THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
GIFT OF
i
l
Cerey MoWillisms
THE STORY OF
THE IRISH NATION
THE STORY OF
THE IRISH NATION
< FRANCIS HACKETT <
DRAWINGS BY
HARALD TOKSVIG
JQ ^1|^^^^Mmg2&|^ga|^B^H 2O
ALBERT AND CHARLES BONI NEW YORK
Copyright, 1922, by
FRANCIS HACKETT
Copyright, 1922
(N. Y. WORLD) BT PRESS PUBLISHING Co.
Printed in U. S. A.
College
Library
lio
Hu
To
HERBERT BAYARD SWOPE
When I came to see you just before Christmas you
asked me if I could write a history of Ireland in three
days. I said, "not in three days but in three weeks," and
on this pure mechanical retort you told me to go ahead
for the World. You raised only one point : Do men make
the epochs, or do epochs make the men? And you flat-
tered and impressed me by inquiring if I agreed with
Hegel. Here, then, is the result, though I had to give it
more than the heroic three weeks. I owe you much be-
cause without your superb confidence I should never have
had the courage to attempt even this popular story. So
let me thank you and especially for plunging me into
the history of Ireland, its "perilous seas," its "faery lands
forlorn."
F. H.
New York City,
March 17, 1922.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE GAELIC PERIOD: PAGAN 5
II THE GAELIC PERIOD: CHRISTIAN .... 30
III CLONTARF TO THE NORMAN INVASION . . 60
IV NORMAN INVASION TO HENRY VIII ... 84
V THE CONQUEST 106
VI THE CONFISCATIONS 131
VII THE ABYSS 162
VIII THE ANGLO-IRISH PARLIAMENT . . . . 189
IX THE UNION AND THE REPEAL MOVEMENT . 229
X THE LAND WAR 261
XI THE COMING OF SINN FEIN 332
XII THE IRISH REPUBLIC 370
INDEX 397
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Ancient Irish Archer, Kings and Harper . . . . 15
Great Cross of Monasterboice .."....'. 45
T i_ O T7 A.H
John Scotus Erigena 47
m. A j i, r-i. v ^fft* 1 *} i . A
The Ardagh Chance 50
mi. TJ-l r> - <V 3
The Vikings Come .... ,/,.. . . x *, , - .
Ireland 1171 . .'.... '^A
Norman Soldiers *!"".''. . . .*'* 70
4 faiT- T T ' 1 T T T T T T Y 1 -t s~\
Ireland Under Henry V11I . . . . ^. . . 110
Hugh O'Neill ...... ; el . 9U 7 3 . b '. 124
n r* iv /-i c. j.-
Pre-Cromwellian Confiscations 136
Oliver Cromwell 147
Patrick Sarsfield 159
William of Orange 164
Henry Grattan 181
Parliament House 188
Theobald Wolfe Tone 204
Lord Edward Fitzgerald 220
An Irish Insurgent of 1798 ....... 223
Robert Emmet . 241
iz
x List of Illustrations
PAGE
Daniel O'Connell 248
John Mitchel , . 263
William E. Gladstone 283
Charles Stewart Parnell 294
Michael Davitt . 298
John E. Redmond 344
Horace Plunkett 347
Arthur Griffith 359
James Connolly 361
Roger David Casement 373
Padraic H. Pearse 376
Ulster Showing Parliamentary Divisions .... 379
Eamon de Valera 387
Michael Collins 389
THE STORY OF
THE IRISH NATION
THE STORY OF THE
'^ IRISH NATION
CHAPTER I
THE GAELIC PERIOD: PAGAN
ON a fine day in the Wicklow Mountains you can
survey half Ireland. You can look as far north
as the lovely Mourne range in Ulster, and on the other
hand as far south as the tip of Wexford, framed in a
bright sea.
To take in the full scope of the Irish story you must
climb to some similar height in imagination, some height
from which narrow boundaries are released, and the
prospect becomes emotionally open. To find this emi-
nence, it is perhaps best to go back a few thousand
years. Here it is no longer history, as we know it
nationally and politically, that takes us by the hand.
It is the much calmer genius of science.
The Story of the Irish Nation
From this remote period one can construct no cer-
tain narrative. There is only the wavering accent of
tradition, the hint of geology and anthropology, the
literal "footprints on the sands of time." But by
great luck we happen to have preserved in Gaelic the
oldest existing body of Northern literature. From this
literature we are able to judge or guess at the types of
men who stand on the sky-line of Irish history.
This Gaelic past is of intense interest, not only be-
cause so many records and memorials of it exist, but
because the Irish people to-day are in such vivid rela-
tion to their past. Like all invaded and suppressed
peoples, they have been repeatedly informed that their
past is wild, obscure, and barbaric ; they have been
encouraged to forget it. But the past swings the fu-
ture into being. The present key to Ireland is in the
Gaelic period which flourished so nobly in pagan times,
and so generously in the Christian period that followed
Patrick. This civilization, however, is not mon-
strously peculiar or archaic. The Irish are not racially
separate from Europe. Their history is a vital part
of European history. By an accident of political and
economic suppression the Irish people have been forced
for centuries to turn all their energies into making a
fight for survival. But, for centuries, like a river that
4
The Gaelic Period: Pagan
has been dammed and forced out of its channel, the
Irish nation has at last pushed through its unnatural
obstacle, established its continuity, and begun to flow
in freedom. Hence the head-waters of Gaelic civiliza-
tion are more important to examine than ever.
To begin with the earlier human inhabitants of Ire-
land, it is by no means established that they were all
of one racial stock. It was dark Mediterranean peo-
ple, we are told, who worshiped around the glacial
boulders which still remain. It was broad-headed
"Beaker" people who erected the great burial mounds
and laboriously decorated the memorial stones. These
prehistoric inhabitants of Ireland are hardly dis-
cernible. They are vaguely known as Iberians and as
Picts.
Descendants of early tribes wiry, black- haired
Sicilian-like are still to be met in stony Connacht.
Perhaps these are "Iberians." Once it was supposed
that the famous chronologies of the pagan kings had
historical value and gave a clue to the pre-Celtic Irish,
but it now appears that their lists of dates and mon-
archs were compiled on the model of the Old Testa-
ment after Christianity had come to Ireland. But
5
The Story of the Irish Nation
much is to be inferred from the unwritten records
from the burial mounds and the big memorial stones
and the Druidical circles which are still, to our won-
derment, sprinkled over Ireland. On a stone at New
Grange there is to be seen the spiral that came from
the ^Egean, traced by some pre-Celtic hand about 1500
B. c. Near-by in royal Meath are the many hillocks
which the fear and awe of a later age raised to the Old
Men. Under a seventy-foot mound at New Grange,
with a circle of stones outside, one may now climb
down to the mysterious set of chambers in which the
pre-Celtic chiefs were first buried. Here, up to the
time of Christianity, the pagan kings were laid, some-
times in urns and sometimes lengthwise and sometimes
standing up, in full armor and face toward the enemy.
The early race of men came to be called Firbolg, or
"men of the bags." In these bags, it is recorded, the
Greeks, so-called, compelled the Firbolg to haul loam
for their hillside gardens. Revolting against their
slavery, the Firbolg escaped from their Mediterranean
masters, making boats out of their bags.
However dim this legend, the first man of the pres-
ent surviving type certainly came to Ireland oversea,
so one may fairly picture the Firbolg sailing to their
new country as Lucan pictured the Briton :
6
The Gaelic Period: Pagan
The moistened osier of the hoary willow
Is woven first into a little boat;
Then, clothed in bullock's hide, upon the billow
Of a proud river lightly doth it float
Under the waterman:
So on the lakes of overswelling Po
Sails the Venetian; and the Briton so
On the outspread ocean.
Here, as so often, the poet is the antique historian.
On the west coast of Ireland the little boat "clothed
in bullock's hide" is still in use.
But there are other memorials of the bagmen.
There is a legend that they fought a great battle for
survival against powerful new-comers in County Mayo,
near Cong. On this ground to-day there are five groups
of stone circles, besides a number of burial cairns,
which may indicate a battle-field or simply a cemetery.
One of these cairns, however, has always been known
as the "Cairn of the One Man." Eochy, the king of
the Firbolg, was bathing in the opening of an under-
ground river that still connects Lough Mask and
Lough Corrib. Three of the enemy came upon him
and demanded his surrender, but before they had taken
him his own body-servant arrived and, at the cost of
his life, fought and slew all three. The legend declares
that in this "Cairn of the One Man," the king, with
great honor, buried his servant. And when this grave
was opened, in the middle of last century, by Sir Wil-
7
The Story of the Irish Nation
liam Wilde, father of Oscar Wilde, a single urn was
found inside which once had held a man's bones.
The Firbolg, then, were the primitive stock, and
when the Celts or Gaels came oversea to Ireland about
350 B. c. (in the so-called Iron Age), they were met,
as Pilgrim Fathers always seem to be met, by a group
of "natives." These natives of 350 B. c. have left no
trace whatever of their language in Ireland, and no
certain picture of their appearance and social habit,
but enough is known about them to make it clear that
they were definitely less far advanced than the fighting
Celts to whom they succumbed.
Almost immediately after the arrival of the Celts,
these older inhabitants seem to have become bottom-
dog. The Celts were bigger men, they had bigger and
better boats, they were better clad above all, they
had better implements both for fighting and working.
The result, in the dim age of which we speak, was the
subjection of the early tribes.
Who were the Celts? They were a Nordic people,
sprung from southeast of the Baltic. Some recent
commentators, not without political bias, have denied
that the Irish have ever had Celtic antecedents. They
8
The Gaelic Period: Pagan
assert that the invaders of 350 u. c. were Alpine folk,
round-headed and tall and fair ; more primitive than the
Nordic type, though "plastic and imaginative and sym-
pathetic." But the evidence of race, of the Gaelic
language, and of the Latin classics points to the inclu-
sion of Ireland within the range of that Celtic expan-
sion which took place in the fourth century B. c.
The Firbolg, however, were not exterminated by the
Celts or Gaels who came in the fourth century before
Christ. Although it is certain from all the memorials
of the North that these Gaelic contemporaries of the
civilized Greeks were some hundreds of years behind
the Greeks in culture, it is also certain that their state
of culture was not primitive. They were far enough
along, at any rate, to tax their subject peoples. But
they did not kill off the Firbolg. What happened to
the brave but less advanced type may, in a plain image,
be suggested by the survival of frame dwellings in a
modern city like New York. Even latterly a single
frame dwelling may stand next to a sky-scraper, while
in outlying districts the frame dwellings may persist
in groups. The erection of the brownstone type of
house suggests a later incursion say the Norse and
the survival of this type in a variety of modifications
and disguises indicates what may happen even with
9
The Story of the Irish Nation
tenements of stone. As to the succession of human
types, one thing seems clear; nothing, not even the
skull, is unchangeable in size or shape, and too much
may be inferred on the hypothesis that bone is fixed,
like cast-iron. But history and tradition in Ireland
do indicate that the Firbolg was subordinated, even
though he was valued as a fighting conscript and gave
the Heroic Cycles some of their noblest figures. The
Firbolg generally was pushed into the hills, into the
woods, into the less desirable lands and the less desir-
able work. Still, because his property descended
through the female line, the Gael not only fought his
way but married his way into supremacy: he took the
Firbolg chieftainess to wife, and then her property
went to the Gaelic sept in the natural course of descent.
For the Gael came to Ireland with social ideas consid-
erably in advance of those matriarchal tribes who at
that time supplied the human groundwork of the Brit-
ish Isles. The Gael, we may assume as certain, was
of the common Northern stock which is the racial basis
of modern France, Belgium and Germany. And prob-
ably the clearest way to conceive the Irish nation is
as part of this vast Northern adventure which became
possible once the later inhabitants learned to use iron.
The conquest of the Firbolg *by the Gael is now
10
The Gaelic Period: Pagan
viewed with equanimity by all Irish historians. Yet
historically speaking, the Gael was a ruthless oppres-
sor. He belittled and misrepresented the people whom
he conquered. It is a pity we do not possess a Firbolg
history of the Gael.
The fact that he was so capable of conquest and
oppression links him with northen Europe. And his-
torically it is desirable to remember the European
Southeast Baltic cradle of the Gael, because for many
centuries the Gael continued to be an element in the
life of the Continent. It is easy to see, in our own
time, how the whole fortune of a modern people may
change in a few years, how their social margin may be
wiped out and their main fight become the primitive
fight to survive. That was the case of the Irish Gael
after 1600 A. D., and to a great extent after 1200.
But at the time when the Continent of Europe had
the least cultural margin of its own, in the chaos of
the fifth and sixth centuries, it was the Irish Gael's
turn to contribute. During that period, as a conse-
quence of the conversion by St. Patrick, the Gael was
a supreme factor in the life of the Continent. It is
impossible, on this account, to comprehend the true
story of the Irish nation unless one keeps realizing the
fluidity of boundaries that now seem to be fixed and
11
The Story of the Irish Nation
the flexibility of channels that now seem to be rigid.
The Gael is a European not only in stock but in cul-
tural history. To think of him as separate and iso-
lated is to make him unintelligible.
To return to 350 B. c. The physical Ireland to
which the Gaels pushed forward under Continental pres-
sure was a fair, fertile land, with probably the same
moist climate it has to-day. Like the rest of the
Northern world, it swarmed with forest. When the
Picts came Meath alone seems to have been cleared.
In the shade of its great woods of oak and ash and
hazel and holly, the fox, the red wolf, the boar, the bear,
the deer, and perhaps the elk were still at large. But
one may suppose that the Gaels were rejoiced to find
grassy plateaus from which they edged the Firbolg
away ; and clear rivers leaping with salmon, and "fishy
pools," and sandy shores where boats could easily be
beached. The wild swan, we may imagine, swam in
the silences of inland lakes. The wild geese flew over
Ireland on their journey south. On high hills there
were places for Druid worship and sacrifice, and on a
plain in Cavan a place for the idol Cromm Cruach,
god of the sun, whom the pagan multitudes adored.
12
The Gaelic Period: Pagan
A very old Gaelic poem, ascribed to Finn mac Cool
(Finn mac Cumhail), may be quoted to suggest the
country that surrounded and delighted the Gael.
"May-Day, delightful time! How beautiful the color;
the blackbirds sing their full lay; would that Leahy
(Laighaig) were here! The cuckoos sing in constant
strains. How welcome is the ever-noble brilliance of
the seasons ! On the margin of the branching woods
the summer swallows skim the stream. The swift horses
seek the pool. The heath spreads out its long hair, the
weak, fair bog-down grows. Sudden consternation at-
tacks the signs; the planets, in their courses running,
exert an influence ; the sea is lulled to rest, flowers cover
the earth."
From the Irish literature that now remains, thou-
sands of pages of which are still unpublished and many
not yet translated into English, it is not impossible
to suppose the kind of life which these pre-Christian
groups enjoyed. Each of these groups which occupied
the fair lands of Ireland circled socially round the domi-
nant local chief and his family. And the group in
itself formed a community with a social structure which
was fairly proof against internal change. The Fir-
bolg, in the first place, seem to have been in most cases
"unf ree." They were not slaves ; that lot was reserved
13
The Story of the Irish Nation
for the males and females who were captured in raids
or for the general captives of war. But the Firbolg,
excellent fighters though they were, formed subject
communities to do the mechanical work which the pas-
toral Gaels apparently scorned, and to pay tribute,
after the fashion of subject communities. The bronze
rivet-folk, the shield-folk, the chariot-folk, the wheel-
folk, the plow-folk, were castes of Firbolg, and it is
suggested that the tameless tinkers of Ireland to-day
may be a survival of this type of community life.
Everywhere, except in Ossory and in Down and An-
trim, the Firbolg succumbed. But besides the "un-
free" Firbolg, with their fairs and possible exchange of
wives, there were serfs who were too poor to own cattle.
They merely had the use of cattle in return for servi-
tude.
Wealth was then, as now, in the hands of a ruling
class. As the "pillow-talk" of king and queen in the
epic tale of the Raid of Cooley (County Louth) in-
forms us, wealth consisted of jheep and herds, of horses
and steeds and studs, of droves of swine "driven from
woods and shelving glens and wolds," of pails and cal-
drons and iron-wrought vessels, of jugs and eared
pitchers, of apparel of kingly colors purple and blue
and black and green and yellow and vari-colored and
14
The Gaelic Period: Pagan
rings and thumb-rings and bracelets and golden treas-
ures, probably from the rich alluvial gold of Arklow.
Slave-women, who were worth three cows or five bul-
locks, were also part of the wealth of that harsh Queen
Maeve of Connacht who went to war for a bull.
FROM OLD FRESCOES AND
STONE SCULPTURE
Ancient Irish Archer, Kings and Harper
In this pastoral life, as might be expected, the great
men were the men of personal strength and beauty and
pride and skill. When even the petty king traveled in
state he was accompanied always by his judges and
poets, by harpers and pipe and horn players, by jug-
glers and fools, besides his soldiers and stewards and
servants. Sport and hospitality were as much a part
of his life as war. His lawful occupations, as the old
rule laid them down in later times, were legislation on
15
The Story of the Irish Nation
Monday, chess on Tuesday, seeing the coursing of
grayhounds on Wednesday, the pleasures of love on
Thursday, horse-racing on Friday, delivering judg-
ment on Saturday, and on Sunday feasting and ale-
drinking and distributing ale. These activities have a
flavor of the time and place about them, and yet, with
the inclusion of the laying of corner-stones, they might
bring to mind the liipited sovereignty of Edward VII.
In the habitation of Ireland by free Gaels, their un-
free dependents, and their slaves there was no immedi-
ate need for a strong central government. Government
centralized for military reasons was attempted in pagan
times but not secured. It was hard to secure because
it was still possible for compact political agencies like
the sept, or group of kinsmen, to be self-sufficient, like
small shops before the trusts came. Now, looking
backward, we can see how "primitive" the Gaelic septs
were, just as by hindsight it will some day very likely
be agreed all around that it was wasteful for each rail-
way in 1922 to try to keep its independence. But to
the Gaels who occupied Ireland in pre-Christian days
the main reason they rode to Tara in their chariots
with their poets and judges and retainers was to enjoy
16
The Gaelic Period: Pagan
the enormous triennial assembly in a festival spirit,
with tradition and ceremonial in their mind rather than
the modern idea of representative government. The
hard political problems were not central in an age in
which wealth was agricultural, an age content with
wooden bridges or fords and a few good roads and
houses built from the timber or wattles with which
Ireland was so well supplied. The really pressing con-
flicts concerned tangible wealth and provincial military
power. By what new local combinations could a proud
and mettlesome chief hope to aggrandize himself at
the expense of his natural or acquired enemies? That
was the sort of problem that had point. Until the
Strangers came with such strategy that they could
grip all pastoral Ireland willy-nilly, the need to com-
bine was not clear. When the necessity was felt to be
actual, the Gaels did attempt to centralize. Perhaps
because they had never lived in towns and had there-
fore missed the quick though dangerous adaptability
that comes with many contacts and easy associations,
they persisted in the old ways long after the European
world had learned new modes. This conservatism,
joined with their pride in the fighting character of
their leaders, was probably one element in determining
their subsequent fortunes.
17
The Story of the Irish Nation
Another fact of serious social consequence, as Pro-
fessor MacNeill defines, was the way in which the sept
or true family or derbfine was organized in relation
to the kingship.
A derbfine or true family was not grouped according
to the modern idea of the married coupla and their off-
spring. The Gaelic family took in all the immediate
kinsmen of four generations, the head of the sept being
reckoned the great-grandfather, whether living or not.
Birth and death were consequently of essential impor-
tance to the derbfine. When the first son was born to
the fourth generation a new great-grandfather was thus
created, and consequently a new unit or derbfine. When
any male member of the four generations died his hold-
ings went into the family pool and were redivided
among every one according to prescription. In case
of the kingship, any male member of the derbfine was
in line of succession, the monarch being elected by all
who were eligible. The bad consequence of this law
of succession, as Professor MacNeill points out, was
the drive it gave to those men whose fathers and grand-
fathers had not held the kingship to seize the kingship
for themselves and thus "keep it in the family."
There was much conflict in early Irish history, and
18
The Gaelic Period: Pagan
most of it sprang from this system. Powerful men
gambled with life rather than resign themselves to an
inferior role in their family's district. And where so
much depended on the chances of mortality, men's
minds naturally tended to elevate the value of power
rather than the value of life. To kill a man, as with
all Aryans, asked for vengeance, not justice. There
was, besides, the provocation that came to fighting men
from living near other fighting men whose wealth con-
sisted in cattle and sheep. There were innumerable
disputes, a few entirely lawless and wanton, but most
of them due to the lack of a code supported by force
and to the fierce personal partisanships of the septs.
The conflicts of territorial chiefs were possible at any
time down to the sixteenth century. But there were
long periods of tranquillity and order during the whole
Gaelic period, and at least one great effort to consoli-
date the position of the high-king. A professional
soldiery, with its promise of order and threat of domi-
nance, was missing in Ireland. It existed so long as
the plundering of Britain and Gaul was profitable.
But later this fighting militia disappeared, and with
it royal Tara, "home of the warrior-bands."
19
The Story of the Irish Nation
6
There are many popular notions about Ireland
which are best explained by reference to this prehistoric
period in which the life of Ireland is simply the life of
a congeries of small, comfortable, prosperous, belliger-
ent chieftaincies. One is the famous myth that a
handful of Spaniards wrecked on the shores of Ireland
after the dispersal of the Armada became thereafter
the fathers of innumerable and consistently black-
haired descendants. These black-haired people are