The Old Irish World

But after a short time we fall to roundly on every dish calling now and then for wine, now and then for attendance, everyone according to his whim. In the midst of supper Master Morrison ordered be given to him a glass goblet full of claret, which measured, (as I conjecture) ten or eleven inches roundabout, and drank to the health of all, and to our happy arrival. We freely received it from him, thanking him, and drinking one after the other, as much as he drank before us. He then gave four or five healths of the chief men, and of our absent friends, just as the most illustrious Lord, now Treasurer of Ireland, is used to do at his dinners. And it is a very praiseworthy thing, and has, perhaps, more in it than anyone would believe; and there was not one amongst us who did pledge him and each other without any scruple or gainsay, which I was very glad to see; for it was a proof of unanimity and assured friendship.

For there are many (a thing I can’t mention without great and extreme sorrow) who won’t drink healths with others; sitting, nevertheless, in the company of those who do drink, and not doing as they do; which is of all things the most shameful… For, at table, he who does not receive whatsoever healths may be proposed by another, does so, either because he likes not the proposer, or he to whom they drink, or the wine itself. Truly I would not willingly have any dealings with him who under values either me or my friend, or lastly wine, the most precious of all things under heaven.

••••••••••••

Let us now return to Lecale, where the supper (which, as I have said, was most elegant) being ended, we again enter our bedroom, in which was a large fire (for at the time it was exceedingly cold out of doors) and benches for sitting on; and plenty of tobacco, with nice pipes, was set before us. The wine also had begun to operate a little on us, and everyone’s wits had become somewhat sharper; all were gabbling at once, and all sought a hearing at once… Amongst other things, we said that the time was now happily different, from when we were before Kinsale at Christmas of last year, when we suffered intolerable cold, dreadful labour, and a want of almost everything; drinking the very worst. We compared events, till lately unhoped for, with the past, and with those now hoped for. Lastly, reasoning on everything, we conclude that the verse of Horace (Ode 37, Book 1st) squares exceedingly well with the present time – namely, “that now is the time for drinking, that now is the time for thumping the floor with a loose foot.” Therefore, after a little Captain Jephson calls for usquebaugh, and we all immediately second him with one consent, calling out “Usquebaugh, usquebaugh” – for we could make as free there as in our own quarters.

Besides it was not without reason we drank usquebaugh; for it was the best remedy against the cold of that night, and good for dispersing the crude vapours of the French wine; and pre-eminently wholesome in these regions, where the priests themselves, who are holy men – as the Abbot of Armagh, the Bishop of Cashel, and others; and also noble men – as Henry Oge MacMahon, MacHenry – and men and women of every rank – pour usquebaugh down their throats by day and by night; and that not for hilarity only, which would be praiseworthy, but for constant drunkenness which is detestable.

Therefore, after everyone had drank two or three healths … what because of the assailing fumes of the wine which now sought our heads … we thought it right, as I have said, to rest for some hours. And behold, now, the great kindness that Master Morrison shows towards us. He gives up to us his own good and soft bed, and throws himself upon a pallet in the same chamber, and would not be persuaded by anything we could say, to lie in his own bed; and the pallet was very hard and thin, such as they are wont to have who are called “Palatine” of great heroes.

I need not tell how soundly we slept till morning, for that is easily understood, all things considered; at least if the old syllogism be true: “He who drinks well sleeps well.” We did not, however, pass the night altogether without annoyance: for the Captain’s dogs, which were very badly educated (after the Northern fashion) were always jumping on the beds, and would not let us alone, although we beat them ever so often, which the said Captain took in dudgeon, especially when he heard his dogs howling; but it was all as one for that; for it is not right that dogs, who are of the beasts, should sleep with men who are reasoning and laughing animals, according to the philosophers… Before we get out of bed they bring to us a certain aromatic of strong ale, compounded with sugar and eggs (in English “caudle”) to comfort and strengthen the stomach, they also bring beer (if any prefer it) with toasted bread and nutmeg, to allay thirst, steady the head, and cool the liver; they also bring pipes of the best tobacco to drive away rheums and catarrhs.

We now all jump quickly out of bed, put on our clothes, approach the fire, and, when all are ready, walk abroad together to take the air, which, in that region, is most salubrious and delightful, so that if I wished to enumerate all the advantages of the place, not only powers (of description), but time itself would be wanting. I shall therefore omit that, as being already known, and revert to ourselves, who, having now had a sufficient walk, returned to our lodging as dinner time was at hand. But how can we tell about the sumptuous preparation of everything? How about the dinners? How about the dainties? For we seemed as if present (as you would suppose) at the nuptial banquet to which some Cleopatra had invited her Antony; so many varieties of meat were there, so many kinds of condiments; about every one of which I would willingly say something, only that I fear being too tedious. I shall therefore demonstrate from a single dinner, what may be imagined of the rest. There was a large and beautiful collar of brawn, with its accompaniments – to wit, mustard and Muscadel wine; there were well-stuffed geese, … the legs of which the Captain always laid hold of for himself; there were pies of venison and of various kinds of game; pasties also, some of marrow, with innumerable plums; others of it with coagulated milk; others which they call tarts, of divers shapes, materials and colours, made of beef, mutton and veal. I do not mention because they are reckoned vulgar, other kinds of dishes, wherein France much abounds, and which they designate “Quelq’choses” [“Kickshaws”]. Neither do I relate anything of the delicacies which accompanied the cheese, because they would excel all belief. I may say in one word, that all things were there supplied us most luxuriously and most copiously. And lest anyone might think that God had sent us the meat, but the Devil the Cook (as the proverb says), there was a cook there so expert in his art that his equal could scarce be found…

If you now inquire whether there were any other amusements, besides those I have related, I say an infinite number, and the very best. For if we wished to ride after dinner, you would have seen forthwith ten or twelve handsome steeds with good equipments and other ornaments, ready for the road. We quickly mount, we visit the Well and Chair of St. Patrick [Struel], the ancient Fort [Rath-Celtair], or any other place according to our fancy; and at length returning home, cards, tables, and dice are set before us, and amongst other things that Indian tobacco (of which I shall never be able to make sufficient mention), and of which I cannot speak otherwise.

••••••••••••

And now once more to our Lecale, where amongst other things that contributed to hilarity, there came one night after supper certain maskers belonging to the Irish gentry, four in number (if I rightly remember). They first sent in to us a letter marked with “the greatest haste,” and “after our hearty commendations,” according to the old style, saying that they were strangers, just arrived in these parts, and very desirous of spending one or two hours with us; and leave being given, they entered in this order: first a boy, with a lighted torch; then two, beating drums; then the maskers, two and two; then another torch. One of the maskers carried a dirty pocket handkerchief, with ten pounds in it, not of bullion, but of the new money lately coined, which has the harp on one side, and the royal arms on the other.

They were dressed in shirts, with many ivy leaves sewed on here and there over them; and had over their faces masks of dog-skin; with holes to see out of, and noses made of paper; their caps were high and peaked (in the Persian fashion), and were also of paper, and ornamented with the same (ivy) leaves.

I may briefly say we play at dice. At one time the drums sound on their side; at another the trumpet on ours. We fight a long time a doubtful game; at length the maskers lose, and are sent away cleaned out. Now whoever hath seen a dog, struck with a stick or a stone, run out of the house with his tail hanging between his legs, would have (so) seen these maskers going home: without money; out of spirits; out of order; without even saying “Farewell”; and they said that each of them had five or six miles to go to his home, and it was then two hours after midnight.

I shall now tell of another jest or gambol, which amongst many, the domestics of Master Morrison exhibited for us. Two servants sat down after the manner of women (with reverence be it spoken) when they “hunker,” only that they (the servants) sat upon the ground: their hands were tied together in such a manner that their knees were clasped within them; and a stick placed between the bend of the arms and the legs, so that they could in no way move their arms; they held between the thumb and forefinger of either hand a small stick, almost a foot in length, and sharp at the farther end. Two are placed in this way: the one opposite the other at the distance of an ell. Being thus placed they engage; and each one tries to upset his opponent, by attacking him with his feet; for being once upset, he can by no means recover himself, but presents himself to his upsetter for attack with the aforesaid small stick. Which made us laugh so for an hour, that the tears dropped from our eyes; and the wife of Philip the cook laughed, and the scullion, who were both present. You would have said that some barber-surgeon was there to whom all were showing their teeth.

But enough of these matters; for there would be no end of writing, were I to recount all our grave and merry doings in that space of seven days.

I shall therefore make an end both of the journey and of my story. For on the seventh day from our arrival we departed, mournful and sad; and Master Morrison accompanied us as far as Dundrum; to whom each of us bid farewell, and again farewell, and shouting the same for a long way, with our caps raised above our heads, we hasten to our quarters, and there we each cogitate seriously over our own affairs.

CHAPTER V

TRADITION IN IRISH HISTORY

Reprinted from the Nineteenth Century and After, March, 1909

IN the Quarterly Review of January last there appeared an article by Mr. Robert Dunlop, dealing in a trenchant manner with a book which I wrote lately, The Making of Ireland and Its Undoing. I regret to take part personally in a controversy where my own credit is brought into question, and I am only moved to do so by consideration of the grave issues which are involved as regards the study of Irish history.

The appearance of my book has raised two questions of a very different order – the important question of whether, with the advance of modern studies, need has arisen for an entire review of the whole materials for Irish history and of the old conclusions, and the less interesting problem of my own inadequacy and untrustworthiness. Mr. Dunlop, in some fifteen pages of discourse, has not so much as mentioned the first. He has treated the second at considerable length. We may here take them in order of importance.

The real difference between Mr. Dunlop and myself lies deeper than the question of my merits or demerits. It is the old conflict between tradition and enquiry. For the last 300 years students of medieval Irish history have peacefully trodden a narrow track, hemmed in by barriers on either hand. On one side they have been for the most part bounded by complete ignorance of the language of the country or its literature. On the other side they have raised the wall of tradition. Along this secluded lane writers have followed one another, in the safety of the orthodox faith. A history recited with complete unanimity takes on in course of time the character of the highest truth. There have been disputes on one or two points perhaps where theologians are concerned, as for example the story of St. Patrick; but on the general current of Irish life there has been no serious discussion nor any development in opinion. The argument from universal assent has been sufficient. There is a similarity even of phrase. “We prefer to think,” writes Mr. Dunlop. “We prefer to abide by the traditional view of the state of Ireland,” writes another critic from the same school. Agreement has been general, individual speculation has not disturbed the peace, and all have joined their voices to swell the general creed. Under these favouring conditions historians of Ireland speak with a rare confidence and unanimity. “What are novelties after all?” cries the sagacious historian imagined by M. Anatole France: “mere impertinences.”

It has happened to me to question the received doctrine. Universal assent of all men of all time is a very useful thing, and for some positive facts it may be decisive. But in Irish history it is used to enforce a series of negations – no human progress, no spiritual life, no patriotism, no development, no activity save murder, no movement but a constant falling to decay, and a doomed lapse into barbarism of every race that entered the charmed circle of the island. However universal the consent, the statements of the tradition are of so extraordinary a character, that one may fairly desire an inspection of the evidence. I have ventured to suggest that the time had come to study the sources anew; to see if any had been omitted, or if in modern research any new testimony concerning Ireland had been brought to light; to give less weight to negative assertions than to positive facts; and to enquire what the whole cumulative argument might imply. Thus the fundamental problem has been raised. If Mr. Dunlop has not a word to say about it, it will nevertheless not disappear. The enquiry will need many scholars and a long time, but I am sure it will be completed, and that Irish history will then need to be re-written. Meanwhile, as I claim no infallible authority, to fulminate against me does not get rid of the essential problem. The discrediting of a doubter of the orthodox faith is the simplest form of argument and the least laborious. The trouble is that when it is done the real question is no further advanced.

A heretic must take his risks. We have an example of their gravity in this article, in which Mr. Dunlop restores an old custom to controversy. We had almost come to suppose that it was the privilege of theologians to settle the respective platforms from which disputations should be carried on. The higher plane is reserved for the orthodox. The “querulous” dissentient, on the other hand, is pronounced to be making mere incursions into what is for him a comparatively unknown region, his incapacity is obvious and his want of candour deplorable, and he has forfeited all claim to respect. This is all in the appropriate manner of those who hold an Irish history handed down by tradition.

The permitted belief about Ireland has been summed up dogmatically by Mr. Dunlop in the Dictionary of National Biography, the Cambridge Modern History, and elsewhere. Of the inhabitants of Ireland “two-thirds at least led a wild and half nomadic existence. Possessing no sense of national unity beyond the narrow limits of the several clans to which they belonged, acknowledging no law outside the customs of their tribe, subsisting almost entirely on the produce of their herds and the spoils of the chase, and finding in their large frieze mantles a sufficient protection against the inclemency of the weather, and one relieving them from the necessity of building houses for themselves, they had little in their general mode of life to distinguish them from their Celtic ancestors.” “Outside the pale there was nothing worthy of being called a Church. To say that the Irish had relapsed into a state of heathenism is perhaps going too far. The tradition of a Christian belief still survived; but it was a lifeless, useless thing.” The country was “cut off by its position, but even more by the relapse of the greater of its inhabitants into a state of semi-barbarism, from the general currents of European development.” Bogs and woods, the lairs of the wild-boar and the wolf, made internal communications dangerous and difficult, and prevented trade and intercourse with other nations. Few words, therefore, are needed to sum up their commerce. “French wines found their way into the country through Cork and Waterford; the long-established relations between Dublin and Bristol still subsisted; Spanish traders landed their wares on Galway quay; the fame of St. Patrick’s purgatory attracted an occasional pilgrim from foreign lands; and of one Irish chieftain it was placed on record that he had accomplished the hazardous journey to Rome and back.” Shane O’Neill, “champion of Celtic civilisation,” could speak no language but Irish, and could not sign his name. In the Quarterly Review we have a few more details – that the main part of the Irishmen’s dress was skins; that this people who lived without houses when they went on their “marauding expeditions” (excursions of the full summer time) made to themselves tents of untanned skins to cover them (here I could almost imagine Mr. Dunlop, in spite of his aversion to bards, indulging on the sly in a cloudy reminiscence of an Irish poet); that among the whole of them they had just a few hundred coracles made of osiers and skins for crossing swollen rivers, for the O’Malleys and O’Driscolls who had long-boats represented “perhaps the Iberian element in the nation,” suggests Mr. Dunlop, not to give the Gaels any credit, while he slips by the way into the objectionable word apparently so hard to avoid; that they made no practical use even of their inland fisheries, and had no industries, so that even the cloth was made by Englishmen.

We would desire to ask Mr. Dunlop for the exact proof he relies on for any one of these statements, beginning perhaps with “no law outside the customs of the tribe.” Writers who hold Ireland to be, as he says, “a sort of scrap-heap for Europe,” and who cannot conceive of medieval Irishmen as ordinary men sharing the faults and virtues of other white Europeans, are addicted to the word “native” – a word not in common use among historians for Englishmen in England in the Middle Ages, but affected by them to indicate Irishmen in Ireland, with the derogatory sense which their “tradition” requires. The vulgar view received as it were official recognition half a century ago from Mr. Hamilton in his preface to the State Papers of 1509-73 (see also references in my book, 487-8), where he explains that the study of Irish life till Elizabethan times will be of considerable value in the study of Universal History, Ireland being so remote from the earlier seats of civilisation that the rude way of living described by Hesiod and the old poets still lingered there till the sixteenth century; till which time “most of the wild Irish led a nomade life, tending cattle, sowing little corn, and rarely building houses, but sheltered alike from heat and cold, and moist and dry, by the Irish cloak.” The last fifty years, we see, amid the general shaking of dry bones and the movement of history elsewhere, have brought no stir in Irish history. That alone stands like eternal truth fixed and unchangeable. Hence, doubtless, Mr. Dunlop’s canon (Quart. Rev., 1906) forbidding “a history of Ireland in more than one volume.”

The barbarian legend has got a long start. A first attempt to review its evidence was made in my book. In a series of social studies I have endeavoured to discuss, not the whole of Irish history, but definite matters of trade, social life, and education. I have gathered a body of facts which indicate that Ireland had considerable manufactures; that her foreign commerce can be traced throughout Europe; that there was an orderly society, even a wealthy one; that Irish travellers were known at Rome and in the Levant; that there was an Anglo-Irish culture by no means contemptible, in touch with Continental learning; and that increasing intercourse of the races did not tend to barbarism but to civilisation.

In this sketch I have not proposed to myself to draw nice distinctions between what the Normans precisely did, and what the Irish (or even, following Mr. Dunlop), what Iberians were doing in the sixteenth century in the joint work of commerce and culture, because there is as yet no sufficient material for that discussion; I share this lack of knowledge with many who have pronounced themselves with no uncertain voice. Further, I should have been glad to confine these studies to the cheerful progress of trade and culture; but I was confronted with two possible objections. The suggestion that if there had been any considerable trade it would not have vanished by a freak, could only be answered by indicating how and why the destruction had been wrought. And to meet the argument that historians would not have let a genuine story perish, I gave my opinion on how it was that the truth dropped out of sight.

My conclusions conflict with the venerable traditions over which Mr. Dunlop mounts guard. I clearly offend also against the canon of one volume. It is obvious that he must feel for me the sharpest disapproval; and this censure is conveyed with no mitigation of phrase or manner.

The charge he elaborates against me is briefly that I have no judgment, and less candour, in the use of documents, and have thus produced a mass of mischievous fiction.

I may say in passing that Mr. Dunlop’s severity with regard to authorities comes somewhat oddly from one who has shown himself fairly easy in such matters. In his own writings he gives no references, and in this same article the only authority he quotes independently is Mr. O’Connor’s Elizabethan Ireland. When I have to be silenced, “Turn we to Mr. O’Connor!” Now Mr. O’Connor has written a slight sketch of Irish political and social life in some 280 pages. He gives no dates, no indications of place, and no references. But we have Mr. Dunlop’s word for it that it is a “scholarly” work. “Mr. O’Connor” quoted by Mr. Dunlop ends controversy. The tradition is secure. I might envy Mr. Dunlop this freedom from trammels of references, of date, or of place. In such wide and impartial survey any statement about Ireland may appear as true of every place and of all time. Barbarism would seem to be a fixed and unchanging state, a passive monotony, from the time of “Lacustrine habitations” and of “Hesiod and the old poets,” till its characteristic representative in Shane O’Neill. The principle once assumed, any evidence will suffice to show that the Irish had none of the attributes of ordinary white Europeans; while evidence that they made money, traded, built houses, talked Latin, studied medicine and law, or otherwise behaved like other people of the Middle Ages, is probably rhodomontade, moonshine, or historical profligacy.

Mr. Dunlop’s summary method with unfamiliar sources appears in his asperity towards what he calls my “trivial references” to Mr. Standish Hayes O’Grady’s Catalogue of Manuscripts.

“We wonder (he says on p. 267) how many of Mrs. Green’s readers are aware that of this book, from which she has gleaned so much information – of a sort – only one copy, so far as we know, is accessible to the public, and that is in the MSS. Department of the British Museum. The book, we understand, was never published. It is still incomplete. The official copy consists merely of the bound sheets as they were printed off for proof.”

I suppose Mr. Dunlop does not mean to suggest that the value of a book is in proportion to the number of copies, or that an authority of which a single copy exists should not be quoted. In any case I can reassure him. The sheets of this Catalogue have been these many years past for sale to the public at the Museum, where I got my copy, and I hope many others did the same. The book can be bought in a London shop to-day. Mr. Dunlop might consult it in the London Library. The copy placed in the National Library in Dublin in 1895 has been in frequent use since then. Possibly Mr. Dunlop knows the inside of the book better than the outside, but it seems to be a new acquaintance, suddenly introduced and viewed with distaste. In this brilliant Catalogue we have the work of a very great authority, unsurpassed in his special learning, far beyond what O’Donovan could lay claim to; with its “information – of a sort – ” it is the most important book that has appeared for many years with regard to Irish history. Another critic of Mr. Dunlop’s school, who in his remarks gives no definite sign of any knowledge of Mr. O’Grady’s work, has reproached me for referring to it “without further sifting.” But it is certain that neither of these writers who reprove me will themselves do much “further sifting” where that admirable scholar has gone before them.