Books: Irish Race in the Past and the Present

A >> Aug. J. Thebaud >> Irish Race in the Past and the Present

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This supposes, as we have said, a sound, good sense, which is
characteristic of the race. We may say that this nation
possesses the wisdom of Sir Thomas More, who esteemed it folly
to lose eternity for a life of twenty years of ease and honors.
Is not this, at bottom, the thought which has sustained the
nation in that dread martyrdom of three centuries, whose
terrible story we have still to tell? Have they not, as a nation,
one after another, generation upon generation, lived and passed
their lives in contempt, in want, in frightful misery, to die in
torments or hidden sufferings, without a gleam of hope from this
world for their race, their families, their children, their very
name, because they would not surrender their religion, that is
to say, truth, which alone could secure the eternal welfare of
their souls?

Speak to us, after this, of a steady and systematic mind! Prate
to us of the love of liberty, of self-dignity! Where are such
things to be found in their reality, on their trial, if not in
the scenes and the nation we have just pictured?

A second reason, no less effective, perhaps, than the first, and
certainly as remarkable, is the very composition of the Celtic
mind, which naturally tends to firm belief, because it is given
exclusively to traditions, past events, narratives of poets,
historians, and genealogists. Had the Irish at any time turned
themselves to criticise, to doubt, to argue, their very
existence, as a people, would have ceased. They must go on
believing, or all reality vanishes from their minds, accustomed
for so many ages to take in that solid knowledge founded, it is
true, on hearsay; but how else can truth reach us save by
hearsay? Hence, their simple and artless acquiescence in any
thing they hear from trustworthy lips - acquiescence ever
refused to a known enemy, never to a well-tried friend, even
when the facts ascertained are strange, mysterious, unaccounted
for, and incredible to minds differently constituted.

Thus, when we read their "Acta Sanctorum," we at once find
ourselves in a world so different from our every-day world - a
region of wonders, mysteries, of heavenly and supernatural deeds,
unequalled in any story of marvellous travel or fable of
imaginative romance. Yet, who will say that the writers doubted
a single phrase of what they wrote? Is it not clear, from the
very words they use, that they would have held it sacrilege to
utter a falsehood, when speaking of the blessed saints? And, can
the lives of the saints be like those of common mortals? What is
there strange in considering that the earth was mysterious and
heavenly, when heavenly beings walked upon it? Read the Litany
and Festology of Aengus, and doubt if the holy man did not
believe all therein contained. Say, if it can be possible, that
it is not all true, though apparently incredible. Who can doubt
what is asserted with such vehemence of belief? How can that
fail to be true which holy men and women have themselves
believed, and given to the world to be believed?

This thoroughly explains the simplicity of faith which still
distinguishes the Irish people. It explains why no heretic could
be found among them, and their intense horror of heresy as soon
as known. Nor is it their mind alone which bears the impress of
faith: their very exterior is a witness to it. Go into any large
city where dwell a number of Irish inhabitants; walk through the
public streets, where they walk among the children of other
races, and you will easily distinguish them, not only by the
modesty of their women and the simple bearing of their men, but
by the look of confidence and contentedness stamped on their
features. Whoever has a settled faith, is no longer an inquirer,
no longer troubled with the anxiety and restlessness of a man
plunged in doubt and uncertainty; all the lineaments of the face,
all the gestures and attitudes of the body, speak of quietude
and repose.

We might render this discussion more effective by the study of
the contrary phenomena, by showing how easily races, differently
gifted, endowed with the spirit of criticism and argument, sever
from the faith and follow the lead of deceptive teachers. Our
object here was to describe the Irish, and not to enter into a
study of the physiology of other minds; but a word on Germanic
and Scandinavian tribes and peoples may not be amiss.

There is no doubt that these races place their "good sense" in a
very different line from the Irish; that they are, also, much
more given to criticism, what they call "grumbling," and absence
of repose.

With regard to the first point - their "good sense" - it is easy
to remark their tendency to prefer the temporal to the eternal.
For their "good sense" consists in enjoying the things of this
life without troubling themselves over-much about another. And,
in this observation, there is nothing which can possibly offend
them, for such is their open profession and estimate of true
wisdom. Hence result their love of comfort, their thrift, their
shrewdness in all material and worldly affairs; hence, their
constant boasting about their civilization, understanding,
thereby, what is pleasing to the senses; hence, also, their
success in a life wherein they set their whole happiness. How
could they be expected to remain steadfast to a faith which
declares war to pleasure, and speaks only of contempt for this
world? It is not matter of surprise, then, that their great
argument, to prove that theirs is the better and the right
religion, is to compare their physical well-being with the
inferiority in that regard of Catholic nations.

With regard to the spirit of criticism and argumentation,
nothing is so opposed to the spirit of faith; and it is as clear
as day that the northern races possess this in an eminent degree.
What question, religious or philosophical, can rest intact when
brought under the microscopic vision of a German philosopher or
an English rationalist? A few years more of criticism, as now
understood and practised by them, would leave absolutely nothing
which the mind of man could respect and believe.

An attentive observer will surely conclude, after a serious
examination of the subject, that it is from petty causes of this
character that these races have so easily surrendered their
faith, rather than from their systematic minds and love of
liberty.

II. The rising of the communes, one of the greatest features of
mediaeval Europe, did not extend to Ireland, separated as it
then was from the Continent. But, by reason of this very
separation, the island remained forever free from the future
political commotions of what is known as "the third estate." A
few remarks on this subject are requisite, because of the
objection brought against the Irish, that they have never known
municipal government, and also on account of the false
assertions of some philosophical historians, who allege that the
Danes and Anglo-Normans, in turn, wrought a great good to
Ireland by bringing with them the boon of citizen rights.

What were the causes of the rising of the communes in the
eleventh and following centuries? The universality of the fact
argues identity of motives, since, without common understanding
among various nations, the risings showed themselves at about
the same time in Italy, France, Germany, Spain, and England.

In ancient cities, which existed prior to the Germanic invasions,
the population, after the scourge had passed, was composed
principally of three elements: 1. Free men of the conquering
races, who were poor, and had embraced some mechanical pursuit;
2. The remnants of the Roman population, who followed some
trade; 3. Freedmen from the rural districts, who, unable to gain
a livelihood in the country, had come to reside in the cities,
where they could more easily subsist.

Thus, besides the feudal lords and the class of villeins, there
was formed everywhere a third class, that of arts and trades.

The juridical power being restricted to the lords, whose rights
extended only to the land and the men attached to it, the class
of artisans found themselves destitute of legal rights, without
a recognition or place even in the jurisprudence, as then
existing, consequently in a practically anarchical state. Hence,
they formed among themselves their own associations, elected
their own magistrates, enacted their own by-laws.

In the cities we have mentioned, the bishop alone held social
relations with the lords, whether the feudal chieftain of the
vicinity, or the Count of the city. Thus, the bishop often acted
as the mediator between the citizens and the privileged class
which surrounded them. The great object of the citizens was to
obtain a charter of rights from the suzerain, who alone could
act with justice and impartiality toward those disfranchised
burghers. To this was owed the immense number of charters
granted at that time, many of which, lately published, tend
better than any thing else to give us an insight into the origin
of municipal life in mediaeval Europe.

New cities, either founded by the invaders or springing up of
themselves around feudal castles and monasteries, soon
experienced the necessity of similar favors, which, as soon as
obtained, invested them with a social status unenjoyed before.

The number of freemen, reduced to poverty, or of recent freedmen
- freed by the emancipation everywhere set on foot and
encouraged by the Church - extended the spread of communes even
to the rural districts. Thus, many villages or small towns grew
into corporations, and a social state arose, hitherto totally
unknown in Europe.

The question has been much discussed, whether those new
municipal corporations owed their origin to the municipal system
of the Romans, or were altogether disconnected with it. The
opinion commonly now accepted is, that the two systems were
utterly distinct. In some few instances, a particular Roman
municipal city may have passed into a mediaeval corporate town
under a new charter and with extended rights; but this was
certainly the exception. In the great majority of cases, the
newly-chartered cities had never before enjoyed municipal rights.

These few words suffice to show that the communes, wherever they
arose, presupposed the existence of feudalism, and the slavery
once so widely extended, passing gradually into serfdom.

But neither feudalism nor slavery, in the old pagan sense of the
word, nor even serfdom, properly so called, as the doom of the
ascripti glebae, ever existed in Ireland. There was, therefore,
no need among the Irish for the rising of communes.

Nevertheless, we do find communes existing in Ireland and
charters granted to Irish cities by English kings. But they were
merely English institutions for the special benefit of the
English of the Pale, which were always refused to "the Irish
enemy," and which the "Irish enemy," with the exception of a few
individual cases, never demanded. Consequently the fact stands
almost universally true that the rising of the communes never
extended to Ireland, and that, if the Irish never enjoyed the
benefit of them, as little did they share in the evil
consequences resulting from them.

All those evil consequences had their root in a feeling of
bitter hostility between the higher or noble classes, and not
only the villeins, whom they ground between them, but also the
middle classes, who were dwelling in the cities, emancipating
themselves by slow degrees, and forming in course of time the
"third estate."

The workings of that hostility form a great part of the history
of Europe from the twelfth century down to the present day, and
many social convulsions, recorded in the annals of the six ages
preceding our own, may be traced to it. The frightful French
Revolution was certainly a result of it, although it must be
granted that several secondary causes contributed to render the
catastrophe more destructive, the chief among which was the
spread of infidel doctrines among the higher and middle classes.

But our days witness a still more awful spectacle, the
persistent array of the poor against the rich in all countries
once Christian, and this may be traced directly to their
mediaeval origin now under our consideration; and, the evils
preparing for mankind therefrom, future history alone will be
able to tell.

In Ireland, this has never been the danger. In the earlier
constitution of the nation, there could be no rivalry, no
hostility of class with class, as there never existed any social
distinction between them; and if, in our days, the poor there as
elsewhere seem arrayed against the rich, it is not as class
against class, but as the spoiled against the spoiler, the
victim against the robber, against the holders of the soil by
right of confiscation--a soil upon which the old owners still
live, with all the traditions of their history, which have never
been completely effaced, and which in our days are springing
into new life under the studies of patriotic antiquarians. This
fact cannot be denied.

The case of Ireland is so different in this respect from that of
other nations, that in no other country have the people been
reduced to such a degrading state of pauperism, yet in no other
country is the same submission to the existing order of society
found among the lower classes. No communism, no socialism has
ever been preached there, and, were it preached, it would only
be to deaf ears. Until the last two or three centuries, no seed
of animosity between high and low, rich and poor, had been sowed
in Ireland. The reason of this we have seen in a previous
chapter. And if, since the wholesale confiscations of the
seventeenth century, the country has been divided into two
hostile camps, the fault has never laid with the poor, the
despoiled; they have always been the victims, and never uttered
open threats of destruction against their oppressors. If in the
future men look to great calamities, Ireland is the only quarter
from which nothing of the kind is to be feared, and the
impending revolution by which she may profit will look to her
for no assistance in the subversion of society.

We now leave the reader to appreciate to its full extent the
real value of the opinion of modern writers who would justify
the successive invasions of the Danes and Anglo-Normans, and
also, we suppose, of the Puritans, as praiseworthy attempts to
introduce into Ireland the municipal system, so productive of
good elsewhere throughout Europe.

There is no doubt that municipal rights have been of immense
advantage to European society, as constituted at the time of
their introduction. They formed the germ of a new class,
destined to be the ruling class of the world, by whom human
rights were first to be understood and proclaimed, and the
necessary amount of freedom granted to all and secured by just
laws justly administered. Christianity is the true source of all
those rights, as Christian morality ought to be their standard.

But what an amount of human misery was first required, in order
that such blessed results might follow, merely because religion,
which was and ever had been steadily working to the same end,
was altogether set aside, and its assistance even despised in
the mighty change! And after all--we might say in consequence--
how limited has the boon practically become! How few are the
nations, even in our days, which understand impartiality,
moderation, justice! How soon will mankind become sufficiently
enlightened to settle down peacefully in the enjoyment of those
blessings of civil liberty proclaimed and trumpeted to the four
winds of heaven, yet in no place rightly understood and
equitably shared?

Ireland never knew those municipal rights from which have flowed
so many evils, side by side with so few blessings, because their
essential elements were never found there. What the future may
develop, no man can say. It is time, however, for all to see
that the nation is equal to any rights to which men are said to
be entitled.

III. The great intellectual movement set on foot in Europe
during the middle ages, by the numerous universities which
sprang up everywhere, under the fostering care of Popes or
Christian monarchs, failed to reach the island, in consequence
of its exclusion from the European family; yet even this was not
for her an unmitigated evil, though certainly the greatest loss
she sustained. While Europe, during the eighth and ninth
centuries, was in total darkness, Ireland alone basked in the
light of science, whose lustre, shining in her numerous schools,
attracted thither by its brightness the youth of all nations,
whom she received with a generosity unbounded. Not content with
this, she sent forth her learned and holy men to spread the
light abroad and dispel the thick darkness, to establish seats
of learning as focuses whence should radiate the light of truth
on a world buried in barbarism.

And when the warm sunshine, created or kept alive by her, sheds
its rays on Italy, on France, on Germany, and England itself,
all her own schools are closed, her once great universities
destroyed. Clonard, Clonfert, Armagh, Bangor, Clonmacnoise, are
desolate, and the wealthy Anglo-Norman prelates find their
purses empty when the question arises of restoring or forming a
single centre of intellectual development. The natural
consequences should have been darkness, barbarism, gross
ignorance. Ireland never fell to that depth of spiritual
desolation. Her sons, though deprived of all exterior help,
would still feed for centuries on their own literary treasures.
All the way down to the Stuart dynasty, the nation preserved,
not only her clans, her princes, and her brehon laws, but also
her shanachies, her books, her ancient literature and traditions.
These the feudal barons could not rob her of; and if they would
not repay her, in some measure, for what they took away, by
flooding her with the new methods of thought, of knowledge, of
scientific investigation, at least they could not destroy her
old manuscripts, wipe out from her memory the old songs, snatch
the immortal harp from the hands of her bards, nor silence the
lips of her priests from giving vent to those bursts of
impassioned eloquence which are natural to them and must out.
Hence there was no tenth century of darkness for her--let us
bear this in mind--light never deserted her, but continued to
shine on her from within, despite the refusal of her masters to
unlock for her the floodgates of knowledge.

For this reason was it not to her an unmitigated loss; but there
is another and, perhaps, a stronger still.

We should be careful not to attribute to what is good the abuse
made of it by men; yet the good is sometimes the occasion of
evil; and so it was with those great, admirable, and much-to-be-
regretted universities.

They imparted to the mind of man an impulse which the pride and
ambition of man turned to his intellectual ruin. What was
intended for the spread of true knowledge and faith became in
the end the source of spiritual pride, the natural fosterer of
doubt and negation. Modern science, so called, that incarnation
of vanity, sophistry, error, and delusion, comes indirectly from
those universities of the middle ages; and it was chiefly at the
time of what is called the revival of learning, that the great
revolution in science came about, which changed the intellectual
gold into dross, the once divine ambrosia of knowledge, served
to happy mortals in mediaeval times, into poison.

That pretended "revival of learning" can never be mentioned in
connection with Ireland; and the "idolatry of art," and
corruption of morals, never crossed the channel which God set
between Great Britain and the Island of Saints.

Another revival, though of a very different character, was,
however, actually taking place in Erin at that very period, when
the Wars of the Roses gave her breathing-time, which we relate
in the words of a modern Irish writer, as a conclusion to the
reflections we have indulged in:

"Within this period lived Margaret of Offaly, the beautiful and
accomplished queen of O'Carrol, King of Ely. She and her husband
were munificent patrons of literature, art, and, science. On
Queen Margaret's special invitation, the literati of Ireland and
Scotland, to the number of nearly three thousand, held a
"session" for the furtherance of literary and scientific
interests at her palace near Killeagh, in Offaly, the entire
assemblage being the guests of the king and queen during their
stay.

"The nave of the great church of Da Sinchell was converted for
the occasion into a banqueting-hall, where Margaret herself
inaugurated the proceedings by placing two massive chalices of
gold, as offerings, on the high altar, and committing two orphan
children to the custody of nurses to be fostered at her charge.
Robed in cloth of gold, this illustrious lady, who was as
distinguished for her beauty as for her generosity, sat in
queenly state m one of the galleries of the church, surrounded
by the clergy, the brehons, and her private friends, shedding a
lustre on the scene which was passing below, while her husband,
who had often encountered England's greatest generals in battle,
remained mounted on a charger outside the church, to bid the
guests welcome and see that order was preserved. The invitations
were issued, and the guests arranged according to a list
prepared by 0'Carrol's chief brehon; and the second
entertainment, which took place at Rathangan, was a supplemental
one, to embrace such men of learning as had not been brought
together at the former feast."--(A.M. 0'Sullivan.)

Such was the true "revival of learning" in Ireland--a return to
her old traditional teaching. If this peaceful time had been of
longer duration, there is no doubt that her old schools would
have flourished anew, and men in subsequent ages might have
compared the results of the two systems: the one producing with
true enlightenment, peace, concord, faith, and piety, though
confined to the insignificant compass of one small island; the
other resulting in the mental anarchy so rife to-day, and
spreading all over the rest of Europe.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE IRISH AND THE TUDORS.--HENRY VIII.

By losing the only bond of unity--the power vested in the Ard-
Righ--which held the various parts of the island together,
Ireland lost all power of exercising any combined action. The
nations were as numerous as the clans, and the interests as
diverse as the families. They possessed, it is true, the same
religion, and in the observance of its precepts and practices
they often found a remedy for their social evils; but religion,
not encountering any opposition from any quarter, with the
exception of the minor differences existing between the native
clergy and the English dignitaries, was generally considered as
out of the question in their wranglings and contentions. We
shall see how the blows struck at it by the English monarchs
welded into one that people, were the cause of that union now so
remarkable among them, and really constituted the only bond that
ever linked them together.

Before dwelling on these considerations, let us glance a moment
at the state of the country prior to the attempt of introducing
Protestantism there.

The English Pale was reduced at this period to one half of five
counties in Leinster and Meath; and even within those boundaries
the 0'Kavanaghs, O'Byrnes, O'Moores and others, retained their
customs, their brehon laws, their language and traditions, often
making raids into the very neighborhood of the capital, and
parading their gallowglasses and kerns within twenty miles of
Dublin.

The nobility and the people were in precisely the same state
which they had known for centuries. The few Englishmen who had
long ago settled in the country had become identified with the
natives, had adopted their manners, language, and laws, so
offensive at first to the supercilious Anglo-Normans.

But a revolution was impending, owing chiefly to the change
lately introduced into the religion of England, by Henry Tudor.
It is important to study the first attempt of the kind in
Ireland; not only because it became the occasion of establishing
for a lengthy period a real unanimity among the people--giving
birth to the nation as it were--but also for the right
understanding of the word "rebellion," which had been so freely
used before toward the natives, and which was now about to
receive a new interpretation.

The English had once deceived the Irish, exacting their
submission
in the twelfth century by foisting upon them the word homage:
they would deceive Europe by a constant use, or rather misuse,
of the words "rebel" and "rebellion." By the enactment of new
laws they pronounce the simple attachment to the old religion of
the country a denial of sovereign right, and consequently an act
of overt treason; and the Irish shall be butchered mercilessly
for the sake of the religion of Christ without winning the name,
though they do the crown, of martyrdom; for Europe is to be so
effectually deceived, that even the Church will hesitate to
proclaim those religious heroes, saints of God.