5 060 063 ,ill (Henry) Ireland for th* Irish : aceable and Juab Solution ' Irish Land Question, 12rno, cloth. i'n 1'; f VST AND PHKM NT, Mrs aiti) bcr ItV (II- HKK AM JK.VT I.-III 1JKV. A. ]{. >| T, M.A., """' ' 'Idlt^ham, I'.urliam. * O.\I>< c ( HUN S. i>. OLUHAM. G 1854. o EX LlBRIS IRENE DWEN ANDREWS IRELAND AND- THE IRISH, PAST AND PRESENT, THE BIBLE THE GLORY OF HER ANCIENT CHURCH AMD THE CURE OF HER PRESENT SHAME AND SUFFERING. EEV. A. R. FAUSSET, M.A., Lately Scholar and Sen. Classical Moderator of Trinity College, Dublin, now Curate of Bishop Middlehani, Durham. * LONDON : j. w. PARKER, WEST STRAND, b. OLDHAM, SUFFOLK-STREET, DUBLIN. 354. TO THE READER. THESE sketches, being originally intended as a Lec- ture for audiences of Church of England, and other Associations for mutual instruction, in Durham, Sunderland, Darlington, and Stockton-on-Tees, and not for the reading public, have little or no pretence to originality, save in the arrangement of materials. The author has freely availed himself of the writings of Dill, Mac- Walter, King, Otway, Moore, and others to a degree he would not have felt himself warranted in doing, had he originally intended his work for publication. However, he trusts an in- dulgent public will scan lightly defects, and, if in any degree amusement and instruction are to be found in these desultory sketches, will dwell rather upon these, and thereby be led to have a zest for more solid and able works, written by others, on the condition, past and present, of th^most interest- ing country Ireland. A. R. F.^ Bishop Middleham Curacy, County Durham, May, 1853. IRELAND AND THE IRISH. I AM to discuss a subject, which I hardly know where to begin or where to end, so wide is the field of discussion, and so varied are the productions which grow in that field ; here and there fruits and flowers, but, alas ! in too many directions foul weeds of sin and its inseparable consequences misery and neglect. Though most dearly loving the land of my birth and my youth, yet I will not shrink from notic- ing her faults as well as her misfortunes : indeed these latter only the more deeply move the affection- ate sympathies of her children, as for a beloved mother in her distress ; as our Irish lyrist has so beautifully apostrophised Erin, " Wert tbou all that I wish thee, great, glorious, and free, First flower of the earth, first gem of the sea, I might hail thee with prouder, with happier brow ; But oh ! could I love thee more dearly^tan now ? No, thy chains as they rankle thy bloo?(Pit runs, But make thee more painfully dear to thy sons, Whose hearts, like the young of the desert bird's nest, Drink love in each life-drop that streams from thy breast." Our character has been compared to that of the 5 B 6 JRELAND AND THE IRISH. French ; and though, in some respects, resembling them, as might be expected from our partly-common Celtic origin, yet, there is in us nothing of their reckless heartlessness, nothing of that horrid levity with which our Gallic neighbours can pass from the imaginary scenes of sentiment in a novel or play- house to the bloody realities of the guillotine or re- volutionary barricade. Our character for humour is well known ; and wherever there is true humour, there must be also a back ground of pathos and genuine feeling. If blood has been shed in Ireland, and alas ! the blood of many cries from the ground for vengeance, it has been shed under the demoralising influences of superstition and secret combinations for avenging imaginary or real wrongs, not from any innate blood-thirstiness of spirit. If left to himself and under favorable circumstances, none of any nation exceed Paddy in kindliness of heart. But there are and have been various causes acting on him, which I shall briefly notice before entering on the lighter and more agreeable part of my sub- ject. To the latter I shall gladly hasten, as like all my countryme% ^ dwell but lightly on sorrowful themes, treading them softly, as I would one of our native bogs, and chasing away th^Ftear of sorrow with the smile of hope. Truly, Ireland and its people are made up of a IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 7 combination of contrasts. Well, has our poet de- scribed the blending of sorrow with joy, both in the history and character of the sons of the Emerald Isle, " Erin the tear and the smile in thine eyes Blend like the rainbow that hangs in the skies, Shining through sorrow's stream, Saddening through pleasure's beam, Thy suns with doubtful gleam Weep while they rise !" The present state of Ireland exceeds in misery, amidst seeming outward advantages, that of any other nation on earth. Her history has been written in blood for centuries past : but now she seems to have reached the pinnacle of wretchedness, and has been for the last six years passing through an ordeal, which excites the pity and astonishment of the world. Like the prophet's roll, on the page of her history are written, " within and without lamenta- tions, mourning, and woe." Before the disastrous potato blight and the famine of 1847, she was al- ready in a state lower than that of any other nation in Europe. More than three-fourths of the dwellings were built of mud, and these containing but one apartment, in which were huddled together father, mother, and children not forgetting the pigs all indiscriminately. Nearly two-thirds lived by manual labour. And a third of these were out of work IRELAND AND THE IRISH. twenty weeks of the year, and one-eighth were in the state of paupers. The famine gave the finish- ing blow. The whole country almost was changed into a grave-yard. Men once muscular would stand round the houses of the respectable, their skin hang- ing loose and wrinkled with emaciation. It was not uncommon to find whole families dead in the cabins together. And well authenticated cases exist of that awful woe, foretold against the Jews, of the delirious mother having fed on her dead infant child ! Then, indeed, it was that the clergy of the much maligned Established Church were found foremost in relieving the woes of the dying. I myself could mention the names of numbers of Protestant clergy, my own particular friends, who fell victims of fever caught by the bed-sides of dying Roman Catholics as well as Protestants, to whom without distinction, they ministered not merely bread for the body out of their own scanty means, but also, to those willing to receive it, the bread of life, which the Lord Jesus has bought with his precious blood for all the suffer- ing sons of men. Hut why dwell on those harrowing scenes, to which many of you are familiar, by the powerful advocacy of those who pleaded the cause of Irish suffering before you on that fearful year ? Nobly you, Englishmen, came forward to the relief of your IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 9 afflicted fellow-men in the sister isle. May the blessing of the widow, the orphan, and the starving thousands, relieved by your Christian bounty, rest on you ! May God avert for ever from your highly favored land the miseries, which then called forth your benevolent sympathies ! And what is the history of that unfortunate country since? The census of 1851 revealed the astounding fact, that the population of Ireland in the previous five years had virtually decreased two and a-half millions, or nearly one-third, that is, as much almost as the whole population of Scotland ; and in that space no less than 269,353 of all the dwellings in the country have been levelled to the ground. The emigration for some time, you all know, has been well called an exodus, that is, not a mere departure of individuals, but of almost the masses of the nation flying from the country as from a plague : the chief business of our shipping seems to be emigration : so that unless, as we humbly trust, by God's mercy, a brighter day dawn, at the present rate of emigration, the once thickly- peopled Ireland is likely to became a waste from the want of men to till the soil.* How passing strange all this is, when you con- * Since the above was written the prospects of Ireland have become much brighter. 10 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. sider some at least of the qualities of tlie people ! "When the English tourist comes among us, he is delighted to hear on every side expressions full of wit and imagination, which to the Irishman himself are the most commonplace, and which fall from him as the fragments of a diamond in all the brilliancy of unpolished lustre. And even as to the more solid qualities, which he does not generally get credit for, owing to the unfavourable circumstances with which he is surrounded what country might not be proud of such men as a Boyle in philosophy, a Lord Rosse and a Sir W. Hamilton in astronomy a Goldsmith and a , Moore in poetry a Sheridan, a Curran, a Grattan, and above all a Burke in eloquence ? Of the first I have mentioned, namely Boyle, most of you remember the account given by a Patlander, " He was father of chemistry, and brother of the Earl of Cork !" And then I must not forget Ireland's, and perhaps I may add, the world's greatest soldier, the hero of a hundred fights, Wellington. Of that great Irishman's " kingmaking victory" Waterloo, it used to be O'Connell's favorite doggerel, " On the field of Waterloo Duke Wellington would have looked blue, If Paddy had'nt been there too." And, however, little can be said of the rhyme, you will not say the compliment to Paddy's fighting IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 1 1 powers is altogether without reason. Hospitable, generous, warm-hearted, enthusiastic in love and war alike, with as much mercury in his heels and hands as there is wit in his head, distinguished by the Celtic principle of veneration, which would na- turally lead him to be conservative in politics, if it were not for alien influences, whilst in religion he is fervent and self-devoting to a degree Avhich mis- directed betrays him into superstition : how strange, that the elements of so noble a race should be lost by a strange perversity in such evil moral as well as physical ! And now as to the causes, I shall first notice it as a most extraordinary fact, that the northern province Ulster, though hardly equal in the pro- ductiveness of its soil to the other three provinces, is nevertheless the Goshen of Ireland. The Union with England some Irishmen will tell you is the cause of all Ireland's woes. But one would think " Union is strength." And none can complain that Parliament does not take pains in legislating for Ireland. One million, since the Union, has been granted it for harbours, eight millions for the en* couragement of manufactures, twenty-six millions in mere grants and advances, and eight millions in the famine years 1846-7. Still the question re- mains, luhy is Ulster, the north of Ireland so much 12 IRELAJiD AND THE IRISH. superior in character and condition to the east, west, and south of Ireland ? Demagogues in Ireland complain of England's injustice. / am not aware of any injustice done Ireland at present, unless it be thought injustice, that England has not imposed on the sister-isle the income-tax (A.D. 1851), or any of the numerous assessed taxes, which honest John Bull pays, because he knows his government must be supported, even though he pay with the customary grumble, which is the constitutional privilege of the English subject. I rather fancy you in this country would like to be visited with such acts of injustice. I remember hearing of one of these Irish brawlers against England, who chanced to be sailing over to Liverpool from Dublin. " What time" said he to the captain, " shall we be in Liverpool ?" " Pro- bably" said the captain, " if all goes right, at seven o'clock in the morning." " O," said the Irishman, " that will just suit me, as I shall catch the half- past seven train to London." " But Sir," said the captain, " you forget that Liverpool time is twenty minutes faster than Dublin time." " Och murdher," cries Pat, " do you call that justice to Ireland ?" Many of Ireland's fancied wrongs from England have, at least now, though not in former days, in my opinion, not much more ground to rest upon than that of 1 1 is worthy Irishman. It must have been in IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 13 allusion to such brawlers, that Swift gave his ludi- crous etymology of Patriot, namely Pat-riot, or Pat in a riot a riotous Paddy. But whatever wrong Ireland labours under for with the best intentions, legislators will at times make a slip Ulster partakes in that wrong equally with the other provinces. Yet Ulster flourishes, and in many parts of it you might fancy from the comfortable look of the people and of the country, you were not in Ireland but in the best tilled lands of Scotland. Why is this ? In answering this, I need hardly remind you that ignorance and vice are the main sources of any na- tion's degradation. How seldom does knowledge, and still less virtue find its way into a gaol ? For the four years up to 1850, there were only eighteen per cent, of the average annual proportion of pri- soners in Ireland who could read and write Hence arises that great characteristic of the Irish, superstition. In all other parts of Ireland save Ulster, I state a notorious fact in asserting that even the Roman Catholic version of the Bible is practically, to say the least, not read by the large majority of Roman Catholics. Now I cannot but think, that when God has given a Revelation for the very purpose of dispelling man's natural dark- ness and sin, wherever man refuses wilfully that 14 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. light from heaven, God in righteous retribution gives him over to congenial darkness and crime. Let me briefly give instances of superstition. In many places you will see charms called gospels, and scapulars tied round the neck to keep off devils and fairies. There abound through the country holy wells, holy trees, holy mountains, just as the Greeks used to deify every stream, fountain, and hill : each of them has its own patron saint : some wells cure the lame, some the blind, and one in Connaught has, they believe, what is not very com- mon in Ireland, an utter hatred of the whole female sex. There are besides banshees with their wail to give warning of approaching deaths ; leprechauns to haunt the seekers of wealth ; poocas to frighten the timid ; and fairies, who in the war between heaven and hell, according to superstition, took neither side and therefore are sentenced to have their place on earth between the two, with an influence sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. That humorous describer of Irish character, Rev. Csesar Otway, mentions, that whilst travelling in Erris the driver said to him, " this is a great country, your honor, for the genthry." " Gentry," said I, " I can't see a single house, where a gentleman could reside." " Och I don't mane squires, but the good people, the fairies. There was a neighbour of mine IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 15 coming one evening as we are now, apd just in this very road he met a concourse of people and cattle coming along, and what should he see but two bul- locks of his own, which were sometime before drowned in the bog-hole. ' By dad,' says he, ' this is quare, but anyhow they are my cattle I'll swear anywhere to my own brand, I'm in luck to night, and -home I'll drive them.' So with his stick he tould off his two bullocks from among the rest, when he hears behind him a man shouting after him, ' where are you going with my bastes ?' So he stopt and up comes a man he once knew very well, (Paddy being married to his widdy) : ' och then Paddy M'Cormick, where are you going, you thieving rascal, with my bastes ?' ' The}''re not yours but my own. Would'nt I swear to my own brand? And why should you, Terry Barrett, be after claim- ing them, seeing as how you are long ago dead and buried, and I am married to your widdy ?' ' What's that to you, you ignoramus you? What call has the likes of you to know the ins and outs of these matters ? And at any rate / have as good a right to your dead cattle which died honestly in the bog- hole of Poulshesare, as you have to my living wife. I wont say who has the best of the bargain, but anyhow I'll have the cattle.' So up comes a faction of Terry's people, and what was strange all out, 16 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. every one of them Paddy knew to be long ago dead ; and they fell to, and gave Paddy a good beating, that knocked the seven senses out of him, and when he awoke, all round his head was a crop of fairy mushe- roons growing. ' Och then,' says Pat, ' if ever I look after dead cattle, may musheroons be my bed instead of the best of feathers !' " I might multiply stories endlessly of a similar kind, many of which have come under my own ob- servation, as there are legends of fairies, of saints, and of evil spirits associated with almost every re- markable piece of scenery in the country. But one disgusting superstition I just notice in passing. It is the Spancel, i. e. a continuous band of skin taken from round the length of the body of a dead man for the purpose of a love charm. All that is neces- sary in order to secure the affections of the victim, is, to tie the spancel round him, while asleep: if he does not awake during the operation, all must turn out to the wish of the operator : if he does awake, he dies before the end of the year, so that there is no possible escape for him. It is a story in Erris, that a Very Rev. Dean of the Roman Catholic Church, hearing of the wonders effected by the silent fraternity of Trappists, in Waterford, was desirous to introduce the brotherhood into Erris, and asked one of them to come to him on a visit. IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 17 Unfortunately for the cause as well as for himself, he fell sick, died, and was buried. Now as the spancel is the more powerful, as a charm, the more chaste the body from which it is taken, the hide of the Trappist monk of course was invaluable ; and a spancel was accordingly torn from the body. And so alas ! the plan of the worthy dean was nipped in the bud ; for no Trappist monk was found bold enough to venture his skin among the charming natives of Erris ever afterwards. Surely I shall not be thought guilty of sectarian feeling when I say, if the Bible had its free course, such horrid super- stitions would fly away, as the dark shades of night before the rising sun. But, after all, superstition itself is but a perversion of the noblest instinct of our nature, that of religion. And whilst in the past history of my native country, an Irishman has little matter for pride in the annals of wars, feuds, factions, and rebellions of petty chief- tains, there is one feature of which he may feel justly proud, namely Ireland's primitive Christian church, from which no doubt the country has received its appellation of " the isle of saints." Travel through the country in what direction you will, you find everywhere abundant traces of her early Christianity. Nay, even your own illustrious countryman, the Venerable Bede, testifies, that in England under the 1 8 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. heathen Saxons, who had driven the ancient British churches into the extreme districts, Wales and Cornwall, the kingdom of Mercia, including most of the western counties, was converted to Christianity by Irish missionaries, Finanus, Diuna, Ceollagh, and Trumhere ; so also the kingdom of Northumberland by Aidan, another Irishman : Paulinus of Canterbury had been sent the same mission, but failed : Essex, Middlesex, and Hertford were, according to the same historian, converted by Cedd, another Irish bishop ; and the Picts and Scots by Columba, another Irish- man of the 6th century, who became first Abbot of lona.* Here I will remark, it is a common, and a no less great error for its being a common one, to suppose that St. Patrick, or Succathus as he was originally called, was the first who preached Christianity in Ireland. Indeed his own words in his Confession or Letter to the Irish a work universally admitted to be genuine imply the very contrary ; " I went," says he, addressing the Irish, " every where on your account, even to the remotest parts of the Island, * The same historian states that " many of the nobility and middle classes of the English nation retired to Ireland for the sake of reading God's word, or leading a more holy life : all whom the Irish receiving most warmly, supplied, not only with food free of charge, but even books to read and masters to teach, gratuitously." IRKLAM) AM} THE IRISH. 19 where no one had baptized any before." Hen.ce we may infer, that in the more accessible parts of the country, Christianity had been preached before the arrival of Patrick, and that " the Apostle of Ireland," as he is called, only extended the Gospel much more widely than it had been previously.* His name is associated with a thousand Christian monuments throughout all Ireland. His father was probably a Briton, named Calpurnius, a deacon, and the son of a priest or presbyter, Potitus, a plain proof, that the doctrine of a celibate clergy was then unknown. His youth was spent in sore trials. Niall, king of Erin, in a ravaging invasion of Britain and Gaul carried him away into slavery : "At the age of sixteen," writes Patrick himself, " I was made captive and brought into Ireland ; I was then igno- rant of God ; but it was there the Lord opened my heart to a sense of my unbelief, and comforted me, as a father doth a child." And then he adds this forcible acknowledgment of the wonderful ways in which God's sovereign grace " chooses men in Christ," and, when they are in darkness, " brings them by Christ to everlasting salvation as vessels prepared for honour :" " At first a clown, an exile, * Mention is made of an Irish missionary, Cathalgus, who went forth to other lands preaching the Gospel about the end of the second century, and at last settled in Italy at Tarentuni. 20 IRELAND AND THE IKISH. illiterate, O, how true' it is, that before the Lord humbled me, I was even as a stone lying in the depth of the mire, and He, who alone is able, came, and in His mercy lifted me up, and not only lifted me up, but set me at the top of the wall." After five years' slavery, in which he often endured the extremities of hunger, cold, and nakedness, tending sheep on the sides of a mountain in Antrim (Sleivmid), he escaped from captivity. And such was the blessed effect of sanctified affliction to his soul, that so far from harbouring resentment against those who had done him so much wrong, he desired to give back good for evil, and to impart that Gos- pel to his oppressors, which had been so blessed to himself. The fact of the opportunity afforded him, during his captivity, of studying the language, habits, and feelings of the Irish, naturally directed his thoughts to them. But his parents and friends affectionately besought him, not to leave them again after all the grief they had suffered for him already. Distracted thus between earthly and heavenly im- pulses, he knew not what to do, until in a dream he saw a man from Ireland, named Victoricius, hand- ing a letter thus inscribed "A voice from the Irish ;" and at the same time he heard a voice of entreaty from the West, "We beseech thee, holy youth, come and walk still among us." This vision, IRELAND AXD THE IRISH. 21 the effect of the natural excitement of his mind on the missionary project he had so much at heart, in God's providence determined him to go. Accord- ingly, once more he entered the bay of Dundrum, 432 A.D. no longer a slave, but a preacher of the glorious freedom of the Gospel. And it is a re- markable fact, that his greatest number of conver- sions (12,000, according to Nennius. a writer in the ninth century) was in that same Connaught, in which at the present day so many thousands are casting off the chains of Romish superstition. One work of his, called " The Three Habitations," still extant, and acknowledged genuine by many Roman Catholic authorities, is conclusive evidence of his not having held the modern Romish doctrine of Purgatory : for there are mentioned but three habitations of man earth, heaven, hell, and none besides. After having been the honored instru- ment in God's hand of fixing firmly, if not first planting Christianity in Ireland, he came to a peaceful death at the age of 78, in March, 465 A.D., and was buried, as some say, in Glastonbury in England ; or as others think, in an obscure grave in the County Down. Ever since, the 17th of March has been kept sacred to his memory, as the day on which he passed to " the rest which re- maineth for the people of God." 22 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. He was supposed to be a Scotchman, because he is called Scotus. But it is notorious to every well informed antiquary, that Bede and other ancient writers apply the term Scoti and Scotia to the Irish and Ireland alone. The learned Mosheim notices the fact, that in the eighth century the Irish were known by the name Scots ; and yet he falls into the error of supposing Patrick to be a Scotchman.* Another greater and more injurious error, into which he falls, and which is most widely spread, is, that Patrick was sent to Ireland by Celestine, the Pope of that day. This error has had a power- ful influence on the Irish, whose character is so strongly marked by the principle of veneration, in making them cling to the religion of Rome, as though it were the same as Patrick preached and as if he had received his mission to Ireland from the Bishop of Rome. By this they are led to re- gard the Romish religion as invested, through the vista] of antiquity, with all the romance of a pic- turesque and melancholy grandeur, feeling a mourn- ful consolation in turning back from their own * The term Scot is from the Celtic Sciute, an emigrant ; it is a kindred word to Scythts, a notoriously nomadic race. Nu- midee itself comes from vo^dSes. The Scoti seem to have had the upper hand of the other two Irish races, the Hiberni and Cruithne. IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 23 wretched condition to the supposed greatness of their forefathers. This is, as the poet Moore in his history happily expresses it, " that retrospective imagination in the Irish, which for ever yearns after the past." Patrick, however, was not sent by the Bishop of Rome. In his letter to the Irish, already alluded to, he says, that the Lord Jesus Christ had sent him to them, and makes no mention of a com- mission from the Pope. He never urges his doc- trines on Papal authority, but always on that of Holy Scripture alone. Moreover, a most conclu- sive fact is, he makes use of a quite different version of the Bible from that of Jerome, which was at that time the authorised one of Rome ; and his Canon of Scripture also is quite different from that of Jerome. And though allusions to prayer, advocacy, and intercession abound in this interesting document, his language always is, " the Lord is our advocate, He prays for us ; the Holy Spirit kindles a flame of love within me." There is no mention made of any other intercession but that of the Lord Jesus and his Holy Spirit. Besides this truly Scriptural confession of Patrick, there is also extant his letter to the Christian captives of the Pirate Coroticus, and a few fragments ; but in all alike there is de- cisive negative evidence against Patrick having re- ceived his commission from Rome. The venerable 24 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. Bede makes no mention of Patrick having been so sent, which he must have done, as being a strong advocate of Rome's supremacy, had it been the case. It is an interesting tradition, that the origin of the great respect, in which the three-leaved shamrock is held as the national symbol, was the fact, that Patrick, in preaching the doctrine of the Trinity to the ignorant people in Ireland, showed under the form of the three leaves joined together forming one shamrock, how it is equally possible that there should be three persons in one Godhead. I shall only mention one more of the extant re- cords of this true servant of God, the genuine hymn of St. Patrick, preserved among the MSS. of Arch- bishop Ussher in the library of Trinity College, Dublin.* As a sample of the beautiful tone of piety, which breathes through it, take the following, " At Temor to day, may God's eye view me, God's wisdom instruct me, God's power preserve me !" " May Christ be with me, Christ before me, Christ after me, Christ in me. May Christ be in the heart of every person, to whom I speak, Christ in the mouth of every one that speaks to me, Christ in every eye * It is also called " Patrick's armour," being intended as a prayer of defence against the malice of his foes, when about to preach at Temor or Tarah in Meath, before the heathen king and assembled parliament of Ireland. IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 2o that may see me, Christ in every ear that may hear me !" The original is in Irish, but it closes in Latin thus, " Domini est salus ; Christi est salus ; Salus tua, Domine, sit semper nobiscum !" Every Christian heart will respond, Amen, Amen. Time will not allow me to enter into the able arguments, by which that great Irish antiquary Petrie and others have disproved the common error, into which even Mosheim falls, of supposing that Palladius preceded Patrick. Palladius was certainly in some documents called Patrick, which seems to have been a title of dignity. But he is not to be confounded with the older Patrick mentioned in the book of Armagh, who preceded him by many years. Palladius no doubt came from Rome, but Patrick did not. And it is a most striking fact. acknowledged even by Roman Catholic writers, (Prosper and others,) that Palladius was regarded by the Irish as an intruder into a church that was complete and independent, because he came with a mission from Rome. Nay more, he was forced to flee, says T. Moore, leaving no other memorial of his labours than the traditional saying among the Irish, that "not to Palladius but to Patrick did God grant the conversion of the Irish." As a proof of the marked difference between the Irish church and that of Rome, I may mention that Alcuin, the tutor 26 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. of Charlemagne states, that none of the laity in Ireland would confess to a priest.* Bernard also testifies to the non-celibacy of the Irish clergy, and mentions that even their primate Celsus, as late as A.D. 1089, was a married man: he tells us also of what some may think a still greater Irish enormity, namely, that the primate actually erected a bishop's see into an archbishopric without a pall from Rome. Need I also remind you of that learned Irishman, who emigrated to escape the Danish invaders of the ninth century, John Scot Erigena, who so coura- geously opposed the doctrine of transubstantiation, when first formally broached by Radbert Paschase of Corby, in France. His wit was as ready as that of most of his countrymen. It is told of him, that being seated at table one day opposite the dissolute * In the seventh century an Irish bishop, " Daganus, refused to eat with Lawrence, Romish Archbishop of Canterbury under the same roof," according to an original letter of the latter. Cardinal Baronius mentions that when " the controversy of the three Chapters" had been decided, by the condemnation of the writings of the three, Theodore, Theodoret, and Ibas, at the council of Constantinople, sanctioned also by Rome, all the bishops in Ireland rose up in defence of the three, and sepa- rated themselves from the same (i. e. refused to hold commu- nion with Rome or Constantinople in consequence). Comba- tiveness seems to have marked the Irish character in those days as in the present, directed to better ends than faction fights and shillela-flourishing. IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 27 French king, Charles the Bald, the latter in jest asked him, " What is the distance between a Scot and a Sot ?" " Please your majesty," replied Scot, " the width of this table." His name Scot, refers to his country, not the present Scotland, but Ireland. Though he was famed for his reasoning subtlety, an extant prayer of his shows the child-like simplicity of his faith, " Lord Jesus, I ask no other happi- ness, but to understand, unmixed with deceitful sub- tleties, the "Word which thou hast inspired by thy Holy Spirit: show thyself to those who seek for thee alone!" The learned and candid Mosheim remarks, " The Irish, who in the eighth century were known by the name of Scots, were the only divines, who refused to dishonour their reason by submitting it implicitly to the dictates of authority. They dis- tinguished themselves in those times of ignorance by the culture of the sciences beyond all other Euro- pean nations, and discharged with the highest repu- tation the function of doctor in France, Germany, and Italy. As early as the seventh century, an Irish missionary, named Gall, who had been edu- cated under Columba, preached the Gospel in the north-east of Switzerland. It is from him the famous Convent of St. Gall takes its name. Bene- dict the abbot of Languedoc, in the eighth cen- tury, states, that the Irish were the first teachers of 28 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. the scholastic theology in Europe. Their so-called monasteries were rather ecclesiastical colleges for promoting piety and learning than for asceticism. A monk in the modern sense, according to St. Ber- nard, the Romish zealot, was not known in Ire- land, until Malachy imported them. What a noble statement of the doctrine of justification by faith only that faith afterwards producing the fruit of good works is found in the commentary of Sedulius, (identical with the modern name Shell,) 818 A.D. " God will be gracious to mankind, if they do but believe they are to be freed by the blood of Christ. Therefore the root of righteousness doth not grow out of works, but the fruit of works from the root of righteousness."* * This faithful testimony he bore against the heresy of Pela- gius (nAc7Jos=Morgan=:Of the sea), a Britannic Scot, who had taken up his false doctrines on free will from Ruffinus in Rome : in them he was supported by an Irish noble, Celestius (from which the modern name Kelly is derived). Dr. Petrie proves from the letters the latter wrote to his parents in Ireland, the certainty of letters being known in that country, at least, early in the fourth century. I may observe also, that, as much of the history of a people is embodied in its words, the Christian names most prevalent in Ireland, are mostly taken from Scripture characters. Barny, Barnabas ; Tim, Timothy ; Thady, Thaddeus ; Corny, Cornelius ; Mick, Michael ; Denny, Dionysius ; Mat. Matthew ; Phil, Philip; Molly, Mary; Judy, Judith (the Apocrypha). IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 29 Another point, which is interesting as to the early Irish church is, that there is little doubt it was of Eastern origin, and not connected with the Western or Latin church. There are several particulars in which its Eastern origin is shown. I In its time for observing Easter it agrees with the churches es- tablished by St. John, in opposition to the usage of the Western or Latin church. II The Irish church used the Eastern mode of tonsure. III. No repre- sentative of the Irish church attended the council of Nice, nor were its canons transmitted to the Irish clergy. IV. The celebrated book of Armagh, of 698 A.D., composed by Bishop Aidus, containing the New Testament in Latin, is written generally in the Irish character, but with just so many words and letters in the Greek character as are enough to afford indisputable proof of Eastern intercourse. V. St. Patrick, in the Confession, expressly speaks of the Gallic church as a kindred church : and that church, it is well known, was originally connected with the East rather than with Rome : nay more, Patrick himself was said to have been nephew of Martin of Tours. VI In several striking points Irish churches resemble the Oriental : their church- Other names are taken from those who first preached Scrip- ture truth, or were eminent for Christian devotedness among them ; for instance, Pat, Patrick ; Biddy, Bridget (a Chris- tian lady of Kildare). 30 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. buildings were small in size, grouped in clusters of seven built together (the very number so prevalent in Asia Minor), as at the famous Glendalough, in Wicklow, which gives its name to the ancient see of Dublin : the congregations were multiplied, and were therefore small : their bishops were many in proportion to the number of their churches ; so much so, that we read Patrick actually consecrated no fewer than 365 bishops ; a bishop for every day in the year. I rather imagine, their temporalities were not quite so superabundant in those days as to need the reforming supervision of that episcopus episcoporum, Mr. Horsman. Be that as it may, the facts just stated prove the oriental origin of the Irish church : so that we may infer, St. Patrick transplanted from the church of Irenceus, at Lyons, the scion which afterwards flourished so well in Ireland: he thus was the spiritual ancestor of Colum- ba, whose church, the church of the Scots, Colman traces up to St. John. Columba (of the lineage of King Niall " of the nine hostages,") I may here observe, was one truly "mighty in the Scriptures." His writings prove that the ancient Catholic Church of Ireland was as distinguished for its love of God's Written Word, as the modern Romish Church in Ireland is notorious for its hatred of it. In a charge to the local bishops, speaking of the Bible being the IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 31 sole rule of faith, not adding thereto the traditions of the church, which is made up of fallible men, and can, therefore, no more be infallible than many finites can make up one infinite, he says, " Our Canons are the commands of the Lord Jesus and his apostles : these are our faith ; lo ! these are our arms, shield, and sword ! these are our defence ! In these we pray and desire to persevere unto death." He even wrote against Boniface, the then Bishop of Rome, warning him " to beware, for the Lord Jesus the Prince of Apostles is approaching ;" " Watch, again, I say, watch, because Vigilius did not keep Vigil" " That it would be an awful thing, if the Lord should find the Catholic faith not held in an Apostolic seat," a plain protest by antici- pation against the modern dogma of Romish infal- libility. The occasion of his passing from Ireland, as missionary to the Caledonian isle of lona, is curious. When on a visit with Finnian of Moville, he got i'rom him the loan of a part of Holy Scripture. Being greatly delighted he used to stay in the church after service, day and night, copying portions out, without Finnians knowledge. One day, however, he was detected ; and Finnian was much displeased, and demanded the copy as being a kind of stolen off- spring of his. Columba proposed, that Diermit, king 32 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. of all Ireland, should decide. The king decided in Finnian's favour against Columba, in a remarkable form of Irish words, which passed into a proverb among the people, " To every cow belongs its calf, and therefore likewise to every book should belong its copy." (What would our plagiarist writers say to this rule? I am afraid many a stolen literary calf would have to go back to the parent cow ; and after all, when restored, would be found to resemble the parent only in her faults, not in her merits in short would turn out a literary bull !) Columba, I am sorry to say for the honour of Christianity, dis- pleased at king Diermit's decision, and for other causes of offence, stirred up the other Irish princes to make war with him, in which the king was defeated. But the church of Ireland, being a messenger of peace, not war, declared that to remedy the scandal caused to religion, Columba should undergo some public penance. By the advice, therefore, of St. Lasrean of Devenish, he determined to spend the rest of his life in a foreign land, where he should bring more per-ons to Christ, than owing to him had perished in war. Accordingly he sailed to the isle Aoi, which has since been latinized into lona : and from thence he used to sally forth preaching the glad tidings of salvation through Christ in Scotland, then called Albania, (akin to IRELAND AND THE IRISH. the old name of Britain, Albion.) He was the honoured instrument of rescuing large parts of England under the Saxon princes from Paganism, giving glory unto the Lord, and declaring his praise in the islands. It was he who revived the Culdees, (cultores Dei), that wide- famed order of ecclesiastical teachers, which existed down to the time of Arch- bishop Ussher, and whose chief office was to commit to memory and teach others the exact words of Holy Scripture. Compulsory celibacy and monkery were utterly unknown among them. Columba was well called by a name, which is a brief summary of his career, Colum-kille " the dove of the churches," (a dove of a very different note and feather from the modern Irish titular, dubbed " the dove of Elphin.") From being a man of hot fiery temper, by the work of the Spirit he gradually caught the dove-like spirit of the meek and lowly Jesus, and gave up his naturally strong energies to such labours of love for the Redeemer as the founding of churches and Scrip- tural Schools. These were the days when amidst the gradually thickening darkness of almost all Europe, the sun of Ireland's Christianity shone with undimmed lustre : she was then Europe's college of religious learning, as Rome is now of its opposite. Cam- den states it was then a proverb when any one 34 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. was missing abroad, " Oh ! he has gone for learning into Ireland." Erin was then called the " Isle of saints, the asylum of piety," and to be an Irishman was thought an honour. "Eheu! quantum mutatus ab illo." Thus founded and thus connected, the Irish church remained altogether independent of Romish interference, until A.D. 600. From that time until the twelfth century, there was a protracted struggle for freedom against the continued encroachments of Rome. But at length in the dark night of igno- rance, which followed the Danish devastations, from the landing of Turgesius in 808 A.D. to their defeat at Clontarf, 1014, by Brian Borhoime, when pure religion had been gradually corrupted, Rome gained her point. Adrian the IV., Rome's only English Pope, (Nicholas Breakspeare,) made over to Henry II. by bull, the kingdom of Ireland, which was not his to give, on the express condition that he should bring the Irish church to submit to the Romish see, and that " every Irish house should pay St. Peter's pence." Accordingly by the force of English arms, (under Strongbow,) brought to bear on a country already prostrated by Danish devastations, Ireland was robbed at the Council of Cashel 1172 A.D., of her independent national church, and was delivered IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 35 up, bound hand and foot, to Romish usurpation. Two Irish prelates of that day, in reward for their subserviency, Malachi Morgair, Archbishop of Armagh, and Lawrence O'Toole, Archbishop of Dublin, were the first Irishmen ever canonized as saints of the Romish calendar ; (the latter seems to be an especial favorite with the titular metropolitan of the Roman Catholic church in Ireland in his in- vocations perhaps he hopes to be a second Lawrence O'Toole in subjecting Ireland to Rome "quod Deus avertat !") Thenceforward the country became as degraded, socially and religiously, as she had been before honourably distinguished among the nations of Europe. I should mention, that even as early as the beginning of the eleventh centu- ry, Sitric, Danish king of Dublin, pioneered the way for Adrian's usurpation by sending Donatus ; and Godfred, another king of the Ostmen, by send- ing Patrick to Lanfranc, the Romish Archbishop of Canterbury, to receive consecration as Bishops of Dublin from him. Anselm, the successor of Lan- franc, followed up the work of Rome thus begun. Then followed centuries of violence and barbarism almost without parallel in the history of the world. Here let me notice, that there are still remaining in excellent preservation many monumental memo- rials of the early church of Ireland. The Round 36 IRELAND AND THE IEISH. Towers, those remarkable relics of a by-gone age, the origin of which has been such a subject of dis- pute among antiquaries, at length are satisfactorily proved by Dr. Petrie, not to be, as was supposed, heathen structures, but Christian. They are always found near Christian ecclesiastical remains in some cases joined to the church-building as our church- turrets in other cases separate, but still standing close by : the common name for them in Ireland is doc-teach, or belfry. It is therefore probable they were used first as belfries ; secondly, as places of safety for keeping the sacred utensils in case of sudden invasion, for which reason there was no en- trance into them immediately from the ground, but probably by a moveable ladder : lastly, as signal watch towers on an emergency, such as often would occur in those lawless times. There is a curious parallel in the English invasion of Ireland to the war of Greece against Troy, aris- ing from the rape of Helen, the wife of the Grecian Menelaus, by Paris, a Trojan prince. In times though so long subsequent, yet combining, like the former, so strange a mixture of barbarism and chivalry, Dermot MacMurrogh, king of Leinster, carried off Dervorghal the beautiful wife of O'Ruark, king of Breffni (Leitrim). The latter, with the king of Connaught, invaded Leinster, recovered the IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 37 princess, and expelled Dermot. The latter invoked the aid of Henry II., who was but too glad of a pre- text of getting a footing in Ireland, which, with the religious sanction of Adrian, as we have seen, he obtained. " Such," adds Giraldus Cambrensis, " is the variable and fickle nature of woman, by whom for the most part all mischiefs in the world do happen, as may appear by Marcus Antonius and the destruction of Troy !" The latter has obtained more celebrity, thanks to Homer's immortal lays ; though the results of Dermot's lust have been far greater. Moore's pathetic song of O'Ruark to his princess does justice to his theme, " While now oh degenerate daughter Of Erin, how fall'n is thy fame ! And thro' ages of bondage and slaughter, Our country shall bleed for thy shame. Already the curse is upon her, And strangers her valleys profane ! They come to deride, to dishonour, And tyrants they long will remain. On our side is Virtue and Erin, On theirs is the Saxon and Guilt." At the Reformation the Irish bishops all cast off obedience to Rome, with the exception of two alone, Walsh, Bishop of Meath ; and Leverous, Bishop of Kildare. And to those interested in the question D 38 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. of Apostolical succession, it is a curious fact, quan- tum valeat, that these two had no hand in the conse- cration of the bishops afterwards sent from Rome. So that all the present Roman Catholic Bishops in Ireland have foreign and not native Irish orders. It must seem strange at first sight, that the Refor- mation which took such deep root in Scotland and among the Welsh Celts, and which moreover began so favorably in Ireland, where the traditions of an early pure and independent church promised so much success, should afterwards have fallen back so lamentably. The Archbishop of Dublin, George Brown, of the reign of Henry VIII., was the first of the bishops to embrace the Reformation ; and the other bishops, with the exception of the two, as al- ready stated, all followed his example. A tempo- rary check to the Reformation in Ireland was given by the accession of queen Mary to the throne. But a merciful Providence saved the Irish Reformers from sharing the persecutions suffered by their English brethren. The account of it is taken from the papers of Richard Earl of Cork, and is most curious and interesting. Queen Mary gave a com- mission to Dr. Cole to go to Ireland and visit with imprisonment, tortures, and death, all Protestants who should refuse to abjure their faith. The doctor coming to Chester on his way to Ireland, the Mayor IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 39 of Chester waited on the doctor, who, in conversa- tion, taking out of a bag a leathern box containing the queen's commission, said, " Here is a commis- sion, that shall lash the heretics of Ireland." The good woman of the house, being a Protestant and having a brother named John Edmonds a Protestant of Dublin, was much troubled at the doctor's words ; but watching her opportunity, whilst the mayor took leave and the doctor walked down stairs to see him out, she took the commission out of the box and put instead a sheet of paper with a pack of cards, the knave of clubs being faced uppermost. The doctor returning and suspecting nothing, put up the box, and in due course arrived in Ireland on the 7th of October, 1558. The Lord Lieutenant Fitz waiters sent for him ; and after he had stated the purpose for which he had come by order of the queen, he presented the box to the Lord Lieutenant ; but lo ! on opening it, nothing was found save a pack of cards, the knave of clubs being faced uppermost ; which startled not only the Lord Lieutenant but the doctor, who assured the former that he had had a commission, but knew not how it was gone. " Never mind," said the Lord Lieutenant, " let us have ano- ther commission, and we will shuffle the cards in the meantime." The doctor returned to England, got another commission, but before he could reach Ire- 40 IRELAND AN THE IRISH. land the queen was dead, and the Irish Protestants were safe. Queen Elizabeth, who succeeded, was so delighted with the story that she gave a handsome pension for life to Elizabeth Edmonds, the woman who saved the Reformers in Ireland. Thus all things seemed to favour the spreading of the Reformation in that country. But alas ! the English rulers made one fatal mistake, the evil re- sults of which will long be felt. They made no ef- fort to teach the Irish people the word of God in their own language. Nay, though Edward VI. had ordered the worship of God in Irish wherever ne- cessary, his successors forbad the use of that lan- guage (reviving the infamous statute of Kilkenny of 1367, A.D. against it), and caused the services of the Established church to be conducted in English, which the masses of the people could not understand ; and when complaints were made, by way of satisfy- ing the complainers they permitted the services to be in Latin (!), which, I fancy was little more in- telligible to Irishmen than English. The clergy of the Established church in Ireland were, also, with a few bright exceptions, in those days merce- nary and apathetic as to the souls committed to them. Bedell, the pious bishop of Kilmore, com- plains that he has but fifteen Protestant clergy in his diocese, and these all Englishmen, unable to IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 41 speak the language of the people. He took pains to learn Irish, and though he could not speak it fluent- ly, he composed the first grammar ever made in it, and had Common Prayer celebrated in that tongue. He even undertook an Irish translation of the Old Testament (as the New Testament in Irish, by Nicholas Walsh of St. Patrick's Cathedral, had been already completed), but was prevented by the bigotry and intolerance of Archbishop Laud and Strafford. However, it was at last printed, 1685 A. D. It was of Bedell that a Roman Catholic priest, standing over his grave, exclaimed : " Oh ! let my soul be with Bedell !" But for the most part the English government sent over men unfit for the sacred office, thrusting into the sees and livings favorites of profligate earls, strangers to the language, and careless of the souls of their Irish flocks. And then, with strange injustice, they punished by penal laws all who would not conform to a religion, which they took all possible pains to make unintelligible to them. By these laws Roman Catholics were virtually excluded from almost all public rights as citizens. By the oath of supremacy they were shut out from practising at the bar. Ro- man Catholic priests were ordered by proclamation to quit the realm. The chief citizens of Dublin 42 IKELAKB AND THE IRISH. were committed to prison for not frequenting Pro- testant churches. Truly we may say, " Non tali auxilio, non defensoribus istis Tempus eget." No ; Truth fears not to stand on her own inherent strength : She needs not thes word of persecution ; which, so far from aiding her cause, is a foul insult and slander upon her as though she feared inves- tigation : She saith to the persecutors, as her Lord said to Peter, " Put up thy sword in the sheath, for all they that take the sword shall perish by the sword." Alas ! we must blush for our Protestant forefathers, who, in imitating the Eomanist perse- cutor by virtually punishing non- conformists, did evil that good might come, and forgot that the weapons of our Christian warfare are not carnal but spiritual. I cannot admit what some able historians maintain, that there was a time when penal laws for religion were expedient. Injustice never can be expedient. It certainly proved not to be so in Ire- land. For the result of these penal laws, and of the neglect of teaching the people religious truths in a language which they could understand, has been, that the greater part of Ireland for a long time past has been utterly alien to England both in political and religious sympathies. The only palliation of IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 43 this injustice is the notorious fact, that Rome was the fomenter of unceasing rebellions in Ireland against that very country, England, which, when it suited her purpose, she had instigated to invade a peaceful nation and independent church. A striking instance of God's retributive justice in his dealings with nations, that the very stepping stone, Rome, which England used towards robbing Ireland of her liberties, should afterwards be made her chief " stone of stumbling," not only in Irish bnt even English political interests ! It was Rome |at urged O'Neill to a bloody and fruitless rebellion : nay even the Pope's legate bribed that chieftain to this vain attempt by the gift of a plume of feathers, blessed by his Holiness, which the legate gravely assured him had been plucked out of the tail of the Phoenix ! A better day is, I firmly believe, already dawn- ing. As a deformation marred the once fair form of Ireland's Christianity, so a Reformation is now, with God's blessing, likely to restore it, so that its " latter end will be more blessed than its beginning." Every true Irishman must feel thoroughly convinced, that England's anxious aim now is, to do impartial justice to Ireland, nay, more than justice, to help out of her own abundance her poor woe-stricken sister ; above all, to give her the Bible, that great moral 44 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. lever for raising the fallen, in her own beautiful, glowing, and devotional language. It is the Bible, which is the great secret of Ulster's prosperity, that very Bible, which men wearing the garb of ministers of Christ have dared blasphemously to call the Gospel of the Devil : and it is a remarkable fact, that five-sixths of all Ireland's Sunday Schools and Bible instruction are confined to prosperous Ulster. England, to gain political dominion for herself, in times gone by, imposed Romanism on Ireland, robbing her of her best birthright, an unclasped Bible and independent church. England has now a glorious opportunity of making amends for the past, by giving back to her fallen sister that word of God, which herself in Saxon times of old often heard at the mouth of Irish misssionaries. May God prosper still, as He has been doing, the efforts now being made by pious Englishmen, Dallas and others, awaking to a sense of their duty. It is a remarkable prophecy among Roman Catholics in Ireland, that Rome shall fall everywhere, when she loses her hold of Ireland. And it is told by Joceyline of St. Patrick, he saw once a vision of Ireland lit up with the flame of piety at first, then the light dwindling down to darkness, but not ex- tinguished, and then suddenly re-kindled in the North. No less than 35,000 converts from Rome have IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 45 been made in Ireland by the simple reading of the Scriptures in Irish, and by the labours of the Church missions. Bribery has been alleged as the cause. The only bribe has been pure Christianity. And long may there be missionaries to offer, and multi- tudes to receive this blessed bribe, heaven's own best gift ! You may perhaps feel curious to know something about the famous Roman Catholic College of Maynooth. I have visited the College, and have met in travelling many of its students. The young men there are mostly sons of small farmers and shopkeepers. They have to pass through a seven years' course before being admitted into the priest- hood. The discipline is very strict. They are not allowed on any pretence to enter one another's rooms. Each student has a separate room. No newspapers are permitted ostensibly ; but they manage to smuggle these in without the knowledge of the authorities ; and I have generally found them very violent in their Anti-English feeling both in politics and religion. They have two months' vacation during Summer; and on returning have to submit to a week of silence, in which they are not permitted to speak one word, except to their con- fessor. So I was assured by a student with whom I became intimate in travelling. 46 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. This young man was a member of Father Mathew's Temperance Society, and showed me his medal. You may judge how amused I was, when on coming to a town, where the coach stopped, he offered me, in the abundance of his good nature, at the expense of his consistency and without any fear of Father Mathew before his eyes, a glass of brandy ! But Paddy has curious ways of cheating conscience. I remember having heard of a man, who, in a fit of penitence after a drunken bout, took a vow he would never after drink a glass inside or outside a house. Well, he kept his vow for a time : but old inclination began to wax strong again, and he pined after a drop of the craythur, as they fondly term whiskey. What then did he do, in order to keep his conscience and yet get his glass ? He took it neither inside nor outside the house, but sitting on the window sill between the two. To return to Maynooth. It derives its name from the Irish Mach-an-fhuaith " the field of hatred," a title singularly prophetical of its sub- sequent history. I must say, it turns out men far inferior in general education to the priesthood of the old school, before the days of Maynooth, edu- cated at St. Omer's and other colleges of France. Take as a sample a letter which a college friend of IRELAND AND THE IRISH. '17 mine, Rev. D. Foley, received in answer to an invitation to attend a controversial lecture, " The Rev. Mr. Harrington, P.P., finding from the ortho- graphy of Mr. Foley's letter, that the lecture cannot be orthodox, lacks inclination to be present at any lecture coming from that quarter." The attainments of the vast majority, beyond a smattering of Latin, with a thorough drilling in controversy and dogmatic theology, are very mea- gre. Their chief erudition is in the casuistries of Bailly and Delahogue, the lying legends of Butler's Saints, and the pollutions of Dens' directions for the ^Confessional. Notwithstanding this, the de- gree of thraldom which the priest exercises, in Ire- land, over his flock is amazing. I remember hear- ing of a poor Roman Catholic going to a priest and saying, " Plase, your Riverence, some of the Pro- testants have been arguing with me, and I can't make out myself what they mane by a miracle : so your Riverence, as I'm no scholar at all at all, may be you'd tell me, what is a miracle." "Well, Paddy, I'm in a hurry now," said the Priest, " and I'll talk to you again." " Ah ! but your Riverence, I'd thank you to tell me now, that I may be able to answer the heretics." " Well, Paddy, come here to me." "Now turn your back to me." So Paddy turned his back, expecting a great miracle. But 48 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. his Reverence gave him a thumping blow behind, saying, "Did you feel that Paddy?" " Och, then, to be sure I did, do you think I have no feeling in me." " Well, Paddy, if you had not felt it, it would have been a miracle. Now you know what a mi- racle is !" As another instance : A priest, only a short time ago, in a district of the west, where many conversions from Romanism have been matters of weekly occurence, in a warning addressed to his flock against the Irish mission schools, established by Rev. Mr. Dallas of Wonston, Hants, in which a meal of stirabout or porridge used to be given once a day to the starving children, gravely assured them that Satan had been seen rising out of Lough Corrib, his whole body from tip to snout being made of stir- about and that the children might, perhaps, in the stirabout they got at school, some day eat unawares his satanic majesty himself! Often has the mass itself, believed to be the incarnate God, been offered for the recovery of a sick cow, or the safety of a boat! Alas ! that it should be possible, any of our coun- trymen should be duped by such palpable imposture, or that there should be found men bearing the name of ministers of Christ, capable of practising such a cheat ! There is a class in Ireland, of whom Carleton IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 49 gives a humorous specimen in " the Midnight Mass." I mean that kind of beggar, who acts as a subordi- nate to the priest, and blends together a curious mixture of fun and devotion, a love of superstition and good whiskey. Many of you will remember Carleton's Darby More and his imitations of the priest's Latin, " Oxis doxis glorioxis, Amin. This is the day, howandiver it's night now, glory be to God, that the angel Lucifer appeared to Shudorth, Meeshach, and Tobedwego, in the village of Con- stantinople near Jerusalem. The heavens be praised, for it ; t'was a blessed and holy night and remains so from that day to this, Oxis, doxis, glorioxis, Amin." I remember well one of this genus, who used to go about Dublin at night repeating scraps of very apocryphal saints' lore. He was nicknamed Zosimus, from his frequently making imaginary quotations from that saint. "My friends, good Christians," he would add, "Paul the apostle wrote an epistle to the Romans, and to the Corinthians, and the Ephesians, but Paul never wrote an epistle to the Protestants, poor deluded craythurs ! The heretics are always finding fault with purgatory, but, as Father O'Leary says, maybe they'll go farther and fare worse." As a sample of the religious ballads, some of which I have heard Zosimus reciting at night through the 50 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. streets of Dublin, take the following, which the said Zosimus used to give forth with great unction, and a slow and measured nasal twang, " On Egypt's banks contagious to the Nile, King Pharaoh's daughter went to bathe in style : And as she trod the banks to dry her skin, She stumbled on the cot the babe was in ! Then she exclaimed, in accents strange and wild, ' Och, murther, girls which of yees owns the child ?' " The beggars are altogether a class sui generis. Their readiness of wit and unbounded impudence exceed all powers of description. To give you an instance. I once drove on an outside jaunting car into the town of Tralee. There was sitting beside me a Roman Catholic young lady. The car stopped before a shop, and instantly we were surrounded with swarms of beggars. " Och, then, Miss Jane," they cried to my companion, " wont you give us a halfpenny ; do, alanna. If you do'nt, Miss, I'll tell Father Murphy the priest on you." Then turning to me one said, " maybe, your honour, you'd give us a halfpenny, and you have it in your face, for you have a face that looks as if you would pity the poor." I pretended not to mind them, when one of them quite upset my gravity by saying, " Och, then, your honour, if you give me a penny, I'll pray that you may be married to that purty girl, Miss Jane there, IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 51 that is sitting beside you !" There was no resisting this. I mentioned jaunting cars. The best definition I have heard was given by a carman of the difference between the inside and outside car, when an English- man asked him the question ; " Please your honour, the inside car has got the wheels outside, and the outside car has got the wheels inside !" One feature strikes an observer much in the language of the lower orders in Ireland, namely its picturesque beauty. Like the orientals, from whom the aboriginal race sprung, they excel in " word- painting." A friend of mine asked a poor woman, had she been up early that morning. " I was up, my lady," she replied, " before the lark shook her wing." What a beautiful picture ! Again, no country pro- duces expressions of more fervent love, such as Cushla ma chree, " Pulse of my heart." And this sometimes mixed with something comical, as in this, which Lover quotes, " O Judy, my darling, its you that have the purty cheeks, and your breath is sweet as the cows' breath, barring that the lips are not so ugly" This tendency of ours to give loose rein to the imagination leads us to be less practical than honest John Bull. Sidney Smith was not altogether wrong, when he recommended us, instead of our national 52 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. cry Erin go bragh, to substitute "Erin go bread and breeches." Indeed one great want in Ireland is the want of wants. We are content to live in wretched discomfort, without our lowest classes feeling the least inclination to raise themselves in the social scale. Hence the absence of cleanliness, which would cost an effort, and which has been said with some truth, though requiring much limitation, to be next to Godliness. The lower classes are never almost, as in England, rising into the middle classes by their own energy. It was a saying of Voltaire, that Englishmen resemble a barrel of their own beer, where the top is all froth, the bot- tom all dregs, but the middle excellent. In Ireland alas ! we have almost no middle class. There are but two leading classes, at least in all the provinces, save Ulster, the Protestant gentry owning almost the whole land, and the Roman Catholic masses living in the lowest state, in which it is just possible to keep human beings alive. Both these classes Were formerly alike improvident. The lower class by working in the most slovenly way for a few months could get enough potatoes to do for the whole year $ and so they would labour for nothing more. The gentry borrowed largely, and as for payment, they put that off to the Greek Kalends. They acted on Sheridan's famous or rather infamous IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 53 system when in debt; "They always made it their principle not to pay the interest, and found it their interest not to pay the principal." Yet these same persons, who would pay nothing as a matter of justice, would give away hands' full as a matter of generosity ; and on the slightest provocation would shoot any man, in a duel, who breathed a breath against their honour. Moreover when extravagance had left them penniless, they felt like the great Sir Lucius O'Trigger : " Thank God, though the dirty acres have slipped through my fingers, the family pictures are as fresh as ever." Lord Chesterfield, who was one of the best Lord Lieutenants Ireland ever had in spite of his famous letters on polite- ness, which are the least calculated to impress us favourably as to his sincerity and truthfulness after leaving Ireland said, what has been too true of the Irish in all modern times, " Of all people under heaven, you Irish take the least forethought for the year to come, excepting in the matter of your wines and whiskey, of which you take good care to lay in a plentiful store in good time." I suppose I cannot pass without notice the Irish Bulls. About as good a one as I know is told by a friend of my father, Rev. Caesar Otway. There were many volunteer corps formed at the time of the Irish rebellion of 1798. For instance, E 54 IRELAND AND THE IKISH. there was the University of Dublin Corps, of which my father was a volunteer, and which had as its motto " Tarn Marti quam Minervas." There was also the Attorneys' corps, of which it is told, that their captain, himself an attorney, addressing them said, " Gentlemen, if you are only able to fire as well as you are able to charge, there won't be a more eificient corps in His Majesty's service." My father, on his way to be ordained by the Bishop of Killala, heard of the French landing, and at once joined Lord Corri's corps, thus exchanging for a time the spiritual for the secular sword. "Well then, among the corps formed at that time, a County Mayo regiment was raised. In it was a captain, who, on the eve of a battle with the rebels, worked himself up in nervousness to believe, that on the following day the rebels would certainly leave him a bloody corpse on the battle field. Un- der this impression, he actually wrote to his mother, on the night before the battle, the following letter : "Dear Mother, I write to tell you, this day our regiment attacked the rebels on Vinegar Hill. I did all that man could do. But towards the close of the day, the rebels made a combined rush on the troops, and then I received a pike through my heart. I now lie on the field of honour, and hope I may get decent burial, and not be left to dogs, pigs, IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 55 and scald crows. Tell brother Rory, I would ra- ther he would not sell the chestnut mare. She's of the right sort, and carried me well at the Crossma- lina steeple chase. Blessings be with you, dear Mother. The last words of your affectionate son after death A. B." The said captain did not fall according to his gloomy anticipations for the best of reasons that though his regiment joined the onslaught, he did not ; for, just as the battle began, he had practical experience of Juvenal's words, " Trepido tibi solvunt cornua ventrem ;" so he re- tired under a bridge, where he was internally en- gaged until the insurgents were dispersed. The posthumous letter, however, was duly sent : and the mother, a puzzle-pated woman, never taking into account the absurdity of a man announcing his own death by letter, was in a terrible dismay, and sent it to a gentleman, a neighbour of hers. This gentleman was weak-sighted and rather deaf. He handed it to a young man present to read, who read it in the midst of a party of young people, amidst roars of laughter. The gentleman being deaf only caught up so much that the captain was dead, with- out hearing the palpable absurdity of the letter. He was, therefore, greatly enraged at the heartless- ness of the laughers, and flung his crutch at the reader's head. In due time, however, all was ex- 56 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. plained, and the gallant captain arrived safe and sound, to give the lie to his own letter, and to be the standing joke of the whole country. Of perpetrators of bulls, none was more famous than Sir Boyle Roach of the Irish house of Com- mons. Replying to a speech on one occasion, he said, " I beg to inform the honorable gentleman who has just spoken, I am not like a bird, able to be in two places at once." In pressing friends to partake of his hospitality he once said, " My dear friends, I do hope, if ever you come within ten miles of my house you will stop there !" I suspect Sir Boyle in this case was more knave than fool. I remember hearing of an amusing bull perpetrated by a reverend brother : on the Sunday before Lent he gave notice to this effect, "I give notice, that next Friday, being Ash- Wednesday, is appointed to be kept holy !" Among the lower classes there is a good deal of arch drollery under the affectation of simplicity, and they don't scruple to play a practical joke at the expense of the stranger. An English gen- tleman who had never seen an Irish bog before, asked a poor fellow he met in the country, " Can I walk over here, my good man ?" " Och, yes, your honour," said Paddy, "to be sure you can ; there is a good hard bottom" The gentleman accordingly IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 57 made the attempt, but had not got more than a hundred yards, when down he went plop into the middle of a boghole up to the waist. Turning round in great wrath, he shook his fist at the Irish- man, " You rascal, didn't you tell me there was a good hard bottom?" "Yes, indeed I did, your honour, and so there is, when you have got far enough down, but your honor is only half way to the bot- tom !" Let me observe that the car-drivers, when they fall in with English tourists, say all kinds of witty things, which they seldom think of saying to their countrymen, in order to amuse the stranger. A car- man, who drove a stranger through Dublin on a wet day, brought him,, among other places, to the post- office, on which there stand three large statues. " Pray, driver, what are these three figures ?" " Plase your honour, they're the twelve apostles." " Twelve apostles ! why, my man, I only see three." " Thrue, your honour, but you would'nt have the whole twelve stand out together this wet day, so they take it by turns, three at a time." They all thoroughly enjoy a joke, and have all what is known as " the gift of the gab." Of no people under heaven does the Archbishop of Dublin's saying hold more true, "some people are said to have a great command of words, whereas it would 58 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. be much more true to say, words have a great com- mand of them ; they have about the same command of words that a man has of a horse that runs away with him." There is also much shrewdness under the guise of seeming simplicity. As an instance : a strict Protestant gentleman was hiring a servant. After making many inquiries, at last he asked " what per- suasion are you of?" " What's that your honour ?" " What religious persuasion are you of?" "Oh! I undherstand your honour ; I'm of the same per- suasion as Mick Doolin." " And of what persuasion is Mick Doolin ?" " Why, he says, that I owe him five shillings and won't pay him ; and troth, your honour, I'm of the same persuasion." One story more, and I close. It is one of Otway's, and happily illustrates Paddy's eccentric mode of confusing ideas, which mated to a teeming imagina- tion is the prolific parent of Bulls. A farmer came to Ballycastle inn, and as it was late, and he had money, he was afraid to go farther that night. There chanced to be a negro in the inn : and as the farmer had never seen a black before, he looked on him with dread and disgust. You may imagine his feel- ing when mine hostess informed him, the house was so full he could get no bed, unless he would sleep with blacky ! However he resolved to sit up all IRELAND AND THE IftlSfl. 59 night rather than go alongside of the negro. So he ordered whiskey punch, and, as fortune would have it, became intoxicated and fell asleep. Some sailors present thought it would be a good joke to blacken his face with burnt cork, and put him in bed beside the negro. Now the farmer had ordered the ostler to call him before break of day. So having slept an uneasy sleep, with confused dreams, owing to the effects of the whiskey, about robbers and his money and the negro, he was called by the ostler before dawn. Rising most unwillingly, and hastily putting on his clothes, and going to the looking-glass he saw his face all black as any African. No man could be more rejoiced, none happier in the confusion of his ideas, when he called out to the ostler " come here you rascal ; see what you have done. You've woke the wrong man. Don't you see it is the blackamoor you have called up instead of me. So that being the case, I'll just go lie down and take a sleep, un- til the proper time comes for myself to get up." One word on a very different subject, the Irish national music. The great French historian, Thier- ry, well remarks, that the ancient Irish music is the truest commentary on Ireland's history. It is true, the words have perished for the most part, but still if ever music spoke in language, too deep for utterance, the pent up feelings of the soul, that 60 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. music is the minstrelsy of the ancient Irish bards. We find in it a profoundly-felt but vaguely-ex- pressed grief, like that of a people long suffering under cruel wrongs a tone of defiance is succeeded by the languor of despair which again passes into a tone of reckless levity in a moment. But even in the most lively melodies, some melancholy chord comes in unexpectedly, as on a cloudy day we see the sun-beam burst out for a moment and instantly vanish again. The Irish bards used to wander from village to village, delighting with their strains all classes, and keeping up the remem- brance of ancient Irish independence. Every lead- ing house had its harp, ever ready for the travel- ling minstrel, who was rewarded with most lavish hospitality. How beautifully Moore apostrophises the lyre of his country, comparing its melancholy strains to the JEolian harp, " The warm lay of love, the light note of gladness, Have wakened thy fondest, thy liveliest thrill ; But so oft hast thou echoed the 'deep sigh of sadness, That e'en in thy mirth it will steal from thee still ! If the pulse of the patriot, soldier, or lover, Have throbbed at our lay, t'was thy glory alone, I was but as the wind passing heedlessly over, And all the wild music, I waked, was thy own." So now I must close these rambling sketches. Amidst his many failings, I hope you agree with IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 61 me in thinking, there is much you "cannot help liking in Paddy. His faults are the effects of un- favourable influences, religious and political, as well as of former oppression and neglect. His virtues are all his own. I never can persuade my- self that Ireland, the early cradle of Christianity in the west, with its pure independent primitive Church, will be suffered always to remain in it's present degraded wretchedness and superstition. " The sainted isle of old, says the Shan Van Vocth, The sainted isle of old, says the Shan Van Vocth, The parent, and the mould of the beautiful and bold, Has her blithesome heart waxed cold ? says the Shan Van Vocth." No ! Her blithesome heart has not waxed cold. She still has the warm heart, which shall yet show its recuperative energy in a glorious resurrection, socially, morally, and spiritually. The Bible, the great palladium of highly-blessed England, is the heaven-sent messenger of God, which even already in some measure has come down from above and pushed back the stone from the mouth of the tomb, and Ireland shall rise again and once more be free free with more than earthly freedom free with the glorious liberty of the children of God : for, " He is free, whom truth makes free, And all are slaves beside." And whilst many countries are sinking in the scale, 62 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. may the reverse be true of Erin ! Of her may we be able to say, in a social and spiritual point of view, " The nations are falling, but thou art still young, And thy Sun is but rising, whilst others have set, And though slavery's clouds o'er thy morning have hung, The bright sun of freedom shall beam round thee yet !" Pardon me for the time I have detained you, and receive my thanks for your patient attention. And believe me, if in any respect I have interested you in my beloved country, or have led you to re- solve to give her that open BIBLE which England enjoys, I shall feel myself amply rewarded for my trouble. THE END. Shortly will be published, foolscap 8vo, cloth lettered, Price 2s. 6d. Sfri&ta info % JJrap-Swfe m I ramg. ENGLAID'8 CHURCH AND HOUSE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, THE SCRIPTURAL ANTIDOTE OF SACERDOTALISM AND SCHISM; WITH