Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  “‘Yes; too well!’ said she, drawing back from my breath. And the aunt looked at her, and she at the aunt, and the sergeant stopped his nose, saying he had not been long enough in Ireland to love the smell of whiskey. I observed, that was an uncivil remark in the present company, and added, that I had not taken a drop that night, but one glass. At which he sneered, and said that was a bull and a blunder, but no wonder, as I was an Irishman. I replied in defence of myself and country. We went on from one smart word to another; and some of his soldiermen being of the company, he had the laugh against me still. I was vexed to see Rose bear so well what I could not bear myself. And the talk grew higher and higher; and from talking of blunders and such trifles, we got, I cannot myself tell you how, on to great party matters, and politics, and religion. And I was a catholic, and he a protestant; and there he had the thing still against me. The company seeing matters not agreeable, dropped off till none were left but the sergeant, and the aunt, and Rose, and myself. The aunt gave me a hint to part, but I would not take it; for I could not bear to go away worsted, and borne down as it were by the English faction, and Rose by to judge. The aunt was called out by one who wanted her to go to a funeral next day: the Englishman then let fall something about our Irish howl, and savages, which Rose herself said was uncivil, she being an Irish woman, which he, thinking only of making game on me, had forgot. I knocked him down, telling him that it was he that was the savage to affront a lady. As he got up he said that he’d have the law of me, if any law was to be had in Ireland.

  “‘The law!’ said I, ‘and you a soldier!’

  “‘Do you mean to call me coward?’ said he. ‘This is what an English soldier must not bear.’ With that he snatches at his arms that were beside him, asking me again, did I mean to call an Englishman coward?

  “‘Tell me first,’ said I, ‘did you mean to call us Irish savages?’

  “‘That’s no answer to my question,’ says he, ‘or only an Irish answer.’

  “‘It is not the worse for that, may be,” says I, very coolly, despising the man now, and just took up a knife, that was on the table, to cut off a button that was hanging at my knee. As I was opening of the knife he asks me, was I going to stab at him with my Irish knife, and directly fixes a bayonet at me; on which I seizes a musket and bayonet one of his men had left, telling him I knew the use of it as well as he or any Englishman, and better; for that I should never have gone, as he did, to charge it against an unarmed man.

  “‘You had your knife,’ said he, drawing back.

  “‘ If I had, it was not thinking of you,’ said I, throwing the knife away. ‘See! I’m armed like yourself now: fight me like a man and a soldier, if you dare,” says I.

  “‘Fight me, if you dare,’ says he.

  “Rose calls to me to stop; but we were both out of ourselves at the minute. We thrust at each other — he missed me — I hit him. Rose ran in between us to get the musket from my hand: it was loaded, and went off in the struggle, and the ball lodged in her body. She fell! and what happened next I cannot tell, for the sight left my eyes, and all sense forsook me. When I came to myself the house was full of people, going to and fro, some whispering, some crying; and till the words reached my ears, ‘Is she quite dead?’ I could not understand where I was, or what had happened. I wished to forget again, but could not. The whole truth came upon me, and yet I could not shed a tear; but just pushed my way through the crowd into the inner room, and up to the side of the bed. There she lay stretched, almost a corpse — quite still! Her sweet eyes closed, and no colour in her cheeks, that had been so rosy! I took hold of one of her hands, that hung down, and she then opens her eyes, and knew me directly, and smiles upon me, and says, ‘It was no fault of yours: take notice, all of you, it was no fault of his if I die; but that I won’t do for his sake, if I can help it!’ — that was the word she spoke. I thinking, from her speaking so strong, that she was not badly hurt, knelt down to whisper her, that if my breath did smell of spirits, it was the parting glass I had tasted before making the vow I had done against drink for her sake; and that there was nothing I would not do for her, if it would please God to spare her to me. She just pressed my hand, to show me she was sensible. The priest came in, and they forced our hands asunder, and carried me away out of the room. Presently there was a great cry, and I knew all was over.”

  Here the old man’s voice failed, and he turned his face from us. When he had somewhat recovered himself, to change the course of his thoughts, we asked whether he were prosecuted for his assault on the English sergeant, and what became of him?

  “Oh! to do him justice, as one should do to every one,” said the old man, “he behaved very handsome to me when I was brought to trial; and told the whole truth, only blamed himself more than I would have done, and said it was all his fault for laughing at me and my nation more than a man could bear, situated as I was. They acquitted me through his means. We shook hands, and he hoped all would go right with me, he said; but nothing ever went right with me after. I took little note ever after of worldly matters: all belonging to me went to rack and ruin. The hand of God was upon me: I could not help myself, nor settle mind or body to any thing. I heard them say sometimes I was a little touched in my head: however that might be I cannot say. But at the last I found it was as good for me to give all that was left to my friends, who were better able to manage, and more eager for it than I; and fancying a roving life would agree with me best, I quitted the place, taking nothing with me, but resolved to walk the world, and just trust to the charity of good Christians, or die, as it should please God. How I have lived so long He only knows, and his will be done.”

  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 kishes51 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.

  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 mor
e 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!” 52

  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.”

&
nbsp; “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!”