The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1920-01-31
DOCTOR ANALYZES ULSTER MIND

ory," exceeded the devotion of Cath
| olics to st. Patrick. King Williams
| portrait hung on the walls of all our
homes, and decorated our plates and
saucers. We placed him amongst the
gods. Our songs were the vilest dog
gerel, but we sang them with more
zest than we ever put into hymns.
Here is a sample:
"Slether, slaughter, holy watherr,,
Sprinkle the Papishes every : =
Well cut them asundther, 10 -
Well make them lie undthe., =.
The Protestant boys will carry the
dhrum.' >ss
mo surrender was woven into the
fabric of our minds as firmly as
hatred of the Pope was in our ma
lures. To us an Irish Parliament
meant the rape of Irish women and
the wholesale slaughter OF Protestant
children. 1t was the end of liberty
and the beginning of chaos,
Bigotry and Rags.
And in all our boasted loyalty and
bigoted devotion we never noticed
that we were in rags and dirt and
gaunt naked poverty. We were Ut
terly oblivious of the fact that we
were bereft of the slightest chance of
an education. Our loyal demagogues
were all of the landlord class, and we
were their truculent slaves-hewers
of wood and drawers of water, with
less care-much less care-than the
horses in their stables.
Amongst the educated and well-to-
do there We're variations of the Ul-
ster mind. With us there were none.
We. were solid in the slums.
The bitter hatreds had been SO bat
tered into our minds that they were
as much part of us as the blood in
our veins.
Becomes Human Being.
l got out of Ulster. | became an in
telligent human being. When |
learned to read l read history and
strangely enough | read the history of
Ireland! With mental development
came mental analysis. | had an u
ster mind 1t was closed mind-not
absolutely incapable of change, but
nearly so. 1t was not Celtic, not Sax
on, and not English. 1t was static,
not dynamic.
1t is unimaginative, stolid and inert.
Its chief values are tenacity, thrift
and shrewdness. 1t is as devoid of
sentiment as it is bereft of romance.
1t produces no art, no music, its con-
tribution to literature and poetry is
quite negligible.
When transplanted into more fer
tile soil the Ulster mind grows and
expands. 1t is said that the frog got
his bulging eyes in the following man.
ner. One day frog wandered away
from his little puddle-wandered
quite distance for frog. In his
puddle. He was so astounded that
his eyes buiged out and from that
day to this they never went back
Dublin and Belfast.
When the Ulster mind leaves Ul-
ster something similar happens to it.
In other mental climates it quickly
adapts itself, and history records some
remarkable transformations. Dublin
and Belfast have some things in COM
mon. Both of them have a sunken
substratum of life that seems less
than .human-but Dublin produces the
creative mind
Whatever of art, or poetry, or lit
erature is produced in Ireland eman-
ates from Dublin-Belfast produces
business and business only. The Gel
tic Irish mind cannot live on spin
dies. The Ulster mind apparently
can.
The former lives on the past, the
latter is eternally projecting itself
| into the future One is Helot mind,
| the other is the mind of a rebel AS
| an utterly disinterested spectator,
| look upon the Irish question as a
problem in psychology-a problem OF
the human mind. If Ulster was po-
litical province in the ordinary sense
4 Of the word, the solution would be
easy.
| Ulster is state of mind, and po-
litical action hardly touches the sit
uation The Democratic ideal over
| spreading the world in the Twentieth
| century is unknown-or nearly un.
! known-in Ulster, not until it reaches
1 Belfast is there much hope for Ire
land.
| aa