HUMOURS OF
: IRISH LIFE :

Drawn by]	[Geo. Morrow
Frank Webber wins the wager

HUMOURS
OF IRISH LIFE

WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY CHARLES L. GRAVES, M.A.

NEW YORK:
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Printed by The
Educational Company
of Ireland Limited
at The Talbot Press
Dublin

Introduction.

The first of the notable humorists of Irish life was William Maginn, one of the most versatile, as well as brilliant of Irish men of letters.

He was born in Cork in 1793, and was a classical schoolmaster there in early manhood, having secured the degree of LL.D. at Trinity College, Dublin, when only 23 years of age. The success in “Blackwood’s Magazine” of some of his translations of English verse into the Classics induced him, however, to give up teaching and to seek his fortunes as a magazine writer and journalist in London, at a time when Lamb, De Quincey, Lockhart and Wilson gave most of their writings to magazines.

Possessed of remarkable sparkle and finish as a writer, considering with what little effort and with what rapidity he poured out his political satires in prose and verse, and his rollicking magazine sketches, it was no wonder that he leaped into popularity at a bound. He was the original of the Captain Shandon of Pendennis and though Thackeray undoubtedly attributed to him a political venality of which he was never guilty, whilst describing him during what was undoubtedly the latter and least reputable period in his career, it is evident that he considered Maginn to be, as he undoubtedly was, a literary figure of conspicuous accomplishment and mark in the contemporary world of letters.

Amongst his satiric writings, his panegyric of Colonel Pride may stand comparison even with Swift’s most notable philippics; whilst his Sir Morgan O’Doherty was the undoubted ancestor of Maxwell’s and Lever’s hard drinking, practical joking Irish military heroes, and frequently appears as one of the speakers in Professor Wilson’s “Noctes Ambrosianae,” of which the doctor was one of the mainstays.

Besides his convivial song of “St. Patrick,” his “Gathering of the Mahonys,” and his “Cork is an Eden for you, Love, and me,” written by him as genuine “Irish Melodies,” to serve as an antidote to what he called the finicking Bacchanalianism of Moore, he contributed, as Mr. D. J. O’Donoghue conclusively proves, several stories, including “Daniel O’Rourke,” printed in this volume, to Crofton Croker’s “Fairy Legends and Traditions of Ireland,” first published anonymously in 1825—a set of Folk Tales full of a literary charm which still makes them delightful reading. For just as Moore took Irish airs, touched them up and partnered them with lyrics to suit upper class British and Irish taste, so Croker gathered his Folk Tales from the Munster peasantry with whom he was familiar and, assisted by Maginn and others, gave them exactly that form and finish needful to provide the reading public of his day with an inviting volume of fairy lore.

Carleton and the brothers John and Michael Banim, besides Samuel Lover, whose gifts are treated of elsewhere in this introduction, followed with what Dr. Douglas Hyde rightly describes as Folk Lore of “an incidental and highly manipulated type.”

A more genuine Irish storyteller was Patrick Kennedy, twice represented in this volume, whose “Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celt” and “Fireside Stories of Ireland” were put down by him much as he heard them as a boy in his native county of Wexford, where they had already passed with little change in the telling from the Gaelic into the peculiar Anglo-Irish local dialect which is markedly West Saxon in its character.

His lineal successor as a Wexford Folklorist is Mr. P. J. McCall, one of whose stories, “Fionn MacCumhail and the Princess” we reproduce, and a woman Folk tale teller, Miss B. Hunt, adds to our indebtedness to such writers by her recently published and delightful Folk Tales of Breffny from which “McCarthy of Connacht” has been taken for these pages.

We have also the advantage of using Dr. Hyde’s “The Piper and the Puca,” a foretaste, we believe, of the pleasure in store for our readers in the volume of Folk Tales he is contributing to “Every Irishman’s Library” under the engaging title of “Irish Saints and Sinners.”

In a survey of the Anglo-Irish humorous novel of recent times, the works of Charles Lever form a convenient point of departure, for with all his limitations he was the first to write about Irish life in such a way as to appeal widely and effectively to an English audience. We have no intention of dwelling upon him at any length—he belongs to an earlier generation—but between him and his successors there are points both of resemblance and of dissimilarity sufficient to make an interesting comparison. The politics and social conditions of Lever’s time are not those of the present, but the spirit of Lever’s Irishman, though with modifications, is still alive to-day.

Lever had not the intensity of Carleton, or the fine humanity of Kickham, but he was less uncompromising in his use of local colour, and he was, as a rule, far more cheerful. He had not the tender grace or simplicity of Gerald Griffin, and never wrote anything so moving or beautiful as “The Collegians,” which will form a special volume of this Library, but he surpassed him in vitality, gusto, exuberance and knowledge of the world.

Overrated in the early stages of his career, Lever paid the penalty of his too facile triumphs in his lifetime, and his undoubted talents have latterly been depreciated on political as well as artistic grounds. His heroes were drawn, with few exceptions, from the landlord class or their faithful retainers. The gallant Irish officers, whose Homeric exploits he loved to celebrate, held commissions in the British army. Lever has never been popular with Nationalist politicians, though, as a matter of fact no one ever exhibited the extravagance and recklessness of the landed gentry in more glaring colours. And he is anathema to the hierophants of the Neo-Celtic Renascence on account of his jocularity. There is nothing crepuscular about Lever; you might as well expect to find a fairy in a railway station.

Again, Lever never was and never could be the novelist of literary men. He was neither a scholar nor an artist; he wrote largely in instalments; and in his earlier novels was wont to end a chapter in a manner that rendered something like a miracle necessary to continue the existence of the hero: “He fell lifeless to the ground, the same instant I was felled to the earth by a blow from behind, and saw no more.” In technique and characterisation his later novels show a great advance, but if he lives, it will be by the spirited loosely-knit romances of love and war composed in the first ten years of his literary career. His heroes had no scruples in proclaiming their physical advantages and athletic prowess; Charles O’Malley, that typical Galway miles gloriosus, introduces himself with ingenuous egotism in the following passage:

“I rode boldly with fox-hounds; I was about the best shot within twenty miles of us; I could swim the Shannon at Holy Island; I drove four-in-hand better than the coachman himself; and from finding a hare to cooking a salmon, my equal could not be found from Killaloe to Banagher.”

The life led by the Playboys of the West (old style) as depicted in Lever’s pages was one incessant round of reckless hospitality, tempered by duels and practical joking, but it had its justification in the family annals of the fire-eating Blakes and Bodkins and the records of the Connaught Circuit. The intrepidity of Lever’s heroes was only equalled by their indiscretion, their good luck in escaping from the consequences of their folly, and their susceptibility. His womenfolk may be roughly divided into three classes; sentimental heroines, who sighed, and blushed and fainted on the slightest provocation; buxom Amazons, like Baby Blake; and campaigners or adventuresses. But the gentle, sentimental, angelic type predominates, and finds a perfect representative in Lucy Dashwood.

When Charles O’Malley was recovering from an accident in the hunting field, he fell asleep in an easy-chair in the drawing-room and was awakened by the “thrilling chords of a harp”:

“I turned gently round in my chair and beheld Miss Dashwood. She was seated in a recess of an old-fashioned window; the pale yellow glow of a wintry sun at evening fell upon her beautiful hair, and tinged it with such a light as I have often since then seen in Rembrandt’s pictures; her head leaned upon the harp, and, as she struck its chords at random, I saw that her mind was far away from all around her. As I looked, she suddenly started from her leaning attitude, and, parting back her curls from her brow, she preluded a few chords, and then sighed forth, rather than sang, that most beautiful of Moore’s melodies—

‘She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps.’

Never before had such pathos, such deep utterance of feeling, met my astonished sense; I listened breathlessly as the tears fell one by one down my cheek; my bosom heaved and fell; and when she ceased, I hid my head between my hands and sobbed aloud.”

Lever’s serious heroines, apart from the fact that they could ride, did not differ in essentials from those of Dickens, and a sense of humour was no part of their mental equipment. The hated rival, the dark-browed Captain Hammersly, was distinguished by his “cold air and repelling hauteur,” and is a familiar figure in mid-Victorian romance. Lever’s sentiment, in short, is old-fashioned, and cannot be expected to appeal to a Feminist age which has given us the public school girl and the suffragist. There is no psychological interest in the relations of his heroes and heroines; Charles’s farewell to Lucy is on a par with the love speeches in “The Lyons Mail.” There is seldom any doubt as to the ultimate reunion of his lovers; we are only concerned with the ingenuity of the author in surmounting the obstacles of his own invention. He was fertile in the devising of exciting incident; he was always able to eke out the narrative with a good story or song—as a writer of convivial, thrasonic or mock-sentimental verse he was quite in the first class—and in his earlier novels his high spirits and sense of fun never failed.

In his easy-going methods he may have been influenced by the example of Dickens—the Dickens of the “Pickwick Papers”—but there is no ground for any charge of conscious imitation, and where he challenged direct comparison—in the character of Mickey Free—he succeeded in drawing an Irish Sam Weller who falls little short of his more famous Cockney counterpart. For Lever was a genuine humorist, or perhaps we should say a genuine comedian, since the element of theatricality was seldom absent. The choicest exploits of that grotesque Admirable Crichton, Frank Webber, were carried out by hoaxing, disguise, or trickery of some sort. But the scene in which Frank wins his wager by impersonating Miss Judy Macan and sings “The Widow Malone” is an admirable piece of sustained fooling: admirable, too, in its way is the rescue of the imaginary captive in the Dublin drain. As a delineator of the humours of University life, Lever combined the atmosphere of “Verdant Green” with the sumptuous upholstery of Ouida. Here, again, in his portraits of dons and undergraduates Lever undoubtedly drew in part from life, but fell into his characteristic vice of exaggeration in his embroidery. Frank Webber’s antics are amusing, but it is hard to swallow his amazing literary gifts or the contrast between his effeminate appearance and his dare-devil energy.

While “Lord Kilgobbin”—which ran as a serial in the “Cornhill Magazine” from October, 1870, to March, 1872—was not wholly free from Lever’s besetting sin, it is interesting not only as the most thoughtful and carefully written of his novels, but on account of its political attitude. Here Lever proved himself no champion à outrance of the landlords, but was ready to admit that their joyous conviviality was too often attended by gross mismanagement of their estates. The methods of Peter Gill, the land steward, are shown to be all centred in craft and subtlety—“outwitting this man, forestalling that, doing everything by halves, so that no boon came unassociated with some contingency or other by which he secured to himself unlimited power and uncontrolled tyranny.” The sympathy extended to the rebels of ’98 is remarkable and finds expression in the spirited lines:—

These must have been almost the last lines Lever ever wrote, unless we accept the bitter epitaph on himself:

The bitterness of the epitaph lies in the fact that it was largely true; he had exhausted the vein of rollicking romance on which his fame and popularity rested. For the rest the charge of misrepresenting Irish life is met by so judicious a critic as the late Dr. Garnett with a direct negative:—

“He has not actually misrepresented anything, and cannot be censured for confining himself to the society which he knew; nor was his talent adapted for the treatment of such life in its melancholy and poetic aspects, even if these had been more familiar to him.”

Of the humorous Irish novelists who entered into competition with Lever for the favour of the English-speaking public in his lifetime, two claim special notice—Samuel Lover and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. Lover has always been bracketed with Lever, whom he resembled in many ways, but he was overshadowed by his more brilliant and versatile contemporary. Yet within his limited sphere he was a true humorist, and the careless, whimsical, illogical aspects of Irish character have seldom been more effectively illustrated than by the author of ‘Handy Andy,’ and ‘The Gridiron.’ Paddy, as drawn by Lover, succeeds in spite of his drawbacks, much as Brer Rabbit does in the tales of Uncle Remus. His mental processes remind one of the story of the Hungarian baron who, on paying a visit to a friend after a railway journey, complained of a bad headache, the result of sitting with his back to the engine. When his friend asked, “Why did not you change places with your vis-à-vis?” the baron replied, “How could I? I had no vis-à-vis.” Lover’s heroes “liked action, but they hated work”: the philosophy of thriftlessness is summed up to perfection in “Paddy’s Pastoral”:—

For all his kindliness Lover laid too much stress on this happy-go-lucky fecklessness to minister to Irish self-respect. His pictures of Irish life were based on limited experience; in so far as they are true, they recall and emphasise traits which many patriotic Irishmen wish to forget or eliminate. An age which has witnessed the growth of Irish Agricultural Co-operation is intolerant of a novelist who for the most part represents his countrymen as diverting idiots, and therefore we prefer to represent him in this volume by “The Little Weaver,” one of those mock heroic tales in which Irishmen have excelled from his day to that of Edmund Downey. No better example could be given of his easy flow of humour in genuine Hiberno-English or of his shrewd portraiture of such simple types of Irish peasant character.

The case of Le Fanu is peculiar. His best-known novels had no specially characteristic Irish flavour. But his sombre talent was lit by intermittent flashes of the wildest hilarity, and it was in this mood that the author of “Uncle Silas” and “Carmilla” wrote “The Quare Gandher” and “Billy Malowney’s Taste of Love and Glory,” two of the most brilliantly comic extravaganzas which were ever written by an Irishman, and which no one but an Irishman could ever have written.

There is no Salic Law in letters, and since the deaths of Lever and Le Fanu the sceptre of the realm of Irish fiction has passed to women. But the years between 1870 and 1890 were not propitious for humorists, and the admirable work of the late Miss Emily Lawless, who had already made her mark in “Hurrish” before the latter date, does not fall within the present survey. The same remark applies to Mrs. Hartley, but there is a fine sense of humour in the delicate idylls of Miss Jane Barlow, twice represented in this volume.

By far the most widely read Irish novelist between 1880 and 1900 was the late Mrs. Hungerford, the author of “Molly Bawn” and a score of other blameless romances which almost rivalled “The Rosary” in luscious sentimentality. The scenes of her stories were generally laid in Ireland, and the stories themselves were almost invariably concerned with the courtship of lovely but impecunious maidens by eligible and affluent youths. No one in Mrs. Hungerford’s novels ever seemed to have any work to do. The characters lived in a paradise of unemployment, and this possibly accounts for Mrs. Hungerford’s immense popularity in America, where even the most indolent immigrants become infected with a passion for hard work. In the quality of gush she was unsurpassed, but her good nature and her frank delight in her characters made her absurdity engaging. Sentiment was her ruling passion; she did no more than scrape the surface of Irish social life; and she had no humour but good humour. But she had not enough of literary quality to entitle her work to rank beside that of the other women writers represented in this volume.

The literary partnership of Miss Edith Somerville and Miss Violet Martin—the most brilliantly successful example of creative collaboration in our times—began with “An Irish Cousin” in 1889. Published over the pseudonyms of “Geilles Herring” and “Martin Ross,” this delightful story is remarkable not only for its promise, afterwards richly fulfilled, but for its achievement. The writers proved themselves the possessors of a strange faculty of detachment which enabled them to view the humours of Irish life through the unfamiliar eyes of a stranger without losing their own sympathy. They were at once of the life they described and outside it. They showed a laudable freedom from political partisanship; a minute familiarity with the manners and customs of all strata of Irish Society; an unerring instinct for the “sovran word;” a perfect mastery of the Anglo-Irish dialect; and an acute yet well-controlled sense of the ludicrous. The heroine accurately describes the concourse on the platform of a small country station as having “all the appearance of a large social gathering or conversazione, the carriages being filled, not by those who were starting, but by their friends who had come to see them off.” When she went to a county ball in Cork she discovered to her dismay that all her partners were named either Beamish or Barrett:—

“Had it not been for Willy’s elucidation of its mysteries, I should have thrown away my card in despair. ‘No; not him. That’s Long Tom Beamish! It’s English Tommy you’ve to dance with next. They call him English Tommy because, when his Militia regiment was ordered to Aldershot, he said he was ‘the first of his ancestors that was ever sent on foreign service.’... I carried for several days the bruises which I received during my waltz with English Tommy. It consisted chiefly of a series of short rushes, of so shattering a character that I at last ventured to suggest a less aggressive mode of progression. ‘Well,’ said English Tommy confidentially, ‘ye see, I’m trying to bump Katie,’ pointing to a fat girl in blue. ‘She’s my cousin, and we’re for ever fighting.’”

As a set-off to this picture of the hilarious informality of high life in Cork twenty-five years ago, there is a wonderful study of a cottage interior, occupied by a very old man, his daughter-in-law, three children, two terriers, a cat, and a half-plucked goose. The conversation between Willy Sarsfield—who foreshadows Flurry Knox in “Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.” by his mingled shrewdness and naiveté—and Mrs. Sweeny is a perfect piece of realism.

“Mrs. Sweeny was sitting on a kind of rough settle, between the other window and the door of an inner room. She was a stout, comfortable woman of about forty, with red hair and quick blue eyes, that roved round the cabin, and silenced with a glance the occasional whisperings that rose from the children. ‘And how’s the one that had the bad cough?’ asked Willy, pursuing his conversation with her with his invariable ease and dexterity. ‘Honor her name is, isn’t it?’—‘See, now, how well he remembers!’ replied Mrs. Sweeny. ‘Indeed, she’s there back in the room, lyin’ these three days. Faith, I think ’tis like the decline she have, Masther Willy.’—‘Did you get the Doctor to her?’ said Willy. ‘I’ll give you a ticket, if you haven’t one.’—‘Oh, indeed, Docthor Kelly’s afther givin’ her a bottle, but shure I wouldn’t let her put it into her mouth at all. God-knows what’d be in it. Wasn’t I afther throwin’ a taste of it on the fire to thry what’d it do, and Phitz! says it, and up with it up the chimbley! Faith, I’d be in dread to give it to the child. Shure, if it done that in the fire, what’d it do in her inside?—‘Well, you’re a greater fool than I thought you were,’ said Willy, politely.—‘Maybe I am, faith,’ replied Mrs. Sweeny, with a loud laugh of enjoyment. ‘But, if she’s for dyin’, the crayture, she’ll die aisier without thim thrash of medicines; and if she’s for livin’, ’tisn’t thrusting to them she’ll be. Shure, God is good, God is good——’—‘Divil a betther!’ interjected old Sweeny, unexpectedly. It was the first time he had spoken, and having delivered himself of this trenchant observation, he relapsed into silence and the smackings at his pipe.”

But the tragic note is sounded in the close of “An Irish Cousin”—Miss Martin and Miss Somerville have never lost sight of the abiding dualism enshrined in Moore’s verse “Erin, the tear and the smile in thine eyes”—and it dominates their next novel, “Naboth’s Vineyard,” published in 1891, a sombre romance of the Land League days. Three years later they reached the summit of their achievement in “The Real Charlotte,” which still remains their masterpiece, though easily eclipsed in popularity by the irresistible drollery of “Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.” To begin with, it does not rely on the appeal to hunting people which in their later work won the heart of the English sportsman. It is a ruthlessly candid study of Irish provincial and suburban life; of the squalors of middle-class households; of garrison hacks and “underbred, finespoken,” florid squireens. But secondly and chiefly it repels the larger half of the novel-reading public by the fact that two women have here dissected the heart of one of their sex in a mood of unrelenting realism. While pointing out the pathos and humiliation of the thought that a soul can be stunted by the trivialities of personal appearance, they own to having set down Charlotte Mullen’s many evil qualities “without pity.” They approach their task in the spirit of Balzac. The book, as we shall see, is extraordinarily rich in both wit and humour, but Charlotte, who cannot control her ruling passion of avarice even in a death chamber, might have come straight out of the pages of the Comédie Humaine. Masking her greed, her jealousy and her cruelty under a cloak of loud affability and ponderous persiflage, she was a perfect specimen of the fausse bonne femme. Only her cats could divine the strange workings of her mind:

“The movements of Charlotte’s character, for it cannot be said to possess the power of development, were akin to those of some amphibious thing whose strong darting course under the water is only marked by a bubble or two, and it required almost an animal instinct to note them. Every bubble betrayed the creature below, as well as the limitations of its power of hiding itself, but people never thought of looking out for these indications in Charlotte, or even suspected that she had anything to conceal. There was an almost blatant simplicity about her, a humorous rough-and-readiness which, joined to her literary culture, proved business capacity, and her dreaded temper, seemed to leave no room for any further aspect, least of all of a romantic kind.”

Yet romance of a sort was at the root of Charlotte’s character. She had been in love with Roddy Lambert, a showy, handsome, selfish squireen, before he married for money. She had disguised her tenderness under a bluff camaraderie during his first wife’s lifetime, and hastened Mrs. Lambert’s death by inflaming her suspicions of Roddy’s fidelity. It was only when Charlotte was again foiled by Lambert’s second marriage to her own niece that her love was turned to gall, and she plotted to compass his ruin.

The authors deal faithfully with Francie FitzPatrick, Charlotte’s niece, but an element of compassion mingles with their portraiture. Charlotte had robbed Francie of a legacy, and compounded with her conscience by inviting the girl to stay with her at Lismoyle. Any change was a god-send to poor Francie, who, being an orphan, lived in Dublin with another aunt, a kindly but feckless creature whose eyes were not formed to perceive dirt nor her nose to apprehend smells, and whose ideas of economy was “to indulge in no extras of soap or scrubbing brushes, and to feed her family on strong tea and indifferent bread and butter, in order that Ida’s and Mabel’s hats might be no whit less ornate than those of their neighbours.” In this dingy household Francie had grown up, lovely as a Dryad, brilliantly indifferent to the serious things of life, with a deplorable Dublin accent, ingenuous, unaffected and inexpressibly vulgar. She captivates men of all sorts: Roddy Lambert, who lunched on hot beefsteak pie and sherry; Mr. Hawkins, an amorous young soldier, who treated her with a bullying tenderness and jilted her for an English heiress; and Christopher Dysart, a scholar, a gentleman, and the heir to a baronetcy, who was ruined by self-criticism and diffidence. Francie respected Christopher and rejected him; was thrown over by Hawkins, whom she loved; and married Roddy Lambert, her motives being “poverty, aimlessness, bitterness of soul and instinctive leniency towards any man who liked her.” Francie had already exasperated Charlotte by refusing Christopher Dysart: by marrying Lambert she dealt a death-blow to her hopes and drove her into the path of vengeance.

But the story is not only engrossing as a study of vulgarity that is touched with pathos, of the vindictive jealousy of unsunned natures, of the cowardice of the selfish and the futility of the intellectually effete. It is a treasure-house of good sayings, happy comments, ludicrous incidents. When Francie returned to Dublin we read how one of her cousins, “Dottie, unfailing purveyor of diseases to the family, had imported German measles from her school.” When Charlotte, nursing her wrath, went to inform the servant at Lambert’s house of the return of her master with his new wife, the servant inquired “with cold resignation” whether it was the day after to-morrow:—

“‘It is, me poor woman, it is,’ replied Charlotte, in the tone of facetious intimacy that she reserved for other people’s servants. ‘You’ll have to stir your stumps to get the house ready for them.’—‘The house is cleaned down and ready for them as soon as they like to walk into it,’ replied Eliza Hackett, with dignity, ‘and if the new lady faults the drawing-room chimbley for not being swep, the master will know it’s not me that’s to blame for it, but the sweep that’s gone dhrilling with the Mileetia.’”

Each of the members of the Dysart family is hit off in some memorable phrase; Sir Benjamin, the old and irascible paralytic, “who had been struck down on his son’s coming of age by a paroxysm of apoplectic jealousy “; the admirable and unselfish Pamela with her “pleasant anxious voice”; Christopher, who believed that if only he could “read the ‘Field,’ and had a more spontaneous habit of cursing,” he would be an ideal country gentleman; and Lady Dysart, who was “a clever woman, a renowned solver of acrostics in her society paper, and a holder of strong opinions as to the prophetic meaning of the Pyramids.” With her “a large yet refined bonhomie” took the place of tact, but being an Englishwoman she was “constitutionally unable to discern perfectly the subtle grades of Irish vulgarity.” Sometimes the authors throw away the scenario for a whole novel in a single paragraph, as in this compressed summary of the antecedents of Captain Cursiter:

“Captain Cursiter was ‘getting on’ as captains go, and he was the less disposed to regard his junior’s love affairs with an indulgent eye, in that he had himself served a long and difficult apprenticeship in such matters, and did not feel that he had profited much by his experiences. It had happened to him at an early age to enter ecstatically into the house of bondage, and in it he had remained with eyes gradually opening to its drawbacks until, a few years before, the death of the only apparent obstacle to his happiness had brought him face to face with its realisation. Strange to say, when this supreme moment arrived, Captain Cursiter was disposed for further delay; but it shows the contrariety of human nature, that when he found himself superseded by his own subaltern, an habitually inebriated viscount, he committed the imbecility of horsewhipping him; and finding it subsequently advisable to leave his regiment, he exchanged into the infantry with the settled conviction that all women were liars.”

Nouns and verbs are the bones and sinews of style; it is in the use of epithets and adjectives that the artist is shown; and Miss Martin and Miss Somerville never make a mistake. An episode in the life of one of Charlotte’s pets—a cockatoo—is described as occurring when the bird was “a sprightly creature of some twenty shrieking summers.” We read of cats who stared “with the expressionless but wholly alert scrutiny of their race”; of the “difficult revelry” of Lady Dysart’s garden party when the men were in a hopeless minority and the more honourable women sat on a long bench in “midge-bitten dulness.” Such epithets are not decorative, they heighten the effect of the picture. Where adjectives are not really needed, Miss Martin and Miss Somerville can dispense with them altogether and yet attain a deadly precision, as when they describe an Irish beggar as “a bundle of rags with a cough in it,” or note a characteristic trait of Roddy Lambert by observing that “he was a man in whom jealousy took the form of reviling the object of his affections, if by so doing he could detach his rivals”—a modern instance of “displiceas aliis, sic ego tutus ero.” When Roddy Lambert went away after his first wife’s funeral we learn that he “honeymooned with his grief in the approved fashion.” These felicities abound on every page; while the turn of phrase of the peasant speech is caught with a fidelity which no other Irish writer has ever surpassed. When Judy Lee, a poor old woman who had taken an unconscionable time in dying was called by one of the gossips who had attended her wake “as nice a woman as ever threw a tub of clothes on the hills,” and complimented for having “battled it out well,” Norry the Boat replied sardonically:—

“Faith, thin, an’ if she did die itself she was in the want of it; sure, there isn’t a winther since her daughther wint to America that she wasn’t anointed a couple of times. I’m thinking the people th’ other side o’ death will be throuncin’ her for keepin’ them waitin’ on her this way.”

Humour is never more effective than when it emerges from a serious situation. Tragedy jostles comedy in life, and the greatest dramatists and romancers have made wonderful use of this abrupt alternation. There are many painful and diverting scenes in “The Real Charlotte,” but none in which both elements are blended so effectively as the story of Julia Duffy’s last pilgrimage. Threatened with eviction from her farm by the covetous intrigues of Charlotte, she leaves her sick bed to appeal to her landlord, and when half dead with fatigue falls in with the insane Sir Benjamin, to be driven away with grotesque insults. On her way home she calls in at Charlotte’s house, only to find Christopher Dysart reading Rossetti’s poems to Francie FitzPatrick, who has just timidly observed, in reply to her instructor’s remark that the hero is a pilgrim, “I know a lovely song called ‘The Pilgrim of Love’; of course, it wasn’t the same thing as what you were reading, but it was awfully nice, too.” This interlude is intensely ludicrous, but its cruel incongruity only heightens the misery of what has gone before and what follows.

“The Silver Fox,” which appeared in 1897, need not detain us long, though it is a little masterpiece in its way, vividly contrasting the limitations of the sport-loving temperament with the ineradicable superstitions of the Irish peasantry. Impartial as ever, the authors have here achieved a felicity of phrase to which no other writers of hunting novels have ever approached. Imagination’s widest stretch cannot picture Surtees or Mr. Nat Gould describing an answer being given “with that level politeness of voice which is the distilled essence of a perfected anger,” or comparing a fashionable Amazon with the landscape in such words as these:—

“Behind her the empty window framed a gaunt mountain peak, a lake that frittered a myriad of sparkles from its wealth of restless silver, and the gray and faint purple of the naked wood beyond it. It seemed too great a background for her powdered cheek and her upward glances at her host.”

But the atmosphere of “The Silver Fox” is sombre, and a sporting novel which is at once serious and of a fine literary quality must necessarily appeal to a limited audience. The problem is solved to perfection in “Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.,” a series of loosely-knit episodes which, after running a serial course in the “Badminton Magazine,” were republished in book form towards the close of 1899. There is only one chapter to cloud the otherwise unintermittent hilarity of the whole recital. The authors have dispensed with comment, and rely chiefly on dialogue, incident, and their intimate and precise knowledge of horses, and horse-copers of both sexes. An interested devotion to the noble animal is here shown to be the last infirmity of noble minds, for old Mrs. Knox, with the culture of a grande dame and the appearance of a refined scarecrow, went cub-hunting in a bath chair. In such a company a young sailor whose enthusiasm for the chase had been nourished by the hirelings of Malta, and his eye for points probably formed on circus posters, had little chance of making a good bargain at Drumcurran horse fair:—

“‘The fellow’s asking forty-five pounds for her,’ said Bernard Shute to Miss Sally; ‘she’s a nailer to gallop. I don’t think it’s too much.’—‘Her grandsire was the Mountain Hare,’ said the owner of the mare, hurrying up to continue her family history, ‘and he was the grandest horse in the four baronies. He was forty-two years of age when he died, and they waked him the same as ye’d wake a Christian. They had whisky and porther—and bread—and a piper in it.’—‘Thim Mountain Hare colts is no great things,’ interrupted Mr. Shute’s groom, contemptuously. ‘I seen a colt once that was one of his stock, and if there was forty men and their wives, and they after him with sticks, he wouldn’t lep a sod of turf.’—‘Lep, is it!’ ejaculated the owner in a voice shrill with outrage. ‘You may lead that mare out through the counthry, and there isn’t a fence in it that she wouldn’t go up to it as indepindent as if she was going to her bed, and your honour’s ladyship knows that dam well, Miss Knox.’—‘You want too much money for her, McCarthy,’ returned Miss Sally, with her air of preternatural wisdom. ‘God pardon you, Miss Knox! Sure a lady like you knows well that forty-five pounds is no money for that mare. Forty-five pounds!’ He laughed. ‘It’d be as good for me to make her a present to the gentleman all out as take three farthings less for her! She’s too grand entirely for a poor farmer like me, and if it wasn’t for the long, weak family I have, I wouldn’t part with her under twice the money.’—‘Three fine lumps of daughters in America paying his rent for him,’ commented Flurry in the background. ‘That’s the long, weak family.’”

The turn of phrase in Irish conversation has never been reproduced in print with greater fidelity, and there is hardly a page in the book without some characteristic Hibernianism such as “Whisky as pliable as new milk,” or the description of a horse who was a “nice, flippant jumper,” or a bandmaster who was “a thrifle fulsome after his luncheon,” or a sweep who “raised tallywack and tandem all night round the house to get at the chimbleys.” The narrative reaches its climax in the chapter which relates the exciting incidents of Lisheen races at second-hand. Major Yeates and his egregious English visitor Mr. Leigh Kelway, an earnest Radical publicist, having failed to reach the scene, are sheltering from the rain in a wayside public-house where they are regaled with an account of the races by Slipper, the dissipated but engaging huntsman of the local pack of hounds. The close of the meeting was a steeplechase in which “Bocock’s owld mare,” ridden by one Driscoll, was matched against a horse ridden by another local sportsman named Clancy, and Slipper, who favoured Driscoll, and had taken up his position at a convenient spot on the course, thus describes his mode of encouraging the mare:

“‘Skelp her, ye big brute!’ says I. ‘What good’s in ye that ye aren’t able to skelp her?’... Well, Mr. Flurry, and gintlemen,... I declare to ye when owld Bocock’s mare heard thim roars she stretched out her neck like a gandher, and when she passed me out she give a couple of grunts and looked at me as ugly as a Christian. ‘Hah!’ says I, givin’ her a couple o’ dhraws o’ th’ ash plant across the butt o’ the tail, the way I wouldn’t blind her, ‘I’ll make ye grunt!’ says I, ‘I’ll nourish ye!’ I knew well she was very frightful of th’ ash plant since the winter Tommeen Sullivan had her under a sidecar. But now, in place of havin’ any obligations to me, ye’d be surprised if ye heard the blaspheemious expressions of that young boy that was riding her; and whether it was over-anxious he was, turning around the way I’d hear him cursin’, or whether it was some slither or slide came to owld Bocock’s mare, I dunno, but she was bet up against the last obstackle but two, and before you could say ‘Shnipes,’ she was standin’ on her two ears beyant in th’ other field. I declare to ye, on the vartue of me oath, she stood that way till she reconnoithered what side Driscoll would fall, an’ she turned about then and rolled on him as cosy as if he was meadow grass!’ Slipper stopped short; the people in the doorway groaned appreciatively; Mary Kate murmured ‘The Lord save us’—‘The blood was druv out through his nose and ears,’ continued Slipper, with a voice that indicated the cream of the narration, ‘and you’d hear his bones crackin’ on the ground! You’d have pitied the poor boy.’—‘Good heavens!’ said Leigh Kelway, sitting up very straight in his chair. ‘Was he hurt, Slipper?’ asked Flurry, casually. ‘Hurt is it?’ echoed Slipper, in high scorn, ‘killed on the spot!’ He paused to relish the effect of the denouement on Leigh Kelway. ‘Oh, divil so pleasant an afthernoon ever you seen; and, indeed, Mr. Flurry, it’s what we were all sayin’, it was a great pity your honour was not there for the likin’ you had for Driscoll.’”

Leigh Kelway, it may be noted, is the lineal descendant of the pragmatic English under-secretary in “Charles O’Malley,” who, having observed that he had never seen an Irish wake, was horrified by the prompt offer of his Galway host, a notorious practical joker, to provide a corpse on the spot. But this is only one of the instances of parallelism in which the later writers though showing far greater restraint and fidelity to type, have illustrated the continuance of temperamental qualities which Lever and his forerunner Maxwell—the author of “Wild Sports of the West”—portrayed in a more extravagant form. On the other hand it would be impossible to imagine a greater contrast than that between Lever’s thrasonical narrator heroes and Major Yeates, R.M., whose fondness for sport is allied to a thorough consciousness of his own infirmities as a sportsman. There is no heroic figure in “Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.,” but the characters are all lifelike, and at least half-a-dozen—“Flurry” Knox, his cousin Sally, and his old grandmother, Mrs. Knox, of Aussolas, Slipper, Mrs. Cadogan, and the incomparable Maria—form as integral a part of our circle of acquaintance as if we had known them in real life. “The Real Charlotte” is a greater achievement, but the R.M. is a surer passport to immortality.

The further instalment of “Experiences,” published a few years later did not escape the common lot of sequels. They were brilliantly written, but one was more conscious of the excellence of the manner than in any of their other works. The two volumes of short stories and sketches published in 1903 and 1906 under the titles of “All on the Irish Shore” and some “Irish Yesterdays” respectively show some new and engaging aspects of the genius of the collaborators. There is a chapter called “Children of the Captivity,” in which the would-be English humorist’s conception of Irish humour is dealt with faithfully—as it deserves to be. The essay is also remarkable for the passage in which they set down once and for all the true canons for the treatment of dialect. Pronunciation and spelling, as they point out, are, after all, of small account in its presentment:—

“The vitalising power is in the rhythm of the sentence, the turn of phrase, the knowledge of idiom, and of, beyond all, the attitude of mind.... The shortcoming is, of course, trivial to those who do not suffer because of it, but want of perception of word and phrase and turn of thought means more than mere artistic failure, it means want of knowledge of the wayward and shrewd and sensitive minds that are at the back of the dialect. The very wind that blows softly over brown acres of bog carries perfumes and sounds that England does not know; the women digging the potato-land are talking of things that England does not understand. The question that remains is whether England will ever understand.”

The hunting sketches in these volumes include the wonderful “Patrick Day’s Hunt,” which is a masterpiece in the high bravura of the brogue. Another is noticeable for a passage on the affection inspired by horses. When Johnny Connolly heard that his mistress was driven to sell the filly he had trained and nursed so carefully, he did not disguise his disappointment:

“‘Well, indeed, that’s too bad, miss,’ said Johnny comprehendingly. ‘There was a mare I had one time, and I sold her before I went to America. God knows, afther she went from me, whenever I’d look at her winkers hanging on the wall I’d have to cry. I never seen a sight of her till three years afther that, afther I coming home. I was coming out o’ the fair at Enniscar, an’ I was talking to a man an’ we coming down Dangan Hill, and what was in it but herself coming up in a cart! An’ I didn’t look at her, good nor bad, nor know her, but sorra bit but she knew me talking, an’ she turned into me with the cart. ‘Ho, ho, ho!’ says she, and she stuck her nose into me like she’d be kissing me. Be dam, but I had to cry. An’ the world wouldn’t stir her out o’ that till I’d lead her on meself. As for cow nor dog nor any other thing, there’s nothing would rise your heart like a horse!’”

And if horses are irresistible, so are Centaurs. That is the moral to be drawn from “Dan Russel the Fox,” the latest work from the pen of Miss Somerville and Miss Martin, in which the rival claims of culture and foxhunting are subjected to a masterly analysis.

The joint authors of the “R.M.” have paid forfeit for achieving popularity by being expected to repeat their first resounding success. Happily the pressure of popular demand has not impaired the artistic excellence of their work, though we cannot help thinking that if they had been left to themselves they might have given us at least one other novel on the lines of “The Real Charlotte.” Their later work, again, has been subjected to the ordeal, we do not say of conscious imitation, but of comparison with books which would probably have never been written or would have been written on another plan, but for the success of the “R.M.” To regard this rivalry as serious would be, in the opinion of the present writer, an abnegation of the critical faculty. But we have not yet done with Irish women humorists. Miss Eleanor Alexander, the daughter of the Poet Archbishop of Armagh and his poet wife has given us in her “Lady Anne’s Walk,” a volume of a genre as hard to define as it has been easy to welcome, at times delicately allusive, now daringly funny—an interblending of tender reminiscences and lively fancy, reminding us perhaps most of old Irish music itself with its sweet, strange and sudden changes of mood. Humorous contrasts of the kind will be found in the chapter entitled “Old Tummus and the Battle of Scarva,” printed in these pages.

Another woman contestant for humorous literary honours was the late Miss Charlotte O’Conor Eccles, represented in this volume by the moving story of “King William.” Her “Rejuvenation of Miss Semaphore” and “A Matrimonial Lottery” achieved popularity by their droll situations and exuberant fun, but her “Aliens of the West” contained work of much finer quality. She lets us behind the shutters of Irish country shop life in a most convincing manner, and the characters drawn from her Toomevara are as true to type as those of Miss Barlow. The disillusionment of Molly Devine “The Voteen,” with her commonplace, not to say vulgar surroundings, on her return from the convent school with its superior refinements, her refusal to marry so-called eligible, but to her, repulsive suitors, encouraged by her mother and stepfather and her final resolve to become a nun in order to escape further persecution of the kind, is told with convincing poignancy. A variant of this theme is treated with even more power and pathos in “Tom Connolly’s Daughter,” a story which we should like to see reprinted in separate form as it sets one thinking furiously, and its general circulation might do much to correct the love and marriage relations between young people in provincial Ireland.

And yet a final name has to be added to the long roll of Irishwomen who have won distinction as writers of fiction, beginning with Miss Edgeworth whose Irish writings will receive separate treatment in a volume in “Every Irishman’s Library” at the hands of Mr. Malcolm Cotter Seton. Championed by Canon Hannay himself, who furnishes a genial, whimsical, provocative introduction to her “The Folk of Furry Farm,” Miss Purdon there describes what, from the point of view of romance, is a new part of Ireland, for West Leinster is a land more familiar to fox-hunters than to poets. Miss Purdon has plenty of independence, but it is not the frigid impartiality of the student who contemplates the vagaries and sufferings of human nature like a connoisseur or collector. She shows her detachment by giving us a faithful picture of Irish peasant society without ever once breathing a syllable of politics, or remotely alluding to the equipment and machinery of modern life. The dramatis personæ are all simple folk, most of them poor; the entire action passes within a radius of a few miles from a country village; and only on one occasion, and at second hand do we catch so much as a glimpse of “the quality.” Throughout, Miss Purdon relies on the turn of the phrase to give the spirit of the dialect, and uses only a minimum of phonetic spelling.

That is the true and artistic method. But Miss Purdon is much more than a collector or coiner of picturesque and humorous phrases. She has a keen eye for character, a genuine gift of description and a vein of pure and unaffected sentiment; indeed, her whole volume is strangely compounded of mirth and melancholy, though the dominant impression left by its perusal is one of confidence in the essential kindliness of Irish nature, and the goodness and gentleness of Irish women.

But so far, the only formidable competitor Miss Martin and Miss Somerville have encountered is the genial writer who chooses to veil his identity under the freakish pseudonym of “George A. Birmingham.” Canon Hannay—for there can be no longer any breach of literary etiquette in alluding to him by his real name—had already made his mark as a serious or semi-serious observer of the conflicting tendencies, social and political, of the Ireland of to-day before he diverged into the paths of fantastic and frivolous comedy. “The Seething Pot,” “Hyacinth,” and “Benedict Kavanagh” are extremely suggestive and dispassionate studies of various aspects of the Irish temperament, but it is enough for our present purpose to note the consequences of a request addressed to Canon Hannay by two young ladies somewhere about the year 1907 that he would “write a story about treasure buried on an island.” The fact is recorded in the dedication of “Spanish Gold,” his response to the appeal, and the first of that series of jocund extravaganzas which have earned for him the gratitude of all who regard amusement as the prime object of fiction.

The contrast between his methods and those of the joint authors discussed above is apparent at every turn. He maintains the impartiality which marked his serious novels in his treatment of all classes of the community, but it is the impartiality not of a detached and self-effacing observer, but of a genial satirist. His knowledge of the Ireland that he knows is intimate and precise, and is shown by a multiplicity of illuminating details and an effective use of local colour. But the co-operation of non-Irish characters is far more essential to the development of his plots than in the case of the novels of Miss Somerville and Miss Martin. The mainspring of their stories is Irish right through. Canon Hannay depends on a situation which might have occurred just as well in England or America, while employing the conditions of Irish life to give it a characteristic twist or series of twists. Even his most notable creation, the Reverend Joseph John Meldon, is too restlessly energetic to be an altogether typical Irishman, to say nothing of his unusual attitude in politics: “Nothing on earth would induce me to mix myself up with any party.” An Irishman of immense mental activity, living in Ireland, and yet wholly unpolitical is something of a freak. Again, while the tone of his books is admirably clean and wholesome, and while his frankly avowed distaste for the squalors of the problem novel will meet with general sympathy, there is no denying that his treatment of the “love interest” is for the most part perfunctory or even farcical. Again, in regard to style, he differs widely from the authors of the “R.M.” Their note is a vivid conciseness; his the easy charm of a flowing pen, always unaffected, often picturesque and even eloquent, never offending, but seldom practising the art of omission.

But it is ungrateful to subject to necessarily damaging comparisons an author to whom we owe the swift passage of so many pleasant hours. It might be hard to find the exact counterpart of “J.J.” in the flesh, but he is none the less an unforgettable person, this athletic, exuberant, unkempt curate, unscrupulous but not unprincipled, who lied fluently, not for any mean purpose, but for the joy of mystification, or in order to carry out his plans, or justify his arguments. His strange friendship with Major Kent, a retired English officer, a natty martinet, presents no difficulties on the principle of extremes meeting, and thus from the start we are presented with the spectacle of the reluctant but helpless Major, hypnotised by the persuasive tongue of the curate, and dragged at his heels into all sorts of grotesque and humiliating adventures, and all for the sake of a quiet life. For “J.J.’s” methods, based, according to his own account, on careful observation and a proper use of the scientific imagination, involve the assumption by his reluctant confederate of a succession of entirely imaginary roles.

But if “J.J.” was a trying ally, he was a still more perplexing antagonist, one of his favourite methods of “scoring off” an opponent being to represent him to be something other than he really was to third persons. When the process brings the curate and the Major into abrupt conflict with two disreputable adventurers, he defends resort to extreme methods on grounds of high morality. Burglary, theft and abduction become the simple duty of every well-disposed person when viewed as a necessary means of preventing selfish, depraved and fundamentally immoral people from acquiring wealth which the well-disposed might otherwise secure.

“J.J.’s” crowning achievement is his conquest of Mr. Willoughby, the Chief Secretary, by a masterly vindication of his conduct on the lines of Pragmatism: “a statement isn’t a lie if it proves itself in actual practice to be useful—it’s true.” “J.J.” only once meets his match—in Father Mulcrone, the parish priest of Inishmore, who sums up the philosophy of government in his criticism of Mr. Willoughby’s successor: “A fellow that starts off by thinking himself clever enough to know what’s true and what isn’t will do no good for Ireland. A simple-hearted innocent kind of man has a better chance.”

Needless to say, the rival treasure-hunters, both of them rogues, are bested at all points by the two padres, while poetic justice is satisfied by the fact that the treasure falls into the adhesive hands of the poor islanders, and “J.J.’s” general integrity is fully re-established in the epilogue, where, transplanted to an English colliery village, he devotes his energies to the conversion of agnostics, blasphemers and wife-beaters.

The extravagance of the plot is redeemed by the realism of the details; by acute sidelights on the tortuous workings of the native mind, with its strange blending of shrewdness and innocence; by faithful reproductions of the talk of those “qui amant omnia dubitantius loqui” and habitually say “it might” instead of “yes.” And there are delightful digressions on the subject of relief works, hits at the Irish-speaking movement, pungent classifications of the visitors to the wild West of Ireland, and now, and again, in the rare moments when the author chooses to be serious, passages marked by fine insight and sympathy. Such is the picture of Thomas O’Flaherty Pat, the patriarch of the treasure island:

“An elderly man and five out of the nine children resident on the island stood on the end of the pier when Meldon and the Major landed. The man was clad in a very dirty white flannel jacket and a pair of yellowish flannel trousers, which hung in a tattered fringe round his naked feet and ankles. He had a long white beard and grey hair, long as a woman’s, drawn straight back from his forehead. The hair and beard were both unkempt and matted. But the man held himself erect and looked straight at the strangers through great dark eyes. His hands, though battered and scarred with toil were long and shapely. His face had a look of dignity, of a certain calm and satisfied superiority. Men of this kind are to be met with here and there among the Connacht peasantry. They are in reality children of a vanishing race, of a lost civilisation, a bygone culture. They watch the encroachments of another race and new ideas with a sort of sorrowful contempt. It is as if understanding and despising what they see around them, they do not consider it worth while to try to explain themselves; as if, possessing a wisdom of their own, an æsthetic joy of which the modern world knows nothing, they are content to let both die with them rather than attempt to teach them to men of a wholly different outlook upon life.”

The element of extravaganza is more strongly marked in the plot of “The Search Party,” which deals with the kidnapping of a number of innocent people by an anti-militant anarchist who has set up a factory of explosives in the neighbourhood of Ballymoy. “J.J.” does not appear in propriâ personâ, but most of his traits are to be found in Dr. O’Grady, an intelligent but happy-go-lucky young doctor. The most attractive person in the story, however, is Lord Manton, a genially cynical peer with highly original views on local government and the advantages of unpopularity. Thus, when he did not want Patsy Devlin, the drunken smith, to be elected inspector of sheep-dipping, he strongly supported his candidature for the following reasons:—

“There’s a lot of stupid talk nowadays about the landlords having lost all their power in the country. It’s not a bit true. They have plenty of power, more than they ever had, if they only knew how to use it. All I have to do if I want a particular man not to be appointed to anything is to write a strong letter in his favour to the Board of Guardians or the County Council, or whatever body is doing the particular job that happens to be on hand at the time. The League comes down on my man at once, and he hasn’t the ghost of a chance.”

Excellent, too, is the digression on the comparative commonness of earls in Ireland, where untitled people tend to disappear while earls survive, though they are regarded much as ordinary people. Canon Hannay makes great play as usual with the humours of Irish officialdom, and his obiter dicta on the mental outlook of police officers are shrewd as well as entertaining. District-Inspector Goddard had undoubted social gifts, but he was an inefficient officer, being handicapped by indolence and a great sense of humour. There is something attractive, again, about Miss Blow, the handsome, resolute, prosaic young Englishwoman whose heroic efforts to trace her vanished lover are baffled at every turn. Everybody in Ballymoy told her lies, with the result that they seemed to her heartless and cruel when in reality they wished to spare her feelings. Others of the dramatis personæ verge on caricature, but the story has many exhilarating moments.

Exhilarating, too, is “The Major’s Niece,” which is founded on an extremely improbable imbroglio. So precise and business-like a man as Major Kent was not likely to make a mistake of seven or eight years in the age of a visitor especially when the visitor happened to be his own sister’s child. However, the initial improbability may be readily condoned in view of the entertaining sequel. “J.J.” reappears in his best form, Marjorie is a most engaging tomboy, and the fun never flags for an instant. But much as we love “J.J.,” we reluctantly recognise in “The Simpkins Plot” that you can have too much of a good thing, and that a man who would be a nuisance as a neighbour in real life is in danger of becoming a bore in a novel. At the same time the digressions and irrelevancies are as good as ever. It is pleasant to be reminded of such facts as that wedding cake is invariably eaten by the Irish post office officials, or to listen to Doctor O’Donoghue on the nutrition of infants:

“You can rear a child, whether it has the whooping cough or not, on pretty near anything, so long as you give it enough of whatever it is you do give it.”

Canon Hannay excels in the conduct of an absurd or paradoxical proposition, but he needs a word of friendly caution against undue reliance on the mechanism of the practical joke. Perhaps his English cure has demoralized “J.J.,” but we certainly prefer him as he was in Inishgowlan, convinced by practical experience that he would rather do any mortal thing than try to mind a baby and make butter at the same time.

Of Canon Hannay’s later novels, two demand special attention and for widely different reasons. In “The Red Hand of Ulster,” reverting to politics—politics, moreover, of the most explosive kind—he achieved the well-nigh impossible in at once doing full justice to the dour sincerity of the Orange North, and yet conciliating Nationalist susceptibilities. In “The Inviolable Sanctuary,” he has shown that a first-rate public-school athlete, whose skill in pastime is confined to ball games cuts a sorry figure alongside of a chit of a girl who can handle a boat. This salutary if humiliating truth is enforced not from any desire to further Feminist principles—Canon Hannay’s attitude towards women betrays no belief in the equality of the sexes—but because he cannot be bothered with the sentimentality of conventional love-making. It may be on this account that he more than once assigns a leading role to an ingenuous young Amazon into whose ken the planet of love will not swim for another four or five years.

During the last thirty years the alleged decadence of Irish humour has been a frequent theme of pessimistic critics. Various causes have been invoked to account for the phenomenon, which, when dispassionately considered, amounted to this, that the rollicking novel of incident and adventure had died with Lever. So, for the matter of that, had novels of the “Frank Fairleigh” type, with their authors. The ascendancy of Parnell and the régime of the Land League did not make for gaiety, yet even these influences were powerless to eradicate the inherent absurdities of Irish life, and the authors of the “R.M.” entered on a career which has been a triumphal disproval of this allegation as far back as 1889. At their best they have interpreted normal Irishmen and Irishwomen, gentle and simple, with unsurpassed fidelity and sympathy. But to award them the supremacy in this genre both as realists and as writers does not detract from the success won in a different sphere by Canon Hannay. His goal is less ambitious and aim is less unfaltering, but as an improvisor of whimsical situations and an ironic commentator on the actualities of Irish life he has invented a new form of literary entertainment which has the double merit of being at once diverting and instructive.

But as we believe this volume will sufficiently show, though these three novelists have so far transcended the achievements of contemporary writers on Irish life, they are being followed at no long distance by younger writers, for whom they have helped to find a public and in whose more mature achievements they may have to acknowledge a serious literary rivalry. We have dealt with the women writers to be found in this new group. It remains for us to criticise the work of the men who belong to it.

Mr. John Stevenson, otherwise Pat Carty, whose Rhymes have been so charmingly set to music by Sir Charles Stanford, and so delightfully sung by Mr. Plunket-Greene, possesses a whimsical gift, both in prose and verse, which gives fresh evidence of the awakening of an Ulster school of humorists. His “Boy in the Country” is descriptive of a child’s companionship in the country with farmers and their wives and servants, his falling under the spell of a beautiful lady whose romance he assists like a true young cavalier, and his association with that formidable open-air imp, Jim, a little dare-devil poacher and hard swearer, who sailed his boats with strips cut from his shirt tails and could give a canting minister as good as he got, instead of cowering under his preachment. The manners and customs of the farming class in the “Nine Glens of Antrim” could not be more simply and humorously told, and when the author divagates into such sketches as “The Wise Woman and the Wise Man,” and breaks into occasional verse faithfully descriptive of his natural surroundings, he is equally delightful.

Of course, he is not as old a craftsman as Mr. Shan Bullock, whose dry drollery has given the readers of his novels and stories so much pleasure, and whose serious purpose and close observation of Northern Irish character are so well recognised by all serious students of Irish life. He is represented in the volume by “The Wee Tea-Table,” a life-like sketch taken from his “Irish Pastorals.”

Mr. Frank Mathew, whose first literary work was his biography of his illustrious grand-uncle Father Mathew, has also written some admirable stories of Irish life, which appeared in “The Idler,” and have been collected in a volume called “At the Rising of the Moon.” “The Last Race,” by which he is represented in this volume, will give our readers a good taste of his graphic quality.

Mr. Padric Colum will speak for himself on Irish fiction in his introduction to an edition of Gerald Griffin’s “Collegians,” which is to form part of this series of Irish volumes. His finely distinctive literary style and intimate knowledge of Irish peasant life so clearly exhibited in his poems, plays and stories, is shown in these pages by that remarkable sketch of “Maelshaughlinn at the Fair,” written with the elemental abandon of Synge himself.

Finally, in absolute contrast with Mr. Colum’s idealistic work, comes the humorous realism of Lynn Doyle’s pictures of the Ulster Peasantry. But their efforts to over-reach one another, their love of poaching, and their marriage operations, afford the author of “Ballygullion” a congenial field for the display of his observation, his high spirits, and his genuine sense of the ridiculous. His comedy of “The Ballygullion Creamery Society” which fitly concludes this volume, is good, hearty, wholesome fun, and we only trust, in Ireland’s best interests, that its official stamp, a wreath of shamrocks and orange lilies—is not merely an unlikely if amiable suggestion, but is yet to have its counterpart in reality.

Preface.

The fiction of which this volume consists is in part fabulous in character, in part descriptive of actual Irish life upon its lighter side.

The Heroic stories and Folk-tales are, on chronological grounds, printed early in the book and are then followed by extracts from the writings of the Irish novelists of the first half and third quarter of the 19th Century—Maginn, Lever, Lover, and LeFanu.

Then come the writers who have made their mark in recent times, such as Miss Jane Barlow, the authors of “Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.,” and Canon Hannay, and lastly those of a new school amongst whom may be named Mr. Padraic Colum, “Lynn Doyle,” and Miss K. Purdon.

This may be said to be the general order of the contents of “Humours of Irish Life.” But where artistic propriety, suggesting contrasts of local colour and changes of subject, has called for it, a strict chronological sequence has been departed from; yet enough of it remains to enable the critic to observe what we believe to be a change for the better, both in the taste and technique of these Irish stories and sketches, as time has gone by.

It remains for us to express our cordial obligations to the following authors and publishers for the use of copyright material. To Messrs. Macmillan and Miss B. Hunt for the story of “McCarthy of Connacht,” from “Folk Tales of Breffny”; to Canon Hannay and Messrs. Methuen for chapters from “Spanish Gold” and “The Adventures of Dr. Whitty,” entitled “J. J. Meldon and the Chief Secretary,” and “The Interpreters”; to Mr. H. de Vere Stacpoole and Mr. Fisher Unwin for “The Meet of the Beagles,” from the novel of “Patsy”; to Miss O’Conor Eccles and Messrs. Cassell for “King William,” a story in the late Miss Charlotte O’Conor Eccles’s “Aliens of the West”; to Miss Eleanor Alexander and Mr. Edward Arnold for “Old Tummus and the Battle of Scarva,” from “Lady Anne’s Walk,” and to the same publisher and to Mr. John Stevenson for a chapter entitled “The Wise Woman” from “A Boy in the Country”; to Messrs. James Duffy and Sons for Kickham’s Story of “The Thrush and the Blackbird”; to Mr. William Percy French for “The First Lord Liftenant”; to Mr. Frank Mathew for “Their Last Race,” from his volume “At the rising of the Moon”; to Miss K. Purdon for a chapter entitled “The Game Leg,” from her novel “The Folk of Furry Farm,” and to its publishers, Messrs. James Nisbet and Co. Ltd.; to Dr. Douglas Hyde for his Folk-tale of “The Piper and the Puca”; to Martin Ross and Miss E. Œ. Somerville and Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co., for the use of two chapters—“Trinket’s Colt” and “The Boat’s Share”—from “Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.” and “Further Experiences of an Irish R.M.” respectively; to Mr. Shan Bullock for “The Wee Tea Table,” from his “Irish Pastorals”; to Miss Jane Barlow and Messrs. Hutchinson for “Quin’s Rick,” from “Doings and Dealings,” and for “A Test of Truth,” from “Irish Neighbours”; to Mr. Padraic Colum for his sketch “Maelshaughlinn at the Fair,” from his “A Year of Irish Life,” and to the publishers of the book, Messrs. Mills and Boon, Ltd.; to its author, “Lynn Doyle,” and its publishers, Maunsel & Co., for “The Ballygullion Creamery,” from “Ballygullion”; and to Mr. P. J. McCall and the proprietors of “The Shamrock” for the story “Fionn MacCumhail and the Princess.”

Finally, acknowledgment is due to the courtesy of the Proprietors and Editor of “The Quarterly Review” for leave to incorporate in the Introduction an article which appeared in the issue of that periodical for June, 1913.

CONTENTS

AUTHORS REPRESENTED

HUMOURS OF IRISH LIFE

Daniel O’Rourke.

From Crofton Croker’s “Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland.”

By Dr. Maginn (1793-1842).

People may have heard of the renowned adventures of Daniel O’Rourke, but how few are there who know that the cause of all his perils, above and below, was neither more nor less than his having slept under the walls of the Phooka’s tower. I knew the man well: he lived at the bottom of Hungry Hill. He told me his story thus:—

“I am often axed to tell it, sir, so that this is not the first time. The master’s son, you see, had come from beyond foreign parts; and sure enough there was a dinner given to all the people on the ground, gentle and simple, high and low, rich and poor. Well, we had everything of the best, and plenty of it; and we ate, and we drunk, and we danced. To make a long story short, I got, as a body may say, the same thing as tipsy almost. And so, as I was crossing the stepping-stones of the ford of Ballyasheenogh, I missed my foot, and souse I fell into the water. ‘Death alive!’ thought I, ‘I’ll be drowned now!’ However, I began swimming, swimming, swimming away for dear life, till at last I got ashore, somehow or other, but never the one of me can tell how, upon a dissolute island.

“I wandered, and wandered about there, without knowing where I wandered, until at last I got into a big bog. The moon was shining as bright as day, or your lady’s eyes, sir (with your pardon for mentioning her), and I looked east and west, and north and south, and every way, and nothing did I see but bog, bog, bog. I began to scratch me head, and sing the Ullagone—when all of a sudden the moon grew black, and I looked up, and saw something for all the world as if it was moving down between me and it, and I could not tell what it was. Down it came with a pounce, and looked at me full in the face; and what was it but an eagle? So he looked at me in the face, and says he to me, ‘Daniel O’Rourke,’ says he, ‘how do you do?’ ‘Very well, I thank you sir,’ says I; ‘I hope you’re well’; wondering out of my senses all the time how an eagle came to speak like a Christian. ‘What brings you here, Dan?’ says he. ‘Nothing at all, sir,’ says I: ‘only I wish I was safe home again.’ ‘Is it out of the island you want to go, Dan?’ says he. ‘’Tis, sir,’ says I. ‘Dan,’ says he, ‘though it is very improper for you to get drunk on Lady-day, yet, as you are a decent, sober man, who ‘tends Mass well, and never flings stones at me or mine, nor cries out after us in the fields—my life for yours,’ says he, ‘so get on my back and grip me well for fear you’d fall off, and I’ll fly you out of the bog.’ ‘I am afraid,’ says I, ‘your honour’s making game of me; for who ever heard of riding horseback on an eagle before?’ ‘’Pon the honour of a gentleman,’ says he, putting his right foot on his breast, ‘I am quite in earnest: and so now either take my offer or starve in the bog—besides, I see that your weight is sinking the stone.’

“It was true enough, as he said, for I found the stone every minute going from under me. ‘I thank your honour,’ says I, ‘for the loan of your civility; and I’ll take your kind offer.’ I therefore mounted upon the back of the eagle, and held him tight enough by the throat, and up he flew in the air like a lark. Little I knew the trick he was going to serve me. Up—up—up, dear knows how far he flew. ‘Why, then,’ said I to him—thinking he did not know the right road home—very civilly, because why? I was in his power entirely: ‘sir,’ says I, ‘please your honour’s glory, and with humble submission to your better judgment, if you’d fly down a bit, you’re now just over my cabin, and I could be put down there, and many thanks to your worship.’

“‘Arrah, Dan,’ said he, ‘do you think me a fool? Look down in the next field, and don’t you see two men and a gun? By my word it would be no joke to be shot this way, to oblige a drunken blackguard that I picked off a cowld stone in a bog.’ Well, sir, up he kept, flying, flying, and I asking him every minute to fly down, and all to no use. ‘Where in the world are you going, sir?’ says I to him. ‘Hold your tongue, Dan,’ says he: ‘mind your own business, and don’t be interfering with the business of other people.’

“At last where should we come to, but to the moon itself. Now, you can’t see it from this, but there is, or there was in my time, a reaping-hook sticking out of the side of the moon, this way’ (drawing the figure thus on the ground with the end of his stick).

“‘Dan,’ said the eagle, ‘I’m tired with this long fly; I had no notion ’twas so far.’ ‘And, my lord, sir,’ said I, ‘who in the world axed you to fly so far—was it I? did not I beg, and pray, and beseech you to stop half-an-hour ago?’ ‘There’s no use talking, Dan,’ says he; ‘I’m tired bad enough, so you must get off, and sit down on the moon until I rest myself.’ ‘Is it sit down on the moon?’ said I; ‘is it upon that little round thing, then? why, sure, I’d fall off in a minute, and be kilt and split, and smashed all to bits; you are a vile deceiver, so you are.’ ‘Not at all, Dan,’ said he; ‘you can catch fast hold of the reaping hook that’s sticking out of the side of the moon, and ‘twill keep you up.’ ‘I won’t, then,’ said I. ‘May be not,’ said he, quite quiet. ‘But if you don’t, my man, I shall just give you a shake, and one slap of my wing, and send you down to the ground, where every bone in your body will be smashed as small as a drop of dew on a cabbage-leaf in the morning.’ ‘Why, then, I’m in a fine way,’ said I to myself, ‘ever to have come along with the likes of you’; and so, giving him a hearty curse in Irish, for fear he’d know what I said, I got off his back, with a heavy heart, took hold of the reaping-hook, and sat down upon the moon, and a mighty cold seat it was, I can tell you that.

“When he had me fairly landed, he turned about on me, and said, ‘Good morning to you, Daniel O’Rourke,’ said he; ‘I think I’ve nicked you fairly now. You robbed me nest last year’ (’twas true enough for him, but how he found it out is hard to say), ‘and in return you are freely welcome to cool your heels dangling upon the moon like a cockthrow.’

“‘Is that all, and is this the way you leave me, you brute, you?’ says I. ‘You ugly, unnatural baste, and is this the way you serve me at last?’ ’Twas all to no manner of use; he spread out his great, big wings, burst out laughing, and flew away like lightning. I bawled after him to stop; but I might have called and bawled for ever, without his minding me. Away he went, and I never saw him from that day to this—sorrow fly away with him! You may be sure I was in a disconsolate condition, and kept roaring out for the bare grief, when all at once a door opened right in the middle of the moon, creaking on its hinges as if it had not been opened for a month before—I suppose they never thought of greasing ‘em, and out there walks—who do you think, but the man in the moon himself? I knew him by his bush.

“‘Good morrow to you, Daniel O’Rourke,’ says he; ‘how do you do?’ ‘Very well, thank your honour,’ said I. ‘I hope your honour’s well.’ ‘What brought you here, Dan?’ said he. So I told him how it was.

“‘Dan,’ said the man in the moon, taking a pinch of snuff, when I was done, ‘you must not stay here.’

“‘Indeed, sir,’ says I, ‘’tis much against my will I’m here at all; but how am I to go back?’ ‘That’s your business,’ said he; ‘Dan, mine is to tell you that you must not stay, so be off in less than no time.’ ‘I’m doing no harm,’ says I, ‘only holding on hard by the reaping-hook, lest I fall off.’ ‘That’s what you must not do, Dan,’ says he. ‘Pray, sir,’ says I, ‘may I ask how many you are in family, that you would not give a poor traveller lodging; I’m sure ’tis not so often you’re troubled with strangers coming to see you, for ’tis a long way.’ ‘I’m by myself, Dan,’ says he; ‘but you’d better let go the reaping hook.’ ‘And with your leave,’ says I, ‘I’ll not let go the grip, and the more you bids me, the more I won’t let go;—so I will.’ ‘You had better, Dan,’ says he again. ‘Why, then, my little fellow,’ says I, taking the whole weight of him with my eye from head to foot, ‘there are two words to that bargain; and I’ll not budge, but you may if you like.’ ‘We’ll see how that is to be,’ says he; and back he went, giving the door such a great bang after him (for it was plain he was huffed) that I thought the moon and all would fall down with it.

“Well, I was preparing myself to try strength with him, when back again he comes, with the kitchen cleaver in his hand, and without saying a word he gives two bangs to the handle of the reaping hook that was keeping me up, and whap! it came in two. ‘Good morning to you, Dan,’ says the spiteful little old blackguard, when he saw me cleanly falling down with a bit of the handle in my hand; ‘I thank you for your visit, and fair weather after you, Daniel.’ I had not time to make any answer to him, for I was tumbling over and over, and rolling, and rolling, at the rate of a fox-hunt. ‘This is a pretty pickle,’ says I, ‘for a decent man to be seen at this time of night: I am now sold fairly.’ The word was not out of my mouth when, whizz! what should fly by close to my ear but a flock of wild geese; all the way from my own bog of Ballyasheenogh, or else, how should they know me? The ould gander, who was their general, turning about his head, cried out to me, ‘Is that you, Dan?’ ‘The same,’ said I, not a bit daunted now at what he said, for I was by this time used to all kinds of bedevilment, and, besides, I knew him of ould. ‘Good morrow to you,’ says he, ‘Daniel O’Rourke; how are you in health this morning?’ ‘Very well, sir,’ says I, ‘I thank you kindly,’ drawing my breath, for I was mighty in want of some. ‘I hope your honour’s the same.’ ‘I think ’tis falling you are, Daniel,’ says he. ‘You may say that, sir,’ says I. ‘And where are you going all the way so fast?’ said the gander. So I told him how I had taken the drop, and how I came on the island, and how I lost my way in the bog, and how the thief of an eagle flew me up to the moon, and how the man in the moon turned me out. ‘Dan,’ said he, ‘I’ll save you: put out your hand and catch me by the leg, and I’ll fly you home.’

“‘Sweet is your hand in a pitcher of honey, my jewel,’ says I, though all the time I thought within myself that I don’t much trust you; but there was no help, so I caught the gander by the leg, and away I and the other geese flew after him as fast as hops.

“We flew, and we flew, and we flew, until we came right over the wide ocean. I knew it well, for I saw Cape Clear to my right hand, sticking up out of the water. ‘Ah! my lord,’ said I to the goose, for I thought it best to keep a civil tongue in my head, any way, ‘fly to land if you please.’ ‘It is impossible, you see, Dan,’ said he, ‘for a while, because, you see, we are going to Arabia.’ ‘To Arabia!’ said I; ‘that’s surely some place in foreign parts, far away. Oh! Mr. Goose: why, then, to be sure, I’m a man to be pitied among you.’ ‘Whist, whist, you fool,’ said he, ‘hold your tongue; I tell you Arabia is a very decent sort of place, as like West Carbery as one egg is like another, only there is a little more sand there.’

“Just as we were talking, a ship hove in sight, scudding so beautiful before the wind; ‘Ah! then, sir,’ said I, ‘will you drop me on the ship if you please?’ ‘We are not fair over her,’ said he. ‘We are,’ said I. ‘We are not,’ said he; ‘If I dropped you now you would go splash into the sea.’ ‘I would not,’ says I; ‘I know better than that, for it is just clean under us, so let me drop now, at once.’ ‘If you must, you must,’ said he; ‘there, take your own way,’ and he opened his claw, and, ‘deed, he was right—sure enough, I came down plump into the very bottom of the salt sea! Down to the very bottom I went, and I gave myself up then for ever, when a whale walked up to me, scratching himself after his night’s sleep, and looked me full in the face, and never the word did he say, but, lifting up his tail, he splashed me all over again with the cold, salt water till there wasn’t a dry stitch on my whole carcase; and I heard somebody saying—’twas a voice I knew, too—‘Get up, you drunken brute, off o’ that’; and with that I woke up, and there was Judy with a tub full of water which she was splashing all over me—for, rest her soul! though she was a good wife, she never could bear to see me in drink, and had a bitter hand of her own. ‘Get up,’ said she again: ‘and of all places in the parish would no place sarve your turn to lie down upon but under the ould walls of Carrigaphooka? an uneasy resting I am sure you had of it.’ And sure enough I had: for I was fairly bothered out of my senses with eagles, and men of the moons, and flying ganders, and whales driving me through bogs, and up to the moon, and down to the bottom of the green ocean. If I was in drink ten times over, long would it be before I’d lie down in the same spot again, I know that.”

Adventures of Gilla na Chreck an Gour.

(THE FELLOW IN THE GOAT SKIN).

From “Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts.”

By Patrick Kennedy (1801-1873).

(Told in the Wexford Peasant Dialect.)

Long ago a poor widow woman lived down by the iron forge near Enniscorthy, and she was so poor, she had no clothes to put on her son; so she used to fix him in the ash-hole, near the fire, and pile the warm ashes about him; and, accordingly, as he grew up, she sunk the pit deeper. At last, by hook or by crook, she got a goat-skin and fastened it round his waist, and he felt quite grand, and took a walk down the street. So, says she to him next morning, “Tom, you thief, you never done any good yet, and you six-foot high, and past nineteen; take that rope and bring me a bresna from the wood.” “Never say’t twice, mother,” says Tom; “here goes.”

When he had it gathered and tied, what should come up but a big joiant, nine-foot high, and made a lick of a club at him. Well become Tom, he jumped a-one side and picked up a ram-pike; and the first crack he gave the big fellow he made him kiss the clod. “If you have e’er a prayer,” says Tom, “now’s the time to say it, before I make brishe of you.” “I have no prayers,” says the giant, “but if you spare my life I’ll give you that club; and as long as you keep from sin you’ll win every battle you ever fight with it.”

Tom made no bones about letting him off; and as soon as he got the club in his hands he sat down on the bresna and gave it a tap with the kippeen, and says, “Bresna, I had a great trouble gathering you, and run the risk of my life for you; the least you can do is to carry me home.” And, sure enough, the wind of the word was all it wanted. It went off through the wood, groaning and cracking till it came to the widow’s door.

Well, when the sticks were all burned Tom was sent off again to pick more; and this time he had to fight with a giant with two heads on him. Tom had a little more trouble with him—that’s all; and the prayers he said was to give Tom a fife that nobody could help dancing to when he was playing it. Begonies, he made the big faggot dance home, with himself sitting on it. Well, if you were to count all the steps from this to Dublin, dickens a bit you’d ever arrive there. The next giant was a beautiful boy with three heads on him. He had neither prayers nor catechism no more nor the others; and so he gave Tom a bottle of green ointment that wouldn’t let you be burned, nor scalded, nor wounded. “And now,” says he, “there’s no more of us. You may come and gather sticks here till little Lunacy Day in harvest without giant or fairy man to disturb you.”

Well, now, Tom was prouder nor ten paycocks, and used to take a walk down the street in the heel of the evening; but some of the little boys had no more manners nor if they were Dublin jackeens, and put out their tongues at Tom’s club and Tom’s goat-skin. He didn’t like that at all, and it would be mean to give one of them a clout. At last, what should come through the town but a kind of bellman, only it’s a big bugle he had, and a huntsman’s cap on his head, and a kind of painted shirt. So this—he wasn’t a bellman, and I don’t know what to call him—bugleman, maybe—proclaimed that the King of Dublin’s daughter was so melancholy that she didn’t give a laugh for seven years, and that her father would grant her in marriage to whoever would make her laugh three times. “That’s the very thing for me to try,” says Tom; and so, without burning any more daylight, he kissed his mother, curled his club at the little boys, and set off along the yalla highroad to the town of Dublin.

At last Tom came to one of the City gates and the guards laughed and cursed at him instead of letting him through. Tom stood it all for a little time, but at last one of them—out of fun, as he said—drove his bagnet half an inch or so into his side. Tom did nothing but take the fellow by the scruff of his neck and the waistband of his corduroys and fling him into the canal. Some ran to pull the fellow out, and others to let manners into the vulgarian with their swords and daggers; but a tap from his club sent them headlong into the moat or down on the stones, and they were soon begging him to stay his hands.

So at last one of them was glad enough to show Tom the way to the Palace yard; and there was the King and the Queen, and the princess in a gallery, looking at all sorts of wrestling and sword-playing, and rinka-fadhas (long dances) and mumming, all to please the princess; but not a smile came over her handsome face.

Well, they all stopped when they seen the young giant, with his boy’s face and long, black hair, and his short, curly beard—for his poor mother couldn’t afford to buy razhurs—and his great, strong arms and bare legs, and no covering but the goat-skin that reached from his waist to his knees. But an envious, wizened basthard of a fellow, with a red head, that wished to be married to the princess, and didn’t like how she opened her eyes at Tom, came forward, and asked his business very snappishly. “My business,” says Tom, says he, “is to make the beautiful princess, God bless her, laugh three times.” “Do you see all them merry fellows and skilful swordsmen,” says the other, “that could eat you up without a grain of salt, and not a mother’s soul of ‘em ever got a laugh from her these seven years?” So the fellows gathered round Tom, and the bad man aggravated him till he told them he didn’t care a pinch of snuff for the whole bilin’ of ‘em; let ‘em come on, six at a time, and try what they could do. The King, that was too far off to hear what they were saying, asked what did the stranger want. “He wants,” says the red-headed fellow, “to make hares of your best men.” “Oh!” says the King, “if that’s the way, let one of ‘em turn out and try his mettle.” So one stood forward, with sword and pot-lid, and made a cut at Tom. He struck the fellow’s elbow with the club, and up over their heads flew the sword, and down went the owner of it on the gravel from a thump he got on the helmet. Another took his place, and another and another, and then half-a-dozen at once, and Tom sent swords, helmets, shields, and bodies rolling over and over, and themselves bawling out that they were kilt, and disabled, and damaged, and rubbing their poor elbows and hips, and limping away. Tom contrived not to kill anyone; and the princess was so amused that she let a great, sweet laugh out of her that was heard all over the yard. “King of Dublin,” says Tom, “I’ve the quarter of your daughter.” And the King didn’t know whether he was glad or sorry, and all the blood in the princess’s heart run into her cheeks.

So there was no more fighting that day, and Tom was invited to dine with the royal family. Next day Redhead told Tom of a wolf, the size of a yearling heifer, that used to be serenading (sauntering) about the walls, and eating people and cattle; and said what a pleasure it would give the King to have it killed. “With all my heart,” says Tom. “Send a jackeen to show me where he lives, and we’ll see how he behaves to a stranger.”

The princess was not well pleased, for Tom looked a different person with fine clothes and a nice green birredh over his long, curly hair; and besides, he’d got one laugh out of her. However, the King gave his consent, and in an hour and a half the horrible wolf was walking in the palace yard, and Tom a step or two behind, with his club on his shoulder, just as a shepherd would be walking after a pet lamb. The King and Queen and princess were safe up in their gallery, but the officers and people of the court that were padrowling about the great bawn, when they saw the big baste coming in gave themselves up, and began to make for doors and gates; and the wolf licked his chops, as if he was saying, “Wouldn’t I enjoy a breakfast off a couple of yez!” The King shouted out, “O Gilla na Chreck an Gour, take away that terrible wolf and you must have all my daughter.” But Tom didn’t mind him a bit. He pulled out his flute and began to play like vengeance; and dickens a man or boy in the yard but began shovelling away heel and toe, and the wolf himself was obliged to get on his hind legs and dance Tatther Jack Walsh along with the rest. A good deal of the people got inside and shut the doors, the way the hairy fellow wouldn’t pin them; but Tom kept playing, and the outsiders kept shouting and dancing, and the wolf kept dancing and roaring with the pain his legs were giving him; and all the time he had his eyes on Redhead, who was shut out along with the rest. Wherever Redhead went the wolf followed, and kept one eye on him and the other on Tom, to see if he would give him leave to eat him. But Tom shook his head, and never stopped the tune, and Redhead never stopped dancing and bawling and the wolf dancing and roaring, one leg up and the other down, and he ready to drop out of his standing from fair tiresomeness.

When the princess seen that there was no fear of anyone being kilt, she was so divarted by the stew that Redhead was in that she gave another great laugh; and well become Tom, out he cried, “King of Dublin, I have two quarters of your daughter.” “Oh, quarters or alls,” says the King, “put away that divel of a wolf and we’ll see about it.” So Gilla put his flute in his pocket, and, says he, to the baste that was sittin’ on his currabingo ready to faint, “Walk off to your mountains, my fine fellow, and live like a respectable baste; and if ever I find you come within seven miles of any town—.” He said no more, but spit in his fist, and gave a flourish of his club. It was all the poor divel wanted: he put his tail between his legs and took to his pumps without looking at man or mortial, and neither sun, moon, nor stars ever saw him in sight of Dublin again.

At dinner everyone laughed except the foxy fellow; and, sure enough, he was laying out how he’d settle poor Tom next day. “Well, to be sure!” says he, “King of Dublin, you are in luck. There’s the Danes moidhering us to no end. D—— run to Lusk wid ‘em and if anyone can save us from ‘em it is this gentleman with the goat-skin. There is a flail hangin’ on the collar-beam in Hell, and neither Dane nor Devil can stand before it.” “So,” says Tom to the King, “will you let me have the other half of the princess if I bring you the flail?” “No, no,” says the princess, “I’d rather never be your wife than see you in that danger.”

But Redhead whispered and nudged Tom about how shabby it would look to reneague the adventure. So he asked him which way he was to go, and Redhead directed him through a street where a great many bad women lived, and a great many shibbeen houses were open, and away he set.

Well, he travelled and travelled till he came in sight of the walls of Hell; and, bedad, before he knocked at the gates, he rubbed himself over with the greenish ointment. When he knocked, a hundred little imps popped their heads out through the bars, and axed him what he wanted. “I want to speak to the big divel of all,” says Tom; “open the gate.”

It wasn’t long till the gate was thrune open, and the Ould Boy received Tom with bows and scrapes, and axed his business. “My business isn’t much,” says Tom. “I only came for the loan of that flail that I see hanging on the collar-beam for the King of Dublin to give a thrashing to the Danes.” “Well,” says the other, “the Danes is much better customers to me; but, since you walked so far, I won’t refuse. Hand that flail,” says he to a young imp; and he winked the far-off eye at the same time. So, while some were barring the gates, the young devil climbed up and took down the iron flail that had the handstaff and booltheen both made out of red-hot iron. The little vagabond was grinning to think how it would burn the hands off of Tom, but the dickens a burn it made on him, no more nor if it was a good oak sapling. “Thankee,” says Tom; “now, would you open the gate for a body and I’ll give you no more trouble.” “Oh, tramp!” says Ould Nick, “is that the way? It is easier getting inside them gates than getting out again. Take that tool from him, and give him a dose of the oil of stirrup.” So one fellow put out his claws to seize on the flail, but Tom gave him such a welt of it on the side of his head that he broke off one of his horns, and made him roar like a divil as he was. Well, they rushed at Tom, but he gave them, little and big, such a thrashing as they didn’t forget for a while. At last says the ould thief of all, rubbing his elbows, “Let the fool out; and woe to whoever lets him in again, great or small.”

So out marched Tom and away with him without minding the shouting and cursing they kept up at him from the tops of the walls. And when he got home to the big bawn of the palace, there never was such running and racing as to see himself and the flail. When he had his story told, he laid down the flail on the stone steps, and bid no one for their lives to touch it. If the King and Queen and princess made much of him before they made ten times as much of him now; but Redhead, the mean scruff-hound, stole over, and thought to catch hold of the flail to make an end of him. His fingers hardly touched it, when he let a roar out of him as if heaven and earth were coming together, and kept flinging his arms about and dancing that it was pitiful to look at him. Tom run at him as soon as he could rise, caught his hands in his own two, and rubbed them this way and that, and the burning pain left them before you could reckon one. Well, the poor fellow, between the pain that was only just gone, and the comfort he was in, had the comicalest face that ever you see; it was such a mixerumgatherum of laughing and crying. Everyone burst out a-laughing—the princess could not stop no more than the rest—and then says Gilla, or Tom, “Now, ma’am, if there were fifty halves of you I hope you will give me them all.” Well, the princess had no mock modesty about her. She looked at her father, and, by my word, she came over to Gilla, and put her two delicate hands into his two rough ones, and I wish it was myself was in his shoes that day!

Tom would not bring the flail into the palace. You may be sure no other body went near it; and when the early risers were passing next morning they found two long clefts in the stone where it was, after burning itself an opening downwards, nobody could tell how far.

But a messenger came in at noon and said that the Danes were so frightened when they heard of the flail coming into Dublin that they got into their ships and sailed away.

Well, I suppose before they were married Gilla got some man like Pat Mara of Tomenine to larn him the “principles of politeness,” fluxions, gunnery, and fortifications, decimal fractions, practice, and the rule-of-three direct, the way he’d be able to keep up a conversation with the royal family. Whether he ever lost his time larning them sciences, I’m not sure, but it’s as sure as fate that his mother never more saw any want till the end of her days.

The Little Weaver of Duleek Gate.

From “Legends and Stories of Ireland.”

By Samuel Lover (1791-1868.)

There was a waiver lived, wanst upon a time, in Duleek here, hard by the gate, and a very honest, industherous man he was. He had a wife, an’ av coorse, they had childre, and small blame to them, so that the poor little waiver was obleeged to work his fingers to the bone a’most to get them the bit and the sup, and the loom never standin’ still.

Well, it was one mornin’ that his wife called to him, “Come here,” says she, “jewel, and ate your brekquest, now that it’s ready.” But he never minded her, but wint an workin’. “Arrah, lave off slavin’ yourself, my darlin’, and ate your bit o’ brekquest while it is hot.”

“Lave me alone,” says he, “I’m busy with a pattern here that is brakin’ my heart,” says the waiver; “and antil I complate it and masther it intirely I won’t quit.”

“You’re as cross as two sticks this blessed morning, Thady,” says the poor wife; “and it’s a heavy handful I have of you when you are cruked in your temper; but, stay there if you like, and let your stirabout grow cowld, and not a one o’ me ‘ill ax you agin;” and with that off she wint, and the waiver, sure enough, was mighty crabbed, and the more the wife spoke to him the worse he got, which, you know, is only nath’ral. Well, he left the loom at last, and wint over to the stirabout and what would you think, but whin he looked at it, it was as black as a crow—for, you see, it was in the heighth o’ summer, and the flies lit upon it to that degree that the stirabout was fairly covered with them.

“Why, thin,” says the waiver, “would no place sarve you but that? and is it spyling my brekquest yiz are, you dirty bastes?” And with that, he lifted his hand, and he made one great slam at the dish o’ stirabout, and killed no less than three score and tin flies at the one blow, for he counted the carcases one by one, and laid them out an a clane plate for to view them.

Well, he felt a powerful sperit risin’ in him, when he seen the slaughter he done, at one blow; and not a sthroke more work he’d do that day, but out he wint and was fractious and impident to every one he met, and was squarin’ up into their faces and sayin’, “Look at that fist! that’s the fist that killed three score and tin at one blow—Whoo!”

With that all the neighbours thought he was crack’d, and the poor wife herself thought the same when he kem home in the evenin’, afther spendin’ every rap he had in dhrink, and swaggerin’ about the place, and lookin’ at his hand every minit.

“Indeed, an’ your hand is very dirty, sure enough, Thady, jewel,” says the poor wife. “You had betther wash it, darlin’.”

“How dar’ you say dirty to the greatest hand in Ireland?” says he, going to bate her.

“Well, it’s nat dirty,” says she.

“It is throwin away my time I have been all my life,” says he, “livin’ with you at all, and stuck at a loom, nothin’ but a poor waiver, when it is Saint George or the Dhraggin I ought to be, which is two of the siven champions of Christendom.”

“Well, suppose they christened him twice as much,” says the wife, “sure, what’s that to uz?”

“Don’t put in your prate,” says he, “you ignorant sthrap,” says he. “You’re vulgar, woman—you’re vulgar—mighty vulgar; but I’ll have nothin’ more to say to any dirty, snakin’ thrade again—sorra more waivin’ I’ll do.”

“Oh, Thady, dear, and what’ll the children do then?”

“Let them go play marvels,” says he.

“That would be but poor feedin’ for them, Thady.”

“They shan’t want feedin’?” says he, “for it’s a rich man I’ll be soon, and a great man, too.”

“Usha, but I’m glad to hear it, darlin’—though I dunno how it’s to be, but I think you had betther go to bed, Thady.”

“Don’t talk to me of any bed, but the bed o’ glory, woman,” says he, lookin’ mortial grand. “I’ll sleep with the brave yit,” says he.

“Indeed, an’ a brave sleep will do you a power o’ good, my darlin,” says she.

“And it’s I that will be a knight!” says he.

“All night, if you plaze, Thady,” says she.

“None o’ your coaxin’,” says he. “I’m detarmined on it, and I’ll set off immediately, and be a knight arriant.”

“A what?” says she.

“A knight arriant, woman.”

“What’s that?” says she.

“A knight arriant is a rale gintleman,” says he; “going round the world for sport, with a soord by his side, takin’ whatever he plazes for himself; and that’s a knight arriant,” says he.

Well, sure enough he wint about among his neighbours the next day, and he got an owld kittle from one, and a saucepan from another, and he took them to the tailor, and he sewed him up a shuit o’ tin clothes like any knight arriant, and he borrowed a pot lid, and that he was very particular about, bekase it was his shield, and he went to a friend o’ his, a painter and glazier, and made him paint an his shield in big letthers:—

“I’M THE MAN OF ALL MIN,
THAT KILL’D THREE SCORE AND TIN
AT A BLOW.”

“When the people sees that,” says the waiver to himself, “the sorra one will dar for to come near me.”

And with that he towld the wife to scour out the small iron pot for him, “for,” says he, “it will make an illegent helmet;” and when it was done, he put it an his head, and his wife said, “Oh, murther, Thady, jewel; is it puttin’ a great, heavy, iron pot an your head you are, by way iv a hat?”

“Sartinly,” says he, “for a knight arriant should always have a weight on his brain.”

“But, Thady, dear,” says the wife, “there’s a hole in it, and it can’t keep out the weather.”

“It will be the cooler,” says he, puttin’ it an him; “besides, if I don’t like it, it is aisy to stop it with a wisp o’ sthraw, or the like o’ that.”

“The three legs of it look mighty quare, stickin’ up,” says she.

“Every helmet has a spike stickin’ out o’ the top of it,” says the waiver, “and if mine has three, it’s only the grandher it is.”

“Well,” says the wife, getting bitter at last, “all I can say is, it isn’t the first sheep’s head was dhress’d in it.”

“Your sarvint, ma’am,” says he; and off he set.

Well, he was in want of a horse, and so he wint to a field hard by, where the miller’s horse was grazin’, that used to carry the ground corn round the counthry. “This is the identical horse for me,” says the waiver; “he’s used to carryin’ flour and male, and what am I but the flower o’ shovelry in a coat o’ mail; so that the horse won’t be put out iv his way in the laste.”

So away galloped the waiver, and took the road to Dublin, for he thought the best thing he could do was to go to the King o’ Dublin (for Dublin was a great place thin, and had a King iv its own). When he got to the palace courtyard he let his horse graze about the place, for the grass was growin’ out betune the stones; everything was flourishin’ thin in Dublin, you see. Well, the King was lookin’ out of his dhrawin’-room windy, for divarshin, whin the waiver kem in; but the waiver pretended not to see him, and he wint over to the stone sate, undher the windy—for, you see, there was stone sates all round about the place, for the accommodation o’ the people—for the King was a dacent obleeging man; well, as I said, the waiver wint over and lay down an one o’ the seats, just undher the King’s windy, and purtended to go asleep; but he took care to turn out the front of his shield that had the letthers an it. Well, my dear, with that the King calls out to one of the lords of his coort that was standin’ behind him, howldin’ up the skirt of his coat, accordin’ to rayson, and, says he: “Look here,” says he, “what do you think of a vagabone like that, comin’ undher my very nose to sleep? It is thrue I’m a good king,” says he, “and I ‘commodate the people by havin’ sates for them to sit down and enjoy the raycreation and contimplation of seein’ me here, lookin’ out a’ my dhrawin’-room windy, for divarsion; but that is no rayson they are to make a hotel o’ the place, and come and sleep here. Who is it, at all?” says the King.

“Not a one o’ me knows, plaze your majesty.”

“I think he must be a furriner,” says the King, “because his dhress is outlandish.”

“And doesn’t know manners, more betoken,” says the lord.

“I’ll go down and circumspect him myself,” says the King; “folly me,” says he to the lord, wavin’ his hand at the same time in the most dignacious manner.

Down he wint accordingly, followed by the lord; and when he wint over to where the waiver was lying, sure the first thing he seen was his shield with the big letthers an it, and with that, says he to the lord, “This is the very man I want.”

“For what, plaze your majesty?” says the lord.

“To kill the vagabone dhraggin’, to be sure,” says the King.

“Sure, do you think he could kill him,” says the lord, “when all the stoutest knights in the land wasn’t aiquil to it, but never kem back, and was ate up alive by the cruel desaiver?”

“Sure, don’t you see there,” says the king, pointin’ at the shield, “that he killed three score and tin at one blow; and the man that done that, I think, is a match for anything.”

So, with that, he wint over to the waiver and shuck him by the shouldher for to wake him, and the waiver rubbed his eyes as if just wakened, and the King says to him, “God save you,” said he.

“God save you kindly,” says the waiver, purtendin’ he was quite unknownst who he was spakin’ to.

“Do you know who I am,” says the king, “that you make so free, good man?”

“No, indeed,” says the waiver, “you have the advantage o’ me.”

“To be sure, I have,” says the king, moighty high; “sure, ain’t I the King o’ Dublin?” says he.

The waiver dhropped down on his two knees forninst the King, and, says he, “I beg your pardon for the liberty I tuk; plaze your holiness, I hope you’ll excuse it.”

“No offince,” says the King; “get up, good man. And what brings you here?” says he.

“I’m in want of work, plaze your riverence,” says the waiver.

“Well, suppose I give you work?” says the king.

“I’ll be proud to sarve you, my lord,” says the waiver.

“Very well,” says the King. “You killed three score and tin at one blow, I understan’,” says the King.

“Yis,” says the waiver; “that was the last thrifle o’ work I done, and I’m afraid my hand ‘ill go out o’ practice if I don’t get some job to do at wanst.”

“You shall have a job immediately,” says the King. “It is not three score and tin or any fine thing like that; it is only a blaguard dhraggin that is disturbin’ the counthry and ruinatin’ my tinanthry wid aitin’ their powlthry, and I’m lost for want of eggs,” said the King.

“Och, thin, plaze your worship,” says the waiver, “you look as yellow as if you swallowed twelve yolks this minit.”

“Well, I want this dhraggin to be killed,” says the King. “It will be no trouble in life to you; and I am sorry that it isn’t betther worth your while, for he isn’t worth fearin’ at all; only I must tell you that he lives in the County Galway, in the middle of a bog, and he has an advantage in that.”

“Oh, I don’t value it in the laste,” says the waiver, “for the last three score and tin I killed was in a soft place.”

“When will you undhertake the job, thin?” says the King.

“Let me at him at wanst,” says the waiver.

“That’s what I like,” says the King, “you’re the very man for my money,” says he.

“Talkin’ of money,” says the waiver, “by the same token, I’ll want a thrifle o’ change from you for my thravellin’ charges.”

“As much as you plaze,” says the King; and with the word he brought him into his closet, where there was an owld stockin’ in an oak chest, bursting wid goolden guineas.

“Take as many as you plaze,” says the King; and sure enough, my dear, the little waiver stuffed his tin clothes as full as they could howld with them.

“Now I’m ready for the road,” says the waiver.

“Very well,” says the King; “but you must have a fresh horse,” says he.

“With all my heart,” says the waiver, who thought he might as well exchange the miller’s owld garron for a betther.

And maybe it’s wondherin’ you are that the waiver would think of goin’ to fight the dhraggin afther what he heerd about him, when he was purtendin’ to be asleep, but he had no sich notion, all he intended was—to fob the goold, and ride back again to Duleek with his gains and a good horse. But, you see, cute as the waiver was, the King was cuter still, for these high quality, you see, is great desaivers; and so the horse the waiver was an was learned on purpose; and sure, the minit he was mounted, away powdhered the horse, and the sorra toe he’d go but right down to Galway. Well, for four days he was goin’ evermore, until at last the waiver seen a crowd o’ people runnin’ as if owld Nick was at their heels, and they shoutin’ a thousand murdhers, and cryin’—“The dhraggin, the dhraggin!” and he couldn’t stop the horse nor make him turn back, but away he pelted right forninst the terrible baste that was comin’ up to him; and there was the most nefaarious smell o’ sulphur, savin’ your presence, enough to knock you down; and, faith, the waiver seen he had no time to lose; and so threwn himself off the horse and made to a three that was growin’ nigh-hand, and away he clambered up into it as nimble as a cat; and not a minit had he to spare, for the dhraggin kem up in a powerful rage, and he devoured the horse body and bones, in less than no time; and then began to sniffle and scent about for the waiver, and at last he clapt his eye on him, where he was, up in the three, and, says he, “You might as well come down out o’ that,” says he, “for I’ll have you as sure as eggs is mate.”

“Sorra fut I’ll go down,” says the waiver.

“Sorra care I care,” says the dhraggin; “for you’re as good as ready money in my pocket this minit, for I’ll lie undher this three,” says he, “and sooner or later you must fall to my share;” and sure enough he sot down, and began to pick his teeth with his tail afther a heavy brekquest he made that mornin’ (for he ate a whole village, let alone the horse), and he got dhrowsy at last, and fell asleep; but before he wint to sleep he wound himself all round about the three, all as one as a lady windin’ ribbon round her finger, so that the waiver could not escape.

Well, as soon as the waiver knew he was dead asleep, by the snorin’ of him—and every snore he let out of him was like a clap o’ thunder—that minit the waiver began to creep down the three, as cautious as a fox; and he was very nigh hand the bottom when a thievin’ branch he was dipindin’ an bruck, and down he fell right a top o’ the dhraggin; but, if he did, good luck was an his side, for where should he fall but with his two legs right acrass the dhraggin’s neck, and my jew’l, he laid howlt o’ the baste’s ears, and there he kept his grip, for the dhraggin wakened and endayvoured for to bite him, but, you see, by rayson the waiver was behind his ears he could not come at him, and, with that, he endayvoured for to shake him off; but not a stir could he stir the waiver; and though he shuk all the scales an his body, he could not turn the scale agin the waiver.

“Och, this is too bad, intirely,” says the dhraggin; “but if you won’t let go,” says he, “by the powers o’ wildfire, I’ll give you a ride that’ll astonish your siven small senses, my boy”; and, with that, away he flew like mad; and where do you think he did fly?—he flew sthraight for Dublin. But the waiver, bein’ an his neck, was a great disthress to him, and he would rather have had him an inside passenger; but, anyway, he flew till he kem slap up agin the palace o’ the king; for, bein’ blind with the rage, he never seen it, and he knocked his brains out—that is, the small trifle he had, and down he fell spacheless. An’ you see, good luck would have it, that the King o’ Dublin was looking out iv his dhrawin’-room windy, for divarshin, that day also, and whin he seen the waiver ridin’ an the fiery dhraggin (for he was blazin’ like a tar barrel) he called out to his coortyers to come and see the show.

“Here comes the knight arriant,” says the King, “ridin’ the dhraggin that’s all a-fire, and if he gets into the palace, yiz must be ready wid the fire ingines,” says he, “for to put him out.”

But when they seen the dhraggin fall outside, they all run downstairs and scampered into the palace yard for to circumspect the curiosity; and by the time they got down, the waiver had got off o’ the dhraggin’s neck; and runnin’ up to the King, says he—

“Plaze, your holiness, I did not think myself worthy of killin’ this facetious baste, so I brought him to yourself for to do him the honour of decripitation by your own royal five fingers. But I tamed him first, before I allowed him the liberty for to dar’ to appear in your royal prisince, and you’ll oblige me if you’ll just make your mark with your own hand upon the onruly baste’s neck.” And with that, the King, sure enough, dhrew out his swoord and took the head aff the dirty brute, as clane as a new pin.

Well, there was great rejoicin’ in the coort that the dhraggin was killed; and says the King to the little waiver, says he—

“You are a knight arriant as it is, and so it would be no use for to knight you over agin; but I will make you a lord,” says he “and as you are the first man I ever heer’d tell of that rode a dhraggin, you shall be called Lord Mount Dhraggin’,” says he.

“And where’s my estates, plaze your holiness?” says the waiver, who always had a sharp look-out afther the main chance.

“Oh, I didn’t forget that,” says the King. “It is my royal pleasure to provide well for you, and for that rayson I make you a present of all the dhraggins in the world, and give you power over them from this out,” says he.

“Is that all?” says the waiver.

“All!” says the king. “Why, you ongrateful little vagabone, was the like ever given to any man before?”

“I believe not, indeed,” says the waiver; “many thanks to your majesty.”

“But that is not all I’ll do for you,” says the king, “I’ll give you my daughter, too, in marriage,” says he.

Now, you see, that was nothin’ more than what was promised the waiver in his first promise; for, by all accounts, the King’s daughter was the greatest dhraggin ever was seen.

Fionn MacCumhail and the Princess.

From “The Shamrock.”

By Patrick J. McCall (1861—).

(In Wexford Folk Speech.)

Wance upon a time, when things was a great’le betther in Ireland than they are at present, when a rale king ruled over the counthry wid four others undher him to look afther the craps an’ other indhustries, there lived a young chief called Fan MaCool.

Now, this was long afore we gev up bowin’ and scrapin’ to the sun an’ moon an’ sich like raumash (nonsense); an’ signs an it, there was a powerful lot ov witches an’ Druids, an’ enchanted min an’ wimen goin’ about, that med things quare enough betimes for iverywan.

Well, Fan, as I sed afore, was a young man when he kem to the command, an’ a purty likely lookin’ boy, too—there was nothin’ too hot or too heavy for him; an’ so ye needn’t be a bit surprised if I tell ye he was the mischief entirely wid the colleens. Nothin’ delighted him more than to disguise himself wid an ould coatamore (overcoat) threwn over his showlder, a lump ov a kippeen (stick) in his fist and he mayanderin’ about unknownst, rings around the counthry, lookin’ for fun an’ foosther (diversion) ov all kinds.

Well, one fine mornin’, whin he was on the shaughraun, he was waumasin’ (strolling) about through Leinster, an’ near the royal palace ov Glendalough he seen a mighty throng ov grand lords and ladies, an’, my dear, they all dressed up to the nines, wid their jewels shinin’ like dewdrops ov a May mornin’, and laughin’ like the tinkle ov a deeshy (small) mountain strame over the white rocks. So he cocked his beaver, an’ stole over to see what was the matther.

Lo an’ behould ye, what were they at but houldin’ a race-meetin’ or faysh (festival)—somethin’ like what the quality calls ataleticks now! There they were, jumpin’, and runnin’, and coorsin’, an’ all soorts ov fun, enough to make the trouts—an’ they’re mighty fine leppers enough—die wid envy in the river benaith them.

The fun wint on fast an’ furious, an’ Fan, consaled betune the trumauns an’ brushna (elder bushes and furze) could hardly keep himself quiet, seein’ the thricks they wor at. Peepin’ out, he seen, jist forninst him on the other bank, the prencess herself, betune the high-up ladies ov the coort. She was a fine, bouncin’ geersha (girl) with gold hair like the furze an’ cheeks like an apple blossom, an’ she brakin’ her heart laughin’ an’ clappin’ her hands an’ turnin her head this a-way an’ that a-way, jokin’ wid this wan an’ that wan, an’ commiseratin’, moryah! (forsooth) the poor gossoons that failed in their leps. Fan liked the looks ov her well, an’ whin the boys had run in undher a bame up to their knees an’ jumped up over another wan as high as their chins, the great trial ov all kem on. Maybe you’d guess what that was? But I’m afeerd you won’t if I gev you a hundhred guesses! It was to lep the strame, forty foot wide!

List’nin’ to them whisperin’ to wan another, Fan heerd them tellin’ that whichever ov them could manage it wud be med a great man intirely ov; he wud get the Prencess Maynish in marriage, an’ ov coorse, would be med king ov Leinster when the ould king, Garry, her father, cocked his toes an’ looked up through the butts ov the daisies at the shky. Well, whin Fan h’ard this, he was put to a nonplush to know what to do! With his ould duds on him, he was ashamed ov his life to go out into the open, to have the eyes ov the whole wurruld on him, an’ his heart wint down to his big toe as he watched the boys makin’ their offers at the lep. But no one of them was soople enough for the job, an’ they kep on tumblin’, wan afther the other, into the strame; so that the poor prencess began to look sorryful whin her favourite, a big hayro wid a colyeen (curls) a yard long—an’ more betoken he was a boy o’ the Byrnes from Imayle—jist tipped the bank forninst her wid his right fut, an’ then twistin’, like a crow in the air scratchin’ her head with her claw, he spraddled wide open in the wather, and splashed about like a hake in a mudbank! Well, me dear, Fan forgot himself, an’ gev a screech like an aigle; an’ wid that, the ould king started, the ladies all screamed, an’ Fan was surrounded. In less than a minnit an’ a half they dragged me bould Fan be the collar ov his coat right straight around to the king himself.

“What ould geochagh (beggar) have we now?” sez the king, lookin’ very hard at Fan.

“I’m Fan MaCool!” sez the thief ov the wurruld, as cool as a frog.

“Well, Fan MaCool or not,” sez the king, mockin’ him, “ye’ll have to jump the sthrame yander for freckenin’ the lives clane out ov me ladies,” sez he, “an’ for disturbin’ our spoort ginerally,” sez he.

“An’ what’ll I get for that same?” sez Fan, lettin’ on (pretending) he was afeered.

“Me daughter, Maynish,” sez the king, wid a laugh; for he thought, ye see, Fan would be drowned.

“Me hand on the bargain,” sez Fan; but the owld chap gev him a rap on the knuckles wid his specktre (sceptre) an’ towld him to hurry up, or he’d get the ollaves (judges) to put him in the Black Dog pres’n or the Marshals—I forgets which—it’s so long gone by!

Well, Fan peeled off his coatamore, an’ threw away his bottheen ov a stick, an’ the prencess seein’ his big body an’ his long arums an’ legs like an oak tree, couldn’t help remarkin’ to her comrade, the craythur—

“Bedad, Cauth (Kate),” sez she, “but this beggarman is a fine bit of a bouchal (boy),” sez she; “it’s in the arumy (army) he ought to be,” sez she, lookin’ at him agen, an’ admirin’ him, like.

So, Fan, purtendin’ to be fixin’ his shoes be the bank, jist pulled two lusmores (fox-gloves) an’ put them anunder his heels; for thim wor the fairies’ own flowers that works all soort ov inchantment, an’ he, ov coorse, knew all about it; for he got the wrinkle from an ould lenaun (fairy guardian) named Cleena, that nursed him when he was a little stand-a-loney.

Well, me dear, ye’d think it was on’y over a little creepie (three-legged) stool he was leppin’ whin he landed like a thrish jist at the fut ov the prencess; an’ his father’s son he was, that put his two arums around her, an’ gev her a kiss—haith, ye’d hear the smack ov it at the Castle o’ Dublin. The ould king groaned like a corncrake, an’ pulled out his hair in hatfuls, an’ at last he ordhered the bowld beggarman off to be kilt; but, begorrah, when they tuck off weskit an’ seen the collar ov goold around Fan’s neck the ould chap became delighted, for he knew thin he had the commandher ov Airyun (Erin) for a son-in-law.

“Hello!” sez the king, “who have we now?” sez he, seein’ the collar. “Begonny’s,” sez he, “you’re no boccagh (beggar) anyways!”

“I’m Fan MaCool,” sez the other, as impident as a cocksparra’; “have you anything to say agen me?” for his name wasn’t up, at that time, like afther.

“Ay lots to say agen you. How dar’ you be comin’ round this a-way, dressed like a playacthor, takin’ us in?” sez the king, lettin’ on to be vexed; “an’ now,” sez he, “to annoy you, you’ll have to go an’ jump back agen afore you gets me daughter for puttin’ on (deceiving) us in such a manner.”

“Your will is my pleasure,” sez Fan; “but I must have a word or two with the girl first,” sez he, an’ up he goes an’ commences talkin’ soft to her, an’ the king got as mad as a hatther at the way the two were croosheenin’ an’ colloguin’ (whispering and talking), an’ not mindin’ him no more than if he was the man in the moon, when who comes up but the Prence of Imayle, afther dryin’ himself, to put his pike in the hay too.

“Well, avochal (my boy),” sez Fan, “are you dry yet?” an’ the Prencess laughed like a bell round a cat’s neck.

“You think yourself a smart lad, I suppose,” sez the other; “but there’s one thing you can’t do wid all your prate!”

“What’s that?” sez Fan. “Maybe not” sez he.

“You couldn’t whistle and chaw oatenmale,” sez the Prence ov Imayle, in a pucker. “Are you any good at throwin’ a stone?” sez he, then.

“The best!” sez Fan, an’ all the coort gother round like to a cock-fight. “Where’ll we throw to?” sez he.

“In to’ards Dublin,” sez the Prence ov Imayle; an’ be all accounts he was a great hand at cruistin (throwing).

“Here goes pink,” sez he, an’ he ups with a stone, as big as a castle, an’ sends it flyin’ in the air like a cannon ball, and it never stopped till it landed on top ov the Three Rock Mountain.

“I’m your masther!” sez Fan, pickin’ up another clochaun (stone) an’ sendin’ it a few perch beyant the first.

“That you’re not,” sez the Prence ov Imayle, an’ he done his best, an’ managed to send another finger stone beyant Fan’s throw; an’ sure, the three stones are to be seen, be all the world, to this very day.

“Well, me lad,” says Fan, stoopin’ for another as big as a hill, “I’m sorry I have to bate you; but I can’t help it,” sez he, lookin’ over at the Prencess Maynish, an’ she as mute as a mouse watchin’ the two big men, an’ the ould king showin’ fair play, as delighted as a child. “Watch this,” sez he, whirlin’ his arm like a windmill, “and now put on your spectacles,” sez he; and away he sends the stone, buzzin’ through the air like a peggin’-top, over the other three clochauns, and then across Dublin Bay, an’ scrapin’ the nose off ov Howth, it landed with a swish in the say beyant it. That’s the rock they calls Ireland’s Eye now!

“Be the so an’ so!” sez the king, “I don’t know where that went to, at all, at all! what direct did you send it?” sez he to Fan. “I had it in view, till it went over the say,” sez he.

“I’m bet!” sez the Prence ov Imayle. “I couldn’t pass that, for I can’t see where you put it, even—good-bye to yous,” sez he, turnin’ on his heel an’ makin’ off; “an’ may yous two be as happy as I can wish you!” An’ back he went to the butt ov Lugnaquilla, an’ took to fret, an I understand shortly afther he died ov a broken heart; an’ they put a turtle-dove on his tombstone to signify that he died for love; but I think he overstrained himself, throwin’, though that’s nayther here nor there with me story!