The contest for the
throne resulted in the elevation of Meave to the royal dignity. Before
this, she had contracted marriage with a prince, with whom she
lived unhappily. She returned to her father's court, and, after
her coronation, married the powerful chief Ailill. The death of her
husband and that of her father, which occurred at about the same time,
left her solitary. The queen's misfortune in marriage did not deter
her from seeking a further union. One day, the court of Ross-Ruadh,
King of Leinster, was thrown into a great stir by the arrival of
the heralds of Meave dressed in "yellow silk shirts and grass-green
mantles," who announced that the famous queen was on a royal progress
throughout the land in quest of a husband suited to one of her state
and character. She was feted and catered to in every way, and finally
fixed her choice upon the seventeen-year-old son of Ross-Ruadh, whose
character promised enough meekness to insure the dominance over him of
his much older spouse.
The event which the chroniclers make the prominent one of her reign
had its origin in a heated dispute between the queen and her spouse as
to their respective possessions. The result of the controversy was an
actual inventory of their belongings. "There were compared before them
all their wooden and their metal vessels of value; and they were found
to be equal. There were brought to them their finger-rings, their
clasps, their bracelets, their thumb-rings, their diadems, and their
gorgets of gold; and they were found to be equal. There were brought
to them their garments of crimson and blue, and black and green, and
yellow and mottled, and white and streaked; and they were found to
be equal. There were brought before them their great flocks of sheep,
from greens and lawns and plains; and they were found to be equal.
There were brought before them their steeds and their studs, from
pastures and from fields; and they were found to be equal. There were
brought before them their great herds of swine, from forest and from
deep glens and from solitudes; their herds and their droves of cows
were brought before them, from the forests and most remote solitudes
of the province; and, on counting and comparing them, they were
found to be equal in number and excellence. But there was found among
Ailill's herds a young bull, which had been calved by one of Meave's
cows, and which, not deeming it honourable to be under a woman's
control, went over and attached himself to Ailill's herds."
Deeply chagrined that she had not in all her herds a bull to match
this one, which seems to have been a remarkable animal, she asked her
chief courier where in all the five provinces of Erin its counterpart
might be found. He replied that not only could he direct her to its
equal, but to its superior. The possessor of this animal was Dare, son
of Fachtna of the Cantred of Cualigne, in the province of Ulster.
Its name was the Brown Bull of Cualigne. Straightway was the courier,
MacRoth, sent to Dare with an offer of fifty heifers for the animal,
and the further assurance that, if he so desired, he and his people
might have the best lands of what are now the plains of Roscommon,
besides other valuable considerations, which included the permanent
friendship of the queen herself.
Swiftly upon his errand sped the courier, accompanied by an impressive
train of attendants. A friendly and hospitable reception and
entertainment awaited them, and Dare accepted the terms they offered.
One of the courtiers expressed admiration for the amiability of the
king who thus consented to part from that which, on account of his
power, the four other provinces of Erin could not have wrested
from him. From this praise a cup-valorous associate dissented, and
maintained that it was no credit to him, since, had he refused, Meave
of herself could have compelled him to surrender it. The steward of
Dare, coming in at this inopportune moment, heard the insulting vaunt,
and went out in a rage and bore to his master the remark he had heard.
Dare, in a passion of resentment, withdrew his offer, swearing by all
the gods that Meave should not have the Brown Bull by either consent
or force. Meave, on hearing of his determination, was correspondingly
incensed, and without delay gathered together her forces and declared
war upon Dare.
In a hotly contested battle, the army of Meave defeated that of her
adversary, and the Brown Bull was carried back to her own country.
According to the grave narrative of the chronicler, the issue of
the bulls had yet to be fought out by the animals themselves, for no
sooner did the captive bull come into the province of Connaught than
there was precipitated a tremendous conflict with his rival, the
bull of Ailill. The tale describes vividly and with much of fabulous
admixture the contest, which resulted in the rout of the White-horned.
Thus was the honor of Meave doubly sustained by the wage of battle.
This and many other strange narratives with regard to the undoubtedly
historical Meave have vested her with a halo of romance, and so
veiled her real personality that it is rather in her mythical than her
historical character that she has come down to us; for there is little
doubt of her being the original of Queen Mab of fairy fame. Spenser
gathered much of his fairy lore in Ireland, and in the section where
this famous queen lived and where grew up the mass of tradition and
fable which must have appealed strongly to the imagination of the
author of the _Faerie Queen_.
The intense religious character of the Irish people is not to be
accredited to the persistence of superstitious influences and beliefs
in the new garb of Christian enlightenment; for although their
exuberant fancy has always peopled their land with races of malign as
well as of amiable spirits, the real impress of religion is that which
they received from early Christian sources. Bridget, the saint who
heads the calendar of Irish women of sanctity, was born in the first
half of the fifth century A.D., and survived until the end of the
first quarter of the sixth. She it was who, despite the disadvantages
of her sex, performed a work paralleled by but few persons in the
religious history of the country. It was inevitable that there should
have grown up about her a fund of story and fable from which it is
now difficult to distinguish in order to give her real work its full
appreciation without sanctioning stories that have their roots in the
soil of the fond fancy of a grateful people.
As one divests a rare parchment of its later writing in order that the
original manuscript may be studied, so, when the after-traditions and
the excrescences of the supernatural are removed from the character
of Bridget, her real worth is seen and the value of the record of
her life, which is thereby disclosed, is greatly enhanced. As to her
learning, her blameless character, her wisdom, her charity, and her
honesty, there is no manner of doubt. To swear by her name was to give
to the asseveration the sanctity of inviolable truth.
It must be remembered that in the middle of the fourth century female
monasteries upon the continent had aroused among women a great deal of
religious enthusiasm. Already had the seeds of religion been sown
in Ireland by Patrick, when Bridget came, imbued with the ardor of
religious training and stimulation received upon the continent.
The religious order for women which she instituted spread in its
ramifications to all parts of the country. Many were the widows and
young maidens who thronged to her religious houses; indeed, so great
was the throng, that it became necessary to form one great central
establishment, superior to and controlling the activities of numerous
other establishments which were scattered throughout the land. She
herself made her abode among the people of Leinster, who became
endeared to her as her own people. The monastery she reared amid the
green stretches of pasture received the name of Cill Dara, or the Cell
of the Oak, from a giant oak which grew near by, and which continued
down to the twelfth century, "no one daring to touch it with a knife."
On account of the monastery and its sacred surroundings, the section
became the place of residence of an increasing number of families, and
from the settlement thus begun arose the modern town of Kildare.
Such sanctity and devotion to good works as that of Bridget attracted
to her monastery many visitors of note. Among those who esteemed it
an honor to have her friendship was the chronicler Gildas. The
Ey-Bridges, i.e., the Isles of Bridget, or the Hebrides, according to
the modern form of their name, claim the honor of holding in loving
embrace her mortal remains. In this claim, however, they have a
vigorous disputant in the town of Kildare, which claims the renown of
her burial.
Passing from the vague borderland between legend and history, we come
down to the twelfth century, when mediaeval conditions were in full
force and the manners and customs already described in connection
with the women of the times had full hold upon their lives. As
representative of the spirit of the period, the life of the renowned
Eva, Princess of Leinster and Countess of Pembroke, may be briefly
considered.
The history of the sad princess centres about the struggles of Dermot
to regain the throne of Leinster, from which he had been deposed by
the federated kings. First he equipped a body of mercenaries from
Wales, only to be met with defeat in his endeavor to take Dublin from
the enemy. He appealed for aid to the English king, Henry II., who was
then engaged in a campaign in France. He did not receive direct help
from that monarch, who himself was looking with covetous eyes upon
Ireland, but he did receive permission to make recruits from among his
Anglo-Norman subjects. His real aid came from the Earl of Pembroke,
called Richard Strongbow. With a large fleet, Dermot now set sail
for Ireland, bent not only upon the recovery of his possession of
Leinster, but the conquest of the whole island.
The consideration offered by Dermot to Pembroke for his services
was the hand of his daughter Eva, with the kingdom of Leinster for
a dowry. Waterford, a town then of equal importance with Dublin, was
successively besieged and sacked; the Danes, who held it, were driven
out with great slaughter. Amid all the horror of the sacked city
was consummated the union of Eva and Richard, Earl Strongbow. Dublin
became the place of their residence. A few years thereafter, the
husband's checkered career was closed by a wound in the foot. In
Christ Church, Dublin, lies the body of the warrior, and the monument
displays the figure of a recumbent knight in armor, with that of his
bride at his side.
The national struggles of Scotland are as replete with examples of
illustrious women as those of Ireland; the tragedy of the lives of
some of Scotia's daughters not only serves to mark the brutal spirit
of times which, with all their superficial glorifying of the sex, yet
could with good conscience make war upon women, but also serves to
illustrate the height of feminine devotion when called forth by some
great occasion with its demand for self-abnegation. Among such heroic
characters must ever be honorably numbered the fair Isobel, Countess
of Buchan, of whom the poet Pratt says:
"Mothers henceforth shall proudly tell
How cag'd and prison'd Isobel
Did serve her country's weal."
The nine years which saw the struggles of a Wallace and a Bruce, from
the appearance of the former as the champion of Scottish rights to
the crowning of the latter at Scone, were years big with the fate of
a people full of heroic purpose and undaunted fortitude. The story
of the national conquest must be sought elsewhere. In 1305, upon the
death of Wallace, the younger Bruce was impelled to abandon the
cause of the King of England, who had been pleased to name him in a
commission for the direction of the affairs of Scotland. He made his
peace with Red Comyn, the leader of the rival Scottish faction, and
closed with him a pact on the terms proposed by Bruce: "Support my
title to the crown, and I will give you my lands." The story of the
perfidy of the treacherous Comyn and of the revolt of Bruce against
Edward of England is well-known history. The actual crowning of the
Scottish chieftain occurred on March 27, 1306. At that time appeared
Isobel, wife of John, Earl of Buchan, who asserted the claim to
install the king, which had come down of ancient right in her family.
With great pomp, this illustrious scion of the house of the Earls of
Macduff led Bruce to the regal chair. The English chronicler crustily
remarks: "She was mad for the beauty of the fool who was crowned." The
English king was enraged at the presumption of his vassal, and sent
out his soldiers against the Scottish sovereign. In the notable battle
which followed, the forces of Bruce were routed and he himself made
a fugitive. Other reverses befell the arms of the Scotch, and among
those who were carried away captive to gratify the lust for vengeance
of the English was the noble lady who had proudly inducted Bruce
into the royal power. Isobel of Buchan was carried to Berwick, and
condemned to a fate which can best be described in the words of an
early chronicler: "Because she has not struck with the sword, she
shall not die by the sword, but on account of the unlawful coronation
which she performed, let her be closely confined in an abode of stone
and iron, made in the shape of a cross, and let her be hung up out of
doors in the open air of Berwick, that both in her life and after her
death she may be a spectacle and an eternal reproach to travellers."
For four years she suffered the imposition of this heinous punishment,
which was then mitigated to imprisonment in the monastery of Mount
Carmel at Berwick. After three years she was removed to the custody
of Henry de Beaumont. Her final fate is unknown, but it is presumable
that, if she lived, her release from durance was secured by the
victory of Bannockburn.
Amid the misfortunes which pressed thickly upon the house of those
whose name, more than that of any other, is linked with Scotland's
history--the mighty Douglases--must ever appear the sad-visaged Janet,
Lady Glamis. When under the royal ban, remorseless as the will of
fate, the house of Douglas was expelled from its native heath, a woman
of unusual nobility suffered death in the general disaster to her kin.
Gratitude is not a virtue of kings, or else there would have been
some remembrance of that earlier lady of the Douglas line, Catherine
Douglas, who, when the assassins upon midnight murder bent appeared
at the chamber of the queen of James I., opposed to their
entrance--fruitlessly, indeed, but none the less nobly--her slender
arm, which she thrust into the staple to replace the bar that had been
treacherously removed. The ambition of the Douglases, however, knew
no bounds, and in actual fact their power often not only rivalled
but overtopped that of the crown. The feud, with varying degrees of
irritation and occasions of outbreak, had gone on until the time of
James V., when the reverses suffered by the Douglases effectually
destroyed their power and made them fugitives during the reign of that
monarch. That king had an undying resentment to the Earl of Angus, who
had obtained possession of his person as a child and had continued
to be his keeper until he finally slipped the leash to take up the
sovereignty unhampered. One of the sisters of the mighty earl, in the
flower of her youth, became the wife of Lord Glamis. While her kinsmen
were in exile, she secretly did what she could to further their
designs against the Scottish throne. Charges were formulated against
her, but do not appear to have been pressed. Other actions against
her for treason were instituted by her enemies, and she lived under
continual harassment and apprehension of danger. All her property was
confiscated as that of a fugitive from the law and one tainted with
treason. Her enemies were not satisfied with the measure of revenge
they had wrought upon her, and were content with nothing short of her
life.
The venom of the persecution is shown by the nature of the charge
which was trumped up against her to ensure her death. Four years after
the death of her husband, she was indicted on the charge of killing
him by poison. Three times the majority of those summoned to serve
on the jury to hear the charges against her refused to attend, thus
showing how little faith the popular mind had in the sincerity of the
indictment against her. As it seemed impossible to secure a jury to
hear the odious charge against an innocent and high-minded lady, the
case was allowed to lapse. Soon after this she again married.
A description of her which was penned by a writer in the early part of
the seventeenth century represents her as having been reputed in
her prime the greatest beauty in Britain. "She was," he says, "of an
ordinary stature, not too fat, her mien was majestic, her eyes full,
her face was oval, and her complection was delicate and extremely
fair. Besides all these perfections, she was a lady of singular
chastity; as her body was a finished piece, without the least blemish,
so Heaven designed that her mind should want none of those perfections
a mortal creature can be capable of; her modesty was admirable, her
courage was above what could be expected from her sex, her judgment
solid, her carriage was gaining and affable to her inferiors, as she
knew well how to behave herself to her equals; she was descended from
one of the most honorable and wealthy families of Scotland, and of
great interest in the kingdom, but at that time eclipsed." This is
the testimony of hearsay, but, allowing for exaggeration, the great
impression which she made upon her contemporaries is amply shown.
The very nemesis of misfortune seemed to pursue this innocent
lady. The next turn of envious fate brought to light a plot for her
destruction which was hatched in the dark recesses of a heart burning
with passionate resentment over its inability to invade her wifely
integrity. William Lyon had been one of the suitors who were
disappointed at her acceptance of the son of the Earl of Argyll.
After several years had elapsed, this man sought to pass the limits
of friendship, and had the baseness to seek to draw her away from the
path of honor. Her contemptuous and indignant rebuff rankled in his
mind, and led him to lay a deep plot tending to bring Lady Glamis
under suspicion of attempting to poison the king. Her former
indictment as a poisoner was counted upon to give probability to the
charge. She, with all other persons under suspicion as parties to the
plot, was arrested and immured in Edinburgh Castle.
So much of political matter entered into the testimony, and so
skilfully was it wrought, that the jury found her guilty of the crimes
charged, namely, treasonable communication with her relatives, the
enemies of the king, and of conspiring to poison her monarch. The
sentence was that she should be burned at the stake, and the same
day of its delivery it was executed. "She seemed to be the only
unconcerned person there, and her beauty and charms never appeared
with greater advantage than when she was led to the flames; and her
soul being fortified with support from Heaven, and the sense of her
own innocence, she outbraved death, and her courage was equal in the
fire to what it was before her judges. She suffered those torments
without the least noise: only she prayed devoutly for Divine
assistance to support her under her sufferings." She died as a burnt
offering to the hate which was engendered against her line, but which
could be visited only upon her, as all others of her house were out of
reach of the royal anger.
Returning to Ireland and leaving behind the atmosphere of political
machinations and persecutions, it is pleasant to take up the
characters of some women of the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries
who for different reasons have written their names lastingly in the
memories of their race. To be hailed as the best woman of her times
was the happy privilege of Margaret O'Carroll, who died in 1461.
McFirbis, the antiquary of Lecan, her contemporary, says of her: "She
was the one woman that made most of preparing highways, and erecting
bridges, churches and mass-books, and of all manner of things
profitable to serve God and her soul." Her life was most celebrated
for her pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint James of Compostella in
Spain, and her unbounded charity. The pilgrimage followed upon a great
revival of religion which seems to have swept over Ireland in 1445.
The occasion of the awakening is not known, other than that following
upon the signs of religious discontent upon the continent the monks of
Ireland roused themselves to earnest and arduous religious labors. The
chronicler gives illustration of her practical charity in the account
of her two "invitations": twice in the one year did she call upon
all persons "Irish and Scottish" to bestow largely of their money
and goods as a feast for the poor. Thousands resorted to the place of
distribution, and, as each was aided in an orderly manner, they had
their names and the amount and nature of their relief entered in
a book kept for the purpose. In summing up her life's work, the
chronicler says: "While the world lasts, her very many gifts to the
Irish and Scottish nations cannot be numbered. God's blessing, the
blessing of all saints, and every our blessing from Jerusalem to Innis
Glauir be on her going to Heaven, and blessed be he that will reade
and will heare this, for the blessing of her soule. Cursed be the sore
in her breast that killed Margrett." Such a picture as this serves to
offset the more usual idea of the women of Ireland during the Middle
Ages as coarse, half-civilized beings. Such a character would lend
dignity and worth to any people during any age.
The many benefactions and the public spirit of this great lady
make her deserving of mention in any account of the development of
charities. The poet D'Arcy McGee has immortalized her in a poem in
which, referring to the occasion of her "great Invitation," he says:
In cloth of gold, like a queen new-come out of the royal wood
On the round, proud, white-walled rath Margeret O'Carroll stood;
That day came guests to Rath Imayn from afar from beyond the sea
Bards and Bretons of Albyn and Erin--to feast in Offaly!"
To be celebrated for beauty alone is the prerogative of a few of
the women of the ages. What nation is there that does not hold in as
cherished regard the women who have represented its noblest physical
possibilities as their women of unusual sanctity or those who have
glorified their literature or ennobled their arts? A beautiful
woman--a woman whose beauty is not alone flawless in feature and
full of the instinctive intellectuality of a soul mirrored in
a countenance, but also typical of the expression of racial
characteristics, is as much a product of ages, as much a climax of
evolution at the point of perfection, as the saint, the artist, the
dramatist who marks a period and exalts a people. To pass down in
history as an exceptional beauty is to inspire art ideals and to
furnish a theme for the lyricist. Frailty is often found united with
such exceptional beauty, so is it with exceptional genius; alas! that
predominating gifts should be so often inimical to balance. To find
such beauty in the way of virtue is as grateful as to find an orchid
exhaling perfume.
In the tales of fair women, the Fair Geraldine, who was born in the
first half of the sixteenth century, must always be celebrated, not
only as a typical Irish beauty, but as a woman whose virtues were of
a similar order to her physical charms. She was the second daughter
of the Earl of Kildare by his second wife, Lady Elizabeth Grey, and
inherited from both sides of this union, which was most auspicious,
the high breeding and gentle graces which fitted well her gracious
carriage and great beauty and served, by enhancing her physical
charms, to attract to her a wide circle of friends and to secure for
her the knightly attendance of a band of distinguished suitors. She
was taken to England to be educated, and at court received the polish
which perfected the jewel of her beauty. She made her home with a
second cousin of her mother, Lady Mary, who was afterward England's
queen. While quite young she was appointed maid of honor to her
kinswoman. Already her charms had ripened to the point of eliciting
from the poet, soldier, and politician, Henry, Earl of Surrey, the
high praise of the following sonnet:
"From Tuscane came my lady's worthy race,
Fair Florence was sometime her ancient seat.
The western isle, whose pleasant shore doth face
Wild Cambor's cliffs, did give her lively heat.
Fostered she was with milk of Irish breast;
Her sire an Earl, her dame of Princes' blood,
From tender years in Britain doth she rest,
With King's child; where she tasteth costly food.
Hunsdon did first present her to mine eyes;
Bright is her hue, and Geraldine she hight.
Hampton me taught to wish her first as mine,
And Windsor, alas! doth chase her from my sight.
Her beauty of kind; her virtues from above,
Happy is he that can attain her love."
The noble earl who lamented that Windsor chased her from his sight
was suffering incarceration in Windsor Castle for eating meat in Lent.
That the Fair Geraldine had made full conquest of his heart is shown
by his conduct at a tournament at Florence, where he defied the world
to produce her equal. He was victorious, and the palm was awarded the
Irish beauty. Again, he is found resorting to a famous alchemist of
the day to enable him to peer into the future, that he might know what
disposition of her heart would be made by the lady of his affections.
The only satisfaction he obtained was the seeing of Geraldine
recumbent upon a couch reading one of his sonnets. This must have
stirred his blood and have strengthened his faith in the ultimate
success of his wooing. Had he obtained the revelation he sought, he
would have seen the adored beauty, with that curious inconsistency of
her sex, bestowing herself upon Sir Anthony Brown, a man sixty years
of age, and who was forty-four years her senior. After his death
she married the Earl of Lincoln, whom she also survived. There is
no further record of the beauty whose fame extended over England and
Ireland. The circumstance of Surrey's visit to the alchemist has been
preserved in Scott's _Lay of the Last Minstrel_:
"Fair all the pageant--but how passing fair
The slender form that lay on couch of Ind!
O'er her white bosom strayed her hazel hair,
Pale her dear cheek, as if for love she pined;
All in her night-robe loose she lay reclined
And, pensive, read from tablet eburine
Some strain that seemed her inmost soul to find;
That favored strain was Surrey's raptured line,
That fair and lovely form, the Ladye Geraldine."
In the picturesque annals of the piracy of the sixteenth century,
when England was getting that sea training which was to make her the
undisputed naval power of the world, when the Turkish corsair spread
the terror of his savage brutality through the hearts of the brave
seamen who manned the craft of legitimate commerce, at a time when the
trade routes of the sea were the paths of piracy, and the sabre,
the cutlass, and the newly invented gunpowder were depended upon to
establish the right of way for the ships of the nations, there appears
no more daring character than Grainne O'Malley. Many stories of her
prowess are still current in the west of Ireland, and the political
ballads of her time make frequent allusion to the sea queen. For the
greater part of the sixteenth century she lived, an example of that
splendid virility which is yet characteristic of the hardy Irish
peasantry, when not under the shadow of famine.
She came of right by her seafaring proclivities, for from the earliest
period the O'Malleys have been celebrated as rivalling the Vikings
in their love of the sea. In the fourteenth century a bard is found
singing:
"A good man never was there
Of the O'Mailly's but a mariner;
The prophets of the weather are ye,
A tribe of affection and brotherly love."
Grainne O'Malley, with all her depredations upon the sea, was no
common pirate; through her veins ran the royal blood of the line
of Connaught, and, despite her serviceability to the English as
a freebooting ally upon the western coasts of the island, she
acknowledged no higher power than her own. Her title of dignity was
regarded as inviolable. Quite worthy of the brush of an artist was
the scene presented by the reception at court of the wild Irish
chieftainess. Disdaining land travel, she performed the whole trip to
London by water, sailing up the Thames to the Tower Gate. The little
son who was born upon this voyage was fittingly called Theobald of the
Ship. There has come down to us no account of the meeting of the two
queens, but one may readily imagine the scene--the blonde Elizabeth,
thin, unbeautiful, her scant features lined by petulance, but with
indomitable will shown in the turn of her mouth and the strength of
her chin, and the large-limbed, full-bodied Irish woman, dressed in
the semi-wild attire of her race and of her calling, her arms, her
wrists, her ankles, gleaming with circlets of gold, a fillet of
massive metal binding her hair, her mantle caught up at the shoulder
by an immense, ornately wrought brooch. Courteously, but with no sign
of inferiority in her demeanor, her swarthy skin showing the dash of
Spanish blood in her veins, and her eyes flashing with the light of
an unconquered spirit, stood the female buccaneer before the woman
who had rule of England. The best tradition of the results of the
interview tell us that a treaty was effected between the two, but that
the Irish chieftainess did not yield an iota of her royal claims.
Thus was cemented a union between the English throne and the piratical
leader. It must be borne in mind, however, that piracy was not
then the despicable vice that it afterward came to be regarded. The
commerce of the enemy was always lawful spoil, and, even when there
was not actually a state of hostilities existing between countries,
preying upon one another's commerce was often regarded as a
semi-legitimate industry; and if the freebooter kept out of reach of
the enemy, he was not likely to be seriously sought out for punishment
by the authorities of his own country. The exploiters of the New
World, under the title of merchant-adventurers, were for the most part
pirates; the Spanish galleons were always lawful spoil for the English
merchantman, who knew the trick of painting out the name of his craft,
giving it a garb of piratical black, using a false flag, spoiling the
enemy after some swift, hard fighting, and then resuming again his
real or assumed pacific character. In the light of her times must
Grainne O'Malley be regarded.
As a sea queen she is without parallel in any time; and if the stain
of their piracy does not attach to her English contemporaries, Drake,
Raleigh, and Gilbert, no more should it to her. By force of a powerful
individuality, she ruled a race of men who were noted as the most
lawless of all Ireland, men among whom women as a class were so
little esteemed that they were not allowed to hold property. An early
traditional account of this woman of the waves, which is preserved
in manuscript at the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, describes her as
follows:
"She was a great pirate and plunderer from her youth. It is
Transcended to us by Tradition that the very Day she was brought to
bed of her first Child that a Turkish Corsair attacked her ships,
and that they were Getting the Better of her Men, she got up, put her
Quilt about her and a string about her neck, took two Blunder Bushes
in her hands, came on deck, began damming and Capering about, her
monstrous size and odd figure surprised the Turks, their officers
gathered themselves talking of her; this was what she wanted,
stretched both her hands, fired the two Blunder Bushes at them and
Destroyed the officers." Many are the deeds of prowess ascribed to
her, and so widespread was her fame that desperate characters
came from all parts to enroll themselves under her standard. Her
serviceability to the English, to whose extending power she had the
good sense not to put herself in opposition, secured to her the right
to continue her depredations.
With all her daring and the romance with which tradition has
surrounded her, she was not, nor does the report of her times
represent her as having been, handsome. In fact, notwithstanding that
the Anglicized form of her given name is Grace, its real meaning is
"the ugly." Her first husband was an O'Flaherty, the terror of which
name is preserved in the litany of the Anglo-Norman, recalling the
capture of the city of Galway and the surrounding country: "From the
ferocious O'Flaherties,--Good Lord, deliver us." The same words, as a
talisman, were inscribed over the gate of the city. We know little of
the representative of this family who became the husband of Grainne
O'Malley. Her second husband was Sir Richard Bourke, of the Mayo
division of a great Norman-Irish clan. It was after contracting this
alliance that Grainne O'Malley put herself under the protection of the
English rule in Connaught. Sidney, the lord-deputy, referring to his
visit to Galway in 1576, says: "There came to me a most famous female
sea-captain, called Granny-I-Mallye, and offered her services to me,
wheresoever I would command her, with three galleys and two hundred
fighting men, either in Ireland or Scotland. She brought with her her
husband, for she was, as well by sea as by land, more than master's
mate with him. He was of the nether Bourkes, and now, as I hear,
MacWilliam Euter, and called by the nickname 'Richard in Iron.' This
was a notorious woman in all the coasts of Ireland. This woman did Sir
Philip see and speak with: he can more at large inform you of her."
The personal character of this female buccaneer was never called into
question; saving only her piratical proclivities, she seems to have
been exemplary. The circumstances of her life at the death of her
first husband forced her, a daughter of a pirate, to the seas as
a "thrade of maintenance," as she apologetically put it to Queen
Elizabeth. She founded and endowed religious houses, and the
attitude she maintained toward the powers higher than she was in the
furtherance of the peace of her country. Yet her good deeds have not
been borne in the same remembrance as her piratical performances. With
this account of the adventurous Irish woman, we may turn to a very
different picture, taken from Scotland.
The annals of the Scottish border are replete with stories of cruel
warfare and of savage vengeance. The wars of England with the valorous
Scots present hardly more instances of heroism and of brutality than
do the accounts of the feuds which arose between the clans themselves.
Of the first sort was the expedition which Bluff King Hal sent out to
punish the Scots for becoming incensed at the insolent tone and the
humiliating conditions he imposed on the negotiations looking to the
marriage of his young son, afterward Edward VI., and the infant Mary,
Queen of Scots.
The English conducted a series of savage forays across the Scottish
border. Their success led the leaders of the invading army to
represent to Henry that, owing to the distracted condition of
Scotland on account of the internal disorders, the time was peculiarly
auspicious for a permanent conquest of a large part of the border.
Under commission of the English king to effect such a conquest, they
returned and renewed their attack. The tower of Broomhouse, held by
an aged woman and her family, was consigned to the flames, and she and
her children perished in the conflagration. Melrose Abbey was wantonly
plundered and ruined, and the bones of the Douglases were taken from
their tombs and scattered about. Next, the little village of Maxton
was burned. All its inhabitants had made good their escape excepting
a maiden of high courage and deep devotion, who remained with her
bed-ridden parents. The approach of the enemy meant their destruction.
The village maid had a lover, who, on finding that she was not with
the refugees, returned to the town and forcibly carried her off,
although he was grievously wounded in the act of doing so. After he
had effected her rescue, the brave savior, breathing with his expiring
breath a prayer of thankfulness that he had been permitted to yield up
his life for her who was more than life to him, died of exhaustion
and of his wounds. The measure of iniquity was complete, and,
although many other bloody deeds were perpetrated in this warfare, the
instrument of vengeance was at hand; when the hour came that marked a
turn in the tide:
"Ancrum Moor
Ran red with English blood;
Where the Douglas true and the bold Buccleuch
'Gainst keen Lord Evers stood."
When the battle was over and the English had been driven with great
slaughter from the field, the body of the English general was found
near that of a young Scottish soldier with flowing yellow tresses, who
was mangled by many wounds. The delicacy of feature soon led to the
discovery that the slayer of the English leader was a woman, and her
identification as the maiden Liliard of the hamlet of Maxton followed.
So had she avenged the cruel slaughter of her aged and helpless
parents and that of the devoted lover who had laid down his life in
her behalf. In a borrowed suit of armor and weapons she had arrayed
herself under the Red Douglas, that she might seek out him who was
the author of her calamities, to visit upon him the vengeance of her
desolation, and yield up the life she no longer valued.
Upon the bloody field her compatriots interred her who was thereafter
to be held in dear regard as one of Scotland's noblest daughters.
Above the head of "Liliard of Ancrum" was erected a gravestone with
the following inscription to commemorate her valor:
"Fair maiden Liliard lies under this stane,
Little was her stature, but great was her fame;
Upon the English loons she laid mony thumps,
And when her legs were cutted off, she fought upon her stumps."
Ancrum Moor was fought in 1544. James V. had died two years earlier,
and the crown of Scotland had devolved upon his infant daughter, Mary.
Henry VIII. was bent on securing the Scotch kingdom, and to that end
persisted in urging the betrothal of Prince Edward to the infant Mary,
Queen of Scots; but the Scots were equally averse to the alliance,
hence Henry continued to harass the kingdom by armed forces. After
Edward VI. succeeded his father, he continued to sue for Mary's
hand, and made use of military force in the hope of accomplishing his
object. The child-queen's safety being in constant jeopardy, she was
betrothed to the Dauphin of France, and in 1548 left for the court of
France. In her sixteenth year she married Francis, making at the same
time a secret treaty bestowing the kingdom of Scotland on France, in
case she died without an heir. Francis II., however, died in 1560, and
Mary returned to Scotland the following year. Here, her Roman Catholic
practices soon brought her into conflict with Knox, but for a time she
managed to rule without serious troubles. Romantic adventure, however,
best describes the life of this lovely queen. She was beset with
suitors and pestered with intrigue for her favor. The most popularly
known story in connection with her life is that of her relation to
Rizzio, her Italian confidant. He it was who arranged Mary's marriage
to Darnley, and it was his influence over her that finally led to his
own assassination by Darnley and his companions in Holyrood Palace
in 1566. Shortly thereafter the queen gave birth to Prince James;
and from this time troubles and conspiracies constantly involved the
unhappy queen, until her execution in 1586 for her association in the
Babington conspiracy against the life of Queen Elizabeth.
It was while the partisans of Queen Mary and those of her young son
James were imbruing the soil of Scotland with one another's blood, and
when all the horrors of internecine warfare were being perpetrated,
there was lighted a flame that added a heroine to the country's list
of women who have honorably earned that title. There appeared one day
before Corgaff Castle, in Strathdon, Captain Kerr and a party of
men, sent by the deputy lieutenant of the queen, Sir Adam Gordon of
Auchindown, to capture and to hold it. Between the houses of Gordon
and Forbes existed a deadly feud, although they were united by
marriage. The Forbeses had espoused the cause of the king, while
the Gordons were arrayed on the side of the queen. This added to the
bitterness of their feeling, and accounts for the stubbornness which
Lady Towie displayed when called upon to surrender. Her husband, John
Forbes, the Laird of Towie, was in the field with his three sons;
the defence of the castle accordingly fell upon her. When the Gordons
appeared before the castle and demanded its subjection, its noble
defender replied in such scornful terms to Captain Kerr, the leader of
the besieging force, that he swore that he would wipe out the stigma
of her insult with her blood. As it was impossible to carry the castle
by assault without the aid of artillery, he resorted to fire--not,
however, before the brave lady had shot her pistol at him pointblank,
missing her aim, but yet grazing the captain's knee with the bullet.
In spite of the plea of her sick stepson, she resolutely determined to
perish in the flames which were spreading through the castle from the
fire started by the enemy in a breach of the castle wall.
This incident of the siege is described in an old ballad:
"Oh, then out spake her youngest son,
Sat on the nurse's knee:
Says--'Mither, dear, gie o'er this house,
For the reek it smithers me.'
"'I would gie all my gold, my bairn,
Sae would I all my fee,
For ae blast o' the Westlin' wind
To blaw the reek frae thee.'"
Next, her daughter appealed to her that she might be sewed up in a
sheet and let down the tower wall. To this the mother assented. The
maiden was thus lowered to the ground, only to be received upon the
spear of the brutal captain:
"O then out spake her daughter dear.
She was baith jimp and small:
'Oh, row me in a pair of sheets,
And tow me o'er the wall.'
* * * * *
"Oh, bonnie, bonnie was her mouth,
And cherry was her cheeks;
And clear, clear was her yellow hair,
Whereon the red bluid dreeps.
* * * * *
"Then with his spear he turned her o'er;
Oh, gin her face was wan!
He said--'You are the first that e'er
I wish'd alive again.'"
Of the thirty-seven persons in the castle, Lady Towie, her stepson,
her three young children, and her retainers, none escaped the
holocaust; the roof of the keep fell in and carried them down into the
flames. So perished one of the bravest and most spirited women of her
times. The retribution which, in the later circumstances of the feud,
was wrought upon those responsible for this massacre does not concern
us here. The heroism of Lady Towie's defence of Corgaff Castle has
furnished a theme for other poets than the obscure bard whom we have
quoted; the bravery to the point of rashness which she displayed
endears her to the heart of the Scotchman who glories in the deeds of
courage of his race.
One of the sweetest stories of devotion to be found in the history
of Scotland's women is that which centres about the knightly house of
Cromlix and Ardoch. Sir James Chisholm was born in the early part of
the sixteenth century, and, as a youth, was sent to France for the
completion of his education. Before his departure he had exchanged
with fair Helen Stirling, of the house of Ardoch, vows of undying
affection. This young lady, because of her beauty, had achieved wide
local celebrity, and throughout the countryside she was called "Fair
Helen of Ardoch." The two young people had been brought up in each
other's society, and, as they grew in years, began to feel for each
other that tenderness of sentiment which, while they were yet in their
teens, led to mutual avowals of love. Their parents were not averse
to the match, after the young people should have arrived at a more
suitable age for marriage. The course of their love ran smoothly,
until the separation came by Sir James going abroad. As their
relatives were not favorable to a correspondence between the young
people, the good offices of a friend were invoked. He received
the letters of both parties, and saw that they were sent to their
respective destinations. The correspondence went happily on; his
letters were full of pleasing gossip about the belles and beauties of
France, of society and manners, everything, indeed, that a young lover
of reflective and poetic temperament would be likely to pen to the
lady of his heart from whom he was separated by a distance which could
be made communicable only by correspondence.
Almost a year had sped away when the letters received by Helen became
less frequent and then stopped. She wrote again and again, but in
vain; she received no replies. The agent of the young people then
professed to write himself to her recreant lover, and informed her
that he had discovered that the attachment of the young man for her
had waned and that he was to marry a French beauty. His condolence was
apparently so sincere and delicately phrased that when he proffered
her his love there was in her breast some degree of kindly sentiment
toward him, which, while of a very different nature from her feeling
for the one who had discarded her, was yet such as to lead her to
assent finally to his suit; not, however, before many considerations
had been skilfully brought to bear upon her, not the least of which
were the desires of her kindred.
The wedding day was set, and before the assembled guests, forming a
brilliant gathering, the bride appeared in rich adornings, but
pale, her bosom, heaving with sobs. The ceremony was performed. Then
occurred a dramatic scene; some whisper seemed to reach the bride's
ear; to the amazement of the guests, she turned upon her husband and
denounced him as the blackest of traitors. She declared that her own
letters and those of her lover had been kept back, and that she knew
that her lover had landed in Scotland and would vindicate his honor.
She vowed in the presence of Heaven that she would never acknowledge
as her husband the man she had just wedded, nor would she ever
leave for him her father's roof. Amid shouts of derision, the false
bridegroom hastily left the house. The young lover had indeed landed
in the country, and was hastening to his beloved that he might prove
to her that he had been grossly slandered and she grievously deceived.
The knowledge of the situation did not reach him in time to forestall
the plans of his rival, and not until his arrival home did he find out
the full facts of the case and have his mind entirely relieved of the
thought of his love's perfidy. Legal measures were speedily taken for
the dissolution of the hateful bonds, and the young lady was united
to the one to whom, notwithstanding her acquiescence in the wishes of
others, her heart had been true.
The maid of Ardoch's story has been variously told. The most familiar
form of it is that found in Robert Burns's _Observations on Scottish
Songs_. The romance has taken strong hold upon the hearts of the
Scotch race, through a simple melody which has held the interest of
the people for nearly three centuries. This ballad was written by the
young lover himself on board the ship that was bearing him back to
Scotland. The first verse is as follows:
"Since all thy vows, false maid,
Are blown to air,
And my poor heart betrayed
To sad despair,
Into some wilderness,
My grief I will express,
And thy hard-heartedness,
O cruel fair!"
As fearless as the Scotch heroine Lady Towie in the defence of her
castle was the Irish heroine Lettice, Baroness of Ophaly, in the
famous defence of the castle of Geashill in Queen's County. The one
lived in the sixteenth, the other belonged to the seventeenth century.
The Baroness Ophaly was of the famous house of Geraldine, heir in
general to the house of Kildare, and inherited the barony of Geashill.
She married Sir Robert Digby, and after his death returned to Ireland.
She was a model mistress to her household and her tenantry. Although a
woman of brilliant attainments, she was yet content to live in a quiet
way, performing the congenial duties of administrator of the affairs
of her household, and being held in affectionate regard by all those
dependent upon her. In 1641, however, the quiet current of her daily
life was broken in its flow; civil war devastated the land. The rebels
thought to find in the defenceless situation of the widowed lady, with
her brood of young children, an opportunity for plunder and ravage
with little prospect of serious resistance. A motley throng appeared
before the castle and demanded possession. They then presented to her
a written order as follows: "We, his Majesty's loyal subjects, at the
present employed in his Highnesses service, for the sacking of your
castle; you are therefore to deliver unto us the free possession of
your said castle, promising faithfully that your ladyship, together
with the rest within your said castle _resiant_, shall have reasonable
composition; otherwise, upon the non-yielding of the castle, we
do assure you that we shall burn the whole town, kill all the
Protestants, and spare neither woman nor child, upon taking the castle
by compulsion. Consider, madam, of this our offer; impute not the
blame of your folly unto us. Think not that here we brag. Your
ladyship, upon submission, shall have safe convoy to secure you from
the hands of your enemies, and to lead you whither you please. A
speedy reply is desired with all expedition, and then we surcease."
To this demand she sent a reply temperate and dignified, but
unyielding. It was as follows:
"I received your letter wherein you threaten to sack this my castle by
his Majesty's authority. I have ever been a loyal subject and a
good neighbor among you, and therefore cannot but wonder at such an
assault. I thank you for your offer of a convoy, wherein I hold little
safety; and therefore my resolution is that, being free from offending
his Majesty, or doing wrong to any of you, I will live and die
innocently. I will do the best to defend my own, leaving the issue
to God; and though I have been, I am still desirous to avoid shedding
blood, yet, being provoked, your threats shall no way dismay me."
The rebels took no notice of her answer, but kept up the siege. After
two months, Lord Viscount Clanmalier brought to bear against the
castle a piece of ordnance. Before using this formidable instrument,
which was cast by a local ironworker out of pots and pans contributed
for the purpose, Clanmalier, who was her kinsman, sent her a letter
repeating the demand for the surrender of the castle. She replied to
this missive, which was signed "your loving cousin," by saying
that she had not expected such treatment at the hands of a kinsman,
repeating her innocence of wrong-doing, and expressing her adherence
to her position as stated in her former reply to similar demands.
After this answer had been delivered to his lordship he discharged the
home-made cannon at the castle, and it promptly exploded at the first
shot; to which fact was due the ability of Baroness Ophaly to hold the
castle against all attack through the long months until the rebellion
had waned and the besiegers withdrew. What she must have suffered
during all the dangers of the siege, in which ingenuity was taxed to
the utmost to effect an entrance within the strong walls, can never be
stated; on the one hand was the terror of famine, on the other,
death. When she was rescued from her perilous situation by Sir Richard
Greville, she went to her husband's late property of Colehill and
there spent the remainder of her life, dying in 1648.
Among the Scotch Covenanters, the names of Isobel Alison of Perth and
Marion Harvie of Bo'ness take high rank because of their undaunted
courage and the strength of conviction displayed by them. It was in
1679 that a band of horsemen slew Archbishop Sharp upon Magnus Moor
and then dispersed. Four of them, among whom was John Balfour of
Kinloch,--the redoubtable Burley of _Old Mortality_,--took refuge
in the house of a widow of the vicinity of Perth. Here they remained
hidden, to watch as to what steps would be taken in regard to their
apprehension. Afterward they retired to Dupplin, thereby escaping
seizure. On June 22d the battle of Bothwell Brig was fought and lost
to the Covenanters. At about this time the first subject of this
sketch, Isobel Alison, an obscure maiden, comes into the stream of
historical occurrence. She was about twenty-five years of age, resided
at Perth, and was of excellent repute. She had been trained in the
strictest Presbyterian faith, and was well versed in the Scriptures.
She had occasionally had the privilege of hearing field preaching,
although field conventicles were not common in the country. Her
sympathies with the persecuted ministers of her faith and her personal
acquaintance with several of them enlisted her aid for the fugitives
in hiding them from the authorities, whose search for them was
relentlessly pursued. The work of bloody persecution continued for
eighteen months, during which many of the Covenanters died in the
maintenance of their convictions. But it was not until the end of 1680
that Isobel attracted attention by reason of her outspoken utterances
against the tyranny under which the country suffered. It was not
long, then, before she was arraigned for her sentiments, and, in the
simplicity of her nature, volunteered the confession that she was in
communication with some of those who had been declared rebels. The
magistrates, however, charitably sought to shield her from the effects
of actions the serious purport of which they did not believe that
she fully realized, and so dismissed her with a caution to be more
circumspect in her speech. But she was not to escape thus easily; some
busybodies speedily reported what she had said to the Privy Council,
which issued a warrant for her arrest. Under a charge of treason,
she was carried from the peaceful seclusion of her humble home, and
immured in the prison at Edinburgh. At her hearing before the Privy
Council, she acknowledged to acquaintance with all those for whom the
authorities were seeking as assassins of Archbishop Sharp. When asked
if she did not know that she was aiding those whose hands were dyed
with the blood of murder, she replied that she had never regarded the
death of the "Mr. James Sharp" as being murder. Her testimony was
so self-condemnatory that, according to the law of the day, there
appeared to be no recourse but to sentence her to hanging. She says:
"The Lords pitied me, for [said they] we find reason and a quick wit
in you; and they desired me to take it to advisement. I told them I
had been advising on it these seven years, and I hoped not to change
now. They asked if I was distempered? I told them that I was always
solid in the wit that God had given me." She was then remanded for
trial before the Judiciary Court. Leaving the thread of her story for
a while, we will take up that of another young woman, who at
about this time had come under a like accusation and was suffering
imprisonment. She was but a poor serving woman, who had been a
domestic at the house of a woman who had sheltered one of the same
fugitives whose cause had gotten Isobel Alison into her straits. The
story of her relations with the Covenanters, as told by her to the
authorities, was a simple one. From the age of fourteen she had heard
the field preaching of the Covenanters, and finally she had been
informed against and arrested. Her demeanor during the ordeal of
examination was firm and composed. The questions put to her she
answered without hesitancy or reservation. The result of the
examination showed her full sympathies with those who were under the
taint of rebellion and treason. She justified their acts by affirming
that the king had broken his covenant oath, and it was lawful to
disown him.
She and her older sister in misfortune were brought together
before the Judiciary Court, and both of the young women declined to
acknowledge the authority of the king and lords. There was nothing
remaining to do but to put them on trial, which was accordingly
done. They both stood indicted for treason. The only evidence adduced
against them was their own confessions, and because of the nature of
these a verdict of guilty was rendered. The court postponed sentence
until the following Friday, when they were condemned to be hanged.
Not a particle of proof had been produced of their having joined in
concocting any schemes against either Church or State; they had simply
let their tongues wag too freely upon the impersonal question, so
far as it concerned them, as to whether a certain assassination was
justified. The prosecution had been conducted by the king's advocate,
Sir George Mackenzie, that "noble wit of Scotland," as he was styled
by Dryden, but whom the Scotch people have branded as the "bluidy
Mackenzie" of the popular rhyme. This same advocate who secured the
sentencing of the two young girls for expressions of opinion upon
a question which was purely one of casuistry wrote in one of his
_Essays_: "Human nature inclines us wisely to that pity which we may
one day need; and few pardon the severity of a magistrate, because
they know not where it may stop."
During the period intervening between their condemnation and their
execution, they were visited by kindly disposed ministers of the
Established Church and others, who sought to persuade them out of
their beliefs. But to no purpose; even the promise of a full pardon
failed to move either of them from the steadfastness of their
expressed convictions. In order to surround their execution with
as much of ignominy as possible, it was ordered that five women,
convicted of the murder of their illegitimate children, should be
hanged along with them. In their last hour upon earth, the young women
were sustained by the fortitude of their faith. The attempt to make
them hear the ministrations of a curate was frustrated by the two
young women singing together the Twenty-third Psalm. Upon the scaffold
they continued their religious devotions; and in the midst of their
calm, confident declarations of faith in Christ and of their innocence
of any real wrong, they perished.
The transit from religion to pleasure is, after all, but a short
passage from one department of life to another, and the story of the
women of Scotland and of Ireland would not be complete without notice
of some of that group of famous Irish women who were conspicuous upon
the stage of Great Britain in the eighteenth century--women whose
excellence served to raise the dramatic art to the point of prominence
and dignity which it attained during that period. One of the earliest
of that group who gave lustre to the stage was Margaret Woffington.
The story of her life is a record of high achievement in the
histrionic profession, although it is as well a record of frailty--a
fact unfortunately too often true of actresses in the eighteenth
century, when the standards of their art were supposed to absolve them
to an extent from the ordinary demands of circumspection in conduct.
She had all the susceptibility of the Celtic temperament, and her warm
Irish blood was easily made to surge through her veins in waves of
passion, although, when not indulging in a fit of temper, she was
bright, vivacious, witty, and entertaining to a degree. Arthur Murphy,
in his _Life of Garrick_, says: "Forgive her one female error, and it
might fairly be said of her that she was adorned with every virtue;
honour, truth, benevolence, and charity were her distinguishing
qualities." This much said for the weakness of her character, we can
concern ourselves altogether with the strength of her genius. The
circumstances of her birth were not fortunate, nor was there anything
in them to predicate the distinguished place she was to fill in the
public eye. The year of her birth is variously given. It was probably
in 1714 that she first saw the light, in a miserable slum of the city
of Dublin. Her father was a bricklayer, and died when she was but
five years old. At that early age she had to take her part of the home
responsibilities and earn money to aid in the support of her family;
this she did by serving as a water carrier. The advent of a French
dancer into Dublin at about this time marked an epoch in the life of
Peggy. She brought with her a troupe of acrobats and rope dancers,
and the exhibition she offered attracted large audiences. In order
to afford a novel feature, which should at the same time affect local
interest, Madame Violante, the head of the amusement company, arranged
for an operatic presentation which should be participated in by some
of the bright Irish children to whom she had been drawn. The _Beggars'
Opera_ was then in the height of its popularity, and this was the play
she fixed upon. Little Peggy Woffington, not quite ten years old,
had the chief female part. From this simple introduction to the
amusement-loving public started the train of development in the
life of this young Irish girl, which was to make her the captivating
actress, the beautiful and witty woman, who bewitched Garrick and
Sheridan.
The novelty of the conception attracted much notice, and the opera was
given before large houses. Other plays and farces were staged in the
same way. While Peggy played principal parts on the stage, her mother
sold oranges to the patrons at the entrance to the theatre. Matters
continued this way until Peggy Woffington was sixteen years of age,
by which time she had become noted for ease and grace as a dancer,
although her coarseness of voice and pronounced brogue debarred her
from any important playing part. Her opportunity came, however, when
a favorite actress who was to take the part of Ophelia was, at the
eleventh hour, incapacitated from so doing. There was no recourse
but to permit Peggy Woffington to take it. Notwithstanding the
difficulties under which she labored, her interpretation of the
character was quite favorably received. She had been developing in
grace of figure and of feature, and had ripened into a young woman of
dazzling fairness, perfect form, with eyes luminous and black, shaded
by long lashes and arched by exquisitely pencilled eyebrows.
She was just twenty years of age when she completely turned the heads
of the Dublin theatre-goers by the magnificence of her impersonation
of Sir Harry Wildare in _The Constant Couple_. Her first appearance
in London was not at the behest of her art, but, unfortunately, as a
result of the arts of an admirer to whose addresses she had given some
favor, and who led her to go to the English metropolis with him under
promise of marriage. This regrettable circumstance was soon followed
by her repudiation of the man on finding out his real character. She
was not long off the stage, and in 1740 the playbills announced the
first appearance of Miss Woffington in England. She drew large houses,
and greatly widened her reputation as a leading actress of her time.
To give the plays in which she took principal parts during her first
London season would be to enumerate the best productions of the
English stage at that time. It is said of her that before the season
was half over, Miss Woffington had become the fashion. Among the many
swains who followed in her wake and indited to her amorous
missives and verses was Garrick. He pursued his lovemaking with all
seriousness, and made his assault not solely upon the heart of the
butterfly beauty, but upon her mind as well. He saw that beneath all
the audacities of her mind and irregularities of life there was a
noble nature, which the circumstances of her birth and training
had never permitted true expression. His intentions were entirely
honorable, but whenever the subject of marriage was broached by him
she managed to switch off the conversation to a lighter subject. Her
coquettishness would not permit her to take seriously the addresses
of the man whom she doubtless greatly admired and loved. When she
was regarded by everyone else as without a moral equivalent for her
artistic temperament, Garrick steadfastly refused to regard her simply
as a vain, flighty, and vacillating person. He was rewarded by being
the only man whom she ever seriously thought of marrying.
Her mode of life was not conducive to the furtherance of her health,
and at the comparatively early age of thirty-seven years her friends
saw a change both in the demeanor and the appearance of the witty
woman. The seeds of an internal disorder had been sown, but, with
her usual recklessness, she failed to heed the premonitions of nature
until the malady was too far advanced for cure. At about this time
the famous John Wesley was stirring London with his preaching. She
attended his chapel through curiosity, and afterward from conviction.
She was clearheaded and honest enough to see the force of the
religious truth which he presented, and was brought quite under the
influence of the great preacher. As a result of the awakening of her
religious nature, she determined on the reformation of her private
life, although she does not appear to have linked with that the
purpose of quitting her profession. She resolved, however, not to
remain before the public until they tired of her. As she herself
expressed it: "I will never destroy my reputation by clinging to the
shadow after the substance is gone. When I can no longer bound on the
boards with elastic step, and when the enthusiasm of the public begins
to show symptoms of decay, that night will be the last appearance of
Margaret Woffington."
She was not destined to remain before the public until they wearied of
her; on May 3, 1757, she appeared as Rosalind in _As You Like It_. The
circumstances of the tragic close of her dramatic career, as quoted
from a contemporary writer in Blackburn's _Illustrious Irish Women_,
were as follows: "She went through Rosalind for four acts without
my perceiving she was in the least disordered; but in the fifth she
complained of great indisposition. I offered her my arm, the which she
graciously accepted; I thought she looked softened in her behaviour,
and had less of the hauteur. When she came off at the quick change
of dress, she again complained of being ill, but got accoutred,
and returned to finish the part, and pronounced in the epilogue
speech,--'If it be true that good wine needs no bush, it is as true
that a good play needs no epilogue,' &c., &c. But when she arrived at
'If I were among you, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that
pleased me,' her voice broke, she faltered, endeavoured to go on, but
could not proceed; then, in a voice of tremor, screamed, 'O God! O
God!' and tottered to the stage door speechless, where she was caught.
The audience, of course, applauded until she was out of sight, and
then sunk into awful looks of astonishment--both young and old, before
and behind the curtain--to see one of the most handsome women of the
age, a favourite principal actress, and who had for several seasons
given high entertainment, struck so suddenly by the hand of death in
such a situation of time and place, and in her prime of life, being
about forty-four."
Such were the circumstances attending the last appearance of Margaret
Woffington, who, notwithstanding she died in the prime of life at the
age of forty-seven, had been for twenty-seven years the delight of the
play-going public. The three years she lingered as a mere skeleton of
her former self were spent in trying to awaken the consciences of her
late theatrical associates. Some of these scouted her new spirit as
hypocrisy, and insinuated that religion was her recourse only when
beauty and spirits had been lost. But the One who judgeth the
secrets of men's hearts is not so uncharitable in His judgment of His
creatures. It may be believed that the influence which she received
from the chapel meetings of John Wesley was the beginning of a genuine
religious life and character, and that it brought from her Maker that
commendation which was ungenerously denied her by her associates.
These brief sketches of the lives of some of the daughters of Scotland
and of Ireland illustrate the principal characteristics of the women
of the Scotch-Irish race. Among all the nations of the world no
women hold as high a place for pure morals and high courage. The
spiritualizing effect of the profound religious feeling of these
people--although in the form of their religious faith the Scotch and
the Irish are for the most part so diametrically different--accounts
in a large measure for their conservation of the facts and forces of
the religious life. The soil of both Ireland and Scotland was bedewed
for centuries with the tears of affliction and of persecution; the
blood of martyrs who cheerfully laid down their lives at the dictates
of religion and that highest social expression of the religious
instinct, the noblest piety of the human race--patriotism. Out of
all the oppression, rapacity, confiscation, which the two peoples
experienced in different forms and different degrees, arose an
unworldly ideal, a sense of the invisible realm. The sturdy Calvinist
matron of the Scottish Highlands is no more religious, no more the
product of the travails of her country, no more under the inspiration
and exaltation of high principle, than her less fortunately placed
sister of the Green Isle, whose religion is at the opposite extreme of
the forms of Christian faith. The women of both peoples can point
with tearful joy to the history of their sex as a scroll of fame and a
record of noble achievement.