THE MOTHERS OF ’NINETY-EIGHT “Hush, O Mother, and be not sorrowful, The women of My keening are yet unborn, little Mother.” —_The Keening of Mary._ TRULY it was of the Mothers of Ireland that Mary’s Son was thinking, when from the Tree of His Passion He comforted His own Mother with prophecy of the “keeners” yet unborn who, through the centuries, were to bear her company in her anguish, and weep with her for her sorrow and His most bitter death. That knowledge—with so much else—we owe to the teaching of Padraic Mac Piarais. He gave us the first part of the lesson when he gathered us with him into the cottage of Mary Clancy, in Iar Chonnacht,[1] and bade us listen to her “keening” with Mary for her dying, crucified Son, and shuddering at the instruments of His Passion, and shedding floods of tears at the thought of His gaping wounds. He made us realise what “a precious thing it is for the world that in the homes of Ireland there are still men and women who can shed tears for the sorrows of Mary and her Son.” But did the teacher, himself, know then at what a price had been won for the mothers of the Gael their “terrible and splendid trust”? Or was it only revealed to him in the blinding flash of the illumination which showed him that his own mother’s soul must be pierced by the same sword which transfixed Mary’s? Certain it is that we had to wait for the completion of the lesson, begun in Mary Clancy’s cottage, till that most holy and solemn night when, as he waited, like King Cellach in his prison cell, for “his love, the morning fair”—and the flame-like gift it was to bring him—he wrote for his mother the exquisite prayer, with which he would have her, on the morrow, lay his own broken body in Mary’s outstretched arms. Then was it made plain to us that the mothers of Ireland have won the right to stand thus close to Mary, beneath the Cross, and to claim as their hereditary office, the task to minister to her in her desolation, because they, above all the other women of the world, have so often “seen their first-born sons go forth,” even like Mary’s, “to die amid the scorn of men—For whom they died.” Footnote 1: “Caoineadh Mhuire” (The Keening of Mary) was taken down by P. H. Pearse from the singing of Mary Clancy in Moycullen, and first published by him in the _Claidheamh Soluis_, October 24th, 1904. Thus the Desolate Mother, even in a world which has so largely forgotten the sorrows of her and of her Son, has always found, and will find, in the homes of Ireland, her faithful company of keeners. And who shall say that their ministering is less grateful to her, because while they weep for her Son, they are weeping for their own, and the voice they raise in woe is that of Rachel, who will not be comforted?