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THE WILD IRISHMAN
THE WILD
IRISHMAN
BY
T. W. H. CROSLAND
_Author of_
“_The Unspeakable Scot_”
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1905
COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
_Published October, 1905._
PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION
The people of America may or may not indulge kindly views of the Irish
community; but there cannot be the slightest question that the Irish
of Ireland have kindlier feelings for America than ever they have had
for England. To the Irish of Ireland, in fact, America has long stood
in the relation of a sort of promised land, and they have a habit of
turning their thoughts thitherward even when small matters are concerned.
There is a tale of an elderly lady of Galway who, on being informed by
her medical attendant that it was desirable that she should consult a
dental specialist, set forth incontinently for New York to the total
neglect of London. She believed that of the two places, New York was the
friendlier. I am informed that, broadly speaking, New York is policed
by Irish Americans and that the American Irishman makes a rather useful
subordinate municipal official. Be this as it may, there can be no doubt
that very considerable numbers of Irishmen contrive to do themselves a
great deal better in the United States than they could ever have hoped to
do in their own native Erin. To those Americans and American Irish who
happen to be at all interested in the present condition and prospects of
the green country, I venture to offer the following pages for what they
are worth.
T. W. H. C.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.—DISTRESSFUL 1
II.—THE SHILLELAGH 11
III.—BLARNEY 19
IV.—WHISKY 29
V.—THE PATHRIOT 36
VI.—ORANGEMEN 42
VII.—THE LOW SCOTCH 50
VIII.—PRIESTCRAFT 60
IX.—MORALS 71
X.—PRETTY WOMEN 91
XI.—THE LONDON IRISH 100
XII.—TOM MOORE 105
XIII.—W. B. YEATS 117
XIV.—WIT AND HUMOR 130
XV.—MORE WIT AND HUMOR 141
XVI.—DIRT 151
XVII.—THE TOURIST 158
XVIII.—POTATOES 169
XIX.—PIGS 179
XX.—EMIGRATION 187
THE WILD IRISHMAN
CHAPTER I
DISTRESSFUL
The person who invented the Irish question may or may not deserve well
of his species. In a sense, of course, there has been an Irish question
since the beginning of history. But it is only within the last century
or so that we have begun to spell it with a big Q. That big Q perhaps
attained its largest proportions during the eighties of the last century,
and associated, as it usually was, with a capital G, which stood for
Gladstone, and a capital P, which stood for somebody else, it certainly
did yeoman service wherever a use for letters could be found. At the
time of Mr. Gladstone’s Home Rule campaign the existence of a highly
insistent Irish question could not be doubted. A good deal of water
has flowed under the bridges since then, however, and at the present
moment, and in view of the present situation of Irish affairs, one is
tempted to wonder whether there now exists, or whether there really has
ever existed, an Irish question with a big Q at all. It is true that at
the time of writing there is an actual and undesirable famine raging
in Connemara. It is true that the population of the country is on the
decline, and that the standard of comfort among the people will not bear
comparison with the standard of comfort in any other country in the
world, unless it be in the poorer and bleaker regions of Kamchatka; and
it is true also that Irishmen as a body continue to exercise themselves
both at street corners, and on all sorts of platforms, in a habit of
rhetoric, which many years of shouting have made second nature with
them. For all that, the Irish question as a portentous and vital matter
appears to be somewhat played out. One may safely say that in Ireland,
at any rate, it has been reduced to an obscurity which allows of its
being now spelled with about the smallest “q” in ordinary use among
printers. In England it has been allowed to disappear, in favor of the
Russo-Japanese War, Protection, and Do We Believe? On the whole, though
it no doubt harrows the souls of the horde of carpet-baggers which have
come to us out of Ireland, this condition of affairs is exceedingly
salutary for Ireland itself. Now that the factions, and the tumult, and
the turbulence, and the wrangling have died down, or at least been in
large measure abated, the facts about Ireland are for the first time in
history beginning, as it were, to swim into our ken. We are beginning
to perceive, for example, that out of the quarrels and bloodshed of the
past hundred years Ireland has emerged triumphant. It has been a case
of a bankrupt, downtrodden and dwindling people’s fight against a rich
and powerful dominant people, and the weaker side has proved clearly
that in the long run God is on the side of “justice.” To all intents and
purposes Ireland is at the present moment in full possession of all that
she herself has felt it reasonable to demand. She has the franchise, she
has land laws which are almost socialistic in the benefits they offer to
the cultivators of the soil, and she has local self-government. More than
all, she has herself begun to recognize that the disposition of England
toward her is becoming year by year less arrogant, less implacable, less
contemptuous, and less severe. It has been said that Erin’s appeals for
reasonable treatment at the hands of England have had to be made by
violence of the most brutal and terrorizing kind. She has stood before
us with the head of a landlord in one hand and the tail of a cow in the
other, and screamed till we gave her what she wanted. And always in a
large measure we have succumbed. And the singular part of it is that in
no instance have we had cause, nor do we appear likely to have cause,
to regret it. Of course, that crown and summit of Irish blisses, Home
Rule, has not yet been vouchsafed to her. But this, I believe, is due to
the fact that Ireland herself is still making up her mind whether she
really wants it. Half Ireland says, “Give us Home Rule,” the other half
says, “Please don’t;” and the two parties seem to be getting on very well
together by agreeing to differ. This is a true and natural settlement
of a problem which, as I believe, is purely artificial, arising out of
the exigencies of party and the jealousies of rival demagogues, rather
than out of the desires of the people. If Ireland in her heart of hearts
desired Home Rule, she would have it within the next couple of years.
She has the good sense to know that, however fascinating the theory of
Home Rule may appear, the practise of it for her would be difficult and
irksome, if not altogether disastrous. Both sides are agreed that Home
Rule for Ireland means an immediate spell of civil war for Ireland. The
Irish Catholic will tell you this, and the Irish Protestant is equally
clear about it. In view of the condition and nature of the country, such
a war were a calamity to be staved off at pretty well any cost, even
if it were certain—and it is by no means certain—that the subsequent
benefits would be appreciable and lasting. The politicians will tell
you that it is possible to have in Ireland what is somewhat prettily
called a “union of hearts.” “The union of hearts which I desire,” says
one of them, “is a union of Irishmen of all classes and of all creeds,
from the north to the south, from the east to the west; landlords and
tenants, Catholics and Protestants, Orange and Green; and I look to this
union as the surest way of bringing about the national regeneration of
our country.” Which is exceedingly beautiful, but amounts to asking for
the moon. Oil and water cannot be made to mix, and in a country where
a couple of cardinals and a number of bishops were lately stoned by a
rabblement of Protestants, the union of hearts may be reckoned still a
great way off. Holy Ireland—and I think it is rather to her credit—will
never be brought to do what England and Scotland have managed to do,
namely to set the political or material interest in front of the
religious or spiritual interest. Catholics and Protestants in Ireland are
Catholic and Protestant from head to foot and right through, and you will
never induce them to forget it. All the same it is not impossible, with
the exercise of a little charity and self-restraint, for the lion to lie
down with the lamb politically, if not religiously, and this is what is
happening in Ireland. In other words the Irish Catholics and Protestants
have tacitly agreed that they can live in more or less amity under one
government, providing that government is neither an Irish Catholic
government nor an Irish Protestant government, but an alien, impartial
and practically secular government.
As we have said, the Irish question as a portent and terror to England
is disappearing, if indeed it has not already disappeared. For all that,
the fact remains that Ireland in the main is a distressful country.
Thackeray’s Snooks gives it as his opinion that “of all the _wum_
countwith that I ever wead of, hang me if Ireland ithn’t the wummetht.”
“Wum,” gay and irrepressible epithet though it may be, is really and deep
down not the epithet; whereas “distressful” is. There are people in the
world who are born to misfortune, whose lives are touched with melancholy
from beginning to end, and who cannot be brought to rejoice even by Act
of Parliament. Ireland’s woes may be said to be largely temperamental and
still more largely “misfortunate.” Her very position in the geographical
scheme of things is strikingly lonesome and unhappy. Practically she is
the last outpost of Europe, and a little one at that. With sheer Atlantic
on one side of her, and sixty miles of sea between herself and England,
it is impossible for her to get rid of a certain feeling of isolation
which is not good for the spirits. The soft rain that is always over
her may heighten the green of her meadows, but it keeps her damp and
watery and preternaturally boggy. She has no harbors of the kind that are
essential to fishermen, and though some of her ports may be admirable,
there is little in the country that calls for the use of them. Thus
physically handicapped, Ireland has necessarily produced a people who are
in all respects a people to themselves. The religious faculty in them has
been highly developed, the commercial faculty might seem to have been
left out of their composition. By nature they are a simple, cheerful,
unambitious, warm-hearted race, and they have suffered accordingly.
Sir Francis Drake, or some instrument of his, planted the potato upon
them. James I. planted the Scotch on them. George III. gave them a Lord
Lieutenant and a Secretary. The potato, the Scotch, and Dublin Castle
have been the three bitter curses which have brought this people to the
ghastliest social and political passes. All three are ineradicable, but
they may be mitigated. This is what Ireland wants.