Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry Part 9

Yet the man who would keep chronicling the dry events would miss writing a history. He must fathom the social condition of the peasantry, the townsmen, the middle-cla.s.ses, the n.o.bles, and the clergy (Christian or Pagan), in each period--how they fed, dressed, armed, and housed themselves. He must exhibit the nature of the government, the manners, the administration of law, the state of useful and fine arts, of commerce, of foreign relations. He must let us see the decay and rise of great principles and conditions--till we look on a tottering sovereignty, a rising creed, an incipient war, as distinctly as, by turning to the highway, we can see the old man, the vigorous youth, or the infant child. He must paint--the council robed in its hall--the priest in his temple--the conspirator--the outlaw--the judge--the general--the martyr. The arms must clash and shine with genuine, not romantic, likeness; and the brigades or clans join battle, or divide in flight, before the reader's thought. Above all, a historian should be able to seize on character, not vaguely eulogising nor cursing; but feeling and expressing the pressure of a great mind on his time, and on after-times.

Such things may be done partly in disquisitions, as in Michelet's "France"; but they must now be done in narrative; and nowhere, not even in Livy, is there a finer specimen of how all these things may be done by narrative than in Augustine Thierry's "Norman Conquest" and "Merovingian Scenes." The only danger to be avoided in dealing with so long a period in Thierry's way is the continuing to attach importance to a once great influence, when it has sunk to be an exceptive power.

He who thinks it possible to dash off a profoundly coloured and shaded narrative like this of Thierry's will find himself bitterly wrong. Even a great philosophical view may much more easily be extemporised than this lasting and finished image of past times.

The greatest vice in such a work would be bigotry--bigotry of race or creed. We know a descendant of a great Milesian family who supports the Union, because he thinks the descendants of the Anglo-Irish--his ancestors' foes--would mainly rule Ireland, were she independent. The opposite rage against the older races is still more usual. A religious bigot is altogether unfit, incurably unfit, for such a task; and the writer of such an Irish history must feel a love for all sects, a philosophical eye to the merits and demerits of all, and a solemn and haughty impartiality in speaking of all.

Need we say that a history, wherein glowing oratory appeared in place of historical painting, bold a.s.sertion instead of justified portraiture, flattery to the living instead of justice to the dead, clever plunder of other compilers instead of original research, or a cramped and scholastic instead of an idiomatic, "clear and graphic"

style, would deserve rejection, and would, we cannot doubt, obtain it.

To give such a history to Ireland as is now sought will be a proud and ill.u.s.trious deed. Such a work would have no pa.s.sing influence, though its first political effect would be enormous; it would be read by every cla.s.s and side; for there is no readable book on the subject; it would people our streets, and glens, and castles, and abbeys, and coasts with a hundred generations besides our own; it would clear up the grounds of our quarrels, and prepare reconciliation; it would _unconsciously_ make us recognise the causes of our weakness; it would give us great examples of men and of events, and materially influence our destiny.

Shall we get such a history? Think, reader! has G.o.d given you the soul and perseverance to create this marvel?

--------------------------------------------------------------- [30] The following is the list of books given as the present sources of history:--

SOME OF THE ORIGINAL SOURCES OF IRISH HISTORY.

ANCIENT IRISH TIMES.

Annals of Tigernach, abbot of Clonmacnoise, from A.D. 200 to his death, 1188, partly compiled from writers of the eighth, seventh, and sixth centuries.

Lives of St. Patrick, St. Columba.n.u.s, etc.

Annals of the Four Masters, from the earliest times to 1616.

Other Annals, such as those of Innisfallen, Ulster, Boyle, etc.

Publications of the Irish Archaeological Society, Danish and Icelandic Annals.

ENGLISH INVASION AND THE PALE.

Gerald de Barri, surnamed Cambrensis, "Topography" and "Conquest of Ireland." Four Masters, Tracts in Harris's Hibernica. Campion's, Hanmer's, Marlborough's, Camden's, Holingshed's, Stanihurst's, and Ware's Histories. Hardiman's Statutes of Kilkenny.

Henry VIII. and Elizabeth.--Harris's Ware. O'Sullivan's Catholic History. Four Masters. Spencer's View. Sir G. Carew's Pacata Hibernia. State Papers, Temp. H. VIII. Fynes Moryson's Itinerary.

James I.--Harris's Hibernica. Sir John Davies' Tracts.

Charles I.--Strafford's Letters. Carte's Life of Ormond. Lodge's Desiderata. Clarendon's Rebellion. Tichborne's Drogheda. State Trials. Rinuccini's Letters. Pamphlets. Castlehaven's Memoirs.

Clanrickarde's Memoirs. Peter Walsh. Sir J. Temple.

Charles II.--Lord Orrery's Letters. Ess.e.x's Letters.

James II. and William III.--King's State of Protestants, and Lesley's Answer. The Green Book. Statutes of James's Parliament, in Dublin Magazine, 1843. Clarendon's Letters. Rawdon Papers. Tracts.

Molyneux's Case of Ireland.

George I. and II.--Swift's Life. Lucas's Tracts. Howard's Cases under Popery Laws. O'Leary's Tracts. Boulter's Letters.

O'Connor's and Parnell's Irish Catholics. Foreman on "The Brigade."

George III.--Grattan's and Curran's Speeches and Lives--Memoirs of Charlemont. Wilson's Volunteers. Barrington's Rise and Fall. Wolfe Tone's Memoirs. Moore's Fitzgerald. Wyse's Catholic a.s.sociation.

Madden's United Irishmen. Hay, Teeling, etc., on '98. Tracts.

MacNevin's State Trials. O'Connell's and Sheil's Speeches.

Plowden's History.

Compilations.--Moore. M'Geoghegan. Curry's Civil Wars. Carey's Vindiciae. O'Connell's Ireland. Leland.

Current Authorities.--The Acts of Parliament. Lords' and Commons'

Journals and Debates. Lynch's Legal Inst.i.tutions.

Antiquities, Dress, Arms.--Royal Irish Academy's Transactions and Museum. Walker's Irish Bards. British Costume, in Library of Entertaining Knowledge.

ANCIENT IRELAND.

There was once civilisation in Ireland. We never were very eminent, to be sure, for manufactures in metal, our houses were simple, our very palaces rude, our furniture scanty, our saffron shirts not often changed, and our foreign trade small. Yet was Ireland civilised.

Strange thing! says someone whose ideas of civilisation are identical with carpets and cut-gla.s.s, fine masonry, and the steam engine; yet 'tis true. For there was a time when learning was endowed by the rich and honoured by the poor, and taught all over our country. Not only did thousands of natives frequent our schools and colleges, but men of every rank came here from the Continent to study under the professors and system of Ireland, and we need not go beyond the testimonies of English antiquaries, from Bede to Camden, that these schools were regarded as the first in Europe. Ireland was equally remarkable for piety. In the Pagan times it was regarded as a sanctuary of the Magian or Druid creed. From the fifth century it became equally ill.u.s.trious in Christendom. Without going into the disputed question of whether the Irish church was or was not independent of Rome, it is certain that Italy did not send out more apostles from the fifth to the ninth centuries than Ireland, and we find their names and achievements remembered through the Continent.

Of two names which Hallam thinks worth rescuing from the darkness of the dark ages, one is the Irish metaphysician, John Erigena. In a recent communication to the "a.s.sociation" we had Bavarians acknowledging the Irish St. Killian as the apostle of their country.

Yet what, beyond a catalogue of names and a few marked events, do even the educated Irish know of the heroic pagans or the holy Christians of Old Ireland? These men have left libraries of biography, religion, philosophy, natural history, topography, history, and romance. They _cannot all be worthless_; yet, except the few volumes given us by the Archaeological Society, which of their works have any of us read?

It is also certain that we possessed written laws with extensive and minute comments and reported decisions. These Brehon laws have been foully misrepresented by Sir John Davies. Their tenures were the gavelkind once prevalent over most of the world. The land belonged to the clan, and on the death of a clansman his share was re-apportioned according to the number and wants of his family. The system of erics or fines for offences has existed amongst every people from the Hebrews downwards, nor can anyone, knowing the mult.i.tude of crimes now punishable by fines or damages, think the people of this empire justified in calling the ancient Irish barbarous because they extended the system. There is in these laws, so far as they are known, minuteness and equity; and what is a better test of their goodness we learn from Sir John Davies himself, and from the still abler Baron Fingla.s.s, that the people reverenced, obeyed, and clung to these laws, though to decide by or obey them was a high crime by England's code.

Moreover, the Norman and Saxon settlers hastened to adopt these Irish laws, and used them more resolutely, if possible, than the Irish themselves.

Orderliness and hospitality were peculiarly cultivated. Public caravansarais were built for travellers in every district, and we have what would almost be legal evidence of the grant of vast tracts of land for the supply of provisions for these houses of hospitality. The private hospitality of the chiefs was equally marked; nor was it quite rude. Ceremony was united with great freedom of intercourse, age, and learning, and rank, and virtue were respected, and these men, whose cookery was probably as coa.r.s.e as that of Homer's heroes, had around their board harpers and bards who sang poetry as gallant and fiery, though not so grand, as the Homeric ballad-singers, and flung off a music which Greece never rivalled.

Shall a people, pious, hospitable, and brave, faithful observers of family ties, cultivators of learning, music, and poetry, be called less than civilised because mechanical arts were rude and "comfort" despised by them?

Scattered through the country in MS. are hundreds of books wherein the laws and achievements, the genealogies and possessions, the creeds and manners and poetry of these our predecessors in Ireland are set down.

Their music lives in the traditional airs of every valley.

Yet _mechanical civilisation_, more cruel than time, is trying to exterminate them, and, therefore, it becomes us all who do not wish to lose the heritage of centuries, nor to feel ourselves living among nameless ruins, when we might have an ancestral home--it becomes all who love learning, poetry, or music, or are curious of human progress, to aid in or originate a series of efforts to save all that remains of the past.

It becomes them to lose no opportunity of instilling into the minds of their neighbours, whether they be corporators or peasants, that it is a brutal, mean, and sacrilegious thing to turn a castle, a church, a tomb, or a mound into a quarry or a gravel pit, or to break the least morsel of sculpture, or to take any old coin or ornament they may find to a jeweller, so long as there is an Irish Academy in Dublin to pay for it or accept it.

Before the year is out we hope to see A SOCIETY FOR THE PRESERVATION OF IRISH MUSIC established in Dublin, under the joint patronage of the leading men of all politics, with branches in the provincial towns for the collection and diffusion of Irish airs.[31]

An effort--a great and decided one--must be made to have the Irish Academy so endowed out of the revenues of Ireland that it may be A NATIONAL SCHOOL OF IRISH HISTORY AND LITERATURE AND A MUSEUM OF IRISH ANTIQUITIES on the largest scale. In fact, the Academy should be a secular Irish College, with professors of our old language, literature, history, antiquities, and topography; with suitable schools, lecture-rooms, and museums.

--------------------------------------------------------------- [31] Like many of the suggestions of Thomas Davis this has borne fruit. In our own day the Irish Folk Song Society (20 Hanover Square, London, W.) as well as the Feis Ceoil and the Gaelic League have done invaluable work in the direction indicated.--[Ed.]

HISTORICAL MONUMENTS OF IRELAND.

We were a little struck the other day in taking up a new book by Merimee to see after his name the t.i.tle of "Inspector-General of the Historical Monuments of France." So then France, with the feeding, clothing, protecting, and humouring of thirty-six million people to attend to, has leisure to employ a Board and Inspector, and money to pay them for looking after the Historical Monuments of France, lest the Bayeux tapestry, which chronicles the conquest of England, or the Amphitheatre of Nimes, which marks the sojourn of the Romans, suffer any detriment.