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The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh

by William Carleton · English · Gutenberg #16014 · 448,411 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh

Author: William Carleton

Illustrator: M. L. Flanery


        
Release date: June 7, 2005 [eBook #16014]
                Most recently updated: December 9, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16014

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEDGE SCHOOL; THE MIDNIGHT MASS; THE DONAGH ***




Produced by David Widger





THE WORKS

OF

WILLIAM CARLETON.


VOLUME III.




TRAITS AND STORIES OF THE IRISH PEASANTRY


PART III.


[Illustration: Frontispiece]

[Illustration: Titlepage]




CONTENTS

     The Hedge School.

     The Midnight Mass.

     The Donagh; Or, The Horse Stealers.




THE HEDGE SCHOOL.

There never was a more unfounded calumny, than that which would impute
to the Irish peasantry an indifference to education. I may, on the
contrary, fearlessly assert that the lower orders of no country ever
manifested such a positive inclination for literary acquirements,
and that, too, under circumstances strongly calculated to produce
carelessness and apathy on this particular subject. Nay, I do maintain,
that he who is intimately acquainted with the character of our
countrymen, must acknowledge that their zeal for book learning, not only
is strong and ardent, when opportunities of scholastic education occur,
but that it increases in proportion as these opportunities are rare and
unattainable. The very name and nature of Hedge Schools are proof of
this; for what stronger point could be made out, in illustration of my
position, than the fact, that, despite of obstacles, the very idea of
which would crush ordinary enterprise--when not even a shed could be
obtained in which to assemble the children of an Irish village, the
worthy pedagogue selected the first green spot on the sunny side of a
quickset-thorn hedge, which he conceived adapted for his purpose, and
there, under the scorching rays of a summer sun, and in defiance of
spies and statutes, carried on the work of instruction. From this
circumstance the name of Hedge School originated; and, however it may be
associated with the ludicrous, I maintain, that it is highly creditable
to the character of the people, and an encouragement to those who wish
to see them receive pure and correct educational knowledge. A
Hedge School, however, in its original sense, was but a temporary
establishment, being only adopted until such a school-house could be
erected, as it was in those days deemed sufficient to hold such a number
of children, as were expected, at all hazards, to attend it.

The opinion, I know, which has been long entertained of Hedge
Schoolmasters, was, and still is, unfavorable; but the character of
these worthy and eccentric persons has been misunderstood, for the
stigma attached to their want of knowledge should have rather been
applied to their want of morals, because, on this latter point, were
they principally indefensible. The fact is, that Hedge Schoolmasters
were a class of men from whom morality was not expected by the
peasantry; for, strange to say, one of their strongest recommendations
to the good opinion of the People, as far as their literary talents and
qualifications were concerned, was an inordinate love of whiskey, and if
to this could be added a slight touch of derangement, the character was
complete.

On once asking an Irish peasant, why he sent his children to a
schoolmaster who was notoriously addicted to spirituous liquors, rather
than to a man of sober habits who taught in the same neighborhood,

“Why do I send them to Mat Meegan, is it?” he replied--“and do you
think, sir,” said he, “that I'd send them to that dry-headed dunce, Mr.
Frazher, with his black coat upon him, and his Caroline hat, and him
wouldn't take a glass of poteen wanst in seven years? Mat, sir, likes
it, and teaches the boys ten times betther whin he's dhrunk nor when
he's sober; and you'll never find a good tacher, sir, but's fond of
it. As for Mat, when he's half gone, I'd turn him agin the country for
deepness in learning; for it's then he rhymes it out of him, that it
would do one good to hear him.”

“So,” said I, “you think that a love of drinking poteen is a sign of
talent in a school-master?”

“Ay, or in any man else, sir,” he replied. “Look at tradesmen, and 'tis
always the cleverest that you'll find fond of the drink! If you had hard
Mat and Frazher, the other evening, at it--what a hare Mat made of him!
but he was just in proper tune for it, being, at the time, purty well
I thank you, and did not lave him a leg to stand upon. He took him in
Euclid's Ailments and Logicals, and proved in Frazher's teeth that the
candlestick before them was the church-steeple, and Frazher himself the
parson; and so sign was on it, the other couldn't disprove it, but had
to give in.”

“Mat, then,” I observed, “is the most learned man on this walk.”

“Why, thin, I doubt that same, sir,” replied he, “for all he's so great
in the books; for, you see, while they were ding dust at it, who comes
in but mad Delaney, and he attacked Mat, and, in less than no time,
rubbed the consate out of him, as clane as he did out of Frazher.”

“Who is Delaney?” I inquired.

“He was the makings of a priest, sir, and was in Maynooth a couple of
years, but he took in the knowledge so fast, that, bedad, he got cracked
wid larnin'--for a dunce you see, never cracks wid it, in regard of the
thickness of the skull: no doubt but he's too many for Mat, and can go
far beyant him in the books; but then, like Mat, he's still brightest
whin he has a sup in his head.”

These are the prejudices which the Irish peasantry have long entertained
concerning the character of hedge schoolmasters; but, granting them to
be unfounded, as they generally are, yet it is an indisputable fact,
that hedge schoolmasters were as superior in literary knowledge and
acquirements to the class of men who are now engaged in the general
education of the people, as they were beneath them in moral and
religious character. The former part of this assertion will, I am aware,
appear rather startling to many. But it is true; and one great cause why
the character of Society Teachers is undervalued, in many instances, by
the people, proceeds from a conviction on their parts, that they are,
and must be, incapable, from the slender portion of learning they have
received, of giving their children a sound and practical education.

But that we may put this subject in a clearer light, we will give a
sketch of the course of instruction which was deemed necessary for a
hedge schoolmaster, and let it be contrasted with that which falls to
the lot of those engaged in the conducting of schools patronized by the
Education Societies of the present day.

When a poor man, about twenty or thirty years ago, understood from the
schoolmaster who educated his sons, that any of them was particularly
“cute at his larnin',” the ambition of the parent usually directed
itself to one of three objects--he would either make him a priest, a
clerk, or a schoolmaster. The determination once fixed, the boy was set
apart from every kind of labor, that he might be at liberty to bestow
his undivided time and talents to the object set before him. His parents
strained every nerve to furnish him with the necessary books, and always
took care that his appearance and dress should be more decent than those
of any other member of the family. If the church were in prospect, he
was distinguished, after he had been two or three years at his Latin, by
the appellation of “the young priest,” an epithet to him of the
greatest pride and honor; but if destined only to wield the ferula, his
importance in the family, and the narrow circle of his friends, was by
no means so great. If, however, the goal of his future ambition as a
schoolmaster was humbler, that of his literary career was considerably
extended. He usually remained at the next school in the vicinity
until he supposed that he had completely drained the master of all his
knowledge. This circumstance was generally discovered in the following
manner:--As soon as he judged himself a match for his teacher, and
possessed sufficient confidence in his own powers, he penned him a
formal challenge to meet him in literary contest either in his own
school, before competent witnesses, or at the chapel-green, on the
Sabbath day, before the arrival of the priest or probably after it--for
the priest himself was sometimes the moderator and judge upon these
occasions. This challenge was generally couched in rhyme, and either
sent by the hands of a common friend or posted upon the chapel-door.

These contests, as the reader perceives, were always public, and
were witnessed by the peasantry with intense interest. If the master
sustained a defeat, it was not so much attributed to his want of
learning, as to the overwhelming talent of his opponent; nor was
the success of the pupil generally followed by the expulsion of the
master--for this was but the first of a series of challenges which the
former proposed to undertake, ere he eventually settled himself in the
exercise of his profession.

I remember being present at one of them, and a ludicrous exhibition it
was. The parish priest, a red-faced, jocular little man, was president;
and his curate, a scholar of six feet two inches in height, and a
schoolmaster from the next parish, were judges. I will only touch upon
two circumstances in their conduct, which evinced a close, instinctive
knowledge of human nature in the combatants. The master would not
condescend to argue off his throne--a piece of policy to which, in my
opinion, he owed his victory (for he won); whereas the pupil insisted
that he should meet him on equal ground, face to face, in the lower end
of the room. It was evident that the latter could not divest himself
of his boyish terror so long as the other sat, as it were, in the
plentitude of his former authority, contracting his brows with habitual
sternness, thundering out his arguments, with a most menacing and
stentorian voice, while he thumped his desk with his shut fist, or
struck it with his great ruler at the end of each argument, in a manner
that made the youngster put his hands behind him several times, to be
certain that that portion of his dress which is unmentionable was tight
upon him. If in these encounters the young candidate for the honors of
the literary sceptre was not victorious, he again resumed his studies,
under his old preceptor, with renewed vigor and becoming humility; but
if he put the schoolmaster down, his next object was to seek out some
other teacher, whose celebrity was unclouded within his own range. With
him he had a fresh encounter, and its result was similar to what I have
already related.

If victorious, he sought out another and more learned opponent; and
if defeated, he became the pupil of his conqueror--going night about,
during his sojourn at the school, with the neighboring farmers' sons,
whom he assisted in their studies, as a compensation for his support.
He was called during these peregrinations, the Poor Scholar, a character
which secured him the esteem and hospitable attention of the peasantry,
who never fail in respect to any one characterized by a zeal for
learning and knowledge.

In this manner he proceeded, a literary knight errant, filled with a
chivalrous love of letters, which would have done honor to the most
learned peripatetic of them all; enlarging his own powers, and making
fresh acquisitions of knowledge as he went along. His contests, his
defeats, and his triumphs, of course, were frequent; and his habits
of thinking and reasoning must have been considerably improved, his
acquaintance with classical and mathematical authors rendered more
intimate, and his powers of illustration and comparison more clear
and happy. After three or four years spent in this manner, he
usually returned to his native place, sent another challenger to the
schoolmaster, in the capacity of a candidate for his situation, and if
successful, drove him out of the district, and established himself in
his situation. The vanquished master sought a new district, sent a new
challenge, in his turn, to some other teacher, and usually put him to
flight in the same manner. The terms of defeat or victory, according to
their application, were called sacking and bogging. “There was a great
argument entirely, sir,” said a peasant once, when speaking of these
contests, “'twas at the chapel on Sunday week, betiane young Tom Brady,
that was a poor scholar in Munsther, and Mr. Hartigan the schoolmaster.”

“And who was victorious?” I inquired. “Why, sir, and maybe 'twas young
Brady that didn't sack him clane before the priest and all, and went
nigh to bog the priest himself in Greek. His Reverence was only two
words beyant him; but he sacked the masther any how, and showed him in
the Grammatical and Dixonary where he was Wrong.”

“And what is Brady's object in life?” I asked. “What does he intend to
do.”

“Intend to do, is it? I am tould nothing less nor going into Trinity
College in Dublin and expects to bate them all there, out and out:
he's first to make something they call a seizure; (* Sizar) and, afther
making that good he's to be a counsellor. So, sir, you see what it is to
resave good schoolin', and to have the larnin'; but, indeed, it's Brady
that's the great head-piece entirely.”

Unquestionably, many who received instruction in this manner have
distinguished themselves in the Dublin University; and I have no
hesitation in saying, that young men educated in Irish hedge schools, as
they were called, have proved themselves to be better classical scholars
and mathematicians, generally speaking, than any proportionate number
of those educated in our first-rate academies. The Munstor masters have
long been, and still are, particularly celebrated for making excellent
classical and mathematical scholars.

That a great deal of ludicrous pedantry generally accompanied this
knowledge is not at all surprising, when we consider the rank these
worthy teachers held in life, and the stretch of inflation at which
their pride was kept by the profound reverence excited by their learning
among the people. It is equally true, that each of them had a stock
of _crambos_ ready for accidental encounter, which would have puzzled
Euclid or Sir Isaac Newton himself; but even these trained their minds
to habits of acuteness and investigation. When a schoolmaster of this
class had established himself as a good mathematician, the predominant
enjoyment of his heart and life was to write the epithet Philomath after
his name; and this, whatever document he subscribed, was never omitted.
If he witnessed a will, it was Timothy Fagan, Philomath; if he put his
name to a promissory note, it was Tim. Pagan, Philomath; if he addressed
a love-letter to his sweetheart, it was still Timothy Fagan--or whatever
the name might be--Philomath; and this was always written in legible and
distinct copy-hand, sufficiently large to attract the observation of the
reader.

It was also usual for a man who had been a preeminent and extraordinary
scholar, to have the epithet Great prefixed to his name. I remember one
of this description, who was called the Great O'Brien par excellence. In
the latter years of his life he gave up teaching, and led a circulating
life, going round from school to school, and remaining a week or a month
alternately among his brethren. His visits were considered an honor,
and raised considerably the literary character of those with whom he
resided; for he spoke of dunces with the most dignified contempt, and
the general impression was, that he would scorn even to avail himself of
their hospitality. Like most of his brethren, he could not live without
the poteen; and his custom was, to drink a pint of it in its native
purity before he entered into any literary contest, or made any display
of his learning at wakes or other Irish festivities; and most certainly,
however blamable the practice, and injurious to health and morals, it
threw out his talents and his powers in a most surprising manner.

It was highly amusing to observe the peculiarity which the consciousness
of superior knowledge impressed upon the conversation and personal
appearance of this decaying race. Whatever might have been the original
conformation of their physical structure, it was sure, by the force of
acquired habit, to transform itself into a stiff, erect, consequential,
and unbending manner, ludicrously characteristic of an inflated sense of
their extraordinary knowledge, and a proud and commiserating contempt
of the dark ignorance by which, in despite of their own light, they were
surrounded. Their conversation, like their own _crambos_, was dark and
difficult to be understood; their words, truly sesquipedalian; their
voice, loud and commanding in its tones; their deportment, grave and
dictatorial, but completely indescribable, and certainly original to the
last degree, in those instances where the ready, genuine humor of their
country maintained an unyielding rivalry in their disposition, against
the natural solemnity which was considered necessary to keep up the due
dignity of their character.

In many of these persons, where the original gayety of the disposition
was known, all efforts at the grave and dignified were complete
failures, and these were enjoyed by the peasantry and their own pupils,
nearly with the sensations which the enactment of Hamlet by Liston would
necessarily produce. At all events, their education, allowing for
the usual exceptions, was by no means superficial; and the reader has
already received a sketch of the trials which they had to undergo,
before they considered themselves qualified to enter upon the duties of
their calling. Their life was, in fact, a state of literary warfare; and
they felt that a mere elementary knowledge of their business would
have been insufficient to carry them, with suitable credit, through the
attacks to which they were exposed from travelling teachers, whose mode
of establishing themselves in schools, was, as I said, by driving away
the less qualified, and usurping their places. This, according to the
law of opinion and the custom which prevailed, was very easily effected,
for the peasantry uniformly encouraged those whom they supposed to be
the most competent; as to moral or religious instruction, neither was
expected from them, so that the indifference of the moral character was
no bar to their success.

The village of Findramore was situated at the foot of a long green hill,
the outline of which formed a low arch, as it rose to the eye against
the horizon. This hill was studded with clumps of beeches, and sometimes
enclosed as a meadow. In the month of July, when the grass on it was
long, many an hour have I spent in solitary enjoyment, watching the
wavy motion produced upon its pliant surface by the sunny winds, or
the flight of the cloud-shadows, like gigantic phantoms, as they
swept rapidly over it, whilst the murmur of the rocking-trees, and
the glancing of their bright leaves in the sun produced a heartfelt
pleasure, the very memory of which rises in my imagination like some
fading recollection of a brighter world. At the foot of this hill ran a
clear, deep-banked river, bounded on one side by a slip of rich, level
meadow, and on the other by a kind of common for the village geese,
whose white feathers, during the summer season, lay scattered over its
green surface. It was also the play-ground for the boys of the village
school; for there ran that part of the river which, with very correct
judgment, the urchins had selected as their bathing-place. A little
slope, or watering-ground in the bank, brought them to the edge of
the stream, where the bottom fell away into the fearful depths of the
whirlpool, under the hanging oak on the other bank. Well do I remember
the first time I ventured to swim across it, and even yet do I see,
in imagination, the two bunches of water flaggons on which the
inexperienced swimmers trusted themselves in the water.

About two hundred yards from this, the boreen (* A little road) which
led from the village to the main road, crossed the river, by one of
those old narrow bridges whose arches rise like round ditches across
the road--an almost impassable barrier to horse and car. On passing the
bridge in a northern direction, you found a range of low thatched houses
on each side of the road: and if one o'clock, the hour of dinner, drew
near, you might observe columns of blue smoke curling up from a row of
chimneys, some made of wicker creels plastered over with a rich coat of
mud; some, of old, narrow, bottomless tubs; and others, with a greater
appearance of taste, ornamented with thick, circular ropes of straw,
sewed together like bees' skeps, with a peel of a briar; and many having
nothing but the open vent above. But the smoke by no means escaped
by its legitimate aperture, for you might observe little clouds of it
bursting out of the doors and windows; the panes of the latter being
mostly stopped at other times with old hats and rags, were now left
entirely open for the purpose of giving it a free escape.

Before the doors, on right and left, was a series of dunghills, each
with its concomitant sink of green, rotten water; and if it happened
that a stout-looking woman, with watery eyes, and a yellow cap hung
loosely upon her matted locks, came, with a chubby urchin on one arm,
and a pot of dirty water in her hand, its unceremonious ejection in the
aforesaid sink would be apt to send you up the village with your finger
and thumb (for what purpose you would yourself perfectly understand)
closely, but not knowingly, applied to your nostrils. But, independently
of this, you would be apt to have other reasons for giving your horse,
whose heels are by this time surrounded by a dozen of barking curs, and
the same number of shouting urchins, a pretty sharp touch of the spurs,
as well as for complaining bitterly of the odor of the atmosphere. It
is no landscape without figures; and you might notice, if you are, as
I suppose you to be, a man of observation, in every sink as you pass
along, a “slip of a pig,” stretched in the middle of the mud, the very
beau ideal of luxury, giving occasionally a long, luxuriant grunt,
highly-expressive of his enjoyment; or, perhaps, an old farrower, lying
in indolent repose, with half a dozen young ones jostling each other for
their draught, and punching her belly with their little snouts, reckless
of the fumes they are creating; whilst the loud crow of the cock, as he
confidently flaps his wings on his own dunghill, gives the warning note
for the hour of dinner.

As you advance, you will also perceive several faces thrust out of the
doors, and rather than miss a sight of you, a grotesque visage peeping
by a short cut through the paneless windows--or a tattered female flying
to snatch up her urchin that has been tumbling itself, heels up, in the
dust of the road, lest “the gentleman's horse might ride over it;” and
if you happen to look behind, you may observe a shaggy-headed youth in
tattered frieze, with one hand thrust indolently in his breast, standing
at the door in conversation with the inmates, a broad grin of sarcastic
ridicule on his face, in the act of breaking a joke or two upon
yourself, or your horse; or perhaps, your jaw may be saluted with a
lump of clay, just hard enough not to fall asunder as it flies, cast by
some ragged gorsoon from behind a hedge, who squats himself in a ridge
of corn to avoid detection.

Seated upon a hob at the door, you may observe a toil-worn man, without
coat or waistcoat; his red, muscular, sunburnt shoulder peering through
the remnant of a skirt, mending his shoes with a piece of twisted
flax, called a _lingel_, or, perhaps, sewing two footless stockings (or
_martyeens_) to his coat, as a substitute for sleeves.

In the gardens, which are usually fringed with nettles, you will see
a solitary laborer, working with that carelessness and apathy that
characterizes an Irishman when he labors for himself--leaning upon his
spade to look after you, glad of any excuse to be idle. The houses,
however, are not all such as I have described--far from it. You see here
and there, between the more humble cabins, a stout, comfortable-looking
farm-house, with ornamental thatching and well-glazed windows;
adjoining to which is a hay-yard, with five or six large stacks of corn,
well-trimmed and roped, and a fine, yellow, weather-beaten old hay-rick,
half cut--not taking into account twelve or thirteen circular strata of
stones, that mark out the foundations on which others had been raised.
Neither is the rich smell of oaten or wheaten bread, which the good wife
is baking on the griddle, unpleasant to your nostrils; nor would the
bubbling of a large pot, in which you might see, should you chance to
enter, a prodigious square of fat, yellow, and almost transparent bacon
tumbling about, to be an unpleasant object; truly, as it hangs over a
large fire, with well-swept hearthstone, it is in good keeping with the
white settle and chairs, and the dresser with noggins, wooden trenchers,
and pewter dishes, perfectly clean, and as well polished as a French
courtier.

As you leave the village, you have, to the left, a view of the hill
which I have already described, and to the right a level expanse of
fertile country, bounded by a good view of respectable mountains,
peering decently into the sky; and in a line that forms an acute angle
from the point of the road where you ride, is a delightful valley, in
the bottom of which shines a pretty lake; and a little beyond, on the
slope of a green hill, rises a splendid house, surrounded by a park,
well wooded and stocked with deer. You have now topped the little hill
above the village, and a straight line of level road, a mile long, goes
forward to a country town, which lies immediately behind that white
church, with its spire cutting into the sky, before you. You descend on
the other side, and, having advanced a few perches, look to the left,
where you see a long, thatched chapel, only distinguished from a
dwelling-house by its want of chimneys and a small stone cross that
stands on the top of the eastern gable; behind it is a graveyard; and
beside it a snug public-house, well whitewashed; then, to the right,
you observe a door apparently in the side of a clay bank, which rises
considerably above the pavement of the road. What! you ask yourself,
can this be a human habitation?--but ere you have time to answer the
question, a confused buzz of voices from within reaches your ear, and
the appearance of a little “gorsoon,” with a red, close-cropped head
and Milesian face, having in his hand a short, white stick, or the
thigh-bone of a horse, which you at once recognize as “the pass” of
a village school, gives you the full information. He has an ink horn,
covered with leather, dangling at the button-hole (for he has long
since played away the buttons) of his frieze jacket--his mouth is
circumscribed with a streak of ink--his pen is stuck knowingly behind
his ear--his shins are dotted over with fire-blisters, black, red, and
blue--on each heel a kibe--his “leather crackers,” videlicet--breeches
shrunk up upon him, and only reaching as far down as the caps of his
knees. Having spied you, he places his hand over his brows, to throw
back the dazzling light of the sun, and peers at you from under it, till
he breaks out into a laugh, exclaiming, half to himself, half to you:--

“You a gintleman!--no, nor one of your breed never was, you procthorin'
thief, you!”

You are now immediately opposite the door of the seminary, when half a
dozen of those seated next it notice you.

“Oh, sir, here's a gintleman on a horse!--masther, sir, here's
a-gintleman on a horse, wid boots and spurs on him, that's looking in at
us.”

“Silence!” exclaims the master; “back from the door; boys, rehearse;
every one of you, rehearse, I say, you Boeotians, till the gintleman
goes past!”

“I want to go out, if you plase, sir.”

“No, you don't, Phelim.”

“I do, indeed, sir.”

“What!--is it after conthradictin' me you'd be? Don't you see the
'porter's' out, and you can't go.”

“Well, 'tis Mat Meehan has it, sir: and he's out this half-hour, sir; I
can't stay in, sir--iplrfff--iphfff!”

“You want to be idling your time looking at the gintleman, Phelim.”

“No, indeed, sir--iphfff!”

“Phelim, I know you of ould--go to your sate. I tell you, Phelim, you
were born for the encouragement of the hemp manufacture, and you'll die
promoting it.”

In the meantime, the master puts his head out of the door, his body
stooped to a “half bend”--a phrase, and the exact curve which it forms,
I leave for the present to your own sagacity--and surveys you until you
pass. That is an Irish hedge school, and the personage who follows you
with his eye, a hedge schoolmaster. His name is Matthew Kavanagh; and,
as you seem to consider his literary establishment rather a curiosity in
its kind, I will, if you be disposed to hear it, give you the history of
him and his establishment, beginning, in the first place, with


THE ABDUCTION OF MAT KAVANAGH,

THE HEDGE SCHOOLMASTER.

For about three years before the period of which I write, the village
of Findramore, and the parish in which it lay, were without a teacher.
Mat's predecessor was a James Garraghty, a lame young man, the son of
a widow, whose husband lost his life in attempting to extinguish a fire
that broke out in the dwelling-house of Squire Johnston, a neighboring
magistrate. The son was a boy at the time of this disaster, and the
Squire, as some compensation for the loss of his father's life in his
service, had him educated at his own expense; that is to say, he gave
the master who taught in the village orders to educate him gratuitously,
on the condition of being horsewhipped out of the parish, if he refused.
As soon as he considered himself qualified to teach, he opened a school
in the village on his own account, where he taught until his death,
which happened in less than a year after the commencement of his little
seminary. The children usually assembled in his mother's cabin; but
as she did not long survive the son, this, which was at best a very
miserable residence, soon tottered to the ground. The roof and thatch
were burnt for firing, the mud gables fell in, and were overgrown with
grass, nettles, and docks; and nothing remained but a foot or two of
the little clay side-walls, which presented, when associated with the
calamitous fate of their inoffensive inmates, rather a touching image of
ruin upon a small scale.

Garraghty had been attentive to his little pupils, and his instructions
were sufficient to give them a relish for education--a circumstance
which did not escape the observation of their parents, who duly
appreciated it. His death, however, deprived them of this advantage; and
as schoolmasters, under the old system, were always at a premium, it
so happened, that for three years afterwards, not one of that class
presented himself to their acceptance. Many a trial had been made, and
many a sly offer held out, as a lure to the neighboring teachers, but
they did not take; for although the country was densely inhabited, yet
it was remarked that no schoolmaster ever “thruv” in the neighborhood of
Findramore. The place, in fact, had got a bad name. Garraghty died, it
was thought, of poverty, a disease to which the Findramore schoolmasters
had been always known to be subject. His predecessor, too, was hanged,
along with two others, for burning the house of an “Aagint.”

Then the Findramore boys were not easily dealt with, having an ugly
habit of involving their unlucky teachers in those quarrels which they
kept up with the Ballyscanlan boys, a fighting clan that lived at the
foot of the mountains above them. These two factions, when they met,
whether at fair or market, wake or wedding, could never part without
carrying home on each side a dozen or two of bloody coxcombs. For these
reasons, the parish of Aughindrum had for a few years been afflicted
with an extraordinary dearth of knowledge; the only literary
establishment which flourished in it being a parochial institution,
which, however excellent in design, yet, like too many establishments of
the same nature, it degenerated into a source of knowledge, morals, and
education, exceedingly dry and unproductive to every person except the
master, who was enabled by his honest industry to make a provision for
his family absolutely surprising, when we consider the moderate nature
of his ostensible income. It was, in fact, like a well dried up, to
which scarcely any one ever thinks of going for water.

Such a state of things, however, could not last long. The youth of
Findramore were parched for want of the dew of knowledge; and their
parents and grown brethren met one Saturday evening in Barny Brady's
shebeen-house, to take into consideration the best means for procuring
a resident schoolmaster for the village and neighborhood. It was a
difficult point, and required great dexterity of management to enable
them to devise any effectual remedy for the evil which they felt. There
were present at this council, Tim Dolan, the senior of the village, and
his three sons, Jem Coogan, Brian Murphy, Paddy Delany, Owen Roe O'Neil,
Jack Traynor, and Andy Connell, with five or six others, whom it is not
necessary to enumerate.

“Bring us in a quart, Barny,” said Dolan to Brady, whom on this occasion
we must designate as the host; “and let it be rale hathen.”

“What do you mane, Tim?” replied the host.

“I mane,” continued Dolan, “stuff that was never christened, man alive.”

“Thin I'll bring you the same that Father Maguire got last night on his
way home afther anointin' 'ould Katty Duffy,” replied Brady. “I'm sure,
whatever I might be afther giving to strangers, Tim, I'd be long sorry
to give _yous_ anything but the right sort.”

“That's a gay man, Barny,” said Traynor, “but off wid you like a shot,
and let us get it under our tooth first, an' then we'll tell you more
about it--A big rogue is the same Barny,” he added, after Brady had gone
to bring in the poteen, “an' never sells a dhrop that's not one whiskey
and five wathers.”

“But he couldn't expose it on you; Jack,” observed Connell; “you're too
ould a hand about the pot for that. Warn't you in the mountains last
week?”

“Ay: but the curse of Cromwell upon the thief of a gauger,
Simpson--himself and a pack o' redcoats surrounded us when we war
beginnin' to double, and the purtiest runnin' that ever you seen was
lost; for you see, before you could cross yourself, we had the bottoms
knocked clane out of the vessels; so that the villains didn't get a hole
in our coats, as they thought they would.”

“I tell you,” observed O'Neil, “there's a bad pill* somewhere about us.”

     * This means a treacherous person who cannot depended
     upon.

“Ay, is there, Owen,” replied Traynor; “and what is more, I don't think
he's a hundhre miles from the place where we're sittin' in.”

“Faith, maybe so Jack,” returned the other.

“I'd never give into that,” said Murphy. “'Tis Barny Brady that would
never turn informer--the same thing isn't in him, nor in any of his
breed; there's not a man in the parish I'd thrust sooner.”

“I'd jist thrust him,” replied Traynor, “as far as I could throw a cow
by the tail. Arrah, what's the rason that the gauger never looks next
or near his place, an' it's well known that he sells poteen widout a
license, though he goes past his door wanst a week?”

“What the h---- is keepin' him at all?” inquired one of Dolan's sons.

“Look at him,” said Traynor, “comin' in out of the garden; how much
afeard he is! keepin' the whiskey in a phatie ridge--an' I'd kiss the
book that he brought that bottle out in his pocket, instead of diggin'
it up out o' the garden.”

Whatever Brady's usual habits of _christening_ his poteen might have
been, that which he now placed before them was good. He laid the bottle
on a little deal table with cross legs, and along with it a small
drinking glass fixed in a bit of flat circular wood, as a substitute for
the original bottom, which had been broken. They now entered upon the
point, in question, without further delay.

“Come, Tim,” said Coogan, “you're the ouldest man, and must spake
first.”

“Troth, man,” replied Dolan, “beggin' your pardon, I'll dhrink
first--healths apiece, your sowl; success boys--glory to ourselves, and
confusion to the Scanlon boys, any way.”

“And maybe,” observed Connell, “'tis we that didn't lick them well in
the last fair--they're not able to meet the Findramore birds even on
their own walk.”

“Well, boys,” said Delany, “about the masther? Our childre will grow
up like bullockeens (* little bullocks) widout knowing a ha'porth; and
larning, you see, is a burdyen that's asy carried.”

“Ay,” observed O'Neil, “as Solvester Maguire, the poet, used to say--

     'Labor for larnin, before you grow ould,
     For larnin' is better nor riches nor gould;
     Riches an' gould they may vanquish away,
     But larnin' alone it will never decay.'”

“Success, Owen! Why, you might put down the pot and warm an air to it,”
 said Murphy.

“Well, boys, are we all safe?” asked Traynor.

“Safe?” said old Dolan. “Arrah, what are you talkin' about? Sure 'tisn't
of that same spalpeen of a gauger that we'd be afraid!”

During this observation, young Dolan pressed Traynor's foot under the
table, and they both went out for about five minutes.

“Father,” said the son, when he and Traynor re-entered the room, “you're
a wanting home.”

“Who wants me, Larry, avick?” says the father.

The son immediately whispered to him for a moment, when the old man
instantly rose, got his hat, and after drinking another bumper of the
poteen, departed.

“Twas hardly worth while,” said Delany; “the ould fellow is mettle to
the back-bone, an' would never show the garran-bane at any rate, even if
he knew all about it.”

“Bad end to the syllable I'd let the same ould cock hear,” said the
son; “the divil thrust any man that didn't switch the primer (* take and
oath) for it, though he is my father; but now, boys, that the coast's
clear, and all safe--where will we get a schoolmaster? Mat Kavanagh
won't budge from the Scanlon boys, even if we war to put our hands
undher his feet; and small blame to him--sure, you would not expect him
to go against his own friends?”

“Faith, the gorsoons is in a bad state,” said Murphy; “but, boys where
will we get a man that's up? Why I know 'tis betther to have anybody nor
be without one; but we might kill two birds wid one stone--if we could
get a masther that would carry 'Articles,' * an' swear in the boys, from
time to time--an' between ourselves, if there's any danger of the hemp,
we may as well lay it upon strange shoulders.”

     * A copy of the Whiteboy oath and regulations.

“Ay, but since Corrigan swung for the Aagint,” replied Delaney, “they're
a little modest in havin' act or part wid us; but the best plan is to
get an advartisement wrote out, an' have it posted on the chapel door.”

This hint was debated with much earnestness; but as they were really
anxious to have a master--in the first place, for the simple purpose of
educating their children; and in the next, for filling the situation of
director and regulator of their illegal Ribbon meetings--they determined
on penning an advertisement, according to the suggestion of Delaney.
After drinking another bottle, and amusing themselves with some further
chat, one of the Dolans undertook to draw up the advertisement, which
ran as follows:--

“ADVARTAAISEMENT.”

“_Notes to Schoolmasthers, and to all others whom it may consarn_.

“WANTED,

“For the nabourhood and the vircinity of the Townland of Findramore, in
the Parish of Aughindrum, in the Barony of Lisnamoghry, County of Sligo,
Province of Connaught, Ireland.


“TO SCHOOLMASTERS.'

“Take Notes--That any Schoolmaster who understands Spellin'
gramatically--Readin' and Writin', in the raal way, accordin' to the
Dixonary--Arithmatick, that is to say, the five common rules, namely,
addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division--and addition,
subtraction, multiplication, and division, of Dives's denominations.
Also reduction up and down--cross multiplication of coin--the Rule
of Three Direck--the Rule of Three in verse--the double Rule of
Three--Frackshins taught according to the vulgar and decimatin' method;
and must be well practised to tache the Findramore boys how to manage
the Scuffle.*

     * The Scuffle was an exercise in fractions, illustrated
     by a quarrel between the first four letters of the
     alphabet, who went to loggerheads about a sugar-plum.
     A, for instance, seized upon three-fourths of it; but B
     snapped two-thirds of what he had got, and put it into
     his hat; C then knocked off his hat, and as worthy Mr.
     Gough says, “to Work they went.” After kicking and
     cuffing each other in prime style, each now losing and
     again gaining alternately, the question is wound up by
     requiring the pupil to ascertain what quantity of the
     sugar-plum each had at the close.

“N.B. He must be will grounded in _that_. Practis, Discount, and
_Rebatin'_. N.B. Must be well grounded in that also.

“Tret and Tare--Fellowship--Allegation--Barther--Rates per
Scent--Intherest--Exchange--Prophet in Loss--the Square root--the Kibe
Root--Hippothenuse--'Arithmatical and Jommetrical Purgation--Compound
Intherest--Loggerheadism--Questions for exercise, and the Conendix to
Algibbra. He must also know Jommithry accordin' to Grunther's
scale--the Castigation of the Klipsticks--Surveying, and the use of the
Jacob-staff.

“N.B. Would get a good dale of Surveyin' to do in the vircinity of
Findramore, particularly in _Con-acre_ time. If he know the use of the
globe, it would be an accusation. He must also understand the Three
Sets of Book-keeping, by single and double entry, particularly Loftus
& Company of Paris, their Account of Cash and Company. And above all
things, he must know how to tache the _Sarvin' of Mass_ in Latin, and be
able to read Doctor Gallaher's Irish Sarmints, and explain Kolumkill's
and Pasterini's Prophecies.

“N.B. If he understands _Cudgel-fencin'_, it would be an accusation
also--but mustn't tache us wid a staff that bends in the middle, bekase
it breaks one's head across the guard. Any schoolmaster capacious and
collified to instruct in the above-mintioned branches, would get a good
school in the townland Findramore and its vircinity, be well fed, an'
get the hoith o' good livin' among the farmers, an' would be ped--

“For Book-keepin', the three sets, _a ginny and half_.'

“For Gommethry, &c, _half a qinny a quarther_.

“Arithmatic, _aight and three-hapuns_.

“Readin”, Writin', &c, _six Hogs_.


“Given under our hands, this 37th day of June, 18004.

     “Larry Dolan.
     “Dick Dolan, his (X) mark.
     “Jem Coogan, his (X) mark.
     “Brine Murphey.
     “Paddy Delany, his (X) mark.
     “Jack Traynor.
     “Andy Connell.
     “Owen Roe O'Neil, his (X) mark.”


“N.B. _By making airly application to any of the undher-mintioned, he
will hear of further particklers_; and if they find that he will shoot
them, he may expect the best o' thratement, an' be well fed among the
farmers.*

“N.B. Would get also a good _Night-school_ among the vircinity.”

     * Nothing can more decidedly prove the singular and
     extraordinary thirst for education and general
     knowledge which characterizes the Irish people, than
     the shifts to which they have often gone in order to
     gain even a limited portion of instruction. Of this the
     Irish Night School is a complete illustration. The
     Night School was always opened either for those of
     early age, who from their poverty were forced to earn
     something for their own support during the day; or to
     assist their parents; or for grown young men who had
     never had an opportunity of acquiring education in
     their youth, but who now devoted a couple of hours
     during a winter's night, when they could do nothing
     else, to the acquisition of reading and writing, and
     sometimes of accounts. I know not how it was, but the
     Night School boys, although often thrown into the way
     of temptation, always conducted themselves with
     singular propriety. Indeed, the fact is, after all,
     pretty easily accounted for--inasmuch as none but the
     steadiest, _most_ sensible, and best conducted young
     men ever attended it.

Having penned the above advertisement, it was carefully posted early the
next morning on the chapel-doors, with an expectation on the part of the
patrons that it would not be wholly fruitless. The next week, however,
passed without an application--the second also--and the third produced
the same result; nor was there the slightest prospect of a school-master
being blown by any wind to the lovers of learning at Findramore. In the
meantime, the Ballyscanlan boys took care to keep up the ill-natured
prejudice which had been circulated concerning the fatality that
uniformly attended such schoolmasters as settled there; and when this
came to the ears of the Findramore folk, it was once more resolved that
the advertisement should be again put up, with a clause containing an
explanation on that point. The clause ran as follows:

“N.B.--The two last masthers that was hanged out of Findramore, that
is, Mickey Corrigan, who was hanged for killing the Aagent, and Jem
Garraghty, that died of a declension--Jem died in consequence of
ill-health, and Mickey was hanged contrary to his own wishes; so that it
wasn't either of their faults--as witness our hands this 207th of July.

“Dick Dolan, his (X) mark.”


This explanation, however, was as fruitless as the original
advertisement; and week after week passed over without an offer from
a single candidate. The “vicinity” of Findramore and its “naborhood”
 seemed devoted to ignorance; and nothing remained, except another effort
at procuring a master by some more ingenious contrivance.

Debate after debate was consequently held in Barney Brady's; and, until
a fresh suggestion was made by Delany, the prospect seemed as bad as
ever. Delany, at length fell upon a new plan; and it must be confessed,
that it was marked in a peculiar manner by a spirit of great originality
and enterprise, it being nothing less than a proposal to carry off,
by force or stratagem, Mat Kavanagh, who was at that time fixed in the
throne of literature among the Ballyscanlan boys, quite unconscious of
the honorable translation to the neighborhood of Findramore which was
intended for him. The project, when broached, was certainly a startling
one, and drove most of them to a pause, before they were sufficiently
collected to give an opinion on its merits.

“Nothin', boys, is asier,” said Delaney. “There's to be a patthern
in Ballymagowan, on next Sathurday--an' that's jist half way betune
ourselves and the Scanlan boys. Let us musther, an' go there, any how.
We can keep an eye on Mat widout much trouble, an' when opportunity
sarves, nick him at wanst, an' off wid him clane.”

“But,” said Traynor, “what would we do wid him when he'd be here?
Wouldn't he cut an' run the first opportunity.

“How can he, ye omadhawn, if we put a manwill* in our pocket, an' sware
him? But we'll butther him up when he's among us; or, be me sowks, if it
goes that, force him either to settle wid ourselves, or to make himself
scarce in the country entirely.”

     * Manual, a Roman Catholic prayer-book, generally
     pronounced as above.

“Divil a much force it'll take to keep him, I'm thinkin',” observed
Murphy. “He'll have three times a betther school here; and if he wanst
settled, I'll engage he would take to it kindly.”

“See here, boys,” says Dick Dolan, in a whisper, “if that bloody
villain, Brady, isn't afther standin' this quarter of an hour, strivin'
to hear what we're about; but it's well we didn't bring up anything
consarnin' the other business; didn't I tell yees the desate was in 'im?
Look at his shadow on the wall forninst us.”

“Hould yer tongues, boys,” said Traynor; “jist keep never mindin', and,
be me sowks, I'll make him sup sorrow for that thrick.”

“You had betther neither make nor meddle wid him,” observed Delany,
“jist put him out o' that--but don't rise yer hand to him, or he'll
sarve you as he did Jem Flannagan: put ye three or four months in the
_Stone Jug_” (* Gaol).

Traynor, however, had gone out while he was speaking, and in a
few minutes dragged in Brady, whom he caught in the very act of
eaves-dropping.

“Jist come in, Brady,” said Traynor, as he dragged him along; “walk in,
man alive; sure, and sich an honest man as you are needn't be afeard of
lookin' his friends in the face! Ho!--an' be me sowl, is it a spy we've
got; and, I suppose, would be an informer' too, if he had heard anything
to tell!”

“What's the manin' of this, boys?” exclaimed the others, feigning
ignorance. “Let the honest man go, Traynor. What do ye hawl him that way
for, ye gallis pet'?”

“Honest!” replied Traynor; “how very honest he is, the desavin' villain,
to be stand-in' at the windy there, wantin' to overhear the little
harmless talk we had.”

“Come, Traynor,” said Brady, seizing him in his turn by the neck, “take
your hands off of me, or, bad fate to me, but I'll lave ye a mark.”

Traynor, in his turn, had his hand twisted in Brady's cravat, which he
drew tightly about his neck, until the other got nearly black in the
face.

“Let me go you villain!” exclaimed Brady, “or, by this blessed night
that's in it, it'll be worse for you.”

“Villain, is it?” replied Traynor, making a blow at him, whilst Brady
snatched, at a penknife, which one of the others had placed on the
table, after picking the tobacco out of his pipe--intending either to
stab Traynor, or to cut the knot of the cravat by which he was held. The
others, however, interfered, and presented further mischief.

“Brady,” said Traynor, “you'll rue this night, if ever a man did, you
tracherous in-formin' villian. What an honest spy we have among us!--and
a short coorse to you!”

“O, hould yer tongue, Traynor!” replied Brady: “I believe it's best
known who is both the spy and the informer. The divil a pint of poteen
ever you'll run in this parish, until you clear yourself of bringing
the gauger on the Tracys, bekase they tuck Mick M'Kew, in preference to
yourself, to run it for them.”

Traynor made another attempt to strike him, but was prevented. The rest
now interfered; and, in the course of an hour or so, an adjustment took
place.

Brady took up the tongs, and swore “by that blessed iron,” that he
neither heard, nor intended to hear, anything they said; and this
exculpation was followed by a fresh bottle at his own expense.

“You omadhawn,” said he to Traynor, “I was only puttin' up a dozen o'
bottles into the tatch of the house, when you thought I was listenin';”
 and, as a proof of the truth of this, he brought them out, and showed
them some bottles of poteen, neatly covered up under the thatch.

Before their separation they finally planned the abduction of Kavanagh
from the Patron, on the Saturday following, and after drinking another
round went home to their respective dwellings.

In this speculation, however, they experienced a fresh disappointment;
for, ere Saturday arrived, whether in consequence of secret intimation
of their intention from Brady, or some friend, or in compliance with the
offer of a better situation, the fact was, that Mat Kavanagh had removed
to another school, distant about eighteen miles from Findramore. But
they were not to be outdone; a new plan was laid, and in the course
of the next week a dozen of the most enterprising and intrepid of the
“boys,” mounted each upon a good horse, went to Mat's new residence for
the express purpose of securing him.

Perhaps our readers may scarcely believe that a love of learning was so
strong among the inhabitants of Findramore as to occasion their taking
such remarkable steps for establishing a schoolmaster among them; but
the country was densely inhabited, the rising population exceedingly
numerous, and the outcry for a schoolmaster amongst the parents of the
children loud and importunate.

The fact, therefore, was, that a very strong motive stimulated the
inhabitants of Findramore in their efforts to procure a master. The
old and middle-aged heads of families were actuated by a simple wish,
inseparable from Irishmen, to have their children educated; and the
young men, by a determination to have a properly qualified person to
conduct their Night Schools, and improve them in their reading, writing,
and arithmetic. The circumstance I am now relating is one which actually
took place: and any man acquainted with the remote parts of Ireland, may
have often seen bloody and obstinate quarrels among the peasantry, in
vindicating a priority of claim to the local residence of a schoolmaster
among them. I could, within my own experience, relate two or three
instances of this nature.

It was one Saturday night, in the latter end of the month of May, that
a dozen Findramore “boys,” as they were called, set out upon this most
singular of all literary speculations, resolved, at whatever risk, to
secure the person and effect the permanent bodily presence among them of
the Redoubtable Mat Kavanagh. Each man was mounted on a horse, and one
of them brought a spare steed for the accommodation of the schoolmaster.
The caparison of this horse was somewhat remarkable: wooden straddle,
such as used by the peasantry for carrying wicker paniers creels,
which are hung upon two wooden pins, that stand up out of its sides.
Underneath was a straw mat, to prevent the horse's back from being
stripped by it. On one side of this hung a large creel, and on the other
a strong sack, tied round a stone merely of sufficient weight to balance
the empty creel. The night was warm and clear, the moon and stars all
threw their mellow light from a serene, unclouded sky, and the repose of
nature in the short nights of this delightful season, resembles that of
a young virgin of sixteen--still, light, and glowing. Their way, for the
most part of their journey, lay through a solitary mountain-road; and,
as they did not undertake the enterprise without a good stock of poteen,
their light-hearted songs and choruses awoke the echoes that slept in
the mountain glens as they went along. The adventure, it is true, had
as much of frolic as of seriousness in it; and merely as the means of a
day's fun for the boys, it was the more eagerly entered into.

It was about midnight when they left home, and as they did not wish to
arrive at the village to which they were bound, until the morning should
be rather advanced, the journey was as slowly performed as possible.
Every remarkable object on the way was noticed, and its history, if
any particular association was connected with it, minutely detailed,
whenever it happened to be known. When the sun rose, many beautiful
green spots and hawthorn valleys excited, even from these unpolished and
illiterate peasants, warm bursts of admiration at their fragrance and
beauty. In some places, the dark flowery heath clothed the mountains
to the tops, from which the gray mists, lit by a flood of light, and
breaking into masses before the morning breeze, began to descend into
the valleys beneath them; whilst the voice of the grouse, the bleating
of sheep and lambs, the pee-weet of the wheeling lap-wing, and the
song of the lark threw life and animation the previous stillness of the
country, sometimes a shallow river would cross the road winding off into
a valley that was overhung, on one side, by rugged precipices clothed
with luxurious heath and wild ash; whilst on the other it was skirted
by a long sweep of greensward, skimmed by the twittering swallow, over
which lay scattered numbers of sheep, cows, brood mares, and colts--many
of them rising and stretching themselves ere they resumed their pasture,
leaving the spots on which they lay of a deeper green. Occasionally,
too, a sly-looking fox might be seen lurking about a solitary lamb, or
brushing over the hills with a fat goose upon his back, retreating
to his den among the inaccessible rocks, after having plundered some
unsuspecting farmer.

As they advanced into the skirts of the cultivated country, they met
many other beautiful spots of scenery among the upland, considerable
portions of which, particularly in long sloping valleys, that faced the
morning sun, were covered with hazel and brushwood, where the unceasing
and simple notes of the cuckoo were incessantly plied, mingled with the
more mellow and varied notes of the thrush and blackbird. Sometimes the
bright summer waterfall seemed, in the rays of the sun, like a column
of light, and the springs that issued from the sides of the more distant
and lofty mountains shone with a steady, dazzling brightness, on which
the eye could scarcely rest. The morning, indeed, was beautiful, the
fields in bloom, and every thing cheerful. As the sun rose in the
heavens, nature began gradually to awaken into life and happiness; nor
was the natural grandeur of a Sabbath summer morning among these piles
of magnificent mountains--nor its heartfelt, but more artificial beauty
in the cultivated country, lost, even upon the unphilosophical “boys”
 of Findramore; so true is it, that such exquisite appearances of nature
will force enjoyment upon the most uncultivated heart.

When they had arrived within two miles of the little town in which Mat
Kavanagh was fixed, they turned off into a deep glen, a little to the
left; and, after having seated themselves under a white-thorn which
grew on the banks of a rivulet, they began to devise the best immediate
measures to be taken.

“Boys,” said Tim Dolan, “how will we manage now with this thief of a
schoolmaster, at all? Come, Jack Traynor, you that's up to still-house
work--escapin' and carryin' away stills from gaugers, the bloody
villains! out wid yer spake, till we hear your opinion.”

“Do ye think, boys,” said Andy Connell, “that we could flatter him to
come by fair mains?”

“Flatther him!” said Traynor; “and, by my sowl, if we flatther him at
all, it must be by the hair of the head. No, no; let us bring him first,
whether he will or not, an' ax his consent aftherwards!”

“I'll tell you what it is, boys,” continued Connell, “I'll hould a
wager, if you lave him to me, I'll bring him wid his own consint.”

“No, nor sorra that you'll do, nor could do,” replied Traynor: “for,
along wid every thing else, he thinks he's not jist doated on by the
Findramore people, being one of the Ballyscanlan tribe. No, no; let two
of us go to his place, and purtind that we have other business in the
fair of Clansallagh on Monday next, and ax him in to dhrink, for he'll
not refuse that, any how; then, when he's half tipsy, ax him to convoy
us this far; we'll then meet you here, an' tell him some palaver or
other--sit down where we are now, and, afther making him dead dhrunk,
hoist a big stone in the creel, and Mat in the sack, on the other side,
wid his head out, and off wid him; and he will know neither act nor part
about it till we're at Findramore.”

Having approved of this project, they pulled out each a substantial
complement of stout oaten bread, which served, along with the whiskey,
for breakfast. The two persons pitched on for decoying Mat were Dolan
and Traynor, who accordingly set out, full of glee at the singularity
and drollness of their undertaking. It is unnecessary to detail the
ingenuity with which they went about it, because, in consequence of
Kavanagh's love of drink, very little ingenuity was necessary.
One circumstance, however, came to light, which gave them much
encouragement, and that was a discovery that Mat by no means relished
his situation.

In the meantime, those who stayed behind in the glen felt their patience
begin to flag a little, because of the delay made by the others, who had
promised, if possible, to have the schoolmaster in the glen before
two o'clock. But the fact was, that Mat, who was far less deficient in
hospitality than in learning, brought them into his house, and not only
treated them to plenty of whiskey, but made the wife prepare a dinner,
for which he detained them, swearing, that except they stopped to
partake of it, he would not convoy them to the place appointed. Evening
was, therefore, tolerably far advanced, when they made their appearance
at the glen, in a very equivocal state of sobriety--Mat being by far the
steadiest of the three, but still considerably the worse for what he
had taken. He was now welcomed by a general huzza; and on his expressing
surprise at their appearance, they pointed to their horses, telling him
that they were bound for the fair of Clansallagh, for the purpose of
selling them. This was the more probable, as, when a fair occurs in
Ireland, it is usual for cattle-dealers, particularly horse-jockeys, to
effect sales, and “show” their horses on the evening before.

Mat now sat down, and was vigorously plied with strong poteen--songs
were sung, stories told, and every device resorted to that was
calculated to draw out and heighten his sense of enjoyment; nor were
their efforts without success; for, in the course of a short time, Mat
was free from all earthly care, being incapable of either speaking or
standing.

“Now, boys,” said Dolan, “let us do the thing clane an' dacent. Let you,
Jem Coogan, Brian Murphy, Paddy Delany, and Andy O'Donnell, go back, and
tell the wife and two childher a cock-and-a-bull story about Mat--say
that he is coming to Findramore for good and all, and that'll be thruth,
you know; and that he ordhered yez to bring her and them afther him; and
we can come back for the furniture to-morrow.”

A word was enough--they immediately set off; and the others, not wishing
that Mat's wife should witness the mode of his conveyance, proceeded
home, for it was now dusk. The plan succeeded admirably; and in a short
time the wife and children, mounted behind the “boys” on the horses,
were on the way after them to Findramore.

The reader is already aware of the plan they had adopted for translating
Mat; but, as it was extremely original, I will explain it somewhat more
fully. The moment the schoolmaster was intoxicated to the necessary
point--that is to say, totally helpless and insensible--they opened the
sack and put him in, heels foremost, tying it in such a way about his
neck as might prevent his head from getting into it: thus avoiding the
danger of suffocation. The sack, with Mat at full length in it, was then
fixed to the pin of the straddle, so that he was in an erect posture
during the whole journey. A creel was then hung at the other side, in
which was placed a large stone, of sufficient weight to preserve an
equilibrium; and, to prevent any accident, a droll fellow sat astride
behind the straddle, amusing himself and the rest by breaking jokes upon
the novelty of Mat's situation.

“Well, Mat, _ma bouchal_, how duv ye like your sitivation? I believe,
for all your larnin', the Findramore boys have sacked you at last!”


[Illustration: PAGE 831-- The Findramore boys have sacked you at last]


“Ay!” exclaimed another, “he is sacked at last, in spite of his
Matthew-maticks.”

“An', be my sowks,” observed Traynor, “he'd be a long time goin' up a
Maypowl in the state he's in--his own snail would bate him.” *

     * This alludes to a question in Gough's Arithmetic,
     which is considered difficult by hedge schoolmasters.

“Yes,” said another; “but he desarves credit for travelin' from
Clansallagh to Findramore, widout layin' a foot to the ground--

     “'Wan day wid Captain Whiskey I wrastled a fall,
     But faith I was no match for the captain at all--
     But faith I was no match for the captain at all,
     Though the landlady's measures they were damnable small.
     Tooral, looral, looral lorral lido.'

Whoo--hurroo! my darlings--success to the Findramore boys!
Hurroo--hurroo--the Findramore boys for ever!”

“Boys, did ever ye hear the song Mat made on Ned Mullen's fight wid
Jemmy Connor's gander? Well here is part of it, to the tune of 'Brian
O'Lynn'--

     'As Ned and the gander wor basting each other,
     I hard a loud cry from the gray goose, his mother;
     I ran to assist him, wid very great speed.
     But before I arrived the poor gander did bleed.

     'Alas!' says the gander, 'I'm very ill-trated,
     For traicherous Mullen has me fairly defated;
     Bud had you been here for to show me fair play,
     I could leather his _puckan_ around the lee bray.'

“Bravo! Matt,” addressing the insensible schoolmaster--“success, poet.
Hurroo for the Findramore boys! the Bridge boys for ever!”

They then commenced, in a tone of mock gravity, to lecture him upon
his future duties--detailing the advantages of his situation, and the
comforts he would enjoy among them--although they might as well have
addressed themselves to the stone on the other side. In this manner they
got along, amusing themselves at Mat's expense, and highly elated at the
success of their undertaking. About three o'clock in the morning they
reached the top of the little hill above the village, when, on looking
back along the level stretch of road which I have already described,
they noticed their companions, with Mat's wife and children, moving
briskly after them. A general huzza now took place, which, in a few
minutes, was answered by two or three dozen of the young folks, who
were assembled in Barny Brady's waiting for their arrival. The scene now
became quite animated--cheer after cheer succeeded--jokes, laughter, and
rustic wit, pointed by the spirit of Brady's poteen, flew briskly
about. When Mat was unsacked, several of them came up, and shaking him
cordially by the hand, welcomed him among them. To the kindness of
this reception, however, Mat was wholly insensible, having been for the
greater part of the journey in a profound sleep. The boys now slipped
the loop of the sack off the straddle-pin; and, carrying Mat into a
farmer's house, they deposited him in a settle-bed, where he slept
unconscious of the journey he had performed, until breakfast-time on the
next morning. In the mean time, the wife and children were taken care of
by Mrs. Connell, who provided them with a bed, and every other comfort
which they could require.

The next morning, when Mat awoke, his first call was for a drink. I
should have here observed, that Mrs. Kavanagh had been sent for by the
good woman in whose house Mat had slept, that they might all breakfast
and have a drop together, for they had already succeeded in reconciling
her to the change. “Wather!” said Mat--“a drink of wather, if it's to
be had for love or money, or I'll split wid druth--I'm all in a state
of conflagration; and my head--by the sowl of Newton, the inventor of
fluxions, but my head is a complete illucidation of the centrifugal
motion, so it is. Tundher-an'-turf! is there no wather to be had? Nancy,
I say, for God's sake, quicken yourself with the hydraulics, or the best
mathematician in Ireland's gone to the abode of Euclid and Pythagoras,
that first invented the multiplication table.”

On cooling his burning blood with the “hydraulics,” he again lay down
with the intention of composing himself for another sleep; but his eye
having noticed the novelty of his situation, he once more called Nancy.

“Nancy avourneen,” he inquired, “will you be afther resolving me one
single proposition.--Where am I at the present spaking? Is it in the
Siminary at home, Nancy?” Nancy, in the mean time, had been desired to
answer in the affirmative, hoping that if his mind was made easy on that
point, he might refresh himself by another hour or two's sleep, as
he appeared to be not at all free from the effects of his previous
intoxication.

“Why, Mat, jewel, where else could you be, alannah, but at home? Sure
isn't here Jack, an' Biddy, an' myself, Mat, agra, along wid me. Your
head isn't well, but all you want is a good rousin' sleep.”

“Very well, Nancy; very well, that's enough--quite satisfactory--quod
erat demonstrandum. May all kinds of bad luck rest upon the Findramore
boys, any way! The unlucky vagabonds--I'm the third they've done up.
Nancy, off wid ye, like quicksilver for the priest.”

“The priest! Why, Mat, jewel, what puts that into your head? Sure,
there's nothing wrong wid ye, only the sup o' drink you tuck yesterday.”

“Go, woman,” said Mat; “did you ever know me to make a wrong
calculation--I tell you I'm non compos mentis from head to heel. Head!
by my sowl, Nancy, it'll soon be a capui mortuum wid me--I'm far gone
in a disease they call an opthical delusion--the devil a thing less it
is--me bein' in my own place, an' to think I'm lyin' in a settle bed;
that there is a large dresser, covered wid pewter dishes and plates; and
to crown all, the door on the wrong side of the house! Off wid ye, and
tell his Reverence that I want to be anointed, and to die in pace and
charity wid all men. May the most especial kind of bad luck light down
upon you, Findramore, and all that's in you, both man and baste--you
have given me my gruel along wid the rest; but, thank God, you won't
hang me, any how! Off, Nancy, for the priest, till I die like a
Christhan, in pace and forgiveness wid the world;--all kinds of hard
fortune to them! Make haste, woman, if you expect me to die like a
Christhan. If they had let me alone till I'd publish to the world my
Treatise upon Conic Sections--but to be cut off on my march to fame!
another draught of the hydraulics, Nancy, an' then for the priest--But
see, bring Father Connell, the curate, for he understands something
about Matthew-maticks; an' never heed Father Roger, for divil a thing
he knows about them, not even the difference between a right line and a
curve--in the page of histhory, to his everlasting disgrace, be the same
recorded!”

“Mat,” replied Nancy, scarcely preserving her gravity, “keep yourself
from talkin', an' fall asleep, then you'll be well enough.”

“Is there e'er a sup at all in the house?” said Mat; “if there is,
let me get it; for there's an ould proverb, though it's a most
unmathematical axiom as ever was invinted--'try a hair of the same dog
that bit you;' give me a glass, Nancy, an' you can go for Father Connell
after. Oh, by the sowl of Isaac, that invented fluxions, what's this
for?”

A general burst-of laughter followed this demand and ejaculation; and
Mat sat up once more in the settle, and examined the place with keener
scrutiny. Nancy herself laughed heartily; and, as she handed him the
full glass, entered into an explanation of the circumstances attending
his translation. Mat, at all times rather of pliant disposition, felt
rejoiced on finding that he was still compos mentis; and on hearing what
took place, he could not help entering into the humor of the enterprise,
at which he laughed as heartily as any of them.

“Mat,” said, the farmer, and half a dozen of the neighbors, “you're a
happy man, there's a hundred of the boys have a school-house half built
for you this same blessed sunshiny mornin', while your lying at aise in
your bed.”

“By the sowl of Newton, that invented fluxions!” replied Mat, “but I'll
take revenge for the disgrace you put upon my profession, by stringing
up a schoolmaster among you, and I'll hang you all! It's death to steal
a four-footed animal; but what do you desarve for stealin' a Christian
baste, a two-legged schoolmaster without feathers, eighteen miles, and
he not to know it?”

In the course of a short time Mat was dressed, and having found benefit
from the “hair of the dog that bit him,” he tried another glass, which
strung his nerves, or, as he himself expressed it--“they've got the rale
mathematical tinsion again.” What the farmer said, however, about the
school-house had been true. Early that morning all the growing and grown
young men of Findramore and its “vircinity” had assembled, selected
a suitable spot, and, with merry hearts, were then busily engaged in
erecting a school-house for their general accomodation.

The manner of building hedge school-houses being rather curious, I will
describe it. The usual spot selected for their erection is a ditch in
the road-side; in some situation where there will be as little damp as
possible. From such a spot an excavation is made equal to the size of
the building, so that, when this is scooped out, the back side-wall, and
the two gables are already formed, the banks being dug perpendicularly.
The front side-wall, with a window in each side of the door, is then
built of clay or green sods laid along in rows; the gables are also
topped with sods, and, perhaps, a row or two laid upon the back
side-wall, if it should be considered too low. Having got the erection
of Mat's house thus far, they procured a scraw-spade, and repaired with
a couple of dozen of cars to the next bog, from which they cut the light
heathy surface in strips the length of the roof. A scraw-spade is an
instrument resembling the letter T, with an iron plate at the lower
end, considerably bent, and well adapted to the purpose for which it is
intended. Whilst one party cut the scraws, another bound the _couples
and bauks_* and a third cut as many green branches as were sufficient to
wattle it. The couples, being bound, were raised--the ribs laid on--then
the wattles, and afterwards the scraws.

     * The couples are shaped like the letter A, and sustain
     the roof; the bauks, or rafters, cross them from one
     side to another like the line inside the letter.

Whilst these successive processes went forward, many others had been
engaged all the morning cutting rushes; and the scraws were no sooner
laid on, than half a dozen thatchers mounted the roof, and long before
the evening was closed, a school-house, capable of holding near two
hundred children, was finished. But among the peasantry no new house is
ever put up without a hearth-warming and a dance. Accordingly the clay
floor was paired--a fiddler procured--Barny Brady and his stock
of poteen sent for; the young women of the village and surrounding
neighborhood attended in their best finery; dancing commenced--and
it was four o'clock the next morning when the merry-makers departed,
leaving Mat a new home and a hard floor, ready for the reception of his
scholars.

Business now commenced. At nine o'clock the next day Mat's furniture
was settled in a small cabin, given to him at a cheap rate by one of the
neighboring farmers; for, whilst the school-house was being built,
two men, with horses and cars, had gone to Clansallagh, accompanied
by Nancy, and removed the furniture, such as it was, to their new
residence. Nor was Mat, upon the whole, displeased at what had happened;
for he was now fixed in a flourishing country--fertile and well
cultivated; nay, the bright landscape which his school-house commanded
was sufficient in itself to reconcile him to his situation. The
inhabitants were in comparatively good circumstances; many of them
wealthy, respectable farmers, and capable of remunerating him very
decently for his literary labors; and what was equally flattering, there
was a certainty of his having a numerous and well-attended school in a
neighborhood with whose inhabitants he was acquainted.

Honest, kind-hearted Paddy!--pity that you should ever feel distress or
hunger--pity that you should be compelled to seek, in another land, the
hard-earned pittance by which you keep the humble cabin over your chaste
wife and naked children! Alas! what noble materials for composing a
national character, of which humanity might be justly proud, do the
lower orders of the Irish possess, if raised and cultivated by an
enlightened education! Pardon me, gentle reader, for this momentary
ebullition; I grant I am a little dark now. I assure you, however, the
tear of enthusiastic admiration is warm on my eye-lids, when I remember
the flitches of bacon, the sacks of potatoes, the bags of meal, the
miscowns of butter, and the dishes of eggs--not omitting crate after
crate of turf which came in such rapid succession to Mat Kavanagh,
during the first week on which he opened his school. Ay, and many a
bottle of stout poteen, when

“The eye of the gauger saw it not,”

was, with a sly, good-humored wink, handed over to Mat, or Nancy, no
matter which, from under the comfortable drab jock, with velvet-covered
collar, erect about the honest, ruddy face of a warm, smiling farmer,
or even the tattered frieze of a poor laborer--anxious to secure
the attention of the “masther” to his little “Shoneen,” whom, in the
extravagance of his ambition, he destined to “wear the robes as a
clargy.” Let no man say, I repeat, that the Irish are not fond of
education.

In the course of a month Mat's school was full to the door posts, for,
in fact, he had the parish to himself--many attending from a distance
of three, four, and five miles. His merits, however, were believed to
be great, and his character for learning stood high, though unjustly
so: for a more superficial, and at the same time, a more presuming
dunce never existed; but his character alone could secure him a good
attendance; he, therefore, belied the unfavorable prejudices against
the Findramore folk, which had gone abroad, and was a proof, in his own
person, that the reason of the former schoolmasters' miscarriage lay in
the belief of their incapacity which existed among the people. But Mat
was one of those showy, shallow fellows, who did not lack for assurance.

The first step a hedge schoolmaster took, on establishing himself in
a school, was to write out, in his best copperplate hand, a flaming
advertisement, detailing, at full length, the several branches he
professed himself capable of teaching. I have seen many of these--as who
that is acquainted with Ireland has not?--and, beyond all doubt, if
the persons that issued them were acquainted with the various
heads recapitulated, they must have been buried in the most profound
obscurity, as no man but a walking Encyclopaedia--an admirable
Crichton--could claim an intimacy with them, embracing, as they often
did, the whole circle of human knowledge. 'Tis true, the vanity of the
pedagogue had full scope in these advertisements, as there was none to
bring him to an account, except some rival, who could only attack him
on those practical subjects which were known to both. Independently of
this, there was a good-natured collusion between them on those points
which were beyond their knowledge, inasmuch as they were not practical
but speculative, and by no means involved their character or personal
interests. On the next Sunday, therefore, after Mat's establishment at
Findrainore, you might see a circle of the peasantry assembled at the
chapel door, perusing, with suitable reverence and admiration on their
faces, the following advertisement; or, perhaps, Mat himself, with a
learned, consequential air, in the act of “expounding” it to them.

“Mr. Matthew Kavanagh, Philomath and' Professor of the Learned
Languages, begs leave to inform the Inhabitants of Findramore and' its
vicinity, that he lectures on the following branches of Education, in
his Seminary at the above-recited place:--

“Spelling, Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, upon altogether new
principles, hitherto undiscovered by any excepting himself, and for
which he expects a Patent from Trinity College, Dublin; or, at any
rate, from Squire Johnston, Esq., who paternizes many of the pupils;
Book-keeping, by single and double entry--Geometry, Trigonometry,
Stereometry, Mensuration, Navigation, Guaging, Surveying, Dialling,
Astronomy, Astrology, Austerity, Fluxions, Geography, ancient and
modern--Maps, the Projection of the Sphere--Algebra, the Use of the
Globes, Natural and Moral Philosophy, Pneumatics, Optics, Dioptics,
Catroptics, Hydraulics, Erostatics, Geology, Glorification, Divinity,
Mythology, Medicinality, Physic, by theory only, Metaphysics
practically, Chemistry, Electricity, Galvanism, Mechanics, Antiquities,
Agriculture, Ventilation, Explosion, etc.

“In Classics--Grammar, Cordery, AEsop's Fables, Erasmus' Colloquies,
Cornelius Nepos, Phaedrus, Valerius Maximus, Justin, Ovid, Sallust,
Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, Persius, Terence, Tully's Offices, Cicero,
Manouverius Turgidus, Esculapius, Rogerius, Satanus Nigrus, Quinctilian,
Livy, Thomas Aquinas, Cornelius Agrippa, and Cholera Morbus.

“Greek Grammar, Greek Testament, Lucian, Homer, Sophocles, AEschylus,
Thucydides, Aristophanes, Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, and the
Works of Alexander the Great; the manners, habits, customs, usages, and
the meditations of the Grecians; the Greek Digamma resolved, Prosody,
Composition, both in prose and verse, and Oratory, in English, Latin and
Greek; together with various other branches of learning and scholastic
profundity--_quoi enumerare longum est_--along with Irish Radically, and
a small taste of Hebrew upon the Masoretic text.

“Matthew Kavanagh, Philomath.” (* See note at the end of this sketch.)

Having posted this document upon the hapel-door, and in all the public
places and cross roads of the parish, Mat considered himself as having
done his duty. He now began to teach, and his school continued to
increase to his heart's content, every day bringing him fresh scholars.
In this manner he flourished till the beginning of winter, when those
boys, who, by the poverty of their parents, had been compelled to go
to service to the neighboring farmers, flocked to him in numbers, quite
voracious for knowledge. An addition was consequently built to the
school-house, which was considerably too small; so that, as Christmas
approached, it would be difficult to find a more numerous or merry
establishment under the roof of a hedge school. But it is time to give
an account of its interior.

The reader will then be pleased to picture to himself such a house as I
have already described--in a line with the hedge; the eave of the back
roof within a foot of the ground behind it; a large hole exactly in the
middle of the “riggin',” as a chimney; immediately under which is an
excavation in the floor, burned away by a large fire of turf, loosely
heaped together. This is surrounded by a circle of urchins, sitting
on the bare earth, stones, and hassocks, and exhibiting a series of
speckled shins, all radiating towards the fire, like sausages on a
Poloni dish. There they are--wedged as close as they can sit; one with
half a thigh off his breeches--another with half an arm off his tattered
coat--a third without breeches at all, wearing, as a substitute, a piece
of his mother's old petticoat, pinned about his loins--a fourth, no
coat--a fifth, with a cap on him, because he has got a scald, from
having sat under the juice of fresh hung bacon--a sixth with a black
eye--a seventh two rags about his heels to keep his kibes clean--an
eighth crying to get home, because he has got a headache, though it may
be as well to hint, that there is a drag-hunt to start from beside his
father's in the course of the day. In this ring, with his legs stretched
in a most lordly manner, sits, upon a deal chair, Mat himself, with
his hat on, basking in the enjoyment of unlimited authority. His dress
consists of a black coat, considerably in want of repair, transferred to
his shoulders through the means of a clothes-broker in the county-town;
a white cravat, round a large stuffing, having that part which comes in
contact with the chin somewhat streaked with brown--a black waistcoat,
with one or two “tooth-an'-egg” metal buttons sewed on where the
original had fallen off--black corduroy inexpressibles, twice dyed, and
sheep's-gray stockings. In his hand is a large, broad ruler, the emblem
of his power, the woful instrument of executive justice, and the signal
of terror to all within his jurisdiction. In a corner below is a pile
of turf, where on entering, every boy throws his two sods, with a hitch
from under his left arm. He then comes up to the master, catches his
forelock with finger and thumb, and bobs down his head, by way of making
him a bow, and goes to his seat. Along the walls on the ground is a
series of round stones, some of them capped with a straw collar or
hassock, on which the boys sit; others have bosses, and many of
them hobs--a light but compact kind of boggy substance found in the
mountains. On these several of them sit; the greater number of them,
however, have no seats whatever, but squat themselves down, without
compunction, on the hard floor. Hung about, on wooden pegs driven into
the walls, are the shapeless yellow “caubeens” of such as can boast the
luxury of a hat, or caps made of goat or hare's skin, the latter having
the ears of the animal rising ludicrously over the temples, or cocked
out at the sides, and the scut either before or behind, according to the
taste or the humor of the wearer. The floor, which is only swept every
Saturday, is strewed over with tops of quills, pens, pieces of broken
slate, and tattered leaves of “Reading made Easy,” or fragments of old
copies. In one corner is a knot engaged at “Fox and Geese,” or the “Walls
of Troy” on their slates; in another, a pair of them are “fighting
bottles,” which consists in striking the bottoms together, and he whose
bottle breaks first, of course, loses. Behind the master is a third set,
playing “heads and points”--a game of pins. Some are more industriously
employed in writing their copies, which they perform seated on the
ground, with their paper on a copy-board--a piece of planed deal, the
size of the copy, an appendage now nearly exploded--their cheek-bones
laid within half an inch of the left side of the copy, and the eye set
to guide the motion of the hand across, and to regulate the straightness
of the lines and the forms of the letters. Others, again, of the more
grown boys, are working their sums with becoming industry. In a dark
corner are a pair of urchins thumping each other, their eyes steadily
fixed on the master, lest he might happen to glance in that direction.
Near the master himself are the larger boys, from twenty-two to
fifteen--shaggy-headed slips, with loose-breasted shirts lying open
about their bare chests; ragged colts, with white, dry, bristling beards
upon them, that never knew a razor; strong stockings on their legs;
heavy brogues, with broad, nail-paved soles; and breeches open at the
knees. Nor is the establishment without a competent number of females.
These were, for the most part, the daughters of wealthy farmers, who
considered it necessary to their respectability, that they should not
be altogether illiterate; such a circumstance being a considerable
drawback, in the opinion of an admirer, from the character of a young
woman for whom he was about to propose--a drawback, too, which was
always weighty in proportion to her wealth or respectability.

Having given our readers an imperfect sketch of the interior of Mat's
establishment, we will now proceed, however feebly, to represent him at
work--with all the machinery of the system in full operation.

“Come, boys, rehearse--(buz, buz, buz)--I'll soon be after calling
up the first spelling lesson--(buz, buz, buz)--then the
mathematicians--book-keepers--Latinists and Grecians, successfully.
(Buz, buz, buz)--Silence there below!--your pens! Tim Casey, isn't this
a purty hour o' the day for you to come into school at; arraix, and what
kept you, Tim? Walk up wid yourself here, till we have a confabulation
together; you see I love to be talking to you.

“Sir, Larry Branagen, here; he's throwing spits at me out of his
pen.”--(Buz, buz, buz.)

“By my sowl, Larry, there's a rod in steep for you.”

“Fly away, Jack--fly away, Jill; come again, Jack--”

“I had to go to Paddy Nowlan's for to-baccy, sir, for my
father.” (Weeping with his hand knowingly across his face--one eye
laughing at his comrades.)--

“You lie, it wasn't.”

“If you call me a liar agin, I'll give you a dig in the mug.”

“It's not in your jacket.”

“Isn't it?”

“Behave yourself; ha! there's the masther looking at you--ye'll get it
now.”--

“None at all, Tim? And she's not after sinding an excuse wid you? What's
that undher your arm?”

“My Grough, sir.”--(Buz, buz, buz.)

“Silence, boys. And, you blackguard Lilliputian, you, what kept you away
till this?”

“One bird pickin', two men thrashin'; one bird pickin', two men
thrashin'; one bird pickin'--”

“Sir, they're stickn' pins in me, here.”

“Who is, Briney?”

“I don't know, sir, they're all at it.”

“Boys, I'll go down to yez.”

“I can't carry him, sir, he'd be too heavy for me: let Larry Toole do
it, he's stronger nor me; any way, there, he's putting a corker pin in
his mouth.” *--(Buz, buz, buz.)

     * In the hedge schools it was usual for the unfortunate
     culprit about to be punished to avail himself of all
     possible stratagems that were calculated to diminish
     his punishment. Accordingly, when put upon another
     boy's back to be horsed, as it was termed, he slipped a
     large pin, called a corker, in his mouth, and on
     receiving the first blow stuck it into the neck of the
     boy who carried him. This caused the latter to jump and
     bounce about in such a manner that many of the blows
     directed at his burthen missed their aim. It was an
     understood thing, however, that the boy carrying the
     felon should aid him in every way in his power, by
     yielding, moving', and shifting about, so that it was
     only when he seemed to abet the master that the pin was
     applied to him.

“Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo--I'll never stay away agin, sir; indeed I won't, sir.
Oh, sir, clear, pardon me this wan time; and if ever you cotch me doing
the like agin, I'll give you lave to welt the sowl out of me.”--(Buz
buz, buz.). “Behave yourself, Barny Byrne.”

“I'm not touching you.”

“Yes, you are; didn't you make me blot my Copy?”

“Ho, by the livin', I'll pay you goin' home for this.”

“Hand me the taws.”

“Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo--what'll I do, at all at all! Oh, sir dear,
sir dear, sir dear--hoo-hoo-hoo.”

“Did she send no message, good or bad, before I lay on?”

“Oh, not a word, sir, only that my father killed a pig yestherday, and
he wants you to go up to-day at dinner-time.”--(Buz, buz, buz.)

“It's time to get lave--it isn't, it is--it isn't, it is,” etc.

“You lie, I say, your faction never was able to fight ours; didn't we
lick all your dirty breed in Builagh-battha fair?”

“Silence there.”--(Buz, buz, buz.)

“Will you meet us on Sathurday, and we'll fight it out clane!”

“Ha-ha-ha! Tim, but you got a big fright, any how: whist, ma bouchal,
sure I was only jokin' you; and sorry I'd be to bate your father's son,
Tim. Come over, and sit beside myself at the fire here. Get up, Micky
Donoghue, you big, burnt-shinn'd spalpeen you, and let the dacent boy
sit at the fire.”

“Hulabaloo hoo-hoo-hoo--to go to give me such a welt, only for sitting
at the fire, and me brought turf wid me.”

“To-day, Tim?”

“Yes, sir.”

“At dinner time, is id?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Faith, the dacent strain was always in the same family.”--(Buz, buz,
buz.)--

“Horns, horns, cock horns: oh, you up'd vrid them, you lifted your
fingers--that's a mark, now--hould your face, till I blacken you!”

“Do you call thim two sods, Jack Laniran? why, 'tis only one long one
broke in the middle; but you must make it up tomorrow. Jack, how is your
mother's tooth?--did she get it pulled out yet?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, tell her to come to me, and I'll write a charm for it, that'll
cure her.--What kept you' till now, Paddy Magouran?”

“Couldn't come any sooner, sir.”

“You couldn't, sir--and why, sir, couldn't you come any sooner', sir?”

“See, sir, what Andy Nowlan done to my copy.”--(Buz, buz, buz.)--

“Silence, I'll massacree yez if yez don't make less noise.”--(Buz, buz,
buz.)

“I was down with Mrs. Kavanagh, sir.”

“You were, Paddy--an' Paddy, ma bouchal, what war you doing there,
Paddy?”

“Masther, sir, spake to Jem Kenny here; he made my nose bleed.”--

“Eh, Paddy?”

“I was br ingin' her a layin' hen, sir, that my mother promised her at
mass on Sunday last.”

“Ah, Paddy, you're a game bird, yourself, wid your layin' hens; you're
as full o' mischief as an egg's full o' mate--(omnes--ha, ha, ha,
ha!)--Silence, boys--what are you laughin' at?--ha, ha, ha!--Paddy, can
you spell Nebachodnazure for me?”

“No, sir.”

“No, nor a better scholar, Paddy, could not do that, ma bouchal; but
I'll spell it for you. Silence, boys--whist, all of yez, till I spell
Nebachodnazure for Paddy Magouran. Listen; and you yourself, Paddy, are
one of the letthers:

     A turf and a clod spells Nebachod--
     A knife and a razure, spells Nebachodnazure--
     Three pair of boots and five pair of shoes--
     Spells Nebachodnazure, the king of the Jews.'

Now, Paddy, that's spelling Nebachodnazure by the science of
Ventilation; but you'll never go that deep, Paddy.”--

“I want to go out, if you plase, sir.”

“Is that the way you ax me, you vagabone?”

“I want to go out, sir,”--(pulling down the fore lock.)

“Yes, that's something dacenter; by the sowl of Newton, that invinted
fluxions, if ever you forgot to make a bow again, I'll nog the enthrils
out of you--wait till the Pass comes in.”

Then comes the spelling lesson. “Come, boys, stand up to the spelling
lesson.”

“Mickey,” says one urchin, “show me your book, till I look at my word.
I'm fifteenth.”

“Wait till I see my own.”

“Why do you crush for?”

“That's my place.”

“No, it's not.”

“Sir, spake to---------I'll tell the masther.”

“What's the matther there?”

“Sir, he won't let me into my place.”

“I'm before you.”

“No you're not.”

“I say, I am.”

“You lie, pug-face: ha! I called you pug-face, tell now if you dare.”

“Well boys, down with your pins in the book: who's king?”

“I am, sir.”

“Who's queen?”

“Me, sir.”

“Who's prince?”

“I am prince, sir.”

“Tag rag and bob-tail, fall into your places.”

“I've no pin, sir.”

“Well down with you to the tail----now, boys.” *

     * At the spelling lesson the children were obliged to
     put down each a pin, he who held the first place got
     them all with the exception of the queen--that is the
     boy who held the second place! who got two; and the
     prince, the third who got one. The last boy in the
     class was called Bobtail.

Having gone through the spelling-task, it was Mat's custom to give out
six hard words selected according to his judgment--as a final test;
but he did not always confine himself to that. Sometimes he would put a
number of syllables arbitrarily together, forming a most heterogeneous
combination of articulate sounds.

“Now, boys, here's a deep word, that'll thry yez: come Larry
spell me-mo-man-dran-san-ti-fi-can-du-ban-dan-li-al-i-ty, or
mis-an-thro-po-mor-phi-ta-ni-a-nus-mi-ca-li-a-lioy;--that's too hard
for you, is it? Well, then, spell phthisic. Oh, that's physic you're
spellin'. Now, Larry, do you know the difference between physic and
phthisic?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, I'll expound it: phthisic, you see, manes--whisht, boys: will
yez hould yer tongues there--phthisic, Larry, signifies--that is,
phthisic--mind, it's not physic I'm expounding, but phthisic--boys, will
yez stop yer noise there--signifies----but, Larry, it's so deep a
word in larnin' that I should draw it out on a slate for you. And now I
remimber, man alive, you're not far enough on yet to understand it: but
what's physic, Larry?”

“Isn't that sir, what my father tuck the day he got sick, sir?”

“That's the very thing, Larry: it has what larned men call a
medical property, and resembles little ricketty Dan Reilly there--it
retrogrades. Och! Och! I'm the boy that knows things--you see now how I
expounded them two hard words for yez, boys--don't yez?”

“Yes, sir,” etc., etc.

“So, Larry, you haven't the larnin' for that either: but here's an
'asier one--spell me Ephabridotas (Epaphroditas)--you can't! hut!
man--you're a big dunce, entirely, that little shoneen Sharkey there
below would _sack_. God be wid the day when I was the likes of you--it's
I that was the bright gorsoon entirely--and so sign was on it, when
a great larned traveler--silence boys, till I tell yez this [a dead
silence]--from Thrinity College, all the way in Dublin, happened to meet
me one day--seeing the slate and Gough, you see, undher my arm, he axes
me--' Arrah, Mat,' says he, 'what are you _in_?' says he. 'Faix, I'm
in my breeches, for one thing,' says I, off hand--silence childhre,
and don't laugh so loud--(ha, ha, ha!) So he looks closer at me: 'I see
that,' says he; 'but what are you reading?' 'Nothing at all at all,'
says I; 'bad manners to the taste, as you may see, if you've your
eyesight.' 'I think,' says he, 'you'll be apt to die in your breeches;'
and set spurs to a fine saddle mare he rid--faith, he did so--thought me
so cute--(omnes--ha, ha, ha!) Whisht, boys, whisht; isn't it a terrible
thing that I can't tell yez a joke, but you split your sides laughing at
it--(ha, ha, ha!)--don't laugh so loud, Barney Casey.”--(ha, ha, ha!)

_Barney_.--“I want to go out, if you plase, sir.”

“Go, avick, you'll be a good scholar yet, Barney. Faith, Barney knows
whin to laugh, any how.”

“Well, Larry, you can't spell Ephabridotas?--thin, here's a short weeshy
one, and whoever spells it will get the pins;--spell a red rogue wid
three letters. You, Micky! Dan? Jack? Natty? Alick? Andy? Pettier? Jim?
Tim? Pat? Body? you? you? you? Now, boys, I'll hould you that my little
Andy here, that's only beginning the _Rational Spelling Book_, bates you
all; come here, Andy, alanna: now, boys, If he bates you, you 'must all
bring him a little _miscaun_ of butter between two kale leaves, in the
mornin', for himself; here, Andy avourneen, spell red rogue with three
letthers.”

_Andy_.--“M, a, t--Mat.”

“No, no, avick, that's myself, Andy; it's red rogue, Andy--hem!--F--.”

“F, o, x--fox.”

“That's a man, Andy. Now boys, mind what you owe Andy in the mornin,
God, won't yez?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I will, sir.”

“And I will, sir.”

“And so will I sir,” etc., etc, etc

I know not whether the Commissioners of Education found the monitorial
system of instruction in such of the old hedge schools as maintained an
obstinate resistance to the innovations of modern plans. That Bell and
Lancaster deserve much credit for applying and extending the principle
(speaking without any reference to its merits) I do not hesitate to
grant; but it is unquestionably true, that the principle was reduced
to practice in Irish hedge schools long before either of these worthy
gentlemen were in existence. I do not, indeed, at present remember
whether or not they claim it as a discovery, or simply as an adaptation
of a practice which experience, in accidental cases, had found useful,
and which they considered capable of more extensive benefit. I remember
many instances, however, in which it was applied--and applied, in my
opinion, though not as a permanent system, yet more judiciously than
it is at present. I think it a mistake to suppose that silence, among a
number of children in school, is conducive to the improvement either
of health or intellect, that the chest and the lungs are benefited by
giving full play to the voice, I think will not be disputed; and that a
child is capable of more intense study and abstraction in the din of a
school-room, than in partial silence (if I may be permitted the word),
is a fact, which I think any rational observation would establish. There
is something cheering and cheerful in the noise of friendly voices about
us--it is a restraint taken off the mind, and it will run the lighter
for it--it produces more excitement, and puts the intellect in a better
frame for study. The obligation to silence, though it may give the
master more ease, imposes a new moral duty upon the chil--the sense of
which must necessarily weaken his application. Let the boy speak aloud,
if he pleases--that is, to a certain pitch; let his blood circulate; let
the natural secretions take place, and the physical effluvia be thrown
off by a free exercise of voice and limbs: but do not keep him dumb and
motionless as a statue--his blood and his intellect both in a state
of stagnation, and his spirit below zero. Do not send him in quest of
knowledge alone, but let him have cheerful companionship on his way;
for, depend upon it, that the man who expects too much either in
discipline or morals from a boy, is not in my opinion, acquainted
with human nature. If an urchin titter at his own joke, or that of
another--if he give him a jab of a pin under the desk, imagine not that
it will do him an injury, whatever phrenologists may say concerning the
organ of destructiveness. It is an exercise to the mind, and he will
return to his business with greater vigor and effect. Children are not
men, nor influenced by the same motives--they do not reflect, because
their capacity for reflection is imperfect; so is their reason: whereas
on the contrary, their faculties for education (excepting judgment,
which strengthens my argument) are in greater vigor in youth than in
manhood. The general neglect of this distinction is, I am convinced,
a stumbling-block in the way of youthful instruction, though it
characterizes all our modern systems. We should never forget that they
are children; nor should we bind them by a system, whose standard is
taken from the maturity of human intellect. We may bend our reason to
theirs, but we cannot elevate their capacity to our own. We may produce
an external appearance, sufficiently satisfactory to ourselves; but, in
the meantime, it is probable that the child may be growing in hypocrisy,
and settling down into the habitual practice of a fictitious character.

But another and more serious objection may be urged against the present
strictness of scholastic discipline--which is, that it deprives the
boy of a sense of free and independent agency. I speak this with
limitations, for a master should be a monarch in his school, but by no
means a tyrant; and decidedly the very worst species of tyranny is
that which stretches the young mind upon the rod of too rigorous a
discipline--like the despot who exacted from his subjects so many
barrels of perspiration, whenever there came a long and severe frost. Do
not familiarize the mind when young to the toleration of slavery, lest
it prove afterwards incapable of recognizing and relishing the principle
of an honest and manly independence. I have known many children, on
whom a rigor of discipline, affecting the mind only (for severe corporal
punishment is now almost exploded), impressed a degree of timidity
almost bordering on pusillanimity. Away, then, with the specious and
long-winded arguments of a false and mistaken philosophy. A child will
be a child, and a boy a boy, to the conclusion of the chapter. Bell
or Lancaster would not relish the pap or caudle-cup three times a day;
neither would an infant on the breast feel comfortable after a gorge of
ox beef. Let them, therefore, put a little of the mother's milk of human
kindness and consideration into their straight-laced systems.

A hedge schoolmaster was the general scribe of the parish, to whom all
who wanted letters or petitions written, uniformly applied--and these
were glorious opportunities for the pompous display of pedantry; the
remuneration usually consisted of a bottle of whiskey.

A poor woman, for instance, informs Mat that she wishes to have a letter
written to her son, who is a soldier abroad. “An' how long is he gone,
ma'am?”

“Och, thin, masther, he's from me goin' an fifteen year; an' a comrade
of his was spakin' to Jim Dwyer, an' says his ridgiment's lyin' in the
Island of Budanages, somewhere in the back parts of Africa.”

“An' is it a lotther of petition you'd be afther havin' me to indite for
you, ma'am?”

“Och, a letthur, sir--a letthur, master; an' may the Lord grant you all
kinds of luck, good, bad, an' indifferent, both to you and yours: an'
well it's known, by the same token, that it's yourself has the nice
hand at the pen entirely, an' can indite a letter or petition, that the
priest of the parish mightn't be ashamed to own to it.”

“Why, thin, 'tis I that 'ud scorn to deteriorate upon the superiminence
of my own execution at inditin' wid a pen in my hand; but would you feel
a delectability in my supersoriptionizin' the epistolary correspondency,
ma'am, that I'm about to adopt?”

“Eagh? och, what am I sayin'!--sir--masther--sir?--the noise of the
crathurs, you see, is got into my ears; and, besides, I'm a bit bothered
on both sides of my head, ever since I heard that weary _weid_.”

“Silence, boys; bad manners to yez, will ye be asy, you Lilliputian
Boeotians--by my hem--upon my credit, if I go down to that corner, I'll
castigate yez in dozens: I can't spake to this dacent woman, with your
insuperable turbulentiality.”

“Ah, avourneen, masther, but the larnin's a fine thing, any how; an'
maybe 'tis yourself that hasn't the tongue in your head, an' can spake
the tall, high-flown English; a wurrah, but your tongue hangs well, any
how--the Lord increase it!”

“Lanty Cassidy, are you gettin' on wid your Stereometry? _festina, mi
discipuli; vocabo Homerum, mox atque mox_. You see, ma'am, I must tache
thim to spake an' effectuate a translation of the larned languages
sometimes.”

“Arrah, masther dear, how did you get it all into your head, at all at
all?”

“Silence, boys--_tace--' conticuere omnes intentique ora tenebant_.'
Silence, I say agin.”

“You could slip over, maybe, to Doran's, masther, do you see? You'd do
it betther there, I'll engage: sure and you'd want a dhrop to steady
your hand, any how.”

“Now, boys, I am goin' to indite a small taste of literal correspondency
over at the public-house here; you _literati_ will hear the lessons for
me, boys, till afther I'm back agin; but mind, boys, _absente domino
strepuunt servi_--meditate on the philosophy of that; and, Mick
Mahon, take your slate and put down all the names; and, upon my
soul--hem--credit, I'll castigate any boy guilty of _misty mannes_ on
my retrogadation thither;--_ergo momentote, cave ne titubes mandataque
frangas_.”

“Blood alive, masther, but that's great spakin'--begar, a judge couldn't
come up to you; but in throth, sir, I'd be long sarry to throuble you;
only he's away fifteen year, and I wouldn't thrust it to another; and
the corplar that commands the ridgment would regard your handwrite and
your inditin'.”

“Don't, ma'am, plade the smallest taste of apology.”

“Eagh?”

“I'm happy that I can sarve you, ma'am.”

“Musha, long life to you, masther, for that same, any how--but it's
yourself that's deep in the larnin' and the langridges; the Lord incrase
yer knowledge--sure, an' we all want his blessin', you know.”

“Home, is id? Start, boys, off--chase him, lie into him--asy, curse
yez, take time gettin' out: that's it--keep to him--don't wait for me;
take care, you little spalpeens, or you'll brake your bones, so you
will: blow the dust of this road, I can't see my way in.”


THE RETURN.

“Well, boys, you've been at it--here's swelled faces and bloody noses.
What blackened your eye, Callaghan? You're a purty prime ministher, ye
boxing blackguard, you: I left you to keep pace among these factions,
and you've kicked up a purty dust. What blackened your eye--eh?--”

“I'll tell you, sir, whin I come in, if you plase.”

“Ho, you vagabones, this is the ould work of the faction between the
Bradys and the Callaghans--bastin' one another; but, by my sowl, I'll
baste you all through other. You don't want to go out, Callaghan. You
had fine work here since; there's a dead silence now; but I'll pay you
presently. Here, Duggan, go out wid Callaghan, and see that you bring
him back in less than no time. It's not enough for your fathers and
brothers to be at it, who have a right to fight, but you must battle
betune you--have your field days itself!”

(Duggan returns)--“Hoo--hoo--sir, my nose. Oh, murdher sheery, my nose
is broked!”

“Blow your nose, you spalpeen you--Where's Callaghan?”

“Oh, sir, bad luck to him every day he rises out of his bed; he got a
stone in his fist, too, that he hot me a pelt on the nose wid, and then
made off home.”

“Home is id? Start, boys, off--chase him, lie into him--azy, curse yez,
take time gettin out; that's it--keep to him--don't wait for me; take
care you little salpeens or you'll brake your bones, so you will: blow
the dust of this road, I can't see my way in it.”

“Oh! murdher, Jem, agra, my knee's out' o' joint.”

“My elbow's smashed, Paddy. Bad luck to him--the devil fly away wid
him--oh! ha I ha!--oh! ha! ha! murdher--hard fortune to me, but little
Mickey Geery fell, an' thripped the masther, an' himself's, disabled
now--his black breeches split too--look at him feelin' them--oh! oh! ha!
ha!--by tare-an'-onty, Callaghan will be murdhered, if they cotch him.”

This was a specimen of scholastic civilization which Ireland only could
furnish; nothing, indeed, could be more perfectly ludicrous than such a
chase; and such scenes were by no means uncommon in hedge-schools, for,
wherever severe punishment was dreaded--and, in truth, most of the hedge
masters were unfeeling tyrants--the boy, if sufficiently grown to make
a good race, usually broke away, and fled home at the top of his speed.
The pack then were usually led on by the master, who mostly headed them
himself, all in full cry, exhibiting such a scene as should be witnessed
in order to be enjoyed. The neighbors, men, women, and children, ran
out to be spectators; the laborers suspended their work to enjoy it,
assembling on such eminences as commanded a full view of the pursuit.

“Bravo, boys--success, masther; lie into him--where's your huntin' horn,
Mr. Kavanagh?--he'll bate yez if ye don't take the wind of him.
Well done, Callaghan, keep up yer heart, yer sowl, and you'll do it
asy--you're gaining' on them, _ma bouchal_--the masther's down, you
gallows clip, an' there's none but the scholars afther ye--he's safe.”

“Not he; I'll hould a naggin, the poor scholar has him; don't you see,
he's close at his heels?”

“_Done_, by my song--they'll never come up wid him; listen to their
leather crackers and cord-a-roys, as their knees bang agin one another.
Hark forrit, boy's; hark forrit! huz-zaw, you thieves, huzzaw!”

“Your beagles is well winded, Mr. Kava-nagh, and gives good tongue.”

“Well, masther, you had your chase for nothin', I see.”

“Mr. Kavanagh,” another would observe, “I didn't think you war so
stiff in the hams, as to let the gorsoon bate you that way--your wind's
failin', sir.”

The schoolmaster was abroad then, and never was the “march of
intellect” at once so rapid and unsuccessful.

During the summer season, it was the usual practice for the scholars
to transfer their paper, slates, and books to the green which lay
immediately behind the school-house, where they stretched themselves on
the grass, and resumed their business. Mat would bring out his chair,
and, placing it on the shady side of the hedge, sit with his pipe in his
mouth, the contented lord of his little realm, whilst nearly a hundred
and fifty scholars, of all sorts and sizes, lay scattered over the
grass, basking under the scorching sun in all the luxury of novelty,
nakedness, and freedom. The sight was original and characteristic, and
such as Lord Brougham would have been delighted with. “The schoolmaster
was abroad again.”

As soon as one o'clock drew near, Mat would pull out his Ring-dial*
holding it against the sun, and declare the hour.

* The Ring-dial was the hedge-schoolmaster's next best substitute for
a watch. As it is possible that a great number of our readers may never
have heard of, much less seen one, we shall in a word or two describe
it--nothing could indeed be more simple. It was a bright brass ring,
about three-quarters of an inch broad, and two and a half in diameter.
There was a small hole in it, which when held opposite the sun admitted
the light against the inside of the ring behind. On this was marked the
hours and the quarters, and the time was known by observing the number
or the quarter on which the slender ray that came in from the hole in
front fell.

“Now, boys, to yer dinners, and the rest to play.”

“Hurroo, darlins, to play--the masther says it's
dinner-time!--whip-spur-an'-away-grey--hurroo--whack--hurroo!”

“Masther, sir, my father bid me ax you home to yer dinner.”

“No, he'll come to huz--come wid me if you plase, sir.”

“Sir, never heed them; my mother, sir, has some of what you know--of the
flitch I brought to Shoneen on last Aisther, sir.”

This was a subject on which the boys gave themselves great liberty; an
invitation, even when not accepted, being an indemnity for the day; it
was usually followed by a battle between the claimants, and bloody noses
sometimes were the issue. The master himself, after deciding to go where
he was certain of getting the best dinner, generally put an end to
the quarrels by a reprimand, and then gave notice to the disappointed
claimants of the successive days on which he would attend at their
respective houses.

“Boys, you all know my maxim; to go, for fear of any jealousies, boys,
wherever I get the worst dinner; so tell me now, boys, what yer dacent
mothers have all got at home for me?”

“My mother killed a fat hen yesterday, sir, and you'll have a lump of
bacon and flat dutch along wid it.”

“We'll have hung beef and greens, sir.”

“We tried the praties this mornin', sir, and we'll have new praties, and
bread and butther, sir.”

“Well, it's all good, boys; but rather than show favor or affection, do
you see, I'll go wid Andy, here, and take share of the hen an' bacon:
but, boys, for all that, I'm fonder of the other things, you persave;
and as I can't go wid you, Mat, tell your respectable mother that
I'll be with her to-morrow; and with you, Larry, _ma bouchal_, the day
afther.”

If a master were a single man he usually went round with the scholars
each night--but there were generally a few comfortable farmers, leading
men in the parish, at whose house he chiefly resided; and the children
of these men were treated, with the grossest and most barefaced
partiality. They were altogether privileged persons, and had liberty
to beat and abuse the other children of the school, who were certain
of being most unmercifully flogged, if they even dared to prefer a
complaint against the favorites. Indeed the instances of atrocious
cruelty in hedge schools were almost incredible, and such as in the
present enlightened time, would not be permitted. As to the state of
the “poor, scholar,” it exceeded belief; for he was friendless and
unprotected. But though legal prosecutions in those days were never
resorted to, yet, according to the characteristic notions of Irish
retributive justice, certain cases occurred, in which a signal, and
at times, a fatal vengeance was executed on the person of the brutal
master. Sometimes the brothers and other relatives of the mutilated
child would come in a body to the school, and flog the pedagogue with
his own taws, until his back was lapped in blood. Sometimes they would
beat him until few symptoms of life remained.

Occasionally he would get a nocturnal notice to quit the parish in a
given time, under a penalty which seldom proved a dead letter in case
of non-compliance. Not unfrequently did those whom he had, when boys,
treated with such barbarity, go back to him, when young men, not so much
for education's sake, as for the especial purpose of retaliating upon
him for his former cruelty. When cases of this nature occurred, he found
himself a mere cipher in his school, never daring to practise excessive
severity in their presence. Instances have come to our own knowledge, of
masters, who, for their mere amusement, would go out to the next
hedge, cut a large branch of furze or thorn, and having first carefully
arranged the children on a row round the walls of the school, their
naked legs stretched out before them, would sweep round the branch,
bristling with spikes and prickles, with all his force against their
limbs, until, in a few minutes, a circle of blood was visible on
the ground where they sat, their legs appearing as if they had been
scarified. This the master did, whenever he happened to be drunk, or
in a remarkably good humor. The poor children, however, were obliged
to laugh loud, and enjoy it, though the tears were falling down their
cheeks, in consequence of the pain he inflicted. To knock down a child
with the fist, was considered nothing harsh; nor, if a boy were, cut,
or prostrated by a blow of a cudgel on the head, did he ever think of
representing the master's cruelty to his parents. Kicking on the shins
with a point of a brogue or shoe, bound round the edge of the sole with
iron nails, until the bone was laid open, was a common punishment; and
as for the usual slapping, horsing, and flogging, they were inflicted
with a brutality that in every case richly deserved for the tyrant, not
only a peculiar whipping by the hand of the common executioner, but a
separation from civilized society by transportation for life. It is a
fact, however, that in consequence of the general severity practised in
hedge schools, excesses of punishment did not often produce retaliation
against the master; these were only exceptions, isolated cases that did
not affect the general character of the discipline in such schools.

Now when we consider the total absence of all moral and religious
principles in these establishments, and the positive presence of
all that was wicked, cruel, and immoral, need we be surprised that
occasional crimes of a dark and cruel character should be perpetrated?
The truth is, that it is difficult to determine, whether unlettered
ignorance itself were not preferable to the kind of education which the
people then received.

I am sorry to perceive the writings of many respectable persons on
Irish topics imbued with a tinge of spurious liberality, that frequently
occasions them to depart from truth. To draw the Irish character as it
is, as the model of all that is generous, hospitable, and magnanimous,
is in some degree fashionable; but although I am as warm an admirer of
all that is really excellent and amiable in my countrymen as any man,
yet I cannot, nor will I, extenuate their weak and indefensible
points. That they possess the elements of a noble and exalted national
character, I grant; nay, that they actually do possess such a character,
under limitations, I am ready to maintain. Irishmen, setting aside
their religious and political prejudices, are grateful, affectionate,
honorable, faithful, generous, and even magnanimous; but under the
stimulus of religious and political feeling, they are treacherous,
cruel, and inhuman--will murder, burn, and exterminate, not only without
compunction, but with a satanic delight worthy of a savage. Their
education, indeed, was truly barbarous; they were trained and habituated
to cruelty, revenge, and personal hatred, in their schools. Their
knowledge was directed to evil purposes--disloyal principles were
industriously insinuated into their minds by their teachers, most of
whom were leaders of illegal associations. The matter placed in their
hands was of a most inflammatory and pernicious nature, as regarded
politics: and as far as religion and morality were concerned, nothing
could be more gross or superstitious than the books which circulated
among them. Eulogiums on murder, robbery, and theft were read with
delight in the histories of Freney the Robber, and the Irish Rogues and
Rapparees; ridicule of the Word of God, and hatred to the Protestant
religion, in a book called Ward's Cantos, written in Hudi-brastic verse;
the downfall of the Protestant Establishment, and the exaltation of
the Romish Church, in Columbkill's Prophecy, and latterly in that of
Pastorini. Gross superstitions, political and religious ballads of
the vilest doggerel, miraculous legends of holy friars persecuted by
Protestants, and of signal vengeance inflicted by their divine power on
those who persecuted them, were in the mouths of the young and old, and
of course firmly fixed in their credulity.

Their weapons of controversy were drawn from the Fifty Reasons, the
Doleful Fall of Andrew Sail, the Catholic Christian, the Grounds of
Catholic Doctrine, a Net for the Fishers of Men, and several other
publications of the same class. The books of amusement read in these
schools, including the first-mentioned in this list, were, the Seven
Champions of Christendom, the Seven Wise Masters and Mistresses of
Rome, Don Belianis of Greece, the Royal Fairy Tales, the Arabian Nights'
Entertainments, Valentine and Orson, Gesta Romanorum, Dorastus and
Faunia, the History of Reynard the Fox, the Chevalier Faublax; to these
I may add, the Battle of Auhrim, Siege of Londonderry, History of the
Young Ascanius, a name by which the Pretender was designated, and the
Renowned History of the Siege of Troy; the Forty Thieves, Robin Hood's
Garland, the Garden of Love and Royal Flower of Fidelity, Parismus and
Parismenos; along with others, the names of which shall not appear on
these pages. With this specimen of education before our eyes, is it not
extraordinary that the people of Ireland should be in general, so moral
and civilized a people as they are?

“Thady Bradly, will you come up wid your slate, till I examine you in
your figures? Go out, sir, and blow your nose first, and don't be
after making a looking-glass out of the sleeve of your jacket. Now that
Thady's out, I'll hould you, boys, that none of yez knows how to expound
his name--eh? do ye? But I needn't ax--well, 'tis Thaddeus; and, maybe,
that's as much as the priest that christened him knew. Boys, you see
what it is to have the larnin'--to lade the life of a gintleman, and to
be able to talk deeply wid the clargy! Now I could run down any man in
arguin', except a priest; and if the Bishop was after consecratin'
me, I'd have as much larnin' as some of them; but you see I'm not
consecrated--and--well, 'tis no matther--I only say that the more's the
pity.”

“Well, Thady, when did you go into subtraction?”

“The day beyond yesterday, sir; yarra musha, sure 'twas yourself, sir,
that shet me the first sum.”

“Masther, sir, Thady Bradly stole my cutter--that's my cutter, Thady
Bradly.”

“No it's not” (in a low voice).

“Sir, that's my cutter--an' there's three nicks in id.”

“Thady, is that his cutter?”

“There's your cutter for you. Sir, I found it on the flure and didn't
know who own'd it.”

“You know'd very well who own'd it; didn't Dick Martin see you liftin'
it off o' my slate, when I was out?”

“Well, if Dick Martin saw him, it's enough: an' 'tis Dick that's the
tindher-hearted boy, an' would knock, you down wid a lump of a stone, if
he saw you murdherin' but a fly!”

“We'll, Thady--throth Thady, I fear you'll undherstand subtraction
better nor your teacher: I doubt you'll apply it to 'Practice' all
your life, _ma bouchal_, and that you'll be apt to find it 'the Rule of
False' * at last. Well, Thady, from one thousand pounds, no shillings,
and no pince, how will you subtract one pound? Put it down on your
slate--this way,

     The name of a 'Rule' in Gough's Arithmetic.

1000 00 00

1 00 00”

“I don't know how to shet about it, masther.”

“You don't, an' how dare you tell me so you _shingaun_ you--you
Cornelius Agrippa you--go to your sate and study it, or I'll--ha! be
off, you.”--

“Pierce Butler, come up wid your multiplication. Pierce, multiply four
hundred by two--put it down--that's it,

400

By 2”

“Twice nought is one.” (Whack, whack.)

“Take that as an illustration--is that one?”

“Faith, masther, that's two, any how: but, sir, is not wanst nought
nothin'; now masher, sure there can't be less than nothin'.”

“Very good, sir.”

“If wanst nought be nothin', then twice nought must be somethin', for
it's double what wanst nought is--see how I'm sthruck for nothin', an'
me knows it--hoo! hoo! hoo!

“Get out, you Esculapian; but I'll give you _somethin_', by-and-by, just
to make you remimber that you know _nothin_'--off wid you to your sate,
you spalpeen you--to tell me that there can't be less than nothin' when
it's well known that sporting Squaire O'Canter's worth a thousand pounds
less than nothin'.”

“Paddy Doran, come up to your 'Intherest.' Well Paddy, what's the
intherest of a hundred pound, at five per cent? Boys, have manners you
thieves you.”

“Do you mane, masther, per cent, per annum?”

“To be sure I do--how do you state it?”

“I'll say, as a hundher pound is to one year, so is five per cent, per
annum.”

“Hum--why what's the number of the sum Paddy?”

“'Tis No. 84, sir. (The master steals a glance at the Key to Gough.)

“I only want to look at it in the Gough, you see, Paddy,--an' how dare
you give me such an answer, you big-headed dunce, you--go off an' study
it, you rascally Lilliputian--off wid you, and don't let me see your
ugly mug till you know it.”

“Now, gintlemen, for the Classics; and first for the Latinaarians--Larry
Cassidy, come up wid your Aisop. Larry you're a year at Latin, an' I
don't think you know Latin for frize, what your own coat is made of,
Larry. But, in the first place, Larry, do you know what a man that
taiches Classics is called?”

“A schoolmasther, sir.” (Whack, whack, whack.).

“Take that for your ignorance--and that to the back of it--ha; that'll
taiche you--to call a man that taiches Classics a schoolmaster, indeed!
'Tis a Profissor of Humanity itself, he is--(whack, whack, whack,)--ha!
you ringleader, you; you're as bad as Dick M'Growler, that no masther in
the county could get any good of, in regard that he put the whole school
together by the ears, wherever he'd be, though the spalpeen wouldn't
stand fight himself. Hard fortune to you! to go to put such an affront
upon me, an' me a Profissor of Humanity. What's Latin for pantaloons?”

“Fern--fern--femi--”

“No, it's not, sir.”

“Femora--”

“Can you do it?”

“Don't strike me, sir, don't strike me, sir, an' I will.”

“I say, can you do it?”

“Femorali,”--(whack, whack, whack,)--

“Ah, sir! ah, sir! 'tis fermorali--ah, sir! 'tis fermorali--ah, sir!”--

“This thratement to a Profissor of Humanity--(drives him head over heels
to his seat).--Now, sir, maybe you'll have Latin for throwsers agin,
or by my sowl, if you don't, you must peel, and I'll tache you what a
Profissor of Humanity is!

“Dan Roe, you little starved-looking spalpeen, will you come up to your
Elocution?--and a purty figure you cut at it, wid a voice like a penny
thrumpet, Dan! Well, what speech have you got now, Dan, _ma bouchal_. Is
it, 'Romans, counthrymin, and lovers?'”

“No, shir; yarrah, didn't I spake that speech before?”

“No, you didn't, you fairy. Ah, Dan, little as you are, you take credit
for more than ever you spoke, Dan, agrah; but, faith, the same thrick
will come agin you some time or other, avick! Go and get that speech
betther; I see by your face, you haven't it; off wid you, and get a
patch upon your breeches, your little knees are through them, though
'tisn't by prayin' you've wore them, any how, you little hop-o'-my-thumb
you, wid a voice like a rat in a thrap; off wid you, man alive!”

Sometimes the neighboring gentry used to call into Mat's establishment,
moved probably by a curiosity excited by his character, and the general
conduct of the school. On one occasion Squire Johnston and an English
gentleman paid him rather an unexpected visit. Mat had that morning got
a new scholar, the son of a dancing tailor in the neighborhood; and
as it was reported that the son was nearly equal to the father in that
accomplishment, Mat insisted on having a specimen of his skill. He was
the more anxious on this point as it would contribute to the amusement
of a travelling schoolmaster, who had paid him rather a hostile visit,
which Mat, who dreaded a literary challenge, feared might occasion him
some trouble.

“Come up here, you little sartor, till we get a dacent view of you.
You're a son of Ned Malone's--aren't you?”

“Yes, and of Mary Malone, my mother, too, sir.”

“Why, thin, that's not so bad, any how--what's your name?”

“Dick, sir.”

“Now, Dick, ma bouchal, isn't it true that you can dance a horn-pipe?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Here, Larry Brady, take the door off the hinges, an' lay it down on the
flure, till Dick Malone dances the _Humors of Glynn_: silence, boys, not
a word; but just keep lookin' an.”

“Who'll sing, sir? for I can't be afther dancin' a step widout the
music.”

“Boys, which of yez'll sing for Dick? I say, boys, will none of yez give
Dick the Harmony? Well, come, Dick, I'll sing for you myself:

     “Tooral lol, lorral lol, lorral lol, lorral, lol--
     Toldherol, lorral lol, lorral lol, lol,” etc., etc.

“I say, Misther Kavanagh,” said the strange master, “what angle does
Dick's heel form in the second step of the treble, from the kibe on the
left foot to the corner of the door forninst him?”

To this mathematical poser Mat made no reply, only sang the tune with
redoubled loudness and strength, whilst little Dicky pounded the old
crazy door with all his skill and alacrity. The “boys” were delighted.

“Bravo, Dick, that's a man,--welt the flure--cut the buckle--murder the
clocks--rise upon suggaun, and sink upon gad---down the flure flat,
foot about--keep one foot on the ground and t'other never off it,”
 saluted him from all parts of the house.

Sometimes he would receive a sly hint, in a feigned voice, to call for
“Devil stick the Fiddler,” alluding to the master. Now a squeaking voice
would chime in; by and by another, and so on until the master's bass had
a hundred and forty trebles, all in chorus to the same tune.

Just at this moment the two gentlemen altered; and, reader, you may
conceive, but I cannot describe, the face which Mat (who sat with his
back to the door, and did not; see them until they were some time in the
house), exhibited on the occasion. There he sung ore rotundo, throwing
forth an astonishing tide of voice; whilst little Dick, a thin,
pale-faced urchin, with his head, from which the hair stood erect,
sunk between his hollow shoulders, was performing prodigious feats of
agility.

“What's the matter? what's the matter?” said the gentlemen. “Good
morning, Mr. Kavanagh!”

----Tooral lol, lol----

Oh, good---Oh, good morning---gintlemen, with extrame kindness,”
 replied Mat, rising suddenly up, but not removing his hat, although the
gentlemen instantly uncovered.

“Why, thin, gintlemen,” he continued, “you have caught us in our little
relaxations to-day; but--hem!--I mane to give the boys a holiday for the
sake of this honest and respectable gintleman in the frize jock, who is
not entirely ignorant, you persave, of litherature; and we had a small
taste, gintlemen, among ourselves, of Sathurnalian licentiousness,
_ut ita dicam_, in regard of--hem!--in regard of this lad here, who was
dancing a hornpipe upon the door, and we, in absence of betther music,
had to supply him with the harmony; but, as your honors know, gintlemen,
the greatest men have bent themselves on espacial occasions.”

“Make no apology, Mr. Kavanagh; it's very commendable in you to bend
yourself by condescending to amuse your pupils.”

“I beg your pardon, Squire, I can take freedoms with you; but perhaps
the concomitant gentleman, your friend here, would be pleased to take
my stool. Indeed, I always use a chair, but the back of it, if I may, be
permitted the use of a small portion of jocularity, was as frail as the
fair sect: it went home yisterday to be mended. Do, sir, condescind
to be sated. Upon my reputation, Squire, I'm sorry that I have not
accommodation for you, too, sir; except one of these hassocks, which, in
joint considheration with the length of your honor's legs, would be,
I anticipate, rather low; but you, sir, will honor me by taking the
stool.”

By considerable importunity he forced the gentleman to comply with
his courtesy; but no sooner had he fixed himself upon the seat than
it overturned, and stretched him, black coat and all, across a wide
concavity in the floor nearly filled up with white ashes produced from
mountain turf. In a moment he was completely white on one side, and
exhibited a most laughable appearance; his hat, too, was scorched and
nearly burned on the turf coals. Squire Johnston laughed heartily, so
did the other schoolmaster, whilst the Englishman completely lost his
temper--swearing that such another uncivilized establishment was not
between the poles.

“I solemnly supplicate upwards of fifty pardons,” said Mat; “bad manners
to it for a stool! but, your honor, it was my own detect of speculation,
bekase, you see, it's minus a leg--a circumstance of which you waren't
wi a proper capacity to take cognation, its not being personally
acquainted with it. I humbly supplicate upwards of fifty pardons.”

The Englishman was now nettled, and determined to wreak his ill-temper
on Mat, by turning him and his establishment into ridicule.

“Isn't this, Mister ------ I forget your name, sir.”

“Mat Kavanagh, at your sarvice.”

“Very well, my learned friend, Mr. Mat Kevanagh, isn't this precisely
what is called a hedge-school?”

“A hedge-school!” replied Mat, highly offended; “my seminary a
hedge-school! No, sir; I scorn the cognomen in toto. This, sir, is a
Classical and Mathematical Seminary, under the personal superintendence
of your humble servant.”

“Sir,” replied the other master, who till then was silent, wishing,
perhaps, to sack Mat in presence of the gentlemen, “it is a
hedge-school; and he is no scholar, but an ignoramus, whom I'd sack in
three minutes, that would be ashamed of a hedge-school.”

“Ay,” says Mat, changing his tone, and taking the cue from his
friend, whose learning he dreaded, “it's just for argument's sake, a
hedge-school; and, what is more, I scorn to be ashamed of it.”

“And do you not teach occasionally under the hedge behind the house
here?”

“Granted,” replied Mat; “and now where's your _vis consequentiae?_”

“Yes,” subjoined the other, “produce your _vis consequentiae_; but any
one may know by a glance that the divil a much of it's about you.”

The Englishman himself was rather at a loss for the _vis consequentiae_,
and replied, “Why don't you live, and learn, and teach like civilized
beings, and not assemble like wild asses--pardon me, my friend, for the
simile--at least like wild colts, in such clusters behind the ditches?”

“A clusther of wild coults!” said Mat; “that shows what you are; no
man of classical larnin' would use such a word. If you had stuck at the
asses, we know it's a subject you're at home in--ha! ha! ha!--but you
brought the joke on yourself, your honor--that is, if it is a joke--ha!
ha! ha!”

“Permit me, sir,” replied the strange master, “to ax your honor one
question--did you receive a classical education? Are you college-bred?”

“Yes,” replied the Englishman; “I can reply to both in the affirmative.
I'm a Cantabrigian.”

“You are a what?” asked Mat.

“I am a Cantabrigian.”

“Come, sir, you must explain yourself, if you plase. I'll take my oath
that's neither a classical nor a mathematical tarm.”

The gentleman smiled. “I was educated in the English College of
Cambridge.”

“Well,” says Mat, “and may be you would be as well off if you had picked
up your larnin' in our own Thrinity; there's good picking in Thrinity,
for gentlemen like you, that are sober, and harmless about the brains,
in regard of not being overly bright.”

“You talk with contempt of a hedge-school,” replied the other master.
“Did you never hear, for all so long as you war in Cambridge, of a nate
little spot in Greece called the groves of Academus?

“'Inter lucos Academi quarrere verum.'

“What was Plato himself but a hedge schoolmaster? and, with humble
submission, it casts no slur on an Irish tacher to be compared to him,
I think. You forget also, sir, that the Dhruids taught under their oaks:
eh?”

“Ay,” added Mat, “and the Tree of Knowledge, too. Faith, an' if that
same tree was now in being, if there wouldn't be hedge schoolmasters,
there would be plenty of hedge scholars, any how--particularly if the
fruit was well tasted.”

“I believe, Millbank, you must give in,” said Squire Johnston. “I think
you have got the worst of it.”

“Why,” said Mat, “if the gintleman's not afther bein' sacked clane, I'm
not here.”

“Are you a mathematician?” inquired Mat's friend, determined to follow
up his victory; “do you know Mensuration?”

“Come, I do know Mensuration,” said the Englishman, with confidence.

“And how would you find the solid contents of a load of thorns?”

“Ay, or how will you consther and parse me this sintince?” said Mat--

     “'Ragibus et clotibus solemus stopere windous,
     Non numerus sumus et fruges consumere nati,
     Stercora flat stiro raro terra-tanfcaro bungo.'”

“Aisy, Mister Kavanagh,” replied the other; “let the Cantabrigian
resolve the one I propounded him first.”

“And let the Cantabrigian then take up mine,” said Mat: “and if he can
expound it, I'll give him a dozen more to bring home in his pocket, for
the Cambridge folk to crack after their dinner, along wid their nuts.”

“Can you do the 'Snail?'” inquired the stranger..

“Or 'A and B on opposite sides of a wood,' without the Key?” said Mat.

“Maybe,” said the stranger, who threw off the frize jock, and exhibited
a muscular frame of great power, cased in an old black coat--“maybe the
gintleman would like to get a small taste of the '_Scuffle_'”

“Not at all,” replied the Englishman; “I have not the least curiosity
for it--I assure you I have not. What the deuce do they mean, Johnston?
I hope you have influence over them.”

“Hand me down that cudgel, Jack Brady, till I show the gintleman the
'Snail' and the 'Maypole,'” said Mat.

“Never mind, my lad; never mind, Mr ------a------Kevanagh. I give up the
contest; I resign you the palm, gentlemen. The hedge school has beaten
Cambridge hollow.”



“One poser more before you go, sir,” said Mat--“Can you give me Latin
for a _game-egg_ in two words?”

“Eh, a game egg? No, by my honor, I cannot--gentlemen, I yield.”

“Ay, I thought so,” replied Mat; “and, faith, I believe the divil a much
of the game bird about you--you bring it home to Cambridge, anyhow,
and let them chew their cuds upon it, you persave; and, by the sowl
of Newton, it will puzzle the whole establishment, or my name's not
Kavanagh.”

“It will, I am convinced,” replied the gentleman, eyeing the herculean
frame of the strange teacher and the substantial cudgel in Mat's hand;
“it will, undoubtedly. But who is this most miserable naked lad here,
Mr. Kevanagh?”

“Why, sir,” replied Mat, with his broad Milesian face, expanded by a
forthcoming joke, “he is, sir, in a sartin and especial particularity, a
namesake of your own.”

“How is that, Mr. Kevanagh?”

“My name's not Kevanagh,” replied Mat, “but Kavanagh; the Irish A for
ever!”

“Well, but how is the lad a namesake of mine?” said the Englishman.

“Bekase, you see, he's a, poor scholar, sir,” replied Mat: “an' I hope
your honor will pardon me for the facetiousness--

     'Quid vetat ridentem dicere verum!'

as Horace says to Maecenas, in the first of the Sathirs.”

“There, Mr. Kavanagh, is the price of a suit of clothes for him.”

“Michael, will you rise up, sir, and make the gintleman a bow? he has
given you the price of a shoot of clothes, ma bouchal.”

Michael came up with a very tattered coat hanging about him; and,
catching his forelock, bobbed down his head after the usual manner,
saying--“Musha yarrah, long life to your honor every day you rise, an'
the Lord grant your sowl a short stay in purgatory, wishin' ye, at the
same time, a happy death aftherwards!”

The gentleman could not stand this, but laughed so heartily that the
argument was fairly knocked up.

It appeared, however, that Squire Johnston did not visit Mat's school
from mere curiosity.

“Mr. Kavanagh,” said he, “I would be glad to have a little private
conversation with you, and will thank you to walk down the road a little
with this gentleman and me.”

When the gentlemen and Mat had gone ten or fifteen yards from the
school door, the Englishman heard himself congratulated in the following
phrases by the scholars:--

“How do you feel afther bein' sacked, gintleman? The masther sacked
you! You're a purty scholar! It's not you, Mr. Johnston, it's the other.
You'll come to argue agin, will you? Where's your head, Bah! Come back
till we put the _suggaun_* about your neck. Bah! You now must go to
school to Cambridge agin, before you can argue an Irisher! Look at the
figure he cuts! Why duv ye put the one foot past the other, when ye
walk, for? Bah! Dunce!”

     * The suggaun was a collar of straw which was put round
     the necks of the dunces, who were then placed at the
     door, that their disgrace might be as public as
     possible.

“Well, boys, never heed yez for that,” shouted Mat; “never fear but I'll
castigate yez, ye spalpeen villains, as soon as I go back. Sir,” said
Mat, “I supplicate upwards of fifty pardons. I assure you, sir,
I'll give them a most inordinate castigation, for their want of
respectability.”

“What's the Greek for tobaccy?” they continued--“or for Larry O'Toole?
or for bletherum skite? How many beans makes five? What's the Latin
for poteen, and flummery? You a mathemathitician! could you measure a
snail's horn? How does your hat stay up and nothing undher it? Will you
fight Barny Parrel wid one hand tied! I'd lick you myself! What's Greek
for gosther?”--with many other expressions of a similar stamp.

“Sir,” said Mat, “lave the justice of this in my hands. By the sowl of
Newton, your own counthryman, ould Isaac, I'll flog the marrow out of
them.”

“You have heard, Mr. Kavanagh,” continued Mr. Johnston, as they went
along, “of the burning of Moore's stable and horses, the night before
last. The fact is, that the magistrates of the county are endeavoring to
get the incendiaries, and would render a service to any person capable,
either directly or indirectly, of facilitating the object, or stumbling
on a clew to the transaction.”

“And how could I do you a sarvice in it, sir?” inquired Mat.

“Why,” replied Mr. Johnston, “from the children. If you could sift them
in an indirect way, so as, without suspicion, to ascertain the absence
of a brother, or so, on that particular night, I might have it in my
power to serve you, Mr. Kavanagh. There will be a large reward offered
to-morrow, besides.”

“Oh, damn the penny of the reward ever I'd finger, even if I knew the
whole conflagration,” said Mat; “but lave the siftin' of the children
wid myself, and if I can get anything out of them you'll hear from me;
but your honor must keep a close mouth, or you might have occasion to
lend me the money for my own funeral some o' these days. Good-morning,
gintlemen.” The gentlemen departed.

“May the most ornamental kind of hard fortune pursue you every day you
rise, you desavin' villain, that would have me turn informer, bekase
your brother-in-law, rack-rintin' Moore's stables and horses were burnt;
and to crown all, make the innocent childre the means of hanging their
own fathers or brothers, you rap of the divil! but I'd see you and all
your breed in the flames o' hell first.” Such was Mat's soliloquy as he
entered the school on his return.

“Now, boys, I'm afther givin' yez to-day and to-morrow for a holyday:
to-morrow we will have our Gregory;* a fine faste, plinty of poteen,
and a fiddle; and you will tell your brothers and sisters to come in
the evening to the dance. You must bring plinty of bacon, hung beef,
and fowls, bread and cabbage--not forgetting the phaties, and sixpence
a-head for the crathur, boys, won't yez?”

The next day, of course, was one of festivity; every boy brought, in
fact, as much provender as would serve six; but the surplus gave Mat
some good dinners for three months to come. This feast was always held
upon St. Gregory's day, from which circumstance it had its name. The
pupils were at liberty for that day to conduct themselves as
they pleased: and the consequence was, that they became generally
intoxicated, and were brought home in that state to their parents. If
the children of two opposite parties, chanced to be at the same school,
they usually had a fight, of which the master was compelled to feign
ignorance; for if he identified himself with either faction, his
residence in the neighborhood would be short. In other districts, where
Protestant schools were in existence, a battle-royal commonly took
place between the opposite establishments, in some field lying half-way
between them. This has often occurred.

Every one must necessarily be acquainted with the ceremony of _barring
out_. This took place at Easter and Christmas. The master was brought
or sent out on some fool's errand, the door shut and barricaded, and the
pedagogue excluded, until a certain term of vacation was extorted.
With this, however, the master never complied until all his efforts
at forcing an entrance were found to be ineffectual; because if he
succeeded in getting in, they not only had no claim to a long vacation,
but were liable to be corrected. The schoolmaster had also generally the
clerkship of the parish; an office, however, which in the country parts
of Ireland is without any kind of salary, beyond what results from the
patronage of the priest; a matter of serious moment to a teacher, who,
should he incur his Reverence's displeasure, would be immediately driven
out of the parish. The master, therefore, was always tyrannical and
insolent to the people, in proportion as he stood high in the estimation
of the priest. He was also a regular attendant at all wakes and
funerals, and usually sat among a crowd of the village sages engaged
in exhibiting his own learning, and in recounting the number of his
religious and literary disputations.

One day, soon after the visit of the gentlemen above mentioned, two
strange men came into Mat's establishment--rather, as Mat thought, in an
unceremonious manner.

“Is your name Matthew Kavanagh?” said one of them.

“That is indeed the name that's upon me,” said Mat, with rather an
infirm voice, whilst his face got as pale as ashes.

“Well,” said the fellow, “we'll just trouble you to walk with us a bit.”

“How far, with submission, are yez goin' to bring me?” said Mat.

“Do you know Johnny Short's hotel?” *

     * The county jail.--Johnny Short was for many years the
     Governor of Monaghan jail. It was to him the _Mittimus_
     of “Fool Art,” mentioned in Phelim O'Toole's Courtship,
     was directed. If the reader will suspend his curiosity,
     that is, provided he feels any, until he comes to the
     sketch just mentioned, he will get a more ample account
     of Johnny Short.

“My curse upon you, Findramore,” exclaimed Mat, in a paroxysm
of anguish, “every day you rise! but your breath's unlucky to a
schoolmaster; and it's no lie what was often said, that no schoolmaster
ever thruv in you, but something ill came over him.”

“Don't curse the town, man alive,” said the constable, “but curse your
own ignorance and folly; any way, I wouldn't stand in your coat for the
wealth of the three kingdoms. You'll undoubtedly swing, unless you turn
king's evidence. It's about Moore's business, Mr. Kavanagh.”

“Damn the bit of that I'd do, even if I knew anything about it; but,
God be praised for it, I can set them all at defiance--that I'm sure of.
Gentlemen, innocence is a jewel.”

“But Barny Brady, that keeps the shebeen house--you know him--is of
another opinion. You and some of the Pindramore boys took a sup in
Barny's on a sartin night?”

“Ay, did we, on many a night, and will agin, plase Providence--no harm
in takin' a sup any how--by the same token, that may be you and yer
friend here would have a drop of rale stuff, as a thrate from me?”

“I know a thrick worth two of that,” said the man; “I thank ye kindly,
Mr. Kavanagh.”

One Tuesday morning, about six weeks after this event, the largest crowd
ever remembered in that neighborhood was assembled at Findramore Hill,
whereon had been erected a certain wooden machine, yclept--a gallows. A
little after the hour of eleven o'clock two carts were descried winding
slowly down a slope in the southern side of the town and church, which
I have already mentioned, as terminating the view along the level road
north of the hill. As soon as they were observed, a low, suppressed
ejaculation of horror ran through the crowd, painfully perceptible to
the ear--in the expression of ten thousand murmurs all blending into one
deep groan--and to the eye, by a simultaneous motion that ran through
the crowd like an electric shock. The place of execution was surrounded
by a strong detachment of military; and the carts that conveyed the
convicts were also strongly guarded.

As the prisoners approached the fatal spot, which was within sight
of the place where the outrage had been perpetrated, the shrieks and
lamentations of their relations and acquaintances were appalling indeed.
Fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, cousins, and all persons to the
most remote degree of kindred and acquaintanceship, were present--all
excited by the alternate expression of grief and low-breathed vows of
retaliation; not only relations, but all who were connected with them
by the bonds of their desperate and illegal oaths. Every eye, in fact,
coruscated with a wild and savage fire, that shot from under brows knit
in a spirit that deemed to cry out Blood, vengeance--blood, vengeance!
The expression was truly awful; all what rendered it more terrific was
the writhing reflection, that numbers and physical force were unavailing
against a comparatively small body of armed troops. This condensed the
fiery impulse of the moment into an expression of subdued rage, that
really shot like livid gleams from their visages.

At length the carts stopped under the gallows; and, after a short
interval spent in devotional exercise, three of the culprits ascended
the platform, who, after recommending themselves to God, and avowing
their innocence, although the clearest possible evidence of guilt had
been brought against them, were launched into another life, among the
shrieks and groans of the multitude. The other three then ascended; two
of them either declined, or had not strength to address the assembly.
The third advanced to the edge of the boards--it was Mat. After two
or three efforts to speak, in which he was unsuccessful from bodily
weakness, he at length addressed them as follows:--

“My friends and good people--In hopes that you may be all able to
demonstrate the last proposition laid down by a dying man, I undertake
to address you before I depart to that world where Euclid, De Cartes,
and many other larned men are gone before me. There is nothing in all
philosophy more true than that, as the multiplication-table says, 'two
and two makes four;' but it is equally veracious and worthy of credit,
that if you do not abnegate this system that you work the common rules
of your proceedings by--if you don't become loyal men, and give up
burnin' and murdherin', the solution of it will be found on the gallows.
I acknowledge myself to be guilty, for not separatin' myself clane from
yez; we have been all guilty, and may God forgive thim that jist now
departed wid a lie in their mouth.”

Here he was interrupted by a volley of execrations and curses, mingled
with “stag, informer, thraithor to the thrue cause!” which, for some
time, compelled him to be silent.

“You may curse,” continued Mat; “but it's too late now to abscond the
truth--the _sum_ of my wickedness and folly is worked out, and you see
the _answer_. God forgive me, many a young crathur I enticed into the
_Ribbon_ business, and now it's to ind in _Hemp_. Obey the law; or, if
you don't you will find a _lex talionis_ the construction of which is,
that if a man burns or murdhers he won't miss hanging; take warning by
me--by us all; for, although I take God to witness that I was not at
the perpetration of the crime that I'm to be suspinded for, yet I often
connived, when I might have superseded the carrying of such intuitions
into effectuality. I die in pace wid all the world, save an' except the
Findramore people, whom, may the maledictionary execration of a
dying man follow into eternal infinity! My manuscription of conic
sections--” Here an extraordinary buz commenced among the crowd, which
rose gradually into a shout of wild, astounding exultation. The sheriff
followed the eyes of the multitude, and perceived a horseman dashing
with breathless fury up towards the scene of execution. He carried and
waved a white handkerchief on the end of a rod, and made signals with
his hat to stop the execution. He arrived, and brought a full pardon for
Mat, and a commutation of sentence to transportation for life for the
other two. What became of Mat I know not; but in Findramore he never
dared to appear, as certain death would have been the consequence of his
not dying _game_. With respect to Barny Brady, who kept the shebeen,
and was the principal evidence against those who were concerned in this
outrage, he was compelled to enact an _ex tempore_ death in less than
a month afterwards; having been found dead, with a slip of paper in his
mouth, inscribed--“This is the fate of all Informers.”


* * * * *


(Note to page 834.)

The Author, in order to satisfy his readers that the character of Mat
Kavanagh as a hedge schoolmaster is not by any means overdrawn, begs to
subjoin (verbatim) the following authentic production of one, which will
sufficiently explain itself, and give an excellent notion of the mortal
feuds and jealousies which subsist between persons of this class:--

“To the Public.--Having read a printed Document, emanating, as it
were, from a vile, mean, and ignorant miscreant of the name of ------,
calumniating and vituperating me; it is evidently the production of a
vain, supercilious, disappointed, frantic, purblind maniac of the name
of ------, a bedlamite to all intents and purposes, a demon in the
disguise of virtue, and a herald of hell in the paradise of innocence,
possessing neither principle, honor, nor honesty; a vain and vapid
creature whom nature plumed out for the annoyance of ------ and its
vicinity.

“It is well known and appreciated by an enlightened and discerning
public, that I am as competently qualified to conduct the duties of a
Schoolmaster as any Teacher in Munster. (Here I pause, stimulated by
dove-eyed humility, and by the fine and exalted feelings of nature, to
make a few honorable exceptions, particularly when I memorize the names
and immortal fame of a Mr. ------, a Mr.---------, a Mr. ---------, a
Mr.---------, a Mr. ---------, a Mr. --------, ---------; a Mr. Matt.
---------, ---------; a Mr.---------, ---------; and many other stars of
the first magnitude, too numerous for insertion).

“The notorious impostor and biped animal already alluded to, actuated by
an overweening desire of notoriety, and in order to catch the applause
of some one, grovelling in the morasses of insignificance and vice,
like himself, leaves his native obscurity, and indulges in falsehood,
calumny, and defamation. I am convinced that none of the highly
respectable Teachers of -------- has had any participation in this
scurrilous transaction, as I consider them to be sober, moral, exemplary
well-conducted men, possessed of excellent literary abilities; but this
expatriated ruffian and abandoned profligate, being aware of the marked
and unremitting attention which I have heretofore invariably paid to the
scholars committed to my care, and the astonishing proficiency which,
generally speaking, will be an accompaniment of competency, instruction,
assiduity and perseverance, devised this detestable and fiendish
course in order to tarnish and injure my unsullied character, it being
generally known and justly acknowledged that I never gave utterance
to an unguarded word--that I have always conducted myself as a man of
inoffensive, mild, and gentle habits, of unblemished moral character,
and perfectly sensible of the importance of inculcating on the young
mind, moral and religious instruction, a love of decency, cleanliness,
industry, honesty, and truth--that my only predominant fault some years
ago, consisted in partaking of copious libations of the 'Moantain Dew,'
which I shall for ever mourn with heartfelt compunction.--But I return
thanks to the Great God, for more than eighteen months my lips have
not partaken of that infuriating beverage to which I was unfortunately
attached, and my habitual propensity vanished at the sanctified
and ever-memorable sign of the cross--the memento of man's lofty
destination, and miraculous injunction, of the great, illustrious, and
never-to-be-forgotten Apostle of Temperance. I am now an humble member
of this exemplary and excellent society, which is engaged in the
glorious and hallowed cause of promoting Temperance, with the zealous
solicitude of parents.--I am one of these noble men, because they
are sober men, who have triumphed over their habits, conquered their
passions, and put their predominant propensities to flight; yes,
kind-hearted, magnanimous, and lofty high, minded conqueror, I have to
announce to you that I have gained repeated victories, and consigned to
oblivion the hydra-headed monster, Intemperance; and in consequence of
which, have been consigned from poverty and misery, to affluence and
happiness, possessing 'ready rino,' or ample pecuniary means to make one
comfortable and happy thereby enjoying 'the feast of reason and the
flow of soul,' i.e.,--an honest, cozy warm, comfortable cup of tea, to
consign my drooping, sober, and cheerful spirits into the flow of soul,
and philosophy of pleasure. I, therefore, do feel I hid no occasion to
speak a word in vindication of my conduct and character. A conspiracy
in embryo, formed by a triumvirate, was brought to maturity by as
experienced a calumniator, as Canty, the Hangman from Cork, was in the
discharge of his functions, when in the situation of municipal officer;
and the hoary-headed cadman and crack-brained Pedagogue was appointed
a necessary evil vehicle for industriously circulating said maniac
calumny. Why did not this base Plebeian, anterior to his giving
publicity to the tartaric nausea that rankled at his gloomy heart,
forward the corroding philippic, and bid defiance to my contradiction?
No, no; he knew full well that with his scanty stock of English
ammunition scattered over the sterile floor of his literary magazine, he
could not have the effrontery, impudence, or presumption to enter
the list of philosophical and scientific disputation with one who has
traversed the thorny paths of literature, explored its mazy windings,
and who is thoroughly and radically fortified, as being encompassed
with the impenetrable shield of genuine science. This red, hot, fiery,
unguarded locust, in the inanity of his mind's incomprehensibleness, has
not only incurred my displeasure by his satirical dogged Lampoons, etc.,
but the abhorrence, animosity, and holy indignation of many who move in
the high circle, as well as the ineffable contempt of the majority
of those good and useful members of society, who are engaged in the
glorious and delightful task of 'teaching the young idea how to shoot,'
and forming the mind to rectitude of conduct; and whose labors
are tremendous--I speak from long and considerable experience in
scholastic pursuits. I am as perfectly aware as any man of the friendly
intercourse, urbanity, and social reciprocation of kindness and demeanor
that ought to exist among Teachers;--and, in a word, that they should
be like the sun and moon--receptacles of each other's light. But these
malicious, ignorant, callous-hearted traducers finding it perfectly
congenial to their usual habits, and perhaps feeling no remorse
of conscience in departing from those principles which must always
accompany men of education, carry into effect their scheme of wanton,
atrocious, and deliberate falsehood. And accordingly, in pursuance of
their infernal piece of villainy, one of them being sensible of
being held in contempt and ridicule by an enlightened public--whose
approbation alone is the true criterion by which Teachers ought to
be sanctioned, countenanced, and patronized--incited, ordered, and
directed, the aforesaid Lampooner--a reckless, heartless, illiterate,
evil-minded ghost, yes my friends an evil-spirit, created by the
wrath of God--to pour out the rigmarole effusions of his silly and
contemptible lucubrations. It is a well-known fact, that this vile
calumniator is the shame, the disgrace, the opprobrium, and brand of
detestation; the sacrilegious and perjured outcast of society, who would
cut any man's throat for one glass of the soul-destroying beverage. This
accursed viper and well-known hobgoblin, labors under a complication of
maladies: at one time you might see him leaving the Court-house of with
the awful crime of perjury depicted in capital letters on his forehead,
and indelibly engraven in the recesses of his heart, considering that
every tongueless object was eloquent of his woe, and at periods laboring
under a semi-perspicuous, semi-opaque, gutta-serena, attended with an
acute palpitation of his pericranium, and a most tormenting delirium
of intellects from which he finds not the least mitigation until he
consopiates his optics under the influence of Morpheus. There are ties
of affinity and consanguinity existing between this manfacturer of
atrocious falsehoods and barefaced calumnies, and a Jack-Ass, which ties
cannot be easily dissolved, the affinity or similitude is perceptible to
an indifferent observer in the accent, pronunciation, modulation of the
voice of the biped animal, and in the braying of the quadruped. This
Jack-Ass you might also behold perambulating the streets of ------,
a second Judas Iscariot--a houseless, homeless, penniless, forlorn
fugitive, like Old Nick or Beelzebub, seeking whom he might betray
and injure in the public estimation, in rapacity, or in discharging a
blunderbuss full of falsehood against the most pure and unimpeachable
Member of society! Is it not astonishing this wretched, braying,
incorrigible mendicant does not put on a more firm and unalterable
resolution of taking pattern by, and living in accordance with the
laudable and exemplary habits of members of the Literatii, the ornament
of which learned body is the Rev. Dr. King, of Ennis College, a
gentleman by birth, by principles, and more than all, a gentleman by
education; whose mind is pregnant with inexhaustible stores of classical
and mathematical lore, entertainment and knowledge; whose learning and
virtues have shed a lustre on the human kind; a gentleman possessing
almost superhuman talents. No, he must persevere and run in his
accustomed old course of abomination, slander, iniquity, and vice.

“In conclusion, to the R. C. Clergymen of ------, and the respectable
portion of the laity, I return my ardent heartfelt thanks--to the
former, who are the pious, active, and indefatigable instructors of the
peasantry, their consolers in affliction, their resource in calamity,
their preceptors and models in religion, the trustees of their interest,
their visitors in sickness, and their companions on their beds of death;
and from the latter I have experienced considerable gratitude in unison
with all the other fine qualities inherent in their nature; while
neither time nor place shall ever banish from my grateful I heart,
their urbanity, hospitality, munificence, and kindness to me on every
occasion.

“I have the honor to be their very devoted, much obliged, and grateful
Servant,

“JOHN O'KELLY.

“The itinerant cosmopolite, to use his own phraseology, accuses me
with being lame--I reply, so was Lord Byron; and why not a 'Star from
Dromcoloher' be similarly honored, for

     If God, one member has oppress'd,
     He has made more perfect all the rest.

“The following poetic lines are to be inserted in reply to the doggerel
composition of the equivocating and hoary champion of wilful and
deliberate falsehood, and a compound of knavery, deception, villainy,
and dissimulation, wherever he goes:--

     “O'Kelly's my name,
     I think it no shame,
     Of sempiternal fame in that line,
     As for my being lame,
     The rest of my frame,
     Is somewhat superior to thine.

     These addled head swains,
     Of paralyzed brains,
     Who charge me with corrupting youth,
     Are a perjuring pair,
     In Belzebub's chair,
     Stamped with disgrace and untruth.”

We are obliged to omit some remarks that accompanied the following
poetical effusion:--

     “A book to the blind signifies not a feather,
     Whose look and whose mind chime both together,
     Boreas, pray blow this vile rogue o'er the terry,
     For he is a disgrace and a scandal to Kerry.”

The writer of this, after passing the highest eulogium on the Rev. Mr.
O'Kelly, P.P., Kilmichael, in speaking of him, says,

     “In whom, the Heavenly virtues do unite,
     Serenely fair, in glowing colors bright,
     The shivering mendicant's attire,
     The stranger's friend, the orphan's sire,
     Benevolent and mild;
     The guide of youth,
     The light of truth,
     By all condignly styl'd.”

A gentleman having applied for a transcript of this interesting document
for his daughter, Mr. O'Kelly says, “This transcript is given with
perfect cheerfulness, at the suggestion of the amiable, accomplished,
highly-gifted, original genius, Miss Margaret Brew, of --------, to
whom, with the most respectful deference, I take the liberty of applying
the following most appropriate poetic lines:--

     “Kilrush, a lovely spot of Erin's Isle,
     May you and your fair ones in rapture smile,
     By force of genius and superior wit,
     Any station in high life, they'd lit.
     Raise the praise worthy, in style unknown,
     Laud her, who has great merit of her own.
     Had I the talents of the bards of yore,
     I would touch my harp and sing for ever more,
     Of Miss Brew, unrivaled, and in her youth,
     The ornament of friendship, love and truth.
     That fair one, whose matchless eloquence divine,
     Finds out the sacred pores of man sublime,
     Tells us, a female of Kilrush doth shine.
     In point of language, eloquence, and ease,
     She equals the celebrated Dowes now-a-days,
     A splendid poetess--how sweet her verse,
     That which, without a blush, Downes might rehearse;
     Her throbbing breast the home of virtue rare,
     Her bosom, warm, loving and sincere,
     A mild fair one, the muses only care,
     Of learning, sense, true wit, and talents rare;
     Endless her fame, on golden wings she'd fly,
     Loud as the trumpet of the rolling sky.

“I avail myself of this opportunity, in the most humble posture, the
pardon and indulgence of that nobleman of the most profound considerable
talents, unbounded liberality, and genuine worth, Crofton M. Yandeleur,
Esq., for the culpable omission, which I have incautiously and
inadvertly made, in not prior to, and before all, tendered his honor, my
warm hearted and best acknowledgments, and participating in the general
joy, visible here on every countenance, occasioned by the restoration
to excellent health, which his most humane, truly charitable, and
illustrious beloved patroness of virtue and morality, Lady Grace T.
Yandeleur, now enjoys May they very late, when they see their children,
as well as their numerous, happy and contented tenantry, flourish around
them in prosperity, virtue, honor, and independence--may they then
resign their temporal care, to partake of the never-ending joys, glory,
and felicity of Heaven; these are the fervent wishes and ardent prayers
of their ever grateful servant,

“JOHN O'KELLY.

     “O rouse my muse and launch in praise forth,
     Dwell with delight, with extasy on worth;
     In these kind souls in conspicuous flows,
     Their liberal hands expelling-human woes.
     Tell, when dire want oppressed the needy poor,
     They drove the ghastly spectre from the door.
     Such noble actions yield more pure content,
     Than thousands squander'd or in banquets spent.

“I hope, kind and extremely patient reader, you will find my piece
humorous, interesting, instructive, and edifying. In delineating and
drawing to life the representation of my assailant, aggressor, and
barefaced calumniator. I have preferred the natural order, free, and
familiar style, to the artificial order, grave, solemn, and antiquated
style; and in so doing, I have had occasion to have reference to the
vocal metaphrase of some words. With a due circumspection of the use
of their synonymy, taking care that the import and acceptation of each
phrase and word should not appear frequently synonymous. Again. I have
applied the whip unsparingly to his back, and have given him such a
laudable castigation, as to compel him to comport himself in future with
propriety and politeness; yes, it is quite obvious that I have done it,
by an appropriate selection of catogoramatic and cencatogoramatic terms
and words. I have been particularly careful to adorn it with some
poetic spontaneous effusions, and although I own to you, that I have no
pretensions to be an adept in poetry, as I have only moderately sipped
of the Helicon Fountain; yet from my knowledge of Orthometry I can
prove the correctness of it; by special and general metric analysis. In
conclusion, I have not indulged in Rhetorical figures and Tropes, but
have rigidly adhered to the use of figurative and literal language;
finally I have used a concatination of appropriate mellifluous epithets,
logically and philosophically accurate, copious, sublime, eloquent, and
harmonious.

“Adieu! Adieu! Remember, JOHN O'KELLY, Literary Teacher, And a native of
Dromcoloher.”


“The author of this extempore production of writing a Treatise on Mental
Calculations, to which are appended more than three hundred scientific,
ingenious, and miscellaneous questions, with their solutions.

“Mental calculations for the first time are simplified, which will
prove a grand desideratum and of the greatest importance in mercantile
affairs.

     “You will not wonder when I will ye,
     You have read some pieces from 0' Kelly;
     Halt he does, but 'tis no more
     Than Lord Byron did before;
     Read his pieces and you'll find
     There is no limping in his mind;
     Reader, give your kind subscription,
     Of you, he will give a grand description.

     Price 2s., to be paid in advance,

“There are Sixty-eight Subscribers to the forthcoming work, gentlemen
of considerable Talents, Liberality, and worth;--who, with perfect
cheerfulness, have evinced a most laudable disposition to foster,
encourage, and reward, a specimen of Irish Manufacture and Native
Talent, in so humble a person as their extremely grateful, much obliged,
and faithful servant,

“JOHN O'KELLY.”






THE MIDNIGHT MASS.


Frank M'Kenna was a snug farmer, frugal and industrious in his habits,
and, what is rare amongst most men of his class, addicted to neither
drink nor quarrelling. He lived at the skirt of a mountain, which ran up
in long successive undulations, until it ended in a dark, abrupt peak,
very perpendicular on one side, and always, except on a bright day,
capped with clouds. Before his door lay a hard plain, covered only with
a kind of bent, and studded with round gray rocks, protruding somewhat
above its surface. Through this plain, over a craggy channel, ran a
mountain torrent, that issued to the right of M'Kenna's house, from a
rocky and precipitous valley which twisted itself round the base of
the mountain until it reached the perpendicular side, where the peak
actually overhung it. On looking either from the bottom of the valley or
the top of the peak, the depth appeared immense; and, on a summer's day,
when the black thorns and other hardy shrubs that in some placas clothed
its rocky sides were green, to view the river sparkling below you in the
sun, as it flung itself over two or three cataracts of great depth and
boldness, filled the mind with those undefinable sensations of pleasure
inseparable from a contemplation of the sublimities of nature. Nor did
it possess less interest when beheld in the winter storm. Well do we
remember, though then ignorant of our own motives, when we have, in the
turmoil of the elements, climbed its steep, shaggy sides, disappearing
like a speck, or something not of earth, among the dark clouds that
rolled over its summit, for no other purpose than to stand upon its
brow, and look down on the red torrent, dashing with impetuosity from
crag to crag, whilst the winds roared, and the clouds flew in dark
columns around us, giving to the natural wildness of the place an air
of wilder desolation.--Beyond this glen the mountains stretched away for
eight or ten miles in swelling masses, between which lay many extensive
sweeps, well sheltered and abundantly stocked with game, particularly
with hares and grouse. M'Kenna's house stood, as I said, at the foot
of this mountain, just where the yellow surface of the plain began to
darken into the deeper hues of the heath; to the left lay a considerable
tract of stony land in a state of cultivation; and beyond the river,
exactly opposite the house, rose a long line of hills, studded with
houses, and in summer diversified with pasture and corn fields, the
beauty of which was heightened by the columns of smoke that slanted
across the hills, as the breeze carried them through the lucid haze of
the atmosphere.

M'Kenna's family consisted of himself, his wife, two daughters, and
two sons. One of these was a young man addicted to drink, idle,
ill-tempered, and disobedient; seldom taking a part in the labors of
the family, but altogether devoted to field sports, fairs, markets,
and dances. In many parts of Ireland it is usual to play at cards for
mutton, loaves, fowls, or whiskey, and he was seldom absent from such
gambling parties, if held within a reasonable distance. Often had
the other members of the family remonstrated with him on his idle and
immoral courses; but their remonstrances only excited his bad passions,
and produced, on his part, angry and exasperating language, or open
determination to abandon the family altogether and enlist. For some
years he went on in this way, a hardened, ungodly profligate, spurning
the voice of reproof and of conscience, and insensible to the entreaties
of domestic affection, or the commands of parental authority. Such was
his state of mind and mode of life when our story opens.

At the time in which the incidents contained in this sketch took place,
the peasantry of Ireland, being less encumbered with heavy rents, and
more buoyant in spirits than the decay of national prosperity has of
late permitted them to be, indulged more frequently, and to a greater
stretch, in those rural sports and festivities so suitable to their
natural love of humor and amusement. Dances, wakes, and weddings, were
then held according to the most extravagant forms of ancient usage; the
people were easier in their circumstances, and consequently indulged in
them with lighter hearts, and a stronger relish for enjoyment. When any
of the great festivals of their religion approached, the popular mind,
unrepressed by poverty and national dissension, gradually elevated
itself to a species of wild and reckless mirth, productive of incidents
irresistibly ludicrous, and remarkably characteristic of Irish manners.
It is not, however, to be expected, that a people whose love of fighting
is so innate a principle in their disposition, should celebrate these
festive seasons without an occasional crime, which threw its deep shadow
over the mirthful character of their customs. Many such occurred; but
they were looked upon then with a degree of horror and detestation of
which we can form but a very inadequate idea at present.

It was upon the advent of one of those festivals--Christmas--which the
family of M'Kenna, like every other family in the neighborhood, were
making preparations to celebrate with the usual hilarity. They cleared
out their barn in order to have a dance on Christmas-eve; and for this
purpose, the two sons and the servant-man wrought with that kind of
industry produced by the cheerful prospect of some happy event. For a
week or fortnight before the evening on which the dance was appointed
to be held, due notice of it had been given to the neighbors, and, of
course, there was no doubt but that it would be numerously attended.

Christmas-eve, as the day preceding Christmas is called, has been always
a day of great preparation and bustle. Indeed the whole week previous to
it is also remarkable, as exhibiting the importance attached by the
people to those occasions on which they can give a loose to their love
of fun and frolic. The farm-house undergoes a thorough cleansing.
Father and sons are, or rather used to be, all engaged in repairing
the out-houses, patching them with thatch where it was wanted, mending
mangers, paving stable-floors, fixing cow-stakes, making boraghs,*
removing nuisances, and cleaning streets.

     * The rope with which a cow is tied in the cowhouse.

On the ether hand, the mother, daughters and maids, were also engaged in
their several departments; the latter scouring the furniture with sand:
the mother making culinary preparations, baking bread, killing fowls,
or salting meat; whilst the daughters were unusually intent upon the
decoration of their own dress, and the making up of the family linen.
All, however, was performed with an air of gayety and pleasure; the ivy
and holly were disposed about the dressers and collar beams with great
glee; the chimneys were swept amidst songs and laughter; many bad
voices, and some good ones, were put in requisition; whilst several who
had never been known to chaunt a stave, alarmed the listeners by the
grotesque and incomprehensible nature of their melody. Those who were
inclined to devotion--and there is no lack of it in Ireland--took to
carols and hymns, which they sang, for want of better airs, to tunes
highly comic. We have ourselves often heard the Doxology sung in Irish
verse to the facetious air of “Paudeen O'Rafferty,” and other hymns to
the tune of “Peas upon a Trencher,” and “Cruskeen Lawn.” Sometimes,
on the contrary, many of them, from the very fulness of jollity,
would become pathetic, and indulge in those touching old airs of their
country, which maybe truly,called songs of sorrow, from the exquisite
and simple pathos with which they abound. This, though it may seem
anomalous, is but natural; for there is nothing so apt to recall to
the heart those friends, whether absent or dead, with whom it has been
connected, as a stated festival. Affection is then awakened, and summons
to the hearth where it presides those on whose face it loves to look;
if they be living, it places them in the circle of happiness which
surrounds it; and if they be removed forever from such scenes, their
memory, which, amidst the din of ordinary life, has almost passed away,
is now restored, and their loss felt as if it had been only just then
sustained. For this reason, at such times, it is not at all unusual to
see the elders of Irish families touched by pathos as well as humor. The
Irish are a people whose affections are as strong as their imaginations
are vivid; and, in illustration of this, we may add, that many a time
have we seen them raised to mirth and melted into tears almost at the
same time, by a song of the most comic character. The mirth, however,
was for the song, and the sorrow for the memory of some beloved relation
who had been remarkable for singing it, or with whom it had been a
favorite.

We do not affirm that in the family of the M'Kennas there were, upon the
occasion which we were describing, any tears shed. The enjoyments of the
season and the humors of the expected dance, both combined to give them
a more than usual degree of mirth and frolic At an early hour all that
was necessary for the due celebration of that night and the succeeding
day, had been arranged and completed. The whiskey had been laid in,
the Christmas candles bought, the barn cleared out, the seats laid; in
short, every thing in its place, and a place for everything. About one
o'clock, however, the young members of the family began to betray some
symptoms of uneasiness; nor was M'Kenna himself, though the _farithee_
or man of the house, altogether so exempt from what they felt, as might,
if the cause of it were known to our readers, be expected from a man of
his years and experience.

From time to time one of the girls tripped out as far as the stile
before the door, where she stood looking in a particular direction until
her sight was fatigued.

“Och,' och,” her mother exclaimed during her absence, “but that
colleen's sick about Barny!--musha, but it would be the beautiful joke,
all out, if he'd disappoint the whole of yez. Faix, it wouldn't be
unlike the same man, to go wherever he can make most money; and sure
small blame to him for that; what's one place to him more than another?”

“Hut,” M'Kenna replied, rising, however, to go out himself, “the
girsha's makin' a _bauliore_ (* laughing stock) of herself.”

“An' where's yourself slippin' out to?” rejoined his wife, with a wink
of shrewd humor at the rest. “I say, Frank, are you goin' to look for
him too? Mavrone, but that's sinsible! Why, thin, you snakin' ould
rogue, is that the way wid you? Throth I have often hard it said, that
'one fool makes many;' but sure enough, 'an ould fools worse nor any.'
Come in here this minute, I say--walk back--you to have your horn up!
Faix, indeed!”

“Why! I am only goin' to get the small phaties boiled for the pigs, poor
crathurs, for their Christmas dinner. Sure we oughtn't to neglect thim
no more than ourselves, the crathurs, that can't spake their wants,
except by grantin'.”

“Saints above!--the Lord forgive me for bringin' down their names upon
a Christmas Eve, but it's beside himself the man is! an' him knows
that the phaties wor boiled an' made up into balls for them airly this
mornin'!”

In the meantime, the wife's good-natured attack upon her husband
produced considerable mirth in the family. In consequence of what she
said, he hesitated: but ultimately was proceeding towards the door,
when the daughter returned, her brow flushed, and her eye sparkling with
mirth and delight.

“Ha!” said the father, with a complacent smile, “all's right, Peggy, you
seen him, alanna. The music's in your eye, acushla; an' the' feet of you
can't keep themselves off o' the ground; an' all bekase you seen Barny
Dhal (* blind Barney) pokin' acrass the fields, wid his head up, an'
his skirt stickn' out behind him wid Granua Waile.” (* The name of his
fiddle)

The father had conjectured properly, for the joy which animated the
girl's countenance could not be misunderstood.

“Barny's comin',” she exclaimed, clapping her hands with great glee,
“an' our Frank wid him; they're at the river, and Frank has him on his
back, and Granua Waile undhor his arm! Come out, come out! You'll die
for good, lookin' at them staggerin' acrass. I knew he'd come! I knew
it! and be good to thim that invinted Christmas; it's a brave time,
faix!”

In a moment the inmates were grouped before the door, all anxious to
catch a glimpse of Barny and Granua Waile.

“Faix ay! Sure enough.. Sarra doubt if it! Wethen, I'd never mistrust
Barny!” might be heard in distinct exclamations from each.

“Faith he's a Trojan,” said the _farithee_, an' must get lashins of
the best we have. Come in, childher, an' red the hob for him.

     “'Och, Christmas comes but wanst a year,
     An' Christmas comes but wanst a year;
     An' the divil a mouth
     Shall be friends wid drouth,
     While I have whiskey, ale, or beer.

     Och, Christmas comes but wanst a year,
     An' Christmas comes but waust a year;
     Wid han' in han',
     An' can to can,
     Then Hi for the whiskey, ale, and beer.

     Och, Christmas comes but wanst a year,
     An' Christmas comes but wanst a year;
     Then the high and the low
     Shall shake their toe,
     When primed wid whiskey, ale, an' beer.'

For all that, the sorra fig I care for either ale or beer, barrin' in
regard of mere drouth; give me the whiskey, Eh, Alley--won't we have a
jorum any how?”

“Why, thin,” replied the wife, “the devil be from me (the crass about
us for namin' him) but you're a greater _Brinoge_ than some of your
childher! I suppose its your capers Frank has in him. Will you behave
yourself, you old slingpoke? Behave, I say, an let me go. Childher,
will you help me to flake this man out o' the place? Look at him,
here, caperin' an' crackin' his fingers afore me, an' pullin' me out to
dance!”

“Och, och, murdher alive,” exclaimed the good man out of breath, “I seen
the day, any way! An', maybe, could show a step or two yet, if I was
well fixed. You can't forget ould times, Alley? Eh, you thief?”

“Musha, have sinse, man alive,” replied the wife, in a tone of placid
gravity, which only betrayed the pleasure she herself felt in his
happiness. “Have sinse, an' the strange man comin' in, an' don't let him
see you in such figaries.”

The observation of the good woman produced a loud laugh among them.
“Arrah what are yez laughing at?” she inquired.

“Why, mother,” said one of her daughters “how could Barny _Dhal_, a
blind man, see anybody?”

Alley herself laughed at her blunder, but wittily replied, “Faith,
avourneen, maybe he can often see as nately through his ear as you could
do wid your eyes open; sure they say he can hear the grass growin'.”

“For that matther,” observed the farithee, joining in the joke, “he can
see as far as any of us--while we're asleep.”

The conversation was thus proceeding, when Barney _Dhal_ and young Frank
M'Kenna entered the kitchen.

In a moment all hands were extended to welcome Barney: “_Millia failte
ghud_, Barny!” “_Cead millia failte ghud_, Barny!” “Oh, Barny, did you
come at last? You're welcome.” “Barny, my Trojan, how is every cart-load
of you?” “How is Granua Waile, Barny?”

“Why, thin, holy music, did you never see Barny _Dhal_ afore? Clear off
from about me, or, by the sweets of rosin, I'll play the devil an' brake
things. 'You're welcome, Barny!'--an' 'How are you, Barny?' Why thin,
piper o' Moses, don't I know I'm welcome, an' yit you must be tellin' me
what everybody knows! But sure I have great news for you all!”

“What is that, Barny?”

“Well, but can yez keep a sacret? Can yez, girls?”

“Faix can we, Barny, achora.”

“Well, so can I--ha, ha, ha! Now, are,yez sarved? Come, let me to the
hob.”

“Here, Barny; I'll lead you, Barny.”

“No, I _have_ him; come, Barny, I'll lead you: here, achora, this is the
spot--that's it. Why, Barny,” said the arch girl, as she placed him in
the corner, “sorra one o' the hob but knows you: it never stirs--ha, ha,
ha!”

“Throth, a colleen, that tongue o' yours will delude some one afore
long, if it hasn't done so already.”

“But how is Granua Waile, Barny?”

“Poor Granua is it? Faith, times is hard wid her often. 'Granua,' says
I to her 'what do you say, acushla? we're axed to go to two or three
places to-day--what do you say? Do you lead, an' I'll follow: your
will is my pleasure.' 'An' where are we axed to?' says Granua, sinsible
enough. 'Why,' says I, 'to Paddy Lanigan's, to Mike Hartigan's, to
Jack Lynch's, an' at the heel o' the hunt, to Frank M'Kenna's, of the
Mountain Bar.' 'By my song,' says she, 'you may go where you plase; as
for me, I'm off to Frank M'Kenna's, one of the dacentest men in Europe,
an' his wife the same. Divil a toe I'll set a waggin' in any other place
this night,' says she; 'for 'tis there we're both well thrated wid the
best the house can afford. So,' says she, 'in the name of all that's
musical, you're welcome to the poker an' tongs anywhere else; for me,
I'm off to Frank's.' An' faith, sure enough, she took to her pumps; an'
it was only comin' over the hill there, that young Frank an' I overtuck
her: divil a lie in it.”

In fact, Barney, besides being a fiddler, was a senachie of the first
water; could tell a story, or trace a genealogy as well as any man
living, and draw the long bow in either capacity much better than he
could in the practice of his more legitimate profession.

“Well, here she is, Barny, to the fore,” said the aforesaid arch girl,
“an' now give us a tune.”

“What!” replied the farithee, “is it wid-out either aitin' or dhrinkin'?
Why, the girsha's beside herself! Alley, aroon, get him the linin' * an'
a sup to tighten his elbow.”

     * Linin'--lining, so eating and drinking are often
     humorously termed by the people.

The good woman instantly went to provide refreshments for the musician.

“Come, girls,” said Barny, “will yez get me a scythe or a handsaw.”

“A scythe or a handsaw! eh, then what to do, Barny?”

“Why, to pare my nails, to be sure,” replied Barny, with a loud laugh;
“but stay--come back here--I'll make shift to do wid a pair of scissors
this bout.

     “'The parent finds his sons,
     The tutherer whips them;
     The nailer makes his nails,
     The fiddler clips them.'”

Wherever Barny came there was mirth, and a disposition to be pleased, so
that his jokes always told.

“Musha, the sorra _pare_ you, Barny,” said one of the girls; “but
there's no bein' up to you, good or bad.”

“The sorra _pair_ me, is it? faix, Nancy, you'll soon be paired yourself
wid some one, avourneen. Do you know a sartin young man wid a nose on
him runnin' to a point like the pin of a sun-dial, his knees brakin' the
king's pace, strikin' one another ever since he was able to walk, an'
that was about four years afther he could say his Father Nosther; an'
faith, whatever you may think, there's no makin' them paceable except by
puttin' between them! The wrong side of his shin, too, is foremost;
an' though the one-half of his two feet is all heels, he keeps the same
heels for set days an' bonfire nights, an' savinly walks on his ankles.
His leg, too, Nancy, is stuck in the middle of his foot, like a poker in
a pick-axe; an', along wid all--”

“Here, Barny, thry your hand at this,” said the good woman, who had
not heard his ludicrous description of her fictitious son-in-law--“_eeh
arran agus bee laudher_, Barny, _ate bread and be strong_. I'll warrant
when you begin to play, they'll give you little time to do anything but
scrape away;--taste the dhrink first, anyway, in the name o' God,”--and
she filled him a glass.

“Augh, augh! faith you're the moral of a woman. Are you there, Frank
M'Kenna?--here's a sudden disholution to your family! May they be
scattered wid all speed--manin' the girls--to all corners o' the
parish!--ha, ha, ha! Well, that won't vex them, anyhow; an' next, here's
a merry Chris'mas to us, an' many o' them! Whooh! blur-an'-age! whooh!
oh, by gorra!--that's--that's--Frank run afther my breath--I've lost
it--run, you tory: oh, by gor, that's stuff as sthrong as Sampson, so
it is. Arrah, what well do you dhraw that from? for, faith, 'twould be
mighty convanient to live near it in a hard frost.”

Barny was now silent for some time, which silence was produced by the
industry he displayed in assailing the substantial refreshments before
him. When he had concluded his repast he once more tasted the liquor;
after which he got Granua Waile, and continued playing their favorite
tunes, and amusing them with anecdotes, both true and false, until the
hour drew nigh when his services were expected by the young men and
maidens who had assembled to dance in the barn. Occasionally, however,
they took a preliminary step in which they were joined by few of their
neighbors. Old Frank himself felt his spirits elevated by contemplating
the happiness of his children and their young associates.

“Frank,” said he, to the youngest of his sons, “go down to Owen
Reillaghan's, and tell him an' his family to come up to the dance early
in the evenin'. Owen's a pleasant man,” he added, “and a good neighbor,
but a small thought too strict in his duties. Tell him to come up,
Frank, airly, I say; he'll have time enough to go to the Midnight Mass
afther dancin' the 'Rakes of Ballyshanny,' and 'the Baltihorum jig;' an'
maybe he can't do both in style!”

“Ay,” said Frank, in a jeering manner, “he carries a handy heel at
the dancin', and a soople tongue at the prayin'; but let him alone for
bringin' the bottom of his glass and his eyebrow acquainted. But if he'd
pray less--”

“Go along, a _veehonce_, (* you profligate) an' bring him up,” replied
the father: “you to talk about prayin'! Them that 'ud catch you at a
prayer ought to be showed for the world to wondher at: a man wid two
heads an him would be a fool to him. Go along, I say, and do what you're
bid.”

“I'm goin',” said Frank. “I'm off; but what if he doesn't come? I'll
then have my journey for nothin'.”

“An' it's good payment for any journey ever you'll make, barrin' it's to
the gallows,” replied the father, nearly provoked at his reluctance in
obeying him: “won't you have dancin' enough in the coorse o' the night,
for you'll not go to the Midnight Mass, and why don't you be off wid you
at wanst?”

Frank shrugged his shoulders two or three times, being loth to leave
the music and dancing; but on seeing his father about to address him
in sharper language, he went out with a frown on his brows, and a
half-smothered imprecation bursting from his lips.

He had not proceeded more than a few yards from the door, when he met
Rody Teague, his father's servant, on his way to the kitchen. “Rody,”
 said he, “isn't this a purty business? My father wantin' to send me down
to Owen Reillaghan's; when, by the vartue o' my oath, I'd as soon go
half way into hell, as to any place where his son, Mike Reillaghan, 'ud
be. How will I manage, Rody?”

“Why,” replied Rody, “as to meetin' wid Mike, take my advice and avoid
him. And what is more I'd give up Peggy Gartland for good. Isn't it a
mane thing for you, Frank, to be hangin' afther a girl that's fonder
of another than she is of yourself. By this and by that, I'd no more do
it--avvouh! catch me at it--I'd have spunk in me.”

Frank's brow darkened as Rody spoke; instead of instantly replying', he
was silent and appeared to be debating some point in his own mind, on
which he had not come to a determination.

“My father didn't hear of the fight between Mike and me?” said he,
interrogatively--“do you think he did, Rody?”

“Not to my knowledge,” replied the servant; “if he did, he wouldn't
surely send you down; but talking of the fight, you are known to be a
stout, well-fought boy--no doubt of that--still, I say, you had no right
to provoke Mike as you did, who, it's well known, could bate any two men
in the parish; and so sign, you got yourself dacently trounced, about a
girl that doesn't love a bone in your skin.”

“He disgraced me, Rody,” observed Frank--“I can't rise my head; and
you know I was thought, by all the parish, as good a man as him. No, I
wouldn't, this blessed Christmas Eve above us, for all that ever my name
was worth, be disgraced by him as I am. But--hould, man--have patience!”

“Throth and, Frank, that's what you never had,” said Eody; “and as to
bein' disgraced, you disgraced yourself. What right had you to challenge
the boy to fight, and to strike him into the bargain, bekase Peggy
Gartland danced with him, and wouldn't go out wid you? Death alive, sure
that wasn't his fault.”

Every word of reproof which proceeded from Rody's lips but strengthened
Frank's rage, and added to his sense of shame; he looked first in the
direction of Reillaghan's house, and immediately towards the little
village in which Peggy Gartland lived.

“Rody,” said he, slapping him fiercely on the shoulder, “go
in--I've--I've made up my mind upon what I'll do; go in, Eody, and get
your dinner; but don't be out of the way when I come back.”

“And what have you made up your mind to?” inquired Eody.

“Why, by the sacred Mother o' Heaven, Rody, to--to--be friends wid
Mike.”

“Ay, there's sinse and rason in that,” replied Eody; “and if you'd take
my advice you'd give up Peggy Gartland, too.”

“I'll see you when I come back, Eody; don't be from about the place.”

And as he spoke, a single spring brought him over the stile at which
they held the foregoing conversation.

On advancing, he found himself in one of his father's fields, under the
shelter of an elder-hedge. Here he paused, and seemed still somewhat
uncertain as to the direction in which he should proceed. At length he
decided; the way towards Peggy Gartland's was that which he took, and
as he walked rapidly, he soon found himself at the village in which she
lived.

It was now a little after twilight; the night was clear the moon being
in her first quarter, and the clouds through which she appeared to
struggle, were light and fleecy, but rather cold-looking, such, in
short, as would seem to promise a sudden fall of snow. Frank had passed
the two first cabins of the village, and was in the act of parrying the
attacks of some yelping cur that assailed him, when he received a slap
on the back, accompanied by a _gho manhi Dhea gliud, a Franchas, co wul
thu guilh a nish, a rogora duh_?*

     * God save you, Frank! where are you going now, you
     black rogue?

“Who's this?” exclaimed Frank: “eh! why, Darby More, you sullin' thief
o' the world, is this you?”

“Ay, indeed; an' you're goin' down to Peggy's?” said the the other,
pointing significantly towards Peggy Gartland's house. “Well, man,
what's the harm? She may get worse, that is, hopin' still that you'll
mend your manners, a bouchal: but isn't your nose out o' joint there,
Frank, darlin'?”

“No sich thing at all, Darby,” replied Frank, gulping down his
indignation, which rose afresh on hearing that the terms on which he
stood with Peggy were so notorious.

“Throth but it is,” said Darby, “an' to tell the blessed thruth, I'm not
sarry that it's out o' joint; for when I tould you to lave the case in
my hands, along wid a small thrifle o' silver that didn't signify much
to you--whoo! not at all: you'd rather play it at cards, or dhrink it,
or spind it wid no good. Out o' joint! nrasha, if ever a man's nose was
to be pitied, and yours is: why, didn't Mike Reillaghan put it out o'
joint, twist? first in regard to Peggy, and secondly by the batin' he
gave you an it.”

“It's well known, Darby,” replied Frank, “that 'twas by a chance blow he
did it; and, you know, a chance blow might kill the devil.”

“But there was no danger of Mike's gettin' the chance blow,” observed
the sarcastic vagrant, for such he was.

“Maybe it's afore him,” replied his companion: “we'll have another
thrial for it, any how; but where are you goin', Darby? Is it to the
dance?”

Me! Is it a man “wid two holy ordhers an him?* No, no! I might go up,
may be, as far as your father's, merely to see the family, only for the
night that's in it; but I'm goin' to another frind's place to spind my
Chris'mas, an' over an' above, I must go to the Midnight Mass. Frank,
change your coorses, an' mend your life, an' don't be the talk o' the

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