“Were you obliged to part with one or the other?” Sorrow is garrulous, and in the natural selfishness of its suffering, seeks to lessen the weight of its woe by participation. In a few minutes I was master of Murtoch O’Shaughnassey’s story: * he was the husband of a sick wife; the father of six children, and a labourer, or cotter, who worked daily throughout the year for the hut that sheltered the heads, and the little potatoe rick which was the sole subsistence of his family.
* Neither the rencontre with, nor the character or story of
Murtoch, partakes in the least degree of fiction.
He had taken a few acres of ground, he said, from his employer’s steward, to set grass potatoes in, by which he hoped to make something handsome; that to enable himself to pay for them he had gone to work in Leinster during the last harvest, “where, please your Honour,” he added, “a poor man gets more for his labour than in Connaught; * but there it was my luck (and bad luck it was) to get the shaking fever upon me, so that I returned sick and sore to my poor people without a cross to bless myself with, and then there was an end to my fine grass potatoes, for devil receive the sort they’d let me dig till I paid for the ground; and what was worse, the steward was going to turn us out of our cabin, because I had not worked out the rent with him as usual, and not a potatoe had I for the children; besides finding my wife and two boys in a fever: the boys got well, but my poor wife has been decaying away ever since; so I was fain to sell my poor Driminduath here, which was left me by my gossip, in order to pay my rent and get some nourishment for my poor woman, who I believe is just weak at heart for the want of it; and so, as I was after telling your Honour, I left home yesterday for a fair twenty-five good miles off, but my poor Driminduath has got such bad usage of late, and was in such sad plight, that nobody would bid nothing for her, and so we are both returning home as we went, with full hearts and empty stomachs.”
* It is well known that within these last thirty years the
Connaught peasant laboured for threepence a day and two
meals of potatoes and milk, and four pence when he
maintained himself; while in Leinster the harvest hire rose
from eight pence to a shilling. Riding out one day near the
village of Castletown Delvin, in Westmeath, in company with
the younger branches of the respectable family of the F——ns,
of that county, we observed two young men lying at a
little distance from each other in a dry ditch, with some
lighted turf burning near them; they both seemed on the
verge of eternity, and we learned from a peasant who was
passing, that they were Connaught men who had come to
Leinster to work; that they had been disappointed, and owing
to want and fatigue, had been first attacked with ague and
then with fevers of so fatal a nature, that no one would
suffer them to remain in their cabins: owing to the
benevolent exertions of my young friends, we however found
an asylum for these unfortunates, and had the happiness of
seeing them return comparatively well and happy to their
native province.
This was uttered with an air of despondency that touched my very soul, and I involuntarily presented him some sea biscuit I had in my pocket. He thanked me, and carelessly added, “that it was the first morsel he had tasted for twenty-four hours; * not,” said he, “but I can fast with any one, and well it is for me I can.” He continued brushing an intrusive tear from his eye; and the next moment whistling a lively air, he advanced to his cow, talking to her in Irish, in a soothing tone, and presenting her with such wild flowers and blades of grass as the scanty vegetation of the bog afforded, turned round to me with a smile of self-satisfaction and said, “One can better suffer themselves a thousand times over, than see one’s poor dumb beast want: it is next, please your Honour, to seeing one’s child in want—God help him who has witnessed both!”
* The temperance of an Irish peasant in this respect is
almost incredible; many of them are satisfied with one meal
a day—none of them exceed two—breakfast and supper; which
invariably consists of potatoes, sometimes with, sometimes
without milk. One of the rules observed by the Finian Band,
an ancient militia of Ireland, was to eat but once in the
twenty-four hours.—See Keating’s History of Ireland.
“And art thou then (I mentally exclaimed) that intemperate, cruel, idle savage, an Irish peasant? with a heart thus tenderly alive to the finest feelings of humanity; patiently labouring with daily exertion for what can scarcely afford thee a bare subsistence; sustaining the unsatisfied wants of nature without a murmur; nurtured in the hope (the disappointed hope) of procuring nourishment for her, dearer to thee than thyself, tender of thy animal as thy child, and suffering the consciousness of their wants to absorb all consideration of thy own; and resignation smooths the furrow which affliction has traced upon thy brow, and the national exility of thy character cheers and supports the natural susceptibility of thy heart.” In fact, he was at this moment humming an Irish song by my side.
I need not tell you that the first village we arrived at, I furnished him with the means of procuring him a comfortable dinner for himself and Driminduath, and advice and medicine from the village apothecary for his wife. Poor fellow! his surprise and gratitude was expressed in the true hyperbola of Irish emotion.
Meantime I walked on to examine the ruins of an abbey, where in about half an hour I was joined by Murtoch and his patient companion, whom he assured me he had regaled with some hay, as he had himself with a glass of whisky.—What a dinner for a famishing man!
“It is a dreadful habit, Murtoch,” said I.