A selection of poems,speeches and recollections.

A selection from “Irish Readings,” edited by A. M. Sullivan, M.P., and T. D. Sullivan, M.P, published by H. H. Gill & Son, Dublin, 1895. **

O’Connell’s Sacrifices for Ireland

Described by himself.**

During his Lord Mayoralty of Dublin, in 1842, Daniel O’Connell had a somewhat heated controversy with the Earl of Shrewsbury, who, as an English Catholic, wrote a public letter charging the Liberator with all sorts of crimes. He was accused, amongst other things, of exciting hatred against England, of being guilty of political ingratitude in demanding Repeal of the Union, and of promoting agitation for the purpose of increasing his own personal receipts through the means of the “Repeal rent.” O’Connell~s reply to this tissue of misrepresentations was one of the ablest productions that ever came from his pen. In the course of it he dealt as follows with the question of the. “Repeal rent.”

I will not consent that my claim to “the rent” should be misunderstood. That claim may be rejected; but it is understood in Ireland; and it shall not be misstated anywhere without refutation.

My claim is this. For more than 20 years before Emancipation the burthen of the cause was thrown on me. I had to arrange the meetings, to prepare the resolutions, to furnish replies to the correspondence, to examine the case of each person complaining of practical grievances, to rouse the torpid, to animate the lukewarm, to control the violent and the inflammatory, to avoid the shoals and breakers of the law, to guard against multiplied treachery, and at times to oppose at every peril the powerful and multitudinous enemies of the cause.

To descend to particulars - at a period when my minutes counted by the guinea; when my emoluments were limited only by the extent of my physical and waking powers; when my meals were shortened to the narrowest space, and my sleep restricted to the earliest hours before dawn; at that period, and for more than 20 years, there was no day that I did not devote from one to two hours, often much more, to the working out of the Catholic cause. And that without receiving or allowing the offer of any remuneration, even for the personal expenditure incurred in the agitation of the cause itself. For four years I bore the entire expenses of Catholic agitation, without receiving the contributions of others to a greater amount than £74 in the whole. Who shall repay me for the years of my buoyant youth and cheerful manhood? Who shall repay me for the lost opportunities of acquiring professional celebrity or for the wealth which such distinction would ensure? *

Other *honours I could not then enjoy.

Emancipation came. You admit that it was I who brought it about. The year before Emancipation, though wearing a stuff gown, and belonging to the outer bar, my professional emoluments exceeded £8,000; an amount never before realised in Ireland in the same space of time by an *outer *barrister.

Had I adhered to my profession I must soon have been called within the bar, and obtained the precedency of a silk gown. The severity of my labour would have been at once much mitigated, whilst the emoluments would have been considerably increased. I could ,have done a much greater variety of business with much less toil, and my professional income must have necessarily been augmented by probably one-half.

If I had abandoned politics, even the honours of my profession and its highest stations lay fairly before me.

But I dreamed a day-dream - was it a dream? - that Ireland still wanted me; that although the Catholic aristocracy of Ireland had obtained most valuable advantages from Emancipation, yet the benefits of good government had not reached the great mass of the Irish people, and could not reach them unless the Union should be either made a reality - or unless that hideous measure should be abrogated.

I did not hesitate as to my course. My former success gave me personal advantages which no other man could easily procure. I flung away the profession - I gave its emoluments to the winds - I closed the vista of its honours and dignities - I embraced the cause of my country! and - come weal or come woe - I have made a choice at which I have never repined, nor ever shall repent.

An event occurred which I could not have foreseen. Once more high professional promotion was placed within my reach. The office of Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer became vacant. I was offered it. Or, had I preferred the office of Master of the Rolls, the alternative was proposed to me. It was a tempting offer. Its value was enhanced by the manner in which it was made; and pre-erninently so by the person through whom it was made

• the best Englishman that Ireland ever saw - the Marquis of Normanby.

But I dreamed again a day-dream - was it a dream? - and I refused the offer. And here am I now taunted, even by you, with mean and sordid motives.

I do not think I am guilty of the least vanity when I assert that no man ever made greater sacrifices to what he deemed the cause of his country than I have done. I care not how I may be ridiculed or maligned. I feel the proud consciousness that no public man has made more, or greater, or more ready sacrifices.

Still there lingers behind one source of vexation and sorrow; one evil, perhaps greater than all the rest; one claim, I believe higher than any other, upon the gratitude of my countrymen. It consists in the bitter, the virulent, the mercenary, and therefore the more envenomed hostility towards me which my love for Ireland and for liberty has provoked. What taunts, what reproaches, what calumnies, have I not sustained? what modes of abuse, what vituperation, what slander have been exhausted against me! what vials of bitterness have been poured on my head! what coarseness of language has not been used, abused, and worn out in assailing me? what derogatory appellation has been spared? what treasures of malevolence have been expended? what follies have not been imputed? in fact, what crimes have I not been charged with?

I do not believe that I ever had in private life an enemy. I know that I had and have many, very many, warm, cordial, affectionate, attached friends. Yet here I stand, beyond controversy the most and the best abused man in the universal world! And, to cap the climax of calumny, you come with a lath at your side instead of the sword of a Talbot, and you throw Peel’s scurrillity along with your own into my cup of bitterness.

All this have I done and suffered for Ireland. And let her be grateful or ungrateful, solvent or insolvent, he who insults me for taking her pay wants the vulgar elements of morality which teach that the labourer is worthy of his hire; he wants the higher sensations of the soul which enable one to perceive that there are services which bear no comparison with money, and can never he recompensed by pecuniary rewards.

Yes, I am - I say it proudly - the hired servant of Ireland, and I glory in my servitude.

**Misadventures of a Medical Student

By Richard Dalton Williams ***

There’s a tavern off Westmoreland-street, near Robinson and Bussell’s,

Where I often took the wrinkles from my epigastric muscles,

And sometimes brought a friend or two right valiantly to join

In a foray on the “Natives” or a jousting with Sir Loin;

And oft I condescended with my solemn host to chatter

Of steam-engines and rattle-snakes, or any other matter

I glanced at apple dumplings, monster-meetings, civil wars,

Ham sandwiches, geology, the Oregon, the stars,

Hydropathy, the Puseyites, the newspapers, and soup,

And gave himself advice for gout, his child the same for croup.

I blarneyed him, I plastered him, I stuck it on in lumps,

I said he was a “roarer,” and the emperor of trumps;

And I called him, while he boarded me respectably on tick,

The quintessence concentrated of a sublimated brick.

At length (misguided man I) unpleasant messages were sent

Most annoying to the feelings - that is, pocket - of a gent,

Containing inuendoes about - damn it! - about the rent.

To think that I, who spend my cash on science and experiment,

Would pay for vulgar food’s enough to wake a stoic’s merriment.

I quoted much in learned tongues from many an ancient oracle,

Arid poured upon mine host a flood of logic oratorical,

To prove that *his *the debt had been, and *I *had been the loser;

Whereto he only answered me, “By Jingo - but that’s new, sir.”

(Vile wretch, before posterity I’ll be his soul’s accuser.)

In wrath I, somewhat rashly, drew a scalpel from my pocket

To amputate his humerus directly at the socket;

But slips belong unhappily to surgery and dancing,

I stumbled on an orange-peel while hastily advancing,

And only slightly wounded, through his “ready-made” habiliments,

Some intercostohumeralcutaneous nervous filaments;

And then he called a gentleman in deep cerulean blue,

With cabalistic symbols on his broidered collar too.

What! - a minstrel of the Nation - therefore one of “nature’s nobs”-

To be sent, with knights and aldermen, and other prosy snobs,

For malt arrears, to Jericho - although, did Guinness know it,

He’d bring me here his finest beer, and never charge a poet.

I stood in the Insolvent Court - not one of all my friends,

To save my soul from Newgate, as security attends

Though when I revelled gloriously on hock and venison pie,

The deuce a one in Dublin had so many friends as I.

Yet I thought that the indignant court would strike away the fetter

That my creditor, in malice, wove to chain his guileless debtor,

And would adjudge that I, to meet a schedule pretty full,

Had rather more than plenty in a thorax and a skull.

Besides - I thank post mortems - I also claim as mine,

A heart, and lungs, and liver, in a jar of spirits of wine;

And curious little monsters from the Niger and the Ganges,

An alderman’s intestines, and a pickpocket’s phalanges.

As these were all my assets, save a scapula and carpus,

I sang the following melody to soothe opposing harpies

“I give thee all, I can no more,

Though poor the offering be;

My heart and lungs are all my store,

And these I give to thee.

A heart where dilatation and

Hypertrophy are seen,

And lungs with countless tubercles

Upon them and between.”

They listened to my eloquence; but yet, ‘tis very odd,

They sent me ignominiously, the savages, to quod.

Farewell to Poupart’s ligament, the brain, and caeliac axis,

The lancet and the tourniquet, the cannula and taxis!

Adieu St. Vincent’s, Dun’s, the Meath, obstetrical diameters!

I’m left alone, in quod to groan, or howl my own hexameters,

And muse upon a law like this, so dolorously funny,

That takes away my liberty because I haven’t money.

I could work before they quodded me, but devil a thing at all

Can a fellow do in prison but apostrophise the wall;

But I’m not without some distant hope of bettering my fate;

And my hope, like many another’s, is built upon the grate-

No fire it has to solace me, but, better far I knew

That one of the detective force was always up the flue.

So, as I ever like to have a little quiet fun,

I sat me down beside the hob, and, having first begun

To damn the Court Insolvent for refusing my petition,

I projected up the chimney a Vesuvius of sedition;

Especially on railway wars I came it very strong,**

**And then I sang, extempore, a treasonable song,

Particularly lauding in the chorus of my lays

A pyrotechnic plan to set the Liffey in a blaze;

And my melody, no doubt of it, was sweet as Hybla’s dew

To the tympanum detective of the “crusher” in the flue.

And now I’m hoping constantly - I trust not without reason -

To be put upon my trial for sedition or high treason,

And thus at once win martyrdom and Richmond country air

By means of “a delusion, a mockery, and a snare”;

But it very much depends upon the Alphabetic** liver

Whether he’ll believe or not the quiz about the river.

Perhaps, if his digestion’s good, he’ll be a little sceptical,

But men will snap at anything when surly and dyspeptical,

So here I stay imploring all the consonants and vowels

To constipate imperviously the Alphabetic bowels;

And should the fates decree him “dura ilia messorum”

I confidently hope to stand ere long arraigned before him,

Accused of “foul conspiracy” - God know; perhaps to shatter

The Pigeon-House with lollypop, or capture Stoneybatter.

Unless, indeed, ad *interim, *the fortune-telling benchers

Adjudicate to stop at once my breath and misadventures.

• Richard Dalton Williams was one of the liveliest, gayest, and sweetest; poets of the *Nation. *His first contribution to the poesy of that journal appeared in its thirteenth number, published on January 7th, 1843. It was a ringing war-song, intended to represent the spirit of the Munster clans when uniting and rising against the English in the year 1190. No finer poem of its kind exists in our modern Irish literature. He continued, up to the year 1848, when the crash came, to contribute at-frequent intervals poems on a variety of subjects and pitched in many-moods; there were fiery battle pieces, glowing appeals to the rising enthusiasm of the people, some pieces expressive of tenderer emotions, and several light-hearted and humorous compositions, amongst which his “Misadventures of a Medical Student” occupy a foremost place. The author was himself a medical student when he sent to the press those amusing compositions, which; appearing as they did in the columns of a high-pressure political journal, and affording a pleasant sort of contrast to hot speeches and fiery articles, were all the more enjoyed. A collection of his poems, with a memoir of the author, has been published at the *Natton *office.

** The Attorney-General who conducted the State prosecution against the Repealers was popularly known by the cognomen of “Alphabet Smith,” in allusion to the number of initial letters which he prefixed to his name.

**The Shadow on the Landscape.

Anon.**

O’Connell went down to Kingtown [Dun Laoghaire. KF.], near Dublin, with a party, to visit a queen’s ship-of-war, which was then riding in the bay. After having seen it, O’Connell proposed a walk to the top of Killiney Hill. Breaking from the rest of his party, he ascended to the highest point of the hill, in company with a young and real Irish patriot, whose character was brimful of national enthusiasm. The day was fine, and the view from the summit of the hill burst gloriously upon the sight. The beautiful bay of Dublin, like a vast sheet of crystal, was at their feet. The old city of Dublin stretched away to the West, and to the North was the bold promontory of Howth, jutting forth into the sea. To the South were the Dublin and Wicklow mountains, enclosing the lovely vale of Shanganah, rising picturesquely against the horizon. The scene was beautiful, with all the varieties of sunlight and shadow. O’Connell enjoyed it with nearly as much rapture as his youthful and ardent companion, who broke forth; “It is all Ireland - oh! how beautiful! Thank God we see nothing English here. Everything we see is Irish!” His rapture was interrupted by O’Connell gently laying his hand on his shoulder, and pointing to the ship-of-war at anchor, as he exclaimed: *“A speck of the British power!” *The thought was electric. That speck, significantly pointed out by O’Connell, suggested the whole painful history of his fatherland to the memory of the ardent young Irishman.

The Old Houses of Dublin

By Sarah Atkinson in the “Irish Monthly.”

The lordly mansions which, in the streets of Dublin, raise a proud front amidst more humble structures, not unfrequently rivet the astonished gaze of the stranger, who, in the one breath, is told the historic names by which these dwellings once were designated, and the uses to which they are in latter days designed. Various, indeed, has been the fortune of stately houses, the home of the brilliant or the powerful, and the resort of all that was distinguished in the political and social life of Ireland before the Union was carried and the imperial standard hoisted on Dublin Castle. In some instances their altered destiny simply marks the descent from pre-eminence to a low estate, and typifies the changed condition of a dismantled capital; while, in other cases, the way in which the halls deserted by their princely owners are turned to account, has oftentimes a strange significance.

Fortune was hardly pitiful in transforming the good Lord Moira’s once brilliant residence into a refuge for mendicants, or in converting the edifice so intimately associated with the memory of the noble earl who headed the Volunteers, into a range of offices for Civil Service clerks; or, again, in turning the corridors and reception rooms of Lord Powerscourt’s town mansion into the goods stores of wholesale warehousemen. One cannot say that Leinster House was appropriated to any ignoble use when assigned for the location of the society incorporated for the improvement of husbandry and other useful arts in Ireland; and yet the sights and sounds attendant on cattle shows and agricultural exhibitions are not precisely those that fall in best with the remembrance of these Geraldines! these Geraldines!

But there is something of the irony of fate, if not of the spirit of retribution, in the destiny that has in two or three instances overtaken the mansions of such aristocrats as the Brabazons, De la Poers, the Beresfords. In the Earl of Meath’s luxurious dwelling the Sisters of Charity now keep house for the sick and hurt, who are carried up the elegant staircase, laid beneath the richly stuccoed ceilings, and made as much of as if they were the very heirs of the vanished lords. Tyrone House is the central office of commissioners whose business it is to allocate some five or six hundred thousand a year for the education of the people whose religion the former residents traduced, and whose existence they did their best to ignore. A certain high and wide red house, the scene in bygone times of splendid hospitalities, is now a hospital for children: for the children in the fourth generation of the Croppies whom the munificent host had in the days of ‘98 tortured with pitch-caps, hung up at triangles, and scourged in the riding-school.

So striking a vicissitude in the destiny of historic houses does not pass unnoticed. It signalises to the popular mind the consequences of changed political conditions, and marks the progress of the social revolution which began with emancipation, passed since through many phases, and has not yet approached its term. When one of the spacious mansions of pro-Union date, dishonoured by neglect and fast mouldering into ruin, suddenly assumes a grimly renovated air and becomes the bureau of a public department, or when a titled house is turned into a vast mercantile concern, or leased to a tenant whose fortune is, perhaps, hardly large enough to keep the mansion in repair though his family goes far to peopling its apartments, the occurrence may provoke a remark touching an absentee gentry and anti-Irish aristocracy; but when, on the other hand, one of these relics of the, past falls into the. possession of a religious body, and is made the centre of a Catholic organisation, the public voice not merely acquiesces in the transfer, but is jubilant over it. And naturally it is so. In Ireland religion and nationality are fast bound together. The Catholic Church and the Gaelic race shared the same afflictions and survived through the same length of intolerable years. Each new token of inextinguishable life in the one notes an advance in the onward career of the other; on this soil, at least, they are a common cause.

If, like archaeologists of a certain school, we took our data from stone monuments, we should find it easy to trace the history of Dublin during the last hundred and fifty years. At the very outset one is struck by the shortness of the period during which the city maintained in any degree the character of a splendid capital. Nearly all the noble buildings which adorn its streets were erected within a period of 50 or 60 years. The Parliament House, commenced in 1729, was finished, according to the original design, ten years later; but the Eastern front of the House of Lords, with its fine surmounting statues, and the Western front in Foster-place, were not erected until the century was drawing to a close. Between 1741 and 1796, the Exchange, the Custom House, the Four Courts, the King’s Inns, and Carlisle-bridge were built. Tyrone House, Leinster House, Lord Powerscourt’s mansion, and the residence so creditable to the Earl of Charlemont’s taste, are of the same date. From the era of the Volunteers to the enactment of the Union, private speculation as well as private enterprise were actively engaged in making Dublin a handsome city. The loss of legislative independence, one of the first consequences of which was the withdrawal of nearly all the nobility and gentry from the chief city, gave a check to the erection of public buildings, and put an end to the opening of new streets. Isolated blocks of houses standing about the North side of Dublin still indicate the lines by which it had been designed to extend the city towards the then fashionable outlets of Glasnevin and Drumcondra. *

Grattan and Freedom*

By Edward Lysaght*

Edward Lysaght, barrister-at-law, was cue of the wits and *bon vivants *of Dublin society in the times immediately preceding the Union. His genial qualities, his abounding humour, his racy anecdotes and ready repartees obtained for him amongst his friends the familiar appellation of “pleasant Ned Lysaght.” His faculty of improvisation in poetry was remarkable, but he cared little for the preservation of the compositions which he produced so readily and easily, and many of them, consequently, were not recoverable when a volume of his poetry was being selected a short time after his death. One of his anti-Union poems commencing “How justly alarmed is each Dublin Cit,” is very well known, and his poem on Grattan as “the gallant man who led the van of the Irish Volunteers,” is frequently quoted. The following, written on the occasion of Grattan’s candidature for the representation of Dublin, is not so frequent y met with, but it is very clever and amusing.

Since the Union, poor Dublin lay dozed,

Oppressed with dismay and dejection -

Till Patrick’s kind voice interposed,

Saying, “Hasten to Grattan’s election!”

Be advised by our tutelar saint;

Vile bigots and knaves never heed ‘em;

Corruption’s grown hopeless and faint

At the mention of Grattan and Freedom.

Some minions (vile bigotry’s tools),

Who have got selfish hearts and dull sconces,

Would to Parliament send solemn fools,

Fit to represent blockheads and dunces.

Their legible characters base,

There’s none of us all but can read ‘em;

Dull knavery’s stamped on each face

That vilifies Grattan and Freedom.

You merchants, a liberal train

(Some few, very few, are ungrateful),

Remember who struck off the chain

From your trade, so oppressive and hateful.

More blessings for Erin he sought,

Till destiny hence had decreed ‘em;

To all public virtue forgot,

Shall we traffic our Grattan and Freedom?

The lawyers the libel refute

Of Junius, who says they’re contracted,

And zealously favour his suit

By whom such good laws were enacted.

For Grattan has studied our rights -

No advocate like him can plead ‘em;

Each sound-hearted lawyer delights

To bustle for Grattan and Freedom.

Distinguished by honour’s true pride,

Physicians, at liberty’s station,

Will vote for the man who applied

Much balm to the *wounds *of our nation.

The children of Erin he’d *heal,

*While others would *blister *and bleed ‘em;

The faculty’s pulse let me feel;

Oh! it’s beating for Grattan and Freedom.

Honest Crispins will serve him with pleasure,

For he’ll prove a good soul to the *last, *sir;

Worthy tailors are sure every *measure

*He’ll take will be good as the past, sir.

The gardeners and seedsmen revile

*Rank *knaves, and from Erin they’d *weed *‘em;

They say, “To protect our green isle

From a *blight, *give us Grattan and Freedom.”

The barbers their votes are bestowing

On Grattan the man, *to a hair, *sir,

Who’d keep Erin’s welfare *a-growing,

*While others would *shave *it quite *bare, *sir;

They rail at the thick muddy bloods

Of blockheads, and say, “We don’t need ‘em -

Our country they’d leave in the *suds,

*So our poll is for Grattan and Freedom.”

For serving their trade in our isle

The brewers his cause will maintain, sir;

They know (though a man without guile)

He’s clever, and honest in *grain, *sir;

As clear and as sound as brown *stout,

*With *froth *he disdains to mislead ‘em:

Drink the king - then the tankard about

To Erin, to Grattan, and Freedom!

The bricklayers, manly and true,

Acknowledge, with grateful effusion,

That Grattan, in famed Eighty-Two,

*Erected *a fine constitution:

Though all this *free *mason did build

Some slaves have pulled down (d—l speed ‘em),

The brothers of this worthy guild

Are *cemented *with Grattan and Freedom.

The hosiers and hatters assert

He’s right from the *heel *to the *crown, *sir;

The people he’ll never desert,

Nor let just prerogative down, sir.

Each butcher, that’s honest, disdains

All hirelings, and wonders who’d *breed *‘em -

“Who’d choose a *calf’s-head *without brains?

On your *marrow-bones *drink Hal and Freedom!”

And all the industrious neighbours,

Whatever their callings may he, sir,

Should side with the man whose life’s labours

Would make us all happy and free, sir.

Bless the king! At his word of command

We’ll hazard our lives, should he need ‘em,

For the rights and delights of our land-

For Erin, and Grattan, and Freedom.

General Contents. .