THE LAND AND ITS PEOPLE
One hundred or more years ago, when Arthur Young first wrote his journal
of a tour in Ireland, those who had Ireland's welfare most at heart
deplored the fact that "her greatness was still practically unexplored,
and the early history of her brighter days excited no interest even
among her own people."
Doctor Johnson felt this himself when he wrote, "I have long wished that
Irish literature were cultivated, as Ireland is known by tradition to be
a seat of piety and learning, ... and surely it would be very acceptable
to be further informed regarding a people at once so ancient and
illustrious."
It has been said, too,--the words are taken from the mouth of a poor
parish priest,--that "the Celt is melting like the snow: he lingers in
little patches in the corner of the field, and hands are stretched on
every side. It is human to stretch hands to fleeting things, but as well
might we try to retain the snow."
From this it would appear that Ireland and its institutions, as they
have existed in the past, and as they exist to no small extent to-day,
are not yet the familiar ground that many might suppose.
Just what the reason for this indifference to its charms may be, it is
impossible for any one to state; but, at all events, it is traditional
to a large extent, and is a long time being lived down.
During the period of the varied fortunes of the ancient kings of
Ireland's four great divisions--from perhaps the fifth century until the
coming of Henry II. of England--there was little connection between
Ireland and the outside world, excepting always the Church which
attached Ireland to Christendom.
It was, perhaps, small wonder that the Plantagenet Henry, who was in
favour at Rome, was desirous of uniting the four kingdoms of Ireland as
a Roman Catholic whole. He had already sent three bishops to Rome, and
its most famous of all "Irish bulls," if the levity be pardoned, came
forth naturally from Nicholas Breakspeare, the English Pope.
The Church in Ireland, or, rather, religion in Ireland, is a subject
that one approaches with dread. So much so, that it had best be avoided
altogether so far as its controversial elements are concerned.
The real significant ecclesiastical aspect of Ireland of the past--or of
the present, for that matter--can be discussed with less trepidation.
Of the devotion of the people to their Church there can be no question,
though it smacks not a little of the devotion of the ivy to the tree.
It has been said before now that "the houses of the people are
indecently poor and small, and the houses of the Church are indecently
rich and large. Out of the dirt and decay they rise always proud and
sometimes ugly and substantial, as though to inform the world that at
least one thing is not dying and despondent, but keeps its loins girded
and its lamps trimmed."
All of which is,--or was,--perhaps, true enough in the abstract; but,
_tempus fugit_, and Ireland, if not actually grown, as yet, more
prosperous, or, in many parts, any less primitive, is without question
becoming, throughout, more enlightened; and the traveller, walking or
driving across the wastes of the west, will not cavil at the fact that
the first thing to break the monotony of the horizon is a church spire
or tower, or that it towers over a little group of cottages huddled
about it. Sometimes, indeed, these church buildings are poor and rough;
but these are becoming fewer and fewer, and are now gradually, even in
the poorest districts, being replaced by more pretentious structures.
The last few years have seen in Ireland a great activity in the building
of these chapels, though they are not always of the artistic value of
many of the older examples.
The economists and political agitators have, of late, drawn attention to
the "positive sinfulness" of the increase of chapels and religious
buildings side by side with the increase of poverty. This may have
existed up to the last half-century, but, as surely as the seasons
change, a new era for Ireland is close upon it,
[Illustration: ST. DOULOUGH.]
and the increase of what is called the "religious vocation" is not the
bugaboo that it once was.
One should pay a hearty tribute to the patriotic efforts of the Gaelic
League to inspire throughout Ireland a wholesome and invigorating sense
of nationality, and to guide its energies into industrial and
intellectual channels. This movement, from within and without, is doing
noble work, and, if it is uninterrupted in its progress by religious or
political jealousies, Ireland may yet come to her own again.
More than seven centuries have rolled onward since the English have
become intimately connected with Ireland, and yet how little is really
known of the land and its people, in spite of all that the political
economists, the ecclesiasts, and the antiquarians have written
concerning it.
Professor Van Raumer, a German, in his "Letters from Three Kingdoms"
(which it is only proper to say has been criticized before now as a mass
of bold trivialities and solemn inaccuracies), says that he never knew
what poverty meant until he travelled in Ireland. Its existence, to a
very large extent, is undeniable; and, in times of stress and strife, it
has even become virulent; but ragged dress, frugal fare, and mean houses
do not always indicate actual distress. The trouble seems to be with
those who commit themselves to written observations that they never
appear as apologists, but condemn, from the start, anything and
everything which falls below a certain preconceived standard which they
may have unknowingly set.
In spite of the fact that the population in certain parts of Ireland was
proclaimed as being, at the beginning of the Victorian era, at its
lowest ebb,--in many parts of Ulster conditions have since changed but
little,--there was often no apparent haggardness or lack of nourishment
to be observed; the children notably, like the children of the slums in
great cities, were rosy, chubby, and high-spirited--a very good
indication of the general health of a community. This is one of the
anomalies of travel and observation which cannot be explained.
A statement was made in the public prints, at the beginning of the year
1903, that Ireland had lost, in the twelvemonth previous, a population
equal to that of Limerick, the fourth largest Irish municipality, and
greater than that of at least one Irish county (Carlow). This awful
drain by the outflow of the virile young of both sexes should be
controlled by the well-wishers of Ireland's prosperity.
What the future is to bring forth for Ireland is doubtless quite
problematical; but there is no gainsaying that the hour is ripe for any
action which it may seem advisable to take. It is difficult to believe
that even the fieriest of the patrons of Ireland can fail to perceive
England's present willingness to make what perhaps she thinks is a
sacrifice, but which in any event is intended as an atonement for the
past, and an eager desire for the prosperity of the country at her
doors. There are many respects in which Ireland is eminently fitted by
nature for prosperity. There is hardly to be found anywhere in the world
such natural facilities for the development of a great mercantile marine
as exist on the eastern coast from Londonderry and Antrim to Waterford
and Cork, and Belfast to-day contains one of the world's greatest and
most able ship-builders. There is, it is said, no part of the country
which stands at a greater distance from a waterway to the sea than four
and twenty miles. The country has immense stores of iron, still
unutilized, mainly because of the scarcity of native coal; but some day,
in this epoch of cheap and rapid transportation, they will yield a rich
harvest. There was once a considerable industry carried on in the
copper-mines of counties Waterford, Wicklow, and Cork, but of late it
has greatly declined. So it is with the sulphur-mines of Wicklow, which
at one time yielded nearly a hundred thousand tons per annum. The bogs,
which cover one-seventh part of the surface of the whole island, have
never yet been turned to such economic uses as most certainly await
them--the production of a really well-cured compressed peat fuel. There
are vast deposits of lignite, already proved to be of great depth, but
which can be worked on a large scale only at a greater expenditure of
capital than has yet been applied. In point of fact, Ireland is
potentially a rich country, but her mineral deposits have been
practically neglected. It will be a happy day for England when she
finds, as she yet may,
[Illustration: PEAT-CHOPPERS.]
a prosperous and contented Ireland at her doors.
A prosperous Ireland means, ultimately, a healing of whatever sore
remains open; and may, perhaps, mean the removal of the last bar against
the real federation of the English nation. The recent visit of Britain's
king and queen may be taken as a good omen, and its effects may turn out
to have been far-reaching. At its least, it stimulates good-will on
either side, and does its own quota of work in the inspiration of a
hopeful spirit in a natively buoyant people, who have long chafed at
neglect. At its best, it may hope to make one of the loveliest countries
in the world a place of popular resort, with the inevitable result that
its advantages will become more widely known and better exploited than
they have hitherto been.
It has long been the opinion of many Irishmen, and of many British
well-wishers of Ireland, that the permanent establishment of a royal
court would be of much service to the country. It is claimed that this
idea is not dictated by any spirit of "flunkeyism," but rests on a sound
business basis, which, after all, if a sordid view, is an essentially
practical one. Such a court would promote trade, and trade would feed
industries that are now starving; and, while it would carry these
material blessings in its train, it would have its proper sentimental
value also, and would do its share, and no small share, either, in the
final reconciliation of two countries which have long, to their common
disadvantage, been divided.
Any one who reads has heard considerable of "the unfinished chapter" of
the nineteenth century of Ireland; how Ireland "oft doomed to death, is
fated not to die;" and of "the Exodus." Yet, after all, these affairs of
apparent moment have really very little import to-day. Ireland is by no
means dead, nor ever will be, as things point now.
The history of Ireland during the past hundred years has indeed been
vivid. So has the history of most other lands. It is merely a sign of
the times.
The year 1849 found Ireland in as wretched a condition politically, and
socially, as she ever had been. 1846 and 1847 had been famine years,
when people lay perishing and the land lay untilled. No crops were
raised and no rents were paid. The corn laws had come into effect in
England, and the tax on foreign corn, which gave to Ireland a real
advantage with respect to grain, was withdrawn. The economists advised
cattle-raising as a substitute, and pointed to the fact that, as an
English statesman had said, "Ireland was clearly intended to grow meat
for the great hives of English industry." How the transformation from a
grain-raising to a cattle-growing country was to be made,
instantaneously, he did not say.
The project did not receive immediate favour, as might be presumed, and
was the real cause of the impetus given to migration to the United
States, "the home of the free."
The streams of fugitives swelled to dimensions that startled
Christendom; but the English press burst into a pæan of joy and
triumph--for now at last the Irish question would be settled! Now at
last England would be at ease. Now at last this turbulent, disaffected,
untamable race would be cleared out. "In a short time," said the London
_Times_, "a Catholic Celt will be as rare in Ireland as a red Indian on
the shores of Manhattan."
The press, indeed, in England, was most uncharitable, and, assuredly, in
more instances than one, quite ignorant of that about which they were
writing.
Religion was, of course, their chief point of attack. It is always a
safe card to play, if one wants notoriety merely, not only for as
impersonal a thing as a public journal, but for an individual as well.
The Irishmen who remained, the emigrants' kindred, their own flesh and
blood, their pastors and prelates, could not witness unmoved this
spectacle, unexampled in history; the flight _en masse_ of a
population--as it then seemed, and the figures are truly
astonishing--from their own beautiful land, not as adventurers, but as
heart-crushed victims of expulsion. Some voices, accordingly, were
raised to deplore this calamity; to appeal to England; to warn her that
evil would come of it in the future. But England did not see this; at
least, did not see it _then_. There were philosopher-statesmen ready at
hand to argue that the flying thousands were "_surplus population_."
This was the cold-blooded official way of expressing it; but the English
press, however, went farther. They called the sorrowing cavalcade,
wending its way to the emigrant ship, a race of assassins, creatures of
superstition, lazy, ignorant, and brutified. The London _Saturday
Review_ made the following reply to a very natural expression of
sympathy and grief wrung from an Irish prelate witnessing the departure
of his people:
"The Lion of St. Jarlath's surveys with an envious eye the Irish exodus,
and sighs over the departing demons of assassination and murder. So
complete is the rush of departing marauders, whose lives were profitably
occupied in shooting Protestants from behind a hedge, that silence
reigns over the vast solitude of Ireland."
Volumes might be filled with the same sort of comment, and yet other
volumes with an impartial review of events as they really were; but even
then the story would not be told, and hence the impossibility of
entering into the controversial aspect of the question here.
Tears may trickle down the cheeks, and hearts may palpitate with
emotion, when the sons and daughters of the soil view for the last time
the streams which sparkle in the glens, the lakes which bosom themselves
in the mountains, and the bowers of fairyland with which every Irish
wood is endowed; but, yet, one may depend upon it that as bright or a
brighter future awaits the emigrant who goes out into the world than
remains for him who stays at home.
It seems paradoxical to see in emigration at once the hope and the curse
of Ireland; but, after all, perhaps it is not wholly a detriment. The
area of Ireland is comparatively small, its productiveness limited, and
its population still relatively great, in spite of the fact that some
five millions have emigrated to America alone since 1840.
Manifestly it has been for years, and must be for some years yet, mainly
emigration to which Ireland must look for improvement of the social
conditions of those who are left behind--provided, of course, that home
conditions are sufficiently encouraging to the tillers of the fields,
the cattle-growers, the men and women in the great flax and linen
factories, the ship-building establishments, and the fisheries. These
industries alone, with the increasing
[Illustration: A WEST OF IRELAND FARM.]
trade outside their own country for the native products, ought in a
measure to win increased prosperity.
In addition, too, it is fondly hoped by many, and predicted by a few,
that a great tide of tourist travel will turn toward Ireland, and that,
in time, it will become as busy catering to the wants of pleasure-loving
tourists as are Switzerland and Norway.
Perhaps this is not altogether to be desired, from many points of view,
but it appears inevitable.
The political aspect of affairs in Ireland is ever and ever improved by
the periodic and frequent visits of royalty. These ought to do much
good, for the idea should be fostered that the people of Ireland have
the same king as Britain across the Channel. Some there be, in both
islands, who would have this forgotten, and many happy ideas for the
encouragement of Irish affairs have been strangled by hands both from
within and without the green isle.
Forgetfulness _may_ account for this, but more probably it does not, and
many entirely ignore the fact that Great Britain's king has also the
words "and Ireland" attached to his title. At the end of a recent visit
of King Edward, the London papers, almost without exception, referred to
his return as a "home-coming," as if he had returned from an alien
shore.
The fact was passed unnoticed, apparently, but there was a sting in it
which the Irish themselves, one may be sure, did not overlook.
The Irish land and tenant problem is one which cannot be ignored, and
has given great concern to those responsible for Ireland's welfare.
It is impossible, and it would not be meet, to attempt to deal, even
superficially, with the question here; but it cannot be overlooked by
one who knows anything of Ireland and the present-day aspect and
conditions of life there; nor can it by even the "butterfly" tourist,
who does the round of Killarney's fair lakes in a personally conducted
party. Even he, if he is at all observant, will see evidences of certain
conditions of life with which he has not become acquainted elsewhere.
The question for the landlords--leaving the rights and wrongs out of
it--was, and is, how rentals can be collected.
It certainly cannot always be expected to be
[Illustration: BOG LAND, KERRY.]
paid out of the land. The eight or nine acres of reclaimed bog-land,
which often constitute the tenants' holding, can produce nothing in the
nature of rent after the occupants have secured any sort of subsistence.
But that is only half the case. There is, or is supposed to be, another
very large class of holdings in the poorest districts, which cannot even
produce a bare subsistence for an average family. It is possible that
the demerits of bog-land are greatly exaggerated. When reclaimed it is,
it is said, in a sense, easy to till and productive. But, on the other
hand, it rapidly impoverishes itself and deteriorates by periodical
flooding,--the curse of all the west,--and its productivity is but
comparative.
On the De Freyne estate at Castlerea there are hundreds of acres of rich
grassland with scarcely a house upon them, "cleared" years ago by the
landlord when prices were high and there was a chance of profitable
sales,--which sales, however, apparently did _not_ materialize. On the
other hand, there are hundreds of acres of bog-land, with the little
cabins crowding close upon one another as far as the eye can see, which
certainly indicates that there is a demand for this class of holding.
Rents are not high, as rents go elsewhere; but they cannot be paid out
of the land, and the sons and the daughters, in order to live, must
leave it. In cottage after cottage one may hear the same story. An old
man and his wife with one daughter left at home; two sons in England;
two daughters in America,--all sending over a pound now and then to keep
the roof over their parents' heads. And these people cleared the land
themselves. "It was all red bog, sorr, like yon," they tell you.
A peasant in the townland of Cloomaul gives these figures. He is
sixty-seven years old, and until 1860 the rent of his holding was £5 a
year. In 1860 it was raised to £11 5_s._ 0_d._; twenty-eight years later
the Land Commission reduced it to £6 5_s._ 0_d._ Meanwhile great became
the stimulus to emigration, and once again the old story of "me sons
beyond the sea" is given out. In some sections there is scarce a young
man or a young woman to be seen. The evictions, that throughout Ireland
raise the countryside as nothing else does, only bring together, with a
few rare exceptions, a band of women, children, and old men. The hay
harvest in England calls many of the able-bodied away temporarily, and
the colonies and the United States call those who would go farther
afield.
The moral aspect of the whole problem is thus put in a nutshell by the
economists and Ireland's well-wishers:
"Irish landlordism to-day represents little more than an enormous tax
upon the industry of the people. It does nothing in return for the money
it receives. It is, to a very large extent, non-resident. Much of it is
in a bankrupt condition."
And no wonder, when one remembers the vast proportion that is "spent out
of the country."
Mr. T. W. Russell, M.P., contributed a recent paper to the _New Liberal
Review_ on "Disturbed Ireland." In it he takes a very gloomy view of the
present situation. He says that a grave crisis is rapidly approaching,
which will shake things to their foundations in Ireland; and points out
that since 1868 the whole of the Irish governing class has been
disestablished and disendowed. Before that year, Ireland was governed by
its Protestant landlord garrison. First by one measure of reform and
then by another, every cartridge has been withdrawn from the bandoliers
of the garrison, which is now as powerless as it was once all-powerful.
England is dealing with an absolutely crimeless country. White gloves
are the order of the day, blank court calendars are reported all over
the country, yet boycotting is wide-spread, and intimidation is rampant.
A conspiracy to boycott is punishable, but boycotting is not in itself
an offence. Hence the great part of the country has passed under the
dominion of the United Irish League. What the future will actually bring
forth for "poor, distressed Ireland" it is impossible to predict, but it
may be presumed that other lands will go on enriching themselves by the
accumulation, as citizens, of the flower of Ireland's flock, and that
this is in fact but a natural enough thinning-out process, which has
obtained among other nations before now.
What the further and yet dimmer future will be, no one can tell; but the
above seems a plausible opinion which has much to justify it, both in
precedent of the past and with due regard to the racial characteristics
of the people.
Others hold out more hope. The Right Hon. George Wyndham, M. P., chief
secretary for Ireland, stands sponsor (1903) for the fact that it is the
wish of the people at large that "the evening star of the Empire,
shedding a sad light in the west, shall rise toward the zenith and shine
out from amid the brightest constellations in the imperial empyrean."
With Mr. Wyndham's appointment to the secretaryship, it is thought by
many Ireland's great revival is at hand.
Already opposing partisans have begun to realize that the genius of the
Celt disposes the Irish to take kindly to coöperative efforts for their
welfare; and more stimulating than all else will be found to be the
great Celtic revival among all classes.
Forty years ago the great Protestant revival in Ulster had for its
object, or at least its main object, a passionate and more or less
selfish personal aspiration.
To-day the movement is even greater, while it leaves religion aside, and
is essentially national.
Study has taken the place of idleness; grammars have replaced playing
cards. On St. Patrick's Day the Irish celebrate the restoration of their
ancient language to its ancient dignity. The public-houses are shut up
instead of being crowded. A new hope, a new motive, a new
incentive,--all these are visible in Ireland. They find practicable
expression in the enthusiasm with which the Irish language is being
studied everywhere.
This latter may be a pure fad, but it is in no way an unhealthy one. How
far the chief secretary's attitude actually goes in behalf of Ireland,
his own words will best tell.
In the House of Commons he asked:
"Was it necessary to dread any dire political consequences from the
spread of the Celtic renaissance? He thought the object, the brightening
of the intellect of the Irish child, was a good one; and he did not
think the political consequences would be very harmful. If, as a result
of such instruction, Irish lads in fifty years gave up the practice of
singing, on certain anniversaries, inspiring ditties which enjoin the
propriety of kicking the Crown or the Pope into this or that river, and
preferred to sing the Irish song:
"'Oh! where, Kincora, is Brian the great,
Where is the beauty that once was thine,
Where are the princes and nobles that sate
To feast in thine halls and drink the red wine?'
he could not see that the change would be politically deleterious. They
could not make a Scotsman into a better engineer by confiscating his
heirloom; and their language was an heirloom of the Irish. Its
usefulness was not immediately obvious; but that was true of most
household gods, and yet a tutelary reverence for household gods had
often nerved heart and hand for utilitarian contests. There was no
heresy to the Union in permitting to Ireland that which they promoted in
Scotland and in Wales; on the contrary, it was an article of the
Unionist creed that within the ambit of the Empire there should be room
for the coöperation of races, maintaining each its memory of its own
past as a point of departure for converging assaults on the problems of
the future."
There can be no doubt but that the chief secretary for Ireland has been
baptized with the spirit of the Irish revival. He believes in Ireland.
He loves the Irish people. To him the witty and mercurial Celt is much
more sympathetic than the more stolid Englishman. Ireland, like the fair
damozel in Spenser's poem, has a singular fascination for the Sir
Calidores and Sir Artegalds who stray within range of the magic of her
charms.
As to what were the real beginnings of Ireland, and whence came the
original Celt, we must for a time longer, it seems, remain in doubt. The
more the pity, for the character of a people is in large measure due to
inheritance. Here, for centuries long gone past, there was isolation in
manners, customs, and forms of government. But then, Ireland being
insular, the chances were that many people of a different race might
have mixed their blood with that of the early settlers. Still, there
never was a country which delighted more in legends and of which the
past was more legendary. And, above all, the Irishman always respects
these antiquated stories, whether authenticated by later scholarship or
not.
[Illustration: A JIG DANCER]
Therein lies the charm of association which surrounds the very shores
and rocks and rills of Ireland.
Here are a few brief lines from McCarthy which express it far more
succinctly and with more feeling than it would perhaps be possible for
any other living historian to write, be he Irishman or not:
"Every stream, well, and cavern, every indentation of the seashore,
every valley and mountain peak, has its own stories and memories of
beings who did not belong to this earth. A distinguished Englishman once
said that whereas in the inland counties of England he had found many a
peasant who neither knew the name of the river within sight of his
cottage, nor troubled himself about its early history, he never met with
an Irish peasant who was not ready to give him a whole string of legends
and stories about the stream which flowed under his eyes every day."
An American writer, Horatio Krans, has recently attempted to dissect the
motives of the Irish novelist of the first half of the nineteenth
century. He has put his finger upon one notably weak spot in the earlier
novels,--the delineation of female character. He claims particularly
(though the Irish novelist is not alone in this sinning) that the
heroines, with a few exceptions,--Lady Geraldine in Miss Edgeworth's
"Ennui" and Baby Blake in "Charles O'Malley,"--are hopelessly
conventional in speech, in sentiment, and in manner; all of which is
undeniably true.
The Irish novelists of the time divided their product into two distinct
classes, "the novels of the gentry" and "the novels of the peasantry,"
and there is, as a fact, much in favour of the heroine of the peasantry
class.
The names of the novelists of that time most generally known, and most
readily recalled, are unquestionably, first of all, Goldsmith, then
perhaps Miss Edgeworth, Charles Lever, Maxwell, and Samuel Lover. Among
themselves they have apportioned the various types which we of a later
generation have come to recognize as of the soil. The most notable, and
one common to all, is that strange product of Irish life (to which, it
may be observed, Oliver Goldsmith called attention), the "squireen," who
was without an idea beyond a dog, a gun, and a horse.
It is a commonplace to remark here that many of the gentry of that time
lived in barbaric and slovenly splendour, led devil-may-care lives,
hunted during the day, and drank, played cards, and quarrelled at night.
But new forces are certainly bestirring themselves in the Ireland of
to-day, and a new standard of life, a wider knowledge, and a finer
culture is broadcast. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the realm of
Ireland's imaginative literature, in prose as well as verse.
Of the actual life of the times, the present-day Irish novelist draws
not with so firm a hand as his predecessor, but he makes a more pleasing
picture.
The duel, as an institution, is extinct to-day, but much the same mode
of life as that of a former day is depicted in the stories of Miss
Sommerville and Miss Martin Ross. In these modern novels are found the
horse-dealing, hunt-loving gentry; but the peasants appear only as
retainers and as necessary adjuncts to the occupations of their betters.
The Ireland of these writers, then, is a land of happy-go-lucky and
thriftless enjoyment and cheerful impecuniosity, with an occasional
glimpse of tragedy. Miss Katherine Tynan, too, deals with the same
class and succeeds in depicting Irish landscape, in its quick-changing
colours, its gloom and sunshine strangely mingled, mountain and bog, dew
and rain, in a manner which suggests that her books are a genuine
distillation of Ireland itself.
The soul of a country is to be sought in the literature of the people,
and the literature of Ireland is yet, to the vast majority, an unopened
book; and, paradoxically, it is in the pages of fiction that one seeks a
record of many facts which are otherwise unwritten.
Besides the "gentry" and the "peasantry," the two distinctive classes
into which writers divide the Irish, there is another class in Ireland,
and an important class, which has been practically neglected by Irish
writers of fiction,--the shopkeeper. Here Ireland is at once the most
aristocratic as well as the most democratic country in the world. In the
learned professions you will find the sons of butchers and publicans
jostling the offspring of peers and gentlemen of lineage in the race for
preferment, and, like enough, beating them at their own game. In England
the expected sometimes happens; in Ireland even the fairy-tales _may_
come true; and there will be found a delicate refinement in life which,
those competent to explain suggest, has been imported by the daughters
of the house from the convents of Ireland, of France, and of Belgium.
Few countries so small have given the same opportunities to the novelist
as has Ireland. Village life is dull enough from within, no doubt; from
without, unlike English village life, it is, in Ireland, quite dramatic.
It has been said that the people are unconsciously dramatic and that
even their grief is picturesque. The possibilities of the race are
great.
An Irish villager may become a Dublin shopkeeper, a London barrister,
or, in America, a politician of the first rank. He would never once so
much as get a glimmering of this in his native village; but news of the
outside world filters through and attracts the ingenious and soulful
Irishman to the betterment of himself, and, truly enough, in many cases
no doubt, to the poverty of Ireland; for it has come to be admitted that
the desertion of Ireland by those who have since become classed among
the world's great is one of the plausibly acceptable explanations of
Ireland's poverty.
Every French soldier was said to carry the field-marshal's baton in his
knapsack. Every Irish peasant who crosses the Atlantic has his marshal's
baton in his knotted handkerchief on the end of his blackthorn. It is a
young race in modern development; its energies are fresh and
unexhaustible, and therein lies a field for the novelist which is not
yet worked out.
One other type should be mentioned here, if only to proclaim their
unselfish devotion to their vocation,--that of the parish priest, the
poor cleric who, with a parish of a few score of souls in some barren
bog, finds his life-work full in ministering to their souls, and often,
as well, to their bodies.
The pseudo-Irish priests of melodrama, and too frequently of novels, are
huge travesties on the devoted and valiant fathers who are hidden away
in innumerable corners of Ireland, surrounded only by a dwindling score
of communicants.
The Ireland with which the present-day traveller has most to do is the
Ireland which came more or less under English influences in the time of
Henry II.
The legendary and romantic period of the Phoenician settlers, the
Spanish colonists, and the warfares of petty kings and chieftains has
left little but a vague impress upon Irish national life and sentiment,
if we except a certain imaginative and romantic temperament, which seems
to be the true birthright alike of the Irish poet, peasant, and
politician.
The crafty, ambitious Henry obtained from Adrian II., the first and only
English Pope, in 1159, a bull authorizing him "to enter Ireland and
execute therein whatever should pertain to the honour of God and the
welfare of that land."
English power in Ireland rooted, grew, and flourished, and propagated no
end of internal troubles, which are to this day, if we are to believe
all that we see and hear, the cause of much of Ireland's unrest.
During four centuries Ireland was visited by but three English
sovereigns, Henry II., John, and Richard II., and during the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries English influences gradually declined, reaching
their lowest ebb at the time of Henry VII. The Reformation, under Henry
VIII., took place in 1536, and was in all respects the most remarkable
era of Ireland's history, and from that time on--until the events which
rose out of the tenantry laws, and home rule, and their attendant and
satellite conditions--her troubles have been solely a warfare more or
less dependent upon religious influences and conditions.
Commencing with the seventeenth century, the population sprang forward
with leaps and bounds. Its estimated growth for the succeeding two
hundred years is as follows:
1652 850,000
1672 1,100,000
1712 2,099,094
1787 3,001,200
1792 4,088,226
1805 5,395,456
According to the old historians, there were anciently many divisions of
Ireland, made at various times by the several petty kings and chiefs who
had possession of them.
There is an element of uncertainty about all the information concerning
these ancient political divisions; some, indeed, may have been purely
apocryphal, hence writers have mostly contented themselves with defining
and delimiting the more modern divisions of Ulster, Leinster, Munster,
and Connaught.
These four great divisions were subdivided into thirty-two counties, 256
baronies, and 2,293 parishes.
The province of Ulster took in the northern part of the island, and
extended from sea to sea. What has always rendered this province
superior, in prosperity, to the rest of the island is its great industry
of linen manufacture.
The province of Leinster, in which is situated Dublin, Wicklow, etc.,
has the sea only on the east. The writers of a century or more ago were
prone to remark that here the inhabitants approached the nearest to
English manners and customs, and with some truth this is so.
The province of Connaught, with the sea on its western boundary,
containing the counties of Mayo, Galway, and Sligo, through the city of
Galway early arrived at a commercial prominence which later eras have
not sustained.
Munster crosses the southern part of the island, extending itself
northward on both the east and west coasts. Its principal and most
famous city is Cork, and the whole county abounds in that wild romantic
scenery which has fondly inspired so many poets and painters.
To these four provinces some ancient writers added a fifth, called
Meath, formed by a small part taken from each of the other provinces,
but independent of all of them.
Of the ancient commerce of Ireland Tacitus wrote: "Its channels and
harbours are better known to merchants than those of Britain," which
eulogy, of course, referred to the first century.
The Phoenicians are reputed to have worked the mines which existed in
the neighbourhood of the lakes of Killarney, and to have acquired the
art of "extracting the celebrated Tyrian purple from the juice of
shell-fish."
Cæsar's invasion of what are known as the British Isles was supposed to
have been instigated by the export from Ireland of the "margaritas"
taken from these Killarney mines.
That the commerce referred to by Tacitus was that carried on by the
Phoenicians, is deduced from the fact that the Romans knew nothing of
the country at that time.