ginative grace, a careless atmosphere of humour, sometimes gay, sometimes melancholy, always attractive, which at once disarmed the hand which was raised to strike or punish them. These spirits were dangerous neighbours. Men who first entered the country at mature age might be fortified by experience against their influence, but on the young they must have exerted a charm of fatal potency. The foster-nurse first chanted the spell over the cradle in wild passionate melodies.[1] It was breathed in the ears of the growing boy by the minstrels who haunted the halls,[2] and the lawless attractions of disorder proved too strong for the manhood which was trained among so perilous associations.
For such a country, therefore, but one form of government could succeed—an efficient military despotism. The people could be wholesomely controlled only by an English deputy, sustained by an English army, and armed with arbitrary power, till the inveterate turbulence of their tempers had died away under repression, and they had learnt in their improved condition the value of order and rule. This was the opinion of all statesmen who possessed any real knowledge of Ireland,
- ↑ Some sayeth that the English noble folk useth to deliver their children to the King's Irish enemies to foster, and therewith maketh bands.—State Papers, vol. ii. p. 13.
- ↑ 'Harpers, rhymers, Irish chroniclers, bards, and ishallyn (ballad singers) commonly go with praises to gentlemen in the English pale, praising in rhymes, otherwise called 'danes,' their extortions, robberies, and abuses as valiantness; which rejoiceth them in their evil doings, and procures a talent of Irish disposition and conversation in them.'—Cowley to Cromwell: Ibid. vol. ii. p. 450. There is a remarkable passage to the same effect in Spenser's View of the State of Ireland.
