THE REAL IRISH PROBLEM
IT was well we went to Cong when we did, for the next day was cold and
rainy, with a clammy mist in the air which settled into the valleys and
soaked everything it touched. I walked over to the village, after
breakfast, to keep my promise to the school-teacher. The school is a
dingy frame building with two rooms and two teachers, a man for the
older pupils and a woman for the younger ones. They are brother and
sister, and from their poor clothes and half-fed appearance, I judge
that teachers are even worse paid in Ireland than elsewhere. But they
both welcomed me warmly, and the man hastened to set out for me the only
chair in the place, carefully dusting it beforehand.
He called the roll, and it was delightful to hear the soft, childish
voices answer "Prisent, sorr," "Prisent, sorr." Then he counted heads to
be sure, I suppose, that some child hadn't answered twice, once for
himself and once for some absent friend. There were about thirty
children present, ranging in age from six to fifteen; and they were all
barefoot, of course, and such clothing as they had was very worn and
ragged, and most of them had walked four or five miles, that morning,
down out of the hills. The teacher said sadly that the attendance should
be twice as large, but there was no way of enforcing the compulsory
education law, though the priest did what he could.
I wish I could paint you a picture of that school, so that you could see
it, as I can, when I close my eyes. In the larger room there was a
little furniture--a chair and cheap desk for the teacher, some rude
forms for the children, and a small blackboard; but the other room was
absolutely bare, and the children sat around on the floor in a circle,
with their legs sticking out in front of them, red with cold, while the
teacher stood in their midst to hear them recite. Each of them had over
his shoulder a cheap little satchel, usually tied together with string;
and in this he carried his two or three books--thin, paper-covered
affairs, which cost a penny each; and all the children, large and small,
had to carry their books about with them all the time they were in
school because there was no place to put them.
The reading lesson had just started when I entered the room where the
smaller children were, and it was about the advantages of an education.
It brought tears to the eyes to hear them, in their soft voices and
sweet dialect, read aloud with intense earnestness what a great help
education is in the battle of life and in how many ways it is useful.
When the reading was done, the teacher asked them the meaning of the
longest words, and had them tell again in their own way what the lesson
had said, to be certain that they understood it.
Poor kiddies! As I looked at them, I could see in my mind's eye our
schoolhouses back home, heated and ventilated by the best systems--there
was ventilation enough here, heaven knows, for the door was wide open,
but no heat, though the day was very raw and chilly, and the children
were shivering--equipped with expensive furniture and the latest devices
of charts and maps; and I could see the well-fed, well-clothed children,
with their beautiful costly books which make teachers almost
unnecessary, languidly reading some such lesson as was being read here
in Connaught, on the advantages of an education! It would not have been
read so earnestly, be sure of that, nor with such poignant meaning.
And in that moment, I thrilled with a realisation of Ireland's greatest
and truest need. It is not land purchase, or reform of the franchise, or
temperance, or home rule, though these needs are great enough; it is
education. It is education only that can solve her industrial problems
and her labour problems; and, however she may prosper under the
favouring laws of a new political regime, it is only by education, by
the banishment of ignorance and illiteracy, that she can hope to take
her place among the nations of the world.
It was a sort of vision I had, standing there in that bare little room,
of a new Ireland, dotted with schools and colleges, as she was a
thousand years ago, illumined with the white light of knowledge; but
here, meanwhile, were these eager, bright-eyed, ragged little children,
stumbling along the path of knowledge as well as they could; but a rocky
path they find it, and how deserving of help they are! I wish you could
have seen those soiled, thumbed little readers, which cost, as I have
said, only a penny each, and which, if they had cost more, would have
been beyond the reach of the average Connaught family.
I bought a few of them, afterwards, to bring home with me, and when I
looked through them, I found them very primitive indeed. Here, for
instance, is Lesson Six in the primer:
Pat has a cat.
It is fat. It is on the mat.
The cat ran at the rat.
It bit the fat cat.
Pat hit the rat.
The rat ran. The cat ran at it.
The rat bit the fat cat.
Cats and rats used, I remember, to be favourite subjects in the readers
of my own early school days; and so were dogs. It is still so in
Ireland, as Lesson Eight will show:
Is it a dog?
It is a fox.
Was the fox in a box?
The dog was in the box.
He was in the mud.
Rub the mud off the dog.
He ran at the fox in the mud.
The dog ran at the fox and bit it.
My principal objection to this is that it is nonsense: how, for example,
if the dog was in the box, could it have been also in the mud? These
questions occur to children even more readily than to adults, and to
teach them nonsense is wrong and unjust. Also these lessons tell no
story; they have no continuity; they ask questions without answering
them; they change the subject almost as often as the dictionary. Here,
for instance, is the first lesson of the second term:
Tom put the best fish in a dish.
The cat sat near it on a rug.
Let the hen rest in her nest.
Frank rode a mile on an ass.
He went so fast he sent up the dust.
The last sentence shows it was an Irishman made this book; but why, in
this lesson, did he not continue with the story of the fish in the dish,
which the cat was plainly watching from the rug with malicious intent,
instead of branching off to a wholly irrelevant remark about a hen, and
then to an account of Frank's adventure with an ass? Perhaps the first
step to be made in educational reform in Ireland is the adoption of
better school-books, and there is no reason why this step should be
delayed.
I went back, presently, to the other room where the larger boys and
girls were reciting in small sections, standing shrinkingly before the
shrivelled little teacher, whose fierceness, I am sure, was assumed for
the occasion, and he got out for me a sheaf of compositions which the
boys and girls had written on the subject, "My Home," and of which he
was evidently very proud. They were written in the round, laborious
penmanship of the copy-book, and the homes which they described were,
for the most part, those poor little cabins clinging to the rocky
hillsides, which I have tried to picture; but here the picture was drawn
sharply and simply, with few strokes, without any suspicion that it was
a tragic one. For instance, this is John Kerrigan's picture of
My Home.
My home is in County Galway and is placed in
Ganaginula. It is built on a height near the
roadside. The length of it is eighteen feet and
the breadth is six feet. It is about ten feet
high. The covering is timber and thatch. It is
built with stones and mortar. There are four
windows, two in the kitchen and two in the room.
The floor is made of sand and gravel.
That was all that John Kerrigan found to describe about his home, and I
dare say there wasn't much more; but it is easy to picture it standing
there on the bleak hillside, with its low walls of rubble and its roof
of thatch, and its two little rooms, nine feet by six, with dirt floor
and tiny windows. And at one end of the kitchen there would be an open
fireplace, with some blocks of turf smoking in it, and above the turf
there would be hanging a black pot, where the potatoes are boiling which
is all John will have for supper. . . .
I put the compositions aside, for a lesson in Gaelic had begun. The
teacher wrote on the little blackboard some sentences composed of the
strangest-looking words imaginable, and the pronunciation of them was
stranger still. But the lesson proceeded rapidly, and it was evident
that most of the children understood Gaelic quite as well as they did
English. That, of course, is not saying very much; and I fancy that
about all these children can be expected to learn is to read and write.
Indeed, it is a wonder that they learn even that, for the odds against
them are almost overwhelming.
I bade them good-bye at last, and returned pensively to the hotel, and
there I found the district physician making some repairs to his
motor-cycle. It probably needs them often, for the roads up into the
hills are trying for anything on wheels; but he said it was surprising
where it would go and how much knocking about it would stand. And then,
naturally enough, we fell into talk about his work.
Every poor person in Ireland is, as I understand it, entitled to free
medical attendance. The country is divided into districts, in each of
which a doctor is stationed, paid partially by the government and
depending for the remainder of his income on his private practice.
Before a person is entitled to free attendance, he must secure a ticket
from one of the poor-law guardians, who have the management of the
charities in each district; and no physician is compelled to give free
attendance, unless the person asking for it can produce one of these
tickets.
"Even then," continued the doctor at Leenane, who was explaining all
this to me, "I don't put myself out, if I think the person presenting
the ticket can afford to pay. I look him over, of course, and give him
some medicine, with instructions how to take it--the law compels me to
do that; but I don't bother myself to see whether the instructions are
carried out. And if he's really sick, he soon realises that if he wants
me to be interested, he's got to pay for it, and he manages to find a
guinea or so. This sounds hard-hearted, perhaps; but it's astonishing
how many beggars there are in this country, and how the poor-law
guardians let themselves be imposed on. Why, people come to me with
cards and try to get free attendance who could buy and sell me ten times
over! I don't bite my tongue telling them what I think of them, you may
well believe. The trouble is, the poor-law guardians are natives of the
district and they all have some axe to grind; so the doctor, who is a
stranger for whom they care nothing, gets the worst of it. This is about
the worst district in Ireland, anyway, so big and poor and full of
hills. A man has to work himself to death to make three hundred pounds a
year out of it."
Various reflections occurred to me while he was talking. One was that
three hundred pounds a year is many, many times the income of the
average dweller in Connaught; and another was that, to leave any
discretion to the physician in regard to the treatment of charity
patients is not without its dangers; and still a third was that, in any
sudden emergency, such as might occur at any time, many valuable minutes
would be lost if the poor-law guardians had to be hunted up and a card
obtained before the doctor could be summoned. I suppose, in such cases,
the doctor is summoned first, and the card secured when there is time to
do so.
It is probably only in cases of dire need that the district doctor is
summoned at all. The fact that he is a stranger and a government
appointee is enough to make a large section of the Irish peasantry
distrust him. This one told me that he is never called for confinement
cases, because every old Irish woman considers herself competent to
handle them, and usually is; and that other cases are treated with "home
remedies" or visits to holy wells, until they get so bad that the doctor
is turned to as a last resort.
"The ignorance of the people is past all belief," he went on. "They
haven't any idea of what causes disease; they never heard of germs; they
don't know it is unhealthy to have a stinking heap of manure and human
excrement under the window or in front of the door; they don't believe
there is any reason why a person dying with consumption shouldn't sleep
in the same bed with other people, and eat out of the same dishes, and
spit all about the place. And so we have typhus, and tuberculosis--you
Americans are partially responsible for that."
"In what way?" I asked.
"The people born and reared in these western highlands, with lungs
adapted through long generations to this soft, moist climate, can't
stand the American atmosphere. When they are poor and live crowded
together in your towns, consumption gets them; and then, when they're
too far gone to work, they come back home to cough their lives out and
poison all their friends. They lie in these dark cabins without a
window, which soon become perfect plague-spots; and the children,
playing on the filthy, infected floor, get the infection in their lungs;
or perhaps they cut their knees and rub it into the sore. Ugh! it makes
one sick to think about it. There ought to be a law preventing any such
infected person landing in Ireland--you won't let such a one land in
America."
I had to admit that that would be one way of dealing with the mischief;
and I suggested that another way would be to try to educate the people
to some knowledge of the simpler facts of hygiene. But the doctor
snorted.
"Educate them!" he echoed. "You can't educate them! Why, you haven't any
conception of the depths of their ignorance. And they're superstitious,
too; they don't believe in science; they think it's something
irreligious, something against their faith. If prayers to the Virgin
won't cure them, or a visit to some holy well or other, why nothing
will. If I do cure them, I don't get the credit--they simply believe
they've got on the good side of one of their saints. What is a man to do
against such ignorance as that? The only reason they don't all die is
because this country is so full of little streams that the running water
carries off most of their filth, and the turf smoke which fills their
houses helps to disinfect them."
I agreed that his was a hard task; and left him still tinkering with his
motor-cycle, and went over to smoke a pipe with the men at the stables.
Joyce, our driver of the day before, was there, and he smiled as he
pointed his pipe-stem toward the doctor, with whom he had seen me
talking.
"He's a hard one, he is," he said. "Not a word of advice nor a sup of
medicine do you get out of that one, if he thinks you've got a shillin'
about you. He thinks we're all liars and thieves, which is natural
enough, for he's an Englishman--and I'm not sayin' but what it may be
true of some of us," and he grinned around at his companions.
"Tell the gintleman about the other one," one of them suggested.
"Ah, Mister O'Beirn, that was," said Joyce; "a Galway man, born to the
Irish. How he got the app'intment, I don't know; but he did stir this
district up--went about givin' long talks, he did, about how we're made
and why we get sick, and such like; and he went into the houses and made
the women wash the childer and set things to rights, and they bore with
him because they knew he meant them no harm. He wore himself to a bone,
he did, and we were all fond of him; but I'm not sayin' it wasn't a
relief when he was moved to another district, and we could make
ourselves comfortable again."
"No doubt the children are glad, too," I ventured.
"They are, sir; and why should one bother washin' them when they get
dirty again right away? Sure the women have enough to do without that!"
But it would be a mistake to suppose that the lives of the women and
girls are all work and no play. Betty chanced to remark to the girl who
waited on our table at the hotel that she must find the winters very
lonesome.
"Oh, not at all, miss," she protested. "We have a very good time in the
winter with a dance every week; and at Christmas Mr. McKeown do be
givin' us a big party here at the hotel. Then there will be maybe two or
three weddings, and as many christenings, and some of the girls who have
been to America will come home for a visit and there will be dances for
them, so there is always plenty to do."
So Leenane has its social season, just the same as New York and Paris
and London; and I suppose the same is true of every Irish village. The
Irish are said to be great dancers, but we were never fortunate enough
to see them at it.
You may perhaps have noticed that in such Irish conversations as I have
given in these pages, I have contented myself with trying to indicate
the idiom, without attempting to imitate the brogue; and this is
because it is impossible to imitate it with any degree of accuracy.
Such imitation would be either a burlesque or would be unreadable. For
example, while we were talking to the waitress at Leenane, Betty asked
her what a very delicious jam which she served with our tea was made of.
"Black torn, miss," she answered--at least, that is what it sounded
like.
"Black torn?" repeated Betty. "What is it? A berry or a fruit?"
The girl tried to describe it, but not recognisably.
"Can you spell it?" asked Betty at last.
"I can, miss; b-l-a-c-k, black, c-u-r-r-a-n-t, torn," answered the girl.
* * * * *
We bade good-bye to Leenane, that afternoon, taking the motor-bus for
Westport, and my friends of the constabulary were out to see me off and
shake hands, and Gaynor sent a "God speed ye" after us from the door of
his little shop, and the schoolmaster and his sister waved to us from
the door of the school. It was almost like leaving old friends; and
indeed, I often think of them as such, and of that drab little town
crouching at the head of Killary, and of how serious a thing life is to
those who dwell there. We looked back for a last glimpse of it, as we
turned up the road out of the valley--the row of dingy houses, the grey
mountains rising steeply behind them, the broad sheet of blue water in
front--how plainly I recall that picture!
There were three other passengers on the bus--an elderly man and woman,
rather obese and grumpy, and a younger man with clean-shaven eager
face; and we were puzzled for a time to determine their relationship,
for the younger man was most assiduous in attending to the wants of his
companions and pointing out the places of interest along the road. And
then, finally, it dawned upon us--here was a personally conducted party;
a man and wife who had brought a guide along to see them safely through
the wilds of Ireland!
The road from Leenane to Westport is not nearly so picturesque as that
from Clifden, for we soon ran out of the hills, and for miles and miles
sped across a wild bog, without a sign of life except a few sheep
grazing here and there. We met a flock of them upon the road, and the
way the shepherd's dog, at a sharp whistle from him, herded his charges
to one side out of the way was beautiful to see.
Then at last, far below us, at the bottom of a valley, we saw the roofs
of Westport, and we started down the road into it--a steep and dangerous
road, for we came within an ace of running down a loaded cart that was
labouring up; and when we came to the foot of the hill, we were startled
by a remarkable monument looming high in the middle of the principal
street--a tall, fluted shaft, with two seated women at its base, rising
from an octagonal pedestal, and surmounted by a heroic figure in knee
breeches and trailing robe--without question the very ugliest monument I
ever saw. It was so extraordinarily ugly that we came back next day to
look at it, and discovered the following inscription:
To the Memory of
GEORGE GLENDINING
Born in Westport 1770
Died in Westport 1845
If the deceased had any other claim to fame except that he was born in
Westport, and also ended his days there, it does not appear upon his
monument.
* * * * *
Westport has only one hotel, and it is probably the worst in Ireland.
When we had been ushered along its dark and dirty corridors, into a room
as dingy as can be imagined, and had found that it was the best room to
be had, and that there was nothing to do but grin and bear it, we sat
down and looked at each other, and I could see in Betty's disgusted face
some such thought as Touchstone voiced: "So here I am in Arden. The more
fool I. When I was at home, I was in a better place."
"'Travellers must be content,'" I said. "Let's get out of here and look
at the town."
Betty agreed with alacrity; but we soon found that it is a dull and
uninteresting place, offering no diversion except a stroll through Lord
Sligo's demesne. The gate was open, so we entered and plodded along a
sticky road, past the square, unimpressive mansion-house, out to the
head of Clew Bay. We walked on, past the longest line of deserted quays
and empty warehouses we had encountered in Ireland. There must be half a
mile of quays, and the warehouses are towering, four-storied structures,
with vast interiors given over to rats and spiders; and all along that
dreary vista, there was just one boat--a small one, unloading lumber.
It was government money, I suppose, which built the quay, and a
government board which authorised it; and looking at it, one realises
where Canon Hannay got the local colour for the descriptions of the
activities of government boards which are scattered through his Irish
stories. For Canon Hannay, whose pen name is George A. Birmingham, lives
here at Westport; and the bay which faces it is the scene of most of his
tales.
It is a beautiful bay, dotted with the greenest of islands; and it was
among those islands that the irrepressible Meldon sailed in quest of
Spanish gold; it was there the Major's niece had her surprising
adventures; and I have wondered since if the grotesque statue back in
the town may not have suggested that of the mythical General John Regan.
And there, in the distance, towering above the bay, is Croagh Patrick,
the great hill, falling steeply into the water from a height of 2500
feet, down which Saint Patrick one fine morning drove all the snakes and
toads and poisonous creatures in Ireland, to their death in the sea
below. Indeed, the marks of their passage are still plainly to be seen,
for the precipice down which they fell is furrowed and scraped in the
most convincing manner:
The Wicklow hills are very high,
And so's the Hill of Howth, sir;
But there's a hill much bigger still,
Much higher nor them both, sir;
'Twas on the top of this high hill
St. Patrick preached his sarmint
That drove the frogs into the bogs
And banished all the varmint.
The legend is that St. Patrick, who had spent forty days on the mountain
in fasting and prayer, stood at the edge of the precipice and rang his
little bell--the same bell we have seen in the museum at Dublin--and all
the snakes and toads in Ireland, attracted by the sound, plunged over
the cliff and so down into the sea.
From a distance, Croagh Patrick seems to end in a sharp point; but there
is really a little plateau up there, some half-acre in extent, and a
small church has been built there, and on the last Sunday in July,
pilgrims gather from all over Ireland and proceed to the mountain on
foot and toil up its rugged sides and attend Mass on the summit and then
make the rounds of the stations on their knees, just as has been done
from time immemorial. For Croagh Patrick is a very holy place, since
Ireland's great apostle prayed and fasted there, and those who pray and
fast there likewise shall not go unrewarded.
* * * * *
I heard the click of a typewriter, as I went up the walk to the rectory,
that evening, to spend a few hours with Canon Hannay, and it must be
only by improving every minute that he gets through the immense amount
of work he manages to accomplish. He had just arranged for an American
lecture tour in the following October, and both he and his wife were
pleasantly excited at the prospect of encountering American
sleeping-cars and soft-shelled crabs and corn on the cob, and other such
novelties, some of which they had heard were very dreadful. I reassured
them as well as I could; and then we talked awhile about George Moore's
inimitable reminiscences, and Canon Hannay's own books; but the gist of
the evening was the discussion of Ireland and Irish problems which
occupied the greater part of it. It was very late indeed when I arose to
say good-night.