Tales and Novels Volume IV Part 4

[8] _Pin_, read _pen_. It formerly was vulgarly p.r.o.nounced _pin_ in Ireland.

[9] _Her mark_. It _was_ the custom in Ireland for those who could not write to make a cross to stand for their signature, as was formerly the practice of our English monarchs. The Editor inserts the fac-simile of an Irish _mark_, which may hereafter be valuable to a judicious antiquary--

Her Judy X M'Quirk, Mark.

In bonds or notes, signed in this manner, a witness is requisite, as the name is frequently written by him or her.

[10] _Vows_.--It has been maliciously and unjustly hinted, that the lower cla.s.ses of the people in Ireland pay but little regard to oaths; yet it is certain that some oaths or vows have great power over their minds. Sometimes they swear they will be revenged on some of their neighbours; this is an oath that they are never known to break. But, what is infinitely more extraordinary and unaccountable, they sometimes make and keep a vow against whiskey; these vows are usually limited to a short time. A woman who has a drunken husband is most fortunate if she can prevail upon him to go to the priest, and make a vow against whiskey for a year, or a month, or a week, or a day.

[11] _Gossoon_, a little boy--from the French word _garcon_. In most Irish families there _used_ to be a barefooted gossoon, who was slave to the cook and butler, and who in fact, without wages, did all the hard work of the house. Gossoons were always employed as messengers. The Editor has known a gossoon to go on foot, without shoes or stockings, fifty-one English miles between sunrise and sunset.

[12] At St. Patrick's meeting, London, March, 1806, the Duke of Suss.e.x said he had the honour of bearing an Irish t.i.tle, and, with the permission of the company, he should tell them an anecdote of what he had experienced on his travels. When he was at Rome, he went to visit an Irish seminary, and when they heard who he was, and that he had an Irish t.i.tle, some of them asked him, "Please you Royal Highness, since you are an Irish peer, will you tell us if you ever trod upon Irish ground?"

When he told them he had not, "Oh, then," said one of the order, "you shall soon do so". They then spread some earth, which had been brought from Ireland, on a marble slab, and made him stand upon it.

[13] This was actually done at an election in Ireland.

[14] _To put him up_--to put him in gaol.

[15] _My little potatoes_--Thady does not mean, by this expression, that his potatoes were less than other people's, or less than the usual size--_little_ is here used only as an Italian diminutive, expressive of fondness.

[16] _Kith and kin_--family or relations. _Kin_ from _kind_; _kith_ from we know not what.

[17] Wigs were formerly used instead of brooms in Ireland, for sweeping or dusting tables, stairs, &c. The Editor doubted the fact, till he saw a labourer of the old school sweep down a flight of stairs with his wig; he afterwards put it on his head again with the utmost composure, and said, "Oh, please your honour, it's never a bit the worse."

It must be acknowledged, that these men are not in any danger of catching cold by taking off their wigs occasionally, because they usually have fine crops of hair growing under their wigs. The wigs are often yellow, and the hair which appears from beneath them black; the wigs are usually too small, and are raised up by the hair beneath, or by the ears of the wearers.

[18] A wake in England is a meeting avowedly for merriment; in Ireland it is a nocturnal meeting avowedly for the purpose of watching and bewailing the dead; but, in reality, for gossiping and debauchery. See Glossary [C2].

[19] Shebean-house, a hedge alehouse. Shebcan properly means weak small-beer, taplash.

[20] At the coronation of one of our monarchs, the king complained of the confusion which happened in the procession. The great officer who presided told his majesty, "That it should not be so next time."

[21] _Kilt and smashed_.--Our author is not here guilty of an anti-climax. The mere English reader, from a similarity of sound between the words _kilt_ and _killed_, might be induced to suppose that their meanings are similar, yet they are not by any means in Ireland synonymous terms. Thus you may hear a man exclaim, "I'm kilt and murdered!" but he frequently means only that he has received a black eye, or a slight contusion.--_I'm kilt all over_ means that he is in a worse state than being simply _kilt_. Thus, _I'm kilt with the cold_, is nothing to _I'm kilt all over with the rheumatism_.

[22] _The room_--the princ.i.p.al room in the house.

[23] _Tester_--sixpence; from the French word, tete, a head: a piece of silver stamped with a head, which in old French was called "un testion,"

and which was about the value of an old English sixpence. Tester is used in Shakspeare.

ESSAY ON IRISH BULLS

Summos posse viros, et magna exempla daturos, Vervec.u.m in patria, cra.s.soque sub aere nasci. JUVENAL.

IRISH BULLS

INTRODUCTION.

What mortal, what fas.h.i.+onable mortal, is there who has not, in the midst of a formidable circle, been reduced to the embarra.s.sment of having nothing to say? Who is there that has not felt those oppressive fits of silence which ensue after the weather, and the fas.h.i.+ons, and the politics, and the scandal, and all the common-place topics of the day have been utterly exhausted? Who is there that, at such a time, has not tried in vain to call up an idea, and found that _none would come when they did call_, or that all that came were impertinent, and must be rejected, some as too grave, others too gay, some too vulgar, some too refined for the hearers, some relating to persons, others to circ.u.mstances that must not be mentioned? Not one will do! and all this time the silence lasts, and the difficulty of breaking it increases every instant in an incalculable proportion.

Let it be some comfort to those whose polite sensibility has laboured under such distress to be a.s.sured, that they need never henceforward fear to be reduced to similar dilemmas. They may be insured for ever against such dangers at the slight premium and upon the easy condition of perusing the following little volume. It will satisfy them that there is a subject which still affords inexhausted and inexhaustible sources of conversation, suited to all tastes, all ranks, all individuals, democratic, aristocratic, commercial, or philosophic; suited to every company which can be combined, purposely or fortuitously, in this great metropolis, or in any of the most remote parts of England, Wales, or Scotland. There is a subject which dilates the heart of every true Briton, which relaxes his muscles, however rigid, to a smile,--which opens his lips, however closed, to conversation. There is a subject "which frets another's spleen to cure our own," and which makes even the angelic part of the creation _laugh themselves mortal_. For who can forbear to laugh at the bare idea of an Irish bull?

Nor let any one apprehend that this subject can ever become trite and vulgar. Custom cannot stale its infinite variety. It is in the main obvious, and palpable enough for every common understanding; yet it leads to disquisitions of exquisite subtlety, it branches into innumerable ramifications, and involves consequences of surprising importance; it may exercise the ingenuity of the subtlest wit, the fancy of the oddest humourist, the imagination of the finest poet, and the judgment of the most profound metaphysician. Moreover, this happy subject is enveloped in all that doubt and confusion which are so favourable to the reputation of disputants, and which secures the glorious possibility of talking incessantly, without being stopped short by a definition or a demonstration. For much as we have all heard and talked of Irish bulls, it has never yet been decided what it is that const.i.tutes a bull. _Incongruity of ideas_, says one. But this supposition touches too closely upon the definition of wit, which, according to the best authorities, Locke, Burke, and Stewart, consists in an unexpected a.s.semblage of ideas, apparently discordant, but in which some point of resemblance or apt.i.tude is suddenly discovered.

Then, perhaps, says another, the essence of a bull lies in _confusion of ideas_. This sounds plausible in theory, but it will not apply in practice; for confusion of ideas is common to both countries: for instance, was there not some slight confusion of ideas in the mind of that English student, who, when he was asked what progress he had made in the study of medicine, replied, "I hope I shall soon be qualified to be a physician, for I think I am now able to cure a child?"

To amend our bill, suppose we insert the word laughable, and say that a _laughable confusion of ideas_ const.i.tutes a bull. But have we not a laughable confusion of ideas in our English poet Blackmore's famous lines in Prince Arthur?--

"A painted vest prince Vortigern had on, Which from a naked Pict his grandsire won."

We are sensible that, to many people, the most vulgar Irish bull would appear more laughable merely from its being Irish,--therefore we cannot make the propensity to laughter in one man the criterion of what is ridiculous in another; though we have a precedent for this mode of judging in the laws of England, which are allowed to be the perfection of human reason. If a man swear that his neighbour has put him in bodily fear, he may have the cause of his terror sent to gaol; thus the feelings of the plaintiff become the measure of the defendant's guilt.

As we cannot extend this convenient principle to all matters of taste, and all subjects of risibility, we are still compelled to acknowledge that no accurate definition of a bull has yet been given. The essence of an Irish bull must be of the most ethereal nature, for notwithstanding the most indefatigable research, it has. .h.i.therto escaped from a.n.a.lysis.

The crucible always breaks in the long-expected moment of projection: we have nevertheless the courage to recommence the process in a new mode.

Perhaps by ascertaining what it is not, we may at last discover what it is: we must distinguish the genuine from the spurious, the original from all imitations, the indigenous from the exotic; in short, it must be determined in what an Irish bull essentially differs from a blunder, or in what Irish blunders specifically differ from English blunders, and from those of all other nations. To elucidate these points, or to prove to the satisfaction of all competent judges that they are beyond the reach of the human understanding, is the object of the following _Essay concerning the Nature of Bulls and Blunders_.

CHAPTER I.

ORIGINALITY OF IRISH BULLS EXAMINED.

The difficulty of selecting from the vulgar herd of Irish bulls one that shall be ent.i.tled to the prize, from the united merits of pre-eminent absurdity, and indisputable originality, is greater than hasty judges may imagine. Many bulls, reputed to be bred and born in Ireland, are of foreign extraction; and many more, supposed to be unrivalled in their kind, may be matched in all their capital _points_: for instance, there is not a more celebrated bull than Paddy Blake's. When Paddy heard an English gentleman speaking of the fine echo at the lake of Killarney, which repeats the sound forty times, he very promptly observed, "Faith, that's nothing at all to the echo in my father's garden, in the county of Galway: if you say to it, 'How do you do, Paddy Blake?' it will answer, 'Pretty well, I thank you, sir.'"

Now this echo of Paddy Blake's, which has long been the admiration of the world, is not a prodigy _unique_ in its kind; it can be matched by one recorded in the immortal works of the great Lord Verulam.[24]

"I remember well," says this father of philosophy, "that when I went to the echo at Port Charenton, there was an old Parisian that took it to be the work of spirits, and of good spirits, 'for,' said he, 'call Satan, and the echo will not deliver back the devil's name, but will say, 'Va t'en.'"

The Parisian echo is surely superior to the Hibernian! Paddy Blake's simply understood and practised the common rules of good-breeding; but the Port Charenton echo is "instinct with spirit," and endowed with a nice moral sense.

Amongst the famous bulls recorded by the ill.u.s.trious Joe Miller, there is one which has been continually quoted as an example of original Irish genius. An English gentleman was writing a letter in a coffee-house, and perceiving that an Irishman stationed behind him was taking that liberty which Hephaestion used with his friend Alexander, instead of putting his seal upon the lips of the _curious impertinent_, the English gentleman thought proper to reprove the Hibernian, if not with delicacy, at least with poetical justice: he concluded writing his letter in these words: "I would say more, but a d.a.m.ned tall Irishman is reading over my shoulder every word I write."

"You lie, you scoundrel!" said the self-convicted Hibernian.

This blunder is unquestionably excellent; but it is not originally Irish: it comes, with other riches, from the East, as the reader may find by looking into a book by M. Galland, ent.i.tled, "The Remarkable Sayings of the Eastern Nations."

"A learned man was writing to a friend; a troublesome fellow was beside him, who was looking over his shoulder at what he was writing. The learned man, who perceived this, continued writing in these words, 'If an impertinent chap, who stands beside me, were not looking at what I write, I would write many other things to you, which should be known only to you and to me.'

"The troublesome fellow, who was reading on, now thought it inc.u.mbent upon him to speak, and said, 'I swear to you, that I have not read or looked at what you are writing.'