and the island advanced in renown for valor, for wealth, for manufactures, and for commerce. By this, however, my young readers are not to suppose that anything like the civilization of our times, or even faintly approaching that to which ancient Greece and Rome afterwards attained, prevailed at this period in Ireland. Not so. But, compared with the civilization of its own period in Northern and Western Europe, and recollecting how isolated and how far removed Ireland was from the great centre and source of colonization and civilization in the East, the civilization of pagan Ireland must be admitted to have been proudly eminent. In the works remaining to us of the earliest writers of ancient Rome, we find references to Ireland that attest the high position it then held in the estimation of the most civilized and learned nations of antiquity. From our own historians we know that more than fifteen hundred years before the birth of our Lord, gold mining and smelting, and artistic working in the precious metals, were carried on to a great extent in Ireland. Numerous facts might be adduced to prove that a high order of political, social, industrial, and intellectual intelligence prevailed in the country. Even in an age which was rudely barbaric elsewhere all over the world, the superiority of intellect over force, of the scholar over the soldier, was not only recognized but decreed by legislation in Ireland! We find in the Irish chronicles that in the reign of Eochy the First (more than a thousand years before Christ) society was classified into seven grades, each marked by the number of colors in its dress, and that in this classification. men of learning, i. e. eminent scholars, or savants as they would now be called, were by law ranked next to royalty. But the most signal proof of all, attesting the existence in Ireland at that period of a civilization marvellous for its time, was the celebrated institution of the Feis Tara, or Triennial Parliament of Tara, one of the first formal parliaments or legislative assemblies of which we have record.* This great * The Amphictyonic Council did not by any means partake to a like extent of the nature and character of a parliament. national legislative assembly was instituted by an Irish monarch, whose name survives as a synonym of wisdom and justice, Ollav Fiola (11ain poola,), who reigned as Ard Ri of Erinn about one thousand years before the birth of Christ. To this assembly were regularly summoned : Firstly-All the subordinate royal princes or chieftains; Secondly-Ollaves and bards, judges, scholars, and historians; and Thirdly-Military commanders. We have in the old records the most precise accounts of the formalities observed at the opening and during the sitting of the assembly, from which we learn that its proceedings were regulated with admirable order and conducted with the greatest solemnity. Nor was the institution of "triennial parliaments" the only instance in which this illustrious Irish monarch, two thousand eight hundred years ago, anticipated to a certain extent the forms of constitutional government of which the nineteenth century is so proud. In the civil administration of the kingdom the same enlightened wisdom was displayed. He organized the country into regular prefectures. "Over every cantred," says the historian, "he appointed a chieftain, and over every townland a kind of prefect or secondary chief, all being the officials of the king of Ireland." After a reign of more than forty years, this "true Irish king" died at an advanced age, having lived to witness long the prosperity, happiness, and peace which his noble efforts had diffused all over the realm. His real name was Eochy the Fourth, but he is more familiarly known in history by the title or soubriquet of "Ollav Fiola," that is, the "Ollav", or law giver, preeminently of Ireland or "Fiola." Though the comparative civilization of Ireland at this remote time was so high, the annals of the period disclose the usual recurrence of wars for the throne between rival members of the same dynasty, which early and mediæval European history in general exhibits. Reading over the history of ancient Ireland, as of ancient Greece, Rome, Assyria, Gaul, Britain, or Spain, one is struck by the number of sovereigns who fell by violent deaths, and the fewness of those who ended their reigns otherwise. But those were the days when between kings and princes, chiefs and warriors, the sword was the ready arbiter that decided all causes, executed all judgments, avenged all wrongs, and accomplished all ambitions. Moreover, it is essential to bear in mind that the kings of those times commanded and led their own armies, not merely in theory or by "legal fiction," but in reality and fact; and that personal participation in the battle and prowess in the field was expected and was requisite on the part of the royal commander. Under such circumstances one can easily perceive how it came to pass, naturally and inevitably, that the battle-field became ordinarily the deathbed of the king. In those early times the kings who did not fall by the sword, in fair battle or unfair assault, were the exceptions everywhere. Yet it is a remarkable fact, that we find the average duration of the reigns of Irish monarchs, for fifteen hundred or two thousand years after the Milesian dynasty ascended the throne, was as long as that of most European reigns in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Several of the Milesian sovereigns enjoyed reigns extending to over thirty years; some to fifty years. Many of them were highly accomplished and learned men, liberal patrons of arts, science, and commerce; and as one of them, fourteen hundred years before the Christian era, instituted regularly convened parliaments, so we find others of them instituting orders of knighthood and Companionships of Chivalry long before we hear of their establishment elsewhere. The Irish kings of this period, as well as during the first ten centuries of the Christian age, in frequent instances intermarried with the royal families of other countries-Spain, Gaul, Britain, and Alba; and the commerce and manufactures of Ireland were, as the early Latin writers acquaint us, famed in all the marts and ports of Europe. III.-HOW THE UNFREE CLANS TRIED A REVOLUTION; AND WHAT CAME OF IT. HOW THE ROMANS THOUGHT IT VAIN TO ATTEMPT A CONQUEST OF IRELAND. URING those fifteen hundred years preceding the Christian era, the other great nations of Europe, the Romans and the Greeks, were passing, by violent changes and bloody convulsions, through nearly every conceivable form of government-republics, confederations, empires, kingdoms, limited monarchies, despotisms, consulates, etc. During the like period (fifteen centuries) the one form of government, a limited monarchy, and the one dynasty, the Milesian, ruled in Ireland. The monarchy was elective, but elective out of the eligible members of the established or legitimate dynasty. Indeed the principle of "legitimacy," as it is sometimes called in our times-the hereditary right of a ruling family or dynasty seems from the earliest ages to have been devotedly, I might almost say superstitiously, held by the Irish. Wars for the crown, and violent changes of rulers, were always frequent enough; but the wars and the changes were always between members of the ruling family or "blood royal;" and the two or three instances to the contrary that occur, are so singularly strong in their illustration of the fact to which I have adverted, that I will cite one of them here. The Milesians and the earlier settlers never completely fused. Fifteen hundred years after the Milesian landing, the Firbolgs, the Tuatha de Danaans, and the Milesians were still substantially distinct races or classes, the first being agriculturists or tillers of the soil, the second manufacturers and merchants, the third soldiers and rulers. The exactions and oppressions of the ruling classes at one time became so grievous that in the reign succeeding that of Creivan the Second, who was the ninety-ninth Milesian monarch of Ireland, a wide-spread conspiracy was organized for the overthrow and extirpation of the Milesian princes and aristocracy. After three years of secret preparation, everything being ready, the royal and noble Milesian families, one and all, were invited to a "monster meeting" for games, exhibitions, feastings, etc., on the plain of Knock Ma, in the county Galway. The great spectacle had lasted nine days, when suddenly the Milesians were set upon by the Attacotti (as the Latin chroniclers called the conspirators), and massacred to a man. Of the royal line there escaped, however, three princes, children yet unborn. Their mothers, wives of Irish princes, were the daughters respectively of the kings of Scotland, Saxony, and Brittany. They succeeded in escaping into Albion, where the three young princes were born and educated. The successful conspirators raised to the throne Carbry the First, who reigned five years, during which time say the chronicles, the country was a prey to every misfortune; the earth refused to yield, the cattle gave no milk, the trees bore no fruit, the waters had no fish, and " the oak had but one acorn." Carbry was succeeded by his son, Moran, whose name deservedly lives in Irish history as "Moran the Just." He refused to wear the crown, which belonged, he said, to the royal line that had been so miraculously preserved; and he urged that the rightful princes, who by this time had grown to man's estate, should be recalled. Moran's powerful pleading commended itself readily to the popular conscience, already disquieted by the misfortunes and evil omens which, as the people read them, had fallen upon the land since the legitimate line had been so dreadfully cut down. The young princes were recalled from exile, and one of them, Faradah the Righteous, was, amidst great rejoicing, elected king of Ireland. Moran was appointed chief judge of Erinn, and under his administra * Such was the deep faith the Irish had in the principle of legitimacy in a dynasty! This charactertistic of nearly all the Celtic nations survives in all its force in the Jacobite Relics of Ireland, the outburst of Irish national feeling seventeen hundred years subsequently. Ex. gr. Compare the above, taken from an old chronicle of the period with the well-known Jacobite song translated from the Irish by Callanan : "No more the cuckoo hails the spring; No more the woods with staunch-hounds ring; Since the rightful prince is far away." |