LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
[Letters of the length of one of our leading paragraphs are often more read,and therefore more effective, than those which fill treble the space.] MYTHS OF IRISH HISTORY.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.")
Sia,—There are many of the above, but one in particular has been put forward so often without contradiction that in Ireland, and in England, too, it seems to be taken as an accepted and reasoned. fact. We are told that Ireland has always struggled against the Saxon . yoke, and has never
• acknowledged the English king as. Lord or King of Ireland, .and yet after what was really little more than a filibustering expedition of a few hundreds of Normans all the Irish kings, with the exception of the Ulster king, and all the prelates came in and swore allegiance to Henry II. The same in the ease of Henry VIII., and again in the time of the Stuarts, we find the Irish armies fighting, not for Ireland against England, but for the English king de jure, notably so at the most famous of Irish battles, the Battle of the Boyne. Finally, in cur own day, we have Queen Victoria acclaimed with enthu- siasm in Dublin after the Boer War. There was no talk then of " a foreign 'Queen," and that is not twenty years ago. Other instances might be adduced from history.—I am, Sir, &c.,
EXILE OF ERIN.
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