DENIS DONOGHUE
225
Davis's reference to Greece and Rome evidently recalls the three hundred
who died at Thermopylae-the "hot gates"-and the three Romans who
kept the Sublician Bridge. I didn't know the references, or stop to learn
them, when I committed the song to memory or let it inhabit my mind.
I should have wondered why Ireland, to become a nation rather than a
province, must exhibit the bravery of Greece and Rome.
In the south of Ireland, so far as I recall, there were no parades of
Orange or Green, except for an Orange march every year in Bundoran,
County Donegal, for reasons I don't understand. The anthologies read in
schools south of the border featured patriotic poems but not marching
songs. The most memorable poem in that context was Thomas D'Arcy
McGee's "The Celts":
Long, long ago, beyond the misty space
Of twice a thousand years,
In Erin old there dwelt a mighty race,
Taller than Roman spears;
Like oaks and towers they had a giant grace,
Were fleet as deers,
Wi th wind and wave they made their 'biding place,
These Western shepherd-seers.
Presumably the Celts were thought to be mighty because epic tradition
required them to be.
lt is customary to say that Ireland was a nation in the twelfth century,
but I don't understand how the conspiracies and struggles for power
among the local kings fulfilled the concept of a nation. We read of
Diarmait MacMurchadha in conflict with Tighernan Ua Ruairc not only
because MacMurchadha abducted Ua Ruairc's wife Dervorgilla but
because the province of Meath was to be won or lost. We hear of the High
King Ruairi Ua Concobhar in league with Ua Ruairc; of MacMurchadha
submitting himself to King Henry II of England to gain his support in
recovering his territory; of the bishops giving Henry their allegiance in the
expectation that he would reform the Irish church, in the twelfth century
a notoriously corrupt institution. Davis's "A Chronology of Ireland" gives
the relevant dates without comment, as if they spoke their own truth, as
they would if they were accurate. I'll give them so far as they have been
corrected:
