member of parliament for his University, and for a time occupied the presidential chair of the Royal Society. He devoted himself, _inter alia_, to optical work, and is perhaps best known by those researches which deal with the undulatory theory of light. It was on this subject that he delivered the Burnett lectures in Aberdeen (1883-1885).
James McCullagh, the son of a poor farmer, was born in Tyrone in 1809, d. 1847. His early death, due to his own hand in a fit of insanity, cut short his work, but enough remains to permit him to rank amongst the great mathematicians of all time, his most important work being his memoir on surfaces of the second order.
Humphrey Lloyd (b. in Dublin 1800, d. 1881), F.R.S. His father was Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, a position subsequently occupied also by the son. Lloyd’s work was chiefly concerned with optics and magnetism, and it was in connection with the former that he carried out what was probably the most important single piece of work of his life, namely, the experimental proof of the phenomenon of conical refraction which had been predicted by Sir William Hamilton. He was responsible for the erection of the Magnetic Observatory in Dublin, and the instruments used in it were constructed under his observation and sometimes from his designs or modifications. He was also a meteorologist of distinction.
George Salmon (b. in Dublin 1819, d. 1904), like the last mentioned subject, was, at the time of his death, Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. Besides theological writings, he contributed much to mathematical science, especially in the directions of conic sections, analytic geometry, higher plane curves, and the geometry of three dimensions. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and received the Copley and Royal medals, as well as distinctions from many universities and learned societies.
John Casey (b. Kilkenny 1820, d. 1891), F.R.S., was educated at a National School and became a teacher in one in later years. Entirely self-taught as a mathematician, he raised himself from the humble position which he occupied to be a university professor (in the Catholic University of Ireland, and afterwards in the Royal University), and earned the highest reputation as one of the greatest authorities on plane geometry. He was a correspondent of eminent mathematicians all over the world.
Henry Hennessey (b. in Cork 1826, d. 1901), F.R.S., was also a professor in the Catholic University of Ireland and afterwards in the Royal College of Science in Dublin. He was a writer on mathematics, terrestrial physics, and climatology.
Benjamin Williamson (b. in Cork 1827), F.R.S., is a Senior Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, and a distinguished writer on mathematical subjects, especially on the differential, integral, and infinitesimal calculuses.
Sir Joseph Larmor (b. in Antrim 1857), F.R.S., was educated at Queen’s College, Belfast, and in Cambridge, in which last place he has spent his life as a professor. He now represents the University in parliament and is secretary to the Royal Society. He is well-known for his writings on the ether and on other physical as well as mathematical subjects.
ASTRONOMERS.
William Parsons, Earl of Rosse (b. in York 1800, d. 1867), F.R.S., was a very distinguished astronomer who experimented in fluid lenses and made great improvements in casting specula for reflecting telescopes. From 1842-45 he was engaged upon the construction, in his park at Parsonstown, of his great reflecting telescope 58 feet long. This instrument, which cost L30,000, long remained the largest in the world. He was president of the Royal Society from 1848 to 1854.
Sir Howard Grubb (b. 1844), F.R.S., is known all over the world for his telescopes and for the remarkable advances which he has made in the construction of lenses for instruments of the largest size.
Sir Robert Ball (b. in Dublin 1840, d. 1913), F.R.S. Originally Lord Rosse’s astronomer at Parsonstown, he migrated as professor to Trinity College, Dublin, and subsequently became Lowndean Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge. He was a great authority on the mathematical theory of screws, and his popular works on astronomy have made him known to a far wider circle of readers than those who can grapple with his purely scientific treatises.
William Edward Wilson (b. Co. Westmeath 1851, d. 1908), F.R.S. A man of independent means, he erected, with the help of his father, an astronomical observatory at his residence. In this well-equipped building he made many photographic researches, especially into the nature of nebulae. He also devoted himself to solar physics, and wrote some remarkable papers on the sudden appearance in 1903 of the star Nova Persei. He was the first to call attention to the probability that radium plays a part in the maintenance of solar heat. In fact, the science of radio-activity was engaging his keenest interest at the time of his early death.
A.A. Rambaut (b. Waterford 1859), F.R.S., formerly Astronomer Royal for Ireland and now Radcliffe Observer at Oxford, is one of the leading astronomers of the day.
PHYSICISTS.
Lord Kelvin, better known as Sir William Thompson (b. Belfast 1824, d. 1907), F.R.S. Amongst the greatest physicists who have ever lived, his name comes second only to that of Newton. He was educated at Cambridge, became professor of natural philosophy in Glasgow University in 1846, and celebrated the jubilee of his appointment in 1896. To the public his greatest achievement was the electric cabling of the Atlantic Ocean, for which he was knighted in 1866. His electrometers and electric meters, his sounding apparatus, and his mariners’ compass are all well-known and highly valued instruments. To his scientific fellows, however, his greatest achievements were in the field of pure science, especially in connection with his thermodynamic researches, including the doctrine of the dissipation or degradation of energy. To this brief statement may be added mention of his work in connection with hydrodynamics and his magnetic and electric discoveries. His papers in connection with wave and vortex movements are also most remarkable. He was awarded the Royal and Copley medals and was an original member of the Order of Merit. He received distinctions from many universities and learned societies.
George Francis Fitzgerald (b. Dublin 1851, d. 1901), F.R.S., was fellow and professor of natural philosophy in Trinity College, Dublin, where he was educated. He was the first person to call the attention of the world to the importance of Hertz’s experiment. Perhaps his most important work, interrupted by his labors in connection with education and terminated by his early death, was that in connection with the nature of the ether.
George Johnston Stoney (b. King’s Co. 1826, d. 1911), F.R.S., after being astronomer at Parsonstown and professor of natural philosophy at Galway, became secretary to the Queen’s University and occupied that position until the dissolution of the university in 1882. He wrote many papers on geometrical optics and on molecular physics, but his great claim to remembrance is that he first suggested, “on the basis of Faraday’s law of Electrolysis, that an absolute unit of quantity of electricity exists in that amount of it which attends each chemical bond or valency and gave the name, now generally adopted, of electron to this small quantity.” He proposed the electronic theory of the origin of the complex ether vibrations which proceed from a molecule emitting light.
John Tyndall (b. Leighlin Bridge, Co. Carlow, 1820, d. 1893), F.R.S., professor at the Royal Institution and a fellow-worker in many ways with Huxley, especially on the subject of glaciers. He wrote also on heat as a mode of motion and was the author of many scientific papers, but will, perhaps, be best remembered as the author of a Presidential Address to the British Association in Belfast (1874), which was the highwater mark of the mid-Victorian materialism at its most triumphant moment.
CHEMISTS.
Richard Kirwan (b. Galway 1733, d. 1812), F.R.S. A man of independent means, he devoted himself to the study of chemistry and mineralogy and was awarded the Copley medal of the Royal Society. He published works on mineralogy and on the analysis of mineral waters, and was the first in Ireland to publish analyses of soils for agricultural purposes, a research which laid the foundation of scientific agriculture in Great Britain and Ireland.
Maxwell Simpson (b. Armagh 1815, d. 1902), F.R.S., held the chair of chemistry in Queen’s College, Cork, for twenty years and published a number of papers in connection with his subject and especially with the behavior of cyanides, with the study of which compounds his name is most associated.
Cornelius O’Sullivan (b. Brandon, 1841, d. 1897), F.R.S., was for many years chemist to the great firm of Bass & Co., brewers at Burton-on-Trent, and in that capacity became one of the leading exponents of the chemistry of fermentation in the world.
James Emerson Reynolds (b. Dublin 1844), F.R.S., professor of chemistry, Trinity College, Dublin, for many years, discovered the primary thiocarbamide and a number of other chemical substances, including a new class of colloids and several groups of organic and other compounds of the element silicon.
Among others only the names of the following can be mentioned:–Sir Robert Kane (b. Dublin 1809, d. 1890), professor of chemistry in Dublin and founder and first director of the Museum of Industry, now the National Museum. He was president of Queen’s College, Cork, as was William K. Sullivan (b. Cork 1822, d. 1890), formerly professor of chemistry in the Catholic University. Sir William O’Shaughnessy Brooke, F.R.S. (b. Limerick 1809, d. 1889), professor of chemistry and assay master in Calcutta, is better known as the introducer of the telegraphic system into India and its first superintendent.
BIOLOGISTS.
William Henry Harvey (b. Limerick 1814, d. 1866), F.R.S., was a botanist of very great distinction. During a lengthy residence in South Africa, he made a careful study of the flora of the Cape of Good Hope and published _The Genera of South African Plants_. After this he was made keeper of the Herbarium, Trinity College, Dublin, but, obtaining leave of absence, travelled in North and South America, exploring the coast from Halifax to the Keys of Florida, in order to collect materials for his great work, _Nereis Boreali-Americana_, published by the Smithsonian Institution. Subsequently he visited Ceylon, Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, and the Friendly and Fiji Islands, collecting algae. The results were published in his _Phycologia Australis_. At the time of his death he was engaged on his _Flora Capensis_, and was generally considered the first authority on algae in the world.
William Archer (b. Co. Down 1837, d. 1897), F.R.S., devoted his life to the microscopic examination of freshwater organisms, especially desmids and diatoms. He attained a very prominent place in this branch of work among men of science. Perhaps his most remarkable discovery was that of Chlamydomyxa labyrinthuloides (in 1868), “one of the most remarkable and enigmatical of all known microscopic organisms.”
George James Allman (b. Cork 1812, d. 1898), F.R.S., professor of botany in Trinity College, Dublin, and afterwarls Regius Professor of natural history in the University of Edinburgh, published many papers on botanical and zoological subjects, but his great work was that on the gymnoblastic Hydrozoa, “without doubt the most important systematic work dealing with the group of Coelenterata that has ever been produced.”
Amongst eminent living members of the class under consideration may be mentioned Alexander Macalister (b. Dublin 1844), F.R.S., professor of anatomy, first in Dublin and now in Cambridge, an eminent morphologist and anthropologist, and Henry Horatio Dixon (b. Dublin), F.R.S., professor of botany in Trinity College, an authority on vegetable physiology, especially problems dealing with the sap.
GEOLOGISTS.
Samuel Haughton (b. Carlow 1821, d. 1897), F.R.S., after earning a considerable reputation as a mathematician and a geologist, and taking Anglican orders, determined to study medicine and entered the school of that subject in Trinity College. After graduating he became the reformer, it might even be said the re-founder, of that school. He devoted ten years to the study of the mechanical principles of muscular action, and published his _Animal Mechanism_, probably his greatest work. He will long be remembered as the introducer of the “long drop” as a method of capital execution. He might have been placed in several of the categories which have been dealt with, but that of geologist has been selected, since in the later part of his most versatile career he was professor of geology in Trinity College, Dublin.
Valentine Ball (b. Dublin 1843, d. 1894), F.R.S., a brother of Sir Robert, joined the Geological Survey of India, and in that capacity became an authority not only on geology but also on ornithology and anthropology. His best known work is _Jungle-Life in India_. In later life he was director of the National Museum, Dublin.
MEDICAL SCIENCE.
Very brief note can be taken of the many shining lights in Irish medical science. Robert James Graves (1796-1853), F.R.S., after whom is named “Graves’s Disease”, was one of the greatest of clinical physicians. His _System of Clinical Medicine_ was a standard work and was extolled by Trousseau, the greatest physician that France has ever had, in the highest terms of appreciation.
William Stokes (1804-1878), Regius Professor of Medicine in Trinity College, and the author of a _Theory and Practice of Medicine_, known all over the civilized world, was equally celebrated.
To these must be added Sir Dominic Corrigan (1802-1880), the first Catholic to occupy the position of President of the College of Physicians in Dublin, an authority on heart disease, and the first adequate describer of aortic patency, a form of ailment long called “Corrigan’s Disease”. “Colles’s Fracture” is a familiar term in the mouths of surgeons. It derives its name from Abraham Colles (1773-1843), the first surgeon in the world to tie the innominate artery, as “Butcher’s Saw”, a well-known implement, does from another eminent surgeon; Richard Butcher, Regius Professor in Trinity College in the seventies of the last century.
Sir Rupert Boyce (1863-1911), F.R.S., though born in London, had an Irish father and mother. Entering the medical profession, he was assistant professor of pathology at University College, London, and subsequently professor of pathology in University College, Liverpool, which he was largely instrumental in turning into the University of Liverpool. He was foremost in launching and directing the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, which has had such widespread results all over the world in elucidating the problems and checking the ravages of the diseases peculiar to hot countries. It was for his services in this direction that he was knighted in 1906.
Sir Richard Quain (b. Mallow 1816, d. 1898), F.R.S., spent most of his life in London, where he was for years the most prominent physician. He wrote on many subjects, but the _Dictionary of Medicine_, which he edited and which bears his name, has made itself and its editor known all over the world.
Sir Almroth Wright (b. 1861), F.R.S., is the greatest living authority on the important subject of vaccino-therapy, which, indeed, may be said to owe its origin to his researches, as do the methods for measuring the protective substances in the human blood. He was the discoverer of the anti-typhoid injection which has done so much to stay the ravages of that disease.
ENGINEERING.
Bindon Blood Stoney (1828-1909), F.R.S., made his reputation first as an astronomer by discovering the spiral character of the great nebula in Andromeda. Turning to engineering, he was responsible for the construction of many important works, especially in connection with the port of Dublin. He was brother of G. J. Stoney.
Sir Charles Parsons (b. 1854), F.R.S., fourth son of the third Earl of Rosse, is the engineer who developed the steam turbine system and made it suitable for the generation of electricity, and for the propulsion of war and mercantile vessels. If he has revolutionized traffic on the water, so on the land has John Boyd Dunlop (still living), who discovered the pneumatic tire with such wide-spread results for motorcars, bicycles, and such means of locomotion.
MISCELLANEOUS.
Admiral Sir Leopold McClintock (b. Dundalk 1819, d. 1907), F.R.S., was one of the great Arctic explorers, having spent eleven navigable seasons and six winters in those regions. He was the chief leader and organizer of the Franklin searches. From the scientific point of view he made a valuable collection of miocene fossils from Greenland, and enabled Haughton to prepare the geological map and memoir of the Parry Archipelago.
John Ball (b. Dublin 1818, d. 1889), F.R.S., educated at Oscott, passed the examination for a high degree at Cambridge, but, being a Catholic, was excluded from the degree itself and any other honors which a Protestant might have attained to. He travelled widely and published many works on the natural history of Europe and South America from Panama to Tierra del Fuego. He was the first to suggest the utilization of the electric telegraph for meteorological purposes connected with storm warnings.
Space ought to be found for a cursory mention of that strange person, Dionysius Lardner (1793-1859), who by his _Lardner’s Cyclopaedia_ in 132 vols., his _Cabinet Library_, and his _Museum of Science and Art_, did much to popularize science in an unscientific day.
REFERENCES:
The principal sources of information are the National Dictionary of Biography; the Obituary Notices of the Royal Society (passages in inverted commas are from these); “Who’s Who” (for living persons); Healy: Ireland’s Ancient Schools and Scholars; Hyde: Literary History of Ireland; Joyce: Social History of Ancient Ireland; Moore: Medicine in the British Isles.
LAW IN IRELAND
By LAURENCE GINNELL, B.L., M.P.
A DISTINCTION. Ireland having been a self-ruled country for a stretch of some two thousand years, then violently brought under subjection to foreign rule, regaining legislative independence for a brief period toward the close of the eighteenth century, then by violence and corruption deprived of that independence and again brought under the same foreign rule, to which it is still subject, the expression “Law in Ireland” comprises the native and the foreign, the laws devised by the Irish Nation for its own governance and the laws imposed upon it from without: two sets, codes, or systems proper to two entirely distinct social structures having no relation and but little resemblance to each other. Whatever may be thought of either as law, the former is Irish in every sense, and vastly the more interesting historically, archaeologically, philologically, and in many other ways; the latter being English law in Ireland, and not truly Irish in any sense.
ORIGIN AND CHARACTER OF IRISH LAW. _Seanchus agus Feineachus na hEireann_ == _Hiberniae Antiquitates et Sanctiones Legales_–The Ancient Laws and Decisions of the _Feini_, of Ireland. _Sen_ or _sean_ (pronounced shan) == “old,” differs from most Gaelic adjectives in preceding the noun it qualifies. It also tends to coalesce and become a prefix. _Seanchus_ (shanech-us) == “ancient law.” _Feineachus_ (fainech-us) == the law of the _Feini_, who were the Milesian farmers, free members of the clans, the most important class in the ancient Irish community. Their laws were composed in their contemporary language, the _Bearla Feini_, a distinct form of Gaelic. Several nations of the Aryan race are known to have cast into metre or rhythmical prose their laws and such other knowledge as they desired to communicate, preserve, and transmit, before writing came into use. The Irish went further and, for greater facility in committing to memory and retaining there, put their laws into a kind of rhymed verse, of which they may have been the inventors. By this device, aided by the isolated geographical position of Ireland, the sanctity of age, and the apprehension that any change of word or phrase might change the law itself, these archaic laws, when subsequently committed to writing, were largely preserved from the progressive changes to which all spoken languages are subject, with the result that we have today, embedded in the Gaelic text and commentaries of the _Senchus Mor_, the _Book of Aicill_, and other law works, available in English translations made under a Royal Commission appointed by Government in 1852, and published, at intervals extending over forty years, in six volumes of “Ancient Laws and Institutions of Ireland,” a mass of archaic words, phrases, law, literature, and information on the habits and manners of the people, not equalled in antiquity, quantity, or authenticity in any other Celtic source. In English they are commonly called Brehon Laws, from the genitive case singular of _Brethem_ = “judge”, genitive _Brethemain_ (pronounced brehun), as Erin is an oblique case of Eire, and as Latin words are sometimes adopted in the genitive in modern languages which themselves have no case distinctions. It is not to be inferred from this name that the laws are judge-made. They are rather case law, in parts possibly enacted by some of the various assemblies at which the laws were promulgated or rehearsed, but for the most part simple declarations of law originating in custom and moral justice, and records of judgments based upon “the precedents and commentaries”, in the sort of cases common to agricultural communities of the time, many of the provisions being as inapplicable to modern life as modern laws would be to ancient life. A reader is impressed by the extraordinary number and variety of cases with their still more numerous details and circumstances accumulated in the course of long ages, the manner in which the laws are inextricably interwoven with the interlocking clan system, and the absence of scientific arrangement or guiding principle except those of moral justice, clemency, and the good of the community. This defect in arrangement is natural in writings intended, as these were, for the use of judges and professors, experts in the subjects with which they deal, but makes the task of presenting a concise statement of them difficult and uncertain.
SOCIETY LAW. The law and the social system were inseparable parts of a complicated whole, mutually cause and consequence of each other. _Tuath, clann, cinel, cine_, and _fine_ (pronounced thooah, clong, kinnel, kineh, and fin-yeh) were terms used to denote a tribe or set of relatives, in reality or by adoption, claiming descent from a common ancestor, forming a community occupying and owning a given territory. _Tuath_ in course of time came to be applied indifferently to the people and to their territory. _Fine_, sometimes designating a whole tribe, more frequently meant a part of it, occupying a distinct portion of the territory, a potential microcosm or nucleus of a clan, having limited autonomy in the conduct of its own immediate affairs. The constitution of this organism, whether as contemplated by the law or in the less perfect actual practice, is alike elusive, and underwent changes. For the purpose of illustration, the _fine_ may be said to consist, theoretically, of the “seventeen men” frequently mentioned throughout the laws, namely, the _flaithfine_ = chief of the _fine_; the _geilfine_ = his four fullgrown sons or other nearest male relatives; the _deirbhfine, tarfine_, and _innfine_, each consisting of four heads of families in wider concentric circles of kinship, say first, second, and third cousins of the _flaithfine_. The _fine_ was liable, in measure determined by those circles, for contracts, fines, and damages incurred by any of its members so far as his own property was insufficient, and was in the same degree entitled to share advantages of a like kind accruing. Intermarriage within this _fine_ was prohibited. The modern term “sept” is applied sometimes to this group and sometimes to a wider group united under a _flaith_ (flah) = “chief”, elected by the _flaithfines_ and provided, for his public services, with free land proportionate to the area of the district and the number of clansmen in it. _Clann_ might mean the whole Irish nation, or an intermediate homogeneous group of _fines_ having for wider purposes a _flaith_ or _ri-tuatha_ = king of one _tuath_, elected by the _flaiths_ and _flaithfines_, subject to elaborate qualifications as to person, character, and training, which limited their choice, and provided with a larger portion of free land. This was the lowest chief to whom the title _ri, righ_ (both pr. ree) = _rex_, or “king”, was applied. A group of these kinglets connected by blood or territory or policy, and their _flaiths_, elected, from a still narrower circle of specially trained men within their own rank, the _ri-mor-tuatha_–king of the territory so composed, to whose office a still larger area of free land was attached. In turn, kings of this class, with their respective sub-kings and _flaiths_, elected from among the _riogh-dhamhna_ (ree-uch-dhowna) = _materia principum_ or “king-timber”, a royal _fine_ specially educated and trained, a _ri-cuighidh_ (ree coo-ee-hee) supreme over five _ri-mor-tuathas_–roughly, a fourth of Ireland. These, with their respective principal supporters, elected the _ard-ri_–“supreme king”, of Ireland, who for ages held his court and national assemblies at Tara and enjoyed the kingdom of Meath for his mensal land. Usually the election was not direct to the kingship, but to the position of _tanaiste_–“second” (in authority), heir-apparent to the kingship. This was also the rule in the learned professions and “noble” arts, which were similarly endowed with free land. The most competent among those specially trained, whether son or outsider, should succeed to the position and land. All such land was legally indivisible and inalienable and descended in its entirety to the successor, who might, or might not, be a relative of the occupant. The beneficiaries were, however, free to retain any land that belonged to them as private individuals.
Membership of the clan was an essential qualification for every position; but occasionally two clans amalgamated, or a small _fine_, or desirable individual, was co-opted into the clan–in other words, naturalized. The rules of kinship determined _eineachlann_ (ain-yach-long)–“honor value”, the assessed value of status, with its correlative rights, obligations, and liabilities in connection with all matters civil and criminal; largely supplied the place of contract; endowed members of the clan with birthrights; and bound them into a compact social, political, and mutual insurance copartnership, self-controlled and self-reliant. _Eineachlann_ rested on the two-fold basis of kinship and property, expanding as a clansman by acquisition of property and effluxion of time progressed upward from one grade to another; diminishing if he sank; vanishing if for crime he was expelled from the clan.
FOSTERAGE. To our minds, one of the most curious customs prevalent among the ancient Irish was that of _iarrad_, called also _altar_ = “fosterage”–curious in itself and in the fact that in all the abundance of law and literature relating to it no logically valid reason is given why wealthy parents normally put out their children, from one year old to fifteen in the case of a daughter and to seventeen in the case of a son, to be reared in another family, while perhaps receiving and rearing children of other parents sent to them. As modern life does not comprise either the custom or a reason for it, we may assume that fosterage was a consequence of the clan system, and that its practice strengthened the ties of kinship and sympathy. This conjecture is corroborated by the numerous instances in history and in story of fosterage affection proving, when tested, stronger than the natural affection of relatives by birth. What is more, long after the dissolution of the clans, fosterage has continued stealthily in certain districts in which the old race of chiefs and clansmen contrived to cling together to the old sod; and the affection generated by it has been demonstrated, down to the middle of the nineteenth century. The present writer has heard it spoken of lovingly, in half-Irish, by simple old people, whom to question would be cruel and irreverent.
LAND LAW. The entire territory was originally, and always continued to be, the absolute property of the entire clan. Not even the private residence of a clansman, with its _maighin digona_ = little lawn or precinct of sanctuary, within which himself and his family and property were inviolable, could be sold to an outsider. Private ownership, though rather favored in the administration of the law, was prevented from becoming general by the fundamental ownership of the clan and the birthright of every free-born clansman to a sufficiency of the land of his native territory for his subsistence. The land officially held as described was not, until the population became numerous, a serious encroachment upon this right. What remained outside this and the residential patches of private land was classified as cultivable and uncultivable. The former was the common property of the clansmen, but was held and used in severalty for the time being, subject to _gabhail-cine_ (gowal-kinneh)–clan-resumption and redistribution by authority of an assembly of the clan or _fine_ at intervals of from one to three years, according to local customs and circumstances, for the purpose of satisfying the rights of young clansmen and dealing with any land left derelict by death or forfeiture, compensation being paid for any unexhausted improvements. The clansmen, being owners in this limited sense, and the only owners, had no rent to pay. They paid tribute for public purposes, such as the making of roads, to the _flaith_ as a public officer, as they were bound to render, or had the privilege of rendering–according to how they regarded it–military service when required, not to the _flaith_ as a feudal lord, which he was not, but to the clan, of which the _flaith_ was head and representative.
The uncultivable, unreclaimed forest, mountain, and bog-land was common property in the wider sense that there was no several appropriation of it even temporarily by individuals. It was used promiscuously by the clansmen for grazing stock, procuring fuel, pursuing game, or any other advantage yielded by it in its natural state.
Kings and _flaiths_ were great stock-owners, and were allowed to let for short terms portions of their official lands. What they more usually let to clansmen was cattle to graze either on private land or on a specified part of the official land, not measured, but calculated according to the number of beasts it was able to support. A _flaith_ whose stock for letting ran short hired some from a king and sublet them to his own people. A _feine, aithech_, or _ceile_ (kailyeh), as a farmer was generally called, might hire stock in one of two distinct ways: _saer_-“free”, which was regulated by the law, left his status unimpaired, could not be terminated arbitrarily or unjustly, under which he paid one-third of the value of the stock yearly for seven years, at the end of which time what remained of the stock became his property, and in any dispute relating to which he was competent to sue or defend even though the _flaith_ gave evidence; or _daer_–“bond”, which was matter of bargain and not of law, was subject to onerous conditions and contingencies, including maintenance of kings, _flaiths_, or brehons, with their retinues, on visitations, of disbanded soldiers, etc., under which the stock always remained the property of the _flaith_, regarding which the _ceile_ could not give evidence against that of the _flaith_, which degraded the _ceile_ and his _fine_ and impaired their status; a bargain therefore which could not be entered into without the sanction of the _fine_. This prohibition was rendered operative by the legal provision that in case of default the _flaith_ could not recover from the _fine_ unless their consent had been obtained. The letting of stock, especially of _daer_-stock, increased the _flaith’s_ power as a lender over borrowers, subject, however, to the check that his rank and _eineachlann_ depended on the number of independent clansmen in his district.
Though workers in precious metals, as their ornaments show, the ancient Irish did not coin or use money. Sales were by barter. All payments, tribute, rent, fulfilment of contract, fine, damages, wages, or however else arising, were made in kind–horses, cows, store cattle, sheep, pigs, corn, meal, malt, bacon, salt beef, geese, butter, honey, wool, flax, yarn, cloth, dye-plants, leather, manufactured articles of use or ornament, gold, and silver–whatever one party could spare and the other find a use for.
Tributes and rent, being alike paid in kind and to the same person, were easily confused. This tempted the _flaith_, as the system relaxed, to extend his official power in the direction of ownership; but never to the extent of enabling him to evict a clansman. For a crime a clansman might be expelled from clan and territory; but, apart from crime, the idea of eviction from one’s homestead was inconceivable. Not even when a _daer-ceile_, or “unfree peasant”, failed to make the stipulated payments could the _flaith_ do more than sue as for any other debt; and, if successful, he was bound, in seizing, to leave the family food-material and implements necessary for living and recovering.
LAW OF DISTRAINING. _Athgabail_ ([)a]h-gowil) = “distress”, was the universal legal mode of obtaining anything due, or justice or redress in any matter, whether civil or criminal, contract or tort. Every command or prohibition of the law, if not obeyed, was enforced by _athgabail_. The brehons reduced all liabilities of whatsoever origin to material value to be recovered by this means. Hence its great importance, the vast amount of space devoted to it in the laws, and the fact that the law of distress deals incidentally with every other branch of law and reveals best the customs, habits, and character of the people. A claimant in a civil case might either summon his debtor before a brehon, get a judgment, and seize the amount adjudged, or, by distraining first at his own risk, force the defendant either to pay or stop the seizure by submitting the matter in dispute to trial before a brehon, whom he then could choose. There was no officer corresponding to a sheriff to distrain and realize the amount adjudged; the person entitled had to do it himself, accompanied by a law-agent and witnesses, after, in “distress with time”, elaborate notices at intervals of time sufficient to allow the defendant to consider his position and find means of satisfying the claim if he could. In a proper case his hands were strengthened by very explicit provisions of the law. “If a man who is sued evades justice, knowing the debt to be due of him, double the debt is payable by him.” In urgent cases “immediate distress” was allowed. In either case the property seized–usually cattle–was not taken to the plaintiff’s home, but put into a pound, and by similar easy stages became his property to the amount of the debt. The costs were paid out of what remained, and any ultimate remainder was returned. On a _fuidir_ (foodyir) = serf or other unfree person resident in the territory incurring liability to a clansman, the latter might proceed against the _flaith_ on whose land the defendant lived, or might seize immediately any property the defendant owned, and if he owned none, might seize him and make him work off the debt in slavery.
Seizure of property of a person of higher rank than the plaintiff had to be preceded by _troscead_ (truscah) = fasting upon him. This consisted in waiting at the door of the defendant’s residence without food until the debt was paid or a pledge given. The laws contained no process more strongly enforced than this. A defendant who allowed a plaintiff properly fasting to die of hunger was held by law and by public opinion guilty of murder, and completely lost his _eineachlann_. Both text and commentary declare that whoever refuses to cede a just demand when fasted upon shall pay double that amount. If the faster, having accepted a pledge, did not in due course receive satisfaction of his claim, he forthwith distrained, taking and keeping double the amount of the debt. The law did not allow those whom it at first respected to trifle with justice.
_Troscead_ is believed to have been of druidical origin, and it retained throughout, even in Christian times, a sort of supernatural significance. Whoever disregarded it became an outcast and incurred risks and dangers too grave to be lightly faced. Besides being a legal process, it was resorted to as a species of elaborate prayer, or curse,–a kind of magic for achieving some difficult purpose. This mysterious character enhanced its value in a legal system deficient in executive power.
NON-CITIZENS. From what precedes it will be understood that there were in ancient Ireland from prehistoric times people not comprised in the clan organization, and therefore not enjoying its rights and advantages or entitled to any of its land, some of whom were otherwise free within certain areas, while some were serfs and some slaves. Those outsiders are conjectured to have originated in the earlier colonists subdued by the Milesians and reduced to an inferior condition. But the distinction did not wholly follow racial lines. Persons of pre-Milesian race are known to have risen to eminence, while Milesians are known to have sunk, from crime or other causes, to the lowest rank of the unfree. Here and there a _daer-tuath_ = “bond community”, of an earlier race held together down to the Middle Ages in districts in which conquest had left them and to which they were restricted. Beyond that restriction, exclusion from the clan and its power, some peculiarities of dialect, dress, and manners, and a tradition of inferiority such as still exists in certain parishes, they were not molested, provided they paid tribute, which may have been heavy.
There were also _bothachs_ = cottiers, and _sen-cleithes_ = old adherents of a _flaith_, accustomed to serve him and obtain benefits from him. If they had resided in the territory for three generations, and been industrious, thrifty, and orderly, on a few of them joining their property together to the number of one hundred head of cattle, they could emancipate themselves by appointing a _flaithfine_ and getting admitted to the clan. Till this was done, they could neither sue nor defend nor inherit, and the _flaith_ was answerable for their conduct.
There being no prisons or convict settlements, any person of whatever race convicted of grave crime, or of cowardice on the field of battle, and unable to pay the fines imposed, captives taken in foreign wars, fugitives from other clans, and tramps, fell into the lowest ranks of the _fuidre_–“serfs.” It was as a captive that Saint Patrick was brought in his youth to Ireland. The law allowed, rather than entitled, a _flaith_ to keep unfree people for servile occupations and the performance of unskilled labor for the public benefit. In reality they worked for his personal profit, oftentimes at the expense of the clan. They lived on his land, and he was responsible for their conduct. By analogy, the distinctions _saer_ and _daer_ were recognized among them, according to origin, character, and means. Where these elements continued to be favorable for three generations, progress upward was made; and ultimately a number of them could club together, appoint a _flaithfine_, and apply to be admitted to the clan.
A _mog_ was a slave in the strict sense, usually purchased as such from abroad, and legally and socially lower than the lowest _fuidir_. Giraldus Cambrensis, writing towards the close of the twelfth century, tells us that English parents then frequently sold their surplus children and other persons to the Irish as slaves. The Church repeatedly intervened for the release of captives and mitigation of their condition. The whole institution of slavery was strongly condemned as un-Christian by the Synod held in Armagh in 1171.
CRIMINAL LAW. Though there are numerous laws relating to crime, to be found chiefly in the _Book of Aicill_, criminal law in the sense of a code of punishment there was none. The law took cognizance of crime and wrong of every description against person, character, and property; and its function was to prevent and restrict crime, and when committed to determine, according to the facts of the case and the respective ranks of the parties, the value of the compensation or reparation that should be made. It treated crime as a mode of incurring liability; entitled the sufferer, or, if he was murdered, his _fine_, to bring the matter before a brehon, who, on hearing the case, made the complicated calculations and adjustments rendered necessary by the facts proved and by the grades to which the respective parties belonged, arrived at and gave judgment for the amount of the compensation, armed with which judgment, the plaintiff could immediately distrain for that amount the property of the criminal, and, in his default, that of his _fine_. The _fine_ could escape part of its liability by arresting and giving up the convict, or by expelling him and giving substantial security against his future misdeeds.
From the number of elements that entered into the calculation of a fine, it necessarily resulted that like fines by no means followed like crimes. Fines, like all other payments, were adjudged and paid in kind, being, in some cases of the destruction of property, generic–a quantity of that kind of property. Large fines were usually adjudged to be paid in three species, one-third in each, the plaintiff taking care to inform correctly the brehon of the kinds of property the defendant possessed, because he could seize only that named, and if the defendant did not possess it, the judgment was “a blind nut.” Crime against the State or community, such as wilful disturbance of an assembly, was punished severely. These were the only cases to which the law attached a sentence of death or other corporal punishment. For nothing whatsoever between parties did the law recognize any duty of revenge, retaliation, or the infliction of personal punishment, but only the payment of compensation. Personal punishment was regarded as the commission of a second crime on account of a first. There was no duty to do this; but the right to do it was tacitly recognized if a criminal resisted or evaded payment of an adjudged compensation. Criminal were distinguished from civil cases only by the moral element, the sufferer’s right in all cases to choose a brehon, the loss of _eineachlann_, partial or whole according to the magnitude of the crime, the elements used in calculating the amount of fine, and the technical terms employed. _Dire_ (djeereh) was a general name for a fine, and there were specific names for classes of fines. _Eric_ = reparation, redemption, was the fine for killing a human being, the amount being affected by the distinction between murder and manslaughter and by other circumstances; but in no case was a violent death, however innocent, allowed to pass without reparation being made. A fine was awarded out of the property of the convict or of his _fine_ to the _fine_ of the person slain, in the proportions in which they were entitled to inherit his property, that being also according to their degrees of kinship and the degrees in which they were really sufferers. This gave every clan and every clansman, in addition to their moral interest, a direct monetary interest in the prevention and suppression of crime. Hence the whole public feeling of the country was entirely in support of the law, the honor and interest of community and individual being involved in its maintenance. The injured person or _fine_, if unable to recover the fine, might, in capital cases, seize and enslave, or even kill, the convict. Probably restrained by the fact that, there being no officers of criminal law, they had to inflict punishment themselves, they sometimes imprisoned a convict in a small island, or sent him adrift on the sea in a _currach_ or boat of hide. Law supported by public opinion, powerful because so inspired, powerful because unanimous, was difficult to evade or resist. It so strongly armed an injured person, and so utterly paralyzed a criminal, that escape from justice was hardly possible. The only way in which it was possible was by flight, leaving all one’s property behind, and sinking into slavery in a strange place; and this in effect was a severe punishment rather than an escape.
FOREIGN LAW. The Danes and other Norsemen were the buccaneers of northwestern Europe from the eighth to the eleventh century. They conquered and settled permanently in Neustria, from them called Normandy, and conquered and ruled for a considerable time England and part of Scotland and the Isles. In Ireland they were little more than marauders, having permanent colonies only round the coast; always subject, nominally at least, to the _ard-ri_ or to the local chief; paying him tribute when he was strong, raiding his territory when he was weak, and fomenting recurrent disorder highly prejudicial to law, religion, and civilization. They never made any pretence of extending their laws to Ireland, and their attempt to conquer the country was finally frustrated at Clontarf in 1014.
The Anglo-Norman invaders also seized the seaports. The earlier of them who went inland partially adopted in the second generation the Gaelic language, laws, and customs; as many non-Celtic Lowlanders of Scotland about the same period adopted the Gaelic language, laws, and customs of the Highlanders. Hence they did not make much impression on the Gaelic system, beyond the disintegrating effect of their imperfect adoption of it.
Into the eastern parts of Ireland, however, a fresh stream of English adventurers continued to flow, as aggressive and covetous as their means and prudence permitted; calling so much of the country as they were able to wrench from the Irish “the English Pale”, which fluctuated in extent with their fortunes; and, when compelled to pay tribute to Irish chiefs, calling it “black rent”, to indicate how they regarded it. Their greatest difficulty was to counteract the tendency of the earlier colonists to become Hibernicized–a most unwilling tribute to the superiority of the Irish race. They, and still more those in England who supported them, knew nothing of the Irish language, laws, and institutions but that they should all be impartially hated, uprooted, and supplanted by English people and everything English as soon as means enabled this to be done. This was the amiable purpose of the pompously-named “Statute of Kilkenny”, passed by about a score of these colonists in 1367. Presuming to speak in the name of Ireland, the statute prohibited the English colonists from becoming Irish in the numerous ways they were accustomed to do, and excluded all Irish priests from preferment in the Church, partly because their superior virtue would by contrast amount to a censure. The purpose was not completely successful even within the Pale. Outside that precinct, the mass of the Irish were wholly unconscious of the existence of the “Statute of Kilkenny.” But expressing, as the statute did correctly, the views of fresh adventurers, it became, in arrogance and in the pretension to speak for the whole of Ireland, a model for their future legislation and policy.
Under King Henry VI. of England, Richard, Duke of York, being Lord Deputy, the Parliament of the Pale, assembled in Dublin, repudiated the authority of the English Parliament in Ireland, established a mint, and assumed an attitude of almost complete independence. On the other hand, in 1494, under Henry VII., the Parliament of the Pale, assembled at Drogheda, passed Poyning’s Act, extending all English laws to Ireland and subjecting all laws passed in Ireland to revision by the English Council. This, extended to the whole of Ireland as English power extended, remained in force until 1782. Henry VIII. was the first English sovereign to take practical measures for the pacific and diplomatic conquest of the whole of Ireland and the substitution of English for Irish institutions and methods. His daughter, Queen Elizabeth, continued and completed the conquest; but it was by drenching the country in blood, by more than decimating the Irish people, and by reducing the remnant to something like the condition of the ancient _fuidre_. Her policy prepared the ground for her successor, James I., to exterminate the Irish from large tracts, in which he planted Englishmen and Scotchmen, and to extend all English laws to Ireland and abolish all other laws. James’s English attorney-general in Ireland, Sir John Davies, in his work, _A Discoverie of the True Causes, etc._, says:
“For there is no nation of people under the sunne that doth love equall and indifferent [= impartial] justice better than the Irish; or will rest better satisfied with the execution thereof, although it bee against themselves; so as they may have the protection and benefit of the law, when uppon just cause they do desire it.”
The ancient Irish loved their laws and took pride in obeying and enforcing them. The different attitude of the modern Irish towards foreign laws and administration is amply explained by the morally indefensible character of those laws and that administration, to be read in English statutes and ordinances and in the history of English rule in Ireland–a subject too vast and harrowing, and in every sense foreign to what has gone before, to be entered upon here. Though the Parliament of 1782-1800 was little more than a Pale Parliament, in which the mass of the Irish people had no representation whatever, one of its Acts, to its credit be it said, was an attempt to mitigate the Penal Laws and emancipate the oppressed Gaelic and Catholic population of Ireland. With the partial exception of that brief interval, law in Ireland has, during the last 360 years, meant English laws specially enacted for the destruction of any Irish trade or industry that entered into competition with a corresponding English trade or industry. In later times those crude barbarities have been gradually superseded by the more defensible laws now in force in Ireland, all of which can be studied in statutes passed by the Parliament, since the Union with Scotland, called British.
REFERENCES:
Pending the desirable work of a more competent Brehon Law Commission and translators, the subject must be studied in the six volumes of _Ancient Laws of Ireland_, produced by the first Commission, from 1865 to 1901, ignoring the long introductions and many of the notes. Whitley Stokes: Criticism of Atkinson’s Glossary (London, 1903); R. Dareste: Etudes d’histoire de droit (Paris, 1889); d’Arbois de Jubainville and Paul Collinet: Etudes sur le droit celtique, 2 vols. (Paris, 1895); Joyce: Social History of Ancient Ireland, 2 vols. (London, 1913); Laurence Ginnell: The Brehon Laws (London, 1894).
IRISH MUSIC
By W.H. GRATTAN FLOOD, Mus. D., M.R.I.A., K.S.G.
Perhaps nothing so strikingly brings home the association of Ireland with music as the fact that the harp is emblazoned on the national arms. Ireland, “the mother of sweet singers”, as Pope writes; Ireland, “where”, according to St. Columcille, “the clerics sing like the birds”; Ireland can proudly point to a musical history of over 2,000 years. The Milesians, the De Dananns, and other pre-Christian colonists were musical. Hecataeus (B.C. 540-475) describes the Celts of Ireland as singing songs to the harp in praise of Apollo, and Aethicus of Istria, a Christian philosopher of the early fourth century, describes the culture of the Irish. Certain it is that, even before the coming of St. Patrick, the Irish were a highly cultured nation, and the national Apostle utilized music and song in his work of conversion. In the early Lives of the Irish Saints musical references abound, and the Irish school of music attracted foreign scholars from the sixth to the ninth century.
Hymnologists are familiar with the hymns written by early Irish saints and laics, _e.g._, St. Sechnall, St. Columcille, St. Molaise, St. Cuchuimne, St. Columbanus, St. Ultan, St. Colman, St. Cummain, St. Aengus, Dungal, Sedulius, Moengal, and others. Who has not heard of the great music school of San Gallen, founded by St. Gall, “the wonder and delight of Europe,” whither flocked German students? One of the Irish monks, Tuathal (Tutilo), composed numerous sacred pieces, including the famous farced Kyrie, “Fons bonitatis”, included in the Vatican edition of the _Kyriale_ (1906). Not alone did Irish monks propagate sacred and secular music throughout France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and the far North, but they made their influence felt In Lindisfarne, Malmesbury, Glastonbury, and other cities in England, as also in Scotland. St. Aldhelm, one of the pupils of St. Maeldubh, tells us that at the close of the seventh century, “Ireland, synonymous with learning, literally blazed like the stars of the firmament with the glory of her scholars.”
During the ninth century we meet with twelve different forms of instruments in use by the Irish, namely:–the _Cruit_ and _Clairseach_ (small and large harp); _Timpan_ (_Rotta_ or bowed _cruit_); _Buinne_ (oboe or bassoon); _Bennbuabhal_ and _Corn_ (horn); _Cuisleanna_ and _Piob_ (bagpipes); _Feadan_ (flute or fife); _Guthbuinne_ (bass horn); _Stoc_ and _Sturgan_ (trumpet); _Pipai_ (single and double pipes); _Craoibh cuil_ and _Crann cuil_ (cymbalum); _Cnamha_ (castanet); and _Fidil_ (fiddle). The so-called “Brian Boru’s Harp” really dates from the thirteenth century, and is now in Trinity College, Dublin, but there are numerous sculptured harps of the ninth and tenth centuries on the crosses at Graig, Ullard, Clonmacnois, Durrow, and Monasterboice.
Donnchadh, an Irish bishop of the ninth century, who died as abbot of St. Remigius, wrote a commentary on Martianus Capella, a well-known musical text book. Towering above all his fellows, John Scotus Erigena, in 867, wrote a tract _De Divisione Naturae_, in which he expounds _organum_ or discant, nearly a hundred years before the appearance of the _Scholia Enchiriadis_ and the _Musica Enchiriadis_. He also wrote a commentary on Martianus Capella, now in a Paris MS. of the ninth century.
The eulogy of Giraldus Cambrensis, or Gerald Barry, who came to Ireland in 1183, on Irish harpers and minstrels is too well known to be repeated, but Brompton and John of Salisbury are equally enthusiastic. Ground bass, or pedal point, and singing in parts, as well as bands of harpers and pipers, were in vogue in Ireland before the coming of the English. Dante, quoted by Galilei, testifies to the fact that Italy received the harp from Ireland; and, it may be added, the Irish harp suggested the pianoforte. In the Anglo-Norman ballad, “The Entrenchment of New Ross”–in 1265–allusion is made to pipes and flutes, and carols and dancing. Another poem, dating from about 1320, refers to Irish dances in a flattering manner.
John Garland (1190-1264) wrote a treatise on _Organum_, and outlined a scheme of dividing the interval, which developed into ornamentation, passing notes, and grace notes. The Dublin _Troper_ of the thirteenth century has a number of farced Kyries and Glorias, also a collection of Sequences. A Dublin _Processionale_ of the fourteenth century contains the most elaborate form of the _Officium Sepulchri_, with musical notation on a four-line stave–the foundation of the Miracle Play of the Resurrection. Another Dublin _Troper_ dates from 1360 and was used in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It contains the hymn, “Angelus ad Virginem”, alluded to by Chaucer. The Christ Church Psaltery, about 1370, has musical notation and is exquisitely illuminated. Lionel Power, an Anglo-Irishman, wrote the first English treatise on music in 1395. Exactly a century later, in 1495, a music school was founded in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.
The Irish Annals of the thirteenth to the fifteenth century have numerous references to distinguished harpers and singers, and there are still sung many beautiful airs of this period, including “The Coulin” and “Eibhlin a ruin.” John Lawless was a famous Irish organ-builder of the second half of the fifteenth century, and his successor, James Dempsey, built many fine organs between the years 1530 and 1565.
Notwithstanding the many penal enactments against Irish minstrels, all the great Anglo-Irish nobles of the Pale retained an Irish harper and piper in their service. Under date of 1480, we find Chief Justice Bermingham having an Irish harper to teach his family, as also “to harp and to dance.” A century later “Blind Cruise, the harper”–Richard Cruise–composed a lamentation song on the fall of the Baron of Slane, the air of which is still popular. It is to the credit of the Irishman, William Bathe (who subsequently became a Jesuit), that he wrote the first printed English treatise on music, published in 1584–thus ante-dating by thirteen years Morley’s work. Bathe wrote a second musical treatise in 1587, and he was the first to call measures by the name of bars. He also formulated methods of transposition and sight reading that may still be studied with profit.
Thomas Campion, the poet and composer, was born in Dublin in 1567, but spent nearly all his life in England. Other Irish composers, to mention only the most distinguished, were William Costello (madrigalist), Richard Gillie, Edward Shergold, and Walter Kennedy. Strange as it may seem, Queen Elizabeth retained in her service an Irish harper, Cormac MacDermot, from 1591 to 1603, and on the death of the queen he was given an annual pension of L46 10s. 10d.–nearly L500 a year of our present money.
Shakespeare refers to eleven Irish tunes, of which the famous “Callino Casturame” (_Cailin og a stuir me_) is still fresh. Irish dances were extremely popular at the English court from 1600 to 1603 and were introduced into the Masks. Shakespeare’s “intrinsic friend,” John Dowland of Dublin, was one of the greatest lutenists in Europe from 1590 to 1626. In the dedication of a song “to my loving countryman, Mr. John Foster the Younger, merchant of Dublin in Ireland,” Dowland sufficiently indicates his nationality, and his compositions betray all the charm and grace of Irish melody. It is of interest to add that the earliest printed “Irish Dance” is in _Parthenia Inviolata_, of which work, published in 1613-4, there is only one copy known–now in the New York Public Library. From 1600-1602, Charles O’Reilly was harpist to the court of Denmark at 200 thalers a year. His successor was Donal _Dubh_ (“the black”) O’Cahill (1602-1610), who followed Anne of Denmark to the English court. Walter Quin of Dublin was music master to King James’s eldest son, Prince Henry, from 1608 to 1611. Other noted harpers of the first half of the seventeenth century are: Rory _dall_ (“the blind”) O’Cahan; Nicholas _dall_ Pierce; Tadhg MacRory; John, Rory, and Henry Scott; Owen MacKeenan; Owen MacDermot; Tadhg O’Coffey; and Father Robert Nugent, S.J. Darby Scott was harper to the Danish Court from 1621 till his death, at Copenhagen, on December 19, 1634. Pierce Ferriter, a “gentleman harper”, was executed at Killarney in 1652. Myles O’Reilly and the two Connellans were famous harpers between the years 1660-1680. Evelyn, the English diarist, in 1668, praises the excellent performance on the harp of Sir Edward Sutton, who, in the following year, was granted by King Charles II. the lands of Confey, Co. Kildare. Two beautiful harps of this period are still preserved–the Fitzgerald Harp and the Fogarty Harp.
There are many exquisite airs of the seventeenth century, some of which have been incorporated in Moore’s _Irish Melodies_. The titles of several airs of this epoch are of historical interest, _e.g._, “Sarsfield’s Lament,” “Lament for Owen Roe O’Neill,” “MacAlistrum’s March,” “Ned of the Hill,” “The Breach of Aughrim,” “Limerick’s Lamentation,” “Lilliburlero,” “Ballinamona,” “The Boyne Water,” and “The Wild Geese.” Irish tunes abound in the various editions of Playford’s _Country Dances_ from 1651 to 1720.
Turlogh O’Carolan (1670-1738), who has been styled “the last of the Irish bards”, wrote and composed innumerable songs, also Planxties, Plearacas, and Lamentations. It is here merely necessary to note that twenty-six of O’Carolan’s airs are included in Moore’s _Irish Melodies_, although his claim to them has only recently been proved by the present writer. Goldsmith’s eulogy of O’Carolan is well known.
The Jacobite period from 1710 to 1750 considerably influenced Irish minstrelsy, and some of the most delightful airs were adapted to Jacobite lyrics. “Seaghan buidhe,” “An Sean duine,” “Lament for Kilcash,” “Ormonde’s Lament,” “Morin ni Chullenain,” “All the Way to Galway” (the air of “Yankee Doodle”), “Caitlin ni Houlihan,” “Balance a straw” (“The Wearing of the Green”), “St. Patrick’s Day,” “Plancam Peirbhig,” are amongst the tunes in vogue at this period.
As early as 1685 the Hibernian Catch Club was established and still flourishes. Cecilian celebrations were held from 1727 to 1732, and a Dublin Academy of Music was founded in 1728. The Charitable and Musical Society (founded in 1723) built the Fishamble Street Music Hall in 1741, and assisted at the first performance of _The Messiah_, conducted by Handel himself, on 13th April, 1742. Kitty Clive, Peg Woffington, and Daniel Sullivan were noted Irish singers of this epoch, while John Clegg, Dr. Murphy, and Burke Thumoth were famous instrumentalists. In 1741 Richard Pockrich invented the Musical Glasses, for which Gluck wrote some pieces: it was afterwards improved by Benjamin Franklin. On the continent, Henry Madden was music director of the Chapel Royal at Versailles in 1744 (in succession to Campra), and was also canon of St. Quentin.
In 1764 the Earl of Mornington, Mus. D., was appointed first professor of music in Dublin University. A few years later Charles Clagget invented the valve-horn. Michael Kelly of Dublin was specially selected by Mozart to create the parts of Basilio and Don Curzio at the first performance of the opera of _Figaro_, on May 1st, 1786. Kane O’Hara, Samuel Lee, Owenson, Neale, Baron Dillon, Dr. Doyle, T.A. Geary, Mahon, and the Earl of Westmeath were distinguished musicians–while the fame of Carter, Mountain, Moorehead, and Dr. Cogan was not confined to Ireland.
Among native minstrels, Jerome Duigenan, Dominic Mongan, Denis Hempson, Charles Byrne, James Duncan, Arthur Victory, and Arthur O’Neill were celebrated as harpers. The Belfast meeting of 1792 revived the vogue of the national instrument. Nor was the bagpipe neglected. Even in America, in 1778, Lord Rawdon had a band of pipers, with Barney Thomson as Pipe Major. At home, Sterling, Jackson, MacDonnell, Moorehead, Kennedy, and Macklin sustained the reputation of this ancient instrument.
Ere the close of the eighteenth century John Field of Dublin was a distinguished pianist. He subsequently (1814) invented the nocturne, developed by Chopin. Sir John Stevenson (the arranger of the _Irish Melodies_), Tom Cooke, William Southwell (inventor of the damper action for pianofortes), Henry Mountain, Andrew Ashe (flautist), Barton, Rooke, and Bunting were world-famed.
Among the Irish musicians of the last century the following names are typical: Thomas Moore, J. A. Wade, Balle (_Bohemian Girl_), Wallace (_Maritana_), Osborne, Sir Frederick Ouseley, Scotson Clarke, Howard Glover, Horncastle, J. W. Glover, Sir Robert Stewart, Augusta Holmes, R. M. Levey, Joseph Robinson, Forde, Lover, Kearns, Allen, Barker, Torrance, Molloy, Guernsey, Gilmore, Thunder, Harvey, Goodman, Sir Arthur Sullivan (_Pinafore, Mikado_), Miss Davis, Halliday (inventor of the Kent bugle), Latham, Duggan, Gaskin, Lacy, Pontet (Piccolomini), Hudson, Pigot, Horan, Marks, and W. C. Levey. Famous vocalists like Catherine Hayes, Mrs. Scott Fennell, Signer Foli (Foley), Barton McGuckin, Denis O’Sullivan, and William Ludwig deserve inclusion.
In our own day, it is only necessary to mention composers like Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, Dr. C. Woods, Victor Herbert, Mrs. Needham, Dr. Sinclair, Norman O’Neill, and Arthur O’Leary; singers like Egan, Burke, Plunket Greene, John MacCormack, P. O’Shea, Charles Manners, and Joseph O’Mara; violinists like Maud McCarthy, Emily Keady, Arthur Darley, and Patrick Delaney; organists like Dr. Charles Marchant, Brendan Rogers, Dr. Joze, and Professor Buck; writers like Mrs. Curwen, Dr. Annie Patterson, Mrs. Milligan Fox, Professor Mahaffy, A.P. Graves, Dr. Collison, and G.B. Shaw; and conductors like Hamilton Harty and James Glover.
REFERENCES:
Walker: Irish Bards (1786); O’Curry: Lectures (1870); Hardiman: Irish Mistrelsy (2 vols., 1834); The Complete Petrie Collection (3 vols., 1902-1904); Grattan Flood: History of Irish Music (3rd ed., 1913), Story of the Harp (1906), Story of the Bagpipe (1911); Mrs. Milligan Fox: Annals of the Irish Harpers (1911); Mason: Song Lore of Ireland (1910); Armstrong: Musical Instruments (2 vols., 1904-1908); O’Neill: Irish Folk Music (1911), Irish Minstrels and Musicians (1913).
IRISH METAL WORK
By DIARMID GOFFEY.
From the earliest times in the history of western Europe Ireland has been renowned for her work in metal. The first metal used was copper, and copper weapons are found in Ireland dating from 2,000 B.C., or even earlier, the beautiful designs of which show that the early inhabitants of the country were skilled workers in metal. Fields of copper exist all along the southern seaboard of Ireland. Numbers of flat copper celts, or axes, have been found modelled on the still earlier stone implements. By degrees the influence of the early stone axe disappears and axes of a true metal type are developed. Primitive copper knives and awls are also abundant. The fineness of the early Irish copper work is seen at its best in the numerous copper halberd blades found in Ireland. These blades, varying from nine to sixteen inches in length, were fastened at right angles by rivets into wooden shafts. The blades show a slight sickle-like curve and are of the highest workmanship. Halberds somewhat similar in type have been found in Spain, North Germany, and Scandinavia.
Between the years 2000 and 1800 B.C. the primitive metalworkers discovered that bronze, a mixture of tin and copper, was a more suitable metal than pure copper for the manufacture of weapons; and the first period of the bronze age may be dated from 1800 to 1500 B.C. The bronze celts at first differed little from those made of copper, but gradually the type developed from the plain wedge-shaped celt to the beautiful socketed celt, which appears on the scene in the last, or fifth, division of the bronze age (900-350 B.C.). It was during the age of bronze that spears came into general use, as did the sword and rapier. The early spear-heads were simply knife-shaped bronze weapons riveted to the ends of shafts, but by degrees the graceful socketed spear-heads of the late bronze age were developed.
Stone moulds for casting the early forms of weapons have been found, but, as the art of metalworking became perfected, the use of sand moulds was discovered, with the result that there are no extant examples of moulds for casting the more developed forms of weapons. The bronze weapons–celts, swords, and spear-heads–are often highly decorated. In these decorations can be traced the connection between the early Irish civilization and that of the eastern Mediterranean. The bronze age civilization in Europe spread westward from the eastern Mediterranean either by the southern route of Italy, Spain, France, and thence to Ireland, or, as seems more probable, up the river Danube, then down the Elbe, and so to Scandinavia, whence traders by the north of Scotland introduced the motives and patterns of the Aegean into Ireland. Whichever way the eastern civilization penetrated into Ireland, it left England practically untouched in her primitive barbarity.
Of gold work, for which Ireland is especially famous, the principal feature in the bronze age was the lunula, a crescent-shaped flat gold ornament generally decorated at the ends of the crescent. These lunulae are found in profusion all over Ireland. A few have been found in Cornwall and Brittany, and a few in Scotland and Denmark. One has been found in Luxemburg and one in Hanover.
Gold collars are numerous in Ireland and also date from the bronze age. The earliest form of collar is the “torc” of twisted gold. Another type, later in date than the torc, is the gold ring-shaped collar. Two splendid examples of this latter type were found at Clonmacnois, the decoration of which, in _La Tene_, or trumpet, pattern, shows the connection between the Irish and continental designs.
A find of prehistoric gold ornaments in county Clare should be mentioned. An immense number was there discovered in 1854 hidden together in a cist, the value of the whole being estimated at over L3,000.
After the bronze age comes the iron age. The introduction of iron wrought a great change in metalworking, but, as iron is a metal very subject to oxidization, comparatively few early iron remains are found. There are some swords of an early pattern in the National Museum at Dublin.
It has been shown that the pre-Christian metalwork of Ireland is well worthy of attention, but it is to the early Christian metalworkers that Ireland owes her pre-eminent fame in this field. In early Christian Ireland metalworking was brought to a pitch rarely equalled and never excelled. The remains found, such as the Tara Brooch, the Cross of Cong, and the Ardagh Chalice, are among the most beautiful metalwork in the world. The wonderful interlaced patterns, which are typically Celtic, bewildering in their intricacy, and fascinating in the freedom and boldness of their execution, lend themselves readily to metal work.
The connecting link between the metalwork of the late pagan period and that of early Christian times is chiefly exemplified by the penannular brooches, of which great numbers have been found in Ireland. Examples of this characteristically Celtic ornament may be seen in all Celtic countries.
In its earliest form this brooch is simply a ring, with a gap in it, to which a pin is loosely attached by a smaller ring. Gradually the open ends of the ring, which need some enlargement in order to prevent the pin slipping off, became larger and ornamented. In time these became regular trumpet-shaped ends, generally ornamented with characteristic “trumpet” patterns. The next stage was to close the gap, leaving a ring with a crescent-shaped disc at one side. Space does not permit of the description of the numerous brooches found. It will be sufficient to describe the Tara Brooch, which is the crowning glory not only of the Irish but of any metalworker’s art.
The Tara Brooch, whose only connection with Tara is its name, was found near Drogheda; it is about seven inches in diameter and the pin about fifteen inches long. It is made of bronze covered with the most elaborate interlaced ornament in gold. The fineness of the interlaced work may be compared with, and is quite equal to, that of the best illuminated manuscripts; the freedom of its execution is amazing. Besides panels of ribbon ornament, which include spirals, plaited work, human heads, and animal forms, the front of the brooch is decorated with enamel and settings of amber and colored glass. The back of the brooch is, as is often the case in Irish work, decorated in a bolder manner than the front, and the “trumpet” pattern is there very marked. The head of the pin is also elaborately decorated. The minute and intricate style of the work is strikingly shown by the fact that, even after prolonged study, some patterns escaped notice and have only lately been discovered. Further, each of the gold lines is made of tiny gold balls, so small as only to be seen by means of a magnifying glass.
With the introduction of Christianity, the attention of artificers was turned to the manufacture of church vessels and shrines. Of these perhaps the most beautiful are the Ardagh Chalice, the Cross of Cong, and the Shrine of St. Patrick’s Bell, though great numbers of other sacred ornaments, such as the Shrine of St. Lactan’s Arm and the numerous bell shrines, are also fine examples of the work of an unsurpassed school of metalworkers.
The date of the Tara Brooch is not easy to determine, but it may probably be placed in the eighth century of our era. The Ardagh Chalice belongs probably to about the same date. It was found in a rath at Ardagh, county Limerick, in 1868. It measures 7 inches in height and 9-1/2 in diameter. Around the cup is a band of fine filigree interlaced ornament in the form of panels divided by half beads of enamel. Below this are the names of the twelve Apostles in faint Celtic lettering. The two handles are beautifully decorated with panels of interwoven ornament, and on the sides are two circular discs divided into ornamented panels. The under side of the foot of the Chalice is also very beautifully decorated.
The shrines of the bells of the Irish saints are interesting examples of Irish metal work. As is fitting, the finest of these is the Shrine of St. Patrick’s Bell. This was made by order of King Domnall O’Lachlainn between the years 1091 and 1105 to contain St. Patrick’s Bell, a square iron bell made of two plates of sheet iron riveted together. The shrine is made of bronze plates, to which gold filigree work and stones are riveted. The top of the shrine, curved to receive the handle of the bell, is of silver elaborately decorated. The back is overlaid with a plate of silver cut in cruciform pattern. Around the margin of the back is engraved the following inscription in Irish: “A prayer for Domnall Ua Lachlainn, by whom this bell [shrine] was made, and for Domnall, successor of Patrick, by whom it was made, and for Cathalan Ua Maelchallann, the keeper of the bell, and for Cudulig Ua Inmainen with his sons, who fashioned it.” The whole is executed in a very fine manner and is the most beautiful object of its kind in existence. Another beautiful shrine, known as the Cross of Cong, made to enshrine a piece of the true cross presented by the pope in 1123, was made for King Turlogh O’Conor at about that date. It is 2 feet 6 inches high and 1 foot 6-3/4 inches wide. It is made of oak cased with copper and enriched with ornaments of gilded bronze. The ornamentation is of the typical Irish type, as on the Ardagh Chalice and the Shrine of St. Patrick’s Bell. A quartz crystal set in the centre of the front of the cross probably held the relic.
It is clear from the succession of beautiful work executed from the eighth to the twelfth century, that there must have existed in Ireland during that period a school of workers in metal such as has seldom been equalled by any individual worker or guild before or since, and never excelled. The examples described are only the more famous of the remains of early Irish Christian art in metal, but they are surrounded by numerous examples of pins, brooches, and shrines, each worthy to rank with the finest productions of the metalworker. The Shrine of St. Moedoc (date uncertain) ought perhaps to be mentioned. On it are found several figures, including three nuns, men with books, sceptres, and swords, and a lifelike figure of a harper.
Besides articles of ornament, articles of use, such as bits for horses and household utensils, have been found, which show that the Irish smiths were as well able to produce articles for every-day use as the artificers were to create works of art in metal.
With the landing of the English in 1169 the arts and sciences in Ireland declined. Indeed, from that time on and for long afterwards, almost the only metalworkers needed were makers of arms and weapons of offense and defense.
REFERENCES:
British Museum, Bronze Age Guide; Coffey: Bronze Age in Ireland; Allen: Celtic Art; Abercrombie: Bronze Age Pottery; Wilde: Catalogue of the Royal Irish Academy’s Collection; Allen: Christian Symbolism; Stokes: Christian Art in Ireland; Petrie: Ecclesiastical Architecture in Ireland; Coffey: Guide to the Celtic Antiquities of the Christian Period perserved in the National Museum, Dublin; Kane: Industrial Resources of Ireland; O’Curry: Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish; Coffey: New Grange and other incised Tumuli in Ireland; Dechelette: Manuel d’Archeologie pre-historique; Ridgeway: Origin of Currency and Weight Standards.
IRISH MANUSCRIPTS
By LOUIS ELY O’CARROLL, B.A., B.L.
In the dark ages of Europe, whilst new civilizations were in the making and all was unrest, art and religion, like the lamp of the sanctuary, burned brightly and steadily in Ireland, and their rays penetrated the outer gloom. Scattered through the libraries of Europe are the priceless manuscripts limned by Irish scribes. The earliest missionaries to the continent, disciples of St. Columbanus and St. Gall, doubtless brought with them into exile beautiful books which they or their brothers of the parent monastery had wrought in a labor of love; or mayhap many a monk crossed the seas bearing the treasured volumes into hiding from the spoiling hands of the Dane. Yet, fortunately, in the island home where their beauty was born the most superb volumes still remain.
From almost prehistoric times the Irish were skilled artificers in gold and bronze, and, at the advent of Christianity, had already evolved and perfected that unique system of geometrical ornament which is known as Celtic design. The original and essential features of this system consisted in the use of spirals and interlacing strapwork, but later on this type was developed by transforming the geometrical fret into a scheme of imaginary or nondescript animals, portions of which, such as the tails and ears, were prolonged and woven in exquisite fancy through the border. The artistic features of Celtic book decoration consist chiefly of initial letters of this nature embellished with color. Amongst the ancient Irish there was a keen knowledge of color and an exceptional appreciation of color values. Thus it was that in the early centuries of Christian Ireland the learned monks, transcribing the Gospels and longing to make the book beautiful, were able to bring to their task an artistic skill which was hereditary and almost instinctive. The colors which they used were mostly derived from mineral substances and the black was carbon, made, it is conjectured, from charred fish-bones; but with them was combined some gummy material which made them cling softly to the vellum and has held for us their lustre for more than a thousand years. It is noteworthy that neither gold nor silver was used for book decoration, and this would appear to be a deliberate avoidance of the glitter and glare which distinguish eastern art.
_The Book of Durrow _(in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin) is the oldest specimen of Celtic illumination and, if not the work of St. Columcille, is certainly of as early a date. Each of the Gospels opens with a beautiful initial succeeded by letters of gradually diminishing size, and there are full page decorations embodying such subjects as the symbols of the Evangelists. The colors are rich and vivid and all the designs are of the purest and most Celtic character.
_The Gospels of MacRegol _(now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford) is the work of an Abbot of Birr who died A.D. 820. It is a volume of unusually large size, copiously ornamented with masterly designs and containing illuminated portraits of Saints Mark, Luke, and John. The first part of the book with the portrait of St. Matthew is missing. _The Book of Kells _(in the Library of T.C.D.) is the all-surpassing masterpiece of Celtic illuminative art and is acknowledged to be the most beautiful book in the world. This copy of the four Gospels was long deemed to have been made by the saintly hands of Columcille, though it probably belongs to the eighth century. Into its pages are woven such a wealth of ornament, such an ecstasy of art, and such a miracle of design that the book is today not only one of Ireland’s greatest glories but one of the world’s wonders. After twelve centuries the ink is as black and lustrous and the colors are as fresh and soft as though but the work of yesterday. The whole range of colors is there–green, blue, crimson, scarlet, yellow, purple, violet–and the same color is at times varied in tone and depth and shade, thereby achieving a more exquisite combination and effect. In addition to the numerous decorative pages and marvellous initials, there are portraits of the Evangelists and full-page miniatures of the Temptation of Christ, His Seizure by the Jews, and the Madonna and Child surrounded by Angels with censers. Exceptionally beautiful are these angels and other angelic figures throughout the book, their wings shining with glowing colors amid woven patterns of graceful design. The portraits and miniatures and the numerous faces centred in initial letters are not to be adjudged by the standard of anatomical drawing and delineation of the human figure, but rather by their effect as part of a scheme of ornamentation; for the Celtic illuminator was imaginative rather than realistic, and aimed altogether at achieving beauty by means of color and design. The Book of Kells is the Mecca of the illuminative artist, but it is the despair of the copyist. The patience and skill of the olden scribe have baffled the imitator; for, on an examination with a magnifying glass, it has been found that, in a space of a quarter of an inch, there are no fewer than a hundred and fifty-eight interlacements of a ribbon pattern of white lines edged by black ones on a black ground. Surely this is the manuscript which was shown to Giraldus Cambrensis towards the close of the twelfth century and of whose illuminations he speaks with glowing enthusiasm; “they were,” he says, “supposed to have been produced by the direction of an angel at the prayer of St. Brigid.”
_The Gospels of MacDurnan _(now in the Archbishop’s Library at Lambeth) is a small and beautiful volume which was executed by an abbot of Armagh who died in the year 891. A full-page picture of the Evangelist precedes each Gospel, and a composite border frames each miniature in a bewildering pattern of intertwining strapwork and wonderful designs of imaginary beasts. Ornamental capitals and rich borders give a special beauty to the initial pages of the Gospels.
_The Book of Armagh _(in the Library of T.C.D.) was carefully guarded and specially venerated through the ages in the erroneous belief that it was in part the handiwork of St. Patrick. It was written about the year 800, and would appear to have been copied from documents actually written by the patron saint of Ireland. The book is exceptionally interesting by reason of the fact that it contains St. Patrick’s Confession, that beautiful story of how he found his mission, how the captive grew to love his captors, and how, after his escape, he came back to them bearing the lamp of Holy Faith. Although the ornamentation of the manuscript is infrequent, there are occasional beautiful examples which compare in richness with those in the Book of Kells.
_The Liber Hymnorum _(in the Franciscan Monastery, Dublin) contains a number of hymns associated with the names of Irish saints. The ornamentation consists of colored initials, designed with a striking use of fanciful animal figures interlaced and twined with delightful freedom around the main structural body.
The _Garland of Howth_ and the _Stowe Missal_ (both in Trinity College Library) belong to the eighth century and are beautiful examples of early illuminative art. The former, which is very incomplete, has only two ornamental pages left, each containing figure-representations inserted in the decorative work.
The _Gospels of St. Chad_ (in the Cathedral Library at Lichfield) and the _Gospels of Lindisfarne_, which are “the glory of the British Museum”, form striking examples of the influence of Celtic art. St. Chad was educated in Ireland in the school of St. Finian, where he acquired his training in book decoration. The Gospels of Lindisfarne were produced by the monks of Iona, where St. Columcille founded his great school of religion, art, and learning. This latter manuscript is second only to the Book of Kells in its glory of illuminative design, and, from its distinctive scheme of colors, the tones of which are light and bright and gay, it forms a contrast to the quieter shades and the solemn dignity of the more famous volume.
_The Book of the Dun Cow, The Book of Leinster_, and the other great manuscripts of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries are interesting as literature rather than as art, for they tell the history of ancient Erin and have garnered her olden legends and romantic tales. It is only the Gospels and other manuscripts of religious subjects that are illuminated. In the apparel of the ancient Irish, the number of colors marked the social rank: the king might wear seven colors, poets and learned men six; five colors were permitted in the clothes of chieftains, and thus grading down to the servant, who might wear but one. All this the scribe knew well. We can picture the humble servant of God, clad in a coarse robe of a single color, deep in his chosen labor of recording the life and teachings of his Master, and striving to endow this record with the glory of the seven colors which were rightly due to a King alone. As we gaze on his work today its beauty is instinct with life, and the patient love that gave it birth seems to cling to it still. The white magic of the artist’s holy hands has bridged the span of a thousand years.
REFERENCES:
O’Curry: Lectures on the Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History (Dublin, 1861); Brunn: An Enquiry into the Art of the Illuminated Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, Part I, Celtic Illuminated Manuscripts (Edinburgh, 1897); Robinson: Celtic Illuminative Art in the Gospels of Durrow, Lindisfarne, and Kells (Dublin, 1908); Westwood: The Book of Kells, a lecture given in Oxford, November, 1886 (Dublin, 1887); Gougaud: Repertoire des fac-similes des manuscripts irlandais (Paris, 1913).
THE RUINS OF IRELAND
By FRANCIS JOSEPH BIGGER, M.R.I.A.
The ruins of Ireland are her proudest monuments. They stand as a lasting revelation to all mankind–a distinct and definite proclamation that the Irish people, century after century, were able to raise and adorn some of the finest buildings in stone that western civilization has seen or known. It is recognized the world over that Irish art has a beauty and distinction all its own, in its own Irish setting unrivalled, throned in its own land, in its own natural surroundings. The shrines and gospels, the reliquaries and missals, the crosses and bells that are still existent, many in Ireland, others in every country in the world, attest beyond any dispute that Irish art-workers held a preeminent place in the early middle ages, and that works of Irish art are still treasured as unique in their day and time. No country has been plundered and desolated as Ireland has been. Dane, Norman, English–each in turn swept across the fair face of Ireland, carrying destruction in their train, yet withal Ireland has her art treasures and her ruins that bear favorable comparison with those of other civilizations.
In Dublin and in many private Irish collections can be found hand-written books of parchment, illuminated with glowing colors that time has scarce affected or the years caused to fade. On one page alone of the Book of Kells, ornament and writing can be seen penned and painted in lines too numerous even to count. They are there by the thousand: a magnifying glass is required to reveal even a fragment of them. Ireland produced these in endless number–every great library or collection in Europe possesses one or more examples.
As with books, so with reliquaries, crosses, and bells. When the Island of Saints and Scholars could produce books, it could make shrines and everything necessary to stimulate and hand down the piety and the patient skill of a people steeped in art-craft and religious feeling. What they could do on parchment–like the Books of Kells and Durrow–what they could produce in bronze and precious metals–like the Cross of Cong, the Shrine of Saint Patrick’s Bell, the Tara Brooch, and the Chalice of Ardagh–not to write of the numberless bronze and gold articles of an age centuries long preceding their production–they could certainly vie with in stone.
Of this earlier work a word must go down. In Ireland still at the present day, after all the years of plunder she has undergone, more ancient gold art-treasures remain than in any other country, museum, or collection, most of them pre-Christian, and what the other countries do possess are largely Irish or of Celtic origin. We must have this borne into the minds of every one of Irish birth or origin, that this great treasure was battered into shape by Irish hands on Irish anvils, designed in Irish studios, ornamented with Irish skill for Irish use.
With such workmen, having such instincts and training, what of the housing and surroundings to contain them and give them a fit and suitable setting? The earliest stone structures in Ireland still remaining are the great stone cashels or circular walls enclosing large spaces–walls of great thickness, unmortared, in which there are vast quantities of masonry. Around their summits a chariot might be driven, inside their spaces horse races might be run. As a few examples, there are Staigue, in Kerry; Dun Angus, in Aran, off Galway; Aileach, above the walls of Derry. Of the earliest churches, cyclopean in construction and primitive in character, built of stone, with thick sloping walls from foundation to ridge, Gallerus still remains, and the Skelligs, those wondrous sea-girt rocks, preserve both church and cell almost perfect. There are many other examples, some of a later date, such as Temple Cronan and Maghera and Banagher in Derry, St. Finan’s oratory in county Cork, St. Fechin’s at Fore, and St. Molaise’s at Devenish.
From the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, there are innumerable examples of oratories, some with stone roofs, others with roofs not so permanent, but all having the common features of an altar window facing the east, through which the sun fell at the beginning of the day to tell the early missioner that his hour of devotion had arrived, and a west door, through which the rays of the declining sun fell across the altar steps, speaking of a day that was closing. A south window was added close to the east end, and it, too, was a sun-dial; it told the hour of angelus, the mid-day, when the bell was rung and a calm reverence fell on all within its hearing. Such churches can still be seen at Aran and Inismurray, on the islands of Lough Derg, Lough Ri, and in many other places.
A few years later these oratories were too small for the growing faith, and larger churches were built, some using the older structure as chancels. Where the west door was built a circular arch was made and the new and old united. This can well be seen at Inis-na-ghoill in Lough Corrib, on the Aran Islands off Galway, at Glendalough, at Inis-cleraun in Lough Ri, at Clonmacnois, at Iniscaltra, and on many another island and promontory of the south and west.
During this time, and after, we find the most elaborate carvings on door and arch and window, equal in skill to what is found in book or metal work.
It must have been at this time that the Galls, or strangers, first invaded Ireland, bearing havoc in their train, for then it was that the _cloicteach_, or Round Towers, were built. It is now admitted by all Irish authorities of any repute, and that beyond dispute, that the Round Towers, the glory of Ireland, were built by Irish people as Christian monuments from which the bells might be rung, and as places of strength for the preservation of the valued articles used in Christian worship; here they might be safely stored. They were also used for the preservation of life in case of sudden attack and onslaught by unexpected enemies. All the towers are on ecclesiastical sites, many are incorporated in church buildings, such as those of Glendalough in Wicklow and Clonmacnois on the Shannon, The records of the construction of some of them in the tenth and eleventh centuries are still extant, and this is conclusive. There are today about seventy Round Towers in Ireland, and many have been destroyed.
The pillar towers of Ireland, how wondrously they stand By the lakes and rushing rivers through the valleys of our land; In mystic file, through the isle, they lift their heads sublime, These gray old pillar temples–these conquerors of time.
Here was placed the holy chalice that held the sacred wine, And the gold cross from the altar, and the relics from the shrine, And the mitre shining brighter with its diamonds than the east, And the crozier of the pontiff, and the vestments of the priest.
_D.F. MacCarthy_.
This was the time when the High Crosses of Ireland were carved and set up. They vie with the Round Towers in interest and in the display of skill. What the towers have in perfection, masonry and construction, the crosses have in artistic carving and symbolic design. No two crosses are alike; they are as varied as the clouds in an Irish sky or the pebbles on the beach or the flowers in a garden. They were carved in reverence by those who knew and esteemed their art, and lavished all their skill and knowledge on what they most valued and treasured. They were not set up as grave-marks merely–theirs was a higher and loftier mission. They were raised in places where some great event or period was to be commemorated–they were erected where some early disciple of the Cross could stand beside one of them and from any panel could tell the foundation of the Faith, for there in stone was story after story, from the Old Testament and the New, that gave him his text, and so, as at the Cross of the Scriptures at Clonmacnois, a missioner could preach on every recurring holy day from Christmas to Christmas, with ever his text in stone before him. Many a broken and mutilated cross has been set up in Ireland in recent years, proving that the heart of the Gael, no matter how rent and broken, is still inclined to bind up the broken wounds of her past glories.
With the religious orders there came to Ireland a widespread desire to add something to the older sanctuaries of the Gael, to widen their borders and strengthen their cords, and so the abbeys were founded. Here and there we find them still–by winding rivers, on rich meadows, in glens and glades, by the sea margin, or on the slopes of the rugged mountain. Their crumbling walls and broken windows can still be traced, their towers are still to be seen over tree tops and in the centre of many a slumbering town. By the shores of Donegal Bay the old Franciscan house, where the Four Masters compiled what is perhaps the most remarkable record possessed by any nation, is still clothed in ivy. At Kilconnell, in Galway, their old place is almost as they left it, but roofless, with the tears of the friars upon the altar steps. Clare Galway has a tower worth travelling half a continent to see. By the Boniet River, at Drumahaire, on the banks of Lough Gill, are the mason marks of the cloister builders, and the figure of St. Francis talking to the birds is still there. The abbey is roofless and empty, and so the birds of the air are his constant companions.
Space forbids, or endless abbeys might be described. The Black Abbey at Kilkenny, with its long row of Butler effigies, or the Cathedral of Saint Canice, still perfect, with its soaring round tower beside it, or the mystical seven light window of the Franciscan friary by the Nore, with the old mill-weirs running free to this day. How long could we ponder by the east window of Kilcooley, with tracery like a spider’s web, and listen to the mystical bells, or gaze at the beautiful oriel at Feenagh, or stand at Jerpoint, with its spacious cloisters and stone-groined choir, with Saint Christopher in Irish marble beside us.
Cashel, one of the wonders of the world, grows up suddenly into sight on a high rock rising from level land crowned with buildings. A great abbey dominates; beside it clings that carved gem of a stone-roofed church, Cormac’s Chapel. Round Tower and Cross are there, and many a sculptured tomb.
Not far from Cashel is the Abbey of Holy Cross, with its lovely mitred windows, shadowed in the river passing at its feet. The circular pillars and arches of Boyle Abbey are splendidly proportioned, whilst the cloisters of Sligo display in their long, shadowy recesses and ornamented pillars great dignity and beauty. The windows and monuments of Ennis Friary, founded by the O’Briens, are of unusual interest, the carving of figure-subjects being equal to the best of their age.
We have Thomastown and Callan, Dunbrody and Tintern, all having an individual charm and interest that not only dim the eye and make the blood course freely in every one of Irish stock when he looks upon what is and thinks of what was, but even in the coldest light give food for thought to every one desirous of knowing something of the growth and civilization of a great people.
Of the many castles and stout Irish strongholds it is hard to write in such a short paper as this. Those on the Boyne, such as Trim, for strong building and extent, excel in many ways. Carlingford, Carrickfergus, and Dunluce have by their size and picturesque situations ever appealed to visitors. They are each built on rocks jutting into the sea, Dunluce on a great perpendicular height, the Atlantic dashing below. Dunamace, near Maryborough, in the O’More country, appears like Cashel, but is entirely military. The famed walled cities of Kells, in Kilkenny, and Fore, in Westmeath, are remarkable. Each has an abbey, many towers, gates, and stout bastions. The great keeps of the midland lords, the towers of Granuaile on the west coast, and the traders’ towers on the east coast, especially those of Down, afford ample material for a study of the early colonizing efforts of different invaders, as well as providing incidents of heroism and romance. These square battlemented towers can be seen here and there in every district.
Every portion of Ireland has its ruins. Earthworks, stone forts, prehistoric monuments, circular stone huts, early churches, abbeys, crosses, round towers, castles of every size and shape are to be found in every county, some one in every parish, all over Ireland. It is almost invidious to name any in particular where the number is so great.
REFERENCES:
Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy (Dublin); Proceedings of Society of Antiquaries (Dublin); Ulster Journal of Archaeology, Old Series and New Series, edited by F.J. Bigger, Belfast; Wakeman: Handbook of Irish Antiquities (Dublin, 1891); Stokes: Early Christian Art in Ireland (Dublin, 1887); Petrie: Round Towers and Ancient Architecture of Ireland (Dublin, 1845).
MODERN IRISH ART
By D.J. O’DONOGHUE,
_Librarian, University College, Dublin_.
It would be difficult to dispute, in view of her innumerable and excellent artists, that there has always been in modern times an art consciousness in Ireland, but it is impossible to assert that there has been any artistic unity in her people. She has produced no school, but merely a great number of brilliant painters, sculptors, and engravers, chiefly for export. With all our acknowledged artistic capacity, we have not, except in one notable instance, produced a cumulative art effect. The history of Irish art is almost uniformly a depressing narrative. During a comparatively brief period in the eighteenth century–significantly enough, it was while the country enjoyed a short spell of national life–there was something like a national patronage of the artist, and the result is visible in the noble public buildings and beautiful houses of the Irish capital, with their universally admired mantelpieces, doors, ceilings, fanlights, ironwork, and carvings. In short, while Ireland had even a partly unfettered control of her own concerns, the arts were generously encouraged by her government and by the wealthy individual. When other European capitals were mere congeries of rookeries, Dublin, the centre of Irish political life, possessed splendid streets, grandly planned. But there was little solidarity among the artistic fraternity. Various associations of artists were formed, which held together fairly well until the flight of the resident town gentry after the Union, and many admirable artists were trained in the schools of the Royal Dublin Society, but, since the opening of the nineteenth century, there has been almost no visible art effort in Dublin. True, there have been many fine artists, who have made a struggle to fix themselves in Dublin, but, as with the Royal Hibernian Academy, of which the best of them were members, the struggle has been a painful agony. Usually the artist migrated to London to join the large group of Irishmen working there; a few others went to America and obtained an honored place in her art annals. Those who went to England secured in many cases the highest rewards of the profession. Several, like Barry, Hone, Barrett, and Cotes, were founders or early members of the Royal Academy; one, Sir Martin Shee, became its President. Nevertheless, many distinguished artists remained in Dublin, where the arts of portrait-painting and engraving were carried to a high pitch of excellence.
This record must necessarily be of a chronological character, and can only take note of those whose works have actual value and interest, historical or other. Edward Luttrell (1650-1710) did some excellent work in crayon or pastel, while Garrett Murphy (fl. 1650-1716), Stephen Slaughter (d. 1765), Francis Bindon (d. 1765), and James Latham (1696-1747), have each left us notable portraits of the great Irish personages of their day. To fellow countrymen in London, Charles Jervas (1675?-1739), Thomas Hickey (d. 1816?), and Francis Cotes, R.A. (1725-1770), we owe presentments of other famous people. George Barrett, R.A. (1728-1784), one of the greatest landscapists of his time; Nathaniel Hone, R.A. (1718-1784), an eccentric but gifted painter, with an individuality displayed in all his portraits; James Barry, R.A. (1741-1806), still more eccentric, with grand conceptions imperfectly carried out in his great historical and allegorical pictures:–these, with Henry Tresham, R.A. (1749?-1814), and Matthew Peters, R.A. (1742-1814), historical painters of considerable merit, upheld the Irish claim to a high place in English eighteenth century art. A little later, miniaturists such as Horace Hone, A.R.A. (1756-1825), George Chinnery (1774-1852), and Adam Buck (1759-1844), also worked with remarkable success in London. Among resident Irish artists, the highest praise can be given to the miniature painters, John Comerford (1770?-1832) and Charles Robertson (1760-1821), and to the portrait-painters, Robert Hunter (fl. 1750-1803) and (especially) Hugh Douglas Hamilton (1739-1808), of whose work Ireland possesses many distinguished examples. Some day Hamilton’s pictures will appeal to a far wider public than his countrymen can provide. One must omit the names of many clever Irish artists like the Wests, Francis and Robert, who were the most successful teachers of perhaps any time in Ireland, and come at once to that branch of art in which Ireland stands second to none–mezzotint-engraving.
One of the earliest engravers in this style was Edward Luttrell, already named as a painter, but it was John Brooks (fl. 1730-1756) who is justly considered the real founder of that remarkable group of Irish engravers whose work may be more correctly described as belonging to a school than any other of the period. For many years in Dublin, and afterwards in London, a succession of first-rate artists of Irish birth produced work which remains and always must remain one of the glories of Ireland. Limits of space allow only the bare mention of the names of James McArdell (1728?-1765), Charles Spooner (d. 1767), Thomas Beard (fl. 1728), Thomas Frye (1710-1762), Edward Fisher (1722-1785?), Michael Ford (d. 1765), John Dixon (1740?-1811), Richard Purcell (fl. 1746-1766), Richard Houston (1721?-1775), John Murphy (1748?-1820), Thomas Burke (1749-1815), Charles Exshaw (fl. 1747-1771), and Luke Sullivan (1705-1771)–artists of whom any country might be proud, and whose works have in most cases outlasted the remembrance of the persons whose likenesses they sought to reproduce. Separate monographs might be justifiably written on most of the gifted artists here enumerated, and one can only regret not being able in short space to compare and estimate their various qualities. Thomas Chambers, A.R.A. (1724?-1784), William Nelson Gardiner (1766-1814), James Egan (1799-1842), and William Humphreys (1794-1865) are other Irish engravers who cannot be overlooked in a survey of the art of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Contemporaneously with the remarkable development of the art of engraving arose a group of Irish architects. Rather earlier in point of time was Sir Edward Lovat Pearce (d. 1733), who was one of the chief architects of the Irish Parliament House, and Thomas Burgh (d. 1730), to whom we owe the Library of Trinity College, Dublin; but Thomas Cooley (1740-1784), designer of the handsome Royal Exchange of that city; Richard Castle (d. 1751), a foreigner who settled in Ireland and built a number of beautiful Irish residences; Francis Johnston (1761-1829), an excellent architect whose chief claim to remembrance, however, is as founder of the Royal Hibernian Academy; and, above all, James Gandon (1743-1823), whose superb Custom House, Four Courts, and part of the Irish Parliament House will perpetuate his name in Dublin while that city lasts–each helped to make the capital, even in its decay, one of the most interesting in Europe. Nor should we forget Thomas Ivory (d. 1786), whose Foundling Hospital is another of Dublin’s many graceful edifices; nor Sir Richard Morrison (1767-1849) and his son William (1794-1838), much of whose work remains to testify to their skill and ingenuity.
Ecclesiastical architecture in Ireland is indebted to Patrick Byrne (fl. 1840), James J. McCarthy (d. 1882), J.B. Keane (d. 1859), and James Murray (1831-1863), for many well designed churches and chapels throughout Ireland; but the great names in modern Irish architecture are those of Benjamin Woodward (1815-1861), whose premature death was a serious loss to Irish art; Sir Thomas Deane (1792-1871); and his son, Sir Thomas Newenham Deane (1828-1899). The elder Deane was, with Woodward, the architect of the Oxford Museum and of the splendid Engineering Hall of Trinity College, Dublin, buildings which have elicited enthusiastic praise from John Ruskin and other eminent critics. Deserving of respectful mention, too, to come down to our own days, are Sir Thomas Drew (1838-1910) and William H. Lynn, who is still living.
In sculpture, again, Ireland has done memorable work. In the eighteenth century she gave us admirable craftsmen like Edward Smyth (1749-1812), John Hickey (1756-1795), and Christopher Hewitson (fl. 1772-1794), whose dignified monument of Bishop Baldwin is one of the most distinguished pieces of sculpture in Trinity College, Dublin. But it was not till the appearance of a later group of sculptors, including John Hogan (1800-1858), John Edward Carew (1785-1868), John Henry Foley, R.A. (1818-1874), and Patrick MacDowell, R.A. (1799-1870), that Irish sculpture obtained more than local renown. Fortunately, most of the best work of Hogan and Foley remains in Ireland; that of Carew and MacDowell is chiefly to be found in the Houses of Parliament and other institutions in London. The incomparable “Goldsmith,” “Burke,” “Grattan,” and other statues by Foley, together with an almost complete collection of casts of his other works, are in his native country. Hogan is represented in Dublin by his “Thomas Davis” and his “Dead Christ,” to name but two of his principal works. The names at least of James Heffernan (1785-1847), of John Edward Jones (1806-1872), of Terence Farrell (1798-1876), of Samuel F. Lynn (1834-1876), and perhaps of Christopher Moore (1790-1863), an excellent sculptor of busts, may be set down here. Sir Thomas Farrell (1827-1900) and the living sculptors, John Hughes, Oliver Sheppard, and Albert Bruce Joy, are responsible for some of the more admirable of the public monuments of Dublin. It is much to be deplored that of the work of one of the greatest of Dublin-born artists, Augustus Saint Gaudens, we have only one example–the statue of Parnell. Ireland may surely claim him as one of her most gifted sons. And perhaps a word might be said in this place of some of the other Irishmen who made their home in America: of Hoban the architect who designed the White House at Washington, modelling it after Leinster House in Dublin; of painters like Charles Ingham, W.G. Wall, William Magrath, the Morans, James Hamilton, and Thomas Hovenden; and of sculptors like John Donoghue, John Flanagan, Andrew O’Connor, John F. Kelly, Jerome Connor, John J. Boyle, and Martin Milmore. But they belong rather to the history of American art than to that of Ireland.
Before leaving the subject of Irish sculpture, the work of the medallists, an allied branch of the art in which Irishmen did much valued work, should not be overlooked. The medals of William Mossop (1751-1805), of his son, William Stephen Mossop (1788-1827), and of John Woodhouse (1835-1892), to mention only three of its chief representatives in Ireland, are greatly prized by collectors.
Most modern Irish art of high importance has been largely produced out of Ireland, which has been perforce abandoned by those artists who have learned how little encouragement is to be met with at home. One can blame neither the artist nor the Irish public for this unfortunate result; there is sufficient reason in the political and economic condition of Ireland since the Union to explain the fact. But for this cause men like Daniel Maclise, R.A. (1806-1870), William Mulready, R.A. (1786-1863), Francis Danby, A.R.A. (1793-1861), and Alfred Elmore, R.A. (1815-1881), might have endeavored to emulate the spirit of James O’Connor (1792-1841), the landscapist, Richard Rothwell (1800-1868), a charming subject painter, and Sir Frederic W. Burton (1816-1900), one of the most distinguished artists of his time, who at least spent some of their active working career in their native land. The same words apply to artists who succeeded in other branches of the profession, men like John Doyle (1797-1868), a caricaturist with all the power, without the coarseness, of his predecessors; his son, Richard Doyle (1824-1883), a refined and delicate artist; John Leech (1817-1864), the humorist, a member of an Irish Catholic family; Paul Gray (1842-1866), who died before his powers had fully matured; and Matthew James Lawless (1837-1864), who also died too early. William Collins, R.A. (1788-1847) and Clarkson Stanfield, R.A. (1793-1867), both eminent representatives of English art, though of Irish extraction, more properly belong to England than to Ireland.
Not discouraged by the melancholy history of many gifted Irish artists, Ireland still produces men who are not unworthy of association with the best who have gone before. Our most recent losses have been heavy–notably those of Walter F. Osborne (1859-1903) and Patrick Vincent Duffy (1832-1909), but we still have artists of genius in the persons of Nathaniel Hone, a direct descendant of his famous namesake; John Butler Yeats; John Lavery, A.R.A.; and William Orpen, A.R.A. Many other names might be given, but already this attempt at a survey suffers by its enumeration of artists, who, however, could hardly be neglected in such a record.
Crowded as the list may be, it is a careful selection, and it demonstrates that, notwithstanding all the disadvantages under which Ireland suffers, the country has an almost unlimited capacity for fine achievement, and that, with prosperity and contentment, she may be expected to rival the most illustrious of art centres. It is only within living memory that any attempt has been made to direct the known artistic skill of the Irish people to industrial effort. But the remarkable success achieved in the modern designs for Irish lace in the English art competitions is an instance of what might be done generally in the applied arts. Though they are in their infancy, the new carpet and stained glass industries in Ireland also hold out considerable hope for the future. But one can only barely indicate what has been and might be done in the furtherance of Irish art. If we only had under one roof a judiciously made collection of all the best work done by Irish artists of all styles and periods, it would more eloquently justify our claim than endless columns of praise.
REFERENCES:
Anthony Pasquin [John Williams]: History of Professors of Painting in Ireland (1795); T.J. Mulvany: Life of James Gandon; John O’Keeffe: Reminiscences, vol. I; Taft: American Sculpture; W.G. Strickland: Dictionary of Irish Artists (2 vols., 1913).
IRELAND AT PLAY
By THOMAS E. HEALY,