“Wasn’t she black all down one side, the crathur?”
“Ah, maybe—but she was always a yaller girl,” opined a wise matron.
Dimly I can recall that she had the pallor that goes with swarthy hair and eyes. A handsome creature, but not of the type admired by her class. The poor girl’s sudden end formed a stirring illustration for the second curate’s sermon the Sunday after the funeral.
A PERSUASIVE TONGUE
“What did I say, me brethren, last time I stood preaching here at you? Didn’t I say who could tell who would be missing before the year was out? And look now at the wan that has been taken—a foin, sthrapping young girl, one of the foinest, I might say, in this parish.... Not an ail on her a few days ago, and where is she now?”
He jerked his thumb terribly through the little glass window at the side. The congregation enjoyed it enormously. There was a sucking of breaths, a clacking of tongues and subdued groans of approbation; and a good deal of rocking backwards and forwards on the part of Judy, who as usual squatted on her heels at the edge of the altar rails. But, poor little wretch that I was, how I quaked!
The second curate was an excellent young man, of the sturdy type familiar to many Irish districts in those days. The people called him “rale wicked,” and loved him proportionately—“wicked,” in their terminology, having a very different significance from the word used in its English sense. “Wicked” to them refers but to the flame of the fire of zeal; and they like to feel it scorch them.
When from the altar steps he threatened by name certain recalcitrant black sheep of his congregation who were neglecting their Easter duty, to be “afther them with a horsewhip if they didn’t present themselves ‘at the box’ so soon as he had his breakfast swallowed,” there was a thrill of admiration through the chapel. That was being “wicked” after a fashion they all appreciated. And when, after his breakfast had been gulped down, he duly appeared with a horsewhip, the results were immediate and excellent. His morning meal, in parenthesis, got ready for him by a neighbouring farmer’s wife and served to him in the little damp sacristy, invariably consisted of three boiled eggs, besides the usual pot of poisonous strong tea. Three eggs is the number consecrated to the cleric in Ireland.
At a certain Connemara hotel a curious visitor, hearing the orders shouted out: “Bacon and eggs for a lady,” “Bacon and eggs for a gentleman,” “Bacon and eggs for a priest,” ventured to inquire the differentiation. The answer was prompt and simple.