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"See what in hell at last I've won,
Because on Saturdays I've spun."
Hemp.– I don't remember seeing hemp growing in Aran to any great extent. Sowing the seed of hemp on All Hallows' Eve in some parts of the country, and on St. John's Night in others, is described in the following lines from Gay's "Pastorals": —
"At eve last midsummer no sleep I sought,
But to the field a bag of hemp seed brought:
I scattered round the seed on every side,
And three times in a trembling accent cried,
'This hemp seed with my virgin hand I sow,
Who shall my true love be the crop shall mow.'
I straight looked back, and, if my eyes speak truth,
With his keen scythe behind me came the youth.
'With my sharp heel I three times mark the ground,
And turn me thrice around, around, around!"
HAZEL – DIVINING-RODS.
The Hazel, one of Thor's trees, is generally used as a divining-rod to discover mines and lost treasures supposed to be hidden underground. The person who seeks for the treasure takes a hazel rod with an end in each hand, and then slowly walks over the ground, keeping the rod in a horizontal position before him; when passing over the spot it bends down like a bow in the middle, towards the place as if it were magnetized, as the needle turns to the pole. Beyond a doubt the hazel is known to miners, and to those who look for minerals underground, as the divining-rod.
FAREWELL INISHMORE.
And now, bringing our legends to a close, we shall bid farewell to these lonely and lovely isles, and in bidding them farewell we shall merely ask how it is that the travelling English public travel not into these islands, where frosts never wither, where snows never rest? And so farewell to Inishmore, the island-home of St. Enda – Inishmore – once
"Notissima famâ
Insula dives opum, Hiberniæ dum regna manebant
Nunc tantum sinus, et statio mala fida carinis."
APPENDIX A
"Adorned with honours on their native shore,
Silent they sleep and dream of wars no more."
Pope's Iliad.
O'BRIENS LORDS OF ARAN.
We have spoken so much in the foregoing pages of the O'Briens, lords of Aran, that we feel inclined to say a word as to, who those O'Briens were, whence they came, and whither they went; and first, let us state that their pedigree is traced by Irish genealogists to a date earlier than the Christian era. The O'Briens, lords of Aran, were descended from Bryan Boroimhe, King of Thomond and monarch of all Ireland, who conquered and fell at the battle of Clontarf on April 23, 1014, when the Danish power, all over Ireland, was scattered to the four winds of heaven. In the third generation after the death of Bryan, his descendant Dermod sat on the throne of Thomond, and this Dermod had sons and daughters, and the eldest of the sons was called Turlough, who in 1118 became, on his father's death, King of Thomond, whilst his younger brother was Mahon, and his youngest brother was Teige; and the clan MacTeige for 470 years ruled those islands, we have no doubt, with a very equitable and a very paternal rule, and wholly unhampered with legislative bodies such as a Witenagemot, or with the parliamentary institutions of the Normans, where the members then, as now, had the liberty of speaking, sometimes very plainly, their minds – as, indeed, the Norman name of our legislative assembly imports: parler-les-mens, a place for "speaking their minds." That the Corporation of Galway recognized the power of the O'Briens, lords of the isles, is plainly told in the foregoing pages, where we remember that twelve tuns of wine were annually paid to the lord for sweeping the sea, as it were with a broom, clean of the Algerine pirates that then infested the high seas; and there can be little if any doubt that the O'Briens were ready, from time to time and at all times, to massacre the foe wherever they met him, and to convert his ships to their own use and behoof in manner and form as by their indenture of treaty was provided. It is not for us to criticize with critical pen the policy of the respected lord of the isles, who, in 1560, was swallowed up in the deep, near the Great Man's Bay, when he was returning from Thomond loaded with the booty which, at the point of the sword, he had won from the subjects of his cousin O'Brien of Thomond; for it does not appear that ties of blood preserved his Majesty of Thomond from the vengeance of his lordship the lord of the isles, or, mutatis mutandis, the lord of the isles from the vengeance of his Majesty. "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," was their maxim, and it may have been good law where the antagonists had each two eyes and two teeth; but the vengeance was dreadful when the punished party had only one eye and one tooth. He was then blinded and untoothed out and out; and frequently such dreadful vengeance did await the conquered. Let us not, however, be too hard on the conquerors when we remember that David sawed his prisoners in two, and drove harrows over them in a harrowed field.29 The O'Flaherties, an equally warlike race, dispossessed the lords of the isles, and in 1588, the very year of the Spanish Armada, Queen Elizabeth finally confiscated their territories, and now the name of O'Brien is forgotten in Aran. Not so on the mainland; the O'Briens are still in Thomond and elsewhere, as, it is to be hoped, they will be for centuries yet to come. The lords of the Isles of Aran are extinct. The last of the male line was John O'Brien of Moyvanine and Clounties, whose daughter Sarah was married to Stephen Roche, from whom is descended the present Thomas Redington Roche, of Ryehill, Esq., J.P., Co. Galway. Amongst the families of this house still existing in Thomond, are the noble house of Inchiquin and the O'Briens of Ballynalacken, both of whom trace up, in an unbroken succession, to Bryan Boroimhe, who, like Leonidas at Thermopylæ, fell fighting the foreign foe for the liberties of his country.
O'BRIENS LORDS INCHIQUIN.
The title of Inchiquin dates from the year 1543, but no title was required to ennoble those who were of the blood of kings, and were "nobler than the royalty that first ennobled them." The untitled aristocracy in England are often superior to the titled aristocracy, who cannot trace back farther than the Wars of the Roses. Now, the last King of Thomond resigned his royalty to Henry VIII., who in return, by patent a. d. 1543, bestowed upon Murrough O'Brien, and upon the heirs male of his body, the title of Baron of Inchiquin. This Murrough had two sons, the elder Dermot, and the younger Donough, and Dermot on his father's death became Baron of Inchiquin; and so the title descended from father to son until the year 1855, when James, the twelfth baron, who was also seventh Earl of Inchiquin (creation a. d. 1654) and third Marquis of Thomond (a. d. 1800), died without issue male, when the earldom and marquisate expired. Thereupon the father of the present baron, who was also a baronet, and brother to William Smith O'Brien, celebrated as Member of Parliament and leader of the Irish people, knowing his descent from Donough, second son of the first baron, instructed his counsel to bring his case before the Committee of Privileges of the House of Lords, to whose satisfaction he proved that he was heir male of the body of the first baron, and thereupon he was confirmed in said barony, and became thirteenth baron.
MARSHAL MACMAHON.
Let us now go back to Dermod, the third generation from Bryan Boroimhe, which Dermod died, as we said, in 1118, leaving three sons, the eldest Turlough, King of Thomond, the younger Mahon, and the youngest Teige, lord of the isles; from Mahon is sprung Marshal MacMahon, whose acts and deeds are known of by all men.
O'BRIENS OF BALLYNALACKEN.
This Turlough, King of Thomond, was ancestor of Teige O'Brien, who married Annabella, daughter of Ulick McWilliam Burke, of Clanrickarde, known as "Ulick of the Wine," and by her had, with other sons, Turlough Don, King of Thomond in 1498, and Donal. Turlough Don was ancestor of the family of Inchiquin, of which we have spoken, and from Donal sprang Turlough O'Brien, who was married to a grandniece of Sir Toby Butler, better known as the jovial Sir Toby, the great luminary of the Connaught Circuit, Solicitor-General for Ireland under James II., and the celebrated lawyer who drafted that treaty which will be remembered by all generations as the broken Treaty of Limerick. Turlough was the grandfather of John O'Brien, of Ballynalacken, who died in 1855, and of James O'Brien, Esq., Q.C., who was Member of Parliament for the city of Limerick from 1854 to 1858, when he was raised to a judgeship in the Queen's Bench. It is too near our own time to speak of that learned lawyer further than to say that "he judged not according to appearance, but judged just judgment;" that in him the prisoner at the bar found a merciful judge, and at the same time one who held the scales so that crime could not escape with impunity. Let us hope that when he went to a higher court he reaped the rewards promised to a just judge; and let us hope that those who come after him of his name and race may, when their turn comes, follow in his footsteps, and thus show that the wisdom of the wise still dwells in the brehons of the Celtic race.
The Ballynalacken O'Briens are now represented amongst the landed gentry by James O'Brien, J.P., D.L., and they are also represented at the Bar by his brother, my learned friend, Peter, late Sergeant O'Brien, now Solicitor-General for Ireland.
APPENDIX B
STATISTICS OF ISLANDS OF ARAN.
[30] Vide return made in 1801 by Most Rev. Edward Dillon, D.D., Roman Catholic Archbishop of Tuam (Lord Castlereagh's Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 126). I can find no subsequent return.
[31] Charles's "Irish Church Directory."
