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‘am.
March, 1907
THE NATIONAL DEMOCRAT 29
IN THE LIBRARY.
IN PRAISE OF IRELAND
THE FAIR HILLS or IRELAND.
Gwynn. Dublin: Maunsel;
Macmillan. 65.
By Stephen
London 2
“ VVHAT is this book but a twentieth century
Dindsenchus-a topographical discussion of Irish
history?” So Mr. Gwynn himself describes his
latest work, in which, he adds, he finds himself
“ with much wonder ” unconsciously imitating
the literary methods of the old Irish chroniclers. It
is a pleasantly-discursive volume, in which he takes
his readers up and down, in rambling fashion,
through the four provinces of Ireland, from Slemish
to Cashel and from Sligo to Clontarf, and gossips
gracefully about the historical and legendary asso-
ciations of each spot. The general arrangement
being topographical, each chapter presents in itself
a rapid survey of the whole course of Irish history ;
Tara recalls O’Connell as well as Cormac Mac Art,
and Captain Boycott stands beside the heroes of
Moytura in the section dealing with Cong and its
neighbourhood. Yet a chronological plan, though
it never obtrudes any unpleasant suggestion of rigid
system, and might easily be overlooked in a first
reading, is not altogether absent; the chapters are
grouped so as to deal first with “those places where
the salient interest belongs to a very remote age ";
Armagh and the Red Branch precede St. Ciaran
and Clonmacnoise. But the best notion of what
this book is like will be derived from the words of
the author 2-
If you set down a geologist anywhere in Ireland, and give him
time and the opportunity to dig and to investigate, he will de-
monstrate toyou there-provided he candigdeepcnough-the history
of the soil and rock he stands on. Stratum by stratum he will show
you the successive deposits ; but in any given place, some particular
phase in the geological history of Ireland will be salient and charac-
teristic. Here it will be a story of subsidence, there of upheaval ;
here of wearing away, there of piling up. But whether in the
alluvial valley of the Shannon, or the basaltic outcrop of northeast
Antrim, the geologist can infer for you the story of Ireland, with
special reference to one place, and special insistence on one incident
in the evolution of the whole. In like manner there is no town-
land in Ireland so insignificant, but that if you could trace back all
that happened there you would have a history of Ireland from one
limited point of view. And there is no one of the places where
great things have been done and suffered for Ireland, but keep:
evidence of historic strata (so to speak) before and after that
moment by which specially it is named and known.
The Ireland with which Mr. Gywnn is most
concerned is Irish Ireland; the ten chief “historic
strata” which he illustrates are all prior to the
Norman Conquest. From the mysterious pre-
historic structures of Brugh na Boinnc to the
twelfth century architecture of Cormac’s Chapel, it
is native civilisation and native art that he dwells on.
But his method enables him to touch lightly upon
later happenings; and his pages enshrine the work of
the Keating Branch, Colonel Everard's ‘tobacco
plantation, and the poems of Mr. W. B. Yeats, as
well as the doings of Eochy and Cuchulain, of
Benen and Columba. V
Mr. Gwynn is one of those rare men (rare, at
least, in Ireland) who combine political and literary
gifts. In his political capacity, he never fails to be
literary ; as a man of letters, he never forgets to be
a good politician. The Fair Hillraflrelzmrl is no
bloodless rhapsody on Ireland's natural beauties
Mr. Gwynn is throughout more interested in I‘t‘:'t‘
than in nature, in archaeology than in aesthetics
He is not a violent partisan ; he does not conceal
his shrinking from the horrors of the Land VVar or.
his preference for the more intellectual work of the,
Gaelic League, which appears to him “ of fat
brighter augury ” than the agrarian struggle. But
this judicial tone only lends weight to the crushing
condemnation of England and English methods in
Ireland which may be found, explicit or implied, on
almost every page. Nor is this mere vague brood-
ing over the past ; ifMr. Gwynn praises and desires
to preserve the Irish sense of historic continuity, it
is because he sees in it the inspiration and the
guarantee of future progress. He insists constantly
upon the urgent necessity of studying Ireland's past,
if her present is to be understood; and replies to
Sir Horace Plunkett’s famous dictum about Irish
history being for Englishmen to remember and
Irishmen to forget, by saying, “It will be time to
talk of remembering or forgetting when the facts
are generally familiar either to Englishmen or Irish-
men.” Nor is he an uncritical historian; he
Constantly refers to Mr. john MacNeill's recent
researches into our origins, and will, it may be
hoped, assist in popularising the valuable, but yet
little-known, work of lVIr. MacNeill in sifting
history from legend amid the earliest Irish records.
His ingenious attempt to reconcile the divergent
theories, as to St. Patrick’s place of captivity, of
Archbishop Healy and Professor Bury, is worthy
of note.
To architecture Mr. Gwynn devotes special
attention. VVith the assistance of Mr. Hugh
Thomson, whose drawings add enormously to the
value of the book, he makes us feel the grandeur of
church-building in media:val Ireland ; and then, in
sharp contrast, he castigates the tastclessness of
modern ecclesiastical art. A personal note, not
unpleasing, is frequently, and indeed inevitably,
struck. Mr. Gwynn dilates with pardonable pride
of ancestry on the great deeds of Brian, “the one