Katharine Tynan - Peeps at Many Lands: Ireland

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VOLUMES UNIFORM WITH THIS

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THE EAGLES NEST, KILLARNEY.

First printed November, 1909
Reprinted October, 1910, and September, 1911

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A VILLAGE IN ACHILL.

IT may safely be said that any boy or girl who takes a peep at Ireland will want another peep. Between London and Ireland, so far as atmosphere and the feeling of things is concerned, there is a world of distance. Of course, it is the difference between two races, for the Irish are mainly Celtic, and the Celtic way of thinking and speaking and feeling is as different as possible from the Saxon or the Teuton, and the Celt has influenced the Anglo-Irish till they are as far away from the English nearly as the Celts themselves. If you are at all alert, you will begin to find the difference as soon as you step off the London and North Western train at Holyhead and go on board the steamer for Kingstown. The Irish steward and stewardess will have a very different way from the formal English way. They will be expansive. They will use ten words to one of the English official. Their speech will be picturesque; and if you are gifted with a sense of humourand if you are not, you had better try to beg, borrow or steal it before you go to Irelandthere will be much to delight you. I once heard an Irish steward on a long-sea boat at London Docks remonstrate with the passengers in this manner:

Gentlemen, gentlemen, will yez never get to bed? Yez know as well as I do that every light on the boat is out at twelve oclock. Its now a quarter to wan, and out goes the lights in ten minutes.

There is what the Englishman calls an Irish bull in this speech; but the Irish bull usually means that something is left to the imagination. I will leave you to discover for yourself the hiatus which would have made the stewards remark a sober English statement.

These things make an Irish heart bound up as exultantly as the lark springs to the sky of a day of Aprilthat is to say, of an Irish exile home-returningfor the dweller in Ireland grows used to such pearls of speech.

Said a stewardess to whom I made a request that she would bring to my cabin a pet-dog who, under the charge of the cook, was making the night ring with his lamentations: Do you want to have me murdered? This only conveyed that it was against the regulations. But while she looked at me her eye softened. Ill do it for you, she said, with a subtle suggestion that she wouldnt do it for anyone else; and then added insinuatingly, if the cook was to mind the basket? To be sure, said I, being Irish. Ask the cook if he will kindly mind the basket and let me have the dog. And so it was done, and the cook had his perquisite, while I had the dog.

At first, unless you have a very large sense of humourand many English people have, though the Irish who do not know anything about them deny it to them en blocyou will be somewhat bewildered. Apropos of the same little dog, we asked a policeman at the North Wall, one wintry morning of arrival, if the muzzling order was in force in Dublin.

Well, it is and it isnt, he said. Lasteways, theres a muzzlin order on the south side, but there isnt on the north, through Mr. L on the North Union Board, that wont let them pass it. If I was you Id do what I liked with the dog this side of the river, but when I crossed the bridge Id hide him. Youll be in a cab, wont you?

After youve had a few peeps at Ireland, you wont want the jokes explained to you, perhaps, or the picturesqueness of speech demonstrated.

Before you glide up to the North Wall Station you will have discovered some few things about Ireland besides the picturesqueness of the Irish tongue. You will have seen the lovely coast-line, all the townships glittering in a fairy-like atmosphere, with the mountains of Dublin and Wicklow standing up behind them. You will have passed Howth, that wonderful rock, which seems to take every shade of blue and purple, and silver and gold, and pheasant-brown and rose. You will have felt the Irish air in your face; and the Irish air is soft as a caress. You will have come up the river, its squalid and picturesque quays. You will have noticed that the poor people walking along the quay-side are far more ragged and unkempt generally than the same class in England. The women have a way of wearing shawls over their heads which does not belong naturally to the Western world, and sets one to thinking of the curious belief some people have entertained about the Irish being descended from the lost tribes. A small girl in a Dublin street will hold her little shawl across her mouth, revealing no more of the face than the eyes and nose, with an effect which is distinctly Eastern. The quay-side streets are squalid enough, and the people ragged beyond your experience, but there will be no effect of depression and despondency such as assails you in the East End of London. The people are much noisier. They greet each other with a shrillness that reminds you of the French. The streets are cheerful, no matter how poor they may be. I have always said that there is ten times the noise in an Irish street, apart from mere traffic, than in an English one. An Irish village is full of noise, chatter of women, crying of children, barking of dogs, lowing of cattle, bleating of sheep, crowing of cocks, cackling of hens, quacking of ducks, grunting of pigs. The people talk at the top of their voices, so that you might suppose them to be quarrelling. It is merely the dramatic sense. I have heard an Irish peasant make a bald statementor, at least, it would have been bald in an English mouthas though she pleaded, argued, remonstrated, scolded, deprecated.