The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1893-11-04

COUNTRIES tQ6 OuuICl1aWS10sOka S9 Ouly 4yOW0A4s1
that stood between the brutal barons
and the enslaved masses In Ireland
barons and even monarohs shrank be-
fore the bards-the Fourth Estate Of
their day-even as an English Ministry
shrinks ON chorus OF condemnation
from the London newspapers. Picture
the terrors Of hostile judgment from
learned versiier, one of whose satlrical
incantations, according to the popular
legend, could visibly "raise the three
blisters of disgrace" upon the cheek of
his victim. Loeb Derg derives it's name
from the bloody eyeball which King
Eochy plucked out OF his head as the
price which an insolent bard demanded
for his performances. Power, SO great,
of course, brought its abuses. Notwith-
standing, the learned doctor degenerated
into the scurrilous balladist. A national
parliament was summoned for the expul-
sion from the country of tue ibellous
crew. 1t took the pleading of the sanity
Columbkille to save them.
The other elements of the population
were scarcely less worthy of high state
of civilization. The workers IN gold were
a more numerous body than they are to-
day. The artists who fashioned the
Cross of Cong would see no human
handiwork SO fine if they could visit the
Chicago Exhibition. The royal ceme-
teries along the Boyne are, in their SIM
ole way, as kingly as those Of Heliopolis.
The population of each barony formed
one family, who chose their own chief,
and pastured their lands in common.
The first tenancies that began to be
formed we're rather freer tenancies than
those Of the nineteenth century, before
the Act of 1881 was passed. The peo-
ple's houses were of precisely the same
pattern tnat the tourist still sees in tens
of thousands along the Western sea-
board, after seven Centuries OF English
domination. The Church formed ben
efcent Third Estate, checking the rich,
feeding the poor investing Every portion
of the island with consecrated associa-
tions, and sending forth over distracted
Europe as many gentle saints as Scythia
and Germany sent Attilas and Alarics.
Civil wars during these centuries were
not frequent, and not ut all grave. A
tribal war meant chiefly the transfer OF
ca.tle-prey from one valley to neigh
boring one The deaths we're principal
ly the deaths of chiefs and knights, who
vent out to encounter with the full
blooded appetite with which modern
sportsmen hunt lions and tigers, and did
not much oftener meet with serious mis-
haps. The five united states, into which
the island was divided, were loosely and
pleasantly held together by national
feasts, fairs, pilgrimagee, and Occasion
all parliaments. In general way the
strongest of the five kings ruled, and
the weak went to the wall. So they did
SO, unhappily, they do still.
It was the three centuries of invasion
by the Danish barbarians that brought
this fair civilization to ruin and inter
rupted the natural evolution OF the five
states into one. No country in Europe
resisted the Vikings so effectively as Ire
land. No country, consequently, suffered
so bitterly from their ravages. Never
theless, it was only disastrous accident
that prevented Ireland from being consol-
dated into united kingdom on the field
of Clontarf. In all Ireland's ill-starred
history there is no ore pathetic mis-
chance. 1t might we'll have been the
subject of National epic, if the eight
of unbroken warfare, oppres-
sion, and intellectual darkness which
followed did not give the Order of Poets
their coup de grace.
The case of Irish nationality does not
depend upon whether the Ireland OF the
twelfth century was, what no other
country in Europe was, a perfect homo
geneous state, pollced like the modern
English shire. But ut least let us not
make fun of the most incontrovertible
evidence of it's exceptionally good record,
I hope Englishmen, for the future, at
least, will be ashamed not to know some
thug Of the glory and tragedy enacted
upon the day of Clontarf. By-and by
they may find the story fascinating
enough to lead them on to the discovery
that even century and a half after that
fearful blow, when Strongbow and his
French knights came to Leinster, the
Irish ace was still a freer, more civilized
and cultured race than their cotempor
aries of Anglo.Saxon blood, and had
again and again all but completed the
fabric of national unity, centuries before
the King of Paris ruled in Burgundy, or
the King of CASTLE among the minarets
of Granada
I 0RD DIJNRAVF'N,