Green Coat Hospital, Cork
One likes to indulge in a bit of sentiment sometimes, and I stood and waited to hear the bells of Shandon that sound so grand on the pleasant waters of the river Lee. I had left the Lee to the fishermen and the make-believe swimmers, but the bells would sound sweetly here under the tower that held them.
A minute passed, and then another, and then I heard music—music that called forth old memories of days long since dead. How it pealed out its delight on the (icy) air of night. And how well I knew the tune:
No, it was not the chimes, but a nurse in the hospital at a piano. Before she had finished, Shandon bells began, but they played what did not blend with what she sang, and I went on my way thinking on the potency of music.
I passed on down where the river Lee flowed, and the fishermen were still fishing, but the little boys had tired of swimming.
Two signs met me at nearly every corner. One read, "James J. Murphy & Co.," and the other "Beamish & Crawford," or "Crawford & Beamish," I forget which. Both marked the places of publicans (and sinners, I doubt not), and both were brewers' names. The publican's own name never appeared, but these names were omnipresent.
Again I thought of Shandon bells, and the romantic song, "Down Where the Wurzburger Flows," and leaving the Lee still flowing I sought my hotel.
I would like to make a revolutionary statement, that is more often thought than uttered, but before I make it, I would like to say that there are two classes of travelers: those who think there is nothing in Europe that compares with similar things in America, and those who think there is nothing in America that can hold a candle to similar things in Europe.
I hope I belong to neither class. If I mistake not, I am a Pharisee, and thank my stars that I am not as other men are. Most of us are Pharisees, but few will admit it.
I began being a Pharisee when I was a small child, and that is the time that most people begin.
I kept it up. In this, I am—like the multitude.
Having thus stated my position, let me go on to say, that I am perfectly willing to admit that this or that bit of scenery in France, or Switzerland, or England, or Ireland, lays over anything of the sort I ever saw in America, if I think it does, and I am equally willing to say, that America has almost unknown bits that are far better than admired and poet-ridden places in Europe.
Twin Lakes in Connecticut is one of them, and Killarney is a poet-ridden place.
Why, even in Ireland there are places just as lovely as Killarney, but they have not been written up, and so no one goes to visit them.
I felt that one of the worst things about Killarney was the American sightseer, and I came away soon.
Cook's tourists have never heard of Twin Lakes, thank fortune, and it will be some time before they (the lakes) are spoiled.
The Lakes of Killarney are so beautiful that they are worthy of the pen of a poet, but the pen of a poet does not make any lake more beautiful, and I am quarreling because so many people refuse to believe the evidence of their own senses, and take their natural beauties at the say so of another.
There is a tower going up in New York at present, a tower that with the exception of the Eiffel Tower is the tallest on earth.
Many persons look at it, reflect that it is a skyscraper, and then dismiss it as therefore hideous. But it is really very beautiful, and seen from certain vantage points, it is architecturally one of the glories of New York.
A bit of Killarney
If it ever gains a reputation for beauty, you will find persons raving over it, who to-day class it among the "hideous skyscrapers."
A hundred years ago there were some skyscrapers in Switzerland, and they were thought to be hideous. After awhile a man with a poet's eyes and a courageous tongue visited them, and he said "The Alps are beautiful."
When their reputation for beauty was established, travelers left the region round about the Rockies to go and rave over the beauties of Switzerland.
That's all.
CHAPTER IX
A Visit to Mount Mellaray
MANY persons whom I met in Ireland told me that I ought to go to Mount Mellaray "for my sins." Mount Mellaray (to those who don't know) is a Trappist monastery, set among hills that would be at once the temptation and despair of a colorist in landscape.
To it go the brain and heart weary from all countries, and the good monks (there's no doubt that they are good) welcome them whether they have money or not.
They tell of a man who went to Mount Mellaray and accepted the hospitality of the inmates and on his going away he did no more than bid them good by. Not a penny did he leave behind him, although he had sat at table with the other guests several days.
Next year he came again for his soul's rest, and the monks received him as an old friend. Those who were not under vows of silence spoke to him, the others nodded to him, and once more he rested on the side of the purple hills and partook of their hospitality.
When it came time for him to go away he left behind him—a pleasant impression, but not a cent did he give to the cause of charity.
Another year passed by, and he came again. Hundreds had come in the meantime, and none so poor but had left something in return for the restfulness and peace that are to be had there.
Quite as an old friend he was now received and was made to feel welcome. No one knew who he was—perhaps he was nobody—but on his going away for the third time he showed that he had been but acting the part of an ingrate, for he gave the father who acts as keeper of the gate a hundred pounds.
This story I told to the jarvey who took me up the hilly road to the monastery, and he listened with interest, and when I had finished he said, "It's quite true."
As I did not expect to visit it again I made up my mind to do my giving on leaving the place, but my hundred pound notes are all in the future, and therefore no one can ever tell a similar tale of me.
I must confess that, being a Protestant, I felt a little compunction about going to the place, but I had been assured that my sect would make no difference, that the fathers were glad to receive all who came, and that I would be as well treated as though I were a saint.
On my way up my jarvey told me of the amount of good that the monks do, not only in a spiritual, but in a material way, by providing work for the able-bodied men of the vicinity.
We passed a neat stone cottage with ivy growing on it, and a vigorous fuchsia tree blooming in the garden, and he told me that it was a government cottage and rented for the absurd sum of a shilling a week.
"And how much can a man earn in the fields?" said I.
"A matter of ten shillings a week," was his reply.
Query: If a man gets ten dollars a week in New York and lives in a crowded Harlem flat for which he pays at least five dollars a week, is he as well off as this Irishman, in his native land, with all the fresh air in the world, fowls and fresh eggs, and butter of his wife's making, and one of the loveliest views imaginable before him?
But you'll find the man in the neat little government cottage anxious to fly to the land of dollars—and when he's there he'll hand out more dollars to his landlord for inadequate accommodations than he could earn at home in a month of Sundays.
Human nature is human nature, and the daisies in the field over the pond are always more beautiful than the ones that lie at your feet.
I was received at the monastery by a monk, who on learning that I wished to become a guest, took me over to the guest house, and there a white-robed father took my surname, and I began to feel that I had renounced the world, and that perhaps I was trying something that I would regret, and wouldn't mamma come and get me.
But the bearded man before me was kindly, and when I told him (not wishing to sail under false colors) that I was a Protestant, he told me that it was a fast day, and had I dined.
Fortunately I had eaten heartily at noon. "If ye have not dined we can give you something substantial," said he, but I decided that it would be better to be treated as the other guests were to be treated, and so I told him, and he said that at six o'clock there would be tea, and that at eight I would retire to my room, and at ten all lights must be out.
It was raining dismally, but he said that I could go for a walk in the garden, or stay in my room, or go to the "smoke shed," to smoke a pipe or a cigar.
I chose the smoke shed as I understood there were other human beings there, and although I had only been in the monastery five minutes, I felt the need of companionship.
After a brother had taken my traps to my room, I went out to the smoke shed, and found there some ten or twelve guests, five or six of them priests, and all Catholics but myself.
They were very quiet as I came up, and I feared to speak above a whisper myself, but a jolly-looking priest, seeing a newspaper sticking out of my raincoat pocket, said: "Is that to-day's paper?" and on my saying it was, he asked me if he might borrow it, and then he stood up in front of them all and said:
"The news of the day.... 'Irish Ireland. A Leaguer's Point of View.' 'The French Trunk Horror.' 'The Bachelor Tax,' discussed by Mr. Dooley."
"Rade that, father," said a young chap with a twinkling eye.
"Sure it's in dialect," said the priest with a smile, and his own brogue.
"Never mind. Go ahead. 'Tis a dreary day."
The paper was the Dublin Independent, and in a moment more I was listening to the familiar humor of the funniest man in America, and that in a monastery, of all places.
"'This here pa-aper says,' said Mr. Hennessy, 'that they're goin' to put a tax on bachelors. That's r-right. Why shudden't there be a tax on bachelors? There's one on dogs.'"
Loud was the laughter in the smoke shed at this sally, and none laughed louder than those professional bachelors, the priests.
Street in Youghal
"'I suppose,' said Mr. Dooley, 'that next year ye expect to see me throttin' around with a leather collar an' a brass tag on me neck. If me tax isn't paid th' bachelor wagon'll come around, an' th' bachelor catcher'll lasso me an' take me to the pound, an' I'll be kept there three days, an' thin, if still unclaimed, I'll be dhrowned, onless th' pound keeper takes a fancy to me.'" (Loud laughter by priests and laymen.)
The ice thus broken by my friend Dunne, I was soon in conversation with the group, and discovered two compatriots from Indiana, one a native of Ireland returning to visit it once more before he departed, the other his son.
Vesper bells broke up the talk, and I went with the rest to chapel.
After vespers came "tea," which I had supposed would be literally nothing else, but there was the most delicious graham bread I have had since I came to Ireland, and unlimited milk. There was no butter, as it was a fast day. This I regretted keenly.
Talk went on among us all until a bearded monk in white came in and began to read passages from Thomas à Kempis. His enunciation was peculiarly pure, and I doubt not that he was a gentleman born. It was a pleasure to hear such English. While he read we were all silent.
After supper we went out to the garden, and in a sheltered place (although we did not need a shelter, as the fickle rain had stopped) those who wished played a spirited game that consisted of tossing stones into a little pocket of earth. One of the priests was an adept, and he carried all before him.
In such simple pleasures, or in walking, the evening was spent until it came time to go to chapel again.
One of my companions (and they were there from all parts of Ireland, and you might hear the Scotch accent of the north, the pure Dublin and Wicklow Elizabethan English, the slightly thickened Waterford variety, and the hurried talk of the Corkonian, as well as other styles I could not place—probably west coast dialects, mournful and slow) asked me what I thought of Ireland, and I told him my impressions had been tremendously favorable so far. He said that a man who had returned not long since told him that Ireland was hopelessly behind the times, and I told him, for his comfort, that to take one instance in which Ireland was up to date, the tram service in Dublin was far ahead of that of New York, both in the elegance of its rolling stock, its cheapness, and the civility of its employes. He was much amused at the idea of horse cars in New York. (Electric cars play an important part in all the large Irish cities, and a ride on the top of one to Howth, a lovely suburb of Dublin, is worth every bit of the eight cents it costs).
They have yet to introduce the transfer system, but in other particulars, like Mr. O'Reilly, "they're doin' dam' well." All this I told him.
At eight I sought my room, where there was reading matter suitable to the place, but the candle was not conducive to extended reading unless I held it close to the book, and then it dazzled me, and at nine o'clock I was in my bed, and until two in the morning the house was quiet, save for a snore here and there. But at two the bells began to ring, and kept it up at intervals all through the night. I was told this, but "tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep," came to my aid, and I dreamed it was a feast day and that all the monks were sitting at the breakfast table, singing at each other joyfully.
Next day was a feast day (to my relief). I was up at six, but it was some time after that that I heard steps in the hall. I had looked out of the window from time to time, hoping to see some one in the garden. The table of the duties of the day hung in my room, and I noticed that breakfast was at nine. Luckily I had some chocolate, or I might have felt I was likely to faint by the wayside.
I did not go to early devotion, and when I heard the footsteps in the hall I opened my door and found that it was Father David, the keeper of the gate, going around to see if any were still in bed. When he saw me, he said to the brother who accompanied him, "Oh, it doesn't make any difference with him." Then to me, "Would you like to walk in the garden?" I said that I would, and walked round and round its lonely paths for over an hour, now and then eating a square of chocolate to keep off death.
But before eight the good father came and asked me if I'd like to see the interior of the monastery, and he showed me the bakeshop with its most up to date ovens, and oh, how hungry the smell of baking made me, and the steam-saw, and the creamery, and the library with its old newspaper telling to Irishmen that Cromwell had departed to his rest the day before. Not very sorrowful news, that, I imagine, to the Irishman of that day.
And Father David showed me and the other Americans an incubator, and explained the process, with an innocent circumstantiality that we respected. Why tell him that the woods were full of incubators in America? The things that appealed most to him, however, was the big circular saw that would saw up a log of wood in a "minyit."
With his permission I took a photograph of a beautiful Irish cross in the graveyard, but when I suggested my taking him, he averted his palms at me. Such vanities were not for him.
At breakfast there were eggs and milk and tea, and delicious butter in abundance, and the reading of some holy book by Father David, which did not stop all conversation. Being a feast day, there was one priest who felt his tongue could be loosened, and he kept up an undercurrent of conversation, to Father David's annoyance, but it was a human touch that was not out of place.
The monks are themselves vegetarians, but a school is run in connection with the monastery, and the students are allowed meats.
At nine my jarvey called for me and took me to the boat for Youghal, and I made my offering and shook hands with Father David, and felt that I had been benefited by my stay in the retreat. I even felt that had I more time at my disposal, I would stay on for several days, talking with the guests, pitching stones into the hole, and looking at the rolling landscape and the awe-inspiring hills behind the chapel spire.
One thing in America had interested Father David—the Thaw trial—and he wanted to know if Thaw would be hanged.
One day the only American news in the 'Derry papers was to the effect that Evelyn Thaw thought of going on the stage.
Not our art, or our literature, or our suppression of the boss, but the Thaw trial, is the thing that has made a deep impress on Great Britain and Ireland, and everywhere I am asked to give an opinion.
The Thaw trial was a matter of moment to the good old man, with his incubators and his steam saw and his absence of personal vanity.
As half way down the mountain I turned and looked back at the spire against the somber hills (for it had begun to rain) I wished that my camera would take them for me, but I knew that snapshots of hills are like literary snapshots—inadequate.
CHAPTER X
A Dinner I Didn't Have
THE best laid schemes of mice and men aft gang aglee, or words to that effect, and in a small village in County Wicklow I fared differently from what had been my expectation.
I had a letter to a literary man of whom I had heard nothing but pleasant words, and I looked forward to spending several hours with him.
I had dispatched my letter of introduction to him over night, intending to perch on his door sill during a flight from Dublin further south: Waterford and Cork.
The day was beautiful (whenever the clouds rolled away from before the sun) and as I left my grips in the station and fared forth I imagined how pleasantly we would talk together on matters and things, how soon we would find we had mutual friends, how possible it was that one or the other of us would commit the bromide of "It's a small world after all, isn't it?"
It was a long time before the dinner hour, but if he invited me to stay on and dine I would certainly do it. Tasteful napery, handsome women, light and joyous talk, delicate viands and sparkling wines—
"Plaze, sorr, would ye help a poor man to's dinner. I've walked from Ovoca the day an' devil a bit or a sup is in me."
A beggar!
The idea of a man who never saw me before asking me and evidently expecting me to help him to a dinner.
But of course when you meet a fellow out in the country away from professional beggars you naturally feel like helping him, particularly if the Irish weather is so fine that it hasn't rained for a quarter of an hour—
Thatched Cottage, Wicklow
"Oh, thank ye, sorr. May your bed in heaven be aisy an' may ye oversleep on the day of judgment."
A kind wish.
As I walked on I couldn't help thinking how similar was his case to my own. In all probability he had the price of a meal in his pocket when he met me and I too had the price of several meals in my pocket and even as he had "braced" a total stranger, so I was about to do the same thing, only I expected intellectual talk, a dinner, possibly a drive around the country, and when all was said and done I wouldn't be able for my quid pro quo to call down such a blessing as he had given me.
At last I came to the lodge of Heatherdale and asked if Mr. W—— was in.
He was not. He had gone by an early train to Dublin and would not be back until seven.
Oh, such a noise of falling air castles.
My letter had been to him, not to his wife.
I could not, or at least I felt that I could not present my card to her and explain that I was very much disappointed, and would Mrs. W—— kindly entertain me with intellectual talk and food and drink.
I turned sadly away and put on my raincoat (for it had begun to rain dismally as soon as the lodgekeeper had told me Mr. W—— was out) and made my way back to the station, intending to take the next train.
The urbane station master, resplendent in a gay new uniform, told me kindly but firmly that there was no train until seven o'clock, that that train did not go as far as Waterford, only to Wexford, and that my through ticket to Waterford was good for this day only and would be waste cardboard when the morning dawned, and I took the first train from Wexford there.
That meant the price of an excellent dinner thrown away——
An excellent dinner. It was twelve o'clock; time to begin to think of a dinner of some kind.
No (said the station master) there was no hotel in the place. I might get something at some farmhouse, but no dinner anywhere.
And Mr. W—— in Dublin for the day. What good had the tramp's blessing done me?
I left the station and walked toward the village. At last I came to a "public" and there I found my tramp drinking porter with gusto—but nothing else. His hunger had evidently departed. Perhaps the same thing that had put it to flight would allay mine.
But the first incivility that I have received since I came to Ireland was offered me here. The proprietress of the public laughed at me and said that they had nothing but bread in the house—and she evidently did not care to part with that.
"There's a good hotel at Rathdrum, sorr," said the tramp to me. "It's not five miles away an' the road light as a feather, barrin' the mud."
I had no notion of going five miles on the light road on the light breakfast I had eaten—and no certainty that there would be a dinner at Rathdrum, so I left the public, and the rain having stopped and the sunshine having come out with a most businesslike air, as much as to say, "See here, you clouds have been running things altogether too much lately; it's now my turn at the wheel," I set out as blithely as I could (with the thought of my letter of introduction crossing Mr. W—— on his way to town and me a homeless wanderer) and before long I came to a little whitewashed cabin in front of which a handsome old woman in a man's cap was bending over some flowers.
"Good morning. Can you let me have something to eat?"
"Sure 'tis little I have," said she, with a smile that took five years off her age.
"Some fresh eggs, perhaps, or some milk?"
"Aye, I can give ye those, but me house is no place for the likes——"
"That'll be just what I want," said I, and she went into the house and bade me follow.
Fresh eggs and unlimited milk are not the same as brill and young lamb and sauterne and cigars and witty conversation, but when you are hungry from outdoor exercise they are not so bad.
And Mrs. Kelly, like every other man, woman, and child in the whole of Ireland, had relatives in America.
She'd a son there long since and Ja-mes just turned twenty-one had gone there this summer to the "states of Indiana. Did I know the states of Indiana?"
I told her I did, that I'd been to them many a time. And where did "Ja-mes go to—to what city?"
To Lafayette (with as French an accent as you'd wish) and was I ever there?
I was. Her face lighted up.
If I went there again would I ask for Ja-mes Kelly an' he'd be her son an' as fine a boy as ever left Ireland (with a true Dublin roll of the r).
Still thinking of the dinner I had not had at Heatherdale house I asked her if she knew Mr. W——.
"Sure I do, an' the finest man in all Ireland. Me boy Ja-mes worked there at gardening and whin he was leaving for America Mr. W—— gave a dinner for him to all the villagers and gave him a watch with his name on it and 'in remimbrance of Heatherdale' in it. Oh, yes, a fine man an' humble. Sure, if Jimmy'd be sick for a day it's Mr. W—— would be down here in me cottage askin' afther him an' could he be doing annything for him.
"Humbleness. That what the blissed Lord taught us. He could have been borrn in a palace, but he was borrn in a stable in Bethleham. Are you a Catholic?"
"No—"
"Ah, never mind. There's arl kinds of good people——"
"Is Mr. W—— a Protestant?"
"Sure, I dunno," was Mrs. Kelly's guarded reply. "He goes to the Protestant church, but I don't know what he is, on'y he's a good man—none better in all Ireland.
"The good Lord," she continued, as she filled up my cup with rich milk (she had no tumblers at all, she said), "taught us to be kind to one another and to be humble, the same as He was kind and humble, although He could have had a palace if He'd chosen, and if we keep His commandments we'll all go to heaven, but if we don't (here the good Mrs. Kelly lowered her voice) we'll be damned in everlasting fire. The Lord tells us so."
I told her that I had heard such things, that I had a grandmother who taught me all about "Bethleham" and the rest——
"Oh, the good woman," said Mrs. Kelly, feelingly. "Well, it's true. Be kind and be good and be humble and ye'll be rewarrded."
After I had finished the lunch she asked me if I could take a picture of her.
I told her that I could, but she must come out of doors. Off came her man's cap and she arranged her wisps of white hair and washed her face and then said, "Be sure to get me eyes good and clear. I do take a fairly (very) good picture, and me eyes always come out fine."
The good woman had eyes she might well be proud of in spite of her desire to be humble, and they danced and snapped with joy as I leveled the camera at her and took her photograph.
All the afternoon I climbed the beautiful heather purpled hills in the vicinity with her youngest son, a boy of nineteen, eating wild fraochans, a kind of whortle-berry, and had "afternoon tea" with her at six and then went on to catch my train.
The son was a very intelligent boy and I was struck with his easy and correct use of English. He told me that it was easier to understand me than an Englishman, and I took it as a compliment, for I certainly never heard better English spoken than is talked in the Dublin district by rich and poor alike. London and New York should come to Dublin and vicinity to learn the proper pronunciation of English.
Wicklow Peasants
As I left the village I felt that I had lost one good time to have another, and the day on the hills made me sleep like a top.
CHAPTER XI
What Ireland Wants
BEFORE I went to Ireland I imagined the Irish standing in a crowd with their right hands pointing to heaven and all of them demanding home rule. But talk about shades of opinion and political differences at home, why, it's nothing to the mixture here.
I meet a man to-day and as I shake his hand I tell him with heartfelt sympathy that I hope he'll get home rule, that most of us are with him in the United States, and he wrings my hand and tells me that American sympathy is the thing that has kept Ireland up.
My bosom swells with pride and I feel that I have hit on just the right phrase to use.
Next day I meet another Irishman, a Protestant from Belfast, and as I wring his hand with emotional fervor, I tell him that I hope he'll get home rule, and he pulls his hand from my grasp to bring it down on desk or counter or table with impetuosity, as he says, "Ireland doesn't want home rule. If the phrase had never been coined Ireland would be happy to-day. What Ireland wants is less sympathy from outsiders. If my child bumps his head and begins to cry, I say, 'Sure it's nothing. Brave boys like to bump their heads,' and he begins to laugh and forgets about it. But if a stranger says, 'Poor Patsy. It must hurt awfully,' then he sets up a howl about it and fancies he's injured. What Ireland needs is to forget her troubles and her political disabilities and work. An Irish workingman in Ireland is the laziest man alive. When he goes to America or Canada or Australia and is released from priestly authority he's a hard worker and a success, but Paddy in the fields is always looking for saints' days—and finding them—and when he finds them he takes a holiday."
I am silent because I really know so little about it, but next day I meet another Protestant and I say to him, "I suppose it's Rome rule that is killing Ireland?"
He's up in the air at once and tells me that it is the priests who are interesting the peasants in the revival of industries long dormant.
"Aren't the priests fine-looking men?" says he.
"Yes," breaks in another Irishman, "and they ought to be the fathers of families. All that good blood going to waste and their lines ending with them instead of enriching the blood of Ireland in future generations. That's what celibacy does."
Another Irishman chimes in, "Oh, the priests are not such a fine lot. The constabulary are, I'll admit, but the most of them are as useless as the priests. Most of their time is spent training canaries, for there's little else for them to do in the country districts. But the priests; sure a man says, 'Oh, Jimmy's no good at all at all. Let's make a priest of him.'"
"It's folly you're talking," says the one who spoke for the priests. "There's not a finer body of men in Ireland than the priests."
"Oh," says the other, with Irish wit, "there's white sheep in every fold, I'll admit, but if Ireland was free from political and religious domination, she'd be able to stand upright and she wouldn't need home rule."
All of which is very perplexing to the man who came to Ireland thinking that with the exception of a few Orangemen all Ireland was working morning, noon, and night for home rule.
Next day I meet a man I know to be a Protestant and I say to him in my easy-going way (being all things to all men when I am traveling, in order to save wear and tear), "The Catholic religion is keeping Ireland back, is it not?"
He looks at me for a moment and then a spiritual light illumines his eyes and he says: "Protestantism is always death to arts. Look at Shakespeare, the last Catholic that England had, as you might say, and look at his work with its artistry, its absence of dogmatism, and then look at Protestant and tiresome Wordsworth and Protestant and didactic Tennyson. Spenser was a great artist. Spenser was a Catholic. Catholicism emancipates the artistic side of a man's nature, puritanism seals it up, dams it, condemns him to preach sermons.
"The Irish are the most artistic people on the face of the earth when Protestantism has not been allowed to stamp their idealism out of them."
"But I thought you were a Protestant. Then I suppose that you think that the priests——"
"I think that the priests ought never to be allowed to tamper with education. Spiritually they release Irishmen from puritan fetters (I speak as a Protestant and the son of a Protestant) but politically and educationally they are millstones about Ireland's neck."
I leave him and going to Hibernia Hall in Dublin, where the work of Irish industries is being displayed, and where stands temporarily St. Gaudens's splendid statue of Parnell, and I see there Augustine Birrell, whom I believe to be one of Ireland's warmest and truest friends.
I am talking to a handsome six-foot priest.
"Ah, there's Birrell," I say to him.
"Yes," says he with a twinkle in his Irish eyes, "'twould be a fine chance to drop a little dynamite under him."
I leave the hall hurriedly and listen outside for the explosion, meanwhile wondering why a priest who wants home rule hates Birrell, who has tried to give Ireland a modified version of it.
I meet a literary Catholic and ask him whether home rule would mean Rome rule and he tells me that it would not; that the Catholics would not stand for priestly interference with politics; that the priests themselves would not desire to interfere.
Next day I ask a jarvey if he wants home rule and he says, "Begorry, higher wages would be better. I'd not be botherin' with home rule if there was enough to keep me sons busy."
"Well, Michael, would home rule mean Rome rule?"
"Sure it would. Isn't the pope the head of the church?"
Ireland seems to be a house divided against itself.
I like the father of the family very much. We'll say he comes from the south of Ireland and is a Catholic. He's a witty man, a hospitable man, a cheery man, but won't speak to his oldest son, because he's a Belfast Unionist and believes in letting well enough alone.
Lost in His Lunch, Mallow, County Kerry
Now the eldest son is a delightful fellow. A little more reserved than his southern father, but just as hospitable, just as cheery—almost as witty. The mother is a Sinn Feiner, an idealist of the idealists. She believes that Irishmen ought to withdraw from Parliament. She urges her son, who is in Parliament, to resign, to boycott England, to get his brother members of Parliament to come home and form a National Council in Dublin. She doesn't believe in war, but she hates England with an animosity that is positively amusing to one whose forbears fought England and had done with the fight long ago. She won't speak to her daughter, who believes in working for home rule in season and out of season in London.
The mother is witty and cheery, and, oh, so hospitable, but when I visit the daughter I don't mention the old lady to her, for in spite of the ingrained love for parents that is almost as strong in an Irishman as it is in a Chinaman, she says very sharp things about her unpractical mother. But when we leave politics alone, she is cheery and witty, and always as hospitable as she can be.
Now, if by means of arousing a truly national spirit (and the Gaelic League is going about it in the right way) this family of witty and cheery and hospitable people can be induced to sink minor differences and act together they'll get what they want—whatever that is. And then won't they be the happy family?
And I'm sure I do hope with all my heart that they'll get it.
For they won't be happy till they get it.
CHAPTER XII
A Hunt for Irish Fairies
"I'LL niver forget wan gintleman that kem here from America. He'd been borrn here, but had gone to Chicago whin he was a lad, an' he had made a fortune.
"He had hundreds under him, an' he told me he had niver touched a drop of liquor. Oh, he was the kind man. He hired me car every day he was here, an' he said anny time I wanted to sind anny of me sons over, to sind them to him an' he'd take them on an' pay them good wages.
"Oh, he was the ginerous man, too ginerous in fact. He'd scatter his money like water whin he'd be in liquor——"
"Why, I thought you said he never touched a drop, Michael."
"Oh," with a toss of the head. "Sure that was in America. Bein' on a holiday here he tasted it, an' likin' the taste he kep' on.
"Sure he'd fling money out be the handfuls if I'd let him. I told him if he done that the news of it would spread an' some of the wilder ones would demand it of him, an' wance I refused to go anny further till he'd promise to stop throwin' money away—half soverigns, mind ye.
"Ah, but he was the kind man, drunk or sober. The day before he left—an' he was here two or three weeks huntin' for his birthplace—he said:
"'Michael, I've drank too much, but it tasted good. After to-day not a drop I touch, an' me goin' back to America.'
"Sure, I hope he didn't, for he had a fine business of manufactures of some sort, an' he says:
"'Sind them along, Mike, when they does be old enough an' I'll give them good jobs. Only they must l'ave liquor alone.'
"Ah, a kind man he was an' a true American. Wance I met Larrd Kinmare, an' I took off me hat to him. 'Who's that?' says he. 'Larrd Kinmare,' says I. 'Why do you take off your hat to him?' says he; 'he's only a man like yourself.' I'll never forget that. Only a man like meself."
I asked this same jarvey if he would like to see home rule.
"Sure, better wages would be better."
There are many like him in Ireland, men of the practical kind, who would rather see prosperity than home rule, and who evidently do not believe the two are synonymous terms.
Perhaps a little more of this jarvey's talk will not be uninteresting.
"What do you think of King Edward, Michael?"
He looked at me seriously. "He's not had a thri'l yit, but he seems a nice man. When he was Prince of Wales he was here to visit with his mother, the Queen of England, and he wint to a nunnery, an' him a Protestant, an' he kep' his hat off his head all the time he was in. An' him a Protestant, mind you. He seems a nice man, but he hasn't had a thri'l yit."
There's simplicity for you. One need not have the acknowledged tact of the best king in Europe to keep off his hat in a nunnery, but Michael had treasured the anecdote forty years as the measure of a ruler's merit.
But I am treading on dangerous ground and it would be better to venture on fairy ground.
One needs to live long among the Irish peasants to get at their folklore. They are invariably agreeable to strangers, as Michael has shown himself to have been to me, and are more than willing to talk about America and the sorrows of Ireland, but if the subject of fairy folk is broached they seem to be anxious to change the subject.
I was fortunate enough to get a little insight into their beliefs, but before I touch on the topic I would like to scatter a few thoughts on the subject of Irish wit.
Here I have set down a conversation of a typical Irishman, but you will notice that there is nothing witty in what he says. In books he is witty, and in Scotland the Scotchman is witty, as I had occasion to notice many times last year when I was there, but in Ireland (I record personal impression) the Irishman is not witty, as I met him in the peasant class.
I have conversed with dozens and scarcely a witty reply have I had. Humor often, but wit seldom. I sometimes think that it is because I have used the wrong tactics. Perhaps if I had bantered them they would have retaliated.
I fancy that their reputation for wit is largely of English manufacture, and that the Englishman calls it forth by his undoubted feeling of superiority. The wit is at his expense.
We were passing a little opening in the woods the day I rode with Michael and I said to him:
"That would be a fine place for fairies."
He quickly turned his head and looked at me.
"So it would," said he, "but they're all gone now. Whin I was a boy the old folks did be talkin' of them, but there's none of them now."
"I suppose so," said I sympathetically, "but a friend of mine in Connecticut, an Irishman, told me he'd been led by them into a bog with their false lights."
"Oh," said Michael, quick as a wink, "so have I. They'd lade you to folly the light, an' the first thing ye'd know ye'd be up to your waist in a bog. But there's none of them hereabouts now."
And that ended Michael's remarks about fairies. And that was further than most of them would go until I met an old woman on the west coast. She, after I had gained her confidence, talked quite freely.
I asked her if she had ever seen any of the red leprechauns (I am not sure of the spelling) that are so mischievous to housewives and are so fond of cream, and while she had not seen any herself a friend of hers had seen two of them.
"Wan had a red cap on an' the other was dressed all in green and they was wrestlin' in a field.
"An wance I looked out of the winder," she had grown absorbed in her own talk now—"an' I saw over there on the mountain side a fair green field that never was there before"—the mountain was bald and rocky and bleak—"an' in it was a lot of young lads and gerruls, all dressed gayly, the lads and the gerruls walking like this"—illustrating by undulatory motions—"and full of happiness.
"Oh, yes; I've seen the little folk, but I don't mind them at all. The sight of them comes to me when I'd not be thinking of it, and it's little I care."
She tossed her head in evident superiority, perhaps feeling that I might think it folly for a woman as old as she to see things so out of the ken of an ordinary mortal. But I showed an interest that was perfectly genuine, and she went further into her revelations.
"Wance I was lookin' out of this same winder, an' a queen of the air came out of the heavens ridin' on a cloud. Oh, she was the most beautifully made woman I ever saw, with a stride on her like a queen.
"She had a short skirt on her, and her calves were lovely, and around her waist was a sash with a loose knot in it for a dagger, an' the dagger raised in her right hand—an' a crown upon her head."
"And did she look angry?"
"Indeed she didn't. A beautiful face she had, an' she come straight for this winder, an' when she was almost before it I put up my hands to my eyes, for I thought that if she was coming out of the other space and I was the first she met here she might do harm to me, and 'twas well not to look at her—and when I opened my eyes again she was gone.