Clan na Gael

“ Like all proceedings from which the general public are shut out, a Clan-na-Gael assembly becomes interesting in proportion to the amount of secrecy by which it is attended. Not indeed that a Clan-na-Gael Convention is anything very exciting or terrible after all. It possesses none of the weird features of that scene in which our three old friends of Macbeth figure. It is on the contrary very Irish—very Irish indeed. But what it is and what it is not can best be demonstrated by some few details by way of description ”

“ From him in the secrecy of conversation, undisturbed by the [180] presence of a warder or fellow-prisoner, I learnt that the Land League had placed the Fenian or National cause in a far stronger position than ever in Ireland. Could the Clan-na-Gael only see the national spirit which had been developed all over Ireland, they would never oppose it, he believed. In counties where the Revolutionary organisation had been dead for years, continued he, there was now material for work, and men ready to go as far as any one. All these men wanted was organisation and leaders. ”

“ There are many millions of Irish in America and there is one organization, the Clan-na-Gael, known as the Physical Force Element. For nearly half a century this organization has been crying and preaching that "England's difficulty was Ireland's opportunity." They have blown up a few barns and woodsheds in the rear of some lord's residence, managed to get some good patriotic Irishmen behind the bars of English prisons for life, and tried to turn the course of the Gulf Stream in order to frighten or freeze England. ”

“ Lord Salisbury and Chamberlain must have known all about the stand the leaders of the Clan-na-Gael had taken and the reasons for it, for both said in Parliament, "there was nothing to fear from the Irish in America." Clansmen should look out, for there is something wrong about their leaders. Had the Irish destroyed that camp, it would have told England, in unmistakable terms, that so long as there are Irish in America, so long will it be impossible for her to recruit horses, mules and men on our soil. ”

“ Parnell obtained the countenance and support of the Clan-na-Gael, a revolutionary organization of the American-Irish, and the Land League began to absorb all the more violent spirits in Ireland, though the Fenian brotherhood still held officially aloof from it. ”

“ Battle-banners of the Gael, that in Kieran’s plain of crosses
Now their final hosting keep.
And in Clonmacnois they laid the men of Teffia,
And right many a lord of Breagh;
Deep the sod above Clan Creidè and Clan Connall,
Kind in hall and fierce in fray.
Many and many a son of Conn the Hundred-Fighter
In the red earth lies at rest;
Many a blue eye of Clan Colman the turf covers,
Many a swan-white breast.
[48]
SONG OF FINN IN
PRAISE OF MAY [5] From the Irish.
May Day! delightful day!
Bright colours play the vales along. ”

“ He asked with indignation if they supposed that he could be such a villain. They repeated the offer to him on the scaffold, but he died firm to his notion of fidelity. His life was nothing to that of his master, he said. The brother of this Macnaughton was known to Garth, and was one of the Gael who always carried a weapon about him to his dying day. [214]
Under the subordinate head of Siol O’Cain, other two clans are included in the Maormordom of Moray, viz., clan Roich or Munro, and clan Gillemhaol or Macmillan. ”

“ England is still to-day the land of the Saxons to the Gael, and its inhabitants are the "Sassenachs"; the Irishman persists in disregarding the coming of the Angles. We may talk of the extinction of the Gaelic tongue, but in his poetry, as in every place-name of stream or hill or townland all over the country, it is about us still. In the poetry we are back in Gaelic Ireland; the old tribal distinctions, the old clan names, meet us on every page. What does the modern man know of Leth Cuinn or Leth Mogha, the ancient divisions of the North and South, or of the stories which gave them birth? ”

“ Clarke, travelling agent for Clan-na-Gael in Europe and ally of Egan, 190. O’Donovan Rossa, arrival of, and sketch of, 102; further details regarding, and his connection with Clan-na-Gael, 121; advocates “Skirmishing Fund,” 130, 135; Devoy on difficulties regarding, 156; expelled from Clan-na-Gael, 209; work of his agents in England, 237; controversy with Egan regarding the £20,000, 264. O’Kelly, J. J., member of executive of Irish Confederation, 104; obtains seat in Parliament by misappropriation of Clan-na-Gael funds, 153 ”

“ So complete is the fusion that, when by ancient custom this or that portion of the community remains liable to pay tributes or taxes in virtue of their being the successor of some old conquered tribe, our old historians or archivists are careful again and again to say that the people themselves are free and that these imposts are attached only to the lands on which they dwell.
I think that the popular notion of a Gaelic clan is derived from Scottish writers like Thomas Campbell and Sir Walter Scott. "False wizard, avaunt! I have marshalled my clan. ”

“ It is possible, however, from these genealogies, and from other indications, to distribute the clans in certain groups, as having apparently a closer connection with each other, and these groups we hold in the main to represent the great tribes into which the Gaelic population was divided before they became broken up into clans. The two great tribes which possessed the greater part of the Highlands were the Gallgaidheal or Gael in the west, who had been under the power of the Norwegians, and the great tribe of the Moravians, or Men of Moray, in the Central and Eastern Highlands. ”

“ When the conflict of these laws in regulating succession, and the frequent insurrections of the Gaelic population, with the confiscations which followed upon them, led to the breaking up of the Gaelic tribes, and to the severance of those ties which bound the septs or clans which had been developed within the tribe to each other, the pedigree would cease to be of value as between clan and clan. ”

“ I consider it next to impossible for any Gaelic pedigree to have been materially tampered with from the introduction of the art of writing, because tribal jealousies alone would have prevented it, and because each stem of the four races was connected at some point with every other stem, the whole clan system being inextricably intertwined, and it was necessary for all the various tribal genealogies to agree, in order that each branch, sub-branch, and family might fit, each in its own place. ”

“ While in this disorganised condition in Gaul, they were overrun by tribes of the Nordic race, who established themselves as a conquering nobility, superimposing upon the rudimentary political organisation of the Celts a loose military organisation of clans; each clan was led by a popular warrior who attached to himself by his personal qualities as large as possible a number of clients or clansmen, acquiring rights over their land and property, in return for the patronage and protection he offered them. ”

“ Up to the time of the Union the Gaelic language had preserved intact, in spite of Penal Laws and the instruments of repression, all that was most vital in the national spirit. Tales of warriors and heroes, of the long wars of the Gael with the stranger, the sighs of love and the aspirations of devotion, satire and encomium, all the literature and song of a people were enshrined in the native tongue. ”

“ I am thus unlike the poor people round me, who are oppressed and destroyed, without knowing why and wherefore the land of their fathers, so dear to their hearts, is made a hunting-field for the dissipated and the idle of the south country, while they are driven from starvation to exile—we, the Gael, who since the Union have led the van of Britain's bloodiest battles. But I know that our enthusiasm, our traditions, and our ties of clanship seem mere trash and absurdity to such as you, Sir Horace—a cold-blooded conventionalist and man of the world. ”

“ Chiefly through the great labours of Zeuss, the distinguished Bavarian, the Gael is now, as already remarked, universally admitted to belong to the Aryan family. No student of the science of language will now contend that he has any special affinity to the Semitic race. The Keltae of the Greek, the Galli of the Roman, and the Gàidheil of Scotland and Ireland, are the same people. In the east and in the west Galatia, or in Gaelic [Gaidhealtachd, contracted] and pronounced Gaeltachd, is the Celtica, or land of the Celts or Gaels. ”

“ English thought and culture also reach the people through the hundreds of University-bred ministers who preach Gaelic in Highland pulpits.
These important changes in the Celtic world are not effected without many venerable regrets being uttered by sentimentalists both in Ireland and Scotland. If we look across the channel we find that the Irish Gael indulges in the same unpractical wail over an irrevocable past, that we find so prevalent with his brother of Albin. The cry of the sentimentalist there is even more intense, more persistent. ”

“ As surnames were not generally used either in Ireland or anywhere else, till after the tenth century, the great families are distinguishable at first, only by their tribe or clan names. Thus at the north we have the Hy-Nial race; in the south the Eugenian race, so called from Nial and Eoghan, their mutual ancestors.
We have already compared the shape of Erin to a shield, in which the four Provinces represented the four quarters. Some shields have also bosses or centre-pieces, and the federal province of MEATH was the boss of the old Irish shield. ”

“ The third is that a Gaelic King has given us the line of monarchs which we have still represented in the present sovereign of the British Empire. To these another fact might be added—that the earliest modern literature is to be found among the Scoto-Irish Gael. After the decadence of Greece and Rome the Celts were the first of the European tribes to cultivate letters. While the Germans and the Northmen were yet roving heathen tribes the Gael in Ireland and in Scotland had their seminaries of learning, where literature was loved and cherished. ”

“ The conflict [Pg 293] over Irish Home Rule has now culminated in a treaty accepted by the nation as a whole and acquiesced in by the most violent amongst its opponents.
But fiercer political passions were stirred up by the struggle between parties over Ireland than by any political question of modern times. The causes underlying the conflict dealt with two of the most powerful motives which make the human heart throb—race and religion. There was the old feud between Saxon and Gael extending over at least seven centuries. ”

“ This innovation on their ancient system, and confiscation of their lands, was stoutly resisted by the Scottish Gael. In Somerled, lord of the Isles, and ancestor of the Macdonalds, they found a powerful leader, and Somerled found Irish allies always ready to assist him, in a cause which appealed to all their national prejudices. In the year 1134, he led a strong force of Irish and Islesmen to the assistance of the Gaelic insurgents, but was defeated and slain, near Renfrew, by the royal troops, under the command of the Steward of Scotland. ”

“ If this is the case, and if it is true that every Gael belonging to the Free Clans of Ireland could trace his pedigree with accuracy back to the fourth, third, or even second century, it affords a strong support to Irish history, and in my opinion considerably heightens the credibility of our early annals, and renders the probability that Finn mac Cool and the Red Branch heroes were real flesh and blood, enormously greater than before. ”

“ There still exists in England, Wales, and Ireland, a distinct race, possessed of some of the mental characteristics anciently attributed to the Gaels. In mental character the Gaels are excitable, and alternately lively and melancholy. The Gael is also by temperament an excellent soldier, but he needs to be commanded by a race possessed of moral determination, tempered by judgment and foresight. Another characteristic of the Gaelic race is sociability. ”

“ They exempted the men of no property, but marked out all others for total ruin; and had there been no other principle at issue than the individual merits of William and James, it is hard to tell what their effect on the artisan and laboring classes might have been. But the clan system was not yet entirely eradicated from the minds of the people. Most of the private soldiery in the Irish army were men attached to their leaders by all the memories and ties which that system engenders, and the wrongs of those leaders were resented as their own individual wrongs. ”

“ That the population of Strathnaver remained Gaelic we have the distinct authority of the Sagas, for they inform us that the Dölum, or glens, were inhabited by the ‘Gaddgedli,’ a word plainly signifying some tribe of the Gael, as in the latter syllable we recognise the word Gaedil or Gael, which at all events shews that the population of that portion was not Norse. ”

“ Thus the eastern shore of Britain became a purely Celtic land; but in the districts along the shore of the Irish Sea, where the Gael bore rule, the blood of the earlier race remained, and the population was largely non-Celtic. There are to this day regions where the survival of the ancient inhabitants can be traced by the preponderance of short stature and dark hair among the inhabitants. Many such are to be found both in South Wales and in the Highlands of Scotland. The Gael, therefore, were of much less pure blood than the later-coming Britons. ”

“ But though he could thus, in a military sense, reward or punish the clan, he could not diminish in the least the property of the clan itself;”—he was a chief, not a proprietor, and had “no more right to expel from their homes the inhabitants of his county, than a king to expel from his country the inhabitants of his kingdom.” “Now, the Gaelic tenant,” continues the Frenchman, “has never been conquered ”