THE IRISH NATIONAL IDEA
From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893
Page 5
THE IRISH NATIONAL IDEA
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beamy celestial armour of faith and hope is imperishable, no matter how disarmed, bare, and degraded in the eyes of a triumphant soldiery or of a more ruthless legislature. In the darkest hour of the Penal night, when it was transportation to learn the alphabet, and when Irishmen were rung outside the gates of Irish cities like lepers at sundown by the sound of the evening bell, it is not too much to say that the one simple little treason-song,' The Blackbird,' sung low around the winter fireside in the mountain shieling, had more influence in preserving the spirit of Irish nationality than all the enactments of the diabolical penal code, enforced by all the might of England, could counteract. What the star that shone over Bethlehem on the first Christmas night was to the three Eastern Magi; what the vision of the Holy Grail was to the Knights of the Round Table; what the Holy Sepulchre was to the dying eyes of the Crusaders fainting in the parched Syrian desert, that to the children of the Irish race was and is the tradition that there has been, and the faith that there will be, a golden-hearted Irish nation—the land of song and wit and mirth and learning and holiness, and all the fair-flowering of the human mind and soul. By the light of that message, glinting out in ineffaceable rainbow colours, no matter what angriest storm-clouds may cross the Irish sky, generation after generation have marched gaily to their doom upon battle-field or scaffold; and the statesman who hopes to settle accounts with Ireland by mending our clothes, and giving us an additional meal a day, without satisfying that imperious spiritual craving of the high-strung Celtic nature, may as well legislate for a time when the green hills of holy Ireland will wear the red livery of England, and when the birds on the Irish bushes will chirp 'Rule Britannia.' … continue reading »
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