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From this point onward it is more easy to follow the development of the special characteristics caused by the intermingling of the Scotch and Irish races.
Donal was succeeded in Islay by his son Angus. He brought the Norwegian King Hako to assist the islanders against Alexander, the third King of Scotland, when they fought the battle of Largs. Angus had a son, Angus Oge, who succeeded him. He married a daughter of O’Cahan, an Irish chieftain of the family of O’Neill, who owned all the territory of the present County Derry. Angus had greatly befriended Robert Bruce in the time of his adversity; he brought him to Rathlin Island, off the Giant’s Causeway, and kept him there when pursued by his enemies. When Bruce became king, he rewarded Angus Oge by granting him the isles of Mull, Jura, Coll, and Tiree; he previously owned Islay and Cantire. Angus was succeeded by his son John, who married for his second wife Margaret Stuart, daughter of King Robert the second, the first Stuart king of Scotland. John had by her several sons and one daughter, who married Montgomery of Eglinton. John was the first of the island kings to make an alliance with England, – a policy continued by his successors, and which ultimately led to the downfall of his principality.
It is easy to trace the progress by which the Macdonnells became connected with Antrim, and formed an Irish family, whose head is the Earl of Antrim. John Mor Macdonnell, son of Eion of Islay, and grandson through his mother of King Robert the Second, came to Antrim to seek the hand of Margery Bysett, the heiress to all the lands included in the Glens of Antrim. The Bysetts were an outlawed Scotch family who, about the year 1242, were exiled from Scotland on a charge of supposed murder. With their means they acquired their Irish territory. This lady’s father had married a daughter of the O’Neill, and, being the only child, the property fell to her. After the marriage between John Macdonnell and Margery Bysett in 1399, a greater number of the islanders settled in the Glens, which continued to be a favourite resort and hiding-place when any trouble arose in Scotland. The intercourse between Antrim and the Isles, particularly Islay and Cantire, from this time became very close. There was constant going to and from the Isles, and occasional forays were made as far as Castlereagh, whence large preys of cattle would be driven back to the Glens, and thence to Rathlin, to be taken afterward to Islay at their convenience. In the year 1551 a feud existed between the O’Neills of Castlereagh and the Macdonnells, “and the latter made an incursion into Clannaboy, from which a great prey of cattle and other valuables were lifted and removed to Rathlin.”
The Macdonnells were able to strike a blow at England more easily through the north of Ireland than any other quarter, and the government in Dublin made up its mind to put them down. In 1551 four ships were fitted out, and a large number of soldiers placed on board to proceed to Rathlin, and, if possible, to carry off the plunder which was supposed to be stored there. The ships, on their arrival, proceeded to land an armed force of three hundred gunners and archers. The Macdonnells awaited them on the shore, prepared to give them a warm reception. By a sudden upheaval of the sea, the boats were driven high on the rocks, and, before they could recover themselves, the Macdonnells attacked and slew every man, except the two captains of the expedition. These were retained as hostages, and afterward exchanged for the younger brother of the chief, the afterward celebrated Sorley Boy, who was then a prisoner in Dublin Castle.
The intimacies and relations between the Scotch and the Irish were growing more and more involved, and a new race – a blend of the most admirable qualities of both – was being propagated. The Macdonnells at this time owned Dunluce Castle, which had been taken from the MacQuillans, also Kenbane Castle and Dunanynie Castle, built on a cliff near the sea at Ballycastle. Ballycastle, previously called Port Brittas, was the place principally used for landing or embarking for Cantire. It was also from here that Fergus was supposed to have embarked when he and his brothers founded the Scottish kingdom. A little to the east of Ballycastle is Port Usnach, whence Naysi and Derdrie sailed to Alba. There were frequent intermarriages between the Macdonnells and the leading families in the north of Ireland. John Mor, as already stated, married Margery Bysett. Donald Ballach married a daughter of the O’Donnells of Donegal. John of Islay married a daughter of the O’Neills. Shane Cathanach married a daughter of Savage of the Ards. James Macdonnell married Agnes, daughter of the Earl of Argyle, and their daughter married Hugh, Prince of Tyconnell, and became the mother of the celebrated Red Hugh O’Donnell. After the death of James Macdonnell, his widow, the Lady Agnes, became the second wife of Turlough Luineach O’Neill, and thus mother and daughter married the two most powerful chiefs in Ulster.
James Macdonnell died in the dungeons of Shane O’Neill, and was succeeded by his younger brother, Sorley Boy, the greatest of all the Macdonnells of Antrim. During the latter half of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, Sorley Boy was able to hold his own against all the queen’s generals, as well as against the MacQuillans, O’Cahans, and O’Neills. He died in 1589 in his castle of Dunanynie, and was buried at Bun-na-Margie Abbey. His wife was Mary O’Neill, daughter of Conn, first Earl of Tyrone, who died in 1582. He left five sons, and was succeeded by his third son, who died suddenly in Dunluce Castle on Easter Monday, 1601.
His younger brother, Randal, next succeeded, who, in the reign of James the First, was, in 1618, created Viscount Dunluce, and two years later, in 1620, Earl of Antrim. James gave him a grant of all the lands lying between the Bann of Coleraine and the Corran of Larne, a territory equal to the ancient kingdom of Dalriada.
The second earl succeeded in 1644, and was created a marquis by Charles the First. He was afterward deprived of his vast property by the Cromwellians. In the reign of Charles the Second, after many difficulties had been surmounted, he had the greater part of it reconveyed to him. He died in 1682, and was succeeded by his younger brother, Alexander, who was in time succeeded by his son Randal, who died in 1721. The Macdonnells succeeded in holding a large portion of their Irish property, whilst they lost Islay and Cantire.
From these brief facts one readily evolves the process by which grew up the ancient and intimate connection between the Scotch and the Irish. One realizes full well, too, that the peoples of the north of Ireland and of the Scottish Isles were of the same race and language, and to a great extent are so to-day.
In manners, customs, and arts, as well, there is a blending greatly to be remarked. In Dunvegan Castle in Scotland one is shown a drinking-cup made in the north of Ireland four hundred years ago. Naguire, of Fermanagh, in the fifteenth century, married a lady from Skye, Catherine Magrannal, and this cup was made at her expense and forwarded as a present to her relatives there. The high crosses of Ireland are reproduced in Scotland and the Isles, and the island monasteries of Ireland and Scotland were similar in both architecture and discipline, and ruins in the Flannan Islands and North Rona have their counterparts in Innismurray, Arran, and the Skelligs.
CHAPTER VII.
IRISH INDUSTRIES
IT is usually supposed that there is very little romance about industry or business of any sort. In general, this is doubtless true, but there is an element which enters into certain kinds of industry, which if not exactly romantic, is assuredly not prosaic.
The cottage industries, as they have come to be popularly known, of Ireland, have this element of romanticism, or assuredly picturesqueness, which is not usually associated with the matter-of-fact throbbing loom and busy shuttle.
This particular phase of industry has of late become somewhat of a fad, so far as people taking an interest in its product goes, though there is a very real, tangible, and practical side to it for the workers, who, perforce, might otherwise be in idleness.
The public-spirited men and women who have encouraged this special industry, or industries rather, for it comprehends lace-making, embroideries, and homespun woollens, are to be thanked and congratulated by reason of the success which has resulted from their efforts.
Everybody has a vague idea that there are certain products which come out of Ireland in large quantities. When called to specialize or enumerate them, they stop short at fine linen and bacon. Beyond this – what? There is but one way to find out, if one is not to visit Ireland itself, and that is from the government publications, Chamber of Commerce reports, and the like. These are dry reading, however, for some people impossible reading, and there is very little romance about them.
When one actually visits Ireland, and sees the Limerick pig in all his gaucheries, and his product in sausages, hams, and bacons, there is perhaps more romance connected with it, for there is a certain picturesqueness which invariably surrounds him. It may be a red-skirted, blue-coated colleen, or it may be a green-trousered, pot-hatted gossoon, who is driving him to market, or it may be that the environment of his home is so squalid as to be picturesque, and suggests primitive conditions and romantic times that have long gone past in other parts of the world.
To consider seriously just why the industries of Ireland are at the low ebb that they are, one has to realize that Ireland has ever been backward and unprogressive in developing her resources, though mostly this is because of oppression, as they call it in Ireland, and oppression, as a matter of fact, it is, or has been.
Primarily there is a scarcity of coal in Ireland. There are no workings that are profitable, and of a good quality, that are opened up at the present time; at any rate, not of a quality to be compared with that obtainable elsewhere and in countries which have prospered more fully than has Ireland.
One thing Ireland has, and has wofully neglected, is its supply of water-power such as has made many similar regions on the Continent of Europe thrifty and prosperous.
It might be used to generate electricity; it assuredly could do so, as there are several swift flowing waters that would fill the requirements admirably, – the Falls of Ballyshannon, for instance. Perhaps some day, when some ingenious individual succeeds in getting motive-power out of the rise and fall of the tides, Ireland will become the most prosperous of any country in the world.
In the seventeenth century, smelted iron – Ireland being very rich in iron ore – was exported to London in large quantities. This trade does not exist to-day. As early as the sixth century Irish woollens were exported to Nantes, and in the fourteenth century there was a large demand for Irish serges in Italy.
The woollen industry was given a great impetus in 1667 by the Duke of Ormonde, who induced five hundred Walloon families to settle at Clonmell, at Killarney, and at Carrick-on-Suir; but in 1698 the English manufacturers persuaded the Irish Parliament to prohibit the exportation of woollens.
From Dean Swift we learn that by this act twelve thousand families were thrown out of employment in and near Dublin, and thirty thousand more elsewhere.
It is of late years only that the cottage handicrafts, knitting, spinning, weaving of homespuns, and lace-making, have been given the great impetus which has now made them established industries, like the cottage cutlers of Barmen and Essen, in Germany, who fashion knife-blades from the crude product which they obtain from the large steel works near by.
Formerly paper-making was very extensively conducted in the county of Dublin; but this is no longer the case. Who does not know the famous Irish linen? Strange to say, the best quality was known as Royal Irish linen. This assuredly was an effort on the part of some astute Irishman to capture outside trade, but his astuteness apparently did not extend to other things.
The dictionaries received a new word in Balbriggan, which was the name of the cotton hosiery first made a hundred and fifty or more years ago at Balbriggan.
Irish whiskey distilleries and the breweries of porter and stout have come to be recognized as premier establishments in their line, and, whatever the opponents of the liquor trade may say, these industries have done Ireland much good. Far more good, be it acknowledged, than that other brewer, Cromwell, ever did for it.
The shipbuilding industry of Belfast ranks among the first establishments, if it is not the very first, in the world, and the allied industries, which produce ropes, cables, chains, and rigging, are likewise foremost in their class. These are mainly centred around Belfast, but an echo is heard at Londonderry, on the north coast.
Porcelain of a rare and unique quality is manufactured at Belleek. So frail and delicate and so translucent is this ware that it stands quite in a class by itself.
The paramount industry of Ireland is the spinning and weaving of linen and flax, mostly centred around Belfast. The great linen ware-houses of Belfast, with branches throughout the English-speaking world, and even on the Continent, are almost household names, and no product of a similar nature elsewhere produced at all enters into competition with the real Irish product. Besides the great establishments at Belfast, there are others, nearly as great, at Ballymena, Londonderry, Coleraine, and Lisburn.
This great industry grew up at the summary closing of the woollen mills, prospered, and, if at first it did not take the place entirely of the woollen industry, it did so finally.
In the mid-nineteenth century it has already reached huge proportions, and, while to-day the public undoubtedly buys a great deal that is not linen in the expectation that it is linen, and a great deal of linen that is not Irish linen in the hope or the belief that it is Irish linen, there is no question but that the trade has already advanced beyond the point where it was when it stood alone and supreme in the world.
The trade has reached its present magnitude from the very small beginnings of a Huguenot refugee named Crommelin, who settled originally at Lisburn.
The superiority of Irish linen is due primarily to the bleaching, which, of itself, depends upon the water and atmosphere, which at Belfast and the other places mentioned is apparently not equalled elsewhere in the world.
To get the same results, it is said that a certain German manufacturer buys Irish yarn, – that is, linen spun in Ireland, – weaves it into cloth in Bohemia, sends it back to Belfast to be bleached, finally brings it back to his establishment in Germany, and sells it as – what?
The most varied and most successful cottage industries are at Limerick, Carrickmacross, Cork, Youghal, Kinsale, Crosshaven, Ardora, and Clones. Their specialty is lace of a delicate and elegant variety.
The cottage woollens are mostly made in Donegal and Connemara, while the art of embroidery is followed most extensively at Belfast, Dublin, Dalkey, Garryhill, Sligo, Strabane, and Ballintra.
There is one phase of trade that the Irish have neglected to develop of late, – the fisheries. More or less philosophically, as they think, they lay this to the Scotch, who are much more successful at the industry than themselves. This is not the fault of the Scotch; it is the folly of the Irish. At any rate, there is an inexhaustible supply of mackerel, herring, cod, hake, sole, turbot, lobsters, and even oysters to be found on the south and southwest coast of Ireland.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries this was a trade which was worked, and successfully worked, as records show, by Spaniards, Dutch and French fishermen, who came from their own fishing-grounds to angle in these more plethoric Irish waters.
It was only in the nineteenth century that the Irish took up the industry in at all a commensurate manner, and by the famine years of the late forties they had 19,833 vessels, manned by 130,000 men and boys, in the trade. Then it steadily declined through succeeding years until 1894. In 1900 there were only 6,500 registered boats, employing 25,360 men, and the harvest which they gathered from the sea had but the value of £300,000. Truly this is a sad tale, and not a creditable one. The chief fishing stations are at Kinsale, Baltimore, Valentia, and Bearhaven. There are salmon to be had in almost every river estuary, and the taking of them has not been neglected, as has deep-water fishing.
The chief industry of most countries is perhaps agriculture. Even in Ireland crops are raised, – crops of a sort must be raised, – but they are grown to nothing like the extent that they ought to be.
Probably Ireland’s record is not as bad as England’s in this respect; but landlordism, whatever that vague term may really mean, is certainly responsible for the minute proportions of this industry. In 1831 1,270,000 were engaged in agriculture, approximately 65½ per cent. of the population; in 1891, 49½ per cent., showing plainly that agriculture in Ireland is rapidly on the down grade.
The most fertile counties are Tipperary and Limerick; Kerry is generally poor; but “Mounster,” as Spenser called it, was “of the sweetest soyle of Ireland.”
Cattle-raising in Ireland is truly preëminent, as bald, unromantic statistics show. In Ireland there are 138 horses per thousand of the population. In England, but 36 only. There are 996 cattle in Ireland as against 152 in England; 951 sheep as against 511; and 278 pigs as against 69.
The small farmer in Ireland is, it is true, uneducated to a surprising degree. He knows nothing of rotation of crops, and cultivates seldom more than two varieties. Artificial enrichment of the soil is a profound mystery to him, and he apparently would rather work a piece of reclaimed peat-bog than the most fertile valley that ever grew the products of the field.
Truth to tell, the genuine Irish peasant hates the cultivation of the soil; he dislikes to dig in the earth, as he does to fish in the sea; but he rejoices in cattle-raising, and, above all, cattle-trading. He likes to drive them to market; he makes a regular holiday of it, and so do the rest of his family, as one who has ever met such a composite caravan on the road well knows.
It is said that twenty thousand Irish go to England every autumn for the harvest. It seems a pity that these twenty thousand workers could not have the opportunity of working at home. The author does not pretend to explain this; he recounts it simply as current rumour, which doubtless could be authenticated.
CHAPTER VIII.
DUBLIN AND ABOUT THERE
THE environment of Dublin, so far as its immediate surroundings are concerned, is exceedingly attractive to the jaded inhabitant of brick and mortar cities.
Phœnix Park, belonging anciently to the Knights Templars, is more beautiful, as a city park, than those possessed by any other city of the size of Dublin in the British Isles, and is, moreover, of great extent. It is densely wooded, has lovely glades, and is plentifully stocked with herds of deer, who seem unconsciously to group themselves picturesquely at all times.
It is in no sense grand, nor, indeed, are the views of the lovely country lying immediately to the southward; but the distant views of the Wicklow peaks are full of quiet, restful beauty, which must help to make life in a great centre of population, such as Dublin, livable at all seasons of the year.
The Viceregal Lodge is in Phœnix Park, and near it is the spot where Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke were walking together on the night of May 6, 1882, when they were assassinated by the “Invincibles.”
The “Fifteen Acres,” where now horses are exercised, was a very favourite duelling-ground in olden times. A local description of this “bloody ground” states:
“There is not a single one of its acres that has not been stained with blood over and over again, in those gray mornings of the eighteenth century, when Dublin beaux, half-sobered after a night’s debauch, used to confront one another in the dew-drenched grass, and startle the huddled herds of deer with the deadly crack of pistols at twelve paces.”
Beyond Phœnix Park is Lucan, four miles up the Liffey, near the river’s celebrated salmon-leap.
Clondalkin, six miles from Dublin, possesses one of the finest and most perfect round towers in Ireland, eighty feet in height, and forty-five in circumference at the base.
The Falls of the Liffey, at Poula-Phooka, twenty miles from town, flow under a graceful viaduct. Here the foam-whitened river casts itself down a succession of rocky leaps, and through a richly wooded gorge, into the smoother plain below. This is a scenic gem, such as amateur photographers love, and its picturings are found in the album of almost every Irish traveller. Its name enshrines one of the best known of the many Celtic fairy myths, – that of the Phooka. Certainly, the wild, lofty defile of splintered rock, through which the fall leaps down, must have been exactly the sort of place to allure the goblin horse that had such an unpleasant fancy for breaking people’s necks.
The legend of the Phooka is one familiar in many forms to all lovers of folk-lore. It is claimed to be of Celtic origin, but with equal assurance it is said to be Norse, and again Indian. The apparition is a weird ghost-like horse-shape, not unlike the steed which Ichabod Crane saw mounted by a headless horseman.
Kingstown, seven miles from Dublin, has no great interest for the lover of artistic or historic shrines, though the view of its harbour, with its cross-channel shipping, its fishing-boats, and its long, jutting piers, composes itself gaily enough, on a bright summer’s day, into a pleasing picture.
Originally named Dunleary, the town received its present title in 1821, after the departure of George IV. An obelisk, surmounted by a crown, and placed upon four stone balls, stands near the harbour entrance, and commemorates – what? The king’s coming? Not at all. He landed at Howth, and no one, apparently, thought that incident worthy of a memorial. The Kingstown obelisk commemorates his departure from his Irish dominions.
This seems significant, but it will not do to condemn Irish hospitality on this score. Perhaps it is an attempt at humour. If so, it is not wholly unsuccessful.
Just north of Dublin are two spots famed alike of history and legend, – at least most of the local story-tellers’ tales sound like legends, – Clontarf and Howth.
As the Hill of Howth is one of the first of Ireland’s landmarks which come to the vision of the majority of visitors from England, it may perhaps be permissible to include the following lines here. They were written many years ago by a local poet whose, name is lost in obscurity, but whose verse is sufficiently apropos to-day to need no qualifying comment:
“Well might an artist travel from afar,
To view the structure of a low-backed car;
A downy mattress on the car is laid,
The father sits beside his tender maid.
Some back to back, some side to side are placed,
The children in the centre interlaced.
By dozens thus, full many a Sunday morn,
With dangling legs the jovial crowd is borne;
Clontarf they seek, or Howth’s aspiring brow,
Or Leixlip smiling on the stream below.”
“The Hill” is a bold peninsula at the mouth of Dublin Bay, above whose waters, and those of the Irish Sea, the rugged promontory rises to the height of 563 feet. The whole mount abounds in precipitous rocky formations, blended most artistically with fields of heather and of greensward in a manner apparently possible only in Ireland. From the cliffs over-looking the sea, the outlook embraces the counties of Dublin, Meath, and Louth; the Mourne Mountains and County Down, Ireland’s Eye and Lambay Island; while to the south loom the Wicklow Hills, Bray Head, Sugar Loaf Mountain, Dalkey Island, Kingstown Harbour, and Dublin, showing a variety of form which contrasts strangely with the placid sea, sky, and hills.
Howth itself is a village of one long, rambling street, – or was; of late it has grown more pretentious, and has thereby lost some of its pristine charm.
Off Howth Harbour is “Ireland’s Eye,” which in ancient works is printed Irlandsey. Thus its evolution is easily followed.
The island has some fragmentary remains of the old church of St. Nessan, showing portions of a still more ancient round tower.
The ancient castle of Howth is the family seat of the St. Lawrences, the Earls of Howth, who have held it since the time of their ancestor, Sir Armoric Tristram de Valence, who arrived here in the twelfth century. It is said that the family name was Tristram, and that even Sir Armoric never bore the present family title, but that a descendant or relative assumed it on the occasion of a battle won by him on St. Lawrence’s Day. The castle was in a great measure rebuilt by the twentieth Lord of Howth in the sixteenth century. It consists of an embattled range, flanked by towers. The interior of the castle is rich in historical associations, founded as it was by one of the most chivalrous of the Anglo-Norman settlers in Ireland.
One sad blow was struck at the founder’s dignity by the graceless Grace O’Malley, or Granuaile, or Grana Uile, a western chieftainess, who, returning from a visit to Queen Elizabeth at London, landed at Howth and essayed to tax the hospitality of the lordly owner, who refused to give her any refreshment. Determined to have her revenge, however, and to teach hospitality to the descendant of the Saxon, she kidnapped the heir and kept him a close prisoner until a pledge was obtained from his father that on no pretence whatever were the gates of Howth Castle to be closed at the hour of dinner. A painting of the incident exists, or did exist, in the oak-panelled dining-hall of the castle. In the hall also is the two-handed sword which won that St. Lawrence’s Day battle. It measures, even in its mutilated state, five feet, seven inches, the hilt alone being twenty-two inches long.
St. Mary’s Abbey, Howth, is a great ruined, roofless structure, which, in spite of its decrepitude, tells a story of great and appealing interest to the student of architecture. Its foundation by Luke, Archbishop of Dublin, dates from 1234, and it is one of those picturesque ruins which, while by no means so grand, will rank in the memory with Melrose and Muckross. As a well-preserved ruin, it still exists and shows unmistakable evidences of having been inspired by some Burgundian or Lombard architect-builder.
Lying between Howth and Dublin is Clontarf, famous as the scene of Brian Boru’s victory over the Danes. Moore has perpetuated its glories in verse, thus:
“Remember the glories of Brian the brave,
Though the days of the hero are o’er;
Though lost to Mononia, and cold in the grave,
He returns to Kinkora no more.
That star of the field, which so often hath poured
Its beam on the battle, is set;
But enough of its glory remains on each sword
To light us to victory yet.”
Many have doubted whether the victory was really in favour of the Irish. It is generally, however, conceded to have been in their favour. Scotsmen will be interested to see the name of Lennox mentioned among the soldiers of the patriot king. An Irish manuscript, translated for the Dublin Penny Journal, after summing up the number of natives slain on the side of Brian, says:
“The great stewards of Leamhue (Lennox) and Mar, with other brave Albanian Scots, the descendants of Corc, King of Munster, died in the same cause.”
After the battle, great respect was shown to the body of the deceased king by his devoted followers, who looked upon him in the light almost of a saint. Wills, the historian, gives the following account of the progress of his corpse:
“The body of Brian, according to his will, was conveyed to Armagh. First, the clergy of Swords in solemn procession brought it to their abbey, from thence the next morning the clergy of Damliag (Duleck) conducted it to the church of St. Kiaran. Here the clergy of Lowth (Lughmach) attended the corpse to their own monastery. The Archbishop of Armagh, with its suffragans and clergy, received the body at Lowth, whence it was conveyed to their cathedral. For twelve days and nights it was watched by the clergy, during which time there was a continual scene of prayers and devotion.”
Few traces remain of this dreadful encounter, and one perforce takes a good deal on faith, as one does much of history where architectural remains are practically non-existent.
An ancient preceptory of the Knights Templars, a dependency of that at Kilmainham, formerly occupied the site of Clontarf Castle, the seat of the Vernons.
Dublin is the metropolitan county of Ireland, also its chief city. The city is thought to have derived its name from the “black channel” of the river Liffey, and to have communicated the name by some expansionist process to the surrounding county, which comprised the six baronies of Coolock, Balrothery, Nethercross, Castleknock, Newcastle, and Uppercross, as well as half that of Rathdown.
Dublin County, unlike most other parts of Ireland, has no silver or mirror lake. In this respect it has manifestly been cheated by nature. Neither are there any of those deforming peat-bogs with which many of Ireland’s fairest lakes are surrounded.
There is a great distinction between legendary and monumental remains; and, since Ireland is so full of both sorts, it behooves one to stop and think for a moment, when viewing some shrine to which his fancy has led him, whether it ever had a former, a real existence, or not. This opens a vast field to research, controversy, and soi-disant opinion.
Near Dublin, on the hill called Tallaght, there are mounds – existing since time immemorial – referred to by the old historians on pre-Christian Ireland as “the mortality tombs of the people of Partholan,” who first colonized Ireland. The mounds are there, and we, perforce, have to imagine the rest, but there is good ground for believing that these grass-grown mounds, the burial-places of thousands of people, are as real and tangible memorials of the pre-Christian era in the British Isles as are anywhere to be found.
