Chapter V: The Race

The essential character of Irish scenery is, besides the green colour and the absence of trees, the frequent ruins that meet the eyes everywhere—one cannot go two steps without seeing them. Ruins of castles, abbeys, churches, or even humble private dwellings. There are quarters of large towns or boroughs, such as for instance the northern one in Galway, that might be taken at night, with their sinister looking rows of houses, roofless and with gaping walls, for a street in Herculaneum or Pompeii. When the ancient stone walls are those of a church or chapel, they generally serve as a setting for the legends of the countryside; there occurred all the terrifying tales of former days, there took place all the local miracles, and there still is the favourite haunt of illustrious spirits, of fairies and _banshee_.

Almost in every case the graves of a hamlet come to group themselves at the foot of those ivy-clothed old walls, by an instinctive and touching effect of the Irishman’s passionate love for the traditions of his race; and those graves, generally covered with great slabs of stone, scattered among the tall grasses, wild and moss-grown, without cross or emblem of any sort, well accord with the melancholy aspect of the site.

Sometimes near these ruins and graves is still seen, proudly raising its head, one of those monuments peculiar to the country and about which antiquaries are at such variance,—the round towers of Ireland: slender and bold turrets, slightly conical in shape, not unlike minarets 75 or 80 feet high, upon a base 15 to 18 feet broad, and springing from the ground like obelisks. They are built of large stones, sometimes rough, sometimes cut, but always cemented together, a fact which gave rise to the opinion that they must be posterior to the invasion of Great Britain by the Romans. But that is simply begging the question and is justified by nothing; moreover, the absence of any tradition about the origin or use of those towers make such a tale appear in the highest degree improbable. A race was never seen to borrow the technical industry of another race to apply it to the construction of monuments that are essentially their own. Celtic civilization had attained in Ireland, centuries before the Romans, to a degree of perfection witnessed by the Brehon Code, compiled at least five or six centuries before the Christian era, and the first among human laws that substituted arbitrage to brute force. A people capable of submitting to the law of reason and who knew enough of mechanics to erect monoliths of twenty-four thousand cubic feet could well discover alone the art of mixing mortar, and need not borrow it from the Romans, who besides did not set foot in the country. Never was hypothesis more childish or more unfounded. The truth is that nothing is known about the round towers, as is the case with the _nurraghs_ of Sardinia; that all those monuments are anterior to any positive traditions and have been built for uses of which we have no conception. At the most one might suppose from their aspect, which is that of inland lighthouses, that they may have been used as military or astronomical observatories, and, perhaps, bore on their summit a sacred fire visible throughout a whole district. In such a case the only guide to be followed with any certainty is the eternal fitness between organ and function.

Eighty-three of these towers are still standing in Ireland, and their dilapidated condition allows it to be supposed that they may once have been much more numerous. Whatever may have been their origin, they remain so narrowly and so fitly associated in the popular imagination with the Irish idea of nationality that the image of a round tower naturally grew under the chisel of the sculptor, as an emblem of patriotism, on the tomb of O’Connell in the cemetery of Dublin.

Megalithic monuments and dolmen are equally found in great numbers in Ireland. Donegal presents at Raphre a circus of raised stones absolutely similar to that of Stonehenge, while in Derry one sees in the Grianan of Aileach the finest fortified temple that was ever raised in honour of the sun. In many districts all the hills or mountains without exception are crowned with the funeral hillock or Celtic _rath_. As for the Druidical inscriptions in the _Ogham_ character, consisting of twenty-five combinations of oblique or vertical strokes corresponding to an equal number of sounds, they abound in all the counties. The most curious is that of the Cave of Dunloe, discovered by a labourer, in the vicinity of Killarney, in the year 1838; it may be considered a true Druidical library, of which the books are represented by the stones of the vaulted roof. Those characters have been deciphered now, thanks to bilingual inscriptions posterior to the Roman period.

Lastly, the names of places and the geographical definitions are, in nine cases out of ten, of Celtic origin, according to the tables drawn out by Chalmers. The mountains are called _ben_, and the chains of hills _sliebh_, rocks are _carricks_ or _cloagh_, lakes _loughs_, an island _innis_, bogs _corks_, lands _curraghs_, hills _knocks_, rivers _anagh_.

The Erse tongue, still spoken by a twelfth part of the population, is sister to the Gaelic and the Breton. It denominates a field _agh_, a ford _ath_, a village _bally_, a city _cahir_, _ban_ what is white or beautiful, _deargh_ what is red, _dua_ what is black, _beg_ what is small, and _mor_ what is big, _clar_ a plain, _teach_ a house, _donagh_ a church, _ross_ a wooded hillside.

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As for the type of the Irish race it is undeniably Celtic, or at least essentially different from the Anglo-Saxon. The hair is black or brown, the eyes dark, the complexion pale, the nose short, the forehead bony. The general appearance is vigorous and active, the movements are quick and often graceful; the stature without being low, is nearer to middle height than is generally the case in a British country. The rudest peasant girls often have a sculptural grace of attitude; one sees them in the fields, carrying burdens on their head with that stateliness of Greek canephores which seems as a rule the exclusive attribute of the daughters of the East.

Still more different from the English is the inner man; naturally mirthful and expansive, witty, careless, even giddy, quarrelsome from mere love of noise, prompt to enthusiasm or despondency, imbued with the love of literary form and legal subtleties, he is the Frenchman of the West, as the Pole or the Japanese are Frenchmen of the East. And always there has been an affinity of nature, a harmony of thought, between them and us. At once we feel we are cousins. Their ancestors formerly came in thousands to fight under our flag. Our revolutions were always felt in Ireland. So strong, for nations as well as individuals, is that mysterious tie of a common origin, or even the most remote consanguinity.

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Does this mean that the Irishman, thanks to his insular position, has escaped all cross breeding and remained pure Celt? Far from it. No country was oftener or more cruelly invaded than his. The stranger implanted himself in it, begat his children there, introduced in the race elements that are still recognizable; for example, that most peculiar expression of the eyes, the height of the cheek-bones, the outline of the temples and cranium, which are in many cases clearly Scandinavian.

In the origin of history the primitive inhabitants of Erin, the Firbolgs (men with the skin of beasts) were vanquished by the Thuathan-de-Danan, “the fairy people,” who came from the East, and who founded the realm of Innisfallen, or Island of Fate. A Spanish invasion (probably Phenician), that of the Milesians, overthrew that establishment ten or twelve centuries before the Christian era, and three hundred years before the foundation of Rome. After that came an uninterrupted list of one hundred and ninety-seven Milesian kings, who reached to the arrival of the Northmen, in the eighth century of the present era. Under their rule Ireland enjoyed a profound peace. It was during this period of more than a thousand years that flourished and developed in the island of Erin an entirely original civilization, characterised by the Brehon Code, by customs of great gentleness, by institutions of admirable prudence, among others that of a national militia, the _Fiana-Erin_, or _Fenians_, who were recruited by voluntary enlistment, defended the country and maintained order therein, while the citizens pursued their various avocations,—agriculture, in which they excelled, fishing and navigation, for which they displayed some ability.

Divided into five or six small independent kingdoms Ireland, without her militia, would have fallen an easy prey to the Britons, the Gauls, or the Caledonians, and later on to the Romans. Thanks to that national force,—a true civic guard, quartered during winter on the inhabitants, and ever popular, which proves that it knew how to preserve intact the tradition of Celtic virtues,—Ireland, alone almost among European nations, escaped a Roman invasion. After twelve hundred years the remembrance of the Fenians has remained so vivid in the hearts of the people that the Irish Republicans of America, when they resumed in our own days the struggle in arms against England, naturally chose the name of the ancient defenders of national independence.

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With the fall of the Roman Empire and the dying out of the fear of invasion, the Fenian institution disappeared. The military instincts of the nation then manifested themselves at the exterior by frequent incursions made by Irish adventurers in England, Scotland, or Gaul. It was in one of those incursions off the coast of Brittany that Niall Mor, King of Tara, took prisoner, with several other young Christians, a boy named Sucoth, and whom they called _Patricius_ (Patrick) on account of his noble origin. This was at the end of the fourth century of our era. The prisoner was employed in tending flocks in Ireland, spent seven years there, and at last found an opportunity of escaping to his own country. When back in Brittany, he constantly thought with grief of the dreadful destiny of the Irish, who still remained in ignorance of the true religion, and vegetated in the darkness of Druidism. One night he had a prophetic dream, after which he resolved to dedicate himself to the evangelization of those unhappy heathens. To this effect he went to the town of Tours, where he assumed the religious habit, then on to Rome, where he entered the missionary seminary. In the year 432 he was at the Barefooted Augustines’ Convent, in Auxerre, when he heard of the death of Paladius, fifth apostolic missionary of the Holy See in the island of Erin. Patrick solicited and obtained the honour of succeeding him. He was made Archbishop _in partibus infidelium_, and set out with twenty other French priests.

A certain number of Christians were already to be found in Ireland; but the bulk of the nation remained attached to its traditional worship, which was that of Chaldea and of Ancient Gaul, the worship of the sun or fire, as the principle of all life and purity.

Yet the sons of Erin were not by any means barbarians; their civilization could rather be regarded as the most flourishing in Europe. They knew the art of weaving stuffs, and of working metals; their laws were wise and just, their customs hardy without ferocity. Patrick knew better than any one that he must think neither of hurrying their conversion nor of imposing it by force. He devoted himself with great adroitness to the task of winning the favour of the chiefs, tenderly handled all the national prejudices, loudly extolled the excellence of the Brehon Code, and succeeded at last in giving baptism to the Princes of Leinster. After this the new religion made such rapid progress that at the end of fifteen years Patrick was obliged to ask for thirty new Bishops from Rome, besides the numerous native priests who had already received ordination at his hands. When he died at the ripe age of one hundred and twenty years, Ireland had become Christian, and was rapidly being Latinised in the innumerable schools attached to the monasteries and churches. She even entered so eagerly in the new path as to deserve the name of “Isle of Saints” throughout the Roman world, and that for a long time it was enough to be Irish or to have visited Erin to become invested with almost a halo of sanctity.

That transformation had been accomplished without violence or effusion of blood. Until the 8th century it was a source of honour and prosperity for Ireland, for the lustre of her own civilization was enhanced by her renown for piety, and all the neighbouring nations sent their sons in flocks to be instructed in her arts and her virtues.

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But the very virtues that made her a country of monks and scholars were doomed before long to become the source of all her misfortunes. When the Scandinavian invasions began to pour over the whole of Europe, Ireland, emasculated by an entirely mystical devotion, was found incapable of sustaining the shock of the Northmen. The disappearance of the Fenian Militia had for a long time left her without a national tie, given up to local rivalries, and broken in pieces, as it were, by the clan system. At the very time that she most urgently needed a powerful central authority to struggle against the _black_ and _white strangers_ from Norway and Denmark, she was found defenceless, and it was not her feeble belt of mountains, opening everywhere on deep bays, that could oppose a serious barrier to them, or guard her plains against their invasions.

Pressed by hunger, the Scandinavians left their country in shoals. They threw themselves on the coasts of Great Britain, France, and Spain, as far as the basin of the Mediterranean. In no place were the people of Europe, already enfeebled by habits of comparative luxury, able to resist those giants of the North, who dauntlessly embarked in their otter-skin boats and dared to go up the Seine even to the very walls of Paris. Ireland was a prey marked out for them. If peradventure the invading party were not numerous enough and were beaten back by numbers, they would come back in thousands the following year and sweep all before them. Vainly did the sons of Erin fight with all the courage of despair; one after the other their chieftains were vanquished, and the foe definitely took up a position on the south-east coast, where he founded the cities of Strangford, Carlingford, and Wexford.

Not content with reducing the Irish to bondage, the victors took a cunning and savage delight in humiliating and degrading them, lodging garnisaries under their roofs, interdicting, under pain of death, the exercise of all liberal arts as well as the carrying of arms, destroying schools, burning books to take possession of the gold boxes that protected their precious binding.

Every ten or twelve years a liberator sprang up in the West or North, and tried to shake off the abhorred yoke. But the rebellion only made it weigh more heavily on the neck of the vanquished; and if it happened that a Brian Boru succeeded, after incredible efforts and heroism, in gathering troops numerous enough to inflict on the stranger a bloody defeat, such a day of glory was invariably followed by the most sinister morrow.

After two centuries of slavery, interrupted by massacres, vain struggles, and impotent efforts, Ireland, once so prosperous, gradually sank in the darkest state of barbarism. The intestine dissensions and the rivalries between clans achieved the work of the Northern Conquerors. In the year 1172 she was ripe for new masters, also of Scandinavian race, who were ready to swoop on her with their Anglo-Saxon bands, after passing, to come to her, through the duchy of Normandy and through Great Britain.

Henry the Second of Anjou, King of England, was resolved to add Ireland to his possessions. All he wanted was a pretext. He found it in the state of practical schism and independence into which the insular Church had fallen. The members of its clergy no longer recognized the Roman discipline, did not observe Lent, and married like those of the Greek rite. Henry the Second solicited and obtained from Pope Adrian II. a bull authorizing him to invade the sister isle, in order to “re-establish therein the rule of the Holy See, stop the progress of vice, bring back respect for law and religion, and secure the payment of St. Peter’s pence.” But in spite of this formal authorization he was too much occupied with Aquitaine to be able to entertain seriously the idea of undertaking the conquest of Ireland, when one of his vassals, Strongbow, cut the knot by landing on the island at the head of a Welsh army, to carve himself a kingdom on the south-east coast.

The way was open; Henry II. threw himself in it in his turn, and established himself in the east of the island, where, strong in the countenance of the clergy secured to him by the Papal bull, he received before long the homage of the principal native chieftains.

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Limited at first to a territory enclosed within palisades, or _Pale_, which, during more than four centuries, enlarged or got narrowed, according to the fortune of war and the relative strength of the belligerent parties, the English rule was destined at last to spread over the whole of the island. But, of this seven-century struggle, the last word is not yet said. The wound is ever bleeding. Ireland has never accepted her defeat; she refuses to accept as valid a marriage consummated by a rape. Always she protested, either by direct rebellion, when she found the opportunity for it, as in 1640, in 1798, and in 1848; either by the voice of her poets and orators, by the nocturnal raids of her _Whiteboys_ and _Ribbonmen_, by the plots of her Fenians, by the votes of her electors, by parliamentary obstruction, by passive resistance, by political or commercial interdict—opposed to the intruder; in a word, by all the means, legal or illegal, that offered to interrupt prescription.

A striking, and, one may say, a unique example in history: after seven centuries of sustained effort on the part of the victor to achieve his conquest, this conquest is less advanced than on the morrow of Henry the Second’s landing at Waterford. An abyss still severs the two races, and time, instead of filling up that abyss, only seems to widen it. This phenomenon is of such exceptional and tragic interest; it beats with such crude light on the special physiology of two races and the general physiology of humanity, that one needs must stop first and try to unravel its tangible causes if one be desirous of comprehending what is taking place in the land of Erin.