But here lies the fact which supplies the contrast between Spaniards and Irish, a contrast within the similarity which classed the two together, as countries seen by foreigners. The latter's disillusion was produced by the barbarism interwoven with the civilisation of Spain, but, in Ireland, by the civilisation co-existent with the known barbarism. It was a perpetual surprise to all visitors to find many of the individuals of a society that persisted in the crudest and rudest way of living, showing a force of intelligence and character, and in certain ways a refinement and a degree of education, which seemed to presuppose all the advantages that the best of European surroundings and training had to give.
Most are content just to note these and other contrasts; the sum of their opinion as regarded the people being: "If they be bad you shall nowhere meet with worse; if they be good you shall hardly find better."[67] Of experience of this, Captain Cuellar's narrative stands out as a quintessential example. It is equally handy for those who wish to prove the Irish the most charming, or the most abominable, nation that ever existed. He found them equally ready to strip him and to feed him, to wound and to heal, to betray and to shelter, to make him at home and to make him work. Compare with this the conclusions of an impartial Italian[68] seventy years earlier. The women he found very beautiful and white, but dirty; the people generally, very religious, yet do not consider stealing a sin. He was given to understand that Irish people looked down on such as were averse to share and share alike as regards the blessings of fortune, and certainly came across many on the road anxious to give effect to communistic theories; these he terms robbers.
Aliens of a philosophic turn of mind, after passing through the state of surprise, not so much, even, at their being this or that, as at their being content or able to continue to be both at once, turned to looking for reasons. The foreigner who brought to bear on this question as great an amount of knowledge, experience, and fair-mindedness as any was Sir John Davies, who, in his "Discovery," after referring to the Irishman's "contempt and scorn of all things necessary for the civil life of man," goes on, "for though the Irishry be a nation of great antiquity and wanted neither art nor valour and ... were lovers of music and poetry, and all kinds of learning, and possessed a land abounding with all things necessary; yet ... I dare say boldly that never any person did build any stone or brick house for his private habitation, but such as have lately obtained estates according to the course of the law of England. Neither did any of them in all this time plant any gardens or orchards, enclose or improve their lands, live together in settled villages or towns, nor make any provision for posterity; which being against all common sense and reason, must needs be imputed to those unreasonable customs which made their estates so uncertain and transitory in their possessions."
If Sir John Davies thought thus, it is not surprising that hastier foreigners who had less knowledge of the ancient Irish civilisation, thought so too. We have just seen how, with regard to Spain, a history made up of the imaginary glories of an imaginary past helped to give the foreigner so high an idea of the individuals of the nation that the reality came as a shock. Here in Ireland, in this matter as in others, was a similarity with a difference. However true it may be that the Irish suffered from a radical lack of adaptability to modern conditions, the defects of it were undoubtedly heightened in the eyes of strangers by the latter's ignorance of the conditions that the Irish could accept, the Brehon laws, for instance, and all that they imply, especially the check on their misuse by means of public opinion.
AN IRISH DINNER
Two features, however, were almost invariably commended: Irish harping and Irish girls. And the latter were at no disadvantage among the foreigners, since even in the far west which Captain Cuellar visited, they spoke Latin fluently, although content with one garment, often with less. The only fault that could be found with them was that of growing older as years went on, for to see an old Irishwoman before breakfast was, says Moryson, enough to turn a man's stomach. The country, too, received unlimited praise, with one abatement here also: in respect of its wetness; greater then than now, it may be said with some certainty.[69] Lithgow, in particular, when he visited "this sequestrate and most auspicuous monarchy," in 1619, discovered there "more Rivers, Lakes, Brooks, Strands, Quagmires, Bogs, and Marshes than in all Christendom besides." In five months he ruined six horses and was himself more tired than any of them.
Great, however, were the fetiches, and they prevailed. The essentials of life, as they appeared to the Irishman, and as they appeared to most Europeans, differed so utterly, and the reasons underlying the differences were so unrealisable to each other, that Ireland remained comparatively unvisited on account of its lack of the kind of interest for which travellers felt themselves bound to look. So, at least, the balance of the evidence seems to show, but the evidence is as conflicting here as in relation to everything else to do with Ireland. While the Bollandist fathers affirm that fifteen hundred foreigners made the pilgrimage to St. Patrick's Purgatory during the "Counter-Reformation,"[70] the native contemporary Catholic, Phillip O'Sullivan, living at Madrid, had to go back beyond the memory of living man for the written account of such a pilgrimage with which he wished to preface his history of the struggle against England. Or again, the excellent knowledge the Irish leaders in this struggle received of foreign affairs presupposes a great deal of going to and fro; yet De Thou, in a letter dated 1605,[71] by which date he had been working at his history of his own times for many years and was well known as a man worth helping to correspondents all over Europe, writes that he has not hitherto come across any one who has personal knowledge of Ireland nor even any one who has talked with some one who has been there.
Neither are there nearly so many casual references to visitors as one chances on with regard to other countries. Two exceptions which suggest the likelihood of others are, however, to be found mentioned in the correspondence between the English Privy Council and the Deputy at Dublin.[72] In 1572 the latter announces the arrival of three German earls with one Mr. Rogers, their guide, adding, to Lord Burghley, "according to your directions, they shall travel as little way into the country as I can manage." This is explained by the second reference, seven years later, when three more Germans come across with letters of introduction from the Privy Council, who half suspect them, young though they are, of being spies. But after the close of this period, in 1666, we find a Frenchman[73] noting that the Provost of Trinity College "seemed astonished that out of mere curiosity I should come to see Ireland, which is a country so retired and almost unknown to foreign travellers."