The Irish Race in the Past and the Present

by Augustus J. Thébaud

At first sight, the Celtic system appears, in one respect at least, inferior to that which prevailed throughout the rest of Europe: the simple clansmen could never indulge in the hope of attaining to the chieftainship, being naturally excluded from that high office. Only the actual members of the chieftain's own family could hope to succeed him after his death, by election, and take the lead of the sept; thus nobility was entirely exclusive, and regulated by the very laws of Nature. The office was really not transferable, and no degree of exertion, of whatever nature, could win it for any person born out of the one family. But the difference was scarcely one in fact; and we know how illusory, often was that ambition which the system of merit inspired in the man born of an inferior class in other races than the Celtic. The broad assertion, that no man could rise from the condition in which he happened to be born, remains true for nearly all cases.

But, on the other hand, there were motives of ambition besides that of becoming chieftain, or entering on the road thereto, by being admitted into the ranks of the nobility, which lay open to the Celt; and if the desire of a mere clansman to become a chieftain lay within the bounds of possibility, the social state of Celtic countries would have been broken up and become intolerable, and society would have been dissolved into its primitive elements. Two considerations of importance:

The whole of Irish history teaches one lesson, or, rather, impresses one fact: that every member of a clan took as much pride in the sept to which he belonged, and labored as zealously for its head, as he could have done had the advantage turned all to himself. The peculiar features engendered by the system were such that each man identified himself with the whole tribe and particularly with its leader; and this is easily understood, as we see the same sort of feeling existing to-day among families. It is in the very essence of natural ties to merge the individual in the community to which he belongs, as in questions which affect the whole family to merge self in the whole, to forget one's own identity, to be ready for any sacrifice, particularly when the sacrifice is called forth in defence of a beloved parent.

To judge by the ancient annals of Ireland which are accessible, this was undoubtedly the sentiment pervading Celtic clans, and it is easy to conceive how, under such conditions, ambitious thoughts of the chieftainship or nobility could not well enter there. Moreover, we repeat, had such ambitious thoughts been within the compass of realization, the whole system would have been destroyed.

The greatest source of quarrels, feuds, wars, and general calamities among the Irish people, was the insane aspiration among the inferior members of a chieftain's family after supreme power. The institution of Tanist, or heir-apparent, particularly, which was general for all offices, from the highest to the lowest, was a constant source of trouble and contention to septs which, without it, would have remained united and in harmony. Montalembert has well said that it seems as if an incurable fatality accompanied the Irish everywhere, and condemned nearly all the highest among them to have their blood shed either by others or by their own hand, and that few indeed are those renowned chieftains and kings who died quietly in their beds. Their annals are filled throughout with tales of blood; and, when we know of their strong attachment to religion, of their tenderheartedness for women, children, old and feeble men, it is hard to conceive how they came to shed blood so often, and show themselves proof against the simplest claims of humanity.

But the difficulty is sufficiently explained by their own annals and the state of society under which they lived. The Tanistry was the great source of all those evils. The position of a chieftain was so honorable, so influential, and powerful, that all natural sentiments, even those of family affection, were often extinguished by the insane ambition of attaining to it, in those whom Nature had set on the road toward it.

It looks like a contradiction, yet nothing is so well established as their deep affection for their near relatives and the fury engendered against their nearest of kin when allured by the prospect of the chieftainship. What the case might have been, had all the inferior clansmen been influenced by the same motive, one shudders to think. Happily the possibility of such a position was denied them, and thus were they spared all the crime and horrors which it entailed. Let us now turn to the fall of the Irish nobility, in order to see how that fall was final and decisive, leaving little or no room for the hope of their resurrection.

The great wars of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth upon the island often drove some of the Irish chieftains to quit their country for a time; a thing scarcely ever known before, where the Pale was so contracted and the power of the English kings so limited. But those first voyages of Irish lords to foreign countries had generally no other destination than England itself, whither they sometimes repaired to justify themselves in the presence of the sovereign against the imputations of their enemies, or to pay court to him for the purpose of obtaining some coveted object. Occasionally their children were brought up at the English court, either with the view of instilling Protestantism into their artless minds, or to make them friends of England, so that many of them thus became king's or queen's men. In this manner the Irish nobility first came to look out beyond their own country.

When, as events went on, some great family was crushed or nearly so, as were the Kildares by Henry Tudor and the Geraldines by Elizabeth, the outraged nobility began to think of foreign alliances, and cast their eyes abroad over Spain, Belgium, or France, above all toward Rome, which was the centre of their religion, attachment to which was one of their chief crimes, where the Holy Father was ever ready to encourage and receive them with open arms, Thus history tells us of the narrow escape of young Gerald Desmond.

He was still a child of twelve years, and the sole survivor of the historic house of Kildare, when his life was sought after with an eagerness which resembled that of Herod, but the devotion of his clansmen defeated all attempts at his capture. "Alternately the guest of his aunts, married to the daughter of the chief of Offaly and Donegal, the sympathy everywhere felt for him lead to a confederacy between the northern and southern chieftains, which had long been felt wanting, and never could be accomplished. A loose league was formed, including the O'Neills of both branches, O'Donnell, O'Brien, the Earl of Desmond, and the chiefs of Moylurg and Breffni. The child, object of so much natural and chivalrous affection, was harbored for a time in Munster; then transported, through Connaught, into Donegal; and finally, after four years, in which he engaged more the minds of the statesmen than any other individual under the rank of royalty, he was safely landed in France."-(A. M. O'Sullivan.)