LUCAS'S PENNY LIBRARY 18 NOV 1965 LIBRARY DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN.-CHAUCER. is merely in a general way to bring to the recollection of our readers the longing and eager affection which all the THE first open announcement, people of these islands once felt to Mary the mother of gentle reader, of this little pe- God, and the exhaustless variety of expedients they riodical, was made on the Feast adopted to satisfy the wonderful devotion with which of our Blessed Lady ad Nives. this affection inspired them. Perhaps we could furnish A great part of this first numno better illustration of this than is to be found in the ber, and in particular the pre-writings of Chaucer. sent article, was written during the solemnity of the Assumption. The day of the publication of this first number is the eve of the festival of the Rosary of our Blessed Lady; and, moreover, every Saturday throughout the year (the day of our publication) is, by the order of the Church, and the pious custom of the faithful, devoted to the service of the Holy Mother of God. It is obvious, therefore, that so far as coincidence of days is concerned, this undertaking, if what has been done has been done with due devoutness, has been in an especial manner placed under the patronage of Her whom all nations shall call Blessed. In order that this patronage may be more solemnly invoked, and the blessings which attend it showered down more copiously, we have thought it right to make a more public profession of the service which we owe to our gracious Patroness, and of the hopes and the glad thoughts that spring from the honour of her name. It has not then been as a mere artistic device that we have placed on this page her effigy and that of her Divine Son; nor have we adopted for our legend what is there written as a mere religious battle-cry. On the contrary, it is in all truth and simplicity of heart that, prostrate before this august, powerful, and clement Mother of all the faithful, and not daring to use our own unhallowed language in addressing her, we do, with an inexpressible feeling of our need and of her merciful condescension, strongly cry out to her in the words of the Church-" We fly to thy patronage, O "Holy Mother of God! Despise not our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us from all dangers, O ever"glorious and blessed Virgin." 66 It was far more the custom of our ancestors than (unfortunately) it is ours in the present day, to cherish, and publicly and openly to set forth their devotion to particular days, particular places, and particular saints of God. We have of course lost or forgotten nothing that is absolutely of Faith. We retain the observance of festivals; we commemorate in our public services the holy men and women who have gone before us; we supplicate their intercession according to the forms prescribed in our prayer-books: but, living as we do, surrounded by sceptical influences of all kinds, we have in great measure ceased to pour out our hearts in those innumerable and varied acts expressive of reverence, affection, and homage, which were familiar to our Catholic forefathers. The contagion of bad example, though it has not blasted the trunk of our devotion, nor killed any of its main branches, has yet withered too many of the flowers and too much of the foliage that it bore of old in this land. The infection of heresy, though it has not killed the principle of life, has stripped us bare, and left us miserably unprovided with the comely trappings and pleasant and life-preserving garniture of the true Faith. To explain thoroughly how deep this evil has penetrated, would lead us further than we should be warranted in going on the present occasion. Our purpose now, as the subject springs naturally from what has gone before, Chaucer, with all his faults and failings, must be called the great English Catholic poet. Inferior in many respects to the great Italian poet of the middle ages, Dante, he yet most assuredly occupies the third place in the poetic literature of a nation which numbers among its bards Shakspere, Spenser, and Milton; and he may, even without much presumption, put forth claims to the second place. Shakspere alone seems incontestably to challenge a higher crown than belongs to this poet of the fourteenth century. But undoubtedly, of all English poets, Chaucer is the great poet of Catholic times. His gay, joyous spirit, indeed, was deformed by many excesses; and though we have no reason to believe that the purity of his faith was stained by the doctrines of Wickliffe, yet even his mighty intellect was in some degree darkened and overshadowed by the gloom of the coming heresy. Poor Chaucer! he was a courtier and a man of the world; a partisan of John of Gaunt, and a votary of Cupid; a ripe scholar according to the measure of his age; an extravagant satirist of the vices and excesses of the clergy; and himself a gay and gallant minstrel to boot. In such a writer as this, we shall assuredly meet with nothing which did not approve itself deeply and profoundly to the universal heart of English Catholicism even in the least devout period of the middle age. Now it is precisely in Chaucer that we meet with strains of homage addressed to the Mother of God, beautiful, touching, and affectionate as any that are to be met with, we were almost going to say, even in the writings of the Saints. Never was this man, who so deeply loved the blessed Mary, doubtful in his faith. The heart of him was sound, whatever glooms and shadows dimmed for a time the lustre of his spirit. Innumerable passages of the kind to which we allude are to be found scattered through Chaucer's works. One of the most beautiful and elaborate, and indeed one of the best known, is in the "Canterbury Tales"-in "the Prioresses tale ;"-a tale of a miracle of a Christian child murdered by the Jews. The scene of this lovely story is said to be laid "in Asie, in a great citie;" but it is evident that this is a mere fancy, and that the scene is meant to be laid in an English city of the poet's own time. In this city there was a Jewry-a street in which the Jews lived apart from the rest of the inhabitants. The Jewry was not (as often was the case) shut in at each end by gates, so that the dwellers in it could not pass out or in except at certain hours of the day. On the contrary, through this Jewry men might ride and wend, folk," to which flocked numbers of children to learn "Such manner doctrine as men usen here." of seven years old, who every day, as he came to the As this little child, thus taught to worship our blessed Lady, sat at school reading his primer, he listened to the older children who were learning to sing for the Church the beautiful hymn Alma Redemptoris; and though he knew nothing of the meaning of the words, yet he "hearkened to the wordés and the note, Till that the first verse couth* he all by rote." One day, however, he begged "his fellow, which that older was than he," to tell him the meaning of the words; and as "his fellow," we may suppose, was ashamed to acknowledge his ignorance, he had to beg him again and again, "Full oftentimes upon his kneés bare." At last his fellow told him that it was a song in honour of "our blessed Lady free." "And is this song imade in reverence Of Christés mother?' said this innocent. To con it all ere Christenmas be went. He learned this song accordingly, and sang it twice a day aloud as he passed to school in the morning and homeward in the evening. Even as he passed to and fro through the Jewry, through which it seems his way lay, he would sing it "full merrily;" "The sweetness hath his heart ypierced so Of Christés mother, that to her to pray, He cannot stint of singing by the way.' Dwell, good reader, for a moment, upon the delicious expression of these last three lines, and when you consider what a love they paint, think from what an overflowing heart they issued. "The sweetness of Christ's mother' hath so pierced the heart of this young innocent, that he cannot cease singing aloud in the public street; nay, even in the Jewry itself. At last, the Jews, indignant at this boldness, and stirred up by "the serpent Sathanas," conspired against him. They "hired an homicide thereto;" and one day as the child passed by as usual "This cursed Jew him hent,† and helden fast, And cut his throat and in a pit him cast." We cannot stop here to tell how the poor widow sought her child up and down, " crying on Christés mother, meek and kind," till at last, happening to be near the pit where "he with throat ycorvent lay upright," she discovered him by a miracle. For lo,"He Alma Redemptoris gan to sing So loud, that all the place began to ring." The murder being thus discovered, wholesale chastisement was inflicted on the Jews; for the provost " with wild horses did them draw; "His mother swooning by the bier ylay." Before the chief altar whiles the Mass last, The abbot adjures the child by the Holy Trinity to say why he thus sings, when his throat appears to be cut; and the child answers : "This well of mercy, Christés mother sweet To me she came and bade me for to sing In honour of the blissful maiden free, "took away this martyr from the bier, And in a tomb of marble stonés clear Enclosen they his little body sweet, Where he is now, God grant us for to meet." Chaucer will furnish us with matter for another article on this subject; but before concluding for the present week, we must give in full the beautiful prologue by which this exquisite tale is preceded. It consists of five stanzas, and is supposed to be uttered by the prioress, by whom the tale itself is related "Oh Lord, our Lord! Thy name how marvellous But by the mouth of children thy bounty Of Thee and Her that is the lily-flower Not that I may encreasen her honour, Oh bush unburnt, burning in Moses' sight, Through thine humbleness; the Ghosts that in thee light; Thy virtue, and thy great humility But, as a child of twelve months old or less These beautiful verses, as well as the whole story which follows, Chaucer puts into the mouth of the prioress; but they are too earnestly and humbly affectionate, and they agree too well with other passages where he speaks in his own person, not to make us feel certain that in writing them he was writing from the overflowing of his own heart. We hope that many persons in England in the present day feel and think on this subject as Chaucer felt and thought; but the fear of exciting ridicule makes us less ready to express our feelings, and gives us fewer opportunities of hearing the praises of our Blessed Lady uttered with this childlike and trusting simplicity which was natural even to the gay and jocund layman of the fourteenth century. The story to which we have now for the first time introduced many of our readers has been a favourite down to our times; and with very little alteration of the words, a modern version has been prepared with much care and skill by a great Protestant poetWordsworth. TESTAMENTARY CHARITY IN THE FOUR- we are particularly struck by two, of very distinguished personages indeed. One is the will of the munificent Skirlaw, Bishop of Durham, who died, "full of years and good works," the 24th of March, 1405-6. He had been Bishop of Lichfield, and also of Bath and Wells, before being transferred in the year 1388 to the see of Durham, and over that see he presided for about 17 years. He was not one of those men who hoarded up money during his life to have the glory of leaving rich legacies at his death; on the contrary, the whole period of his bishophood was a period of unexampled activity and munificence. He built and endowed bridges; he was a principal contributor to the great tower in York Minster; he founded Skirlaw's Chantry in the south transept; and he founded three Scholarships at Oxford. The great tower of the collegiate church at Howden (which was "intended as "a place of security to the inhabitants from inundation"), the chapter-house, the manor-house, the gateway, and the great hall; also the cloisters at Durham and the dormi Much research and much ingenious reasoning have been employed in the endeavour to determine the comparative condition of the common labourer in the present and in past times. As might have been expected, the result of all past inquiries (and we may expect that all future inquiries will be attended with pretty much the same fate) has been to leave a great deal of uncertainty hanging over the subject. We do not intend to enter upon this question now, further than to say, that from the fourteenth century to the present time, nothing has yet been adduced to show with any degree of proof, that theory; and a chapel and a chantry in his own native farm-labourer or the common-labourer in towns, is now in village of Swynne, in Holderness-these are some of the more notorious living benefactions of the son of an humble the receipt of a higher rate of wages than was his prede- sieve-maker! cessor at the earlier period. On the contrary, we think it admits of being made very probable, that the rate of wages ment. Its beautiful and humble commencement, though The will of this great prelate is a very interesting docu—that is, that the amount of food purchaseable by the peculiarly appropriate to a bishop, is a fair speciwages ordinarily given in the fourteenth century-was men of the style even of lay-wills in the old Catholic really more liberal than the rate or amount in the present times. "In the name of the Highest and Undivided day. However, for the present, we wish it to be taken "Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of the most for granted, that the money-rate of wages has remained nearly stationary; it then becomes very important to dis-"whole Court of Heaven, Amen. The remembrance of "Blessed Mother of God and Virgin Mary, and also of the cover, whether there were not in the old Catholic times a "dire death would be too bitter to the rational creature, vast number of incidental circumstances, now wanting, by "had he not after the course of this road, that ever which the condition of the labourer was then materially "fluctuateth, the hope of a happier life in the country to bettered. The first branch of this subject that occurs to "which he is going. And, therefore, the sagacity of us is that of the distribution of charity, and in particular of "human prudence, knowing that nothing has been fixed the distribution of alms by will. The giving of alms by "by the laws of nature more certain than death, and the living is a very wide subject, which will supply us nothing more uncertain than the hour of death, hath hereafter with many illustrations of the middle age life; "been used to prevent the hour of this dissolution, not but for the present we will content ourselves with a narrower only by virtuous and meritorious works, but also by a field of inquiry, in which we shall be greatly aided by a "provident dispensing of one's goods, that thus the hour, volume of wills of the fourteenth century, which has lately. though itself unexpected, yet being anticipated by a been published by the Surtees Society from the Registry provident disposition, may be more securely waited for. of the county of York. In order, however, to enable our "Which thing revolving in the repository of due conreaders to appreciate the value of the bequests there resideration, I, most miserable sinner, Walter, by the corded, we must say a few words on the value of money in that period. "patience and mercy of God, Minister of the Holy Church The statute of labourers, passed in the "of Durham, although useless and unworthy, yet being middle of the fourteenth century to regulate wages, affects "by the grace of God sound in mind and body, but knowto determine the price of wheat so as to regulate the rate ing that all flesh is grass, and all the glory of it like the of wages paid in kind. Accordingly, it fixes the price of flower of the field, and that, in the words of the Wise wheat at tenpence a bushel, or six shillings and eight"Man, we all die and like water pass away over the earth, pence a quarter. A computation of the price of wheat as therefore, in the year, &c., I have thought fit to make recorded at the priory of Finchale, near Durham, in 49 different years, between A.D. 1316 and 1496-a period of "by God after this fashion, &c. As to the expenses of my will, and dispose of the goods of fortune given to me near two centuries-gives within a farthing the very same "my funeral, I wish them to be as my executors shall deaverage, or about six shillings and eightpence a quarter. Now the statute of labourers was passed with the object with decency. Also I bequeath two hundred pounds to termine, but with as little pomp as may be consistent of lowering the rate of wages, and therefore we may "be distributed among the poor, and principally my suppose that in it the highest price of the best wheat was selected for the standard. The prices, too, from Finchale "tenants, from the day of my death to the time of the are not recorded with any view to ascertaining an average "solemnization of my obsequies, and another two hundred either of price or quality. On the other hand, we have a pounds for priests to say Mass for my soul during one table of the prices of wheat in Oxford in the beginning year next following my death." of the fourteenth century recorded with the object of determining the assize of bread.* In this record three qualities of wheat are given, and the price of each quality several times in each of twelve years between 1309 and 1328; and from this table it appears that the average so ascertained was just under five shillings and tenpence a quarter. Now the average price of wheat in England during the last fifteen or sixteen years, has been about fifty-eight shillings a quarter, that is to say, exactly ten times the money price of the former period. Taking the price of wheat then as the standard in the fourteenth century, a legacy of one pound would be equal in value to a legacy of ten pounds of our present money. In the volume of wills to which we have before alluded *Lloyd's prices of corn in Oxford, 1830. 66 66 66 66 We print the whole of this last clause that the reader doctrine of purgatory and the legacy to the poor. The may see clearly the connexion between the Catholic bishop in the same clause bequeaths the very same sum for the poor, which he gives to have Masses offered up for his soul. There can be no doubt that the motive which led to this bequest was religious; the belief in a word that he was a debtor to the poor, and that by alms he could procure relief to his soul from the punishment due to his sins. According to our former estimate of the value of money, this legacy of £200 would be equal to about £2000 in the present day. This is a first bequest. The good bishop then goes on to mention several pious in our days would be provided for by church-rates, or by legacies for expenses connected with the Church, which acts of Parliament, where rich and poor pay after an 66 equal scale. He then gives legacies to several of his servants, and adds, "I also wish twenty pounds" (equal to £200) "to be distributed among the poorer of them according to the discretion of my executors." After another personal legacy, he then proceed, "I also wish and ordain that a hundred marks" (equal to £666 13s. 4d. of our present money) "be distributed among the poorer of "my kindred to the fourth degree, and even more remote, according to the discretion of my executors." 66 our calculation as in the former instance, they would be In a first codicil to his will, we find the following clauses: In the first place, I give and bequeath to pious "uses, according to the disposition of my executors, a thou"sand pounds, subject, however, to my former legacies." According to our previous calculation,' this legacy (of which a large part doubtless would go to the Church, but a large part also would just as certainly be divided among hospitals and go in other channels more immediately relating to the poor) is equivalent to a present legacy of £10,000. He then proceeds:-"I also wish my executors to distri-a poor beggar who solicits alms of the passer-by, that this "bute among a thousand poor persons, in the purchase of "beds and other necessaries, according to their discretion, "a thousand marks;" that is, as before, about £6666 13s. 4d. The editor of the collection from which this will is taken, in a note upon this bequest, remarks, that it "would not fall much short of £10,000 of our present money." We have already given our reasons for adopting the very moderate estimate of the value of money which has formed the basis of our calculation; and according to this basis, the legacies enumerated above would, taken altogether, amount to (£19,533 6s. 8d.) nearly twenty thousand pounds in the present day. If from this amount we make a deduction on account of the large sum that was given "to "pious uses" in general, and suppose that only one half of it went directly to the poor, we shall still have a sum of £14,533 6s. 8d. bequeathed to the poor by this one prelate; and that according to a moderate estimate of the value of money. Now, supposing the rate of agricultural wages to be as it now is throughout the south of England 10s. a week, these legacies would be equivalent to wages for a quarter of a year to two thousand two hundred and thirty-five families, or reckoning five to each familymore than eleven thousand (11,175) persons. Eleven thousand persons kept in full wages for a quarter of a year without giving an hour's labour in return for it! A FRENCH BARRACK.-A French barrack is worth seeing. Whenever this legacy dropped in, it must have made The beds appear particularly good. Each private had a bed a very considerable addition to the money-rate of wages three men are laid in one bed. The French peasantry, even to himself on an iron bedstead. In our service, two and even in the county palatine of Durham. This, however, was the will of an unmarried bishop. in the lowest condition, are accustomed to good beds. A high A layman, even a prince of the blood royal, cannot of course be pile of bedding seems a kind of ornamental furniture indisexpected to be equally liberal-either in his life or at pensably necessary in their ideas of housekeeping; and you see even in the single-room households of the poor, a kind of his death-yet, let us see the testamentary charity of display in the neatness and quantity of bedding. This taste "Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster." We has probably spread so widely as to act upon the military acshall find that it is even on a higher scale than the cleri-commodation. Each bed had a brown cloth covering neatly cal munificence of Skirlaw. covering the bed-clothes, and the sheets and mattresses were as clean and nicely done up as in any hospital. In this barrack it struck me as characteristic of the good relation between the officers and men, that on the inside of the door was stuck up a notice, that it would not be reputable to be seen in certain streets mentioned, on account of houses of ill-fame in them.Laing's Notes of a Traveller. He desires in the first place, that his body may be kept above ground for forty days. "Also, I will and devise "that each day of the said forty days, there be, for my "soul, given to poor people of the neighbourhood, fifty "marks of silver, and the eve of my burial three hundred "marks of silver, and the day of my burial five hundred "marks of silver, if it seems to my executors that this can "be done, considering the amount of my goods and my "other ordinances and bequests." The sums bequeathed in this clause amount to 2800 marks of silver, that is, to £1866 13s. 4d., of that time; and in our computation, to no less a sum than £18,666 13s. 4d.! The Duke of Lancaster then gives many charitable and pious bequests which do not at present concern us, and proceeds thus:-"I also bequeath to every house of lepers, "within five leagues round London, that has charge of "five sick, five nobles in honour of the five principal "wounds of our Lord; and to those that have less charge "three nobles in honour of the Blessed Trinity." Also, I "bequeath to the prisoners of Newgate and Ludgate in "London one hundred marks to be divided among them so "as best to profit them at the discretion of my executors." All these legacies taken together make very little short of twenty thousand pounds of our money; and pursuing SLANDERING THE DEVIL.-The artfulness of the Russian Mushiks in evading the laws and precepts of religion surpasses the wiles of Satan himself. The injunction is-"Ye shall not eat on fast-days any kind of flesh, nor shall ye boil eggs in water upon your hearths, and eat such eggs." A peasant who has no notion of debarring himself from eating eggs, though it is a strict fast-day, drives a nail into the wall, and hangs up an egg from it by a wire; he then places his lamp under the Being caught in this trick egg, and cooks it in that manner. by a priest, he alleges in excuse that he thought in this way he have taught you that!" cries the priest, peevishly. "Ah, yes, was not breaking the commandment. Why, the devil must father, forgive me, I will confess-it is true, the devil did 'No, it is not true!" shouts the devil, who has been present unobserved during the conversation, and, seated on the stove, chuckles at the sight of the suspended egg"Indeed I have not taught him this, for, upon my word, this is the first time I ever saw the trick."-Khol's Russia and the Russians in 1842. teach me.' 46 66 magistrates are men like themselves. He introduced into the FATE OF A PROTESTANT COLONY IN ERRIS. Towards the reign of King William the Third, we meet We presume that most of our readers have heard how it with a decided effort at the plantation of Connaught with was that Ulster became so Protestant. King James the Protestants. It is probably the earliest instance on record, First was pleased to consider “ the greatest part of six and as it is the one to which our title refers, we shall notice it as minutely as our means will allow us. “counties” in that province to have "escheated and come "to the crown," as his own royal ordinance informs us; in Catholic times, is the north-west corner of the county The Barony of Erris, or Arras-Dundonald, as it was called whereupon, it proceeds, "his Majesty, of his princely Mayo, where it abuts on the Atlantic. Its total extent is bounty, not respecting his own profit, but the public peace “ and welfare of that kingdom, by the civil plantation of 230,000 imperial acres, or nearly 360 British square miles. In old times it was at least as populous as now, and far "those unreformed and waste counties, was graciously "pleased to distribute the said lands" to a number of better cultivated. Besides the old forts, baronial castles, British scoundrels called undertakers, upon certain con- monastic and ecclesiastical buildings, coins, and other monuditions for the extermination of the Catholic proprietors ments of great antiquity, which cover the soil, its former and the reformation of religion, as the Protestants under- state may be easily judged of from the vast extent of rich stood that phrase. Unfortunately, so many and so powerful the wild winds of heaven, after having been for centuries and cultivated ridges of plough-lands, frequently laid bare by were those unprincipled undertakers, that the Ulster men covered by masses of sea-sand, to the depth sometimes of could not cope with them, but fled for the most part into 60 feet. Many of the fields of Erris that are now again the neighbouring provinces. Many of these fugitives perished of hunger by the way, many were weeded out by producing luxuriant crops of corn and grass, were sterile the assassin-swords of the strangers; but, in fine, many, were tracts until they were reclaimed in this strange fashion! able to make good their escape into the other provinces. Formerly the proprietors of Erris were the O'Flaherties; Those who stayed in the escheated counties of Ulster had but Charles the Second, out of his royal bounty we presume to make up their minds to the loss of their old estates and (for his royal justice could have nothing to say to grants of family names, and to become dependants of the upstarts other men's estates), granted to certain Londoners in trust for that had plundered them. The names of places even had one Sir James Shaen, Baronet, who was the Surveyor-General of Ireland, and likewise a farmer of Irish revenues, to be forgotten: the county of Cavan, for example, as we the "whole half barony of Erris, with the parish of Doonlearn from Sir John Davies, who was active in these barbarities, had until then been known by the name of Brevye."feeney, in Tyrawly, and the parish of Tarnionbarry. Where We are sorry to say that polity and violence did the work the old proprietors were Catholic and the new ones Protestin Ulster that they were meant to do. It is still the main ant, there was never any scruple about this wholesale way garrison of heresy among the Irish. The word garrison in- of granting. Sir James Shaen, however, contented himself deed becomes that Protestant colony well. It has all the with having robbed the people of their lands: their souls he vices of a garrison; it is anti-national still; it is servile to suffered them to take to themselves. He "took no active the stranger and insolent to the native; prone to cruel and part in endeavouring to improve this country." But his cowardly outrages; sensual and dissolute; contemptuous of son, Sir Arthur Shaen, on succeeding to the property, all laws, human and divine; and secure of impunity, for their peninsula a Protestant colony, to whom he gave certain followed a very decided course. "allotments of land in the parish of Kilmore, within the "Mullet, where they were to reside, and in that of Kilcommon, or the mountains, where their cattle were to graze in the 66 summer time. The tenure was that of leases renewable for ever (a tenure peculiar to Ireland), at rents so very trifling there is no evidence of his having given such leases or such as to be almost nominal." It is added by Mr. Knight, that encouragements to any of the original inhabitants, with the exception of the Cormicks, who were probably apostates. A parson accompanied the colony of course, and, equally of course, was made a magistrate. His name was Josiah Tollet. Their first step was to clear their farms of the idolatrous aborigines, " for the purpose of turning them to the rearing the civil war that distracted it. The disinterested zealots of other stock." Then they set about building comregarded it as too bleak and barren a province for their fortable houses, and enclosing cabbage-gardens, and the gospellers to dwell in, and hence they contented themselves rearing of the other stock aforesaid, taking no thought of with making it a receptacle for the plundered fugitives whom the natives they had ejected, nor caring whether they died they drove from Ulster: a hell upon earth for papists, as of starvation or not. Unluckily for them, the natives cared their well-known proverb impiously proclaimed it. There a good deal about these matters. Captain Rock and his are traces in the most remote parts of Connaught, which outrages are notorious enough in our days, to the great still bear witness of their cruelty. disgrace, not only of the wretched perpetrators, but also of island where dupes help knaves to feed fatly, under pretence similar causes operated similarly in the days of the colony those who were to them the ultimate occasions of sin. of colonising it and making Protestants of its stubborn of Erris. The ejected natives began to persecute their natives-Achil, says a recent author*, and the adjacent Ballycroy, have been for a great number of years inhabited by a colony from the north, who are called by their neighbours " Ultagh," or "Ulster men." An old Achil peasant recited in his hearing two Irish rhymes, which showed that at the beginning of the last century an O'Donel was their leader; but whether at the tirae of their emigration they were under the O'Donels seems doubtful. This colony still retains the ancient Gaelic of Ulster. They intermarry almost exclusively with each other. In person they are hardy, low-sized, and dark. In character they are acute, bold, intrepid, and irritable, but their hospitality is extreme. To a stranger, however much unknown, their greeting on the road is always, "You are welcome to our country, stranger." Mr. Knight thinks them the material of a peculiarly fine people, if well managed. An example so encouraging as this has never been lost sight of by succeeding Protestants. Colony after colony has been planted in other provinces for the same object, but in vain. These mimic experiments were made on a small scale, and the fortunate Ulster one owed all its horrid success to its magnitude. A religion that needs brute force to establish and maintain itself, cannot thrive if that force is economically administered. Nought but thorough will "do it." Of this truth the colonies in Connaught are powerful examples, and it is to one of these that we direct the attention of our readers to-day. 66 For half a century after the Ulster plantation was made, Connaught continued to breathe religious peace, in spite of Achil-the famous *Knight's "Erris." Dublin, 1836. 66 66 ،، persecutors. It had been better that they had not done perhaps knew no better, and how should they? Their so: crime does not justify crime; but the poor people priests, who would have taught them better, dared not show their heads. The law, which made it penal to steal and not to steal or murder to breathe the air of their native Iremurder, made it as penal for those who taught the people land. Within the Mullet, where these outrages were perpetrated, and where the relics of old Catholic piety are numerous and magnificent, even at the present day, so completely had these unnatural laws of the Reformation done their external work, that until within these 14 years, achouse of worship! At the date to which we are referring, cording to Mr. Knight, there was not a single Catholic matters were so far worse, that the people were deprived not only of churches, but of priests too, so far as the law was concerned. If the men of the Mullet ever saw a priest at |