LITERATURE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16687, 6 May 1916, Page 2

LITERATURE.

Special Eeviews, and Gleanings from Various Sources.

" CATHLEM NI HOOLIHAN." * IN "DEAR OLD DUBLIN." Br Constant Readeb. _ Not one person in the audience which listened to Miss Dorothea Spinney's sympathetic rendering of Mr W. J5. Yoats's ort'iun play "Oathloon ni Hoolihan" had any idea that within the following weeks the meaning and moral of that play would be sorrowfully and dramatically presented to the wliolo world. Yet this is whnt has actually happened. "Cathlcen ni Hoolihan is tho name of The Poor Old Woman, the Shan Van Yoeht, of tho song, one of the poetic embodiments of the spirit of Ireland, which, according to' tradition, when • war or trouble is at iiand, goes up and down tho land." The time of tho play is 1798, when the French an; landing at Killala. _To make my point, it is ncceESary to dive a little bit into the history of the re bellion of '93, and since at tho time England was at war —with France, not Germany—it presents some parallels with last week's rising:—

Tho elements tended to defeat the Armada: so the same power prevented the landing of the French troops procured by the offices of Theobald Wolfe Tone, who on December 24, 1795, arrived in Bantry Bay. Had this formidable ex T pedition landed on Irish soil, the country would certainly have secured freedom at last from British rule- Tho fleet consisted of no less than 17 line-of-battle ships, 13 frigates, and 13 sloops. They had on board an army of 14,000 men. 45,000 stand of arms, with artillery and military stores. The land troops were

commanded by Generals liocho and Grouchy; the fleet by Admiral Bouvet. The weather was. so stormy that no effort was made to land the troops ,and thus the British rule was preserved in Ireland.

On landing in Bantry Bay the French intended proceeding to Cork. It is related of the then Mayor of Cork —Philip .Man— that when it was reported the French ships of war were in Bantry Bay. he so lost his senses, that writing to the Viceroy, praying for troops to defend the city, he said: "To give your Excellency some idea of the way all loyal men are prepared to resist invasion, while I write I hold a pistol in each hand and a sword in the other."

The spirit in which a section at least of the Irisn people were prepared to receive the invader is sufficiently indicated in the words of the famous revolutionary song, "The Shan Van Vocht," written in 1796 to. celebrato the arrival of the French Fleet in Bantry Bay:— Oh! the French are on the sea Says the Shan Van Vocht; The French are on the sea, Slays the Shan Van Vocht; Oh! the French are in the Bay,

They'll bo here without delay, And the Orange will decay, Says the Shan Van Vocht. And where will they have, their camp? Says the Shan Van Vocht; Where will they have their camp? Says the Shan Van Vocht; On the Curragh of Kildnre, The boys they will be there, With their pikes in good repair Slays the Shan Van Vocht. What will the yeomen do? Says the Shan Van Vocht; What will the yeomen do? Says the Shan Van Vocht; What should the yeomen do, But throw off the red and blue, And swear that they'll be true To the Shan Van Vocht. And what colour will they wear? Says the Slhari Van Vocht; What colour will they wear? Says the Shan Van Vocht; 1 What colour should be seen Where our fathers' homes have been, But their own immortal green? Says the. Shan Van Vocht. And will Ireland then be free ? Says the Shan Van Vocht; Will Ireland then be free? Says the Shan Van Vocht; Yes! Ireland shall be free, From the centre to the sea; Then hurrah for Liberty ! Says the Shan Van Vocht. Two years later negotiations were entered into for another expedition to aid the rebellion of the United Irishmen, and this time the place of landing was Killala Bay, iin the West of Ireland. Here, on August 22, 1798, the French, under General Humbert. to the number of 11,000, landed. A capital acoount of that landing and tho events which followed is given by the Hon. Emily Lawless in her biography of Maria Edgoworth, and from which I take the following:—

The landing-place which the invaders had chosen for the descent was Killala, a small town upon the coast of Mayo. . . So little expectation of invasion was there at the time that tho landing was accomplished without the slightest difficulty. A few yeomen and fencibles who chahced to be in Killala were put to flight. . Upon the news of the French descent, the troops in Oonnaught had been ordered by Lord Cornwallis to concentrate at Castlebar. The officer in Command was General Lake. . . . The regular road

from Killala to Castlebar lies through the village of I'ax ford, 'and a force of some 1200 men, under General Taylor, had 'been sent to hold this against _ the invaders. At 3 o'clock on the morning of August 27 there arrived a messenger to inform the general that the French were advancing, not by the usual road, but along a rude hill trtek, so rough that the few guns they possessed hud to be dragged over the rocks by the peasants. But for this accidental warning the garrison would almost certainly have been surprised in their beds, and the panic which followed would, in that case, have been comparatively excusable. As it was, General Lake had 'time to draw out his forces and to

dispose them in an oxcellent position above Castlebar. flanked by a marsh and a small lake. The entire force under his orders amounted to over 4000 men, nearly half of which seems to have been employed in this manner They consisted chiefly of yeomanry and militia, but there were also a certain rrumbsr of regular troops and a strong body of artillery. Under these circumstances it was naturally regarded as incredible that so mere a handful as the invaders wero known to be would venture to assail a position held by a foe more than twice their number, and fresh after a night's rest. In so calculating General Lake and his staff underrated the spirit of the men to whom the 1796-1797 campaign in Italy was still a very recent experience. Undismayed by the numbers oposed to them, and despite the fact of their having been already nearly 15 hours on foot, the French came steadily up the hill, in the face of a fire which scattered their untrained assistants right and left The top reached, they rushed upon the defenders with level bayonets. The artillery stood to their guns, Lord Rodcn's cavalry behaved well, but the rest of the troops sceim hardly to have attempted to make a stand. Within a few minutes the whole forcc was flying in wild confusion towards the town. Through the streets of Castlebar they were driven before the French bayonets, and out into the country beyond, over _ which_ they continued to stream, flinging their weapons away from them in all directions in their headlong haste. It was less a defeat than a simple rout, or, as it has always 'been called in Ireland, a race—the Race of Castlebar. . . . some of the men who had fled from Castlebar having never ceased running all night, and having reached Athlone. it is said, within the 28 hours. What lends an element almost of comedy to the whole affair is that the originators of this panic never made tho slightest attempt, to pursue ! The French remained quietly at Castlebar, satisfied, and very naturally satisfied, with what they had already achieved 1 . Hero they stayed, recruiting themselves, and seeking for reinforcements, for about 10 days. Meanwhile, fresh troops had been hurried over from England. Lord Cornwallis, tho commander-in-chief, had himsol.f advanced as far as Hollymount, having under him a force of not less than 20,000 men. Finding themselves _in danger of Heing surrounded, the invaders at length loft Castlebar, and started towards Sligo, apparently with a wild idea of making a detour, and so descending- upon Dublin. Had they reached the countrv a coirple of months sooner, while tho rising at Wexford was still absorbing all the energies of the military, it is hard to say what iniffht not havo happened. As it was, the rising had t-een l>y this time effectually crushed. A ; reaction of terror had spread over tho whole East of Ireland. The hour of snii'/iess was over, and, after one sharp brush with Colonel Vereker at Colloonoy, near Sligo, there was nothing before the invaders but an honourable surrender

This took place upon the Bth of September at Ballinnmuck, a littlo village upon the borders of Longford and Koscominon. . . • Yaaxti afterwards, at fet. Helena, Napoleon is said to liave dwelt with special" emphasis upon the error ho had 1 committed in not having made a descent upon Ireland, one of the main points of his campaign against England. Had lie done so, and had fortune favoured him, it would be bold to assert, that his success, so far as Ireland was concerned, might not have been complete. Seeing what was achieved bv the utterly inadequate force which did land, it would requiro more than un ordinary amount of _ national vanity to deny that, given a sufficient one, led by Napoleon himself, or one of the best of his subordinates, tho entire island might havo been overrun.

It is surely a splendid tribute to tho vigilance of the British navy that Germany lound it impossible to supplement the carefully organised rising of last week with an invasion of her troops. Read in this light, the above description carries its moral. The immediate result of tho rebellion of '98 was the consent of tho Irish Parliament to the Bill for tho legislative union between Great Britain' and Ireland which became law in 1800. It was thin that the Parliament House of Dublin, one of tho finest buildings in Europe, said to have originally cost £80,030, was sold to the Bank of Ireland for £40,000. This is the building which tho rebels endeavoured to seize at the outbreak of hostilities, only to be frustrated by the determination of the Trinity College students. It faces, College Green, and over the front is a colossal statue of Ilibernia, with statues emblematic of Commerce and Fidelity. Many stories are told about the buildings of Dublin, and the following, though not new, is one of tho beat: —

A stranger to Dublin, driving on an Irish jaunting car, inquired of the driver "if ho knew who those statues represented." " Oh, yes, your honour!" promptly replied the driver, " Thim's the Twelve Apostles." " Why," remarked the stranger, " there axe only three." "Oh, shure, you wouldn't expect all the gintlemen to stand out in the could at the same time; so you see they tako the post in turn." Sackville street, which suffered severely, was renamed O'Conncll street when a monument to Daniel O'Conncll was unveiled in that magnificent thoroughfare some years ago. The work of t'hat racy volume, "Recollections of Dublin Castle and of Dublin Society," a copy of which I was fortunate enough to find on the shelves of the Dunedin Athenaeum, says in this connection —and it shows that the City Corporation of Dunedin is not a]pile in its trouble over re-naming streets:—

The Dames of the Dublin streets have a sort of expressive or dramatic effect: Dame street, Great Britain street, Bachelor's walk, Pickwick lane (even), D'Olier street, Great Brunswick street, Mary street, and Henry street. It is, however, gall and wormwood to Nationalists that all the lea"in r:ets should bear the names of distingh ;1 Englishmen: Essex bridge and Cape'l street leading to it, Grafton street, Rutland square, Sackville 6treet, Westmoreland street, and so on. When the new Carlisle bridge was' finished, a battle raged between the factions as to what name it was to bear. The patriots desired " O'Connell bridge," though he was not then much in favour. This was resisted, and at last an odd sort of compromise was agreed to; to wit, that it was practically to bear both names. This is continued bv an ambiguously worded inscription on the bridge. During the discussiob a local newspaper incidentally mentioned that the bridge DIVIDED the north side of the city from the south. The same dispute raged as to Sackville street—" widest street in Europe, sir. — the name of which must be changed to O'Connell street All the traders and business folk objected. . . . At the present moment the old and the new names are both in equal vogue—i.e., you are sure to be to the right place under either denomination.

Next to the lamentable loss of life, the most regrettable feature about the Irish rising is the damage done to some of the most picturesque and historic parts of the City of Dublin—" dear old and dirty Dublin," to quote Lady Morgan's well-known description. According - to tho writer of the article in the Special Irish Number of The Times —published on March 17, 1913— the epithet "dirty" is no longer deserved: " Thou eh many of the glories of Dublin are passed away, the place has improved in other respccts. For whatever detractors may sav, the dirty and unsanitary state of the' city has vanished just as surely as tho thieves and footpads of eighteenth century Dublin. Her outlying districts have been, converted into beautiful suburbs accessible by rail and by electric trams." Although, when this article was penned, tho writer dreamt not of the coming great European conflagration, nor that Ireland would become involved in the catastrophe, there is a ring of prophecy in the concluding sentence: "Whatever the coming years, may have in store for Dublin, they can no more alter the many pleasant qualities or tho courtesv and the hospitality of her people than they can deprive tfhem of the natural beauties of mountain and sea which surround their native city." These beauties, have been immortalised by Lady Dufferin in " Du'blin Bay":—

Oh, Bay of Dublin, how my heart you're troublin'; Your beauty .haunts me" like a fever dream; Like frozen fountains that the sun seta bubblin'; My heart's blood warms / when I but hear your name. And never'till this life's pulsation ccascs, My earliest, latest thought you'll fail to be. •> Oh, none here knows how very fair that place is. And no one cares how dear it is to me. Sweet Wicklow mountains, the soft sunlight slee.pin' On your green uplands is a picture rare; You crowd around me, like young maidens peepin' And puzzlin' mo to say which is most fair, As tho' you longed to see your own sweet faces

Reflected in that smooth and silver sea. My fondest blessin' on those lovely places. Tho' no one cares bow dear they are to mo. How often, when alono at work I'm sittin',

And musing sadly on the days of yore, I think I see my pretty Katie knittin', The childer playin' round the cabin door; I think I see the neighbour' kindly faces, All gathered round, their long-lost friend to see; Though none here knows how -very fair that place is, , Heaven knows how dear my poor home was to me.

The mention of Dublin Bay always prompts comparison with the Bay of Naples. Thackeray, who crossed from Holyhead to Kingston in 1842, struck a wet night, and had to chose between; being " dry and ill below rather than wet and squeamish above." Ho took the mate's advice and "turned in." "Ilenoe," he writes in "The Irish Skctoh Bpok, "it wae impossible to institute the comparison between . the Bay of Naples and that of Dublin (the Bee of Neeples tho former is sometimes called in this country), where I havo heard the likeness asserted in a great number of societies and conversations. But how .could one see the Bay of Dublin in the dark? And how, supposing one could see it, should a person, behave who has never seen tho Bay of Naples? It is but to take the similarity for granted and remain in bod till morning."

Thackeray remarked that " tho times are very much changed since those described by the facetious Jack Hinton." In " Recollections of Dublin Castle and of Dublin Society" the writer says: "In Ireland surprises meet us at every turn. Often tho most Irish of Irishmen, tho most racy of the soil, turn out to be. Englishmen! . . . Such was Charles Lever, whoso father and mother were English born and bred, though he himself chanced to have been born in Ireland." In another place in tho same volume the author exclaims: "What do wo not owe to that delightful checry writer—so full of- ebullient spirits and natural frolic—the author of ' Harry Lorrequer!' Fow works—save, perhaps, 'Pickwick'—have been so 'enjoyed' in their pink covers, as those of the irrepressible Charles Lever." Tho »<?cond rihapter of "Jack Hinton," entitled "The Irish Packet," conveys a capital idea of what a journey from England to Ireland meant a hundred years ago:—

I aroused myself from tho depression of nearly thirty hours' sea sickness on hearing that at length we were in the Bay of Dublin. Hitherto I had never loft the precincts of the narrow den denominated my fcwrth; but now I made my way

eagerly on deck, anxious to catch a glimpse, however faint, of that bold coast I had more than once heard compared with, or even preferred to. Naples. The night, however, was falling fast, and, worse still, a perfect downpour of rain • was falling with it; the sea ran high and swept the little craft from stem to stern; the spars bent like whips, and our single topsail strained and stretched as though at every fresh plunge it would part company with us altogether. No trace or outline of the coast could I detect on any side —a deep red light appearing and disappearing at intervals, as we rode upon or sank beneath the trough of the sea, was all that my eye could perceive. This the dripping helmsman briefly informed me was the " Kish." The storm of wind and rain, increasing at each moment, drove me once mqte back to the cabin. . . . It must Be borne in mind that some thirty odd years ago the passage between Liverpool and Dublin was not as at present (1842), the rapid flight of a dozen houre from shore to shore; where in one evening you leave the thundering din of wagons and the iron crank of cranes and windlasses to wake up the next morning with the rich brogue of Paddy Abating softly around you. Far from it. The thing was then a voyage. You took a solemn leave - of your friends, you tore yourself from the embraces of your family, and with a tear in your eye and a hamper on your • arm you betook yourself to the pier to watch, with anxious and beating heart, every step of the three hours' proceeding that heralded your departure. In those days there was some honour in being a traveller, and the man who had crossed the Channel a couple of times became a kind of Captain Cook among his acquaintances. " When Arthur Young, author of ' The Tour in Ireland,' visited Dublin in 1776, he sailed from Holyhead, and arrived at Dunleary after a voyage of 22 hours. The modern traveller . will probably follow the same course. He will cross from Holyhead and arrive at Dunleary, known as Kingstown since the departure from there of King George IV in 1821; but the passage which lasted nearly a, day over a century ago now occupies about three hours." Notwithstanding the fact that the crossing between Wales and Ireland has been made speedier and easier, it is well to stress t"ho fact that Ireland remains an island with a tumultuous sea between it and the main land. In this geographical separation may be found the real reason of the political and social differences and dissensions to which the Irish have been heir for many generations. After reading Thackeray's description of "A Summer Day in Dublin," I turned up Mr James Huneker's ■" New Cosmopolis." (This is not the American critic's last book, as he has recently issued a new one called " Apes, Ivory, and Peacocks," which I have not yet seen). Therein I read:—

After all, blood is thicker than water; in Ireland it is thicker than whisky. I forgot the joys of Vienna, the trim existence of them that reside in Berlin on the River Spree, when after a ride through the Happv Valley, Wales, I found myself in the Irish Sea, then on Irish soil at Kiugstown. The reason I speak of blood is because I'm half Irish by descent and was brought up in the good old-fashioned beliefs, Ireland, the Isle of Saints; Ireland, oppressed by the Sassenach; Ireland, the land of the bravest men and best women; Ireland, the most beautiful countrv in God's footstool. ' I have read and believed in the Island of Samuel Lover and Charles Lever, of Carlton and Dion Boucicault's Colleen Bawn, of Tom Moore and Father Burke. The New Ireland, the Celtic Awakening, the new fangled fairies of Yeats, the myetic music of A. E (George Russell). the exquisite carolling of a younger choir, the bitter sweet pathos and human and dramatic power of John Synge—all these wero not in existence when I was a lad; nor were Lady Gregory's gods and fighting men, and the epical Cuchalain and Deirdre. Indeed. I was fed upon Hplendid legends of Fenianism. My grandfather, James Gibbons, had been vice-prcsident of the American organisation. You may imagine what a different Ireland was unfolded when I read T. W. Rollcston's Anthology of Celtic Poetry. The "natural magic" of Matthew Arnold is not missing in the new men and women; the ancient and fascinating poetic potion of smiles, tears, and tenderness is as cunningly concocted as ever, for as long as there is a Celt on the rind of our planet there you will find sentiment and romance. All the busy professors of criticism cannot kill romance with their little metallic essays. Romance is out q{ fashion? Go to Ireland and see if it is. ill. i- " An' I wisht I was in Ireland the liveJong day. . • ■ Och! Corrymeela an' the blue sky over it." Well, I got there last June, and while I didn't find Moira O'Neill's Corrymeela, I discovered Dublin; also discovered that the Irish of Ireland didn't come over from Liverpool in cattle boats, as Bernard Shaw ingenuously suggested : nevertheless the race is much moro like the men and women of Synge, Yeats, Lady Gregory. Martyn, George Moore, Birmingham, Dr Hyde, and Shaw than the stage Irishman of a past generation. The modern Irishman is rather melancholy, a pessimist born, and his womenkind the reverse; robust, hopeful, hardworking.

Mr Hunekor's impressions of Dublin are well worth reading, but if it be truo that this unhappy rebellion has relation to tho syndicalist strike in Dubbn in 1913, tho following has special interest for to-day:— My second visit to Dublin was not as pleasant as the first. I went over from Holland and landed in the very heat and disorder of the strike. Now tho striking Irishman is not a pleasant companion in New York; in Dublin he is fir wore©. Not for me to discuss the economic cause of the strike, but they tell a pretty story of starvation wages and exhausting labour hours. The employers havo their side of tho question. I never wish to see again the panic which occurred during the funeral of tho unluoky James Nolan, whose !*kull had been battered in during a shindy with tho police. It was terrifying

as much so to me in my hotel window facing on Sackville street, near the Pillar, as to the mob that was ' rushed' by the constabulary. If such treatment were accorded the public at one of our gatherings in the streets, vengeance would be swift. I quite agree with those who think the police were too brutal with their own people; not that the rioting Irishman is a pleasing spectacle, but in this case it was the women and children who were the sufferers. Mr H. J Howard in his book on Dublin quotes Giraldus Cainbrensis: "Perchance it is the chastisement of God, whereby these lands are suffered to struggle continually one with the other, so that neither is England ever wholly victorious, nor Ireland thoroughly subdued."

In "The Seething Pot," one of the best books on Ireland ever published, Mr George A. Birmingham explains his title by a reference to the verse in Jeremiah, " I see a seething pot, and the face of it is towards the north." He adds: "We are a seething pot—we, the Irish people. Just now it is the scum which is coming malodorously to the, surface, and perhaps scalding your hands and feet. Yet within the pot there is good stuff. ... It is at all events the raw material of life. Far better it is to be sitting beside a 6eething pot, than a stagnant pool. Let us keen the pot seething if we can." It may be well to keep this simile in mind before passing judgment upon Ireland and the Irish. " Our dear Ireland, which we love best of all things in spite.—Would we love Ireland so well as we do if we had not got to love her in spite of her breaking onr hearts?" Four or five years ago there was published by the Cuala Press a little book o" essays by W. B. Yeats and Lionel Johnson, on "Poetry and Ireland." The second of these essays "Poetry and Patriotism in Ireland," by Lionel Johnson, has an eloquent, conclusion, defining the poet's-mission in "serving Ireland- through song" with all the patience and all the passion which the thought can give them: > They (the poets) are preparing the way for the triumph song that the poets of a day to come will chaunt, with every splencour, every -iehr.c-s3, every loveliness and grace that Irish music has ever known Remember how Paint Patrirk preached lefore the high King Leaghaixe and _ his court at Tara. There 6at the great king, his court and warriors round him, with anger in their eyes. But as Saint Patrick spoke, a wonder happened; the tide ceased to ebb, the white deer forgot to' drink by the river, the eagles hung poised in the air,, the green loaves* loft off rustling, and a mystical, sacred silence fell upon Ireland. We want a silence to fall upon Ireland, a silence from lamentation and from conflict; and then, in that happy dawn the only voices will be voices of the Irish Muses, reigning in their old home; and the voices of the Irish people, speaking peace and goodwill through all our loved