“A Grand Orange demonstration will be held in Donegal on Tuesday, 12th July 1898. Who fears to speak of Derry, Aughrim, and the Boyne? Papists, stand aside! We conquered you before, and can do so again. Our motto still is: Down with Home Rule, Hurrah for King William, and to Hell with the Pope!”
“A Grand Orange demonstration will be held in Donegal on Tuesday, 12th July 1898. Who fears to speak of Derry, Aughrim, and the Boyne? Papists, stand aside! We conquered you before, and can do so again. Our motto still is: Down with Home Rule, Hurrah for King William, and to Hell with the Pope!”
This is a sample Orange proclamation quoted by Mr. M. J. F. M’Carthy inFive Years in Ireland. Now seventy-five per cent. of the population of Ireland are Roman Catholics; what is more, they are Roman Catholics of the devoutest and most devoted type. Probably the Orangemen do not number ten per cent. of the population; yet they are allowed to insult the Head of the Roman Church in the grossest manner, with absolute impunity. If any secret society or other body in Ireland were to post a notice in Donegalto-morrow announcing a grand national demonstration, and winding up with some such ejaculatory remark as “To Hell with Mr. Balfour,” there would be arrests and terms of imprisonment and howls from every corner of England. It goes without saying that the Pope is not Mr. Balfour, and when His Holiness is wished “to Hell” nobody is really a penny the worse. But can it be claimed for a moment that there is either justice or reason in allowing such insults to be placarded in the midst of a Catholic population? Nobody above the level of a Scotch Presbyterian would attempt to justify anything of the kind. It may be that when the Orange lodges were founded they had a use and were necessary for the protection of the Protestant religion against the wiles of Roman Catholicism. At the present moment they serve no purpose whatever that is not essentially evil. In point of fact they are organized centers for the encouragement of bibulous sentiment and the open flaunting of thepower of an ill-conditioned minority over a decent and fairly tolerant majority. The Protestant religion in Ireland must be in a distinctly parlous condition if it requires any such backing or any such “protection.” The fact is that nothing of the sort is necessary, or believed to be necessary, even by the more bigoted Irish Protestants. That being so, Orangeism would seem to be ripe for extirpation. If the English Government were as secular as it is commonly held to be, the Orange lodges would have short shrift. It is their supposed connection with religious liberty which shields them from suppression. Yet every Irishman, Protestant or Catholic, knows well that the religious element in Orangeism is little more than pure farce. The entire Orange forces of Ireland could not muster a couple of saints, lay or clerical, to save their lives. At the present time the Orange faction is literally powerless to do anything but create disturbances which are, in effect, street rows of the most vulgar and ill-considerednature. The stoning of Cardinals belongs properly to the same order of sport as the baiting of Jews. Neither pastime would be tolerated for a moment in England.
Why the Northern Irish should be indulged passes comprehension. The majority in Ireland is Green and Catholic as opposed to a tiny minority of Orange and Protestant. The majority has an admitted right to its way in England—why not in Ireland? Much has been said as to the “sinfulness” and “wickedness” of Mr. Gladstone in disestablishing the Irish Church. I am not sure that even the Catholics are quite convinced that Mr. Gladstone’s action was wise. But one thing is certain, namely, that the disestablishment of the Irish Church was eminently just, having regard to the relative position of religious parties in the country. The suppression of the Orange lodges, or, at any rate, the penalization of Orange demonstrations, ought to have followed as a matter of course. Therewill never be real peace nor content in Ireland till Orangeism is deprived of its present scandalous powers of annoyance, disturbance and tyranny. Toleration on both sides, Catholic and Protestant, is the only hope for a “United Ireland,” or for an Ireland that is to work out its own social and political salvation. And you cannot have tolerance where you have an organization of chartered reactionaries who, in spite of their alleged religious purpose, are little removed, whether in temper or intention, from the common Hooligans of London. The Irish Catholic Church, which, after all, possesses some say over its adherents, has, during late years, done all that lies in its power to prevent collisions between Catholics and Orangemen; it avoids as far as is possible the occasions of such collision; it is careful neither to provoke nor challenge, and in practise it literally “turns the other cheek.” The Irish Protestant Church is equally anxious for peace and equally assiduous in its efforts to secure it.Yet Orangeism flaunts itself at large and without let or hindrance. It furnishes forth “riots o’ Monday” at its own sweet will, and hoots, and mobs, and waves crimson handkerchiefs, and throws stones, and breaks windows and heads to its heart’s content. There is really nobody to say it nay. Authority stands by and winks, for is it not the great principle of Protestantism that is being protected? And are not these same Orangemen vigorous and violent anti-Home-Rulers? Herein, indeed, you have the true inwardness of the modern English attitude toward King William’s men. The domestic quietude of Ireland and the religious freedom of two-thirds of her population cannot be of the remotest consequence compared with the maintenance of the Union. That Ireland no longer seeks Home Rule does not matter. Orangeism has severed the Unionists passing well in the day that is just past. Let it reap its reward in the shape of leave and license. It deserves well of England; who shall raisea finger against it? And, moreover, it is Scotch, and the Scotch are the backbone of Ireland, as of England—manners and morals and all other decent things on one side. As I indicated at the beginning of this chapter, to attempt to rid Ireland of Orangemen were to attempt the impossible. But to deprive Orangeism of English approval and countenance is possible. Break up the lodges, bring to bear on the suppression of Orange demonstrations and Orange disturbances one tithe of the forces you brought to bear against Irish nationalism, and you will have gone a great way toward removing the last obstacles to the peace and contentment of the Irish people as a body.
I have no desire to offer in the present pages a re-hash of a former work of mine, which is said to have provoked the Scotch to the point of laughter. But I do desire to assert that, in my humble opinion, it is the Scotch, or alien population of Ireland, which has been at the root of Ireland’s principal troubles throughout the past century. Ulster may be a fine kingdom, the wealthiest, most industrious, and the wisest and happiest in the country, if you like. Yet it is Ulster that bars the way in all matters that make for the real good of Ireland. Every proper Irishman knows this, and Ulstermen will be at no pains to deny it. Rather are they disposed to glory in it and to brag about it. Ireland, they will tell you, is theircountry. It is they who have made it, they who have saved it, they who have enriched, beautified and adorned it. They point to the linen industry and to the shipbuilding industry; they crack about Belfast and Portadown, and about “eminent Ulstermen in every walk of life.” There would be no Ireland at all if it were not for themselves. They rule Ireland. What Ireland wants she may have, if it pleases Ulster. What Ireland does not want she must have, if Ulster so much as nod. That, at any rate, is the view of Ulster, the view of the thrifty, douce Scotch bodies whose fathers got gifts of other people’s lands from James I. of England and VI. of Scotland, and whose sons go up and down and to and fro upon the earth, calling themselves “Irishmen of Scotch descent.” There are no Irishmen of Scotch descent. And Ulstermen are not Irishmen unless their descent be Irish. Failing this, they are simply interlopers, or, at best, colonists and plantation men, and they had best put the factin their pipes and smoke it. Nobody can deny that it was a bad day for Ireland when they came grabbing and grubbing to her shores, just as it was a bad day for England when she “took up” with them. They got Ulster for nothing, and they have kept it for “that same.” They have lived and waxed fat on Irish plunder, and the whole force of English legislation has been directed toward maintaining them in their place, fostering their projects, pampering and propitiating them, and “protecting” them against the wicked, degraded, unreasonable Irish outside. Nor have they been content to confine their greedy attention to their own proper “kingdom,” which is not theirs. Where the carcass is, there will the vulture be; and where there is a soft job, or obvious pickings, there you will find a Scotchman. So that throughout Ireland, Scotchmen have been scattered wherever the Government could find a place for one. There is scarcely an office, sub-office, or sub-deputy office worththe having in all Ireland which has not been made the perquisite of a Protestant Scotchman. Even the Congested Districts Board employs Scotch factors, and Thom’s Almanac is little more than a catalogue of Scotch patronymics. And the pride and insolence and unfairness of them! From a booklet calledThe Scot in Ulster, written by a Scotchman, and published, if you please, by Blackwood’s of Edinburgh, I take the following: “Their English and Scotch origin seems to me to give to the men of Ulster an unalienable right to protest, as far as they are concerned, against the policy of separation from Great Britain to which the Irish, with the genius for nicknames which they possess, at present give the name of Home Rule.” Could sophistry, craft, subtlety, disingenuousness, or the Scotch genius for cunning misrepresentation go further? To say that when the Irish people have said Home Rule they meant separation, is to promulgate a deliberate and wily untruth. The Irish people proper invariablymean what they say, no more and no less. Home Rule never meant more nor less to the Irish than “a parliament on college green.” It was the Scotch, and the Scotch alone, who set up the cry of “separation” for a bugbear and a bogy wherewith to frighten the timorous English ruler into stubborn acquiescence in the Scotch view of Irish affairs. Yet here we have a Scotchman assuring us in cold print that Home Rule is merely an Irish “nickname” for “separation.” I note with considerable satisfaction, however, that, as Scotchmen will, the author ofThe Scot in Ulsterproceeds religiously to give away the whole Scotch-Irish question. “For centuries,” says he, “the Scot had been wont to wander forth over Europe in search ofadventure. [The italic is ours.] As a rule, he turned his steps where fighting was to be had,and the pay for killing was reasonably good. [Again the italics are ours.]… These Scots who have flocked from Leith, or Crail, or Berwick to seek fortune,in peace or war, on the Continent of Europe were mostly the young and adventurous, for whom the old home life had become too narrow.They took with them little save their own stout hearts and their national long heads. [These, too, are our italics.]… The time arrived at last, however, when war with England ceased, and internal strife became less bloody, and Scotland began to be too small for her rapidly growing population,for in those days food did not necessarily come where there were mouths to consume it. [Italics—of our own—which famine-stricken Ireland may fittingly ponder.] Then the Scots, true to the race from which they sprung—for ‘Norman, and Saxon, and Dane are we’ [think of it!][2]—began to go forth, like the northern hordes in days of yore, the women and the children along with the bread-winners, and crossed the seas, and settled in new lands, and were ‘fruitful andmultiplied and replenished the earth,’ until the globe is circled round with colonies which are of our blood, and which love and cherish the old ‘land of the mountain and the flood.’” [Tut, tut!] And now mark us: “It was in the beginning of the seventeenth century that the first of these swarms crossed the narrowest of the seas which surround Scotland; it went out from the Ayrshire and Galloway ports, and settled in the north of Ireland. The numbers which went were large. They left Scotland at a time when she was deeply moved by the great Puritan revival. They took with them their Scottish character and their Scottish Calvinism. [Clearly they had both hands full!] They founded the Scottish colony in Ulster. Thus it comes to pass ‘That the foundation of Ulster society is Scottish. It is the solid granite on which it rests.’ [Glory be!] The history of this Scottish colony seems worth telling, for it is a story of which any Scotsman at home or abroad may be proud.[Where is my crimson handkerchief?] Its early history isquaintandinteresting[our italics]; there is muchsufferingandoppressionin the story of the succeeding years [our italics]; but there are flashes of brightness to relieve the gloom.The men which this race of Scotsmen has produced are worthy of the parent stock; the contribution which this branch of the Scottish nation has made to the progress of civilization proves that it has not forgotten the old ideals; the portion of Ireland which these Scotsmen HOLD is so prosperous and contented that it permits our statesmen to forget that it is part of that most ‘distressful’ country.” I venture to thank Heaven and St. Patrick that the statements we have last italicized and the word we have put in capital letters embody the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Examine them, O sons of Erin, and take heed that You are the people, and that the Scotch are but the sons of Belial and Astoreth. What has holy Ireland to do with these vapors,these swaggerings, these smitings of righteous breasts? Who be the grubby, grimy, gallowayan, grasping, governmental hucksters that so by implication and innuendo contemn You, the proper and legitimate owners of Ulster? Ask of the winds, which far around strew Scotchmen and the devil on the fair places of the earth. You are innocent to put up with it. You fought the landlords and beat them hollow. “We conquered you before, and can do so again!” Be done with this Scotch obsession. Good can come out of Ireland and Irishmen, as well as out of Ulster and Scotchmen. Lo, that green island is yours, not theirs. Seven-tenths of it are in your hands to do with as you will. “There is not, perhaps, another country on the face of the globe where more good, solid work is waiting to be done, where greater capacities lie dormant, yet where trifling of all kinds so abounds.” That is the verdict of an Irishman and an Irish Catholic upon you. In sober truth you groan, as England groans,under the Scotch superstition. Nobody can be prosperous in Ireland save Scotchmen. Nobody can manufacture but Scotchmen, nobody can farm but Scotchmen. The view is entirely false. Encourage it no longer; remember who you are, and make an end of trifling.
[2]In point of fact the Scotch are neither Norman, Saxon, Dane nor good red-herring, but sheer Scotch.
[2]In point of fact the Scotch are neither Norman, Saxon, Dane nor good red-herring, but sheer Scotch.
[2]In point of fact the Scotch are neither Norman, Saxon, Dane nor good red-herring, but sheer Scotch.
Are there too many priests in Ireland? Yes. Is Dublin “black with them”? Yes. Do they appear to be as frequent on the country side as crows? Yes. Are they extorting from the Irish people money which is sorely needed for secular purposes? Yes. Here you have four pertinent questions, which invariably crop up whenever Ireland is discussed, together with the average answers to them. “It is the priests!” cry both well and ill informed. According to the latest critic—who, it seems, once occupied the somewhat superfluous position of “literary editor of theDaily Mail”—“one of the heaviest drags upon the life of Ireland is the religious vocation. The monasteries and nunneries prosper and increase, choking and interfering withthe circulation of labor and of industry in the country.” Also, “it is my profound conviction that a large proportion of the present misery of Ireland is not only bound up with, but is actually a result of the country’s religion.” Also, “the houses of the people are so indecently poor and small; the houses of the Church are so indecently rich and large. Out of the dirt and decay they rise, proud and ugly and substantial, as though to inform the world that at least one thing is not dying and despondent, but keeps its loins girded and its lamps trimmed.” This, roughly, is the indictment. Appended are some of the figures upon which it is based. Mr. Michael M’Carthy, himself a Catholic, says, “A cardinal, 3 archbishops, 25 bishops, 2 mitred abbots, and 2,722 secular priests, together with a host of regular priests of all the different Orders, such as Jesuits, Franciscans, Vincentians, Holy Ghost, Carmelites, Passionists, Augustinians, Mary Immaculate, Dominicans, Cistercians, Marists, Redemptoristsand so forth, all of whom flourish in Ireland—such is the force which constitutes the formidable clerical army of the Catholic Church in Ireland, and its auxiliary forces are the numerous Orders of nuns, Christian brothers, lay brothers attached to the regular Orders, and so forth; together with the great body of Catholic National teachers, male and female, who are under the control of the priests, and teach catechism in the churches; the parish priests, as managers of the parochial National Schools, having the power of dismissing the teachers.” “May it not be said of this great organization,” adds Mr. M’Carthy, “that ‘it is on a scale such as few nations would be able and willing to afford’?”
To dispose of the indictment first, we may quote a little further from the author of it. He writes: “So far as they are individually concerned, they [the priests] are in many cases the true friends of the people. They help them in their affairs, settle their disputes,claim for them their rights, comfort them in their sorrows, admonish, encourage, cherish and watch over them. This is at the best. At the worst they are hard and cruel, selfish and unjust, over-eating and over-drinking—a grotesque and monstrous company. But these are the minority; and on the whole the priests perform the duties of a dreary life as well as could be expected of a narrow and half-educated class of men.” Now, if this means anything at all it means that the person responsible for it believes that the Catholic priesthood of Ireland is socially useful and necessary. The minority of its members are “hard and cruel, selfish and unjust,” which is true of the minority in other priesthoods besides the Irish. But the majority “are the true friends of the people, helping them in their affairs, settling their disputes, claiming for them their rights, comforting them in their sorrows, admonishing, encouraging, cherishing and watching over them.” How the majority manages to accomplish somuch, if it is composed of a “narrow and half-educated class of men,” passes comprehension; but we have the fact that it manages it, which is satisfactory. Further, our friend omits, in the plenitude of his deprecation, to mention that the “religious vocation” in Ireland is by no means the softest, easiest and rosiest of vocations, amounting, indeed, to a species of spiritual and physical servitude of the severest kind; and that the religious Orders, so far as they may be represented in “monasteries and nunneries,” are self-supporting, subsisting austerely on the labor of their own hands, and devoting themselves to the most arduous charitable and educational work without fee or reward. And as to “indecently rich” houses of the Church, such an epithet as applied to the Catholic churches of Ireland is quite preposterous. There is no “indecently rich” Catholic church in all Ireland. That there are Protestant churches with incomes amounting to a comfortable number of hundreds per annumand not half a dozen souls in the way of abona-fidecongregation may be granted; but the Catholic church with as little as £100 a year and no congregation does not exist. Neither can it be maintained that the Irish Catholic churches are “indecently rich” in the matters of architecture or adornment—the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault, gorgeous windows, splendid altars and vessels, or other elaborate fitments, being the exception and not the rule. Indeed, our author himself complains that “the ugliness of the churches in Ireland is revolting to the healthy sense,” and that the “decorations” which “enshrine the mysteries of the Mass” are “cheap” and “hideous,” so that on his own showing “indecently rich” somehow fails to fit in.
Now for the figures. The population of Ireland at the last census was, roughly, 4,500,000, and the population of England and Wales 32,500,000. In Ireland there are 3 archbishops and 25 bishops, withoutreckoning Episcopalians. In England and Wales there are 2 archbishops, 33 bishops, 8 assistant bishops, and 27 bishops suffragan, without reckoning 1 Roman Catholic archbishop and 15 bishops, and the chiefs of the Wesleyan Methodist, Methodist New Connexion, Primitive Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, Free Church, Salvation Army, Church Army, Calvinistic, Unitarian, Catholic Apostolic, and a host of other bodies. In the matter of hierarchy, therefore, Ireland is not exactly overburdened, even if it be admitted that she should take her pattern from England. Then, as against Ireland’s 2,722 secular priests, England boasts the amazing total of 23,000 beneficed and unbeneficed clergy, plus from 7,000 to 10,000 Nonconformist ministers and 20,000 Salvation Army “Officers.” So that, at a moderate computation, while there is one priest or minister of religion to every 500 of the population in England, there is only one priest to every 800 of the population of Ireland. Theratios indicated may not be exact, but they are based on Whitaker and pretty near the mark. Taken another way the position amounts to this. In an English townlet of from 3,000 to 4,000 population you will find, as a rule, a couple of vicars, three or four curates, a Wesleyan minister, a Baptist minister, a Congregational minister, a Catholic priest and a couple of Salvationists. In an Irish townlet of the same size you have possibly six Catholic priests and a solitary Episcopalian. Dreadful, is it not? Being mainly of one sort, as it were, the priests of Ireland appear to be much thicker on the ground than the clergy and ministers of England. But it is nothing more nor less than an optical illusion—one of those many illusions upon which judgments about Ireland are usually formed. As to places of worship, it has been charged against the Irish Church that she builds too much. “The traveler walking or driving across the wastes of that empty land,” says the author previouslyquoted, “will nearly always find that the first thing to break the monotony of the horizon is a spire or tower; and when he arrives at the desolate little huddle of cabins or cottages that makes a town he will find, dominating and shadowing it, the Catholic chapel. Sometimes, indeed, the buildings are poor and rough: but these are becoming fewer and fewer, and are now gradually, even in the poorest districts, being replaced by structures strangely out of keeping with the ruinous poverty around them. The last few years have seen in Ireland a great activity in the building of these chapels; the very slight increase which has taken place in the standard of living has made the movement possible.” Assuming this to be a just statement of the case, is it not equally true of our own England? Has not the building of churches, chapels and general places of worship proceeded as merrily in the poorer districts of the larger English towns during the past decade as ever it did in Ireland? Where canyou turn in England without seeing a spire? Where is the townlet, or suburb, or slum that has not got its brand new red-brick Anglican church, or its ruddy, stone-fronted Bethesda, or its castellated, prison-like Salvation Barracks? Furthermore, the English temples are seldom half full. You have to provide a sort of religious variety entertainment, with services of song, magic-lantern sermons, brass bands and the like to get the people in at all; whereas the churches of Ireland are full to overflowing, and the congregations do not require the lure of a steady succession of novelties, or, indeed, any departure from the prescribed offices.
The fact is that the Irish Church and the Irish priesthood have been cruelly and brutally maligned by pretty well every sand-blind writer and carpet-bagging politician who has visited the country. We have blamed upon the Church poverty and distress and ignorance and squalor which are the direct outcome of bad government and not of priestlycupidity. We have said in effect to our Irish brethren, “You are too indigent to have a religion, or churches, or spiritual guidance. Every penny you pay for these things is sheer waste of money, particularly as it keeps our rents down. And inasmuch as you are of one Church and one mind—which is a thing unthinkable in this free and enlightened England—you are slaves and soulless.” But the Church of Ireland goes on its way, and in the words of Archbishop Croke, which by the way Mr. M’Carthy, Irish Catholic, quotes with a sneer, “[The Irish priesthood] holds possession of the people’s hearts to a degree unknown to any other priesthood in the world.”
For all practical purposes, and in spite of everything that can be brought against her, Ireland may be justly described as a moral country, even as Scotland is essentially an immoral country and England a middling one. It is true that we live in a time when morality has ceased to matter and virtue is become a reproach. The world has divided itself into two camps—the one scientific, the other artistic. Neither of them professes the smallest concern with morals. We have invented new and most blessedly euphonious names for the old wickednesses. Robbery is called competition; lying, smartness; effrontery, pluck; cowardice, courtesy; avarice, thrift; cunning, wisdom, and so forth.And when it pleases us we can e’en find hard names for the Christian graces. The faith of Ireland, for example, has been discovered to be fanaticism, bigotry, paganism, materialism, idolatry, and I know not what besides; her charity is credited to her for pusillanimity; her patience and long-suffering for indolence and apathy. What wonder, therefore, that the very chastity upon which her national morals are based should at length have been assailed. Hearken to the inspired ex-literary editor of theDaily Mail:
“The crowning achievement of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, the thing which is unparalleled elsewhere in the world, is the complete and awful (sic) chastity of the people. There is many a country district where that incident which in England and Scotland is regarded merely as a slight misfortune is unknown and unimagined by the people. I have seen a man, the father of a grown-up family, blanch and hold up hishands at the very name of it, as though even to breath it were a blasphemy. And this, in itself a good thing, has reached such a point that it has become a dreadful evil. It is no longer a virtue, it is a blight.”
And the dear young gentleman goes on to assert that it is the chastity of the Irish people which fills Irish lunatic asylums, and exclaims dithyrambically: “There may be no bastards in Ireland, but a hundred bastards would, in Ireland’s peculiar circumstances, be a more gracious and healthy sign than one lunatic.” Here surely is wisdom of the highest and most delightful type. We have already seen that the increase of lunacy in Ireland has been pronounced, by the committee which sat on the question in Dublin, to be mainly due to excessive drinking and the assimilation of adulterated spirits. The committee may not have been right; for my own part I believe it was decidedly wrong. But it delivered itself of no pronouncement which warrants either the scientific or theribald to associate Irish lunacy with chastity, rather than with drink or other predispositions. If chastity fills the lunatic asylums how come the Irish priesthood to be at large, or for that matter the women of the English middle classes, and honest women all the world over? And if bastardy be a preventative of lunacy, how comes it that in Scotland you have as many lunatics as you have in Ireland, and about ten times as many bastards? Can it be that of two evils Caledonia, with her customary shrewdness, has chosen both? The suggestion is as ridiculous as it is abominable, and as scandalous as it is malicious. Even in the sense which ourDaily Mailyoung person may be presumed to have in mind, it is the direct opposite of chastity that helps to people lunatic asylums, and never chastity itself, “blight” or no blight. I mention this wholly unprecedented incursion into sophistry only by way of showing what the astute censors of Ireland really can do when they set themselves to the work;and although I have no proof on the subject I should like to wager that the author of it is an Orangeman and of Scotch extraction. It is no compliment to Ireland to say that, in theory at any rate, her morals are entirely sound. In other words, Ireland believes in virtue and goodness, even though she may not always succeed in living up to her tenet, and though, for reasons which need not be discussed, she may be possessed of primal dispositions to the sorriest evil.
And it is the solemn and deplorable fact that there does exist in the Irish blood a tendency toward wickedness of the most ghastly and inhuman character. A case in point is afforded by the frightful doing to death of Mrs. Bridget Cleary at Ballyvadlea in 1895. The following account of this tragedy is abridged from Mr. M’Carthy’sFive Years in Ireland:
“Mrs. Cleary fell ill on Wednesday, the 13th of March, and sent for a doctor and a priest. The priest saw her in the afternoon.She was in bed, and ‘she did not converse with him except as a priest, and her conversation was quite coherent and intelligible.’ The doctor also saw her, thought her illness slight, prescribed for her and left.… On the morning of Thursday the 14th Father Ryan ‘was called to see Mrs. Cleary again, but he told the messenger that having administered the last rites of the Church on the previous day there was no need to see her again so soon.’… William Simpson, a near neighbor of the Clearys, living only 200 yards off, accompanied by his wife, left their own house between nine and ten o’clock on Thursday evening to visit Mrs. Cleary, having heard she was ill. When they arrived close to Cleary’s house they met Mrs. Johanna Burke, accompanied by her little daughter, Katie Burke, and inquired from her how Mrs. Cleary was. Mrs. Burke, herself a first cousin of Mrs. Cleary’s, said, ‘They are giving her herbs, got from Ganey,over the mountain, and nobody will be let in for some time.’ These four people then remained outside the house for some time, waiting to be let in. Simpson heard cries inside, and a voice shouting, ‘Take it, you b⸺, you old faggot, or we will burn you!’ The shutters of the windows were closed and the door locked. After some time the door was opened and from within shouts were heard: ‘Away she go! Away she go!’ As Simpson afterward learned, the door had been opened to permit the fairies to leave the house, and the adjuration was addressed to those ‘supernatural’ beings.
“In the confusion Simpson, his wife, Mrs. Burke, and her little daughter, worked their way into the house.… Simpson saw four men—John Dunne, described as an old man, Patrick Kennedy, James Kennedy, and William Kennedy, all young men, ‘big black-haired Tipperary peasants,’ brothers of Mrs. Burke and first cousins of Mrs. Cleary, ‘holding Bridget Cleary down on the bed.She was on her back, and had a night-dress on her. Her husband, Michael Cleary, was standing by the bedside.’
“Cleary called for a liquid, and said, ‘Throw it on her.’ Mary Kennedy, an old woman, mother of Mrs. Burke, and of all the other Kennedys present, brought the liquid. Michael Kennedy held the saucepan. The liquid was dashed over Bridget Cleary several times. Her father, Patrick Boland, was present. William Ahearne, described as a delicate youth of sixteen, was holding a candle. Bridget Cleary was struggling, vainly, alas! on the bed, crying out, ‘Leave me alone.’ Simpson then saw her husband give her some liquid with a spoon; she was held down by force by the men for ten minutes afterward, and one of the men kept his hand on her mouth. The men at each side of the bed kept her body swinging about the whole time, and shouting, ‘Away with you! Come back, Bridget Boland, in the name ofGod!’ She screamed horribly. They cried out, ‘Come home, Bridget Boland.’ From these proceedings Simpson gathered that ‘they thought Bridget Cleary was a witch,’ or had a witch in her, whom they ‘endeavored to hunt out of the house by torturing her body.’
“Some time afterward she was lifted out of the bed by the men, or rather demons, andcarried to the kitchen fireby John Dunne, Patrick, William, and James Kennedy. Simpson saw red marks on her forehead, and some one present said they had to ‘use the red poker on her to make her take the medicine.’ The four men named held poor Bridget Cleary, in her night-dress, over the fire; and Simpson ‘could see her body resting on the bars of the grate where the fire was burning.’ While this was being done, we learn that the Rosary was said. Her husband put her some questions at the fire. He said if she did not answer her namethree times they would burn her. She, poor thing, repeated her name three times after her father and her husband!
“‘Are you Bridget Boland, wife of Michael Cleary, in the name of God?’
“‘I am Bridget Boland, daughter of Patrick Boland, in the name of God.’
“Simpson said they showed feverish anxiety to get her answers before twelve o’clock.
“They were all speaking and saying,Do you think it is her that is there?And the answer would be ‘Yes,’ and they were all delighted.
“After she had answered the questions they put her back into bed, and ‘the women put a clean chemise on her,’ which Johanna Burke ‘aired for her.’ She was then asked to identify each person in the room, and did so successfully. The Kennedys left the house at one o’clock ‘to attend the wake of Cleary’s father,’ who was lying dead that night at Killenaule! Dunne and Ahearne left at two o’clock. It was six o’clock onthe morning of the 15th, ‘about daybreak,’ when the Simpsons and Johanna Burke left the house after those hellish orgies. There had been thirteen people present in Cleary’s house on that night, yet no one outside the circle of the perpetrators themselves seems to have known, or cared, if they knew, of the devilish goings-on in that laborer’s cottage.
“At one time during that horrible night the poor victim said, ‘The police are at the window. Let ye mind me now!’ But there were no police there.
“We now come to the third day, Friday, 15th of March. Six o’clock on that morning found Michael Cleary, the chief actor, Patrick Boland and Mary Kennedy in the house with the poor victim, when the two Simpsons and the two Burkes were leaving. Simpson says, ‘Cleary then went for the priest, as he wanted to have Mass said in the house to banish the evil spirits.’ This brings us back again to the Rev. Father Ryan,who says, ‘At seven o’clock on Friday morning I was next summoned. Michael Cleary asked me to come to his house and celebrate Mass: his wifehad had a very bad night.’… Father Ryan arrived at the cottage at a quarter past eight, andsaid Massin that awful front room where poor Bridget Clearywas lying in bed.…
“‘She seemed more nervous and excited than on Wednesday,’ he says, and adds, ‘her husband and father were present before Mass began, but I could not say who was there during its celebration.’ He had no conversation with Michael Cleary ‘as to any incident which had occurred,’ because he suspected nothing. ‘When leaving,’ he said, ‘I asked Cleary was he giving his wife the medicine the doctor ordered? Cleary answered that hehad no faith in it. I told him that it should be administered. Cleary replied thatpeople may have some remedy of their own that could do more good than doctor’s medicine.’ Yet, Father Ryan left thehouse ‘suspecting nothing.’ ‘Had he any suspicion of foul play or witchcraft,’ he says, ‘he should have at onceabsolutely refused to say Massin the house, and havegiven information to the police.’…
“After Father Ryan had said his Mass and left, Mrs. Cleary remained in bed. Simpson saw her there at midday and never saw her afterward. His excuse for his presence and non-interference on Thursday night is that ‘the door was locked, and he could not get out.’ We find the names of still more people mentioned as having visited her this day. She seems, judging from the number of visitors, to have been extremely popular. Johanna Burke seems to have been in the house the greater part of this day. At one time she tells how Cleary came up to the bedside and handed his wife a canister, and said there was £20 in it. She, poor creature, took it, tied it up, ‘and told her husband to take care of it, that he would not know the difference till he was withoutit.’ She was ‘in her right mind, only frightened at everything.’
“At length the night fell upon the scene; and, at eight o’clock, Cleary, who seems to have ordered all the other actors about as if they were hypnotized, sent Johanna Burke and her little daughter Katie for ‘Thomas Smith and David Hogan.’ Smith says, ‘We all went to Cleary’s, and found Michael Cleary, Mary Kennedy, Johanna Meara, Pat Leahy, and Pat Boland in the bedroom.’ The husband had a bottle in his hand, and said to the poor bewildered wife, ‘Will you take this now, as Tom Smith and David Hogan are here? In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!’ Tom Smith, a man who said ‘he had known her always since she was born,’ then inquired what was in the bottle, and Cleary told him it was holy water. Poor Bridget Cleary said ‘Yes,’ and she took it. She had to say, before taking it, ‘In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,’ which she did. Smith andHogan then left the bedside and ‘went and sat at the fire.’ Cleary told them that his wife, ‘as she had company, was going to get up.’ She actually left her bed, put on ‘a frock and shawl,’ and came to the kitchen fire. The talk turned uponbishogues, or witchcraft and charms. Smith remained there till twelve o’clock, and then left the house, leaving Michael Cleary (husband), Patrick Boland (father), Mary Kennedy (aunt), Patrick, James, and William Kennedy (cousins), Johanna Burke, and her little daughter Katie (also cousins), behind him in the house. Thomas Smith never saw Bridget Cleary after that. According to Johanna Burke, they continued ‘talking about fairies,’ and poor Bridget Cleary, sitting there by the fire in her frock and shawl, wan and terrified, had said to her husband, ‘Your mother used to go with the fairies; that is why you think I am going with them.’
“‘Did my mother tell you that?’ exclaimed Cleary.
“‘She did. That she gave two nights with them,’ replied she.…
“Johanna Burke then says that she made tea and ‘offered Bridget Cleary a cup.’ But Cleary jumped up, and getting ‘three bits of bread and jam,’ said she would ‘have to eat them before she could take a sup.’ He asked her as he gave her each bit, ‘Are you Bridget Cleary, wife of Michael Cleary, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?’ The poor, desolate young woman answered twice and swallowed two pieces. We all know how difficult it is, when wasted by suffering and excited by fear, to swallow a bit of dry bread without a drop of liquid to soften it. It, in fact, was the task set to those in the olden days who had to undergo the ‘ordeal by bread.’ How many of them, we are told, failed to accomplish it! Poor Bridget Cleary failed now at the third bit presented to her by the demon who confronted her. She could not answer the third time.
“He ‘forced her to eat the third bit.’ He threatened her, ‘If you won’t take it, down you go!’ He flung her to the ground, put his knee on her chest, and one hand on her throat, forcing the bit of bread and jam down her throat.
“‘Swallow it, swallow it. Is it down? Is it down?’ he cried.
“The woman Burke says she said to him, ‘Mike, let her alone; don’t you see it is Bridget that is in it?’ and explains, ‘He suspected it was a fairy and not his wife.’
“Let Burke now tell how the hellish murder was accomplished: ‘Michael Cleary stripped his wife’s clothes off, except her chemise, and got a lighted stick out of the fire, and held it near her mouth. My mother (Mary Kennedy), brothers (Patrick, James, and William Kennedy), and myselfwanted to leave, but Cleary said he had the key of the door, and the door would not be opened till he got his wife back.’
“They were crying in the roomand wantingto get out. This crowd in the room crying, while Cleary was killing their first cousin in the kitchen!
“‘I saw Cleary throw lamp-oil on her. When she was burning, she turned to me’ (imagine that face of woe!) ‘and called out, “Oh, Han, Han!” I endeavored to get out for the peelers. My brother William went up into the other room and fell in a weakness, and my mother threw Easter water over him.Bridget Cleary was all this time burning on the hearth, and the house was full of smoke and smell. I had to go up to the room, I could not stand it. Cleary then came up into the room where we were and took away a large sack bag. He said, “Hold your tongue, Hannah, it is not Bridget I am burning. You will soon see her go up into the chimney.” My brothers, James and William, said, “Burn her if you like, but give us the key and let us get out.” While she was burning, Cleary screamed out, “She is burned now. God knows I did not meanto do it.” When I looked down into the other room again,I saw the remainsof Bridget Cleary lying on the floor on a sheet. She was lying onher face and her legs turned upward, as if they had contracted in burning. She was dead and burned.’”
There is nothing which quite parallels the foregoing in the whole history of crime. At least a dozen persons, male and female, had knowledge of what was going on in that dreadful household over three days. Not one of them had bowels of compassion, not one of them lifted a little finger in the victim’s behalf. The majority of them were her blood relations, all of them were Catholics, not one of them but could have informed the priest, the doctor or the police of what was taking place had he or she been so minded. But the devilish poison raging in the blood of the woman’s husband raged also in their veins. They stood fascinated in the presence of superstitions which they haddrawn in with their mother’s milk. They believed in their hearts that Cleary and themselves were righteously, if terribly, occupied. They said the Rosary. And they did all things in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost!
The women of England, not to say of Scotland, have of late years lain under the reproach that they are ceasing to be possessed of the fatal gift of beauty. I am well aware that there is not a reviewer exercising his calling between Land’s End and John o’ Groats who will not profess to foam at the mouth on the strength of this statement. Yet the fact remains that ugliness is rapidly becoming the common heritage of English women and Scotch women alike. There is an old superstition, not, of course, tolerable to the minds of the smart people of to-day, that wickedness, or, not to put too fine a point upon it, ugliness of temperament is calculated gradually to induce ugliness of physique. Without going into the question of the generalwickedness of Anglo-Saxon femininity, we may put it down for a scientific fact that the beauty of them is wearing away—let us hope to the land of the leal. In those remarkably æsthetic organs which sell fifty process-block portraits per week for sixpence, we are treated continually to what the editors take for types of English beauty. You pay your sixpence and you open your hot-pressed beauty-show. On the first page—that is, of course, after the advertisements—you have a speaking presentment of something with elaborate hair and an inexhaustible fund of torso which, frankly, might pass very well for a sign to a public-house called “The Bald-faced Stag.” Beneath you read in capital letters “MissorMrs. So and So—The Famous Beauty.” No woman in England apparently is allowed to know whether she be beautiful or not until either Mr. Keble Howard Bell or Mr. J. M. Bulloch has so labeled her; Bell and Bulloch being, of course, the only possible judges of feminine beauty England possesses.In the politest circles it is quite dangerous to praise a woman’s good looks without reference to the files ofThe SketchandThe Tatler. A certain nobleman, however, is understood to have earned something of a reputation for himself as connoisseur by openly avowing his contempt for both sheets, and surreptitiously swotting up the picture pages of theDaily Mirror. This, however, like theDaily Mirror, is probably neither here nor there. The solemn fact remains that the beauty of England’s fairest daughters and Scotland’s bonniest lasses alike, has become a doubtful quantity. Any person who is troubled with qualms on the subject need only visit a Court, or the Opera, or Messrs. Peter Robinson’s, or an A. B. C. shop, or a mothers’ meeting. Hard faces, bleary eyes, saw teeth, humpy shoulders, and an undignified gait, not to mention greasy complexions, scanty hair, bony hands and knock knees, are the rule and not the exception among English womankind. We have scarcely a beautyleft, even at the Gaiety Theater. In fact, leaving out the ravishing pictures of the illustrated press, there are really only two beautiful women in England, and both of these are married to reviewers. Now, I say and maintain that any male person, possessed of an eye for the charms of what is commonly called the opposite sex, will find that in Ireland the decay of female beauty has not yet commenced. Whether he be in Dublin or in Cork, in Sligo or in Limerick, pretty women take his vision—as the daffodils take the winds of March—at every corner. In fine, it may be said without exaggeration that if Ireland possesses a characteristic which renders her entirely different from the countries to which, on the face of it, she displays a sort of second hand, tumble-down resemblance, it is the prettiness of her women. I take it for granted that this trait has been commented upon by other travelers; but I do not think that it has heretofore been in any sense properly impressed upon the public mind. It isgenerally understood among artists that Irish women have delicate hands and an eye with a sparkle about it. Irish poets, in more or less halting English verse, have done their best to indicate that Irish women are, to say the least of it, worth looking at. But I am not aware that on the whole the literature about Ireland insists, to anything like a reasonable degree, on the beauty of Irish women. If the present work were from the “exquisite” pen of Mr. Arthur Symons, our failure adequately to portray the beauty of Erin’s daughters would, no doubt, be counterbalanced by the insertion of a selection of half-tone portraits of representative specimens. As it is we are compelled to admit that words fail us, and that, even if we cared to employ them, the process-block makers would fail us also.
It may be said roughly, that the beauty of an Irish woman, while quite tangible and perfect to the vision, is an elusive matter when one comes to cold type. The Anglo-Saxon beauty can be hit off in words, quiteas handily as she can be hit off in paint. What she amounts to as a rule is pink and white, and yellow hair, or mouse-colored hair, and a genteel pallidity. But in Ireland all this is different, beauty of a witching and almost eerie quality is a commonplace throughout the country. An Irishman will speak to you of “the red-haired woman,” or “that shlip of a girl,” when he means pieces of loveliness that Titian might have given his eye teeth for a sight of. In France at the present moment there is an artist who is understood to be making a fortune by drawing pretty faces. He could find more subjects for his pencil in a day in Dublin than he could find in a month in Paris. For this information I make no charge. Even Mr. Gibson, who appears to have invented a “girl” of his own, might do very well out of the green country. Mr. Gibson’s young lady is believed to typify the fairest that the United States of America can boast. At times, and when Mr. Gibson is at his best, she is undoubtedly a young womanof prepossessing appearance. That she is also a truly American type may be taken for granted. There are plenty of women in Ireland, however, who come quite up to the Gibson girl standard, and for that matter beat it. In journeying through the country I have been struck continually by the remarkable facial resemblance which exists between the Irish and the American people. In an Irish railway train you see faces which at once give you the impression that you are at the Hotel Cecil. The high cheek bones and lank shaven jaw of the full-blooded American are here in great force, and it is only when their possessors open their mouths that you can tell the difference. Of course, the thing is accounted for by the fact that a very considerable proportion of the population of America is Irish, and that for a hundred years Ireland has been sending her best blood to those states.
Besides being comely, the Irish women have the advantage of what one may term an individualbeauty. In England you might rake together twenty beautiful blondes and twenty pretty brunettes, and discover that they were merely blondes and brunettes and nothing more. That is to say the blondes might readily pass for sisters, and so might the brunettes, both sorts lacking the ultimate gift of individuality. Irish women are different—indeed, you may safely say of them that they are all pretty and all different. They never repeat their beauty, there is nothing of the white rabbit or puss, puss, puss about them, and consequently they do not bore you. As most things have a cause it seems possible that there are reasons for the beauty of Irish womanhood. For myself I should be disposed to ascribe it to the circumstance that the average Irish woman, be she rich or poor, leads the life which a woman was intended to lead by the order of things, namely, the domestic life. Irish women are not without the wit to know that they are beautiful; they have an armory of feminine allurements, andwit enough to handle them with skill, and they cannot be considered insensible to the fripperies which all women love. But they do not make gaiety and ostentation the aim and end of their existence, and they do not shirk the plain duties of womanhood. In Ireland, though the women of the poorer classes have to work in the fields and undertake tasks which by good rights should be done by men, there is absolutely no third sex. The manly woman, the emancipated woman, and the impertinent flat-chested typewriter banger, which so infest Great Britain, are unknown. Even the Irish sportswoman—and, as everybody knows, she is pretty numerous—retains her womanliness in a way that is quite beyond the horsey or doggy woman of the Shires. So that in one respect at least Ireland may be reckoned something of a paradise.
The Irishman in London appears to lose a great deal of his luster. If you wish to see him at his best in this Metropolis you must go to the Bar. If you wish to see him at his worst you must go to the House of Commons. And both best and worst are pretty bad. The Irishmen at the Bar shall not be named, but all the world knows that they are a fairly ill-conditioned community—savage, rude, reasonably illiterate, and not in the least witty. Many of them model themselves on the late Lord Russell and come off accordingly. Others again are beefy and vulgar and notorious bullies. The judicial bench does not include an Irish judge. Possibly this is fortunate. In London journalism the Irish scarcely count. Mr. W. M. Thompsonedits a sheet calledReynolds’s Newspaperto the complete satisfaction of Mr. Clement Shorter, and Mr. T. P. O’Connor editsT. P.’s WeeklyandM. A. P., both of them journals with which London could well afford to dispense. As for Irish reporters and sub-editors, they are few and timid and well under the heel of the Scotch, who are numerous and rampant and unblushing. In the minor professions, such as physic, publishing, and stockbroking, the Irish do not figure at all impressively. The truly great physicians of London are mostly Scotch, so—thank Heaven!—are the truly great publishers; while the stockbrokers are commonly believed to belong to the tribe of Manasseh. Of the politicians a great deal more has been written than the politicians are worth. Let us draw a decent green veil over them. Few Englishmen nowadays know which of them is alive and which of them is dead; neither can one tell off-hand whether they are for the Government or agin it. I have heard rumors ofthe existence in London of an Irish Literary Society. Somewhere in Holborn there exists, too, I am told, an Irish Club. So far as letters are concerned, London is pretty well denuded of Irishmen. Mr. George Moore no longer abides with us. Mr. W. B. Yeats has latterly preferred Dublin to the Euston Road. Mr. George Bernard Shaw has become an American playwright. If these gentlemen are members of the Irish Literary Society so much the better for the Irish Literary Society. There is an Irish poetess resident in Twickenham, butWho’s Whoinforms us that her Celtic quality has not been stimulated by a sojourn in her native land. The Irish Club would seem to devote itself to “Smokers,” “Socials,” and “Enjoyable Evenings.” Its saturnalia are duly reported inReynolds’s Newspaper. Probably the most distinguished Irishman in the Metropolis is Sir Thomas Lipton, whose name is as prominently associated with sport as it is with tea. Then there are the Irish Guards, one of the finestbodies of men in the King’s service, and Mr. Dennis O’Sullivan, England’s only Irish actor. It will thus be seen that the London Irish do not shine effulgently. None of them is at the top of things, as it were; none of them has got very far above the middling. The reason no doubt is that the Irish temperament is coy. The Scotchman who comes to London knows that he is an alien and an interloper, and despised of his fellow-men, but he blusters it out. The Irishman, on the other hand, feels his position keenly and refuses to be other than diffident. As a rule, too, he is without commercial aptitude, and not vastly taken with the blessed word thrift. Besides which, Irishmen do not come to London in droves, as do the Scotch. When they emigrate, their natural tendency is toward America. In any case it cannot be suggested that the London Irish have at any time presumed to be aggressive. Neither have they made pretensions to superiority, or exhibited a disposition to clannishness. That they donot count is therefore probably their own fault; for London, in a greater degree perhaps than any other city in the world, is always open to prostrate herself before the invader, providing he be assertive and pushful enough. Leaving out the more or less eminent, and glancing for a moment at the common rank of Irishmen in London, one is confronted with two facts, and two facts only. The first of them is that the London Irish can muster in sufficient force to make a St. Patrick’s Day concert or so financially successful, and the second is that the morning after, the metropolitan magistrates have invariably to deal with a fairly noble batch of Irish “drunks.” Practically this is all that is known by the Cockney respecting his Irish fellow-citizen, and I think that it is distinctly unfortunate for Ireland, because it fosters a false impression. The Scotch, who are wilier, take great care not to get drunk on St. Andrew’s Day.
InThe Treasury of Irish Poetry in the English Tongue, edited by Messrs. Stopford A. Brooke and T. W. Rolliston, Thomas Moore is represented by eleven pieces, to wit, “The Song of Fionnuola,” “The Irish Peasant to his Mistress,” “At the Mid Hour of Night,” “When He who Adores Thee,” “After the Battle,” “The Light of Other Days,” “On Music,” “Echo,” “As Slow our Ship,” “No, not more Welcome,” and “My Birthday.” I do not suppose for a moment that the editors intended to suggest that this selection represents in any sense the more popular of Moore’s writings from the Irish point of view. Only two of the lyrics, indeed, namely, “The Light of OtherDays” and “As Slow our Ship,” are really well known among lovers of poetry, even in Ireland. We assume, therefore, that the remaining sets of verses have been inserted because, in the opinion of Mr. Stopford A. Brooke and his co-editor, they are the best of Moore,quapoet in the English tongue. We quote here at length “The Song of Fionnuola”: