The existence in certain nooks and corners of Ireland of a democratic vote hostile to Home Rule is, let us confess, a conundrum.  But it is a conundrum of psychology rather than of politics.  It may seem rude to say so, but Orangeism consists mainly of a settled hallucination and an annual brainstorm.  No one who has not been present at a Twelfth of July procession can realise how completely all its manifestations belong to the life of hysteria and not to that of reason.  M. Paul-Dubois, whom we may summon out of a cloud of witnesses, writes of them as “demagogic orgies with a mixed inspiration of Freemasonry and the Salvation Army.”  The Twelfth of July is, or rather was, for its fine furies are now much abated, a savage carnival comparable only to the corroborees of certain primitive tribes.

“A monster procession,” continues M. Paul-Dubois, “marches through Belfast, as through every town and village of Orange Ulster, ending up with a vast meeting at which the glories of William of Orange and the reverses of James II. are celebrated in song....  Each ‘lodge’ sends its delegation to the procession with banners and drums.  On the flags are various devices:  ‘Diamond Heroes,’ ’True Blues,’ ‘No Pope.’  The participants give themselves over to character dances, shouting out their favourite songs:  ’The Boyne Water’ and ‘Croppies Lie Down.’  The chief part is played by the drummers, the giants of each ‘lodge,’ who with bared arms beat their drums with holy fury, their fists running with blood, until the first drum breaks and many more after it, until in the evening they fall half-dead in an excess of frenzy.”

Such is the laboratory in which the mind of Orange Ulster is prepared to face the tasks of the twentieth century.  Barbaric music, the ordinary allowance of drum to fife being three to one, ritual dances, King William on his white horse, the Scarlet Woman on her seven hills, a grand parade of dead ideas and irrelevant ghosts called up in wild speeches by clergymen and politicians—­such is Orangeism in its full heat of action.  Can we, with this key to its intellectual history, be really astonished that Shankhill Road should move all its life in a red mist of superstition.  The North of Ireland abounds in instances, trivial and tragic, of this obsession.  Here it is the case of the women of a certain town who, in order to prevent their children from playing in a dangerous swamp close by, have taught them that there are “wee Popes” in it.  There it is a case of man picked up, maimed and all but unconscious after an accident, screwing up his lips to utter one last “To Hell with the Pope!” before he dies.  I remember listening in Court to the examination of an old Orangeman who had been called as a witness to the peaceable disposition of a friend of his.  “What sort of man,” asked the counsel, “would you say Jamie Williamson is?” “A quiet, decent man.”  “Is he the sort of man that would be likely to be breaking windows?”