106 ST NICOTINE 



have been picked up in remote places, and have been 

 attributed by imaginative country folk to the fairies and 

 elves, to the Celts and to the Danes. Raleigh's sowing 

 the seeds of Ireland's first tobacco-plant in his garden at 

 Youghal is lost sight of in a desire to yield to antiquity the 

 credit due to modern enterprise. About a century ago (to 

 be exact, in the year 1784), the fine Milesian imagination 

 was afforded an opportunity of soaring into the glorious 

 region of an indefinable past, when the headman of every 

 village was indeed a king. In an ancient tomb far too old 

 to bear the vulgar indication of a date which had been 

 opened at Bannockstown in Kildare, there was found 

 firmly held between the teeth of the silent occupant a 

 tobacco-pipe, small, but perfectly formed. Here, then, 

 was positive proof of the antiquity of smoking in Ireland, 

 ages, possibly, before the Saxon or Danish barbarian had 

 invaded her shores. This important discovery naturally 

 created a commotion among the learned of the Emerald 

 Isle, which soon found mellifluent expression in the 

 Journal of Anthologia Hibernica. Visions of a re- 

 vivified Celtic history, clothed in the poetic vestments 

 which properly belong to a venerable, half-forgotten past, 

 rose to cheer young Ireland's aspirations ; and now could 

 be sung with renewed fervour, 



Let fate do her worst, there are relics of joy, 

 Bright beams of the past, which she cannot destroy. 



It is not pleasant to be robbed of a cherished belief. 

 The awakening breaks upon the shores of romance as 

 would a London fog on a Swiss lake ; yet it must needs be 

 said that under the critical eye of the expert the vision 

 dissolved, and left but an Elizabethan pipe behind. For 

 such, indeed, vras the fate that befell the famous Celtic 



