Poor Biddy had never been so rich before in all her life; but that did not console her for the sentence passed upon her protegé, and it was a long time before she was restored to her usual spirits. She flagged and pined; and when the spring began to advance a little, and the sun to shine, her misery became quite troublesome, her continual wail being “for the poor sinful craythur who was shut up among stone walls, and would be sure to come out worse than she went in!”
The old cook lived to grow thoroughly ashamed of the reproaches she cast on Biddy, and Jessie shows her off on all occasions as a specimen of an Irish Washerwoman.
Quick Senses of the Arab.—Their eyesight is peculiarly sharp and keen. Almost before I could on the horizon discern more than a moving speck, my guides would detect a stranger, and distinguish upon a little nearer approach, by his garb and appearance, the tribe to which he belonged.—Wellsted’s City of the Caliphs.
THE IRISH IN 1644:
AS DESCRIBED BY A FRENCHMAN OF THAT PERIOD.
We are indebted to our talented countryman, Crofton Croker, for the translation of the tour of a French traveller, M. de la Boullaye Le Gouz, in Ireland in 1644. Its author journeyed from Dublin to the principal cities and towns in Ireland, and sketches what he saw in a very amusing manner. The value of the publication, however, is greatly enhanced by the interesting notes appended to it by Mr Croker and some of his friends; and as the work is less known in Ireland than it should be, we extract from it the Frenchman’s sketch of the habits and customs of the Irish people as they prevailed two centuries back, in the belief that they will be acceptable to our readers.
“Ireland, or Hibernia, has always been called the Island of Saints, owing to the number of great men who have been born there. The natives are known to the English under the name of Iriche, to the French under that of Hibernois, which they take from the Latin, or of Irois, from the English, or Irlandois from the name of the island, because land signifies ground. They call themselves Ayrenake, in their own language, a tongue which you must learn by practice, because they do not write it; they learn Latin in English characters, with which characters they also write their own language; and so I have seen a monk write, but in such a way as no one but himself could read it.
Saint Patrick was the apostle of this island, who according to the natives blessed the land, and gave his malediction to all venomous things; and it cannot be denied that the earth and the timber of Ireland, being transported, will contain neither serpents, worms, spiders, nor rats, as one sees in the west of England and in Scotland, where all particular persons have their trunks and the boards of their floors of Irish wood; and in all Ireland there is not to be found a serpent or toad.