“I know myself that many of our finest and most valuable MSS. are in libraries in France, and have heard, that not a few of them enrich the Vatican at Rome.” *
* In a conversation which passed in Cork between the
author’s father and the celebrated Dr. O’Leary, the latter
said he had once intended to have written a history of
Ireland. And added, “but, in truth, I found, after various
researches, that I could not give such a history as I would
wish should come from my pen, without visiting the
Continent, more particularly Rome, where alone the best
documents for the history of Ireland are to be had. But it
is now too late in the day for me to think of such a journey
or such exertions as the task would require.”
“Mr. O’Halloran informs me [says Mr. Walker, in his Memoirs of the
Irish Bards, p. 141], that he lately got in a collection
from Rome, several poems of the most eminent Bards of last
centuries.”
“But,” said I, “are not many of those MSS. supposed to be monkish impositions?”
“Yes,” replied the priest, “by those who never saw them, and if they did, were too ignorant of the Irish language to judge of their authenticity by the internal evidences they contain.”
“And if they were the works of monks,” said the priest, “Ireland was always allowed to possess at that era the most devout and learned ecclesiastics in Europe, from which circumstance it received its title of Island of Saints. By them, indeed, many histories of the ancient Irish were composed in the early ages of Christianity, but it was certainly from Pagan records and traditions they received their information; besides, I do not think any arguments can be advanced more favourable to the histories, than that the fiction of those histories simply consists in ascribing natural phenomena to supernatural agency.”
“But,” returned I, “granting that your island was the Athens of a certain age, how is the barbarity of the present day to be reconciled with the civilization of the enlightened past?”
“When you talk of our barbarity,” said the priest, “you do not speak as you feel, but as you hear.” I blushed at this mild reproof, and said, “what I now feel for this country, it would not be easy to express, but l have always been taught to look upon the inferior Irish as beings forming an humbler link than humanity in the chain of nature.”
“Yes,” said the priest, “in your country it is usual to attach to that class of society in ours a ferocious disposition amounting to barbarity; but this, with other calumnies, of national indolence, and obstinate ignorance, of want of principle, and want of faith, is unfounded and illiberal; * ‘cruelty,’ says Lord Sheffield, ‘is not in the nature of these people more than of other men, for they have many customs among them which disprove of unnatural indolence, that they are constitutionally of an active nature, and capable of the greatest exertions; and of as good dispositions as any nation in the same state of improvement; their generosity, hospitality, and bravery are proverbial; intelligence and zeal in whatever they undertake will never be wanting:—? It has been the fashion to judge of them by their outcasts.’”
* When nature is wounded through all her dearest ties, she
must turn on the hand that stabs, and endeavour to wrest the
poignard from the grasp that aims at the life-pulse of her
heart. And this she will do in obedience to that immutable
law, which blends the instinct of self-preservation with
every atom of human existence. And for this, in less
felicitous times, when oppression and sedition succeeded
alternately to each other, was the name of Irishman, blended
with the horrible epithet of cruel But when the sword of the
oppressor was sheathed, the spirit of the oppressed reposed,
and the opprobrium it had drawn down on him was no longer
remembered, until the unhappy events of a late anarchial
period, 1798 revived the faded characters in which that
opprobrium had been traced. The events alluded to were the
atrocities which chiefly occurred in the county of Wexford,
and its adjoining and confederate district. Wexford is an
English colony, planted by Henry the Second, where scarcely
any feature of the original Irish character, or any trace of
the Irish language is to be found. While in the barony of
Forth, not only the customs, manners, habits, and costume,
of the ancient British settlers still prevail, but the
ancient Celtic language, has been preserved with infinitely
less corruption than in any part of Britain, where it has
been interwoven with the Saxon, Danish, and French
languages. In fact, here may be found a remnant of an
ancient. British colony, more pure and unmixed than in any
other part of the world. And here were committed those
barbarities, which have recently attached the epithet of
cruel to the name of Irishman!
“It is strange (said the Prince,) that the earliest British writers should be as diffuse in the praise, as the moderns are in calumniating our unhappy country. Once we were everywhere, and by all, justly famed for our patriotism, ardour of affection, love of letters, skill in arms and arts, and refinement of manners; but no sooner did there arise a connexion between us and a sister country, than the reputed virtues and well-earned glory of the Irish sunk at once into oblivion: as if (continued this enthusiastic Milesian, rising from his seat with all his native vehemence,)—as if the moral world was subject to those convulsions which shake the natural to its centre, burying by a single shock the monumental splendours of countless ages. Thus it should seem, that when the bosom of national freedom was rent asunder, the national virtues which derived their nutriment from its source sunk into the abyss; while on the barren surface which covers the wreck of Irish greatness, the hand of prejudice and illiberality has sown the seeds of calumny and defamation, to choke up those healthful plants, indigenous to the soil, which still raise their oft-crushed heads, struggling for existence, and which, like the palm-tree, rise, in proportion to those efforts made to suppress them.”