A group of peasants were straggling along the hilly road returning
from the fair in the summer twilight. It was composed of about an
equal number of men and women; the women trudged along on their naked
feet, with their heavy market-baskets over one arm, and their boots
slung by the laces over the other; the men lazily dragged their
heavily shod feet after them, with the trailing gait born of much
walking in ploughed fields and clinging soil, they carried one hand
in their trousers' pocket, the other twirling an ash plant, with
which they switched off the heads of all the thistles they met.
In front of them wandered a few young bullocks, badly bred and
unkempt, mooing pitifully from time to time. In their midst was a
donkey-cart with four sheep and a couple of pigs confined between its
cribs; the sheep were tied together in pairs with twisted hay-bands
round their necks, their legs also were hobbled with hay-bands; the
pigs ran about loose and routed ceaselessly among the straw at the
bottom of the cart. The donkey plodded patiently along by himself,
for the most part unnoticed; but when it was necessary to turn aside
into a by-road or avoid one of the huge stones that had tumbled off a
neighboring ditch, one of the men guided him by the simple but
effective means of seizing the tail-pieces and levering round both
cart and staggering donkey together.
'A bad fair agin the day,' said one of the elder men in a high
querulous tone, directed impartially to the group at large.
'Ay, deed so,' replied another, 'times is main bad the now. Bastes
is gone clane to nothin'; two pun I was bid the day for a year-ould
heifer; that's her runnin' in front wi' the white patch 'roun' her
tail; I min' the time when I wouldn't have luked at sivin for her;
two pun, min' that now,' and he spat disgustedly. 'Pigs is the on'y
thing as fetches any price at ahl, an' who's to be at the cost of
fattenin' thim?'
'Michael Dolan wudn't be overly well plazed at yon sight,'
interjected the first speaker, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in
the direction of the hindmost of the group.
The couple thus alluded to were the youngest of those present. They
were in the stage known as 'coortin',' and ever since leaving town
some half hour before they had been unobtrusively dropping in the
rear of their party. They were walking along with their arms round
each other's waists, and her head drooped upon his shoulder.
Contrary to the rule among the Northern peasantry, who are for the
most part hard-featured and uncomely, perhaps owing to the admixture
of Scotch blood in their veins, the girl had the true Celtic type of
beauty, straight features with black hair, and large blue eyes
fringed with dark lashes, a tall figure, and a firm and
well-developed bust. But the young man beside her overtopped her by
a head, straight-limbed, with a broad sun-tanned face and a wide
laughing mouth; the damp of the plough-land had not yet got into his
bones nor the bend of the scythe into his knee-joints. They walked
in silence, content to be together; your rustic has not too many
words to spare to waste any even in his courting. But the blood
coursed none the less hotly in the veins of both.
The rich, who have more room in their houses, and fewer constraints
to trouble them, do most of their love-making indoors. The poor have
to do theirs in the open air, chiefly, as now, in the long evenings
coming home together from market. The middle classes are more
restricted by space and convention on both these sides, which perhaps
partly accounts for their higher morality.
An Irish laborer's cottage of two rooms has to accommodate a whole
family, the younger children often sleeping in the same bed with
their parents. From thus herding together, and from the necessities
of country life in connection with animals, the children are brought
up in familiarity with aspects of life which never come under the
notice of those bred in towns. And yet the Irish women have a high
reputation for chastity; and justly, for they rarely take a lover
outside of their own class. Within that class they are protected by
their religion; if anything goes wrong between a man and a maid, the
priest always hears of it, and marries them on the spot before worse
can happen. Generations of this restraint have bred an ingrained
habit of continence among the people, so that now in the Roman
Catholic districts of Northern Ireland an illegitimate child is an
almost unknown disgrace.
'What did ye buy in town the day, Paddy?' asked the girl, with the
intonation of a tender speech. The limits of her vocabulary did not
admit of a nearer approach to lovers' talk than the practical details
of housekeeping that bore on their projected marriage.
'Them two pigs in the ass-cart, an' the Saints alone knows whether
I'll be fit to kape thim through the winter. A shillin' a day, an'
not ivery day at that, isn't enough to kape a man, let alone a wife
an' two suckin' pigs. I only git two shillin' when I'm ploughin' or
mowin', an' them machines is cuttin' us all out; they git all the
wurruk these times. I'm thinkin' I'll jine to larn the use av them
be next year; there's no man hereabouts as knows the thrick av it,
an' I've a consate that siveral av the farmers would jine an' buy a
mowin' machine right out instead av hirin' them thramp wans, av they
had a man as cud use it.'
'But yous is the boy as has the head,' said the girl admiringly.
'I'm glad I'm to be married to yous. I'll niver want for bit nor
sup, I'll hold ye.'
'It's that same that's botherin' me this minit, Norah darlin'. Whin
are we to be married? It ud be ahl right wi' the house an' the wee
bit farrum; but me brother Mick is that set agin you I don't know
what's kim over him. An' I'd as lave not ang-er him. For Mick's
right fond av me the whole time, whin ahl's said an' done.'
'Ay, troth is he; he thinks the sun rises an' sets an yer elbow whin
yous is not by.'
'I'm clane moidhered what to do. What did you buy, swateheart?'
'I'm worse agin nor yous. I on'y got five shillin' for spriggin' an'
stockins as tuk me a fair fortnight. But I scraped enough ha'pence
together for a churn; an' I said as how yous wud bring it home the
nixt time ye had the ass-cart in town.'
In these marriages it is the woman's part, where possible, to supply
the household utensils necessary to set up house together, the man's
to find the live-stock and keep a roof over their heads by his labor.
'It's comin' on saft, let's take shelther,' said Paddy presently.
'Ah, what signifies that dhrap? It'll on'y be a shower.'
'An' yous in yer new jacket an' hat wi' the red feather till it;
it'll be ahl shpoilt. As it isn't goin' to last, it's ahl the more
raison not to git wet to the pelt for nothin'. Let's git in behin'
this ould wall for a wee taste; it's gran' shelther, an' the brackens
right saft to set an.'
The girl resisted for a time, but finally, when she felt a large drop
splash on her nose, her fears for her finery triumphed over her
native modesty, and she let herself be persuaded against her will.
Paddy calmly 'tossed' the loose stone wall, making a gap of a height
sufficient to let her pass over it, and they took refuge under the
ruined gable of an old church beside the road. The bracken grew
thickly up to the foot of the crumbling wall; the overhanging ivy
cast them into deep shadow.
'Ah, quit,' exclaimed the girl presently, in a tone half-angry,
half-alarmed. 'Quit now, I'm tellin' ye. What for are ye squeezin'
me so tight? For the love av Mary, Paddy darlin,' what are ye doin'?
I didn't think it av ye,' and her voice died away in a murmur of
passion.
When the shower was over, they rose and resumed their journey in
silence, walking apart, one on the grass on either side, with the
roadway between them.