The O'Donoghue: Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago

“A neighbour! but bless my heart, that makes it worse.”

“Sure, sir, it was nothing to speak of; it was Darby Lenahan said your honour’s bull was a pride to the place, and Shamus said the O’Donoghue’s was a finer baste any day; and from one word they came to another, and the end of it was, Lenahan got a crack on the scull that laid him Quivering on the daisies.”

“Savage ruffian, that Shamus; I’ll keep a sharp eye on him.”

“Faix, and there’s no need – he’s a Ballyvourney man.”

The old baronet looked up from his large volume, and seemed for a moment undecided whether he should not ask the meaning of a phrase, which, occurring at every moment, appeared most perplexing in signification; but the thought that by doing so, he should confess his ignorance before the sub-agent, deterred him, and he resolved to leave the interpretation to time and his own ingenuity.

“What of this old fellow, who has the mill? – has he consented to have the overshot wheel?”

“He tried it on Tuesday, sir,” said Sam, with an almost imperceptible smile, “and the sluice gave way, and carried off the house and the end of the barn into the tail race. He’s gone in, to take an action again your honour for the damages.”

“Ungrateful rascal! I told him I’d be at the whole expense myself, and I explained the great saving of water the new wheel would ensure him.”

“True, indeed, sir; but as the stream never went dry for thirty years, the ould idiot thought it would last his time. Begorra, he had enough of water on Tuesday, anyhow.”

“He’s a Ballyvourney man, isn’t he?”

“He is sir,” replied Wylie, with the gravity of a judge.

Another temptation crossed Sir Marmaduke’s mind, but he withstood it, and went on —

“The mountain has then been divided as I ordered, has it?”

“Yes, sir; the lines were all marked out before Saturday.”

“Well, I suppose the people were pleased to know, that they have, each, their own separate pasturage?”

“Indeed, and, sir, I won’t tell you a lie – they are not; they’d rather it was the ould way still.”

“What, have I taken all this trouble for nothing then? – is it possible that they’d rather have their cattle straying wild about the country, than see them grazing peaceably on their own land?”

“That’s just it, sir; for, you see, when they had the mountain among them, they fed on what they could get; one, had maybe a flock of goats, another, maybe a sheep or two, a heifer, an ass, or a bullsheen.

“A what?”

“A little bull, your honour; and they didn’t mind if one had more nor another, nor where they went, for the place was their own; but now. that it is all marked out and divided, begorra, if a beast is got trespassing, out comes some one with a stick, and wallops him back again, and then the man that owns him, natural enough, would’nt see shame on his cow, or whatever it was, and that leads to a fight; and faix, there’s not a day now, but there’s blood spilt over the same boundaries.”

“They’re actually savages!” said Sir Marmaduke, as he threw his spectacles over his forehead, and dropped his pen from his fingers in mute amazement; “I never heard – I never read of such a people.”

“They’re Ballyvourney men,” chimed in Wylie, assentively.

“D – d – ”

Sir Marmaduke checked himself suddenly, for the idea flashed on him that he ought at least to know what he was cursing, and so he abstained from such a perilous course, and resumed his search in the big volume. Alas! his pursuit of information was not more successful as he proceeded: every moment disclosed some case, where, in his honest efforts to improve the condition of the people, from ignorance of their habits, from total unconsciousness of the social differences of two nations, essentially unlike, he discovered the failure of his plans, and unhesitatingly ascribed to the prejudices of the peasantry, what with more justice might have been charged against his own unskilfulness. He forgot that a people long neglected cannot at once be won back – that confidence is a plant of slow growth; but more than all, he lost sight of the fact, that to engraft the customs and wants of richer communities, upon a people sunk in poverty and want – to introduce among them new and improved modes of tillage – to inculcate notions which have taken ages to grow up to maturity, in more favoured lands, must be attended with failure and disappointment. On both sides the elements of success were wanting. The peasantry saw – for, however strange it may seem, through every phase of want and wretchedness their intelligence and apprehension suffer no impairment – they saw his anxiety to serve them, they believed him to be kind-hearted and well-wishing, but they knew him to be also wrong-headed and ignorant of the country, and what he gained on the score of good feeling, he lost on the score of good sense; and Paddy, however humble his lot, however hard his condition, has an innate reverence for ability, and can rarely feel attachment to the heart, where he has not felt respect for the head. It is not a pleasant confession to make, yet one might explain it without detriment to the character of the people, but assuredly, popularity in Ireland would seem to depend far more on intellectual resources, than on moral principle and rectitude. Romanism has fostered this feeling, so natural is it to the devotee to regard power and goodness as inseparable, and to associate the holiness of religion, with the sway and influence of the priesthood. If the tenantry regarded the landlord as a simple-hearted, crotchety old gentleman with no harm in him, the landlord believed them to be almost incurably sunk in barbarism and superstition. Their native courtesy in declining to accept suggestions they never meant to adopt, he looked on as duplicity; he could not understand that the matter-of-fact sternness of English expression has no parallel here; that politeness, as they understood it, has a claim, to which truth itself may be sacrificed; and he was ever accepting in a literal sense, what the people intended to be received with its accustomed qualification.

But a more detrimental result followed than even these: the truly well-conducted and respectable portion of the tenantry felt ashamed to adopt plans and notions they knew inapplicable and unsuited to their condition; they therefore stood aloof, and by their honest forbearance incurred the reproach of obstinacy and barbarism; while the idle, the lazy, and the profligate, became converts to any doctrine or class of opinion, which promised an easy life and the rich man’s favour. These, at first sight, found favour with him, as possessing more intelligence and tractibility than their neighbours, and for them, cottages were built, rents abated, improved stock introduced, and a hundred devices organized to make them an example for all imitation. Unhappily the conditions of the contract were misconceived: the people believed that all the landlord required was a patient endurance of his benevolence; they never reckoned on any reciprocity in duty; they never dreamed that a Swiss cottage cannot be left to the fortunes of a mud cabin; that stagnant pools before the door, weed-grown fields, and broken fences, harmonize ill with rural pailings, drill cultivation, and trim hedges. They took all they could get, but assuredly they never understood the obligation of repayment. They thought (not very unreasonably perhaps), “it’s the old gentleman’s hobby that we should adopt a number of habits and customs we were never used to – live in strange houses and work with strange tools. Be it so; we are willing to gratify him,” said they, “but let him pay for his whistle.”

He, on the other hand, thought they were greedily adopting what they only endured, and deemed all converts to his opinion who lived on his bounty. Hence, each morning presented an array of the most worthless, irreclaimable of the tenantry around his door, all eagerly seeking to be included in some new scheme of regeneration, by which they understood three meals a day and nothing to do.

How to play off these two distinct and very opposite classes, Mr. Sam Wylie knew to perfection; and while he made it appear that one portion of the tenantry whose rigid rejection of Sir Marmaduke’s doctrines proceeded from a sturdy spirit of self-confidence and independence, were a set of wild, irreclaimable savages; he softly insinuated his compliments on the success in other quarters, while, in his heart he well knew what results were about to happen.

“They’re here now, sir,” said Wylie, as he glanced through the window towards the lawn, where, with rigid punctuality Sir Marmaduke each morning held his levee; and where, indeed, a very strange and motley crowd appeared.

The old baronet threw up the sash, and as he did so, a general mar-mur of blessings and heavenly invocations met his ears – sounds, that if one were to judge from his brightening eye and beaming countenance, he relished well. No longer, however, as of old, suppliant, and entreating, with tremulous voice and shrinking gaze did they make their advances. These people were now enlisted in his army of “regenerators”; they were converts to the landlords manifold theories of improved agriculture, neat cottages, pig-styes, dove-cots, bee-hives, and heaven knows what other suggestive absurdity, ease and affluence ever devised to plate over the surface of rude and rugged misery.

“The Lord bless your honour every morning you rise, ‘tis the iligant little place ye gave me to live in. Musha, ‘tis happy and comfortable I do be every night, now, barrin’ that the slates does be falling betimes – bad luck to them for slates, one of them cut little Joe’s head this morning, and I brought him up for a bit of a plaster.”

This was the address of a stout, middle-aged woman, with a man’s great coat around her in lieu of a cloak.

“Slates falling – why doesn’t your husband fasten them on again? he said he was a handy fellow, and could do any thing about a house.”

“It was no lie then; Thady Morris is a good warrant for a job any day, and if it was thatch was on it – ”

“Thatch – why, woman, I’ll have no thatch; I don’t want the cabins burned down, nor will I have them the filthy hovels they used to be.”

“Why would your honour? – sure there’s rayson and sinse agin it,” was the chorus of all present, while the woman resumed —

“Well, he tried that same too, your honour, and if he did, by my sowl, it was worse for him, for when he seen the slates going off every minit with the wind, he put the harrow on the top – ”

“The harrow – put the harrow on the roof?”

“Just so – wasn’t it natural? But as sure as the wind riz, down came the harrow, and stript every dirty kippeen of a slate away with it.”

“So the roof is off,” said Sir Marmaduke with stifled rage.

“Tis as clean as my five fingers, the same rafters,” said she with unmoved gravity.

“This is too bad – Wylie, do you hear this?” said the old gentleman, with a face dark with passion.

“Aye,” chorused in some half dozen friends of the woman – “nothing stands the wind like the thatch.”

Wylie whispered some words to his master, and by a side gesture, motioned to the woman to take her departure. The hint was at once taken, and her place immediately filled by another. This was a short little old fellow, in yellow rags, his face concealed by a handkerchief, on removing which, he discovered a countenance that bore no earthly resemblance to that of a human being: the eyes were entirely concealed by swollen masses of cheek and eye-lid – the nose might have been eight noses – and the round immense lips, and the small aperture between, looked like the opening in a ballot-box.

“Who is this? – what’s the matter here?” said Sir Marmaduke, as he stared in mingled horror and astonishment at the object before him.

“Faix, ye may well ax,” said the little man, in a thick guttural voice. “Sorra one of the neighbours knew me this morning. I’m Tim M’Garrey, of the cross-roads.”

“What has happened to you then?” asked Sir Marmaduke, somewhat ruffled by the sturdy tone of the ragged fellow’s address.

“‘Tis your own doing, then – divil a less – you may be proud of your work.”

“My doing! – how do you dare to say so?”

“‘Tis no darin’ at all – ‘tis thrue, as I’m here. Them bloody beehives you made me take home wid me, I put them in a corner of the house, and by bad luck it was the pig’s corner, and, sorra bit, but she rooted them out, and upset them, and with that, the varmint fell upon us all, and it was two hours before we killed them – divil such a fight ever ye seen: Peggy had the beetle, and I the griddle, for flattening them agin the wall, and maybe we didn’t work hard, while the childer was roarin’ and bawlin’ for the bare life.”

“Gracious mercy, would this be credited? – could any man conceive barbarism like this?” cried Sir Marmaduke, as with uplifted hands he stood overwhelmed with amazement.