The Old Irish World

by Alice Stopford Green

Then there was Irish dancing and singing on the little platform, with the grey wall of the castle as a background and the waving ivy branches and tree shadows in the limelight, a scene of marvellous light and shade. But the great moment of all came when a huge Irish flag was flung out on the night wind from the Columba tower. I have never seen so magic a sight. Lights blazed from the castle-roof, rockets flamed across the sky, and in the midst suddenly appeared like a vision among the host of stars (for no flag-staff could be seen against the night-sky) a gleaming golden harp hanging secure in immensity, crossed and re-crossed by balls and flames of fire, so that it seemed to escape only by a miracle.

How did Ardglass and Lecale take this revival of its older fame? That sight was not less striking than the vision on the tower. Every cottage in the village had candles set in its windows. The fisher-boats in the harbour were alight; they flew flags too, and Irish flags, as many as could get them. For hours crowds climbed and descended the narrow winding staircase in the castle turret, lighted by candles fixed in old Ulster iron holders. They thronged the rooms, themselves the guardians of all the treasures lying on the benches and shelves and suspended on the walls. When they drew aside the light curtain before the oratory and entered in, they prostrated themselves, kneeling in prayer, and came out with tears in their eyes. Young men looked at Shane O’Neill, and looked again, and took off their hats. As in other Irish gatherings where I have been, sobriety and good manners distinguished the crowd, very visible and audible to me from my little hotel fronting the castle where the visitors flocked for refreshment, under my window opening on the one street of the village. Strangers dispersed about eleven o’clock, but men of the village sat round the fire of the old guard-room for hours after, singing songs of Ireland endlessly. There was no host, and no master of the ceremonies. The castle was left absolutely to the people. Anyone who would came in. They sang, and sang, the sorrowful decadent songs of modern Ireland—songs of famine, emigration, lamentation, and woe. But still they sang of Ireland.

The next day was Sunday. The parish priest, many years among his people, shared in the joy of the festival, in the new interest come to break the long monotony of their life, and in the widening and lifting of their emotion. He preached twice on the restoration to them of their castle, and on their duty to hold it sacred, and to act with courtesy and good breeding when they entered it. He gave the children freedom from Sunday School that they might see the Irish flag flown from the tower at noon; and boys and girls poured laughing down the street. All that day, from morning till night, without a pause, lines of village and country folk filed up and down the turret stairs, holding to the rope, kept taut by its old stone weight, that served as balustrade. Protestants were intermingled with Catholics, as one could see by the badges of their societies, in a common enthusiasm for the memories of the country which was theirs. Two admirable little girls of nine and fourteen installed themselves as handmaids and hostesses of the castle, and might be seen all day carrying water to the cauldron, making tea, giving hospitality to visitors—their first free service to Ireland. At night, men and women of the village came into the guard-room and banquet-hall, and sang and sang of Ireland. They did not even smoke. One after another sang till one o’clock. One or two sentimental ditties turned up, on Shannon’s shores and Killarney’s lakes, of the feeble artificial sort favoured by so-called “National Schools,” but these found little encouragement. Many evenings since, the guard-room has been filled with villagers, and singing and old-time lore abound. Many bring presents and leave them with scarce a word; and the old oratory has not been left without gifts and flowers. Nowhere has a pin been disturbed, or a trifle broken or injured. The battlements and the glorious view are a delight to all. They examine and point out to each other the old devices, the flint weapons and the bronze, the Celtic emblems and memorials, and the Elizabethan and Volunteer arms that lie about. The people have a new pride put in them, and are learning to be their own Conservators and Board of Works.

The Bishop of Ossory has lately given us all to understand that the Church of Ireland, boasting itself to be the highest, perhaps the sole, regenerating force in the country, is at this crisis altogether absorbed in anxious contemplation of the supposed danger from the people of Ireland to its property. A material preoccupation, at such a pitch, induces a multitude of unreasoning timidities, fantastic safeguards, and voluntary solitudes. It is true, indeed, that it was only “property” in a spiritual sense which the people of Ardglass had got that day. But in that higher sense they had been given that which every Irishman lacks—something of their own. No Englishman can picture to himself that lack. He has never had it. But with us it is an old story. If the people ask to learn Irish—“Here is arithmetic; that will suit you better.” They would like something of Irish history—“I assure you that it is German grammar which you really wish to ask for.” If the talk is of schools or fisheries—“The English Treasury will see that you do not waste money on school-house or steam trawler.” Their very names are not their own. A Belfast bank the other day refused the life-long signature on a cheque of a well-known Irish writer because he signed, in English letters indeed, but with his customary Irish spelling of Padraic, and required instead the conventional English Patrick. Who can tell the needless restrictions and trivialities and imposed fashions that check expansion, experiment, and freedom of mind? A dreary emptiness has been stretched over the vivid natures of Irishmen. What is there left for them to love? Is it any wonder they desire something they may call their own? It may be that “Loyalists” imagine that a longer continuance of such destitution will end at last in a lively passion for Englishmen and the Empire. Or, perhaps, it is the Unionist idea that an enforced apathy indefinitely continued will produce the fate that comes on men doomed to imprisonment for life in solitary confinement, when after long years thought and speech are gone, and idiot prisoners may mingle harmlessly together.

While the castle was repairing at Ardglass, an Irish visitor watched the fishermen leaning on the sea-wall. Every half-hour one might drop a word. They were passing the time as only fishermen know how. As to the castle, they looked as oblivious to it as to everything else. After watching for some time, the Irish visitor casually passed one of them, dropping an indifferent remark: “What’s the meaning of all this?” “It’s comin’,” said the fisherman. “We’re too long held in chains”—and fell back into silence.

NOTE.

Bodley’s visit to Lecale, preserved in a Latin MSS. in the British Museum, has been printed with a translation in the Old Ulster Journal of Archæology II. 73. The account is concerned with six officers of high rank and fame in the veteran army of Elizabeth. The writer, Captain Bodley, brother of the founder of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, was commanding officer at Armagh, commissioned to raise fortifications or entrenchments for the army—“a very honest fellow with a black beard,” he describes himself. His companion Captain Toby Caulfield, who had fought at Carlingford and Kinsale, was the first Governor in 1602 of the new fort of Charlemont, and Governor in 1603 of the counties of Armagh and Tyrone, where he made good use of his opportunities, a skilful appropriator of lands, who secured for himself grants in nine counties, and the wealth on which the earldom of Charlemont was established. Captain John Jephson had rescued the remnant of the British army caught in the pass of the Curlew Mountains in 1599: he gained the Mallow estate by marriage with the daughter of Norreys, President of Munster. Captain Adderton, whom they picked up on the way, had distinguished himself in the Wicklow wars, and was now Governor of the newly-built fort of Mount-norris, on the road from Armagh to Newry.

Their host at Downpatrick, Sir Richard Moryson, one of the chief friends of Mountjoy, had fought in Leix and at Kinsale, was now Governor of Lecale, and this same year (1603) was promoted Governor of Waterford, and later (1607), President of Munster. With him was Captain Ralph Constable, who had followed all his campaigns from Kinsale to the Blackwater.

Four of the six, Moryson, Bodley, Jephson, and Caulfield, had been comrades in the campaigns of the Low Countries a few years before, and were among the companies of soldiers which were drafted over from the Netherlands to Ireland to strengthen the armies of Essex and Mountjoy. They were men who prospered in Irish wars—keen soldiers, and as keen dividers of lands and offices in the new country, deeply concerned in plantations and confiscations.