near Minnie's hospital, he said to himself, it might have been less
unlucky, but, alas, the whole city spread between them and the
institution whither he was brought. The sense of his helplessness
almost drove him frantic, as he lay in the long ward fretting over the
thought that he was tied by the leg, unable to come next or nigh her,
whatever might befall, or even to get a word of news about her. But on
this latter point his forebodings were not fulfilled, his neighbours
proved themselves to be friends in need. At the tidings of his mishap
they made their way in to see him from unhandy little Ballyhoy,
undeterred by what was often to them no very trivial expense and
inconvenience. Nor were they slow to discover that they could do him no
greater service than find out for him "what way herself was at all over
at the other place." Everybody helped him readily in this matter, more
especially three or four good-natured Ballyhoy matrons. On days when
they came into town to do their bits of marketing they would augment
their toils by long trudges on foot, or costly drives on tramcars, that
they might convey to Jim Hanlon the report for which he pined. They
considered neither their heavy baskets, nor the circumstance that they
were folk to whom time was time, and a penny a penny indeed.
Yet, sad to say, great as was Jim's relief and his gratitude, their very
zeal did in some degree diminish the value of their kindness. For their
evident desire to please and pacify him awakened in his mind doubts
about the means which they might adopt; and it must be admitted that his
mistrust was not altogether ungrounded. The tales which they carried to
him from "the other place" were not seldom intrinsically improbable, and
sounded all the more so to him because of his intimate acquaintance with
their subject. When Mrs. Jack Doyle averred that Minnie was devouring
all before her, and that the nurse said a strong man would scarce eat
as much as she did, Jim remembered Minnie's tomtit-like meals at home,
and found the statement hard to accept. It was still worse when they
gave him effusively affectionate messages, purporting to come from
Minnie, who had always been anything in the world but demonstrative and
sentimental. His heart sank as Mrs. Doran assured him that Minnie had
sent her love to her own darling treasure of a precious old daddy, for
he knew full well that no such greeting had ever emanated from Minnie,
and how could he tell, Jim reflected, but that they might be as apt to
deceive him about one thing as another? Perhaps there was little or no
truth in what they told him about the child being so much better, and
able to sit up, and so forth. Like enough one couldn't believe a word
they said. On this terribly baffling question he pondered continually
with a troubled mind.
Saturday mornings were always the most likely to bring him visitors, and
on a certain Saturday he rejoiced to hear that somebody was asking for
him. He was all the more pleased because the lateness of the hour had
made him despair of seeing any friends, and because this portly,
good-humoured Mrs. Connolly was just the person he had been wishing to
come. She explained that she would have paid him a visit sooner, had not
all her children been laid up with colds, and then, as he had hoped, she
went on to say that she was going over to see after little Minnie. "And
the Sister here's promised me," said Mrs. Connolly, "she'll let me in to
bring you word on me way back, even if I'm a trifle beyond the right
visitin' time itself."
Thereupon Jim produced a sixpence from under his pillow, where he had
kept it ready all the long morning. "If it wouldn't be throublin' you
too much, ma'am," he said, "I was wonderin' is there e'er a place you
would be passin' by where you could get some sort of a little doll wid
this for Minnie."
"Is it a doll?" said Mrs. Connolly. "Why to be sure I will, and welcome.
I know a shop in O'Connell Street where they've grand sixpenny dolls,
dressed real delightful. I'll get her a one of them as aisy as
anythin'." Mrs. Connolly knew that the price of the dolls she had in her
eye was actually sixpence-halfpenny, but she at once resolved to pay the
halfpenny herself and not let on.
"And you might maybe be gettin' her an orange wid this," Jim said,
handing her a penny.
"Well, now, it's the lucky child poor Minnie is," Mrs. Connolly
declared, "to have such a good daddy. Finely set up she will be wid a
doll and an orange. I'll bring her the best in Dublin, Jim, no fear."
"She might fancy the orange, anyway," Jim said, half to himself, with a
queer remorseful sort of look.
Mrs. Connolly having gone, he began to expect her back again with an
unreasonable promptitude which lengthened the afternoon prodigiously. He
had suffered innumerable apprehensions, and fidgetted himself into a
fever of anxiety before she could possibly have returned. At last,
however, when her broad, cheerful countenance did reappear to him,
looming through the misty March dusk, he felt that he would almost have
chosen a further delay. For he had staked so much upon this venture that
the crisis of learning, whether it had failed or succeeded could not but
be rather terrible.
There was nothing apparently alarming in Mrs. Connolly's report. She
had found Minnie doing finely. Her nurse said she would be out of bed
next week, and was very apt to get her health better than before she
took bad. The orange had pleased her highly, and she had bid Mrs.
Connolly tell her daddy that he might be sending her another one next
Saturday if he liked. All this was good as far as it went, but about the
doll, Mrs. Connolly kept silence, and it struck Jim that she shrank away
from anything which seemed leading towards a reference to the subject.
Jim, who at first had half dreaded and half longed every moment to hear
her speak of it, began to think that she might go away without
mentioning it, which would not do at all. In the end he had to introduce
it himself.
"And how about the bit of a doll, ma'am?" he inquired as unconcernedly
as he could. "Was you able to get her e'er a one?"
Unmistakably Mrs. Connolly was much disconcerted by the question. Her
face fell, and she hesitated for a while before she replied, with
evident reluctance--
"Sure, now, man alive, you never can tell what quare notions childer'll
take up wid when they're sick, and more especially when they do be about
gettin' well agin, the way Minnie is now. Quiet enough the crathurs do
be as long as they're rale bad. But, tellin' you the truth, Jim, not a
bit of her would look at the doll. Some fantigue she had agin it,
whatever ailed her, an' it a great beauty, wid a pink sash on it and all
manner. Slingin' it into the middle of the floor she was, only the nurse
caught a hould of it, an' biddin' me to take it away out of that. So
says I to her, 'What at all should I do wid the lovely doll, after your
poor daddy sendin' it to yourself?' And, says she to me, 'Give the ugly
big lump of a thing to the ould divil,' says she, 'an' let him give it
to the little young black-leggy divils to play wid if they like.' I
declare to you, Jim, thim was the very words of her, sittin' up in her
bed, not lookin' the size of anythin'. 'Deed, now, she's the comical
child. But sure who'd be mindin' her? And the nurse says she'll keep the
doll till to-morrow, an' if Minnie doesn't fancy it then, she'll give it
to the little girl in the next cot that does be frettin' after her
mother, so it won't go to loss. An' besides--"
She stopped short in surprise, for Jim, who had been laughing silently
to himself, now broke out in tones of positive rapture--
"'The little young black-leggy divils'--that's Minnie herself, and no
mistake this time, glory be to God! Sorra the fantigue it was, but just
the nathur of her, for the thoughts of a doll she never could abide all
the days of her life. She'd as lief be playin' wid a snake or a toad. So
if you'd let on to me that she liked it, ma'am, well I'd know 'twas only
romancin' to me you were. But the truth you tould me, right enough, and
thank you kindly. The little villin'll be runnin' about before I am,
plaze goodness. Och, bedad, I can see her slingin' it neck an' crop out
of the bed."
As Jim fell to laughing again, Mrs. Connolly looked at him puzzled, and
with some disapproval, though she would not express the latter sentiment
to him in his invalided condition. But she soon afterwards took leave,
and on her homeward way she said to herself, "Musha, good gracious,
mightn't one suppose Jim Hanlon 'ud have more since than to go sind the
poor imp of a child a prisint only for the sake of annoyin' her? 'Twas
the quare, foolish way to be spendin' a sixpence, in my opinion. But
sure, 'twas be way of a joke, an' the poor man hasn't much chance of
e'er a one lyin' there. It's wonderful the store men set by nonsense.
Sometimes you'd think they were all born fools, they do be that aisy
amused. You'll hear thim guffawin' like a jackass bewitched over silly
ould blathers that an infant child 'ud have more wit than to be
mindin'."
Certainly, Jim was so well satisfied with his joke, if joke it were,
that when he grew drowsy towards evening, his last thoughts made him
chuckle contentedly. "The little black-leggy divils," he said to
himself. "Glory be to God! she's finely." And he fell asleep with a glad
and grateful heart.
The Wise Woman.
_From "A Boy in the Country."_
BY JOHN STEVENSON.
That she knew far more than all the doctors put together was commonly
considered, in the territory of her operations, as truth beyond
question. Sometimes a man body, with a pain for which he could not
account, fearing the inquisition and expense of the qualified
practitioner, would make believe to doubt the potency of her medicines,
the reality of her cures. But even the discernment of a boy was
sufficient to detect the insincerity of his contemptuous talk about
"auld wife's doctorin'," and to find lurking behind his brave words the
strong desire to consult the wise woman. With much show of impatience,
and pretence of anger, at the over-persuasion of his womankind, he would
give a seemingly reluctant consent to see Mrs. Moloney, "if she should
happen to look in." He knew as well as that he lived that her coming
would be by invitation.
Such a one, receiving in the field the message that "Mrs. Moloney's in,"
would probably say, "Hoots, nonsense," and add that he had his work to
look after. But, very soon, he would find that he needed a spade or a
hook, a pot of paint, or a bit of rope, from home, and he must needs go
home for it himself. He believed in a man's doing a thing for himself if
he wanted it well done; as like as not a messenger would spend half a
day in looking for what he wanted, and bring the wrong thing in the end.
At home he would make a fine show of searching out-houses and lofts,
passing and repassing, with some noise, the kitchen windows, finally
looking in to see if the thing is in the kitchen; and there, of course,
quite accidentally, he would see Mrs. Moloney and would not be rude
enough to leave without passing the time o' day. Then the womankind took
hold of the case, drew out the man's story of distress, took notes of
the remedy, and saw to it that the medicine was taken according to
direction.
"The innards o' man is tough, and need to be dealt with accordin'," said
Mrs. Moloney, and for man she prescribed a dose which gave him some pain
and, usually, cured him. It may be that Nature, provoked by the irritant
remedy, got rid of it, and the ailment at once; or it may be that the
man body, after the racket in "his innards," found his ailment, by
comparison, easy to live with, and imagined himself cured. In either
case, the result was counted as cure to the credit of Mrs. Moloney.
By profession a seller of needles, pins, buttons, and such small wares,
she owed her livelihood, in reality, to payment for her medical skill.
Not that she took money for her prescription or advice--"Thanks be to
God," she said, "I never took wan penny for curin' man, woman, or
child"; but then, no one ever asked her advice without buying something,
and if her charges were just a little more than shop prices, she was
entitled to something extra for bringing the shop to the customer. Then
she got her meals from grateful and believing patients, and her basket
had an uncommercial end, covered with a fair, white cloth, into which
the good wife, with some show of doing good by stealth, introduced the
useful wreck of a boiled fowl, or a ham-bone with broth possibilities.
She did not meddle with diseases of children, except in cases of
measles, for which she prescribed whisky and sulphur, and a diet of
sweet milk warm from the cow. Decline, she considered to be due to "a
sappin' o' the constitution," and she shared the old-time belief in the
noxious effect of night air on consumptives, and would have them warm in
curtained four-posters, in rooms into which little light and no fresh
air could enter. Beyond a recommendation of port wine, she had no
message for healing for these poor sufferers. Her strength lay in the
treatment of adults' ailments which do not necessarily kill. Her list of
diseases was a short one. For the numerous forms of hepatic trouble
known to the professional, she had one comprehensive title--
Liver Complent,
and for it one remedy, varied only in magnitude of dose. She recognised
also as a common ailment--
Stomach Complent,
differentiating under this heading, Andygestion, Waterbrash, and
Shuperfluity o' phlegm on the stomach. She knew, too--
Bowel Complent,
Rheumatism,
Gineral Wakeness,
and
Harry Siplars.[1]
The foundation of her great reputation was, indeed, largely built on her
celebrated cure of this last, in the case of Peggy Mulligan. She shall
tell of it herself:--
"She come to me, an' she ses, 'Mary,' ses she, 'can ye cure me, for I'm
heart-sick o' them doctors at the dispinsary, an' they're not doin' me
wan pick o' good.' Ses I to her, ses I, 'What did they give ye?' ses I.
'O the dear knows,' ses she. 'I haven't tuk anythin' they said, for I
didn't believe they would do me no good.' An' I had pity on the cratur,
for her face was the size o' a muckle pot, an' lek nothin' under the
sun. Ses I to her, ses I, 'I can cure you, my good woman, but ye'll hev
to do what you're tould,' ses I, 'an' I'll make no saycret about it,'
ses I--'it's cow-dung and flour mixed, an' ye'll put it on your face,
an' lave it there for a fortnight,' ses I, 'an' when ye'll wash it off,
ye'll have no Harry Siplars.' An' nether she had."
She had a fine professional manner, and she knew how to set at ease the
anxious patient. The concerned man body, wishful to appear unconcerned,
she took at his own valuation; appearing more interested in a bit of
chat or gossip of the country than in particulars of pains and aches.
And while she talked with him of crops and kine, and the good and
ill-doings of men's sons, the wife would urge John to tell Mrs. Moloney
about that bit of pain of his and how he could not sleep for it o'
nights. Then the wise woman would mention something which the good wife
"might" get for the good man--it would cure him in no time, but--turning
to the man,--"'deed, an' there's not much the matter with ye. It's
yerself that's gettin' younger lookin' every year--shows the good care
the mistress takes o' ye." And the gratified creature would retire,
proud to think that he had acted so well the part of the unconcerned,
and filled with respect for Mrs. Moloney as a woman of "great sinse and
onderstandin'."
Of new-fangled diseases she had a perfect horror, speaking of them more
in anger than in sorrow, as of things which never should have been
introduced. Even the New Ralgy she declined to entertain, dismissing the
mention of it, contemptuously, in the formula, "New Ralgy or Ould Ralgy,
I'll have nothing to do with it." To it, however, as Tic Doloro,[2] she
gave a qualified recognition, allowing its right to existence, but
condemning it as outlandish, and a gentry's ailment, which the gentry
should keep to themselves. And while she did not refuse to treat it
(with "Lodelum" in "sperrits," hot milk, and a black stocking tied round
the jaws), the patient was made to feel a certain degree of culpability
in touching a thing with which she should not have meddled, and that
Mrs. Moloney had reason for feeling displeased.
Very different was her attitude to one suffering from Gineral Wakeness.
This was her pet diagnosis, and one much craved by overworked and ailing
farmers' wives, for it meant for them justification of rest, and
indulgence in food and drink which they would have been afraid or
ashamed to ask or take, unfortified by an authoritative command. No man
ever suffered from Gineral Wakeness--it was a woman's trouble, and never
failed to draw from Mrs. Moloney a flood of understanding sympathy,
which was to the despairing one like cool water on the hot and thirsty
ground, making hope and health revive ere yet medicament had been
prescribed. Seated before the patient, she would sway slowly back and
forward, gently patting the while the afflicted's hand, and listening,
with rapt attention, to the longest and dreariest tale of woe.
The Patient.--O, but it's the weary woman I am, waitin' and hopin' that
you would come roun'. 'Deed, and if it hadn't been for the hope o'
seein' ye I would have give up altogether.
Mrs. M.--Puir dear; tell me all aboot it.
The Patient.--It's a cough and a wakeness and a drappin'-down feelin',
as if my legs were goin' from under me; and I could no more lift that
girdle o' bread there than I could fly--not if ye were to pay me a
thousand pound.
Mrs. M.--I know, dear; if it were writ out I cudn't see it plainer.
The Patient.--And when I get up in the mornin', I declare to ye, I have
to sit on the edge o' the bed for five minutes before puttin' fut to
groun', and if I didn't take a sup of cold water I couldn't put on my
clothes.
Mrs. M.--That's it, dear; that's just the way it goes.
The Patient.--And as for breakfast, I declare to ye, ye couldn't see
what I ate.
Mrs. M.--That's a sure sign, a sure sign.
The Patient.--And all through the day it's just the same thing. I'm just
in a state of collops the whole time. Niver a moment's aise the day
through, especially in the afternoon. It's just hingin' on I am; that's
what it raly is.
After an hour of alternating symptomatic description and sympathetic
response, interrupted only by the making and drinking of tea, the wise
woman is prepared to utter, and the patient to hear, the words of
healing.
"Now, dearie, listen to me, that's a good woman. It's Gineral Wakeness
that ails ye. I knew it the minute I set fut inside the dure. Ses I to
myself, ses I, 'There's Gineral Wakeness writ on the mistress's face;
it's prented on her face like a book,' ses I, 'before ever she says a
word to me.' Now listen, dearie, and do what I tell ye. Ye'll get a
bottle o' sherry wine, and ye'll take a bate-up egg in milk every day,
with a sup o' sherry in it, at eleven o'clock. And ye'll fill that pot
there with dandelion leaves and roots, and a handful o' mint on the top
o' it, and ye'll put as much water on it as'll cover it, and ye'll let
it sit at the side o' the fire all day until all the vartue is out o'
it. And ye'll take a tablespoonful o' it three times a day, immajintly
before your meals. And every day, whin it comes to three o'clock, ye'll
go to your bed and lie down for an hour, and when ye get up ye'll take a
cup o' tay. Do that now, an' ye'll not know yerself whin I come back."
As Mrs. Moloney's list of legitimate and proper country diseases was a
short one, so was her pharmacop[oe]ia a small book. Besides such common
remedies as Epsom salts, senna, ginger, and powdered rhubarb, it took
account of--
Lodelum which is Laudanum,
Hickery pickery " Hiera picra,
Gum Go Whackem " Gum guaiacum,
Assy Fettidy " Asafoetida,
as chemist's stuff fit for her practice, and of various herbs
(pronounced yarbs), alterative or curative, such as dandelion, camomile,
peppermint, and apple-balm. As she said herself, she made no "saycret"
of many of her remedies, but she was wise enough to carry and dispense
certain agents; for, to the benefit of the wise woman, these free gifts
constituted a claim for the liberal purchase of small wares, and the use
of one of these gave a certain cachet to an ailment which, with a
prescription of hot milk and pepper, or of ginger tea, would have been
sufficiently commonplace. These secret remedies were kept in little
bottles, each of which had its own sewed compartment in a large linen
pocket hanging at the mistress's waist, between the gown and the
uppermost petticoat. A certain solemnity attached to their
production--three, four, or five being invariably drawn and set out on
the table, even when, as in most cases, the contents of one only was
needed. Mrs. Moloney would contemplate the range, attentively and
silently, for a few minutes; lifting one after another, wrinkling her
brows the while, and, finally, selecting and uncorking one, while she
requested "a clane bottle and a good cork." The selected drug was
generally a crystal; the bottle, by request, was half-filled with hot
water, in which, through vigorous shaking, the crystal rapidly
disappeared. Handing the bottle to the patient, the instruction would be
given to take a tablespoonful immediately after eating. Silly young
folks, who had no need of the good woman's services, were known to say
that Mrs. Moloney knew perfectly well what she was going to use, that
the consideration was simulated, and that the oft-used crystal was
common washing-soda and nothing else. But these flighty children took
care not to say such things in the hearing of their mothers, who had
been treated for Gineral Wakeness.
Doubtless the prescriptions of Mrs. Moloney lacked precision on the
quantitative side. A cure of rheumatism was threepence-worth of "Hickery
Pickery in a naggin o' the best sperrits." To be well shaken and taken
by the teaspoonful, alternative mornings, on a fasting stomach.
"Sixpence worth o' Gum Go Wackem," also made up in the "best sperrits,"
was a remedy supposed to acquire special potency from a prodigious
amount of shaking. "Show me how ye'll shake it," the medicine-woman
would say, and when the patient made a great show of half-a-minute's
shaking, she--it was oftenest she--would be surprised to hear that
_that_ was no shaking, and an exhibition of what was good and sufficient
shaking would be made by Mrs. Moloney. In the case of her sovran remedy
for sore eyes, to be used very sparingly--a pennorth o' Red
Perspitherate,[3] in a tablespoonful of fresh butter--the quantity for
an application was always indicated in special and dramatic fashion. She
asked, "And how much will ye be puttin' in your eye, now?--jist show
me." The patient, desiring to avoid a mean or niggardly use of the
remedy, would probably indicate on the finger a lump as large as an eye
of liberal measurements could be supposed to accommodate. Then the good
woman would lean back and sigh. A pin would be withdrawn from some part
of her clothing, and held between the thumb and finger so that only the
head appeared.
"Do ye see that pin-head?"
The afflicted nods in acquiescence.
"Do ye see that pin-head? Now take a good look at it."
Again the sore-eyed indicates accurate observation.
"Well, not a pick more nor that, if ye want to keep your eyesight."
Other quantitative directions were given in "fulls"--"the full o' yer
fist," "the full o' an egg-cup," even "the full o' yer mooth." Or, by
sizes of objects, as, "the size o' a pay," "the size o' a marble." Or by
coin areas, "what'll lie on a sixpence," or on a shilling, or on a
penny. Or by money values, as in the Hickery Pickery prescription.
Fists, peas, marbles vary considerably in size, and in the case of
money-values a change of chemist might mean a considerable variation in
quantity; but, with the possible exception of "Lodelum," prescribed in
drops, the quantities of the good woman's remedies bore variation to a
considerable extent without serious difference in result. That "the best
sperrits" were so frequently the medium for "exhibition" of her remedies
may account for the great popularity with adults which these remedies
enjoyed. These were the days when hospitality was not hospitality
without "sperrits" free from medicinal addition, and, late in the
afternoon, Mrs. Moloney was accustomed to accept graciously "the full o'
an egg-cup," qualified by the addition of sugar and hot water. Once,
while sipping her punch, she asked that a little should be given to me
as a treat, and when the pungent spirit, in the unaccustomed throat,
produced a cough, she promptly diagnosed "a wake chist."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Erysipelas.
[2] Tic douloureux.
[3] Red Precipitate--red oxide of mercury.
The Meet of the Beagles.
_From "Patsy."_
BY H. DE VERE STACPOOLE.
Directly Patsy had left the news that the "quality" were coming to the
meet and returned to the house the crowd in front of the Castle Knock
Inn thickened.
Word of the impending event went from cabin to cabin, and Mr. Mahony,
the chimney sweep, put his head out of his door.
"What's the news, Rafferty?" cried Mr. Mahony.
"Mimber of Parlymint and all the quality comin' to the meet!" cried a
ragged-looking ruffian who was running by.
"Sure, it'll be a big day for Shan Finucane," said Mrs. Mahony, who was
standing behind her husband in the doorway with a baby in her arms.