This is the never-ending burden of all the speeches and all the writings addressed to the Irish people. It is in vain you feed and clothe them-pay them to make their own roadsdrain their own bogs-nay, sow their own land. It is quite sufficient to render the boon distrusted when it is associated with "the Saxon and guilt!" But still the lesson is, Get all you can take every advantage-still cry for more-hate the giver, but take the gift— cram and blaspheme your feeder!" 66 Education may do something; but when you have taught them to read, will they be allowed to read? Did any body ever see an Irish peasant reading in his cabin? and yet education is very general. The great difficulty is to teach them to think. This once attained, they will gradually shake off their "old men of the sea." In the mean time, our law-tinkers may meddle with their system of tenure, their poor, and their relation of landlord and tenant -for it will be hard to put them into any position more deplorable than that in which they are now. IRISH HISTORY. CHAPTER I. ANTIQUITY OF IRISH ORIGIN-THEIR THREE KINGS AT THE CONQUEST-ST. PATRICK-BREHON LAW-PAYING ERIC MONSTER MEETINGS - TROOPS O'CONNELL'S QUOTATIONS -1641 -STATE OF THE COUNTRY IN THE 16TH CENTURYLAWYERS AND CLERGY-IRISH INNOCENCE-ENGLISH CRIMES -IRISH MERCY AND LOVE OF JUSTICE-DESPAIR OF AUTHORS. THE Irish have a commendable pride in tracing their history up to a very remote antiquity; and in this respect are, perhaps, second only to the Welsh. Mr. Moore, indeed, has the modesty to commence his book at only a thousand years before Christ; but as great men were living long prior to that era, whose lives and times may not be familiar to the general reader, I will take the liberty of introducing him to such as strike me to be the most remarkable: and conclude this little book with such bits, taken here and there from the old chronicles, as I may think illustrative of the national character and manners at various periods, and likely to afford amusement to such kind readers as have gone with me so far. And I will anticipate the cavils of such as may complain that this touch-and-go system is unworthy of the gravity of history, by reminding them that this is a book of "Scraps and Sketches," without form or method, and written for Jean qui rit, not Jean qui pleure. upon sore In carrying out this design, I must endeavour to touch as little as may be places; for though history may be falsified to blacken the English character, the truth must be kept back if it tell against the Irish. "It is the nature of the Irishman," says Holinshed, "that albeit he keepeth faith for the most part with no bodie, yet will he have no man to break with him." The It is considered quite fair to talk of the "bloody Saxon," but not a word of Irish midday murders and midnight burnings. ladies of England are, to a woman, no better than they should be; but no "Times Commissioner" shall dare to criticise even a feature here. English landlords and English companies, how ever prosperous their tenantry may be, are grasping and grinding if you please, but not a word of Cahirciveen! and touch Derrynane Beg if you dare! We were a great and glorious nation till we fell under Saxon misrule. You may believe those who tell you that we held synods, and sent forth learned men; but not that our people were sunk in utter barbarism, and only bent upon cutting each other's throats. You may say that our kings built monasteries, but not of mud; that they lived in palaces, but not with dunghills at the doors; that they were brave and warlike, but not that they bit off their enemies' noses, or rooted out their brothers' eyes; and, whether we can prove it or not, you shall say that our ancestors wore breeches as well as bracelets. The first great attempt to colonise Irelandfor I hold all previous accounts to be fabulous, was made by "one Cesara (or Cesarea, for they are very particular), who, when others neglected her uncle's warning of the coming deluge, ‘rigged a navy,' committing herself, with her adherents, to the seas, to seek adventures and to avoid the plagues that were to fall. There arrived in Ireland with her, three menBithi, Laigria, and Fintan, and fifty women." Considering the sex of the person who planned this expedition, the company seems an ill-chosen one; and there is, besides, a shadow of scandal cast upon the commodore, which we hope is the translator's doing: they are, however, unfortunately caught in the flood within forty days of their arrival, and all drowned but Fintan, who was transformed into a salmon and swoome all the time of the deluge about Ulster, and after the fall of the water recovering his former shape, lived longer than Adam, and delivered strange things to the posterity, so that of him the common speech riseth, If I had lived Fintan's yeeres, I could say much.'”* 6 66 From this submarine historian we come to thePlantation of Bartholanus," one of the giants, who kept possession of the land from “2333 for many yeares, without foreign invasion." But even in those days there was a cry of "misrule." They began," says Campion, "to kicke at their governours," "and in all that space their mindes not being set upon any goodnesse, but * Hanmer, p. 5. |