The Irish Race in the Past and the Present | Page 8

life--an
interest and a profit which will appear as we study it more in detail.
It may be said that the threefold conflict which we have outlined might
be condensed into the surprising fact that all efforts to drag Ireland into
the current of European affairs and influence have invariably failed.
This is the key to the understanding of her whole history.
Even originally, when it formed but a small portion of the great Celtic
race, here existed in the Irish branch a peculiarity of its own, which
stamped it with features easy to be distinguished. The gross idolatry of
the Gauls never prevailed among the Irish; the Bardic system was more
fully developed among them than among any other Celtic nation. Song,
festivity, humor, ruled there much more universally than elsewhere.
There were among them more harpers and poets than even genealogists
and antiquarians, although the branches of study represented by these
last were certainly as well cultivated among them as among the Celts of
Gaul, Spain, or Italy.
But it is chiefly after the introduction of Christianity among them,
when it appeared finally decreed that they should belong morally and
socially to Europe, it is chiefly then that their purpose, however
unconscious they may have been of its tendency, seems more defined
of opening up for themselves a path of their own. And in this they
followed only the promptings of Nature.
The only people in Europe which remained untouched by what is called
Roman civilization--never having seen a Roman soldier on their shores;
never having been blessed by the construction of Roman baths and
amphitheatres; never having listened to the declamations of Roman
rhetoricians and sophists, nor received the decrees of Roman praetors,
nor been subject to the exactions of the Roman fisc--they never saw
among them, in halls and basilicas erected under the direction of
Roman architects, Roman judges, governors, proconsuls, enforcing the

decrees of the Caesars against the introduction or propagation of the
Christian religion. Hence it entered in to them without opposition and
bloodshed.
But the new religion, far from depriving them of their characteristics,
consecrated and made them lasting. They had their primitive traditions
and tastes, their patriarchal government and manners, their ideas of true
freedom and honor, reaching back almost to the cradle of mankind.
They resolved to hold these against all comers, and they have been
faithful to their resolve down to our own times. Fourteen hundred years
of history since Patrick preached to them proves it clearly enough.
First, then, although the Germanic tribes of the first invasion, as it is
called, did not reach their shore, for the reason that the Germans, as
little as the Celts, never possessed a navy--although neither Frank, nor
Vandal, nor Hun, renewed among them the horrors witnessed in Gaul,
Spain, Italy, and Africa--they could not remain safe from the
Scandinavian pirates, whose vessels scoured all the northern seas
before they could enter the Mediterranean through the Straits of
Gibraltar.
The Northmen, the Danes, came and tried to establish themselves
among them and inculcate their northern manners, system, and
municipal life. They succeeded in England, Holland, the north of
France, and the south of Italy; in a word, wherever the wind had driven
their hide-bound boats. The Irish was the only nation of Western
Europe which beat them back, and refused to receive the boon of their
higher civilization.
As soon as the glories of the reign of Charlemagne had gone down in a
sunset of splendor, the Northmen entered unopposed all the great rivers
of France and Spain. They speedily conquered England. On all sides
they ravaged the country and destroyed the population, whose only
defence consisted in prayers to Heaven, with here and there an heroic
bishop or count. In Ireland alone the Danes found to their cost that the
Irish spear was thrust with a steady and firm hand; and after two
hundred years of struggle not only had they not arrived at the survey
and division of the soil, as wherever else they had set foot, but, after
Clontarf, the few cities they still occupied were compelled to pay
tribute to the Irish Ard-Righ. Hence all attempts to substitute the
Scandinavian social system for that of the Irish septs and clans were

forever frustrated. City life and maritime enterprises, together with
commerce and trade, were as scornfully rejected as the worship of Thor
and Odin.
Soon after this first victory of Ireland over Northern Europe, the
Anglo-Norman invasion originated a second struggle of longer duration
and mightier import. The English Strongbow replaced the Danes with
Norman freebooters, who occupied the precise spots which the new
owners had reconquered from the Northmen, and never an inch more.
Then a great spectacle was offered to the world, which has too much
escaped the observation