"I have not forgotten him--I quoted him but a moment since; and 'tis true he was a great man and a true patriot. But he fell into grievous error when he chose Catholic emancipation, when he might have got Home Rule. What did Catholic emancipation mean to me and thousands like me? It meant just nothing at all. It meant that some Catholics of O'Connell's own class could hold jobs under government--that was all. The greatest man this island ever produced, sir, was a Protestant. I have mentioned him already; his name was Charles Stewart Parnell!"
I wish you could have seen his shining eyes and heard his quivering voice as he went on to tell me about Parnell; and how, after the scandal which ruined his life--a scandal prearranged, so many think, by his political enemies--he had come to Limerick to address a meeting, with death in his face and a broken heart in his eyes; and there had been some in the crowd that hissed him and pelted him with mud; and the little tailor, his chest swelling at the old glorious memory, told how he had been one of those who rallied around the stricken leader and beat the crowd back and got him safe away. There were tears in his eyes before he had ended.
"Ah, woman," he went on, "'twas not only Parnell you ruined then, it was ould Ireland, too! And not for the first time! Why, sir, 'twas because of a woman the British first came to this island. Troy had her Helen, as Homer tells, and so had Erin. 'Twas the same story over again. Dervorgilla the lady's name was, and she was the wife of Tiernan O'Rourke, Prince of Breffni, who had his fine castle on the beautiful green banks of Lough Gill. It was there that Dermot MacMurrough, King of Leinster, saw her, and after that no other woman would do for him. So he courted her in odd corners and whispered soft honeyed words into her ear; and she listened, as women will, and her head was turned by his flattery. One day her husband, who was a pious man, kissed her good-bye and started on a pilgrimage to St. Patrick's Purgatory in Lough Derg; and he was there nine days; and when he came back, what did he find? Ah, sir, Tom Moore has told it far better than I can:
"'The valley lay smiling before me, Where lately I left her behind; Yet I trembled, and something hung o'er me, That saddened the joy of my mind. I looked for the lamp which, she told me, Should shine when her Pilgrim returned; But, though darkness began to enfold me, No lamp from the battlements burned!