The poor man was overjoyed at the offer while Glorvina betrayed neither surprise nor regret at my intention, but looked first at her father, and then at me, with kindness and gratitude.
Were my heart more at ease, were my confidence in the affections of Glorvina something stronger, I should greatly relish this little tour, but as it is, when I found every thing arranged for my departure, without the concurrence of my own wishes, I could not check my pettishness, and for want of some other mode of venting it, I endeavoured to ridicule a work on the subject of ancient Irish history which the priest was reading aloud, while Glorvina worked, and I was trifling with my pencil.
“What,” said I, after having interrupted him in many different passages, which I thought savoured of natural hyperbole, “what can be more forced than the very supposition of your partial author, that Albion, the most ancient name of Britain, was given it as though it were another or second Ireland, because Banba was one of the ancient names of your country?”
“It may appear to you a forced etymology,” said the priest, “yet it has the sanction of Camden, who first risked the supposition. But it is the fate of our unhappy country to receive as little credit in the present day, for its former celebrity, as for its great antiquity, * although the former is attested by Bede, and many other early British writers, and the latter is authenticated by the testimony of the most ancient Greek authors. For Jervis is mentioned in the Argonautica of Orpheus, long before the name of England is anywhere to be found in Grecian literature. And surely it had scarcely been first mentioned, had it not been first known.”
* It has been the fashion to throw odium on the modern
Irish, by undermining the basis of their ancient history,
and vilifying their ancient national character. If a
historian professes to have acquired his information from
the records of the country whose history he writes, his
accounts are generally admitted as authentic, as the
commentaries of Garcilasso de Vega are considered as the
chief pillars of Peruvian history, though avowed by their
author to have been compiled from the old national ballads
of the country; yet the old writers of Ireland, (the Psalter
of Cashel in particular) though they refer to these ancient
re cords of their country, authenticated by existing manners
and existing habits, are plunged into the oblivion of
contemptuous neglect, or read only to be discredited.
“Then you really suppose,” said I, smiling incredulously, “we are indebted to you for the name of our country?”
“I know,” said the priest, returning my smile, “the fallacies in general of all etymologists, but the only part of your island anciently called by any name that bore the least affinity to Albion, was Scotland, then called Albin, a word of Irish etymology, Albin signifying mountainous, from Alb, a mountain.”
“But, my dear friend,” I replied, “admitting the great antiquity of your country, allowing it to be early inhabited by a lettered and civilized people, and that it was the Nido paterno of western literature when the rest of Europe was involved in darkness; how is it that so few monuments of your ancient learning and genius remain? Where are your manuscripts, your records, your annals, stamped with the seal of antiquity to be found?”
“Manuscripts, annals, and records are not the treasures of a colonized or conquered country,” said the priest; “it is always the policy of the conqueror, or the invader, to destroy those mementi of ancient national splendour which keep alive the spirit of the conquered or the invaded; * the dispersion at various periods ** of many of the most illustrious Irish families into foreign countries, has assisted the depredations of time and policy, in the plunder of her literary treasures; many of them are now mouldering in public and private libraries on the Continent, whither their possessors conveyed them from the destruction which civil war carries with it, and many of them (even so far back as Elizabeth’s day) were conveyed to Denmark. The Danish monarch applied to the English court for some learned men to translate them, and one Donald O’Daly, a person eminently qualified for the task, was actually engaged to perform it, until the illiberality of the English court prevented the intention on the poor plea of its prejudicing the English interest.”
* Sir George Carevy, in the reign of Elizabeth, was accused
of bribing the family historian of the McCarthies to convey
to him some curious MSS. “But what,” says the author of the
Analect, “Carevy did in one province [Munster] Henry Sidney,
and his predecessors did all over the kingdom, being charged
to collect all the manuscripts they could, that they might
effectually destroy every vestige of antiquity and letters
throughout the Kingdom.” And St. Patrick, in his apostolic
zeal, committed to the flames several hundred druidical
volumes.
** Fourteen thousand Irish took advantage of the articles of
Limerick, and bade adieu to their native country forever.