YOUNG IRELAND LITERATURE

New Zealand Tablet, 9 October 1913, Page 15

YOUNG IRELAND LITERATURE

THE CAUSES THAT INFLUENCED IT At a recent meeting of the Catholic Federation at Palmerston North it was proposed' that lectures should from time to time be given by members of the Federation. At a meeting on Monday evening, September 22, Rev. Father McManus presided,. and after the business had been transacted, a short lecture .on ' the -‘ Young Ireland literature, and the causes that influenced it,’ was delivered by Rev. Father; Kelly. ; ; -'-V Early in the forties of the last 'century- (said the rev. lecturer) O’Connell began to realise that his hold on the people was not so strong as it had been; apathy grew around him everywhere, and his clarion voice no longer awoke responsive chords in the hearts of Irishmen ; so the great Repeal organisation was in peril, and, though his lion heart never lost hope, he grew very anxious. Then there came into the movement three young Irishmen, who quickened and fired to new enthusiasm their tepid countrymen; the three were Thomas Davis, John Dillon, and Gavan Duffy. Davis and Dillon were lawyers, Duffy a journalist. Davis was a Protestant, and besides his genius, his ardent love for Ireland, and his broad sympathy for mankind, he had that magnetic charm which made all who knew, him love him. Duffy had his full share of the common sense of the northern Irishman, and was gifted .with rare literary qualities. Dillon was one of the truest, purest, and most fearless of all that gallant band of those who loved Ireland in all ages. They liked O’Connell, but did not see eye to eye with him in his policy; and they had a deep distrust of English statesmen; they preached the sound gospel that Irishmen of all creeds and classes should be united, that in no whining suppliants’ tones, but with manly independence they should demand to have their wrongs made right. They wanted Irishmen to be relf-reliant and self-respecting, and they would have these qualities nourished and strengthened by meditation on the storied past of Erin. •> In the summer of 1842 they sat under the leaves of an elm tree in the green lawns of Phoenix Park, and, as was their custom, spoke earnestly of such problems as they had at heart. And there came to them the idea of starting a newspaper to further the propaganda of their doctrines. Thus was born that wonderful paper known as The Nation. Its purpose was ‘to create and foster public opinion in Ireland, and to make it racy of the soil.’ Its qualities of freshness, of high seriousness, of manliness, soon made it famous, and attracted to it a galaxy of brilliant writers, whose contributions, during the twelve years it lasted, crowned it with a halo of glory that will never fade in Ireland; The Nation was first published in the autumn of 1842. Three years later the blight first appeared in the County Wexford, and quickly spread over the whole land. The terrible years of the famine had come. The green leaves of the potatoes shrivelled up and died, and the tubers at the root became a fetid, putrid mass. The once verdant acres grew into disgusting patches of drab-yellow that hurt the eyes; and the heavy stench of the rotten plants pervaded the great fields and the sweet country hedgerows of Ireland. Their food was now poison; and the poor people sickened and died. They died in thousands ; old men and old women, boys and girls in the full flower of youth, little children, babes at their mothers’ breasts, cried aloud for food, and because there was none, they too, like the green plants, shrivelled and died. It was a common-sight to see starving, halfnaked women and children going through the empty fields searching for turnips or mangolds which might have been left behind when the crop was gathered in. Eight millions of Irish people cried for food, and died in thousands—3oo,ooo of them in one year. And they saw before their eyes Irish corn, which would have kept them alive," carted away under the protection of soldiers, to be sold to enrich the landlords. And because; the people paid; no. rent in these years, they were thrown out ,of their homes to die like dogs by the roadside. O’Connell was dying slowly, though at the time few realised it. - His son, John, a man utterly unworthy

to stand in the Liberator’s shoes, tried to do so. He seems to have been both arrogant and narrow-minded; and the combination of these qualities is a curse in, a political leader. . He widened the breach between his father and the Young Irelanders, and the advent of John Mitchel, too fearless, too outspoken, too bold for any compromise, brought on dissension. Mitchel, Smith, O’Brien, and Meaghera young Waterford man' endowed with marvellous oratorical powers, —now advocated physical force as the remedy for Ireland’s wrongs. A poor little rebellion began and ended quickly. The leaders were transported or escaped to distant lands, and the turbulent decade of the forties ended. Meantime O’Connell died. In February, 1847, he made his last speech in the British Parliament, and a few months later expired in Genoa, on his way to Rome. Heartbroken Erin hid her head in grief, and the whole Catholic world kept, vigil with her in her night of sorrow by the bier of the great immortal Liberator. He, in his. own way, and, hardly less the young Irelanders in their way, sowed in Ireland the seeds which have since borne fruit in better laws and better conditions for the people of Ireland, which, we trust, soon will reach the full ripeness of harvest in the passing of the Bill which will for over place in Irish hands the government of Ireland. Thus much, it seemed to me necessary to say, in order that you may more surely grasp the inner meaning of the Poetry of the Nation. Remember that it was a poetry with a message, and that often to the poet the message was more than the poetry, and you will be ready to make due allowances for whatever of grace and polish and melody is sacrificed for the sake of intensity and earnestness. I recommend you to read it for yourselves and let it sink deep into your hearts if you love Ireland ; for the deeper it sinks the richer harvest will it bear in love and loyalty to Ireland. I purpose to read for you a few verses chosen here and there to illustrate the general trend of the poetry of the period, and to give you a fair insight into the ‘ Spirit of the Nation.’ Let us first take a couple of stanzas from Mangan’s magnificent poem, ‘ Dark Rosaleen,’ which is a work of genius saturated through and through with intensesv; love for Ireland, and which voices in deathless song the ardent yearning love of their country burning in the hearts of the Young Irelanders: ‘ All day long in unrest, To and fro do I move, The very soul within my breast Is wasted for you, love ! The heart ... in my bosom faints , To think of you, my, queen My life of life, my saint of saints, My dark Rosaleen, '. My own Rosaleen! • To hear your sweet and sad complaints, My life, my love, my saint of saints, My dark Rosaleen! ■ ‘ Oh! the Erne shall run red . With -redundance of blood; The earth shall rock beneath our tread And flames wrap hill and wood; • And gun-peal and slogan cry, ", Wake many a glen serene, ; Ere you shall fade, ere you shall die, ,{ • My dark Rosaleen, My own Rosaleen! The judgment hour must, first be nigh, Ere you can fade, ere you can die. 7 My dark Rosaleen ! ■ In this poem Mangan expresses all the sorrow and all the hope and all the love of Irish patriots, and I don’t think the patriotic literature of any country has a nobler song than * Dark Rosaleen.’ When poor Mangan, probably the greatest, and certainly the most unfortunate, of Erin’s uoets. came to die,' Sir William Wilde found him starving in a cellar, from which he had him brought to a hospital. So Mangan’s name naturally reminds us of Lady Wilde, who, under the name of ‘ Speranza,’ wrote many poems for the Nation.

She was a young lady of fashion, daughter of a dignitary of the Church of Ireland, and of a different race a pd a different class from the Irish peasants. But no voice was wider heard than hers, no pen pleaded more earnestly in the cause of the poor and oppressed people. Her poetic work burned with a white fire of intensity; her voice sweeps forward with immense power and compelling harmony. After Mangan she has perhaps more real poetic genius than any other contributor to the Nation. Listen to this pen picture of the famine years: Little children, tears are strange upon your infant - faces, ’ i God meant you but to smile within your mothers’ soft embraces, ‘OH, we know not what is smiling, and we know not what is dying But we’re hungry, very hungry, and we cannot stop our crying; And some of us grow cold and white— know not , .-what it means—• But as they lie beside us we tremble in our dreams.’ ‘ O Christ, how have we sinned, - that on our native plains We perish houseless, naked, starved, with branded brow like Cain’s ? Dying, dying wearily, with a torture sure and slow— Dying as a dog would die, by the wayside as we go.’ ‘ We are wretches, famished, scorned, human tools to build your pride, But God will yet take vengeance for the souls for whom Christ died.’ Here is a strange poem from John O’Hagan containing an exhortation to Irishmen to read the history of their country and draw from the past enthusiasm to stay them in their fight for liberty; Deep let it sink in Irish hearts the story of their rise, And waken thoughts of tenderest love and burning wrath the while; And press upon us one by one the fruits of English sway. - And blend the wrongs of bygone times with this we , fight to-day; And show our fathers’ constancy by truest instinct led, To loathe and battle with the power that on their substance fed; And let it place beside our own the world’s vast page to tell That never lived the nation yet could rule another well. Darcy McGee, who surpassed even Thomas Francis Meagher as a speaker, was, more than, any of the party, drenched with the spirit of the past, and perhaps in his poem on ‘ The Four Masters ’ does this spirit find its clearest utterance: Many altars are in Banva, Many chancels hung in white, Many schools and many abbeys Glorious in our. fathers’ sight;. Yet whene’er I go a pilgrim Back, dear native isle, to thee. May my filial footsteps lead me To that abbey by the sea. To that abbey, roofless, doorless, Shrineless, monkless though it be! He goes on to describe the toilful, prayerful days of the pale scholars bent over ; their tomes, and concludes : V ‘ Oh, that we, who now inherit The great bequest of their toil, — Were but fit to trace their footsteps Through the annals of the isle ! Oh, that the same angel, Duty, Guardian of our tasks might be ; Teach us as she taught our masters, Faithful, grateful, just, to be; — As she taught the old “Four Masters” In that abbey by the sea!’

, r But McGee did not confine himself to poetry in praise of the past. There were many notes in his lyre, and once in a homely ballad he depicts the honest pride of a farmer who at length owns his land —owns a little bit of Ireland :—• ‘ All that I have is my own, ■ >': I owe duty to nobody ; I can labor or let it alone, N'NN-. I give my work to nobody. • I have no agent to tease, : ■ I have no bailiff to bother me; I’ll vote for whoever I please. However they try to soother me.’ Simple enough words; but they have compact in them the whole sad story of bad landlords and persecuted tenants. , ~ , The poetry of The Nation was not always so solemn and serious as these few selections might lead you to believe. McGee, indeed, was usually serious, but most of the writers knew how to write gracefully of the humor and the mirth and the loves of the Irish people. John O’Hagan’s poem, ‘ The Old Story,’ many of Edward Walsh’s, of Davis’s, and of Gavan Duffy’s are well known love songs and are so familiar to every Irishman that it would be useless for me to quote from them here. And if any do not know them and all the other songs which build up the Spirit of the Nation ’ get them now and read them if you love Ireland, and if Irish sentiments means anything to you. The pen is mightier than the sword. The flash of the sword at Ballingarry in ’4B has been well nigh forgotten. But the work done in the columns of The Nation still lives gloriously enshrined in Irish hearts, though the hands that wielded the pen have all now been stricken by death.

And how they died! What various deaths, what tragic deaths in many cases! Meagher's brilliant genius went out darkly and mysteriously when he who set Ireland ' aflame with his rhetoric, and who charged at the head of . the Irish Brigade in America like the greatest of the dead heroes of our race, was drowned in the rushing waters of the Mississippi ;;Darcy McGee was shot through the head at his own door in Canada; Dal ton Williams breathed his last in Louisiana; Mangan and Davis died early in Ireland ; Gavan Duffy went to an honored grave, dying at Nice, after a long, glorious life in Australia. As we read of their deaths in distant lands where ' by the strangers' heedless hands their narrow graves were made,' and of their services for other countries than their own, we think of Sarsfield bleeding to death at Landen, and crying out as he saw the life blood ebbing from his wounds, Oh, that this were for Ireland.' !