These real estate transactions of Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and Cromwell
have been severely criticised, but they must have been right because we
did very much the same thing with our Indians, the original owners of
the "Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave." Whenever an Indian
tribe has rebelled about something, just as the Irish have rebelled from
time to time since the conquest of Henry II., we have driven them from
the homes of their forefathers; have penned them up in reservations, and
have sold their lands to immigrants from Ireland, Sweden, and other
European countries, precisely as the English sovereigns disposed of the
homes and the farms of the Irish. We did it in the name of civilization;
they did it, very often, because they could not worship the same God in
the same way.
About an hour by automobile from Dublin, beyond Bray and Greystone and
other summer resorts, is a lovely place that you will be pleased to hear
about because there is a pretty story attached to it. It is an old Tudor
mansion of the seventeenth century, covered with luxuriant ivy and half
concealed by ilex, arbutus, hawthorn, and rhododendron bushes that are
all in bloom in May. They call it "Hollybrook" and it is the seat of Sir
Robert Adair Hodson, whose great-grandfather, Sir Robert Adair, a
dashing soldier, was knighted by his king on the field of battle for
the handy way he had of amputating the heads of his majesty's enemies.
He afterward became a lieutenant-general and one of the most famous
soldiers in the United Kingdom. But what interests us more is that he
was the young gentleman for whom the song "Robin Adair" was written by
Lady Katherine Keppel. She loved him very much, they say, and broke her
heart for him.
Just beyond the railway station of Rathdrum is the Avondale estate, the
seat of the family of the late Charles S. Parnell, the Irish political
leader, which has recently been purchased by the new Irish department of
agriculture, as a school for the training of foresters. Here we enter
that romantic region known as the Vale of Avoca, which has been
described in a pretty ballad by Tom Moore, called "The Meeting of the
Waters"--the rivers Avonbeg and Avonmore. Here was a meeting place of
the Druids in ancient times. Their altars and seats of judgment remain,
and you can see the hurling stone of the great Finn McCool, which is
fourteen feet long, ten feet wide, and seven feet thick, but he was so
strong that he had no trouble in tossing it about like a football.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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