‘The poorhouse!’ (firing up); ‘I'd rather die than go there! I'd rather lie down under the snow at the side of the road and die! But sure the neighbours will help me. There isn't one 'ill refuse me an air of the fire or a night's lodging, or maybe a bit and sup of an odd time. And you're going to give me something yourself, my lady, avourneen, you are! Don't I see it in yer face? You're going to bring out the dust of dry tay and the grain of sugar and the couple o' coppers to the poor old granny. Ah yes! And maybe the sarvant-maids will have an ould cast petticoat to throw to her, for to keep the life in her ould carcase this perishing day.’
Before the famine of 1846-7, which brought about a change in the food of the peasantry, systematic begging was the annual custom. Potatoes were then the sole food of the working-classes, and the farmers paid their labourers by allowances of potato-ground (half or quarter acres), with seed to till it. Money, therefore, was little in circulation among the lower orders. In the interval between the consumption of the old potatoes and the coming in of the new—expressively known as ‘the bitter six weeks’—there were occasionally great privation and distress. Whole families turning out of their cabin and leaving it with locked door, might at this time be seen trooping along the roads—the father away ‘harvesting’ or getting work where he could. As they went along, stopping at every cabin on their route, a few potatoes would be handed to them—less or more, according as the stock of the donors was holding out—so that by nightfall the bag on the mother's back would have increased to sufficient proportions to furnish a good meal for the family. And thus they continued to live until the new potatoes were fit to dig, when the cabin-door was unlocked, and plenty once more the order of the day.
The charity of the poor to the poor is very touching, and nowhere do we see more of this than in Ireland. The people are naturally good-natured and full of kindly impulses; and they attach moreover, a superstitious, almost religious value to the blessing of the poor, with an equal dread of their curse.
A fatal instance of the latter feeling occurred near Limerick some years since.
A young man fell in love with a girl who did not return his affection; telling him plainly that it was useless to persevere, as she never could care for him. He took his disappointment so much to heart that he fled the country and went off to America.
Maddened with rage and despair at the loss of her only son—the darling of her heart and her sole support, for she was a widow—the bereaved mother went straight from the ship that took away her boy, to the young woman's house. Kneeling down on the threshold, and stretching her arms to heaven with frantic gesticulation, she called down its vengeance upon her trembling hearer, pouring forth a torrent of imprecations upon her head.
By the broken heart of her son—by the widow's hearth made desolate—by the days and nights of lonely misery before her, she cursed the girl! And the latter, appalled by her bitter eloquence, and superstitiously convinced that those awful curses would ‘cleave to her like a garment,’ never rallied from the terror and the shock to her nerves of this vindictive outbreak. She went into a decline, haunted by the woman's dreadful words; and her death confirmed the popular belief.
To return to our subject. Although the use of Indian meal and griddle-bread as articles of food in place of the exclusive potato, together with increased wages and the payment of labour in cash instead of kind, have abolished the annual begging migrations, mendicants still abound. The tourist season brings them out, as numerous as the flies in summer, and equally troublesome. A party of English clergymen visiting Killarney were pestered, as most travellers are there, by beggars. These reverend gentlemen had, for greater convenience, adopted the usual tourist costume, with the exception of one who belonged to the ultra High Church party, and retained his clerical garb in all its strictness. His dress caused him to be mistaken by the peasantry wherever he went for a Roman Catholic priest; and he was not a little startled when, in Tralee, a girl flung herself down on her knees before him in the muddy street to ask his blessing. The abject obeisance of the people to their priests in those days, was an unaccustomed sight to an English clergyman.
The traveller in question soon became accustomed to the position, and used it for the benefit of his party. Tormented on one occasion by the importunities of a crowd of beggars who followed them, he suddenly stopped. Drawing a line across the road with his stick, he cried to the clamorous troop: ‘Pass that mark, and the curse of the priest will be upon you!’ All fled in a moment!
Another time the same individual utilised the mistake in the cause of humanity. The party were travelling on a jaunting-car, and going up a steep hill, the driver was flogging his horse unmercifully.