SECOND ERA
From no man's life, perhaps, is hope more rigidly excluded than fromthat of the Irish peasant of a poor district. The shipwrecked marinerupon his raft, the convict in his cell, the lingering sufferer on a sickhed, may hope; but he must not.
Daily labour, barely sufficient to produce the commonest necessaries oflife, points to no period of rest or repose; year succeeds year in thesame dull routine of toil and privation; nor can he look around him andsee one who has risen from that life of misery, to a position of evencomparative comfort.
The whole study of his existence, the whole philosophy of his life, is,how to endure; to struggle on under poverty and sickness; in seasons offamine, in times of national calamity, to hoard up the little pittancefor his landlord and the payment for his Priest; and he has nothingmore to seek for. Were it our object here, it would not be difficultto pursue this theme further, and examine, if much of the imputedslothfulness and indolence of the people was not in reality due to thatvery hopelessness. How little energy would be left to life, if you tookaway its ambitions; how few would enter upon the race, if there were nogoal before them! Our present aim, however, is rather with the fortunesof those we have so lately left. To these poor men, now, a new existenceopened. Not the sun of spring could more suddenly illumine the landscapewhere winter so late had thrown its shadows, than did prosperity fallbrightly on their hearts, endowing life with pleasures and enjoyments,of which they had not dared to dream before.
In preferring this mountain-tract to some rich lowland farm, theywere rather guided by that spirit of attachment to the home of theirfathers--so characteristic a trait in the Irish peasant--than by thepromptings of self-interest. The mountain was indeed a wild and bleakexpanse, scarce affording herbage for a few sheep and goats; the callowsat its foot, deeply flooded in winter, and even by the rains of autumn,made tillage precarious and uncertain; yet the fact that these wererent-free, that of its labour and its fruits all was now their own,inspired hope and sweetened toil. They no longer felt the drearymonotony of daily exertion, by which hour was linked to hour, and yearto year, in one unbroken succession;--no; they now could look forward,they could lift up their hearts and strain their eyes to a future, wherehonest industry had laid up its store for the decline of life; theycould already fancy the enjoyments of the summer season, when theyshould look down upon their own crops and herds, or think of the winternights, and the howling of the storm without, reminding them of theblessings of a home.
How little to the mind teeming with its bright and ambitious aspiringswould seem the history of their humble hopes! how insignificant and hownarrow might appear the little plans and plots they laid for that newroad in life, in which they were now to travel! The great man mightscoff at these, the moralist might frown at their worldliness; but thereis nothing sordid or mean in the spirit of manly independence; and theywho know the Irish people, will never accuse them of receiving worldlybenefits with any forgetfulness of their true and only source. And nowto our story.
The little cabin upon the mountain was speedily added to, and fashionedinto a comfortable-looking farmhouse of the humbler class. Both fatherand son would willingly have left it as it was; but the landlord'swish had laid a command upon them, and they felt it would have been amisapplication of his bounty, had they not done as he had desired. Soclosely, indeed, did they adhere to his injunctions, that a little roomwas added specially for his use and accommodation, whenever he cameon that promised excursion he hinted at. Every detail of this littlechamber interested them deeply; and many a night, as they sat over theirfire, did they eagerly discuss the habits and tastes of the "quality,"anxious to be wanting in nothing which should make it suitable for onelike him.
Sufficient money remained above all this expenditure to purchase somesheep, and even a cow; and already their changed fortunes had excitedthe interest and curiosity of the little world in which they lived.
There is one blessing, and it is a great one, attendant on humble life.The amelioration of condition requires not that a man should leave thefriends and companions he has so long sojourned with, and seek, in anew order, others to supply their place; the spirit of class doesnot descend to him, or rather, he is far above it; his altered statesuggests comparatively few enjoyments or comforts in which his oldassociates cannot participate; and thus the Connors' cabin was eachSunday thronged by the country people, who came to see with their owneyes, and hear with their own ears, the wonderful good fortune thatbefell them.
Had the landlord been an angel of light, the blessings invoked uponhim could not have been more frequent or fervent; each measured themunificence of the act by his own short standard of worldly possessions;and individual murmurings for real or fancied wrongs were hushed in thepresence of one such deed of benevolence.
This is no exaggerated picture. Such was peasant-gratitude once; andsuch, O landlords of Ireland! it might still have been, if you had notdeserted the people. The meanest of your favours, the poorest showof your good-feeling, were acts of grace for which nothing was deemedrequital. Your presence in the poor man's cabin--your kind word to himupon the highway--your aid in sickness--your counsel in trouble, wereties which bound him more closely to your interest, and made him moresurely yours, than all the parchments of your attorney, or all thepapers of your agent. He knew you then as something more than therecipient of his earnings. That was a time, when neither the hirelingpatriot nor the calumnious press could sow discord between you. If it beotherwise now, ask yourselves, are you all blameless? Did you everhope that affection could be transmitted through your agent, like theproceeds of your property? Did you expect that the attachments of apeople were to reach you by the post? Or was it not natural, that, intheir desertion by you, they should seek succour elsewhere? that intheir difficulties and their trials they should turn to any who mightfeel or feign compassion for them?
Nor is it wonderful that, amid the benefits thus bestowed, they shouldimbibe principles and opinions fatally in contrast with interests likeyours.
There were few on whom good fortune could have fallen, without excitingmore envious and jealous feelings on the part of others, than onthe Connors. The rugged independent character of the father--the gaylight-hearted nature of the son, had given them few enemies and manyfriends. The whole neighbourhood flocked about them to offer their goodwishes and congratulations on their bettered condition, and withan honesty of purpose and a sincerity that might have shamed a moreelevated sphere. The Joyces alone shewed no participation in thissentiment, or rather, that small fraction of them more immediatelylinked with Phil Joyce. At first, they affected to sneer at the storiesof the Connors' good fortune; and when denial became absurd, theyhalf-hinted that it was a new custom in Ireland for men "to fight formoney." These mocking speeches were not slow to reach the ears of theold man and his son; and many thought that the next fair-day would bringwith it a heavy retribution for the calamities of the last. In this,however, they were mistaken. Neither Owen nor his father appeared thatday; the mustering of their faction was strong and powerful, but they,whose wrongs were the cause of the gathering, never came forward to headthem.
This was an indignity not to be passed over in silence; and the murmurs,at first low and subdued, grew louder and louder, until denunciationsheavy and deep fell upon the two who "wouldn't come out and rightthemselves like men." The faction, discomfited and angered, soon brokeup; and returning homeward in their several directions, they left thefield to the enemy without even a blow. On the succeeding day, when theobservances of religion had taken place of the riotous and disorderlyproceedings of the fair, it was not customary for the younger men toremain. The frequenters of the place were mostly women; the few of theother sex were either old and feeble men, or such objects of compassionas traded on the pious feelings of the votaries so opportunely evoked.It was with great difficulty the worthy Priest of the parish hadsucceeded in dividing the secular from the holy customs of the time,and thus allowing the pilgrims, as all were called on that day, anunin
terrupted period for their devotions. He was firm and resolute,however, in his purpose, and spared no pains to effect it: menacingthis one--persuading that; suiting the measure of his arguments to thecomprehension of each, he either cajoled or coerced, as the circumstancemight warrant. His first care was to remove all the temptations todissipation and excess; and for this purpose, he banished every showand exhibition, and every tent where gambling and drinking wentforward;--his next, a more difficult task, was the exclusion of allthose doubtful characters, who, in every walk of life, are suggestive ofeven more vice than they embody in themselves. These, however, abandonedthe place, of their own accord, so soon as they discovered how few werethe inducements to remain; until at length, by a tacit understanding, itseemed arranged, that the day of penance and mortification should sufferneither molestation nor interruption from those indisposed to partakeof its benefits. So rigid was the Priest in exacting compliance in
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