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THE STORY OF IRELAND

(By A. M. Sullivan.)

: CHAPTER LX,—(Continued.) But there ■:, was another ; armyother of the expatriated whom we are riot to lose sight, the "Irish swordmen," so-called in the European writings of the time; the Irish regiments who elected to go into exile, preferring to ' , '{■•:■ -: ;"■■■-': , -.- . "roam Where freedom and their God might lead," rather than be bondsmen under a bigot-yoke at home. "Foreign nations were apprised by the Kilkenny Ar-. tides that the Irish were to be allowed to engage in the service of any State in amity with the Commonwealth. The valor of the Irish soldier was well known abroad. From the time of the Munster plantation by Queen Elizabeth, numerous exiles had taken service in the Spanish army. There were Irish regiments serving in the Low Countries. The Prince of Orange declared they were ' born soldiers'; and Henry the Fourth of France publicly called Hugh O'Neill 'the third soldier of the age,' and he said there was no nation made better troops than the Irish when drilled. Agents from the King of Spain, the King of Poland, and the Prince de Conde, were now contending for the services of Irish troops. Don Ricardo White, in May, 1652, shipped 7000 in batches from Waterford, Kinsale, Galway, Limerick, and Bantry, for the King of Spain. Colonel Christopher Mayo got liberty in September, 1652, to beat his drums to raise 3000 for the same king. Lord Muskerry took five thousand to the King of Poland. In July, 1654, 3500, commanded by Colonel Edmund Droyer, went to serve the Prince de Conde. Sir Walter Dungari and others got liberty to beat their drums in different garrisons, to a rallying of their men that laid down arms with them in order to a rendezvous, and to depart for Spain. They got permission to march their men together to the different ports, their pipers perhaps playing '- Ha til, Ha til, Ha til, mi tulidh ' — We return, we return no more!' Between 1651 and 1664, 34,000 (of whom few ever saw their loved native land again) were transported into foreign parts." While the roads to Connaught were as I have described witnessing a stream of hapless fugitives—prisoners rather, plodding wearily to their dungeon and grave—a singular scene was going on in London. At an office or bureau appointed for the purpose by government, a lottery was held, whereat the farms; houses, and estates from which the owners had thus been driven, were being "drawn" by or on behalf of the soldiers and officers of the army, and the "adventurers"—i.e. petty shopkeepers in London, and others who had lent money for the war on the Irish. The mode of conducting the lottery or drawing was regulated by public ordinance. Not unfrequently a vulgar and illiterate trooper "drew" the mansion and estate of an Irish nobleman, who was glad to accept permission to inhabit, for a few weeks merely, the stable or the cowshed with his lady and children, pending their setting-out for Connacht! This same lottery was the "settlement" (varied a little by further confiscations to the same end 40 years subsequently) by which the now existing landed proprietary was "planted" upon Ireland. Between a proprietary thus planted and the bulk of the population, as well as the tenantry under them, it is not to be marvelled that feelings the reverse of cordial prevailed. From the first they scowled at each other. The plundered and trampled people despised and hated the "Cromwellian brood," as they were called, never regarding them as more than vulgar and violent usurpers of other men's estates. The Cromwellians, on the other hand, feared and hated the serf-peasantry, whose secret sentiments and desires of hostility they well knew. Nothing but the fusing spirit of nationality" obliterates l such feelings as these but no such spirit was allowed to fuse

the Cromwellian "landlords" and the Irish tenantry. The .former were taught to consider themselves as a foreign garrison, endowed to watch and keep down, and levy a.hand-tribute off the native tillers. of the soil; moreover "the salt of the land," the "elect of the Lord," the ruling class, alone entitled to be ranked as saints or citizens. So they looked to and leaned all on England, without whom they thought they must be massacred. "Aliens in race, in language, and in religion," they had not one tie in common with the subject population; and so both classes unhappily grew up to be what they remain very much in our own day —more of taskmasters and bondsmen than landlords and tenants. (To be continued.)

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Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZT19200923.2.7

Bibliographic details

New Zealand Tablet, 23 September 1920, Page 7

Word Count
762

THE STORY OF IRELAND New Zealand Tablet, 23 September 1920, Page 7

THE STORY OF IRELAND New Zealand Tablet, 23 September 1920, Page 7

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