it may at any time be suddenly swollen with the fury of a mountain
torrent, deeply discoloured by a Republican element.

It must be granted, I fear, that the Celts of Ireland feel pretty much
as the Britons felt under the ascendency of the Saxons, and as the
Saxons in their turn felt under the ascendency of the Normans. In
the estimation of the Christian Britons, their Saxon conquerors,
even after the conversion of the latter, were 'an accursed race, the
children of robbers and murderers, possessing the fruits of their
fathers' crimes.' 'With them,' says Dr. Lingard, 'the Saxon was no
better than a pagan bearing the name of a Christian. They refused to
return his salutation, to join in prayer with him in the church, to
sit with him at the same table, to abide with him under the same roof.
The remnant of his meals and the food over which he had made the sign
of the cross they threw to their dogs or swine; the cup out of
which he had drunk they scoured with sand, as if it had contracted
defilement from his lips.'

It is not the Celtic memory only that is tenacious of national wrong.
The Saxon was doomed to drink to the dregs the same bitter cup which
he administered so unmercifully to the Briton. His Teutonic blood
saved him from no humiliation or insult. The Normans seized all the
lands, all the castles, all the pleasant mansions, all the churches
and monasteries. Even the Saxon saints were flung down out of their
shrines and trampled in the dust under the iron heel of the Christian
conqueror. Everything Saxon was vile, and the word 'Englishry' implied
as much contempt and scorn as the word 'Irishry' in a later age. In
fact, the subjugated Saxons gradually became infected with all the
vices and addicted to all the social disorders that prevailed among
the Irish in the same age; only in Ireland the anarchy endured much