Just Irish Part 14

I asked what they were waiting for, and one of the mackerel selling and barefooted Velasquez women told me that an American circus was coming.

I felt it was worth waiting to see an American circus in Galway.

The circus was called "Buff Bill's Wild West Show." Not Buffalo Bill, mind you, but Buff Bill.

For a long time I waited and at last my patience was rewarded.

I knew just what it would be. There would be fifty or sixty cowboys on their broncos, a bevy of female sharpshooters, and the Deadwood stage; and for the circus part of it an elephant or two and the $10,000 beauty, followed up by dens of wild beasts and representatives of all the countries of the world.

At last music was heard. The band was approaching. Around a bend in the street came the usual crowd of small boys and girls running ahead.

Then came a yellow wagon, with a cowboy band discoursing the latest New York favorite.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WAITING FOR THE CIRCUS, GALWAY]

Next came one dreadful dwarf, made up as a hideous clown. Behind him rode an ordinary negro, not costumed in any special manner. He was enough novelty as he was.

And behind these two rode a man of the toothpowder vender type, with long hair, _boiled s.h.i.+rt_, sombrero, and no necktie.

He was Buff Bill.

And that made up the parade.

It was worth waiting for, if only to see what it is that const.i.tutes a wondrous spectacle to a small boy.

Fifty years from now some prosperous Chicagoan will take his grandson to see a four-mile parade of some great circus of the period, with half a hundred elephants, a thousand n.o.ble hors.e.m.e.n, and scores of gilded chariots; and when the small boy voices his rapture the old man will say with sincerity:

"It's pretty good, I suppose, but you ought to have seen the circus that came to Galway when I was a boy of eight. That beat any circus I've ever seen since. I couldn't sleep for weeks thinking about it."

XIV

_The New Life in Ireland_

No one can be in Ireland long without realizing that when st.u.r.dy, practical John Bull forcibly married dreamy Hibernia, with her artistic temperament, it was a very foolish marriage, and as a good American I could have predicted trouble from the very start. John Bull is accustomed to be obeyed at the drop of the hat, and Hibernia, for all her dreaminess, is a lady of spirit and will not become a willing slave.

John Bull has no more knowledge of the real needs and capabilities of this Irish wife of his than the average American has of the real needs and capabilities of an Indian, and the result of the union has been a series of bickerings that show John up in his worst light and that do not serve to call out the most agreeable aspects of his unfortunate wife's nature.

He suspects her, and what good woman will stand being suspected by her husband without resentment? In her temperamental qualities--qualities that could be cultivated to express something n.o.ble--he sees only idleness and s.h.i.+ftlessness. He treats his wife as a child, and the wife who is treated as a child becomes a mighty poor mother.

That Hibernia is a failure as a mother is shown by the fact that thousands of her sons are still willing and even anxious to leave her instead of staying and showing by their industry and sobriety and willingness to make the most of the opportunities that undoubtedly exist in Ireland, that they are capable of developing and governing their native land without interference of any kind from John Bull.

Ordinarily I'm quite opposed to divorce, and I know that Catholics abhor it, but it seems as if Hibernia ought to get a decree against John Bull on the plea of incompatibility of temper. And I wouldn't advise Hibernia to rush into marriage again after she gets her freedom.

But through what courts she is to get her decree is beyond my knowledge. She's a most attractive lady and she has fertile farms and some say undeveloped mines, and there is certainly land enough, setting aside the fact of owners.h.i.+p, to support all the sons who have stayed by her.

Every Irishman in America who loves Ireland, and I can't imagine that there are any who do not, ought to advise against further immigration.

Ireland needs every able-bodied man to help carry on the work there is to do--a work that the Gaelic League is doing so much to foster.

The Gaelic League with its fostering of the artistic spirit that is dormant in the Irish nature, and that already finds expression in the weaving of rugs and in embroidery and in bookbinding and the making of stained gla.s.s, and the Irish Agricultural Organization Society, with its introduction of modern scientific methods of farming, its model hospitals and schoolhouses and dwellings--these movements are waking great interest among the younger people. And Ireland cannot afford to part with a single man or woman from now on.

The study of Gaelic increases year by year, and whereas in former times Irishmen, subdued by the English spirit, punished their children if they were caught talking Gaelic, now Irishmen encourage them and they are freely learning Gaelic in all parts of Ireland. This movement cannot help revivifying a national spirit.

In a railway carriage I talked with some young women who, with their brothers, were returning from a three days' fast and an all night vigil at a little village near Bundoran. They were of course Roman Catholics. They asked me if I was going to the national festival about to be held in Dublin, the Oireachtas, and when I found out what it meant I told them that I was, and asked them if they were members of the Gaelic League.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GAELIC SIGN, DONEGAL]

"Indeed we are," said one, and her eyes glowed with enthusiasm as she said it.

"And do you speak Gaelic?"

"Oh, yes. We've learned it, you understand, learned it since growing up."

They were heart and soul in the new movement that it is hoped will regenerate and cultivate and spiritualize Ireland, and while I was talking to them and felt their sincerity and ardor, I was sure that the Gaelic League was doing more than all the politicians ever could.

It is not the Catholics only that have joined this movement; it is non-sectarian. I talked with a young drug clerk in a northern town and he "had the Irish" (could talk Gaelic), and wrote his name in Gaelic characters, but he was a Protestant. He offered to give me a line to a well-known Dublin literary man, which shows how democratic the movement is.

To-day you'll meet with a land-owning aristocrat who is interested in what the league is doing, and to-morrow you'll meet a jarvey who is learning Gaelic, and the next day a young lady of gentle birth who is teaching the poor children of the neighborhood how to weave rugs, and then you'll meet an artist who was formerly a land owner and a Protestant, and who was one of the first to sell his property to his tenants under the Wyndham act--and being an artist and not a business man he got ruinous prices for it--and has been forced ever since to rely on his brush for his support. He, too, is heart and soul in the movement.

Now when the yeast permeates the lump to such an extent there is bound to be a rising--but of the peaceful kind.

"Pat," in his "Economics for Irishmen," says, "Were I a priest, I should, I think, regard it as a sin on my soul every time a young person emigrated from my parish while I might have shown him how he could have made an excellent living at home."

It must strike every American, no matter whether he is a Protestant, an atheist, an agnostic, or a Roman Catholic, so long as he is open minded, that the size and evident costliness of the churches in the country districts is out of all proportion to the costliness of the houses of the peasants.

In a poor community money that is put into costly bricks and stone that might have been put into books and bread is money inadequately expended, even if Ruskin rise from his grave to contradict me. A better temple to G.o.d than a granite church is a granite const.i.tution, and the light of health and sanity and cheerful industry in the eye of an Irish lad is better than the light of a thousand candles.

This is not a question of religion, but of common sense. If all the money that has been spent upon the extra embellishment of churches of all denominations in Ireland had been spent on the physical and educational and moral betterment of Irishmen, they would have ceased to emigrate long since.

But this is thin ice, and as I can't swim I'll give up the skating on it until the weather is colder.

But the priests are also interested in this Gaelic revival of which Americans have already heard so much, and which is non-sectarian and non-political. And the nuns are doing a blessed work all over Ireland.

Let me close this somewhat serious chapter--one can't help being serious in Ireland when he sees that her regeneration is at hand--with a parable that I made all by my lonesome:

Once there was a man who had a sugar maple, and there being a demand for maple sugar he allowed the sap to run early and late, and disposed of the sugar thus obtained. But there came by a man who said:

[Ill.u.s.tration: GONE TO AMERICA]

"Why, you're ruining that tree. The sap that is being made into sugar for the whole United States is the life blood of that green old tree.

If you keep on, your tree will wither and die."

And the man took the advice and the tree renewed its youth.

Close up the sap holes and keep in the sap, for the sap is the life blood of Ireland, and we in America have learned how to make sugar out of many things--even out of beets--and we no longer need the Irish young man. But the old tree needs her young blood in order to keep her fresh and green.