by Unknown
The English now disparage the Irish because they are Catholic, poor, and ignorant; however, it will not be so easy to justify such disparagement to some people. Ireland is poor because English laws ruined the country’s industries, especially the wool industry, because the neglect of the English government in the years of the potato famine allowed the best of the population to die from hunger, and because under the present administration, while Ireland is losing its population and crimes are almost non-existent, the judges receive the salary of a king, and governing officials and those in public service receive huge sums for doing little or nothing. In Dublin alone, to take an example, the Lord Lieutenant receives a half-million francs a year. For each policeman, the Dublin citizens pay 3,500 francs a year (twice as much, I suppose, as a high school teacher receives in Italy), and the poor fellow who performs the duties of chief clerk of the city is forced to get along as well as he can on a miserable salary of 6 pounds sterling a day. The English critic is right, then, Ireland is poor, and moreover it is politically backward. For the Irish, the dates of Luther’s Reformation and the French Revolution mean nothing. The feudal struggles of the nobles against the king, known in England as the Barons’ War, had their counterpart in Ireland. If the English barons knew how to slaughter their neighbours in a noble manner, the Irish barons did, too. At that time in Ireland, there was no lack of ferocious deeds, the fruit of aristocratic blood. The Irish prince, Shane O’Neill, was so strongly blessed by nature that they had to bury him up to his neck in his mother earth every so often, when he had a desire for carnal pleasure. But the Irish barons, cunningly divided by the foreign politician, were never able to act in a common plan. They indulged in childish civil disputes among themselves, and wasted the vitality of the country in wars, while their brothers across St. George’s Channel forced King John to sign the Magna Charta (the first chapter of modern liberty) on the field of Runnymede.
The wave of democracy that shook England at the time of Simon de Montfort, founder of the House of Commons, and later, at the time of Cromwell’s protectorate, was spent when it reached the shores of Ireland; so that now Ireland (a country destined by God to be the everlasting caricature of the serious world) is an aristocratic country without an aristocracy. Descendants of the ancient kings (who are addressed by their family names alone, without a prefix) are seen in the halls of the courts of justice, with wig and affidavits, invoking in favour of some defendant the laws that have suppressed their royal titles. Poor fallen kings, recognizable even in their decline as impractical Irishmen. They have never thought of following the example of their English brothers in a similar plight who go to wonderful America to ask the hand of the daughter of some other king, even though he may be a Varnish King or a Sausage King.
Nor is it any harder to understand why the Irish citizen is a reactionary and a Catholic, and why he mingles the names of Cromwell and Satan when he curses. For him, the great Protector of civil rights is a savage beast who came to Ireland to propagate his faith by fire and sword. He does not forget the sack of Drog- heda and Waterford, nor the bands of men and women hunted down in the furthermost islands by the Puritan, who said that they would go ‘into the ocean or into hell’, nor the false oath that the English swore on the broken stone of Limerick. How could he forget? Can the back of a slave forget the rod? The truth is that the English government increased the moral value of Catholicism when they banished it.
Now, thanks partly to the endless speeches and partly to Fenian violence, the reign of terror is over. The penal laws have been revoked. Today, a Catholic in Ireland can vote, can become a government employee, can practise a trade or profession, can teach in a public school, can sit in parliament, can own his own land for longer than thirty years, can keep in his stalls a horse worth more than 5 pounds sterling, and can attend a Catholic mass, without running the risk of being hanged, drawn, and quartered by the common hangman. But these laws have been revoked such a short time ago that a Nationalist member of parliament who is still living was actually sentenced by an English jury to be hanged, drawn, and quartered for the crime of high treason by the common hangman (who is a mercenary in England, chosen by the sheriff from among his mercenary colleagues for conspicuous merit in diligence or industry.)
The Irish populace, which is ninety per cent Catholic, no longer contributes to the maintenance of the Protestant church, which exists only for the well-being of a few thousand settlers. It is enough to say that the English treasury has suffered some loss, and that the Roman church has one more daughter. With regard to the educational system, it allows a few streams of modern thought to filter slowly into the arid soil. In time, perhaps there will be a gradual reawakening of the Irish conscience, and perhaps four or five centuries after the Diet of Worms, we will see an Irish monk throw away his frock, run off with some nun, and proclaim in a loud voice the end of the coherent absurdity that was Catholicism and the beginning of the incoherent absurdity that is Protestantism.
But a Protestant Ireland is almost unthinkable. Without any doubt, Ireland has been up to now the most faithful daughter of the Catholic church. It is perhaps the only country that received the first Christian missionaries with courtesy and was converted to the new doctrine without spilling a drop of blood. And, in fact, the ecclesiastical history of Ireland completely lacks a martyrology, as the Bishop of Cashel had occasion to boast in a reply to the mocker, Giraldus Cambrensis. For six or eight centuries it was the spiritual focus of Christianity. It sent its sons to every country in the world to preach the gospel, and its Doctors to interpret and renew the holy writings.
Its faith was never once shaken seriously, if we except a certain doctrinal tendency of Nestorius in the fifth century concerning the hypostatic union of the two natures in Jesus Christ, some negligible differences in ritual noticeable at the same time, such as the kind of clerical tonsure and the time of celebrating Easter, and finally, the defection of some priests at the urging of the reform emissaries of Edward VII. But at the first intimation that the church was running into danger, a veritable swarm of Irishenvoys left at once for all the coasts of Europe, where they attempted to stir up a strong general movement among the Catholic powers against the heretics.
Well, the Holy See has repaid this fidelity in its own way. First, by means of a papal bull and a ring, it gave Ireland to Henry II of England, and later, in the papacy of Gregory XIII, when the Protestant heresy raised its head, it repented having given faithful Ireland to the English heretics, and to redeem the error, it named a bastard of the papal court as supreme ruler of Ireland. He naturally remained a king in partibus infidelium, but the pope’s intention was none the less courteous because of this. On the other hand, Ireland’s compliance is so complete that it would hardly murmur if tomorrow the pope, having already turned it over to an Englishman and an Italian, were to turn their island over to some hidalgo of the court of Alphonso who found himself momentarily unemployed, because of some unforseen complication in Europe. But the Holy See was more chary of its ecclesiastical honours, and although Ireland in the past has enriched the hagiographie archives in the manner that we have seen, this was scarcely recognized in the councils of the Vatican, and more than fourteen hundred years passed before the holy father thought of elevating an Irish bishop to a cardinal.
Now, what has Ireland gained by its fidelity to the papacy and its infidelity to the British crown? It has gained a great deal, but not for itself. Among the Irish writers who adopted the English language in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and almost forgot their native land, are found the names of Berkeley, the idealist philosopher, Oliver Goldsmith, author of The Vicar of Wakefield, two famous playwrights, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and William Congreve, whose comic masterpieces are admired even today on the sterile stages of modern England, Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels, which shares with Rabelais the place of the best satire in world literature, and Edmund Burke, whom the English themselves called the modern Demosthenes and considered the mos
t profound orator who had ever spoken in the House of Commons.
Even today, despite her heavy obstacles, Ireland is making her contribution to English art and thought. That the Irish are really the unbalanced, helpless idiots about whom we read in the lead articles of the Standard and the Morning Post is denied by the names of the three greatest translators in English literature — FitzGerald, translator of the Rubaiyat of the Persian poet Omar Khayyam, Burton, translator of the Arabian masterpieces, and Cary, the classic translator of the Divine Comedy. It is also denied by the names of other Irishmen — Arthur Sullivan, the dean of modern English music, Edward O’Connor, founder of Chartism, the novelist George Moore, an intellectual oasis in the Sahara of the false spiritualistic, Messianic, and detective writings whose name is legion in England, by the names of two Dubliners, the paradoxical and iconoclastic writer of comedy, George Bernard Shaw, and the too well known Oscar Wilde, son of a revolutionary poetess.
Finally, in the field of practical affairs this pejorative conception of Ireland is given the lie by the fact that when the Irishman is found outside of Ireland in another environment, he very often becomes a respected man. The economic and intellectual conditions that prevail in his own country do not permit the development of individuality. The soul of the country is weakened by centuries of useless struggle and broken treaties, and individual initiative is paralysed by the influence and admonitions of the church, while its body is manacled by the police, the tax office, and the garrison. No one who has any self-respect stays in Ireland, but flees afar as though from a country that has undergone the visitation of an angered Jove.
From the time of the Treaty of Limerick, or rather, from the time that it was broken by the English in bad faith, millions of Irishmen have left their native land. These fugitives, as they were centuries ago, are called the wild geese. They enlisted in all the foreign brigades of the powers of Europe — France, Holland, and Spain, to be exact — and won on many battlefields the laurel of victory for their adopted masters. In America, they found another native land. In the ranks of the American rebels was heard the old Irish language, and Lord Mountjoy himself said in 1784, ‘We have lost America through the Irish emigrants.’ Today, these Irish emigrants in the United States number sixteen million, a rich, powerful, and industrious settlement. Maybe this does not prove that the Irish dream of a revival is not entirely an illusion!
If Ireland has been able to give to the service of others men like Tyndall, one of the few scientists whose name has spread beyond his own field, like the Marquess of Dufferin, Governor of Canada and Viceroy of India, like Charles Gavin Duffy, and Hennessey, colonial governors, like the Duke de Tetuan, the recent Spanish minister, like Bryan, candidate for president of the United States, like Marshal MacMahon, president of the French Republic, like Lord Charles Beresford, virtual head of the English navy, just recently placed in command of the Channel Fleet, like the three most renowned generals of the English army — Lord Wolseley, the commander-in-chief, Lord Kitchener, victor of the Sudan campaign and at present commanding general of the army in India, and Lord Roberts, victor of the war in Afghanistan and South Africa — if Ireland has been able to give all this practical talent to the service of others, it means that there must be something inimical, unpropitious, and despotic in its own present conditions, since her sons cannot give their efforts to their own native land.
Because, even today, the flight of the wild geese continues. Every year, Ireland, decimated as she already is, loses 60,000 of her sons. From 1850 to the present day, more than 5,000,000 emigrants have left for America, and every post brings to Ireland their inviting letters to friends and relatives at home. The old men, the corrupt, the children, and the poor stay at home, where the double yoke wears another groove in the tamed neck; and around the death bed where the poor, anaemic, almost lifeless, body lies in agony, the rulers give orders and the priests administer last rites.
Is this country destined to resume its ancient position as the Hellas of the north some day? Is the Celtic mind, like the Slavic mind which it resembles in many ways, destined to enrich the civil conscience with new discoveries and new insights in the future? Or must the Celtic world, the five Celtic nations, driven by stronger nations to the edge of the continent, to the outermost islands of Europe, finally be cast into the ocean after a struggle of centuries? Alas, we dilettante sociologists are only second-class augurers. We look and peer into the innards of the human animal, and, after all, confess that we see nothing there. Only our supermen know how to write the history of the future.
It would be interesting, but beyond the scope I have set myself tonight, to see what might be the effects on our civilization of a revival of this race. The economic effects of the appearance of a rival island near England, a bilingual, republican, self-centred, and enterprising island with its own commercial fleet, and its own consuls in every port of the world. And the moral effects of the appearance in old Europe of the Irish artist and thinker — those strange spirits, frigid enthusiasts, sexually and artistically untaught, full of idealism and unable to yield to it, childish spirits, ingenuous and satirical, ‘the loveless Irishmen’, as they are called. But in anticipation of such a revival, I confess that I do not see what good it does to fulminate against the English tyranny while the Roman tyranny occupies the palace of the soul.
I do not see the purpose of the bitter invectives against the English despoiler, the disdain for the vast Anglo-Saxon civilization, even though it is almost entirely a materialistic civilization, nor the empty boasts that the art of miniature in the ancient Irish books, such as the Book of Kells, the Yellow Book of Lecan, the Book of the Dun Cow, which date back to a time when England was an uncivilized country, is almost as old as the Chinese, and that Ireland made and exported to Europe its own fabrics for several generations before the first Fleming arrived in London to teach the English how to make bread. If an appeal to the past in this manner were valid, the fellahin of Cairo would have all the right in the world to disdain to act as porters for English tourists. Ancient Ireland is dead just as ancient Egypt is dead. Its death chant has been sung, and on its gravestone has been placed the seal. The old national soul that spoke during the centuries through the mouths of fabulous seers, wandering minstrels, and Jacobite poets disappeared from the world with the death of James Clarence Mangan. With him, the long tradition of the triple order of the old Celtic bards ended; and today other bards, animated by other ideals, have the cry.
One thing alone seems clear to me. It is well past time for Ireland to have done once and for all with failure. If she is truly capable of reviving, let her awake, or let her cover up her head and lie down decently in her grave forever. ‘We Irishmen’’, said Oscar Wilde one day to a friend of mine, ‘have done nothing, but we are the greatest talkers since the time of the Greeks.’ But though the Irish are eloquent, a revolution is not made of human breath and compromises. Ireland has already had enough equivocations and misunderstandings. If she wants to put on the play that we have waited for so long, this time let it be whole, and complete, and definitive. But our advice to the Irish producers is the same as that our fathers gave them not so long ago — hurry up! I am sure that I, at least, will never see that curtain go up, because I will have already gone home on the last train.
James Clarence Mangan (1907)
There are certain poets who, in addition to the virtue of revealing to us some phase of the human conscience unknown until their time, also have the more doubtful virtue of summing up in themselves the thousand contrasting tendencies of their era, of being, so to speak, the storage batteries of new forces. For the most part, it is in the latter role rather than the former that they come to be appreciated by the masses, who are by nature unable to evaluate any work of true self-revelation, and so hasten torecognize by some act of grace the incalculable aid that the individual affirmation of a poet gives to a popular movement. The most popular act of grace in such cases is a monument, because it honours the dead while it flatters
the living. It has also the supreme advantage of finality, since, to tell the truth, it is the most polite and effective way to assure a lasting oblivion of the deceased. In logical and serious countries, it is customary to finish the monument in a decent manner, and have the -sculptor, the city officials, orators, and a great crowd of people attend the unveiling. But in Ireland, a country destined by God to be the eternal caricature of the serious world, even when the monuments are for the most popular men, whose character is most amenable to the will of the people, they rarely get beyond the laying of the foundation stone. In the light of the foregoing, perhaps I can give you an idea of the Cimmerian night that enfolds the name of Clarence Mangan when I say that, to the detriment of the noted generosity of the Emerald Isle, up to now no ardent spirit has thought of laying the restless ghost of the national poet with the foundation stone and the usual wreaths. Perhaps the unbroken peace in which he lies will have become so pleasant for him that he will be offended (if mortal accents ever come to that world beyond the grave) at hearing his spectral quiet disturbed by a countryman in exile, at hearing an amateur talk about him in a strange tongue before well-wishing foreigners.
Ireland’s contribution to European literature can be divided into five periods and into two large parts, that is, literature written in the Irish language and literature written in the English language. Of the first part, which includes the first two periods, the more remote is almost lost in the night of the times in which all the ancient sacred books, the epics, the legal codes, and the topographic histories and legends were written. The more recent period lasted a long time after the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons and Normans under Henry II and King John, the age of the wandering minstrels, whose symbolic songs carried on the tradition of the triple order of the old Celtic bards, and of this period I had occasion to speak to you several nights ago. The second part, that of Irish literature written in the English language, is dividedinto three periods. The first is the eighteenth century, which includes among other Irishmen the glorious names of Oliver Goldsmith, author of the famous novel The Vicar of Wakefield, of the two famous writers of comedy, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and William Congreve, whose masterpieces are admired even today on the sterile stage of modern England, of the Rabelaisian Dean, Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels, of the so-called English Demosthenes, Edmund Burke, whom even his English critics consider the most profound orator that ever spoke in the House of Commons and one of the wisest statesmen, even among the astute band of politicians of fair Albion. The second and third periods belong to the last century. One is the literary movement of Young Ireland in ‘42 and ‘45, and the other the literary movement of today, of which I intend to speak to you in my next lecture.