The treasured lies of seven
hundred years are in his heart to-day. For time runs against the cause
of truth as well as with it. Once create a Frankenstein of race hatred,
and he will gather strength in going. The chronicler's fable of this
century becomes the accredited historical fact of the next. Give it what
billiard-players call "legs" enough and it will mature into a tradition,
a proverb, a spontaneous instinct. There is a whole department of
research concerned with the growth of myths, stage by stage, from a
little nebulous blotch into a peopled world of illusion. The strange
evolution there set forth finds an exact parallel in the development of
English opinion on Ireland. And, indeed, the more you study "the Irish
Question," as it is envisaged by the ruling mind of Great Britain, the
more conscious are you of moving in the realm not of reason but of
mythology.
All this will seem obvious even to the point of weariness. But it is of
interest as furnishing a clue to the English attitude towards Irish
history; I should rather say attitudes, for there are two.
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