The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent Part 17

It is not considered etiquette to come out of Killorglin sober on Puck Fair; and, judging by the state of the people in the vicinity in the evening, this social custom is rigidly observed.

They are wonderfully particular in Kerry in attending to exactly what is congenial to them, and if it were not for the thickness of their heads a good many lives would be lost.

There was a gauger, in a central county in Ireland, killed by a blow on the head from a stick.

The man who struck him, in his defence, stated:--

'I did not hit him a very hard blow, and why the devil did the Government make a gauger of a man that had a head no thicker than an egg-sh.e.l.l?'

Mighty few of the Killorglin folk have egg-sh.e.l.l heads, and the bulk of these do not come to maturity.

The avowed fact that lunacy is largely on the increase in Ireland has been p.r.o.nounced by the committee which sat on the question in Dublin to be mainly due, not only to excessive drinking, but to the a.s.similation of adulterated spirits.

Though the foregoing recipe furnishes a pretty fair example, I certainly would not wager that it could not be beaten elsewhere in Ireland.

For a long time the priests were entirely apathetic on the subject, but latterly they are bestirring themselves, and are doing their best to put down wakes, which simply mean one or more nights of disgusting intemperance in the immediate vicinity of the corpse.

Keening, by the way, is dying out, and what remains of this curious, mournful waiting is now almost entirely in the hands of old women who are experts in the art, and get remunerated not only in drink but also in cash.

It is, however, possible that when I am deploring the alcoholic tendencies of the Irishman, that these may be due to his more vegetarian dietary, and not to any undue natural craving for alcohol. This is borne out by the fact that no Irishman will willingly drink alone, and that his potations are in the shops where whisky and porter are sold for consumption on the premises, or at fairs, markets, weddings, or wakes, to the diminishing number of which I have just called attention.

The parish priest of Dingle recently stated in court that in a population of seventeen hundred there were over fifty licensed houses, and he rightly declared that all dealings in licences should for the present be only by transfer, and that for five years at least no new licences should be granted. The argument so often heard against stopping licences is that then more illicit drinking will ensue, but this does not convince me that the redundant licences should be renewed.

My remedy would be to increase all renewals of licences to fifty pounds apiece, and to apply the difference as compensation to unrenewed licences. If a man fits up his house as a shebeen, and has conducted it tolerably, he ought to receive just compensation when his licence is cancelled owing to there being too many in a district.

If this is not done, he would be the victim of as great a robbery as was perpetrated on the unfortunate landlords by the Land Act.

I have a yarn or two on the subject of drink which may be appropriately related here.

Old David Burus, the steward at Ardrum, County Cork, was a great character who had got inextricably confused between the Council of Trent and the Trant family in the vicinity, and no amount of explanation could ever enlighten him. Directly he had begun to be jovial, he used to say:--

'My blessing on Councillor Trent, who put a fast on meat, but not on drink.'

And he proved the devoutness of his grat.i.tude by conscientiously getting drunk every Friday.

That recalls to my mind the case of the ill.u.s.trious gentleman--also a fellow-countryman, I regret to say--who committed burglary and murder when there was an opportunity, but religiously refrained from eating meat on Friday.

Reverting to David Burus: on one occasion I remonstrated with him on the amount of whisky he drank.

'I did drink a great deal of whisky, and I would have drunk more.' was his reply, 'if I had known it was going to be as dear as it is now.'

He evidently regretted not having thoroughly saturated himself with alcohol. It was the only way in which he could have possibly increased his consumption.

He was wont to say that if he had known the trick Mr. Gladstone was going to play on honest, G.o.d-fearing men, with sound stomachs and a decent appet.i.te, by imposing a ten shilling duty on every gallon of whisky, he would have drunk his fill beforehand, even if _delirium tremens_ had been the penalty.

Such hard drinking as his, and so calmly avowed, must, even in the south of Ireland, be fortunately rare, for few const.i.tutions can stand conversion into animated whisky vats.

There was a farmer at Kanturk railway station who confided to the stationmaster that he himself on the previous evening had been as drunk as the very devil.

A parson on the platform, overhearing him, said:--

'You make a mistake, my friend, the devil does not drink. He keeps his head cool for the express purpose of watching such as you.'

The countryman replied:--

'You seem to be very well acquainted with the respected gentleman's habits, your riverince.'

And then they walked off different ways.

Which reminds me of another clerical incident.

A parish priest within twenty miles of Tralee, who subsequently left the Church--I will not say on account of his thirst, though, as that was unquenchable, it no doubt conduced to his retirement--came into the parlour of the manager of the bank with two farmers to have a bill discounted.

The manager, having ascertained the farmers were good security, cashed the bill and gave the proceeds to the priest. He was very much surprised on the following day at the two farmers walking into his room with the money.

'What's the meaning of this?' says he.

'Well, your honour, we could not stay in the parish, if we refused to join his reverence in the deal, which was sure to be a very bad one for us. So we thought the best thing to do was to get him a little hearty at his own expense on the way home. And then we picked his pocket and have brought the money to your honour, whilst he is cursing every thief outside his parish, and will probably ask the congregation to make up the amount next Sunday.'

And that is a true story, and as ill.u.s.trative of the Irish peasant as any you could ever get told to you.

A coffin-maker named Sullivan thrived in Tralee. He received an order for a coffin for a man living about six miles away from the town. It was not called for for a week, and so he went out to the house where the man lay dead to inquire the cause.

When he came back to Tralee, he said to a friend:--

'Who do you think I saw, Mick, but that scoundrel of a corpse sitting in a ditch eating a piece of pig's cheek.'

That reminds me of another coffin story.

A man who lived in Cork was notorious for being always behind time for everything. He knew his failing, and was rather touchy about it.

One night, stumbling out of a whisky shop, he lurched into a yard, fell against a door, which gave way, and finished his slumbers peacefully in the shed, which was the storehouse of an undertaker.

In the morning he awoke, rubbed his eyes in astonishment at the strange surroundings amid which he found himself, and after recollecting his own pet proclivity, as he ruefully surveyed all the empty coffins, e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed:--

'Just my usual luck. Late for the Resurrection.'

Which recalls another tale:--

A man was dead drunk, so some friends, for a lark, brought him into a dark room, lit a lot of phosphorus, and made up one of their party in the guise of a devil before they flung a bucket of water over their victim.

'Where am I?' asked the fellow, looking round 'skeered.'

'In h.e.l.l,' retorted the devil, with exaggerated solemnity.

'Heaven bless your honour, as you know the ways of the place, will you get me a drop of drink?'

But a mere drop does not suffice as a friend of mine found out.