Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry Part 12

"Where Cormac held his court was at Tara, in imitation of the kings who preceded him, until his eye was destroyed by Engus Gaibhuaiphnech, the son of Eochaidh Finn Futhairt: but afterwards he resided at Acaill (the hill on which Serin Colaim Cille is at this day), and at Cenannas (Kells), and at the house of Cletech; for it was not lawful that a king with a _personal_ blemish should reside at Tara. In the second year after the injuring of his eye he came by his death at the house of Cletech, the bone of a salmon having stuck in his throat. And he (Cormac) told his people not to bury him at Brugh (because it was a cemetery of Idolaters), for he did not wors.h.i.+p the same G.o.d as any of those interred at Brugh; but to bury him at Ros-na-righ, with his face to the east.

He afterwards died, and his servants of trust held a council, and came to the resolution of burying him at Brugh, the place where the kings of Tara, his predecessors, were buried. The body of the king was afterwards thrice raised to be carried to Brugh, but the Boyne swelled up thrice, so that they could not come; so that they observed that it was 'violating the judgment of a prince' to break through this testament of the king, and they afterwards dug his grave at Ros-na-righ, as he himself had ordered.

"These were the chief cemeteries of Erin before the Faith (_i.e._, before the introduction of Christianity), viz., Cruachu, Brugh, Tailltin, Luachair, Ailbe, Oenach Ailbe, Oenach Culi, Oenach Colmain, Temhair Erann.

"Oenach Cruachan, in the first place, it was there the race of Heremon (_i.e._, the kings of Tara) were used to bury until the time of Cremhthann, the son of Lughaidh Riabh-n-derg (who was the first king of them that was interred at Brugh), viz., Cobhlhach Coelbregh, and Labhraidh Loingsech, and Eocho Fedhlech with his three sons (_i.e._, the three Fidhemhna--_i.e._, Bres, Nar, and Lothoe), and Eocho Airemh, Lughaidh Riabh-n-derg, the six daughters of Eocho Fedhlech (_i.e._, Medhbh, and Clothru, Muresc, and Drebrin, Mugain, and Ele), and Adill Mac Mada with his seven brothers (_i.e._, Cet, Anlon, Doche, _et ceteri_), and all the kings _down_ to Cremhthann (these were all buried at Cruachan). Why was it not at Brugh that the kings (of the race of Cobhthach down to Crimthann) were interred? Not difficult; because the two provinces which the race of Heremon possessed were the province of Gailian (_i.e._, the province of Leinster), and the province of Olnecmacht (_i.e._, the province of Connaught). In the first place, the province of Gailian was occupied by the race of Labhraidh Loingsech, and the province of Connaught was the peculiar inheritance of the race of Cobhtach Coelbregh; wherefore it (_i.e._, the province of Connaught) was given to Medhbh before every other province. (The reason that the government of this land was given to Medhbh is because there was none of the race of Eochaidh fit to receive it but herself, for Lughaidh was not fit for action at the time.) And whenever, therefore, the monarchy of Erin was enjoyed by any of the descendants of Cobhthach Coelbregh, the province of Connaught was his _ruidles_ (_i.e._, his native princ.i.p.ality). And for this reason they were interred at Oenach na Cruachna. But they were interred at Brugh from the time of Crimthann (Niadh-nar) to the time of Loeghaire, the son of Niall, except three persons, namely, Art, the son of Conn, and Cormac, the son of Art, and Niall of the Nine Hostages.

"We have already mentioned the cause for which Cormac was not interred there. The reason why Art was not interred there is because he 'believed,' the day before the battle of Muccramma was fought, and he predicted the Faith (_i.e._, that Christianity would prevail in Erin), and he said that his own grave would be at Dumha Dergluachra, where Treoit [Trevet] is at this day, as he mentioned in a poem which he composed--viz., _Cain do denna den_ (_i.e._, a poem which Art composed, the beginning of which is _Cain do denna den_, etc.). When his (Art's) body was afterwards carried eastwards to Dumha Dergluachra, if all the men of Erin were drawing it thence, they could not, so that he was interred in that place because there was a Catholic church to be afterwards at the place where he was interred (_i.e._, Treoit _hodie_). because the truth and the Faith had been revealed to him through his regal righteousness.

"Where Niall was interred was at Ochain, whence the hill was called Ochain, _i.e._, _Och Caine_, _i.e._, from the sighing and lamentation which the men of Erin made in lamenting Niall.

"Conaire More was interred at Magh Feci in Bregia (_i.e._, at Fert Conaire); however, some say that it was Conaire Carpraige was interred there, and not Conaire Mor, and that Conaire Mor was the third king who was interred at Tara--viz., Conaire, Loeghaire, and * * *

"At Tailltin the kings of Ulster were used to bury--viz., Ollamh Fodhla, with his descendants down to Conchobhar, who wished that he should be carried to a place between Slea and the sea, with his face to the east, on account of the Faith which he had embraced.

"The n.o.bles of the Tuatha De Danann were used to bury at Brugh (_i.e._, the Dagda with his three sons; also Lughaidh and Oe, and Ollam, and Ogma, and Etan, the Poetess, and Corpre, the son of Etan), and Cremhthann followed them because his wife Nar was of the Tuatha Dea, and it was she solicited him that he should adopt Brugh as a burial-place for himself and his descendants, and this was the cause that they did not bury at Cruachan.

"The Lagenians (_i.e._, Cathair with his race and the kings who were before them) were buried at Oenach Ailbhe. The Clann Dedad (_i.e._, the race of Conaire and Erna) at Temhair Erann; the men of Munster (_i.e._, the Dergthene) at Oenach Culi, and Oenach Colmain; and the Connacians at Cruachan."

ANCHORITE TOWERS.

Because Simon Stylites lived in a domicile, sized "scarce two cubits,"

_on_ a pillar sixty feet high, and because other anchorites lived on pillars and in cells, Dean Richardson suggested that the Irish Round Towers were for hermits; and was supported by Walter Harris, Dr.

Milner, Dr. King, etc. The _cloch angcoire_, or hermit's stone, quoted in aid of this fancy, turns out to be a narrow cell; and so much for the hermits!

The confusion of

TOURS AND TOWERS

is a stupid pun or a vulgar p.r.o.nunciation in English; but in Irish gave rise to the antiquarian theory of Dr. Smith, who, in his _History of Cork_, concludes that the Round Towers were penitential prisons, because the Irish word for a penitential round or journey is _turas_!

THE PHALLIC THEORY

never had any support but poor Henry O'Brien's enthusiastic ignorance and the caricaturing pen of his ill.u.s.trator.

We have now done with the theories of these towers, which Mr. Petrie has shown, past doubt, to be either positively false or quite unproved.

His own opinion is that they were used--1, as belfries; 2, as keeps, or houses of shelter for the clergy and their treasures; and 3, as watch-towers and beacons; and into his evidence for this opinion we shall go at a future day, thanking him at present for having displaced a heap of incongruous, though agreeable, fancies, and given us the learned, the most exact, and the most important work ever published on the antiquities of the Ancient Irish Nation.

THE IRISH BRIGADE.

When valour becomes a reproach, when patriotism is thought a prejudice, and when a soldier's sword is a sign of shame, the Irish Brigade will be forgotten or despised.

The Irish are a military people--strong, nimble, and hardy, fond of adventure, irascible, brotherly, and generous--they have all the qualities that tempt men to war and make them good soldiers. Dazzled by their great fame on the Continent, and hearing of their insular wars chiefly through the interested lies of England, Voltaire expressed his wonder that a nation which had behaved so gallantly abroad had "always fought badly at home." It would have been most wonderful.

It may be conceded that the Irish performed more ill.u.s.trious actions on the Continent. They fought with the advantages of French discipline and equipment; they fought as soldiers, with the rights of war, not "rebels, with halters round their necks"; they fought by the side of great rivals and amid the gaze of Europe.

In the most of their domestic wars they appeared as divided clans or abrupt insurgents; they were exposed to the treachery of a more instructed, of an unscrupulous and a compact enemy; they had neither discipline, nor generals.h.i.+p, nor arms; their victories were those of a mob; their defeats were followed by extermination.

We speak of their ordinary contests with England from the time of Roderick O'Connor to that of '98. Occasionally they had more opportunities, and their great qualities for war appeared. In Hugh (or, rather Aodh) O'Neill they found a leader who only wanted material resources to have made them an independent nation. Cautious, as became the heir of so long a strife, he spent years in acquiring military knowledge and nursing up his clan into the kernel for a nation; crafty as Bacon and Cecil, and every other man of his time, he learned war in Elizabeth's armies, and got help from her store-houses. When the discontent of the Pale, religious tyranny, and the intrigues and hostility of Spain and Rome against England gave him an opening, he put his ordered clan into action, stormed the neighbouring garrisons, struck terror into his hereditary foes, and gave hope to all patriots; but finding that his ranks were too few for battle, he negotiated successfully for peace, but unavailingly for freedom; his grievances and designs remained, and he retired to repeat the same policy, till, after repeated guerillas and truces, he was strong enough to proclaim alliance with Spain and war with England, and to defeat and slay every deputy that a.s.sailed him, till at last he marched from the triumph of Beal-an-ath Buidhe[39] (where Marshal Bagenal and his army perished) to hold an almost royal court at Munster, and to reduce the Pale to the limits it had formed in the Wars of the Roses; and even when the neglect of Spain, the genius of Mountjoy, the resources and intrigues of England, and the exhaustion and divisions of Ireland had rendered success hopeless, the Irish under O'Ruarc, O'Sullivan, and O'Doherty vindicated their military character.

From that period they, whose foreign services, since Dathi's time, had been limited to supplying feudatories to the English kings, began to fight under the flags of England's enemies in every corner of Europe.

The artifices of the Stuarts regained them, and in the reign of Charles the First they were extensively enlisted for the English allies and for the crown; but it was under the guidance of another O'Neill, and for Ireland,[40] they again exhibited the qualities which had sustained Tyrone. The battle of Benburb affords as great a proof of Irish soldiers.h.i.+p as Fontenoy.

But it was when, with a formal government and in a regular war, they encountered the Dutch invader, they showed the full prowess of the Irish; and at the Boyne, Limerick, Athlone, and Aughrim, in victory or defeat, and always against _immensely superior numbers and armaments_, proved that they fought well at home.

Since the day when Sarsfield sailed the Irish have never had an opportunity of refuting the calumny of England which Voltaire accepted.

In '98 they met enormous forces resting on all the magazines of England; they had no officers; their leaders, however brave, neither knew how to organise, provision, station, or manoeuvre troops--their arms were casual--their ignorance profound--their intemperance unrestrainable. If they put English supremacy in peril (and had Arklow or Ballinahinch been attacked with skill, that supremacy was gone), they did so by mere valour.

It is, therefore, on the Continent that one must chiefly look for Irish trophies. It is a pious and n.o.ble search; but he who pursues it had need to guard against the error we have noticed in Voltaire, of disparaging Irish soldiers.h.i.+p at home.

The materials for the history of the Irish Brigade are fast acc.u.mulating. We have before us the _Military History of the Irish Nation_, by the late Matthew O'Conor. He was a barrister, but studied military subjects (as became a gentleman and a citizen), peculiarly interested himself in the achievements of his countrymen, and prepared materials for a history of them. He died, leaving his work unfinished, yet, happily sufficiently advanced to offer a continuous narrative of Irish internal wars, from Hugh O'Neill to Sarsfield, and of their foreign services up to the Peace of Utrecht, in 1711. The style of the work is earnest and glowing, full of patriotism and liberality; but Mr.

O'Conor was no blind partisan, and he neither hides the occasional excesses of the Irish, nor disparages their opponents. His descriptions of battles are very superior to what one ordinarily meets in the works of civilians, and any one reading them with a military atlas will be gratified and instructed.

The value of the work is vastly augmented by the appendix, which is a memoir of the Brigade, written in French, in 1749, and including the War Office orders, and all the changes in organisation, numbers, and pay of the Brigade to that date. This memoir is authenticated thus:--

"His Excellency, the Duke of Feltre, Minister of War, was so kind as to communicate to me the original memoir above cited, of which this is a perfect copy, which I attest.

"DE MONTMORENCY MORRES (Herve), "Adjutant-Commandant, Colonel.

"Paris, 1st September, 1813."

To give any account of the details of Mr. O'Conor's book we should abridge it, and an abridgment of a military history is a catalogue of names. It contains accounts of Hugh O'Neill's campaigns and of the wars of William and James in Ireland. It describes (certainly a new chapter in our knowledge) the services of the Irish in the Low Countries and France during the religious wars in Henri Quatre's time, and the hitherto equally unknown actions abroad during Charles the Second's exile and reign.

The wars of Mountcashel's (the old) Brigade in 1690-91, under St. Ruth in Savoy, occupy many interesting pages, and the first campaigns of the New Brigade, with the death of Sarsfield and Mountcashel, are carefully narrated. The largest part of the work is occupied with the wars of the Spanish succession, and contains minute narratives of the battles and sieges of Cremona, Spire, Luzzaca, Blenheim, Ca.s.sano, Ramilies, Almanza, Alcira, Malplaquet, and Denain, with the actions of the Irish in them.

Here are great materials for our future History of Ireland.

--------------------------------------------------------------- [39] See Mitchel's _Life of Hugh O'Neill_, and Meehan's _Flight of the Earls_. Dublin: Duffy & Sons.

[40] Owen Roe, who defeated Monro, 1646.

THE SPEECHES OF GRATTAN.[41]

Of the long line of Protestant patriots Grattan is the first in genius, and first in services. He had a more fervid and more Irish nature than Swift or Flood, and he accomplished what Swift hardly dreamed, and Flood failed in--an Irish const.i.tution. He had immeasurably more imagination than Tone; and though he was far behind the great Founder of the United Irishmen in organising power, he surpa.s.sed him in inspiration. The statues of all shall be in our forums, and examples of all in our hearts, but that of Grattan shall be pre-eminent. The stubborn and advancing energy of Swift and Flood may teach us to bear up against wrong; the principles of Tone may end in liberation; but the splendid nationality of Grattan shall glorify us in every condition.

The speeches of Grattan were collected and his memoirs written by his son. The latter is an accessible and an invaluable account of his life; but the speeches were out of print, not purchasable under five or six guineas, and then were unmanageably numerous for any but a professed politician. Mr. Madden's volume gives for a trifle all Grattan's most valuable speeches, with a memoir sufficient to explain the man and the orator.

On the speeches of Grattan here published we have little to say. They are the finest specimens of imaginative eloquence in the English, or in any, language. There is not much pathos, and no humour in them, and in these respects Grattan is far less of an Irishman, and of an orator too, than Curran; but a philosophy, penetrating const.i.tutions for their warnings, and human nature for its guides--a statesman's (as distinguished from an antiquarian's) use of history--a pa.s.sionate scorn and invective for the base, tyrannical, and unjust--a fiery and copious zeal for liberty and for Ireland, and a diction and cadence almost lyrical, made Grattan the sudden achiever of a Revolution, and will make him for ever one of the very elements of Ireland.