IRISH BOOKS AND IRISH PEOPLE

 By

 STEPHEN GWYNN. 

 DUBLIN The Talbot Press Ltd. 89 Talbot Street

 LONDON T. Fisher Unwin Ltd. 1 Adelphi Terrace

 CONTENTS

 Page INTRODUCTION 1

 NOVELS OF IRISH LIFE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 7

 A CENTURY OF IRISH HUMOUR 23

 LITERATURE AMONG THE ILLITERATES:

 I. --THE SHANACHY 44

 II. --THE LIFE OF A SONG 51

 IRISH EDUCATION AND IRISH CHARACTER 65

 THE IRISH GENTRY 83

 YESTERDAY IN IRELAND 97

INTRODUCTION. 

My publisher must take at least some of the responsibility for revivingthese essays. All bear the marks of the period at which they werewritten; and some of them deal with the beginnings of movements whichhave since grown to much greater strength, and in growing have developednew characteristics at the expense of what was originally moreprominent. Other pages, again, take no account of facts which to-daymust be present to the mind of every Irish reader, and so are, perhapssignificantly, out of date. Nobody for instance, could now complain thatIrish humour is lacking in seriousness. Synge disposed of thatcriticism--and, indeed, the Abbey Theatre in its tone as a whole may beaccused of neglecting Ireland's gift for simple fun. Yet Lady Gregorymade the most of it in her "Spreading the News, " and Mr. Yeats in his"Pot of Broth. "--How beautifully W. G. Fay interpreted an Irish laughterwhich had no bitterness in it. 

But the strong intellectual movement which has swept over Ireland hasbeen both embittering and embittered. These last five and twenty yearshave been the most formative in the country's history of any sinceIreland became the composite nation that she now is, or, perhaps, hasyet to become. At the back of it all lies the great social changeinvolved in the transfer of ownership from the landlord to thecultivators of the soil--a change which has literally disenserfedthree-fourths of Ireland's people. Yet the relations are obscure, indefinite, and intangible, which unite that material result to theoutcome of two forces, allied but distinct, which have operated solelyon men's minds and spirits. These are, of course, the Gaelic revival andthe whole literary movement which has had its most concrete expressionin the Irish theatre, and its most potent inspiration in the personalityof Mr. Yeats. 

Of these two forces, one can show by far the more tangible effects, forthe Gaelic League has issued in action. Setting out to revive and savethe Irish language as a living speech, the instrument of a nation'sintercourse, it has failed of its purpose; but it has revived andrendered potent the principle of separation. Nationalist, it will havenothing to do with a nationality that is not as plainly marked off fromother nationalities as a red lamp from a green lamp; and the essentialsymbol of separate nationality is for orthodox Gaelic Leaguers aseparate language. America, said an able exponent of this doctrine theother day in a public debate, will never and never can be a nation tillits language is no longer recognisable as English--till its Englishdiffers as much from the language of England as German differs fromDutch. An inevitable corollary to this view is the necessity forcomplete political separation from Great Britain--if only to provide themachinery for this complete differentiation by daily speech. 

I cannot pretend to assess impartially the value of this movement. Itasserted itself in passionate deeds at a moment when many thousands ofus Nationalists were taking equally vigorous action in pursuit of aless tribal ideal. Thousands of us lost our lives, all of us risked ourlives, with the hope of achieving a national unity which could never bebuilt on the basis of regarding no man as an Irishman who did not speak, or at least desire to speak, Gaelic for his mother tongue. The action ofIrish soldiers was thwarted and frustrated by the action of a very fewseparatists, with a very small expense to themselves in bloodshed. Butthe tribute to the work of the Gaelic League is that Ireland acceptedthem and rejected us. None can deny that it has been a potent stimulusto national education; and it only lacks official prohibition by theBritish Government to become more powerful still. 

Whatever the outcome, I take back nothing of what is written in thesepapers concerning the Gaelic revival. In a country governed against thewill of its people, forces that, under normal and healthy conditions, would be purely beneficent, may easily grow explosive and disruptive. Yet I have not changed my mind on a critical question which led me tosever my connection with the work of the Gaelic League. When that bodydecided to rely on compulsion rather than persuasion, it took the wrongroad, if its object was to endear the Irish language to all Ireland, andto induce all Irishmen to cherish it as part of the common nationalheritage. As a result Ulstermen have a perfect right to say that if theyaccepted Home Rule, one of the first steps of an Irish government formedunder the present auspices would be to demand a knowledge of Gaelic asthe necessary qualification for holding any public office. 

I do not believe that this tribal idealism which is now so potent willendure. It is out of harmony with the world's development--a world whichin order to preserve the very principle of small nationalities, isgrowing more and more international. America is not only a nation, butis the type of the modern nation--bound together less by what itinherits from the past, than by what it hopes from the future. 

The other force which has been operating through these years is, in asense, obliged to give the lie to the pretensions of the Gaelic League. Yeats and Synge have showed how completely it is possible to be Irishwhile using the English language. They have accepted the fact thatIreland to-day thinks in English, but they have endeavoured to give toIreland a distinctively Irish thought, coloured by the whole racialtradition and temperament. With them has been allied a personality notless Irish, yet less obviously Irish--"A. E. , " George Russell. Betweenthem, these writers and thinkers have profoundly influenced the mind ofthe generation younger than themselves. It is not possible to deny thatIreland's literary output during those last twenty years is far moreimportant and serious than that of the whole preceding century. The onlypart of it exempt from these influences is the work of Edith Somervilleand Martin Ross; and even that is based on a closer study ofdistinctively Irish speech than had ever been attempted in earlier days. The propagandist work of Pearse and Arthur Griffiths--equal in merit tothat of their forerunners, Davis and Mitchel--was Irish only insubstance and spirit, not in form or accent--a thing the lesssurprising, since both men were only half Irish by parentage. But thewhole group of writers, of whom it may be said that their writings arealmost as unmistakably Irish as the work of Burns is Scotch, havefollowed Mr. Yeats and Synge in this, that in writing they assume anIrish public, not an English one; they make no explanations, they speakas to those who share their own inheritance. In this group has beenfostered a spirit of the freedom which belongs properly to art. Thus theschool, for it may justly be called a school, has created its owntradition, and it has been a tradition of freedom, not asserted butexercised: a freedom, not as against England, but as against all theworld. Everywhere, but especially in countries undergoing revolutionarychange, there is a tyranny of the crowd. When the Gaelic League decidedto make the learning of Irish compulsory, it attorned to this tyranny. On the other hand, Mr. Yeats, at a moment when the Abbey Theatre seemedabout to become popular, was threatened by a fiat of thismob-dictatorship; he was told that his theatre must become unpopularunless he would throw overboard most of Synge's work. By the stand whichhe then made he did a greater service to freedom of the mind in Irelandthan has yet been at all recognised; he helped to make his countryfearless and strong. Thanks mainly to him and to those who worked withhim, Ireland's thought is freer and more outspoken; there is morethought in Ireland than there used to be. This does not make the countryeasier to govern, and just now, Ireland, if given the opportunity, wouldhave a hard task to govern itself. But Ireland would not be the onlycountry in the world in that predicament. The schoolmaster has beenabroad, and where you have education without liberty there is bound tobe trouble. The only cure is, not to suppress education, but to give theresponsibility of freedom. 

I have left these papers in order as they were written, with datesannexed. One of them, _Literature among the Illiterates_, was publishedin an earlier volume, _To-day and To-morrow in Ireland_ which is now outof print. I include it here, because it completes the companion essay, called _The Life of a Song_. 

My acknowledgments are due to the various publications in which theyhave all, except the last, previously appeared. 

Dublin, _March_, 1919. 

NOVELS OF IRISH LIFE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

"What Ireland wants, " said an old gentleman not very long ago, "is aWalter Scott. " The remedy did not seem very practical, since WalterScotts will not come to order, but the point of view is worth noting, for there you touch the central fact about Irish literature. We desire aWalter Scott that he may glorify our annals, popularise our legends, describe our scenery, and give an attractive view of the nationalcharacter. In short, we know that Ireland possesses pre-eminently thequality of picturesqueness, and we should like to see it turned to goodaccount. We want a Walter Scott to advertise Ireland, and to fill thehotels with tourists; but as for desiring to possess a great novelistsimply for the distinction of the thing, probably no civilised people onearth is more indifferent to the matter. At present, indeed, a WalterScott, should he appear in Ireland, would be apt to have a cold welcome. To write on anything connected with Irish history is inevitably tooffend the Press of one party, and very probably of both. Lever is lessof a caricaturist than Dickens, yet Dickens is idolised while Lever hasbeen bitterly blamed for lowering Irish character in the eyes of theworld; the charge is even repeated in the _Dictionary of NationalBiography_. That may be patriotic sentiment, but it is not criticism. 

Literature in Ireland, in short, is almost inextricably connected withconsiderations foreign to art; it is regarded as a means, not as an end. During the nineteenth century the belief being general among all classesof Irish people that the English know nothing of Ireland, every book onan Irish subject was judged by the effect it was likely to have uponEnglish opinion, to which the Irish are naturally sensitive, since itdecides the most important Irish questions. But apart from thispractical aspect of the matter, there is a morbid national sensitivenesswhich desires to be consulted. Ireland, though she ought to countherself amply justified of her children, is still complaining that sheis misunderstood among the nations; she is for ever crying out forsomeone to give her keener sympathy, fuller appreciation, and exhibitherself and her grievances to the world in a true light. The result isthat kind of insincerity and special pleading which has been the curseof Irish or Anglo-Irish literature. I write of a literature which hasits natural centre in Dublin, not in Connemara; which looks eastward, not westward. That literature begins with the _Drapier Letters_: itcontinues through the great line of orators in whom the Irish genius (wesay nothing of the Celtic) has found its highest expression; and itproduced its first novelist, perhaps also its best, in the unromanticperson of Maria Edgeworth. 

Miss Edgeworth had a sound instinct for her art, disfigured though herlater writings are by what Madame de Staêl called her _triste utilité_. Her first story is her most artistic production. _Castle Rackrent_ issimply a pleasant satire upon the illiterate and improvident gentry whohave always been too common in her country. In this book she holds nobrief; she never stops to preach; her moral is implied, not expressed. Ahistorian might, it is true, go to _Castle Rackrent_ for informationabout the conditions of land tenure as well as about social life in theIreland of that day; but the erudition is part and parcel of her story. Throughout the length and breadth of Ireland, setting aside great towns, the main interest of life for all classes is the possession of land. Irish peasants seldom marry for love, they never murder for love; butthey marry and they murder for land. To know something of theland-question is indispensable for an Irish novelist, and Miss Edgeworthgraduated with honours in this subject. She was her father's agent; whenher brother succeeded to the property she resigned, but in the troublesof 1830 she was recalled to the management, and saved the estate. _Castle Rackrent_ is, therefore, like Galt's _Annals of the Parish_, ahistorical document; but it is none the worse story for that. Thenarrative is put dramatically into the mouth of old Thady, a lifelongservant of the family. Thady's son, Jason Quirk, attorney and agent tothe estate, has dispossessed the Rackrents; but Thady is still "poorThady, " and regards the change with horror. Before recounting thehistory of his own especial master and patron, Sir Condy Rackrent, lastof the line, Thady gives his ingenuous account of the three whopreviously bore the name; Sir Patrick, Sir Murtagh, and Sir Kit. SirPatrick, the inventor of raspberry whiskey, died at table: "Just as thecompany rose to drink his health with three cheers, he fell down in asort of fit, and was carried off; they sat it out, and were surprised inthe morning to find that it was all over with poor Sir Patrick. " Thatno gentleman likes to be disturbed after dinner, was the best recognisedrule of life in Ireland; if your host happened to have a fit, you knewhe would wish you to sit it out. Gerald Griffin in _The Collegians_makes the same point with his usual vigour. A shot is heard in thedining-room by the maids downstairs. They are for rushing in, but themanservant knows better: "Sure, don't you know, if there was anyone shotthe master would ring the bell. " After Sir Patrick, who thus lived anddied, to quote his epitaph, "a monument of old Irish hospitality, " cameSir Murtagh, "who was a very learned man in the law, and had thecharacter of it"; another passion that seems to go with the land-hungerin Ireland. Sir Murtagh married one of the family of the Skinflints:"She was a strict observer for self and servants of Lent and all fastdays, but not holidays. " However, says Thady (is there not a strongtrace of Swift in all this?). 

 "However, my lady was very charitable in her own way. She had a charity school for poor children, where they were taught to read and write gratis, and where they were well kept to spinning gratis for my lady in return; for she had always heaps of duty yarn from the tenants, and got all her household linen out of the estate from first to last; for after the spinning, the weavers on the estate took it in hand for nothing, because of the looms my lady's interest could get from the Linen Board to distribute gratis. .. . Her table the same way, kept for next to nothing; duty fowls, and duty turkeys, and duty geese came as fast as we could eat them, for my lady kept a sharp look-out and knew to a tub of butter everything the tenants had all round. .. . As for their young pigs, we had them, and the best bacon and hams they could make up, with all young chickens in the spring; but they were a set of poor wretches, and we had nothing but misfortunes with them, always breaking and running away. This, Sir Murtagh and my lady said, was all their former landlord, Sir Patrick's fault, who let 'em get the half year's rent into arrear; there was something in that, to be sure. But Sir Murtagh was as much the contrary way--"

I have abridged my lady's methods, and I omit Sir Murtagh's, who taughthis tenants, as he said, to know the law of landlord and tenant. But, "though a learned man in the law, he was a little too incredulous inother matters. " He neglected his health, broke a blood-vessel in a ragewith my lady, and so made way for Sir Kit the prodigal. Sir Kit was shotin a duel, and Sir Condy came into an estate which, between SirMurtagh's law-suits and Sir Kit's gaming, was considerably embarrassed;indeed, the story proper is simply a history of makeshifts to keep rainand bailiffs out of the family mansion. Poor Sir Condy; he was the verymoral of the man who is no man's enemy but his own, and was left at thelast with no friend but old Thady. Even Judy Quirk turned against him, forgetting his goodness in tossing up between her and Miss IsabellaMoneygawl, the romantic lady who eloped with him after the toss. Shedeserted before Judy; here is a bit of the final scene. Thady was goingupstairs with a slate to make up a window-pane. 

 "This window was in the long passage, or gallery, as my lady gave orders to have it called, in the gallery leading up to my master's bedchamber and hers. And when I went up with the slate, the door having no lock, and the bolt spoilt, was ajar after Mrs. Jane (my lady's maid), and as I was busy with the window, I heard all that was saying within. 'Well, what's in your letter, Bella, my dear?' says he. 'You're a long time spelling it over. ' 'Won't you shave this morning, Sir Condy?' says she, and put the letter into her pocket. 'I shaved the day before yesterday, ' says he, 'my dear, and that's not what I'm thinking of now; but anything to oblige you, and to have peace and quietness, my dear, '--and presently I had the glimpse of him at the cracked glass over the chimney-piece, standing up shaving himself to please my lady. "

However, the quarrel comes on in a delightful scene, where Sir Condyshows himself at all events an amiable gentleman; and so my lady goeshome to her own people. There you have Miss Edgeworth at her very best;and, indeed, _Castle Rackrent_ received such a tribute as no other novelever had paid to it. Many people have heard how when _Waverley_ came tothe Edgeworth household, Mr. Edgeworth, after his custom, read it aloudalmost, as it would appear, at one sitting. When the end came for thatfascinated circle, amid the chorus of exclamations, Mr. Edgeworth said:"What is this? _Postscript which ought to have been a preface_. " Thenthere was a chorus of protests that he should not break the spell withprose. "Anyhow, " he said, "let us hear what the man has to say, " and soread on to the passage where Scott explained that he desired to do forScotland what had been done for Ireland: "to emulate the admirablefidelity of Miss Edgeworth's portraits. " What Maria Edgeworth felt weknow from the letter she posted off "to the Author of 'Waverley, ' _AutScotus aut Diabolus_. "

It would be unkind to compare Scott with his model. For the poetry andthe tragic power of his novels one would never think of looking in MissEdgeworth. Her work is compact of observation; yet the gifts she has arenot to be under-valued. She is mistress of a kindly yet searchingsatire, real wit, a fine vein of comedy; and she can rise to such truepathos as dignifies the fantastic figure of King Corny in _Ormond_, perhaps the best thing she ever did. But she had in her father aliterary adviser, not of the negative but of the positive order, andthere never was a more fully developed prig than Richard Edgeworth. Hisview of literature was purely utilitarian; to convey practical lessonswas the business of all superior persons, more particularly of anEdgeworth. In _Castle Rackrent_ his suggestions and comments are happilyrelegated to the position of notes; in the other books they form partand parcel of the novel. _The Absentee_, for instance, containsadmirable dialogue and many life-like figures; but the scheme of thestory conveys a sense of unreality. Every fault or vice has itscounterbalancing virtue represented. Lady Clonbroney, vulgarly ashamedof her country, is set off by the patriotic Lady Oranmore; the virtuousMr. Burke forms too obvious a pendant to the rascally agents old Nickand St. Dennis. It is needless to say that the exclusively virtuouspeople are deadly dull. It is the novel with a purpose written by anovelist whose strength lies in the delineation of character. MissEdgeworth can never carry you away with her story, as Charles Readesometimes can, and make you forget and forgive the virtuous intention. 

What was unreal in Miss Edgeworth became mere insincerity in hercontemporary, Lady Morgan. Few people could tell you now where Thackeraygot Miss Glorvina O'Dowd's baptismal name; yet _The Wild Irish Girl_ hada great triumph in its day, and Glorvina stood sponsor to the milliners'and haberdashers' inventions ninety years before the apotheosis ofTrilby. _O'Donnell_, which is counted Lady Morgan's best novel, gives alively ideal portrait of the authoress, first as the governess-grub, then transformed by marriage into the butterfly-duchess. But the book isa thinly-disguised political pamphlet. "Look, " she says in effect, "atthe heroic virtues of O'Donnell, the young Irishman, driven to serve inforeign armies, despoiled of his paternal estates by the penal laws;look at the fidelity, the simplicity, the native humour (so dramaticallyeffective) of his servant Rory; and then say if you will not plump forCatholic Emancipation. " "My dear lady, " the reader murmurs, "I wonderedwhy you were so set upon underlining all these things. Can you not tellus a story frankly, and let us alone with your conclusions?"

Unfortunately, very much the same has to be said of a far greaterwriter, William Carleton, even in those tales which are based upon hisown most intimate experience. _The Poor Scholar_, his most popularstory, proceeds directly from an episode in his own life. He had himselfbeen a poor scholar, had set out from his northern home to walk toMunster, where the best known schools were, trusting to charity by theway to lodge him, and to charity to keep him throughout his schoolingfor the sake of his vocation, and for the blessing sure to descend uponthose who aided a peasant's son to become a priest. Nothing could bemore vivid than the early scenes, the collection made at the altar forJimmy McEvoy, the priest's sermon, the boy's parting from home, and theroadside hospitality; there is one infinitely touching episode in thehouse of the first farmer who shelters him. Then come the school itself, and the tyranny of its master, till the boy falls sick of a fever, andis turned out of doors. Then, alas, the conventional intervenes in theperson of the virtuous absentee ignorant of his agent's misdoings: thelong arm of coincidence is stretched to the uttermost; and we have towade through pages of discussion upon the relations of landlord andtenant till we are put wholly out of tune for the beautiful scene ofJimmy's return home in his priestly dress. 

Carleton did for the peasantry what Miss Edgeworth had done for theupper classes. In her books the peasants have only an incidental part, and she describes them shrewdly and sympathetically enough, but with amind untouched either by their faith or by their superstitions; seeingtheir good and bad qualities clearly in a dry light, but never inimagination identifying herself with them. Superior to Miss Edgeworth inpower and insight, he is immeasurably her inferior in literary skill. One should remember, in commenting upon the poverty of Irish literaturein English, that, so far as concerns imaginative work, it began in thenineteenth century. Carleton only died in 1869, Miss Edgeworth in 1849;and before them there is no one. 

On the other hand the speech of Lowland Scots, with whose richness inmasterpieces our poverty is naturally contrasted, has been employed forliterature as long as the vernacular English. A king of Scotland wroteadmirable verse in the generation after Chaucer; the influence of theCourt fostered poetry, and the close intercourse with France kept Scotchwriters in touch with first-rate models. Dunbar, strolling as a friar inFrance, may have known Villon, whom he often resembles. In Ireland, tilla century ago, English was as much a foreign language as Norman Frenchin England under the Plantagenets. Among the English Protestants, settled in Ireland, and separated by a hard line of cleavage from theCatholic population, there arose great men in letters, Goldsmith, Burke, Sheridan, who showed their Irish temperament in their handling ofEnglish themes. But in Ireland itself, before the events of 1782 addedimportance to Dublin, there was no centre for a literature to gatherround. Such national pride as exists in English-speaking Ireland datesfrom the days of Grattan and Flood. And Irish national aspirations stillbear the impress of their origin amid that period of political turmoil, than which nothing is more hostile to the brooding care of literaryworkmanship, the long labour and the slow result. Irishmen have alwaysshown a strong disinclination to pure literature. The roll of Irishnovelists is more than half made up of women's names; Miss Edgeworth, Lady Morgan, Miss Emily Lawless, and Miss Jane Barlow. JournalistsIreland has produced as copiously as orators; the writers of _The Spiritof the Nation_, that admirable collection of stirring poems, arejournalists working in verse; and Carleton, falling under theirinfluence, became a journalist working in fiction. In his pages, evenwhen the debater ceases to argue and harangue, the style is stilljournalistic, except in those passages where his dramatic instinct putsliving speech into the mouths of men and women. Politics so monopolisethe minds of Irishmen, newspapers so make up their whole reading, thatthe class to which Carleton and the poet Mangan belonged have neverfully entered upon the heritage of English literature. If an Englishpeasant knows nothing else, he knows the Bible and very likely Bunyan;but a Roman Catholic population has little commerce with that purefountain of style. Genius cannot dispense with models, and Carleton andMangan had the worst possible. Yet when it has been said that Carletonwas a half-educated peasant, writing in a language whose best literaturehe had not sufficiently assimilated to feel the true value of words, itremains to be said that he was a great novelist. He cannot be fairlyillustrated by quotation; but read any of his stories and see if he doesnot bring up vividly before you Ireland as it was before the famine;Ireland still swarming with beggars who marched about in familiessubsisting chiefly on the charity of the poor; Ireland of which thehedge-school was plainly to him the most characteristic institution. 

Carleton does not stand by himself; he is the head and representative ofa whole class of Irish novelists, among whom John Banim is the bestknown name. All of them were peasants who aimed at depicting scenes ofpeasant life from their own experience. What one may call themelodramatic Irish story, in which Lever was so brilliantly successful, has its first famous example in _The Collegians_ of Gerald Griffin. Thenovel has no concern with college life, and is far better described byits stage-title, _The Colleen Bawn_. Here at least is a man with a storyto tell and no object but to tell it. Griffin belonged to the lay orderof Christian Brothers: his book deals principally with a society no morefamiliar to him than was the household of Mr. Rochester to CharlotteBrontë; and his method recalls the Brontës by its strenuous imaginationand its vehement painting of passion. The tale was suggested by a murderwhich excited all Ireland. A young southern squire carried off a girlwith some money, and procured her death by drowning. He was arrested athis mother's house and a terrible scene took place, terribly rendered inthe book. Griffin, of course, changes the motive; the girl is carriedoff not for money but for love, and she is sacrificed to make way for astronger passion. Eily O'Connor, the victim, is a pretty and patheticfigure; the hero-villain Hardress Cregan, and the mother who indirectlycauses the crime, are effective though melodramatic; but the actualmurderer, Danny the Lord, Hardress Cregan's familiar, is worthy of Scottor Hugo. 

In his sketches of society, Hyland Creagh, the duellist, old Cregan, andthe rest, Griffin is describing a state of affairs previous to his ownexperience, the Ireland of Sir Jonah Barrington's memoirs; he is not, aswere Carleton and Miss Edgeworth, copying minutely from personalobservation. Herein he resembles Lever who, when all is said and done, remains the chief, as he is the most Irish, of Irish novelists. It istrue that Lever had two distinct manners: and in his later books hedeals chiefly with contemporary society, drawing largely on hisexperiences of diplomatic life. Like most novelists he preferred hislater work; but the books by which he is best known, _Harry Lorrequer_and the rest, are his earliest productions; and though his maturer skillwas employed on different subjects, he formed his imagination in studiesof the Napoleonic Wars and of a duelling, drinking, bailiff-beatingIreland. His point of view never altered, and the peculiar attraction ofhis writings is always the same. Lever's books have the quality ratherof speech than of writing; wherever you open the pages there is always awitty, well-informed Irishman discoursing to you, who tells his storyadmirably, when he has one to tell, and, failing that, never fails to bepleasant. Irish talk is apt to be discursive; to rely upon a generalcharm diffused through the whole, rather than upon any quotablebrilliancy; its very essence is spontaneity, high spirits, fertility ofresource. That is a fair description of Lever. He is never at a loss. Ifhis story hangs, off he goes at score with a perfectly irrelevantanecdote, but told with such enjoyment of the joke that you cannotresent the digression. Indeed the plots are left pretty much to takecare of themselves; he positively preferred to write his stories inmonthly instalments for a magazine; he is not a conscientious artist, but he lays himself out to amuse you, and he does it. If he advertises acharacter as a wit, he does not labour phrases to describe hisbrilliancy; he produces the witticisms. He has been accused ofexaggeration. As regards the incidents, one can only say that thememoirs of Irish society at the beginning of this century furnish atleast fair warranty for any of his inventions. In character-drawing hecertainly overcharged the traits: but he did so with intention, and byconsistently heightening the tones throughout obtained an artisticimpression, which had life behind it, however ingeniously travestied. His stories have no unity of action, but through a great diversity ofcharacters and incidents they maintain their unity of treatment. That isnot the highest ideal of the novel, but it is an intelligible one, notlacking famous examples; and Lever perfectly understood it. 

If one wishes to realise how good an artist Lever was, the best way isto read his contemporary Samuel Lover. _Handy Andy_ appeared somewhatlater than _Harry Lorrequer_. It is just the difference between goodwhiskey and bad whiskey; both are indigenous and thereforecharacteristic, but let us be judged by our best. Obviously the men havecertain things in common; great natural vivacity, and an easy cheerfulway of looking at life. Lover can raise a laugh, but his wit ishorseplay except for a few happy phrases. He has no real comedy; thereis nothing in _Handy Andy_ half so ingenious as the story in _JackHinton_ of the way Ulick Bourke acquitted himself of his debt to FatherTom. And behind all Lever's conventional types there is a real fund ofobservation and knowledge which is absolutely wanting in Lover, whosimply lacked the brains to be anything more than a trifler. 

A very different talent was that of their younger contemporary J. Sheridan Le Fanu. The author of _Uncle Silas_ had plenty of solid power;but his art was too highly specialised. No one ever succeeded better intwo main objects of the story-teller; first, in exciting interest, instimulating curiosity by vague hints of some dreadful mystery; and thenin concentrating attention upon a dramatic scene. It is true that, although an Irishman, he gained his chief successes with stories thathad an English setting; but one of the best, _The House by theChurchyard_, describes very vividly life at Chapelizod in the days whenthis deserted little village, which lies just beyond the Phoenix Park, was thickly peopled with the families of officers stationed in Dublin. Yet somehow one does not carry away from the reading of it any pictureof that society; the story is so exciting that the mind has no time torest on details, but hurries on from clue to clue till finally andliterally the murder is out. Books which keep a reader on thetenter-hooks of conjecture must always suffer from this undueconcentration of the interest; and in spite of cheery, inquisitive Dr. Toole, and the remarkable sketch of Black Dillon, the ruffianly geniuswith a reputation only recognised in the hospitals and the police-courts(a character admirably invented and admirably used in the plot) one canhardly class Le Fanu among those novelists who have left memorablepresentments of Irish life. It is a pity; for plainly, if the man hadcared less for sensational incident and ingenious construction, he mighthave sketched life and character with a strong brush and a kind of grimrealism. 

Realism Lever does not aim at: he declines to be on his oath aboutanything. What he gives one, vividly enough, is national colour, notlocal colour; he is essentially Irish, just as Fielding is essentiallyEnglish; but he aims at verisimilitude rather than veracity. The idealof the novel has changed since his day. Compare him with the two ladieswho stand out prominently among contemporary writers of Irish fiction, Miss Jane Barlow and Miss Emily Lawless. To begin with, Lever's storiesare always concerned with the Quality; peasants only come in for anunderplot, or in subordinate parts; and the gentry all through Irelandresemble one another within reasonable limits. It is different with thepeasantry. In every part of Ireland you will find people who have neverbeen ten miles away from the place of their birth, and upon whom a localcharacter is unmistakably stamped. The contemporary novelists delight tomark these differences, these salient points of singularity; and theirstudies are chiefly of the peasantry. They settle down upon some littlecorner of the country and never stir out of it. Miss Lawless is notcontent to get you Irish character; she must show you a Clare man or anArran islander, and she is at infinite pains to point out how hisnature, even his particular actions, are influenced by the place of hisbringing up. Lever avoids this specialisation; he prefers a stone wallcountry for his hunting scenes, but beyond that he goes no further intodetails. Again Miss Lawless both in _Grania_ and in _Hurrish_ makes youaware that young Irishmen of Hurrish's class are curiously indifferentto female beauty. Lever will have none of that: his Irishman must be "adivil with the girls, " although Lever is no sentimentalist, and does nottalk of love matches among the Irish peasantry. 

The greatest divergence of all, however, is in the temper attributed tothe Irish. Lever makes them gay, Miss Lawless and Miss Barlow make themsad. No one denies that sadness is nearer the reality, but it isunreasonable to call Lever insincere. Naturally careless andlighthearted he does not trouble himself with the riddle of the painfulworld; the distress which touches him most nearly is a distress fordebt. But if Lever is not realistic he is natural; he follows the lawof his nature as an artist should; he sees life through his own medium;and if books are to be valued as companions, not many of them are bettercompany than _Charles O'Malley_ or _Lord Kilgobbin_; for first and lastLever was always himself. 

Yet, I must own it, it does not do to read Lever soon after Miss Barlow. Her stories of Lisconnel and its folk have a tragic dignity wholly outof his range. It is a sad-coloured country she writes of, gray andbrown; sodden brown with bog water, gray with rock cropping up throughthe fields; the only brightness is up overhead in the heavens, and eventhey are often clouded. These sombre hues, with the passing gleam ofsomething above them, reflect themselves in every page of her books. Sherenders that complete harmony between the people and their surroundingswhich is only seen in working folk whose clothes are stained with thecolour of the soil they live by, and whose lives assimilate themselvesto its character. She has a fineness of touch, a poetry, to which noother Irish story-teller has attained. 

Yet, Miss Barlow has never succeeded with a regular novel: and she mayhave been only a forerunner. All great writers proceed from a school, and there does exist now undeniably a school of Irish literature whichdiffers from Miss Edgeworth in being strongly tinged with the element ofCeltic romance, from Carleton in possessing an admirable standard ofstyle, and from Lever in aiming at a sincere and vital portraiture ofIrish life. 

1897. 

A CENTURY OF IRISH HUMOUR. 

In a preface to the French translation of Sienkiewicz's works, M. DeWyzewa, the well-known critic, himself a Pole, makes a suggestivecomparison between the Polish and the Russian natures. The Pole, hesays, is quicker, wittier, more imaginative, more studious of beauty, less absorbed in the material world than the Russian--in a word, infinitely more gifted with the artistic temperament; and yet in everyart the Russian has immeasurably outstripped the Pole. His explanation, if not wholly convincing, is at least suggestive. The Poles are a raceof dreamers, and the dreamer finds his reward in himself. He does notseek to conquer the world with arms or with commerce, with tears or withlaughter; neither money tempts him nor fame, and the strenuous, unremitting application which success demands, whether in war, business, or the arts, is alien to his being. 

The same observation and the same reasoning apply with equal force tothe English and the Irish. No one who has lived in the two countrieswill deny that the Irish are apparently the more gifted race; no one candeny, if he has knowledge and candour, that the English haveaccomplished a great deal more, the Irish a great deal less. Nowhere isthis more evident than in the productions of that faculty which Irishmenhave always been reputed, and justly reputed, to possess in peculiarmeasure--the faculty of humour. Compare Lever, who for a long timepassed as the typical Irish humorist, with his contemporaries Thackerayand Dickens. The comparison is not fair, but it suggests the centralfact that the humour of Irish literature is deficient in depth, inintellectual quality, or, to put it after an Irish fashion, in gravity. 

'Humorous' is a word as question-begging as 'artistic, ' and he would bea rash man who should try to define either. But so much as this willreadily be admitted, that humour is a habit of mind essentially complex, involving always a double vision--a reference from the public or normalstandard of proportion to one that is private and personal. The humoristrefuses to part with any atom of his own personality, he stamps it onwhatever comes from him. "If reasons were as plenty as blackberries, "says Falstaff, achieving individuality by the same kind of oddpicturesque comparison as every witty Irish peasant uses in talk, to thedelight of himself and his hearers. But the individuality lies deeperthan phrases: Falstaff takes his private standard into battle with him. There is nothing more obviously funny than the short paunchy man, let usnot say cowardly, but disinclined to action, who finds himself engagedin a fight. Lever has used him a score of times (beginning with Mr. O'Leary in the row at a gambling-hall in Paris), and whether he runs orwhether he fights, his efforts to do either are grotesquely laughable. Shakespeare puts that view of Falstaff too: Prince Hal words it. ButFalstaff, the humorist in person, rises on the field of battle over theslain Percy and enunciates his philosophy of the better part of valour. Falstaff's estimate of honour--"that word honour" ("Who hath it? he thatdied o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it?"), the "grinning honour" that SirWalter Blunt wears where the Douglas left him--is necessary to completethe humorist's vision of a battle-piece. Lever will scarcely visit youwith such reflections, for the humorist of Lever's type never standsapart and smiles; he laughs loud and in company. Still less will he giveyou one of those speeches which are the supreme achievement of thisfaculty, where the speaker's philosophy is not reasoned out likedFalstaff's, but revealed in a flash of the onlooker's insight. Is itpardonable to quote the account of Falstaff's death as the hostessnarrates it?

 "How now, Sir John, quoth I, what, man! be of good cheer. So a' cried out God, God, three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him a' should not think of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet. "

Humour can go no farther than that terrible, illuminating phrase, whichis laughable enough, heaven knows, but scarce likely to make you laugh. Contrast the humour of that with the humour of such a story as Leverdelighted in. There were two priests dining with a regiment, we all haveread in _Harry Lorrequer_, who chaffed a dour Ulster Protestant till hewas the open derision of the mess. Next time they returned, theProtestant major was radiant with a geniality that they could notexplain till they had to make their way out of barracks in a hurry, andfound that the countersign (arranged by the major) was "Bloody end tothe Pope. " Told as Lever tells it, with all manner of jovialamplifications, that story would make anyone laugh. But it does not godeep. The thing is funny in too obvious a way; the mirth finds too largean outlet in laughter; it does not hang about the brain, inextricablefrom the processes of thought; it carries nothing with it beyond thejest. And just as tears help to an assuaging of grief, so in a senselaughter makes an end of mirth. Give a feeling its instinctive vent, andyou will soon be done with it, like the child who laughs and crieswithin five minutes; check it, and it spreads inward, gaining inintellectual quality as it loses in physical expression. The moral is, that if you wish to be really humorous you must not be too funny; andthe capital defect of most Irish humour is that its aim is toosimple--it does not look beyond raising a laugh. 

There are brilliant exceptions in the century that lies between Sheridanand Mr. Bernard Shaw, between Maria Edgeworth and Miss Barlow. Butserious art or serious thought in Ireland has always revealed itself tothe English sooner or later as a species of sedition, and the Irish havewith culpable folly allowed themselves to accept for characteristicexcellences what were really the damning defects of their work--an easyfluency of wit, a careless spontaneity of laughter. They have takenMoore for a great poet, and Handy Andy for a humorist to be proud of. Yet an Irishman who wishes to speak dispassionately must find humour ofa very different kind from that of _Handy Andy_ or _Harry Lorrequer_either, to commend without reserve, as a thing that may be put forwardto rank with what is best in other literatures. 

Taking Sheridan and Miss Edgeworth as marking the point of departure, itbecomes obvious that one is an end, the other at a beginning. Sheridanbelongs body and soul to the eighteenth century; Miss Edgeworth, thoughher name sounds oddly in that context, is part and parcel of theromantic movement. The "postscript which ought to have been a preface"to _Waverley_ declared, though after Scott's magnificent fashion, a realindebtedness. Sheridan's humour, essentially metropolitan, had found nouse for local colour; Miss Edgeworth before Scott proved the artisticvalue that could be extracted from the characteristics of a specialbreed of people under special circumstances in a special place. Mr. Yeats, who, like all poets, is a most suggestive and a most misleadingcritic, has declared that modern Irish literature begins with Carleton. That is only true if we are determined to look in Irish literature forqualities that can be called Celtic--if we insist that the outlook onthe world shall be the Catholic's or the peasant's. Miss Edgeworth hadnot a trace of the Celt--as I conceive that rather indefiniteentity--about her; but she was as good an Irish woman as ever walked, and there are hundreds of Irish people of her class and creed looking atIrish life with kindly humorous Irish eyes, seeing pretty much what shesaw, enjoying it as she enjoyed it, but with neither her power nor herwill to set it down. _Castle Rackrent_ is a masterpiece; and had MissEdgeworth been constant to the dramatic method which she then struck outfor herself, with all the fine reticences that it involved, her namemight have stood high in literature. Unhappily, her too exemplary fatherrepressed the artist in her, fostered the pedagogue, and in her laterbooks she commits herself to an attitude in which she can moraliseexplicitly upon the ethical and social bearings of every word andaction. The fine humour in _Ormond_ is obscured by its setting; in_Castle Rackrent_ the humour shines. Sir Condy and his lady we see nonethe less distinctly for seeing them through the eyes of old Thady, theretainer who narrates the Rackrent history; and in the process we have avision of old Thady himself. Now and then the novelist reminds us of herpresence by some extravagantly ironic touch, as when Thady describes SirCondy's anger with the Government "about a place that was promised himand never given, after his supporting them against his conscience veryhonourably and being greatly abused for, he having the name of a greatpatriot in the country. " Thady would hardly have been so ingenuous asthat. But for the most part the humour is truly inherent in thesituation, and you might look far for a better passage than thedescription of Sir Condy's parting with his lady. But it is better toillustrate from a scene perhaps less genuinely humorous, but moreprofessedly so--Sir Condy's wake. Miss Edgeworth does not dwell on thebroad farce of the entertainment; she does not make Thady eloquent overthe whisky that was drunk and the fighting that began and so forth, asLever or Carleton would certainly have been inclined to do. She fixes onthe central comedy of the situation, Sir Condy's innocent vanity and itspitiable disappointment--is it necessary to recall that he had arrangedfor the wake himself, because he always wanted to see his own funeral?Poor Sir Condy!--even Thady, who was in the secret, had forgotten allabout him, when he was startled by the sound of his master's voice fromunder the greatcoats thrown all atop. 

 "'Thady, ' says he, 'I've had enough of this; I'm smothering and can't hear a word of all they're saying of the deceased. ' 'God bless you, and lie still and quiet a bit longer, ' says I, 'for my sister's afraid of ghosts, and would die on the spot with fright if she was to see you come to life all on a sudden this way without the least preparation. ' So he lays him still, though well-nigh stifled, and I made haste to tell the secret of the joke, whispering to one and t'other, and there was a great surprise, but not so great as he had laid out there would. 'And aren't we to have the pipes and tobacco after coming so far to-night?' said some one; but they were all well enough pleased when his honour got up to drink with them, and sent for more spirits from a shebeen house where they very civilly let him have it upon credit. So the night passed off very merrily; but to my mind Sir Condy was rather upon the sad order in the midst of it all, not finding there had been such great talk about himself after his death as that he had always expected to hear. "

In the end Sir Condy died, not by special arrangement. "He had but apoor funeral after all, " is Thady's remark; and you see with the kindlydouble vision of the humorist Thady's sincere regret for thecircumstance that would most have afflicted the deceased, as well as themore obviously comic side of Thady's comment and Sir Condy's lifelongaspiration. Indeed, the whole narrative is shot with many meanings, andone never turns to it without a renewed faculty of laughter. 

If it were necessary to compare true humour with the make-believe, acomparison might be drawn between Thady and the servant in Lady Morgan'snovel _O'Donnell_. Rory is the stage Irishman in all his commonestattitudes. But it is better to go straight on, and concern ourselvessolely with the work of real literary quality, and Carleton falls nextto be considered. 

Of genius with inadequate equipment it is always difficult to speak. Carleton is the nearest thing to Burns that we have to show; and hisfaults, almost insuperable to the ordinary reader, are the faults whichBurns seldom failed to display when writing in English. But to Burnsthere was given an instrument perfected by long centuries of use--theScotch vernacular song and ballad; Carleton had to make his own, and thegenius for form was lacking in him. Some day there may come a man ofpure Irish race who will be to Carleton what Burns was to Ferguson, andthen Ireland will have what it lacks; moreover, in the light of hisachievement we shall see better what the pioneer accomplished. Everygift that Carleton had--and pathos and humour, things complementary toeach other, he possessed in profusion--every gift is obscured by faultytechnique. Nearly every trait is overcharged; for instance, in his storyof the _Midnight Mass_ he rings the changes interminably upon the oldbusiness of the wonderful medicine in the vagrants' blessed horn thathad a strong odour of whisky; but what an admirably humorous figure isthis same Darby O'More! Out of the _Poor Scholar_ alone, that inchoatemasterpiece, you could illustrate a dozen phases of Carleton's mirth, beginning with the famous sermon where the priest so artfully wheedlesand coaxes his congregation into generosity towards the boy who is goingout on the world, and all the while unconsciously displays his ownlaughable and lovable weaknesses. There you have the double vision, thathelps to laugh with the priest, and to laugh at him in the same breath, as unmistakably as in the strange scene of the famine days where theparty of mowers find Jimmy sick of the fever by the wayside and "schamea day" from their employer to build him a rough shelter. That wholechapter, describing the indefatigable industry with which they labouron the voluntary task, their glee in the truantry from the labour forwhich they are paid, their casuistry over the theft of milk for thepious purpose of keeping the poor lad alive, the odd blending ofcowardice and magnanimity in their terror of the sickness and in theirconstant care that some one should at least be always in earshot of theboy, ready to pass in to him on a long-handed shovel what food theycould scrape up, their supple ingenuity in deceiving the pompouslandlord who comes to oversee their work, --all that is the completeststudy in existence of Irish character as it came to be under the systemof absolute dependence. There is nothing so just as true humour, for bythe law of its being it sees inevitably two sides; and this strangecompound of vices and virtues, so rich in all the softer qualities, solacking in all the harder ones, stands there in Carleton's pages, neither condemned nor justified, but seen and understood with a kindlyinsight. Carleton is the document of documents for Ireland in the yearsbefore the famine, preserving a record of conditions material andspiritual, which happily have largely ceased to exist, yet operateindefinitely as causes among us, producing eternal though eternallymodifiable effects. 

But, for the things in human nature that are neither of yesterday, to-day, nor to-morrow, but unchangeable, he has the humorist's truetouch. When the poor scholar is departing, and has actually torn himselfaway from home, his mother runs after him with a last token--a smallbottle of holy water. "Jimmy, alanna, " said she, "here's this an' carryit about you--it will keep evil from you; an' be sure to take good careof the written characther you got from the priest an' Squire Benson;an', darlin', don't be lookin' too often at the cuff o' your coat, forfeard the people might get a notion that you have the banknotes sewed init. An', Jimmy agra, don't be too lavish upon their Munsther crame; theysay 'tis apt to give people the ague. Kiss me agin, agra, an' theheavens above keep you safe and well till we see you once more. "

Through all that catalogue of precautions, divine and human, one feelsthe mood between tears and laughter of the man who set it down. But Ithink you only come to the truth about Carleton in the last scene ofall, when Jimmy returns to his home, a priest. Nothing could be morestilted, more laboured, than the pages which attempt to render hisemotions and his words, till there comes the revealing touch. His motherat sight of him, returned unlooked-for after the long absence, loses fora moment the possession of her faculties, and cannot be restored. Atlast, "I will speak to her, " said Jimmy, "in Irish; it will go directlyto her heart. " And it does. 

Carleton never could speak to us in Irish; the English was still astrange tongue on his lips and in the ears of those he lived among; andhis work comes down distracted between the two languages, imperfect andhalting, only with flashes of true and living speech. 

When you come to Lever, it is a very different story. Lever was at nolack for utterance; nobody was ever more voluble, no one ever lessinclined to sit and bite his pen, waiting for the one and only word. Good or bad, he could be trusted to rattle on; and, as Trollope said, ifyou pulled him out of bed and demanded something witty, he would flashit at you before he was half awake. Some people are born with theperilous gift of improvisation; and the best that can be said for Leveris that he is the nearest equivalent in Irish literature, or in Englisheither, to the marvellous faculty of D'Artagnan's creator. He has thesame exuberance, the same inexhaustible supply of animal spirits, ofinvention that is always spirited, of wit that goes off like fireworks. He delighted a whole generation of readers, and one reader at least inthis generation he still delights; but I own that to enjoy him you musthave mastered the art of skipping. Whether you take him in his earliermanner, in the "Charles O'Malley" vein of adventure, fox-hunting, steeple-chasing, Peninsular fighting, or in his later more intellectualstudies of shady financiers, needy political adventurers, and the wholegeneration of usurers and blacklegs, he is always good; but alas andalas, he is never good enough. His work is rotten with the disease ofanecdote; instead of that laborious concentration on a single characterwhich is necessary for any kind of creative work, but above all forhumorous creation, he presents you with a sketch, a passing glimpse, andwhen you look to see the suggestion followed out he is off at score witha story. In the first chapter of _Davenport Dunn_, for instance, thereis an Irish gentleman on the Continent, a pork-butcher making his firstexperience of Italy, hit off to the life. But a silhouette--and a veryfunny silhouette--is all that we get of Mr. O'Reilly, and the figuresover whom Lever had taken trouble--for in that work Lever did taketrouble--are not seen with humour. Directly he began to think, hishumour left him; it is as if he had been funny in watertightcompartments. And perhaps that is why, here as elsewhere, he shrank fromthe necessary concentration of thought. 

There is always a temptation to hold a brief for Lever, because he hasbeen most unjustly censured by Irishmen, even in so august and impartiala court as the _Dictionary of National Biography_, as if he had traducedhis countrymen. Did Thackeray, then, malign the English? The only chargethat may fairly be brought against him is the one that cannot berebutted--the charge of superficiality and of scamped work, of a humourthat only plays over the surface of things--a humour which sees only thecomic side that anybody might see. And because I cannot defend him, Isay no more. Lever is certainly not a great humorist, but he isdelightful company. 

One may mention in passing the excursions into broad comedy of anotherbrilliant Irishman--Le Fanu's short stories in the _Purcell Papers_, such as the _Quare Gander_, or _Billy Molowney's Taste of Love andGlory_. These are good examples of a particular literary type--thehumorous anecdote--in which Irish humour has always been fertile, and ofwhich the _ne plus ultra_ is Sir Samuel Ferguson's magnificent squib inBlackwood, _Father Tom and the Pope_. Everybody knows the merits of thatstory, its inexhaustible fertility of comparison, its dialecticingenuity, its jovialty, its drollery, its Rabelaisian laughter. But, after all, the highest type of humour is humour applying itself to thefacts of life, and this is burlesque humour squandering itself in riotupon a delectable fiction. Humour is a great deal more than aplaything; it is a force, a weapon--at once sword and shield. If thereis to be an art of literature in Ireland that can be called national, itcannot afford to devote humour solely to the production of trifles. _Father Tom_ is a trifle, a splendid toy; and what is more, a triflewrought in a moment of ease by perhaps the most serious andconscientious artist that ever made a contribution to the small body ofreal Irish literature in the tongue that is now native to the majorityof Irishmen. 

Of contemporaries, with one exception, I do not propose to speak at anylength, nor can I hope that my review will be complete. There is firstand foremost Miss Barlow, a lady whose work is so gentle, so unassuming, that one hears little of it in the rush and flare of these stridenttimes, but who will be heard and listened to with fresh emotion as thestream is heard when the scream and rattle of a railway train havepassed away into silence. Is she a humorist? Not in the sense ofprovoking laughter--and yet the things that she sees and loves anddwells on would be unbearable if they were not seen through a delicatemist of mirth. The daily life of people at continual handgrips withstarvation, their little points of honour, their little questions ofprecedence, the infinite generosity that concerns itself with theexpenditure of six-pence, the odd shifts they resort to that a gift maynot have the appearance of charity, --all these are set down with atenderness of laughter that is peculiarly and distinctively Irish. 

Yet, though we may find a finer quality of humour in those writers whodo not seek to raise a laugh--for instance, the subtle pervasive humourin Mr. Yeats's _Celtic Twilight_--still there are few greaterattractions than that of open healthy laughter of the contagious sort;and it would be black ingratitude not to pay tribute to the authoressesof _Some Experiences of an Irish R. M. _--a book that no decorous personcan read with comfort in a railway carriage. These ladies have thekeenest eye for the obvious humours of Irish life, they have abundanceof animal spirits, and they have that knack at fluent descriptionembroidered with a wealth of picturesque details that is shared byhundreds of peasants in Ireland, but is very rare indeed on the printedpage. And, mingling with the broad farce there is a deal of excellentcomedy--for instance, in the person of old Mrs. Knox of Aussolas. Butthere is the same point to insist on--and since these witty anddelightful ladies have already the applause of all the world one insistsless unwillingly--this kind of thing, admirable as it is, will notredeem Irish humour from the reproach of trifling. But in the novel, _The Real Charlotte_, there is humour as grim almost as Swift's--and ascompletely un-English; it is a humour which assuredly stirs morefaculties than the simple one of laughter. 

There is indeed a literature which, if not always exactly humorous, isclosely allied to it--the literature of satire and invective; and inthis Ireland has always been prolific. In the days of the old kings theorder of bards had grown so numerous, that they comprised a third of thewhole population, and they devoted themselves with such talent and zealto the task of invective that no man could live in peace, and thecountry cried out against them, and there was talk of suppressing thewhole order. The king spared them on condition that they would mendtheir manners. We have those bards still, but nowadays we call thempoliticians and journalists; and frankly I think we are ripe for anotherintervention, if only in the interests of literature. So much goodtalent goes to waste in bad words; and, moreover, an observance of thedecencies is always salutary for style. And it seems that as the yearshave gone on, humour has diminished in Irish politics, while bad humourhas increased; and therefore I leave alone any attempt to survey thehumour of the orators, though Curran tempts one at the beginning and Mr. Healy at the close. Of purely literary satire there has been littleenough, apart from its emergence in the novel; but there is one examplewhich deserves to be recalled. I have never professed enthusiasm forThomas Moore, but I am far indeed from agreeing with a recent critic whowould claim literary rank for him rather in virtue of the _Fudge Family_than of the Irish Melodies. That satire does not seem to get beyondbrilliancy; it is very clever, and not much more. Still, there arepassages in it which cannot be read without enjoyment; and one quotationmay be permitted, since it puts with perfect distinctness what it isalways permissible to put--the English case against Ireland. 

 I'm a plain man who speak the truth. And trust you'll think me not uncivil When I declare that from my youth I've wished your country at the devil. Nor can I doubt indeed from all I've heard of your high patriot fame, From every word your lips let fall, That you most truly wish the same. 

 It plagues one's life out; thirty years Have I had dinning in my ears-- Ireland wants this and that and t'other; And to this hour one nothing hears But the same vile eternal bother. While of those countless things she wanted, Thank God, but little has been granted. 

The list of writers of humorous verse in Ireland is a long one, but acatalogue of ephemera. Even Father Prout at this time of day is littlemore than a dried specimen labelled for reference, or at most preservedin vitality by the immortal _Groves of Blarney_. But neither that work, nor even _The Night before Larry was stretched_, nor Le Fanu's ballad of_Shemus O'Brien_, can rank altogether as literature. About the humoroussong I need only say that, so far as my experience goes, there is one, and one only, which a person with no taste for music and some taste forliterature can hear frequently with pleasure, and that song of course is_Father O'Flynn_. To recall the delightful ingenuity and the nimble witshown by another Irishman of the same family in the _Hawarden Horace_, and in a lesser degree by Mr. Godley in his _Musa Frivola_, leadsnaturally to the inquiry why humour from Aristophanes to Carlyle hasalways preferred the side of reaction--a question that would need anessay, or a volume, all to itself. 

But the central question is after all why in a race where humour is sopreponderant in the racial temperament does so little of the elementcrystallise itself in literature. Humour ranks with the water power asone of the great undeveloped resources of the country. Something indeedhas been done in the past with the river of laughter that almost everyIrish person has flowing in his heart; but infinitely more might bedone if these rivers were put in harness. 

Yet, take away two Irish names from the field of modern comedy in theEnglish language written during the nineteenth century, and you haveuncommonly little for which literary merit can be claimed. The qualityof Oscar Wilde's is scarcely disputed. There is the more reason to dwellon Mr. Bernard Shaw's plays, because they have not even in the twentiethcentury been fully accepted by that queer folk, the theatre-goingpublic. But I never yet heard of anyone who saw _You Never can Tell_, and was not amused by it. That was a farce, no doubt, but a farce whichappealed to emotions less elementary than those which are touched by thespectacle of a man sitting down by accident on his hat; it was a farceof intellectual absurdities, of grotesque situations arising out ofperversities of character and opinion; a farce that you could laugh atwithout a loss of self-respect. But it is rather by his comedies than byhis farces that Mr. Shaw should be judged. If they are not popular, itis for a very good reason: Mr. Shaw's humour is too serious. His humouris a strong solvent, and one of the many things about which thishumorist is in deadly earnest is the fetish worship of tradition. Tothat he persists in applying--in _Candida_ as in half a dozen otherplays--the ordeal by laughter--an ordeal which every human institutionis bound to face. _Candida_ will not only make people laugh, it willmake them think; and it is not easy to induce the public to think afterdinner on unaccustomed lines. They will laugh when they have been usedto laugh, weep when they have been used to weep; but if you ask them tolaugh when they expect to weep, or _vice versâ_, the public will resentthe proceeding. The original humorist, like every other original artist, has got slowly and laboriously to convert his public before he canconvince them of his right to find tears and laughter where he can. 

Whatever Mr. Shaw touches, whether it be the half-hysterical impulsethat sometimes passes current for heroism, as in _Arms and the Man_, or, as in the _Devil's Disciple_, the conventional picturesqueness of a DonJuan--that maker of laws, breaker of hearts, so familiar with thelimelight, so unused to the illumination by laughter, who finds himselfin the long run deplorably stigmatised as a saint--there is a flood oflight let in upon all manner of traditional poses, literaryinsincerities that have crept into life. There are few things of morevalue in a commonwealth than such a searching faculty of laughter. LikeSheridan, Mr. Shaw lives in England, and uses his comic gift for themost part on subjects suggested to him by English conditions of life, but with a strength of intellectual purpose that Sheridan neverpossessed. Irishmen may wish that he found his material in Ireland. Butan artist must take what his hand finds, and there is no work in theworld more full of the Scottish spirit or the Scottish humour thanCarlyle's _French Revolution_. If it be asked whether Mr. Shaw's humouris typically Irish, I must reply by another question: "Could his playshave conceivably been written by any but an Irishman?"

Is there, in fact, a distinctively Irish humour? In a sense, yes, nodoubt, just as the English humour is of a different quality from theGreek or the French. But nobody wants to pin down English humour to theformula of a definition; no one wants to say, Thus far shalt thou go, and beyond that shalt cease to be English. Moreover, a leadingcharacteristic of the Irish type is just its variety--its continualdeviation from the normal. How, then, to find a description that willapply to a certain quality of mind throughout a variable race; thatquality being in its essence the most complete expression of anindividuality, in its difference from other individualities, since aman's humour is the most individual thing about him? Description isperhaps more possible than definition. One may say that the Irish humouris kindly and lavish; that it tends to express itself in an exuberanceof phrase, a wild riot of comparisons; that it amplifies rather thanretrenches, finding its effects by an accumulation of traits, and not bya concentration. The vernacular Irish literature is there to prove thatIrish fancy gives too much rather than too little. One may observe, again, that a nation laughs habitually over its besetting weakness; andif the French find their mirth by preference in dubious adventures, itcannot be denied that much Irish humour has a pronounced alcoholicflavour. But it is better neither to define nor to describe; there ismore harmful misunderstanding caused by setting down this or thatquality, this or that person, as typically French, typically English, typically Irish, than by any other fallacy; and we Irish have sufferedpeculiarly by the notion that the typical Irishman is the funny man ofthe empire. What I would permit myself to assert is, first, that thetruest humour is not just the light mirth that comes easily from thelips--that, in the hackneyed phrase, bubbles over spontaneously--but isthe expression of deep feeling and deep thought, made possible by deepstudy of the means to express it; and secondly, that literature, whichthrough the earlier part of last century never received in Ireland thelaborious brooding care without which no considerable work of art ispossible, now receives increasingly the artist's labour; andconsequently that among our later humorists we find a faculty of mirththat lies deeper, reaches farther, judges more subtly, calls into lighta wider complex of relations. After all, laughter is the mostdistinctive faculty of man; and I submit that, so far as literatureshows, we Irish can better afford to be judged by our laughter now thana century ago. 

1901. 

LITERATURE AMONG THE ILLITERATES

I

THE SHANACHY

There is nothing better known about Ireland than this fact: thatilliteracy is more frequent among the Irish Catholic peasantry than inany other class of the British population; and that especially upon theIrish-speaking peasant does the stigma lie. Yet it is, perhaps, as wellto inquire a little more precisely what is meant by an illiterate. If tobe literate is to possess a knowledge of the language, literature, andhistorical traditions of a man's own country--and this is no veryunreasonable application of the word--then this Irish-speaking peasantryhas a better claim to the title than can be shown by most bodies of men. I have heard the existence of an Irish literature denied by a roomful ofprosperous educated gentlemen; and, within a week, I have heard, in thesame county, the classics of that literature recited by an Irish peasantwho could neither write nor read. On which part should the stigma ofilliteracy set the uglier brand?

The Gaelic revival sends many of us to school in Irish-speakingdistricts, and, if it did nothing else, at least it would have sent usto school in pleasant places among the most lovable preceptors. It was ablessed change from London to a valley among hills that look over theAtlantic, with its brown stream tearing down among boulders, and itsheathy banks, where the keen fragrance of bog-myrtle rose as you brushedthrough in the morning on your way to the head of a pool. Here wasindeed a desirable academy, and my preceptor matched it. A big, loose-jointed old man, rough, brownish-gray all over, clothes, hair, andface; his cheeks were half-hidden by the traditional close-croppedwhisker, and the rest was an ill-shorn stubble. Traditional, too, wasthe small, deep-set, blue eye, the large, kindly mouth, uttering Englishwith a soft brogue, which, as is always the case among those whose realtongue is Irish, had no trace of vulgarity. Indeed, it would have beenstrange that vulgarity of any sort should show in one who had perfectmanners, and the instinct of a scholar, for this preceptor was not eventechnically illiterate. He could read and write English, and Irish, too, which is by no means so common; and I have not often seen a man happierthan he was over Douglas Hyde's collection of Connacht love-songs, whichI had fortunately brought with me. But his main interest was inhistory--that history which had been rigorously excluded from his schooltraining, the history of Ireland. I would go on ahead to fish a pool, and leave him poring over Hyde's book; but when he picked me up, conversation went on where it broke off--somewhere among the fortunes ofDesmonds and Burkes, O'Neills and O'Donnells. And when one had hooked alarge sea-trout, on a singularly bad day, in a place where no sea-troutwas expected, it was a little disappointing to find that Charlie's onlyremark, as he swept the net under my capture, was: "The Clancartys wasgreat men too. Is there any of them living?" The scholar in him hadcompletely got the better of the sportsman. 

Beyond his historic lore (which was really considerable, and by no meansinaccurate) he had many songs by heart, some of them made by Carolan, some by nameless poets, written in the Irish which is spoken to-day. Iwrote down a couple of Charlie's lyrics which had evidently a localorigin; but what I sought was one of the Shanachies who carried in hismemory the classic literature of Ireland, the epics or ballads of anolder day. Charlie was familiar, of course, with the matter of this"Ossianic" literature, as we all are, for example, with the story ofUlysses. He knew how Oisin dared to go with a fairy woman to her ownland; how he returned in defiance of her warning; how he found himselflonely and broken in a changed land; and how, in the end, he gave in tothe teaching of St. Patrick ("Sure how would he stand up against it?"said Charlie), and was converted to Christ. But all the mass of rhymedverse which relates the dialogues between Oisin and Patrick, the talesof Finn and his heroes which Oisin told to the Saint, the fierce answerswith which the old warrior met the Gospel arguments--all this was onlyvaguely familiar to him. I was looking for a man who had it by heart. 

The search for the repositories of this knowledge leads sometimes intostrange contrasts. One friend of mine lay stretched for long hours ontop of a roof of sticks and peat-scraws which was propped against thewall of a ruined cabin, while within the evicted tenant, still clingingto his home as life clings to the shattered body, lay bedridden on alair of rushes, and chanted the deeds of heroes; his voice issuingthrough the vent in the roof, at once window and chimney, from thekennel in which was neither room nor light for a man to sit and recordthe verses. My own chance was luckier and happier. It came on a day whena party of us had set out in quest of a remote mountain lough. Our wayled along the river, and as we drove up to where the valley contracted, and the tillage land decreased in extent and fertility, the type of thepeople changed. They were Celts and Catholics, evident to the leastpractised eye. A little further still from civilisation we reached thefringe that was Gaelic not merely in blood; the kindly woman whosecottage warmed and sheltered us when we returned half-foundered fromplunging through bogs was an Irish speaker. She had no songs herself, but if I wanted them her neighbour, James Kelly, was the best ofcompany, and would keep me listening the length of a night. 

I pushed my bicycle through a drizzle of misty rain up the road overmountainous moor, before I saw his cottage standing trim and white underits thatch in a screen of trees, and as I was nearing it, the boy withme showed me James down in a hollow, filling a barrow with turf. Hestopped work as I came down, and called off his dog, looking at mecuriously enough, for, indeed, strangers were a rarity in that spot, clean off the tourist track, and away from any thoroughfare. One'spresence had to be explained out of hand, and I told him exactly why Ihad come. He looked surprised and perhaps a little pleased, that hislearning should draw students. But he made no pretence of ignorance; theonly question was, how he could help me. Did I want songs of the modernkind, or the older songs of Finn Mac-Cool? If it was the latter, itseemed I was not well able to manage the common talk, and these songswere written in "very hard Irish, full of ould strong words. "

I should like to send the literary Irishmen of my acquaintance one byone to converse with James Kelly as a salutary discipline. He wasperfectly courteous, but through his courtesy there pierced a kind oftoleration that carried home to one's mind a profound conviction ofignorance. People talk about the servility of the Irish peasant. Herewas a man who professed his inability to read or write, but stoodperfectly secure in his sense of superior education. His respect for megrew evidently when he found me familiar with the details of morestories than he expected. I was raised to the level of a hopeful pupil. They had been put into English, I told him. "Oh, ay, they would be, in asort of a way, " said James, with a fine scorn. Soon we broke new ground, for James had by heart not only the Fenian or Ossianic cycle, but alsothe older Sagas of Cuchulain. He confused the cycles, it is true, takingthe Red Branch heroes for contemporaries of the Fianna, which is much asif one should make Heracles meet Odysseus or Achilles in battle; but hehad these earlier legends by heart, a rare acquirement among theShanachies of to-day. 

Here then was a type of the Irish illiterate. A man somewhere betweenfifty and sixty, at a guess; of middle height, spare and well-knit, high-nosed, fine-featured, keen-eyed; standing there on his own ground, courteous and even respectful, yet consciously a scholar; one who hadtravelled too--had worked in England and Scotland, and could tell methat the Highland Gaelic was far nearer to the language of the old daysthan the Irish of to-day; finally, one who could recite without apparenteffort long narrative poems in a dead literary dialect. When I find anEnglish workman who can stand up and repeat the works of Chaucer byheart, then and not till then I shall see an equivalent for James Kelly. 

And yet it would be a different thing entirely. Chaucer has neversurvived in oral tradition. But in the West of Donegal, whence JamesKelly's father emigrated to where I found his son, every old person hadthis literature in mind, and my friend was no exception. It is among theyounger generation, who have been taught in the National Schools (surelythe most ironic of all titles), that the language and the history of thenation are dying out. Yet that is changing. For instance, James Kelly'sson reads and writes Irish, and on another day helped me to note downsome of his father's lore. 

For it was late when I came first to the house, and though the Shanachiepressed me (not knowing even my name) to stay the night, I had to departfor that day, after I had heard him recite in the traditional chant somestaves of an Ossianic lay, and sing to the traditional air Carolan'sfamous lyric, "The Lord of Mayo. " We drank a glass of whisky from myflask, a cup of tea that his wife made; and as we went into the house heasked a favour in a whisper. It was that I should eat plenty of his goodwoman's butter. He escorted me a good way over the hill, for, said he, when I had come that far to see him, it was the least that he should putme a piece on my road, and he exhorted me to come again for "a goodcrack together. " And if I deferred visiting him for another year thatwas largely because I did not like to face again this illiterate withoutacquiring a little more knowledge. 

What came of my second visit must be written in another paper. But here, let it be understood this is no exceptional case. In every three or fourparishes along the Western seaboard and for twenty miles inland, fromDonegal to Kerry, there is the like of James Kelly to be found. It maybe that in another fifty years not one of these Shanachies will linger;education will have made a clean sweep of illiteracy. And yet again, itmay be that by that time, not only in the Western baronies but throughthe length and breadth of Ireland, both song and story and legend willbe living again on the lips and in the hearts of the people. _Go leigidhDia sin. _

LITERATURE AMONG THE ILLITERATES

II

THE LIFE OF A SONG

There was a great contention some years ago fought out in a law courtbetween the British Museum and the Royal Irish Academy, for the custodyof certain treasure trove, gold vessels and ornaments disinterred on anIrish beach. The treasures went back, as was only right, to Ireland, where is a rich storehouse of such things, for the soil has been dugover in search for the material relics of ancient art. Yet little heedhas been paid to treasures of far greater worth and interest, harder tosell, it is true, but easier to come by--the old songs and stories whichlinger in oral tradition or in old manuscripts handed down from peasantto peasant. Only within the last few years did the Irish suddenly awaketo a consciousness that the authentic symbols, or, rather, theindisputable proofs of the national existence so dear to them, wereslipping out of their hands. So far had the heritage perished, so illhad the tradition been maintained, that when they turned to revive theirexpiring language and literature, the first question asked was, "What isit you would revive? Was there ever a literature in Irish or merely acollection of ridiculous rhodomontade? Is there a language, or doesthere survive merely a debased jargon, employed by ignorant peasantsamong themselves, and chiefly useful, like a thieves' lingo, to bafflethe police?"

These were the questions put, and not one in a thousand of IrishNationalists could give an answer according to knowledge. 

Now, matters are changed. The books that were available in print havebeen read; the work of poets extant only in manuscript has been printedand widely circulated; the language is studied with zeal, and not inIreland only, but wherever Irishmen are gathered. Yet nothing has sostrongly moved me to believe that we cherish the living rather than payfuneral honours to the dead, as certain hours spent with a peasant whocould neither write nor read. 

The life of a song--poets have said it again and again in immortalverse--is of all lives the most enduring. Kingdoms pass, buildingscrumble, but the work which a man has fashioned "out of a mouthful ofair" defies the centuries; it keeps its shape and its quiveringsubstance. Strongest of all such lives are perhaps those where "themouthful of air" is left by the singer mere air, and no more, unfixed onpaper or parchment; when the song goes from mouth to mouth, altering itscontours it may be, but unchanged in essence, though coloured by itsimmediate surroundings as a flower fits itself to each soil. Such wasthe song that I had the chance to write down, from lips to which it camethrough who knows how many generations. 

The story which it tells is among the finest in that great repertory oflegend which, since Ireland began to take count of her own possessions, has become familiar to the world. It is the theme of a play in the lastbook published by the chief of modern Irish poets, Mr. W. B. Yeats. Butsince he tells the story in a way of his own, and since it is none toowell known even in those parts of Ireland where its hero's name is aproverb (_Comh làidir le Cuchulain_, Strong as Cuchulain), it may bewell to set out the legend here. 

Cuchulain, the Achilles of Irish epic, was famous from the day inboyhood when he got his name by killing, bare-handed, the smith's fiercewatchdog that would have torn him. The ransom for the killing was laidon by the boy himself, and it was that he should watch Culann's housefor a year and a day till a pup should be grown to take the place of theslain dog. So he came to be called Cú Chulain, Culann's Hound, and bythat name he was known when, as a young champion, he set out for theIsle of Skye, where the warrior-witch Sgathach (from whom the island iscalled) taught the crowning feats of arms to all young heroes who couldpass through the ordeals she laid upon them. 

There was no trial that Cuchulain could not support, and the fame of himdrew on a combat with another Amazonian warrior, Aoifé, who, in thestory that I heard, was Sgathach's daughter, though Lady Gregory in herfine book _Cuchulain of Muirthemne_ gives another version. But, at anyrate, Cuchulain defeated Aoifé, and she gave love to herconqueror--whose passion for the fierce queen was not strong enough tokeep him from Ireland. When he made ready to go, the woman warrior toldhim that a child was to be born of their embraces, and she asked whatshould be done with it. "If it be a girl, keep it, " said Cuchulain, "but if a boy, wait till his thumb can fill this ring"--and he gave herthe circlet--"then send him to me. " So he departed, leaving wrath behindhim. 

The child born was a son, and Aoifé reared him and taught him all featsof arms that could be taught to a mortal, except one only, and of thatfeat only Cuchulain was master: "the way, " said James Kelly, prefacinghis ballad with such an explanation as I am now giving, "there would benone could kill him but his own father. " And when the boy had learnt alland was the perfect warrior, Aoifé sent him out to Ireland under apledge to refuse his name to any that should ask it, well knowing howthe wardens of the coast would stop him on the shore. It fell out as shepurposed. The young Connlaoch defeated champion after champion tillCuchulain himself went down, and was recognised by his son. But thepledge tied Connlaoch's tongue, and only when he lay dying, slain by themagic throw which Aoifé had withheld from his knowledge, could he revealhimself to his father, the great and childless hero, whose lament forhis lost son is written in the song that I set out to secure, on a dayof sun and rain, last summer, when great soft clouds drove full sailthrough the moist atmosphere, their shadows sweeping over brown moor andgreen valley, while far away towards the sea, mountain peaks rose purpleand amethystine in the distance. 

Twice before this I had been in the little cottage on Cark Mountain;first, when the chance rumour heard in a neighbouring cabin of a manwith countless songs and stories sent me off to investigate; and for asecond time, when I had come back with a slightly better knowledge ofGaelic and had taken down a few verses of the poem. These, sent to anIrish scholar, had sufficed to identify the ballad with one printed inMiss Brooke's _Reliques of Irish Poetry_, a characteristic production ofthe latter days of the eighteenth century, when Macpherson, with hisadaptation of the Ossianic poems, and Bishop Percy, with his gatheringof old English ballads, had set a fashion soon to culminate in Scott'sgreat achievement. 

They proved, however, not identity only but difference; and the balladas I have it in full with its nineteen quatrains, is even less like thelonger version given by O'Halloran to Miss Brooke, than the openingstanzas suggested. In them the variations were mainly textual, and whenI read out O'Halloran's version to James Kelly, his son, a keenlistener, declared a preference for the printed text. But the old manwas of another mind. "It's the same song, " he said, "sure enough, butthere's things changed in it, and I know rightly about them. Some onewas giving it the way it would be easier to understand, leaving out theold hard words. And I did that myself once or twice the last day youwere here, and I was vexed after, when I would be thinking about it. Andthis day you will be to take down what I say, let you understand it ornot; just word for word, the right way it should be spoken. "

There you have in a glimpse the custodian of legend. The man wasilliterate, technically, but he knew by instinct, as his ancestors hadknown before him, that he was the guardian of the life of a song; herecognised that it was a scripture which he had no right to mutilate oralter. He had to the full that respect for a work of literature which isthe best indication of a scholar, and for him at least the line wasunbroken from the Ireland of heroes and minstrels to the hour when hechanted over the poem that some bard in the remote ages had fashioned. 

Little wonder, too, for his own way of life was close to that of theMiddle Ages. Below in the valley, where the Swilly River debouches intoits sea lough, was a prosperous little town with banks and railway; butto reach the bleak brown moor where James Kelly's house stood, you mustclimb by one of two roads, each so rough and steep that a bicycle cannotbe ridden down them. Here, in a little screen of scrub alders, standsthe cottage, where three generations of the family live together. Hisown home consisted simply of two rooms with no upper story, but it wastrim and comfortable, the dresser well filled, and the big pot over theturf fire gave out a prosperous steam. The son, a grown man, waited fromhis turf-cutting to help in our discussion; the wife was abroad thatday, and one daughter was just starting for market with a web ofhomespun cloth which they had dressed in the household. The spinningwheel stood in the corner; but another girl was busy near the fire withmore modern work, hemming shirts with a machine for a Derry factory, andthe bleached linen was the only thing in the house which had not takenon the brown tints of peat smoke. 

James Kelly himself, as he sat by the fire declaiming at me, was allbrowns and greys, like the country outside his door; and his eyes werelike brown streams running through that peaty mountain, with theirmovement and sparkle, and their dark depths. At other times easy, likethat of all Irish peasants, his manner changed and grew rough andimperious when the business began. I must not interrupt with questions. I must write down, syllable for syllable, that the song might be got"the right way. " It was by no means easy to carry out these directions, for the poem was written in an Irish not spoken to-day, as unlike as theChaucerian English is to our common speech; and even to write downmodern Irish by ear I was poorly qualified. Things were made harder, too, by the manner of recitation, as traditional as the words. Hechanted, with a continuous vocalisation, and while he chanted, elbow andknee worked like a fiddler's or piper's marking the time. However, withpersistence, I got the thing down, letting him first say a verse fullythrough, then writing line by line or as near as I could; then goingback and asking questions in detail: the son coming to my rescue, whenthe old man lost patience (as he did once in every ten minutes) andinterposing usefully in our discussions. 

For there were endless discussions as to the meaning of words, andnothing could be more curious than to see the old man's endeavour togive in English not merely a bare rendering, but the colour of everyphrase. It made me realise as nothing else could have done, how fine washis feeling for the shade of a word, and I cannot describe hisdissatisfaction with the poor equivalents he could find. He was happyenough when the debate drifted into an exposition--always addressed tohis son--of the uses of some rare word in the Irish, the manner ofexposition being by citation of passages from other songs, or phrasesthat might occur in talk. I have listened to many a professor doing thesame thing in Greek and Latin, but to none who had a finer instinct forthe business. Kelly's vexation came when he had to "put English on" aword for me, and the obvious equivalent was not the right one. SometimesI could help; sometimes he arrived by himself at what satisfied him, though once at least it was droll enough. We were at the lines whereConnlaoch, dying, says to his father: "If I could give my secret to anyunder the sun, it is to your bright body I would tell it. " The troublewas about the phrase "bright body, " for the word "cneas" means literally"skin, " but is used (just like [Greek: chrôs] in Homer) to signify"person. " What James wanted to convey to me was that the word was notthe common one for "body, " and at last he smote his thigh. "Carkidge, "he cried, "it's carkidge (carcase), 'It is to your clear carkidge Iwould tell it. '" A man with less instinct for literature would have said"body" at once, and never trouble more; but James knew at once too muchand too little, and I give the instance to show how an Irishmanunlettered in English may be deeply imbued with the true spirit ofletters through a literature of his own. 

There were, however, several passages where I could get no clear accountof the meaning, and in some I have since found by comparison with thetext which O'Halloran provided for Miss Brooke that Kelly had got thewords twisted. For instance, the first stanza opens simply:--

 "There came to us a stout champion, The hearty champion Connlaoch. "

But of the next two lines I could get no clearer rendering than that "hejust came in full through these people for diversion and for fun tohimself. " Then the ballad continues at once--for its method is terse andits transitions abrupt throughout--to give us the words of the men whomeet Connlaoch on his landing:--

 "Where have you been, O tender gallant, Riding like a noble's son? Methinks by the way of your coming, You are wandering or astray. "

And Connlaoch answers the taunt and the challenge implied:--

 "My coming is over seas from the land Of the High King of the World, To prove my merry prowess Athwart the high chiefs of Erin. "

(It seemed to me characteristic that the stock epithet of valour shouldbe "merry" or "laughing. ") The ballad added no reply (though in MissBrooke's version at this point there is a dialogue of warnings), butwent on to tell in the shortest possible words how Conall Cearnach ("theVictorious") rode out from Emain Macha and met the challenger:--

 "Out started Conall, not weak of hand, To get news of the noble's son. Bitter and hard was the way of it; Conall was tied by Connlaoch. "

 "'Bring word from us to Hound's head, ' Said the King in fierce sullen tones, To Dundalk sunny and bright, To the Hound, Dog's jaw. "

Then Cuchulain (thus described by versions of the nickname won when hebroke the jaws of Culann's hound) made answer:--

 "Hard for us is hearing of the captivity Of the man whose plight is told; And hard it is to try the venom of blades With the warrior that bound Conall. "

But the messenger pleads:--

 "Do not think but to go to the rescue Of the destroying keen dangerous warrior, Of the hand that had no fear for any, To loose him, and he fettered. "

Then (as Miss Brooke in the majestic manner of the eighteenth centuryputs it):--

 "Then with firm step and dauntless air, Cucullin went and thus the foe addrest, Let me, O valiant knight (he cried), Thy courtesy request, To me thy purpose and thy name confide. "

And so on through a sonorous description of dialogue and fight till:--

 "At length Cucullin's kindling soul arose, Indignant shame recruited fury lends; With fatal aim his glittering lance he throws, And low on earth the dying youth extends. "

Or, as I translate almost literally from James Kelly's version, which isconsiderably briefer than the text which Miss Brooke has so volublyexpanded:--

 "Out set the Hound of the keen, smooth blade To see the work that Conall made, Till he pierced with a bitter blow, That hero youth his hardy foe. "

That is all we are told of the fighting; the ballad passes straight to aterse dramatic dialogue, which Cuchulain opens:--

 "Champion, tell your story, For I see your wounds are heavy; 'Twill be short ere they raise your cairn, So hide your testament no longer. "

"That's what he said to the son, " said James Kelly, finishing the verse, and beginning afresh, "Let me fall on my face, For methinks 'tis you are my father, And for fear lest men of Eiré should see Me retreating from your fierce grapple. "

"Then, " said James, "the son spoke for to tell him the reason hecouldn't spake at the first":--

 "I took pledges to my mother Not to give my story to any single man, If I would give it to any under the sun, It is to your bright body I would tell it. "

("Complimenting him, like, " said James. ) Then he recited the stanzawhich tells by implication how in the long duel Cuchulain was at lastdriven to use the irresistible stroke of Sgathach's teaching:--

 "I lay my curse on my mother, That she put me under pledge; But if it were not for the feat of magic I had not been got for nothing. "

(It is a fine phrase surely, "You had paid dear in blood before youmastered me. ")

Cuchulain answers groaning, with a wail for the lineage that is cut off:

 "I lay my curse on your mother, For she destroyed a multitude of young ones; And because the treachery that was in her Left your smooth flesh reddened. "

Then comes, with the boy's dying word, the revelation of the most tragicmoment in the fight. 

 "Cuchulain, beloved father, Is it not a wonder you did not know me When I cast my spear crooked and feebly Against your bush of blades. "

Where will you find a finer stroke of invention? The boy, tongue-tied byhis pledge, knows his father and feels his defence failing against theterrible onset; he would not, if he could, be the victor, but he thinksof a way within the honour of his bond which may awaken knowledge ofhim; and he casts his javelin with a clumsiness not to be looked for inthe champion "that tied Conall. " It is useless, the battle madness is inCuchulain, he thinks only of conquest, an end to the supple, quickparrying, and he throws the gaebulg, a spear of dragon's bones bristlingwith points (his "bush of blades"), with the magic cast that there is nomeeting. And now there is nothing left to him but the lamentation, "Och, och! Great is my madness! I lifting here my young lad! My son's head in my one hand, His arms and his raiment on the other. 

 "I, the father that slew his son, May I never throw spear nor noble javelin; The hand that slew its son, May it win torture and sharp wounding. 

 "The grief for my son I put from me never, Till the flagstones of my side crumble, It is in me, and through my heart, Like a sharp blaze in the hoar hill grasses. 

 "If I and my heart's Connlaoch Were playing our kingly feats together, We could range from wave to shore Over the five provinces of Erin. "

The penultimate stanza, with its magnificent closing image and its trulyÆschylean hyperbole, is not even suggested in Miss Brooke's version. Itis, perhaps, the finest thing in the poem; but I hardly know any balladfiner as a piece of dramatic narrative; and the resonant verse, stronglyrhymed (in the Gaelic assonances), and copiously stressed withalliteration, bears out the theme. 

These, I trust, are critical opinions. But if the collector would have aspecial weakness for a vase which his own spade had unearthed, I may beprejudiced in favour of the poem, which I got in the sweat of my browfrom very probably the one man living who knew it in that form. 

Tellers of old Irish fairy tales about enchanted princes, magic cocksand hens, and the like, are still numerous; but it is very rare to finda man who keeps living the old poetry which was made, perhaps, in thetwelfth century. Yet while any survive the tradition is still there; thesong still lives, for I did not spend my hours without feeling that thisold man could respond to any emotion that the song-maker put into thesound and the meaning and the associations of his words. There are stillthose to whom the Irish even of the twelfth century is no dead language. Even if it were, no doubt the songs made in it might still be strong inlife, as are to-day those of Homer and a hundred others. But in the caseof these smaller literatures, once the tongue itself has ceased to beheard, dumbness and paralysis fall upon what might else be so full ofvitality. And a song has more than its own life, it has power toquicken, to breed. If any one considers that legend of the son andfather (found in many languages, yet in none, I think, more finelyshaped), it is easy to see how from age to age it may revive itself innew forms, entering into other shapes, as Helen's figure adorns not herown story only, but the praise of a thousand women. Let it be understoodthat this legend is only one of a cycle, and that the song which I wrotedown was only the barest fraction of James Kelly's repertory. Indeed, hewas vexed that I should take it as a specimen, for he himself "had moreconceit in" the lays that tell of Finn and his companions, and I couldhave filled a volume, and maybe several volumes, from his recitations. 

These songs may die, the language may die, the Irish race may beswallowed up in England and America. But it is my belief that the strongintellectual life which made of Ireland a home of the arts before theNormans came across channel may, like many another life in nature, spring after centuries of torpor into vigour and fertility again. Thatis the belief and hope of many of us; but nothing has rendered me soconfident in it as to find this work of a strong and fine art not laidaside and neglected, but honoured and current to-day, and, though in apoor man's cottage, living with as full a life as when it was chanted atthe feasts of princes. 

IRISH EDUCATION AND IRISH CHARACTER. 

Education in Ireland has been organised by the State in accordance withEnglish ideas. Had English influence been able to bring about any largemeasure of conformity between the two countries, there would have beenlittle or no need for a separate paper on moral training in Irishschools. But what conformity there is, is purely superficial; andalthough free development has been hindered, and Irish institutions forteaching are less characteristic than they would have been if entirelyleft to themselves, still the moral influences which emerge whereverpupils and teachers are brought together reveal themselves in Ireland, and reveal themselves as Irish. The object of this paper, then, is toillustrate, so far as possible, the nature and the symptoms of thesedistinctive influences. 

First of all, it may be said broadly that no ordinary person in Irelandcontemplates the possibility of teaching morality apart from religion;and by religion is meant emphatically this or that particular creed. Almost every school maintained by the State is managed locally by aclergyman, who appoints the teacher, and public feeling is so strong onthe matter that in any neighbourhood even a small group of families ofany particular denomination is always provided with a separate school ofits own. Of late, indeed, opinion has begun to agitate for associatingthe laity with the clergy in the management of schools; but this doesnot indicate any desire to lessen the importance given to the partplayed by religion in education. 

Further, so far as Catholic Ireland is concerned, an immense proportionof the teaching both in primary and secondary schools is done by membersof religious orders, and in these, of course, there is no conception ofseparating moral influences from religious. There is, however, noevidence known to me that even in the few Protestant schools which arepartly or wholly under lay control any duties, other than those ofordinary school work, are inculcated except as part of a Christian'sreligious obligations. This entire state of things is due to the factthat positive Christian belief, and the practice of religiousobservances, are everywhere in Ireland very general, and among theCatholic population almost universal. It is also hardly necessary topoint out that in many respects the standard of Irish morality is sohigh that the example of Ireland may be quoted with confidence insupport of the view which makes moral teaching necessarily a part ofreligion. 

But from such broad generalities there is not much to be gathered, and Iproceed to examine in some detail the existing institutions--beginningat the top with higher education. 

It follows from what has been said that, in the general opinion ofIrishmen, there can be no positive moral influence where there is noreligious teaching; and for that reason a university without a school oftheology or arrangements for corporate worship is, to Irishmen, auniversity deficient in moral safeguards. This accounts for the factthat Catholic opinion was much less opposed to the ProtestantUniversity of Dublin than to the more modern Queen's Colleges, which, designed by England to provide for her wants of Ireland, excludedreligion entirely from their purview. This provision satisfied no one, except to some extent the Presbyterians, who accepted Queen's College, Belfast, with some alacrity, though in practice demanding that its headshould always be a staunch professor of their own persuasion. ButCatholics as a body refused to accept either the University of Dublinwith its Protestant atmosphere or the "godless" Queen's Colleges; andsince Ireland is mainly a Catholic country, and the National Universityhas not yet created a tradition, it is clear that not much can begleaned on the subject of Irish ideas of moral training from Irishuniversities. 

Yet Trinity College is well worth study, for in it we have a freegrowth, typifying both in its virtues and in its defects the rulingProtestant class, landed and professional. Here, unquestionably, thechief moral influence is that of the Church, felt, as at Oxford, directly through the chapel services and sermons, and indirectly throughthe presence of a large body of theological students. The second ofthese influences is specially strong in Dublin, because these studentshave an organisation of their own in the University Theological Society, and also because the work of the Divinity School at Dublin comprisesmuch that is done in England by the training colleges. I shouldtherefore be inclined to put the positive influence of dogmatic religionhigher at Dublin than at Oxford. 

On the other hand, the vaguer humanitarian enthusiasms which are more orless allied to Socialism, and with which the High Church partywillingly allies itself, have, I think, much less hold in Trinity thanat the English universities; though the movement which sends so manybrilliant young Englishmen into work (temporary or permanent) in theEast End of London has its parallel in the recently organised SocialService Society, which attempts something for the reclamation of Dublinslums. Again, in regard to more definitely political aspirations, IrishProtestants are somewhat unfortunately situated. Trinity as a whole hasno sympathy with the ideals that appeal to Ireland as a nation, and italways seems to lack first-hand touch with the best English thought, whether Liberal or Tory. This isolation from the main movement of Irishthought and feeling on the one hand, and on the other, this enforcedseparation from the current of English life, keep the place a littleold-fashioned; and to generate enthusiasm, ideals and feelings need acertain freshness. If it be held (as I should hold) that a university'smain moral function is to produce enthusiasts rather than merely decentcitizens, in this respect, I think, Trinity fails. 

In regard to the less direct influences, a good deal may be noted. Thegeneral trend of life in Trinity is towards frugality, just as at Oxfordit is towards extravagance. Consequently, money is less of an advantage, poverty less of a drawback than at the English universities; thestandard of living is more uniform; and in the society of which theuniversity is typical, and which it influences, respect for wealth aswealth is noticeably rare. Again, the idea of education is moredisciplinary than in England. Irishmen go to college, not to acquireculture by contact, but to learn certain definite things; and theuniversity, in its anxiety to find out if the task is being learnt, multiplies examinations. The same idea pervades all Irish education--theold-fashioned demand for a positive result in knowledge; and if it leadsto an excessive value set upon these tests, it also goes far todiscourage idleness. 

In another matter Trinity College is typical of Irish ideas generally. Games are simply taken as games, not as a main business of life in whichsuccess may even have a marketable value. Everybody recognizes theirphysical use, and more than that, their use as a means of bringing mentogether. But nobody in Ireland, save here and there a stray apostle ofEnglish notions, talks of the moral lessons to be acquired by fieldingout or by patient batting. Compulsory games at school are practicallyunknown; nobody plays unless he wants to; so that the duffer does notexperience the questionable moral advantage of physical discomfort andfrequent humiliation, and the naturally painstaking or excellent athletegets no more than his fair chance of exercising his gifts. And these areless likely to have an undue importance in their possessor's eyes, because they will not of themselves lead him to a position of greatdistinction in an Irish university. 

Unfortunately, Trinity College is the only place in Ireland--unlessperhaps a saving clause should be made for Queen's College, Belfast--which offers what is meant by a university life. The NationalUniversity, whether in Dublin, Cork or Galway, brings young men togetheronly in classes and in one or two debating societies. Yet even so, Iquestion whether, in some ways, life does not beat stronger in it thanin Trinity; whether the moral influences proper to a university, theenthusiasm, the contagion of generous ideas, are not here more stronglyfelt. The reason for this view must be given. 

Trinity has never been the University of Ireland. It is ceasing to bethe University of Protestant Ireland, for Protestants, who can afford todo so, send their sons increasingly to Oxford or Cambridge, and Trinity, which has not known how to create a true and special function foritself, is becoming merely a cheap substitute for these Englishinstitutions. And the reason for this is a moral reason which goes tothe root of many questions connected with Irish education. Should Irishschools and colleges seek to educate citizens for the Empire, orcitizens for Ireland? During the last half century, while theImperialist idea has been developing in England, Trinity has thrown allits moral weight into support of that idea. But the Imperialist idea inEngland is very different from the same idea as viewed in Canada or NewZealand or Australia; and universities in these countries addressthemselves particularly to local needs. In the section of Ireland whichTrinity represents, local patriotism is held to conflict with Imperialpatriotism, and one has to observe that Trinity's Imperialism isforwarding tendencies which are leaving her drained. Nationalists mayrespect the sincerity of convictions so pressed in defiance of a localinterest; but a university, whose main emotional appeal is directedtowards evoking primarily an enthusiasm for England, cannot be of muchuse to Nationalist Ireland. Catholics may (and do) respect thethoroughness of the religious teaching, and the strong grip whichProtestantism keeps on the university; but a university whichinculcates morals through a Protestant religion is not preciselysuitable to Catholics. Yet Catholics and Nationalists alike infinitelyprefer a university or a college or a school with strong Protestantbeliefs, or strong Imperialist patriotism, to an institution withneither beliefs nor patriotism at all. The colourless and merelyscholastic ideals of the Queen's Colleges, and the huge examiningmachinery known as the Royal University, typified in their total lack ofmoral influences all that was worst in the educational system underwhich Ireland labours. 

I pass to a brief examination of the boarding schools, institutionswhich have never flourished in Ireland. Nearly all Protestants and manyCatholics, if they can afford it, send their sons to England to betaught. The ideals of the English Public School have reacted so stronglyupon Irish Protestant schools that nothing need be said of these--notone of which has ever, within living memory, had a continuousprosperity. The important Catholic schools are managed by the greatteaching orders, especially by the Jesuits, and managed at astonishinglylow cost. They give everywhere more than value for the fees which theyreceive. No unendowed institution could compete with them; and itpractically comes to this, that the regular clergy subsidise educationwith their own unpaid labour and even with their own funds, in order tomaintain their influence over the faith and morals of their country. Whether it might be more to the advantage of Irish parents to pay moreand get something different, is another question; but those of us wholeast like the exclusive delegation of these important functions to thepriesthood, cannot but admire the thoroughness and consistency withwhich the Catholic priesthood's idea is carried out. It would be hard tooverstate the moral effect of that vast organised system ofself-sacrifice and self-suppression. 

Three or four points may be noted in relation to these schools. One is, that in all classrooms and playgrounds, a master is always present. Comparing this with the system in vogue at many English schools, underwhich a boy out of school hours is always forced to live in public byrules which compel him either to be playing some game or looking onwhile others play, I prefer the system of frank supervision, as leavingmore individual freedom and choice of pursuits, and as making seriousbullying impossible. Generally, the idea that it is good for a boy to beknocked about without stint is foreign to Irish ideas. A pleasant andcharacteristic feature of Jesuit schools is the habit of telling offsome boy to act as companion and cicerone to a newcomer for his firstweek or fortnight; and the ridiculous English fashion which prescribesthat the smallest fag should be described as a "man" is unknown. Christian names, not surnames, are used generally. The unpopularity ofboarding schools in Ireland is due to the great value set upon homelife; and an Irish boarding school is far less distinct from home lifethan an English one. 

English eyes would be surprised and a good deal shocked by the presenceof a billiard table in every playroom; yet it may fairly be argued thatit is wise to limit the number of things that have the fascination ofthe forbidden. A more serious criticism would address itself to thepermitted slovenliness. Untidiness amounts to a national vice inIreland, and, though one may overstate its gravity, the secondaryschools could and should do much more to remedy this national defectthan they are at present doing. At one first-class Irishestablishment--admirably equipped with buildings, playground, and allother appliances--boots used to go unblacked from one end of the monthto the other. The boys who come here come largely from the well-to-dofarming class, in whose homes, in many ways so pleasant and worthy ofrespect, there is often a lamentable lack of that charm which comes ofnotable housewifery. The young men who return from this school will beless apt than they should be to value good housewifery in their wivesand mothers. 

But of all sinners in this regard the State is the chief offender. Underthe Code of the National Board of Education a national schoolmaster ormistress is bound to teach cleanliness and decency by precept andexample. He or she is paid an average wage (without allowances) ofthirty shillings or one pound a week according to sex; and out of thatan appearance befitting superior station has to be maintained--for inIreland the schoolmaster has always a position of some dignity. For theschool the State provides four bare walls, a roof, not alwaysweatherproof, and a few desks. Firing is not provided. Decoration issubject to inspection, and any picture which can be held to have areligious or remotely political bearing is a gross offence against theCode. It follows, in practice, that bare walls are kept bare, though notclean; and let it be remembered that Catholicism, if left to itself, ineducation always trusts greatly to the appeal to the eye. In everyCatholic school uncontrolled by the State the emblems of religion areeverywhere present. National schools under State control, even in placeswhere there is not a Protestant child within twenty miles, arerigorously forbidden the use of any such embellishment. On the otherhand, Protestant schools which would gladly, and, as I think, mostlaudably, furnish themselves with pictures recalling such memories asthe shutting of the Derry gates, come under the same tyranny ofcompromise. Taste and culture are the expression of an individuality, and individuality is forbidden to Irish teachers in State employ. TheState puts a schoolmaster into a schoolhouse, without adequate paymentfor himself, without adequate provision either for building or theupkeep of building; it bids him to keep it clean, but pays no servant towash or sweep; and, while enjoining the absence of dirt, it checks andhampers that desire to decorate, which is the positive side of order andtaste. The result is, broadly, slatternly schools. 

There could hardly be a better moral influence in Ireland thantastefully and brightly decorated schools, cleanly kept. But to securethis the State must provide money, and must give individual freedom. Instead of that, it adapts its institution to the lowest standard ofliving; and the raggedest child out of the dirtiest cottage willprobably be in full keeping with his environment when he takes his placein class. 

The same tyranny of compromise sterilises the whole teaching on themoral side. Nothing must be taught anywhere which could offend anysusceptibility--except in the hour licensed for the teaching ofdenominational religion. There must be no appeal to Irish patriotism, whether it be of Protestant or Catholic. Irish history may not be taughtas a subject, and, until lately, anything bearing on it, howeverremotely, was tabooed. The poem _Breathes there a man with soul so dead_was struck out of a lesson book, lest it should encourage sedition. To-day certain accepted books on Irish history may be used as readers;the Irish language may be taught, and is taught; and gradually withthese changes new moral influences are coming in. Irish children arebeing encouraged to remember their nationality. Yet, meanwhile, theteacher, who is to instruct them in the duties of a good citizen, isdebarred from taking any part in local politics, from serving on anylocal council. He is forbidden, in fact, to be himself a good citizen;forbidden to be anything more than the colourless instrument of a systemof compromise and countercheck. Nothing is more certain than this, thatto get a good teacher you need a man's whole personality; you mustenlist all his beliefs and his feelings in the exercise of that moralfunction of education which can never be fulfilled by a mere machine forimparting the rudiments. Man everywhere, but especially in Ireland, is, as Aristotle said, a political animal. The State in Ireland, whenorganising education, tries as far as possible to eliminate the man andproduce the pedagogue. 

Take, for contrast with all this, the purely native institution, nowunhappily extinct, of the old "classical academies" kept in the countryparts of Munster by private laymen. In the eighteenth century, and oninto the nineteenth, these men kept alive the tradition of Irish popularpoetry, sometimes with a real gift. For good or for bad they werepersons of character and of talent, and the last of them is alive, though he keeps school no longer. He taught boys who had learnt therudiments at the ordinary national school, and who wished to carry ontheir studies with a view either to the priesthood or to medicine. Hewas paid only by the fees of his scholars, who were either the sons offarmers about him, or of men living at a distance, who sent theirchildren to be part of the family in some farm where they had kinship oracquaintance. Thus existence for these scholars was divided between thehome life of a farm and the hours of school. There was, however, a smallelement of what in Ireland were called "poor scholars"--boys from theless prosperous North and West, who came (sometimes walking the wholejourney) to get learning gratis. To them teaching was never refused, andtheir board was provided by the farmers, who "would be snatching themfrom one and other, " since they assisted the other children in preparingtasks. 

Now, in the school which my friend has described to me, there was noformal teaching of anything but the prescribed subjects. But literaturewould be lying about--Haverty's _History of Ireland_, and theNationalist papers of the day--and the teacher was there always ready toexpound and answer questions. Himself a fighting politician (a member ofthe Fenian organisation, whose name is still sacred throughout Ireland), he was careful never to draw in or compromise his pupils; but to teachthem the story of their country and discuss it with them was part of hisnatural occupation. He taught Irish also, the tongue readiest to him, for he held that Irishmen should know their own language; but theessential business of his school was teaching the simple old-fashionedcurriculum, Latin, mathematics, and some Greek. Yet because he was a manwho loved and valued knowledge for its own sake, and loved and valuedliterature, it is probable that he gave a more real training to the mindthan is achieved by the most modern system of hand and eye culture andthe rest of it. He taught neither religion nor morals, but his teachingassumed throughout, what his example showed, that a man should be trueand thorough in what he professed to believe, and should be ready at alltimes to make sacrifices for principle. Such a school had the only moralinfluence which in Ireland has ever counted for much--the influence of astrong personality, acting in alliance with the influences of a fullyrealised religion and of an ordered family life. 

I sketch a more concrete picture that always rises in my mind with a rayof hope, when I think of education in Ireland. Out of doors, wintertwilight falling on a wild landscape within hearing of the Atlanticsurf; the man of the house coming out to talk to me, a handsome Irishmanof the old school, frieze-clad, with the traditional side whiskers, thehumorous eye and mouth. We talked for a while in the cold, then "_Gabh ileith isteach_, " he said, "for I hear you have the Irish. " As I pausedin the door to phrase the Gaelic salutation, more devout and courteousthan would come to my lips in any other tongue, I was astonished at thecompany gathered in the long low room. Chairs were set by the widehearth of course, and from one of them the woman of the house rose togreet me; a settle ran along the side wall, and its length was filledwith men and women blotted against the dusk background. But the centreof the picture was a narrow deal table set in the middle of the room, with candles on it, and benches on each side, and on the benches fullyten children busy with books and copies. "Are these your burden?" Iasked in the quaint Irish phrase. "A share of them, " the man answered;and then I understood that some belonged to other neighbours, and thatit was a mutual arrangement for friendliness and help. None of thechildren budged; there they were, drilled and disciplined at their work, in the middle of the room, while their elders sat and chatted quietly. Ihave never seen elsewhere anything which so filled my conception of whata home should be, as that farmhouse in Corcabascinn--so full of orderand good governance, yet so free of constraint, so full of welcome, yetso lacking in expense or display. For, understand, we who were strangerswere brought (much against my will) into the state-room or parlourbeyond the party wall, and drink was pressed upon us hospitably. But theneighbours who had come there (and came daily, I fancy) came neither toeat nor drink (unless maybe tea might be brewing) but simply to sit andsmoke and talk, and watch that their children got their lessonsproperly. And at the end, perhaps before they parted, perhaps when thefamily was alone, the rosary would be said by the turf fire, that made, winter or summer, the centre of all that pleasant existence. 

It is a pity to think of how poorly the National school, to which thosechildren would go with their tasks in the morning, seconds the helpwhich this home life gives it. Easily could the school--which takeswhatever real light it has from the home, just as it depends for warmthon the few turf which scholars bring daily along with theirbooks--reflect sound and fruitful ideas on to the home through thechildren. It could teach the children and the parents, not only thepolitical, but the economic history of their own country; it could teachthem what has been done in Ireland, what has succeeded, what has failed, and why; it could teach them, who are already proud of being Irish, tohave new reasons for their pride; it could teach them, who are alreadywilling to do their best for Ireland, into what channels the drivingforce of that willingness may be poured. 

Outside of definite religion, the only fruitful source of educationalideas connected with the moral order that I see in Ireland is the GaelicLeague. This organisation, founded to save from extinction, and torevive into new prosperity the national language of Ireland, baseditself entirely upon a moral appeal. It appealed to Irishmen as theywere proud of their race, to save the most distinctive symbol of theirnationality; and the appeal met with an extraordinary promptness ofresponse. But to stimulate and promote the movement, it was foundnecessary to widen the propaganda. Irishmen were urged to learn Irish, and to speak Irish because of pride in their country; the sameorganisation soon began to teach that an Irishman who set an example ofdrunkenness, or gave an occasion of it, not only sinned against himself, but against his country. Vulgar and indecent literature was denounced asun-Irish; Irish dances were advocated, not only for their admirablegrace and their historic interest, but also because it was held thatdances like the waltz, departed from the austere standard of Irishmorality. Irish men and women were taught to buy goods of Irishmanufacture by the people who taught them to learn the language, on theground that if the Irish nation continued to ebb away out of Ireland, nationality and language must perish together. 

Thus through the medium of a propaganda which at first sight would seemmerely literary and archæological, many practical issues of life wererelated to a purely educational purpose. There is no doubt that theGaelic League, now a widespread and solidly established organisation, spending on the whole, perhaps, £30, 000 or £40, 000 a year on itsenterprise, has done as much to promote temperance, and to further Irishindustries, as it has accomplished in its peculiar task of reviving theold tongue. Primarily a teaching institution--for each of the League'seight hundred branches exists to hold classes for Irish study--it haslinked with the linguistic teaching a moral idea. The reaction has beenmutual, for there is more intelligent thought on the methods oflinguistic teaching in the Gaelic League than one would easily find inall the schools and universities of Ireland. The appeal to pride of racehas quickened intelligence no less than enthusiasm. 

It is a very remarkable fact, that the great teaching order of theChristian Brothers has taken up the teaching of Irish and generally theGaelic League's whole propaganda more thoroughly than any otherorganisation in Ireland; very remarkable, for their practical success isso conspicuous that Protestant clergymen have repeatedly from the pulpitappealed for extra support to Protestant schools whose pupils, as onepreacher said in my hearing, were being ousted in all competition foremployment by the lads from the Christian Brothers' schools. Whateverthe post was, the preacher said, this body of lay Catholics seemedalways to have a candidate specially prepared for it. One of thegreatest institutions in charge of that order is the industrial schoolat Artane, near Dublin, where eight hundred boys are being prepared fordifferent trades. Every single one of those boys is now being taughtIrish; that is to say, a linguistic training with a special appeal tothe learner's patriotism has been superimposed on the ordinaryrudiments. It is a great experiment made by enthusiasts who are alsoteachers with an intensely practical bent. 

It is too early even to forecast the effect which is likely to beproduced upon Irish education generally by the new university collegesset up under Mr. Birrell's Act. Yet this may be said. Irish educationneeds reform from the top downwards, not from the bottom upwards. It haslacked idealism, and these universities in which Ireland, whether of thenorth or the south, will be free to express its own character, can andshould set up ideals which will govern every school in the country. Trinity College has been free to follow its own bent, and its eyesto-day are, in scriptural phrase, "on the ends of the earth. " Primaryeducation, secondary studies, as governed by the machinery controlledthrough the Board of Intermediate Education, and university teaching asdirected and rewarded through the Royal University, have all in the lastresort been inspired by Englishmen who thought it very desirable thatIrish boys and girls should learn to read and write and cipher, and thatyoung men and young women should equip themselves for clerkships in thecivil service, but who never for one instant realised that the end ofeducation is divergence not conformity--to elicit, whether from the raceor from the individual, a full and characteristic development. In twentyyears perhaps a paper of interest may be written to show the positiveresults of education upon Irish character. At present the mostnoticeable facts are negative, and may be summed up by affirming a totallack of correspondence between the system employed and the needs andqualities of the Irish people. 

1907. 

THE IRISH GENTRY. 

At the height on the struggle over the Home Rule Bill, there waspublished a book interesting as the biography of a remarkableindividual, but no less interesting as depicting the crucial moment inthe history of an aristocracy. Colonel Moore wisely entitles the life ofhis father simply _An Irish Gentleman_. Versatile, eloquent, quick-tempered and lovable, excessive in generosity, excessive incourage and self-confidence, with the racecourse for his ruling passionand horsemanship for his supreme achievement, George Henry Moore was theparagon of his class. He displayed in the highest degree those qualitieson which the Irish gentry prided themselves and which they most admired:he shared the prestige and power of Irish landlords when prestige andpower were at their height; and he confronted the decisive hour when he, and men like him, had to choose between the interest of their countryand the interest of their class. There he separated himself from hisfellows; he parted from all to whom he was bound by ties of immediateadvantage, of pleasure, of association, of affection, and he threw inhis lot with Ireland. He saw first the moral bankruptcy of his ownclass, then their widespread financial ruin; and though he helped tobreak their political power, and in so doing earned the general love ofhis countrymen, yet the troubles which beset the landlord class did notspare him, and he died, broken-hearted, forty-three years ago, at thebeginning of a struggle which is not ended yet. It is well worth whileto consider the circumstances of that stormy career. 

First a brilliant schoolboy, then an idle law student, George HenryMoore was driven to travel by the complications of a passionate loveaffair, and he travelled adventurously, being a pioneer of explorationin the Caucasus and Syria. Sketches reproduced in the book show that hecould draw no less well than he wrote. Returning to Ireland at the ageof twenty-seven, he devoted himself entirely to hunting and racing, andfew men were better known on the turf, nor were there even in the Westof Ireland more desperate riders than his brother and himself. GeorgeHenry was carried off the field at Cahir in 1843 to all appearance dead;he was alive enough to hear discussion as to his burial. Augustus, lesslucky, died of a fall he took riding Mickey Free in the Grand Nationaltwo years later. The brothers were closely bound to each other inaffection, and this was a heavy blow to the survivor; but George Moorecontinued to race, and in 1846 made the coup of his life, winning£10, 000 on "Coranna" for the Chester Cup. He sent £1, 000 of it home fordistribution among his tenants, and there was soon sore need of themoney, for that year saw the second and disastrous failure of the potatocrop. The Irish Famine made the turning-point in Moore's history, as inthat of his class. The catastrophe which brought him into public lifeand into the service of his country demonstrated, cruelly enough--thoughthis was the least of its cruelties--the futility of the Irish gentry asa whole. 

By the shock of his brother's death in 1845 Moore's mind had been turnedto serious thoughts. Matter was not lacking. The report of the DevonCommission upon Irish land, joined to the first failure of the potatocrop--with its accompaniment of distress and widespread agrariancrime--gave any Irish landlord food for reflection, and in March, 1846, when a vacancy occurred in the representation of Mayo, Moore cameforward as a Whig candidate. The whole landlord interest was at hisback, but a Repealer opposed him, and O'Connell's influence carried theday. There were fierce encounters, the landlords marching their tenantsto the poll under guards of soldiers, the popular side falling uponthese escorts and sometimes carrying off the voters--or enabling them toescape. One of Moore's friends, Mr. Browne, afterwards Lord Oranmore, wrote: "I now see we owe our lives to the priests, as they can excitethe whole people against us whenever they like. Whatever may be thecause, Ireland needs reconquering. "

That was a typical expression of the gentry's view. Plainly Ireland wasin rebellion when landlords could no longer carry their tenants to thepolls to vote as the landlord directed. Moore however differed from thegenerality of Irish landlords in one important respect. He was notdivided by religion from the people over whom he ruled, and he can neverhave had Mr. Browne's feeling of aloofness from Ireland as a countrywhich might need reconquering to re-establish the ascendancy of the"English garrison"; nor was it natural to him to distrust the priests asleaders of a separate and subject race. 

In the autumn of 1846, when the threat of famine had become acertainty, Moore came home to Mayo, where there was grim business to bedone. His tenants, on an estate running up into the wild Partrymountains, numbered five thousand souls. For their benefit he utilisedfar more of his winnings on "Coranna" than the tithe which he hadoriginally ear-marked; and not one of all these his dependants died ofwant in that outlandish region, though in places far less remote deathwas ravenous. He was chairman of the Relief Board for the whole county, and slaved at his task--not harder than other landlords in other partsof Ireland. But his methods were more drastic, his view of the situationclearer. Folk must have rubbed their eyes and perhaps stopped to thinktwice when the owner of "Wolfdog, " of "Anonymous, " and a score of otherfamous horses, wrote, in answer to a request for his annual subscriptionto the local races, that he thought the county of Mayo "as little fit tobe the scene of such festivities as he to contribute to theircelebration. "

But Moore did not content himself with mere administration of relief. Hesaw that the English Government was apathetic and incompetent to face soterrible an affliction, and he took in hand to create within his ownclass an organised force of Irish opinion to bind together the rulingIrishmen for the good of Ireland. In company with his friend andkinsman, Lord Sligo, he "travelled through twenty-seven counties andpersonally conferred with most of the leading men in Ireland on theurgent necessity of a united effort to save the sinking people. " Theresult was that between sixty and seventy members of Parliament and someforty peers pledged themselves to endeavour to secure united actionupon measures regarding Ireland in the new session. On the 14th ofJanuary, 1847, the Irish landlord class held such a muster as had notbeen seen since the Union. "Nearly twenty peers, more than thirtymembers of Parliament, and at least six hundred gentlemen of name andstation took part in it. The meeting called on Government to prohibitexport of food stuffs and to sacrifice any sum that might be required tosave the lives of the people. " It passed thirty resolutions withoutdissension; and then some one asked what was to be done if theGovernment refused to adopt any of their suggestions. Would Irishmembers then unite to vote against the Government? To this, Irishmembers refused to pledge themselves, and Moore, as he said afterwards, "saw at a glance that the confederacy had broken down. "

That was the end of the revolt of the Irish gentry. It was really thedecisive moment of their failure; disorganised and futile, they wentdown by scores in the ruin of the Encumbered Estates Court, while theirtenants were marking with their bones a road across the Atlantic. As forthe landlords who were popular leaders, within a few months after thatgreat assembly, Daniel O'Connell, who had proposed the first resolution, died in Rome, heart-broken. A few months more and Smith O'Brien, themover of another resolution, headed a rebellion in sheer despair. 

Smith O'Brien had twenty years of parliamentary life behind him when hewas driven to the wild protest of insurrection. Twenty years of the sameexperience were to bring Moore to a very similar attitude; but in 1847Moore was hopeful of building up in Parliament the nucleus of anIndependent Irish Party. When the dissolution came, in 1847, he stoodfor a second time, but as an Independent, and his work in the faminetimes carried at least its recognition. Every single elector who went tothe poll gave one of his two votes to the Independent. He went toWestminster and denounced with equal energy the agrarian murders, whichwere then rife in Ireland, and those organs of publicity in Englandwhich sought to magnify these outrages into an indictment against theIrish nation. The ferment of indignation against English methods had notyet died out in the hearts of Irish landlords. Lord Sligo, writing toMoore concerning the controversy which followed, used these words: "Ibelieve that _The Times_ did much to cause the feeling which resulted inlandlord and parson shooting; it will end by turning us all intoRepealers. " If only it had! But Moore got no help from the landlordclass, and the well-to-do Catholic professional men with whom he wasprincipally allied proved themselves unable to resist the temptations ofoffice and of personal interest. In the days of Sadleir and Keogh hefought a desperate fight against Whig place-seekers; his reward was tobe finally unseated (in 1857) on an election petition, the charge beingthat spiritual intimidation had been exercised on his behalf by thepriests. As Colonel Moore observes, if a landlord threatened his tenantswith disfavour, which meant eviction, that was "only a legitimateexercise of their rights of property"; but if a priest told his flockthat a man would imperil his soul by selling his vote or prostituting itto the use of a despot, the candidate whom that priest supported wouldlose his seat and be disqualified for re-election. 

From this time onward George Henry Moore found himself heading the sameway as Smith O'Brien had gone. In 1861 he told the Irish people that ifthey desired freedom they must take a lesson from Italy; they must"become dangerous"; and he advocated the formation of a new Irishvolunteer force to emulate that of 1782. Nothing came of this; but afterthe American war a new movement grew up, not this time among thelandlords or the professional men, nor countenanced by the priests, butnursed in the fierce heart of the people. Ireland had become dangerous. Colonel Moore recognises rightly the difference between the Fenianorganisation and the Young Ireland movement which had preceded it. Bothwere idealistic, but the idealism of 1848 was "the inspiration of a fewliterary gentlemen, poets, and writers. " Smith O'Brien, its titularhead, was influenced profoundly by the aristocratic conception of hisrightful place as representing the Kings of Thomond. Fenianism wasdemocratic; it was officered largely by men who had themselves fought inthe most stubborn of modern wars and who had seen what Irish regimentscould do in the citizen levies of Federals and Confederates. It wasspontaneous, and it was strong; the measure of its strength is given notby the few flickering outbreaks easily suppressed, but by the terrorwhich it inspired, and by the change which it wrought in the spirit ofthe people. Moore when he took the step, extraordinary for a man in hisposition, of enrolling himself in that sworn and secret conspiracy canhardly have failed to foresee the collapse of Fenianism as a fightingforce; but he recognised that (in his son's words) "the old complacenttoleration of schemers and dishonest politicians had vanished and asturdy independence had taken its place. "

With the advent of that spirit the power of the Irish landlords wasdoomed. They had made their choice; when they might have made commoncause with the whole people of Ireland they had refused to rise beyondtheir immediate personal advantage and the interests of their class. Moore, who was of themselves, who shared all their pleasures, who lovedthem, was forced to take a hand in their overthrow. From 1858 onward hehad been almost entirely out of politics, living the life of a popularcountry gentleman, racing and hunting more successfully than ever; hismost famous horse, "Croagh Patrick, " ran in the 'sixties. But in 1868 heflung all this aside, sold his horses, and undertook to fight thealliance of Whig and Tory which had dominated County Mayo in thelandlord interest for ten years. 

 I shall have the question settled (he said) whether one lord shall drive a hundred human souls to the hustings, another fifty, another a score; whether this or that squire shall call twenty, or ten, or five as good men as himself "his voters" and send them up with his brand on their backs to vote for an omadhaun at his bidding. 

He did settle it. Mayo beat the landlords then, and Mayo became thecradle of popular movements ever after. This most typical of Irishland-owning gentlemen had been forced to sever himself from his classand even to injure his class, and it was not by advocacy ofself-government that he estranged so close a friend as Lord Sligo. Fintan Lalor's policy, rejected by the Young Irelanders in 1846, wasbeginning to take hold in 1868; the movement for self-government wasbecoming linked on to the driving force of land-hunger. In the eyes ofLord Sligo and all his class Tenant Right meant Landlord Wrong, andMoore himself was not exempt from that feeling. He suffered indeed, forrents that he had reduced to a figure fixed by the tenants' ownarbitrators were withheld from him. Yet he knew clearly that it wasnecessary for the country, and not more necessary than just, to securethe tenants in their holdings. No one disputes now that he was right. But the last thing he desired was to abolish the landlords. If they didnot like the leadership of the priests "they have, " he said, "a remedyleft; let them make themselves more popular than the priests. If thelandlords will make common cause with the people, the people will makecommon cause with them. " There was never a truer word spoken, but itfell on closed ears. 

Moore himself broke the landlords' power at the polls; their infinitelygreater power, proceeding from control of the land, was broken byanother Mayo man, Michael Davitt, the evicted peasant from Straide, close by Moore Hall. That fight was bound to come when Moore's warningand the warning of men like him was set at nought. What a change it hasmade! and what has been lost to Ireland!

Moore died in 1870. His last year of life saw a hope that Presbyterianfarmers of the North, interested in Tenant Right, who had beentemporarily allied to Catholics in the struggle for Disestablishment, might unite solidly with the Nationalists. Even the Protestant gentryafforded numerous supporters to Butt's Home Rule policy at its outset. But of this nothing serious came. The Land Act of 1870 was ineffective, and it seemed that, in spite of Fenianism, all would go on as before. Throughout the 'seventies the landlord class was in undisturbedsupremacy. Country gentlemen still talked in good set phrase about "therobbery of the Church"; in actual fact they were very complacently andcompetently helping to administer its new constitution. Agriculture wasprosperous and rents went high, though the harsh and overbearinglandlord was condemned by his fellows. This, however, was poorconsolation to the tenants. In the county where I was brought up, onelandlord was a name of terror, and there was no redress from histyranny, until at last the peasantry found it for themselves. The grimold man died fighting hard before his brains were dashed out on theroadside, and two innocent people were killed along with him; but nosane person could fail to perceive that, within five years of his takingoff, the whole district was improved out of knowledge. The moral to bedrawn was only too obvious; yet none of the landlords drew it; theestablished interest of a class is too strong a thing for that class toshake themselves out of its influence. 

The men of that generation--how well I remember them! most vividlyperhaps as they used to come in to church on Sunday morning, when theladies of their families addressed themselves to devotions kneeling, while the men said their prayers standing, peering mysteriously intotheir tall hats--a strange ritual, of which traces may be observed atthe House of Commons, but nowhere else, I fancy, on earth. On week daysthey lived an orderly, dignified existence in their big old-fashionedhouses, leaving home little, though the more cultivated among them hadtravelled in their youth and knew thoroughly some foreign country. Intheir own orbit they had power, leisure, and deference, all of which seta stamp upon them; individuality had great scope to develop, and an ableman among them was a man made for government. One such stands out in mymemory. Stormy tales were told of his youth, but from himself no oneheard a whisper of these far-off exploits; small, exquisitely neat, finely made and finely featured, he was courteous and gentle-spoken withall; but he was of those quiet creatures who breed fear. I cannotimagine the situation of power of responsibility from which he wouldhave shrunk, or to which he would have been unequal; neither can Iimagine him anxious in the pursuit of office. That was Parnell's type. Parnell's strength appears to have lain precisely in thatself-confidence which was a law to itself and which no prestige of fameor authority could shake or overawe. The men who might have beenIreland's leaders were men extraordinarily suited for the conduct ofaffairs, but as a class they had been thrown out of their naturalrelation. Castlereagh, who in his cold efficiency had much in commonwith Parnell, accomplished a desperate deed when he made the Unionthrough them. He committed their honour to justify for all time thattransaction. If those who condemned the Union were not traitors, thenthe class from whom it was bought with cash and titles stood convictedof infamy; and since the heart of Ireland loathed and detestedCastlereagh's work, the whole body of the Irish gentry found themselvesinevitably estranged from the heart of Ireland. On one side was theinterest of a class--and not merely the material interest but theinterest of its honour, which sought a justification in the name ofloyalty; on the other was the interest of Ireland; and the landlord whochose the side of Ireland severed himself necessarily, as Moore had todo, from his own friends and kin. 

For years now there has been moving through many minds in Ireland thequestion whether this state of things must permanently endure. Is thatestrangement inevitable? I at least think otherwise. Throughout the lasttwo decades of the nineteenth century landlord and tenant were opposedin a struggle for definite material interests; it was a fight not onlyfor free conditions of tenure but for the reduction of rent, if not forits total abolition. A way of peace was found in State-aided landpurchase, and in a reconstitution of the whole agricultural order. Thelandlords, where they have been bought out, have not even the duty ofrent collecting. How will this affect their traditional attitude, whichcalls itself loyalty to the English connexion, but which I interpretrather as a traditional justification of the Union and of the hereditarylandlord policy? If self-government is established without dissolutionof the Union, is it not reasonable to suppose that there will be achange in men's dispositions?

The question involved is really more serious, though of far lesspolitical importance, than that of Ulster. Whatever happens, theindustrial community of Belfast and its district is not going to runaway. That element will not be lost to Ireland; it is too strong, toowell able to assert itself; and it is anchored by its interest. Theex-landlords, now that their occupation is gone, are bound to Irelandonly by habit and attachment. At present they fulfil no essentialfunction; and it will be open undoubtedly for the gentry once more tomake an error mischievous to Ireland and disastrous to themselves. Theymay take up the line of unwilling submission, of refusal to co-operate, of cold-shouldering and crying down the new Parliament and the newMinistry. Social pressure may be exercised to keep men from seekingelection, and so to perpetuate the existing severance between theleisured and wealthier classes and the main body of the nation. Therewill be strong tendencies in this direction. But on the other hand Ithink that among the men who have grown up under the new order there isan increasing willingness to accept the change. One friend of mine--nopolitician, and, like all non-politicians, a Unionist--said to me latelythat he would be rather disappointed if Home Rule did not become law--hewas "curious about it"; and he added, "I think a great many like me havethe same feeling. " Others probably have a more positive outlook, anddesire to take an active part in the public life of their country; andthere will be a strong desire among Irish Nationalists to bring in atthe outset those who wish to come in. On the other hand, no lesscertainly, there will be the feeling that is natural towards those whowish to reap where they have not sown; and the gentry will need to makeallowance for this. If they set out with the notion, as some did whenLocal Government was established, that places are theirs by right whenthey condescend to take them--that they are entitled to election becausethey have more money, more education, because, if you will, they are, inthe eye of pure reason, better qualified--nothing but trouble can comeof such a disposition. Ireland, which in George Henry Moore's time wasthe most aristocratically governed part of the British Isles, is now byfar more democratic, at all events, than England: the poor man is on alevel with the rich, and means to stay there. Those who want to go intoIrish politics, under Home Rule as now, must take their chances in theruck; but if they do, they will find a people ready and even eager torecognise their qualities, and to allot perhaps more consideration thanis due to their social position. 

With all their practical democracy, the Irish have a great tendernessfor "the old stock. " In the cases (and there are many hundreds of them)where a landlord or professional man or Protestant clergyman has beenfor long years a real friend and support and counsellor to his poorerneighbours, as Irish in voice and looks and gesture as they, sharingtheir tastes and their aversions, their sport and their sorrow, yetdivided and cut off from them by a kind of political religion, I believefrom my heart that there will be on both sides a willingness tocelebrate the end of that old discord in some happy compact. But on bothsides there must be generosity and a sympathy with natural hesitationsand reluctances. Whatever comes or goes, the old domination of thegentry has disappeared; yet, whatever comes or goes, men of that classmay find a sphere of usefulness and even of power in Ireland. But thiswill be infinitely easier to achieve when the great subject ofcontention is removed, and when the ex-landlord can seek election, andthe ex-tenant can support him, without a sense on either side of turningagainst the traditional loyalties of a class. 

1913. 

YESTERDAY IN IRELAND. 

"Oh, maybe it was yesterday, or forty years ago, " says the verse of anIrish song. That is the kind of indeterminate "yesterday" which isdescribed in _Irish Memories_ by two friends who have made some memoriesof Ireland imperishable. "The Ireland that Martin and I knew when wewere children, " writes Miss Somerville, "is fast leaving us; every daysome landmark is wiped out. " No one knows better than she that while inmany parts of Ireland you must go back very close on forty years toreach any likeness of that old way of life, yet in other parts yesterdayand forty years ago are very much the same. Still, she would reply, andI must admit, that one profound modification has affected even the mostunchanging places, altering the whole position of the class in which shewas born and bred. In a sense, all her memories of Ireland concernthemselves with this change, depicting either what formerly was, and theprocess of its passing, or what yet remains and seems likely to vanishtoo. Her presentment of yesterday is well worth study, for its outlookis typical of the most generous and shrewdest minds among the Irishgentry. I use here an old-fashioned word, somewhat decried, but it isthe only one that expresses my meaning. 

But readers will know that this is not only a book of memories; it is, if not a memoir, at least the memorial of a singularly brilliant Irishwoman. Miss Somerville had planned to write her recollections, as shehad written so much else, in collaboration with her cousin and comrade, "Martin Ross"--Miss Violet Martin, of Ross, in County Galway. It did notso fall out; and though in this volume one is aware that the narrator isoften (by a sort of sub-conscious habit) speaking out of two minds, froma dual complex of associations, and though considerable fragments ofMartin Ross's own writing give a justification to the joint signature, yet one of the two comrades is joint author now only in so far as she ispart of all the memories, and a surviving influence little likely topass away. But her stock, so to say, in the partnership remains; Galway, no less than Cork, is the field over which these memories travel. In themain, the book is concerned with recalling the joint kindred of the twofriends and cousins, and reconstituting the surroundings and theatmosphere of both families. Families, however, are conceived anddepicted in their most extended relations; figures are evoked of chief, vassal, page and groom, tenant and master; and with them go their"opposite numbers" (to borrow an army term) from chieftainess to cook. Chieftainesses are there unmistakably. One ex-beauty had retired fromthe Court of the Regent to Castle Townshend (Miss Somerville's personalbackground), and there lived long, "noted for her charm of manner, herculture and her sense of humour. "

 Near the end of her long life she went to the funeral of a relative, leaning decorously upon the arm of a kinsman. At the churchyard a countryman pushed forward between her and the coffin. She thereupon disengaged her arm from that of her squire and struck the countryman in the face. 

Miss Somerville observes that such stories may help to explain theFrench Revolution; but she adds, quite plausibly:--

 It is no less characteristic of the time that the countryman's attitude does not come into the story, but it seems to me probable that he went home and boasted then, and for the rest of his life, that old Madam---- had "bet him in a blow in the face. "

Undoubtedly the chieftain-spirit is admired, and not least when it showsitself in a woman. A more lenient and more modern example is to be foundin the account of a dispute about bounds in a transaction under the LandPurchase Act. After all other agencies failed, the landlord's sistercalled the disputants before her to the disputed spot, stepped thedistance of the land debatable, drove her walking-stick into a creviceof the rock (disputes are passionate in opposite ratio to the value ofthe land) and, collecting stones, built a small cairn round it. "Nowmen, " she said, "in the name of God let this be the bounds. " And it wasso. "It failed the agent, and it failed the landlord, and it failed thepriest; but Lady Mary settled it, " was the summing up of one of thedisputants. That was a chieftainess for you. 

Not inferior in chieftainly spirit was Martin Ross's grandfather who"had the family liking for a horse. "

 It is recorded that in a dealer's yard in Dublin he mounted a refractory animal, in his frock-coat and tall hat, and took him round St. Stephen's Green at a gallop, through the traffic, laying into him with his umbrella. 

Somehow that picture gives a measure of the remoteness. Stephen's Greenwas not then a place of square-set granite pavement, tram-rails andlarge swift-moving electric trams; it was a leisurely promenade wherelarge slow-moving country gentlemen turned out in tall hats andfrock-coats. We of Miss Somerville's generation depend on ourimagination, not on memory, to reconstruct the scene. The grandfather inquestion died before the great famine of 1847, which shook and in manyplaces uprooted the old order without yet bringing in the new. His son, Martin Ross's father, had the famine to cope with and survived it; butof the second convulsion from which emerged the Ireland of to-day he sawonly the beginning, for he died in 1873, when the organised peasantuprising was at most a menace. But his wife knew both periods--the badtimes of the late 'forties and the bad times of the early eighties. Thetrue link with the past for the writers of _Irish Memories_ is throughthe female line. This is a book of mothers and daughters rather than offathers and sons. 

Martin Ross's mother went back easily in memory to the society which hadknown the Irish Parliament, had made or accepted the Union, and which, after the Union, exercised chieftainship in Ireland. She was thedaughter of Chief Justice Bushe, one of Grattan's rivals in oratory, who, like Grattan, had opposed the Union with all the resources of hiseloquence. Against his name in the private Castle list of voters for thecrucial division had been written in despair one word: "Incorruptible. "He was the common ancestor whose blood made the bond of kinship betweenMiss Somerville and Martin Ross, and both these staunch Unionist ladiesare passionately proud of the part which their grandfather played inresisting the Union; just as you will find the staunchest UlsterCovenanters exulting in the fact that they had a forbear "out" with theUnited Irishmen at Antrim or Ballynahinch in 1798. No wonder Englishmenfind Ireland puzzling; but Scots understand, for their own recordsabound in examples of the same paradoxes of historic sentiment. 

_Yesterday in Ireland_, I think, for my present purpose comes to defineitself as the period between the famine of 1847 and the famine of1879--between the downfall of O'Connell and Parnell's coming to power. We who were born in the 'sixties grew up in the close of it, and perhapsrecognise now more clearly than when they were with us the characters ofour kindred who were a part of it as mature human beings. "The men andwomen, but more specially the women of my mother's family andgeneration, are a lost pattern, a vanished type. " I could say the sameas Miss Somerville. There was a spaciousness about those people, adisregard of forms and conventions, a habit of thinking and acting forthemselves which really came down from a long tradition of interpretingthe law to their own liking. Miss Somerville and her comrade knew thetype in its fullest development, for both grew up in far-outAtlantic-bordering regions--Carbery of West Cork, Connemara of WestGalway--where the countryside knew scarcely "any inhabitants but thegentry and their dependents. 'Where'd we be at all if it wasn't for theColonel's Big Lady?' said the hungry country-women, in the Bad Times, scurrying, barefooted, to her in any emergency to be fed and doctoredand scolded. " So writes Miss Somerville of her mother; so might MartinRoss have written of her father, who was, so far as in him lay, aProvidence for his tenantry. Yet there is a story told of Mr. Martinthat throws a flood of light on the whole position of affairs. Who wereindeed the dependents? And on what did they depend? The story tells of awidow down by Lough Corrib, long in arrears with her rent. 

 The Master sent to her two or three times, and in the end he walked down himself, after his breakfast, and he took Thady (the steward) with him. Well, when he went into the house, she was so proud to see him, and "Your Honour is welcome, " says she, and she put a chair for him. He didn't sit down at all, but he was standing up there with his back to the dresser, and the children were sitting down one side the fire. The tears came from the Master's eyes, Thady seen them fall down the cheek. "Say no more about the rent, " says the Master to her, "you need say no more about it till I come to you again. " Well, it was the next winter, men were working in Gurthnamuckla and Thady with them, and the Master came to the wall of the field, and a letter in his hand, and he called Thady over to him. What had he to show but the widow's rent that her brother in America sent her. 

Martin Ross, writing in the light of to-day, makes this comment:--

 It will not happen again; it belongs to an almost forgotten régime, that was capable of abuse, yet capable too of summoning forth the best impulses of Irish hearts. 

War, famine and pestilence--all these are capable of summoning forthsplendid impulses; but society should not be organised to give play tothese hazards of feeling. The fundamental truth about yesterday inIreland is that everybody accepted as natural a state of affairs underwhich Irish gentry were taking rents that could not be earned on theland which was burdened with them. Landlord and tenant alike were reallydependent on what was sent back by the sons and daughters of poor peoplefrom America to prevent the break-up of homes. The whole situation wasfalse, from top to bottom. At top, a small class, physically and oftenmentally superb, full of charm, extraordinarily agreeable, fit for greatuses, but by temperament, habit and education unequipped for its propertask of equipping and directing the labour out of which ultimately ithad to live or perish. It perished. At bottom, a multitude withmarvellous constitution, undermined by age-long under-feeding, friendly, most lovable, most winning, but untrained and unequipped, half-heartedin its business of rolling the pitiless stone up the never-ending hill. It survived--clinging with a desperate tenacity to the soil which someagrely nourished it. But during that generation of yesterday--and howmany generations before it?--there grew up inevitably, from theconditions, a traditional toleration of incompetence, a faith as it werein inefficiency. Ireland of yesterday was bound up in one vicious circleof work that was necessarily underpaid because it was inefficient, andwork that was necessarily inefficient because it was underpaid. In thelower class there were no reserves; the dependants lived from hand tomouth, and when hand failed to find food, they had to come to the upperclass, first for remission of its claims on them and then for actualsubsistence. But the dependence was mutual, and there were no reservesat top equal to the needs of that joint hazard. Penury was only at tworemoves from the "gentry houses. " While the first line of defence, thetenants, held good, the world went pleasantly for the Ireland ofyesterday. But when that line broke, and starvation burst in, then thebest men and women in the big houses flung their all into the commonstock, and went under--as did the chief of the Martins in Connemara. 

That, however, happened the day before yesterday; yesterday saw nothingso dire. But the menace of it was always there, and the rest of Irelandgradually consolidated itself for a struggle to win what had long agobeen acquired for Protestant Ulster--the right of a tenant to what hisown labour created. The Ulster custom has done for Ulster, industrial aswell as agricultural, more than is generally perceived. It gave in somedegree recognition to efficiency. Tenure was there less precarious, lessdependent on the landlord's pleasure; men were freer, work had morerights. There was less room for impulse, perhaps less appeal toaffection; but when a business relation is based on impulse andaffection, where rights are not solid and defined, the sense ofobligation easily leads men astray. That which is given out of loyaltyand affection comes to be taken as a due. Martin Ross--"Miss Violet, "whom the people of Ross called "the gentle lady, " as beautiful a name aswas ever earned by mortal--inherited with little qualification thelandlord standpoint. She recalls the story of an election in 1872, whenher father, going to vote in Oughterard, saw "a company of infantrykeeping the way for Mr. Arthur Guinness (afterwards Lord Ardilaun) as heconveyed to the poll a handful of his tenants to vote for CaptainTrench, he himself walking in front with the oldest of them on his arm. "She does not ask if the tenants desired to be so conveyed. She merelydescribes how her father "ranged through the crowd incredulously, askingfor this or that tenant, unable to believe that they had deserted him. "When he came home, "even the youngest child of the house could see howgreat had been the blow. It was not the political defeat, severe asthat was, it was the personal wound, and it was incurable. "

Looking back through all those years, the "gentle lady" can see nothingin that episode but a case of priestly intimidation. "One need not blamethe sheep who passed in a frightened huddle from one fold to another. "Yet friends of mine in Galway look back on it in a very differentspirit; they remember the Nolan-Trench election and Captain Nolan'svictory as a triumph of the poor, a first instalment of freedom; itbrought with it an exultation very different from the mere outburst ofhatred that these pages suggest. What is more, having been privileged tosit in the most widely representative assembly of Irishmen that modernIreland has known, I can testify that to-day peer and peasant, clergyand laymen, those who opposed it, and those others who fought for it, alike admit that the change which such a victory fore-shadowed wasnecessary and was beneficent. But it was a revolution. Ireland ofyesterday was Ireland before the revolution. The Ireland that MissSomerville and Martin Ross have lived in as grown women has been acountry in the throes of a revolution, long drawn-out, with varyingphases, yet still incomplete. Those who judge Ireland should rememberthis. In time of revolution, life is difficult, ancient loyalties clashwith new yet living principles, sympathy and justice even are unsureguides. No country could have been kept for forty years in such aferment as Ireland has known without profound demoralisation. We maywell envy those who lived more easily and quietly in the Ireland ofyesterday, and held with an unquestioning spirit to the state of thingsin which they were born. 

Such were the folk of whom Miss Somerville writes with "that indomitablefamily pride that is an asset of immense value in the history of acountry. " They "took all things in their stride without introspection orhesitation. Their unflinching conscientiousness, their violentchurch-going (I speak of the sisters), were accompanied by awhole-souled love of a spree and a wonderful gift for a row. " I cancorroborate her details, especially the last. All those that I recallhad some talent for feuds; at least, in every family there would be onewarrior, male or female; and all had the complete contempt, not so muchfor convention as for those who were affected in their lives (orcostumes) by any standard that was not home-made. But in all humility Imust admit that the real heroines of this book--Mrs. Somerville and Mrs. Martin--outshine anything that my memory can produce. When Martin Rossand her mother went back to West Galway and re-established themselves attheir old home, a letter from her to Miss Somerville describes oneincident:--

 I wish you had seen Paddy Griffy, a very active little old man, and a beloved of mine, when he came down on Sunday night to welcome me. After the usual hand-kissings on the steps, he put his hands over his head and stood in the doorway, I suppose invoking his saint. He then rushed into the hall. 

 "Dance, Paddy, " screamed Nurse Bennett (my foster-mother, now our maid-of-all-work). 

 And he did dance, and awfully well, too, to his own singing. Mamma, who was attired in a flowing pink dressing-gown and a black hat trimmed with lilac, became suddenly emulous, and with her spade under her arm joined in the jig. This lasted for about a minute, and was a never-to-be-forgotten sight. They skipped round the hall, they changed sides, they swept up to each other and back again and finished with the deepest curtseys. 

My own mother would gladly have done the same on a like occasion, butshe lacked Mrs. Martin's talent for the jig. Mrs. Somerville is sketchedwith a free and humorous hand. I quote only one detail, but it shows thereal Irishwoman, more deeply in touch with Ireland's traditional lifethan any Gaelic League could bring her. Question arose how to find asuitable offering for 'an old servant of forty years' standing, whosefancies were few and her needs none. ' "Give her a nice shroud, " saidMrs. Somerville, "there's nothing in the world she'd like so well asthat. "

Shakespeare could not have outdone that intuition, and only one of thelarger breed would have been unconventional enough to suggest what theyounger generation, hampered by other feelings than those of WestCarbery, "were too feeble to accept. "

These two traits belong to the harmonious and thoroughly Irish groupingin which such ladies as Mrs. Martin and Mrs. Somerville were centralfigures of the whole countryside. That grouping exists no longer, andthis book has to describe the discord which interrupted that harmony. Martin Ross's elder brother, Robert Martin (famous in his day as thewriter and singer of _Ballyhooly_, and a score of other topical songs), left his work as a London journalist to help in fighting the firstcampaign which brought the word "boycott" into usage. 

 It was at this work (his sister writes), that Robert knew for the first time what it was to have every man's hand against him, to meet the stare of hatred, the jeer and the sidelong curse; to face endless drives on outside cars with his revolver in his hand; to plan the uphill tussle with boycotted crops and cattle for which a market could scarcely be found; to know the imminence of death, when by accidentally choosing one of two roads he evaded the man with a gun who had gone out to wait for him. 

Robert Martin faced, in a word, the earliest and ugliest phases of thatIrish revolution, which was the Nemesis of the all too easy and toopleasant ways of yesterday in Ireland. Later, after his death, MartinRoss herself had to gain some experience of the same trouble. When shewent back with her mother to re-establish the family home from whichthey had been fifteen years absent, there was a hostile element in theparish, and gracious hospitality was ungraciously met. An attempt wasmade to keep children from a children's party which she had organised. The move was half-hearted and her energy defeated it, but that theattempt should be made was such "a facer" as she had never before known. Like many another ugly thing in Ireland, it originated in that cowardlyfear of public opinion which is to be found on the seamy side of allrevolutions; and it did not stand against her "gallant fight to restorethe old ways, the old friendships. "

The old ways, in so far as they meant the old friendships, she mighthope to restore, although the friendship would, half consciously, takeon a new accent; personality would count for more in it, position forless. But the old relation which authorised a kind-hearted landlord tofeel that his tenants had "deserted him" because they voted against hiswish in an election--that is gone for ever; and gone, at all events, forthe present, is the local leadership of the gentry. 

I question whether it is realised that in parting from that leadershipIreland lost what was in a sense Home Rule. In the "yesterday" of whichI write Ireland was governed in all its parochial and most intimateaffairs by a class or a caste; but that governing class was Irish--Irishwith a limitation, no doubt, yet still indisputably Irish. When thatrule perished, when that class lost its local ascendancy, governmentbecame the bastard compromise that we have known, with powerinharmoniously divided between officialdom and agitators. The law wasframed and administered by officials, often English or Scotch, possessing no authority except what the law conferred on them. Authoritylay very largely with popular leaders; but leadership and authorityalike were purely personal, depending on a man's own qualities and thesupport which they evoked. No man was born to it as of right, and suchauthority is far more precarious than the established power of agoverning class. This is a weakness in all democratically-governedcountries, but where there is self-government, the individual, inentering upon office, acquires the support and the prestige of along-established machinery of power. He ceases to be merely theindividual when he becomes part of the Government. For the Irish leadersthis reinforcement to the personal authority has never existed; theyhave been at a terrible disadvantage as compared with all otherdemocratic politicians; and consequently the power exercised by them hasalways, except perhaps at Parnell's zenith, been far less than was thecombined authority of the gentry before the landlord rule was broken. Those who shared in that authority acted, and could afford to act, withunquestioning confidence; they were surer of themselves, than is anypopular leader or any official in Ireland of to-day. It seldom occurredto them to ask whether their conduct in any juncture might meet withapproval; being a law to other people, they were naturally a law tothemselves, and an Irish law. Their power was excessive, and demoralisedthem by its lack of limitation; yet many of the qualities which it bred, made them an element of great value in the country. These qualities areby no means extinct in their kindred, nor is the tradition of theirright to leadership forgotten. 

Of one thing Miss Somerville and those for whom she speaks (she is areal spokeswoman) may be well assured. Whatever be the surface mood ofthe moment, whatever the passing effect of war's hectic atmosphere, nothing is more deeply realised throughout Ireland than the need torestore the old ways, the old friendships--the need to bring back thegentry to their old uses in Ireland, and to so much of leadership asshould be theirs by right of fitness. When the history of the IrishConvention comes to be fully recorded, it will be seen that a greatdesire was universally felt, cordially uttered, in that assembly, tobridge over the gulf which divides us from yesterday in Ireland, and torecover for the future much of what was admirable, valuable and lovablein a past that is not unkindly remembered. Indeed, it is plain that MissSomerville has felt the influences that were abroad on the winds, whenshe wrote of her comrade:--

 Her love of Ireland, combined with her distrust of some of those newer influences in Irish affairs to which her letters refer, made her dread any weakening of the links that bind the United Kingdom into one; but I believe that if she were here now, and saw the changes that the past eighteen months have brought to Ireland, she would be quick to welcome the hope that Irish politics are lifting at last out of the controversial rut of centuries, and that although it has been said of East and West that "never the two shall meet, " North and South will yet prove that in Ireland it is always the impossible that happens. 

North and South--that is a more difficult gulf to bridge, for the one Ihave been speaking of is only a breach to repair. But industrialProtestant Ulster and the rest of Ireland have never really been one. Unity there has not to be re-established, but created. Martin Ross wentto the North only once "at the tremendous moment of the signing of theUlster Covenant, " and she was profoundly impressed by what she saw. Shewrote about it publicly and she wrote also privately (in a letter whichI had the honour to receive) a passage well worth quoting:--

 I did not know the North at all. What surprised me about the place was the feeling of cleverness and go, and also the people struck me as being hearty. If only the South would go up North and see what they are doing there, and how they are doing it, and ask them to show them how, it would make a good deal of difference. And then the North should come South and see what nice people we are, and how we do that. 

When that reciprocal pilgrimage was accomplished by the Convention, heranticipations were more than justified. But how clever she was! In aflash, she, coming there a stranger, hits on the word which describesUlster and differentiates it from the rest of Ireland. "Hearty, " that iswhat they are; it is the good side of their self-content. No people thatis in revolution can be hearty--least of all when revolution has draggedon through more than a generation. Distrust of your comrades--distrustof your leaders--self-distrust--these are the characteristic vices ofrevolution (look at Russia), and they sow a bitter seed. ProtestantUlster has never known revolution; for it yesterday and to-day have beenhappily, naturally, continuous. Political change it has known, normaland beneficent; land purchase came to Ulster as a by-product of what therest of Ireland endured in torment, and agony, and self-mutilation. Clever the Northerns are, but their cleverness issues prosperously inaction; they carry on in a solidly-established order; they have notneeded to break down before they could begin to build. That is why theirheartiness stood out when they were assembled, as I have seen them in acommon council of Irishmen, which was also, thank heaven, acompanionship. But the world at large can see it exhibited in anotherway. Contrast the work of the Ulster Players with that of the AbbeyTheatre. _The Drone_ is perhaps not the best of new Irish comedies, butit is infinitely the pleasantest; there is no bitter tang in its heartyhumour. Even in _The Enthusiast_, a sketch which has some touch ofpessimism, there is little more than a good-humoured shrug of theshoulders when the Enthusiast abandons his pretensions to make himselfheard against the banging of Orange drums. I find a very different note, not merely in the work of Synge, of Boyle, Colum, Lennox Robinson, andthe rest of the Abbey dramatists, but even in the books of which MissSomerville was joint author. When Ireland is seen with the eyes, forinstance, of her Major Yeates, is not the whole attitude one of amusedand acquiescent resignation? Take the hunting out of it (with all thehumours of the hunt)--take the shooting and fishing--and what is leftbut a life (to borrow a phrase from Mr. George Moore) "as melancholy asbog-water and as ineffectual. " Miss Somerville would probably declineto imagine an Ireland with these unthinkable suppressions, but afterall, we cannot live by or for sport alone. What gave dignity and realityto the life of yesterday was leadership in one class, and loyalty in theother. Leadership resting on ownership is gone now, dead as the dodo;what is left for the like (say) of Mr. Flurry Knox if he should begin totake himself seriously? You can easily make a soldier of him; we haveall met him in trenches and observed his airy attitude in No Man's Land. But soldiering has generally meant expatriation. For my part, I hopesome day to see this gentleman (or his like) play a useful part in somebattalion of Irish territorials--some home service offshoot of theConnaught Rangers. But that is not enough. If those who, like MissSomerville, love Ireland's yesterday and desire to link it up with aworthy to-morrow, there must be a wider understanding of Ireland, not inthe North only, but in that element of the South and West which standsto-day in a sense morally expatriated. The Irish gentry who complainthat their tenants "deserted" them must learn where they themselvesfailed their tenants. Leadership cannot depend merely on a power toevict, and they would to-day repudiate the desire for a leadership sogrounded. But between free men where there is not comprehension therecan be no leadership. 

I take first what is most difficult--the very heart of antagonism. Everyone who desires to understand Ireland to-day should read PatrickPearse's posthumous book, called boldly _The Story of a Success_. [1] Itis the spiritual history of Pearse's career as a schoolmaster, editedand completed by his pupil, Desmond Ryan; and it is a book by which noone can be justly offended--a book instinct with nobility, chivalry andhigh courtesy, free from all touch of bitterness; a book, too, shotthrough and slashed with that tragic irony which the Greeks knew to bethe finest thrill in literature--the word spoken, to which the foreknownevent gives an echo of double meaning. Pearse was concerned withIreland's yesterday; he desired to bring the present and the future intoorganic rotation with the past. But his yesterday was not MissSomerville's nor mine. The son of an English mechanic and a Galwaywoman, he was brought up in Connemara after the landlord power hadceased to exist. Ireland's past for him and Irish tradition were seenthrough the medium of an imagination in touch only with the peasantlife, but inspired by books and literature, written and spoken. Hisyesterday was of no definite past, for he had been born in a revolutionwhen the immediate past was obliterated. In his vision a thousand yearswere no more than the watch of some spellbound chivalry, waiting for thevoice that should say, "It is the time. " Cuchulain and Robert Emmet werehis inspirations, but the champion of the legendary Red Branch cycle andthe young revolutionary of Napoleon's days were near to him one as theother, in equally accessible communion. Going back easily to the heroiclegends, on which, though blurred in their outline, his boyhood had beenfostered by tellers of long-transmitted tales at a Connemara hearthside, he found the essential beauty and significance where more learned thoughless cultured readers have been bewildered by what seemed to them wildextravagances of barbarism. What he gathered from them did not lieinert, but quickened in him and in others, for he was the revolutionaryas schoolmaster--the most drastic revolutionary of all. In the schoolreview which was the first vehicle for these writings of his, he hopedto found "the rallying point for the thought and aspirations of allthose who would bring back again in Ireland that Heroic Age whichreserved its highest honour for the hero who had the most childlikeheart, for the king who had the largest pity, and for the poet whovisioned the truest image of beauty. " All his theory of education wasbased on the old Irish institution of fosterage, which was no merephysical tie of the breast; the child sent to be fostered was sent to bebred and trained, and it was a tie stronger than that of its blood or ofthe breast. _Irish Memories_ shows incidentally how great a part thisfosterage played in the Ross of yesterday--that family with itsmultitude of children was bound to the countryside by all the "Nursies. "But the Martin household, and all similar households were, in a lessliteral sense, fostered by the peasantry at large. The truest part ofeducation should be to know your own country (a principle much neglectedin Ireland), and which of us all, who had the good fortune to be broughtup in touch with Irish peasant life, does not realise our debt? Wereceived a devotion, an affection, for which no adequate return could bemade--it is the nature of fosterage that the fosterer should give morethan can ever be requited; but we gained also our real knowledge, in sofar as we ever had it, of the countryside, the traditional wisdom, theinherited way of life. There was more to be got if we had the wit toassimilate it. Almost all of modern Irish literature that has lastingvalue is evoked from elements floating in peasant memory, in the peasantmind, and in the coloured peasant speech of an Ireland which keepsunbroken descent from a long line of yesterdays. Mr. Yeats is only thechief of those who draw from this source. Miss Somerville herself andher cousin must have known well that the real worth of their work liesin their instinct for the poetry which, more specially inGaelic-speaking regions, sits in rags by roadside and chimney corner. Irish poetry is not only the tragic voice of the keene; Gaelic had itscomic muse as well, a robust virago, of the breed which producedAristophanes and Rabelais--and Slipper with his gift for epic narrativeis a camp-follower of that regiment. 

[Footnote 1: "The Story of a Success. " By P. H. Pearse. Being a Record ofSt. Erda's College, September, 1908, to Easter, 1916. Edited by DesmondRyan, B. A. Maunsel & Co. ]

Yet in Miss Somerville's appreciation there is often--not always--asense of the incongruity as well as of the beauty in peasant speech. Thewoman crying for alms of bread who described her place of habitation, "Ido be like a wild goose over on the side of Drominidy Wood, " moves tolaughter as well as to pity with the dignity of her phrase. Ireland sofelt is Ireland perceived from the outside--seen as a picturesque ruin. You cannot so see Pearse; he is too strong for even compassionatelaughter. What he embodies is the central strength of Irishnationalism--its disregard of the immediate event. 

 Wise men have told me that I ought never to set my foot on a path unless I can see clearly whither it will lead me. But that philosophy would condemn most of us to stand still till we rot. Surely one can do no more than assure one's self that each step one takes is right; and as to the rightness of a step one is fortunately answerable only to one's conscience and not to the wise men of the counting house. The street will pass judgment on our enterprises according as they have "succeeded" or "failed. " But if one can feel that one has striven faithfully to do a right thing, does not one stand ultimately justified, no matter what the issue of one's attempt, no matter what the sentence of the street?

By such teaching he commended to his scholars, and to Ireland, thespirit which he desired to see expressed in "that laughing gesture of ayoung man that is going into battle or climbing to a gibbet. " Strangecountry, that has the gibbet always before the eyes and almost beforethe aspiration of its idealists! It was so yesterday--in all theyesterdays--and yet the reason is plain. All the aspirations of suchidealists have been regarded as criminal by the class for which MissSomerville and her cousin speak--criminal and menacing to those who, holding the power, arrogated to themselves a monopoly of loyalty. Theyhave always conceived of Pearse and his like as thirsting for theirblood. Miss Edgeworth, in a letter printed for the first time in _IrishMemories_, writes:--"I fear our throats will be cut by order ofO'Connell and Co. Very soon. " We know enough to-day about O'Connell torealise how far this estimate lay from the truth of things; yet MissSomerville herself talks about "Parnell and his wolf-pack. " JustinMcCarthy, John Redmond, Willie Redmond--these were some of the wolveswho presumably wanted to tear Miss Somerville's kindred to pieces. Thatis where the change must come; there must be among the gentry somegenerous understanding of Nationalist leaders before the grave hasclosed over them. Anyone can see what is bad in Sinn Féin, but no onecan fight that evil effectively, no one can convert to better uses theill-guided force which Sinn Féin represents, until he understands whatis best in it. Sinn Féin has largely replaced a movement which, in itslater phases, dwelt perhaps too much on the material advantages which itoffered as the reward of support. Sinn Féin's strength has lain not inwhat it has offered, but in what it has asked; it has asked fordevotion, and Pearse certainly both gave that and received it. Such washis teaching, and I do not know a better saying for the Irish gentry toponder over than the last sentence in these essays of his: "The highestthing anyone can do is to serve. "

That temper was perhaps lacking in the Ireland of yesterday which MissSomerville so lovingly describes. To command loyalty as a right, toreward it by generosity, by indulgence--this made part of the ideal ofleadership; but scarcely to be laborious either in rendering or exactingcapable work. 

The old way of life was good for children, as Martin Ross describes itin her sketch of her brother's upbringing. 

 Everything in those early days of his was large and vigorous; tall trees to climb, great winds across the lake to wrestle with, strenuous and capable talk upstairs and downstairs, in front of furnaces of turf and logs, long drives and the big Galway welcome at the end of them. 

But for the grown men, it lacked one thing: effort. Pleasant it was;lots of everything, lots of hunting, lots of game on the moors and bogs, lots of fish in lake and river, lots of beef and mutton on the farm, lots of logs and turf, lots of space--above all, lots of time, andalways the spirit for a spree that made everyone "prefer good fun to apunctual dinner. " There was only one deficiency: that way of life wasapt to be short of cash. It was, in short, a life that could not pay itsway. The "big Galway welcome" is just as big with a sounder economicsystem, that rests solidly on men's own work. Anyone who knows WesternIreland can tell you that the quality of work is better on the landwhere men are their own masters than it was in the old days. Yet eventhere we are not out of the old vicious circle of under-pay andunder-work; and in the industrial life we are fully entangled in it. Buthere also the revolutionary as schoolmaster has appeared. To my thinkingthe most momentous apparition in Ireland of our times is that of Mr. Ford, who is paying American wage rates for labour in Cork, andcalculating, not to get value for his money at once, but to teach labourto be worth it. According to his gospel, as it was expounded to me, youwill not get efficiency by offering to pay the wages of efficiency whenlabour becomes efficient: you must first provide the conditions ofefficiency and then teach, just as in the army your first care is to geta recruit fit and your second to make him thorough in his ground work. That is the practical recognition of what yesterday in Ireland failed torecognise. 

Nor does this ideal of strenuous and capable work exclude either thestrenuous and capable talk of Martin Ross's Galway household or anythingelse that was excellent in the old way. Certainly the most laborious andthe most prosperous peasant household that I have ever known (and formany months I was part of it) was the most thoroughly and traditionallyIrish, except that it was removed by one generation from Gaelic speech. But the whole cast of mind was Gaelic, remote as the poles from that"newer Ireland" which is in revolt against all tradition ofauthority--and, if they only knew it, against all Irish tradition. MissSomerville thinks, as a page in her book shows, that the newer Irelandhas lost the endearing courtesy which is imposed by the genius of theGaelic tongue, and is for that matter to be found in every line ofPearse's essays. We can educate back to that without any detriment; wecan be as efficient and as courteous as the Japanese. Another thing isgone. Ireland of yesterday, even in its poverty, was a merry country;to-day, even in its prosperity, it is full of bitter, mirthless rancourand hate. It will be a great thing if we can help to preserve forIreland the exquisite benediction which a beggar woman in Skibbereenlaid upon Martin Ross: "Sure, ye're always laughing! That ye may laughin the sight of the glory of Heaven. "

1918.