wall, through which they say she tied a cable from her ship, ready by day or night for a summons from her seamen. She voyaged as far as London town, and stood face to face with the ruffed and hooped Elizabeth, meeting her offer of an English title with the assertion that she was a princess in her own land.

The mother of Red Hugh O'Donnell, Ineen-dubh, though daughter of the Scottish Lord of the Isles, was none the less of the old Irish stock. Her character is finely sketched for us by the Franciscan chronicler who wrote the story of the captivity and mighty deeds of her son. When the clans of Tir-Conal assembled to elect the youthful chieftain, he writes: "It was an advantage that she came to the gathering, for she was the head of the advice and counsel of the Cinel-Conail, and, though she was slow and deliberate and much praised for her womanly qualities, she had the heart of a hero and the sou! of a soldier." Her daughter, Nuala, is the "woman of the piercing wail" in Mangan's translation of the bard's lament for the death of the Ulster chieftains in Rome.

Modern critics like to interpret the "Dark Rosaleen" poem as ar expression of Red Hugh's devotion to Ireland, but I think that Rose, O'Doherty's daughter, wife of the peerless Owen Roe, deserves recognition as she whose

"Holy delicate white hands should girdle him with steel."

The record has come down to us that she prompted and encouraged her husband to return from the low-countries and a position of dignity in a foreign court to command the war in Ireland, and in her first letter, ere she followed him over sea, she asked eagerly: "How stands Tir-Conal?" True daughter of Ulster was Owen's wife, so let us henceforth acknowledge her as the Roisin dubh, "dark Rosaleen", of the sublimest of all patriot songs.

In the Cromwellian and Williamite wars, we see the mournful mothers and daughters of the Gaeldom passing in sad procession to Connacht, or wailing on Shannon banks for the flight of the "Wild Geese." But what of Limerick wall, what of the valorous rush of the women of the beleaguered city to stem the inroads of the besiegers and rally the defenders

to the breach? The decree of St. Adamnan was quite forgotten then, and when manly courage for a moment was daunted, woman's fortitude replaced and reinspired it.

And fortitude was sorely needed through the black years that followed-the penal days, when Ireland, crushed in the dust, bereft of arms, achieved a sublimer victory than did even King Brian himself, champion of the Cross, against the last muster of European heathendom.

Yes, her women have done their share in making Ireland what she is, a heroic land, unconquered by long centuries of wrath and wrong, a land that has not abandoned its Faith through stress of direst persecution or bartered it for the lure of worldly dominion; no-nor ever yielded to despair in face of repeated national disaster.

It was this fidelity to principle on the part of the Irish Catholic people which won for them the alliance of all that were worthiest among the Protestants of north and south in the days of the Volunteers and the United Irishmen. What interesting and pathetic portraits of Irishwomen are added to our roll at this period! None is more tenderly mournful than that of Sarah Curran, the beloved of Robert Emmet. The graceful prose of Washington Irving, the poignant verses of Moore, have enshrined the memory of her, weeping for him in the shadow of the scaffold, dying of heart-break at last in a far-off land. No more need be said of her, for whom the pity of the whole world has been awakened by song allied to sweetest, saddest music. What of Anne Devlin, Emmet's faithful servant, helping in his preparations for insurrection, aiding his flight, shielding him in hiding, even when tortured, scourged, half-hanged by a brutal soldiery, with stern-shut lips refusing to utter a word to compromise her "Master Robert"?

What of the sister of Henry Joy McCracken, Mary, the friend and fellow-worker with the Belfast United Irishmen? An independent, self-reliant business woman, she earned the money which she gave so liberally in the good cause, or to help the poor and distressed, through the whole period of a long life. Some still living have seen Mary passing along the streets of Belfast, an aged woman, clad in sombre gown, to

whom Catholic artisans raised their caps reverently, remembering how in '98 she had walked hand in hand with her brother to the steps of the scaffold, and how, in 1803, she had aided Thomas Russell in his escape from the north after Emmet's failure, had bribed his captors after arrest, provided for his defence, and preserved for futurity a record of his dying words. Madden's History of the United Irishmen, as far as it tells of the north, is mainly the record that she kept as a sacred trust in letters, papers, long-treasured memories of the men who fought and died to make Ireland a united nation.

And now a scene in America comes last to my mind. Wolfe Tone, a political fugitive who has served Ireland well and come through danger to safety, is busy laying the foundations of a happy and prosperous future, with a beloved wife and sister and young children to brighten his home. An estate near Princeton, New Jersey, has been all but bought, possibilities of a career in the new republic open before him, when a letter comes from Belfast, asking him to return to the post of danger, to undertake a mission to France for the sake of Ireland. Let his own pen describe what happened: "I handed the letter to my wife and sister and desired their opinion. My wife especially, whose courage and whose zeal for my honor and interest were not in the least abated by all her past sufferings, supplicated me to let no consideration of her or our children.stand for a moment in the way of my duty to our country, adding that she would answer for our family during my absence and that the same Providence which had so often, as it were, miraculously preserved us would not desert us now." Inspired by the fortitude of this noble woman, Tone went forth on his perilous mission, and similarly the Young Ireland leaders, Mitchel and Smith O'Brien, were sustained by the courage of their nearest and dearest. "Eva," the poetess of the Nation, gave her troth-plight to one who had prison and exile to face ere he could claim her hand. Other names recur to me "Speranza", with her lyric fire; Ellen O'Leary, fervent and still patient and wise; Fanny Parnell and her sister.

And what of the women of Ireland today? Shall they come short of the high ideal of the past, falter and fail, if devotion and sacrifice are required of them? Never: whilst

they keep in memory and honor the illustrious ones of whom I have written. The name of Irishwoman today stands for steadfast virtue, for hospitality, for simple piety, for cheerful endurance, and in a changing world let us trust it is the will of God that in this there will be no change.

REFERENCES:

On Ethne, mother of St. Columcille: The Visions, Miracles, and Prophecies of St. Columba (Clarendon Press Series). On Ronnat: S. Mac an Bhaird, Life (in Irish) of Adamnan (Letterkenny); Reeves, St. Adamnan's Life of St. Columba; The Mother of St. Adamnan, an old Gaelic text, ed. by Kuno Meyer (Berlin). On Gormlai: Thomas Concannon, Gormfiath (in lrish; The Gaelic League, Dublin). On Granuaile: Elizabethan State Papers (Record Office Series); William O'Brien, A Queen of Men. On Ineen-Dubh: O'Clery's Life of Red Hugh (contemporary), ed. by Denis Murphy, S. J. (Dublin, 1894); Standish O'Grady, The Flight of the Eagle, or Red Hugh's Captivity. On Rose, wife of Owen Roe O'Neill, see references in Father Meehan's The Flight of the Earls, and in Sir John Gilbert's History of the Confederate War (Dublin, 1885). On the wife of Wolfe Tone, see Wolfe Tone's Autobiography, ed. by R. Barry O'Brien (London, 1894). The American edition has a fuller account of Tone's wife, her courage and devotion in educating her son, and her interviews with Napoleon, and life in America. The women of the United Irish period are fully dealt with in R. R. Madden's Lives and Times of the United Irishmen. On Mary McCracken, see Mrs. Milligan Fox, The Annals of the Irish Harpers. On the women of the Young Ireland period, see C. Gavan Duffy's Young Ireland (Dublin), and John O'Leary's Fenians and Fenianism. On the women of Limerick, see Rev. James Dowd, Limerick and its Sieges (Limerick, 1890). For the women under Cromwellian Plantation persecutions and the Penal Laws, see Prendergast's Cromwellian Settlement, Rev. Denis Murphy's Cromwell in Ireland, and R. R. Madden's History of the Penal Laws,

IRISH NATIONALITY

BY LORD ASHBOURNE.

[NOTE. This chapter was written by Lord Ashbourne in French, because he is so strong an Irishman that he objects to write in English. The translation has been made by the Editors.]

O those of us who are interested in the future of our country there is at this very moment presented a really serious problem. The political struggle of the last century has been so intense that many of our people have come to have none but a political solution in view. For them the whole question is one of politics, and they will continue to believe that Ireland will have found salvation the moment we get Home Rule or something like it. Such an attitude seems natural enough when we remember what our people have suffered in the past. Nevertheless, on a little reflection, this error-for error it is, and an enormous one, too-will be quickly dissipated. In the first place, the political struggle of today is only the continuation of a conflict which has lasted seven hundred years, and in point of fact we have a right to be proud that after so many trials there still remains to us anything of our national inheritance. We find ourselves indeed on the battlefield somewhat seriously bruised, but we can console ourselves with the thought that our opponent is in equally doleful case, that he is beginning to suffer from a fatal weariness, and that he is anxious to make peace with us.

In order to place the present political situation in its true light and to take into account its comparatively limited importance, we must not lose sight of the fundamental fact that what Home Rule connotes is rather a tender of peace on the part of Ireland than a gift which England presents us of her own free will. In fact, our neighbor across the Channel has as much interest as ourselves, and perhaps even more, in bringing the struggle to an end. Through us, England has already lost much prestige, and that famous British Constitution, which in times past everyone admired while trying in vain to imitate it, has lost caste considerably. I am not now speaking of the danger which an Ireland discontented, and