W. GEORGE BEERS.
[We have described a run through the south of Ireland, which to the traveller seemed but a brown and barren commentary on the so-called Emerald Island. The traveller from whom we now quote found the aspect of nature verdant enough fully to justify this title. But the poverty and shiftlessness which appeared so patent to Dr. Woods proved equally evident to Mr. Beers, to whom the lack of snakes in Green Erin seemed more than replaced by the multitude of beggars.]
Up in the forecastle of an ocean steamer a group of sea-tired souls look away to starboard, where a faint shape lies on the horizon like an early-morning cloud. “It’s only a bit of old-country fog,” mutters the Grumbler, and goes back to his bed. A thrush had been playing for over an hour on the spars and rigging, and we fancied we could smell the land from which it had flown to greet us. And by and by the dim line took a more solid shape, and soon we could see the rough rocks of the northern coast. We were nearing Innistrahull light-house and Malin Head, and the ship’s engines stopped, for the first time since leaving the New World, to take on a pilot. A short sail along the rocky coast, passing the ivy-covered ruins of an ancient castle, the green refreshing grass, the hedges, and the white houses, and the beautiful panorama of Moville, at the mouth of the Foyle, was unfolded, and Nature tinged the sea and sky with a masterpiece of sunset. Suddenly a few jaunting-cars came flying down the hill like highway comets, and the Grumbler came up again, in time to find that we were only a hundred yards from shore. “That’s Ireland,” said he. We felt enlightened. It was not long before we were ashore at Moville, a quiet watering-place for the people of Derry, Tyrone, and Donegal counties.
Our first reception was from a sturdy beggar, who apologized for the absence of the mayor and corporation. I had heard of this genius of Moville before. He is a character of the place, and one of the most original hypocrites among the begging fraternity. When I was in Queenstown, a few weeks afterwards, I saw a perfect shoal of his kind, of all degrees of dirt, disease, and disaster,—a sort of ragged resurrection through which passengers from an American steamer had to pass. There were beggars with strong lungs and stout legs; beggars with scarce a lung and but one leg; paupers in all the traditional heraldry of rags and wretchedness,—blind, crippled, crooked, and crazy; with bags and babies, sticks and dogs, canes and crutches, all colors of hair and all sorts of disease, real or feigned; some funny, some furious, some bold, some blushing, nearly all overwhelming in benediction.
One sore-eyed veteran, whose apostolical succession from blind Bartimeus I should have been easily disposed to accept, stuck to my heels, and in a tone that would have melted the Blarney stone implored me, “A pinny, yer honor.” With New-World innocence of Old-World wickedness, I gave my Irish Moses a sixpence, upon which the crowd came upon me in a ring of blessing, until I pushed through it with some rough epithet. In the twinkling of an eye the circle of sickly saints fell into a close column of renovated sinners, and yelled after me the characteristic south-of-Ireland curses, from the mild “Bad luck to ye!” to the more historical “The curse of Cromwell upon ye!” One crooked old lady had got close to my ear: “Shure, yer honor, I’ve been bint up like this these twinty year wid the rheumatiz, and me back’s bruk and one of me lungs is gone;” but when I shook her off she straightened up like a giantess and swore at me with as hearty a pair of respiratory organs as any Glasgow fish-wife might boast. I felt as if I had performed a miracle upon the old lady’s spine. But I nearly collapsed with laughter when I saw one mild-looking fellow, who had been limping near me with his right leg held up in a wooden crutch and his right hand apparently shrivelled beyond the power of use, holding the crutch, which he had unhitched, under his left arm and shaking the game leg and the lame fist at my back.
Our arrival at the north, however, was less ceremonious. I do not know whether our Moville beggar was the last of the mendicant Mohicans of the coast or had simply stolen a march upon the rest of his fraternity, but there he stood, a monopolist of the art: “Good luck to ye, jintlemen! Ye’re welcome to Ireland. Ye’ll give me a few pennies for luck, yer honors, won’t ye? Jist whativer ye like, jintlemen. Be good to the motherless and sivin small childer, and niver a bite to ate since yesterday mornin’. Jist whativer ye like, jintlemen.” Our first Old-World beggar had caught us in the tide of good nature, and the pennies soon grew to shillings. It was our first experience, and we were on the “Green Isle.” We learned to be wiser before we had gone much farther, and by the time we left the island we felt as if we could throttle every beggar we met.
“How long have you been begging?” I asked the Moville suppliant.
“I began wid me mother, sir, soon after I was born.”
“And do you never work?”
“Work, is it? Shure, sir, I was niver educated to it. And there’s too many people working already, sir.”