Sketches New and Old
Page 62
"PARTY CRIES" IN IRELAND
Belfast is a peculiarly religious community. This may be said of thewhole of the North of Ireland. About one-half of the people areProtestants and the other half Catholics. Each party does all it can tomake its own doctrines popular and draw the affections of the irreligioustoward them. One hears constantly of the most touching instances of thiszeal. A week ago a vast concourse of Catholics assembled at Armagh todedicate a new Cathedral; and when they started home again the roadwayswere lined with groups of meek and lowly Protestants who stoned them tillall the region round about was marked with blood. I thought that onlyCatholics argued in that way, but it seems to be a mistake.
Every man in the community is a missionary and carries a brick toadmonish the erring with. The law has tried to break this up, but notwith perfect success. It has decreed that irritating "party cries" shallnot be indulged in, and that persons uttering them shall be fined fortyshillings and costs. And so, in the police court reports every day, onesees these fines recorded. Last week a girl of twelve years old wasfined the usual forty shillings and costs for proclaiming in the publicstreets that she was "a Protestant." The usual cry is, "To hell with thePope!" or "To hell with the Protestants!" according to the utterer'ssystem of salvation.
One of Belfast's local jokes was very good. It referred to the uniformand inevitable fine of forty shillings and costs for uttering a partycry--and it is no economical fine for a poor man, either, by the way.They say that a policeman found a drunken man lying on the ground, up adark alley, entertaining himself with shouting, "To hell with!" "To hellwith!" The officer smelt a fine--informers get half.
"What's that you say?"
"To hell with!"
"To hell with who? To hell with what?"
"Ah, bedad, ye can finish it yourself--it's too expinsive for me!"
I think the seditious disposition, restrained by the economical instinct,is finely put in that.