to peaceful days, and gentle
white-clothed saints arose and monasteries with tolling bells, and great
Celtic crosses.... And gone were the Druids, their cursing stones, their
Ogham script.... Gone old Celtic divinities, Angus of the Boyne, and
Manannan, son of Lir, god of the sea ... and the peace of Galilee came
over the joyous hunting land.... The little people of the hills, with
their pygmy horses, their pygmy pipes, cowered, went into exile, under
the thunder of Rome.... And the land was meek that it might inherit the
kingdom of heaven.... And the English came.... The Earls of Ulster fled
into Spain.... And only here and there was a memory of old-time heroes,
of Cuchulain of the Red Branch; of Maeve, queen of Connacht, in her
fighting chariot, her great red cloak; of Dermot, who abducted Grania
from the king of Ireland's camp, and knew nine ways of throwing the
spear.... The O'Neils remembered Shane, who brought Queen Elizabeth to
her knees with love and terror.... And Owen Roe, the Red.... And the
younger Hugh O'Neil, with his hardbitten Ulstermen at Benburb.... They
had to bring the greatest general of Europe, Cromwell, the lord
protector, to subdue the Ulster clans.... Sullen peace, and the Stuarts
came back, and again Ireland was lulled with their suave manners, the
scent of the white rose.... The crash of the Boyne Water, and King James
running for his life.... And Limerick's siege, and the Treaty, and
Patrick Sarsfield and the Wild Geese setting wing for France.... France
knew them, Germany, Sweden, even Russia.... Ramillies and the
Spaniard knew Lord Clare's Dragoons.... And Fontenoy and the thunder of
the Irish Brigade.... And Patrick Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan, dead at the
end of the day.... Even to-day Europe knew them: O'Donnel, Duke of
Tetuan and grandee of Spain; and Patrice McMahon, Duke of Magenta, who
had been made president of the Republic of France--they were of the
strain of Lucan's wild Geese....

[Illustration]

And again a sullen peace, and Ulster rang to the trumpet of American
freedom, and the United Irishmen arose in Belfast.... And Napper Tandy
at Napoleon's court, and Hoche with his ships in Bantry Bay.... Wolfe
Tone's mangled throat, and Lord Edward Fitzgerald murdered by his
captors....

What had made these men, sane men--Ulstermen mostly--risk life and face
death so gallantly? What brought out the men of '48 and the men of '67?
What was making little Bigger fight so savagely in Parliam