PATRIOTIC SKETCHES OF IRELAND PATRIOTIC SKETCHES OF IRELAND, WRITTEN IN CONNAUGHT. JBY MISS OIVEA'SOM ^, TWO VOLUMES IN ONE. BALTIMORE: PRINTED FOR GEO. DOBBIN 8c MURPHY, AN» CALLENDER £c WILLS. Gee. Dobbin & Murphy, printer? . 1809. ADVERTISEMENT. The publishers of Miss Owenson's Pa- triotic Sketches would remark, that the price of the English copy of this work is four dollars, and they flatter themselves that it docs not cacecd the present editi- on in typographical execution, nor in beauty of paper. — The type was cast ex- pressly for this volume at the Baltimore Foundery owned by Samuel Sower &. Co. the paper manufactured by Conrad, Lucas & Co. and the relative excellence of each have not often been surpassed by any publications which have been issu- ed from the American press. Miss Owenson has been long celebra- ted, as an eminent proof of the vast ex- tent of the powers of the imagination ; and her ardent attachment to the'^ Eme- rald Isle," elicits patriotic fire in every page of her writings, when the '' green fields of Erin" arc the subject. They A 2 . ADVERTISEMENT, who have read and admired the Wild I- rish Girl^ will recognise in the Patriotic Sketches the same pen, animated by a si- milar spirit ; and this last effusion of her mind will be perused with the strongest emotions of sympathy and philanthropy, by all those who weep over the degrad- ation, or rejoice in the melioration of the condition of man. Balt'more, March 22d, 1809. PREFACE. IN that happy age when the first gloss of nature is fresh on every sense, when infant attention hangs eagerly on the tale of fanciful tradition, when the heart trem- bles to the pathetic, and the imagination revels in the marvellous ', it was my des- tiny to have the first warmed into feeling — the other, first kindled into ardour, by the pensive legend of national woe, or the romantic tale of national heroism. To have caught from the paternal lip, the transmitted '' song of other times," breathed in the native strains of my na- tive country, and emulous of the lay which engrafted on the simple sensations of childhood the glowing sensibilities of maturer life, early to have learnt to lisp its echo, and to awaken the first tones oi my infant lyre to the inspirations of na- tional enthusiasm. VIII. PREFACE. In a more advanced period of existence, I became the resident of those scenes sa- cred to the airy images of my childhood's wonder; from whence tradition still sends forth her tale of interest ; and where to the heated fancy, the genius of Ireland seems to droop over her silenced harp, and at intervals to snatch from its tremu- lous chords, a strain^ which like the mu- sic of her own bards is ^' sweet, though mournful to the soul." Here reveliing in the ever ready ccad milefaUra of milisian cordiality, the fre- quent visitant of the peasant's hut, the sometimes guest of the chieftain's mansi- on, my heart in its general intercourse, thus touched on the two extremes of Irish wretchedness and Irish comfort. W~hile in the genuine aspect of the national cha- racter, whether viewed in the rough-hewn traits of immodified illiteracy, or the po- lished features of educated refinement, my mind still found a sanction for that na- tional partiality, which if not an intuitive principle, at least, formed the first oi its imbibed ideas. PREFACE. IX. ' It was requisite therefore I should leave my native country to learn the turpi- tude, degradation, ferocity and inconse- quence of her offspring ; the miseries of her present, and the falsity of the record- ed splendours of her ancient state. This ungracious information I acquired during a short toui' through a sister isle ; and it w^as in the course of one of the ma- ny converations which occurred on the subject of my always termed, " unhappy country,'' that a hint casually suggested, formed the origin of a little work, which -has since appeared under the title of the '' Wild Iriiih Girir Yet I came to the self-devoted task, with a diffidence proportioned to the ar- dour which instigated me to the attempt; for -as a looman, a young ivoman, and an Irtish tcomaii; I felt all the dchcacy of un- dertaking a work which had for the pro- fessed theme of its discussion, circum- stances of national import, and national mterest. But though 1 meant not to appear on the list of opposition as a fairy amazon, arm- X. PREFACE. ed with a pebble and a sling, against a host of gigantic prejudices: although to compose a national defence, to ward the shaft of opprobrium hurled at the charac- ter of my country, to extenuate the ef- fects or expose the cause of its popular discontents, was as incompatible with my sex and years, as with my trivial ta- lent, and limited powers ; yet I was still aware that in the historic page, recent details, and existing circumstances of I- rish story, Hved many a record of Ii-ish virtue, Irish genius, and Irish heroism, which the simplicity of truth alone was suflficient to delineate ; many a tale of pa- thos which woman's heart could warmest feel, and truest tell, and many a trait of romantic colouring and chivalrous re- finement, which woman's fancy fondest contemplates and best depicts. Still however in that era of life, when the faculties of the mind abandon them- selves to the wild impulse of imagina- tion, or fondly hover round the local ter- ritories of the heart, I found it difficult and uninteresting to confine myself to a PREFACE. XI. mere relation of facts ; and in preference to a cold detail of '' flat realities/' deter- mined on the composition of a national novel, spun from those materials which the ancient and modern history, man- ners, and habits of my country supplied ; and while fiction wove her airy web, to draw the brightest tints of her variegat- ted tissue from the deathless colouring of truth. To blend the imaginary though proba ble incident with the interesting fact, to authenticate the questioned retinement of ancient habits, by the testimony of li- ving modes, faithfully to delineate what I had intimately observed, and to found my opinions on that medium which ever vibrates between the partial delineation of national prejudice, on one side, and the exaggerated details of foreign anti- pathy on the other; such was the prospec- tus my wishes dared to draw, if I failed in their accomplishment, that failure a- rose from the mediocrity of very limit- ed talents, which I soon found were in- adequate to realise all my heart dicta- ted or my hopes conceived. xn. PREFACE. The world however had the indulgence to tolerate the execution in favour of the motive, and the reception with which it honoured ^' the Wild Irish Girl/' was such as surpassed my most sanguine ex- pectations, and stimulated me to further exertion in that cause, which is impossi- ble to examine without interest, or to embrace without enthusiasm. Politics can never be a woman's science ; but pa- triotism must naturally be a woman's sentiment. It is inseparably connected with all those ties of tenderness which her heart is rnlrnhifprl to cherish, and though the energy of the citizen may not animate her feelings to acts of nation- al heroism, the fondness of the child the mistress, the wife and the mother, must warm and enoble them into senti- ments of national affection. For my- self, while my heart still triumphs in the principle which leads me to effuse over the world's ear the " native wood notes wild" of my native country, I would wish it to be believed that I have ever swept the strings of the Irish harp w^ith the tremulous touch of conscious inabi- PREFACE. XIII. lity; that in humbly endeavouring to revive the faded shamrock, that which droops round my country's emblem, I have ever brought to the grateful effort an anxious hope, rather than a sanguine expectation of success ; and that in touch- ing on the grievances of the lower orders of my countrymen and their fatal but con- sequent effects, unswayed by interest, unbiassed by partiality, the hope of woo- ing the attention of abler minds to a sub- ject on which my own has dwelt with in- effectual anxiety, and unavailing regret, has been the sole motive of the feeble and individual efforts I now humbly sub- mit to the world's consideration. SlDNEV OwENSONi PATRIOTIC SKETCHES^ SKETCH L THE scenery which environs the town of Sligo* is bold, irregular, and pictur- esque: and though despoiled of those lux- urious woods which once (in common with the rest of the island) enriched its aspect, it still preserves many of those traits which constitute the perfection of landscape ; hanging over a beautiful bay formed by the influx of the "steep At- lantic," sheltered by lofty mountains, and * Situated in the county of Sligo, province' of Connaught 105 miles from Dublin. It is a borough, post, and fair town. 16 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. reposing almost at the brow of a hill along whose base the river Gitley steals its de vious way. The high road* by which it is approached for the last twenty miles, winds through a scene of roman tic variety, which frequently combines the most cultivated and harmonious traits, with the wildest and most abrupt images of scenic beauty. The groves, the lakes, the enchanted islands, and all the glowing charms of aii Italian scenery which diffuses itself over the picturesque and cultivated scenes of Florence-courtf are suddenly replaced by a dreary heath, and a bold and continued mass of rocks, through which nature, time, and art, seem to have cut a deep and narrow de- file which, entered at that hour sacred to the sombre grandeur of the true sublime, awakens in the heart of the traveller such a warning as the entrance to Dante's In- ferno holds out. I left Dublin in the au- tumn of 1806, with the intention of ram- bling through such scenes in the north * The northern road. t The seat of the earl of Iniskillcn. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 17 west of Connaught as I had not yet visi- ted; and it was here my little journey be- gan to receive its first decided character of interest; it w^as here that the impres- sion made on my imagination insensibly communicated to memory the first of those rough sketches which, divested of the delicate pencil, touch the pentimenti (to use a technical phrase) of studied art, and practised judgement. I have copied with the same rude simplicity with which they were drawn in the moment of pas- sing observation, as the heart was touch- ed by objects of moral interest, or the fan- cy awakened by scenes of natural beauty. 1 had watched the last beam of the set- ting sun stealing his faded splendours from the last of those lakes which pre- cede the entrance of the cavern -path, and the broken and irregular masses of rock which arose pyramidically on ei- ther side, partially caught the retreating glow of the horizon, and displayed the greatest variety of light and shadow, till gradually opening, a rich and expansive prospect broke on the eye : the lakes and B 5^ 18 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, fairy land of Hazlewood*, the bold at^ titude of Benbubin, the beetling brow of Knockna-bet? the ocetin's gleaming line €omminghng with the horizon, and the town of Sligo spreading irregularly a- longthe base of a lofty hill, crowned with meadows, and successively betrayed by the expanding view ; till the softening influence of twilight mellowed every outline into air, and dissolved every ob- ject into one mild and indistinct hue. The literal meaning of the word Sli go is the ** town of shells'^ and the deri- vation of the epithet is traced by local history and oral tradition to the follow- ing curious origin. Many of the inhabit- ants of Esdera (now Bally sidore), a flou- rishing and neighbouring town, having jbeen driven by the vicissitudes of civil dissention from their native place, fled to the shore, and of the shells and peb- bles flung by the violence of the tide a- Ions the coast, erected a number of huts. * The scat of Owen Wynn, Esq, t In Engfish, " the hill of the king. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 19 which formed the infancy of Sligo. Sli- go is now a large opulent and commer- cial town, while its parent city is one of the most ruinous and wretched villages in the province: still distinguished for the beauty of its situation and the romantic wildness of its environs. The vicissi- tudes of those two little places present us an epitome of the fate of all earthly states. The routine of all human, as of all natural events, knows no variability in its cause or its effects ; and the rise, elimatric, decline, and fall of every em- pire, are but the counterpart of that which has preceded it. Babylon (says a celebrated French philosopher), " qui n'a plus que des monceauxdeterre fouillee,a occupe sur la rive orientale un espace de six lieuesde \oug\xe,ur,Q,tT]iehcsaux cent falais est aujured'hui reduite a la condi- tion d'un miserable village." — '' Babylon the sight of which is now distinguished only by the inequalities of the ground, formerly occupied six leagues in length ; and Thebes with its hundred gates (or palaces) is reduced to the condition of a wretched village." — Thus by the unvari- 20 PaTEIOTIC 8KETC&ES. ed mnd ^jencral laws of naiorp a Kne €>f c&rts of afl Iwiaaii cxioiioo, and Ihiiits Ikr f e g! C S S of all haman greamef f — and Aose traasiiioBs of power from ibe iB%kty to tkc lesser, wlacb parti^^y and SMfiridB^^j considered, seem stan^d witk dK character it a saperaded c&vnu as^ faan^ witk a tcB^ar resr^ i^pcB its 'e-' 22 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. distant view of Sligo abbey, in a mo- ment of such felicity as childhood only experiences/^ when we feel that we are happier than we know." An idea of its venerable ruins had insensibly associa- ted itself with the remembrance of the lively susceptibility 1 then possessed^ to every impression ; and that idea still pre- serving its ascendancy in my mind, ren- dered the object that gave rise to it, an object of peculiar interest, and ardent curiosity. I have always loved those scenes which connect the pleasures of intellect with those of sense, which are equally dear to reflection and to fancy, over which the mental sympathies extend themselves, and where the heart and the eye repose with equal satisfaction and delight; and as I involved myself amidst the ruins of Sligp abbey where doubtless;, " Many a saint and many a hero trod,** the beautiful apos trophy of Volney float- ed on my memory : PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 2S ^^ Je vous salue mines solitaires ! Oui : tandis que votre aspect repousse d'un se- cret efFroi les regards du vulgaire, mon coeur trouve a vous contempler le charme des sentimens profounds et des haute s pensees/' — '^ Hail, solitary ruins ! Yes : while your appearance cxites in vulgar minds a repulsive dread, my heart tastes, in contemplating you, the charm of pro- found sentiments and elevated thoughts.'' The abbey seemed to have moulder- ed into new beauty, since the cursory view 1 last had of it. Recent decay had touched its cloisters with a painter's hand — and the influence of a few added years, and the vicissitudes of a few successive seasons, had mellowed its once grey tints into a variety of glowing hues, and had enriched its vegetative drapery with more luxuriant masses of foliage. The abbey, whose former extent and beauty may be calculated from the wreck which time has spared, owes its foundation to Maurice Fitzgerald; who, under the invocation of the Holy Ghost, 24) PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. erected it for the friars of the order of St. Dominic. Like other religious edifices, it found its sanctity no protection against the ravages of war, and the vicissitudes of civil dissension ; and falling a prey to the contending factions of the province, it was pillaged successively in the years 1270, 1360, and 1394 : so that in 1414, its revenues were scarcely adequate to the support of twenty friars ; while all that the rapine and violence of war had spa- red, was finally destroyed by an acci- dental fire. The abbey, however, must have been an object of no trivial consi- deration to the Romish see ; for pope John XXIII. issued apostolic letters to pro- mote its restoration, andelicited the hum- ble mite of the poor, and the splendid contribution of the rich sinner, throuoh the medium of their salvation, by offer- ing the remission of ten j'ears and forty days penance to all who, on the feasts of the Assumption and St. Patrick, should visit the ruined abbey, and contribute to its repairs. Foremost on the list of its benefactors, stood O'Connor, lord or chief of Sligo, the lineal decendant of the PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 25 ancient kings of Connaught, and whose posterity still boast that the blood-royal of Ireland flows in their veins. \\ hat- cver remuneration the pious Hberality of the chiefiain may have received in the other world, it has at least obtained a deathless testimony in this ; for a sta tue erected to his memory still holds its place unimpaired amidst the surrounding ruins. Its coarse sculpture is strongly illustrative of those rude days, when the progress of genius and reason was oppo- sed by political discord, and religious intolerance ; when the infant arts droop ed, neglected or oppressed; and when the human mind, directing all its powers to the difficult and doubtful preservation of a harassed existence, checked the opera tion of its better faculties, and resigned all its nobler perceptions to the influence of credulity and error. To accuse heaven of venality, and con sider religion as a traffic, may be peculiar todays of ignorance and darkness ; but in what age has religion been painted o- c 26 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. Iherwise than selfish? Punishments and rewards have been the invariable agents of faith, and an eternity of enjoyment or of suffering has been still held out to seduce or to impel us to that which na- ture teaches and reason confirms. The ruins of Sligo abbey, though wild ty irregular, are noble in decay. The arched entrance to the chapel, lofty and animpaired, is still enriched with the fo- liage, and that delicacy of ornament which forms so striking a conrast amidst the sombre heaviness of Gothic architec- ture. A stone gallery still surrounds the nave of the chapel. The delicate propor- tions and construction of the eastern window, still in good preservation, are ornamented with Gothic arches and cu- rious tracery ; the tower, elevated and conspicuous, has sustained no injury ex- cept in a partial dilapidation of its bat- tlements ; and three sides of the cloisters that once formed a large square, are still supported by a range of small fluted pil- lars enriched with a variety of devices PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 27 of the most minute workmanship, and crowned with an arched roof. These in- teresting ruins spread along an inclined plane, bathed by the river Gitley, which guides the eye, in its meandering course, to the delicious scenery of Hazlewood, and loses itself amidst those charming lakes which reflect on their expansive bo- somsthe most romantic shores and bold- est mountains ; while on the other side of the river swells arange of pasturage hills, a distant view of the ocean is partially caught, and a chain of lofty mountains forms the bas-relief to the animated pic- ture. Abstracted devotion or monkish lux- ury could never have found a site more a- propriate to holy meditation, and mdre conducive to laic enjoyment ; and the vale of Euzras, which sheltered in its bo- som the celebrated abbey of Llanthoni, boasts less of natural charm, in the ani- mated description of Giraldus Cambren- sis, than the scenery which once sur- rounded the Abbey of Sligo must have 28 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. possessed, when the luxuriance of un- liewn woods spread their shade over its romantic hills, and the intrusion of an ill-built town, neither obscured nor de formed its extensive and varying pros- pect. Disposed by a certain tone of mind to behold with a touching interest, a scene never to be viewed with indifference, while a pre-existing train of ideas were refreshed and associated by the corres ponding impressions which my senses received from every object around me. [ sat down on the tomb of the royal O'Connor, and plucked the weed or blew away the thistle " that waved there its lonely head." The sun was setting in gloomy splendour, and the lofty angles of the Abbey-tower alone caught the re- flection of his dying beams, from the summits of the mountains where they still lingered : the horizon betrayed a beautiful gradation of tint, which in sen sibly softened into the reserved colour ing of twilight, while broken hues, and PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 29 irregular masses of light and shadow^ flung through the pillars of the cloisters^ or from the high- arched portals of the chapel, harmonized the general outline of the ruins, and shed around such aerial and indistinct forms, as fancy woos to aid the vision of her wildest dream. Nor did she now refuse to " give to airy no- thing a local habitation and a name." — Along each mouldering aisle, and gloo- my cloister, her creative eye still pursu ed the close-cowled monk ; the haughty abbot, pacing in all the solemn pomp of holy meditation the damp and checquer ed pavement ; or caught the pious chief tain's warrior-form, as he made his sump tuous offering at the altar's foot, follow ed by the credulous and penitential crowd 4vhich the artful policy of John had lur- ed thither, to expiate the past, and pur- chase the remission of future sins. While the singular and striking ceremo- nies of a religion, so consonant to the live- liest powers of the imagination, once splendidly celebrated in the now gloomy and ruinous chapel; the brilliant illuiuina- c 2 so PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. tions of tapers, the solemn gray-headed friars, or close-veiled nuns ; the meretri cious ornaments which the vitiated taste of superstition flings over the pure and simple forms of true religion, and the swelling chaunt of midnight devotion or matins-piety, seemed even now, some thing more than *^ the baseless fabric of Such scenes are never to be visited Avith that interest which peculiarly be- longs to them, in the broad glare of day^s meridian splendour, since much of their picturesque effect is produced by the so- lemn stillness of the twilight hour, when the faintest breeze wastes not its sigh upon the *' desert air ;" and when the dim discoloured liglit sheds a mystic hue^ on every object, and peoples the gloomy space with wild and fancied forms. The simplicity of reason, and the purity of truth, though they afford the clearest c vidence to the mind, and sublime while they enlighten, deny to fancy that image so dear to her illusory desires ; the sim PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 31 pie conviction of an abstract faith gives no picturesque forms to her wondering gaze, affords no mysteries to her unli- censed wishes. A sensible personified religion is the creed she clings to, where the senses are the medium of belief, and credulity reposes on the enjoyments of imagination. Thus the faith of a So- crates was the faith of a philosopher, but the mythology of Homer was the religi- on of a poet. While my eye now rested on those ob- jects that formed a festival to my fancy, which revelled in a train of visionary i- deas full of poetical interest, my mind insensibly recurred to those events and circumstances in the religious and poli- tical history of my country, from whence these objects stole their interest ; and tracing the sacred footsteps of Christia- nity, from the moment of its admission into Ireland, to the period of its existing influence, 1 sighed to reflect that those mild tenets by which it preached '^ peace and good will to all men,'^ were still op- 32 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. posed by the cold contracted dogmas of intolerance, flinging its gloomy shadow on religion's cheering rays, like the nox- ious vapour, which rising from the cor- ruption of the earth, meets and obscures the beam whose radiance comes from Heaven. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 33 SKETCH IIL POLITICAL philosophy by extend ing the mind's eye to the whole great scale of civil society, and demonstrat- ing the close-linked dependencies of its remotest parts, affords to the benevo- lence of the human heart, and the com- prehension of the human understanding, a social system, gratifying to the feelings of the one, and ennobling to the facul- ties of the other. But that partial view of things which prejudice loves to sketch, and which self- interest delights to contemplate, sheds over the political sentiments of certain minds, a species of misty influence thro' which every object is beheld dim and discoloured. 34 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. How few are those who dare to take in- to the scope of their political specalation the universal good and welfare of their countrj', independent of every bias to any sect or an\- party I How fesv are they who dare to expand their thoughts, and a- waken their feelings, to the general well- being of their compatriots, and hazard- ing their individual effort to it? promoti- on, contemn that chain by which inte- rest* would rivet them to some empow- ered being on whose influence their own must depend; while every principle of political philanthropy is lost in a timid coincidence with the sentiments and o- pinions of him, who, himself the slave of circumstances, makes the sacrifice of in- * Ce n'est done point (dit Helveiius) de la mechancete des honnnes dont il faut se plain- dre, mais de rignorance des legislateurs, qui ont toujours mis VinltTii particulier en op/iod' tion avec Cintertt ,^hitral. " It is not of the •wickedness of mankind," says Helvetius, •' that ■we ought to complain ; but of the ignorance of legislators, who have always set private at variance with public interests." PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 35 dependence in one sense, the purchase of it in another. To one who, reared in re- tirement, has studied the world but in books ; who enters its busy scene full of ^^ the vulgar errors of the wise ;" whose romantic mind has taken the bias of its political sentiments from the national enthusiasm of the first Greeks, or the a- mo7^ patrice of the first Romans ; and w ho unites to these imbibed ideas, an almost innate devotion to the land of his nativi ty ; that species of conduct in politics which is founded on self-interest, ani- mated by faction, or imbittered by into- lerance, must excite in the mind of the young, the indigent patriot, the strong- est feehng of contempt and abhorrence. There is in Ireland, and perhaps there is every where, a kind of non-descript characters in politics, tantamount to that which Burke alludes to when he speaks of a certain party who distinguished them selves by the name of ^^ king's men," " by an invidious exclusion, he adds, of the rest of his majesty's most loyal and 36 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. affectionate subjects." The true ratic onal, disinterested loyalist, is the most respectable of political characters ; he is a patriot in the best sense of the word; his country only is dearer to him than his king: and while he boldly stands forth as the defender of one against the abuse of power, or encroachmentof royal pre- rogative, andas the champion of the other against the rage of popular inebriety or anarcliical tumult, his property and his life are cheerfully risked, and nobly de- voted, to the preservation of the respec tive rights and safeties of both. But in Ireland, among the many who are dignified with the name of loyahst, there are some who, mistaking the prin- ciple, injure the cause they affect to sup- port ; who in debasing their own coun- try, injure that empire of which it is a constituent part ; and who, false to the land which gave them birth, cannot be true to that sovereign to whose heart and interest that country is, or ought to be, endeared. '^ If Ireland be not safe. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 37 we, the English, cannot be safe,"* says sir Edward Coke, when agreeing with his friend sir John Davie s on the pohti- cal independence of Ireland. f It was thus a crown-officer of England wisely thought, and boldly spoke: it has how- ever been since reserved for certain or- ders of Irishmen to discover, that to fo- * The language of that sound and perfect policy which has its basis in truth and philan- thropy, has been ever the same in all ages and in all countries ; and Lord Howick, in his elo- quent speech upon a late momentous question, delivers an opinion to the same effect, and al- most in the same words as these used by sir E. Coke : " If Ireland were rendered insecure, the establishment of England would be expos- ed to greater danger than any which could pos- sibly result from such a boon to the Catholics," &c. t It is a circumstance not a little to the ho- nour of Ireland, that scarce any man ever en- joyed the office of her government, who did not prove for ever after her strenuous defen- der, . • D 38 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. ment by artful or coercive measures the disturbances in Ireland, to perpetuate e- very party-feud, retrace every fading cha- racter of religious distinction, give the colouring of rebellion to every local com- plaint or domestic commotion, of which their own conduct to the lower orders is generally the efficient cause, and to brand the character of their country with the epithets of wretched, deluded and un- happy, is to conduce to the honour of En- gland, and to demonstrate their own at- tachment to the Britiiih government ! How happy is England to find in the •noblest of her sons, the most devoted of her champions ! Enthusiastic even to pre- judice in her favor; " Their first best country ever is at home ;'* while Ireland fondly sighs to produce, in all a mother's pride, those of her proge- ny, who, uniting the influence of high rank to the powers of opulence, the pure spirit of patriotism to the steady senti- ment of loyalty, am! the ardent love of PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 39 freedom to that of rational subordinati- on, might stand forth at once her pride^ protection and defence. Yet what coun- try ever flourished in which the honour of national pride was extinct r* what country ever obtained esteem from other nations, when^it was denied to her by her own sons ? It is true that the great mass of the people of [r el and are attached to their country with an idolatrous, butin- cifectual fondness, that increases in a ra- tio with her struggles and her sufferings : but the union of power and influence rests not alw ays with those who w ould exert both to the promotion of their country's good; and while the domesticated ene- mies of Ireland, even from the midst of the luxurious asylum which she affords them, blast forth the tale of her degradati- * " Le bonheur des peuples depend et de la felicite dont ils jouissent au-dedans, et du res- pect qu'ils inspirent au-dehors." — " The wel- fare of a nation depends on the happiness which it enjoys within itself, and the respect with which it inspires others.''-'^ ffelvetius. 40 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, on with Stentorian lungs, the attachment of her numerous and unalienated chil- dren is breathed in tender murmurs or indignant sighs ; and like the tones of her own harp, vibrates in sad and plain- tive fondness unheard or unheeded. It is finely observed by Voltaire, that " Le genre humain seroit trop malheureux s'il 6toit aussi pret de commettre des choses atroces, que de les croire ;"* and were the national character of the Irish as cor rupt as the tongue of prejudice asserts ; it must have long since drawn down up- on its own iniquities that retribution, w^hich an apostacy from the moral influ- ence of nature and reason inevitably in- curs in a general and national, as well as in an individual and personal sense. To speak indeed of the vices of any country independent of its police or le- gislation, is perhaps to speak in vulgar language, and under the influence of vul- gar prejudice. * " The condition of mankind would be wretched indeed, if they were as prone to commit atrocities as to believe tales of them." PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 41 One of the greatest philosophers of the last age, considers the series of illustri- ous actions ascribed to the Greeks and Romans of a certain period, as the result of that address by which their legislators blinded the individual with the public interest, '' in a union of which, he adds, consists the true spirit of laws." In spite, however, of the obstacles which have oifered themselves to the progress of the national virtues and national prosr perity of Ireland, she can yet " lift her fair head on high," while she beholds so many of her sons weaving the laurel round their victor-brows in those distant lands where the hand of cold intolerance cannot tear it from the hero's grasp : and while on her own green shores, native genius and native talent blush not to call her mother, and boast their inspiration is their country's love. d2 42 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. SKETCH IV. ABOUT three miles from the town of Sligo, Hes a beautiful spot, called the glen of Knock-na-ree, from the bold and ro- mantic mountains, along whose base it winds the road which leads to it from the town; it combines many charms of ocean scenery, with many traits of picturesque landscape. The little maritime village of Gibraltar, whose white huts appear glittering among the rocks that skirt the irregular coast; the cloud-capped heights of Benbullen and Knock -na-ree, with a distant view of the island of Innismurry,*^ * The island of Innismurry is celebrated m Irish legend, and is still remarkable for the 'manners, dress, and customs of its inhabitants. The ruins of the chapel of St. Columbkiil, and part of the crosier of vSt- Molaire, are sjtill PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 43 !ind a faint undulating line of the coast of Ulster; unite within the scope of a coup-d'oeil, a picture highly animated and romantic. The direct path to the glen is tracked through an expansive meadow, which slopes from the foot of Knok-na-ree towards the bay, and ter- minating in a certain point, by a narrow defile, forms the entrance of the glen, which winds between a double range of rocks for more than a mile. This ro- mantic glen, rich in all that irregularity shewn there as relics of the two most famous saints in the calender of Irish canonization ; — the latter, who was confessor to Columbkill, ba- nished him from Innismurry, his favorite re- treat, to Scotland, as a penance for three des- perate battles the ambition of his penitent had caused to be fought. The Irish seem to have held all islands in a superstitious veneration. In the river Shannon, the romiuitic island of Iniscailtre contains the ruins of seven church- es and a round tower ; and in another of its is- lands, an anchorate tower 120 feet high, with the ruins of eleven churches, are, I am told, still visible. 44 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. SO essential to the true picturesque, seems to have been produced by some convul- sion of nature ; and the rocks in many places are so perfectly concave and con- vex, that it appears as if another shock w^ould unite them again into one solid mass. The strained eye becomes dazzled in the contemplation of their altitude, while it reposes with delight on the beautiful variety of vivid hues which stain their shelving sides ; on the rich foliage of the shrubs that hang their fantastic drapery over the rugged projections ; or on the bending trees which seem to shoot from their deep crevices without the aid of earth to nourish their bare and interwo- ven roots : while innumerable torrents, dashing from the pointed summits of the highest cliffs, dow at their base in one pellucid stream ; or rushing with con- gregated force over roots of trees, or pro- jecting rocks, fall into some deep cavity, and form an elevated and natural bason, shaded by the luxuriancy of the over banging shrubs. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 45 The glen is sometimes overflown by these torrents, while the immense mas- ses of rock, covered with moss and li- chens, which they force down at inter- vals in their steep descent, construct, for the steps of the adventurous wanderer, a species of little causey ; and the over- arching" of the cliffs seems to threaten destruction from above ; or, by a con- junction of their respective shrubs, forms a leafy canopy almost impervious to the beams of the sun. That even some de- gree of moral charm should not be want- ing to this little Vaucluse, the rocks in ma- ny places assume the appearance of spa- cious ruins, sometimes rising in light and spiral shafts, sometimes rudely broken in irregular masses ; while fancied clois- ters, imaginary fortresses, and ideal cas- tles, present themselves to the eye amidst the creeping underwood and clustering shrubs, by which their grotesque forms are partially veiled. Where the gloom seems deepest, and the opposite rocks almost knit their towering summits, the glen abruptly terminates, and a beauti- 46 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. ful sea-coast suddenly bursts upon the view; the bay reflecting on its bosom the opposite shores, spangled with white houses; the mountains of Donegal float- ing like vapours in the haze of distance ; and as a back-ground to the animated landscape, the mountain of Knock -na- ree, rising majestically from behind the rocky sides of the glen which reposes at its base. Sugna-clogh, or the Giant's Grave, near the town of Sligo, excites a diiYer- ferent interest from that awakened by the glen of Knock -na-ree. Several im- mense stones are raised in a very curi- ous and romantic manner, upon the ends of others, which seem pitched perpendi- cularly into the earth, and give to the eye a miniature representation of Stone- lienge on Sahsbury -plain. Sugna-clogh is one of those puzzling relics of other times, with which anti- quarian ingenuity delights to amuse it^ self; but to the mind that seeks a pictu- PATRIOTfC SKETCHES. 47 resque effect, or moral interest, in eve- ry object, it merely excites a transient cm'iosity which the traditional lore of the country is unable to gratify. 48 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. SKETCH V, IT is observed by Zimmerman, that ^' in the mivaried stilhiess and stagnation of small remote places, lie buried an acri- mony and rancour of the passions, rarely found in i^reat cities." That mind in- deed must be endued with great native strength, over which a certain peculiarity of situation holds no influence; which can breathe the spirit of liberty beneath the lash of despotism, be true to nature where art only reigns, and in a range of action limited within a narrow circle, disdain to graduate its sentiments and opinions on a scale proportionably con- tracted. From the general order of things, the lesser towns of every country must still 1*ATJU0T1C 8KElX:i{ES. 49 be as centres, to wliich the radii of illi- bcrality and cabal point with the greatest force ; and Ireland perhaps, beyond any other country in Europe, furnishes the strongest testimony to the truth of the assertion. That destructive spirit of in- tolerance in religion, and of faction in politics, which has so long and fatally dif- fused its noxious intluence over the wholt! kingdom and which we hope is now hap [n\}' fading away in its leading cities, may still be found flourishing in all its pristine vigour, in the hearts of those lit tie towns and great villages, where both are still mirtured by the local intimacy and opinionative distance of those who perhaps agree in fundamentals, and dif iVr only in points merely speculative ; where, on one side, opposition is fed by the jealousy of conscious degradation, and on the other, by the pride of consci ous prerogative : where each, solely bent on the support of its respective tenets, allows no modification in political prin- ciple or religious opinion ; where all must be considered as the extreme of 50 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. orthodox zeal or heterodox error, as the coarse caricature of loyalty or wild out- line of rebellion ; and where the respec- tive prejudices of each party, tear away in their vortex every unbiassed sentiment of public good, every generous principle of patriotic feeling, and sacrifice at the shrine of religious and political intole- rance, the peace, the welfare, and the prosperity, of a nation.* To minds which slavery has not bro- ken, nor oppression debased, the consci- ousness of political inferiority and nati- onal inconsequence must ever bring with it a sensitive pride, a tenacious reserve, a suspicious timidity, and an irritability of spirit, which are only to be dissipated by the conciliating advances of that su- perior influence under which a series of certain events has placed them : and * " The two factions of protestant and ca- tholic, more intent on thwarting each other, than in maintaining their mutual rights, be- came an easy prey," &c. Macanlay's History of England,, vol. ii. p. 177. IMTPJOl'lC SKETCHES. 51 vvlieii two distinct parties are internally divided by a difference in religious faith, i y an inequality of politicai establish- ment, and externally coalesced by local circumstaiices and certain ties of deni- zation common to both ; where preroga live rests on one side, and submission on the other ; the natural suspicions, the cautious vigilant diftidcncc of the subor- dinate party, are only to be seduced into amity, or warmed into confidence, by the open, injjenuous, volunteering liberality f the supreme power.* * " Sure I am says Edmund Burke, that there have been thousands in Ireland who have never conversed with a Roman catholic in their whole lives, unless they happened to talk with their gardener's workman, or to ask their way when they had lost it in their sports, or at best who had only associated with ex-footmen or other domestics of the third or fourth order ; and so averse were they some time ago to have them near their persons, that they would not employ even those who would never find their way beyond their stable. I well remember a great, and in many respects a good man, who 52 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. But in that dominant sect which by adopting a rational scepticism to anti- quated error, may be natm-ally supposed to possess the tolerance towards others which it has claimed for itself, dwells there that mild, that generous, and all- advertised for a blacksmith, but at the same time added, ' he must be a protestant.' It is impossible that s'.ich a state of things, though natural goodness in many persons will undoubt- edly make exceptions, must not produce alien- ation on the one side, and pride and insolence on the other." It is to be hoped, and indeed to be believed, lliat the fatal spirn of prejudice thus strongly adverted to by Burke, is daily losing its influ- ence; for myself though one among the many in my own country who have been educated in the most rigid adherence to the tenets of the church of England, I should, like the poor Maritornes of Cervantes, think myself endov»ed with very few " sketches and shadows of Chris- tianity,*' v/ere I to confine virtue to sect ; or make the speculative theory of opinion the test of moral excellence, or proof of human per- fection. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 5S conciliating spirit of charity, which, like the bow of heaven's promise, flings the encircling arch of its mercy round the whole earth, and receives within the great compass of its indulgence every sect and every persuasion ? Dwells there among those who vaunt their own abhor- rence of fanaticism and bigotry, that pure and sole religion which, in consi- dering'the great and only Object of the universal worship of mankind, neither derides nor reviles the medium through which it flows ? Does it indiscriminately betray that open smiling confidence which unnerves the hand of vengeance, inspires alfection, and turns the gall of hatred to the '' milk of human kind- ness ?" Does it feel for the political sub- jection of a compatriot, but not esta- blished sect; endeavour to counteract the cftects of an erroneous and fatal po- licy, by opposing the endeared rites of social conciliation to the chilling influ- ence of a penal code ; of private inter- course to public distinction ; and by endeavouring to produce that compatriot £2 54 PATRIOTIC SKETCIiliS. felicity, that national unanimity and bro- therly love, over which a i'anetical dog- ma, or an intolerant law, holds no juris- diction ? If these interrogations can be answered by an undeniable affirmative of actual demonstration, what has Ii-e- land to fear ? what has Ireland to wish ? The unanimity of a nation, and the mu tual confidence and confederation of her sons, are the firmest basis of her prosperity, and the strongest bulwark of her freedom. The odium of bigotry is generally thrown upon the subordinate sect of every country. Bigotiy, however, is in fact the cosmopolite of religion, and ad- hf^res with more or less influence to every mode of faith. Of the countless sects into which the christian church is divid- ed,* it appears that each, ^^ dark wiih * " Les Chretiens, says Helvetius, qui don- naient avec justice le nom de barbaric et de crime anx cruautes qu' exercaient sur eux les payens, ne donnerent-ils pas le nom de zele aux cruautes qu'ils exercaient a leur tour sur PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. i?0 excessive light," arrogates to itrJclf an in- fallible spirit, which shat^ the gates of mercy on the rest of mankin^i, while it condemns or opposes to the utmost stretch* of its ability, all who^^^e faitli i.^ ces memes payens ?" — ." Did not the Chris- tians, who justly gave the epithets o^ barbaritij and crime to the cruelties inflicted on tlicm by the pagans, dignify with the name of zeal those cruelties v/hich they retaliu^ed in theii turn ?" * " Ja consideniis cette divcrsitc dcs scctes. qui regnent sur la terre, et s*uccusent mutuel- lement de mensonge et d'erreur ; je deman- dais, quelle est la bonne ? chacune me repon- dait, ' c^est la micnne ;' chacune me disait, * nioi seiiie, et nnes partisans pensent juste ; tous les autres sont dans I'eiTeur.' Et com- ment savezvous que votre secte est la bonne ? * Parceque Dieu I'a dit. * Et qui vous dit que Dieu Ta dit ? ' Mon pasteur, qui le sait bien ; mon pasteur me dit, et ainsi croire, et aiiisi jc crois-,' — il m'assure que tous ceux qui disent autrement que lui mententy et je nc les ecoute pas."' — E7mle, t. 9 1. 4. — " While I surveyed this divej'sity of sects prevaiUng on the face ol 56 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. not measured by the standard of its own peculiar creed. All perhaps are alike zealots ; the difference is^that the zeal of some is their privilege, and of others their c?ime.* The Irish, nationally con- sidered with respect to their prevailing rehgion, n^ver were a bigoted people, though the vivacity of their imagination has sometimes devoted them to supersti- the earth, and accusing one another of error and falsehood, I inquired, ' Which is the right ?' Each replied : * It is ours ; we alone possess the truth, and all others are in mistake.* — .< And how do you know this ?' — * Because God himself has declared it'—' Who told you so ?' — ^ Our minister, who is well acquainted with the divine will : he has ordered us to be- lieve this, and accordingly we do believe it. — He assures us that all who contradict him speak false, and therefore we do not listen to them." * " Helas ! si I'homme est aveugle, ce qui fait son tourment, fera-t-il encore son crime ?" De Volneijf ch. iv. p. 24. " Alas ! if man is blind, shall this blindness, which constitutes his misery, be also imputed to him as a crime ?*' PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 57 tioiis illusion. When Christianity took the lead of druidisra in Ireland, it was preserved and nurtured by the same mild principles of toleration, which suffered its admission ; and though the druidical tenets flourished for two centuries after the arrival of the first christian mission- ary in the island, yet neither historic re- cord, nor oral tradition, advances any detail of religious persecution adopted on either side. The tenets preached by the christian missionary, or the argu- ments opposed by the heathen contro- vcrtists, awakened no further interest in the public consideration, than a desire to embrace that mode of faith, which came home with most force to reason, and to truth, ff the arguments held out were not always attended with conviction, the doubtful superiority was never decided at the svrord's point ; if the cross was sometimes unavailingly raised, the arm* * " Can tliat church be the church of Christ," says the tolerant bishop of Novogorad, " whose arm is red to the shoulder with human gore?'* .38 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. which supported it was not protected from injury by the egis of toleration ; nor were tortures invented, persecution en- forced, or oppressions exercised, to ob- tain the abjuration of a long-cherished tenet, to prove the orthodoxy of ii doc- trinal point, or to establish the infallibility of a speculative theory.* As yet free from that fanatic spirit which strews the earth with human victims, and still '' op- poses man against the murderer man," the Irish would have rejected with hor- * " Cesar et Pompee,'* says Voltaire in his English Letters, " ne sont pas fait la guerre pour savoir si les fioulets sacrees daivent man- ger et boir^ ou bien manger seulement ; ni pour savoir si les pretres devaient sacrifier avec leur chemise sur leur habit, ou leur habit sur leur chemise. Non ! bes horreurs etatient reserves pour la religion de la charite*' — " Cesar and Pompeydid not fight to determine whether the consecrated fowl ought to eat and drink, or to eat only ; nor whether the priests should offici- ate with their surplice over their gown, or their gown over their surplice. No : these horrors were reserved for the religion of charity." PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 59 ror and incredulity that prophecy, which should have foretold such a series of re- ligious barbarities as attended the expul- sion of the Moors from Spain, the con- version of the Mexicans in America, the revocation of the edict of Nantz, and the establishment of the popery laws in their own country. Surely the experience of successive ages should hold out some beacon to those minds, which the pernicious and illusory light of intolerance misleads ; and evince the dreadful effects which have been invariably produced, by suf- fering an abstract opinion to prevail over the social affections of mankind, either in politics or in religion."* * The catholics of that part of Silesia con- quered by Frederic the great, were so sensible of the toleration they enjoyed from the liberal conduct of their conqueror, that they have ever since remained faithful to the Prussians ; while those of their compatriots, who had successful- ly resisted his victorious arms, have since sub- mitted to the French influence. 60 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. The toleration of the Germans on religious points, is deservedly poverbial. The pati'on of Luther, and the first protestant potentate, was an elector of Saxony ; and notwithstanding the present electoral family has for four genera- tions back been Roman catholics, they continue to live in the most perfect harmony with their Protestant subjects. Catherine of Russia dispersed among her Ma- hometan subjects eighty thousand copies of the Koran ; while among her Christian subjects she circulated such works as were likely to es- tablish them most firmly in their religion. Yet, during her long and prosperous reign, the voice of revolt or insurrection was never heard to mur- mur. But in what age, or in what country, has Tolerrition displayed her radiant banner, and found her standard deseited by peace, by happi- ness, and unanimity ? PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 61 SKETCH VI. AT a period when national taste, like national spirit, lingers through its last era of decay in the Irish breast, it is as rare as it is delightful to meet with one, for whom every relic of Irish antiquity possesses a peculiar interest; who con- templates with pleasure even the least-im- portant production of antient wit in his own country; and by an association of ideas which have their source in the a. mor p atria:, values ^\eiy little relic as exhibiting some genuine though minute testimony of that progress in the refine^ ments of life, which he fondly believer distinguished his native land, in those days when she w^as looked upon with ad- miration and respect by the people of o 62 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. ther nations, and regarded with triumph by her own= To the national taste of Mr. O*** of C** house, in the bosom of whose charm- ing family I have spent some days since my arrival in this province, the remem- brance of which neither my memory nor my heart will be apt to relinquish, 1 stand highly indebted for what might be consi- dered as a honne bouche to the hitherto unsatisfied appetite of national virtu. — His library is stored with antiquities dis- covered amidst adjacent ruins, or dug out of the bogs on his own estate. A- mong those which peculiarly struck me were : An ur?i*, composed of the finest clay, highly polished, elegantly formed, and curiously carved. It was dug out of a sand-hill on the sea-shore near C*** house: and found nearly filled with ash- * This urn exactly resembles that described by Ware, and delineated by Vallency in his Collectanea. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. G3 es and a kind of bituminous stuff, over which was placed a beautiful lozenge of thin variegated marble, once perhaps marked with an inscription now entirely defaced. The urn most probably con- tained the ashes of some Milesian prince, or sacred druid, to whom, in days of paganism, this privilege alone was ac- corded ; for when the body of the warri- or was consigned to the earth, his arms were buried with him. Thus the anci- ent Irish, like the ancient Etruscans, us- ed both modes of inhumation at the same time : and with that pertinacious adhe- rence to the distinction of the different orders of the state, which marked their ancient regime, the inequality of rank and office was ascertained beyond the li- mits of the grave ; and their love of order and subordination betrayed itself, where even all human distinction cease to be ob- served. A stylus made of brass, and curiously engraved, particularly engaged my at tention : and when I learnt that it we^s 64 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. found in a deep grave amidst the ruins of Sligo abbey, the busy agency of fan- cy endowed it with an interest it proba- bly had no claim to ; and as I gazed on its point, I imagined that he who had carri- ed it with him to the tomb, and made it his companion in death, had probably made it the confidant of his thoughts, and the herald of his hopes, when living. — It might have been the property of some young monk of St. Dominic ; the vehi- cle of his sufferings and his love to some self-devoted Heloise, immured within the " relentless w^alls" of a neighbouring con- vent. But whether it was devoted to the- service of love or of religion, to detail- ing the miracles of a saint or the charms of a mistress, it interested me from the fanciful speculations it gave rise to. Two rings, dug out of some neighbour- ing ruins, the one studded with brass knobs, the other constructed of brass loops : and both resembling the talisman described by Vallencey. l>ATmOTiC SKETCHES. 65 Disposed by the ardour of their ima- gination to every illusion of superstitious error, in no nation whatever were charms more prevailing than among the ancient Irish. The warrior or the knight never entered the field of battle without his ring, or amulet ; and on the fair bosoms of the noblest dames, sparkled the con- secrated talisman. Papal policy, taking advantage of this national superstition, consecrated seals, which were called ab- solution-seals*, and bore the following inscription : '^ Multitude of pardons to the sons of the son of ***/' &c. These were disposed of by the Romish see to the confessors: who enriched themselves by the traffic of salvation ; and retailed the remission of sins at the highest price that timid penitence could give, or exor- bitant priestcraft extort. A hridle-bit, and head-stall, of a very curious description, made of brass, and *One of these absolution-seals, once the pro- perty of a priest, was lately in the possession of Arthur Wolf, Esq, f2 66 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. found in a bog in the vicinity. On the top of the head-stall was a little pillar of brass elegantly formed, which was most^ probably erected for the purpose of sus- taining the plume of feathers which de- corated tlie proud head of the Beltene- bros of some puissant knight of the val- ley : and indeed the finely carved spur which accompanied it, proved it the pro- perty of some Sir Launcelot or Sir Ber- tram. A brass hatchet, dug out of a bog in Terrerah, and exactly resembling that called by the ancient Irish tuah snaight ; derived says general Vallencey, from the Chaldee tuah, to strike. A small sptar or pike, the well known laineach catha of the ancient Irish. A brazen sword, twenty -two inches long, and exactly formed like that which general Vallencey describes as resem- bling the sword found in the plains of Canac. It had been dug out of a bog by a peasant; whose good dame, having PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 67 performed the same operation on its rus- ty blade as destroyed the value of the shield of Martinus Scriblerus, convert- ed it to the domestic purposes of a hatch- et, from which degrading metamorphose Mr. O*** rescued this trusty weapon of some Irish Rolando or Rogero. An ancient Irish brogue, remarkable for the neatness of its form ; made of thin tanned leather^ fastened above the ancle in a manner both convenient and tasteful, and closely resembling the Ro- man buskin. A small box of beautiful marble, of an octagon form, the lid very delicately carved, and covered with inscriptions in a character resembling the Persic. It was found among the ruins of Sligo ab- l)ey^ and was probably the bon bonniere of some self-denying monk. Many other national relics presented themselves to my observation, which, though too numerous to detail, posses- sed scarcely less interest than those I 68 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. have mentioned; though certainly not more so than the remains of druidical Cromlech, which rose almost immedi- ately beneath the windows of the libra- ry. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 69 SKETCH VIL WHILE the mind, by an association of its ideas, discovers ^' a spell of a<> traction" in every thing, however intrin- sically valueless, which carries with its protracted existence the character of a- ges gone by '' with years beyond the flood;" of objects which time has res- cued from the vicissitude of human e- vents, and which tradition has connect- ed with incidents of historic interest ; it pursues with an opposite sensation of de- light, every thing in the moral or natural world, which is touched by the charm of novelty, or which owes its interest to the rarity of its existence. Thus the most sublime objects of the creation ex- cite a less animated sensation in obser- 70 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. vance than the liisus naturcty Avhose sin- gularity is probably its only excellence. This observation insensibly suggested itself, as I turned with indift'erence from a very noble view of the ocean, to be- hold with eager curiosity the water-flight of Glencar. The water-flight of Glencar derives its source from the summit of a lofty hill whose base it scarcely reaches, if the wind is in a certain point ; there it is a- gain carried perpendicularly back, form- ing a species of waterspout. Nothing can be more splendidly beautiful than its appearance when seen under the influ- ence of an unclouded sun, rising like a pillar of light : the least variation of the air breaks it into a feathery spray, which falls at a considerable distance, like the misty shower of a summer's evening tinged with the departing glow of the- ho- rizon. Nor is the water-flight of Glencar the only aquatic curiosity in the neighbour- hood of Sligo. The hill of Knock -na- PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 71 shong, or the Hill of the Hawk, is from its elevation the first point of land seen on this coast at sea, and has become a kind of land-mark to mariners. Yet notwithstanding its altitude, and its dis- tance from the shore, its summit con- tains a small well, which ebbs and flows with the tide. Of both the mountain and the well, tradition has preserved ma- ny miraculous talcs. /r /2 PATRIOTIC SKET "HE8. SKETCH VIII THE poverty of the lower orders of every nation is always found to derive its source less from national vice, than political grievance. The j)Overty of the lower orders of the Irish is equally ob- vious in its causes, and melanclioly in its effects. At certain seasons of the year, the high-roads, and even the main streets, of every town and village of Ire- land, are infested with groupes of mendi- cants, who exhibit to the eye all the sad variety of wretchedness which '' flesh is heir to.'' These are not common beg gars, who make it a profession to live at the expence of the community ; and who indulge their propensities to idleness and vice, by imposing on the unregulated be nevolencc of those PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 73 << Whose pity gives ere charity begins :" they are the necessitous families of the Irish peasants. When the season of employment is over, when the necessity of human la- bour is considerably disproportioncd to the population of the country, as is in- variably the case in all grazing-countics of Ireland, where no manutactory offers the avocation to the superllux of willing industry ; and when the scanty hire of tlic labourer, during the short season it is paid, affords no little treasure stored to ward off the wants of an inactive sea- son ; the Irish peasant quits the spot where he once " Sat him down the monarch of a shed ;" quits the family, dearer to his heart from the pang it feels for them ; and beckoned by hope, or urged by despair, departs for a distant province, or even a distant land, in search of that employment, and G 71 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. that reward^ which his own impoliticly denies. When the strained eye of sorrowing affection has followed the father and the husband, even till fancy gives what dis- tance snatches from its view, the mother closes the door of her desolate cabin ; and when, as is generally the case, her family are too helpless to relinquish her maternal cares and enable her to work, followed by her little children, and fre- quently by an aged parent, beggary is embraced as the only alternative to want and famine*. Sometimes with an infant * I this day overtook a mendicant groiipe who were with clifficuUy creeping on before me : the mother, a delicate-looking woman, had a child on her back, another infant in a deep decay hung on the shoulder of a girl of twelve years old, and two more little ones followed. — 1 asked the woman what profession her husband was of; she said, " he was a slave ;" for it is ])y this term that the labouring peasantry of Ire- land invariably designate themselves. The v/o- m,)n looked iil : I inquired the cause. Shere- PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. VO oil her back, and another in her arms, while the ablest of her little train is always charged with the tin vessel which carri- es the sour milk supplied by charity, and another infant wanderer sustains the weight of the blanket which constitutes the only covering thrown over them at night, she commences her sad and soli- tary wanderings. How frequently, and in what opposite seasons, have I beheld these helpless and wretched groupes straggling along the high-roads, or re- posing their wearied limbs beneath the shelter of a ditch ! I have seen the feet of the heavily-laden mother totter through winter snows beneath her tender bur- then : while the frost-bitten limbs of her infant companions drew tears to their eyes, which in the happy thoughtlessness of childhood had never been shed to the plied that in those cabins where they gave her a lodging " for God's sake," she had for some nights back lain on wet straw, the rain which had continued for some days having penetrated through the roof of her lodging. 76 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. unconscious misery of their situation, had not bodily pain taught them to flow. I have met them wandering over those heaths, which aftorded no shelter to their aching brows, amidst the meridian ar- dours of a summer's day ; when violent heat and insupportable fatigue, rendered the stream they stooped to drink, a lux- ury the most exquisite. I have met them at the door of magisterial power, and seen them spurned from its threshold by him who should have redressed their grievances or relieved their wants ; and 1 have seen them cheerfully received in- to the cabin of an equally humble, but more fortunate compatriot, where their wants were a recommendation to bene- volence, and their number no check to its exertion. For never yet was the door of an Irish cabin closed against the sup- pliant who appealed to the humanity of its owner*. * As soon as a mendicant groupe appears at their door, it receives the accustomed kead- mille-a faltha ; the circle round the fire is en- PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, 77 In Ireland there are no poor laws. In Ireland the reins of magisterial influence are loosely held ; and those to whose hands they are consigned are seldom sti- mulated to exertion, where self-interest, or party prejudice, affords no powerful incentive. The ill-conducted police of the country-towns of Ireland is a natio- nal disgrace; while that countless hordes of wretches are suffered to wander unre- lieved, and indeed unnoticed, is a^ stain on national humanity. Casual bounty can afford but transient redress • it lies to a certain degree within the jurisdiction of the magistracy, to render that bounty unnecessary by examining into the cau- ses of that wretchedness which so fre- quently appeals to it ; and by either en- deavouring to redress the grievance, or punish the imposition, which equally fling an odium on the character of that coun- try whose negligent police has so long larged ; a fresh supply of potatoes brought for- ward ; and shelter for the night, and clean straw to repose on, voluntarily offered. g2 78 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. slumbered over both*. The establish- ment of manufactories in the remote parts of Ireland, would undoubtedly be the most effectual check to the progress of mendicancy ; but can there be no me- dium adopted between the great ex- tremes of idle poverty and affluent in- dustry ? * The inhabitants of Crete, says Montes- quieu, used a veiy singular method to keep the principal magistrates dependant on the laws : part of the citizens rose up in arms, put the magistrates to flight, and obUged them to re- turn to a private life. This was supposed to be done in consequence of the law. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 79 SKETCH IX. I AM at present residing in that part of Ireland where the association of thrasii- ers first arose. I am consequently sur- rounded by those who formed that asso- ciation : a peasantry poor, laborious, ve- hement, and enterprising ; capable of good or ill ; in the extremes of both ; left to the devious impulse of either ; but of- tener impelled by the hardest necessity to the latter, than allured to the former, by kindness, by precept, or reward. — ■ Punished with rigorous severity when acting wrong, but neglected, unnoticed^ and unrecompensed when acting right ; forming the last link in the chain of hu- man society, and treated with contempt because unable to resist oppression, It 80 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, was with one of these beings, who in the strictest sense, daily performed " the pe- nalty of Adam/' and nightly, perhaps, assumed the daring character of insur- gency, that I had some days back the following conversation : '^ Are you laying in your winter's fire ?" <^ No young lady, I am cutting this turf for his honour." '' What is your hire by the day ?" — '' Sixpence one half, and threepence the other half of the year*." " Have you a family ?" — ^' I have a wife and six children." " Then of course you must have some o-round for their maintenance ?' — " Oh ! yes, two acres at 61. an acre ; but what * I have been assured, however, that six- pence a day, throughout the year, is in gene- ral the averaged hire in most parts of Con- naught. Many persons still living remember it so low as fourpence. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 81 with the tythe proctor, the priest's dues being raised, and the weaver having dou- bled his prices, that day goes by well e- nough, when we can afford a drop of milk to moisten the potatoes for the young ones.'' He paused for a moment, cast his eyes to heaven, shook his head expressive- ly, and then abruptly applied himself to his labour with an effort of overstrain- ed exertion, that seemed to derive its e- nergy from feelings that dewed his rough cheek with tears, flowing from the sad heart of the father and the husband.* * Since the above was written, a young pea- sant in Westmeath gave me the following ac- count of his family, which I believe is an epi- tome of the general state of the peasantry in a county not 30 miles from the metropolis. — The boy was the eldest of seven children though scarcely twelve years old, and of course the only one able to labour ; in the summer and harvest season he earned fourpence a day, his father worked for sixpence and eightpence a day through the year j they paid six pounds 82 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. '' If wc do not go to the very origin and first ruling cause of a grievance," — says Edmund Burke, " we do nothing :" and if we resort to the light of truth and evidence of fact, it will be found that with respect to every national grievance or political disorder in Ireland, for near- ly five hundred years back, a mode of conduct has been pursued, partial in it^ eflects, unavailing in its influence, and nutritive to public evil by an apparent blindness to the pristine existence of that evil, and by the rigidly coercive mea- sures exerted against its natural but fa- tal effects. Still careless and perhaps ig- norant of the cause, still attentive only to the result, the rest of discontent has for an acre of oats, forty shillings a year for grass for their cow, and forty shillings for their cabin and a little ground for their potatoes ; in Avinter when the cow was dry, they lived upon oaten bread, and potatoes and salt. Engaged with the care of seven children, the mother could give little assistance except by spinning sometimes : and out of the year's hire of the father, Sundays and holidays were deducted. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 83 only invigorated, by the topping of its branches, and the pruning of its suck- ers. The first settlement of the English co- lonists in the island took place at a mo- ment peculiarly favorable to such an cn- terprize : the devotional enthusiasm with which the Irish had applied themselves to letters, to the arts of poesy and song, and all their elegant, but frequently ener- vating concomitants, left them but ill qualified to oppose an hostile and savage enemy ; and sharing the inevitable des- tiny of all polished nations in a certain era of refinement, they sunk beneath the daring inroads of such barbarians as Greece has submitted to, and Rome was unable to oppose. To those who believe their fate has reached its clima:>^ of evil, every doubt wears the aspect of a hope, and every change the character of a be- nefit ; and the arrival of a few English barons and their followers on the Irish coast, at a moment when the Irisli spi- rit was harrasscd by the ceaseless sulYer- 8i PATRIOTIC SKETCHKb. ing of civil dissention;, awaken a conso- latory expectation, and gave to the poli- tic strangers the air of protectors and the epithet of friends. From that moment the mass of the 1- rish people became affectionate to the British government ; and if tlie attesta- tions of historians* are to be credited, if the native tone of the minds of the Irish was attentively studied, it will be found that though that aftcction may be forced, it can never be voluntarily or causelessly withdrawn from its object. But the government which they, the Irish, loved, was still counteracted in e- * " I am well assured that the Irish desired to be admitted to the benefit of English law, not only in tlieir petitions," Sec. — Davis, p. 88. It was a circumstance, however, not a little flattering to the Irish, that while the benefit of English laws was denied them, the English colonists adopted tlie ancient Irish system of legislation. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 85 very intention formed in their favour. — The claims which they made in the ex- pecting confidence of their hearts, re- mained unrealized, because they were unheard :* for it was ever^, as it is now, the singular destiny of Ireland to nourish within her own bosom her bitterest ene- mies, who with a species of poHtical vampyrism, destroyed that source from whence their own nutriment flowed. — For still did they, who partially ruled over one country under the influence of the other, close every avenue to mutual and conciliating intelligence; and inva riably endeavoured to elYccta separation, from wliich they alone derived a benefit — ^ benefit, however, precarious and un stable, as it was selfish and unjust. It was in vain that the Irish of other times, testified their anxiety to be admit- * " It is not,'* says the poet Saadi, " the ti- mid voice of a minister which can breathe to the ears of his king the complaints of the un- happy ; it is the cry of the people only that should ascend directly to the throne." ti 86 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, ted to the protection of the laws of En- gland ; it was in vain, even so early as the reign of Edward III, that they en- deavoured to represent the good that would naturally accrue from denization. ^' For still/' says Sir John Davis, '^ the great lords of Ireland informed the king that the Irish might not be naturalized without damage and prejudice to the crown, or themselves ;"* and perhaps it is no unfounded assertion to advance, that the same disposition on the part of the I- rish to the English government, and the same ohatacle to its accomplishment on the part of their internal enemies, still ex- ist with undiminished forcef. Few coun- * " All the statutes from Henry IV. to Henry VII. speak of English rebels, and Irish enemies, as if the Irish had never been in the condition of subjects, but always out of the law." t The genius of Palermo, kept in the sena- torial palace, is represented as a man with a serpent on his breast, and this motto, Alienos nutrit^ se ipsimi devorat ; a figure that might PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. §7 tries ever suffered more from the cease- less vicissitudes of civil dissention, than Ireland; and none ever preserved a more general uniformity of character^ disposi- tion, and principle, both as to its inter- nal and relative situation, for ages back. The same grievances have furnished the same complaints, and the same causes invariably produced the same effects. — The Irish heart was ever, and is still, warmly alive to the least appearance of confidence and kindness. The Irish spi- rit has ever been and ever will be, prompt to resist, what it would be dishonour to endure. It is a corroborating proof of the un- varying system of things in this country, that an assertion of the able minister of Elizabeth relative to the antecedent and then existing state of Ireland, may be in some respects applied to its present cir- cumstances, viz. '' That certain great answer equally well for the personification of Ire- land. 88 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. men of Ireland cross and withstand the enfranchisement of the Irish : whereunto he adds, I must acquit the crown of En- gland of ill policy^ and lay the fault up- on t,he pride, covetousness, and ill coun- sel, of the English planted here."* — The line of demarcation which distin- guished the English-Irish from the native Is now indeed smoothed away by the ob- iiviating finger of time ; but the sordid spirit and unpatriotic principles, which guided the views, and directed the acti- * " When," says Burke, " the vvarfai'e of chicane succeeded to the war of arms and of hostility, statutes and a regular series of ope- ration was carried on, particularly from Chi- chester's time, in the ordinary courts of jus- tice ; and by special commissions and inquisi- tions, first under pretence of tenures, and then of titles in the crown, for the purpose of the total extirpation of the interest of the natives in their own soil : until this species of subtle ravage, being carried to the last excess of op- pression and insolence under lord Stafford, kindled the flames of that rebellion which broke out in 1641. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 89 ons of the naturalized foreigner, still sur- vive in the breasts of some who have no ther claim to the title of Irishmen, than othat which the accident of nativity be- stows ; who, unalfectionate to their com- patriots, and unendeared to their coun- try, resolve every principle into self; and give to every local disturbance that ter- rific aspect of public danger, which ex- tends the empire of individual influence, and strengthens the chain of general op- pression.* This perhaps was nevermore strongly evinced than by those efforts made to misrepresent the recent rising of the thrashers ; and to call and punish that as a rebellion, which an officer of the crown, even in the act of pleading against the association alluded to, de- clares '^ as not partaking of any politi- cal complexion, or confined to any parti- cular party or persuasion ;" and that *^ its professed object was to regulate the payments of the church-tythes, of cer- * It is perhaps necessary to mention, that this sketch was begun and finished at two dif- ferent and distant periods, h2 90 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. tain dues paid to the clergymen af the catholic church, and the rates of manu- al and manufacturing labour."* It is indeed a fact incontrovertible and asserted by those employed on the part of the crown against the persons termed thrashers, that this association had its rise in that source which at various and distant periods has given birth to such numerous associations among the Irish peasantry : associations unknown per- haps in any other country in the world, and which, animated by the same princi- ple, and sanctioned by the same plea of grievance, have taken the various names of white boys, hearts of steel, hearts of oak, break-ofday boys, right boys, defen- ders, and thrashers. Yet from the first whisper of insurrection, to its last mur- mur, the complaint of the people never * While the peasant 'of Ireland labours from sun-rise to sun-set, for sixpence a day, the work- ing mechanic regulates his prices by his de- sires, and the extortion of three days enables iiim to be idle and inebriate the other four. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 91 breathed upon the government,* and their accusations were as local as the grievances which gave birth to them : — but every pecuniary exaction unjustly and exorbitantly levied on those whose hard-earned little ^' just gives what life requires, and gives no more," becomes an object of consideration ; and while with willing cheerfulness they conti'ibute to the maintenance of the ministers of one church, and from a principle of duty * A few days back, I met with two peasants who were making complaints of the oppression they endured. A gentleman asked them if they thought they were worse off since the uni- on. They replied, " they had never heard a- ny thing about the union, and did not know what it meant." After some further questi- ons, they were asked " if they did not know that there was now no Irish parliament. They replied, that all tJiey had heard was, that the parliament-books were sent away, and that the good luck of the country went with them. So full is the heart of an Irish peasant of his own grievance, and so little is his he^d troubled a- bout public affairs. 92 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. and affection voluntarily support that of another,* it is little to be wondered at, if that extortion which drives them to the very barrier of penury and want should sometimes impel them beyond that of prudence and subordinationf. In the present instance they endeavour to palliate their conduct, by asserting, that to the usual exorbitant demands of * " It is no slight evil for a country sinking under the weight of taxes, to support a double hierarchy ; and some share of the expencc might perhaps, without injustice, be defrayed from the revenues of the present establishment, in parishes where every inhabitant is a catho- lic."— -Rex^zVw of Sir J. Throgmorton on the Cathqlic Question. t Lands in Ireland are generally held on free- hold leases, which throws the burthen of tithes upon the tenant chiefly : the collection being al- so principally in kind, renders it of course more odious, and the alternative is become insupport- able from the extortion of the tithe farmers.—* Ibid. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 93 the tythet farmers, were added the in- creasing exactions of the middle-man^ the impositions of the weaver, and' the increased dues of the catholic clergy. These, they asserted, were exactions which sixpence a day was scarcely ade- qate to answer. These perhaps were the efficient causes which gave to the pity- ing eye of the traveller, roofless cabins, desponding contenanccs, squalid figures, t The payment of tithes among the Jews formed a part of the foundation of their repub- lic ; but on their first introduction into Chris- tendom, Charlemagne, who established them, found them opposed by the people ; " who, says Montesquieu, are rarely influenced by ex- ample, to sacrifice their interests, " and who considered them " as burthens quite independ- ant of the other charges of the establishment." A synod of Frankfort had recourse to their su- perstition to ensure their obedience, by pro- testing, that in the last famine the spikes of corn were found to contain no seed, the infer- nal spirits having devoured it all ; and that those spirits had been heard to reproach them with not having paid the tithes." Book xxxi. 339. 94 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. and shuddering groups of literally naked children ; these were perhaps the latent sources of those emotions in which the lower orders of this country have been so frequently involved, and the main spring of that coalition of imprudent and unfortunate persons called thrashers ; who daringly seized in their own hands the power of summary retribution, pro- portioned and appropriate as they con- ceived to their real or fancied grievances, and according to the strict letter of their own old Brehon law. That they did thus dare to seize the means of redress in their own hands, was a conduct that no one can justify ; but that any other mode was left them, is a fact no one can esta- blish. The English country-gentleman, full of patriarchal kindness towards his te- nantry, will ask, '' Why did not these unfortunates apply for counsel and assis- tance to their land-lord, their paternal adviser and advocate r" But that tie, so firmly bound in days of feudal influence, PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, 95 and which still in a modified sense in most countries unites the extremes of ci- vil society, the lord of the soil to the peasant who cultivates it, in Ireland is bi'oken; or rather wholly dissolved: and the Irish peasant, while he venerates the name of the good old family under whom his forefathers worked, or for whom his forefathers bled, has now but the name only to revere ; while his heart turns des- pondingly from the middle-man, beneath whose influence he lives; and who would scarcely ameliorate his grievances, while conscious that he was himself the cause of many, and the sanction of all. It ever was, and is still, the conduct of a certain order of persons in Ireland, to shadow the light of government from the mass of the Irish people ; to give to causes of local and domestic disturbance, the invidious term of open rebellion ; and to drive by pitiless unkindness to acts of fatal desperation, a people who may be soothed into subjection, but who can ne- ver be harassed into a tame endurance 96 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. of oppression ; a people whose national character aftords the noblest subject to philosophical observance, that human na- ture ever presented to the eye of reason and philanthropy.* When the thrashers first attracted no- tice in those counties where they first a- rose, it was not unusual to hear, even from those whose opinion carried most weight, that there was some ground for complaint among the Connaught peasan- try ; the nocturnal adventures of the in- surgents were then deemed rather whim- sical than mischievous ; were sometimes listened to with indifference, or laughed at as ludicrous; but the natural conse- quences of all pubHc commotions, how * " Nations are governed by the same me- thods, and on the same principles, by which an individual, without authority, is often able to govern those who are his equals or his superi- ors ; by a knowledge of their temper, and by a judicious management of it." — Thoughts on the Causes of the present Discontents^ ^c. iJJ'c. Bu rke. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 97 ever apparently unimportant in their ten- dency and trivial in their origin, from their too frequently experienced and fa- tal result, should have taught those in whose hands the reins of timely suppres- sion were vested, the necessity of crush- ing the germ, if they had not the power of destroying its root. But if the inva- riable effects of a long-existing cause were foreseen, no exertion was made to- wards their early extinction : the thrash- ers indeed were instantly called a mise- rable, deluded and misguided people ; — degrading epithets, to which, how ever I- rish feelings have become almost callous. But among the many who thus designat- ed their hnmbler compatriots, and re- versing the maxim of Hamlet, taught them '' to assume the vice they had not," who was the benevolent the rational be- ing, to step fortli, to inquire into the cause of their discontent, to alleviate their sufferings, or dispel their delusion ? Did the head landlord, did the middle-man, did the magistrate, collect around them their misguided countrymen, and with an ap^ 98 PATRIOTIC SKETCIiES. parent interest in their destiny, investi- gate the cause of their real, or probe the source of their fancied grievance, pro- mising their best individual efforts to the removal of the one, or simply proving to their untutored understandings the fal- lacy and danger of the other ? Oh, no ! a vehement, an impetuous, a brave but misguided peasantry, cai'cless of that life to which so few ties of human happiness attached them, unquestioned, unresisted, were suffered to accuinulalc in numbers, to strengthen in principle, to pursue that object which their sense of right upheld to them ; and neither redressed in one instance, nor opposed in another, to esta- blish the justice of their cause on the ba- sis of their progressive success ; and to become inebriate with that flow of for- tune which stronger heads seldom resist, and stronger minds seldom contemplate in its probable and approximating reflux.* * The thrashers were suffered, for a consi- derable time, to pursue their depredations on the fields of the tythe-farmers, unmolested and and almost unnoticed. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 99 As long as the vengeance of the thrash- ers was confined to the tj the -farmers, the middle-man smiled at a retribution so summarily used; but when its spread- in^ effects threatened the most distant boundary of his own interest, he shrunk back upon himself with the same princi- ple of repercussion which actuates the tarantula when, retiring to the centre of her web, she darts with aocumulated ve- nom on the daring insect who flutters within the sphere of her enslaving domi- nion. It then became usual, from the well or ill-founded reports of every informer, for a few skirmishing parties to set out in quest of the insurgents ; frequently to escape from the hall of social enjoyment, or the banquet of festal revelry, and " hot with the Tuscan grape," to pursue amidst the doubtful shades of night " the idle visions of a heated brain ;" or, per haps less strictly Quixotorial, to fire at random on such fugitives as chance pre sented to their observation. 100 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. That an insurrection which at this pe- riod wore so alarming an aspect ought not to have been suppressed in the first era of its existence, or firmly and deci- sively opposed in its state of maturer be- ing, is there a mind so weak or so inhu- man as to assert? To that rational poli- cy w^hich is ever the '' flail of faction." which is ever more solicitous to remove the grievance than to punish even the un- justifiable mode of redress imprudently seized on by the aggrieved, be it left to decide op the most efficacious mode to obviate the evil ; but that the partial and summary coercion adopted by certain in- dividuals, in the present instance, were neither correct in plan nor effective in execution, the result fully evinced. It was indeed at last discovered, that though firing at an odd man of an odd night might have been a chivalrous feat, it was far from being either a decisive or a successful one. Every bullet had not the political sagacity to lodge itself in the fervid brain of an insurgent ; the inno- PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 101 cent had sometimes a chance of suffer- ing with the guilty : and though they might '' fill a pit as well as better men," yet that cause was not weakened, whose professed opposers became obnoxious to the neutral as well as to the active party; while the moan of private sorrow min- gled with the murmurs of public discon- tent, and the pang of individual anguish exasperated the feelings of general dis- affection. But one mode now seemed left to des- troy the hydra-monster of a hitherto un- availing vengeance ; and unawed by the series of horrid events which, at no dis- tant intervals, for the space of five hun- dred years have distracted and impove- rished their country, a certain order of persons supplicated the governing pow- er of their nation to erect once more the standard of civil discord, and to estab- lish that law which every state reserves as its last resource against the unmasked appearance of open, daring, and avowed rebellion ! But what was the result o.f i2 102 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. this patriotic application ? At the mo- ment when it was eagerly hoped that no- thing would be seen '■^ but man and steel, the soldier and the sword/- the British government rushed between the mass of the people of Ireland and a few of her degenerate sons ; and flinging the veil of her mercy over the errors of her impru- dent but unalienated subjects, turned a- side the poniard that aimed at the life- pulse of their hearts. For ever honoured be the memory of that administration which gave to the un- happy, the deluded people of Ireland, the full benefit of that sacred justice coeval with truth and with the God of Truth ; who, deaf to the interested application of the few, rescued the many from destruc- tion; who mercifully refused to send back the visionary insurgent to his comfortless hut, to brood, in the midst of his helpless family, over that grievance as poignant in idea as in fact, and which neither re- dressed, nor contradicted, would rankle with added force in his disappointed PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. lOS heart ; who saved the hard-earned pit- tance of the laborious peasant from the ravages of licensed insolence and the op- pression of delegated power; who turn- ed aside the musket that would have aw- ed the oppressed master in that home, where (though but the shelter of a bana- na-tree from the rays of a vertical sun (even the slave feels himself a king ; and who gave to the free-born subjects of the freest of all earthly states, the fair occasion to expose the cause by which they believed themselves agrieved, and to prove how far the effects were '' to be extenuated, " or had been '' set down in malice!"* * How firmly attached the Irish have ever been to the laws of England, and inimical to the slight- est appearance of military subjection, is not on- ly proved by Sir John Davis and his cotempo- raries, but strongly alluded to by Burke in his speech on the conciliation with America. " Af- ter," says he, " the vain project of militaiy government attempted in the reign of Eliza- beth, it was soon discovered that nothing could make Ireland English in civility and allegiance, 104 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. It was reserved for the representative of the illustrious house of Russel to be the agent of that divine mission, which had for its object the peace and welfare of a nation ; and surely in that record where the gratitude of Ireland has traced in imperishable characters the names of her best friends, his will not be register- ed in an oblivious page. but your laws and your form of legislature. It was not English arms, but the English consti- tution, that conquered Ireland PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 105 SKETCH X. *' In Ireland, '^ says a modern writer, *^ the harpers (the original composers and depositaries of their music) have till lately been uniformly cherished and supported by the nobiHty and gentry." It is indeed but too true, that that warm ardent spirit of national enthusiasm which hung de- lighted on the song of national melody, to which many an associated idea, many an endeared feeling, lent their superadded eharm, has now faded into apathy ; and neither the native strain, nor native sen- timent, which gave it soul, touches on the spring of national sensibility, or awakens the dormantenergy of national taste. The ear, desultory in its musical enjoyments 106 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. formed to the style of foreign harmony, and scholared into taste by the theories of recondite science, may indeed no longer convey to the heart that poignant thrill of national emotion which shakes the firm nerved Swiss " even to dissolution," when the strain of his mountain-liberty * abruptly floats on his awakened sense. But Oh ! surely that untravelled heart, which has never felt the throb of absence far from the home of its affection, that unsophisticated sense which has never dissolved to the impassioned influence of Italian composition, might still hang with national pride and national delight upon those strains which owe their birth to the musical genius of their native country ; upon those strains which harmonize with every emotion of the soul, and which whether breathed in sorrow or in joy, are still true to nature and nature's dear- est feelings. * Were the feelings of national liberty and national affliction to be illustrated by a sound, the BentzV'de-V aches and Erin go brack would surely be found to inspire their essence. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 107 The enthusiastic passion for music* which has ever distinguished the people of Ireland, still remains unabated; but by the puerile vanity of adopting a re- finement which removes the ear from the heart, their own beautiful airs are the on- ly compositions which now fail to attract their notice or secure their admiration: yet let me not (in the ardour of that in- dignation which swells my heart for my native country), while I behold the in- difference, the neglect with which she is in so many instances contemplated by many of her own children, let me not forget how often and how recently I have * A few evenings ago, Mr. O'Neil the har- per assured a friend of mine, that having been received into the house of a Mr. Irvine of this country about fifty years past, he found assem- bkd thiity-seven musicians, professional and private. " I made," he added, " the thirty-eighth ; and before wc concluded the evening, a piper claimed admittance, and according to the good old Irish custom was received, and accommo- dated with a good supper and b^d.*' 108 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. beheld the most animated emotions pro- duced in an Irish heart by the influence of an Irish song : how often I have be- held the sweet testimony of a feeling tear shed to the witchery of a national strain, even in those circles where the polish of fashion had smoothed down the energetic sensibilities of nature ; and where taste and science too frequently regulate the empire of opinion, indepen- dant of the feelings of the heart, inde- pendant of the sentiments of the mind. There are still few houses in the interi- or parts of Ireland, where a musician of some description is not constantly retain- ed or welcomely received ; who in coin- cidence with the prevailing gusto of the day, is always more ready to play a Ger- man waltz than a jig, or a French cotil- lion than a planxty. But Irish harpers (once so cherished and revered) arc as rarely to be met with as encouragement to Irish music. A very old and a very wretched being, with an ill-strung in- strument of greats antiquity suspended from his bending shoulder, is sometimes 109 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES* seen creeping along the road-side, slip- plicating at the gates of a great man^s mansion, or hailed at the door of a poor man's hut. But with a taste for nation- al music, has subsided all encourage- ment to its professors.* The Irish pea- sant indeed still retains an idolatrous fondness for those strains his ear has learnt from his heart: a song beguiles the labours of the day ; a song ushers in the repose of the night ; a song effu- ses his joys, and a song is the interpreter of his sorrows. Of the latter fact the following circumstance is illustrative : * The bardict order however is by no means extinct in Ireland. What they were, and what they are still capable of being, the venerable O'Neil is a striking instance. Many female har- pers still wander through the remote parts of Ireland. At the harper's prize-ball at Granard in 1782, a woman of the name of Bridges ob- tained the second prize. The names of the fe- male bards of other times were handed down for several generations, and repeated with de- votional respect. K 110 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. But a few days back, a musical pro- fessor, from whom I had the anecdote, was walking in the vicinity of Sligo at a very early hour, when a sound, wild, low and plaintive, sought his ear ; and ap- proaching the spot from whence it seem- ed to proceed, he observed an elderly fe- male leaning over a little paling which encircled a cabin. Her hair was dishe- velled, her eyes full of tears and her voice though broken and inarticulate, respired in the intervals of her deep-heaved sobs, a melancholy recitative accompanied by these words — " A few days are gone by ; hhe entered this gate in all her beauty and her health : to-morrow she will pass it without life, and she never will enter it more.*-' This funereal sons: was the im- * A parallel instance of parental and melo- lodized affliction is to be found in Chandler*s Travels into Asia Minor, " One evening com- ing from some ruins in a Greek village," says he, " we found an old womaii sitting by the church on the grave of her daughter, who had been two years buried, over whom she lament- ed aloud, singing in an uniform and dismal ca- dence." JPATRIOTIC SKETCHES. Ill promtu requiem of a wretched mother, whose only daughter, a young and love- ly girl, had expired the night before. If we are to form our opinion of the original genius of Irish music from the accounts handed down by Cambrensis, the pathos which it now betrays was cer- tainly not its primeval character. ^* But music," says lord Verulam, — *^ feedeth the disposition which it find- eth." The popular feelings of a nation may be frequently discovered to a cer- tain degree, in the character and idiom of its native melodies ; and the very key in which those melodies are composed, may give a refined intimation of the po- litical circumstances under which they were first breathed. Thus the Irish dur- ing the long series of their sufferings, ef- fused not their tuneful sorrows in the cheery, open, fulness of the major mode. Their voices, broken and suppressed, faintly rose by minor thirds ; and the sentiment of anguish communicated to 112 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. the song of the persecuted bard, in less felicitous periods, by " his soul's sad- ness/' still breathes in Irish music, even though the efficient cause from whence it stole its plaintive character may no lonarer exist. •o' That rapidity, however, wliich Cam- brensis* remarks, is still preserved in a * " It is wonderful,** says the archdeacon of St. David's, " how in such precipitate rapi- dity of the fini^ers tlie musical proportions arc preserved, and by their art faultless through- out, in the midst of their complicated modula- tions and most intricate arrangement of notes, by a rapidity so sweet, an irregularity so regu- lar, a concord so discordant. The melody is rendered perfect and harmonious whether the chords of the diapason or diapente are struck together ; yet they always begin in a soft mode and end in the same, that all may be perfected in the sweetness of delicious sounds : then they enter on, and again leave their modulations, with much subtilty ; and the tingling of the small strings spoils with so much freedom under the deep notes of the bass, delights with so much PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 113 certain description of Irish song, where every note melodizes a word, and of which the fine old air of Plai Racah 7ia Roiirk, or O'Rourk's noble feast, is a very striking instance.* So invariably do the Irish make the ear the path to the heart, so frequently is sound commingled with sentiment, and the affections of the mind with organic sensation, that even the prevailing super- stition of the lower classes borrows much of its illusory creed from the exquisite sensibility of their ear; and supernatural sounds are not only devoutly believed, but always expected, as the herald of an important event, or singular incident. Death itself is predicted by the melancho- delicacy, and soothes so softly, that the excellence of their art seems to lie in concealing it." * Even the most rapid Irish air, when played slow, will be found to contain some lurking shade of pathos, and even to possess something of that melancholy luxury of sound which cha- racterises the Arabian music. k2 114 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, Jy moan of the benshi ;* and the heavi est curse that vengeance bx-eathes upon the object of its direst hatred is, " the screech of the morning be upon you ;"f a curSe never to be heard w^ithout a thrill of horror and emotion. The inordinate passion which the Irish have in all ages betrayed for music, must have eventually produced an eager pur- suit of such means as would tend to its * Mr. Walker ingeniously traces the origin of the benshi to the passing breeze brushing over the strings of the harp which the sorrow- ing bard h;mg up in the hall, on the death of his chief or patron. t When the c^awn rises for the first time on the remains of a beloved and deceased object^ those feelings of sorrow which were till then faintly expressed, or silently betrayed, become wild and vehement in their indulgence ; and the shriek of despair which ushei-s in the davm's grey light to the bed of death, may indeed well be considered as an anathema by the ear and the heart on which it falls. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 1 15 gratification. Musical instrument-ma- kers are in fact to be found in many of the smallest towns of Ireland^ and gene- rally among men of the lowest professi- ons. Some instances have come under my own observation, too singular to pass unnoticed. In the town of Strabane, a poor man, originally a hedge-carpenter, obtained some degree of excellence in making vi- olins and flutes, built a small organ, and was frequently called in by the most res- pectable families in the neighbourhood, to tune or mend piano-fortes, harpsi- chords, &c. There is now resident in Dublin a young Connaught man, who works as a common carpenter, and who has made a small piano on which he performs, self- taught in the theory of music as in the construction of a musical instrument. A remarkably ^ne toned organ with six stops has been lately placed in the Roman-catholic chapel at Mulingar — 116 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES* built by a poor wheel-vvright, a native of the town. He had commenced bagpipe - maker a few years before without any previous instruction, and shortly after completed a good piano-forte. But the most striking and singular in- stance of this nature which this, or per- haps any other, country presents, is ex- hibited in the musical and mechanical talents of Mr. John Egan, tlie only pe- dal-harp maker in Ireland. Brought up from his earliest youth to the labours of the anvil, Mr. Egan was still serving his time to a smith, when chance threw in his way a French harp. A natural fond- ness for music, and the curiosity and ad- miration excited by a lirst view of the most beautiful and picturesque of all in- struments, induced him to examine its machinery ; and all the money he pos- sessed in the world was shortly after laid out in the purchase of such materi- als as were requisite for the construction of a pedal harp, which he accomplished with so much success, as to find a high PTRIOTIC SKETCHES. 117 and immediate sale for it. He is now very extensively engaged in the busi- ness, and may be ranked among the first of the profession ill Great Britain.* His harps however have one fault, which though it does not influence the opinion of true judges, or prevent their exporta- tion to Scotland, and even to parts of En- gland, is a frequent barrier to their sale in Ireland, namely, that their maker is an Irishman. * By an invention of which he has all the merit, he has so simplified the machinery, that the springs hitherto found necessary to retm'n the pedals, he has laid aside ; which renders the harp less liable to go out of order, much easier to repair, and enables the ingenious in- ventor to sell a pedal harp nearly one-half cheap^ er than it could be imported. 118 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. SKETCH XL THE barony of Tyrerah is a remote tract of land, skirting the most roman- tic part of the coast of Sligo ; twenty- seven miles long, and sheltered by a con- tinued chain of momitains, above whose varying elevation the '^ cloud-capt" sum- mits of Knock -na-shoug, Knockna-chree and Nephin-noble, are conspicuously distinguished. The old traditions of the country assert, that the barony of Tyre- rah, as well as that of Tyrawley, deriv- ed its name from Fion-maccumhal, or Fingal, the far-famed hero of Osian's songs, as he stood on the summit of one of the Ox mountains, where he was de- voting some days to the pleasures of the chace. My heart had long owed a pilgri- PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 119 mage to this remote, and, I believe, little- known barony; for it was the residence of the dear and respected friend for whom that heart had long throbbed with an in- variable pulse of gratitude, tenderness, and affection. I had, indeed, long been anxious to indulge both my feelings, my curiosity and prevailing taste, by this visitation, which was eminently produc- tive of the highest gratification to all. The road which leads from the town of Sligo to Tyrerah is varying and ro- mantic in its aspect, hanging over the sea-coast, and beneath the shelter of the loftiest mountains. The bay of Sligo, the fairy land of Hazlewood, the distant heights of Benbo and Benbulbin ; the opposite shores of the bay, crowned with the majesty of Knock-na-ree ; a partial view of the town of Sligo ; and the woods which skirt the adjacent lakes ; are caught, and lost, at intervals, amidst the devious windings of the road which passes directly through the village of Bal- lysadere. This little village lies on the 120 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. banks of a river which has its source in the mountains ; and forms in its rapid course, over a steep and unequal bed, a beautiful succession of water-falls, which wear the singular appearance of an a- quatic amphitheatre. The rapid and re- pulsed stream breaks over rocks iz oni point to point, for the space of more than two hundred yards ; till with congregat- ed force it reaches the principal steep, which is upwards of fifteen feet perpen- dicular. These romantic cataracts, when seen through the dark woods which once sur- rounded them, and with the full relief of Knock-na-ree in the rear, must have ranked amongst the noblest scenic fea- tures in the world. Over the deepest of the falls, and on the point of a little pro- montory, which appears flung between the confluence of the river and the bay, into which it pours its waters, hang the ruins of an abbey, founded by St. Fit- chin in the seventh century. It after- w^ards belonged to the regular canons of St. Austin, and during the intolerant PAiKlOTIC SKETCHES. 121 persecutions carried on in this country in Elizabeth's day, the abbey, with aii its revenues, was bestowed on Brian Fitzwilliam, who assigned it over to Ed- ward Crofton, escheator-general of Ire- land, and founder of the Crofton fami- ly in this province.* I understand—- that, till within these few years, the ab- bey w^as in some degree of preservation? and a fragment of the town still remains, which exhibits some traces of good ma- sonry. Near Ballyredon lies a lead mine, which, though very rich, has ne- ver been worked with success ; and Gla- nesk and Lockalt are but at an inconsi- derable distance, Avhile the luxurious is- land of Ylanabaolane, which forms the bay of Sligo, gives considerable interest * Mr. Young asserts, that most of the gen- tlemen in this part of the country were Crom- weirs soldiers, and many of them new settlers from Wales, as the Joneses, Morgans, Wynns, Sec. &c. Many, however, of the descendants of the Milesian race are still to be found in it, and some among the most distinguished per- sons of the country, as the family of tlie O'Haras. 122 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. to a vein of scenery, which wants no- thing but plantation to render it the most picturesque which imagination can de- vise, or nature present. L# # # house, the ancient family-seat of sir M* * * c* * *n, bart. was the goal of my little journey, and I reached its venerable avenue at a season of the day peculiarly favourable to the soft chiaro- oscura of picturesque beauty : with the old gloomy avenue of an ancient mansi- on-seat, there is, I think, invariably con- nected a certain sentiment which bears the heart back to ^^ other times," and awakens it to an emotion of tender re- verence, and melancholy pleasure. For mys(^lf, I have never walked beneath its interwoven branches uninfluenced by a certain feeling, in which memory's pen- jiive spell mingled with the speculations of awakened fancy. The lands and demesne of L* * * he almost along the shores of the Atlantic ocean, and immediately beneath tlie shel- PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 123 ter of Knockachree,* from whose rug- ged base swells the lesser chain of the Ox-mountains, whose sides were once covered with luxuriant woods, and from whose towering summit i-ush innumera- ble torrents, which lesseninginto streams in their deep descent, water the plains beneath, and flow into the ocean. The shores on the other side of the bay are romantic and striking ; the beautiful pe- ninsula of Tandsago intervenes its cul- tivated landscapes, and most happily breaks the view, while the rude dashing of the waves against the bar, lends an effective sound ; and the back scenerv afforded by the mountains, wears a cha- racter of wildness and sublimity, which finishes a picture that betrays no defici- ency but from that want under which it labours in common with the rest of the country, the want of plantation. • Of the old castle of L* * * nothing now remains but a few fragments that * Knockachree, or the " hill of the heart,*' when measured from the shore, is supposed to be one of the highest mountains in Ireland. i24f PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. mark its site, and are strewed amidst the vegetation which covers a cave, the probable asylum of many an unhappy fugitive in days of civil horror, or reli gious persecution. Near the spot where the castle once frowned, moulders the ruin of a small building, whose dilapi- dated portal still bears a Spanish inscrip- tion, intimating tliat it was the ^^ retreat of a priest and his yellow-haired compa- nion.^^ It was in fact erected, as tradi- tion asserts, by one of the lords of the castle, for his youngest son, who had in the Elizabethian day forfeited the reve- nues of an abbey of which he was su- perior ; but whether the forfeiture arose from his attachment to popety, or the yellow-haired companion, oral history has preserved no record. Near this retreat stands a small orato- ry or cell, furnished with a ruined altar, and some curiously carvedheads of saints; while several fragments of rude sculp- tureand entablatures, with mottoes in Latin or Spanish, lie scattered around it. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 125 In the traditional history of the baro- ny, L * * *d holds a distinguished place. The castle, erected and long possessed by the O'Dowels, one of the most pow- erful families in Connaught, was besieg ed and taken by the clan of the Mac Swines ; whose descendants in the reign of Elizabeth made it over, for a certain sum of money, with all the circumjacent lands, to Edward Crofton, an officer in Essex's army, and afterwards escheator- general of Ireland. That the lands of L* * *(j vvere neither won by arms, nor seized on by licensed violence, from the original proprietors, is a circumstance well known to the neighbouring peasan- try : one of them said to me, '^ L***d estate is not a debenture,'' which is a term applied to those properties made o- ver by Cromwell to his soldiers : and the liberality of the escheator-general has added a kind of reverence to the affecti- on and respect which his lineal descen- dant has awakened in the hearts of his tenants, dependants, and followers * l2 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 126 * This term will only be understood in Ire- land, where the " followers of the family" claim and receive the right of patronage, and too of- ten of support and maintenance ; it is a lin- gering custom of feudal times, which in many instances would be " more honoured in the breach than the observance.'* END OF VOLUME 1 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES OF IRELAND WRITTEN IN CONNAUGHT BY MISS OTVEJVSOjV, VOLUME SECOND> BALTIMORE : PRINTED FOR GEO. DOBBIN & MURPHY AND CALLENDER. & WILLS. Geo. Dobbin & Murphy, Printers » 1809. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. Sfc. SKETCH XIII ALTHOUGH the sun was hastening to his goal, pursued by gloomy masses of dark red clouds, that seemed ^' porten- tous of a storm,^' we were tempted a few evenings back to take a short ramble, which amply repaid us for the risk we voluntarily encountered. The threatened inclemency, however, passed away in a few heavy drops : the air was soft and oppressive, and its tran ISO PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. quillity was only disturbed at distant in- tervals by sudden gusts of wind, which increased the dashing of the waves against the bar. The mountains on the other side of the bay were veiled in deep blue mists, while the summits of those we approach- ed were brightened by the slanting sun- beam, which shot its sacred light from the watery clouds on which it seemed to repose. As we proceeded through a deep- entangled dell, I was struck by the forci- ble contrast presented to my eye, by two cabins, which lay close to each other ; the one wretched and ruinous, was rais- ed with mud, and thatched with sods ; the other well built, and almost pictu- resque in its appearance, displayed all the neat comforts of an English cottage. Mr. **** offered to account for the dis parity; but observing a decent look- ing old man seated at the door of the bet- ter residence, he added, " Here is one, an old tenant and workman of my fa- ther's, whose information on the subject will be more grateful to you than mine PTEIOTIC SKETCHES. 131 can possibly be.'^ The old man now ap- proached us, and with that courtesy which invariably distinguishes the manners of the peasantry of this country, he request- ed us to walk in and rest ourselves, ad- ding, the cow had just been milked, if we would condescend to take a draught of new milk. W^e found within the cabin his-old dame seated at her wheel, and a young girl busied at some flax. She was pretty, and on enquiry I found she was not their daughter, but a little orphan they had a- dopted. " Poor thing, said the old man, looking affectionately at her, she has got a disorder in her arm, which is wasting her away sadly. '^ Mr. **** advised him to take her to an hospital in the neigh- bourhood, " God bless her," returned the old man, " I would take her all over the world, if it would do her any good ;" and yet he had a family of his own, and the little orphan had no other claim on his kindness than that of standing in need of it. 132 PATRIOTIC SKinXHti^. I now inquired into the cause of thai evident disjjarity of circumstance? which apparently existed between him and his neighbour, and was glad to hear that the ruinous cabin was uninhabited. ** That miserable hut,** said he. *•' was my own poor home for twelve jears ; for, never being able to get a lease from the gentle- man who stood between me and the head landlord, his honour's father there, Chri si bless him, my heart failed me, as to do- ing any thing in the \i ay of improvement: knowing that if I did, my poor boys might be turned out, and a stranger come' and reap the fruits of our labour : so I went plodding on from year to year- heartless enough, taking an acre here to-day. and there to-morrow, to sow our potatoes and flax in. But no sooner had the lands got back into his honour's hands, my blessing light on him. than he gave us a lease that will stand good for my chil- dren and my children's children ; and then our spirits got op. and we worked night and day. and improved this little farm, and built this comfortable cabin. PaTEIOTIC SKiTCHi:*. lo3 which it is 'worth while to keep neat and clean ; and though I never saw twenty guineas of my own together in all my life, there is not a happier man in the ba- rony for an that.^ Thi-; little detail -bed another Tiy : li^ht upon those pc»palar discontTr.:? which have so long agitated this conn 07'. and which have been invariably anribirt ed to an inimicality on the pan of the I- ri=h peasant to the British government : ^ "pyhold lease is onknown in Ire- .:A neither the eqmty nor the heart of the middle-man acknowledges those claims which the affection ef the child makes on the little spot dear to the earliest feehngs ot his sool. and reclaim- ed and cultivated by the hands of his fa- ther. We now proceeded along a narrow and neglected path, partially shaded by a thicket, and which gradoaDy woond np the lwt>w of a ragged hiD. whose snm- lo4< PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. mit was crowned with the ruins and ce- metery of the abbey of Druniard. As the abbey had received a particular be- nediction from one of the popes, it is still looked on as a kind of passport to salva- tion, by the neighbouring peasantry, to be buried in its consecrated ground; and many a snowy garland, and flowery wreath, identihed the '^ nairow house" of some recently lost, or tenderly lament- ed object. The gloom of evening was thickening ; from the eminence where we stood, the sea, dark and turbulent, was heard to roar. I sat down on a tomb among the ruins of the abbey; and the tone of my mind, though mournful, was not ungracious to my fancy or my feel- ings. At that moment a young peasant entered the cemetery, and having chas- ed away a mule who was grazing on its skirts, he took off his hat, and approach- ing Mr. *** with a melancholy air, said, <^ that he had followed his honour, in the hope of relieving his heart of a great weight, for that it was nigh to break when he beheld the beasts of the field disturbing the remains of hi< poor father PATKIOTIC SKETCHES. 1S5 and mother, owing to the fences of the burial-ground being all removed or bro- ken down, so that at last the whole church-yard would become pasture; and all this/' added he, " for want, an please your honour, of mending that ruined wall which served as a parting between it and the parson's lands. For my own part, I would rather fast for a week, and give up my labour towards rebuilding the wall, than to see the remains of my poor parents disturbed by mules, and horses, and pigs ; and if your honour will but allow me to take stones and sand from your honour's quarry, I will engage to build up the wall myself in three days, without either assistance or reward." — This disinterested request was instantly complied with, and with blessings on his tongue, and satisfaction in his eyes, the young peasant departed ; stooping to pluck away a thistle from the grave of his parents as he passed it,* with a look * I afterwards leamt that he had actually car- ried the stones on his back from a considerable distance, with which he had built up the walls of the cemetery. 1S6 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. full of self-satisfaction, and delighted to make a temporary resignation of the means of livelihood, by which be should secure the ashes of his departed parents from violation. The affectionate regard which the Irish peasant feels for the memory of those dear to him in life, is indeed romantic, and almost incredible. ^^ Here," said Mr. ****^ pointing to a tomb-stone — *^ here is a curious instance of the love of posthumous honours prevailing among the lower orders of this country. The person whose death, &c. &c. this grave- stone is to relate, superintended the car- riage of it here to-day himself, and ac- tually chose the spot where he wished to be interred. He was a poor farmer in delicate health ; and probably purchased the means of perpetuating his memory after death, by the denial of many com- forts requisite to the prolongation of his life." This circumstance brought mutually to our remembrance many anecdotes il PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 187 lustrative of the predominant passion of the lower Irish, to hold an endeared im- mortality in the hearts of their surviv- ing friends. In the poems of Ossian ma- ny allusions are made to this so ignoble propensity ; and the bard who anxious- ly exclaims, " Oh! lay me near my favo- rite hills, ye that see the light,'' &c. &c. seems to have been animated by the same desire as the peasant of the present day, who w^atches with anxiety the progress of his tomb, and marks the spot which is to receive his ashes. Not many months back, a labouring man was tried in an assize-town in this province, and condemned to die; but be- traying a hardened insensibility to his fate, even while sentence was passing on him, the judge endeavoured to awa- ken some ^^ compunctious visitings of conscience" in his unrepenting breast, by declaring that he should suffer in for- ty-eight hours. ^^ Forty- eight hours !" reiterated the condemned with a smile of contempt; " in forty eight minutes if yon m2 138 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. will, so that my body is but given to my people.^' It is a circumstance well known in the neighbourhood of Tereragh, that during the late rebellion a man was tried and condemned for disaffection, to whom it was offered to have his sentence of death changed into transportation;, if he would make some discoveries. After some con- sultation, however, with his wife and fa- mily, he sent for the officer of the guard, and told him he was ready for executi- on. ^' We must all die, please your ho- nour,'' said he calmly, " sooner or la- ter ; for my part, thank God ! I am sure of dying in the midst of my people — Many a tear will be dropt, and many a song sung over me, and my children's children will talk of my wake and my funeral. But if I go into foreign parts, though I save my life for a time, 1 must die at last; and die among strangers^, without one friend to close my eyes, or to watch the morning light shining for the first time on my corpse." His wife, who was present, wept; but confirmed PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 139 him in his resolution, and the next day he was executed. A passion for enjoying a twofold exis tence, independent of actual being ; of tracing back genealogical honours, and anticipating a perpetuated life in the hearts of those they leave behind ; is a passion incidental to the native Irish cha- racter of every rank ; and though in the world's language it may be deemed a ro- mantic passion, yet romance, like hero- ism, is never the national trait of a cor- rupt or base people : it may be found in the character of an Aristides ; it may be traced in the conduct of a Scevola, but it will not be easily discovered in the slaves of modern Greece, or found in the natives of modern Rome. The last rays of the setting sun had withdrawn their glow from the ruins of Drumard, and were succeeded by a clear twilight, animated by the brightness of a rising moon. W^e were on the point of returning to L*** house, which was ht- tle more than half a mile distp^nt across a 140 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES; ijeld-patb, when a partial view of a holy well caught as we descended the brow of the hill, and tempted us to a little pilgri- mage aside, for it lay almost in our way to L*** house. We directed our steps therefore to a glen, through which a stream meandered its irregular way, o- verarude bed of rock, whic"^ produced an incessant murmur in its impeded course. A little circular spot sacred to religious gloom, and shaded with sycamores and elms, terminated the glen : its entrance was constructed of a rude arch, and the flag which formed its threshold was thrown over the stream, which had doubt- less been the rubicon of faith to many an all-believing soul. In the centre of this consecrated spot stood around stone bath, which received its tributary waters from the adjoining sacred spring ; which was simply covered with a broad fiat stone, raised over it longitudinally. A path was traced round the holy well, which seemed to have been '' worn by holy knees," and a small bowl suspend- ed over it by a chain, many a holy lip had doubtless pressed, and haply fancied PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 1 11 that it quaflfed salvation with a draught. At some little distance from the bath and well stood a simple altar, enriched with stones, and shaded by a spreading oak, from whose trunk was hung a wooden crucifix, and on whose branches were thrown the votive offerings of those whose " faith had made them whole," while the names of the pious convales- cents were carved on its bark. Religion, in her deepest mood of so- lemn meditation, couid not have chosen a spot more congenial to the indulgence of her spiritual abstraction. The gloo- my sequestration of the place, the purpo- ses to which it was devoted, the rude simplicity of its aspect, the sweet solem- nity of the hour, the oppressive softness of the atmosphere, and the stilly sounds that breathed on the silence of the even- ing, gave a combined and touching inte- rest to the scene ; and if I were to judge by my own feelings, it required no pre- disposition to fanaticism, to resign, in such a spot and in such an hour, the soul to the influence of sacred emotion, and 142 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. by a " soft transition mingle with the skies/' Such a temple as this must ever be ac- cordant to the simplicity of primitive re- ligion, where heaven forms the canopy, and nature furnishes the altar ; where all inspires enthusiasm, unaccompanied by the fury of sect, and all breathe the ardour of devotion, unalloyed by that ve- nality to which devotion is so frequent-, ly prey ; when credulous vice hopes to *' bribe the wrath of ill-requited heaven," and pious Fraud affects to cancel the sin, and laughs while he profits by the folly of the sinner. Superstition is the religion of weak minds ; but the surperstition which t^ simple, the romantic solemnity of this little spot awakened, was the orthodox of the fancy and the heart. I left it with regret ; and we again found ourselves in the gloomy little glen ; the sea-breeze rushed sharply through it, and our approach to the shore was mark- PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 143 ed by the change of atmosphere, which was now sharp and cold ; and we were luxuriating in the idea of a warm draw- ing-room and good fire, when a shivering little girl appeared driving a sorry horse, laden with turf, in tjie narrow^ and almost impassible defile which we were strug- gling through ; she did not appear above ten years old, and was literally half-nak- ed. With the idle curiosities incident to ramblers, we asked her some questions, which she answered in Irish ; and we learnt that she was the eldest child of a poor widow, who lived on the other side of the hill we had descended ; she was the only one of four children able to work, ^' and was then," she said, *' returning home after getting some turf off Law- rence Hogan's bog, Patrick Flanagan having lent his horse out of charity to draw it.'^ '' And Mr. Lawrence Ho- gan," said Mr. ***, ^^ is liable to a pe- nalty for giving turf in this manner off the bog ; and Mr. Patrick Flanagan has been idle all davfor the want of his horse; 144 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, but one half of the poor of this country would perish were it not for the benevo- lence and brotherly assistance of the o- ther." The little shivering girl curtsey- edj and passed on towards the mountain. How few are the hardships to which the females of this country are not innured from their infancy ! By the time we had reached the old a- venue of L*** house, the moon rode high, and darted her beams through the foliage of the trees that canopied our heads, while opposed to her cold but brilliant light the deep red blaze of a turf fire gleamed through the ^^ loop-hole" of a neighbouring cabin. The song which caught our car as we passed the door in- duced us to enter. It was the song of an itinerant taylor ; he was seated in the centre of the earthen floor, working by the light of a rush, and surrounded by a group of children, who were hanging de lightedly on his song ; and watching with eagerness the progress of the little frieze jackets, spun by their mother, and now in the hands of the musical taylor, while PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, 115 their parents, released from the labours of hire, were working by the light of the moon in their little garden; and their eldest brother, submitting to the influ- ence of inordinate fatigue, lay stretched on some straw in a corner of the ca- bin, the head of a calf actually reposing on his arm, and the parent cow quietly slumbering at his feet. A more striking picture of the interior of an Irish cabin could not be given. Notwithstanding a certain quaint hu- mour in the wandering taylor, who en- tered with some degree of droll freedom into conversation with us, and the beau- ty of the children strikingly apparent even in their ragged attire, the clouds of smoke which thickened round us drove us almost immediately away. 146 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. SKETCH XIII. There are not only picturesque forms, picturesque scenes, and picturesque sounds, on which the fancy loves to dwell; but even the weather has its picturesque beauty, and every season of the day "its charm peculiar :" which to a poetic ima- gination never looses a certain interest, and communicates to every object some- thing of its own character. Thus while the genius of a Lorraine basked in the red rich beams of a declining sun, the fancy of a Salvator wooed the gloomy shadows of the midnight storms. Thus the East's chill blasts, or South's soft breeze, the thunder's prelusive cloud, or day's meridian ray, communicates to the human frame a sensation correspondent PATKICrriC SKETCHES. 147 to their effects ; which reacting on the feeling and the mind, submits to the in- fluence of material causes, the essence of the immaterial being.. " So the glad impulse of congenial powers, Or of sweet sound, or fair-proportion'd form. The grace of motion, or the bloom of lights Thrills through imagination's tender frame : From nerve to nerve, all naked and alive, They catch the spreading ray till now the soul At length discloses every tuneful spring To that harmonious movement from without Responsive." Human knowledge has its source in human wants ; and he who first made meteorology his study, was perhaps like me, dependant on the vicissitudes of the weather for his occupation and his plea- sures. A ramble among some line mountain scenery having been proposed, we left L*** house early in the morning on our pedestrian tour ; although the apparent ly doubtful temper of the day almost held 148 PATKIOTiC SKETCHES. determination in suspense, while it pos- sessed the same degree of fascination as the dotage of iove is apt to discover in the half-pouting, half-smihng caprice of a whimsical mistress. The mellowed tone of spirits under which my last Sketch was drawn, when the soft gloom of an autumnal evening hung its pensive sha- dows round me, was now^, by the sweet- ness of an autumnal morning, animiited into that flow of animal and intellectual vivacity which flings on the opening scenes of nature a prismatic hue, " And before us turns The gayest, happiest attitude of things. As we emerged from the venerable a- venue, the elevation of the road into which w^e advanced gave to our glance a full view of the ocean; its bosom smooth and unruflied sparkled to the radiance of an almost vertical sun ; while the bar re- sisting the tide's swelling ebb, flung back the stealing wave in snowy breakers. High above our winding path the Ox- mountains arose like an amphitheatre, PA'rRlOTIC SKETCHES. 149 and spreading their undulating line to- wards the County of Letrim, lost their distant summits in the golden clouds that reposed on them, while on the opposite shore the solitary majesty of Knock-na- ree settled its lofty brow. As we paused to contemplate a scene rich in some of the finest features of the picturesque sublime, a young peasant approached us: he seemed like the here- ditary bards of his country, " formed in the prodigahty of nature;" and though ''■ he whistled as he went/' if the intelli- gence of his countenance was to be cre- dited, it was not " for want of thought.'' This," said Mr.***, who accompanied us, "is an apropos recontre ; for this is the young fellow I mentioned to you, who has obtained so much celebrity a- mong his rustic friends for singing the songs of Ossian ; and in fact, after a few words of conversation with him, we dis- covered he was on his way to attend a wake seven miles for that purpose. Mr. *** asked him if he would come and N 2' 150 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. sing the songs of Ossian for us at L*** house ; he repUed^ with a bow and a blush ^^ that he did not think he could, not being used to sing before such com- pany;" adding, that *Mie was sure he could •AOt make himself understood in English, as the songs were in such fine old cramp Irish, that few (save the old people) could understand them; and that though he felt all he sung, he could not hijnself explain it, so as to hit his fancy. '^ In a word he gave us to understand, that the songs had descended orally in the pure ancient Irish, which, like every other polished language, had its classical and vulgar dialects. At my particular instance, the young story-teller (for so he was named) re- peated some stanzas from Ossian in a species of recitative not unmusical : it was an account of Fingal's combat with the Danish monarch; and while he recit- ed the combat with some degree of epic fire, he pointed to a mountain sacred to some of the feats of his hero, and thus PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 151 gave a superadded interest to his ^' song of other times." It is now T believe generally allowed by those whose attention has been fasci- nated by the subject, that the Ossianic poems are not more ancient than the ele- venth and twelfth centuries ; as many of the terms of language found in them must have been unknown to the early I- rish: they are even now given in an al- most obsolete dialect, though still in that short measure which was formerly sung to the harp by the Irish lyrists. The pertinacity with which the Irish adhere to their ancient customs and man- ners, in almost every instance, is strong- ly illustrated in this; our young story-tel- ler being in fact a representative of a certain order of *^ bardis," of whom Spenser gives so ^curious an account. — Speaking of the higher order of min- strels he says,* " their verses were ta- ken up with general applause, and sung * Vol. vi. small edition. 152 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. at all feasts and meetings, by certain o- ther persons whose function that is, and who receive for the same great rewards and reputation among them." * In a la- ter period however, this musique ambu- Xante seems to have declined in its influ- ence, as did its professors in respectabi- lity ; for we find one of them thus descri- bed by Sir William Temple : '' A very gallant gentleman of the north of Eng- land," says he, '^ has toM me of his own experience, that in his wolf-huntings * " The Scotch, Welsh, and Irish, though the countries they inhabit have been much sub- ject both to foreign aggression and intestine wars, yet contain more of their aboriginal in- habitants, and are at this day a less mixed race than the English. They have stiJl in some measure retained .in popular use their peculiar dialects, handed down to them from remote ages. They converse in their own language with a conscious delight, and have preserved many of their ancient customs, institutions, tra- ditions, and pastimes, and also many of their metrical compositions.'*— Pres^ow no the OrU gin and Progress of the Fine Asts. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 153 ihere^, when he used to be abroad in the mountains three or four days together, and lay very ill at nights, so that he could not sleep, they would bring him one of the tale-tellers ; that when he lay down would begin a story of a king, or a giant, or a dwarf, or a damsel, or such ram- bling stuff, and continue it all night long, in such an even tone, that you heard it going on whenever you awakened." Mr. Walker traces the origin of ro- mantic fabling in Ireland to an Orien- tal source ; not however through so re- mote a medium as the Milesian settlers in this country, but through those catho- lic missionaries deputed occasionally from Rome to regulate the ritual, and who probably introduced among their sup- plies of holy legends, many profane ro- mances, the wild off-spring of visionary fancies and monastic indolence ; and as the brilliant fictions of the East were the elements of which these romances were composed, ^^ they thus,'' Mr. Walker as- serts, ^*^ obtained a footing in Ireland, and 154 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. rurnished materials for the metrical talcs of our early bards. '^ 1 have however met with some ancient Irish compositions which did not wear the character of Oriental poetry, and certainly rose far beyond the " rambling stuff" alluded to by Temple. I shall se- lect a translation of one as an instance. Scene, near Qalway. " Now sleeps the breeze of night on the moon-shattered wave, and the kindling azure of rosy morn invites my steps to the ocean's brim ; its murmer sooths my care ; a ship at a distance (stately as a swan on the rising surge) salutes my eye ; the swelling sail courts the passing air ; quickly she reaches the pebbled shore ; her lading precious holds the attentive sight captive ; the richest silks of Greece in folds loose floating rise, or sinking beam each various die that woofs the fluid bow ; while precious stones that thirsty-seeming drink the light gleam brightly round. But soon my wandering PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 155 soul is fixed on one fair object issuing from the bark, milder than day decend- ing on the plain ; behind her flows a train of snowy virgins, in movements gentle and in air divine ; but she that train out- shines as Hesper does his twinkling host, while her untainted mind beams through her form, diifusing smiles that soften e- very thought, and tune to sighs of love each passing gale ; her wavy locks in parting radiance fall adown her lessening waist, while shining rings of happy gold embrace her snowy neck ; the infant blushes of the dewy rose light kiss her cheek ; her scarcely parting lip delays the milky dawn. Now various thoughts of conteftiplation rise — AVhat can the er- rand of this angel mean ? for nothing less I deemed the beautious form of Peg- gy Deane. O fairest star of beauty's spreading sky ! O beautious swan, that swelling on the sight dissolves in luxury the sinking soul ! O beautious nymph with teeth of polished snow! O sweetest branch of an illustrious race, whose deeds have often swelled the eternal song, and fed the poet's flame ! O voice 156 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. of love, whose melting tones new accents to the listening harp impart! at thy dear presence the sun enfeebled grows, his beams soft sinking shew thy flowing hair that richer glows than his. Thrice hap- py man ! oh, happiest he of men, who dares thy presence sott approach, hang on thy look, meit at thy touch, or waste his soul for thee in sighs ! O too enchanting look, that early spreads its soft persuasion o'er my heart, that dimed mine eyes, and won me first to verse ; much fairer than Cassandra's form, than Helen of the win- ning mein, or Dian chaste, or Graina, soft-eyed maid,* or Deirdra mild, that with her lover Naoise fled to Alban's shore from Ulster's king, her spouse whose beauty, hapless fate, and lawless flame, have often swelled the poet's reed! Yes, thou art fairer far than she; and yet thy glowing charms await unsung : in vain the lily offers for thy neck, the rose-bud for thy cheek, or blossoms for thy hair. Thy waist is gentler then the * A celebrated Irish beauty and heroine in the reign of Elizabeth. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 157 weasel's, and thy song's melody would chase the stroke of death ; my heart in- cessant bleeds from womids thine eyes have made ! I feel my soul dissolve in sighs, and I am shrunk like flowers that mourn the absence of the sun. I'm like the solitary fowl on evening's purple wave ; thy breath alone can warm me, for thy breath is sweeter than the breath of morn. In vain I fly, still thou persu- est: in solitude I meet thy presence, and in a crowd I am alone: imagination loves to dwell upon thee ; thy hair long and spreading is drawn from love's own net; the rose and lily still dispute thy cheek ; thy accent soft fades like the accent of the melting string ; and thine eye's beam -oh ! happy he who flies that beam, yet hapless he! !!" We had scarcely taken leave of our young story-teller, whose accidental ren- contre has led me into this digression, vv^hen a sudden shower obliged us to seek shelter in a cabin near the shore ; though Vtttle better than a mud built hut. it was o 158 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. singularly clean, and we found its mis» tress (an elderly dame) busied in prepar- ing dinner for her sons, who were at work. The feast consisted of some pota- toes and milk, of which we were courte- ously solicited to partake. In the course of some little chit-chat, she took occa- sion to complain to Mr.**** of the op- pression she suffered from her landlord ; and having mentioned the exorbitant rent she paid for her cabin, added with a look and a manner I shall never forget : "Surely it is too much to pay for a shed io break one^s heai^t under T^ So energe- tic, so expressive is the Irish language, that those of the lower order, who bor- row the idiom of their English from that of their native tongue, frequently say more in a single sentence than volumes could express.* "Your absence is ever present to me ; " " the light of heaven has taken shelter in your eye ;'^ " pulse *" The Irish tongue is sharp and sententi- ous," says Stuinhurst, " and offereth great occa- sions to quick apothcgnis and proper allusions.'' PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 159 of my beating heart;" and many other equally tender expressions of endear- ment, I have heard them frequently use to each other; and indeed, were Love to draw up a nomenclature of his own tech- nical phrases, the Irish language would perhaps contribute more largely to the undertaking then any other whatever. 160 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. SKETCH XIV. A§ novelty affords to the senses and the mind one of the liveliest gratificati ons of which either is susceptible, that system w^hich still retains its gloss, that mode which still preserves its sanction, whether founded in truth or originating in error, still holds its patent from the passions of mankind, and is neither to be opposed with effect, nor resisted with success, till the acumen of experience has detected its fallacy, or till it becomes uninteresting by becoming stale ; while that which has for its best recommenda- tion the charm of novelty only, must owe the sanction of universal adoption to the same variable and fluttering power to which it stood indebted for its first intro- PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 161 duction. Whether the ^^ new light" in farming so eagerly embraced in many parts of Ireland, owes its influence to its novelty or to its intrinsic excellence, it is for those to judge who can form their es- timate from experienced proof. But how far this country has been benefited mo- rally, politically or physically, by the in- creased weight of it sirloins, the additi- onal rotundity of its hogs, or the delicate ossific construction of its sheep, is a cir- cumstance of which I candidly plead the most perfect ignorance. But while the silver vase or golden me- dal shines at the board, or glitters at the breast of him who has enriched his coun- try with the fattest bullock, or ennobled it with the largest hog, is there no prize for him whose heart, swelling indignant at the obvious degradation of his hum- ble compatriot brethren, exerts the best energies of his being to raise them in the scale of human nature and national in- interest? for him who indignantly be- holding that o2 162 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. '< Man's the only growth that withers here,** boldly comes forward as the champion of those, from whose minds even habit- ual wretchedness has not obliterated the noblest traces of humanity ; who en- deavours to extend towards them the means of labour, and consequently of subsistence ; who adequately rewards their exertions, and voluntarily lends his individual efforts to that redress of long and existing grievance which can alone chase the scowl of latent insurrection from the close-knit brow of popular feel- ing, and awaken the cheery smile of heartfelt contentment in the downcast eye of habitual despondency. 1 am told that many characters of high vespectabillity, and some political influ- ence in this country, undisturbed by nati- onal conflict, unambitious of legislative power, devote all their faculties to the im- provement of such implements of hus- bandry as may eventually annihilate the necessity of all manual labour, and like the flying chase of Bacon, or the magic PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 163 cap of Fortunatas, execute the intention of their possessors without the trouble- some intervention of human aid or a- nimal assistance ;* that others, distin- guished by their elevated rank in socie- ty, meekly devote themselves to the bi- enseance of a piggery, and endeavour to regulate the " petits morales^^ of its occupants by the new light of agricult- * In a country swarming with population, chiefly devoted to pasturage, and inhabited by a bold, active, and restless peasantry, the good policy of torfiiring mp.rlianicg:^ sl^ill to devise nev/ modes of lessening the neci^sity of human labour, is not very clear to nlfHids who are apt to judge of causes by their effects, and to esti- mate an invention rather by its utility than its ingenuity. — " Le public ne prendjamtisconseil que de son interet, £c ne proportionne point son estime pour les differens genres de I'e sprit a I'inegale difficulte de ces genres, c'st-a-dire au- nombre Sc a la finesse des idees U^^cessaire ; pout y reussir, mais seulement a Tavantage jplus ou monis grand qu'il en retire."— Z>e l*£sjirit,/iar Rafi^iort au Public, c. 12, p, ^9. 164 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. ral philosophy;* and that many who u- nite opulence to rank, emulate the pro- pensities and avocations of their own blacksmith, and on the splendid domains of their ancestors preside over the sale of newly-invented harrows and patent ploughs, t But while the regimen of cattle has become an object of fashionabh* attenti- on, who, by an adequate reward of in- dustry, " Grants a bliss at labour's earnest call," ■M *An Irish gentleman distinguished by his farming enthusiasm, invented a trough of pecu- liar construction, to induce tlie pigs to eat with proprete i failing in the attempt, I heard him seriously declare that there was a radical prin- ciple of filth in the animal, which neither care nor education could vanquish, t Attendant on these vast machines, and at- tached to the farms of these patrician farmers, a number of English hinds, imported to super- intend the farms, are to be seen, who, well 4ressed, well fed,^ and well paid, insult by their f' l^ATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 165 and adds to the potatoe and salt of his peasant the luxury of one of the turnips sown for his sheep ? While some degree of elegance is betrayed in the construc- tion of a bullock-s-tall or a pig-stye, who raises the walls or secures the roof of the miserable cabin, which, covered with a few turf sods, subjects its shivering in- habitants to all '' the penalties of Adam, the seasons' changes ?^' While vehicles of comfort and of ease are provided to convey the pampered animal from the soil that nourishes it, to the market where it is to enrich its owner's purse, who feels for those whose wretched drapery de- fends not the form it scarcely covers from the weather's inclemency, for those whose torn and perished feet so of- ten track the winter's snows with their naked pressure? It is in vain to assert that by the po- pulation of Ireland exceeding the neces- sity of human labour, the wretchedness presence the natives of the soil, and by contrast and comparison teach them to feel their own degraded state with keener susceptibility. 166 PATEIOTIC SKETCHES. of the lower orders is become an inevi- table evil ; while immeasurable tracts of bog, whose reclaiming would aft'ord sub- sistence to many hundred families, are suffered to lie undrained, to impure and corrupt the climate, and to injure and deform the aspect of the country ;* while * The promotion of public good must ever in some degree flow back in an inverse ratio on those whose individual exertions have tended to that promotion j and I was so forcibly struck by the proprietors of bogs slumbering over the aggrandizement of their own properties, that I applied for a solution of the enigma to a gentle- man of considerable landed property and agri- cultural experience ; who replied, " that the preliminary step to render a bog productive was to drain it, which was best effected by subdivid- ing it into roads ; but that the inability of the small adjacent baronies to undertake so great a work was in general the chief obstacle. It was alone to be accomplished by becoming an object of general attention, by the unanimity and confederate efforts of a county at large to give presentments ; in a word, the influence and exeition of public spirit, blended with the individual principles of private interest." The PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 167 those numerous rivers in which the is- land abounds, sharing that genev^V ne- glect of all public concerns, interwoven with the intrinsic and internal interest of the country, are suifered to overflow their banks to a vast extent ; whose time- ly confinement within their natural shoals would rescue many thousand acres of now unproductive land, from decided loss, and give employment to many thou- sand wretches, whom want of work and not want of principle drives to despera- tion. Incapable from my sex, my years, my inexperience, to judge how far the na- tural, political, or commercial state of my native countj-y admits of the intro- duction and establishment of manufac- tories ; it is yet impossible I should cast my eyes on those vast bogs which spread their savage plains till the horizon limits Dublin Society, I understand, give premiums for crops oif bogs, for the obt linment of which a few partial efforts by certain individuals are made ; but if the premiums were offered for 168 PATRIOTIC SKKTCHEb. their extent to the strained eye ;* it i& impossible I should behold those nume- rous and noble rivers whose too abun- dant waters covert the most naturally the draining of bogs, would or would not the effects be more general, and more extensive- ly beneficial ? * The partial reclamation to be seen on the skirts of some bogs, testifies the latent capabili- ties of the whole. Speaking of a bog at Word- lawn, the seat of Lord Ashtown, and of the proprietor's mode of improving it, Mr. Young in his travels through Ireland asserts, that the bog in its original state was " like a bed of ;tow,'* unable to sustain the pressure of a horse's foot, from the lightness of its substance, and so wet that the drains could not be at first cut deeper than four feet ; yet he adds, that he afterwards saw it in such perfect improvement, that its hay was fine, its herbage good, and it carried the complete appearance of a meadow, except in the drains, where the heath still ap- peared. t This perhaps would be most effectually obviated by the interference of the legislature, obliging the proprietors of the circumjacent PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 159 luxurious soil, without a conviction strik ing my heart, that, in the remedy of those natural but injurious defects, lurk employment for the industrious, compe- tency for the impoverished, riches for the individual, and beauty, health, and prosperity, for the country in general. Oh ! surely it requires no new light to discover that the happiness of a people constitutes the prosperity of a nation ; that neither the improved beauty of her animals, nor the partial luxuriancy of her soil, can secure her internal felicity, or add lustre to her reputation, .while cir- cumstances of a peculiar but not evitable nature repress the energy and limit the lands 10 contribute to a work of such private and public utility, according to their respec- tive tenures. The idea, however, is the sug- gestion of an inexperienced mind, guided by the enthusiasm of its wishes, in every thing that concerns the good of that country where its first ideas were awakened into existence, and cradled amidst circumstances of national interest. p 170 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. faculties of her children ; while pover ty sallows the check of her sons, and discontent sits lowering on their brows ; while the bold hand of religious distinc- tion flings its ice upon the ardent feelings of national confederacy ; and the bane- ful influence of party-spirit severs those hearts, whose unanimous coalition would form round the green shores of their na- tive island, a barrier impregnable to the force of foreign invasion, invulnerable to the arts of foreign seduction. To him then whose every energy tends to the promotion of that great object be the prize of national honour adjudged ; round his heart whose strongest feeling is his country's good, be that medal suspend ed, which ,warm from the mint of natio nal gratitude, his country's hand pre sents. For such is the man to whom monarchs should decree their honours ; such is the man to whom nations should erect their statues. I^ATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 171 SKETCH XV. THE precipice of Alt-bo is a shrine to which all the votaries of the '' terrible graces" of nature should bend their pii grim steps. No sloping upland lifting to the sun. Stone mountain this, desolate rock on rock i The burthen of the earth. From the window of my apartment at L##* house, the extreme point of Alt-bo incessantly caught my eye, and so fre- quently have I heard its wild and deso- late feamres exalted above the other na- tural sublimities of the neighbourhood, that unable to wait upon the tardy de- 172 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. parture of damp and gloomy weather, J prevailed on the indulgent associates of many of my little rambles to accompa- ny me to this master-piece of magnifi- ent but savage natm-e. The morning was chill, light showers fell at intervals, and as the road which leads to Alt-bo is ^o perilous and intricate as to be inacces- '-ible to any vehicle, we were obliged to perform our little pilgrimage on horse- back. As we proceeded, that bold ridge of mountain which towers above the nar- row plains of Tyrerah, spread its undu- lating lines to the left, blue with the mists of morning, and dashing from its clou- dy heights streams which the rain had swelled to torrents. To the right, the mountains of Donegal appeared like va- pours staining the horizon. The road narrow, devious, and sometimes almost impassable, frequently gave to our eyes the most wretched huts, whose half-nak- ed inhabitants the sound of our horses' feet occasionally brought to their doors, giving a moral finish, not to a scene of characteristic wiidness, but of comfort PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 173 less desolation. The ocean at last ab- ruptly broke upon our view, and pre- sented the noblest, though certainly the wildest coast I had ever beheld; the rock-scenery and windings of the coast equally deiying the pencil or the pen to detail the featui'es they darina'ly betrav- ed. As we reached the shore, the tide was going out; yet as we crossed the sands beneath the umbrage of " Rocks inaccessible, And summits that tii-ed the eagle*s wing," the agitated ocean drove its mountainous billows back, as if to threaten destruc- tion on those who thus intruded on the boundaries of its awful and treacherous empire. Almost bathed by the spray of the tide, which opposing w^inds thus flung back, we took advantage of a defile worn through rocks by the incm'sion of the waves, with some difficulty ascended the precipitous heights., and at last gained p2 174 PATRIOTIC SiiEtCiit^ the summit of those savage cliffs which a short time before we had strained our eyes to gaze at. We now continued, and with great difficulty, to follow the narrow path which was sometimes tracked along the edge of a precipice, sometimes wound through a desolated heath, and sometimes ran a- long the rocks which skirted the coast, until we at last reached the edge of a tor- rent which, flowing from the mountains that rose on our left, plunged into the ocean with a fathomless fall. Here, a- midst tlie acclivities of the rocks, ap- peared a few fishing huts, called in Irish •* the village of the cliffs ;" while among some boats drawn up from the shore, one of a better description was distinguished by the title of the admiral-boat, and be- longed to the chief or leader of this lit- tle piscatory colony. We obtained this intelligence from some young men, na- tives of the savage soil, and in their de- portment free as the winds that visited n It was Sunday, and they were amus- Patriotic sketches. 175 ing themselves on the rocks ; then- feet and heads were uncovered, though the wind blew keenly from the ocean, and the warm and almost impregnable co- vering we had provided ourselves with, was unable to resist the occasional at- tacks of the '^ pitiless storm.'' They however seemed perfectly un conscious of its effects ; and their appa- rent insensibility to the ^^jar of elements," and their tall, robust, and hardy figures, were finely in point with the rude scene- ry around them ; while their civilized address, and evident courtesy, evinc- ed the little influence which mere situa- tion can produce on manners. They en- treated us to rest in their huts, offered to be our guides, and when we thank- fully refused their attention, promised to take care of our horses, which now ceased to be of any use to us. The im- mediate path to Alt-bo, by which we now proceeded, was indeed barely passable to the human foot: sometimes the marshy soil sunk beneath the pressure of our 176 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. steps ; sometimes high momids of earth were to be surmounted, deep ditches got over, and not unfrequently the savage and irregular cliffs, darting abruptly in- to the ocean, rendered the head giddy while the timid and uncertain foot pursu- ed the track marked along their tower- ing summits. It was from the extreme points, and angular direction, of these cliffs, that we sometimes obtained a view of those immense grottoes, and yawning caverns, which vaulted their lofty heads, hung with sea-weed, and embossed with shells and maritime shrubs ; and where the pent up winds and incursive waves occasioned such an incessant war of e- lements, that fancy, resting her wan- dering eye upon the terrific excavations, might well consider them as the palladi- um of the spirit of the storms. Some scattered pieces of wreck floated near;* and at the entrance of one was anchor- ed a fishing-boat, which marked the ad- * The coast is reckoned fatal by mariners, and many vessels are frequently lost on it dur» ingthe winter season. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 177 venturous spirit of him that dared to guide it to so perilous a mooring. Above the most awful of these caves^ and high over all its savage competitors, towers the cliff which bears the name of Alt-bo. With hesitating steps and daz- zled eyes we approached its highest point. The ocean roaring at its shelvy base, whichindeed seemed "fixed in the world's foundation/' spread before the eye in all the grandeur of infinitude ; while the mountain scenery of Tyrerah rose in full relief to the left, and to the right swelled the savage supimits of the Rosses, which skirted the opposite shores of Donegal, and the island of Innis-murry lifted its green head midway amidst the surround- ing waves. At some distance from Alt- bo, the abyss of Coraduu presents an object never to be viewed without an e- motion of terror ; and if the source of the true sublime consists in that which excites ideas of pain and danger, and o- perates on the mind in a manner analo- gous to terror, the sublimest object I 178 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. have ever bejield is the abyss of Cora- dun. High and bold as the precipice of Alt-bo, its black and rocky sides seemed to have been wrenched asunder by some great convulsion of nature ; while the noise of the ocean rushing through the mighty chasm, though its ^* earth-shak- ing roar comes deadened up," falls on the ear like subterraneous thunder. Even the shrill scream of the numerous flocks of sea-fowl, which from its summit ap- pear like flies swarming at its base, is but faintly caught at intervals, when urg- ing their rapid wings, they reach its al titude half way, and spent and exhaust- ed by the soaring effort, sink on the vi^aves beneath. If any sounds can be said to be sub- lime, those which reached my ear as I tremblingly hung over the abyss of Co- radun, may surely arrogate the charac- ter; for though the sentiment of sublimity belongs more properly to the affections of the mind than to mere organic sensa- tion, yet who has not felt that there is in sound '^ some sympathy with souls," and PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 179 that the one may be '^ not touched but rapt^ not wakened but inspired," by the influence of the other? Oh! never can that effect be obliterated from my recol lection, which was produced on my fancy and my feelings, by the deep roar of wa- ters in the narrow confines of Coradun. and by the wildly magnificent scenery a- midst whose savage grandeur 1 heard it: often will the memory of that moment re- turn, when my mind, all its motions sus- pended between admiration and horror, became the victim of imagination ; and overwhelmed by a sense of my fancied danger, I rushed precipitately from the awful brow of Coradun, with such a feel- ing of vague and doubtful pleasure, as the consciousness of sudden preservation on the very verge of destruction brings with it, the lingering emotions of recent ter- ror tempering the joy of immediate de- livery. It is amidst such scenes as Co- radun and Alt-bo present, where " No vernal blooms the torpid rock array, Bvit meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest,*' 180 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. that descriptive genius might select her grandest images of sublimity. In such a scene, the soaring genius of a Shaks- peare, a Salvator, or an Ossian, might repose his soaring wing, and find his wildest visions realized. Our return from the shrine of our in teresting pilgrimage was marked-by as many ^^hair-breadth scapes," and '^mov- ing accidents,'^ as crossing the wildest heaths and most desolate rocks, amidst the sombre gloom of a dark stormy au tumnal evening, could bring with it.— While the roar of Coradun was still murmuring on our ears, we lost our path ; but fortunately met a poor peasant re- turning to his hut in the neighbouring- mountains, and who, instead of answer ing our questions, insisted on turning back with us, and was indeed our vo luntary guide for near two miles, which he had of course to traverse over again on his way home. Before we caught a view of the cliifs. the shadows of evening were thickening PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 181 into night; and notwithstanding the driz- zling of the rain, and keen sea-breeze that chilled the air, we found the cour- teous " sons of the wave" to whom we had intrusted our horses, watching with solicitude and impatience for our return. 1 82 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. SKETCH XVL WHATEVER hardships the Irish peasant submits to during the week, it <-an never be said that " Sunday shines no sabbaih-day to Jmn.^^ Apparently en- dowed with the singular faculty of being periodically happy, the hallowed day brings with it to him, a temporary obli- vion of every care, and the transient pos- session of every enjoyment, which his fancy, little schooled in pleasurable spe- culation, can devise. Early on a Sun- day morning a cabin, cleaner than usual, exhibits at its door a groupe very differ- ent in appearance from that it sheltered the preceding day. The lower Irish, pas- sionately fond of dress, and without the means of gratifying their dominant pas- PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 183 sion, confine their wishes to the hard- earned suit which the mass-house, or dance on Sunday, or the fair of their mar- ket-town, affords an opportunity of dis- playing. Thus the scanty drapery of wretchedness is exchanged, not only for the garb of comfort, but of ostentation ; and it is not unusual to behold even or- namental finery on those on Sunday, who during the rest of the week were worse clothed than the poorest mendicant in England. It is remarked by Buffon_, that *^ a man's character passes in some de- gree into his dress ; and that we are led to suppose what kind a man he is, by the kind of dress he wears." This is in some degree illustrated by the weekly meta- morphosis of the Irish peasant ; for he seems to throw off, with his wretched " customary suit," the gloom of coun- tenance which accompanied it, and the national cheeriness of his character then shines in every lineament of his face. , On a Sunday the young women go in groupes to the mass -house, generally 18 i PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. dressed in white gowns and coloured pet- ticoats ; with their rug cloaks hanging on one arm, and their shoes and stock- ings on the other. When they approach the chapel they bathe their feet in the first stream^, and assume those articles of luxury which are never drawn on but for shew, and the public gaze of the pa- rish. After prayers both sexes, and of all ages, generally adjourn to the fields, to witness a hurling* match, or some of * A barony, and even sometimes a county, will hurl against another. The respective par- ties are drawn up like two little armies, and dis- tinguished from each other by their colours.-*. Their goals are generally placed about 200 yards distant : they are guarded by two senti- nels called in Irish coolbara^ while the active parties are termed tridah^ which I believe means on the alert. " The might that slumbers in a peasant's arm'* is by them roused to an incre- dible exertion; and the address, spirit, and dex- terity, displayed during the game, are truly won- derful Wrestling-matches are also extremely frequent, and generally performed with singu- lar skill and adroitness. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 185 those manly sports to which the lower Irish are so passionately addicted. One of them, the cathu-clogh, or " flinging of the stone/' is precisely the same with the ancient Greek pastime of the discus. The candidate who pants for the fame of those " Virtues that are placed in nerve and bone," takes a stone of immense weight in his right hand, inclines his body a little for- ward, advances one l^g, poises his arm, and after two or three balancing moti- ons, flings it from him to a considerable distance. These national amusements are not confined to the peasantry, the young gentlemen of the adjoining coun- ties frequently engage in them. As in the gymnastic festivals of ancient Greece, men of the highest rank, and most re- fined education, appear as candidates for the prize of personal strength or per- sonal activity. Thus even the amuse- ments among the lower Irish are calcu- lated to strengthen their frames, and io inure them in supporting the greatest q2 186 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. burthens and the greatest fatigue. While the English peasant employs the hour succeeding to his attendance at church, in the perusal of some religious tract, the Irish peasant devotes himself to an exercise which may render him a less pi- ous, but certainly forms him to be a more serviceable member of the community. Although the fare of Sunday seldom rises beyond the accustomed potatoes and milk of the rest of the week ; some few halfpence are always spared from the household purse to purchase the plea- sures which the Sunday cake bestows. — In the centre of a field near some petit auberge, a distaff is fixed in the earth, on which is placed a large flat cake: this cake is the signal of pleasure, and be- comes the reward of talent. The young and old of both sexes, for miles round the neighbourhood, hasten to enjoy the pleasures of the cake, which is some- times carried off by the best dancer, and sometimes by the archest wag of the com- pany. At a little distance from this stan- dard of revelry, is placed its chief agent PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, 187 the piper, who is always seated on the ground with a hole dug near him, into which the contributions of the assembly are dropt : the manner of bestowing these donations is attended with a little gallantry not to be passed over in silence. At the end of every jig, the piper is paid by the young man who dances it, and who endeavours to enhance the value of the gift, by first bestowing it on his fair partner, and though a penny a jig is es- teemed very good pay, yet the gallantry or ostentation of the contributor, anxi- ous at once to appear generous in the eyes of his mistress, or to outstep the liberal- ity of his rivals, sometimes trebles the sum which the piper usually receives. I have been at some of these cakes, and have invariably observed the inordinate passion for dancing, so prevalent among the Irish peasants. It is indeed very rare to find an individual among them who was not for some time under the tuition of a dancing master.* Thus passes a- * It is however necessary to observe that the profession of this elegant art, by no means pro- hibits the adoption of any other : a friend of 188 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. way the Sabbath of an Irish peasant, the first hours of the day are devoted to re- hgion, the rest to the enjoyment of such pleasures as lie within the limited scope of his acquisition. Sometimes led by the light of nature, sometimes restrained by the shades of prejudice, alternately go- verned by truth and error, his conduct is only to be judged by the circumstan- ces under which he is reared. The rigid principles of Calvinistical faith, the strict observances of Lutheran piety, may con- demn his festal mode of passing that day peculiarly devoted to the Being who made it the sacred season of his own repose ; but whether the happy overflowings of a cheerful humble heart, blest and blessing in the short sweet season of its transient feUcity, or the sombre meditation of sys- mine having sent for a carman a few days back to convey some furniture to a neighbouring town, he excused himself, saying that " he was a dancing-master by trade, as well as a car- man, and that his pupils were so numerous just then, he could not possibly absent himself from them. PATRIOTIC SKJiTCHES. 189 tematic piety, periodically indulged, ac- cox'ding to the letter of the law, is the in- cense that '^ smells sweetest to heaven,'^ it is for him alone to judge ^^ to whom all heart>? are known '' 190 PATRIOTIC SKKTCHES, SKETCH XVII, TO those who are Epicureans in wea- ther, whose pleasures are in some degree subject to " every skiey influence," the refreshing sweetness of the air after a transient shower is the first of atmosphe- rical enjoyments ; and in the confidence of a promise oiFcred to us by a brilliant rainbow, we set out on one of the plea- santest rambles we had hitherto enjoyed. Directing our steps to the foot of the ox- mountains, we crossed a dismantled arch rudely thrown over a stream which flow- ed from their summit, and whose source became the object of our pursuit. As we descended the mountain's brow, a lit- tle vally gradually opened between its steep acclivities, which still ascending PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 191 with the elevation of the mountains, was still embosomed by its irregular and o- verhangingprojections,while the streams which serpentined through it, seemed- to expand as we proceeded along its banks, sometimes dashing wildly over those pie- ces of rock it had torn away in its steep descent, sometimes stealing its thin pel- lucid wave over broad flags of marble which shone brightly to the transient sun- beam, and sometimes falling unimpeded from a lofty and perpendicular steep, while from the white foam beneath arose a feathery spray which dropt in dewy showers on the aquatic plants with which its shores were enriched. We frequent- ly paused in the course of our ramble from the weariness of the continued as- cent ; but more frequently to contem- plate such scenes as included within a coup-d'oeil, much of the beautiful and sub lime of picturesque creation. The bound- less ocean, the Alpine rock, the dreary heath, the luxurious vale, and many landscape traits incongruous to each o- ther, seemed here happily united in one 192 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. harmonious combination ; while many a ruin which time had ^' mouldered into beauty," many a hut which necessity had hung upon the virid point of some tall clift', charmed the fairy gaze of fancy, and awakened in the musing mind a train of associated ideas which shed an extraneous interest over every object on which the eye reposed. While 1 beheld these beautiful scenes, so numerous in my native country, so frequently con- cealed in those remote places which na- tional observation has never visited, and to which foreign curiosity has never been pointed ; imagination eagerly glided o- ver those times of anarchy and warfare, when the waste and desolated land smok- ed with the vital stream of her sons, to that felicitous period, when the candid Bede describes it as another Canaan, flowing with milk and honey ; and when even Cambreus, borne away by the beau- ty and fertility of its aspect, describes it as a country whose verdant hills were covered with innumerable flocks, whose plains waved with golden corn, and whose ancient forests were filled with PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 193 wild beasts. Such it was when the Cam- brian topographer landed on its green and smiling shores among the first of its British invaders*. Notwithstanding the rough acclivities of which these mountains are composed, we found them cultivated to their sum- raits, in detached places ; and as we were climbing up an almost inaccessible steep, we overtook a poor peasant who was li- terally not driving but pushing a poor lean horse up before him, laden with pan- niers filled with manure, with which he was going to enrich a future potatoe * Even Morryson, the most prejudiced and abject of the many scribblers, who in the Eli- zabethian day, endeavoured to write themseh'es into the favour of the English government by calumniating the natural as well as the moral state of Ireland, even while he upbraids the na- tives for their negligence of agriculture, is in- advertently led into a description of the beau- ty and fertility of a part of the country and involuntarily extols the disposition of the Irish to tillage and their large exportation of corn. R 194 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. ridge, obtained for a low rent on the sum- mit of the mountain ; thus, by unexam- pled industry and unwaried labour, en- deavouring to " Force a churlish soil for scanty bread." Before we lost sight of him, he had ac- tually taken one of the panniers off the w^retched animal's back, and was carry- ing it on his own.* * A cultivation so constantly formed on the summits of the highest mountains in Ireland, proves that native taste for agriculture, which to the modern Irish has been so unjustly de- nied, and of which the ancient left such irre- fragable proofs. Mr. Mollineux in his letter to the archbishop of Dublin, supposes Ireland to have been more populous in former times, merely from the remains which it still exhibits of agriculture : " momitains, says, he, that are now covered with bogs, have been formerly ploughed, for when dug five or six feet high a proper soil for vegetation is discovered, and an appearance of furrows and ridges is still visible : PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 195 "^While necessitous industry, without the cheering stimulus of a competent reward, thus toils laboriously up the '^ heights precipitous/' and steals a scan- he adds, that a plough and a hedge-rov/ were found under a bog six feet deep in the county of Donegal, and that he had himself seen the stump of a large tree in a bog ten feet deep at Castie Forbes. It is well known that in the ■\vdldest and most uncultivated parts of the county of Cork, the vestages of high roads cut- through the mountains are still visible, and that while modern Ireland is reproached for the scantiness of her plantations, her luxurious woods in former times supplied England with the timber of which many of the noblest of her religious edifices are constructed : the churches of Gloucester, Westminster, and several others, are covered luith Irish oak. All that remained of the Irish woods were cut down during the reigns of William and Anne, and sent to Hol- land for the purpose of ship-building, Irish oak being even then deemed the best in Europe. I believe it was some time antecendent to that period, that the famous wood of shilelah in tlie county of Wicklow lost its growth of timber. " Countries," says Montesquieu, "^are not cul- 196 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. iy subsistence from that rugged soil least favoured by the genial eye of nature, in- dolence, as a national defect, cannot be attributed to the Irish character.* Per- haps indeed the same cheeriness of exer- tion is not to be found in the Irish labour- er as animates the efforts of the Enghsh husbandman. But surely the eagerness with which the English farmer seizes on the poor peasant emigrant of Ireland, is tivated in proportion to their fertility, but to their liberty ; and the vesdges of ancient agri- culture which are still discoverable in Ireland, give no faint proof of the civil liberty she en- joyed." * I have been repeatedly assured by persons of undoubted veracity, that it is usual to let the least fertile parts of the mountains to the pea- santry, at a low rent ; from whom, after they have by the greatest labour improved their soil, it is reclaimed, and relet at a higher rent to some more wealthy tenant : mean dme the ori- ginal cultivator takes another barren tract, and continues to use the same exertions to the same effect PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, 197 a correlative proof of that superiority of manual strength*, that wondrous capa^ bility of exertion, and that ready inclina tion for employment, which characterize the poor adventurer, whose merit in this instance is seldom justly estimated in his own country, and never adequately re- warded. ^' Nature is just to all mankind^ and repays them for their industry : she renders them industrious by annexing rewards in proportion to their labour; but if an arbitrary prince should attempt to deprive people of nature's bounty, they would fall into a disrelish of industry, and then indolence and inaction must be their only happiness:" and by whatever means the bounteous intentions of na- ture are counteracted, the efforts must be the same. The character of a nation, so far as it is uninfluenced by climate, must in a great degree be the result of the policy . * " Both the body and mind of the Irish," says Davis, " are indued with extraordinary a- bilities of natui'e." i98 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. by which it is governed. " La science de la morale, says Helvetius, n'est au- tre chose que la science meme de legis- lation.'' — Admitting, therefore, that the indolence of the Irish has become a na- tional vice, it certainly cannot be traced to a national source ; the liberal minister of Elizabeth^ reluctantly acceding to the fact, endeavours, and with success, to trace it to the extortion of com and live- r//, an extortion under which the Irish smarted for centuries, ^^ and which," says Davis, " produced two notorious effectSy for it made the lands waste, and the peo- ple idle ; for when the husbandman had laboured all the year, the soldier con- sumed in one niglit all the fruits of that labour." Among a people who for more than four centuries suffered the most gal- ling hardships that warfare and civil dis- sention could inflict, who, as an English minister expresses it, " were beaten as in a mortar by pestilence and famine," many bad habits must have insinuated themselves, which thne, good policy, and undeniable causes of popular content- ment, could alone ujidermine or des- PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 199- troy ;* and indeed a knowledge of Irish history is sufficient to convince the most prejudiced mind, that most of the vices which have been attributed to the cha- racter of the lower Irish, are to be trac- ed to an early political cause. Thus the same injustice that operated as a check on the ardour of Irish industry, broke * " Qu'ont produit, jusqu'aujourdhui les plus belles maximes de morales ? Elles ont corrige quelques particuliers des defauts que peu-^ttre ils se reprochaint d'ailleurs : elles n'ont pro- duit aucun changement dans les moeurs des na- tions. Quelle en est la cause ? C'est que les vices d'un peuple sant, si j'ose le dire, toujours caches au fond de sa legislation ; c'est la qu'il fut fouiller, pour arracher la racine productrice de ses vices." Helvetius. — " What has ever been accomplished by all the fine maxims of morality ? They may have corrected some faults, of which individuals were conscious in their conduct ; but they have produced no amend- ment in the characters of nations. And the cause of this is, that the vices of a people are always rooted in its legislative code, where w:^ must search in order to eradicate them/' 200 PATRIOTIC SKETCHESk the tie of national love, and drove the suffering native of Ireland a mendicant into foreign lands*, awakened in those w^ho preferred a struggling penury at home, to confident indigence abroad, that vigilant quickness of apprehension, which prejudiced aversion construed into craft. As we had now reached the spring of the mountain-torrent, whose devious course had already seduced us far beyond the general limits of our rambles, we began to descend by a winding path, which led to a little village on the skirts of the mountain's brow. The intelligence of our approach had preceded our arrival by some minutes, and two of the villagers who had been in dispute about a stream of water, which the one had diverted * <* So, says Sir J. Davis, that the lower I- rish chose to be beggars in foreign countries rather than labour in their o^vn fruitful land at home." " And a brave people, asserts Burke, " will prefer liberty accompanied by virtuous poverty, to a depraved and wealthy servitude." Re/lections on the Revolution in France. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 201 from supplying the mill of the other, came to submit their dispute to Mr. ***, and to abide by his arbitration. A people who are always thus ready to apply to magisterial influence, cannot so much be supposed a litigious people, as to act from a sense of equity that renders them ever alive to the least appearance of imposi- tion. An Irish peasant who thinks himself aggrieved or injured, will go any dis- tance, and encounter every obstacle, to obtain retribution, or, as he expresses it, to get law ; but whatever may be the destiny of his suit, or whatever verdict the magistrate pronounces, even though destructive to his hopes, and inimical to his interest, if he can at all reconcile it to his understanding, he submits without a murmur.* * Being on a visit a few Aveeks back at the house of a leading magistrate, and rising earlier one morning than usual, I beheld from my window two groupes of peasants leaning at a little distance from each other j and though it 202 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. Fierce in their native hardihood of soul, True to imagined ri^ht, above controul, While thus the peasant boasts his right to scan. He learns to venerate himself as man. The Irish have probably borrowed this keen sense of justice and profound sub- mission to judicial authority, from the ri- gid severity of their ancient Brehon laws. "When Sir E. Pelham and Sir J. Davis went as the first justices of assize into the counties of Tyrconnel and Tyrone, they observed, that though their corn- was excessively cold and rained heavily, they remained in this exposed and comfortless situa- tion from seven till ten. When my host de- scended from his bed-room and gave audience to his shivering clients, who had come for law, the question to be decided was of a very equi- vocal nature, and I imagine it required all the subtility of the law to ascertain to an exactitude which was the party aggrieved ; an immediate judgment was however pronounced, and the li- tigants departed amicably together, equally sub- missive to the decree of magisterial umpire, though certainly not with equal cause for satis- faction. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 203 mission was somewhat distasteful to the Irish lords, ** yet tiiat it w as most sweet and welcome to the common people : for they quickly apprehended the difference between the tyranny and oppression un- der which they lived before, and the first government and protection which was promised them in time to come :" and surely this amenability to magisterial in- fluence, this subordination to the voice of superior rank and official power, ar^ gue little of that lawless and intractable disposition so generally ascribed to the character of the Irish peasantry. They indeed not only entertain a strong and almost intuitive idea of jurisprudence, but are warmly attached to the formulae of such little laws as their sense of right and wrong, and wish of mutual preser- vation, have induced them to establish among themselves.* * To borrow salt and not to repay it, even to the last grain, is deemed a fatal infringement of this social code ; and I understadd that even the first organization of the Thrashers was 204 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. marked by the promulgation of certain sump- tuary laws, by which they endeavoured to re- strain the licentious innovations admitted into the costume of their compatriots, by the influ- ence of rustic vanity, or the contagion of su- perior example. One of their manifestoes fix- ed on the door of a chapel, interdicted the use of shoes in favour of brogues^ except to such as did not speak Irish, they being considered equally unworthy the national character and na- tional dress. The Irish kerchiff and binogiie were also to be worn, on the penalty of having any more modern covering taken from the we^r -Cr. PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 205 SKETCH XVIII. MY rambles and frequent conversa- tions with the peasantry in the neigh- bourhood of L*** house have obtained me a degree of rustic notoriety, to which I stand indebted for a visit from Mr. Thady O'Conolan, a schoolmaster in the neighbourhood, and a personage not on \y highly esteemed by his rural disciples, but looked up to by his less intelligent neighbours, as a prodigy of learning, e rudition, and genius. He introduce himself, by saying : '^ he had heard 1 was fond of Irish composition, and that he had waited on me to mention he had some of the poems of Ossian, which were much at my service. The Irish,^^ he added with a brogue that beggars all concepti- :^06 PATRIOTIC SKKTCHES. on, '' the Irish is the finest and loftiest tongue in the world: the English can ne- ver come near it, and the Greek alone is worthy of being compared to it." He then with great enthusiasm repeated the description of Fion's shield in Irish, and Homer's description of that of Achilles, giving, with great exultation, the prefer- ence to the former ; as he did to Ossian's account of his father's hounds, over the dogs of Ovid : and then with the utmost gravity declared his intention of trans- lating the Eneid, and some of Terence's plays, into Irish. " The latter, he con- tinued, I will teach to my scholars, who may play it yet upon one of the great London stages to admiration." When I complimented him on the ex- tent of his erudition, and expressed my astonishment at his having acquired it in so remote a situation, he repUed: '^ Young lady, I went far and near for it, as many a poor scholar did before me : for I could construe Homer before I ever put on shoe or stocking, aye, or a hat either, which PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 207 to be sure I never did till I was twenty years of age." He then at my request gave me a sketch of his peripatetic stu- dies. When he was a young man, he said, there were but few schools in Con- naught, and those few but bad : and that it was not unusual for eight or ten boys " who had the love of learning strong up on them,^'' to set off bare-footed and bare- headed to Munster, where the best schools were then held ; that they commenced their philosophic pilgrimage poor and friendless ; but that they begged their way, and that the name of poor scholar procured them every where friends and subsistence ; that having heard much of the celebrity of a school-master in the county of Clare, he and his adventurous companions directed their steps towards his seminary; -^ but,'^ added Thady ^' it being a grazing country, and of course no hospitality to be found there, mean- ing that it was thinly inhabited, we could not get a spot to shelter our heads in the neighbourhood of the school ; so being a tight set of Connaught boys, able and strong, we carried off the school-master 208 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. one fine night, and never stopped till we landed him on the other side of the Shan- non, when a priest gave us a chapel-house, and so we got learning and hospitality to boot, and the school-master made a great fortune in time, all Connaught flocking to him, and now here I am at the head of a fme seminary myself He then in- formed me that he had Mty pupils; that the head class were in Homer, and did not pay for their tuition, as they assisted him to teach the rest ; that all boys of the name ot'O'Conolan were also taught gFa- tis, and the rest paid according to the means of their parents, from one shil- ling to four a quarter : he added that he had then five female eleves, ^' to whom, said he, I am teaching philosophy, the hu- manities and mathematics, to give them a genteel idea of becoming tutoresses in gentlemen's families." After some fur- ther conversation, Mr. Thady O'Cono- Ian departed, but not without a promise of our visiting his academy the following day. I^ATRIOTiC SKKTCHES, x^()9 The lyceum of this Coniiaught sage, IS a miserable cabin on the side of a ve- ry desolate wood. The sound of our horses' feet brought a number of his young disciples to the door, clad in a dra- pery light and frugal as philosophy her- self could dictate ; for neither the Greek sandal, the Roman perones, nor the I- rish brogue, secured their naked feet from the damp earthen floor of the aca demy. The next moment Thady him- self appeared in all the majesty of pe- dagogue power : his hair, dress, and manner, were all admirable, and left the Lingo and O'Sullivan of O'Keefe far be- hind; his low clumsy figure, clerical ton- sure, rubicund face ; his wrapping coat, according to the old Irish costume, fas tened with a skewer, the sleeves unoc cupied, and the collar of his shirt thrown open; combined with his Greek and La- tin quotations, his rich brogue, and af- fected dignity, to render him a finished character. Having reprimanded his pu pils for their want of good manners, he welcomed us with a look and air that s2 210 PATRIOTIC sketches:' seemed to convince us, as well as them, that their dereliction from decorum pro- ceeded not from any deficiency of pre- cept or example on the part of their mas- ter. He then apologized for the absence of his first class, who, he said, he intend- ed should have construed some of Ho- mer for us ; but that they had gone to cut turf for a poor distressed family in the neighbourhood, and that for that day the Trojan plains were resigned for the bog. *^ It was but the other day, said he, they built up that cabin yonder, for a poor old widow, and I gave them a holiday for it and my blessing into the bargain." The interior of Thady's cabin perfect- ly corresponded with its external aspect. It was divided into two apartments, which boasted no other furniture than an old deal table covered with copy-books and slates, and a few boards placed on stone« which served as seats to the young students, some of whom were poring o- ver the ^* Seven wise Masters of Greece:'^ PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 211 Others, vainly held a Cordery, while their eyes were fixed on the visitors ; and three tall fellows were endeavoas ing to read all at the same time out of an old tattered volume of Virgil. '^ There, said Thady pointing to the inward room, there is my sanctum sanctorum : there I teach Homer, philosophy and the mathema- tics :" and taking down an old book, which had sympathized in the destiny of Virgil, he exclaimed : '' This is the only Homer I have ; and though seven boys read out of it daily, it never causes a moment's dispute: whereas,if I hadtwo young gentlemen studying in it, my Ho> mer would be a bone of contention to them from morning till night." Indeed Thady endeavoured continually to im- press us with an idea of the subordina- tion and civilized manners of his scho- lars, and we saw nothing that in the least degree contradicted his assertions ; he assured us that the labourer who earned but sixpence a day, would sooner live upon potatoes and salt, than refuse a lit- tle learning to his child. ^' I have," said 212 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. he^ " above twenty boys who are come from distant parts to me^ who begged their way, and are now maintained a- mong the poor of the neighbourhood, who, far from considering them a bm'- then, were so eager to have them, that to avoid jealousy, I was obhged to have lots drawn forthem; the boys indeed are grateful, and make the best returns they can by working early and late for their patrons when not engaged with me." — Having procured a holiday for his pupils, we now took leave of Thady ; and if to be a school-master, it is ^^ requisite to be more or less than man,'^ as Le Sage de- clares, Thady certainly conceived him- self the former, as he detailed the me- rits of his seminary, and the classic pro- gress of his disciples. The passionate love of letters disco- vered by the native Irish in all ages, it would indeed be obstinate scepticism to deny ; since even the host of enemies which Ireland has had to contend with, never dare deny her supremacy in learn- ing ; and how so ardent a love for all PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 21 S that softens and humanizes the natural state of man can be reconciled with a fe- rocious and savage barbarity of national character, is a paradox not easily com prehended. Sir John Davis, who was attorney general in Ireland, when a se- ries of civil wars had reduced it to an al- most barbarous state, compared to that in which it was found by the English ba- rons in the re'^,^ of Henry the Second, declares, '' that the Irish were even then, amidst an unceasing anxiety for their lives and property, which were always threatened and never secure, still lovers of music, poetry, and all kind of learn- ing ;" and indeed no stronger testimony''^ of their ancient civilization could be pro- *Allemande, in his Histoire d*Irlande, as- serts that it was enough to be an Irishman, or even to have studied in Ireland, to become the founder of a religious seminary in any part of Europe. " When Gothic ignorance expelled all learning and science from the continent," says an elegant writer, " they fell into the pro- tection of the Hynialls until a war with stran- gers altered the face of things in Ireland,'* 214 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. duced than that which still exists in the love of learning discoverable among the most neglected and despisedof their pos- terity. Doctor Johnson, in lamenting that doctor Leland began his History from too late a date, adds : ** the ages w^hich deserve a strict inquiry, are those times, for such there have been, when Ireland was the school of the West." Learning in Ireland has in/<.ed had much to encounter both from foreign and do- mestic enemies. The first blow it re- ceived was during the first Danish inva- sion, when the savage Turgicus with a political barbarity burnt all the books he could discover, and razed the colleges to the ground ; while the bard, resign- ing his charming art with that liberty which had been his inspiration and his theme, fled from the usurped castle of his patron, or escaped from the ruins of the hallowed sanctuary of his order, and with his harp unstrung and his voice bro- ken and tremulous, sought a refuge in the labyrinth of the cavern or the gloom of the wood, refusing like the en: laved Is- raelite to breathe on the ear of his coun PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 215 try's foe a " melody in heaviness.'' Yet how few are there now to be found, who, like the bard of Erin or of Israel, ex- claim : " when I forget thee, my coun- try, may my right hand forget her cun- ning !" On our return from Thady's, a tall well-looking young man with a satchel on his back, ran for a considerable way beside the carriage, until perceiving that we observed him, he said he had taken the liberty to follow us, to beg we would give him an old Cicero ; as we had dis- tributed several old books among Tha- dy's pupils, not one of which had fallen to his lot. W^e asked him what profes- sion he was intended for: he said he had been studying for Apothecaries' Hall, but that of late he had taken to Philoso- phy. The philosopher was barefooted, and though it was raining, ran beside the carriage with an uncovered head. 216 PATKIOTIC SKJETCHES. SKETCH XIX. THE incessant rain of a morning, sul try for the advanced season, was the pre- curser of one of tlie finest evenings I ever beheld. The clouds discharged of their heaviness rose in fleecy columns from the sides of the surrounding moun- tains. The setting sun unobscured by a single vapour, with all his blushing ho- nours thick about him, sunk in the waves of the ^' steep Atlantic;" and the large lingering drops of the recent showers hung like brilliant gems on the foliage of the trees, whose leaves were imbued with the mellow colouring of autumn's last tints. The air, calm and still, breath- ed odours ; and a shot fired from an A- merican vessel as it cleared the bar, was PATRIOTIC SKETCHES- 217 the only sound that disturbed the soft so- lemnity of the hour. Such was the even ing in which my last ramble amidst the romantic wilds of Tyreragh was taken I had not wandered far from L*** house, when I was overtaken by a young peasant who was driving a mule laden with two panniers. As soon as he had approached us, I received the usual be nediction and salute ; and the volun tary information that he was going to Sligo, for some grains for a sick cow, not being able, he said, to procure any at Ballina, whence had just come, as Ballina and its neighbourhood had been the he ad -quarters of the Thrashers. I made some inquiries relative to their o perations. '' Why, replied he, they arc busy enough at present with the tythe proctors ; and they have barred a priest out of his chapel, in the hope of making him lower his dues, threatening to go to church if he does not, not being able to pay both priest and minister, since the proctors have raised the tythe s and the 218 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. priest his dues. For my own part^ church or mass is all the same to me." — After some further conversation, my e- leemosynary companion passed on. The apparent indifference of this young peasant, who was probably the oracle of his countrymen, to any peculi ar form of worship, confirmed me in an opinion, which from reiterated experi- ence T had long entertained ; that the pea- santry of Ireland were not naturally so bigoted a people as was generally sup- posed ; and that they were rather coa- lesced in opinion and sentiment, and at- tached to a certain class in political es- tablishment, than jealously united as the professors of any particular sect in reli gion. Does the unfortunate whom necessity leads, or the traveller whom mischan^ conducts, to their huts, find his religion a subject of inquiry before he receives the rites of hospitality, so cordially, so indiscriminately bestowed? Does the PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 219 protestant gentleman find himself less faithfully, less actively served than the catholic, or does a difference of faith in- fluence the social affections of their hearts, or chill the ardour of their attachment to those who treat them with justice andhix manity ? Oh ! no ; the line of demarca tion which severs the lower from the high er orders of the Irish nation has not been traced by the finger of bigotry : it is drawrn by poverty and discontent ; it is to be defaced by benevolence and good policy. However principles of patriotism may be influenced by a romantic ardour of i- magination ; however the amor patriae. of youthful feelings may revel in the spe culation of a native Utopia; however the enthusiasm of national affection may ideally overleap the rational boundary of reason and possibility; it is not easy to believe that even the most visionary mindf animated by the most patriotic senti ments, would be so chimerical in its hopes or so wild in it? desires, a? to anticipate ;<^20 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, or suppose the revival of those original rights forfeited by the influence of the (now far distant) events to which all na- tions are subject, and lost in the sweep of ages gone by '^ with those beyond the Flood ;" or speculate on the annihilation of those existing establishments, sancti- oned by time, by succession, by all that guards the privileges and claims of so- ciety, and all that secures the property and possessions of the individual. But though I would not assert, and do not be- lieve, that "the succession of those who cultivate the soil is the true pedigree of property ;" yet while in those who do cultivate it I behold the rude traces of the happiest nature, struggling against the hardships of the severest destiny ; while local oppression and hopeless indi- gence impel them to desperate revolt, or lure them to daring innovation; itis sure- ly to be wished that those causes, which through a series of ages have produced such fatal, such invariable effects, were at least softened, if not effectually eradi- cated,* PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, 221 It is indeed asserted by some Irishmen, that there is no excuse for the errors of their unhappy countrymen, because there is no cause for that murmuring spirit of discontent so long apparent in their con- duct ; and though this doctrine of effect without causes may be supported by some logicians, who assert that their actual se- paration implies neither absurdity nor contradiction, yet to one whose heart has long sorrowed over national affliction, * " If civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right : it is an institution of bene- ficence ; and law itself is but beneficence act- ing by rule. Men have a right to live by that rule : they have a right to justice as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in po- litic functions, or in ordinary occupation ; they have a right to the fruits of their industry, and to the means of making their industry fruitful ; they have a riejht to the acquisition of their pa- rents, to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring, to instruction in life, and to con- solation in death.'* — Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. 222 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. and whose head is little skilled in logical subtilities, it implies both. The light of truth guides us by the sim- plest path to the source of national mise ry or national vice ; it is with her we trace them to natural or to moral causes, to the fatality of chmate or to the errors of legislation. It is by her pure beam we discover whether the distractions in which nations are so frequently involved, are the physical results of feverish con- stitutions and maniac brains ; or the mo- ral effects of that impulsive principle in human nature, which sooner or later in- evitably opposes itself to the infringe- ments of those rights which hold their sacred charter from the voice of nature^ God THE END. ADVERTISEMENT. THE publishers of Miss Owenson's Patriotic Sketches would remark, that the price of the English copy of this work is four dollars. They flatter themselves, it will be a source of pleasure to local readers to learn, that the type was cast expressly for this volume at the Balti- more Foundery, owned by Samuel Sow- er Sf Co. — the paper manufactured by Conrad, Lucas §• Co. — and the relative excellence of each has not often been surpassed by any publications whichhave been issued from the American press. Miss Owenson has been long celebra ted, as an eminent proof of the vast ex- tent of the powers of the imagination ; and her ardent attachment to the '^ Eme- rald Isle," elicits patriotic fire in every page of her writings, when the ^^ green fields of Erin" are the subject. They ADVERTISEMENT. who have read and admired the Wild 1- rish Girl, will recognise in the Patriotic Sketches the same pen, animated by a si- milar spirit; and this last effusion of her mind will be perused with the strongest emotions of sympathy and philanthropy, by all those who weep over the degrada- tion, or rejoice in the melioration of the condition of man. Baltimore, June 2d, 1809. a 63 5