sense I know of no stranger or more instructive passage in the life of mankind than the story of Ireland, from the day when strange proprietors were set over her confiscated soil. Her story —not in camps, or courts, or senates-her story in her villages, her farms, her farm-houses and her hovels, in all the changes of her peasant life-in the relations between those who owned and those who occupied the soil-in the serfdom and misery, and the oppression of the old race-in the effects which all this produced upon her national industry and prosperity-upon the character and condition of all classes.

"When we can bring all this in one view before your mind we have a great historic picture, in the scenes of which we see something very different from the mere image of beggary and crime— we see vividly pourtrayed before us the working of all the elements and passions which create national happiness and misery -scenes which impress upon us the most striking illustration of political and economic laws. May I stop to say, that surely we may perceive in that view those higher moral lessons which history teaches us, that sometimes, at least in national affairs, oppression and wrong are blunders as well as crimes.

"Who has profited by the grievous oppression of the Irish people? What cause has prospered which that oppression was designed to secure? The old people were crushed down to protect the English interest, the Protestant interest and the new proprietors. Has the English interest been really upheld? If the most malignant and wily enemy of England had devised the policy, by which Ireland was to be reserved to be her 'secret scourge' in some future day, could his aim have been more effectually worked out than it has been by the result of the very system of government which was justified by the plea that the interests of England must be upheld?"

CHAPTER I

THE IRISH LANGUAGE, EARLY CIVILIZATION AND

TRADITIONS

BEFORE entering upon our subject-Ireland under English Rule-we should consider briefly the early history of her language, laws, literature and civilization, as the assertion is often made by English writers that Ireland was in a condition of semi-barbarism when Henry II. made his first attempt to seize the country. Fortunately the fact can be easily established that the Irish were a learned race long before the Roman civilization culminated and they maintained the same eminence for centuries and until the English had overrun the country. The invaders then closed all the centres of learning and destroyed as far as possible every vestige of Ireland's former civilization, that the people might be kept in a state of ignorance for centuries thereafter.

Ireland's decadence from the position which she had occupied for at least a thousand years was due directly to the destructive efforts of the semi-savage Normans who first successfully invaded the country in quest of land and plunder. The same destructive spirit and motive were maintained for centuries after by their descendants through fear of a people which could not be conquered, short of extermination, and in later years even extermination was attempted from religious bigotry.

O'Hart writes:

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In Connellan's Four Masters we read-' The great affinity be1Irish Pedigrees, or the Origin and Stem of the Irish Nation, John O'Hart, Dublin, 1892, vol. i., p. 9.

Language, Civilization and Traditions

17

tween the Phoenician and Irish language and alphabet has been shown by various learned antiquaries-as Vallancey, Sir Laurence Parsons, Sir Wm. Betham, Villaneuva, and others; and they have likewise pointed out a similarity between the Irish language and that of the Carthaginians, who were a colony of the Tyrians and Phoenicians. The Phoenician alphabet was brought to Greece from Egypt by Cadmus. And Phoenix, brother of Cadmus the Phoenician who first introduced letters amongst the Greeks and Phoenicians, is considered by O'Flaverty, Charles O'Connor and others to be the same as the celebrated Phoeniusa (or Feniusa) Farsaidh of the old historians, who state that he was King of Scythia and ancestor of the Milesians of Spain who came to Ireland; and that, being a man of great learning, he invented the Irish alphabet, which his Milesian posterity brought to Ireland; and it may be further observed that the Irish in their own language, were from Phoeniusa or Feniusa, called Feine, a term latinized Phoenii, and signifying Phoenicians, as shown by Charles O'Connor and in O'Brien's Dictionary."

We also find in a note on the same page by O'Hart:

"It is to the Gaelic language that the following stanza, translated from a poem written in the third century by the Irish Monarch Carbre Liffechar, refers

"Sweet tongue of our Druids and bards of poet ages;

Sweet tongue of our Monarchs, our Saints and our Sages;
Sweet tongue of our heroes and free-born Sires,
When we cease to preserve thee our glory expires.'"1

The earliest Irish writers claimed the existence of authentic records of their own country's history to a most I We may accept the last line of this stanza, written sixteen centuries ago, in the spirit of a prophecy, for truly Ireland's glory as a nation has waned since her language ceased to be in common use. The alarm has been sounded none too soon among the sons and daughters of Erin throughout the world, with the object of showing that all spirit of nationality must eventually be lost and in the near future, unless a knowledge of the Irish language be revived. Most gratifying is the progress already made towards accomplishing this purpose, particularly in having the Irish language brought into common use throughout Ireland among the National schools' where for many years its use had been forbidden.

VOL. 1.-2.

remote period. So general was the destruction of all such records by the Normans and to a less extent by the Danes that, until the results of recent investigations became known, it was impossible to disprove the statements made by the English writers that Ireland was uncivilized at the coming of Henry II. Dr. John O'Donovan, in his introductory remarks to his translation of the Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters, writes:

"The accuracy of ancient dates being thus apocryphal, we are driven to regard the catalogue of Kings, given by Gilla-Gaemain and others, as a mere attempt at reducing to chronological order the accumulated traditions of the Poets and Seanachies of Ireland. But that a list of Irish Monarchs was attempted to be made out at a very early period is now generally admitted by the best antiquaries. Mr. Pinkerton, who denies to the Irish the use of letters before their conversion to Christianity, still admits the antiquity of their list of Kings—' Foreigners' (he remarks) may imagine that it is granting too much to the Irish to allow them lists of Kings more ancient than those of any other country in modern Europe; but the singularly compact and remote situation of that Island, and its freedom from Roman conquest and from the concussions of the fall of the Roman Empire, may infer this allowance not too much. But all contended for is the list of Kings, so easily preserved by the repetition of bards at high solemnities and some grand events of History.' (Inquiry into

the History of Scotland, &c. By John Pinkerton.)

"At what period regular annals first began to be compiled with regard to minute chronology we have no means of determining; but we may safely infer from the words of Tighernach, that the ancient historical documents existing in his time were all regarded by him as uncertain before the period of Gimbaeth, the commencement of whose reign he fixes to the year before Christ 305. His significant words, Omina Monumenta Scotorum usque Gimbaeth incerta erant, inspire a feeling of confidence in this compiler which commands respect for those facts he has transmitted to us, even when they relate to the period antecedent to the Christian Era. . The compiler frequently citing the names of the authors or compilers whose works

Language, Civilization and Traditions

he had before him.

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From these notices we have reason

to believe that the ecclesiastical writers carried forward a continuous chronicle from age to age; each succeeding annalist transmitting the records which he found existing along with his own; thus giving to the whole series the force of contemporary evidence. The precision with which the compiler of the Annals of Ulster has transmitted the account of an eclipse of the sun, which took place in the year 664, affords a proof that his entry was derived from a contemporaneous record."

The following notices of eclipses and comets from A. D. 495 to A.D. 1065, copied from various works, show that they were recorded originally by eye-witnesses.

The special eclipse referred to above is thus described:

A.D. 673. Nubes tenuis et tremula ad speciem celestis arcús iv vigilia noctis vi feria ante pasca ab oriente in occidentem per serenum celum apparuit. Luna in sanguinem versa est.”

Dr. O'Donovan states in continuation of the subject:

"The dates assigned to these eclipses are confirmed by their accordance with the catalogue of eclipses in L'Art De Ver. Les Dates, Tom. 1, pp. 62-69; and from this accuracy it must be acknowledged that they have been obtained by actual observation and not from scientific calculations; for it is well known that any after calculations, made before the correction of the Dionysian Period, would not have given such correct results."'

Mr. Moore has the following remarks upon the eclipse of 664':

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The precision with which the Irish annalists have recorded to the month, day, and hour, an eclipse of the sun, which took place in the year 664, affords both an instance of the exceeding accuracy with which they observed and noted passing events, and also an undeniable proof that the annals for that year, though long since lost, must have been in the hands of those who have transmitted to us that remarkable record. In calculating the period of the same 'History of Ireland, etc., vol. i., p. 163.