The Immortal Irishman

Perhaps the most demoralizing passage I have read in many years. I was born a Farley.  My father was a Farley and his Irish heritage burned deep in his soul. We traveled there once together, the only visit for each of us, and it was one of the most memorable experiences of my life.  So the history of oppression of the Irish people feels a little personal to me.

This from one of my favorite authors, Tim Egan: The opening paragraphs of his fascinating biography of Thomas F. Meagher, The Immortal Irishman.

"For the better part of seven centuries, to be Irish in Ireland was to live in a land not your own.  You called a lake next to your family home by one name, and the occupiers gave it another.  You knew a town had been built by the hands of your ancestors, the quarry of origin for the stones pressed into those streets, and you were forbidden from inhabiting it.  You could not enter a court of law as anything but a criminal or a snitch.  You could not worship your God, in a church open to the public, without risking prison or public flogging. You could not attend school, at any level, even at home. And if your parents sent you out of the country to be educated, you could not return. You could not marry, conduct trade or go into business with a Christian Protestant. You could not have a foster child. If orphaned, you were forced into a home full of people who rejected your faith. You could not play your favorite sports--hurling was specifically prohibited. You could not own land in more than 80 percent of your country; the bogs, barrens and highlands were your haunts. You could not own a horse worth more than 5 sterling. If you married an Englishman, you would lose everything upon his death. You could not speak your language outside your home. You would not think in Irish, so the logic went, if you were not allowed to speak in Irish.

"Your ancient verses were forbidden from being uttered in select company. Your songs could not be sung, your music not played, your Celtic crosses not displayed. You could be thrown in prison for expressions of your folklore or native art. One law made it a felony for "a piper, story-teller, babler or rimer" to be in the company of an Englishman. Another six statutes banished bards and minstrels. You could not vote. You could not hold office.  You were nothing. "The law does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic," said John Bowes, an eighteenth-century lord chancellor of the island. Nor could any such person draw a breath without the Crown's permission.

"The melodies of this nation and its favorite instrument were a particular target of English hatred. At one point, your fingernails could be removed if you were caught playing the harp. The Irish married to the sounds that came from that instrument, and they grieved in some of those same keys. But the indigenous music came to be seen as subversive--too nationalistic, too connected to the old stories. In 1603 it was proclaimed that "all manner of bards and harpers" were to be "exterminated by martial law." That same year, a few months before her death, it was said in Ireland that Queen Elizabeth had ordered her troops to "hang the harpers, wherever found, and destroy their instruments." The Virgin Queen allowed Shakespeare and Marlowe to reach great heights during her long reign, but Elizabeth had not a thimble of tolerance for a people she considered primitive. To encourage the elimination of one musical aspect of that culture, the government paid a bounty to anyone who turned in outlaws of the harp. The musicians were easy to round up; many of them were blind, music their only refuge and source of income.

"What had the Irish done to deserve these cruelties? They had refused to become English."