HOME LIFE 
 
 IN 
 
 IRELAND 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT LYND 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 
 
 CHICAGO 
 A. C. McCLURG & CO. 
 
 191 2 
 
-V r, 
 
 
 '^ ^> o ' ^ /!. '> 
 
 f.v w' t> .>- i 1^ 
 
 Co/>yriirIil in the British Empire of Mills & Boon, Ltd., London 
 
 O'NEILL LIBRARY 
 AUG BOSTON COLLEGE 
 
SYLVIA LYND 
 
PREFACE TO FIllST EDITION 
 
 T WISH to thank Mrs N. F. Diyhurst and i\lr 
 J. \V. Good for tlie help they gave nie at various 
 points while 1 was writing this book — help all 
 tlie more generous because neither of them is 
 likely to agree with all I sa,y. I*;i(lraif <) (Joiii- 
 eeaniiain will p('i'lia,[)S i"(HM)griise somclliiiig bke 
 the echo of his voiee in one of the elia[)ters. J\li' 
 and Mrs Robert Steen may not see tlie image of 
 their kindness reflected in these pages, but it is 
 none the less there, for it was in their house and 
 in the house at Killure that T received the most 
 abundant hosjiitality I have known, and was 
 initiated into the friendship of country people 
 and places. 
 
 R. L. 
 
 Scptemher 1909. 
 
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION 
 
 I snri'osK iio one — no one, at niiy rato, with 
 eiithusiasiii in his body — ever writes a book iu 
 these days witliout wishing immediately after- 
 wards to overflow into a preface exjjlaining what 
 the book nicnns. I overflowed into a preface — a 
 real pre(";i,t(»iial |H('f;icc- to tli(; first edition of tliis 
 liook, I)u(, it see?ned unixM-essary, so I destroyed or 
 lost it. W there is a preface to this new edition, 
 it is not 1, l)ut my publishers, who must be blamed 
 for it. 
 
 At the same time, I am glad they demanded the 
 preface, for it enables me to say a second time 
 some of tlic things 1 have said already, and so 
 help to estal)lisli their truth in average minds. 
 I am especially glad of an opportunity to repeat 
 my belief in the oneness of the Irish people, north 
 and south, east and west — a belief, I may say, 
 which has been challenged by several critics with 
 denials rather than with arguments. In spite of 
 these denials, however, it is becoming more gene- 
 rally recognised every day that the northern and 
 southern, the .Protestant and Catholic, Irish are 
 potentially one people as surely as are the northern 
 and southern, the Protestant and Catholic, English. 
 If Ireland has divisions of 1)lood and interests, so 
 h.'is ICiigland, Indeed, so different Jire the ])eople of 
 one English county from tlie people of another, that 
 one of their writers, Dr J^aty, recently contended, 
 in a book on " International Law," that Enoiish 
 patriotism could not long survive the era of fast 
 
viii HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 and cheap railway trains, Ijringing, as these must 
 do, the Northiimljrian and the Devonian and the 
 man of Suttblk into each other's countrysides and 
 letting them see how utterly at variance with 
 each other in manners, speech, and outlook they 
 are. The Northumbrian, the Devonian, and, if 
 I may coin a word, the Suliolkian — so runs the 
 arjzument — have hitherto been i)atri(>tic l<]ni>lish- 
 men because eacii of them bebeved that all l*]nglaiid 
 was merely an enlargement of his own county, and 
 that all English men and women were made after 
 the pattern of the men and women of his own 
 parish. Let him once grasp the fact that beyond 
 a certain radius he is tlu'ce-parts a foreigner in 
 his own country, and English patriotism will 
 come tuml)linf like a house of cards and leave 
 room for a new sort of patriotism to l)e built up 
 on the basis of the parisli or commune. It is 
 worth noting, by the way, that Colxlen fore- 
 shadowed a possible reversion throughout Europe 
 to the municipal system in politics, with, as 
 a necessary consequence, the municipal kind of 
 patriotism. Of course, the. arguments which Dr 
 Baty, quoting Cobden, puts forward apply, not 
 only to England, but to every country in J^^urope, 
 and point to the disruption in the comparatively 
 near future of every nation and empire the world 
 over, except nations and em])iros on a strictly 
 federal basis. Much as I l)eiieve in communal 
 and municipal patriotism, and much as I dis- 
 believe in nations and empires which contain 
 reluctant parishes and rekictant countries, 1 need 
 hardly say that I think Dr Baty presses his theory 
 too far. 
 
 Jf I quote him, then, it is not l)ecause I agree 
 with him altogether, but in order to stress the fact 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 that it is ns easy to deny tlie oneuess of the people 
 of England as it is to deny the oneness of the 
 people of Ireland. In Ireland, unfortunately, we 
 have allowed our language — always the most 
 vigorous symbol of national unity — to (let us 
 say) ebb. We are also without free political 
 institutions. These things, however, do not dis- 
 prove our oneness : they only show that we have 
 not yet entirely realised it. 
 
 One of the most absurd arguments hurled 
 against tlie unity of the Irish people is that our 
 origins are different, as though any healthy people 
 in Europe could survive a parallel test. One even 
 hears honest and pleasant people making state- 
 ments such as that our language is the traditional 
 language of only a section of the people. Just as 
 Broadbent, in "John Bull's Other Island," speaks 
 of the r»ilile as an ossentinlly Protestant document, 
 so a number of people talk of Oaelic as though it 
 were a pcuruliarly (JatlioHc jtossession. As a matter 
 of fact, Irish is a national possession which the 
 Protestant and Presbyterian inhabitants of the 
 country inherit through their ancestors as surely 
 as they inherit their share of Irish air and soil. 
 Irish is a ])art of the traditional atmosphere of 
 Ireland. In su[)port of this view, Dr Douglas 
 Hyde, Professor of Irish in the National University, 
 referred some time ago to the language " as 
 it was spoken one hundred years ago, right u]) 
 to the gates of Dublin ; and, in fact, by all 
 Ireland, even the descendants of the Elizabethans 
 and Cromwellians, including even the Lowland 
 Scotchmen in North - East Ulster, who, I may 
 mention in ))assing, were habitual Gaelic speakers, 
 though the l)ulk of them came from Galloway and 
 Ayrshire. Indeed," he added, " almost the only 
 
X HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 iion-Irisli speaking population in Ireland were the 
 cliiklren of a small hody of planters who came 
 from England and settled in South Ulster, in parts 
 of Armagh, 'JYrone, and, perhaps, in spots of Fer- 
 managh." An exaggeration, perhaps, but we know 
 that in one Presbyterian church, within a short dis- 
 tance of Belfast, sermons in Irish used fre{[uently 
 to be delivered towards the close of the eighteenth 
 century. It is unlikely that this was a mere 
 eccentric accident. Just as there are many hisli- 
 speaking Catliolic congregations to-day which 
 never hear a sermon in Irish, so there must have 
 been many Irish -speaking Presbyterian congrega- 
 tions a hundred and fifty years ago or so which 
 never heard a sermon in Ii'ish. \t must be 
 remembered that in those days Jiot only was 
 Irish looked u])on as a symbol of inferiority and 
 semi-savagery, but it had becji for a long time under 
 the ban of the law. 
 
 Had the Protestant Church of Ireland lived in 
 the spirit of the great P)is]io|) Iledcll, who had 
 the Bible translated into Irish in the seventeenth 
 century, and liad the Pre8l)yt(;rians reiilised tlie 
 truth of the Ilev. Norman Alacleod of (Jampsie's 
 remarks about Irish two hundred years later, 
 non-Catholic Ireland might have been Irish- 
 speaking to-day. " I am more convinced than 
 ever," wrote Dr Macleod in The OrtJtodox Pretihy- 
 tcruiH. for November IBM,'], "that- the iiish 
 language is the key, the very key to the Irish 
 heart." Of course, this was with reference to 
 the prospects of winning Ireland to Protestantism. 
 The words are true, however, apart altogether 
 from their application to the business of prose- 
 lytism. The heart of Irekind, whether in the 
 history of the past or in high visions of the future, 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 can only lie reached by those who have taken the 
 Irish language as the key. Like a key, it is 
 chiefly valuable, not for its mere shape or com- 
 position, but for tliat to which it admits us and 
 for that which it enables us to shut out. 
 
 To return, however : there are a hundred other 
 tilings which show how Ireland has adopted 
 equally into her own household all the peoples 
 who ever came to her shores, Gael and Saxon, 
 Pict and Norman and Dane, ami offered them 
 places at her table as her authentic family. For 
 one thinl^^ she lias chosen her heroes impartially 
 from them all. (Juchullain, Brian, Owen Roe 
 O'Neill, Dean Swift, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 
 Tone, William Orr, M'Cracken, Davis — two 
 thousand years of heroic names testify to the 
 continuous assimilating power of Ireland and fore- 
 tell the ultimate unity of her people. 
 
 Even the English language as it is spoken in 
 Ireland shows far fewer divergencies of use in 
 north and south than is generally appreciated. 
 Let an Ulstcrman take up Patrick Kennedy's 
 delightful book, " The Fireside Stories of Ireland," 
 writ'ten in the dialect of the Wexford peasantry, 
 and he will feel curiously at home with many of 
 the idioms he finds there. He will find that iu 
 Wexford, as in Ulster, the greeting "Morrow, 
 boy," or "Morrow," is common, lie will see 
 "oxter" used for armpit, "haggard" for stack- 
 yard, and so forth. Similarly, in Dr P. W. Joyce's 
 recently published " English As We Speak It In 
 Ireland," he will find tiiat in the south as well 
 as in the north the people use such plirases as 
 " in under the bed," " never let on " (for " i)rctend 
 not to"), "])old" in the sense of "impudent," 
 " the dear knows " for " God knows," " bees " for 
 
xii HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 "is," "yous" as the plural of "you," "wer" for 
 "our," "rinsh" for "rinse," "lep" for "leap," 
 "by the hokey," "faith," "troth," " heth," and so 
 on infinitely. With regard to the use of " faith ! " 
 as an exclamation, Dr Joyce quotes a correspondent 
 who declares that the use of this is "a sure mark 
 of an Irishman all over the world." Take, again, 
 the ap|)arently insignificant exclamation, " liii])]), 
 hupp !" used by drivci's all over Ireland to urge 
 on their horses : it looks like a corruption of the 
 English word " up," but Dr Joyce tells us that 
 it probably comes down from a time before the 
 English language had even been invented. " In 
 the library of St Gall iu Switzerland," he informs 
 us, " there is ;i manusci'ipt written in the eighth 
 century by some scholarly Irish monk — who he 
 was we cannot tell, and in this the old writer 
 glosses or explains many Latin words by corres- 
 ponding Irish words. Among others, the Latin 
 interjection ei or hei (meaning ho ! quick ! come 
 on !) is explained by upp or hupp." 
 
 I am writing a preface and not a book, however, 
 and the proof of my arguments must come to a 
 temporary and sudden end. The reader, I may 
 observe, can easily gather sufficient facts for himself 
 in any good library to convince hiniselt" twenty 
 times over of the sense of what i say. And if, 
 iu the course of his researches, he should discover 
 anything to suggest that my sense is all nonsense, 
 let him not hesitate to write a wilderness of 
 prefaces saying so. 
 
 ROBERT LYND. 
 
 June 1910. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAT. rAOK 
 
 I. The Irishman: Introductory . . 1 
 
 II. Farms and Farmers . . . .10 
 
 III. Marriages and Match-making . . 40 
 
 IV. Stories and Superstitions (or whatever 
 
 YOU LIKE TO CALL ThEM) . . 56 
 
 V. Schools and Children . . .82 
 
 VI. Wakes and Funerals . . .110 
 
 VII. Priests and Tarsons , . .122 
 
 VIII. The Ulsteuman's Notoriety . . 151 
 
 IX. The Irish Gentry . . . .172 
 
 X. Town Life, with a Note on Public 
 
 Life . . . . .184 
 
 XI. Games and Dances . . . .198 
 
 XII. Food, Clothes, etc. .... 204 
 
 Xin. Religion . . . . .211 
 
 XIV, The Lives of the Workers . . 226 
 
 xiii 
 
FAQE 
 
 xiv HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 XV. Sinn Ftis : The New Note in Politics . 247 
 
 XVI. Politics and Gatherings . . .262 
 
 XVII. Manners . . . . .275 
 
 XVIII. Characters. I.— The Driver . . 285 
 
 XIX. Characters. II. — The Man of Secrets . 296 
 
 XX. Literature and Music . . . 305 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 1. A Farm House Interior . . Frontispiece 
 
 From <'i {ihotograph by R. Welch, Belfast. 
 
 FAftNQ PACK 
 
 2. A CouNiY Down Faubi . . . .14 
 
 From a iihotograjih by R. Welch, Belfast. 
 
 3. Bringing Home Turf in Donegal . . 16 
 
 From a photograph by R. Welch, Belfast. 
 
 4. An Aciiill Boy ..... 32 
 
 From a photograph by H. Welch, Belfast. 
 
 5. County Antrim Girls . . . .38 
 
 From a photograph hy R. Welch, Belfast. 
 
 6. A Gaelic Story-Teller . . . .60 
 
 From a photograph by Mrs N. F. Dryhurst. 
 
 7. A Sligo Bog ..... 80 
 
 From a photograph by R. Welch, Belfast. 
 
 8. Aran Children ..... 90 
 
 From a photograph by R. Welch, Belfast. 
 
 9. Farm House in Donegal . . .118 
 
 From a photograph by R. Welch, Belfast. 
 
xvi HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 FACIHQ PAOB 
 
 10. The M'Kinley Farm, Dervock . . 146 
 
 From a iiLotograpb by K. Welch, Belfast. 
 
 11. Fireplace and Dresser . . .166 
 
 From a photograph by R. Welch, Belfast. 
 
 12. Galway Fish Market . . . .178 
 
 From a photograph by U. Welch, Belfast. 
 
 13. The Treaty Stone, Lii\ierick . . .194 
 
 From a photograph by W. bawrence, Dublin. 
 
 14. Grinding Corn in the Old Way . . 206 
 
 From a photograph by R. Welch, Belfast. 
 
 15. CURRAOHS . . . .232 
 
 From a photograph by 1{. Welch, Belfast. 
 
 16. Mud Cottage near Dublin . . . 244 
 
 From a photograph by R. Welch, 15elfast. 
 
 17. An Antrim Farm and an 0[.d-fashionei) 
 
 Cart 290 
 
 From a photograph by R. Welch, Belfast. 
 
 18. Clonbur — a Connaciit Village . . 298 
 
 From a photograph by K. Welch, Belfast. 
 
HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE IRISHMAN : INTRODUCTORY 
 
 The Irishmau is dug of the world's puzzles. 
 People seem to be quite unable to agree as to who 
 he is, or as to what constitutes his Irishuess. 
 Some people say that he is a Celt. Some say he 
 is a Catholic. Some say he is a comic person. 
 Some say he is a melancholy person. Others say 
 he is both. According to some, he is of a gay, 
 generous nature. According to others, he is a 
 shrivelled piece of miserliness and superstition. 
 " The least criminally-inclined of all the inhabi- 
 tants of Europe," declare those who stand up for 
 him, and they have ofHcial statistics on their side. 
 A murderer, a maimer of cattle, a carder of 
 women's hides, squeal the Kiplingesque school of 
 critics, and they, too, have ofhcial statistics — very 
 official statistics — on their side. A missionary 
 among the nations, affirm some religious 
 enthusiasts. 'J'ho builbon of the world, cry those 
 who are less likely to be found in a church than 
 in a music-hall. 
 
 The truth is, there is a great deal of nonsense 
 
 A 1 
 
2 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 talked about the " real Irishman " aud the " typical 
 Irishman" — to mention two phrases common 
 among thoughtless people. The "real Irisliman" 
 is neither essentially a Celt nor essentially a 
 Catholic. He is merely a man who has had the 
 good or bad fortune to be born in Ireland or of 
 Irish parents, and who is intcr(!sted in Inland more 
 than in any other country in (ho woild. 
 
 Tlie landlord of Norman or Saxon descent is 
 quite as truly an Irishman as the tenant-farmer 
 of Gaelic descent, provided that Ireland is the 
 home of his best thoughts, even if not always 
 of his body. The Orange labourer of the north, 
 whose ancestors may have come from Sc<itland, 
 has all the attributes ot" an irishman no less than 
 the Catholic labourer of the west, whose ancestors 
 may have come from Greece, or from Germany, or 
 from Spain, or from anywhere you care to specu- 
 late. Occasionally, owing to political bitter- 
 nesses, you will find a Northerner denying his 
 Irishness. " We're j^higlish in the north," a 
 Deny merchant once said to me, and indeed 
 some of these people have sung "God save the 
 King" so often since the introduction of Mr 
 Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill that their blood 
 now refuses to flow to any other music, and 
 their ears are deal" to the songs of their own 
 valleys and hills. Even people with Gaelic names 
 are to be found now and then denying the charge 
 of being Irish with a vigour worthy of Peter's 
 denial of the accusation of beina" a Christian. A 
 
THE IRISHMAN : INTRODUCTORY 3 
 
 friend of mine, who is an entliusiast for Irish 
 things, was wandering about Tyrone some time 
 ago, wlien he fell into talk in a hotel-bar with 
 a labouring man who gave his name as James 
 M'C'abo. "Well, you have a good Irish name, 
 at any rate," my fi'icnd said to him in a tone of 
 congratulation. "Good Irish name be damned," 
 retorted the other, bursting into a temper. " It's 
 a good Protestant name." 
 
 Luckily, this kind of talk is becoming rarer 
 in Ireland every day. It is a relic of the days 
 of the religious wars of the Tudors and the 
 Stuarts when Catholicism and Irishism were both 
 put on their defence in Ireland, and as a result 
 became somewhat confused till they appeared to 
 be ])ractically tlie same thing. The Protestant 
 religion came into lichuid, not as a ])liase of 
 Christianity, but as the rebgion of foreign in- 
 vaders. Cojise(|uently, among the Irish people, 
 Protestant and foreigner came to mean the same 
 thing, and in the older-fashioned Irish language 
 they are denoted by the same word — Gall. Simi- 
 larly, (iaedheal or Gael came to signify, not only 
 an Irislituau of the Gaelic stock, but an Irishman 
 of the Catholic religion. 
 
 I remember once when I was in County Sligo 
 I was taken to see a herdsman who knew Irish, 
 in order that I might listen to a man with so 
 fortunate a possession, and 1 found that to him 
 Gael meant, not an Irishman at all, but a Catholic. 
 We were talking about Irish things over a sip 
 
4 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 of whiskey with which he filled two small delf 
 cups to the brim, leaving no room for the least 
 drop of water, and 1 was telling him how even 
 manufacturers and business people now recognise 
 the importance of the language. In proof of this 
 I brought out from my pocket a box of Dublin- 
 made matches, with the words, " Solus na nCTaed- 
 heal "— " The Light of the Gael "—printed on the 
 outside. He took the box from me, and looked 
 it up and down — I did not know that he could 
 not read when 1 handed it to him — and then he 
 gave it back to me, saying that he hadn't his 
 spectacles on him, and would I mind reading what 
 was on it to him. T read the words carefully, 
 " Solus na nGaedheal," feeling very nervous about 
 my accent, and he said, " Ah, that means ' The 
 Light of the Catholics.'" At this, the school- 
 master who had brought me looked both surprised 
 and shocked, for he was the most generous and 
 hospital)le of men. " But, John," he protested, 
 " it can't mean that, Mr Lynd himself is a 
 Protestant." " Well," declared the herdsman, with 
 a kindly twinkle in his eye, but determination 
 in his jaw, " he's none the worse for that. There's 
 many a good Protestant Irishman. P)Ut that 
 doesn't change the meaning of words, and I tell 
 you Gaedheal means Catholic." I think, indeed, 
 if he had wished to say "Irishman" in the 
 Irish language he would have used the word, 
 " Lireannach." 
 
 It is curious to find even to-day in Ireland 
 
THE IRISHMAN : TNTRODUCTORY 5 
 
 an occasional person of one idea who will tell you 
 that nobody is any use except the Gaels, or that 
 nobody is any use except the Catholics, or that 
 nobody is any use exce[)t the Ulstermen. As a 
 rule, people who talk like this belong to an old 
 and dwindling school, and are of a crankisli nature. 
 The general trend of Irish thought during the 
 past number of years has made for the breaking- 
 down of all such barriers of mistrust and mis- 
 understanding. 1 heard from a national platform 
 an ancient man of wild notions call upon his 
 audience on one occasion to put no trust in 
 Protestants — " they will betray you, they always 
 have betrayed you" — and passionately proclaim 
 that Ireland must look for salvation to the *' sea- 
 divided Gael" alone. Ilis audience, however, 
 greeted his sentiments with no enthusiasm, but 
 maintained a polite approach to silence. Similarly, 
 I have heard an Ulsterman — ridiculously enough, 
 a Catholic and a Nationalist too — speak as though 
 all the southern Irish were worthless people. 
 ** Between you and me and the man in the 
 moon," he said once, tapping me on the knee 
 confidentially, " there's not much worth talking 
 about south of the Boyne." Of course, one finds 
 these local and sectional conceits and contempts 
 in all countries. In England, for instance, the 
 Baptist does not always speak flatteringly of the 
 Methodist, nor does the Churchman usually speak 
 flatteringly of either. Manchester and Liverpool 
 are not linked together in a mutual admiration 
 
6 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 society, and the Yorksbireman is not a permanent 
 object of veneration to tbe Londoner. \n tbe same 
 way, tbere are Tories wlio deny tlie rigbt ot" tbe 
 Radicals to call tbemselves patriotic Englishmen, 
 and Radicals who think equally bitter things of 
 the Tories, and Socialists who place Radicals and 
 Tories in one basket of worthlessness. In Eugland, 
 however, these differences of creed and outlook 
 are regarded as normal, and are not counted for 
 national unrighteousness. In Ireland, on the 
 other hand, let one man speak critically of an- 
 other, and immediately we have lurid pictures 
 drawn for us of a ])eople with a g(iiiius for 
 dissensions and fighting, as tbougb diilercuces 
 of opinion were a thing unknowji in civilised 
 countries. Political necessities — to give a flatter- 
 ing name to a bad thing — have led to every fault 
 of Ireland's being seen as if through a microscope, 
 and to every virtue's being seen upside down or 
 inside out till it seemed equal to two faults. 
 Personally, I deny the existence of any gulfs 
 between different sections of the inhabitants of 
 Ireland which need prevent us from regarding 
 them as one people, just as we regard the English 
 or the French or the Italians as one people. 
 
 This belief in the oneness of the Irish people 
 will colour everything I write in this book. For, 
 great as are the differences between the people of 
 one province and the ])eople of another, between 
 the people of one creed and the people of another, 
 between the people of one parish and the people of 
 
THE IRISHMAN : INTRODUCTORY 7 
 
 another, tlie things which unite them and mark 
 them aa belonging to one ever-evolving race are 
 more numerous and more remarkable still. The 
 Cork man and the Belfast man realise this when 
 they meet in a foreign country. In England, for 
 instance, (licy feel some bond of fraternity uniting 
 them to each other different from any bond that 
 may unite them to the Englishman or Scotchman 
 or Frenchman, or any other of the strange races. 
 They are l)oth Irish, and, even if they have not 
 the same friendly interests, they h;ivc at hvist tihc 
 same things to quarrel over — no unim[)ort;int tie 
 in a worhl where most peoj)le persist in living 
 dully. Consequently, when I hear a Belfastman 
 speaking contemptuously of Dublin, I do not take 
 the conversation very seriously, and when I hear a 
 Dubliner speaking contemptuously of Belfast, 1 do 
 not take the conversation yery seriously. The 
 kind of Irishman who (hjes really offend me is 
 the Belfastman, who speaks contemptuously of 
 Belfast, and his counterparts from other parts of 
 Ireland. Everybody has. met the escaped Belfast- 
 man in foreign countries, who delights in depreciat- 
 ing his own town, because he thinks that it is the 
 right tiling to do. I have almost invariably found 
 him a useless person with all the faults of his 
 birth-place and few of the virtues. He has never 
 felt the heart-beat of Ireland or the thrill of 
 abundant life that makes the laughter of chOdren 
 in Ballymena of one spirit with the singing of 
 birds a))ove the beggars on Granard door-steps, 
 
8 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 and witli the shrill shouts of l)oys hurling in a 
 Munster field when a goal is scored. 
 
 My theme, tlieu, in this book will be the people 
 of Ireland and their oneness — oneness of customs 
 and character and interests and even of language 
 traditions — their oneness, and, within the circle of 
 that, their curious variableness. The Irishman of 
 the North meriies into the Irislmian of llie ]\Iid- 
 lands, and he into the Irishman of the South and 
 West, as naturally as a similar phenomenon takes 
 place in England. If you travel by easy stages 
 from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear you will 
 notice how beautifully and gradually the Scotticised 
 accent of Antrim and Down undergoes change 
 after chano;e until it is transformed into the 
 bubbling brogue of Cork. It is the same, if you 
 take the Irish, instead of the Anglo-Irish, language. 
 There are numerous differences of accent — dialects 
 we call them in Ireland — but these surface differ- 
 ences are as nothing compared to the essential 
 unity of speech that links the four provinces 
 together. Country people, who have not travelled, 
 are, of course, inclined to stress these differences. 
 If you go to Connacht with a JMunster accent, you 
 need not be surprised to be told that your Irish 
 is not Irish at all, and if you take a Connacht turn 
 of speech to Ulster, some grey-headed old woman 
 will as likely as not shake her head at you, and tell 
 you that Connacht Irish is bad Irish. These are 
 comedies, however, which will always be with us 
 so long as individual patterns remain among 
 
THE IRISHMAN : INTRODUCTORY 9 
 
 countries acd meu. I know my arguments could 
 be used — or misused — to support a good many 
 theories which I do not wish tliem to support. 
 But, as a matter of fact, I put them forward in 
 proof, not so mucli of the positive tilings in which 
 I believe, as of some negations which will clear the 
 way for the understanding of those positive things. 
 I wish then merely to enforce the idea that Ireland 
 is not a country scored and riven internally by 
 impassable frontier lines — that the common talk 
 of the "two nations" in Ireland is an exaggera- 
 tion, and leads to confused thinking about the 
 country. 1 hope to touch on this point more 
 fully, however, in later pages of the book. 
 
 There is a nursery-rhyme in Ireland which 
 
 runs : — 
 
 Ulster for a soldier, 
 Connacht for a thief, 
 Minister for learning, 
 And Leinster for beef. 
 
 There is just as much sense in this as in most of 
 the generalisations we hear about the different 
 parts of Ireland — the dourness of Ulster, the 
 dishonesty of Connacht, the idleness of at least 
 the other two provinces. Almost all generalisa- 
 tions, I suppose, were in the beginning born of 
 some seed of truth. Nearly all the generalisations 
 about Ireland, however, have grown up into per- 
 verted and lying shapes, like monstrous light- 
 hiding trees, and in their branches the parrots of 
 the nations chatter innumerable foolish things. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 FARMS AND FARMERS 
 
 I MET a lady the other day who became very 
 sorrowful over the condition of living into which 
 the Irish farmer has now fallen. She recalled the 
 days of her girlhood, when the house of the large 
 farmer was a centre of hospitality and of a certain 
 kind of culture, in those days it was not a 
 surprising tiling to see a new hook — even a good 
 book — on a farmer's table. Nowadays, one is 
 astonished to see any new written matter there, 
 except " The Freeman's Journal " or " The Northern 
 Whig," or one of those useless series of volumes on 
 religion or history, of wliicli l)ook-pcdlars contrive 
 to get rid on the instalment system. 
 
 This lady's lamentation, I believe, had a heart 
 of truth in it. It was not merely the regret of one 
 who saw the past in rose-colour and the present 
 through a grey rain of dullness. If you go into an 
 old farm-house, the books that y<Mi see stored away 
 in some shabby case, and the prints that you see 
 hanging on the walls, tell you that a generation of 
 men once lived here, who, if not supermen of taste, 
 were at least giants in this respect compared with 
 those who have come after them. 
 
 10 
 
FAUMS AND FARMERS 11 
 
 The Irish farmer, indeed, the respectable son of 
 the ragged soldier of the land wars, is a failure in 
 the matter of fine living. When, instead of being 
 the respectable son, he is the respectable transmo- 
 grification of the ragged land soldier, his case is 
 little bettor. 1 use tlie word " ra,oired," let nie 
 say, in praise of good fighting, and not in any 
 belittling sense, for, like most of the talking sort of 
 peo]ilc, 1 prefer rags to selfish respectability. And 
 scKisii respectability is tiie daiig(!r wiiich at the 
 present UKnuent more than any other threatens the 
 delightfidness and human richness of Irish country 
 life. 
 
 Of course, it is impossible to make a true 
 generalisation that will cover all the farmers of 
 li'cland. Vov an Irish farmer may be anything 
 from a, ])riva.te gentleman on a small scale to a 
 labouring man on a large one. Farmers and 
 farmers' families make up the greater part of the 
 varied population of Ireland. There are in the 
 country nearly 600,000 farm holdings of all shapes 
 and sizes, and it has been estimated by a writer 
 who takes the average family as consisting of five 
 persons, that about 75 per cent, of the population 
 are directly dependent upon the soil. Con- 
 sequently, it will be seen that, if the country life 
 of Ireland is decadent and dull, the entire life of 
 the nation is in peril of decadence and dullness. 
 
 Personally, I believe that it is the better-off 
 farmers who arc most in danger of losing the 
 colour out of their lives. Suddenly finding 
 
12 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 themselves in possession of their own Land, or at 
 least with a good prospect of possessing their own 
 land, after a struggle of many generations, they 
 are like men who have come upon a fortune, and 
 are in dread that some neighbour should hear of 
 it, and cast an envious eye on it. They feel now 
 that their crops are their own, that their cattle are 
 their own, that their money is their own, in a way 
 that was never so before. They have arrived in 
 the Utopia towards which their fathers strove 
 as, outside Heaven, the chief end of man, and they 
 wish to rest for a while and enjoy the sweets of it. 
 Like the farmers in Mr Shaw's play, " John Bull's 
 Other Island," they just want tilings to be left as 
 they are, without change, without disturljance. I 
 was talking to a County Mayo farmer sometime 
 ago, who declared in a whirl of not very sensible 
 language : "I was always an extreme man, but I 
 don't believe in going to extremities." It was the 
 protest of one of the contented " haves " against 
 the boycotting and cattle-driving practices of some 
 of the discontented " have-nots." 
 
 He affirmed that men of property had now no 
 say in the management of the country — that 
 public life was in the hands of a " lot of lads and 
 tramps." lie said that he would like to see the 
 return of the old system under which country 
 government was in the hands of the grand juries 
 instead of, as at present, the County Councils. 
 He pointed to the road outside his house, and 
 declared that, under the old grand jury, this used 
 
FARMS AND FARMERS 13 
 
 to cost £14 a year for maintenance — £14, if I 
 remember, for six or eight miles, but that now 
 under the County Council it was, how much ? I 
 guessed twenty pounds, then thirty. *' Fifty-five," 
 he declared, fixing his disgusted withered face on 
 mc; "fifty-fifty pounds." 1 said that, perhaps, 
 the road was better, but the suggestion made him 
 twist his neck as though he were choking. As I 
 looked at the little hedge of white beard that 
 wandered round liis throat, and his figure knotted 
 in tlie chair, nud liis pecvisli old eyes, I seemed to 
 see in him the tragedy of a revolutionary — a 
 revolutionary who had aimed too low and got 
 even a little more than he desired. He was like a 
 once-starving man, who, being suddenly well-fed, 
 thought it irrational that anybody else should go 
 on complaining of starvation. 
 
 This old farmer is typical of a good many of 
 his class, I do not mean in his attitude to the 
 County Councils — most farmers will admit the 
 virtues of these — but in his general conversation. 
 The truth is, the Irish farmer has l)een demoralised 
 by three great forces — by the education given in 
 the National Schools, by landlordism, and by 
 agrarian politics. The schools de-Irishised him and 
 BO robbed him of a sort of culture, which made the 
 air about him exhilarating and the land a land of 
 memories and cnricliing thoughts. Agrarian 
 politics, taking the place of national politics, have 
 trained him to be a self-seeker, a materialist, look- 
 ing outside his own country to a foreign Parliament 
 
14 HOiSlE LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 for the beginnings of justice, and, if not for the 
 beginnings of justice, for doles. Landlordism, 
 again, by fining him for every effort he made after 
 better things, by a[)propriating all the fruits of his 
 labour as far as was in its power, trained him to 
 cultivate an idle, shiftless, untidy air, and to avoid 
 the very appearance of prosperity. 
 
 L'cland is in the result an untidydooking country, 
 a country of untidy houses, of untidy stone walls 
 and hedges, of untidy fields. Li many parts if a 
 gate is broken down, as likely as not it will be 
 fixed up temporarily with bits of rope, or with the 
 help of stones or thorn In-anclios, instead of being 
 properly repaired. Similarly, if a window is broken 
 or a spout injured, some hopelessly inefficient 
 steps will often be taken to stave off" the critical 
 day when a new window must be put in or the 
 spout properly seen to. People who do not 
 examine into the causes of things look upon this 
 untidiness of the country-side as a, deep-seated Irish 
 characteristic, born of Irish blood rather than of 
 Irish conditions. There could not be a shallower 
 thought. The L'ish farmer originally became 
 untidy in self-defence. lie knew that, if his house 
 looked beautiful and his hedges trim, the quick 
 eye of the land-agent would soon size him u]) as a 
 prosperous man, and raise his rent accordingly. 
 Ever since the 1881 Land Act enabled him to 
 stand up to the rent-raising landlord with some 
 prospect of success — certainly since the l)eginuing 
 of the present century — there has been a slow but 
 
FARMS AND FARMERS 15 
 
 sure tentleucy to improvement in the appearance 
 of Irish farms and farm-houses. If the tendency 
 has been too slight and slow for the censorious, it 
 is because the traditions of generations cannot 
 suddenly be made as though they were not, and 
 becniisc the liii-mcr continued to suspect, even 
 under the 1881 Land Act, that the landlord 
 still reaped no small benefit from the tenant's 
 improvements. 
 
 Now that the land is coming into his own hands, 
 the Irish farmer is showing, as I have stated, a 
 wonderful instinct for improving his surroundings. 
 The farms themselves are still shaggy — I say 
 shaggy rather than shabby — in appearance, but 
 the houses, especially the houses of the small 
 farmers, are beginning to wear a new air of bright- 
 ness and prosperity. 
 
 One thing that will strike you about the houses 
 in most parts of the country — it will strike you 
 especially forcibly if you have listened with an 
 attentive ear to all the old falsehoods about Ireland 
 — is their cleanliness. I do not mean that they 
 arc as clean as a new })in or as some of those si)ick- 
 and-span hydrangia-guarded cottages in North 
 Wales. But they are clean beyond all the con- 
 ceptions of nearly all the people who have ever 
 written about Ireland. Ireland has always been 
 set down as a country of dirty houses, as though 
 people living in London or Manchester ought to 
 feel almost unwell at the thought of it. The 
 picture is a false one. I am sure there is more 
 
16 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 dirt in London or in JMancliostcr than in all 
 Connacht. The comparison between town and 
 country may seem unfair ; but dirt is dirt wherever 
 you find it, and there has been too much uncon- 
 tradicted nonsense talked about the dirtiness of 
 Ireland. 
 
 If I seem to exaggerate on this matter, it is 
 because I wish to redress a balance and brino- 
 the truth nearer. Politicians, I believe, have for a 
 long time had the loudest say about Ireland, and 
 they have almost invariably maligned her either 
 out of love or from malice. Pro-Irish politicians, 
 wishing to make a pitialjle and sympathy-winning 
 sliow of the country, have dragged forward the 
 dirtiest and most dismantled mud hovels as 
 demonstrations of the wretched condition of the 
 people. Anti-Irish politicians, on the other hand, 
 have called up these same dirty and dismantled 
 hovels as witnesses to the fact that the Irish are a 
 half-savage and worthless people, less fit than 
 any other in Europe to be trusted with the govern- 
 ment of their own land. Thus a very deceptive 
 myth has been created — a myth which many of 
 us even in Ireland have begun to believe. All sides 
 have agreed to judge Ireland by its worst, and have 
 held up as the typical Irish home not anything 
 like the average Irish home, but the most 
 tumbledown and ill-kept Irish home they could 
 find. 
 
 Irish farm-houses vary, of course, from imposing 
 stone-finished dwellings, fitted out with pianos 
 

 \<A' 
 
 
18 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 After these come Daniel O'Connell aud the things 
 that grocers give away at Christmas, and occasion- 
 ally portraits of royal [)eo[)h; like Queen Vi(;toria 
 or King Edward Vil. These royal pictures are 
 sometimes to be seen in the same room with 
 portraits of Wolfe Tone and Emmet, and are to 
 be taken as proofs tliat the people want (theaj) 
 decorations, not that they are becoming loyal lo 
 the English connection. In Unionist homes, of 
 course, they have another meaning. Here they 
 add to the dulness of walla already made dull 
 by framed photographs — dismal photographs 
 dismally framed — of those who have emigrated 
 and those who have dieil. In the Orange homes 
 of Ulster, too, the portrait of King William the 
 Third, blue-coated and on a white horse, takes 
 the place of the portrait of Emmet, and the Kev. 
 Henry Oooke, the genius of bigotry and debate, 
 is the Presbyterian substitute for Daniel O'Connell. 
 In the poorer houses the black mantelpiece has often 
 as its proudest ornament a c(jloured delf statue of 
 King William of Orange seated on a charger. 
 
 Many of the houses in all parts of the country 
 make an attempt at civilisation and liveliness 
 with pictures taken from the l^higlish magazines 
 — pictures of pretty, llully women, pictures of 
 deanimalised animals, pictures of the splendours 
 of war. The country houses are not so bad in 
 this respect as the houses in town. The ugliness 
 of the country house, in other words, is more Irish 
 and therefore less deadly than the ugliness of the 
 
FARMS AND FARMERS 19 
 
 town house. But they are both tolerably — or 
 intoleraljly — ugly. 
 
 It is luy strenuous opinion that there is nothing 
 in the world more essentially a national matter 
 than taste — taste in dress, in food, in manners, in 
 household arni.ugement — and tl»;i,t a jH'.oph? with- 
 out natioiiality must always Ije a people without 
 taste. Ireland is a country whose nationality 
 has Ijecomc as weak as watered gruel, and, until 
 this is made stroni;- and I'oal again, as 1 believe it 
 will be with the help of tlie Gaelic spirit, 1 see no 
 prospect that Irish farm-houses will become 
 beautiful and colour-haunted places, inhabited by 
 distinctively-dressed women and w^ell-mannered 
 men. Even now, if one wants to see that part 
 of Ireland in whicli dress is least dull and manners 
 most gentle, one must go to the most impoverished 
 and most Irish districts, like Achill in the west. 
 
 Taste, however, in the sense of that fine spirit 
 whicli touches nothing that it does not adorn, is 
 a rare thing anywhere in Ireland. That it is 
 growing with the other new national forces is 
 siiown by tlie f;ict that every day it is becoming a 
 less sur[U'ising thing to see a few lloweis in bloom 
 outside a farmer's house or a labourer's cottage. 
 The Orangeman of Ulster, I may say, had always 
 these llowers outside his window. The Orange 
 lily, flaming and erect n[)on its stalk, is by good 
 fortune the emblem of all to which he clings most 
 passionately, and this has probably encouraged 
 him in the taste for growing flow^.rs. If 
 
20 IIOINIE LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 Nationalism luul been symbolised by a rose in- 
 stead of the shamrock, it miglit have made all 
 tlie dillcrence in the world in the i)[)pearan('e of 
 Irish country places. 
 
 Tiiere is no feature in the economy of the Irish 
 home which has been more commented upon than 
 the manure-heap which so often lies in shapeless 
 squalor not far from the door. This has been 
 pointed to as a breeder of disease— a direct 
 ancestor of consumption and the direst fevers. 
 I met a brilliant doctor some time ago who 
 quarrels with the evil fame of the manure-heap. He 
 admits its ugbness of look, and, at times, of smell, 
 l)ut lie holds that its iiiJhicnce on the hcndtli of the 
 pco})le lias been greatly exaggci'ated. If Irish 
 farm-children were brought up on good food — if 
 they had something more invigorating to eat and 
 drink than tea and white bread and potatoes and 
 American bacon — they would not have much 
 difficulty in resisting all the germs that a manure- 
 heap could nourish. I am inclined to think, too, 
 that if the Irish were not the worst cooks in 
 Europe, the country would be a good deal 
 healthier. Perhaps, however, this applies to 
 farmers of the middle sort, and to the people in 
 towns rather than to the poorest of the jx-asantry. 
 For the Irish certainly make tea adiniral)ly and 
 bake admirably, and l)oil and fry bacon siitliciently 
 well, and these arc practically all tlie foods with 
 which the poor have much acquaintance. 
 
 Th(i farmer who is aljove the line of poverty, 
 
FARMS AND FARMERS 21 
 
 however, occasionally gets his wife to experiment 
 with beef, and tlie result is often a woe to the 
 stranger. Never in any place have I seen such 
 leathery and impracticable gobbets of meat as I 
 have sat down to again and again in the houses of 
 small Irisli farmers. Perhaps the meat is taken 
 from some part of the animal that the townsman is 
 accustomed to scorn, or it may be that it is too 
 fresh. I do not know. I cannot believe, however, 
 that any meat would be so militantly bad, so 
 defiant to tlie human tooth, if it were treated with 
 proper gentleness in the cooking. Let me admit, 
 on the other hand, that there are many exceptional 
 houses which good cooking makes pleasant in the 
 memory, and that, even in those places where the 
 meat is most impossible, they can nearly always 
 cook a clii('.k(>Ji excellently. It is all a matter of 
 training. There is a low standard of taste in the 
 country, and bad cooking is but one feature in the 
 general disorder. 
 
 While on the subject of food, I may mention one 
 curious thing about the tastes of the country- 
 people. They look with a kind of modest shame 
 on their home-baked bread as compared with the 
 white loaves of the town. More than once, when 
 I have chanced to have a meal in a small farm- 
 house, have 1 had to listen to royal apologies 
 because there was no loaf, but only home-baked 
 bread, to sot on the table. Equally odd must it 
 seem to many that, not even in the poorest Irish 
 home, will the people dream of eating so passable 
 
22 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 a vegetahle as turnip-tops. I remember wlien I 
 came to Euglancl first and had turnip-tops oflered 
 to me in a restaurant, I felt a sort of disgust, as 
 thouoli 1 liad been asked to eat some indecent tliino;. 
 There is a change coming over frehmd in regard 
 to food and cooking as in most otlier matters. 
 Cookery is now being tauglit as an art in the 
 teclmical schools and elsewhere, and if the tables 
 of some of the farm-houses are not sensibly the 
 more aoreeable, it is because the conservatism of 
 the people holds out against new-fangled things, 
 even when they are sweet to the taste. I lieard 
 of one instance in which there was a more absurd 
 cause for tJui new talent's hcMiig left to rust without 
 use. A farmer's daui>iiter in the soutli, havinix 
 returned home with her training in coolvcry, was 
 permitted amid some excitement to prove lier 
 gifts in getting ready the midday dinner. She 
 prepared a magnificent steak pudding, the like 
 of which had never been seen in the iiouse before, 
 and her father glowed with enthusiasm at the 
 end of the meal. " We must always let j\Iary 
 do the cooking after this ! " he cried, and the 
 happiness on the children's faces echoed him. 
 All the greater was their surprise when the 
 woman of the house, hearing this, suddenly lifted 
 up her voice and wept. " Oh ! " she lamented, 
 wringing her hands. " After me cooking and 
 slaving for you for twenty years! And now to 
 have my own daughter put against me 1 " And 
 she finished with a flood of tears. Stunned by 
 
FAIMMS AND FAKMEUS 23 
 
 the new twist things liad taken, the family made 
 ]jaste to comfort her. Tliey weren't thinking 
 what they were saying, they explained ; tliey 
 were only meaning to tell Mary how they liked 
 her cooking. 
 
 Slowly the mother dried her eyes and cheered 
 up, and no one ever dared to propose Mary as family 
 cook again. Tims, in at least one liouse, the old 
 cookery won its decisive battle against the new, 
 and a family that might be taking in health with 
 its food still sits down at meabtimes to IkmtI ;i,nd 
 knobl»y inii.tlcr swiniining in watery gnivy. liCt 
 nic warn lasli generalisers, liowever, that this is not 
 to be taken as a picture of an average Irish home. 
 
 I am ab-aid I have wandered some way from 
 the point which led me to speak of food in connec- 
 tion will) farms. I mentioned it chiefly in older 
 to bring in an o])inion that bad food — a.nd Ijadly- 
 cooked food — is the cause of more weakness and 
 disease in Irehind than all the obtrusive manure- 
 heaps 3'ou will see between the house-doors and 
 the roads. 1 think the clothes of the people are 
 also somewhat to blame. Country people very 
 rarely change their clothes when they get a 
 wetting : often they have no other clothes into 
 which to change. Children and grown-up people 
 go about in the rain as though the sun were 
 shining, an<l in a wet country like Ireland the 
 result of this is bound to l)e disastrous. Add to 
 this the fact that in too many ])laces the houses 
 are built on regularly-llooded lands, and on the 
 
24 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 marshy edges of streams, and you have another 
 fruitful cause of Ijodily ills. 
 
 Poverty and the want of an enlivening natujual 
 spirit, however, are tlie real cause of the weakness 
 of Ireland. If disease results, for instance, from 
 the presence of an animal in the house during the 
 winter months, this must be put down in some 
 measure to the generi)sity of very poor pe<)[)k!. 
 One has heard so much of the pig as an inmate of 
 the Irish home that one is almost inclined to put 
 it down as a myth, so comparatively rare a sight 
 is it in the thirty-two counties. Thousands of 
 Irish people believe that the household pig is only 
 an English music-hall joke, for they have never 
 seen such a thing. It is only in poor and 
 unsheltered places, indeed, it is ever to be found, 
 and then, chiefly, in the cold stormy times of 
 winter. If in those shrill nights and days the 
 pig is admitted to the comfort of the hcartli, it by 
 no means follows that the house is turned into 
 a pig-sty. The pig is not necessarily a filthier 
 animal than the dog, but can Ije ecpially accus- 
 tomed to habits of cleanliness. I knew a most 
 refined and wealthy lady who kept a pig as a pet. 
 At the same time I am not going to argue that 
 the very poor people in Ireland can fight against 
 the dirt of circumstances any more than the very 
 poor people in any other country. Poverty, wdieu 
 she settles down in a country, always ends by 
 bringing in her little sister, dirt, to live with her. 
 Crowded houses are bad enough when the crowd 
 
FAIIMS AND FARMERS 25 
 
 is entirely composed of human beings. They are, 
 in the imagination of sensitive people, intolerable, 
 when added to the human beings are animals — 
 especially farm animals like pigs and cows — which 
 must at all costs be kept from perishing in the cold. 
 
 I must say, however, if I had a miserable hovel 
 and a pig, and had not the means of putting up a 
 second miserable hovel in which the pig could 
 enjoy that minimum of warmth and shelter to 
 whicli even j)igs liavc a natural claim, 1 would 
 count myself more cliaritable to give the animal 
 a corner of my hut than to send it out to a death 
 of cold. There is the obvious retort, " But why 
 keep a pig ? " Equally to the point would it be 
 to ask, "Why live?" The pig and the potato- 
 patch are among the first of the assets of life on 
 the small farms of Ireland. 
 
 It is impossible, I imagine, for any one who 
 has not travelled in Ireland to realise the bad 
 conditions in which the poorest of the peasantry 
 live. I might almost say, in which all the country 
 people live, for Irish farming life is unsatisfactory 
 from top to bottom. Especially so is the way 
 ill which the people have been driven out of 
 possession of the good lands. Ireland is a country 
 in which, to put the truth in an extreme way, 
 all the land not worth cultivating is cultivated, 
 and all the land worth cultivating is left out of 
 cultivation. It is a country in which the farmer 
 with ten talents hides them in a napkin, and the 
 peasant with only one talent — or a chipped piece 
 
26 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 of one — puts it to the most marvellous usury. 
 There is no parallel in Europe to the state of 
 ill-cultivation which results from this condition 
 of things. Indeed, as one interpreter of statistics 
 has put it, "such a fact as that G3.1 per cent, 
 (nearly two-thirds !) of the whole country should 
 be given up to hay and pasture is unparalleled in 
 the world." For the rest nearly a quaiter of the 
 surface of the country is barren and unfit even 
 for pasture, while a miserable one-and-a-half per 
 cent, is given up to " woods and forests." The 
 remainder — about I'J [)er cent. — is tlie dillicult 
 kingdom of the ])lough and the spade. 
 
 It is ail old story that nearly all lli<! best land 
 in ircilaiid is in ])Ossession of bidlocks. The faliK^ss 
 of JMeatli and the rich glories of the (Jolden \'ale 
 that runs across Muuster are too good for human 
 beings. So human beings withdraw,^ with some 
 grumblings, but still for the most })art courteously, 
 to America, in order that cattle may come in and 
 possess the land with their idle strength and the 
 will of God be accomplished. Sometimes the 
 purseless people, gathering from some vague part 
 of their souls the conviction that so wasteful a 
 system of land-using proceeds from the will, not 
 of God, but of the Devil, take it into their heads 
 to protest eliectively against sin, and a, cattle-diivc 
 
 * This is less true of the Golden Vale tliau of I\reath. In parts 
 of the (Julden Vale the people have .shown tlieiabelves Jiiagnilicc-nlly 
 tenacious, and no district in Ireland lias lieen mure progressive in 
 the matter of buildin" lahourer.-*' coLtayvs. 
 
FAllINIS AND FARMERS 27 
 
 ensues. A caitlc-drivc, it may be noted in this 
 connection, means simply what it says — a driving 
 of cattle. It does not mean cattle-maiming or 
 any other kind of brutality. There is more cruelty 
 to animals, 1 imngine, ])ractised in a single week 
 by the Irish mil way-(;()m[)anies, with their iidiumiin 
 methods of traus[)orting animals, than all the 
 cattle-drivers of the country would be guilty of 
 through an entire year. Occasionally, I know, 
 some ill-balanced person, made brutal by brutal 
 circumstnnces, creeps out in the night to wreak a 
 hysterical revenge on the dumb beast of a man, 
 who, he thinks, has wronged him. Things like 
 this, are done by isolated, ill-witted individuals ; 
 they are not the characteristic Irish deeds of Irish- 
 men. They are things tliat ha])pen, as Mr R. E. 
 Prothero, a Conservative Englishman, shows in 
 his " IMciisaiit Land of P^-jince," even amona' the 
 most humane people. Tliey broke out like a 
 disease among the gentlest people in France — the 
 people of Picardy — in land- war times, just as they 
 broke out during the eighties of last century in 
 Ireland. There are always some men whom excite- 
 ment and poverty iwdkc mad. 
 
 To return to the Irish — or anti-Irish — system of 
 land-using which gives a preference to bullocks 
 over men and women and joyous children, it must 
 be admitted at once that the cattle-drivers, vaguely 
 couscious though they are of the economic wrong 
 of the present system, would not necessarily them- 
 selves turn that economic wrong into an economic 
 
28 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 right, if tliey came into possession of the 
 rich hinds. Not immediately, at any rate. The 
 National Schools did not educate them to be 
 efficient Irishmen — farmers or anything else. Pro- 
 bably, until Sir Horace Plunkett's organisation and 
 other agencies have spread agricultural common- 
 sense in the country, the cattle-drivers would be 
 quite as uneconomic farmers as the red-faced 
 grazier who rolls about the country on his car 
 with his armed policemen following him on their 
 bicycles. The truth is, the Irish farmer is very 
 often ignorant of the first principles of agriculture. 
 His teachers, whether in or out of school, never 
 made any attempt to give him light on the matter. 
 In many parts of the country he will only till his 
 land when it is too poor to be of any use for 
 grazing purposes. When I was in a town in the 
 southern midlands lately, I noticed that a great 
 deal of the land to the north of the town was tilled 
 while to the south nearly all the fields were grass- 
 green. " You see," explained a friend who was 
 with me ; " the land on the north side is poor soil, 
 and they have to till it." 
 
 It is the poor people on the poor land, who 
 cultivate the ground with the most passionate 
 earnestness. Consequently, it is in the poorest 
 counties, not in the richest, that you will often 
 find the greatest press of life, the highest social 
 energy, the liveliest minds. I had rather live in 
 the most congested district in Donegal than on the 
 most fertile estate in Meath, and Achill Island 
 
FAKMS AND FAllMEllS 29 
 
 iuterests mc more than the Golden Vale. In 
 Meatli you may walk a long way and meet no 
 human being and see only an occasional isolated 
 human haJjitation amid the wastes of lavish fields. 
 The loneliness of this bullock-land came home to 
 me most overwhelmingly when 1 was told recently 
 how a visitor, tramping the country one Friday, 
 fell in with a herdsmen and began to talk of some 
 one who had lately died. The stranger asked the 
 herdsman when the funeral was to be, l)ut the 
 herdsman ]-c[)lied how would he know, as he had 
 seen no one to speak to since he had been to Mass 
 on Sunday. One hears a good deal of tlie loneli- 
 ness of Canadian prairies, but the loneliness of 
 some Irish pasture-lands is more tragically terrible, 
 for it is a loneliness ghost-haunted by one's vision 
 of the men who once dwelt there with their 
 families and tlicre flow of talk and their little cares. 
 Compare with this rich, idle, solitary country 
 the small brown fragments of farms that crowd 
 into each other's sides among the shelterless hills 
 of Achill. Here, amid the gloom and the dark 
 Avind, rises a land populous in parts with cot- 
 tages as a city with human beings. It is a 
 place of tiny dwellings and tiny farms. Out in 
 the fields you see the women labouring and bring- 
 ing wonder into the rocky darkness of the island 
 with their heavy ])ctticoats of red and blue that you 
 will not sur[)as3 for colour in a Titian. The men 
 dig the earth into strange shapes — furrows and 
 ridges that you would conceive might be dug 
 
30 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 blindly by night, Tli(3 social spirit is here, however, 
 making continual war on the Imnory hiireness of 
 thino'S. The people delight in dancing and song, 
 and old men scrape a living from twittering fiddles 
 on the earthen cottage floors in the evenings. Irish, 
 of course, is the language of the place, and Irish 
 are the ways. This is the more curious, l^ecause 
 no part of Irehmd sends the same continuous swarm 
 of people to England and Scotland as does Acliill. 
 Every summer, it is scarcely an exaggeration to 
 say, the population of Achill flings itself into 
 British fields to help with the potatoes and turnips 
 and harvests, and it seems as though few but old 
 men and the mothers of children are left to gather 
 in such harvest as there is at home. Excursion 
 trains carry the young and the strong and the ad- 
 venturous from this westernmost part of Ireland to 
 Glaso-ow or Liverpool for a fare of twelve shillings 
 — I believe there is even a boat which takes a 
 labourer from Westport to Glasgow for six shillings; 
 and in those few weeks of stoo})ing labour among 
 the potato and corn fields of England and Scotland 
 must be amassed sufhcient wealth to keep the 
 farms at home out of bankruptcy during the rest 
 of the year. 
 
 Sometimes you will hear foolish people, who nuiy 
 have seen an Irishman making a noise outside a 
 public-house in Liverpool, talking as though the 
 harvesters were a pack of uproarious, drunken, 
 good-for-nothings who go back to Ireland as poor 
 as they left it. The people at home know Ijetter. 
 
FAUINIS AND FARMERS 
 
 31 
 
 Tlie shop-keepers know better, for they allow debts 
 to run all winter, knowing that they will be paid — 
 with a little interest heaped-up — after the home- 
 coming from the British harvests. There are said 
 to be some 200,000 "uneconomic holdings" in 
 Ireland. Acliill must contribute her share to this 
 figure. It seems a ludicrous thing that people 
 should run farms which do not pay any more than 
 they should run shops which do not pay. There is 
 a certain royalty of extravngancc al)out it. Yet 
 many Iiish fjirniers could nfivo- make ends mccit,^ 
 were it not for tlie steady gifts of sons and daughters 
 
 * The following budgetfs of ty]>ical families in tlie congested 
 districts were collected and published liy Mr W. Micks in the first 
 Report of the Congested Districts Board (1892). They give a vivid 
 idea of the jxivcrty of some of the Irish farms. 
 
 No. 1 
 
 llKCEirTS ANT) Exi'ioNiUTunK OF A FAUihY in onUnnry circumstances, 
 
 THE lUOCEIfTS T'.RINO DERIVED FROM AGRICULTURE, FiSHINa 
 
 AND Home Industries. 
 
 Rficeipfs. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Expen 
 
 diture 
 
 
 
 
 Sale of heifer or bul- 
 
 
 
 
 Rent . 
 
 
 
 £2 
 
 
 
 
 
 lock 
 
 £4 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 County cess 
 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 8 
 
 Sale of live sheep 
 
 3 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 'I'ea ". 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 17 
 
 
 
 „ r'g • 
 
 3 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 Sugar 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 19 
 
 
 
 „ eggs 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 Meal . 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 14 
 
 
 
 „ (lannel or tweed 
 
 3 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 Flour 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 17 
 
 G 
 
 ,, com 
 
 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 Clothing 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 6 
 
 „ fish . 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 
 
 Tobacco 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 7 
 
 8 
 
 „ knitting, etc. . 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 One youn 
 
 gP'g 
 
 
 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 lm])lc>nents 
 
 
 1 
 
 4 
 
 9 
 
 ■^'^^ 4 4 £30 9 1 
 
 Home produce consumed by the family is valued at from £5, lOg. 
 to £10. 
 
32 
 
 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 who have gone to America. Thousauds of others, 
 like the Achill people, regularly cross over to 
 Great Britain and raid it for the gold and silver of 
 subsistence. 
 
 
 
 
 No. II 
 
 
 
 Receipts and Expenditdre of a family in very -poor circumstances 
 
 THE Receipts ijeing 
 
 DEllIVED F1U)M AoUICUI,TUKE 
 
 AND 
 
 FlHIIINO. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 licccipts. 
 
 
 
 
 I'Jxinnditufc 
 
 
 
 Sale of calf 
 
 £2 
 
 
 
 
 
 Rent . . . . 
 
 £1 
 
 10 
 
 „ two sheep 
 
 
 
 16 
 
 
 
 County cess 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 „ pig (profit) 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 Clerical charges, etc. , 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 „ M\ 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 
 
 Meal . . . . 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 V %'gs 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 Flour 
 
 (Groceries, etc. . 
 
 Clotliiiig 
 
 Lights 
 
 Utensils, tools, etc. 
 
 Tobacco 
 
 1 
 
 3 
 
 
 1 
 
 10 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 10 
 
 G 
 
 £9 IG £10 19 
 
 Home produce consumed by the family is valued at from £12 to 
 
 £17. 
 
 No. Ill 
 
 Receipts and Expenditure of a I'-AiriLY in the poorest possible 
 
 CIUCUMSTANCIW, TIIK UKCKIPTS IiKlN(J DEIUVL;!) FUuM AUUICUL- 
 TUUE AND LaUOUU IN THE LOCALITY. 
 
 Receipts. 
 
 Eggs . . . .£1 
 Sixty days labour at 
 
 Is. per day . . 3 
 Herding cattle . . 4 
 
 (irocei'ies . 
 
 £8 3 £11 9 
 
 Home produce consumed by the family is valued at about £6. 
 These budgets, by the way, do not include families in which 
 
 there are migratory labourers who bring a few more pounds back 
 
 from Scotland and England. 
 
 
 
 E. 
 
 cpei 
 
 (lit 
 
 ire. 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 Rent . 
 
 
 
 .£1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 County cess 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Meal . 
 
 
 
 . f) 
 
 17 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 (Mulliiiig . 
 (iroceries . 
 
 
 
 
 io 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 ., ■',■' : ^: ! ''V^ 
 
 > J 
 
 
 "5 
 
 
 
 
FARMS AND FARMERS 33 
 
 Three years ago, the Irisli Department of Agri- 
 culture issued a Report, showing the number of 
 Irish men and women who went out on this yearly- 
 adventure to England and Scotland, It was 
 estimated that the number of Achill workers who 
 t('.m[)orarily left Ireland in 1905 on this errand 
 was between 1500 and IGOO, the entire population 
 of Achill being, I believe, between 6000 and 7000. 
 The term "Achill workers," however, covers others 
 besides the people of Achill, and is used technically 
 to describe the lal)Ourcrs from Achill and neiirh- 
 bouring places who go to Scotland — and especially 
 to Ayrshire — to help in the work of potato-lifting. 
 
 These labourers are engaged in squads for the 
 season, and it is calculated that in a season of four- 
 and-a-half months one of them may with luck save 
 about eight pounds. The Achill labourers are said 
 to be distinguished from tlie other Irish migratory 
 workei's in several respects. Women take part in 
 the adventure as well as the men ; they are, if 
 anything, more numerous than the men. Further, 
 " there is more of the family group relationship 
 among the workers," and other workers are not in 
 the same way engaged in S(piads anel for the season. 
 At the same time, I imagine that a good many 
 people leave Achill for Great Britain every year 
 who are not classified as " Achill workers." The 
 Connacht men who go to England must include a 
 share of them, for 1 have talked with men in Achill 
 familiarly about England and one of them even 
 sang me a song about " Sweet Liverpool." 
 c 
 
34 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 The Counacht man with tlie keenest eye to 
 prosperity is said to go to Lancasliire for the 
 haying, then to Lincolnshire or Caniljridgeshire 
 for the corn harvest, and alter that to Warwick- 
 shire or Staflbrdshire for the potato-lifting. If he 
 has a saving disposition, and is fortunate enough 
 to have no fortnight's spell of unemployment, lie 
 may be able to take £20 home with him as the 
 result of five months' work. The number of 
 labourers who left Ireland in 1905 to help in the 
 work of British farms was 14,830. Mr W. G. S. 
 Adams, the statistican who prepared the Report 
 for the Department of Agriculture, estimates the 
 savings brought back (or sent back) by all these 
 ])eople to Ireland in a year at about £275,000. 
 A heroic-looking sum, which does infinite credit 
 to the Irish peasant but reflects somewhat on a 
 system which leaves the fields of Ireland deserted 
 and unprofitable. 
 
 The lives of the majority of these labourers and 
 of many of the small farmers of the west of 
 Ireland, I think, are the strongest disproof that 
 could be desired of the common theory that the 
 Irish are by nature a lazy people. "The western 
 peasantry," declared Sir Horace riunkett, in a 
 recent article in "The Nineteenth Century," "when 
 working for wages in ]^]ngland and Scotland, or 
 engaged in a struggle for bare life in almost 
 impossible physical surroundings, develop surpris- 
 ing industry and resourcefulness." Another close 
 observer, the editor of "The Irish Nation," wrote 
 
FARMS AND FARMERS 35 
 
 the other tlay in a similar mood : " The Connemara 
 man's capacity for spade-work on his own soil, to 
 which he is so intensely devoted, is almost 
 miraculous." I remember some years ago a 
 friend of mine, a Unionist and a doubter of 
 Ireland, went to Donegal on some agricultural 
 business for a Dublin Castle department, and came 
 back with the same story, " I used to believe 
 that all the Irish were lazy," he wrote to me, 
 " but since I came to Donegal I have seen men 
 forcing a livelihood out of ])alches of rocks and 
 stones, where any other people I ever met" — and 
 my friend had enthusiastic experience of farm- 
 work both in England and Scotland — "would 
 have thrown themselves over the cliffs in despair." 
 I'he truth is, tlicre is plenty of energy in Ireland. 
 It is, however, as often as not, energy wasted 
 through ignorance or through want of capital or 
 because the Irish farmer is most demoniacally 
 enei'getic where being energetic is least worth 
 while. Tbe tragedy of Ireland, indeed, is not so 
 much the tragedy of want of character — though it 
 is partly that — as the tragedy of waste of character. 
 Ireland is a country, not only of wasted fields, 
 but of wasted men and women. And of all the 
 conditions that waste the men and women of the 
 nation there is none more wasteful than this 
 system of settling them on small, hard-hearted 
 farms. 
 
 Sir Horace Plunkett, whom I have quoted 
 already — he is one of the few writers worth quot- 
 
36 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 ing about Ireland — has again and again drawn 
 attention to this wasteful sort of land-distril)ution. 
 It is especially wasteful because, not oidy are the 
 holdings in the poor districts absurdly small, but 
 frequently they lie about in scattered parts like 
 the torn limbs of Pentheus. " Often," as Sir 
 Horace puts it, "a holding of three or four acres 
 will be divided into as many as a dozen or twenty 
 patches, lying intermingled with patches held by 
 other tenants." It is like a child's puzzle of Find 
 the Farm. More inconvenient and more primitive 
 still is it when the fragmentary estates are shaken 
 up regularly in the basket and redistributed accord- 
 ing to the system known as "rundale." I re- 
 member when I was drivino- ulon2; the coast road 
 on the north of Donegal, one day, I noticed the 
 fields running up from the side of the road in 
 little lean strips, looking much as I had always 
 pictured the lands of village communities in my 
 imagination, exce])t for their ill-fed a[)pearance. I 
 asked a neighbour the meaning of these strange 
 shapes. "Well," he said, "they divide it like that 
 so as to make sure everybody has a good bit." 
 One cannot help having a grave doubt as to their 
 success in this laudable aim. 
 
 I will say nothing more alxjut the Irish farmer 
 here, but I suspect he will appear in a good 
 many of the succeeding chapters. I hope I have 
 been fair to him. I only wish the generations had 
 treated him less scurvily. Ireland of the coming 
 times must be built largely in farm-houses and in 
 
FARMS AND FARMERS 37 
 
 labourers' cottages, aud therefore the farmer and 
 the farm-labourer are to me potential heroes. The 
 building of Ireland, however, will be at the hands 
 of a new race of men, more cultured, more in- 
 dependent, more tolerant and at the same time 
 more intolerant, tlian the present. Ireland has 
 csc'iped the dcliumanising shock of the Ijukistrial 
 Eevolution. Sli-e will, I believe, discover an 
 industrial life tliat is nearer the life of the farms 
 than is tlie industrial life of most western countries 
 at present. She will fill her countrysides, 1 trust, 
 with energy and music and exuberant living, and 
 in doing this will beat out a new civilisation upon 
 the anvil of the world. 
 
 I had better, perhaps, say before closing this 
 chapter, that there arc many country places 
 in Ireland where the binds are rich and yet 
 not given up to death by grazing, but are cul- 
 tivated as well as the means of the occupier 
 will permit on a common-sense system of rota- 
 tion of crops (though it is surprising to see how 
 the principle of the rotation of crops is ignored 
 in some districts which have a fairly (;omfortal)le 
 look.) TlicsG farms have well-kept hedges and 
 iron gates that swing clear on hinges of prosperity. 
 The farmers' carts lumber along the roads with 
 brightly-painted red and blue cribs. The harness 
 on the horse is not make-shift but stout and well- 
 kept. The potato-plants are sprayed carefully to 
 a blue tint with the copper sulphate mixture to 
 keep away the blight. Even on the careless farms, 
 
38 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 however, potato spraying is common, for very few 
 farmers entertain the early religious objection of 
 one stout conservative that to put chemicals on 
 the potatoes was an interference with the will of 
 God. The farm-house of the prosperous sort has 
 little plantations of trees around it, and an orchard 
 and flower-beds, and often a lawn for games. 
 The houses are stone-finished and four-square and 
 roofed with slate — not so beautiful as the old 
 rain-marked thatched houses, perhaps, but much 
 more prosperous and settled-looking. Even in 
 these places of success, however, the atmosphere 
 of sleepy fatness which you will sometimes sec in 
 the south of l*hiuland is uncommon. 'I'lie diller- 
 ence between Ireland and the soutli of England, 
 I should say, is the difference between a dreaming 
 country and a sleepy country. Not that either 
 Ireland or the south of England can be compre- 
 hensively defined in these phrases, but there is an 
 element of truth in the contrast. 
 
 1 may note another thing. Irish countrysides 
 are so difterent from each other that it is not easy 
 to find an interpreting word which will cover 
 them all. Still, there is one thing which gives a 
 unity — a personality, as it were — to freland. It 
 is the glory of liglit which com(!H towards evening 
 and rests on every field and on every hill and in 
 the street of every town like a strange tide. 
 Everywhere in Ireland, north, south, east, and 
 west, the evening air is, as a fine living poet has 
 perceived, a shimmer as of diamonds. It gives a 
 

 
 ■•A 
 
 *^,', , J . *>',; ..•,V 
 
FAHMS AND FAllMERS 39 
 
 new woiKlcrfulncss to the untidy farms, to the 
 horses out in the fields as they munch the darken- 
 ing grass with a noise, to the carelessly clad 
 farmer hnngiiig over a, gate witli invisible lapwings 
 crying a])()V(> his head, to the stained white little 
 house with its oil-lamp not yet lit, and tlie glow 
 of the turf-fire growing momently stronger. I 
 believe and hope that this light is the syndjol of 
 some good thing whicli will one day find its way 
 into tlie l)reast and limbs of the Irish country- 
 maiS and make him, not oidy an imaginative and 
 therefore progressive farmer, but a man of high 
 dreams and a high heart who will esta1)lish in 
 Ireland a kingdom of the spirit, beautiful and 
 adventurous. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 MARRIAGES AND MATCH-MAKING 
 
 It is unlucky to niiu-ry for love, aceoi'diiig to nu 
 Irish proverb.^ Irchmd, i[^ oue cau trust the 
 general belief, is a land of marriages of convenience 
 rather than of marriages of romance, and uu- 
 doubtedly it is also a laud of happy marriages^ 
 Cousequently, the proverb seems to have a kind 
 of negative juHtification. I tliiidv my.siilf thai 
 there has been a good deal of exaggeration as to 
 the extent to which tlie match-makiug custom 
 prevails in Ireland. Certainly, there has been 
 some exaggeration regarding the evil eflects of 
 the custom. Still, to any one who res])ects the 
 economic or social independence of woman, it is 
 an uncomfortable thing that a custom of this sort 
 should be so general as it is, even if it is not a 
 frequent begetter of tragic consequences. The 
 mind of young Ireland is at the present moment 
 in the beginnings of revolt against it. In ancient 
 Ireland, it is interesting to note, it was the man 
 who always brought the marriage portion — not 
 the woman, as it is at present. As this was a 
 
 1 A contradictory proverb on the same subject runs : " Marry 
 for love, and induster for riches." 
 
 40 
 
MARRIAGES AND MATCH-MAKING 41 
 
 survival from times when men bought their wives, 
 the modern method must be considered on the 
 whole as an advance on it. At the same time, 
 the older system had many points of superiority. 
 Under it a certain ainount of tlie marriage portion 
 became the woman's to do witli as she liked. 
 Married^ women's property was secured to them 
 in Ireland many centuries before the Married 
 Women's Property Act conferred equal rights 
 upon women in Ei)gland. Tlic present system in 
 Ireland works out less advantageously for women. 
 Now, it is the husband who a[)propriates the 
 marriage-portion, or most of it. Sometimes, he 
 even uses the portion which his wife brings him 
 to marry off his sisters. And so the same fortune 
 may play a part in the making of many marriages, 
 and pass from man to man, almost intact. 
 
 Match-making, of course, is known in every 
 country where money is reverenced, and it is not 
 only in Ireland that men marry with an eye to 
 a dowry. Still, Irish match-making is a distinct 
 institution. It is not an unheard-of, though it 
 is an uncommon thing in rural Ireland for the 
 woman never to have seen the man she is going 
 to marry until he calls at her father's house to 
 take away the dowry. Cases even have been 
 known where the girl had not set eyes on her 
 husband till the marriage-morning. The marriage 
 is frequently arranged without any reference to 
 her tastes and wMslies. Her father comes home 
 one evening and tells her that he has got a bus- 
 
42 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 band for her, and she can but wait in patience 
 and wonder till the young man calls. 
 
 Marriages like these are brought about by a 
 curious machinery. It is often ditticult to know 
 who first suggests them. Sometimes, it is an old 
 busy-body with an appetite for glory. lie casts 
 his glance at a young girl and learns l)y some 
 means or other the amount of the rortuiie which 
 her father is willino- to aive with her. After this, 
 he puzzles his brains to find a suitaljle husband. 
 He picks out some fjirmer of su])stance and 
 broaches the matter to liim in hints, say, during 
 a drink at a fair.^ If tin; fai'incr scicms inclined 
 ibr the marriage-, the niat(;h-inak(;r g()(\s oil' and 
 arranges a confereiK-ci beLw(;en him and the girl's 
 father. It is then the bargaining begins, the 
 girl's father doing his utmost to lessen his pro- 
 spective son-in-law's demands by it may be fifty 
 sovereigns or it may be a cow. Indecent scenes 
 of heat and miserly excitement in connection with 
 
 * Mr Stei)lien Qwynn, in " A Holiday in Connemara," gives a 
 description of a match-making party, in which eight or ten of the 
 boy's friends called at the girl's house and met an e(|ual number 
 of her people. " The host sat at the head of the centre table ; ou 
 his right was the suitor's spokesman, on his left the bride's spokes- 
 man." This curious parliament settled the terms of the marriage. 
 " Lastly, tin; father dealt with the i|iu;stion of the ceremonial heifer, 
 which is always given witli a lu'ide by any fatlier who wi.-ilies to 
 hold up his head in the country. He must buy one, he said, having 
 no heifer beast that he would think good enough to send with his 
 daughter." The girl's mother was unollicially present during the 
 proceedings in a wall-cupboard behind curtains. The evening 
 ended in a dance, the old men sitting over their liquor at a table 
 in the corner till morning. 
 
INIATIRI AGES AND MATCH-MAKING 43 
 
 these preliminary meetings are a favourite subject 
 with Irish novelists, and indeed there is plenty of 
 material both for satire and tragedy in the match- 
 making business. Still, I think tlie novelists ex- 
 aggerate the dark side. If the custom were 
 {dtogetlic]' cruel and scHish in practice, Irish homes 
 would not be so full of a pleasant atmosphere of 
 affectiouateness as they usually are. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the custom of match- 
 making does not often seem to involve the forcing 
 of husl)ands on unwilling girls, as we might at 
 first think would be probable. Girls, 1 imagine, 
 are not forced into marriage against their will in 
 Ireland more frequently than, in other countries. 
 If the girl is not always at liberty to choose a 
 liusband, she is generally at liberty to refuse a 
 husband she does not want. I know a girl who 
 had to leave home in order to escape being married 
 to an old man with money, who had been afraid 
 to get married till his mother died, but the 
 situation, I believe, is not particularly Irish. 
 The very fact that the girls can and do leave 
 their homes so freely is a proof that Irish women 
 are not so slavishly dependent on their fathers 
 as, in the dislike of match-making, one may be 
 inclined to think. Very few of them find it 
 necessary to leave their homes, even if they refuse 
 to fall in with their father's choice of a husband 
 for them. The ordinary afi'ectionate father will 
 be guided by his daughter's preference in arranging 
 a match, and so it comes about that, even where 
 
44 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 the custom of match-making prevails, the young 
 people in kindly households choose their own 
 husbands or wives as unconstraiuedly as if they 
 were in America. 
 
 Perhaps, it is the husband rather than the 
 father who is the least commendable person in 
 many country marriages. Money is often a rare 
 and precious thing to a young farmer, and since 
 it is the custom to give dowries, a marriage 
 without a dow^ry would seem to him to be lacking 
 in one of its most agreeable incidents just as a 
 marriaf][e without a weddino--dress would be re- 
 garded as tragically imperfect by a bride. High 
 as may be his ideal of the purity of the home, 
 his ideal of man-iagc is often only an ideal of 
 convenience and comfort. Consequently, he does 
 not feel that he is belittling either himself or the 
 woman he marries in giving preference to girls 
 in proportion to the fortunes they bring. Like 
 all men, of course, he will take a good-looking 
 woman with a smaller fortune than he will expect 
 with a plain one ; for the Irish, I think, are 
 beyond most people lovers of personal beauty..,. 
 Still, it is often said that a plain woman with a 
 bit of money has a better chance of a good 
 marriage than a handsome woman with none. 
 Sometimes, when a very plain woman is mentioned, 
 you will hear remarks such as: "It will need a 
 good lump of money to get her a husband." But, 
 the money being sufficient, the husljand will 
 ultimately turn up even for her. 
 
MAURI AGES AND MATCH MAKING 45 
 
 Mauy girls, knowing tlie demands of husbands, 
 do not wait for their fathers to make matches for 
 them. They go out to America or elsewhere and 
 shive and scrape till they have a little treasure 
 collected, and, a few years after their departure 
 from home, they appear in their native parish 
 again. It soon becomes known that they have 
 a little money put by and are willing to settle 
 down, should a suitable home be offered. Re- 
 tui-ncd (Mnii;i;ints of this sort ;i,n; not at ;dl 
 iinconmion in purls of the west. Irish girls would 
 rath er marry Irish husb ands than Ameri cans any 
 day, though, it is said, they are generally deter- 
 mined to take no husband who is not worthy of 
 the fortune they have earned with so much lal)our 
 and adventure. If a girl who has l)eon to America 
 finds after a inonlli or two, or a year or two, of 
 waiting at home that no suitable husband is to 
 be had, she as likely as not packs up her trunk and 
 again steams olf for New York with an invincible 
 heart. Her courage and determination will appear 
 comical or tragical, according as you consider her 
 an isolated and ambitious figure or a symbol of 
 the eternal Odyssey of Ireland — the Odyssey that 
 does not end in a return. 
 
 With regard to the girl who has come home 
 from America, I may say that there are two 
 ()j)inions about lier in rural Ireland. Progressive 
 young farmers arc nither attracted by her, because 
 trav(d has sharnejied h(U' iutelli<'en(;e and Lauirht 
 her many desirable things about food and dress 
 
46 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 and housekeeping. She is awake and anil)itiou3 
 and is a wife of whom one may l)e proud before 
 one's neighbours. Other peophi take a less 
 favourable view of her. They say that America 
 has spoiled her, and taught her only airs and 
 extravagance and that she is no longer fit to be 
 the wife of a sim])le man. " Better one pound 
 of Irish money than ten of American. That's what 
 all the people about here will tell you," said a 
 cross-looking old man who spoke to me on the 
 subject one day. He meant, of course, that an 
 Irish-American girl would run her husband into 
 ten times as much expense as a home-staying girl. 
 
 He declared that American girls were only 
 wasters of money, who would lead their l)iisl)and3 
 a terrible and ruinous dance. They bad got used 
 in America to all sorts of things and were not con- 
 tent to live in an ordinary way like other people. 
 
 The chief marriage trouble in Ireland, how^.vev, 
 is not that so many people marry for money ..ijt^ 
 is that so many pe()[)le do not marry at all, Q¥. 
 not until very late. The labourer marries early, 
 because he is as well off at twenty as he is 
 likely to be at forty. The laljourer, too, is free 
 from the worries of match-making, though he 
 has usually sufficient self-interest to choose for 
 a wife a woman who will be able to add to the 
 income of the house at times of turnip-thinning, 
 hay-making, and the corn harvest. The most 
 unhappily placed man in Irel and as reg ards 
 marriao;e is the eldest son on a small farm. The 
 
IMARJllAGES AND MATCH-MAKING 47 
 
 other SODS adventure fortli to America, to Eugland, 
 anywhere out of IreLind, and marry when and 
 wliom they will. The eldest son remains on the 
 farm to which he is heir and which cuts him off 
 from all freedom of life until his father is in the 
 grave. The farm does not produce sufficient 
 wealth for two generations of married people, 
 and the eldest son, being usually a dutiful person, 
 waits on and on, obeying his parents, and filling 
 the position of a farm-labourei', without the ffirm- 
 labourer's hiie or his fieedom to marry and 
 establish a new home in the world. 
 
 This tragedy of the eldest sou is common in all 
 parts and provinces of Jreland. It is as common 
 in Protestant as in Catholic places. It is as 
 common in valleys that look rich and prosperous 
 as it is on hill-sides that are stony and barren. 
 As a c()ns('(juciice of this, in Ireland the eldest son 
 is often the last of the family to grow up. It 
 does not seem an abuse of language that unmarried 
 men should be called "boys" and unmarried 
 women "girls," no matter how old they are, as 
 is the custom through the country. (As an in- 
 stance of this custom, I have heard a man describ- 
 ing how, when he was doing some work near a 
 house, a girl ran out and interrupted him — " a 
 middle-aged girl of about forty," he said.) The 
 eldest son seems to me to be frecpiently a middle- 
 aged boy. Jlis [)arents treat him as a boy no 
 matter what his age, and, as often as not, he 
 remains one till they die. 
 
48 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 I have heard that among the very poor people 
 the okl age pensions liave made a difference in 
 the position of the eklest son. His energies are 
 no longer altogether occupied in making ends meet 
 for his parents and himself His parents with 
 their pensions are almost self-supporting, so that 
 he is free to go out and look for a wife if he 
 wants one. According to report he has already 
 in many cases done so. 
 
 Ireland is largely a country of late marriages 
 
 and of few marriages. Emigration has drained 
 
 the country to an unnatural degree of the young 
 
 men and women of the marrying age, and those 
 
 who remain are, as I have shown, frequently 
 
 unable to marry until all tiie exuberance of life 
 
 has gone out of them. Ireland stands third from 
 
 ^ tlie bottom in a list of thirty countries, whose 
 
 \y^^ marriage-rates have been compared bythe liegistraij:, 
 
 j^rii<\'^'^ General of England. During a recent period of 
 
 "^ \^ ten years, Ireland has shown an annual average 
 
 of only ten people married for every 1000 of the 
 
 population. Of the thirty countries compared, 
 
 }^y> Servia has the highest rate — 19.5 per 1000: 
 
 ^wX^h^ England, along with Wales, is twelfth in the list 
 "^^^ with 15.8; France sixteenth with 15.1. This low 
 
 Irish marriage-rate has, it is only right to say, 
 been rising steadily during the }»ast twenty years. 
 The average birth-rate in Ireland gives as serious 
 cause for alarm — at least, for desire for ckange — 
 as the marriage-rate. During the ten j^ears, 
 1894-1903, it reached a lower average than any 
 
MARRIAGES AND MATCH -AJAKING 49 
 
 of the thirty countries to whicli I have referred 
 except France. The low French birth-rate, how- 
 ever, is due to the infertility of marriages ; the low 
 Irish rate to their fewness. 
 
 This hist hic.t nMuiiids us that thinujs in In^land 
 nro ]i()t so had as a superficial glance at the 
 statistics would suggest. It has been pointed out 
 by Mr F. F. Montague in " Lcabhar ua h-Jijireanu " 
 that, while the birth-rate per head of the popula- 
 tion has declined rapidly during the last ten years 
 in most couu tries, in Ireland during the same 
 period it has remained stationary. The same 
 writer quotes a paper read before the London 
 Statistical Society in 1906 to show that, if we 
 consider the birth-rate, not with reference to the 
 whole poj)ulation of the country, Init witli reference 
 to the po])ulation of a cliild-l)caring age, the 
 position of li'cland is still happier. Ireland, it 
 is proved, is inhabited by almost the most fertile 
 race in Europe, and " Ireland and all its divisions 
 alone among all the countries for which figures 
 could 1)0 obtMiined show an increased fertility." 
 Protestant Irehmd and Catholic Ireland share this 
 virtue of fertility as they share so many others. 
 
 Until the last paragraph or so, we have been 
 discussing marriage for the most part with reference 
 to the farming classes. Marriage, it may be said, 
 is a sul)ject of perpetual interest and speculation 
 with them. If old country-women meet a pleasant 
 girl on the road and get into talk with her, it is 
 unlikely they will proceed on their journey without 
 
 D 
 
50 TTOIME LIFE IN lEELAND 
 
 havino- mnde a few humorous ol)servations on 
 
 o 
 
 husbauds and marriage. Among otlier classes 
 there arc few marriafje customs whicli differentiate 
 Ireland from America or England. The gentry, of 
 course, follow the English fashion, and the most 
 notable thinoj about the town artisan is that, like 
 the artisan elsewhere, he gets married by preference 
 on a holiday like Easter JMonday and goes off with 
 his bride for a day's excursion. 
 
 Among the working classes in one Ulster town, 
 according to an exaggcrator, it is the way of the 
 women to support their husbands, lie affirms 
 that it is the ambition of unmarried girls in the 
 town to get sulHcicntly W(:ll-]>aid work to be able 
 to keep a liusband. A ty})ical girl, lie declares, 
 will go to the clergyman and give him notice that 
 she is going to marry, say, Jimmy Brown. The 
 clergyman warns her that Jimmy is an irregular, 
 thriftless character, who cannot be relied on to 
 earn a steady living. " And what does that 
 matter?" cries the girl. " Amn't I as well able 
 to keep a man as Lizzie M'Keown that was married 
 on Joe Harbison last week ? " In Ulster, people — 
 average people — are not married "to" but always 
 " on " each other. 
 
 The young Protestant in the commorcial and 
 professional classes has also tlie reputation of being 
 something of a materialist in his love-making. It 
 is said that, when he hears of a girl who might 
 suit him as a wife, he asks three ipiestions : 
 "What's her religion? How old is she? Has 
 
>/<: o^- 
 
 MARRI AGES AND MATCH-MAKING 51 
 
 she any money ? " Sometimes, however, he falls in 
 love before he knows what lie is doing and marries 
 a poor girl, or even a middle-aged one, or, more 
 terrible still, a Catholic. 
 
 Mixed ni.'iri'iagcs — marriages between Catholics ^p^ 
 
 iind Protestants — -are, as 1 show elsewhere, as 
 frequent as is wise, though usually, s o far as I 
 hrwe scfiu,..Jliiiher the husband or the wife takes ' 
 the " mixed " element out of the marriage by 
 Lecoming converted to the religion of the other. 
 Tlie cK'rgy of all tlie cl)ui(!lies ()|)pose these 
 marriages tooth nnd nail. The Catholic clergy arc 
 often blamed for the inlcusity of tlieir oj)[)osition, an 
 opposition which, 1 imagine, has become more 
 uncompromising since the present Pope was raised 
 to the i^i|)al Cliair. Within the last few years, a 
 Cathobc, whose mai'i-iage with a Piotestaut girl an 
 Irish Bishoj) refused to sanction, had to cross over 
 to England to get a priest of his own church to 
 marry him, and no doubt the same kind of thing 
 had frequently happened. Protestants whom 
 this annoys ought in fairness to consider the 
 attitude of their own clergy in regard to the 
 question of mixed marriages. Some years ago 
 I remember hearing from a broad-minded Presby- 
 terian minister how he himself had prevented a 
 mixed marriage in the south of Ireland. A 
 Presbyterian soldier in a Scottish regiment, which 
 was quai'tered in a southern town, fell in love \N'ith 
 a Catholic girl, and again and again besought her 
 to marry him. The girl at last consented ou 
 
52 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 condition that the soldier would become a Catholic, 
 and the soldier, probably not caring two pins for 
 any religion, promised to do so. The Presbyterian 
 minister heard of this and rushed off to the Colonel, 
 urging the latter to save the man from so fatal a 
 step. As a result, the Colonel immediately 
 bundled the man out of the town and had him 
 transferred to another regiment beyond the circle 
 of temptation. "J'he minister boasted of all this to 
 me as though he had performed a noble work. 
 Perhaps he had. 
 
 It may not be out of place here to remark that 
 love-making is a good deal commoner in the towns 
 than in tlie country, and in Protestant ])laces than 
 in Catholic places. The common joke among 
 country boys in Ulster — "Are you doin' any 
 coortin' this weather " ? — springs from social 
 conditions in which the sexes meet on easy and 
 intimate terms. These conditions have their bad 
 as well as their good side. Ulster pays for its 
 greater sexual freedom by a n-e(|U(;ii(-y of illegili- 
 mate biitlis unlcnown in the other provinces. 
 
 An illegitimate birth, of course, does not always 
 imply immorality of a gross sort, and the people 
 recofjnise this for all theii' Puritanism. 1 liave 
 known more than one admiral)le woman in country 
 places whose child had no legal father and whose 
 neighbours were sulHcientl}' human in their 
 philosophy to treat her as they would any married 
 woman. Usually, the child is called frankly after 
 its father, though not always. Its ros|)ectability 
 
MAIUUAGES AND JMATCH-MAKING 53 
 
 is even measured in part by the father's — or 
 supposed father's — position in life. I once was 
 startled to hear a very religious lady, who was 
 praising a farm-labourer say : " And indeed it's 
 no wonder he is a decent man, for tliey say liis 
 father was a Presbyterian minister." No one need 
 construe this as a thrust at the Presbyterian clergy, 
 who are as clean-living a body of men as could be 
 found in any country. Even among them, how- 
 ever, a rare exception will be found. As for the 
 laity, there are a suflicieut number of exceptions 
 among them to make "Holy Willie's Prayer" a 
 very intelligible poem in Ulster. 
 
 On the other hand, I think the Ulster atmosphere 
 is sufficiently clean if you contrast it with that of 
 the majority of civilised countries. But the 
 sensualist disguised as a lover is unquestionably 
 one of the persons of the play. The clergy and the 
 parents make no attempt to teach sexual common- 
 sense to the young. Among the middle classes 
 in Belfast, liuudreds of youths fling their arms 
 round girls with an undesirable promiscuity, and, 
 indeed, consider the girls rather dull — " chil- 
 blains " is an expressive word I have heard them 
 described by — if they object to the business. The 
 curious thing is that practically all this amorousness 
 which goes on within the middle classes them- 
 selves is quite moral from a conventional point 
 of view. It is none the less demoralisinnf on this 
 account, for, where it exists, there can of course 
 be no intelligent friendship between the sexes. 
 
54 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 The young male amorists, too, frequently end by 
 going forth on adventures among women outside 
 their own class. 
 
 I think, nevertheless, there is a good deal of 
 respect shown to women in Ireland. A youth does 
 not take a girl into public-houses for drink in any 
 part of Ireland as you will see youths doing in 
 London and in Mancliester. Neither will you see 
 him cndn-acing her on tram-cars, and in all surts of 
 public places, with the frequency which is so odd a 
 feature of the social phantasmagoria in cities like 
 London. In London these pul)lic cml)races seem 
 to pass without notice, hi Hclfjist, in the day- 
 liglit hours, hugging couples would, ! am afraid, 
 l)e figures of satire for small boys. 
 
 I am getting away from thesultjeet of marriages 
 and matchmaking, however. Before closing the 
 chapter, let me return to the point, if only to 
 mention one curious custom connected with 
 marriages. It is considered the right thing in 
 some parts of Ireland, if you are going along ihe 
 road with a gun and meet a newly married couple 
 driving on a car, to fire a shot into the air in 
 their honour. I have seen a man suddenly catch 
 up his gun, in a public-house, where he was hav- 
 ing a drink, and rush out into tlie road to lire a 
 shot skywards with every sign of enthusiasm when 
 a bridal couple had driven by. 
 
 The excitements of wedding-days have lessened 
 during the last century, for a hundred years ago — 
 even, I have heard, a generation ago — there were 
 
JMARllI AGES AND MATCH-MAKING 55 
 
 stiJl traces of something that looked like the cus- 
 tom of marriage by capture in many country 
 places. Something more than traces, indeed, if 
 half tlie stories al)out cigliteenth century abduc- 
 tioiiH (',;ui be. bcbevod, I do not know whether 
 the abduction habit liad its origin in tlie (jiaelic 
 parts of Irehind, or among the invaders from 
 England. Whichever may be the case, there is 
 no doubt tliat young men in those days often 
 sought, girls who liad fortunes by force where tlicy 
 now seek them by peaceable persuasion. In 1G34 
 t he Irish Parliament had to pass a measure for 
 punish ing thosa-who "carried away maydens that 
 be inlieritorSj'' and a century later abduction was 
 made a capital otience. It was easy to break 
 through the spirit of the law, liowever, for if the 
 girl was ])la,('ed in front of tiie man on tlie horse 
 on which lie carried her oil", she, and not he, was 
 technically responsible for the abduction. 
 
 The excitements of eighteenth century Ireland, 
 it must be remembered, were the excitements of an 
 a1)norinal country out of which many of the finest 
 elenients had be(!n driven by persecution and war. 
 
 I a.m assured by a. friend that traces of marriage 
 by ca[)ture were still to be found in some })arts of 
 Cavan till fairly recent years, and that it was not an 
 unknown thing for the bridegroom to ride up chal- 
 lengingly on horseback to the bride's house, and for 
 the bride to climb out to him through the window. 
 This was but a tradition and a ritual, the meaning 
 of which had probably been long forgotten. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 STORIES AND SUPERSTITIONS (OR WHATEVER YOU 
 LIKE TO CALL THEm) 
 
 It is a common opinion that the Irish are very 
 superstitious, and, reading some books, you would 
 imagine tliat a great number of Irish men and 
 women passed their spare time in trances on the 
 liill-sides, heai'iug the music and l)eli(>hling the 
 goings-lbrth of the fairy hosts. Ireland, however, 
 is by no means a country of visionaries, 1 tliiuk 
 that for every visionary you meet with, you will 
 discover ten or even twenty people who occupy 
 their idleness with jTcandjlin"- on tlie Enoli.sh iiorse- 
 races. Still, there is no doubt tliat the old people 
 — especially in the least Anglicised })arts — liave 
 plenty of strange and incredible stories to tell, 
 though the grown-up boys and girls smile across 
 the fire at them with materialistic wisdom. 
 
 There are few parts of the country where you 
 will not meet with some belief in witch-craft. 
 Especially common is the belief in that form of 
 witch-craft by means of which the JRitter is 
 taken from your cows to enrich a wicked neigh- 
 bour's churn. I have heard it said that old women 
 are still to be found here and there in the lields 
 
STORIES AND SUPERSTITIONS 57 
 
 oil May Eve, gathcriug lierbs over which to 
 murmur their butter-stealing spells. Usually, 
 however, these moony ceremonies do not seem to 
 be a necessary [)art (^f the bewitchment. " A very 
 small (lr()[) of milk laken from tlie cow is CTiough 
 to work tlie charm," is the account a girl from 
 the midlands gives of the business. It seems to 
 be with the idea of preventing the milk in its 
 pure state from falling into doubtful hands that 
 a farmer's wife in Meath, of wliom I have heard, 
 never sends a present of milk to a poor ncigld)our 
 without first putting a pinch of salt in it. " It 
 is not right," as the girl from whom I had the 
 story said, " to let milk out into the wind without 
 putting salt into it." The same girl told me a 
 curious sl,ory of l)iitter-stca,ling in her nciglibour- 
 liood. There was a woman, siic said, living not 
 far from her father's, who was noticed getting a 
 powerful lot of butter off her few cows. One 
 day her motiier determined to get to the heart 
 of the mystery, and went to the woman's house. 
 She said when she came home tliat she had found 
 the woman standing on a creei)io stool witli her 
 head down into tlie churn and lier rosary in her 
 hand. " It was praying she was," she declared, 
 " but maybe to the devil." The girl's mother cer- 
 tainly was inclined to believe that something 
 dishonest was afoot, for she herself had been 
 brought uj) in a home wlierc there was a charm 
 nailed to tlie bottom of the big churn to protect 
 the butter. 
 
58 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 I have heard many simihir stories of stolen 
 butter in County Mayo. One of them tokl of 
 an old woman, with one lean cow, who always 
 managed to have two crocks full of hutter to 
 take with her to market — much more than she 
 could ever have come by honestly. She was 
 going to market one day, with her ass carrying 
 the two crocks, when, just as tliey were crossing 
 a bridge, something broke, and the crocks of butter 
 fell out into the road and were smashed. Well, 
 would you believe it, whatever was the matter 
 with the luitter, no dog or bird or beast would 
 touch or taste it, l)ut it lay thci-e on the I'oad 
 rotting till tlie sun had nuilti'd it and I he horsiis 
 and cattle had trodden it away. It was some- 
 thing more than butter that was in it, my in- 
 formant concluded. 
 
 If stories like these were oidy told as anecdotes 
 to make a fireside interesting, they would have 
 comparatively little value as revelations of the 
 mind of a people; but they are nearly always 
 related as a part of the history of the story-teller's 
 neighbourhood and even of his family. Usually 
 they deal with matters that have come within 
 his own experience — real or imagined. When 
 they go back as far as the days of his grandfathers 
 and greatgrand lathers, they havt; a way of being 
 more artistically shaped and more dclinite in 
 detail. One does not often hear as full a story 
 concerning contemporary or recent events as the 
 story of the scholar and the three black bottles, 
 
STOIMES AND SUPERSTITIONS 59 
 
 wliich 1 heard as an old true story during my 
 last holiday. It related to the time when the 
 poor scholars used to be going about the country 
 — the ])oor scholars who, as every one knows, 
 had knowledge more than common men. A 
 learned man of them arrived one night in a farm- 
 house, where, churn as they might, they had been 
 getting hardly any butter from the milk. " Put 
 a pot on the fire," he said to the farmer's wife, 
 when he heard the story, " and boil some milk in 
 it, and I'll find out wlio it is that's stealing your 
 butter." lie got a large black bottle from the 
 farmer's wife, and, when he had sealed and corked 
 it, he put it into the pot where the milk was 
 boiling, saying a number of words that you 
 couMn'L uiideistiMid wliih^ he did so. After a 
 while, the bottle cracked, and with that tliere 
 was a sound like a cry far away from the hous(!. 
 " Listen to that," said the scholar. " I'll put in 
 another bottle and you will hear something more." 
 He closed up a second black bottle, and put 
 it into tlie j)ot, saying more words over it. AVhen 
 iu due course this gave a crack, there was a shriek, 
 as of a w^oman in great pain, much nearer the 
 house than the first cry. "Do you hear that?" 
 said the scholar, becoming interested iu his w^ork. 
 " It isn't long till she'll be here now and she 
 yelling in her pain. So bolt the door and don't 
 let her in till I tell you." With that he took a 
 third bottle, and saw that the cork was in it, and 
 was just going to put it in the pot, when there 
 
60 HOISIE LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 came a loud bangiiig and shrieking at tlie door. 
 *' Let me in, let me in ! " cried a voice I'rom the 
 outside, whining and supplicating. "Oh, you're 
 killing me, you're killing me. If anything else 
 cracks in me, I'll surely die." The man at the 
 fire told them to wait, however, and to make 
 her confess that she had stolen the butter, and 
 promise never to do it again, while all the time 
 the groaning and moaning went on as if she were 
 in fearful torment. As he put the third bottle 
 into the boiling milk, she let a shriek out of her 
 and confessed, so he took tlie bottle out again, 
 and told tliem to let her in. Tliey let her in, 
 and saw that it was an old woman from near the 
 ])hice. She confessed everything, and promisevl 
 to give up the butter, so they let her oil". After 
 that, they were never troubled with scarcity of 
 butter again. 
 
 Mr W. B. Yeats, whose "Celtic Twilight" 
 shouhl be read by all wlio are interested in Irish 
 beliefs and visions, tells us in his collection of 
 " Irish Fairy and Folk Tales," that, when the 
 butter has been bewitched as in the story of the 
 three black bottles, " sometimes the coulter of 
 a plough will be heated red-hot, and the witch 
 will rush in, crying out that she is ])uriung. A 
 new horse-shoe or donkey-shoe, heated and put 
 under the churn, with three straws, if possible, 
 stolen at midnight from over the witch's door, 
 is quite infallible." I do not wish in the present 
 book, however, to quote passages from books 
 
A C;.\i;i.lC STOKV-TF.r.T.KR. 
 Wiidiiii Coik-IIo. of the ClaMhvJji. u'lio u\m a f^iU at a iwciil OiiwiJilas fo, her stoiy-fclliii^.) 
 
STORIES AND SUPERSTITIONS 61 
 
 which everybody oiiglit to have read for them- 
 selves, l)ut rather to give a sense of what I have 
 seen with my own eyes, and heard with my own 
 ears, in Irehind or in the company of Irish people. 
 Consequently, 1 will oidy mention here those 
 beliefs which I know to be in existence, because 
 I have met and spoken to the people who believed 
 in them. 
 
 Very intimately connected with the belief in 
 the sto.'ilini;- of 1)utter by witchcraft is the ])e]ief in 
 the evil ey(! or something like it. I'his belief may 
 be expi'CvSsed in the words of a Meatli girl, who de- 
 clared that " any one that has a grudging eye, to 
 cast it on a live thing would make it decay away 
 if it was not given to them." One of the tradi- 
 tional charms to j^rotect cattle from being bewitched 
 or " grudged " she described as follows. Get a bit 
 of string, and put a certain numl)er of knots on it, 
 saying a prayer over each knot. The string should 
 then be tied to the animal's tail in case any one 
 had overlooked or grudged it. Another charm, 
 " when a nice beast has been grudged," is to get a 
 bit of the ij;rudij[er's coat and burn it under the 
 beast's nose. 
 
 It is not only from witches with the gift for steal- 
 ing butter — tliere are some delightful stories, by the 
 way, of witches who transform themselves into 
 hares, and milk their luugldjours' cows in tliis guise 
 — and from ])eo])le with malice in their eyes that 
 the imaginative peasant aj)prchends danger. There 
 is still plenty of belief in fairies in the country — 
 
62 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 thougli it is not nearly so common, T think, as tlie 
 belief in witchcraft — and in spite of the fact that 
 fairies are known as " good people," sensitive 
 parents none the less object to having their ciiildren 
 cai-ried off by them. A iMayo man lately told me 
 how, when he was a child, he was never sent out 
 of the house on a message down the road without 
 someone putting a coal or something of the; sort in 
 his pocket to })rotect liim from unseen harm. 
 There is no need, on the other hand, to suppose 
 that it is necessarily a tragic fate for a chikl to be 
 taken off by the fairies. A good many years ago, 
 there was a lame boy in Mulranny on the coast of 
 JMayo who used to 1)0 sent out to mind tlie cattle. 
 One time he disap[)eared for two days, and, when 
 he came home, he said that he had Ijeen with the 
 fairies. As a proof that something supernatural 
 had happened to him, he went out where there was 
 only grass then, but where tliere are houses, and a 
 hotel, and a railway station now, and he ]tro[)hesied 
 that a big house would be built here, and anotlier 
 house tliei-e, and something corresponding to a rail- 
 way station in yet a tiiird place, lie pointed out the 
 exact spots where all the new buildings in Mulranny 
 stand to-day, and not only this but he traced the 
 line of all the foundations. This, it must be re- 
 membered, was in days long l)eibre any one 
 expected the great hotel to be built, and hefore 
 there was any thought of railways in those parts. 
 I heard the story as a true one from a man who 
 himself was brought up in Mulranny. 
 
STORIES AND SUPERSTITIONS 63 
 
 I heard anotlier story from him of a young 
 woman who was stok^i hy the fairies in the same 
 county — a story that, no doubt, has its parallels in 
 other districts, for I seem to have heard something 
 like it 1)0 fore. Tlicrc was once a younijf fnrmcr, 
 he said, who lived in such-and-such a place, and 
 who did not believe in the fairies, so that he would 
 walk past a certain fairy rath on any night of the 
 year without caring. One night he was going 
 along the road, and liad got past the rath when 
 he saw a curious sight coming towards him. This 
 was a coffin being carried by three tall, dark men, 
 with no one in the place where the fourth man 
 should have been. The young farmer thought this 
 was queer. However, out of respect to the dead, 
 he offered to help the bearers of the coffin, and 
 went over and put his shoulder in the foujih })]iice. 
 The bearers walked forward in silence, but they 
 had not gone far when one of the three said that 
 it was time they had a rest. AVith that they laid 
 the coffin down on the road. The young farmer 
 may have looked away for a minute, or sometliiug 
 of the sort. Anyway, he suddeidy woke u]) to 
 the fact that tlic three others had disappeared, and 
 tJKit he was alone with the coffin lying at his feet 
 on the road. 
 
 After a while, when the others showed no signs 
 of coming back, something impelled him to look 
 inside the coffin, and there he saw a beautiful, 
 fair-haired young woman, dressed not like a corpse 
 at all, but in her ordinary clothes. She opened 
 
64 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 her eyes wliile the young man was looking inside, 
 and after a minute she sat up in tlie cotlin, and he, 
 l)eing quite fearless, helped her to stand up and 
 to come out on to the road. I le asked her how 
 she came to be there, but in answer to all his 
 questions she only shook her head, so that he 
 thought she must be dumb, and, not knowing what 
 to do with her, took her along with him to his 
 house. Well, she lived tliere for a good many 
 years, looking after the house and keeping every- 
 thing in beautiful order, but never opening her 
 mouth to speak. 
 
 Amon<>' other thino-s, she knitted him a lono;- 
 sl('.(!V(;d vest oi' waistcoat, (»f which he was wry 
 proud. He was W(;aring this at a fail' twenty or 
 thirty mik'S away from his home one chiy, when he 
 saw two men, an elderly man and a young one, 
 looking at him very hard. First they looked at 
 liis waistcoat, and then they looked at liim, and in 
 the end they (;ame u]) and asked liim where lie 
 had got the vest. He asked them what they 
 wanted to know for, and they told him that there 
 was some kind of a stitch or pattern in it which 
 they recognised, and that they only knew one person 
 who could do that kind of work, and that they had 
 lost her some years ago. The young niuii became 
 interested in what he heard, and, thinking that 
 this mioiit be the father and brother of the siirl in 
 his house, lie told them the story of the cofhn anil 
 tlie three tall dark men, and askiid them to go 
 home with him and see the girl, 'riiey went, and. 
 
STOIMES AND SUPEltSTITIONS 05 
 
 sure eiiongli, it was the old man's daughter. They 
 were iu great delight at first, but, wheu they 
 found that none of them could get the girl to speak 
 a word, they hecanic as moui'iiful as they had pi'C- 
 viously ]»een ha[)])y. The girl then went off with 
 the two strangers, and the young farmer promised 
 to go and see her soon. Some nights after this, he 
 was walking down past the fairy rath again when 
 he heard voices near him. He stopped to listen 
 and discovered that, whoever the speakers were, 
 they were talking about the young girl, and 
 grumbling about how they had been prevented 
 from carrying her off on that first night. " Well," 
 said one of them with satisfaction, " he has never 
 been able to make her talk any way." " No," said 
 another with a malicious chuckle, " and never 
 will. It's not likely he'll ever notice that silver 
 pin behind her car, and pull it out so that she'll 
 get back her speech." 
 
 On hearing this, the young man hurried off as 
 fast as he could without being perceived, and on 
 the next morning at break of day he rode off to 
 the distant farm iu which the girl's family lived. 
 He found the girl sitting over the kitchen fire, 
 and going up behind her, he saw the silver pin at 
 the back of her ear just as he expected. He pulled 
 this out, and no sooner had he done so than she 
 got back her power of speech, and sat up and 
 began talking to him. After that, her father 
 and brother came in, and everybody was so 
 happy that a match was immediately made of 
 
 £ 
 
66 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 it between the girl and the young farmer. It is to 
 be presumed that they lived happily ever afterwards. 
 
 Of course, tlie fairy whose credit is most generally 
 and firmly estaljlished in Ireland is not the fairy 
 who steals children or beautiful young women, 
 sometimes leaving a changeling in their place, 
 but the Banshee — the fairy-woman whose cry is 
 a portent of coming death. You will not have 
 to go into the Irish-speaking districts, or even 
 into the Catholic districts, to find people who 
 believe in the Banshee. You will meet Protestants 
 in County Antrim who believe that there is a 
 Banshee in th(;ir family, ;iiid who say that tluiy 
 have heard ils terrible ciy. Occasionally, loo, 
 one meets amono- the Ulster ih'otestants with the 
 belief in witches, but the last County Antrim 
 girl who said to me that she knew a witch 
 added significantly that the witch was a " Boman 
 Catholic." 
 
 To return to the Banshee, I have never myself 
 met any one who had seen her in human shape, 
 but that she has a human and alterable form many 
 of the legends attest. " Sometimes," declares Lady 
 Wilde in " Ancient Legends of Ireland," " the 
 Banshee assumes the form of some sweet-singing 
 virgin of the family who died young, and has 
 been given the mission by the invisible powers 
 to become the harbinger of coming doom to her 
 mortal kindred. Or she may be seen at night as 
 a shrouded woman, crouched beneath the trees, 
 lamenting with veiled face ; or flying past in the 
 
SrORIES AND SUPERSTITIONS C,7 
 
 moojiliglit, crying bitterly." Anotlicr portent of 
 death, comparable to the Banshee, is the Coiste 
 Boclliar — the Death (or, rather. Deaf) Coach — 
 which, according to some, is a kind of licarse 
 drawn by headless horses. I know a man of line 
 intellect from Connemara who declares that he 
 has seen the phantom. He says that he was 
 driving out one day with some other people 
 when tliey saw the silent shadow of a hearse 
 di'awn l)y foui' hoi'ses [Kissing along tlie side of 
 tlie road. Tlieic was no hearse in reality to cast 
 this sliadow. 
 
 Besides the Banshee and tlie Soundless Coach, 
 there are numerous other evil portents in Ireland. 
 Here as elsewhere it is bad luck to have a hare 
 rumiing across your path. Here as elsewhere you 
 will find the rhyme a,I)out mag[)ics : 
 
 One for sorrow, 
 Tavo for joy, 
 Three for a marriage, 
 Four for a boy, 
 
 or one of its variants. It is unlucky to kill 
 robins, for they got their red breasts at the cross 
 of Christ. It is unlucky to meet a priest or a red- 
 haired person when one is setting out on a journey. 
 " God forgive you, father, you've spoilt my day 
 on me," said a holiday-making girl the other day 
 to a priest she met on tlie road. ** God forgive 
 you, Bridget, for your foolish superstition," replied 
 the priest. All the same, as her friend told me, the 
 girl did not meet the l)oy she went out in the 
 
68 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 hope of seeing that day. It is unhicky to meet 
 funerals and not to turn with them, and I 
 remember a medical student who was at college 
 with me saying that funerals always brought him 
 luck. Once, on one of the few occasions that I 
 was ingenuous enough to put money on a horse, 
 he and I had just been sending a postal order 
 from the country town where we were staying to 
 a Belfast book-maker when a funeral came up the 
 road. My friend insisted — half laughing at his 
 superstition — that we should go along with it, 
 and we even accompanied it into the graveyard, 
 where a Methodist minister delivered an address, 
 holding up the conduct of the dead young man 
 as an example for the bystanders to follow. I 
 am curiously puzzled by myself when I look 
 back on it, and wonder what the minister would 
 have thought if he could have seen behind 
 our serious eyes to tlie thoughts that wei'c con- 
 cerned, not witli death and l)eauty of conduct, 
 but with the fortunes of an English horse-race. 
 The horse we backed did not win, I may add, 
 and, having lost five shillings out of an already 
 empty pocket, I no longer believed in the super- 
 stition al)out funerals. 
 
 The superstition that it is uiducky to let a red- 
 haired person into the house the lirst thing in the 
 New Year is, of course, not confined to Ireland. 
 In many places, too, outside Ireland ill luck is 
 supposed to be foretold by a crowing hen or a 
 cock crowing at irregular times. On one occasion 
 
STORIES AND SUrEUSTlTlONS G9 
 
 a farmer's daughter told me how, when her uncle 
 lay ill of blood-poisoning, " two hens came up 
 to the door, where they do be strolling about, 
 and one of them clapped her wings and 
 crowed loudly." Said she to the serving boy, 
 " What the deuce is the matter with the hen ? " 
 " I'm damned if I know," he replied. " With 
 that," continued the girl who told the story, " T 
 gave her a clatter with a stick and killed her — she 
 was an awful old lien. Thou the other, a young 
 one, came up to the door and crowed iind (•lap[)cd 
 her wings, and I threw the stick at her and lamed 
 her. She had to be killed, and we made soup 
 out of her. When my aunt came down the stairs 
 she asked what had liaj)pencd to the two hens, 
 but 1 didn't like to frigliten licr by telling her 
 what the lien had done. And my uncle died the 
 third day after that." 
 
 There are, as might be expected, a good many 
 families in Ireland in which the death of one of 
 the members is often preceded by the dis- 
 appearance of the rooks from the trees round 
 the house, and ominous dreams are as common 
 in Ireland as in most places. I knew one very 
 beautiful and clever old Presbyterian lady who 
 usually dreamt that she had lost one of her teeth 
 a short time before the death of any of her near 
 relations. She seemed to have other gifts of 
 prophecy, too, for she told me how she had seen her 
 husband's face in a dream three times before ever 
 she set eyes on him in real life. 
 
70 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 Besides the beliefs in omens, witclies, fairies 
 and ghosts — beliefs which exist in a hundred other 
 forms than those I have mentioned — the country is 
 full of strano;e stories about human beinirs who can 
 chanoe themselves into animals, and of animals 
 who have lived for a time as human beings. I 
 have already told how old women who bewitch 
 butter are sometimes supposed to turn tiiemselves 
 into hares, this being a more convenient shape for 
 the purpose of committing their thefts of the 
 necessary drops of millc. 
 
 in County Mayo j^eople will tell you that you 
 must never say "Glirrie" — this is a semi-phonetic 
 spelling of the Irish word fjirrj'hiad/i, "a hare" — 
 to a M/Oann, 'J'liis is because one of the JM'Oann 
 women of those parts was in a former age suspected 
 of being a witch, and because a farmer whom she 
 was injuring discovered her in her witchery. See- 
 ing that his cows were ceasing to yield any l)utter 
 in their milk, he began to spy on them in the 
 field, and, one day, ;is lie was looking llirongh a 
 space in the wall, he saw a hare busy taking 
 the milk from them. Tie didn't let a sign or 
 sound out of him then, but the next time he came 
 he brought the greyhounds with him. Well, the 
 hare turned up again and began milking one of 
 the cows, and, when she was in the middle of her 
 work, he set the dogs at her. Off she ran, and the 
 dogs after her, over wall and field, and wall and 
 field, till she came near Girrie M'Cann's cottage. 
 The dogs were nearly touching her when she 
 
STORIES AND SUPERSTITIONS 71 
 
 reached it, and she made a wild leap for the window 
 of the cottage as if it was her last chance of safety. 
 Just as she was jumping, one of the dogs caught 
 her scut in his mouth, though the window was too 
 small for him to follow her. The farmer on 
 coming up saw the dog standing there with the 
 hare's scut in his mouth, and signs of blood on it 
 where it had been bitten off. He went into the 
 house to sec if the hare was there, but he only 
 fouiitl old Mrs M'Cann lying in the bed, groaning, 
 and with m;irks of blood on the floor and tlie 1)0(1- 
 clothes. She denied that any haie had come in 
 tlirough tli(! window, .-uid the farmer looked at 
 her, and knew that she herself was the hare. 
 After that, lie told the neighbours what he had 
 seen, and from that day slic was always known as 
 "Girrie" iM'Cann. "And that's why," wound up 
 the man who told me the story, " the J\i/Canns 
 get angry if you say ' Girrie' to one of them." 
 
 The O'Tooles of Clare Island are said to become 
 angry in a similar way if seals are mentioned in 
 their presence. There is every reason why they 
 should, if tlie story one hears about tlieii- ancestry 
 is to l)c believed. In the beginning of the genera- 
 tions of the O'Tooles, we arc told, a man of the 
 family was wandering one day towards the edge 
 of the island, which lies amid the coloured and 
 wonderful ti<lcs of Clew Bay. In the water by the 
 shore he espied throe seals swimming about, and 
 something gave him the idea that they were not 
 ordinary seals. He had not been watching long, 
 
72 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 when, sure enough, the three seals came suddenly 
 up to the land, stepped out of their skins, and 
 began dancing and running along the shore in the 
 appearance of three beautiful young women. The 
 man of the O'Tooles watched them for some time 
 in amazement, but it did not take him lono- to 
 recover his wits and decide upon a plan for captur- 
 ing one of them. lie crept down towards where 
 the skins were lying, hiding himself IVum time 
 to time l)ehinel a big stone so that he should not 
 be seen. Having reached the shore, he caught up 
 one of the skins, and made off with it as fast and 
 as secretly as lie could towards his home. Jle 
 knew well that the seal-woman would follow where 
 her skin had been talvcn, so he hid it cunningly in 
 the thatcli of his house, where no one \vould be 
 likely to think of looking lor it. 
 
 When the seals had had their fill of dancing and 
 play on the shore, they went back to look foi- their 
 skins, and their surprise was great to find that one 
 of these was missing. 
 
 That night, O'Toole was sitting in his house, 
 when, as ho had expected, a beautiful woman in 
 her bare pelt came to the door and asked him to give 
 licr back her coat. Tie did not, let on that liolviiew 
 anything al)out it, tlu)ugli she cried and moaned 
 and Ijcsought him to give it l)ack again. He held 
 out so well, and had hidden the skin so cleverly, 
 that in the end she had to settle down and stay on 
 in his house, for she could not go away without 
 her skin. 
 
STORIES AND SUPERSTITIONS 73 
 
 Well, she lived there a good number of years, 
 and had four children, and O'Toole and she were very 
 happy together, when one day during his absence 
 a lire broke out in the house. It soon spread to 
 the tliatcli, and there was a queer smell of singeing. 
 The woman knew it was her seal's coat was burning, 
 and climbed up to where it was, and, when she had 
 found it, off with her to the water as fast as she 
 was able. She forgot all about her husband and 
 all about her children, and notliing would do her 
 but she must get into the seal-skin again, and go 
 out swimming into the sea where the other seals 
 were. O'Toole never got her back again, but there 
 was a hole in tlie seal's coat where it had been 
 burnt by the fire, and when the seals came up 
 swimming near tlie land you could tell this one 
 by tlie burnt patch. 
 
 " You needn't l)clieve the story," said the man 
 who told it to me, "if you don't like ; but it's a 
 queer thing the O'Tooles have always been known 
 for their short arms. And if you called one of 
 them a seal, there would be murder." 
 
 Ireland — at least, that part of it which lies 
 wilhin sound of the sea — is full of stoiies like 
 this. " It would not do to injure a seal," said 
 an old Kerry (isherman to a friend of mine ; " the 
 seals are God's blessed creatures." 
 
 On the other hand, if it is wrong for a man to 
 work injury among the creatures of the deep, it is 
 equally wrong to have commerce with them of a 
 more intimate kind. Old people of Kilkee will 
 
74 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 tell you of a man who used to be there within 
 living memory, and who took a mermaid as his 
 wife. No])ody in the place would speak to him, or 
 have anything to do with him. 
 
 The sea is full of strange mysteries, indeed, and 
 the best course for men is to walk warily and 
 separately among them. I was out in a lonely 
 part of St John's l^oint in Donegal about two 
 years ago, where a friend of mine was examining 
 the dilapidated fragments of an old church. Near 
 the ruin was a kind of harbour where some fishing- 
 boats lay, and a number of fishermen were pidliug 
 out a boat full of their bi'owu nests over the heavy, 
 pur[)h3 \val<',r. There was a youiig man standing 
 beside me, dressed in Sunday respectabibty, an 
 extraordinarily handsome, strong man, with dark, 
 shining hair, and eyes the colour of a dark pool 
 among rocks. His bowler-hat and the watch-cliain 
 running across his waist-coat, with a medal iianging 
 from it, gave him an air of town ordinariness for 
 all his beauty. We got into conversation about the 
 fishing in those parts, and he was telling me how 
 the fish were being destroyed at a terrible rate by 
 some curious kind of monster. I said that 1 sup- 
 posed he meant porpoises. 
 
 " Well," he said, " [)i-'rha[)s yon miglit call tliem 
 porpoises, but they're no por])oises." I asked him 
 what did he think they were then. 
 
 *' I don't know whether tlierc's any name for 
 them," he said. "But I call them magic fish, for 
 there's maaic in them, and all the fishermen here 
 
SrOIlIES AND SUPERSTITIONS 75 
 
 know it. One of them came into tlie bay there 
 on the other side of the Point last year, and the 
 fishermen had the idea that it was a porpoise, and 
 tlic Covernment sent round a ])oat to destroy it. 
 I>ut when tliey hnd this one destroyed, it's a queer 
 tiling they could find no sign of its body, but two 
 other ones came in its place to look for vengeance 
 for it. Tiiere's no use trying to destroy them, 
 because, for every one you destroy, there'll come 
 two others in place of it. And tlie fishermen 
 know that now." 1 do not remendjcr whether lie 
 mentioned any other way, save the way of war, to 
 get rid of these magic enemies. 
 
 In some parts of the country., where the imagina- 
 tions of the people are not filled with the sea 
 and its miracles, a beast whicli causes most ex- 
 (|uisite tej'ior is one whicli 1 always heard called 
 in my childhood by the name of the "man-keeper." ^ 
 Jt is a children's bogey. It is, I think, something 
 about the size of a frog, and it haunts spring wells. 
 I know that, when I was a child, 1 never got down 
 on my knees l)eside a country well for a drink of 
 water without looking carefully to see whether the 
 eye of this small monster was anywhere watching 
 me. If a man-keeper catches you drinking out of 
 a well, he always makes straight for your mouth, 
 and, no matter how tight you may close it, he will 
 force his way in. 1 used to hear a story of a man 
 near Maghera, in County Derry, who was chased 
 by a man-keeper. He ran down the road with all 
 
 ' The lizard, I suppose. 
 
7& HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 liis niiglit, Jiiid, fueling that he was Ijoiiig over- 
 taken, lie made a superliuniau eflort, and leaped 
 over a six-foot hedge into a Held. The man- 
 kee^^er leaped the hedge, too, and with a series of 
 vicious little jumps and wrigglings got into his 
 shut mouth, and, I suppose, into his stomach. 
 Salt, they say, is the only thing with which the 
 evil beast can be forced into the open world again, 
 and it was with salt the Mao;hera man was treated 
 when he reached home in torture. 
 
 I remember tliere were horrible tales about 
 dangers from weasels and whiltrets which ati'ected 
 my childish imagination almost as painfully as 
 man-keepers. It was said that, if you injured a 
 weasel, it woidd whistle on the other weasels in 
 the neighbourhood, and that they wouhl all come 
 together in answer to the call, and give you the 
 chase of your life. 
 
 There are a good many stories in Ireland which 
 have nothing to tlo with either fairies or with 
 animals, magical or otherwise, ])ut arc a part of 
 the religious imagination of the people. lilvery 
 holy well in the country — and they are suflieiently 
 numerous— has its cycle of stories of marvellous 
 cures, and the votive rags of those whom God has 
 restored to sight, or to purity of Ijlood, or to the 
 power of walking, flutter on the thorn-trees near 
 them, a testimony to the Irish faith in the eternal 
 wonderfulness of life. There are many secular 
 stories of the saints, too, which still continue among 
 the peo})le — stories of brave adventures in tlie old 
 
STORIES AND SUPERSTITIONS 11 
 
 times, and of timely interventions in modern 
 days. 
 
 1 heard a gruesome story not long ago of the 
 help given by a saint to a young married woman 
 in time of need. She was married to an old 
 farmer, wlio lived in a lonely place, a mile and 
 more away from any otlier house, and she had nob 
 been married long when one night, in the middle 
 of the night, he took sick without any warning. 
 She got up and called the servant-girl to go and 
 get help, and while the girl was away the old 
 man died on her. She laid him out, and then 
 sat down to watcl) till the neighbours came. 
 Suddenly the corpse rose up in the bed and began 
 to make the most fearful faces, for it had died 
 without anoiutnicnt, and the devil was in it. It 
 would lie back and then sit up niid be<^in niMkiiig 
 fac(^s ag.uii, and the poor woman was nearly at 
 her wits' end with terror. It kept doing this 
 for a long time, and she praying and nearly out 
 of her mind, when a knock came at the door, and 
 she let in a tall man, dressed something like a 
 soldier, and with a piece of a stick, or a wand, in 
 his hand. He went over to the side of the bed 
 where the corpse was, and touched it with the 
 stick, and it lay Ijack on tlie bed calm and quiet. 
 Then he sat down to watch with the woman, and 
 every time the corpse moved he touched it again, 
 and it subsided. 
 
 He stayed with her till near dawn, and just 
 before he was going he turned to her and put the 
 
78 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 stick into her hand, and said, " Take tliis, and 
 whenever lie l)egins to make faces, just touch him 
 on tlie shouhler with tlie stick, and he'll lie (hjwn 
 aoaiu. lie died without oil, and the devil's in 
 him, and, if 1 hadn't come, he would have got up 
 and torn you to pieces." She thanked him for 
 his kindness, and he was turning to go away, when 
 she said, " But before you go, you must tell me 
 who it is I have to thank for what you've just 
 done. I see you're not a priest, and I don't think 
 you're a doctor, but who are you ? " " Well," 
 he said, " do you remember hast All Hallows' Eve, 
 when you and the other girls were drawing lots 
 for what saints you would have to protect you 
 during the year, and you drew Saint Dominic? 
 The other girls laughed at you, but you said you 
 were quite content with the saint you had drawn. 
 AVell, I'm Saint Dominic, and this night I have 
 come to reward you." So he left her the stick, 
 and, every time the corpse would try to get up 
 and make faces, she hit it a tap, and it lay down 
 aoain. In regard to this story, 1 may say it is 
 still a Hallowe'en game in some parts of Catholic 
 Ireland to draw lots out of a hat for guardian 
 saints. 
 
 I have not yet touched upon one of the most 
 interesting of all the streams of story-telling 
 which are to be found in Ireland — tlie legends 
 of the heroes who loom over the beginnings 
 of Irish history with something of the immense 
 o-lory of the gods and the demi-gods of Greece. 
 
STORIES AND SUPERSTITIONS 79 
 
 Lady Gregory lias i)ut the world iu her debt by 
 collecting these stories in at least one imperishable 
 volume, " Gods and Fighting Men," and in another 
 which is full of beautiful things, " Cuchullain of 
 Muirthcmne." Most of these stories she found 
 in books and in manuscripts, but bits of them 
 she heard, too, from the lips of country people 
 with inherited memories. In proof of the long 
 memories of the people, she tells us in one of her 
 essays how some time ago a poem was taken 
 down from a countryman, and how the same 
 poem was iifterwards found in a generations-old 
 manuscript in the Irish Academy. " There was 
 only one word different," she says, " between the 
 written and the spoken version, and in that it 
 was m.'uiin^st that the j>en had made tlie slip and 
 not the tongue." These poems and stories, 
 naturally, arc remembered most clearly where the 
 people sjieak Irish, and the exactness with which 
 a poem like that just mentioned has been handed 
 down through the generations helps us to under- 
 stand how the Homeric epics may have survived 
 so long before they were ever put into writing. 
 
 Speaking about heroic stories reminds me of the 
 surprise I once felt, when I was in County Sligo, 
 to hear from a farmer a story which Mr Neil 
 Munro has told in his most delightful book, " The 
 Lost Pibroch." 
 
 Sligo is a county overmarked with little circular 
 forts which some associate with f^iiries, some with 
 old Danish invaders. The farmer was talkiuLf to 
 
80 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 me about the Danes, wlicii a land-afrent who was 
 present said to him, "Don't tliey say the Danes 
 used to make some kind of jjeer out of heather ? " 
 The farmer said yes, hut that no one now knew 
 how they did it, and then he tokl us the story of 
 the chieftain who sacrificed his sons and himself 
 rather than let the Danes know tlie secret of his 
 clan. The story was more blurred than, in ]\lr 
 Munro's version, but it was essentially the same, 
 and those who wish to read one of the best of 
 short stories should turn to Mr JMuiu'o's "The 
 Secret of the Heather Ale," Some people may 
 imagine that the farmer read the story in " The 
 Lost Pibroch," but I am certain that it came from 
 tradition, and that Mr Munro himself heard the 
 story from some old Gael on a Scottish hill-side. 
 
 Lately, many enthusiastic people have been 
 going among the Irish-speakers and taking down 
 the old stories, and a good many of these have 
 been pulilished in the Irish language. ]\rost of 
 th(! stories which have been collected have been 
 in the nature of fairy-tales rather than heroic and 
 semi-historical legends, but even of the latter 
 there has been a considerable share. , Naturally, 
 many of the stories are only remembered in hints 
 and glimpses, and the imagination of the people 
 has too often become confused as a result of 
 poverty and long subjection. Lady Gregory 
 gives us an instance of the mixed condition into 
 which some of the stories have fallen. She was 
 told on Slieve Echtsfe that " Oisin and Finn took 
 
STORIES AND SUPEKSTITIONS 81 
 
 the lead for strength, aud Samson, too, he had 
 great strength." " I would rather hear about the 
 Irish strong men," she said. "Well," was the 
 reply, "and Samson was of the Irish race, all the 
 world was Irish in those times, and he killed 
 the Philistines, and the eyes were picked out of 
 him after. He was said to be the strongest, but 
 I think myself Finn MacCumhall was stronger." 
 
 I believe Irish imaginations will return soon to 
 a consciousness of that literature of beauty and 
 nobleness in which it expressed so long ago its 
 abundant joy in living. It is impossible to 
 pnulict exactly the cIVcct which this will have on 
 Irish life aud art and literature. We cannot be 
 sure that in the result Ireland will produce a great 
 drama, like the legend-loving Greek, or a great 
 music-drama, like the l(\gcnd-loviiig (Jcrmaii. Wo 
 can be sure, however, that Irish life will become 
 infinitely richer when it is coloured with a sense 
 of its heroic circumstances. It will be put, too, 
 in the way of building up a great home litera- 
 ture, for memory and imagination will be restored 
 to it, and these, with character aud passion, are 
 the makers of all the beautiful things in the world. 
 Of memory and imagination — even of character 
 and passion — the Irish heroic stories are clear and 
 inexhaustible wells. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 SCHOOLS AND CHILDREN 
 
 Tf you wish to obtain both the liappiest and the 
 imliappiest look at contemporary IrcLand, you 
 must go into the National Schools — the word 
 " National," of course, being used in a strictly 
 Pickwickian sense. The cliildren, vivacious, alert, 
 quick-eyed, are a golden proof that, despite all the 
 emigration and decay and jioverty, Ireland is not 
 yet a ruined country, but has even now within her 
 the makings of a pleasant and virile nation. The 
 school buildings, on the other hand, too often bear 
 witness to the fact that by the authorities who 
 govern Ireland the cliild is made of less account 
 than the criminal. Oidy a revolutionist at the 
 present moment would pr()})ose that the authorities 
 should make the schoolhouse as clean, say, as a 
 church, or as comfortable as a police-barracks. 
 
 At the same time there is a great deal of 
 mournful nonsense talked aljout llie schools of 
 Irehmd. One sometimes hears the National 
 Schools spoken of as though they were for the 
 most part lilthy barns — with birds flying in and out 
 through the holes in the roof, or, should the school 
 not be ventilated in this ready way, haunts of 
 
SCHOOLS AND CHILDREN 83 
 
 fetid and disease-laden air in which children jrrow 
 up with pale faces, dull eyes, and songless voices. 
 There is no doubt that many of the town schools, 
 especially in Belfast, are overcrowded and un- 
 Jicalthy, and that some of the country schools arc 
 more exposed to tJic moods of tlie sky (,luin ia 
 pardonable in a wet country. It is equally true, 
 however, that many of the schools are clean and 
 merry places, and that children bloom liealthily in 
 them, and grow up as unconsumptive-looking as 
 clergymen. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the condition of the schools 
 depends largely upon the individual temperaments 
 of that badly-treated body of men and women, the 
 National school-teachers. The school-teacher is 
 sometimes represented to us as a pauper ignoramus, 
 a bumptious loathcr of his trade, who is the fourth 
 person in the tyiannical vilhige liierarchy, the 
 other three being the priest or parson, the 
 gombeen-man and the policeman, lie is un- 
 questionably as often as not a pauper ; he begins 
 his career at a salary of £58 — in the case of 
 women teachers the salary is £48 — but, on the 
 whole, considering their miserable opportunities, I 
 am inclined to think that no class of Irish men 
 and women serve their country more faithfully 
 according to their lights than the teachers in the 
 National Schools. 
 
 I have said tliat the good or bad condition ol 
 any particular school is due for tlie most part tc 
 the teacher who happens to be in charge of it 
 
84 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 The National Board provides no caretaker to see 
 that the floors are swept, or the walls hung with 
 pictures, or the fires lit. If the floor is to he swept, 
 the teacher must either do it himself, or get some 
 of the puj^ils to do it for him. If pictures are 
 needed for the walls, the teacher must paint them 
 himself — which, thank heaven, he can seldom do — 
 or buy them with his wages, or tear them out of 
 the English magazines. Worse still, if the school 
 is to l)e kept warm during the winter, the teacher 
 must once more put his fingers into his purse and 
 provide liis share of the coal or turf supply. Tiie 
 custom is, no doubt, that tlie pupils, or their 
 parents, should contri])ute either in money or in 
 kind to tlie keeping up of the fires. In the towns 
 and in districts wlicre turf is not used, tlie con- 
 tribution is usually in money. 
 
 In some of the poorer districts where turf is 
 plentiful, however, the labourer's child may still ])e 
 seen of a winter's morning carrying his sod of turf 
 to the schoolhouse as his share of the l)urden of the 
 expenses of a warm, if otherwise unsatisfactory, 
 education. The farmer as a rule spares his son 
 such an indignity by sending round an occasional 
 cart-load of turf to the school durinor the cold 
 months. The amount of fuel supplied in this 
 way, it may be said, is rarely sullicicnt for the 
 needs of the school, and either the pupils must be 
 left to starve in the cold, or the teacher has to 
 pay for the extra amount required. I have heard 
 of children — children who were not iriven to blub- 
 
SCHOOLS AND CHILDREN 85 
 
 bering eitlier — cryiug regularly as they were sent 
 off to school on winter mornings. These were bare- 
 footed children, and the schools had stone floors, 
 and were without fires, so tljat the tears, perhaps, 
 were not without justification. 
 
 Obviously, the Irish teachers' lines are not cast 
 in superabundant places. 1 have been all the more 
 surprised by the energy and cheerfulness with 
 which some of them throw themselves into their 
 work, and with the clean bright look they manage 
 to j)ut on their schools. Some of the schools it 
 would be impossible to kecj) clean or bright. 1 
 have seen schools in the County of Tippcrary in 
 which holes had been worn in the floor by the 
 drip of the rain through corresponding holes in 
 the roof, and where the ivy had pushed its way 
 through numberless cracks, and was clambering in 
 case aud disciise over the walls and the ceibug. 
 On the otiier hand, 1 have seen schools in County 
 Limerick, where everything was neat and sound 
 and healthy, and where portraits of Wolfe Tone 
 and Douglas Hyde aud Daniel O'Connell, and other 
 notable Irishmen, looked inspiringly from the walls, 
 not to mention pardonable prettinesses in colour 
 from the Christmas numbers. These schools were 
 little nests of music and cheerfulness — centres of 
 country light and eager spirits. If they were 
 iiienicieiit, it was nob the fa,u1t of the teachers, Imt 
 ol" a system of government whicli discoura,ges the 
 peo})le of Ireland from taking an interest in 
 education. 
 
86 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 This brings us to tlie fact that a priest, parson 
 or minister, is almost invarial)ly the manager of 
 the National School, and that, even though he 
 may not care very much about education himself, 
 he is inclined to be suspicious when any one else 
 threatens to care about it. In the Protestant 
 churches, the clergyman too often regards the 
 teacher as a useful hack, good for jJaying tiie organ 
 on Sunday, or teaching a Sunday-school class, and 
 so forth, and under the Catholic priest the teacher 
 is not usually said to enjoy any greater esteem. 
 
 The odd thing is that, in spite of all the sectarian 
 turmoil and tyranny in Irish (idiication, the National 
 (Schools are among the most non-sectarian imagin- 
 able. Go into a priest-managed school in Ireland, 
 and you will hear no word of religious teaching 
 outside the hour set apart for it ; you will see no 
 statue of the Mother of God, surrounded with 
 faded llowers, in a nook in the walls, such as you 
 will see in a priest-managed school in England. 
 If you must compare the buildings to barns, they 
 resemble barns in nothing so much as in their 
 non-sectarian, not to say non-religious, character. 
 The Christian Brothers, a lay Catholic order, have 
 a number of schools in tlie more prosperous centres, 
 free of the control of the National Board and 
 provided with the emblems of ndigion. An ex- 
 pupil of one of these schools told me how he and 
 his companions used to despise the ordinary non- 
 sectarian priest -managed schools as institutions 
 that had " given in to the enemy." 
 
SCHOOLS AND CHILDREN 87 
 
 One bappy consequence of this absence of 
 sectarianism from the atmosphere of the schools 
 is that Protestant chiklrcn attend Catholic schools, 
 and Catholic cliihlren Protestant schools, in much 
 greater numbers than is generally realised. Three 
 years ago, there were 8559 Protestant pupils 
 studying in schools exclusively under Catholic 
 teachers, and 5174 Catholic pupils in schools 
 exclusively under Protestant teachers. These 
 figures arc, 1 admit, low enough, in comparison 
 witli tlic size of the scliool-going po[)ulation, but 
 they show that the religious compartments in Irish 
 (xlucation arc not quite water-tight. (The Ten 
 Commandments, by the way, are, by order of the 
 National Board, hung on squares of card-board 
 from the walls of every school-building, but I 
 never heard of any of the pupils of either religion 
 leaving school any tlie worse for this.) I have seen 
 Protestant children enthusiastically learning Irish, 
 and singing Irish songs in Catholic schools in the 
 south. This, too, was in a district where a few 
 years ago political passion ran so high that the 
 priest called for a boycott, not only of the police- 
 men in the district, but of tlic policemen's children. 
 In the Catholic parts of Ireland, })00ple have often 
 been boycotted for political reasons, practically 
 never for religious reasons. 
 
 One of the many things which I dislike in the 
 educational system in Ireland is the early age at 
 which children are permitted to begin going to 
 school. This seems all the worse as the ordinary 
 
88 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 school hours are from ten in the morning till three 
 in the afternoon. I was in a country school lately 
 where some of tlie children were only three years 
 old, and I do not like to see an infant thrust thus 
 early into the atmosphere of learning, unless where 
 there are crabbed or debauched parents darkening 
 the home. The evil sort of parents, I may say in 
 passing, are rare, outside the slums in the big cities 
 of Ireland. Even in the slums — and there are 
 slums in Dublin that would disfigure the civilisa- 
 tion of any place or any period — cruelty of the 
 fiendish kind, of which one occasionally hears 
 among the poor and dogencrat(3 in England, is 
 practically unknown. A liigh official in the 
 Society for the I'reventiou of Cruelly for Children 
 has told me that there is no comparison between 
 England and Ireland in regard to the treatment of 
 children. One occasionally hears, of course, of a 
 drunken mother who parts with her child to 
 proselytising agents for the sake of quietness and 
 gin. It is also true that, in cases of })areutal 
 cruelty, the clergy usually have the child removed 
 to some humane atmosphere long before things 
 have reached the stage demanding the attention of 
 the Society for the rrevention of Ci-ueUy to 
 Children. Still, from all 1 have seen and heard, 
 I am inclined to think that the lot of the Irish 
 child is, so far as its parents know how to make 
 it so, usually a not unenviable one. 
 
 This is in explanation of the pleasant, variable 
 faces one sees so often on the children in the Irish 
 
SCHOOLS AND CHILDREN 89 
 
 scliools. They are clean faces, too, as children's faces 
 go, and one sometimes sees a basin of water in the 
 school-porch where they may wash their hands as 
 they go in. They are, for the most part, bare- 
 footed, some from necessity, some from choice — at 
 least, in the summer— for boots are becoming 
 commoner in Ireland every day. I have known 
 children who were sent off from home wearing 
 boots, but who took these and their stockings off 
 as soon as tlicy wore out of reach of their mother's 
 eye, in order that their feet might enjoy tlie 
 greater coolness and liljerty along the grassy sides 
 of the road. Tliere is, it is pleasant to know, an 
 almost perfect democracy of feeling in the Irish 
 schools. The farmer's daughter in her boots and 
 her bright pinafore wears no airs of superiority 
 over the bare-footed labourer's child with too few 
 buttons and too many raggednesses showing in 
 her faded dress. The boys mix freely in tbeir 
 games as in tlieir classes, and many frieudBhips 
 begin which are only broken when differences of 
 wealth and environment at last compel the grown- 
 up youths into separate worlds. 
 
 I ho[)C 1 have said nothing to give the impres- 
 sion that everything, or indeed auytliing, in the 
 Irisli educational system is in a fairly satisfactory 
 condition. I have merely stated certain human 
 facts in answer to those who, for political reasons 
 or from a tradition of scntimentalism, are always 
 drawing pictures of licland as a ruin and a helpless 
 desolation. The Irish schools are not the schools 
 
90 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 of a ruined and helpless people. They are the 
 schools rather of a people who have been for along- 
 time intellectually aimless— who have allowed out- 
 siders to take their money and spend it for them, 
 and to dictate the lines upon which their education 
 should he run. This, indeed, is the worst that you 
 can say of the schools. However white may be their 
 walls, however lively and lovely the faces of the 
 children, however blameless tlie intentions of the 
 teachers, the National Schools were not established 
 to meet the needs of Ireland, but to fulfil certain 
 political objects. Instead of fitting boys and girls 
 to live useful and charming lives in Ireland, 
 they were used as a means of making the children 
 forget that there was any such country as Ireland. 
 It will be no harm, perhaps, to give some well- 
 known instances of this. 
 
 In the early half of last century, when the school 
 readers were being pre]iare<l, it was proposed by a 
 Scotch Presbyterian minister on the controlling 
 Board to iiudude Sir Walter Scott's lines, " Breathes 
 there a man with soid so dead," etc, in one of 
 them. Archbishop Whately, who had been 
 entrusted by the English Government with the 
 work of civilising Ireland, caught sight of the 
 words, and, realising how indecent was the sen- 
 timent they might convey to the imaginations 
 of Irish children, insisted upon their omission. 
 Poetry about things like Irish harpers was treated 
 in the same summary w^ay, and children were tauglit 
 to repeat, instead of the sincere songs of their own 
 
SCHOOLS AND CHILDREN 91 
 
 people, a pseudo-rcli tenons jingle containing the 
 words : — 
 
 I thank tlic goodness and the grace 
 
 That on my birth have smiled, 
 And made nio in those Christian days 
 A happy English child. 
 
 The chief lesson to be learned bj the school 
 cliildren was ignorance — not to say contempt — of 
 Ireland and everything Irish, and reverence for 
 England and everything English. Even in districts 
 where Irish was tlie only language spoken, the 
 children were taught that English and not Irish 
 was their native language. "On the east of 
 Ireland," runs a passage in one of the archiepiscopal 
 school-books, " is England, where the Queen lives ; 
 many people who live in Ireland were born in 
 England, and we sp(3ak the same language, and 
 arc callcfl the same nation." This passage was 
 written, be it noted, at a time when the Irish 
 language was still spoken by probably half the 
 Irish people. 
 
 The authorities, liowever, did not like the Irish 
 language and so they affected to believe that it did 
 not exist. Teachers who knew no Irish were put 
 in charge of schools where the pupils knew no 
 English, and the absurd spectacle was common of 
 a teacher trying to instruct in reading, writing and 
 arithmetic children who did not understand a 
 word he said. I met an English-speaking teacher 
 the otlicr day who began his career in a Galway 
 school in which all tlic childrcji were exclusively 
 
92 HOME LIFE IN IKELAND 
 
 Irish speaking. I asked him liow on earth he 
 managed. " Damned badly," he said with a twinkle. 
 It is only fair to him to say that, if he performed 
 de-Irishising work, he did it reluctantly and not 
 with a punitive enthusiasm, as some of the teachers 
 did. In many places, teacher, priest and parent 
 combined with the authorities in stamping out all 
 knowledge of the native language from the minds 
 of the children. The children were forbidden to 
 speak any Irish in the schools, and they carried 
 little tally-sticks hung round their necks so that, 
 every time they lapsed into Irish intheirhomes, their 
 parents might cut a notch in these and the teacher 
 might award as many strokes of the cane as he 
 found notches in the tidly-stick on the next 
 morning. 
 
 It is difficult to forgive a generation of parents, 
 priests, politicians and teachers who thus flogged 
 the children of the country out of the knowledge 
 of their natural speech. Many parents, it is clear, 
 looking at the course of events in the world, came 
 to the conclusion that English was the languaoe of 
 success and Irish the language of decay and starva- 
 tion. If they punished their children for being 
 Irish, they thought they were punishing bread- 
 and-butter into their stomachs, if not the bread of 
 life into their souls. Curious to relate, this idea 
 is not dead among Irish-speaking parents even to- 
 day. Those who know English, though they 
 speak Irish to each other and to grown-up neigh- 
 bours, very often drop into English when they 
 
SCHOOLS AND CHILDREN 93 
 
 address their children. They still think that 
 English is the language of respectability — an idea 
 that is only dying slowly under the persistent 
 assaults of the Gaelic League propaganda. The 
 priest nearly always preaches in it, the member of 
 Pai'liameiit or.'i.tes in it, the newspapers are written 
 in it, and how, in face of all this, is an average 
 badly-educated parent to guess that the praise of 
 the Irish language is anything but the jingle- 
 jangle of hare-brained agitators ? 
 
 It will be seen from what I have said that the 
 National Schools were intended to destroy any 
 traces of an Irish civilisation that were left by the 
 early part of last century. They have been fairly 
 successful in accomplishing the aims of their 
 founders, and there were probably fewer signs of 
 an interestino; and distinct civilisation in Ireland 
 during the closing years of the nineteenth ccntuiy 
 than at any other period of the country's history. 
 The present adult population of Ireland is probably 
 the least Irish, the least interesting, the least 
 capable of beauty of thought and effort, that ever 
 inherited the five provinces. The present genera- 
 tion of growing children is likely to jirovc the 
 very opposite. Moderate people like myself believe 
 that there is at present growing up to manhood and 
 womanhood in Ireland a race of boys and girls 
 who will make sure the foundations of a new 
 civilisation, and so leave a long memory after 
 them. 
 
 Education in Ireland, when it ceased to be a 
 
94 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 violent political attack on the spirit of the people, 
 (lid so in order to take on, not the fair colours of 
 nationality, but a kind of dull negative hue. The 
 training-colleges, through which the teacliers have 
 to pass for want of a university education, do 
 nothing to encourage the knowledge and spirit of 
 Ireland in those whose duty it Avill one day be to 
 capture the imaginations and shape the minds of 
 Irish children. Consequently, manned by teachers 
 without any national knowledge, the schools have 
 always been great breeding-grounds for boy clerk- 
 ships in the British Civil Service. 'J'he child has 
 never been trained at school to live in an Irish 
 h()in(!, to worlv on an Irish fiinii or in an Irish 
 shop. If he has shown any signs of ability, he 
 has generally been taught to despise Ireland as 
 a sphere of labour for so promising a genius, and 
 to set his heart on some Government position, 
 tlie salary of which seems princely to him in his 
 narrow home. Too many fresh-faced boys have 
 been wasted on these London clcrkslups to allow 
 such dreams of wealth to mislead the people 
 permanently, and both teachers and parents are 
 beginning to know that a boy clerk's wage in 
 London is not a living wage, and that, poor as it is, 
 it may be brought to a sudden end in three or four 
 years. Consequently, fewer Irish children are now 
 sent over to London with their inci})ient brains 
 than used to be. Still, the bad tradition of teach- 
 ing remains, and the Irish boy and girl are for the 
 most part even now educated on the supposition 
 
SCHOOLS AND CHILDREN 95 
 
 that they have not a country of their own, but 
 will one day emigrate. One of the arguments 
 used against the revival of the Irish language was : 
 *• What use will it be to anybody outside Ireland ? " 
 As though every language did not first grow up, 
 not because it was suited for use in foreign 
 countries, but because it was suited for use in the 
 country in which it was native and vital. 
 
 I myself, who was brought up in a district rich 
 in liistory and in heroic tales, was never allowed 
 to know at school a single human fact suggesting 
 that this country around me and I had any relation 
 to each other — or even, indeed, that this country 
 existed, except in the geographical sense. Cuchul- 
 lain, the hero of Ulster, is to my mind one of the 
 great figures in the world's imaginative literature. 
 J lis story is as woudciful a,nd varied as the story 
 of Achilles, a thousand times more wonderful and 
 varied than the story of Hercules. Yet 1, living 
 in the capital of Ulster, was taught my fair share 
 about Achilles and Hercules, but heard never a 
 word about Cuchullain. Near my father's house 
 were mounds that had once been the dwelling- 
 places of Cuchullain's comi)anions, the Knights 
 of the Red Branch, but my father had been told 
 nothing about these places, and so he could com- 
 municate none of their mystery to me. I say that 
 it is an evil thing to let all this beauty, Ijeauty of 
 memory and imagination, go to waste and not use 
 it to enrich tlic lives of Irisli children. History, 
 again, meant to mc, just as literature did, some- 
 
96 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 thing a])Out anywhere except Irehmd. AVe had 
 the Hamiug youth of Red Ilugli O'Donnell at 
 our doors, and the liumours and heroisms of the 
 O'Neills, and the passionate drama of Wolfe Tone, 
 and the passionate sacrificeof Henry Joy ]\['Crackeu. 
 Never, however, during all my schooldays do I 
 remember hearing a single intelligent fact stated 
 in regard to any of these men or anybody like 
 them. 1 do not blame my teachers. They, too, 
 were brought up in a system which aimed at 
 educating Irish boys and girls largely by ignoring 
 their own country. Some of them were un- 
 surpassed teachers on their own lines, but 
 they never realised that the object of Irish 
 education ought to be to produce a race of men 
 and women who would be useful and many- 
 sided citizens of Ireland. 
 
 It may be argued that Irish education is no 
 worse-off than English in this respect, and that 
 the English schools lay very little stress on history. 
 The case is different, however. The English child, 
 at least, is not taught to ignoi'e Waterloo and 
 Trafalgar and the Armada as though they were 
 shameful things. He is brought up in the idea 
 that his is a country to be proud of. The trend of 
 Irish education, on the other liand, is largely — or 
 was until the day before yesterday — to convince a 
 child that his is a country of which to be ashamed. 
 Sir Horace Plunkett has put the case in regard to 
 this aspect of Irish education so well that I shall 
 quote a few of his sentences and so anticipate the 
 
SCHOOLS AND CHILDREN 97 
 
 many people who in all honesty and innocence will 
 accuse me of exaorfferatiou. " The national factor 
 in Ireland," he writes in "Ireland in the New 
 Century," " has been studiously eliminated from 
 national education, and Ireland isperha])s the only 
 country in Europe where it was part of the settled 
 policy of those who had the guidance of education to 
 ignore the literature, history, arts, and tradition of 
 the people. It was a fatal policy, for it obviously 
 tended to stamp their native country in the eyes 
 of IrisJmien with the ))adgc of inferioi-ity and to 
 extinguish the sense of healthy self-respect which 
 comes from the consciousness of high national 
 ancestry and traditions. This policy, rigidly 
 adhered to for many years, almost extinguished 
 native (culture a,ni()ng Irishmen, but it did not 
 succeed in m.'iking another form of culture accept- 
 able to them. It (hilled tiie intelligence of the 
 people, impaired their interest in their own 
 surroundings, stimulated emigration by teaching 
 them to look on other countries as more asreeable 
 places to live in, and made Ireland almost a social 
 desert. Men and women without culture or 
 knowledirc of literature or of music have succeeded 
 a former generation who were passionately in- 
 terested in these things, an interest which extended 
 down even to the wayside cabin." 
 
 I do not think you coidd damn an educational 
 system mucii more comprehensively than 8ir 
 Horace Plunkett damns the Irish " National " 
 system in these measured words. His words are 
 
 G 
 
98 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 true, however, not only of the National Schools, 
 but of almost all the primary schools in Ireland, 
 except some of those belonging to the Christian 
 Brothers. The private schools, to which the rich 
 and comfortable send their children in the towns, 
 are roomier and more respectable than the National 
 Schools, but in the essentials of a worthy Irish 
 educational establishment they are even more 
 miseral)ly lacking. Some of them are run by very 
 able ladies ; some of them are run by very silly 
 ladies ; practically all of them are run by ladies 
 who seem never to have heard of Ireland. 
 
 As for the secondary schools, it is not an ex- 
 aggeration to say that where the primary schools 
 have chastised the country with whips, the second- 
 ary schools have chastised it with scorpions. They 
 have been absolutely inefficient in accomplishing 
 what ouo-ht to have been their sole laroe end — 
 strengthening the character and affecting the 
 culture of Ireland. As the secondary schools — 
 public and private — have progressed, the country 
 instead of appmaching anytliing in the shape 
 of culture has receded further and further away 
 from it. These schools are efficient machines for 
 only one purpose — the preparation of Ijoys and 
 girls for competitive examinations, ranging from 
 the Intermediate Board's examinations at home to 
 the examinations for the English Civil Service. 
 The Intermediate Exhibitions are well worth getting 
 — they amounted to from £20 in the Preparatory 
 Grade to £40 in the Senior Grade in my own day 
 
SCHOOLS AND CHILDREN 99 
 
 — and Ireland in its teens makes a rusli for them 
 to the exclusion of practically every other intel- 
 lectual interest. In the result, never surely were 
 schools, taught by able masters and mistresses 
 and filled with clever boys and girls, so barren of 
 use or beauty. One of the most brilliant educa- 
 tionists in Ireland told me on one occasion that 
 nowhere in his experience had he found a higher 
 level of intelligence than in Ulster, but that, owing 
 to the lifeless state in which the intellect of the 
 people had be(;ii left by the schools ajid other 
 provincial forces, it was useless, in his opinion, to 
 look for any good thing like literature from that 
 quarter for many generations. Now literature is 
 by no means everything, or even the chief thing, 
 in this world. But the utter absence of it from a 
 country shows that the schools of that country are 
 in a dangerous condition. 
 
 The odd thing to be noted in this connection 
 is that the Irish secondary schools, if they were 
 in England, would be excellent institutions. 
 Many of them are simply good things in the 
 wrong place. Thus, they are quite unlike the 
 National Schools, which are often bad things 
 in the wrong place. In the secondary schools, 
 if you take the trouble, you may certainly learn 
 English well, you may learn the Classics well, 
 you may learn physical and mathematical science 
 well, you may sometimes learn even French and 
 German well. The worst of it is, you are taught 
 everything as though your brain were a fact-store 
 
100 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 — or at the best a good-taste-store — instead of 
 a livino- thino- to be used for the building and 
 beautifying of the world within the Ijorders of 
 your own country first and anywhere else you 
 like afterwards. 
 
 Many of the Irish secondary schools are 
 boarding-schools, but neither the boarding-schools 
 nor the day-schools have many points of com- 
 parison with the more famous pul>lic schools of 
 England. For one thing, the boys are mostly 
 the sons of not too wealthy parents, and the need 
 to earn a living is so pressing that comparatively 
 few of them stay on long enough to enter one of 
 the professions or the English Civil Service. As 
 a result — or as one of the results — Irish Ijoys 
 have not time to play cricket with the perfection 
 common among English boys, though they some- 
 times try. Besides, by good luck, the Irish schools 
 make real cricket-playing impossible by rising 
 for the holidays at the end of June and remaining 
 closed till the beginning of September. Again, 
 Irish school-boys practically never wear any 
 distinctive uniform — nothing but a cap with the 
 initials of their school sewn on it. They have 
 a pleasant disordered air in a class-room, some 
 of thcMu sitting about in their overcoats, others 
 disdaining such trappings of weakness. They 
 are an eager, quick, conversational crowd, diliicult 
 for a nervous master to keep in hand. People 
 wha have taufijht schools both in England and 
 Ireland tell me that, after having been accus- 
 
SCHOOLS AND CHILDREN 101 
 
 tomed to Ireland, the decorum of English chil- 
 dren comes upon one cas a shock. When I read 
 Mr Kipling's "Stalky and Co.," and saw it de- 
 nounced as being quite unlike English school- 
 life, I felt like putting in a claim for it as in 
 some measure a picture of Irish school-life. Mr 
 Kipling's unruly, vigorous, adventurous boys are 
 not unlike Irish boys. Irish boys, however, 
 are much less sentimental than English boys 
 about headmasters or indeed any masters, or about 
 the "old school" or about each other. Irish 
 girls, too, gush and sentimentalise over their 
 mistresses to a much less degree than school- 
 girls in England. Take another point. Irish boys 
 of all ages mix with each other much more freely 
 than boys in England seem to do. There is no 
 " cock-of-the-walking," on the one hand, and no 
 deepl)owing to authority, on the other. Priggish- 
 uess is a rare vice among them, and so is bullying. 
 Possibly, fifty per cent, of them or so do not 
 reverence the truth, when a master is on the hunt 
 for it, but what school-boys do ? They are amon^ 
 the cleanest-minded iK)ys to be found, I should 
 imagine. At the school at which I was, only a 
 disreputable few of us ever aimed at anything 
 like Rabelaisianism in our conversation, and, as 
 for vice of conduct, it was hinted at by hardly 
 more than two of the boys, who were looked on, 
 one tolerantly, the other dislikingly, as bad eggs. 
 Schools "nrv a great deal in this regard, I know, 
 and there is plenty of fdtli spoken— I once had a 
 
102 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 taste for it myself — here and there in Ireland. 
 From all I have heard, liowever, I should judge 
 that a boy at school has a better chance of enjoy- 
 iuof a clean time in Ireland than in most countries. 
 There are other ways of demoralising children 
 besides putting them in immoral company, and 
 the Irish schools in many cases tend to encourage 
 the most dreary form of snobbishness — wliaL is 
 called "shoneenism." This is said to l)e especially 
 true of some of the Convent schools, which aim 
 at making lively-minded Irish girls " respectalde " 
 and "more English than the English." They 
 teach any music except Irish music, any language 
 except the Irish hmguage, any literature except 
 Irish literature. They train everything except 
 the character, tlie body and the intelligence. 
 They make up for the want of these with a 
 plethora of " accomplishments." They inculcate 
 that lowly and reverent obedience to one's 
 "betters" which still keeps alive the essentials 
 of the slave system in so many countries nominally 
 free. They praise success, and one feels that, if 
 it were in their power to prevent it, there would 
 be no vivid national movement in Ireland. This 
 is, of course, not true of all the Convent schools, 
 but it is true of enough of them to make what 
 I have said fjiir as a generalisation. It is due 
 
 o 
 
 partly to the fact that so many of the nuns are 
 foreigners, who do not realise that there is such 
 a thing as a distinct Irish nation. It is one of 
 the anomalies of Irish life that parents, the 
 
SCHOOLS AND CHILDREN 103 
 
 majority of whom are nominally Nationalists, 
 should continue to send their daughters to these 
 schools, 
 
 I know of one school, for instance, where during 
 the i>of'r War the children were encouraged to 
 W(>ar liLII(> Ihiion -lacks jmd to sing "({od save 
 the Queen " in anticipation of a visit from Queen 
 Victoria. One of the girls who refused to surrender 
 her independence even to keep the favour of her 
 teachers, appeared in class one day with a Kruger 
 button instead of the usual British symbol. She 
 was ordered to take it off at once, but stoutly 
 r(3fuscd. She was tlir(?atened with all sorts of 
 punishments, but still she held out. In the end, 
 I believe, the girl went home and remained there 
 till the lioyal visit was over, her mother declaring 
 in answer (o her indignant teachers that she 
 wished licr daujj-liter to be traijied in obedience 
 and good manners, but not in loyalty to foreign 
 rule. From a Unionist point of view, the nuns 
 may seem to have been justified in their attitude 
 all through. Consider, on the other hand, what 
 this attitude meant in Ireland. Jt meant that the 
 children were quietly having wrung out of them 
 all the ideals which were in the atmosphere of 
 their homes. It meant that the gentle and un- 
 selfisli ideal of a nation was being deliberately 
 displaced by the ideal of bigness and success and 
 worldly power. Need I say again, that I do not 
 wish all the Convent schools of Ireland to be taken 
 as included in this indictment ? Some of these 
 
104 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 schools do all in their [)0wcr to licconic a real 
 educational force in the life of the Irish nation. 
 
 It may be doubted, however, whether on the 
 wdiole the influence of the religious schools on 
 Irish life is a healthy one. I say this, of course, 
 not because the schools make the children too 
 religious, but because they make them too " re- 
 fined," in the sense that they unfit them for the 
 mixed surroundings to which they are accustomed 
 at home. A farmer's daughter who has been 
 educated at a Convent, sometimes loses all taste 
 for settling down on a farm. Iter education has 
 trained her, not to be a good farmer's wife, but 
 to be an amiable ornament in the drawing-room. 
 She bclonirH to a dill'iirent woi'ld IVom li(;r soil- 
 stained father and his neighbours and his neigh- 
 bours' sons. The horror of their home-life, in its 
 carelessness of the niceties, its very earthy un- 
 reiinement, has undoubtedly driven many Irish 
 girls into the nunneries for a refuge. Catholic 
 parents tell you of these things and speak com- 
 plainingly of the spread of the educational religious 
 orders, but still they send their chilcb'cn to the 
 religious schools, for they are commonly the best 
 to be had in the district. Teachers in the ordinary 
 schools also complain. They say that it does not 
 pay a teacher to work up a school to a ]ioint of 
 too great excellence, for, if he does, the religious 
 orders come in and establish another school, and 
 take away his pupils from him. 
 
 The spread of the religious orders is one of 
 
SCHOOLS AND CHILDREN 105 
 
 the most remarkable phenomena of our time. 
 In Louoliglynn, in tlie County of Roscommon, 
 the Franciscan nuns are now in possession of Lord 
 Dillon's great mansion and grounds, but 1 believe 
 tlie inlkicncc of these hidies on the district in 
 which they have settled is a good one. In 
 Nenagh, in County Tipperary, the nuns have 
 found a still stranger home, for there they occupy 
 the old gaol, and the statue of the Virgin now 
 stands over the porch where two innocent men 
 were brought out and hanged a good many years 
 ago — the last public hanging that took place in 
 Nenagh. It is said, by the way, that ruin came 
 upon the house of every member of the jury, who 
 were stupefied by drink into condemning those 
 innocent men, some of them going mad, some 
 dyiuo' iti drink and poverty, some of horrible 
 dis('ji,H(\s. l*co|»le l-ell you, furtlier, tliiit when th(i 
 authorities had a lamp put outside the gaol at 
 the place of hanging, it flickered and went out, 
 and, no matter what they did or how calm the 
 evening was, it would still go out in the most 
 ghostly way. It was thought that the troubled 
 spirits of the dead moved about there, disturbing 
 the scene of their great wrong. Since the nuns 
 came, however, the lamp has begun to burn 
 brightly and the ghosts trouble the place no 
 more. 
 
 Now that I have had my bad say about a great 
 deal in modern Irish education, let me add that 
 there are signs of a new life — to use a phrase 
 
106 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 that is becoming tlireadljare — spriiioing up in the 
 country and especially in the elementary scliools. 
 Education is now bi-lingual in many of the dis- 
 tricts where the children speak Irish/ though 
 sometimes a lazy teacher hides the fact that his 
 pupils are Irish-speaking in order that he may 
 continue along the old, useless, indolent paths. In 
 schools outside these districts, l)i-lingual education 
 is still forbidden, and teachers are not encouraged 
 too strongly to make Irish one of the ordinary 
 subjects of study. Sometimes, too, the teacher 
 knows no Irish. The Gaelic League provides a 
 certain number of travelling teac^liers, who go 
 about from si-hool to school on bi(^ycles and give 
 we(;kly or bi-weekly lessons in Irish to the 
 children. The ordinary teaciiers themselves some- 
 times help the language forward by teaching 
 Irish songs during the singing lesson, though I 
 was horrified on one occasion, when I asked a 
 child ior a song in a very Irish district, and she 
 broke out with " I never loved a dear gazelle." 
 I suppose Ireland is the only part of the civilised 
 
 1 The bi-liiigual programme is now (1909) in force in 174 schools 
 as compared with 12G last year. 
 
 Fees were paid for Irish as an extra suliject in the year 1908 in 
 1507 national Kchools, 4n,0()() hcing tlie numher of pu[)ils in average 
 attendance for whom fees were paid. The fees amounted to 
 £10,227, 16s. 8d. 
 
 The number of pupils who were receiving instruction in Irish 
 as an optional subject on December 31st, 1908, was 56,800 
 approximately. 
 
 There were 385 evening schools opened for the 190S-9 session. 
 
 Irish was tau'dit in 185 of these evening schools. 
 
SCHOOLS 7\NJ) CHILDREN 107 
 
 world where anyone would sing a song like that 
 nowadays. 
 
 Tlie school-books in general are becoming more 
 Irish than they used to be. Nationality is as yet 
 permitted only in moderate doses, but the great 
 thing is that it sliould be permitted at all. It 
 has not yet made as great progress in the secondary 
 as in the elementary schools. Even there, how- 
 ever, I hear Irish history is being taught much 
 less contemptuously than it used to be. Of late, 
 too, we have had fine prospects opened out by 
 the way in whicli important girls' schools like 
 Alexandra College in Dublin — one of the prin(npal 
 Protestant schools in the country — have shown an 
 inclination to play a significant part in the life of 
 Ireland. Add to this the fact that last year a 
 Catholic boys' school, St Enda's, was opened in 
 ])ul)lin as an institution int(!ndcd to be as Irisii 
 as Eton or tlie City of London School is EngHsh. 
 
 St Enda's, comfortably set in a beautiful garden, 
 is the fruit of a passionate enthusiasm. It is an 
 effort to accomplish the dream of the headmaster, 
 Mr P. H. Pearse, a barrister, a scholar, and the 
 editor of ^?i Claidhcamh Soluis, the official journal 
 of the Gaelic League. In the hall as one enters 
 one is faced by a lunette representing Cuchullain at 
 the heroic feats of his boyhood. In another room 
 are pictures by Mr George Russell (A. E.), Mr 
 Jack Yeats, and others. High on the walls of the 
 princii)al class-room is a line of the names of the 
 great heroes of Ireland, coming down to Wolfe 
 
108 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 Tone and Robert Emmet and Thomas Davis. 
 The teacliing is carried on partly in Irish and 
 partly in English. When I visited the school 
 during the past spring a class was in progress in 
 which a lesson in Irish phonetics was being given 
 first in Irish, then in English. The English 
 classes, of course, are carried on through the 
 medium of English, the French through the 
 medium of French, and so forth, but liistory, 
 geography, science, and similar subjects are taught 
 now in the one language and now in the other. 
 Everybody in the establishment is an Irish-speaker 
 except the cook. The gardener is an especially 
 useful person, as in the liours devoted to nature 
 study he can be turned into a familiar teacher 
 and give easy lessons in the Irish names of the 
 flowers and the trees. Of course, there is a 
 playing-ground where Irish games, like hurling 
 and ()!aelic football arc; played, and there is also a 
 ball-alley — aji essentially Irish thing to be found 
 in even the most anti-lrisli schools in the country. 
 Tennis is played by the boys dui-ing summer. A 
 good many of the pupils wear the Irish kilt — a 
 comely costume, though there are still some of 
 us who thank God we liave trousers in the tubes 
 of which to hide our crooked limbs. 1 liave said 
 enough, I think, to give an idea of the Irish 
 atmosphere of this pioneer school. It is likely 
 before long to have a good many imitators — 
 especially on that day, sure to come at last, when 
 the new National University will make Irish an 
 
SCHOOLS AND CHILDREN 109 
 
 essential subject for raatriculatiou and so force 
 the secondary schools to give it a prominent place 
 in their curricula. 
 
 Irish education, however, will never be in a satis- 
 factory condition until the Irish people have taken 
 it laroely into their own hands. That the British 
 Government is not fit to control it is proved, if by 
 nothing else, by the way in which they consider 
 it less important than the policing of the country. 
 In Scotland, as Mr Barry O'Brien points out in 
 " Dublin Castle and the Irish People," the cost 
 per head of the population is 2s. Gd. for Police and 
 8s. 8d. for Education. In Ireland it is 6s. 7d. 
 for Police and 6s. 6d. for Education. This shows 
 how thoroughly necessary it is that the Irish 
 people should take over the control of the secnlar 
 part of it, and put an end to a state of aflairs 
 which ncillior the liiitish Covernnient nor the 
 clergy as a whole ^ show any mind to remedy. 
 
 1 A Bill v,-Rs recently introduced by Mr Craig, M.P., in the 
 English Parliament, to throw a portion of the school expenses on 
 the local rates, and the Central Council of the Irish Clerical 
 Managei's has passed a resolution in opposition to it. This body, 
 however, oflers to make the managers responsible for half the 
 expenses of heating, cleansing, and the sanitation of schools, the 
 Treasury supplying the other half. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 WAKES AND FUNERALS 
 
 No Irish custom, I suppose, is more famous than 
 that of "waking" the dead. The custom goes 
 back to pagan times, when we are tokl great 
 persons were usually waked for seven nights and 
 days. The introduction of Christianity seems to 
 have lengthened the ceremonies, for St Patrick's 
 wake lasted twelve nights, during which lights 
 were kept burning and, as Dr Joyce reminds us, 
 "night was made like day with the blaze of 
 torches." 
 
 The modern wake seems to be Init a pale 
 reflection, a bewildered memory, of the ceremonies 
 which used to follow a deatli till about a hundred 
 years ago. In the old days, according to an 
 account preserved by Lady Wilde, the room or 
 barn in which the dead body lay was hung with 
 " branches of evergreen and festoons of laurel and 
 holly." On a bed lay the corpse, surrounded by 
 branches of green leaves. The mourning women 
 came in and sat down on the i>round in a circle. 
 In the centre one of them, cloaked and hooded, 
 began the funeral wail, the others joining in the 
 chorus. The lament ceased at intervals only to 
 no 
 
AYAKES AND FUNERALS 111 
 
 be raised again, and, when it was over, the women 
 went out, and their places were taken by a new 
 crowd of people who performed a kind of mystery 
 play. Before the play began, there was pipe- 
 music, and whiskey was served round. With 
 i'('sp(H'.t to tlic [)l''iys acted on these occasions, some 
 of them appear to have been serious and symbolic. 
 Others contained farcical elements like the mystery 
 plays in all Christian countries during the middle 
 ages. We hear, for instance, of " one called ' Hold 
 the liglit,' wliere tlie passion of tlie Lord Christ 
 is travestied with grotesque imitation." Many of 
 them were full of sarcastic references to Christianity 
 — references which are to be found also in tradi- 
 tional Irish literature — and the priests fought hard 
 to put an end to these irreverent relics of the 
 pagan spirit. As regards the effectiveness of 
 some of these old dramas. Lady Wilde r(;[)eats an 
 interesting criticism of an "intelligent peasant" 
 who had been to Dublin and had been taken to 
 the theatre. " I have now," he said on his return, 
 " seen the great English actors, and heard plays 
 in the English tongue, but })oor and dull they 
 seemed to me after the acting of our own people 
 at the wakes and fairs : for it is a truth, the 
 English cannot make us weep and laugh as I have 
 seen the crowds with us when the players played 
 and the poets recited their stories." 
 
 While on the subject of the old funeral customs, 
 it may be of interest to note that some of them 
 at least were common both to Catholic and 
 
112 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 Protestant Ireland. When John Wesley was in 
 Ireland in 1750, he preached at a burial service, 
 and was greatly shocked by the " Irish liowl " 
 which followed. This was the " dismal inarticulate 
 yell" of the four mourning women who were 
 hired to stand by the grave and raise tlie lament. 
 " But I saw not one that shed a tear," comments 
 Wesley; "for that, it seems, was not in their 
 bargain." 
 
 Wakes are sullicicntly common both in Catholic 
 and Protestant Ireland to-day, but they are fast 
 becoming a discredited institution. In many 
 dioceses the Catholic Bishops have absolutely 
 forbidden them. The priests sometimes go so far 
 as to threaten to withhold the rites of Christian 
 burial if the wake is not dispensed with. Tlie 
 reason of this is, of course, not that the wake is 
 a relic of paganism, but that it is apt to cause an 
 excessive amount of drinking and extravagance. 
 As a result of the determined attitude of the 
 clergy, wakes are now practically unknown in 
 some parts of the country. When a man dies, 
 his body is almost at once put into the coffin and 
 carried off to the chapel, where it remains till the 
 day of the funeral. If he dies early in tlie 
 morning, liis body may be removed to the cha])el 
 towards the evening of the same day. If lie dies 
 in the evening, the collin is taken to the cliurch 
 on the following morning. Thus he lias a sort 
 of double funeral. 
 
 I saw the first part of a funeral like this when 
 
WAKES AND FUNERALS 113 
 
 I was in a town in County Tipperary some time 
 ago. Every sliop in the place had half the 
 shutters up an liour or two in advance, out of 
 respect to the funeral procession that was to pass 
 along the streets. The dead man was a man with- 
 out note, yet a great number of the townspeople, 
 includiufT some women, turned out to walk after 
 the hearse. Tlie coffin was left in a corner of 
 the church near the door, and most of those who 
 had followed it went into the church to say a 
 prayer before returning home. It was as silent a 
 ceremony as you could imagine. 
 
 Compare with this the wakes that still survive 
 in many parts of Ireland. Nowhere, I imagine, 
 is their traditional form preserved more fully than 
 in Conncmara. Here, as Mr W. P. Ryan tells us, 
 "the elders sit by the fire and tell stories of the 
 Fianna ; the youn(:;er folk, the girls at one side, 
 the boys at the other, sit in rows on the straw- 
 strewn floor ; the corpse very often lies on a 
 table in the centre of the room or kitchen." 
 About eleven o'clock at night, poteen — the poison- 
 ous watery-looking whiskey which is still manu- 
 factured secretly in some parts of Ireland — is 
 served out to all present. At midnigiit the first 
 keen over the dead is raised — the sgread na 
 maidne, or morning cry, as it is called, " which 
 no one who has heard it in Connacht is likely to 
 forget." The keen is repeated at intervals till 
 the burial takes place. At about three o'clock 
 in the morning, the poteen goes round again, and 
 
 H 
 
114 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 this, like the keen, is repeated at intervals till the 
 time of burial. 
 
 The professional story-tellers used to be an in- 
 dispensable feature in an Irish wake, and the old 
 men of Connemara telling their Fenian tales are 
 their true heirs. Story-telling, indeed, seems to 
 be an essential part of the wake all over Ireland, 
 but the stories in most places now are not 
 necessarily on the old lieroic themes, Imt arc as 
 likely to be concerned with the good deeds of the 
 dead man or woman as with the l^rave and beauti- 
 ful people of the legends. Songs, too, are raised 
 from time to time, and there is occasionally a 
 good d(;ul of di'inkiiig, for cverybo(]y is welcome 
 at a wake, and it is a point of lionour with the 
 relatives of tlie dead to show hospitality to all. 
 Formerly, when a member of any prominent 
 family died, people would come to the wake from 
 all quarters, the worthless with the worthy, and 
 occasionally tlicse indiscriminate gatherings had 
 the appearance of something like a debauch. It 
 is a mistake, however, to think that a wake always 
 degenerates into an orgy. The man who is drunk 
 at a wake is very often a man who has been 
 drunk, or nearly so, before he came in. Young 
 men, knowing they are going to liavc a late 
 sitting, are inclined to prepare for it by a visit to 
 a public-house on the way. The ordinary man 
 who assists at a wake is as sober as the ordinary 
 man who assists at a wedding. 
 
 In some parts of the country where the wake 
 
WAKES AND FUNERALS 115 
 
 still survives, the sittiug-up lias come to be re- 
 garded as a kind of" excitement for the young men. 
 The older men do not believe in losing their sleep 
 for it, and only turn in to pay their respects to 
 the dead mail's family for a few minutes before 
 going to work in the morning, or at some other 
 time, 
 
 Protestant wakes, especially, are coming more 
 and more to be recognised as excitements for 
 the young. Near a watering-place in the north 
 of Ireland is an island inhabited by some Pro- 
 testant farmers and their families. Recently, there 
 was a death on the island, and many young 
 holiday-makers from the mainland joined in the 
 wake that followed. On the day of the funeral 
 the colfin was brought over to the mainland on 
 a boat, and the boats of the fishermen of the 
 place followed it like carringcs at a funeral. 
 
 It is a curious fact that wakes are not un- 
 common .among the working people of Belfast, 
 Protestant as well as Catholic. As often as not, 
 the music on these occasions is of the Moody- 
 and-Sankey order. Whiskey is served round hos- 
 pitably, and one hears of a good deal of court- 
 ing going on among the young people in the 
 background. 
 
 When a man dies in an Irish countryside, all 
 the neighbourhood unites to do him honour. In 
 some parts of Ulster a mourning card is at once 
 printed oft', with a deep black border, and sent 
 round the neighbours to inform them of the day 
 
116 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 of tlie funeral. Before the funeral, every one 
 Hocks to the house, witli its piece of crepe on the 
 knocker, if there is a knoctkcr, and those wlio 
 have not already seen the corpse no\s' go into the 
 room where it is lying and offer some remark of 
 praise. In some of the Catholic districts of Ire- 
 land a collection is made for the priest on the day 
 of the funeral. Writing of this with special re- 
 ference to Connemara, Mr Ryan says, " These 
 collections are curiously styled ' altars.' The P.P., 
 or the P.P. and curate, stand near the table, and 
 every one attending the funeral is expected to 
 come u[) and conliibute. Tliis has come to he a 
 source of considerable hardship in Connemara, 
 especially on the very poor — to [)rovide even a 
 shilling is naturally a strain vcsry often on a poor 
 man in a Conuacht nook or village, and in point 
 of fact in order to be able to furnish the contribu- 
 tions the villagers and country folk have often to 
 trudge to the towns and sell something or other. 
 No neighbour with any respect for the departed, 
 or the friends of the departed, will dream of stay- 
 ing away from the funeral, and to the collection 
 everybody, fearing the charge of meanness, and 
 the public opinion which is terrible and subtle in 
 villages and country places, must be sure to 
 contribute." 
 
 Recently, according to the same writer, a sen- 
 sational incident occurred in Connemara in con- 
 nection with the "altar." Tlie wake seems to 
 have been something of an orgy, for when the 
 
WAKES AND FUNEUAI.S 117 
 
 moucy collected was handed to a young curate 
 who was present he threw it down in disgust, 
 saying in Irish that it was the price of devilry. 
 The Parish Priest came forward and — in Irish, 
 too, of course — told the people not to mind the 
 curate, for he was here to-day and would be gone 
 to-morrow, and did not understand the question. 
 Both priest and curate ultimately went to the 
 Archbishop with reference to the incident, and it 
 is hinted that the Arclibishop took tlie curate's 
 side. It is cerLaiiily a fine thing that a number 
 of the young clergy are trying to put an end to 
 the "altars." I wonder, however, whether the 
 " altars " and the poteen are so intimately related 
 as Mr Ryan contends they are. Even in parts of 
 tlie (iountry where there is neither wake nor free 
 drinking, these collections in the house of the 
 dead are fretjuently made. 
 
 Coming to the funeral ceremony itself, one may 
 say that customs vary in different parts of the 
 country. In some places, the hearse is followed 
 to the grave by men only : elsewhere women 
 form a part of the procession. In the greater part 
 of Ulster women stay in the house of mourning, 
 condoling with each other, while the men are at 
 the funeral, though among the working-classes in 
 the towns it is common for the women to follow 
 tlie coffin to tlie grave. In the Aran Islands, as 
 every one who has read J. M. Synge's account of 
 them will remember, women are an essential part 
 of the procession. Mr Synge, describing an Aran 
 
118 HOME LIFE IN lUELAND 
 
 funeral, tells how, as the coffin, sewn loosely in 
 sailcloth, was carried clown to the graveyard, 
 *' nearly all the men, and all the oldest women, 
 wearing petticoats over their heads, came out and 
 joined in the procession." When they reached 
 the graveyard, the women sat down among the 
 flat tombstones and began keening for the dead. 
 "Each old woman, as she took her turn in the 
 leading recitative, seemed possessed for the moment 
 with a profound ecstasy of grief, swaying to and 
 fro, and bending her foreliead to the stone before 
 her, while she called out to the dead with a per- 
 petually recurring chant of sobs. All round the 
 graveyard other wrinkled women looking out from 
 under the deep red petticoats that cloaked them, 
 rocked themselves with the same rhythm, and in- 
 toned the inarticulate chant that is sustained by all 
 as an accompaniment." This crying for the dead 
 is not always confined to the day of the funeral. 
 There are ])arts of the country in which, after 
 Mass on a Suinhiy, you will Hv.a tlie women sway- 
 ing and sobbing over their dead in the chapel 
 graveyard as though they had lost them the day 
 before. 
 
 It is the custom in most places for the friends 
 of the dead to carry the coffin on their shoulders 
 a part of the way, the hearse moving slowly in 
 front. Sometimes, it is the rule to give every 
 pair of bearers a turn at each end of the coffin. 
 In Dublin, 1 believe, funerals going through the 
 city are compelled by a bye-law to move at a 
 

 ■'•■-■ f Ms; 
 
WAKES AND FUNERALS 119 
 
 brisk trot — a thing which startled me the first 
 time I saw it, for iu Belfast funerals move at a 
 suail's pace through the most crowded traflic. 
 Funerals in town generally take place in the 
 morning, in order that business people may not be 
 put to too great inconvenience in attending them. 
 1 used to have something like a passion for 
 going to funerals — not an uncommon taste iu the 
 country — and I was often struck by the pliilosopliic 
 way in whicli tlie ])oorcr people seemed to accept 
 the (h\'ilh of the ohl. I ;itt(>ii(l('(l one country 
 fiUK'iiiJ \vh('i(! the gr(>\vn-ii|) sons of the (hiad man 
 smoked Ihcii- [)i[)('s sU^adily as they walked after 
 the hearse. An Ulster country funeral, indeed, 
 has an air of stoical resignation, of grim fatalism. 
 Every farmer in the neighbourhood goes to it, or 
 sends his car, or his polo-cart, and it is a common 
 thing for cars that meet the procession on the 
 road to turn and follow it. While it is going by, 
 the driver of the car always pulls in towards the 
 ditch, and remains there with his raised hat almost 
 hiding his inquisitive eyes till the front part has 
 gone past. Arrived at the grave, when the colTin 
 has been committed to the ground, some of the 
 young men present will occasionally take a spade 
 and help the grave-digger to fill in the earth. I 
 remember one day 1 had driven with a friend 
 some two miles to a funeral, and after the service 
 we were about to drive off again, when we heard 
 a loud whistle. Looking over the wall of the 
 graveyard, we saw a young countryman at the 
 
120 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 graveside gesticulating and calling on us to stop, 
 and, as we waited for him, lie Hung down the 
 spade that he had been using and ran over the 
 graves to us. He lived in the same district as 
 ourselves, and did not fancy the idea of walking 
 home when he could Q-et a drive. I never saw so 
 practical a man, so cool a disregarder of the con- 
 ventions, in a graveyard Ijcfore or since. 
 
 Before leaving the sultjcct of wakes and funerals, 
 it may be worth noting that another kind of wake 
 is common in Ireland besides the wake of the 
 dead. This is known as the American wake, and 
 is held in the west in honour of those who are 
 emi<jfratino; to America. It is a strano-e mixture 
 of dancino- and sudden lamentation which continues 
 all through the night till morning. It is not 
 without sionificance that so funereal a name should 
 be given to these emigration ceremonies, for the 
 Irish emigrant is not the personification of national 
 adventure, but of something that has the appear- 
 ance of national doom. "^Po be in a Oonnemara 
 station when emigrants are going olF by the train 
 is one of the most torturing experiences that 1 
 know. When it is a girl that is going off, she is 
 almost carried along the ]»latforni in the arms of 
 her male relatives, and the sliiill hiniciit (h;U she 
 raises as the train comes in is as teiriblc as tlumgh 
 she were keeniuG: her dead. As she hanos from 
 the railway-carriage kissing the men of her family 
 good-bye, it seems as though they were fighting 
 to hold her back among them, and the railway- 
 
WAKES AND FUNERALS 121 
 
 porters have to struggle with them as the train 
 moves out to keep them from being dragged 
 away. Sometimes, the lamenting girl seems to 
 lose her grief as suddenly as she found it, and as 
 she arrives at vai'ious railway stations slie leans 
 out of tlie window to see if there arc any friendly 
 faces about whicli will be wakened into interest 
 by her momentary tragedy. After all, the worst 
 tragedy of Irish emigration is not the tragedy of 
 hopeful youth, but the tragedy of the old people 
 who are left. The tragedy of youth occurs 
 amid tlie disillusiouments of the big cities of 
 America, 
 
 I heard recently of yet a third kind of wake 
 which took place in a town in County Tipperary. 
 A young Protestant fell in love with a Catholic 
 girl, and clianged his religion in order to marry 
 her. lie was his mother's only soji, and, wlieu he 
 left both her and her religion, she pulled down 
 the blinds of the house and waked him for two 
 nights and two days as though he were dead. 
 And dead he is to her, for change of creed is not 
 easily forgiven. One is sometimes told that there 
 is no dramatic interest in the life of the people of 
 modern Ireland, because there is so rigid a sup- 
 pression of the emotions of sex. Only a person 
 whose mind was monopolised by the sexual side 
 of life, however, could believe this. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 PRIESTS AND PARSONS 
 
 The Irish priest is the most difficult of all subjects 
 for any one writing about Ireland. It is easy 
 enough to make generalisations about him and 
 even to believe them. But to see him fairly as a 
 human being, to appreciate his virtues and to 
 understand his faults and tlie cause of them, would 
 inv(»lve a know]edg(;, an imagination, and a sense 
 of justice such as have been united in no writer 
 of Irish critical books that I can remember. 
 Emphatically, I am not the person who can fill 
 this gap of perfectness. For one tiling, I was 
 reared a rresl)yterian, as they say iu Ulster, and 
 priests are not an essential part of the colour of 
 my life as they are of the life of an Irish Catholic. 
 The attitude of many of tlie Irish people to the 
 priests has often struck me as curious. The 
 average intelligent Irish Catholic, so far as my 
 experience holds, is as critical of priests as the 
 average Protestant is of the Protestant clergy. 
 He will tell you in conversation how this one is 
 grasping and the other narrow to the point of 
 bigotry, as freely as he will praise a courageous 
 priest for his courage and a good priest for liis 
 
 12J 
 
riMESTS AND PAJISONS 123 
 
 generosity. At the same time he has uot yet 
 succeeded in creating an atmospliere of critical 
 opinion in the light of which the bad qualities of 
 bad priests would gradually disappear, and the 
 good qualities of good priests have due and intelU- 
 gent lionour. 
 
 Probably, the reason why in the public as opposed 
 to the private life of the country the priests 
 have been thus kept outside the scope of criticism 
 is that they liave already been attacked and 
 criticised so much and so wronghcadcdly by 
 the other side. 1 am sure, if the Protestant clergy 
 had been attacked by the Catholics witli the 
 same blind bitterness with which the Catholic 
 clergy have l)eeu attacked by the Protestants, we 
 should see tljc Protestants rallying around their 
 ecclesiastical leaders witli a bewildering warlike 
 enthiisiasin. If Ireland is ;i. [)ri('Ht-ridd('ii country 
 — and it is not a priest-ridden country to anything 
 like the degree which most people suppose — it 
 is largely because the Irish people as a whole 
 have not been left to work out their own salvation 
 without interference from England, and because 
 the Catholics of the country have not been left 
 to work out their own salvation without inter- 
 ference from Protestants. 
 
 If you doubt the first of these reasons, you 
 had better read Mr George Bernard Shaw's 
 preface to "Jolm Bull's Other Island." If you 
 doubt the second, I cannot think that you have 
 studied the kind of book which an Irish Protestant 
 
124 HOME LIFE IN IKELAND 
 
 usually reads when he sits down to learn the 
 truth about Ireland. It is hy preference a ])ook 
 attacking priests, and if it is written by a 
 Catholic, or a professing Catholic — so much the 
 better. This represents the Protestant spirit, the 
 Protestant attitude, not at its best, but at its 
 most usual. It is this, along with British policy, 
 as set forth in a well-known letter of Lord 
 Paudolph Churchill, that has done more than 
 anything else to drive tlie Irisli Catholic publicly 
 into the priest's arms. 
 
 I say " publicly," because, as I have already 
 mentioned, there is almost a superfluity of private 
 criticism of the priests among the people. The 
 Irish temperament seems to me to show a curious 
 combination of the satirical and the idealistic, 
 and the priest is as likely to be a figure of 
 mirtli in a satirical phrase as he is to be idealised 
 into a saint. The priest, it must be rememljered, 
 is not a stranger who has come down from the 
 sacred niouiitaiiis among tlu; jn'o^tlc. ; \\{'. is ahuost 
 always one of the people tliemselves. I have 
 no means of getting at figures about the family 
 origin of the priests ; but, from all I can hear, 
 it would be near the truth to say that the priest 
 is usually the son of a farmer, and tliat, when 
 he is not the son of a farmer, he is usually the 
 son of a publican. It is the Catholic farmer's 
 summit of pride to have a son clever enough 
 at books to be sent in for the priesthood, just 
 as it is the Presl)yterian farmer's ultimate glory 
 
rillESTS AND PARSONS 125 
 
 to have a soo of sufficient learning to be sent 
 on for the ministry. 
 
 Jewish parents never dedicated their chiklren to 
 the priesthood of God with greater pride than 
 is sometimes felt l)y Catholic and Presbyterian 
 parents in Ireland when devoting their sons to 
 a similar service. I am sure, indeed, that in 
 both creeds the ambitions of religious fathers, 
 and especially of religious mothers, have thrust 
 up into the pul[)it a good many young men 
 who were by nature intended to live on a more 
 commonplace and human level. 
 
 One of the most generally satirised faults 
 among priests — a fault which is a constant subject 
 of joking all over the country — is one to which 
 the farming classes arc especially liable, and if 
 many priests arc guilty of it, this is not because 
 they are priests, but because they are farmers' 
 sons. Farmers in the mass, I think, are every- 
 where noted for their reverent tenderness for 
 money. Sometimes they cling to money thriftily ; 
 sometimes they cling to money wastefully. In 
 Ireland, where thrift has been so frequently dis- 
 couraged by law, and where even a small 
 sufficiency of money has about it something of a 
 miraculous wonderfulness, the unprofitable sort 
 of saving is the general rule. The Irish farm- 
 born priest often brings his father's moncy-lovinn- 
 characteristics with him into his new calling. 
 It is only fair to him to say, on the other hand, 
 that, so far as one can hear from (VithoUc 
 
126 HOME LIFE IN IKELAND 
 
 witnessess, the priest usually gathers money, 
 not for his own enrichment, but either for the 
 glory of his church, or in order to help his parents, 
 sisters, and brothers. 
 
 There is nothing for which the priests are 
 more freely blamed, perhaps, than for the fees 
 which they demand in connection with marriages. 
 Some people talk, indeed, as though every })riest 
 in the country were a leech-like creature, who 
 would never perform a marriage ceremony until 
 he had drained the unfortunate bridegroom of 
 the last possible penny. This, of course, is 
 nonsense, and a libel on many good men. As 
 one of the gentlest of priests said to a friend 
 of mine some time ago, "Not only docs the 
 priest often marry poor people for nothing, but 
 sometimes you will find him buying the ring 
 with which he marries them." It is not long- 
 since a Munster priest made an effective protest 
 from the pulpit against the idea that the clergy 
 will refuse to mai-ry a poor man unless he can 
 give them a rich reward for it. " If any man 
 here," he announced from the altar, " has the 
 courage to take a woman by the hand and say 
 in the presence of God that lie wants to marry 
 her, let him conui to me and I'll marry him 
 without any charge." 
 
 The majority of priests, of course, expect a 
 good fee when the bridegroom is able to afford 
 it. I heard of a rich Catholic who was married 
 some time ago, and who after the ceremony 
 
PRIESTS ANU PARSONS 127 
 
 handed the priest ten pounds. " Are you joking ? " 
 said the priest, with a scornful look at the 
 money. Personally, I think it is a good thing 
 that the marriage-fee should have some relation 
 to the means of the bride and bridegroom. On 
 tlie other hand, there is no doubt that there 
 are more than a liandful of really extortionate 
 priests scattered through the country who are 
 a burden both to rich and poor. It is almost 
 impossible to give any approximate idea of the 
 extent to which extortion is practised on the 
 occasion of mai-ria.gcs. Accounts vary from ])lace 
 to place, and most people judge all the clergy 
 by the priest in their own neighbourhood. Add 
 to this the fact that one bad priest gets talked 
 about more than twenty good ones, and you 
 will see how diflicult it is to arrive at anything 
 like a confident conckision on the matter. 
 
 I do not know how far the figures given by a 
 correspondent in " The Irish Nation " some time 
 ago may be regarded as typical of Catholic 
 Ireland. Speaking of a district in the west of 
 Ireland, the writer declared that it is customary 
 for the i)riest to demand £4 for marrying a poor 
 man like a labourer, and £10 for a man in the 
 position of a schoolmaster. AVhen the bride and 
 bridegroom belong to the farming classes, the 
 priest, we are told, discovers the amount of the 
 fortune which goes with the marriage, and assesses 
 liis fee accordingly. Often on occasions like this, 
 says the same writer, a bargain is struck, and the 
 
128 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 holy sacrament is preceded by a conversation sucli 
 as: "Do it for £13, father." "No, [ won't 
 marry you under £16." "Split the difference, 
 father." And so on, and so on. That there are 
 priests as bad as this is unquestionable. But are 
 they numerous ? Are they in the majority ? I 
 liave met too many kindly and manly-eyed priests 
 myself to believe that this sui)position can be 
 true.^ 
 
 1 CharleB Kickham, who was sentenced to fourteen years' 
 imprisonment for Fenianism, wrote a too little known novel, 
 *' Knockiiagow," which gives an excellent picture of Irish life and 
 customs ill the latter half of the nineteenth century. Ivickhiim, 
 who was an earnest Catholic, expressed the view of many of the 
 clergy and laity of his church nsgarding exorlntant marriage-fees 
 in tlie following passage of dialogue in that novel : 
 
 " Maybe," said Maurice Kearney, " the marriage money has 
 Boraething to do with keeping people from getting married. Ned 
 Brophy tells me the priest will charge twenty pounds fur 
 marrying him." 
 
 " Well," replied Father MacMahon with a laugh, " that is not so 
 much, bearing in mind that old sauce-pan you told us of. But 
 another parishioner of mine tells me his match is broken off 
 altogether on account of the exorbitant demand of the priest. The 
 father of the girl ha<l only lifteen acres uf land, ami the priest 
 wanted (ifteen pounds for marrying liis daugliler." 
 
 "I know all about that case," said Father Hannigan. "He 
 went against the priest at the election." 
 
 " That makes the matter worse," rejoined Father MacMahon. 
 "Such jiractices will liavi; the cil'ect oi' making llm jicople look 
 upon thii priest as a tyrant, lint in the pari.-,li to \viii<li I refer, 1 
 am assured, as a rnle, the i'armer niu.^t pay half a ycar'-s rent lu 
 the priest for marrying his daughter." 
 
 "What do you think of the old sybtem of public weddings ?" 
 asked Father Hannigan ; " when friends and neighbours were 
 invited, and tlie priest went round with a 2->late for hia collection.' 
 
 "I liked it," replied Father .MacMahon. "Indeed 1 was looked 
 upon as singular because I did my best to encourage the people to 
 
PKIESTS AND PARSONS 129 
 
 I heard recently of a case of priestly extortion — 
 though not in coiniection with marriages — which 
 the priest's own parishioners may liave regarded as 
 typical, ])iit wliich the action of a Bislioj) proved to 
 be o])[)os(mI to the (hH!eiit traditions of the (Mnirch. 
 It wjis tli(! custom of this priest to m;i,k(i his jx^.ople 
 supply him with farm produce which lie always 
 accepted as a gift. The Bishop of the diocese got 
 wind of tlie thing, 1 suppose, for he stopped a man 
 who was driving a load of liay near the priest's house 
 one day, and, after some talk, asked him where he 
 was going with the hay. The man told him that 
 
 it was to Father 's house. Tlie Bishop 
 
 delicately drew out the statement that Father 
 
 113 had not bought the hay, but was expecting 
 
 it for notliiug. " Oo home," he said to tlie man, 
 "and take tht; h;iy b;ick with you." "But what 
 
 will l*\a(Ji('r • s!iy ? " protcslcd the poor in;i,n 
 
 in terror, " if 1 don't bring ]iim the Jiay after 
 him telling me to bring it ? " The Bishop ex- 
 keep up the old system. It made them more social and neigh- 
 bourly. Tlie priest, too, felt that what he got was given cheerfully. 
 And besides,'' added I'^ather MacMahon, laughing, "he went 
 home with a heavier purse." 
 
 "I remember what you said at the last public wedding we had 
 iu this parish," said Mr Kearney. " 'Twas at Tom Donnelly's. 
 The collection was larger than you expected, and when you were 
 thanking them you said no matter how small the sum might be, 
 they could say, 'Go home now, sir, you are paid' ; but that if it 
 was a private wedding you could charge what you liked.' 
 
 " I dare say Bome of the bridegroom's friends have often thought 
 of my words since. But I fear we are becoming more genteel and 
 more selfish every day ; so perhaps it is as well to make people pay 
 for their gentility." 
 I 
 
130 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 plained that Father did not require the 
 
 hay now, and that he himself would l)e re.s[)onsil)le 
 for what he told the man to do. 
 
 Many people will look on the extortionate 
 
 Father as the typical priest, and will pass 
 
 over the fact that the humane Bishop, who is one 
 of the most Q-enerous of the leaders of his Church 
 in Ireland, also belonged to the priestly order. 
 Another comment that may be made here is that 
 it is not in every district in Ireland that extortion 
 such as I have mentioned could Ije practised. 
 Some of the more prosperous farmers would never 
 submit to it. In many pai-ts, liowcvcu', povi'rty 
 lias demoralised ull the iii(h!j)eiidence ouL ol the 
 peo[)le. 
 
 The lavish generosity which the Catholics show 
 in supporting their priests and churches is the 
 subject of continual amazement and respect among 
 the better sort of Irish ]*rotestants. I have heard 
 Presl)yterian ministers more than once wishing 
 that they possessed the Catholic secret of })('rsuad- 
 ing the people to give cheerful gifts to God, and a 
 pious Presbyterian lady, who was commiserating 
 the fate of misguided Catholics to me one day, 
 wound up her lamentation with, " Well, there's 
 one thing in whic-li we would do well to follow 
 their example. We'd be better Christians if we 
 gave as generously to our Church as they do to 
 theirs." 
 
 As may be imagined, however, there are two 
 sides to this rjuestion. Not only are the peo})le 
 
riMESTS AND PARSONS 131 
 
 very ready to give, but the Church is very ready to 
 ask. Ou tlie other liand, it is not so ready 
 to ask as is couteudcd by some imaginative 
 people Avlio tell you that in parts of Belfast 
 it expects contributions, not only from the 
 Catholics themselves, but from the Protestant 
 traders with whom the Catholics deal. 1 know 
 an energetic little anti-Catholic shop-keeper who 
 used to complain bitterly that he had to contribute 
 to the Catholic funds. lie was afraid that, 
 if his name were not read out from the altar 
 in the list of subscriptions, his Catholic cus- 
 tomers would cease dciHug with him. y\nd so, 
 Avitli the one hand he was helping to support the 
 Catholic Church, and with the other he was trying 
 to undo his work by sul)scribing to a Presl)yterian 
 mission for the conversion of Irish Catholics to 
 i*j-otestaiitisin. 
 
 In oue of the biggest towns in the west of Ire- 
 land, the leading priest outdid anything suggested 
 in Belfast in coaxing subscriptions from non- 
 Catholics during the present year. All through 
 Lent, when an opera-company or circus or anything 
 of the sort came to the town, it only received 
 " permission to perform " when an undertaking 
 had been given that the proceeds of one even- 
 ing's entertainment should be handed over to 
 a diocesan project in which the priest was 
 interested. One of the entertainments that 
 arrived in the town at the time was Toft's Hobby 
 Horses, and these had to gallop round to an even- 
 
132 HOME LIFE IN IHELANi:) 
 
 iiig's orgaii-griiRling on ])cli.'ilf of the (^liiu'tih. 
 Tliis story has appeared in print in a Duhlin paper, 
 which gives the name ot" the priest and the parish 
 concerned, and, as it has uot been contradicted, I 
 take it for granted that it is true. 
 
 A good many Catholics liold tliat some of the 
 financial methods of tlieir church have, to say the 
 least of it, gone desperately out of date. Take, 
 for instance, the method of collecting the priest's 
 income. In country places, two collections on 
 behalf of the priests are held during the year — 
 one at Easter, one in November. Each meml)er 
 of the chnrcli gives his contriljution as he goes in 
 at the chapel door — Catholic cliundies are called 
 chapels in Ireland just as Dissenting c]nir('hes are 
 in England — and tlie amount is duly noted down 
 by the priest's delegates. Ultimately, the list of 
 the names of all the parishioners on the c]iaj)el roll 
 is read out by the [)riest from tiie altar, and with 
 the name of each person is read out the amount of 
 his subscription — it may Ik- a pound or it may be 
 nothing. 8ome priests go a step lurther than this. 
 They not only read out the names and the sub- 
 scriptions (or the non-subscriptions), but they 
 make comments on the amounts su])scril)ed, flatter- 
 ing or the reverse, according as they think each 
 parishioner has or has not given in fair proportion 
 to his means. This is a cause of acute miser}^ in 
 some places, and, human nature l)eing wliat it is, 
 it would be strange if many country people, in- 
 tiuenced either ))y vanity or by fear (jf the priest's 
 
PRIES'IS AND P7VRSONS 133 
 
 remarks, did not occasionally contribute a good 
 deal more than tlieir means justify. 
 
 I heard lately of a labourer in the west {whom 
 I will call Martin Henry), who put down a shilling 
 as his coiitriljution, and had it returned to him by 
 the priest's orders as insulhcient. The man was 
 very poor — perhaps, even a shilling was more than 
 he could afford — so rather than give more he gave 
 nothing. When the priest was reading the names 
 out from the ;iltar — after the pattern of "James 
 lawyer, five shillings; Owen Latimi^r, a })<)und " — 
 he paused opi)()site the labourer's name and uttered 
 tbe words: " l\biri.iii llcnr)' — wli;i,t Davy shot in 
 the lough — nothing." It is said that Henry nearly 
 took a bodily revenge on the priest after this, for 
 they met on the road and some sharp words passed. 
 Just as Henry seemed to l)e about to strike, how- 
 ever, the priest let him know that he had the Holy 
 Sacrament on his person, being in fact on his way 
 to a death-bed. To attack a priest who is carrying 
 the Holy Sacrament is an act of sacrilege, of which 
 no Catholic would willingly be guilty, and Henry 
 withheld his hnnd for the occasion. 
 
 In some of tlie town districts, I l^elieve, the 
 priest's dues are collected by the priest himself 
 instead of at the church doors. These regular 
 calls of the priest in liis parishioners' houses for 
 liis money im])ress themselves u[)on the minds of 
 the people, ajid the result is, as it would ])e in any 
 other church, a good deal of sjitirical gossip. 
 
 One of the priestly levies which has been 
 
134 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 criticised a good deal is that wliich is made 
 in some parts of the country on the occasion 
 of wakes and funerals. [ describe in another 
 chapter how at times like these a plate is left in 
 the room with the coffin so that all visitors to the 
 house may contribute something. This custom of 
 making a collection for the priest at i'unerals goes 
 back, I believe, to the days of tlu; Penal Laws, 
 when the livelihood ot" a priest was precai'ious, and 
 the generosity of the people was only too anxious 
 to find such an expression as these occasional 
 funeral gifts. Nowadays, when })riests have 
 assured livings, the oH'erings continue out of 
 custom rather than for any oilier r(;asoii. 
 
 Priests seem to be divided in opinion as to 
 whether this custom should be done away with. 
 Not long ago a priest in the south of Ulster was 
 asked to omit the collection for a single occasion, 
 and refused. The wife of a conijiaratively prosper- 
 ous man had died. The collecting-])late was didy 
 laid beside her coflin, and every visitor to the 
 liouse chiidvcd his (-ontrihution oji the plate. The 
 husband, a sensitive man, Ijcgan to feel an acute 
 agony as the thing went on. lie felt that it was 
 offering a kind of disres[)ect to the dead. He 
 went to the priest and promised to give him any 
 sum he liked to name as the probable amount 
 the collection would reach — a larger sum, if 
 necessary — if only the plate were removed, and 
 an end put to the indecent business. The priest 
 could not see his way to grant the request. "I 
 
PRIESTS AND PARSONS 135 
 
 must tliiiik of tlie precedent," he said. Here again 
 1 must repeat the warning not to judge all the 
 Irish priests l)y this one. It is the less generous 
 priests about whom most of the stories are told. 
 
 The fault most commonly imputed to Irish 
 ])riests aflor tin; love of money is the love of 
 j>(>\v(M'. Ill regard lo tins, it is prohnhly true to 
 siiy that the average priest loves 2)ower as much 
 as the average Protestant minister in Ireland and 
 elsewhere, and that he grasps as mucli of it as he 
 c-;m. It is a way with men in uiiirdnn, wliether 
 ch'iical, military, or of ;uiy other sort, ;ill {]\v. world 
 over. Sir Horace Plunkett's testimony in regard 
 to the priests a] id the power they wield ought to 
 give pause to those who are inclined to hasty 
 condemnations. " I have come to the conclusion," 
 he says, " tliat tlie immense i)Ower of the Irish 
 Roman Catholic clergy has been singularly little 
 abused," Of course, the immense power is in 
 itself an abuse, but if there had been a healthy 
 national atmosphere in the country, and a healthy 
 national system of education, this would have 
 given us a body of clear- thinking, independent 
 laymen, who would have come forward to direct 
 the public life of the country, and so have made a 
 good deal of the social and political leadership of 
 the priests unnecessary. This is a condition of 
 affairs, I may say, which many of the priests 
 tliems(?lves desire. Did not that excellent Irish 
 man, the present Bishop of Galway, some years 
 ago put forward as a reason for the establishment 
 
136 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 of a Catholic Uiiivertiity the need of au educated 
 Catholic laity in order to do away with the power 
 of tlie priests in public life, "so far as it is 
 abnormal or unreasonable ? " 
 
 The piiests, indeed, are, some of them, as anti- 
 clerical as their severest critics in the sense that 
 they desire to see a strong and self-reliant race of 
 men and women growing up in Ireland, and taking 
 the destinies of the country into their hands. It 
 must be rememl)ered, when the Irish IVishops say 
 reactionary things or do reactionary things — as, 
 like all Bishops, they frequently do— that tliey are 
 not necessarily rein-esentative of the best elements 
 in the priestliood. The r>ish<)])S are a])})ointed 
 from IJome, S(nnctimcs in op[)().siti()ii to tlie wishes 
 of the mass of the priests in their luiw diocese; 
 and many Catholic laymen will tell you that 
 Rome is more desirous to win the Ihitish Empire 
 for Catholicism than to help to Ijuild up a strong 
 and independent nation in Ireland, and that a 
 priest too closely identified with the natitmal 
 movement is not likely to lind himself appointed 
 to a Bisho})'s see. On the other hand, L do not 
 think that the Bishops of any church in the world 
 are representative of the most intellectual or the 
 most ])rogr(.'Ssive of the ('lergy undci' tluiin. 
 
 Ireland has its lidl share of palriolii- a)id noble 
 priests — juiests who are not slow to come out and 
 oppose the Bishops, when the Bisho[)S oppose the 
 interests of Ireland, During the present year, for 
 instance, the Standing Committee of the Bishops 
 
PRIESTS AND PARSONS 137 
 
 declared publicly against making IriBli an essential 
 subject for matriculation and the first year's 
 examination in the new National University. 
 Some of them even forbade the clergy in their 
 dioceses to do, speak, or write anything in favour 
 of giving the Irish language this prominence in the 
 University curriculum. Wherever the discipline 
 of the Church permitted them, priests have none 
 the less been found to come forward side by side 
 with Catholic and Protestant laymen to insist that 
 Irish must be given its due place in the University, 
 or that tlic University must get no h(;l[) or sanction 
 i'rom the Irish [)eo|)le. l^^ithcr (J'Ciarain, P.P., for 
 instance, told the people at Castleblayney Feis 
 that " the Bishops of Ireland had as good a right 
 to come into his garden and tell him to dibble his 
 ('abbage-])la,nts head downwards as they had to 
 tell the whole Irish nation that they would nob 
 tolerate any essential Irish in the new University." 
 The curious f(\ature in the situation is that many 
 Protestant Unionists who have always been de- 
 nouiicing the Irish Catholics as a priest-ridden 
 })eople, are doing all in their power to prevent 
 their fellow-countrymen at the present moment 
 from showing their independence of the Bishops 
 in secular, as opposed to religious, affairs. The 
 power of the Bishops is a much more real danger 
 in Irish life than the power of the priests. The 
 priests, as I have said, are in numberless cases 
 on the side of the people from whom they are 
 sprung. 
 
138 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 " I'd be a Home Ruler, if it weren't for the 
 priests," is a remark Protestant Unionists make to 
 you till you are weary of it. People who talk like 
 this do not recognise the faet that })riests only 
 wield an undue power because Ireland is not 
 an independent country with an independent 
 atmosphere. They do not re(*ognise either that 
 the Protestant Irish parson and the Catholic Irish 
 priest have in many cases the same vices and the 
 same virtues. You will find tyrants and bullies in 
 both creeds, as you will find gentlemen in both 
 creeds. You will find cultured men in both creeds, 
 as you will find boors in both creeds. You will find 
 misers in both creeds, as you will find patterns of 
 generosity in both creeds. J imagine, however, 
 that you will find a greater variety of charactei- 
 and temperament among the priests than among 
 the clergy of the other churches. In all churches, 
 of coiu'se, the Catholic Church included, the clergy 
 j)ass by slow gradations from saints and heroes 
 down to liypocrites and bullies. iJiit it is only in 
 the Catholic Church, i think, that you will find 
 the merry, almost Epicurean priest and the black- 
 browed kill-joy priest ecpially typical figures. 
 
 In one parish you will have a priest wlio is 
 really the father of his peo])le. l[e encourages the 
 boys and girls to meet in the (Jaelic League classes, 
 and to spend a share of their evenings in dancing. 
 He goes to see the young men hurling on Sundays, 
 and takes an interest in the little plays which they 
 perform with so lively a spirit. The children do 
 
PRIP^STS AND PARSONS 139 
 
 not fear him wlieu they meet him on the roads. 
 He is as welcome as a stranger, or as a son come 
 home from America, in the houses of the poorest 
 and h\'ist siio]>l)isli ]»coplc. He strives to find 
 work for his people, at liome, so tliat they need not 
 omigrate, lie (rains tli(>m U) hahits oF [)lcasant- 
 iiess as well as in hahits of goodness. Such a 
 priest is like a living soul in his parish — a light- 
 Ijringer, a builder of society. I have met several 
 priests ol" this high chnracter. 'i'hey are, I may 
 note in ])assing, freer from religious bigotry than 
 any other equally large body of clergy in Ireland. 
 Perhaps, none of them has done more excellent 
 work in putting a heart of progress and delight 
 into his people than Father Matthew Maguire, 
 the parish priest of Kilskeery 'in County Fermanagh. 
 He has made the schools in his parish among the 
 most efficient in Ireland. He collected a few 
 pounds, and set on foot a lace-making industry 
 which gives out hundreds of pounds' worth of work 
 among the homes of his people every year, in the 
 turning of a wrist, he has converted a district, 
 which was nearly dead to Ireland, into a ])lnce 
 where you will now be greeted freely in Irish by 
 those who meet you on the road. His parish is 
 a centre of the Home Brightening Association — a 
 body with a somewhat sentimental name, but with 
 a fine purpose. Only let the churches fill their 
 pulpits with clergymen like Father Matthew 
 Maguire, and the uudcrilow of satire about ministers 
 of religion will quickly lose its justification through 
 
140 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 Ireland. Men like him — and there are many with 
 similar aims now working in the Gaelic League — 
 curates more often than parish priests, perhaps — 
 are the salt, not only of their church, Ijut of their 
 country. 
 
 Contrasted with this kind of priest is the kill- 
 joy, the sour Puritan. Not that I object to 
 Puritanism. Puritanism of the sort wliich is not 
 repression of joy l)ut tlic attainment of joy through 
 cleanness of mind and cultivation of decent and 
 delightful things is one of the saving graces of 
 trchmd. Tlie Puritanism of many of the priests, 
 liowcvcr, docs not mean tlic training of the young 
 men to think lionoural)ly a]>out women, but the 
 training of tliem not to think a])out women at all. 
 It means the suppression of all delights, not their 
 reasonal)le cultivation. When a priest like this 
 approaches down a lane, the boys and girls fly 
 separate, as though even conversation l)ct\veen 
 them were the beginnings of sin. He forljids the 
 holding of Gaelic League classes unless the class 
 for young men meets on a different evening from 
 the class for young women. He sees only the 
 dangerous side of dancing and none of its divine 
 necessity. He is a prohibiter of joy ; he hushes 
 song ; he ])rea(dies the llames of hell, and is a spectre 
 of terror for children. He nudvcs liis ])arish a 
 desert, and calls it the peace of God's kingdom. 
 The Puritanical priest is sometimes a well-meaning 
 man — even a lovable man — but the results of liis 
 pseudo-Puritanism are none the less disastrous. 
 
PIUKSTS AND PARSONS 141 
 
 Young men and women of adventurous mind 
 and character will not remain in such a kingdom of 
 gloom, and some of them go to America, no less to 
 escape from the face of the priest than to escape 
 from the face of poverty. I know a lady who 
 organised Gaelic League classes, and had a country- 
 side dancinfj and sinijinff on her lawn on summer 
 evenings. But the priest stepped in. He saw 
 nothing in the whole business but the danger to 
 the girls of walking home in the company of the 
 young men. Tlie lady offered to see every girl 
 home h(>rs(']f willi a lantern. But the ))riest, with 
 his harrowing vision of the world, the flesh and the 
 devil, did not abandon his objections, and the little 
 flame of pleasure, which had promised brightness 
 to a valley, flickered and became a part again of 
 the ancient uidifting gloom. 
 
 It may not b(M)ut (»r ]>lace here to mention the 
 case of a priest in a midland county who denounced 
 the Gaelic League for holding mixed classes of boys 
 and girls. His insults to the Gaelic Leaguers from 
 the altar outraged the sense of decency of one 
 of them to sucli a degree that he rose in the 
 chapel during the service and challenged the truth 
 of the priest's words. Of course, there was a great 
 scandal. But the sympathies of all that was best 
 in Catholic Ireland were with the Gaelic Leaguer, 
 and the priest's "Damn the Gaelic League!" has 
 become historic. 
 
 I hope 1 have made it clear that there are 
 two sorts of priestly despotism in Ireland. One is 
 
142 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 the natural despotism of a good and educated 
 man among people who have been impoverished 
 and denationalised out of a great part of their 
 iutellio;ence and character. The other is the 
 unnatural despotism of men who are greedy for 
 power and for opportunities to let other people feel 
 it. The good priest, it must be admitted, often 
 interferes with the conduct of his people in a way 
 which fortunately or unfortunately no Protestants 
 would endure from their clergy. I have heard, for 
 instance, of a priest in an Irish part of London who 
 went into a public-house one night and swept the 
 glasses of drink from the counter on to the floor. 
 1 have seen a ))ri(ist myself on :i g;ihi-day in an Irisli 
 country town come into a puhiic-house, and say, 
 " Boys, remember that any man who shows himself 
 the worse for drink to-day is disgracing Ireland," 
 and order the barman in front of us all not to serve 
 any man who was not sober with drink. Many of 
 tlic driidvcrs were indignant at the interference 
 with their liberty, and many of them showed before 
 evening how foolish it was to imagine them priest- 
 ridden. 
 
 I know of a priest who went even Ijeyond this in 
 cutting into the liberty of his people. He arrived 
 in the chapel one day to celebrate a marriage, but 
 no brideo;room came. The rumour beuan to be 
 whispered that the man was l)acking out of the 
 marriage at the last moment. 80 the priest 
 resolutely marched off to the hotel where the man 
 was employed, and, finding him in hiding under a 
 
IMMESTS AND PARSONS 143 
 
 billiard-table, dragged him off by maiu force and 
 married liim whether lie would or no. 
 
 These are some trivial examples of the power 
 which a good priest has at every turn in the lives 
 of his pco])le. Sometimes, fi'om tlie Protestant point 
 of view, the priestly innueuce is used to less ex- 
 cellent })urpose. The Catholic theory is against 
 mixed education, for instance, and, wdien a Catholic 
 parent sends his son to a non-denominational 
 school or college, some priest or other usually does 
 his best to ])ersuade the parents to ta,kc tlie boy 
 away, and have him educated at a Catholic institu- 
 tion, ill s[)ite oi" these persuasions, however, tJiei'c 
 are always a number of independent Catholics who 
 send their sons to the non-denominational schools 
 and (!oih'g('S. Even if they did not, I do not see 
 . what cause the other si(h3 has t(j gnindjle. I my- 
 self detest sectarian education licai-tily, but, if some 
 people are conscientiously inclined to it, 1 do not 
 see what grounds we others have for getting angry 
 with them. There ought to be room in a decent 
 country for all sorts of conflicting ideals. 
 
 Sometimes, unfortunately, the clergy themselves 
 will not admit this. There have been few things 
 more sliameful in recent Irish history than the 
 suppression by Cardinal Logue of the weekly paper 
 called " The Irish Peasant," merely because it 
 attacked the clerical control of Irish elementary 
 cducatioji from an intellectual Catholic layman's 
 point of view. Any institution, Protestant or 
 Catholic, which ruthlessly sui)presses criticism of 
 
144 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 itself is to my mind committing slow suicide. 
 Truth itself cannot survive in an atmospliei-e which 
 is not lilled with the conflict of free ideas. 
 
 I should like to end these glimpses of the priest- 
 hood with a statement of excellent things. People 
 often tell you that the priests are to hiame for half 
 the public-houses in the country. 1 have heard it 
 said in Belfast that if you see a fiuieral with a 
 crowd of priests following it, it is sure to be a 
 publican's. Now, it is probaljle that a great many 
 priests, like other clergymen, have shares in drink 
 establishments. It is likely, too, that the publican's 
 large subscriptions often give liim higli importance 
 as a parishioner. At the same time, so far as I can 
 judge, the priests as a whole do more persistent 
 work in the cause of temperance than any other 
 body of clergymen in Ii-eland. Privately, they 
 adhere to the old-fashioned sort of hospitality 
 which partly consists in ollering drink to their 
 guests— a constant soiu'ce of sliocdc to ci'itics in 
 search of faults, 'i'he best of them, however, are 
 tireless in urging upon tli(;ir ])e()[il(i the necessity 
 of temperate lives. 
 
 In some parishes, they have an excellent custom 
 of getting men to sign the teetotal pledge for a 
 year. Many people, who would shrink from 
 pledging their entire life- time, are rpiite willing to 
 promise a year's abstinence from liquor. In one 
 parish that I know the priest calls once every 
 quarter upon all those who are willing to i)romise 
 to abstain from drink for three months to stand 
 
PRIESTS AND PARSONS 145 
 
 up during the chapel-service. His parish used to 
 be intemperate. Now practically all his people 
 stand up once a quarter at mass, and take the 
 three-monthly pledge. I have been in his parish 
 during the bustle and convivial excitement of a 
 fair day, and did not see a single drunken person. 
 It was a strange contrast to a fair 1 had seen in a 
 parish at the far side of the same county. There 
 the thing seemed more like some grotesque debauch 
 as one saw the old men with flaming faces and the 
 young nuM) with wiindering licads reckling in tlie 
 cveninir to tlicir homes. 
 
 In attempting to make generalisations to fit tlie 
 Protestant and Presbyterian clergy, you will again 
 find it difficult to say who is the typical clergyman 
 and who the exceptional. Some of the older men 
 are domineering, and greedily snuff up the honour 
 paid to them by simple people. They are passion- 
 ately dogmatic in their creed, and they are so 
 busy preaching dogma that the virtues of excellent 
 conduct in ordinary life seems to be almost for- 
 gotten by them. In other words, they are so busy 
 looking after the Pope that they often forget their 
 still more dangerous enemy, the Devil. Only a 
 few years ago, a young man of unusually faultless 
 character was refused ordination in the Presbyterian 
 church because he would not assent to that part 
 of the Confession of Faith which declares the Pope 
 to be Anti-Christ. Splendid fighters, these old 
 Presbyterians encourage their people in tlie virtues 
 which they already have, but they do not frequently 
 
146 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 enough encourage tliem to acquire the virtues 
 which they have not. True, they preacli temper- 
 ance, and ahnost invariably practise it. But tliey 
 have permitted Ulster to drift sexually into loose 
 ways that are unknown in the Catholic parts of 
 Ireland. Sabbath-breaking is in their eyes one of 
 the deadly sins, and the cruel Sabl)atarian atmos- 
 phere which they have created in Ulster is largely 
 responsible, I think, for the revolt of many of the 
 young men and women against all Christianity 
 whatsoever. The fires of Hell, too, burn with 
 somewhat sepulchral flames in the imaginations of 
 some of the older men, and dancing, card-playing, 
 and other neutral pleasui'cs are to them merely 
 the enticements of mortal sin. 1 know Presbyterians 
 who could forgive a sensual error more easily than 
 a breach of the Sabbath, though this would by no 
 means be true of the majority of them. 
 
 As for dancing, it is not always the clergymen, 
 sometimes it is the people themselves, who are the 
 most tyrannous in suppressing any sucli ex|)rcssi()M 
 of joy in the world. 1 know a young clergyman 
 who went to a dance in the country not long ago. 
 The elders agreed that it must not happen again, 
 and told him so. The Presbyterian elder can be 
 as <»'reat a tyrant as the Catholic priest. 1 know 
 another clergyman who believed that a man could 
 live in. the spirit of Christ and yet play an occasional 
 game of billiards. When a country churcii was 
 thinking of asking him to become its minister, it 
 was an elder from the town who wrote anonymous 
 
rillESTS AND TARSONS 147 
 
 letters to the members, warniug them of the 
 billiard-playing habits of the young man. The 
 old sort of elder and the old sort of minister, 
 indeed, have between them helped to make many 
 of the country parts of Ulster an intellectual and 
 social dos(Mt. 
 
 The rresbytcrian minister, like tlic priest, is 
 often the subject of jokes among ordinary people 
 on the ground of his love for money. When he is 
 called from ;i poor congregation to a rich one, for 
 instance, and publicly remarks tliat it lias pleased 
 the Lord to call him to a sphere of wider usefulness, 
 the laity is inclined to smile. Before leaving one 
 church for another, a minister must always receive 
 the permission of his Presbytery to make the 
 change. Some years ago, a minister in a provincial 
 town was called to a church in Belfast, and he told 
 his Presbytery of the invitation. He said that he 
 had consulted the Lord as to what he should do, 
 but that he found it impossible to be certain what 
 was the Lord's will ; consecpieiitly, he would leave 
 himself in the hands of the Presbytery, to do with 
 as they thought best. Of course, it was taken for 
 granted that the Presbytery would regretfully 
 permit him to go to the larger sphere. His intimate 
 friend, who was beside him, had already asked 
 him before the meeting for his private wish, and 
 the minister had conveyed to him, as he thought, 
 that he was ready to go to Belfast ; indeed, he 
 had already begun to make some of the arrange- 
 ments for his new household. His frieud was. 
 
148 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 uuluckily, rather deaf, and took the matter up in 
 the opposite sense. He rose in the Presbytery 
 and said that the work of their brother had been 
 so greatly blest in his present sphere, and he had 
 made himself so beloved by his people, that he 
 thought they ought to ask him to continue to 
 labour yet further in that part of the vineyard. 
 The unhappy minister, hearing what was beiug 
 said, distractedly caught his friend's attention, and 
 let him know, in the vulgar saying, that he was 
 putting his foot in it. The other showed no 
 embarrassment, but calmly went on to say that, 
 perhaps, on the other hand, they had no right to 
 limit their brother's uyefuhiess, and that, great as 
 would l;e the loss to them and to their Presbytery 
 as a result of his removal to Belfast, they must 
 think, not of their own interests, but of the 
 interests of the Church as a whole. After a 
 rigmarole of this sort, he moved that the Presbytery 
 should give their ])rother permission to accept the 
 call to Belfast. 
 
 Both clergy and laity will tell you stories like 
 this with a satirical delight. Not that the Presby- 
 terian clergy as a whole are particularly worldly. 
 But, like the priests, they have their share of 
 worldly, comfortable men among them. One hears 
 even of cases of clergymen who extract marriage 
 fees from the people in a way comparable to that 
 which is so generally condemned in tlie priests, 
 though the sums are never comparably exor- 
 bitant. No one, however, could say that the 
 
PRIESTS AND PARSONS 149 
 
 Presbyterian clergy are people who use their pro- 
 fession to make themselves rich. Their chief fault 
 is not love of money, but a kind of pride in 
 social power, and a narrow refusal to fight against 
 the bigotry so common among their people. If 
 the Presbyterian chu'gy had loved Ireland as much 
 as they have hated Rome, they could have made 
 Ulster a home of intellectual energy and spiritual 
 buoyancy long ago. They have preferred to keep 
 Ulster dead to fine ideas rather than risk the 
 appearnnce of a few unsettling ideas among the 
 rest. Consecpiently, one sees in Ulster a good 
 deal more of hard dogma than of courageous 
 thought and spiritual living. 
 
 The younger Presbyterian clergy, like the 
 younger priests, are gradually coming under the 
 influence of a new and broader spirit. There is a 
 reaction going on against all the barren dread of 
 Catholicism. The young men, or some of them, 
 realise that the f^ogey of Popery has been standing 
 in the path of the Church, preventing its advance 
 towards any fair ideals. Tliey are taking a new 
 interest in the condition of the poor. They are 
 l)aying less hood to the mere dognuis of their 
 Church, and more to the spirit of Christ wdiich is 
 at the back of those dogmas. They are beginning 
 to think of Ireland, and to see that the creation of 
 a just and generous atmosphere in Ireland is itself 
 a sacred work. 
 
 Tlie clergy of the Protestant Church of Ireland 
 have many of the faults and many of the virtues 
 
150 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 of the Presbyterian clergy. Like tliese, tliey in- 
 clude many moral men, many narrow men, 
 many tyrannical men, and a moral, narrow, 
 tyrannical man is a danger in any community. 
 You find some of them preaching religious fury 
 from Orange platforms on the Twelfth of July. 
 The majority of them, however, like the clergy of 
 the other churches, lead comparatively imobtrusive 
 lives, much fuller of sacrifices and unselfish gentle- 
 ness than a person like myself can appreciate. I 
 am afraid in this chapter I have dealt less than 
 justly with the excellent aspects of the lives of 
 Irish priests and parsons. Tliese men, liundreds 
 of them, have noble ideals of their own, noble 
 passions. If their politics have been narrow, 
 their creed hard, and their thoughts of other 
 churches somewhat hostile and militant, it is 
 because we in Ireland have been living in the 
 backwash of two mingling tides of religious and 
 political bitterness. The clergy have behaved in 
 most circumstances with the same mixture of 
 nobleness and ignobleness as their peopK^ 'J'his is 
 at once their defence and their condemnation. 
 
CHAPTER VIll 
 
 THE ULSTERMAN's NOTORIETY 
 
 I HAVE already denied tlie foolish superstition — a 
 superstition wliicli lias vitiated politics, both Irish 
 and English, for a century — that the Ulstcrnian is 
 only a sort of foreigner in Ireland. Ireland has 
 marked the Ulsterinan for her own — marked him 
 racially as well as geographically. If he is differ- 
 ent from the general people of the south and west, 
 it is not a deep division of blood and of permanent 
 interests. It is a division of ancient religious 
 ideals, and of a political, intellectual and economic 
 atmosphere created for the most part by those 
 ideals. Irish Protestant and Irish Catholic were 
 never given a fair field upon which to fight out 
 the battle of the Reformation. The religious issue 
 was constantly allowed to become confused wqtli 
 the national issue, and, as a result of various 
 Imperial aml)itions, Ireland did not experience 
 the unifying effects of a civil war free from foreign 
 interference. If Ireland had enjoyed civil wars to 
 the extent to which England has enjoyed them, 
 she might not be more Protestant than she is, but 
 she would certainly be more united and prosperous. 
 As it is, Ireland has remained a divided country. 
 
 151 
 
152 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 Ulster, in spite of more tliau one fair promise of 
 better things, is still a nation within a nation. 
 Some one has said of her that she is Irish to the 
 English and English to the Irish. This is a view, 
 however, that takes into account only her politics, 
 and expresses none of her deeper liuman character- 
 istics. I like better the thought of the writer who 
 summed up the Ulsterman as " a veneer of John 
 Knox upon Rory of the Hills." This, I think, 
 helps us more sharply than any other phrase I 
 know to realise that, even though the Ulsterman 
 may be cousin several times removed to the Scot, 
 Ireland is the true mother who bore and nurtured 
 and shaped him. The Ulsterman may be a Pro- 
 testant and a Presbyterian, but at least lie is an 
 Irish Protestant and Presbyterian, not a Scotch or 
 an English one. 
 
 The Ulsterman's religion has been at once his 
 making and undoing. It has sent him about the 
 world with a flame in his head, and this is a virtue 
 or an evil just as accidents may determine. I 
 have heard a traveller with some knowledge of 
 South Africa declare that you might meet a man 
 from any other part of the world out there, and 
 might even work and live with liim for a season, 
 and at the end of the time still l)e ignorant wliether 
 he was a Protestant or a Catholic or nothing at all, 
 but that you could scarcely sit down to have a 
 drink with a man from anywhere in the Belfast 
 end of Ulster without his immediately setting out 
 to discover what was your religion and telling 
 
THE ULSTERMAN'S NOTORIETY 153 
 
 you his own. This curiosity about the religion 
 of otlier people is one of the most distinguish- 
 ing characteristics of the Ulsterman. Pious 
 cliurcli-goeis, l)lasphemers, saints, money-grubbers, 
 loosc-livcis, r('Rj)cctal)lcs — the people of the north, 
 with c()tn])arativoly few exceptions, will not re- 
 main satisfied until they have ranged you up like 
 an armed soldier behind either the Pope or Martin 
 Luther. 
 
 Sometimes this is an ignoble curiosity ; some- 
 times it is harmless and merely shows a preoccupa- 
 tion witli religious or semi-religious things. As 
 an instance of it, a countryman in County Derry 
 told me one day how he had some months pre- 
 viously gone to Belfast to look for work, and had 
 taken a job as tram-conductor. The first day he 
 turned up at the stables, he declared, another 
 worker came up to him inquisitively and said : 
 " What peg do you hang your hat on ? " My 
 acquaintance thought himself very clever because, 
 squaring his jaw and looking the other man de- 
 terminedly in the eyes, he had answered : " On 
 the right peg." " After that," lie said, with an 
 air as though he had still his knife in the other 
 despite the shining fact of his own victory, " I 
 wasn't much bothered." 
 
 This is an instance of apparently harmless 
 curiosity, though assuredly the countryman did 
 not think so. Unfortunately, the curiosity is not 
 always harmless. The Ulsterman is changing fast 
 nowadays — he is becoming more Irish and less 
 
154 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 bigoted — ])ut until comparatively recently it was 
 no unusual thing in Belfast for a worker to come 
 up to his employer and say " So-and-so's an R.C. 
 (Roman Catholic), I'm not going to work along 
 with an R.C." ; and on occasions of special excite- 
 ment the Catholic workers at the ship-building 
 yards and elsewhere have had to stay away from 
 their work till the heat of sectarian frenzy gene- 
 rated l)y some religious celebration or political 
 crisis had died away, or at least diminished to a 
 normal ill-humour. On such occasions there has 
 been an almost mediaeval damper abroad — to limb, 
 if not to life — but even on many occasions, it 
 must bo confessed, to life itself. Pxilfast, when 
 ma(hlened, is as capable of a J*a[)ist-hiint, as the 
 French Revolutionaries were of a hunt for aristo- 
 crats. I have a friend, indeed, who, whenever he 
 had been out looking on during a Belfast riot, 
 used to go home and read Carlyle's " French 
 Revolution." He said that in movement and 
 colour it read like a description of things in 
 Belfast. 
 
 Religious bigotry is by no means confined to 
 the ordinary workers in Ulster. It is also common 
 among the foremen, the managers, and even the 
 employers — though by no means so demoniacally 
 common as it has been the custom to represent. 
 I met a foreman belonging to a mill one day, who 
 agreed with me in deploring an outburst of 
 sectarian trouble that had just taken i)lace in the 
 town. He earnestly stated his belief that every 
 
THE ULSTERMAN'S NOTORIETY 155 
 
 mau had a riglit to ]iis owu religious opinions, and 
 lamented the fact that Protestants and Catholics 
 could not agree to live in peace together. In the 
 course of our conversation I mentioned laughingly 
 the way in which sonic Protestants talked of 
 Catholics as though they were hopelessly dishonest 
 and not to be trusted. The foreman's eyes filled 
 with dark excitement. 
 
 " It's true enough," he said gravely. " Pve 
 worked with Protestant and Roman Catholic girls 
 for fourteen years, and never made no dilTcrence 
 between one and the other, and I know what Fm 
 saying. 1 tell you this for a fact: you can go 
 out of a room and leave a Protestant working, and 
 while you're away, she'll work just as hard as if 
 your eye was on her ; but so much as turn your 
 back on a Pomnii (Jatliolic, and sli(>/ll dro]) her 
 work like .'i, hot brick, .and devil the hand's turn 
 will she do unless you stand over her and make 
 her do it." 
 
 His speech had become impassioned and fanatical. 
 I had scratched a reasonable man and found a 
 bigot. It may be thought strange of me to put 
 down the foreman's statements to fanaticism rather 
 than accept them as the careful observations of a 
 practical mau. But I have seen too often how 
 the practical Ulsterman with a flame in his head 
 can become utterly incapable of impartial judg- 
 ment, jjcsides, 1 am a practical Ulsterman 
 myself, and J have witnessed as many disproofs of 
 Catholic laziness as of Protestant black-heartedness. 
 
156 HOME LIFE IN IKELAND 
 
 The anti-Catholic passion is ahnost the first 
 passion that an Ulster non-Catholic child knows — 
 or was until yesterday. Fanaticism among the 
 working classes is disappearing, but tlie badly 
 educated middle class Protestants, many of whom 
 fear that the death of fanaticism will mean the 
 birth of Socialism, have still an abundance of the 
 old catchwords of distrust. When I was a child, 
 the fiivourite wall-scribbling in Belfast was : " No 
 Pope Here." The Catholic retort to this, which 
 you would see chalked under it on many a red 
 gal)le-end was : 
 
 " He who wrote this wrote well, 
 Vi)V the .siiiiio in writ on tlm i^ates of 1T(;11." 
 
 — a couplet that, used in another connection, has 
 been traced, I believe, to Dean Swift. The Pro- 
 testants, on their side, are not without their 
 rhymed statements of faith. It is an excepliuiial 
 Protestant child who does not know tlie couplet : 
 
 "Up the long ladder and down the short rope, 
 God save King William, to Hell with the Pope." 
 
 This cry of "To Hell with the Pope," though 
 in another generation it will be more silent, one 
 hopes, than the harp on Tara's walls, has long 
 been the shibboleth of true blue Protestantism in 
 Ulster. Once when I was walking with a friend 
 on the road near Lisburn, a man in a greasy caj), 
 like an engineer's, came towards us on a bicycle 
 and, just as he was passing us, lie looked at our 
 faces suddenly and, with a loud shout of " To 
 
THE ULSTERIMAN'S NOTORIETY 157 
 
 Hell with the Pope," pedalled off as fast as he 
 could down the road. Evidently he had thought 
 that we looked like Catholics, and had felt it as 
 a duty laid on liim to challenge our faith. 
 
 This is one of the humours of the religious wars 
 in Ulster — that one's face is supposed in many 
 quarters to betray the fact that one is a 
 Catholic or a Protestant. I cannot say exactly 
 what the difference between the two kinds of 
 faces is, save that, I think, the Catholic has a 
 deeper, more sensitive and religious eye, while the 
 Protestant looks at once more rugged and better 
 fed, and has an eye more accustomed to size up 
 material things in spite of all his semi-religious 
 idealism. The difference, however, is largely 
 imaginary. To take my own case, for instance, 
 my face has caused me to be taken for a Catholic 
 quite as often as for a Protestant. 1 remember, 
 when I was a boy, a friend of mine — a young 
 Protestant Nationalist, whose proud boast it was 
 that he had " a Papish face " — refused to let me 
 go in his company to a Nationalist meeting in a 
 field outside the town, because, he said, my face 
 was a " Protestant face " and would put me in 
 danger. Yet another friend of mine, a doughty 
 Protestant, was going through Sandy Pow, an 
 Orange neighbourhood, one night at a time of 
 trouble, when to his anger and amazement he was 
 set upon as a Catholic and threatened with a 
 beating. He, too, had the good or Ijad luck to 
 have a "Papish face " — an expensive gift from the 
 
158 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 gods. At that time it was thought in some 
 quarters to be a sign of Papistry if one went 
 about clean-shaven. True-l)lue Protestants wore 
 moustaches — a Catholic with a red moustache, 
 indeed, was unthinkable. My friend had been 
 foolish enough to shave iiis upper lip. He would 
 have paid the penalty, if his anger had not roused 
 him to a pitch of denunciatory eloquence that at 
 once convinced and humiliated his assailants. 
 
 It would be wrong to infer from all this that 
 there is no such thing as friendly intercourse 
 between Protestants and Catholics. In Belfast 
 and the towns an ancient, easily-fired feud, as 
 between Montagu and C'a})ulet, is the rule, but 
 even here friendship between people of o})posing 
 religions is by no means so uncommon as is often 
 supposed. At the same time, the Catholic who 
 mixes freely in Protestant society, and vice versa, 
 is an exceptional person. He is, as a, lule, exceed- 
 ingly popular — partly because of his obvious broad- 
 mindedness, partly because he is looked on as 
 something of a miracle. There are many i*rotestant 
 houses, on the other hand, in Avhicli the appearance 
 of a Catholic, however broad-minded he may be, 
 would be as unacceptable as the appearance of the 
 devil. These are, I imagine, mostly the houses of 
 people who know Catholics only through " Foxe's 
 Book of Martyrs" and literature of that sort, and 
 have never had occasion to mix with them and 
 talk with them as flesh-and-blood human beings. 
 If the children in houses like these make Catholic 
 
THE ULSTETIMAN'S NOTORIETY 159 
 
 friends at school, they do not feel like Iniuging 
 the latter home and introducing them to their 
 families. Tliey cannot trust their parents to be- 
 have tliemselves in such unfamiliar circumstances. 
 
 Prol)ably the father of tlic house, who himself 
 subscribes to a mission for proselytising among 
 the Catholics of tlie south and west, would honestly 
 look on any Catholic companion of his sou's as a 
 deeply designing agent of the Jesuits, whose 
 single thought in life was how most speedily and 
 eirecLivcly to smasl) the Protestant reh'gioii to 
 pieces. The presence of so dangerous a (conspirator 
 at the tea-tal)l(i — full armed with Jesuit wiles 
 even at the age of twelve — would produce an 
 atmosphere of restraint and frowns. After the 
 unwelcome guest had gone, the son of the house 
 would be turned upon hy an indignant Ijithcr and 
 warned not to repeat his outrage on the sanctity 
 of a Protestant home. 
 
 I do not say that the average Protestant home 
 is so exclusive as this, though I think tliat, when 
 it is not, it is the result of indifference more often 
 than of lil)eral ideas. The extreme sort of exclu- 
 siveness, however, is more common among the 
 middle-classes than among the workers — much 
 more common in the towns than in the country. 
 Let a Protestant girl in Belfast have a Catholic 
 friend of the opposite sex, and immediately there 
 is a hubbub among her fimiily friends and church 
 acquaintances as thougli the world was in danger 
 of coming to an end. The majority of Protestant 
 
160 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 parents would, so far as I have observed, rather see 
 their children married to atheists than to Catholics. 
 This, fortunately, does not prevent an occasional 
 young man and woman of opposite religions from 
 having the courage to marry. In cases of this 
 sort, the woman commonly takes the religion of 
 her husband, though sometimes both husband and 
 wife remain faithful to their own churches. On 
 the whole, T think mixed marriages show as high 
 an average of happiness as any other. They are 
 dangerous experiments, liowever, among people 
 who believe that those of an opposite religion to 
 their own are doomed to everlasting })uiiislimeut. 
 
 ]-*robably I have said enough to show the extent 
 to which religious l)itterncss prevails in Ulster. 
 It may be no harm, however, to mention one 
 aspect of this bitterness which is not without its 
 paradoxical and amusing side. Nothing makes an 
 Ulster Protestant more indignant than the treat- 
 ment which is said to be meted out to a Southern 
 Catholic who changes, or desires to change, his 
 relisfion. It never seems to strike that i'rotestant 
 that, were he himself to propose to change his 
 religion, his fellow- Protestants would treat him in 
 exactly the same way. I knew a young man some 
 years ago who gradually became converted — or, if 
 you like the word better, perverted — to Catholicism, 
 One day, after the news of the conversion was 
 published, he met in the street the two sisters of 
 one of his most intimate friends. He was about 
 to greet them in the old friendly, cheerful way, 
 
THE ULSTERMAN'S NOTORIETY 161 
 
 raising his hat and eager to shake hands. They 
 stared at him, however, as though they had never 
 seen him before. TJiey were educated and — if I 
 may use a silly word — fashionable girls, but they 
 were still suflicieiitly sturdy in their Protestantism 
 to cut a. man who tuiJKnl his back — or his coat — 
 on the Protestant rcli<»ion. 
 
 In the country and among the poorer people, as 
 I have said, a healthier spirit rules. Here, too, it 
 must be admitted, the ancient bigotries are alive, 
 and stories pass from grandmother to grandchild 
 of the wickedness and greed of priests, and of the 
 wiles of nuns, and memories of the fires of the 
 persecutor, and of the reputed massacre of 
 Protestants in 1641, and of the '98 incident of 
 tScullabogue barn, are stuff of which much light 
 conversation is made. An Orangeman, sitting 
 over the lire with you, will roll you off a long list 
 of Catholic crimes, and open out for you a field of 
 blood-stained lore with such earnestness and 
 imagination that, if not convinced, you are at 
 least overwhelmed. 
 
 "There was oidy one man that ever knowed 
 how to treat them," said an Orange farmer to me 
 cue night of the Catholic Irish; "and that was 
 Cromwell. He never let them get their head up. 
 It's the only way." 
 
 This sounds as bad as anything you could find 
 among the middle-classes of Belfast, so that some 
 people will be all the more surprised to hear that 
 the farmer, who spoke in such a manner, lived on 
 
 L 
 
1G2 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 the easiest and even most warm-hearted terms 
 with his Catholic ueighbours. 
 
 " Do you tliiiik 1 don't like Roman Catholics?" 
 he cried one day when I was putting up a case for 
 them. " I tell you I'd sooner have a Roman 
 Catholic than a Protestant any day. All my best 
 
 friends are Roman Catholics. Sure, Willie " 
 
 (naming a Catholic neighbour) "and me is never 
 separate." 
 
 Upon this [ cornered him, and asked him if he 
 
 honestly thought Willie was a terril)le fellow, 
 
 who would cheat him and lie to him and cut his 
 throat in a moment of religious excitement. 
 
 The Orangeman's face screwed u]) in bitterness, 
 and he looked at me from wriidvled eyes. "Ay," 
 he declared in a kind of sour passion, "he would 
 cheat me and lie to me and cut my throat or any- 
 thing else for the sake of his religion, and," he 
 added surprisingly, " I don't blame him either. 
 A Roman Catholic is a Roman Catholic first and 
 your friend afterwards, and he'll tlo whatever his 
 priest tells him. The priest tells him it isn't a 
 sin to tell lies and murder for the sake of the 
 Church, and that he'll go to Hell if he doesn't do 
 as they bid. I tell you if the Roman Catholics 
 had the upper hand there wouldn't be many 
 Protestants left in Ireland. And," he wo' xid up, 
 
 with a knowing look, " Willie would have to 
 
 do as he was bid, the same as the rest of them." 
 
 The reality of the friendship which existed 
 between the ultra-Orange farmer and his Catholic 
 
THE ULSTEIIMAN'S NOTORIETY 163 
 
 friend AVillie was made manifest on a critical 
 occasion during the last Boer War. For some 
 reason or other, a rumour arose in their part of 
 the country during the early days of tlie war that 
 a great Catholic rising was to take place, and that 
 farmers miglit expect to liavc Englisli troops 
 billeted on tliein at any moment for tlie protection 
 of the defenceless Protestant majority. Some faces 
 were white at the market at which the story was 
 spread, and not the least white was our friend tlie 
 Orange farmer's — a pardonable whiteness, seeing 
 that throat-cutting and burning at the stake were 
 the gentlest of deaths to the possibility of which 
 he and his family might now look forward. AVliile 
 he was digesting the first terrors of the news, his 
 friend, Willie, appeared along the street, and the 
 Orangeman went up to liim with troubled eyes, 
 and told him the worst. 
 
 " And I'm saying, Willie," he broke out, with 
 a sudden tearful earnestness, when his story was 
 told, " if it comes to war in the end, and you and 
 me finds ourselves on opposite sides on the field of 
 battle, 1 swear to God that I'll shoot over your 
 head, and you must shoot over mine, for, man 
 dear, I'd be loath to kill you." 
 
 Thus was made a new pact of friendship — a pact 
 that has its comic side, but that has still about it 
 something of beauty, and that helps to show the 
 foolishness of those who speak as though the 
 estranging sea between Irish Catholic and Pro- 
 testant were an eternal work of God, and not a 
 
164 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 removable bitterness created by politicians and 
 journalists. 
 
 The tendency of Protestant and Catholic in 
 Ulster for some time past has been to unite, and 
 if the clergy and the journalists wished for this 
 unity, the atmosphere of Ulster could be cleared in 
 less than a generation. The Press, however, is in 
 the hands, not of idealists, but of heated politicians, 
 and the same thing holds true to a great extent of 
 the pulpit. Protestants are more likely to be 
 warned in their churches ao;ainst errors of Catliolic 
 doctrine than against errors of Protestant conduct 
 towards Catholics in a misbehavinix world. 
 8imihirly, if any trouble arises between Cathobcs 
 and Protestants in the streists, tlie Unionist Press, 
 instead of commenting upon the case on its merits, 
 denounces it at once as a Nationalist or Catholic 
 outrage, while the Nationalist Press, with equal 
 readiness, represents the same incident as an un- 
 provoked Orange assault on unoffending Catholics. 
 Thus innocent and well-meaning [)eo[)le, who only 
 read papers containing their own views, learn to 
 look on their opponents as a kind of savages, lying- 
 in Avait for the seed of the righteous with stones, 
 rivets, and bad language. 
 
 The truth of the matter is, of course, that Ulster 
 Protestants and Ulster Catholics are, to use an 
 expressive phrase, very much of a muclmess. 
 There are broad-minded Protestants and broad- 
 minded Catholics, bigoted Protestants and bigoted 
 Catholics. There are cruel Protestants and cruel 
 
THE UT.SIERMAN'S NOIORIETY 165 
 
 Catholics, gentle Protestants and gentle Catholics. 
 There are Protestants who would like to see all 
 the Catholics swept out of the country, and 
 Catholics who would like to see Protestants swept 
 out of tlic country ; Init, to match tliem, there are 
 Protestants who want to live in peace and friend- 
 ship with their Catholic neighbours, and Catholics 
 who want to live in peace and friendship with 
 their Protestant neighbours. For every bigot or 
 black sheep you find on one side, you will, as an 
 English commentator on Ireland would say, find 
 two on the other. Protestant and Catholic have 
 been looking at each other more closely and 
 honestly of late, and have each been amazed to 
 discover how human the other is. There may 
 never h;i,ve been a more bitter sort of bigotry in 
 Ulster tlian at the present moment, but, on the 
 otlier hand, never was so fine and genc)-al a spirit 
 of broad-mindedness to be found. Middle-aged — 
 or rather century-old — bigotry is uttering its last 
 cry, and it is a loud and strident cry, so loud 
 indeed that many people are unable to hear beyond 
 it the more ])leasaut and gathering voices of the 
 peace-bringers. 
 
 The youth of Ulster are coming to see more and 
 more clearly that the fears of their fathers, while 
 they may have had an intelligible enough origin, are 
 now absurd. Catholics have been mixing more 
 freely with the Protestants during the last few 
 years in the schools and colleges than they used to 
 do. This, too, despite the frequent protests of the 
 
166 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 Catholic Bishops and clergy — protests which afford 
 the old kind of Protestant a sort of bitter satis- 
 faction, because he imagines tliey justify him in 
 his vigorous faith. On tlie whole, however, it is 
 doubtful whether sectarian bigotry is very much 
 more common in Ulster than in England. English 
 Anglicans and Catholics and Nonconformists make 
 a sufficiently loud noise about having to send their 
 children to schools of which they do not approve, 
 and I have heard as spitefully narrow things said in 
 England against Nonconformists as I ever heard 
 said in Ulster against Catholics. In Ulster sectarian 
 hatred is at 'least a passion : in England, so far as 
 I have been able to see, it is a pettiness. I once 
 asked an En<(liHhman whether he (jot his news- 
 papers in a certain shop, lie said that he did not, 
 because he "did not believe in encouraging those 
 damned Nonconformists." I believe his spirit is 
 a good deal commoner in the country pi^rts of 
 England than is sometimes realised. There was a 
 Scotch lady, for instance, who took over a school 
 in an English country-town some time ago, and 
 who, in order to further her interests, ceased to be 
 a professing Presbyterian and became a member 
 of the local Anglican Church. The Vicar sent his 
 children to her school, till one day it became 
 known that she was an escaped Dissenter, where- 
 upon he immediately withdrew his children from 
 the care of a teacher with so dubious a past. 
 
 I mention these facts merely to show that 
 it is foolish to represent, as some people do, 
 
THE ULSTERMAN'S NOTORIETY 1G7 
 
 the war of creeds in Ulster and throughout Ireland 
 as an unparalleled phenomenon, branding the 
 people as a sort of religious hooligans wlio would 
 produce a kind of blend of the Cromwellian 
 massacres and St Bartholomew's Day were it 
 not for the watchful care of a humane British 
 Government. The Irish in Ulster, as in the other 
 provinces, would get on excellently, if they were 
 only left to themselves. At the time of the 
 recent Belfast dockers' strike this tendency to 
 union was clearly seen. Mr Jose[)h Devlin, the 
 Natiouabst J\l.L*., ;ui(l Councillor Boyd, the 
 Orange Trade Unionist, followed each other ou the 
 same platform and pronounced sectarian bigotry 
 among the Belfast working men dead. And 
 dead, or on the way to death, it afterwards 
 proved to be, for when the riots broke out — in 
 which tw^o lives were lost — they took the form 
 of fights between the people and the soldiers, 
 never between the Catholics and the Protestants.^ 
 Every one who knows Belfast and the curious 
 way in which Catholics and Protestants to a 
 large extent inhabit different districts, communicat 
 ing with each other through numerous short 
 streets — streets which are a temptation of the 
 evil one to raiders and stone-throwers — will realise 
 the significance of this fact. A few years ago 
 
 ' Tlie Press made ;i great deal of tlic J3elfast riots on the last 
 twelfth of July. 'J'hese riots, however, were between the 
 Nationalists and the police, not between the Catholics and the 
 Orangemen. They did not signify an outbreak of the old religious 
 bigotry. 
 
168 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 an anti-military riot in the Falls Road — the 
 Catholic quarter of the city — would have been 
 the si<mal for a hostini? of tlie Protestant forces 
 on the Shankhill Road and in Sandy Row. Many 
 of the enemies of the strikers, failing to recognise 
 the strength and the extent of the new spirit, 
 believed that su(^h a riot had only to he pre- 
 cipitated a couple of years ago to kindle the 
 old fires of hatred and leave the Protestant and 
 Catholic workers divided as before. As things 
 turned out on this occasion, more than one fiery 
 Protestant was to be found fighting doughtily 
 side by side with the Catholic rioters. A friend 
 of mine who was through the riots told me that, 
 at one time, some stones came down on the 
 rioters through a side street from a group of 
 Orange boys, but that, instead of replying to 
 them in the same way, the Catholic figliters cried 
 to each other : " Don't throw back. We have 
 no quarrel with the Orangemen, it's the soldiers 
 we're fighting." 
 
 Indeed, I saw something of the same spirit 
 in action myself on the night after the riot, 
 when 1 walked through the disturbed quarter. 
 Not the men of tlie Shankhill Road as a whole, 
 but a few boys incited by a iirebrand whom the 
 Orangemen do not take very seriously, were 
 shouting an occasional song of defiance and 
 hurling now and then an angry stone down 
 the gloom of a connecting street into the Catholic 
 district. It was easy to see that, the soldiers 
 
THE ULSTEIIMAN'S NOTORIETY 169 
 
 having been hurriedly witlidrawn, the rank and 
 file of the people were becoming a little irritated 
 by these small but persistent attacks from a 
 new source. It ia to their credit, however, that 
 tlicy stood there in the darkness and endured 
 (•halleng(i and attacks without an clfort at retort, 
 clergymen, politicians and industrial leaders being 
 tireless with their wise and charitable counsels. 
 Indeed, one of the most irresistible peace-makers 
 on this occasion was a man who, I knew for 
 certain, had been among the most impetuous of 
 the stone-slingers twenty-four hours previously. 
 He had a strong belief in fighting the English 
 whenever and wherever possible, but he did not 
 believe in Irishmen fighting each other. 
 
 It is, of course, as yet scarcely possible to 
 test the depth and extent of the new spirit 
 at the ballot-boxes. It is a spirit which is affect- 
 ing the youth of tlie province, largely without 
 votes and without oi-gnnisation, rather than the 
 old and the middle-aged who have still control 
 of the political machine. The greater part of 
 the latter will never realise the folly of their 
 bigotry until they awake in Paradise. Youth, 
 however, ardent, courageous , determined, is be- 
 ginning to think new thoughts and to make 
 for itself new ideals, social, national, and spiritual. 
 It is only fair to say that the credit of the new — 
 or the coming — order of things is largely due 
 to men like Mr Lindsay Crawford, who broke 
 away from the old sort of Orangeism to tell 
 
170 HOIME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 his fellow-Protestants that no Irish politics could 
 be honourably based on any consideration that 
 did not include the passionate love of Ireland, 
 and to Parlijimentary Nationalists of the younger 
 generation, like Mr Joseph Devlin and Mr T. ]\1. 
 Kettle, who have fouo;lit election-battles in the 
 new faith of the union of Orange and Green. 
 I do not hold the same political creed as Mr 
 Devlin — indeed, he has had little but what was 
 disparaging to say of the school of politics which 
 I follow — but every one must recognise that, 
 in spite of his association with a rather sectarian 
 society like the Itihernians, he has pcu'sistcntly 
 set his Hice aijfainst reliti-iouH hiuotry tlirouuh liis 
 public career. Mr Thomas Sloan, the lnd('[)t'ndent 
 Orange M.P., might send down a no])le name 
 to history as a worker for the same end, for he 
 has a strong and ardent following. The question 
 that troubles many people is, Has he the courage 
 of soul — no one doubts his physical courage — to 
 choose the diiHcult way of patriotism rather than 
 the readier way of relying upon old catchwords 
 and hatreds ? Some of the younger Presbyterian 
 ministers are beginning to respond to the new 
 influences, just as are some of the younger Catholic 
 priests, and both among the clergy and the 
 laity of the Presbyterian Church growing murmurs 
 are to be heard aofaiust the ofiicial Church collec- 
 
 O 
 
 tion of money for the proselytisation of Irish 
 Catholics. I met a Presbyterian of some weight 
 the other day who refuses to put even a penny 
 
THE ULSTERMANS NOTORIETY 171 
 
 in the plate ou the day oq which this collection 
 is made. 
 
 Nor are the members of the disestablished 
 Protestant Church remaining aloof from the 
 new patriotic movement towards unity. One of 
 the sanest and most charitable influences in his 
 own sphere in Ireland to-day is the witty and 
 brilliant Protestant Episcopal clergyman, who 
 writes novels under the pseudonym of George 
 A. Birmingham. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE IRISH GENTRY 
 
 In Ireland, according to a cliaracter of Mr Shaw's, 
 there is only one class distinction : either you are 
 a gentleman or you are not. Mr Shaw — or his 
 character — is not quite right. The landed gentry 
 give us a sort of upper class, as the professions 
 and the shop-keepers give us a sort of middle 
 class, in Ireland. Tlie Irish uj)per class, however, 
 plays a smaller part in the social and progressive 
 life of the nation than the upper class in almost 
 any other country in the world. Irish gentlemen 
 as individuals arc among the ballad-glorious 
 heroes of the nation : the Irish gentry as a class 
 arc, from Ireland's point of view, one of llie most 
 worthless aristocracies in history. 
 
 The ordinary Irish gentleman who can afford 
 to do so lives largely out of Ireland. As a boy, 
 he goes to an English school : as a young man he 
 plays at an Englisii University, or becomes an 
 officer in the English army. When he is at home 
 he lives as completely aloof from his people as 
 though he were a foreigner treading conquered 
 ground. His estate is not a thing in which he 
 takes any interest apart from the tril)ute which 
 
THE IRISH GENTRY 173 
 
 he can exact from it. The people do not see him 
 at their churches; they do not find him on their 
 platforms at political meetings ; he does not even 
 lend his presence to their festivals of song and 
 language revival, their b^eiscanna — those delightful 
 rocrcalors of the sociid life of Ireland. J^ehind 
 the rent-collecting agent and the rent-defending 
 policeman he stands, a hostile force, believing in 
 no justice save the justice which gives him as 
 much money as he can get for his land, believing 
 in no liberty save the liberty to leave his country 
 a little poorer than he found it, and to subject the 
 interests of an entire people to his own. His 
 relations with his tenants have no sanction of 
 human feeling. He never helped to build a house 
 or an out-house on one of his farms ; his presence 
 never encouraged a farmer to drain a field, but 
 rather to leave it undrained ; to build a wall, but 
 rather to leave it unbuilt. People stdl tell how 
 he once forbade even the erection of cottages for 
 labourers on the farms on his estate. Remember- 
 ing that death, old age, and other accidents have 
 a way of suddenly plunging labourers' families 
 into pauperism, he looked on labourers as mere 
 potential burdens on the poor rate which came so 
 largely out of his own pocket. His " crowbar 
 brigade" — the band of hired men who went 
 round his estate with their crowbars and levelled 
 cottage after cottage to the ground — is one of the 
 picturesque evil memories of Irish nineteenth- 
 century history. 
 
174 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 Apart from bis treatment of his country and 
 his tenants, the Irish landlord oiight not to be 
 looked upon as a monster of the vices. " Is he a 
 good landlord ? " a friend of mine asked an old 
 man going up Croaghpatrick one day about a 
 gentleman in the neighbourhood. " I have never 
 heard tell of a good landlord," the countryman 
 replied with a kind of humour ; " it's a bad 
 trade." Whatever the evils of his trade may be, 
 however, it cannot be denied that the landlord 
 is a vital and courageous figure, as the record of 
 himself and his sons as soldiers in the British 
 army bears witness; and if he has been un- 
 scru|)ul(>us in his dealings with his tenants, it 
 is because Ireland bus for long been really in a 
 state of war, and he looked on tiiose who challenged 
 him as his enemies not merely in person but 
 in principle. He could work himself into a 
 moral hatred of them as the enemies of religious 
 liberty, of social order, of the English throne, of 
 everything he honours in his conventional phrases. 
 His imagination could not grasp tlie point of 
 view of the other side. To him it simply meant 
 anarchy and uncleanuess. It meant, too, it must be 
 remembered, the overthrow of his sons' chances in 
 the world and of the security of his daughters' 
 social well-being. He fought as cruelly as men 
 always fight for their families. 
 
 Ireland has lost much by the absence of 
 her aristocrats from her councils and from the 
 centres of her national life. She has lost the 
 
THE IRISH GENTRY 175 
 
 lielp of liundreds of men, unsurpassed as fighters, 
 with high gifts of organisation and leadership, 
 unbending in trutlifulness, passionately honour- 
 n.l)]c nion as lionour is generally understood among 
 aristocracies. It is a question, however, if the 
 Irish gentry have not lost still more. Tliey have 
 lived in a little narrow world of bitterness, when 
 they might have been a part of a large and joyous 
 struggle towards the making of a civilisation. They 
 have experienced all the pleasures of hunting and 
 shooting, of eating and drinking, of comfort and 
 the company of handsome men and women, but 
 they are like people who go through one of the 
 wonderful places of the world in a closed carriage 
 with the blinds pulled down. They do not know 
 the music of tlie hills and the lakes among which 
 they live, or the stories, or the histories. They 
 miglit have Ix'.en \]\o hs'idcrs of ;i, nation : tliey iiw. 
 no better than touiists in their own country, and, 
 unlike tourists, they are not an expending but an 
 expensive institution. Mr Standish O'Grady has 
 pronounced their epitaph in one of the most im- 
 pressive passages I know in contemporary literature. 
 "Aristocracies," he has written, "come and go 
 like the waves of the sea ; and some fall nobly 
 and others ignobly. As T write, this Protestant 
 Anglo-Irish aristocracy, which once owned all 
 Ireland from the centre to the sea, is rotting from 
 the land in the most dismal farce-tragedy of all 
 time, without one brave deed, without one brave 
 word. 
 
176 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 " Our last Irish aristocracy was Catholic, 
 intensely and fanatically Royalist and Cavalier, 
 and compounded of elements which were Norman- 
 Irish and Milesian-Irish. They worshipped the 
 Crown when the Crown had become a phantom 
 or a ghost, and the god whom they worshipped 
 was not able to save them or himself. Tiiey were 
 defeated and exterminated. They lost everything, 
 but they did not lose honour ; and because they 
 did not lose that, their overthrow was bewailed 
 in songs and music which will not cease to sound 
 for centuries yet. 
 
 " * Sliawn O'Dwyer a Glaniia, 
 We're worsted in Liu; ^Mriie.' 
 
 " Worsted they were ; for they made a fatal 
 mistake, and they had to go ; but they l^rought 
 their honour with them, and they founded noble 
 and ])rinccly families on the Continent, 
 
 "Who laments the destruction of our ])resent 
 Anglo-Irish aristocracy ? Perhaps in broad 
 Ireland not one. They fall from the laud while 
 innumerable eyes are dry, and their fall will not 
 be bewailed in one piteous dirge or one mournful 
 melody." 
 
 The landlord is passing now with a swifter sure- 
 ness than ever, as a result of Mr AVyndham's Laud 
 Act, and, save ::. those cases where he is meeting 
 new facts with a new attitude, he is becoming 
 more and more an isolated figure, living behind 
 high walls and iron gates. The richer ones cross 
 
THE IRISH GENTRY 177 
 
 to England, except for the shooting and hunting 
 seasons, hut the poorer ones live on in tlieir old 
 homes like a kind of first-class misdemeanants, for 
 their homes must have grown something of a 
 prison to tliem. They have no national culture — 
 very little of any sort of culture, indeed— and those 
 of them who have intellect must find their sur- 
 roundings at times almost insupportable. 
 
 One hears a good deal about the gay and rollick- 
 ing Irish gentleman, but I do not think the Irish 
 gentleman is now half so gay or half so rollicking 
 as he was towards the end of the eighteenth century, 
 when it is said he used to mix with the boys of the 
 countryside on the liurliug-field. To the older 
 sort of landlord, indeed, Ireland must now be one 
 broad valley of bitterness and humiliation. There 
 is a titled landlord in the south, who in the 
 old d;iys us(m1 to keep liis tcuiaiits standing bare- 
 headed for hours in the rain on days on which they 
 came to pay their rents. He put them even to the 
 indignity of taking off their boots before he would 
 allow them to come into his rent-office. Lately, 
 he entered into negotiations with them with 
 regard to the sale of his land, and made an appoint- 
 ment for a conference with them in a hotel in a 
 neighbouring market-town. On the appointed 
 day, the tenants held a preliminary meeting in 
 the hotel to discuss what terms they should offer, 
 and while the meeting was in progress the land- 
 lord arrived, and sent in word that he was ready. 
 The chairman of the meeting sent back a message 
 
 M 
 
]78 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 that if Lord So-and-so would call back iu about 
 three-quarters-of-an-hour tlioy would be })repared 
 to receive him. That scene, even if you have not 
 much imagination, will enable you to realise the 
 measure of the revolution that is changing the 
 face and the character of Ireland. 
 
 Far as the Irish gentry have lived out of the 
 main stream of the national life, however, Ireland 
 has given them a definitely Irish character in more 
 ways than one. Irish gentry are difierent from 
 the gentry of other countries. No one could have 
 mistaken Colonel Saunderson for anything but an 
 Irishman, and Lord Charles Beresford has eifaracter- 
 istics as essenlially Irish as though he had been 
 a Nationalist from his birth. Colonel Saunderson 
 had the traditional high spirits of his class, and 
 his instinct for practical joking went so far that 
 once, when some English guests came to visit him 
 at his home, he drove them from the railway- 
 station to the hous(5 at a broaknec'lc gallop on a 
 jaunting-cai-, and had i)igs running ahoutllic house 
 when he arrived, so that they might not be disap- 
 pointed in any of their prejudices. It may have 
 been a Lever-and-Lover kind of humour, but Lever 
 and Lover, exaggerated as many of their i>agesare, 
 reflected at least one side of the Irish character — 
 its exuberance, its recklessness, its hospitality. 
 
 I think myself that the Irish gentleman some- 
 times assumes this recklessness and exuberance to 
 a degree far beyond what is natural to him. Going 
 to England, he finds that a certain conception of 
 
THE IRISH GENTRY 179 
 
 the Irish character exists among the English people, 
 and that he can make himself popular with the help 
 of a few extravagant tricks and stories. Accord- 
 ingly, he begins to behave as he never behaved in 
 Ireland, and sometimes even puts a dash of brogue 
 into his s})cecli which had never been noticeable 
 before. Luckily the "stage Irishman " has been 
 discredited of late years, and so the real Irishman 
 no longer finds it desirable to make caricatures of 
 himself for the amusement of strangers. 
 
 George ]\l(M'cdith had evidently met the "stage 
 Irishman " before he invented the character of 
 Mr Sullivan Smith in " Diana of the Crossways." 
 " There are Irishmen and Irishmen," declares the 
 wise lied worth in a comment on Mr Sullivan Smith. 
 " I've met cool heads and long heads among them, 
 and you and I knew Jack Derry, who was good at 
 most things. But the burlesque Irishman can't 
 be caricatured. Nature strained herself in a fit of 
 absurdity to produce him, and all that Art can do 
 is to copy. " The absurdity of the " stage Irishman," 
 however, is not always the work of Nature. 
 It is often, as I have suggested, a characteristic 
 acquired by assiduous labour, like a knowledge of 
 Latin or ease in dancing. It is as frequently con- 
 scious as it is unconscious. It is an abuse of the 
 racial comic and dramatic instinct which gave so 
 many fine comic playwrights to English literature — 
 Sheridan, Oscar Wilde, and Mr Bernard Shaw, to 
 name no others. Where it is unconscious, it is an 
 expression of denationalisation, like the English 
 
180 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 writing of a Babu. Ireland trying to express itself 
 in the English way is bound to have its ridiculous 
 and grotesque side, just as India trying to express 
 itself in an English way is bound to have its 
 grotesque and ridiculous side. It may be argued 
 that the Irish gentleman — I use the word in the 
 technical sense all through this chapter — is usually 
 a colonist from England, and that tlierefore this rule 
 does not ap[)ly to liim. Every one knows, on tlic 
 other hand, that no family, English or otherwise, 
 can live even for a single generation in Ireland 
 without becomino- in some decree Irish. Enorlaud 
 
 o o o 
 
 vainly passed laws again and again to prevent the 
 colonists from becoming Irishised. Tim tragedy of 
 the landlords, like the tragedy of the people of 
 Ulster, is that they could not be altogether Eng- 
 lish, and would not be altogether Irish. 
 
 The Irish gentleman, now that the land war has 
 lost its indecisiveness, and, with tliat, much of its 
 bitterness, is changing. In many parts of the 
 country we sec him making advances towards the 
 people, attempting to get at their point of view, 
 to help them in the reconstruction of the social 
 life, the industrial life, the intellectual life of the 
 country. All intelligent Ii'islimi^n know of the 
 splendid work done in Kilkenny by (Japtaiu 
 Otway Culfe, l)rother of the Earl of Desart. 
 Kilkenny has now a woollen mill, a furniture 
 industry, and a little national theatre, and Captain 
 Cufie has lately been standing on (Jaelic League 
 platforms, speaking in support of essential Irish in 
 
THE IRISH GENTRY 181 
 
 the National University. Lord Dunraveu has 
 definitely made his confession of faith in nationality, 
 and Lord Monteagle has helped in the building of 
 the new Ireland around his own home. Lord 
 Castlctow!! passionately advocates tlic revival of 
 the Irish laiigunge, ajul C;)|)tain Sliawe-'I'aylor is 
 only one of many of his class who have taken part 
 in the present reawakening of the national self- 
 consciousness. The Protestant Bishop of Clogher 
 has urged tlic people of his church to establish a 
 kindofTrotestant Gaelic League. Colonel l^^verard 
 has planted the tobacco-growing industry in 
 Ireland. Elsewhere we have a country gentleman 
 thinking out the railway problem from the national 
 point of view, and Mr Archibald Dobbs, a de- 
 scendant of the famous industrial Dobljs of the 
 Irish Parliament of the eighteenth century, has 
 been worlcing at a scheme of proportional repre- 
 sentation, so that minorities in Ireland may have 
 no fear of being overwhelmed. Over the country 
 there are a hundred signs that the Irish gentry 
 are taking a vital interest in their country, such as 
 they have not taken since the days of Grattan and 
 Lord Cliarlemont and Lord Edward Fitzgerald. 
 Only the other day, Lord Iveagh's paper, " The 
 Outlook," spoke in admiration of the industrial 
 side of the Sinn Fdin policy, and we may presume 
 that Lord Iveagh himself would stand by this 
 statement of opinion. Sir Horace Plunkett's co- 
 operative movement has had numerous and en- 
 thusiastic supporters among the landed gentry and 
 
182 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 the industrial leaders of the country ; and Sir 
 Horace Plunkett's movement, pliilosopliically con- 
 sidered, is only a part of the general nation-l)uilding 
 effort which is every day finding new expressions, 
 new outlets, in all manner of people and all manner 
 of places. 
 
 I do not think then that the Irish aristocracy is 
 going to perish without hope of a l)lessed resurrec- 
 tion. Tlie Irish landlord has sinned against 
 Ireland as the Irish farmer has, as the Irish priest 
 has, as the Irisli Protestant has, as the Irish 
 industrialist has — all of them in different ways, 
 and in different degrees. AVe see at the present 
 moni(3i)t I he l)(!gi linings, as il, were, of a great act 
 of national re[)entanc(', in wliich Irish men and 
 women of all creeds and classes arc taking part. 
 We are as yet only in the first day of things. 
 Misunderstandings, bigotries, still fill the air with 
 their echoes, and make the condition of the country 
 seem much more desperate tiian it is. Hopes, 
 however, are continually challenging and defeating 
 fears. 
 
 I find I have left out of account in this chapter 
 the Irish woman of the aristocratic classes. This 
 is unfair, because for every man in those classes 
 who is now taking an elfe(itiv(! interest, in Ireland 
 you will prol)ably find two women doing the same 
 thing. Irish clothes, Irish music, Irish dancing, 
 are beginning to have even a fashionable reputa- 
 tion. Many of these ladies, of course, were never 
 regardless of the people around them, and the 
 
THE IRISH GENTRY 183 
 
 people have spoken kindly of them in return. 
 The bad landlord was a fact, and politicians made 
 it appear as though he were the only fact in Irish 
 landlordism. But there have always been excep- 
 tions to tlic rule of badness, and the more human 
 and generous side of the landed class is now con- 
 stantly asserting itself— asserting itself through 
 the energies of the women, I think, more usually 
 even than among the men. The peoj^le, I believe, 
 will not long har))our their old grudges, if they 
 are apj)roach('d in the si)irit of friendship and not 
 of patronage. " Ah, why would we speak ill of 
 them? Bad luck follows them," said an old 
 countryman lately, speaking about the landlords 
 of his part of the country. That is not an un- 
 common attitude among the people. They have 
 no desire to see their ancient enemies thrust from 
 their mansions and their woods. They neither 
 hate lords nor love them so much as is generally 
 and contradictorily supposed. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 TOWN LIFE, WITH A NOTE ON PUBLIC LIFE 
 
 Some of tlie Irish towns are the plainest — I will 
 not say the ugliest — you could desire. At the 
 head of the towns, however, stand a number of 
 cities of distinguished beauty — Dul)lin and 
 Limerick and (jJalway, to name no others. Dublin 
 with its wide central street, its statues and its 
 time-darkened buildings, has a dignity su(;h as 
 one associates with some of the southern towns in 
 the United States — a dignity of memories and of 
 manners. Its squares, its railed-in areas, its flights 
 of steps, its tall houses of bi-ick richly-coloured 
 as wine, give it the air of a splendid relic of the 
 eighteenth century.^ It is unforgettably a capital. 
 
 ' The first volume of au interesting book about Dublin has 
 lately been published by the Georgian Society. Its object is to 
 leave a permanent record of the beautiful houses decorated during 
 Ireland's luxurious period — 1782-1800. It is mainly made up of 
 reproductions of carvings in plaster, wood and stune, wliich, as 
 exami)les of pseudo-classic art, are uneijualled, and in addition it 
 contains a note giving the names of the occupiers in the more im- 
 portant streets from 1798 to tlie present day. Many of these fine 
 and polished liomes are now among tlie worst tenements in the 
 city, and are being dismantled and their treasures sold in England. 
 Others have long Ijeen tlie liead(juarters of jirofcssional men, and 
 Irishmen of taste have begun to regard them as possessicjiis to be 
 coveted. 
 
TOWN LIFE 185 
 
 Soldiers appear and reappear like monotouous red 
 toys, under the shadow of the low classic temple 
 that is now the Bank of Ireland, but that once was 
 the Irish Parliament House. It is as though they 
 were there in temporary occupation : the Parliament 
 Jlousc h;is ail air of permanency, of solemn patience, 
 tliat makes them look like impudent unrealities. 
 Opposite to it stands Trinity College with its dingy 
 walls — fortress in chief of the strong masterful 
 colonists, against which wave upon wave of the 
 national desire has beaten and broken, leaving its 
 tide-marks as upon an old rock. Dublin, indeed, 
 is a kind of ambiguous ca[)ital, the capital partly 
 of a colony, partly of a nation ; it never decided 
 which. It is not without significance that the 
 far-famed Dublin Castle is not much more notice- 
 able in the scliemc of the city than a shop in a 
 back street. The Dublin that impresses itself 
 upon the eye and the imagination is the Dublin 
 of the Parliament House and Trinity College, the 
 Dublin of the Anglo-Irish colony and the Irish 
 nation strugsjlinof tlirough centuries to its birth. 
 
 Belfast, with its industrial clamour, its new red 
 brick that screams at you, and its electric trams 
 that fly faster than the trams anywhere else, re- 
 presents by comparison the rush of the nineteenth 
 century into Ireland. It is the nineteenth-century 
 in youth, however, not in decadence. Belfast has 
 made itself hastily, too hastily, and when it lies 
 silent through the fear of God on the morning of 
 the seventh day, you see that it is as yet an in- 
 
186 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 dustrial campand not a city. . . . Ft will he ])ullc<l 
 down one of these days, and ])uilt afresh \)y people 
 wlio love it too well to leave it like a junihle of 
 jerry-building in a Held. It has too many of the 
 elements of beauty both in its situation and in 
 its people to remain permanently a discord in the 
 side of Ulster. Spread beneath its hills and along 
 the low shores of its windy lough, it has a bust- 
 ling popuhation of men who are at onc(i militant 
 and emotional, and of women with a liigh average 
 of determination and good looks. It seems to me 
 indeed to lack only one thing in order to be a 
 great city : it lacks that healthy nationality which 
 is synonymous with taste. Its pco})le have a 
 promising gladness in s[)ite of the gloom of its 
 conflicting churches. They arc idealists, for they 
 would drop all their worldly interests any day to 
 fight, some of them for a green flag, some of them 
 for an orange banner. 1 do not mean that the 
 town is not full of quiet people who would not 
 fight for any cause whatsoever. AVhat gives 
 Belfast its distinction among cities, however, is 
 the strain of almost savage idealism that runs in 
 the veins of the people. I call the idealism savage, 
 because it has never been given a soul by the 
 churches, or an intellect by the schools and colleges. 
 Belfast has grown up like a child whose parents 
 died in its infancy, and the jerry-builders and the 
 catchword orators have taken merciless advantage 
 of it. 
 
 Limerick is in some ways like a miniature 
 
TOWN LIFE 187 
 
 Dul)lin. Just as iu Dublin the main tliorouglifare 
 is called O'Conuell Street by the Irish and Sack- 
 ville Street by other people, so in Limerick the 
 main thoroughfare is called O'Councll Street by 
 the Irish and George Street by everybody else. 
 In both cities you can almost tell a man's politics 
 by the way in which he names these streets.^ As 
 regards the appearance of Limerick, Thackeray, 
 in his rather useless book on Ireland, declares that 
 at first sight you are " half led to believe that you 
 arc arrived in a second Liverpool, so tall arc the 
 warcliouses and broad the quays : so neat and trim 
 a street of near a mile which stret(;hes before 
 you." It is, as he saw, an idle Liverpool, however. 
 Its quiet warehouses and its deserted quay-sides 
 give you (In; scnsatioiiM you might feel if you had 
 conH! suddenly upon the forgotten ])ala,(io of some 
 Sleeping Lcauty. Looking over the bridge by the 
 ruined castle in the evening, you see a river of 
 lights as wonderful as the Thames between West- 
 minster Bridge and St Paul's after nightfall, but 
 it is the Thames of a distant enchanted country — 
 the Thames seen in an exquisite revealing mirage. 
 In the day-time O'Connell Street is filled with fine- 
 
 1 This is much less the case in Limerick than in Dublin. 
 O'Connell Bridge in Dublin used to be called Carlisle Bridge, and 
 loyalists fought for the old name as though it were a symbol of 
 their religious faith. One loyal gentleman used, whenever he was 
 driving across the Bridge, to ask the carman in an innocent tone 
 what it was called. If tlie caiman answered, as he usually did, 
 "O'Connell Bridge, sir," the fare would say, as if driving home 
 a needed lesson in loyalty, " Ilumpli, if you had said 'Carlisle 
 Bridge,' I would have given you another sixpence ! " 
 
188 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 looking people who know how to dress, going 
 leisurely about in earriages, in motor-cars, and on 
 foot, and jaunting-cars wait idly at the street- 
 corners for their fares. Limerick has its own 
 fashion and its own elegance. It belongs to a 
 civilisation before trams were invented or tea-shops 
 thought of. It is the stateliest city of its size I 
 know, and built upon the stateliest river. 
 
 Galway is more essentially a city in ruins than 
 any I have ever beheld. It is a grey city, a city 
 of noble walls and narrow streets, with the winds 
 of the sea blowing into its mouth and remindinor 
 it ever of the days when it sent forth its mer- 
 chant ships into deep waters, and Spanish captains 
 brought theii" wares to its cpiays. Culway has 710 
 main street of fashion and elei^ance. its ware- 
 houses, its ruinous mills, give it the appearance 
 of a city that has been shelled and sacked by an 
 invader. These warehouses and mills were built 
 on a palatial scale, and even in j'uin they are noble : 
 by moonlight they have a marble grandeur. A 
 sleepy horse-tram with its sleepy bell winds along 
 one of the streets, as though apologising for its 
 almost modern intrusiveness. The Claddagh village 
 by the harbour, with its coloured cottages under 
 their grotesque depths of thatch and its fishing 
 population in their jerseys and shawls, helps to give 
 Galway the appearance of the most distinctively 
 Irish city in Ireland. On fair days, too, the Cou- 
 uemara people pour into the market square in 
 their white woollen jackets and their black tam- 
 
TOWN LIFE 189 
 
 o'-slianters, and the air is nob fuller of the shrieks 
 of pigs and the protesting roar of cattle than of the 
 rich tiow of Gaelic so expressive in gossip and in 
 bargaining. Some of the sho[)3 of the city have 
 the names of the proprietors written above the 
 windows in Irish — as the sho})S have, indeed, in a 
 growing number of towns and villages. In some 
 of them you can buy all you want without any 
 need to resort to the use of English at all. 
 
 T cannot go tlirough the catalogue of the Irish 
 cities and towns, however, though 1 do not like to 
 pass without speaking of Cork which I have not seen 
 and Derry which I have seen, and twenty others. 
 As for the smaller towns and villages, these are 
 for the most part market towns, and have neither 
 industrial life nor dignity save in the beauty of 
 the situation of many of them. They (jonsist 
 largely of churches of the various denominations, 
 drapers' shops, public-houses, a hotel or two, a 
 post-office, and a police-barracks. To a stranger, 
 a small Irish town may often seem at first sight 
 to be merely a collection of public-houses, but this 
 is because a public-house in an Irish country-town 
 is very difi:erent from what it is elsewhere. It is 
 commonly a general store with a license to sell 
 beer and whiskey. The farmer who goes marketing 
 does not like to have to go from shop to shop 
 looking for what he wants. He prefers to get 
 everything so liir as Ik; can at tlu? same [»l;u'.c, and 
 tjjc phu^e always linds it worth its while to sell him a 
 glass of whiskey as he is making his purchases, in 
 
190 HOJNIE LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 addition to his glass of wliiskey, however, he may 
 get his meat, his coal, his groceries, his seed, 
 peppermint dro})S for his wife, and lialf-a-dozen 
 other things, in the same shop. Jn progressive 
 towns, the publicans are more inclined to make 
 their trade a drink trade pure and simple ; but in 
 towns like these the spirit-grocery is much too 
 common, and has long been recognised as a curse 
 because of the extent to which it leads to drinking 
 among women. 
 
 On an ordinary week-day the country-town is 
 one of the most deserted and indolent-looking 
 places in the world. Ireland is, so far as most of 
 the towns are concerned, a nation of shoplceepers, 
 and, as there is often no industrial life to keep tlie 
 place busy from hour to hour, it is surprising that 
 the people have kept any capacity for work at all. 
 
 Every town has its share of men hanging 
 over bridges and leaning against walls, and 
 women standing in the doors and busily watch- 
 ing nothing happen. It is not that lli(iy are boi'u 
 lazy but that they are bred lazy. There is 
 nothinir for them to do, and there will not l)e 
 anything for them to do until Irishmen begin, 
 among other things, to invest their savings, not in 
 the Post-OlHce Savings l^ank, but in Irish in- 
 dustrial enterprises. Some peo}jle talk as though 
 the increase in the Irish Savings Bank deposits 
 is a sign of great prosperity. It is not entirely 
 so. It shows chiefly a terrible want of enter- 
 prise among the older people, and a refusal to 
 
TOWN LIFE 191 
 
 raise the standard of living as it has been raised 
 in other civilised countries. The low standard of 
 living and the dead air of the towns and the 
 country-sides have resulted in sending an ever- 
 increasing proportion of the population to [)lant 
 cabbages in workhouse gardens, and to gibber 
 behind the walls of lunatic asylums. 
 
 It may not be out of place here to touch upon 
 the injury which this poverty and lifelessness have 
 done to tlie character of the people in a few parts 
 of the country. This injury is noticeable both in 
 the poorest towns and in the poorest country-sides. 
 It appears especially in the corruption of their 
 civic and corporate life. There is more than one 
 Board of Poor Law Guardians, for instance, 
 in which the liiglicsL a|)[»()inlmciil.H jirc |)rac,(i('jiJly 
 for sale. No doctor can hope to secure a dispen- 
 sary under boards like these unless he has bribed a 
 certain number of the guardians before the election- 
 day. The curious thing is that many good and 
 honest men — good and honest in the ordinary 
 affairs of life — accept bribes on occasions of 
 this sort. They hold, I suppose, that one doctor 
 is practically as good as another, and that, when 
 money is flying about, they might as well have 
 their share of it, like a clergyman at a wedding. 
 There was one man who received a bribe of £10 
 for his vote in a dispensary election, and was after- 
 wards sent £15 by a second candidate. A third 
 candidate then approached him through an agent, 
 and was so anxiously in need of the vote that he 
 
192 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 asked the man to put his own price on it. The 
 guardian named the price, and the doctor was 
 temporarily a happy man. On the election-day, 
 however, the guardian shammed a sudden and 
 surprising illness, which kept him in bed so that 
 he could not cast his vote. Of course, a case like 
 this would be exceptional even on the most corrupt 
 local bodies. It is pleasant to know, too, that in 
 the most prosperous parts of Ulster, Munster and 
 Connacht, and in all Leinster briber}^ of this sort 
 is practically unknown. Corruption, where it 
 exists in Dublin and Belfast and the big towns, is 
 of another kind. It is the less easily definable 
 corruption which exists where men enter public 
 life in order, as the phrase goes, to feather their 
 own nests. In Dublin, lately, the election of a 
 number of Sinn F(^iners on the City Council is 
 generally admitted to have made wonderfully for 
 the purification of public life. 
 
 Tlie j)0verty of some of the small towns — the 
 towns that arc little more than villages — lias, I 
 have suggested, been responsible for a good deal 
 of the corruption of which 1 have spoken. The 
 extent of this poverty will be realised by anyone 
 who visits one of the towns in question on a 
 Friday — the day on which the old age pensions 
 are paid out at the post-ofiice. Old age pension 
 day is in many places almost as busy a day as 
 market day itself. It is certainly busier than any 
 other day in the week but that. I was in a little 
 town in the south of Galway recently on a Friday, 
 
TOWN LIFE 193 
 
 and I beheld a spectacle which struck me as most 
 remarkable. Along all the roads leading to the 
 town, old men and women came jolting in on their 
 donkey carts, and before noon the carts were stand- 
 ing in a sort of red-wheeled regiment in the market- 
 square. The town looked almost as if it had no 
 inhabitants younger than eighty. Old men with 
 wrinkled hats and grey whiskers moved about the 
 main street or stood within the door of a public- 
 house fiUl of wealtli niid gossij). Aged women — 
 some of tlicm rlicumaiically bent, some of them 
 girlishly agile on their feet — carried their baskets 
 under their entangling sliawls from shop to 
 shop, Ijuying here a pennyworth of pins and 
 there a packet of tea, and standing still every 
 now and then on the pavement when a chance 
 of talk arose. The town was murmurous 
 with old people : it was grotesque and crooked- 
 looking with them. Even the landlady of the 
 nominal hotel in which I lodged was an old 
 crumpled women, who coughed like a sheep as she 
 went about the deserted rooms of her high relic of 
 a house, which seemed as though no hand had 
 dusted its carpetless stairs or its cob webbed walls 
 or made any efforts to mend its creaking doors 
 since the old days when the military were quartered 
 in the town, and gentlemen pulled up for a meal at 
 the hotel as they posted on their way to the gaieties 
 of cities. In the evening a half-aged ballad-singer 
 came from nowhere into the empty market- 
 square — a dirty-faced and ragged man who looked 
 
 N 
 
194 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 older tlian he was— and howled songs about Robert 
 Emmet and Irishmen who had died and suffered in 
 other ways, and I went over and bought a few of 
 his ballads. The songs he sang were full of good 
 memories, but the town heard him listlessly from 
 behind its small dimly-lighted windows. It was 
 as though he had intruded with unnecessary 
 patriotic songs into the porches of the dead. 
 
 Irish towns, on the other hand, vary as widely 
 as Irish farms. Most of them have sulficient youth 
 and prosperity to enjoy a circus or a cinemato- 
 graph entertainment now and tlien, and they have 
 even an appearance of buoyancy and colour at 
 the time of a Gaelic League Feis. The bank- 
 clerks and tlie shop-boys have boating-clul)s, and 
 an Irish regatta, with its roulette tables, its ballad- 
 singers, its three-card tricks, its booths of dulse 
 and yellow man, is an excitement worth living to 
 see. Except within the Gaelic League itself, how- 
 ever, there is far too mucli social narrowness in 
 some of the towns. There is commonly one social 
 set which looks down on Ireland and Irish things , 
 there are shades and half-shades of respectability ; 
 "two-pence," as the saying goes, "looks down 
 on three-halfpence " ; and there is an amount of 
 cli(]uery and snobl)ery which is uidcnowni in the 
 country places. This is cliiefly l)ecausc no healtliy 
 wind of public opinion, or national opinion, blows 
 there. You have only to meet the ordinary type 
 of young man who lives in a smidl town, playing 
 tennis and golf and despising his neighbours, to 
 
TOWN LIFE 195 
 
 realise bow dull and empty of personality Irish 
 men can be when they are without patriotism. 
 They have plenty of physical courage, and even 
 of the family virtues, but they are imitation people 
 without any delight in their faces or colour in 
 their lives. They arc constantly grumbling about 
 their neighbours and their surroundings, and if 
 any one tries to do anything out of the ordinary 
 they pour contempt and suspicion on him over 
 their meals as a self-seeker and disturber of the 
 peace. These young men, of course, were educated 
 on lines which implied that Ireland really was 
 a country to keep quiet about, and so they are 
 scarcely to be blamed for having grown up so 
 uninterested and uninteresting. You could not 
 talk with one of them for half-an-hour, however, 
 without realising that from the aesthetic point of 
 view, if from, no other, [)atriotism is one of the 
 first essentials of Irish life. Did not Aristotle say 
 that it was the end of education to make men 
 patriots ? He would have been doubly confirmed 
 in his opinion if he had listened for a few minutes 
 to the conversation of the superior type of young 
 Irish townsman. 
 
 I have already said that the circumstances of 
 town life vary from place to place. Amid their 
 very diflerenccs, however, all Irish towns have a 
 sufficient number of features in common. The 
 outside cars in the streets, the women going about 
 in their shawls, the number of merry barefoot 
 children, the corner-boys leaning against the walls 
 
196 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 till the season for the militia-traiuing comes round, 
 the gloom and strength of the policemen's figures 
 going up and down, the proprietorial names above 
 the public-houses, and twenty other things, unite 
 to give a composite picture which will serve for 
 any town. I deal elsewhere with the religion, 
 the sports, the food, the clothes and the manners 
 of the people. With regard to theatres and so 
 forth, it may be mentioned that the big towns 
 have their theatres and music halls, but that, with 
 the exception of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, 
 where Mr W. B. Yeats and his fellow- workers 
 have inaugurated a beautiful and critical school 
 of national drama, these are mere ])ieces of 
 England unnaturally dumped down in Ireland 
 and served for the most part by English touring- 
 companies. The Ulster Literary Theatre in 
 Belfast is an institution, not a building ; it has 
 already produced several admirable comedies of 
 Ulster life. Cork, too, has adventured success- 
 fully in the production of national drama, and in 
 Galway — indeed, everywhere where there is a 
 GaelicLeague centre — companies have been brought 
 together from time to time for the performance 
 of short plays in the Irish language. The Gaelic 
 League holds an annual festival — the Oireachtas — 
 in Dublin, and in connection with this a number 
 of prizes are awarded for plays in Irish, the 
 winning plays being performed during Oireachtas 
 week. As for the art of painting, the recently- 
 founded Municipal Art Gallery in Duljlin contains 
 
TOWN LIFE 197 
 
 a collection of modem European masters — Monet, 
 J\lanet, Degas, Manciui, Corot, and others — which 
 is among the most important of its kind. Ireland, 
 however, has a immber of native artists of more 
 than Irisli reputatioji — Mr Nathaniel Hone, Mr 
 George llnsscll (A.E.), Mr Orpen, and Mr Jack 
 Yeats, to name no others. As for literature and 
 music, I hope to touch upon them in another 
 chapter. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 GAMES AND DANCES 
 
 Ireland is almost suflicicntly ricli in native games 
 to be able to amuse herself without importing 
 from abroad any games at all. She is short of 
 light summer games, indeed, though I have seen 
 it contended that both tenuis and golf are games 
 of Irish origin. Dr J. P. Henry recently dis- 
 covered a passage in the old heroic literature, 
 describing a game played by Cuchullain, and 
 certainly this had many of the features of modern 
 golf. I see even the game of croquet attril)uted 
 to Irish invention in Mr Woodgate's wildisli Ijook 
 of reminiscences. I do not know what grounds 
 Mr Woodf^ate liad for niakiiiL!; lliis (■,liai-<'-e. 
 
 The distinctive games of Ireland to-day are 
 hurling and Gaelic football. Hurling is a game 
 with some resemblance to hockey, and until re- 
 cently it was popular in Protestant Ulster country- 
 places as well as in other parts of Ireland. It 
 is known there as "cammon" or "shinty," and 
 I have myself played it with other boys with bits 
 of sticks in a haggard. Hurling is a game played 
 between teams of seventeen men a side, and one 
 of the main ditferences between it and hockey 
 
GAMES AND DANCES 199 
 
 is that the hurler is not forbidden to raise his 
 stick his/her tliau his shoukler or to hit with both 
 sides of the stick. A hurler, however, will tell 
 you that hurling is as different from hockey as 
 niglit from afternoon. Besides goal - posts of 
 ordinary widtli, tlicrc are two wider posts out- 
 side the others, and when tlie ball passes l^etwecn 
 these, a point is scored. Three points are equal 
 to one goal. The player is allowed to catch the 
 ball in liis liand, but is not allowed to lift it 
 from the ground exc(>])t on the [)oiiit of bis hurley. 
 The game is rapid and vigorous, and is said to be 
 more dangerous for tlic inexperienced than for tlie 
 expert. It is being played more and more through- 
 out the country every day, and there is no doubt 
 that it deserves to be popular on its merits, a])art 
 from .'dl queslioM of fi.-i.tion.'d H(Mitirneiil.. (J iris pl;iy 
 a variety of liiitliiig vmUvA cani('>giiidh(!M,chL 
 
 Irish athletes are not as a rule so positive re- 
 garding the merits of Gaelic football as they are 
 regarding those of hurling. I have heard more 
 than one of them declare that, though Gaelic 
 football is a better game than association, it is 
 not so good a game as rugl)y, It would bo foolish 
 for an unathletic person like myself to oifer any 
 dogmatic opinion on the matter, but I think 
 Gaelic football could be mended into as good a 
 game as any. It has been suggested at different 
 times that it would be a more exciting game if 
 points were abolished and only goals allowed to 
 count in the score, for the point system exists 
 
200 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 here as in hurling. As it is, however, it is a fine 
 game when phayed between two well-matched 
 teams of seventeen a side. It may be deseribed 
 as a catch-and-kick game, for tlie player is allowed 
 to catch the ball and to bounce it before kicking 
 it, but not to hold it and run with it. 
 
 (laclic football and hurbiig arc [)laycd all over 
 Muuster and Leinster and in the Falls Uoad 
 district of Belfast, Jhit Connacht is a province 
 in which, for some reason or other, the old Irish 
 games do not flourish as they ought, though, of 
 course, even here they are played in some places. 
 Munster seems to have more sporting vigour than 
 any of the other provinces. In the industrial parts 
 of Ulster, the working classes play association 
 football to a great extent, and in nearly all the 
 large towns through the country there are rugby 
 clubs for the middle-classes. It must be said that 
 the rugby game has been nationalised to a far 
 greater degree than association, and it is claimed 
 that the game as played in Ireland has various 
 distinctions and vii'tucs when contrasted with tiie 
 rugby football of other countries. 
 
 Cricket has never aroused much interest in 
 Ireland except within a comparatively narrow 
 circle, and lacrosse, at wliich the counties of Antrim 
 and Down excelled for a good nund)er of years, 
 seems now to be dying out of existence. Lacrosse, 
 by the way, has always been played in Ireland as 
 a summer game — not as a winter game, according 
 to the English custom. 
 
GAMES AND DANCES 201 
 
 Polo is a favourite game with the wealthier 
 classes, aud grounds for racing, steeple-chasing 
 and jumping are plentiful in many parts of the 
 country. Irishmen are all supposed to l)e good 
 judges of a liorse. Certainly, a great proportion 
 of country gentlemen, rich farmers and professional 
 men are enthusiasts for riding and hunting, and 
 the mettle of Irish riders and horses is proverbial. 
 
 Cock-fighting is still a favourite pastime in some 
 of the midhind <!0unties of Ulster, and encounters 
 between the cock-figliters and the police now and 
 then form the sul)jcctof a newspaper paragrapli. 
 
 As for indoor games, the only distinctively 
 national indoor game I know is spoil-five with its 
 variants. This is a card game which is played in 
 all parts of Ireland, and in which the value of the 
 cards must seem extraordinarily topsy-turvy to 
 players of games like nap and bridge. The five of 
 trumps is the best card, and after it, if I remember 
 right, come the ace of liearts, the ace of trumps, 
 Jack, King and Queen in order, while among the 
 otlier cards the higliest card in a red suit wins, 
 and tlie lowest card in a bla.ck suit. Tliere is a 
 great deal of gand)liiig over spoil-five and other 
 games in some of the farm-houses, and, where 
 money is rare, it is not unusual to play for the 
 delf on the dresser, the geese in the field, and 
 even bulkier stakes. Cards, indeed, are a passion 
 in many Irish homes, and Mr Yeats's lines about 
 " old men playing at cards with a twiiikling of 
 ancient hands " give us a picture of many a farm 
 
202 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 parlour and kitchen on a winter evening. I know 
 a bouse in which regularly every winter evening 
 at seven o'clock the game begins, and I think 
 this is no exceptional instance of enthusiasm. Of 
 course, the better-known card-games are common 
 as well as spoil-five, but spoil-five may Ije regarded 
 as essentially the national game, though I do not 
 know whether it is Irish in oriij-in or not. 
 
 Chess is a game of which we are constantly 
 hearing in the old heroic legends, and the chess- 
 boards and chess-men of the kings were often 
 decorated with gold and studded with jewels. 
 There is a doubt, I believe, as to whether the game 
 anciently playeil in Ireland resembled more closely 
 chess or draughts. At the ])resent day, ])oth games 
 are played a good deal, but not to a remarkable 
 extent. 
 
 I suppose in this connection it will not be in- 
 appropriate to speak of Irish dancing. Some 
 people declare that the ancient Irish did not dance 
 at all — at least, that no trace or mention of danc- 
 ing is to be found in their literature. Dancing, 
 however, has flourished in Ireland for several 
 centuries, and Irish dances were popular at the 
 Court of Queen Elizabeth. The usual dances are 
 dillerent sorts of jigs and reels — very unlike the 
 jigs and reels which tail - coated Paddies and 
 short-skirted colleens so often perform for the 
 amusement of the non-Irish — sometimes even of 
 the Irish themselves. The most remarkable quality 
 in Irish dancing is its mixture of high spirits, and 
 
GAMES AND DANCES 203 
 
 what, for want of a better word, I must call decorum. 
 Irish dancers do not bring their arms into play as 
 do the dancers of Scotland, but keep the upper 
 })arts of their bodies curiously still. Further, 
 there is no seizing of waists in Irish dances, except 
 in sonic S([uare dances on the model of quadrilles, 
 and these tlie purists declare are not real Irish 
 dances at all. It is always exhilarating to see the 
 dances that take place in barns and on kitchen- 
 floors, where the men in their thick-aolcd, heavy- 
 nailed boots perform wonderful feats of agility. 
 
 Besides jigs and reels and the ordinary country 
 dance or lono; dance, there are also a number of 
 what might be called picture dances or drama 
 dances. The Rocky Eoad to Dublin, for instance, 
 gives a humorous impression of a limping journey. 
 The Walls of Limerick had perhaps a similarly 
 imitative origin. As for the Waves of Tory, witli 
 its rhythmical ups and downs, to watch it is to have 
 one's senses exhilarated as by the sight of the hosts 
 of the waves advancing towards the shore. 
 
 Irish dances, it may be said, are not danced in 
 all parts of Ireland, though they are now being 
 spread with great enthusiasm. It is impossible to 
 foretell whether they will ever completely drive 
 foreign dances out of Ireland. Some of the 
 revivalists themselves have no objection to the in- 
 troduction of foreign dances and games, provided 
 that the national dances and games are firmly 
 established again as part of the social life of the 
 people. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 FOOD, CLOTHES, ETC. 
 
 I HAVE already made a good many references to 
 the food and dress of different classes of people in 
 Ireland. In tiie matter of food, the things that strike 
 one most are the comparatively small amount of 
 meat tliat is eaten even hy jtcople wlio can 
 allord it, and Llic, general [)()])uhii'ity of the mid-day, 
 as compared with the evening, dinner. A thousand 
 years ago, we are told, late dinner was the rule, 
 and in many town and country houses at the 
 present time the late tea rather than the mid-day 
 dinner is the most distinctive meal of the day. 
 Sometimes in the towns you have what is called 
 "high tea," with meat or fish, but even without 
 these, tea is frequently an abundant and deliglitful 
 meal owing to tlie varieties of bread which are put 
 on the table. Barn-ln-ack is an Irish word mean- 
 ing "speckled cake," and besides barn-l)racks you 
 will often have on the table scones and farls of 
 wheaten, soda and Indian meal bread, oat-cake, 
 baps, slim-cakes, seed-cakes, loaves, potato-bread, 
 or fadge, and various other sorts of bread. You 
 may not have all these on the ta])le at (»nce, but 
 you will have a good nund_)er of them il' you are 
 
FOOD, CLOTHES, ETC. 205 
 
 iuvited to share the hospitality of a prosperous 
 farm-house. 
 
 As for the tea itself, it is probably as good as 
 any you will find in Europe. The people as a 
 whole have not yet got used to the cheaper sorts 
 of tea, l)ut are often williug to pay fifty per cent, or 
 even a hundred per cent, more for their tea than 
 English people in similar circumstances will pay. 
 Thus 3s. and 3s. Gd. a pound are not uncommon 
 prices for tea among comparatively poor people. I 
 am afraid, however, it is only a matter of time till 
 cheap tea becomes a rule in Ireland. China tea is 
 extremely rare, and the people like their tea as 
 much for its strength as for its quality. The 
 excellence of the tea one gets in Ireland is probably 
 due to the pleasant spring water of the country as 
 much as to any merit in the tea itself. 
 
 Where the people in the country rise at six or 
 earlier, they often dine at twelve o'clock in the day, 
 but one is not surprised to get dinner in the 
 country at any hour between twelve and two in 
 the afternoon. If dinner is at twelve, tea will be 
 between four and five, and there will be some milk 
 and bread-and-butter between nine and ten before 
 going to bed. Porridge is sometimes a morning, 
 and sometimes an evening, dish. I think very early 
 hours are more usual in Ulster than in the other 
 provinces. In the towns, tea-time is any time 
 between five and seven. 
 
 As regards the more substantial foods, it may be 
 said that the small farmers and the labourers 
 
206 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 scarcely ever touch them. Meat is especially rare. 
 Bacon, of course, is eaten, but nothing more forcibly 
 shows the abnormal condition into which the 
 country has sunk than the fact that the Irish 
 farmer exports his own superior bacon in order to 
 make enough money to be able to import and eat 
 inferior American bacon. It is another curious 
 example of national waste. In the year 1905, 
 Ireland exported dead meats to the value of 
 X2, 482, 035, and imported dead meats to the value 
 of £2,281,226 — almost an equal amount — most 
 of this being bacon. Thus we see Ireland carrying 
 on a foreign trade in bacon to the value of four or 
 five million pounds a year, and being a good deal 
 poorer instead of richer as the result. " There must," 
 as one writer puts it, " be an inadequate adjustment 
 in the commercial arrangements of a country where 
 commodities coming in are met and passed by 
 exactly similar commodities going out." Some 
 people have grown so accustomed to thinking that 
 nothing good can come out of Ireland that they 
 possibly even prefer American bacon to home- 
 grown bacon. I know that this preference of the 
 foreign to the national article is common in regard 
 to such things as Hour. Several grocers have told 
 me how diilicult it is to persuade farmers to take 
 Irish instead of imported flour, though every expert 
 knows that good Irish Hour is as cheap and as 
 fine in quality as any. 
 
 Another point about meals in Ireland is that 
 the people, except in some of the more prosperous 
 
aasij&is, ^, 
 
FOOD, CLOrilES, ETC. 207 
 
 or cosmopolitan houscliolda, do nob as a rule drink 
 beers and wines at their dinner to the same extent 
 as the people of other countries. They prefer, as 
 a rule, tea or milk or buttermilk — a fine drink 
 which is fast disappearing in these days of the 
 creameries. Potatoes and buttermilk make an 
 excellent occasional meal in many farm-houses. 
 There is also a curious sort of milk-food which has 
 been popular in Ireland since Pagan times. This 
 is made from beestings, the milk taken from cows 
 wliich have just calved. Though unfit for 
 drinking, it is heated till it becomes thick curds, 
 and these have a pleasant taste enough. Among 
 alcoholic drinks, the favourite drink with the 
 younger men is stout or porter. If you go into 
 a public-house in Ireland and ask for " a pint," 
 a pint of stout will ])e brought to you. The Irish 
 public-house, it may be said in this connection, 
 has usually very little about it of the inn or 
 tavern. It has not, save in exceptional cases, 
 even a romantic name, like " The Sign of the 
 Good Intent" or "The Prodigal's Return," but 
 is called simply after the proprietor. It is 
 sociable, however, in that it is not generally 
 divided into class compartments, like the saloon, 
 private bar, and public bar, but offers equal and 
 undiscriminatiug hospitality to all who enter it, 
 from the sweep to the shoneen. 
 
 I do not know that much more need be said 
 as to the distinctive features of Irish food and 
 drink. 1 have already spoken of the popular 
 
208 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 contempt for turDip-to})s. It may be worth 
 mentiojiiug that dulse, or dilisk — a kind of dried 
 sea-weed — is frequently eaten by lioHday-makers, 
 and it may be bouglit in handfuls bom the baskets 
 of okl women at the fairs. 
 
 Ice-cream shops with ItaUan names over the 
 doors have become a popiihar institution in Belfast 
 of late years, and the factory-girls crowd into 
 these at the dinner-hcnir to eat unhealthy fish, 
 peas, and pastries, and to drink unhealthy minerals. 
 One or two of the factories, I believe, like the 
 York Street and the Jeunymount mills, have now 
 restaurants connected with them at which the 
 workers can have good cheap food, but these "re 
 the exce[)tions. 
 
 To come to the matter of dress, it might truly 
 enough be said that the only distinctively national 
 garment which is to be found all over Ireland 
 to-day is the shawl worn by the women. In some 
 parts of the country, tlie wives of the farmers as 
 well as of the laliourers wear the shawl ; thougli 
 many of them, of course, wear hats and bonnets 
 in addition on Sundays. Black or grey is perhaps 
 the prevailing colour, but in different parts of the 
 country dilferent colours are the vogue, and even 
 the fashion in which the shawl is arranged varies 
 from place to place. In one district you will find 
 fawn-coloured or brown shawls almost the only 
 wear, and these have often broad borders with 
 designs in other colours woven into them. Else- 
 where the women frequently wear two shawls — 
 
FOOD, CLOTHES, ETC. 209 
 
 oue over the shoulders and the other over the 
 head. In the iiiauufacturing towns, they draw 
 the shawd tight and nunnisldy across the brows 
 and pin it beneath tlie cliin, and on a wet evening 
 the lanipdit streets are filled with hurrying 
 ]\ladonua-likc women of a strange, hidden beauty. 
 Again you may find the shawl worn like a wild 
 hood that has half- fallen from the head, while one 
 end is flung loosely round the shoulder. Check 
 handkerchiefs are often worn over the head, and 
 in some parts the old women wear dainty frilled 
 caps. 
 
 Tlui natiouid dross of the men is said to l)e tlie 
 kilt, but tliis is only worn as yet by a number of 
 enthusiastic pioneers. The Irish kilt is not made 
 of tartan, but is s.'dTron -coloured, though t.'ii'tan, 
 J bebeve, is {i, thin*; of Irisli oriijin. The onbuarv 
 costume for men is suiliciently unremarkable in 
 cut ; elderly men seem to have a preference for a 
 kind of morning coat. The material of which the 
 clothes are made, on the other hand, is of distinctive 
 interest, and a bog-coloured coat of dyed home- 
 spun has an appropriate beauty of its own. In 
 Connemara the men wear a bainin — a jacket of 
 white flannel — which helps to give an air of local 
 wonderfulness to the roads and the fields. The 
 women, too, with their petticoats of beautiful 
 shades of red remind us of a time when the Irish 
 were noted for their love of colours, thouirh the 
 red petticoat of the town is sometimes eye-scaring 
 enough. 
 
 
 
210 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 The red petticoat of rural Ireland, I may say, 
 is of a totally different colour from that worn 
 in pseudo-Irisli plays on the British stage. It 
 is not an offensive scarlet ; its colour is nearer 
 that of a red carnation. It is not, of course, the 
 custom to wear green garments along with it. 
 
 I have already spoken of the beauty of the 
 heavy dyed garments of the women of A chill, 
 some of bright blue, some of bright red, some 
 of bright green. It is customary to use an 
 incredible number of yards of stuff in these skirts, 
 so that the figure has something of a clumsy look. 
 1 heard from one girl how an Achill woman had 
 reproved her for immodesty, because she wore a 
 skirt of the ordinary shape and measure. 
 
 The pampooties, or cow-skin sandals, worn by 
 the people of the Aran Islands, are the most 
 distinctive foot-dress to be found in Ireland. 
 In some parts of the country you will also 
 occasionally see an old woman going the roads in 
 martins — a kiud of soleless socks which would do 
 little, one imagines, to keep the feet either warm 
 or dry on uncomfortable days. Nearly all the 
 grown-up people wear boots, however, and it is 
 only the children as a rule who run about with 
 tlieii' feet as bare as their heads. 
 
 There is scarcely any need to refer to the dress 
 of the professional classes in the towns. It is of 
 the cosmopolitan sort, and the only noticeable 
 thing in regard to it is the comparative infre(juency 
 of the tall hat. 
 
CTTAPTER Xin 
 
 RELIGION 
 
 If you are in a little town in any part of Ireland — 
 except the iiorth-enst — .'il)out noon, when the 
 clia[H'l-l)elI riii^s ("or the juiii^elu.s, you will Hce all 
 the men 8ii(ldenly taking their liat^ oil" and cross- 
 ing themselves as they say their mid-dny prayers. 
 The world loses its air of work, or of common- 
 place idleness, and the streets take on an intense 
 beauty for the moment as the old people and the 
 young half-hide their eyes and murmur a rapid 
 prayer to the Mother of God. The boy walking 
 by a loaded cart stands still with bared head or 
 stumbles forward, praying as he walks. In the 
 doors of the houses, in the entries, on the bridge 
 over the river, tlie town assumes a multitudinous 
 reverence as tlie tide of prayer sweeps through it 
 to the dinning music of the bell. Even the 
 policeman, ludicrously stiff in his military uniform, 
 lowers his head with a kind of salute and offers 
 homage to heaven. I confess I like this daily 
 forg(>tfulnesfl of the wcu'ld in the middle of the 
 worhl. It brings wonder into almost every 
 country town in Ireland at least once every day. 
 .1 On Sunday, I imagine, Ireland must be one of 
 
212 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 the most religious-looking countries in Europe. 
 North, Sol th, East and West, nearly every one 
 who is physically lit goes to church or to chapel. 
 Of course, there are a few agnostics even in 
 Ireland, and all the towns of any size have their 
 growing population of indifferents — people who 
 stay away from church, not because they believe 
 something else than orthodox Cliristauity, Init 
 because they believe nothing at all. On the other 
 hand, there must be a greater proportioTi of men 
 as compared with women atten<ling tlie churches 
 in Ireland tlian in most Christain countries. 
 Sunday wears a different appearance in different 
 parts of the (country, but not much so during the 
 time of the morning religious services. Until 
 after one o'clock in the day the streets and the 
 roads are mainly filled with men, women and 
 children who have been to church, or wlio are 
 going there. 
 
 The Ulster Sabbath is more like the Scottish 
 Sabbath than anytliing else. 1'lie trams are 
 runninc; in Belfast, but there are still a o'ood 
 many people in the city who would no more think 
 of riding a tram on a Sunday than of picking your 
 pocket. As for travelling in a railway train on a 
 Sunday, this is looked on by the strict as tli(i 
 loos(;st behaviour. So rigid is the idea of Sabbath- 
 keeping even in Belfast, that when a i\t\v years 
 ago a gentleman bequeathed some money to the 
 city for the provision of music in the parks, 
 making his bequest conditional upon the music 
 
RELIGION 213 
 
 being given on Sundays as well as on week-days, 
 the bequest bad to be refused. Had it been 
 accepted, there would likely have been an out- 
 break of Sabbath riots against Sabbath-breaking. 
 
 The feeling against playing games or holding 
 political meetings on Sunday is still strong, though 
 it is fast weakening. Some years ago, a number o 
 boys went out to play hurling in the bottom of 
 an old circular fort which was only a few hundred 
 yards away from a ))ublic-housc greatly frefpiented 
 ]»y bona (ide travellers from Belfast (^n Sundays. 
 One day, the bona fides, shocked that so gross an 
 outrage on the peace of the Sabbath should be 
 going on almost within smelling-distance of their 
 pints of stout, sallied forth and, along with a 
 crowd of villagers and country-people, made an 
 onslaught on the boys. The boys defended 
 themselves through a vigorous fight with their 
 hurling-sticks, but they were mercilessly beaten, 
 and one of them at least retains the marks of the 
 battle till this day. 
 
 The British Trade Unionists, I remember, were 
 shocked some years ago when it was proposed, at 
 a congress they held in Belfast, to hold a demon- 
 stration on a Sunday, and the motion was defeated 
 by Belfast votes. Mr John Burns was so enraged 
 when the result of the voting was announced that 
 he cried out : " Belfast bigotry ! " On the follow- 
 ing Saturday 1 was present at a great labour 
 gathering in Ormeau Park, at which Mr Burns 
 was one of the speakers. Some sour working- 
 
214 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 man in the crowd kept mumbling tilings while 
 Mr Burns was speaking from a wagonette, and 
 at last hurled at his head the phrase : " You 
 and your Sabbath demonstrations ! " " It's all 
 right, my friend," said Mr Burns in a jaunty way 
 he then had, " this is not the Sabbath." "It 
 would Ije all the same to you if it was," retorted 
 the other with a growl, and J thought he had the 
 best of the argument. 
 
 Sunday in some of the country parts of Ulster 
 is a still stricter affair than has yet been suoo-ested. 
 Some of the older people — people, too, of high 
 cultui'e and intelligence — -would not open until 
 Monday a letter that came to tiiem by Sunday 
 morning's post : for, ridiculously enough, there is 
 a Saljbath post in some of the most Sabbatarian 
 parts of Ireland. It is regarded by the extremely 
 orthodox as a piece of doubtful morality even to 
 go for a walk on Sunday. Whistling on Sunday 
 is suppressed as a sin, even if one whistles a 
 psalm-tune, and the same nniy l)e said of the [»laying 
 of musical instruments, though many people, who 
 believe it is wicked to play an organ in church, do 
 not object to a harmonium in the Sunday School. 
 Boating is not permitted : going into a fruit- 
 garden to eat goosberries is immoral. There are 
 even some subjects of conversation which you will 
 do ill to broach on a Sunday in strict company. 
 I have often thought it odd, however, that not 
 even in the most scrupulous houses do you meet 
 with the old Scottish sort of Sa])batarianism which 
 
RELIGION 215 
 
 ]n'oliibits the cooking of moat ou Sundays, and sets 
 whole families down to cold dinners. In Ulster 
 Sunday is the fullest-feeding day of the week. 
 
 Sabbatarianism, as I have said, is dying fast in 
 Ulstei', and you will lind clergymen discussing all 
 manner of subjects nowadays, and even reading 
 novels, on Sundays. Protestants usually think 
 that the Irish Catholic has no regard for Sunday, 
 especially after mid-day, but had any of them been 
 ])resent one day when I attended a service in the 
 Catholii; Cntliedi'id in Sligo they would have been 
 surprised to hear a young priest denouncing 
 Sabbath- breaking with a vigour worthy of an 
 orthodox Presbyterian. I met a Catholic school- 
 master in the same county who expressed his horror 
 at the universality with which hurling and foot- 
 ball were l)eing played on Sundays. I reminded 
 him that priests frequently attend these nuitches, 
 " I don't care," he said ; " I think it's wrong." 
 
 Catholic Irehind, as a whole, would not agree 
 to so strict a rule. The majority of Catholics 
 are quite satisfied with their Sunday observance 
 when once iMass is over, and, in one country phacc 
 I know, the people coming from the twelve o'clock 
 Mass turn into the principal Bho}) of the district 
 to make their week's purchases. This shop is 
 at once a hotel, a public-house, a post-office, and 
 a general store, and the people, I think, are 
 supposed to be going to it for their letters. The 
 road in front of the shop is filled like a market- 
 square, the young men sitting on a wall, the 
 
216 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 men witli l)ear(ls standing round and getting rid 
 of the week's gossip, and tlie old women in their 
 beautiful frilled eaps and elieek shawls paeing 
 up to the shop door and talking to all and sundry 
 in their rapid Irish. It all seems like an agreeably 
 miniature market without the noise of animals. 
 
 In some of the lonely country parts, where the 
 people have to come long distances to chapel, you 
 will see a still more curious Sa!)l)ath sight than 
 this business of commerce and gossip. These 
 isolated chapels have sometimes a low white 
 stable connected with them, just as some old- 
 fashioned Presbyterian churches have, and, when 
 Mass is over, you will see the people slowly 
 getting ready their c;irs and their ]i(n\ses to go 
 home. It is odd enouirh to see men ridino- from 
 church on horseback in their rustic respectability, 
 but the spectacle becomes comic when you see 
 their wives sitting behind them, pillion fashion, 
 wearing the foolish bonnets and l)lack jackets for 
 which countrywomen discard their week-day clothes 
 on great occasions like Sunday. I met a whole 
 cavalcade of women riding from chapel like this 
 behind their husbands one Sunday morning when 
 I was driving in the south of County Mayo. 
 The sight surprises a nuin from town like a piece 
 of romance : there is something; fascinatino- and 
 gipsy ish about it. 
 
 Irish religion, however, is not a mere affair of 
 Sunday. It is an essential part of the life of the 
 house every day of the week. The Catholic has 
 
RELIGION 217 
 
 his crucifix in some couvenient place to remind 
 him of the sacrifice of Christ at his prayers, and 
 the Protestant has tlic Bible to turn to for help in 
 times of ease and difficulty. On some evenings, if 
 you are in a Catliolic liouse in the most Irisli parts 
 of the country, you may hear a strange crying — 
 ahnost a lamentation — such as you might expect 
 in days of religious revival. This is at the hour of 
 family j^rayer. The family worship of Protestants 
 in country places is usually less demonstrative but 
 no less impressive, in some Presbyterian houses 
 a psalm is first sung, and the members of the 
 family then read a chapter of the Bible, verse 
 about. The servant joins in the reading, and, as 
 her education is usually of the most elementary 
 nature, her treatment of some of the old Hebrew 
 names, and even of the simpler English words, is 
 at times curiously original. Occasionally, an old 
 evangelist or lay-reader goes round the poorer 
 houses and holds a small family service in them, 
 and these lay-readers have often a way of being 
 more violent than sweetly reasonable in their 
 propagation of Christian truths. 
 
 " Lord," one of them prayed in a house I 
 know, "do thou shake these people over hell-fire, 
 but shake them in marcy ! " 
 
 Sometimes you feel that there is almost an 
 excess of the terrors of hell in the religion of the 
 Protestants, and I believe some priests insist with 
 equal vigour upon the penal side of religion. 
 
 One of the most remarkable events in the 
 
218 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 liistory of Ireland during the nineteenth century 
 was the Ulster Revival in 1859, when half the 
 province was swept by a storm of religious fear 
 and fervour. The very children in the schools in 
 some places would suddenly cry out in lamentation 
 for their sins and fall prostrate. The factory girls 
 would be caught with the new passion of repent- 
 ance at their work, and within a short time dozens 
 of them would be lying ** stricken" on the ground. 
 One spinning factory had to close for two days, 
 owing to the workers having been incapacitated 
 for work by the revival, and when it was opened 
 again, only about half the hands were able to 
 resume their duties. The printers in a Coleraine 
 newspaper office were seized with the new exalta- 
 tion on a Thursday, and the appearance of the 
 paper was delayed for a whole day in consequence. 
 In the churches it was a common tiling for people 
 suddenly to spring to their feet with loud cries 
 and then fall prostrate to the ground, I have 
 heard from a lady, who was present at services 
 on occasions like these, how the women used to 
 be carried out from the churches into the open air, 
 with all and sundry dragging at the hoops of their 
 crinolines. Men and women who were stricken 
 often lost all their bodily i)owers for the time 
 being, and, falling into a trance, would remain 
 deaf, dumb, blind and motionless for hours. 
 These trances were looked on as something miracu- 
 lous, because the people who fell into them 
 would frequently give warning beforehand to the 
 
RELIGION 219 
 
 bystanders regarding the hour at which the 
 trance would begin and the liour at which tliey 
 would wake out of it again. Probably there is 
 an explanation in hypnotism of the prophetic gifts 
 of these " sleepers." 
 
 Another phe?)oinenon, the genuineness of which 
 is doubted by many of the Presbyterians them- 
 selves, was common during the Ulster Revival. 
 This was the appearance of marks, cojnparable to 
 the stigmata of St Francis, on the bodies of certain 
 religious enthusiasts. Sometimes these represented 
 printed characters, sometimes mystic symbols, and 
 those wdio could show them made a wide reputation 
 as proj^hets and people divinely honoured. We 
 hear of instances where admission was charged to 
 visitors to the houses of such peculiar people, but 
 it is fair to suppose that those who put religious 
 sensations upon the market in this way were 
 charlatans taking advantage of the spirit of the 
 times. I cannot agree, however, with clergy- 
 men who put down all these apparent miracles as 
 impostures. Presbyterian leaders are sometimes 
 too nmch afraid of occurrences that look like 
 miracles, if these are of a date later than apostolic 
 times. 
 
 The ordinary Protestant laity, I think, is free 
 from this scepticism, and a record of the 
 experiences of commonplace people during the 
 Revival times, if written from the people's instead 
 of from the clergyman's point of view, would 
 make amazing reading. A clergyman wrote 
 
220 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 a book, " The Year of Grace," on the period, but 
 it is a mere tract when it might have been a 
 book of the wonders of the human imagination and 
 spirit. 
 
 " I believe, as a matter of fact," a friend once 
 wrote to me, " the poorer Protestants all over the 
 country share the superstitions of their Catholic 
 neighbours — if superstitions is the right word." 
 Certainly there are parts of the country in which 
 they resort to the Holy Wells with the same 
 hopefulness of cures. 
 
 Speaking of miraculous things reminds me that I 
 once met a man who Ijclieved lie had performed a 
 miracle — and lie was a Presbyterian. He was an 
 old and almost chikl-like man, who followed the pro- 
 fession of colporteur ; in other words, he went into 
 the Catholic districts and tried to persuade the 
 people to read the Bible, in the hope that they 
 would afterwards become Protestants. He declared 
 that he had one day been called into a house 
 where there was a dead girl, and that God had put 
 it in his power, something after the pattern of 
 Elijah in the widow's house, to raise the dead to 
 life. It was impossible to doubt the old man's 
 sincerity, and, if he was as accurate as he was 
 sincere, the people of the district were not slow to 
 believe that he possessed some miraculous powers. 
 Even the priest came up to him some time 
 afterwards, he said, and asked him to touch him 
 on the breast and cure an apparently incurable 
 pain of the heart. 
 
RELIGION 221 
 
 This brings me to yet another feature in the 
 religious life of Ireland — the proselytising tendency 
 of the Protestants. The militant Protestants have 
 never been weary of attempting to convert the 
 Catholics to their own point of view. They even 
 took advantage of the terrible Famine of tlie 
 forties — the " starvation " as Mitchel called it, 
 for the people died in the midst of plentiful 
 harvests — to give spoonfuls of Protestantism 
 alternately with spoonfuls of soup to famishing 
 people too far gone in weakness to refuse both. 
 Wise in their generation, they had missionaries 
 trained to speak the Irish language so as to get the 
 more intimately to the inner spirit of the people, 
 and the decay of the Irish language became much 
 more rapid wlicn it began to l)e regarded in many 
 places as tlie language of the Protestant prosely- 
 tiser. I wonder if it was with an eye to its value 
 as a medium of proselytisin that, at the Presby- 
 terian General Synod of Ulster in 1828, it was, as 
 we find in the published Minutes, " overtured and 
 agreed to, that it be most earnestly recommended 
 by the Synod to candidates for the Ministry to 
 apply themselves to the study of tlie Irish 
 language." Whatever may have been the reason 
 for this overture, it is a lasting pity that the 
 recommendation has never been carried out. 
 
 As I have said, however, the Protestants no sooner 
 began to use Irish in their propaganda than the 
 Catholic priests, or some of them, set to disparaging 
 and discouraging it. Some years ago, there were 
 
222 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 parts of Ireland where a stranger, attempting to 
 speak to the people in their own language, was 
 looked on with the utmost suspicion in consequence. 
 Miclieal Breathnach, one of the young princes 
 of the Irish revival, yet dead already, found this 
 out one day when he tried to live up to Gaelic 
 League principles in a western town which he was 
 visiting. He spoke to a man in the street in Irish, 
 and before long an inquisitive crowd had gathered 
 round him. They asked him where he came from 
 and where he had learned his Irish, but they would 
 believe nothing he said, and swore that he was a 
 Protestant from Dublin who wanted to make 
 "soupers" of them — a reminiscence of the soul- 
 purchasing soup of Famine times. Ultimately one 
 of them asked him if he knew what weasels' eggs 
 were. He said tliat he did not. A heap of stones 
 lying by the roadside was pointed out to him, and 
 he was told that those were weasels' eggs, and that, 
 if he didn't clear out, he would be made a present 
 of a few of them. This incident occurred a few 
 years ago, I may say, in one of the most Anglicised 
 towns in the west ; but even there the revolution 
 in Irish ideals has produced great changes by to- 
 day. 
 
 On the whole, it must be admitted, the Irish 
 Catholic accepts the Protestant missionary with 
 great tolerance. There has been trouble in the 
 streets of Cork, and, I believe, in the streets of 
 Galway, owing to the presence of missionaries 
 preaching militant Protestantism in the public places 
 
IIELIGION 223 
 
 in each city. But the Catholics as a whole take 
 these attacks on their faith calmly — much more 
 calmly than would Irish Protestants take similar 
 attacks on Protestantism. The Catholic, indeed, 
 may pray in his churches for the conversion of his 
 non-Catliolic fellow-Christians, but 1 do not be- 
 lieve there is anybody freer from the proselytising 
 spirit than the ordinary Irish Catholic — even 
 the ordinary Irish Catholic priest. A score of 
 exceptions do not disprove my contention. Irish 
 Cjitholics nearly always give a fme example in 
 respecting the religion of their neighbours. A 
 Protestant rowdy does not object to Hinging a stone 
 at a chapel window, but a Catholic rowdy will 
 think twice, or oftener, before he will do any 
 damage to a Protestant Churcli. 
 
 Wliere Irish Protestantism expresses itself in 
 somcwliid, militant missions, one might say, Irisli 
 Catholicism expresses itself in peaceful processions. 
 You see these winding along the country roads, 
 making solemn music and Hying banners, and the 
 streets of some of the towns are busy with them 
 during certain days of the year. These are church 
 or school processions, however. A procession of a 
 different sort is that which every year, on a day 
 in July or August, climbs, in the ancient pilgrim 
 spirit, the rocky cone of Croagh Patrick overlooking 
 Clew Bay. It used to be the custom for the more 
 devout pilgrims to clindj this stony way on their 
 knees, l>Mt the [)riests in the end forbade so cruel 
 a display of self-torture. Women, especially 
 
224 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 married women who desire children or a blessing 
 on ehildren that will soon he horn to them, form a 
 conspicuous part of the long procession, and some 
 of the most ardent take oif their hoots at the most 
 difficult part of the journey and walk on the 
 stones barefoot. A year or two ago, a lady I 
 know was walking in the ])roceRsion and stumltled 
 accidentally agaijist one of the women-pilgrims. 
 The woman's husband thrust his shoulder against 
 my friend and pushed her off. " Don't interfere 
 with the lady, Michael," said the woman gently : 
 " sure, she didn't hurt me." " 1 wouldn't let her 
 push you, Bridgie," declared the man with decision, 
 "not if she was nine months gon(;." 
 
 This incident suggests better than a dozen pages 
 of description the faith, the energy, the primitive 
 drama, of this mountain procession. 
 
 Catholic processions in the north have a way of 
 being more political. The Ancient Order of 
 ITibernians, which has jin especially strong hold 
 on northern (Jatholics, is little more than a 
 Catholic counterpart of the Orange Order, it has 
 bands and banners and passwords on much the 
 same model, and, though it is strongly Catholic, the 
 priests sometimes appear to l)e in doul)t as to 
 whether they ought not to denounce it as a secret 
 society. Its Lady-day processions in August, 
 however, have usually a Nationalist rather than a 
 merely sectarian colour, but at the same time it is 
 a question whether they do not make for the 
 introduction of sectarianism into national politics. 
 
RELIGION 225 
 
 Orangeism and Hibemianism, indeed, are mere 
 relics of mediaeval wars. No clear-tbinkinof Irish- 
 man now looks on the Irish question as being a 
 question between Protestant and Catholic. If 
 there were no Catholics in Ireland, the Irish 
 question might be of a different colour, but it 
 would be none the less acute. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE LIVES OF THE WORKERS 
 
 I HOPE that before long some oue with knowledge 
 and courage will write a book about tlie lives of 
 the workers in Ireland. I am not thinkinor 
 
 O 
 
 especially about the skilled workers in the towns, 
 organised in Trade Unions and able to secure for 
 themselves as good a wage as the skilled workers 
 in England and Scotland. It is the unskilled 
 labourers, the women and the half-time children, 
 who are most in need of some one to interpret 
 their lives. The question of sweated labour and 
 of child-labour is a crucial one in Ireland to-day. 
 Miss Martindale, that generous-minded and fearless 
 lady-iuspector, has stated some of the realities of 
 our industrial conditions in the little-read pages of 
 Factories and Workshops blue-books. It may 
 seem surprising to some people that we did not 
 collect and publish the facts ourselves. But the 
 truth is, we were educated in our schools and 
 colleges to take an interest in all things except 
 Irish things, and, when some of the facts of Irish 
 life are put before us, they astonish no one so 
 much as they astonish ourselves. 
 
 If you go to Belfast, the chief industrial centre 
 
THE LIVES OF THE WORKERS 227 
 
 in Ireland, you will find the skilled artisans in 
 the shipyards and the foundries living in fairly 
 comfortable little brick houses, and earning, as I 
 have said, very decent wages. The unskilled 
 labourers are in a diflcrent ])osition. Among the 
 best paid arc those who work for the Cor[)oration 
 at a wage of about 21s. weekly — a wage which, I 
 remember, provoked a good deal of protest among 
 otherwise humane people by its generosity when it 
 was first agreed u])on. In the shi{)yards unskilled 
 labour is not so well re\vard(Ml. Here the worker's 
 wage may be estimated, 1 believe, at from 17s. Gd. 
 to 18s. Gd. weekly. In the building trades it 
 varies from 15s. to 17s., and labourers in mills and 
 for small firms get from 12s. to 15s. Carters of 
 six months' experience and over, however, make 
 about 22s. per week ; carters ibr teams get 2Gs. a 
 week for a ton-hour day ; wliilc youths who drive 
 light vans earn 16s. or a little more. Dockers are 
 paid from 4^d. to 6d. an hour. 
 
 If we turn to the textile trades — the most im- 
 portant trades in Ulster, for they are established, 
 not only in Belfast, but in Lurgan, Portadown, 
 Ballymena, Lisburn, Uerry, and a score of other 
 towns through the province — we shall not find an 
 improved state of affairs. It is the custom to 
 congratulate Belfast on having the ship-building 
 industry to give employment to the men and the 
 linen industry to give employment to the women, 
 and there is some reason for this congratulation. 
 At the same time, these industries have fitted into 
 
228 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 each other to the interest of the employers rather 
 than of the employed, and the linen manufacturers 
 seem to regulate the pay of their women-workers 
 on the assumption that the latter are living in the 
 houses of either their husbands or their fathers. 
 I know that Ireland is not the only country in 
 which the economic independence of woman is a 
 burning question — or ought to be. ]\\\t the con- 
 ditions which prevail in other countries do not 
 make the conditions which prevail in Ireland in 
 the matter of women's labour any the less objec- 
 tionable. 
 
 Here, approximately, are a few instances of the 
 wages paid to women in the spinning and weaving 
 mills of Belfast, l^-eparcrs, spreaders, drawers 
 and rovers get from 8s. Gd. to lis. per week ; 
 spinners earn from lis. 6d. to 13s. ; reelers from 
 15s. to I7s. ; weavers and winders from 8s. to 14s. ; 
 though those who are engaged in line weaving ur 
 damask work earn up to 18s. or 19s. As for male 
 workers in these industries, skilled labourers like 
 flax-dressers are paid from 24s. to 28s. per week, 
 and roughers from 20s. to 24s. These figures, 
 however, give a rather flattering idea of the wages 
 paid in the textile industries, for it must be re- 
 membered that it is always possible that either 
 the cut-throat competition which continually goes 
 on between the spinning and the weaving industries, 
 or some other cause of trade depression, may result 
 in the mills working only short time. Towards 
 the end of 1907, for instance, all the spinning 
 
THE LIVES OF THE WORKERS 22.9 
 
 mills were working for half-time for nearly twelve 
 months, and a friend of mine tells me of a reeler 
 lie knew, a married woman, who was trying during 
 all that time to support a family on Gs. 3d. a week. 
 Skilled male labourers, like ilax-roughcrs, were for 
 a time making as low a wage as 10s. 6d. weekly. 
 The workers, indeed, suffer when trade is bad, 
 but they do not gain in proportion when trade is 
 good. 
 
 In the early part of 1907, thougli it was known 
 that several firms had made an extra profit of 
 £80,000, the spinners had to strike for a rise in 
 wages of Gd. a week. The low wages paid in 
 Belfast to women — lowered still further by spells 
 of short work-lime and by a ruthless system of 
 fines — undoubtedly mean that many young women 
 are driven on to tlie stretits to eke out a living by 
 })rostitution. And yet it is only recently, I tliink, 
 that any clergyman in Belfast ever thought it 
 worth his while to preach a sermon on the con- 
 ditions of labour. 
 
 So far I have given approximate figures — and I 
 do not think they will be seriously challenged. 
 Warehouse girls' wages, however, are no better 
 than those of factory-workers. In a fairly decent 
 house, a woman stitcher earns from 10s. and lis. 
 to 18s. a week on the piece-work system, and 
 printers — girls who stencil on to the linen the per- 
 forated design — are paid as low as 7s. Gd. Orua- 
 menters make about 12s. weekly. 
 
 The deadliest sin in the labour conditions of 
 
230 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 Ireland is neither tlie low waij,e })ai(l to unskilled 
 labourers nor that paid to women. It is the 
 system under wliieh boys and girls hardly out of 
 their infancy are employed in the mills at a wage 
 of 3s. Gd. a week. The child half-timer in 
 Lancashire is often an object of sympathy. The 
 plight of the Ulster half-timer, however, is infinitely 
 more pitiable. In Lancashire the child really 
 works half-time every day of the week and goes to 
 school during the other part of the day. In Ulster 
 the child works full time during tliree days in the 
 week, and attends school on the remaining days. 
 The results which folh^w, when cliildren of twelve 
 years ohl or ther(,'al)Outs arc kept working for ten 
 liours a day during three days in the week in a 
 humid atmospliere of from 70 to 80 degrees 
 Fahrenheit, might have been foreseen. Vitality 
 is slowly squeezed out of them, and it is hardly an 
 exaggeration to say that from the age of 15 
 upwards they die like flies. The death rate in 
 Belfast among young peophi between the ages of 
 15 and 20 is double what it is in Manchester. 
 That this is due neither to inherited lack of vitality 
 nor to the condition of Belfast houses is proved by 
 the fact that in the first five years of their life 
 childi'cn die less rapidly in Belfast than in 
 Manchester. Miss Murtindale, who is as enviably 
 free from the vice of doizmatism as she is from 
 that of melodrama, believes that the over-crowded, 
 ill-ventilated and insufficientlj^-warmed state of 
 some of the schools may be a partial cause of the 
 
THE LIVES OF THE WORKEJIS 231 
 
 high death-rate among these boys and girls, but 
 there can be little doubt that the half-time system 
 is a ruling cause of such an unnatural rate of 
 mortality. How lal)oriou3 the conditions under 
 which children are employed in the neighbourhood 
 of Belfast can sometimes be will be best realised 
 from an incident reported by Miss Martindale. 
 " On visiting a flax-scutching mill one morning," 
 she writes, " I found a little girl, aged 12 years, 
 stricking flax with a rapidity and dexterity which 
 showed considerable practice. My inquiries were 
 met with what is far too common in Ireland — the 
 most bare-faced untruths. I was told that the 
 child was at the mill for no other purjDose than 
 bringing tea to the workers. On visiting the 
 school in the neighbourhood, I was immediately 
 told that this little girl and her sister, aged 10^ 
 years, worked (or alternate weeks at the scutching- 
 mill, nud were employed there from 8 a.m. to 
 8 p.m. on every week day including Saturday. I 
 could not, however, ]iear of any steps having been 
 taken by the teacher or managers to stop this 
 obviously illegal employment." Miss Martindale 
 also tells how in another factory she found a little 
 girl of thirteen working full time, her teacher 
 apparently having given her an illegal certificate 
 of proficiency. 
 
 This is not the worst of the matter, however. 
 Miss Mnrtiudale lilts the curtain upon darker 
 things when she describes how, having visited a 
 school frequented by half-timers and taken almost 
 
232 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 at random the names and addresses of a few chil- 
 dren, she and a colleague went to see some of them 
 in their homes. " We found A. B. suflering from 
 partial blindness," she writes, " with a curious film 
 over both eyes. On examination the Certifying- 
 Surgeon pronounced her to be suffering from a form 
 of ophthalmia, causing intolerance of light, which 
 rendered her quite unfit for any kind of work. 
 C D. had lost an eye as the result of an accident 
 in the mill. E. F. was sufiering seriously from 
 wounded feet ; both feet were bound up, and one of 
 them she could not put to the ground. G. H. was 
 suffering from general debility, and was quite unfit 
 for work. All tliesc cliildrcu had been certified l)y 
 tlie Certifying-Surgeoii as lit foj- work, and yet in 
 a few mouths the result of their work was alarm- 
 ingly evident." 
 
 I wish we had a Mrs Browning in Ireland to 
 give us a new "Cry of tlie Chihlren," to make us 
 I'ealise the tragedy of these bal)y-d()IT(!rs wlio run 
 to and fro in the heat and moisture of the mills as 
 the whistle of the dofling mistress calls. Perhaps 
 Miss Alice Milligan, who has written with so much 
 passion and vigour on so many national themes, 
 will make a brave and bitter music of this. Indig- 
 nation, says a fixmous tag, makes verses, and it is 
 diiiicult to read without indignation a paragraph 
 like the following, in which Miss Martindale gives 
 us a glimpse of the life of a half-timer. 
 
 L. M. was nearly 13 years of age, but her weight in clothes 
 was 57 lbs. and her height 47 inches, which 1 mulcrstand is 
 
i 
 
 ' ''l r 'Oil 
 
 m 
 
 
 :/. \ n .*♦ 
 
 .^l ■ 
 
 
 y^Ai 
 
 
 V";i-.>^:' 
 
 
 X;..;;:-S:a:V;.i.:i-:iai 
 
 yt^.a;_ii .'*;.' .ItivSI 
 
THE LIVES OF THE WORKERS 233 
 
 30| lbs. and 11 iiiclies below the average weight and height. 
 I had her examined by a doctor, who reported : "I have exa- 
 mined L. M., and find her very ill developed for a child of 
 13 years of age. She is hardly up to the standard of a child 
 of nine years. She is ill cared for, her hair being in an unfit 
 state, and her body covered with marks of scratching to relieve 
 irritation. Tier heart scorns to mo to be dilated and sun'cring 
 from over strain, and her lungs are not sound. . . . The child 
 is certainly unfit for any but the lightest Avork, and should not 
 on any account be asked to lift heavy weights or exert herself 
 much." The child is a eager, which necessitates her kneeling 
 on the damp floor of the spinning room and j)lacing the 
 bobbins in llio cage as th(i tiollcrs l;d<e tliom oil" the frames ; 
 she then phucs tlio cage in the place Irom which the yarn- 
 hawker fetches it. 1 have had a cage of these bobbins 
 weighed, and found it weighed 28 lbs. The child is bare- 
 footed, and in this damp room wears only a cotton chemise, 
 a skirt ami the "jumper," which is a cotton bodice cut low at 
 the neck and with short sleeves. On the night I saw her 
 she complained of headaches on mill days, and she was suffer- 
 ing from a cold. About three months after she had begun 
 work in the mill she was taken with a severe attack of mill 
 fever, and was unable to work for three weeks. About four 
 weeks ago a brother died of spotted fever. 
 
 Her family consists of a mother who is not employed in a 
 factory, a father who is often out of work (at present he is in 
 work and earning probably about 12s. a week), and an aunt 
 earning about 10s. a week, an elder sister earning 10s. a week, 
 and five younger children. L. M. earns 43. Gd. a week as a 
 half-timer. Although the child is nearly 13 years of age, she 
 is only in the second stmdard ; mentally, however, she is very 
 intelligent, with the pretty manners and love of fairy myths 
 so often found amongst the Irish children. I have heard on 
 good authority that the wages of L. M. were entirely spent 
 in driidc by the [)arcnts. 
 
 It is obvious that a good many of the things I 
 have said in praise of the kindly treatment and 
 
234 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 happiness of Irish children must be accepted with 
 reservations, just as some of the things I have said 
 with regard to tlie respect paid to women in Irehand 
 must be accepted with reservations. Miss Martin- 
 dale believes that public opinion in Ireland is not 
 opposed to child labour, but I think that public 
 opinion would be opposed to child labour in its 
 crueller forms if only the facts were generally 
 known. There is all the difference in the world 
 between sending little children of eight years old 
 out into tlie fields to herd cattle, and sending 
 children of eleven and twelve to put in a ten 
 hours' working day in the corrupting air of a 
 factory. The one thing may be an error of 
 thoughtlessness, the other is a sin of cruelty. 
 Children in the country do not lose their merriment 
 through labour : factory children become listless 
 and lifeless, and cease to be capable of play. 
 Observers tell us that, on the days on which the 
 lialf-timers go to school, they prefer during the 
 recr(!ati()n-])eriod to sit down instead of riiiniiiig 
 about. In this way you can easily distinguisli 
 them from the children who do not work in the 
 mills. In many cases, however, the parents of 
 iialf-timers do not send their childi-eii to school at 
 all. Education is conipulsoiy in lj(»,lfast, but the 
 average attendance at the schools is only GO.G'per 
 cent, of the children on the rolls. The average for 
 all Ireland, I believe, is about 65 per cent., as 
 compared with the 85 per cent, of Scotland and 
 the 84 per cent, of England, showing that Belfast 
 
THE LIVES OF THE WORKERS 235 
 
 with all its twentieth-century progress is in much 
 the same position educationally as the agricultural 
 parts of the country of which it thinks so poorly. 
 The trutli is, there has been a blight and a darkness 
 ovoi- tlio wliolo Iniid, ;in(l our vision has l)co!i dim 
 and confused in Belfast as it has been elsewliere. 
 
 With regard to the wages of half-timers, the 
 reader may remember tliat I put them down at 
 3s. 6d. a week. The last case which I quoted 
 from Miss Martindale's Report mentions 4s. 6d. 
 a week, and J\liss ]\lartindale tells us elsewhere of 
 a mill whore " calipers and doffers, children between 
 12 and 14 years, earned as half-timers 4s. 3d. and 
 4s. 9d. a week." Wages seem to vary consider- 
 ably. They are, it may be some encouragement 
 to know, a great advance on what they used to be. 
 A friend of mine was recently talking to a ]^)elfast 
 working-man who l)egan work twenty-five years 
 ago at tlie nge of ten at a weekly wage of Is. 7d. 
 
 It was not my intention when I began this book 
 to go into such minute detail with regard to wages 
 and labour conditions. The present chapter, in- 
 deed, may seem a little out of place in a book 
 wliicli is a conversation alx)ut people and things 
 rather than a scientific consideration of economic 
 and social conditions. Still, it may be no harm to 
 stress the fact that in Ireland we have a labour 
 problem as well as problems of education and 
 agriculture. In Belfast alone there are, according 
 to the Report of the Belfast Health Commission, 
 28,000 women and children employed in the flax 
 
23G HOME LIRE IN IRELAND 
 
 and linen tj-adc, as compared witli (1000 m,n. 
 And Jklfast, as I have sliown, stands in danger 
 of losing its youthful vitality unless the conditions 
 under which these people are employed are quickly 
 changed. 
 
 It seems to be in danger of developing a slum 
 problem, too, though it has until now been fairly 
 free from anything that could be described as 
 slums. There are hundreds of houses empty in the 
 city at a rent of 2s. 6d. per week, but, as a 
 Town Councillor recently put it, " that was no use 
 to a man with a family of four who had to sultsist 
 on lis. a week." As a conse(|uence, two families 
 often crowd into a small house of this sort, with 
 the result that you have, in the wonls of another 
 member of the Corporation, " a family of human 
 beings living in upper apartments without the 
 sanitary conveniences necessary for human habita- 
 tion," these being as a rule downstairs in the Ijack 
 yard. 
 
 In Dublin the housing of the poor has long been 
 one of the most pressing of municipal proldems. 
 There many of the line houses which were inhabited 
 by a lavish aristocracy, before the Union with 
 England destroyed hope and eflbrt in the country, 
 are now dens of the most horrid poverty. Two 
 members of the Belfast l^iblic Health Commission 
 visited Dublin some time ago, and found four 
 families " living in a single room, each occupying 
 a corner." 1 do not think this was an isolated 
 instance. 
 
THE I.IVES OF THE WORKEIIS 237 
 
 III tlie country towns tlic poor may be happier 
 in their houses, l)ut the ruthless sweatiug-emj)ioycr 
 is not unknown even there. I know of one in- 
 stance of an employer who has founded a new 
 industry, and who keeps his people working from 
 early in the morning until eight at night. The 
 people dare not complain, for there is no other 
 industry in the town to afford an alternative 
 market to their labour. 
 
 To come to the workers in the country itself, the 
 agricultural labourer in Ireland is very poorly paid 
 com[)ared to the farm labourer in Scotland, Wales, 
 or illngland. J\Ir Wilson Fox's second ]5oard of 
 Trade lieport on the earnings of agricultural 
 labourers estimates the average weekly wages in 
 the four countries as follows : — 
 
 Scotland . . 19s. 3d. 
 
 l^higland . . 18s. 3d. 
 
 Wales . . 17s. 3d. 
 
 Ireland . . 10s. lid. 
 
 These wages, I may say, include the value of 
 all payments in kind, such as free houses, food, 
 and so forth. It is a common thing for a farm 
 labourer to be paid six, seven or eight shillings 
 a week, with a free cottage (worth from Is. to 
 Is. 6d. weekly) and meals at the farmer's house 
 extra. He may also have a little patch of 
 garden or a ridge of potatoes in one of his master's 
 fields. His wife and children, too, contribute 
 something to the family income. During the 
 turnip-thinning season a woman working a ten or 
 
238 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 eleven hours' day may earn tenpence a day, and if 
 slie is strong enough to pull llax she may make 
 anything up to two shillings a day during a week 
 or a fortnight of the year. In ordinary women's 
 work, however, I believe tenpence a day is con- 
 sidered a good wage. Young boys may earn a few 
 pence a day, driving carts or lielping with the 
 corn, and doing various odd jol)s during the busy 
 season. The figures 1 have given I have taken 
 from one of the prosperous counties. ■ Probaljly, in 
 counties like Mayo, where the average weekly 
 wage of a farm labourer is only 8s. 9d., women's 
 and children's wages are correspondingly low. 
 
 There is other woi'k besides agricultural labour 
 to b(i had in soiiKi of the c<Minli-y [)la(;eH. 'I'his 
 iiK'luihis cottage work — like endjroidery, knitting, 
 and the machining and finishing of shirts and 
 collars — three kinds of work which are sent down 
 by the manul'actui'ers in the l)ig towns to be done 
 cheaply by the women in the rural districts. JVliss 
 MarLiiidale made exhaustive incpdries in 1907 into 
 the wages and other lal)Our conditions of these 
 outworkers, taking the County of Donegal as her 
 field of study. She found that women who em- 
 broidered handkerchiefs were paid at the rate of 7d. 
 a dozen, and that a dozen handkerchiefs would be a 
 fair day's work for one woman. Monograms could 
 be embroidered at the rate of half-a-dozen a day, and 
 for these half-dozen 4d. would be paid. Initials 
 on handkerchiefs were paid for at the rate of id. 
 each, and about ten of these could be finished in a 
 
THE LIVES OF THE WORKEllS 239 
 
 clay. Workiui^' on a muslin tray-cloth, a woman 
 could earn lOd. for two days' work ; on a side- 
 Iward cloth, she could earn from 4d. to 6d. a day ; 
 on a tahlc-cloth, 3s. in four days; and on ladies' 
 skiits, about 3s. Gd. in a week. For knitting men's 
 socks, women were paid Is. Gd. a dozen, and a 
 worker could seldom knit more than 1 pair or 1^ 
 pairs in a day. The finest socks, which required 
 more labour, were paid for at the rate of 4s. a 
 dozen. Gloves were paid for at the rate of from 2s. 
 to 2s. Gd. a dozen pairs, a i)air and a half being 
 regarded as a good day's work. 
 
 " In hand knitting," writes Miss JMartindale, 
 "the usual day's wage varies from l|d. to 4d., but 
 the number of hours worked are far longer than in 
 si>rigging (eml)roidery), and we heard of work 
 being carried on Irom (S a,.m. to 10 p.m." 
 
 Coming to the machimiig and finishing of shirts 
 and collars, we lind tlie avcj-age wage <as high as 
 lOd. or Is. a day, but this often means a working 
 day wliich begins early in the morning and lasts 
 till midnight. 
 
 These wages seem wretched enough, but they 
 do not sufficiently denote the wretched condition, 
 economically speaking, of the w^orkers in some of 
 the cottage industries of Donegal. A good many 
 readers probably know already that the work is 
 usually distributed among the outworkers by shop- 
 keepers whom the town manufacturers a])])oint as 
 tlieir local agents. JMiss JMartindale describes one 
 district, for instance, as " almost studded with 
 
240 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 little sliopa in which sprigging for distribution to 
 outworkers is to l)e seen on the slielves and in the 
 windows, together with the ordinary groceries and 
 draperies." Shop-keepers, of course, find it very- 
 profitable to undertake these agencies, for not 
 only do they make a 10 per cent, commission on 
 the work they give out — which may be anything 
 from £20 worth to XI 00 wortli of work per month 
 — but their Imsiness is greatly increased by the 
 fact that a vast number of outworkers become 
 their steady customers. The shop-keeper agents, 
 unfortunately, are not always satisfied with these 
 two streams of prosperity. Many of them do not 
 pay the women workers in wages at all, but in 
 goods out of the shop — often })riced far beyond 
 their value. These shop-keepers — I do not, of 
 course, mean all the shop-keeper agents, but the 
 many unscrupulous people among them — are the 
 worst sort of gombeen men. 'I'hey know that 
 ready money is a rare thing in the labourers' 
 cottages and on the small farms, and they allow 
 the country people to get heavily into their deljt, 
 knowing that the men of the house will bring a 
 lump of money home with them from the British 
 harvests, and that the women will Ijc able to work 
 off the rest of the debt by doing sprigging and 
 knitting work. 
 
 Cash-payments for goods are the exception 
 rather than the rule in. some places, and debts are 
 allowed to run up to the extent of .£20 or £30. 
 It is a fact, of course, that in many poor parts of 
 
THE LIVES OF THE WORKERS 241 
 
 Ireland the people could not exist at all were it 
 not for the long credit permitted by the shop- 
 keepers, and so the gombeen shop-keeper may be 
 looked on from one point of view as a public bene- 
 factor. On the other hand, though some of the 
 shop-keepers arc reaBonal)ly just and generous in 
 their use of the credit system, it is well known 
 that many of them enrich themselves like the most 
 extortionate moneylenders at the expense of all 
 the poor and comparatively poor peo})le in their 
 dislii(;t. The lattc.i- — especially when they arc 
 outworlcers — are encouraged to l)uy goods, which 
 they would never dream of taking if they had to 
 pay cash down for them instead of owing the 
 money. " One priest," writes Miss Martindale, 
 "informed us that lie had felt o])liged to strongly 
 denounce the truck system from llic^ altai', because 
 it was so prevalent in his parisJi. He stated tlu\t 
 it was useless for more than one girl in a family 
 to have a knitting-machine, because the larger 
 income thus obtained consisted only of draperies 
 and useless fineries. Coin was not given for 
 wages, and as several of the employers did not 
 deal in fiour or meal, these goods, which were 
 necessities, were not given in lieu of coin." Miss 
 ]\lartindale interviewed 154 outworkers in the 
 course of her inquiries into the truck system, and 
 in 104 instances truck was admitted, in 48 cases 
 it was denied. It is all the moie amazing to find 
 Mr W. J, D. Walker, the Industrial Adviser and 
 Inspector to the Irish Congested Districts Jioard 
 
242 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 when giving evidence last year l)efore the Select 
 Committee of the British House of Commons on 
 Home Work, saying, in regard to the Donegal out- 
 workers, that " there is not very much truck, and 
 I do not think myself that they are badly treated 
 in that way." Miss Martindale shows clearly 
 that the credit system is ol'lcn workiHl in such a 
 way as to be merely truck in disguise. 
 
 Some of the shopkeepers supply only their own 
 customers and debtors with sprigging and knitting 
 work ; at least, they give all the best paid work to 
 their own customers. Sometimes, in these shops 
 payment money is handed over the counter, but it 
 must be handed back at once — all or nearly all of 
 it — for no more outwork will be given to those 
 who take their money away with them. "Con- 
 tinually," declares Miss lAlartindale, "we were 
 told that unless the wages were left at the shop 
 no work would be given." 
 
 Miss Whitworth, a colleague of Miss IMartindale's, 
 Sfives an account of an interview she had with a 
 dispensary nurse who put the matter in a nut- 
 shell. " AH the agents round here have shops," 
 said the nurse, " and they will only give out the 
 best work to customers; in fact ihey want you to 
 leave all your money in the shop. Now, <Hily 
 yesterday a girl came to me and said : ' You're 
 doing sprigging for Mr A., and you'll have to 
 leave all your money with him, for he has saitl 
 he's going to give out no more work to a sewer 
 unless she gives the money Imck to him.' I said, 
 
THE LIVES OF THE WORKERS 243 
 
 ' I'll spend my money where I like,' but you see 
 I'm not depeudeut on the sprigging, but the poor 
 folk who are have to spend it all at the agent's 
 shop. There's many a poor mother and girl who 
 have to buy articles they don't want, and have no 
 money for what they want for other things." 
 
 I know that optimists will argue tliat the out- 
 workers of Donegal are at least better off than 
 they were before the cottage industries were intro- 
 duced among tliem. This may be true enough, 
 but it does not alter the fiuit that a great number 
 of tlicsc workcu's :ire l)eiiig most flMgranlJy injured 
 both in ])0cket and in character. There is nothing 
 that saps the independence of average human 
 beings to a greater degree than to deprive them of 
 the right to take their earnings into their own 
 hands and to spend them as they will. The Irish 
 Agricultural Organisation Society and Sinn F6in 
 have done something to arouse public opinion 
 against the gombeen man, and, the former at least 
 with its co-operative credit banks, to make him a 
 less maleficent figure in Irish rural life. 
 
 While I am on the sul)ject of the Irish workers, 
 it may not be out of place to mention the fact 
 that no body of the people of Ireland serves its 
 ideals more faithfully than they. In Belfast you 
 will find the sturdiest Orangemen and the sturdiest 
 Socialists as well as the sturdiest Nationalists 
 among the working classes. So far as I have 
 seen, I believe they are more capable of absorp- 
 tion in political ideas — ideas apart from all thought 
 
244 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 of self-interest — than any other class in Ireland. 
 Many of them gamble and many of them drink, 
 and some of them beat their wives, as is the 
 custom in civilised countries, but these are the 
 bad examples. There is a radical soundness in 
 the Irish working people, a belief in principle, 
 a generosity of pur|)ose, which will be invaluable 
 to any Icadcu' who can give them a great cause 
 to follow. In Belfast, Cork, and elsewhere, great 
 numbers of the most intelligent of them are at 
 present turning with hope to a kind of inter- 
 national Socialism. I do not think this tendency 
 will continue long, however, for the workers are 
 too quick-witted not to see that international 
 brotherhood is meaningless except as a brother- 
 hood of free nations. Some of the Oranoe workers 
 in Belfast have already come to see the necessity 
 of a national basis for any real progress, industrial, 
 social or intellectual. 
 
 What the new sort of Oranofcman is learning 
 by thinking out, the LiuKirick lal)ourcr knows by 
 instinct. Collectors for the Gaelic Leaii^ue funds 
 in Limerick tell me that nowhere are they so 
 sure of a generous reception as in the houses of 
 the workers in tlic ]ioor parts of the city. A 
 collector told me of one instance where he had 
 begun with the usual remark, " 1 suppose you 
 believe in the Irish language revival '{ " and a 
 working-man had replied, " And why the hell 
 wouldn't I ? " as though it were an insult even 
 to put the question to him. This, he said, was 
 
THE LIVES OF THE WORKERS 245 
 
 a somewhat forcible expression of the spirit he 
 had foiuid general among the working people of 
 the city. 
 
 Before I close this chapter I slioiild like to 
 meulioii yet another fact — rcnlised by only a very 
 few people — with rcgjird to the working-classes 
 in Ireland. It is that, greatly as the population 
 of Ireland has declined in recent years, the 
 numbers of the workers engaged in the manu- 
 facturing industries has decreased in an even 
 greater pro})ortion. Between the census of 1881 
 and that of 1901 the principal manufacturing 
 industries of Ireland, in so far as they afforded a 
 means of livelihood to the population, decrensed 
 by 17 per cent, wdiile the population itself de- 
 creased by only — I use the word comparatively — 
 13.8 per cent. \n the (lax and linen industry, 
 for instance, which is always held up as a model 
 of prosperity, the number of persons employed 
 decreased during the twenty years mentioned 
 from 92,650 to 75,100. In the leather trades 
 the number of workers went down from 30,766 
 to 19,891. The iron and steel industry, which 
 includes shipbuilding, is the only industry of any 
 size which has given increased employment. 
 Since the last census the record of the woollen 
 trade has probably improved as a result of the 
 industrial revival, but even here the loss during 
 twenty years has hardly been made up yet. 
 
 1 must apologise for putting so many figures 
 into this chapter. I decided, however, that they 
 
246 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 might carry conviction with many readers who 
 would be inclined to dismiss statements of facts 
 which had no warrant but my own observation 
 as worthless. Besides, these figures have some- 
 thing of novelty in a book about Ireland. Most 
 people who write books about Ireland seem to 
 set out with the assumption that Ireland is an 
 exclusively agricultural country, and their figures 
 are nearly all concerned with either laud or 
 education. As a result the Irish working-man 
 has been unduly ignored, and very little public 
 light has been thrown ujion his circumstances. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 SINN FifllN : THE NEW NOTE IN POLITICS 
 
 Every one who comes to Irish politics from the 
 outside, seems to find them a little difficult to 
 uiidcr.sLand. Tliis perplexity, indeed, is not un- 
 known among the Irish people themselves. The 
 reason is simple enough. Logically, there are only 
 two scliools of Irish politics — the Nationalist and 
 the Unionist. Logically, the Nationalist believes 
 that Ireland lias an inherent right to be governed 
 by the li'ish people in the iiiLerests of Ireland. 
 The htgic.nl Unionist, on the other hand, believcH 
 that Enghind has an inherent — or, at least, an 
 adherent — right to govern Ireland in the interest 
 of either Ireland or herself — it never seems to be 
 precisely set forth which. This being so, it is clear 
 that the dividing line in Irish politics ought to 
 fall between those who believe in Ireland's right 
 to be a nation, and those who believe in Ireland's 
 fate to be an English province or shire. 
 
 Ireland, unhappily, is not inhabited to more 
 than a comparatively small extent by logical 
 Unionists and Nationalists — pro-Ireland men and 
 pro-England men. Outside the ranks— perl laps, 
 even inside the ranks — of tlie Sinn Fein parly, it 
 
 217 
 
248 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 is a suificieiitly common thing to find a Nationalist 
 witli a touch of Unionism in liis political faith ; 
 and, as for Unionists, the logical worshipper of 
 England and despiser of Ireland is becoming more 
 and more rare, and we find Unionists breaking- 
 out into Nationalist enthusiasms in all directions, 
 falling in with here the Devolutionist proposals of 
 Lord Dunraven and his fellow-landlords, here with 
 Sir Horace Plunkett's co-operative schemes, and 
 here with the language or industrial revival. 
 Thus, while the logical extremes of Unionism and 
 Nationalism are as wide apart as the poles, the 
 moderate, or middle, men of l)oth parties are 
 becoming more and more indistinguisliabh) froju 
 each other. It would scmietimes l)e a quite 
 pardonable accident to mistake a moderate 
 Nationalist for a moderate Unionist, and the 
 other way about. 
 
 I'he Sinn Kcin policy may be descril)cd as 
 at once the most extreme and the most moderate 
 form of Nationalism. It is the most moderate 
 because it aims at uniting Irishmen of all 
 creeds and classes on a common platform — or a 
 progressive series of common platforms — for Irish 
 ends. Sinn Fc^in meets the Unionist, who will 
 not consent to work for the political independence 
 of Ireland, with the question : " Well, but even 
 if you do not believe in helping Ireland to be 
 politically self-reliant, is that any reason why 
 you should not desire to see her intellectually 
 self-reliant, industrially self-reliant, economically 
 
SINN FlilN 249 
 
 self-reliant ? " IvecogiiisiDg tliat many men and 
 women are Unionists from patriotic motives, it says 
 to them : " Show your Unionism at election times 
 as much as you like, but be sure to remember 
 to show your patriotism on other occasions by 
 hel})ing Ireland on the path to intellectual love- 
 liness, to economic health, to industrial inde- 
 pendence." Eealising that Ireland's health and 
 wealth depend on Unionist manufacturers, county 
 councillors, Poor Law guardians, school-masters, 
 clergymen, farmers, artisans, labourers, journalists, 
 (h)ctors and shop-keepers, no less than on 
 Nationalist manufaetiinTS, county council hjrs, 
 Poor Law gunrdians, school-masters, clergymen, 
 farmers, artisans, labourers, journalists, doctors and 
 shop-keepers, it reminds men of all classes, creeds 
 and parties th;i.t they have a common country 
 to serve, and stresses the points uj)on wliicli they 
 may agree rather than the points upon which 
 they must disagreee. 
 
 Thus it calls upon the Irish manufacturer to 
 use Irish materials as far as is possible both 
 in the wares he makes and in the wares he 
 buys. It expects, for instance, that the manu- 
 facturer of caps will not only make these of 
 Irish cloth and Irish thread, but that in his 
 advertisements and correspondence he will use 
 Irish paper and the work of Irish printers, and 
 that his factory will be built of Irish material. 
 To those who sit on public bodies and have 
 the spending of public money it appeals to give 
 
250 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 a preference in their contracts to Irish contractors 
 and Irish manufacturers, and, where doctors or 
 nurses or emph^yees of any sort are wanted, 
 to people with a knowledge of the Irish language. 
 It arranged last year for a conference of Poor 
 Law Unions, at which standard regulations might 
 1)6 agreed upon concerning nil food-stulls, medi- 
 cines, dressings and so forth required in workhouses 
 and infirmaries, in order that at least preferential 
 treatment might l^e guaranteed to Irish contractors. 
 Similarly, clergymen and schoolmasters are urged 
 to give the teaching of the Irish language, Irish 
 history and Irish literature its due place in the 
 schools, and if an organ is required in a church 
 or a billiard table in a young man's society, 
 an effort is made to see that the oroan and the 
 billiard-table shall be of Irish manufacture. 
 
 " Burn everything that comes from England," 
 was Dean Swift's advice to the Irish ])e()ple in 
 the eight(!eiitli century, " exccjtt tlie pcojdi! and 
 tlie coals," And this is the most mibtaiit expres- 
 sion of the Sinn Fein policy on its industrial 
 side at the present moment, Sinn Fein supports 
 the industrial revival both as a non-political 
 and as a political movement — one of tiiose 
 necessary paradoxes in human alTairs. " Buy 
 Irish goods because they are Irish," it says non- 
 politically to all Irish men and women who 
 desire to see their country prosperous. "Buy 
 Irish goods because they are not ll^nglish, and, 
 if you cannot get Irish goods, Iniy French or 
 
SINN FEIN 251 
 
 German or Americau, or indeed any goods in 
 the world rather than English. Do so as long 
 as England refuses to keep the terms of the 
 Renunciation Act of 1783, in which she laid it 
 down ' that the right claimed by the people of 
 Ii(>land to Ih>. hound ordy hy laws enacted by 
 his JMajcsty and the Parliament of that Kingdom 
 is hereby declared to be established, and as- 
 certairied for ever, and shall at no time hereafter 
 be questioned or ([uestionaljle ' " — such is the 
 nicssaiie of Sinn I^'din, considerini»' tlui industrial 
 revival as a political weapon. 
 
 Sinn i*'('in, indeed, stands for both nationality 
 and politics, and its chief wisdom is to be found 
 in its recognition of the fact that nationality 
 is a much l)igger thing than politics. Its ])olicy 
 will certainly put the convinced Unionist in 
 a very awkward position during the next few 
 years, for, of course, much as the Unionist may 
 be inclined to buy an Irish pair of boots or 
 a packet of Irisli envelopes with the object 
 of helping Ireland, he is strongly disinclined to 
 buy an Irish pair of Ijoots or a packet of Irish 
 envelopes with the result of boycotting England. 
 And the irony of his position lies in that fact 
 that, when he wishes to help Ireland, he cannot 
 help agreeing with the Sinn Fein Nationalists 
 ill conduct, however nuich he may disagree with 
 them in regard to some of the motives of their 
 conduct. 
 
 The Unionist dilemma was made manifest in a 
 
252 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 trivial way in a letter that appeared in one of the 
 Unionist papers some three years ago, Sinn Fein, 
 out of its versatile and inventive energy, has set 
 on foot a temperance propaganda, which aims, not 
 only at making Irisli men and women good citizens, 
 but at diminishing the revenue that the British 
 exchequer annually draws from Ireland. Tlie 
 Irish drink l)ill contributes something like five- 
 and-a-half million pounds a year in taxatic^n to 
 the British Treasury, and the Sinn Fein argument 
 is that, if this amount were considerably reduced, 
 Ireland would become a financial loss to England 
 instead of being, as at present, a financial gain, so 
 that England would have yet one more practical 
 reason for letting Ireland go. Seeing the dilemma 
 in which this feature of the Sinn Fdin policy would 
 place Irisli Unionists, a Nationalist with a sense of 
 humour wrote in to one of the Belfast papers over 
 an aggressively Unionist pseudonym, calling the 
 attention of the readers of the pai)er to the fact 
 that, now that Nationalists wca'c proposing to 
 drink less and so injure the British Treasury, it 
 behoved loyal citizens to drink more and so help 
 to make the Union pay. Impossible as it may 
 seem, the Unionist paper to which the letter was 
 sent publishetl it, and there was a good deal of 
 laughing among the wise. The incident, of course, 
 is only trifiing, but it serves to illustrate the 
 troubles that beset the path of the Unionist, whom 
 the Sinn Feiner acclaims as a Nationalist, will he 
 or nill he, in so far as he helps Ireland by being 
 
SINN FEIN 253 
 
 sober or chaste, or by buying Irish tobacco or 
 flour, or by doiug any good work that benefits his 
 country. Allingham's couplet, 
 
 " We're one at heart if you be Ireland's friend, 
 There are but two groat parties in the end," 
 
 is quoted on the cover of Leahhar na hEireann, 
 (The Irish Year Book) — the valuable hand-book 
 of facts, figures and theories issued annually by 
 the National Council of Sinn Fein — and this may 
 be taken as the motto and central ])rinciple of 
 Sinn F6in regarded from the point of view, not of 
 politics, but of nationality. 
 
 Sinn F^in, then, recognises in nationality some- 
 thing much more wonderful and even necessary 
 than politics. It holds, however, that nationality 
 must have its political phase and expression, and 
 that no nation ever yet became exuberantly itself, 
 exuberantly a thing of beauty and use in the 
 family of nations, unless it was politically free. 
 Its aim as a political organisation is consequently 
 the independence of Ireland, and as a means to 
 that end it proposes the destruction of the 
 machinery of foreign government in Ireland. 
 Not that it is princi[)ally a destructive or war 
 policy. Nationalists are anxious for peace, accord- 
 ing to Mr Arthur Griffith, the political thinker of 
 genius who edits " Sinn Fein," and who originated 
 the Sinn Fein policy in the columns of " The 
 United Irishman," but before terms of peace can 
 be discussed, he continues, in a phrase reminiscent 
 
254 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 of John Mitcliel, " England must take lier one 
 liand away from Ireland's throat, and her other 
 hand out of Ireland's pocket." In other words, 
 let England observe the terms by which she bound 
 herself in the Renunciation Act of 1783 — an Act 
 which has been violated, but which could not 
 even legally and constitutionally be repealed with- 
 out the consent of the Irish people — and when 
 Ireland's rights have been restored, including, dT 
 course, an independent Parliament and exchequer, 
 then ways and means for the future may be made 
 matter for discussion. 
 
 I am giving here what I understand to be the 
 ollicial attitude of Sinn l*\'iii on the (piestion 
 of Anglo-Irish relations. Individually, however, 
 many rank-and-file Sinn Fdiners put very little 
 trust in legal and constitutional arguments, and 
 claim Ireland's right to be a separate and free 
 nation as a right given by God, without troubling 
 about its other aspect as a right confirmed by 
 England. At the same time, Sinn Eciners of all 
 ways of thinking are agreed to work on a common 
 platform for the independence of Ireland, the 
 minimum interpretation of independence being 
 that which is laid down in the Constitution of 
 1782 and the Uenunciation Act of 1783. Seeing 
 that England is unlikely to consent to observe the 
 terms of 1783 of her own accord, Sinn Fein pro- 
 poses to make it easier for England to observe them 
 than not to observe them. Ireland, it declares, 
 must no longer send representatives to the British 
 
SINN FEIN 255 
 
 Parliament to plead to indifTerent ears the cause 
 of Irish freedom, since to send representatives to 
 Westminster is not only useless in practice, but is 
 an apparent acquiescence in the terms of the Act 
 of Union. Moreover, it holds that for Irishmen 
 to attend in a foreign Parliament and to take an 
 oath of allegiance to a King, who is no longer the 
 head of a free Irish constitution, but a symbol of 
 foreign conquest, is a lie and an act of national 
 dishonour. Irish politics, according to the Sinn 
 Ff'in ideal, must not be allowed to rest on a 
 national falseliood, which lias already done so 
 mu(;h to c()ii'U[)t and confuse the political thought 
 of the country, 1)ut must be placed on the far 
 securer basis of truth and honour and reason. 
 
 Hence the central suggestion of political Sinn 
 Fein is the withdrawal of the Irish representatives 
 from Westminster and the setting-up of a de facto 
 Irish Parliament in Dublin instead. It is often 
 asked what such a Parliament as this could do, 
 and it is obvious that without the support of the 
 great majority of the people of Ireland in all four 
 provinces it could do very little. Granted this 
 support, however, it could do much towards organ- 
 ising Ireland into an efficient and prosperous 
 nation. It would be a deliberative assembly whose 
 will would have the force of law with those who 
 believed in it. It could frame measures, for in- 
 stance, for the promotion of education suited to 
 the needs of the Irish people, and these measures 
 would, if the people \vere behind tliem, be adopted 
 
256 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 by the majority of managers in the primary scliools, 
 by the majority of county and urban councils in 
 the technical schools, and by at least one — and 
 perhaps two, for there are those who believe that 
 Protestant Ulster will be overwhelmingly national 
 in another generation — of the universities. It 
 could also encourage a genuine national education 
 system by demanding in all candidates for offices 
 in the pay of public bodies — and these include 
 doctors, engineers, solicitors, nurses, labourers, 
 clerks, librarians, teachers, to name no others — a 
 knowledge of the language and history of Ireland. 
 It could, if necessary, decree the holding of ex- 
 aminations for what would in effect be an Irish 
 National Civil Service. It would have an equal 
 power of organising the country in support of 
 Irish industries and agriculture by means of the 
 local councils and by the appointment of Irish 
 consuls in all the great capitals of the world to 
 look after the interests of the country. The cost 
 of these consuls, it is estimated, would be much 
 less than the present cost of sending Parliamentary 
 representatives to Westminster. Supported by a 
 progressive and industrious Ireland, they might 
 not at first be recognised by the various foreign 
 governments, but would become usefully known 
 to foreign traders and in foreign markets. 
 
 Ireland also, according to the Sinn F^iners, 
 requires a National Stock Exchange, where Irish 
 enterprises can be floated ; a National Banking 
 System, which will look not with exceptional 
 
SINN FEIN 257 
 
 suspicion but witli exceptional favour on Irish 
 industrial undertakings ; a National Railway 
 System and a National Mercantile Marine, which, 
 instoiul of ]uiin[)eriiig and penalising the home 
 producer at every turn, wouhl help aud encourage 
 him. There is scarcely any limit, indeed, to 
 what the Irish Parliament could discuss and do. 
 It could do everything except levy taxes with the 
 sanction of the policeman, but the Irish people, 
 like many another people, have shown before now 
 tliat, when they believe in a principle, they are 
 willing to tax themselves in its support, and it is 
 likely that the Parliament would not be at a loss 
 for money in furtherance of its schemes. One of 
 these schemes, which is worth noticing, by the way, 
 is the institution of national arbitration courts, to 
 wjiicli tlic ])eo|)l(; coidd ca,ny their civil suits, thus 
 refusing in so far as is possible to recognise the 
 foreign law-courts. 
 
 Obviously, in a country organised on Sinn Fc^in 
 lines, Irishmen would enter the British army and 
 navy and police force in smaller and smaller 
 numbers. The Irishman who would do so, indeed, 
 would be regarded as was an Italian in the 
 Austrian army in the days of Garibaldi, and 
 could never hope for employment in Ireland 
 in his later years as a pensioner. Until the 
 present day, Irish brains have gone largely into 
 the British Civil Service, and Irish muscle into 
 the British army. It is one of the objects of 
 Sinn Fein to give the brains and muscle of 
 
258 HOME LIFE TN TIIELAND 
 
 the country scope and happiness in the service 
 of Ireland. 
 
 Sinn bViin thus proposes to l)uihl up tlie Irish 
 nation in spite of tlie British Parliament and the 
 repeated refusal by the latter of even a small 
 instalment of self-government. It proposes to 
 organise a great national passive resistance move- 
 ment to oppose the British Government and British 
 influence at every point of vantage they have 
 gained in the country, fiscal, educational, industrial, 
 legal, literary, dramatic, artistic. Ireland, it says, 
 has too long met England on battlefields which 
 Eno'laiid hci'scif has chosen — the lh)or of the 
 House of (Jomnioiis and the Held of war. liCt 
 Ireland now choose the place of battle and let it 
 be the Irish school, the Irish factory, the Irish 
 shop, the Irish home, the Irish farm, the Irish 
 church, the Irish theatre, and Sinn Feineis have 
 no doul>t that a new and l)eautiful individuaHty 
 will be added to the family of nations. 
 
 I have given this prominence to an account of 
 the Sinn Fein policy, not because it has yet 
 captured the majority even of Nationalist Irish- 
 men, but because I think it is the school of 
 Nationalism Avith which the future will have to 
 reckon. Sinn Fein stands alone in Irisli politics 
 as having Ijoth a national and a constructive policy. 
 It aims at building a nation to include all the races 
 and creeds and ranks that inhabit Ireland. It 
 recognises the existence of only one race in Ireland 
 — not the Celtic or the Gaelic or the Danish or 
 
SINN FEIN 259 
 
 the Norman or the Saxon, ))ut the Irish race. It 
 desires the revival of the national language, not 
 because it is the language of the Gael, but because 
 it is the traditional language of the Irish j^eople. 
 As for its iuclusioii of all creeds and chisses, it 
 (juarr(>Is with the Nationalism of Daniel O'Conuell 
 because at a critical moment it raised a sectarian 
 and not a national standard — the emancipation of 
 the Catholics, not the emancipation of Ireland. 
 •Similarly, it holds that Parnell, influenced by 
 Davitt and other leaders of the late seventies and 
 early eiglitics, committed a national l)lunder when 
 he allowed a war for the rights of the tenant- 
 farmers to be substituted for a war for the rights 
 of Ireland. 
 
 Sinn lA'in holds that every time tlie Irish nation 
 has aHowcMl ilself to be se( bleed from the direct 
 line of national jtobcy into social and sectarian 
 side-issuoH, it lias lost hcn.vily, and it ])oints to the 
 facts of history as a [)roof that, l)ecause tlie dominant 
 national issue was not settled first, neitlier the 
 emancipation of the Catholics nor the many laws 
 in relief of the tenant-farmers have been able to 
 prevent Ireland from sinking into a deeper and 
 more general poverty every year. The condition 
 of the country has certainly improved in some 
 respects during the last thirty years or so, but its 
 condition as a nation has changed ever so much 
 for the worse. The population has gone down by 
 over a million. More than a million acres of land 
 have gone out of tillage. Meanwhile, the taxation 
 
260 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 per liead of an impoverished people has increased 
 from 18s. 9d. in 1871, to £2, 4s. 4d. in 190G. 
 
 Sinn Fein holds that, to use an old similitude, 
 the sun of national independence alone can scatter 
 the deep darkness that has been gathering for so 
 long over the land, and it appeals to the gentry, 
 to the industrial and manufacturing classes, to the 
 society Catholic, to the Protestant Ulsterman, to 
 abandon their ancient distrust of the nation and 
 to unite with the rest of the Nationalist forces in 
 settino- the national house in order — or rather in 
 building a new national house altogether. It is 
 the first Nationalist movement, I believe, which 
 appeals directly to the middle-classes in the town 
 centres, for its leaders realise tJiatno great national 
 revolution was ever yet accomplished without the 
 aid either of an organised upper-class or of an 
 organised middle-class, or both. It has been 
 criticised, on the other hand, for not ai)pealing 
 with a sulliciently winning voice to the artisans 
 and labourers, but that it has not yet done so is 
 partly due to a laudable determination to keep 
 national solidarity and independence the sole 
 planks in its platform and not to allow its forces 
 to be divided on a class issue. Even social reform, 
 it contends, cannot be radical or of much avail 
 while an unsettled and unsettling national question 
 troubles the air. 
 
 Many Irish men and women refrain from 
 being Nationalists, l)ecause, they say, Ireland 
 is too small and too ]XJor to be an independent 
 
SINN FEIN 
 
 2G1 
 
 nation. Here again, the Sinn Fdiner offers his 
 answer — in the form of a statistical table this 
 time. In this table, the area, population, revenue 
 and taxation of seven more or less independent 
 European Nations arc com])ared with those of 
 Ireland. The list reads as follows : 
 
 Countrj-. 
 
 Desciiption. 
 
 Area 
 
 (square 
 miles). 
 
 Popula- 
 tion. 
 
 Revenue. 
 
 Taxation 
 per head. 
 
 Doimmik 
 
 Wurtcrnbcrp; 
 
 ( ! rcoi'o 
 
 Uonninnia 
 
 Sweden 
 
 NorWi-iy 
 
 Switzerland 
 
 Ireland 
 
 Fndopcndont Kingdom 
 Siizor.'iiii Kingdom 
 (Jii.iniiitcod Kingdom 
 Independent Kingfli)ni 
 Independent Kingdom 
 Independent Kingdom 
 Inde})endent Kepublic 
 
 15.388 
 
 7,534 
 
 25,014 
 
 50,720 
 
 172,870 
 
 124,12!) 
 
 15,976 
 
 32,531 
 
 2,404,770 
 2,1G!),486 
 2,4:«,800 
 5,93(5,f,!(0 
 5,513,044 
 2,240,032 
 3,315,443 
 4,391,543 
 
 4,250,000 
 4,500,000 
 3, 000, 000 
 9 250,000 
 8,800,000 
 5,500,000 
 4,000,000 
 9,753,500 
 
 £ R. 1). 
 
 1 13 
 1 8 
 1 3 
 1 4 
 1 13 G 
 1 12 6 
 
 1 7 
 
 2 4 4 
 
 Mr (icorge A, l]iriniii<fhani, tin; Irish novelist 
 and publicist, has declared that " The Sinn F6iii 
 Policy " — the pamphlet from which I have taken 
 the above figures — is the most remarkable state- 
 ment of political thought published in Ireland 
 since the days of the Revolutionists, or Rebels, of 
 the end of the eighteenth century. Certainly, Sinn 
 F(^in has brought intellect, imagination and con- 
 structive ideas into Irish politics to a degree un- 
 paralleled since the time of Davis, Mitchel, Lalor, 
 and the Young Irelanders. The present century 
 will see the triumph of one of two policies in 
 Ireland. One of these policies is Unionism, the 
 Unionism of Lord Londonderry, and Mr Walter 
 Long, and Mr C. A. Pearson. The other — the more 
 honourable one — is the policy of Sinn Fein. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 POLITICS AND (JATIIERINOS 
 
 The history of Irish politics, on the whole, apart 
 from the question whether they have always heen 
 directed along the wisest channels, seems to me to 
 reflect a good deal of credit on the character of the 
 Irish people. It sliows them not to he a fickle 
 people, as they are often called, l)ut to be a race 
 determinedly ])ent upon reaching a more or less 
 definite goal. The Nationalist Irish have changed 
 policies frequently enough, but they never yet 
 would liavc much to do with a policy unless it came 
 to them as in some way a furtherer of national 
 liberty. Similarly, the Orange Irish would never 
 have anything to do with a policy which did not 
 present itself to them as in some way a furtherer 
 of religious liberty. The Orange farmer has again 
 and ajrain sacrificed his interests as a farmer 
 Ijefore the fair figure of relioious liberty, or some- 
 thing got up in imitation of it. " I wouldn't let 
 them change the King's oath anyway," an Orange- 
 man of this class said to me some years ago, when 
 the question of the compulsory sale of laud was 
 raging, and I am sure he would rather remain for 
 ever in bondage to the landlords he hates than 
 
 202 
 
POIJTICS AND GATHERINGS 263 
 
 see agrariau fuceJom purchased by the concessiou 
 of a little politeness to his enemy the Pope, 
 The Nationalist worker in the towns has at all 
 times been equally ready to sacrifice his own 
 immediate interests to his ideal or dream. 
 
 I do not mean that, [)olitically speaking, the 
 Irish are a race of saints or martyrs. 1 mean 
 simply tliat there is a vein of political idealism 
 running through their nature, and that green 
 banners and orange banners rather than any 
 materiaHstic ])assi()iis ha,vc given to Irish pobtics 
 such dignity of spirit and continuity as it possesses. 
 The leaders on both sides may at times have fallen 
 short of the best, but the rank and file of the 
 people have, I think, again and again shown their 
 ca])a.city for daring and unselfisJi courses. Their 
 daring and unsellishness, it may be added, have 
 been hugely wasted owing to the fact that the first 
 necessity of national vitality, the national language, 
 was until lately forgotten in their battles. 
 
 The Irishman is born with an interest in politics 
 as he is born with an interest in relioion. If at 
 the present moment he seems to be apathetic and 
 bewildered, it is because he has reached a transition 
 point, and is reconsidering the formula) which 
 have expressed his political principles for so long. 
 Some people may imagine they see a decadence in 
 Irish politics. And a decadence there is. Agrarian 
 [»olitics arc decaying, and Orange ])olitics are 
 decaying. 8idc by side with the decadence, how- 
 ever, a renaissance is going on. A new element of 
 
264 HOISIE LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 nationality is slowly entering into both Nationalist 
 and Orange politics and transforming them. The 
 decadence is in reality a sign of growth. 
 
 Many of the older people, who took part in the 
 agrarian struggle now in its last phases, seem to be 
 utterly weary of politics. The failure of Parlia- 
 mentary agitation to win the smallest measure of 
 Home Rule has left them witli the sensations of 
 people who have been badly disillusionised. To talk 
 to them, you would think that Nationalist Ireland 
 had lost both its self-confidence and its self-con- 
 sciousness. " What is the use of struggling any 
 more ? " these people say in eflect. " We're beaten, 
 so let us save what we can from the wreck. Let 
 J^iiglish royalties visit us and bring money into the 
 country. Let regiments of soldiers come and take 
 up their quarters in our towns, so that we can at 
 least make something l)y selling them food and 
 drink. Let the (Joveriimeiit help us with our 
 land, help us with iinlustries, help us in all times 
 and in all [daces, jjct them make some of us 
 J.P.'s, and give our sons jobs, and we'll be content, 
 or, at least, we'll learn to keep quiet." 
 
 This is the voice, I may say, of the dying, not 
 of the living, Ireland. It is a voice, however, 
 which is audible in so many parts of the country 
 that some people may be misled into thinking that 
 Ireland is really so weak and demoralised that it is 
 ready to sell everything in which it once believed 
 for Government doles. The decadence of agrarian 
 politics is discernible in nothing more clearly than 
 
POLITICS AND GATHERINGS 265 
 
 in the trausformatioii of the boycott from au 
 iiiBtrument of uuselfishuess to au instrument of 
 selfishness. The boycott, as a national means to 
 a national end, is of course as tolerable a thing 
 as any system of police you will find the world 
 over. It is a means of expressing the organised 
 sense of justice of the people in an unfree country, 
 just as the law and police are a means of expressing 
 the organised sense of justice of the people in a 
 free country, it is in itself no more shocking to 
 tlic moral Hcnse to see an evil-doer punished by the 
 honourable sort of boycotters than it is to see him 
 punished by a judge, jury and policemen. It is 
 obvious, however, that the system of boycott, like 
 the police system, is capable of being abused and 
 perverted into a system of extreme tyranny. The 
 personal boycott for personal ends is a crime 
 against Nationalism as it is against morals, and 
 where it exists, it is the result of the entrance of 
 selfish men into politics, and of their capture of 
 the local political machine for their own purposes. 
 If the police were under popular control instead of 
 being tlie soldiers of a foreign conquest — "saigli- 
 didri dubha" (black soldiers) is the Irish name for 
 them in some places — the people would help them 
 in putting down this as every other sort of crime. 
 So long as the police stand for the perpetuation of 
 foreign government, however, thousands of people 
 would regard it as the greatest of all crimes to give 
 them any aid, no matter what the circumstances 
 — even, say, if it were a question of the conviction 
 
266 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 of a man guilty of poisoning fish or some equally- 
 unpleasant deed. 
 
 1 am not here going to discuss the constitution 
 of the United Irish League, the Irish Unionist 
 Alliance, the Devolutionists, the Imperial Home 
 Rule Association, the Northern Union, the 
 Socialists, and the other political bodies in the 
 country. ^J'hat would involve an amount of 
 exposition and criticism quite ])eyond the scope of 
 this book. I have already given an outline of 
 Sinn Fdin, the newest of the political ideals, which 
 will have an official daily paper of its own by the 
 time the present volume is in ])rint. My main 
 point in this chapter, however, is to stress the fact 
 that, in spite of the selfishness which sometimes 
 characterises agrarian politics, in spite of the 
 frequent abuse of the Ijoycott, in spite of the 
 occasional success of men of poor principles in 
 gaining control of the local machine, the mass of 
 t]ie people have usually taken tlieir ])olitics with 
 an honourabhi seri(jusness. Education has l)een at 
 so low a level in tlie country tliat political thought 
 has not been so connnon as political sincerity, 
 with the result that the people have often mistaken 
 party machines for political realities, and have 
 stood by tliem with a lirmness worlliy, as the 
 saying is, of a Ijetter cause. 
 
 This loyalty to party often springs out of a fine 
 desire for unity, for many people seem to think 
 that variety of political ideals is permissil)le in 
 every country in the world except Ireland. The 
 
POLITICS AND GATHERINGS 267 
 
 younger men are beginning to Bee that tlie unity 
 of patriotism is one thing, and the unity of a 
 party machine another. 
 
 Ideas are becoming more and more insistent 
 in tlie political atmosplicro, and audiences can no 
 longer be made enlliusinstic- by a windy use of 
 green and orange words to the extent which used 
 to be the case. Tlie mob-orator is now looked 
 on in most jilaces as a comic character, and the 
 very vocabulary of ])\d)lic speech is ch;inging. 
 Tiic old sort of orators are still occasionally loosed 
 on the land, of course, but their exaggerated 
 words now fall fiat where they used to be applauded 
 as though they had a meaning. The practical, 
 critical speaker is listened to in a tenser silence 
 than any of them, and no man in Dublin gets 
 so attentive a hcarini;- as Mr Arthur Grillith, when 
 he is expounding in a quiet, unemotional voice 
 some subject like the financial bearings of the 
 connection with England. 
 
 Public meetings and processions seem to be 
 rapidly losing ground in Ireland as a method of 
 expressing political enthusiasm. I think this 
 is only a temporary change. It is a reaction 
 against a kind of politics which depended too 
 much on the demonstrative enthusiasm of the 
 crowd, and too little on the silent enthusiasm of 
 the individual. 1 confess I like the meetings and 
 processions : the people, 1 believe, have a natural 
 genius for them. I like the green and gold and 
 orange and purple of the huge banners as they 
 
268 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 come floating up the road in the wind, with the 
 drums beating and the bauds crashing out warlike 
 music. Sometimes the portraits of O'Connell, of 
 Emmet, of Lord Edward Fitzgerakl, of William of 
 Orange, of Martin Luther, are less than beautiful 
 in detail, but they have a splendid insolence of 
 colour that mixes well with the movement and 
 enthusiasm of huge crowds. 
 
 The most enthusiastic gatherings nowadays 
 have nothing to do with politics, but are the 
 feiseanna, or festivals, organised in country places 
 in connection with tlie laiiguaoe revival. Tlitlier 
 come tlie troops of the jtolilicians Ixiliind their 
 bannei's and their l)and,s, but hither, too, come 
 the scliohirs, the singers, tlie dancers, the whistlers, 
 the story-tellers, the fiddlers, the young men and 
 maidens, the well-dressed children, with new 
 banners in an old tongue rising from among them. 
 The Gaelic League crowd, one feels, is a crowd 
 which never took much public pait in allairs 
 before. It is a crowd, not enamoured of surface 
 catchwords, l)ut with the secrets of vitality in its 
 quick, pleasant eyes. In no crowd in L'eland is 
 there so much equal talk and laughter between 
 the sexes, hi no crowd in Ireland is there the 
 same almost merry devotion to the real unity of 
 nationhood — the unity at which Wolfe Tone 
 aimed when he desired that Irishmen should no 
 longer be known merely as Protestants, Catholics 
 and Dissenters, but that these dividing names 
 should all give way in national alfairs to the more 
 
POLITICS AND GATHERINGS 2G9 
 
 generous denomination of Irislimau. There arc 
 narrow peoi)le, foolish people, to be found at 
 CTaelic gatherings as at all other public gatherings 
 in the Christian world. But the Gaelic League 
 itself is neither narrow nor foolish. It contains 
 within its ranks landlords and fanners, Catholic 
 ju'iests and Trotcstant ministers, employers and 
 labourers, Christians and agnostics, and is now so 
 firmly rooted in the imagination and conscience 
 of the people that the movement for which it 
 stands cannot in the ordinary course of events fail 
 in the achievement of its object — which is to 
 make Ireland a living country and to give it a 
 personality among the nations. 
 
 No less characteristically Irish than the political 
 gatherings and the feiseanna are the lively, jostling, 
 slioutiiii'' tliioi)o;s that one sees at fairs and reirattas. 
 and at important hurling and fooll)M.II matches. 
 Hero on great days you will sec a littk', village 
 of l)ooths grow up on the roads or in the fields, 
 and men with roulette tables, men with the 
 three-card trick, men with trick-in-the-loop, 
 men with sticks and rings, men witli checkered 
 cloths on which many abortive pennies are thrown, 
 men with white mice for telling fortunes, tumblers, 
 cord-escapers, ballad-singers, and fiddlers with 
 their tunes come together as if from the four 
 corners of the world. A blind beggar, his white 
 head bare in the sunny breeze, will plant himself 
 in the fair-way of the thronging traffic, crying 
 with a noble persuasiveness : " A penny for a poor 
 
270 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 blind man, for the love of God ! A penny for the 
 love of ( Jod I God knows you won't miss it ! 
 God knows you won't miss it ! It isn't much 
 I'm asking. It isn't much I'm asking. A penny 
 for a poor blind man, for the love of God ! A 
 penny for the love of God ! " 
 
 Surrounded by a crushing circle of people, a man 
 and woman will be standing, tough-looking cus- 
 tomers, yelling ballads into each other's faces. 
 Sometimes it is the rule for them to hold their green 
 or wiiite ballad-sheets in front of tliem as they sing, 
 but you need not be surprised if the balhid-slieet in 
 their hands is upside-down, or if it contains quite 
 a, dilTeriHit l):dla<l from the oui; they ai-e singiug. 
 They sing a du(;t in uuison — a duet without a 
 pause from start to finish, for the man will proljably 
 let the woman sing the last half-line of the verse 
 by herself in order that he may fill his lungs so as 
 to be able to bellow out the beginning of a new 
 verse from his twisted face before the last note of 
 the old has died a painful death on the woman's 
 lips. It is dillicult to convey the exact iuipressiou 
 of this racing kind of singing. The Irish tramp- 
 sino-er is heir to the old tunes, Ijut lie is heir, I 
 imao-ine, only to the battered relics of the old 
 methods of singing. lie moans, he skirls, he yells ; 
 he would wake the dead with his u}»roar. Some- 
 times he will give you the ancient ballad of 
 " Robert Emmet " — " Poor Rol)ert Emmet, the 
 darlino" of Ireland." Sometimes, if there are no 
 police near, you may even get him to sing you 
 
POLITICS AND GATHERINGS 271 
 
 "The Peeler and the Goat" — a soug putting 
 ridicule upon the police to the merriest tune. Or, 
 perhaps, he will let you have a new and topical 
 l)allad of his own. Here, for example, is the 
 bco;innin<jj of a ballad on the takino: of the census, 
 suiiii; ill the strec^ts of Dublin before ballad-sinoiuix 
 had become a declining trade : 
 
 " Oh, they're taking of the census 
 In the country and the town ! 
 Have your children got the maisles ? 
 Are your chinil)lcys tuml)]ini^ down?" 
 
 Lady (Iregory quotes a Ijallad of a dillerent sort, 
 made during tlie South African war in lionour of 
 the Irishmen who fought on the side of the Boers. 
 One beautiful verse runs : 
 
 "Oil, mother of tlic Avonnded breast! 
 Oil, juothor of tliG tears ! 
 'I'lio sons yon Iovc(l and trusted best 
 Have, gias[tc(l their liattic Rpears." 
 
 Pecently the air has been noisy witli ballads 
 about the old age pensions and their good and dire 
 results. 1 came upon no less than three of these 
 in a single week. Of tlie best of them, unfortun- 
 ately, 1 did not get a copy, but 1 think one of the 
 others may be worth quoting because of its char- 
 acteristic qualities — a few verses of it, at least, for 
 it is too long to give in full. After three intro- 
 ductory verses, it runs on like this : 
 
 " Some ])eople used deny their age — 
 You often could them hear — 
 They would nearly strike you Avith their stick 
 If you said they were seventy year. 
 
272 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 Now they arc nuininf^ to the [)aiish books, 
 They do not cure aljout wind or cohi, 
 
 And they tell the priest now if he can, 
 To try and make tlicm old. 
 
 " I met an old man the other day, 
 
 Who was both old and weak. 
 He says ' I'll try and calculate 
 
 How to spend five bob a week. 
 There is one and nincpence for my lodging. 
 
 For to lay my poor head down, 
 And ninepence for tobacco, 
 
 That is the first half-crown. 
 
 " 'Then there is sevenpence for sugar, 
 
 And sevenpence for tay : 
 Tenpencedia 'penny woiLli of bread, 
 
 That's three-halfpence every day. 
 Thret!i)ence haUpcnny I'or new milk — 
 
 Uiir feeding won't be great : 
 And I'll have twopence for Sunday for 
 
 To buy a piece of mate. 
 
 " ' But I think I'll get married to 
 
 Some old woman in the town. 
 For I am told by young and old 
 
 She'll have a half-a-crown. 
 Then we'll take a cabin of our own, 
 
 Where I can rest my bones, — 
 Unless that she'd go on the spree 
 
 And hammer me with stones.' " 
 
 This song incidentally gives some idea of a poor 
 man's budo;et. It also contains in the last two 
 lines a suggestion of tlie grim sort of humour in 
 which Irish l)allad-singers, whether in English or 
 in Irish, seem every now and then to indulge in the 
 
rOLlTICS AND CATITElllNGS 273 
 
 intervals of idealism. In the closing verse we have 
 a sardonic and ludicrous picture of old men and 
 women militant — a picture of a kind which is more 
 typical perhaps of the humour of tramps than of the 
 humour of settled people. The poet observes : — 
 
 " Wh.ib a splendid regiment they would be, 
 
 If it happened they would be called in, 
 With their hand-sticks and their crutches. 
 
 The old women and old men, 
 They avouM l)cat the stones and ditches, 
 
 And pretend they were not so weak, 
 And tlicy would (iglit with all their might 
 
 For tliis five bob a week." 
 
 The singing and selling of ballads like this is a 
 great business in country towns where sports of 
 any kind arc being held. Often the singers, 
 instead of making a collection for themselves, sell 
 their ballads to the onlookers after each song— a 
 transiiction which gives country po()[)le a ])le.'i,Ranfc 
 feeling that they are getting something for their 
 money. Nothing could be more amusing than the 
 rapidity with which the song is brought to an end 
 as the time for selliuor draws near. The traditional 
 Irish way of ballad-singing has no top-notes or 
 lingering graces at the close of the song. The 
 last few words, indeed, are not sung at all, but 
 the voice suddenly drops from impassioned music 
 to the ordinary tones of conversation, and the 
 ballad ends like a hurried comment on the weather, 
 as the siuger moves off to collect his reward. 
 
 I have pcrliaps given a disproportionate amount 
 s 
 
274 HOJNIE LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 of space to tlic l)allad-singer, Ijiit to me lie is 
 always the centre of the lair or the festival which 
 he atteiuls, Ife seeins to link them to the i'airs 
 and festivals of other centuries : lie is the past in 
 rags. A new style of singer has unfortunately 
 begun to go about the country with words and 
 airs from the music-halls. The music-hall words 
 may be as wise as the ballad-singer's, l)Ut they 
 are not related to Irish earth in the same way. 
 Besides, there is all the difference in the world 
 between the new tunes and the old. There is as 
 much difference between them as between giggling 
 and natural laughter, as lietween maudlin senti- 
 mentaliyni and the passion of dcs[)air. An Irisli 
 iirowd at once loses half its meaning — for it loses 
 all its significance to the memory — when the 
 banjos troop in, and the home-coming of Bill 
 Bailey and the history of the man who was afraid 
 to go home in the dark, take the place of tlie 
 ancient interests. 
 
 I remember, one twelfth of Jul}', if 1 may be 
 allowed to shift the subject a little, hearing a band 
 in a great Orange procession playing " AVhat oh, 
 she Ijumps ! " It killed the spirit of the })rocession 
 for me, as it would kill the spirit of a church if 
 tlie organist suddenly struck up with a tune of 
 this sort as a voluntary. For Orangeism, like the 
 fairs, owes much of what beauty it possesses to the 
 traditional tunes; and "The Boyne Water," "The 
 Orange Lily," and "The Protestant Boys" are 
 among the most joyous and exhilarating airs 1 know. 
 
CITAPTER XVII 
 
 MANNERS 
 
 Irish manners appear at their best, I think, in 
 connection with hospitality. The tradition of 
 hospitality is an old one in Irehiud, and according 
 to the Brelion law, people in the higher stations 
 were bound to entertain guests "without asking any 
 questions." There were besides some four hundred 
 guest-houses scattered throughout the country in 
 the early days of Christianity, and the master 
 of cad) of these was ,sii|)[)OHed to keep his kitchen- 
 fire co?istantly burning and j(jiuts boiling in liis 
 cauldron in readiness for the arrival of strangers. 
 This ma}'^ seem to have very little to do with the 
 home life of ordinary Irish men and women of 
 the present time, l^ut it must be remembered that 
 the ordinary Irish men and women of the present 
 time are the representatives of an okl aristocracy 
 fallen upon evil times. Many foreign elements, 
 many elements of a ruder sort, have entered into 
 the composition of the nation in the last several 
 hundred years. But there still survives an ancient 
 aristocratic leaven among the people — an aristo- 
 cratic leaven of hospitality and good manners. 
 It is a question whether the Irish landloid or 
 
276 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 the Irish peasant is tlie more distinguished for his 
 hospitality. The peasant has often not much 
 to give you, but in unspoiled places he will likely 
 give you all he has. It is well in some parts 
 of the country not to take a full meal in the 
 houses of the poor if you are a passing stranger, 
 for they will accept no money for what they give 
 you, and you will go away with a conscience that 
 tortures you for having robbed the needy. Even 
 in those places where the spirit of hospitality has 
 been to some degree commercialised, you will 
 come upon unexpected hospitable turns in the 
 behaviour of the people. Thus, as I was walking 
 with a iViend along a lonely road in the west one 
 j)arching day, we called in at a public-house, 
 which looked something like an ordinary farm- 
 house, and tried to get some lemonade. The 
 house was out of temperance liquors, however, 
 and, as we refused to take claret, the girl in 
 charire of it offered us some milk. We took 
 good drinks of this, and then asked liow much 
 we had to pay for it. But the girl said " There's 
 no charge," and would take nothing, though the 
 house was a licensed public-house and the sales of 
 drinks must have been small. 
 
 This is typical of the desire to be hospitable 
 that one finds nearly everywhere. Ireland is, as 
 a result of this, an awkward country in which 
 to travel. It is extremely difficult to know when 
 you will be insulting people by offering money, 
 and when you will l)e insulting them by not 
 
INIANNEUS 277 
 
 offering it. Tlie very man who brings you your 
 drink in ca public-house, even in Dublin or Belfast, 
 may take a drink with you, but he will not take 
 money from you. The waitresses in the resturants, 
 except in the more fashionable and cosmopolitan 
 Dublin tea-shops, look for no tips. Obligingness, 
 indeed, without money and without price, is a 
 national virtue. On the other hand, let an Irish- 
 man once get accustomed to accepting money 
 for small services, and he will run to the opposite 
 extreme from hospitality in his greediness. The 
 pennies and twopences witli which so many people 
 tip their way througli London would be despised 
 in Ireland. You could not overwhelm the tip- 
 taking sort of Irishman, no matter how large your 
 dole. The tourist-corrupted districts, it may be 
 said, arc very often extremely poor pl.-iccs, and 
 visitors arc looked on as l)eing a sort of millionaires 
 to whom giving out money is as easy as breathincr. 
 Personally, I am not sorry that the weather and 
 the money-demands between tliem should scare 
 away a good many tourists from Ireland. Ireland 
 is a good country for genuine travellers, but the 
 tripper will be far merrier and more comfortable 
 out of it. And I hope it will always remain so. 
 
 When I call the Irish a hospitable people, 
 moreover, I do not mean that they are open- 
 lipped and open-hearted for every stranger. As 
 a matter of fact, outside the tourist districts, 
 they arc likely to be shy and reticent unless they 
 know who you arc. Thackeray made this a 
 
278 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 cause of complaint against tlieni. " In the various 
 cabins I have entered," he decLared, writing; of 
 his journey from Clifden to Westport, " I liave 
 found talking a vain matter ; the people are 
 suspicious of the stranger within their wretched 
 gates, and are shy, sly, and silent. I have com- 
 monly only been able to get half-answers in reply 
 to my questions, given in a manner that seemed 
 plainly to intimate that the visit was unwelcome." 
 Yet the district of which Thackeray is here 
 writing is one of the most hospitable in Ireland. 
 
 In some places, any one who meets you on the 
 road will have a greeting for you. Elsewhere, 
 they will stare at you without ex[)ression, or look 
 in front of them as though your presence were 
 a matter of no importance to them. 
 
 The road-greetings in Ireland vary from place 
 to place. In the Irish-speaking districts of 
 Connacht and elsewhcie the usual greeting is 
 " Go mbeannuighidh Dia dhuit" (God bless you ), 
 and the answer, "Dia 's JMuirc; dliuit " (God and 
 Mary bless you). In some parts of iMunsier they 
 say, " Bail 6 Dhia ort " (A blessing from God 
 on you), and in Donegal they say simply, " Lit 
 bredgh " (Fine day), or if it is after twelve o'clock 
 in the day, "'i'rathnoiia maith"(G()od evening); 
 for through a great part of Ireland, evening 
 technically begins after midday. " Good-night," 
 too, is used almost as freely upon meeting people 
 as upon parting from them. In the English- 
 speaking districts, the traditional southerner is 
 
JMANNEllS 279 
 
 supposed to say "That's a fine day," and to be 
 answered, "It is, glory be to God," while the 
 northerner, pusliing past in the rain with his 
 coat-collar about liis ears, grunts out "Saft!" 
 and is answered " Ay ! " It is not always raining 
 in the nortli, however, nor is the northeruer always 
 so pessimistic and monosyllabic as tradition makes 
 him out. A common greeting with him is, 
 " JMorrow, boy," if lie meets a man or a boy, 
 and the answer is " Morrow." 
 
 'i'lic IriHliiiiati lias a great rc[)uta.tion for poblc- 
 ness, and 1 Ihiidv this is deserved. In the laud- 
 owning and |)rofeRsional classes, tlicre is a fine 
 spirit of chivalry tow^ards women, and in the towns 
 you will see proportionately fewer women standing 
 in the trams and trains than in English cities. 
 The Belfast trams have, or used to have, a rather 
 startling notice painted up on them: "The life- 
 boat rule is, women and children first." 
 
 Politeness in the country places is very different 
 from town politeness. The poorer people are not 
 nearly so much given to raising their caps as is 
 often stated. In many parts, the ordinary man 
 does not think of taking off his cap to anybody 
 of the other sex, and in the kitchens and even 
 parlours of farm-houses, you will often see the 
 men sitting with their hats or caps on their heads, 
 no matter who is present. This, of course, is onl}' 
 a convention, and politeness expresses itself in 
 various ways in various places. Even where the 
 conventions permit a man to go through a door 
 
280 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 in front of a woman, and where they have not 
 tauoht him the different uses of the knife and 
 
 o 
 
 fork, or the side of a phite at which a tea-cup 
 should stand, you will find the essentials of polite- 
 ness among the people — kindliness, ease, and the 
 spirit of equality. 
 
 There is very little boot-licking in Ireland, 
 on the one hand, and very little l)row-1)eating 
 pretentiousness on the other. There are diflereut 
 classes among the people, but not different castes, 
 as it always seems to me there are in England. 
 Master and servant can talk togetlier with some- 
 thing like ease and intimacy, and there is no deep 
 iSuU dividin*^ the children of the i-ich from the 
 children of the poor, save in a few narrow cliques 
 in the towns. 
 
 Perhaps a chapter on Irish manners ought to 
 contain some reference to the " stage Irishman " 
 — the boisterous buffoon, who is to l)e met with 
 in the music-halls, and occasionally in real life 
 where it has been inlluenced by tiie nmsic-lialls. 
 The "stage Irishman," it may be said at once, 
 does not exist at all in Irish country places. The 
 country people sometimes accept him with amuse- 
 ment on the concert stage, but even here they 
 have lately taken to hissing liim as an offence 
 and a bore. 
 
 He was in origin a travesty of an Anglicised 
 sort of Irishman, who was as absurd a sight for 
 the gods as an Anglicised Egyptian, and whose 
 manners were no more like real Irish manners 
 
MANNERS 281 
 
 than the pigeon English which is to be heard in 
 China is like the real English language. His 
 shouts, his clownishness, his clothes, his jokes, 
 have no more resemblance to their Irish counter- 
 parts than the Frenchman of a London musical 
 comedy has to a Frenchman of Paris. Even the 
 bulls he makes arc only a caricature of the real 
 Irish bull — that turn of speech which, as the 
 Somerville-Ross collaboration has insisted, is by 
 no means an idiocy, but is often a paradoxical and 
 impressionistic mctliod of conveying an idea in 
 itself beyond the reach of ordinary statement. 
 The impressionistic sort of bull is, I think, a 
 peculiarly Irish or Anglo-Irish form of wit. The 
 idiotic sort of bull is quite another thing, and, 
 like malapropisms, is common in all countries 
 among uneducated people who use words rashly. 
 
 The "stage Irishman" gives us a caricature 
 of one undoubtedly Irish quality — what we 
 might call the fighting quality. Irishmen are 
 certainly pugnacious, as a race. They take a real 
 joy in the battle. The faction fights which used 
 to make the fairs lively were a national institu- 
 tion. One of tlie new Irish writers somewhere 
 defends these fights as the comparatively modern 
 remnants of the old heroic battles. They were 
 a strenuous sort of sport, and it is a good thing 
 that they have disappeared, but I do not think 
 they were as brutal as the old-fashioned sort of 
 l)0xiug, and probably they were not always more 
 dangerous than American football. I have often 
 
282 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 seen a small boy in Belfast, when another eyed 
 him as he passed, stopping and saying : " Who 
 are you looking at?" and the other answering: 
 "Do you want to pick a fight?" and I think 
 these casual challenges spring from some instincts 
 of a fighting ancestry. Riots and faction-fights 
 equally are symptoms of a virile fighting spirit 
 running to waste. 
 
 Again, if you compare an Irishman and an 
 Englishman when under the influence of liquor, 
 you will notice that in a great nmnher of cases the 
 Irishman becomes dramatic and pugnacious and 
 wants to sliow oil', while the Englishman is anxious 
 to get away to some (juiet place where no one will 
 be witness of his shame. As a consequence, when 
 an Irishman is drunk, everybody knows it : when 
 an Englishman is drunk, as few people as possible 
 are allowed to know it. This, of course, is only 
 a generalisation with a thousand exceptions. It 
 may seem a trivial generalisation, ])ut it is not 
 without significance. The fact that a number of 
 Irishmen in their cups are so much more vividly 
 drunk than a similar number of Euolishmen in a 
 similar condition has impressed the imagination of 
 the world, and led })eople to conclude that, com- 
 paratively spuakiiig, the Irish arc a drunken race, 
 whereas, comparatively speaking, they are a sober 
 race, drinking less, I believe, than either the Scotch 
 or the English. 
 
 Obliging and at the same time individualistic to 
 an almost quarrelsome point, generously hospitable 
 
MANNERS 283 
 
 and at the same time thrifty, quick in tlieir emotions 
 and yet not fickle in regard to the things they care 
 about, at once reverent and ruthlessly satirical, 
 hard-working and hard-idling, the Irish people 
 have a thousand [)ara,doxes in tlicir character. 
 There are few things you can truthfully say al)out 
 them which you cannot as truthfully contradict. 
 They are a people of extraordinary nervous force, 
 which makes their merriment seem merrier than that 
 ofotlioi- jx'oplos and their deH[)air more dcsj)erat(;, 
 their goodness more saintly and tlieir corruption 
 more corrupt. This nervous energy has fortunately 
 not yet been perverted by industrialism or by 
 religious and political indifferentism. Unless the 
 people follow a detcrmiudedly Irish way, however, 
 they will most surely end in drifting away both 
 from their morals and their manners. 
 
 Perhaps I cannot put a better end to this 
 chapter than by quoting a letter written to me 
 from Dublin by a lady a few months ago — a letter 
 dwelling upon the obligingness of the people, 
 which I have already mentioned as the central 
 virtue of their manners. She was walking out 
 past Dalkey one day, she wrote, when she put her 
 foot through the braid of her skirt and had to cut 
 it with scissors. " It still kept ripping," she went 
 on, "and we stopped to search for pins when a little 
 scrubby tramp jiassed us. He promptly produced 
 a needle with a bit of grey thread in it and ollered 
 it to me, and went on his way. I was very grate- 
 ful and sewed on the braid. The little tramp was 
 
284 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 trudging on ahead so we gave chase. When we 
 overtook him, he wanted me to keep the needle, so 
 I had to exphiin I'd used it and presented it to 
 him again. Wasn't it nice of him ? I'm sure 
 Ireland is the only country where a tramp would 
 part with the only useful thing he had to a perfect 
 stranger passing on the road.'' I am not dogmati- 
 cally sure of tiiis. But tlio atmosphere of kindness 
 for which the tramp stood is an atmosphere to 
 which I myself owe so many pleasant nights and 
 days that I can hardly think any praise an 
 exaggeration. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 CHARACTERS. I. — THE DRIVER 
 
 We did not really want a car. I had gone with a 
 friend to a small town in the west where a fair was 
 being held, and we had no wish to be borne off to 
 look at scenery, but only asked to be let alone to 
 walk up and down and hear ballads and watch 
 fine-looking aged people bargaining about the 
 price of pigs and calves in Irish. 
 
 We did not, I repeat, want a car. We had 
 stepped from the train, however, on to the little 
 wind-swept platform, and, as we were the only 
 urban-looking people among the arrivals, the 
 carmen took the matter determinedly out of our 
 hands. We had the force of character to refuse 
 the first of them — a sly, sullen, suspicious old man 
 in a cloth cap, who tried to sell us what appeared 
 to be bits of stones. Then a fellow with the 
 length and the low brows of a guardsman shot 
 across the platform to us. I think we must have 
 lost our heads. Anyhow, we found ourselves, 
 against all our better inclinations, sitting on the 
 narrow edge of his car, and he told us he was going 
 to take us to see " the clift," which, he declared, 
 " towerists " from all parts of the world swore 
 
 285 
 
286 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 was the graudest piece of scenery to be found any- 
 where. 
 
 Luckily, he was a good-natured fellow, with his 
 lanky limbs, his flowing moustaches, and his 
 soldier's brow, and he permitted us to get off at a 
 way-side hotel — or public-house, or hardware shop, 
 or l)akery, whichever you like to call it — for a half- 
 hour's lunch. 
 
 When we came out again, he was moving agilely 
 about among the crowd of buyers and sellers, his 
 whip towering symbolically and inescapably as a 
 slave-driver's, flaving helped us to our seats 
 and pressed a number of rugs in about us, he lay 
 up against his side of the car and l)atterud the 
 pony into a broken trot along a lane of booths and 
 rebellious animals. 
 
 He was soon talking volubly in a language that 
 was neitlier EngliHli nor hish, but was a kind of 
 mixture, 1 think, that he had invented for himself. 
 He was especially interested in " towerists," and 
 would have talked of nothing else if I had let him. 
 
 " There was an English gentleman telling me a 
 while back," he said, leaning insinuatingly over 
 the car, as the talk drifted into semi-political 
 things, "that the Gover'ment means soon to show 
 creat favour to Ireland." 
 
 " That's an old story, isn't it ? " 1 said. 
 
 "Well," he declared confidently, "they tell me 
 it's all coming true at last." 
 
 Having evidently observed some turn or feature 
 of loyalty in my countenance, he went on to draw me 
 
CHARACTERS. I.— THE DRIVER 287 
 
 a peaceful picture, in which it appeared Congested- 
 districts gold would fall like rain upon his part of 
 the country, and Ireland, out of a grateful heart, 
 would ]ic.][) England with soldiers and with love to 
 retain her eminence among the nations. 
 
 T did not want to talk ahout England, however, 
 for 1 had just come back from it, and besides 1 
 was more interested in the men and women I saw 
 about me than in political theories coloured to suit 
 the tastes of tourists. 
 
 A sort of loyalty still kept bobbing up like a 
 Jack-in-the-Box at intervals in his conversation, but 
 he began to talk humanly enough about his own 
 people, their music, their dances, and their journeys 
 to Englaiul. Everybody except the infants-in- 
 arms seemed to have been to England — " yes, girls 
 and all, and they came 1)ack with their characters, 
 too, thank God, poor things. Would you believe 
 that, now ? " 
 
 He would like to live in England himself, he 
 said, for it was a warm, comfortable country, but 
 here there wasn't as much as a thorn-bush to 
 protect you from the cold winds that swept down 
 between the hills all through the, winter. It was 
 indeed a l)are place of heather-coloured hills and 
 grey stones. There were no fences in the fields — 
 fields about as big as a sitting-room — and only a 
 few tumbled stones marked their boundaries. 
 "Though I will say this," he admitted, turning 
 suddenly to the friend who was with me, "that 
 on a fine warm day in June or thereabouts, when 
 
288 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 the sun bes shining, it would pay you, ma'am, to 
 be out in your shimmy." 
 
 He assured us, too, tliat, when the workers 
 returned from England, there was great joy in tlie 
 place, and the cottages were lively with singing 
 and dancing, the boys and girls putting their 
 means together to pay the expenses of a couple 
 of fiddlers. I told him that, if he knew a fiddler 
 anywhere near, we would rather go and hear a 
 tune from him than see the "clift" to which he 
 was jolting us whether we would or no. He 
 declared that it would be a pity for us to miss the 
 " clift," but his face lit up suddenly, and he said 
 that perhaps we would stay at tlic hotel all night, 
 and he could drive us to the "clil't" to-morrow. 
 We said, "Perhaps," but asked to be taken to the 
 fiddler's house in any case. 
 
 " AVell," said he, " there's Tom the fiddler and 
 Ned living in a house down the road a space, and 
 we'll be able to have a song or a dance, if you'd 
 like that better. Here's the house," he said after 
 a while, pointing to a naked white cottage l)y the 
 roadside. " If they're at home, we'll have to get 
 in a half-gallon of porter to courage them up a ])it. 
 Is Tom the fiddler in ? " he roared suddenly at a 
 small dark girl who hesitated on the road-side near 
 the cottage. 
 
 The girl looked startled, and was too distant, I 
 think, to hear what he had said. 
 
 "Is Tom the fiddler in?" he roared again, a 
 little louder and a little nearer by this time. 
 
CHARACTERS. 1— THE DRIVER 289 
 
 " 1 clout know," the girl seemed to reply in a 
 sbriuking voice. 
 
 "Go aud find out now," he commanded her, 
 " and don't be long. There's a lady and gentle- 
 man here that's come over from England to hear 
 him playing." 
 
 The girl disappeared for an instant and was back 
 again by the time we had dismounted from the 
 car. 
 
 " Tom the fiddler's coming down the field," she 
 announced. 
 
 "That's good," he declared, bustling about like 
 a master of ceremonies. " Co in, sir, go in, ma'am. 
 Here," he gave his orders to the girl, "go down to 
 Nora's and bring us a half-gallon of porter — good 
 drink, mind," lie added warningiy, as he handed 
 her the money I had given liim. 
 
 Tom the (i(hllcr apitcared round the corner of 
 his cottage, walking with the help of a stick and a 
 crutch. He had lost one of his feet, and the stump 
 was bound in black wool. He was a grey, weather- 
 beaten little man of a darkish countenance. He 
 had humour in his eyes, however, and kindliness 
 and independence in his firm mouth — a mouth 
 that was in itself a history of sufi"ering. He wore 
 on his head a black tam-o'-shanter. 
 
 " Where's Ned ? " the driver asked him, uncere- 
 moniously. 
 
 " He's lying in bed," replied Tom slowly, in a 
 voice that seemed as though it hurt him even to 
 talk, while he hobbled towards us. " He's de- 
 
 T 
 
290 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 stroyccl with pain. I tliiuk may-l)e he's dying." 
 He spoke tlie words quietly and sadly, taking in 
 our appearance all the time. 
 
 Our carman was not for a moment put out. 
 
 " Go and tell him to get up," he said. " There's 
 a lady and gentleman here has come a long way 
 to hear him and you playing your music." 
 
 The old fellow shook his head, and showed us 
 politely into his house. 
 
 " Well, get down your own fiddle, anyway," said 
 the driver, bundling us through the door, and then, 
 as the old man protestingly drew his fiddle from 
 under the bed, and sat down in a hard chair by 
 the fire, our guide continued, turning to us : " This 
 is a poor, decent, honest man that whatever 
 small bit he has to keep between himself and the 
 starvation, he makes it all with that fiddle you 
 see there in his hands before you." 
 
 The old man's face gave a little twist of dislike, 
 as he plucked a string and tightened it. 
 
 " [ glory in it," he said dcliantly. 
 
 After that he spoke no more English to us. 
 
 "Is docha go blifuil Gaedhilg agat ? " (Likely you 
 have Irish ?) 1 said to him out of my scanty 
 stock ; and, with a new interest in his face, he 
 said he had, and after that he would talk nothing 
 else. 
 
 He would have been glad enough, I think, to 
 talk English on an ordinary occasion, but Irish at 
 the present time seemed to make him feel less like an 
 animal being shown off in a cage and more like a 
 
x^.^Nii-.-^i ;'*•.v-;^4■ 
 
CHARACTERS. I.— THE DRIVER 291 
 
 human being. It was easy to see that he resented 
 the carman's manucr of taking him and his house 
 over, and rumniig them as a sort of peep-show for 
 tourists, and every time the carman said anything 
 to him in Euglisli Tom replied stolidly in Irish. 
 
 Tlie drink arrived in a jug, and the carman 
 brought down a number of cu])S and nnigs from 
 the dresser at the foot of the bed and filled 
 them. "As clean as if it was meant for the Lord 
 Lieuieii.'int's own tal)lc," lie commented euthusiasti- 
 cally, liaviug looked into one of them. IJefore 
 l<)nL^ a numbci' of a'irls and ciiildr(!n and men 
 wandered into the house, and took their seats on a 
 long bench which stood against the opposite wall. 
 
 The driver, with a mug of porter in his hand, 
 made us known to the company as a " lady and 
 gentleman " wlio had come an incredible number 
 of miles to hear Tom })laying the fiddle and to 
 learn Irish — " would you believe that, now ? " 
 Having pressed mugs of good porter on the other 
 men — *' Have a sup of good porter now with the 
 lady and gentleman " — he took the middle of the 
 floor, which was lialf earthen and half composed 
 of broken ling-stones. 
 
 " I tell you," he said, still with the mug in his 
 hand, and carrying on a running soliloquy, " there's 
 great change and improvement coming in this 
 country. Irishmen have appreciation shown to 
 them now the way they never had before. Tiie 
 English are beginning to find out for themselves 
 that we're good men. And what could they do 
 
292 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 without us ? Where would they be without Irish- 
 meu for soldiers ? I hear now the King of England 
 would go down on his bended knees to get fair 
 treatment for the Irish, because he knows he 
 couldn't do without them in time of war." 
 
 A pale-haired man with a cap in his hand looked 
 up from the bench where he was crouching. 
 
 "Is it true he went to Mass ? " he asked. 
 
 1 said I didn't know. 
 
 " I heard he went to Mass," declared the pale- 
 haired man, nodding his head. 
 
 *' Well now, I'll sing you a song," our guide 
 volunteered, seeing the conversation drifting away 
 from him. *' Will I sing it in English or in 
 Irish?" 
 
 We said Irish, so he began shouting on the floor, 
 and, at the end of every line of shouting, he would 
 stop not only to translate but to explain to us. 
 It was a song about drowning, and we had all the 
 relations between the dead man and his sweetheart 
 irivcn to us in detail between the lines. The 
 fiddler scraped something like an accompaniment 
 when the song reappeared at intervals, but he 
 seemed to be purposely playing in wrong time. 
 Certairdy it was odd that so good a player as he 
 sliould always contrive not to keep time when the 
 driver happened to be singing, and I am quite 
 sure he was in this way paying the other out 
 for bringing publicity and turmoil into a decent 
 house. 
 
 After giving us a song, the driver danced for us, 
 
CHARACTERS. I.— THE DRIVER 293 
 
 liopping afi liglitly as an insect on the broken floor 
 in his thick hob-nailed boots. Swallowing anotlier 
 mug of porter, he sang to us a second time — an 
 English song about an Irish harvester in England, 
 a fight and an arrest by the police. After that, 
 he proposed another dance, and, as the friend who 
 was with me did not feel equal to such a floor and 
 so acrobatic a partnership, he dragged a girl with a 
 black shawl round her head into the middle of the 
 floor, and danced rings round her while she nicj'cly 
 sliuljled her clumsy boots in a formal self-conscious 
 way. 
 
 Everybody in the house was silent and a little 
 shy — everybody except this master of our destinies 
 who made us drink porter or dance or listen to his 
 loud voice according as he had the whim. A few 
 delicate bright - haired children in shawls, who 
 had pattered in on their bare feet, stared at us 
 and the tremendous driver in turns from their 
 wistful blue eyes. One of the men who were 
 present — a man with an underglow of purple in 
 his hair and on his face — sang us a brief wonder- 
 ful piece of music with Irish words, and brought 
 the beauty of a thousand years ago into the kitchen 
 for a moment ; but the driver soon remembered his 
 duties as a twentieth-century provider of amuse- 
 ment, and made the room ring again with the sound 
 of his voice and feet. 
 
 While he was singing, 1 slipped out of the 
 room, feeling that even scenery was better than 
 this. I looked out over the barren heather- 
 
294 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 coloured land to the barren purple sea, an odd 
 woman or two bending over the earth at their 
 work in the middle distance, and bringing curious 
 colours into the scheme of things with their 
 flannel petticoats. As I stood there, with the wet, 
 fragrant wind blowing about my forehead, I 
 suddenly heard " God save Ireland" roared from 
 the cottage in a mixture of voices. When it was 
 over, I went in again, as 1 thouglit it must l)e 
 time to go. 
 
 " You missed it," the carman exclaimed, striding 
 excitedly over to me and catching my hand. " You 
 missed 'God save Ireland,' sir. We must give 
 you that again now. Now, all join in. It wouldn't 
 be right for us to separate without all taking part 
 in that song." 
 
 As we stood around, he raised his arm, and 
 marked time Ijy swinging his cap round his head, 
 and the song went on to the chorus : 
 
 "'God save TrelaiKl,' said tliey proudly, 
 'God save Trelaml,' say wc all ; 
 Whether on the gallows high or the battle-field we die, 
 Oh, what matter when for Erin dear we fall ! " 
 
 " Acfain," he said, and the absurd business was 
 all gone through once more, the carman contribut- 
 ing nearly all the noise, and the rest of us nearly 
 all the dispiritedness. 
 
 "And a good song," he declared, "and we 
 needn't be ashamed of ourselves either, no matter 
 what part of the world we may be in." 
 
CHARACTERS. I.— THE DRIVER 295 
 
 1 certtainly wondered at the man, even if I did 
 not love his methods. I began to see how Ireland 
 must present itself to the foreign visitor — Ireland 
 of the tourist guides — the Ireland of loud loyalty or 
 loud patriotism, whichever you are ready to pay for. 
 Ireland of tlie realities lay about us, silent, hard- 
 labouring, pondering partly on high heaven and 
 partly on the price of bacon, while the sea fell with 
 a mysterious murmur on the stones and sands of 
 her mysterious shore. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 CHARACTERS. II. — THE MAN OF SECRETS 
 
 It is only by accident that I came to visit the 
 grave of Myles the Proud, a liero of the Crom- 
 wellian wars, and so had the good luck to fall in 
 with Mr Foley and his singular personality. I 
 was passing through a town in the Irish midlands 
 on my way to a demonstration tliat was partly 
 political and partly commemorative of Myles's 
 greatest exploit. He had fought side by side with 
 Owen Roe O'Neill, and had won deathless fame by 
 a splendid single-handed fight he had made, like 
 Umslopogaas, against impossible odds. As he 
 was said to be buried in the old churchyard in the 
 town in which I found myself, with half-a-day 
 before me and nothing particular to do in it, I 
 asked a local friend to go with me and show me 
 the place. 
 
 It was a place without paths, a nook of ruined 
 walls, and of worn and falling tomb-stones. The 
 ruins of a woman came out ot the ruins of a house 
 beside the high, rusted gate of the porch, and 
 unwound chains so that we might enter. Inside, 
 a clear, gloomy silence reigned, impressive as the 
 silence in a forest. It was as though the singing 
 
 2'JG 
 
THE MAN OF SECRETS 297 
 
 of birds bad uever been lieard there, or the 
 swish of a scythe, or the noise of a sickle coming 
 suddenly against a stone. 
 
 Some of tlio graves Avere fairly modern, and 
 there were several vaults belonging to the Pro- 
 testant county families — peers, colonels, captains, 
 deputy lieutenants, baronets, magistrates, and the 
 rest. Even these seemed to be ajffected by the 
 spirit of decay, and to have become an assimilated 
 part of the ill-kept grass-grown wilderness. Our- 
 selves, we did not pay much attention to them, 
 but made straight for the little oblong patch 
 where the church had once stood — a patch marked 
 by a considerable fragment of a gable which 
 still lingered on in a sorrowful mantle of ivy, like 
 nil aged wonian in a shawl sitting witliout speech 
 by the fireside y(>ars after she ought to be in her 
 grave. Somewhere near this, according to tradi- 
 tion, Myles the Proud was buried. As in the 
 case of so many of the Irish heroes, there was no 
 stone or epitaph to mark the exact spot where 
 he lay. 
 
 I will be frank, and confess that I am never 
 able to take much pleasure in these personally- 
 conducted visits to famous graves. I do not 
 know what to say, or even what to think, when I 
 am brought to a halt and bidden to look down at 
 the grave of some hero, whose mere name, perhaps, 
 can set my pulses dancing in the solitude of my 
 own room. My imagination stubbornly refuses to 
 walk in dead, far off centuries, while men in 
 
298 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 starched collars and Trill )y hats are present with 
 their aggressively modern shapes at my side. 
 
 Proltably, my companion was feeling very much 
 the same sort of dissatisfaction as myself, and it 
 was with a sigh of relief, rather than of reverence, 
 that we turned from our contemplation of what 
 may or may not have been Myles's grave, and made 
 our way back to the churchyard gate. 
 
 The stooping woman who had admitted us 
 locked the gate after us with a great rattle of 
 chains. Leaving the dead world behind us, we 
 were stepping down the road on our way back to 
 the hotel, when a ])i[»ing asthmatic voice hailed us 
 out of nowhere. 
 
 " Well, gentlemen, have you been taking a look 
 at the old church ? " 
 
 We stopped and turned round, and my friend 
 introduced me to a tall, high-shouldered man, 
 very jerky in his movements, and with busybody 
 written all over him. He was a local magnate of 
 some sort — either Clerk of the Workhouse, or 
 verger at the Protestant Church — I do not re- 
 member which. Beyond the middle age, he had 
 a not too generous allowance of grey beard, and 
 cheeks that went up so high in liis face that they 
 almost buried his little beady eyes out of sight. 
 He appeared as though he might be half-blind, or 
 an albino, or have a squint — his e3^es had certainly 
 something the matter with them. Though he 
 wore a pair of black-rimmed spectacles, these hung 
 some way down his nose, and, when he wanted to 
 
THE MAN OF SECRETS 299 
 
 see you, he usuall}' looked over them, not through 
 them. lie was dressed in a morning coat of dis- 
 coloured tweed, which had the air of having been 
 put on hurriedly, carelessly ; and a dusty high hat, 
 round at the top, sat anyhow on his head with a 
 suggestion of absent-mindedness. 
 
 Out of politeness my friend told him the errand 
 that had brought us to the churchyard. 
 
 " I suppose, Mr Foley," he said, with the spice 
 of conipliiiicnt that deceives even the cleverest of 
 us, "you kuow as much a1)0ut these things as 
 any man in tiie county. Can you tell us if we 
 were right in looking for Myles the Proud's grave 
 under the gable of the old church ? " 
 
 Mr Foley, looking like the sun in mid-winter 
 with pleasure, laid his hand on my friend's 
 shoulder, and almost pushed him back to the 
 gate of the churchyard. 
 
 " Come and I'll show you," he said in his high 
 voice. " It's lucky you young gentlemen met 
 me. There's nobody could tell you all you want 
 to know about the graves in this yard, and the 
 people that's buried in them, as well as myself." 
 Whereupon he brought a private key out of his 
 pocket, opened the padlock, and ushered us back, 
 willy-nilly, into the haunts of the dead. 
 
 My friend threw me a glance as though to 
 warn me that we had let ourselves in for a rather 
 boring experience. 
 
 "We haven't much time to spare, Mr Foley," 
 he said deprecatiugly ; " but if you would show 
 
300 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 us where Myles is really buried we'd be very 
 much obliged to you." 
 
 " I'll do thut," Mr Foley assured him heartily, 
 walking on ahead with a sort of running motion 
 through the long grass, and halting to take breath 
 as he clambered up each fresh grave-mound. " I'll 
 tell you everything you want to know. Just 
 keep following me." 
 
 He came to a sudden pause at the top of a 
 mound, and put his hand on the railing that 
 marked of!" the grave of a coimty family. 
 
 "Now look at that grave, gentlemen. There's 
 an interesting grave," he said, raising his voice 
 as thougli he were addressing deaf people. 
 "That's where Colonel Finch-Bellew is buried. 
 You didn't know him, Mr Ward, did you ? " he 
 turned to my friend. "I tell you, he was a 
 splendid figure of a man — the splendidest figure 
 of a man ever you saw. He came home with a 
 bad leg fi'om fighting the !)0('rs, and tlien, just 
 when \\v had found his hcallli again, liis liorsc fell 
 dead under him while he was out hunting, and 
 that was the end of him. Och, he was a hand- 
 some man ! You would see him there in his 
 place in the church every Sunday morning as 
 regular as the clock in the town iiall, when he 
 would be at the castle. Ay, I knew the Colonel 
 well ! " 
 
 He lowered his voice, and changing his ex- 
 pression to the very opposite of what it had been, 
 cast a sudden winking glance round us. 
 
THE MAN OF SECRETS 301 
 
 ' I could tell you a thing about the Colonel 
 would make you laugh," he half- whispered, shak- 
 ing his head knowingly. 
 
 We nodded and said, " Oh ! " in an encouraging 
 tone, feeling our interest wakening up at the 
 prospect of scandal. 
 
 Mr l<\)ley's expression suddenly changed back 
 again to the deepest solemnity. He fetched a 
 heavy sigh. 
 
 " You may say what you like about the laud- 
 lords," he remarked, as though gently reju-oving 
 the curiosity which he himself had so cunningly 
 stirred, " but 1 never met anybody yet with a 
 bad word for the Colonel. Ah, he was a fine, 
 open-handed man — a fine, open-handed, kindly- 
 spoken man was the Colonel ! " 
 
 After a decent interval, when it became 
 apparent that tlic story about the dead Colonel 
 was to remain an eternal secret, as far as we were 
 concerned, my friend interrupted Mr Foley in 
 the reverie into which he seemed to have fallen. 
 
 " And now, Mr Foley," he said, "as we're rather 
 in a hurry, and it's not fair to be taking up so 
 much of your time, perhaps we had better go on 
 and see where Myles is buried." 
 
 Mr Foley, standing with his hands under his 
 coat-tails, twisted round his head inquisitively. 
 
 "Myles?" he said, as though he had forgotten the 
 name. " Oh, yes ; Myles the Proud. Come this 
 way." And he hurried forward again on his feeble 
 spindle-shanks over the disregarded grave-mounds. 
 
302 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 He had not gone very far before he brought us 
 to a stop again to admire a dull rectangular vault 
 roofed with a great slab of stone. 
 
 "Now, perhaps, if you've just got a moment to 
 spare," he observed, as though he were showing 
 us one of the rare specimens in a museum, " there's 
 something that will interest you. That's Sir 
 Harvey Joyce's vault. The last time it was 
 opened was ten years ago when old Sir Stephen 
 died." 
 
 He rubbed the roots of his beard, and shook 
 his head, lowering his voice wickedly, as he had 
 done when hinting at scandal aliout tlie (Jolonel. 
 
 " I could tell you a good story about him," he 
 sai<l, liis eyes blinking round at us. 
 
 He paused and shook his head reminiscently. 
 
 "They say Sir Stephen was a wild man, Mr 
 Foley," suggested my friend, trying to draw him. 
 
 " Ah, never mind, never mind," Mr Foley 
 snap})ed hurriedly, with another sudden change of 
 expression, as though he feared some of his secrets 
 were going to be stolen from him, and he led the 
 way in a series of short-sighted stumbles in the 
 direction of the old church. 
 
 l>efore long, he pulled us up again without 
 warning, and pointed to a corner of the church- 
 yard where the enclosing wall had a rather new 
 look. 
 
 " Do you see that ? " he squeaked at us. " AVell, 
 just where you see that new bit of wall, there were 
 three rebels hung from a tree at the time of the 
 
THE INIAN OF SECRETS 303 
 
 liebellion. They were buried at the foot of the 
 tree where they were hung ; but that's not 
 the best part of the story. Perhaps you heard 
 the story fi-om me before, Mr Ward ? A year or 
 two after that, there was a most tremendous storm 
 that l)lcw down the tree, and a good lump of the 
 wall beside it. They gave the building of the wall 
 to some fool of a fellow, and what did he do but put 
 the new wall away round the far side of the piece 
 of ground where the old tree used to be ! I tell 
 you," he tittered, glancing from one to the other 
 of us with what seemed like enthusiasm, " when 
 James Henry was looking for a place to put his 
 wife a couple of years ago, little he knew he would 
 be putting her where she would be lying among 
 rebels — rebels that had died with the rope round 
 their necks too ! " 
 
 His face beamed with delight, and his foolish 
 little ball of a stomach shook with laughter. 
 
 "James didn't know, but I knew !" he crowed. 
 " I tell you young gentlemen, sometimes when I 
 drop into his shop for a bit of a chat with him, I 
 find myself thinking, 'My bold fellow, if 1 had a 
 mind, I could tell you something would make you 
 laugh with the other side of your mouth ! ' Ay, 
 James is a hearty laugher, but, maybe, if he knew 
 the company his wife was keeping — Well, there's 
 a lot of queer things about a place like this nobody 
 knows except an old fellow like me that makes a 
 kind of a hobby of it. ..." 
 
 Tt was time to go, however, and we intcrru])ted 
 
304 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 him to say bow sorry we were that we had to go 
 away before he had sliown us wliere iMyles the 
 Proud was buried. 
 
 " Ah, well," he commented a little contemp- 
 tuously, as he shook hands with us, " there's not 
 much to see, any way. Some say he was buried 
 on the far side of the gal^le of the old church over 
 yonder, and some say it was a man of the same 
 name was buried there, and that Myles the Proud 
 isn't buried in this graveyard at all. Anyway, 
 I never could take much interest myself in them 
 old Irish chiefs that died three or four hundred 
 years ago. They were wild, savage fellows. . . . 
 Did I ever tell you, Mr Ward," he suddenly broke 
 back into subjects more worthy of a civilised 
 man's interest, " what Colonel Finch-Bellew said to 
 me up at the Castle the day he was leaving for 
 South Africa? ..." 
 
 We did not allow him to get out his story, but 
 thrust our good-l)ye3 and our gratitude on him 
 with as little rudeness as possible, and leaving him 
 blinking and wheezing on his long treml)ling legs, 
 we made hurriedly for the gate 
 
 He called after us shrilly that, if ever I was in 
 the town again, and wanted to know anything 
 about the old churchyard, I must pay him a visit, 
 for there were all sorts of interesting things about 
 the graves and the people who were buried in 
 them that nobody but himself knew. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 LITERATURE AND MUSIC 
 
 Ireland is at present sending forth two streams 
 of literature— one in Irisli and one in English. Tlie 
 Hteratnrc in English is, so far, the richer in fulfil- 
 ment, but the literature in Irish is the richer in 
 l)roniise, l)ecause in it Ireland is taking a first 
 step towards the resumption of the normal and 
 traditional way of her national life. 
 
 The literature which Mr W. B. Yeats, A. E., 
 .1. M. Syngc and others have ])ccn producing, how- 
 ever, comes nearer to being an artistic expression 
 of the national life than any previous literature 
 written in the English language. Never before 
 was there a school of writers in Anglo-Ireland who 
 worked out new artistic methods for themselves 
 and whose work could not be matched and beaten 
 by the same kind of work in English literature. 
 Hitherto the greatest Irishmen who had written in 
 the English language had been inspired, not by 
 artistic, but by propagandist motives. Thomas 
 Davis was the prophet and journalist of nationality 
 in the middle of last century, and the artistic 
 quality in his work was only occasional and acci- 
 dental. John Mitcliel, a greater writer thoutrh 
 
 U 305 
 
306 HOxAIE LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 not so great a tliinker, wrote a s])leii(li(l and war- 
 ike prose, as readers of "The Jail Journar' and 
 "'I'lie Last (Jon(|uest of Ireland (Perliajjs)" know. 
 But he too was preoccupied with immediate facts 
 and necessities rather than with the permanent 
 things which are the material of literature. 
 Mangan stands out among his contemporaries of 
 the Young Ireland movement as the only man who 
 was at once a fine patriot and, in the best sense of 
 the words, a fine artist. His greatest poems are 
 in their substance patriotic — " Dark Rosaleen," 
 " 0, woman of the piercing wail " and " Kathaleen 
 ni Houliluin," to name three of tliem : they ex- 
 pressed, however, not the patriotism of the period, 
 but the patriotism of all time. They were not 
 poems merely of Young Ireland : they were poems 
 of the Ireland which abides. Some people would 
 put Sir Samuel Ferguson's work near JMangan's, 
 but Ferguson's poems seem to me to l)e the ex- 
 pression of a noljle talent rather tlian of imagina- 
 tive genius. 
 
 Young Ireland, it must be said, played a great 
 part in Irish literature as a forerunner. J\Ir Yeats 
 and his contemporaries built their self-conscious 
 literature largely on foundations which had been 
 prepared by the writers of Young Ireland. Critics 
 see in Mr Yeats's poetry the influence of Blake 
 and the influence of Swinburne, but these are 
 only accidental. Mr Yeats found his inspiration 
 in an Irish imaginative ntmosphere, in the lives of 
 Irish peo[)le, in the manifestations of l)eauty in 
 
LlTEllATUllE AND MUSIC 307 
 
 Irish })laces, and not in the books of dead poets, 
 lie may not have altogether mirrored Ireland in 
 his works, but he made Ireland mirror himself. 
 This means simply, I suppose, that he is lyrical 
 rather than dramatic in his inspiration. 
 
 No Irish writer before him had used the English 
 language so beautifully. He strove after perfection 
 in his verse as Stevenson strove after perfection in 
 his prose. He invented new rhythms no less than 
 new images, and gave the imagination a new world 
 of ecstasy in whi(;h to wandcu*. Ho is sometimes 
 accused of being vague and etliereal, but, as for 
 vaguein'ss, this is ratlier in the minds of his readers 
 who find themselves in unfamiliar places and 
 among names with hidden meanings. One or two 
 of his poems, I know, are obscure, and a few of 
 them bring their meaning to the imagination 
 rather than to the intellect, like a snatch of song 
 in the wind. His work can only be said to be 
 ethereal in quality, however, if it is less ethereal 
 to see the world in the bravery of the sun than to 
 see it in the dim approach of evening, with no 
 light burning but the lights of candles and, later, 
 of the moth-like stars. On the other hand, Mr 
 Yeats's dim twilight atmosphere is heavy with 
 appeals to the senses : his dreams are passionate 
 dreams, and it is a puzzling matter that so ecstatic 
 a worship of the beauty of the body as his should 
 even have been lal)elled with the word ethereal. 
 
 I do not wish to attempt in this chapter 
 anything like a criticism of contemporary Irish 
 
308 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 literature, but only to hint at the extent to which 
 a literature of magic and, beside it, a literature of 
 realism have been growing up in Ireland during 
 recent years. I do not think that the world has 
 yet realised the originality and depth of Mr Yeats's 
 genius. His revelation of beauty seems to me to 
 l)e larger and more intimate than that of Keats, 
 if one revelation of beauty may be compared in in- 
 tensity with another. Measured by him, Tennyson 
 is a mere maker of phrases and Swinburne a mere 
 maker of sounds. Mr Yeats has the intellectual 
 faculty of condensation, though perhaps not of 
 construction on a great scale. lie is a master of 
 new lyric forms. He does not express splendour 
 of personality in his work, in the degree that 
 Whitman or Hugo or Shelley did, but he expresses 
 splendour of vision such as none of these three, 
 save Shelley, expressed. He is the poet of intoxi- 
 cation : he is intoxicated with the quest for the 
 secret rose of beauty — the rose of the beauty, not 
 of the spirit, but of this world. His delight in the 
 immediate beauty of things is as nothing compared 
 with his passionate craving for the beauty of the 
 unattained. The banners of East and West are 
 but symbols proclaiming the separation between 
 him and the desire of his lieart. His ])oetry often 
 gives us the feeling of pessimism, because this 
 beauty which he seeks is in so largely a beauty of 
 this world — a beauty which the senses can appre- 
 hend. Immortal beauty itself seems to reveal itself 
 most fully to him in the form of the l)eloved. It 
 
LITERATURE AND JMUSIC 309 
 
 is out of the separation not from immortal, but from 
 mortal, beauty that that exquisite poem, " The Folly 
 of Being Comforted," is born — the poem which 
 ends : 
 
 I'nt, lioart, flicrc is no comfort, not n. grain ; 
 Time cnn but make her beauty over again, 
 Because of that great nobleness of hers ; 
 The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs 
 Burns but more clearly. she had not these ways, 
 When all the wild summer Avas in her gaze. 
 heart ! heart ! if she'd but turn her head. 
 You'd know the folly of being comforted. 
 
 Mr Yeats, indeed, is the poet of passionate love 
 beyond all his contemporaries. It is the wistful- 
 ness of the lover, not of the mystic, that runs 
 through all his best work. And that, perhaps, is 
 all the better for his art. 
 
 A. E. (Mr George Russell), who is sometimes — 
 but wrongly — looked on as belonging to the same 
 school of poetry as ]\Ir Yeats, is a real mystic who 
 moves with rapture amid this world of appearances. 
 His is the divine vision — the vision which enables 
 him to hold converse with the gods and to live 
 gladly. There is no man in Ireland with a larger 
 utterance — none who expresses a more sincere and 
 buoyant personality. He, like Mr Yeats, is a 
 lover of symbols, but his heart is set on the eternal 
 things. He does not intoxicate us with beauty as 
 Mr Yeats does, but he imparts to us something of 
 the peace of God. His work has strength and 
 sweetness — something that we might call spiritual 
 
310 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 heroism. He is emphatically one of the great 
 men of contemporary Ireland. Lately, I may 
 note in passing, he has been turning to painting 
 rather than poetry. 
 
 Mr Padraic Colum, among the younger writers, 
 is the poet of the earth and the men and women 
 who labour it — also, perhaps, of the men and women 
 who wander between the earth and the sky, un- 
 settled tramps, Imt with simple desires for settled 
 comforts. lie is a figure-painter, or rather, if the 
 word is permissible, a character-painter, whose 
 work is infoi'nu'd with })liil()S(>[)hi(; dignity. He 
 seems to have abandoned ])oetr3'^ for prose lately, 
 but his prose sk(;l.ches take us into the same 
 atmosphere of fields and fire-sides vvijich we iind 
 in the poems in his " Wild Earth," that beautiful 
 and interpretative volume, 
 
 Mr James Stephens's " Insurrections " is the 
 first expression of realism in Anglo-Irish verse. 
 His people are the people of the towns — cabmen, 
 the population of })ublic-houses, grotesque and 
 battered people. He is humorous, whimsical, 
 upsetting, grim. Mr Seosamh Mac Cathmhaoil in 
 "The Mountainy Singer" gives us a curious 
 mixture of the fairy and the fighting man. He 
 would be content enough with the com})aiiy of the 
 fairies, we feel, if it were not for the stranger — the 
 Black Earl over the Sea — who makes Ireland 
 desolate. It is the thought of this that rouses 
 him to a fire of prophecy in many of his finest 
 poems, but even here we have gentle and pleasant 
 
LITERATURE AND MUSIC 311 
 
 music. Air Seamus O'Sullivaii's lyrics liave a 
 quality which is less easy to defmc. The best of 
 them are little passing things of beauty captured 
 in exquisitely careful verse. 
 
 Mr J. j\l. Synge, who died recently, had some- 
 tliiitg of tlu! poetic inspiration, but his rare and 
 interesting genius expressed itself best in the 
 dramatic form. His dramas are wonderful decora- 
 tions rather than interpretations — revelations of a 
 temperament rather than revelations of the world 
 or of Ireland. In liis early enthusiasm, when he 
 first began to write about Ireland, he seemed to 
 get near the large and simple and elemental things 
 in the people around him, and in "Riders to the 
 Sea" he gave us a tragic rearrangement of life 
 whose appeal is universal and which is written in 
 imaginative prose of a texture without an exact 
 parallel in literature. His other phiys bear the mark 
 of the same grotesque and decorative genius, but 
 it becomes more and more an eclectic genius con- 
 sciously using the life with which it comes in 
 contact as the material for art rather than leaping, 
 like a fire, out of experience and knowledge as the 
 genius of the great dramatists seems to do. His 
 dialogue, with its haunting rhythms, its figures, its 
 harsh accidents of realism, offers a new experience in 
 literature to those w^ho read it for the first time. 
 Whether, in his later plays, like " The Playboy of 
 the Western World," it was not becoming too 
 remote from ordinary speech, too like a mosaic of 
 strange things instead of being itself a living and 
 
312 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 woven piece of strangeness, is a question which 
 disturbs some of those who know his work best. 
 His was a strange and lonely genius — a genius with 
 something sinister in it, a genius of dark comedy 
 and of byways. Like Mr Yeats, he brought to 
 Ireland a high artistic ideal, a reverence for form, 
 the value of which in a country seeking after new 
 ways of self-expression in literature can scarcely be 
 exao-fi^erated. 
 
 Of Lish novelists Mr Georoe ]\Ioore is the 
 most notable ; but his distinctively Irish work, 
 sunfG;estive and intellectual tliouoh it is, is not 
 
 OO O ' 
 
 cornpand)le in structure or in insight to " Esther 
 W.'itcj's," his inasler[)icc(!, and, indeed, one of 
 the masterpieces of his time. Mr George A. 
 Birmingham is a critical [ind humorous novelist 
 rather than a novelist of character. His " Bene- 
 dict Kavanao'h" mves us the most interestinf^ 
 and interpretative glimpse we have had in fiction 
 of the new Ireland, the Ireland of the Gaelic 
 Lea<][uc. Mr BirminQ;ham has a measure of Mr 
 
 O O 
 
 Shaw's faculty for analysing points-of-view, and 
 he has a fine wit as well as a genius for farcical 
 comedy. The best of recent historical novels is j\lr 
 William Buckley's Ninety-eight story, "Cro[)pies 
 Lie Down." Mr Standi.sh G'Grady brings .some- 
 thing of the Homeric spirit into Anglo-Irish 
 literature with his heroic prose in " In the Gates 
 of the North," his glorious retelling of the story of 
 Cuchullain and the lonf{ fioht at the ford. ^Ir 
 Shan Bullock's truthful idylls of northern life 
 
LITEllATURE AND MUSIC 313 
 
 have not yet won the praise they deserve. But 
 the list of contemporary Irish noveUsts, good and 
 bad, could be prolonged through pages. 
 
 Lady Gregory's and Dr Douglas Hyde's transLa- 
 tions of Irish stories and songs are already well- 
 known among those who care for what is Ijcst in 
 literature. Mrs Mary Hutton's blank-verse trans- 
 lation of "The Tain," — the Cuchullain epic — has 
 not so wide a reputation, but it is a strongly- 
 constructed and noble piece of work. Among 
 historians, the most brilliant and original of 
 contemporary writers is Mrs A. S. Green, whose 
 "The Making of Ireland and its Undoing" is a 
 powerful plea for a complete reconsideration of the 
 materials from which Irish history has hitherto 
 been written. 
 
 Irish literature in the Irish language is a subject 
 which I will not discuss at Jeiigtli, because Irish 
 is unfortunately a language of which I can as yet 
 make but a limping and stammering use. It may 
 be as well to say here, however, that Ireland has 
 never ceased producing literature in the Irish 
 language during all the turmoil of the centuries 
 down to the present day. Kaftery was a nine- 
 teenth - century poet, and only a few years ago 
 Colum Wallace, an aged poet who knew no English, 
 was recovered from the workhouse in OuQ-hterard 
 by some members of the Gaelic League. Since the 
 Gaelic League came into existence, Irish books, 
 booklets, sketches and articles have been published 
 in great numbers. Father O'Leary's "Seadna" 
 
314 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 is at once the longest and the most popular of the 
 new books. It is a haphazard mixture of folk- 
 tale and scenes from common life, told largely in 
 the form of dialogue. It is written with many- 
 pleasant touches of humour, and is rich in the 
 idioms of the countryside. 
 
 Piidraic Conaire is one of the few writers who 
 are using the Irish language, not to re-tell old 
 stories, but to express the realities of contemporary 
 life. He has written several plays, a short novel 
 and a great number of short stories. He is a lover 
 of facts, however cruel they may be, and is an 
 enemy of the sentimentalists. His best stories 
 road like transcripts from life, thus fnlliiling the 
 Ibseni(i idea of wluit iiuitginative literature ought 
 to be. Condn Maol is another writer of stories 
 and historical sketches who lias a high reputation 
 in Irish Ireland. He has a strong and whimsical 
 personality and uses words with literary dignity. 
 IVidraic Mac Piarais has given us in "losag;in" 
 and other slender books a numljcr of stories with 
 a great deal of sentimental charm. It would be 
 wrong to omit from a list of Irish writers the name 
 of Dr Douglas Hyde, the President of the Gaelic 
 League, whose books on Raftery, on the Love- 
 Songs of Connacht and similar subjects, he has 
 himself turned into Enolish. Amono- a host of 
 other writers I will only mention Father Tomds 
 O Ceallaigh, who has translated Mr W. B. Yeats's 
 " Kathleen ni Iloulihdn " into Irish and has 
 written a number of plays as well. The tendency 
 
LITERATURE AND MUSIC 315 
 
 in Irish circles, I may say, is in an increasing 
 degree to insist upon authors giving the folk-tale 
 and the fairy-tale a rest for a time and bringing 
 literature into relation with modern experience and 
 the modern spirit. 
 
 To turn for a moment to Irish music, I am afraid 
 I must dismiss it in even fewer sentences than 
 those in which I have summed up — or rather 
 hinted at — the present position of Irish literature. 
 The Irish music which I like best myself is the old 
 Irish music, the music of the songs, such as has 
 been collected and published in recent years by 
 Dr r. AV. Joyce, Mv IIerl)crt Hughes and others. 
 Mr Hughes, in his last collection, " Irish Country 
 Songs," does not profess to put down the songs as 
 he heard them with complete accuracy, for he holds 
 that the traditional Irish singer sings quarter-tones 
 which cannot be recorded l)y the conventional 
 method of notation. Musicians with fixed ideas, 
 hearing an Irish singer, often think that he is 
 singing flat, when as a matter of fact he is singing 
 with scrupulous exactness according to the Irish 
 way. I have no musical knowledge myself and 
 therefore cannot go into the matter. On the other 
 hand, I have experienced the delight, as in sight 
 and hearing of strange seas, which is to be had in 
 listening to Irish songs sung in the traditional 
 manner without the accompaniment of any instru- 
 ment. Those who have never heard Irish songs 
 sung except to the accompaniment of the piano 
 have only an incomplete idea either of the graces 
 
316 HOME LIFE IN IRELAND 
 
 or of the emotional subtlety and intensity of Irish 
 music. 
 
 It is good news that in many parts of Ireland 
 the people are taking to the fiddle again, where 
 their fathers were content with the melodeon and 
 its crude noises. A great number of boys, too, are 
 learning the bag-pipes. Some of them prefer 
 the war pipes, which are blown by the mouth like 
 the Scotch pipes : others have a keener taste for the 
 union pipes, which are filled by a bellows worked 
 by the player's elbow. The latter is, it may be 
 added, the instrument which is played within 
 houses. 
 
 The Fdis Ceoil and the Gaelic League have 
 between them done a great deal to encourage the 
 revival of Irish music, and it will be surprising if 
 we have not before long a number of Irish composers 
 drawing their inspiration from national sources. 
 During the past summer, indeed, an Irish opera, 
 " Eithne," by Mr Robert O'Dwyer, was performed 
 at the Gaelic League Oireachtas. The libretto 
 was, of course, in Irish, and the performance was, 
 from all accounts, excellent. 
 
 Before closing this very personal and haphazard 
 account of certain contemporary Irish facts, I 
 must express my regret for liaving said so little 
 about the part played in Irish country life by 
 the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, with 
 its cooperative dairies, its banks, and its other 
 manifold energies. I should have liked, too, to 
 
LITERATURE AND MUSIC 317 
 
 give a separate account of the work of the Gaelic 
 League. Looking at the social and intellectual 
 changes brought about in Ireland by these two 
 organisations, Irish men and women are naturally 
 growing more and more optimistic with regard to the 
 future. S(3lf-coiifidciicc is being gradually restored 
 to the country, and the nation is becoming self- 
 conscious to an extent, and in a manner, which no 
 one would have dared to prophesy twenty years 
 ago. " Ireland has always struck me," says a 
 character in a story of Mr George Moore's, " as a 
 place tluit God had intended to do something 
 with ; but he changed liis mind, and that change 
 happened about a thousand years ago. Since 
 then the Gael has been wastiuo-." Others of us 
 
 o 
 
 regard those thousand years as at once a pre- 
 pai'ntion and a propliecy — a journeying in the 
 wilderness. Ireland is now, as it were, getting 
 ready to leave the wilderness. She may not yet 
 be clear of all its entanglements and its shadows, 
 but she is assuredly approaching the only possible 
 way out — the way, not of mere political Nationalism, 
 but of nationhood in the fullest and most spiritual 
 meaning of the word. 
 
 TL'RNDULL AND SI^BARS, TRINTERS, EDINBURGH. 
 
This preservation photocopy was made 
 
 at BookLab, Inc. in compliance with copyright law. 
 
 The paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO 
 
 Z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper) 
 
 Austin 1995 
 
DATEDUE 
 
 uSl^;ESsi^VPRODCfeTinNri«S9.5503 
 
BOSTON COLLEGE 
 
 3 9031 022 60777 4