Tipperary Read Online Free PDF Page A

Irish people of his era, with, as yet, scant literature to hand, told the world in stories. Naturally, therefore, he begins at the beginning—of his own existence, with his first memories. As he embarks upon his journey to “improve” himself, his “History” also supplies a portrait of life in a well-to-do Irish rural family of the mid-nineteenth century.

    The names of my parents are as follows: Bernard Michael O'Brien, from the county Tipperary, and the former Amelia Charlotte Goldsmith, from the county Roscommon; he a Catholic, she what they mistakenly call “Protestant.” The term should technically refer only to the Reformed churches who protested Rome as Luther did. In Ireland, it applies to every person not a Catholic, and therefore my mother, an Irish Anglican or Irish Episcopalian, a member of the Church of Ireland, is counted Protestant.
    My parents thus entered what is said to be “a mixed marriage.” Father came from the ancient Irish native roots that went into this ground once the Great Ice Age melted, ten thousand years ago; and Mother sprang from the English “strangers” who have long ruled this island. Our branch of the O'Brien tribe or clan managed to hold on to their land down the oppressed and confiscating centuries. Mother's antecedents, of the same stripe as those oppressors and confiscators, came into Ireland around 1590 and were given many, many acres in reward for their military support in the great English attempt to eradicate the Irish people. She therefore qualifies as “Anglo-Irish.”
    Let me define the nomenclature once and for all. The Anglo-Irish comprise that peculiar breed of people of English ancestry who settled in Ireland on land that was taken by force from the native Irish. By virtue of having been planted in their new acres militarily, they became economically superior to the natives—a superiority they also assumed to be social; and they spoke a different language (the Queen's English). Soon they had so thoroughly merged with their new land as to be neither English nor Irish. Many of them—in fact, most—fell passionately in love with the country that they were given; they became infected with its imagination, and they made significant contributions to it. Many others behaved like ignorant, bullying savages.
    Whether I am Irish or Anglo-Irish I do not know; I fit the hat to the moment, and as a consequence both peoples greet me as their own. With the grandees in their limestone mansions and their vividly painted walls and their great furnishings and
objets d'art
I have an easy familiarity. But with the native-born folk in the cottages and small farms and their wonderful spirit, their music, their passion, their stories in their dense, ringing accents—with them I am alive to the quick.
    To keep this adroit balance going, to broaden the tightrope a little under my feet, I—almost militantly—do not practice any religion, although I was tutored as a Catholic and can spout the liturgy with the best of priests.
    My family lived in a house on a wooded hill in County Tipperary. I was born there, on the twenty-first day of June 1860, not far from Cashel, which is a landlocked and fertile town, a fortress of Ireland's faith in medieval times. At my conception some wonderful spiritual exchange must have happened between my father and my mother, because my chief asset is, I believe, a notable zest, an exuberant, rich energy for all the excellent things that Life can bring.
    I love wines, I play a smooth hand at cards, and such horses as I have wagered upon have almost won a number of races. Travel delights me, the opportunity to look upon other faces in other circumstances. I enjoy good company with many tales told, and I have been given to understand that my gifts as a raconteur stand up well.
    Excitement has come to me often, and its glories make me impatient with those who have not understood it, who have often used words such as “reckless” and “feckless” when they