THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY
By SIR ROGER CASEMENT, C.M.G.

The history of Ireland remains to be written, for the purpose of
Irishmen remains yet to be achieved.

The struggle for national realization, begun so many centuries ago,
is not ended; and if the long story offers a so frequent record of
failure, it offers a continuous appeal to the highest motives and a
constant exhibition of a most pathetic patriotism linked with the
sternest courage.

Irish wars, throughout all time, have been only against one enemy,
the invader, and, ending so often in material disaster, they have
conferred always a moral gain. Their memory uplifts the Irish heart;
for no nation, no people, can reproach Ireland with having wronged
them.

When, at the dawn of the Christian era, we first hear of Ireland from
external sources, we learn of it as an island harboring free men,
whose indomitable love of freedom was hateful to the spirit of
imperial exploitation.

Agricola's advice to the empire-builders of his day was that Rome
should "war down and take possession of Ireland, so that freedom
might be put out of sight."

It was to meet this challenge of despotism that the Scotic clans of
Alba turned to their motherland for help, and the sea was "white with
the hurrying oars" of the men of Erin speeding to the call of their
Highland kinsmen, threatened with imperial servitude.

The first external record we possess thus makes it clear that when
the early Irish went forth to carry war abroad, it was not to impose
their yoke on other peoples, or to found an empire, but to battle
against the Empire of the World in the threatened cause they held so
dear at home.

In this early Roman reference to Ireland we get the keynote to all
later Irish history--a warring down on the one hand, so that freedom
might be put out of sight; an eternal resistance, on the other, so
that it might be upheld.

It was this struggle that Ireland sought to maintain against every
form of attack, down through Danish, Norman, Tudor, Stuart, and
Cromwellian assault, to the larger imperialism of the nineteenth
century, when, as Thierry, the historian of the Norman Conquest,
tells us, it still remained the one "lost cause" of history that
refused to admit defeat. "This indomitable persistency, this faculty
of preserving through centuries of misery the remembrance of lost
liberty and of never despairing of a cause always defeated, always
fatal to those who dared to defend it, is perhaps the strangest and
noblest example ever given by any nation."

The resources Ireland opposed to her invaders have been unequal to
the founding of a great state, but have preserved a great tradition.
The weakness of Ireland lay in the absence of a central organization,
a state machine that could mobilize the national resources to defend
the national life. That life had to depend for its existence, under
the stress of prolonged invasion, on the spontaneous patriotism and
courage of individuals. At times one clan alone, or two clans,
maintained the struggle. Arrayed against them were all the resources
of a mighty realm--shipping, arms, munitions of war, gold,
statecraft, a widespread and calculating diplomacy, the prestige of a
great Sovereign and a famous Court--and the Irish clan and its
chieftain, by the sheer courage of its members, by their bodily
strength and hardihood and feats of daring, for years kept the issue
in doubt.

When Hugh O'Neill, leagued with Red Hugh O'Donnell, challenged the
might of Elizabeth, he had nothing to rely upon but the stout hearts
and arms of the men of Tir-owen and Tir-Conail. Arms and armaments
were far from Ulster. They could be procured only in Spain or
elsewhere on the continent. English shipping held the sea; the
English mint the coinage. The purse of England, compared to that of
the Ulster princes, was inexhaustible. Yet for nine years the
courage, the chivalry, the daring and skill of these northern
clansmen, perhaps 20,000 men in all, held all the might of England at
bay. Had the Spanish king at any time during the contest made good
his promise to lend effective aid to the Irish princes, O'Neill would
have driven Elizabeth from Ireland, and a sovereign State would today
be the guardian of the freedom of the western seas for Europe and the
world. It took "the best army in Europe" and a vast treasure, as Sir
John Davies asserted, to conquer two Ulster clans three hundred years
ago. The naked valor of the Irishman excelled the armed might of
Tudor England; and the struggle that gave the empire of the seas to
Britain was won not in the essay of battle, but in the assay of the
mint.

It is this aspect of the Irish fight for freedom that dignifies an
otherwise lost cause. Ever defeated, yet undefeated, a
long-remembering race believes that these native qualities must in
the end prevail. The battle has been from the first one of manhood
against might. The State Papers, the official record of English rule
in Ireland, leave us rarely in doubt. We read in that record that,
where the appeal was to the strength or courage of the opposing men,
the Irish had nothing to fear from English arms.

Thus the Earl of Essex, in a despatch to Elizabeth, explained the
failure of his great expedition in 1599 against O'Neill and
O'Donnell. "These rebels ... have (though I do unwillingly confess
it) better bodies and perfecter use of their arms than those men whom
your Majesty sends over." The flight of the Earls in 1607 left
Ireland leaderless, with nothing but the bodies and hearts of the
people to depend on. In 1613 we read, in the same records, a candid
admission that, although the clan system had been destroyed and the
great chiefs expropriated, converted, or driven to flight, the people
still trusted to their own stout arms and fearless hearts:

"The next rebellion, whenever it shall happen, doth threaten more
danger to the State than any heretofore, when the cities and walled
towns were always faithful; (1) because they have the same bodies
they ever had and therein they had and have advantage of us; (2) from
infancy they have been and are exercised in the use of arms; (3) the
realm by reason of the long peace was never so full of youths; (4)
that they are better soldiers than heretofore their continental
employment in wars abroad assures us, and they do conceive that their
men are better than ours."

And when that "next rebellion" came, the great uprising of the
outraged race in 1641, what do we find? Back from the continent sails
the nephew of the great O'Neill, who had left Ireland a little boy in
the flight of the Earls, and the dispossessed clansmen, robbed of all
but their strength of body and heart, gathered to the summons of Owen
Roe.

Again it was the same issue: the courage and hardihood of the
Irishman to set against the superior arms, equipment, and wealth of a
united Britain. Irish valor won the battle; a great state
organization won the campaign. England and Scotland combined to lay
low a resurgent Ireland; and again the victory was not to the brave
and skilled, but to the longer purse and the implacable mind. Perhaps
the most vivid testimony to these innate qualities of the Irishman is
to be found in a typically Irish challenge issued in the course of
this ten years' war from 1641 to 1651. The document has a lasting
interest, for it displays not only the "better body" of the Irishman,
but something of his better heart and chivalry of soul.

One Parsons, an English settler in Ireland, had written to a friend
to say, among other things, that the head of a colonel of an Irish
regiment then in the field against the English would not be allowed
to stick long on its shoulders. The letter was intercepted by the
very regiment itself, and a captain in it, Felim O'Molloy, wrote back
to Parsons:

"I will doe this, if you please. I will pick out 60 men and fight
against 100 of your choise men, if you do but pitch your campe one
mile out of your towne, and then, if you have the victory, you may
threaten my colonel; otherwise do not reckon your chickens before
they be hatched."

It was this same spirit of daring, this innate belief in his own
manhood, that for three hundred years made every Irishman the
custodian of his country's honor.

An Irish state had not been born; that battle had still to be fought;
but the romantic effort to achieve it reveals ever an unstained
record of personal courage. Freedom has not come to Ireland; it has
been "warred down and kept out of sight"; but it has been kept in the
Irish heart, from Brian Boru to Robert Emmet, by a long tale of blood
shed always in the same cause. Freedom is kept alive in man's blood
only by the shedding of that blood. It was this they were seeking,
those splendid "scorners of death", the lads and young men of Mayo,
who awaited with a fearless joy the advance of the English army fresh
from the defeat of Humbert in 1798. Then, if ever, Irishmen might
have run from a victorious and pitiless enemy, who having captured
the French general and murdered, in cold blood, the hundreds of
Killala peasants who were with his colors, were now come to Killala
itself to wreak vengeance on the last stronghold of Irish rebellion.

The ill-led and half-armed peasants, the last Irishmen in Ireland to
stand in open, pitched fight for their country's freedom, went to
meet the army of General Lake, as the Protestant bishop who saw them
says, "running upon death with as little appearance of reflection or
concern as if they were hastening to a show."

The influences that begot this reverence for freedom lie in the
island itself no less than in the remote ancestry of the people.
Whoever looks upon Ireland cannot conceive it as the parent of any
but freemen. Climate and soil here unite to tell man that
brotherhood, and not domination, constitutes the only nobility for
those who call this fair shore their motherland. The Irish struggle
for liberty owes as much, perhaps, to the continuing influence of the
same lakes and rivers and the same mountains as to the survival of
any political fragments of the past. Irish history is inseparably the
history of the land, rather than of a race; and in this it offers us
a spectacle of a continuing national unity that long-continuing
disaster has not been able wholly to efface or wholly to disrupt.

To discover the Europe that existed before Rome we must turn to the
East, Greece, and to the West, Ireland.

Ireland alone among western lands preserves the recorded tradition,
the native history, the continuity of mind, and, until yesterday, of
speech and song, that connect the half of Europe with its ancestral
past. For early Europe was very largely Celtic Europe, and nowhere
can we trace the continuous influence of Celtic culture and idealism,
coming down to us from a remote past, save in Ireland only.

To understand the intellect of pre-Roman Gaul, of Spain, of Portugal,
and largely of Germany, and even of Italy, we must go to Ireland.
Whoever visits Spain or Portugal, to investigate the past of those
countries, will find that the record stops where Rome began. Take
England in further illustration. The first record the inhabitants of
England have of the past of their island comes from Roman invasion.
They know of Boadicea, of Cassivelaunus, the earliest figures in
their history, from what a foreign destroyer tells them in an alien
tongue.

All the early life of Celtiberians and Lusitanians has passed away
from the record of human endeavor, save only where we find it
recorded by the Italian invaders in their own speech, and in such
terms as imperial exploitation ever prescribes for its own
advancement and the belittlement of those it assails. Ireland alone
among all western nations knows her own past, from the very dawn of
history and before the romance of Romulus began, down to the present
day, in the tongue of her own island people and in the light of her
own native mind. Early Irish history is not the record of the
clan-strivings of a petty and remote population, far from the centre
of civilization. It is the authentic story of all western
civilization before the warm solvent of Mediterranean blood and iron
melted and moulded it into another and rigid shape.

The Irishman called O'Neill, O'Brien, O'Donnell, steps out of a past
well-nigh co-eval with the heroisms and tragedies that uplifted
Greece and laid Troy in ashes, and swept the Mediterranean with an
Odyssey of romance that still gives its name to each chief island,
cape, and promontory of the mother sea of Europe. Ireland, too, steps
out of a story just as old. Well nigh every hill or mountain, every
lake or river, bears the name today it bore a thousand, two thousand,
years ago, and one recording some dramatic human or semi-divine
event.

The songs of the Munster and Connacht poets of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries gave to every cottage in the land the ownership
as well as the tale of an heroic ancestry. They linked the Ireland of
yesterday with the Ireland of Finn and Oscar, of Diarmid and Grainne,
of Deirdre and the Sons of Usnech, of Cuchulainn the Hound of Ulster.
A people bred on such soul-stirring tales as these, linked by a
language "the most expressive of any spoken on earth" in thought and
verse and song with the very dawn of their history, wherein there
moved, as familiar figures, men with the attributes of gods--great in
battle, grand in danger, strong in loving, vehement in death--such a
people could never be vulgar, could never be mean, but must repeat,
in their own time and in their own manhood, actions and efforts thus
ascribed as a vital part of their very origin. Hence the inspiration
that gave the name of Fenian, in the late nineteenth century, to a
band of men who sought to achieve by arms the freedom of Ireland. The
law of the Fenian of the days of Marcus Aurelius was the law of the
Fenian in the reign of Victoria--to give all--mind, body, and
strength of purpose--to the defense of his country, "to speak truth
and harbor no greed in his heart."

Some there are who may deny to Finn and his Fenians of the second and
third centuries corporeal existence; yet nothing is surer than that
Ireland claims these ancestral embodiments of an heroic tradition by
a far surer title of native record than gives to the Germans
Arminius, to the Gauls, Ariovistus, to the British, Caractacus. This
conception of a national life, one with the land itself, was very
clear to the ancient Irish, just as it has been and is the foundation
of all later national effort.

"If ever the idea of nationality becomes the subject of a thorough
and honest study, it will be seen that among all the peoples of
antiquity, not excluding the Hellenes and the Hebrews, the Irish held
the clearest and most conscious and constant grasp of that idea; and
that their political divisions, instead of disproving the existence
of the idea, in their case intensely strengthen the proof of its
existence and emphasize its power.

In the same way the remarkable absence of insular exclusiveness,
notwithstanding their geographical position, serves to bring their
sense of nationality into higher relief.

Though pride of race is evident in the dominant Gaelic stock, their
national sentiment centres not in the race, but altogether in the
country, which is constantly personified and made the object of a
sort of cult.

It is worth noting that just as the Brehon Laws are the laws of
Ireland without distinction of province or district; as the language
of Irish literature is the language of Ireland without distinction of
dialects; as the Dindshenchus contains the topographical legends of
all parts of Ireland, and the Festilogies commemorate the saints of
all Ireland; so the Irish chronicles from first to last are histories
of the Irish nation. The true view of the Book of Invasions is that
it is the epic of Irish Nationality." (Professor Eoin MacNeill, in a
letter to Mrs. A.S. Green, January, 1914.)

The "Book of Invasions", which Professor MacNeill here speaks of, was
compiled a thousand years ago. To write the history of later Ireland
is merely to prolong the "Book of Invasions", and thus bring the epic
of Irish resistance down to our own day. All Irish valor and
chivalry, whether of soul or of body, have been directed for a
thousand years to this same end. It was for this that Sarsfield died
at Landen no less than Brian at Clontarf. The monarch of Ireland at
the head of a great Irish army driving back the leagued invaders from
the shores of Dublin Bay in 1014, and the exiled leader in 1693,
heading the charge that routed King William's cause in the
Netherlands, fell on one and the same battlefield. They fought
against the invader of Ireland.

We are proudly told that the sun never sets on the British Empire.
Wherever an Irishman has fought in the name of Ireland it has not
been to acquire fortune, land, or fame, but to give all, even life
itself, not to found an empire, but to strike a blow for an ancient
land and assert the cause of a swordless people. Wherever Irishmen
have gone, in exile or in fight, they have carried this image of
Ireland with them. The cause of Ireland has found a hundred fields of
foreign fame, where the dying Irishman might murmur with Sarsfield,
"Would that this blood were shed for Ireland", and history records
the sacrifice as made in no other cause.

Ireland, too, owns an empire on which the sun never sets.

REFERENCES:

Sigerson: Bards of the Gael and Gall; O'Callaghan: History of the
Irish Brigades; Mitchel: Life of Hugh O'Neill; Green: The Making of
Ireland and its Undoing, Irish Nationality, The Old Irish World;
Taylor: Life of Owen Roe O'Neill; Todhunter: Life of Patrick
Sarsfield; Hyde: Love Songs of Connacht, Religious Songs of Connacht;
O'Grady: Bog of Stars, Flight of the Eagle; Ferguson: Hibernian
Nights' Entertainment; Mitchel: History of Ireland, in continuation
of MacGeoghegan's History.

IRISH MUSIC
By W.H. GRATTAN FLOOD, Mus. D., M.R.I.A., K.S.G.

Perhaps nothing so strikingly brings home the association of Ireland
with music as the fact that the harp is emblazoned on the national
arms. Ireland, "the mother of sweet singers", as Pope writes;
Ireland, "where", according to St. Columcille, "the clerics sing like
the birds"; Ireland can proudly point to a musical history of over
2,000 years. The Milesians, the De Dananns, and other pre-Christian
colonists were musical. Hecataeus (B.C. 540-475) describes the Celts
of Ireland as singing songs to the harp in praise of Apollo, and
Aethicus of Istria, a Christian philosopher of the early fourth
century, describes the culture of the Irish. Certain it is that, even
before the coming of St. Patrick, the Irish were a highly cultured
nation, and the national Apostle utilized music and song in his work
of conversion. In the early Lives of the Irish Saints musical
references abound, and the Irish school of music attracted foreign
scholars from the sixth to the ninth century.

Hymnologists are familiar with the hymns written by early Irish
saints and laics, _e.g._, St. Sechnall, St. Columcille, St. Molaise,
St. Cuchuimne, St. Columbanus, St. Ultan, St. Colman, St. Cummain,
St. Aengus, Dungal, Sedulius, Moengal, and others. Who has not heard
of the great music school of San Gallen, founded by St. Gall, "the
wonder and delight of Europe," whither flocked German students? One
of the Irish monks, Tuathal (Tutilo), composed numerous sacred
pieces, including the famous farced Kyrie, "Fons bonitatis", included
in the Vatican edition of the _Kyriale_ (1906). Not alone did Irish
monks propagate sacred and secular music throughout France, Italy,
Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and the far North, but they made their
influence felt In Lindisfarne, Malmesbury, Glastonbury, and other
cities in England, as also in Scotland. St. Aldhelm, one of the
pupils of St. Maeldubh, tells us that at the close of the seventh
century, "Ireland, synonymous with learning, literally blazed like
the stars of the firmament with the glory of her scholars."

During the ninth century we meet with twelve different forms of
instruments in use by the Irish, namely:--the _Cruit_ and
_Clairseach_ (small and large harp); _Timpan_ (_Rotta_ or bowed
_cruit_); _Buinne_ (oboe or bassoon); _Bennbuabhal_ and _Corn_
(horn); _Cuisleanna_ and _Piob_ (bagpipes); _Feadan_ (flute or fife);
_Guthbuinne_ (bass horn); _Stoc_ and _Sturgan_ (trumpet); _Pipai_
(single and double pipes); _Craoibh cuil_ and _Crann cuil_
(cymbalum); _Cnamha_ (castanet); and _Fidil_ (fiddle). The so-called
"Brian Boru's Harp" really dates from the thirteenth century, and is
now in Trinity College, Dublin, but there are numerous sculptured
harps of the ninth and tenth centuries on the crosses at Graig,
Ullard, Clonmacnois, Durrow, and Monasterboice.

Donnchadh, an Irish bishop of the ninth century, who died as abbot of
St. Remigius, wrote a commentary on Martianus Capella, a well-known
musical text book. Towering above all his fellows, John Scotus
Erigena, in 867, wrote a tract _De Divisione Naturae_, in which he
expounds _organum_ or discant, nearly a hundred years before the
appearance of the _Scholia Enchiriadis_ and the _Musica Enchiriadis_.
He also wrote a commentary on Martianus Capella, now in a Paris MS.
of the ninth century.

The eulogy of Giraldus Cambrensis, or Gerald Barry, who came to
Ireland in 1183, on Irish harpers and minstrels is too well known to
be repeated, but Brompton and John of Salisbury are equally
enthusiastic. Ground bass, or pedal point, and singing in parts, as
well as bands of harpers and pipers, were in vogue in Ireland before
the coming of the English. Dante, quoted by Galilei, testifies to the
fact that Italy received the harp from Ireland; and, it may be added,
the Irish harp suggested the pianoforte. In the Anglo-Norman ballad,
"The Entrenchment of New Ross"--in 1265--allusion is made to pipes
and flutes, and carols and dancing. Another poem, dating from about
1320, refers to Irish dances in a flattering manner.

John Garland (1190-1264) wrote a treatise on _Organum_, and outlined
a scheme of dividing the interval, which developed into
ornamentation, passing notes, and grace notes. The Dublin _Troper_ of
the thirteenth century has a number of farced Kyries and Glorias,
also a collection of Sequences. A Dublin _Processionale_ of the
fourteenth century contains the most elaborate form of the _Officium
Sepulchri_, with musical notation on a four-line stave--the
foundation of the Miracle Play of the Resurrection. Another Dublin
_Troper_ dates from 1360 and was used in St. Patrick's Cathedral. It
contains the hymn, "Angelus ad Virginem", alluded to by Chaucer. The
Christ Church Psaltery, about 1370, has musical notation and is
exquisitely illuminated. Lionel Power, an Anglo-Irishman, wrote the
first English treatise on music in 1395. Exactly a century later, in
1495, a music school was founded in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

The Irish Annals of the thirteenth to the fifteenth century have
numerous references to distinguished harpers and singers, and there
are still sung many beautiful airs of this period, including "The
Coulin" and "Eibhlin a ruin." John Lawless was a famous Irish
organ-builder of the second half of the fifteenth century, and his
successor, James Dempsey, built many fine organs between the years
1530 and 1565.

Notwithstanding the many penal enactments against Irish minstrels,
all the great Anglo-Irish nobles of the Pale retained an Irish harper
and piper in their service. Under date of 1480, we find Chief Justice
Bermingham having an Irish harper to teach his family, as also "to
harp and to dance." A century later "Blind Cruise, the
harper"--Richard Cruise--composed a lamentation song on the fall of
the Baron of Slane, the air of which is still popular. It is to the
credit of the Irishman, William Bathe (who subsequently became a
Jesuit), that he wrote the first printed English treatise on music,
published in 1584--thus ante-dating by thirteen years Morley's work.
Bathe wrote a second musical treatise in 1587, and he was the first
to call measures by the name of bars. He also formulated methods of
transposition and sight reading that may still be studied with
profit.

Thomas Campion, the poet and composer, was born in Dublin in 1567,
but spent nearly all his life in England. Other Irish composers, to
mention only the most distinguished, were William Costello
(madrigalist), Richard Gillie, Edward Shergold, and Walter Kennedy.
Strange as it may seem, Queen Elizabeth retained in her service an
Irish harper, Cormac MacDermot, from 1591 to 1603, and on the death
of the queen he was given an annual pension of L46 10s. 10d.--nearly
L500 a year of our present money.

Shakespeare refers to eleven Irish tunes, of which the famous
"Callino Casturame" (_Cailin og a stuir me_) is still fresh. Irish
dances were extremely popular at the English court from 1600 to 1603
and were introduced into the Masks. Shakespeare's "intrinsic friend,"
John Dowland of Dublin, was one of the greatest lutenists in Europe
from 1590 to 1626. In the dedication of a song "to my loving
countryman, Mr. John Foster the Younger, merchant of Dublin in
Ireland," Dowland sufficiently indicates his nationality, and his
compositions betray all the charm and grace of Irish melody. It is of
interest to add that the earliest printed "Irish Dance" is in
_Parthenia Inviolata_, of which work, published in 1613-4, there is
only one copy known--now in the New York Public Library. From
1600-1602, Charles O'Reilly was harpist to the court of Denmark at
200 thalers a year. His successor was Donal _Dubh_ ("the black")
O'Cahill (1602-1610), who followed Anne of Denmark to the English
court. Walter Quin of Dublin was music master to King James's eldest
son, Prince Henry, from 1608 to 1611. Other noted harpers of the
first half of the seventeenth century are: Rory _dall_ ("the blind")
O'Cahan; Nicholas _dall_ Pierce; Tadhg MacRory; John, Rory, and Henry
Scott; Owen MacKeenan; Owen MacDermot; Tadhg O'Coffey; and Father
Robert Nugent, S.J. Darby Scott was harper to the Danish Court from
1621 till his death, at Copenhagen, on December 19, 1634. Pierce
Ferriter, a "gentleman harper", was executed at Killarney in 1652.
Myles O'Reilly and the two Connellans were famous harpers between the
years 1660-1680. Evelyn, the English diarist, in 1668, praises the
excellent performance on the harp of Sir Edward Sutton, who, in the
following year, was granted by King Charles II. the lands of Confey,
Co. Kildare. Two beautiful harps of this period are still
preserved--the Fitzgerald Harp and the Fogarty Harp.

There are many exquisite airs of the seventeenth century, some of
which have been incorporated in Moore's _Irish Melodies_. The titles
of several airs of this epoch are of historical interest, _e.g._,
"Sarsfield's Lament," "Lament for Owen Roe O'Neill," "MacAlistrum's
March," "Ned of the Hill," "The Breach of Aughrim," "Limerick's
Lamentation," "Lilliburlero," "Ballinamona," "The Boyne Water," and
"The Wild Geese." Irish tunes abound in the various editions of
Playford's _Country Dances_ from 1651 to 1720.

Turlogh O'Carolan (1670-1738), who has been styled "the last of the
Irish bards", wrote and composed innumerable songs, also Planxties,
Plearacas, and Lamentations. It is here merely necessary to note that
twenty-six of O'Carolan's airs are included in Moore's _Irish
Melodies_, although his claim to them has only recently been proved
by the present writer. Goldsmith's eulogy of O'Carolan is well known.

The Jacobite period from 1710 to 1750 considerably influenced Irish
minstrelsy, and some of the most delightful airs were adapted to
Jacobite lyrics. "Seaghan buidhe," "An Sean duine," "Lament for
Kilcash," "Ormonde's Lament," "Morin ni Chullenain," "All the Way to
Galway" (the air of "Yankee Doodle"), "Caitlin ni Houlihan," "Balance
a straw" ("The Wearing of the Green"), "St. Patrick's Day," "Plancam
Peirbhig," are amongst the tunes in vogue at this period.

As early as 1685 the Hibernian Catch Club was established and still
flourishes. Cecilian celebrations were held from 1727 to 1732, and a
Dublin Academy of Music was founded in 1728. The Charitable and
Musical Society (founded in 1723) built the Fishamble Street Music
Hall in 1741, and assisted at the first performance of _The Messiah_,
conducted by Handel himself, on 13th April, 1742. Kitty Clive, Peg
Woffington, and Daniel Sullivan were noted Irish singers of this
epoch, while John Clegg, Dr. Murphy, and Burke Thumoth were famous
instrumentalists. In 1741 Richard Pockrich invented the Musical
Glasses, for which Gluck wrote some pieces: it was afterwards
improved by Benjamin Franklin. On the continent, Henry Madden was
music director of the Chapel Royal at Versailles in 1744 (in
succession to Campra), and was also canon of St. Quentin.

In 1764 the Earl of Mornington, Mus. D., was appointed first
professor of music in Dublin University. A few years later Charles
Clagget invented the valve-horn. Michael Kelly of Dublin was
specially selected by Mozart to create the parts of Basilio and Don
Curzio at the first performance of the opera of _Figaro_, on May 1st,
1786. Kane O'Hara, Samuel Lee, Owenson, Neale, Baron Dillon, Dr.
Doyle, T.A. Geary, Mahon, and the Earl of Westmeath were
distinguished musicians--while the fame of Carter, Mountain,
Moorehead, and Dr. Cogan was not confined to Ireland.

Among native minstrels, Jerome Duigenan, Dominic Mongan, Denis
Hempson, Charles Byrne, James Duncan, Arthur Victory, and Arthur
O'Neill were celebrated as harpers. The Belfast meeting of 1792
revived the vogue of the national instrument. Nor was the bagpipe
neglected. Even in America, in 1778, Lord Rawdon had a band of
pipers, with Barney Thomson as Pipe Major. At home, Sterling,
Jackson, MacDonnell, Moorehead, Kennedy, and Macklin sustained the
reputation of this ancient instrument.

Ere the close of the eighteenth century John Field of Dublin was a
distinguished pianist. He subsequently (1814) invented the nocturne,
developed by Chopin. Sir John Stevenson (the arranger of the _Irish
Melodies_), Tom Cooke, William Southwell (inventor of the damper
action for pianofortes), Henry Mountain, Andrew Ashe (flautist),
Barton, Rooke, and Bunting were world-famed.

Among the Irish musicians of the last century the following names are
typical: Thomas Moore, J. A. Wade, Balle (_Bohemian Girl_), Wallace
(_Maritana_), Osborne, Sir Frederick Ouseley, Scotson Clarke, Howard
Glover, Horncastle, J. W. Glover, Sir Robert Stewart, Augusta Holmes,
R. M. Levey, Joseph Robinson, Forde, Lover, Kearns, Allen, Barker,
Torrance, Molloy, Guernsey, Gilmore, Thunder, Harvey, Goodman, Sir
Arthur Sullivan (_Pinafore, Mikado_), Miss Davis, Halliday (inventor
of the Kent bugle), Latham, Duggan, Gaskin, Lacy, Pontet
(Piccolomini), Hudson, Pigot, Horan, Marks, and W. C. Levey. Famous
vocalists like Catherine Hayes, Mrs. Scott Fennell, Signer Foli
(Foley), Barton McGuckin, Denis O'Sullivan, and William Ludwig
deserve inclusion.

In our own day, it is only necessary to mention composers like Sir
Charles Villiers Stanford, Dr. C. Woods, Victor Herbert, Mrs.
Needham, Dr. Sinclair, Norman O'Neill, and Arthur O'Leary; singers
like Egan, Burke, Plunket Greene, John MacCormack, P. O'Shea, Charles
Manners, and Joseph O'Mara; violinists like Maud McCarthy, Emily
Keady, Arthur Darley, and Patrick Delaney; organists like Dr. Charles
Marchant, Brendan Rogers, Dr. Joze, and Professor Buck; writers like
Mrs. Curwen, Dr. Annie Patterson, Mrs. Milligan Fox, Professor
Mahaffy, A.P. Graves, Dr. Collison, and G.B. Shaw; and conductors
like Hamilton Harty and James Glover.

REFERENCES:

Walker: Irish Bards (1786); O'Curry: Lectures (1870); Hardiman: Irish
Mistrelsy (2 vols., 1834); The Complete Petrie Collection (3 vols.,
1902-1904); Grattan Flood: History of Irish Music (3rd ed., 1913),
Story of the Harp (1906), Story of the Bagpipe (1911); Mrs. Milligan
Fox: Annals of the Irish Harpers (1911); Mason: Song Lore of Ireland
(1910); Armstrong: Musical Instruments (2 vols., 1904-1908); O'Neill:
Irish Folk Music (1911), Irish Minstrels and Musicians (1913).

THE RUINS OF IRELAND
By FRANCIS JOSEPH BIGGER, M.R.I.A.

The ruins of Ireland are her proudest monuments. They stand as a
lasting revelation to all mankind--a distinct and definite
proclamation that the Irish people, century after century, were able
to raise and adorn some of the finest buildings in stone that western
civilization has seen or known. It is recognized the world over that
Irish art has a beauty and distinction all its own, in its own Irish
setting unrivalled, throned in its own land, in its own natural
surroundings. The shrines and gospels, the reliquaries and missals,
the crosses and bells that are still existent, many in Ireland,
others in every country in the world, attest beyond any dispute that
Irish art-workers held a preeminent place in the early middle ages,
and that works of Irish art are still treasured as unique in their
day and time. No country has been plundered and desolated as Ireland
has been. Dane, Norman, English--each in turn swept across the fair
face of Ireland, carrying destruction in their train, yet withal
Ireland has her art treasures and her ruins that bear favorable
comparison with those of other civilizations.

In Dublin and in many private Irish collections can be found
hand-written books of parchment, illuminated with glowing colors that
time has scarce affected or the years caused to fade. On one page
alone of the Book of Kells, ornament and writing can be seen penned
and painted in lines too numerous even to count. They are there by
the thousand: a magnifying glass is required to reveal even a
fragment of them. Ireland produced these in endless number--every
great library or collection in Europe possesses one or more examples.

As with books, so with reliquaries, crosses, and bells. When the
Island of Saints and Scholars could produce books, it could make
shrines and everything necessary to stimulate and hand down the piety
and the patient skill of a people steeped in art-craft and religious
feeling. What they could do on parchment--like the Books of Kells and
Durrow--what they could produce in bronze and precious metals--like
the Cross of Cong, the Shrine of Saint Patrick's Bell, the Tara
Brooch, and the Chalice of Ardagh--not to write of the numberless
bronze and gold articles of an age centuries long preceding their
production--they could certainly vie with in stone.

Of this earlier work a word must go down. In Ireland still at the
present day, after all the years of plunder she has undergone, more
ancient gold art-treasures remain than in any other country, museum,
or collection, most of them pre-Christian, and what the other
countries do possess are largely Irish or of Celtic origin. We must
have this borne into the minds of every one of Irish birth or origin,
that this great treasure was battered into shape by Irish hands on
Irish anvils, designed in Irish studios, ornamented with Irish skill
for Irish use.

With such workmen, having such instincts and training, what of the
housing and surroundings to contain them and give them a fit and
suitable setting? The earliest stone structures in Ireland still
remaining are the great stone cashels or circular walls enclosing
large spaces--walls of great thickness, unmortared, in which there
are vast quantities of masonry. Around their summits a chariot might
be driven, inside their spaces horse races might be run. As a few
examples, there are Staigue, in Kerry; Dun Angus, in Aran, off
Galway; Aileach, above the walls of Derry. Of the earliest churches,
cyclopean in construction and primitive in character, built of stone,
with thick sloping walls from foundation to ridge, Gallerus still
remains, and the Skelligs, those wondrous sea-girt rocks, preserve
both church and cell almost perfect. There are many other examples,
some of a later date, such as Temple Cronan and Maghera and Banagher
in Derry, St. Finan's oratory in county Cork, St. Fechin's at Fore,
and St. Molaise's at Devenish.

From the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, there are innumerable
examples of oratories, some with stone roofs, others with roofs not
so permanent, but all having the common features of an altar window
facing the east, through which the sun fell at the beginning of the
day to tell the early missioner that his hour of devotion had
arrived, and a west door, through which the rays of the declining sun
fell across the altar steps, speaking of a day that was closing. A
south window was added close to the east end, and it, too, was a
sun-dial; it told the hour of angelus, the mid-day, when the bell was
rung and a calm reverence fell on all within its hearing. Such
churches can still be seen at Aran and Inismurray, on the islands of
Lough Derg, Lough Ri, and in many other places.

A few years later these oratories were too small for the growing
faith, and larger churches were built, some using the older structure
as chancels. Where the west door was built a circular arch was made
and the new and old united. This can well be seen at Inis-na-ghoill
in Lough Corrib, on the Aran Islands off Galway, at Glendalough, at
Inis-cleraun in Lough Ri, at Clonmacnois, at Iniscaltra, and on many
another island and promontory of the south and west.

During this time, and after, we find the most elaborate carvings on
door and arch and window, equal in skill to what is found in book or
metal work.

It must have been at this time that the Galls, or strangers, first
invaded Ireland, bearing havoc in their train, for then it was that
the _cloicteach_, or Round Towers, were built. It is now admitted by
all Irish authorities of any repute, and that beyond dispute, that
the Round Towers, the glory of Ireland, were built by Irish people as
Christian monuments from which the bells might be rung, and as places
of strength for the preservation of the valued articles used in
Christian worship; here they might be safely stored. They were also
used for the preservation of life in case of sudden attack and
onslaught by unexpected enemies. All the towers are on ecclesiastical
sites, many are incorporated in church buildings, such as those of
Glendalough in Wicklow and Clonmacnois on the Shannon, The records of
the construction of some of them in the tenth and eleventh centuries
are still extant, and this is conclusive. There are today about
seventy Round Towers in Ireland, and many have been destroyed.

The pillar towers of Ireland, how wondrously they stand
By the lakes and rushing rivers through the valleys of our land;
In mystic file, through the isle, they lift their heads sublime,
These gray old pillar temples--these conquerors of time.

Here was placed the holy chalice that held the sacred wine,
And the gold cross from the altar, and the relics from the shrine,
And the mitre shining brighter with its diamonds than the east,
And the crozier of the pontiff, and the vestments of the priest.

_D.F. MacCarthy_.

This was the time when the High Crosses of Ireland were carved and
set up. They vie with the Round Towers in interest and in the display
of skill. What the towers have in perfection, masonry and
construction, the crosses have in artistic carving and symbolic
design. No two crosses are alike; they are as varied as the clouds in
an Irish sky or the pebbles on the beach or the flowers in a garden.
They were carved in reverence by those who knew and esteemed their
art, and lavished all their skill and knowledge on what they most
valued and treasured. They were not set up as grave-marks
merely--theirs was a higher and loftier mission. They were raised in
places where some great event or period was to be commemorated--they
were erected where some early disciple of the Cross could stand
beside one of them and from any panel could tell the foundation of
the Faith, for there in stone was story after story, from the Old
Testament and the New, that gave him his text, and so, as at the
Cross of the Scriptures at Clonmacnois, a missioner could preach on
every recurring holy day from Christmas to Christmas, with ever his
text in stone before him. Many a broken and mutilated cross has been
set up in Ireland in recent years, proving that the heart of the
Gael, no matter how rent and broken, is still inclined to bind up the
broken wounds of her past glories.

With the religious orders there came to Ireland a widespread desire
to add something to the older sanctuaries of the Gael, to widen their
borders and strengthen their cords, and so the abbeys were founded.
Here and there we find them still--by winding rivers, on rich
meadows, in glens and glades, by the sea margin, or on the slopes of
the rugged mountain. Their crumbling walls and broken windows can
still be traced, their towers are still to be seen over tree tops and
in the centre of many a slumbering town. By the shores of Donegal Bay
the old Franciscan house, where the Four Masters compiled what is
perhaps the most remarkable record possessed by any nation, is still
clothed in ivy. At Kilconnell, in Galway, their old place is almost
as they left it, but roofless, with the tears of the friars upon the
altar steps. Clare Galway has a tower worth travelling half a
continent to see. By the Boniet River, at Drumahaire, on the banks of
Lough Gill, are the mason marks of the cloister builders, and the
figure of St. Francis talking to the birds is still there. The abbey
is roofless and empty, and so the birds of the air are his constant
companions.

Space forbids, or endless abbeys might be described. The Black Abbey
at Kilkenny, with its long row of Butler effigies, or the Cathedral
of Saint Canice, still perfect, with its soaring round tower beside
it, or the mystical seven light window of the Franciscan friary by
the Nore, with the old mill-weirs running free to this day. How long
could we ponder by the east window of Kilcooley, with tracery like a
spider's web, and listen to the mystical bells, or gaze at the
beautiful oriel at Feenagh, or stand at Jerpoint, with its spacious
cloisters and stone-groined choir, with Saint Christopher in Irish
marble beside us.

Cashel, one of the wonders of the world, grows up suddenly into sight
on a high rock rising from level land crowned with buildings. A great
abbey dominates; beside it clings that carved gem of a stone-roofed
church, Cormac's Chapel. Round Tower and Cross are there, and many a
sculptured tomb.

Not far from Cashel is the Abbey of Holy Cross, with its lovely
mitred windows, shadowed in the river passing at its feet. The
circular pillars and arches of Boyle Abbey are splendidly
proportioned, whilst the cloisters of Sligo display in their long,
shadowy recesses and ornamented pillars great dignity and beauty. The
windows and monuments of Ennis Friary, founded by the O'Briens, are
of unusual interest, the carving of figure-subjects being equal to
the best of their age.

We have Thomastown and Callan, Dunbrody and Tintern, all having an
individual charm and interest that not only dim the eye and make the
blood course freely in every one of Irish stock when he looks upon
what is and thinks of what was, but even in the coldest light give
food for thought to every one desirous of knowing something of the
growth and civilization of a great people.

Of the many castles and stout Irish strongholds it is hard to write
in such a short paper as this. Those on the Boyne, such as Trim, for
strong building and extent, excel in many ways. Carlingford,
Carrickfergus, and Dunluce have by their size and picturesque
situations ever appealed to visitors. They are each built on rocks
jutting into the sea, Dunluce on a great perpendicular height, the
Atlantic dashing below. Dunamace, near Maryborough, in the O'More
country, appears like Cashel, but is entirely military. The famed
walled cities of Kells, in Kilkenny, and Fore, in Westmeath, are
remarkable. Each has an abbey, many towers, gates, and stout
bastions. The great keeps of the midland lords, the towers of
Granuaile on the west coast, and the traders' towers on the east
coast, especially those of Down, afford ample material for a study of
the early colonizing efforts of different invaders, as well as
providing incidents of heroism and romance. These square battlemented
towers can be seen here and there in every district.

Every portion of Ireland has its ruins. Earthworks, stone forts,
prehistoric monuments, circular stone huts, early churches, abbeys,
crosses, round towers, castles of every size and shape are to be
found in every county, some one in every parish, all over Ireland. It
is almost invidious to name any in particular where the number is so
great.

REFERENCES:

Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy (Dublin); Proceedings of Society
of Antiquaries (Dublin); Ulster Journal of Archaeology, Old Series
and New Series, edited by F.J. Bigger, Belfast; Wakeman: Handbook of
Irish Antiquities (Dublin, 1891); Stokes: Early Christian Art in
Ireland (Dublin, 1887); Petrie: Round Towers and Ancient Architecture
of Ireland (Dublin, 1845).

IRISH FOLKLORE
By ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES.

Among savage peoples there is at first no distinction of a definite
kind between good and bad spirits, and when a distinction has been
reached, a great advance in a spiritual direction has been made. For
the key to the religion of savages is fear, and until such terror has
been counteracted by belief in beneficent powers, civilization will
not follow. But the elimination of the fear of the unseen is a slow
process; indeed, it will exist side by side with the belief in
Christianity itself, after a modification through various stages of
better pagan belief.

Ireland still presents, in its more out-of-the-way districts,
evidence of that strong persistence in the belief in maleficent or
malicious influences of the pre-Christian powers of the air, which it
seems difficult to eradicate from the Celtic imagination. In the
celebrated poem entitled _The Breastplate of St. Patrick_, there is
much the same attitude on the part of Patrick towards the Druids and
their powers of concealing and changing, of paralyzing and cursing,
as was shown by Moses towards the magicians of Egypt. Indeed, in
Patrick's time a belief in a world of fairies existed even in the
king's household, for "when the two daughters of King Leary of
Ireland, Ethnea the fair and Fedelma the ruddy, came early one
morning to the well of Clebach to wash, they found there a synod of
holy bishops with Patrick. And they knew not whence they came, or in
what form, or from what people, or from what country; but they
supposed them to be _Duine Sidh_, or gods of the earth, or a
phantasm."

Colgan explains the term _Duine Sidh_ thus: "Fantastical spirits," he
writes, "are by the Irish called men of the _Sidh_, because they are
seen, as it were, to come out of the beautiful hills to infest men,
and hence the vulgar belief that they reside in certain subterranean
habitations: and sometimes the hills themselves are called, by the
Irish, _Sidhe_ or _Siodha_."

No doubt, when the princesses spoke of the gods of the earth,
reference was made to such pagan deities as Beal; Dagda the great or
the good god; Aine, the Moon, goddess of the water and of wisdom;
Manannan macLir, the Irish Neptune; Crom, the Irish Ceres; and
Iphinn, the benevolent, whose relations to the Irish Oirfidh
resembled those of Apollo towards Orpheus; and to the allegiance they
owed to the Elements, the Wind, and the Stars. But besides these
pagan divinities and powers, and quite apart from them, the early
Irish believed in two classes of fairies: in the first place, a
hierarchy of fairy beings, well and ill disposed, not differing in
appearance, to any great degree at any rate, from human beings--good
spirits and demons, rarely visible during the daytime; and, in the
second place, there was the magic race of the De Danann, who, after
conquest by the Milesians, transformed themselves into fairies, and
in that guise continued to inhabit the underworld of the Irish hills,
and to issue thence in support of Irish heroes, or to give their aid
against other fairy adversaries.

There is another theory to account for the fairy race. It is that
they are angels who revolted with Satan and were excluded from heaven
for their unworthiness, but were not found evil enough for hell, and
therefore were allowed to occupy that intermediate space which has
been called "the Other World." It is still a moot point with the
Irish peasantry, as it was with the Irish saints of old, whether,
after being compelled to dwell without death among rocks and hills,
lakes and seas, bushes and forest, till the day of judgment, the
fairies then have the chance of salvation. Indeed, the fairies are
themselves believed to have great doubts of a future existence,
though, like many men, entertaining undefined hopes of happiness; and
hence the enmity which some of them have for mankind, who, they
acknowledge, will live eternally. Thus their actions are balanced
between generosity and vindictiveness towards the human race.

Mr. W.Y. Evans Wentz, A.M., of Leland Stanford University,
California, and Jesus College, Oxford, has received an honorary
degree from the latter university for his thesis, "The Fairy Faith in
Celtic Countries: Its Psychical Origin and Nature", a most laborious
as well as ingenious work, whose object is to prove "that the origin
of the fairy faith is psychical, and that fairyland, being thought of
as an invisible world within which the visible world is immersed as
an island in an unexplored ocean, actually exists, and that it is
peopled by more species of living beings than this world, because
incomparably more vast and varied in its possibilities." This may be
added as a fourth theory to account for the existence of fairies, and
it may be further stated here that the Irish popular belief in ghosts
attributes to some of their departed spirits much of the same
violence and malice with which fairies are credited. Mr. Jeremiah
Curtin gives striking instances of this kind in his book, the _Folk
Lore of West Kerry_.

It became necessary, therefore, for the Gaels who believed in the
preternatural powers of the fairies for good and ill to propitiate
them as far as possible. On May eve, accordingly, cattle were driven
into raths and bled there, some of the blood being tasted, the rest
poured out in sacrifice. Men and women were also bled on these
occasions. The seekers for buried treasure, over which fairies were
supposed to have influence, immolated a black cock or a black cat to
propitiate them. Again, a cow, suffering from sickness believed to be
due to fairy malice, was bled and then devoted to St. Martin. If it
recovered, it was never sold or killed. The first new milk of a cow
was poured out on the ground to propitiate the fairies, and
especially on the ground within a fairy rath. The first drop of any
drink is also thrown out by old Irish people. If a child spills milk,
the mother says, "that's for the fairies, leave it to them and
welcome." Slops should never be thrown out of doors without the
warning, "Take care of water!" lest fairies should be passing
invisibly and get soiled by the discharge. Eddies of dust upon the
road are supposed to be caused by the fairies, and tufts of grass,
sticks, and pebbles are thrown into the centre of the eddy to
propitiate the unseen beings. Some fairies of life size, who live
within the green hills or under the raths, are supposed to carry off
healthy babes to be made fairy children, their abstractors leaving
weak changelings in their place. Similarly, nursing mothers are
sometimes supposed to be carried off to give the breast to fairy
babes, and handsome young men are spirited away to become bridegrooms
to fairy brides. Again, folk suffering from falling sickness are
supposed to be in that condition owing to the fatigue caused by
nocturnal rides through the air with the fairies, whose steeds are
bewitched rushes, blades of grass, straws, fern roots, and cabbage
stalks. The latter, to be serviceable for the purpose, should be cut
into the rude shapes of horses before the metamorphosis can take
place.

Iron of every kind keeps away malignant fairies: thus, a horseshoe
nailed to the bottom of the churn prevents butter from being
bewitched. Here is a form of charm against the fairies who have
bewitched the butter: "Every window should be barred, a great turf
fire should be lit upon which nine irons should be placed, the
bystanders chanting twice over in Irish, 'Come, butter, come; Peter
stands at the gate waiting for a buttered cake.' As the irons become
heated the witch will try to break in, asking the people to take the
irons, which are burning her, off the fire. On their refusing, she
will go and bring back the butter to the churn. The irons may then be
removed from the fire and all will go well."

If a neighbor or stranger should enter a cottage during the churning,
he should put his hand to the dash, or the butter will not come. A
small piece of iron should be sewed into an infant's clothes and kept
there until the child is baptized, and salt should be sprinkled over
his cradle to preserve the babe from abduction. The fairies are
supposed to have been conquered by an iron-weaponed race, and hence
their dread of the metal.

To recover a spell-bound friend, stand on All Hallows' eve at cross
roads or at a spot pointed out by a wise woman or fairy doctor. When
you have rubbed fairy ointment on your eyelids, the fairies will
become visible as the host sweeps by with its captive, whom the gazer
will then be able to recognize. A sudden gust announces their
approach. Stooping down, you will then throw dust or milk at the
procession, whose members are then obliged to surrender your
spell-bound friend. If a man leaves home after his wife's
confinement, some of his clothes should be spread over the mother and
infant, or the fairies may carry them off. It is good for a woman,
but bad for a man, to dream of fairies. It betokens marriage for a
girl, misfortune for a man, who should not undertake serious business
for some time after such dreaming.

Fairy changelings may be recognized by tricky habits, constant
crying, and other unusual characteristics. It was customary to
recover the true child in the following way: The changeling was
placed upon an iron shovel over the fire, when it would go shrieking
up the chimney, and the _bona fide_ human child would be restored. It
was believed that fairy changelings often produced a set of small
bagpipes from under the clothes and played dance music upon them,
till the inmates of the cottage dropped with exhaustion from the
effects of the step dancing they were compelled to engage in.

On Samain eve, the night before the first of November, or, as it is
now called, All Hallows' night or Hallowe'en, all the fairy hills or
_shees_ are thrown wide open and the fairy host issues forth, as
mortals who are bold enough to venture near may see. Naturally
therefore people keep indoors so as not to encounter the spectral
host. The superstition that the fairies are abroad on Samain night
still exists in Ireland and Scotland, and there is a further belief,
no doubt derived from it, that the graves are open on that night and
that the spirits of the dead are abroad.

Salt, as already suggested, is regarded to be so lucky that if a
child falls, it should always be given three pinches of salt, and if
a neighbor calls to borrow salt, it should not be refused, even
though it be the last grain in the house.

An infant born with teeth should have them drawn by the nearest
smith, and the first teeth when shed should be thrown into the fire,
lest the fairies should get hold of what had been part of you.

Those who hear fairy music are supposed to be haunted by the melody,
and many are believed to go mad or commit suicide in consequence.

The fairies are thought to engage in warfare with one another, and in
the year 1800 a specially sanguinary battle was believed to have been
fought between two clans of the fairies in county Kilkenny. In the
morning the hawthorns along the fences were found crushed to pieces
and drenched with blood.

In popular belief fairies often go hunting, and faint sounds of fairy
horns, the baying of fairy hounds, and the cracking of fairy whips
are supposed to be heard on these occasions, while the flight of the
hunters is said to resemble in sound the humming of bees.

Besides the life-sized fairies who are reputed to have these direct
dealings with human beings, there are diminutive preternatural beings
who are also supposed to come into close touch with men. Among these
is the Luchryman (_Leithphrogan_), or brogue maker, otherwise known
as Leprechaun. He is always found mending or making a shoe, and, if
grasped firmly and kept constantly in view, will disclose hidden
treasure to you, or render up his _sparan na sgillinge_, or purse of
the (inexhaustible) shilling. He can only be bound by a plough chain
or woolen thread. He is the symbol of industry which, if steadily
faced, leads to fortune, but, if lost sight of, is followed by its
forfeiture.

Love in idleness is personified by another pigmy, the _Geancanach_
(love-talker). He does not appear, like the Leprechaun, with a purse
in one of his pockets, but with his hands in both of them, and a
_dudeen_ (short pipe) in his mouth, as he lazily strolls through
lonely valleys making love to the foolish country lasses and
"gostering" with the idle "boys." To meet him meant bad luck, and
whoever was ruined by ill-judged love was said to have been with the
_Geancanach_.

Another evil sprite was the _Clobher-ceann_, "a jolly, red-faced,
drunken little fellow," always "found astride of a wine-butt" singing
and drinking from a full tankard in a hard drinker's cellar, and
bound by his appearance to bring its owner to speedy ruin.

Then there were the _Leannan-sighes_, or native Muses, to be found in
every place of note to inspire the local bard, and the _Beansighes_
(Banshees, fairy women) attached to each of the old Irish families
and giving warning of the death of one of its members with piteous
lamentations.

Black Joanna of the Boyne (_Siubhan Dubh na Boinne_) appeared on
Hallowe'en in the shape of a great black fowl, bringing luck to the
home whose _Banithee_ (woman of the house) kept the dwelling
constantly clean and neat.

The Pooka, who appeared in the shape of a horse, and whom Shakespeare
is by many believed to have adapted as "Puck," was a goblin who
combined "horse-play" with viciousness, but also at times helped with
the housework.

The _Dullaghan_ was a churchyard demon whose head was of a movable
kind. Dr. Joyce writes: "You generally meet him with his head in his
pocket, under his arm, or absent altogether; or if you have the
fortune to light upon a number of _Dullaghans_, you may see them
amusing themselves by flinging their heads at one another or kicking
them for footballs."

An even more terrible churchyard demon is the fascinating phantom
that waylays the widower at his wife's very tomb, and poisons him by
her kiss when he has yielded to her blandishments.

Of monsters the Irish had, and still believe in, the _Piast_ (Latin
_bestia_), a huge dragon or serpent confined to lakes by St. Patrick
till the day of judgment, but still occasionally seen in their
waters. In old Fenian times, namely, the days of Finn and his
companion knights, the _Piasts_, however, roamed the country,
devouring men and women and cattle in large numbers, and some of the
early heroes are recorded to have been swallowed alive by them and
then to have hewed their way out of their entrails.

Merrows, or Mermaids, are also still believed in, and many folk tales
exist describing their intermarriage with mortals.

According to Nicholas O'Kearney, "It is the general opinion of many
old persons versed in native traditional lore, that, before the
introduction of Christianity, all animals possessed the faculties of
human reason and speech; and old story-tellers will gravely inform
you that every beast could speak before the arrival of St. Patrick,
but that the saint having expelled the demons from the land by the
sound of his bell, all the animals that, before that time, had
possessed the power of foretelling future events, such as the Black
Steed of _Binn-each-labhra_, the Royal Cat of _Cloughmagh-righ-cat_
(Clough), and others, became mute, and many of them fled to Egypt and
other foreign countries."

Cats are said to have been appointed to guard hidden treasures; and
there are few who have not heard old Irish people tell about strange
meetings of cats and violent battles fought by them in the
neighborhood. "It was believed," adds O'Kearney, "that an evil spirit
in the shape of a cat assumed command over these animals in various
districts, and that when those wicked beings pleased they could
compel all the cats belonging to their division to attack those of
some other district. The same was said of rats; and rat-expellers,
when commanding a colony of those troublesome and destructive animals
to emigrate to some other place, used to address their 'billet' to
the infernal rat supposed to hold command over the rest. In a curious
pamphlet on the power of bardic compositions to charm and expel rats,
lately published, Mr. Eugene O'Curry states that a degraded priest,
who was descended from an ancient family of hereditary bards, was
enabled to expel a colony of rats by the force of satire!"

Hence, of course, Shakespeare's reference to rhyming Irish rats to
death.

It will thus be seen that Irish Fairy Lore well deserves to have been
called by Mr. Alfred Nutt, one of the leading authorities on the
subject, "as fair and bounteous a harvest of myth and romance as ever
flourished among any race."

REFERENCES:

Alex. Carmichael: Carmina Gadelica; David Comyn: The Boyish Exploits
of Finn; the Periodical, "Folklore"; Lady Gregory: Cuchulain of
Muirthemne, Gods and Fighting Men; Miss Eleanor Hull: The Cuchulain
Saga in Irish Literature; Douglas Hyde: Beside the Fire, (a
collection of Irish Gaelic Folk Stories), _Leabhar Sgeulaicheachta_,
(Folk Stories in Irish); "Irish Penny Journal"; Patrick Kennedy: The
Fireside Stories of Ireland, Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celt;
Standish Hayes O'Grady: Silva Gadelica; Wood-Martin: Traces of the
Elder Faiths in Ireland, Pagan Ireland; W.Y. Wentz: The Fairy Faith
in Celtic Countries; Lady Wilde: Charms, Incantations, etc.; Celtic
articles in Hastings' Dictionary of Religion and Ethics.

.IRISH WIT AND HUMOR
By Charles L. Graves.

No record of the glories of Ireland would be complete without an
effort, however inadequate, to analyze and illustrate her wit and
humor. Often misunderstood, misrepresented, and misinterpreted, they
are nevertheless universally admitted to be racial traits, and for an
excellent reason. Other nations exhibit these qualities in their
literature, and Ireland herself is rich in writers who have furnished
food for mirth. But her special pre-eminence resides in the
possession of what, to adapt a famous phrase, may be called an _anima
naturaliter jocosa_. Irish wit and Irish humor are a national
inheritance. They are inherent in the race as a whole, independent of
education or culture or comfort. The best Irish sayings are the
sayings of the people; the greatest Irish humorists are the nameless
multitude who have never written books or found a place in national
dictionaries of biography. None but an Irishman could have coined
that supreme expression of contempt: "I wouldn't be seen dead with
him at a pig-fair," or rebuked a young barrister because he did not
"squandher his carcass" (_i.e._, gesticulate) enough. But we cannot
trace the paternity of these sayings any more than we can that of the
lightning retort of the man to whom one of the "quality" had given a
glass of whisky. "That's made another man of you, Patsy," remarked
the donor. "'Deed an' it has, sor," Patsy flashed back, "an' that
other man would be glad of another glass." It is enough for our
purpose to note that such sayings are typically Irish and that their
peculiar felicity consists in their combining both wit and humor.

To what element in the Irish nature are we to attribute this joyous
and illuminating gift? No one who is not a Gaelic scholar can venture
to dogmatize on this thorny subject. But, setting philology and
politics aside, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Ireland has
gained rather than lost in this respect by the clash of races and
languages. Gaiety, we are told, is not the predominating
characteristic of the Celtic temperament, nor is it reflected in the
prose and verse of the "old ancient days" that have come down to us.
Glamour and magic and passion abound in the lays and legends of the
ancient Gael, but there is more melancholy than mirth in these tales
of long ago. Indeed, it is interesting to note in connection with
this subject that the younger school of Irish writers associated with
what is called the Celtic Renascence have, with very few exceptions,
sedulously eschewed anything approaching to jocosity, preferring the
paths of crepuscular mysticism or sombre realism, and openly avowing
their distaste for what they consider to be the denationalized
sentiment of Moore, Lever, and Lover. To say this is not to disparage
the genius of Yeats and Synge; it is merely a statement of fact and
an illustration of the eternal dualism of the Irish temperament,
which Moore himself realized when he wrote of "Erin, the tear and the
smile in thine eye."

A reaction against the Donnybrook tradition was inevitable and to a
great extent wholesome, since the stage Irishman of the transpontine
drama or the music-halls was for the most part a gross and unlovely
caricature, but, like all reactions, it has tended to obscure the
real merits and services of those who showed the other side of the
medal. Lever did not exaggerate more than Dickens, and his portraits
of Galway fox-hunters and duellists, of soldiers of fortune, and of
Dublin undergraduates were largely based on fact. At his best he was
a most exhilarating companion, and his pictures of Irish life, if
partial, were not misleading. He held no brief for the landlords, and
in his later novels showed a keen sense of their shortcomings. The
plain fact is that, in considering the literary glories of Ireland,
we cannot possibly overlook the work of those Irishmen who were
affected by English influences or wrote for an English audience.

Anglo-Irish humorous literature was a comparatively late product, but
its efflorescence was rapid and triumphant. The first great name is
that of Goldsmith, and, though deeply influenced in technique and
choice of subjects by his association with English men of letters and
by his residence in England, in spirit he remained Irish to the
end--generous, impulsive, and improvident in his life; genial, gay,
and tender-hearted in his works. The Vicar of Wakefield was Dr.
Primrose, but he might just as well have been called Dr. Shamrock. No
surer proof of the pre-eminence of Irish wit and humor can be found
than in the fact that, Shakespeare alone excepted, no writers of
comedy have held the boards longer or more triumphantly than
Goldsmith and his brother Irishman, Sheridan. _She Stoops to Conquer,
The Rivals, The School for Scandal_, and _The Critic_ represent the
sunny side of the Irish genius to perfection. They illustrate, in the
most convincing way possible, how the debt of the world to Ireland
has been increased by the fate which ordained that her choicest
spirits should express themselves in a language of wider appeal than
the ancient speech of Erin.

On the other hand, English literature and the English tongue have
gained greatly from the influence exerted by writers familiar from
their childhood with turns of speech and modes of expression which,
even when they are not translations from the Gaelic, are
characteristic of the Hibernian temper. The late Dr. P.W. Joyce, in
his admirable treatise on English as spoken in Ireland, has
illustrated not only the essentially bilingual character of the
Anglo-Irish dialect, but the modes of thought which it enshrines.
There is no better known form of Irish humor than that commonly
called the "Irish bull," which is too often set down to lax thinking
and faulty logic. But it is the rarest thing to encounter a genuine
Irish "bull" which is not picturesque and at the same time highly
suggestive. Take, for example, the saying of an old Kerry doctor who,
when conversing with a friend on the high rate of mortality,
observed, "Bedad, there's people dyin' who never died before." Here a
truly illuminating result was attained by the simple device of using
the indicative for the conditional mood--as in Juvenal's famous
comment on Cicero's second Philippic: _Antoni gladios potuit
contemnere si sic omnia dixisset_. The Irish "bull" is a heroic and
sometimes successful attempt to sit upon two stools at once, or, as
an Irishman put it, "Englishmen often make 'bulls,' but the Irish
'bull' is always pregnant."

Though no names of such outstanding distinction as those of Goldsmith
and Sheridan occur in the early decades of the nineteenth century,
the spirit of Irish comedy was kept vigorously alive by Maria
Edgeworth, William Maginn, Francis Mahony (Father Prout), and William
Carleton. Sir Walter Scott's splendid tribute to the genius of Maria
Edgeworth is regarded by some critics as extravagant, but it is
largely confirmed in a most unexpected quarter. Turgenief, the great
Russian novelist, proclaimed himself her disciple, and has left it on
record that but for her example he might never have attempted to give
literary form to his impressions of the classes in Russia
corresponding to the poor Irish and the squireens and the squires of
county Longford. Maginn and Mahony were both scholars--the latter
happily called himself "an Irish potato seasoned with Attic
salt"--wrote largely for English periodicals, and spent most of their
lives out of Ireland. In the writings of all three an element of the
grotesque is observable, tempered, however, in the case of Mahony,
with a vein of tender pathos which emerges in his delightful "Bells
of Shandon." Maginn was a wit, Mahony was the hedge-schoolmaster _in
excelsis_, and Carleton was the first realist in Irish peasant
fiction. But all alike drew their best inspiration from essentially
Irish themes. The pendulum has swung back slowly but steadily since
the days when Irish men of letters found it necessary to accommodate
their genius to purely English literary standards. Even Lever, though
he wrote for the English public, wrote mainly about Ireland. So, too,
with his contemporary Le Fanu, whose reputation rests on a double
basis. He made some wonderful excursions into the realm of the
bizarre, the uncanny, and the gruesome. But in the collection known
as _The Purcell Papers_ will be found three short stories which for
exuberant drollery and "diversion" have never been excelled. That the
same man could have written _Uncle Silas_ and _The Quare Gander_ is
yet another proof of the strange dualism of the Irish character.

The record of the last fifty years shows an uninterrupted progress in
the invasion of English _belles lettres_ by Irish writers. Outside
literature, perhaps the most famous sayer of good things of our times
was a simple Irish parish priest, the late Father Healy. Of his
humorous sayings the number is legion; his wit may be illustrated by
a less familiar example--his comment on a very tall young lady named
Lynch: "Nature gave her an inch and she took an ell." In the House of
Commons today there is no greater master of irony and sardonic humor
than his namesake, Mr. Tim Healy. On one occasion he remarked that
Lord Rosebery was not a man to go tiger-shooting with--except at the
Zoo. On another, being anxious to bring an indictment against the
"Castle" _regime_ in Dublin and finding the way blocked by a debate
on Uganda, he successfully accomplished his purpose by a judicious
geographical transference of names, and convulsed the House by a
speech in which the nomenclature of Central Africa was applied to the
government of Ireland.

But wit and humor are the monopoly of no class or calling in Ireland.
They flourish alike among car-drivers and K.C.'s, publicans and
policemen, priests and parsons, beggars and peers. It is a
commonplace of criticism to deny these qualities in their highest
form to women. But this is emphatically untrue of Ireland, and was
never more conclusively disproved than by the recent literary
achievements of her daughters. The partnership of two Irish ladies,
Miss Edith Somerville and Miss Violet Martin, has given us, in _Some
Experiences of an Irish R.M._ (_i.e._, Resident Magistrate), the most
delicious comedy, and in _The Real Charlotte_ the finest
tragi-comedy, that have come out of Great Britain in the last thirty
years. The _R.M._, as it is familiarly called, is already a classic,
but the Irish _comedie humaine_--to use the phrase in the sense of
Balzac--is even more vividly portrayed in the pages of _The Real
Charlotte_. Humor, genuine though intermittent, irradiates the
autumnal talent of Miss Jane Barlow, and the long roll of gifted
Irishwomen who have contributed to the gaiety of nations may be
closed with the names of Miss Hunt, author of _Folk Tales of
Breffny_; of Miss Purdon and Miss Winifred Letts, who in prose and
verse, respectively, have moved us to tears and laughter by their
studies of Leinster peasant life; and of "Moira O'Neill" (Mrs.
Skrine), the incomparable singer of the Glens of Antrim. To give a
full list of the living Irish writers, male and female, who are
engaged in the benevolent work of driving dull care away would be
impossible within the space at our command. But we cannot end without
recognition of the exhilarating extravaganzas of "George A.
Birmingham" (Canon Hannay), the freakish and elfin muse of James
Stephens, and the coruscating wit of F.P. Dunne, the famous
Irish-American humorist, whose "Mr. Dooley" is a household word on
both sides of the Atlantic.

REFERENCES:

Goldsmith: Vicar of Wakefield, She Stoops to Conquer; Sheridan: The
Rivals, The School for Scandal, The Critic; R. Edgeworth: Essay on
Irish Bulls; M. Edgeworth: Castle Rackrent, The Absentee; Maginn:
Miscellanies in Prose and Verse; Carleton: Traits and Stories of the
Irish Peasantry; Mahony (Father Prout): Reliques of Father Prout;
John and Michael Banim: Tales of the O'Hara Family; Lover: Legends
and Stories of Ireland, Handy Andy; Lever: Harry Lorrequer, Charles
O'Malley, Lord Kilgobbin; Le Fanu: The Purcell Papers; Barlow:
Bogland Studies, Irish Idylls, Irish Neighbours; Birmingham: The
Seething Pot, Spanish Gold, The Major's Niece, The Red Hand of
Ulster, General John Regan; Stephens: The Crock of Gold, Here are
Ladies; Hunt: The Folk Tales of Breffny; Purdon: The Folk of Furry
Farm; Somerville and Ross: The Real Charlotte, Some Experiences of an
Irish R.M., All on the Irish Shore, Dan Russel the Fox.