Class Z)AAliL 
 
 GopightN?_ 
 
 CORfRIGHT DEPOSm 
 
THE WOMEN 
 
 OF 
 
 THE GAEL 
 
 By 
 JAMES F. CASSIDY, B. A. 
 
 1922 
 
 THE STRATFORD COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 
 BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 
 
Copyright, 1922 
 
 The STRATFORD CO., Publishers 
 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 The Alpine Press, Boston, Mass., U. S. A, 
 
 JUN 1 2 1922 
 
 vyaAR77095 
 •no ( 
 
The author wishes to thank The Mac Millan 
 Publishing Company, Messrs. Funk and Wagnalls, Mr. 
 Padraic Colum and Mr. Seumas Mac Manus for per- 
 mission to reprint certain poems included in this 
 Volume. 
 
Contents 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 Introduction 1 
 
 I In the Pagan Tales of Love and War . . 7 
 II The Social Dignity of Women . . .18 
 
 III The Objects of Men's Reverence . . 30 
 
 IV Feminine Morality in Pagan Days . . 43 
 V When Saints Were Numerous . . .54 
 
 VI Women of Action from the Ninth to the 
 
 Seventeenth Century . . . .74 
 
 VII Virtuous and Noble from the Dane to 
 
 Elizabeth . . . . . .100 
 
 VIII Devotion to Letters from the Sixth to the 
 
 Eighteenth Century .... 122 
 
 IX Heroines from Elizabeth to the Present Day 132 
 X Womanly Morality and Honour from the 
 
 Sixteenth Century Onwards . . . 169 
 XI Writers of the Nineteenth and Twentieth 
 
 Centuries 181 
 
 XII The Mothers and Daughters of To-day . 198 
 
Prefatory Note 
 
 IT IS proper that a country that has taken for itself the 
 most feminine representation should have a book devoted 
 
 to the eulogy of its womanhood. "The Women of the 
 Gael" renders justice — even romantic justice — to the woman- 
 hood of the country whose representations are Dark Rosaleen, 
 and Kathleen ni Houlihan, and The Poor Old Woman. Its 
 writer has made of it a long roll of honor, a roll of women with 
 beautiful names who have been remembered for their piety, 
 their learning, and their patriotism : It is distinctly a Legend 
 of Good Women. 
 
 Little is said of another type of woman that has been 
 celebrated from far-of times in Ireland — the woman whose 
 virtue was in her overflowing energy, the woman whose type 
 is Queen Maeve, bearer of warrior children, herself a warrior 
 and a great lover. And naturally in a Legend of Good Women 
 nothing would be said of that woman of the O'Briens who, on 
 coming back to her castle, finds the women lamenting for her 
 husband slain in battle, and says "Dead men are no use to us 
 here," and rides back to the battle-line, and there and then 
 marries the general of the opposing army. Little is said of the 
 women of that type : The Women of the Gael who are spoken 
 of have their names on the roll for being guardians of the 
 national virtue and custodians of the Gaelic civilization. 
 
 The conquest of Ireland — or rather, the repeated half- 
 conquests of the country — inflicted an especial wrong upon 
 the Women of the Gael. Peculiarly fitted as they were for a 
 brilliant social life and for artistic enterprise of every kind, 
 they were, with the exception of privileged ones, deprived 
 of a life that might have such manifestations. It was 
 theirs to spiritualize as harsh conditions as were any- 
 where. A single glimpse is often revealing, and we have 
 seen Connacht women come in from working in the fields, 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 stand by a little window, and with hands that have labored out- 
 side, work the delicate laee that is to become the possession of 
 some radiant lady at the other side of the ocean. And we have 
 often heard from women who have finished such double tasks 
 such wit and poetry as one would listen for in vain in the 
 drawing room of the radiant lady. That clever observer of 
 European life, Max O'Rell, placed Europe's most charming 
 women in Hungarj'^ and in Ireland. "In the drawing rooms of 
 Buda-Pesth," he said. And he was compelled to add "In the 
 potato-fields of Ireland." 
 
 The conquest of Ireland is being repealed, and the democ- 
 racy of Ireland is emerging towards the brilliant social life and 
 the artistic enterprise that the women of Ireland are so well 
 fitted for. And, as Father Cassidy has shown, the women of 
 the Gael well deserve a place in that redeemed democracy, for 
 it is largely due to them — to their inspiration, their heroic 
 memory, their courage, their actual combativeness, that the 
 emancipation has been achieved. It it due to them that Ireland 
 has remained Irish and Gaelic. The women always had more 
 than a single share of the racial heritage, and the Norse and 
 the Normans and the English who married with them found 
 that their children had it in them to become "Kindly Irish of 
 the Irish." 
 
 Another observer of Europe — Dr. Brandes, I think — has 
 noted that in Germanic countries the men, in terms of per- 
 sonality, are superior to the women; that in Latin countries 
 men and women are equal, and in Slavonic countries — he was 
 thinking especially of Poland — the women are superior to the 
 men. Ireland in this regard is like Latin Europe — indeed in 
 some parts she is close to Slavonic Europe. Again let us go 
 to the most Gaelic part of Europe — to Connacht. There the 
 men are certainly not superior to the women; the women, in 
 terms of personality have the ascendency. This may be due, 
 not to a racial heritage, but to local circumstances, for the 
 smallness of the fields in a place where one works only with 
 the spade, gives the man little room for development. How- 
 ever that may be, the women in Connacht have the ascendency. 
 
Prefatory Note 
 
 and this ascendency has left a spiritual mark — in the beautiful 
 and poignant songs that express the woman's side in love, and 
 in the number of words in the language the use for the thin^ 
 that are especially in the woman's care — the number of words 
 for "child" for instance. The Gaelic civilization as we see it 
 in Connacht is distinctly a feminine civilization. 
 
 Even if we had no record in history of the status of women 
 in Ireland, we could judge that it was high from saga and 
 romance, and from those naive reconstructions of history that 
 early peoples make. The epic tale and the sagas show women 
 moving with more freedom than they have in Homer and more 
 freedom than they have in the Germanic sagas. The very 
 names for Ireland — Eire, Banba, Fodhla, were taken from 
 the three queens that the Milesian adventurers found in 
 Ireland. All this would show that the status was high and 
 free. But we have an actual law promulgated in 694-5 that 
 gives a notable franchise to women. 
 
 Before that time, in a disturbed epoch, there must have- 
 been great hardships inflicted on the women of Ireland. They 
 had to take part in war and in battle. But in Ireland there 
 were men who were revolted by these conditions, and that dis- 
 tinguished scholar and statesman, Adamnan, abbot of lona 
 and friend of the Venerable Bede, undertook to win a status 
 for them. 
 
 He was travelling with his mother and he offered to carry 
 her on his back. She refused his help, saying she would not be 
 carried by an undutiful son. Where had he failed in his duty? 
 Adamnan asked. She told him he had failed because he had 
 not freed the women of Ireland from their political bondage. 
 There and then he undertook to do it, going on a hunger-strike 
 until the Kings would come to terms with him. "It shall not 
 be in my time if it is done," said the King, Loingsech Bregban, 
 speaking like the conservative of all time, "an evil time when 
 a man's sleep shall be murdered for women, that women should 
 live men should be slain. Put the deaf and dumb to the 
 sword who asserts anything but that women shall be in ever- 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 lasting bondage to the brink of Doom." Seven kings supported 
 Loingsech, but, by the power of God, Adamnan overcame them. 
 Thereafter Adamnan's law was accepted, and the securities for 
 its fulfilment were — The Sun and the Moon and all the other 
 elements of God, Peter, Paul, Andrew and all the other 
 Apostles, together with the Irish saints. Those who violated 
 the law drew on themselves the maledictions of those great 
 powers. Adamnan also inserted a curse in the daily service 
 against those who put themselves against the spirit of the law. 
 
 After that the women of Ireland had unquestioned status. 
 They had control of their own property. Those who drew them 
 into battle were punished severely. If a man slew a woman 
 lie was condemned to two-fold punishment. If a woman was 
 slain by part of an army every fifth man up to the three 
 hundredth was condemned to a severe penalty. Even for in- 
 sult the penalty was made heavy. "If it be by making a 
 gentlewoman blush by imputing unchastity to her, or by throw- 
 ing doubt on the legitimacy of her offspring a fine of seven 
 cwmals shall be exacted." 
 
 The position of women in Ancient Ireland is revealed by 
 the apostrophe of the writer of the tenth century treatise o.n 
 "Adamnan's Law." "Adamnan suffered much harship for your 
 sake, women, so that ever since Adamnan's time one half 
 of your house is yours, and there is a place for your chair in 
 the other half; so, that your contract and your safeguard are 
 free. And the first law made in Heaven and on Earth for 
 women is Adamnan's Law." So, very long ago, women in 
 Ireland had a position that was formally recognized. 
 
 It is very just that at this time a writer should make a 
 record for the women of Ireland, reminding us of what that 
 clever cosmopolitan observer who has been quoted before. Max 
 O'Rell, once said. "There will be no one to tell it, but bear this 
 in mind: If ever Ireland come to anything it will be because 
 of her women." Well, Ireland, has come to something. And 
 there has been one to tell us why: It is because of the faith, 
 the courage, the wisdom and the wit of THE WOMEN OF 
 THE GAEL. 
 
 PADRAIC COLUM. 
 
Introduction 
 
 The Women of the Gael 
 
 ANY national biography that seriously ne- 
 glects the role of woman in a people's life 
 must be condemned as dwarfed and incom- 
 plete. It is a repudiation of an element of a na- 
 tion's existence that is most vitally fundamental 
 and forceful. It lacks that medium through which 
 the eye of the interpretative searcher after truth 
 can behold the mystic depths of a nation's soul 
 and reveal with a sense of substantial realism the 
 glory, beauty and strength which live and operate 
 in the corporate individuality of a people. Nation- 
 hood is a most delicately fashioned and intricate 
 thing and defies with ease all human efforts to ac- 
 complish its ultimate and perfect analysis. The 
 clearest conception of its nature can only be 
 attained by a study of the simplest yet most endur- 
 ing and far-reaching factors on which its perplex- 
 ing labyrinth is constructed. At the fountain-head 
 whence the stream of life has issued must the stu- 
 dent labour to acquire a reasonably successful 
 knowledge of the secrets of a people's evolution 
 and there he shall find that the greatest and most 
 
 [0 
 
r 
 
 Introduction 
 
 life-giving element of this nutritive spring is 
 woman. 
 
 Nationhood is primarily the product of spirit- 
 ual forces. Divorced from the mastery of the soul 
 a people may constitute for itself a world hege- 
 mony through the power of its artillery or the 
 multitude of its merchant-men but it cannot boast 
 of fidelity to that part of its nature which alone 
 has the most enduring influence upon the future 
 of itself and of all mankind. It is for this reason 
 that woman is more essentially responsible for 
 the development of the ideas that make for the per- 
 petuity of national life. She is the main worker 
 in the garden of the souls of children whence the 
 nation must extract its spiritual nutrition. She 
 is more constantly and familiarly in contact with 
 the sacredness of the child soul than man. Hence 
 her knowledge of the precious beings confided to 
 her care endows her with limitless power to win 
 their confidence and mould their character. When 
 she points the way to the ruling verities of the in- 
 visible world the impressionable heart of the child 
 naturally heeds her words for it trusts the one it 
 knows best and, above all, the one whose feminine 
 delicacy is a most efficient interpreter of the 
 spiritual world for the young and tender soul. 
 
 If this feminine contribution to the greatness 
 of nations is an indubitable fact that can not be 
 overlooked it is especially so in the case of Ire- 
 land. Nowhere does woman exert a greater influ- 
 ence than in that island outpost of western 
 
 [2] 
 
Introduction 
 
 Europe. Several influences conspire to create for 
 her therein an atmosphere most congenial for the 
 operation of her nature. Of these we will cite a 
 few of the most potent. The manhood of the Irish 
 Celt has a decidedly supernatural bent which has 
 established within it a sympathetic comprehen- 
 sion of woman born of a striking kinship with her 
 being. The feminine factor in the Irishman's 
 make-up begets a remarkable harmony of thought 
 and feeling between him and his racial sister which 
 resulting in unbounded trust in her gives her an 
 honoured position as mother, wife and maiden that 
 is scarcely paralleled in any other country. Then, 
 too, he is an idealist and hungers for an idol to wor- 
 ship, for some worthy object to absorb the highest 
 energy of his soul: this he finds in a pure woman- 
 hood. Yetj despite the delicacy of his nature the 
 Irishman is as manly a type as breathes. On this 
 account he finds in the extreme femininity of the 
 daughters of the Gael a most suitable complement 
 of his own sturdy manliness. The sheer force of 
 contrast draws him towards her with a sense of 
 passionate reverence and a vivid conception of the 
 many qualities of her being that are admirably cal- 
 culated to fill many a void in his nature and 
 contribute to its strength and happiness. 
 
 Fully cognisant of this dominating position of 
 woman in Irish life the writer with a sense of duty 
 as well as pleasure has assumed the task of paying 
 a more extensive tribute to the daughters of the 
 Gael than has hitherto appeared in print. This we 
 
 [3] 
 
Introduction 
 
 do not intend to accomplisli by elabourate acconnts 
 of distinguished individuals in severe isolation 
 from the common mass of Irish womanhood. We 
 hope that the nature of our work shall be such 
 that the reader can see in the women who enter 
 into our narrative great and brilliant personalities 
 dependent for their nobility on the wine of in- 
 spiration which they derived from the secret vin- 
 tage of character which is the heritage of the 
 whole body of the daughters of Erin. The great- 
 ness of the relatively few with whom we have to 
 deal shall be symbolic of the greatness of the 
 many because it would have been impossible had 
 not the common properties of feminine Gaeldom 
 been wholesome and enduring. The distinguished 
 daughters of Ireland are the bright-crested 
 billows of the vast sea of the womanhood of their 
 race dependent for their might and beauty on 
 the ever bounteous depths of the source that pro- 
 duced and sustained them. They are no freakish 
 exceptions but the continuous and unfailing prod- 
 ucts of their race and civilisation. 
 
 And just as truly as their lives reveal traits 
 that are the property of the race rather than 
 qualities inhering in a mere group of abnormally 
 gifted individuals so they also manifest attributes 
 that are primarily in consonance with all that is 
 womanly. They are rarely sexually unsphered 
 when doing the work of Ireland. Sometimes, in- 
 deed, feminine activity assumes an aggressiveness 
 that savours of masculinity in the field of battle, 
 
 [4] 
 
Introduction 
 
 the diplomatic arena and the sphere of the agi- 
 tator. Even in these instances Irish women pri- 
 marily forge their way to success because they 
 are women. No matter what masculinity of fibre 
 is discoverable in their personalities it is not such 
 as to unsex them and deprive them of that spirit- 
 uality of appeal which feminine character flings 
 out to an impressionable and soulful manhood. 
 In other words, womanhood is practically in its 
 entirety valuable tojreland as an indirect rather 
 than a direct force. ' It furnishes a light of ideal- 
 ism in which the manhood of the nation sees 
 many incentives for the maintenance of its 
 patriotic endeavours and the deeds it inspires 
 by its spirit-influence are far more important 
 than anything that results from its own direct 
 participation in acts that are more suited for 
 manly hands to do^ It wins for itself a respect 
 that compels men to regard it as an intimate and 
 most sacred part of that national heritage for 
 which they were in honour bound to struggle and 
 die. 
 
 [5] 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 In the Pagan Tales of Love and Wak 
 
 IN THE tales of old, be they of a mythical or 
 quasi-mythical nature, there is much em- 
 balmed that is founded on the rock of fact. A 
 man may regard with the eyes of a skeptic the exis- 
 tence of gods and heroes but he can not deny that 
 the milieu of thought and sentiment which en- 
 velopes them must reveal most interesting aspects 
 of the creative brain whence they emanated. In- 
 deed, peoples in their infancy give in their literary 
 creations a more real expression of racial prin- 
 ciples than any bald scientific enumeration of facts 
 can furnish. As a well-known writer states: 
 ^^the mythical heroes which a race creates for 
 itself, the aspirations which it embodies and 
 illustrates, the sentiments which it immortalises 
 in story and ballad, will help us to under- 
 stand the real character of the race better 
 than it could be expounded to us by any 
 collection of the best authenticated statistics. ''* 
 Mere figures have only an incomplete mathe- 
 matical value whilst the vital and human 
 currents of thought-electricity that vivify the 
 pages of ancient story are a more reliable index 
 
 . * Irish Literature, ed Justin MaCarthy. Vol. 1 p. i. 
 
 [7] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 of the qualities that reside in the power-house of 
 that section of humanity to which they owe their 
 existence. 
 
 Bearing this in mind we go back to the twilight 
 of Gaelic story for our initial views of Irish 
 womanhood. Here we find the feminine section 
 of the Gael enjoying a conspicuous place in the 
 world of letters. Kindling in the hearts of men 
 the fires of tenderness or rousing within them the 
 tempests of battle-fury these ancient heroines are 
 worthy subjects of epic masterpieces. The spell 
 that is associated with their majesty of manner 
 is as potent to hypnotise and woo to sympathetic 
 mood, the reader as is the magic charm of their 
 alluring and delicate femininity. 
 
 Who that knows aught of literature has not 
 heard of Deirdre, that sorrow-burdened woman 
 symbolic of suffering Eire? She is the central 
 figure of the tragic tale that bears her name and 
 so magnificent is the woe that encircles her therein 
 that Dr. Sigerson deems this piece of literature 
 **the first tragedy outside the classics in Europe.'' 
 It is certainly the finest, most pathetic and deftly 
 executed of all the ancient tales of Ireland. 
 
 And the greatness that is Deirdre 's is not rooted 
 in conquering malice but a resplendent nobility. 
 The helpless prey of a malign destiny she permits 
 the surges of woe to inundate and overwhelm her 
 without ever losing her queenly dignity. Like a 
 luminous symbol expressive of the sorrow and 
 unflinching heroism of the Celt she concentrates 
 
 [8] 
 
In the Pagan Tales of Love and War 
 
 in her personality the twin and constant heritage 
 of the race, grief ever mating with invincible 
 majesty of mien. Honourable principle and 
 sweetest tenderness form in her a combination 
 that constitute her one of the most sublime women 
 of myth. True to the bond of affection that binds 
 her to her brothers she fears not to accompany 
 them whithersoever they may go, though the 
 threatening clouds of impending disaster tell this 
 child of prophecy of the inevitable fate that is 
 hers. She leaves the pleasant ways of Alba be- 
 hind her where the raptures of the cuckoo's voice 
 on bending bough and the glory of scenic beauty 
 held her soul enthralled and faces with fortitude 
 the stern future of her visions. When utter grief 
 had become her lot and cruel perfidy brought her 
 lover, Naoisi, and her brothers, Annla and Ardan 
 to their violent deaths she mourns them with a 
 titanic sorrow that is intensely expressive of the 
 Irishwoman's loyalty to family and kin. Listen 
 to her as the torrent of lament pours forth through 
 the floodgates of her soul while she stands by the 
 grave of the beloved three and you can not but 
 feel admiration for the infant genius of the Gael 
 that could create in the utterance of this far-off 
 lonely figure so human and time-defying an 
 appeal : 
 
 *'0 man who diggest the new grave 
 Make not the grave narrowly ; 
 
 Beside the grave I will b( 
 Making sorrow and lamentations. 
 
 [9] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 I was not one day alone, 
 Till the day of the making of the grave 
 Though oftentimes have I myself 
 And yourself been lonely. 
 
 I am Deirdre without pleasure 
 And I in the end of my life ; 
 Since it is grievous to be after them, 
 I will myself not be long. 
 
 Turning from dignified sorrow to the stern field 
 of war we find a female character strong with the 
 strength of the Gael's pride. This is Maeve, the 
 peerless warrior queen of Connaught. She is one 
 of the leading personalities of the Tain, which is 
 numbered amongst the greatest prose epics of 
 antiquity. All the tempestuous scenes of strife, 
 wild cattle forays and deathless deeds of chivalry 
 that live in the womb of the Tain are not deemed 
 too terrible or splendid to find their source in the 
 pride of a woman of the Gael. The Greeks built 
 the masterpiece of the lUiad on the weakness of 
 Helen but the Irish evolved the Tain from the 
 massive and unbending fibre of royal Maeve 's 
 character. 
 
 Yet for all her stubborn strength she had the 
 heart of a woman. Verses still survive to show 
 that when that husband over whom she towered 
 lay still in death she gave vent to a truly feminine 
 lament indicative of a sense of loss created by 
 the departure from her life of one whom the soul 
 
 [10] 
 
In the Pagan Tales of Love and War 
 
 of a woman needed. *^ Kindly king" she ex- 
 claimed, 
 
 ** who liked not lies, 
 
 Rash to rise to fields of fame, 
 Raven black his brows of fear, 
 Razor-sharp his spear of flame." 
 
 It is little wonder that her fascination for literary 
 minds is cosmopolitan and that — to mention one 
 of many notables of the pen — she captivated the 
 inspired eye of Spenser who deemed her worthy 
 of a place in his masterpiece, the Faerie Queene. 
 
 But it is in the tales that are burdened with 
 the eternal message of love, that key to the gate- 
 way of power, which woman wields with sovereign 
 skill that the daughters of ancient Eire play the 
 most conspicuous part. In this type of literature 
 which is so vitally dependent for inspiration on a 
 true study of womanhood the Irish took an es- 
 pecial interest. A considerable portion of the 
 early heroic literature is devoted to the subject 
 of love and the power that woman wields through 
 it to move great men to deeds that claim the 
 tribute of a nation's admiration. No less than 
 thirteen courtships and twelve elopements enjoy 
 the company of Ireland's other ancient tales. We 
 have it from no less an authority than Eleanor 
 Hull that the first story of the human race telling 
 of the activities of passionate hearts came from 
 the brain of the Gael. It was Ireland first 
 glorified the mysteries veiling and the beauty in 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 forming the magnetism of woman's heart for man 
 and the noble efforts of the latter to be worthy 
 of the admiration of the gentler sex. The country 
 was fortunate in the selection of the subject to 
 which she was to give special attention for she 
 manipulated it with a rare success. In her early 
 literature of love, heroines possess a variety of 
 type and a distinctness and individuality of char- 
 acter that surpass what is best even in the 
 Arthurian legend. 
 
 One of the tenderest love tales ever penned is 
 the Wooing of Etain, which deals with the lure 
 there was in the heart of a lady of no mortal 
 lineage for a monarch of Ireland. It is permeated 
 by a singular detachment from debased motive 
 and a certain platonism in the immaterial hunger 
 of soul for soul that is generally the attribute of 
 all kindred themes in Gaelic letters. The heart 
 of a monarch is subdued by the vision of a woman 
 whose ruling attraction is the spiritual beauty of 
 her form and the life she enjoys in Tir na N-Og, 
 the land of pure though passionate hearts. Yet 
 for all the spirit influence of Etain she embodies 
 much that is human and feminine. 
 
 The most primitive attempt of the Gael to tell 
 in song of love is found in Fand's Farewell to 
 Cuchulainn. In it there dwells a pathos most 
 striking and delicate for so early an age. In 
 spirituality of feeling it is akin to the Wooing 
 but its human tenderness and heart searching 
 potency is its supreme asset. It is in this dom- 
 
 [12] 
 
In the Pagan Tales of Love and War 
 
 inant characteristic that its guarantee of im- 
 mortality resides for there is little doubt but that 
 in the words of Dr. Sigerson the music of its 
 passionate chimes shall ** vibrate in the human 
 heart till mankind is no more. ' ' 
 
 In the Fenian cycle of saga there is bountiful 
 evidence of the love-impetuosity of the Celt. 
 Caoilte's Urn yields a proof of the impulsive 
 readiness of heroic Ireland to respond to the at- 
 tractions of women when their mode of appeal 
 was even decidedly intellectual. Finn, the arch- 
 hero of the knightly Fenians, becomes at first 
 sight the prey of the beauty of the daughter of 
 Eanna. But the fair damsel did not rely on mere 
 physical attractions and she took into her service 
 the power of music to aid her symmetry of form 
 in its onslaught on the soul of the rugged warrior. 
 Thus her mode of wooing is elevated and subtle. 
 She brings to her assistance her father, a noted 
 harpist, whom the old Celtic writer with all the 
 wealth of his perfervid imagination describes as 
 unsurpassable. Speaking of the wondrous airs 
 this musician could manipulate, he says: *4f the 
 deft goltarghleas were played for the kings of the 
 melodious world, all that might hear, though sor- 
 rowless, would feel a lasting sorrow. If the clear 
 gantarghleas were played for the grave kings of 
 the earth, all that might hear without contempt 
 would be forever laughing. If the full suantargh- 
 leas were played for the kings of the bright world, 
 all that might hear (a wondrous way) would fall 
 
 [13] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 into a lasting sleep. *'* Thus did maidenhood in 
 those days enlist the aid of the tearful, laughing, 
 dreamy strains of the wizard of the harp to win 
 its heart's desire. Is it little wonder that with 
 such an ally it rarely failed to search all that 
 was best in the inmost being of its beloved and 
 batter down his last fortress of hesitancy? 
 
 A few other kindred tales there are worthy of 
 some notice here. In Baile, the Sweet-Spoken, 
 we meet with a most poignant picture having for 
 its background a sublime passion. But the sword 
 of sorrow that pierces as we read it borrows a 
 terrible beauty from the love that produced it. 
 The tragic glory with which it is endowed is but 
 an index of the splendid fire of love in which its 
 penetrating steel was tempered. Two passionate 
 hearts grow cold in death through sheer grief for 
 one another caused by the false news of mutual 
 dissolution. The rumour was untrue but the 
 credence given it made a reality of a non-existent 
 tragedy. 
 
 Not so tragic but highly complimentary to 
 woman is Diarmuid and Grainne, one of the finest 
 of the Fenian tales. It is replete with the heroic 
 efforts of a gallant knight to face unflinchingly all 
 trials that might beset him to save and honour 
 his intended bride. The fury of the jealous and 
 relentless Finn menaced him on every side but 
 the staunch young Diarmuid never failed to suc- 
 cour his beloved Grainne and the feats by which 
 
 * The Book of the Lays of Finn. J. MacNeill. p. 147. 
 
In the Pagan Tales of Love and War 
 
 he ofttimes rescued her from the most perilous 
 situation illumine the story with an almost con- 
 stant brilliancy of soul-stirring adventure. 
 
 Tales there are, too, that deal not specifically 
 with love or war, though these in miniature 
 appear, where woman is the pivotal point of in- 
 terest. One is so preoccupied with a feminine 
 problem that its title tells the reader that the 
 actions of women is its sole theme; it is called 
 The Women's War of Words. A banquet was 
 provided by a noted entertainer named Bricriu 
 for all that was most knightly in the Red Branch 
 ranks. With the heroes came their ladies priding 
 in their distinguished husbands. As the guests 
 were about to take their places at the festive 
 board the women sought positions in consonance 
 with the rank of their lords. The result was a 
 violent controversy for each lady contended for 
 priority of place. As the debate waxed louder 
 and more vehement it reached the ears of the ban- 
 queting nobles. The sound of the combatting 
 voices roused them to battle-fury and only diplo- 
 macy kept them from red slaughter for their 
 ladies' sake. They knew the unyielding pride of 
 their womanhood rooted in the domestic virtue of 
 devotion to their husbands and were ready to a 
 man to vindicate it to the utmost. 
 
 A like principle of manly loyalty to womanhood 
 is in evidence in the Burning of Finn's house. 
 The women folk of this famous stead, in the ab- 
 sence of their husbands, raised a false cry of 
 
 [15] 
 
The Women of the Oael 
 
 alarm that they might behold an aged man named 
 Garaid whom in his sleep they had bound by hair 
 and beard to the hostel endeavoring to come to 
 their rescue. The old warrior discovering the in- 
 sult offered him, set fire to the house and com- 
 mitted them to a dreadful death. The story in- 
 deed manifests most primitive savagery on the 
 part of the enraged warrior and crude wantonness 
 on the part of the women. Yet the readiness with 
 which they anticipated a response to their outcry 
 shows their faith in the men of the Gael whilst 
 the old man's vindictiveness is somewhat atoned 
 for by his alertness of action for the sake of 
 woman in distress. Garaid has the untamed pas- 
 sion of the early Gaelic fighting man which knows 
 no checks in the presence of falsehood. Only 
 where truth and honor clamoured for support in 
 the service of womanhood did that wild tempera- 
 ment become submissive yoked to the service- 
 chariot of the gentler sex. 
 
 Closely associated with the feminine ideals that 
 permeate so much of the literature of love and 
 war is that patriotic instinct which was the prop- 
 erty of the women of the Gael. It pervades their 
 domestic relations and lends a glamour to the 
 tragedies of conflict. In the Death of Cuchulainn 
 the solicitude of his wife and other ladies for 
 his safety is prompted by their pride in him as 
 prime champion of their land as well as by their 
 womanly admiration for a magnificent type of 
 manhood. When the sons of Galatin, in one of 
 
 [i6] 
 
In the Pagan Tales of Love and War 
 
 the most dramatic incidents of the story, in league 
 with the mystic agencies of the druids endeavor 
 to secure the ruin of this champion of the Gael 
 these ladies render futile their attempts and pre- 
 serve him for the future glory of their country. 
 In the touching song of Crede, daughter of Guaire 
 the generous, the red fire of a woman's patriotic 
 passion is kindled at the sight of the ruddy wounds 
 that mar the figure of her father stricken in de- 
 fense of his people. While she thinks of these, 
 the angel touch of sleep cannot soothe her for 
 their haunting presence are as * * arrows that mur- 
 der sleep in the bitter cold night.'' Thus might 
 we enumerate instance after instance to demon- 
 strate the ancient Irish belief in the patriotism 
 of the women of Erin. The sayings of ladies are 
 manifold displaying the *amor patriae' that 
 burned in their bosoms. It is even this sense of 
 patriotism that contributes to the elevated moral 
 principles of Irish womanhood in pagan days 
 when they consider adultery one of the gravest 
 of crimes. They regard it as a national as well 
 as a moral stain on the soul of the guilty one for 
 it strikes at that purity of race that is one of the 
 most treasured possessions of the Celts. And if 
 it is the spiritual and the poetic in the Irishman 
 as well as his ruggedness of soul that rivet his 
 being to his motherland it is only reasonable that 
 these characteristics which are emphatically pres- 
 ent in his very feminine sisterhood should bind it 
 passionately to its country. 
 
 [17] 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 The Social Dignity Of "Women 
 
 DEPAETING from the rose-tinged world of 
 romance to a more prosaic discussion of 
 the public and social position accorded 
 woman in ancient Ireland there is an abundance 
 of data at hand to render the fruits of our search 
 highly creditable to our subject. Just as she has 
 charm and influence where the finest and most 
 soul-searching things of life are in demand, so she 
 owns sterner qualities which procure her an 
 honourable entrance to the place where clarity 
 of intellect, robustness of spirit and fortitude of 
 a high calibre adorn her actions and add lustre 
 to her nation. 
 
 A vari-coloured evidence taken broadly from 
 the different angles from which old writers regard 
 her, shows their general acceptance of her capacity 
 for shouldering public burdens. A prominence 
 is commonly given therein to the role of woman 
 in civic life that, in the literature of the Teutons 
 is usually handed over to man. Eleanor Hull 
 who is intimately acquainted with old Celtic writ- 
 ings ably summarises for us the evidence she 
 discovers in favour of the social dignity of the 
 daughters of the Gael. She tells us how marked 
 
 [i8] 
 
The Social Dignity of Women 
 
 strength, and conquering ambition together with 
 a subtle beauty and sunniness of temperament 
 wins for Irish women the respect they covet. ^ ^ The 
 Irish women/' she says, ** belong to an heroic 
 type. They are often the counsellors of their hus- 
 bands and the champions of their cause; oc- 
 casionally, as in Maeve's case, their masters. 
 They are frequently fierce and vindictive, but 
 they are also strong, forceful and intelligent. In 
 youth they possess often a charming gaiety ; they 
 are full of clever repartee and waywardness and 
 have a delightful and wayward self-confidence. 
 Emer, especially has a great deal of the modern 
 woman about her; she is no lovelorn maid to be 
 caught by the words of a wooer's tongue, even 
 though her lover is Cuchulainn; she is gay, petu- 
 lant and not too readily satisfied. He thinks to 
 win his cause simply by the fame of his name and 
 the splendour of his appearance, but she makes 
 larger demands ; nor will she listen to his suit until 
 she has won from him respect and admiration 
 as well as affection.''* 
 
 The nation seems to have been aware of the 
 presence of these strong qualities and accordingly 
 has recourse to unique methods to recognize its 
 debt to its women. Some of the most distinguished 
 amongst them are given a special prominence 
 in the genealogical strata of which a tribal com- 
 monwealth was intensely jealous and proud. 
 Oftentimes the names of noted men enshrined 
 
 \ 
 
 A Text Book of Irish Literature, p. 78. 
 
 [19] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 those of their mothers thus linking the glory of 
 maternal parents with that of their sons for all 
 time. In this wise did the illustrious warrior of 
 the North, King Conor Mac Nessa honour the 
 one who hore him. Sometimes they are pursued 
 even to their last long resting-place by the solic- 
 itude of the people. There are recorded instances 
 of cemeteries for the burial of women alone where 
 enduring sleep might hold them in honourable 
 seclusion from the other sex and where the peril 
 of having their memory obliterated through the 
 intrusion of greater masculine celebrities might 
 be obviated. But surpassing every tribute of re- 
 spect to the women of the race is that of the 
 writer who says that ^* after Mary, the Mother 
 of God, the six best women in the world were 
 Maeve, Saiv, Sarait, Ere, Emer and Achall. ^ ' He 
 feared not to compare the product of his land in 
 its pagan state with the best that any other clime 
 produced even under the tutelage of Christianity. 
 Considering more specifically the various de- 
 partments in which the women of old won re- 
 nown we find that in the councils which control 
 the destinies of embattled hosts they were often- 
 times conspicuous figures. Maeve of Connaught 
 is the superior of her husband in the intellectual 
 as well as the physical leadership of their armies. 
 It was the strength of her arm and the virility 
 of her mind that made the chieftains of three 
 provinces with their troops hearken to her will. 
 And when the manhood of three-fourths of Erin 
 
 [20] 
 
The Social Dignity of Women 
 
 met together under her banner to carry red war 
 into Ulster to wrench from it the pride of its 
 steers, the Dnn Bull of Cooley, it was her master 
 intellect that grappled with the problems of or- 
 ganization and strategy incidental to the enter- 
 prise. Hers was a commanding and invincible will 
 that never quailed before obstructing forces and 
 tested to its utmost the ingenuity of Cuchulainn 
 himself. Sometimes when Ailill in the face of 
 peril hesitated, his imperious queen brushed him 
 aside and made her will triumphant with words 
 of stern reproof and grim resolves such as, 
 ^^ Coward! .... If you don't decide, I will.'' And 
 as in war, so in peace, her statesmanship and 
 strength were evident. With a far-seeing power 
 of vision she provided for the stability of her 
 kingdom by measures of wisdom such as marriage 
 alliances. 
 
 Women too, there were whose technical knowl- 
 edge of the machinery then used in war and of 
 the drill that should befit a champion of the battle- 
 field was renowned. One of these entrusted with 
 the preparation of the weapons for the Battle of 
 Moytura was a woman. This proves that long 
 before the feminine element became important in 
 the Great War of 1914 as makers of munitions 
 the Irish relied on the ability of women to fashion 
 war's engines of destruction. A certain Eachtach 
 was so conversant with the use of weapons that 
 she braved the prowess of Finn himself and 
 matched her skill against his by the '^ music of 
 
 [21] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 her round spears.'' And the men of Ireland 
 honoured her for her military science by a dis- 
 tinguished burial place at her death. Then there 
 was Giachni who ^radiated beauty' yet feared not 
 to expose her loveliness to the hardships asso- 
 ciated with prominence in the field of battle. The 
 mother of Conor Mac Nessa was almost as noted 
 as her famous son as a leader of men. Cuchulainn, 
 the arch-hero of the Gael, confided himself to the 
 tutelage of Scathach for the acquirement of 
 special dexterity in the manipulation of arms. 
 
 Missions that demanded the intelligence of the 
 counsellor and the courage of the warrior were 
 often entrusted to women. They were frequently 
 employed as ambassadors capable of being en- 
 trusted with messages of high import the exe- 
 cution of which often involved much peril. Three 
 female runners were part of the official household 
 of Finn Mac Cool. Lavercam who was a poetess 
 was also an envoy of kings. She with another noted 
 envoy had once the coveted distinction of seeking 
 for Conor Mac Nessa when deep melancholy 
 seized him some lady within the seas of Erin 
 whose charms should dispel the heaviness of his 
 heart. 
 
 As they were deemed worthy of sharing in the 
 deliberations of high councils of state it is no 
 cause for wonder that they were intimately asso- 
 ciated with the legislative life of the land. They 
 were regarded as eligible for the office of brehon 
 or judge in a country which demanded rigid and 
 
 [22] 
 
The Social Dignity of Women 
 
 lengthy preparation for that position. A period 
 of study ranging from ten to twenty years was 
 required for candidates having judicial ambitions, 
 for the mind of the country was decidedly a 
 justice-loving one and could not tolerate poor in- 
 tellectual equipment in the person responsible for 
 the preservation of this virtue in the land. So 
 well did women meet the requirements of the na- 
 tion in this regard that some of those who were 
 privileged to be brehons rose far beyond the com- 
 monplace in the execution of their duties and left 
 the memory of their names an enduring one in 
 Irish legal tradition. The decisions, for instance, 
 of Brigh Brugaid determined as precedents in 
 law cases in Gaelic courts for centuries. 
 
 But it was as objects of legal solicitude that we 
 know most about them. Anyone who consults the 
 Senchus Mor cannot fail to realise that they were 
 well provided for in the enactments of the 
 brehons. This was especially remarkable where 
 marriage was in question. Irish women, unlike 
 their sisters of Rome and Germany, we are in- 
 formed by De Jubainville, retained for themselves 
 their marriage dowry and thus provided them- 
 selves with a check on masculine tyranny. When 
 her life partner was so unfortunate as to have 
 no property the housewife was the ruling one in 
 the home. Sometimes a less appreciable disparity 
 between the possessions of wife and husband was 
 sufficient to give the former control of domestic 
 affairs if she had a commanding character. This 
 
 [23] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 seems to have been realised in the case of Maeve 
 who occasionally in anger claimed to be superior 
 to her husband. Addressing her lord in the Tain 
 she says: 
 
 ''A man upon a woman's maintenance 
 Is what thou art, Ailill." 
 
 Maeve 's status, however, was not regarded as an 
 ideal to be generally aimed at in married life. 
 ** Marry a wife who is your equaP' is an aphorism 
 that tells of the wisdom of being mated with a 
 partner who is fitted for one by endowments of 
 wealth and character; yet almost in the same 
 breath another proverb says **rule your wife,'' 
 implying that the law of nature which gives the 
 human leadership of the household to the husband 
 must not be dethroned. It seems to have been 
 the hope of the Gaelic legislator that this basis 
 of a woman's marriageable suitability for a man 
 whilst not interfering with the proper repository 
 of authority should make for domestic concord 
 by giving the housewife the right to be consulted 
 in all important decisions affecting the home. 
 When her property was equal to her husband's 
 the wedded pair constituted a council of two 
 whose unanimity was necessary for the validity 
 of all such contracts. But no matter what her 
 possessions might have been there were certain 
 contracts into which her husband could not enter 
 without her consent. In the Ancient Laws of 
 Ireland there is evidence of several privileges 
 
 [24] 
 
The Social Dignity of Women 
 
 accorded to women independently of their wealth.. 
 **And every woman in general/^ says the ancient 
 book, *^may give the presents which are men- 
 tioned in the book called *Cin' to her poor friends 
 every year.'' Besides she could go security for 
 others, make loans and entertain half the number 
 of guests that fell to the lot of her husband to 
 manage at a reception. In a word, the domestic 
 rights and privileges of women were such that 
 masculine absolutism was a very rare occurrence 
 in the homes of ancient Erin for should every safe- 
 guard that the law provided fail to keep the evil of 
 incurable discord from the family heads, the 
 mother was free to separate from the father tak- 
 ing with her a fair division of the property. Where 
 such procedure was necessary she found in the 
 laws several reasons to enable her to obtain 
 justice. 
 
 And the care that was manifested for the mar- 
 ried woman did not surpass that bestowed upon 
 the young lady in anticipation of wedlock. Until 
 her heart and hand merited the protection of 
 some young man she was completely under her 
 father's protection. This was done not for the 
 purpose of curbing her personal liberty but that 
 paternal care might contribute to the preservation 
 of her dignity. For education by fosterage her 
 father was bound to provide and when this 
 reached completion and her nuptial hour ap- 
 proached it was his duty to see that no inferior 
 was honoured by her wedded hand. Age of course 
 
 [25] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 was another important matrimonial factor and 
 that advanced years might not prove an obstacle 
 to a marriageable maiden custom expected the 
 eldest daughter of the family to make her great 
 adventure before her younger sisters showed like 
 daring. Parents could not neglect her even 
 though a younger daughter might possess far 
 greater attractions, for in proportion to their in- 
 terest in the latter should be their solicitude for 
 the oldest who while unmarried was a stumbling 
 block in the former's road to nuptial success. It 
 has been often objected that parents in Ireland 
 seriously erred by artificially made matches at 
 the great festive gatherings where the individual 
 tastes of the young lady were in no wise con- 
 sulted. This seems an unjustifiable assumption 
 for there is little positive evidence that the in- 
 stincts of romance were not taken into account. 
 Parental influence was exerted as far as we can 
 judge as a guiding and corrective rather than a 
 destructive force. It was there to superintend 
 rather than eliminate romance. 
 
 As the system of fosterage attended to the edu- 
 cation of the young woman within domestic 
 circles so there are grounds for believing that 
 the state had public institutions where a more 
 complete knowledge was imparted. Back in the 
 twilight of the second century we hear of a 
 college at Tara, the seat of national government, 
 solely devoted to the training of the feminine 
 mind. There are records of great female phy- 
 
 [26] 
 
The Social Dignity of Women 
 
 sicians and lawyers whose proficiency in their 
 professions was not with likelihood acquired by 
 private tutelage. Even if this were possible it 
 is improbable that they would receive govern- 
 mental recognition without some official guarantee 
 of their ability. Besides, in literature, music and 
 architecture there were several accomplished 
 ladies who in all probability were educated in 
 national institutions. There were many female 
 rhymers and harpists who were recognised 
 throughout the land at the festive and cultural 
 gatherings of the people. In architecture Macha 
 showed the might of her brain in such 
 distinguished fashion that she is worthy of special 
 note. Supposed to have lived three hundred years 
 before the Christian era she planned the historic 
 palace of Emain after her warrior hand had made 
 the throne of Ulster her own. Some idea of the 
 spaciousness and splendour of that edifice may be 
 obtained from the following description: '^In the 
 King's house there were three times fifty rooms, 
 and the walls were made of red yew with copper 
 rivets, but in Conor's own room, which was in 
 the front of the house, and large enough for 
 thirty warriors, the walls were inlaid with bronze, 
 wrought with silver on it, and carbuncles and 
 precious stones, and great gold birds, with 
 jeweled eyes, so that day and night were equally 
 light therein."* 
 
 * The Romance of Irish Heroines. L. M. McCraith. p. 5. 
 
 [27] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 It was for such intellectual leadership as well 
 as for their strictly feminine graces that women 
 were recognised as one of the prime adornments 
 of every brilliant scene whether it was legislative, 
 literary or festive. In such places they were 
 seated with their own people in the special places 
 set apart for the representatives of their respec- 
 tive tribes. They had also councils of their own 
 from which all men were excluded where subjects 
 solely relating to the welfare of their sex were 
 discussed. Many descriptions of the women pres- 
 ent at these purely feminine and mixed assemblies 
 have come down to us. In these the writer usually 
 takes special pains to depict in colourful words 
 the beauty of mind and body that characterised 
 the women folk. Emphasis is laid upon their 
 Celtic sense of honour, the delicate workmanship 
 of nature on their forms and the riot of rich and 
 scintillating colour that dwelt in their apparel. 
 
 It is little wonder they were conscious of 
 their dignified position and often exulted in it. 
 It was only where such conditions prevailed that 
 a lady could have the towering self-reliance and 
 hauteur of Maeve when chafing under insult she 
 sought to match her might with a great warrior 
 monarch of her time and supremely humble him. 
 
 "I thought that my high pride of mind and spirit 
 Would ne'er recover from this seemed hurt 
 Until I should behold red-sworded Conor 
 Pale in his death before me." 
 
 [28] 
 
The Social Dignity of Women 
 
 It was a like spirit that in the Women's War of 
 Words prompted the speech of the lady who 
 gloried in the race that exalted her, in the family 
 of which she was the ornament and in her own 
 intrinsic worth for her nation and her lord. It 
 was this, which was the basis of the custom by 
 which women claimed after wedlock the privilege 
 of being still known by that maiden name which 
 was the hallmark of their family and clan. The 
 nation, indeed, honoured them officially and 
 socially and they manifested to the nation their 
 answering pride and gratitude. 
 
 [29] 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The Objects of Men's Reverence 
 
 THE Irish woman's sense of self-respect won 
 for her deep reverence from the nation: 
 that attitude of respect was considerably 
 strengthened by the unusual innate bent of the 
 Irishman to protect what is worthy and needful 
 of his guardianship. Religious, speculative, emo- 
 tional, imaginative and aggressively masculine he 
 has found in woman food for his spiritual appe- 
 tite, for the idealism that haunts him, for the af- 
 fectionate impulses of his being, for his hunger 
 for the aesthetic and for his craving to protect 
 the weak and defenceless. 
 
 It has been said and with much truth that the 
 world is as much indebted to Ireland for the 
 romantic as it is to Greece for the philosophical 
 and Rome for the juridical. It is equally true to 
 assert that the chivalrous which is so closely asso- 
 ciated with the romantic proceeded in its earliest 
 and most conspicuous form from the poetic soul 
 of the western Gael. The most primitive serious 
 attempt to propound with something like com- 
 pleteness, canons regulating knightly conduct is 
 traceable to the Celtic race. Chivalry in the old 
 Irish tales has an importance that can not be 
 
 [30] 
 
The Objects of Men's Reverence 
 
 located in the kindred literature of Greece and 
 Eome. It has a prominence that brands it as an 
 outstanding feature of the Gaelic myth while its 
 presence in the classics, may fail to arrest the at- 
 tention or at least but feebly challenge it. 
 
 As one of the mainsprings governing the knight- 
 ly action of all time has been the idea of service 
 born of the lure of the aesthetic, the desire for 
 self-sacrifice in behalf of some beautiful human 
 being, it is little wonder that the Irishman with his 
 vivid conception of the glory that resides in sym- 
 metry of form became an ardent worshipper in 
 the temple of chivalry. ^^For beauty and amour- 
 ousness, the Gaels,'' says an old Irish proverb, 
 maintaining that the aesthetic was the principal 
 objective towards which its emotionalism im- 
 pelled the heart of the pagan Gael. Perhaps in 
 none of the literatures of the world is there any- 
 thing like the homage which the Irish paid to the 
 form which beauty inhabited. Minutely painted 
 pictures glowing with the light of an exuberant 
 imaginativeness tell the reader constantly of the 
 lure there was in human beauty for the Celt. Such 
 a description is Cathbad's account of Deirdre 
 whose cheeks were 
 
 ''Crimson like fox-gloves, and a faultless treasure 
 Of teeth like autumn snow, and two curved lips 
 Red like red-rowan fruit o'er shining snow." 
 
 Even in a man beauty was adored. This was 
 as much part of Cuchulainn as his might of arm. 
 
 [31] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 In the Intoxication of the Ultonians the warriors 
 would not ^^ wound him because of his beauty, '* 
 for according to a proverb, beauty as well as 
 wealth and worth was cogent enough to transform 
 the hatred of an enemy into love. Aye, over the 
 very sprites of the viewless world it could cast its 
 spell for when Carmun died the hosts of fairy 
 hovered over her prostrate form to sing their 
 weird laments desiring because of the ^^ delight 
 of her beauty to keen and raise the first wailing 
 over her/' The aesthetic in fact all over the 
 broad face of nature, animate as well as inani- 
 mate, appealed to the old Irish. Moy Mel, their 
 pagan Elysium, as depicted in the sagas is a be- 
 wildering maze of scintillating beauty where 
 everything is crowned with loveliness from the 
 trees in perennial bloom to the maiden mated with 
 all the glories that flesh and blood and gorgeous 
 robes can confer. 
 
 Impelled by this idealism men went to great 
 lengths to serve the fair sex. Respect for woman 
 was part of the knightly vow of Red Branch and 
 Fenian heroes. No matter how tumultuous the 
 anger that vexed the soul of Cuchulainn, a suppli- 
 ant woman could dispel by song or prayer the 
 fury that raged within him. He was wont to speak 
 of the honour of his wife as one of the dearest 
 things in life to him. He considered the *^ pre- 
 cedence of his wife over all Ultonia's ladies'' as 
 worthy of his ambition as the sovereignty of Erin 
 and the champion's portion. He put her highest 
 
 [32] 
 
The Objects of Men's Reverence 
 
 interests on the same plane as the attainment of 
 that pride of position and honour for which his 
 soul most hungered. For the mere sake of giving 
 pleasure to ladies he oftentimes performed deeds 
 of wonder. Once as he was faring to royal 
 Cruachan in the west with a gentlemanly instinct 
 that is quite modern he executed special feats to 
 destroy the monotony of the journey for some 
 fair attendants. It was such courtesy which 
 doubtless contributed to his being of ** victory- 
 loving women beloved. '* Men were prepared to 
 go to any extreme, even to the point of losing their 
 lives for the sake of a lady^s fair regard. Witness 
 the promise of love of the diplomatic Findabair, 
 daughter of Maeve, forging battle-fury in the 
 hearts of heroes in an episode of the Tain. The 
 very terms they used when speaking of their wives 
 told of a striking delicacy of attitude towards 
 women in an age of untamed prehistoric vigour. 
 When Goll bade farewell to his wife he spoke 
 of her as the ** clear one of rosy cheeks" and 
 ** gentle one of red lips" whose soulful songs 
 coming from the **red mouth that was musical" 
 so often brought peace to his heart. 
 
 Not only did men act through this inspiration 
 with special zest under the impulse of duty or 
 politeness but they sometimes seemed neglectful 
 of patriotic and other principles when seized by 
 its intoxicating influence. Cuchulainn himself 
 who was always so unswerving on the path of 
 honour momentarily neglected his staunch loyalty 
 
 [33] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 to his beloved Uladh out of tender feeling for 
 Maeve. With diplomatic acuteness she pitted his 
 sense of chivalry against his warrior zeal for 
 Ulster appealing to him to shield her retreating 
 army even though it was his foe, and she proved 
 victor. At the Feast of Bricriu the very ring of 
 the contending voices of women was capable of 
 generating in a warrior band a lust for battle 
 that was more instinctive than rational. With 
 aimless rage they swung their mighty swords and 
 dealt stout blows to one another knowing no 
 prompting motive save that in some confused way 
 they felt their ladies grieved. Their passionate 
 tumult seemed a natural responsive echo to the 
 excited cries of their women folk. It was this 
 spiritual chivalry too, which gave the Gael the 
 idea of making mortal man seek a fairy lover 
 whom in defiance of nature's dictates and manly 
 tradition, he should be content to recognise as his 
 superior within his homestead. 
 
 When these canons of chivalry were violated 
 by a man, popular sentiment marked him out as 
 fated for bitterness. A standard example of the 
 curse thus supposed to fall upon the erring one 
 was that which overtook the whole province of 
 Ulster for a display of serious rudeness towards 
 a lady. The blight of a perennial malediction 
 rested on the Ulstermen for forcing Macha in her 
 travail to vie in speed with a racing chariot. Thus 
 was a tradition embedded in ancient lore that a 
 periodic debility overcame the inhabitants of a 
 
 [34] 
 
The Objects of Men's Reverence 
 
 whole province for want of gentleness to a woman 
 that it might be a signal warning to all the land 
 that m the sanctum of the Irish heart the fair 
 sex held a shrine protected by most precious safe- 
 guards and any serious slight offered to its 
 dignity would be punished as a sacrilege before the 
 high altar of the national honour. 
 
 But the nation went still further along the way 
 of idealism when paying its homage to women. 
 She was given an honoured niche within the 
 temple of the national cult where the most sacred 
 and symbolic treasures of the race were guarded. 
 Men saw in her so much of the wine of national 
 inspiration and realised that she embodied in an 
 emphatic manner so much of what was character- 
 istically Celtic that they elevated her to the realm 
 wherein she became the mystic and luminous 
 symbol of their land and the pure, white, delicate 
 object of the amourous cravings of all patriotic 
 spirits. 
 
 Some samples of these mystic imaginings are 
 worthy of production here. When Niall, son of 
 Eocaid, in the daring of his heart went through 
 the ordeal of accepting a kiss from a mysterious 
 hag of dreadful mien his courage was repaid by 
 a most pleasing change in the appearance of this 
 creature. The hideous form that confronted him 
 vanished, supplanted by that of a maiden of sur- 
 passing loveliness. The wonderful metamorphosis 
 was seemingly effected to convey the lesson that 
 
 [35] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 those who wish for the cherished affection of the 
 great lady, Eire, whom this figure symbolised, 
 must shirk no horrors for her sake. **I am the 
 sovereignty of Erin, ' ' said the new wooer of Niall. 
 She is described as having *Hwo blunt shoes of 
 white bronze between her little snow-white feet 
 and the ground. A costly full-purple mantle she 
 wore, with a broach of white silver in the clothing 
 of the mantle. Shining pearly teeth she had, an 
 eye large and queenly, and lips red as rowan- 
 berries.'' 
 
 Other striking evidence exists of the use of 
 woman as a symbol of Ireland. The ancient 
 name of Ireland is identical with that of a mythical 
 goddess or queen and the attributes of this lady 
 have frequently been applied in mystic language 
 to that country. This fascinating conception has 
 roamed through the souls of poets and called 
 forth the fine-frenzied expression of their visions 
 for centuries. Some of the most heart-searching 
 verses of the land have had this tender mysticism 
 as their highest and most enduring note. See 
 what passionate tenderness lives in the lines of 
 Fergusin's Cean Duv Deelish, symbolic of Ireland, 
 as they tell of the pure fire of the patriot lover 
 for the Dear Black Head. 
 
 ' ' Put your head darling, darling, darling, 
 Your darling black head my heart above ; 
 mouth of honey with the thyme for fragrance, 
 Who with heart in breast could deny you love ? 
 
 [36] 
 
The Objects of Men's Reverence 
 
 many and many a young girl for me is pining, 
 Letting her locks of gold to the cold winds free, 
 For me, the foremost of the gay yonng fellows, 
 But I ^d leave a hundred, pure love for thee. ' ' 
 
 Look at the exquisite intermingling of wrestling 
 sorrow and buoyant hope that subsists beneath the 
 glowing passion of Shiela-Ni-Gara, the songful 
 symbol of Ethna Carbery. 
 
 Shiela-Ni-Gara, it is lonesome where you hide, 
 
 With plovers circling over and the sagans spreading 
 
 wide, 
 "With an empty sea before you and behind a wailing 
 
 world. 
 Where the sword lieth rusty and the banner blue is 
 
 furled. 
 
 Is it a sail you wait, Shiela? Yea, from the westering 
 sun. 
 
 Shall it bring you joy or sorrow? Oh ! joy gladly won. 
 
 Shall it bring peace or conflict? The pibroch in the 
 glen 
 
 And the flash and crash of battle round a host of fight- 
 ing men. 
 
 Green spears of hope rise round you like grass blades 
 
 after drouth 
 And there grows a white wind from the East, a red 
 
 wind from the South 
 A brown wind from the West, Agra, a brown wind from 
 
 the West — 
 But the black winds from the Northern hills — ^how can 
 
 you love it best? 
 
 [37] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 Said Shiela-Ni-Gara, ' ' 'Tis a kind wind and true, 
 
 For it rustled soft through Aeleach's halls and stirred 
 
 the hair of Hugh 
 Then blow wind and snow wind ! What matters storm 
 
 to me 
 Now I know the fairy sleep must break and set the 
 
 sleepers free." 
 
 Thus have writers thought in prose or sung 
 in poetry from the earliest historic days of 
 Ireland's story until the present time. This note 
 of inspiration has been especially distinct after 
 the Anglo-Norman invasion in the Jacobite songs 
 of the eighteenth century and the meditative 
 verses of the nineteenth and twentieth century 
 Celtic Eenaissance literature. These periods 
 have been remarkable for a resurgence of Celtism 
 and it is noteworthy that the prominence of 
 woman as a symbol should have entered so in- 
 timately into the warp and woof of literary 
 thought in its typically racial phases. We shall 
 present to the reader one more example of this 
 symbolic verse and we believe ourselves pardon- 
 able in doing so, for it is one of the most recent 
 and sublimely inspired poems of that type that 
 has yet appeared. It comes from the pen of 
 Joseph Mary Plunkett who in Easter Week of 
 1916 gave his life for Ireland. Its intense per- 
 sonal feeling and apparent note of destiny exalt 
 its literary qualities to the level of first class 
 poetry. Addressed to Cathleen Ni Houlihan, its 
 title is The Little Black Eose shall be Eed at Last. 
 
 [38] 
 
The Objects of Men's Reverence 
 
 ''Because we share our sorrows and our joys 
 And all your dear and intimate thoughts are mine 
 We shall not fear the trumpets and the noise 
 Of battle, for we know our dreams divine, 
 And when my heart is pillowed on your heart 
 And ebb and flow of their passionate flood 
 Shall beat in concord love through every part 
 Of brain and body — ^when at last the blood 
 O'er leaps the final barrier to find 
 Only one source wherein to spend its strength 
 And we two lovers, long but one in mind 
 And soul, are made one only flesh at length ; 
 Praise God if this my blood fulfils the doom 
 When you dark rose, shall redden into bloom." 
 
 There is yet another department of Irish tra- 
 dition which cannot be neglected in dealing with 
 the process of Gaelic idealism of woman; that is 
 fairy lore. In this there is abundant material 
 whence the student of folk-lore may extract the 
 most honeyed thought relative to the adoring 
 attitude of the Irish towards the feminine world. 
 The realm of spirits is peopled with attractive 
 maidens who combine the sublimity and winning 
 elusiveness of creatures of intangible essence with 
 most human attributes. Woman is spiritualised 
 in them without being dehumanised. 
 
 From the misty land of immortal beauty came 
 these spirit-maidens to woo the souls of men. One 
 of the most fascinating of all spirit lovers in all 
 literature is Etain the Beloved. With beauty of 
 form transcending far the best that earth could 
 boast of, she came to make a certain Midir a 
 
 [39] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 prisoner in the net of her loveliness. With 
 promises that were seductive, bnt pure, she told 
 him that with her he would find all that was fairest 
 in colour, most enduring in joy and attractive in 
 melody in the mystery land whence she came. * * O 
 fair one, wilt thou come with me,'' she said, *Ho 
 a wonderful land that is mine, a land of sweet 
 music; there primrose blossoms on the hair, and 
 snow-white the bodies from head to toe. There no 
 one is sorrowful or silent; white the teeth there, 
 
 black the eyebrows the hue of the fox-glove 
 
 on every cheek.'' Her appeal proved resistless. 
 Bound together in deathless bondage with a 
 silvery chain between them the amorous pair left 
 the land of Erin in the transfigured shape and 
 grace of two white swans for the scenes of their 
 paradisal honeymoon. 
 
 The same lady in the History of Ailill and 
 Etain, won the heart of Eochaid, King of Ireland. 
 Here, too, despite her spirit nature she was Irish 
 and feminine for she loved the monarch for his 
 skill as a raconteur and the splendid symmetry of 
 his form. Strong and resistless as the growing 
 strength of a hurricane was the affection this fairy 
 lover aroused within Eochaid. Its limits were 
 unknown, its power almost effaced individuality 
 and the end towards which it tended was the ec- 
 static freedom of the spirit. In the quaint, pithy 
 and fanciful concreteness of the olden writer it 
 was ** deeper every year .... endless like the sky 
 a battle against a shade a drowning in 
 
 [40] 
 
The Objects of Men's Reverence 
 
 water . .. a course to heaven .... a love to an 
 echo. " We wonder not at this love-distress of the 
 King when we read the rapturous description of 
 Etain in the Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel. 
 Her beauty gleamed with the purity of azure skies 
 and the cold glory of a northern landscape. 
 ** White as the snow of one night were the two 
 hands .... and as red as fox-glove were the two 
 clear-beautiful cheeks. Dark as the back of a stag- 
 beetle the two eyebrows. Like a shower of pearls 
 were the teeth in her head. Blue as a hyacinth 
 were the eyes. Eed as rowan-berries the lips .... 
 The bright radiance of the moon was in her noble 
 face: the loftiness of pride in her smooth eye- 
 brows : the light of wooing in her regal eyes .... 
 Verily of the world's women 'tis she was the 
 dearest and loveliest and justest that the eyes of 
 man had ever beheld."* 
 
 Spirits other than messengers of love were 
 also pictured as women. Death was represented 
 by an optimistic people as a beautiful maiden 
 stripped of everything that might be forbidding 
 and clothed with the richest tints of fancy. In 
 reality she was regarded as an envoy of veiled 
 love for the happy nature of the Celt always be- 
 held the brightness of God's smile behind the 
 darkest clouds of life. There is every reason to 
 believe that he looked with eyes of affection on 
 the messenger who came to lead him through the 
 dark way to the glory of the unseen world with 
 
 * Revue Celtique. Vol. 22. pp. 15-16. 
 
 [41] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 whicli in spirit he was so familiar. It was to Moy 
 Mel he hoped to go whether the entry thereto was 
 through the gates of life or death. Once arrived 
 there, no matter how he journeyed thither, unfail- 
 ing life was to be his. Whether the lure of beauty 
 or the voice of death called him to the Isles of the 
 Blessed, *Hhe Land of Women," the personage 
 who accompanied him thither was always a maiden 
 whose soul spoke of love in the mystic land where 
 the best of his race should receive its supreme 
 reward. 
 
 [42] 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 Feminine Moeauty in Pagan Days 
 
 BEFORE we leave the days of heroic story- 
 one of the brightest features of that epoch 
 must claim our attention. The flower of 
 highest grade in the garden of Irish womanhood 
 has yet to display its glory to us. That flower is 
 the splendid fealty of the women of the ancient 
 Gael to moral principles. 
 
 Some sayings exist which are indicative of the 
 Irish feminine sense of moral honour, and the Gael 
 seldom elevated a dictum to the plane of a proverb 
 which he did not regard as capable of verification 
 in his national life. It was for him as rationally 
 sacrosanct as an axiom for *4t is impossible to 
 contradict a proverb.*' Some of these treasured 
 sayings we will quote. One of them makes purity a 
 woman's prime asset, for, it states that ** modesty 
 is the beauty of women." The other synthesises 
 the glories of a woman as embracing a ^* proud 
 spirit, ' ' a spirit that accepts no dishonour, as well 
 as physical shapeliness. 
 
 That there was a basis justifying the race which 
 formulated such proverbs as applicable to women 
 we have every reason to believe. Emer, the wife 
 of Cuchulainn, was given premier place in the 
 
 [43] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 world by Bricriu on account of the goodness of 
 her reputation. We have the extraordinary spec- 
 tacle of a pagan maiden the daughter of Aengus, 
 seeking perfection of continence for she loved 
 **the lot of virginity.'* There are instances of 
 heroic fortitude and infinite delicacy of conscience 
 associated with the preservation of this virtue. 
 Fial was said to have purchased death for herself 
 through pangs resulting from a sheer sense of 
 shame when her modesty was in peril. A certain 
 Luaine met a similar fate because of an insult 
 offered to her for **she died of shame and bash- 
 fulness." A maid named Gile on whom mascu- 
 line eyes accidentally fell as she bathed *^died of 
 shame and found death in the well. ' ' Eithne, we 
 are told, was miraculously sustained in life by the 
 true God without partaking of any food, as a 
 reward for her purity. When Ailill wooed and 
 won Etain another mysterious intervention is sup- 
 posed to have saved her when her honour was 
 seriously menaced. 
 
 So characteristic was this feminine virtue that 
 the greatest in Ireland regarded it as essential in 
 a marriageable woman. It was the fidelity of 
 Emer to her husband that roused his spell-bound 
 spirit from the enthrallment of the fairy Fand 
 as with tear-strewn face she besought him to be 
 faithful to one who had been loyal to him. And 
 he was true to Emer when he remembered that 
 one of the arch qualities for which he grew en- 
 amoured of her was her love of maiden honour. 
 
 [44] 
 
Feminine Morality in Pagan Days 
 
 When Art, son of Conn, in a fairy island **fnll of 
 wild apples and lovely birds, with little bees ever 
 beautiful on the tops of the flowers*' met a 
 maiden who captured his fancy and was deemed 
 worthy to be his wife she was one *^fair .... in 
 chastity. *' Eochaid would not have Etain when 
 he sought her hand merely because of her sen- 
 suous appeal to him; he demanded that she have 
 steadfastness and honour. ^^With thee alone will 
 I live,'' he exqlaimed, ^^so long as thou hast 
 honour. ' ' 
 
 So sacred, indeed, did women deem the mar- 
 riage bond that rather than be untrue to their 
 wedded lords they welcomed death itself if it 
 saved them from dishonour. When the sword of 
 Conall Cernach overcame Mesgegra the wife of 
 the doomed hero, true to his memory and her 
 womanhood, surrendered her spirit to her God 
 rather than sacrifice her good name. With a 
 mighty effort of soul she rent her heart asunder 
 for in the quaint words of the writer she lifted 
 up **her cry of lamentation .... and she cast her- 
 self backwards and she dead." Even the mere 
 memory of a deceased husband was sometimes 
 sufficient to force a widow to pay the toll of death. 
 This supreme sacrifice was regarded as a fitting 
 recognition of the unbounded affection that dwelt 
 in the soul of the Gaelic wife for her husband. 
 Almu died of grief for the one that wed her and 
 the arrows of love were fatal to Etar when she 
 saw her dead lord in a dream. 
 
 [45] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 So highly did the nation value this virtue of its 
 womanhood that it ordained grievous penalties 
 for those who tarnished it. A grave offense in 
 this matter was sometimes deemed sufficient to 
 deprive a monarch of his throne. This happened 
 in the case of Mac Da Cherda who was considered 
 unworthy to preside over his people since he knew 
 not how to respect what the people most revered. 
 Within the province of Ulster anyone who brought 
 to shame a maiden soul had to face the withering 
 ire of Cuchulainn for *^ every maiden and every 
 single woman that was in Ulster, they were in his 
 ward till they were ordained for husbands. ' ' One 
 of Ireland's greatest national woes had its origin 
 in an insult offered to a woman. Its story is re- 
 plete with suffering. The daughter of Tuahal 
 of Meath married the King of Leinster. The lat- 
 ter, tiring of his wife, sought the hand of her sis- 
 ter Fithir under the pretence that he was a 
 widower. His base scheme was successful until 
 Fithir arrived at his palace. Then learning how 
 cruelly she had been victimized she lost her life 
 in a sea of shame. But Leinster paid a terrible 
 price for the deed. It was compelled to give a 
 constant tribute to the Ard-Ri as a penitential 
 recompense, an exaction which spelt destruction 
 for national solidarity for many a day. 
 
 But punishment for woman's infidelity was not 
 always confined to men. If she had been a willing 
 victim of crime the law demanded that she suffer 
 for her action. Occasionally the wildest barbaric 
 
 [46] 
 
Feminine Morality in Pagan Days 
 
 wrath was loosed against such hapless creatures. 
 To cite but one example, in the Battle of Cnucha 
 we find a fierce old chieftain condemning to the 
 tortures of the fiery stake the mother of Finn 
 whom he adjudged guilty of impurity. 
 
 That the mind of the race demanded and was 
 cognisant of this prime adornment of womanhood 
 is apparent even in the descriptive passages of the 
 tales which are concerned with women and are 
 steeped in an atmosphere of purity. The Tain 
 presents us with a picture of Fedelm, the fairy 
 prophetess, which illustrates our contention. 
 
 *' Folded round her shape, 
 
 A bratt of leafy green, chequered and pied 
 Was held by a full fruit-like, heavy clasp 
 Over her breast. Her face was rosy bright. 
 Her eyes were laughing, blue ; and her two lips 
 Were shapely, thin and red. Within her lips 
 Her teeth were glistering, pearly — glimmering — 
 One might have deemed a white rain shower of pearls 
 Had rained in there. Her bright long yellow hair 
 Divided ; three gold tresses of it wound 
 About her head; another long, gold tress 
 Fell round her 
 
 Her nails were trim and sharp and crimson-stained, 
 Whiter than snow in one night softly fallen, 
 The whiteness of her flesh was, where it shined 
 And gleamed athwart her quivering, blown apparel. ' ' * 
 
 There is nothing of the sensual in this but a 
 cold brilliancy and richness that is suggestive of 
 
 * p. 94. Mary A. Hutton. 
 
 [47] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 the vigorous beauty of northern lands rather than 
 the enervating glory of southern climes. Though 
 oriental in its riot of glistening, bewitching colour 
 its rays of influence reach us through a crystal, 
 chastening atmosphere. There is something of an 
 elemental freshness in it which smacks of the 
 wild freedom of Celtic breeses that have no wan- 
 tonness but soothing tenderness. 
 
 If an explanation is to be sought for this moral 
 rectitude of Ireland's daughters no surer reason 
 can be found than their devotion to the principles 
 of home life. The domestic circle was the nursery 
 where the seedlings of the national oak of Irish 
 feminine purity were planted and cared for. 
 
 To verify this we have only to consider how de- 
 voted woman was in the old Gaelic home to her 
 husband. This is the acid test of feminine domes- 
 tic rectitude and the pivotal point round which 
 most of the family happiness revolves. Without 
 it there is an influence absent which is absolutely 
 essential for true family life. 
 
 Over and over again instances of deep matronly 
 and domestic instincts can be encountered in the 
 heroines of the tales. This sense of domesticity 
 shone most clearly in the sense of bereavement 
 which women manifested when their husbands 
 entered the shadowland of death. Take for ex- 
 ample the lament of Crede, so expressive of in- 
 curabe loss, when she consigned to the grave her 
 life-mate. The simplicity of her words coupled 
 with their ebb and flow of repetition produces a 
 
 [48] 
 
Feminine Morality in Pagan Days 
 
 note of sincerity clearly indicative of great and 
 lasting woe. '^Sore suffering and suffering 
 sore is the hero's death, his death who used to lie 
 by me. ' * The same sentiment is seen in the lament 
 of Emer over Cuchulainn when the fatal spear slew 
 her valiant lord. Raising a keen over him she let 
 the waves of distress inundate her soul and died in 
 the clasp of a sea of grief. 
 
 In other respects, also, the importanceof wom- 
 an 's household position was apparent. One of the 
 qualities of Emer most highly lauded by her hus- 
 band was her proficiency in attending to the sim- 
 ple art of home business: and Cuchulainn seldom 
 praised but what was great and impressive as a 
 national asset. The same lady won laudatory re- 
 marks from Bricriu for the wisdom that adorned 
 her domestic life. In the War of Words we have 
 already seen that the cause of feminine agitation 
 was solicitude for the happiness of their husbands 
 on the part of the women and the belief of each 
 noble dame that her lord had no peer in all the 
 land. Herein Emer lauds her husband with imag- 
 inative exuberance giving him a countenance like 
 unto the sun and a soul dowered with a nobility 
 that no other mortal possessed. There is a world 
 of primitive conjugal affection in Groll when he 
 bade his wife farewell. With barbaric crudeness he 
 mingled his blood with hers to show how thorough 
 and fundamental he believed her loyalty to him 
 to be and how in payment for that affection 
 no nuptial promises to any other woman should 
 
 [49] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 ever stain his manhood. The name of the river 
 Liffey perpetuates the memory of a woman, Life, 
 whose loyalty to her lord was so striking that his 
 mourning heart burst in twain as a tribute to her 
 fidelity. 
 
 Though we have not been attempting to convey 
 the idea that Irish women in the olden days were 
 perfect or anything approaching that, we did wish 
 to maintain that in what we have produced there 
 is evidence of a singularly high moral standard 
 in their lives considering the dim beacon of re- 
 ligious guidance that their pagan faith provided. 
 Furthermore, in the light of this contention, we 
 think ourselves justified in believing that the 
 facts substantiating moral laxity and disrespect 
 for women are not sufficiently weighty to warrant 
 a serious attack upon the exalted virtue of the 
 fair sex of pagan Ireland. 
 
 In spite of the fact that the tales provide many 
 instances of concubinage we must admit that it 
 was mainly prevalent in the ranks of the nobility. 
 Whilst its presence amongst the common people is 
 but very meagerly attested the lofty principles 
 governing sex relations are so frequently encoun- 
 tered and so soaring in dignity that they could not 
 be accounted for, had not the roots of national life 
 been embedded in a soil of very considerable prac- 
 tical morality. Abduction, indeed, was rather 
 frequent, but it was rather the outcome of sheer 
 wildness of the primitive spirit that loved bravado 
 and acts that tried the soul of courage than a han- 
 
 [50] 
 
Feminine Morality in Pagan Days 
 
 kering for things that were sensual. Besides, with 
 the seizure was always intertwined a fight for the 
 honour of the smuggled woman which proved the 
 battling mettle and uprightness of the defending 
 party as well as the unrestrained spirit of the 
 abductor. Aodh, for instance, in the Abduction 
 of Eargna, roused by the banter of Finn fought a 
 fierce dual with Conan who sought by violent 
 means to woo a maiden. 
 
 Hence we cannot accept Pflugk-Hartung's 
 statement that *^the position of the wife and 
 daughter ' ^ in ancient Ireland ^ ^ was one of supreme 
 subjection '* in a moral or a fortiore in a social 
 sense. True, indeed, statements hostile in a gen- 
 eral way to womanhood are to be found in Irish 
 literature but these should not invite serious preju- 
 dice against it. Such as these are discoverable in 
 all literature and in Irish letters any unfavourable 
 attitude they might create should be practically 
 eliminated by the vastly superior array of fine 
 tributes lined up in support of the ladies of the 
 Gael. Besides some of these when contextually 
 interpreted do not seem to be uttered in a serious 
 mood but were dictated by the racial desire for 
 pungent wit and rich humour. 
 
 Just to give some idea of what they were like 
 we will produce a few of them here. From a piece 
 called Eve 's Lament we take the excerpt ^ ^ so long 
 as they endure in the light of day, so long women 
 will not cease from folly. ' * This condemnation is 
 so vague that it carries with it no special bitterness 
 
 [51] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 and leaves only the impression of minor deficien- 
 cies rather than any damning vices. The com- 
 mand rings out ' ' rale your wife, ' ' but this is mere- 
 ly equivalent to advocating a preservation of the 
 natural social order of the homestead. Perhaps 
 some of the most blighting of all anti-feminine 
 dicta are those ascribed to King Cormac in his 
 instructions to his son Carbery. ** Silly coun- 
 sellors,'' he calls all womankind: ** steadfast in 
 hate, forgetful of love, on the pursuit of folly, bad 
 among the good, worse among the bad. ' ' The con- 
 demnatory character of this advice is so sweeping 
 and universal that by the very force of its ex- 
 aggeration it dispels all likelihood of veracity. 
 Another says **do not give your wife authority 
 over you, for if you let her stamp on your foot 
 to-night, she will stamp on your head to-morrow. ' ' 
 This seems bitter until we read in the same text 
 ** reprove your wife as you would your son or 
 your friend:'' then one feels that its harshness 
 is only apparent and formulated with a view to 
 impress forcibly the need of preserving nature's 
 authority in the home. Taking, then, evidence 
 as a whole into account there seems to be vastly 
 more truth in the words of M. Gaston Paris when 
 he praises that loyalty of the Irishwoman to the 
 dictates of morality which would be impossible 
 under the slavish conditions imposed upon her by 
 Pflugk-Hartung. **The oldest Irish literature," 
 says the French Celtist, ** furnishes evidence of 
 the fidelity of the betrothed to her lover, of the 
 
 [52] 
 
Feminine Morality in Pagan Days 
 
 wife to the husband and of the widow to her dead 
 mate, whom she laments and to whom she remains 
 faithful.''* There were dark spots in the sun- 
 light of Irish pagan morality as in everything on 
 earth but the gloom they induce was of little ac- 
 count when compared with the brilliancy that en- 
 veloped them. 
 
 * Rev. Celt. Vol. 15. p. 407. 
 
 [S3l 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 When Saints Weee Numeeous 
 
 LEAVING the golden grey of saga landscape 
 we now pass on to scenes more definite and 
 historical in feature though scarcely less il- 
 lumined by the glorifying aureole of the romantic. 
 We go from the glamour of the pagan period to 
 the captivating beauty and innocence of the 
 neophyte nation newly introduced to the mysteries 
 of Christianity. Here we shall behold how when 
 the message of the Master ^s Gospel rang out over 
 the hills and dales of Erin and the people with 
 longing hearts hearkened to its welcome notes, 
 the women of the Gael were throbbing with ardour 
 for the treasure that had appeared in their midst. 
 They furnished some of the most saintly minds 
 of the early church and some of the most capable 
 spirits that were allied with sanctity in that youth- 
 ful institution. 
 
 That greatness of intellect and valuable material 
 for citizenship should go hand in hand with saint- 
 liness was naturally to be expected. The qualities 
 that forged the way towards christian perfection 
 were those which were fundamentally neces- 
 sary for national wholesomeness. Respect for 
 authority, justice, sobriety, self-denial and purity 
 
 [54] 
 
When Saints Were Numerous 
 
 of life which are always associated with those who 
 seek first the Kingdom of God, are the soundest 
 pillars of any kingdom that man may construct. 
 Their absence can only be justified by materialism 
 of outlook and the nation that has only this vision 
 is fetid at the core and doomed to an early death. 
 Their presence means the controlling hand of 
 idealism at the nation *s helm, a force that must 
 lead it triumphantly against all brute influences 
 into final success. 
 
 This effectiveness of the saint as a national 
 factor was especially appreciable in Ireland. The 
 dominant note of early Celtic Christianity was 
 monastic and this was closely associated with the 
 social and governmental machinery that prevailed 
 in the commonwealth. The system upon which 
 Irish civilisation was erected was that of tribal- 
 ism. With the government of the church rigidly 
 fashioned after and largely dependent on this it 
 was only natural to expect a considerable mingling 
 of interest between church and state and a marked 
 unanimity of purpose in the pursuit of the ideals 
 of both organizations. The limits of the diocese 
 which was ruled by a monastic head had to be 
 coterminous with those of the tribe-lands. The 
 head of the monastery had to be selected from 
 some member of the clan so that the bond of 
 blood gave him an interest in the temporalities 
 as well as the spiritual needs of the people over 
 whom he presided. Other affinities existed be- 
 tween the ecclesiastical and civil institutions all 
 
 [55] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 of which tended to make the fire of the love of 
 God breeding-ground for the fire of patriotism in 
 the sonl of the saint. 
 
 What was true of the tribal character of the 
 monastery for men was likewise verified in its 
 kindred establishment for women. The convent 
 was an intimate part of tribal life whilst the im- 
 portance of its inmates was augmented by their 
 feminine hold upon the racial sense of reverence 
 for woman as well as by its official connection with 
 the existing mode of civilisation. Its inmates 
 wielded a powerful influence as women of the 
 Gael and as Irish saints. 
 
 Though countless numbers of Irish maidens are 
 to be met with in the early days of the church's 
 history who showed in their lives a sublimity 
 worth recording we must content ourselves with 
 presenting the few whose careers are in a marked 
 degree representative of those of the many. 
 
 To begin with Patrician times we find that some 
 of the most attractive episodes in the life of the 
 national apostle were based on the guileless char- 
 acter and lofty ideals of women. In these first 
 fruits reaped by the great reaper there was, as 
 it were, a symbolic guarantee of the elevating in- 
 fluence which the christian daughters to come 
 would wield within the land of Erin. In the 
 western part of the country two maiden figures, 
 fresh as the flowers of the field and taintless as 
 unstained rivulets, were wafted in upon the path- 
 way of the missionary as if to refresh his weary 
 
 [56] 
 
When Saints Were Numerous 
 
 soul and give him the strength of a magnificent 
 hope in the christian future of the nation that 
 could present such early flowers to the garden of 
 the Lord. Of royal birth they were and of royal 
 mind as was well shown in their thirst for truth 
 and the effusive manner in which Patrick willed 
 to satisfy their well-meant curiosity. He was ques- 
 tioned as to the nature of his God: he told them 
 that He was the Being who would satisfy the de- 
 mand of their Celtic natures by the expression of 
 his power and grandeur through the energy and 
 beauty of all that their senses perceived in the 
 spaces of the heavens and the expanses of the 
 earth, His God made the rushing waters of the 
 river, the light of the sun, the beauty of the sleep- 
 ing valleys, the majesty of the adoring mountains 
 and the isleted gems of the sea. 
 
 On another occasion the daughter of Daire 
 brought an element of romance into the story of 
 early Irish Christianity which though earthly was 
 pure and merited to be elevated by the i)rayers 
 of the apostle to the realm of the supernatural. 
 With Patrick always went Benignus whom he 
 loved for his innocence and sweet singing and it 
 was this youth whose attractions won the affec- 
 tion of an Irish maiden. So violent did her love 
 for him become that a deadly sickness settled upon 
 her. Patrick saved her life, purified her affections 
 and directed them into heavenly channels. Her 
 passion was terrestrial but untainted and Patrick 
 deemed it worthy of transformation into 
 
 [57] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 supernatural fidelity to the Supreme Lover. Her 
 awakening from the spells of worldly love is pre- 
 served in verse for us by Aubrey De Vere. 
 
 ^ ' One day through grief of love 
 
 The Maiden lay as dead ; Benignus shook 
 Dews from the fount above her, and she woke, 
 With heart emancipate that outsoared the lark. 
 Lost on the blue heavens. She loved the Spouse of 
 souls." 
 
 In another woman we are provided with a 
 splendid example of that spirit of self-sacrifice 
 which is so necessary for working of christian 
 principles in the human soul. This was the wife 
 of Laoghaire, the High King of Ireland. Though 
 the monarch refused to desert the pagan religion 
 his wife embraced the new faith and manifested 
 her gratitude to the apostle for the gift he had 
 given her by a permanent donation to the church. 
 ^^She bound herself to give a sheep out of every 
 flock she possessed each year and a portion of 
 every meal she should take during her life to the 
 poor of God.^'* A like tribute to the church she 
 ordained every property owner in Ireland should 
 give. 
 
 That these were not exceptions in their virtuous 
 behaviour we know from the testimony of Patrick 
 himself. He states that the women of Ireland in 
 general displayed a magnificent attitude towards 
 the new message of self-sacrifice that he brought 
 
 * Irish Texts Society. Vol. 9. p. 41. 
 
 [58] 
 
When Saints Were Numerous 
 
 them. He tells how in spite of all opposition they 
 unhesitatingly became christians and lived up to 
 the teachings of their new faith in the midst of 
 temptation. ** Their parents, *' those remaining 
 pagans, no doubt, ^ instead of approving of it, 
 persecute and load them with obloquy; yet their 
 number increases constantly; and, indeed, of all 
 those that have been thus born in Christ, I cannot 
 give the number, besides those living in holy 
 widowhood, and keeping continency in the midst 
 of the world.''* 
 
 There is another name which was closely asso- 
 ciated with that of Patrick but which needed no 
 such distinguished affiliation to enable it to endure 
 in history. That is the name of Brigid which was 
 held by the premier member of Ireland's early 
 saintly womanhood. Her memory is as much part 
 and parcel of the national and ecclesiastical tra- 
 dition as is that of Patrick himself. Interest and 
 pride in her glory is confined within no provincial 
 limitations but maintain an equal hold upon every 
 section of the country. Her name when borne 
 by a woman is regarded in foreign parts as dis- 
 tinct a badge of Irish origin as is that of the 
 national apostle when its honours a man. 
 
 A potent reason for this universal esteem for 
 Brigid is the fact that though wedded to Heaven 
 she was never divorced from Ireland. She was 
 not that type of saint whose celestial tendencies 
 make mental absentees from the ordinary life of 
 
 The Irish Race, Aug. Tliebaud. Quotation, p. 36. 
 
 [59] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 earth. She was as practical in citizenship as she 
 was mystic in religion. 
 
 When the blood of her countrymen became 
 stirred and heated for action her love of peace 
 and her liberal conception of nationalism inspired 
 her to hesitate at no saintly effort that might heal 
 wounded pride and introduce serenity where 
 serious strife might have been. For this reason 
 great men sought her aid. She was visited by 
 Conall, son of Niall of the Nine Hostages, who 
 sought her protection against his brother Carbery 
 whose malice menaced him for the sake of a 
 kingdom. With a solicitude that was truly mater- 
 nal mingled with an element of rpmanc that was 
 mediaeval she covered with her protecting 
 presence the troops of Conall as they marched to 
 the field of battle. A clash was frustrated and 
 the would-be contestants were compelled to depart 
 with a kiss of peace whilst the name of Brigid as 
 a peacemaker and a benefactor of the policy of 
 national unity was universally applauded. 
 
 However where diplomacy failed to adjust a 
 dispute on a basis of fairness she was not the one 
 to prevent the arms of the warrior seeking a vin- 
 dication of principle. On this same Conall for 
 whom she obtained peace from Carbery she after- 
 wards bestowed her benediction and relying on 
 its sustaining power he led his men to triumph on 
 the field of strife. In the Battle of Allen a singular 
 tale is narrated which, whatever its worth may 
 be in the realm of sober history, is decidedly in- 
 
 [60] 
 
When Saints Were Numerous 
 
 teresting as a medium for the study of the 
 national belief in Brigid's local patriotism. Herein 
 as a Leinster woman she championed the cause 
 of her native province against external aggression, 
 and though her action may not redound to her 
 credit as a nationalist because of its encourage- 
 ment of provincial strife it showed the warmth 
 of her tribal sentiments which amongst the Gael 
 as a race were the secret of intellectual national 
 unity even though they were a stumbling block in 
 the way of the organic solidarity of the common- 
 wealth. The followers of the 'Neill were waging 
 war on the men of Leinster whilst in the language 
 of Whitley Stokes * ^ Columbkille and Brigid'^ were 
 ** heartening, like Homeric heroes their respective 
 clans in battle. ' ' As the tide of conflict ebbed and 
 flowed, according to the old writer, great was the 
 agitation of the saintly scion of the race of Niall 
 who feared with a great fear when he perceived 
 that the great woman of Kildare was pitted 
 against his Ulster clansmen. **Now in that battle 
 the mind of Columbkille did not rest or stay for 
 the Hy Neill, for above the battalion of Leinster 
 he saw Brigid terrifying the hosts of Conn's half . " 
 Thus did the popular imagination summon her 
 from the realm of the dead to shield the martial 
 honour of the province she loved so well in life 
 and to match her saintly influence against that of 
 Columbkille, the most noted masculine saint of 
 Irish stock. 
 In more reposeful scenes than these Brigid won 
 
 [6i] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 renown. Ireland in her day was noted far be- 
 yond its shores for the hospitality of its people. 
 The providing of good cheer for the friend and 
 the stranger was long the custom there before the 
 coming of Patrick and the monastic usage of 
 maintaining a public guest-house did not accom- 
 plish a social revolution in the life of the Gael 
 but simply gave the sanction of religion to a well- 
 established habit. Hospitality was a part of the 
 business of the state ; it was the glory of the palace 
 and the pride of the humblest home. Brigid as 
 the head of a great monastery shone as the dis- 
 penser of good cheer and as an entertainer of 
 guests. She received with the kindliness native 
 to her race men distinguished for spirituality, 
 statecraft and various branches of learning whilst 
 the sunshine of her comforting smile warmed the 
 cold hearts of the poor and the outcast. Kings 
 sought her counsel and favour and bishops learned 
 wisdom at her feet whilst erring ones went away 
 consoled. 
 
 Even for literature she found time despite all 
 her responsibilities. A poem in her native tongue 
 on *The Virtues of St. Patrick' is attributed to 
 her. In prose she is supposed to have written a 
 small treatise entitled ^The Quiver of Divine 
 Love' and an Epistle to St. Aid of Degill. She 
 encouraged others to love letters and by her ad- 
 vice and example helped to make the monastery of 
 Kildare as remarkable for its culture as for its 
 piety. 
 
 [62] 
 
When Saints Were Numerous 
 
 It is, however, in religion that her supreme hold 
 upon the mentality of the Gael is rooted. Her 
 name, with that of Patrick and Columbkille, has 
 always been accepted as completing that trinity 
 of Ireland's greatest saints and as sacred to tra- 
 dition as the memory of the most successful of 
 national apostles and that of the noblest of the 
 Hy Neill who had the most patriotic heart that 
 ever beat within the bosom of a saint. Thus have 
 the Irish people erected through Brigid an en- 
 during memorial in their literature and tradition 
 to one of the noblest of their womankind, to one 
 who so proudly partook of the work of developing 
 the highest aspect of the national mentality, its 
 keenness of vision of the spiritual world. Actuated 
 by such a desire we find a writer in the Leabar 
 Breac paying a rapturous tribute to the surpassing 
 mastery of things spiritual (that was Brigid 's 
 heritage. ^^ There was not in the world one of 
 more bashfulness of modesty than this holy virgin 
 
 She was abstinent, unblemished, fond of 
 
 prayer, patient, rejoicing in God's commands, 
 
 benevolent, forgiving, charitable And hence 
 
 in things created her type is the Dove among 
 birds, the Vine among the trees, and the sun above 
 the stars."* She was regarded, above all, as the 
 national protectress of that virtue so treasured 
 by Ireland, purity. In the Felire of Aengus, all 
 the virgins of Ireland were confided to the pro- 
 tection of Brigid that in her inspiring example 
 
 * Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars. Healy. Quot. p. 1S5. 
 
 [63] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 they might find that feminine nobility necessary 
 for the welfare of their souls and the moral sound- 
 ness of the commonwealth. 
 
 As an ecclesiastical ruler she also did much to 
 make her name endure in the religious traditions 
 of Ireland. Many houses of piety outside the 
 monastery of Kildare obeyed the Brigidine rule, 
 while evidence is not lacking for the assumption 
 that she and some of her successors invaded the 
 domain of church oJB&cialdom proper to men and 
 claimed in some respects the obedience due to 
 high dignitaries. It seems very likely that some 
 of the Abbesses of Kildare enjoyed marked juris- 
 diction within the diocese of that name in things 
 that pertained to the episcopal office. On 
 the authority of Archbishop Healy we have it that 
 ^*the lady-abbesses of Kildare enjoyed a kind of 
 primacy over all the nuns of Ireland and, more- 
 over, were in some sense independent of episcopal 
 jurisdiction, if indeed, the Bishops of Kildare 
 were not to some extent dependent on them.''* 
 
 And even if all these facts of ancient times were 
 consigned to oblivion the vital influence of her 
 memory in the world of the modern Gael would 
 be quite sufficient to prove that the personality 
 from which it emanated centuries ago must have 
 been a commanding one. Irish manhood re- 
 members her as the acme of glory of its woman- 
 hood and it feels stronger and more sanguine 
 
 *Ibid. p. 137. 
 
 [64] 
 
When Saints Were Numerous 
 
 every day in the face of all difficulties bolstered 
 up by the sustaining reflection that the companions 
 of its joy and sorrow and ultimate triumph is the 
 feminine factor of which Brigid is the spiritual 
 and patriotic archetype. Multitudes of societies 
 pledged to the support of the twin ideals of faith 
 and nationality act under the patronage of her 
 protection. Her memory survives in the names 
 of a host of parishes and townlands throughout 
 the country. Churches, ancient and modern, 
 within and beyond the seas of Ireland preserve 
 her name. The very topography of Ireland con- 
 spires to keep the memory of Brigid ever fresh 
 in the soul of the Gael. Her holy fountains strew 
 the land where her devotees come in crowds to 
 seek her healing power for wound of soul and 
 body. In a word all that lives of her in the G-aelic 
 memory helps to wield with powerful force the 
 hammer that drives home conviction of woman's 
 domineering part in the spiritual regeneration of 
 the Irish race. It tells too of the need of un- 
 swerving adherence to the spiritual tenets of 
 Brigid for the preservation of sterling nationality 
 for it shows the potency of a woman to help 
 that essentially Celtic attribute of immaterialism 
 of outlook which has ultimately wrested many and 
 many a time the nation from its death grasp, and 
 preserved intact its corporate sense of racial dis- 
 tinctness and individuality. It is a reminder that 
 the nation which for six and a half centuries, 
 
 [65] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 according to Cambrensis, kept a mysterious fire 
 continually burning at Kildare in honour of 
 Brigid, has still the fire of admiration in its heart 
 for one of its greatest benefactors. 
 
 Another saintly woman who bore a striking 
 resemblance to the great one of Kildare was St. 
 Ita, the Mary of Munster. Of illustrious lineage she 
 proved herself in the assumed humility of her life 
 to possess a magnitude of soul exceeding that of 
 any of her ancestors. She loved the things of the 
 spirit but did not cut herself adrift from the 
 mundane things of her island home. She was a 
 saint not only for heaven but for Ireland and 
 sought to give a spiritual elevation to the tem- 
 poral activities of her countrymen. When the 
 Hy-Conall clan appealed to her for victory in 
 battle, won by affection for her kin and the un- 
 sullied honour of her tribe, she girt the clansmen 
 around with the conquering weapons of her 
 prayers. 
 
 For learning, too, she had a strong desire. In 
 the Felire there lives a beautiful hymn of which 
 she was the author. It reveals a rare simplicity 
 of soul, a touching familiarity of treatment of the 
 spiritual and the Celtic tribalism of conception 
 which intertwines happily with warmth of feeling. 
 
 ' ' Little Jesus, little Jesus, 
 Shall be nursed by me in my dear Disert: 
 Though a cleric may have many jcAvels, 
 All is deceit but little Jesus. 
 
 [66] 
 
When Saints Were Numerous 
 
 A nurseling I nurse in my house, 
 
 It is not the nurseling of a low-born clown, 
 
 It is Jesus with his heavenly host. 
 
 That I press to my heart each night. 
 
 The fair Jesus, my good life. 
 Demands my care and resents neglect 
 The King who is Lord of all. 
 To pray him not we shall be sorry. 
 
 It is Jesus, the noble, the angelical, 
 Not at all a tear-worn cleric. 
 That is nursed by me in my dear Disert, 
 Jesus, the Son of the Hebrew maiden. 
 
 The sons of chiefs, the sons of Kings, 
 Into my district though they may come, 
 It is not from them that I expect wealth, 
 More hopeful for me is my little Jesus. 
 
 Make ye peace, daughters. 
 
 With him to whom your fair tributes are due, 
 
 He rules in his mansion above us. 
 
 Though he be little Jesus in my lap. ' ' 
 
 And as she loved learning for herself so she 
 desired to communicate it to others, and her 
 efforts in this respect produced some very notable 
 results. To mention but one there is St. Brendan. 
 For his early mental development she was 
 responsible. Thus was she intellectual mother of 
 as masterly and daring a soul as early christian 
 Ireland can claim. As fearless of the elements as 
 he was strong in virtue he cared not for the terrors 
 
 [67] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 of the Atlantic. Drawn on by that peculiar desire 
 of the Celt to probe the depths of the unknown 
 he is credited with being bold and clever enough 
 to have probably discovered America by the very 
 crude means at his disposal. No doubt much of 
 that vigour of mind and manliness was the product 
 of the fostering care of Ita and we cannot help 
 feeling that if she accomplished nothing else her 
 share in the development of Brendan would be 
 sufficient to mark hers as a queenly intellect 
 donating a good to her native Munster spiritually 
 and temporarily that can be measured by no 
 miserly calculations. 
 
 In a different sphere from that of Brigid and 
 Ita lived and worked Ronnat, the pious mother of 
 St. Adamnan. Determining to remain in the 
 world she became instrumental in giving to her 
 country one of the greatest of its saintly citizens. 
 She moulded the infant mind of him who in 
 maturity was to preserve for us in the Life of 
 Columba that human and fascinating picture of 
 his beloved master. But besides that she was the 
 indirect means of effecting a social revolution 
 freighted with far-reaching benefits for her nation. 
 As late as her time the women of the Gael revelling 
 in the young vigour of the race oftentimes 
 cherished the excitement of the battle-field and 
 fought side by side with their men. This was 
 without doubt degrading to the feminine nature 
 even though it was often inspired by heroic sen- 
 timents. It was one of these debasing features 
 
 [68] 
 
When Saints Were Numerous 
 
 of the custom which was responsible for the action 
 of Ronnat which culminated in the elimination of 
 her sex from the field of battle. On one occasion, 
 when travelling with her son, seeing the harrowing 
 results of feminine strife she was stricken with 
 horror and pleaded with her child to emancipate 
 women. Her request met with success for the 
 voice of Adamnan raised in protest won for all 
 time exemption from the duty of carrying arms 
 for the women of Erin. 
 
 As if to show the sublimity of this task old 
 literature tells us that before Adamnan could in 
 this respect become the liberator of women he had 
 to prove himself worthy by the cleansing force of 
 great suffering. Furthermore we are informed 
 that Heaven itself took special notice of the prob- 
 lem that was his. In Adamnan 's Law in the Book 
 of Raphoe there is recorded a supernatural inter- 
 ference in behalf of the women of the Gael. The 
 story is replete with delicate sentiments towards 
 womanhood and insists upon its supernatural dig- 
 nity and domestic sacredness. ^* After fourteen 
 years,'' it says, ** Adamnan obtained this law from 
 God and this is the cause. On Penecost eye a 
 holy angel of the Lord came to him, and again at 
 Pentecost after a year, and seized a staff and 
 struck his side and said to him: Go forth into 
 Ireland and make a law in it that women be not 
 in any manner killed through a slaughter or any 
 other death .... Thou shalt establish a law in 
 Ireland and Britain for the sake of the mother 
 
 [69] . 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 of each one, because a mother has borne each one, 
 and for the sake of Mary, mother of Jesns Christ, 
 through whom all are .... The sin is great when 
 anyone slays the mother and sister of Christ's 
 Mother, and her who carries the spindle and who 
 clothes everyone.'' 
 
 Other individuals to whom we would like to 
 devote more space were it available, we must 
 briefly mention. About the domestic life of the 
 mother of Columbkille facts are very silent. But 
 can we not without doing violence to our fancy 
 picture the patriotic nobility of Ethne who 
 moulded the mind of the greatest saintly worker 
 for national honour, tradition and civilisation that 
 Ireland has produced. Indeed, no sanctified mem- 
 ber of the church in any age or clime could outdo 
 the child of this mother in affection for his native 
 land. Before Enda founded the noted monastic 
 and scholarly institution of Aran he was a rough 
 tribal leader revelling in wild forays and blood- 
 shed. The sweet and firm influence of his sister, 
 Fanchea, robbed him of his rudeness and con- 
 verted him into a mystic lover of peaceful ways. 
 Several others there were of this calibre to whom 
 only a special chapter could do justice. 
 
 Oftentimes not only individuals but even fam- 
 ilies possessed striking sanctity and nobility of 
 heart. In the lives of the saints and the martyr- 
 ologies there are many instances of the collective 
 holiness of a high grade of all the girls in a 
 family. We read in the martyrology of Tallaght 
 
 [70] 
 
When Saints Were Numerous 
 
 that the daughters of Baith in the plain of the 
 river Liffey were so distinguished for their piety 
 as to be honoured by a special festival on the 
 second of January when a church was dedicated 
 in their honour. Considering the disturbed stats 
 of public life the possibility of finding such a 
 domestic serenity is little short of marvellous. It 
 could only occur in a country where the highest 
 respect for the sacrosanct character of the family 
 and the fundamental value of its wholesomeness 
 for the nation at large overshadowed all inter- 
 tribal broils and jealousies. It is noteworthy too, 
 that in most cases this type of family was the 
 product of woman's rather than man's influence. 
 Such splendid replicas of the homestead at 
 Nazareth were bound to be not only luminous 
 centres of religion but beacon-lights calling the 
 nation to safest anchorage within the harbour 
 of domestic sanctity. There it would find the 
 truest antidote for disintegrating forces and the 
 best guarantee of continued loyalty to the dictates 
 of its highest self. 
 
 Before parting with the saints we must say 
 a word about that virtue of chastity which was the 
 very core of their moral and mental greatness 
 and the ultimate basis of their usefulness to the 
 nation. We have seen at length how even in pagan 
 days it was honoured and in this chapter we have 
 occasionally seen the glory of its presence 
 amongst the early exponents of Christianity. Here 
 we would like to dwell on it more at length but 
 
 [71] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 we must content ourselves with the production 
 of a few facts that shall illustrate the rigid 
 and oftentimes harsh principles governing its 
 maintenance. 
 
 St. Patrick, who usually showed himself to be 
 so kind and forgiving, did not think that his 
 people should consider him too severe when he 
 ordered even his sister, who was accused of sin, 
 to be run down near Armagh by his charioteer. 
 *^ Drive the chariot over her,'^ he bade him, ^*and 
 the chariot went over her three times." Even if 
 the historicity of this tale be challengeable its 
 preservation in tradition manifests the national 
 scrupulousness where this virtue was in question. 
 Who has not heard of the violent methods of St. 
 Kevin of Glendalough, when he sought to guard 
 himself against the attentions of a fair Irish 
 Cathleen? We have no reason for believing that 
 there was anything gravely immoral in her 
 actions, and yet the story did not hesitate to make 
 the saint plunge her into the depths of a lake as 
 a punishment for her folly. 
 
 In customs as well as in the lives of individuals 
 there is evidence of the national delicacy where 
 this virtue was concerned. So conservatively did 
 the saints treasure woman's reputation that not 
 merely monasteries but certain tracts of land were 
 declared unlawful ground for feminine footsteps. 
 Within the watery boundaries of Inniscathy no 
 woman's presence was tolerated. These prevent- 
 ative measures, of course, were taken for the or- 
 
 [72] 
 
When Saints Were Numerous 
 
 dinary woman and should not be interpreted as 
 indicative of narrowness of mind and undue dis- 
 trust of and disrespect for women. Where the 
 sanctity of men and women was of such a high 
 grade as to render both parties, humanly speaking, 
 immune from grave sin, no wall of exclusiveness 
 was set up between them. On the contrary com- 
 munication was encouraged, and some of the 
 greatest men and women saints frequently met 
 und were on terms of intimate friendship with 
 one another. There were to be found, even, 
 monasteries of such a unique type that close asso- 
 ciation of the sexes was a matter of daily life. 
 This was due to the fact that the inmates of these 
 houses were the first order of saints whose holi- 
 ness of life reached a high degree of excellence. 
 In these places ** women were welcomed and 
 cared for ; they were admitted, so to speak, to the 
 sanctuary; it was shared with them, occupied in 
 common. Double or even mixed monasteries, so 
 near to each other as to form but one, brought 
 the two sexes together for mutual edification ; men 
 became the instructors for women; women of 
 men. ' ' * The Irish were, indeed, severely sound 
 but not irrational in their zeal for the noblest 
 ornament that womanhood could possess. 
 
 * A. Thebaud. Op. Oit. p. 104. 
 
 [73] 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Women of Action feom the Ninth to the Seven- 
 teenth Century 
 
 WITH the passing of the eight century the 
 women of Ireland found themselves in 
 the presence of a problem that was en- 
 tirely new to them. Hitherto all their activity 
 was confined to questions merely affecting their 
 nation from within but now there came the men- 
 ace of an external force that threatened to destroy 
 all the most treasured possessions of their land. 
 The first grim clouds of invasion swept down from 
 the cold lands of the Northmen over Irish skies 
 glowing with the warmth of christian fervour, 
 and menaced by their malignant pagan lightnings 
 the serenity of the atmosphere created by the 
 mating of the doctrines of Patrick with the civ- 
 ilisation of the Gael. The new situation furnished 
 a striking contrast to that of the golden era of 
 the three preceding centuries and was calculated 
 to test the most sterling fund of heroism that the 
 nation possessed. It was a challenge not merely 
 to the local sense of honour of a clan but to that 
 common feeling of pride that welded the whole 
 congeries of clans into that spiritual common- 
 wealth called Ireland. It was an hour when the 
 
 [74] 
 
Women of Action, 900-1700 A, D. 
 
 the presence of a strong womanhood conld act as 
 a mighty leverage to exalt the soul of the people 
 above all fear of final destruction. 
 
 That Irish women did not live np to their past 
 in the face of this new peril we have no gromid for 
 assuming. The records of this period are very con- 
 servative in the giving of information about men 
 or women but the little they provide when prop- 
 erly interpreted shows that the daughters of Erin 
 fought a creditable fight. Very little beyond 
 obits are mentioned in the annals in the case 
 of individuals in the early and mediaeval centur- 
 ies and as we know from other sources that some 
 of these who are dismissed thus hastily were peo- 
 ple of distinction it seems only reasonable to as- 
 sert that others for whose fame we have not such 
 corroborative evidence were in all likelihood im- 
 portant personalities. In a word the mere fact of 
 mention in the annals seems the hall-mark of 
 distinction for those whose memory is thus pre- 
 served. We hope that the reader will keep this 
 in mind as an aid towards a sympathetic under- 
 standing of the position of woman in the centuries 
 that antedate the Tudor era. 
 
 In the Annals of the Four Masters, several wom- 
 en of the ninth century are recalled as possessing 
 a prominence equal to that of most of their broth- 
 ers of distinction if the number of words that com- 
 memorate them has any worth as a measure of 
 greatness. But besides these we have a few in- 
 stances where more lengthy accounts are given 
 
 [75] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 of the activities of women. In the reign of 
 Domnacad, Ard-Ri, a dispute for the sovereignty 
 of Munster arose between Cumeide and Ceallachan. 
 Things were looking stormy and a bloody clash 
 seemed to be impending when the wisdom of a 
 woman in council won the day. Keating tells us 
 that the mother of Ceallachan travelled from 
 Cashel to where the contestants met and besought 
 them **to remember the agreement come between 
 Fiachaidh Muilleachan and Cormac Cas that the 
 descendants of both should alternatively inherit 
 Munseer .... And as a result of the woman's 
 discourse Cumeide left the sovereignty of Munster 
 to Ceallachan. * ' * The fact that the person for 
 whom this noble lady pleaded was her son in 
 favour of whom she might have been prejudiced 
 did not tell against her for her argument was 
 founded on justice which the glamour of a throne 
 could not force her opponent to resist. 
 
 Into the life of the same Ceallachan there en- 
 tered the heroism of another woman. This time 
 his enemy was Sitric, a Danish prince, who plotted 
 to effect by treachery the death of the Munster 
 king. Mor, the Irish wife of the foreigner, hear- 
 ing of the scheme saved the life of the intended 
 victim by a timely warning. She was wedded to 
 her land and kin before all things and she faced 
 the wrath of an angry husband rather than see 
 them injured. Like her Muirgel, in A. D. 882, 
 won fame in dealing with another of the leaders 
 
 * Irish Texts Society. Vol. 9, p. 223. 
 
 [76] 
 
Women of Action, 900-1700 A. D. 
 
 of the Northmen. This latter lady, the daring 
 daughter of royal Maelseachlainn, slew a chieftain 
 of the foreigners that her country might get rid 
 of a powerful and most troublesome foe. 
 
 In this same period there is evidence of an- 
 other kind that demonstrates the loyalty of woman 
 to kith and kin and country. Women were made 
 the special target of the wrath of the foreigners 
 in such a general way as to show that they were 
 regarded as a valuable national asset. True, in- 
 deed, libertinism to a large extent inspired this 
 policy of the pagans but their wholesale deporta- 
 tion of women to foreign parts is strongly sugges- 
 tive of the Cromwellian anti-racial movement that 
 centuries afterwards sent many a cargo of fem- 
 inine victims to the Barbadoes. Of the Danes it 
 is stated in the Annals of Clonmacnoise that in the 
 year 830 * ^ as many women as they could lay hands 
 on, noble or ignoble, young or old, married or un- 
 married, whatsoever birth or age they were of, 
 were by them abused most beastily and filthily, 
 and such of them as they liked best, were by them 
 sent over seas into their own country there to be 
 kept by them to use their unlawful luste."* An- 
 other ancient writer with a weeping pen tells of 
 the harassed virtue and beauty of those tur- 
 bulent days. ^^Many were the blooming, lively 
 women; and the modest, mild, comely maidens 
 .... whom they carried off into oppression and 
 bondage over the broad, green sea. Many and 
 
 * Dublin. 1896. ed. Rev. D. Murphy SJ. 
 
 [77] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 frequent were the bright and brilliant eyes that 
 were suffused with tears at the separation of ... . 
 daughter from mother. ' ' ** 
 
 During the next century the goading of the 
 Northmen became more venomous and serious and 
 yet their augumented tortures elicited only a grow- 
 ing resistance from the nation and an increase in 
 number of the women who merited special atten- 
 tion from the chronicler for pronounced value to 
 the commonwealth. For this they continued to 
 suffer from the invader. Their hostile incursions 
 were frequently unannounced and many a time 
 no sex was spared by the ruthless sword of the 
 pirates of the North. 
 
 There was one, however, who did not suffer 
 for she was conspicuous rather for malicious 
 greatness than studied patriotism. Yet we must 
 not pass her over for she displayed an ability 
 in intrigue and rank- seeking that was out of the 
 ordinary even though it wore the apparel of evil. 
 Her soaring ambition led her into three provinces 
 where in succession she pledged herself in wed- 
 lock to Olaf Cuaran of Dublin, Malachy of Tara 
 and Brian the Great of Kinkora. It was with the 
 last of these monarchs that she manifested the 
 greatness of her vindictiveness. Gormlai, for 
 this was her name, was a fit companion in sheer 
 intellectuality for the able lord of the Dalcassians 
 but her duty as a wife was lost in her overweening 
 pride. Ill-brooking the vision of her family in 
 
 * Wars of the Gael and Gall. ed. J. H. Todd. London. 1867. p. 43. 
 
 [78] 
 
Women of Action, 900-1700 A. D. 
 
 subjection even to her husband she inserted the 
 poison of jealousy in the heart of her brother and 
 made him the defiant enemy of Brian. Impelled 
 still further along her serpentine ways and heed- 
 less of plighted troth and her marriage vow she 
 offered her hand in wedlock to Sigurd in return 
 for his aid against the grandson of Malachy whom 
 her wounded pride wished to vanquish. Wider 
 and wider she spread her tentacles of secret 
 scheming until she held within them the forces 
 that paved the way for the Battle of Clontarf. 
 That conflict drove the Dane from Ireland but its 
 benefit was very dubious for on its fatal field fell 
 the most statesmanlike and constructive mon- 
 arch that the country knew for centuries. From 
 it there resulted disputed successions to the sov- 
 ereignty of the High King which might have been 
 avoided had Brian lived. He would have be- 
 queathed to his family a leadership that foes 
 might fear to dispute and to his country a sense 
 of national government and organic solidarity 
 which might have expelled the invading legions of 
 the second Henry of England. 
 
 As the trouble-haunted years of the eleventh 
 and twelfth centuries wing their feverish flight 
 into the silence of the past the little brightness 
 that is hidden in them is scarcely noticeable. It 
 is a fitful, twinkling light in a wilderness of dark- 
 ness and chaotic waters. Yet we have no doubt 
 that the tradition of a noble womanhood still en- 
 dured and helped to keep within the nation that 
 
 [79] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 latent strength which manifested itself in days 
 of resurgence. Such an item as that which rec- 
 ords the death of Bevinn in 1134, who was a fe- 
 male erenach of Derry Columbkille, serves to 
 strengthen that conviction. The office which the 
 lady held entailed responsibility for the manage- 
 ment of church temporalities. In the case of 
 Derry it must have been especially onerous for 
 this was one of the most important ecclesiastical 
 establishments in the country. Yet in the midst 
 of political distraction sufficient faith in woman 
 still resided amongst the people to entrust to one 
 of her sex the civil administration of Derry ^s 
 church property. Another significant proof of 
 the prevailing respect of the Ireland of this time 
 for woman's ability came from the pen of Giolla 
 Modhuda O'Cassidy, Abbott of Ardbraccan in 
 County Meath who died about 1143. This man 
 who combined considerable learning with poetic 
 powers wrote a History of Women from the earl- 
 iest times to his own day. He who had written long 
 historical poems on the monarchs of Ireland be- 
 lieved the wives and mothers of these rulers as 
 worthy of a scholar's attention as the sovereigns 
 themselves. His action must have been inspired 
 by the presence of a capable womanhood in his 
 own time. 
 
 Sweeping onward we find the land imperilled 
 by a new invader. This time the stranger gave 
 every sign of intending to make himself a per- 
 manent dwelling place within the island to which 
 
 [80] 
 
Women of Action, 900-1700 A.D. 
 
 he had been introduced. The Anglo-Norman had 
 arrived and four decades had not elapsed ere he 
 began a systematic framing of machinery of gov- 
 ernment through which to secure his new posses- 
 sions. Unlike the Dane the Anglo-Norman with 
 stolid deliberations and methodic action settled 
 down almost from the beginning in his acquired 
 territory as if it had been the cradle of his race 
 and was intended by nature to be his for all time. 
 This was something that the Gael had never be- 
 fore encountered and its very novelty was a fresh 
 tax upon his determination to defend his ancient 
 heritage. 
 
 Nothing daunted, the daughters of Ireland re- 
 mained faithful and did their part where the fight 
 was sternest. When they could, they employed 
 all the weapons they had in their armoury of fas- 
 cinations to make the trans-channel visitor a sym- 
 pathetic member of their national family and 
 when success was not assured by such strategy 
 they did a lion's share in the work of keeping 
 those beyond the pale of conversion from enjoying 
 the confidence of their people. When for instance 
 the daughter of Hugh O'Connor, King of Con- 
 naught, in 1226, was forcibly detained in Dublin by 
 the English, we can feel sure that they were not so 
 attached to her presence on account of her Anglo- 
 phile tendencies. We have to travel but the space 
 of another decade to find a Mac Maurice manifest- 
 ing his interest in a similar manner in Irish women. 
 Occupying the chief executive position within the 
 
 [8i] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 territory where Saxon writs ran, he thought it a 
 necessary imperialist move to keep many respect- 
 able women in bondage where their protection was 
 very questionable and their nationalist efforts were 
 eliminated. 
 
 Despite officialdom, however, the sunbeams of 
 Irish life slowly but surely bridged the rampart of 
 darkness that prevented the amalgamation of the 
 races and the ^ ^ degeneracy ' ' of the ^'superior" 
 Saxon was certainly becoming an unpleasant real- 
 ity. To check this mingling of ** polluted'^ Irish 
 waters with the ^^ limped'' stream of the invading 
 flood new methods were strictly urgent. The first 
 Edward was an enthusiastic supporter of such 
 tactics and in 1295 statutory bayonets were lev- 
 elled at the breasts of any who dared to retain 
 or acquire anything that suggested Gaelic civili- 
 zation. Yet twelve months had scarcely vanished 
 before the royal ears could hear the revolting 
 news that even an Irish maiden had no respect for 
 England's decrees. The deathless song of the 
 Coolin which is supposed to date from 1296 is a 
 monument in music commemorating the defiance 
 hurled at these statutes by a woman. It was a 
 high crime and misdemeanour for an Irishman to 
 wear long locks. To one who fell under this ban 
 the maid in question was about to offer her heart 
 and hand when with doubtful love he consented 
 for her sake to save himself from Saxon vengeance 
 by submitting his locks to the imperialist scissors. 
 Such a selfish surrender to aggression she would 
 
 [82] 
 
Women of Action, 900-1700 A, D. 
 
 not for a moment entertain and prondly told him 
 she would have him with his flowing hair and its 
 attendant perils, but never with a cropped head 
 and Anglicised security. 
 
 The years that ensued saw Edward and his 
 statutes little more than a memory whilst their 
 would-be prey even of the weaker sex still waved 
 the banner of indignant repudiation of things op- 
 pressive. English dominion was now rushing to- 
 wards the precipice which lay between it and de- 
 struction and instead of turning back and becom- 
 ing aggressive was striving frantically to check 
 the speed of its retreat. To add to its weakness 
 there came a king, Edward III, who thought 
 France a more satisfactory field for the glutting 
 of his martial vanity than Ireland and left his 
 subordinates in the sister isle to maintain their 
 hold there with little encouragement from his 
 royal self. In the midst of these happenings Irish 
 women who forced the reticent pen of the chron- 
 iclers into eulogy became more and more numer- 
 ous. In 1316, Dervorgill, the wife of Hugh 
 'Donnell, procured for herself a force of gallow- 
 giasses and she did not maintain them for fancy 
 manoeuvres or to help the Viceroy. We hear of 
 a Darrel 'Donnell in 1343, of whom it was said 
 that ^Hhere never was a woman of the tribe who 
 surpassed her in goodness ' ' and we feel sure that 
 her primacy of merit amongst the daughters of 
 Tirconnell was not obtained without very sub- 
 stantial service to her clansmen. Within ten more 
 
 [83] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 years our attention is f ocussed on another woman 
 of this tribal stock named Gormlai than whom 
 there ^^was not in her time a woman of greater 
 fame or renown/' 
 
 Not long after this the English government de- 
 termined to reapply the methods of Edward I for 
 the purpose of reclaiming the Irish from their 
 ^* savage '' ways. In 1367 the Statute of Kilkenny 
 reaffirmed the policy of proclaiming all manners 
 and customs of the Gael illegal. However there 
 were ladies who seemed to care naught for its 
 sanctions, for twenty years later there is record 
 of a daughter of Hugh O'Neill, ^^a lady that far 
 surpassed all the ladyes of Clanna Neales, in all 
 good parts requisite in a noble matron. ' ' Knowing 
 what the past history of that famous clan was we 
 can easily imagine that this noble dame must have 
 grievously sinned against the decrees that eman- 
 ated from the Marble City. Away in the west, a 
 scion of the royal house of O'Connor, seemed 
 equally heedless of the crusade preached from 
 Kilkenny. Her name was Cobhlai Mor and by 
 1395 she had established a national reputation for 
 herself as a hostess and her mode of entertaining 
 was not inspired by any Saxon code of etiquette. 
 
 Further and further away ebbed the tide of 
 English civilisation as the fourteenth century 
 fared rapidly towards approaching dissolution. 
 Then suddenly Richard II burst in upon the re- 
 treating waters endeavouring by a display, and 
 nothing more, of sheer majesty and power to stem 
 
 [84] 
 
Women of Action, 900-1700 A. D. 
 
 their progress. Content with this he hastily re- 
 turned to England only to hear that the waters 
 continued to rise and threatened to engulf be- 
 neath them every remnant of foreign dominion. 
 To this new avalanche the feminine element 
 added impetus and weight. Women continued to 
 appear as good practical housewives who re- 
 garded it as their prime duty to preserve that fam- 
 ily sobriety and sense of hospitality which should 
 keep the source of Irish energy and anti-Saxon 
 aggressiveness strong and wholesome. There went 
 to her everlasting reward in 1421 a great matron 
 of Connaught, Mor, wife of Walter Burke, the 
 ^^most distinguished woman in her time in Leath 
 Mogha, for knowledge, hospitality, good sense 
 and piety.'' In the same province it is recorded 
 there lived in the next generation a certain Celia 
 Burke who was the wife of another of the Gaeli- 
 cised strangers and ^^was the most preeminent of 
 the women of Connaught.'' This preeminence in 
 the west at this time was an impossibility unL^ss 
 it had been based on hostility to England. A con- 
 temporary of these Connaught dames was Cath- 
 leen, the ^^old countess of Desmond'' who was 
 born in 1464 and continued to live until the leign 
 of James I. Her longevity was most remarkable 
 but her ability to sustain and surmount suffering 
 was equally striking. She traversed faithfully 
 all the valleys of affliction through which her fam- 
 ily passed and fought for it with unsubdued 
 spirit. When the first Stuart reached the throne 
 
 [85] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 she, who had known days of abundance, Avas re- 
 duced to utter destitution. But even then within 
 a stooped and aged frame she had a soul of 
 adamant. She never lost hope, and carrying her 
 weak daughter on her back, she made her final 
 journey to the court of James in London where 
 she wrenched justice from the monarch in person. 
 Whilst her ultimate surrender as a suppliant be- 
 fore English sovereignty was regrettable it was 
 somewhat palliated by the extremity of her age 
 and her loyalty to a family that had now become 
 part and parcel of Gaeldom. 
 
 With the destruction of feudal aristocratic pow- 
 er through the wars of the Roses there leaped 
 into being the dynasty of the Tudors. The new 
 house was destined to have vigorous and am- 
 bitious monarchs who were well able to manipu- 
 late the vast strength which was snatched from 
 the prostrate barons. That power was soon di- 
 rected towards the reconquest of the Irish lands 
 that had been forfeited through domestic strife 
 in England. There was instituted a campaign of 
 aggressiveness against everything Irish that 
 brought untold misery to the people and cul- 
 minated in the utter undoing of their polity 
 and laws. 
 
 To the elimination of the native government, 
 however, the Saxon victory was confined. The 
 soul of the land and that vast heritage of tradi- 
 tion that went to sustain it remained substantially 
 unchanged. And it is our high pleasure to be able 
 
 [86] 
 
Women of Action, 900-1700 A. D. 
 
 to state that during this period as always, woman- 
 hood did its part in sustaining the vital breath 
 within the nation. The increased rigour of the 
 foreign government and the augmented weight 
 of sorrow which it piled upon the Gael did not 
 make the tender soul of its womanhood hesitate 
 to do its duty. On the contrary, the added bitter- 
 ness of the new calvary only found an ever-grow- 
 ing number of voluntary victims to court its gall 
 and vinegar. Whilst those amongst them who 
 had not come into contact with the foreigners' 
 wild ways did their part as of yore in sustaining 
 by championship of ancient manner and custom 
 that spirit bond of nationhood that no tyrant 
 steel could sunder. 
 
 Beginning with the bleak and iron-ribbed prin- 
 cipality of the 'Sullivan in the southwest we 
 find towards the close of the fifteenth century 
 its chieftains still deeming their ladies' civic use- 
 fulness worthy of considerable remuneration. All 
 the standing rent due to the Lord of Beare from 
 his crag and rock continued to be given to his 
 wife for her idle expenses. A proof of the merit 
 that won this hereditary recompense may be wit- 
 nessed in the heroism of the daughters of Beare, 
 humble as well as great, after the disasters of a 
 hundred years had brought red ruin to their prin- 
 cipality. When after desperate resistance the 
 proud keep of Dunboy fell into the hands of the 
 English the staunchness of the women defenders 
 brought them the stern revenge of the, enemy's 
 
 [87] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 sword. ^'Some ran their swords up to the hilt 
 through the babe and mother who was carrying it 
 on her breast/' says a most reliable writer, de- 
 scribing the activities of the foe after the fall of 
 the castle. * The hangman's rope, too, did its 
 deadly work upon several women with Carew su- 
 perintending operations. Those who escaped the 
 steel and the strangling noose threw in their lot 
 with the brave 'Sullivan in his heroic retreat to- 
 wards the North. In this the trials were so exact- 
 ing upon the courage and physique of the sturdy 
 band of men that some of their bravest were lost 
 through lack of staying power. Yet hear what 
 O 'Sullivan says of the manner in which their sis- 
 ters on the march bore themselves. ^^I am aston- 
 ished," he says, **that .... women of delicate 
 sex, were able to go through their toils, which 
 youths in the flower of age and height of their 
 strength were unable to endure. " * 
 
 Moving northward into deep-vallied Munster 
 we encounter many a true sister of the women of 
 Beare. In 1524 all Thomond knew of a Mor 
 'Brien who did her best to keep a buoyant and 
 robust spirit within the warlike and the cultured 
 in * * an open house of hospitality. ' ' 1548 the wife 
 of O 'Dwyer was such an influence within her hus- 
 band 's territory that when it sent a payment of 
 tribute to the White Knight her consent was vital 
 to the transaction. Spenser in Pacata Hibernia 
 
 * Ireland under Elizabeth. O'Sullivan Beare. Dub. 1903. p 156. 
 
 * Op. Cit. p. 173. 
 
 [88] 
 
Women of Action, 900-1700 A. D, 
 
 dwells regretfully on the * ^ treacherous ' ' action 
 of the Lady of 'Brien, Lord of Lixnaw, which re- 
 sulted in the death of a certain Maurice Stack. 
 That there was perhaps some element of good, at 
 least for the Irish, in a deed where the gentle poet 
 saw nothing but rampant foulness does not seem 
 unlikely when we hear that the victim was a 
 *^ worthy subject (more worthy than whom there 
 was no one of Ireland birth of his quality.) " 
 
 Crossing into the broad domains of the lord of 
 Desmond there is abundance of feminine ability 
 and patriotism to greet us. This is especially ap- 
 parent in the history of the Desmond family itself. 
 As soon as the feudal aristocracy had been crushed 
 in England the nobles in Ireland were marked 
 out for destruction. But in the latter country the 
 great lords had become far more like independent 
 Gaelic princes than vassals of any king and hence 
 their subjugation was not only a crown but a 
 national policy of the Tudors. Desmond was one 
 of the greatest of the ^ ^ degenerate " nobles and 
 his defeat was a long and tedious business. Be- 
 fore that was accomplished many noble ladies 
 showed as much prowess in the struggle as their 
 lords. 
 
 The staunchest and most distinguished of the 
 galaxy of fighting dames was she who was mated 
 in suffering glory with the last Earl of that 
 Munster house. She stood by him unto the last 
 even when the pardon and protection of the 
 British Crown was proffered her and when in the 
 
 [89] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 words of Holinshed ^ * whoever did travel from one 
 end of Munster to the other, would not meet any 
 man, woman or child, saving in towns or cities; 
 and would not see any beast. ' ' It was this sterling 
 loyalty to her land and husband that wrung from 
 Malbie the bitter statement that she was '^an in- 
 famous woman'' and ^^the greatest worker of 
 these wicked rebellions on the Pope's behalf" 
 and hence was beyond the pale of amnesty. When, 
 at last, the Desmond 's sun of hope had set forever 
 his Countess braved in futile effort the wrath of 
 Sir Warham of St. Leger to get from him a pardon 
 for her heroic lord. And that fervent loyalty that 
 was hers pervaded the hearts of even the lowliest 
 of her servants. We cannot forget Mary Sheehy, 
 her devoted maid, who faced the perils of the 
 lonely road in those lawless days for her mistress ' 
 sake only to find herself at the end of her journey 
 in the prison of the Queen's President of Munster. 
 Close by Desmond was the chieftaincy of the 
 Mac Car thy of Muskerry. Here we are reminded 
 of the self-sacrificing Eleanor Mac Cartliy who at 
 one time in its history saved the leading house of 
 the Kildare Geraldine from extinction. After the 
 abortive revolt of Silken Thomas and Henry VIII 
 had produced the grim exhibition of six Geraldines 
 dangling at the end of a rope on Tyburn Hill only 
 one Fitzgerald of that line escaped the royal 
 clutches. This was Gerald Fitzgerald, the heir to 
 the house of Kildare, who succeeded in eluding 
 the royal endeavour to entrap him through the ef- 
 
 [90] 
 
Women of Action, 900-1700 A. D. 
 
 forts of the noble Eleanor. Taking liim under her 
 protection, for he was then bnt a boy of twelve, 
 she kept him in Muskerry whilst the arm of a 
 Mac Carthy could shield him. When his haven of 
 safety in Muskerry was menaced she brought her 
 protegee through many perils to the land of 
 O'Donnell in the North. Here she married the 
 chieftain of Tyrconnell for the sole purpose of 
 making the position of the young Geraldine all the 
 more secure. But her spouse was faithless and 
 realising his treacherous designs upon the boy she 
 abandoned him and his unworthy scheming. 
 Knowing now that nowhere on Irish soil could 
 young Gerald find safety she effected his escape 
 to the Eternal City where papal friendship 
 shielded him. 
 
 Leaving the Geraldine we transfer our attention 
 to the Ormond family. Here woman appears as a 
 doer of great deeds and a giver of wise counsel. 
 The most illustrious woman in the history of that 
 Earldom was the Countess Margaret. In her the 
 eighth Earl of Desmond found a life companion 
 who shouldered the greater part of his burdens of 
 state and disposed of them in a masterly fashion. 
 Her husband had many enemies and the aid of her 
 vigorous and constructive mind must have been a 
 tower of support for him when he sought in spite 
 of external aggression to maintain a strong and 
 orderly rule at home. That this was at his disposal 
 we know from the authority of Campion, the 
 Jesuit, who says that she ^^was a rare and noble 
 
 [91] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 woman and able for wisdom to rule a realm. ' ^ To 
 this we can add the tribute of another old writer 
 who says that her husband ^^bare out his honours 
 and the charge of his government very worthily, 
 through the singular wisdom of his Countess, a 
 lady of such port that all estates in the realms 
 crouched unto her, so politique that nothing was 
 thought substantially debated without her ad- 
 vice. ' * * Her mental astuteness she was able to 
 complement by the weapon of force. She was 
 fashioned in such a rugged mould that in feats of 
 physical prowess she could put the ruler of 
 Ormond to shame and could levy blackmail on 
 her neighbours by an armed band that she main- 
 tained for her personal aims. 
 
 Yet in the avocations that tell of a finer fibre 
 in her character she was not deficient. Moved by 
 a feeling of nationalism as well as appreciation of 
 the aesthetic she found pleasure in patronising 
 the arts. At her invitation artificers crossed the 
 seas from Flanders to impart to her people the 
 mysteries of the tapestry-making in which they 
 excelled. Her admiration for letters led her to 
 erect a school where those who hungered for the 
 food of the mind got what their souls desired. In 
 brief, the life-task which she accomplished was so 
 remarkable that her memory is still a vivid and 
 prized possession of the inhabitants of Kilkenny 
 City whilst that of her husband is dimmed by the 
 mist-inducing lapse of centuries. 
 
 * Romance of Irish Heroines. McOraith. Quot. p, 41. 
 
 [92] 
 
Women of Action, 900-1700 A. D. 
 
 In the neighbourhood of Ormond there are other 
 instances of feminine worth that merit production. 
 In 1535 there is record of a Janet Eustace who was 
 a persona ingrata in the eyes of Dublin Castle. The 
 Saxon gave her the hospitality of a prison for ''be- 
 ing the great causer of the insurrection of Thomas 
 Fitzgerald and of her son James Delahide.'' 
 Nearly half a century later an official was deeply 
 angered by the sister of Simon MacDavid and his 
 anger was due to loyal official reasons. When he 
 had arrested her his words were: ''if she do not 
 stand by me in steede I mean to execute her.'' A 
 little later the wife of Sir Barnaby Fitzpatrick, 
 Baron of Upper Ossory, was evidently in sym- 
 pathy with the sentiments of an anti-English hus- 
 band and for that reason was forced to change 
 with his her residence for the most austere apart- 
 ments of a Dublin prison, when the Elisabethan 
 kidnappers secured for their mistress in the castle 
 prison of the Metropolis the youthful Hugh 
 Roe O'Donnell the strategy of a woman con- 
 tributed to his rescue. This was Rosa 'Toole 
 who cooperated with her brother Felim and her 
 husband, Fiach O 'Byrne, in the liberation of the 
 young chieftain of Tyrconnell. The work she par- 
 ticipated in, cost England many a man and dollar 
 and gave Ireland one of the most efficient and pic- 
 turesque of its leaders. 
 
 How bitterly the minions of England regarded 
 these activities of the womenfolk in this part of 
 Ireland may be estimated by their savage treat- 
 
 [93] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 ment of many of their sex. The sword and stran- 
 gling rope were used unsparingly to crush this very 
 unbecoming spirit in the souls of Irish ladies. It 
 was regarded as an effective way of procuring the 
 extermination of the race as well as of telling 
 women that their traitorous guilt was equal to 
 that of men. Coote, a true son of the infamous 
 President of Connaught, amused himself at Black- 
 hall, Kildare, according to the author of Cam- 
 brensis Eversus, by massacring women and trans- 
 fixing their infant children on their breasts. He 
 liked to dispatch the child with the mother for it 
 was one of his principles of political philosophy 
 that '^a bad crow from a bad Qgg^^ was an in- 
 dubitable law of nature. On one occasion he 
 committed to the rope a noble lady who was his 
 host and taking the unborn babe from her womb 
 strangled it by the hair of the martyred mother. 
 He had an eminent rival in butchery in Cosby, 
 governor of Leix, who resorted to similar methods 
 for the civilisation of the wild Irish. 
 
 As we direct our vision from the Southwest 
 to the land of Owen and Connell in the North 
 where the Gael by the shield of his might saved 
 the sanctuary of his ancient heritage until tlie 
 bitter end from the sacrilegious legions of 
 Elisabeth, we cannot but expect to find some 
 staunch defenders of his strongest fortress 
 amongst the ranks of women. Knowing how thor- 
 oughly the government at London set itself to in- 
 ject an English mind into the great Hugh of 
 
 [94] 
 
Women of Action, 900-1700 A. D. 
 
 Tyrone and how for a time it seemed to liave par- 
 tially succeeded we cannot but feel that if his wife 
 was influential in his home she must have con- 
 tributed to the strength of his grim resolve when 
 he challenged to the combat all the forces of 
 England. But we know from the confession of an 
 English official that his wife was Mary O'Neill 
 *^the Lady ... by whom he is most ruled'' and are 
 not therefore basing our former conclusions on 
 premises of imaginary origin. Speaking of the 
 O'Neills reminds us of another lady, the wife of 
 Nelan 'Neill, who was one of the official plenipo- 
 tentiaries engaged to settle the disputes between 
 her husband and the 'Neill. Then there was the 
 lady of the famous Thurlugh Lynagh O'Neill who 
 was a very worthy partner of the stout old chief- 
 tain. She stood staunchly by the side of her war- 
 harassed husband where her ability won for her 
 special attention from English officialdom. Malby, 
 from the security of the land he had conquered, is- 
 sued an ominous warning to his government lest 
 her leadership might make his subject province an 
 unsafe place for Englishmen. His words were that 
 ''she had already planted a good foundation, for 
 she in Tyrone, her daughter in Tyrconnell, and 
 Sorley Boy in Clandaboy, do carry all sway in the 
 North and do seek to creep into Connaught. ' ' * 
 She was evidently the master mind not only within 
 her own domains but of an alliance that held in its 
 grasp the power of a province. 
 
 * O'Grady. Cat. of MSS in British Museum, p. 404. 
 
 [95] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 Close by in gallant Tyrconnell were Mgh-sonled 
 dames who bade fair to ontdo their sisters of 
 Tyrone in the service of Uladh. Queenly and true 
 loom forth the figures of Ineen Duv, the mother 
 of Hugh Roe 'Donnell, and her daughter, Nuala, 
 who aided in masterly fashion the young eagle of 
 the North to hold for many a year in his mighty 
 talons his native territory against overwhelming 
 odds. Ineen was Scotch by birth, being the daugh- 
 ter of the Lord of the Isles, but was Gaelic by des- 
 cent from the race of CoUa Uais and was certainly 
 loyal to her ancient blood when she heard its call 
 in the land of Connell. Her advice was ever valued 
 by her able son and many a time befriended him 
 in the hour of need. When the dauntless Hugh 
 left the warders of Dublin prison wondering how 
 the elusive chieftain had escaped from their toils 
 and in his native Tyrconnell summoned his people 
 together for a conference on questions vitally af- 
 fecting their destiny, his mother was one of the 
 dominant counsellors of the assembly. She clari- 
 fied their deliberations by the logic of her argu- 
 ments and by pointing out to them the severe and 
 hoxiourable path of duty she added by her display 
 of fortitude to the unyielding attitude of their 
 resolute souls. As the olden writer puts it * 4t was 
 an advantage that she came to the gathering, for 
 she was the head of advice and counsel of the 
 Cinel-Conail, and though she was slow and very 
 deliberate and much praised for her womanly qual- 
 ities, she had the heart of a hero and the soul of a 
 
 [96] 
 
Women of Action, 900-1700 A, D. 
 
 soldier, inasmuch as she exhorted in every way 
 each one that she was acquainted with, and her 
 son especially, to avenge his injuries and wrongs 
 on each one according to his deserts/' That she 
 could face the sterness of war as well as the en- 
 tanglements of the council-chamber we know from 
 the fact that she fought against a son of 'Donnell 
 by a former wife on whom in the interest of her 
 own children she inflicted a defeat. For such 
 emergencies as this she had always ready at hand 
 a mixed force of Irish and Scots. And her daugh- 
 ter, Nuala, had been so apt a student in the school 
 of her mother that all through life she never wav- 
 ered in her devotion to the cause that was so dear 
 to the heart of Ineen. She fought for it while a ray 
 of hope shone over it, and she went with it 
 into exile in 1607 when that sorrow-laden ship 
 brought the best that Ulster had to the land of the 
 stranger. 
 
 Eer we part with the days of Elisabeth, so often 
 called spacious, and certainly so characterised by 
 vastness in the ruin which it measured out to the 
 polity and civilisation of the Gael, we must pay 
 our respects to the greatest Irish lady that ever 
 maintained the honour of her race against the 
 Lady of Windsor. This was Grace O'Malley, 
 ^ * Grainuaile, ' ' the glory of Connaught and the 
 most abiding and absorbing subject of song and 
 story in the West since the days of Maeve. 
 
 When we think of Grace we primarily associate 
 with her name things dared and done on the sea. 
 
 [97] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 Belonging to a clan wMcli was noted for centuries 
 for its love of the wild waves, Grace, though a 
 woman resolved to maintain this primal attach- 
 ment of her ancestors. This decision gave to the 
 'Malley tribe as distinguished a sea leader as its 
 history could unfold. Soon she found herself at 
 the head of a little fleet that for many a year 
 under her captaincy was to rule the wild seas 
 off the western coast with as free a hand as the 
 winds that buffeted them. With her three galleys 
 and two hundred fighting men, the terror of her 
 name entombed more lightnings for unwelcome 
 intruders upon the Connaught coast than did that 
 of her husband, Eichard-in-Iron Burke, for *^she 
 was as much by sea as by land more than Mrs. 
 Mate with him.'^ Sidney expressed in 1575 his 
 dislike of her when he condemned her to Elisabeth 
 as *^a terror to all merchantmen that sailed the 
 Atlantic." Her galleys were, no doubt, an un- 
 welcome vision for Saxon merchantmen out for 
 the destruction of Irish commerce and the de- 
 velopment of British imperialism on the seas. 
 Such as thwarted that nefarious work were surely 
 pirates in English eyes, though the orbs that saw 
 in them this malice belonged to the greatest robber 
 mariners of those days. But, then as now, what 
 was virtue in the Saxon was crime in the Gael. 
 However, Grace could boast that no English buc- 
 caneer ever forced her to land. Day and night 
 she kept vigil over her fleet, for tradition has it 
 that, even in her hour of rest, in her castle tower 
 
 [98] 
 
Women of Action, 900-1700 A,D. 
 
 in Clare Island, a cable through a shaft in the wall 
 was always at hand to summon her to her ships. 
 
 As the might of Elisabeth had little terror for 
 her in her native West, so it failed to awe her in 
 the very palace of the English Queen. It is said 
 that she once paid a visit to London, where she 
 interviewed her Brittanic Majesty. On this oc- 
 casion the lure of an English title was held out 
 to her in the hope that she might forget that she 
 was Grace O'Malley and be henceforth the loyal 
 and exalted Countess of somewhere. Grace knew 
 her own dignity and duty, and did not hesitate to 
 inform her would-be benefactor that she would 
 never be the titled servant of another and that the 
 position she enjoyed as Lady Chieftain of the 
 O'Malleys was as royal and orthodox as that which 
 Elisabeth herself could claim. 
 
 With Grace O^Malley we part for the present 
 with the heroines of Ireland. They fought a splen- 
 did fight and the sun of their lives set in glory 
 with the dying Irish state. If they did not succeed 
 in keeping brehonism in the land and the law of 
 Saxondom away, they kept alive what created 
 brehonism and Irish civilisation, the dauntless be- 
 lief of the people that they had an immortal na- 
 tional soul that sooner or later would resurrect 
 their departed polity over a land free to mould 
 its future as it willed. 
 
 [99] 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Virtuous and Noble feom the Dane to Elizabeth 
 
 WHEN last we dealt with those character- 
 istics which are peculiar to noble woman- 
 hood we were pondering on centuries of 
 luminous virtue unchallenged by little that was 
 hostile. So numerous were those who then sought 
 moral perfection that they created not merely 
 within their own individual souls but also within 
 the nation an atmosphere of religion that con- 
 tributed all the advantages of a nursery to every 
 single flowering of virtue. It is true that the com- 
 mon resultant of a highly standardised Christianity 
 was the product of individual effort, but this 
 should not lead us to forget that once this atmos- 
 phere was created, it had powerful reactionary in- 
 fluences upon each wayfarer along the path of 
 the christian life. The exalted public sense of the 
 beauty of a strictly christian life furnished a 
 strong incentive for individual hunger for virtue, 
 whilst it eliminated many possible factors that 
 might militate against it. 
 
 But the centuries that succeeded the golden age 
 of the saints introduced factors that were to with- 
 draw many of the elements that hitherto made 
 noble living relatively easy. The clear skies that 
 
 [100] 
 
Virtuous and Noble from the Dane to Elizabeth 
 
 gave the warmth of their sun-lit features to flower- 
 ing virtue were to be veiled by many a darksome 
 cloud girt round by chilling blasts. Foreign ag- 
 gression was to throw the shadow of its ugly head 
 above the untroubled horizons of Gaelic Chris- 
 tianity, and prove by its unwholsome presence 
 whether the ideals that Patrick brought were 
 merely hot-house plants or robust growths capable 
 of withstanding adverse atmospheric conditions. 
 
 That they withstood, if not with consummate 
 success, at least with a degree of victory that was 
 unique, the hostile elements encountered, is a fact 
 in the history of the nation at large that there is 
 no denying. And as women as an integral part of 
 the nation inevitably participated in the triumph 
 of the whole there is no need to prove their con- 
 tinuity of noble living by citing endless numbers. 
 We will only endeavor to unearth the prominent 
 ones with a view to procuring material for a con- 
 clusion relative to type and the standard of 
 wholesome living maintained by the whole femi- 
 nine section of the nation. That that brand of 
 virtue continued to be of a very elevated and 
 unique type we believe to be the case. 
 
 In the period we are considering, the evidence 
 in general of the native records bears rare and 
 inappreciable testimony to moral decline in 
 womanhood whilst it provides abundant proof 
 of sterling loyalty to moral principles. Where 
 slurs are cast on the good name of Irish women 
 the sources are usually so prejudiced that they 
 
 [lOl] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 merit little respect. Besides, the few black sheep 
 of genuine wickedness that are met, there files in 
 far-surpassing numbers the fair ones with clean 
 and snow-white fleeces. Throughout the march of 
 the centuries good and true noble souls greet us 
 like so many stellar glories flashing their hopeful 
 gleams into the hearts of the oppressed and con- 
 veying to them the exhortation to be steadfast 
 till the storm-swept skies became fair again. 
 
 Starting with the period of Danish incursions 
 we behold a veritable reign of terror launched 
 upon all that was peaceable and good. Churches 
 were plundered, schools destroyed and families 
 slaughtered in cold blood. Society was thrown 
 into a state of violent disorder and the peace 
 that nourished pious and noble life was menaced 
 on every side. Yet despite this chaos women of 
 highly christian and refined calibre are often men- 
 tioned in the annals as the product of the ninth 
 century. As disorders thickened in the years that 
 ensued, ladies of this type became more numerous. 
 With rare exceptions those recorded were of noble 
 rank and of a nobility of mind that was an orna- 
 ment to their positions. One of these, Gormlai, in 
 the tenth century, was a queen in dignity and in 
 heart. Her conjugal fidelity was so impressive 
 that it caused the old writer to give an unusually 
 elabourate account of her. A way of thorns was 
 her progress through life, but her sorrows only 
 served as a foil to set oif the tenderness and 
 strength that her soul enshrined. She had to 
 
 [102] 
 
Virtuous and Nohle from the Dane to Elizabeth 
 
 lose the companionsliip of the princely and noble 
 Cormac Mac Culinan, when the call to the epis- 
 copal dignity joined his royal sceptre of Cashel 
 to the ecclesiastical crozier of that kingdom. 
 Subsequently, her marriage to Carroll of Leinster 
 brought her nothing but woe. Cormac fell in 
 battle by the hand of her second husband. As he 
 lay in death the vilest indignities were offered 
 him by Carroll. Gormai dared to reproach her 
 ruthless husband for his deed, and for her devotion 
 to a noble soul was violently hurled to the ground. 
 Later on, happiness momentarily seemed to 
 beam on her when Niall of Aileach became her 
 spouse. But its life was short, for the maw of 
 battle claimed him as he fought a patriot's fight 
 against the Danes at Eathfarnham. When the 
 hour of burial came, the sorrow-stricken widow 
 called forth a funeral lament in honour of the 
 dead. And when the sod was over him and she 
 had departed from the grave to face a lonely life, 
 she never lost vision of her faithful husband. 
 Finally this fidelity to his memory cost her life 
 itself. One night as she lay asleep, her haunted 
 fancy summoned the departed to her side; when 
 rushing with a flood of eagerness to embrace him, 
 she suffered a mortal wound from the headpost 
 of the bed. Thus nobly did she close her troubled 
 career, and go in manner most pathetic to link 
 her spirit with that of one to whose memory she 
 paid the tribute of a martyr's homage. 
 
 [103] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 At last a brief lull came in the terrible struggle 
 with external aggression. The raven of battle was 
 hushed for some years by the army of Brian, and 
 the dove of peace remained undisturbed. During 
 this period we behold a feminine self-respect so 
 impressive that a lone lady could traverse the 
 length of Ireland without fear of molestation. It 
 is true that Brian's control over the island con- 
 tributed to this lady's security, but such remark- 
 able immunity from attack in those days would 
 have been most improbable, had woman not im- 
 planted by her previous noble bearing a genuine 
 respect for her sex in the soul of the nation. It 
 showed a universality of respect that was rooted 
 in a universality of merit on the part of women 
 that overwhelms the critic who seeks in the licen- 
 tious temperament of a chieftain, or the undis- 
 ciplined mind of a royal maiden material 
 condemnatory of the moral status of the nation 's 
 womanhood. 
 
 A rather long passage in the Wars of the Gall 
 and the Gael tells this story. Here it would likely 
 have been confined to students of history had not 
 the genius of Moore popularised and immortalised 
 it in his musical lyric, *^Eich and Rare.'' We 
 think its reproduction here is pardonable. 
 
 ''Rich and rare were the gems she wore 
 And a bright gold ring on her hand she bore ; 
 But oh ! her beauty was far beyond 
 Her sparkling gems and snow-white wand. 
 
 [104] 
 
Virtuous and Noble from the Dane to Elisabeth 
 
 *' 'Lady, dost thou not fear to stray, 
 
 So lone and so lovely through this bleak way ? 
 
 Are Erin's sons so good or so cold. 
 
 As not to be tempted by woman or gold?' 
 
 ^' Sir Knight! I feel not the least alarm, 
 No son of Erin will offer me harm : 
 For though they love women and golden store, 
 Sir Knight ! they love honour and virtue more. ! ' 
 
 On she went and her maiden smile 
 In safety lighted her round the green isle; 
 And blest forever is she who relied 
 On Erin's honour and Erin's pride. 
 
 When the years of peace passed away with the 
 great monarch of Kinkora, and endless dynastic 
 strife ensued between the claimants of his throne, 
 the women, praised by the annalists for goodness 
 of heart towards the poor and the church and 
 for love of the penetential, grew more numerous 
 than ever. To distant Eome went the Queen of 
 the Gailenga in 1051 seeking in penance a secure 
 passage to the world beyond. What trials she 
 must have endured to satisfy her pious cravings 
 at the heart of the christian world! A less am- 
 bitious journey did Bibinn, daughter of Brian 
 the Great, undertake when in 1073 she carried the 
 pilgrim's staff to Armagh, Patrick's city. Here 
 she sojourned in self-denial till death brought her 
 quiet and peace. Four years later there passed 
 away Gormlai, the wife of Toird, who left behind 
 her a great benefactor 's name. She * * distributed, ' ' 
 
 [105] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 says the annalist, *^much wealth amongst cells 
 and churches and the poor of the Lord for the 
 welfare of her sonl. ' ' To the favourite monastery 
 of Columbkille, Derry Mor, the daughter of King 
 Murtagh O'Brien, betook herself, where in 1137 
 she passed away in most edifying manner. There 
 was another king's daughter some decades later, 
 whose conduct was not so calculated to win our 
 admiration as was that of the 'Brien lady. Yet 
 it had not all the malice that many give it for, 
 though Dervorgilla deserted her husband for the 
 King of Leinster, she was induced to do so by the 
 cruelty of her own lord and the encouragement of 
 her brother. And so much did public opinion 
 deem the action of the Leinster King responsible 
 for her fall, and so high was its standard of 
 female morality that its armed forces drove the 
 delinquent monarch from his realm to a Saxon 
 shelter. That her sin was due to weakness rather 
 than malice seems likely, for so keenly did she 
 feel the gravity of her lapse that she endeavored 
 to atone for it for the rest of her life in monastic 
 seclusion. And this was not the only remarkable 
 manifestation of goodness with which history has 
 associated her name. Her gifts to the church were 
 oftentimes very considerable, and on one occasion 
 they eclipsed those of all generous givers before 
 her. In 1158 her donation to the clergy on the 
 occasion of the consecration of Mellifont Abbey 
 was sixty ounces of gold, triple the amount con- 
 tributed to the premier see of Armagh by Brian 
 
 [io6] 
 
Virtuous and Noble from the Dane to Elimbeth 
 
 Boru, whose munificence towards the churcli was 
 one of his prime characteristics. 
 
 Dervorgilla reminds us of Roderick O'Connor, 
 the Ard-Ri, who espoused the cause of her injured 
 husband. In the High King's life there is other 
 evidence of the rigid moral rectitude of con- 
 temporary women. The provisions he caused to 
 be made for its preservation were so stringent and 
 so efficient, they demonstrate that only high 
 merit on the part of those protected could deserve 
 such serious attention from the nation. He con- 
 vened a great meeting of prelates and lords at 
 Athboy in Meath in 1167, where laws were passed 
 guaranteeing, as in the days of Brian the im- 
 munity of woman from attack throughout the 
 length and breadth of Ireland. How well the 
 nation responded to the demands of the assembly 
 we know from Dr. Lynch, who says they were 
 *'so salutary, that a woman might safely travel 
 through all Ireland, which then enjoyed such tran- 
 quillity as Northumbria is said by Bede to have 
 had under the royal sway of Edwin."* 
 
 It was during the reign of this Ard-Ri that the 
 Anglo-Norman came in the guise of a religious 
 reformer. If his plea had any basis of sincerity 
 he should have seen that there were many in the 
 land far better qualified to reform him than he 
 them. Amongst these, the ladies alone could prove 
 the hypocrisy of the would-be evangelists. They 
 continued to furnish, after English occupation, 
 
 * Op. Oit. p. 71-2& 
 
 [107] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 conspicuous examples of virtue that could very 
 favourably bear comparison with that of their 
 sisters across the Irish sea. It is all in vain for 
 apologists of the Saxon intrusion to seek in some 
 anti-Irish comments of St. Bernard a justification 
 of this invasion. If the statements of St. Bernard 
 were true in relation to Ireland, we are justified 
 in assuming that they were also applicable to 
 England. He has said far harsher things of the 
 latter country than he has uttered about Ireland. 
 He has stated, for instance, that immorality was 
 rampant in England, whilst he has spoken only of 
 some cases of concubinage in Ireland. Besides, 
 there is abundance of evidence to substantiate his 
 onslaught on English morals, whilst there is little 
 of real weight to support his anti-Irish utterances. 
 When we hear of the Bernardine accusations, 
 we must remember the noble women that Irish 
 homes still continued to provide. When the first 
 marauding barons crossed the seas, there lived in 
 the palace of the Munster King his daughter 
 Etain, who some years later was to die in pil- 
 grimage at Derry. Fifty years afterwards the 
 compiler of the Annals of Kilronan paid tribute 
 to the goodness of Failge of the house of Conor 
 Mac Dermott. Her passport to immortality was 
 a comeliness of soul in consonance with that of an 
 attractive appearance, whilst her generosity 
 threw open the portals of her home to all who 
 sought to make happy in a becoming way the 
 fleeing hour. A contemporary of hers was the 
 
 [io8] 
 
Virtuous and Noble from the Dane to Elizabeth 
 
 wife of the King of Aeleach, who was famed for 
 like characteristics. The Annals of Clonmacnoise 
 relate the religions ardonr that, linked with a 
 quickness of intellect and sunniness of disposition, 
 gave Ireland in 1269 the remarkable Christina 
 'Neachtain. She was, says the annalist, ^ * a right 
 exceeding beautiful woman, well hymned, bounti- 
 ful in bestowing, chaste of her body, and ingenious 
 and witty delivery of mind, devout in her prayers, 
 and finally she was inferior to none other of her 
 time for any good parts requisite in a noble gentle- 
 woman. ' ^ In the West she had one who vied with 
 her in uprightness of character. This was 
 Lasareena, the daughter of the famous King 
 Cathal O'Connor of the ^Wine-Eed Hand' who 
 was called ^Hhe noblest in Ireland in her time." 
 
 With women of this type presented to the 
 stranger, whilst for the first hundred years, 
 through lack of intimate acquaintance with Irish 
 life he still cherished dreams of the religious re- 
 formation of Ireland, it is little wonder that, when 
 circumstances threw him into closer contact with 
 the native race, all his doubts about the moral 
 greatness of the women of the Gael were dispelled. 
 As the fourteenth century grew beyond the stage 
 of infancy, various causes, which need not be enu- 
 merated here conspired to effect the amalgamation 
 of Irish and Anglo-Irish. The settlers were com- 
 pelled by the force of events to fraternise with 
 the natives, and the knowledge thus acquired dis- 
 pelled their misapprehensions. Intermarriage of 
 
 [109] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 the two races became frequent, and tliat one wMch 
 regarded itself as religionsly the superior of the 
 other became the rapid prey of the latter 's civil- 
 isation. It was surely a marvel to witness this 
 conquest of the foreigners by the life and man- 
 ners of a people whom, in the highest department 
 of life, they regarded as sorely in need of refor- 
 mation. The marvel needs no comment, save that 
 it clearly proves that such a fascination could not 
 have emanated from Irish life, had it not been 
 better than that of the race it vanquished. 
 
 In the face of these facts it is interesting to 
 know something of some of the leading women 
 who participated, by the dignity of their lives, in 
 this conquest of the heart. One of these we find 
 to be Derbail O'Connor, who in the first half of 
 the fourteenth century was reputed to be **the 
 best woman that ever came of her own tribe." 
 She had during her lifetime a worthy rival in 
 goodness in Duthalach Mac Diamarda, who is 
 known to us as * ^ a choice woman without dispute. ' ' 
 The house of Aiffric 'Rahilly lost in 1364 a lady 
 of whom it is handed down that ** there was no 
 stint to her goodness up to the time of her 
 decease. ' ' The land of Breffney sorrowed in 1367 
 for the death of Derbail O'Rourke than whom 
 *' there was not since Una, daughter of the King 
 of Lochlannn, a woman of greater beneficence." 
 
 The year in which the last-named lady went to 
 her reward witnessed a weak and extreme legis- 
 lative effort to stem the tide of ^degeneracy' that 
 
 [no] 
 
Virtuous and Noble from the Dane to Elisabeth 
 
 had been let loose upon the Anglo-Irish by inter- 
 course with such social purity and brightness as 
 has just been revealed in the persons of some of 
 the leading ladies of the country. It failed to 
 realise its end, for the same clear and laughing 
 waters of Gaelic life flowed on unabated as before 
 and continued to woo the thirsty foreigner to their 
 sweetness. And reformers still continued to be 
 reformed. 
 
 In 1371 the clan Mac Carthy bewailed the loss 
 of Joan, who had contributed to that victory of 
 Irish honour by a life of charity and lavish hos- 
 pitality. There came an honourable end to an 
 honourable career when, in 1378 Mor O'Farrell, 
 **an excellent woman with dispute, died a death of 
 Unction and Penance and was buried honourably 
 in Cluain-Conmaicne. * ' She had as contempo- 
 raries the wife of O'Rourke, who was **an ex- 
 cellent woman,'' and Nuala O'Farrell, whose 
 entertaining habits rendered her name so fascin- 
 ating for those of English blood as to compel the 
 government to give her the hospitality of a prison. 
 The sweet song of Eileen Aroon, which so capti- 
 vated a genius like Handel, was inspired by the 
 ^Treasonable' nobility of Eileen Kavanaugh, a 
 woman of this period. The Countess of Desmond 
 of this time was no friend of England, for the 
 sunshine of her palace-life was provokingly Celtic. 
 
 Then came Eichard II, hoping by the mag- 
 nificience of his majesty and the terror of his arms 
 to eclipse that Celtic glamour that so hypnotised 
 
 [III] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 his Saxon subjects. His very transient glory was 
 of little avail, for when it departed with him the 
 power of the olden spell seemed to reassert itself 
 upon the colonists with redoubled vigour. The 
 avalanche of Irish life increased in velocity and 
 bulk, as it bore menacingly nearer and nearer the 
 rapidly waning strength of the fortress of the 
 stranger in Dublin; and the feminine elements in 
 that avalanche assumed a speed and massiveness 
 that entitled them to a substantial part in its 
 growing ability for destruction. 
 
 In 1419 the annalist takes note of Finmehain Ua 
 Manchain for the purity that dwelt in her soul, 
 and the honesty that was hers was well worth re- 
 cording. Finmehain could visit Thomond and feel 
 pride in meeting Mor, daughter of the king who 
 ruled there, for plenty of womanly sense and 
 virtue was her store. She was ^^best of her name 
 in gerorosity, sense and piety that was in Ireland 
 in her time. ' ' She could pay a visit to the land of 
 Breffney also, and take delight in the company of 
 Gormlai 'Rourke, whose beauty of soul and body 
 was the glory of her sect. She could include in 
 her itinerary the residence of Una O'Rourke, for 
 there the most hospitable and religious atmos- 
 phere of any home in lower Connaught would greet 
 her. Above all, she could not afford to neglect the 
 princely home of Margaret O'Connor of Offaly 
 which, owing to the matron who directed its life, 
 had earned the esteem of all Ireland as a centre 
 of beneficence. In another place we hope to 
 
 [112] 
 
Virtuous and Nohle from the Dane to Elizabeth 
 
 dwell more at length on the munificence of 
 Margaret, especially towards the learned. Here 
 we will content ourselves with a few words on the 
 spirit of fidelity towards the christian religion 
 that actuated her. High churchmen were her most 
 trusted councillors and most honoured guests. 
 Her wealth and time were liberally devoted to 
 the erection of churches and their becoming adorn- 
 ment. For the orphan and the homeless she had 
 nothing but the tenderest love and solicitude. 
 
 The next generation which linked that of which 
 the great Offaly lady was the finest product with 
 the time of greatest debility in the history of 
 Dublin Castle, emulated the religious and civic 
 worth of the womanhood that has just preceded 
 it. In its ranks we find in 1444 Duthalai Mac 
 Cahill, who cheered many a poverty-stricken soul 
 by her generosity. Twenty-two years later the 
 quaint language of the annalist informs us that 
 death dealt a serious blow to Erin by depriving 
 it of Grace Maguire for ^^a great tale in Ireland 
 was the death of this good woman.'' Two other 
 ladies of the same name and time, Margaret and 
 Ailbe, were well known for their exemplary 
 Christianity. The latter ended by transferring 
 herself and her property to the monastery of 
 Lisgabail. These daughters of Fermanagh had 
 a worthy neighbour in Aiffric O'Neill of Tirowen, 
 ' ^ a superior woman without defect. ' ' Close by in 
 Tirconnell they had another rival in virtuous and 
 civic activity in Finola 'Brien, the wife of Hugh 
 
 [113] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 Eoe O'Donnell. *^As regarded both body and 
 soul, she had gained more fame and renown 
 than any of her contemporaries.'' An act for 
 which she can never be forgotten was the building 
 of the famous monastery of Donegal. She was as 
 much responsible for the execution of this work 
 as was her distinguished husband. 
 
 Irish monks had not long been chanting their 
 psalms in this sacred edifice of the Northwest ere 
 a critical era in the history of their native land 
 had manifested itself. The first of the Tudors 
 came to the throne of England, and with his 
 arrival the tide that threatened to engulf the last 
 vestiges of English power in Ireland was finally 
 halted. Little by little a variety of circumstances 
 forced it to retreat until the government of Dublin 
 was once again on a secure and aggressive 
 position. The victory that had been all but com- 
 pleted had gradually to be relinquished until the 
 decease of Elisabeth witnessed the decisive over- 
 throw of the tribal state. 
 
 Yet, nothing daunted the womanhood of Ireland, 
 who continued to maintain the same unyielding 
 attitude that had characterised it heretofore in 
 the face of adversity. It held tenaciously to the 
 bitter end its old ideals of elevated living, though 
 the much relaxed grasp of another style of living 
 had reasserted itself with an ever-growing 
 strength and deadliness. 
 
 In the ranks of this never-ceasing procession 
 of daughters of the Gael pledged to God and 
 
Virtuous and Noble from the Dane to Elizabeth 
 
 country there comes Margaret ^Flanagan, at the 
 close of the fifteenth century, who cooperated with 
 her husband to ^^ build a chapel in honour of God 
 and Mary in Achadh-Mor. ' ' Marching into the 
 new century that was so momentous in the history 
 of Ireland we discover in Grace Maguire 
 of Fermanagh one whom an age of innovations 
 found staunchly adhering to the tradition of piety, 
 philanthropy and humanity that was so prized by 
 many a spirited dame in the history of her house. 
 The stripling century could lay claim to Margaret 
 'Rourke, whose skill, ranging from the womanly 
 science of home-keeping to the sublime ambition 
 of the church-builder, was the common knowledge 
 of all the race of the Gael. She was **the unique 
 woman who, of what were in Ireland of her time, 
 was of best fame and hospitality and house- 
 keeping .... was buried in a magnificent and 
 richly endowed church *^ built by herself for the 
 Friars Manor close by Dromahair.'' It could 
 also boast before its youth had vanished of the 
 Lady of Hugh 'Neill, whose matronly ways and 
 social respectability were admirably based on a 
 singular fidelity to the precepts of her Maker. 
 And ere yet this stage of its life had vanished it 
 could furnish ^^the Dark Damsel, wife of 
 O'Donnell, whose mated virtue and wit few could 
 afford to dispute. ' ' 
 
 Then came a challenge from across the waters 
 to Irish loyalty not only to fatherland, but also 
 to faith. Eeligious scruples that were mat- 
 
 [115] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 rimonially very convenient severely afflicted 
 Henry VIII and finally resulted in his severence 
 from the church of Eome. Not content with re- 
 formation of creed in himself, he sought to extend 
 his change of conscience to Ireland as well. With 
 what hostility the nation received his suggestion 
 is well known. It beheld in it a more pernicious 
 menace to its life and civilisation than had hitherto 
 been essayed, and treated it as such. It saw in 
 the new assault a deadly thrust at a faith which 
 had become an integral part of its ancient mode 
 of life, and had entered into its every part purify- 
 ing, strengthening and glorifying it. It is in this 
 new concept of the novel features of this Saxon 
 campaign that the real key to the secret of Irish 
 resistance must be sought, for the nation sus- 
 tained its faith not merely for its christian, but 
 for its Gaelic value and its civilisation not solely 
 for its temporal but for its eternal preciousness. 
 In the teeth of this new gale of imperial vin- 
 dictiveness, the heroic hardihood evinced by the 
 women who aided the nation to survive the storm 
 becomes more and more interesting. While Henry 
 was preoccupied with the business of transforming 
 himself into a Saxon pope Judith O'Donnell, the 
 wife of the cultured Manus, continued as of old 
 to display in a prominent way her devotion to the 
 precepts that emanated from the * old-fashioned* 
 papacy of Eome and the generous traditions of 
 her fathers. When with more radical projects in 
 view Elisabeth intensified the policy of her father 
 
 [ii6] 
 
Virtuous and Noble from the Dane to Elisabeth 
 
 she found one who little heeded her schemes for 
 the religions and social * betterment' of the Irish 
 people. This was Grace O'Malley, the mariner 
 Queen of the West. Sturdy of soul and unyielding 
 as the billows that harassed her native shores, 
 she was like them pure at heart. The Lady of 
 Windsor might ravage monasteries, confiscate 
 ecclesiastical property and destroy the shrines of 
 the saints, but Grace would prove her religious 
 conservatism by a contructive policy in the spheres 
 where Elisabeth's was destructive. A monastery 
 on Clare Island still bears testimony to the fact 
 that Grace loved to bestow her wealth on the 
 temples and shrines that Elisabeth despised. And 
 that the race which produced so many church- 
 builders might continue to preserve its wonderful 
 vigour and vitality, she gave all the weight of her 
 encouragement to the practice of early marriages 
 and the rearing of healthy children who would be 
 a bulwark against the enemies of faith and father- 
 land. 
 
 In later years, while the Elisabethan fury 
 raged at its worst there was one in Breffny, 
 Gormlai O'Eourke, who maintained the ideals of 
 munificence towards the church which character- 
 ised Grace. Her festive board, too, served to keep 
 some of the old love of the ancient life and some 
 of the warmth of hope in the hearts of her clans- 
 men. A little later lived Mor O'Brien, who was 
 **a woman praiseworthy in the ways of woman," 
 when the ravagers of Ireland did so much to strip 
 
 [117] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 Irish femininity of its self-respect. Aye, even 
 towards the close of the Elisabethan era of 
 *f rightfulness/ Joan Maguire, the pride of 
 Fermanagh, was herself a living proof that the 
 conquest effected by the sword and famine left 
 the Gaelic soul of Irish womanhood unvanquished. 
 When famine stalked throughout the land claim- 
 ing thousands of victims and leaving some places 
 tenanted only by wolves, and when many a 
 daughter of the Gael was left fatherless and 
 brotherless, she did what she could for the widow, 
 the orphan and the penury-stricken and outlawed 
 clergy. In the words of the analist she ^^was the 
 pillar of support and maintenance of the indigent 
 and the mighty, of the poets and exiled, of widows 
 and orphans, of the clergy and men of science, of 
 the poor and the needy.'' 
 
 Before parting with the noble women whose 
 lives contributed such staying power to the nation 
 in its attachment to Gaelic traditions in this most 
 critical of centuries in Irish history, we intend 
 to give some further general evidence to substan- 
 tiate what has been revealed in the careers of the 
 women who have been recorded. 
 
 We will begin with the testimony of Captain 
 Cuellar, a Spaniard, who has provided us with 
 some impressions he received from a journey 
 through Ireland. There is reason for believing 
 that this gentleman was in no way prejudiced in 
 favour of the Irish, for in his account he did not 
 hesitate to record some incidents that were not 
 
 [ii8] 
 
Virtuous and Noble from the Dane to Elisabeth 
 
 creditable to Ireland. Happily, there is every 
 reason for believing that these were isolated and 
 abnormal, and in no way indicated anything like 
 a universality of prevalence. Neither did he 
 leave behind him any statement condemnatory in 
 a general way of the people amongst whom he 
 fared. But a statement has survived in favour of 
 Irish women. He pays a tribute to their fine in- 
 stinct for the management of the home, saying 
 that, as a body, they were ** great workers and 
 housekeepers after their fashion."* In this pithy 
 assertion there is much more than might appear 
 at first sight. Where a hard-working womanhood 
 obtains there is little opportunity for anything 
 save moral strength and civic integrity. When the 
 home is the central sphere of that labour, it in- 
 contestably proves the existence of an upright 
 and useful womanhood. 
 
 Confirming and developing Cuellar's statement 
 comes the testimony of Dr. Lynch. He informs 
 us of his belief in the splendid loyalty of Irish 
 women to their marriage vows and a modesty of 
 bearing which characterised their domestic ac- 
 tivity. With regard to matrimonial life he states : 
 ^^ nothing can induce me to believe that promis- 
 cuous lusts were indulged and that the marriage 
 
 tie was disregarded by the Irish when I 
 
 reflect that this same people, when yet pagans, 
 paid such respect to their women, that they would 
 not allow them to intermarry with the Picts, with- 
 
 * Adventures, ed. Allingham. p. 62. 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 out the express stipulation that the maternal line 
 should be preferred to the paternal in the royal 
 succession.''** This connubial purity and loyalty 
 seemed to be indicated in the sense of decorum 
 and studied simplicity manifested in their external 
 appearance. *^They did not polish their cheeks 
 with rouge nor borrow fair complexions from 
 ceruse. If they were handsome they studied more 
 to be inviolably faithful to their husbands than to 
 heighten their beauty by ornament; if they were 
 not handsome they did not aggravate the defect 
 by deformity of soul.''*** 
 
 But perhaps the most indestructible argument 
 he provides us for their moral integrity was their 
 affection for their children. Where the maternal 
 instinct is pure and strong a loose conception of 
 marriage obligations is a very rare abnormality. 
 That this was preeminently realised in Irish 
 mothers has been asserted by Lynch. ^* There is 
 no quarter of the world," he says, ** where the 
 infant is attended with more affectionate solicitude 
 than in Ireland at the present day." And the 
 energy, valour and strength of the manhood of 
 that time was in itself no feeble revelation of the 
 veracity of the author of Cambrensis Eversus. 
 
 In the light of all this favourable evidence it is 
 interesting to consider for a moment the accusa- 
 tion of excessive love of drink that many English 
 writers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 
 
 * Op. Cit. p. 353-4. 
 
 * Dr. Lynch, Op. Oit. p. 223. 
 
 [I20] 
 
Virtuous and Noble from the Dane to Elizabeth 
 
 level at Irish womanhood. In the first place, if the 
 Saxon assertions were perfectly true, it is certain 
 that that standard of morality which from other 
 sources we know to have been the property of 
 Irish women could not possibly have existed. 
 Secondly, slanderous language about Irish char- 
 acter was no unusual thing in those days, and by 
 no means helps the veracity of these English 
 writers who speak of Irish feminine affection for 
 strong liquor. Thirdly, their accusations are in no 
 way substantiated by any of the native records. 
 Perhaps their *high conception' of Irish civilisa- 
 tion unduly affected their teeming imaginations 
 and led them to assume the existence of more pro- 
 nounced bibulous tendencies in Ireland than in 
 England, where they could contemplate those pot- 
 houses half-full of tippling women whom their 
 own literature portrayed. 
 
 With this we must bring this chapter to a close. 
 We do so feeling confident that the matter con- 
 tained therein demonstrates that the strength of 
 purity and the sunshine of geniality which made 
 their home in the soul of Irish womanhood from 
 the Danish to the Elisabethan troubles played no 
 inconsiderable part in the work of keeping the 
 spirit of Ireland elevated, self-reliant and unsub- 
 dued when the grandeur of its civilisation had been 
 humbled to the dust. 
 
 [121] 
 
CHAPTEE VIII 
 
 Devotion to Lettees feom the Sixth to the 
 Eighteenth Century 
 
 HERE are many who contend that a life 
 devoted to high intellectual emprises ex- 
 tracts all that is most womanly and best 
 from woman. Whatever amount of truth may be 
 contained in this theory there is no doubt that the 
 radical exclusion of woman from the sphere of 
 literature can mean for a nation the loss of a 
 substantial influence that might be highly con- 
 ducive to its moral and mental betterment. 
 Whether woman be the intellectual inferior of 
 man or not she is from the numerical standpoint 
 as important a fraction of the nation as man, and 
 the amount of mental power residing in her as a 
 part of the national entity must always be very 
 considerable. Besides, her donation to the printed 
 page is calculated to embody in a more marked 
 degree certain educational qualities which are of 
 rather rare occurence in the products of the mas- 
 culine literateur. 
 
 With this in mind we cannot help feeling regret 
 that so many centuries of the world's history 
 passed away with woman as a negligible quantity 
 in literature. In Ireland, however, we do not dis- 
 
 [122] 
 
Devotion to Letters, 600-1800 A, D. 
 
 cover such a notable absence of woman from 
 things literary. Though in this country, as in 
 every other, women writers were very rare until 
 the centuries that history calls modern, interest 
 in letters and learned men attained a degree of 
 intensity and continuity that can scarcely be 
 paralleled elsewhere. 
 
 This Irish feminine delight in letters manifested 
 itself in the desire of mediaeval women to acquire 
 several languages. It could be seen in the fact 
 that even in the earliest stages of the history of 
 christian Ireland, women of the world as well as 
 those who had assumed the garb of religion had 
 the ambition to transmit their thoughts in both 
 prosaic and poetic form to the guardianship of the 
 manuscript. Above all, it was apparent in the 
 history of that long line of noble ladies whose 
 patronage and encouragement sheltered and stim- 
 ulated within the precincts of their homes the 
 ^literati' of their land. 
 
 Earlier in this book we had occasion to speak 
 of woman's literary activity within the cloister 
 during the golden age of Irish Christianity. ^ We 
 can go back to the same period and find her sister 
 in secular life essaying similar work. In the sixth 
 century the mother of King Branduff had a writ- 
 ing style which was evidently utilised on wax 
 tablets. We are not compelled to deduce from 
 meagre fact the common ability of her sisters of 
 the Gael to manipulate the pen. It is distinctly 
 stated in the old record that ladies were ordinarily 
 
 [123] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 able to accomplish such a feat. Before we leave 
 the era of the saints, we find the daughter of the 
 King of Culann betaking herself to the great 
 school of Clonard to learn to read the psalms in 
 Latin. Thus she displayed a desire not only to 
 have a direct knowledge of the scriptures, but to 
 acquire a working grasp of one of the learned 
 languages of antiquity. It shows also that young 
 ladies had the same privilege as boys seeking cul- 
 ture at the learned institutions of the time. Very 
 likely it was due to such training that the lady 
 nurse of Cuicamne was able to utter in bardic 
 fashion over him whose impromptu verses which 
 paid tribute to the learning which was his whilst 
 he lived. 
 
 Later on, while the Danish storm was raging, 
 some poems exhaling a delicate intermingling of 
 joy and sorrow are supposed to have come from 
 the pen of Gormlai. In her, Ireland can probably 
 claim to have given birth to the earliest historical 
 woman writer, and one too who, as the world's 
 feminine literary pioneer, was the author of a 
 considerable amount of verse, for according to the 
 Annals of Clonmacnoise she ^* composed many 
 pitifiul and learned ditties.'' Her ** Lament for 
 Niall" was her best production, being character- 
 ised by originality and sincerity and a passion 
 that knows a striking restraint in its greatest 
 fervour. Its poignancy was aggravated by the 
 fact that it arose from hearing the joyful sounds 
 of a wedding which, kindling within her a remin- 
 
 [124] 
 
Devotion to Letters, 1600-1800 A,D. 
 
 iscent mood, sent her back in fancy to happy days, 
 the glory of which when contrasted with her pres- 
 ent state of bereavement led to a splendid sorrow. 
 With this knowledge of woman's association 
 with literature in the early centuries of the chris- 
 tian era we can, with high expectation of finding 
 that relationship continued, transfer our attention 
 to the middle ages. And we are not to suffer dis- 
 appointment, for we find women so vigorous in 
 the prosecution of their literary avocations that 
 the English government regarded them as worthy 
 of its persecuting attention. A Presentment of the 
 Grand Jury at Cork in the fourteenth century 
 mentioned in an unfavourable light as ** poets, 
 chroniclers and rhymers'' the names of Mary 
 O'Donoughue and Mary Clancy. Another who 
 might merit similar notice of the enemy of Irish 
 learning was Fionnuala Mac Finghinn, who was 
 known about the middle of this century as ^Hhe 
 woman who was best that was in Ireland in her 
 own sphere as the wife of a learned man. " There 
 yet remains one lady, Aine Mac Keon, who de- 
 serves recognition as one of the distinguished 
 women of this century. She can not have escaped 
 the fascination of letters, for she was married to 
 Matthew O'Eogain, who, according to the Annals 
 of Ulster was ^^fourteen years continuously in 
 Oxford delivering lectures." If then as the wife 
 of this cultured man she was the ' ' chief entertainer 
 and tribe-head of her ilk," it is no farfetched con- 
 
 [125] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 elusion that her services were usually at the 
 disposal of those who experienced the hypnotism 
 of their ancient lore. 
 
 Following the highway of learning into the next 
 century we continue to find amid the bardic com- 
 panies that trod thereon ladies who joined in the 
 procession to encourage or participate in its work. 
 Fiounnuala 'Kelly, well-known for her piety, 
 thought she was doing work of a supernatural 
 quality when her patronage went out to the 
 * literati'. She was ^*a woman that was a gen- 
 eral protection to the learned companies of Ire- 
 land." The next generation produced a lady, 
 Maragaret O'Connor of Offaly, in whose per- 
 sonality the spirit of mediaeval literary patronage 
 reached its apogee. The munificent attitude she 
 displayed in this matter is sufficient to enthrone 
 her as one of the most illustrious personages in 
 all the history of the principality of Offaly. The 
 receptions she provided for the learned ones had 
 a vastness and splendour that was truly regal. 
 Her invitation was not circumscribed even by the 
 four seas of her native land, for her noble hand 
 proferred hospitality to the children of the Gael 
 in exile, as well as at home. The numbers that 
 responded to her call were immense, but no one 
 left her princely residence unsatisfied. 
 
 We can not part with this noble woman without 
 giving that enthusiastic description of one of her 
 great receptions, which Mac Firbis has handed 
 
 [126] 
 
Devotion to Letters, 600-1800 A.D. 
 
 down to us. We are told that twice in the year 
 1434 whilst a dreadful famine searched the vitals 
 of the land did generous Margaret open her home 
 to the learned of Ireland and those who dwelt in 
 Scotland. With Mac Firbis as narrator, let us 
 listen for a moment to his tale of the splendid 
 pageantry of intellectualism that distinguished 
 one of these occasions. **A11 persons, Irish and 
 Scottish, or rather Albans'' were welcomed by 
 Margaret, *^as it is recorded in a Roll to that 
 effect, and the account was made thus, that the 
 chief kins of each family of the learned Irish 
 was by Gilla-na-Naemh Mac Egan's hand, the chief 
 judge to O'Connor, written in the Roll, and his 
 adherents and kinsmen, so that the aforesaid 
 number of 2700 was listed in the Roll with the 
 
 arts of dan or poetry, music and antiquity 
 
 And Margaret on the garrets of the great church 
 of Da Sinchell clad in cloth of gold, her dearest 
 friends about her, her clergy and judges too, 
 Calvage himself on horseback by the church's out- 
 ward side, to the end that all things might be done 
 
 orderly and each one served successively 
 
 As it was we never saw nor heard neither the like 
 of that day nor comparable to its glory and solace. 
 
 And so we have been informed that the 
 
 second day in Rathangan (on the feast of the 
 Assumption in harvest) was nothing inferior to 
 the first day. And she was the only woman that 
 had made most of preparing all manner of 
 
 [127] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 things possible to serve God and her soul, and not 
 that only, but while the world stands her very 
 many gifts to the Irish and Scottish nations shall 
 never be numbered. God^s blessing, the blessing 
 of all saints and every other blessing from 
 Jerusalem to Inis Gluair be on her going 
 to Heaven, and blessed be he that will hear and 
 read this for blessing her soul.''* Well, indeed, 
 did the lady responsible for such a scene merit 
 the eulogy of Thomas D'Arcy Magee when he 
 says : 
 
 '*She made the bardic spirit strong to face the evil days. 
 To the princes of a feudal age she taught the might of 
 
 love, 
 And her name, though woman's shall be scrolled their 
 
 warrior names above." 
 
 A few others in this century who befriended the 
 * literati' we should like to place in this book in 
 the company of Margaret of Offaly. There died 
 in 1447 Sarah 'Mulchonry, who so tenderly loved 
 the bards that she was called a ** nurse to all the 
 learned." In the following generation lived 
 Slaine, the wife of Mac William Burke of 
 Clanrickard, whose bounty towards ^sons of learn- 
 ing' was almost as ambitious as Margaret's. She 
 **was general protector of the (bardic) bands of 
 Ireland and Scotland and a woman who was of 
 best charity and humanity that was in her time. ' ' 
 And before the century had vanished into the past 
 it could lay claim to Margaret 'Eahilly, a scholar 
 
 * Mrs. Green. Op. Cit. Quot. pp. 346-7. 
 
 [128] 
 
Devotion to Letters, 600-1800 A.D, 
 
 of considerable ability, for she was * learned in 
 Latin and in English and in Irish. ' ' 
 
 Coming to the age of the Tudors, which wit- 
 nessed so much intellectual brilliancy in England, 
 and yet so much Saxon antagonism towards the 
 development of any such cultural magnificence in 
 Ireland, we find the women of the Gael still help- 
 ing, as far as in them lay, those who had con- 
 secrated themselves to the high emprises of the 
 poet, chronicler and raconteur. In the first part 
 of this age the lady of Hugh 'Neill was as noted 
 for her affection for *folk of learning' as for her 
 ardent piety. Whilst this lady entertained in the 
 North, the wife of Rory Mac Dermott in the West 
 performed a kindred labour of love towards the 
 devotees of literature. In her home at Lough 
 Key she cooperated enthusiastically with her hus- 
 band to make cheerful the lot of those men of 
 letters who were the target of the persecuting 
 Saxon. The tradition of generosity she upheld 
 was sustained in the ensuing generation within 
 the province where Lough Key was situated, by 
 Sheela Mac William Burke. No man of letters, 
 whatever his tribe might be, came unwelcomed to 
 her homestead, for it was ^^the resort of bards 
 from the Lifitey side, of the Dalcassions' choice 
 poets, of the schoolmen from near Barnasmore, of 
 the tale-reciters and of minstrels out of every airt 
 in Ireland.''* A contemporary of hers was the 
 
 * O' Grady. Cat. of MSS in British Museum. 404. 
 
 [129] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 wife of Brian Mac Manns, whose all-embracing 
 hospitality was as powerfully focussed upon the 
 literary man as the pilgrim and the penury- 
 stricken wanderer. As the annalist states it, she 
 was *Hruly hospitable to the poor of God and to 
 the (bardic) bands and retinues, and to pilgrims 
 and to permanent beggars, to erudite and to 
 ollaves, to every one of those that were wont to 
 be seeking largess throughout Ireland/^* In 1583 
 died Margaret O'Donnell, who won the praise of 
 the poet, Teigue Ball, for the protection she be- 
 stowed on men of learning. And even as late as 
 the year 1600, when the polity that had encouraged 
 and endowed the learned orders had gone down 
 in defeat, there was a Jean Maguire of 
 Fermanagh, who was ''the pillar of support and 
 maintenance .... of the poets and of men of 
 science.^' 
 
 Noble, indeed, was the part which the women 
 of Ireland played in the preservation of the 
 learned tradition of the land. No national ad- 
 versities divorced them from fidelity to that 
 cause, and though despite their efforts the ''bardic 
 bands" followed almost in their entirety the fun- 
 eral train of the civilisation of the brehons to its 
 seventeenth century grave, they helped to preserve 
 through centuries of bardic effort the abiding 
 impress of the old tradition upon the national 
 soul, an impress that no slayers of bard or brehon 
 
 * Annals of Ulster, ed. Hennessy. Dub. 1580. 
 
 [130] 
 
Devotion to Letters, 600-1800 A.D. 
 
 could eradicate. That spirit had to languish for 
 many years to come behind prison bars, but it 
 knew no fear of death, and only awaited the day 
 when the slightest liberalism of the oppressor 
 should enable it to reassert itself with resurrected 
 glory in a literature the progress of which shall 
 never be interrupted until full freedom greets it 
 in the land of its production. 
 
 ri3i] 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Heroines From Elizabeth to the Present Day 
 
 HEN at the dawn of the seventeenth 
 century we parted with the last of those 
 heroic women whose activities were asso- 
 ciated with the last agony of the Gaelic system of 
 government, we saw in the glory of their vanishing 
 forms the assurance that a something essential 
 to nationhood yet abided, and could not, like the 
 organism of a governmental system, be reduced 
 by gun and sword to inanimate helplessness. We 
 are now about to consider how the women who 
 came after them received the deathless ideals that 
 had been transmitted to them by the ladies who 
 held them aloft over the ruin accomplished by 
 the Tudors, and fought for that soul-heritage 
 until our present time. 
 
 The reigns of James I and Charles I passed 
 away leaving little of particular interest in fem- 
 inine activity to be recorded. During this period 
 the patriotic energy of women had, for the most 
 part, to be confined to the inner recesses of their 
 hearts. For its outward display there was but 
 meagre opportunity left, for the aggressive 
 forces of their land were temporarily shattered. 
 With the rest of the nation, they found them- 
 
 [132] 
 
Heroines From Elisabeth to the Present Day 
 
 selves utterly helpless in the hands of the spolia- 
 tors, who came to complete by wholesale 
 confiscation of the landed patrimony of the tribes 
 the work of infamy that Elizabeth had per- 
 petrated. With a wave of ejection from the 
 stronghold of their fathers sweeping over the 
 country, the only sphere left them for heroism 
 was within the domain of the mind, which they 
 might still hold intact, despite the hell of ruth- 
 lessness that was raging round them. They could 
 still preserve the determination never to be evicted 
 from the world of Gaelic ideals, though deprived 
 of their ancestral halls and lands. That this was 
 the case their heroic activity in an approaching 
 age was to manifest. 
 
 The era that was to show their fidelity arrived 
 when the parliament of England threw down the 
 gage of battle to Charles I. The worthless king 
 permitted the nation he had persecuted to arm 
 itself on his behalf when, taking advantage of the 
 civil war in England, it might with far more utility 
 for itself, have endeavoured to get rid of both 
 cavalier and roundhead. However, it was nation- 
 ally sincere in the policy it adopted, for, when 
 Charles was losing in England it hoped to appro- 
 priate him as the ruler of an independent anti- 
 Cromwellian Ireland. Besides, he was of Celtic 
 stock, and was not regarded as an intruder into 
 the family life of the Gael, provided he severed 
 all connections with the sovereignty of the Saxon. 
 
 [133] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 A crucial test of Irish loyalty to its own ideals 
 whilst advocating the cause of the Stuart, was the 
 treatment meted out to the nation when the Iron- 
 sides of the Protector of England won the day 
 against royalty. That is a fact well known to 
 readers of history. Here we intend to show how 
 conspicuously the womanhood of Ireland shared 
 the punishment for staunchness to its Celtic past. 
 
 We will open the bitter, yet glorious, tale with 
 a recital of some instances of the blood-lust of 
 the Puritans and the indiscriminate venting of its 
 fury upon women as well as men. When heroic 
 Drogheda capitulated after a wonderful resis- 
 tance, the number of women who share with the 
 men the tender ^ mercy' of the Puritan sword eas- 
 ily exceeded the thousand mark. In the vault of one 
 church, where a large number of women had taken 
 refuge, not a single lady escaped a cruel death. 
 When Coote plundered and destroyed the town 
 of Clontarf he, as admitted by Lord Clarendon, 
 massacred the women and ** three suckling 
 infants." In the same week the ladies of the 
 village of Bullock, fearful of sharing the fate of 
 their sisters of Clontarf, betook themselves in 
 boats to sea. Thither Colonel Clifford pursued 
 them where, being *^ overtaken, they were all 
 thrown overboard. ' * Who does not know of how 
 the heartless soldiery butchered three hundred 
 women as they knelt round the cross in the market 
 place of Wexford town 1 Worse than any we have 
 
 [134] 
 
Heroines From Elizabeth to the Present Day 
 
 recounted, perhaps, was the massacre of Island 
 Magee, where the naked steel and the jagged 
 precipice were the weapons used by the Cromwel- 
 lian ruffians to dispatch helpless women. After 
 multitudes of them had been done to death in 
 their beds, the remnant was driven at the bayonet 
 point over the Gobbins cliffs, where the lacerating 
 rocks and the icy waves completed the work of 
 the murdering steel. The vision of surging woe 
 and infamy that the tale of that night's crime 
 produced in the fancy of Ethna Carbery has re- 
 sulted in as fierce a song of vengeance as Ireland 's 
 poetic anthology contains. We make no apology 
 for giving it in its entirety. 
 
 ''I am Brian Boy Magee — 
 My father was Eoghan Ban — 
 I was awakened from happy dreams 
 By the shouts of my startled clan ; 
 And I saw through the leaping glare 
 That marked where our homestead stood, 
 My mother swing by her hair — 
 And my brothers lie in their blood. 
 
 In the creepy cold of the night 
 The pitiless wolves came down — 
 Scotch troops from the Castle grim 
 Guarding Knockf ergus town ; 
 And they hacked and lashed and hewed, 
 With musket and rope and sword, 
 Till my murdered kin lay thick, 
 In pools, by the Slaughter Ford. 
 
 [135] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 I fought by my father 's side, 
 
 And when we were fighting sore 
 
 "We saw a line of their steel 
 
 With our shrieking women before ; 
 
 The red-coats drove them on 
 
 To the verge of the Gobbins gray, 
 
 Hurried them, God, the sight ! 
 
 As the sea foamed up for its prey. 
 
 Oh ! tall were the Gobbin cliffs. 
 And sharp were the rocks, my woe ! 
 And tender the limbs that met 
 
 Such terrible death below ; 
 Mother and babe and maid 
 They clutched at the empty air, 
 "With eyeballs widened in fright, 
 
 That hour of despair. 
 
 (Sleep soft in your heaving bed, 
 
 little fair love of my heart ! 
 The bitter oath I have sworn 
 Shall be of my life a part; 
 And for every piteous prayer 
 You prayed on your way to die. 
 May I hear an enemy plead, 
 While I laugh and deny.) 
 
 In the dawn that was gold and red, 
 Ay, red as the blood-choked stream, 
 
 1 crept to the perilous brink — 
 Great Christ ! was the night a dream 
 In all the island of gloom 
 
 I only had life that day — 
 
 Death covered the green hill-sides, 
 
 And tossed in the Bay. 
 
 [136] 
 
Heroines From Elizabeth to the Present Day 
 
 I have vowed by the pride of my sires — 
 By my mother's wandering ghost — 
 By my kinsfolk's shattered bones 
 Hurled on the cruel coast — 
 By the sweet, dead face of my love, 
 And the wound in her gentle breast 
 To follow that murderous band, 
 A sleuth hound who knows no rest. 
 
 I shall go to Phelim O'Neill 
 With my sorrowful tale and crave 
 A blue-bright blade of Spain, 
 In the ranks of his soldiers brave. 
 And God grant me strength to wield 
 That shining avenger well — 
 When the Gael shall sweep his foe 
 Through the yawning gates of Hell. 
 
 I am Brian Boy Magee ! 
 And my creed is a creed of hate; 
 Love, Peace, I have cast aside — 
 But Vengeance, Vengeance, I wait ! 
 Till I pay back the fourfold debt 
 For the horrors I witnessed there. 
 When my brothers moaned in their blood. 
 And my mother swung by her hair. ' ' 
 
 These bewildering orgies of blood were surely 
 not inspired by the mere royalist creed of their 
 victims. Cromwell did not wade to power 
 through any such, welter of blood in England. He 
 did so in Ireland because the daughters of the 
 Gael were not merely advocates of the Stuart 
 cause, but true champions of the national gospel. 
 
 [137] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 But methods even worse than these were re- 
 sorted to, that a noble womanhood might taste of 
 the most diabolic suffering that a perverted human 
 ingenuity could devise for it. They were torn in 
 thousands from the bosom of their native land 
 and sent into exile to become the prey of the 
 swinish desires of their Saxon masters. English- 
 men, with their astute commercial instinct, saw 
 a new field for enterprise in the ranks of Irish 
 womanhood, and discussed the question of its 
 manipulation with their government in terms of 
 pounds, shillings and pence. A systematic 
 ^ rounding-up ' of Irish ladies resembling the slave 
 hunts of the African wilds became a favorite 
 pastime of efficient traders, that their sugar plan- 
 tations in the West Indies might have a bountiful 
 supply of physical and moral slaves. Those alone 
 could consider themselves immune from the 
 hunters ' toils whose loyalty to England had been 
 proved to be unimpeachable. Should those who 
 were caught in the venatorial net decide, after 
 capture, on the Anglicising of their minds, they 
 had a fair chance of escaping the most degrading 
 outrages, for such a perversion was a most 
 savoury dish for the Saxon imperial appetite. 
 This is clearly demonstrated in the correspondence 
 of some of those responsible for the success of the 
 slave mart. They did not object to helping to 
 preserve Irish feminine goodness, provided it 
 merited such liberal treatment by a previous dis- 
 play of affection for England. Stimulated by this 
 
 [138] 
 
Heroines From Elizabeth to the Present Bay 
 
 pious motive, it has been estimated that Cromwell 
 sent twenty thousand Irish, of whom a large per- 
 centage were women, into the Virginian colonies 
 and the West Indies. 
 
 Another proof, if proof were needed, of the 
 sterling Gaelic spirit and heroism of the women 
 of those days, may be seen in the marriage laws 
 enacted by the Cromwellian legislators. Men 
 marrying transplantable, in other words, truly 
 Irish ladies, ipso facto exposed themselves to the 
 peril of a similar fate. Soldiers of the Common- 
 wealth were forbidden to marry Irish ladies unless 
 they became Protestant, which at least in those 
 days meant English, lest the Puritan brand of 
 Christianity and patriotism might fade away 
 before the conquering influence of Gaelic fidelity 
 to God and country. 
 
 So much for the evidence of the Irishwoman's 
 hardihood of soul in the treatment which she 
 received from those who looked with keen dis- 
 relish on the type of fortitude she prized. We 
 can not part with Cromwellian days without 
 citing one shining example of woman's heroism. 
 This was Rose O'Doherty, the wife of the great 
 Owen Eoe O'Neill. It was her entreaties that 
 were largely responsible for the transference of 
 his Spanish blade from the Continent to Ireland. 
 It was thus considerably due to her patriotic heart 
 that Ireland wooed back from the military 
 glamour of Europe one of the ablest soldiers that 
 her history can claim. Were it not for most 
 
 [139] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 unlocked for circumstances, the man whom Rose 
 persuaded to come to Ireland would in all prob- 
 ability have accomplished the emancipation of his 
 people. She is assuredly deserving of a dignified 
 position in the pantheon of Irish memory. For 
 this reason we like to believe that patriotic grati- 
 tude enshrined her name in the music of Ireland, 
 where the knowledge of its honour should make 
 doubly dear the haunting melody of Eoisin Dubh. 
 With Eose we leave the blood and iron rule of 
 the dour Puritan behind us, and after watching 
 the sway of Charles II pass away, we find England 
 again thrown into the confusion of a civil war. 
 "William of Orange was invited to dethrone the 
 Catholic James, and soon, with the aid of 
 Protestant England, he compelled the last of the 
 Stuart kings to fly to Ireland for safety. The 
 Gael again, with much more sentimentality and 
 generosity than the instinct of national self- 
 preservation should have permitted, took to his 
 bosom the good-for-nothing royal fugitive because 
 of his racial stock and faith. In the struggle that 
 ensued between Ireland and the Orange leader, 
 the resurrected chance of smiting the Saxon ap- 
 pealed to Irish women. Many instances of their 
 heroism might be recounted, but the valour they 
 displayed at one great moment of that struggle 
 throws sufficient light on the tenacious and long- 
 suffering patriotism of Irish femininity. That deed 
 of heroic calibre the walls of Limerick witnessed. 
 Every other fortified city had succumbed to the 
 
 [140] 
 
Heroines From Elizabetlfi to the Present Bay 
 
 Williamite attacks, when the Irish troops deter- 
 mined to make their last great fight at the city 
 on the Shannon. The struggle here was one of the 
 most bitter of the whole war. But no ferocity- 
 could quell the fortitude of its inhabitants, women 
 as well as men. And when the ranks of the de- 
 fending manhood grew thinner as the siege pro- 
 gressed, and the stout walls were reeling to ruin 
 before the Williamite assaults, the heroic women 
 of that city rallied many a time their hard-pressed 
 men and side by side with them, smote with any 
 weapon at hand the onrushing troops of the 
 Orange leader. If, finally Limerick yielded to 
 the attacker, no one can say it was for lack of 
 battling spirit in its feminine population. 
 
 Though the heroines of this southern city gazed 
 on the battered and stormed defense works that 
 had been their pride, and the star of their leader, 
 Sarsfield, had set behind Irish skies, the work 
 they had done gave a new fascination to that 
 appeal of the Poor Old Woman to her future 
 daughters to abide in truth and fidelity. How 
 clamorous and persistent that appeal was to be 
 in the immediate future, and how generously 
 responsive to its voice womanhood was to prove 
 itself, the eighteenth century can tell. 
 
 The fall of Limerick rang the death knell of the 
 Stuart cause in Ireland, but its sanguine and ima- 
 ginative adherents continued to dream and smg 
 for many a day of the return of a Jacobite kmg, 
 for whom a resurrected land might once more fly 
 
 [HI] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 to arms. In these reveries and songs there was 
 entombed an imagery that could have risen only 
 from the soul of a nation where women's heroic 
 instinct still lived on unimpaired, and its arrest- 
 ing nature had seized the popular worshipping 
 tendency with all its pristine vigour. When the 
 people spoke in verse of their national destiny, 
 they saw in the pitiful plight of their land all the 
 appealing characteristics of a lady of ideal beauty 
 in distress, and the urgent duty of the chivalry 
 of the nation's manhood coming to her rescue. 
 The bards say visions of Erin robed in the delicate 
 and alluring mysticism of a symbolic Granuaile, 
 Kathleen ni Houlihan or Dark Rosaleen, and made 
 the thoughts that arose therefrom a controlling 
 feature of eighteenth century poetry. 
 
 This wave of idealism bearing woman on its 
 crest swept onwards through this century until, in 
 its latest years, the trend of political developments 
 gave many a noble lady an opportunity of verify- 
 ing by stern activity the recitude of the people 
 that had made her sex a glorified symbol of the 
 national being. The organization of the society of 
 United Irishmen paved the way for the heroic role 
 that the daughters of Ireland played during the 
 eventful years of the last nineties. 
 
 In speaking of the women of that period, we can 
 begin with no nobler individual than Sarah 
 Curran, whose devotion to Eobert Emmet and 
 the cause for which he stood, has immortalised 
 her name, and made her one of the leading types 
 
 [142] 
 
Heroines From Elisabeth to the Present Day 
 
 of Irish feminine fidelity to the call of a nation 
 and its manhood. A romance of exquisite beauty 
 might be constructed from the story of Miss 
 Currants relations with Eobert Emmet, but, how- 
 ever tempting the subject may be, we are com- 
 pelled for lack of space to deal with it briefly in 
 this book. The intensity and steadfastness of her 
 life-long devotion to the man who loved his 
 country before all things, has scarcely been sur- 
 passed in history. It has been worthily com- 
 memorated in Moore ^s immortal musical eulogy, 
 ' ' She is Far from the Land. * ' This most plaintive 
 of melodies with its armoury of soul-searching 
 weapons tells how the allegiance to her patriot 
 lover never waned, and no distraction could dull 
 the sense of loss experienced, when the law of the 
 Saxon deprived her of him. In foreign climes, 
 like a Siren voice, the music of his memory sang 
 her to death, the death of a woman who died of 
 the passion of a patriot for a patriot lover. Listen 
 to Moore as he tells the sweet, sad story : 
 
 She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps, 
 And lovers around her are sighing; 
 But coldly she turns from their gaze and weeps, 
 For her heart in his grave is lying. 
 
 He had lived for his love, for his country he died, 
 They were all that to life had entwined him ; 
 Nor soon shall the tears of his country be dried, 
 Nor long will his love stay behind him." 
 
 [143] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 That which has been stated in prose and verse of 
 the unflinching loyalty of Miss Curran to Emmet 
 is unwarrantable, many people contend. They 
 believe they find justification for the maintenance 
 of this attitude towards Miss Curran in the fact 
 that she got married after Emmet's death. It is 
 our opinion that, if the circumstances surrounding 
 that marriage are honestly considered, they com- 
 pletely exonerate Sarah Curran from the charge 
 of infidelity to the memory of the Irish patriot. 
 Her family and friends persistently urged her, if 
 for no other reason, for the sake of her health, to 
 wed someone who would take a husband's care 
 of her. It was only after many entreaties that 
 she yielded to their wishes, and when she did so, 
 she seemed to manifest a lack of interest in her 
 action that could only be accounted for by the 
 all-absorbing devotion of her soul to the one she 
 had lost. Besides, the marriage did not accom- 
 plish what her friends desired, for, despite every 
 attention on the part of her husband, she died 
 soon afterwards in a foreign clime. 
 
 Linked in honour with the fate of Emmet, was 
 the life of his servant, Anne Devlin, socially 
 humble, but kin in a spirit of the grandees of the 
 soul. She inherited the daring, ingenuity and 
 energy of her uncle, Michal Dwyer, the famous 
 Wicklow outlaw, who for so long a time defied and 
 outwitted the hunters of the English crown. She 
 actively participated in the preparations for the 
 '98 insurrection, helping to forge the engines of 
 
 [144] 
 
Heroines From Elisabeth to the Present Day 
 
 war. And, when at last her master was caught 
 in the meshes of the law, no torture could enduce 
 her to surrender any secret which could facilitate 
 the conviction of her beloved chief. What suffer- 
 ings she vanquished to establish her loyalty to 
 Dark Eosaleen are told us in that most striking 
 tribute which Dr. Madden has paid to her memory. 
 *^The extraordinary sufferings endured, and the 
 courage and fidelity displayed by this young 
 woman, have few parallels, even in the history of 
 those times which tried people's souls, and called 
 forth the best, occasionally, as well as the basest 
 of human feelings. She was tortured, frightfully 
 maltreated, her person goaded and pricked with 
 bayonets, hung up by the neck, and was only 
 spared to be exposed to temptations, to be sub- 
 jected to new and worse horrors, than any she 
 had undergone, to suffer solitary confinement, to 
 be daily tormented with threats of further priva- 
 tions, till her health broke down and her mind was 
 shattered, and after years of suffering in the same 
 prison .... she was turned adrift on the world 
 without a house to return to, or friends or rela- 
 tions to help or succour her.''* Did nothing sur- 
 vive but this solitary passage of Dr. Madden it 
 should suffice to make the name of Anne Devlin 
 one to be treasured by a people fashioned in a 
 mould of chivalry. 
 
 Before dismissing the name of Emmet, we can 
 not afford to forget the wife of Thomas Addis 
 
 * United Irishmen, p. 335. 
 
 [145] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 Emmett, the brother of Eobert. Gently nurtured 
 and unaccustomed to the commonplace trials of 
 life, she was fated to encounter circumstances of 
 such a forbidding character as might be calculated 
 to overcome even one trained in the school of 
 adversity. But they could not cow the spirit of 
 Jane Emmett. She beheld her happy home in 
 Stephen's Green invaded by a brutal soldiery, 
 and the menacing steel pointed at the innocent 
 children in their cots, whilst no domestic privacy 
 was respected and her husband was removed to 
 Newgate prison. Thither she pursued him and, 
 eluding the vigilence of the guards she, who had 
 *^ never waked but to a joyful morning*' endured 
 with him the austerites of a cell but twelve feet 
 square. Discovered, she was ordered to leave, but 
 her ^^mind was made up,'' and her womanly 
 steadfastness forced the prison authorities 
 to submit to her presence. 
 
 Later on, Thomas Addis was removed to Fort 
 George in Scotland and here, too, the heroism of 
 his wife brought him her company to cheer his 
 cell. There she continued to administer to her 
 patriot husband all the consolation of a faithful 
 wife, until they tasted freedom on American soil. 
 In the land of the free she enjoyed the honours 
 that her sufferings merited. Having survived her 
 husband nineteen years she, in the words of Dr. 
 Madden, * terminated in a foreign land a long 
 career, chequered by many trials, over which a 
 virtuous woman's self-sacrificing devotion, the 
 
 [146] 
 
Heroines From Elizabeth to the Present Day 
 
 courage and constancy of a faithful wife, the force 
 of a mother 's love eventually prevailed. ' ^ 
 
 Thinking of the Emmets inevitably directs 
 one 's attention to Theobald Wolfe Tone, and that 
 one most intimately associated with him, his wife. 
 The part Mrs. Tone had in the making of the 
 patriotic career of her husband in its initial stages 
 forcibly reminds one of Eose O'Doherty and her 
 responsibility for the services rendered by Owen 
 Roe to Ireland. As Rose persuaded the great 
 leader of the seventeenth century to draw his 
 sword for his native land, so Mrs. Tone trans- 
 ferred the attention of her husband from farming 
 in the United States to sowing the seeds of insur- 
 rection in Ireland. He had purchased an estate 
 for himself at Princeton, New Jersey, that there 
 he might have that liberty which Ireland could 
 not provide, and the bliss of unperturbed family 
 life. But, Mrs. Tone preferred the high and 
 arduous way along which the patriot must fare, 
 and with a sacrificial spirit denied herself the 
 haven of peaceful home life for the comradeship 
 of one ever threatened by the law that seeks to 
 stifle in martyr blood the deathless voice of a 
 nation. Through her, indeed, America lost a dis- 
 tinguished citizen, but Ireland obtained one 
 worthy of her most select niche in the temple of 
 her great ones, and an inspiration for her 
 principle-loving sons for all time. 
 
 Once Tone had embarked on the enterprise that 
 was to lead him through terrible seas to the haven 
 
 [147] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 of death, she never for a moment forsook him. 
 How intimately she entered into his life during 
 that period of grievous anxiety and how greatly 
 he prized her sympathy and aid, we learn from 
 the words of Tone himself. His great confidence 
 in her ability, as well as her will to sustain him 
 and his cause, should be most convincing, since it 
 emanates from a mind such as his. Inferior 
 women may sometimes be the mates of great men, 
 but when distinguished husbands, after the inti- 
 mate study of their wives that married life affords 
 them attribute to their partners considerable 
 credit for their own success, the objects of their 
 praise invariably deserve it. 
 
 Such, we believe, to have been verified in the 
 case of Mrs. Tone, for her masterly husband never 
 ceases to eulogise her. There is nothing more 
 beautiful in the world of domestic literature than 
 the compliments which Tone paid his wife in the 
 epistolary exchanges between them. Obsessed with 
 the feeling of her grandeur of character he pro- 
 claims her *Hhe light of my eyes and the pulse of 
 my heart.'* He told her that she was as indis- 
 pensable to his life and its strength as the nurtur- 
 ing rays of the sun are to the oak of the forest, 
 before the day of storm. In his Autobiography he 
 said that in his work he always relied on her assis- 
 tance and received it. ** Women in general, '* he 
 said, ^*I am sorry to say are mercenary, and, 
 especially, if they have children, they are ready 
 to make all sacrifices to their establishment. But 
 
 [148] 
 
Heroines From Elisabeth to the Present Day 
 
 my dearest love had bolder and juster views. On 
 every occasion of my life I consulted her ; we had 
 no secrets one from the other, and I unvaryingly 
 found her think and act with energy and courage 
 .... If ever I succeed in life and arrive at any- 
 thing like station and eminence, I shall consider 
 it due to her counsels and example.''* 
 
 Confirming Tone 's appreciation of her are those 
 of Lucien Bonaparte and Dr. Madden. The 
 brother of Napoleon when addressing the French 
 Directory on her behalf compared her to ^* those 
 women of Sparta, who on the return of their 
 countrymen from battle, when, with anxious looks, 
 they ran over the ranks, and missed among them 
 their sons, their husbands and their brothers, 
 exclaimed: '*He died for his country; he died for 
 the republic!" We cannot refrain from giving 
 the bouquet of praise with which Dr. Madden has 
 adorned her memory. * * She was a faithful, noble- 
 minded, true-hearted and generous woman," he 
 states, * 'utterly divested of selfishness, ready to 
 make any sacrifices, and endure any suffering for 
 her husband, her children and her country. 
 Always cheerful, trustful and hopeful in her hus- 
 band's destiny, and strongly impressed with the 
 goodness of his heart, and the brilliancy of his 
 talents, and his devotedness to his cause, she was 
 the solace of his life, the never-failing comfort of 
 it, the courageous partner and partaker of his 
 trials in adversity, and the support of his weari- 
 
 * Autobiography, p. 66. 
 
 [149] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 ness of mind in all his struggles, labours and 
 embarassments. ' '** 
 
 In the noble company to which Mrs. Tone 
 belonged we must also include Lady Lucy 
 Fitzgerald, the sister of Lord Edward. Akin to 
 her brother in many aspects of temperament, she 
 was like him, too, in the f ervoUr of her devotion 
 to the Dear Dark Head. She loved the cause he 
 advocated, and she loved him especially because 
 of his loyalty to that cause. Two quotations from 
 her letters are sufficient to convey to the reader 
 the spirit that was her's. They are shot through 
 and through with pride of race, admiration of the 
 patriotic passion of her brother, a courage that 
 quailed before no foe of her land, and an immov- 
 able confidence in the ability of her nation to 
 march with dignity to freedom, ** Irishmen,'' she 
 exclaims, .... '4t is Edward Fitzgerald's sister 
 who addresses you: It is a woman, but that 
 woman is his sister : she would therefore die for 
 you as he did. I don't mean to remind you of 
 what he did for you .... He was a Paddy and no 
 more; he desired no other title than this. He 
 never deserted you — will you desert yourselves *? 
 .... Will you forget the title which it is still in 
 your power to ennoble? .... Will you make it 
 the scoff of your triumphant enemies, while 'tis 
 in your power to raise it beyond all other glory 
 to immortality? Yes, this is the moment, the 
 precious moment which must either stamp with 
 
 * Op. Cit. vol. III. p. 2.52. 
 
 [150] 
 
Heroines From Elkaheth to the Present Day 
 
 infamy the name of Irishmen and denote you 
 forever wretched .... or raise the Paddies to 
 the consequence which they deserve, and which 
 England shall no longer with-hold, to happiness, 
 freedom, glory.'' Again she tells in trumpet 
 tones of the perfect mingling of the waters of 
 Edward's love and her's, as they rushed ever 
 onward to their ocean receptacle, Ireland. In 
 her *^he met a soul, twin to his own" because each 
 breathed and loved alike their object, Ireland; 
 Ireland, where each had first drawn breath — 
 Ireland, greater in her misfortunes, in her wrongs 
 than the most favoured country of the earth .... 
 Ireland, whom neither falsehood could entice nor 
 interest bribe to apostacy, suffering through suc- 
 cessive ages from the oppression of a nation 
 inferior to Herself in all but in one of the adven- 
 titious circumstances of fortune." 
 
 Just as heroic as Lady Lucy was Mary Anne, 
 the sister of Henry Joy McCracken. In fact, if 
 we wanted to be skeptical of any evidence of 
 courage short of positive acts, we should be 
 inclined to make her far superior in fortitude to 
 the sister of the Geraldine. When the cause which 
 was dear to the heart of Henry met with failure 
 in Antrim, she was with him to keep him strong 
 in an atmosphere of defeat, and when the last 
 grim circumstances attending his exit from mortal 
 life became a reality, she failed not to be with him 
 until the very end. We will let herself tell in 
 her unostentatious way how her magnificent 
 
 [151] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 sisterly love poured honey into the vinegar and 
 
 gall of poor Henry's final progress towards his 
 
 calvary. **Abont five p. m., he was ordered to the 
 
 place of execution, the old market-house, the 
 
 ground of which had been given to the town by 
 
 his great, great grandfather. I took his arm, and 
 
 we walked together to the place of execution, where 
 
 I was told it was the general's orders that I should 
 
 leave him, which I peremptorily refused. Harry 
 
 begged I would go. Clasping my hands around 
 
 him (I did not weep till then) I said I could bear 
 
 anything but leaving him. Three times he kissed 
 
 me, and entreated I would go ; and looking around 
 
 to recognise some friend to put me in charge of, 
 
 he beckoned to a Mr. Boyd, and said, *He will take 
 
 charge of you.' Mr. Boyd stepped forward; and 
 
 fearing my further refusal would disturb the last 
 
 moments of my dearest brother, I suffered myself 
 
 to be led away." These simple words of Mary 
 
 Anne, and the act to which they testified, establish 
 
 her beyond all doubt a queen in the realm of 
 
 heroism. It is no wonder that Madden should say 
 
 of her that her name *^has become associated in 
 
 the North with that of her beloved brother. The 
 
 recollection of every act of his seems to have been 
 
 stored up in her mind, as if she felt the charge 
 
 of his reputation had been committed to her 
 
 especial care. In that attachment there are traits 
 
 to be noticed indicative not only of singleness of 
 
 hearts and benevolence of disposition, but of a 
 
 noble spirit of heroism, strikingly displayed in the 
 
 [152] 
 
Heroines From Elizabeth to the Present Bay 
 
 performance of perilous duties, of services ren- 
 dered at the hazard of life, at great pecuniary- 
 sacrifice, not only to that dear brother, but at a 
 later period to his faithful friend, the unfortunate 
 Thomas Russell. '* 
 
 The nobility of soul that was Miss McCracken's 
 was typical of that of many another sister, wife 
 and mother of these trying times. With these, 
 we are compelled to deal more briefly, because a 
 certain needless repetition would be involved in 
 the lengthy recital of their activities, for the roads 
 of heroic endeavor they traversed were very like 
 in nature to that trodden by the sister of Mc- 
 Cracken. There was Julia Sheares, the sister of 
 John and Henry, whose unremitting solicitude for 
 her brother 's welfare was lauded in the last letter 
 of one of them to her. There was the sister of 
 Myles Byrnes, who, when the savagery of the 
 soldiery drove the people of Wexford to the 
 mountains, was the most prominent of a large 
 number of women who braved the perils of the 
 hills to keep their kin informed of the movements 
 of the troops. Of the wife of Samuel Neils on, 
 Mrs. Concannon has said that no woman of '98 
 **has suffered so much,'' yet, when she came to 
 the end of her sorrowful life she deserved this 
 epitaph on her tomb : * ^ a woman who was an orna- 
 ment to her sex ; who fulfilled in the most exemp- 
 lary manner, the duties of a daughter, wife and 
 mother." What Irishman cannot feel proud of 
 the patriotic fervour of the mother of the 
 
 [153] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 Teelings ? She prided in her noble ancestry, and 
 the gallant actions of some of them that were so 
 creditable to their rank. She knew all the elegance 
 and happiness of a cultured home, and yet she 
 did not hesitate to offer on the altar of patriotism 
 the two sons, who were the very light of her life. 
 Who that loves liberty, and feels the thrill of that 
 enchantment that comes from the shackled beauty 
 of a national spirit that would feign, with un- 
 fettered pinions, wing its way in an atmosphere of 
 its own creation, can think without admiration of 
 Mrs. Michael O'Dwyer, who left ignoble security 
 for the perils of that defiant freedom on the moun- 
 tains of Wicklow, with her noted outlaw husband? 
 Here she stood by him when the bloodhounds of 
 England were hot on his trail, and when at last 
 he was taken and sent into exile she bore with him 
 the sorrows of his prison ship, and gave him, 
 during the few years of life that remained to him 
 on foreign soil, the solace of a brave woman's 
 care. Two other women, not as well known as 
 those whom we have already placed to the credit 
 of the eighteenth century, but girt round with as 
 deathless a valour as any of them, were Eose 
 Hope and Betsey Gray. Rose, who was the wife 
 of James Hope, was a valuable aid to her husband 
 whenever his patriotic work demanded the ser- 
 vices of a courageous and resourceful supporter. 
 Before the rebellion in the North, she did good 
 work by helping to get arms and ammunition to 
 the United Irishmen, whilst apparently plying the 
 
 [IS4] 
 
Heroines From Elizabeth to the Present Bay 
 
 innocent business of a marketer. She did the same 
 in the old city on the Liffey, though her efforts 
 were attended by some hairbreath escapes. Many 
 of her other adventures, telling of the dauntless 
 soul that lived in this daughter of Erin, might 
 be recounted. To the North, too, belonged Betsey 
 Gray, for she came from the vicinity of Bangor. 
 She, not content with being a purveyor of am- 
 munition, sought the more satisfactory work of 
 helping to use it on the Saxon. When the men of 
 Down came out to do battle in '98, she found a 
 place in their ranks. But poor Betsey, with her 
 brother and sweetheart, were overpowered by a 
 party of yeomen before they could do much for 
 their country. She received, however, the death 
 she longed for, and her spirit must feel joyful if 
 it knows that her honourable end has kept her 
 memory green in the popular fancy of the neigh- 
 borhood. The local folk love to picture her clad 
 in green, and, mounted on her charger as, with 
 glistening blade, she smote the foe of her land. 
 With Betsy we say farewell to the heroines of the 
 eighteenth century, and the threads of golden 
 story they have woven into the fabric of their 
 country's history. 
 
 In the wake of the death blow that was given to 
 the dream of '98 came the destruction of Irish leg- 
 islative independence. Thus English statesmen 
 intended to consign to a grave that harboured no 
 ray of hope that sanguine idealism in which Irish 
 strivings of centuries for national emancipation 
 
 [155] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 had been rooted. They were destined, as usual, 
 to be disillusioned. Ireland, ever fruitful of 
 leadership, did not grow sterile now. She soon 
 produced O'Connell, who plumbed the depths of 
 national self-consciousness, and reawakened the 
 dormant appetite for freedom. That energy 
 which the Emancipator stirred and loosed was 
 destined to know but little rest, until it brought 
 those ideals of liberty from which it sprang so 
 close to realisation as they are to-day. 
 
 Pursuing that role which women played in this 
 resurgent activity for liberty, we find nothing that 
 can justify production in this book, until about 
 the middle of the nineteenth century. By this, 
 we do not mean to imply that they slumbered dur- 
 ing the years between the Union and this period 
 without feeling the throb of the reinvigorated 
 national impulse. This they certainly did, for the 
 great women of the second generation of this 
 century would have been an impossibility, had not 
 their mothers, who linked them with the days of 
 '98 been admirers of the heroism furnished by the 
 ladies of that time. However, until the spirit of 
 Young Ireland manifested itself, the patriotic 
 activity of women was almost completely unosten- 
 tatious, and the great work it accomplished was 
 within the quiet purlieus of the home. 
 
 With Catholic Emancipation a reality, and 
 Kepeal of the Union almost an accomplished fact, 
 the nation, sniffing so much of the air of liberty 
 became restless, until it could enjoy it without 
 
 [156] 
 
Heroines From Elisabeth to the Present Day 
 
 check or limit. The Young Ireland Movement, 
 having for its object no mere legislative freedom 
 but the absolute right of the Irish people to regu- 
 late every department of their life as they thought 
 best, gripped the country. Into this movement, 
 the women of the country leaped with an eager- 
 ness and courage which would do justice to the 
 patriotic instinct of the daughters of Ireland, in 
 the most thrilling days of the past. 
 
 Amongst these Young Ireland women of action 
 there were two who deserve space for individual 
 attention, *Eva' and 'Speranza' of the * Nation.' 
 What *Eva* preached in the newspapers of Young 
 Ireland, fearlessness and patriotic passion, she 
 clearly manifested in her own actions. Who that 
 has heard of it can forget that memorable scene 
 when, in a moment of supreme trial, she surren- 
 dered him who was dearest to her, that Dark 
 Eosaleen, whose claims on his affection she 
 regarded as immeasureably more sacred than 
 hers, might suffer no injury. As her sweetheart, 
 Kevin 'Doherty, stood on the dock charged with 
 the high crime of fealty to his mystic lover, * Eva * 
 was close beside him to confirm his loyalty to that 
 passion. She told him before a crowded court- 
 house, to proclaim his patriotism like a man, and 
 take whatever penalty such a noble confession 
 entailed. Kevin did so, and for ten long years in 
 prison the silver sound of her heroic words, **be 
 thou faithful, 1 11 wait, ' ' kept chiming a message 
 of hope in his heart, until the day of his liberation. 
 
 [157] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 He was not disappointed by 'Eva' for she had 
 waited, and gave him the reward of her wedded 
 affection for the love that had wedded his soul to 
 Ireland. 
 
 In the sisterhood pledged to patriotic endeavor, 
 'Eva' had a worthy comrade in 'Speranza.' 
 Crowned with beauty, youth and intellectuality, 
 she was a brilliant luminary in the social firma- 
 ment of Dublin, but no empty glamour of the 
 drawing-room could divorce her from the great 
 service to which she was pledged. 
 
 From her pen a message of courage and truth 
 challenging every knavish foe of her land ever 
 leaped forth. With truth as with a sword of light 
 she bade her countrymen 
 
 ''Go war against evil and sin, 
 
 'Gainst the falsehood and meanness and seeming 
 
 That stifle the true life within. 
 
 Your bonds are the bonds of the soul, 
 
 Strike them off and you spring to the goal. ' ' 
 
 What her pen espoused she never feared to 
 support in her own person. The most remarkable 
 occasion on which she showed that she could 
 practice what she preached was at the trial of 
 Gavan Duffy. We will let A. M. Sullivan describe 
 her action in his enthusiastic and dramatic wsij. 
 ''When the struggle was over, and Gavan Duffy 
 was on trial for high treason among the articles 
 read against him was one from the suppressed 
 number of the Nation, entitled ' ' Jacta Alea Est. ' ' 
 
 [158] 
 
Heroines From Elizabeth to the Present Day 
 
 It was without example as a revolutionary appeal. 
 Exquisitely beautiful as a piece of writing it 
 glowed with fiery incentive. It was in fact a prose 
 poem, a wild war song, in which Ireland was 
 called upon that day in the face of earth and 
 Heaven to invoke the ultima ratio of oppressed 
 nations. The Attorney-General read the article 
 amidst breathless silence. At its close there was 
 a murmur of emotion in the densely-crowded 
 court, when suddenly a cry from the ladies^ gal- 
 lery startled everyone. ^^I am the culprit if crime 
 it be,'* was spoken in a woman's voice. It was 
 the voice of queenly ^Speranza.' '' The woman 
 that uttered those words was certainly one who 
 would not be a failure even if she had to grapple 
 with more stern fact. 
 
 The armed efforts of the Young Irelanders 
 proved abortive but the national atmosphere 
 remained charged with the lightnings of rebellion 
 until it assumed a most menacing aspect a few 
 years later. The Fenians believed in the use of 
 the same weapons as Young Ireland. They were 
 ready like their mythical ancestors of old to court 
 almost certain death in battle against the armed 
 might of England. Amongst them there were to 
 be found members of the gentle sex who were as 
 brave as the bravest of their manhood. Typically 
 such was Ellen O'Leary, the sister of the lion- 
 hearted John, who took almost as intimate and 
 fearless a part in the Fenian conspiracy as her 
 dauntless brother. In this work she was as clever 
 
 [159] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 as she was energetic. One of the deeds that prove 
 her ingenuity was the efficient part she took in the 
 rescue of Stephens from prison. She is indeed 
 worthy of being forever associated in the memory 
 of her countrymen with the name of her patriot 
 brother. 
 
 The Fenians ^ plans for an uprising were nipped 
 in the bud by the arrest of many of the leaders 
 and as a result the armed effort that was made to 
 attack the forces of the Crown was absolutely 
 futile. Their complete failure brought the coun- 
 try back to parliamentary methods of seeking 
 redress for its grievances until it chanced upon 
 the able leadership of Charles Stuart Pamell. 
 When in the nineties "i\iQ Chief as the people 
 liked to call him had levelled the heaviest artillery 
 of statesmanship he could devise at the fortress 
 of Saxon domination some of the best purveyors 
 of ammunition that he had were to be found 
 amongst the women of his day. Chief of these 
 were his sisters Fanny and Anne. 
 
 Anyone who has read what Fanny ParnelPs 
 pen produced cannot fail to see what intense 
 sympathy there was in her heart for the agonis- 
 ing heart of Ireland. Pondering on that calvary 
 of her nation, she contributed most substantially 
 to that avalanche of patriotic emotion that was 
 bearing down upon those who had violated the 
 rights of a sovereign people. John Boyle ^Reilly 
 speaking of the manner in which she championed 
 through her Land League Songs the rights of an 
 
 [i6o] 
 
Heroines From Elizabeth to the Present Day 
 
 ancient race says that the sweeping messages of 
 her songful utterances were ^ ^ crushed out like the 
 sweet life of a bruised flower. '^ They were ^^the 
 very cry of a race. ' ^ In this relentless crusade of 
 pen and ink she invaded even America where 
 through the medium of the Boston Pilot she won 
 the sympathy of many a heart for her long- 
 suffering land. The ringing command of her 
 ^^Hold the Harvest^' entered a Saxon court of 
 justice where a judge had it read at a state trial 
 to show what a menace it voiced for English 
 power. One glorious verse of it we give. 
 
 ''Oh! by the God who made us all — 
 
 The seignior and the serf — 
 
 Rise up ! and swear this day to hold 
 
 Your own green Irish turf; 
 
 Rise up ! and plant your feet as men 
 
 Where now you crawl as slaves, 
 
 And make your harvest fields your camps, 
 
 Or make of them your grave." 
 
 It is little wonder that Davitt called it ''the 
 Marseillaise ' ' of the Irish peasant, the trumpet 
 call of the League to the Celtic people to remem- 
 ber the hideous crimes of an odious system, and 
 with trust in God's eternal justice to rise and give 
 battle to the death against the imported curse of 
 their country and their homes. ' ' * 
 
 As an organiser she displayed as much capacity 
 for patriotic work as in the printed page. It was 
 she who initiated the movement for the creation 
 
 * The Fall of Feudalism, p. 292. 
 
 [i6i] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 of a Ladies* Land League. Despite the frowns 
 of many skeptics and nltra-conservatives who 
 should be friendly she made a success of this 
 enterprise. She made of this society an engine 
 of war that forced Buckshot Forster, one of the 
 worst enemies of the oppressed tenant-farmers, 
 to retreat to his native England. 
 
 With Fanny went hand in hand her fighting 
 sister Anne. The latter owned a warrior fire that 
 could not be extinguished and a strength of will 
 that might have adorned the personality of the 
 most masculine of men. She fought '^with all 
 her brother *s intense application to any one thing 
 at a time, and with more than even his resolute- 
 ness of purpose in many enterprises that might 
 enlist her interest and advocacy, together with a 
 thorough revolutionary spirit. * * To have out- 
 Parnelled Parnell in this the ruling feature of his 
 character was an achievement of which the great- 
 est of women might be pardonably proud. 
 
 Unfortunate circumstances deprived Ireland of 
 Parnell ere he could win a striking victory for 
 her. Political strife became the thing of the hour 
 till John Redmond was permitted without opposi- 
 tion to take the dead ^ ' Chief 's ' * place. Under the 
 new leadership many good concessions were made 
 to the national demands. In the meantime, how- 
 ever, a new idea was gradually taking hold of the 
 country. That idea was Sinn Fein, a system of 
 political philosophy which maintained that the 
 
 * Davitt. Op. Cit. p. 300. 
 
 [162] 
 
Heroines From Elisabeth to the Present Bay 
 
 time was ripe for Irishmen to discard the Parlia- 
 ment of Westminster and win national freedom 
 by a self-reliant development of Ireland itself. 
 Young Ireland with startling rapidity became 
 enamoured of the new policy and in the Battle 
 of Dublin in 1916 proved its willingness to die for 
 an Irish Eepublic which the principle of *^ Ireland 
 for the Irish '* demanded. 
 
 This brings us to the latest phase of Irish 
 feminine heroism. The most commonplace knowl- 
 edge of the fight of Easter Week must convince 
 even the most inimical that Irish women are yet 
 true to the spirit of their sisters of the dead cen- 
 turies. Everything that a man could do must be 
 placed to the credit of heroic daughters of Ireland 
 during that greatest week that Dublin ever knew. 
 Their services to their brothers in arms embraced 
 every department of war work from the man- 
 ipulation of a rifle to the merciful labours of Red 
 Cross nurses. No better picture of their activity 
 has yet been presented than that given by an 
 English Red Cross nurse whose testimony has 
 every right to be regarded as impartial. *^0n 
 Easter Sunday^' she says, ^* which was the day 
 first appointed for the Volunteers^ manoeuvres, 
 and for which all the men were mobilised the 
 women in the movement were also mobilised and 
 ordered to bring rations for a certain period. It 
 was only at the last moment and for sufficiently 
 dramatic reasons that the mobilisation of the men 
 and women was cancelled. These Irish women 
 
 [163] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 who did their work with a cool and reckless cour- 
 age unsurpassed by any man, were in the firing 
 line from the first to the last day of the rebellion. 
 There were women of all ranks from titled ladies 
 to shop assistants, and they worked on terms of 
 easy equality, caring nothing, apparently, but for 
 the success of the movement. Many of the women 
 were snipers, and both in the Post Office and in the 
 Imperial Hotel, the present writer, who was a 
 Red Cross nurse, saw women on guard with rifles 
 relieving worn out volunteers. Cumann na mbam 
 girls did practically all the despatch carrying; 
 
 some of them were killed They did Red 
 
 Cross work — I saw them going out under the 
 deadliest fire to bring in wounded volunteers. They 
 cooked, catered and brought in supplies; they 
 took food to men under fire at barricades; they 
 visited every volunteer's home to tell his people 
 of his progress. I never imagined that such an 
 organisation of determined fighting women could 
 exist in the British Isles. These women could 
 throw hand grenades, they understood the use of 
 bombs; in fact they seemed to understand as much 
 of the business of warfare as their men. ' ' * 
 
 Such heroism would be a worthy theme for a 
 special volume. Here, however, we cannot afford 
 to be individualistic in our treatment of these 
 ladies, with the exception of a few. Those we 
 propose to favour thus are the Countess 
 Markievicz and the mother of the two Pearses. 
 
 * The New York Sun. May 22iid. 
 
 [164] 
 
Heroines From Elizabeth to the Present Day 
 
 The Countess being the only woman in charge 
 of a fighting unit and her name having won inter- 
 national recognition we think that she is entitled 
 to individual treatment here. To gain a proper 
 idea of the debt of honour that her country owes 
 her we must call to mind what barriers she had 
 to burst through in earlier days before she won 
 her way to an understanding of the rights of 
 Irish nationhood. She was born within a circle 
 which the clear light of Dark Rosaleen's counten- 
 ance could never penetrate. But the honesty of 
 her heart was too powerful for these instruments 
 of darkness and it emancipated her from their 
 control to such an extent as to make her one of 
 the most ardent supporters of Irish Republican 
 liberty. 
 
 When the blood-test of this revived republican- 
 ism was in operation in 1916 she was in the midst 
 of the ordeal with her brave Fianna or Irish Boy 
 Scouts. These she had founded years before and 
 had fashioned them into a splendidly organised 
 body of young martial spirits who treasured a 
 career of arms as the boy Cuchulainn loved it of 
 old. Leading these throughout the fray she 
 evinced a marked sense of leadership coupled with 
 a courage that nothing could daunt. We can not 
 refrain here from giving the magnificent tribute 
 bestowed on her by Sidney Gilford when her fight 
 had been fought and lost. The consequent forti- 
 tude and nobility to which he bears testimony 
 exceeded those of the hour of battle for now the 
 
 [i65l 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 wild storm of strife had ceased, her fight-fervour 
 had abated and she was face to face with the calm 
 reality of death. We will let Gifford tell how she 
 faced this new situation. ^^She was sentenced to 
 death by court-martial but the sentence was 
 altered to imprsionment for life. It is reported 
 that she made a vigorous protest when the change 
 of sentence was announced. She had fought side 
 by side with the fifteen men who were shot. She 
 would have shared in their glory if they had been 
 successful. She longed to share their fate, to die 
 rather than suffer the living death of imprison- 
 ment for life. To Countess Markievicz, proud- 
 spirited, fiery, accustomed all her days to un- 
 trammelled freedom, the very embodiment of both 
 mental and physical energy, imprisonment for 
 life is a far more bitter fate than death itself. ' ' * 
 It is little wonder that such heroism drew George 
 Eussell from his cooperative farming schemes 
 and the mysteries of the spheres to sing the glories 
 of the Countess and the women of the land she 
 represented. 
 
 ''Here's to the women of our blood 
 Stood by them in the fiery hour, 
 Rapt lest some weakness in their mood 
 Rob manhood of a single power — 
 You, brave as such a hope forlorn, 
 Who smiled through crack of shot and shell, 
 Though the world look on you with scorn, 
 Here 's to you, Constance, in your cell. ' ' 
 
 The glories of Ireland, ed. Maurice Joyce. Quotation, pp. 359-60. 
 
 [i66] 
 
Heroines From Elizabeth to the Present Day 
 
 With the Countess we wish to associate in hon- 
 ourable mention the mother of the two Pearses, 
 Patrick and William. She took no positive part 
 in the rebellion but she gave to it all that her 
 heart held dearest, her two magnificent sons. She 
 gave to God and Ireland two of the most beautiful 
 characters that her land had ever known and she 
 gave them with the unwavering faith that she 
 was only doing her duty. That such was her sub- 
 lime creed we know from the words she uttered 
 at her last sad interview with her son, Willie, 
 after Padraic had gone the martyr's way. Her 
 motherly heart, because it was so motherly and 
 good, was weighted with a most bitter natural 
 sorrow, yet turning to her son she said: ^^ Thank 
 God they are taking you. When I heard they had 
 taken Pat I hoped you, too, would go because I 
 would rather that the two go than leave one be- 
 hind to bear the sorrow. I am more content to 
 bear the sorrow to the end of my life when I 
 know that as you were always together in child- 
 hood, in boyhood and manhood, you are united 
 together in death. ' ' Then turning to the English 
 officer present she said: ^^You have taken my 
 darling son Padraic and now you are about to take 
 my second and only remaining son Willie. Gladly 
 do I offer them to die for Jesus and for Ireland. ' ' 
 Well, indeed, did she prove herself to be that ideal 
 patriot mother on whose lips Padraic put the 
 sacred and sacrificial words: 
 
 [167] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 **I do not grudge them: Lord, I do not grudge 
 
 My two strong sons that I have seen go out 
 
 To break their strength and die, they and a few, 
 
 In bloody protest for a glorious thing. 
 
 They shall be spoken of among their people. 
 
 The generations shall remember them. 
 
 And call them blessed ; 
 
 But I will speak their names to my own heart 
 
 In the long nights ; 
 
 The little names that were familiar once 
 
 Round my dead hearth. 
 
 Lord, thou art hard on mothers : 
 
 We suffer in their coming and their going ; 
 
 And though I grudge them not, I Weary, weary 
 
 Of the long sorrow — And yet I have my joy : 
 
 My sons were faithful and they fought." 
 
 With the mother of the Pearses we say fare- 
 well to the women of action whose deeds have 
 adorned the story of Ireland. We see in her, one 
 of the latest heroic products of the land, a 
 guarantee of the indestructibility of Irish nation- 
 hood. Whilst a nation possesses such mothers 
 as she it is endowed with a nationalising alchemy 
 that can never cease to make soldiers of men 
 who shall not hesitate to seek honour on the 
 death-haunted battle-field whilst the Gael has life 
 and consciousness. 
 
 [i68] 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Womanly Moeality and Honour from the 
 Sixteenth Century Onwards 
 
 WE HAVE seen what a record of noble 
 living in the domestic sense of the words 
 had been the property of Irish women 
 until the destruction of that polity at the close 
 of the sixteenth century, which had protected 
 piety and had encouraged so many of those vir- 
 tues which are the prime ornament of family life. 
 We have likewise observed the steadfastness 
 with which since the collapse of that common- 
 wealth Gaelic feminity had aided in preserving 
 the national soul of Ireland. We think it will be 
 interesting to consider, in this chapter, how 
 faithfully the women of Ireland adhered to the 
 tradition of exalted living handed down to them 
 until the sixteenth century, for in the quietude 
 that hovers round the hearth they were more 
 fundamentally potent in shaping the destiny of 
 the nation than in the council chamber, or in the 
 theatre of heroic deeds. 
 
 As the family is, so to a large extent the nation 
 must be, in patriotism and general self-respect. 
 That the Irish home must have been a nursery 
 of morality and civic virtue in the seventeenth 
 
 [169] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 century, we know from the fact of the large fam- 
 ilies it reared, and the piety that was the orna- 
 ment of its women. To these two features of Irish 
 life several writers of that age bear testimony, 
 but here we content ourselves with giving that 
 of two foreigners who were eyewitnesses of what 
 they relate. These were Massari and Malasana, 
 the companions of the Nuncio, Einnucini, who 
 assert that the women of Ireland, despite the dis- 
 turbed state of the country, bestowed their tender 
 care on large families, and did themselves ^^with 
 comeliness combine matchless modesty and 
 piety, by which their native attractions were 
 enhanced. ' '* 
 
 Not only in prose but in poetry we hear lauda- 
 tory words bestowed on the women of this 
 century. The sorrowful and suffering remnant 
 of the bardic class made the moral loftiness and 
 beautiful home life of many a lady the theme of 
 songful outpourings. To give but one noted 
 example, the well-known harpist, O'Carolan, paid 
 tribute in several immortal airs to the nobility 
 of the women of his day. And well he might, for 
 the truest friend he had was Madame Mac 
 Dermot, who so loved the tuneful songs of the 
 blind minstrel, that she gave him every help at 
 her command, and wept bitter tears when the 
 silence of the grave enfolded him. 
 
 In addition to this evidence of womanly worth 
 there is some also of an indirect nature which, 
 
 * The Irish People. E. Hogan. SJ. quot. p. 55. 
 
 [170] 
 
Womanly Morality and Honour 
 
 in no mean measure, testifies to the feminine 
 self-respect of this period. We have already had 
 occasion to dwell at length on the cruelty exer- 
 cised towards Irish ladies in Cromwellian days, 
 and pointed out how it was in revenge for their 
 patriotic activities. Here we wish to cite one 
 noted instance of Cromwellian barbarism, which 
 seems to have been dictated by the hellish desire 
 to expose to the basest insults not merely pride 
 of race, but the most delicate feminine modesty. 
 A low scoundrel named Hurd, who was governor 
 of Galway in 1655, took fiendish delight in mak- 
 ing a laughing-stock of the women of that city by 
 ordering them to discard their Irish cloaks, know- 
 ing well they had little else save ludicrous apparel 
 to shelter them from the public eye. Yet, the 
 efforts they put forth to shield their womanly 
 sense of propriety, even at the cost of social 
 dignity, must redound forever to the fair name of 
 Galway. On the day subsequent to Hurd's orders 
 there could be seen on the streets **most of the 
 women appearing in men's coats — high-bom 
 ladies who had been plundered of all their prop- 
 erty by the rapacious soldiers, sinking their shame 
 before the gaze of the public, with their ragged or 
 patched clothes, and sometimes with embroidered 
 table-covers, or a stripe of tapestry torn from the 
 walls, or some lappets cut from the bed-curtains, 
 thrown over their head and shoulders. Other 
 women covered their shoulders only with blankets 
 
 [171] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 or sheets, or table clothes, or any other sort of 
 wrapper they could lay their hands on. You 
 would have taken your oath that all Galway was 
 a masquerade, the unrivalled home of scenic 
 buffons, so irresistibly ludicrous were the varied 
 dresses of the poor women."* Kurd's poisoned 
 arrows reached the target of their Irish pride, 
 but failed to do anything to their modesty save 
 glorify it. 
 
 Notwithstanding the butcheries and acts of 
 shame directed by the Cromwellians against Irish 
 womanhood, the men of the Gael, whose souls were 
 harrowed by the sight of these atrocities, could 
 not get themselves to revenge their outraged 
 wives and daughters by disrespectful treatment 
 of the ladies of the Saxon. The fact that in this 
 respect they maintained a noble reputation speaks 
 volumes of praise for their innate reverence for 
 womankind, and shows that this attitude must 
 have been largely the resultant of a truly moral 
 and honourable native femininity. The testimony 
 we deduce in favour of this noble bearing of Irish- 
 men we get from the lips of a Privy Counsellor of 
 Ireland. His statement is that ** though unarmed 
 men, women and children, were killed in thousands 
 by command of the Lords Justices, the Irish sent 
 multitudes of our people, both before and since 
 these cruelties were done, as well officers and 
 soldiers as women and children, carefully con- 
 
 * Cam. Ever. ed. Kelly. Dub. 1848. vol. II. p. 207. 
 
 [172] 
 
Womanly Morality and Honour 
 
 veyed, to the sea-ports and other places of 
 safety.''* 
 
 Of the purity of woman's life during the next 
 century we are told by men who were strongly 
 antagonistic to Irish patriotic endeavor. Such 
 an eminent authority as Lecky has paid splendid 
 compliments to the moral integrity of eighteenth 
 century Irish women, and the purifying and 
 elevating effect it had upon the nation. His 
 testimony is all the more valuable seeing that his 
 highly reputable veracity as a historian forced 
 him to admit, despite his anti-Catholic bias, the 
 existence of something admirable within a church 
 organisation which he despised. In like manner, 
 Arthur Young, an Englishman, in his Tour of 
 Ireland in 1776, gave a very favourable report of 
 womanly morality. Amongst the gentry, indeed, 
 he observed considerable moral laxity, but the 
 general body of the people furnished a woman- 
 hood that was exemplary in its fidelity to its 
 noblest instincts. 
 
 But even in his criticism of the gentry, we find 
 that Young was far too severe. We have already 
 glanced into the attractive home life and shining 
 civic virtues of the women who adorned the last 
 troubled years of this century, and we must not 
 forget that for the most part they belonged to 
 upper class society, and to the Protestant faith 
 to boot. Some of them, too, were the products of 
 the city, and surely, if their womanly grandeur 
 
 * Cromwellian Settlement. Prendergast. Dub. 1875. p. 71. 
 
 [173] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 survived the temptations of their surroundings, it 
 is not far-fetched to assume that they had, in the 
 pure atmosphere of the countryside, many a lady 
 of high standing in society, with a moral character 
 akin to theirs. 
 
 Passing on to the nineteenth century, we find 
 ourselves flooded with a mass of material testify- 
 ing to the goodness of Irish womanhood. Volumes 
 based on that material might be written, but here 
 we can not afford, in a general survey of Irish 
 women, to sin against the rules of proportion by 
 giving relatively more space to the ladies of this 
 period than to those of other days. In this par- 
 ticular instance this is especially true, because so 
 much evidence has been produced in print from 
 statistics and otherwise to show the morality of 
 Irish women of recent times, and the world is so 
 universally convinced of the fact, that there is 
 scarcely any need of reasserting its truth. 
 
 However, we cannot pass it over in perfect 
 silence. Beginning with citations from author- 
 ities, we find Count d'Aveze, early in the century, 
 noting in the west the very soul of honour and 
 queenliness of spirit reflected in the countenances 
 of Irish women. ^ * While contemplating, ' ' he says, 
 *^ these poor women, for the moment, I confess 
 that their titles of nobility seemed to radiate from 
 their brows, and I gave way to the idea that they 
 were really descended from the blood of kings.'' 
 Dr. Brown pays a high tribute to the Irishwoman's 
 
 [174] 
 
Womanly Morality and Honour 
 
 religion and love of children, and the large fam- 
 ilies they have reared and continue to rear as an 
 incontrovertible proof of both these character- 
 istics. Dr. Brownson, an American, attributed in 
 1873 the strength of Irish manhood to a large 
 extent *Ho the pure and virtuous lives of the 
 women of the race for which they have been 
 distinguished in all ages. ^ ' Elie Eeclus, a French- 
 man, asserts that ^^ there are few countries of 
 Europe whose women possess so much dignity 
 and self-respecf as those of Ireland. George 
 Petrie, speaking in 1821, says that he saw in his 
 travels through the island ** young and unmarried 
 women, with cloaks carelessly disposed in pic- 
 turesque draperies, whilst their attitude bespoke 
 the presence of youthful affection and innocent 
 simplicity.'* Finally, the Rev. William Maxwell, 
 a Protestant divine, tells us that in certain parts 
 of Ireland despite a rather abnormal affection for 
 drink on the part of the men, ** deceived and 
 deserted females are seldom seen. * ' 
 
 This nobility of Irish women has been the theme 
 of countless songs throughout the century. For 
 the most part, it is found interwoven with the 
 great basic virtue of love that radiates purity and 
 strength. Many pages might be filled with 
 selections illustrative of poetry's passion for this 
 theme. We are compelled to limit ourselves to 
 two, one of which was written early in the century, 
 and the other quite recently. 
 
 [175] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 The first we give is that intensely passionate 
 yet sublime address to love by 'Curnain, entitled 
 Loves Despair. 
 
 "Love that my life began, 
 
 Love that will close life's span, 
 
 Love that grows ever by love-giving : 
 
 Love from the first to last, 
 
 Love till all life be past, 
 
 Love that loves on after living. 
 
 Bear all things evidence 
 
 Thou art my very sense, 
 
 My past, my present and m^^ morrow. 
 
 All else on earth is crost, 
 
 All in the world is lost — 
 
 Lost all — but the great love gift of sorrow. ' ' 
 
 The woman that could create in the soul of a poet 
 such a spark of heavenly passion could not but 
 be magnificent. 
 
 The other poem we take from a book of Padraic 
 Columns verse. It is a lullaby that reveals the 
 world of exquisite tenderness entombed in the 
 heart of the twentieth century Irish mother for her 
 child. It shows how rigidly her eyes are rivetted 
 on the sanctum of the cradle, and how sacred she 
 regards the atmosphere which surrounds it, whilst 
 in other parts of the world * progressive ideas ^ 
 would seek to rid it of much of this ^ superstitious ' 
 character and exchange its * folly ^ for the more 
 up-to-date demands of materialist eugenics. 
 
 [176] 
 
Womanly Morality and Honour 
 
 ' ' ! Men from the fields ! 
 Come gently within. 
 Tread softly, softly, 
 ! Men coming in. 
 
 Mavourneen is going 
 From me and from you, 
 Where Mary will fold him 
 With mantle of blue ! 
 
 From reek of the smoke 
 And cold of the floor, 
 And the peering of things 
 Across the half-door. 
 
 ! Men from the fields ! 
 Soft, softly come through 
 Mary puts around him 
 Her mantle of blue. ' ' 
 
 There is also another type of poetry, the poetry 
 of architecture, that lives in the sculptured marble 
 and the chiseled beauty of stone-work of many 
 a sacred edifice, that proclaims the grandeur of 
 soul of modern Irish womanhood. Eivalling the 
 princely church-builders of old, who gave ^ to 
 Ireland so many of those abbeys of meditative 
 loveliness, are the daughters of the Gael, who have 
 worked since the days of Catholic emancipation 
 for the construction of churches to replace the 
 confiscated and plundered ones of their ancestors. 
 In one sense they have surpassed the women of 
 old, for unlike them, they are for the most part 
 
 - [^77] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 poor in the world's goods, though doubtless the 
 blood of many of them has been derived from a 
 noble ancestry, whose broad lands the hireling and 
 the stranger possess. They could not, however, 
 be robbed of the gold of generosity and the price- 
 less heritage of their faith. Even the Irish servant 
 girl has established an envious reputation for 
 herself as a generous donor of funds for the erec- 
 tion of churches. Hundreds of sacred edifices in 
 the English-speaking world almost completely 
 owe their existence to the hard won money of the 
 humble daughters of Ireland. They adorn not 
 only their own land, but the Eepublic of the Starry 
 Flag, the continent of the Southern Cross, mute 
 but majestic witnesses of the loyalty of Irish 
 womanhood to the twin inspirations of the voice 
 of their Maker, and the traditions of their race. 
 
 The zeal that has upreared so many churches 
 continues to provide in abundance maidens for the 
 rigours of convent life. Every year hundreds 
 dedicate themselves to this cloistered existence 
 where their spiritual work for the nation's youth 
 is very considerable. Since this has rarely been 
 questioned, we see no need for dwelling at length 
 on it here. There are many, however, who main- 
 tain that the good conferred on the people by 
 their hidden life of religion is solely spiritual, and 
 that in it all secular and civic usefulness are lost. 
 With these we decidedly disagree. 
 
 To prove our contention, we will select one 
 feature of secular life, the industrial, in which 
 
 [178] 
 
Womanly Morality and Honour 
 
 Sisterhoods have done solid patriotic work for 
 their country. In several important centres Irish 
 nuns are in control of industries which provide 
 employment for many hundreds, for whom other- 
 wise emigration would be the only alternative. 
 The thriving Youghal Needlelace Industry owes 
 its origin in the famine-swept days of 1847 to the 
 noble efforts of Sister Mary Anne Smyth. Very 
 few who have learned the work of this institution 
 have ever been lured from the services of their 
 country to foreign climes. In the same year the 
 Sisters of Mercy in Sligo started a cookery and 
 laundry, by which several were rescued from 
 starvation and death. This institution still 
 flourishes, and since 1880 has added to its work 
 the teaching of hosiery-making. Since 1900 the 
 Sisters of St. Louis have directed some of the 
 energy of Bundoran towards the making of the 
 well-known Garrickmacross lace. Instances like 
 these might be enumerated for several towns in 
 Ireland to show that the modern daughters of the 
 ancient faith are, in their attention to the needs 
 of the body, as well as those of the soul, true to 
 the tradition that has come down to them from 
 the great Abbess of Kildare. 
 
 Thus it is apparent that the public heroism 
 which has marked the story of Irish womanhood 
 during the last three centuries has been the off- 
 spring of that silent heroism that has dwelt in 
 woman's soul, whether by the hearth-stone or in 
 the cloister. The numberless humble ones who, by 
 
 [179] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 christian principles and industrial habits, have 
 supplied the fuel that kept the fires of a nation 
 burning, shall never be known, but the work they 
 have accomplished is none the less glorious than 
 that of those whom the searchlights of publicity 
 have consigned to the everlasting reverence of a 
 people. 
 
 [i8o] 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 Weiters of the Nineteenth and Twentieth 
 
 Centuries 
 
 WHEN last we parted with the women 
 friends of letters at the close of the 
 eighteenth century we saw them en- 
 deavoring under the blight of many forces 
 inimical to intellectual culture to keep up the hon- 
 ourable tradition of their land as patrons rather 
 than writers of literature. The confinement of 
 their literary efforts to this sphere was neces- 
 sitated by the penal laws which reigned in their 
 country and threatened with prosecution and pun- 
 ishment all possible flowerings of the national 
 genius. The old learning which expressed the 
 soul of the Gael was forced to seek a refuge in 
 the hedge-school or the secrecy of a few great 
 homes whilst England's brand of enlightenment 
 arrayed in imperial garb was offered in its stead 
 to an enslaved people. All that could be done 
 in such circumstances was to prevent the national 
 soul from becoming the prey of the imperial 
 schoolmasters by keeping it true to its ancient 
 cult in the *' catacombs. ' ' This Ireland did and 
 we have seen what a part woman played in the 
 defensive struggle. 
 
 [i8i] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 That work merited for the feminine mind of 
 Ireland an opportunity in later times of display- 
 ing what it could achieve within the world of 
 literary production which hitherto it was com- 
 pelled merely to protect and patronise. How it 
 availed itself of this opportunity that the destruc- 
 tion of penal statutes brought it we are about to 
 show by presenting to the reader a procession of 
 the leading women writers of the nineteenth and 
 twentieth centuries. In this pageant of the 
 devotees of the pen there shall march a body of 
 Irish ladies whose literary output bears favour- 
 able comparison with that of their masculine 
 rivals. A few striking individuals in the ranks 
 of manhood have far surpassed the best women 
 authors of Ireland but the average lady-writer 
 can lay claim to as meritorious work as the aver- 
 age labourer within the ranks of manhood can, 
 boast of. 
 
 Griving priority of position to poetry the first 
 worker in that field in the early part of the nine- 
 teenth century to claim our attention is Lady 
 Dufferin. Her genius was probably a heritage as 
 well as a personal endowment for her grandfather 
 was none other than the reknowned Richard 
 Brindsley Sheridan. Her poems were primarily 
 songs and every song was a melody of tear- jewels 
 revealing the sad beauty of a suffering race. One 
 of these that will forever keep her memory fresh 
 is the Irish Emigrant, which so simply and spon- 
 taneously tells of the pangs of exile endured by 
 
 [182] 
 
Writers of Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 
 
 the children of the Gael sundered from home and 
 kin. It does not seem rash to state that few 
 who have read it in boyhood days do not think 
 with tenderness of its creator and bless her for 
 the reminder she gave them of the loyalty they 
 owe whether at home or abroad to that Dark 
 Rosaleen whom in impressionable years tliej were 
 tanght to cherish. Bearing a like message is 
 Terence's Farewell. It mingles the pathos of 
 exile with sweet strains of love whilst its dancing 
 humour shows the everlasting sunshine that no 
 sorrow could expel from the Irish heart. 
 
 Resembling her muse was that of Mrs. Julia 
 Crawford who was a distinguished daughter of 
 County Cavan. From her prolific pen came over 
 a hundred songs and amongst them that musical 
 gem, Kathleen Mavourneen. For this song alone 
 the poetess has earned the undying thanks of 
 her people for it can never fail to charm them 
 whilst they treasure the gold of a haunting air 
 and the magic interwoven with pure true love. 
 
 In Young Ireland days appeared Lady Wilde 
 wielding a more robust and stormy pen in the 
 interests of patriotism than any of those we have 
 mentioned. In early life she had been so com- 
 pletely outside the pale of national belief that 
 when she saw the funeral of Thomas Davis pass- 
 ing she confessed her complete ignorance of the 
 dead patriot to whom the last honours of death 
 were being paid. Her presence in Young Ireland 
 ranks was therefore due to a radical conversion 
 
 [183] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 from the modes of thought of her girlhood. Like 
 most of those great spirits which have leaped 
 from the darkness of error into the white light 
 of consciousness of fealty to a sacred faith and 
 ideal she carried with her new creed an invincible 
 vehemence and fire in its advocacy. The energy 
 and sincerity of the convert forged upon the 
 printed page a supply of verbal weapons calcu- 
 lated to stir the most phlegmatic of her readers. 
 
 Side by side Avith her worked Mrs. Kevin Izod 
 O'Doherty, ^^Eva^' of the Nation whose heroism 
 we have already referred to. This young lady's 
 patriotic poems remind one of that vigorous 
 freshness and vitality which live in the winds 
 that buffet the coast of her native Galway. They 
 vent their clean fury on all that is foul and cry 
 with an elemental strength against the unjust 
 political structures that are the handiwork 
 of man. 
 
 With these two stormy petrels of Young Ireland 
 verse there was also associated Ellen Downing, 
 ^^Mary of the Nation/' whose voice of poetic in- 
 dignation though not as rugged, was none the less 
 firm and determined than, theirs. With the calm 
 vision of the saint she scanned all the mountain 
 summits whereon patriotic right is seated and in 
 sweet but unfaltering accents bade her country- 
 men toil through woe and weal until all storms 
 vanquished they reached those serene heights 
 and could gaze down from the majesty thereof on 
 a land where the quietude of justice had resumed 
 
 [184] 
 
Writers of Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 
 
 its sway. The atmosphere of gracefulness and 
 devont feeling upon which these directions were 
 borne girt them round with that strength in 
 appeal which always accompanies the dictates of 
 a pure and gentle yet indomitable conscience. 
 
 For many years longer she might have pro- 
 longed her good work but a sore disappointment 
 crept into her life and dried up the founts of her 
 inspiration. One whom she had loved with a sin- 
 cere Irish love forsook her and she left the 
 troubled ways of the world for the reposeful soli- 
 tude of the convent. There she prayed for her 
 beloved land but never again wrote patriotic 
 verse. ^ * She put by the lyre and in utter seclusion 
 from the world lingered for a while; but ere long 
 the spring flowers blossomed on her grave. '^ 
 
 Advancing into the latter half of the nineteenth 
 century we greet that poetic embodiment of Irish 
 patriotism, Ethna Oarbery. Coming from the 
 land of Tyrconnell where the mystery-laden mists 
 so love to hold in their embrace the brows of the 
 mountains and endow them with that Celtic and 
 fairy-like fascination which lives in the grey 
 cloudiness of Irish landscapes her soul drank in 
 great draughts of the secrets of her native hills 
 and under the influence of their intoxication sang 
 in strains of weird beauty of the old old message 
 of Eire to her children. Nature, in fact, seemed 
 to be almost the sole source of her patriotic inspir- 
 ation for she found in everything in her native 
 place a medium through which to express the irre- 
 
 [185] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 pressible story of the ages associated witli it. She 
 appeared to feel the imminence of a national 
 spirit in the very winds that fanned into vigour 
 her beloved Donegal and she took up the pen 
 not to create a beautiful fabric of words but to 
 find an outlet for the patriotic fire that consumed 
 her. That the alpha and omega of her songful 
 inspiration was a sense of patriotism appears 
 not only in her verse but in the testimony of her 
 distinguished husband, Seumas Mac Manus. 
 <<Prom childhood/' he says, *^till the closing- 
 hour every fibre of her being vibrated with the 
 love of Ireland. Before the tabernacle of poor 
 Ireland's hopes she burned in her bosom a per- 
 petual flame of faith. Her great warm heart 
 kept the door of its fondest affection wide open 
 to all who loved Ireland — and in her heart of 
 hearts was sacredly cherished the memory of the 
 holy dead who died for Ireland.'' 
 
 As a result a tender simplicity and sincerity 
 characterised all her poetry. Her folk songs were 
 unsophisticated but this quality was their pass- 
 port to her heart of a people close to nature, a 
 people whom she loved to fancy as fellow-sharers 
 with her of a love of their past and their beauti- 
 ful present. No checks of technique injured the 
 flow of her feeling. She spoke directly to her 
 countrymen because she liked a heart to heart 
 melody. The pity is that she ceased to speak so 
 soon and that death smiled on her at an early 
 age and called her from her soulful chantings. 
 
 [186] 
 
Writers of Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 
 
 A prominent writer of the same generation as 
 Ethna Carbery is Catharine Tynan Hinkson. 
 Like the latter poetess she is gifted with a fascin- 
 ating spontaneity. As some critic so well phrased 
 it she is ^^an authentic singer with the true lyric 
 note that she seems to have caught from the birds 
 of the trees.'' The buoyancy of the heart-song 
 constantly abides in her poetry and yet for all 
 its sunshine we miss in it the sweetness of mourn- 
 ing for a sacred cause that hovers o 'er the stanzas 
 of Ethna. 
 
 One, however who reminds us more of the 
 Donegal songstress is Alice Furlong. She is a 
 product of the City of Dublin yet there is little 
 of the artificial atmosphere of urban life in her 
 verse. She gives utterance to a music as deli- 
 cately pathetic as the sighing of the wind amongst 
 the reeds on the rim of a bleak Irish lake. Yet 
 for all its sadness it is never foresaken by sweet- 
 ness. To her generation we might also assign 
 Alice Milligan who hails from the North of 
 Ireland. In the land of the 'Neills she was born 
 and there she found much of the mental pabulum 
 that resulted in the breezy ballads she has given 
 to Ireland. 
 
 Belonging to the latest flowering of Irish poetry 
 are many of the group of young writers of today. 
 With the exception of Dora Sigerson who died 
 recently they are relatively young and may yet 
 bequeath a large crop of thought to their land. 
 
 Though death did not find Dora Sigerson in 
 
 [1S7] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 the ripeness of old age she left behind her a con- 
 siderable amount of verse. She was destined by 
 living in England to be divorced from the con- 
 stant influence of her native soil yet her mind 
 always clung to the land of her birth. A decidedly 
 Celtic atmosphere envelops her writing and this 
 is the fundamental reason of its best literary 
 characteristics. The fascinating weirdness of her 
 poems revealing the doings of distinctively Celtic 
 sprites, the fairies, makes us forget her mere 
 technical deficiencies. She may err in metrics 
 and in style but she handles with a deft hand that 
 familiarity which exists between Irish character 
 and the invisible world. She makes us love the 
 fairies despite all their elfish malice because she 
 makes them so human without robbing them of 
 their supernatural anchorage. They are so Irish 
 in all their ways that we insinctively forgive them. 
 
 In addition her diction is admirably adapted 
 to her subject. The rhythmic swing of her ballads 
 is as free and airy as the goblins that are its 
 theme. The familiarity and homeliness of expres- 
 sion with which they reach out to the heart are 
 akin to that atmosphere of kindly relations which 
 they seek to generate in us towards the world of 
 the spiritual. 
 
 Very close in character to the poetry of Dora 
 Sigerson is that of Nora Hopper. It has a like 
 clinging mysteriousness of thought whilst the 
 weird apparel of its words intensifies the uncan- 
 niness of its conceptions. Though extensive the 
 
 [i88] 
 
Writers of Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 
 
 fecundity that characterises it it does not seem to 
 lower the standard of its poetic quality. It is 
 always as fresh as the dew on an Irish hillside 
 and tenderness and gems of fancy seldom abandon 
 it. No less an authority than Mr. Yeats, perhaps 
 Ireland ^s greatest singer in the English language, 
 has acclaimed her ** Ballads of Prose'' as an 
 adeptly woven fabric of mystic thought and 
 symbol. **They delight us,'' he says, ^^by their 
 mystery, as ornament full of lines, too deeply in- 
 terwoven to bother us with discoverable secret, 
 delights us with its mystery; and as ornament is 
 full of strange trees and flowers that were once 
 the symbols of great religions, and are now mix- 
 ing one with the other, and changing into new 
 shapes, this book is full of old beliefs and stories, 
 mixing and changing in an enchanted dream." 
 
 For the next writer we go to the County of 
 Antrim. This is Moira O'Neill. She has given 
 pleasant glimpses of the peasant soul of Ireland 
 and she has not spoiled their sincerity by any 
 vulgarity of literary artifice. But Irish literature 
 is most of all indebted to her for her masterpiece, 
 * * Corrymeela, " where she sings with a lambent 
 fluency of the mysteries of the dawn reminiscent 
 of the free limpid progress of her native hill- 
 rimmed rivulets in the Glens of Antrim. 
 
 And last of all treading the ways of mysticism 
 come Susan Mitchell and Ella Young. They have 
 gazed into the wondrous worlds which George 
 
 [189] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 Russell has pointed out and more distinctly than 
 any of their sisters of the pen have attempted to 
 fashion visions for themselves like unto his. With 
 these we part with the daughters of poesy and 
 turn to those who were content to labour in the 
 literature of prose. 
 
 In this department of letters, especially romance, 
 Irish women in modern days have climbed into 
 high favour and carried off many laurels from the 
 men. In this respect, too, it is our belief they have 
 displayed far more talent than those of their sisters 
 who used poetry as a medium of expression. 
 
 In discussing these ladies we can make a very 
 dignified start with Maria Edgeworth who is the 
 doyen of them all and as a novelist holds a high 
 place amongst kindred writers of the English 
 speaking world of her day. Her ^ ^ Castle Rackrent ' ' 
 with its beaming humour cleverly mingled with 
 exquisite pathos is generally recognised as her 
 masterpiece. Looking at her work as a whole she 
 accomplished for the Ireland of her day some- 
 thing worthy of her comparison with what Scott 
 achieved for his native land. The folk-lore and 
 feelings of her country she made tribuary to 
 her pen and utilised them to produce works of 
 high artistic value. So self-sacrificing was she 
 and so sacred a conception had she of her literary 
 duty towards her native land that she refused her 
 hand in marriage to one whom she deeply loved 
 that her activity as an author might not be 
 checked. She sacrificed him and everything else 
 
 [190] 
 
Writers of Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 
 
 that her heart desired when they were deemed 
 inimical to the interests of her country. 
 
 She was not, however, a solitary prose luminary 
 in her age. There was Lady Morgan who worked 
 at fiction and wrote novels that were fearless and 
 honest and rooted in a soul that loved its country. 
 She was one of the best literary supporters that 
 the Emancipator had. To the early nineteenth cen- 
 tury Dublin gave Anna Jameson, who was the au- 
 thor of some tales and a vigorous pen exponent of 
 the rights of women. Caroline Norton who laboured 
 so arduously for the betterment of woman's status 
 and the condition of the poor was a romantic 
 writer of high standing and in this sphere dis- 
 played a power of repartee that w^as not surpassed 
 by her zeal as a doer of good deeds. From the 
 Marble City came Mary Costello to whom Ireland 
 is indebted for sketches of Dublin which are vivid 
 and worthy of remembrance. Lismore was hon- 
 oured by being the birthplace of Julia Crotty who 
 attained distinction by portrayals of Irish char- 
 acter. Her pictures sometimes caused offense to 
 sensitive readers but she quailed not before 
 criticism for she justified herself on the grounds 
 of realism. Mrs. Sadlier in her enthusiasm for 
 the moral uplift of her countrymen used with con- 
 siderable success the novel as a means to attain 
 her end. Castle Daly, one of the best of Irish 
 stories owes its existence to Annie Keary. 
 
 We now pass on to a group of novelists who 
 primarily belong to a later period. The first we 
 
 [191] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 select for consideration is Jane Barlow whose 
 name is a very respectable one in Irish literature. 
 In her work there gleams a wealth of peasant 
 character that bespeaks marked gentleness and 
 simplicity on the part of the writer. Silvered 
 streaks of hnmonr and golden veins of pathos are 
 everywhere in scintillating evidence. A wit that 
 leaps forth from pictnresqne and mnsical lan- 
 guage is constantly present to endow with a peren- 
 nial freshness the creations of the artist. To sum 
 up in the words of George Green in the Treasury 
 of Poetry, *4t may be doubted, indeed, whether 
 anyone has, to the same extent, sounded the depths 
 of Irish character m the country districts and 
 touched so many chords of sympathy, humour and 
 pathos as Jane Barlow. ' ' 
 
 With an object kindred to that of Miss Barlow, 
 Elisabeth Blackburne Casey devoted herself to 
 romantic literature. Amid the pasture lands of 
 Meath she found many interesting peasant 
 subjects for her pen. In the manipulation of these 
 she exhibited certain dramatic powers which lent 
 a striking vitality to her tales. Coupling with this 
 an attractive and picturesque background, she 
 succeeded in producing sketches of the peasant 
 soul endowed with uncommon brilliancy and 
 vividness. 
 
 At a distance from pastoral influences in the 
 City of Dublin Mrs. Blundell first saw light. 
 However, as she advanced in years, she found 
 
 [192] 
 
Writers of Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 
 
 herself in surroundings more congenial to her 
 nature. She left the ** madding crowds," and the 
 places where the artificial and material knock so 
 loudly at the gates of the heart for the romantic 
 and mystery-haunted highlands of Donegal. 
 There, despite the ravages of a long and painful 
 disease, she held her ear ever open to receive the 
 whisperings of wonder. The pleasure that these 
 messages from a marvel world afforded her she 
 told of in sweet tales brimming over with Arabian- 
 like magic. She wrote them especially for the 
 perusal of children who are always so near to 
 the wonder-world and who wreathe with glory 
 'Hhat never was on land or sea'' what to mature 
 eyes seem the most commonplace realities. 
 
 In a part of the country, similar to Donegal 
 because of its remarkable immunity from the 
 artificialities of life, did Emily Lawless find food 
 for her novels. Revelling in the gaunt, wild 
 scenery of West Clare and Galway, she extracted 
 from the granite-sheathed hills and the wind-vexed 
 precipices material for the construction of some 
 of the best novels that Ireland possesses. Here, 
 in this hinterland of the Gael, she witnessed how 
 close the heart of man was to the throbbings of 
 nature's heart, and what a harmony prevailed 
 between them. Into her novels she introduced 
 with marked success this intimacy between man 
 and nature to which she attached the weird adorn- 
 ment of the grand terrors of the West mingling 
 dramatically with its embracing pity. 
 
 [193] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 In the same inspiring West did Eosa Mnlholland 
 find fuel for the fire of a writer's sonl. From the 
 mountains there came to her the voice of a 
 romance, coupled with that message of mysticism 
 that gives a distinctly religious tinge to her writ- 
 ings. Yet, for all her hankering after the mys- 
 terious, she loves a serene simplicity, which seems 
 to have been dictated by her love for children, for 
 whom she intended so many of her books. 
 
 Rosa brings us to the end of the writers of 
 romantic works. A few others still remain who 
 devoted themselves to a literature of a di:fferent 
 type, and to these we must devote a few pages, 
 before our final farewell to women literateurs of 
 Ireland. 
 
 In dramatic literature there is a distinguished 
 representative in Lady Gregory, who has done as 
 much, perhaps, for the Irish stage, as anyone in 
 the history of Ireland. Her name must be forever 
 linked with that revival in dramatic art, which 
 began with the last decade of the nineteenth 
 century. Living in the western Gaelthacht, she 
 was closely in touch with that folklore which pro- 
 vided material for the most successful type of 
 play that the dramatic movement has produced. 
 Utilising this, she has produced stage literature 
 of high merit. To the sphere of a writer, however, 
 she has not limited herself. She has worked 
 zealously for the success of the Abbey Theatre, 
 and has never failed to encourage all aspiring 
 writers who are endeavoring to produce dramatic 
 
 [194] 
 
Writers of Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 
 
 literature that might lend lustre to that playhouse 
 and their country. 
 
 In the more sober subject of history, Sarah 
 Atkinson displayed in periodical literature a mind 
 of no mean calibre. In her footsteps has followed 
 Mrs. John Richard Green, who is a worthy wife 
 of a distinguished husband, and one of the most 
 scholarly historians that Ireland has produced. 
 Her contributions to the story of her land reveal 
 a cultured intellect, steeped in the lore of the past. 
 For the economic and educational department of 
 their history which had been so badly neglected, 
 Irishmen are especially indebted to the labours 
 of Mrs. Green. 
 
 Another lady, Frances Power Cobbe, invaded 
 a realm that is closely associated with that of the 
 historian. She delved into the problems of 
 sociology, and herein won considerable respect 
 for herself by the able manner in which she cham- 
 pioned the rights of women in public life. She did 
 this, too, through the medium of a style that was 
 fresh and attractive. Thus, the readable character 
 of her writings, as well as the interesting material 
 they contained, won for her a very large circle 
 of readers. 
 
 In a sphere partly historical and partly liter- 
 ary, three other ladies laboured with considerable 
 success. Eleanor Hull has done much for early 
 romantic history, and her work on the ancient 
 tales has largely contributed to their being more 
 sympathetically and widely known. Miss Stokes, 
 
 [195] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 the sister of the well-known authority on Celtic 
 literature, has done a good deal for the cause of 
 Gaelic scholarship. In Irish scenery and its his- 
 torical associations, Mrs. S. C. Hall found especial 
 interest, and her work in this respect has added 
 largely to that fascination which the physical 
 contour of a country, viewed in the light of the 
 past, always holds for a nation that reveres the 
 great days gone by. 
 
 But, the most sublime path of all was reserved 
 for the literary foot-prints of Agnes Mary Clarke. 
 Clad in the robes of the astronomer, she sought 
 the mysteries of the firmament. In this capacity 
 she exhibited an acute power of observation, for 
 her thought was characterised by a profundity 
 and accurateness that shone to fullest advantage 
 through a clear medium of expression. Yet, for 
 all the depths plumbed by her mind, she managed 
 to speak of her scientific researches in a manner 
 that was highly attractive. 
 
 We can not let the curtain down on the women 
 devotees of literature without mentioning the 
 Countess of Blessington. Though a novelist of 
 some note, she primarily deserves to be remem- 
 bered for the kindness she bestowed on all who 
 loved a life of letters. Belonging to hospitable 
 Tipperary, she was as noble an ornament of that 
 county as was Margaret O'Connor in mediaeval 
 days of the principality of OfPaly. For fourteen 
 years her spirit of hospitality welcomed to her 
 home wit and genius, whenever they sought an 
 
 [196] 
 
Writers of Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 
 
 entry. From beyond the seas, as well as from 
 different parts of her own land, learned men were 
 lured to the pleasing atmosphere of her home. In 
 the words of Mr. Proctor, **men famous for art 
 and science in distant lands sought her friend- 
 ship, and the historians and scholars, the poets 
 and the wits, and painters of her own country 
 found an unfailing welcome in her ever hospitable 
 home. ' ' She maintained in the nineteenth century 
 that tradition of devotion to the elevated and im- 
 materialistic concept of civilisation, which is the 
 only explanation of what Mr. G. K. Chesterton 
 calls the * miracle' of Ireland's survival as a 
 nation. 
 
 [m] 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 The Motheks and Daughters of Today 
 
 ITHERTO we Have, for the most part, 
 devoted our attention to that section of 
 Irish womanhood which has come prom- 
 inently before the public eye; we now intend to 
 smng the censer of praise before the shrine of 
 the multitudes of great ones who, in the secret 
 places of their quiet homes, keep kindled the fires 
 that contribute to the perpetuity of the nation's 
 life. 
 
 It is a truism, yet one that never grows stale 
 by repetition, that as the family is, so the nation 
 shall be. If this is true of nations that live the 
 most artificial of lives and do greatest violence to 
 family traditions, it is especially verifiable 
 amongst a people like the Irish who are still so 
 close to nature, and considerably influenced in 
 their national activity by the precepts and cus- 
 toms of their sires. It is evident, then, that the 
 force that moulds in such a community the life 
 of the family possesses an extraordinary potency 
 to shape the destiny of the nation. Such a force 
 we believe to be primarily the property of Irish 
 mothers. 
 
 The Irish mother is as true to her God-given 
 
 [198] 
 
The Mothers and Daughters of Today 
 
 nature as any that breathes on earth, for she dedi- 
 cates herself with the most sacrosanct sense of 
 fidelity to the most essential work of motherhood, 
 the care of the child. 
 
 This solicitude for her offspring is most in 
 evidence in the Irish mother 's clinging love of the 
 cradle. She gives personal attention to the child 
 at the most troublesome stage of its existence, and, 
 wealthy or poor, rarely deems any other hand 
 than her own worthy of watching by the infantas 
 cot. And what a care she lavishes on the little 
 one that Grod has sent her! Who that has ever 
 heard an Irish mother whisper in tenderest accents 
 her love to her little one, or fling the caresses of 
 her dream-song round the infant fancy, can fail 
 to realise what a world of maternal affection 
 dwells within her bosom! She has the sweetest 
 lullabies that any mother can boast of wherewith 
 to lull to sleep the baby mind. Her slumber songs 
 are so sleep-inducing, that rarely does childish 
 restlessness fail to surrender to their crooning 
 magic. For this reason she seldom needs those 
 artificial methods of the more * cultured' mothers 
 of humanity to hand over her child to the 
 strengthening repose of slumberland. She gives 
 a peace by the sheer overflow of her maternal 
 feeling and the music of her soul to her infant care 
 that nothing else can provide. 
 
 This solicitude for the infant she may have to 
 manifest for many a year, for her affection for 
 children is not alienated as her married life 
 
 [199] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 advances by the frivolous objects that entertain 
 the foolish attention of so many women in 
 countries where science is developed to the detri- 
 ment of morality. Yet, she fears not the trouble 
 that every new child-gift from the Almighty may 
 occasion her, for she has not succumbed to any 
 materialistic creed that cherishes physical comfort 
 more than the dictates of duty. She knows the 
 value of the child soul, which is the most precious 
 thing that heaven could give to earth. As a true 
 christian she knows the necessity and worth of 
 self-sacrifice as a means of attaining any end that 
 is great and sublime, whether in the spiritual or 
 temporal order. Accordingly, she understands 
 that if she is to entertain the hope of having sons 
 and daughters who shall be her pride and her 
 glory, she must be ready to endure the suffering, 
 mental and physical, that is associated with the 
 rearing of a family. This is distinctly her spirit, 
 and it rarely fails to reap the reward of the 
 splendid self-denial on which it is based. The 
 average Irish family is large, and seldom disloyal 
 to the one mainly responsible for its moral and 
 physical well-being. 
 
 Next to the religious motive, some merely 
 natural attributes of the Celt contribute to the 
 strength of the maternal instinct in the Irish 
 woman. The element of the affectionate is uni- 
 versally admitted to be one of the leading con- 
 stituents of Irish character. It manifests itself 
 in a thousand different ways, and largely explains 
 
 [200] 
 
The Mothers and Daughters of Today 
 
 the position of universal esteem whicli the Irish 
 race enjoys amongst every people that feels its 
 warmth. If this is true of the nation as a whole it 
 is decidedly so of its womanhood, which finds in 
 motherhood an opportunity of expressing the 
 strongest and purest human love that warms our 
 terrestrial globe. Even the terms of endearment 
 with which she addresses her child bespeak in the 
 Irish mother the refined and intense passion which 
 consumes her. Such love-expressions as * pulse 
 of my heart,' ^vein of my heart,' 'my share of the 
 world thou art' reveal the shrine that maternal 
 love possesses in the inmost recesses of the Irish 
 mother's being. This affectionate bent of her 
 nature is reenf orced by her racial imaginativeness 
 and romanticism. The possibilities that the future 
 holds for the child, and the dreams she weaves 
 round its developing mind very often provide her 
 with a powerful incentive to bestow on it her most 
 jealous care. Then, she has that intense Celtic 
 pride of family, which urges her to rear children 
 who shall be worthy of the best traditions of those 
 who came before her. And finally, she is endowed 
 with an instinctive conservatism which is a strong 
 barrier against all temptations to abandon the 
 home for more 'up-to-date' activities outside it. 
 
 This love of the home makes her dwelling-place 
 not a mere inhabitable edifice of brick and mortar 
 and furniture. It is not so much mere property, 
 to be arbitrarily bartered for money. It entombs 
 
 [201] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 a something which cannot be purchased. It is, in 
 a word, a home in the truest, and, if you will, the 
 most old-fashioned sense of the word. It is the 
 centre of all the most treasured memories of her 
 own and her family's life. It has wound itself so 
 intimately into her fancy, and has, so to speak, 
 absorbed so much of the family soul by constant 
 association with it, that it cannot be abandoned 
 without doing violence to an integral part of the 
 mother's spiritual existence. Thus does her innate 
 conservatism transform the prosaic house of stone 
 and mortar into the poetic and spiritual entity 
 called the home, and bind her heart to it by the 
 strongest of bonds. 
 
 Where such devotion to the home exists, there 
 must be present a high standard of morality. This 
 is certainly realised in the feminine head of the 
 Irish household. Her devotion to religion is re- 
 vealed in several ways, to only a few of which we 
 can here pay attention. She is strongly attached 
 to prayer. In fact, her daily existence is, to a 
 large extent, immersed in an atmosphere of 
 prayer. Prayerfulness is manifest in most of her 
 daily actions. During the day her ordinary con- 
 versation is shot through and through with the 
 names of things sacred. And when the special 
 time for prayer arrives at night, the whole family 
 must faithfully assemble, to lay the wreathe of 
 the Rosary at Mary's feet. Not content with this, 
 she arranges a program of prayers at the con- 
 
 [202] 
 
The Mothers and Daughters of Today 
 
 elusion of the Eosary, which begs the Creator's 
 aid for the entire world, and especially for those 
 in the throes of suffering and distress. Friends 
 and enemies, poor and rich, christians and un- 
 believers, all find themselves commended to the 
 mercy of the Most High, by the pitiful, devotional 
 soul of the Irish mother. 
 
 And the virtues she exalts in her prayers she 
 strives to practise. She is no mechanical utterer 
 of pious phrases. She walks along a high path 
 of virtue, especially that of purity. She is a model 
 of modesty, and her marked devotion to her mar- 
 riage vow saves Ireland from those disgraceful 
 scenes which disfigure the moral and social life of 
 so many other countries. Not only has her husband 
 no cause for complaint in this respect, but her 
 uprightness is a considerable factor in the preser- 
 vation of her partner 's moral integrity. Drink is 
 the greatest vice with which the Irishman has to 
 contend, and many an Irish husband has been kept 
 from rushing over its precipice to destruction by 
 the angel efforts of a good wife. Oftentimes it 
 occasions the wife a veritable white martyrdom 
 to accomplish this, but she considers the victory 
 gained a sufficient recompense for the sufferings 
 endured. 
 
 Still more beneficial, perhaps, is her influence 
 over her sons and daughters, for it is reenforced 
 by an authority which they dare not disrespect. 
 Oftentimes her sons remain with her until they 
 are mature men, for late marriages have become 
 
 [203] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 the custom in Ireland, yet they are always her 
 * boys' and follow her guidance with a boyish 
 instinct. Very likely, it is this submission to long 
 maternal tutelage that engenders more than aught 
 else in the Irishman that deep-seated respect for 
 womanhood, of which his nation is so proud. For 
 her daughters, she is a worthy example of 
 womanly modesty and piety. Her vigilance care- 
 fully shields them, and many liberties that are 
 ordinarily granted to young ladies of other coun- 
 tries are denied these. Their relations with young 
 men are most rigidly scrutinised, for the maternal 
 instinct treasures most of all that virtue tha,t has 
 been the glory of the daughters of the Gael for 
 all time. Assuredly, when we think of the honour 
 and purity of Irish youth, we cannot fail to see 
 how nobly the Irish mother fulfills the high 
 mission entrusted to her by Providence. We can 
 not resist endorsing the beautiful tribute paid 
 the Irish mother by a recent writer, when he says : 
 ^*She is the foremost among the hidden saints of 
 earth. A follower of Christ, whose cloister is 
 within the four walls of the home. A lover of 
 Christ, whose little kingdom comprises the 
 treasured souls whom God has given her to guide. 
 A ruler of Christ, who draws her subjects to her 
 by sanctity and love. Her t old-worn hands that 
 clasp the old, brown rosary, are eloquent of 
 strength to seize and lift to good all souls they 
 meet; her lips are moulded to lines of peace by 
 years of unending prayer, and murmured benisons 
 
 [204] 
 
The Mothers and Daughters of Today 
 
 over sleeping babes ; upon ber brow eternal calm 
 and resignation sit enthroned. '** 
 
 If the Irish mother 's love for the beauty of the 
 moral order is so intense and sublime, her admira- 
 tion for the God-given love of country is none the 
 less insistent. 1 Today she is manifesting a heroism 
 in the cause of her land that bids fair to emulate 
 that of Irish matrons in the most trying days of 
 the past. Only a few years ago, she manifested 
 a fortitude that might grace the story of Ireland 
 in the days of its greatest sacrifices. In that 
 glorious week of 1916, when the husband and son 
 went forth against overwhelming odds to battle 
 for their country, Irish wives and mothers offered, 
 with sorrow-rent and dauntless hearts, their men 
 to the great mother of them all, the Poor Old 
 Woman. Many of these husbands and sons made 
 the supreme sacrifice of their lives, and hundreds 
 of them endured the tortures of a prison existence, 
 whilst their women-folk had to bear the terrible 
 anguish of the mind as they pondered, in the lone- 
 liness of their homes, on the miseries suffered by 
 their patriot men. Yet, they could not be broken, 
 and though natural sorrow played havoc with their 
 spirits, their will to stand by the manhood of their 
 homes remained unconquerable. And, at this 
 moment, their heroic patience and encouragement 
 are some of the greatest aids that a manhood 
 struggling against a militaristic tyranny could 
 have. In the martyrdom of the spirit which they 
 
 * The Soul of Ireland. W. J. Lockington. SJ. p. 110, 
 
 [205] 
 
V 
 
 The Mothers and Daughters of Today 
 
 nobly bear, their men find a strength and inspira- 
 tion that nerve them for any martyrdom of the 
 body which foreign despotism may impose npon 
 thenip> 
 
 From the mothers of to-day we turn for a 
 moment to their daughters, to see how the seed 
 of maternal example and teaching produces fruit 
 in their character. 
 
 The young women of Ireland can perhaps carry 
 off the premier prize of the world for maidenly 
 modesty and purity. They are as bountifully 
 dowered as the daughters of any land with those 
 natural gifts which, if not properly used, prove 
 seriously detrimental to morality. They are as 
 attractive, physically, as any that breathe, for the 
 Divine Artist has endowed their forms with a 
 beauty that cannot be surpassed anywhere. They 
 have as keen a sense of the joie de vivre, and as 
 generous a fund of the sunniness of life as can 
 be claimed by the girlhood of any nation. Yet, 
 they know where to set up the barriers between 
 true and false pleasure, and rarely seek enjoyment 
 at the expense of morality. There is a lower per- 
 centage of illegitimate births in Ireland than in 
 any other country in the world. Whenever a child 
 is born outside wedlock, so shocked is the public 
 sense by the very unusual occurrence, that it 
 brands with an irreparable stigma, and, to a large 
 extent, excommunicates the woman guilty of the 
 crime. The Irish girl's most prevalent mode of 
 
 [206] 
 
The Women of the Gael 
 
 amusement is a type of dance that, perhaps of all 
 the dances in the world, is the most innocent, 
 though inferior to none in vigour and variety. She 
 takes part in this solely to find an outlet for the 
 music of her soul, and the Celtic energy that 
 hungers for the poetry of rythmic movement. 
 When she dreams of a partner in life, the romantic 
 and imaginative in her calls forcibly for the pres- 
 ence of the aesthetic in the future husband, but 
 her primary desire is that her bridegroom have 
 a fair heart and an honourable conscience. She 
 longs with a feminine longing for attractive 
 apparel, but her dress must not sacrifice a sense 
 of maidenly decorum for the false allurements that 
 unbecoming fashions may hold. 
 
 As, like her mother, the Irish maiden is moral, 
 so, like her too, she is patriotic. She is an active 
 member of many societies, the avowed aim of 
 which is the emancipation of her country. She is 
 a prominent element in the Gaelic League, that 
 has done and continues to do, so much for the 
 preservation of the ancient Gaelic tongue, for the 
 slain industries of Ireland, and for the resurrected 
 vitality of the manners and customs that sprang 
 from the genius of the Irish Celt. She is a staunch 
 supporter of Sinn Fein, and is always ready, as 
 she was at Easter Week, to offer the testimony of 
 her blood to prove the creed that is in her. She 
 is, in a word, as true to-day to the ancient heritage 
 of her people as any generation of women who 
 
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The Mothers and Daughters of Today 
 
 have preceded her, and clings as staunchly to the 
 century-long hope that, when freedom abides 
 again with Eire, its benisons will come in full 
 measure to those who have been and ever shall be, 
 loyal ** Women of the Gael.^' 
 
 THE END 
 
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