Irish brogue

“ In the traverse where I was planted I dropped into Ireland; heaps of it. There was the brogue that could be cut with a knife, and the humour that survived Mons and the Marne, and the kindliness that sprang from the cabins of Corrymeela and the moors of Derrynane.
"Irish?" (p. 084) I asked.
"Sure," was the answer. "We're everywhere. Ye'll find us in a Gurkha regiment if you scratch the beggars' skins. Ye're not Irish!"
"I am," I answered.
"Then you've lost your brogue on the boat that took ye over," somebody said. "Are ye dry?"
I wiped the sweat from my forehead as I sat down on the banquette. ”

“ Elusive as running water is the brogue of the Irish peasant; hardly attained even by those who have known its tune from childhood. They, at least, know how it ought to be, and with this knowledge in their hearts, they have to sit in dreary submission while the stage Irishman convulses the English audience; they must smile, however galvanically, when friends, otherwise irreproachable, regale them with the Irish story in all its stale exuberance of Pat and the Pig, or expound for their benefit that epitome of vieux jeu, the Saxon conception of an Irish Bull. ”

“ And you hear the brogue in the pulpit as well as in the slums. There is no form of speech richer or more musical than the brogue of an eloquent Irishman, and his natural gifts of oratory enable him to convey the meaning of his words to the fullest degree by his accent. I never heard the service of the Episcopal church read in a more eloquent and impressive manner than by a young curate with a brogue “that you could cut with a knife,” as the saying is. There is nothing to compare with it except the “sweet, soft, southern accent in the United States.” ”

“ There is nothing elevates the Irish peasant so highly in my esteem as his earnest love for his country when absent from it. Your well-bred Irishman, in nine cases out of ten, looks disconcerted when you allude to his country, and with either a brogue or a tone, an oily, easy, musical swing of the voice, which is never lost, begs to inquire “how you knew he was Irish?” and has sometimes the audacity to remark, “that people cannot help their misfortunes.”
But the peasant-born have none of this painful affectation. Hear Biddy when challenged as to her country: the questioner is a lady. ”

“ Much of the comic effect of Irish bulls, or of such speeches as are mistaken for bulls, has depended upon the tone, or brogue, as it is called, with which they are uttered. The first Irish blunders that we hear are made or repeated in this peculiar tone, and afterward, from the power of association, whenever we hear the tone we expect the blunder. Now there is little danger that the Irish should be cured of their brogue ”

“ Judging from the brogue I heard in the streets and in the hotels, I should fancy that English, Scotch, and Irish are mixed up in Brisbane in about equal proportions. This may not agree with statistics. Statistics consider people who were born in Ireland as Irishmen. In my estimate I only reckon as Irishmen those who talk with a good brogue, make bulls, and tell every girl they see that she is the prettiest in the town. ”

“ The Irish, whom the English call savages, have for their head-dress a little blue bonnet, raised two fingers-breadth in front, and behind covering their head and ears. Their doublet has a long body and four skirts; and their breeches are a pantaloon of white frize, which they call trousers. Their shoes, which are pointed, they call brogues, with a single sole. They often told me of a proverb in English, ‘Airische brogues for Englich dogues’ [Irish brogues for English dogs] ‘the shoes of Ireland for the dogs of England,’ meaning that their shoes are worth more than the English. ”

“ Innumerable fresh instances of Irish eloquence and wit crowd upon our recollection, but we forbear. The examples we have cited are taken from real life, and given without alteration or embellishment.
CHAPTER XI. THE BROGUE.
Having proved by a perfect syllogism that the Irish must blunder, we might rest satisfied with our labours; but there are minds of so perverse a sort, that they will not yield their understandings to the torturing power of syllogism.
It may be waste of time to address ourselves to persons of such a cast ”

“ This I said in the Irish way, about which there is allowed to be something very engaging. It’s a remarkable thing, and a testimony to the love with which our nation is regarded, that this address scarce ever fails in a handsome fellow. I cannot tell how often I have seen a private soldier escape the horse, or a beggar wheedle out a good alms by a touch of the brogue. ”

“ There is hot work going on at present up the Black Sea, and brave men, especially Irishmen, are in great request.”
“Yes, brave Irishmen are always in great request with England when she has a battle to fight. At other times they are left to lie in the mud with the chain round their necks. It has been so ever since the time of De Courcy, and I suppose always will be so, unless Irishmen all become of my mind, which is not likely. Were the Irish all of my mind, the English would find no Irish champion to fight their battles when the French or the Russians come to beard them.” ”

“ Many Centuries had this wise Constitution subsisted here, before our Neighbours, even of South Britain, knew any thing relative to Houses, or Raiment; it being notorious that so late as the Arrival of Julius Cæsar among them, they painted their Bodies, to render them terrible, and lived in the open Fields. It is really somewhat surprzing that People so near in Situation, should differ so essentially in Disposition, as the Inhabitants of those Islands have in all Ages; Hospitality having been the distinguishing Attribute of the Irish, and it's opposite Defect, that of the Britons ”

“ Until that moment the disorders in Ireland had arisen out of a natural preference for anarchy. Every man's hand was against his neighbour, and the clans made war on each other only for revenge and plunder, and the wild delight of the game. These private quarrels were now to be merged in a single cause—a cause which was to lend a fresh stimulus to their hatred of England, and was at once to create and consecrate a national Irish spirit. ”

“ What affects the English mob, with regard to Irishmen, is terrour. Our English ancestors dispatched into Ireland, and their descendants, have taken effectual care to fasten this bugbear upon their mother country, and represent the Irish as monsters and cannibals, in order to justify their own more barbarous oppressions upon that people. These dreadful ideas have left so strong an impression, that even at this day, when the nations are more mixed than they have been formerly, an Irishman is looked upon by the vulgar in England, remote from great towns, as a raw head and bloodybones! ”

“ Every impetuous, impatient act is dragged before the prejudiced mind. But when Mr. Froude is painting Sir Walter and Spenser, blind no longer, he says: 'I regret—it is very sad to think—that such things should ever have been!'"
Such was the cup from which Ireland drank even into the days of men now living. Nor was this all. The rise of English manufactures brought a new chapter of woes to Ireland. The Irish cattle trade had been killed by an Act of Charles II. for the benefit of English farmers. The Irish then took up the raising of wool and woolen manufactures. A flourishing trade grew up. ”

“ It is plain that Edward Bruce--who on one side was descended both from Strongbow and Dermot McMurrough--fully hoped to have cut out a kingdom for himself with his sword, as others of his blood had hoped and intended before him. His own excesses, however, went far to prevent that. So frightfully did he devastate the country, and so horrible was the famine which he created, that many even of his own army perished from it or from the pestilence which followed. His Irish allies fell away in dismay. English and Irish annalists, unanimous for once, alike exclaim in horror over his deeds. ”

“ The waters that had been Ireland's protection now became the high roads of the invaders. By the river Shannon they pushed their conquests into the heart of the country. Dublin Bay, Waterford Harbor, Belfast Lough, and the Cove of Cork offered shelter to their vessels. They established themselves in Dublin and raided the country around. Churches and monasteries were sacked and burned. To the end these Norsemen were robbers rather than settlers. To these onslaughts by the myriad wasps of the northern seas, again and again renewed, the Irish responded manfully. ”

“ The English language and customs are continually making greater progress towards the west; and the Irish, who can no longer withstand England’s power, seek in great numbers, like their kinsmen in Scotland, a new asylum in America. The struggle is the more severe in proportion as the Irish are more numerous than the Celtic population in Scotland and England. The last violent throes of the once powerful and mighty Irish nationality now fearfully agitate Ireland, which has been so long and so severely tried by oppression, pestilence, and famine. ”

“ The history of Ireland must have a strong influence on men's hearts, for nobody can speak or write of it without exhibiting the feelings of the partisan. The unstudied inaccuracies of the phlegmatic Froude show that historian to be capable of emotion when dealing with Irish affairs. Froude had no sense of humour, and, therefore, no sense of proportion, and his detestation of the Celtic temperament caused his prejudices to run riot in his pages on Ireland. On the other side are the painfully sincere patriots whose efforts to divide humanity into sheep and goats wrong both parties. ”

“ The last ten years of the eighth century were very bad ones for Ireland. Then for the first time the black Viking ships were to be seen sweeping shore-wards over the low grey waves of the Irish Channel, laden with Picts, Danes, and Norsemen, "people," says an old historian, "from their very cradles dissentious, Land Leapers, merciless, soure, and hardie." They descended upon Ireland like locusts, and where-ever they came ruin, misery, and disaster followed. ”

“ On the other hand, the mode of collection was extremely vexatious, perhaps involving the seizure of a pig, a bag of meal, or a sack of potatoes; and a starving cottier, paying fees to his own priest, was easily persuaded by demagogues that it was an arbitrary tribute extorted by clerical tyrants of an alien faith.
Thus it came to pass that the history of the Irish "tithe-war" exhibits the Irish peasantry in their very worst moods, and it is stained with atrocities never surpassed in later records of Irish agrarian conspiracy. ”

“ Every one must be acquainted with individual Irishmen who do not correspond with Froude's general description. Nor does Froude always take into account the shrewdness, the humour, the genius for politics, which have distinguished Irishmen throughout the world. Impressed with this view of the Irish character, he held that forbearance in dealing with Irish rebellions was misplaced, that Irishmen respected only an authority with which they durst not trifle, and that universal confiscation should have followed the defeat of Shan O'Neill. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But whatever were the causes of early degradation of Ireland, there can be no doubt that England has, during the last two centuries, by discouraging the commerce of Ireland, — thus striking at the very root of civilization—rendered herself responsible for much of the barbarisms that afflicts it. ”

“ I therefore feel it a duty to such critics, to give them at least one or two reasons why they should not consider Irish oaths immoral, or Irish colloquy vulgar.
The outrageous blasphemy and indecency, so copious in the slang of England, with neither wit, point, or national humour, to qualify it, might indeed disgust even the seven hundred imps whom the devil sent into this world to capture St. Chrysostom. [13] The curses and imprecations of Ireland are of a nature totally different. They have no great variety; they are neither premeditated, nor acquired through habits of dissipation. ”

“ Ay, ay! they do not like idolatry, and will not bow the knee before a stone! "But their language is frequently indecorous." Go to, my dainty one, did ye ever listen to the voice of Papist cursing?
The Irish Protestants have faults, numerous ones; but the greater number of these may be traced to the peculiar circumstances of their position: but they have virtues, numerous ones; and their virtues are their own, their industry, their energy, and their undaunted resolution are their own. They have been vilified and traduced—but what would Ireland be without them? ”

“ It might seem that amid centuries of conflict, ever-present danger, preyings and raidings, statutes to shut them out from learning, trade, or advancement in their church, and torrents of slander to defile their name, the Irish might in truth have fallen into the nomad barbarism and the beastly ignorance of which they were accused by the English from that time to this. In fact however the people, endowed with an immense vitality, were busily occupied with commerce and with learning. Irish princes were lively competitors with the English merchants of the Pale. ”