Oh! worship Him in faith, and find eternal rest!”
CV.—CHARACTER OF THE IRISH PEASANTRY.
BARRINGTON.
Sir Jonah Barrington was born in Ireland in 1767, and died in 1834. He was a member of the Irish Parliament which met in Dublin before the act of Union in 1800, and which numbered among its members a great many men of distinguished character and brilliant talents, such as Grattan, Curran, Plunkett, Flood, and others. His “Personal Sketches” are racy, humorous, and full of interesting anecdotes.
1. The Irish people have been as little known, as they have been grossly defamed, to the rest of Europe. The lengths to which English writers have proceeded in pursuit of this object would surpass all belief, were not the facts proved by histories written under the immediate eye and sanction of Irish governments; histories replete with falsehood, which, combined with the still more mischievous misrepresentations of modern writers, form altogether a mass of the most cruel calumnies that ever weighed down the character of a meritorious[638] people.
2. This system, however, was not without its meaning. From the reign of Elizabeth, the policy of England has been to keep Ireland in a state of internal division; perfect unanimity among her inhabitants has been considered as likely to give her a population and a power incompatible[639] with subjection,[640] and there are not wanting natives of Ireland, who, impressed with that erroneous idea, zealously plunge into the same doctrine, as if they would best prove their loyalty to the king by vilifying their country.
3. The Irish peasantry, who necessarily compose the great body of the population, combine in their character many of those singular and repugnant[641] qualities which peculiarly designate the people of different nations; and this remarkable contrariety of characteristic traits pervades almost the whole current of their natural dispositions. Laborious, domestic, accustomed to want in the midst of plenty, they submit to hardships without repining, and bear the severest privations with stoic fortitude. The sharpest wit, and the shrewdest subtilty, which abound in the character of the Irish peasant, generally lie concealed under the semblance of dullness, or the appearance of simplicity; and his language, replete with the keenest humor, possesses an idiom of equivocation,[642] which never fails successfully to evade a direct answer to an unwelcome question.
4. Inquisitive, artful, and penetrating, the Irish peasant learns mankind without extensive intercourse, and has an instinctive knowledge of the world, without mingling in its societies; and never, in any other instance, did there exist a people who could display so much address and so much talent in the ordinary transactions of life as the Irish peasantry.
5. The Irish peasant has, at all periods, been peculiarly distinguished for unbounded but indiscriminate[643] hospitality, which, though naturally devoted to the necessities of a friend, is never denied by him even to the distresses of an enemy.[644] To be in want or misery, is the best recommendation to his disinterested protection; his food, his bed, his raiment, are equally the stranger’s and his own; and the deeper the distress the more welcome is the sufferer to the peasant’s cottage.
6. His attachments to his kindred are of the strongest nature. The social duties are intimately blended with the natural disposition of an Irish peasant; though covered with rags, oppressed with poverty, and perhaps with hunger, the finest specimens of generosity and heroism are to be found in his unequaled character.