English As We Speak It in Ireland Part 21

I was the delight and joy of that school; for I generally carried in my pocket a little fife from which I could roll off jigs, reels, hornpipes, hop-jigs, {159} song tunes, &c., without limit. The school was held in a good-sized room in the second story of a house, of which the landlady and her family lived in the kitchen and bedrooms beneath--on the ground-floor.

Some dozen or more of the scholars were always in attendance in the mornings half an hour or so before the arrival of the master, of whom I was sure to be one--what could they do without me?--and then out came the fife, and they cleared the floor for a dance. It was simply magnificent to see and hear these athletic fellows dancing on the bare boards with their thick-soled well-nailed heavy shoes--so as to shake the whole house. And not one in the lot was more joyous than I was; for they were mostly good dancers and did full justice to my spirited strains. At last in came the master: there was no cessation; and he took his seat, looking on complacently till that bout was finished, when I put up my fife, and the serious business of the day was commenced.

We must now have a look at the elementary schools--for teaching Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic to children. They were by far the most numerous, for there was one in every village and hamlet, and two or three or more in every town. These schools were very primitive and rude. The parish priests appointed the teachers, and kept an eye over the schools, which were generally mixed--boys and girls. There was no attempt at cla.s.sification, and little or no cla.s.s teaching; the children were taught individually.

Each bought whatever Reading Book he or his parents pleased. So there was an odd mixture. A very usual book was a 'Spelling and {160} Reading book,'

which was pretty sure to have the story of Tommy and Harry. In this there were almost always a series of lessons headed 'Principles of Politeness,'

which were in fact selected from the writings of Chesterfield. In these there were elaborate instructions how we were to comport ourselves in a drawing room; and we were to be particularly careful when entering not to let our sword get between our legs and trip us up. We were to bear offences or insults from our companions as long as possible, but if a fellow went too far we were to 'call him out.' It must be confessed there was some of the 'calling out' business--though not in Chesterfield's sense; and if the fellows didn't fight with pistols and swords, they gave and got some black eyes and b.l.o.o.d.y noses. But this was at their peril; for if the master came to hear of it, they were sure to get further punishment, though not exactly on the face.

Then some scholars had 'The Seven Champions of Christendom,' others 'St.

George and the Dragon,' or 'Don Bellianis of Greece,' 'The Seven Wonders of the World,' or 'The History of Reynard the Fox,' a great favourite, translated from an old German mock heroic. And sometimes I have seen girls learning to read from a Catholic Prayerbook. Each had his lesson for next day marked in pencil by the master, which he was to prepare. The pupils were called up one by one each to read his own lesson--whole or part--for the master, and woe betide him if he stumbled at too many words.

The schools were nearly always held in the small ordinary dwelling-houses of the people, or perhaps a {161} barn was utilised: at any rate there was only one room. Not unfrequently the family that owned the house lived in that same room--the kitchen--and went on with their simple household work while the school was buzzing about their ears, neither in any way interfering with the other. There was hardly ever any _school_ furniture--no desks of any kind. There were seats enough, of a motley kind--one or two ordinary forms placed at the walls: some chairs with _sugaun_ seats; several little stools, and perhaps a few big stones. In fine weather the scholars spent much of their time in the front yard in the open air, where they worked their sums or wrote their copies with the copybooks resting on their knees.

When the priest visited one of these schools, which he did whenever in the neighbourhood, it was a great event for both master and scholars. Conor Leahy was one of those masters--a very rough diamond indeed, though a good teacher and not over severe--whose school was in Fanningstown near my home.

One day Billy Moroney ran in breathless, with eyes starting out of his head, to say--as well as he could get it out--that Father Bourke was coming up the road. Now we were all--master and scholars--mortally afraid of Father Bourke and his heavy brows--though never was fear more misplaced (p.

71). The master instantly bounced up and warned us to be of good behaviour--not to stir hand or foot--while the priest was present. He happened to be standing at the fireplace; and he finished up the brief and vigorous exhortation by thumping his fist down on the hob:--'By this stone, if one of ye opens your mouth while the priest is here, I'll knock your {162} brains out after he's gone away!' That visit pa.s.sed off in great style.

These elementary teachers, or 'hedge teachers,' as they were commonly called, were a respectable body of men, and were well liked by the people.

Many of them were rough and uncultivated in speech, but all had sufficient scholarship for their purpose, and many indeed very much more. They were poor, for they had to live on the small fees of their pupils; but they loved learning--so far as their attainments went--and inspired their pupils with the same love. These private elementary schools gradually diminished in numbers as the National Schools spread, and finally disappeared about the year 1850.

These were the schools of the small villages and hamlets, which were to be found everywhere--all over the country: and such were the schools that the Catholic people were only too glad to have after the chains had been struck off--the very schools in which many men that afterwards made a figure in the world received their early education.

The elementary schools of the towns were of a higher cla.s.s. The attendance was larger; there were generally desks and seats of the ordinary kind; and the higher cla.s.ses were commonly taught something beyond Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic; such as Grammar, or Book-keeping, with occasionally a spice of Euclid, Mensuration, Surveying, or Algebra.

It very often happened that the school took its prevailing tone from the taste of the master; so that the higher cla.s.ses in one were great at Grammar, those of another at Penmanship, some at Higher {163} Arithmetic, some at 'Short Accounts' (i.e. short methods of Mental Arithmetic), others at Book-keeping. For there were then no fixed Programmes and no Inspectors, and each master (in addition to the ordinary elementary subjects) taught just whatever he liked best, and lit up his own special tastes among his pupils.

So far have these words, _church_, _chapel_, _scallan_, _hedge-school_, led us through the bye-ways of History; and perhaps the reader will not be sorry to turn to something else.

_Rattle the hasp: Tent pot._ During Fair-days--all over the country--there were half a dozen or more booths or tents on the fair field, put up by publicans, in which was always uproarious fun; for they were full of people--young and old--eating and drinking, dancing and singing and match-making. There was sure to be a piper or a fiddler for the young people; and usually a barn door, lifted off its hinges--hasp and all--was laid flat, or perhaps two or three doors were laid side by side, for the dancers; a custom adopted elsewhere as well as in fairs--

'But they couldn't keep time on the cold earthen floor, So to humour the music they danced on the door.'

(CROFTON CROKER: _Old Song_.)

There was one particular tune--a jig--which, from the custom of dancing on a door, got the name of 'Rattle the hasp.'

Just at the mouth of the tent it was common to have a great pot hung on hooks over a fire sunk in the ground underneath, and full of pigs cheeks, flitches of bacon, pigs' legs and _croobeens_ galore, kept {164} perpetually boiling like the chiefs' caldrons of old, so that no one need be hungry or thirsty so long as he had a penny in his pocket. These pots were so large that they came to be spoken of as a symbol of plenty: 'Why you have as much bacon and cabbage there as would fill a tent-pot.'

One day--long long ago--at the fair of Ardpatrick in Limerick--I was then a little boy, but old enough to laugh at the story when I heard it in the fair--a fellow with a wattle in his hand having a sharp iron spike on the end, walked up to one of these tent-pots during the momentary absence of the owner, and thrusting the spike into a pig's cheek, calmly stood there holding the stick in his hand till the man came up. 'What are you doing there?'--When the other looking sheepish and frightened:--'Wisha sir I have a little bit of a pig's cheek here that isn't done well enough all out, and I was thinking that may be you wouldn't mind if I gave it a couple of _biles_ in your pot.' 'Be off out of that you impudent blaa-guard, yourself and your pig's cheek, or I'll break every bone in your body.' The poor innocent boy said nothing, but lifted the stick out of the pot with the pig's cheek on the end of it, and putting it on his shoulder, walked off through the fair with meek resignation.

More than a thousand years ago it was usual in Ireland for ladies who went to banquets with their husbands or other near relations to wear a mask.

This lady's mask was called _fethal_, which is the old form of the word, modern form _fidil_. The memory of this old custom is preserved in the name now given to a mask by both English and Irish speakers--_i fiddle_, _eye-fiddle_, _hi-fiddle_, or _hy-fiddle_ (the first two {165} being the most correct). The full Irish name is _aghaidh-fidil_, of which the first part _agaidh_, p.r.o.nounced _i_ or _eye_, means the face:--_agaidh-fidil_, 'face-mask.' This word was quite common in Munster sixty or seventy years ago, when we, boys, made our own _i-fiddles_, commonly of brown paper, daubed in colour--hideous-looking things when worn--enough to frighten a horse from his oats.

Among those who fought against the insurgents in Ireland during the Rebellion of 1798 were some German cavalry called Hessians. They wore a sort of long boots so remarkable that boots of the same pattern are to this day called _Hessian boots_. One day in a skirmish one of the rebels shot down a Hessian, and brought away his fine boots as his lawful prize. One of his comrades asked him for the boots: and he answered 'Kill a Hessian for yourself,' which has pa.s.sed into a proverb. When by labour and trouble you obtain anything which another seeks to get from you on easy terms, you answer _Kill a Hessian for yourself_.

During the War of the Confederation in Ireland in the seventeenth century Murrogh O'Brien earl of Inchiquin took the side of the Government against his own countrymen, and committed such merciless ravages among the people that he is known to this day as 'Murrogh the Burner'; and his name has pa.s.sed into a proverb for outrage and cruelty. When a person persists in doing anything likely to bring on heavy punishment of some kind, the people say 'If you go on in that way _you'll see Murrogh_,' meaning 'you will suffer for it.' Or when a person seems scared or frightened:--'He saw Murrogh or {166} the bush next to him.' The original sayings are in Irish, of which these are translations, which however are now heard oftener than the Irish.

In Armagh where Murrogh is not known they say in a similar sense, 'You'll catch Lanty,' Lanty no doubt being some former local bully.

When one desires to give another a particularly evil wish he says, 'The curse of Cromwell on you!' So that Cromwell's atrocities are stored up in the people's memories to this day, in the form of a proverb.

In Ulster they say 'The curse of _Crummie_.'

'Were you talking to Tim in town to-day?' 'No, but I saw him _from me_ as the soldier saw Bunratty.' Bunratty a strong castle in Co. Clare, so strong that besiegers often had to content themselves with viewing it from a distance. 'Seeing a person from me' means seeing him at a distance. 'Did you meet your cousin James in the fair to-day?' 'Oh I just caught sight of him _from me_ for a second, but I wasn't speaking to him.'

_Sweating-House._--We know that the Turkish bath is of recent introduction in these countries. But the hot-air or vapour bath, which is much the same thing, was well known in Ireland from very early times, and was used as a cure for rheumatism down to a few years ago. The structures in which these baths were given are known by the name of _tigh 'n alluis_ [teenollish], or in English, 'sweating-house' (_allus_, 'sweat'). They are still well known in the northern parts of Ireland--small houses entirely of stone, from five to seven feet long inside, with a low little door through which one must creep: {167} always placed remote from habitations: and near by was commonly a pool or tank of water four or five feet deep. They were used in this way. A great fire of turf was kindled inside till the house became heated like an oven; after which the embers and ashes were swept out, and water was splashed on the stones, which produced a thick warm vapour. Then the person, wrapping himself in a blanket, crept in and sat down on a bench of sods, after which the door was closed up. He remained there an hour or so till he was in a profuse perspiration: and then creeping out, plunged right into the cold water; after emerging from which he was well rubbed till he became warm. After several baths at intervals of some days he commonly got cured. Persons are still living who used these baths or saw them used. (See the chapter on 'Ancient Irish Medicine' in 'Smaller Soc.

Hist. of Anc. Ireland,' from which the above pa.s.sage is taken.)

The lurking conviction that times long ago were better than at present--a belief in 'the good old times'--is indicated in the common opening to a story:--'Long and merry ago, there lived a king,' &c.

'That poor man is as thin as a _whipping_ post': a very general saying in Ireland. Preserving the memory of the old custom of tying culprits to a firm post in order to be whipped. A whipping post received many of the slashes, and got gradually worn down.

The hardiness of the northern rovers--the Danes--who made a great figure in Ireland, as in England and elsewhere, is still remembered, after nine or ten centuries, in the sayings of our people. Scores of {168} times I heard such expressions as the following:--'Ah shut that door: there's a breeze in through it that _would perish the Danes_.'

The cardinal points are designated on the supposition that the face is turned to the east: a custom which has descended in Ireland from the earliest times of history and tradition, and which also prevailed among other ancient nations. Hence in Irish 'east' is 'front'; 'west' is 'behind'

or 'back'; north is 'left hand'; and south is 'right hand.' The people sometimes import these terms into English. 'Where is the tooth?' says the dentist. 'Just here sir, in the _west_ of my jaw,' replies the patient--meaning at the back of the jaw.

Tailors were made the b.u.t.t of much good-natured harmless raillery, often founded on the well-known fact that a tailor is the ninth part of a man. If a person leaves little after a meal, or little material after any work--that is 'tailor's leavings'; alluding to an alleged custom of the craft. According to this calumny your tailor, when sending home your finished suit, sends with it a few little sc.r.a.ps as what was left of the cloth you gave him, though he had really much left, which he has cribbed.

When you delay the performance of any work, or business with some secret object in view, you 'put the pot in the tailor's link.' Formerly tailors commonly worked in the houses of the families who bought their own material and employed them to make the clothes. The custom was to work till supper time, when their day ended. Accordingly the good housewife often hung the pot-hangers on the highest hook or link of the pot-hooks so as to raise {169} the supper-pot well up from the fire and delay the boiling. (Ulster.)

The following two old rhymes are very common:--

Four and twenty tailors went out to kill a snail, The biggest of them all put his foot upon his tail-- The snail put out his horns just like a cow: 'O Lord says the tailor we're all killed now!'

As I was going to Dub-l-in I met a pack of tailors, I put them in my pocket, In fear the ducks might _ait_ them.

In the Co. Down the Roman Catholics are called 'back-o'-the-hill folk': an echo of the Plantations of James I--three centuries ago--when the Catholics, driven from their rich lowland farms, which were given to the Scottish Presbyterian planters, had to eke out a living among the glens and mountains.

When a person does anything out of the common--which is not expected of him--especially anything with a look of unusual prosperity:--'It is not every day that Ma.n.u.s kills a bullock.' (Derry.) This saying, which is always understood to refer to Roman Catholics, is a memorial, in one flash, of the plantation of the northern districts. Ma.n.u.s is a common Christian name among the Catholics round Derry, who are nearly all very poor: how could they be otherwise? That Ma.n.u.s--i.e. a Catholic--should kill a bullock is consequently taken as a type of things very unusual, unexpected and exceptional. Maxwell, in 'Wild Sports of the West,' quotes this saying as he heard it in Mayo; but naturally enough the saying alone had reached the west without its background of history, which is not known there as it is in Derry. {170}

Even in the everyday language of the people the memory of those Plantations is sometimes preserved, as in the following sayings and their like, which are often heard. 'The very day after Jack Ryan was evicted, he _planted himself_ on the bit of land between his farm and the river.' 'Bill came and _planted_ himself on my chair, right in front of the fire.'

'He that calls the tune should pay the piper' is a saying that commemorates one of our dancing customs. A couple are up for a dance: the young man asks the girl in a low voice what tune she'd like, and on hearing her reply he calls to the piper (or fiddler) for the tune. When the dance is ended and they have made their bow, he slips a coin into her hand, which she brings over and places in the hand of the piper. That was the invariable formula in Munster sixty years ago.

The old Irish name of May-day--the 1st May--was _Belltaine_ or _Beltene_ [Beltina], and this name is still used by those speaking Irish; while in Scotland and Ulster they retain it as a common English word--Beltane:--

'Ours is no sapling, chance sown by the fountain, Blooming at Beltane, in winter to fade.'

('Lady of the Lake.')

Before St. Patrick's time there was a great pagan festival in Ireland on 1st May in honour of the G.o.d _Bel_ [Bail], in which fire played a prominent part: a custom evidently derived in some way from the Phoenician fire festival in honour of the Phoenician G.o.d _Baal_. For we know that the Phoenicians were well acquainted with Ireland, and that wherever they went they introduced the worship of Baal with his festivals. {171}

Among other usages the Irish drove cattle through or between big fires to preserve them from the diseases of the year; and this custom was practised in Limerick and Clare down a period within my own memory: I saw it done.

But it was necessary that the fires should be kindled from _tenaigin_ [_g_ sounded as in _pagan_]--'forced fire'--i.e., fire produced by the friction of two pieces of dry wood rubbed together till they burst into a flame: Irish _teine-eigin_ from _tein[)e]_, fire, and _eigean_, force. This word is still known in the South; so that the memory of the old pagan May-day festival and its fire customs is preserved in these two words _Beltane_ and _tenaigin_.

Mummers were companies of itinerant play-actors, who acted at popular gatherings, such as fairs, _patterns_, weddings, wakes, &c. Formerly they were all masked, and then young _squireens_, and the young sons of strong farmers, often joined them for the mere fun of the thing; but in later times masking became illegal, after which the breed greatly degenerated. On the whole they were not unwelcome to the people, as they were generally the source of much amus.e.m.e.nt; but their antics at weddings and wakes were sometimes very objectionable, as well as very offensive to the families.

This was especially the case at wakes, if the dead person had been unpopular or ridiculous, and at weddings if an old woman married a boy, or a girl an old man for the sake of his money. Sometimes they came bent on mischievous tricks as well as on a _shindy_; and if wind of this got out, the faction of the family gathered to protect them; and then there was sure to be a fight. (Kinahan.) {172}

Mummers were well known in England, from which the custom was evidently imported to Ireland. The mummers are all gone, but the name remains.