History of Ireland

“ Our people by their toil of mind and muscle have made other lands rich in manufacture and commerce. Ireland remains poor.
That is why there is not and cannot be a history of Ireland. It is never in Ireland that our history has been made. The threads of our story are ours, spun at home, but they are woven into splendid fabrics elsewhere, not in Ireland. But the history of the Irish people will be a great work when it is written. ”

“ From 1775 the whole history of Ireland was to change completely, and for one brief period we see something like an Irish nation. For the first time in her history England was to be confronted with a united Ireland, strong in her determination to win her just rights, and carried along on a wave of patriotic enthusiasm such as seldom happens twice in a nation's life. ”

“ The Irish are, unfortunately, not so; and yet, what is English or Scottish history to compare with Irish? Ireland was a land of saints and scholars when Britons were painted savages. Wise and noble laws, based upon the spirit of Christianity, were administered in Erin, and valuable books were written ere the Britons were as far advanced in civilization as the Blackfeet Indians. In morals and intellect, in Christianity and civilization, in arms, art, and science, Ireland shone like a star among the nations when darkness enshrouded the world. ”

“ We are true to our colour, "the green," and true to our watchword, "Ireland for the Irish." We want to win Ireland and keep it. If we win it, we will not lose it nor give it away to a bribing, a bullying, or a flattering minister. But, to be able to keep it, and use it, and govern it, the men of Ireland must know what it is, what it was, and what it can be made. They must study her history, perfectly know her present state, physical and moral—and train themselves up by science, poetry, music, industry, skill, and by all the studies and accomplishments of peace and war. ”

“ You will not find anywhere in Europe during that age any approach towards the definite and concrete sense of nationality—of country and people in one—which is the common expression of the Irish mind in that age. Beginning with the sixth century chronicle, every Irish history is a history of Ireland—there is not one history of a tribal territory or of any grouping of tribal territories. Every Irish law-book is a book of the laws of Ireland—there are no territorial laws and no provincial laws. The whole literature is pervaded by the notion of one country common to all Irishmen. ”

“ None of them are wholly satisfactory as histories of England are, or histories of America. No one can write a history of Ireland which will set forth intelligently Ireland's place in the world. We wait for the coming of some larger-minded man who will write the history, not of Ireland, but of the Irish. In one respect it is not with us as it is with other nations. ”

“ Ireland alone among all western nations knows her own past, from the very dawn of history and before the romance of Romulus began, down to the present day, in the tongue of her own island people and in the light of her own native mind. Early Irish history is not the record of the clan-strivings of a petty and remote population, far from the centre of civilization. ”

“ The motives which form the distinctive characteristics of the Irish people are, and always have been, enthusiastic devotion to their religious convictions, unflinching loyalty to the principle of nationality, and a passionate attachment to the soil of their fatherland. Is not the history of England's rule in Ireland a heart-breaking record of systematic oppression upon each and all of these inherent principles of Irish character? ”

“ The States obtained a glorious freedom—a freedom which, on the whole, they have used wisely and well; and even their bitterest enemies cannot deny that they have formed a powerful nation—a nation which may yet rule the destinies of the world. Let us endeavour now to estimate in some degree the influence of Irish emigration on American society. If the history of Ireland were written in detail up to the present day, fully one-fourth the detail should comprise a history of the Irish in America. ”

“ In more senses than one Irish folk-lore is Irish history. At least the traditions that have been handed down from one generation to another contain not only the sometimes authentic record of events, but a revelation of the Milesian temperament, with its mirth and its melancholy, its exuberant fancy and its passion. So in these weird tales there is plenty of history, and plenty of poetry, to one who will listen to it; but the high and tragic story of Ireland has been cherished mainly in the sorrowful traditions of a defeated race, and the legends have not yet been wrought into undying verse. ”

“ And how excellent that history was, how full of humanity and the rich wine of life, the stories of Fergus and Concobar and Cuculain, of Find and Ossin and Gael, of Meave and Deirdré and Credé bear sufficient witness. The tide of Irish life to which they belong, and which brought them forth, flowed on without break to a time so recent that their whole tradition has come down to us, practically at first hand, from the heralds and bards themselves. Ireland is, therefore, our one doorway to the history of northern Europe through the long era of pagan times. ”

“ It is very certain that Ireland of all countries, if left to itself, would never of its own will allow history to lie in a backwater among the flotsam of the current. History was the early study of the Irish, the inspiration of their poets and writers. Every tribesman of old knew, not only the great deeds and the famous places of his own clan, but of the whole of Ireland. In the lowliest cabin the songs of Irish poets lived on for hundreds of years, and dying fathers left to sons as their chief inheritance the story of their race. ”

“ There can be no mention of the five hundred years of Irishmen’s fame in Europe as classical scholars, philosophers, saints, merchants, or travellers. The centuries of Ireland’s history as a free and independent country are blotted out, and he may catch no glimpse of his people save in the various phases of their material subjugation. During his entire course he can turn [47] no wandering eye on an Ireland that had any art, literature, or industry of its own—a place where anything may have happened on its own account, or where any interest may lie detached from an English book of chronology. ”

“ The Irish people, who are contemptuously, but not altogether unjustly, accused of being incuriosi suorum, and the English people, who are indifferent to whatever is merely Irish, have let the events of this era fall into obscurity, but some of the transactions which are now to be detailed were powerful and permanent factors in the political history of Ireland as it is, and as it is to be. ”

“ The state of Ireland—not the present state merely, but the habitual state—is hitherto the most unqualified instance of signal failure which the practical genius of the English people has exhibited. We have had the Irish all to ourselves for five hundred years. No one has shared with us the privilege of governing them, nor the responsibilities consequent on that privilege. No one has exercised the smallest authority over them save by our permission. ”

“ Indeed, as truth is often stranger than fiction, so Irish history is more romantic than romance. How Queen Scota unfurled the Sacred Banner. How Brian and Malachy contended for empire. How the "Pirate of the North" scourged the Irish coast. The glories of Tara and the piety of Columba. The cowardice of James and the courage of Sarsfield. How Dathi, the fearless, sounded the Irish war-cry in far Alpine passes, and how the Geraldine forayed Leinster. The deeds of O'Neil and O'Donnell. The march of Cromwell, the destroying angel. Ireland's sun sinking in dim eclipse. ”

“ Irish history is not to be the story of Ireland, but of the “United Kingdom.” It is to travel with the fortunes of England step by step. An exact care conducts the student through the centuries. All dates are ruled by English text-books, never by periods of change in Ireland. According to the step by step theory, if the Irish student must begin his story of Ireland with William’s Conquest of England, he must pause at the end of the English Wars of the Roses. ”

“ While their kinsmen in Ireland were declared incapable of filling the humblest public employments, or of exercising the commonest franchise, they met British ambassadors abroad as equals, and checked or countermined the imperial policy of Great Britain. It was impossible that such a contrast of situations should not attract the attention of all thinking men! It was impossible that such reputations should shine before all Europe without reacting powerfully on the fallen fortunes of Ireland! ”

“ From the beginning of the fourteenth century English power in Ireland was on the decline. The Irish princes, driven to desperation by the exactions and cruelties of the officials, adopted generally a more hostile attitude, while the great Norman nobles, who had obtained grants of land in various parts of Ireland, began to intermarry with the Irish, adopted their language, their laws, their dress, and their customs, and for all practical purposes renounced their allegiance to the sovereign of England. ”

“ CHAPTER I. HOW THE ANCIENT IRISH PEOPLE WERE GOVERNED BY THEIR KINGS AND CHIEFS.
There were in Ireland, from times beyond the reach of history, kings, who were of various grades according to the extent of the country or district they ruled over. The highest of all was the king of Ireland, who lived in the royal palace at Tara. He was called the Ard-ri [ard-ree] , i.e., ‘High king’ or Over-king, because he claimed authority over all the others. There was also a king over each of the five provinces—Leinster, Munster, Connaught, Ulster, and Meath—who were subject to the Ard-ri. ”

“ There is really no authentic history of Ireland before the introduction of Christianity into the country, but there are some genuine traditions which appear based upon truth, because they accord with and explain the peculiar customs which were found to prevail in the island at the time of the English invasion. ”

“ It may startle some of our readers to find any mention of Irish history "before the Flood," but we think the burden of proof, to use a logical term, lies rather with those who doubt the possibility, than with those who accept as tradition, and as possibly true, the statements which have been transmitted for centuries by careful hands. There can be no doubt that a high degree of cultivation, and considerable advancement in science, had been attained by the more immediate descendants of our first parents. Navigation and commerce existed, and Ireland may have been colonized. ”

“ In Ireland our history begins with the most ancient of any in a mythical era when earth mingled with heaven. The gods departed, the half-gods also, hero and saint after that, and we have dwindled down to a petty peasant nationality, rural and urban life alike mean in their externals. ”

“ In fact, its origin was prehistoric, and the Pentarchy is the oldest certain fact in the political history of Ireland. That it is a certain fact, nobody who is acquainted with Irish literature and tradition will be disposed to question. To this day the word cuigeadh, "a fifth," is in general use among speakers of Irish as the term to denote each of the principal sub-divisions of the country; and cuig cuigidh na hEireann, "the Five Fifths of Ireland," is an expression familiar to all who speak the Irish language. ”

“ It is true that towards the end of the period we may see the faint beginnings of a new national spirit, a spirit raised not as in other countries, by common traditions and a common history, but one aroused by the unwise policy of England. But the beginning was faint and could come to nothing until a great leader appeared and until England's difficulties made Ireland's opportunity. ”

“ In a series of social studies I have endeavoured to discuss, not the whole of Irish history, but definite matters of trade, social life, and education. I have gathered a body of facts which indicate that Ireland had considerable manufactures; that her foreign commerce can be traced throughout Europe; that there was an orderly society, even a wealthy one; that Irish travellers were known at Rome and in the Levant; that there was an Anglo-Irish culture by no means contemptible, in touch with Continental learning ”

“ 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. ”

“ From time immemorial two adverse parties have always existed among the Catholics of Ireland. The first are called the 'old Irish.' They are most numerous in Ulster, where they seem to have their head-quarters; for even the Earl of Tyrone placed himself at their head, and maintained a protracted war against Elizabeth. The second may be called the 'old English,'—a race introduced into Ireland in the reign of Henry II., the fifth king in succession from William the Conqueror; so called to distinguish them from the 'new English,' who have come into the kingdom along with the modern heresy. ”