The English name or title has not a place in the Irish language, no, nor has it caught on to the Irish tongue yet. Neither has it a place in the Irish heart. Notwithstanding all that English laws have done to blot Irish history, the Irish people, in the Irish language, still hold their own.
That is why England has tried hard to kill the Irish language. Some of my readers may think she is encouraging the cultivation of it now. She is not; she doesn’t mean it; her heart is not in the professions she is making, no more than was the heart of my hen blackbird Gladstone in the professions about home rule that he was making for Ireland for the past twenty years.
Yes, ’tis twenty years now since he made that Mid-Lothian speech, in which he said “Ireland should be governed according to Irish ideas.” He was out of office then. But, shortly after, he came into office, and he put thousands of Irishmen into prison for having them dare to think they ought to be governed by Irish ideas. And he kicked the Irish members out of the English House of Commons for having them dare to think Ireland should be governed according to Irish ideas.
’Tis my mother and father, God be good to them, that had the true Irish natural feeling about those Englishmen governing Ireland.
I can see now how relieved they felt whenever they’d hear of a landlord being shot in Tipperary or anywhere else in Ireland.
It was like an instinct with them that an enemy of theirs had been done away with. That kind of instinct is in the whole Irish race to-day, and if the power that supports landlordism in Ireland could be stricken down, there would be a general jubilee of rejoicing in the land. Until it is stricken down, there is no freedom, no home rule for Ireland.
Going into the town of Bandon one day, I overtook on the road a man who had a car-load of hay. At the right hand side of the road was the demesne of Lord Bandon. I was on horseback, and was high enough to see over the wall, the mansion called Castle Bernard in the demesne. “Go d’ aon caislean e sin thall ansann?” (what castle is that over there) said I. “Caislean ui Mhahoona” (O’Mahony’s castle) said he. The O’Mahonys are out of it, on a tramp through the world; the Bernards are in it, and are lords of Bandon. And these are the lords that administer the English laws to the people they have plundered. Take the present day, and look at the list of grand jurors that are summoned the two seasons of the year in every county in Ireland. They are the plunderers who hold the lands and castles of the plundered people, and they sit in judgment on the children of those to whom the lands and castles belonged. And these children, in cases of difficulties with the law, have to be running after the makers of that law for influence to get them out of the troubles that eternally surround them.
One of the fireside stories that got into my mind when I was a child was the story of a bill of indictment against my people, the time of the “White boys.”
These “White boys” came into the bleach-field one night, and washed their faces in the stream that ran by it, and dried themselves with the linen that was bleaching in the field. Whatever offence the White boys were charged with, my people were put into the indictment with them, either as participants or sympathizers, or as assisting in the escape of criminals who had committed offences. It was considered they knew who blackened the linen, and they should be punished as they wouldn’t tell on them. My grandfather, after using all the influence of all the friends, had got some letters from the lords and landlords around to the grand jury of the Cork assizes. He had them one evening, and he should be in Cork city at ten o’clock next morning. There were no trains running anywhere at that time. He got on horseback, and galloped to Rossmore. He got a fresh horse at Rossmore. Then he galloped on to Ballineen and got another fresh horse there; then another in Bandon, and another in Ballinhassig that landed him at Cork city courthouse before ten o’clock in the morning. He gave in his letters to the grand jury, waited a few hours, and returned home with the news that the bills were “ignored.” That is; that the grand jury “threw out” the bills and did not follow up the prosecution of the case against the people who owned the bleach.