O’Leary and the other Bacchanalians who came after Maginn were worthy followers of the school which devoted all its lyrical enthusiasm to the praise of drink, while Marmion Savage showed rather the acid wit of Moore. Ferguson and Wade are better known by their verse than as humorous storytellers. We find true Irish humour again in Kickham and Halpine. The Irish humorists of the present day hardly need any introduction to the reader.
The treatment of sacred subjects by Irish wits is similar to that in most Catholic countries. St. Patrick is hardly regarded as a conventional saint by Irish humorists, and it is curious that St. Peter is accepted by the wits of all nationalities as a legitimate object of pleasantry. If, however, Irish writers occasionally seem to lack reverence for things which in their eyes are holy, “it is only their fun,” as Lamb would say. Only those who are in the closest intimacy with sacred objects venture to treat them familiarly, and the Irish peasant often speaks in an offhand manner of that which is dearest to him. Few nations could have produced such a harvest of humour under such depressing and unfavourable influences as Ireland has experienced. And it may be asserted with truth that many countries with far more reason for uninterrupted good-humour, with much less cause for sadness, would be hard put to it to show an equally valuable contribution to the world’s lighter literature.
Though it has been sought to make this volume as comprehensive as possible, some familiar names will be missed; it is believed, however, that it contains a thoroughly representative collection of humorous extracts. There are some undoubted humorists whose wit will not bear transferring or transplanting, and it is as hard to convey their humour in an extract as it is to bottle a sunbeam. In others, the humour is beaten out too thin, and spread over too wide an area, to make selection satisfactory. The absence from this collection of any example of Mr. Oscar Wilde’s characteristic wit is not the fault of the present writer or the publishers. I have to thank nearly all the living authors represented in this collection for permission to use their writings, the one or two exceptions being those whose writings are uncollected, and whom I could not reach; and I have also to express my indebtedness to Mr. Alfred Nutt for allowing me to quote from “The Vision of McConglinne” and Dr. Hyde’s “Beside the Fire”; to Messrs. Ward & Downey for the extract from Edmund Downey; to Messrs. James Duffy & Son for the extract from Kickham; to Messrs. Routledge for poems by Lover; etc. I am also, deeply obliged to Dr. Douglas Hyde, the eminent Irish scholar and folk-lorist, for copies of some of the earlier extracts, and to Messrs. F. A. Fahy and P. J. McCall for some later pieces. For the proverbs I am chiefly indebted to Dr. Hyde, Mr. Fahy, Mr. T. J. Flannery, and Mr. Patrick O’Leary.
D. J. O’DONOGHUE.
THE HUMOUR OF IRELAND.
EXORCISING THE DEMON OF VORACITY.
[Cathal MacFinguine, King of Munster, is possessed by a demon of gluttony that “used to devour his rations with him to the ruin of the men of Munster during three half-years; and it is likely he would have ruined Ireland during another half-year.” Anier MacConglinne, “a famous scholar” and satirist, undertakes to banish the demon, whom he entices out of Cathal by marvellous stories of food and feasting, etc., meanwhile keeping him fasting.]
And he called for juicy old bacon, and tender corned-beef, and full-fleshed wether, and honey in the comb, and English salt on a beautiful polished dish of white silver, along with four perfectly straight white hazel spits to support the joints. The viands which he enumerated were procured for him, and he fixed unspeakable huge pieces on the spits. Then putting a linen apron about him below, and placing a flat linen cap on the crown of his head, he lighted a fair four-ridged, four-apertured, four-cleft fire of ash-wood, without smoke, without fume, without sparks. He stuck a spit into each of the portions, and as quick was he about the spits and fire as a hind about her first fawn, or as a roe, or a swallow, or a bare spring wind in the flank of March. He rubbed the honey and the salt into one piece after another. And big as the pieces were that were before the fire, there dropped not to the ground out of theses four pieces as much as would quench a spark of a candle; but what there was of relish in them went into their very centre.