POLITICAL AMAZONS.
[To THE Burros or Tea SPECTATOR'"]
818,—The strange spectacle of politicians taking their women- kind with them to prohibited meetings, when there is every prospect of a scrimmage, is one which does not raise our opinion of the gallantry of the present generation. But it is not without a parallel, as the following extract from the "Life of St. Adamnan" will show. In or about the year 697, that golden age of Hibernian culture, before the Irish were demoralised by contact with the sister-island, the so-called Law of Adamnan- " Not to kill women "—was passed. The motive for such legisla- tion is contained in the following anecdote recorded in the Leabhar Breac," and quoted on p. 179 of Dr. Reeves's " Adamnan's Life of St. Columba :"—" Adamnan happened to be travelling one day through the plain of Bregia [a district roughly corresponding to Meath] with his mother on his back, when they saw two armies engaged in mutual conflict. It happened then that Ronait, the mother of Adamnan, observed a woman, with an iron reaping-hook in her hand, dragging another woman out of the opposite battalion with the hook fastened in one of her breasts. For men and women went equally to battle at that time. After this, Ronait sat down and said,—' Thou shalt not take me from this spot until thou exempteet women for ever from being in this condition, and from excursions and hostings.' Adamnan then promised that thing. There happened afterwards a convention in Ireland, and Adamnan, with the principal part of the clergy of Ireland, went to the assembly, and he exempted the women at it."—I am,
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