CHAPTER XXXI HOSPITALITY IN ANCIENT IRELAND A CHARACTERISTIC of the Irish race for which it has been noted through the ages is its hospitality. In pre-Christian days this quality shone as much as it did in later time. But in later time the virtue was given a sublimely Christian turn. "Christ is in the person of every guest," and "every stranger is Christ," were the sentiments that came to consecrate hospitality. The attitude of the Irish people on the subject is well expressed in one of their ancient poems (translated by Kuno Meyer): Oh King of stars! Whether my house be dark or bright, Never shall it be closed against any one, If there be a guest in your house And you conceal aught from him, 'Tis not the guest that will be without it, As with the Arab, so with the Irish, any one who had partaken of food in one's house, was thereby sacred against harm or hurt from all members of the family. A person of rank had to entertain any stranger without enquiring who or what he was or the wherefore of his coming. Against the coming of unknown guests his door must be open,1 and his fire must always have on it the coire ainsec, undry cauldron. A guest came when he liked, stayed while he would, and left 1 When, in comparatively recent days, the Connaught princess Grainne O'Malley was returning from the state visit which she paid Elizabeth of England, she landed at Howth, and finding Lord Howth's castle-gate closed-as the family and household were at dinner-she, incensed by such Saxon churlishness picked up from a nurse outside the gates and carried off with her to Connaught Lord Howth's child. The Howth family had to pay a goodly ransom for their child-and thereby taught a proper lesson in Irish hospitality. Ever after, when they went to dinner their gates and doors were thrown wide open. when he wished. No matter how many the guests that thronged one's house, or how lengthy their sojourn, under no conceivable circumstances could it be intimated to them that they should depart. And, furthermore, under no circumstances, in those times, could or would a guest, departing from any house howsoever poor, so far forget the respect due his host, as to offer any kind of compensation. There is a Munster story of a rude, wild mountaineer, who visited England, four or five centuries ago, and who, among the many wonderful tales of Saxonland which, on his return, he had to tell, had none more extraordinary, more unbelievable, than that the English people actually charged for the food, liquor, and bed, which they provided for a stranger! The Irishman, who, on the arrival of travellers, discovered that he had not food and drink in the house with which instantly to regale them, suffered keen disgrace. This applied to all ranks, including royalty itself. If the disgrace was incurred, not through wilful negligence on the part of the host, but by the defection of one who had contracted to supply him with provisions, the latter was, then, rendered liable by law to pay to the disgraced one a blush fine, enech-ruice. In the old Irish poets and writers we find a man reckoned wealthy not by what he has but by what he gives. And the right hand of the generous man was often said to have grown longer than his left. It will be remembered that in the time of the Tuatha De Danann, their king, Breas, was deposed because he lacked the first essential, hospitality: "Breas did not grease their knives. In vain they came to visit Breas. Their breath did not smell of ale at the banquet." In the early days, because in many districts people might be too poor, or travellers too many, for satisfactory private hospitality, there were, at various points throughout the land, public houses of hospitality called bruideans (breens). And the honoured officials who were entrusted with these houses were called brughaids (brewys). A bruidean was always set at the junction of several roads, frequently the junction of six. It had open doors facing A century or so ago the MacSweeneys of Cork had a stone erected on the highway near their home to notify all travellers that they were expected to call at the MacSweeney home for entertainment. In the last century the famous Dick Martin of Connemara (who, by the way, was the first man to promote a law against cruelty to animals) used to have a servant awaiting the coming of the long-car to the village some miles off (which was the end of the public conveyance route) whose duty it was to extend the hospitality of his master's house to strangers who arrived on the car. every road-and a man stationed on each road to make sure that no one passed unentertained. It had a light burning on the lawn all night. A full cauldron was always boiling on the fire. It was stocked with provisions of all kinds in plenty. The esteem in which was held the virtue of hospitality is exemplified by the fact that the public brughaid was, by law, permitted the same number of attendants, and given the same protection, as the king of a territory. His hospice was endowed with land, and with other allowances. The brughaid had a magistrate's jurisdiction for arbitration of agrarian cases. His house, too, was the house of assembly for election of officers of the territory. As the brughaid was required to welcome, at all times, every company and every face, his bruidean must always be stocked with three boiled fleshes, three red fleshes (i. e., uncooked) and three living fleshes. The three fleshes were those of an ox, a wether, and a hog. The three living fleshes must be at hand, fattened, and ready for immediate killing; the three red fleshes dressing in the kitchen; the three boiled fleshes in the boilers, ready for instant serving. Every brughaid was required to have at least a hundred of each kind of animal grazing on his fields—and a hundred servants in his house. He was called a brughaid ceadach, meaning a hundred brughaid. There was a brughaid leitech, two hundred brughaid, who had two hundred of each kind of cattle, and a hundred beds for guests. The good brughaid was expected to have in his house the three miachs (sacks)—a miach of malt to make refreshment for wayfarers, a miach of wheat to give them food, and a miach of salt, to improve the food's taste. Also the three cheers, the cheer of the strainers straining ale, the cheer of the servitors over the cauldron, and the cheer of the young men over the chessboard, winning games from one another. The six chief bruideans of Ireland were asylums of refuge for homicides-like the six Jewish cities of refuge. Keating estimated the total number of such houses of hospitality in Ireland, as being over four hundred. He says there were ninety in Connaught, ninety in Ulster, ninety-three in Leinster, and a hundred and thirty in Munster. The Small Primer (Brehon Laws) says: "He is no brughaid who is not possessed of hundreds. He warns off no individual of whatever shape. He refuses not any company. He keeps no account against a person, though often he come. Such is the brughaid who has dire with the king of a territory." The Irish monks and missionaries on the Continent carried with them to Europe the Irish idea of the House of Hospitality-and established regular lines of these in France, and through Germany, for entertaining the crowds of pilgrims who journeyed to Rome on the one hand, and to Jerusalem on the other including, of course, the crusaders. The same idea of providing for those who needed it materialised in other directions-as in the case of the very old and dependent. In each territory was an officer called uaithne (signifying pillar), whose duty it was to provide for such as had not any of their own kin to do so. The law provided the uaithne with power to levy a rate for the maintenance of these dependent ones. He was called uaithne because the law tract describes him as "a pillar of endurance and attendance." If the dependent did have kin but did not choose to live as one of them, the uaithne was to see that a house was provided for him that must be at least seventeen feet long, have two doors, a chest at one side, a bed at the other, and a kitchen or storehouse. Also that he was supplied with a prescribed amount of food, of milk, and of attendance. His head was to be washed every Saturday, and his body every twentieth night. There is displayed a true knowledge of human nature, and a praiseworthy indulgence of the crankiness and abusiveness of the old and dependent, in the wise provision of this law which rules that, contrary to universal custom, the uaithne can suffer the reddening of his face without disgrace to himself or to his kin. The stories told of a certain seventh century king of Connaught, Guaire the Hospitable, illustrate the very high regard in which hospitality and generosity were held. Once, being beaten in battle by one of the kings Diarmuid, Guaire, in token of submission, had to kneel in front of Diarmuid and take in his teeth the point of the victor's sword. When he was in this humiliating position, Diarmuid, to test whether his famed generosity was sincere or ostentatious, had, first, one of his Druids ask of Guaire a gift in honour of learning-to which request the humiliated Guaire paid no heed: and then a leper ask an alms for God's sake, to whom Guaire, with teeth still closed upon the sword point, gave the gold brooch from his mantle. At the secret instigation of the king, one of his people forced the brooch from the leper, who at Throughout early Irish history and story, the several references to pilgrims to Jerusalem are made so casually as to suggest the confident inference that great numbers were constantly going. The pilgrimage to Rome seems to have been very common. Guaire imrne once complained of his loss to the kneeling one. diately unlinked the golden girdle that bound his waist, and reached it to the leper. This gift was instantly also taken from the poor man, when, with sore complaint the leper came a third time to Guaire. Realising the poor man's distress, and knowing that he had nothing more to give, Guaire's tears ran from his eyes in a stream. "Arise, Guaire," said Diarmuid, "and do homage only to God!" Diarmuid then brought his late foe with him to the great fair of Taillte. As was usual with him, Guaire brought to the gathering a sack of silver to make presents to the men of Ireland. Diarmuid, however, had secretly ordered that none should ask or accept a gift from his royal guest. When he had been two days at the fair, he sent for a bishop to give him the last rites of the church. Diarmuid and his friends, alarmed, asked why he sought the last rites. "Because," answered Guaire, "I have seen the men of Ireland for two days assembled together in one spot, without any of them asking me for a bounty. Surely it is the end.' Then Diarmuid lifted the ban, and Guaire was happy once more. In the presence of the men of Ireland, the peace was ratified between the two kings, who kept it ever after. If Guaire was generous, his enemy, Diarmuid, was considerate. For when the latter, marching to give battle, was met by a messenger with the request that as Guaire was not yet fully prepared to give him battle, he should not cross the river for another twenty-four hours-"I gladly grant his request," said Diarmuid, "and would have granted him a much greater, had he asked it." The ancient historical and poetic accounts are full of instances of this kind of battle chivalry-showing that usually a leader considered it disgraceful to attack an unprepared foe. It will be recalled that Gol MacMorna could not be induced to surprise an enemy by attacking before daybreak. We have a fine sample of this chivalry in the Agallam na Seanorach. When Caoilte, with the lute player and the man of beauty, was visiting Bo-bind of the Tuatha de Danann at Assaroe, to get cured of a spear-thrust in the calf of his leg, on a night of revelry there, the alarm was raised that a fleet of marauding foreigners (Fomorians) had sailed into the harbour. Caoilte was appealed to for his advice in the face of impending disaster, and answered: Let them be asked for a truce till the Tuatha de Danann make a gathering and a muster. "And thus it was done,” adds the poet narrator, with naïve simplicity. The most notable historical instance of this kind of chivalry occurred in the year 1001 or 1002 when Brian Boru demanded from the then Ard Righ, Malachi, submission and hostages-"The latter replied to Brian's ambassadors," says Keating, "by saying that if Brian would grant him a respite of one month in order that he might have time to summon around him the army of Leth-Cuin, he would, at the end of the period, either give battle or send hostages to the king of LethMogha." But when Aod O'Neill, king_of Ailech, refused to support him, Malachi, at the end of the month journeyed to Brian, and told him frankly that he was not |