With freedom’s soil beneath our feet,
With freedom’s banner streaming o’er us!
Breathes there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
“This is my own, my native land.”
If there be such a man in all the world, I pity him. One thing is certain, he is not an Irishman, for if he were the blood would congeal in his veins and he would be branded as a wanderer upon the face of the earth, with no place to lay his hypocritical head.
Much has been said about the Irishman in America, but nothing has been said so far about the American in Ireland. It might be well for me to touch on the subject somewhat and tell you a little of my experience in Ireland, and by way of preface it seems to me that every Irish-American must hold down deep in his heart a lurking desire to visit the Green Isle, the land of his fathers, just as I did before I went over there five years ago and saw for myself the things that have made Irishmen great in America.
How vividly the memories of that visit rise up before me to bring added joys to the realities of life! That you may better understand my first impressions of Ireland, I will tell you that I was after finishing an extended tour of the Orient, which included the Holy Land and a great part of Continental Europe, when I entered the portals of the historic city of Dublin. My heart leaped with joy as I felt the friendly breeze of welcome soothe my throbbing brain, and I longed at that moment to share the sublime satisfaction that came o’er me with some kindred spirit who had years ago trod the same earth and looked with beseeching glance, as perhaps millions more did before him, out beyond the great waters, where liberty and personal freedom were to be found.
But I was alone and could not impart to another the impulses that rose up within me and bade me view the matchless beauty of that fair city wherein is consecrated all the glories of Erin’s past, and where today, on the living altar of heroic patriotism, is to be seen the surpliced messenger of Home Rule, ready with trumpet in hand to proclaim to all the world that Emmet’s epitaph shall soon be written.
To stand upon the sod made sacred by the ties of kinship and hallowed by memories that made the new scenes seem as familiar as though one were born and reared among them was the sensation I experienced when I first set my foot upon the soil where my father and mother first saw the light of day. There was something indefinably realistic about my presence in the small town of the Six Mile Bridge in County Clare.