For all this I blame the system rather than the servant; and it is quite odd how Biddy accommodates herself to every modification of system in every house she goes to. The only thing she cannot bear is to hear her country abused; even a jest at its expense will send the blood mounting to her cheek; and some years ago (for Biddy and I are old acquaintances) I used to tease her most unmercifully on that head. There is nothing elevates the Irish peasant so highly in my esteem as his earnest love for his country when absent from it. Your well-bred Irishman, in nine cases out of ten, looks disconcerted when you allude to his country, and with either a brogue or a tone, an oily, easy, musical swing of the voice, which is never lost, begs to inquire “how you knew he was Irish?” and has sometimes the audacity to remark, “that people cannot help their misfortunes.”
But the peasant-born have none of this painful affectation. Hear Biddy when challenged as to her country: the questioner is a lady.
“Thrue for ye, madam, I am Irish, sure, and my people before me, God be praised for it! I’d be long sorry to disgrace my counthry, my lady. Fine men and women stays in it and comes out of it, the more’s the pity—that last, I mane; it’s well enough for the likes of me to lave it; I could do it no good. But, as to the gentry, the sod keeps them, and sure they might keep on the sod! Ye needn’t be afraid of me, my lady; I scorn to disgrace my counthry; I’m not afraid of my character, or work—it’s all I have to be proud of in the wide world.”
How much more respect does this beget in every right-thinking mind, than the mean attempt to conceal a fact of which we all, as well as poor Biddy, have a right to be proud! The greatest hero in the world was unfortunate, but he was not less a hero; the most highly favoured country in the world has been in the same predicament, but it is not less a great country.
Biddy’s reply, however, to any one in an inferior grade of society, is very different.
“Is it Irish?—to be sure I am. Do ye think I’m going to deny my counthry, God bless it! Throth and it’s myself that is, and proud of that same. Irish! what else would I be, I wonder?”
Poor Biddy! her life has been one long-drawn scene of incessant, almost heart-rending labour. From the time she was eight years old, she earned her own bread; and any, ignorant of the wild spirit-springing outbursts of glee, that might almost be termed “the Irish epidemic,” would wonder how it was that Biddy retained her habitual cheerfulness, to say nothing of the hearty laughter she indulges in of an evening, and the Irish jig she treats the servants to at the kitchen Christmas merry-making.
Last Christmas, indeed, Biddy was not so gay as usual. Our pretty housemaid had for two or three years made it a regular request that Biddy should put her own wedding ring in the kitchen pudding—I do not know why, for Jessie never had the luck to find it in her division. But so it was. A merry night is Christmas eve in our cheerful English homes—The cook puffed out with additional importance, weighing her ingredients according to rule, for “a one-pound or two-pound pudding;” surveying her larded turkey, and pronouncing upon the relative merits of the sirloin which is to be “roast for the parlour,” and “the ribs” that are destined for the kitchen; although she has a great deal to do, like all English cooks she is in a most sweet temper, because there is a great deal to eat; and she exults over the “dozens” of mince pies, the soup, the savoury fish, the huge bundles of celery, and the rotund barrel of oysters, in a manner that must be seen to be understood. The housemaid is equally busy in her department. The groom smuggles in the mistletoe, which the old butler slyly suspends from one of the bacon hooks in the ceiling, and then kisses the cook beneath. The green-grocer’s boy gets well rated for not bringing “red berries on all the holly.” The evening is wound up with potations, “pottle deep,” of ale and hot elderberry wine, and a loud cheer echoes through the house when the clock strikes twelve. Poor must the family be, who have not a few pounds of meat, a few loaves of bread, and a few shillings, to distribute amongst some old pensioners on Christmas eve.
In our small household, Biddy has been a positive necessary for many Christmas days, and as many Christmas eves. She was never told to come—it was an understood thing. Biddy rang the gate bell every twenty-fourth of December, at six o’clock, and even the English cook returned her national salutation of “God save all here,” with cordiality.
Jessie, as I have said, is her great ally; I am sure she has found her at least a score of husbands, in the tea cups, in as many months.