THE FARMER'S SON AND THE BISHOP.
PREFACE.
The following story is an extract from a much longer piece in prose and verse, which I take from a manuscript in my own possession made by Patrick O Prunty (grand-uncle, I think of Charlotte Brontë), in 1764. It is called "the Counsel of Mac Lava from Aughanamullin to Red Archy, that is Red Shane, son of Bradach, son of Donal the gloomy, son of Shane, son of Torlogh, etc." In a manuscript in the Royal Irish Academy I find it entitled "The Counsel of Mac Lavy from Aughanamullin to his cousin Red Archy Litis on his forsaking his wife to take the yoke of piety on him, that is of Priestifying; or, the 'Priest of the Stick' by Laurence Faneen." In another MS. of mine, written by the well-known scribe Labhrás O Fuartháin from Portlaw in Co. Waterford, in 1786, it is called "The Counsel of Mac Clava from Aughanamullin to Red Archy Mac a Brady."
The poem is entirely satirical, and the gist of it is that the writer advises Archy not to be working like a poor man in dirt and misery, but from himself to earn the reputation of having a little Latin, and to become a bullaire, a comic word for bull-promulgator or priest. Any kind of Latin he tells him will do with an uneducated congregation, such as "Parva nec invideo" or "Hanc tua Penelope," or "Tuba mirum spargens sonum" or "ego te teneo, Amen!" The poet tells his victim that when he is reading he can twist and stifle his voice "like a melodious droning and partly a humming (?) through the nose, and partly the smothering of a cough, and then the wealthy full-ignorant laity amongst the congregation shall say that it is a great pity the shortness of breath, the pressure on the chest, and the tightness round the breast that strikes the blessed, loud-voiced, big-worded priest at the time of service." He then proceeds to tell him the following story, in the style of the Irish romances common in the eighteenth century. For the original Irish and the poem and notes, see vol. I., p. 180, "Religious Songs of Connacht."
THE STORY.
O, Cousin Archy, I must now tell you a little allegory which has a bearing upon your own present case, about a greedy, fat-boned, stoop-headed, bashful fellow of a son, that a long-bearded, broad-sided, cow-herd-ful, large-flock-having Farmer had, who was once on a time residing by the side of the island and the illustrious Church of Clonmacnois. And this aforesaid Farmer was accustomed to double his alms to a godly-blessed hermit who was living close by him, [giving] with excess of diligence beyond [the rest of] the congregation, in order that he might have the aid of this hermit in putting forward that blockhead (?) of a son towards the priesthood.
At last, on the priest of that parish in which they were, dying, the Farmer promulgates and lays bare to the hermit the secret conception and intention which he had stored up for a long time before that, and it was what he said to him, that he considered, himself, that there was no person at all who would better suit that congregation as a parish priest than this son of his own, from the love of the priesthood which he had.