In th' olde dayes of the King Arthour,Of which that Britons speken greet honour,Al was this land fulfild of fayerye;The elf-queen, with hir joly companye,Daunced ful ofte in many a grene med.
In th' olde dayes of the King Arthour,
Of which that Britons speken greet honour,
Al was this land fulfild of fayerye;
The elf-queen, with hir joly companye,
Daunced ful ofte in many a grene med.
And here again there is a reasonable probability that certain features were borrowed from the wealth of story current in the neighboring isle. Otherwise it is difficult to understand why the queen of fayerye should bear an Irish name (Mab, from Irish Medb), and curiously enough the form of the name rathef suggests that it was borrowed through a written medium and not by oral tradition. On the other hand it is incorrect to derive Puck from Irishpuca, as the latter is undoubtedly borrowed from some form of Teutonic speech.
So all embracing a mind as that of the greatest English dramatist could not fail to be interested in the gossip that must have been current in London at the time of the wars in Ulster. References to kerns and gallowglasses are fairly frequent. He had evidently heard of the marvellous powers with which the Irish bards were credited, for, inAs You Like It, Rosalind exclaims:
"I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat, which I can hardly remember."
Similarly, inKing Richard III, mention is made of the prophetic utterance of an Irish bard, a trait which does not appear in the poet's source. Any statements as to Irish influence in Shakespeare that go beyond this belong to the realm of conjecture. Professor Kittredge has attempted to show that in Syr Orfeo, upon which the poet drew for portions of the plot ofA Midsummer Night's Dream, the Irish story of Etain and Mider was fused with the medieval form of the classical tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. Direct influence is entirely wanting, and it is difficult to see how it could have been otherwise.
Even in the case of the Elizabethan poet who spent many years in the south of Ireland, there is no trace of Hibernian lore or legend. Spenser, indeed, tells us himself that he had caused some of the native poetry to be translated to him, and had found that it "savoured of sweet wit and good invention." But Ireland plays an infinitesimal part in theFaerie Queene. The scenery round Kilcolman Castle forms the background of much of the incident in Book V. "Marble far from Ireland brought" is mentioned in a simile in the second Book, where we also read:
As when a swarme of gnats at eventideOut of the fennes of Allan do arise.
As when a swarme of gnats at eventide
Out of the fennes of Allan do arise.
But Ireland supplied no further inspiration.
The various plantations of the seventeenth century produced an Anglo-Irish stock which soon asserted itself in literature. As a typical example, we may take the author ofThe Vicar of Wakefield. At his first school at Lissoy, Oliver Goldsmith came under Thomas Byrne, a regular shanachie, possessed of all the traditional lore, with a remarkable gift for versifying. It was under this man that the boy made his first attempts at verse, and his memory is celebrated inThe Deserted Village:
There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule,The village master taught his little school.A man severe he was, and stern to view.
There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule,
The village master taught his little school.
A man severe he was, and stern to view.
Unfortunately Goldsmith was removed to Elphin at the age of nine, and although he retained an affection for Irish music all his life, his intimate connection with Irish Ireland apparently ceased at this point. "Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain" is doubtless full of reminiscences of the poet's early years in Westmeath, but the sentiments, the rhythm, and the language are entirely cast in an English mould. We may mention, in passing, that it has been suggested that Swift derived the idea of the kingdom of Lilliput from the Irish story of the Adventures of Fergus macLeide amongst the leprechauns. All that can be said is that this derivation is not impossible, though the fact that the tale is preserved only in a single manuscript rather points to the conclusion that the story did not enjoy great popularity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
We have seen that Goldsmith was removed from an Irish atmosphere at a tender age, and this is not the only instance of the frowning of fortune upon the native literature. When the fame of the ancient bards of the Gael was noised from end to end of Europe, it was through the medium of Macpherson's forgeries.Fingalcaught the fleeting fancy of the moment in a manner never achieved by the true Ossianic lays of Ireland. TheReliques of Irish Poetry, published by Miss Brooke by subscription in Dublin in 1789 to vindicate the antiquity of the literature of Erin, never went into a second edition. And although some of the pieces contained in that volume have been reprinted in such undertakings of a learned character as the volumes of the Dublin Ossianic Society, J.F. Campbell'sLeabhar na Feinne, and Cameron'sReliquiae Celticae, they have aroused little interest amongst those ignorant of the Irish tongue.
During the nineteenth century, the number of poets who drew upon Ireland's past for their themes increased considerably. The most popular of all is unquestionably the author of theIrish Melodies. But, here again, the poet owes little or nothing to vernacular poetry, the mould is English, the sentiments are those of the poet's age. Moore's acquaintance with the native language can have been but of the slightest, and in the case of Mangan we are told that he had to rely upon literal versions of Irish pieces furnished him by O'Donovan or O'Curry. Of the numerous attempts to reproduce the overelaboration of rhyme to which Irish verse has ever been prone, Father Prout'sBells of Shandonis perhaps the only one that is at all widely known. When the legendary lore of Ireland became accessible to men of letters, owing to the labors of O'Curry, O'Donovan, and Hennessy, and the publication of various ancient texts by the Irish Archaeological Society, it was to be expected that an attempt would be made by some poet of Erin to do for his native land what the Wizard of the North had accomplished for Scotland. The task was undertaken by Sir Samuel Ferguson, who met with conspicuous success. His most ambitious effort,Congal, deals in epic fashion with the story of the battle of Moyra. Others in similar strain treat the story of Conaire Mór and Deirdre, whilst others such as theTain-Questare more in the nature of ballads. Ferguson did more to introduce the English reading public to Irish story than would have been accomplished by any number of bald translations. His diction is little affected by the originals, and he sometimes treats his materials with great freedom, but his achievement was a notable one, and he has not infrequently been acclaimed as the national poet.
Is it perhaps invidious to single out any living author for special mention, but this brief survey cannot close without noticing the dramatic poems of W.B. Yeats, the latest poet who attempts to present the old stories in an English dress. His playsOn Baile's Strand, Deirdre, and others, have become familiar to English audiences through the excellent acting of the members of the Abbey Theatre Company. The original texts are now much better known than they were in Ferguson's day, and Mr. Yeats consequently cannot permit himself the same liberties. Similarly, it is only during the last twenty-five years that the language of Irish poetry has been carefully studied, and Mr. Yeats has this advantage over his predecessors that on occasion, e.g., in certain passages inThe King's Threshold, he is able to introduce with great effect reminiscences of the characteristic epithets and imagery which formed so large a part of the stock-in-trade of the medieval bard.
Friedel and Meyer: La Vision de Tondale (Paris, 1907); Boswell: An Irish Precursor of Dante (London, 1908); Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. I, chaps, xii and xvi; Windisch:Das Keltische Brittannien(Leipzig, 1912), more especially chap. xxxvii; Dictionary of National Biography; Gwynn: Thos. Moore ("English Men of Letters" Series, London, 1905).
Among savage peoples there is at first no distinction of a definite kind between good and bad spirits, and when a distinction has been reached, a great advance in a spiritual direction has been made. For the key to the religion of savages is fear, and until such terror has been counteracted by belief in beneficent powers, civilization will not follow. But the elimination of the fear of the unseen is a slow process; indeed, it will exist side by side with the belief in Christianity itself, after a modification through various stages of better pagan belief.
Ireland still presents, in its more out-of-the-way districts, evidence of that strong persistence in the belief in maleficent or malicious influences of the pre-Christian powers of the air, which it seems difficult to eradicate from the Celtic imagination. In the celebrated poem entitledThe Breastplate of St. Patrick, there is much the same attitude on the part of Patrick towards the Druids and their powers of concealing and changing, of paralyzing and cursing, as was shown by Moses towards the magicians of Egypt. Indeed, in Patrick's time a belief in a world of fairies existed even in the king's household, for "when the two daughters of King Leary of Ireland, Ethnea the fair and Fedelma the ruddy, came early one morning to the well of Clebach to wash, they found there a synod of holy bishops with Patrick. And they knew not whence they came, or in what form, or from what people, or from what country; but they supposed them to beDuine Sidh, or gods of the earth, or a phantasm."
Colgan explains the termDuine Sidhthus: "Fantastical spirits," he writes, "are by the Irish called men of theSidh, because they are seen, as it were, to come out of the beautiful hills to infest men, and hence the vulgar belief that they reside in certain subterranean habitations: and sometimes the hills themselves are called, by the Irish,SidheorSiodha."
No doubt, when the princesses spoke of the gods of the earth, reference was made to such pagan deities as Beal; Dagda the great or the good god; Aine, the Moon, goddess of the water and of wisdom; Manannan macLir, the Irish Neptune; Crom, the Irish Ceres; and Iphinn, the benevolent, whose relations to the Irish Oirfidh resembled those of Apollo towards Orpheus; and to the allegiance they owed to the Elements, the Wind, and the Stars. But besides these pagan divinities and powers, and quite apart from them, the early Irish believed in two classes of fairies: in the first place, a hierarchy of fairy beings, well and ill disposed, not differing in appearance, to any great degree at any rate, from human beings—good spirits and demons, rarely visible during the daytime; and, in the second place, there was the magic race of the De Danann, who, after conquest by the Milesians, transformed themselves into fairies, and in that guise continued to inhabit the underworld of the Irish hills, and to issue thence in support of Irish heroes, or to give their aid against other fairy adversaries.
There is another theory to account for the fairy race. It is that they are angels who revolted with Satan and were excluded from heaven for their unworthiness, but were not found evil enough for hell, and therefore were allowed to occupy that intermediate space which has been called "the Other World." It is still a moot point with the Irish peasantry, as it was with the Irish saints of old, whether, after being compelled to dwell without death among rocks and hills, lakes and seas, bushes and forest, till the day of judgment, the fairies then have the chance of salvation. Indeed, the fairies are themselves believed to have great doubts of a future existence, though, like many men, entertaining undefined hopes of happiness; and hence the enmity which some of them have for mankind, who, they acknowledge, will live eternally. Thus their actions are balanced between generosity and vindictiveness towards the human race.
Mr. W.Y. Evans Wentz, A.M., of Leland Stanford University, California, and Jesus College, Oxford, has received an honorary degree from the latter university for his thesis, "The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries: Its Psychical Origin and Nature", a most laborious as well as ingenious work, whose object is to prove "that the origin of the fairy faith is psychical, and that fairyland, being thought of as an invisible world within which the visible world is immersed as an island in an unexplored ocean, actually exists, and that it is peopled by more species of living beings than this world, because incomparably more vast and varied in its possibilities." This may be added as a fourth theory to account for the existence of fairies, and it may be further stated here that the Irish popular belief in ghosts attributes to some of their departed spirits much of the same violence and malice with which fairies are credited. Mr. Jeremiah Curtin gives striking instances of this kind in his book, theFolk Lore of West Kerry.
It became necessary, therefore, for the Gaels who believed in the preternatural powers of the fairies for good and ill to propitiate them as far as possible. On May eve, accordingly, cattle were driven into raths and bled there, some of the blood being tasted, the rest poured out in sacrifice. Men and women were also bled on these occasions. The seekers for buried treasure, over which fairies were supposed to have influence, immolated a black cock or a black cat to propitiate them. Again, a cow, suffering from sickness believed to be due to fairy malice, was bled and then devoted to St. Martin. If it recovered, it was never sold or killed. The first new milk of a cow was poured out on the ground to propitiate the fairies, and especially on the ground within a fairy rath. The first drop of any drink is also thrown out by old Irish people. If a child spills milk, the mother says, "that's for the fairies, leave it to them and welcome." Slops should never be thrown out of doors without the warning, "Take care of water!" lest fairies should be passing invisibly and get soiled by the discharge. Eddies of dust upon the road are supposed to be caused by the fairies, and tufts of grass, sticks, and pebbles are thrown into the centre of the eddy to propitiate the unseen beings. Some fairies of life size, who live within the green hills or under the raths, are supposed to carry off healthy babes to be made fairy children, their abstractors leaving weak changelings in their place. Similarly, nursing mothers are sometimes supposed to be carried off to give the breast to fairy babes, and handsome young men are spirited away to become bridegrooms to fairy brides. Again, folk suffering from falling sickness are supposed to be in that condition owing to the fatigue caused by nocturnal rides through the air with the fairies, whose steeds are bewitched rushes, blades of grass, straws, fern roots, and cabbage stalks. The latter, to be serviceable for the purpose, should be cut into the rude shapes of horses before the metamorphosis can take place.
Iron of every kind keeps away malignant fairies: thus, a horseshoe nailed to the bottom of the churn prevents butter from being bewitched. Here is a form of charm against the fairies who have bewitched the butter: "Every window should be barred, a great turf fire should be lit upon which nine irons should be placed, the bystanders chanting twice over in Irish, 'Come, butter, come; Peter stands at the gate waiting for a buttered cake.' As the irons become heated the witch will try to break in, asking the people to take the irons, which are burning her, off the fire. On their refusing, she will go and bring back the butter to the churn. The irons may then be removed from the fire and all will go well."
If a neighbor or stranger should enter a cottage during the churning, he should put his hand to the dash, or the butter will not come. A small piece of iron should be sewed into an infant's clothes and kept there until the child is baptized, and salt should be sprinkled over his cradle to preserve the babe from abduction. The fairies are supposed to have been conquered by an iron-weaponed race, and hence their dread of the metal.
To recover a spell-bound friend, stand on All Hallows' eve at cross roads or at a spot pointed out by a wise woman or fairy doctor. When you have rubbed fairy ointment on your eyelids, the fairies will become visible as the host sweeps by with its captive, whom the gazer will then be able to recognize. A sudden gust announces their approach. Stooping down, you will then throw dust or milk at the procession, whose members are then obliged to surrender your spell-bound friend. If a man leaves home after his wife's confinement, some of his clothes should be spread over the mother and infant, or the fairies may carry them off. It is good for a woman, but bad for a man, to dream of fairies. It betokens marriage for a girl, misfortune for a man, who should not undertake serious business for some time after such dreaming.
Fairy changelings may be recognized by tricky habits, constant crying, and other unusual characteristics. It was customary to recover the true child in the following way: The changeling was placed upon an iron shovel over the fire, when it would go shrieking up the chimney, and thebona fidehuman child would be restored. It was believed that fairy changelings often produced a set of small bagpipes from under the clothes and played dance music upon them, till the inmates of the cottage dropped with exhaustion from the effects of the step dancing they were compelled to engage in.
On Samain eve, the night before the first of November, or, as it is now called, All Hallows' night or Hallowe'en, all the fairy hills orsheesare thrown wide open and the fairy host issues forth, as mortals who are bold enough to venture near may see. Naturally therefore people keep indoors so as not to encounter the spectral host. The superstition that the fairies are abroad on Samain night still exists in Ireland and Scotland, and there is a further belief, no doubt derived from it, that the graves are open on that night and that the spirits of the dead are abroad.
Salt, as already suggested, is regarded to be so lucky that if a child falls, it should always be given three pinches of salt, and if a neighbor calls to borrow salt, it should not be refused, even though it be the last grain in the house.
An infant born with teeth should have them drawn by the nearest smith, and the first teeth when shed should be thrown into the fire, lest the fairies should get hold of what had been part of you.
Those who hear fairy music are supposed to be haunted by the melody, and many are believed to go mad or commit suicide in consequence.
The fairies are thought to engage in warfare with one another, and in the year 1800 a specially sanguinary battle was believed to have been fought between two clans of the fairies in county Kilkenny. In the morning the hawthorns along the fences were found crushed to pieces and drenched with blood.
In popular belief fairies often go hunting, and faint sounds of fairy horns, the baying of fairy hounds, and the cracking of fairy whips are supposed to be heard on these occasions, while the flight of the hunters is said to resemble in sound the humming of bees.
Besides the life-sized fairies who are reputed to have these direct dealings with human beings, there are diminutive preternatural beings who are also supposed to come into close touch with men. Among these is the Luchryman (Leithphrogan), or brogue maker, otherwise known as Leprechaun. He is always found mending or making a shoe, and, if grasped firmly and kept constantly in view, will disclose hidden treasure to you, or render up hissparan na sgillinge, or purse of the (inexhaustible) shilling. He can only be bound by a plough chain or woolen thread. He is the symbol of industry which, if steadily faced, leads to fortune, but, if lost sight of, is followed by its forfeiture.
Love in idleness is personified by another pigmy, theGeancanach(love-talker). He does not appear, like the Leprechaun, with a purse in one of his pockets, but with his hands in both of them, and adudeen(short pipe) in his mouth, as he lazily strolls through lonely valleys making love to the foolish country lasses and "gostering" with the idle "boys." To meet him meant bad luck, and whoever was ruined by ill-judged love was said to have been with theGeancanach.
Another evil sprite was theClobher-ceann, "a jolly, red-faced, drunken little fellow," always "found astride of a wine-butt" singing and drinking from a full tankard in a hard drinker's cellar, and bound by his appearance to bring its owner to speedy ruin.
Then there were theLeannan-sighes, or native Muses, to be found in every place of note to inspire the local bard, and theBeansighes(Banshees, fairy women) attached to each of the old Irish families and giving warning of the death of one of its members with piteous lamentations.
Black Joanna of the Boyne (Siubhan Dubh na Boinne) appeared on Hallowe'en in the shape of a great black fowl, bringing luck to the home whoseBanithee(woman of the house) kept the dwelling constantly clean and neat.
The Pooka, who appeared in the shape of a horse, and whom Shakespeare is by many believed to have adapted as "Puck," was a goblin who combined "horse-play" with viciousness, but also at times helped with the housework.
TheDullaghanwas a churchyard demon whose head was of a movable kind. Dr. Joyce writes: "You generally meet him with his head in his pocket, under his arm, or absent altogether; or if you have the fortune to light upon a number ofDullaghans, you may see them amusing themselves by flinging their heads at one another or kicking them for footballs."
An even more terrible churchyard demon is the fascinating phantom that waylays the widower at his wife's very tomb, and poisons him by her kiss when he has yielded to her blandishments.
Of monsters the Irish had, and still believe in, thePiast(Latinbestia), a huge dragon or serpent confined to lakes by St. Patrick till the day of judgment, but still occasionally seen in their waters. In old Fenian times, namely, the days of Finn and his companion knights, thePiasts, however, roamed the country, devouring men and women and cattle in large numbers, and some of the early heroes are recorded to have been swallowed alive by them and then to have hewed their way out of their entrails.
Merrows, or Mermaids, are also still believed in, and many folk tales exist describing their intermarriage with mortals.
According to Nicholas O'Kearney, "It is the general opinion of many old persons versed in native traditional lore, that, before the introduction of Christianity, all animals possessed the faculties of human reason and speech; and old story-tellers will gravely inform you that every beast could speak before the arrival of St. Patrick, but that the saint having expelled the demons from the land by the sound of his bell, all the animals that, before that time, had possessed the power of foretelling future events, such as the Black Steed ofBinn-each-labhra, the Royal Cat ofCloughmagh-righ-cat(Clough), and others, became mute, and many of them fled to Egypt and other foreign countries."
Cats are said to have been appointed to guard hidden treasures; and there are few who have not heard old Irish people tell about strange meetings of cats and violent battles fought by them in the neighborhood. "It was believed," adds O'Kearney, "that an evil spirit in the shape of a cat assumed command over these animals in various districts, and that when those wicked beings pleased they could compel all the cats belonging to their division to attack those of some other district. The same was said of rats; and rat-expellers, when commanding a colony of those troublesome and destructive animals to emigrate to some other place, used to address their 'billet' to the infernal rat supposed to hold command over the rest. In a curious pamphlet on the power of bardic compositions to charm and expel rats, lately published, Mr. Eugene O'Curry states that a degraded priest, who was descended from an ancient family of hereditary bards, was enabled to expel a colony of rats by the force of satire!"
Hence, of course, Shakespeare's reference to rhyming Irish rats to death.
It will thus be seen that Irish Fairy Lore well deserves to have been called by Mr. Alfred Nutt, one of the leading authorities on the subject, "as fair and bounteous a harvest of myth and romance as ever flourished among any race."
Alex. Carmichael: Carmina Gadelica; David Comyn: The Boyish Exploits of Finn; the Periodical, "Folklore"; Lady Gregory: Cuchulain of Muirthemne, Gods and Fighting Men; Miss Eleanor Hull: The Cuchulain Saga in Irish Literature; Douglas Hyde: Beside the Fire, (a collection of Irish Gaelic Folk Stories),Leabhar Sgeulaicheachta, (Folk Stories in Irish); "Irish Penny Journal"; Patrick Kennedy: The Fireside Stories of Ireland, Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celt; Standish Hayes O'Grady: Silva Gadelica; Wood-Martin: Traces of the Elder Faiths in Ireland, Pagan Ireland; W.Y. Wentz: The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries; Lady Wilde: Charms, Incantations, etc.; Celtic articles in Hastings' Dictionary of Religion and Ethics.
No record of the glories of Ireland would be complete without an effort, however inadequate, to analyze and illustrate her wit and humor. Often misunderstood, misrepresented, and misinterpreted, they are nevertheless universally admitted to be racial traits, and for an excellent reason. Other nations exhibit these qualities in their literature, and Ireland herself is rich in writers who have furnished food for mirth. But her special pre-eminence resides in the possession of what, to adapt a famous phrase, may be called ananima naturaliter jocosa. Irish wit and Irish humor are a national inheritance. They are inherent in the race as a whole, independent of education or culture or comfort. The best Irish sayings are the sayings of the people; the greatest Irish humorists are the nameless multitude who have never written books or found a place in national dictionaries of biography. None but an Irishman could have coined that supreme expression of contempt: "I wouldn't be seen dead with him at a pig-fair," or rebuked a young barrister because he did not "squandher his carcass" (i.e., gesticulate) enough. But we cannot trace the paternity of these sayings any more than we can that of the lightning retort of the man to whom one of the "quality" had given a glass of whisky. "That's made another man of you, Patsy," remarked the donor. "'Deed an' it has, sor," Patsy flashed back, "an' that other man would be glad of another glass." It is enough for our purpose to note that such sayings are typically Irish and that their peculiar felicity consists in their combining both wit and humor.
To what element in the Irish nature are we to attribute this joyous and illuminating gift? No one who is not a Gaelic scholar can venture to dogmatize on this thorny subject. But, setting philology and politics aside, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Ireland has gained rather than lost in this respect by the clash of races and languages. Gaiety, we are told, is not the predominating characteristic of the Celtic temperament, nor is it reflected in the prose and verse of the "old ancient days" that have come down to us. Glamour and magic and passion abound in the lays and legends of the ancient Gael, but there is more melancholy than mirth in these tales of long ago. Indeed, it is interesting to note in connection with this subject that the younger school of Irish writers associated with what is called the Celtic Renascence have, with very few exceptions, sedulously eschewed anything approaching to jocosity, preferring the paths of crepuscular mysticism or sombre realism, and openly avowing their distaste for what they consider to be the denationalized sentiment of Moore, Lever, and Lover. To say this is not to disparage the genius of Yeats and Synge; it is merely a statement of fact and an illustration of the eternal dualism of the Irish temperament, which Moore himself realized when he wrote of "Erin, the tear and the smile in thine eye."
A reaction against the Donnybrook tradition was inevitable and to a great extent wholesome, since the stage Irishman of the transpontine drama or the music-halls was for the most part a gross and unlovely caricature, but, like all reactions, it has tended to obscure the real merits and services of those who showed the other side of the medal. Lever did not exaggerate more than Dickens, and his portraits of Galway fox-hunters and duellists, of soldiers of fortune, and of Dublin undergraduates were largely based on fact. At his best he was a most exhilarating companion, and his pictures of Irish life, if partial, were not misleading. He held no brief for the landlords, and in his later novels showed a keen sense of their shortcomings. The plain fact is that, in considering the literary glories of Ireland, we cannot possibly overlook the work of those Irishmen who were affected by English influences or wrote for an English audience.
Anglo-Irish humorous literature was a comparatively late product, but its efflorescence was rapid and triumphant. The first great name is that of Goldsmith, and, though deeply influenced in technique and choice of subjects by his association with English men of letters and by his residence in England, in spirit he remained Irish to the end—generous, impulsive, and improvident in his life; genial, gay, and tender-hearted in his works. The Vicar of Wakefield was Dr. Primrose, but he might just as well have been called Dr. Shamrock. No surer proof of the pre-eminence of Irish wit and humor can be found than in the fact that, Shakespeare alone excepted, no writers of comedy have held the boards longer or more triumphantly than Goldsmith and his brother Irishman, Sheridan.She Stoops to Conquer, The Rivals, The School for Scandal, andThe Criticrepresent the sunny side of the Irish genius to perfection. They illustrate, in the most convincing way possible, how the debt of the world to Ireland has been increased by the fate which ordained that her choicest spirits should express themselves in a language of wider appeal than the ancient speech of Erin.
On the other hand, English literature and the English tongue have gained greatly from the influence exerted by writers familiar from their childhood with turns of speech and modes of expression which, even when they are not translations from the Gaelic, are characteristic of the Hibernian temper. The late Dr. P.W. Joyce, in his admirable treatise on English as spoken in Ireland, has illustrated not only the essentially bilingual character of the Anglo-Irish dialect, but the modes of thought which it enshrines. There is no better known form of Irish humor than that commonly called the "Irish bull," which is too often set down to lax thinking and faulty logic. But it is the rarest thing to encounter a genuine Irish "bull" which is not picturesque and at the same time highly suggestive. Take, for example, the saying of an old Kerry doctor who, when conversing with a friend on the high rate of mortality, observed, "Bedad, there's people dyin' who never died before." Here a truly illuminating result was attained by the simple device of using the indicative for the conditional mood—as in Juvenal's famous comment on Cicero's second Philippic:Antoni gladios potuit contemnere si sic omnia dixisset. The Irish "bull" is a heroic and sometimes successful attempt to sit upon two stools at once, or, as an Irishman put it, "Englishmen often make 'bulls,' but the Irish 'bull' is always pregnant."
Though no names of such outstanding distinction as those of Goldsmith and Sheridan occur in the early decades of the nineteenth century, the spirit of Irish comedy was kept vigorously alive by Maria Edgeworth, William Maginn, Francis Mahony (Father Prout), and William Carleton. Sir Walter Scott's splendid tribute to the genius of Maria Edgeworth is regarded by some critics as extravagant, but it is largely confirmed in a most unexpected quarter. Turgenief, the great Russian novelist, proclaimed himself her disciple, and has left it on record that but for her example he might never have attempted to give literary form to his impressions of the classes in Russia corresponding to the poor Irish and the squireens and the squires of county Longford. Maginn and Mahony were both scholars—the latter happily called himself "an Irish potato seasoned with Attic salt"—wrote largely for English periodicals, and spent most of their lives out of Ireland. In the writings of all three an element of the grotesque is observable, tempered, however, in the case of Mahony, with a vein of tender pathos which emerges in his delightful "Bells of Shandon." Maginn was a wit, Mahony was the hedge-schoolmasterin excelsis, and Carleton was the first realist in Irish peasant fiction. But all alike drew their best inspiration from essentially Irish themes. The pendulum has swung back slowly but steadily since the days when Irish men of letters found it necessary to accommodate their genius to purely English literary standards. Even Lever, though he wrote for the English public, wrote mainly about Ireland. So, too, with his contemporary Le Fanu, whose reputation rests on a double basis. He made some wonderful excursions into the realm of the bizarre, the uncanny, and the gruesome. But in the collection known asThe Purcell Paperswill be found three short stories which for exuberant drollery and "diversion" have never been excelled. That the same man could have writtenUncle SilasandThe Quare Ganderis yet another proof of the strange dualism of the Irish character.
The record of the last fifty years shows an uninterrupted progress in the invasion of Englishbelles lettresby Irish writers. Outside literature, perhaps the most famous sayer of good things of our times was a simple Irish parish priest, the late Father Healy. Of his humorous sayings the number is legion; his wit may be illustrated by a less familiar example—his comment on a very tall young lady named Lynch: "Nature gave her an inch and she took an ell." In the House of Commons today there is no greater master of irony and sardonic humor than his namesake, Mr. Tim Healy. On one occasion he remarked that Lord Rosebery was not a man to go tiger-shooting with—except at the Zoo. On another, being anxious to bring an indictment against the "Castle"régimein Dublin and finding the way blocked by a debate on Uganda, he successfully accomplished his purpose by a judicious geographical transference of names, and convulsed the House by a speech in which the nomenclature of Central Africa was applied to the government of Ireland.
But wit and humor are the monopoly of no class or calling in Ireland. They flourish alike among car-drivers and K.C.'s, publicans and policemen, priests and parsons, beggars and peers. It is a commonplace of criticism to deny these qualities in their highest form to women. But this is emphatically untrue of Ireland, and was never more conclusively disproved than by the recent literary achievements of her daughters. The partnership of two Irish ladies, Miss Edith Somerville and Miss Violet Martin, has given us, inSome Experiences of an Irish R.M.(i.e., Resident Magistrate), the most delicious comedy, and inThe Real Charlottethe finest tragi-comedy, that have come out of Great Britain in the last thirty years. TheR.M., as it is familiarly called, is already a classic, but the Irishcomédie humaine—to use the phrase in the sense of Balzac—is even more vividly portrayed in the pages ofThe Real Charlotte. Humor, genuine though intermittent, irradiates the autumnal talent of Miss Jane Barlow, and the long roll of gifted Irishwomen who have contributed to the gaiety of nations may be closed with the names of Miss Hunt, author ofFolk Tales of Breffny; of Miss Purdon and Miss Winifred Letts, who in prose and verse, respectively, have moved us to tears and laughter by their studies of Leinster peasant life; and of "Moira O'Neill" (Mrs. Skrine), the incomparable singer of the Glens of Antrim. To give a full list of the living Irish writers, male and female, who are engaged in the benevolent work of driving dull care away would be impossible within the space at our command. But we cannot end without recognition of the exhilarating extravaganzas of "George A. Birmingham" (Canon Hannay), the freakish and elfin muse of James Stephens, and the coruscating wit of F.P. Dunne, the famous Irish-American humorist, whose "Mr. Dooley" is a household word on both sides of the Atlantic.
Goldsmith: Vicar of Wakefield, She Stoops to Conquer; Sheridan: The Rivals, The School for Scandal, The Critic; R. Edgeworth: Essay on Irish Bulls; M. Edgeworth: Castle Rackrent, The Absentee; Maginn: Miscellanies in Prose and Verse; Carleton: Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry; Mahony (Father Prout): Reliques of Father Prout; John and Michael Banim: Tales of the O'Hara Family; Lover: Legends and Stories of Ireland, Handy Andy; Lever: Harry Lorrequer, Charles O'Malley, Lord Kilgobbin; Le Fanu: The Purcell Papers; Barlow: Bogland Studies, Irish Idylls, Irish Neighbours; Birmingham: The Seething Pot, Spanish Gold, The Major's Niece, The Red Hand of Ulster, General John Regan; Stephens: The Crock of Gold, Here are Ladies; Hunt: The Folk Tales of Breffny; Purdon: The Folk of Furry Farm; Somerville and Ross: The Real Charlotte, Some Experiences of an Irish R.M., All on the Irish Shore, Dan Russel the Fox.
The Irish theatre and secular drama may be said to begin with the production of James Shirley's historical play,St. Patrick for Ireland, in Werburgh Street Theatre, about 1636-7; and though Dublin was a great school for acting, and supplied many of the best players to the English stage, such as Quin, Macklin, Peg Woffington, Miss O'Neill, and hosts of others, it never really possessed a creative theatre (save at the Capel Street Theatre for a few years during the Grattan Parliament) until the modern movement in Ireland came into being and the Abbey Theatre became its headquarters.
Of course, innumerable plays by Irish writers were written, but most of them were not distinctively Irish in character; and the names of Goldsmith, Sheridan, O'Keeffe, Farquhar, Sheridan Knowles, Oscar Wilde, and dozens of others will always be remembered as great Irish writers for the stage. And when fine impersonators of Irish character like Tyrone Power, John Drew, or Barney Williams arrived, there were always to be found several clever writers to fit them with parts, the demand always creating the supply.
Even before Dion Boucicault took to writing Irish dramas of a more palatable and less "stage-Irish" character than those of his immediate predecessors, some excellent plays, Irish in character and tone, had from time to time found their way to the stage. However, Boucicault sweetened our stage by the production ofThe Colleen Bawn, Arrah-na-Pogue, andThe Shaughraun, and showed by his rollicking impersonations of Myles, Shan, and Conn, how good-humored, hearty, and self-sacrificing Irish boys in humble life can be. He had great technical knowledge of stagecraft, and that has helped to make his Irish plays live in the popular goodwill right up to today.
A revolt against Boucicault's Irish boys, all fun and frolic, and charming colleens, who could do no wrong, has made our modern playwrights go to the other extreme; so that now we find our stage peopled with peasants, cruel, hard, and forbidding for the most part, and with colleens who are the reverse of lovable in thought or act. Neither picture is quite true of our people. What is really wanted is the happy medium, which few, if any, of our new playwrights have yet given us.
If our great popular Irish drama has yet to come, I think the Fays have made it possible to say that a distinct and really fine dramatic school has arisen in Ireland, evolved out of their wonderful skill in teaching, producing, and acting; and if we are not always really delighted with what our playwrights give us, the almost perfect way in which the plays are served up by the actors invariably wholly satisfies. It is the actors who have made the Abbey Theatre famous, and not the plays. Such acting as theirs cast a spell over all who see them. What pleasing memories do the names of W.G. Fay, Frank J. Fay, Dudley Digges, Sara Allgood, Arthur Sinclair, Maire O'Neill, Maire ni Shuiblaigh, J.M. Kerrigan, Fred O'Donovan, Eileen O'Doherty, Una O'Connor, Eithne Magee, Nora Desmond, and John Connolly recall!
With the production of W.B. Yeats's poetic one-act play,The Land of Heart's Desire, at the Avenue Theatre, London, on March 29, 1894, began the modern Irish dramatic movement. When the poet had tasted the joys of the footlights, he longed to see an Irish Literary Theatre realized in Ireland. Five years later, in the Antient Concert Rooms, Dublin, on May 9, 1899, his play,The Countess Cathleen, was produced, and his desire gratified. The experiment was tried for three years and then dropped; plays by Yeats, Edward Martyn, George Moore, and Alice Milligan were staged with English-trained actors in the casts; and a Gaelic play—the first ever presented in a theatre in Ireland—was also given during the third season. It wasThe Twisting of the Rope, by Dr. Douglas Hyde, and was played at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, on October 21, 1901, by a Gaelic Amateur Dramatic Society coached by W.G. Fay. The author filled the principal part with distinction.
It was while rehearsing this play that the thought came to Fay: "Why not have my little company of Irish-born actors—the Ormond Dramatic Society—appear in plays by Irish writers instead of in the ones they have been giving for years?" And the thought soon ripened into realization. His brother, Frank, had dreamed of such a company since he read of the small beginnings out of which the Norwegian Theatre had grown; and just then, seeing some of "Æ's" (George Russell's) play,Deirdre, in theAll Ireland Review, he asked the author if he would allow them to produce it, and, consent being given, the company put it into rehearsal at once. "Æ" got for them from YeatsKathleen-Ni-Houlihan, to make up the programme. Thus it was that this company of amateurs and poets, now known as the Abbey Players, came into existence, and at St. Teresa's Hall, Clarendon Street, Dublin, gave their first performance on April 2, 1902.
Shortly afterwards they took a hall at the back of a shop in Camden Street, where they rehearsed and gave a few public performances. On "Æ" declining to be their president, Frank Fay suggested the name of W.B. Yeats, and he was elected, and in that way came again into the movement in which he has figured so largely ever since.
The company played occasionally in the Molesworth Hall, and produced there, among other pieces, Synge'sIn the Shadow of the Glen(October 8, 1903) andRiders to the Sea(February 25, 1904); Yeats'sThe Hour Glass(March 14, 1903) andThe King's Threshold(October 8, 1903); Lady Gregory'sTwenty-five(March 14,1903); and Padraic Colum'sBroken Soil(December 3, 1903).
On March 26, 1904, the company paid a flying one-day visit to the Royalty, London, and Miss A.E.F. Horniman, who had given Shaw, Yeats, and Dr. John Todhunter their first real start as playwrights at the Avenue, London, in March-April, 1894 (Shaw had had his first play,Widowers' Houses, played by the Independent Theatre in 1892), saw the performance, and was so impressed that she thought she would like to find a suitable home for such talent in Dublin, and fixed upon the old Mechanics' Institute and its surrounding buildings, and there the Abbey Theatre soon afterwards—on December 27, 1904—came into existence.
In writing of this Irish dramatic movement, one must always bear in mind that it was Yeats who first conceived the idea of such a movement; the Fays who founded the school of Irish acting; and Miss Horniman who, like a fairy godmother, waved the wand, and gave it a habitation and a name—the Abbey Theatre—and endowed it for six years.
Play followed play with great rapidity, and dramatic societies sprang up all over the country, playing home-made productions in Gaelic and English. All Ireland seemed to be play-acting and play-writing; so much so that Frank Fay was heard to say that "he thought everyone had a play in his pocket, and that anyone in the street could be picked up and shaped into an actor or actress with a little training, Ireland was so teeming with talent!"
Dramatic Ireland had slumbered for a long while, and awoke with tremendous vigor for work. New dramatists sprang up in all parts of Ireland; The Ulster Literary Theatre started in Belfast; The Cork Dramatic Society, in Cork; The Theatre of Ireland, in Dublin; and others in Galway and Waterford soon followed. In Dublin at present more than half a dozen dramatic societies are continually producing new plays and discovering new acting talent. There are also two Gaelic dramatic societies. And nearly every town in Ireland now has its own dramatic class and its own dramatists. All this activity has come about within the last ten or twelve years, where, before, in many places, drama and acting were almost unknown.
Many Gaelic societies throughout the country put on Gaelic plays by Dr. Douglas Hyde, Pierce Beasley, Thomas Haynes, Canon Peter O'Leary, and others; and theOireachtas(the Gaelic musical and literary festival) held each year in Dublin usually presents several Irish plays and offers prizes for new ones at each festival.
Of all the Irish playwrights who have arisen in recent years, Lady Gregory has produced most and W.B. Yeats is the most poetic. He is more a lyric poet than a dramatist, and is never satisfied with his work for the stage, but keeps eternally chopping and changing it. HisKathleen-Ni-Houlihan, though a dream-play, always appeals to an audience of Irish people. Perhaps his one-actDeirdreis the nearest approach to real drama he has done. Some of Lady Gregory's earlier one-act farces, such asThe Workhouse-Ward, are very amusing;The Rising of the Moonis a little dramatic gem, andThe Gaol Gateis touched with genuine tragedy. Synge wrote only one play—Riders to the Sea—that acts well. The others are admired by critics for the strangeness of their diction and the beauty of the nature-pictures scattered through them. His much-discussedPlayboy of the Western Worldhas become famous for the rows it has created at home and abroad from its very first production on January 26, 1907. William Boyle, who gets to the heart of those he writes about, has produced the most popular play of the movement inThe Eloquent Dempsey, and a perfectly constructed one inThe Building Fund. W.F. Casey's two plays—The Man Who Missed the Tide andThe Suburban Groove—are both popular and actable. Padraic Colum's plays—The Land andBroken Soil(the latter rewritten and renamedThe Fiddler's House)—are almost idyllic scenes of country life. Lennox Robinson's plays are harsh in tone, but dramatically effective, and T.C. Murray'sBirthrightandMaurice Harteare fine dramas, well constructed and full of true knowledge of the people he writes about. Seumas O'Kelly has written two strong dramas inThe Shuiler's ChildandThe Bribe, and Seumas O'Brien one of the funniest Irish farces ever staged inDuty. R.J. Ray's play,The Casting Out of Martin Whelan, is the best this dramatist has as yet given us, and George Fitzmaurice'sThe Country Dressmakerhas the elements of good drama in it. St. John G. Ervine has written a very human drama inMixed Marriage. He hails from the north of Ireland; but Rutherford Mayne is the best of the Northern playwrights, and his plays,The DroneandThe Turn of the Road, are splendid homely county Down comedies.
Bernard Shaw'sJohn Bull's Other Island, as Irish plays go, is a fine specimen; Canon Hannay has written two successful comedies,Eleanor's EnterpriseandGeneral John Regan—the latter not wholly to the taste of the people of the west. James Stephens and Jane Barlow have also tried their hands at playwriting, with but moderate success. Perhaps the modern drama that made the most impression when first played wasThe Heather Field, by Edward Martyn. It gripped and remains a lasting memory with all who saw it in 1899. But I think I have written enough to show that the Irish Theatre of today is in a very alive condition, and that if the great National Dramatist has not yet arrived, he is sure to emerge. When that time comes, the actors are here ready to interpret such work to perfection.
An article, however brief, on the Irish Theatre, would be incomplete without mention of the world-famous tragedians, John Edward MacCullough, Lawrence Patrick Barrett, and Barry Sullivan; of genial comedians like Charles Sullivan and Hubert O'Grady; of sterling actors like Shiel Barry, John Brougham, Leonard Boyne, J.D. Beveridge, and Thomas Nerney; or of operatic artists like Denis O'Sullivan and Joseph O'Mara—many of whom have passed away, but some, fortunately, are with us still.
John Genest: Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration to 1830 (1832; vol. 10 is devoted to the Irish Stage); Chetwood: General History of the Stage, more particularly of the Irish Theatre (Dublin, 1749); Molloy: Romance of the Irish Stage; Baker: Biographia Dramatica (Dublin, 1782); Hitchcock: An Historical View of the Irish Stage from its Earliest Period down to the Season of 1788; Doran: Their Majesties' Servants, or Annals of the English Stage (London, 1865); Hughes: The Pre-Victorian Drama in Dublin; The History of the Theatre Royal, Dublin (Dublin, 1870); Levey and O'Rourke: Annals of the Theatre Royal (Dublin, 1880); O'Neill: Irish Theatrical History (Dublin, 1910); Brown: A Guide to Books on Ireland (Dublin, 1912); Lawrence: The Abbey Theatre (in the Weekly Freeman, Dublin, Dec., 1912), Origin of the Abbey Theatre (in Sinn Fein, Dublin, Feb. 14, 1914); Weygandt: Irish Plays and Playwrights (London, 1913); Lady Gregory: Our Irish Theatre (London, 1914); Bourgeois: John M. Synge and the Irish Theatre (London, 1913); Moore: Hail and Farewell, 3 vols. (London, 1911-1914); Esmore: The Ulster Literary Theatre (in the Lady of the House, Dublin, Nov. 15, 1913); the Reviews, Beltaine (1899-1900) and Samhain (1901-1903).
The most splendid testimony to the Irish genius in journalism is afforded by the London press of the opening decades of the twentieth century. One of the greatest newspaper organizers of modern times is Lord Northcliffe. As the principal proprietor and guiding mind of both theTimesand theDaily Mail, he directly influences public opinion, from the steps of the Throne and the door of the Cabinet, to the errand boy and the servant maid. T.P. O'Connor, M.P., is the most popular writer on current social and political topics, and so amazing is his versatility that every subject he touches is illumined by those fine qualities, vision and sincerity. The most renowned of political writers is J.L. Garvin of thePall Mall Gazetteand theObserver. By his leading articles he has done as much as the late Joseph Chamberlain by his speeches to democratize and humanize the old Tory party of England. The authoritative special correspondent, studying at first hand all the problems which divide the nations of Europe, and knowing personally most of its rulers and statesmen, is E.J. Dillon of theDaily Telegraph. And when the quarrels of nations are transferred from the chancelleries to the stricken field there is no one among the war correspondents more enterprising and intrepid in his methods, or more picturesque and vivid with his pen, than M.H. Donohoe of theDaily Chronicle. All these men are Irish. Could there be more striking proof of the natural bent and aptitude of the Irish mind for journalism?
Dean Swift was the mightiest journalist that ever stirred the sluggish soul of humanity. Were he alive today and had he at his command the enormous circulation of a great daily newspaper, he would keep millions in a perpetual mental ferment, such was the ferocious indignation into which he was aroused by wrong and injustice and his gift of savage ironical expression. Swift, as a young student in Trinity College, Dublin, saw the birth of the first offspring of the Irish mind in journalism. TheDublin News Lettermade its appearance in June, 1685, and was published every three or four days for the circulation of news and advertisements. Only one copy of the first issue of this, the earliest of Irish newspapers, is extant. It is included in the Thorpe collection of tracts in the Royal Dublin Society. Dated August 26, 1685, it consists of a single leaf of paper printed on both sides, and contains just one item of news, a letter brought by the English packet from London, and two local advertisements. As I reverently handled it, I was thrilled by the thought that from this insignificant little seed sprang the great national organ, theFreeman's Journal; thePressof the United Irishmen; theNationof the Young Irelanders; theUnited Irelandof the Land League; theIrish Worldand theBoston Pilotof the American Irish; and theIrish Independent, the first half-penny Dublin morning paper, and the most widely circulated of Irish journals. If Swift did not write for theDublin News Letter, he certainly wrote for theExaminer, a weekly miscellany published in the Irish capital from 1710 to 1713, and the first journal that endeavored to create public opinion in Ireland. It was at Swift's instigation that this paper was started, and he was doubtless encouraged to suggest it by the success that attended his articles in the contemporary London publication of the same name, the ToryExaminer, in which his journalistic genius was fully revealed. As it has been expressively put, he wrote his friends, Harley and St. John, into a firm grip of power, and thus, as in other ways, contributed his share to the inauguration and maintenance of that policy which in the last four years of Queen Anne so materially recast the whole European situation. About the same time there appeared in London the earliest forms of the periodical essay in theTatlerand theSpectator, which exhibit the comprehensiveness of the Irish temperament in writing by affording a contrast between the Irish force and vehemence of Swift and the Irish play of kindly wit and tender pathos in the deft and dainty periods of Richard Steele.
Dr. Charles Lucas was, even more than Swift perhaps, the precursor of that type of Irish publicist and journalist, of which there have been many splendid examples since then in Ireland, England, and America. Lucas first started theCensor, a weekly journal, in 1748. Within two years his paper was suppressed for exciting discontent with the government, and to avoid a prosecution he fled to England. In 1763 theFreeman's Journalwas established by three Dublin merchants. Lucas, who had returned from a long exile and was a member of the Irish parliament, contributed to it, sometimes anonymously but generally over the signature of "A Citizen" or "Civis." The editor was Henry Brooks, novelist, poet, and playwright. His novel,The Fool of Quality, is still read. His tragedy,The Earl of Essex, was, wrongly, supposed to contain a precept, "Who rules o'er freemen should himself be free," which led to the more famous parody of Dr. Samuel Johnson, "Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat." The object of Lucas and Brooke, as journalists, was to awaken national sentiment, by teaching that Ireland had an individuality of her own independently of England. But they were more concerned with the assertion of the constitutional rights of the parliament of the Protestant colony as against the domination of England. Therefore, the first organ of Irish Nationality, representative of all creeds and classes, was thePress, the newspaper of the United Irishmen, which was started in Dublin in 1797, by Arthur O'Connor, the son of a rich merchant who had made his money in London. Its editor was Peter Finnerty, born of humble parentage at Loughrea, afterwards a famous parliamentary reporter for the LondonMorning Chronicle, and its most famous contributor was Dr. William Drennan, the poet, who first called Ireland "the Emerald Isle."
Irishmen did not become prominently associated with American journalism until after the Famine and the collapse of the Young Ireland movement in 1848. The journalist whom I regard as having exercised the most fateful influence on the destinies of Ireland was Charles Gavan Duffy, the founder and first editor of theNation, a newspaper of which it was truly and finely said that it brought a new soul into Erin. Among its contributors, who afterwards added lustre to the journalism of the United States, was John Mitchel. In theSouthern Citizenand theRichmond Enquirerhe supported the South against the North in the Civil War. The Rev. Abram Joseph Ryan, who was associated with journalism in New Orleans, not only acted as a Catholic chaplain with the Confederate army, but sang of its hopes and aspirations in tuneful verse. Serving in the army of the North was Charles G. Halpine, whose songs signed "Private Miles O'Reilly" were very popular in those days of national convulsion in the United States. Halpine's father had edited the Tory newspaper, the DublinEvening Mail; and Halpine himself, after the war, edited theCitizenof New York, famous for its advocacy of reforms in civic administration. Perhaps the two most renowned men in Irish-American journalism were John Boyle O'Reilly of theBoston Pilotand Patrick Ford of theIrish World. O'Reilly was a troop-sergeant in the 10th Hussars (Prince of Wales's Own), and during the Fenian troubles of 1866 had eighty of his men ready armed and mounted to take out of Island Bridge Barracks, Dublin, at a given signal, to aid the projected insurrection. Detected, he was brought to trial, summarily convicted, and sentenced to be shot. This sentence was commuted to twenty-five years' penal servitude; but O'Reilly survived it all to become a brilliant man of letters and make theBoston Pilotone of the most influential Irish and Catholic newspapers in the United States. Ford, who had served his apprenticeship as a compositor in the office of William Lloyd Garrison at Boston, founded theIrish Worldin 1870. This newspaper gave powerful aid to the Land League. A special issue of 1,650,000 copies of theIrish Worldwas printed on January 11, 1879, for circulation in Ireland; and money to the amount of $600,000 altogether was sent by Ford to the headquarters of the agitation in Dublin. A journalist of a totally different kind was Edwin Lawrence Godkin. Born in County Wicklow, the son of a Presbyterian clergyman, Godkin in 1865 established theNationin New York as an organ of independent thought; and for thirty-five years he filled a unique position, standing aside from all parties, sects, and bodies, and yet permeating them all with his sane and restraining philosophy.
In Canada, Thomas D'Arcy Magee won fame as a journalist on theNew Erabefore he became even more distinguished as a parliamentarian. When the history of Australian journalism is written it will contain two outstanding Irish names: Daniel Henry Deniehy, who died in 1865, was called by Bulwer Lytton "the Australian Macaulay" on account of his brilliant writings as critic and reviewer in the press of Victoria. Gerald Henry Supple, another Dublin man, is also remembered for his contributions to theAgeand theArgusof Melbourne. In India one of the first—if not the first—English newspapers was founded by a Limerick man, named Charles Johnstone, who had previously attained fame as the author ofChrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea, and who died at Calcutta about 1800.
Stirring memories of battle and adventure leap to the mind at the names of those renowned war correspondents, William Howard Russell, Edmond O'Donovan, and James J. O'Kelly. Russell, a Dublin man, was the first newspaper representative to accompany an army into the field. He saw all the mighty engagements of the Crimea—Alma, Balaclava, Inkerman, Sebastopol—not from a distance of 60 or 80 miles, which is the nearest that correspondents are now allowed to approach the front, but at the closest quarters, riding through the lines on his mule, and seeing the engagements vividly, so that he was able to describe them in moving detail for readers of theTimes. O'Donovan—son of Dr. John O'Donovan, the distinguished Irish scholar and archaeologist—was in the service of the LondonDaily News. That dashing campaigner—as his famous book,The Merv Oasis, shows him to have been—perished with Hicks Pasha's Army in the Sudan in November, 1883. At the same time James O'Kelly, also of theDaily News, was lost in the desert, trying to join the forces of the victorious Sudanese under the Madhi. Ten years before that he had accomplished, for the New YorkHerald, the equally daring and hazardous feat of joining the Cuban rebels in revolt against Spain. He escaped the perils of the Mambi Land and the Sudan, and survived to serve Ireland for many years as a Nationalist member in the British parliament. John Augustus O'Shea, better known, perhaps, as "The Irish Bohemian", also deserves remembrance for his quarter of a century's work as special correspondent in Europe—including Paris during the siege—for the LondonStandard.
Indeed, no matter to what side of journalism we turn, we find Irishmen filling the foremost and the highest places. John Thaddeus Delane, under whose editorship theTimesbecame for a time the most influential newspaper in the world, was of Irish parentage. The first editor of theIllustrated London News(1842)—one of the pioneers in the elucidation of news by means of pictures—was an Irishman, Frederick Bayley. Among the projectors ofPunch, and one of its earliest contributors, was a King's county man, Joseph Sterling Coyne. The founder of theLiverpool Daily Post(1855), the first penny daily paper in Great Britain, was Michael Joseph Whitty, a Wexford man. His son, Edward M. Whitty, was the originator of that interesting feature of English and Irish journalism, the sketch of personalities and proceedings in parliament. Of the editors of theAthenaeum—for many years the leading English organ of literary criticism—one of the most famous was Dr. John Doran, who was of Irish parentage. "Dod" is a familiar household word in the British Parliament. It is the name of the recognized guide to the careers and political opinions of Lords and Commons. Its founder was an Irishman, Charles Roger Dod, who for twenty-three years was a parliamentary reporter for theTimes. And what name sheds a brighter light on the annals of British journalism for intellectual and imaginative force than that of Justin MacCarthy, novelist and historian, as well as newspaper writer?
At home in Ireland the name of Gray is inseparably associated with theFreeman's Journal. Under the direction of Dr. John Gray this newspaper became in the sixties and seventies the most powerful organ of public opinion in Ireland; and in the eighties it was raised still higher in ability and influence by his son and successor, Edmund Dwyer Gray. In the south of Ireland the most influential daily newspaper is theCork Examiner, which was founded in 1841 by John Francis Maguire, who wrote in 1868The Irish in America. It is doubtful whether any country ever produced a more militant and able political journal than wasUnited Irelandin the stormy years during which it was edited by William O'Brien as the organ of the Land League.
The Irish mood is gregarious, expansive, glowing, and eager to keep in intimate touch with the movements and affairs of humanity. That, I think, is the secret of its success in journalism.
Madden: Irish Periodical Literature (1867); Andrews: English Journalism (1855); North: Newspaper and Periodical Press of the United States (1884); MacDonagh: The Reporter's Gallery (1913).
In the closing decade of the nineteenth century and in the opening years of the twentieth, no literary movement has awakened a livelier interest than the Irish Literary Revival, a movement which, by its singleness and solidarity of purpose, stood alone in a time of confused literary aims and tendencies. Movements, like individuals, have their ancestry, and that of the Irish Literary Revival is easily traced. It descends from Callanan and Walsh, and from the writers of '48. It is to this descent that the lines in William Butler Yeats's "To Ireland in Coming Times" allude: