Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  Moved by this lamentable story, the effect of which the woman’s whole miserable appearance corroborated and heightened, the gentleman sent immediately for her hard-hearted landlord. The landlord appeared; not a gentleman, not a rich man, as the term landlord might denote, but a stout, square, stubbed, thick-limbed, grey-eyed man, who seemed to have come smoking hot from hard labour. The gentleman repeated the charge made against him by the poor widow, and mildly remonstrated on his cruelty: the man heard all that was said with a calm but unmoved countenance.

  “And now have you done?” said he, turning to the woman, who had recommenced her lamentations. “Look at her standing there, sir. It’s easy for her to put on her long cloak, and to tell her long story, and to make her poor mouth to your honour; but if you are willing to hear, I’ll tell you what she is, and what I am. She is one that has none but herself in this world to provide for; she is one that is able to afford herself a glass of whiskey when she pleases, and she pleases it often; she is one that never denies herself the bit of staggering bob53 when in season; she is one that has a snug house well thatched to live in all the year round, and nothing to do or nothing that she does; and this is the way of her life, and this is what she is. And what am I? I am the father of eight children, and I have a wife and myself to provide for. I am a man that is at hard labour of one kind or another from sunrise to sunset. The straw that thatched the house she lives in I brought two miles on my back; the walls of the house she lives in I built with my own hands; I did the same by five other houses, and they are all sound and dry, and good to live in, summer or winter. I set them for rent to put bread into my children’s mouth, and after all I cannot get it! And to support my eight children, and my wife, and myself, what have I in this world,” cried he, striding suddenly with colossal firmness upon his sturdy legs, and raising to heaven arms which looked like fore-shortenings of the limbs of Hercules; “what have I in this wide world but these four bones?” 54

  No provocation could have worked up a phlegmatic English countryman to this pitch of eloquence. He never suffers his anger to evaporate in idle figures of speech: it is always concentrated in a few words, which he repeats in reply to every argument, persuasive, or invective, that can be employed to irritate or to assuage his wrath. We recollect having once been present at a scene between an English gentleman and a churchwarden, whose feelings were grievously hurt by the disturbance that had been given to certain bones in levelling a wall which separated the churchyard from the pleasure ground of the lord of the manor. The bones belonged, as the churchwarden believed or averred, to his great great grandmother, though how they were identified it might be difficult to explain to an indifferent judge; yet we are to suppose that the confirmation of the suspicion was strong and satisfactory to the party concerned. The pious great great grandson’s feelings were all in arms, but indignation did not inspire him with a single poetic idea or expression. In his eloquence, indeed, there was the principal requisite, action: in reply to all that could be said, he repeatedly struck his long oak stick perpendicularly upon the floor, and reiterated these words —

  “It’s death, sir! death by the law! It’s sacrilege, sir! sacrilege by act of parliament! It’s death, sir! death by the law! and the law I’ll have of him, for it’s lawful to have the law.”

  This was the whole range of his ideas, even when the passions had tumbled them all out of their dormitories.

  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; we shall therefore change our ground, and adapt our arguments to the level of vulgar capacities. 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; and consequently there is no great reason to apprehend that we should cease to think or call them blunderers.

  Of the powerful effect of any peculiarity of pronunciation to prepossess the mind against the speaker, nay, even to excite dislike amounting to antipathy, we have an instance attested by an eye-witness, or rather an ear-witness.

  “In the year 1755,” says the Rev. James Adams, “I attended a public disputation in a foreign university, when at least 400 Frenchmen literally hissed a grave and learned English doctor, not by way of insult, but irresistibly provoked by the quaintness of the repetition of sh. The thesis was, the concurrence of God in actionibus viciosis: the whole hall resounded with the hissing cry of sh, and its continual occurrence in actio, actione, viciosa, &c.”

  It is curious that Shibboleth should so long continue a criterion among nations!

  What must have been the degree of irritation that could so far get the better of the politeness of 400 Frenchmen as to make them hiss in the days of l’ancien régime! The dread of being the object of that species of antipathy or ridicule, which is excited by unfashionable peculiarity of accent, has induced many of the misguided natives of Ireland to affect what they imagine to be the English pronunciation. They are seldom successful in this attempt, for they generally overdo the business. We are told by Theophrastus, that a barbarian, who had taken some pains to attain the true Attic dialect, was discovered to be a foreigner by his speaking the Attic dialect with a greater degree of precision and purity than was usual amongst the Athenians themselves. To avoid the imputation of committing barbarisms, people sometimes run into solecisms, which are yet more ridiculous. Affectation is always more ridiculous than ignorance.

  There are Irish ladies, who, ashamed of their country, betray themselves by mincing out their abjuration, by calling tables teebles, and chairs cheers! To such renegadoes we prefer the honest quixotism of a modern champion55 for the Scottish accent, who boldly asserted that “the broad dialect rises above reproach, scorn, and laughter,” enters the lists, as he says of himself, in Tartan dress and armour, and throws down the gauntlet to the most prejudiced antagonist. “How weak is prejudice!” pursues this patriotic enthusiast. “The sight of the Highland kelt, the flowing plaid, the buskined leg, provokes my antagonist to laugh! Is this dress ridiculous in the eyes of reason and common sense? No; nor is the dialect of speech: both are characteristic and national distinctions.

  “The arguments of general vindication,” continues he, “rise powerful before my sight, like the Highland bands in full array. A louder strain of apologetic speech swells my words. What if it should rise high as the unconquered summits of Scotia’s hills, and call back, with voice sweet as Caledonian song, the days of ancient Scotish heroes; or attempt the powerful speech of the Latian orator, or his of Greece! The subject, methinks, would well accord with the attempt: Cupidum, Scotia optima, vires deficiunt. I leave this to the king of songs, Dunbar and Dunkeld, Douglas in Virgilian strains, and later poets, Ramsay, Ferguson, and Burns, awake from your graves; you have already immortalized the Scotish dialect in raptured melody! Lend me your golden target and well-pointed spear, that I might victoriously pursue, to the extremity of South Britain, reproachful ignorance and scorn still lurking there: let impartial candour seize their usurped throne. Great, then, is the birth of this national dialect,” &c.

  So far so good. We have some sympathy with the rhapsodist, whose enthusiasm kindles at the names of Allan Ramsay and of Burns; nay, we are willing to hear (with a grain of allowance) that “the manly eloquence of the Scotish bar affords a singular pleasure to the c
andid English hearer, and gives merit and dignity to the noble speakers, who retain so much of their own dialect and tempered propriety of English sounds, that they may be emphatically termed British orators.” But we confess that we lose our patient decorum, and are almost provoked to laughter, when our philological Quixote seriously sets about to prove that Adam and Eve spoke broad Scotch in Paradise.

  How angry has this grave patriot reason to be with his ingenious countryman Beattie,56 the celebrated champion of Truth, who acknowledges that he never could, when a boy or man, look at a certain translation of Ajax’s speech into one of the vulgar Scotch dialects without laughing!

  We shall now with boldness, similar to that of the Scotch champion, try the risible muscles of our English reader; we are not, indeed, inclined to go quite such lengths as he has gone: he insists that the Scotch dialect ought to be adopted all over England; we are only going candidly to confess, that we think the Irish, in general, speak better English than is commonly spoken by the natives of England. To limit this proposition so as to make it appear less absurd, we should observe, that we allude to the lower classes of the people in both countries. In some counties in Ireland, a few of the poorest labourers and cottagers do not understand English, they speak only Irish, as in Wales there are vast numbers who speak only Welsh; but amongst those who speak English we find fewer vulgarisms than amongst the same rank of persons in England. The English which they speak is chiefly such as has been traditional in their families from the time of the early settlers in the island. During the reign of Elizabeth and the reign of Shakspeare, numbers of English migrated to Ireland; and whoever attends to the phraseology of the lower Irish may, at this day, hear many of the phrases and expressions used by Shakspeare. Their vocabulary has been preserved nearly in its pristine purity since that time, because they have not had intercourse with those counties in England which have made for themselves a jargon unlike to any language under heaven. The Irish brogue is a great and shameful defect, but it does not render the English language absolutely unintelligible. There are but a few variations of the brogue, such as the long and the short, the Thady brogue and Paddy brogue, which differ much in tone, and but little in phraseology; but in England, almost all of our fifty-two counties have peculiar vulgarisms, dialects, and brogues, unintelligible to their neighbours. Herodotus tells us that some of the nations of Greece, though they used the same language, spoke it so differently, that they could not understand each other’s conversation. This is literally the case at present between the provincial inhabitants of remote parts of England. Indeed the language peculiar to the metropolis, or the cockney dialect, is proverbially ridiculous. The Londoners, who look down with contempt upon all that have not been bred and born within the sound of Bow, talk with unconscious absurdity of weal and winegar, and vine and vindors, and idears, and ask you ow you do? and ‘ave ye bin taking the hair in ‘yde park? and ‘as your ‘orse ‘ad any hoats, &c.? aspirating always where they should not, and never aspirating where they should.

  The Zummerzetzheer dialect, full of broad oos and eternal zeds, supplies never-failing laughter when brought upon the stage. Even a cockney audience relishes the broad pronunciation of John Moody, in the Journey to London, or of Sim in Wild Oats.

  The cant of Suffolk, the vulgarisms of Shropshire, the uncouth phraseology of the three ridings of Yorkshire, amaze and bewilder foreigners, who perhaps imagine that they do not understand English, when they are in company with those who cannot speak it. The patois of Languedoc and Champagne, such as “Mein fis sest ai bai via,” Mon fils c’est un beau veau, exercises, it is true, the ingenuity of travellers, and renders many scenes of Molière and Marivaux difficult, if not unintelligible, to those who have never resided in the French provinces; but no French patois is more unintelligible than the following specimen of Tummas and Meary’s Lancashire dialogue: —

  Thomas. “Whau, but I startit up to goa to th’ tits, on slurr’d deawn to th’ lower part o’ th’ heymough, on by th’ maskins, lord! whot dust think? boh leet hump stridd’n up o’ summot ot felt meety heury, on it startit weh meh on its back, deawn th’ lower part o’ th’ mough it jumpt, crost th’ leath, eaw’t o’ th’ dur whimmey it took, on into th’ weturing poo, os if th’ dule o’ hell had driv’n it, on there it threw meh en, or I fell off, I connaw tell whether, for th’ life o’ meh, into the poo.”

  Mary. “Whoo-wo, whoo-wo, whoo! whot, ith neme o’ God! widneh sey?”

  Thomas. “If it wur naw Owd Nick, he wur th’ orderer on’t, to be shure —— . Weh mitch powlering I geet eawt o’ th’ poo, ‘lieve57 meh, as to list, I could na tell whether i’r in a sleawm or wak’n, till eh groapt ot meh een; I crope under a wough and stode like o’ gawmbling,58 or o parfit neatril, till welly day,” &c.

  Let us now listen to a conversation which we hope will not be quite so unintelligible.

  CHAPTER XII. BATH COACH CONVERSATION.

  In one of the coaches which travel between Bath and London, an Irish, a Scotch, and an English gentleman happened to be passengers. They were well informed and well-bred, had seen the world, had lived in good company, and were consequently superior to local and national prejudice. As their conversation was illustrative of our subject, we shall make no apology for relating it. We pass the usual preliminary compliments, and the observations upon the weather and the roads. The Irish gentleman first started a more interesting subject — the Union; its probable advantages and disadvantages were fully discussed, and, at last, the Irishman said, “Whatever our political opinions may be, there is one wish in which we shall all agree, that the Union may make us better acquainted with one another.”

  “It is surprising,” said the Englishman, “how ignorant we English in general are of Ireland: to be sure we do not now, as in the times of Bacon and Spenser, believe that wild Irishmen have wings; nor do we all of us give credit, to Mr. Twiss’s assertion, that if you look at an Irish lady, she answers, ‘port if you please.’”

  Scotchman.—”That traveller seems to be almost as liberal as he who defined oats — food for horses in England, and for men in Scotland: such illiberal notions die away of themselves.”

  Irishman.—”Or they are contradicted by more liberal travellers. I am sure my country has great obligations to the gallant English and Scotch military, not only for so readily assisting to defend and quiet us, but for spreading in England a juster notion of Ireland. Within these few months, I suppose, more real knowledge of the state and manners of that kingdom has been diffused in England by their means, than had been obtained during a whole century.”

  Scotchman.—”Indeed, I do not recollect having read any author of note who has given me a notion of Ireland since Spenser and Davies, except Arthur Young.”

  Englishman.—”What little knowledge I have of Ireland has been drawn more from observation than from books. I remember when I first went over there, I did not expect to see twenty trees in the whole island: I imagined that I should have nothing to drink but whiskey, that I should have nothing to eat but potatoes, that I should sleep in mud-walled cabins; that I should, when awake, hear nothing but the Irish howl, the Irish brogue, Irish answers, and Irish bulls; and that if I smiled at any of these things, a hundred pistols would fly from their holsters to give or demand satisfaction. But experience taught me better things: I found that the stories I had heard were tales of other times. Their hospitality, indeed, continues to this day.”

  Irishman.—”It does, I believe; but of later days, as we have been honoured with the visits of a greater number of foreigners, our hospitality has become less extravagant.”

  Englishman.—”Not less agreeable: Irish hospitality, I speak from experience, does not now consist merely in pushing about the bottle; the Irish are convivial, but their conviviality is seasoned with wit and humour; they have plenty of good conversation as well as good cheer for their guests; and they not only have wit themselves, but they love it in others; they can take as well as give a joke. I never lived with a more good-hum
oured, generous, open-hearted people than the Irish.”

  Irishman.—”I wish Englishmen, in general, were half as partial to poor Ireland as you are, sir.”

  Englishman.—”Or rather you wish that they knew the country as well, and then they would do it as much justice.”

  Irishman.—”You do it something more than justice, I fear. There are little peculiarities in my countrymen which will long be justly the subject of ridicule in England.”

  Scotchman.—”Not among well-bred and well-informed people: those who have seen or read of great varieties of customs and manners are never apt to laugh at all that may differ from their own. As the sensible author of the Government of the Tongue says, ‘Half-witted people are always the bitterest revilers.’”

  Irishman.—”You are very indulgent, gentlemen; but in spite of all your politeness, you must allow, or, at least, I must confess, that there are little defects in the Irish government of the tongue at which even whole-witted people must laugh.”

  Scotchman.—”The well-educated people in all countries, I believe, escape the particular accent, and avoid the idiom, that are characteristic of the vulgar.”

  Irishman.—”But even when we escape Irish brogue, we cannot escape Irish bulls.”

  Englishman.—”You need not say Irish bulls with such emphasis; for bulls are not peculiar to Ireland. I have been informed by a person of unquestionable authority, that there is a town in Germany, Hirschau, in the Upper Palatinate, where the inhabitants are famous for making bulls.”

  Irishman.—”I am truly glad to hear we have companions in disgrace. Numbers certainly lessen the effect of ridicule as well as of shame: but, after all, the Irish idiom is peculiarly unfortunate, for it leads perpetually to blunder.”