by George Moore
The priest talked on until he was interrupted by Father Moran.
“I have some business to transact with Father Moran now,” the Bishop said, “but you must stay to dinner. You have walked a long way, and you are tired and hungry.”
“But, your Grace, if I don’t start now, I shall not get home until nightfall.”
“A car will take you back, Father MacTurnan. I will see to that. I must have some exact information about your poor people. We must do something for them.”
Father MacTurnan and the Bishop were talking together when the car came to take Father MacTurnan home, and the Bishop said: —
“Father MacTurnan, you have borne the loneliness of your parish a long while.”
“Loneliness is only a matter of habit. I think, your Grace, I’m better suited to the place than I am for any other. I don’t wish any change, if your Grace is satisfied with me.”
“No one will look after the poor people better than yourself, Father MacTurnan. But,” he said, “it seems to me there is one thing we have forgotten. You haven’t told me if you succeeded in getting the money to buy the pig.”
Father MacTurnan grew very red.... “I had forgotten it. The relief works—”
“It’s not too late. Here’s five pounds, and this will buy him a pig.”
“It will indeed,” said the priest, “it will buy him two!”
He had left the Palace without having asked the Bishop how his letter had been received at Rome, and he stopped the car, and was about to tell the driver to go back. But no matter, he would hear about his letter some other time. He was bringing happiness to two poor people, and he could not persuade himself to delay their happiness by one minute. He was not bringing one pig, but two pigs, and now Mike Mulhare would have to give him Norah and a calf; and the priest remembered that James Murdoch had said, “What a fine house this will be to rear them in.” There were many who thought that human beings and animals should not live together; but after all, what did it matter if they were happy? And the priest forgot his letter to Rome in the thought of the happiness he was bringing to two poor people. He could not see Norah Mulhare that night; but he drove down to the famine road, and he and the driver called till they awoke James Murdoch. The poor man came stumbling across the bog, and the priest told him the news.
JULIA CAHILL’S CURSE
IN ‘95 I was agent of the Irish Industrial Society, and I spent three days with Father O’Hara making arrangements for the establishment of looms, for the weaving of homespuns and for acquiring plots of ground whereon to build schools where the village girls could practice lace-making.
The priest was one of the chief supporters of our movement. He was a wise and tactful man, who succeeded not only in living on terms of friendship with one of the worst landlords in Ireland, but in obtaining many concessions from him. When he came to live in Culloch the landlord had said to him that what he would like to do would be to run the ploughshare through the town, and to turn “Culloch” into Bullock. But before many years had passed Father O’Hara had persuaded this man to use his influence to get a sufficient capital to start a bacon factory. And the town of Culloch possessed no other advantages except an energetic and foreseeing parish priest. It was not a railway terminus, nor was it a seaport.
But, perhaps because of his many admirable qualities, Father O’Hara is not the subject of this story. We find stories in the lives of the weak and the foolish, and the improvident, and his name occurs here because he is typical of not a few priests I have met in Ireland.
I left him early one Sunday morning, and he saying that twenty odd miles lay before me, and my first stopping place would be Ballygliesane. I could hear Mass there at Father Madden’s chapel, and after Mass I could call upon him, and that when I had explained the objects of our Society I could drive to Rathowen, where there was a great gathering of the clergy. All the priests within ten miles round would be there for the consecration of the new church.
On an outside car one divides one’s time in moralising on the state of the country or in chatting with the driver, and as the driver seemed somewhat taciturn I examined the fields as we passed them. They were scanty fields, drifting from thin grass into bog, and from bog into thin grass again, and in the distance there was a rim of melancholy mountains, and the peasants I saw along the road seemed a counterpart of the landscape. “The land has made them,” I said, “according to its own image and likeness,” and I tried to find words to define the yearning that I read in their eyes as we drove past. But I could find no words that satisfied me.
“Only music can express their yearning, and they have written it themselves in their folk tunes.”
My driver’s eyes were the eyes that one meets everywhere in Ireland, pale, wandering eyes that the land seems to create, and I wondered if his character corresponded to his eyes; and with a view to finding if it did I asked him some questions about Father Madden. He seemed unwilling to talk, but I soon began to see that his silence was the result of shyness rather than dislike of conversation. He was a gentle, shy lad, and I told him that Father O’Hara had said I would see the loneliest parish in Ireland.
“It’s true for him,” he answered, and again there was silence. At the end of a mile I asked him if the land in Father Madden’s parish was poor, and he said no, it was the best land in the country, and then I was certain that there was some mystery attached to Father Madden.
“The road over there is the mearing.”
And soon after passing this road I noticed that although the land was certainly better than the land about Culloch, there seemed to be very few people on it; and what was more significant than the untilled fields were the ruins, for they were not the cold ruins of twenty, or thirty, or forty years ago when the people were evicted and their tillage turned into pasture, but the ruins of cabins that had been lately abandoned. Some of the roof trees were still unbroken, and I said that the inhabitants must have left voluntarily.
“Sure they did. Arn’t we all going to America.”
“Then it was not the landlord?”
“Ah, it’s the landlord who’d have them back if he could.”
“And the priest? How does he get his dues?”
“Those on the other side are always sending their money to their friends and they pay the priest. Sure why should we be staying? Isn’t the most of us over there already. It’s more like going home than leaving home.”
I told him we hoped to establish new looms in the country, and that Father O’Hara had promised to help us.
“Father O’Hara is a great man,” he said.
“Well, don’t you think that with the revival of industries the people might be induced to stay at home?”
“Sorra stay,” said he.
I could see that he was not so convinced about the depopulation of Father O’Hara’s parish as he was about Father Madden’s, and I tried to induce him to speak his mind.
“Well, your honour, there’s many that think there’s a curse on the parish.”
“A curse! And who put the curse on the parish?”
“Isn’t that the bell ringing for Mass, your honour?”
And listening I could head a doleful pealing in the grey sky.
“Does Father Madden know of this curse?”
“Indeed he does; none better.”
“And does he believe in it?”
“There’s many who will tell you that he has been saying Masses for the last ten years, that the curse may be taken off the parish.”
We could now hear the bell tolling quite distinctly, and the driver pointed with his whip, and I could see the cross above the fir-trees.
“And there,” he said, “is Bridget Coyne,” and I saw a blind woman being led along the road. At the moment I supposed he had pointed the woman out because she was blind, though this did not seem a sufficient reason for the note of wonder in his voice; but we were within a few yards of the chapel and there was no time to ask him who Bridget Coyne was. I had to speak to h
im about finding stabling for the horse. That, he said, was not necessary, he would let the horse graze in the chapel-yard while he himself knelt by the door, so that he could hear Mass and keep an eye on his horse. “I shall want you half an hour after Mass is over.” Half an hour, I thought, would suffice to explain the general scope of our movement to Father Madden. I had found that the best way was to explain to each priest in turn the general scope of the movement, and then to pay a second visit a few weeks later. The priest would have considered the ideas that I had put into his head, he would have had time to assimilate them in the interval, and I could generally tell in the second visit if I should find in him a friend, an enemy, or an indifferent.
There was something extraordinary in the appearance of Father Madden’s church, a few peasants crouched here and there, and among them I saw the blind woman that the driver had pointed out on the road. She did not move during Mass; she knelt or crouched with her shawl drawn over her head, and it was not until the acolyte rang the communion bell that she dared to lift herself up. That day she was the only communicant, and the acolyte did not turn the altar cloth over the rails, he gave her a little bit of the cloth to hold, and, holding it firmly in her fingers, she lifted up her blind face, and when the priest placed the Host on her tongue she sank back overcome.
“This blind woman,” I said to myself, “will be the priest’s last parishioner,” and I saw the priest saying Mass in a waste church for the blind woman, everyone else dead or gone.
All her days I said are spent by the cabin fire hearing of people going to America, her relations, her brothers and sisters had gone, and every seventh day she is led to hear Mass, to receive the Host, and to sink back. To-day and to-morrow and the next day will be spent brooding over her happiness, and in the middle of the week she will begin to look forward to the seventh day.
The blind woman seemed strangely symbolical and the parish, the priest too. A short, thick-set man, with a large bald head and a fringe of reddish hair; his hands were fat and short, the nails were bitten, the nose was fleshy and the eyes were small, and when he turned towards the people and said “Pax Vobiscum” there was a note of command in his voice. The religion he preached was one of fear. His sermon was filled with flames and gridirons, and ovens and devils with pitchforks, and his parishioners groaned and shook their heads and beat their breasts.
I did not like Father Madden or his sermon. I remembered that there were few young people left in his parish, and it seemed waste of time to appeal to him for help in establishing industries; but it was my business to seek the co-operation of every priest, and I could not permit myself such a licence as the passing over of any priest. What reason could I give? that I did not like his sermon or his bald head? And after Mass I went round to see him in the sacristy.
The sacristy was a narrow passage, and there were two acolytes in it, and the priest was taking off his vestments, and people were knocking constantly at the door, and the priest had to tell the acolyte what answer to give. I had only proposed to myself to sketch the objects of our organisation in a general outline to the priest, but it was impossible even to do this, so numerous were the interruptions. When I came to unfold our system of payments, the priest said: —
“It is impossible for me to listen to you here. You had better come round with me to my house.”
The invitation was not quite in accordance with the idea I had formed of the man, and while walking across the fields he asked me if I would have a cup of tea with him, and we spoke of the new church at Rathowen. It seemed legitimate to deplore the building of new churches, and I mentioned that while the churches were increasing the people were decreasing, and I ventured to regret that only two ideas seemed to obtain in Ireland, the idea of the religious vocation and the idea of emigration.
“I see,” said Father Madden, “you are imbued with all the new ideas.”
“But,” I said, “you don’t wish the country to disappear.”
“I do not wish it to disappear,” he said, “but if it intends to disappear we can do nothing to prevent it from disappearing. Everyone is opposed to emigration now, but I remember when everyone was advocating it. Teach them English and emigrate them was the cure. Now,” he said, “you wish them to learn Irish and to stay at home. And you are quite certain that this time you have found out the true way. I live very quiet down here, but I hear all the new doctrines. Besides teaching Paddy Durkin to feed his pig, I hear you are going to revive the Gothic. Music and literature are to follow, and among these resurrections there is a good deal of talk about pagan Ireland.”
We entered a comfortable, well-furnished cottage, with a good carpet on the floor, and the walls lined with books, and on either side of the fireplace there were easy chairs, and I thought of the people “on the other side.”
He took a pot of tea from the hob, and said: —
“Now let me pour you out a cup of tea, and you shall tell me about the looms.”
“But,” I said, “Father Madden, you don’t believe much in the future of Ireland, you don’t take very kindly to new ideas.”
“New ideas! Every ten years there is a new set. If I had said teach them Irish ten years ago I should have been called a fool, and now if I say teach them English and let them go to America I am called a reactionist. You have come from Father O’Hara;” I could see from the way he said the name that the priests were not friends; “and he has told you a great many of my people have gone to America. And perhaps you heard him say that they have not gone to America for the sake of better wages but because my rule is too severe, because I put down cross-road dances. Father O’Hara and I think differently, and I have no doubt he thinks he is quite right.”
While we breakfasted Father Madden said some severe things about Father O’Hara, about the church he had built, and the debt that was still upon it. I suppose my face told Father Madden of the interest I took in his opinions, for during breakfast he continued to speak his mind very frankly on all the subjects I wished to hear him speak on, and when breakfast was over I offered him a cigar and proposed that we should go for a walk on his lawn.
“Yes,” he said, “there are people who think I am a reactionist because I put down the ball-alley.”
“The ball-alley!”
“There used to be a ball-alley by the church, but the boys wouldn’t stop playing ball during Mass, so I put it down. But you will excuse me a moment.” The priest darted off, and I saw him climb down the wall into the road; he ran a little way along the road calling at the top of his voice, and when I got to the wall I saw him coming back. “Let me help you,” I said. I pulled him up and we continued our walk; and as soon as he had recovered his breath he told me that he had caught sight of a boy and girl loitering.
“And I hunted them home.”
I asked him why, knowing well the reason, and he said: —
“Young people should not loiter along the roads. I don’t want bastards in my parish.”
It seemed to me that perhaps bastards were better than no children at all, even from a religious point of view — one can’t have religion without life, and bastards may be saints.
“In every country,” I said, “boys and girls walk together, and the only idealism that comes into the lives of peasants is between the ages of eighteen and twenty, when young people meet in the lanes and linger by the stiles. Afterwards hard work in the fields kills aspiration.”
“The idealism of the Irish people does not go into sex, it goes into religion.”
“But religion does not help to continue the race, and we’re anxious to preserve the race, otherwise there will be no religion, or a different religion in Ireland.”
“That is not certain.”
Later on I asked him if the people still believed in fairies. He said that traces of such beliefs survived among the mountain folk.
“There is a great deal of Paganism in the language they wish to revive, though it may be as free from Protestantism as Father O’Hara says it is.”
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For some reason or other I could see that folk-lore was distasteful to him, and he mentioned causally that he had put a stop to the telling of fairy-tales round the fire in the evening, and the conversation came to a pause.
“Now I won’t detain you much longer, Father Madden. My horse and car are waiting for me. You will think over the establishment of looms. You don’t want the country to disappear.”
“No, I don’t! And though I do not think the establishment of work-rooms an unmixed blessing I will help you. You must not believe all Father O’Hara says.”
The horse began to trot, and I to think. He had said that the idealism of the Irish peasant goes into other things than sex.
“If this be true, the peasant is doomed,” I said to myself, and I remembered that Father Madden would not admit that religion is dependent on life, and I pondered. In this country religion is hunting life to the death. In other countries religion has managed to come to terms with Life. In the South men and women indulge their flesh and turn the key on religious inquiry; in the North men and women find sufficient interest in the interpretation of the Bible and the founding of new religious sects. One can have faith or morals, both together seem impossible. Remembering how the priest had chased the lovers, I turned to the driver and asked if there was no courting in the country.
“There used to be courting,” he said, “but now it is not the custom of the country any longer.”
“How do you make up your marriages?”
“The marriages are made by the parents, and I’ve often seen it that the young couple did not see each other until the evening before the wedding — sometimes not until the very morning of the wedding. Many a marriage I’ve seen broken off for a half a sovereign — well,” he said, “if not for half a sovereign, for a sovereign. One party will give forty-nine pounds and the other party wants fifty, and they haggle over that pound, and then the boy’s father will say, “Well, if you won’t give the pound you can keep the girl.”
