CHAPTER I.
ORIGINALITY OF IRISH BULLS EXAMINED.
The difficulty of selecting from the vulgar herd of Irish bulls one that shall be entitled to the prize, from the united merits of pre-eminent absurdity, and indisputable originality, is greater than hasty judges may imagine. Many bulls, reputed to be bred and born in Ireland, are of foreign extraction; and many more, supposed to be unrivalled in their kind, may be matched in all their capital points: for instance, there is not a more celebrated bull than Paddy Blake’s. When Paddy heard an English gentleman speaking of the fine echo at the lake of Killarney, which repeats the sound forty times, he very promptly observed, “Faith, that’s nothing at all to the echo in my father’s garden, in the county of Galway: if you say to it, ‘How do you do, Paddy Blake?’ it will answer, ‘Pretty well, I thank you, sir.’”
Now this echo of Paddy Blake’s, which has long been the admiration of the world, is not a prodigy unique in its kind; it can be matched by one recorded in the immortal works of the great Lord Verulam.[24]
“I remember well,” says this father of philosophy, “that when I went to the echo at Port Charenton, there was an old Parisian that took it to be the work of spirits, and of good spirits, ‘for,’ said he, ‘call Satan, and the echo will not deliver back the devil’s name, but will say, ‘Va t’en.’”
The Parisian echo is surely superior to the Hibernian! Paddy Blake’s simply understood and practised the common rules of good-breeding; but the Port Charenton echo is “instinct with spirit,” and endowed with a nice moral sense.
Amongst the famous bulls recorded by the illustrious Joe Miller, there is one which has been continually quoted as an example of original Irish genius. An English gentleman was writing a letter in a coffee-house, and perceiving that an Irishman stationed behind him was taking that liberty which Hephaestion used with his friend Alexander, instead of putting his seal upon the lips of the curious impertinent, the English gentleman thought proper to reprove the Hibernian, if not with delicacy, at least with poetical justice: he concluded writing his letter in these words: “I would say more, but a damned tall Irishman is reading over my shoulder every word I write.”
“You lie, you scoundrel!” said the self-convicted Hibernian.
This blunder is unquestionably excellent; but it is not originally Irish: it comes, with other riches, from the East, as the reader may find by looking into a book by M. Galland, entitled, “The Remarkable Sayings of the Eastern Nations.”
“A learned man was writing to a friend; a troublesome fellow was beside him, who was looking over his shoulder at what he was writing. The learned man, who perceived this, continued writing in these words, ‘If an impertinent chap, who stands beside me, were not looking at what I write, I would write many other things to you, which should be known only to you and to me.’