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Show r5i E RIGHT 6FtHE TrISH j I PEOPLE TO THE IRISH SOIL : (Written for The Intermountain Catholic.) The Irish peasant admits no right, but such as may be in the strong hand, to remove hjm from the soil that like a mother gave sustenance to his race; he may be driven from it, "but never ' without protest. This sense of inherent right to the soil w& do hot hesitate to assert is a tradition of the Irish clan: Thebaud says, describing the -Irish at the time of the Norman conquest: "Hereditary right of land, : with respect re-spect to individuals and the transmission transmis-sion of property of any kind by right oi pi emogemiure were unKnown among them. If a specified " amount of territory terri-tory was assigned to the chieftain, a smaller portion" to "the bishop, the shamachy, ; head, poet, and other civil officers, each -in his degree, such property prop-erty wag. attached to- the office and not to the:man who filled it, but it passed to his elected successor and not to his own children; while the great bulk of the territory belonged to the clan in common. No one possessed the right j to alienate a single rod of it, and, if) at times a portion was granted to exiles, ex-iles, to strangers, to a contiguous clan, the whole tribe was consulted on the subject. Over the common large herds of cattle roamed the property of Individuals Indi-viduals who could own nothing, except of a movable nature, beyond their small uuuru iiuuatra. izns stale 01 iniUKS had existed, according to their annals, for several. thousand, years."-. ,.. A. D. li70 Strongbow commenced eradicate" 'his" system and establish feudalism, and the contest between the two systems has continued to" the present pres-ent day. Edward Stanley Roberts, on writing on this subject, says: - "The Irish peasant has three reasons for his desire to be 'rooted in the soil.' One Is a traditional reason. He think3 his forefathers were unjustly ousted by foreign conquerors. His view rests on an utterly distorted view of history. It is true that eight hundred years ago a few of the ancestors of a few. of the existing peasantry might, in a sort of sense, have been called landlords. But so far as the Gaelic race survives, it would be equally true to say that the ancestors of the existing peasantry had been the serfa or the slaves of barbarous barbar-ous chieftains." Now exactly inasmuch as "the ancestors an-cestors of a few of the existing pe?-3-antry might in a sort of senf e have been called landowners," the. ancestors of the other portion' of the Gaelic peasantry peas-antry might also, in .a. sort of sense, have been called landowners, not in any ren3e slaves or serfs, for what title the few, failed of the many had there was fuIl 'tlUe somewhere just .where, we have shown by better authority , than Mr. Robertson: But whatever the ancient an-cient Irish might have" been called, there were "rooted in the soil" and their traditional right to stay rcoted in the soil is a legitimate one, whatever it i.n Tvnrth.' -. . ! ' The feudal system whereby the king, as absolute possessor of the land, gives , it in fee to his vassals, who in turn absolutely ab-solutely dispense it to personal tenants and retainers, made litle headway in Ireland for 5C0 years after its introduction introduc-tion by the Normans unfler Henry II; on the contrary, many of the Norman lords daring that time, while they nominally nom-inally maintained it in castles of stones and coats of iron, turned actually into chiefs of septs and became more Irish than the Irish themselves. It was only in Cromwell's day, a little over 200 years ago, that Ireland was guage and customs began 10 be superceded; super-ceded; and in 16S1 William of Orange I completed the Irish conquest and established es-tablished the present order of things, as we said before, a perpetual protest of the Irish people. It is true many of James Irish brigades aDanaonea ineir country and sailed away from Limerick, Limer-ick, with Sarsfield, In French ships, to win renown on continental battlefields, and to found new homes. But other portions por-tions of the surendered army resenting the broken treaty, took to the woods , and mountains in armed bands, called Rapparecs, and living by blackmail on the confiscated lands, swooped down with fire and sword on the most obnoxious ob-noxious persecutors of their race and creed. Miserable as such protection was to the Irish Catholic of that day, he had none better. The system of oppression, miscalled law, established by the penal code, accorded with the worst instincts of the oppressor and restrained only his best, it was calculated to foster a. reverence for legislative acts in Ireland, Ire-land, and the Irish peasant living in perpetual protest, constantly butraged i in his finest feelings and best interests, was always ready for agrarian reprisals. repris-als. The Raparees, the arch type of every Irish agraian society that flourished flour-ished since its time, is thus finally pictured pic-tured by Charles Gavin Duffy in .what he calls Righ Shamus. he has gone to France, and left his crown behind: Ill-luck be their's both day and night, put .runnin1- in his mind. Lord Lucart followed after, with his I Slashers brave and true. -And now a doleful keen Is raised, what will loor lre.lard do? What must poor Ireland do? ; Our luck, they say. has gone to trance; What can poor Ireland do? O, never far for Ireland, for she has sogers still, , . , For Rory's boys' are In the wood, 7ar.d Remy's on the hill. And never had poor Ireland more faitntui .... -.. ..n. .haA - ; May God b kind and good to them, the faithful Raparees, The fearless Raparees. The jewel were you Rory, with your irlsn Raparees. . O, blacks your hart. Clan Oliver, and coulder than the clay : I O, highs your head. Clan Sasanach. since I Parsfield's gone away; . . (It's little love you bear to u for sake of long ag-o; But honld your hand! For Ireland still can strike the deadly blow. Can strike- a mortal blow. Och dhar-a-chrpesth. 'tis she that still 'can strike the deadly blow. The master bawn. the master's seat, a j surly dobagh fills. ' Tho master's son. an utlawed man. Is riding rid-ing on the hills. But God be praised, that around him throng as thick as summer bees. The swords that guarded uraencK wan his loyal Raparees; His lovin' Raparees. Who dare say no to Kory Oge with all his Raparees? Black Billy Grimes of Latnamard, he rackes us long and sore: God rest the faithful hearts he broke, we'll never see them more; But I'll go bail he'll break no more, while Truaugh has gallows tre?s, I For why! He met one lonesome night, tti? - fearless Raparees. The angry Raparees. 1 They never sin no more, my lwys that cross the Raparees. ...'. N'ow. Sasanajrh and Cromweller heed of what I sav: ' 1 Iveep down your black and anry !,,, ' a that scorn us nitfht and dav i-or there's a just and wrathful vi,- that every action sees, 's And he'll mak strong to ri-ht - J1'1"0"- the faithful Ramuv. The fearless Raparees. ine men that roce at SarsfleWs ide roving Raparees. ; " ' '"' The state of Ireland for nmro th.,-i a century after the date ascribed - , thisi ballad was something fearful t look back upon. We need nit ref r !, the odious features of the. penal c.-,.;-. which have so often in odr day b.-e-i ...v. .. t a wun in mar.isiri By that code the Irish race, rfligi.-r traditions, sentiments, natural rish-.i and material interests were all brutali : trampled on. No wonder "Right Boy "White Boys," "Black Feet" ir "Rockites" flourished under it as 1 1 1 -did. No wonder that these s-Jci.-t;.'M took, for the most aggrieved clas-j , the place of clan and faction. Th. ir action, to be sure, was a mere ki. k;n against the goad; they had n- worthy political plan or object, and their results re-sults were politically evil, as thy gav,. pretexts- for new oppression in thn shape of curfew and martial laws, under un-der the shadows- of which th myrmidons myr-midons of government rode rough-shod I through the land at all hours lik- tiu-- I ures m a nightmare dream. At th.? same time behind the roadside 'hedn-or 'hedn-or on the lone heath or the heathery mountains lurked the equally terribl' Raparee or Rockite the more' terrlbii for his shrouding mystery to strike th deadly blow, which sooner or later wa sure to fall oh those he doomed, for he, too, had his cod of laws and his penalties for their breach. His sentences sen-tences often came as mysteriously a? the handwriting on the wall, but it took no prophet to read them. Sometimes Some-times a white draped figure appeared' to the intruder on a forbidden farm, a.-i he drove his plough throirgh the furrow-on a spring morning and bad--him "take a fool's advice and lave that place." The advice unheeded, a mysterious mys-terious murder or incendiary conflagration conflagra-tion surely followed. But even in thes crimes we must recognise the fierce protest of agrarian tradition. In the tenant right laws of Ulster. Protestant tillers of the soil had some security given them, but manufacture. and commerce of Protestant or Catholic Cath-olic were crushed in Ireland whenever ' j English policy demanded their sacri- I fice, which it invariably did. So the great mass of the people, with all other f avenues of industry closed against j them, were forced to cling for life to the soil, and, the lords of the soil be- I came, their absolute masters. It was for these masters- to say whether a I. man might hold a spot of land and live, or else go forth to beggary and exile. I When men hold land as most men j do here in America, by the original and indefeasible right of labor to its own J n wl lift T I " Vi T Vt .-T- 2iirVi lahni. Jiaa Kfwn I spent directly in reclaiming the land 'from a wilderness .or... indirectly i n money, the fruit and token of other labors, the sense of proprietary right is strong, and justly so. But claims tf lands obtained as thefts from the lavish lav-ish hand of the usurper, to say nothing I of their moral defect, become liable to forfeiture in these days by a total fail- ure on the part of their holders to fulfil j "the conditions on which they were given in fee. I There is no pretence that now . the I Irish landlord garrisons Ireland for the sovereign, with his castles and retain- f ers. The sovereign, on the contrary, I V is obliged to garrison Ireland to main- tain her worthless, arrogant feudatories in possession of fees- that fairly re- verted to her by forfeiture. British sovereign power can constitu- I tionally lift the landlord incubus from Ireland, and the Irish people, by moral stress on that power, can force it to j do so. I |