WHAT I SAW IN IRELAND

New Zealand Tablet, 11 August 1910, Page 1261

WHAT I SAW IN IRELAND

I crossed the Irish Sea late in March in the midst of a strong gale from the west that tossed our boat like a cork and sent the angry waves to dash up on the English coast (says a writer in America). Every one went below and was consequently seasick except an American priest, who stood on deck, hanging on to a railing during the three hours’ trip. By staying in the fresh air he escaped the common fate of the passengers. In Dublin my first visit was to the Hill of Howth, from which a splendid view of the neighboring scenery, south to the Wicklow Mountains, was obtained, and I had a chance to hear every wild singing bird in Ireland in solo and in chorus. An eight-mile walk partly across and - partly around the hill brought out firstly the best of all the singers, the Irish thrush. He is a tenor with a voice sweet and clear as a bugle. Perched on the branch of an elm tree with his face turned to the east, his tones sounded like a challenge. He seemed to say, ‘ I defy, I defy, I defy,’ and then turning his face to the west he began to warble ‘ come back, come back to the land that you left, but that loves you still.’ Anyone who has ever heard this grandest

of all singing birds will remember how he changes his challenge to a melancholy warble as he closes his chants. Two sopranos from a meadow, two larks were up singing in the sky, a rich baritone, a blackbird, was adding his sweet notes to the harmony, while chaffinches, bullfinches, goldfinches, and linnets made a sweet chorus. I must not forget the little robin, everybody’s friend, who sings even in the rain, flies out when he sees you on the road, goes into your garden, even into your room, and sings for you always cheerful, always happy. There’s a little scolding in his voice, too, for as I walked along the road he always seemed to say: Well how do you do? Welcome back! You ran away, but I am here still. It may rain or it may snow, but I’ll stay here and have a pleasant chat with the people who remained loyal to this island and stayed behind.’ . After the birds on Howth I noticed the children in Dublin, and from there to the Shannon, where I am penning these lines. They have all red cheeks, every one of them; but so have the people, young and old, with hardly an exception. ‘Has that big policeman red whiskers?’ I said to a friend in the streets of Dublin, and I pointed to a big fellow fully six feet five inches. The Dublin police are all giants. • ‘Nonsense,’ said my friend, it’s his cheeks that are red.’ And they were as red as two Oregon apples. From the little urchin in the streets, in town and in country, to the young women and the old, to the young men and to the old, it is the same clear skin and red cheeks.

'ls it tuberculosis?' I asked my friend, a learned gentleman who has lived in Dublin forty years. Again he said: ? Nonsense! You have got that foolish idea from some of those who have been exaggerating in speaking and writing of the spread of consumption in Ireland. Those fresh, rosy cheeks come from . the simple food, the purity of the people, and the genial climate of Ireland. The hot sun in summer and the intense cold in winter thicken the skin of you Americans. You know you have too much cheek, anyhow, and the blood does not show through it. But in Ireland the bloom of the rose and the sweetness of the shamrock appear in the faces of our children and people.' I could not argue with him, for he is a poet and a theologian. I think he is right. At any rate, the universally red cheeks are no sign of tuberculosis in Ireland. Then I visited the schools. I'll say a word only of the primary schools. Of course I saw Maynooth with its seven hundred seminarians, and All Hallows with its two hundred; then many of the training schools. But the primary schools interested me most. In Dublin I heard in the church at Fairview, near Clontarf, the best boys' choir I ever listened to. They sang on Holy Thursday and Easter Sunday, voices clear and sweet, time perfect unison complete, and trained by the Christian Brothers in their elementary schools. Passing through the country from little parish to little parish, I found every school flourishing. The Government supports the Catholic schools and the priests absolutely control them. Score one for the liberality of the English Government. You could not puzzle the little boys or girls in catechism. I tried it. They are talented, they study hard, and they are anxious to learn. They learn Gaelic in every school, and sing sweetly Gaelic songs. The teachers are usually in the small parishes laymen and women, good, fervent Catholics co-operating in everything with the parish priest. And he is a worker. Run through the country everywhere. You will find the old church of the days of persecution replaced by a beautiful new stone building of good architecture, furnished with costly marble altars and mosaic floors. Go to the old town of Trim on the Boyne and see the grand granite columns and the stained glass windows in the church there; pass over to Kildalky or to Summerhill; or farther on to Kinnegad in Westmeath, or to this spot on the Shannon on the borders of Roscommon, once a very poor district, and see what costly churches are going up all over the country. _ This is the age of the Irish r< Renaissance.' May it continue! Yet the people emigrate still. Even the Protestants are going away. Where there used to be fifty of them in a Leinster country parish, there are now not half a dozen. They have not emigrated, they have simply died out. I went the other day into the Protestant church at Clonard, the site of one Of the most famous monasteries in Ireland during the golden age before the Danish invasion, and saw in that church an old Catholic baptistery of the eighth century. *lt is a v beautiful work of art, and is in the wrong place. But it cannot be bought. Although the Protestant congregation there has died out to a few poor hangers-on, the . authorities hold tenaciously to the relic and still call the Catholic Church ' a foreign Church'; and they still call the dwindling little sect of Anglicans in Ireland ' the Church of Ireland! ' A document before me proves all this. When will man fully deserve the title of rational animal conferred on him by our philosophy and our theology? - : .-" ; - -.