main, and Innisclare. These
islands, he added, were under the rule of O'Neill, and they were
'very pleasant and fertile, plenty of wood, water, and arable ground,
pastures, and fish, and a very temperate air.' On this description
Mr. Froude remarks in a note--'At present they are barren heaps of
treeless moors and mountains. They yield nothing but scanty oat crops
and potatoes, and though the seas are full of fish as ever, there
are no hands to catch them. _The change is a singular commentary upon
modern improvements_.' There were many branches belonging to the four
septs, continues the credulous reporter, who was evidently imposed
upon, like many of his countrymen in modern times with better means
of information. For example, 'there was the branch of Gogath, the
glutton, of which one man would eat half a sheep at a sitting. There
was another called the Carrow, a gambler, who generally went about
naked, carrying dice and cards, and he would play the hair off his
head. Then there was a set of women called Goyng women, blasphemers
of God, who ran from country to country, sowing sedition among the
people.'[1]

[Footnote 1: Froude's History, of England, vol. viii. chap. vii.]

Mr. Froude says that this 'picture of Ireland' was given by some
half Anglicised, half Protestantised Celt, who wrote what he had seen
around him, careless of political philosophy, or of fine phrases with
which to embellish his diction. But if he was a Celt, I think his
description clearly proves that he must have been a Celt of some
other country than the one upon whose state he reports. Judging from
internal evidence, I should say that he could not be a native; for an
Irishman, even though a convert to Anglicanism, and anxious to please
his new masters, could scarcely betray so much ignorance of the
history of his country, so much bigotry, such a want of candour and
discrimination. If Mr. Froude's great work has any fault, it is his
unconscious prejudice against Ireland. He knows as well as anyone the
working of the feudal system and the clan system in Scotland in
the same age. He knows with what treachery and cruelty murders
were perpetrated by chiefs and lairds, pretenders and usurpers--how
anarchy, violence, and barbarism reigned in that land; yet, when he is
dealing with a similar state of things in Ireland, he uniformly takes
it as proof of an incurable national idiosyncrasy, and too often
generalises from a few cases. For example, in speakin