Ulster

“ The turf would be nearly black, and bare as a board, and there would be coursing of hares ... November mists, and the trees red and brown.... Eh, hard Ulster, pleasant Ulster!
He should have been happy, as he made his way down the Beirut streets to go aboard, leaving the land of his adoption for the land of his birth, leaving pleasant Fenzile for the shrewd pleasantry of his own folk.... A little while of Ulster and he would be coming back again.... One's heart should lift the glory of the world, the bold line of Ulster and the lavish color of Syria ”

“ But all that mountainous headland is inhabited by folk who still keep the Gaelic speech alive among them, and whose remote forbears owned in far distant times the overlordship of Ireland's most famous champion, when Ulster had a pagan chivalry, the Red Branch Circle, which is to Irish legend what the story of Arthur's knighthood is to British romance, or the tale of the Nibelungs to Germany. ”

“ But I do desire to assert that, in my humble opinion, it is the Scotch, or alien population of Ireland, which has been at the root of Ireland’s principal troubles throughout the past century. Ulster may be a fine kingdom, the wealthiest, most industrious, and the wisest and happiest in the country, if you like. Yet it is Ulster that bars the way in all matters that make for the real good of Ireland. ”

“ Indeed, to those who set out to judge Irish political conditions without troubling themselves about anything more ancient than their own memory can recall, the most fundamental factor of all—the line of cleavage between Ulster and the rest of the island—- is more than unintelligible. ”

“ Nay, Ulster, you, for very shame
Should cede your long monopoly of that name.
Loyal—to whom—to what? To power, to pelf,
To place, to privilege, in a word, to self.
They who assume, absorb, control, enjoy all,
Must find it vastly pleasant to be "loyal."
Lord Randolph Churchill's famous jingle: "Ulster will fight. Ulster will be right," inspired a prophetic forecast of the result of such action, in which Ulster does fight and is defeated ”

“ And at the last the King stood up and cried, “True is the message that the head has brought. Ulster lies bound before her enemies, while we rust here in sleep. By all the gods my nation loves, I swear, unless the stars of heaven shall fall upon our heads, or the strong solid earth give way beneath our feet, I and my chiefs will restore each captive woman to her child [150] and home, each cow to her own meadow, and each stolen piece of land to its own lords, so that in shame with heavy loss the foes of Ulster shall return to their own country.” ”

“ Of Ireland's luck and leave the shamrock broken
Of one green leaf, when four brought joy upon it,
As Ulster lost—from Munster, Leinster, Connacht.
But Ulster lost with each green sod still crying
For those dear dead who left us dreams undying
Of Ireland's needs, O'Neill whose heart took fire
And joined the sacred flames of Hugh Maguire.
Shall we not cry “Lamh Dearg abu” and glory
In Cromwell's fall, in reading Clonmel's story,
Or by the “Yellow Ford” who cheered most loudly
As hand from hand we passed the same flag proudly? ”

“ You are not even accurate in your history when you speak of Ulster's traditions and the blood our forefathers spilt. Over a century ago Ulster was the strong and fast place of rebellion, and it was in Ulster that the Volunteers stood beside their cannon and wrung the gift of political freedom for the Irish Parliament. ”

“ What ought, in fact, to be considered as Ireland proper consists, then, of the eastern province or Leinster, the southern or Munster, and the western or Connaught. Ulster is in reality, as well by the nature of its soil as by the race and habits of the majority of its inhabitants, an annex and dependency of Scotland. The three other provinces, on the contrary, form a whole, as distinct from England or Scotland by the constitution and aspect of the land, as it is different by the race, genius, the traditions and beliefs of the population. ”

“ The Fairy Swan-Maidens Once a year, in the autumn days, a great gathering was made of the men of Ulster, and from all parts men and women would come to share in the sports and marketing, and to meet their friends, and make merry. The place was joyous and full of gaiety with musicians making music on harps and fiddles, and singers singing, and jugglers plying their feats, and horse-racing in open spaces. ”

“ There are others who say that it is the men of Ulster—and they like to saddle the whole thing upon the men of Ulster, as if there are no Protestants in any other part of Ireland— (hear, hear) —and they have invented that witty saying of Ulsteria. I think that our fellow subjects ought to be learning rapidly that it is nothing of the kind. ”

“ Ulster will fight, Ulster will be right; Ulster will emerge from the struggle victorious, because all that Ulster represents to us Britons will command the sympathy and support of an enormous section of our British community, and also, I feel certain, will attract the admiration and the approval of free and civilized nations. ”

“ We start off from the Pentarchy and the Ulster cycle. The Ulster stories have for their main basis the hostile relations between Ulster and Connacht. Being Ulster stories, they do not prolong their scope beyond a time in which Ulster has generally the best of it. Ulster's mishaps merely serve to heighten the effect, which is Ulster's heroism and victory. It was when this time of glory was but a memory, when Emain was a deserted site and the remnant of the Ulaidh occupied only a tiny fraction of their former territory, that these stories took their present shape and were committed to writing. ”

“ Mike told me that the airship was not built for Irish weather, but he afterwards remedied this defect, as we shall see.
When we reached County Fermanagh we began to realize Ireland’s agricultural possibilities. Ulster is a different world from Connaught. The landscape is rolling, covered with cultivated farms. The houses are often two-storied, slated, and neatly kept. There are large barns and every appearance of prosperity. The picture presented to us in Ulster was not so romantic as in Connemara, but it is more like living. ”

“ Ulster (1,617) , the northern province of Ireland, is divided into the nine counties of Antrim, Armagh, Cavan, Donegal, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry, Monaghan, and Tyrone, and has an area of 8560 sq. m.; became an English settlement in 1611, and was largely colonised from Scotland; it is the most Protestant part of the island, though the Catholics predominate, and is the most enterprising and prosperous part; the land is extensively cultivated, and flax growing and spinning the chief industries. ”

“ Relative to Ulster settlement he says: “The settlers were picked men and women of the most excellent sort. By the middle of the seventeenth century there were 300,000 of them in Ulster. The province was a wilderness of bogs and fens; they transformed it into a garden. They also established manufactures of woolens and linens; ... they were intelligent yeomanry and artisans.”
These extracts are the amusing myths of the Scotch-Irish Society. ”

“ In a word, if you cannot get to the west of Lough Swilly you may be very well content with the east of it; and though much of infinite beauty and interest lies beyond, when you have seen and known Lough Swilly and its shores, and the people who live on them—that mixed race, Scot and Irish, lowland and highland, Protestant and Catholic, all neighbourly together—why, at least you will have had a very fair chance to know and love, not the Ulster that people rant about or rail at, but Ulster as it really is. ”

“ Dense crowds cheering and shouting, and waving hats and handkerchiefs, occupied every coign of vantage, and though the Queen had only four hours to spend in the city, she contrived, under competent guidance, to see many of the more interesting places and institutions which illustrate the strong character of the mixed race whose energy, ability, pertinacity, and industry have made Ulster, with her unkindly soil and climate, the richest province in Ireland. ”

“ Other Irishmen may have excelled in literature and the arts, have voiced more eloquently the aspirations of their country or sung with more pathos of its fall, but the bent of Ulster has been on the whole towards action and movement. ”

“ No man gets his living too easily in Ulster, and need makes neighbourly. Protestant and Catholic have to fight the same battle with hard weather—of which perhaps even the summer traveller may form some judgment; they are rewarded by the same loveliness which makes a fine day in Ulster the most enchanting upon earth ”

“ It is what was prophecied for us, that the nobles of Ulster would be congregated in one night in that house. There are seven chains of good iron here under the feet of this bed. Let them be firmly fastened to the seven pillar-stones that are on the green outside."
Then Crom Deroil and Faenglinni came into the house in which were Medb and Ailill of Connacht and the nobles of the province of Munster, and related to them how the Ulstermen were awaited. ”

“ Ne Plus Ulster.—Mr. Chamberlain seems to find the heart of the Irish Question in Ulster. Does he expect to find its solution there? He appears to set little store by the wishes of those not inconsiderable portions of Ireland which, as he says, “do not form a portion of the Ulster plantation.” All other parts, even of the favoured province, “though geographically part of Ulster, are not parts of what we know as political Ulster.” This certainly narrows the Irish Question. But does it simplify it? We have all heard of those who are “more Irish than the Irishmen themselves.” ”

“ The virtues of Ulster are economy and industry and determination. They have an unreasoning decision, a blind enthusiasm, in political and religious matters that carries them along in a way that will never be copied by the more thoughtful and more depressed Southern. ”

“ Gladstone, there were four perfectly separate kingdoms in the island. Now there are four provinces which are quite distinct, and an Ulster man, or a Munster man, or a Connaught man, knows far more, as a rule, of England, or even Scotland, than he does of the other three provinces of his native isle. For one Ulster man who has been in Munster, three hundred have been to Liverpool or Greenock, and until lately there was no railway between Connaught and Munster, so that you had to go nearly up to Dublin to get from one to the other. ”

“ Again, in the Ulster stories, we hardly hear of the existence of the Picts in Ulster; they are completely dominated by the Ulaidh. But when Ireland emerges into the full light of written history, we find the Picts a very powerful people in east Ulster, Cuailnge itself, the home of the Brown Bull, and the neighbouring plain of Muirtheimhne, Cú Chulainn's patrimony, being now Pictish territory. ”

“ Ulster has shown the rest of Ireland that, however attractive the land may be, it is well to 68have trades and industries that do not depend, or only depend partly on the land. The crowning merit of James’s work in Ulster is that there is one part of the country where landlord and tenant, squire and labourer, think very much alike in religion and politics, so that a good understanding should be looked for between the various parties. ”

“ I have said little directly about the problem of modern Ulster, not because I underrate its importance, which is very great, but because I have some hope that my arguments up to this point may be perceived to have a strong, though indirect, bearing upon it. ”

“ The Ulster character is better appreciated by Southern Ireland, and there is little reason to vindicate it against any charges except the slander that Ulster Unionists do not regard themselves as Irishmen, and that they have no love for their own country. ”

“ There would be no Ireland at all if it were not for themselves. They rule Ireland. What Ireland wants she may have, if it pleases Ulster. What Ireland does not want she must have, if Ulster so much as nod. That, at any rate, is the view of Ulster, the view of the thrifty, douce Scotch bodies whose fathers got gifts of other people’s lands from James I. of England and VI. of Scotland, and whose sons go up and down and to and fro upon the earth, calling themselves “Irishmen of Scotch descent.” There are no Irishmen of Scotch descent. And Ulstermen are not Irishmen unless their descent be Irish. ”

“ The remarkable collection of Northern Irish Antiquities and Historical Relics, exhibited at Belfast on the occasion of the British Association meeting in that city, has led to the publication of The Ulster Journal of Archæology, which is to be conducted by gentlemen of the province, and principally devoted to the elucidation of the antiquities and ancient history of Ulster. Ulster, it will be remembered, is historically remarkable as being the last part of Ireland which held out against the English sway, and which therefore retained its ancient customs until a comparatively recent period. ”

“ The province of Ulster, where an ancient Pictish population was encroached upon and gradually superseded by Scottish tribes, exhibits the remarkable peculiarity of an alternate succession of the kings of Ulster between a family descended from its old Pictish kings and one of the earliest colonies of Scots, that of the Dalfiatach, who settled among them. ”

“ With such resources in its wealth and industry, better educated, better [pg 331] equipped, and holding a practically impregnable position in the North of Ireland, with Scotland and the sea at its back, Ulster is very much stronger relatively to the rest of Ireland than La Vendée was relatively to the rest of the French Republic in the last century. ”