IRISH BEGGARS.
Reading edition
“Souhaiter les bonnes fêtes” was thought provincial and old fashioned, even in the time of Louis the Fourteenth: in Ireland the custom is as fresh as ever. “Many happy Christmas’s, Easters, and Patrick’s days,” is the wish of the lower orders, and particularly of the mendicity of Dublin. The Irish beggars are perpetual calendars of days appointed by the church to be kept holy. The resources of their eloquence are indeed infinite, and their keen sense of the influence of pathos and humour on the feelings, (beyond the power of words or even facts to express,) is among the many proofs of the shrewdness and innate perceptions of the people, even in the very lowest state of human degradation for what, on the scale of human wretchedness and prostration, is so low as the Irish beggar!
A book might be written on the mendicity of Dublin; which, like the history of the country, would be at once tragical and farcical. The prevalence of a religion which makes charity (uncalculated charity, the most mistaken and frequently the most selfish virtue,) a leading dogma, combines with the poverty of the people, to render beggary an order, almost as much tolerated and respected in Ireland as in India. Every quarter, and every street of the capital, had, some twenty years back, its established and privileged female beggar; who, known to the great, and maintained by their servants (for services given), was permitted to exercise the immunity of the court fools of old, and to address their superiors on the occasions of their ingress and egress, with a sort of servile familiarity, often seasoned by humour or tinctured by sarcasm. Generally half mad, and always more than half drunk, their folly or their inebriety was deemed an excuse for their impertinence. Lady M—n—rs, descending the steps of her house to get into her carriage, was addressed by a well known beggar of her neighbourhood in the usual tone of supplication.
“Go away,” said her ladyship, “I will give you nothing.”
“Och! then long life to your ladyship; and it’s often you gave us that, God bless you!” was the reply, in the same tone of imploring misery, as the charity was asked.
The beggar, who frequents Kildare-street, loitering about the portico of its club house, at two or three in the morning, observed the Rev. Mr. —— reel forth, and, before she could lend him her assistance, find his level in the kennel. In that state herself, in which “ladies wish to be who love their” glass, and unable to extricate the reverend gentleman, who—
“All inspired lay beside a sink, And to mere mortals seemed a priest in drink,”
she sat herself in the mud beside him, and began to “keen” over him thus:
“Jemmy ——, Jemmy ——; there you lie, machrée, this blessed morning in the gutter, an honour to your cloth and calling; and where are yez all, now, that has’nt left the likes of yez behind, only the Reverend Jemmy in the gutter here. God be wid yez, Denis Bowes! and Charley Ormesby! and rest your souls! for it’s little the likes of you, now, we’ll see again!” Thus sung the modern Bragela!
“The mighty are dispersed at Temora! there is none in Cormac’s hall. Bragela will not hope for your return. She has the arms of him who is no more.”
This sort of apostrophe to old friendships or connexions, is a very common art in the eloquence of Irish mendicity: to awaken your feelings, to seize on your imagination by a sudden reference to some friend, once the daily visitant of your house, or known partizan of your opinions, is a mode of influence frequently resorted to. It was so the other day in my own instance, and by the very Bragela of the Rev. Jemmy.
“Ye have nothing for me the day, my lady? Well, sure you won’t be so, plaze God; and God be with poor Counsellor B——.[25] He took the could (cold) out of my heart and gave me charity on the steps of this very door: and its little the likes of him will ever darken your threshold, lady dear, again, anyhow—rest his sowl! Well, success to Hamilton Rowan, and Counsellor Shiel. Shure there’s life in a muscle, and luck before us yet.—Hurrah for ould Ireland!”
Old friends gone for ever! with Shiel and Hamilton Rowan and ould Ireland! These were well worth the trifle they extorted: and, thus invoked, patriotism “gave, ere charity began!”