Irishman

“ It is under that ensign alone, of all in the world, that an Irishman stands beneath the cross of the Royal saint of Ireland, and each patriotic effort made by a son of Erin adds another leaf to the wreath of renown which, for so many centuries, has made the piety and gallantry of the race a household word among the nations. ”

“ Were Ireland free to-morrow, we would continue our lives as Americans. Our numbers and interests are so great and so deep here that, paraphrasing the words of your distinguished national leader, we can't spare a single Irish-American. But, nevertheless, we leave others to greet you as a cosmopolitan, as a poet, as a novelist, as a historian; and we speak the welcome of the heart, because we Irish-Americans are proud of you as an Irishman. We know how hard it is for one living under the British Crown to be at once an Irish patriot and a successful man of letters. ”

“ I am under no delusion that the Irishman is soft-headed and sentimental, or even illogical and inconsequent. Nine times out of ten, the Irishman is not only more clear-headed, but even more cool-headed than the Englishman. ”

“ The Irish, however, present an exception to this rule. I have scarce ever met a thorough-paced Irishman whose oddities totally deserted him; the humorous idiom of his language, and the rich flavour of his dialect, are intrinsic, and adhere as steadily to his tongue as fancy does to his brain, and eccentricity to his actions.
An Irishman is toujours an Irishman, and wheresoever he “puts up” seldom fails to find one inveterate enemy—“himself.” ”

“ Here we recognize the Irishman as Nature has made him,—docile, confiding, and single-hearted; slow to anger, and ever ready to control his passions!”
“That's exactly his portrait, Father!” said I, enthusiastically. “Without a double of any kind,—a creature that does not know a wile or a stratagem!”
The priest seemed so captivated by my patriotism and my generous warmth that he sat down beside me, and we continued to make Ireland still our theme, each vying with the other who could say most in praise of that country. ”

“ JONATHAN SWIFT. [Pg 320]
THE IRISHMAN AND THE LADY.
There was a lady lived at Leith, A lady very stylish, man; And yet, in spite of all her teeth, She fell in love with an Irishman— A nasty, ugly Irishman, A wild, tremendous Irishman, A tearing, swearing, thumping, bumping, ranting, roaring Irishman.
His face was no ways beautiful, For with small-pox 't was scarred across; And the shoulders of the ugly dog Were almost double a yard across. Oh, the lump of an Irishman, The whiskey-devouring Irishman, The great he-rogue with his wonderful brogue— the fighting, rioting Irishman. ”

“ In this humdrum commercial age——"
"I am an Irishman," said I, "and in Ireland we are always humdrum, but we are never commercial, for the reason that we have not the tools."
"Aye," said he, "you must be a great people. Strangely enough, you are the first Irishman I have ever seen, although I have seen many blackamoors. However, I am edified to find you a gentleman of great learning and experience. ”

“ I am not an Irishman, yet I can feel for you. I hope there are none among you who will read this address with prejudice or levity, because it is made by an Englishman, indeed, I believe there are not. The Irish are a brave nation. They have a heart of liberty in their breasts, but they are much mistaken if they fancy that a stranger cannot have as warm a one. Those are my brothers and my countrymen, who are unfortunate. I should like to know what there is in a man being an Englishman, a Spaniard, or a Frenchman, that makes him worse or better than he really is. ”

“ Irishman, and gifted with the characteristics of his country—a romantic genius, united with feelings the most tremulous, and tender, and impassioned. Many years have since passed away, and over and over again have the wild flowers sprung up, and bloomed, and withered over his narrow resting place, no unmeet emblem of
“The poor inhabitant below!” ”

“ The Irish are more ardent lovers, the English better husbands. The Irishman is more exhilarating in society, the Englishman’s comforts are more domestic. One is formed to give more delight, the other more tranquil and rational happiness to life. ”

“ The Irishman brings with him, and always retains, his light-hearted, go-as-you-please and take-it-as-it-comes characteristics, no matter where he settles. More than all, the Irishman seldom makes trouble in any country but his own, and seems not only content, but quite willing, to accept the customs of his adopted country, even to the point of “running it” if opportunity offers. ”

“ The Irishman who can only handle his spade, wear his garments, talk his wild brogue, and bid his beads, has four or five hundred generations of ancestors behind him, and is as long descended, and from as old a stock, as the accomplished patrician scholar at Oxford and Berlin. The Irishman depends on them all, and on the present generation, for his culture. ”

“ Most of our serious experience has been with the Irish gentry, really English and Scotch, who through years have assumed the delightful mannerisms of the people with whom they have lived. We also shoot and hunt with the real Irishman and find him delightful and romantic. His wonderful lies and flattery please us, but we don't for a single instant take him seriously. The great mass of people here think that we ill-treat the Irish. ”

“ The light-heartedness of the Celt is another feature which strikes the least observant stranger.
An Irishman has been described as a man who confided his soul to the priest, and his body to the British Government, whilst he holds himself devoid of any vestige of responsibility for the care of either. ”

“ There is no nation in the world that leads so monotonous a life as the Irish, because their only occupation is the cultivation of the soil before them.... The Irishman in other countries, where he has a fair field for his talents in various occupations, is equal, if not superior, to most races.... ”

“ It is the opinion of Englishmen and Scotchmen who know not the Irish character thoroughly. The fact is, that in the attainment of an object, where a sad-faced Englishman would despair, an Irishman will, probably, laugh, drink, weep, and fight, during his progress to accomplish it. ”

“ Even your enemies admit that the world has never produced any people that exceeded the Irish in activity and strength. The Scottish philosopher has declared, and the French philosopher has confirmed it, that number one in the human race is, blessed be Heaven, the Irishman. ”

“ —This race and this country and this life produced me—he said.—I shall express myself as I am.—
—Try to be one of us—repeated Davin.—In heart you are an Irishman but your pride is too powerful.—
—My ancestors threw off their language and took another—Stephen said.—They allowed a handful of foreigners to subject them. ”

“ He worshipped God after a pure and rational fashion: the Irish were sunk in idolatry and superstition. He knew that great numbers of Irish had repeatedly fled before a small English force, and that the whole Irish population had been held down by a small English colony; and he very complacently inferred that he was naturally a being of a higher order than the Irishman: for it is thus that a dominant race always explains its ascendency and excuses its tyranny. That in vivacity, humour, and eloquence, the Irish stand high among the nations of the world is now universally acknowledged. ”

“ If you try to do anything else, the upshot will be your appearing somewhere in print as a damned Britisher for whom American ways are not good enough. The whole country is one vast sounding board, and it vibrates with perilous susceptibility in response to an English accent. Don't mention the word Ireland. Perhaps that is most important of all. You will hear lots of Americans—good men, too—damning the Irish. Listen to this, and say nothing, unless something amiable about the Irish occurs to you. Because here is a mysterious paradox. The America always damns the Irishman. ”

“ In describing the character of the Western and Southern Irishman nothing would be more unfair than to leave out of the estimate his curious faithfulness to some persons, and the tenderness with which he cherishes the traditions of the past. ”

“ There must be some sense in every popular [Pg 26] prejudice, even about foreigners. And the English people certainly have somehow got an impression and a tradition that the Irishman is genial, unreasonable, and sentimental. ”

“ an Irishman's heart is nothing but his imagination. ”

“ Next to the French, I believe the Irish the next in vicious actions. An Irishman appears to have more spirit than brains. There are only two situations in which an Irishman seems perfectly happy, viz. ”

“ Fionn went to seek his fortune, to match himself against all that might happen, and to carve a name for himself that will live while Time has an ear and knows an Irishman. ”

“ One had only to remember the history of Ireland to realise that many of the differences between the English and the Irish were no more than the differences between the hunter and the hunted, the persecutor and the persecuted. How could the Irish help having a lower standard of life than the English when their lives had been so disrupted and disturbed that it was difficult for them to have a standard of life at all? ”

“ The modern Irish, who in historical falsification certainly rival, if they do not excel, the Hindús, claim for their ancestry an exalted grade of culture. They found their pretensions upon illuminated manuscripts and similar works of high art; but it is far easier to account for these triumphs as the exceptional labours of students who wandered to the classic regions about the Mediterranean. If ancient Ireland ever was anything but savage, where, let us ask, are the ruins that show any sign of civilisation? ”

“ Those who love Ireland nobly desire for her the highest of human destinies. They would ransack the ages and accumulate wisdom to make Irish life seem as noble in men’s eyes as any the world has known. The better minds in every race, eliminating passion and prejudice, by the exercise of the imaginative reason have revealed to their countrymen ideals which they recognized were implicit in national character. It is such discoveries we have yet to make about ourselves to unite us to fulfill our destiny. ”

“ The characteristics which we deem essentially Irish are not distinctly Irish; they are merely more widely distributed among the Irish. Wit, humor, poesy, melancholy, loyalty to faith and fatherland, patience under trial and hardship, daring in adventure, valor in battle,—these are found in all lands, among all peoples, though the Irish have displayed them so conspicuously in all the centuries that some, aye, many of our own people have come to regard them as exclusively theirs. ”

“ There were only four million Irish altogether, and they were nearly all in Ireland, friendless, voiceless, voteless, landless, powerless, disarmed, disorganized, ignorant, forgotten by the world, misreported and misrepresented by their rich and powerful enemy, and held up in English books, newspapers, schools, at home and abroad, as a race of wild, weak, witty, brave, quarrelsome, purposeless incapables. ”

“ The people stood up respectfully as she came forward, and while each made his or her humble obeisance, a muttered sound ran through them, in Irish, of wonder and astonishment at her grace and beauty; for, whatever be the privations of the Irish peasant, however poor and humble his lot in life, two faculties pertain to him like instincts—a relish for drollery, and an admiration for beauty—these are claims that ever find acknowledgment from him, and in his enjoyment of either, he can forget himself, and all the miseries of his condition. ”

“ As it is admitted, also, that there exists no people whose character is so anomalous as that of the Irish, and consequently so difficult to be understood, especially by strangers, it becomes a still more appropriate duty on my part to give to the public, proofs sufficiently valid, that I come to a subject of such difficulty with unusual advantages on my side, and that, consequently, my exhibitions of Irish peasant life, in its most comprehensive sense, may be relied on as truthful and authentic. ”

“ Again we are told that “the Irish, by being held always at arm’s length, had become more Irish and less civilised than ever”; held at arm’s length is an ingenious phrase for evicting a people from their homes, and throwing them out on bogs and mountains. The hardships of hunted famine-stricken outlaws hanging round their old homes, is represented in this kind of history as the life which would be naturally chosen by wild Irish “nomads.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Irishmen are often taunted with the fact that their history is yet unwritten, but that the Irish, as a nation, have been careless of their past is refuted by the facts which I have mentioned. A people who alone in Europe preserved, not in dry chronicles alone, but illuminated and adorned with all that fancy could suggest in ballad, and tale, and rude epic, the history of the mound-raising period, are not justly liable to this taunt. Until very modern times, history was the one absorbing pursuit of the Irish secular intellect, the delight of the noble, and the solace of the vile. ”