The Irish clergy go with the League, both because their temperament inclines them that way, and also because it is an imperious necessity of their situation; their case is rather similar to that of the Home Rule members, who were compelled to enter the movement, whether they approved of it or not. However strong their hold on the mass of the rural population, their influence would vanish in a week if they tried to pull against the irresistible stream. Such sacrifices have never been a habit of the Roman Church.
Indeed it is permitted to smile, when one sees the Tory Ministry soliciting the intervention of the Pope in the Irish crisis, and obtaining from him the sending of a special legate entrusted with the mission of bringing the Episcopate of Ireland back to less subversive ideas. It is well understood that the Pope of course sends his legate, and derives from his diplomatic compliance all the advantages it entails. But he is better aware than any one that unless he personally gave away one million sterling a year to the parish priests of Ireland, he would have little reasonable hope of success in asking them to shift their policy.
Is it necessary to add that the Irish priest himself knows on occasion how to bring into his mundane relations the traditional suppleness and prudence of his order? A priest of Wexford, actively mixed up with the agrarian movement, was dining a few years ago at the house of Mr. C⸺, proprietor of a large landed estate in the county. Conversation turned upon the League, and no good was said of it. The priest listened in silence, without giving his sentiment either for or against the League. All of a sudden, with a look of assumed simplicity, he turned to his host—
“Look here, Mr. C⸺,” he said, “Will you believe me? Me impresshun is that there is no Land League.”
The saintly man had for the last three months been vice-president of the board of the Land League in his district.
CHAPTER XIV.
FORT SAUNDERS.
Galway.
Galway is an old Spanish colony, planted on the western coast of Ireland, and which kept for a long time intimate relations with the mother country. Things and people have retained the original stamp to an uncommon degree; but for the Irish names that are to be read on every shop, you could believe yourself in some ancient quarter of Seville. The women have the olive complexion, black hair, and red petticoat of the mañolas; the houses open on a courtyard, a thing unknown in other parts of Ireland, as well as in Great Britain; they have grated windows, peep-holes in the door, and are adorned with sculptures, in the Moorish style; the steeples of churches affect the shape of minarets; the very fishermen in the port, with the peculiar shape of their boat, sails and nets, and something indescribable in their general outline, remind you of the hardy sailors of Corunna.
The remembrance of seven or eight centuries of busy trade with the Peninsula, does not show itself solely in faces, manners, or dwelling, it is to be found also in local tradition. Among others, there is the story of the Mayor Lynch Fitz-Stephen, who gave in 1493 such a fearful example of ruthless justice. His only son, whom he had sent to Spain to settle some important affair, was coming back with the Spanish correspondent of the family, bringing home a rich cargo, when he entered into a conspiracy with the crew, appropriated the merchandise, and threw overboard the unfortunate Spaniard. The crime was discovered, the culprit arrested, and brought to trial before his own father, who was exercising the right of high and low justice in the district, and by him condemned to the pain of death. The general belief was that the Mayor would contrive to find some pretext to give his son a respite; and in order to supply him with that pretext, his relations drew up a petition of grace, which they presented to him, covered with signatures. Lynch listened to their request, then merely told them to come back for an answer on a certain day he named. At the appointed time the suppliants appeared again; but the first sight which caught their eyes was the dead body of the Mayor’s son hanging from one of the grated windows of his house. An inscription, placed in 1524, on the walls of the cemetery of St. Nicholas, records the memory of that event.