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ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
ARCHAEOLOGY

Volume 40

ANCIENT IRELAND
This page intentionally left blank
ANCIENT IRELAND
A Study in the Lessons of
Archaeology and History

R. A. S. MACALISTER
First published in 1935
This edition first published in 2015
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 1935 R. A. S. Macalister
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered


trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-138-79971-4 (Set)


eISBN: 978-1-315-75194-8 (Set)
ISBN: 978-1-138-81386-1 (Volume 40)
eISBN: 978-1-315-74785-9 (Volume 40)

Publisher’s Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this book but
points out that some imperfections from the original may be apparent.

Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would
welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.
ANCIENT I R E L A N D
A STUDY IN THE LESSONS OF
ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY

BY

R. A. S. MACALISTER, L it t .D .
PROFESSOR OF CELTIC ARCHAEOLOGY, UN IVERSITY
COLLEGE, DUBLIN

WITH 24 PLATES
AND l8 OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS
AND MAPS

M ETH UEN & CO. LTD. LO N D O N


36 E s s e x S t r e e t W . C . 2
First Published in 1935

PRIN TED IN GREAT BRITAIN


CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE

I n t r o d u c t i o n ............................................................... ix
I T h e F a l l o w L a n d a n d it s E a r l ie s t I n h a b i­
tants ............................................................................ i
II T he M en of th e H alberd . . . . 16

III T he Men of th e Sw ord . . . . 54


IV T h e M e n o f I r o n ................................................... 75
V S h a d o w -S c e n e s . . . . . . 1 26

VI T h e M e n o f th e C ro ss . . . . 1 60

V II T he M en of th e B a ys . . . . . 204

V III M o r e S h a d o w -S c e n e s . . . . . 221

IX T h e B u il d e r s o f C h u r c h e s . . . . 245
X T h e B u il d e r s o f C a s t l e s . . . . 2 66

N otes an d R e fe r e n c e s . . . . . . 2 83

Index 301

V
E n g lis h M ile s / A
0 5 /0 20 30 40 60
J B ro ig h te rX
’A il e c h
I rP d is n a c ro d te ra
\ cp
Y| \lSLAND
L A R N t * \JMAG£E

D rum ke/in J 00*f M ilro o t


• -^
D ru m n a k i/lv L- \
N eaghJ
B A L L Y 8 H A N N 0 I^ * N e n d ru m *
(AssaroeJ. . r ^ C-atLAftfVhite Is.
C logher
j^^ibulbin\\ Deven/siiffi\f-- ^ rne

r__ Rosses a 3655


^^BaJbglas/l.
S* J
i—V^~
" 3 $&8L,GO
'%JKnocknareB^Parrowm pre
ARM A6H

rJ^MA^HSLEfeHT&
L clon es?
New bliss " ’'A nriaghc/ochm uj/inn

^< JK i/n a sa g g a rt
Sh'e\/e/none ' > £V Carrowkeel '.1/ •K ilT y c lu g g in ’L is a J e a .
L .C o n n \ l^ ^ B b u N O A K ^ BLACK ^ #v F A R N E Y ^ -v>— G h s 'lin q fo rx l
A C H IL L W
1 S hercock (
Ardee
C lare !< ± C ruachu jr^ k 'G reenm ount
U crew Loch M onasterboice ?
Croagh P a tric k V y & . Teltow n /& P 2 HEDA
ft K e lls * s^ -4£ ugh\B e tty e to w n
, L .M a s k / f \ ^ / t B unbrosna Donoughm oreX^^ B° ' NS £ \
C astle S tra n g e . , M iiso /o th re u m • Athb°y ' .T a ra , * eenW ue
Uisnech .<■>/ \
*TUAM ! ^?ee\ [ U$ r f!£ n n e // C tofixnL < *> £ T .
j^ L C o ^ L AtHL

t j^W C LO N M AC N O IS O u F rd lv
Turoe House Cfonfin/och BOG OF A LLE N ^ ’ T a J la a h t
j^g^KILDARE \
D ung orey s' oU' r h E * •$" J K ilcuJleri \ / Seefin
MullacLp*0' 9-Jy*J*. I
j \

T O ysert ODea R oscrea •


t NiJleenibrnHucfylendcdobh
ft y\T im a h o e \
*/
. C ell Rannw reck
\*
j
F CastJedermot . /
a d h a ir & ?* { /D e v ils B it ^ * XKiUeshin j ? ’ T ig rony S
y$ Itfa llysp ellaA . O
V *
^ .4 y . B iin r a fty
/ K ,L L A L 0 E ** (
I ^BaJ/on H ill )
F re sh fo ra \ C **m k
r-'^ , .C arriqoqun
LIMEm F e rn s I
f j *CA8H EL • * ^ iG lo g a m e r y
'Ardagh * L Gu ' K itlam ery \ \
j& N ft. C o lla r u ..r . tra fa n n \CahirR.SuJr*Ahttnny y
I w ndhnnane
\JcarrIck\ <?
Castle Saffron
y ^ :G a lla ru i W A TE R F O R D ]

; BLASKET IS R. B lack w a te r
of
/’ a o s
ffanam i AV^pfiyTK
CORK YOUGHAL r^Ardmore

Skehigs p B ord g ri

G /andore

MAP OF IR E L A N D , SHO W ING THE PLACES M E NTIO NED IN TH IS BOOK


ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PAGE

1. S p e c im e n s of b a d l y -m a d e Stone H atch et-


H eads . . . . . . facing 26
2. A H a lb e r d - H e a d . . . . facing 26
3. S k e t c h M a p s h o w in g t h e C o m m e r c ia l R e l a t io n s
o f I r e l a n d w it h E u r o p e in t h e E a r l y B r o n z e
A g e ................................................................................................. 28
4. S p e c im e n o f H a l b e r d - P e r io d P o t t e r y . . 32
5. A D o lm e n , In is m o r e , A r a n Is la n d s facing 34
6. P lan o f Carnagat ..........................................................4 2
7. P l a n o f C u l l a m o r e ...................................................................... 43
8a . S c r ib e d S t o n e fr o m T o r n a n t , C o . W ic k l o w
facing 46
8b . S t o n e C o v e r e d w it h Cu pm arks, D onard
facing 46
9. I n h a b it a n t s o f C e n t r a l A u s t r a l ia s t a n d in g
a r o u n d a G r o u n d -D r a w in g . . facing 48
10 . A S e c t io n o f t h e B og o f A l l e n R o a d w a y
facing 50
11. F o rts on th e A ra n Is la n d s . . facing 58
12. I n t e r io r o f a C h a m b e r e d C a r n , S e e f in M o u n ­
t a i n , Co. W i c k l o w . . . facing 62
13. B u r ia l C is t a t K e e n o g u e . . facing 66
14A . A l i g n m e n t a t B a r a c h a u r a n , C o . C o r k facing 70
14B . C ir c u l a r S t r u c t u r e b e s id e L och Gur, Co.
L im e r ic k . . . . . facing 70
15. G o r g e t fro m G l e n i n s h e e n , Co. C l a r e facing 72
16 . P o t t e r y F ig u r e f r o m B a l l i n t o y , C o . A n t r im
facing 80
17. B r o n z e C a u ld r o n , C o. T y r o n e . facing 84
18 . W ooden Cau ldron , A ltartate, C o . M onaghan 86

vii
v iii A N C IE N T IR E L A N D

F IG . PAG E

19. P lan of the P rincipal Structures on the H ill


of U isnech ........................................................ 103
20. T he U isnech H o u s e ..................................... 105
21. P lan of a Structure at T ogherstown, C o . W est ­
meath ................................................................ 108
22. T he S hercock F igure . . . facing 114
23 . T he H olderness B oat . . . . . 115
24. O gham Stone at A ghascribbagh , C o . T yrone
facing Il8
25 . E arly G reek A lphabet on which the O gham
A lphabet was b a s e d ..................................... 119
26. I reland as known to P tolem y 124
27. D uk - duk D ancers . . . . facing I46
28. T he O rnamentation of the M ullaghmast Stone l80
29 . T he C hurch of K ildare from the description of
COGITOSUS . . . . . . . 182
30 . D evelopment of an O rnamental C ross from the
C hi-R ho Sy m b o l .............................................. I84
31 * T he K ilnasaggart Stone . . facing 184
32 . T he W hite I sland S culptures . I-IV facing 194
33 * T he W hite I sland S culptures . V-VII facing 196
34 - T he Slab of F eidlimid . . . facing 212
35 - T he B allinderry G aming -B oard . fdoing 218
36 . A n I rish B ishop , or A bbot , on a Stone at K il -
ladeas , C o . F ermanagh . . facing 226
37 - F ragment of M ed iaeval I nterlacing facing 226
38 . T he D oorway , C lonfert C athedral facing 250
39 . T he N etwork of C istercian F oundations in
I r e l a n d ....................................................... 257
40. W indow , K ilcolman , C o . K erry . facing 260
41. A P e le -tower , D ungorey , C o . G alw ay facing 274
42. T he C limate - curve and the H istory of I reland 278
M ap of I reland , showing the places mentioned in
this BOOK..................................... after Index
INTRODUCTION

A rch aeology as a science is still comparatively youn g:


and the Archaeology of Ireland, for all that the country
has had a succession of antiquaries for many centuries, is
one of the youngest of its branches. Indeed, just because
there has been such a succession, rooted in remote and pre-
scientific days, the threshold of the subject is cluttered
up— the aptness of the word will condone its inelegance—
with a mass of rubbish, which ought to have been cast into
the scavenger's bucket long years ago. Even yet, the
pagan origin of the Round Towers ; St Patrick’s homiletic
use of the shamrock; St Kevin’s assassination of his
admirer (who is dubbed with the entirely modern and
essentially un-Irish name ' Kathleen ’); the existence in
various places of symbolic groups of ' seven churches ’ ;
these and the like fictions make their appearance in the
most unexpected quarters, and illustrate afresh the univer­
sal experience that an error, once started, can hardly ever
be overtaken. Even yet, Dublin residents call Speaker
Connolly’s shooting-lodge in the mountains ‘ The Hell-fire
Club ’. Even yet, the Irish Melodies of Moore, to say
nothing of the inspirations of lesser bards, are accepted as
authorities for archaeology and history, of equal value
with the works of a Montelius or a Mommsen. It is high
time to shake off all such incubi.
I remember, once on a time, reading a letter in a news­
paper, written by a man who ought to have known better,
to the effect that ' we are not out for scientific research;
we wish to keep our belief in the greatness of our ancient
civilization ’. If any one who feels thus should chance
to take up this book, let him read no further. It is written
ix
X ANCIENT IRELAND

in the conviction that delusions are always b a d ; that


popular delusions are superlatively b a d ; and that their
badness increases in direct ratio to their popularity. It is
also written in the conviction that a virile application of
Science to the study of Ancient Ireland is a truer patriotism
than the only too common saccharine sentimentalism ;
which provokes a reaction to the opposite extreme by its
monotony and indifference to scientific truth, and for this
very reason cannot lead, in the end, to anything but dis­
illusionment.
This book is intended as a supplement to a previous book,
The Archaeology of Ireland, issued by the same publishers
in the year 1927. In that work, what may be called a
* museum ' standpoint was adopted ; it consisted essentially
of descriptions of such types of buildings, weapons, imple­
ments, and so forth, as are characteristic of the country.
In the present work a more ‘ anthropological' standpoint
is adopted; an attempt is made to work back, through
the artifacts, to the men who made them, and to reconstruct
the conditions in which they lived. Except where it is
absolutely necessary, particulars set forth in the preceding
volume are not repeated in these pages ; and for references,
&c., the reader is sent back to the earlier work.
There are, however, a number of points in which, during
the past seven years, I have gradually discarded opinions to
which in the earlier volume I gave expression ; and here a
retracing of old ground cannot be avoided. Among these
points may be mentioned the continuity of the Bronze
Age : the date of the Aran and other great western forts :
the date and manner of the introduction of the Celtic
language: the nature of the iron-age invasion, and the
ethnological affinities of the invaders: the significance of
' the stone of F a l' at Tara : the origin and development
of the Ogham script: and some other matters, which the
attentive reader of the previous volume will not fail to
notice. Knowledge is steadily growing: but in Irish
Archaeology it has not grown far enough to enable us to
attain finality in any of our conclusions. The author feels,
however, that the present book may claim to be a nearer
INTRODUCTION xi
approximation to finality, in these and certain other
matters, than its predecessor.
To those who may find matter for expostulation in some
comparisons instituted between the ancient people of
Ireland, and the aborigines of the islands of the Southern
Seas, I reply, why not ? The South Sea Islanders were a
fine people, before they were reduced to their present
degraded condition by the iniquities of ‘ civilized ' European
intruders. To those who complain that admired heroes
and heroines, about whom there are so many pretty picture-
books, are here shown as mere human beings— as the say­
ing goes, no better than they should be— I reply that no
one regrets this more than I do, but I cannot help i t ; I
have gone for my information to original sources, and not
to pretty picture-books. Critics may be inclined to
protest that I have occasionally looked away from my
proper province— the past— and indulged in glances at the
present and the future: these I refer to the title-page,
where they will find that this book professes to be * a
study in the lessons of Archaeology and History ’.
There now remains the pleasing duty of expressing
thanks to friends and correspondents who have helped
me on my way. I owe much to many discussions with
my colleagues, especially Dr. Adolf Mahr, the Director of
the National Museum, Mr. H. G. Leask, Inspector of
Ancient Monuments for the Irish Free State, and Professor
Eoin MacNeill, University College. I have also to acknow­
ledge the ready helpfulness of Mr. A. C. Deane, Curator
of the Belfast Museum. To Dr. Mahr I owe an additional
and very heavy debt, for his generosity in putting freely
at my disposal the photographs, here reproduced, of some
of the most important recent acquisitions of the Museum
(figs. 4, 13, 15, 17, 18, 22, 35) and also for allowing me the
use of large plans of Carnagat and Cullamore, executed
by Mr. Walter Campbell, and preserved in the Museum
Archives. From these I have drawn smaller plans (figs. 6,
7), adapted to the size of this book, and sufficient for the
immediate purpose of illustrating the descriptions which
it contains. To Mr. Thomas Mason, Dublin, for generous
Xll ANCIENT IRELAND

permission to use his photographs (figs. 12, 31, 34); to the


Lady Dorothy Lowry-Corry for the use of her photograph
of the Killadeas stone (fig. 36) and to Prof. Jackson, Man­
chester, and Mr. A. C. Deane, for permission to include
the Ballintoy statuette (fig. 16), now in Belfast City
Museum, thanks are also due. I have to acknowledge the
favour of Messrs. Macmillan & Co., in allowing me to
reproduce fig. 9, from Spencer and Gillen's Northern
Tribes of Central Australia, published by them ; and of
Prof. Hugo Obermaier, Madrid, in permitting me to copy
fig. 27 from his work Der Mensch der Vorzeit. For provid­
ing me with a copy of the sampler-inscription (p. 274) with
permission to publish it, I have to thank Mrs. Beverley
Ussher, Cappagh: and E. R. Richards-Orpen, Esq., Kil-
lanne, Co. Wexford, for allowing me to print the window-
pane inscription on the following page. The Rev. T. C. de la
Hey, vicar of Bromsgrove, at my request, was so good
as to check my memory of the inscription quoted on p. 244.*
R. A. S. M.
July 1934
Postscript. After this book had gone to press, the
Free State Government made a grant, as generous as it
was unexpected, for archaeological research. It is too
early yet to do more than acknowledge an act which will
certainly be of incalculable benefit to Science.

* The Bromsgrove stone-mason has set out these obviously


rhythmic lines as if they were prose, and he has misspelt the first
word. As such indiscretions detract from the effectiveness of the
epitaph, I have ventured to correct them,
CHAPTER I
T H E F A L L O W L A N D A N D IT S
E A R L IE S T IN H A B IT A N T S

S l o w l y the ice dissolved, and was lost in the waters of


Ocean. Slowly the face of the land, as yet a dull muddy
slop with no green leaf to rest the eye, was laid bare once
again to the life-giving kiss of the sunbeams. Slowly the
curtain rose and revealed the stage, still unlighted and
empty, but with scenery set, prepared for the actors
destined to play out the chequered drama of Irish history.
The Ice Age had at last come to an end. The stress of
its latest rigours had not been so severe as in a former
visitation, which had covered the whole land with a block
of ice thick enough to submerge the mountain-tops. In
the recent glaciation the strip of land bordering on the
southern sea had escaped : a few plants, and possibly some
lowly species of animal life, had there contrived to maintain
their existence. But for the moment all, to the north of
that strip, was desolation.1
A Prologue to the Play flits across the stage— a solitary
human figure, who makes a momentary appearance, and
then vanishes. We cannot tell who he was or what brought
him hither. All that we are able to say, at the moment,
is that a man's bones were found in a cave at a place called
Kilgreany, near Cappoquin in Co. Waterford, embedded
in a layer of stalagmite, underneath, and therefore older
than, a layer of early post-glacial deposit. No implement
of any kind accompanied the bones, to indicate their place
among the pigeon-holes of the anthropological historian.
In the dawning light this vague shadow comes out of the
unknown, utters never a word, and passes from our ken.
i
2 ANCIENT IRELAND

He may have had comrades, whose bones, in their unknown


tombs, still await the posthumous fame which the spade
shall confer upon them. When their time comes, perhaps
they will be more communicative. Meanwhile we wait, as
best we can content, knowing nothing beyond the bare
fact of the existence of this earliest man who lived and
died in Ireland.2
As the lights increase in strength, the scene before us
gradually assumes a definite aspect, wherein the strange
and the familiar intermingle.
The vertical profile will be much as we know it to-day.
We shall have no difficulty in picking out the rugged
heights of Connemara or of Kerry, and the gentler upland
beauties of Wexford and Wicklow. We shall recognize the
strange straight-cut outline of Ben Bulbin; we shall see
the graceful cone of Croagh Patrick, awaiting the traditional
sanctity in which it is later to be clothed. Over the plains
we shall see the rivers that we know— not always in the
channels wherein they flow to-day, but sufficiently near
to them to allow us to speak over them their familiar
names.
But at the beginning of the play, the horizontal outline
of the stage will be unrecognizable. It is only by accident
that Great Britain and Ireland are islands. Geologically,
they are both mere extensions northward of the great
continental ‘ shelf \ A slight elevation of the land-mass
would destroy their insularity, and would turn them into
inland areas, anything up to a hundred miles from the
nearest sea. In contrary wise, a slight depression would
turn them into an archipelago of rocky islets, every one
the disconnected summit of a submerged mountain. Such
conditions passed in alternation, during the ages immedi­
ately preceding the occupation of Ireland by Man.
The causes and the direct consequences of these alter­
nations belong to the province of the geologist rather than
to that of the archaeologist. There is no evidence that
there were any human dwellers in the country at the time
of maximum elevation. The rugged mountains of Cumbria
and Cambria, the vast inland lake which filled the deeper
EARLIEST INHABITANTS 3
depths of the basin of the Irish Sea, the majestic river
which ran out of it southward, and relieved it of the tribute
which the Clyde, the Mersey, the Dee, the Boyne, the
miscalled Liffey, and a host of minor streams poured into
it— and which was itself swelled by the Severn, the Barrow,
the Suir, the Blackwater, the Seine, and countless other
tributaries— all these barriers opposed themselves to
human advance, as they opposed themselves to snakes,
polecats, and other animals, daffodils and other plants,
indigenous in Great Britain but unknown in Ireland, or
only recently imported thither by human agency. We may
indeed assume that these species did not reach Great Britain
itself until after the insularity of Ireland— as an island,
the older of the two— had been completed. Nor have we
any reason to believe, on the other hand, in the existence
of Robinson Crusoes, marooned singly or collectively upon
the island tops of sunken mountains.
The land, freed from the ice-burden, had to find rest
after her long endurance of the load. Before she could be
peopled, she had to seek equilibrium after that distorting
strain ; as an india-rubber ball restores its shape, after it
has been pressed in on one side. She rose and fell, and
rose and fell again, as a pendulum oscillates with ever-
diminishing amplitude before its vibrations cease. Forests
of oak and forests of birch and pine grew and passed away.
Upon their decaying tree-trunks formed the mosses, which
in their turn became the peat-bogs. Bears, boars, wolves,
the misnamed ' Irish e lk ' with its colossal horns, skulked
in the forests or ranged over the plains. Man, the universal
enemy, the universal destroyer, had not as yet intruded
upon their paradise.
As we await his arrival, let us take a rapid glance over
the island prepared for his reception. We need not here
trouble ourselves with the outlying areas, now sunk in the
surrounding seas. Submerged beds of peat, revealed by
the dredger, speak of ancient forests, which in their turn
tell us of long-lost lands : for forests cannot grow, nor can
peat-mosses form, under the sea. We shall take the country
as we find it, which is much as its first inhabitants found it.
4 ANCIENT IRELAND

Ireland is a land of anomalies, not the least of which


is its geographical configuration ; the relative distribution
of its mountains and its plains. Most islands rise gradually
from sea-level to some central peak, or to an axial moun­
tain ridge. In Ireland, however, as in some gigantic lunar
volcano, the mountains stand like a bulwark around a low-
lying central plain ; over which, rivers of considerable size
pursue their winding way, changing so little in level, from
reach to reach, that they are navigable for unusual dis­
tances. The greatest of them all, the Shannon, rises not
much more than twenty miles from the nearest point of
the sea-coast; but so securely is it hemmed in by the
marginal mountain barrier, that it has to wander for ten
times that distance before it can discharge the burden of its
waters.
Lakes abound in the central plain as well as in the
hollows of the mountain bulwark. But the lakes that we
may see to-day are as nothing compared with the complex
network of inland waters which covered the land at the
beginning of human occupation. Almost everywhere we
may find sunken areas with flattened floors, often of vast
extent. These may be, and generally are, marshy, except
where they have been artificially drained with the ditches
which now disconcertingly interrupt a cross-country excur­
sion. There may be stretches of water within them here
and there, often little more than large ponds— the shrunken
relics of the lakes which once filled the entire hollow.
In the days of her first inhabitants, Ireland might have
challenged a comparison with Finland, so many and so
great were her lakes.
The mountain coast-line barrier is not unbroken. There
are three important gaps in its course, where the central
plain, which is essentially a limestone formation, impinges
upon the sea. The first of these is the stretch that lies
between the city of Dublin and the town of Drogheda, some
thirty miles to the north. This has always been the most
important gateway into the country, the pathway of
invaders, the chosen land of colonists. The other gaps,
as they do not face any neighbouring land, are less impor­
EARLIEST INHABITANTS 5
tant, though not wholly unimportant, historically: these
are the inlets between South Donegal and Sligo, and South
Galway and North Clare. In addition to these primary
gateways, minor but still effective entrances are provided
by the principal river estuaries; while the rivers them­
selves are ready-made highways for the invader. Such a
gateway is Waterford Harbour, whence the Barrow, Nore,
and Suir spread back fanwise into the region behind the
granite wall between Dublin and Wexford. The Black-
water, loveliest of all the Irish rivers, opens the land a
little further w est; the Lee with its wonderful harbour-
mouth, the Bandon— these two afford a clue to the sand­
stone labyrinths of Cork, which would otherwise present
bewildering difficulties to an invader ot South-Western
Munster. The Shannon, with its important tributary the
Suck, notwithstanding the obstacle of a line of reefs below
the site of the town of Killaloe, has ever been the water­
way through the central plain; and, shortly before rail­
ways were invented, to make older means of communication
obsolete, long chains of canal routes had been dug, which
widely increased its area of service. The line of lakes
running northward from Galway penetrates the mountain
fastnesses of Connemara. The island-studded Loch Erne,
with its outlet at Ballyshannon, taps the central plain in
the north. The volcanic regions of Antrim are traversed
by the Bann, which, with its enormous expansion called
Loch Neagh, opens up North-Eastern Ulster.3
Nature was surely in jesting mood when she fashioned
this wonderful island. The people of Ireland appear
incomprehensible to their neighbours ; it could hardly be
otherwise, for they live in an incomprehensible country of
paradoxes. Nature has here doubled the parts of the
spendthrift and the skinflint. She bestowed rivers upon
the country which are great, but just not great enough for
the demands which modern industry would fain make
of them. She was niggardly in coal, but lavish in its heart­
breaking and wasteful substitute peat. The most that
can be said for this material is that it is highly effective
within its legitimate province, of providing country cot­
6 ANCIENT IRELAND

tages with a pleasant and sanitary fu el: if there were


any excuse for exhausting the supply by commercial
exploitation, the day would be hastened when those who
depend upon it would be reduced to disagreeable substi­
tutes, such as dried cow-dung. She bestowed abundance
of useless gold, breeding covetousness in the hearts of
less favoured rivals; but she withheld the tin which
at one time in history was absolutely indispensable.4
Here she laid down beds of richly fertile soil— sufficient
to earn for the land the name Eriu (of which the current
' Erin ’ is the dative case), a word which apparently means
' the fat land ’ : but there, by way of contrast, she
left stretches of barren, rocky waste, yielding at best
scanty returns, and that only after bitter toil— thus sow­
ing the seed of insatiable discontent. As though she had
repented herself of this freak, she saddled the country
with an atmospheric moisture which makes the most fertile
regions unprofitable except as pasturage ; and to complete
her jest, she contrived a climate which, though pleasant
enough, is probably the most enervating in Europe, except
in the bracing north-eastern quarter. As ancient saints
are said to have exposed themselves, of set purpose, to
divers temptations,' to increase their fight with the devil \ 6
so, in the remaining three-quarters of the country, the world­
wide struggle for existence is increased to such a degree of
severity by the unconquerable demons of lassitude and
laisser-faire, that to seek to maintain the country per­
manently as an agricultural rather than a pastoral land
is to run serious risk, sooner or later, of a hideous
visitation of famine. ‘ In the beginning, ere man grew \
it was written in the Book of Fate that he who finds
a dwelling in the north-eastern quarter has for birth­
right an energy, quickened by the winds blowing over the
northern snows of Scotland, which the rest of the folk must
purchase at a great price, and must fight an ever-losing
battle to maintain. It was the north-eastern quarter that
created the great Dorsey Fort, and the boundary wall
called ‘ The Black Pig's Dyke ',6 in or about the third
century a.d., to keep out southern aggression. It was
EARLIEST INHABITANTS 7
the north-eastern quarter which gave the greatest trouble
to England. It was the north-eastern quarter which was
first divided into shires, so that the rigours of local govern­
ment might the more easily be applied to its turbulent
inhabitants. It was the north-eastern quarter which in
desperation England finally cleared of its inhabitants, and
filled with colonists pledged to her own service. To this
quite irremediable vice of the Irish climate is due the
notorious fact that Irishmen always do better in any country
but their own.
Further complications are introduced by its geographical
position, in the shadow of another island, larger and
economically more favoured. This island has been the
barrier which prevented Ireland from becoming the prey,
first of the Romans, and afterwards of the Saxons: and
but for its shelter, Ireland would have been absorbed and
exploited, centuries ago, by one or other of the ruthless
military powers of the Continent. Contrariwise, that other
island, having become the centre of a gigantic world-
embracing Commonwealth, is compelled in self-defence to
maintain at least a nominal hold over a land which could
so easily be made a platform of attack.
It is not irrelevant to recapitulate these familiar facts.
They are the keys to the perplexing maze of Irish history,
which is the history of a vain beating against the iron bars
of these limitations; and so will it continue till they are
recognized and accepted with resignation. Nature may
apparently submit to be harnessed, but in fact she never
abdicates the seat of the charioteer: for those who rebel
against her gentle whips, she has in reserve a scourge of
scorpions.

Thus jesting Nature, when she fashioned Ireland, hid


within her fair creation a host of insoluble problems which
have profoundly affected the country's history. The states­
man who has sought to grapple with them has ever been
forced to confess defeat: those who have put their trust
in his panaceas have ever been forced by bitter experience
to the realization that he is merely a man, with a man's
8 ANCIENT IRELAND

limitations, and with no power to work miracles or to


bring the impossible to pass.
However, all these complications, with their latent
possibilities of turmoil, of hopes ever renewed, ever, and
inevitably disappointed, lay still in the future, what time
the earliest settlers established their home in the country.
Not for them the vain effort to extract tilth from an
unwilling soil, or metal from a stony rock. Not for them
a wrestle against principalities and powers. Mere food-
gatherers they, parasites upon N ature: content with the
molluscs of the shores, with trapped birds or captured
fish. Thus easily satisfied, they made no effort to explore
the interior of the country, where all was unknown and
full of dread; nowhere far inland has any trace of their
existence been discovered. They shunned the forests,
haunted by savage beasts; the noxious swamps, the
impassable lakes and rivers. Only by sufferance were
they squatters upon a land which, we cannot doubt,
their imaginations peopled with demons and hobgoblins.
In their time, every strange land was an abode of
uncomprehended terrors— the terrors that could be seen,
and the yet more terrifying terrors that were invis­
ible.
The remains of these earliest occupants, so far as we
know, are confined to the coasts of the county of Antrim.
This does not necessarily mean that they never lived any­
where else. The coast of Antrim would doubtless be more
attractive to them than elsewhere, for there alone is
abundance of flint to be obtained. But even such an
elementary and (to them) all-important economic fact was
still to be discovered, when the country was first peopled.
Colonists might have settled in the southern counties, and
there lived and died for generations, before they had heard
anything of the chalk cliffs of the north-east comer, with
their inexhaustible beds of what was, at the time, the most
important of all of the raw materials of industry. Such
persons would be obliged to make shift with whatever
stones they could g e t : only by slow degrees would they
learn and fully utilize the resources of the country, or
EARLIEST INHABITANTS 9
discover the not inconsiderable limitations which nature
had imposed upon them.
Flint is a tractable material, and in skilful hands can be
worked into easily recognizable implements. Other stones
are less responsive to the methods of ancient artificers, and
the implements made of them would at best be makeshifts,
not always to be identified with assurance as products
of human manufacture. The tragi-comedy of the alleged
implements from Rosses Point, which gave rise to a hot
controversy a few years before the publication of this book,
is of importance only as illustrating this uncertainty. On
the basis of certain criteria, which had been confidently
formulated as definitely discriminative between stone
fractures produced by human and by non-human agency,
a number of broken pieces of limestone, picked up on an
entirely modern storm-beach, were taken to be ancient
implements, specifically assigned to the Mousterian period
of the Old Stone Age— although during that epoch of
time the whole of Ireland was so heavily glaciated, that life
in any part of its area would have been impossible. The
publication of these implements, though a futility in itself,
had the extremely valuable effect of showing that the
criteria of human workmanship, upon which their cham­
pions had relied, are untrustworthy.7
In consequence, although there may have been colonies
of these earliest inhabitants of Ireland in the south, we
cannot point to any traces of them, disregarding the
obscure Kilgreany man and his possible associates. The
Antrim coast-dwellers, as we shall see in a moment, fall
into the period between the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic,
to which it is convenient to give the name Mesolithic,
while admitting the justice of the criticisms that have
been levelled against this word. No implements in any
stone other than flint, comparable with the flint imple­
ments of the early Antrim shore-dwellers, have been
found in the southern counties. And neither in north
nor in south, once more disregarding the Kilgreany
skeleton, have any human bones been found in association
with the implement-bearing beds.
10 ANCIENT IRELAND

There is another cause for the absence of traces of the


shore-dwelling population in the South of Ireland. The time
to which this colonization is to be assigned is the last period
of land-submergence, immediately preceding the establish­
ment of modern conditions. The part of the Antrim coast,
where remains of the colony have been found, was then sunk
25 ft below the present land-level. In other words, the
shore which they occupied now stands at a height of 25 ft
above the level of the sea ; and 25 ft depth of water then
covered the strip of land which is the shore for us, in these
modern days. But this was not the case all over the
country. Ireland did not rise or fall as a whole : rather
did it move like the surface of a bedroom mirror, supported
upon pivots, in which, when the upper part is moved
backward, the lower part moves forward. It was balanced
thus, on an axis whose poles lie somewhere about Dublin
in the east and Sligo in the west.8 The * Raised Beach *
deposits— the beds of waterworn stones, gravel and shells,
interspersed among which are the implements which tell
of human occupation— is 25 ft above the level of the sea
on the northern coast: but as we proceed southward, on
both sides of the country, wherever subsequent erosion has
left remains of it for our instruction, we find its altitude
gradually diminishing, till it reaches the present sea-level
at the two points named. Further south it disappears
altogether. Presumably it continues under the sea, as a
sunken beach, so that the pied d terre of early colonists
in the south is now as far beneath the waves as that of their
northern brethren is above them ; and is therefore hidden
for ever from our curiosity. We are in consequence com­
pelled to confine our attention to the Raised Beach in
the north of the country.
At Larne, Kilroot, Portrush, and other points upon the
coast, the gravels contain artifacts in flint, mingled with
the ordinary beach deposits. Seeing that the manufacturers
of these implements are as yet known only by their handi­
works, no human remains having anywhere come to light
in association with them, we are unable to say anything
about their physical character : and as the sea has appar­
EARLIEST INHABITANTS II
ently washed away all their midden refuse, we can say no
more of their mode of life than can be inferred by analogy
with the huge shell-heaps, left by their contemporaries and
probable kinsmen upon the Baltic shores of Denmark.
This absence of the debris of occupation has been taken
as an indication that the raised-beach sites were merely
factory-sites, where artificers congregated to make tools;
departing at nightfall to dwellings further inland. But
this is not convincing. The artificers would probably have
required occasional sustenance in the course of their daily
labours, the preparation of which would have left traces in
beds of ashes or piles of shells ; and if they lived away
from the immediate source of flints, they would be more
likely to carry home with them the raw material, broken
no doubt into manageable sizes for transport, and there to
shape out their finished implements where these could be
stored in safety. If they had gone away at night, they
would have run the risk of losing the fruit of their labours
by th e ft: for, as we shall see presently, there were rival
settlers almost at their doors. We must suppose that they
threw their refuse into the sea, and that it was washed
away.9 Besides, if they did live inland, some of their
habitation sites ought to have come to light.
The criticism may be made that in deducing the existence
of a colony from implements alone, we are violating a
principle which follows naturally from what we have laid
down a few pages back. If the discrimination of human
workmanship in the ruder stone implements can be legiti­
mately called into question, there can be no certainty in
assuming the fact of an undeveloped stone-age human
occupation, unless we discover human bones. This is a
sound and safe rule : certainly when the rudimentary flint
chips from Tertiary gravels are brought forward to prove
the existence of Tertiary Man, it is reasonable to demand
that Tertiary human bones should also be produced before
any conviction on the subject can be admitted. But flint,
unlike most other stones, can within well-defined limitations
be fractured, by the methods of stone-age Man, to standard
forms: and when a site yields a large number of flint
12 ANCIENT IRELAND

tools, conforming to definite and well-established types,


then we are justified in accepting the presence of a being
capable of designing those types, even though natural
decay may have utterly destroyed the relics of his bodily
constitution. The flints from the raised-beach sites con­
form thus to fixed standards, and therefore permit us to
accept them as evidence for early colonizations.
They tell an interesting story. It has ever been the fate
of Ireland to be the cockpit of two opposing peoples, which,
after they have come together and fused into one, presently
find themselves obliged to meet a fresh opponent. Halberd-
Pict and Sword-Celt: Picto-Celt and Iron-Teuton : Picto-
Celto-Teuton and Scandinavian: Picto-Celto-Teuton-
Scandinavian and Anglo-Norman: Picto-Celto-Teuton-
Scandinavian-Norman and Tudor or Stuart English colonist
— and, peeping into a future which some of us conceivably
may live to see, but which none of us can possibly
hope to survive, Picto-Celto-Teuton-Scandinavian-Norman-
English-Hebrew (for the last-named element is already a
conspicuous, and apparently an increasing, ingredient in
the mixture) and whatever Power will hereafter com­
mandeer the soil of a would-be independent ' Republic',
to serve as a platform from which to challenge the might
of England, thereby bringing upon the land a destruction
that shall stamp her flat— from the first we ever find two
peoples, living a cat-and-dog life within the household of
Ireland. It could not be otherwise: Ireland was the
cul-de-sac of the ancient world, until Columbus (or whoever
was the real discoverer of America) perforated the bottom
of the bag. Refugees might enter, but could not leave:
they must stand at bay or perish. It has been so through­
out history, and it was so at the very beginning.
The coast deposits, in fact, reveal remains of at least
two peoples, differing in cultural relationship, differing,
we cannot doubt, in language and in religion : strangers
and— a natural consequence at their level of civilization
— antagonistic each to the other. The Raised Beach at
Larne has for many years been the classic site in Ireland for
remains of the Campignian culture. On Island Magee,
EARLIEST INHABITANTS 13
within sight of Larne, there have been found remains of the
Asturian culture. Both of these are aspects of the civiliza­
tions belonging to the intermediate, transitional phases
between the Old Stone Age and the N ew : filling in the
time, so to speak, that intervened between the final dis­
appearance of the glaciers of the Ice Age and the establish­
ment of modern climatic conditions.
The Campignian culture seems to have originated in the
lands bordering upon the southern end of the Baltic Sea.
Implements similar to those yielded by the Antrim raised
beach have been found at Nostvet in the south of Norway,
in the famous shell-heaps of the Danish coast, and then,
spreading westward through Northern Europe, as far as
the hill called Le Campigny (Seine-Inferieure) in France,
whose name this phase of culture has inappropriately
borrowed. The typical implements are the ' Campignian
pick \ a roughly chipped bar of flint, some four to six
inches in length, with a blunt point at each en d; and
the ' kitchen-midden a x e ' or tranchet— a sort of chisel,
having a straight sharp edge, intercepted between two
plane faces. Both types of tool appear among the shore
debris of the Antrim Raised Beach; they are sufficient to
identify the dwellers on that beach as settlers from an area
of Campignian culture— presumably from the Baltic area,
whether they arrived by a direct or an indirect route.
On the other hand, the Asturian culture, as its name
implies, is of western origin. Excavations in the caves
of Asturias, in the north of Spain, have revealed a local
facies of Mesolithic civilization, more or less contemporary
with that of Campigny. The typical implement is a
roughly fashioned flint point, trimmed to a pyramidal or
conical shape. This form of flint reappears at Island
Magee, in sufficient quantities to justify us in assuming
an Asturian colony to have settled there.
This is all that we know about the first men in Ireland.
We can guess that fish and shell-fish, sea-birds and their
eggs, afforded them a sufficient, if monotonous and not
ideally hygienic d ie t: but for the rest, their memorial has
perished with them. Their lives, their loves, their hates,
14 ANCIENT IRELAND

their speech, their manners, customs, and scheme of society,


their deaths, their gods, all have faded as in a dream. It
will be a day of great and glad surprise when any explorer
is so fortunate as to discover one single fact, however
insignificant, in all this store of forgotten knowledge.
Whether they vanished before invaders, or perished by
pestilence or otherwise, or whether they persisted so far
as to bequeath some drops of the blood now coursing in
the veins of the people of Ireland, it is as yet impossible
to determine.10
Our knowledge of ancient peoples can never be complete.
At every turn we are confronted by the barriers set up by
broken traditions, decayed wood or textiles, metal melted
down, manuscripts lost, inscriptions defaced and chipped.
The process of annihilating the materials of the historian
is going on perpetually: a gradual but ruthless process,
sometimes flaring up into a monstrous catastrophe, such as
the destruction of the Dublin Public Record Office in 1922.
The historian too often finds himself in the unhappy
position of some ancient Roman augur, at the moment of
realization that the guidance which he was seeking in a
time of public emergency must have been written in one
of the books which the Sibyl had destroyed!
But though our knowledge can never be complete, it
is ever growing; it will continue to grow, even after the
last ancient grave in the world has been opened and duly
classified. The foregoing statement of facts regarding the
earliest settlers in the country claims no finality: it may
be antiquated even before it reaches the reader’s hands.
Researches in this region of Irish Archaeology, carried
out, as we write, by specialist investigators, promise to
open many new doors, and to reveal many surprising
things behind them. It would not be right to say more,
however, until they have completed the publication of
their results.
A word of caution is necessary in conclusion. The
Campignians and Asturians were not the only shore-dwellers
of Ireland. Throughout the whole of her history there
have been people living the same mode of life ; only a few
EARLIEST INHABITANTS 15
of the shore sites can be ascribed to these earliest colonists.
For example, the Whitepark Bay settlement, also in
Co. Antrim, is of the Bronze Age at earliest: and other
settlements are later still, some of them of quite modern
times.
CHAPTER II
THE MEN OF THE HALBERD
W e must therefore wait for some unexpected future dis­
covery if we are ever to know definitely whether the
Campignian-Asturian colonists died o u t; or continued their
existence by the shore, till superseded, and, as a natural
consequence, in time extirpated, by newcomers, who
imported the fully developed neolithic and bronze-age
civilizations; or gradually climbed up the ladder them­
selves, penetrating inland the while, to find that the
dreaded Hinterland was not so impossible a place for
habitation after all, and learning new arts as they con­
quered new lands. Within our present knowledge there
is no transition between the culture, such as it was, of
the Raised Beach, and the culture of the Bronze Age.
Nothing is known of the history of the expansion of Man
over the interior of Ireland.
There ought to be a chain of settlement-sites, leading
from the middens of the shore-dwellers to the central Hill
of Uisnech, which a legend, unsubstantiated by fact,
asserted to be the central point of radiation for all the
provincial boundary-lines.1 There may actually be in
existence such a chain of sites, buried and unrecognized:
the fortunate accident that Ireland is essentially a pastoral
and not a tillage country has withheld the devouring
plough from violating her soil, to any serious extent, so
that (apart from the dampness of climate and of soil) the
archaeological records of history have a chance of being
preserved there better than anywhere else. For the
present, all that we know is that the Campignian-Asturian
settlers are confined to the sea-coast, while the bronze-
16
THE MEN OF THE HALBERD 17

age culture is spread over the whole land ‘ from the centre
to the sea '— or, if we may amend the logic of the old
doggerel at the expense of its rhythm, from the sea to the
centre.
The most pressing necessity for the student of Irish
archaeology is a series of distribution maps, showing the
range of various types of antiquities. But the time for
the preparation of such an atlas is not yet. Archaeo­
logical study has not been endowed hitherto with the
liberality which its importance demands, but has been left to
uncoordinated efforts of amateurs, whose individual work
is often, but not universally, excellent. No archaeological
synthesis of permanent value can be undertaken until we
have a complete Archaeological Survey of the whole
country, which shall include a description of the extant
monuments, county by county ; a judiciously edited synop­
sis of the bewildering mass of heterogeneous material
already accumulated, in printed books, proceedings of
societies, MS. collections, and so forth ; and a classified
index of all the archaeological ‘ finds * that have ever been
made, so far as it is now possible to construct such an
index. When this work has been done, but not till then,
it will be time to begin to consider such questions as the
influence of forest-lands and bog-lands, fertile regions and
wastes, isothermic and rainfall lines, upon the population
at the successive stages of its history. For the present
we have mere detached fragments of knowledge, which
cannot be fitted into a consistent scheme. The private
enterprise of individuals and of societies could not finance
such large undertakings; the spare-time energies of
amateurs could not compass them ; indeed this national
work, involving, as it necessarily does, acts of trespass upon
private property, could not be undertaken at all, except
as a department of the duties of a government.
We have said that there is no direct evidence to help
us in deciding between the alternatives stated in the
opening sentences of the present chapter. But when we
consider probabilities, the chances are enormously in
favour of the new culture being the importation of a new
i8 ANCIENT IRELAND

people. The weavers of history during the early Christian


centuries, whose work is embodied in The Book of Inva­
sions, and in the later compilation of Geoffrey Keating,
have preserved scraps of tradition which, when critically
examined, are found to contain much precious metal
hidden away in their obvious dross. One of their stories
is to the effect that the first men who came from Ireland
were three fishers from Spain : Capa, Luigne, and Luasad
were their names.2 A contrary wind had blown their
boat away from the shore of their homeland, and had
carried them to Ireland. When they saw that the land
was good, they determined there to establish themselves;
and accordingly they returned to Spain to fetch their
wives. This happened in the days immediately preceding
the universal Deluge, (There were not wanting carping
critics who wondered how the story could have been trans­
mitted across that catastrophe.) But even in holy Ire­
land— although, as another legend would remind us, Ire­
land, being free from serpents, ought to have been as safe
as Eden before the Fall 3— even there, the Flood over­
whelmed them, when they were in the very act of setting
foot once more upon the shore where they had thought
to make their home.
Disregard the names of these fishers. Disregard their
wives. Disregard their antediluvian existence : a singular
oversight, by the way, on the part of our worthy historians,
who, seeing that they accepted the early chapters of
Genesis as literal history, should have remembered that
these outlying regions of the world were not inhabited at
all, until after the dispersal at Babel. Leave these trim­
mings out, and what have we left ? The most probable
occurrence possible : a small company of seafarers— it may
well be, of fisher-folk— driven in their cockle-shell curachs
across the wild Bay of Biscay, by a combination of winds
and ocean-currents which set in that direction; and cast
ashore, more dead than alive, on the rocky coast of an
unknown land. Where they were, they knew not. How
to get home again, they knew not. To their friends left
behind they were lost for ever. Like the Lotos-eaters
THE MEN OF THE HALBERD 19

in Tennyson's poem, they sat on the shore, dreaming of


home, but dreading the waste of waters that lay between
— till one said that they should nevermore return; and
although the land which had received them may have
been in certain particulars less delectable than the Land
of the Lotos, they perforce consented to the suggestion,
accepted the situation, and made the best of it.
They were better able to cope with the dangers which
confronted them than their Campignian-Asturian pre­
decessors had been, many centuries before. They had a
better equipment of tools and weapons; and they probably
had sloughed off most of the primaeval fears which for the
earlier folk had barred the way to the interior of the
country.
From time to time * new blood ’ joined the colony, at
first, perhaps, by a series of similar accidents. But only
at first; for as they gradually spread over the surface of
the land, there dawned inevitably the fatal day when
somebody discovered a rich store of gold in the gravels
of one of the south-eastern stream-valleys. We can
scarcely imagine how rich it was. It had been accumuljat-
ing for the thousands upon thousands of years that had
elapsed since the Tertiary Period; it is, indeed, unlikely
that a more abundant supply was known at the time, in
the whole of Europe. Let the wealth of bronze-age gold
ornaments in the National Museum in Dublin bear its
testimony; taking into the reckoning the fact that it is
probably not the tenth, nor yet the hundredth part of the
objects in gold which have been found from time to time
in cutting peat-bogs or in agricultural operations, and of
which the rest have been carried off post-haste to the
nearest goldsmith, turned into money, and summarily
melted down. The feeble traces, which are all that now
remain in the auriferous gravels after their reckless ex­
ploitation during the Bronze Age, cannot give us the least
conception of the sight that gladdened the eyes of the
earliest prospectors.
We have called it a fatal discovery. The secret could
not be hid. The thousand tongues of Rumour carried the
20 ANCIENT IRELAND

tidings, not only through the land but beyond the seas :
and as it happened, the discovery coincided in time with
a period of great unrest over the western half of the known
world— to this we shall return later. There were many
homeless wanderers : it is not surprising that they should
be drawn in ever-increasing numbers to this almost virgin
island, by the mighty magnetism of its new-found gold.
Thus the population increased more and more rapidly,
and in time a network of village communities became
established upon plains, in fertile valleys, or in forest
clearances. Each of these might maintain marital and
other relationships with its neighbours; might perhaps
be forced, by aggressive communities further off, into
mutually defensive alliances. But each group would soon
lose touch with groups at a greater distance. The dwellers
in the centre might speak the same language, might wor­
ship the same gods, as those who lived on the coast; but
before long, both alike would forget their old kinship;
and, as a stranger was as a matter of course an enemy,
their mutual relations would be hostile rather than friendly.
In any case, an uneven distribution of wealth would be
inevitable in a country where the resources of nature are
distributed so capriciously. Villagers whose lot was cast
upon a rocky sea-coast would not have been much better
off than the Campignian shore-dwellers: we can see this
by an analysis of the relics from the Whitepark Bay and
other shore-dwellers' sites.4 Those who lived in metal-
bearing or fertile regions, would prosper. And thus the
universal struggle between ‘ haves ' and ‘ have-nots 5would
arise, automatically and inevitably : that eternal struggle,
the mainspring of human progress. There can be no pro­
gress in a competitionless Polynesian Isle of the Blest,
where the gifts of nature drop automatically into the hand
stretched out for them. ‘ The Golden Age/ we are told,
will return with the establishment of some sort of Com­
munism : an ambiguous promise, for what, after all, is
‘ The Golden Age ', more than a pretty dreamland name,
contrived (with indefensible optimism) by poets, for days
which witnessed the untrammelled charmlessness of a pre­
THE MEN OF THE HALBERD 21
cursor-creature, not yet graduated into Manhood ? Amid,
if not by means of, the struggle of ‘ haves' and *have-
nots Ireland, like all the other lands of the world, had
to fight her way onward, and upward.
The division of the country into provinces, a division
which still survives as a meaningless fossil upon the maps,
may perhaps be as old as these early settlers, and their
battles for the good lands. The dwellers in the rugged
west must have fought many a fight to gain a share in
the fertile plains and the auriferous mountain-streams of
the east: those whom a kindly fortune had established in
these more desirable centres, must have fought with equal
vehemence to keep them out. In such circumstances,
frontiers, depending usually upon mountain-chains, river-
courses, and similar natural boundaries, must early have
become established; and, once established, must have
been jealously guarded.
Until the site of a village of these early settlers, with
its cemetery, shall have been discovered and scientifically
excavated, we can never hope to know much about their
physical character and their manner of life. The osteo-
logical material at our disposal is as yet of the scantiest;
it is presumed rather than determined that they were a
short-statured people, with long narrow heads. That they
were dark in complexion is attested by the Irish literature
of a later day, which always ascribes dark hair to the
despised and enslaved aborigines (as they had by then
become), in contrast to the fair hair of the patrons who
made the literature possible.5 These data lead us to
assign them to the * Mediterranean Race ' of ethnologists,
which is found in its fullest purity in Spain and Italy. It
was a true instinct which made the story-teller bring his
fisher-colonists from Spain: the ethnological connexion
between the two countries is confirmed by the archaeo­
logical evidence, such as it is.
At what stage the colonists began to work the metals
which they found in the country is uncertain: it cannot
have been very long after their arrival. As discovery
follows discovery we are obliged to be more and more
3
22 ANCIENT IRELAND

guarded in our assertions : and we cannot now, with any


confidence, assert that there was ever a period of human
occupation in Ireland (apart from the Campignian-Asturian
episode) during which the use of metals was entirely
unknown. If the newcomers had a Spanish origin, they
were natives of one of the most richly metalliferous coun­
tries in Europe, and may have been fully prepared to deal
with the metals of Ireland so soon as they found them.
On the other hand, the virtual absence of tin put the
population of Ireland, throughout the Bronze Age, in a
position of serious disadvantage; for until they had
obtained access to the Cornish mines they were obliged
to make their metal tools and weapons of pure copper,
an unsatisfactory substitute for bronze. Even after the
Cornish tin had become available, the difficulty of pro­
curing it from oversea must have added considerably to
its costliness; in consequence of which, metal tools and
weapons must always have been of the nature of a luxury.
Those who could not afford them were obliged to content
themselves with flin t: so that flint was used in the country
as late as the Iron Age,6 and was worked with perennial
skill. Usually the art of flint-chipping declines, both in
quality and in quantity, with the arrival of the metal
which supersedes the older m aterial: but in Ireland the
Neolithic and the Bronze Ages may be said to have been
contemporary, not successive, phases of culture. Many,
perhaps most, of the inhabitants remained Neolithic ; only
the wealthy few were able to indulge in metal artifacts.
The flint implements found in Ireland conform, as a
whole, to the types common to Western Europe. It is
here unnecessary to go over well-trodden ground, and to
describe, for the hundredth time, the various forms of
flakes, knives, scrapers, arrow-points, and so forth. There
is a wide range of variety of these, as we might expect,
considering the extended range of the time during which
they were manufactured and used. There is also a wide
range of technical skill. Flint chips are found so rude
that it is next to impossible to be assured of their human
workmanship, and quite impossible to classify them or to
THE MEN OF THE HALBERD 23
determine for what purpose their maker designed them.
On the other hand, some of the knives and arrow-points
are miracles of technical skill, and indicate a rare com­
mand of the artificer over his material. Naturally, where
flint was not available, as was the case over most of the
country, and other stones were employed, the implements
are technically less perfect. Chert was the next-best
material, though it is very capricious in its qualities, and
is not always capable of being fashioned into shape by
the flint-chipper. But a number of implements in chert,
including arrow-heads, scrapers, hollow-scrapers, saws, and
knives, found in the neighbourhood of Kells, Co. Meath,
have been described by Mr. Crofton Rotherham.7 They
seem to have come from an early dwelling-site, although
no remains of huts were identified : a hammer and anvil
stone were found, as well as a sandstone spindle-whorl:
but the site was not systematically examined, the relics
being collected for Mr. Rotherham from the tillage-fields
by ploughmen.
But a fully detailed description of Irish stone weapons
and implements must be left to those whose duty it shall
be, to compile a corpus of flint implements found in the
country, in connexion with the Archaeological Survey of
the future. Such a volume, fully illustrated, would be
an essential part of the publications of a properly organized
Survey ; the same may be said of similar compilations, of
bronze implements, of pottery, of skull-measurements, and
indeed of all the other classes into which the antiquities
of any country can be divided. In a work like the present
there is no room for minute details; and the main out­
lines have already been laid down so completely that in
a general treatment of the subject it is impossible to add
anything new. We need do no more here than to under­
line the caveat, already formulated, against assuming that
a tool of flint, or for that matter a tool of stone, is neces­
sarily to be classed as Neolithic.
A flint implement in Ireland may be as late as the Iron
Age : flint implements may be found in those essentially
iron-age structures, crannogs ; and for the present we are
24 ANCIENT IRELAND

without any satisfactory evidence, other than the associa­


tions in which individual specimens may be found, to help
us to distinguish between tools of early and those of late
origin. It is one more paradox in the history of the
country, due once again to the peculiar climatic and other
conditions prevailing, that while we cannot absolutely
assert that the country ever had a pure Stone Age (apart
from the shadowy first inhabitants described in the pre­
ceding chapter), there is a sense in which it never really
emerged from the Stone Age, until the coming of Chris­
tianity. There was always an aristocratic and a pauper
civilization side by side— the one following out the his­
torical succession of bronze and iron; the other perforce
remaining content with flint.
But while in this place we merely refer the reader to
such studies of flint implements as have already been
published,8 we must not pass over the rhomboid javelin-
point in silence, on account of its historical importance.
This beautiful weapon is chipped into the shape of two
isosceles triangles, placed base to base : one of them with
an acute apical angle, forming the point, the other more
obtuse, forming the butt. The two sides of the weapon,
after shaping, were ground flat, so that it assumed the
appearance of a metal blade. The weapon links Ireland
to Spain, as it is a characteristically Peninsular type.9
Such a continued use of flint must have had an important
effect upon the development of internal communications.
Flint had to be procured from the only certain source of
supply, the chalk cliffs of Antrim, where the quantity was
inexhaustible. It was there collected and conveyed to the
flintless regions of the south and west. In what form it
was transported, whether as unworked raw material or as
implements already manufactured, is doubtful: probably
the latter. There are hardly any known flint factory sites,
indicated as such by the presence of piles of waste flakes,
in any of the non-siliciferous regions. Lambay affords an
exception: upon that island a pile of flint flakes was
discovered in the course of some building operations,
although there is no local supply of flint.10 If the raw
THE MEN OF THE HALBERD 25
material was fashioned into shape at a distance from the
flint beds, we should have to assume that it was so
highly prized that the minutest particles were utilized, in
one way or another, to account for the absence of waste
material: so that it is more reasonable to suppose that
the Antrim people, being fully aware of the value of their
possession, kept the monopoly of the flint trade in their
own hands; that they themselves manufactured the tools
required by the rest of the inhabitants of the country, and
bartered them away in return for other commodities.
Another consequence of this uneven distribution of flint
was the great use made of the polished stone hatchet, a
tool found in large numbers throughout the country. It
is made, not of flint, but of one or other of the more gener­
ally accessible hard compact rocks, such as basalt. In
fashioning the tool, a block of the stone was chipped
roughly to the required shape, and then polished smooth.
Specimens have been discovered in every county of Ire­
land ; for all who could not afford metal, it served the
double purpose of chief tool and chief weapon.
We here repeat the wish, expressed in our previous
essay,11 that the ghost-word ‘ celt ’ as a name for this tool
should be abandoned. It has no legal right to exist
(having been derived from a misinterpretation of a misread­
ing in one group of MSS. of the Vulgate version of the
Book of Job). It falsely suggests a special association
with the people called ‘ Celts \ It gives no information
as to the purpose or nature of the tool. And it tends to
obscure the fact that the object which it designates is
not a complete implement, but only part of an implement:
the head of a hatchet, which requires to be supplemented
with a wooden haft. This can be expressed, and all the
foregoing objections avoided, by calling the tool a ‘ hatchet-
head \ The alternative * axe-head * may conveniently be
reserved for types in which the stone is perforated for
receiving the haft.
The hatchet-head, in its final form, is triangular in out­
line, a flattish oval in section, thickest in the middle, and
tapering forward to a double bevelled edge. The apex of
26 ANCIENT IRELAND

the triangle, which forms the butt of the tool, is either


brought to a point, or else trimmed off, so that there is
a small oval plane surface at the termination. This is not
always at right angles to the axis of the to o l: sometimes
it is sloped obliquely. It is possible that the purpose of
the slope is to furnish a support for the thumb, whenever
the tool, for any special purpose, was taken out of its
haft and grasped in the hand : experiment shows that the
thumb rests comfortably upon the sloping plane, when the
stone is grasped in this way. But undoubtedly the normal
way of using the tool was as the head of a hatchet with a
wooden handle. The handle was perforated, and the butt
of the tool was thrust into i t : specimens of such handles
have been recovered from peat-bogs. Doubtless the
handle was bound round tightly with thongs to prevent
the haft from splitting; but none bound in this way have
been preserved.12 In some, a wooden pin passed through
the side of the hole in the haft, and penetrating into a
corresponding hole bored for a short distance into the side
of the stone head, helped to keep it rigidly in position,
and prevented it from being driven backward through the
socket in the haft by the blows which its use rendered
inevitable.
As is always the case in stone implements, there is much
variety, as between tool and tool, in the skilfulness with
which these objects are made. Human equality is an
ideal so unattainable as to be idiotic : as one star differeth
from another in glory, so, by the inexorable laws of Nature,
one workman differeth from another in competence. Some
of these tools are beautiful examples of perfection, in shape,
evenness, polish, and efficiency. Others are irregular in
outline, and have been made by an artificer too lazy to
grind them down far enough to efface all the chip-matrices,
produced in the first process of rough shaping. The two
specimens here figured (fig. i), which are in the author’s
possession, have been specially chosen for illustration as
examples of inferior work.
The best-made and most highly polished examples can
hardly have been intended for ordinary industrial use.
FIG. I . — SPECIMENS OF BADLY-MADE STONE HATCHET-HEADS

FIG. 2 .— A HALBERD-HEAD
This page intentionally left blank
THE MEN OF THE HALBERD 2J
They are works of art, made of stones which, beyond
doubt, had been specially selected for their ornamental
veining, and polished to the highest degree attainable.
Such objects must have been ceremonial in their intention,
to be used as objects of cult, as instruments of cult, or as
the insignia of important officials, carried by or before
them upon special occasions.
We turn now to implements and weapons of metal.
We have seen that the metal workers in bronze-age Ireland
were handicapped by the scantiness of the available tin
supply : though this metal is not unknown in the country,
the quantity is so small as to be commercially negligible.
Tin is necessary to harden copper— or, to put the fact in
a more accurate form, tin is the most convenient of a
variety of materials which can give copper tools the tough­
ness necessary to make them efficient. Pure copper can
be hardened by hammering after it has been c a st: but
hammer-hardened copper is a poor makeshift for the
copper-and-tin alloy called bronze.
An admixture of tin not only toughens the copper: it
also makes it fusible at a lower temperature, and renders
it capable of being cast in a closed mould. Pure copper,
melted and poured for casting into a closed mould, comes
out with so many air-bubbles that the product would be
almost, if not quite, useless. Consequently, until tin was
procurable, nothing could be made in copper except flat
axes and flat daggers, both of which could be shaped in
an open mould. A depression was sunk in a smooth
surface of stone, of the outline and depth of the tool which
it was proposed to c a st; the molten copper was poured
into i t ; and after it had cooled, the resultant tool was
rendered compact by hammering and so was complete.
Ireland has been called ‘ the home of the flat axe *; and the
name is justified by fact.13 Everywhere through the coun­
try these rudimentary metal tools have been found : and
as the accompanying map (fig. 3) shows, when they come
to light in Great Britain, they lie along lines of march
which have Ireland for a radiant point. Irish merchants,
laden, we may presume, with Irish gold, though bearing
English and. Scottish sites for
copper hatchet-heads

AM BER*

*■
halberds

^ lunula
cZ&pt

[ Luhulae

CLunula

halberds

FIG. 3.— SKETCH MAP SHOWING THE COMMERCIAL RELATIONS OF


IRELAND WITH EUROPE IN THE EARLY BRONZE AGE
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Title: De zilveren schaatsen

Author: P. J. Andriessen
Mary Mapes Dodge

Illustrator: Joh. Braakensiek


Jan Sluijters

Release date: November 24, 2019 [eBook #60777]

Language: Dutch

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DE ZILVEREN


SCHAATSEN ***
DE ZILVEREN SCHAATSEN
DE ZILVEREN SCHAATSEN

NAVERTELD DOOR
P. J. ANDRIESSEN
GEÏLLUSTREERD DOOR
JOH. BRAAKENSIEK EN J. SLUYTERS
TIENDE DRUK

A. W. SIJTHOFF’S
UITGEVERSMAATSCHAPPIJ—LEIDEN
INHOUD.

EERSTE HOOFDSTUK.

Bladz.

Waarin verhaald wordt, hoe men, ook zonder schaatsen, toch het ijsvermaak
genieten kan 1

TWEEDE HOOFDSTUK.

Waarin wij verscheidene nieuwe kennissen ontmoeten 9

DERDE HOOFDSTUK.

Hoe een paar schaatsen en een dokter in één hoofdstuk kunnen vereenigd
worden 15

VIERDE HOOFDSTUK.

Hoe echt Hollandsche jongens zich goed houden onder tegenspoed 22

VIJFDE HOOFDSTUK.

Ongelukken in de hut van Rolf Brinker 35

ZESDE HOOFDSTUK.

Wat de jongens zoo al in Haarlem zagen 45

ZEVENDE HOOFDSTUK.

Hoe goed het kan zijn, als men in een kouden winternacht zonder dek ligt
57

ACHTSTE HOOFDSTUK.
Wat onze knapen al zoo in Leiden zagen 74

NEGENDE HOOFDSTUK.

Hoe onze reizigers in den Haag ontvangen werden 83

TIENDE HOOFDSTUK.

De gevaarlijke operatie 96

ELFDE HOOFDSTUK.

De verborgen schat 106

TWAALFDE HOOFDSTUK.

De toovergodin 118

DERTIENDE HOOFDSTUK.

Het geheimzinnige horloge 128

VEERTIENDE HOOFDSTUK.

De hardrijderij 142

VIJFTIENDE HOOFDSTUK.

Wat de zilveren schaatsen al uitwerken 152

ZESTIENDE HOOFDSTUK.

Besluit 163
VOORBERICHT.

Toen de geachte Uitgever mij eenige jaren geleden dit boek ter hand stelde,
om daarover een oordeel te vellen, beviel het mij zoodanig, dat ik er
volgaarne in toestemde, het voor de Nederlandsche jeugd om te werken. Ik
zeg omwerken, want er is van het oorspronkelijke weinig meer
overgebleven dan het geraamte. Had ik het boek van Mary Mapes Dodge
vertaald, ik zou tal van dwaasheden hebben moeten debiteeren, waarvoor
mijn jeugdige lezeressen en lezers mij zeker op de vingers zouden hebben
getikt en die men in den vreemde voor goede munt opneemt, daar men ’t
natuurlijk niet beter weet. En toch is er veel in, waardoor de Schrijfster haar
landgenooten met vrij wat bijzonderheden van ons land en ons volk
bekendmaakt. Ik twijfel er ook geenszins aan, of deze zilveren schaatsen
zullen mijn jongen vriendinnen en vrienden wèl bevallen. Het werk kan hun
tot een aangename afwisseling strekken van de meer ernstige lectuur mijner
historische verhalen.

Dat dit boek in zoo betrekkelijk korten tijd telken male herdrukt moest
worden, heeft mij niet verwonderd. De goede manier van uitgeven, het echt
nationale, dat er in het schaatsenrijden is, en de vriendelijke inhoud van het
verhaal stonden mij daarvoor borg.

P. J. Andriessen.
EERSTE HOOFDSTUK.
Waarin verhaald wordt, hoe men, ook zonder
schaatsen, toch het ijsvermaak genieten kan.
Wanneer gij, mijn lieve lezeressen en lezers, eenige jaren geleden op een
helderen December-ochtend de vaart van ’t Schouw naar het
Noordhollandsche dorp Broek waart opgewandeld, dan zoudt gij aan den
kant van het bevroren water twee dun gekleede kinderen op hun knieën
hebben zien liggen.

’t Was heel vroeg in den morgen: de zon was zooeven eerst opgegaan en de
horizon zag rood door den nevel, die nog moest optrekken voor den gloed
van haar stralen. De meeste bewoners van Broek en zijn omtrek waren nog
warm in het dons hunner bedden gedoken en schrikten er voor om uit de
veeren te komen: want het was aardig koud en had dien nacht geducht
gevroren. Slechts een enkele boer of boerin, die naar de stad ging, of een
werkman, die wat ver van huis op karwei moest zijn, reed op de gladde
spiegelvlakte en wierp een vriendelijken blik op het tweetal, dat daar aan
den kant geknield lag en zich bezighield met iets aan te binden, hetwelk
schaatsen moesten verbeelden en dat bestond uit stukken hard hout, die naar
onderen spits toeliepen en waarin gaten waren geboord, om ze met touwen
aan de voeten te bevestigen.

Die schaatsen waren het fabrikaat van Hans, den oudste der twee: want zijn
moeder was een arme boerenvrouw, die geen schaatsen bekostigen kon; en
daarom had onze knaap, die zeer behendig in het snijden van hout was, er
een paar voor zich en zijn zuster Griete vervaardigd, op welke zij reeds
menig gelukkig uurtje op het ijs hadden gesleten. Met hun van de kou roode
vingers trokken zij aan de touwen, terwijl hun gezichten zoo ernstig
stonden, als moesten zij zich het beste paar Friesche schaatsen aanbinden.

„Kom, Griete,” zei Hans, toen hij opstond en een prachtige streek op de
vaart maakte, niet zonder beide armen geducht te bewegen.
„Ach, Hans!” riep Griete op verdrietigen toon. „De touwen hebben mij
gisteren zoo geducht gekneld, en nu kan ik ze niet op dezelfde plaats
velen.”

„Bind ze dan wat hooger,” gaf Hans ten antwoord, terwijl hij op zijn manier
een sierlijken zwaai maakte.

„Dat kan ik niet doen: want het touw is te kort.”

Hans had toch deernis met zijn zusje en reed naar haar toe.

„Waarom heb je ook die dunne schoenen aan je voeten, malle meid?” zeide
hij. „Wie trekt zulk dun schoeisel aan, als hij er dikker heeft? Had dan
liever je klompen aangehouden.”

„Maar, Hans! Weet je dan niet, dat vader mijn beste schoenen in ’t vuur
heeft gegooid? Eer ik nog wist, wat hij gedaan had, waren ze al heelemaal
omgekruld en bedorven. Met die schoenen kon ik wel rijden, maar niet met
mijn klompen.”

Hans had intusschen een touw uit zijn zak gehaald en knielde voor Griete,
terwijl hij zijn best deed om haar schaats vast te maken.

„O, je doet me zeer!” riep zij uit.

Hans werd bijna boos, maar hij zag een traan in Griete’s oog en bedwong
zijn toorn. Integendeel hernam hij op vriendelijken toon:

„Ik kan ’t niet helpen, Griete. Maar ik moet de schaats toch vastmaken. En
je weet zelf, dat we weinig tijd hebben: want moeder zal ons wel gauw
roepen.”

Hierop keek hij rond of hij niets zag, waarmede hij zijn zuster kon helpen,
bedacht zich even, nam zijn pet af, haalde uit de gescheurde voering een
dotje watten, legde dat op de plaats, waar hij het touw moest binden, en
bond toen de schaats vast, zoo schielijk als hij ’t met zijn van kou verstijfde
vingers doen kon.
„Kijk, nu zal ’t je geen pijn meer doen, Griete,” zeide hij, „want nu zal je
wel eenige drukking kunnen velen.”

Griete beet
zich op de
lippen, als
wilde zij
zeggen: „’t
doet mij
toch nog
zeer,” maar
zij zweeg en
liet hem
begaan.

Eenige
oogenblikke
n later reden
zij lachend
en vroolijk,
hand aan
hand over
de vaart,
zonder zich
er over te
bekommere
n, of hun
schaatsen al
dan niet met
ijzer beslagen waren. Maar eensklaps begonnen de schaatsen van Hans een
raar soort van geluid te geven, zijn streken werden al korter en korter, flap!
daar lag hij zoo lang als hij was op het ijs te spartelen.

„Ha, ha,” riep Griete lachend. „Daar ben je mooi te land gekomen.” Maar
even snel kwam het liefderijke zusterhart weer boven, en met een fikschen
omzwaai stond zij, ofschoon nog altijd lachend, vóór haar gevallen broeder.
„Je hebt je toch niet bezeerd, Hans?” vroeg zij medelijdend. „O, je lacht.
Dan is ’t niets.” En terwijl zij weer voortreed met wangen, gloeiend van de
warmte, die de beweging haar had gegeven, en oogen, schitterend van
genoegen, riep zij: „Hans je kunt mij niet krijgen!”

Hans sprong weer op de beenen, maar ’t was geen gemakkelijke zaak om


Griete in te halen: want zij was hem reeds een heel eind vooruit. Toch was
zij nog niet ver, toen zij voelde, dat ook haar schaatsen begonnen te krassen.
Daar zij nu de eer aan zich wilde houden, keerde zij zich om en reed haar
vervolger in de armen.

„Gevangen!” riep Hans, terwijl hij haar stevig in zijn armen pakte.

„Ik heb jou gevangen,” antwoordde Griete, die poogde zich uit zijn armen
los te maken.

Juist op dit oogenblik klonk er een luide stem over de vaart: „Hans!
Griete!”

„Moeder roept ons,” zeide Hans, terwijl hij zijn zusje losliet.

Op dat oogenblik werd de vaart door de nu geheel en al opgekomen zon


beschenen en begonnen er al meer schaatsenrijders te komen. ’t Was een
hard gelag, om nu juist te moeten uitscheiden. Maar Hans en Griete waren
gehoorzame kinderen. Terstond bonden zij hun schaatsen af en lieten de
vaart aan de liefhebbers over. Statig liep Hans met zijn breede schouders en
zijn weerbarstig blond haar naast zijn blauwoogige zuster voort, terwijl zij
huiswaarts togen. Hij was vijftien en Griete twaalf jaar. Hij was een stevige,
vriendelijke jongen met een hart van goud en een paar oogen, die hij nooit
neersloeg, als hij u aankeek. Griete was een klein, tenger ding, met een paar
levendige blauwe oogen, die u zoo vriendelijk konden aankijken, en zulk
een lief gezichtje, dat gij, als gij haar aanzaagt, heur armoedig en
verschoten gewaad schier vergeten zoudt hebben.

Toen de kinderen thuis kwamen, was moeder Brinker weer binnen en zat
hun vader bij het vlammende vuur. Die vader was in vroegeren tijd een
stevig werkman geweest, die voor vrouw en kinderen een eerlijk stuk brood
verdiende. Maar jaren geleden, toen er midden in den nacht gevaar voor
overstrooming was en de man zich aan het werk had bevonden aan den dijk,
die dreigde te bezwijken, was hij gevallen, en bewusteloos thuis gebracht.
Sedert dat oogenblik had hij niet meer gewerkt, en, ofschoon hij nog leefde,
waren zijn verstand en geheugen weg.

Griete kende hem niet anders dan als „den zonderlingen, stillen man”,
wiens oogen haar volgden, waar zij ook ging; maar Hans herinnerde zich
nog een hartelijken, vroolijken vader, die hem zoo pleizierig op zijn
schouder kon dragen en die zoo mooi kon zingen, als hij ’s avonds wakker
lag en naar hem luisterde.

De arme vrouw Brinker had sedert dien tijd hard gewerkt. Zij toch moest
den kost verdienen voor haar zelf, haar hulpeloozen man en haar niet
minder hulpelooze kinderen. Met spinnen en breien trachtte zij daarin te
voorzien, zelfs had zij zich tusschenbeide verhuurd, om in het zeel te
loopen voor een schuit; maar sedert Hans sterk genoeg was geworden, had
hij haar plaats vervuld. En het was ook wel noodig, dat vrouw Brinker thuis
bleef: want, hoe hulpbehoevend Brinker ook was, hoewel hij niet meer
verstand bezat dan een kind van drie of vier jaar, had hij toch de kracht van
een man, en het kostte der arme vrouw vrij wat moeite, om hem in bedwang
te houden.

„Ach, kinderen,” zeide zij somtijds, „hij was zoo goed en zoo verstandig!
Zoo knap als een advocaat! Zou je wel willen gelooven, dat de
burgemeester hem soms staande hield, om hem het een of ander te vragen.
En nu, ach, lieve Hemel! nu kent hij zijn vrouw en kinderen niet meer! Jij
kunt je uw vader nog wel voorstellen, niet waar, Hans, toen hij nog de
goede Rolf Brinker was, hè? Wat een ferm, knap man! Weet je ’t nog wel?”

„Ja, moeder,” antwoordde Hans. „En wat wist hij alles, en wat kon hij mooi
zingen! Ik weet het nog best, hoe gij wel eens zeidet, dat hij door zijn stem
alleen al de windmolens aan het draaien zou hebben gemaakt.”

„Ja, dat heb ik dikwerf gezegd. Wat die jongen toch een geheugen heeft!
Griete, kindlief, neem je vader die breinaald af, anders steekt hij er mee in
zijn oog. Doe
hem zijn slof
aan, want zijn
voeten zijn zoo
koud als ijs, en
ik kan ze niet
warm houden,”
en dan liet
vrouw Brinker
haar spinnewiel
weer snorren,
als gaf dat
geluid afleiding
aan haar smart.

Hans en Griete
deden al wat zij
konden, om
hun arme
moeder in haar
zware taak te
ondersteunen.
Waar het lieve
kind in het
huishouden
hielp en den
kleinen
moestuin
bebouwde, die bij het huisje lag, waar zij reeds menig paar sokken breide en
al de boodschappen deed, die er noodig waren, verdiende Hans geld met het
jagen der paarden voor de pakschuiten en kleine vrachtschepen, die door de
vaart kwamen; ook was hij vrij bekwaam in het houtsnijden, in hetwelk hij,
als men de slechte werktuigen, welke hij bezat, en het volslagen gemis aan
onderricht daarbij in aanmerking neemt, al een heel aardige hoogte bereikt
had. En niet alleen in deze werktuigelijke kunst muntte Hans uit. Ook op de
school kon geen enkele hem bijhouden. Hoe hard hij soms moest blokken,
eer hij iets wist, hij rustte niet, vóór hij het onder de knie had, en menigeen,
die zijn neus optrok voor zijn armoedige plunje en zijn gelapte broek, moest
voor hem de vlag strijken en aan den jongen uit de hut de hoogste plaats
afstaan. Jammer genoeg, dat hij nu sedert een jaar niet meer had kunnen
schoolgaan, daar, bij de verergering van Brinker’s toestand, de behoeften
van het gezin waren toegenomen en Hans geld moest verdienen om in die
behoeften te voorzien. Griete was zoo vlug niet in het leeren. Als ’t op
zingen aankwam, kon zeker niemand haar overtreffen, en als zij een liedje
tweemaal hoorde, zong zij het zonder fout; maar—boeken waren haar een
gruwel, het schoolbord een verdriet en de school zelf een soort van
gevangenis, die zij met looden schoenen betrad. Des te meer jammer voor
het lieve kind, dat moeder ook haar moest thuis houden: want wat moest er
van haar worden, als zij op lateren leeftijd niet zou kunnen lezen of
schrijven?

Terwijl onze beide kinderen druk bezig waren, hun moeder binnenshuis te
helpen, kwam er een vroolijke hoop meisjes en jongens over de vaart rijden.
Daar waren goede rijdsters en rijders onder, en als men hen in hun bonte
kleeding op een afstand zag komen aanrijden, dan zou men zich verbeeld
hebben, dat het ijs eensklaps gesmolten was en er een veelkleurig bed met
tulpen op den stroom kwam aandrijven.

Voorop rijdt Hilda, de dochter van burgemeester De Bruyn, in haar


fluweelen, met bont omzet jacketje en haar met pels omboorde jurk, en
naast haar Annie Bouman, de dochter van een rijken boer, met haar
scharlaken rood jacketje, van stevige wol gebreid, en haar keurig blauw
rokje, kort genoeg om haar nette voetjes te doen zien. Verder de trotsche
Truida Korbes, de dochter van den rijken aannemer te Broek, Karel
Schimmel, Peter en Lodewijk van den Helm, Jacob Poot en een heel kleine
jongen, die den naam van Frans van Bree voert. Er waren ruim twintig
jongens en meisjes bij elkander, en zij maakten vrij wat pret, dat kan ik u
verzekeren.

Zij reden herhaalde malen de vaart op en neder, en het was wèl te zien, dat
er flinke schaatsenrijders onder hen waren. Menigen vriendelijken groet
wisselden zij met andere dorpelingen, die hen voorbijreden, om zich naar
Amsterdam of elders te begeven, en ook diegenen, aan wie zij ten eenen
male onbekend waren, konden niet nalaten, met genoegen naar het vroolijke
troepje te zien en het een groet toe te werpen. Ook van den wal af hadden
zij bekijks genoeg van de kinderen, die te voet naar school gingen, en bij
wie zich de meesten van hen straks zouden voegen.

Eensklaps echter scheen hen iets in hun vaart te belemmeren en allen


bleven stilstaan rondom een klein aardig meisje, dat er allerliefst uitzag en
van den kant van Monnikendam was komen aanrijden.

„Waar moet jij zoo vroeg reeds heen, Kato?” riep de een.

„Wat kom je hier jagen?” vraagde de ander.

„Je doet toch ook mee met den wedstrijd op den dertigsten?” zeide een
derde.

„Je moet stellig meedoen, Kato,” bevestigde een vierde.

„Maar, lieve vrienden,” zeide de aardige Kato. „Je brengt me heelemaal in


de war. Spreekt als het u belieft één voor één: want als je allen te gelijk
praat, kan ik je onmogelijk antwoorden.”

„Je doet toch mee met den wedren op den dertigsten?” herhaalde Truida
Korbes, die ’t eerst het woord nam.

„Een wedren? Denk je, dat ik paard kan rijden, Truida?” vroeg Kato
glimlachend.

„Nu, dat begrijp je toch wel beter, Kato.”

„Kom, zij weet er even goed van als wij,” zeide Annie Bouman. „Zoo ver
woont ze niet van Broek af, dat ze het niet zou weten.”

„Inderdaad, ik heb niets van een wedren gehoord,” verzekerde Kato met het
onnoozelste gezicht ter wereld.
„Welnu,” hernam Truida, „als je ’t dan werkelijk niet weet, zal ik ’t zeggen.
Mevrouw De Bruyn van Broek is op den dertigsten van deze maand veertig
jaar en heeft besloten dien dag feestelijk te vieren. Daartoe zal zij een
wedren op schaatsen geven, waaraan al de kinderen van Broek en den
omtrek, mits ze beneden de zestien jaren zijn, mogen deelnemen. Dat is
alles het werk van Hilda.”

„En zullen er mooie prijzen zijn?”

„Een paar beeldige mooie Engelsche schaatsen,” riepen wel zes stemmen te
gelijk.

„Met zilver ingelegd,” voegde een ander er bij.

„En met zilveren neuzen en hielstukken,” vervolgde een derde.

„En er zijn zilveren belletjes ook aan,” voegde Frans van Bree er bij.

„Hoor me zoo’n kleinen betweter eens aan!” riep Jacob Poot uit. „Bellen
aan schaatsen! Dan zou een mensch veel van een paard voor een Narreslede
hebben.”

„Of van een katje, dat men niet wil trappen,” meende Truida.

„Je hebt je wat laten wijsmaken, Frans,” zeide Lodewijk van den Helm,
terwijl hij het kleine kereltje medelijdend aanzag.

„Hij heeft het toch zoo geheel en al niet mis,” verzekerde Hilda. „Er zijn
twee paren schaatsen, één voor de meisjes en één voor de jongens. Het paar
van de meisjes is met zilveren plaatjes aan de hielstukken, die bij het
stampen een rammelend geluid maken als belletjes.”

„En wie zullen er rijden?” vroeg Kato.

„Wel, wij allen,” gaf Truida ten antwoord. „’t Zal een pret zijn! Je doet toch
ook mee, Kato? Maar het is nu tijd, om naar school te gaan. Kom, ga mee,
dan zal ik ’t je onderweg verder vertellen.”
En zonder zich om de overigen te bekommeren, maakte zij een sierlijken
zwaai en reed, door Kato vergezeld, naar de school met een vlugheid, dat de
anderen werk hadden om haar te volgen.
TWEEDE HOOFDSTUK.
Waarin wij verscheidene nieuwe kennissen
ontmoeten.
’t Was op den namiddag van dien zelfden dag, dat onze jongelieden, na
afgeloopen arbeid, weder een uurtje op het ijs reden.

„Kijk eens,” riep Karel Schimmel spottend tegen Hilda, die vlak naast hem
stond. „Kijk eens, welk een mooi paar daar over het ijs komt aanrijden. ’t
Zijn zeker de voddenrapers uit de hut. Hun schaatsen zijn zeker een
geschenk van Hare Majesteit de Koningin in eigen persoon.”

„Foei, Karel,” zeide Hilda. „Je moest je schamen, dat je zoo over hen
spreekt. ’t Zijn arme kinderen en de schaatsen, op welke zij rijden, heeft de
knaap misschien zelf gemaakt.”

Karel keek mal op zijn neus.

„Ik weet niet wat zij met zulk tuig op de baan doen,” bromde hij, terwijl
Hilda naar de beide kinderen toereed, „maar ik zou, dunkt mij, even goed
op een oud verroest mes kunnen rijden als op zoo’n paar schaatsen.”

Deze uitval wekte het gelach van verscheidene andere der rijders. Hilda
stoorde zich daaraan niet en vroeg aan Griete:

„Hoe heet je, kindlief?”

„Griete, juffrouw,” antwoordde het kind, min of meer verlegen, dat de


juffrouw van den burgemeester haar aansprak, al was die dan ook nog geen
twee jaar ouder dan zij.

„En hoe heet je broer?”

„Hans, juffrouw!”
„Nu, ’t is een ferme jongen, die Hans. Die heeft zeker een warm kacheltje
in zijn lijf; want hij ziet er zoo gezond uit als een visch. Maar jij bent koud.
Waarom kleed je je ook niet wat warmer, klein ding?”

Griete deed haar best om te glimlachen.

„Ik ben zoo klein niet als u wel denkt,” zeide zij. „Ik ben ruim twaalf jaar
oud.”

„Nu, je zult wel grooter worden,” hervatte Hilda, meesmuilende over het
antwoord van Griete. „Maar dan moet je je ook wat warmer kleeden.
Meisjes, die kou lijden, worden nooit groot.”

Hans kreeg een kleur als bloed, toen hij zag, dat er waterlanders in Griete’s
oogen kwamen.

„Hoor eens, juffrouw! Mijn zuster heeft nog nooit over de kou geklaagd.
Maar ’t vriest nu ook zoo hard.”

„O,” zeide Griete. „Ik ben dikwijls heel warm, dikwijls al te warm, als ik
schaatsen rijd. ’t Is al heel lief van u, juffrouw, om daaraan te denken.”

„Ik wou je wat anders vragen, Griete,” zeide Hilda, min of meer boos op
zich zelf, omdat zij vreesde de arme kinderen beleedigd te hebben.

„Kan ik de juffrouw van dienst zijn?” vroeg Hans.

„O neen, ik wou je alleen iets vragen over den grooten wedstrijd. Je zult
toch meedoen, niet waar? Je kunt allebei aardig rijden en iedereen mag
meedingen.”

Griete zag Hans zwijgend aan; deze trok verlegen aan zijn buis en
antwoordde op eerbiedigen toon:

„Ach! juffrouw, al konden wij ook meedingen, dan nog zouden wij geen
tien slagen met de overigen doen. Zie maar,” en hij liet haar een zijner
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