Egans, "who kept a law school" in Tipperary, as recently as the reign of Charles I.; but even if the fact were so, the treasure was reserved for the profession, and the ignorance of the laity must have left the law open to every abuse. In such a state of things, the useful and mechanic arts were necessarily unknown; and the fine arts must have been at a much lower ebb. Not one fragment of poetry or music remains, to attest the superiority attributed to the old times in these sister studies. From evidence supplied by the modern researches of antiquaries, it has been proved, that the Irish had neither domestic nor religious edifices of lime and stone, until long after the settlement of the Danes, whose stone crypts (built by these Papal Catholics for the conservation of the relics which they first imported into Ireland) were called temples or churches. At a time when every thing was perpetual change, and exposed to the desolations of incessant warfare, the taste for expensive, though durable, edifices could not well arise. There was then no trade, no corporate communities: the villages were scattered huts, irregular and remote, sheltered by an impending wood, or defended by a rampart of earth, with such barriers as felled trees might afford. The house, or palace, of the chief differed from that of his dependant, only by the superior solidity of its wooden frame, or its greater extent. To men whose lives were spent in the field as hunters or as warriors, their wattled edifices sufficed, while their woods served them for fortifications. A few earthen forts, and lime-stone towers of Danish origin, were in fact their highest acquisition in military architecture. "Perched on lofty edifices, the forts of the Firbolgs resembled aeries of ravenous birds, and were well termed nids de tyrannie." In this state the Irish were found by their English invaders; and of the golden-roofed palace of Emania, (the Alhambra of the Keatinges, the O'Flahertys, and the O'Hallorans,) not a trace even of the site remains. The stone church of Bangor," then recently erected by the Archbishop of Armagh, was deemed a standing miracle of art. A very national and patriotic antiquary, John Lynch, who wrote in 1662, attributes to the Danes the erection of the round towers: these were called Cloch-Theah, or House of Bells. Peter Walsh is also of the same opinion;3 which is further sup 1 The influence of the brehon law was maintained in this county almost to modern times; and even now the peasantry adopt by agreement some of its dispensations relative to the transmission of property. With respect to the language in which these laws were written, General Vallancey made a guess (but confesses himself unable to do more) at the meaning of some of them. O'Flaherty, who wrote in 1684, says there was then a Ms. extant called the "Brethe-Memhe," or Celestial Judgments, dated 647; but he attempted no translation, though he was a pupil of the Mac Firbes, the last of the brehons known to exist. 2 The ancient usage of Ireland was, that on the death of any landed proprietor, the whole possessions of the family of which he was a member, were put together to be again divided among the survivors by the Caenfinny or chief. The justice of these divisions was often disputed, which gave occasion for endless feuds, and, like the land-shifting" of the Germans, was the parent of many murders and civil wars.See Warner, p. 116. 3 It is to be observed, that these two writers were Irish Catholic ecclesiastics, and highly national in their leanings and opinions. John Lynch was a secular priest, and titular archdeacon of Tuam. His most celebrated work is his "Cambrensis Eversus," a violent contradiction of Gerald Barry; who, however, had the advantage of writing of his own times, and putting down what he himself saw or heard ported by Sir W. Petty, Dr. Warner, Ledwick, and most of the dispassionate writers on this obscure subject. The principal towns of Ireland were on the sea-coast, and were in the possession of the Danes; by whom they were raised and defended. The Danes had "kings in every province of Ireland ;" and as far back as 1033, Siteric, king of Dublin, was sufficiently powerful to erect his good city of Dublin (the second in the land) into a see; and the first bishop appointed was a Dane. On the arrival of Henry II., the chief of the Kavanaghs, the celebrated Mac Murroch, was king of Leinster, and Mac Turkill the Dane was king of Dublin and of the north-east district of Fingal.1 The dress and personal appearance of the Irish, beyond all other circumstances of their social state, seems most to have struck "the gallants" of King Henry's army. It is however necessary to remark, that the needy adventurers, who are described by their cotemporary historian as coming in "three skippes," were not of that simple and rude Saxon race, between whom and the Irish there had been considerable friendly intercourse and many common traits. They (the chiefs, at least, of the enterprise) were Norman soldiers of fortune, with whom the Conqueror and his successors had filled their courts and camps. The prefixes of Fitz, De, and Le, attached to their names, show that there was not one English family of note among them. The Fitzgeralds, with their long train of subordinate Fitz's, the De Courcis, the De Lacys, Le Gros, Le Despencers, and Monte Moriscos, were French in all their qualities and habits, and much more opposed to the native Irish, than the neighbouring population of Northumberland, Scotland, and Wales. The Normans are described as being "delicately fed and elegantly clad." Cambrensis says, they were "all gallant, with coats to the mid-knee, heads shorn, arm laden with bracelets, and faces painted;" a species of barbarous refinement that must have offered a strong contrast with the wild but manly and picturesque appearance of the Irish chiefs of half-naked septs, whose fierce countenances were shaded by bushy glibs and long corluns, (mustachios and matted locks,) and were surmounted by conic caps, or berets. The Irish were habited in many-coloured mantles of coarse woollen, with the short falla, or doublet, of the same material, and the close-fitting braccæ, or modern pantaloon. They rushed forth from their gloomy woods, armed with a spear or pike, which they dexterously wielded with their nervous grasp, while their high and lofty bearing in a first encounter showed them to be men used to power, and proud of undisputed control.2 passing near him: whereas Lynch saw through the dim vista of 500 years. Peter Walsh, a celebrated Irish writer of the 17th century, was a Franciscan friar. Among his numerous national works, his "Prospect of the State of Ireland from the year of the world 1756, to the year of Christ 1172," is the most curious. 1 Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, who corresponded with Ireland to forward the interests of the Pope, addressed both the cotemporaneous kings; styling Gothric 'the glorious king," and Turlogh "the magnificent king of Ireland." This imperium in imperio seems to have been (in modern parlance) a great bore. The King of Leinster had a neighbourly hatred for the Danish "viceroy over him." In the time of Mac Murroch, it became a personal pique, through the wounded filial affections of the Irish King: "For his father being on a tyme at Dublyn, and sitting at the door of an ancient man of of the city, they not only murdered him, but, in contempt, buried him with a dog." 2 Two centuries later, when the provincial kings did homage to King Richard, Of the state of literature at this important epoch, when the history of Ireland truly began, all that is known renders the work of the Commines of the Leinster dynasty, Maurice Regan, more precious and singular. If at any period subsequent to the introduction of Christianity, the lay or profane learning of those dark ages had found its way into Ireland, and had been cultivated by the clergy with assiduity and success, it had totally disappeared under the discouraging state of things, produced by the frequent invasions of the Danes and the domestic anarchy of the native toparchs. The physical aspect of the country and its inhabitants, as betrayed in the few striking particulars enumerated in the preceding paragraphs, is perfectly incompatible either with the tranquil pursuits of civilization, or with the diffusion of such comforts and conveniences as a real progress of knowledge inevitably introduces. It is possible that, on the dismemberment of the Roman empire, and the overflow of a warlike and barbarous population upon the south of Germany, Gaul, and Lombardy, many learned ecclesiastics might have sought safety in Britain and Ireland, carrying into the monastic establishments of those remote countries the lights of their age. In the seventh century, the barbarous policy of Rome was directed against all learning; and the burning of the precious Palatine library, by Pope Gregory, put the seal to this persecution. At this period, the mild doctrines of the Culdec monks of Ireland, the security of their wood-embosomed monasteries, and the freedom of the Irish Church from papal dominion, would have rendered that country a desirable asylum for the freethinking and literary spirits of the continent. It is further possible, that on the resettlement of Europe under Charlemagne, and the eruption of the north-men on the shores of Ireland, a revulsion of emigration might have brought Irish ecclesiastics of note back to the south. Amidst the shades of darkness a small flame shines far and bright, and the acquirements of these Irish exiles might have been highly estimated by their foreign cotemporaries.1 But the fame of this oft-cited epoch of Irish story, and of its literary heroes, has most probably been much exaggerated; for if any civilization, approaching in the slightest degree to modern notions of literature and the arts, had been made in Ireland during the eighth and following centuries, it is inconceivable that it should so totally have disappeared, and left no trace behind it in the twelfth. Of the far-famed Irish literati of these days, Ware, arduous, credulous, and national as he was, has collected little more than hear Froissart says, ces roys estoyent bien paris, d'affubler un mantel d'Irelande." The king, displeased with their appearance, clothed them from his own wardrobe with "linen breeches, and gowns of silk furred with miniver and grey:" but the chiefs soon threw off their fealty and their foreign accoutrements together, and in less than half a century the descendants of the Norman invaders adopted, with Irish feelings and interests, the very dress at which their fatbers had scoffed. 1 Ware, amongst other instances, mentions Albin, a reputed Irishman of the ninth century, who forsook his country to avoid the horrors of war, and passed into France with his companion Clement, crying aloud to the inhabitants, "If any body wants wisdom, let him come to us and receive it, for we have it to sell." Herweek, a monk of St. Germaine l'Auxerre, observes, that at this epoch almost all Ireland, despising the dangers of the sea, resorted to the French court with a numerous train of philosophers, to put themselves in the service of "our wise Solomon" (Charlemagne). says; and the titles of their imputed writings, and his voluminous work, only prove that the Irish writers of the twelfth century, like those which preceded them, were confined in their subjects very closely to the learning of the Church. The Irish writers of note, whom the industry of Ware and his continuators has been able to rescue from the oblivion of time, were Congan, a monk, and afterwards abbot of Suir, who "is said to have written" (1150) the life of Malachi bishop of Armagh, and the acts of St. Bernard "according to Thady Dowling;" Murry O'Corman, abbot of Knock, who wrote the Supplement to the Martyrology of Engus, 1171, "in most elegant Irish," says Colgan; Concubran, a learned ecclesiastic, who composed the life of St. Moninna the Virgin, in three books, with two alphabetical hymns" in her praise; Eugene, bishop of Ardmore and suffragan to the Archbishop of Cashel, wrote the life of St. Cuthbert. Such were the principal literati, and such the learning upon which the Irish authorship of the twelfth century expended its forces; and such was the bent, capacity, and extent of intellect at that period all over Europe. " It was at this epoch that an Irish gentleman, or tiernach of the sept of the Regans, was driven by his necessities to become the secretary, or, as it was termed, "the servant and interpreter" to Mac Murroch king of Leinster. That a layman should be so learned as to be capable of such an office, was a singular fact in itself. The King, his master, probably could not even write : it appears indeed that in the absence of his secretary, "being lodged in the abbey of Ferns, the King commanded the abbot to write a letter which he subscribed, and to deliver it to one of his monks to carry it to Murroch O'Beirne." But whether this subscription were a sign manual, or, as is most likely, only a mark, is uncertain; and in either case it may be inferred, without much risk of error, that the King himself had not" the pen of a ready writer." Maurice Regan was a person of rank in his country, descended from ancestors who were chieftains of a considerable territory, called after them Hy Ryan's or O'Ryan's country, "which is now the barony of Tennyhinch, in the Queen's County." But, sharing the common fate of the petty chieftains of that age, he was driven out of his territories by his " encroaching neighbours"-a mild phrase for one neighbour destroying another's property by fire and sword. The learning which proved so great a resource to the discomfited chief, procured him the sobriquet of "the Latiner," or one learned in the Latin tongue. Received into the service of his Sovereign at that momentous conjuncture, when Mac Murroch was dispossessed of his kingdom by O'Connor the supreme monarch, the secretary was raised to the importance of an ambassador. His first mission was to Wales, to solicit aid for the recovery of his master's kingdom; an invitation which he readily accepted. His second embassy was to Asculph Mac Turkill, the Danish king of Dublin, to "command him to yield his kingdom of Dublyn to the English besiegers." Regan continued an eye-witness of all the facts of an event so inauspicious, yet so important, from that time till the death of his unfortunate master; and his manner of recording them Sir George Carew. has in it all that internal evidence which ever accompanies the truth. His chronicle opens with an account of the power and the wrongs of his hero, and details the incidents of the Anglo-Norman invasion, as they occurred, down to the first siege of the Danish settlement of Limerick an interval of three years. He confines himself rigorously to what he saw passing around him, and rarely touches upon those circumstances beyond the evidence of his senses, which were afterwards given by Gerald Barry, the secretary of the Earl of Worcester. The only languages then familiarly known were Latin and Irish. The Chronicle of Regan, it should seem, was composed in the former, but it was put into French (Norman) metre by one of his new friends— the Norman adventurers. The account of the fact is thus given by the translator in a dialect as curious as the subject itself: Par soen demande, Latinner E moi conta de son Historie La storie de lui me mostra. Je (dejà) il Morice erat Latinner Al Re,-Re Murcher. Ici livrai del Bacheler Del Re Dermod vous vois il conter. Another curious specimen of this rare document is the description of Earl Strongbow's gift of his newly acquired lands to his daughter, and to her husband, his brother adventurer, Robert de Quincy :La fille, la dite Marie La don à Robert de Quincy. I loe estoit le marriage Next to the French translation, (the French spoken by the Fitzgeralds, De Lacys, &c. &c. of the twelfth century,) the English version by Sir G. Carew is most notable. It is the. good prose spoken and written in Queen Elizabeth's court; and it is remarkable that the orthography indicates a pronunciation of particular words, which is that of the ancient Catholic families, and of many of the remote provincial Irish to this day. Camden has done the honours by the learning, the library, and the antiquarian acquirements of this accomplished statesman; and particularly praises him for the light he threw on the affairs and the antique lore of Ireland. (Brit. p. 506. An. 1340.) During his ministry in Ireland, Sir George is said to have collected 42 volumes of Irish tracts. The portion here mentioned was the Duffren, a tract of country, still, I believe, so called, in Wexford; and separated from the county of Carlow by the ridge of hills called Mount Leinster. The Duffren afterwards became the property of the Colcloughs. The "constabel" was the civil authority, the "banniere" the military government, in fact the whole regal authority of the district, which was the original nucleus of the Pale. |