The Lunatic—Insanity and its Causes in Ireland—The Usual Old Lady and Donkey—Sunshine and Shadow—Clonmines and its Seven Churches—The Crosses around the Holy Tree—Baginbun and the Landing of the English—The Bull of Pope Adrian—Letter of Pope Alexander—Protest of the Irish Princes—Legends—Death of Henry II.

"To some men God hath given laughter, and tears to some men he hath given."

To-day it is tears and sadness for one poor woman.

B. is a magistrate here and last night at dinner a warrant for his signature was brought to the house. It was for the commitment of a poor woman to an asylum for the insane and this morning we roll away to the village to conclude the matter. The "Court" awaits our arrival, but I have no mind for such scenes; indeed I do not think it right that mere lookers-on should be permitted, any more than curiosity seekers should be allowed to stare at men in prison. So I stay out in the car while B., followed by the "Court," which has been sunning itself outside, passes within.

However, I am not to escape in all ways, as, turning my eyes towards a window to the left, I see the poor woman staring out at me, the sadness and misery of her expression passing description,—life is so absolutely over for her, with nothing save the horror of increasing insanity to look forward to throughout all the years which may remain of existence. Her mother died in an asylum and her fate is certain. The curse of intermarriage has pronounced her doom as it does for so many in Ireland. It is also claimed that much of the insanity so prevalent here is caused by excessive use of tea, and such tea. Placed on the stove and allowed to simmer and stew all day, it acquires a strength that would destroy in time the strongest of nerves.

This poor woman goes to the asylum by her own wish, and is glad to go, knowing the hopelessness of it all for her. Ah, the pity of it, and one is so absolutely powerless to do aught to help! The law is soon complied with and leaving her sad face still at the window we roll away.

The day is especially brilliant and the air like wine, laden with the fragrance of the hawthorn and wild grasses; while the hedgerows bordering the lanes are a mass of blossoms, and the world is beautiful,—all the more beautiful by contrast with that glimpse of sadness we have just left.

Our car goes rushing and singing along until we round a bend of the road and are immediately involved in wild confusion. An old lady—as usual—seated on the smallest of carts, drawn by a most diminutive donkey,—Ireland is full of old ladies in carts, in fact one rarely sees any others in them,—is vainly trying to stop the wild circles it is describing, cart and all, in fright at our appearance. It whirls her around at least a half-dozen times before a passing postman seizing the bridle leads it by us, while the ancient dame, the flowers on her much awry bonnet trembling with her indignation, hurls curses at us. "Blarst yer sowls" comes back at us as she is borne away.

Truly sunshine and shadow, laughter and sadness chase each other closely in this Isle of Erin. Don't for a moment imagine, though you may seem to be in the densest solitude of the country, that there is nobody about; any instant a sudden turn may find you in the midst of shrieking women, flying chicks, quacking ducks, and scoffing geese, where clatter and confusion and curses reign supreme, but again those curses imply nothing generally here, they are only a form of salutation, and rarely mean what is said.

We pass down long stretches of road with the sparkling sea spread out before us until we draw up near the ruins of the seven churches of Clonmines, close down by the placid waters of the river.

Of the churches there is little left, save a few ruined towers. In the centre of one where the sunshine falls warmest and many flowers grow, the late priest of the parish has found his resting-place.

After all there seems to have been close connection between the far east and this Emerald Isle. At these seven churches of Clonmines, there was once held a Moorish slave market, and one cannot but think that that keening for the dead must have come from the chant which one may still hear amongst the followers of the prophet.

Clonmines, which is named from the silver mines near-by, was "a very ancient corporation but quite ruinated" even in 1684 when we find it so described in an old manuscript of Wexford. In the time of the Danes it possessed a mint for silver coining and was surrounded by a fosse. On the shores of its river or tide inlet, called the Pill, the descendants of the first English conquerors still lived in the days of Elizabeth, in fact we find yet living in one of these ancient towers, the descendant of the man, Sir Roger de Sutton, who built it seven centuries ago—a love of home which passes understanding, for that abode to-day could not be considered as agreeable under any circumstances.

This little river was considered of such importance in the days of Henry VI. that an act of Parliament was passed for the building of towers upon its banks "that none shall break the fortifications or strength of the waters of Bannow."

Even in Henry IV.'s time one John Neville was appointed keeper of this water, and the feudal tenure by which the Hore family held their manor of Pole was for the keeping of a passage over the Pill when the Sessions were held at Wexford. But King and noble reckoned without the storms of winter, which year after year drove the sands of the sea inward, filling the harbour and finally destroying all the towns on its banks. One of them, Old Bannow, we have already visited, and we leave this of Clonmines, to-day a ruin past all redemption, inhabited by that one family whose members have watched the years go by just here for seven centuries.

As we glide off through the winding lanes, the birds are talking to themselves in the hedgerows, and could tell us much about it all I doubt not, while far away on the soft air sounds the throbbing and the sobbing of the sea.

Close by the roadside we come upon an evidence of one of the quaint customs still to be met with in this section. There is a certain tree—why so selected does not appear—which is regarded as holy, and every funeral which passes leaves a small cross at its base, so that to-day the pile of rude wooden emblems of our faith reaches half way up its trunk. There are no shrines around the place or any other evidence that it is regarded as sacred or used as a point for devotion, simply that mass of plain wooden crosses mounting high around its trunk, and numbering many thousands, each one representing the passing of some poor soul out of this earthly sunshine and into the shadow of the grave.

Our day is not over yet. This section of Ireland so abounds in points of interest that fearing we may pass any of them the speed of the car is reduced to that of a donkey-cart, in fact, several of the latter pass us with great show of speed and scornful glances cast by ancient dames at our crawling monster, while the donkey kicks dust in our faces—whether from contempt of us or a desire to get home to supper he takes no time to state, but the fact remains.

Our way leads down by the sea, and leaving the car to puff itself to sleep, we pass through the downs on the cliffs and out on to the point of Baginbun. If you are not versed in Irish history, you will wonder why you are brought here—it is pretty, yes, certainly, but you have seen other places far more so. There is a little cove just under you where the waters murmur and whisper, but what of that? Well, that is Baginbun and just there, though time and tide have long since obliterated the marks of their ships' prows, landed the English for the first time in Ireland. Fitzstephens and his band of adventurers in May, 1169, landed there and doubtless climbed this hill where we stand knee deep in the grass to day. What that meant to Ireland is told in the history of all the ensuing years down to this latter day. How many readers are aware of the Bull of Pope Adrian IV. handing Ireland body and soul over to Henry II. of England,—let us quote a bit of it just here.

"Adrian, Bishop, servant of the servants of God, to our well beloved son in Christ, the illustrious King of the English, health and apostolical benediction.

"Your highness is contemplating the laudable and profitable work of gaining a glorious fame on earth, and augmenting the recompense of bliss that awaits you in heaven, by turning your thoughts, in the proper spirit of a Catholic Prince, to the object of widening the boundaries of the Church, explaining the true Christian faith to those ignorant and uncivilised tribes, and exterminating the nurseries of vices from the Lord's inheritance. In which matter, observing as we do the maturity of deliberation and the soundness of judgment exhibited in your mode of proceeding, we cannot but hope that proportionate success will, with the Divine permission, attend your exertions.

"Certainly there is no doubt but that Ireland and all the Islands upon which Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, hath shined, and which have received instruction in the Christian faith, do belong of right to St. Peter and the Holy Roman Church, as your grace also admits. For which reason we are the more disposed to introduce into them a faithful plantation and to engraft among them a stock acceptable in the sight of God, in proportion as we are convinced from conscientious motives that such efforts are made incumbent on us by the urgent claims of duty.

"You have signified to us, son, well-beloved in Christ, your desire to enter the island of Ireland in order to bring that people into subjection to laws, and to exterminate the nurseries of vices from the country; and that you are willing to pay to St. Peter an annual tribute of one penny for every house there, and to preserve the ecclesiastical rights of that land uninjured and inviolate. We, therefore, meeting your pious and laudable desire with the favour which it deserves, and graciously according to your petition, express our will and pleasure that, in order to widen the bounds of the Church, to check the spread of vice, to reform the state of morals and promote the inculcation of virtuous dispositions, you shall enter that island and execute therein what shall be for the honour of God and the welfare of the country. And let the people of that land receive you in honourable style and respect you as their Lord. Provided always that ecclesiastical rights be uninjured and inviolate, and the annual payment of one penny for every house be secured for St. Peter and the Holy Roman Church.

"If then, you shall be minded to carry into execution the plan which you have devised in your mind, use your endeavour diligently to improve that nation by the inculcation of good morals; and exert yourself, both personally and by means of such agents as you employ (whose faith, life, and conversation you shall have found suitable for such an undertaking), that the Church may be adorned there, that the religious influence of the Christian faith may be planted and grow there; and that all that pertains to the honour of God and the salvation of souls may, by you, be ordered in such a way as that you may be counted worthy to obtain from God a higher degree of recompense in eternity, and at the same time succeed in gaining upon earth a name of glory throughout all generations."

In such words this island, which had been faithful to the Church of Rome for centuries, was handed over by its head to bloodshed and murder.

That the progress of the King was watched and approved of is amply set forth in the letter of Pope Alexander III.:

"Alexander, Bishop, servant of the servants of God, to our well beloved son in Christ, Henry, the illustrious King of the English, greeting and apostolical benediction.

"It is not without very lively sensations of satisfaction that we have learned, from the loud voice of public report, as well as from the authentic statements of particular individuals, of the expedition which you have made in the true spirit of a pious King and magnificent prince against that nation of the Irish (who, in utter disregard of the fear of God, are wandering with unbridled licentiousness into every downward course of crime, and who have cast away the restraints of the Christian religion and of morality, and are destroying one another with mutual slaughter), and of the magnificent and astonishing triumph which you have gained over a realm into which, as we are given to understand, the Princes of Rome, the triumphant conquerors of the world, never, in the days of their glory, pushed their arms, a success to be attributed to the ordering of the Lord, by whose guidance, as we undoubtedly do believe, your serene highness was led to direct the power of your arms against that uncivilised and lawless people."

There exists to-day the complaint of the Irish Princes to Pope John XXII. in answer to a letter from him to the Irish prelates empowering them to launch the thunders of the Church against all, whether lay or ecclesiastical, who were guilty of disaffection to the ruling powers. This from their holy head in favour of the English was felt very keenly all over the land and called forth the document referred to above.

"In the name of Donald O'Neill, King of Ulster, and rightful hereditary successor to the throne of all Ireland, as well as Princes and Nobles of the same realm with the Irish people in general present their humble salutations approaching with kisses of devout homage to his sacred feet."

They lay before him, "with loud and imploring cry," the treatment they have received, and also an account of their descent from Milesius, the Spaniard, through a line of one hundred and thirty-six kings unto the time of St. Patrick, A.D. 435. From that saint's day until 1170 sixty-one kings had ruled who acknowledged no superior, in things temporal, and by whom the Irish Church was endowed.

"'At length,' say the Princes, 'your predecessor, Pope Adrian, an Englishman—although not so completely in his origin as in his feelings and connections,—in the year of our Lord 1155, upon the representation, false and full of iniquity, which was made to him by Henry, King of England—the monarch under whom, and perhaps at whose instigation, St. Thomas, of Canterbury, in the same year, suffered death, as you are aware, in defence of Justice and of the Church,—made over the dominion of this realm of ours in a certain set form of words to that Prince, whom, for the crime here mentioned, he ought rather to have been deprived of his own kingdom; presenting him de facto with what he had no right to bestow, while the question touching the justice of the proceeding was utterly disregarded, Anglican prejudices, lamentable to say, blinding the vision of that eminent Pontiff. And thus despoiling us of our royal honour, without any offence of ours, he handed us over to be lacerated by teeth more cruel than those of any wild beasts. For, ever since the time when the English, upon occasion of the grant aforesaid, and under the mask of a sort of outward sanctity and religion, made their unprincipled aggression upon the territories of our realm, they have been endeavouring, with all their might, and with every art which perfidy could employ, completely to exterminate, and utterly to eradicate our people from the country ... and have compelled us to repair, in the hope of saving our lives, to mountainous, woody and swampy and barren spots, and to the caves of the rocks also, and in these, like beasts, to take up our dwelling for a length of time.'

"The Princes enclosed a copy of Pope Adrian's Bull, along with their Complaint, to Pope John, which Bull the latter Pope forwarded to King Edward....

"The part which the Church of Rome has taken, not only in the bringing of Ireland under English rule in the first instance, but in the maintenance of that rule, has never been understood by the Irish people in general.

"Dr. Lanigan, whose history of Ireland is expensive and scarce, says of Pope Adrian that 'love of his country, his wish to gratify Henry, and some other not very becoming reasons, prevailed over every other consideration, and the condescending Pope, with great cheerfulness and alacrity, took upon himself to make over to Henry all Ireland, and got a letter, or Bull, drawn up to that effect and directed to him, in which, among other queer things, he wishes him success in his undertaking, and expresses the hope that it will conduce, not only to his glory in this world, but likewise to his eternal happiness in the next.'[8]

"Adrian's old master was one Marianus, an Irishman, for whom he had great regard, yet, says Dr. Lanigan, 'he was concerned in hatching a plot against that good man's country, and in laying the foundation of the destruction of the independence of Ireland.'[9]

"This is strong language from an Irish Roman Catholic clergyman, who enjoys the fullest confidence of his country, with regard to a former Pope, and it must be remembered that the statement was not made in a platform speech, when momentary excitement might impel a speaker into the use of words which he would afterwards regret, but that it was calmly and deliberately penned in the quietness of the study, and, probably, read and re-read, and finally corrected, before it was committed to print.

"The Rev. M.J. Brennan, O. S. F., who is not at all so unprejudiced as Dr. Lanigan, states that 'Adrian, anxious for the aggrandisement of his country,' or, as Cardinal Pole expresses it, 'induced by the love of his country, lost no time in complying with the agent's request.'[10] The agent referred to was John of Salisbury, who had been sent by King Henry in 1155 to ask for the Pope's sanction for the invasion of Ireland, and who states that the invasion was delayed until 1171 by the restraining influence of the King's mother, the Empress Matilda. With this statement Dr. Lanigan agrees.[11]

"It is a mistake to suppose that the Conquest of Ireland is due to the appeal made in 1168 by Dermot MacMurrogh for King Henry's aid. That event merely afforded to the King and the Pope a convenient excuse for carrying out a long-determined plan.

"Attempts have been made on various grounds to justify Pope Adrian's action. Edmund Campion, the famous English Jesuit, alleges that the Spanish ancestors of the Irish were subject '376 years ere Christ was born' to one Gurguntius, from whom King Henry was descended, and that, consequently, the Pope only helped to restore to Henry his rightful authority.[12] But this notion is too far-fetched to deserve consideration.

"A more plausible excuse is that about a century previous to the Conquest the Irish handed over to the Pope of that time—Urban II.—the sovereignty of this country. This theory was advocated by the Rev. Geoffrey Keatinge, D.D.

"But a still more popular excuse is, that all the Christian Islands of the Ocean were conferred on the Popes by the first Christian Emperor, Constantine. "Dr. Lanigan brushes aside all these fanciful ideas with one sweep. 'This nonsense' he says, 'of the Pope's being the head owner of all Christian Islands had been partially announced to the world in a Bull of Urban II., dated 1091, in which, on disposing of the Island of Corsica, he said that the Emperor Constantine had given the Islands to St. Peter and his vicars. But Constantine could not give what did not belong to him, and accordingly, as Keatinge argues, could not have transferred the sovereignty of Ireland to any Pope.'[13]

"As to Keatinge's own idea, namely, that the Irish had transferred their crown to the Pope, Dr. Lanigan writes: 'Neither in any of the Irish annals, nor in the ecclesiastical documents of those times, whether Roman or Irish, is there a trace to be found of a transfer of Ireland to Urban II., or to any Pope, by either the Irish Kings or Irish nobility, although the sly Italian, Polydore Virgil, who has been followed by two Englishmen, Campion and Sanders (both Jesuits), and also by some Irish writers, has told some big lies on this subject. These stories were patched up in spite of Chronology, or of any authority whatsoever, and Keatinge swallowed them as he did many others.'"[14]

There is much more to be read on the subject and those who are interested in the question cannot do better than examine that very excellent little work of John Roche Ardill, Forgotten Facts of Irish History,[15] from which the foregoing pages are a quotation.

Photo by W. Leonard

Glendalough