Charles Johnston

“ In the choice which our new age must make between these two ways, very much may be done for the enduring well-being of mankind by a race full of clean vigor, a race taught by stern experience the evil of tyranny and oppression, a race profoundly believing the religion of gentleness and mercy, a race full of the sense of the invisible world, the world of our immortality.
We see in Ireland a land with a wonderful past, rich in tradition and varied lore; a land where the memorials of the ages, built in enduring stone, would in themselves enable us to trace the life and progress of human history ”

“ Yet, more, he knows not the real Ireland who cannot feel within that woe the heart of power and joy,--the strong life outlasting darkest night,--the soul that throbs incessantly under all the calamities of the visible world, throughout the long tragedy of our history.
This is our secret: the life that is in sorrow as in joy; the power that is not more in success than in failure--the one soul whose moods these are, who uses equally life and death. ”

“ From the summit of an inclined plane, eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, the eye travels for sixty miles over hundreds of little hills, embosomed in the widely diverging arc that defines the bay-like valley, in which is contained the whole 55 of the numberless streams that, joining the small river Dinkee near to Farree, flow into Lee Adu. This lake formed a bright feature of the scene, embosomed in the dark green belt of forest that marks the course of the Hawash; beyond which the sandy plains of Adal, blending with a colourless sky, constituted an horizon in which sight was lost. ”

“ The sombre hue of its high embosoming rocks, the bare surface of the stone-covered plain, with the absence of all vegetation, formed a scene well suited for a deed of blood, especially if it can be pictured upon a night when the moon, sometimes obscured by clouds, cast occasional shadows of a pitchy darkness upon the earth. ”

“ Did our human destiny stop there, with the perfect life of individual men and women, we might well say that these two epochs of Ireland contain it all; that our whole race could go no further. For no man lived more valiant than Cuculain, more generous than Fergus, more full of the fire of song than Ossin, son of Find. Nor amongst women were any sadder than Deirdré and Grania; craftier than Meave, more winsome than Nessa the mother of Concobar. Perfected flowers of human life all of them,--if that be all of human life. ”

“ What little meat was on the bones was soon stript off with our teeth, during which time Ebin Izaak accounted for his possession of the treat, no sheep having been killed in our Kafilah, by saying that it was the generous gift of some valued friend, belonging to the Kafilah of Mahomed Allee.
Our road lay along a smooth level plain of yellow marl, cracked in every direction by the baking heat of the sun, whilst the mirage before us mocked the dryness of the soil, by the affectation of the appearance of nature’s most refreshing gift, either to animals or to the equally thirsty earth. ”

“ All the world is lost and forlorn, without hope or respite. Everything is given up to the dirges of the moaning seas, the white shrouds of weeping mist. Wander forth upon the uplands and among the lonely hills and rock-seamed sides of the mountains, and you will find the same sadness everywhere: a grieving world under a grieving sky. Quiet desolation hides among the hills, tears tremble on every brown grass-blade, white mists of melancholy shut out the lower world.
Whoever has not felt the poignant sadness of the leafless days has never known the real Ireland ”

“ A long life of trial must produce, therefore, that memory of experience, and that penetration of judgment, which is so characteristic of the chiefs we meet with, on our road through Adal. After all, the axiom that knowledge is power, is the secret of the great influence possessed by the elders, among this people as among all others. Every old man here is a sage, and must be well versed in the philosophy of human nature, taught by an education of many years’ exposure, to the fatal consequences attendant upon unrestrained anger, or unprepared valour. ”

“ At Abbey-quarter, within the town-limits of Sligo itself, there is another great ring of boulders, the past and the present mingling together. On the northern coast, across the Bay of Sligo, where the headland of Streedagh juts forth into the sea, there is another giant necklace of gray blocks ranged upon the moor. Farther along the shore, where Bundoran marks the boundary of Donegal, a cromlech and a stone circle rise among the sand-banks. All have the same rugged and enduring massiveness, all are wrapped in the same mystery. ”

“ Just before sunset, whilst nearly all the men of our Kafilah, stript to their waist-cloths, were engaged in the bustle and the dust of their boisterous game of ball; and I was amusing myself with Zaido and the two Allees, trying our respective strength in balancing and heaving away heavy slabs of pewter; a sudden cry among the women, followed by a general rush of the players to shields and spears, and a plunge by Zaido into my hut to be out of the way, put an end to our sports. ”

“ Concobar the king, stern and masterful, crafty and secret in counsel though swift as an eagle to slay,--Concobar the king had watched Deirdré in her captivity, ever unseen of her, and his heart had been moved by the fair softness of her skin, the glow of her cheek, the brightness of her eyes and hair; so that the king had steadfastly determined in his mind that Deirdré should be his, in scorn of all prophecies and warnings; that her beauty should be for him alone. This the king had determined; and it was known to Naisi the son of Usnac. ”

“ Birds, of every hue, made this Adal forest their home, and displayed all that enjoyment of life, 425which appears to be the one general feeling that animates these happy denizens of air. Their shrill piping songs, their joyous freedom, and quick sportive movements, as chasing each other, or challenging to the flight, they dart from tree to tree, excite corresponding feelings of buoyancy and happiness in the delighted traveller, glad to have escaped from the stony deserts, or the burning plains of the arid country he has previously passed through. ”

“ The cliffs gradually lessen, and their colors grow clearer, till they sink at last toward the sand-banks of Ballysadare, divided from us only by a channel of shallow sea.
The whole colored circle of sea and land, of moor and mountain, is full of the silence of intense and mighty power. The ocean is tremulous with the breath of life. The mountains, in their stately beauty, rise like immortals in the clear azure. The signs of our present works are dwarfed to insignificance. ”

“ To the Ireland that had seen the valor of Cuculain, that had watched the wars of Fergus,--to the Ireland that listened to the deeds of Find and the songs of Ossin,--came the Evangel of Galilee, the darkest yet brightest message ever brought to the children of earth. If we rightly read that Evangel, it brought the doom of the natural man, and his supersession by the man immortal; it brought the death of our personal perfecting and pride, and the rising from the dead of the common soul, whereby a man sees another self in his neighbor; sees all alike in the one Divine. ”

“ III. THE CROMLECH BUILDERS.
In every district of Ireland, therefore, there remain these tremendous and solemn survivors of a mighty past. The cromlechs, with their enormous masses upheld in the air, rising among the fertile fields or daisy-dotted pastures; the great circles of standing stones, starred everywhere, in the valleys or upon the uplands, along the rough sides of heather-covered hills. They have everywhere the same aspect of august mystery, the same brooding presence, like sentinels of another world. It is impossible not to feel their overshadowing majesty. ”

“ From morning to midday the [pg 029] shadows shrink, ever hiding from the sun; an army of wraiths, sprite-like able to grow gigantic or draw together into mere blots of darkness. When day declines, the shadows come forth again, joining ghostly hands from stone to stone, from circle to circle, under the sunset sky, and merging at last into the universal realm of night. Thus they weave their web, inexorable as tireless Time.
There are more than threescore of these circles at Carrowmore, under Knocknarea. Yet Carrowmore is only one among many memorials of dead years within our horizon. ”

“ But not less complete is the contrast between the ancient hamlet, thus hidden for security amid the waters, and the great cromlech, looming black against the sky on the hill's summit, exposed to the wildness of the winds, utterly unguarded, yet resting there in lonely serenity.
A little farther south, Lough Gur lies like a white mirror among the rolling pasture-lands of Limerick, set amongst low hills. On the lake's shore is another metropolis of the dead, worthy to compare with Carrowmore on the Sligo headland. ”

“ The tide of life, thus forced inward, gained a firm possession of the invisible world, with the eternal realities indwelling there. Thus fixed and founded in the real, that tide turned once again, flowing outwards and sweeping before it all the barriers in its way. The population of Ireland is diminishing in numbers; but the race to which they belong increases steadily: a race of clean life, of unimpaired vital power, unspoiled by wealth or luxury, the most virile force in the New World. ”

“ As the gloom rises up out of the earth, bands of dark red gather on the horizon, seaming the clear bronze of the sky, that passes upward into olive-color, merging in dark blue overhead. The sun swings down behind the hills, and purple darkness comes down out of the sky; the red fades from the tree-stems, the cloud-colors die away; the whole world glimmers with the fading whiteness of twilight. ”

“ Owen Roe O'Neill, last great son of a heroic race, splendidly upheld their high tradition and ideal. No nobler figure, and few more gifted captains, can be found in the annals of those warlike centuries. The valor of Cuculain, the wisdom of Concobar, the chivalry of Fergus--all were his, and with them a gentle and tolerant spirit in all things concerning religion, very admirable in an age when so many men, in other things not lacking in elements of nobility, were full of bitter animosity, and zealous to persecute all those who differed from them concerning things shrouded in mystery. ”