Then by the memory of all who fell in holy Ireland’s fight,
Through Famine’s pangs, by steel or rope, we lift our hands and swear to-night
To keep our banner still aloft, through calm and storm, through good and ill,
Until the blaze of freedom’s sun illumines every Irish hill.
Let those who will pay tribute still to alien laws and foreign throne,
Ireland shall see a Jubilee and sing Te Deums of her own.
AN ORANGE ORATION.
IN no country in either the civilized or the barbaric world can we find the counter-type of the Irish Orangeman. In France, Frenchmen are Frenchmen, whatever may be their religious faith. The Catholic from Bavaria fought side by side with the Prussian Lutheran, when German independence was assailed. When the White Czar summons his legions to the defence of the Russian Empire, the peasant who follows the tenets of the Greek Church takes his place under the eagle standard alongside the persecuted believer in the faith of Rome. The English Catholics are as steadfast in their support of the “meteor flag of Old England” as any of the believers in the motley creeds of that much-religious nation—Methodists, Calvinists, Wesleyans, Presbyterians, Unitarians, Baptists, Episcopalians, or Jumpers. In Ireland alone in this tolerant nineteenth century do we find religious bigotry so ineradical, so irrepressible, so stupid as to be beyond the reach of persuasion and the voice of reason. A condemnation of Orangeism is unnecessary, but a description of one of its votaries may be interesting. Nobody falls in love with a two-headed chimpanzee or a double-tailed baboon, but they are valuable accessories to a dime museum. By and by the Orangeman will find his natural place in a side-show, but in the mean time, for the benefit of future Barnums and Forepaughs, we will sketch the prominent features, personal and historical, of one of the tribe.
Billy Macshiver was born in one of those out-of-the-way villages in Antrim, into which neither intelligence nor common sense has so far penetrated. His father was the hero of many a fierce sectarian strife, as the countless bruises he bore upon his venerable scalp could well testify. From his earliest infancy Billy was taught hatred of everything connected with Catholicity. He was told that the cross was a symbol of superstition, a Catholic church the temple of Lucifer, a Catholic priest a stray fiend who had escaped from Limbo, and the “Papists” generally a lot of poor, benighted idiots, especially created by a benign Providence to afford skulls for himself and his confreres to crack. He learned that England was the most Protestant nation in the world, and consequently the greatest; that the “Boyne Water” was the grandest musical composition of this or any other age; and that the Rev. R. R. Kane, a notorious Orange firebrand, was a second St. Paul. He had been taught to shun everything green as he would the small-pox—there was only one color for a devout Christian to patronize—orange. God had not decorated the trees and fields with orange, because he had reserved that beautiful tint for a chosen few, and didn’t wish it to be too common. Of course, when Billy reached the years of maturity he joined the clan in whose ranks his father’s head had so often been bandaged. He became an Orangeman of the deepest purple dye. He mounted Orange lilies, natural and artificial, resplendent and faded, in the button-hole nearest his heart, on every available opportunity. He learned to play “Croppers, lie down” on the concertina, and to master the mysteries of the jew’s-harp to the stirring anthem of “Protestant Boys.” He led insane processions on every 12th of July, and won endless glory by “knocking out” an old woman who declined to shout “To h—with the Pope” at his modest request.
He is now grand master of an Orange lodge. He is a skilful rhetorician, of course. I quote his last 12th of July speech, to show the stuff that awakens the enthusiasm of his class:—
“Brethren—We have met once more to commemorate to-night the memory of the great, the glorious, the pious, and the—the—the Orange-headed William, and in rising to propose the toast of his immortal memory, I—I—as a matter of fact I—I—get upon my feet. (Cheers.) At no time in the history of Orangeism did there exist a greater necessity to—to—to, in short—drink his memory—that is to say, to drink—to drink—to—oh, you know what I mean. (Tumultuous applause.) The papishes are abroad like roaring lions seeking whom they may devour. Shall they swallow us? (Loud cries of ‘No.’) Our Church has been disestablished, and Mr. Gladstone has kissed the Pope’s toe. (Shame.) Yes, shame; but are there not thousands of Orangemen prepared to wipe out with their toes—their big toes—upon the most fleshy part of Gladstone’s carcass this—this—this insult to Christianity? (Loud applause.) They have put down, to a certain extent, our gay and festive and hilarious gatherings, which used to strike terror to the souls—of—of—well, they struck terror all round to somebody or other. (Hear, hear.) The tyrants won’t allow us to remove the idols from Israel by wrecking any more nunneries. The despots forbid us to let the light of the gospel into Papists’ heads with bludgeons any longer. (Groans.) The love of God has departed from the English Cabinet, and their brutal mercenaries forbid believers in the Word to damn the Pope for less than forty shillings. (Hisses.) But still, my brethren, we can drink the pious memory of the sainted William for threepence-halfpenny a glass (loud cheers), and whilst we bear the name of men shall a threepenny bit stand between us and our noble duty? (Shouts of Never and No surrender.) Gentlemen, fill your glasses with whiskey and Boyne water. Here’s to the glorious memory of the glorious William; here’s to the glorious constitution he gave us; here’s to the glorious Boyne water, and, I may add, the glorious whiskey with which to-night it is allied; here’s to the glorious Queen of England, the glorious mother of a glorious baker’s dozen; here’s to glorious John Brown, the pillar of the state and the true prototype of Martin Luther; to thunder with the Pope, and hell’s bells, artillery, bombshells, prison cells, death knells, and a variegated assortment of diversified yells ring, swing, cling, and ding forever and ever amen in the ears of Davitt and Parnell.” (Frantic applause and several free fights.)
SONG OF KING ALCOHOL.
WHAT Kaiser, Czar, or King since the birthday of the world
Had a rule so universal as I claim?
What conquering banner yet was so far and wide unfurled
As my ensign of destruction and of shame?
My burning fetters bind every race of human kind;
My dominion rules their bodies not alone,
But heart and soul and brain are encircled by my chain,
And their future, as their present, is my own.
Then clink-a-clink the bottle and chink-a-chink the glass!
Send the tankard round, imps, and let the goblet pass!
Ply the fools with whiskey and fill them up with rum,
Till fiends are hoarse with laughter, and angels stricken dumb.
Talk not to me of Nero, that ancient Roman ass;
His tortured slaves in death at last were free.
But the serf who bears the sway of bottle or of glass
Belongs for all eternity to me.
The bravest man who broke a human tyrant’s yoke,
If he once began to worship at my shrine
Would submit strength, courage, all of his manhood to my thrall,
Lose truth and pluck and honor, and be mine.
Then pass the poison freely, circle round the drink,
Do not give the drunkard time to even think.
In a stupid slumber let his conscience dwell,
Till, too late, ha! ha! it awakens up in hell!
Despots oft are hated: it is not so with me—
Homage pay my bondsmen for their pains;
Common helots struggle madly to be free,
Mine lie down and hug their bitter chains.
My triumph through the years is told in blood and tears,
On the scaffold, in the dungeon’s dreary gloom.
I whet the murderer’s knife—rob mother, children, wife—
And built my horrid throne upon the tomb.
Then let the red wine gurgle, let the whiskey flow,
Satan turns the hose on, for the demons know
God and heaven are lost to the fools who sink
Underneath the sway of that cruel monarch, Drink!