Penelope's Irish Experiences

How many exiles and wanderers, both those who have no fortune and those who have failed to win it, dream of these cabin rows, these sweet-scented boreens with their ‘banks of furze unprofitably gay,’ these leaking thatches with the purple loosestrife growing in their ragged seams, and, looking backward across the distance of time and space, give the humble spot a tender thought, because after all it was in their dear native isle!

‘Pearly are the skies in the country of my fathers,
Purple are thy mountains, home of my heart;
Mother of my yearning, love of all my longings,
Keep me in remembrance long leagues apart.’

I have been thinking in this strain because of an old dame in the first cabin in Lisdara row, whose daughter is in America, and who can talk of nothing else. She shows us the last letter, with its postal order for sixteen shillings, that Mida sent from New York, with little presents for blind Timsy, ‘dark since he were three years old,’ and for lame Dan, or the ‘Bocca,’ as he is called in Lisdara. Mida was named for the virgin saint of Killeedy in Limerick.[9 - Saint Mide, the Brigit of Munster.] “And it’s she that’s good enough to bear a saint’s name, glory be to God!” exclaims the old mother returning Mida’s photograph to a hole in the wall where the pig cannot possibly molest it.

At the far end of the row lives ‘Omadhaun Pat.’ He is a ‘little sthrange,’ you understand; not because he was born with too small a share of wit, but because he fell asleep one evening when he was lying on the grass up by the old fort, and—‘well, he was niver the same thing since.’ There are places in Ireland, you must know, where if you lie down upon the green earth and sink into untimely slumber, you will ‘wake silly’; or, for that matter, although it is doubtless a risk, you may escape the fate of waking silly, and wake a poet! Carolan fell asleep upon a faery rath, and it was the faeries who filled his ears with music, so that he was haunted by the tunes ever afterward; and perhaps all poets, whether they are conscious of it or not, fall asleep on faery raths before they write sweet songs.

Little Omadhaun Pat is pale, hollow-eyed, and thin; but that, his mother says, is ‘because he is over-studyin’ for his confirmation.’ The great day is many weeks away, but to me it seems likely that, when the examination comes, Pat will be where he will know more than the priests!

Next door lives old Biddy Tuke. She is too aged to work, and she sits in her doorway, always a pleasant figure in her short woollen petticoat, her little shawl, and her neat white cap. She has pitaties for food, with stirabout of Indian meal once a day (oatmeal is too dear), tea occasionally when there is sixpence left from the rent, and she has more than once tasted bacon in her eighty years of life; more than once, she tells me proudly, for it’s she that’s had the good sons to help her a bit now and then,—four to carry her and one to walk after, which is the Irish notion of an ideal family.

“It’s no chuckens I do be havin’ now, ma’am,” she says, “but it’s a darlin’ flock I had ten year ago, whin Dinnis was harvestin’ in Scotland! Sure it was two-and-twinty chuckens I had on the floore wid meself that year, ma’am.”

“Oh, it’s a conthrary world, that’s a mortial fact!” as Phelim O’Rourke is wont to say when his cough is bad; and for my life I can frame no better wish for ould Biddy Tuke and Omadhaun Pat, dark Timsy and the Bocca, than that they might wake, one of these summer mornings, in the harvest-field of the seventh heaven. That place is reserved for the saints, and surely these unfortunates, acquainted with grief like Another, might without difficulty find entrance there.

I am not wise enough to say how much of all this squalor and wretchedness and hunger is the fault of the people themselves, how much of it belongs to circumstances and environment, how much is the result of past errors of government, how much is race, how much is religion. I only know that children should never be hungry, that there are ignorant human creatures to be taught how to live; and if it is a hard task, the sooner it is begun the better, both for teachers and pupils. It is comparatively easy to form opinions and devise remedies, when one knows the absolute truth of things; but it is so difficult to find the truth here, or at least there are so many and such different truths to weigh in the balance,—the Protestant and the Roman Catholic truth, the landlord’s and the tenant’s, the Nationalist’s and the Unionist’s truth! I am sadly befogged, and so, pushing the vexing questions all aside, I take dark Timsy, Bocca Lynch, and Omadhaun Pat up on the green hillside near the ruined fort, to tell them stories, and teach them some of the thousand things that happier, luckier children know.

This is an island of anomalies: the Irish peasants will puzzle you, perplex you, disappoint you with their inconsistencies, but keep from liking them if you can! There are a few cleaner and more comfortable homes in Lisdara and Knockcool than when we came, and Benella has been invaluable, although her reforms, as might be expected, are of an unusual character, and with her the wheels of progress never move silently, as they should, but always squeak. With the two golden sovereigns given her to spend, she has bought scissors, knives, hammers, boards, sewing materials, knitting needles, and yarn,—everything to work with, and nothing to eat, drink, or wear, though Heaven knows there is little enough of such things in Lisdara.

“The quicker you wear ‘em out, the better you’ll suit me,” she says to the awestricken Lisdarians. “I’m a workin’ woman myself, an’ it’s my ladies’ money I’ve spent this time; but I’ll make out to keep you in brooms and scrubbin’ brushes, if only you’ll use ‘em! You mustn’t take offence at anything I say to you, for I’m part Irish—my grandmother was Mary Boyce of Trim; and if she hadn’t come away and settled in Salem, Massachusetts, mebbe I wouldn’t have known a scrubbin’ brush by sight myself!”

Chapter XXI. Lachrymae Hibernicae

‘What ails you, Sister Erin, that your face
Is, like your mountains, still bedewed with tears?
.   .   .   .   .   .   .
Forgive! forget! lest harsher lips should say,
Like your turf fire, your rancour smoulders long,
And let Oblivion strew Time’s ashes o’er your wrong.’

    Alfred Austin.

At tea-time, and again after our simple dinner—for Bridget Thunder’s repertory is not large, and Benella’s is quite unsuited to the Knockcool markets—we wend our way to a certain house that stands by itself on the road to Lisdara. It is only a whitewashed cabin with green window trimmings, but it is a larger and more comfortable one than we commonly see, and it is the perfection of neatness within and without. The stone wall that encloses it is whitewashed too, and the iron picket railing at the top is painted bright green; the stones on the posts are green also, and there is the prettiest possible garden, with nicely cut borders of box. In fine, if ever there was a cheery place to look at, Sarsfield Cottage is that one; and if ever there was a cheerless gentleman, it is Mr. Jordan, who dwells there. Mrs. Wogan Odevaine commended him to us as the man of all others with whom to discuss Irish questions, if we wanted, for once in a way, to hear a thoroughly disaffected, outraged, wrong-headed, and rancorous view of things.

“He is an encyclopaedia, and he is perfectly delightful on any topic in the universe but the wrongs of Ireland,” said she; “not entirely sane and yet a good father, and a good neighbour, and a good talker. Faith, he can abuse the English government with any man alive! He has a smaller grudge against you Americans, perhaps, than against most of the other nations, so possibly he may elect to discuss something more cheerful than our national grievances; if he does, and you want a livelier topic, just mention—let me see—you might speak of Wentworth, who destroyed Ireland’s woollen industry, though it is true he laid the foundation of the linen trade, so he wouldn’t do, though Mr. Jordan is likely to remember the former point and forget the latter. Well, just breathe the words ‘Catholic Disqualification’ or ‘Ulster Confiscation,’ and you will have as pretty a burst of oratory as you’d care to hear. You remember that exasperated Englishman who asked in the House why Irishmen were always laying bare their grievances. And Major O’Gorman bawled across the floor, ‘Because they want them redressed!’”

Salemina and I went to call on Mr. Jordan the very next day after our arrival at Knockcool. Over the sitting-room or library door at Sarsfield Cottage is a coat of arms with the motto of the Jordans, ‘Percussus surgam’; and as our friend is descended from Richard Jordan of Knock, who died on the scaffold at Claremorris in the memorable year 1798, I find that he is related to me, for one of the De Exeter Jordans married Penelope O’Connor, daughter of the king of Connaught. He took her to wife, too, when the espousal of anything Irish, names, language, apparel, customs, or daughters, was high treason, and meant instant confiscation of estates. I never thought of mentioning the relationship, for obviously a family cannot hold grievances for hundreds of years and bequeath a sense of humour at the same time.

The name Jordan is derived, it appears, from a noble ancestor who was banner-bearer in the Crusades and who distinguished himself in many battles, but particularly in one fought against the infidels on the banks of the River Jordan in the Holy Land. In this conflict he was felled to the ground three times during the day, but owing to his gigantic strength, his great valour, and the number of the Saracens prostrated by his sword, he succeeded in escaping death and keeping the banner of the Cross hoisted; hence by way of eminence he was called Jordan; and the motto of this illustrious family ever since has been, ‘Though I fall I rise.’

Mr. Jordan’s wife has been long dead, but he has four sons, only one of them, Napper Tandy, living at home. Theobald Wolfe Tone is practising law in Dublin; Hamilton Rowan is a physician in Cork; and Daniel O’Connell, commonly called ‘Lib’ (a delicate reference to the Liberator), is still a lad at Trinity. It is a great pity that Mr. Jordan could not have had a larger family, that he might have kept fresh in the national heart the names of a few more patriots; for his library walls, ‘where Memory sits by the altar she has raised to Woe,’ are hung with engravings and prints of celebrated insurgents, rebels, agitators, demagogues, denunciators, conspirators,—pictures of anybody, in a word, who ever struck a blow, right or wrong, well or ill judged, for the green isle. That gallant Jacobite, Patrick Sarsfield, Burke, Grattan, Flood, and Robert Emmet stand shoulder to shoulder with three Fenian gentlemen, names Allan, Larkin, and O’Brien, known in ultra-Nationalist circles as the ‘Manchester martyrs.’ For some years after this trio was hanged in Salford jail, it appears that the infant mind was sadly mixed in its attempt to separate knowledge in the concrete from the more or less abstract information contained in the Catechism; and many a bishop was shocked, when asking in the confirmation service, “Who are the martyrs?” to be told, “Allan, Larkin, and O’Brien, me lord!”

Francesca says she longs to smuggle into Mr. Jordan’s library a picture of Tom Steele, one of Daniel O’Connell’s henchmen, to whom he gave the title of Head Pacificator of Ireland. Many amusing stories are told of this official, of his gaudy uniform, his strut and swagger, and his pompous language. At a political meeting on one occasion, he attacked, it seems, one Peter Purcell, a Dublin tradesman who had fallen out with the Liberator on some minor question. “Say no more on the subject, Tom,” cried O’Connell, who was in the chair, “I forgive Peter from the bottom of my heart.”

“You may forgive him, liberator and saviour of my country,” rejoined Steele, in a characteristic burst of his amazingly fervent rhetoric. “Yes, you, in the discharge of your ethereal functions as the moral regenerator of Ireland, may forgive him; but, revered leader, I also have functions of my own to perform; and I tell you that, as Head Pacificator of Ireland, I can never forgive the diabolical villain that dared to dispute your august will.”

The doughty Steele, who appears to have been but poorly fitted by nature for his office, was considered at the time to be half a madman, but as Sir James O’Connell, Daniel’s candid brother, said, “And who the divil else would take such a job?” At any rate, when we gaze at Mr. Jordan’s gallery, imagining the scene that would ensue were the breath of life breathed into the patriots’ quivering nostrils, we feel sure that the Head Pacificator would be kept busy.

Dear old white-haired Mr. Jordan, known in select circles as ‘Grievance Jordan,’ sitting in his library surrounded by his denunciators, conspirators, and martyrs, with incendiary documents piled mountains high on his desk—what a pathetic anachronism he is after all!

The shillelagh is hung on the wall now, for the most part, and faction fighting is at an end; but in the very last moments of it there were still ‘ructions’ between the Fitzgeralds and the Moriartys, and the age-old reason of the quarrel was, according to the Fitzgeralds, the betrayal of the ‘Cause of Ireland.’ The particular instance occurred in the sixteenth century, but no Fitzgerald could ever afterward meet any Moriarty at a fair without crying, “Who dare tread on the tail of me coat?” and inviting him to join in the dishcussion with shticks. This practically is Mr. Jordan’s position; and if an Irishman desires to live entirely in the past, he can be as unhappy as any man alive. He is writing a book, which Mrs. Wogan Odevaine insists is to be called The Groans of Ireland; but after a glance at a page of memoranda pencilled in a collection of Swift’s Irish Tracts that he lent to me (the volume containing that ghastly piece of irony, The Modest Proposal for Preventing the Poor of Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents and Country), I have concluded that he is editing a Catalogue of Irish Wrongs, Alphabetically Arranged. This idea pleased Mrs. Wogan Odevaine extremely; and when she drove over to tea, bringing several cheerful young people to call upon us, she proposed, in the most light-hearted way in the world, to play what she termed the Grievance Game, an intellectual diversion which she had invented on the instant. She proposed it, apparently, with a view of showing us how small a knowledge of Ireland’s ancient wrongs is the property of the modern Irish girl, and how slight a hold on her memory and imagination have the unspeakably bitter days of the long ago.

We were each given pencil and paper, and two or three letters of the alphabet, and bidden to arrange the wrongs of Ireland neatly under them, as we supposed Mr. Jordan to be doing for the instruction and the depression of posterity. The result proved that Mrs. Odevaine was a true prophet, for the youngest members of the coterie came off badly enough, and read their brief list of grievances with much chagrin at their lack of knowledge; the only piece of information they possessed in common being the inherited idea that England never had understood Ireland, never would, never could, never should, never might understand her.

Rosetta Odevaine succeeded in remembering, for A, F, and H, Absenteeism, Flight of the Earls, Famine, and Hunger; her elder sister, Eileen, fresh from college, was rather triumphant with O and P, giving us Oppression of the Irish Tenantry, Penal Laws, Protestant Supremacy, Poynings’ Law, Potato Rot, and Plantations. Their friend, Rhona Burke, had V, W, X, Y, Z, and succeeded only in finding Wentworth and Woollen Trade Destroyed, until Miss Odevaine helped her with Wood’s Halfpence, about which everybody else had to be enlightened; and there was plenty of laughter when Francesca suggested for V, Vipers Expelled by St. Patrick. Salemina carried off the first prize; but we insisted C and D were the easiest letters; at any rate, her list showed great erudition, and would certainly have pleased Mr. Jordan. C, Church Cess, Catholic Disqualification, Crimes Act of 1887, Confiscations, Cromwell, Carrying Away of Lia Fail (Stone of Destiny) from Tara. D, Destruction of Trees on Confiscated Lands, Discoverers (of flaws in Irish titles), Debasing of the Coinage by James I.

Mrs. Odevaine came next with R and S. R, Recall of Lord Fitzwilliams by Pitt, Rundale Land Tenure, Rack-Rents, Ribbonism. S, Schism Act, Supremacy Act, Sixth Act of George I.

I followed with T and U, having unearthed Tithes and the Test Act for the first, and Undertakers, the Acts of Union and Uniformity, for the second; while Francesca, who had been given I, J, K, L, and M, disgraced herself by failing on all the letters but the last, under which she finally catalogued one particularly obnoxious wrong in Middlemen.

This ignorance of the past may have its bright side, after all, though to speak truthfully, it did show a too scanty knowledge of national history. But if one must forget, it is as well to begin with the wrongs of far-off years, those ‘done to your ancient name or wreaked upon your race.’

Part Fourth—Connaught

Chapter XXII. The Weeping West

‘Veiled in your mist, and diamonded with showers.’

    Alfred Austin.

    Shan Van Vocht Hotel,
    Heart of Connemara.

Shan Van Vocht means in English the ‘Poor Little Old Woman,’ one of the many endearing names given to Ireland in the Gaelic. There is, too, a well-known rebel song called by this title—one which was not only written in Irish and English, but which was translated into French for the soldiers at Brest who were to invade Ireland under Hoche.

We had come from Knockcool, Donegal, to Westport, in County Mayo, and the day was enlivened by two purely Irish touches, one at the beginning and one at the end. We alighted at a certain railway junction to await our train, and were interested in a large detachment of soldiers—leaving for a long journey, we judged, by the number of railway carriages and the amount of luggage and stores. In every crowded compartment there were two or three men leaning out over the locked doors; for the guard was making ready to start. All were chatting gaily with their sweethearts, wives, and daughters, save one gloomy fellow sitting alone in a corner, searching the crowd with sad eyes for a wished-for face or a last greeting. The bell rang, the engine stirred; suddenly a pretty, rosy girl flew breathlessly down the platform, pushing her way through the groups of onlookers. The man’s eyes lighted; he rose to his feet, but the other fellows blocked the way; the door was locked, and he had but one precious moment. Still he was equal to the emergency, for he raised his fist and with one blow shattered the window, got his kiss, and the train rumbled away, with his victorious smile set in a frame of broken glass! I liked that man better than any one I’ve seen since Himself deserted me for his Duty! How I hope the pretty girl will be faithful, and how I hope that an ideal lover will not be shot in South Africa!

And if he was truly Irish, so was the porter at a little way station where we stopped in the dark, after being delayed interminably at Claremorris by some trifling accident. We were eight persons packed into a second-class carriage, and totally ignorant of our whereabouts; but the porter, opening the door hastily, shouted, “Is there anny one there for here?”—a question so vague and illogical that none of us said anything in reply, but simply gazed at one another, and then laughed as the train went on.

We are on a here-to-day-and-gone-to-morrow journey, determined to avoid the railways, and travel by private conveyance and the public ‘long cars,’ just for a glimpse of the Weeping West before we settle down quietly in County Meath for our last few weeks of Irish life.

Thus far it has been a pursuit of the picturesque under umbrellas; in fact, we’re desthroyed wid the dint of the damp! ‘Moist and agreeable—that’s the Irish notion both for climate and company.’ If the barometer bore any relation to the weather, we could plan our drives with more discretion; but it sometimes remains as steady as a rock during two days of sea mist, and Francesca, finding it wholly regardless of gentle tapping, lost her temper on one occasion and rapped it so severely as to crack the glass. That this peculiarity of Irish barometers has been noted before we are sure, because of this verse written by a native bard:—

‘When the glass is up to thirty,
Be sure the weather will be dirty.
When the glass is high, O very!
There’ll be rain in Cork and Kerry.
When the glass is low, O Lork!
There’ll be rain in Kerry and Cork!’

I might add:—

And when the glass has climbed its best,
The sky is weeping in the West.