SOME IRISH 
 
 AND 
 
 ROSS 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2013 
 
 http://archive.org/details/someirishyesterdOOsome 
 
SOME IRISH 
 YESTERDAYS 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHORS 
 
 Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. 
 With 31 Illustrations by E. CE. 
 Somerville. Crown 8vo, 6s. 
 
 All on the Irish Shore : 
 
 Irish Sketches. With 10 Illustrations 
 by E. CE. Somerville. Crown 8vo, 6s. 
 
 The Real Charlotte 
 
 Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
 The Silver Fox 
 
 Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
 An Irish Cousin 
 
 Crown 8vo, 6s. 
 Slipper's A B C of Fox-hunting 
 
 By E. CE. Somerville, M.F.H. With 
 
 Illustrations in Colour by the Author. 
 
 4to, boards, 10s. 6d. net. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 
"SHE FOUND THE IDEA HIGHLY HUMOROUS' 
 
SOME IRISH 
 YESTERDAYS 
 
 / / /ZD c 
 
 BY / r-S-JkC-Z^f ^ 
 
 E. CE. SOMERVILLE 
 
 AND 
 
 MARTIN ROSS 
 
 AUTHORS OF 
 "THE REAL CHARLOTTE," "SOME EXPERIENCES 
 OF AN IRISH R.M.," "ALL ON THE IRISH SHORE," 
 ETC. ETC. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY 
 E. CE. SOMERVILLE 
 
 SECOND IMPRESSION 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 
 I906 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I'AGE 
 
 An Outpost of Ireland i 
 
 Picnics 33 
 
 Boon Companions 49 
 
 The Biography of a Pump 67 
 
 Hunting Mahatmas . . . ... . .79 
 
 A Patrick's Day Hunt 91 
 
 Alsatia 121 
 
 "In Sickness and in Health r ' .... 137 
 
 Horticultural 165 
 
 Out of Hand 1S3 
 
 A Record of Holiday 201 
 
 Lost, Stolen, or Strayed 221 
 
 Children of the Captivity 237 
 
 Slipper's ABC of Fox-Huntinu . . . .251 
 
The Authors desire to thank the Editors of 
 the Magazines and Periodicals in which the 
 following Sketches have appeared, for their 
 permission to reprint them here; and they wish 
 also t& acknowledge the courtesy of Messrs. 
 Constable & Co. in permitting the reproduction 
 of "A Patrick's Day Hunt." 
 
 October 1906 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 " She found the idea highly humorous" . . Frontispiece 
 
 Kilronan Bay To face 15 
 
 An A ran Fisherman M 16 
 
 "White houses clustered round a fragment of bastion " ,, 20 
 
 " The outline of Connemara was still sharp" . . 21 
 
 The Elder Turf-Boy 57 
 
 An August Afternoon ,,38 
 
 Rickeen . 52 
 
 i?oss La&£ ,, 74 
 
 " 27*0 hovering horde vacillates no longer " . .84 
 
 M ^4 voice fell like a falling star 99 88 
 
 " / wash meself every Sathurday morning" ... 94 
 
 * It's all would be about it, she'd break the side car /" . 99 
 
 " The like o' the crowd that was in Kyleranny " . to lace 99 
 
 u He's gone North agin !* 112 
 
 11 The Widow Brinckley faced him the same as Jeffrey 
 
 faced his cat' 1 f ace 117 
 
 11 The villyan wheeled into the yard as nate as a 
 
 bicycle" 118 
 
 " Sending his wild voice abroad" . . . „ 126 
 
 Old Michael 126 
 
viii ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 " Ancient widowhood and spinsterdom" .... 129 
 " What have ye on yer noa-se " . . . To /ace 151 
 
 " She's the liveliest of them, God bless her!" . . 153 
 "And cabbages ! %i said the mount ainy man . 176 
 The Candidate . . . , , . 192 
 
 "A man must wote the way his priest and bishop HI tell 
 
 him 11 195 
 
 Facing America .,210 
 
 In West Carbery ,,217 
 
 Patsey Sweeny . . . . . . „ 226 
 
 Mrs. Sweeny „ 227 
 
 "In a lonely cottage" „ 241 
 
 Children of the Captivity „ 249 
 
 Slipper's ABC of Fox-Hunting * 253-271 
 
AN OUTPOST OF IRELAND 
 
AN OUTPOST OF IRELAND 
 
 " Is it a bath on Twelfth Day ? Sure no 
 one would expect that, no more than on a 
 Sunday ! " 
 
 Twelfth Day was accordingly added to 
 Miss Gerraghty s list of Bath Holidays — 
 that is to say, the list allotted to Miss 
 Gerraghty s visitors. Judging from appear- 
 ances, her private list was composed of one 
 infinite bath holiday ; indeed, she has been 
 heard in the kitchen announcing in clear 
 tones her opinion of "them thrash of baths" 
 to an audience whose hands and faces wore 
 a sympathetic half-mourning. Nature, we 
 were given to understand, had intended 
 Miss Gerraghty to be a lady ; a fate more 
 blind to the fitness of things decreed that 
 she should serve tables in a Galway lodging- 
 house, a position in which higher destinies 
 
4 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 are likely to be overlooked. Some touches 
 of dignity remained hers by an immutable 
 etiquette; no cap had ever found footing 
 upon her raven fringe ; a watch chain took 
 the place of the ignoble white apron. 
 Chiefest of all prerogatives, she was addressed 
 as " Miss Gerraghty " by the establishment, 
 an example so carefully set by her brother, 
 the proprietor, as to suggest that her dowry 
 was mingled with the funds of the manage- 
 ment. 
 
 With these solaces she doubtless fed her 
 inner need of refinement, even while she 
 launched the thirteenth trump of repartee at 
 the woman who came to sell turkeys, or 
 broke a lance in coquetry with the coal man. 
 Such episodes were freely audible to the 
 sitting room by the hall — indeed, the woman 
 with the turkeys finally thrust her flushed 
 face and the turkey's haggard bosom round 
 the door, in an appeal to Caesar that made 
 the rooftree ring. These things occur in 
 Galway, with a simplicity that is not often 
 met with elsewhere. 
 
 There was an afternoon when a native of 
 the Islands of Aran penetrated to the hearth- 
 rug of Miss Gerraghty s front sitting-room, 
 
AN OUTPOST OF IRELAND 5 
 
 in the endeavour to plant upon its occupants 
 a forequarter of mutton that smelt of fish, 
 and was as destitute of fat as the rocks of 
 its birthplace. Even the Aran mans assur- 
 ance that it was "as sweet as sugar," could 
 not relax by a line the contempt with which 
 Miss Gerraghty, when summoned to judg- 
 ment, surveyed the dainty and its owner. 
 In course of the discussion, she took occasion 
 to inform the company that she herself could 
 only c< eat ram mutton by the dint of the 
 gravy," which bore, as it seemed, somewhat 
 darkly upon the matter, but had the effect of 
 deepening the complexion of the Aran man 
 by quite two shades of maroon, as he hoisted 
 his unattractive burden to his frieze-clad 
 shoulder and removed himself. 
 
 Miss Gerraghty then stated that them 
 Aran people had a way of their own and a 
 sense of their own, like the Indians, and 
 that a gentleman friend of hers who travelled 
 in tea, had once been weather-bound in 
 Aran and had had a bad stomach ever 
 since. She then retired to the kitchen, 
 where the narrative of the rout of the 
 Aran Islander held, for the space of ten 
 enjoyable minutes, an audience swelled by 
 
6 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 the addition of the washerwoman and the 
 baker's boy. 
 
 The incident passed, yet the phrase "a 
 way of their own, and a sense of their own 
 — like the Indians," hung hauntingly in the 
 memory. 
 
 Any attempt to portray Marino Cottage 
 would be incomplete without mention of its 
 consort, Ocean Prospect, an affiliated estab- 
 lishment, spoken of in the household as 
 " Opposite," from which, at any hour of the 
 day or night, uncertain numbers of Miss 
 Gerraghty's nieces crossed the road to 
 Marino Cottage, laden, like ants, with 
 burdens varying from a feather bed to a 
 kettle of boiling water. A flavour of the 
 life of the "Swiss Family Robinson" was 
 thus imparted, Ocean Prospect filling the 
 position of the wreck, which, as the virtuously 
 brought up should remember, yielded fresh 
 butter, kegs of gunpowder, and bedroom 
 slippers with equal promptness. Miss 
 Gerraghty's nieces occupied undefined and 
 interchangeable positions in both households, 
 from Bedelia, who played the piano, and on 
 Saturdays crimped her hood of auburn hair, 
 to Bridget Ellen, who at seven years of age 
 
AN OUTPOST OF IRELAND 7 
 
 could discern a stale herring and tell the fish- 
 woman so. Like Goldsmith, they left nothing 
 untouched, and there was nothing that they 
 touched that they did not adorn, with genial 
 finger-mark or the generously strewn cinder. 
 Their hats perched like mange-stricken 
 parakeets in the hall, their witticisms 
 drew forth the admiring yells of the kitchen 
 audience from breakfast till bed time, the 
 creaking of their boots was as the innumerable 
 rendings of glazed calico, or the delirium of 
 a corncrake. The Holy-days of the Roman 
 Catholic church were observed by them 
 with every honour, and with many varieties of 
 evening party ; and it is a matter for mingled 
 thankfulness and regret that they observed 
 them, for the most part, " Opposite." 
 Assuredly Bedelia, with a clean face, playing 
 dance music, would have been a spectacle 
 hardly less memorable than Miss Gerraghty 
 and her Sunday boots circling in a waltz and 
 creaking through a quadrille, or sipping a 
 glass of port with the delicacy befitting the 
 noblesse. Yet with three Holy-days in one 
 fortnight it might have proved excessive. 
 
 Miss Gerraghty rises irrepressibly into 
 the foreground of these winter days, but 
 
8 
 
 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 Christmas week in Gal way Town remains an 
 impression both salient and characteristic. 
 During its wet and miry days the country 
 people moved in a slow and voluble throng 
 through streets and shops, indifferent to 
 weather, and time and space, while the sleety 
 storm roared of shipwreck above the rooftops, 
 and the wearied young gentlemen behind 
 the counters held their own against the old 
 women with a philosophy perfected in the 
 afflictions of many market days. 
 
 " Four an* tinpince ! " shouts an old woman 
 in a short scarlet petticoat and a long blue 
 cloak, scornfully thumbing a pair of boots 
 and slapping them down on the counter. 
 She traduces them, minutely, to a party of 
 friends, who, being skilled in the role expected 
 of them, implore her not to waste her valuable 
 time on such unworthy objects. The sales- 
 man has placed himself upon a bench, with 
 his legs extended along it, his eyes on the 
 ceiling, and his arms folded ; his lips repeat 
 occasionally the formula " Five shillins ! " 
 otherwise he remains as remote as the Grand 
 Lama of Tibet. 
 
 " You're too tight with me ! " laments the 
 proprietor of a cartload of apples, in pathetic 
 
AN OUTPOST OF IRELAND 9 
 
 appeal to a customer. "God knows I'm not 
 tight ! " responds the customer, with even 
 superior pathos, "but the times is scroogin' 
 meself ! " 
 
 It is, perhaps, the leading draper who 
 endures most. All day long the blue cloaks 
 and the bony elbows jostle against his 
 counters, disparaging hands subject his 
 calicoes and his flannels to gruesome tests, 
 his plush work-bags and scent-cases are 
 handled uncomprehendingly and flung aside ; 
 acrid jibes are levelled at his assistants, who, 
 to do them justice, show a practised tartness 
 in rejoinder. Through the noise and the smell 
 of stale turf smoke a large musical-box 
 hammers and tinkles forth the "Washington 
 Post." 
 
 Late in the wild darkness of the January 
 evenings the cry M Will thu gull-a-wallia ? " 
 (sic) ("Are you going home?") passes from 
 group to group in the streets. It is far on 
 into the night before the carts with their load 
 of sleepy and drunken people cease to stagger 
 and clatter along the bleak roads that take 
 them home. Beaten with snow, blinded with 
 rain, the holiday season wears itself out 
 in darkness, dirt, and inconvenience, after 
 
io SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 the manner of such seasons, churches and 
 public houses presenting the only open 
 doors in the shuttered streets. All day the 
 electric light hung its fervid loops of white 
 fire up in the roof of the church of St. 
 Nicholas, unearthly, coldly intense, suiting 
 well the spirituality of arches and pillars, 
 loftily interclasping through the storms of 
 centuries. The tattered colours of the 
 Connaught Rangers droop on either side of 
 the chancel arch, shreds of mellow colour 
 against the grey limestone ; they say things 
 that are moving to a Galway heart. Out 
 where the long Sea Road follows the shore of 
 Galway Bay, the great winds press heavily 
 against the windows of Marino Cottage, and 
 the little one-horse trams glide on the 
 desolate shining road like white-backed 
 beetles. 
 
 The year strengthened and the days 
 lengthened over misty seas ridged with 
 angry white. Out where the murky west 
 held the Islands of Aran in its bosom, the 
 sunsets came later day by day. Once, and 
 memorably, a dishevelled and flying pageant 
 of green and lurid pink glowed, like the torn 
 colours in the church, beneath the darkening 
 
AN OUTPOST OF IRELAND n 
 
 roof of cloud ; in its heart I saw the Aran 
 steamer, labouring on the dark horizon of 
 climbing waves. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 It was February when Circumstance took 
 me in her hand and flung- me across two seas 
 into the blue and gold weather and the 
 purple and silver mountains of the Depart- 
 ment of " Pyrenees Orientales and May 
 had come before I was again in London, 
 shivering in a cold rain that dropped acridly 
 out of the dirty fog, the orphan rain of 
 London, that knows no previousness of 
 clouded hill, no dignity of broad-sailed mists 
 moving up along the moor, no hereafter of 
 clean breezes sweeping the bounteous heaven. 
 Twenty hours later the mild yet poignant 
 fragrance of Irish air was in the window of 
 my railway carriage, and the smell of turf 
 smoke came up out of the west across the 
 stone walls of Roscommon. 
 
 Turf smoke lurked in concentrated stale- 
 ness about the garb of the two priests in the 
 opposite corner, yet it was preferable to 
 yesterday s raw whiff of the Channel ; the 
 galloping whisper of the Daily Office in the 
 two Breviaries revealed the accents of 
 
12 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 Connaught, and were comfortable to an ear 
 already soothed by drowsiness. Let others 
 roll and stagger to foreign lands in front of 
 the lashing fins of a screw, I was advancing 
 on an even axle into springtime in the County 
 of Galway ; in my mind's eye I beheld the 
 Aran steamer leisurely paddling upon a sea 
 of satin smoothness to the unknown islands, 
 and in my ear sang the phrase "a way of 
 their own, and a sense of their own ; like 
 the Indians." 
 
 Two mornings later the door of my bed- 
 room in a hotel in Eyre Square, Galway, 
 was dealt a fateful blow by the hand of the 
 hotel cook, at 3.30 a.m., a blow weighted by 
 lifelong combat with loins of mutton. It was 
 no less a person than she who placed the 
 teapot on the breakfast table, murmuring 
 apologetically that "Gerrls was no good to 
 rise early, but owld ones like herself wouldn't 
 ax to stay in bed." The sunshine of May 
 fell upon her grey locks as she stood at the 
 portal to watch her guest's departure, and 
 her " God speed ye ! " mingled with the bang 
 of the swing-door as it slammed upon the 
 dark and sleeping house. 
 
 The laburnums of Eyre Square were 
 
AN OUTPOST OF IRELAND 13 
 
 fountains of gold, and the lilac was delicate 
 and cool ; a perfect stillness lay upon Galway. 
 Passing on through the streets there was no 
 sign of life, and the morning sunshine smote 
 on ranks of muffled windows : here and there 
 on the old houses the coats-of-arms of the 
 Galway Tribes uplifted their melancholy 
 witness to bygone greatness, but the town 
 spoke with no living voice. Emerging at 
 length from between blind-eyed house fronts, 
 the docks were reached, and in the large 
 vacant spaces of water now to be found 
 where was once the second port of the 
 United Kingdom, the smoke of a little 
 steamer rose in lonely activity, with the 
 mountains of Clare and the glitter of Galway 
 Bay for a background. 
 
 There was some delay in departure, owing 
 partly to a genial sympathy with the un- 
 punctual, partly to a question of precedence 
 among a pig family in the process of embark- 
 ation. The captain, a large clerical man in a 
 soft felt hat, bore it with the equanimity of 
 one who has learned in many journeys 
 between Galway and Aran what is the full 
 significance of the devils having entered into 
 the swine. The boat moved out at length 
 
i 4 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 into the gleaming breadth of the bay ; slowly 
 the gray town grouped itself in its low-lying 
 corner, the spires rose, waist-deep in roofs, 
 and the heavy tower of St. Nicholas bore its 
 associations of seven hundred years in the 
 brilliant youth of the spring sunlight. The 
 western suburbs stretched far along the bay, 
 with slopes smoothly wooded ; white houses 
 looked blankly out from their trim demesnes, 
 like alienated friends gazing an unmoved 
 farewell. Even Marino Cottage, attired in a 
 summer wash of pink, seemed to regard us 
 with a new and strange exclusiveness. In- 
 expressibly pure of plumage, the gulls rode 
 the clear wavelets, and swooped from poise 
 to poise with striding wing, masters of art in 
 two elements, with cold eyes observant of 
 the cumbrous creature that crawled on the 
 face of the waters with smoke and foam and 
 splashing. Thirty miles away a low, blue 
 mound on the horizon represented those 
 Islands of Aran described in the ancient 
 "Book of Rights" as "The Aras of the 
 Sea ; " the bows of the steamer swung to 
 them, gradually the brown and ragged coasts 
 of Connemara opened away to the north, and 
 to the south the barren verge of the County 
 
AN OUTPOST OF IRELAND 15 
 
 of Clare was shorn perpendicular to the sea 
 at the thousand-foot drop of the cliffs of 
 Moher. 
 
 The steamer plodded on at her ten miles 
 an hour, the pig families below uttered no 
 more than an occasional yell of fractiousness 
 or dolour, and a party of Aran women sat 
 and conversed under their red shawls with 
 that unflagging zest and seemingly in- 
 exhaustible supply of material that may well 
 be the envy of the cultured. 
 
 It was eight o'clock when the anchor was 
 let go in Kilronan Bay, opposite the principal 
 village of the principal island, while the 
 changeless sunshine shone on shallow green 
 water, on dazzling whitewashed cottages, on 
 dark hills and valleys of grey stone. Round 
 the steamer flocked battered punts and tarred 
 canvas corraghs with their bows high out of 
 the water ; tanned faces, puckered by the 
 sunlight, stared up from them, and in a storm 
 of Irish the process of disembarking began 
 — the phrase but feebly expresses the 
 spectacle of a kitchen table lowered from 
 the deck and laid on its back in a corragh, or 
 the feat of placing an old woman sitting in 
 the table with a gander in her lap. The 
 
1 6 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 corragh has no keel, and a sneeze is rightly 
 believed to be fatal to its equilibrium, but an 
 Aran old woman and an Aran gander can 
 rush in where Sir Isaac Nev/ton might fear 
 to tread. 
 
 A crowd waited at the piers end, as the 
 boats came creaking and gliding in to their 
 feet ; a crowd of large and angular people, 
 their faces strong and inquisitive, and 
 instantly remarkable to any one accustomed 
 to the mild and half-bashful expression of 
 West Galway eyes. There is about them an 
 air of a foreign race and of an earlier century. 
 Under circumstances less soul-stirring than 
 the arrival of the Galway steamer, their long 
 composed faces express their monotony of 
 mood ; their eyes are steady and far-looking, 
 as those that from day to day measure the 
 sweep of great horizons. Men and women 
 alike wear " pampooties " — slippers of raw 
 cowhide, with the hair outside — and walk 
 with the alertness and erectness that are 
 learned from rocky ground and the absence 
 of stiff and high-heeled boots ; the men affect 
 short, full trousers, ending high above the 
 ankle, so that the pampootie is freely dis- 
 played in its varieties of dun or black or 
 
AN ARAN FISHERMAN 
 
AN OUTPOST OF IRELAND 17 
 
 speckled hide. Topping the costume is a 
 "Tarn o' Shanter" cap, probably made in 
 Birmingham. It is not a graceful dress, but 
 the square shoulders and flat backs would 
 dignify a worse one, and the mild and 
 mottled pampootie loses its effeminacy with 
 the peoples singularly emphatic tread. 
 
 A hostelry of two whitewashed stories and 
 a thatched roof faced the pier, and we went 
 thither in search of a car, ordered some days 
 before. The door was open, admitting a 
 flood of sunshine to a narrow passage, on 
 one side of which was a kitchen, on the other 
 a sitting-room, with a wall paper of drab 
 trellis-work starred with balls of Reckitt's 
 blue — so it seemed, at least, to eyes blinded 
 by the outer glare. It contained chiefly the 
 smell of apples and sour bread proper to 
 rooms of its class, such as in the Isles of 
 Aran seemed impossibly conventional. Train- 
 oil and sealskins would have shed a fitter 
 perfume. Having invoked the household in 
 vain, I essayed the kitchen, where an old 
 man in shirt-sleeves was in the act of eating 
 his breakfast. He regarded me, not without 
 aversion, and continued to share an egg with 
 a child of three years old who stood intent 
 
18 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 and dirty-faced at his elbow. I waited till a 
 precarious teaspoonful had been lowered into 
 the wide open mouth, and made my inquiry 
 about the car. 
 
 "They're out since five o'clock looking for 
 the horse." Another spoonful of egg trembled 
 in the balance, and entered the speakers 
 mouth, not without disaster. 
 
 I averted my eyes, and asked where the 
 horse was usually kept. 
 
 "He does be out on the rocks. " The 
 spoon was pointed out of the window, some- 
 what peevishly. 
 
 Looking in the direction indicated, we saw 
 the arid shore of the bay, where, instead of 
 sands, grey stone in platforms and pavements 
 met the blue and glittering tide. From the 
 shore the country rose in haggard slopes of 
 gray stone with rifts of green ; cresting the 
 height, one of Aran's many ruined oratories 
 lifted a naked gable in the deep of the sky. 
 A narrow road followed the bend of the bay, 
 glaring white for two shelterless miles ; no 
 living thing was visible ; the pursuit of the 
 horse must be raging on the other side of the 
 island. It continued for another hour, with 
 what episodes of crag and crevasse can 
 
AN OUTPOST OF IRELAND 19 
 
 scarcely be imagined ; finally a dejected and 
 shaggy captive was led in and was thrust into 
 the shafts of a car. 
 
 The drive that followed is not easily for- 
 gotten. There were moments when the car 
 seemed to open at all its joints, as if falling 
 asunder from exhaustion ; and the shafts 
 swayed and swung like twin bowsprits, the 
 wheels creaked ominously, and one tyre left 
 an undulating line in the gritty dust of the 
 road. On either side spread floors of stone, 
 on which sat parliaments of boulders ; we 
 passed a stone platform so large and so level 
 that the addition of three walls has made a 
 creditable ball-alley of it. The walls are said 
 to have been built with money given for the 
 relief of distress in Aran ; if so, relief money 
 has often been worse spent in the West of 
 Ireland. The road kept in touch with the 
 coast, the car mounted to higher ground, 
 with the shafts pointing heavenward on either 
 side of the horses touzled mane. Pale green 
 fields and pale tracts of sand mitigated the 
 tyranny of rock, as the island sloped south- 
 eastward into the rich and wide azure of the 
 sea. A village straggled along the shore, 
 the chief mass of the low. white houses 
 
20 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 clustered round a fragment of bastion and 
 buttress that tells of the days when 
 Cromwell's arm was long enough to grasp 
 even Aran and build a stronghold there, 
 what time the iron entered into the soul of 
 Galway. 
 
 The builders of the castle had not far to 
 seek for their cut stone. Four churches and 
 a lofty and slender Round Tower were close 
 at hand, a constellation in the devotional 
 system of "Ara the Holy," the mother of 
 many saints and many churches, and there- 
 fore peculiarly suited to the purpose of the 
 Cromwellians. The churches were demolished, 
 the topmost stones of the Tower were utilised, 
 and its " Sweet bell " lost in the sand. To- 
 day but twelve feet of the beautiful masonry 
 remain to testify to the fervid skill of its 
 builders. 
 
 Red-shawled women sat by the white- 
 washed doorways of the village, red petti- 
 coated children pattered barefoot on the hot 
 rocks by the roadside, and behind them 
 burned the sea's leagues of lapis lazuli ; the 
 green of the grass lands intervened suavely 
 in the delicious jangle of colour. We were 
 at our journey's end so far as the car was 
 
AN OUTPOST OF IRELAND 21 
 
 concerned ; the artless islander, having 
 extorted a payment of four shillings for a 
 drive of two miles, retired, and we pursued our 
 way on foot to the Lodge above the village, 
 which was our destination. 
 
 Life at the Lodge on the hill during the 
 ten days that followed had aspects that were 
 wholly ideal, and aspects that were unre- 
 servedly scullion. The chief windows faced 
 north-east, framing a splendid outlook across 
 a plain of sea to where the Connemara moun- 
 tains have pitched their tents in a jagged line, 
 pale in the torpid heat of morning, dark at 
 evening against some lengthening creek of 
 sunset. When, at some ten of the clock the 
 rooms in the lonely house had passed from 
 gloaming to darkness, and the paraffin lamp 
 glared smokily at the semi-grand piano and 
 the horsehair sofa, the wild and noble outline 
 of Connemara was still sharp, the gleam 
 behind it still a harbourage for the daylight. 
 ! The more elementary needs of the estab- 
 lishment were coped with by a henchwoman 
 from the village below, a middle-aged and 
 taciturn widow, wearing a red-checked shawl 
 over her broad chest, a smaller red shawl 
 over her head, an excessively short red 
 
22 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 homespun skirt, and pampooties. In the 
 early hours of the summer morning her step, 
 muffled in cowhide, traversed the house 
 weightily ; in due time followed the entrance 
 of the stable bucket, borne with a slow stride 
 that showed to admiration the grey woollen 
 ankles under the short skirt : her eye rested 
 askance, and not without saturnine humour, 
 upon the weakling of a later civilisation who 
 still lay in bed. As the bucket was set down 
 a deep and serious voice uttered the mono- 
 syllable " bath," as colourlessly as the bleat 
 of a sheep, and, with the exit of her sallow 
 face and dreamy blue eyes, the strange, 
 arduous, trifling day began. 
 
 Breakfast was not its least achievement, 
 prepared by our own hands at a turf fire that 
 added an aroma of its own to the coffee, and 
 delicately flavoured the hot milk. Owing to a 
 scarcity of saucepans the eggs must be boiled 
 in a portly iron pot and fished from its depths 
 with the tongs, and through all, and impeding 
 all, went the flushed pertinacity of the 
 amateur toast-maker. Dinner was a more 
 serious affair, a strenuous triumph of mind 
 over matter and over the Widow Holloran, 
 a daily despair, by reason of potatoes whose 
 
AN OUTPOST OF IRELAND 23 
 
 hearts remained harder than Pharaoh's, and 
 chiefly by reason of the dearth of pie-dishes. 
 1 " Why wouldn't ye ax Miss O'Regan down 
 in the town for the loan of a pie-dish ? Sure 
 she's full up of pie-dishes." This remarkable 
 information came from Mrs. Holloran, but 
 was not acted upon. 
 
 After twenty four hours of the ministry of 
 the Widow Holloran, we found the conclusion 
 forced upon us that the Simple Life was far 
 more complicated, and infinitely more exact- 
 ing than the normal existence of the worldling. 
 To us, nurturing a sulky flame in a gloomy 
 pile of turf, the truly Simple Life resolved 
 itself into two words : good servants. Even 
 the least of Miss Gerraghty's nieces would 
 have been a Godsend ; the thought of mutton 
 chops, procurable at any instant, all but 
 brought a dimness to the eye that foresaw a 
 dinner — the third in succession — of American 
 bacon and eggs that tasted of fish. It was 
 in one of the long May twilights that we 
 were waited upon by the man who had, on 
 the hearthrug of Marino Cottages Front 
 Sitting-room, offered us mutton, sweet as 
 sugar. This time he offered not mutton, 
 but sheep; he produced a sort of subscription 
 
s 4 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 list, and invited us to put down our names for 
 any piece we might prefer of an animal which 
 was at the moment nibbling the dainty grass 
 among the boulders. We subscribed, with a 
 shudder which was, as it proved, superfluous. 
 The subscription list did not fill, and two 
 days afterwards we were told that the matter 
 had fallen through, and if we wanted 
 "buttcher's mate" we must telegraph to 
 Gal way. 
 
 I have heard, in another part of Ireland, 
 described slightingly as " a wild westhern 
 place in Cork," of a somewhat similar, but 
 more elaborate process. " When they goes 
 to kill a cow there, they dhrive her out 
 through the sthreet, and a man in front of 
 her ringing a bell, and another man with her, 
 and he having a bit o' chalk (and it should be 
 a black cow). Every one then can tell what 
 bit of her they want, and the man dhraws 
 it out on her with the chalk. But it should 
 be a black cow." I think it was a relative of 
 this butcher who, when remonstrated with 
 about his meat, on the ground that it had 
 not been properly killed, replied unanswer- 
 ably, " I declare to ye, the one that had the 
 killing of that cow was the Lord Almighty." 
 
AN OUTPOST OF IRELAND 25 
 
 Meals at the Lodge were not things done 
 in a corner. Sheep cropped the grass to 
 the edge of the window sill, village children 
 loitered observantly on their way to the well, 
 tall brindled dogs, in whom must lurk some 
 strain of the old Irish wolfhound, gnawed 
 sapless bones in the porch, as in an accus- 
 tomed sanctuary. The cuckoo, that pre- 
 tended recluse, passed and repassed in 
 clumsy flight, even perching on the roof of 
 the house, and sending a hoarse and hollow 
 cry down the chimney. Sitting on the 
 rock ledges in the long morning, the 
 chiefest concern of idleness was to note his 
 short and graceless flittings from boulder to 
 wall, his tactless call, coarsened by nearness 
 and the lack of illusion. Not thus does the 
 spirit voice poise the twin notes in tireless 
 mystery, among the wooded shores of 
 Connemara lakes. 
 
 ! Below the Lodge, to the south-east, the 
 restless sand has smothered many a land- 
 mark, obliterated many a grave. Lie down 
 in it, it is a soft bed ; let it slip through your 
 fingers, dry and fine and delicate, while the 
 sea line is high and blue above you, and the 
 light breaker strikes the slow moments in 
 
26 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 rhythm. Saint and oratory, cloghaun and 
 cromlech, lie deep in its oblivion, their 
 memory living faintly and more faintly from 
 lip to lip through the years ; around the 
 saints their halos still linger, pale in this 
 ages noonday, and the fishermen still strike 
 sail at the corner of the island to the little 
 crumbling tower that is supposed to mark the 
 grave of Saint Gregory. » 
 
 The ridge of the island runs in table 
 lands of rock, dropping in cliffs to the sea 
 along its south-western face. These heights 
 are level deserts of stone, streaked with soft 
 grass where the yellow vetch blazes and a 
 myriad wild roses lay their petals against the 
 boulders: Yet even these handmaids of the 
 rock are not the tenderest of its surprises. 
 Look down the slits and fissures as you step 
 across them on a May day, and you will see 
 fronds of maiden hair climbing out of the 
 darkness and warm mud below. A month 
 later they will be strong and tall above the 
 surface ; the clots of foam may often strike 
 them when, below their platform, the piled- 
 up Atlantic rolls its vastness to the attack, 
 with the cruel green of the up-drawn wave, 
 with the hurl of the pent tons against crag 
 
AN OUTPOST OF IRELAND 27 
 
 and cliff. But for us, on that May morning, 
 land and sea lay in rapt accord, and the 
 breast of the brimming tide was laid to the 
 breast of the cliff, with a low and broken 
 voice of joy. 
 
 The walk here became finally and de- 
 finitely a steeplechase, and those not bred 
 in Galway had better think twice before 
 attempting an Aran stone wall ; indeed, when 
 five feet of ponderous and trembling stone 
 lattice work has to be dealt with, the native 
 himself will probably adopt the simple course 
 of throwing it down, building it up again or 
 not, according to the dictates of conscience. 
 If the explorer survives two hours of this 
 exercise, he will have reached the fort of 
 Dun ^Engus, built in days when Christianity, 
 a climbing sunrise, was as yet far below the 
 Irish horizon. Of its kind, it is reputed to 
 be as perfect as anything in Europe, but it is 
 an unlovely kind. Three invertebrate walls 
 of loose stones, eighteen feet high and fifteen 
 feet thick, sprawl in a triple horseshoe to 
 the edge of a cliff, which, with its sheer drop 
 of three hundred feet to the sea, completes 
 the line of defence. The innermost of the 
 three ramparts encloses a windy plateau 
 
28 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 where, in times of siege, the Firbolg Prince 
 ^ngus, son of Huamor, probably enjoyed 
 the society of all the cattle in the island, and 
 of an indefinite number of wives. The 
 outermost rampart girdles eleven acres of 
 rocky hillside, and here the unwearied savage 
 labour constructed a chevaux-de-frise by 
 wedging slabs and splinters of stone into 
 every crevice. Hardly now, in the intelligent 
 calm of sight-seeing, can the invader make 
 a way through the ankle-breaking confusion, 
 where, in the gloaming centuries before St. 
 Patrick, bloody hands clutched the limestone 
 edges in the death stagger, and matted heads 
 crashed dizzily down, in unrecorded death 
 and courage and despair. 
 
 After those days Danes and Irish and 
 English plundered in their turn, but the 
 stillness of the rock and the loneliness of the 
 sea closed in again on the islands, while on 
 the mainland rebellion and conquest alter- 
 nated in a various agony, and the civilisation 
 thrust on Ireland was a coat of many colours, 
 dipped in blood. These Aras of the Sea rest 
 in their primitive calm, nurturing a strong, 
 leisurely people, with the patience and hardi- 
 ness of the rock in their blood ; equipped 
 
AN OUTPOST OF IRELAND 29 
 
 physically for any destiny, equipped mentally 
 with the quick financial ability and shrewd- 
 ness of the Irish, yet slow to imitate, slow in 
 the adoption of what others initiate, regard- 
 ing, I fear, their country as the invalid and 
 ill-used wife of the British ogre, a wife of the 
 admired Early Victorian type, unoriginative, 
 prolific, and unable to support herself. 
 
 Looking down from Dun ^Engus there is 
 little expression of the three thousand lives 
 that are hemmed in this floating parish. No 
 wheel is audible along the nine miles of 
 Irish moor; the other two islands lie gray 
 and still, rimmed by fawning and flashing 
 tides, lifeless save where the smoke of 
 burning kelp creeps blue by the waters 
 edge. 
 
 It is a pleasant descent to the village of 
 Kilmurvey, down through the buoyant air of 
 the hill side ; the grass steals its way among 
 the outposts of rock, till the foot travels with 
 unfamiliar ease in level fields. Near 
 Kilmurvey the Resident Magistrate's house 
 shows a trim roof among young larch and 
 spruce, a miracle of modernity and right 
 angles after the strewn monstrosities of the 
 ridge above ; passing near it, a piano gave 
 
3 o SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 forth a Nocturne of Chopin's to the solitude, 
 .a patrician lament, a skilled passion, in a 
 land where ear and voice have preserved the 
 single threads of melody, and harmony is as 
 yet unwoven. 
 
 With its barbaric novelties of colour, its 
 wild, red-clad women, its background of grey 
 rock, its glare of sunshine, Aran should be 
 a place known to painters, but at the first 
 sight of of even the sketch book the village 
 street becomes a desert ; the mothers, spitting 
 to avert the "bad eye," snatch their children 
 into their houses, and bang their doors. 
 The old women vanish from the door steps, 
 the boys take to the rocks. As it is the 
 creed of Aran that any one that has his 
 "likeness dhrew out" will die within the 
 year, it seems unfeeling to urge the matter 
 upon them. Here and there the mission 
 shilling makes its convert ; an old woman 
 braced herself to the risk on the excellent 
 ground that she would probably die before 
 the year was out, and might as well make 
 the most of her chances. She found the 
 idea highly humorous, and so did several of 
 the neighbours. 
 
 Our departure from Aran was not out of 
 
AN OUTPOST OF IRELAND 31 
 
 keeping with the general run of events there. 
 Struggling with painting materials, plants of 
 maidenhair fern, and the usual oversights 
 and overflows of packing, scantily enveloped 
 in newspaper, we made our way on foot from 
 the Lodge to the bay below it, a distance of 
 some two or three hundred yards, and there 
 embarked, attended to the boat by Mrs. 
 Holloran and her next of kin — in other words, 
 a crowd of some twenty deeply interested 
 persons. We had shoved off and were 
 moving out towards the steamer over the 
 transparent green deeps of the bay, when I 
 remembered the little boy who had driven 
 our portmanteaux down to the beach in a 
 donkey cart, and I flung a shilling to one of 
 the next-of-kin in settlement of the obliga- 
 tion. We saw the emissary present the 
 tribute. 
 
 " He'll not take it ! " was shouted from the 
 shore. 
 
 I protested at the full pitch of my voice to 
 the effect that he must not allow his mag- 
 nanimity to interfere with his just dues, that 
 I was very glad to give it to him. 
 
 II He'll take three ! " travelled to us like a 
 cannon ball across the translucent water. 
 
32 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 Nothing travelled back. Nothing, that is, 
 except the Galway steamer, which presently 
 flapped its paddles into the falling tide, and 
 took us away to regions where we ourselves 
 were natives, and viewed the tourist with a 
 proper hauteur. 
 
 Meditating on those May days, winnowed 
 now of their husk of culinary difficulties, they 
 seem the most purely lonely, the most 
 crowded with impressions, that could befall. 
 Habituated to the stillness of West Galway 
 life, these stillnesses were vast and expressive 
 beyond any previous experience of mine ; in 
 the shadeless brilliance, the bare grayness, I 
 breathed a foreign and tingling air. The 
 people's profoundly self-centred existence 
 has " no thoroughfare " written across it ; 
 lying on the warm rocks, they see Ireland 
 stretched silent, enigmatic, apart from them, 
 and are content that it is so. Their poverty 
 is known to many, their way of thought to a 
 few ; they remain motionless on the edge of 
 Europe, with the dust of the saints beneath 
 their feet, 
 
PICNICS 
 
 c 
 
PICNICS 
 
 A kettle seated decorously on a kitchen 
 range is far less likely to be smoked than one 
 propped precariously on a heap of smoulder- 
 ing sticks. It is also ordained by the forces 
 of civilisation that it shall eventually boil ; a 
 point by no means to be taken for granted in 
 the matter of the sticks. A sparcity of 
 saucers, an apostolic community of teaspoons; 
 no one would suspect the hidden humour in 
 such disabilities if confronted with them at 
 an ordinary " At Home," and however 
 excellent the appetite brought to bear upon a 
 chicken pie at a luncheon party, in the lack 
 of knives and forks it would scarce nerve its 
 possessor to eat with his fingers. And yet, 
 so skin deep a fraud is civilisation, the 
 chicken bone to which, through the years, I 
 look back most fondly, was gnawed, warm 
 
36 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 from the pocket, on the top of one of the 
 Bantry mountains. 
 
 The first picnic in which I clearly recall 
 taking part was, like many that succeeded it, 
 illicit. It unconsciously adhered to the great 
 and golden precept that picnics should be 
 limited in number and select in company. It 
 consisted, in fact, of no more than four, which, 
 with a leggy deerhound, a turf fire, and the 
 smoke from the turf fire, were as much as 
 could be fitted in. Why a ruinous lime-kiln 
 should have been chosen is not worth inquir- 
 ing into. It probably conformed best with 
 those ideals of cave-dwelling, secrecy, and 
 rigorous discomfort that are treasured by the 
 young. We were, indeed, excessively young, 
 and should have been walking in all godliness 
 with the governess ; two of us at least should. 
 The other two were turf-boys, who should 
 have been carrying baskets of turf on their 
 backs into the kitchen, and submitting them- 
 selves reverently to the innumerable oppres- 
 sions of the cook, who, they assured us, had 
 already pitched them to the Seventeen Divils 
 three times that same day. The lime-kiln 
 was sketchily roofed with branches, thatched 
 with sedge and was entered by the hole at 
 
PICNICS 37 
 
 which the smoke came out. It was a feat of 
 some skill to lower oneself through this hole, 
 avoid the fire, grope for the table — a packing- 
 case — with one toe, and thence fall on top of 
 the rest of the party. Except in the item of 
 sociability I do not think that the deerhound 
 can have enjoyed himself much ; he spent 
 most of the time in dodging the transits of 
 the kettle, and it was our malign custom to 
 wipe the knives on his back, in places just 
 beyond the flaps of a tongue as long and red 
 as a slice of ham. What we ate is best 
 forgotten. Something disgusting with carra- 
 way seeds in it, kneaded by our own filthy 
 hands, lubricated with lard, and baked in a 
 frying pan in the inmost heart of the turf 
 smoke. The drink was claret, stolen from 
 the dining-room, and boiled with a few hand- 
 fuls of the snow that lay sparsely under the 
 fir trees round the lime-kiln. Why the claret 
 should have been boiled with snow is hard to 
 explain. I think it must have been due to 
 its suggestion of Polar expeditions and Roman 
 Feasts ; subjects both of them, that lent them- 
 selves to learned and condescending explana- 
 tion to the turf-boys. Afterwards, when the 
 elder turf-boy, Sonny Walsh, produced a 
 
38 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 pack of cards from a cavity in his coat that 
 had begun life as a pocket, and dealt them 
 out for " Spoilt Five" it was the turf-boys 
 turn to condescend. " Spoilt Five M is not in 
 any sense child's play ; its rules are compli- 
 cated, and its play overlaid with weird usages 
 and expressions. For the uninitiated it was 
 out of the question to distinguish kings from 
 queens, or the all-important 11 Five-Fingers " 
 from any other five, through the haze of dirt 
 with which all were befogged. The turf-boys 
 knew them as the shepherd knows his flock, 
 and at the end of the game had become 
 possessors of our stock-in-trade, consisting of 
 a Manx halfpenny, a slate pencil with plaid 
 paper gummed round its shank, two lemon 
 drops, and a livery button. 
 
 This was a good and thoroughly enjoyable 
 picnic, containing within itself all the ele- 
 ments of success, difficult as these may be to 
 define, and still more difficult as they are to 
 secure. 
 
 I remember an August afternoon, and a 
 long island that lay sweltering in a sea of flat 
 and streaky blue. Two heated boatloads 
 approached it at full speed, each determined 
 to get there first, and equally determined not 
 
PICNICS 39 
 
 to seem aware of any emulation. Simul- 
 taneously the keels drove like ploughs into 
 the hot shingle, the inevitable troop of dogs 
 flung themselves ashore — it is noteworthy 
 that all dogs dash into a boat as if they were 
 leading a forlorn hope, and leave it as if 
 they were escaping from a fire — the party 
 spread itself over the beach in cheerful ar- 
 gument as to the most suitable place for the 
 repast, and while the contention was still hot 
 as to the relative merits of a long disused 
 churchyard, with an ancient stone coffin lid 
 for a table, or a baking corner of the strand, 
 where a thin stream trickled over the cliffs to 
 the sea, one came from the boats with a 
 stricken face, and said that all the food had 
 been left behind. There was silence for a 
 space. Then, while the accusers answered 
 one another, the remembrance of Mrs. 
 Driscoll's cottage shone like a star on a 
 stormy night into the minds of the castaways. 
 Under happier circumstances the metaphor 
 might have seemed inappropriate, but there 
 is a time for everything, and the time for 
 Mrs. Driscoirs cottage to pose as a star of 
 hope and deliverance had arrived. Mrs. 
 Driscoll herself, emerging from her cowhouse, 
 
4° SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 sympathetic, hospitable, and very dirty, was 
 equal to the occasion. Would she lend us a 
 skillet? Sure, why not ! An* eggs is it? an* 
 praties ? an' a sup o' milk, and the sign o* 
 butther ? Well, well ! the cratures ! An' 
 they come to this lonesome place to ate their 
 dinner, an' to lave it afther them afther ! 
 Glory be to mercy ! Well, the genthry is 
 quare, but for all they're very good! She 
 led the foraging party in to her cottage. It 
 was the only house on the island, and, in 
 rough weather, as solitary and cut off from 
 humanity as was Noahs Ark. Indeed, 
 solitariness was not the only point wherein a 
 resemblance to the Ark was suggested. A 
 cloud of hens screeched forth over the half 
 door in our faces ; two cats and a pig sped 
 out as we opened it ; a small but determined 
 mother goat dared us to force the fortalice of 
 the inner chamber in which her offspring 
 were, no doubt, in laager ; a gander lifted his 
 clattering bill from a skillet — the skillet, I 
 may say, in which our subsequent meal was 
 to be prepared — to hiss alarmingly at us ; 
 two children and, I think, a calf, shuddered 
 noiselessly out of sight into the brown vault 
 of the fireplace, and through it all, as Mrs. 
 
PICNICS 41 
 
 Browning sings, 11 The nightingales 99 (or, 
 strictly speaking, the ducks) " drove straight 
 and full their long clear call." 
 
 Mrs. Driscoll drove, headlong as an ocean 
 steamer, through her manage. The skillet 
 was snatched from the gander ; with one 
 sweeping cuff a low-growling, elderly dog 
 was dashed from its seat on the potato sack 
 under the table. The dresser yielded a bowl 
 full of eggs ; from the bedroom came milk 
 and butter (happily, none of us, save the 
 goat, was made free of the mysteries of their 
 place of keeping), and a little girl was 
 plucked from the depths of the chimney and 
 commanded to M run away to the well for a 
 pitcher of water." 
 
 <{ Not from the well in the bohireen," we 
 said quickly, 11 it doesn't look very — 99 
 
 " Sure that's grand wather, asthore," 
 replied Mrs. Driscoll, "if ye'll take the green 
 top off it there's no better wather in the globe 
 of Ireland, nor in Carbery nayther !" 
 
 We accepted the reassurance. When one is 
 less than twenty and more than half-starved, 
 one accepts a good deal, and I cannot 
 remember that any of us were any the worse 
 for the water. At all events the potatoes 
 
42 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 were boiled in it, the eggs nestling amicably 
 among them (this to save time and fuel). 
 Ultimately there was made a comprehensive 
 blend of everything — eggs, potatoes, milk and 
 butter, the whole served hot, on flat stones, 
 and eaten with pocket knives and cockle- 
 shells. 
 
 Over our heads the unsophisticated sea- 
 gulls swooped and screamed — I remember 
 that one of them nearly knocked my hat off 
 on that island one day — the air quivered like 
 hot oil between us and the purple distance 
 of the mainland, and yet there was the island 
 freshness in it ; we lay on our backs on the 
 heathery verge of the cliffs and drowsed off 
 the potatoes. There were no plates to wash, 
 no forks to clean. It was an admirable 
 picnic. So every one thought, save the dogs, 
 who found egg-shells and potato-skins a poor 
 substitute for chicken bones. 
 
 There is, I think, in the matter of picnics 
 no middle course endurable. If they cannot 
 attain to the untrammelled simplicity of the 
 savage, they require all the resources of 
 civilisation to justify them. Let there be 
 men-servants, and maid-servants, and cattle 
 — for carting purposes — and, in fact, all the 
 
PICNICS 43 
 
 things enumerated in the Tenth Command- 
 ment, including your neighbours wife. 
 Let there also be champagne — and yet, not 
 even champagne will alleviate much if your 
 neighbour's wife be dull and greedy, and 
 how often, how almost invariably is she, at a 
 picnic, both these things ! There certainly 
 is something in the conditions of set feasts 
 out of doors that induces an unusual measure 
 of gluttony. Primarily, of course, there is 
 the lack of other occupation, but chiefly, I 
 think, there is the instinctive wish to lessen 
 the labours of packing up. Packing up is 
 the dark feature of the best picnic. I have 
 often pitied the Apostles for the seven 
 basketfuls that they found left on their 
 hands. 
 
 If an instance of all that is worst in a 
 picnic be required I may lightly record some 
 of the features of an entertainment which, 
 one summer, I was by Heavens help and a 
 little lower diplomacy, enabled to evade. 
 The drag-net of the African war had gone 
 heavily over the neighbourhood, and to the 
 forty women who had unflinchingly accepted, 
 but two men were found to preserve the just 
 balance of the sexes. These numbers are 
 
44 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 not fictitious. They may be found seared 
 upon the heart of the hostess. 
 
 The forty, with a singular fatuity, seem to 
 have been as tenacious of their dignity as 
 jurymen at a Coroners inquest. It was 
 theirs, as females, to sit still and be fed, and 
 this they did, even though the feeding 
 process was conducted solely by the two 
 heroes of the afternoon, and was necessarily 
 of the most gradual character. The kettle, 
 or rather kettles, were — it is the only bright 
 spot in the affair — ably manipulated by serfs 
 in the background, and in their hands was 
 also the grosser conduct of the feast, the 
 unpacking, the setting forth on the grass of a 
 table cloth of about half an acre in area, and 
 the placing on its unattainable central pla- 
 teaux those matters — such as cream-jugs and 
 fruit salads — in greatest request and most 
 prone to disaster. They, also, had been the 
 selectors of a ruined cottage as the site of 
 the camp fires, and it was only when these 
 were being prepared that a swarm of bees 
 discovered itself in the chimney. Fortu- 
 nately, however, before it went on to discover 
 the picnic, some one, with the Irish gift of 
 using the wrong thing in the right place, 
 
PICNICS 45 
 
 stopped the flue with a hamper and a car- 
 riage rug, thus heading off the worst of the 
 bees, while the fires were relit in the corners 
 of the cottage. The two men faced the 
 position. Through smoke and bees they did 
 their duty, carting back and forth the eighty 
 cups of tea which the occasion demanded ; 
 but they said afterwards that more than 
 patriotism barbed the regret that their 
 country had deemed them too old for active 
 service. As for the forty ladies, they sat and 
 fulfilled what was for them the primary, if 
 not the only object of the picnic, by eating 
 and drinking, without haste, without rest, 
 till the kettles gave out. Then, like a flock 
 of gorged birds, they rose heavily, and 
 unaffectedly begged to be allowed to order 
 their carriages, and so went home. The 
 hostess had held a walk and a view in 
 reserve, in case of emergencies, but it was 
 not for her to complain. The two men then 
 had their tea. 
 
 It has been my fate to take part in several 
 yachting picnics. They have all had one 
 common and hideous feature — even as a 
 cocked-nose or a squint will run in families — 
 the yachts have invariably been becalmed. 
 
46 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 Their other conditions have been various. 
 Sometimes the food was sent by land to meet 
 the yachters at the chosen rendezvous ; 
 sometimes the picnicking contingent rode 
 bicycles and sent the food by sea, and some- 
 times the yacht alone took the whole outfit, 
 food and feeders, and putting forth to sea, 
 incontinently fell upon flat calms, and the 
 slow pulsing swell of the Atlantic, and thus, 
 though the direct cause varied, the net result 
 was ever the same — starvation. There is 
 hidden away in West Cork a most lovely 
 and lonely lake. It is joined with the sea by 
 a narrow neck, up which at high water boats 
 can come. To landward is a great hill, 
 thickly grown with firs, and aboriginal oaks, 
 and hollies, wherein on a still night you may 
 hear the wild screech of the martin-cats, 
 ripping the darkness blood-curdlingly, like a 
 woman's scream. From its summit is a 
 view of wondrous beauty and expanse (not 
 necessarily synonymous terms, though often 
 reckoned so), and it was there that we 
 were to picnic, bicycling as near the top 
 as might be, while hirelings from the yacht 
 were to carry provisions up the hill for 
 us. It was a luncheon picnic, the blackest 
 
PICNICS 47 
 
 kfnd of all. The yacht started at day- 
 break ; all was to be ready on the hill top by 
 our arrival. 
 
 I should think the least intelligent would 
 have already gathered the denouement of 
 this %i Cautionary Tale," as Mrs. Sherwood 
 would call it, and I need do no more than 
 indicate the closing scene of the day's 
 tragedy. On a sea of turquoise, far-away 
 sails, saffron-coloured, and motionless in the 
 afternoon sunlight. On the mud floor of a 
 roadside public house, a small company of 
 bicyclists, drearily preserving life by means 
 of sour porter, flat, sweet lemonade, and 
 probably the stalest biscuits in the wide 
 province of Munster. 
 
 Many high authorities, including, I am 
 told, Mr. Herbert Spencer, assure us that it 
 is the inherited influences of prehistoric 
 ancestors that breed in otherwise decent and 
 home-keeping souls the love of the lawless 
 freedom of a picnic, and, to be sure, the 
 pleasure that we had in our island orgy, with 
 its plateless, spoonless indecorums, can best 
 be explained on some such theory. None 
 the less, I maintain that the ideal picnic is 
 only achieved by the most super-civilised 
 
) 
 
 48 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 elimination and selection. Two, or afc most 
 four, congenial souls, and a tea basket of 
 latest device and most expert equipment — 
 these things, and thoroughly dry grass, and 
 I ask no more of heaven. 
 
BOON COMPANIONS 
 
 D 
 
BOON COMPANIONS 
 
 11 D'ye remember of Gill and Poor Fellow, 
 greyhounds that was in it long ago ?" 
 
 I did not. In the long and tear-stained 
 annals of the family dogs but one greyhound 
 was in my memory, the saintly and beautiful 
 Gazelle, own niece to " Master McGrath," as 
 was recited with bated breath to new 
 governesses and other of the unenlightened, 
 coupled with large statements as to her 
 uncomputable value had not her tail in 
 youth been shut into a stable door and given 
 a double angle like a bayonet. 
 
 Rickeen was occupied, to some extent, in 
 felling a young ash tree. He swung in hah 
 a score of blows that made it shiver, and 
 presently came to the expected pause. 
 
 " Faith thim was the dogs — ! My 
 brother Tom was butler here the same time. 
 
52 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 B'leeve me 'twas himself was souple ! He'd 
 run home any minute in the day, two miles, 
 and ye wouldn't hardly feel him gone." 
 
 This remarkable accomplishment on the 
 part of the butler was allowed to sink in, as 
 it deserved. 
 
 " He had a tarrier, and one day going 
 through the Wood of Annagh himself and 
 the tarrier wakened a hare, and the two o' 
 thim was hunting her through and fro, and 
 he cursing the full of a house on the tarrier. 
 He shtud then on the big rock that's in it, 
 and he let a whistle on his two fingers. 
 The two greyhounds was sthretched within 
 at the kitchen fire up at the Big House, and 
 sorra word of lie I'm tellin', but Poor Fellow 
 put an ear on him, and the two of them 
 legged it out of the kitchen and away with 
 them to the wood, and they never stopped 
 nor stayed till they found Tom, and them- 
 selves and the tarrier killed the hare." 
 
 The big rock and the Big House were 
 severed by an Irish mile of tree trunks and 
 briars, but criticism is the last thing required 
 from a listener, and I hope I played my 
 part. 
 
 Rickeen was again possessed by a spasm 
 
RICKEEN 
 
BOON COMPANIONS 53 
 
 of industry : the chips flew out, the tall young 
 ash cracked, and sank into the arms of its 
 neighbours. There was a singular simplicity 
 about the forestry of the establishment. 
 When the bitter cry of the cook went forth 
 for wood wherewith to cook the impending 
 meal, Rickeen prayed that the divil might 
 roast and baste all the women in Ireland, 
 and cut down a convenient young tree. By 
 this means the plantations were lightly thinned 
 at the ends nearest the house, and as a 
 general thing the cook gave notice every 
 three weeks, which prevented any unwhole- 
 some stagnation. 
 
 11 But as for dogs/' continued Rickeen, a 
 little later, as he snicked off the greeny-grey 
 branches, " the grandest dog ever was in 
 this counthry was Mullowny's. Ye couldn't 
 know what kind of a breed was in him, but 
 ye'd have to like him, he was that spotted. " 
 
 Here a long-drawn yell came forth from 
 the yard, resolving itself gradually into a 
 statement to Rickeen that the Misthress 
 wanted her keys, and himself was the last 
 one she seen them with. 
 
 Rickeen put down his hatchet in fateful 
 silence. His dog, couched in a brake where 
 
54 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 the young bracken stems curled like bishops* 
 croziers round her crafty snout, raised one 
 yellow eyebrow out of what was apparently 
 deep sleep, arose, and followed him with her 
 wonted gravity. Her cold manner was the 
 next thing to good breeding ; in spite of a 
 family tree exclusively composed of crosses, 
 in spite of a coat suggestive of a badger skin 
 that has been used as a door mat, there was 
 that in her pale eyes and in the set smile at 
 the corners of her mouth that discouraged 
 familiarity, and induced other dogs to feign 
 a sudden interest in their own affairs as she 
 approached. To follow Rickeen she gnawed 
 ropes, and swam lakes, and ate her way 
 through doors, and Rickeen never to my 
 knowledge addressed her, except with the 
 command to drive in the cows. In her next 
 incarnation she will probably be the ideal 
 colonists wife. 
 
 I remained sitting on a stump in the 
 silence, and thought of my first love, Bran. 
 Through the tree stems I could see a grassy 
 hill sloping to the lake side, where, at the 
 age of nine, I grovelled one morning 
 among the cowslips and mopped my soaking 
 tears with my holland waggoner, and wished 
 
BOON COMPANIONS 55 
 
 for death, because Bran had been drowned. 
 Bran was a cur, half silky and gracious 
 Gordon setter, half woolly vulgarian of the 
 Irish cottage breed, and to us, his comrades, 
 a hero, an object of passionate faith, and, as 
 such, the victim of many well-meant but 
 excruciating honours. He wore, with docile 
 consciousness of his absurdity, ornamental 
 harness of strangling complications, and 
 with it drew at a foot pace a grocer's box, 
 mounted on wheels, while we walked before 
 and after with fixed bayonets and all the 
 gravity befitting a guard of honour operating 
 in shrubberies teeming with banditti. It 
 was not till an attempt was made to put the 
 new bull dog into double harness with him 
 that Bran showed symptoms of resentment, 
 and the battle that then raged in the tangle 
 of the shoulder straps and traces placed him, 
 if possible, higher in our respect. The 
 matter was patched up with the bull dog, 
 who, though instant in quarrel, was not 
 without good feeling, and next morning, at 
 an early hour, I saw his frightful face 
 protruding from under the bedclothes of my 
 brothers bed, framed in a poke bonnet of 
 sheet, while two long tails, languidly waving 
 
56 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 in welcome, hung down over the valance 
 like bell-ropes, and witnessed to the presence 
 of Bran and of the young deerhound, Kilfane, 
 hidden in the deepest heart of the bed. 
 
 Perhaps Sunday was the day that Bran 
 was most satiating to us. To go to church on 
 the top of the family omnibus was at any time 
 the summit of ambition ; with Bran speeding 
 easily in front, or slackening for a hurried 
 exchange of ferocities with cabin acquaint- 
 ances, the five miles (invariably driven in the 
 teeth of a north-westerly wind) were all too 
 short. Those inside, whose turn it would be 
 to sit on top coming home, yearned with 
 crooked necks through the side windows, and 
 stimulated by glimpses of the hero, were 
 enabled to struggle successfully with the 
 hideous tendency of childhood to be sea-sick 
 in covered vehicles. During church time 
 Bran was immured in the lock-up at the 
 police station, and many a wriggling half- 
 hour's endurance of the sermon was gilded 
 by expectancy of the moment when the 
 sorrowful sighing of the prisoner would turn 
 to ardent sniffing under the door of the lock- 
 up, and the hand of the sergeant would restore 
 to us " life's greatest possibility." 
 
BOON COMPANIONS 57 
 
 One summer night, at about this time, as 
 I lay in my bed, the spirits of prophecy and 
 of poesy came upon me hand in hand, quite 
 inexplicably. Bran was in his usual health, 
 and, as I afterwards found, was at that 
 very hour engaged in stealing mutton hash 
 from the back hall : but it was decreed that I 
 should compose an ode fatefully com- 
 memorating his violent death. 
 
 " Oh, Bran, thou wert gentle and sweet," 
 I began, without an effort, while Mattei's 
 Valse swung and crashed its way up through 
 two ceilings from the drawing-room, 
 
 But now thou art past and gone, 
 Like a wave on the ocean so fleet, 
 And the deed of death was done. 
 
 Even here inspiration did not flag. 
 
 'Tis no use to wail or to weep. 
 For oh, alas and alack ! 
 
 Thou'st gone to that eternal sleep, 
 From which none can bring thee back. 
 
 The magnificence of the close was almost 
 stupefying to the author ; even the second 
 line of the verse had seemed full of a rending 
 passion. I sank to sleep, aware that I had 
 taken my place in literature. 
 
 A year afterwards came the miserable 
 
58 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 tears among the cowslips, the first taste of 
 
 the bitter core of sentiment, and the 
 
 discovery that the prophetic ode did not 
 
 express the position. 
 
 Bran occupies the whole foreground of the 
 
 history of pets, but there were many of a 
 
 lesser sort. There was even another elegy, 
 
 beginning : 
 
 Stranger, with reverence draw near, 
 A Linnet lies below. 
 
 But birds were not our foible. 
 
 Rabbits followed each other in bewildering 
 succession, and travelled to their doom by 
 the same track. We fed them with milk 
 and water out of eggspoons, with daisies, and 
 with clover, but the morning always came 
 when the foundling lay stiff in its hay, its 
 black eyes glazed, and the limp daisies 
 untouched beside it. One notable exception 
 is recorded, a young rabbit brought in with a 
 broken leg, who out of pure contrariety and 
 improbability lived for a year. It became 
 precocious beyond belief, and sat all day 
 observing life from the arm of its proprietor. 
 At night it slept, or affected to sleep, in a box 
 in her room, biding its time till the candle 
 was put out. Under cover of darkness it 
 
BOON COMPANIONS 59 
 
 would then stealthily come forth and would 
 buck with precision from the floor on to the 
 face of the sleeper, repeating the feat as often 
 as repulsed, until a burrow in some corner of 
 the bed was granted. (It is not out of place 
 here to mention that its nails were cut 
 with extreme care and regularity.) Its diet 
 presented no difficulty, save in the matter of 
 restriction. It partook of the family meals 
 as they came : porridge, marmalade, bread 
 and butter, meat ; uncooked green vegetables 
 were not so much as mentioned in its 
 presence. It even, horrible to confess, 
 frequently ate rabbit-pie, and cracked and 
 crunched the bones of its relatives with 
 cannibal glee. On these scandalous foods it 
 throve, but remained dwarfish and uncanny. 
 It had moods of suspicion and brooding, 
 when it sat in the chimney of an empty room. 
 Once, under the protection, no doubt, of the 
 evil spirits with whom it was in league, it 
 leaped from a window sill forty feet above 
 the ground, alighted with a flop, and greeted 
 those who rushed to pick up the corpse with 
 a cold stare of inquiry as to what the 
 excitement was about. It met its death 
 by presuming in the open field upon the 
 
60 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 long-suffering of the dogs whom it terrorised 
 in the house. 
 
 Outside the inner circle of pets, and within 
 the outer circle of the donkeys whom we 
 partly loved, partly scorned, and daily 
 martyrised, kids held a certain position of 
 their own. They are not to be commended, 
 being skittish, peevish, tactless and strong, 
 but they were not without attraction. One of 
 them, black and white, with oblique barley- 
 sugar eyes, showed much inclination towards 
 the profession of house dog, and learned 
 many essentials of that trade ; the doors that 
 were worth waiting at, the perils and rich 
 prizes of the kitchen passages, the moment 
 to intrude, the moment to fly. An incident 
 of its career can best be told in the words of 
 a certain Bridget, a notable member of the 
 long dynasty of Bridgets that passed pro- 
 cessionally through the establishments route 
 for America. 
 
 " The Misthress was below in the hall and 
 she heard one above on the top landin', 
 walkin* as sthrong as a man. 1 Bridget ! ' 
 says she," (the voice of command was given 
 with great elegance and hauteur), " and what 
 was in it but the young goat, and it commenced 
 
BOON COMPANIONS 61 
 
 walkin' down the stairs. 1 Come here, 
 Bridget !' says the Misthress, and sure of 
 course the goat said nothing, but goin' on 
 always from step to step. 1 Arrah musha ! 
 The divil go from ye/ says the Misthress, 
 4 why don't ye spake ? What sort of hoppin' 
 is it ye have up there ?' M (The elegance of 
 the imitation here yielded to the narrator's 
 sense of what was fitting.) 11 Faith, the 
 goat stood then, like it 'd be afraid. 4 The 
 Lord save us, it's the fairies ! ' says the Mis- 
 thress, an' there wasn't one in the house 
 but she called, and what did they get in it 
 but the goat, an' it having a stocking half 
 ate!" 
 
 Not long afterwards (next day probably) 
 the kid was sent back on an outside car to its 
 native place, a region of bog and rock and 
 scrub, where its lamentations for the school- 
 room fire had ample scope. It was escorted 
 to its Siberia by a large party from the 
 schoolroom, filled with curiosity to see how 
 it would be received in its family circle. The 
 boy who was left to hold the horse became 
 also impelled to see the meeting, with the 
 result that the horse and car were found a 
 little later on their backs in a bog ditch, 
 
6a SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 which conclusion is not to this hour known 
 to the authorities. 
 
 It was in the winter that the Reign of 
 Terror of the Monkeys began. The first of 
 them, large and grey, wearing the name of 
 Lizzie, and a red flannel coat, arrived in 
 December, and it was humanely arranged 
 that she should live close to the kitchen fire 
 on the flour bin. It was also enacted that 
 she was to be chained to the wall " until she 
 got to know people a little." 
 
 There are Northern stories, Eastern ones, 
 too, I believe, of houses in which evil spirits 
 having once gained entrance, remained in 
 immutable possession. Thus it was with us. 
 In a short time Lizzie got to know every one 
 very thoroughly. She bit each visitor indis- 
 criminately, and having analysed the samples, 
 she arranged a sliding scale of likes and dis- 
 likes, on the negative principle. That is to 
 say, she would tolerate A till B arrived 
 when she bit A. On C's appearance she bit 
 both A and B, and so on up to Z. The 
 master of the house was Z. (Herein she 
 showed her infernal cunning.) Z was never 
 bitten. The kitchenmaid, in whose control 
 were the dainties that Lizzies soul loved, was 
 
BOON COMPANIONS 63 
 
 Y, i.e., she was only bitten on the arrival of 
 the master. Lizzie's bad life had the sole 
 merit of brevity. One of her customs was to 
 strike a match, and having burnt the hair on 
 her grimy, nervous little arm, to eat the 
 frizzled remains. (Thus invalidating the 
 vaunt that man is the only animal that cooks.) 
 Having on several occasions nearly set the 
 house on fire, matches were forbidden to her, 
 but one fortunate day a new boxful somehow 
 fell into her possession, and, varying her 
 wonted practice, she ate off the heads of most 
 of the matches. Therewith her spirit passed ; 
 but only temporarily. In less than a year she 
 was with us again. This time in the guise of 
 a small brown monkey, that went by the name 
 of Jack. A clear proof of obsession by the 
 spirit of Lizzie was afforded in the fact that 
 precisely the same sliding scale of hatred was 
 observed, culminating as before in the master 
 of the house. Jack was in some particulars 
 less repellent than his predecessor. He was 
 smaller, and was given to fits, which gave a 
 hope that his life might not long be spared. 
 By this time the flour-bin from long camping 
 would have supplied the germs of enteric to an 
 entire army corps. (I hasten to say that, being 
 
64 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 in Ireland, it was never used as a flour-bin 
 having been thus temporarily styled as a con- 
 cession to convention during the brief reign 
 of an English cook who had long before fled 
 to her native land.) Between the flour-bin 
 and the w r all Jack's fits usually took place, 
 and it was the wont of the tender-hearted 
 kitchenmaid (known to this day among her 
 fellows as " Mary-the-Monkey." The suffix 
 " the Monkey " being a distinguishing mark ; 
 as " Philippe-le-Bel," " Robert-the-Lion ") to 
 unchain him after one of these seizures and 
 to sit before the fire with him on her lap. 
 No experience seemed to teach her that his 
 first act on recovery was to bite her suddenly 
 and then escape. The alarm was spread in 
 precisely the same manner on each successive 
 occasion. First a shrill and piercing scream 
 from " Mary-the-Monkey," usually coupled 
 with an appeal to her God. Then an 
 answering yell from the next victim in the 
 pantry. Then a shouting, and an earthquake 
 slamming of doors through the house as its 
 occupants one and all sped to safety. Finally 
 the voice of the master assuring the invisible 
 household that all was well, and that the 
 monkey would never bite any one if they 
 
BOON COMPANIONS 6s 
 
 did not show that they were afraid of 
 him. 
 
 Jack died in a fit, and was mourned only 
 by the master and the faithful kitchenmaid. 
 Yet had he and his fellow had any desire for 
 social success it would have been easy for 
 them to have achieved it in a family so 
 inured to pets as ours. 
 
 But monkeys are worse than tactless. 
 They understand their own hideousness and 
 unpopularity, yet will not make a step towards 
 amiability. A little leaning to the pathetic 
 would have made us adore them, but they 
 prefer to remain malevolent, remote, uttering 
 coarse, mysterious grunts and screeches, out 
 of hearts full of cold devilry. It is in keeping 
 with their vulgarity that they should thrust 
 their way into an assemblage of pets; an 
 insult even to the kid and the rabbit, an out- 
 rage to the memory of Bran. 
 
THE BIOGRAPHY OF A PUMP 
 
THE BIOGRAPHY OF A PUMP 
 
 The date of its birth is uncertain. A torpid 
 tradition places it in the Early Victorian Era, 
 but the Regency is more probable ; even the 
 Rebellion of '96 may not have been beyond 
 its ken. Being a native of West Galway, 
 neither Regency nor Early Victorian Era 
 was likely to be an epoch in its surroundings. 
 It belonged to the period when 
 
 " . . . Dick Martin ruled 
 
 The trackless wilds of Connemara ; " 
 
 and the men who put it in its place scarcely 
 knew whether king or queen ruled in an 
 England that was as remote from them as 
 the India of to-day. 
 
 It is probable that in the youth of the 
 pump its labours were light. Baths were the 
 eccentricity of a few, a revival of the corrupt 
 
7 o SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 days of the Roman Empire ; and the process 
 by which the stalwart fox-hunter of the 
 beginning of this century got into his clothes 
 was one that it might be well to slur over, 
 invaluable as he and his costume have been 
 to the Christmas numbers. Vast and simple 
 cooking operations, conducted on an open 
 grate four feet long ; vats of meat pickle 
 lying in cellars where the light came greenly 
 through ivied windows ; cauldrons of potatoes, 
 and possibly cauldrons of punch ; these formed 
 the highest claims on the water-supply before 
 the dynasty of the bath was proclaimed in 
 the establishment. The deathless discontent 
 that followed the innovation has produced 
 many stirring household episodes, none of 
 them more sudden and complete than that 
 which occurred on the day when one of those 
 vessels of wrath, the bath, was repainted for 
 the first time. The local carpenter had 
 arrived for the purpose, with what disdain 
 for such trifling can be imagined. Arriving 
 early, he discovered the bath as yet un- 
 emptied, an added insult to a man whose 
 time was much occupied with fishing on the 
 lake, and other serious matters. The house- 
 maid, with ill-timed coquetry, put out her 
 
THE BIOGRAPHY OF A PUMP 7 1 
 
 tongue at him when approached on the 
 subject. In silence more bodeful than re- 
 partee he returned to the bath, carried it to 
 the door, and emptied its contents down the 
 passage. A stupefied stillness fell upon the 
 bystanders, then arose outcry almost choked 
 by rage, while behind a locked door the 
 carpenter whistled and audibly chuckled over 
 his work. 
 
 In those days the turf -boy was an institu- 
 tion, oppressive, but necessitated by an estab- 
 lishment where coal had never been seen, 
 and an armful of turf burned away in an 
 hour. All day they plied bare-foot between 
 the turf-house and the various fuel depots of 
 the house with baskets of the long, hard sods 
 on their backs and guile and mutiny in 
 their hearts, because that with the office of 
 turf-boy was linked the hated one of water- 
 carrier. About this latter clustered battles 
 of endless variety, involving the sacred person 
 of the cook, and frequently topped as with 
 a banner by her giving of warning. After 
 long warfare it was lightly thought that the 
 exodus of cooks might be stayed by the 
 introduction of a self-filling boiler supplied 
 from a small tank, which must, by Median 
 
72 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 and Persian law, be replenished every morn- 
 ing. It was done, and for an incredible 
 fortnight the charm of novelty retained its 
 hold on the turf-boys ; the tank was filled, 
 the ball-cock did its work like a book, and 
 the Dublin cook was fain to seek another 
 grievance. The inevitable hour drew on when 
 the tank, like any other entertainment, must 
 cease to amuse, the hour in which it ebbed 
 unreplenlshed to its dregs, while the turf- 
 boys, much preoccupied with making a wicker 
 snare for blackbirds, known as a cradle-bird, 
 sat round the fire, and dismissed the boiler 
 from their minds with a calm, native trust in 
 Providence. It was in the meridian of this 
 peace that the boiler burst, with a single and 
 shattering report. What followed on that 
 crack of doom it is not necessary to record ; 
 the imagination of any householder can 
 shadow forth the attitude of the cook, and no 
 living pen could reproduce the flight of the 
 turf-boys. 
 
 It is more agreeable to turn to another 
 scene, in which the pump played its part to a 
 limited extent, when, on the last night of the 
 old year, the coach-house was garlanded with 
 holly and ivy, and " Pete-een bawn," the 
 
THE BIOGRAPHY OF A PUMP 73 
 
 Albino fiddler, sat on high on a window-sill, 
 twitching out jigs and reels from the fiddle 
 that he played on his knee, while the thick 
 boots of a roomful of dancers kept light and 
 unflagging time. As the crowning hour of 
 twelve drew on, preparations began for the 
 brew of punch that was to usher in the new 
 year, and a tasting committee, formed of the 
 gamekeeper and the kitchenmaid, was met by 
 the supreme question of what to brew it in. 
 A bucket was considered too small, the churn 
 was rejected because it had " an ugly smell." 
 Finally some genius bethought him of a hip- 
 bath. The bath was snatched from the 
 nearest bedroom by a bevy of turf-boys, the 
 stone jar of John Jameson was emptied into 
 it, and followed with more reticence by kettles 
 of boiling water ; all that remained was to 
 provide each guest with a cup to dip into the 
 reeking pool. Ten minutes later the bath 
 was empty, and a ring of boys radiated from 
 it at full length, lapping the last drops, and 
 even licking the enamel, while the dancing 
 was resumed with startling emphasis. Out- 
 side, a light snow was on the ground, the 
 north wind blew dark in that bitter midnight, 
 and the ice on the lake uttered strange 
 
74 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 sounds — hollow, musical shocks with the 
 voice of the imprisoned water in them. 
 Every tree in the woods stood separate in 
 white silhouette, the rime sifting through the 
 branches in a dry whisper. Upon this subtle 
 mood of winter came forth from the open 
 doors of the coach-house the light of lamps 
 with tin reflectors, the shrewish scream of the 
 fiddle as Pete-een bawn jerked his whitehead 
 in accord with " The hare was in the corn," 
 the aroma of punch and of clothes seasoned 
 in turf smoke. It is better to withdraw from 
 these early hours of the new year, before the 
 uncertain homeward footsteps blotted the 
 thin snow, and the exponents of the genial 
 first stage of drunkenness assisted the ex- 
 ponents of the aggressive second stage to 
 pull themselves together for early Mass. 
 
 It has been mentioned that the pump was 
 subject to chronic and mysterious ailments, 
 on which every skilled opinion in the country 
 was brought to bear, while the water famine 
 was sore in the land, and the turf-boys plied 
 with buckets and bewailings between the 
 lake and the cook, aud unearthly pronged 
 creatures gyrated in the water-bottles. It 
 was during one of these visitations, when the 
 
THE BIOGRAPHY OF A PUMP 75 
 
 back yard was torn up into entrenchments, 
 and the pump lay two miles away at the 
 forge, that the Garrygillihy horse races were 
 held, and with this event the revolt of the 
 turf-boys broke forth. On the previous day 
 they concealed themselves in an old limekiln 
 and mended their trousers ; on the morning 
 itself they made the simple statement that 
 " if the servants w r as to die dancing for turf 
 and wather they'll not get it to-day," after 
 which ultimatum they were seen no more. 
 Many things happened in their absence, not 
 at first sight connected with it ; the cook 
 went to bed in the afternoon, the hens 
 walked upstairs to the pantry, and picked 
 out the inside of a plum cake, and a cow got 
 into the coach-house, and ate the cushion of 
 the car. The cook gave warning next day, 
 the kitchenmaid, in tears, followed suit, 
 because the cook had called her a "jumper" 
 (ie. y a pervert to Protestantism) ; the house- 
 maid, also in tears, asserted that the kitchen- 
 maid "had a spleen agin her," and the 
 stableman was heard darkly soliloquising 
 over the cleaning of the bits that "a lie 
 was something, but there was no dealing 
 with a d — d lie." All these things were 
 
76 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 subsequently traced by tortuous ways to the 
 grand central fact that the turf- boys had 
 gone to the Garrygillihy races. 
 
 There came at length a notable crisis, 
 when the pump showed that it had, like 
 most of its countrymen, a power of rising to 
 the occasion. It was on a bright morning in 
 May that the kitchen chimney caught fire, 
 an event of yearly occurrence, and by no 
 means displeasing to the authorities. The 
 big shaft roared with furnace heat up its 
 eighty feet, the ugly blaze wavered from the 
 chimney top ; a few buckets of water were 
 poured down, and all became quiet. It had 
 happened in the immemorial manner, but 
 just once too often. Four hours later, in the 
 stillness of the hot afternoon, the voice of the 
 fire was heard again, a soft, busy crackling in 
 the timbers of the roof, a muffled booming 
 sound that grew above it ; a tongue of flame 
 through the slates, a drip of melted lead from 
 the eaves, and the house was full of shouts 
 and rushing feet. An hour afterwards the 
 battle was over, and the toilers could fling 
 themselves down, breathless, to realise an 
 incredible escape, and the clang of the pump 
 handle ceased. Throughout that hour of 
 
THE BIOGRAPHY OF A PUMP 77 
 
 stress none of the pump's repertoire of evil 
 symptoms was exhibited, nor did it fail to 
 respond to the astonishing variety of recep- 
 tacles presented to .its grim beak. Next day 
 it gasped forth the mud of the bottom of the 
 well, and fell into a fractious disorder from 
 which it has never rallied ; but none the 
 less the old house at its back owes its life to 
 the allegiance of its comrade of a hundred 
 years. 
 
HUNTING MAHATMAS 
 
HUNTING MAHATMAS 
 
 Many people have learnt from "Kim" 
 what it is to be a 11 Chela," and there was a 
 time, not long ago, when every self-respecting 
 evening paper and most of the magazines 
 had something sufficiently — or self-sufficiently 
 — illuminating to say about Karma or the 
 Mahatma. I am not skilled in Buddhism, 
 but I have assimilated a fact or two about 
 Mahatmas, and in so doing have become 
 aware of wider issues. , 
 A Mahatma, I believe, implies primarily a 
 teacher,an instructor, a sage or hermit with in- 
 termittently social tendencies ; it also implies 
 the possession of many useful endowments. 
 Matter and space appear to be negligible 
 accidents to the competent Mahatma. As a 
 mere after-dinner triviality he will summon 
 you a cigarette from infinity and will 
 
82 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 materialise it on the table; moving to higher 
 things, he can produce a copy of the Times 
 in the remoter parts of Tibet on the day on 
 which it appears in London, advertisements 
 and all, but exclusive, I fancy, of library 
 privileges. Transcending these lighter ac- 
 complishments, however, is his power of 
 transporting himself to a chosen place at a 
 chosen time without visible means of pro- 
 gression. He, we are assured, can fade from 
 the landscape with the beautiful elusiveness 
 of a rainbow, and can develop himself else- 
 where, in or out of the landscape, with a 
 precision with which the rainbow cannot 
 hope to compete. 
 
 There is a matter that seems to me to 
 have escaped observation — it certainly is not 
 generally admitted — that in society not 
 notably occult, in what, in fact, are often 
 spoken of as Hunting Circles (though why 
 circles, save with a very bad fox, it is hard 
 to say), these privileged beings are found. 
 Unsuspected, unappreciated, his high gifts 
 often despised, even disliked, the Mahatma 
 blooms in what might seem the uncongenial 
 soil of many a hunting country. 
 
 There is a difference, distinct and, in my 
 
HUNTING MAHATMAS 83 
 
 mind, well defined, between the people who 
 hunt and the people who go hunting. The 
 people who hunt are the professionals ; 
 serious, impassioned even, but with subdued 
 emotion ; fanatics who live only to conjugate 
 the verb To Hunt in all its moods and 
 tenses ; recognising implicitly the force of 
 its imperative, accepting its future with joy, 
 its past with loquacity. For them hunt 
 numbers are compiled, and runs recorded 
 with geographical accuracy and microscopic 
 detail ; they cut out the work, they give the 
 time. Yet it is not among their thrusting 
 ranks that the Mahatma is found. He is 
 evolved, in perfect response to the need for 
 him, among the wider brotherhood of those 
 who go hunting. These are the true free 
 lances of the chase. Having cast off the fear 
 of public opinion, and purged themselves of 
 the love of display, they have no conventions 
 to respect and no position to lose. Hand in 
 hand with their devotion to sport goes the 
 most saving good sense. How despicable to 
 these enfranchised minds must be the 
 meaningless twists, the desperate endeavours 
 of the zealots who, infatuated as a string of 
 ants, surmount unwaveringly every obstacle 
 
84 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 that lies in their path ! As, from a pleasant 
 hill side, the Mahatma views these struggles, 
 he must surely feel how well it is with him, 
 and how useful a thing it is to combine moral 
 courage with intelligence. 
 
 "THE HOVERING HORDE VACILLATES NO LONGER " 
 
 But in a hilly and gateless country, such as 
 Ireland excels in, moral courage and intelli- 
 gence will not suffice ; inspiration is needed, 
 and straightway, out of a hovering and un- 
 certain horde of riders, the Mahatma material- 
 ises. The hour has come, and the man. 
 (These things, it may be noted, often 
 synchronise with the interposition of the class 
 
HUNTING MAHATMAS 85 
 
 of fence that is like an east wind, in being 
 neither good for man nor beast.) Without a 
 shadow of hesitation the Mahatma turns his 
 horse at a right angle from the line the 
 hounds are running, possibly even in a 
 diametrically opposite direction. It matters 
 not ; the result will justify him. The hover- 
 ing horde vacillates no longer ; no word is 
 spoken, no allegiance sworn ; his sovereignty 
 is as instant and unquestioned as that of the 
 queen bee ; one telepathic moment has 
 transformed them into his disciples. 
 
 It is here that the superiority of the 
 hunting Mahatma to the religious variety 
 makes itself felt. Like the Magic Carpet in 
 the " Arabian Nights" he has the mystic 
 power of transporting not only himself but 
 his adherents. One moment and you may 
 see him skilfully M knocking a gap " (i.e., 
 unbuilding a wall) or opening a gate, as the 
 case may be, while the disciples wait respect- 
 fully ; the next they are lost, swallowed up 
 in the Fifth Dimension, or wherever it is that 
 Mahatmas move and have their being. It 
 may be a quarter of an hour afterwards, it 
 may be twenty minutes ; the hunt arrives, 
 heated, something blown, and very proud of 
 
86 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 itself, at a road where there is a momentary 
 check. There, drawn up, calm and 
 omniscient, is the Mahatma, with the dis- 
 ciples. He has seen the fox (who, it may 
 not be out of place to note, is on these 
 occasions always the largest dog-fox that the 
 country has ever produced). He advises the 
 huntsman, with perfect knowledge, where to 
 cast his hounds, and once more betakes 
 himself, with his party, to the Fifth Dimen- 
 sion. During the various turns and chances 
 of the average hunting run in rough country, 
 he is met with on every road that is crossed 
 by the hunt. He is a directory of the most 
 obscure and unsuspected gaps, an amateur of 
 padlocks, a Samson who can lift from their 
 hinges the gates of Gaza, or any other gates 
 that may intervene. He is present at all 
 disasters, and acts as a sort of convalescent 
 home for their victims, and as a rallying- 
 place for those who have been thrown out. 
 
 As I muse over his gifts, and the benevo- 
 lence with which they are exercised, my heart 
 warms to him and his compeers. Had I my 
 way no hunt establishment should be without 
 its own accredited Mahatma. He should be en- 
 titled to the letters M. F. H. as unquestioningly 
 
HUNTING MAHATMAS 87 
 
 as the Master. I would blazon them on 
 his broad back (the Mahatma's figure is wont 
 to be a fine one), plain for all men to see, 
 and brand them on his ample sandwich- 
 cass. " Mahatma to the Meaths! ,, Any 
 man might be pleased to have some such an 
 inscription on his tombstone. 11 Mahatma to 
 the Blazers " might hold some hint of in- 
 congruity ; yet, however blazing one may be, 
 there are moments 
 
 It has happened to me, in a remote part of 
 the County Waterford, to have lost the 
 hounds, and at the same moment to find 
 myself confronted by a frowning bank, 
 hollow-faced, afforested with furze, wholly, 
 as it seemed to me, impassable. While I 
 surveyed it in dejection the cry of the 
 hounds was borne to me on the wind ; the 
 music had a dying fall, they were running 
 hard, and away from me. It was then that 
 the voice of the local Mahatma fell like a 
 falling star from the hillside above me. 
 
 " Go on a small piece to the right and ye'll 
 get a passage." 
 
 I obeyed, and saw that hoof marks of 
 cattle led to a cleft in the bank, so masked 
 with furze bushes as to be invisible. I 
 
88 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 squeezed through it, and found the valley 
 smiling before me, and the hounds still 
 within reach. But the Mahatma had 
 gone. 
 
 I met him at the next check, cool and 
 unruffled, silent as to the miraculous nature 
 of his transit. 
 
 " Ye're barefooted/' he said briefly. 
 
 "A VOICE FELL LIKE A FALLING STAR 91 
 
 I found that I had indeed lost a fore- 
 shoe. 
 
 Strange that such faculties as his should 
 command so little general admiration ! Upon 
 his final manifestation, which occurred after 
 the fox had gone to ground, I heard the 
 Master say brutally : 
 
HUNTING MAHATMAS 89 
 
 "How the devil did you get here?" 
 The Master had given his horse two bad 
 cuts. 
 
 The Mahatma maintained a Druid silence ; 
 it was not for him to comment on the eternal 
 supremacy of Mind over Matter. 
 
A PATRICK'S DAY HUNT 
 
A PATRICK'S DAY HUNT 
 
 I wash meself every Sathurday morning, 
 whether I want it or no and 'twas washing 
 my face I was when William Sheehan came 
 in the door, and it no more than ten o'clock 
 in the morning. 
 
 That's the way I remember 'twas a 
 Sathurday, and Pathrick's Day was Monday. 
 
 " God bless the work ! " says he. 
 
 " You too," says I. 
 
 " Would ye lend me the loan of a harness," 
 says he, " to drive Anne Roche " — (that's 
 his wife) — "to town on Pathrick's Day?" 
 
 The dear knows, says I to meself, if I 
 walked two mile asking a harness it isn't to 
 drive that one Pd ask it ! 
 
 " I will to be sure," says I, "and welcome, 
 but is it to town you're goingon Pathrick's Day 
 in place of going to Kyleranny ? Sure you 
 
94 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 know yourself there's the fun of Cork in Kyle- 
 
 ranny when the Hunt's in it on a Holy-day ! 11 
 
 " I believe so indeed," says he. 
 
 " Faith you do believe it," says I. " Dye 
 remember one time," I says, "when the 
 
 M I WASH MESELF EVERY SATHURDAY MORNING M 
 
 Hunt was in it, Stephen's Day it was, you 
 comin down Knockranny Hill hoppin' a 
 quarther of a mile on your one leg, and the 
 other foot fasht in the stirrup, and the owld 
 mare you had that time throttin' on always. 
 The Smith said it was the pleasantest thing 
 ever he seen ! " 
 
 11 God be with the owld days ! " says 
 William, " that was long ago times, before I 
 was married," says he. 
 
A PATRICK'S DAY HUNT 95 
 
 " Thrue for you ! M says I. 
 
 u Will ye lend me the harness ? 91 says he 
 to me again. 
 
 "Come here now William, " says I, " you 
 an' me is friends this many a year. There 
 isn't one in the counthry I have as much 
 wish for as yourself. The Divil sweep ye ! M 
 says I. " Sure it's follying the Hunt you 
 should be, in place of goin' drivin' a side-car 
 to town like a servant boy ! M says I, " and 
 you that was careing a puppy all the winter 
 for the Hunt, the same as meself ! " 
 
 "Ah, that was the grand pup!" says he. 
 "'Twas a pity he died, and God knows," 
 says he, "I dunno in the world what killed 
 him, if it wasn't a bottle of varnish he dhrank 
 one morning." 
 
 Faith, says I to meself, it's aisy known 
 what killed the poor pup. It isn't long our- 
 selves'd live if we didn't get our victuals ! 
 
 I drew out then, and I gave William a 
 puck in the chest. 
 
 "I'm tellin' you now," says I. "Dang 
 the harness ye'll get from me on Pathrick's 
 Day! No! But you'll throw the saddle 
 on the pony a' Monday morning and you'll 
 come out to the Hunt to jolly yourself!" 
 
96 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 " Sure the pony has the colour o' lameness 
 on him since I had him at Cappagh Fair last 
 Tuesday, under pigs," says he. " That was 
 thirty mile on him." 
 
 " Arrah ! what signifies that ? " says I, "that 
 little horse is as tough as an eel ! " 
 
 " And he have a sore place on his shesht, 
 about as big as a thimble," says he. 
 
 " And is it on his shesht you'd go put the 
 saddle ? " says h 
 
 " Well, it is not," says he. 
 
 " And as to go putting a collar and harness 
 on a crayture that has the skin sthripped," 
 says I, "if it was an ass itself the polis'd be 
 afther ye for it. " 
 
 " Indeed I'm told so," says he. 
 
 " Musha, Dual's cure to ye!" says I, 
 "isn't it what ye can be tellin' your wife?" 
 says I. " How simple ye are ! " says I. 
 
 Not another word he spoke but to walk 
 away out o' the house. 
 
 " Ye have the man annoyed with your 
 thricks, Conny," says me wife, " why wouldn't 
 ye give him what he was axing and not to 
 be blackguarding that way ? Maybe yerself 
 wouldn't be so ready to go borrowing a 
 harness for your wife ? " says she. 
 
A PATRICK'S DAY HUNT 97 
 
 " Maybe if I was married to Anne Roche 
 it isn't me razor she'd take to go cuttin' spuds 
 for seed ? " says I. 
 
 "Arrah, sit down to your breakfast, 
 Conny," says she, 11 and have done with your 
 chat ! " 
 
 " Pm tellin* you," says I, "if Anne Roche 
 goes to town on Pathrick's Day, it's her own 
 two legs'll carry her ! " 
 
 " Glory be to God ! " says me wife, " she'll 
 be mad altogether ! She'll tear iron ! " says 
 she. 
 
 " Divil mend her ! " says L 
 
 Now as for the foxy mare I had that time, 
 I declare to ye if ye had her within in the 
 stable, and to be keeping oats to her for two 
 days, she'd have as much thricks and tashpy 
 in her, and she'd be as anxious for the road 
 as a lad that'd be goin' to a fair. 
 
 If she was to be kept within always and 
 getting what she'd ax of hay and oats, it's all 
 would be about it she'd break the sidecar! 
 (and faith, she was nigh handy to doin' that 
 same one time !) But what can a crayture 
 do that's working always, and getting black 
 potatoes for her diet ? 
 
 I went to her St. Pathrick's morning early, 
 
9 3 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 and the full up of a tin basin of oats in my 
 hand. The very minute I opened the door : 
 
 " Ah — hem ! " says she to me, this way. 
 
 " The Divil go from you ! " says I, " wasn't 
 the year long enough for you to get a cough, 
 and not to be sick on Pathrick's Day ? And 
 if ye were coughing the full o' the house ye'll 
 not stop within to-day!" says I, "ye can 
 have your choice thing of coughing to- 
 morrow ! " says I. 
 
 And b'lieve me, 'tis she that had that same. 
 
 I rode her out quite and aisy, its no more 
 than five mile to Kyleranny, and the two 
 lads of sons I have was legging it out before 
 me. 
 
 " What have ye in the bottles? " says I to 
 the eldest little fella when I passed them out. 
 
 " Milk, Sir!" says he. 
 
 " And what have ye in the bag ? " says I 
 to the other lad. 
 
 " Me boots, Sir," says he. 
 
 I knew well that was a lie for them, but I 
 said nayther here nor there to them. , 
 
 When I was passing Macarthys, coming 
 into Kyleranny, what was in it but William 
 Sheehan's yella horse — " Shan Bui" is the 
 name we has in this counthry for them yella 
 
A PATRICK'S DAY HUNT 99 
 
 horses with the black sthripe on their back — 
 and he outside the door, and a bag on his 
 nose. 
 
 Musha, more power to ye William ! says I 
 to meself, ye stole aw r ay clever ! But indeed 
 
 "IT'S ALL WOULD BE ABOUT IT SHE'D BREAK THE SIDE CAR !" 
 
 its aisy known that Herself had the kay of 
 the bin ! 
 
 Himself came out then ; he was afther 
 drinkin' a couple or three glasses o' porther 
 to hearten himself, the poor fella, and he was 
 'long with me from that out from first to last, 
 but not a word good nor bad he spoke of the 
 wife. 
 
 The like o' the crowd of people that was 
 in Kyleranny that day never you seen — 
 side-cars, and carts, and phaytons, and all 
 
ioo SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 sorts, let alone them that was goin' huntin\ 
 Ye wouldn't hardly know there was hounds 
 in it at all with the dint of the people that'd 
 be around them, and it'd be as good for you 
 to thry to get into Heaven as to get past 
 the cross roads. Ye'd lose your life cursin' 
 before the owld women' d stand out from under 
 your feet. Ye'd have to be going around 
 them this way, the same as a person that'd be 
 winding a watch. 
 
 " Is it sick the Major is, that he's not in 
 it?" says I to Tim Hurley the Whip (that's 
 the son of an Aunt of mine by the mother), 
 when I got to come at him, " and Johnny Daly 
 riding Monaloo ? " 
 
 " He has the 'fluenzy," says Tim. 
 
 " Is it bad with him ? " says L 
 
 "He's bad enough to-day," says he, "but 
 yesterday he was clear dead altogether." 
 
 " It's a pity anything would ail him," 
 says I. 
 
 The Major was a fine man, always, and 
 his family was a fine family. Sure me father 
 used to say that in owld times if ye went 
 to the Big House ye'd get the smell o' roast 
 beef when ye'd be no more than half way 
 up the avenue, and there'd be dhrinkin' all 
 
A PATRICK'S DAY HUNT 101 
 
 day and knockin' all night, and if ye axed 
 the change of a half-crown, it wasn't in it. 
 
 Faith, I said to John Daly, there wouldn't 
 be any fun, nor no cursin' nor nothing, when 
 the Major wouldn't be in it. 
 
 " Maybe I might please ye yet before the 
 day's out," says he, lookin' at me ugly enough. 
 " Time's up ! " says he then, and with that he 
 comminced to bugle, and away with himself 
 and Tim and the dogs, out north for 
 Dempsey's Gorse. 
 
 Well, you'd have to pity William Sheehan 
 if ye seen him that time follyin' the hounds 
 out the road from Kyleranny to Dempsey's 
 Gorse. As soon as me bowld Shan Bui felt 
 the horses throttin, and batthering, and 
 belting the road afther him, he made all sorts 
 of shapes and forms of himself, and as for 
 William, if it wasn't for the almighty howlt 
 he cot of the crupper of the owld saddle, he 
 was a dead man. 
 
 11 Blasht your sowl, William! " says owld 
 Dan Donovan to him, "if you would save 
 your bones," says he, " you will lead him out 
 now for a mile till you're coming up to 
 Dempsey's, and when ye have the hill agin 
 him then's the time ye'll get satisfaction ! " 
 
102 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 Well, William had great courage the same 
 day. He held his howlt on the little horse 
 out to Dempsey's, and when we come to the 
 gap into the southern field, below the house, 
 Johnny Daly went away in up through the 
 land. Well, at the third field west of where 
 Dempsey had the turnips two years ago, 
 there was about three foot of a stone wall 
 before us. The yella pony jumped it very 
 crabbed, but the minute he landed, and he 
 havm' the fall o' the ground before him, he 
 made a ball of himself, and he bet a lash on 
 Dan Donovan's owld white mare that wasn't 
 sayin' a word, only goin' from step to step 
 over the wall, like a Christian, and with that 
 he legged it away down the hill ! 
 
 B'lieve me, William was promising God 
 that time that if he come safe out of it he'd 
 howld to the side-car and not ax to go 
 huntin' agin ! But indeed poor William had 
 great courage all through, only for the wife. 
 
 " Whatever way it is," says I to Dan 
 Donovan, and we wheeling round the brink 
 o' the hill, " every horse that's in it will have 
 his 'nough of grass ate before the dogs'll 
 have them furze bushes rattled out. and, 
 I'm tellin' ye, that'll quieten them." 
 
A PATRICK'S DAY HUNT 103 
 
 " The divil a fox is there in it at all," says 
 Dan. 
 
 "Well, now," says William, " there's a 
 woman of the Sullivans' that has a little 
 house beyond, is afther tellin' me a while ago 
 himself and his pups has a nest in it some 
 place. Last week she seen them walkin' in 
 and out of it, like young pigs." 
 
 " Maybe she didn't tel! ye what way her 
 sons has them pause cuted with greyhounds 
 and bulldogs and all sorts ! " says Dan. 
 
 Well, divil such screechin' ever ye heard 
 as what the dogs comminced then down in 
 the furze. 
 
 "That's Fiddler !" says Dan, " that's a 
 great hound ! Maybe it's a cat he have 
 nooked in it ! " 
 
 " Faith, well is he called Fiddler ! " says I, 
 " he roars most furious." 
 
 " Look over ! Look over at Johnny 
 Daly!" says William, "what bugling he 
 have now! If it's a cat itself, what harm 
 would it do them to ate her! It's little 
 ateing there is in the like of her ; them poor 
 craytures of dogs does be starved with the 
 hunger ; and that's what has them yowling 
 this way." 
 
io 4 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 " Look at Johnny skelpin' round the bog ! " 
 says I, " mind ye, he's souple yet, and he as 
 gross as a bullock, and a back on him as long 
 as a double -ditch ! " 
 
 " Whisht!" says Dan, "that's the Whip 
 man screechin' to the dogs ! They have a 
 fox surely ! " 
 
 "Ye lie!" says William, " that's Jeremi'h 
 DrishcolPs screech, I seen him within in the 
 furze. Hi cock ! Jeremi'h ! Bate him out of 
 it boy!" 
 
 " Ah, that's a fine sober fox, " says owld 
 Dan, " he'll not lave his den for them. It's 
 a pity now," says he, "that the Major 
 wouldn't have a fox keeping in a stable, 
 and on a holiday, or the like o' that, to put a 
 halter on him and lead him out before the 
 hounds. Begob, he'd give them a nice 
 chase ! " 
 
 With that all the lads on the hills around 
 let a roar out o' them. 
 
 " Hulla! Hulla! Hulla!" says they. "Look 
 at the cat ! Look at he ! Look at he ! Down 
 him ! Land him ! " 
 
 Every dog that was in it legged it to the 
 roar. 
 
 Well, if ye seen Johnny Daly comin down 
 
A PATRICK'S DAY HUNT 105 
 
 the hill that time ye'd think the fairies was 
 afther him. He'd jump the house, he was 
 that mad ! 
 
 " Plase God he'll not come our way ! " 
 says I. 
 
 I declare to ye now, if you seen Jeremi'h 
 Driscoll leppin' the furze bushes, and Johnny 
 Daly afther him with the whip, ye'd as soon 
 be lookin' at it as ateing your dinner. And 
 as for Tim Hurley, you'd have to pity him, 
 sthrivin' to go around every hound that was 
 in it. 
 
 " The dogs have her ate ! More power ! 
 They have the owld cat ate ! " says Smartheen, 
 that was sitting up on the wall behind us. 
 "She was dam cute! I thought she'd besht 
 them ! The shkamer ! " 
 
 'Twasn't long afther that till Tim Hurley 
 had all the dogs gothered and counted, and 
 'tis he that got his own trouble with them ! 
 Them poor fellas of Whips catches great 
 hardship. Johnny Daly faced away up the 
 hiil agin them, and the whole o' thim afther 
 him. 
 
 " It's for Bludth he's making," says I, " and 
 if that's to be the way, it's there ye'll see 
 leppin!" says I. " Tighten yerself now 
 
to6 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 Dan ! " says I, " thim banks above in Bludth 
 does be made up very crabby, and as for 
 walls, it's not stones at all they has in them, 
 but bog mould and slates ! " 
 
 Well, for all, poor William Sheehan had 
 great courage that day. 
 
 " Your sowl to the divil, Smartheen ! " 
 says he. " Knock a few o' thim stones, 
 boy !" 
 
 With that he gives the yella pony a 
 salamandher of a belt, and he coorsed him 
 about three turns around the field the way 
 he'd knock the wind out o' him, in regard of 
 he being out on grass always, and when he 
 thought he felt him jaded it's then he faced 
 him in at the wall. But in spite of all he 
 jumped it very sevare and very ugly. Them 
 Shan Buies is very piggish that way. 
 
 Meself, I don't like them flippant leppers ; 
 I'd like a horse that will put his two forefeet 
 into the butt o' the wall, and give ye time to 
 say two Aves and a Pather before he leps 
 out. 
 
 " As for my mare," says I to Dan, the 
 same time, " she boxed her knee a fortnight 
 ago, and it's big with her yet, and faith she's 
 avouring it always. And indeed that's a 
 
A PATRICK'S DAY HUNT 107 
 
 cross place in any case," says I. " God 
 bless ye, Smartheen," says I, " throw down a 
 couple more o' them stones ! M 
 
 I'm tellin' ye Smartheen was a decent 
 civil boy always. 
 
 We follied on the bohireens afther that, 
 ye'd think 'twas a wedding with all that was 
 in it ! Throttin' and steppin' their horses, 
 and the hounds and the ladies and gentlemen 
 and all out before us. 
 
 " Faith," says I, " they'd get as nice a 
 shweat this way as w T hat they'd get in any 
 quadhreel whatever in Dublin Castle," says 
 I, "and as for jogglin' and jowltin'," says I, 
 "any one'd be the better o' this in his health 
 while he'll live," says I. 
 
 Indeed, all that was in it was teeming 
 down w T ith the heat before we were up into 
 Bludth at all. 
 
 Comin up out o' the bohireen there was a 
 stick left across in the end of it, keepin' 
 in calves ; a middlin' heavy pole, and the 
 two ends fasht. If it was in the Cork Park 
 races ye wouldn't see as much fun as 
 what we knocked out of it with young Tom 
 Dennehy ! Sure he was ridin' the Docthor's 
 grey mare, an' he dhressed out, and grand 
 
io8 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 yalla gaiters on him, and he in dhread of his 
 life! 
 
 " Dennehy took great use out o' the 
 bohireens all through ! " says one of the lads 
 " 'tis time for him to throw a lep for us now ! " 
 
 It's well the Docthor wasn't looking at 
 them that time, and they weltin' the mare 
 with switches and stones, and Dennehy 
 howlding her back from the lep when she'd 
 be gethered for it. — Begob ! he fell heavy 
 when the crayture jumped in the spite of him ! 
 And there's where the fun was ! 
 
 Ye wouldn't blame him to be afraid if it 
 wasn't for the dirty little boasting he has 
 always. But indeed 'twould stun any one to 
 hear the talk of the Dennehys. 
 
 " Mind yourself now, William," says Dan, 
 afther the three of us had a place made out 
 above on the hill for ourselves to stand aisy. 
 " The hill tops is lakes afther the rain," says 
 he, ' 'though be Jingo ! " says he, " that little 
 horse went over the hill very knacky ! " 
 
 " Look at Smartheen comin' down the 
 bohireen over!" says I, " what have he in 
 the bag ? Ye'd say it was a side o' bacon 
 with all the dogs that's snortin' afther it " 
 
 " Be dom ! " says William, " but it's a fox ! 
 
A PATRICK'S DAY HUNT 109 
 
 Look at Johnny Daly that has all his own 
 dogs dhrove in under the wall. B'lieve me, 
 them two has it settled out ! We'll see sport 
 now," says he, "afther Smartheen'll throw 
 down the owld bag and give the fox a couple 
 of kicks for to rise his heart for him ! " 
 
 Well, what it was vexed Johnny Daly I 
 dunno, but he was mad altogether ! He 
 lepped out the wall before him, and he as 
 wicked with the passion as that he didn't 
 roar, nor say a word, till he had Smartheen 
 cot by the coat and the whip ruz to him to 
 sthrike him ! Ye wouldn't know what was 
 the two o' thim sayin', but Smartheen thought 
 to run, and 'twas then Johnny cot the bag 
 secondly to take it from him. Every lad 
 that was in it comminced to cheer and to 
 bawl when they seen the two o' thim in 
 howlts. I believe meself let a few screeches, 
 but as for William, if it was his father that he 
 seen took by the polis, an' he dhrunk, he 
 wouldn't have more nature for him than what 
 he showed to that boy. 
 
 " Hon-a-maun-dhiaoul / He'll have him 
 dhragged off the horse ! " says Dan. 
 
 " He will! He will!" says I, "he's dam 
 stubborn ! " 
 
no SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 Maybe if it wasn't for the way Johnny 
 crooked the owld horse with the spur, 
 sthrivin' to squeeze the leg around him, he'd 
 have held his howlt, but a Turk couldn't 
 stand it with the hoist that owld Monaloo let 
 out of him. 
 
 a He's down!" says Dan. " He's dead! 
 Tis on his head he's fallen ! " 
 
 " Ye're a liar!" says William, "it's on the 
 fox he fell ! The big mastheen of a tyrant ! " 
 
 'Twasn't long then till the whole of us was 
 gethered lookin' at Johnny, and he ravin' like 
 a cat in the measles, and every bit that was 
 on him desthroyed with the gutther, and 
 says he to Smartheen, givin' a bitter big 
 curse : 
 
 " It's all I wish," says he, " that ye were a 
 football before me ! Ye wouldn't last me 
 three kicks ! " says he. 
 
 'Twould dhrive a chill through your 
 stomach to be leshnin' to the talk he had. 
 And sure the fox was as flat as the palm o' 
 yer hand within in the bag ! 
 
 " Oh, fie, fie ! " says Dan, "our fox is gone 
 from us ! " 
 
 Indeed, ye wouldn't like to be lookin' at 
 the crayture. Johnny Daly's a very weighty 
 
A PATRICK'S DAY HUNT 
 
 1 1 1 
 
 man, and sure its the last sthraw, as 
 they say, put the hump on the camel. But 
 in any case Smartheen battled it out well, 
 and all that was in it was givin' him 
 applauses. 
 
 Yerself knows Bludth, that there's as many 
 hooks and pooks in it as that a person'd be 
 moidthered before he'd have them gone 
 around, let alone dogs, and horses. 
 
 " Brieve me," says Dan, "'tis as good for 
 them to give over ; sure we're sick and tired 
 waitin' on them. The fox that keeps this 
 hill has a sthrong dungeon, and sorra fear of 
 him to lave it for to be sporting for them. 
 What a fool he is ! " 
 
 " Yerrah shut yer mouth, Dan !" says I, 
 " thim lads on the paikeen south is screechin' 
 like as if they seen somethin 5 ! What have 
 ye over there? " says I, lettin' a roar. 
 
 "Yerrah, what are they sayin at all?" 
 says William, " it's like pigs talkin ! Sure I 
 can't understand them no more than if I was 
 a fool ! " 
 
 With that the dogs comminced to gallop, 
 and away with the whole of us. Well, 
 William had great courage always. 
 
 14 Tis down the gully we should go, and 
 
ii2 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 we'll be before them whatever side they'll 
 turn," says he. 
 
 "Musha, the divil go from ye!" says I, 
 ** maybe it's down the chimbly ye'd have us 
 
 " HE'S GONE NORTH AGIN ! " 
 
 go ! Sure a man itself couldn't stand in it, 
 it's that steep ! " 
 
 " No, nor ten men couldn't ! " says Dan. 
 
 " If it was the ugliest place in life, ye'll be 
 hard set to find a betther," says William. 
 
 Well, afther all, we went down in it, as 
 well as another, and you may say there was 
 scroogin' and scramblin', and thim that was 
 
A PATRICK'S DAY HUNT 113 
 
 afther us was bet down on us like a load o' 
 hay, and thim that was before us cursin' black 
 and blue for the way ourselves was squeezin' 
 them. 
 
 1 1 Faith! We're as throng as three in a 
 bed!" says Dan, "the dogs could run away 
 in their choice place and divil a one of us 
 would know what side they went ! " 
 
 11 He's gone north agin ! " says a lad above 
 on the hill, and every one that was in it 
 turned about in the gully and up with them 
 up it agin. 
 
 " Maybe if it was himself was down in it 
 he wouldn't have so much chat about goin' 
 north!" says I, "and we twistin' in it like 
 ye'd be dancin' a reel." 
 
 But as for Williams little horse, if it was 
 the roof of the chapel he was on he'd run 
 in it like a bird, rocks or slates or any 
 other thing, he wouldn't give a dang for 
 them. 
 
 The sight'd lave your eyes if ye were 
 lookin' at us afther that, comin' down out of 
 Bludth, with slidin' and slippin', and buck 
 leps and all sorts, and the dogs yowlin' aw r ay 
 through the counthry from us. Great banks 
 there was below in the fields. Every one o' 
 
 H 
 
ii4 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 them that we come into my mare would crouch 
 like a hen before it, and she'd let a screech, and 
 over with her, and wouldn't lave an iron on 
 it. That was her routheen always, only 
 when she soured by the dint of the Shan 
 Bui, that was baulking with William out 
 before her. When I'd have to dhrive her 
 over before me she'd be waitin' on me the far 
 side of the fence, ateing grass, till I'd come 
 afther her. She is a grand mare indeed, and 
 high ginthry does be jumpin' mad to buy her 
 foals. 
 
 'Twasn't long till we come up to the dogs, 
 where they were searchin' and snuffin' round 
 the four corners of the field, and divil a smell 
 could they get. We seen a lad then standing 
 up on a rock, waving. 
 
 " He's gone wesht up the road ! " says 
 he. 
 
 " Did ye see him ? " says Johnny Daly. 
 
 " Faith I did so ! " says me lad, "and he 
 was the most courageous thief of a fox ever 
 ye seen ! " 
 
 I went up to the lad. 
 
 " Where did ye get the two coats, ye're 
 afther throwing behind the wall ? " says I. 
 " Tis aiqual to you where I got them/' 
 
A PATRICK'S DAY HUNT 115 
 
 says me lad, " ax no questions and ye'll be 
 told no lies ! " 
 
 14 Faith, there's no occasion," says I, "sure 
 it's you is good-natured to be carryin' the 
 two coats that was on my two sons this 
 morning," says I, " and you bloated with 
 running," says I 
 
 Divil a word he said, but away with 
 him. 
 
 "Thim two young lads o' mine will 
 be apt to get a bating before night ! " 
 says I to meself, "and they're in the 
 want of it ! " 
 
 " Forrad ! Forrad ! " says Johnny to the 
 dogs, that was whining most peevish round 
 and about, and you'd think if he never had a 
 nose on him he'd get the smell o' the paraffin 
 oil, it was that parsevarin'. 
 
 Two mile we legged it then, and the 
 biggest wails in the counthry was in it, and 
 God help them that had to be building 
 them afther us ! Comin' up Milleenavillen, 
 William and a few more of us turned about 
 round the butt o' the hill, for fear we'd be 
 bet out entirely, and it wasn't long till we 
 met with a great mountaineer of a big bank 
 down in the widow Brinckley's land. Meself 
 
 ( 
 
n6 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 dhrew out back a couple o' fields, and 
 knocked a few sticks that was in a gap, but 
 me brave William didn't do but to let a roar 
 to the Shan Bui, and to land him two clouts 
 in the jaw comin , into the bank. The Shan 
 Bui lepped up on to it, as loose as a hare, 
 with the fright, but what'd be before him 
 only posts that the widow Brinckley had 
 dhrove in the far side o' the bank, and ropes 
 on them, and clothes hangin' out on them. 
 He put a hump on himself like a ferret when 
 he seen them, but if all the polis in Ireland 
 was below mindin' the clothes, he'd have to 
 change his feet and lep out on to them, with 
 the gallop he had on him, and he cot the two 
 hind legs in the ropes, and himself and 
 William and the clothes was threwn down in 
 the field. 
 
 "He's dead!" says I. "'Twould kill him 
 if he was a bull ! " 
 
 " 'Twould, or if he was an ass," says 
 young Tom Dennehy, that was on the 
 eastern side o' the fence. 
 
 Well afther all, not a bit in the world was 
 on him, only a tooth he had was stirrin' 
 always in his head afther it. But I'm tellin' 
 ye, the widow Brinckley faced him the same 
 
A PATRICK'S DAY HUNT it 7 
 
 as Jeffrey faced his cat, as they say, in regard 
 of some sort of a petticoat the Shan Bui had 
 dhraggin' afther him. 
 
 Out with the whole of us then from her 
 into the road and left her afther us, and she 
 dhrawing down saints and divils and the 
 price o' the petticoat on us. 
 
 "It couldn't be," says I, "that its into 
 Williams land the dogs is facin' now ! Look 
 at the line they're going beyond over the 
 hill!" 
 
 " Begob, it is ! " says Dan. 
 
 " If that be so it'd be betther for William 
 to go under the sod ! " says I. 
 
 Faith, I believe the divil was always 
 busy with the Shan Bui ! The very minute 
 he got the smell o' the road under his feet, he 
 comminced firin' and lashin', and when he 
 had William loosened, it's then he legged 
 it. 
 
 " He's diddled now entirely ! " says I, 
 " that horse won't stand or stay till he lands 
 him within his own yard. The Lord look 
 down in pity on William this day ! Herself 11 
 ate the face off him ! " 
 
 Begob, the Shan Bui kept the one gallop 
 always, the same as a thrain, and we battherin' 
 
n8 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 the road afther him, and the dogs and all 
 screechin' down the hill before us. Your 
 heart'd rise if ye were listenin' to them ! 
 
 " He'll run to the say with him ! " says 
 Dan, " the two o' them'll be cliffted ! " 
 
 " Sorra fear of him ! " says I, "what a fool 
 he is ! Look at him now, tightening himself 
 comin , down to the gate ! " 
 
 Begannies ! The villyan wheeled into the 
 yard as nate as a bicycle, and every hound in 
 the pack was in it before him ! 
 
 -?'f -X* 
 
 Twas the week afther, and I goin' to owld 
 Dick Courtney's funeral (the Lord have 
 mercy on him) and who would I meet only 
 Anne Roche! 
 
 Well now I declare to ye, divil such an 
 ateing ever I got from any woman! The 
 dogs wouldn't pick me bones afther her! 
 Sure she pitched all that was within and 
 without to the Seventeen Divils. 
 
 And sure there was no blame on me at all, 
 only she seen them two young whipsthers o' 
 mine when they thrown the owld bag they 
 had with the ferret's bed back into her hen- 
 house, and they near dead with thrailing it 
 out through the counthry. 
 
A PATRICK'S DAY HUNT 119 
 
 A half a gallon of paraffin they had soaked 
 in it. If it was herself and not meself had 
 one and eightpence lost by it she might be 
 talkin'. 
 
 I'm told she gave William the Seven 
 Shows of Cork on the head of it, but indeed 
 poor William had great courage the same 
 day, 
 
ALSATIA 
 
ALSATIA 
 
 No doubt the fact that it was forbidden, or 
 mainly forbidden, lent it a considerable charm. 
 The prohibitory edict was a semi-obsolete 
 Statute of — say — the reign of Edward VI. 
 Authorities, when driven to their last trench, 
 fell back on it, declaring that no respectable 
 children were allowed in stable-yards, or 
 ever had been. We never argued the point. 
 At an early age we had learned the folly of 
 hardening fluid prohibition into adamant by 
 argument ; but we did not cease from visiting 
 the yard. 
 
 As I look back I see a procession advanc- 
 ing from the dimmest and most ancient places 
 of memory, a procession as varied as that 
 which in Maclise's picture slowly winds away 
 from the Ark. Heading it are two figures 
 who, in their prime, ranked equally as the 
 
i2 4 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 over-lords of the stable-yard, Old Michael, 
 and the copper-coloured turkey cock. When 
 one has attained an altitude of some consider- 
 able number of inches over five feet, it is 
 hard to estimate the terror that a robust 
 turkey cock can inspire in a person, however 
 charged with valiant intention, of little more 
 than forty-eight inches over all. The 
 copper-coloured turkey cock was subtle as he 
 was vicious ; he appreciated as well as any 
 Boer General the moral effect of a surprise. 
 To face him, to go forth with intent to battle, 
 was possible, even enjoyable, but at this 
 moment I can feel the panic, blinding and 
 disintegrating, of being taken in the rear ; I 
 remember the sound of the striding claws 
 on the gravel behind me, the rustle of the 
 stiff wings ; were I but four feet high, and 
 still wore short socks, I am convinced that I 
 would run as hard if similarly attacked. 
 
 Coincident with the time that the turkey 
 cock held sway, one of us had somehow 
 acquired a dog, a meek, female creature, 
 always engaged either prospectively or re- 
 trospectively in family affairs, and loaded 
 with a spirit broken by long beatings from 
 the back-door. She was white, with very 
 
ALSATIA 125 
 
 sore eyes and a long tail ; one of her relatives 
 professed to be a bull-terrier, a fact much 
 dwelt on by her proprietor ; but beyond the 
 soreness of her eyes there was but little to 
 substantiate it. 
 
 " Those village dogs had better look out," 
 said the proprietor. " May-fly'll most likely 
 kill them if she meets them." 
 
 She had come to us in May, and the name 
 held for us the glamour of a hundred springs. 
 Among the village dogs was one, contemp- 
 tible beyond its fellows, known to us as Boiled 
 Rice (a food specially abhorred by us, which 
 her coat and complexion were supposed to 
 resemble). Boiled Rice was generally on hand 
 at or about the lodge gates, and one day May- 
 fly was formally led forth to slaughter her. 
 Boiled Rice was a small and disgusting 
 creature, very old, and nearly toothless, and 
 without reputation as a fighter. None the less, 
 when located by our scouts she did not refuse 
 battle. On the contrary, she bustled up to 
 May-fly, and, rising upon the shortest pair 
 of hind legs ever put under any four-legged 
 creature save a lizard, laid her paws upon 
 her shoulders and yapped harshly in her face. 
 Then, if ever, the blood of the bull terrier 
 
126 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 relation should have come into action; for 
 some unfortunate reason that was the precise 
 moment at which it ebbed. Our champion 
 gave a squeak of resentful alarm, and, disen- 
 gaging herself from the enemy, fled unpre- 
 tentiously, unhesitatingly, without a hint of 
 reprisal. For our parts we stoned and 
 hunted Boiled Rice more mercilessly than 
 ever after this overthrow. An unexpected 
 aspect in the character of May-fly was that 
 she, who fled from every living thing, 
 remained unmoved by the ferocities of the 
 copper turkey cock. At a word from 
 us, and it was a word often spoken, she 
 would take him by his scarlet and bulbous 
 beard and gallop him off into remote places, 
 from whence, long afterwards, he might be 
 seen gloomily returning, a discredited and 
 bedraggled despot. It was her sole achieve- 
 ment, and one greatly valued by us, but, 
 unfortunately, it found no favour with the 
 authorities, and one night she and the then 
 puppy — she always had a puppy or so in her 
 lair behind the potato house — were swept. 
 
 Neck and neck with the copper turkey 
 cock came Old Michael, equal in malignity, 
 but less active. He was nominally a stable 
 
"SENDING 
 
 HIS WILD VOICE ABkOAD 
 
ALSATIA 127 
 
 helper, and was also a self-constituted spy in 
 the service of the government — or rather of 
 the governess — and a more implacable tale- 
 bearer never truckled to authorities. 
 
 "The two o' them is round back o' the 
 cow-house, Miss. It's now this minute I 
 seen them climbing out over the garden 
 gate ! " 
 
 Thus we, prone on the slant of the cow- 
 house roof, under the drooping laurel 
 branches, with our pockets crammed with 
 green, young apples, have listened, panting, 
 to our betrayal. Any other man on the 
 place would have lied in our cause with 
 chapter and verse. 
 
 There was a tradition about Old Michael 
 that he had once been bitten by a mad dog, 
 and had thereupon, as a recognised antidote, 
 killed the dog and eaten its liver. There 
 was something luridly attractive about the 
 transaction, and we often discussed the pos- 
 sibility as to whether the liver had thoroughly 
 played its part, and whether it might not 
 be that he suffered from slight chronic hydro- 
 phobia, and that, at any moment, he might 
 turn snarling and foaming upon us. His 
 ordinary manner lent itself to the fancy, his 
 
128 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 rages were so explosive, his yells at the 
 horses under his charge so ungoverned, so 
 screeching. One of these was a white pony 
 that might have walked straight out of a fairy 
 tale, in which he would have been exclusively 
 employed as palfrey to the principal Princess. 
 He had been bought through, or from, we 
 never quite knew which, an old farmer, one 
 Jer Sullivan, who lived at the head of a long 
 and lonely Atlantic cove, and was as much 
 fisherman as farmer, and more beggar than 
 either. His main source of income was a 
 petition in which was feelingly narrated the 
 manner of death that befell his only horse. 
 
 " She was clifted one night by dogs 
 hunting her, and drowned in the tide, and I 
 have no one now to trust to, only the Lord." 
 
 Thus sorrowed the petition, Christmas by 
 Christmas, getting a little browner as time 
 went by, but no less insatiable. One windy 
 Christmas Eve Jer Sullivan and the petition 
 had appeared as usual, together with the horde 
 of old women who, by long-established 
 custom, received a dole on that day. 
 
 In the twilight of the December morning 
 they came by twos and threes, fluttering up 
 the avenue, looking, with their long dark 
 
ALSATIA 129 
 
 cloaks and thin red legs and feet, like the 
 choughs that used to breed in the neighbour- 
 ing cliffs. Upon the wet grass on the way 
 round to the stable yard they squatted in a 
 
 " ANCIENT WIDOWHOOD AND SPINSTERDOM " 
 
 gabbling row, waiting for the coming forth 
 of the master, and chaffing Jer Sullivan for 
 having joined the ranks of ancient widowhood 
 and spinsterdom, with the unquenchable 
 spirit that lurks in the oldest and most forlorn 
 
i 3 o SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 Irish peasant woman. On this occasion, Jer, 
 having exhausted his stock of repartee, 
 planted himself on the hall-door steps. 
 
 " Is the granddada comin' ?" he called 
 through the window to us, assembled in 
 the hall. His face, wrinkled and grizzly, 
 was pressed against the glass, his filmy eye 
 was full of unutterable things. 
 
 "I have a present for ye!" he said, as 
 soon as we had opened the door. 
 
 To expect a begging petition, and instead 
 of it to be threatened with a gift, is something 
 disconcerting, but we were young, too young 
 to know the mental and financial wear and 
 tear involved by a present from such as Mr. 
 Sullivan. 
 
 " What would you be sayin' to a nate little 
 pony?" went on Jer, with a beguiling smile 
 that was staked out by four huge yellow 
 teeth. 11 Sure a friend o' mine has him below 
 at the gate. Wait awhile now " 
 
 He paused, with an artist's knowledge of 
 effect, and strayed away down the avenue in 
 the indefinite manner of beggar men. 
 
 The ceremonial of the gifts pursued its 
 usual course. The Master moved down the 
 row, a silence of expectation before him a 
 
ALSATIA 131 
 
 cackle of blessings behind him ; as each 
 received her dole she gathered her ragged 
 plumage about her and flitted away, blessings 
 still flowing from her as the steam-clouds trail 
 out behind a train. 
 
 To us again, after breakfast, returned Jer 
 Sullivan, and, incredible sight, he was leading 
 a small pony. It was about thirteen hands 
 high ; in colour, dirty white, with a very wild 
 eye, a figure like a toast rack, and a long tail. 
 
 "Sure your Honour knows the breed of 
 him well. His dam was by the Kerry 
 Diamond, the same as your Honours coach- 
 horses, the grandest horses in the globe of 
 Ireland!" 
 
 Jer took a pull, and the Master eyed the 
 pony in deep silence ; the pony eyed us and 
 snorted apprehensively. 
 
 " Sure the granddam of that one," resumed 
 Jer, " was no loftier size than himself, an' she 
 took a load out o' Banthry, an' a woman, an* 
 three bonnives, an' two bundles o' spades, 
 an' seven hours was all she took comin' to 
 Tragumena Strand." 
 
 "What do you want for him? n said the 
 Master. To say that our hearts leaped in us 
 at this approach to business, is to put the 
 
i 3 2 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 thing very mildly. They rolled and rioted 
 like porpoises in a summer sea, what time 
 the Master, and Jer, and Jimmy Hosford, the 
 coachman, who had joined the action irre- 
 pressibly, moved round and round in the 
 slow orbits of the deal. The fiction that the 
 pony was a present had been abandoned, 
 the thing had narrowed to a duel between 
 Jer Sullivan and Jimmy Hosford. The 
 Master had made his offer — £§ } I believe — 
 and had strolled away. 
 
 u There isn't as much condition on him as'd 
 bait a hook," said Jimmy Hosford. 
 
 " Oh, Jimmy ! " we screamed as one man, 
 " he's a lovely " 
 
 * Ah, God help ye ! " said Jimmy Hosford, 
 washing his hands of a bargain in which he 
 had to suffer such collaborators. 
 
 " My darlin' childhren," said Jer in a hoarse 
 whisper to us, "don't mind for he bein' a 
 small bit thin an wake in himself; its 
 what ails him " — the whisper deepened and 
 thickened — 11 he was ridden — by nights ! " he 
 paused awfully ; " wouldn't I find him in the 
 mornings bate out an' sweatin' ; an' signs on 
 it, the world wouldn't make him cross run- 
 nin' wather ! 99 
 
ALSATIA 133 
 
 "Who rode him ? M said we, thrilling to the 
 implied mystery. 
 
 Jer looked right and left over his shoulders. 
 
 " Those People!" said he. 
 
 A fairy-ridden pony! It needed but that 
 touch of romance. The pony was bought. 
 £5 and a weakling heifer calf were the 
 terms finally agreed to. The explanation 
 offered subsequently by Old Michael that it 
 was the Tragumena boys that took the pony 
 by nights for blagyarding, and to ride him 
 in the tide, was dismissed with deserved 
 contempt ; the pony was called Fairy, and a 
 better never bolted in a snaffle, or kicked its 
 rider over its head when invited to jump a 
 stream. 
 
 Those who have in any measure dipped 
 below the surface of stable yard politics, can 
 hardly fail to have become aware, even in a 
 minor degree, of the subtle relations existing 
 between the house dogs and the yard cats. 
 That an understanding, almost amounting to 
 a treaty, obtains, there can be no reasonable 
 doubt. That the dogs are ashamed of it 
 is certain ; that the cats are not, is a fact 
 bound up in the character of cats, who are 
 never ashamed of anything. But yesterday, 
 
134 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 unsuspected and unseen, I viewed a typical 
 instance of the strange and chilly truce that 
 holds in the ashpit when the house dogs, the 
 yard cats, the turkey cock, and, most im- 
 placably hated of all by all, the pensionnaire 
 hound mother and her brood, feasted horribly 
 and illicitly among cinders and refuse. The 
 house dogs, furtively and hurriedly, with ears 
 laid back, and guilty pauses in mid-bone ; 
 the hound mother grossly and jealously, 
 something disposed to truculence ; the turkey 
 cock contemptibly, with sunken tail, and 
 wattles of faded pink, prepared to skip four 
 times his own length if the hound mother so 
 much as looked at him. 
 
 Of the whole party the hound puppies and 
 the cats alone showed to any advantage. 
 The puppies, jovially unaware of the 
 momentousness of each instant, sprawled and 
 croaked over the woolly shin bone of a lamb ; 
 the cats were unalterably dignified, nibbling 
 with deliberate daintiness the remains of a 
 long-interred cod-fish. A millennial peace 
 rested upon the scene. 
 
 It was possibly half an hour later, when 
 those ineffable snobs, the house dogs, basking 
 in the smiles of the aristocracy, had their 
 
ALSATIA 135 
 
 attention drawn to the creeping grey form 
 of the yard Tom, making fowling observa- 
 tions in the shrubbery. Like twin bolts from 
 a thunder-cloud they sped on the chase ; two 
 highly connected white fox-terrier ladies, 
 shrieking shrill threats at the intruding 
 vermin. No wonder the yard Tom galloped. 
 Yet the close observer could not but notice 
 that as soon as the distance from the quarry 
 had been reduced to some three or four feet, 
 it remained fixed at that. In that nicely 
 maintained interval was embodied one of the 
 most immutable clauses of the treaty. 
 
 The treaty, however, and all connected 
 with it, were of the most artificial and trifling 
 to that child of nature, the hound mother. 
 She, like her many predecessors, pretended to 
 no higher sphere of operations than the 
 stable yard. 
 
 " The care of my children and the surveil- 
 lance of the ashpit," she seemed to say, c< are 
 all I demand/' 
 
 But, like her predecessors, a more accom- 
 plished and wide ranging thief never jumped 
 on to a kitchen table, or smirked hypocri- 
 tically outside a hall door on the chance of 
 making a dash upon the dining-room. It is 
 
136 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 not long since that history, for the twentieth 
 time, repeated itself. 
 
 " The ham ! the ham ! " wailed from the 
 dining-room the voice of the mistress. 
 " Niobe has stolen the ham ! " 
 
 The sequel was given by the laundry- 
 woman, herself long versed in the ways of 
 the stable yard, and of hound mothers. 
 
 " I was west in the field spreading the 
 clothes, when I seen herself sthretched above 
 on the hayrick. Divil blow the stir that was 
 out of her ! I knew by her she was at some- 
 thing ! An 1 afther that I dunno why she 
 wouldn't bursht with all the wather she 
 dhrank ! She has the divil's own inside ! " 
 
SICKNESS AND 
 HEALTH" 
 
"IN SICKNESS AND IN 
 HEALTH" 
 
 When I first heard these words I was not 
 highly impressed by them, or by anything at 
 the moment except the redness of the bride- 
 groom's nose, and the surprising manner in 
 which one of " the young ladies' " dresses 
 had been coerced into fitting the bride. The 
 solemnities of the service passed, in every 
 sense, over my head, which was then not 
 much higher than the table at which the 
 priest stood ; indeed, it was only by putting 
 forth the fullest wriggling powers of child- 
 hood that I was able to gloat in comfort on 
 the brides blushes from a loophole between 
 the turf-flavoured folds of her mother's 
 Galway cloak and the repressive elbow of 
 my elder brother. Why the ceremony 
 should have taken place in the vestry I 
 
i 4 o SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 cannot say, beyond that it was a custom in 
 the little Roman Catholic Chapel of which I 
 write ; just as it was in those friendly days a 
 custom with us to go to the marriages of the 
 tenants, and to take our share of the blessing 
 and the sprinkled holy water. 
 
 The accustomed gold, silver, and copper 
 were laid on the book by the bridegroom, 
 the portentous words were spoken, with 
 the melancholy Galway accent adding its 
 emphasis to them, and at the next interval 
 the priest opened the window behind him. 
 
 " Run down to Mick Leonards for a coal," 
 he said in Irish to some one outside, and 
 then proceeded with a most sound and 
 simple exordium to the newly married pair. 
 
 In a few minutes there appeared in the 
 open window a hand holding a live coal of turf 
 in a bent stick. I can see it yet, the pale fire 
 in the white ash of the sod, thrust between 
 us and the blue sky, and the priests hand put 
 out to take it, but I cannot remember now 
 what was its mission, whether to light a 
 candle or incense. 
 
 After this came a sprinkling with holy 
 water with something that nearly resembled 
 a hearth-brush. A drop fell into my open 
 
"IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH" i 4l 
 
 mouth as I stood gaping with the detestable 
 curiosity of my age, and its peculiar, slightly 
 brackish flavour is always the impression that 
 comes first when I recall that day. There 
 was a long business of hand shakings and 
 huggings, and the wedding party squeezed 
 itself out of the narrow vestry doorway, with 
 hearts fully attuned to the afternoons enter- 
 tainment. 
 
 At the gate some shaggy horses were tied 
 up, and having clambered on to one of these, 
 much as a man would climb a tree, the 
 bridegroom hauled his bride up behind him, 
 and started for home at a lumbering gallop. 
 Shouting and whooping, the other men got on 
 their horses and pursued, and the whole 
 clattering, bumping cavalcade passed out of 
 sight, leaving us transfixed in admiration of 
 the traditional 14 dragging home" of the 
 bride. For me the only remaining recollec- 
 tions of the day are of a surfeit in the bed- 
 room of the brides mother, where in 
 gluttonous solitude I partook of hot soda- 
 bread, half a glass of luscious port, and a 
 boiled egg ; while the less honoured guests 
 in the kitchen outside harangued and sang 
 songs, and drank the wine of the country in 
 
i 4 2 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 its integrity. My wedding garment was, I 
 recollect, a holland " waggoner/' loosely girt 
 by a shiny black belt with a brass serpent 
 buckle. At no subsequent wedding breakfast 
 have I been as enjoyably dressed, and, as a 
 natural consequence, at none have I eaten as 
 much. 
 
 As my first distinct glimpse into matrimony 
 it stands far back and detached ; after it, in the 
 Bayeux tapestry of childhood, horses, dogs, 
 and baffled governesses moved on in untiring 
 confusion, for periods of unmeasured time, 
 before the subject again presented itself. 
 
 There lives in my memory a Sunday 
 morning in spring, when the little beech 
 leaves were poised like pale green moths 
 among the bare branches, and the northerly 
 showers whipped the lambs into shelter. The 
 servants had gone in a body to early mass, 
 leaving the preparations for breakfast in the 
 hands of Tom Cashen, a trusted friend and 
 counsellor, whose ordinary business it was to 
 attend to the affairs of the yard and its pigs. 
 
 There was soda-bread to be watched in the 
 oven, there were saucepans and kettles 
 resolved upon untimely boiling, there was 
 porridge to be stirred, and there was also 
 
"IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH" 143 
 
 Tom Cashen's dog, a hungry, furtive thing, 
 capable at any moment of clearing the table 
 of all that was upon it. The moment came, 
 as it comes to those who wait with complete 
 attentiveness, and Tom Cashen's dog did not 
 let it slip. It was during the retributions of 
 justice that the bread burned in the oven, the 
 coffee boiled over on the range, and the 
 porridge adhered massively to the bottom of 
 the saucepan. 
 
 "I'd sooner be digging the clay from 
 morning till night," said Tom Cashen, after 
 a long and prayerful imprecation, "than to be 
 at this kind of work. There isn't a man in 
 the world without getting married but he's 
 sure to die quare, and no wonder, from the 
 work that's within ! " 
 
 Translated into our inferior English this 
 aphorism sets forth the opinion that a 
 bachelor who has to do his own household 
 work is bound to end his days in a lunatic 
 asylum. This view of matrimony had not 
 before been heard by me, and it seemed to be 
 wholly reasonable. For one thing, the men 
 in the yard were always right in our eyes, 
 and always full of just complaints against the 
 kitchen ; in any case, the Work that was 
 
144 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 Within — the arduous triflings with saucepans 
 and sweeping-brushes — was certainly con- 
 temptible as compared with the realities and 
 the fascinations of the stable and the hay- 
 cart. The point of view of Mrs. Tom Cashen 
 was not touched upon ; I think I realised 
 that she was not likely to have one. 
 
 She was described at the time of her 
 marriage as " fine and fair and freckled, and 
 a great warrant to fatten turkeys," and she 
 walked two miles every day, with a basket on 
 her back, to carry Tom Cashens dinner to 
 him — potatoes and boiled eggs, kept hot in a 
 clean towel. Later on the dinner was carried 
 by two barefooted little boys ; from thence- 
 forward, during many years, there was always 
 a barefooted little boy or two to carry it, 
 whereat the heart of Tom Cashen was glad, 
 and so, in a modified degree, was the heart 
 of Mrs. Tom Cashen, combating hourly, in a 
 swarming cabin, with the Work that was 
 Within. 
 
 Some time afterwards, when a spare son 
 or two had betaken themselves, weeping 
 direfully, to America, it fell to my lot to sit 
 by the fire in the Cashen household, and to 
 read aloud a letter from one of them, for the 
 
"IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH" 145 
 
 enlightenment of his parents, who were not 
 skilled in the finer arts. It was a most 
 affectionate letter, inquiring in turn for all 
 members of the family, and it enclosed an 
 order for two pounds. It concluded as 
 follows : 
 
 11 I think, my dear father, I will not see 
 you again, because you are very old and you 
 will soon die, but when I come home I hope 
 to have the pleasure of visiting your grave 
 and crying my stomachful over it." 
 
 On receiving these cheering assurances the 
 gratification of Tom Cashen was enormous ; 
 it was more to him, he said, than the two 
 pounds itself, and, in his own words, he 11 had 
 to cry a handful." 
 
 There came a day when the words of the 
 letter recurred in their extremest force. 
 Within sight of the Chapel, spoken of further 
 back, stands a ruin, with the ground inside 
 and outside of it choked with graves ; mound 
 and crooked headstone and battered slab, 
 with the briar wreathing them, and the lime- 
 stone rock thrusting its strong shoulder up 
 between. In the last light of an October 
 afternoon I found myself there, in a crowd 
 that huddled and swayed round one intense 
 
146 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 point of interest — a shallow grave, dug with 
 difficulty, where was laid in its deal coffin the 
 quiet body left behind by the restless spirit 
 of Tom Cashen, at the close of a companion- 
 ship that had always been interesting and 
 generally happy. 
 
 The parish priest was ill, and his substitute 
 was late ; the matter was proceeded with in 
 a simplicity that was quite without self-con- 
 sciousness or embarrassment. Tom Cashen's 
 eldest son, grieved, as was well known, to 
 his gentle heart's core, had in a newspaper 
 earth that had been blessed (by whom I know 
 not), and from the newspaper it was shaken 
 by him upon the coffin. Holy water was 
 poured into the grave from a soda-water 
 bottle, and the bottle itself thrown in after it ; 
 then followed the shovelling in and stamping 
 down, and the tender twilight falling in com- 
 passion on the scene. 
 
 The crowd became thin and dispersed, and 
 as I walked away meditating on things that 
 had passed and things that had endured during 
 an absence of many years, a woman kneeling 
 by a grave got heavily on to her feet and called 
 me by my name. A middle-aged stranger in 
 a frilled cap and blue cloak, with handsome 
 
"IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH " 147 
 
 eyes full of friendliness ; that was the first 
 impression. Then some wraith of old associa- 
 tion began to flit about the worn features, and 
 suddenly the bride of twenty-five years ago 
 was there beneath the cap frill. Five minutes 
 told the story : ill-health, an everlasting pain 
 " out through the top of the head," sons and 
 daughters in profusion, and baskets of turf 
 carried on the back in boggy places. " Him- 
 self' was pointed out among the crowd. His 
 nose glowed portentously above a rusty grey 
 beard, and beneath a hat-brim of a bibulous 
 tilt. The introduction was not pressed. 
 
 The sunny Shrove Tuesday in early March 
 lived again as she spoke, the glare of sunshine 
 upon the bare country brimming with immi- 
 nent life, the scent of the furze, already 
 muffling its spikes in bloom, the daffodils 
 hanging their lamps in the shady places. 
 How strangely, how bleakly different was the 
 life history summarised in the melancholy 
 October evening. Instead of the broad- 
 backed horse, galloping on roads that were 
 white in the sun and haze of the strong 
 March day, with the large frieze-clad waist 
 to meet her arms about, and the laughter and 
 shouting of the pursuers coming to her ear, 
 
148 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 there would be a long and miry tramping in 
 the darkness, behind her spouse, with talk of 
 guano and geese and pigs* food, and a perfect 
 foreknowledge of how he would complete, at 
 the always convenient shebeen, the glorious 
 fabric of intoxication, of which the foundation 
 had been well and duly laid at the funeral. 
 
 The possessor of these materials for discon- 
 tent was quite unaware of any of them. Her 
 husband was as good as other peoples, and 
 seldom got drunk, except at funerals, 
 weddings and fairs, or on the Holy days of 
 the Church, and that was no more than was 
 natural. Anything less would be cheerless, 
 even uncanny. She introduced her daughter, 
 44 the second eldest, and she up to twenty 
 years, and she having her passage paid to 
 America with all she earned in the lace school." 
 The young lady up to twenty years had her 
 hair down her back, and wore a long coat 
 with huge buttons, and a whole Harvest 
 Festival in her hat, from which wisps of 
 emerald grass drooped over the fierce fringe 
 below it. To be very young, even childish, 
 is the aim of her generation. The battle has 
 been waged, even to weeping, by the ladies 
 of the Big House, with a "tweeny" ol 
 
"IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH" 149 
 
 seventeen, who, on every descent to the 
 populous regions of the yard and kitchen, 
 plucked the hairpins from her orange mane, 
 and allowed it to flow forth in assertion of 
 her infant charms. The previous generation, 
 superior in this as in many other ways, grows 
 old as unaffectedly as animals ; it is a part of 
 its deep and unstudied philosophy. 
 
 14 I'm very old now, sure," said the matron 
 of twenty-five years' standing, with a comfort- 
 able laugh, " I think I must be near forty-five 
 years. " 
 
 Had she said sixty it would not have 
 seemed much above the mark, and she 
 would have said it with equal composure. I 
 looked the conventional incredulity, and 
 realised that it was thrown away. She, in 
 return, assured me that for my part she had 
 often read of beauty in a book, but had 
 never till now really seen it, that my face 
 was made for the ruin of the world, and that 
 she'd know me out of my father's family by 
 the two eyes and the snout. All was 
 accepted with fitting seriousness, and the 
 piece of news that had been held back with 
 difficulty during these ceremonial obser- 
 vances, was at length given the rein. Had 
 
ISO SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 I not heard of how her sisters daughter, 
 down in Drohorna, had that morning 
 brought three children into the world, 
 daughters, unfortunately, but still a matter 
 reflecting much lustre on the parish, and on 
 that Providence that had singled it out from 
 the Diocese for the honour. 
 
 The conversation abruptly closed, as the 
 priest who was to have performed the 
 Funeral Office scorched up on his bicycle, 
 scarlet-faced, and half an hour late. As if 
 the sight of him set the seal of the irrevocable 
 upon what had been done, the widow of Tom 
 Cashen broke into hoarse wailing ; she was 
 arduously consoled and taken away, and her 
 husband was left behind in the solitude, he, 
 who hated to be alone, and was afraid to pass 
 the churchyard at night. 
 
 A discussion raged as to the opening of 
 his strong box, the men who stamped down 
 the earth on the grave using the action as an 
 emphasis to their assertions. At length the 
 churchyard emptied, the evening wind was 
 raw, and in the gloom the white chapel on 
 the hill stared with its gaunt windows, imper- 
 vious to the life histories of its own making, 
 impossible as an accessory to sentiment. 
 
'WHAT HAVE YE ON YER NO-ASE? 
 
11 IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH n 151 
 
 Obvious duty has seldom gone more 
 suavely hand-in-hand with perfect enjoyment 
 than in the attendance of the parish, prac- 
 tically en masse, at the lev£e held next day, 
 and for many succeeding days, by the 
 Triplets. A grey road runs north and south 
 past their cabin door, level on the level face 
 of the bog for a shelterless half-mile, and 
 neither wake nor "Stations" could have 
 commanded a more representative gathering 
 than went and came upon it in those moist 
 autumn afternoons. The gander who lorded 
 it over the nibbled strip of grass in front of 
 the cabin yard was worn down to amiability 
 by a hundred assaults on new comers and an 
 equal number of glorious returns to the 
 applause of his family ; the half-bred collie, 
 coiled under a cart, closed his cunning eyes 
 to aggressions that were beyond all barking ; 
 a five-year-old boy with tough tight curls 
 of amber, and an appallingly dirty face, 
 regarded me from the doorstep with brazen 
 sang froid as I approached, and said in a loud 
 and winding drawl : " What have ye on yer 
 no-ase ? " Praise is seldom perfected in the 
 mouth of the babe and suckling. I removed 
 my pince-nez, and passed with difficulty into 
 
1 52 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 a doorway filled with people, the blue smoke 
 from the interior filling up the crevices. The 
 father of the Triplets, a lanky young man, 
 in the Sunday clothes in which he had just 
 returned from making his application for the 
 Kings Bounty, was according an unchanging, 
 helpless grin to the shafts of felicitation that 
 beset him, the most barbed being screamed 
 in Irish by the old women, to the rapture of 
 the audience. 
 
 Behind this unequal strife the Triplets 
 held their court, in a cradle by the fire, 
 canopied with coarse flannel, and rocked 
 unceasingly, one would say maddeningly, by 
 a female relative with an expression of pomp 
 befitting the show- woman. It suggested the 
 bellringer who said, "We preached a very 
 fine sermon to-day." The wicker walls 
 rolled creakily. The rockers were uneven, so 
 was the earthen floor beneath them, and each 
 oscillation contained three separate jerks. In 
 this bewildering world, composed of sallow 
 blankets and an unceasing earthquake, the 
 three brand new souls reposed as best they 
 might ; the show-woman's grimy hand parted 
 their firmament of flannel, and revealed three 
 minute faces of the pallor of lard, dome-like 
 
SHE'S THE LIVELIEST OF THEM, GOD BLESS HER! 
 
"IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH n 153 
 
 in forehead, with tiny and precisely similar 
 features, wonderfully absorbed in sleep. 
 The infant of a day old appeals unfailingly 
 to the compassion, but its most impassioned 
 adherent must admit that it is out of drawing. 
 The light from the open door struck sud- 
 denly into the cradle, as some one clove a 
 path through the assemblage ; one of the 
 absorbed faces worked in vexation, elderly, 
 miserable vexation. Tears, too, angry and 
 pitiful ; the long slit of opening eyelid was 
 full of them, the unseeing disc of dull blue 
 within swam in them, the stately bald head 
 turned to terra-cotta. 
 
 u She's the liveliest of them, God bless 
 her ! " said the show- woman, in high admira- 
 tion, " but as for the little one-een next the 
 fire, she'll never do a day's good. 'Twasn't 
 hardly making day this morning when I had 
 a pot of water on the fire for her," 
 
 Being interpreted, this meant that the little 
 one-een by the fire had in the cold autumn 
 dawn retraced her way so far into the white 
 trance of the unknown that all was made 
 ready for washing and laying her out. She 
 lay like a doll made of pale puckered wax, 
 her sleeping lids had a lavender tone, and 
 
i 54 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 the shadows about her mouth were grey. 
 Next morning the cocks had crowed but once 
 when the pot of water simmered again over 
 the turf fire, and the weak and lonely combat 
 with death ended in defeat. 
 
 The life that she was not to share moved 
 on about her in leisurely squalor ; the smoke 
 from the turf fire strayed languidly up the 
 sooty wall, and blundered against the broad 
 mouth of the chimney till the rafters were 
 lost in the blue and settled obscurity. The 
 walls were yellow with smoke ; it was easy 
 to imagine its flavour in the bowl of milk 
 that stood on the dresser, ready for the in- 
 valid in the inner room. Obscure corners 
 harboured obscure masses that might be 
 family raiment, or beds, or old women ; some- 
 where among them the jubilant cry of a hen 
 proclaimed the feat of laying an egg, in 
 muffled tones that suggested a lurking-place 
 under a bed. Between the cradle and the 
 fire sat an old man in a prehistoric tall hat, 
 motionless in the stupor of his great age ; at 
 his feet a boy wrangled with a woolly puppy 
 that rolled its eyes till the blue whites showed, 
 in a delicious glance of humour, as it tugged 
 at the red flannel shirt of its playmate. 
 
"IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH M 155 
 
 " God save all here," said a voice, very 
 dictatorially, at the door ; a black-haired old 
 woman shoved her way to the cradle, and 
 parted the blankets with a professional air. 
 She was a Wise Woman from the mountain, 
 and foreknowing the moment when she 
 would spit, for luck, in the faces of the help- 
 less trio in the cradle, I jostled my way to 
 the bedroom of their mother. It had an 
 almost conventual calm. Moderate as was 
 the light that struggled through a hermeti- 
 cally sealed window of eighteen inches by 
 twelve, it was further baffled by an apron 
 pinned across the panes ; the air was heavy, 
 reinforced only by the draughts and the 
 smoke that entered hand-in-hand from the 
 kitchen. 
 
 In one of two great beds the invalid lay in 
 the twilight, with her hand pressed to her 
 head. She was collected, well-bred, and con- 
 cerned for the welfare of the visitor, and of 
 all the visitor's relations, mentioned in due 
 order of seniority. The glory of her position 
 burned in two spots of excitement on her 
 high cheek bones, but it could not eliminate 
 her good manners. Her sister loudly recited 
 the facts that she was using no food, only 
 
156 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 sups of milk and water, that as for puddings 
 or any little rarities, if you ran down gold in 
 a cup she wouldn't let it to her lips. 
 
 "There's nothing in the world wide I 
 could fancy," said the sick girl, feebly, 11 unless 
 it'd be the lick of a fish's tail." 
 
 The entry of the Wise Woman, with a 
 stentorian benediction, here drove me forth 
 like a bolted rabbit, and having skirted the 
 evil-smelling morass in front of the house, I 
 breathed the large air of the bogs with 
 enthusiasm. The evening was speechless 
 and oppressive ; it held like a headache the 
 question whether it is useful to be sorry for 
 those who are not sorry for themselves, and, 
 unrepining, grope out their lives in the dark 
 house of ignorance ; and whether discontent 
 with one's lot is not the mother of good cook- 
 ing and other excellent things. 
 
 A week afterwards an emissary brought to 
 the Big House the intelligence that the 
 mother of the Triplets had iji the interval 
 been at the point of death, and had been 
 anointed, had an impression on her chest, 
 and could give " no account of the pain she 
 had in her side, only that it was like a person 
 polishing a boot, and there to be lumps in 
 
"IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH" 157 
 
 the boot, and he having a brush in his hand." 
 From out of these symptoms was distilled the 
 fact that she had had pleurisy, acquired while 
 walking barefoot in the yard to feed the 
 calves. She entreated the gift of a pair of 
 boots, and the emissary added, as a rider, 
 the fact that the Colonels boots would be 
 just her fit. The Colonel was away, but the 
 main body of his boots stood in battalions in 
 his room. A pair of the dustiest was snatched, 
 in a heat of philanthropy, and bestowed, and 
 proved, we were given to understand, an 
 invaluable adjunct to the feeding of the calves. 
 It is worth mentioning that the Colonel, on 
 his return next day, was by no means as 
 gratified as had been hoped ; they were, he 
 said, the one and only pair of patent leather 
 boots in which he could walk with comfort 
 and credit in London, and the moving cir- 
 cumstance of Triplets had no power to allay 
 his bitter and impotent wrath. His only tall 
 hat had already been sold at a Jumble sale, 
 and he did well to be angry. The cook, who 
 had been sceptical throughout as to the 
 necessity for the gift, tactfully reported that 
 the Colonel's boots were too tight for That 
 One, and brought from Second Mass the 
 
158 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 comfortable tidings that they had preyed on 
 her feet. 
 
 The cook, always lenient, after the manner 
 of her kind, to the Colonel and all his sex, 
 was at that time much preoccupied with 
 matrimonial affairs. It was soon afterwards 
 that a strange young man in Sunday clothes 
 appeared at intervals in the yard, and melted 
 like a wraith into dark doorways in the 
 kitchen passages. He was found eating trifle 
 in the servants' hall, and in the evenings he 
 fished on the lake. He was, we discovered, 
 the cooks brother, arrived from Loughrea to 
 investigate the position of the swain whom 
 the cook wished to marry. On the fourth 
 day he passed imperceptibly out of the 
 establishment, and the cook fought loudly 
 and venomously with all who crossed her 
 path. It transpired that the brother had 
 visited the home of the aspirant, and had 
 found, she said, that it was a backwards 
 place, and a narrow house, and he wouldn't 
 let her go in it. She had twice at Mass 
 seen the candidate for her hand, she informed 
 us, lamentably, and he was a nice young man, 
 foxy in the face, and she got a good account 
 of him. That it was remarkable, or at all 
 
"IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH " 159 
 
 unpleasant, to marry a perfect stranger was a 
 point quite outside her comprehension. She 
 had never spoken to him, she admitted, but 
 what signified, so long as she got a good 
 account of him. It was afterwards discovered 
 that the lover had been rejected because his 
 family had been broom-makers, and that no 
 self-respecting girl would look at him on that 
 account. The point of social etiquette here 
 touched remains still dark, but it was insuper- 
 able, and the cook eventually married the 
 gentleman whose lofty calling it was to drive 
 the butcher's cart. 
 
 The day before the marriage the battle 
 was waged in the usual manner between 
 the Loughrea brother and the bridegroom ; 
 greasy pound notes were slapped down on 
 the table, the bride's savings were vaunted 
 above the bridegroom's heifers and position 
 as heir to his mother's bit of land, and with 
 swaggering and bluff and whiskey drinking 
 the bargain was concluded. Nothing could 
 have been more frankly commercial ; nothing, 
 apparently, could have given more satis- 
 faction. The cook departed, and lived in a 
 cabin with a variety of her husband's relatives, 
 who were by no means overjoyed at the 
 
i6o SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 circumstance; potatoes for dinner, and stewed 
 tea morning, noon and night were her diet ; 
 the hens roosted above her bed, she weeded 
 turnips and " spread " turf, she grew thin 
 and pale, but never, so far as is known, did 
 she repine, or regret the print dresses and 
 the flesh-pots. The butchers driver was 
 u a quiet boy," better than most husbands; 
 had it been the broom-maker, foxy in the 
 face she would have made him an equally 
 good wife. In a community where old 
 maids are almost unknown, the only point 
 worth considering was that she was married 
 and had a " young son," and every man and 
 woman in the country would have said that 
 she was right. In traversing the point we 
 should run our heads against a wall of 
 primeval instinct. 
 
 Writers of novels, and readers of novels, 
 had better shut their eyes to the fact, the 
 inexorable fact, that such marriages are 
 rushed into every day — loveless, sordid 
 marriages, such as we are taught to hold in 
 abhorrence, and that from them springs, like 
 a flower from a dust heap, the unsullied, 
 uneventful home-life of Western Ireland. It- 
 is romance that holds the two-edged sword, 
 
"IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH" 161 
 
 the sharp ecstasy and the severing scythe 
 stroke, the expectancy and the disillusioning, 
 the trance and the clearer vision. 
 
 It is even more than passive domestic 
 toleration that blossoms in the cramped and 
 dirty cabin life, affection grows with years, 
 and where personal attraction never counted 
 for much, the loss of it hurts nobody. 
 
 "Their hearts were within in each other," 
 was said of an elderly couple, who, thirty 
 years before, had been married in the priests 
 kitchen on the last night of Shraft ; married 
 as a happy thought, and by the merest 
 chance. The lawful bride had taken her 
 place by the bridegroom, but, changing her 
 mind at the last possible moment, sprang 
 from her knees, and declined the ceremony. 
 As her betrothal was probably an affair of 
 that afternoon it was not so dramatic an 
 action as might be assumed, nor did it cause 
 any hitch in the proceedings. The priest 
 looked round the well-filled kitchen. 
 
 "Here, Mary Kate!" he said to his 
 servant, " come on you, and marry the man ! 
 Sure you wouldn't let him go away, and he 
 after walking five miles in the rain ! M 
 
 Mary Kate knelt down by the bridegroom. 
 
1 62 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 We do not hear of remonstrance on her part, 
 and thirty years afterwards, when their 
 children were married or gone to America, it 
 was said that this couple's u hearts were 
 within in each other." It was said with 
 perfect perception of the ways and the deeps 
 of devotion ; but the absence of it at their 
 wedding was not worthy of remark, and in 
 these things is the essence of the Irish nature, 
 that keenly perceives sentiment, and con- 
 tentedly ignores it. 
 
 " She isn't much, indeed/' said a farmer of 
 exceeding astuteness, when questioned about 
 his matrimonial intentions, " but she's a nate 
 little clerk." By this was delicately conveyed 
 the fact that she could read and write, and 
 that he could not. The marriage was highly 
 successful. 
 
 Years afterwards a friend said to him in 
 congratulation, c< Well, James, I hear you 
 married your daughter well." 
 
 " I did, sir, and I got him cheap." Then 
 in a whisper, " He was divilish owld." 
 
 The computation by which the years of 
 the bridegroom were set against the purchase 
 money — in other words, the bride's dowry — 
 must have been an intricate one, involving, 
 
"IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH n 163 
 
 one would say, the tables of insurance, and 
 the best skill of the nate little clerk. 
 
 Congratulations, not unmixed with some 
 genial surprise, were proffered to another 
 parent on the marriage of his daughter, a 
 person by no means in her first youth, and 
 possessed of but one eye. 
 
 11 Sure I had to give him ten pounds agin' 
 the blind eye," explained the father of the 
 bride, with unimpaired cordiality. 
 
 There is here no material, of the accepted 
 sort, for a playwright ; no unsatisfied yearnings 
 and shattered ideals, nothing but remarkable 
 common sense, and a profound awe for the 
 Sacrament of Marriage. Marriage, humour- 
 ous, commercial, and quite unlovely, is the 
 first act ; the second is mere preoccupation 
 with an accomplished destiny ; the last is 
 usually twilight and much faithfulness. The 
 dialogue is a masterpiece throughout, 
 epigram, heart-piercing pathos, with humour, 
 heavenly and inveterate, lubricating all, 
 Perhaps the clue to success lies here, in the 
 mutual possession of agreeability and the 
 good nature that goes with the best agree- 
 ability ; certain it is that with a command of 
 repartee that makes fighting an artistic 
 
1 64 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 r enjoyment, their conjugal battles are insig- 
 nificant. 
 
 The two-fold heart of the race beats 
 everywhere in the confusion ; gross worldli- 
 ness, and a matrimonial standard clear and 
 unquestioned as the stars ; Love the negli- 
 gible quantity, and attachment the rule. It is 
 for us, more singly bent on happiness, to 
 aim at rapture and to foreknow dis- 
 appointment. 
 
HORTICULTURAL 
 
HORTICULTURAL 
 
 I admit that I hesitate at the thought of 
 pressing into the elect company of those who 
 have discoursed upon gardens. From Lord 
 Bacon down to the Poet Laureate, from the 
 Poet Laureate up to that self-sufficing and 
 yet voluble " Elizabeth, " of whose German 
 Garden all the craft have read, there seems 
 no inch of garden sod that has been left un- 
 turned. I ask myself : Have I any original 
 suggestions on, for example, The disbudding 
 of 'Mums ? (a term of horrid familiarity that 
 I have seen applied to Chrysanthemums). 
 Any high thoughts on Manures ? Any 
 special convictions in the matter of 
 mulches ? 
 
 My conscience, far from admitting ability 
 to treat of these solemn things, reminds me 
 
i68 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 that but little more than a year ago I should 
 scarcely have been entrusted with the weeding 
 of a gravel path, and hints at that Affair of 
 the Coltsfoot. It is, in fact, the Coltsfoot 
 Affair that decides me. I cannot be a guide 
 or a sign-post, but I can be a scarecrow. 
 I would say a moral scarecrow, though it 
 may be conceded that the costume of the 
 gardening amateur often lends itself to the 
 more practical role. 
 
 I was not at all aware of being in the 
 movement when I found myself snatching at 
 my weekly copy of Gardening Illustrated in 
 preference to the daily paper, and brooding 
 heavily upon delphiniums when I might have 
 been profiting by the sermon. It was only 
 by degrees, as I went about the world, that I 
 noted how quick and strong would beat the 
 answering conversational pulse at the 
 mention of a garden, at the sighing reference 
 to the arrangement of a herbaceous border. 
 It seemed that every second person I met 
 was as much of a gardener as I was, in the 
 matter of enthusiasm, and, as they might 
 easily be, something more in the matter of 
 practice. This discovery revolutionised 
 society for me. It has doubtless done so 
 
HORTICULTURAL 169 
 
 for many another. The most penal after- 
 noon visit may have its alleviations in a 
 valuable hint on 11 the desire of the rose" — 
 not for the star — but for the cleanings of the 
 scullery drain ; the most inveterate dowager 
 may be found to be a man and a brother, 
 profoundly versed in daffodils, full of lore 
 about " Alpines. " How astonishing it is to 
 find oneself cheerfully, even ardently, assent- 
 ing to what would once have been regarded 
 as the hideous proposal to M Walk round the 
 garden ! M Such a walk has ceased to be 
 a penance ; it has become something, not 
 quite a scouting expedition, not quite a 
 (herbaceous) border-foray, not quite a 
 " beggar's lay " ; but it has something in it 
 of the charms of all three. Which element 
 preponderates depends on the character. 
 There are moss-troopers born, who will 
 twitch off a cutting, and filch a seed head, 
 uncontrollably. There are heaven-endowed 
 mendicants who will yearn and flatter the 
 filling of a flower bed into a knotted pocket 
 handkerchief. It is a useful principle to 
 accept everything, regardless of the accident 
 of the seasons. There are many other 
 accidents of far higher importance to be 
 
tjo SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 considered — lapse of memory on the part of 
 the giver, for instance, or repentance. In the 
 amenities of gardeners, as in love, the advice 
 to "Take me when I'm in the humour," is 
 sound, and a cutting in the hand is well 
 worth six in or on the bush, when the bush is 
 another's. 
 
 I believe it is the gambling element that 
 gives to gardening so potent a charm — that, 
 and the seedmens catalogues. One of my 
 first adventures was in response to a singu- 
 larly seductive advertisement — " Humulus 
 Lupulus," it said, " The finest creeper in the 
 world. Grows forty feet in a single night. 
 Massive clusters of yellowish blossoms. 
 Beautiful; Healthy." I have the consti- 
 tutional misfortune to believe, unquestioning, 
 the printed word. Even now I find it hard 
 to discount the flights of fancy of that poetic 
 idealist, the advertising nurseryman. I 
 despatched eighteenpence by the next post ; 
 received by return an undemonstrative 
 bundle of little roots, planted them prayer- 
 fully in a choice place, and then, as it 
 happened, left home for a time. On my 
 return to my garden I found the usual 
 crop of catastrophes and compensations, but 
 
HORTICULTURAL 171 
 
 disregarding all alike I sped to the site of 
 the Humulus Lupulus. There had been 
 near the same spot a highly esteemed rose, 
 M Climbing Captain Christie." The first 
 thing that greeted me was the wan, indignant 
 face of a Captain Christie, who, having 
 climbed for all he was worth, was none the 
 less overtaken, and was now gazing at me in 
 strangled pallor from the depths of a thicket 
 of common hops. The Poetic Idealist had 
 triumphed. 
 
 I have never been able precisely to 
 ascertain to what extent Bat Whoolley found 
 me out in the Affair — already alluded to — of 
 the Coltsfoot. Bat is my gardener, and I 
 value his opinion highly, almost as highly as 
 he does himself, though possibly with more 
 limitations. Winter Heliotrope was what 
 my neighbour called Coltsfoot. I felt there 
 was something not quite sound in the lavish 
 way she pressed it upon me. She said there 
 was nothing like it for covering bare places, 
 and that I might dig it up for myself and 
 take all I wanted. That specious permission 
 might have warned me ; so also mi^ht the 
 singular fact that my neighbour's shrubbery 
 had for undergrowth naught save the curving 
 
IT 2 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 leaves of the winter heliotrope. None the 
 less, I planted out two or three colonies of it 
 on the outskirts of the rock garden. 
 
 One morning, at the turn by the pine tree 
 (one of my colonies had been unostentatiously 
 planted in a bare place behind the pine tree), 
 I met Bat. His face was redder than usual, 
 and there was something very searching in 
 his eye. Mine did not meet it. 
 
 u Look at that ! " he said. 
 
 He held up a handful of long white roots, 
 and brandished it, much as Jupiter is repre- 
 sented brandishing a handful of lightning. 
 " Look at that dam-root" — he pronounced 
 the words as one pronounces beet-root — 
 "that some" — here a powerful variant on 
 the usual definition of fool — " is after plant- 
 ing in your honour's consarns ! See here ! 
 If ye left no more o' that in the ground than 
 as much as ye couldn't see itself, it'd have 
 the place ate up in one fortnight ! I gave 
 the morning to it, an' if I give the day itself 
 it's hardly I'll have it all dug — Divil's cure to 
 the — " (Here more variants in connection 
 with the imposter.) 
 
 Something wavering in Bat's eye, even 
 while the denunciation proceeded, made me 
 
HORTICULTURAL 173 
 
 conscious of the smirch of suspicion. I 
 remained silent as the grave. Secretly I 
 visited the other colonies, and found that one 
 of them was already swinging an enveloping 
 wing- round the rearguard of the Iris 
 
 o o 
 
 Kaempferi, and that another had flung out- 
 posts into the heart of the helianthemums. 
 At a bound I ranged myself with the opposi- 
 tion. 
 
 "Bat," I said, " the Dam-roots are in the 
 garden ! M 
 
 That night a fair-sized bundle of winter 
 heliotrope was restored to my generous 
 neighbour. Bat threw it over the wall. 
 
 I am slowly acquiring some insight into 
 my gardener's likes and dislikes. He 
 despises anything that he suspects of being a 
 wild flower. 
 
 " 'Sha ! that's no good ! That's one of the 
 Heth family! The hills is rotten with it." 
 
 But on the other hand, he will lavish such 
 a wealth of attention upon potatoes as would, 
 if bestowed on the despised daughter of 
 Heth, cause it to blossom like the rose. 
 There are, in his opinion, but three flowers 
 really worthy of cultivation. Red geraniums, 
 blue lobelias, and yellow calceolarias. With 
 
174 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 these, had he his will, should all my garden 
 be glorious. I never buy them ; I never see 
 them in their earlier stages, but suddenly, in 
 the herbaceous border, the trio will appear, 
 uttering a note of colour only comparable to 
 the shriek of a macaw, 
 
 " Why then, there isn't a gentleman's 
 garden in Ireland but thim have the sway in 
 it!" Bat says, when he finds me brooding 
 over a shattered ideal. " There was Mr. 
 Massy's was the grand place ! The garden 
 steps big slobs of marble, and the gate 
 lodges dashed and haberdashed, and the 
 gardens fit to blind yer eye by the dint o' 
 thim ! " 
 
 What u haberdashed " may mean I cannot 
 say, but " thim " meant the combination so 
 dear to his heart that a stouter than mine 
 would be needed to abolish it, even from a 
 herbaceous border. 
 
 Sometimes, chiefly on Sunday afternoons, 
 I am visited by compunction in the matter 
 of the prohibited " calcies " and <c lobaylias," 
 for it is on Sundays that Bat is "at home " 
 to three favoured enemies of his own profes- 
 sion. They move, very slowly, and, for the 
 most part, silently, from bed to bed, like 
 
HORTICULTURAL 175 
 
 doctors making a clinical inspection at a 
 hospital ; at intervals they put a horny finger 
 under a patients chin and gravely study his 
 complexion, or, wishing perhaps to show 
 generosity to a rival, they pick off some 
 malign bug or caterpillar, and squash it 
 between an unhesitating finger and thumb. 
 It is at such times that I feel how far my 
 garden in its lack of that gorgeous trio lags 
 behind that of any other gentleman in 
 Ireland. 
 
 But my gardener has his alleviations. 
 There was one bright day which, having 
 begun with the funeral of a relative, culmin- 
 ated in a visit as prolonged as it was satiating 
 from the chief mourner. King Solomon did 
 not exploit his Temple more thoroughly for 
 the discomfiture of the Queen of Sheba than 
 did Bat his gardens for the Chief Mourner. 
 The latter, a " mountainy man from back in 
 the counthry," paced heavily round after Mr. 
 Whoolly, his hands folded on the apex of his 
 back under the voluminous skirts of his blue 
 frieze coat, a stick hanging from them like a 
 tail. The deep silence of his native hills was 
 on him ; he suffered his emotions without ex- 
 pression until the tour of the kitchen garden 
 
176 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 was made, its climax — fortunately stage- 
 managed by Bat — being " a bed of greens." 
 There is that in such a bed that, in such a 
 nature, touches an even more vibrating chord 
 than potatoes. 
 
 " And cabbages ! " said the mountainy man, 
 almost in a whisper. 
 
 The Queen of Sheba herself was not a 
 more gratifying audience. Mr. Whoolley 
 seems to have observed the parallelism of the 
 cases, and assuming that the visitor, in spite 
 of the funeral, had no more spirit left in him, 
 the couple adjourned to a convenient public 
 house and were no more seen. 
 
 On the whole, I think I may say that I 
 give Bat satisfaction. He is generous in 
 judging rather by intention than achievement, 
 and he sees the advantages of fostering a 
 disposition to weed. Only once has he been 
 tried too high, and that was when I planted 
 out a bed with what he calls " pushocl>bui, M 
 a most pestilent weed whose English equiva- 
 lent is, I fancy, charlock. To me he passed 
 over the error in a very handsome manner, 
 but I heard him the same afternoon say to 
 ' the subordinate who was making good my 
 misdoing : 
 
1 AND CABBAGES!" SAID THE MOUNTAINY MAN 
 
HORTICULTURAL 177 
 
 " Is it that one ! Sure he's no more good 
 than a feather ! " 
 
 Another act of folly of mine, however, 
 carried with it more serious consequences. 
 
 I was so far left to myself as to give permission 
 to a Sunday School excursion of unknown 
 dimensions to disport itself in my domains. 
 Dates were discussed, and times arranged, and 
 then a sponge of kindly oblivion wiped the 
 affair from my mind. It was a couple of 
 months afterwards — I was inspecting my wall 
 fruit in the kitchen garden at eleven o'clock 
 in the morning, and being eaten by midges in 
 a way that foretold immediate rain, when 
 there was a sound of thunderous driving on the 
 avenue. Just then the rain began to fall, and 
 almost at the same moment there arrived to 
 me a rushing messenger from the house saying 
 
 II there were ladies in the drawing-room." 
 
 I am a lone man, and there is no one to 
 share with me the brunt of such a moment. 
 I hurried in, and was confronted as I neared 
 the hall door by four huge yellow brakes, full 
 of children, and roofed with umbrellas. Two, 
 already empty, were emulously pressing 
 towards the yard, one taking a short cut 
 across a strip of lawn, and two more were 
 
 M 
 
178 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 disgorging their burdens at large. I went 
 into the drawing-room and found it lined 
 with ladies in black. It was explained to me 
 that on account of the rain the party, which 
 comprised the Patrons, Teachers, and Pupils 
 of four Sunday Schools, had " taken the 
 liberty of coming to the house for shelter." 
 Even as they spoke a strange murmuring 
 sound arose from beneath my feet — the hum 
 as of an angry hive. The house, like many 
 old country houses in Ireland, stands upon a 
 basement storey, and I realised that its 
 cavernous recesses were being utilised as a 
 receptacle for the Amalgamated Sunday 
 Schools. 
 
 I cannot clearly recall the varied events of 
 that day of nightmare. I remember finding, 
 at one juncture, one of my subordinates 
 stemming the rush of the Sunday Schools up 
 the back-stairs with the kitchen table and 
 an old driving whip. At another, my 
 honoured presence was requested in a cave- 
 like place, once a laundry, wherein a shocking 
 meal was being partaken of. I noticed a 
 teacher with a " cut " of cold salmon, wrapped 
 in newspaper. She ate it with her fingers, 
 quaffing raspberry vinegar the while. Kettles, 
 
HORTICULTURAL 179 
 
 capacious as the boiler of a man-of-war, 
 steamed on the ancient fireplace ; the air 
 reeked of damp children and buns. Later 
 on it cleared, and I led a company of female 
 patrons forth to see the garden. Already the 
 sward of the tennis ground looked like 
 Epsom Downs on the day after the Derby, 
 and an animated game of Hide-and-Seek 
 was in progress among my young rhododen- 
 drons. I averted my eyes. In the flower 
 garden the usual amusement of leaping the 
 beds had taken place, with the usual results 
 of chasm-like footprints in the centre of each. 
 The first endurable incident of the day was 
 the discovery that Bat had locked the kitchen 
 garden gate, and that my strollings with the 
 patronesses were perforce ended. But even 
 as I was expressing my regrets (coupled, 
 mentally, with a resolve to raise Mr. Whoolly's 
 wages) there arose from within the walls 
 cries of the most poignant, accompanied by 
 roars comparable only to those of a wounded 
 tiger. On the top of the wall, just above us 
 there shot into view the face of a boy, a face 
 scarlet with exertion, vociferous in lamenta- 
 tion. Quickly following it there appeared 
 down the length of the wall other faces, 
 
i8o SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 equally agitated, while from within came a 
 sound as of the heavy beating of carpets. 
 Other sounds came also. Sounds of indigna- 
 tion too explicit to be printable. I blushed 
 for the patronesses. None the less I endorsed 
 every word of it as I realised that my best 
 peach trees were being used as ladders by 
 the Amalgamated Sunday Schools. 
 
 I think that was about the last act in the 
 tragedy. Not long afterwards, in a yellow 
 glow of late, repentant sunlight, the four 
 brakes drove — with further cuttings of grassy 
 corners — up to the hall door. The Sunday 
 Schools were condensed into them, each 
 child receiving an orange as it took its seat, 
 and thin cheers arose in my honour. Simul- 
 taneously the brakes snowed forth orange 
 peel upon the gravel ; the procession swept 
 out of sight, still cheering, still snowing 
 orange peel. 
 
 For reasons darkly and inextricably mixed 
 up with the Sunday School excursion, dinner 
 that night was served at nine o'clock, and as I 
 was aware that every servant in the house was 
 in a separate and towering passion, I refrained 
 from inquiry. 
 
 Yet, even through the indigestion following 
 
HORTICULTURAL i3i 
 
 on this belated repast, I was upheld by the 
 remembrance of Bats face, as he glared at 
 me through the bars of the kitchen garden 
 gate, and said : 
 
 " Thanks be to God, I'm after breaking 
 six pay-sticks on their backs ! " 
 
OUT OF HAND 
 
OUT OF HAND 
 
 Soldiers were there to keep the peace. The 
 redcoats and the bayonets moved in a rigid 
 line through the crowd that blocked the two 
 streets of the town. They guarded a small 
 body of voters that had come across Lough 
 Corrib, and was making its way to the 
 polling-booths, headed by a Galway landlord, 
 on whose arm leaned an old man, decrepit, 
 and unnerved by the storm of opposition 
 through which they passed. 
 
 Another Galway landlord was ranging 
 through groups of men who turned their 
 backs on him, and hid behind each other, 
 his tenants, personal friends all of them, who, 
 for the first time on record, had voted in 
 opposition to his wishes. 
 
 " Every one of them ! " he said, while the 
 atmosphere that surrounds suffering and 
 
186 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 strong emotion made itself felt, "all but two 
 or three. They have all gone against 
 me. i 
 
 It was a memorable election, marking the 
 new departure in Irish politics, and it broke 
 the hearts and practically ended the lives of 
 two at least of the Galway landlords. Till 
 that time the landlords took their tenants to 
 the poll en masse ; thenceforward they were 
 to advance under the banner of the Church. 
 
 The epoch that here found its close was 
 memorable, too, in its way. It held, far back 
 in it, the brave days when the Galway 
 elections lasted for a month, and the actual 
 voting for a week, days to which the pages 
 of Lever bear witness. As that week of 
 delightful warfare strove on the electors 
 became more fastidious about their drinks, 
 and would accept nothing less aristocratic 
 than mulled port and claret. These restora- 
 tives were brewed in fish-kettles on the big 
 fireplaces of the ballroom in Kilroys hotel, 
 an agreeable incident, not, we think, com- 
 memorated by Lever. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 Twenty years afterwards a Galway village 
 lay mute in the sunshine, drowsy with 
 
OUT OF HAND 187 
 
 respectability, assertive of rectitude in every 
 slant of its slate roofs. To view it thus from 
 the waste altitudes of the moor above it, on a 
 Sunday morning of July, with the call of a 
 cock straining up through the silence, was to 
 endue it with all the stillness and strictness 
 of the day itself, even to credit it with a 
 Presbyterian rigour of Sabbaticism that was 
 at variance with the traditions of the County 
 Galway. Down on its own level, and 
 approaching it through the aisle of shade 
 that lay between broken demesne walls and 
 under the lofty embrace of demesne trees, 
 the glare of its whitewash closed the vista 
 blatantly, and with a self-righteousness that 
 suppressed the romantic as a thing of 
 libertine irrelevance. Therefore, to an eye 
 accustomed, during many Sundays, to the 
 recognition of the barren street, with its 
 strings of ducks in moody reverie about the 
 unremunerative gutters, and its dogs asleep 
 outside the closed doors, it was startling 
 beyond the merit of the occasion to be con- 
 fronted with a staring crowd of people that 
 filled the street loosely from end to end. 
 Every face was turned towards the new- 
 comer, till the whole slope of the hill was 
 
188 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 flushed with them ; then it darkened, as the 
 people realised that nothing worthy of further 
 notice was occurring, and turned their heads 
 again towards Galway. 
 
 The crowd was a representative one. 
 Wizened old men in swallow-tailed coats and 
 knee-breeches, degenerate youth in check 
 suits and pot-hats, tanned women in deep- 
 hooded cloaks, girls with shawls over their 
 heads, freckled and ubiquitous children — all 
 smelling heavily of turf smoke, some 
 modernised with the master smell of hair-oil. 
 The anti-Parnellite candidate was expected 
 to arrive at any moment from Galway, to 
 address those who had come to the village 
 for Mass ; and though the people had now 
 been out of chapel for an hour there seemed 
 to be no wish to disperse, or any sign of 
 impatience. They even appeared to be 
 enjoying themselves as thoroughly as was 
 compatible with the fact that the public- 
 houses had not yet been opened. Anything 
 so fascinating as a little political excitement 
 was worth waiting for, especially while 
 Providence was liberal of fresh arrivals on 
 outside cars, and invention failed not of the 
 personal allusion wherewith to greet them ; 
 
OUT OF HAND 189 
 
 so that time passed healthfully, and expecta- 
 tion was no more than pleasantly ripe when 
 outposts on the hill heralded at length the 
 approach of the candidate, 
 
 A blended roar of execration and en- 
 couragement went out to meet him — a 
 greeting sustained on every note of the 
 human compass in a savagely inarticulate 
 mass of discord. He seemed to cleave his 
 way through it as he passed, his figure 
 moving pompously along on its car above the 
 shoulders of the people, in black coat and 
 white waistcoat, while a deft hand manipu- 
 lated a tall hat in recognition of every crumb 
 of welcome. He passed on down a by-road 
 towards the chapel, followed by a few dozen 
 people, and by the booing and hooting of the 
 rest of the assemblage. Clearly the materials 
 for the meeting were elsewhere. 
 
 It was not far to the chapel, four hundred 
 yards or thereabouts of dusty road, that lay 
 hot and quiet between loose stone walls, 
 dropping to a hollow and rising again to the 
 low height where stood the unmistakable 
 building that is the heart and fountain of 
 parish politics, its plaster and whitewash 
 veiled a little by the kindly churchyard trees, 
 
i go SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 and the stone cross on its gable standing 
 strong and keen under the melting sky. 
 
 On nearing the churchyard the candidate's 
 voice was audible through the trees in fluent, 
 opening sentences, each point duly weighted 
 with a " Hee'rr, hee'rr ! " as businesslike as 
 the " Amen" of the parish clerk. His car 
 was waiting outside in the shade, and the 
 carman, who was perhaps a little blast in the 
 matter of speeches, was smoking an un- 
 emotional pipe beside it. 
 
 " Indeed, you may say the town of Galway 
 is in a quare way," he said, putting his hand 
 to a cheek that was just perceptibly more 
 purple than the other. " Look at meself, the 
 figure I am, that wasn't spakin' a word to a 
 Chris thian, good nor bad, and lasht night a 
 fishwoman comes down to me in the sthreet 
 this ways M — squaring his elbows and strutting 
 — " 1 Hi for Lynch ! ' says she, hittin' me a 
 puck in the jaw with her skib (basket). The 
 Lord save us ! 'tis hardly I ran from her before 
 she had the town gethered afther her. Begob, 
 the women's the most that'd frighten ye ! " 
 
 At the churchyard gate a couple of long- 
 tailed colts were tied up, saddle-horses evi- 
 dently, but bare-backed, and bridled with a 
 
OUT OF HAND 19 1 
 
 halter, their bodies bloated with summer 
 grass out of all proportion to their long legs, 
 and their countrified ears pricking occasionally 
 at the cheers that did not by the blink of an 
 eyelid affect the doze of the Galway car-horse. 
 The company inside was a small one as com- 
 pared with that in the street, and had in it a 
 much larger proportion of women and old 
 men, to which was perhaps due the superior 
 calm of the proceedings. The churchyard 
 was a spacious one, depressingly roomy indeed 
 for the present occasion, for which any 
 suburban back garden would have sufficed. 
 Most of the audience had mounted on the 
 tombstones, great slabs of limestone that 
 formed the lids of the boxes placed over the 
 more distinguished dead, blackish grey, and 
 ringing under the hobnailed-boots like metal. 
 The candidate stood on the highest tomb- 
 stone, and all around him leaned and clung 
 these strange groups of men and women, 
 looking like the wooded islands in the lake 
 close by ; while between them the quiet back- 
 ground of the graveyard was visible, with its 
 bent and musing trees, and array of low 
 head-stones gazing blindly at the concourse. 
 The bald top of the candidates head 
 
1 92 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 formed the focus-point of the gathering, 
 giving back the sun's glare like glass as it 
 swung and jerked with the flow of oratory, 
 and beside it the immense shovel-hat of the 
 old priest moved occasionally in accord, 
 italicising for the benefit of the flock such 
 phrases as seemed especially edifying. The 
 curate was nowhere to be seen ; rumour said 
 that his poetical theories were not formed on 
 those of his superior. A remembrance 
 recurred of meeting, that morning, a severely 
 contemplative young priest, walking alone 
 and away from the village, with the green 
 flicker of the leaves overhead playing 
 strangely across the gloom of his sallow 
 face. 
 
 The candidates speech seemed, indeed, to 
 require a little driving home. It was, for the 
 most part, an explanation to his constituents 
 of the reasons that made it necessary for him 
 to forego the happiness of acquainting him- 
 self with them in any intimate degree. He 
 was, he said, in his temperately florid manner, 
 closely connected with a large firm in England 
 and, deplorable to relate, his income depended 
 on his living in the bosom of the English 
 firm. u Sure we know that — we know that !" 
 
THE CANDIDATE 
 
OUT OF HAND 193 
 
 yelled the half-dozen most chosen supporters, 
 crushing precariously round the candidate on 
 the edge of the tombstone platform, with 
 their wild, combative faces pressing, all on 
 fire, towards him. Perhaps he might yet be 
 roused to say the right things about the rival 
 candidate, the things that would wring forth 
 a cheer in reply to those distant ones that 
 came maddeningly at intervals from the 
 crowd in the street. 
 
 But the speaker kept his eloquence well in 
 hand, confining himself to such blind alleys 
 of assertion as the remarkable success of his 
 own career, his confidence that his con- 
 stituents would re-elect him, and his desire 
 to benefit them in some immeasurable way if 
 they did so. A permissive cynicism curved 
 the wrinkles on the faces of the old men who 
 stood on the grassy graves behind him, with 
 their hands under their coat-tails, and their 
 grizzled chins sunk in their shirt-collars ; they 
 knew how they were going to vote, and their 
 own powers (matured in the sale of many a 
 heifer and rood of bog) of taking a part and 
 sustaining it, with a perfectness that would 
 deceive the elect, made them sceptical as to 
 the ends of speech-making. The women 
 
i 9 4 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 were tittering and whispering under their 
 shawls ; but were certainly impressed by the 
 candidate's Sunday attire, his well-kept grey 
 moustache, and his affable way of saying 
 " ladies and gentlemen " every now and 
 then. 
 
 The speech ambled to its close, through a 
 peroration of an uncertain conversational 
 tone, assisted at critical points by one or 
 other of the supporters, who would un- 
 governably supply the needed word out of 
 the bursting fulness of his own repertoire. 
 It was the sole outlet fry their enthusiasm, 
 except for the cheer that caught at the 
 ravelled edge of the final sentence, as the 
 candidate put on his hat and bowed himself 
 from the tombstone. 
 
 " Be pray in for the meeting gerrls," said 
 the old priest, leading the way to the vestry, 
 with rusty skirts floating widely. The door 
 closed on him and his protege, the clumps on 
 the tombstones fell apart, mingling in a 
 laughing and talking stream towards the 
 churchyard gate, and the prayers of the 
 young ladies were apparently deferred to a 
 more convenient season. 
 
 The chapel door stood open, showing the 
 
'A MAN MUST WOTE THE WAY HIS PRIEST AND 
 BISHOPLL TELL HIM" 
 
OUT OF HAND 195 
 
 barren squareness of the interior ; a zinc tub, 
 half-full of Holy-water, stood in the porch, 
 with the flags all round it wet from the splash 
 of dipping hands ; the altar gleamed gaudily at 
 the further end ; and a tall confession-box 
 stood solitary in the seatless expanse of floor, 
 fraught with the inseparable mystery and 
 suggestiveness of its kind, and holding 
 within its curtained rails the knowledge of 
 what things are counted for unrighteousness 
 in that twilight place, the conscience of the 
 Western peasant. The air inside was warm, 
 and still laden with the smell of frieze coats 
 and stale turf smoke ; but, except for this 
 furnishing, the blankness was complete. 
 Sunday and its Mass were over and done 
 with for a week, and priest and congregation 
 were striving factors in the carnal toils of 
 election. 
 
 The people dispersed slowly, discussing 
 the absorbing topic of the day, some in their 
 native tongue, but for the most part in 
 English, so pronounced as to be in the 
 distance scarcely distinguishable from the 
 liquid and guttural flow of Gal way Irish. 
 
 1 1 Sure, a man must wote the way his 
 priest and bishop'll tell him/' says a tall 
 
196 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 supporter, with the air of a person repeating 
 a truism. 
 
 11 Well, meself 'd say," says another, whose 
 handsome eyes shone in the shadow of his 
 soft felt hat, while his hands helped out his 
 words with picturesque gesture, " the man I'd 
 have a wish for to wote for him, is the man 
 that cl rise out o' his bed in the night and give 
 hay and oats to yer horse, and yerself fotever 
 ye'd ax, when any one else'd leshen (listen) in 
 their bed if ye were battherin* there till 
 mornin\" 
 
 This argument referred to the well-known 
 good nature of the Parnellite candidate, a 
 general dealer and publican in a neighbouring 
 village. 
 
 " Well, indeed, he's no scholar, I suppose/ 1 
 says a young fellow, still in reference to the 
 Parnellite. " He has no learnin' nor way of 
 spakin' no more than meself, but becripes ! 
 he's a fine sthrong man, and he'll be well able 
 to fight and box in Parliament." 
 
 This was said in entire good faith, and was 
 listened to with respect. 
 
 4 'Come on back the road!" bawls a 
 supporter, beckoning authoritatively from the 
 distance, "let yees come on now, the whole 
 
OUT OF HAND 197 
 
 o' yee, the way we'd be before the car and it 
 going up ! M 
 
 The reason for this manoeuvre was pre- 
 sently apparent, on returning to the village 
 street. As the candidates car left the 
 chapel the Parnellite crowd thronged the 
 corner by which it must pass ; a battery of 
 threatening faces, waiting with unknown 
 purpose ; a gauntlet to run or to run away 
 from. The car came slowly up the hill, pre- 
 ceded by a party of supporteis ; the candidate 
 on one side, looking anxious the old priest 
 on the other, bare-headed, and looking still 
 more anxious, but waving his hand as if in 
 greeting, while the interwoven yells became 
 a thrilling mass of sound. 
 
 It was well for the candidate that his 
 companion was one of the oldest and most 
 popular of the Galway priests. That pres- 
 tige had shielded the churchyard meeting 
 from disturbance, and but for its influence 
 now the future M.P. might have returned to 
 England with an appearance not advan- 
 tageous to the firm of which he was a 
 member. A forest of clenched fists and 
 sticks seemed to leap up towards him, the 
 scream of hatred never took breath, and 
 
1 98 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 there was entreaty in the face of the priest 
 as his wrinkled hands waved repressively 
 above the tumult. There was a long 
 moment of uncertainty, but in the next the 
 car was through in safety, and was gone in 
 the twinkling of an eye, the supporters 
 running in its wake till the last waving 
 gleam of the candidates silk hat had been 
 garnered. 
 
 It was then that things began to look, to 
 an Irish eye, most promising and attractive. 
 The supporters turned, formed into a solid 
 body of perhaps forty men and boys, and 
 marched with inimitable swagger straight 
 back into the crowd, all together, in a kind 
 
 of chant, shouting, " To hell with ! " (the 
 
 rival candidate) at the utmost strength of 
 their lungs. The theme was a simple one, 
 but magnificently vocalised, and was in- 
 stantly replied to in the tu quoque manner 
 by the opposite party. Sticks went up, the 
 women rushed outwards for safety, looking, 
 with their floating shawls, like a flock of 
 frightened turkeys ; and at this point the 
 four constabulary men who represented that 
 force made themselves felt. The dangerous 
 moment yielded easily and unresentfully to 
 
OUT OF HAND 199 
 
 these judicious hands, and the excitement 
 sputtered out in a little bragging and 
 hustling, without so much as a black eye 
 to commemorate it. In half an hour the 
 ducks were again waddling in line along 
 the empty street, and a muffled hum pro- 
 ceeding from the shuttered public houses, 
 told that the bond fide travellers had at 
 length reached their journey's end. It was a 
 lamentable falling off from the days of the 
 fish kettles and the mulled port of Kilroy's 
 Hotel. 
 
 The episode had expired in the way that 
 might have been expected, and was at best 
 an indeterminate, shapeless thing, full of 
 unripe revolt that it was too childish to 
 express. But that moment when the little 
 flame first flickers in the gorse, feeling its 
 naked way among the thorns and affluent 
 blossom, has a wonder of birth in it that is 
 forgotten when the blazing hillside jars the 
 noonday, and the smoke rolls monotonously 
 from strongholds of conflagration. 
 
A RECORD OF HOLIDAY 
 
A RECORD OF HOLIDAY 
 
 Of summer holidays it may at least be con- 
 tended that they involve two periods of 
 undiluted enjoyment ; the time of anticipa- 
 tion, and the calm — if sometimes chastened — 
 season of retrospect. 
 
 I am glad, now that the mice are nesting in 
 my trunks, and the spiders weaving fresh 
 straps round my hold-all, that I have been to 
 Switzerland, that the greasy Visitors' books 
 of several West of Ireland hotels hold my 
 name. Also, I remember how very cheerful 
 it was to study a scarlet-hued Bradshaw, and 
 to reflect that, with certain financial restric- 
 tions, the Continent of Europe lay smiling 
 before me. (I remember also, that I lent 
 that entertaining work to an American friend, 
 and found the utmost difficulty in recovering 
 it from him. It was only restored, indeed, 
 
I 
 
 204 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 on the morning of my departure, and my 
 friend mentioned that he had sat up all night 
 reading it, " Just to see how it ended/' he 
 said.) 
 
 Between, however, these seasons of satis- 
 faction, there stretches the actual time of 
 holiday, and as I reflect upon it, I am struck 
 by the fact that its more salient features are 
 misfortunes. From a literary point of view 
 this has its advantages ; the happy traveller 
 has no history. If the converse is true it 
 would need Gibbon or Macaulay to deal 
 with our transit from the County Cork to 
 that Alpine fastness for which we had 
 trustingly, fearlessly labelled our luggage. 
 
 It began with fog in the Channel — the 
 Irish Channel — solid, tangible fog, through 
 which our bewildered steamer stumbled, 
 uttering large, desolate cries of distress, 
 stopping every now and then to bellow like 
 a lost cow, sometimes, even, going astern, 
 while muffled hootings told of another 
 wanderer who had drawn nearer than was 
 convenient. 
 
 " When I heard 'em giving the signal to' go 
 astern, "said a sailor officer of high degree, next 
 morning, as he gobbled a belated mouthful 
 
A RECORD OF HOLIDAY 205 
 
 of breakfast, " I thought it was about time to 
 get up and put on my clothes. Said nothing 
 about it to m' wife, though ! " 
 
 I wonder if he has realised yet why every- 
 one smiled. 
 
 In London, rain ; in Paris, blinding heat. 
 Dizzily we staggered round the elder Salon, 
 and through its innumerable small square 
 rooms, with their lining of flagrant canvases ; 
 it was like exploring the brain-cells of a fever 
 patient in delirium. One healing instant was 
 ours, when at the public baths in the Boule- 
 vard Mont Parnasse, the waters of a "Bain 
 Complet " closed over the exhausted person ; 
 but that, even, was speedily poisoned by the 
 discovery that towels and soap, being extras, 
 were not left in the Cabinet de Bain, and 
 the bather, having with dripping hands 
 explored the pocket for the needed coins, had 
 then to tender them to the attendant through 
 a difficult slit of doorway, receiving in 
 exchange a small fragment of slightly scented 
 marble and a gauze veil. 
 
 After that, the night journey to Geneva. 
 Heat, sardine-like proximity of fellow 
 travellers, two dauntless English ladies, who 
 turned the long night into one unending and 
 
206 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 clanking tea-party ; a nightmare interlude of 
 douaniers, then, when a troubled sleep had at 
 length been bestowed, Geneva ; and all the 
 horrors that attend the finish of a long train 
 journey. 
 
 At breakfast, at our hotel, a survey of 
 what we had hitherto endured in the pursuit 
 of pleasure stung us to a brief revolt. This 
 was a holiday, we told ourselves, why hurry ? 
 Fortified by a principle, theoretically un- 
 assailable, we strolled about Geneva. It 
 was cold and very wet ; still, in our newly 
 realised leisure, we made a point of strolling. 
 On our return to our hotel most of the staff 
 were on the pavement, seemingly very much 
 excited. A voiture, laden with our luggage, 
 stood at the door. It appeared that our 
 steamer left for Villeneuve in eight minutes. 
 I imagine that the hotel staff s agitation arose 
 from the fear that we should not have time 
 to tip them all. This was, alas, unfounded. 
 
 The driver took us first to the wrong 
 steamer. He then turned his machine too 
 short, and locked the fore carriage. Then he 
 shambled across the long bridge to the other 
 steamboat qurii, while we sat forward, like 
 the coxswains of racing eights, in sweating 
 
A RECORD OF HOLIDAY 207 
 
 agony, watching our boat getting up steam 
 and preparing for instant departure. 
 
 We caught the boat by springing, like 
 Spurius Lartius and Herminius, across the 
 widening chasm between her deck and the 
 shore, and therewith fell into a species of 
 syncope. Mists shrouded the mountains ; a 
 chilled rain swept the lake. For our parts, 
 slowly recovering, we kept the cabin, and 
 swept the tea-table. It was almost our first 
 moment of enjoyment. 
 
 The Alpine fastness, already alluded to, 
 was not gained for a further couple of days, 
 during which an awakening distaste for 
 Switzerland slowly grew in us, though it did 
 not thoroughly mature till mellowed by a 
 mule ride up a mountain. Reticence in 
 narration is a quality that I endeavour to 
 cultivate. It becomes a necessity in treating 
 of the village and its surrounding slums from 
 and through which our start was made. 
 Having, in a state nearing starvation, been 
 offered the sole refreshment available, namely, 
 concentrated essence of typhoid in the guise 
 of glasses of milk, and having retained 
 sufficient self-control to refuse them, we 
 started on mule-back for the mountain. 
 
2o8 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 Traversing, as I have every reason to believe, 
 the open main drain of the village, our 
 animals proceeded to totter up a narrow and 
 precipitous watercourse. 
 
 "La vote la phis directed explained the 
 mule-driver, lashing his ancient cattle in a 
 general way, and without animosity. 
 
 The cloud that accompanied our wander- 
 ings, as in the case of the Israelites, did not 
 fail of its usual office. Even through the 
 crown of a Panama straw hat the rain 
 attained to my skin. Thence it descended, 
 enveloping me, as it were an inner garment. 
 Twice my mule fell down. I could not 
 reproach it. Indeed, nothing but the fact 
 that one of its parents had been an ass 
 explained its readiness to pick itself up and 
 go on again. It had, however, an incentive, 
 supplied in the rear by its proprietor ; we had 
 naught save the fetish of Holiday to goad us 
 onward, and its potency was beginning to 
 weaken. 
 
 One week of the mountain hotel was as 
 much as we were able to endure. The usual 
 " exceptional " weather prevailed. How 
 familiar is the formula ; and how entirely un- 
 worthy of credence ! 
 
A RECORD OF HOLIDAY 209 
 
 M For seventeen years M — the Landlord 
 calls heaven to witness — "it has never been 
 so wet, or so cold, or so stormy at this time. 
 If Monsieur or Madame, had come but three 
 weeks ago — or would wait but three days 
 longer " 
 
 There was a time when the glamour of 
 holiday might have induced belief, might even 
 have beguiled a further endurance of the age- 
 long table-dhote repasts, of the aggressive 
 muscularity of the English schoolmaster, who, 
 during the progress of the minu from the 
 watery soup to the acrid Alpine strawberry, 
 faced us, boasting at large and in detail ; of the 
 German bride, who practised the piano for four 
 hours daily (her head upon her bridegroom's 
 shoulder, his faithful arm round her waist). 
 These things, though unattractive in them- 
 selves, might once have been submitted to as 
 elements of the theoretical holiday (in 
 Switzerland), as mere inevitable crumples in 
 the rose-leaf. 
 
 But, on this occasion — it is possibly one of 
 the compensations of advancing years — we 
 found ourselves endowed with a juster sense 
 of proportion. The close of the eighth day 
 saw us heading for home with a speed that 
 
210 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 almost amounted to rout. The mule-driver's 
 maxim, " la vote la plus directe" seemed good 
 common sense ; we drew neither breath nor 
 bridle, Geneva, Paris, London were but 
 names in the night, till we found ourselves 
 facing America from the front doorstep of 
 a certain remote hostelry in the far west of 
 Connaught. 
 
 Then, and not till then, did something of 
 the largeness, the leisure, the absurdity, the 
 unconventionality, that should enter into all 
 true holiday, begin for us. 
 
 I have said hostelry, and undoubtedly the 
 words " Seaview Hotel,** in letters large and 
 green, were inscribed upon its pink-washed 
 walls, but without this clue I do not think 
 the closest observer would be able to detect 
 its walk in life. It had but one storey ; a 
 dark and narrow passage led from the 
 entrance to the kitchen, and therein, at (as 
 subsequent experience showed us) any time 
 of the day or night, the entire establishment 
 might be found, massed, talking as though 
 they had not met for years, and were to 
 separate in an hour. 
 
 Thus we, led by our carman, an habitu'e of 
 the house, found them, and thus, with but 
 
A RECORD OF HOLIDAY 211 
 
 brief intervals, they continued during the 
 period we spent among them. 
 
 " What is it, Mike ? ■ this to the car-driver 
 from a very stout lady, whom we rightly 
 assumed to be the proprietress. " Oh — the 
 sitting-room," she exhibited a natural annoy- 
 ance, having been interrupted in a pronounce- 
 ment on, I gathered, the feeding of pigs. 
 " Here ! Mary Kate, show the sitting-room ! " 
 She re-addressed herself to her subject. 
 
 Mary Kate, a charming slattern with a 
 profusion of fair hair, " showed " the sitting- 
 room. It was small, but not unclean, and, in 
 addition to the normal outfit of table and 
 chairs, was remarkably equipped with a large 
 double perambulator, whose use as a side- 
 board was sufficiently indicated by the fact 
 that a cruet stand and a loaf of bread occupied 
 one seat, while a piece of cold beef reclined 
 on the other. The bedrooms, if I may quote 
 a French guide-book's remarks upon the 
 retreat of a hermit, " excited I know not 
 what emotions of religious terror ; " emotions 
 that were not allayed by the suspicion, that 
 deepened to certainly, that, in the absence of 
 visitors, they were occupied by the staff. 
 
 " Hot wather ? O cerrtdXvAy ! " said Mary 
 
2i2 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 Kate, kindly* "Beg your pardon — " she 
 crushed past me to the chimney-piece, and 
 proceeded to grope behind photograph frames 
 and a crowded multitude of glass and china, 
 objets dart. " I left me hat pins — " here she 
 giggled confidentially, while, so intimate was 
 the arrangement of the objets d artythat several 
 of them fell off at the farther end of the chim- 
 ney piece. " Ah ! what matther ! Sure they're 
 all a little broke ! " said Mary Kate, wedging 
 them into their places again, and thrusting the 
 recovered hat pins into her redundant locks. 
 " Ye'll be wanting somethin' to eat now, I dare- 
 say," she went on, " I'll send grannema in 
 to ye." 
 
 A brief interval ensued, during which we 
 furtively examined the bedclothes, and 
 indulged in disturbed conjecture as to the 
 substance that stuffed the pillows. Their smell, 
 though curious, offered no basis for theory. 
 
 There came a creeping sound without, and 
 low down, a panel of the door was dealt a 
 single blow. 
 
 I said "Come in!" not without a slight 
 recurrence of religious terror. 
 
 A very little and ancient woman stood 
 there, with the trade marks of soot and 
 
A RECORD OF HOLIDAY 213 
 
 grease thick upon her. When she curtseyed 
 she seemed to merge in the door mat, so 
 small was she and so dingy. 
 
 There was reassurance in the discovery 
 that she seemed as much in awe of us as we 
 of her. 
 
 "How would I know what the likes o' ye 
 would fancy ? M she said, almost with despair, 
 and went on to hope that our visit might 
 prove an education into the ways of the 
 aristocracy of which she had long stood in 
 need, but she coupled the admission with a 
 w r arning that she 11 was very owld and very 
 dull" ' 
 
 It was a high responsibility, this position 
 of exponents of an unknown type, and it is 
 much to be regretted that we were forced to 
 leave our venerable disciple under the 
 impression that the upper classes usually 
 cook their own food at hotels. It should 
 here be said that this expedition had not 
 been entered upon without a certain fore- 
 knowledge of what it was likely to involve, 
 and amongst other precautions were pro- 
 visions of a portable sort. These included 
 sausages, and the sausages we confided to our 
 old lady. 
 
2i4 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 We sat in the parlour enjoying the appetite 
 for dinner that is one of the bright features 
 of a genuine holiday. After a delay of about 
 half an hour, Mary Kate's head was thrust 
 through a narrow opening of the door. 
 
 " Grannema says will the little puddings 
 be split?" 
 
 Had the answer been Yes, and that it was 
 usual to serve them with cream and sugar, I 
 feel sure that grandmamma would have com- 
 plied. As it was, after instructions to Mary 
 Kate, of a lucidity unrivalled by Mrs. Beeton, 
 the sausages appeared, pale, tepid, raw, in a 
 pie-dish, just a-wash with luke-warm water. 
 
 The holiday appetite quailed at the sight, 
 and the chef was summoned from the con- 
 versazione still raging in the kitchen. A 
 single glance at the guests told her of failure, 
 and, with a masterly grasp of the position, 
 she hurried back to the kitchen and returned 
 with the frying-pan. 
 
 " Keep it now yersels," she said. " Didn't 
 I say to ye I was too owld ?" 
 
 From that time the parlour grate led a 
 sullied life, but — which may have consoled 
 it— a thoroughly useful one. We re-cooked 
 the sausages upon it ; the perambulator 
 
A RECORD OF HOLIDAY 215 
 
 yielded its increase, toast, grilled beef, 
 sausages, who could reasonably ask for 
 more ? 
 
 We spent two days and two nights there ; 
 days of perfect weather, spent in exploring 
 a coast as wild and beautiful as the heart of 
 holiday maker could desire, nights strangely, 
 almost desolately devoid of the entomological 
 excursions and pursuits usual to village inns, 
 and, in spite of the peculiarities of the 
 pillows, sleep was not difficult Or rather, 
 in candour it should be said, was difficult 
 only after the rising of the sun, For with 
 the dawn, a vagrant population was astir in 
 the village ; a street Arab community of 
 hens, dogs, geese and donkeys, incessant and 
 clarion-toned in their addresses to morn and 
 to each other ; creatures who slept under 
 carts and in stray corners ; who treated life 
 as a lounge, and regarded their owners as 
 suzerains merely, to whom occasional allegi- 
 ance was to be rendered, or a tributary egg 
 or two laid in an inaccessible place. 
 
 On the whole, the donkeys are those of 
 whom I can speak least temperately. They 
 had, for want, possibly, of other employment, 
 adopted the position of town-criers to the 
 
216 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 village, or perhaps were its prophets, perhaps 
 its Cassandras, and they uplifted their testi- 
 mony from sunrise till nightfall with a 
 poignancy that rent the very skies. Standing 
 one evening on one of the low hills that 
 hemmed the village into its corner by the 
 sea, I counted easily, and with half a glance, 
 four of these enthusiasts, planted each on a 
 commanding rock or mound, and sending 
 his wild voice abroad over the valley. It 
 was a sunny evening, after a day of sad and 
 opalescent beauty, and the sea had brightened 
 into blue and silver ; the white-washed gables 
 and a far white lighthouse were radiant with 
 recovered cheerfulness, but the jackasses 
 were as despairful and implacable as Jeremiah. 
 
 There was but one disaster during our 
 brief sojourn at the Sea View Hotel. A few 
 sausages and a tin of sardines remained, 
 " spared," as Mary Kate said, from the first 
 repast. These she proposed to store, for 
 safety and coolness, in one of our bedrooms. 
 The idea not being well received, she finally 
 deposited them in the Post Office, which was 
 attached to the hotel. But even this hiding 
 place was not improbable enough to hood- 
 wink that skilled tactician, the hotel cat, and 
 
A RECORD OF HOLIDAY 217 
 
 he, in some dark hour of the night, found and 
 feasted on them with, no doubt, all the 
 ravishing joy of a new experience. 
 
 We could not but sympathise with him. 
 Thanks to the Sea View Hotel that subtle 
 joy was also ours. 
 
 I began by saying that of the Summer 
 holidays the times of anticipation and of 
 retrospect were the times of truest pleasure. 
 Yet I can remember long September days 
 beside a sea of Mediterranean blue, the sea of 
 Southern Ireland, when the perfect present 
 asked nothing of either past or future. The 
 long creek wound, blue-green as a peacocks 
 breast, between deep woods. High places 
 of rock and heather were there, where you 
 could lie, " ringed with the azure world," and 
 see the huge liners, yes, and hear them too, 
 as they went throbbing and trampling along 
 the sun's path westward. 
 
 Those who know this place of holiday are 
 comparatively few, but there is at least one 
 distinguished name of the company — Dean 
 Swift, no less. A couple of hundred years 
 or so ago, he spent a summer in West 
 Carbery, (an ivy-covered ruin, known as 
 Swift's Tower, testifies to the fact,) and he 
 
218 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 forthwith made a poem about it, a Latin 
 poem, addressed to the Rocks of Carbery. 
 
 One gathers that it was of the nature of an 
 encomium, though the points selected for 
 description are not those that would tempt 
 the effete holiday maker of to-day. Possibly 
 it was the Deans majestic eighteenth-century 
 manner of thanking his host for "a very 
 pleasant visit. " I came upon it in the house 
 of a descendant of that host, reverently 
 quoted in a copy of Dr. Smith's history of the 
 County Cork, dated 1749. Thanks to the 
 sympathetic scholarship of a contemporary 
 divine, the Revd. Dr. Donkin, who made a 
 translation of it, I am able to give some 
 quotations from it. Dr. Smith thinks that 
 "the Deans descriptions are as just as his 
 numbers are beautiful." It is not for me to 
 disagree with him. Let them — or some of 
 them — dignify these unworthy pages. 
 
 " Lo ! From the top of yonder cliff, that shrouds 
 Its airy head amidst the azure clouds, 
 Hangs the huge fragment, destitute of props, 
 Prone on the waves the rocky ruin drops. 
 • • • ♦ • 
 
 Oft too with hideous yawn, the cavern wide 
 Presents an orifice on either side ; 
 
A RECORD OF HOLIDAY 219 
 
 A dismal orifice, from sea to sea 
 Extended, pervious to the god of day, 
 
 • • • • c 
 
 High on the cliff their nests wild pigeons make, 
 And sea calves stable in the oozey lake . . . 
 When o'er the craggy steep without controul, 
 Big with the blast, the raging billows roll, . . . 
 The neighbouring race, tho' wont to brave the shocks 
 Of angry seas and run along the rocks, 
 Now pale with terror, while the ocean foams, 
 Fly far and wide, nor trust their native homes. 
 The goats, while pendant from the mountain top, 
 The wither'd herb improvident they crop, 
 Wash'd down the precipice with sudden sweep, 
 Leave their sweet lives beneath th' unfathomed deep." 
 
 I am sorry to say that in these degenerate 
 times the improvident goat has lost his 
 ancient skill and is no longer pendant, and 
 the oozey lake and stabling sea calf (the 
 latter possibly a lingering survivor of the 
 Deluge) may no more be found. None the 
 less, I can confidently commend the scenes 
 of these catastrophes to the holiday maker 
 of to-day. 
 
 Even now, when the sunshine of last 
 September has faded to a memory, and that of 
 next September is too far away to be even a 
 hope, I can still feel the soft lift of the 
 western wind, still hear the booming of the 
 waves in the deep and riven heart of the cliff. 
 
LOST, STOLEN, OR STRAYED 
 
LOST, STOLEN, OR STRAYED 
 
 " I couldn't find your apron, Ma'am," said 
 the 11 Why not," imported a month before, 
 with bare feet and a forelock like a Shetland 
 pony. She belonged to the drift-weed of the 
 household, and would, perhaps, now be 
 ranked as a " tweeny M ; her class derived its 
 title from its genial habit of replying 14 Why 
 not ? " to any given order, without considering 
 or knowing whether such were its business. 
 The " Why not " was at present flushed with 
 long search, and with that sub-resentment 
 and assumption of being suspected that all 
 servants run up like a flag when valuables 
 are missing. 
 
 "There isn't one in the house, but I'm 
 afther axing about it. It must be it was 
 waylaid." 
 
 It may scarcely be necessary to explain 
 
324 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 that she meant mislaid, but in her limited 
 skill in English she had expressed the real 
 trend of the things in the establishment. 
 They were not, as a rule, lost, nor in the 
 strict sense of the word were they stolen ; 
 they were waylaid, snatched from their own 
 walk of life and applied to some pressing 
 necessity of the moment. The apron might 
 have been taken to clean a bicycle, or to stay 
 the flow of spilt ink, or to bandage the foals 
 leg, and the "Why not" probably had been 
 a party to its fate. 
 
 It is on record that in past ages a punt, 
 used by the master for his own pleasure, was 
 waylaid after it had been suitably laid up in 
 the coach-house for the winter. When 
 Spring came, and the time of the singing of 
 birds and the painting of boats set in, the 
 punt was not. 
 
 It was "gone this long time ;" it was "as 
 rotten as that the boards was falling out of it 
 undher the peoples feet. ,, "You couldn't 
 tell what thim women in the laundhry would 
 catch hold of when they'd be short of fire, 
 an' God knows a person's heart would be 
 broke that'd have to be lookin' for sticks for 
 them." 
 
LOST, STOLEN, OR STRAYED 225 
 
 Having arrived at the fact that his boat 
 had been burned, the Master yielded to the 
 inevitable. 
 
 M Begad ! M he said, regarding the culprits 
 through his spectacles, " I believe you'd burn 
 myself if I'd light I" 
 
 The march of education has merely added 
 scope to the art of waylaying. We have in 
 the West of Ireland " heavy showers and 
 showers in between," as an old woman put 
 it when describing a wet day. In the course 
 of one of the in-betweens a party from the 
 Big House took refuge in a wayside cabin, 
 and although it is not desirable or polite 
 to observe too curiously the environment in 
 wayside cabins, a glimpse of a green morocco- 
 bound volume on a shelf, between a salt- 
 herring and a hair-brush was too much for 
 the visitors good breeding. Averting our eyes 
 from the hair-brush we identified the volume 
 as a copy of Byron's " Marino Faliero," which 
 had long since disappeared from the drawing- 
 room book-case in which it had been wont to 
 stand in the decorous neglect which, I 
 imagine, is not uncommonly its portion. 
 
 No one knew anything about the book. 
 It had apparently flown like a storm-beaten 
 
226 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 bird to the cabin door, and, out of pure 
 compassion, was given house room. From 
 internal evidence it would seem to have 
 inspired considerable interest in a family of 
 the name of Sweeny, whose autographs 
 profusely adorned its wide margins. Later 
 on we heard that one, Patsey Sweeny, when 
 dying, had asked for the solace of a book. 
 The Big House had been applied to for 
 something suitable. We shall never know 
 what influenced the 14 Why not " in her 
 selection of 44 Marino Faliero ; " we shall 
 never know anything in that, or in any 
 similar matter, with any certainty, but we do 
 not expect certainty in the West of Ireland. 
 41 Marino Faliero " returned to its fellows, 
 importing a rich odour of tobacco and turf 
 smoke, but otherwise, unfortunately, dumb to 
 its adventures. 
 
 Subsequently a daughter of the house of 
 Sweeny showed much aptitude in the art of 
 waylaying. A Confirmation was in prospect 
 at the chapel, at which Miss Julia Sweeny, 
 aged eleven, was to be presented as a 
 candidate, the occasion requiring that she 
 should be dressed in purest white from her 
 oily curls to her nimble and naked feet. 
 
PATSEY SWEENY 
 
MRS. SWEENY 
 
LOST, STOLEN, OR STRAYED 227 
 
 When the day of transformation arrived, the 
 Young Ladies from the Big House turned 
 out to view it, and as the candidate knelt in 
 angelic decorum in the chapel, the youngest 
 of the Young Ladies made the gratifying 
 discovery that her new white canvas tennis 
 shoes were on the feet of Miss Sweeny. On 
 such a day it would have been a gross want 
 of taste to have mentioned the matter, and 
 that evening the tennis shoes re-appeared 
 unostentatiously in their owner's room. No 
 comment was made on either side, but with 
 the sensitive perception of the clinical thermo- 
 meter, the Sweeny family remained invisible 
 for several weeks, after which Mrs. Sweeny 
 arrived with a score of eggs as a present for 
 the youngest Young Lady, and both sides 
 felt that a disagreeable estrangement had 
 been handsomely closed. 
 
 The adventures of the Gravy Spoon were 
 of the simpler household variety, inexplicable, 
 disconnected, yet following in a certain order 
 a track familiar to all Irish householders. 
 The gravy spoon was antique, slender of 
 curve, and delicately ornamented along its 
 graceful handle. Every servant connected 
 with the spoon will now testify that the 
 
228 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 handle was cracked from the day it was 
 made. One even asserts that "When ye'd 
 strike it agin anything there'd be a roaring 
 in it," which, of course, leaves no more to be 
 said. That its prolonged absence from the 
 table should have been unnoticed was well 
 in the character of things : several months, in 
 fact, passed before the lady of the house ob- 
 served the cook skimming cream with a singu- 
 lar and dwarfish weapon, which proved to be 
 the bowl and one inch of the handle of the 
 gravy spoon. The explanation opened with 
 the formula, u Sure that was broke always," 
 followed almost inevitably by the statement 
 that " it was broke when the young gentlemen 
 was home." From the mouth of a third 
 witness came the information that " Master 
 Lionel broke it one day at luncheon helping 
 curry." History was silent as to the compo- 
 sition of this remarkable curry. The cook 
 entered no protest. Memory was not at any 
 time her strongest point, judging at least 
 from her own guileless confession on one of 
 the many occasions when dinner was very late. 
 
 " Sure I mislaid the pudding, and there I 
 was hunting the house for it, and where 
 would it be afther all but in the oven ! " 
 
LOST, STOLEN, OR STRAYED 229 
 
 The search for the keys was, of course, a 
 mere commonplace of every day. The store- 
 room was carefully locked up, and the bunch, 
 an enormous and for the most part obsolete 
 collection, was then taken severely upstairs 
 and secreted. The next event was, usually, 
 the departure beyond ken or call of the person 
 who had secreted the keys, followed, at a 
 greater or less interval, by the crisis when 
 they became essential to the progress of 
 things, by the opening scenes of the hunt, 
 and its gradual broadening to full cry through- 
 out the house. During this part of the 
 comedy the servants, who were perfectly ac- 
 quainted with every known hiding-place, re- 
 mained coldly intent on their business, and 
 the hunters deferred as long as possible the 
 humiliating moment when their co-operation 
 must be invited. When it came, the keys 
 came with it. 
 
 To the lost and strayed the ashpit in the 
 yard occasionally offered harbourage, where, 
 among the hot turf ashes and evil smells, 
 oblivion came quickly. Sometimes, when 
 search ran high, as lately in the case of three 
 errant postal orders, the ashpit was placed 
 under martial law, and yielded strange spoils 
 
2 3 o SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 to its inquisitors. Instead of the postal 
 orders came forth in the first instance a 
 letter, dated 1805, fr° m an historical person- 
 age, once Chief Justice of Ireland. The 
 letter itself, in remarkably good preservation, 
 described in choice and flowing English a 
 fortnight spent in Bath, an experience in 
 remarkable contrast to the ashpit. The 
 second trophy was a cheque for eight pounds, 
 recent and uncashed. The third was a tea 
 cosy, of old gold and peacock blue satin, 
 somewhat scorched by turf ashes, but new, 
 and preserving in its quilted interior the label 
 with which it emerged from its parent bazaar. 
 There was other booty of an inconsiderable 
 sort, but the postal orders were not found. 
 The net result of the investigation was that 
 every servant in the house hovered on the 
 verge of giving warning, till the day when 
 the postal orders arrived as stowaways in a 
 letter from South Africa. The writer made 
 no mention of their presence in the envelope, 
 nor has he since been able to account for it, 
 nor, to this hour, has any reasonable theory 
 been brought forward to explain their wan 
 derings. 
 
 Lest any hasty judgment should here be 
 
LOST, STOLEN, OR STRAYED 231 
 
 formed as to the conduct of Irish households, 
 it is well to mention that other households, 
 not Irish, have had experiences as remark- 
 able. 
 
 A family of my acquaintance, blameless in 
 domestic life and even notable in virtue, has 
 established what must be, I think, a singular 
 renown at Scotland Yard in the matter of 
 lost valuables. During a stay of two nights 
 under that hospitable roof, three several and 
 severe disasters passed like winds through 
 the establishment, causing much mental and 
 physical stress, and a vast amount of cab 
 hire. 
 
 The first was the loss of a diamond star, 
 to recover which Scotland Yard, much con- 
 cerned, put forth detectives and established 
 a network of theories. It was subsequently 
 found under the owners bed. The second 
 was less showy but more acute, a purse lost 
 while shopping. Scotland Yard (not perhaps 
 without a memory of the diamond star) was 
 guarded, but still sympathetic. Several 
 purses had been brought in ; would the 
 owner describe hers ? The owner now asks 
 us to believe that on being confronted with 
 this question she found herself unable to 
 
232 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 remember what her purse was like. Then 
 perhaps she could mention the sum of money 
 it contained ? Lamentable to relate, on this 
 point also memory was a blank. After so 
 flagrant a breakdown the ordinary individual 
 would have ended the interview in the lock- 
 up, but the claimant of the purse, in addition 
 to being young and lovely, was by no means 
 ordinary. As a matter of fact she was in- 
 vited to try again, and this time was enabled 
 to say that she believed the purse had a hole 
 in it. Further details of the interview were 
 withheld, but we were given to understand 
 that though the purse was not restored, the 
 excellent relations with the officials remained 
 unimpaired. 
 
 The third catastrophe was the loss of a 
 dressing-bag, containing much of value, and 
 forgotten, in the customary way, in a cab. 
 This was a trifling matter ; a mere occasion 
 for a morning call at Scotland Yard, where 
 the officials, with the special and protective 
 smile reserved for this family, produced the 
 bag. It was taken airily home in a hansom, 
 its recovery was announced to an admiring 
 luncheon table, and the peculiar success of 
 the family with Scotland Yard was discussed. 
 
LOST, STOLEN, OR STRAYED 233 
 
 11 But where is the bag ? 11 
 
 And even with the words came the grey 
 dawn of the discovery that the bag had once 
 more been left in the hansom. 
 
 To follow the subsequent events would be 
 an unkindness. It is enough to indicate that 
 even Scotland Yard and its special smile were 
 on this occasion of no avail. 
 
 To lose things by accident is, as we all 
 know, calamitously easy, to lose them de- 
 signedly is not only difficult but takes nerve 
 and, at the right moment, want of principle. 
 
 There was once a red silk parasol, of the 
 genus known to the trade as an en totit cas, 
 which, literally translated, meant that in 
 sunny weather it was cumbrous and heavy, 
 and that during showers it wept tears of 
 indelible maroon upon its possessor. It 
 passed through an unloved youth into an 
 abhorred middle age, with a crooked nose, a 
 swelled handle, and a mottled complexion, 
 unfit for society, yet not sufficiently decayed 
 for a jumble sale. I and another went to 
 Dublin for a week, and on starting found 
 that the red umbrella had been put on the car 
 by the servants, who held it in high esteem. 
 We did not give it a thought; it would, of 
 
234 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 course, return upon the car to its lair in the 
 back hall. As the train moved out into sun- 
 light the red umbrella revealed itself, looming 
 upon us through the netting where a careful 
 porter had placed it. Not as yet recognising 
 the hand of Fate, we lightly regarded it, and 
 determining that it should be left in the 
 train, straightway forgot its existence until 
 an equally attentive porter placed it respect- 
 fully in our cab in Dublin. Had we kept 
 our heads we should have offered it to him, 
 murmuring something about having no 
 change. Like most inspirations, this, un- 
 fortunately, did not occur to us till some five 
 minutes later, but it suggested the idea of 
 giving it to a housemaid, and on this under- 
 standing it accompanied us to our destination. 
 During a week it disgraced our host's 
 umbrella stand, and during that week we 
 discovered that the housemaid, who, from 
 the first, was quelling, was a Plymouth 
 Sister, and would probably have regarded 
 such a gift as an attempt to sap her religious 
 convictions. * When, on departure, it was 
 deliberately forgotten, it was the Plymouth 
 Sister who snatched it from the umbrella 
 stand and breathlessly hurled it into our cab. 
 
LOST, STOLEN, OR STRAYED 235 
 
 It was obvious that to throw it out of the 
 window in streets crowded with traffic would 
 merely have involved a heavy fee to an inevit- 
 able rescuer ; we reserved it for the window of 
 the train, confidently, even enjoyably. Yet, 
 such was its inveteracy, in the train the 
 spell of forgetfulness again held us. The 
 moments when it was remembered were 
 precisely when the train stopped at stations, 
 or the windows were blocked with fellow 
 passengers, who would probably have pulled 
 the communication cord to retrieve it. As 
 we neared the long bridge of Athlone a 
 final resolve was made. The network of big 
 girders glided by, the broad Shannon glittered 
 far below. The red umbrella shot like a spear 
 through the girders and dropped out of sight. 
 " So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur — " 
 The train crept into Athlone Station and 
 there entered upon a prolonged wait among 
 roomy and silent platforms. We exulted at 
 leisure over the red umbrella. A hurrying 
 foot was distantly heard ; doors opened and 
 shut in rapid succession down the length of 
 the train. We disinterred our tickets. The 
 door of our carriage was opened and a heated 
 boy put in his face. 
 
236 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 " Did anny one here lose a red umbrella ? " 
 It was the supreme moment in a duel with 
 Destiny. 
 
 I replied to his question with a firm and 
 simple negative. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE CAPTIVITY 
 
CHILDREN OF THE CAPTIVITY 
 
 The road to Connemara lies white across 
 the memory, white and very quiet. In that 
 far west of Galway, the silence dwells pure 
 upon the spacious country, away to where 
 the Twelve Pins make a gallant line against 
 the northern sky. It comes in the heathery 
 wind, it borrows peace from the white cottage 
 gables on the hill side, it is accented by the 
 creeping approach of a turf cart, rocking 
 behind its thin grey pony. Little else stirs, 
 save the ducks that sail on a wayside pool to 
 the push of their yellow propellers ; away 
 from the road, on a narrow oasis of arable 
 soil, a couple of women are digging potatoes ; 
 their persistent voices are borne on the 
 breeze that blows warm over the blossoming 
 boglands and pink heather. 
 
 Scarcely to be analysed is that fragrance of 
 
24© SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 Irish air; the pureness of bleak mountains is 
 in it, the twang of turf smoke is in it, and 
 there is something more, inseparable from 
 Ireland's green and grey landscapes, wrought 
 in with her bowed and patient cottages, her 
 ragged walls, and eager rivers, and intelligible 
 only to the spirit. 
 
 Over in England there are clustered 
 cottages half buried in rich meadows, covered 
 with roses to the edge of their mellow roof 
 tiles, shaded by venerable and venerated 
 trees, pleasant resting-places for the memory. 
 From one of them comes forth a mild-faced 
 elderly woman in a mushroom hat, the 
 embodiment of respectability and hard work. 
 If you talk to her you will be impressed by 
 her sincerity, her reticence, her reverence for 
 cleanliness, and further, as the conversation 
 progresses, by her total lack of humour, and 
 her conscientious recital of details not 
 essential to the story. You will admire and 
 like her, and she will bore you ; so will her 
 husband, with the serious face and sober blue 
 eyes, and you will be ashamed of being 
 bored. 
 
 Approach one of these lonely cottages on 
 a Connemara road, and you will find it 
 
IN A LONELY COTTAGE 
 
CHILDREN OF THE CAPTIVITY 241 
 
 crooked without quaintness, clumsy, dirty, 
 distressful ; yet there will come forth to you 
 round the manure-heaps in front of the door 
 a human being, probably barefooted, and 
 better skilled in Irish than in English, who 
 will converse with you in the true sense of 
 the word, that is to say, with give and take, 
 with intuition, and with easy and instant 
 sense of humour. While you talk to her you 
 can observe two elderly women in red petti- 
 coats and black cloaks advancing on the long 
 road from Galway, carrying heavy baskets 
 from the market : their eyes are quick, their 
 faces clearly cut and foreign-looking. Were 
 it in your power to listen to what they are 
 saying, you would be entertained as you have 
 seldom been, by highly seasoned gossip, 
 narrative, both humorous and tragic, and 
 wide and exhaustive criticism. A cart 
 lumbers by, loaded with men and women, 
 their teeth, one would say, loosened in their 
 heads by the clattering and jolting, but their 
 flow of ideas and language unshaken. The 
 two women in the cloaks have arrived at a 
 juncture at which they must stand still in the 
 ecstasy of the story ; the narrator shoots out 
 a spike of a thumb, and digs her auditor in 
 
 Q 
 
2 4 2 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 the chest to barb the point of the jest as it is 
 delivered. The recipient swings backward 
 from the waist with a yell of appreciation, 
 they hitch their cloaks on their shoulders, and 
 enter on the Committee stage of the affair as 
 they move on again. 
 
 One might safely say that this bare and 
 still country carries an amount of good talk, 
 nimble, trenchant, and humorous, to the 
 square mile, that the fat and comfortable 
 plains of England could never rival. It has 
 been so for centuries, and all the while the 
 sons and daughters of Connemara have 
 remained aloof and self-centred, hardly even 
 aware of the marching life of England, least 
 of all aware that Ireland holds the post of 
 England's Court Jester. Others of their 
 countrymen, more sophisticated, more astute, 
 probably less agreeable, have not been slow 
 to realise it. Perhaps they would have 
 refused the Cap and Bells had they known 
 the privilege entailed. 
 
 " As for our harps," said the Children of 
 the Captivity, " we hanged them up upon 
 the trees that are therein." That was when 
 the songs of Zion were required of them in 
 the strange land, and the strong Euphrates 
 
CHILDREN OF THE CAPTIVITY 243 
 
 saw their tears. The sympathy of all 
 the centuries has been theirs for that 
 poignant hour ; yet, as far as can be known, 
 they were spared an extremer pang. It is 
 nowhere recorded that the people of the 
 strange land made any attempt to sing the 
 songs of Zion to the Children of Israel. 
 
 When the Children of Erin hang up their 
 harps in the Babylon of to-day, the last 
 thing they wish to emulate is that passionate 
 silence of the Israelites. They hang them 
 up as those do who enter in and possess the 
 land, and the songs of Zion have not faltered 
 on their lips. A captive race they may be, 
 but their national desire to 11 take the floor n 
 has remained unshaken. They have dis- 
 covered that an Irish brogue has a market 
 value, and the songs of Zion have gone 
 through many editions and held many 
 audiences, since the days when Tom Moore 
 exploited his country in London drawing- 
 rooms. The moment of bitterness is when 
 the English become fired with the notion of 
 singing them for themselves. 
 
 Perhaps it comes about from English love 
 of a theory, especially an hereditary theory, 
 that has been handed down to them, well- 
 
244 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 thumbed by preceding generations. They 
 have established a theory for the Irish, 
 and particularly and confidently for Irish 
 humour, and from owning the theory there 
 is but a step to becoming proprietors also 
 of the humour. Myself, when young, was 
 nourished upon a work named " Near Home," 
 and in the edition current at the time, I 
 remember that the Irish were indulgently 
 described as "a merry people, and fond of 
 pigs." The hereditary theory could hardly 
 have been better summarised. The average 
 Englishman owns an Irish story or two, and 
 is genially certain of his ability to tell it, 
 with all necessary embellishment of accent 
 and expression. As often as possible he 
 tells it to an Irishman. 
 
 Elusive as running water is the brogue 
 of the Irish peasant; hardly attained even 
 by those who have known its tune from 
 childhood. They, at least, know how it 
 ought to be, and with this knowledge in 
 their hearts, they have to sit in dreary sub- 
 mission while the stage Irishman convulses 
 the English audience ; they must smile, 
 however galvanically, when friends, other- 
 wise irreproachable, regale them with the 
 
CHILDREN OF THE CAPTIVITY 245 
 
 Irish story in all its stale exuberance of Pat 
 and the Pig, or expound for their benefit 
 that epitome of vieux jeu, the Saxon con- 
 ception of an Irish Bull. 
 
 As to Irish Bulls, it could be explained, 
 were it of any avail, that they convey a 
 finer shade of meaning than the downright 
 English language will otherwise admit of. 
 
 M If ye were to be killed crossing a fence 
 ye'd be all right ! " said a looker-on to one 
 whose horse had turned head over heels in 
 the middle of a level pasture, " but if ye 
 were killed on the flat o' the field ye'd never 
 hold up your head again ! " 
 
 Here was the effort of the true im- 
 pressionist to create an effect regardless of 
 the means. 
 
 " Jerry was a grand man. When he'd be 
 idle itself he'd be busy ! " 
 
 Had the author of this commendation 
 merely said that Jerry's industry was un- 
 ceasing, he would have been unassailable as 
 to diction, but he would have left his 
 audience cold. It is a melancholy fact that 
 the English mind contrives to miss the 
 artist's intention, and fastens unalterably on 
 the obvious contradiction of terms. 
 
246 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 As in converse, so, and with deeper 
 disaster, is it in literature. There is scarcely 
 a week in the life of the English comic 
 papers that is guiltless of some heavy- handed 
 caricature of Irish humour, daubed with false 
 idiom and preposterous spelling, secure in its 
 consciousness of being conventional. It is 
 better to accuse a man of having broken a 
 commandment than to tell him that his sense 
 of humour appears to you defective, so, leaving 
 that branch of the subject open, I will only 
 mention that there are alive many excellent 
 people who will never, on this side of the 
 grave, be convinced that the Irish peasant 
 does not say " indade " for " indeed," 
 " belave " for " believe, 99 or " swape 99 for 
 " sweep." Inborn and ingrained knowledge of 
 such points is essential ; if, among many 
 anomalies, a rule can be found, it seems to be 
 that in an Irish brogue the diphthong "ea" 
 changes to "a," as in " say" for "sea," while 
 the double e remains untampered with ; thus 
 you might hear a person say " I was very 
 wake last week." 
 
 Writers of fiction have done much that is 
 painful in dealing with Irish people. 
 Thackeray's Captain Costigan spoke like a 
 
CHILDREN OF THE CAPTIVITY 247 
 
 stage edition of a Dublin car-driver, which is 
 not what one would expect in a gentleman 
 who, according to his own account, " bore his 
 Majesty's Commission in the foighting 
 Hundtherd and Third," and his introduction 
 of Arthur Pendennis as "a person of refoined 
 moind, emiable manners, and a sinsare lover 
 of poethry " is not convincing or even very 
 amusing. It is strange that the error of 
 making Irish ladies and gentlemen talk like 
 their servants should to this hour have a fas- 
 cination for novelists. It is not so very long 
 since that, in a magazine, I read of a high- 
 born Irish Captain of Hussars, who, in 
 a moment of emotion, exclaimed : " Howly 
 Mither av Hiven! " 
 
 Dealing with present day writers is 
 treading on delicate ground, and it is with 
 diffidence that one arraigns one of the most 
 enthralling of living story-tellers. Few of 
 his works have been more popular than 
 M Soldiers Three," yet to me and others of 
 my country, it is the narratives of Private 
 Mulvany that give least pleasure. M Gurl " 
 for girl, " Thimber " for timber, and " Quane " 
 for Queen, are conventions that have 
 unfortunately proved irresistible ; they are 
 
248 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS 
 
 taken from a random page or two, and there 
 is no page free of such. 
 
 But, after all, right or wrong, pronunciation 
 and spelling are small things in the present- 
 ment of any dialect. 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. A laborious 
 system of spelling exasperates the reader, 
 jades the eye, and fails to convince the ear. 
 If, in illustration, I again quote Mr. Kipling, 
 it is because of the conspicuousness of his 
 figure in literature ; he can afford to occupy 
 the position of target, indifferent alike to miss 
 or bull's-eye. 
 
 Stripped of its curious and stifling 
 superfluities of spelling, a sentence of 
 Mulvaney's runs thus : [ 
 
 " Oh, boys, they were more lovely than 
 the like of any loveliness in heaven ; ay, 
 their little bare feet were better than the 
 white hands of a Lords lady, and their 
 mouths were like puckered roses, and their 
 eyes were bigger and darker than the eyes 
 of any living women I've seen." j 
 
 With the exception of " the like " there 
 is nothing in the wording of this panegyric 
 
CHILDREN OF THE CAPTIVITY 249 
 
 that would even suggest it had been uttered 
 by an Irishman. To stud the page with "ut" 
 and "av" instead of "it" and "of " is of no 
 avail. Irish people do not say these things ; 
 there is a sound that is a half-tone between 
 the two, not to be captured by English 
 voices, still less by English vowels. 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. 
 
SLIPPER'S A B C OF 
 FOX-HUNTING 
 
11 B is for Buck. 
 
 Your best howlt is the spurs, 
 And make sure they're dhruv home 
 When ye're goin' through furze." 
 
M C is for Check. 
 
 If ye go any faster 
 Ye'll be apt to be dhrawn into chat, 
 With the Master.'' 
 
> was the Dhrain that the fox got inside in. 
 Bad luck to the cowardly shkamer for hidin 
 
1 E came from England, and wanted no guide. 
 Now he s laming the lie o' the bogs, 
 From inside ! 
 
" F is Full Cry. 
 
 And it's hard to say which 
 This lad or the hounds 
 
 Lets the powerfullest screech ! " 
 
G stands for Geese. 
 
 Look at Gollagher now, 
 And himself in the thick of a Family Row ! " 
 
> 
 
 H is for Horn. 
 
 The few that can blow it 
 Are born to the thrick, 
 
 Just the same as a poet ! " 
 
t 
 
 44 1 is meself. 
 
 No great shakes, as you see, 
 But there's more than one gerr'l 
 Is wishin' for me ! " 
 
" J is Jog Home. 
 
 A dhry misht from the say 
 Very often comes on, 
 Just to soften the way ! ' 
 
' K is the Kick that killed Kinahane dead. 
 I'd be sorry to mention 
 The words that he said ! " 
 
; M is the Master, " And L is the Lep 
 
 Blaspheemious ot habit ; That he threw in the passion. 
 
 If you would catch hardship Be cripes ! But thim dogs 
 
 Cheer hounds to a rabbit ! Got their 'nough of a thrashin' ! " 
 
11 N was a Nanny-goat up on the hill. 
 Faith ! Some o' thim puppies 
 Is hunting her still ! " 
 
u O's the Obstackle 
 
 Tim met in the way. 
 But the mare being free 
 He got no great delay." 
 
4 * P was the Price of a nate little hin (that's Q) 
 
 That the foxes ate over and over agin. I'll back Biddy Burke 
 And bedad ! if it comes to a Quarrel, To out-hucksther a Jew ! ' 
 
R is for River. " And S was the Saxon 
 
 Young Reilly kept cool. That gave him the warning. 
 
 If ye give him fair warning I'm thinkin' he'll hardly be dhry 
 
 Young Reilly's no fool. Before morning." 
 
;> T is a Tenant " And U s the Umbrella 
 About to vacate That spilt the poor fella. 
 
 The site once well filled by his What call have owld women 
 Family Sate. To want an Umbrella?" 
 
 T 
 
V's the Vet. 
 
 A nate surgeon, he'll ' knife it and chance it ' 
 And he'll 1 cut out the work ' 
 
 Without using his lancet ! " 
 
' Here's the Wrecker, and Earth Stopper, 
 Bowld Willy Roche. 
 Sure they say a fried .egg's the one thing 
 He can't poach ! " 
 
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