'I wouldn't wish to give you so much,' I said, holding it out to
him, 'but it is all I have, and I don't like to give you nothing at
all, and the darkness coming on. Keep the table; it's no use to me,
and you'll maybe sell it for something in the morning.'
The shilling was more than he expected, and his eyes flamed with
joy.
'May the Almighty God preserve you and watch over you and reward you
for this night,' he said, 'but you'll take the table; I wouldn't
keep it at all, and you after stretching out your hand with a
shilling to me, and the darkness coming on.'
He forced it into my hands so eagerly that I could not refuse it,
and set off down the road with tottering steps. When he had gone a
few yards, I called after him: 'There's your table; take it and God
speed you.'
Then I put down his table on the ground, and set off as quickly as I
was able. In a moment he came up with me, holding the table in his
hands, and slipped round in front of me so that I could not get
away.
'You wouldn't refuse it,' he said, 'and I after working at it all
day below by the river.'
He was shaking with excitement and the exertion of overtaking me; so
I took his table and let him go on his way. A quarter of a mile
further on I threw it over the ditch in a desolate place, where no
one was likely to find it.
In addition to the more genuine vagrants a number of wandering men
and women are to be met with in the northern parts of the county,
who walk out for ferns and flowers in bands of from four or five to
a dozen. They usually set out in the evening, and sleep in some
ditch or shed, coming home the next night with what they have
gathered. If their sales are successful, both men and women drink
heavily; so that they are always on the edge of starvation, and are
miserably dressed, the women sometimes wearing nothing but an old
petticoat and shawl--a scantiness of clothing that is sometimes met
with also among the road-women of Kerry.
These people are nearly always at war with the police, and are often
harshly treated. Once after a holiday, as I was walking home through
a village on the border of Wicklow, I came upon several policemen,
with a crowd round them, trying to force a drunken flower-woman out
of the village. She did not wish to go, and threw herself down,
raging and kicking on the ground. They let her lie there for a few
moments, and then she propped herself up against the wall, scolding
and storming at every one, till she became so outrageous the police
renewed their attack. One of them walked up to her and hit her a
sharp blow on the jaw with the back of his hand. Then two more of
them seized her by the shoulders and forced her along the road for a
few yards, till her clothes began to tear off with the violence of
the struggle, and they let her go once more.
She sprang up at once when they did so. 'Let this be the barrack's
yard, if you wish it,' she cried out, tearing off the rags that
still clung about her. 'Let this be the barrack's yard, and come on
now, the lot of you.'
Then she rushed at them with extraordinary fury; but the police, to
avoid scandal, withdrew into the town, and left her to be quieted by
her friends.
Sometimes, it is fair to add, the police are generous and
good-humoured. One evening, many years ago, when Whit-Monday in
Enniskerry was a very different thing from what it is now, I was
looking out of a window in that village, watching the police, who
had been brought in for the occasion, getting ready to start for
Bray. As they were standing about, a young ballad-singer came along
from the Dargle, and one of the policemen, who seemed to know him,
asked him why a fine, stout lad the like of him wasn't earning his
bread, instead of straying on the roads.
Immediately the young man drew up on the spot where he was, and
began shouting a loud ballad at the top of his voice. The police
tried to stop him; but he went on, getting faster and faster, till
he ended, swinging his head from side to side, in a furious patter,
of which I seem to remember--
Botheration
Take the nation,
Calculation,
In the stable,
Cain and Abel,
Tower of Babel,
And the Battle of Waterloo.
Then he pulled off his hat, dashed in among the police, and did not
leave them till they had all given him the share of money he felt he
had earned for his bread.
In all the circumstances of this tramp life there is a certain
wildness that gives it romance and a peculiar value for those who
look at life in Ireland with an eye that is aware of the arts also.
In all the healthy movements of art, variations from the ordinary
types of manhood are made interesting for the ordinary man, and in
this way only the higher arts are universal. Beside this art,
however, founded on the variations which are a condition and effect
of all vigorous life, there is another art--sometimes confounded
with it--founded on the freak of nature, in itself a mere sign of
atavism or disease. This latter art, which is occupied with the
antics of the freak, is of interest only to the variation from
ordinary minds, and for this reason is never universal. To be quite
plain, the tramp in real life, Hamlet and Faust in the arts, are
variations; but the maniac in real life, and Des Esseintes and all
his ugly crew in the arts, are freaks only.