The Irish Race in the Past and the Present Part 5

Long before Cormac, we find the same mirthful glee in the Celtic character expressed by a beautiful and well-known pa.s.sage in the life of St. Bridget: Being yet an unknown girl, she entered, by chance, the dwelling of some provincial king, who was at the time absent, and, getting hold of a harp, her fingers ran over the chords, and her voice rose in song and glee, and the whole family of the royal children, excited by the joyful harmony, surrounded her, immediately grew familiar with her, and treated her as an elder sister whom they might have known all their life; so that the king, coming back, found all his house in an uproar, filled as it was with music and mirth.

Thus the whole island remained during long ages. Never in the whole history of man has the same been the case with any other nation. Plato, no doubt, in his dream of a republic, had something of the kind in his mind, when he wished to const.i.tute harmony as a social and political inst.i.tution. But he little thought that, when he thus dreamed and wrote, or very shortly after, the very object of his speculation was already, or was soon to be, in actual existence in the most western isle of Europe.

Before Columba's time even the Church had become reconciled to the bards and harpers; and, according to a beautiful legend, Patrick himself had allowed Oisin, or Ossian, and his followers, to sing the praises of ancient heroes. But Columbkill completed the reconciliation of the religious spirit with the bardic influence. Music and poetry were thenceforth identified with ecclesiastical life. Monks and grave bishops played on the harp in the churches, and it is said that this strange spectacle surprised the first Norman invaders of Ireland. To use the words of Montalembert, so well adapted to our subject: "Irish poetry, which was in the days of Patrick and Columba so powerful and so popular, has long undergone, in the country of Ossian, the same fate as the religion of which these great saints were the apostles.

Rooted, like it, in the heart of a conquered people, and like it proscribed and persecuted with an unwearying vehemence, it has come ever forth anew from the b.l.o.o.d.y furrow in which it was supposed to be buried. The bards became the most powerful allies of patriotism, the most dauntless prophets of independence, and also the favorite victims of the cruelty of spoilers and conquerors.

They made music and poetry weapons and bulwarks against foreign oppression; and the oppressors used them as they had used the priests and the n.o.bles. A price was set upon their heads. But while the last scions of the royal and n.o.ble races, decimated or ruined in Ireland, departed to die out under a foreign sky, amid the miseries of exile, the successor of the bards, the minstrel, whom nothing could tear from his native soil, was pursued, tracked, and taken like a wild beast, or chained and slaughtered like the most dangerous of rebels.

"In the annals of the atrocious legislation, directed by the English against the Irish people, as well before as after the Reformation, special penalties against the minstrels, bards, and rhymers, who sustained the lords and gentlemen, . . . are to be met with at every step.

"Nevertheless, the harp has remained the emblem of Ireland, even in the official arms of the British Empire, and during all last century, the travelling harper, last and pitiful successor of the bards, protected by Columba, was always to be found at the side of the priest, to celebrate the holy mysteries of the proscribed worship.

He never ceased to be received with tender respect under the thatched roof of the poor Irish peasant, whom he consoled in his misery and oppression by the plaintive tenderness and solemn sweetness of the music of his fathers."

Could any expression of ours set forth in stronger light the Celtic mind and heart as portrayed in those native elements of music and literature? Could any thing more forcibly depict the real character of the race, materialized, as it were, in its exterior inst.i.tutions?

We were right in saying that among no other race was what is generally a mere adornment to a nation, raised to the dignity of a social and political instrument as it was among the Celts. Hence it was impossible for persecution and oppression to destroy it, and the Celtic nature to-day is still traditional, full of faith, and at the same time poetical and impulsive as when those great features of the race held full sway.

Besides music, several other branches of art, particularly architecture, design, and calligraphy, are worthy our attention, presenting, as they do, features unseen anywhere else; and would enable us still better to understand the character of the Celtic race. But our limits require us to refrain from what might be thought redundant and unnecessary.

We hasten, therefore, to consider another branch of our investigation, one which might be esteemed paramount to all others, and by the consideration of which we might have begun this chapter, only that its importance will be better understood after what has been already said. It is a chief characteristic which grew so perfectly out of the Celtic mind and apt.i.tudes, that long centuries of most adverse circ.u.mstances, we may say, a whole host of contrary influences were unable to make the Celts entirely abandon it. We mean the clan system, which, as a system, indeed, has disappeared these three centuries ago, but which may be said to subsist still in the clan spirit, as ardent almost among them as ever.

It is beyond doubt that the patriarchal government was the first established among men. The father ruled the family. As long as he lived he was lawgiver, priest, master; his power was acknowledged as absolute. Hiis children, even after their marriage, remained to a certain extent subject to him. Yet each became in turn the head of a small state, ruled with the primitive simplicity of the first family.

In the East, history shows us that the patriarchal government was succeeded immediately by an extensive and complete despotism.

Millions of men soon became the abject slaves of an irresponsible monarch. a.s.syria, Babylonia, Egypt, appear at once in history as powerful states at the mercy of a despot whose will was law.

But in other more favored lands the family was succeeded by the tribe, a simple development of the former, an agglomeration of men of the same blood, who could all trace their pedigree to the acknowledged head; possessing, consequently, a chief of the same race, either hereditary or elective, according to variable rules always based on tradition. This was the case among the Jews, among the Arabs, with whom the system yet prevails; even it seems primitively in Hindostan, where modern research has brought to light modes of holding property which suppose the same system.

But especially was this the case among the Celts, where the system having subsisted up to recently, it can be better known in all its details. Indeed, their adherence to it, in spite of every obstacle that could oppose it, shows that it was natural to them, congenial to all their inclinations, the only system that could satisfy and make them happy; consequently, a characteristic of the race.

There was a time when the system we speak of ruled many a land, from the Western Irish Sea to the foot of the Caucasus. Everywhere within those limits it presented the same general features; in Ireland alone has it been preserved in all its vigor until the beginning of the seventeenth century, so rooted was it in the Irish blood. Consequently, it can be studied better there. What we say, therefore, will be chiefly derived from the study of Irish customs, although other Gaelic tribes will also furnish us with data for our observations.

In countries ruled by the clan system, the territory was divided among the clans, each of them occupying a particular district, which was seldom enlarged or diminished. This is seen particularly in Palestine, in ancient Gaul, in the British islands. Hence their hostile encounters had always for object movable plunder of any kind, chiefly cattle; never conquest nor annexation of territory.

The word "preying," which is generally used for their expeditions, explains their nature at once. It was only in the event of the extinction of a clan that the topography was altered, and frequently a general repart.i.tion of land among neighboring tribes took place.

It is true, when a surplus population compelled them to send abroad swarms of their youth, that the conquest of a foreign country became an absolute necessity. But, on such occasions it was outside of Celtic limits that they spread themselves, taking possession of a territory not their own. They almost invariably respected the land of other clans of the same race, even when most hostile to them; exceptions to this rule are extremely rare. It was thus that they sent large armies of their young men into Northern Italy, along the Danube, into Grecian Albania and Thrace, and finally into the very centre of Asia Minor. The fixing of the geographical position of each tribe was, therefore, a rule among them; and in this they differed from nomadic nations, such as the Tartars in Asia and even the North American Indians, whose hold on the land was too slight to offer any prolonged resistance to invaders. Hence the position of the Gallic _civitates_ was definite, and, so to speak, immovable, as we may see by consulting the maps of ancient Gaul at any time anterior to its thorough conquest by the Romans; not so among the German tribes, whose positions on the maps must differ according to time.

We have already seen that so sacred were the limits of the clan districts, that one of the chief duties of ollamhs and shanachies was to know them and see them preserved.

But if territory was defined in Celtic nations, the right of holding land differed in the case of the chieftain and the clansman. The head of the tribe had a certain well-defined portion a.s.signed to him in virtue of his office, and as long only as he held it; the clansmen held the remainder in common, no particular spot being a.s.signed to any one of them.

As far, therefore, as the holding of land was concerned, there were neither rich nor poor among the Celts; the wealth of the best of them consisted of cattle, house furniture, money, jewelry, and other movable property. In the time of St. Columba, the owner of five cows was thought to be a very poor man, although he could send them to graze on any free land of his tribe. There is no doubt that the almost insurmountable difficulty of the land question at this time originated in the attachment of the people to the old system, which had not yet perished in their affections; and certainly many "agrarian outrages," as they are called, have had their source in the traditions of a people once accustomed to move and act freely in a free territory.

It is needless to call the attention of the reader to another consequence of that state of things, namely, the persistence of territorial possessions. As no individual among them could alienate his portion, no individual or family could absorb the territory to the exclusion of others; no great landed aristocracy consequently could exist, and no part of the land could pa.s.s by purchase or in any other way to a different tribe or to an alien race. The force of arms sometimes produced temporary changes, nothing more. It is the same principle which has preserved the small Indian tribes still existing in Canada. Their "reservations," as they are called, having been legalized by the British Government at the time of the conquest from the French, the territory a.s.signed to them would have remained in their occupancy forever in the midst of the ever-shifting possessions of the white race, had not the Ottawa Parliament lately "allowed" those reservations to be divided among the families of the tribes, with power for each to dispose of its portion, a power which will soon banish them from the country of their ancestors.

The preceding observations do not conflict in the least with what is generally said of inheritance by "gavel kind," whereby the property was equally divided among the sons to the exclusion of the daughters; as it is clear that the property to be thus divided was only movable and personal property.

But after the _land_ we must consider the _persons_ under the clan-system. Under this head we shall examine briefly:

I. The political offices, such as the dignities of Ard-Righ or supreme monarch, of the provincial kings, and of the subordinate chieftains.

II. The state of the common people.

III. The bondsmen or slaves.

All literary or civil offices, not political, were hereditary.

Hence the professions of ollamh, shanachy, bard, brehon, physician, pa.s.sed from father to son--a very injudicious arrangement apparently, but it seems nevertheless to have worked well in Ireland. Strange to say, however, these various cla.s.ses formed no castes as in Egypt or in India, because no one was prevented from embracing those professions, even when not born to them; and, in the end, success in study was the only requisite for reaching the highest round of the literary or professional ladder, as in China.

But a stranger and more dangerous feature of the system was that in political offices the dignities were hereditary as to the family, elective as to the person. Hence the t.i.tle of Ard-Righ or supreme monarch did not necessarily pa.s.s to the eldest son of the former king, but another member of the same family might be elected to the office, and was even designated to it during the lifetime of the actual holder, thus becoming _Tanist_ or heir-apparent.

Every one sees at a glance the numberless disadvantages resulting from such an inst.i.tution, and it must be said that most of the b.l.o.o.d.y crimes recorded in Irish history sprang from it.

At first sight, the dignity of supreme monarch would almost seem to be a sinecure under the clan system, as the authority attached to it was extremely limited, and is generally compared in its relations to the subordinate kings, as that of metropolitan to suffragan bishops in the Church. Nevertheless, all Celtic nations appear to have attached a great importance to it, and the real misfortunes of Ireland began when contention ran so high for the office that the people were divided in their supreme allegiance, and no Ard-Righ was acknowledged at the same time by all; which happened precisely at the period of the invasion under Strongbow.

Some few facts lately brought to light in the vicissitudes of various branches of the Celtic family show at once how highly all Celts, wherever they might be settled, esteemed the dignity of supreme monarch. It existed, as we have said, in all Celtic countries, and consequently in Gaul; and the pa.s.sage in the "Commentaries" of Julius Caesar on the subject is too important to be entirely pa.s.sed over.

After having remarked in the eleventh chapter, "De Bello Gallico,"

lib. vi., that in Gaul the whole country, each city or clan, and every subdivision of it, even to single houses, presented the strange spectacle of two parties, "factiones," always in presence of and opposed to each other, he says in Chapter XII.: --at the arrival of Caesar in Gaul the _Eduans_ and the _Sequanians_ were contending for the supreme authority--"The latter civitas--clan-- namely, the Sequanians, being inferior in power--because from time immemorial the supreme authority had been vested in the Eduans--had called to its aid the Germans under Ariovist by the inducement of great advantages and promises. After many successful battles, in which the entire n.o.bility of the Eduan clan perished, the Sequanians acquired so much power that they rallied to themselves the greatest number of the allies of their rivals, obliged the Eduans to give as hostages the children of their n.o.bles who had perished, to swear that they would not attempt any thing against their conquerors, and even took possession of a part of their territory, and thus obtained the supreme command of all Gaul."

We see by this pa.s.sage that there was a supremacy resting in the hands of some one, over the whole nation. The successful tribe had a chief to whom that supremacy belonged. Caesar, it is true, does not speak of a monarch as of a person, but attributes the power to the "civitas," the tribe. It is well known, however, that each tribe had a head, and that in Celtic countries the power was never vested in a body of men, a.s.sembly, committee, or board, as we say in modern times, but in the chieftain, whatever may have been his degree.

The author of the "Commentaries" was a Roman in whose eyes the state was every thing, the actual office-holder, dictator, consul, or praetor, a mere instrument for a short time; and he was too apt, like most of his countrymen, to judge of other nations by his own.

We may conclude from the pa.s.sage quoted that there was a supreme monarch in Gaul as well as in Ireland, and modern historians of Gaul have acknowledged it.

But there is yet a stranger fact, which absolutely cannot be explained, save on the supposition that the Celts everywhere held the supreme dignity of extreme if not absolute importance in their political system.

To give it the preeminence it deserves, we must refer to a subsequent event in the history of the Celts in Britain, since it happened there several centuries after Caesar, and we will quote the words of Augustin Thierry, who relates it:

"After the retreat of the legions, recalled to Italy to protect the centre of the empire and Rome itself against the invasion of the Goths, the Britons ceased to acknowledge the power of the foreign governors set over their provinces and cities. The forms, the offices, the very spirit and language of the Roman administration disappeared; in their place was reconst.i.tuted the traditional authority of the clannish chieftains formerly abolished by Roman power. Ancient genealogies carefully preserved by the poets, called in the British language _bairdd_ - bards - helped to discover those who could pretend to the dignity of chieftains of tribes or families, tribe and family being synonymous in their language; and the ties of relationship formed the basis of their social state. Men of the lowest cla.s.s, among that people, preserved in memory the long line of their ancestry with a care scarcely known to other nations, among the highest lords and princes. All the British Celts, poor or rich, had to establish their genealogy in order fully to enjoy their civil rights and secure their claim of property in the territory of the tribe. The whole belonging to a primitive family, no one could lay any claim to the soil, unless his relationship was well established.

"At the top of this social order, composing a federation of small hereditary sovereignties, the Britons, freed from Roman power, const.i.tuted a high national sovereignty; they created a chieftain of chieftains, in their tongue called _Penteyrn_, that is to say, a _king of the whole_, in the language of their old annals. And they made him elective.--It was also formerly the custom in Gaul.

--The object was to introduce into their system a kind of centralization, which, however, was always loose among Celtic tribes."--(_Conquete de l'Angleterre_, liv. i.)

It is evident to us that if the Britons _const.i.tuted_ a supreme power, when freed from the Roman yoke, it was only because they had possessed it before they became subject to that yoke. It is, therefore, safe to conclude that there was a supreme monarch in Britain and in Gaul as well as in Ireland; and since the Britons, after having lost for several centuries their autonomy of government, thought of reestablishing this supreme authority as soon as they were free to do so, it is clear that they attached a real importance to it, and that it entered as an essential element into the social fabric.

But what in reality was the authority of the Ard-Righ in Ireland, of the Penteyrn in Britain, of the supreme chief in Gaul, whose name, as usual, is not mentioned by Caesar?

First, it is to be remarked that a certain extent of territory was always under his immediate authority. Then, as far as we can gather from history, there was a reciprocity of obligations between the high power and the subordinate kings or chieftains, the former granting subsidies to the latter, who in turn paid tribute to support the munificence or military power of the former.

We know from the Irish annals that the dignity of Ard-Righ was always sustained by alliances with some of the provincial kings, to secure the submission of others, and we have a hint of the same nature in the pa.s.sage, already quoted, from Caesar, as also taking place in Gaul.

We know also from the "Book of Rights" that the tributes and stipends consisted of bondsmen, silver shields, embroidered cloaks, cattle, weapons, corn, victuals, or any other contribution.

The Ard-Righ, moreover, convened the _Feis_, or general a.s.sembly of the nation, every third year; first at Tara, and after Tara was left to go to ruin in consequence of the curse of St. Ruadhan in the sixth century, wherever the supreme monarch established his residence.

The order of succession to the supreme power was the weakest point of the Irish const.i.tution, and became the cause of by far the greatest portion of the nation's calamities. Theoretically the eldest son--some say the eldest relative--of the monarch succeeded him, when he had no blemish const.i.tuting a radical defect: the supreme power, however, alternating in two families. To secure the succession, the heir-apparent was always declared during the life of the supreme king; but this const.i.tutional arrangement caused, perhaps, more crimes and wars than any other social inst.i.tution among the Celts. The truth is that, after the heir-apparent, sustained by some provincial king, supplanted the reigning monarch, one of the provincial chieftains claimed the crown and succeeded to it by violence.

Yet the general rule that the monarch was to belong to the race of Miledh was adhered to almost without exception. One hundred and eighteen sovereigns, according to the moat accredited annals, governed the whole island from the Milesian conquest to St. Patrick in 432. Of these, sixty were of the family of Heremon, settled in the northern part of the island; twenty-nine of the posterity of Heber, settled in the south; twenty-four of that of Ir; three issued from Lugaid, the son of Ith. All these were of the race of Miledh; one only was a _firbolg_, or plebeian, and one a woman.

It is certainly very remarkable that for so long a time--nearly two thousand years, according to the best chronologists--Ireland was ruled by princes of the same family. The fact is unparalleled in history, and shows that the people were firmly attached to their const.i.tution, such as it was. It extorted the admiration of Sir John Davies, the attorney-general of James I, and later of Lord c.o.ke.