CORRESPONDENCE.
"BULLS" FROM IRISH PASTURES.
tTo THZ EDITOR OF THY " SPECT/TOH."1
Sin,—" Has the traditional capacity of the Irish for making bulls' become impaired ?" This was one of the questions to which I set myself to find an answer during a recent visit to Ireland. The Irish people, in spite of their dis- tresses, have probably done more than all the other English- speaking races to keep the great Anglo-Saxon world merry; and it might well be regarded as an international misfortune indeed were the native wit and humour of Ireland, and, above all, that laughable confusion of thought, that delightful con- tradiction of meaning—commonly called a "bull "—to show any signs of decay. But I was not two hours in Ireland when I found, to my delight, that that droll mental characteristic of the Irish people, which has contributed so much to the gaiety of nations, still flourishes in undiminished vigour and freshness. I visited a hairdresser's shop in Kingstown, to have a shampoo after the night's run from London. As I was leaving the man tried to induce me to buy a bottle of hair-wash. "What sort of stuff is it?" I asked.—" Oh, it's grand stuff," he replied. " It's a sort of niu/tum in parvo,—the less you take of it the better !" Of coarse, what the hairdresser meant to convey was that the use of a little of the staff was as of iacious as a large quantity.
" Bulls " of this species are mainly due to the fact that the people are in such a hurry to express themselves that they do not give themselves time to weigh the meaning of the words they use. Two farmers were sitting on the promenade at Bray, the well-known Wicklow seaside resort. A lady of meagre proportions passed by. " Did you ever see so thin a woman as that before ? " remarked one of the farmers.—. " Thin ! " said the other, " I seen a woman down in Wexford as thin as two of her put together ! " As a friend with whom I was staying and I were walking one day over the Wicklow Mountains we met a "character," a person well known for1,
some reason—fondness for drink, for instance—in the district. "Well, Mick," said my friend, " I've heard some queer stories about your doings lately."—" Och, don't belave thim, Sir," replied Mick. "Sure half the lies tould about me by the naybours isn't three!"
Celtic fancy has been well described as a "reaction against the despotism of fact." The definition was recalled to my mind by several stories I heard, and particularly by this one of an amusing miscalculation by a tramp. Two labourers set out from Wexford to walk to Dublin. By the time they reached Bray they were very much tired with their journey, and the more so when they were told they were still twelve miles from Dublin. "Be me sowl," said one, after a little thought, "sure it's but six miles apiece; let us walk on!" During a discussion at a meeting of the Trinity College Historical Society upon the slight consideration attached to life by uncivilised nations, a speaker mentioned the extra- ordinary circumstance that in China if a man were condemned to death he could easily hire a. substitute to die for him ; " and," the debater went on, " I believe many poor fellows get their living by acting as substitutes in that way ! "
A curious peculiarity of the Irish nature is the wide limits to which relationship is extended. " Do you know Pat Meehan?" a peasant was asked.—" Of course I do," was the answer. " Why, he's a near relation of mine. He wane proposed for my slather Kate." When faction-fight- ing was rife in Ireland it was a man's interest to " in- erase his followin' " by extending the number of his rela- tions by every possible device. Happily faction-fighting is dead in Ireland, and a man has no need now to have behind him a long line, not of "ancestors," as Sir Boyle Roche would say, but of "relations," as was imperatively necessary when the " bhoys " were accustomed to " hould dishcussions with sticks" at every fair. It is after he is dead that his relations "come in handy " to the Irishman. They give him a " grand bnryin'." " Well, Mary," said a friend of mine to a domestic who had been attending a " buryin'," " had Mat Maloney a good funeral ?"—" Oh, he had a grate wan, Sir," said Mary.
An' why wouldn't he? Wasn't he related to the whole barony? Faith, it reminded me of a Land Lague meetin'." A child went crying to its mother, and reported that it had swallowed a button. " Well, well, look at that now," cried the woman. " Begor, I suppose the next thing you'll do is to swallow a buttonhole!" This story reminds me of the graphic description given by a beggarman of his tattered coat. 'Faith, yer honer, it's nothin' but a parcel of holes sewn together."
It often seems in Ireland as if words are not quick enough, or that they form too cumbersome a vehicle for the rapid and rushing thoughts of these active-minded peasantry. A laugh- able instance of this occurred during a recent visitation by Dr. Walsh, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, to a remote parish in his archdiocese, the story of which I was told by a priest. An old woman hobbled up to his Grace as he was passing through the village, and exclaimed: " Wisha, now that I've seen your Lordship, ye may die, and the Lord be praised! " It was, needless to say, her own death the old lady desired, after the great privilege of having seen a live Archbishop. The same clergyman told me that he has a parishioner who is very addicted to drink. Meeting the man one day when, as the people say, "he had a drop in," the priest insisted that he should take the pledge, for it was the only protection against the temptations of the public house. "You've never seen a teetotaler drunk, Tom," said the priest.—" Ah, your riverence," replied Tom, " I've seen many a man drunk, but I couldn't tell for the life o' me, whether they wor teetotalers or not ! "
An Irishman got out of a train at a railway station for refreshments, but unfortunately the bell rang and the train went off before he had finished his drink. Running along the platform after the train, he shouted, " Hould on, there ; bould on. You've got a passenger aboord that's left behind!" A. poor woman who had a son of whom she was very proud, unintentionally paid him a very bad compliment. Speaking of the boy to the priest, she said : " There isn't in the barony, yer riverence, a cleverer lad nor Tom. Look at thim, yer riverence," pointing to two small chairs in the cabin, " he made thim out of his own head; and fair he has enough of wood left to make me a big armchair!" But despite the -many examples of "things which should have been other- wise expressed" that one meets with in Ireland, like the foregoing, the people have often an apparently blundering way of saying things which really cannot be so forcibly or so clearly expressed as by a " bull." A poor woman was ad- vised by a charitable lady to avail herself of a free distribu- tion of soup. "Do you call that stuff soup?" she cried. " Why ye only get a quart of wather and boil it down to a pint to make it sthrong !" A more contemptuous description of the stuff could hardly be imagined. Here is another amusing "bull." A restive pony which was being ridden by a peasant along a country road, got into a wayside ditch. The animal, in attempting to scramble out again, had its leg entangled in the stirrup. " What are yez up to now, ye ould devil " exclaimed the peasant. " Faith if ye're thinking of getting up here its time for me to get down."
I picked up two delicious literary curiosities during my stay in Ireland. The following notice was posted in a plea- sure-boat belonging to a steamship company on the Suir : " The chairs in the cabin are for the ladies. Gentlemen are requested not to make use of them till the ladies are seated." The time I was in the country was just after the visit of the Duke and Duchess of York. I clipped the following delicious advertisement from a Kingstown paper :—" James O'Mahony, Wine and Spirit Merchant, Kingstown, has still on hands a. small quantity of the whiskey which was drunk by the Duke of York while in Dablin."—I am, Sir, &c., X. X. X.
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