I have been thinking in this strain because of an old dame in the first cabin in Lisdara row, whose daughter is in America, and who can talk of nothing else. She shows us the last letter, with its postal order for sixteen shillings, that Mida sent from New York, with little presents for blind Timsy, 'dark since he were three years old,' and for lame Dan, or the 'Bocca,' as he is called in Lisdara. Mida was named for the virgin saint of Killeedy in Limerick. [*] “And it's she that's good enough to bear a saint's name, glory be to God!” exclaims the old mother returning Mida's photograph to a hole in the wall where the pig cannot possibly molest it.
* Saint Mide, the Brigit of Munster.
At the far end of the row lives 'Omadhaun Pat.' He is a 'little sthrange,' you understand; not because he was born with too small a share of wit, but because he fell asleep one evening when he was lying on the grass up by the old fort, and—'well, he was niver the same thing since.' There are places in Ireland, you must know, where if you lie down upon the green earth and sink into untimely slumber, you will 'wake silly'; or, for that matter, although it is doubtless a risk, you may escape the fate of waking silly, and wake a poet! Carolan fell asleep upon a faery rath, and it was the faeries who filled his ears with music, so that he was haunted by the tunes ever afterward; and perhaps all poets, whether they are conscious of it or not, fall asleep on faery raths before they write sweet songs.
Little Omadhaun Pat is pale, hollow-eyed, and thin; but that, his mother says, is 'because he is over-studyin' for his confirmation.' The great day is many weeks away, but to me it seems likely that, when the examination comes, Pat will be where he will know more than the priests!
Next door lives old Biddy Tuke. She is too aged to work, and she sits in her doorway, always a pleasant figure in her short woollen petticoat, her little shawl, and her neat white cap. She has pitaties for food, with stirabout of Indian meal once a day (oatmeal is too dear), tea occasionally when there is sixpence left from the rent, and she has more than once tasted bacon in her eighty years of life; more than once, she tells me proudly, for it's she that's had the good sons to help her a bit now and then,—four to carry her and one to walk after, which is the Irish notion of an ideal family.
“It's no chuckens I do be havin' now, ma'am,” she says, “but it's a darlin' flock I had ten year ago, whin Dinnis was harvestin' in Scotland! Sure it was two-and-twinty chuckens I had on the floore wid meself that year, ma'am.”
“Oh, it's a conthrary world, that's a mortial fact!” as Phelim O'Rourke is wont to say when his cough is bad; and for my life I can frame no better wish for ould Biddy Tuke and Omadhaun Pat, dark Timsy and the Bocca, than that they might wake, one of these summer mornings, in the harvest-field of the seventh heaven. That place is reserved for the saints, and surely these unfortunates, acquainted with grief like Another, might without difficulty find entrance there.
I am not wise enough to say how much of all this squalor and wretchedness and hunger is the fault of the people themselves, how much of it belongs to circumstances and environment, how much is the result of past errors of government, how much is race, how much is religion. I only know that children should never be hungry, that there are ignorant human creatures to be taught how to live; and if it is a hard task, the sooner it is begun the better, both for teachers and pupils. It is comparatively easy to form opinions and devise remedies, when one knows the absolute truth of things; but it is so difficult to find the truth here, or at least there are so many and such different truths to weigh in the balance,—the Protestant and the Roman Catholic truth, the landlord's and the tenant's, the Nationalist's and the Unionist's truth! I am sadly befogged, and so, pushing the vexing questions all aside, I take dark Timsy, Bocca Lynch, and Omadhaun Pat up on the green hillside near the ruined fort, to tell them stories, and teach them some of the thousand things that happier, luckier children know.
This is an island of anomalies: the Irish peasants will puzzle you, perplex you, disappoint you with their inconsistencies, but keep from liking them if you can! There are a few cleaner and more comfortable homes in Lisdara and Knockcool than when we came, and Benella has been invaluable, although her reforms, as might be expected, are of an unusual character, and with her the wheels of progress never move silently, as they should, but always squeak. With the two golden sovereigns given her to spend, she has bought scissors, knives, hammers, boards, sewing materials, knitting needles, and yarn,—everything to work with, and nothing to eat, drink, or wear, though Heaven knows there is little enough of such things in Lisdara.
“The quicker you wear 'em out, the better you'll suit me,” she says to the awestricken Lisdarians. “I'm a workin' woman myself, an' it's my ladies' money I've spent this time; but I'll make out to keep you in brooms and scrubbin' brushes, if only you'll use 'em! You mustn't take offence at anything I say to you, for I'm part Irish—my grandmother was Mary Boyce of Trim; and if she hadn't come away and settled in Salem, Massachusetts, mebbe I wouldn't have known a scrubbin' brush by sight myself!”