POOR PADDY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 56, 23 May 1874, Page 11

POOR PADDY.

" Peneteate tlie surface of Irish rmture," say you, " and you will fiud hidden beneath crudity and deceit." There is mi uvrful amount of cruelty in the Celtic- nature As the Welsh Kelt mutilated the bodies of the slain after the defeut of Mortimer's oriny ; as French men and women— even ladies— hive taken a horrible pleasure in witnessing bloody executions ; so the massacre by O'Neill, in those of Wexford in '98> aud in many other scenes, we find a ghoul-like cruelty peeping out which seems inherent in the race " This is forcible language, but it is yours, and to sustain it you give an apocryphal story of the savagery of a French duellist, and quote the burbamty of Dermot MacMurrough, whom— from the description of that most untrustworthy of chrouiclers, Gerald Barry, commonly called Ca-inbreusis, you pronounce to have been, the model of an Irish chieftain. To give a deeper dye to Dermot's brutality, you add, " that though the times were barbarous, Ireland had Jong been the seat of learning ;" and you assure' us " that Anglo-Norman Strongbow, a meek, calm, calculating gentleman, brave and courteous as covetous, would never have thus polluted himself." You find that, the Irishman of the present day is not a whit more civilised than was MacMurrough, and you ground this discovery on the reports of the London and Liverpool police courts You conclude the indictment lor cruelty thus : "In contradistinction to such brutalities, the fair stand-up fight of Englishmen who hit only ia the face aid chest, who sirike no foul blow, and never hit a man when he is down, is chivalry itself. In the Irish Rebell oa men were buried up to their chins, and bowled at. No parallel can excuse thetn. Ihe race, in fact, loves extremes - r and in its poetry. brutality is absolutely put forward as strength." If this corpus delicti could be sustained by »ell-authenticofed facts, the devil, instead of being called Niccoli Machiavelh, should have been given an Irish cognomen. Bur, fortunately, though this is one of your most powerfulfy worded charg* s agninst Irish character, it is the weakest. As for Dermot MacMurrough, of infamous memory, the base, forsworn craven, who " trod upon his country's ruin," he was aa much the type of Irish chieftains, as we. c the cruel and treacherous Richard 111. or Henry VIII. ot English nobles. 11 s character was stained with every conceivable crime, and his lustful passion* brought shame cru the household ol a valiant prince, and ruin on his unhappy country. To set up auch a man as a picture of Irish worth in the Middle Ages, is as unjust is if you were to nuasute the meats of Irishmen of the preset t day by the infamies of Corjdon, Talbot, and the other scoundrels who cropped up like mushrooms daring the Fenian emeures, and who so honorably earned their blood-mouey Irom the Imperial Government. MacMurrough was a brutal savuge ; no Irishman will attempt to deny that. For Mercy's sake I then, weigh us by some- other standard. But base and infamous as the perjured Prince of Leinater was, he is not without his peers in treason mid cruelty. Cruelly and revenge were the leading characteristics- of the Plantagenet Kings, and from the Conquest to the last, defe.it of the Stuarts there is hardly a page of English history that is not blotted with blood ; whilst treason to king and country stains every folio of the Scottish annalsy from thetime that John Lorn led the fl^et of Edward I. against the Bruce, to tLat dark hour when infamy was consummated by th« sale ©f Charles I. to the Parliamentarians by the Covenanting army. Nor was the meek and courteous Vnglo-Normari gentleman — that mirror of chivalry — Kichard do Clare, Earl of Pembroke, tho preux chevalier that you describe him. His portrait by a historian reads thus i'• He was a man of ruined fortune, needy, greedy, and unscrupulous, and ready for any desperate adventure ; possessing unquestionable skill, reckless and daring — in fact, just the man for MacMurrough's fell purpose." The slaughter of chiefs ami kernes on the plains of Ossory ; the appalling butcnery at Walerford; the cowardly surprise at Dublin, whilst the negotiator was mediating in the English camp with Strongbow, and the fury with which the Normans vcuted their thirst for blood on the inhabitants, together with his intended treachery to his invited guest, MacGilla Patrick, which wa< prevented by the noble ami gallant Mau* rice do Prendergast, who, in his leader's presence, swore " by the cross ' of his sword that no man there that day should lay hands on the Xii g of Odsory," neither speuks for the huniauity or honor of Strougbow. Henry Ourmantle knew tlw craft nni cunuing of his Norman earl He came to Ireland, humuLited his proud, aspiring subject ; anJ, afier spending a season in Dublin in feasting and riotous livii g, i lie returned to England to do penance for the murder of Thomas A'Beckctt, and Bent his son John, theu twelve years o'd, to lord it over Ireland, and to amuse himself in plucking the beards of the Irish chiefs, who were fools enough to do him homage. Truly, they set a aoble example to the poor barbarian Irish, those noble princes, lorJs, aud knights who came to Ircluud, as is averred, to restore peace, order, and religion to that unhappy country. I wish I had space to chronicle all their crimes. Heury the Second's passion has been compared by the ancijtit chroniclers lo the fury of a savage beast. Wo know that John wus a muderer, a coward, and a liar — the most profligate in a piofligate age; the most faithless of a faithless race Heury 111. was was a weak, credulous fool, and a coward. Cruelty and revenge were the most prominent features of Edward I. ; Edward 11. was an idle, dissipated sot; and Edward 111., the warrior kiiii:,, tarnished the glorious laurels which he had brought with him from the fields of France, by yielding to the thralls of the beautiiul but bid Ah>e Ferraris. Kichard of Bourdeaux was as reckless in revenge, and cruel as Edward Longshanks ; Henry VI. was a weak imbecile; w^ilo Edward IV. was only excellol in blood ihirstin ess, brutality, and sensuality by his ti^er-hke brother, crooked-backed Richurd of Gloucester. Talk about Irish cruelty ! Run your eye over the records of the reigns oi the mouarchs 1 ha\e just mentioned, and find if you can a parallel ol their crimes in the lives of their contemporary Irish princes. What terrible tales of blood are the chronicles of the dynasties of Anjou, Lancaster alhd York ! Memory Bhudders at their contemplation. By murder, rapine, and perjury they crowned their ambition, and through a sea of blood they mounted to the throne. Irish history does not present, even in its worse epochs, auj thing to be compared to tLc flayiug alive of the young archer Gorndou, at Chaluz, after the

dying king had pardoned him ; the massacre of the Jews in Londorr by the mob, and in other towns, in the year 1189, aud the terrible tragedy at York Castle, where 600 of the uuhuppv raeo, rather than fall into the hands of tho people, who were howling for their blood slew their wives and children, and then stabbed one another, are not easily equalled. Where will you find such a scene ns that which Merrie England presented during the famine of 1314*15. The nobles became robbers— they had no other resource— and robbery pillage, bloodshed, and ruin flooded the land. We must wait till the Judgment Day for the terrible secrets which the walls of Berkeley arid Pontefract Castles conceal. And where shall we find a companion picture for the cowardly crime that was perpetrated after the battle of Baraet r when the dastard King Edward IV. struck the gallant young Prince of Wales in the face with his gauntlet, and the recreant Clarence and the hunch-backed Gloucester drove their daggers into the h^art of the chivalrous young prince— the hope and pride of the Red Rose? There was no sunshine in the- heart of old Kin ■* Henry ou that day, and woe was the lot of gentle Anne Neville— the°daughter of the King-maker, the matchless Warwick. It is hirdly to bo wondered at that whilst their C7uquerors lived thiu lawlessly, the Irish in resisting oppression and tyranny were not always over nice ij their reprisals. Thieves for thair robbery have authority When judges steal themselves.