Lady Gregory

“ There was too much of it given to the Irish soldiers that day—drink and spies and traitors. The English never won a battle in Ireland in fair fight, but getting spies and setting the people against one another. I saw where Aughrim was fought, and I turned aside from the road to see the tree where St Ruth was killed. ”

“ O'Connell was a great councillor. At that time if there was a Catholic, no matter how high or great or learned he was, he could not get a place. But if a Protestant came that was a blockhead and ignorant, the place would be open to him. There was a revolution rising because of that, and O'Connell brought it into the House of Commons and got it changed. He was the greatest man ever was in Ireland. He was a very clever lawyer; he would win every case, he would put it so strong and clear and clever. ”

“ CROMWELL IN CONNACHT "Cromwell cleared the road before him. If any great man stood against him he would pull down his castle the same as he pulled down that castle of your own, Ballinamantane, that is down the road. He never got more than two hours sleep or three, or at the most four, but starting up fearing his life would be peppered. There was a word he sounded out to the Catholics, 'To hell or Connacht,' and the reason he did that was that Connacht was burned bare, and he that thought to pass the winter there would get no lodging at all. ”

“ HER WISDOM "As to the last Queen, we thought her bad when we had her, but now we think her good. She was a hard woman, and she did nothing for Ireland in the bad years; but I'll give you the reason she had for that. She had it in her mind always to keep Ireland low, it being the place she mostly got her soldiers. That might not be good for Ireland, but it was good for her own benefit. The time the lads have not a bit to eat, that is the time they will go soldiering." ”

“ The North Cork Militia were the worst; there are places in Ireland where you would not get a drink of water if they knew you came from Cork. And it was the very same, the North Cork, that went of their own free will to the Boer war, volunteered, asked to go that is. They had the same sting in them always. A great many of them were left dead in that war, and a great many better men than themselves. There was one battle in that war there was no quarter given, the same as Aughrim; and the English would kill the wounded that would be left upon the field of battle. There is no Christianity in war. ”

“ And as to drink, a man that takes the first glass is as quiet and as merry as a pet lamb; and after the second glass he is as knacky as a monkey; and after the third glass he is as ready for battle as a lion; and after the fourth glass he is like a swine as he is. 'I am thirsty' [IRISH: Ta Tart Orm] , that was one of our Lord's seven words on the Cross, where he was dry. And a man far off would have given him drink; but there was a drunkard at the foot of the Cross, and he prevented him."
THE BATTLE OF AUGHRIM "That was a great slaughter at Aughrim. ”

“ If it wasn't for the war, that pension would never be given to Ireland. They'd have been driven home by the Boers if it wasn't for the Irish that were in the front of every battle. And the Irish held out better too, they can starve better than the rest, there is more bearing in them. It wasn't till all the Irish were killed that the English took to bribing. Bribed Botha they did with a bag of gold. For all the generals in England that are any good are Irish. Buller was the last they had, and he died. They can find no good generals at all in England, unless they might get them very young. ”

“ O'Connell was all for the poor. See what he did at Saint Patrick's Island—he cast out every bad thing and every whole thing, to England and to America and to every part. He fought it well for every whole body. ”

“ O'Connell was a grand man; the best within the walls of the world. He never led anyone astray. Did you hear that one time he turned the shoes on his horses? There were bad members following him. I cannot say who they were, for I will not tell what I don't know. He got a smith to turn the shoes, and when they came upon his track, he went east and they went west. Parnell was no bad man, but Dan O'Connell's name went up higher in praises. ”

“ There came a grand visitor one time, and when he heard Carolan singing and playing and his fine pleasant talk, he asked him to go with him on a visit to Dublin. So Carolan went, and he promised the King of Mayo he would come back at the end of a month. But when he was at the gentleman's house he liked it so well that he stopped a year with him, and it wasn't till the Christmas he came back to Mayo. And when he got there the doors were shut, and the King was at his dinner, and Queen Mary and the three daughters, and he could see them through the windows. ”

“ So in Bible History, while lesser kings keep their dignity, great Solomon's wit is outwitted by the riddles of some countryman; and Lucifer himself, known in Kiltartan as "the proudest of the angels, thinking himself equal with God," has been seen in Sligo rolling down a road in the form of the Irish Times. The gods of ancient Ireland have not escaped. Mananaan, Son of the Sea, Rider of the Horses of the Sea, was turned long ago into a juggler doing tricks, and was hunted in the shape of a hare. ”

“ What the Danes left in Ireland were hens and weasels. And when the cock crows in the morning the country people will always say 'It is for Denmark they are crowing. Crowing they are to be back in Denmark.'"
THE ENGLISH ”

“ One time some great king or lord sent for the Goban to build a caislean for him, and the son's wife said to him before he went 'Be always great with the women of the house, and always have a comrade among them.' So when the Goban went there he coaxed one of the women the same as if he was not married. And when the castle was near built, the woman told him the lord was going to play him a trick, and to kill him or shut him up when he had the castle made, the way he would not build one for any-other lord that was as good. ”

“ "My husband was in the war of the Crimea. It is terrible the hardships he went through, to be two months without going into a house, under the snow in trenches. And no food to get, maybe a biscuit in the day. And there was enough food there, he said, to feed all Ireland; but bad management, they could not get it. ”

“ "As to the old history of Ireland, the first man ever died in Ireland was Partholan, and he is buried, and his greyhound along with him, at some place in Kerry. ”

“ Thomas Davis was a great man where poetry is concerned, and a better than Thomas Moore. All over Ireland his poetry is, and he would have done other things but that he died young. That was the '48 time. The '48 men were foolish men; they thought to cope with the English Government. They went to O'Connell to get from him all the money he had gathered, for they had it in their head to use that to make a rise against England. But when they asked O'Connell for it he told them there was none of it left, not one penny. ”

“ A sociable people given to conversation and belief; no books in the house, no history taught in the schools; it is likely that must have been the way of it in old Greece, when the king of highly civilised Crete was turned by tradition into a murderous tyrant owning a monster and a labyrinth. ”

“ There came a ship to Dublin from France, calling for soldiers, and he threw up his place, and there were many others threw up their place, and they went off, eleven hundred of them, in the French ship, to go fighting for their religion, and a hundred of them never came back. When they landed in France they were made much of and velvet carpets spread before them. But the war was near over then, and when it had ended they were forgotten, and nothing done for them, and he was in poverty at Lyons and died. ”

“ I have charged my son, and should I live till he comes to sensible years, I will charge my grandson, to keep their ears open to the growth of legend about him who was once my husband's friendly enemy, and afterwards his honoured friend. ”

“ THE OLD AGE PENSIONS "The old age pension is very good, and as to taxes, them can't pay it that hasn't it. It is since the Boer War there is coin sent back from Africa every week that is dug from the goldpits out there. That is what the English wanted the time they went to war; they want to close up the minerals for themselves. ”

“ We saw in the paper a few years ago there was a great deal of money collected for soldiers that had gone through hardship in the war, and we wrote to the War Office asking some of it for him. But they wrote back that there were so many young men crippled in the Boer war there was nothing to be spared for the old. My husband used to be saying the Queen cared nothing for the army, but that the King, even before he was King, was better to it. But I'm thinking from this out the King will get very few from Ireland for his army. ”

“ Parnell had a back to him, but O'Connell stood alone. He fought a good war in the House of Commons. Parnell did a great deal, getting the land. I often heard he didn't die at all—it was very quick for him to go. I often wondered there were no people smart enough to dig up the coffin and to see what is in it, at night they could do that. No one knows in what soil Robert Emmet was buried, but he was made an end of sure enough. Parnell went through Gort one day, and he called it the fag-end of Ireland, just as Lady Morgan called the North the Athens of Ireland. ”

“ Those that make inventions in these days have the gift, such a man now as Edison, with all he has got out of electricity."
A WITTY WIFE
"The Goban Saor was a mason and a smith, and he could do all things, and he was very witty. He was going from home one time and he said to the wife 'If it is a daughter you have this time I'll kill you when I come back'; for up to that time he had no sons, but only daughters. And it was a daughter she had; but a neighbouring woman had a son at the same time, and they made an exchange to save the life of the Goban's wife. ”

“ "The Georges were fair; they left all to the Government; but Anne was very bad and a tyrant. She tyrannised over the Irish. She died broken-hearted with all the bad things that were going on about her. For Queen Anne was very wicked; oh, very wicked, indeed!" ”

“ It was to Henry the Second MacMurrough went, and he sent Strongbow, and they stopped in Ireland ever since. But who knows but another race might be worse, such as the Spaniards that were scattered along the whole coast of Connacht at the time of the Armada. And the laws are good enough. I heard it said the English will be dug out of their graves one day for the sake of their law. As to Dervorgilla, she was not brought away by force, she went to MacMurrough herself. For there are men in the world that have a coaxing way, and sometimes women are weak. ”

“ It is likely there will be a war at the end of the two thousand, that was always foretold. And I hear the English are making ships that will dive the same as diving ducks under the water. But as to the Irish Americans, they would sweep the entire world; and England is afraid of America, it being a neighbour. ”

“ There is many a man without learning will get the better of a college-bred man, and will have better words too. ”

“ So then the Goban went out to three houses, and in each of them he left ten pounds of his thirty pounds, and he told the people in every house what they had to do, and that when he would strike the table with his hat three times they would bring out the money. So then he asked the Scotch rogue into the first house, and ordered every sort of food and drink, ten pounds worth in all. ”

“ "Queen Victoria was loyal and true to the Pope; that is what I was told, and so is Edward the Seventh loyal and true, but he has got something contrary in his body. ”

“ But O'Connell's voice you would hear a mile off, and it sounded as if it was coming through honey,"
THE TITHE WAR "And the Tithes, the tenth of the land that St. Patrick and his Bishops had settled for their own use, it was to Protestants it was given. And there would have been a revolution out of that, but it was done away with, and it is the landlord has to pay it now. The Pope has a great power that is beyond all. There is one day and one minute in the year he has that power if it pleases him to use it. ”

“ WHAT THE OLD WOMEN SAW
"The greatest thing I ever saw was O'Connell driving through Gort, very plain, and an oiled cap on him, and having only one horse; and there was no house in Gort without his picture in it." "O'Connell rode up Crow Lane and to Church Street on a single horse, and he stopped there and took a view of Gort." "I saw O'Connell after he left Gort going on the road to Kinvara, and seven horses in the coach—they could not get in the eighth. He stopped, and he was talking to Hickman that was with me. Shiel was in the coach along with him." ”