Speaking of King Edward’s last visit to Ireland at that time, Harper’s Weekly recently said, editorially, after relating in detail the many other ways in which “Ireland was England’s superior in culture” ... “the Harp, which is the National symbol of Ireland, is really the record of centuries of Musical culture.”
Knowing, as King Alfred certainly must have known, that as early as the beginning of the sixth century the heathen classics were taught by learned Irish monks in their schools of theology, it is easily understood how he came to have such admiration for the Irish and Ireland. Their skill in Greek and Latin poetry as well as in Irish appealed to him so that on leaving Ireland he wrote a poem of sixty lines in the Irish bardic manner. In this poem he compliments the five provinces for their several hospitalities and courtesies to himself. It breathes the spirit of thankful gratitude to the whole nation for all it had done for him.
No people buried in barbarism and ignorance “from the beginning of time” could have evoked such a tribute to their culture and hospitality as that, from an English King whom they had educated. (Pardon the hyperbole.)
But it had not yet become the well established custom and purpose of the writers of English history to pervert their chronicles so as to traduce the Irish people all that their subject matter would bear without seeming to be deliberate untruth. There was, in fact, no English historian at all at the time Ireland’s scholars were thus laying the foundations of classical learning over a great part of Europe. The crowds of strangers that were meantime flocking to Ireland to receive the classical educations which could not be had in their own countries were not only warmly welcomed but were entertained and fed every day free of cost. Free books were furnished them and they were given gratuitous instructions by the Irish masters.
In this atmosphere of culture, hospitality and true Christian refinement was fostered that love of learning and of the unselfish characters of the men who imparted it to those strange princes and kings, which they took home with them to their own countries. Englishmen, especially, had long looked upon Ireland as “the land of scholars and the nurse of arms.”
This marvelous educational activity and open-handed generosity of the Irish had, in fact, become the wonder and admiration of the nations whose sons were being most benefited thereby. “This outburst of religious zeal, glorious and enduring as it was,” says Dr. Hyde, “carried with it, like all sudden and powerful movements, an element of danger.” The danger to which he here refers was that of a clash between the civil and religious authorities on some minor points of the administration of justice at home. Such obstacles in the way of human and spiritual amity seem to have never been for long inseparable from the lives of nations. They spring up suddenly. They are balked at for a time, and it often seems as if such barriers were destined to be the stumbling blocks over which kingdoms would fall.
But it was not until the Norman invasion and complete subjugation of England, and Norman laws, customs and ideals had completely dominated that country and the semi-Latin tongue now known as English had taken the place of the Anglo-Saxon spoken till the Normans came, that the real breach of amity between the English and Irish happened.
It was against the aggressive spirit of this Anglo-Norman power that Ireland first rebelled and rebels to this day. The Normans found the conquest of Ireland a far more difficult undertaking. They were, it is true, by their under-handed system of parceling out portions of the conquered sections to the traitor native chiefs, successful in dividing Ireland against herself. Yet during all the centuries of the persecution made possible by the weakness caused by this division, the Normans failed to dominate Ireland. The free Irish spirit outlived those centuries of “warfare and famine and prison.” Throughout the greater part of that beleaguered land Irish princes and Irish laws ruled. The soul of the nation was nurtured and sustained by the continued use of the mother tongue. To the ranks of the native Irish who were rendered disloyal to their country by Norman influences, the religious schism of the Reformation added many more. Cromwell’s disastrous invasion nearly a century later cut still wider gaps in the loyal ranks of the Irish. In addition to those who were starved or persecuted into submission to Cromwellian rule, many more who could not be tortured into such submission fled the country. Those were “the wild geese,” that flew hither and yonder, lighting, like birds of passage, where instinct or destiny led them.
But wherever they found refuge from the iniquitous powers, that thus made them exiles, they remained true to the ideals for which they were banished. In many instances they became in time honored acquisitions to the countries where they found homes, fitting in as leaders in arts, arms and statecraft. All this is, of course, no more than must be expected of men possessing heritages of many centuries of freedom, based on the American elective system of choosing their governing officials. From her very earliest colonial days down to the present, America derived more of her strength from Ireland, numerically as well as otherwise, than from any other single source. However, much of the fact of Irishmen’s numbers and achievements, in the upbuilding of this nation may have been omitted from our histories purposely or knowingly the facts remain. These mistakes the future historian must see corrected. Nor this alone. The Hume spirit and atmosphere must be forever eliminated from our history. It was the Hume falsehoods which half a century or more ago created in the youthful American mind such false impressions of the Irish character. Bancroft had not yet been introduced in the public schools during my early school days, so it was from Hume that as a twelve-year lad I first learned this false lesson of my native land. Nor can we wonder that Bancroft, with all his learning, has signally failed in many instances to give renowned historical characters their due. This fact came home to me quite recently, while canvassing for a petition to a certain congressman, urging him to press the passage of the bill for an appropriation to erect a monument in Washington to Commodore Jack Barry, Father of the American Navy. On presenting the petition the second time to this “representative and influential citizen,” he demurred, saying: “I don’t find much of anything about this Barry, in Bancroft’s History of the United States entitling him to any such honor as you folks are aiming to give him. So I don’t see how I can sign your petition.”
Such mistakes, or intentional omissions, of our country’s history, mischievous as they may otherwise appear, are here recurred to only to show the great need of a true history of the nation. It is no reflection upon the intellectual integrity of Bancroft to infer that he may have, in some ways been influenced by Hume, nay, is it not very probable that he was in dealing with the Irish heroes of our Army and Navy?