Anglo-Irish

“ The peculiar manner in which Ireland has been conquered, peopled, and managed, renders questions regarding this country most intricate and difficult. There is seldom a single interest to be traced which is not crossed by numerous side winds, which render the development of political questions crooked and complicated. The Roman Catholic interest, the Protestant interest, the old Irish interest, the Anglo-Irish interest, the interest of the English ascendancy, the claims of the Presbyterians as contrasted with the National Church, are constantly crossing and recrossing. ”

“ I now come to the case of the misunderstood, and shall from henceforth be concerned with the immeasurably greater responsibility of the Irish people themselves for their own welfare. The most characteristic, and by far the most hopeful feature of the change in the Anglo-Irish situation which took place in the last decade of the nineteenth century, and upon the meaning of which I dwelt in the preceding chapter, is the growing sense amongst us that the English misunderstanding of Ireland is of far less importance, and perhaps less inexcusable, than our own misunderstanding of ourselves. ”

“ The purpose of our Society is not to attribute all our splendid traits and achievements alone to the Irish element in our composition. Unlike our Anglomaniac brethren, who contend that everything great and good must be Anglo-Saxon, we merely claim credit for a just share in the upbuilding of the nation. ”

“ For hundreds of years after the Invasion, people continued to come from England to live in Ireland both Anglo-Norman and Anglo-Saxon. After settling down they became good friends with the native Irish, intermarried with them, learned to speak and read the Irish language, and quite fell in with the customs and modes of the country, so that it was said of them that they became "more Irish than the Irish themselves." A large proportion of the present inhabitants of Ireland are of this race, mixed up however by intermarriage, with the older Milesian stock. ”

“ This custom, which is as old as our race in Ireland, is remembered in our present-day speech, whether Irish or Anglo-Irish; for the man who courageously and successfully defends any cause or any position, either by actual fighting or by speeches or written articles, is 'the man in the gap.' Of the old Irish chiefs Thomas Davis writes ”

“ The Anglo-Irish, who formed the majority of the Supreme Council, connected by blood and language with England, had entered into the war, purely as one of religious liberty. Nationally, they had, apart from the civil disabilities imposed on religious grounds, no antipathy, no interest, hostile to the general body of English loyalists, represented in Ireland by the King's lieutenant, Ormond. On his side, that nobleman gave all his thoughts to, and governed all his actions by the exigencies of the royal cause, throughout the three Kingdoms. ”

“ While Anglo-Saxon statesmen may quibble in congress and Anglo-Saxon schoolmen criticise in college, “Like lions leaping at a fold when mad with hunger’s pang,” you will find in the forefront, disdaining quibble and laughing at criticism, the hot tide of valor and chivalry which, proud to be American, is not ashamed to be called Irish. ”

“ A century later the grudge between the settlers and the natives was still bitter, but they had become so closely assimilated that it was hard for a stranger to distinguish them. The one were as turbulent, clannish, fierce, and barbarous as the other. Only on the east coast round Dublin, in the district that was afterwards known as the English 'Pale,' did the Anglo-Irish dwell in a settled and civilized manner of life, and obey the King of England's mandates. The larger part of the island had to be reconquered four centuries after. ”

“ For more than two centuries thereafter, owing to the fact that the native Irish, because they were Catholics, were debarred by law from an education, the writing of English remained almost exclusively in the hands of members or descendants of the Anglo-Irish colony, who, with scarcely an exception, were Protestants and had as their principal Irish seat of learning the then essentially Protestant institution, Trinity College, Dublin. ”

“ Their mood is unconquerable, and while often overcome it has emerged again and again in Irish history, and it has perhaps more adherents today than at any period since the Act of Union, and this has been helped on by the incarnation of the Gaelic spirit in the modern Anglo-Irish literature, and a host of brilliant poets, dramatists and prose writers who have won international recognition, and have increased the dignity of spirit and the self-respect of the followers of this tradition. They assert that the Union kills the soul of the people ”

“ During the centuries of English occupation several great Anglo-Irish families had arisen, and, fattening upon their spoils, gradually came to occupy positions more powerful than the representatives of the king. The heads of the Desmonds, the Geraldines, the De Burghs, and {31} others, resented the intrusion of English warriors sent to Dublin to refill their treasure chests. They wished to rule Ireland, and declined to bow the knee to impecunious adventurers invested with royal powers by the King of England. ”

“ He is described as ‘a good man and just, who hanged even his own kinsfolk for theft,’ and ‘well castigated the Irish.’ He was the foremost Irish noble of his time, and the spokesman of the Anglo-Irish party which aspired to practical independence. ”

“ The same year, 1342, a new ordinance came from England, prohibiting the public employment of men born or married, or possessing estates in Ireland, and declaring that all offices of state should be filled in that country by "fit Englishmen, having lands, tenements, and benefices in England." To this sweeping proscription the Anglo-Irish, as well townsmen as nobles, resolved to offer every resistance, and by the convocation of the Earls of Desmond, Ormond, and Kildare, they agreed to meet for that purpose at Kilkenny. ”

“ Mrs. Stopford Green, in her book, “The Making and Undoing of Ireland,” says: “There is no more pious duty to all of Irish birth than to help in recovering from centuries of obloquy the men of noble birth, Irish and Anglo-Irish, who built up the civilization that once adorned their country.
“It is by the study of this history alone that Irishmen will find a just pride restored and their courage assured. In this effort, however, Irishmen are confronted with a singular difficulty.
JOHN O’SULLIVAN, ESQ.,
Of New York City. ”

“ There religious and racial hostility to the English was fusing discordant Irish septs into an Irish nation, and the appearance of a Spanish expedition was the signal for something like a national revolt. England had not been rich enough in men or money to give Ireland a really efficient government, but the extent of the danger in 1598-1602 stimulated an effort which resulted in the first real conquest of Ireland; and Englishmen set themselves to do the same work, with about the same amount of benevolence, for the Irish that the Normans had done for the Anglo-Saxons. ”

“ It is certain that in the beginnings of Irish history we find the tradition of the tribal group, just as we find it in the history of the Hebrews, the Greeks, the 291Romans, the Germans, and their offshoots the Anglo-Saxons. It is also certain that Ireland, not having been overrun and shaken up by any of the great migrations after the migration of the Celts, and not having been steam-rolled by the levelling weight of Roman imperialism, preserved a great deal of the old tradition. ”

“ Now the trouble with most of us Irish Americans—I am Irish in the first degree, having been born in Ireland while most of you are probably only second-class Irish or even third or fourth—is that when we are serious and in deep earnest we are taken to be play acting, and when we are jocose or humorous and contributing to the “gaiety of nations” we are taken to be most in earnest. It is hard for an Anglo-Saxon to understand an Irish Celt. ”

“ CHAPTER V. THE CHRISTIAN IRISH AND THE PAGAN DANES. For several centuries the Irish continued in the happy state described in the last chapter. While the whole European Continent was convulsed by the irruptions of the Germanic tribes, and of the Huns, more savage still, the island was at peace, opened her schools to the youth of all countries—to Anglo- Saxons chiefly—and spread her name abroad as the happy and holy isle, the dwelling of the saints, the land of prodigies, the most blessed spot on the earth. ”

“ It should not be necessary to say (except that Irish-American susceptibilities are sometimes extraordinarily sensitive) that I share to the full that admiration which all people feel for the best traits in the Irish character; but, in spite of individual exceptions, I urge that it is not in the nature of the race to become good and helpful [255] citizens according to Anglo-Saxon ideals, and that, as far as those qualities are concerned which have made the greatness of the United States, the contribution from the Irish element has been inconsiderable. ”

“ Common all over Munster.
The people have a gentle laudable habit of mixing up sacred names and pious phrases with their ordinary conversation, in a purely reverential spirit. This is one of the many peculiarities of Anglo-Irish {195}speech derived from the Irish language: for pious expressions pervaded Irish to its very heart, of which the people lost a large part when they ceased to speak the language. Yet it continues very prevalent among our English-speaking people; and nearly all the expressions they use are direct translations from Irish. ”

“ One could even question whether, deprived of the Irish Celt element, for leaven, for chiefs, for counsellors, in letters, and in assemblies, the heavy Anglo-Saxon race could ever have founded its flourishing colonies. These prosper, one may say, in direct proportion to the number of Irish that come to them, even as the mother island slowly decays [299] in direct proportion to the number of her children that are driven from her shores. ”

“ I have often hoped that the Ireland of the future will not be unduly centralised, and that full scope will be given to the highest possible development of social life and art and education in every part of the country.
The Normans so-called, when they came to Ireland, had ceased to be Northmen. The contemporary Anglo-Saxon, Welsh and Irish chronicles call them by the same name, Franks. Franks they were in language, customs and institutions. ”

“ This will apply to the early Irish and English settlers of America. It would be a very uncertain belief to suppose that the thousands of Irish who settled in America in colonial days to escape the lauded Anglo-Saxon civilization, would tamely submit to a continuance of it in this broad land of liberty and opportunities. ”

“ If I am still honored by your Society, I will be glad to read it at a future meeting, with a view to showing not only the influence of this immigration on the history of the United States, but the fact that these immigrants considered themselves Irish without any qualifying clauses, and were so regarded in America, England and Ireland.
Modern political exigencies are playing sad havoc with ethnology. If an Irishman becomes distinguished at home or abroad, in field, forum, market or shop, he is immediately made an Anglo-Saxon ”

“ If they were seldom obeyed, the divisions in the enemies' camps prevented any chance of their being overthrown. Thus the Irish went on living a rude, turbulent life of perpetual purposeless war and bloodshed. Ireland was a wilder, larger, more remote Welsh march, and the resemblance was heightened by the fact that many of the Anglo-Norman principalities were in the hands of great English or marcher families, and that the Irish foot-soldier played only a less important part than the Welsh archer and pikeman among the light-armed soldiers of the English crown. ”

“ During the first sixty years of the century on which we are next to enter, we shall find the English interest in Ireland controlled by the house of Lancaster; in the succeeding twenty-five years the partizans of the house of York are in the ascendant; until at length, after the victory of Bosworth field (A.D. 1485) , the wars of the roses are terminated by the coronation of the Earl of Richmond as Henry VII., and his politic marriage with the Princess Elizabeth—the representative of the Yorkist dynasty. It will be seen how these rival houses had their respective factions among the Anglo-Irish ”

“ The flowing verses of the Anglo-Norman were impossible for men who delighted in the trammels of the native prosody; and in the heyday of French influence, the patrons of letters in Ireland probably insisted on hearing the foreign compositions in their original dress, as these nobles were doubtless sufficiently versed in Norman-French to be able to appreciate them. But a still more potent factor was the conservatism of the hereditary Irish poet families. A close corporation, they appear to have resented every innovation, and were content to continue the tradition of their ancestors. ”

“ If one could run all races other than the “Anglo-Saxon” out of the United States it would not be worth England’s while to form an alliance with what remained, and she would treat them in that kindly, patronizing, contemptuous way that she does the ultra-loyal Canadians. 101It needs no learned historian to show us the splendid record of the Irish in America, nor how enduringly they have stamped their highest and noblest racial impulses on every page of American history. ”