HE Irish exhibit at the World's Fair in St. Louis. which opens on April 30, promises to be the most dignified and praiseworthy representation that Ireland has ever been given at any international exposition. Not only are the buildings of a character that must call forth the admiration and respect of all who are fortunate enough to see them, but the policy of the administration of the project is one that will find approval in the eyes of all self-respecting Irishmen. National ideals will not be sacrificed on the altar of catchpenny commercialism. The life of Ireland is at stake. Industries can save it. This is realized by the promoters of the enterprise to the fullest extent, and no stone will be left unturned to show the world what the old land is capable of doing.

Exhibit Hall will be the building of greatest importance. This structure is 260 feet in length, seventy in breadth and two stories high. The first floor I will be devoted to the exhibition of textile fabrics and the heavier manufactures. Laces, rugs, silks and the most artistic wares will be displayed on the second floor. A number of workers will be brought over from Ireland, and a demonstration will be given of the methods used in the various manufactures. The most interesting of all these, perhaps, will be the making of the Donegal rugs and carpets. At the time of the Columbian Exposition this industry had not been started. To-day it gives employment to nearly two thousand people in Donegal. No finer rugs are to be found in the world than these hand made productions of the peasant workers. Made on the same principles as the carpets of the Syrians and Persians, they are of better material and more graceful designs.

Like them, too, the colors are the result of natural vegetable dyes, which will last as long as the fabric. Oriental rugs endure through centuries; there is no reason why their Irish prototypes should not also last for similar periods of time.

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Unbreakable doll heads, the invention of an Irish lady, will be exhibited here for the first time. This industry promises to cut into the toymakers of Germany in the near future, so popular the products. Hammered brass ornaments, artistic wrought iron; canned vegetables and small fruits, now placed on the market for the first time, and many other new industrial products will open the eyes of those who have not kept close watch on the progress of Ireland in the last decade.

Of the buildings, the most imposing, perhaps, are the St. Lawrence Gate and Blarney Castle reproductions. The St. Lawrence Gate, which is the exact size of the original structure, forms the entrance to the Irish exhibition from The Pike, as the Midway is called. It is made of staff, cast to represent masonry and painted a natural stone color. Blarney Castle is of the same material and almost full size. From its top can be had a splendid view of the most interesting parts of the fair grounds. Along the passageways inside will be hung large pictures of Irish scenery, and the ascent to the top will be made easy by short flights and long passages.

The crest of the Rock of Cashel, with the gable end of the old cathedral, will also be reproduced with wonderful fidelity. In Cormac's Chapel will be exhibited a number of rare curios. A copy of the ancestral home of the late President McKinley will stand near the St. Lawrence Gate, and will contain all the original furniture of the McKinley family, which has been purchased outright and will remain in America after the exhibition. Kate Kearney's Cottage will be seen in one corner, looking as though by a stroke of magic it had been transported from Killarney. Within its walls the wearied sightseer may find a delicious cup of tea, home made bread, jam, marmalade and the other good things which go to make up characteristic Irish luncheon. Glena Cottage will also be reproduced here. It will be ocupied by booths in which souvenirs, such as bog oak ornaments, jewelry, and small articles of lace, linen, or silk may be purchased.

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The Irish National Theatre will be a very strong attraction. An excellent

stock company has been engaged to give performances of such plays as "The Land of Heart's Desire," "Cathleen Ni Houlihan," and "The Pot of Broth," by William Butler Yeats, "The Heather Field," by Edward Martyn, "Kerry," by Dion Boucicault, and the best dramatic works by Irish authors of the past and present. The auditorium will seat 1,800 people, and no place of amusement is better equipped, so far as the stage is concerned, for the presentation of drama. Scenery, electric lighting, mechanical appliances and safeguards against accident, are thoroughly up to date. Large exits on each side make it possible to empty the theatre in half a minute, no matter how crowded it may be.

The Irish Houses of Parliament are the front of the exhibit. This will be used as a first class restaurant in which everything will be of the highest grade. The view from its windows is magnificent. Facing the Grand Court of Honor in full sight of the Cascade, the diner in the Parliament House restaurant can watch the illuminations, fireworks, and parades while feasting on the productions of the best cooks. A large orchestra will play in the dining room during the afternoon and evening. Many convention banquets are being booked for this restaurant, which has a seating capacity of over 2,000 people.

Music will be a leading feature everywhere. In the centre of the inclosure is the band stand from which "Ireland's Own" brass and reed band will send out strains that will find echoes in every Irish heart present. Famous players on the Irish pipes, harpers and other instrumentalists will be scattered around the grounds for the delectation of those who prefer the most ancient music.

Such is a rough sketch of the coming Irish exhibition. There is a genuine ring in it, and we are sure of the real metal. There will be no ridiculous blarney stone to catch the foolish coin, nor is it an Irish village, the keynote of which is poverty. It is industrial Ireland rising from among her historic ruins, around which her most sacred memories cling.

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UST seventy-eight years before our own Declaration of Independence was penned, William Molyneux in his "Case for Ireland Stated"-a document which ought to have been pregnant with results for Ireland, as the Declaration of Independance was for America, if only the Irish patriots of the time had hung together as the signers of the latter instrument didprefaced his statements by laying down the same principle, as that set forth at the beginning of our own Charter of Liberty, in almost identical phraseology.

"As every school-boy knows," or should know, the opening phrases of that famous document, I need not repeat them here-but the statements of Molyneux are less familiar, and I therefore transcribe them. They run thus:

"All men are by nature in a state of equality in respect of jurisdiction and dominion: this I take to be a principle in itself so evident that it stands in need of little proof. 'Tis not to be conceived that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should be subordinate and subject one to another; these to this or that of the same kind.

"On this equality in nature is founded that right which all men claim, of being free from all subjection to positive laws, till by their own consent they give up their freedom, by entering into civil societies for the common benefit of all the members thereof. And on this common consent depends the obligation of all human laws, inasmuch that without it, by the unanimous opinion of all jurists, no sanctions are of any force.

"No one or more men can by nature challenge any right, liberty or freedom or any ease in his property, estate or conscience, which all other men have not an equally just claim to. Is England a free people? So ought France to be. Is Poland so? Turkey likewise and all the eastern dominions ought to be so. And the same runs throughout the whole race of mankind. Secondly, 'tis against the common laws of England, which are of force both in England and Ireland, by the original compact before hinted.

"It is declared by both houses of Parliament of England, 1 Jac. chap. i., that in the high court of Parliament all the whole body of the realm, and every particular member thereof, either in person or by representation (upon their own free elections), are by the

laws of this realm deemed to be personally present. Is this, then, the common law of England, and the birthright of every free-born English subject? And shall we of this kingdom be denied it, by having laws imposed on us, where we are neither personally nor representatively present?"

It may be interesting to recall the circumstances which elicited these remarkable statements, to relate some few facts concerning the man who made them and to recount the leading incidents of his public career.

William Molyneux was born in Dublin on April 17, 1656, and died on October 4, 1698. Owing to tender health he was educated at home till the age of fifteen, when he was placed in the University of Dublin, under the care of Dr. Palliser. After taking his degree, he went to London, and entered the Middle Temple in June, 1675.

In 1678 he returned to Ireland and married Lucy, the daughter of Sir William Domville, attorney-general.

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Always deeply interested in mathematics and physical science, he established a philosophical society in Dublin with Sir William Petty as president, and in 1685 he was elected a member of the Royal Society, but I cannot follow here the details of his career as a scientist.

He became a member of the Irish Parliament and this event, which seemed unimportant at the time, was the originating cause of the production of the great work by which the name of Molyneux will be forever remembered in Ireland. In the Parliament of 1695 he was chosen to represent the University, which he continued to do till his death, and a little later he was created Doctor of Laws. About this time also he was nominated one of the Commissioners of Forfeited Estates, with a salary of £500 ($2,500) a year, but as one of his biographers states, "Looking upon it as an invidious office, and not being a lover of money, he declined it."

He at once, on entering Parliament, began to take notice of and study the fight for independence which that body had begun in 1690 by the rejection of a money bill which had not originated with themselves. In 1696 and 1697 the English Parliament, desiring to destroy the Irish woollen manufactures, then in a most thriving state, introduced prohibitory laws to prevent their exportation. These enactments seemed to Molyneux not only cruel and unwise, but unjust and tyrannical, and he immediately set himself to produce his "Case

of Ireland Stated." This appeared in 1698, with a manly yet respectful dedication to William III.

In it he proved that Ireland was never really conquered by Henry II. of England, and that by treaty made in the days of that monarch Ireland was to be governed by her own Parliament and laws and independently of those of England.

In size little more than a pamphlet, this work created a great sensation in England. The English House of Commons, ignoring the facts of history and disregarding bygone treaties, declared "that the book published by Mr. Molyneux was of dangerous tendency to the crown and people of England, by denying the authority of the King and Parliament of England to bind the Kingdom and the people of Ireland, and the subordination and dependence that Ireland had, and ought to have, upon England, as being united and annexed to the imperial of England.

An address was presented to the King, who readily promised to enforce the binding of the Parliament of reland to dependence, and the book was committed to the hands of the common hangman, by whom it was glorified by being "burnt with fire." The reception his work met with caused little astonishment to Molyneux, who, in his preface, seemed to anticipate something like what occurred. "I have heard it said," he writes, "that perhaps I might run some hazard in attempting the argument; but I am not at all apprehensive of any such danger. We are in a miserable condition, indeed, if we may not be allowed to complain when we think we are hurt."

This remark shows a philosophical frame of mind very similar to that displayed by Benjamin Frankiia, who is reported as saying when the Declaration of Independence was being signed: "We must all hang together, or we shall surely hang separately."

CHARLES WELSH.

The Famous But'er Family.

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MONUMENT to Count John Butler, the Irish Hungarian, famous for his charities, was unveiled at Budapest recently amid much enthusiasm. Count John was a descendent of the Butler who assisted in the murder of Wallenstein, hero of the Thirty Years' War, for which deed the Emperor of Germany rewarded him with a count's coronet. In the course of time the family acquired immense wealth and is now among the biggest land owners in Hungary, as well as Bohemia and Bavaria, the head of the family, however, always chosing a military career. The Butler commemorated by the monument was as well known for his charities as for his matrimonial troubles. When a youth Count Dory compelled John, revolver in hand, to marry his daughter. He fled during the wedding night, and afterward refused to recognize Josephine's child. The divorce suit he brought against his wife lasted thirty-six years, until the day of his death. Even his change of religion, from Catholic to Protestant, did not obtain him a decree.

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HERE was a great contention the other day fought out in a law court between the British Museum and the Royal Irish Academy, for the custody of certain treasure trove, gold vessels and ornaments disinterred on Irish beach. The treasures went back, as was only right, to Ireland, where is a rich storehouse of such things, for the soil has been dug over in search for the material relics of ancient art. Yet little heed has been paid to treasures of far greater worth and interest, harder to sell, it is true, but easier to come by-the old songs and stories which linger in oral tradition or in old manuscripts handed down from peasant to peasant.

Only within the last few years did the Irish suddenly awake to a consciousness that the authentic symbols, or, rather, the indisputable proofs of the national existence so dear to them, were slipping out of their hands.

So

far had the heritage perished, so ill had the tradition been maintained, that when they turned to revive their expiring language and literature, the first question asked was, "What is it you would revive? Was there ever a literature in Irish or merely a collection of ridiculous rhodomontade? Is there a language, or does there survive merely a debased jargon, employed by ignorant peasants among themselves, and chiefly useful, like a thieves' lingo, to baffle the police?"

These were the questions put, and not one in a thousand of Irish nationalists could give an answer according to knowledge.

Now, matters are changed. The books that were available in print have been read; the work of poets extant only in manuscript has been printed and widely circulated; the language is studied with zeal, and not in Ireland only, but wherever Irishmen are gathered. Yet nothing has so strongly moved me to believe that we cherish the living rather than pay funeral honors to the dead, as certain hours spent with a peasant who could neither write nor read.

The life of a song-poets have said it again and again in immortal verseis of all lives the most enduring. Kingdoms pass, buildings crumble, but the work which a man has fashioned "out of a mouthful of air" defies the centuries; it keeps its shape and its quivering substance. Strongest of all such lives are perhaps those where "the mouthful of air" is left by the singer mere air, and no more, unfixed on paper or parchment; when the song goes from mouth to mouth, altering its contours it may be, but unchanged in essence, though colored by its immediate surroundings as a flower fits itself to each soil. Such was the song that I had the chance to write down, from lips to which it came through who knows how many generations.

The story which it tells is among the finest in that great repertory of legend which, since Ireland began to take count of her own possessions, has become familiar to the world. It is the theme of a play in the last book published by the chief of modern Irish poets, Mr. W. B. Yeats. But since he tells the story in a way of his own, and since it is none too well known in those parts of Ireland where its hero's name is a proverb (Comh laidir le Cuchulain, Strong as Cuchulain), it may be well to set out the legend here.

Cuchulain, the Achilles of Irish epic, was famous from the day in boyhood when he got his name by killing, barehanded, the smith's fierce watchdog that would have torn him. The ransom (penalty) for the killing was laid on by the boy himself, and it was that

he should watch Culann's house for a year and a day till a pup should be grown to take the place of the slain dog. So he came to be called Cu Chulain, Culann's Hound, and by that name he was known when, as a young champion, he set out for the Isle of Skye, where the warrior witch Sgathach (from whom the island is called) taught the crowning feats of arms to all young heroes who could pass through the ordeals she laid upon them.

There was no trial that Cuchulain could not support, and the fame of him drew on a combat with another Amazonian warrior, Aoife, who, in the story that I heard, was Sgathach's daughter, though Lady Gregory in her fine book "Cuchulain of Muirthemne" gives another version. But, at any rate, Cuchulain defeated Aoife, and she gave love to her conqueror-whose passion for the fierce queen was not strong enough to keep him from Ireland. When he made ready to go, the woman warrior told him that a child was to be borne of their embraces, and she asked what should be done with it. "If it be a girl, keep it," said Cuchulain, "but if a boy, wait till his thumb can fill this ring"-and he gave her the circlet "then send him to me." So he departed, leaving wrath behind him.

The child born was a son, and Aoife reared him and taught him all feats of arms that could be taught to a mortal, except one only, and of that feat only Cuchulain was master. "The way," said James Kelly, prefacing his ballad with such an explanation as I am now giving, "there would be none could kill him but his own father." And when the boy had learnt all and was a perfect warrior, Aoife sent him out to Ireland under a pledge to refuse his name to any that should ask it, well knowing how the wardens of the coast would stop him on the shore. It fell out as she purposed. The young Connlaoch

defeated champion after champion till Cuchulain himself went down, and was recognized by his son. But the pledge tied Connlaoch's tongue, and only when he lay dying, slain by the magic throw which Aoife had withheld from his knowledge, could he reveal himself to his father, the great and childless hero, whose lament for his lost son is written in the song that I set out to secure, on a day of sun and rain, last Summer, when great soft clouds drove full sail through the moist atmosphere, their shadows sweeping over brown moor and green valley, while far away toward the sea, mountain peaks rose purple and amethystine in the distance.

Twice before this I had been in the little cottage on Cark Mountain; once, a year earlier, when the chance rumor heard in a neighboring cabin of a man with countless songs and stories sent me off to investigate; and once, this same year, when I had come back with a slightly better knowledge of Gaelic and had taken down a few verses of

the poem. These, sent to an Irish scholar, had sufficed to identify the ballad with one printed in Miss Brooke's "Reliques of Irish Poetry," a characteristic production of the latter days of the eighteenth century, when Macpherson, with his adaptation of the Ossianic poems, and Bishop Percy, with his gathering of old English ballads, had set a fashion soon to culminate in Scott's great achievement.

They proved, however, not identity only but difference; and the ballad as I have it in full with its nineteen quatrains, is even less like the longer version given by O'Halloran to Miss Brooke, than the opening stanzas suggested. In them the variations were mainly textural, and when I read out O'Halloran's version to James Kelly, his son, a keen listener, declared a But preference for the printed text. the old man was of another mind. "It's the same song," he said, "sure enough, but there's things changed in it, and I know rightly about them. Some one was giving it the way it would be easier to understand, leaving out the old hard words. And I did that myself once or twice the last day you were here, and I was vexed after, when I would be thinking about it. And this day you will be to take down what I say, let you understand it or not; just word for word, the right way it should be spoken."

There you have in a glimpse the custodians of legend. The man was illiterate, technically, but he knew by instinct, as his ancestors had known before him, that he was the guardian of the life of a song; he recognized that it was a scripture which he had no right to mutilate or alter. He had to the full that respect for a work of literature which is the best indication of a scholar, and for him at least the line was unbroken from the Ireland of heroes and minstrels to the hour when he chanted over the poem that some bard in the remote ages had fashioned.

Little wonder, too, for his own way of life was close to that of the Middle Ages. Below in the valley, where the Swilly River debouches into its sea

lough, was a prosperous little town with banks and railway; but to reach the bleak brown moor where James Kelly's house stood, you must climb by one of two roads, each so rough and steep that a bicycle cannot be ridden down there. Here, in a little screen of scrub alders, stands the cottage, where three generations of the family live together. His own home consisted simply of two rooms with no upper story, but it was trim and comfortable, the dresser well filled, and the big pot over the turf fire gave out a prosperous steam. The son, a grown man, waited from his turf-cutting to help in our discussion; the wife was abroad that day, and one daughter was just starting for market with a web of homespun cloth which they had dressed in the household. The spinning wheel stood in the corner; but another girl was busy near the fire with more modern work, hemming shirts with a machine for a Derry factory, and the bleached linen was the only thing in the house which had not taken on the brown tints of peat smoke.

James Kelly himself, as he sat by the fire declaiming at me, was all browns and grays, like the country outside his door; and his eyes were like brown streams running through that peaty mountain, with their movement and sparkle, and their dark depths. At other times easy, like that of all Irish peasants, his manner changed and grew rough and imperious when the business began. I must not interrupt with questions. 1 must write down, syllable for syllable, that the song might be got "the right way." It was by no means easy to carry out these directions, for the poem was written in an Irish not spoken to-day, as unlike as the Chaucerian English is to our common speech; and even to write down modern Irish by ear I was poorly qualified. Things were made harder, too, by the manner of recitation, as traditional as the words. He chanted, with a continuous vocalization, and while he chanted, elbow and knee worked like a fiddler's or piper's marking the time. However, with persistence, I got the thing down, letting him first say a verse fully through, then writing line by line, as near as I could; then going back and asking question in details; the son coming to my rescue, when the old man lost patience (as he did once in every ten minutes) and interposing usefully in our discussions.

For there were endless discussions as to the meaning of words, and nothing could be more curious than to see the old man's endeavor to give in English not merely a bare rendering, but the color of every phrase. It made me realize as nothing else could have done, how fine was his feeling for the shade of a word, and I cannot describe his dissatisfaction with the poor equivalents he could find. He was happy enough when the debate drifted into an exposition-always addressed to his son-of the uses of some rare word in the Irish, the manner of exposition being by citation of passages from other songs, or phrases that might occur in

talk. I have listened to many a professor doing the same thing in Greek and Latin, but to none who had a finer instinct for the business. Kelly's vexation came when he had to "put English on" a word for me, and the obvious equivalent was not the right one. Sometimes I could help; sometimes he arrived by himself at what satisfied him, though once at least it was droll enough. We were at the lines where Connlaoch, dying, says to his father: "If I could give my secret to any under the sun, it is to your bright body I would tell it." The trouble was about the phrase "bright body," for the word "cneas" means literally "skin," but is used to signify "person." What James wanted to convey to me was that the word was not the common one for "body," and at last he smote his thigh. "Carkidge," he cried, "it's carkidge (carcase), 'it is to your clear carkidge I would tell it.'" A man with less instinct for literature would have said "body" at once, and never trouble more; but James knew at once too much and too little, and I give the instance to show how an Irishman unlettered in English may be deeply imbued with the true spirit of letters through a literature of his own

There were, however, several passages where I could get no clear account of the meaning, and in some I have since found by comparison with the text which O'Halloran provided for Miss Brooke that Kelly had got the words twisted. For instance, the first stanza opens simply:

"There came to us a stout champion, The hearty champion Connlaoch."

But of the next two lines I could get no clearer rendering than that "he just came in full through these people for diversion and for fun to himself." Then the ballad continues at once-for its method is terse and its transitions abrupt throughout-to give us the words of the men who meet Connlaoch on his landing:

"Where have you been, O tender gallant,

Riding like a noble's son?
Methinks by the way of your coming,
You are wandering or astray."

And Connlaoch answers the taunt and the challenge implied: "My coming is over seas from the land Of the High King of the World, To prove my merry prowess Athwart the high chiefs of Erin."

(It seemed to me characteristic that the stock epithet of valor should be "merry" or "laughing.") The ballad added no reply (though in Miss Brooke's version at this point there is a dialogue of warnings), but went on to tell in the shortest possible words how Conall Cearnach ("the Victorious") rode out from Emain Macha and met the challenger:

"Out started Conall, not weak of hand,
To get news of the noble's son.
Bitter and hard was the way of it;
Conall was tied by Connlaoch."