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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
There are the frightful dungeons beneath Castle Rusline, its Doric columns with inscriptions in Latin and Greek placed there before the Christian Era. The Druidical remains are the most perfect in Great Britain. Relics of St. Patrick, crosses, religious emblems, ruined churches which remind us that in 1488, before America was discovered, Pius II. named the Isle of Man the “Sacred Isle.”
To be sure inscriptions in Greek and Arabic get mixed up, and are found in the most miscellaneous manner on door-steps, stiles and other places. They are merely put there for ornament. The schoolmaster not being abroad, they cannot often be deciphered.
Sometimes the epitaph of a Saxon warrior has been transported to the grave of a child. We read with wonder of the death on the battle-field of this three-year-old who might have died with the measles. There are mysterious secrets hid in Runic characters, often upside down, which have been transported to the sides of barns or humble cabins. But in spite of this grotesque vandalism there is an air of romance and antiquity throughout the island.
This little island, so far behind the world in many things, is in advance in others. Women have always voted in the Isle of Man. Their right is never questioned. From time immemorial women had the legal right to dispose of half of their property, independently of their husbands. Would you know why they are more privileged than their English sisters? Ask some Manx peasant woman to tell you. Her eye kindles and she stops her spinning to relate the story. “Long, long ago the Danes attacked the little Island of Man. The battle was going against her people—the king was desperately wounded, the bravest warriors lay dead upon the ground, when a band of women rushed into the midst of the fight, snatched the weapons from the hands of the dead and drove the enemy to their ships. Many a woman fell by the side of her dead husband, but the country was free. Our land is small, but Manx women own it with the men. Our voices led to victory, and we can raise them on Tynwald Mount on election day with the best and bravest of the men.”
The Isle of Man has a masculine sound, but there, women without asking have their rights.
Everything in this island is quaint, made after a type of its own. The little cats have six toes and no tails to swell out in fury at the sight of a dog. Was there ever so absurd a coat of arms as three armed legs with no body or head, only the motto, “Whichever way you throw me I stand!” A sort of kicking defiance to the three larger neighbor islands.
It was in this mysterious island that Margaret Agnew grew up, reveling in the antiquities and traditions of the place. To her the life of adventure offered by a residence in the New World had great charms. There was a fascination in the very vastness of the Western Continent.
Harmon Blennerhassett was the son of a wealthy Irish gentleman, though he was born in Hampshire. After studying law in King’s Inn, Dublin, he visited France. It was soon after the destruction of the Bastile. He did not agree with his friends, the Emmets, but believed that a revolution would be bloody but hopeless for Ireland. He was already wealthy when by the death of his father he inherited a great estate.
Scholarly, devoted to science, he determined to leave the Old World and make his home in America. Amid the agitations and political excitements of Europe he sought repose. He visited his sister in Kingsale to bid her farewell. She was the wife of Admiral De Courcy—Lord Kingsale. How all the patriotism and chivalry of the English heart is wakened up by the name of De Courcy! “The fearless De Courcy, who fought for the honor of England, but not for false King John.”
I believe were I an Englishman I would rather give up the Magna Charta than the story of De Courcy, perpetuated as it is by the honor granted to his discendants:
“And the sons of that line of heroes To this day their right assume,
And when every head is unbonneted They walk in cap and plume.”