The Story of the Irish Nation

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries http://www.archive.org/details/storyofirishnatiOOhack t THE STORY OF THE IRISH NATION Franc is i Ha cxef BON I BOOKS The Old Corner Book Store, Inc. Boston - Macs THE STORY OF THE IRISH NATION THE STORY OF THE IRISH NATION ft FRANCIS HACKETT ft DRAWINGS BY HARALD TOKSVIG BOSTON COLUet UBJM _ - CHESTNf -°- 19 MiTnrMMrnmiinHiiBi 30 ALBERT AND CHARLES BONI • NEW YORK Copyright, 1922, by Francis Hackett Copyright, 1922 (N. Y. World) by Press Publishing Cc. First printing, August, 1930 Second printing, December, 1930 0/\fU H Z3 205184 Printed in U. S. A. To HERBERT BAYARD SWOPE When I came to see you just before Christmas you asked me if I could write a history of Ireland in three days. I said, "not in three days but in three weeks," and on this pure mechanical retort you told me to go ahead for the World. You raised only one point : Do men make the epochs, or do epochs make the men? And you flat- tered and impressed me by inquiring if I agreed with HegeL Here, then, is the result, though I had to give it more than the heroic three weeks. I owe you much because without your superb confidence I should never have had the courage to attempt even this popular story. So let me thank you—and especially for plunging me into the history of Ireland, its "perilous seas," its "faery lands forlorn." F. H. New York City, Mcvrch 17, CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I The Gaelic Period: Pagan 5 II The Gaelic Period: Christian .... 30 III Clontarf to the Norman Invasion . 60 IV Norman Invasion to Henry VIII ... 84 V The Conquest 106 VI The Confiscations 131 VII The Abyss 162 VIII The Anglo-Irish Parliament . 189 IX The Union and the Repeal Movement . 229 X The Land War 261 XI The Coming of Sinn Fein 332 XII The Irish Republic 370 Index 397 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Ancient Irish Archer, Kings and Harper .... 15 Great Cross of Monasterboice 45 John Scotus Erigena 47 The Ardagh Chalice 50 The Vikings Come 59 Ireland— 1171 63 Norman Soldiers 70 Ireland Under Henry VIII 110 Hugh O'Neill 124 Pre-Cromwellian Confiscations 136 Oliver Cromwell .147 Patrick Sarsfield 159 William of Orange 164 Henry Grattan , .... 181 Parliament House 188 Theobald Wolfe Tone 204 Lord Edward Fitzgerald ........ 220 An Irish Insurgent of 1798 ....... 223 Robert Emmet 241 ix x List of Illustrations PAGB Daniel O'Connell 248 John Mitchel " 263 William E. Gladstone 283 Charles Stewart Parnell 294 Michael Davitt 298 John E. Redmond 344 Horace Plunkett 347 Arthur Griffith 359 James Connolly 361 Roger David Casement 373 Padraic H. Pearse 376 Ulster Showing Parliamentary Divisions .... 379 Eamon de Valera 387 Michael Collins ,,.... 389 THE STORY OF THE IRISH NATION THE STORY OF THE IRISH NATION CHAPTER I THE GAELIC PERIOD I PAGAN ON a fine day in the Wicklow Mountains you can survey half Ireland. You can look as far north as the lovely Mourne range in Ulster, and on the other hand as far south as the tip of Wexford, framed in a bright sea. To take in the full scope of the Irish story you must climb to some similar height in imagination, some height from which narrow boundaries are released, and the prospect becomes emotionally open. To find this emi- nence, it is perhaps best to go back a few thousand years. Here it is no longer history, as we know it nationally and politically, that takes us by the hand. It is the much calmer genius of science. 3 The Story of the Irish Nation From this remote period one can construct no cer- tain narrative. There is only the wavering accent of tradition, the hint of geology and anthropology, the literal "footprints on the sands of time." But by great luck we happen to have preserved in Gaelic the oldest existing body of Northern literature. From this literature we are able to judge or guess at the types of men who stand on the sky-line of Irish history. This Gaelic past is of intense interest, not only because so many records and memorials of it exist, but because the Irish people to-day are in such vivid rela- tion to their past. Like all invaded and suppressed peoples, they have been repeatedly informed that their past is wild, obscure, and barbaric; they have been encouraged to forget it. But the past swings the fu- ture into being. The present key to Ireland is in the Gaelic period which flourished so nobly in pagan times, and so generously in the Christian period that followed Patrick. This civilization, however, is not mon- strously peculiar or archaic. The Irish are not racially separate from Europe. Their history is a vital part of European history. By an accident of political and economic suppression the Irish people have been forced for centuries to turn all their energies into making a fight for survival. But, for centuries, like a river that The Gaelic Period: Pagan has been dammed and forced out of its channel, the Irish nation has at last pushed through its unnatural obstacle, established its continuity, and begun to flow in freedom. Hence the head-waters of Gaelic civilization are more important to examine than ever. To begin with the earlier human inhabitants of Ire- land, it is by no means established that they were all of one racial stock. It was dark Mediterranean people, we are told, who worshiped around the glacial boulders which still remain. It was broad-headed "Beaker" people who erected the great burial mounds and laboriously decorated the memorial stones. These prehistoric inhabitants of Ireland are hardly dis- cernible. They are vaguely known as Iberians and as Picts. Descendants of early tribes—wiry, black- haired Sicilian-like—are still to be met in stony Connacht. Perhaps these are "Iberians. " Once it was supposed that the famous chronologies of the pagan kings had historical value and gave a clue to the pre-Celtic Irish, but it now appears that their lists of dates and mon- archs were compiled on the model of the Old Testa- ment after Christianity had come to Ireland. But 5 — The Story of the Irish Nation much is to be inferred from the unwritten records from the burial mounds and the big memorial stones and the Druidical circles which are still, to our won- derment, sprinkled over Ireland. On a stone at New Grange there is to be seen the spiral that came from the JEgean, traced by some pre-Celtic hand about 1500 b. c. Near-by in royal Meath are the many hillocks which the fear and awe of a later age raised to the Old Men. Under a seventy-foot mound at New Grange, with a circle of stones outside, one may now climb down to the mysterious set of chambers in which the pre-Celtic chiefs were first buried. Here, up to the time of Christianity, the pagan kings were laid, sometimes in urns and sometimes lengthwise and sometimes standing up, in full armor and face toward the enemy. The early race of men came to be called Firbolg, or "men of the bags." In these bags, it is recorded, the Greeks, so-called, compelled the Firbolg to haul loam for their hillside gardens. Revolting against their slavery, the Firbolg escaped from their Mediterranean masters, making boats out of their bags. However dim this legend, the first man of the present surviving type certainly came to Ireland oversea, so one may fairly picture the Firbolg sailing to their new country as Lucan pictured the Briton: 6 ; The Gaelic Period: Pagan The moistened osier of the hoary willow Is woven first into a little boat Then, clothed in bullock's hide, upon the billow Of a proud river lightly doth it float Under the waterman: So on the lakes of overswelling Po Sails the Venetian; and the Briton so On the outspread ocean. Here, as so often, the poet is the antique historian. On the west coast of Ireland the little boat "clothed in bullock's hide" is still in use. But there are other memorials of the bagmen. There is a legend that they fought a great battle for survival against powerful new-comers in County Mayo, near Cong. On this ground to-day there are five groups of stone circles, besides a number of burial cairns, which may indicate a battle-field or simply a cemetery. One of these cairns, however, has always been known as the "Cairn of the One Man." Eochy, the king of the Firbolg, was bathing in the opening of an under- ground river that still connects Lough Mask and Lough Corrib. Three of the enemy came upon him and demanded his surrender, but before they had taken him his own body-servant arrived and, at the cost of his life, fought and slew all three. The legend declares that in this "Cairn of the One Man," the king, with great honor, buried his servant. And when this grave was opened, in the middle of last century, by Sir Wil- 7 The Story of the Irish Nation liam Wilde, father of Oscar Wilde, a single urn was found inside which once had held a man's bones. The Firbolg, then, were the primitive stock, and when the Celts or Gaels came oversea to Ireland about 350 b. c. (in the so-called Iron Age), they were met, as Pilgrim Fathers always seem to be met, by a group of "natives." These natives of 350 b.

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