T. W. H. Crosland

“ I do not believe for a moment that Ireland is going to be regenerated on political, measure-making Parliamentary lines. Her regeneration will have to come out of herself. So much of it as has already been accomplished has come wholly out of herself, and not out of legislation at all. The rest will follow if the Irish people have a mind to deal as straightly with themselves in the future as they have dealt with themselves in the past. And I should say that at all costs the potato-and-pig habit, as it now exists in Ireland, should be broken, and got rid of, and utterly wiped out. ”

“ The tourist is the curse of Ireland, as he is the curse of most places. When one comes to consider the enormous number of grievances the Irish and their political figure-heads have managed to rake up, one wonders that the tourist should hitherto have escaped. That he constitutes a grievance, and a grievance which affects seriously the main body of the Irish people, can not be doubted. It is quite obvious, to begin with, that the tourist in Ireland is usually of the hated Sassenach race. Irishmen do not tour in their own country as Englishmen do, or as Scotchmen have been known to do. ”

“ There are plenty of women in Ireland, however, who come quite up to the Gibson girl standard, and for that matter beat it. In journeying through the country I have been struck continually by the remarkable facial resemblance which exists between the Irish and the American people. In an Irish railway train you see faces which at once give you the impression that you are at the Hotel Cecil. The high cheek bones and lank shaven jaw of the full-blooded American are here in great force, and it is only when their possessors open their mouths that you can tell the difference. ”

“ You vegetate like the tuber, and you grunt and snore and thrive on nothing, like the porker. It suits the landlords and the legislators and the philosophers, and it fits in entirely with that taint of indolence which always lurks in the Irish blood. The farming of one pig, not to mention the keeping of pigs in cabins, should be prohibited by Act of Parliament. There would naturally be great howls from the Irish people, for nobody is loved with a greater love, or treated with a greater amount of respect in Ireland, than the single pig. ”

“ There would be no Ireland at all if it were not for themselves. They rule Ireland. What Ireland wants she may have, if it pleases Ulster. What Ireland does not want she must have, if Ulster so much as nod. That, at any rate, is the view of Ulster, the view of the thrifty, douce Scotch bodies whose fathers got gifts of other people’s lands from James I. of England and VI. of Scotland, and whose sons go up and down and to and fro upon the earth, calling themselves “Irishmen of Scotch descent.” There are no Irishmen of Scotch descent. And Ulstermen are not Irishmen unless their descent be Irish. ”

“ The eminent people who stand for Ireland in this country are all of them afflicted with a similar lack of cheerfulness. Rouse them, and they can be as bitter and vituperative and aboriginal as any Scotchman of them all; but their ordinary habit is sad, uncertain, and inept, and they do not know how to laugh. Here and there one of them at the Bar, or in the House of Commons, or at a greasy journalistic banquet, does his feeble best to keep up the Irish tradition for smartness and wittiness of remark. ”

“ If chastity fills the lunatic asylums how come the Irish priesthood to be at large, or for that matter the women of the English middle classes, and honest women all the world over? And if bastardy be a preventative of lunacy, how comes it that in Scotland you have as many lunatics as you have in Ireland, and about ten times as many bastards? ”

“ No, the American Irish have gone in for pig-keeping on wholesale and colossal lines. They have turned the gentleman that pays the rent out of the house into fields and pens, they have made a business of the feeding and fattening of him, and they have erected mammoth factories wherein he may be slaughtered and salted down by the thousand. Ireland might with indisputable advantage take a leaf out of the bulky lard-stained book of Chicago. Irish bacon will always command quite as good a price as the best American that was ever exported. ”

“ Also, “it is my profound conviction that a large proportion of the present misery of Ireland is not only bound up with, but is actually a result of the country’s religion.” Also, “the houses of the people are so indecently poor and small; the houses of the Church are so indecently rich and large. Out of the dirt and decay they rise, proud and ugly and substantial, as though to inform the world that at least one thing is not dying and despondent, but keeps its loins girded and its lamps trimmed.” ”

“ Tears and howls are the Irish emigrant’s stock-in-trade. I do not deny that this is wrong, but it seems possible that a great deal too much capital has been made out of it, both by the poets and by the politicians. Excepting at the immediate hour of embarkation, the Irish emigrant makes a very good emigrant indeed. If his emigration takes him only so far as England, he becomes at once an industrious, and not infrequently a fairly prosperous, member of the community. If his emigration takes him to America the same thing happens to him, and he has been known to blossom out into millionairedom. ”

“ But is it humor? It provokes a smile certainly, yet it points to simplicity, rather than subtilty, in the Irish character. Indeed, the absolute truth about the bull is that it is the child of a plentiful lack of wit. A nice derangement of epitaphs, an opening of one’s mouth and a putting of one’s foot in it, may provoke mirth in other people, but it does not prove one to be either witty or merry. It is satisfactory to know that, according to the latest observations, the fine art of bull-making is going out of fashion among Irishmen. ”

“ Lunacy in Ireland is the direct outcome of the almost unthinkable poverty and squalor of the greater part of the population. When you couple with poverty, want of occupation, a solitary life, and an enervating climate, not to mention the melancholy brooding propensities of the Irish peasant, it is no wonder that lunacy claims many victims. ”

“ In Scotland whisky is the universal ichor and panacea. In Ireland a kind of whisky which is unquestionably whisky, but not Scotch, stands in the same friendly relation to the people. In England we drink both kinds, lying thus between the devil and the deep sea. There cannot be the slightest doubt that the baser sorts of whisky are Scotch, and that the primal, more edifying and more inspiring sorts—if we only knew it—are Irish. He who drinks beer thinks beer. He who drinks whisky thinks whisky. ”

“ In the politest circles it is quite dangerous to praise a woman’s good looks without reference to the files of The Sketch and The Tatler. A certain nobleman, however, is understood to have earned something of a reputation for himself as connoisseur by openly avowing his contempt for both sheets, and surreptitiously swotting up the picture pages of the Daily Mirror. This, however, like the Daily Mirror, is probably neither here nor there. The solemn fact remains that the beauty of England’s fairest daughters and Scotland’s bonniest lasses alike, has become a doubtful quantity. ”

“ If it be contended that it is shameful that a man should be compelled to leave his native country because that country does not offer sufficient scope for his energies, and fails to provide for him the means of rational human subsistence, I should say that Ireland is by no means singular in such failure. The Scotch emigrate, and boast about it. “Scotland is a stony country,” they say, “there are plenty of mouths and little wherewith to fill them; lo, we will go forth into the undiscovered places of the world, and seek food and fortune where they are most likely to be found.” ”

“ The Land Laws, it is true, seem on the face of them ridiculous, that is to say, if you happen to be a landlord whose eye is forever on the rent-roll and the automatic improvement of properties at other people’s expense. But if, on the other hand, you are a comfortable, high Tory, patriarchal landlord, with bowels, and a proper appreciation of sport, and a proper interest in agriculture and the breeding of cattle, Ireland need have no terrors for you. There is a notion abroad that the Irish farmer has deep-rooted prejudices against landlords of whatever degree. ”

“ Of the peasantry I can only say that cheerfulness, whether of notion or word, is not nowadays their strong point. They have a great way of saying “your honor” to you if you are a man, and “your ladyship’s honor” if you are a woman; but after that the amount of blarney to be got out of them is infinitesimal. Grinding poverty, short-commons, a solitary life on some dreary mountain-side, and a fine view of the workhouse, do not tend to sharpen the Irish tongue any more than they sharpen the Irish wit. ”

“ But in Ireland a bold peasantry has learned to smile and smile and touch the hat, and take the coppers, and provide the political information for which his honor is gasping without so much as turning a hair. It is not really in the Irish blood to take these traveling mountebanks, with their loud suits and louder manners and louder money, seriously or even indifferently. ”

“ There are no snakes in Ireland, and, sad to relate, there is very little blarney. Broadly speaking, the people seem too poverty-stricken and too apathetic for talk of any kind, much less for that sprightly loquacity and skilfulness of retort which we call blarney. [20] The Irish jarvey, who is commonly believed to be an adept in the art, is just as much a disappointment as the London cabby. Even in “the noble city of Dublin” you find, as a rule, that you are being driven by a dull, flea-bitten, porter-full person, who has really not two words to say for himself. ”

“ We have scarcely a beauty [94] left, even at the Gaiety Theater. In fact, leaving out the ravishing pictures of the illustrated press, there are really only two beautiful women in England, and both of these are married to reviewers. Now, I say and maintain that any male person, possessed of an eye for the charms of what is commonly called the opposite sex, will find that in Ireland the decay of female beauty has not yet commenced. Whether he be in Dublin or in Cork, in Sligo or in Limerick, pretty women take his vision—as the daffodils take the winds of March—at every corner. ”

“ It is a sign of the times, however, that Erin is beginning to be alive to the fact that in the main the pathriot is just one of those persons with whom she can very well afford to dispense. Vaulting ambition hath rather overleaped itself in the matter of these gentry, and their posturings and screamings and clenchings of the fist are no longer received with altogether unanimous applause. That there is reason in all things is a simple lesson which pathriots who are not wholly careless of their future will do well to learn. ”

“ But I do desire to assert that, in my humble opinion, it is the Scotch, or alien population of Ireland, which has been at the root of Ireland’s principal troubles throughout the past century. Ulster may be a fine kingdom, the wealthiest, most industrious, and the wisest and happiest in the country, if you like. Yet it is Ulster that bars the way in all matters that make for the real good of Ireland. ”

“ For all practical purposes, and in spite of everything that can be brought against her, Ireland may be justly described as a moral country, even as Scotland is essentially an immoral country and England a middling one. It is true that we live in a time when morality has ceased to matter and virtue is become a reproach. The world has divided itself into two camps—the one scientific, the other artistic. ”

“ The greater part of the population of Ireland proper—that is to say of Ireland with Northern Diamond left out—depends upon the potato to this day. It is a state of affairs which cannot be too severely deprecated; it is a state of affairs which ought in no circumstances to be allowed to continue; it is a state of affairs which convinces one only too clearly that Ireland has for centuries been governed either by rogues or by blockheads. Yet the potato, like the tourist, does not appear hitherto to have been written down for an Irish grievance or injustice. ”

“ In Ireland the pig has long been understood to pay the rent. Hence, no doubt, it comes to pass that Irish rents are not always paid up. That an animal such as the pig, a grunting, groveling wallower in sloughs, should be so popular a favorite among the Irish does not speak too well for them. In England the favorite and most bepraised domestic beast is the dog. The keeping of a pup of some sort is a mark of true English blood. Dogs in Ireland do not appear to be so popular. The fact is, of course, that the pig has been thrust down the Irish throat by greedy, grasping landlordism. ”

“ Irishmen of all degrees will do better if they endeavor to remember that they have really no sense of humor left. The only one of them who has made anything like a satisfactory reputation in London, Mr. W. B. Yeats to wit, has helped himself to it by being as devoid of humor as a bone-yard. Mr. Yeats has never been known publicly to try his hand at the very smallest joke. The sobriety of the hearse is his, and much good sense also. For the eminent Irish, as we know them among us, are by nature neither witty nor humorous; and those who try to be so, succeed in being only fatuous and vulgar. ”

“ The House of Commons has latterly appeared to be filled with gentlemen who live to amuse each other; there are judges who seem almost incapable of opening their mouths without attempting the hilarious, and even bishops and bankers must have their little joke. The press also strains after humorsomeness in every degree, and when critics wish to be particularly severe they write simply, “Mr. So-and-So has no sense of humor.” And here, in effect, we have what I conceive to be another distinct injustice to Ireland. ”