Many years ago a mission priest delivered a sermon in Irish in the bare white chapel that stands high on a hill above Ross Lake. I remember one sentence, translated for me by one of the congregation.
“Oh black seas of Eternity, without height or depth, bay, brink, or shore! How can anyone look into your depths and neglect the salvation of his soul!”[2]
It expresses all that need now be remembered of the Phœnix Park murders.
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CHAPTER II
“THE CHIEF”
It is a commonplace, even amounting to a bromide, to speak of the breadth, the depth, and the length of the ties of Irish kinship. In Ireland it is not so much Love that hath us in the net as Relationship. Pedigree takes precedence even of politics, and in all affairs that matter it governs unquestioned. It is sufficient to say that the candidate for any post, in any walk of life—is “a cousin of me own, by the Father”—“a sort of a relation o’ mine, by the Mother”—and support of the unfittest is condoned, even justified.
I am uncertain if the practice of deifying a relationship by the employment of the definite article is peculiar to Munster, or even to Ireland. “The fawther,” “the a’nt.” He who speaks to me of my father as “The Fawther,” implies a sort of humorous intimacy, a respect just tinged with facetiousness, that is quite lacking in the severe directness of “your father.”
There was once a high magnate of a self-satisfied provincial town (its identity is negligible). An exhibition was presently to be held there, and it chanced that a visit from Royalty occurred shortly before the completion of the arrangements. It also chanced that a possible visit to Ireland of a still greater Personage impended—(this was several years ago). The lesser Royalty partook of lunch with the magnate, and the latter broached the question of a State opening of the exhibition by the august visitor to be.
“When ye go back to London, now,” he beguiled, “coax the Brother!”