_ CHAPTER X. IRISH WIT AND ELOQUENCE
"Wild wit, invention ever new," appear in high perfection amongst even the youngest inhabitants of an Irish cottage. The word
wit, amongst the lower classes of Ireland, means not only quickness of repartee, but cleverness in action; it implies invention and address, with no slight mixture of cunning; all which is expressed in their dialect by the single word
'cuteness (acuteness). Examples will give a better notion of this than can be conveyed by any definition.
An Irish boy (a 'cute lad) saw a train of his companions leading their cars, loaded with kishes[1] of turf, coming towards his father's cabin; his father had no turf, and the question was how some should be obtained. To beg he was ashamed; to dig he was unwilling--but his head went to work directly. He took up a turf which had fallen from one of the cars the preceding day, and stuck it on the top of a pole near the cabin. When the cars were passing, he appeared throwing turf at the mark. "Boys!" cried he, "which of ye will hit?" Each leader of the car, as he passed, could not forbear to fling a turf at the mark; the turf fell at the foot of the pole, and when all the cars had passed, there was a heap left sufficient to reward the ingenuity of our little Spartan.
[Footnote 1: Baskets.]
The same 'cuteness which appears in youth continues and improves in old age. When General V---- was quartered in a small town in Ireland, he and his lady were regularly besieged, whenever they got into their carriage, by an old beggar-woman, who kept her post at the door, assailing them daily with fresh importunities and fresh tales of distress. At last the lady's charity, and the general's patience, were nearly exhausted, but their petitioner's wit was still in its pristine vigour. One morning, at the accustomed hour, when the lady was getting into her carriage, the old woman began--"Agh! my lady; success to your ladyship, and success to your honour's honour, this morning, of all days in the year; for sure didn't I dream last night that her ladyship gave me a pound of tea, and that your honour gave me a pound of tobacco?"
"But, my good woman," said the general, "do not you know that dreams always go by the rule of contrary?"
"Do they so, plase your honour?" rejoined the old woman. "Then it must be your honour that will give me the tea, and her ladyship that will give me the tobacco?"
The general being of Sterne's opinion, that a bon-mot is always worth more than a pinch of snuff, gave the ingenious dreamer the value of her dream.
Innumerable instances might be quoted of the Hibernian genius, not merely for repartee, but for what the Italians call pasquinade. We shall cite only one, which is already so well known in Ireland, that we cannot be found guilty of
publishing a libel. Over the ostentatious front of a nobleman's house in Dublin, the owner had this motto cut in stone:--
"Otium cum dignitate.--Leisure with dignity."
In process of time his lordship changed his residence; or, since we must descend to plebeian language, was committed to Newgate, and immediately there appeared over the front of his apartment his chosen motto, as large as the life, in white chalk,
"Otium cum dignitate."
Mixed with keen satire, the Irish often show a sort of cool good sense and dry humour, which gives not only effect, but value to their impromptus. Of this class is the observation made by the Irish hackney coachman, upon seeing a man of the ton driving four-in-hand down Bond-street.
"That fellow," said our observer, "looks like a coachman, but drives like a gentleman."
As an instance of humour mixed with sophistry, we beg the reader to recollect the popular story of the Irishman who was run over by a troop of horse, and miraculously escaped unhurt.
"Down upon your knees and thank God, you reprobate," said one of the spectators.
"Thank God! for what? Is it for letting a troop of horse run over me?"
In this speech there is the same sort of humour and sophistry that appears in the Irishman's celebrated question: "What has posterity done for me, that I should do so much for posterity?"
The Irish nation, from the highest to the lowest, in daily conversation about the ordinary affairs of life, employ a superfluity of wit and metaphor which would be astonishing and unintelligible to a majority of the respectable body of English yeomen. Even the cutters of turf and drawers of whiskey are orators; even the
cottiers and
gossoons speak in trope and figure. Ask an Irish gossoon to go early in the morning, on an errand, and he answers,
"I'll be off at the flight of night."
If an Irish cottager would express to his landlord that he wishes for a long lease of his land, he says,--
"I would be proud to live on your honour's land as long as grass grows or water runs."
One of our English poets has nearly the same idea:--
"As long as streams in silver mazes run,
Or spring with annual green renews the grove."
Without the advantages of a classical education, the lower Irish sometimes make similes that bear a near resemblance to those of the admired poets of antiquity. A loyalist, during the late rebellion, was describing to us the number of the rebels who had gathered on one spot, and were dispersed by the king's army; rallied, and were again put to flight.
"They were," said he, "like swarms of flies on a summer's day, that you brush away with your hand, and still they will be returning."
There is a simile of Homer's which, literally translated, runs thus: "As the numerous troops of flies about a shepherd's cottage in the spring, when the milk moistens the pails, such numbers of Greeks stood in the field against the Trojans." Lord Kames observes, that it is false taste to condemn such comparisons for the lowness of the images introduced. In fact, great objects cannot be degraded by comparison with small ones in these similes, because the only point of resemblance is number; the mind instantly perceives this, and therefore requires no other species of similitude.
When we attempt to judge of the genius of the lower classes of the people, we must take care that we are not under the influence of any prejudice of an aristocratic or literary nature. But this is no easy effort of liberty.
"
Agk! Dublin, sweet Jasus be wid you!" exclaimed a poor Irishman, as he stood on the deck of a vessel, which was carrying him out of the bay of Dublin. The pathos of this poor fellow will not probably affect delicate sensibility, because he says
wid instead of
with, and
Jasus instead of
Jesus. Adam Smith is certainly right in his theory, that the sufferings of those in exalted stations have generally most power to command our sympathy. The very same sentiment of sorrow at leaving his country, which was expressed so awkwardly by the poor Irishman, appears, to every reader of taste, exquisitely pathetic from the lips of Mary queen of Scots.
"Farewell, France! Farewell, beloved country! which I shall never more behold!" [2]
[Footnote 2: Vide Robertson's History of Scotland.]
In anger as well as in sorrow the Irishman is eloquent. A gentleman who was lately riding through the county of ----, in Ireland, to canvass, called to ask a vote from a poor man, who was planting willows in a little garden by the road side.
"You have a vote, my good sir, I am told," said the candidate, in an insinuating tone.
The poor man stuck the willow which he had in his hand into the ground, and with a deliberate pace came towards the candidate to parley with him.
"Please your honour," said he, gravely, "I have a vote, and I have not a vote."
"How can that be?"
"I will tell you, sir," said he, leaning, or rather lying down slowly upon the back of the ditch facing the road, so that the gentleman, who was on horseback, could see only his head and arms.
"Sir," said he, "out of this little garden, with my five acres of land and my own labour, I once had a freehold; but I have been robbed of my freehold: and who do you think has robbed me? why, that man!" pointing to his landlord's steward, who stood beside the candidate. "With my own hands I sowed my own ground with oats, and a fine crop I expected--but I never reaped that crop: not a bushel, no, nor half a bushel, did I ever see; for into my little place comes this man, with I don't know how many more, with their shovels and their barrows, and their horses and their cars, and to work they fell, and they ran a road straight through the best part of my land, turning all to heaps of rubbish, and a bad road it was, and a bad time of year to make it! But where was
I when he did this? not where I am now," said the orator, raising himself up and standing firm; "not as you see me now, but lying on my back in my bed in a fever. When I got up I was not able to make my rent out of my land. Besides myself, I had my five children to support. I sold my clothes, and have never been able to buy any since but such as a recruit could sell, who was in haste to get into regimentals--such clothes as these," said he, looking down at his black rags. "Soon I had nothing to eat: but that's not all. I am a weaver, sir: for my rent they seized my two looms; then I had nothing to do. But of all this I do not complain. There was an election some time ago in this county, and a man rode up to me in this garden as you do now, and asked me for my vote, but I refused him, for I was steady to my landlord. The gentleman observed I was a poor man, and asked if I wanted for nothing? but all did not signify; so he rode on gently, and at the corner of the road, within view of my garden, I saw him drop a purse, and I knew, by his looking at me, it was on purpose for me to pick it up. After a while he came back, thinking, to be sure, I had taken up the purse, and had changed my mind, but he found his purse where he left it. My landlord knew all this, and he promised to see justice done me, but he forgot. Then, as for the candidate's lady, before the election nothing was too fair-speaking for me; but afterward, in my distress, when I applied to her to get me a loom, which she could have had from
the Linen Board by only asking for it, her answer to me was, 'I don't know that I shall ever want a vote again in the county.'
"Now, sir," continued he, "when justice is done to me (and no sooner), I shall be glad to assist my landlord or his friend. I know who
you are, sir, very well: you bear a good character: success to you! but I have no vote to give to you or any man."
"If I were to attempt to make you any amends for what you have suffered," replied the candidate, "I should do you an injury; it would be said that I had bribed you; but I will repeat your story where it will meet with attention. I cannot, however, tell it so well as you have told it."
"No, sir," was his answer, "for you cannot feel it as I do."
This is almost in terms the conclusion of Pope's epistle from Eloisa to Abelard:--
"He best can paint them who shall feel them most."
In objurgation and pathetic remonstrancing eloquence, the females of the lower class in Ireland are not inferior to the men. A thin tall woman wrapped in a long cloak, the hood of which was drawn over her head, and shaded her pale face, came to a gentleman to complain of the cruelty of her landlord.
"He is the most hard-hearted man alive, so he is, sir," said she; "he has just seized all I have, which, God knows, is little enough! and has driven my cow to pound, the only cow I have, and only dependence I have for a drop of milk to drink; and the cow itself too standing there starving in the pound, for not a wisp of hay would he give to cow or Christian to save their lives, if it was ever so! And the rent for which he is driving me, please your honour, has not been due but one week: a hard master he is; but these
middle men are all so, one and all. Oh! if it had been but my lot to be a tenant to a
gentleman born, like your honour, who is the poor man's friend, and the orphan's, and the widow's--the friend of them that have none other. Long life to you! and long may you live to reign over us! Would you but speak three words to my landlord, to let my cow out of pound, and give me a fortnight's time, that I might see and fatten her to sell against the fair, I could pay him then all honestly, and not be racked entirely, and he would be ashamed to refuse your honour, and afraid to disoblige the like of you, or get your ill-will. May the blessing of Heaven be upon you, if you'll just send and speak to him three words for the poor woman and widow, that has none other to speak for her in the wide world!"
Moved by this lamentable story, the effect of which the woman's whole miserable appearance corroborated and heightened, the gentleman sent immediately for her hard-hearted landlord. The landlord appeared; not a gentleman, not a rich man, as the term landlord might denote, but a stout, square, stubbed, thick-limbed, grey-eyed man, who seemed to have come smoking hot from hard labour. The gentleman repeated the charge made against him by the poor widow, and mildly remonstrated on his cruelty: the man heard all that was said with a calm but unmoved countenance.
"And now have you done?" said he, turning to the woman, who had recommenced her lamentations. "Look at her standing there, sir. It's easy for her to put on her long cloak, and to tell her long story, and to make her poor mouth to your honour; but if you are willing to hear, I'll tell you what she is, and what I am. She is one that has none but herself in this world to provide for; she is one that is able to afford herself a glass of whiskey when she pleases, and she pleases it often; she is one that never denies herself the bit of
staggering bob[3] when in season; she is one that has a snug house well thatched to live in all the year round, and nothing to do or nothing that she does; and this is the way of her life, and this is what she is. And what am I? I am the father of eight children, and I have a wife and myself to provide for. I am a man that is at hard labour of one kind or another from sunrise to sunset. The straw that thatched the house she lives in I brought two miles on my back; the walls of the house she lives in I built with my own hands; I did the same by five other houses, and they are all sound and dry, and good to live in, summer or winter. I set them for rent to put bread into my children's mouth, and after all I cannot get it! And to support my eight children, and my wife, and myself, what have I in this world," cried he, striding suddenly with colossal firmness upon his sturdy legs, and raising to heaven arms which looked like fore-shortenings of the limbs of Hercules; "what have
I in this wide world but these four bones?" [4]
[Footnote 3: Slink calf.]
[Footnote 4: This was written down a few minutes after it had been spoken.]
No provocation could have worked up a phlegmatic English countryman to this pitch of eloquence. He never suffers his anger to evaporate in idle figures of speech: it is always concentrated in a few words, which he repeats in reply to every argument, persuasive, or invective, that can be employed to irritate or to assuage his wrath. We recollect having once been present at a scene between an English gentleman and a churchwarden, whose feelings were grievously hurt by the disturbance that had been given to certain bones in levelling a wall which separated the churchyard from the pleasure ground of the lord of the manor. The bones belonged, as the churchwarden believed or averred, to his great great grandmother, though how they were identified it might be difficult to explain to an indifferent judge; yet we are to suppose that the confirmation of the suspicion was strong and satisfactory to the party concerned. The pious great great grandson's feelings were all in arms, but
indignation did not inspire him with a single poetic idea or expression. In his eloquence, indeed, there was the principal requisite, action: in reply to all that could be said, he repeatedly struck his long oak stick perpendicularly upon the floor, and reiterated these words--
"It's death, sir! death by the law! It's sacrilege, sir! sacrilege by act of parliament! It's death, sir! death by the law! and the law I'll have of him, for it's lawful to have the law."
This was the whole range of his ideas, even when the passions had tumbled them all out of their dormitories.
Innumerable fresh instances of Irish eloquence and wit crowd upon our recollection, but we forbear. The examples we have cited are taken from real life, and given without alteration or embellishment. _