Art. 5.-THE EVOLUTION OF THE ULSTERMAN.

1. The Plantation in Ulster. By the Rev. George Hill. Belfast McCaw, 1877.

2. History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century. By W. E. H. Lecky. Five vols. London: Longmans, 1892. 3. Studies in Irish History. By C. Litton Falkiner. London: Longmans, 1902.

4. The End of the Irish Parliament. By J. R. Fisher. London: Arnold, 1911.

5. Die Englische Kolonisation in Irland. By M. J. Bonn. Two vols. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1906.

6. The Two Irish Nations. By W. F. Monypenny. London: Murray, 1913.

IN Queen Elizabeth's day, by an Act passed in the eleventh year of her reign, Ulster was declared to be the most perilous place in all the isle.' This statement is not surprising, for the northern province was then the most distinctively Irish portion of the country. The native race in it was purer than that in the other three provinces. Of course the term purity can only be applied relatively to any portion of Ireland, as Huxley's famous essay clearly demonstrated. The variety of races which constitute Ulster nationality is truly astonishing. 'Saxon, or Norman, or Dane are we,' sang Tennyson. Doubtless considerations of space and metre prevented him from giving an exhaustive list. For the men of the northern province not only are Saxons, Normans and Danes; they are also Irish, Scots, French and German. The Irish were everywhere; so too were the Scots. There are no more than twenty miles of sea separating County Antrim from Argyll at one point. The Council in Dublin surveyed in the year 1533 the arrival of the Macdonnells with disapproval, declaring that

The Scottes also inhabitith now buyselly a greate parte of Ulster, whiche is the King's inheritance; and it is greatlie to be fearid, oonles that in short tyme they be dryven from the same, that they, bringing in more nombre daily, woll, by lytle and lytle soe far encroche in acquyring and wynning the possessions there, with thaidis of the Kingis disobeysant Irishe rebelles, who doo nowe aide theym therin after suche maner, that at length they will put and expel the King from his hole seignory there' (State Papers, Henry VIII, ii, 172).

Long after the other three provinces had been reduced to submission, chiefs such as the O'Nials retained a large measure of independence. Their aim was to keep their tribesmen faithful to the pastoral ideal of life; and this aim they achieved. They felt that such a life was best fitted to enable them to retain their authority and to preserve their followers from adopting English customs. Fynes Moryson ('Itinerary,' iii, 160) showed that

' plenty of grass makes the Irish have infinite multitudes of cattle, and in the heat of the last rebellion the very vagabond rebels had great multitudes of cows which they still (like the nomads) drove with them whithersoever themselves were driven, and fought for them as for their altars and families.' These nomads were the creaghts. When James I endeavoured to give a system of administration to Ireland, he met with the greatest difficulty from this pastoral population, accustomed to wander about without any fixed habitation after their herds of cattle, living largely on white meats, as the produce of their cows was called. At this period, there was not, according to Sir John Davies, one fixed village in County Fermanagh.* In a letter to the Earl of Salisbury, written during the first circuit ever held in Fermanagh, Davies mentions that 'the fixing a site for a jail and sessions house had been delayed until my Lord Deputy had resolved on a fit place for a market and corporate town; for the habitations of this people are so wild and transitory, as there is not one fixed village in all this country.'

Fynes Moryson describes their dwellings as made of wattles or boughs, covered with long turves or sods of grass, which they could easily remove and put up as they wandered from place to place in search of pasture, following their vast herds of cattle with their wives and children, removing constantly to fresh lands as they depastured others, and living chiefly on the milk of their cows.† North and West of Lough Neagh, it seems that the whole population was formed of creaghts, living this wild and nomadic life.

The difficulty in making these wandering people lawabiding is obvious. The Government grappled with the

* State Papers, Ireland, 1608-10, p. 57. Vol. 220.-No. 438.

H

† 'Itinerary,' iii, 164.

matter, and in the Commission issued for the survey of Ulster, on the suppression of Tyrone's rebellion, dated July 16, 1605, the commissioners are directed to take order for building several towns and villages for settling such subjects as have no certain habitation,

'by reason whereof the inhabitaunts of the same doe for the most parte wander upp and downe looselie, following their herds of cattle without anie certein habitation.'

In a letter to the King, dated October 31, 1610, complaining of some of the difficulties of the Plantation made in 1608, the Earl of Chichester says that, though the Irish of this territory had plentifully tasted of his Majesty's clemency and happy government to their great profit and comfort, yet to alter their rude and uncivil customs, and to bring them to live by their labours on small portions of land by manuring it and stocking it with goods of their own, was as grievous unto them as to be made bond-slaves. With the Ulster Plantation, 1608, appeared the definite appropriation of the lands among the new settlers, and with it disappeared the custom of creaght. The disappearance took time, for, so late as the year 1690, John Stevens records in his remarkable Journal' (p. 161) meeting the creaghts,

' which are much like the Tartar hordes, being a number of people some more some less, men, women and children, under a chief or head of the name or family, who range about the country with their flocks or herds and all the goods they have in the world, without any settled habitation, building huts wherever they find pasture for their cattle and removing as they find occasion.'

This persistence of an ancient custom was due in no small degree to the isolation of the northern province. A glance at the map will show that on three sides it is surrounded by the sea, and that the fourth side has for its land frontier a line drawn from Dundalk to Ballyshannon. The waters of Lough Erne occupy the western half of this line, forming a complete defence from Ballyshannon to Belturbet, a distance of nearly fifty miles. The eastern half is bounded by the chain of the Fews

Erck's Patent Rolls, Jac. I, 182.

mountains, rising in front of Dundalk, long the outmost post of the English Pale. The centre of the line was protected by the counties of Monaghan and Cavan, a district of low wooded hills, interlaced with a perfect net-work of bogs and lakes. Through these there was only one road, that by Carrickmacross in the Barony of Farney. This pass was the Killiecrankie of Ulster and was appropriately designated 'The Gap of the North.' With such excellent natural defences the O'Nials saw no necessity for building castles or for altering the pastoral customs of their tribesmen. Con O'Nial cursed all his posterity in case they learned the English language, sowed wheat, or built them houses. Speed, in his Theatre of the Empire' (cap. 24), explains Con's reasons: 'lest the first should breed conversation, the second commerce of sustenance, and with the last they should speed as the crow that buildeth her nest to be beaten out by the hawk.' It is clear, then, the old form of society did not perish at a remote epoch. Had it done so, the Irishman of to-day would care no more for it than a Frenchman cares for Celtic Gaul or an Englishman for Anglo-Saxon England. There is a tendency in descendants to differ from their progenitor, but the O'Nials discouraged variation from the original type.

In spite of their efforts the variation came, and with it came the Ulster problem of the present moment. It is not too much to say that during the first decade of the reign of James I the whole future of Ireland was at stake. In the north, from 1603 to 1608, conflicting ideals of race and of organisation emerged. The old order suddenly passed away when the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel embarked at Rathmullen. These Earls felt that their local tribal ideal was being replaced by a central and imperial one. Under the new régime there was no room for them, and accordingly they disappeared in 1607. Doubtless two decisions of far-reaching importance hastened their disappearance. In 1605 the judges de

clared the custom of Gavelkind void in law, and abolished Tanistry. By the former custom the lands of the tribe were divided equally among its members, and by the latter they elected the Tanist or successor to the chief. Thus was virtually swept away a code which,

though disturbed by the Danish and Anglo-Norman invasions, had lasted from primitive times to the beginning of the 17th century.

The reasons assigned for this revolution in the land system are obvious. The frequent partition of property and the removal of tribesmen from one portion of the soil to another gave rise to uncertainty of possession. Consequently no fixed habitations were erected, and no improvements made in the cultivation of the land. Ulster, in the words of Sir John Davies, seemed to be all one wilderness before the new plantation made by the English undertakers there.' This revolution, however, disregarding the fact that the chiefs held the soil on behalf of their tribes, made them its absolute owners, and entirely deprived their unfortunate tribesmen of their rights of inheritance. The injury inflicted upon the peasantry lay not in the introduction of English tenure, but in the refusal to recognise any rights save those of the chief. In 1608 the full effects of this momentous change were startlingly clear. Till that year, when the head of a tribe committed treason, the lands of his men could not be affected. He might lose his position of honour and power; that was all. In 1608, however, the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel were in virtue of the judicial decisions owners, not trustees, of land. Their flight was regarded as betraying treasonable intention, and the Crown confiscated their property.

The scheme of the Ulster Plantation provided for the settlement upon over half a million acres of large numbers of small tenants. A colony of English and Scots Protestants, mainly labourers, weavers, mechanics, farmers and merchants, was established upon the forfeited territories. As a result of this great plantation, houses and castles were built; school-houses and churches were erected in many parishes; the desolate wilds were covered with a happy and thriving population. But the crowning benefit was that it laid the foundation of the welfare of the northern province. Then emerged for the first time that well-known type of Ulsterman, the self-reliant and self-confident farmer, well clothed, well fed, with corn in his haggard, store in his barn, food in his house, character in the country, and money in the bank. Thirty years had not passed before towns, fortresses and factories were