This will perhaps be ... it is probable that ... it can only be surmised that ... we are almost tempted to suspect that ... we may perhaps hazard the supposition that ... would probably have been ... it might be held that ... we might perhaps identify, etc., etc. (pp. ccii.-ccvi.).
The fact is that, as I have said, this preface is really the fruit of a habit of mind, a mental twist, which distorts the writer’s vision, and seems to impel him, irresistibly, to arrive at the wrong conclusion.[338] We trace this singular tendency throughout, but its effect has nowhere proved more disastrous than in his treatment of these returns to the great “Inquest of Sheriffs.” That these records should have been so treated in the first work that gives them to the world is a really lamentable matter.
VII
The Conquest of Ireland[339]
A brilliant but paradoxical writer—I refer to Mr. Standish O’Grady—has, with unerring hand, sketched for us the state of Ireland when as yet the Norman adventurer had not set foot upon her shores.[340] To those who dream of a golden age, of a land in the enjoyment of peace and happiness till invaded by the ruthless stranger, the scene his pen reveals should prove a rude awakening. That Mr. O’Grady writes with unrivalled knowledge of his subject, is neither his only nor his chief claim to the confidence of those we speak of: they are more likely to be influenced by the fact that his sympathies are all with the Irish, that he cannot conceal his admiration for government by ‘battle-axe,’ and that he strives to justify what to English eyes could be nothing but a glorified Donnybrook Fair. He is wrathful with Mr. Freeman for picturing Ireland as only “the scene of waste tribal confusions, aimless flockings and fightings, a wilderness tenanted by wolves and wolfish men,” and claims that her history, in each generation, was at this time “that of some half-dozen strong men striving for the mastery ... a most salutary warfare, inevitable, indispensable, enjoined by nature herself.”
No! Freedom, whose smile we shall never resign,
Go, tell our invaders, the Danes,
That ’tis sweeter to bleed for an age at thy shrine
Than to sleep but a moment in chains.
If we cannot agree with this able champion in viewing the warfare he describes as a healthy process of evolution, we may at least gladly admit that some knowledge of this dark period, lighted only by the lurid torch of rapine and internecine strife, is as essential to a right understanding of the Anglo-Norman settlement as is the study of English history, for some generations before the Conquest, the necessary prelude to a comprehension of the Norman Conquest itself.
It is not, however, for the Conquest only that this knowledge of the true state of Ireland ought to be acquired. The light it throws on the Irish people, their inherited and unchangeable tendencies, is of value from the parallel it presents to the latest modern developments. “Tribes and nations,” writes Mr. O’Grady, “had ceased to count”; the struggle was one in which, “released from all control,” some half a dozen rival kings “fiercely battled like bulls for the mastery of the herd.” No lively imagination, surely, is required to see the spirit of this strife renewed in the leaders of the present Irish party, or prophesy a revival, under Home Rule, of the days when “Turlough O’Conor and Tiernan O’Rourke were terribly at war—Ireland (the chronicler adds) a shaking sod between them.” Although, in the true Hibernian spirit, Mr. Standish O’Grady can speak of this as a “vast and bloody, but not ignoble strife,” I hold that its animating spirit was an ambition as ruthlessly personal as that which leads the Presidents of South American Republics to wade through blood to power, and to reduce their country to ‘a shaking sod’ for the gratification of their rivalry. It is the absolutely personal character of this strife which is fatal to Mr. O’Grady’s argument that a strong ‘Ardriship,’ or central rule, was in actual process of evolution before the invaders arrived. Where that rule was based only on personal prowess or strength of character, it was liable, at any moment, to be broken up by death, and once more replaced, if not by anarchy, at least by such internecine strife as has been the fate of Mr. Parnell’s party since the removal of his strong hand. There was, as Mr. O’Grady is never tired of reminding us, but one way, in those halcyon days, of securing the hegemony of Ireland: “a normal Irish king had to clear his way through the provinces, battle-axe in hand, gathering hostages by the strength of his arm”; he had to “move forward step by step, battle-axing territory after territory into submission.” The only vote known was given by “the mouth of the battle-axe”; and for the dissentient Irishmen of the time there were “always ready battle-axes and trained troops of swift raiders and plunderers.” Nor was it necessary for the Irish king to set his “trained plunderers and cattle drivers” at work on every occasion. The convenient and recognised institution of hostages provided him with some one he could hang or blind without the least trouble, and thus anticipate the fate which might very probably be his own.