The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent Part 47

Last year the militia received a grant of 120 from Government to be expended on route marching with the band through the county in order to promote recruiting. The net haul in the Milltown district was the village idiot, who promised to enlist after the next sessions if the jailer did not take him--he being apprehensive of committal to prison.

But even this was not enough, for his mother came to a neighbouring magistrate, weeping and praying for his remission, because--

'It was a drunken freak on Patrick, for if the lad had kept his senses, sure, he would never have done it.'

Another Kerry man being asked why his son did not enlist, replied:--

'Ah, Jamsie was not a big enough scamp for the militia, because you have to be a great blackguard before you can get in there.'

Which shows that the camel and needle's eye trick is easier to perform than to induce a country-bred man to enlist in the King's militia; though once in, every fellow loves it.

This intimation of an army suggests an anecdote of the past war-time.

The militia was being embodied, and several landlords who held commissions were going under canvas with the corps at Gosport. One of his tenants stopped a popular landlord on the road and asked:--

'What do you want to go to be shot at by them Boers for, sir?'

'To be sure, Tim, my tenants have the first right to shoot me, have they not?' was the prompt reply.

The fellow roared with laughter at the retort, and after shaking hands, wished him luck.

It was also characteristic of Irish proclivities for a soft-voiced woman on the estate to say to Miss Leeson Marshall:--

'When the war broke out first we were all praying that the English might be beaten out of South Africa. Then when Mr. Marshall went away to the army, we thought we should not like his side to lose, so we changed our prayers round by the blessing of G.o.d and His Saints.'

If any real impression has been given in these pages of the inconsistent Irish character, the genuine character of this sentiment will be comprehensible. It has been said that an Irishman will tell the truth about everything except one thing--that, of course, is a horse. When not engaged in shooting his landlord, the tenant is by no means disaffected to him, whilst the female appurtenances, mindful of all the small doles they obtain, are much more voluble in their cordial protestations.

Sometimes the women are enigmatical: one does not know if they are acting out of kindness or from duplicity. For example, not so long ago a girl came up to one of my daughters in the road and said to her:--

'For the love of G.o.d tell your mother to order your father's coffin for he'll need it, the Saints preserve us.'

And with that she started away before there was time to reply.

Nothing came of it, of course: nothing ever has, of real importance.

Nothing, alas, also seems so often to be the verdict on life when looking back. Mine, however, has been too full a one, not only with griefs and trials but also with happiness and fun, for me to dismiss it thus. There has been so much more to live through than to write about, and yet, in these pages, has been told something which would have gone for ever untold if I had not in old age become garrulous. Things forgotten have been recalled to my mind and may prove suggestive to other people who read them, and it is my hope, in concluding, that I have provided diversion and a little food for reflection.

I feel that a critic may consider too much that has been set down here is disconnected, yet if he will let a gramophone record an animated conversation, he will find that it ebbs and flows with the uncertain babbling of a brook--and so it has been with me. Only the other day, in the preface to Camden's _History of the British Islands_, I came across the phrase:--

'bookes receive their doome according to the reader's capacitie,'

and that alone emboldens me to hope for some measure of success for the present volume. Readers do not always want serious subjects, and it is in an hour when they desire a little diversion that I hope my reminiscences may commend themselves, for in a phrase not unknown in my native Kerry, this book consists of 'little things, and that away.'

THE END