On Sliabh Ruadh

Sometimes in the late autumn and early winter there come days that are more beautiful than any day of summer. The sunlight has a strange and rare clarity, the slightly frosty air holds in it something of spirituality and exaltation. The world is like a saint that has seen the Divine Vision,—very calm and reverent, but transfigured by a pale joy. Such a day was Sunday last. We felt the exaltation of the morning as we came back from Mass.

It was not a day to spend in a house or in any place where the feet of men habitually tread. Instinctively our eyes turned to the summit of Sliabh Ruadh, which we can always see between the sycamores in our School garden. "Cia aca a b'fhearr libh, a bhuachailli," we said—"cluiche baire no siubhal go barr an tSleibhe ?" There were boys there whose heels had lusted to press the heather of a mountainside every day since they had left their native Conamara. There were others, city children, who had seen Sliabh Ruadh, a blue-grey cloud on their southern horizon, ever since they could remember, but had never yet trod its slope.

Others still there were, the sons of Irish exiles in English cities, who had never stood on an Irish mountain, or indeed on any •mountain, in their lives. So with one voice they answered : "Go barr ar tSleibhe!" We set out at a marching pace. You know how Sliabh Ruadh breaks on you—a great russet-green hillside spangled with diamonds—as you swing round a certain turn in the Baile an tSaoir Road? All our hearts seemed to leap to meet the mountain as its gigantic presence thus bore down upon us. Another short stretch of the road and we were clambering up its side. A Conamara boy was the first to reach the summit.

A little lad from Tir Chonaill was, if we remember aright, the second. When we all stood together on the highest of the Three Rocks we were silent for many minutes. Even schoolboys forget to chatter in presence of such a stretch of land and sea, of woodland and hillside, as one sees from the top of Sliabh Ruadh. Then one of us pointed out the landmarks,—the two spear-like cones across the Wicklow border, the crumpled brow of Bri Cualann, the Vale of Seanganach beneath our feet, Binn Eadair afar like a sleeping monster, the city under its pall of smoke.
 
Spoke at last the voice of a small rebel,—a Bearloir as yet, but on the high road towards becoming a Gaedhilgeoir : " How long could an Irish army hold this mountain against all the English soldiers in Dublin?" We were unable to answer : but we branched off into stories of men who had held, if not this, at any rate neighbouring mountains against the English a hundred years ago, and we told of old people we had met in these Dublin glens who would scornfully say of a neighbour: "What good is he? Sure, his grandfather wasn't 'out' in '98!"
 
But the child's question set us thinking. There are heights to be held in Ireland to-day against the English. Are they all manned? Are the defenders at their posts? Are their weapons primed? Are their teeth set for resistance? How long will they hold out? Then another thought came: could we but garrison our hills with these boys and other boys such as these, what need to fear? And why not so garrison them? Why not set every Irish child a sentinel on a height, to watch and ward it, and hold it even to the death, because it is a part of Ireland? Our hills and our fords and our frontiers want such young defenders. It is for us and for our fellow-teachers to train the young hands and fire the young hearts.
 
We shall find apt pupils.