CHAPTER VIII.
THE DUBLIN SHOEBLACK.
Upon looking over our last chapter on practical bulls, we were much concerned to find that we have so few Irish and so many foreign blunders. It is with still more regret we perceive, that notwithstanding our utmost diligence, we have not yet been able to point out the distinguishing characteristic of an Irish bull. But to compensate for this disappointment we have devised a syllogism, which some people may prefer to an à priori argument, to prove irrefragably, that the Irish are blunderers.
After the instances we have produced, chapter 6th, of the verbum ardens of English and foreign poets, and after the resemblance that we have pointed out betwixt certain figures of rhetoric and the Irish bull, we have little reason to fear that the candid and enlightened reader should object to our major.
Major.—Those who use figurative language are disposed to make bulls.
Minor.—The Irish use figurative language.
Conclusion.—Therefore the Irish are disposed to make bulls.
We proceed to establish the truth of our minor, and the first evidence we shall call is a Dublin shoeblack. He is not in circumstances peculiarly favourable for the display of figurative language; he is in a court of justice, upon his trial for life or death. A quarrel happened between two shoeblacks, who were playing at what in England is called pitch-farthing, or heads and tails, and in Ireland, head or harp. One of the combatants threw a small paving stone at his opponent, who drew out the knife with which he used to scrape shoes, and plunged it up to the hilt in his companion’s breast. It is necessary for our story to say, that near the hilt of this knife was stamped the name of Lamprey, an eminent cutler in Dublin. The shoeblack was brought to trial. With a number of significant gestures, which on his audience had all the powers that Demosthenes ascribes to action, he, in a language not purely Attic, gave the following account of the affair to his judge.
“Why, my lard, as I was going past the Royal Exchange I meets Billy. ‘Billy,’ says I, ‘will you sky a copper?’ ‘Done,’ says he; ‘Done,’ says I; and done and done’s enough between two jantlemen. With that I ranged them fair and even with my hook-em-snivey—up they go. ‘Music!’ says he—‘Skulls!’ says I; and down they come, three brown mazards. ‘By the holy! you flesh’d ‘em,’ says he. ‘You lie,’ says I. With that he ups with a lump of a two year old, and lets drive at me. I outs with my bread-earner, and gives it him up to Lamprey in the bread-basket.”
To make this intelligible to the English, some comments are necessary. Let us follow the text, step by step, and it will afford our readers, as Lord Kames says of Blair’s Dissertation on Ossian, a delicious morsel of criticism.
As I was going past the Royal Exchange I meets Billy.
In this apparently simple exordium, the scene and the meeting with Billy are brought before the eye by the judicious use of the present tense.
Billy, says I, will you sky a copper?
A copper! genus pro specie! the generic name of copper for the base individual halfpenny.
Sky a copper.
To sky is a new verb, which none but a master hand could have coined: a more splendid metonymy could not be applied upon a more trivial occasion; the lofty idea of raising a metal to the skies is substituted for the mean thought of tossing up a halfpenny. Our orator compresses his hyperbole into a single word. Thus the mind is prevented from dwelling long enough upon the figure to perceive its enormity. This is the perfection of the art. Let the genius of French exaggeration and of eastern hyperbole hide their diminished heads—Virgil is scarcely more sublime.
“Her feet on earth, her head amidst the clouds.”
Up they go, continues our orator.
Music! says he—Skulls! says I.
Metaphor continually: on one side of an Irish halfpenny there is a harp; this is expressed by the general term music, which is finely contrasted with the word skull.
Down they come, three brown mazards.
Mazards! how the diction of our orator is enriched from the vocabulary of Shakspeare! the word head, instead of being changed for a more general term, is here brought distinctly to the eye by the term mazard, or face, which is more appropriate to his majesty’s profile than the word skull or head.
By the holy! you flesh’d ‘em, says he.
By the holy! is an oath in which more is meant than meets the ear; it is an ellipsis—an abridgment of an oath. The full formula runs thus—By the holy poker of hell! This instrument is of Irish invention or imagination. It seems a useful piece of furniture in the place for which it is intended, to stir the devouring flames, and thus to increase the torments of the damned. Great judgment is necessary to direct an orator how to suit his terms to his auditors, so as not to shock their feelings either by what is too much above or too much below common life. In the use of oaths, where the passions are warm, this must be particularly attended to, else they lose their effect, and seem more the result of the head than the heart. But to proceed:—
By the holy! you flesh’d ‘em.
To flesh is another verb of Irish coinage; it means, in shoeblack dialect, to touch a halfpenny, as it goes up into the air, with the fleshy part of the thumb, so as to turn it which way you please, and thus to cheat your opponent. What an intricate explanation saved by one word!
You lie, says I.
Here no periphrasis would do the business.
With that he ups with a lump of a two year old, and lets drive at me.
He ups with.—A verb is here formed of two prepositions—a novelty in grammar. Conjunctions, we all know, are corrupted Anglo-Saxon verbs; but prepositions, according to Horne Tooke, derive only from Anglo-Saxon nouns.
All this time it is possible that the mere English reader may not be able to guess what it is that our orator ups with or takes up. He should be apprised, that a lump of a two year old is a middle-sized stone. This is a metaphor, borrowed partly from the grazier’s vocabulary, and partly from the arithmetician’s vade-mecum. A stone, to come under the denomination of a lump of a two year old, must be to a less stone as a two year old calf is to a yearling; or it must be to a larger stone than itself, as a two year old calf is to an ox. Here the scholar sees that there must be two statements, one in the rule of three direct and one in the rule of three inverse, to obtain precisely the thing required; yet the untutored Irishman, without suspecting the necessity of this operose process, arrives at the solution of the problem by some short cut of his own, as he clearly evinces by the propriety of his metaphor. To be sure, there seems some incongruity in his throwing this lump of a two year old calf at his adversary. No arm but that of Milo could be strong enough for such a feat. Upon recollection, however, bold as this figure may seem, there are precedents for its use.
“We read in a certain author,” says Beattie, “of a giant, who, in his wrath, tore off the top of the promontory, and flung it at the enemy; and so huge was the mass, that you might, says he, have seen goats browsing on it as it flew through the air.” Compared with this, our orator’s figure is cold and tame.
“I outs with my bread-earner,” continues he.
We forbear to comment on outs with, because the intelligent critic immediately perceives that it has the same sort of merit ascribed to ups with. What our hero dignifies with the name of his bread-earner is the knife with which, by scraping shoes, he earned his bread. Pope’s ingenious critic, Mr. Warton, bestows judicious praise upon the art with which this poet, in the Rape of the Lock, has used many “periphrases and uncommon expressions,” to avoid mentioning the name of scissars, which would sound too vulgar for epic dignity—fatal engine, forfex, meeting-points, &c. Though the metonymy of bread-earner for a shoeblack’s knife may not equal these in elegance, it perhaps surpasses them in ingenuity.
I gives it him up to Lamprey in the bread-basket.49
Homer is happy in his description of wounds, but this surpasses him in the characteristic choice of circumstance. Up to Lamprey, gives us at once a complete idea of the length, breadth, and thickness of the wound, without the assistance of the coroner. It reminds us of a passage in Virgil—
“Up to the hilt his shining falchion sheathed.”
Let us now compare the Irish shoeblack’s metaphorical language with the sober slang of an English blackguard, who, fortunately for the fairness of the comparison, was placed somewhat in similar circumstances.
Lord Mansfield, examining a man who was a witness in the court of King’s Bench, asked him what he knew of the defendant.
“Oh, my lord, I knew him. I was up to him.”
“Up to him!” says his lordship; “what do you mean by being up to him?”
“Mean, my lord! why, I was down upon him.”
“Up to him, and down upon him!” says his lordship, turning to Counsellor Dunning, “what does the fellow mean?”
“Why, I mean, my lord, as deep as he thought himself, I stagged him.”
“I cannot conceive, friend,” says his lordship, “what you mean by this sort of language; I do not understand it.”
“Not understand it!” rejoined the fellow, with surprise: “Lord, what a flat you must be!”
Though he undervalued Lord Mansfield, this man does not seem to have been a very bright genius. In his cant words, “up to him, down upon him, stagged him,” there are no metaphors; and we confess ourselves to be as great flats as his lordship, for we do not understand this sort of language.
as we may see in another English example. Proverbs have been called the wisdom of nations; therefore it is fair to have recourse to them in estimating national abilities. Now there is an old English proverb, “Tenterden steeple is the cause of Goodwin sands.”
“This proverb,” says Mr. Ray, “is used when an absurd and ridiculous reason is given of any thing in question; an account of the original whereof, I find in one of Bishop Latimer’s sermons in these words—‘Mr. Moore was once sent with commission into Kent to try out, if it might be, what was the cause of Goodwin sands, and the shelf which stopped up Sandwich haven. Thither cometh Mr. Moore, and calleth all the country before him, such as were thought to be men of experience, and men that could, of all likelihood, best satisfy him of the matter concerning the stopping of Sandwich haven. Among the rest came in before him an old man with a white head, and one that was thought to be little less than a hundred years old. When Mr. Moore saw this aged man, he thought it expedient to hear him say his mind in this matter (for being so old a man, it was likely that he knew the most in that presence or company); so Mr. Moore called this old aged man unto him and said, ‘Father,’ said he, ‘tell me, if you can, what is the cause of the great arising of the sands and shelves here about this haven, which stop it up so that no ships can arrive here. You are the oldest man I can espy in all the company, so that if any man can tell any cause of it, you, of all likelihood, can say most to it, or, at leastwise, more than any man here assembled.’
“‘Yea, forsooth, good Mr. Moore,’ quoth this old man, ‘for I am well nigh a hundred years old, and no man here in this company any thing near my age.’
“‘Well then,’ quoth Mr. Moore, ‘how say you to this matter? What think you to be the cause of these shelves and sands which stop up Sandwich haven?’
“‘Forsooth, sir,’ quoth he, ‘I am an old man; I think that, Tenterden steeple is the cause of Goodwin sands. For I am an old man, sir,’ quoth he, ‘I may remember the building of Tenterden steeple, and I may remember when there was no steeple at all there; and before that Tenterden or Totterden steeple was in building, there was no manner of talking of any flats or sands that stopped up the haven, and therefore I think that Tenterden steeple is the cause of the decay and destroying of Sandwich haven.’” 50—Thus far the bishop.
The prolix pertinacity with which this old aged man adheres to the opinion that he had formed, without any intelligible reason, is characteristic of an English peasant; but however absurd his mode of judging may be, and however confused and incongruous his ideas, his species of absurdity surely bears no resemblance to an Hibernian blunder. We cannot even suspect it to be possible that a man of this slow, circumspect character could be in any danger of making an Irish bull; and we congratulate the English peasantry and populace, as a body, upon their possessing that temper which
Nor makes to dangerous wit a vain pretence.”
Even the slang of English pickpockets and coiners is, as we may see in Colquhoun’s View of the Metropolis, free from all seducing mixture of wit and humour. What Englishman would ever have thought of calling persons in the pillory the babes in the wood? This is a common cant phrase amongst Dublin reprobates. Undoubtedly such phrases tend to lessen the power of shame and the effect of punishment, and a witty rogue will lead numbers to the gallows. English morality is not in so much danger as Irish manners must be from these humourous talents in their knights of industry. If, nevertheless, there be frequent executions for capital crimes in England, we must account for this in the words of the old Lord Chief Justice Fortescue—“More men,” says his lordship, “are hanged in Englonde in one year than in Fraunce in seven, because the English have better hartes; the Scotchmenne likewise never dare rob, but only commit larcenies.” At all events, the phlegmatic temper of Englonde secures her from making bulls. The propensity to this species of blunder exists in minds of a totally different cast; in those who are quick and enthusiastic, who are confounded by the rapidity and force with which undisciplined multitudes of ideas crowd for utterance. Persons of such intellectual characters are apt to make elisions in speaking, which they trust the capacities of their audience will supply: passing rapidly over a long chain of thought, they sometimes forget the intermediate links, and no one but those of equally rapid habits can follow them successfully.
We hope that the evidence of the Dublin shoeblack has, in some degree, tended to prove our minor, that the Irish are disposed to use figurative language: we shall not, however, rest our cause on a single evidence, however respectable; but before we summon our other witnesses, we beg to relieve the reader’s attention, which must have been fatigued by such a chapter of criticism. They shall now have the tale of a mendicant. A specimen of city rhetoric is given in the shoeblack; the country mendicant’s eloquence is of a totally different species.
CHAPTER IX.
THE HIBERNIAN MENDICANT.
Perhaps the reader may wish to see as well as hear the petitioner. At first view you might have taken him for a Spaniard. He was tall; and if he had been a gentleman, you would have said that there was an air of dignity in his figure. He seemed very old, yet he appeared more worn by sorrow than by time. Leaning upon a thick oaken stick as he took off his hat to ask for alms, his white hair was blown by the wind.
“Health and long life to you!” said he. “Give an old man something to help to bury him. He is past his labour, and cannot trouble this world long any way.”
He held his hat towards us, with nothing importunate in his manner, but rather with a look of confidence in us, mixed with habitual resignation. His thanks were: “Heaven bless you!—Long life and success to you! to you and yours! and may you never want a friend, as I do.”
The last words were spoken low. He laid his hand upon his heart as he bowed to us, and walked slowly away. We called him back; and upon our questioning him farther, he gave the following account of himself:—
“I was bred and born—but no matter where such a one as I was bred and born, no more than where I may die and be buried. I, that have neither son, nor daughter, nor kin, nor friend on the wide earth, to mourn over my grave when I am laid in it, as I soon must. Well! when it pleases God to take me, I shall never be missed out of this world, so much as by a dog: and why should I?—having never in my time done good to any—but evil—which I have lived to repent me of, many’s the long day and night, and ever shall whilst I have sense and reason left. In my youthful days God was too good to me: I had friends, and a little home of my own to go to—a pretty spot of land for a farm, as you could see, with a snug cabin, and every thing complete, and all to be mine; for I was the only one my father and mother had, and accordingly was made much of, too much; for I grew headstrong upon it, and high, and thought nothing of any man, and little of any woman, but one. That one I surely did think of; and well worth thinking of she was. Beauty, they say, is all fancy; but she was a girl every man might fancy. Never was one more sought after. She was then just in her prime, and full of life and spirits; but nothing light in her behaviour—quite modest—yet obliging. She was too good for me to be thinking of, no doubt; but ‘faint heart never won fair lady,’ so I made bold to speak to Rose, for that was her name, and after a world of pains, I began to gain upon her good liking, but couldn’t get her to say more than that she never seen the man she should fancy so well. This was a great deal from her, for she was coy and proud-like, as she had a good right to be; and, besides being young, loved her little innocent pleasure, and could not easy be brought to give up her sway. No fault of hers: but all very natural. Well! I always considered she never would have held out so long, nor have been so stiff with me, had it not been for an old aunt Honour of hers—God rest her soul! One should not be talking ill of the dead; but she was more out of my way than enough; yet the cratur had no malice in her against me, only meaning her child’s good, as she called it, but mistook it, and thought to make Rose happy by some greater match than me, counting her fondness for me, which she could not but see something of, childishness, that she would soon be broke of. Now there was a party of English soldiers quartered in our town, and there was a sergeant amongst them that had money, and a pretty place, as they said, in his own country. He courted Rose, and the aunt favoured him. He and I could never relish one another at all. He was a handsome portly man, but very proud, and looked upon me as dirt under his feet, because I was an Irishman; and at every word would say, ‘That’s an Irish, bull!’ or ‘Do you hear Paddy’s brogue?’’ at which his fellow-soldiers, being all English, would look greatly delighted. Now all this I could have taken in good part from any but him, for I was not an ill-humoured fellow; but there was a spite in him I plainly saw against me, and I could not, nor would not take a word from him against me or my country, especially when Rose was by, who did not like me the worse for having a proper spirit. She little thought what would come of it. Whilst all this was going on, her aunt Honour found to object against me, that I was wild, and given to drink; both which charges were false and malicious, and I knew could come from none other than the sergeant, which enraged me the more against him for speaking so mean behind my back. Now I knew, that though the sergeant did not drink spirits, he drank plenty of beer. Rose took it, however, to heart, and talked very serious upon it, observing she could never think to marry a man given to drink, and that the sergeant was remarkably sober and staid, therefore most like, as her aunt Honour said, to make a good husband. The words went straight to my heart, along with Rose’s look. I said not a word, but went out, resolving, before I slept, to take an oath against spirits, of all sorts, for Rose’s sweet sake. That evening I fell in with some boys of the neighbours, who would have had me along with them, but I denied myself and them; and all I would taste was one parting glass, and then made my vow in the presence of the priest, forswearing spirits for two years. Then I went straight to her house to tell her what I had done, not being sensible that I was that same time a little elevated with the parting glass I had taken. The first thing I noticed on going into the room was the man I least wished to see there, and least looked for at this minute: he was in high talk with the aunt, and Rose sitting on the other side of him, no way strange towards him, as I fancied; but that was only fancy, and effect of the liquor I had drunk, which made me see things wrong. I went up, and put my head between them, asking Rose, did she know what I had been about?
“‘Yes; too well!’ said she, drawing back from my breath. And the aunt looked at her, and she at the aunt, and the sergeant stopped his nose, saying he had not been long enough in Ireland to love the smell of whiskey. I observed, that was an uncivil remark in the present company, and added, that I had not taken a drop that night, but one glass. At which he sneered, and said that was a bull and a blunder, but no wonder, as I was an Irishman. I replied in defence of myself and country. We went on from one smart word to another; and some of his soldiermen being of the company, he had the laugh against me still. I was vexed to see Rose bear so well what I could not bear myself. And the talk grew higher and higher; and from talking of blunders and such trifles, we got, I cannot myself tell you how, on to great party matters, and politics, and religion. And I was a catholic, and he a protestant; and there he had the thing still against me. The company seeing matters not agreeable, dropped off till none were left but the sergeant, and the aunt, and Rose, and myself. The aunt gave me a hint to part, but I would not take it; for I could not bear to go away worsted, and borne down as it were by the English faction, and Rose by to judge. The aunt was called out by one who wanted her to go to a funeral next day: the Englishman then let fall something about our Irish howl, and savages, which Rose herself said was uncivil, she being an Irish woman, which he, thinking only of making game on me, had forgot. I knocked him down, telling him that it was he that was the savage to affront a lady. As he got up he said that he’d have the law of me, if any law was to be had in Ireland.
“‘The law!’ said I, ‘and you a soldier!’
“‘Do you mean to call me coward?’ said he. ‘This is what an English soldier must not bear.’ With that he snatches at his arms that were beside him, asking me again, did I mean to call an Englishman coward?
“‘Tell me first,’ said I, ‘did you mean to call us Irish savages?’
“‘That’s no answer to my question,’ says he, ‘or only an Irish answer.’
“‘It is not the worse for that, may be,” says I, very coolly, despising the man now, and just took up a knife, that was on the table, to cut off a button that was hanging at my knee. As I was opening of the knife he asks me, was I going to stab at him with my Irish knife, and directly fixes a bayonet at me; on which I seizes a musket and bayonet one of his men had left, telling him I knew the use of it as well as he or any Englishman, and better; for that I should never have gone, as he did, to charge it against an unarmed man.
“‘You had your knife,’ said he, drawing back.
“’ If I had, it was not thinking of you,’ said I, throwing the knife away. ‘See! I’m armed like yourself now: fight me like a man and a soldier, if you dare,” says I.
“‘Fight me, if you dare,’ says he.
“Rose calls to me to stop; but we were both out of ourselves at the minute. We thrust at each other—he missed me—I hit him. Rose ran in between us to get the musket from my hand: it was loaded, and went off in the struggle, and the ball lodged in her body. She fell! and what happened next I cannot tell, for the sight left my eyes, and all sense forsook me. When I came to myself the house was full of people, going to and fro, some whispering, some crying; and till the words reached my ears, ‘Is she quite dead?’ I could not understand where I was, or what had happened. I wished to forget again, but could not. The whole truth came upon me, and yet I could not shed a tear; but just pushed my way through the crowd into the inner room, and up to the side of the bed. There she lay stretched, almost a corpse—quite still! Her sweet eyes closed, and no colour in her cheeks, that had been so rosy! I took hold of one of her hands, that hung down, and she then opens her eyes, and knew me directly, and smiles upon me, and says, ‘It was no fault of yours: take notice, all of you, it was no fault of his if I die; but that I won’t do for his sake, if I can help it!’—that was the word she spoke. I thinking, from her speaking so strong, that she was not badly hurt, knelt down to whisper her, that if my breath did smell of spirits, it was the parting glass I had tasted before making the vow I had done against drink for her sake; and that there was nothing I would not do for her, if it would please God to spare her to me. She just pressed my hand, to show me she was sensible. The priest came in, and they forced our hands asunder, and carried me away out of the room. Presently there was a great cry, and I knew all was over.”
Here the old man’s voice failed, and he turned his face from us. When he had somewhat recovered himself, to change the course of his thoughts, we asked whether he were prosecuted for his assault on the English sergeant, and what became of him?
“Oh! to do him justice, as one should do to every one,” said the old man, “he behaved very handsome to me when I was brought to trial; and told the whole truth, only blamed himself more than I would have done, and said it was all his fault for laughing at me and my nation more than a man could bear, situated as I was. They acquitted me through his means. We shook hands, and he hoped all would go right with me, he said; but nothing ever went right with me after. I took little note ever after of worldly matters: all belonging to me went to rack and ruin. The hand of God was upon me: I could not help myself, nor settle mind or body to any thing. I heard them say sometimes I was a little touched in my head: however that might be I cannot say. But at the last I found it was as good for me to give all that was left to my friends, who were better able to manage, and more eager for it than I; and fancying a roving life would agree with me best, I quitted the place, taking nothing with me, but resolved to walk the world, and just trust to the charity of good Christians, or die, as it should please God. How I have lived so long He only knows, and his will be done.”
CHAPTER X.
IRISH WIT AND ELOQUENCE.
“Wild wit, invention ever new,” appear in high perfection amongst even the youngest inhabitants of an Irish cottage. The word wit, amongst the lower classes of Ireland, means not only quickness of repartee, but cleverness in action; it implies invention and address, with no slight mixture of cunning; all which is expressed in their dialect by the single word ‘cuteness (acuteness). Examples will give a better notion of this than can be conveyed by any definition.
An Irish boy (a ‘cute lad) saw a train of his companions leading their cars, loaded with kishes51 of turf, coming towards his father’s cabin; his father had no turf, and the question was how some should be obtained. To beg he was ashamed; to dig he was unwilling—but his head went to work directly. He took up a turf which had fallen from one of the cars the preceding day, and stuck it on the top of a pole near the cabin. When the cars were passing, he appeared throwing turf at the mark. “Boys!” cried he, “which of ye will hit?” Each leader of the car, as he passed, could not forbear to fling a turf at the mark; the turf fell at the foot of the pole, and when all the cars had passed, there was a heap left sufficient to reward the ingenuity of our little Spartan.
The same ‘cuteness which appears in youth continues and improves in old age. When General V—— was quartered in a small town in Ireland, he and his lady were regularly besieged, whenever they got into their carriage, by an old beggar-woman, who kept her post at the door, assailing them daily with fresh importunities and fresh tales of distress. At last the lady’s charity, and the general’s patience, were nearly exhausted, but their petitioner’s wit was still in its pristine vigour. One morning, at the accustomed hour, when the lady was getting into her carriage, the old woman began—“Agh! my lady; success to your ladyship, and success to your honour’s honour, this morning, of all days in the year; for sure didn’t I dream last night that her ladyship gave me a pound of tea, and that your honour gave me a pound of tobacco?”
“But, my good woman,” said the general, “do not you know that dreams always go by the rule of contrary?”
“Do they so, plase your honour?” rejoined the old woman. “Then it must be your honour that will give me the tea, and her ladyship that will give me the tobacco?”
The general being of Sterne’s opinion, that a bon-mot is always worth more than a pinch of snuff, gave the ingenious dreamer the value of her dream.
Innumerable instances might be quoted of the Hibernian genius, not merely for repartee, but for what the Italians call pasquinade. We shall cite only one, which is already so well known in Ireland, that we cannot be found guilty of publishing a libel. Over the ostentatious front of a nobleman’s house in Dublin, the owner had this motto cut in stone:—
In process of time his lordship changed his residence; or, since we must descend to plebeian language, was committed to Newgate, and immediately there appeared over the front of his apartment his chosen motto, as large as the life, in white chalk,
Mixed with keen satire, the Irish often show a sort of cool good sense and dry humour, which gives not only effect, but value to their impromptus. Of this class is the observation made by the Irish hackney coachman, upon seeing a man of the ton driving four-in-hand down Bond-street.
“That fellow,” said our observer, “looks like a coachman, but drives like a gentleman.”
As an instance of humour mixed with sophistry, we beg the reader to recollect the popular story of the Irishman who was run over by a troop of horse, and miraculously escaped unhurt.
“Down upon your knees and thank God, you reprobate,” said one of the spectators.
“Thank God! for what? Is it for letting a troop of horse run over me?”
In this speech there is the same sort of humour and sophistry that appears in the Irishman’s celebrated question: “What has posterity done for me, that I should do so much for posterity?”
The Irish nation, from the highest to the lowest, in daily conversation about the ordinary affairs of life, employ a superfluity of wit and metaphor which would be astonishing and unintelligible to a majority of the respectable body of English yeomen. Even the cutters of turf and drawers of whiskey are orators; even the cottiers and gossoons speak in trope and figure. Ask an Irish gossoon to go early in the morning, on an errand, and he answers,
“I’ll be off at the flight of night.”
If an Irish cottager would express to his landlord that he wishes for a long lease of his land, he says,—
“I would be proud to live on your honour’s land as long as grass grows or water runs.”
One of our English poets has nearly the same idea:—
Or spring with annual green renews the grove.”
Without the advantages of a classical education, the lower Irish sometimes make similes that bear a near resemblance to those of the admired poets of antiquity. A loyalist, during the late rebellion, was describing to us the number of the rebels who had gathered on one spot, and were dispersed by the king’s army; rallied, and were again put to flight.
“They were,” said he, “like swarms of flies on a summer’s day, that you brush away with your hand, and still they will be returning.”
There is a simile of Homer’s which, literally translated, runs thus: “As the numerous troops of flies about a shepherd’s cottage in the spring, when the milk moistens the pails, such numbers of Greeks stood in the field against the Trojans.” Lord Kames observes, that it is false taste to condemn such comparisons for the lowness of the images introduced. In fact, great objects cannot be degraded by comparison with small ones in these similes, because the only point of resemblance is number; the mind instantly perceives this, and therefore requires no other species of similitude.
When we attempt to judge of the genius of the lower classes of the people, we must take care that we are not under the influence of any prejudice of an aristocratic or literary nature. But this is no easy effort of liberty.
“Agk! Dublin, sweet Jasus be wid you!” exclaimed a poor Irishman, as he stood on the deck of a vessel, which was carrying him out of the bay of Dublin. The pathos of this poor fellow will not probably affect delicate sensibility, because he says wid instead of with, and Jasus instead of Jesus. Adam Smith is certainly right in his theory, that the sufferings of those in exalted stations have generally most power to command our sympathy. The very same sentiment of sorrow at leaving his country, which was expressed so awkwardly by the poor Irishman, appears, to every reader of taste, exquisitely pathetic from the lips of Mary queen of Scots.
“Farewell, France! Farewell, beloved country! which I shall never more behold!” 52
In anger as well as in sorrow the Irishman is eloquent. A gentleman who was lately riding through the county of ——, in Ireland, to canvass, called to ask a vote from a poor man, who was planting willows in a little garden by the road side.
“You have a vote, my good sir, I am told,” said the candidate, in an insinuating tone.
The poor man stuck the willow which he had in his hand into the ground, and with a deliberate pace came towards the candidate to parley with him.
“Please your honour,” said he, gravely, “I have a vote, and I have not a vote.”
“How can that be?”
“I will tell you, sir,” said he, leaning, or rather lying down slowly upon the back of the ditch facing the road, so that the gentleman, who was on horseback, could see only his head and arms.
“Sir,” said he, “out of this little garden, with my five acres of land and my own labour, I once had a freehold; but I have been robbed of my freehold: and who do you think has robbed me? why, that man!” pointing to his landlord’s steward, who stood beside the candidate. “With my own hands I sowed my own ground with oats, and a fine crop I expected—but I never reaped that crop: not a bushel, no, nor half a bushel, did I ever see; for into my little place comes this man, with I don’t know how many more, with their shovels and their barrows, and their horses and their cars, and to work they fell, and they ran a road straight through the best part of my land, turning all to heaps of rubbish, and a bad road it was, and a bad time of year to make it! But where was I when he did this? not where I am now,” said the orator, raising himself up and standing firm; “not as you see me now, but lying on my back in my bed in a fever. When I got up I was not able to make my rent out of my land. Besides myself, I had my five children to support. I sold my clothes, and have never been able to buy any since but such as a recruit could sell, who was in haste to get into regimentals—such clothes as these,” said he, looking down at his black rags. “Soon I had nothing to eat: but that’s not all. I am a weaver, sir: for my rent they seized my two looms; then I had nothing to do. But of all this I do not complain. There was an election some time ago in this county, and a man rode up to me in this garden as you do now, and asked me for my vote, but I refused him, for I was steady to my landlord. The gentleman observed I was a poor man, and asked if I wanted for nothing? but all did not signify; so he rode on gently, and at the corner of the road, within view of my garden, I saw him drop a purse, and I knew, by his looking at me, it was on purpose for me to pick it up. After a while he came back, thinking, to be sure, I had taken up the purse, and had changed my mind, but he found his purse where he left it. My landlord knew all this, and he promised to see justice done me, but he forgot. Then, as for the candidate’s lady, before the election nothing was too fair-speaking for me; but afterward, in my distress, when I applied to her to get me a loom, which she could have had from the Linen Board by only asking for it, her answer to me was, ‘I don’t know that I shall ever want a vote again in the county.’
“Now, sir,” continued he, “when justice is done to me (and no sooner), I shall be glad to assist my landlord or his friend. I know who you are, sir, very well: you bear a good character: success to you! but I have no vote to give to you or any man.”
“If I were to attempt to make you any amends for what you have suffered,” replied the candidate, “I should do you an injury; it would be said that I had bribed you; but I will repeat your story where it will meet with attention. I cannot, however, tell it so well as you have told it.”
“No, sir,” was his answer, “for you cannot feel it as I do.”
This is almost in terms the conclusion of Pope’s epistle from Eloisa to Abelard:—
In objurgation and pathetic remonstrancing eloquence, the females of the lower class in Ireland are not inferior to the men. A thin tall woman wrapped in a long cloak, the hood of which was drawn over her head, and shaded her pale face, came to a gentleman to complain of the cruelty of her landlord.
“He is the most hard-hearted man alive, so he is, sir,” said she; “he has just seized all I have, which, God knows, is little enough! and has driven my cow to pound, the only cow I have, and only dependence I have for a drop of milk to drink; and the cow itself too standing there starving in the pound, for not a wisp of hay would he give to cow or Christian to save their lives, if it was ever so! And the rent for which he is driving me, please your honour, has not been due but one week: a hard master he is; but these middle men are all so, one and all. Oh! if it had been but my lot to be a tenant to a gentleman born, like your honour, who is the poor man’s friend, and the orphan’s, and the widow’s—the friend of them that have none other. Long life to you! and long may you live to reign over us! Would you but speak three words to my landlord, to let my cow out of pound, and give me a fortnight’s time, that I might see and fatten her to sell against the fair, I could pay him then all honestly, and not be racked entirely, and he would be ashamed to refuse your honour, and afraid to disoblige the like of you, or get your ill-will. May the blessing of Heaven be upon you, if you’ll just send and speak to him three words for the poor woman and widow, that has none other to speak for her in the wide world!”
Moved by this lamentable story, the effect of which the woman’s whole miserable appearance corroborated and heightened, the gentleman sent immediately for her hard-hearted landlord. The landlord appeared; not a gentleman, not a rich man, as the term landlord might denote, but a stout, square, stubbed, thick-limbed, grey-eyed man, who seemed to have come smoking hot from hard labour. The gentleman repeated the charge made against him by the poor widow, and mildly remonstrated on his cruelty: the man heard all that was said with a calm but unmoved countenance.
“And now have you done?” said he, turning to the woman, who had recommenced her lamentations. “Look at her standing there, sir. It’s easy for her to put on her long cloak, and to tell her long story, and to make her poor mouth to your honour; but if you are willing to hear, I’ll tell you what she is, and what I am. She is one that has none but herself in this world to provide for; she is one that is able to afford herself a glass of whiskey when she pleases, and she pleases it often; she is one that never denies herself the bit of staggering bob53 when in season; she is one that has a snug house well thatched to live in all the year round, and nothing to do or nothing that she does; and this is the way of her life, and this is what she is. And what am I? I am the father of eight children, and I have a wife and myself to provide for. I am a man that is at hard labour of one kind or another from sunrise to sunset. The straw that thatched the house she lives in I brought two miles on my back; the walls of the house she lives in I built with my own hands; I did the same by five other houses, and they are all sound and dry, and good to live in, summer or winter. I set them for rent to put bread into my children’s mouth, and after all I cannot get it! And to support my eight children, and my wife, and myself, what have I in this world,” cried he, striding suddenly with colossal firmness upon his sturdy legs, and raising to heaven arms which looked like fore-shortenings of the limbs of Hercules; “what have I in this wide world but these four bones?” 54
No provocation could have worked up a phlegmatic English countryman to this pitch of eloquence. He never suffers his anger to evaporate in idle figures of speech: it is always concentrated in a few words, which he repeats in reply to every argument, persuasive, or invective, that can be employed to irritate or to assuage his wrath. We recollect having once been present at a scene between an English gentleman and a churchwarden, whose feelings were grievously hurt by the disturbance that had been given to certain bones in levelling a wall which separated the churchyard from the pleasure ground of the lord of the manor. The bones belonged, as the churchwarden believed or averred, to his great great grandmother, though how they were identified it might be difficult to explain to an indifferent judge; yet we are to suppose that the confirmation of the suspicion was strong and satisfactory to the party concerned. The pious great great grandson’s feelings were all in arms, but indignation did not inspire him with a single poetic idea or expression. In his eloquence, indeed, there was the principal requisite, action: in reply to all that could be said, he repeatedly struck his long oak stick perpendicularly upon the floor, and reiterated these words—
“It’s death, sir! death by the law! It’s sacrilege, sir! sacrilege by act of parliament! It’s death, sir! death by the law! and the law I’ll have of him, for it’s lawful to have the law.”
This was the whole range of his ideas, even when the passions had tumbled them all out of their dormitories.
Innumerable fresh instances of Irish eloquence and wit crowd upon our recollection, but we forbear. The examples we have cited are taken from real life, and given without alteration or embellishment.