CHAPTER VII.
Next evening, as sunset was approaching, the Manuscript Man might have been seen walking with long steady strides along a pass in the hills under Slieve-na-goil, “the mountain of the wild people.” Soon the narrow road emerged into a wide, beautiful valley, green as emerald, with a farm-house and buildings among some fields. Sheer at one side rose the rocky precipices of Slieve-na-goil; and a stream rushed thence copiously, exulting in its young strength, and bearing the appropriate Irish name of Glashenglora, “the noisy green water.”
On a furze-bush near the door of the farm-house was spread a white cloth, as signal for the labourers in outlying fields to come to supper. Workmen’s bells were unknown in this primitive place.
“I’ll just find ‘em all together, which will suit me remarkable well,” thought the Manuscript Man. As he entered, the man of the house, portly Dennis Purcell, had just risen from his seat on the settle at the head of the table, where he had been doing his duty by the abundant potatoes and milk, and stood with his back to the hearth gazing out of a little window at the side, as he meditated on the farm labours of the morrow. Nearest sat his daughters, above their brothers; and then in a position answerable to “below the salt,” sat the labouring women and men, hired for the present season of planting potatoes and turnips. As for comely little Mrs. Purcell, she was on the move everywhere as attendant, having her more refined tastes indicated by a small black tea-pot simmering in a corner of the fire-place.
“Why then yer welcome, Manuscript Man,” exclaimed the jolly voice of the farmer. “Just in time for a bite an’ a ‘sup—here, Biddy, get up some hot roast potatoes, an’ a bit of yer new butter from yer last firkin, missus!”
“Take my advice, wait an’ have a cup of tea of my making,” said the lady addressed. “It’s more refreshin’ like after a long walk.”
But the farmer scouted the beverage as a woman’s drink.
“Thank ye kindly all the same, but I’m not hungry,” answered Clare.
“’Deed, then, that wasn’t like me, the day,” said the farmer; “if ever any one came across the fear gortha (hungry grass) it was meself this evening. I thought I’d never reach home to my supper.”
“Mike, you run out an’ break a potato to the fairies in the well-field,” said his mistress to a shock-headed boy nearest the door. “Wasn’t it there you wor took with the hunger, Denis a-hagur?”
“The little birds will be glad of the potato, any how,” replied the farmer, laughing in his great jolly way. “The missus is a great friend of the little people, Manuscript Man; I believe she has a four-leaved shamrock in her scapular. An’ I’m fairly bothered wid the crickets; she feeds ‘em reglar, wid salt an’ male.”
“It’s better to be on the safe side,” said she, colouring somewhat. “No person gets harm by them little observances.”
Among which were, that on the threshold she had nailed two cast horseshoes, “for luck;” while over the door hung a branch of withered “palm” (being common yew) blessed by the priest in Lent; a big greenish bottle of holy water was set in a recess; a bunch of fairy-flax depended from the rafter along with the hanks of yarn.
“Well,” said her husband, in reply to her last remark, “I’d sooner trust Almighty God an’ the blessed saints.” His Romanist ideas clustered heaven with a multitude of inferior deities, who also had the power to preserve on earth.
“An’ you don’t think I’d be after disparagin’ of the blessed saints?” cried she, hotly.
“Listen to her now; she’s ready to bate me,” said her huge husband, looking comical. “As if the whole country didn’t know what a religious woman she was. Troth, an’ I’m afeared the medicine of the herb-doctor didn’t do you much good, Biddy.”
“I wonder at you, to be always bringin’ up that ould story,” said she.
“The bare sight of it med a lamb of me, any how,” he rejoined. “Never mind, Biddy—we’ll say no more about it; sure I wouldn’t vex you for a pound note, woman.”
But the Manuscript Man knew that the allusion was to a potion warranted to prevent quarreling, which Mrs. Denis had been persuaded to purchase by some wandering rogue; but after duly swallowing her own share she unfortunately could not induce her husband to drink his. It was a standing joke with portly Farmer Purcell. But though thus credulous and superstitious in certain matters, there was no shrewder farmer’s wife than Mrs. Denis, of Glashenglora, concerning all affairs of her calling. If the herb-doctor had tried to overreach her in a firkin of butter, or aught else for sale, he would soon have discovered his mistake.
“Any news stirring, Manuscript Man?”
“Well, the best I know is about the Major. He’s one of the right sort, Mr. Purcell.”
“So I thought the day I paid my last gale.* He spoke so pleasant about the new barn. ‘I likes my tenants to be makin’ improvemants,’ says he, an’ allowed me handsome.”
“ You’ll laugh if I tell you how I came to know his nater. You’ll remember the Ogham stones at St. Kevin’s? Tim Collins took one of them for a gate-post, an’ it was a heart-scald for me to see the cattle a-rubbin theirselves against it, like as it was any common stone. But the Major made him bring it back, an’ set it up in its own place. He’s a great friend entirely to the Irish and ould times.”
From this Clare went on to tell how he was instructed to make an offer of learning to read the Irish to all parties that were willing. The portly farmer at once declared he would have a lesson, and plenty of recruits followed. The evening’s work was understood to be over at supper-time; the cattle had been foddered, (eleven cows were driven nightly into that milking barn,) the younglings looked after; and now the men who would have gone out to friend’s cabins, or to have a game at bowling, or “throwing the shoulder-stone” along the road, as long as daylight lasted, were attracted by the novelty of trying to learn. The Manuscript Man was in his glory, dilating on the beauties and perfections of his beloved mother-tongue, with many an enlivening anecdote of its grandeur in the times of St. Colman, or Conn of the Hundred Battles, or some other traditionary hero, as he administered the alphabet from two or three cards and primers in his pocket. And it was settled there should be a weekly class in the farm-house kitchen.
“Not but I’ll tache ye wherever I’ll find ye, behind a dyke or a hay-rick,” said the tutor.
“I’ll never be able to recollect the difference between them little weeshy marks,” observed Mike the shock-headed boy, looking carefully at his open page. “They dances up and down before my eyes.”
“That’s because you’re starin’ at ‘em too long, they don’t like it, no more than the ladies. Now Manuscript Man,” cried portly Denis, “ may be you’d tell us some of yer ould ancient stories about the kings and bards long ago, before the big rath on Slieve-na-goil was made.”
“Then I should go back to the time when the Milesians came invadin’ us from Spain,” responded Clare. “No, b’lieve me, I’ve something here oulder than that itself.” Drawing forth the book, he added with solemnity, “It’s about the King of all the world, an’ his blessed saints and the apostles.”
“Ah, I heered tell from Sandy here that you read some new Irish book at Eily Connor’s wake. Girl’s, get your wheels, or yer knittin’, ‘tis quieter; and he’ll give us a spell.”
Large splinters of bog-deal were put down among the blocks of turf, whose ruddy blaze sprang then so high as to seem to endanger the “rungs” of the ash-tree hung in the chimney for seasoning as harvest-flails, in company with some strips of eelskin, which had once glided through the “noisy green water” of the neighbouring torrent, and which were the correct hinges for the aforesaid flails.
“Here’s yer ould seat close to the grand-mother. She’s none so deaf but Irish readin’ will pierce her ear, I’ll warrant. Eh, mother?”
The brilliant black eyes in the puckered old face gave answer as much as the lips. Of all the listeners, she became most attentive. Bending forward in her rush-seated arm-chair, with her bony brown hand curved about her ear, those sharp bright eyes of her’s never left the reader’s face.
“This is a very different book from any you have ever read to us before,” she said, in Irish, at the first pause. “This book has power in it—these are the words from God. Why did you never read this history of power to us before?”
“My mother was always a very discerning woman,” said the farmer, admiringly, when Clare had answered. “Though she never could get her tongue round a word of English, she could discourse any body in Irish, an’ had fine thoughts of her own, too.”
“‘Tis better than hearing about kings that are dead,” she continued to say, “for this King is living, up in the heavens,” and she raised her skinny finger. “It’s a history of power. Go on, man.”
He had commenced the Gospel of John. The Irish translation of the Scriptures, made originally under the superintendence of Bishop Bedell, and published at the expense of the Hon. Robert Boyle, in 1682, is in some respects peculiarly fitted for the poor and unlearned, owing to a certain vivid simplicity of language. Thus, when the Irish reader is asked to translate, he will produce such renderings as these, (given literally from an assemblage of peasants): “To take a firm grip of the hope set before us.” “We were brought into agreement with God by the death of his Son; much more, being in second friendship, we shall be saved by his life.” The expression, “They have no cloak for their sin,” becomes “they have no half story for their sin;” such being the root of the idea of an excuse—telling only a part of the truth. And again, “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts,” is realized by these poor people as “The dropping of God’s love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit;” perhaps as seed sown in the furrow, perhaps as the fertilizing rain which causes that seed to swell and shoot into life. So the great truths of John the Divine reached these ears through a channel of words not unworthy.
The dogs began to bark outside; a face looked in furtively over the half door.
“Is that you, Mickey Malt? Come in, we’ll make room for you; there’s a fine book readin’ here.” A tall slouching fellow made his appearance, half unwillingly.
“I didn’t think to find so much folk in the house,” he observed; “’twas only a little business I had wid yerself the night.”
“If it’s about the barley, ‘twill keep. Go on Manuscript Man.”
Mickey Malt (whose soubriquet had a suitable reason) shuffled as he sat down, and shuffled yet more when he found the firelight so full on his Milesian face that every feature was plain in every body’s view; so he presently edged sideways, and managed to get his head into the shadow of the projecting jamb. It was not altogether dislike of the pleasant blaze; but when people are conscious of crooked actions, they have a partiality for hiding their face.
Great,
then was his amazement to hear shortly—
“Men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.”
Immediately Mickey Malt thought of a certain establishment of his own in a certain turfen recess of Slieve-na-goil, where worm and still, wort and wash, might be found by a skilled explorer; and glanced furtively from under his bent brows to percieve whether any of the quick-witted auditory had made what seemed to him the most obvious application. Thenceforward his attention was riveted on the book. Soon they were in the midst of the story of the woman at the well, which comes so home to people of country life.
“An’ to think our blessed Saviour was tired just like we be!” was the farmer’s comment. “Tired wid a long walk of a hot day, belike; an’ we don’t ever hear that he got the drink of water after all.”