The Open Secret of Ireland by T. M. (Thomas Michael) Kettle
page 24 of 122 (19%)
page 24 of 122 (19%)
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will no doubt go far. This is the picture of the coming to Ireland of
the Cymro-Frankish adventurers which its pages will imprint on the minds of the youth of England: "One event of his reign (Henry II.'s) must not be forgotten, his visit to Ireland in 1171-2. St Patrick, you may have heard, had banished the snakes from that island, but he had not succeeded in banishing the murderers and thieves who were worse than many snakes. In spite of some few settlements of Danish pirates and traders on the eastern coast, Ireland had remained purely Celtic and purely a pasture country. All wealth was reckoned in cows; Rome had never set foot there, so there was a king for every day in the week, and the sole amusement of such persons was to drive off each other's cows and to kill all who resisted. In Henry II.'s time this had been going on for at least seven hundred years, and during the seven hundred that have followed much the same thing would have been going on, if the English Government had not occasionally interfered." The English whom Henry II. left behind him soon became "as wild and barbarous as the Irishmen themselves." Oxford, the home of so many other lost causes, apparently aspires to be also the home of the lost cause of mendacity. The forcible-feeble malice of Mr Fletcher calls for no serious discussion; submit it to any continental scholar, to any honest British scholar, and he will ask contemptuously, though perhaps with a little stab of pain, how the name of Oxford comes to be associated with such wicked absurdities. Every other reference to Ireland is marked by the same scientific composure and balanced judgment. And this document, inspired by race hatred, and |
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