Judged by such a standard, Ireland emerges triumphant and points to the roll of her chequered history, the story of her ancient race, with confidence and pride. Gaze into the farthest vistas of her legendary past, into the remotest eras of which tradition preserves a misty memory, and the figure of some fair, n.o.ble woman stands forth glimmering like a white statue against the gloom. At every period of stern endeavor, through all the generations of recorded time, the pages of our annals are inscribed with the names of mothers, sisters, wives, not unworthy to stand there beside those of the world-renowned heroes of the Gael.
In the ancient tales of Ireland we read of great female physicians and distinguished female lawyers and judges. There were _ban-file_, or women-poets, who, like the _file_, were at the same time soothsayers and poetesses, and there are other evidences of the high esteem in which women were held. There can be no doubt, to judge by the elaborate descriptions of garments in the saga-texts, that the women were very skilful in weaving and needlework. The Irish peasant girls of today inherit from them not a little of their gift for lace-making and linen-embroidery. Ladies of the highest rank practiced needlework as an accomplishment and a recreation. Some of the scissors and shears they used have come to light in excavations.
In the stories of the loves of the ancient Irish, whether immortals or mortals, the woman"s role is the more accentuated, while in Teutonic tradition man plays the chief part. Again, it has often been remarked that the feminine interest is absent from the earlier heroic forms of some literatures. Not so, however, in the earliest saga-texts of the Irish. Many are the famous women to whom the old tales introduce us and who stand out and compel attention like the characters of the Greek drama. Everyone knows of the faithful Deirdre, the heroine of the touching story of the "Exile of the Sons of Usnech", and of her death; of the proud and selfish Medb. the ambitious queen of Connacht, the most warlike and most expert in the use of weapons of the women of the Gael--far superior in combat and counsel to her husband, Ailill; of Emer, the faithful wife of Cuchulainn; of Etain of the Horses (that was her name in Fairyland); and of many others too numerous to mention.
It is with the introduction of Christianity into Ireland that the Irish woman came into her rightful place, and attained the preponderating influence which she, ever since, has held among the Celtic people. In the period which followed the evangelization of the island many were the "women of worth" who upheld the honor and glory of "Inisfail the Fair", and women were neither the less numerous nor the less ardent who hung upon the lips of the Apostle of Ireland.
Amid the galaxy of the saints, how l.u.s.trous, how divinely fair, shines the star of Brigid, the shepherd maiden of Faughard, the disciple of Patrick the Apostle, the guardian of the holy light that burned beneath the oak-trees of Kildare! Over all Ireland and through the Hebridean Isles, she is renowned above any other. We think of her, moreover, not alone, but as the centre of a great company of cloistered maidens, the refuge and helper of the sinful and sorrowful, who found in the gospel that Patrick preached a message of consolation and deliverance. Let it be remembered that the shroud of Patrick is deemed to have been woven by Brigid"s hand; that when she died, in 525, Columcille, the future apostle of Scotland, was a child of four. So she stands midmost of that trilogy of saints whose dust is said to rest in Down.
Who that hears of Columcille will forget how He won that name, "dove of the Church", because of his early piety, and that surely bespeaks a mother"s guiding care. Ethne, mother of Columcille, remains a vague but picturesque figure, seen against the background of the rugged heath-clad hills of Tir-Conal by the bright blue waters of Gartan"s triple lake. Her hearth-stone or couch is shown there to this day, where once in slumber, before the birth of her son, she saw in a glorious visionary dream a symbol of his future greatness. A vast veil woven of sunshine and flowers seemed to float down upon her from heaven: an exquisitely poetic thought, which gives us warrant to believe that Columcille"s poetic skill was inherited from his mother.
Ronnat, the mother of his biographer, St. Ad.a.m.nan, plays a more notable part in history, for, according to an ancient Gaelic text recently published, it was to her that the women of Ireland owed the royal decree which liberated them from military service. The story goes that once, as she walked beside the Boyne, after some sanguinary conflict, she came upon the bodies of two women who had fallen in battle. One grasped a reaping hook, the other a sword, and dreadful wounds disfigured them. Horrified at the sight, she brought strong pressure to bear upon her son, and his influence in the councils of the land availed to bring about the promulgation of the decree which freed women from war-service.
Our warrior kings had n.o.ble queens to rule their households, and of these none stands out so distinctly after long lapse of time as Gormlai, the daughter of Flann Siona, and wife of Nial Glondubh. Her story has in it that element of romance which touches the heart and wins the sympathy of all who hear it.
Her father was king of the Meathan branch of the Clan Nial, and _ard-ri_ of Ireland for thirty-seven years. Nial Glondubh was king of Tir-Eoghain, and heir of Flann in the high kingship, for at that era it was the custom for the kings of Meath and of Tyrone to hold the supreme power alternately. In order to knit north and south, Flann betrothed his beautiful daughter to Cormac macCuillenan, king of Cashel, an ideal husband, one would have thought, for a poetess like Gormlai, for Cormac was the foremost scholar of the day; but his mind was so set on learning and religion that he took holy orders and became bishop-king of Cashel, repudiating his destined bride. Gormlai was then given as wife to Cearbhail, king of Leinster, and war was waged against Cormac who was killed in the battle of Ballymoon.
Coming home wounded, Cearbhail lay on his couch, and while tended by Gormlai and her ladies told the story of the battle and boasted of having insulted the dead body of King Cormac. Gormlai reproached him for his ign.o.ble conduct in such terms that his anger and jealousy flamed up, and striking her with his fist he hurled her to the ground.
Gormlai rose indignant and left his house forever, returning to the palace of King Flann, and on Cearbhail"s death she at last found a true lover and worthy mate in Nial Glondubh, who brought her northward to rule over the famous palace of Aileach. In 916 Nial became high king, but the place of honor was also the place of danger, and soon he led the mustered hosts of the north against the pagan foreigners, who held Dublin and Fingal, and he fell in battle at Rathfarnham.
A poem, preserved for us ever since, tells us that Gormlai was present at his burial and chanted a funeral ode. Her long widowhood was a period of disconsolate mourning. At length it is said she had a dream or vision, in which King Nial appeared to her in such life-like shape that she spread her arms to embrace him, and thus wounded her breast against the carven head-post of her couch, and of that wound she died.
Many saintly, many n.o.ble, many hospitable and learned women lightened the darkness that fell over Ireland after the coming of the Normans.
I pa.s.s to the time when a sovereign lady filled the throne of England, "the s.p.a.cious days of great Elizabeth," which were also the period of Ireland"s greatest, sternest struggle against a policy of extermination towards her n.o.bles and suppression of her ancient faith. Amid all the heroes and leaders of that wondrous age in Ireland, there appears, like a reincarnation of legendary Medb, a warlike queen in Connacht, Grace O"Malley, "Granuaile" of the ballads. Instead of a chariot, she mounts to the prow of a swift-sailing galley, and sweeps over the wild Atlantic billows, from isle to isle, from coast to coast, taking tribute (or is it plunder?) from the clans. First an O"Flaherty is her husband, then a Norman Burke. In Clare Island they show her castle tower, with a hole in the wall, through which they say she tied a cable from her ship, ready by day or night for a summons from her seamen. She voyaged as far as London town, and stood face to face with the ruffed and hooped Elizabeth, meeting her offer of an English t.i.tle with the a.s.sertion that she was a princess in her own land.
The mother of Red Hugh O"Donnell, Ineen-dubh, though daughter of the Scottish Lord of the Isles, was none the less of the old Irish stock.
Her character is finely sketched for us by the Franciscan chronicler who wrote the story of the captivity and mighty deeds of her son.
When the clans of Tir-Conal a.s.sembled to elect the youthful chieftain, he writes: "It was an advantage that she came to the gathering, for she was the head of the advice and counsel of the Cinel-Conail, and, though she was slow and deliberate and much praised for her womanly qualities, she had the heart of a hero and the soul of a soldier." Her daughter, Nuala, is the "woman of the piercing wail" in Mangan"s translation of the bard"s lament for the death of the Ulster chieftains in Rome.
Modern critics like to interpret the "Dark Rosaleen" poem as an expression of Red Hugh"s devotion to Ireland, but I think that Rose, O"Doherty"s daughter, wife of the peerless Owen Roe, deserves recognition as she whose
"Holy delicate white hands should girdle him with steel."
The record has come down to us that she prompted and encouraged her husband to return from the low-countries and a position of dignity in a foreign court to command the war in Ireland, and in her first letter, ere she followed him over sea, she asked eagerly: "How stands Tir-Conal?" True daughter of Ulster was Owen"s wife, so let us henceforth acknowledge her as the _Roisin_ dubh, "dark Rosaleen", of the sublimest of all patriot songs.
In the Cromwellian and Williamite wars, we see the mournful mothers and daughters of the Gaeldom pa.s.sing in sad procession to Connacht, or wailing on Shannon banks for the flight of the "Wild Geese." But what of Limerick wall, what of the valorous rush of the women of the beleaguered city to stem the inroads of the besiegers and rally the defenders to the breach? The decree of St. Ad.a.m.nan was quite forgotten then, and when manly courage for a moment was daunted, woman"s fort.i.tude replaced and reinspired it.
And fort.i.tude was sorely needed through the black years that followed--the penal days, when Ireland, crushed in the dust, bereft of arms, achieved a sublimer victory than did even King Brian himself, champion of the Cross, against the last muster of European heathendom.
Yes, her women have done their share in making Ireland what she is, a heroic land, unconquered by long centuries of wrath and wrong, a land that has not abandoned its Faith through stress of direst persecution or bartered it for the lure of worldly dominion; no--nor ever yielded to despair in face of repeated national disaster.
It was this fidelity to principle on the part of the Irish Catholic people which won for them the alliance of all that were worthiest among the Protestants of north and south in the days of the Volunteers and the United Irishmen. What interesting and pathetic portraits of Irishwomen are added to our roll at this period! None is more tenderly mournful than that of Sarah Curran, the beloved of Robert Emmet. The graceful prose of Washington Irving, the poignant verses of Moore, have enshrined the memory of her, weeping for him in the shadow of the scaffold, dying of heart-break at last in a far-off land. No more need be said of her, for whom the pity of the whole world has been awakened by song allied to sweetest, saddest music.
What of Anne Devlin, Emmet"s faithful servant, helping in his preparations for insurrection, aiding his flight, shielding him in hiding, even when tortured, scourged, half-hanged by a brutal soldiery, with stern-shut lips refusing to utter a word to compromise her "Master Robert"?
What of the sister of Henry Joy McCracken, Mary, the friend and fellow-worker with the Belfast United Irishmen? An independent, self-reliant business woman, she earned the money which she gave so liberally in the good cause, or to help the poor and distressed, through the whole period of a long life. Some still living have seen Mary pa.s.sing along the streets of Belfast, an aged woman, clad in sombre gown, to whom Catholic artisans raised their caps reverently, remembering how in "98 she had walked hand in hand with her brother to the steps of the scaffold, and how, in 1803, she had aided Thomas Russell in his escape from the north after Emmet"s failure, had bribed his captors after arrest, provided for his defence, and preserved for futurity a record of his dying words. Madden"s _History of the United Irishmen_, as far as it tells of the north, is mainly the record that she kept as a sacred trust in letters, papers, long-treasured memories of the men who fought and died to make Ireland a united nation.
And now a scene in America comes last to my mind. Wolfe Tone, a political fugitive who has served Ireland well and come through danger to safety, is busy laying the foundations of a happy and prosperous future, with a beloved wife and sister and young children to brighten his home. An estate near Princeton, New Jersey, has been all but bought, possibilities of a career in the new republic open before him, when a letter comes from Belfast, asking him to return to the post of danger, to undertake a mission to France for the sake of Ireland. Let his own pen describe what happened: "I handed the letter to my wife and sister and desired their opinion.... My wife especially, whose courage and whose zeal for my honor and interest were not in the least abated by all her past sufferings, supplicated me to let no consideration of her or our children stand for a moment in the way of my duty to our country, adding that she would answer for our family during my absence and that the same Providence which had so often, as it were, miraculously preserved us would not desert us now."
Inspired by the fort.i.tude of this n.o.ble woman, Tone went forth on his perilous mission, and similarly the Young Ireland leaders, Mitchel and Smith O"Brien, were sustained by the courage of their nearest and dearest. "Eva," the poetess of the _Nation_, gave her troth-plight to one who had prison and exile to face ere he could claim her hand.
Other names recur to me--"Speranza", with her lyric fire; Ellen O"Leary, fervent and still patient and wise; f.a.n.n.y Parnell and her sister.
And what of the women of Ireland today? Shall they come short of the high ideal of the past, falter and fail, if devotion and sacrifice are required of them? Never: whilst they keep in memory and honor the ill.u.s.trious ones of whom I have written. The name of Irishwoman today stands for steadfast virtue, for hospitality, for simple piety, for cheerful endurance, and in a changing world let us trust it is the will of G.o.d that in this there will be no change.
REFERENCES:
On Ethne, mother of St. Columcille: The Visions, Miracles, and Prophecies of St. Columba (Clarendon Press Series). On Ronnat: S. Mac an Bhaird, Life (in Irish) of Ad.a.m.nan (Letterkenny); Reeves, St.
Ad.a.m.nan"s Life of St. Columba; The Mother of St. Ad.a.m.nan, an old Gaelic text, ed. by Kuno Meyer (Berlin). On Gormlai: Thomas Concannon, Gormflath (in Irish; The Gaelic League, Dublin). On Granuaile: Elizabethan State Papers (Record Office Series); William O"Brien, A Queen of Men. On Ineen-Dubh: O"Clery"s Life of Red Hugh (contemporary), ed. by Denis Murphy, S. J. (Dublin, 1894); Standish O"Grady, The Flight of the Eagle, or Red Hugh"s Captivity. On Rose, wife of Owen Roe O"Neill, see references in Father Meehan"s The Flight of the Earls, and in Sir John Gilbert"s History of the Confederate War (Dublin, 1885). On the wife of Wolfe Tone, see Wolfe Tone"s Autobiography, ed. by R. Barry O"Brien (London, 1894). The American edition has a fuller account of Tone"s wife, her courage and devotion in educating her son, and her interviews with Napoleon, and life in America. The women of the United Irish period are fully dealt with in K. R. Madden"s Lives and Times of the United Irishmen. On Mary McCracken, see Mrs. Milligan Fox, The Annals of the Irish Harpers. On the women of the Young Ireland period, see C. Gavan Duffy"s Young Ireland (Dublin), and John O"Leary"s Fenians and Fenianism. On the women of Limerick, see Rev. James Dowd, Limerick and its Sieges (Limerick, 1890). For the women under Cromwellian Plantation persecutions and the Penal Laws, see Prendergast"s Cromwellian Settlement, Rev. Denis Murphy"s Cromwell in Ireland, and R. R. Madden"s History of the Penal Laws.
IRISH NATIONALITY
By LORD ASHBOURNE
[NOTE.--This chapter was written by Lord Ashbourne in French, because he is so strong an Irishman that he objects to write in English. The translation has been made by the Editors.]
To those of us who are interested in the future of our country there is at this very moment presented a really serious problem. The political struggle of the last century has been so intense that many of our people have come to have none but a political solution in view. For them the whole question is one of politics, and they will continue to believe that Ireland will have found salvation the moment we get Home Rule or something like it. Such an att.i.tude seems natural enough when we remember what our people have suffered in the past.
Nevertheless, on a little reflection, this error--for error it is, and an enormous one, too--will be quickly dissipated. In the first place, the political struggle of today is only the continuation of a conflict which has lasted seven hundred years, and in point of fact we have a right to be proud that after so many trials there still remains to us anything of our national inheritance. We find ourselves indeed on the battlefield somewhat seriously bruised, but we can console ourselves with the thought that our opponent is in equally doleful case, that he is beginning to suffer from a fatal weariness, and that he is anxious to make peace with us.
In order to place the present political situation in its true light and to take into account its comparatively limited importance, we must not lose sight of the fundamental fact that what Home Rule connotes is rather a tender of peace on the part of Ireland than a gift which England presents us of her own free will. In fact, our neighbor across the Channel has as much interest as ourselves, and perhaps even more, in bringing the struggle to an end. Through us, England has already lost much prestige, and that famous British Const.i.tution, which in times past everyone admired while trying in vain to imitate it, has lost caste considerably. I am not now speaking of the danger which an Ireland discontented, and even hostile, and having nothing to lose, would const.i.tute for England in case of war. It is especially from our neighbor"s point of view that we can cry up Home Rule or any other solution that will bring peace.
But let us leave to Great Britain the task of getting out of trouble as best she may. On our side, what shall we say of it?
In our conflict with the English we are not wearied; rather are we hardened for the fray. We have acquired the habit of fighting, and many of us can now scarcely regulate our conduct in a manner suitable to a state of peace with England. Nevertheless, as I have already said, we have not emerged unscathed from this war of the centuries.
National sentiment remains with us, no doubt, and our traditions are not wholly lost, especially among the country people of the West. But our commerce is almost ruined and the national language is no longer spoken throughout the greater part of the country. It is true that a continuation of the hitherto existing state of war cannot do us much more harm; that for purposes of mere destruction all the advantages are on our side; and that on the other hand we can begin a reconstruction at home without waiting for a treaty of peace to be signed. But we have some things to do for which a home government would be useful to us, and further, in the absence of such a government, it would be difficult to imagine what means could be employed to turn the people away from their too exclusive absorption in Anglo-Irish politics.
It is, then, from a practical point of view that we wish for peace.
But, we may lawfully ask, will not this peace bring with it a special danger, against which we ought to take precautions? As a matter of fact, there is such a danger, and it lies in the fact that the people have been to so great an extent obsessed by the political struggle that they run the risk, once their end is attained, of collapsing and of losing interest in the national question. Let us not forget that that question is to save our language and our civilization; without that, it is all over with our nationality. Let us endeavor to turn our parliament to account in order to work seriously on the reconstruction of our national life, and it is certain that Ireland will find therein her salvation.
We can, therefore, take advantage either of England"s prolonged resistance or of peace. If England decides to continue the contest, she will suffer more from it than we. Her empire, her inst.i.tutions, her safety, will be more and more impaired, while, as for us, there will result a strong growth in patriotism and in anti-British bitterness. What we have to do, right now, is to take our bearings in such a way that, no matter what happens to England, our own future shall be a.s.sured. We can do it if we wish it: the question is, shall we wish it?
Here it may be objected, _Cui bono_ The English language is quite enough for us. We have it now and we speak it, sometimes, even better than the English people themselves. We are proud of using the same language as Sheridan, Burke, and Grattan used. Such an opinion has its modic.u.m of truth, though less now than a hundred years ago.
Formerly there was in Ireland, and especially around Dublin, a little colony of Anglo-Irish. The members of this colony spoke a very pure and cla.s.sic English, and this fact is largely responsible for the place which Ireland at one time held in English literature. But during the last century the remains of this colony have been swamped beneath a flood of half-Anglicized people, of Irishmen from the country districts, who were formerly excluded, and who brought with them such a mixture of expressions and of phonetic tendencies derived from the Gaelic that the language of Grattan, Sheridan, and Burke has well-nigh gone out of existence. The reason of this is that since the date of Catholic emanc.i.p.ation, most careers are open to everybody.
The result has been that the newly enfranchised majority has ultimately absorbed the minority, and that the atmosphere of culture, of which we have just spoken, has disappeared. We thus reach an Ireland which, in a sense, has neither culture nor language, a country in which the Gaelic spoken by a people humiliated and deeply demoralized by an anti-Catholic legislation, which was both savage and degrading, tended to coalesce with an English already condemned to death. It is from the moment when the Catholics had finally triumphed over persecution that we must date the beginning of that political struggle with which we are familiar, a struggle which has resulted in absorbing all the energies of a great part of the population. That is why this tremendous problem presents itself to us, at the very time when we should be justified in feeling ourselves elated by triumph because of our victories in parliament. And let not England rejoice too much at our dilemma. If we are doomed to die, she will die with us, for before disappearing we shall prove to be a great destructive force, and out of the ruins of the British power we shall raise such a monument that future generations will know what it costs to murder a nation.
But, if possible, we must live and let live. The elements of reconstruction are always at hand. Anglo-Irish culture is indeed dead, but Gaelic culture is only seriously sick, and on that side there is always room for hope. Sooth to say, its sickness consists above all in the fact that the Irish language is no longer spoken in a great part of the country. But, on the other hand, where it is preserved, that same language is spoken in all its purity. By going there to find it all Ireland will gradually become Gaelic.
But, it will be objected, what a loss of time and energy! If it is a question of languages, why not learn one of the more useful ones? To this we may reply that, while English deforms the mouth and makes it incapable of p.r.o.nouncing any language which is not spoken from the tip of the lips, Gaelic, on the contrary, so exercises the organs of speech that it renders easy the acquisition and the practice of most European idioms. Let us add, by way of example, that French, which is usually difficult for strangers, is much more within the compa.s.s of Irishmen who speak Irish, no less because of certain linguistic customs than from the original relationship between the two languages.
This remark brings us to another objection which is often lodged against our movement. It is urged that Ireland is already isolated enough, and that by making it a Gaelic-speaking nation, we shall make that state of affairs still worse. English, say the objectors, is spoken more or less everywhere, while Gaelic will never be able to claim the position of a quasi-universal language. To this line of reasoning it might be answered, for one thing, that no one can tell how far Gaelic will go, in case our movement is a success, and that many a language formerly "universal" is today as dead as a door-nail.
But we must look at the question from another point of view. John Bull"s language is spread everywhere, while he himself retains the most exclusive insularity. He travels to every land and there finds his own language and his own customs. Now it goes without saying that from this very universalization his language is corrupted and becomes vulgarized. The idiom of Shakespeare and Milton gives place gradually to the idiom of the seaports. Furthermore, far from isolating us, Gaelic will tend to put us in touch with the civilization of the West. As a people Anglicised, and badly Anglicised at that, we share, and even exaggerate, the faults which I have just described. It is Anglo-Saxon speech which isolates us, and we wish on this ground to break with it and to hold out our hand to our brothers of the continent.
But, it may be said, what a pity to dig yet another abyss between Ireland and Great Britain, for it is with the latter that our geographical position will always link us for common defense. For, while it is true that history does not show us a single case of an empire which has not sooner or later fallen to pieces, nevertheless, whatever happens, the two islands will be necessarily forced to co-operate for the common good. Well, let us take it that things will so fall out, and let us suppose an Anglicised Ireland called upon to face such a situation. It would be a revolutionary Ireland, a restless Ireland, an Ireland seeking vaguely for revenge on someone, deprived of really national character, and, in a general way, suspecting England of responsibility for the disappearance from our country of everything that const.i.tutes the idea of nationality. And let us remark that we are no longer living in those good old times when entire nations allowed themselves to be absorbed by their conquerors. The art of printing has changed all that. Today a "suppressed" nation is one that will sooner or later have its revenge. Thus let us suppose that we are destined to make political peace with England and to enter of our own accord into a Hiberno-Britannic confederation. From our point of view, what would be the result of that arrangement? The result would be strange. Here again, as in the case of Home Rule, it is rather we who offer advantages to England than she who offers them to us. Only, in this latter case, the result depends on ourselves alone. If we die, it will be because we have wished it. Our language is not dead; on the contrary, although not widely spread, it is in itself much more alive than English, which as a literary language is in full decay. We may congratulate ourselves that our idiom is intact. Our civilization is old, but it has not yet lived its full life. If we wish, the future is ours. And let us truly believe that that is worth while, for the race which has produced epics like those of Ossian and all that magnificent literature which has been preserved for us through the ages, the race that gave to Europe that great impulse of missionary activity which is a.s.sociated with the names of Columcille, Brendan, Columba.n.u.s, and Gall, not to mention men like the famous Scotus Erigena--that race is certainly called upon to play an important part in the modern world. But--let us repeat it--it must have the wish.