_In Galway with a Camera_
Galway comes as near as any Irish city that I ever saw to rivaling New
York's East Side for dirtiness, and yet a fair-minded observer would
be compelled to tell Galway, when the time for awarding the leather
medal came, that she was only a close second.
This does not so much mean that New York is dirtier than I realized
she was when I was there as it means that Ireland is not as dirty as
English and Irish and American writers have pictured it.
Perhaps in some parts of Ireland the pig still sleeps in the room with
the family, but as a faithful chronicler of actual sights I cannot say
that I saw such a sight in any of the numerous slums and villages I
visited in twenty counties. I hate to destroy so poetic an illusion.
[Illustration: PICTURESQUE GALWAY]
There was something idyllic in the thought of a pink little pig and a
pink little boy, the two of them the pink of neatness, lying side by
side in a happy-hearted Irishman's cabin, while pig and boy and
Irishman starved to death, but the truth was something better than
that. There were pigs and little boys, but they were not neatly pink
and they were not starving, and the old man did not swing a shillelagh
or sing songs as I was passing by.
Shillelaghs were never so plentiful as they are now, but they are made
to supply the foreign demand for them, and the Irishman is amused and
perhaps a bit contemptuous as he sees Americans, with never a drop of
Irish blood in them, buying shillelaghs to take home for the sake of
sentiment.
I wish I might write that I saw evidences of destitution on every
side--it would please the sentimentalists--but I did not. There were
beggars, but not so many as I had feared I would see, and they did not
chase me any harder than youngsters have chased me in City Hall Park
in New York demanding a cent to buy sterilized milk.
In Sligo I was followed by a poor woman carrying a baby, and as she
raised her hand for alms her shawl dropped off and disclosed her
nakedness to the waist, but I was assured by a Sligo gentleman that
she was a professional beggar from out of town, and that possibly the
baby was not hers, and I know for a fact that she went to a public
house with the money I gave her.
And all the time I was fumbling in my pocket for coppers she was
wishing me happy days. She stands out in my recollection as the most
abject beggar I saw.
But in Galway there is dirt and squalor and it is picturesque. There
in the Claddagh one meets with old hags who are hideous enough and
Spanish looking enough to have just left Velasquez's studio, where
one can imagine them posing as models for some masterpiece of the
great realist.
Barefooted they are, and the homely ones have a great desire to be
photographed. Many and many were the pretty women I saw in Ireland,
but my camera recorded but few of their lineaments, while I was asked
more than once by plain women to take their pictures.
One nailed me as I was passing her vegetable shop in the Claddagh. She
was cross-eyed, poor thing, and in a land where pretty features are as
plentiful as blackberries, she was plain, but she besought me to take
her picture.
Now, when a woman asks you to photograph her you don't feel like
refusing her, and I was too much of a novice to make a feint at
snapping the shutter and passing on, so I stopped and tried to see a
picture in the carrots and cabbages that were displayed at the door.
Such a simpering, conscious face as she displayed! I tried to engage
her in talk so that she would at least look naturally homely, but it
was no use. Every time my finger strayed up to the little lever her
lips would become set in a smile, one eye would look at the camera and
one would look at me, and she would become the incarnation of
consciousness.
At last I snapped her and passed on. After that I took good care to
hurry past plain women.
The day before, at a railway station, I had gone in to get a bit of
lunch and discovered that one of the waitresses was a little beauty.
The thought came into my head, What a model for "An Irish Beauty,"
just as one of the others, who had no claim to beauty, said, "Take me
picture?"
I told her that I was not a professional, looking all the while at the
pretty one, but she suggested that I take all three waitresses just
for fun, and in order to get the beauty at any cost I assented, and
the girls stood in expectant attitudes.
[Illustration: A STRING OF FISHERMEN, GALWAY]
The beauty was so luscious looking that the other two were simply
obliterated in the finder, and I felt myself lucky at having such a
chance to carry away a permanent impression of Irish maidenhood.
My hand was raised to the lever, in another instant the face would be
mine, but just then the door opened and a man came in to buy a measly
sandwich.
One of the girls left the group--I could see that in the finder, but I
snapped hastily and then looked up.
It was the beauty.
I have the other two. They are undeveloped.
In the Claddagh a pretty little child came up to me and asked me to
take her "piccher," hoping for some coppers in payment.
I nodded my head to her, but a barefooted derelict ahead of me heard
her request, and wheeling around suddenly bade the child be off and
offered to pose for me herself.
Velasquez would have jumped at the chance, but I am not Velasquez and
I shook my head and hurried on.
The vehemence of the old woman's vituperative assault on the little
girl had collected a lot of loungers of both sexes, and I was besieged
for pictures, the pretty little girl saying incessantly, "I as't you
firrst. I as't you firrst. I as't you firrst."
I managed to make her understand that if she walked on far enough I
would take her picture, and only one other heard her, another little
girl who was pretty enough to grace a film.
These two kept on, while the others dropped away when they saw I was
adamant.
And when my models were far enough from the others to enable me to get
them before it was suspected what I was at I snapped them and put my
hand into my pocket to get up a couple of coppers and found nothing
but a sixpence.
Of course the children could not change it, and I could not very well
divide it, so I appealed to some fishermen who were lounging on the
quay, asking them if they could give me coppers for a sixpence.
They gave me to understand that both coppers and sixpences were
strangers to them, and evidently felt that, as a "rich American" I
could easily give each child a shilling. But this would have been to
get the whole pack on me, for they already smelt money and were coming
up.
So I gave the sixpence to the one who had first spoken to me and told
her to keep fourpence for herself and to give tuppence to her little
friend.
I'm afraid they came to blows over it. As for me, I left the
picturesque Claddagh and saw it no more.
It was that same morning that I had seen the entire population lining
one of the narrowest streets in that part of Galway, and there I got
shot after shot of the picturesque groups.
I asked what they were waiting for, and one of the mackerel selling
and barefooted Velasquez women told me that an American circus was
coming.
I felt it was worth waiting to see an American circus in Galway.
The circus was called "Buff Bill's Wild West Show." Not Buffalo Bill,
mind you, but Buff Bill.
For a long time I waited and at last my patience was rewarded.
I knew just what it would be. There would be fifty or sixty cowboys on
their broncos, a bevy of female sharpshooters, and the Deadwood stage;
and for the circus part of it an elephant or two and the $10,000
beauty, followed up by dens of wild beasts and representatives of all
the countries of the world.
At last music was heard. The band was approaching. Around a bend in
the street came the usual crowd of small boys and girls running ahead.
Then came a yellow wagon, with a cowboy band discoursing the latest
New York favorite.
[Illustration: WAITING FOR THE CIRCUS, GALWAY]
Next came one dreadful dwarf, made up as a hideous clown. Behind him
rode an ordinary negro, not costumed in any special manner. He was
enough novelty as he was.
And behind these two rode a man of the toothpowder vender type, with
long hair, _boiled shirt_, sombrero, and no necktie.
He was Buff Bill.
And that made up the parade.
It was worth waiting for, if only to see what it is that constitutes a
wondrous spectacle to a small boy.
Fifty years from now some prosperous Chicagoan will take his grandson
to see a four-mile parade of some great circus of the period, with
half a hundred elephants, a thousand noble horsemen, and scores of
gilded chariots; and when the small boy voices his rapture the old man
will say with sincerity:
"It's pretty good, I suppose, but you ought to have seen the circus
that came to Galway when I was a boy of eight. That beat any circus
I've ever seen since. I couldn't sleep for weeks thinking about it."
XIV
_The New Life in Ireland_
No one can be in Ireland long without realizing that when sturdy,
practical John Bull forcibly married dreamy Hibernia, with her
artistic temperament, it was a very foolish marriage, and as a good
American I could have predicted trouble from the very start. John Bull
is accustomed to be obeyed at the drop of the hat, and Hibernia, for
all her dreaminess, is a lady of spirit and will not become a willing
slave.
John Bull has no more knowledge of the real needs and capabilities of
this Irish wife of his than the average American has of the real needs
and capabilities of an Indian, and the result of the union has been a
series of bickerings that show John up in his worst light and that do
not serve to call out the most agreeable aspects of his unfortunate
wife's nature.
He suspects her, and what good woman will stand being suspected by her
husband without resentment? In her temperamental qualities--qualities
that could be cultivated to express something noble--he sees only
idleness and shiftlessness. He treats his wife as a child, and the
wife who is treated as a child becomes a mighty poor mother.
That Hibernia is a failure as a mother is shown by the fact that
thousands of her sons are still willing and even anxious to leave her
instead of staying and showing by their industry and sobriety and
willingness to make the most of the opportunities that undoubtedly
exist in Ireland, that they are capable of developing and governing
their native land without interference of any kind from John Bull.
Ordinarily I'm quite opposed to divorce, and I know that Catholics
abhor it, but it seems as if Hibernia ought to get a decree against
John Bull on the plea of incompatibility of temper. And I wouldn't
advise Hibernia to rush into marriage again after she gets her
freedom.
But through what courts she is to get her decree is beyond my
knowledge. She's a most attractive lady and she has fertile farms and
some say undeveloped mines, and there is certainly land enough,
setting aside the fact of ownership, to support all the sons who have
stayed by her.
Every Irishman in America who loves Ireland, and I can't imagine that
there are any who do not, ought to advise against further immigration.
Ireland needs every able-bodied man to help carry on the work there is
to do--a work that the Gaelic League is doing so much to foster.
The Gaelic League with its fostering of the artistic spirit that is
dormant in the Irish nature, and that already finds expression in the
weaving of rugs and in embroidery and in bookbinding and the making
of stained glass, and the Irish Agricultural Organization Society,
with its introduction of modern scientific methods of farming, its
model hospitals and schoolhouses and dwellings--these movements are
waking great interest among the younger people. And Ireland cannot
afford to part with a single man or woman from now on.
The study of Gaelic increases year by year, and whereas in former
times Irishmen, subdued by the English spirit, punished their children
if they were caught talking Gaelic, now Irishmen encourage them and
they are freely learning Gaelic in all parts of Ireland. This movement
cannot help revivifying a national spirit.
In a railway carriage I talked with some young women who, with their
brothers, were returning from a three days' fast and an all night
vigil at a little village near Bundoran. They were of course Roman
Catholics. They asked me if I was going to the national festival
about to be held in Dublin, the Oireachtas, and when I found out what
it meant I told them that I was, and asked them if they were members
of the Gaelic League.
[Illustration: GAELIC SIGN, DONEGAL]
"Indeed we are," said one, and her eyes glowed with enthusiasm as she
said it.
"And do you speak Gaelic?"
"Oh, yes. We've learned it, you understand, learned it since growing
up."
They were heart and soul in the new movement that it is hoped will
regenerate and cultivate and spiritualize Ireland, and while I was
talking to them and felt their sincerity and ardor, I was sure that
the Gaelic League was doing more than all the politicians ever could.
It is not the Catholics only that have joined this movement; it is
non-sectarian. I talked with a young drug clerk in a northern town and
he "had the Irish" (could talk Gaelic), and wrote his name in Gaelic
characters, but he was a Protestant. He offered to give me a line to a
well-known Dublin literary man, which shows how democratic the
movement is.
To-day you'll meet with a land-owning aristocrat who is interested in
what the league is doing, and to-morrow you'll meet a jarvey who is
learning Gaelic, and the next day a young lady of gentle birth who is
teaching the poor children of the neighborhood how to weave rugs, and
then you'll meet an artist who was formerly a land owner and a
Protestant, and who was one of the first to sell his property to his
tenants under the Wyndham act--and being an artist and not a business
man he got ruinous prices for it--and has been forced ever since to
rely on his brush for his support. He, too, is heart and soul in the
movement.
Now when the yeast permeates the lump to such an extent there is bound
to be a rising--but of the peaceful kind.
"Pat," in his "Economics for Irishmen," says, "Were I a priest, I
should, I think, regard it as a sin on my soul every time a young
person emigrated from my parish while I might have shown him how he
could have made an excellent living at home."
It must strike every American, no matter whether he is a Protestant,
an atheist, an agnostic, or a Roman Catholic, so long as he is open
minded, that the size and evident costliness of the churches in the
country districts is out of all proportion to the costliness of the
houses of the peasants.
In a poor community money that is put into costly bricks and stone
that might have been put into books and bread is money inadequately
expended, even if Ruskin rise from his grave to contradict me. A
better temple to God than a granite church is a granite constitution,
and the light of health and sanity and cheerful industry in the eye of
an Irish lad is better than the light of a thousand candles.
This is not a question of religion, but of common sense. If all the
money that has been spent upon the extra embellishment of churches of
all denominations in Ireland had been spent on the physical and
educational and moral betterment of Irishmen, they would have ceased
to emigrate long since.
But this is thin ice, and as I can't swim I'll give up the skating on
it until the weather is colder.
But the priests are also interested in this Gaelic revival of which
Americans have already heard so much, and which is non-sectarian and
non-political. And the nuns are doing a blessed work all over Ireland.
Let me close this somewhat serious chapter--one can't help being
serious in Ireland when he sees that her regeneration is at hand--with
a parable that I made all by my lonesome:
Once there was a man who had a sugar maple, and there being a demand
for maple sugar he allowed the sap to run early and late, and
disposed of the sugar thus obtained. But there came by a man who said:
[Illustration: GONE TO AMERICA]
"Why, you're ruining that tree. The sap that is being made into sugar
for the whole United States is the life blood of that green old tree.
If you keep on, your tree will wither and die."
And the man took the advice and the tree renewed its youth.
Close up the sap holes and keep in the sap, for the sap is the life
blood of Ireland, and we in America have learned how to make sugar out
of many things--even out of beets--and we no longer need the Irish
young man. But the old tree needs her young blood in order to keep her
fresh and green.
Transcriber's Note:
Archaic and inconsistent spelling and punctuation retained.