Project Gutenberg's The Wild Irishman, by Thomas William Hodgson Crosland This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: The Wild Irishman Author: Thomas William Hodgson Crosland Release Date: September 3, 2018 [EBook #57838] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILD IRISHMAN *** Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) Cover image [i] THE WILD IRISHMAN THE WILD IRISHMAN BY T. W. H. CROSLAND Author of “The Unspeakable Scot” NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1905 Copyright, 1905, by D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Published October, 1905. PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION The people of America may or may not indulge kindly views of the Irish community; but there cannot be the slightest question that the Irish of Ireland have kindlier feelings for America than ever they have had for England. To the Irish of Ireland, in fact, America has long stood in the relation of a sort of promised land, and they have a habit of turning their thoughts thitherward even when small matters are concerned. There is a tale of an elderly lady of Galway who, on being informed by her medical attendant that it was desirable that she should consult a dental specialist, set forth incontinently for New York to the total neglect of London. She believed that of the two places, New York was the friendlier. I am informed that, broadly speaking, New York is policed by Irish Americans and that the American Irishman makes a rather useful subordinate municipal official. Be this as it may, there can be no doubt that very considerable numbers of Irishmen contrive to do themselves a great deal better in the United States than they could ever have hoped to do in their own native Erin. To those Americans and American Irish who happen to be at all interested in the present condition and prospects of the green country, I venture to offer the following pages for what they are worth. T. W. H. C. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I.—Distressful 1 II.—The Shillelagh 11 III.—Blarney 19 IV.—Whisky 29 [ii] [iii] [iv] [v] [vi] [vii] V.—The Pathriot 36 VI.—Orangemen 42 VII.—The Low Scotch 50 VIII.—Priestcraft 60 IX.—Morals 71 X.—Pretty Women 91 XI.—The London Irish 100 XII.—Tom Moore 105 XIII.—W. B. Yeats 117 XIV.—Wit and Humor 130 XV.—More Wit and Humor 141 XVI.—Dirt 151 XVII.—The Tourist 158 XVIII.—Potatoes 169 XIX.—Pigs 179 XX.—Emigration 187 THE WILD IRISHMAN CHAPTER I DISTRESSFUL The person who invented the Irish question may or may not deserve well of his species. In a sense, of course, there has been an Irish question since the beginning of history. But it is only within the last century or so that we have begun to spell it with a big Q. That big Q perhaps attained its largest proportions during the eighties of the last century, and associated, as it usually was, with a capital G, which stood for Gladstone, and a capital P, which stood for somebody else, it certainly did yeoman service wherever a use for letters could be found. At the time of Mr. Gladstone’s Home Rule campaign the existence of a highly insistent Irish question could not be doubted. A good deal of water has flowed under the bridges since then, however, and at the present moment, and in view of the present situation of Irish affairs, one is tempted to wonder whether there now exists, or whether there really has ever existed, an Irish question with a big Q at all. It is true that at the time of writing there is an actual and undesirable famine raging in Connemara. It is true that the population of the country is on the decline, and that the standard of comfort among the people will not bear comparison with the standard of comfort in any other country in the world, unless it be in the poorer and bleaker regions of Kamchatka; and it is true also that Irishmen as a body continue to exercise themselves both at street corners, and on all sorts of platforms, in a habit of rhetoric, which many years of shouting have made second nature with them. For all that, the Irish question as a portentous and vital matter appears to be somewhat played out. One may safely say that in Ireland, at any rate, it has been reduced to an obscurity which allows of its being now spelled with about the smallest “q” in ordinary use among printers. In England it has been allowed to disappear, in favor of the Russo- Japanese War, Protection, and Do We Believe? On the whole, though it no doubt harrows the souls of the horde of carpet-baggers which have come to us out of Ireland, this condition of affairs is exceedingly salutary for Ireland itself. Now that the factions, and the tumult, and the turbulence, and the wrangling have died down, or at least been in large measure abated, the facts about Ireland are for the first time in history beginning, as it were, to swim into our ken. We are beginning to perceive, for example, that out of the quarrels and bloodshed of the past hundred years Ireland has emerged triumphant. It has been a case of a bankrupt, downtrodden and dwindling people’s fight against a rich and powerful dominant people, and the weaker side has proved clearly that in the long run God is on the side of “justice.” To all intents and purposes Ireland is at the present moment in full possession of all that she herself has felt it reasonable to demand. She has the franchise, she has land laws which are almost socialistic in the benefits they offer to the cultivators of the soil, and she has local self-government. More than all, she has herself begun to recognize that the disposition of England toward her is becoming year by year less arrogant, less implacable, less contemptuous, and less severe. It has been said that Erin’s appeals for reasonable treatment at the hands of England have had to be made by violence of the most brutal and terrorizing kind. She has stood before us with the head of a landlord in one hand and the tail of a cow in the other, and screamed till we gave her what she wanted. And always in a large measure we have succumbed. And the singular part of it is that in no instance have we had cause, nor do we appear likely to have cause, to regret it. Of course, that crown and summit of Irish blisses, Home Rule, has not yet been vouchsafed to her. But this, I believe, is due to the fact that Ireland herself is still making up her mind whether she really wants it. Half Ireland says, “Give us Home Rule,” the other half says, “Please don’t;” and the two parties seem to be getting on very well together by agreeing to differ. This is a true and natural settlement of a problem which, as I believe, is purely artificial, arising out of the exigencies of party and the jealousies of rival demagogues, rather than out of the desires of the people. If Ireland in her heart of hearts desired Home Rule, she would have it within the next couple of years. She has the good sense to [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] know that, however fascinating the theory of Home Rule may appear, the practise of it for her would be difficult and irksome, if not altogether disastrous. Both sides are agreed that Home Rule for Ireland means an immediate spell of civil war for Ireland. The Irish Catholic will tell you this, and the Irish Protestant is equally clear about it. In view of the condition and nature of the country, such a war were a calamity to be staved off at pretty well any cost, even if it were certain—and it is by no means certain—that the subsequent benefits would be appreciable and lasting. The politicians will tell you that it is possible to have in Ireland what is somewhat prettily called a “union of hearts.” “The union of hearts which I desire,” says one of them, “is a union of Irishmen of all classes and of all creeds, from the north to the south, from the east to the west; landlords and tenants, Catholics and Protestants, Orange and Green; and I look to this union as the surest way of bringing about the national regeneration of our country.” Which is exceedingly beautiful, but amounts to asking for the moon. Oil and water cannot be made to mix, and in a country where a couple of cardinals and a number of bishops were lately stoned by a rabblement of Protestants, the union of hearts may be reckoned still a great way off. Holy Ireland—and I think it is rather to her credit—will never be brought to do what England and Scotland have managed to do, namely to set the political or material interest in front of the religious or spiritual interest. Catholics and Protestants in Ireland are Catholic and Protestant from head to foot and right through, and you will never induce them to forget it. All the same it is not impossible, with the exercise of a little charity and self-restraint, for the lion to lie down with the lamb politically, if not religiously, and this is what is happening in Ireland. In other words the Irish Catholics and Protestants have tacitly agreed that they can live in more or less amity under one government, providing that government is neither an Irish Catholic government nor an Irish Protestant government, but an alien, impartial and practically secular government. As we have said, the Irish question as a portent and terror to England is disappearing, if indeed it has not already disappeared. For all that, the fact remains that Ireland in the main is a distressful country. Thackeray’s Snooks gives it as his opinion that “of all the wum countwith that I ever wead of, hang me if Ireland ithn’t the wummetht.” “Wum,” gay and irrepressible epithet though it may be, is really and deep down not the epithet; whereas “distressful” is. There are people in the world who are born to misfortune, whose lives are touched with melancholy from beginning to end, and who cannot be brought to rejoice even by Act of Parliament. Ireland’s woes may be said to be largely temperamental and still more largely “misfortunate.” Her very position in the geographical scheme of things is strikingly lonesome and unhappy. Practically she is the last outpost of Europe, and a little one at that. With sheer Atlantic on one side of her, and sixty miles of sea between herself and England, it is impossible for her to get rid of a certain feeling of isolation which is not good for the spirits. The soft rain that is always over her may heighten the green of her meadows, but it keeps her damp and watery and preternaturally boggy. She has no harbors of the kind that are essential to fishermen, and though some of her ports may be admirable, there is little in the country that calls for the use of them. Thus physically handicapped, Ireland has necessarily produced a people who are in all respects a people to themselves. The religious faculty in them has been highly developed, the commercial faculty might seem to have been left out of their composition. By nature they are a simple, cheerful, unambitious, warm-hearted race, and they have suffered accordingly. Sir Francis Drake, or some instrument of his, planted the potato upon them. James I. planted the Scotch on them. George III. gave them a Lord Lieutenant and a Secretary. The potato, the Scotch, and Dublin Castle have been the three bitter curses which have brought this people to the ghastliest social and political passes. All three are ineradicable, but they may be mitigated. This is what Ireland wants. CHAPTER II THE SHILLELAGH As the Yorkshireman is said to sport on his escutcheon a flea, a fly, and a flitch of bacon, so in the popular imagination an Irishman of the real old sort is usually conceived in association with a pig, a pipe, and a shillelagh. Rightly considered, one supposes that the shillelagh is a survival of the pre-historic club. In any case, it is a weapon of some character, chiefly notable for its handiness in the matter of skull cracking, and believed to be the pride and joy of every Paddy worth his salt. The shillelagh has undoubtedly earned for the Irish a reputation for roguish and heroic delight in battle. “Tread on the tail of my coat, now,” is supposed to be forever on Irish lips, with immediate results in the article of broken heads. And when we English wish the use of a metaphor for rows and scuffles, free fights and so forth, we have a habit of remarking that the affair amounted to “a regular Donnybrook”—Donnybrook, of course, being a sort of feast of shillelaghs to which all Ireland was wont annually to repair. Of the number of shillelaghs in Ireland at the present moment the blue books give no account. It seems to me doubtful whether there are a thousand in the whole country. One may travel through Ireland for weeks on end, and come across nothing of the sort. The only shillelagh I had the pleasure of seeing in the course of a recent, lengthy Irish journey was in the hands of a very ill-clad youth who looked more like a Lancashire cotton operative out of work than a broth of a boy. And the shillelagh in question was of polished black wood without knots, and the top of it had a nickel silver knob, like a beau’s cane. The weapon, indeed, reminded one of nothing so much as a Salmon & Gluckstein, silver-headed, ebony walking-stick, cut short. The owner proudly assured me that it was his bit of a blackthorn, and the finest for miles around. It seems more than probable that the shillelagh-notion of an Irishman had at one time something in it. While Donnybrook Fair has been suppressed, there can be no getting away from the fact that there once was a Donnybrook, and a pretty warm one to boot. Says the poet: [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] “Who has e’er had the luck to see Donnybrook Fair? An Irishman, all in his glory, is there, With his sprig of shillelagh and shamrock so green! His clothes spic and span new, without e’er a speck, A neat Barcelona tied round his neat neck; He goes to a tent, and he spends half a crown, He meets with a friend, and for love knocks him down With his sprig of shillelagh and shamrock so green!” “And for love knocks him down” is quite in the “rale ould” spirit. A spectator[1] of the Donnybrook held on the 29th August 1828, described it as follows: “I rode out again to-day for the first time, to see the fair at Donnybrook, near Dublin, which is a kind of popular festival. Nothing, indeed, can be more national! The poverty, the dirt, and the wild tumult were as great as the glee and merriment with which the cheapest pleasures were enjoyed. I saw things eaten and drunk with delight, which forced me to turn my head quickly away, to remain master of my disgust. Heat and dust, crowd and stench made it impossible to stay long; but these do not annoy the natives. There were many hundred tents, all ragged, like the people, and adorned with tawdry rags instead of flags; many contented themselves with a cross on a hoop; one had hoisted a dead and half-putrid cat as a sign. The lowest sort of rope-dancers and posture-makers exercised their toilsome vocation on stages of planks, and dressed in shabby finery, dancing and grimacing in the dreadful heat till they were completely exhausted. A third part of the public lay, or rather rolled, about drunk; others ate, screamed, shouted and fought. The women rode about, sitting two or three upon an ass, pushing their way through the crowd, smoked with great delight, and coquetted with their sweethearts.” It is notable, however, that our eye-witness continues: “My reverence for truth compels me to add, that not the slightest trace of English brutality was to be perceived; they were more like French people, though their gaiety was mingled with more humor and more genuine good-nature; both of which are national traits of the Irish, and are always doubled by poteen.” Not only is Donnybrook gone, but the whole atmosphere which rendered Donnybrook possible appears to have gone with it. The knocking down of a friend for love or out of sheer gaiety and volatility of soul no longer ranks among the Irishman’s accomplishments. If he fights at all, which is seldom, he fights now with clenched teeth and a fierce hatred at his heart, and usually it is about religion and has nothing whatever to do with either fun or poteen. In Dublin no more fighting goes on than occurs in the average English city of the same size. In Belfast the fighting is frequent, but it is eminently Scotch, and therefore not to be charged against Ireland. Out of Ulster, there is scarcely any fighting at all, poteen or no poteen. At the same time in one city out of Ulster, which I will not name, I was advised by the proprietor of an hotel to prolong my stay because “we are expecting riots on Monday.” Whether the riots came off or not I do not know, but I saw no accounts of them in the papers. It is, of course, common knowledge that, shillelaghs laid on one side, the Irishman makes an admirable soldier. In point of fact he is a much better soldier than the Scot, though he has never had the credit for it. The best English generals from Wellington to Lord Roberts have been Irishmen, which is paradox, not a “bull.” The Irish never run away; in our late wars certain non-Irish regiments, which were neither English nor Welsh, did run away. It is significant that Mr. Kipling’s soldiers—in Soldiers Three for example—are Irish, Cockney, and Yorkshire, and that the Irishman is set down for the smartest man. I have seen it remarked, and I believe it can be justified out of the military histories, that while the Irish and English regiments have usually done the rough and tumble hand-to-hand fighting in our most famous engagements, the gentlemen with the bare knees have had the good fortune to be sent in at the tail end of the trouble, merely to execute a little ornamental sweeping up. To the eye of officers and women “nothing looks nicer” than kilts and spats. To disarrange them were a pity; therefore wherever possible we shall hold them “in reserve.” On the parade ground and in processions the same thing applies; the plaudits of the crowd being invariably forthcoming for the “bonnie bare-legged laddies” newly enlisted, mayhap, out of Glasgow and Dumfries, while “seasoned Irish warriors” go past without a hand-clap. But it is the kilts that do it. There may be nothing in this, and anyway I do not suppose that the Irish care twopence. But the points for us to remember while we are on this part of our subject are, that the shillelagh is an effete weapon, that in Irish differences the principle of “a word and a blow” does not prevail, and that the Irish soldier is very competent and very courageous. Prince Pückler Muskau, quoted by Croker. CHAPTER III BLARNEY Blarney has come to mean a certain adroitness and winningness of speech supposed to be peculiar to the Irish. If an Irishman open his mouth, the English and Scotch insist on assuming that they are being treated to blarney. The persons who affect Messrs. Cook’s tours hang on to the words of every Irishman they meet, particularly if he be a jarvey, and wait lovingly and with bated breath for the same phenomenon. There are no snakes in Ireland, and, sad to relate, there [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [1] [19] is very little blarney. Broadly speaking, the people seem too poverty-stricken and too apathetic for talk of any kind, much less for that sprightly loquacity and skilfulness of retort which we call blarney. The Irish jarvey, who is commonly believed to be an adept in the art, is just as much a disappointment as the London cabby. Even in “the noble city of Dublin” you find, as a rule, that you are being driven by a dull, flea-bitten, porter-full person, who has really not two words to say for himself. That he is a daring and reckless driver I am quite willing to admit; that he has a passion for stout and whisky goes without saying; but that he is a wit, or a humorist, or a wheedling talker, or in any sense gifted above ordinary hack-drivers, I deny. In the smaller centers of population and in the country districts he is even duller and more flea-bitten and more taciturn. When he tries to charge you treble fare, which is his usual practise, he does it with a snap and gracelessly; as a pointer-out of local monuments he lacks both salt and information; he has no gift for entertainment, and he drinks sullenly and with a careful eye on the clock. As for the Irish waiters, grooms, handy men, railway porters, and kindred creatures, of whose powers of humorous persuasion and repartee so much has been written, I have no hesitation in pronouncing them to be a sad, uncertain, curt, fiddle-faced company, with scarcely a smile or the materials for a smile among them. Their conversation is monosyllabic, their manner barely civil, their apprehension slow, and their habit slack and perfunctory. And they are about as blarnified as the Trafalgar Square lions. Of the peasantry I can only say that cheerfulness, whether of notion or word, is not nowadays their strong point. They have a great way of saying “your honor” to you if you are a man, and “your ladyship’s honor” if you are a woman; but after that the amount of blarney to be got out of them is infinitesimal. Grinding poverty, short-commons, a solitary life on some dreary mountain-side, and a fine view of the workhouse, do not tend to sharpen the Irish tongue any more than they sharpen the Irish wit. On the whole, therefore, I am inclined to think that nearly all the blarney that should be in Ireland has for some reason or other taken unto itself wings and flown away. The people are no longer racy of the soil. Even the gentry, who once had the credit of being roguish and devil-may-care to a fault, are become sad and somber and flat of speech. The milk of human kindness in the Irish blood appears, in short, to have gone sour, and in place of the old disposition to humor we have a tendency to cynicism and vituperative remark. And when an Irishman turns cynic or vituperator he takes a wonderful deal of beating, as witness the utterances in Parliament and elsewhere of that choice body of gentlemen known as the Irish Party, or the proceedings of the Dublin Corporation, or the lucubrations of the Irish press. A singular exhibition of this particular Irish weakness has quite lately been offered us by no less a person than Mr. Samuel M. Hussey, who, I believe, rather prides himself on having been described as the best abused man in Ireland. Of Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Hussey writes as follows: “If Napoleon was the scourge of Europe, Mr. Gladstone was the most malevolent imp of mischief that ever ruined any one country.… I heard him introduce the motion [The Land Act of 1881] in the House of Commons, and his speech was a truly marvelous feat of oratory. He was interrupted on all sides of the House, and in a speech of nearly five hours in length never once lost the thread of his discourse. As far as I could judge, he never, even by accident, let slip one word of truth. “To do them justice, the Irish Members gave such an exhibition of blackguardism as has no parallel on earth, though it earned but the mildest rebuke from their obsequious ally, Mr. Gladstone. “Mr. Gladstone considered that if you gave a scoundrel a vote it made him into a philanthropist, whereas events proved it made him an eager accessory of murder, outrage, and every other crime.” It is only fair to Mr. Hussey to say that he himself has received as good as he gives. For example, an Irish demagogue once treated him to the following: “Sam Hussey is a vulture with a broken beak, and he laid his voracious talons on the conscience of the voters. (Boos.) The ugly scowl of Sam Hussey came down upon them. He wanted to try the influence of his dark nature on the poor people. (Groans.) Where was the legitimate influence of such a man? Was it in the white terror he diffused? Was it not the espionage, the network of spies with which he surrounded his lands? He denied that a man who managed property had for that reason a shadow of a shade of influence to justify him in asking a tenant for his vote. What had they to thank him for?” A voice: “Rack rents.” “They knew the man from his boyhood, from his gossoonhood. He knew him when he began with a collop of sheep as his property in the world. (Laughter.) Long before he got God’s mark on him. It was not the man’s fault but his misfortune that he got no education. (Laughter.) He had in that parish schoolmasters who could teach him grammar for the next ten years. The man was in fact a Uriah Heep among Kerry landlords.” (Cheers.) Here surely is blarney with a vengeance. Among a people which was otherwise than glib of expression such writing and such oratory would be difficult to evolve. When presumably cultivated men, for Mr. Hussey’s assailant in this instance was a priest, allow themselves to indulge in such childish objurgation, what wonder is it that the commonalty should be found to have lost their sense of what is proper to decent speech and reasonable argument. The demagogues of Ireland have indubitably gone a great way toward ruining the native taste and innate good breeding of the Irish people. Like the ha’penny papers of England they have made their fortunes and their power by the degradation of the masses. It is possible that the poverty of the country left them absolutely without other weapons wherewith to fight the haughty national enemy, England; it is certain that without these demagogues, and without their raging and blistering words, and the foul and brutal actions which frequently followed them, landlordism in Ireland would never have been scotched. As it is, the landlord has been put in his place and the chances of the natural heirs of the soil have been greatly enhanced. No drastic revolution of this kind can be brought about without loss even to the winning side. And in my opinion not the least of the losses of the winning side in this matter has been the transformation of blarney into flatness [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] and commination. Under the heel of the tyrant the Irish people retained their faculty for mirth and mirthful speech; the exhortations of the demagogue and the agitator have brought them freedom, opportunity and a distinct abatement of spirits. As the world goes, one is now compelled to reckon Ireland in the same category that one reckons those innocuous islets named Man and Wight. There is more devil in the Isle of Dogs than all Ireland is for the moment in a position to show. It is not Ireland’s fault, and it is not England’s fault; it is the horrible fault of the nature of things. Whatever has happened in the past has happened because nothing better nor worse could in the nature of things have happened. What will happen in the future remains to be seen. It may be peace and the rehabilitation of a kindly, lively, and interesting people; it may be peace and the dullest sorts of apathy and decay. In any case it will be peace. The Times, which, after the Saturday Review, is admittedly the least consistent journal published on this footstool, has frequently been reproved over the mouth for remarking years ago that “In a short time, a Catholic Celt will be as rare on the banks of the Shannon as a red Indian on the shores of Manhattan.” This in effect was prophecy, though it is a hundred to one that the Times did not know it. If the resilient and recuperative powers of the Irish people have not been destroyed there is hope for the Irish people in Ireland. If those powers have been destroyed there is no hope for the Irish people in Ireland. Blarney even of the vituperative order will go entirely out, and the low Scotch will come entirely in. I will do the low Scotch the credit of saying, that if they had their way, and no Irish Catholics to contend with, they could make Ireland a highly successful business proposition inside a quarter of a century. Whether they will ever get the chance is on the knees of the gods. For my own part, and this is not blarney, I hope sincerely that they never will. CHAPTER IV WHISKY The Universe as we know it abounds in enigmas. And perhaps the most stupendous enigma of all of them is called whisky. In Scotland whisky is the universal ichor and panacea. In Ireland a kind of whisky which is unquestionably whisky, but not Scotch, stands in the same friendly relation to the people. In England we drink both kinds, lying thus between the devil and the deep sea. There cannot be the slightest doubt that the baser sorts of whisky are Scotch, and that the primal, more edifying and more inspiring sorts—if we only knew it—are Irish. He who drinks beer thinks beer. He who drinks whisky thinks whisky. He who drinks Scotch whisky becomes as the Scotch people, who, as all men know, are a hectoring, swaggering, dull-witted, bandy-legged, plantigrade folk. He who drinks Irish whisky becomes as the Irish, who should be nimble, and neat, and vivacious, and thriftless, and careless, and lavish, and decent, and otherwise gracious. The wise man, of course, will let both varieties pass by him, excepting that he take them in thimblefuls, and then only in the shape of nightcaps. And lest the United Kingdom Alliance misconstrue what I have now said, let me here say roundly and flatly and out of a good heart—A plague on both your whiskies! The Scotch, it is true, is better to your taste; but the Irish has the merit of being better to your ethical or nobler parts. The effect of Irish whisky upon Ireland is a matter that might fittingly form the subject of six or eight stout volumes, bound in calf and prefaced by a life of Father Mathew. The appealing and startling beauty of Irish whisky as a potable spirit appears to lie in the fact that it has never done Ireland any harm. The number of whisky-sodden persons in Scotland and the number of whisky-sodden persons in Ireland stand in the ratio of ten to one. In Scotland the red nose and the pimply face abound. Outside that fearsome area known as the Diamond, there is scarcely a red nose or a pimply face in all Ireland. All the best Scotch whisky is produced in legitimate distilleries, and all the best Irish whisky, with due respect, of course, to Dunville, Jamieson et hoc genus, comes out of little places which are unbeknownst to the King’s officers of Excise. This, however, is merely extraordinary, paradoxical, and inexplicable, and has nothing whatever to do with ethnology. But to return to the point: whisky in Scotland is a religion, an institution, a tradition, and a national reproach. Whisky in Ireland, on the other hand, is an accomplishment, an ornament, a mellowness, a kindness, a simplicity, and a joy forever. The true Irish people drink it wisely as the Gaul takes his wine. When you see a number of drunken persons in Ireland, you may safely assume that they are Orangemen and of Scotch descent. The Irish of Ireland do not get drunk; which means that they neither roister in bars nor soak alcoholically at home. According to Mr. Hussey, Irish whisky is “vilely adulterated,” both by the publican and “in some of the factories.” In support of this statement he tells the following story: “On one occasion a Killorglin publican was in jail, and his father asked for an interview because he wanted the recipe for manufacturing the special whisky for Puck Fair. It has been a constant practise to prepare this blend, but the whisky does not keep many days, as may be gathered from the recipe, which the prisoner without hesitation dictated to his parent: ‘A gallon of fresh, fiery whisky, a pint of rum, a pint of methylated spirit, two ounces of corrosive sublimate, and three gallons of water.’” Which is to suggest that the Irish have no palates, and that like the gentleman who ate fly-papers in mistake for oatcake, they are poison-proof. Frankly, I should be disposed to take Mr. Hussey’s recipe with great reserve. It is amusing, doubtless, but a chemist would shake his head over it. Practically, the only undesirable drinking which goes on in Ireland proper is done at wakes; but even Mr. Hussey admits that wakes are on the decline, and not by any means the occasions for over-indulgence which they once were. It is all very well to visit a country town and single out half a dozen notorious drunkards with the view of proving that the Irish people are a drunken people. I say that the Irish people in the lump are a sober people, though they may not be teetotalers. I will go further and admit that they have a wonderful appreciation for the wine of the country, and that at times some of them even get hearty. But this is not to say that drink rages in Ireland as it rages in Scotland, or, for that matter, as it rages in the poorer quarters of our English cities. And I believe further that, taking the whisky of Ireland all round, it is a much sounder and less sophisticated spirit than the bulk of the whisky consumed in Scotland and England. Mr. Hussey [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] assures us that the increase of lunacy in Ireland has been pronounced by the Committee which sat on the question in Dublin to be mainly due, not only to excessive drinking, but to the assimilation of adulterated spirits. With all respect to the conclusions of this Committee, I do not think that those conclusions are borne out by the facts. Lunacy in Ireland is the direct outcome of the almost unthinkable poverty and squalor of the greater part of the population. When you couple with poverty, want of occupation, a solitary life, and an enervating climate, not to mention the melancholy brooding propensities of the Irish peasant, it is no wonder that lunacy claims many victims. To allege that because a lunatic has been in the habit of consuming a considerable quantity of poteen his lunacy is necessarily due to poteen, seems to me to be begging the question. If you could alleviate the poverty and inaction to which the Irish peasant is condemned from the day of his birth to the day of his death, you would have gone a long way toward eliminating lunacy from Ireland, and at the same time I believe you would find that you had not seriously reduced the consumption of whisky, the fact being that the consumption per head of the population is reasonable. In this, as in many other respects, Ireland has been grossly misrepresented, both by serious and humorous writers. The humorous writers, indeed, have been the graver offenders. Many of them seem incapable of conceiving the Irish character in any terms but those of hilarious and flagrant alcoholism. It is a profound mistake, and we shall be helped materially in our endeavors to comprehend and placate our unfortunate sister kingdom, if we dismiss forthwith from our minds the idea that she is utterly and perceptibly given over to inordinate drinking. CHAPTER V THE PATHRIOT Ireland has produced more patriots than any other country under the sun. The names of them are legion, and from Wolfe Tone down to Dr. Tanner they have all been men of reasonable parts. O’Connell, Emmet, Butt, and Parnell shine out perhaps as the greatest of them. The smaller fry do not require enumeration. But if I mistake not, while it is the fashion to flatter every Irishman who has done anything at all for Ireland with the general title of pathriot, it is only within comparatively recent times that the authentic pathriot has come into being. The fact that in England people are unkind enough to call him an agitator is of small consequence. The pathriot is singularly and peculiarly Irish. There is nothing like him in England, and there never will be anything like him; for he comes like water and like wind he goes. He begins anywhere—he may be a butcher, a publican, a schoolmaster or a farmer—he attains a seat in the House of Commons, and a certain prominence in the press, and he ends nowhere. Irish editors worship him for a season, then they wax critical of him, then they forget him altogether. Mr. Timothy Healy is a good type of the pathriot at his best. He has accomplished great things for Ireland, and achieved for himself a reputation in Parliament for a sort of savage brilliance. But there are not a dozen men in England, Ireland, Scotland or Wales to-day who care twopence where he is, or could tell you what becomes of him when Parliament is not sitting. He will end obscurely, inasmuch as it is the fate of Irish pathriots so to end. As the chief of the pathriots of the less glorious type, who however succeed in making the best of both countries, we may instance Mr. T. P. O’Connor. Mr. O’Connor is an Irishman and a Nationalist, but he has shaken the dust of Ireland from his feet, and he sits for the Scotland division of Liverpool, and has done himself rather well as a promoter of heterogeneous newspapers in London. With Mr. O’Connor, however, we shall deal fully elsewhere. Only for the sake of symmetry, do not let us forget that he is a pathriot of the finest water. The vital defect in the character of the Irish pathriot, looking at him squarely, is that in recent times at any rate he has never been a statesman. A pathriot with the proper statesmanlike qualities might, it is true, have been altogether swamped by the frothy eloquence and wild demands of the main body of pathriots. But such a one, if the Irish could only have managed to find him and keep him going, whether in the House of Commons or on English platforms, would in the long run have made a vast difference to her interests. It may be argued that Ireland did actually find a statesman in Mr. Gladstone. On the other hand it is abundantly evident that however sincere and admirable Mr. Gladstone’s proposals for the betterment of the country may have been, they were not based on anything like an exact, or for that matter even a working, knowledge of its necessities and requirements. As for Mr. Parnell, it is no disrespect to him to say of him, in full view of his amazing career, that he was not a statesman even in a small way. His aloofness, haughtiness and chilliness of temper precluded him from a really effective part or lot in the faction which he led, and ruled with a rod of iron, and, for himself, he had not sufficient spirits and imagination to carve out an independent and statesmanlike policy. Mr. Parnell made a great name and no little dust in the world, yet the verdict of history upon him will be that he was neither an O’Connell nor an Isaac Butt, and that he failed to go anything like so far as might have been expected of him. For the rest of the pathriots, the remnant, as it were, of the National party, they do not matter, and they know it. In the House of Commons they are absolutely without other than adventitious power. The English party system happened to afford them certain mechanical advantages of which they are never tired of boasting. Their sarcasms and humors and occasional displays of temper bring them from time to time a passing notoriety. But taking them as a body they are inept, irresponsible, feeble and negligible; constituting, indeed, a standing monument to the undesirable vagaries which might be looked for in the event of their being granted that much desired “little place of their own” on College Green. In fine, the Irish pathriot of our own times will not wash. He means well by his country, and well enough by himself, but he has no balance, and is entirely blind to the falsehood of extremes. It is curious to note how easily Ireland is satisfied. In pretty well all matters that concern her closely her standard of requirement is barely middling. She knows how to be grateful to the merest nonentities, and she can bestow reverence and undying fame upon persons who are little removed from mediocrity. The modern pathriot has never risen above the foot-hills; yet for Ireland he stands upon the pinnacle, [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] and they say Hosanna to him. It is a sign of the times, however, that Erin is beginning to be alive to the fact that in the main the pathriot is just one of those persons with whom she can very well afford to dispense. Vaulting ambition hath rather overleaped itself in the matter of these gentry, and their posturings and screamings and clenchings of the fist are no longer received with altogether unanimous applause. That there is reason in all things is a simple lesson which pathriots who are not wholly careless of their future will do well to learn. Their well-worn parrot-cries of “tyranny,” “oppression,” “cowardice,” “robbery,” “murder,” and so forth are become just a trifle stale, flat, and unprofitable. Irishmen are weary of shrieks; they desire a trifle of sobriety and good sense. CHAPTER VI ORANGEMEN In matters Irish it is quite usual to talk of aiming at the manifestly impossible. If we could get rid of the priests, say some, Ireland would be a happy country; but nobody suggests how it is to be done, because everybody knows full well that it cannot be done. And nobody pretends to be quite sure that benefits would result if it were done. For myself, I believe that one of the most salutary things that could be done for Ireland at the present moment would be to get rid of the Orangemen. Though they are, of course, a much older organization, they occupy in Ireland pretty much the same position as the Passive Resisters occupy in this country. In other words, while they proclaim themselves to be the friends of liberty, they are in reality nothing more nor less than the friends of intolerance and tyranny. “A Grand Orange demonstration will be held in Donegal on Tuesday, 12th July 1898. Who fears to speak of Derry, Aughrim, and the Boyne? Papists, stand aside! We conquered you before, and can do so again. Our motto still is: Down with Home Rule, Hurrah for King William, and to Hell with the Pope!” This is a sample Orange proclamation quoted by Mr. M. J. F. M’Carthy in Five Years in Ireland. Now seventy-five per cent. of the population of Ireland are Roman Catholics; what is more, they are Roman Catholics of the devoutest and most devoted type. Probably the Orangemen do not number ten per cent. of the population; yet they are allowed to insult the Head of the Roman Church in the grossest manner, with absolute impunity. If any secret society or other body in Ireland were to post a notice in Donegal to-morrow announcing a grand national demonstration, and winding up with some such ejaculatory remark as “To Hell with Mr. Balfour,” there would be arrests and terms of imprisonment and howls from every corner of England. It goes without saying that the Pope is not Mr. Balfour, and when His Holiness is wished “to Hell” nobody is really a penny the worse. But can it be claimed for a moment that there is either justice or reason in allowing such insults to be placarded in the midst of a Catholic population? Nobody above the level of a Scotch Presbyterian would attempt to justify anything of the kind. It may be that when the Orange lodges were founded they had a use and were necessary for the protection of the Protestant religion against the wiles of Roman Catholicism. At the present moment they serve no purpose whatever that is not essentially evil. In point of fact they are organized centers for the encouragement of bibulous sentiment and the open flaunting of the power of an ill-conditioned minority over a decent and fairly tolerant majority. The Protestant religion in Ireland must be in a distinctly parlous condition if it requires any such backing or any such “protection.” The fact is that nothing of the sort is necessary, or believed to be necessary, even by the more bigoted Irish Protestants. That being so, Orangeism would seem to be ripe for extirpation. If the English Government were as secular as it is commonly held to be, the Orange lodges would have short shrift. It is their supposed connection with religious liberty which shields them from suppression. Yet every Irishman, Protestant or Catholic, knows well that the religious element in Orangeism is little more than pure farce. The entire Orange forces of Ireland could not muster a couple of saints, lay or clerical, to save their lives. At the present time the Orange faction is literally powerless to do anything but create disturbances which are, in effect, street rows of the most vulgar and ill- considered nature. The stoning of Cardinals belongs properly to the same order of sport as the baiting of Jews. Neither pastime would be tolerated for a moment in England. Why the Northern Irish should be indulged passes comprehension. The majority in Ireland is Green and Catholic as opposed to a tiny minority of Orange and Protestant. The majority has an admitted right to its way in England—why not in Ireland? Much has been said as to the “sinfulness” and “wickedness” of Mr. Gladstone in disestablishing the Irish Church. I am not sure that even the Catholics are quite convinced that Mr. Gladstone’s action was wise. But one thing is certain, namely, that the disestablishment of the Irish Church was eminently just, having regard to the relative position of religious parties in the country. The suppression of the Orange lodges, or, at any rate, the penalization of Orange demonstrations, ought to have followed as a matter of course. There will never be real peace nor content in Ireland till Orangeism is deprived of its present scandalous powers of annoyance, disturbance and tyranny. Toleration on both sides, Catholic and Protestant, is the only hope for a “United Ireland,” or for an Ireland that is to work out its own social and political salvation. And you cannot have tolerance where you have an organization of chartered reactionaries who, in spite of their alleged religious purpose, are little removed, whether in temper or intention, from the common Hooligans of London. The Irish Catholic Church, which, after all, possesses some say over its adherents, has, during late years, done all that lies in its power to prevent collisions between Catholics and Orangemen; it avoids as far as is possible the occasions of such collision; it is careful neither to provoke nor challenge, and in practise it literally “turns the [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47] [48] other cheek.” The Irish Protestant Church is equally anxious for peace and equally assiduous in its efforts to secure it. Yet Orangeism flaunts itself at large and without let or hindrance. It furnishes forth “riots o’ Monday” at its own sweet will, and hoots, and mobs, and waves crimson handkerchiefs, and throws stones, and breaks windows and heads to its heart’s content. There is really nobody to say it nay. Authority stands by and winks, for is it not the great principle of Protestantism that is being protected? And are not these same Orangemen vigorous and violent anti-Home-Rulers? Herein, indeed, you have the true inwardness of the modern English attitude toward King William’s men. The domestic quietude of Ireland and the religious freedom of two-thirds of her population cannot be of the remotest consequence compared with the maintenance of the Union. That Ireland no longer seeks Home Rule does not matter. Orangeism has severed the Unionists passing well in the day that is just past. Let it reap its reward in the shape of leave and license. It deserves well of England; who shall raise a finger against it? And, moreover, it is Scotch, and the Scotch are the backbone of Ireland, as of England—manners and morals and all other decent things on one side. As I indicated at the beginning of this chapter, to attempt to rid Ireland of Orangemen were to attempt the impossible. But to deprive Orangeism of English approval and countenance is possible. Break up the lodges, bring to bear on the suppression of Orange demonstrations and Orange disturbances one tithe of the forces you brought to bear against Irish nationalism, and you will have gone a great way toward removing the last obstacles to the peace and contentment of the Irish people as a body. CHAPTER VII THE LOW SCOTCH I have no desire to offer in the present pages a re-hash of a former work of mine, which is said to have provoked the Scotch to the point of laughter. But I do desire to assert that, in my humble opinion, it is the Scotch, or alien population of Ireland, which has been at the root of Ireland’s principal troubles throughout the past century. Ulster may be a fine kingdom, the wealthiest, most industrious, and the wisest and happiest in the country, if you like. Yet it is Ulster that bars the way in all matters that make for the real good of Ireland. Every proper Irishman knows this, and Ulstermen will be at no pains to deny it. Rather are they disposed to glory in it and to brag about it. Ireland, they will tell you, is their country. It is they who have made it, they who have saved it, they who have enriched, beautified and adorned it. They point to the linen industry and to the shipbuilding industry; they crack about Belfast and Portadown, and about “eminent Ulstermen in every walk of life.” There would be no Ireland at all if it were not for themselves. They rule Ireland. What Ireland wants she may have, if it pleases Ulster. What Ireland does not want she must have, if Ulster so much as nod. That, at any rate, is the view of Ulster, the view of the thrifty, douce Scotch bodies whose fathers got gifts of other people’s lands from James I. of England and VI. of Scotland, and whose sons go up and down and to and fro upon the earth, calling themselves “Irishmen of Scotch descent.” There are no Irishmen of Scotch descent. And Ulstermen are not Irishmen unless their descent be Irish. Failing this...