Part 2

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_ The notions which the peasantry entertain of a priest's learning are as extravagant as they are amusing, and such, indeed, as would be too much for the pedantic vanity inseparable from a half-educated man to disclaim. The people are sufficiently reasonable, however, to admit gradations in the extent of knowledge acquired by their pastors; but some of the figures and illustrations which they use in estimating their comparative merits are highly ludicrous. I remember a young man, who, at the age of twenty-two, set about preparing himself for the church. He lived in the bosom of a mountain, whose rugged breast he cultivated with a strength proportioned to the difficulty of subduing it. He was a powerful young fellow, quiet and inoffensive in his manners, and possessed of great natural talents. It was upon a Monday morning, in the month of June, that the school-room door opened a foot and a half wider than usual, and a huge, colossal figure stalked in, with a kind of bashful laugh upon his countenance, as if conscious of the disproportion betwixt his immense size and that of the other schoolboys. His figure, without a syllable of exaggeration, was precisely such as I am about to describe. His height six feet, his shoulders of an enormous breadth, his head red as fire; his body-coat made after the manner of his grandfather's--the skirts of it being near his heels--and the buttons behind little less than eighteen inches asunder. The pockets were cut so low, that when he stretched his arm to its full length, his fingers could not get further than the flaps; the breast of it was about nine inches longer than was necessary, so that when he buttoned it, he appeared all body. He wore no cravat, nor was his shirt-collar either pinned or buttoned, but lay open as if to disclose an immense neck and chest scorched by the sun into a rich and healthy scarlet. His chin was covered with a sole of red-dry bristles, that appeared to have been clipped about a fortnight before; and as he wore neither shoe nor stocking, he exhibited a pair of legs to which Rob Roy's were drumsticks. They gave proof of powerful strength, and the thick fell of bristly hair with which they were covered argued an amazing hardihood of constitution and tremendous physical energy.

"Sure, Masther, I'm comin' to school to you!" were the first words he uttered.

Now there ran beneath the master's solemnity of manner a broad but shallow under-current of humor, which agreed but poorly with his pompous display of learning. On this occasion his struggle to retain the grave and overcome the ludicrous was unavailing. The startling fact thus uncouthly announced by so grotesque a candidate for classical knowledge occasioned him to receive the intelligence with more mirth than was consistent with good breeding. His pupils, too, who were hitherto afraid to laugh aloud, on observing his countenance dilate into an expression of laughter which he could not conceal, made the roof of the house ring with their mirth.

"Silence, gintlemen," said he; "legite, perlegite, et relegite--study, gintlemen, study--pluck the tree of knowledge, I say, while the fruit is in season. Denny O'Shaughnessy, what are you facetious for? Quid rides, Dionysi And so, Pether--is Pettier your pronomen--quo nomine gowdes? Silence, boys!--perhaps he was at Latin before, and we'll try him--quo nomine gowdes, Pethre? "

A stare of awkward perplexity was the only reply he could get from the colossus he addressed.

"And so you're fished up from the Streights (* Alluding to the Colossus of Rhodes) at last, Pether?"

"Sir, my name's not Pether. My father's name is Paddy Doorish, but my own is Franky. I was born in Lisnagh; but we lived double as long as I can mind in the Mountain Bar."

"And, Franky, what put Latin into your head?"

"There was no Latin put into my head; I'm comin' to you for that."

"And, you graceful sprig of juvenility, have you the conscience to think that I'd undhertake to fill what you carry on your showlders on the same terms that I'd take for replenishing the head of a rasonable youth? Would you be so unjust in all the principles of correct erudition as to expect that, my worthy Man-mountain?"

"I don't expect it," said Frank; "all that's in your head wouldn't fill the corner of mine, if you go accordin' to size; but I'll pay you for tachin' me as much as you know yourself, an' the more I larn the less pains you'll have wid me."

Franky, however, made an amazing progress--so very rapid, indeed, that in about three years from that day he found himself in Maynooth, and in three years more was an active curate, to whom that very teacher appeared as slavishly submissive as if he had never ridiculed his vulgarity or ungainly dimensions. Poor Frank, however, in consequence of the rapid progress he made, and of the very short interval which elapsed from the period of his commencing Latin until that of his ordination, was assigned by the people the lowest grade in learning. The term used to designate the rank which they supposed him to hold, was both humorous and expressive.

"Franky," they would say, "is no finished priest in the larnin'; he's but a scowdher."

Now a scowdher is an oaten cake laid upon a pair of tongs placed over the greeshaugh, or embers, that are spread out for the purpose of baking it. In a few minutes the side first laid down is scorched: it is then turned, and the other side is also scorched; so that it has the appearance of being baked, though it is actually quite raw within. It is a homely, but an exceedingly apt illustration, when applied to such men as Frank.

"Poor Frank," they would observe, "is but a scowdher--the sign of the tongs--No. 11, is upon him; so that it is asy known he never was laid to the muddha arran,"*--that is to say, properly baked--or duly and thoroughly educated.

* The Muddha Arran is literally "the bread stick," a term in opposition to the scowdher. It is a forked stick with three legs, that stands opposite the fire, and supports the cake, which is placed on the edge until it is gradually baked. The Scowdher is, for the most part, made in cases of hurry.

Denis, however, to resume more directly the thread of our narrative, on finding himself mounted, took an inveterate prejudice against walking. There was something, he thought, far more dignified in riding than in pacing slowly upon the earth, like a common man who had not the justification of Latin and Greek for becoming an equestrian. Besides this accomplishment, there were also many other habits to be broken off, and more genteel ones to be adopted in their place. These were all suggested by his rising pride; and, in sooth, they smacked strongly of that adroitness with which the Irish priest, and every priest, contrives to accomplish the purpose of feeding well through the ostensible medium of a different motive.

He accordingly took his father aside one morning, after he had eaten a more meagre breakfast that usual, and, after licking his lips, addressed him in these words:--

"I think, father, that upon considerating the consequence to which I am now entitled, and the degree of respectability which, in my own person--in propria persona--I communicate to the vulgarians with whom I am connected--I call them vulgarians from no derogatory motive; but you will concede yourself, that they are ignorant of the larned languages, an' consequently, though dacent enough, still, in reference to Latin and Greek, but vulgarians. Well! Quid multis? --I say, that taking all these things into speculation, looking at them--veluti in speculum--it is neither dacent nor becoming that I should ate in the manner I have done, as vulgarly as themselves--that I should ate, I say, any longer, without knife and fork. Neither, I announce, shall I in future drink my milk any longer, as I have with all humility done hitherto, out of a noggin; nor continue to disrobe, my potatoes any longer without a becoming instrument. I must also have better viands to consume. You are not to be ininformed that I am in that situation of life, in which, from my education and other accomplishments, I must be estimated as duly qualified to ate beef and mutton instead of bacon, an' to have my tay breakfast instead of stirabout, which, in polite society, is designated porridge. You know yourself, and must acknowledge, that I'm soon likely to confer distinction and preeminence upon the poor illiterate, but honest creatures, with whom I am associated in the bonds of blood-relationship. If I were a dunce, or a booby, or a leather head, the case might be different; but you yourself are well acquainted with my talents of logic and conthroversy; an' I have sound rasons and good authority, which I could quote, if necessary, for proving that nothing increases the weight of the brain, and accelerates to gravity and solidity more than good feeding. Pay attention, therefore, to my words, for I expect that they will be duly observed:--buy me a knife and fork; and when I get them, it's not to lay them past to rust, you consave. The beef and mutton must follow; and in future I'm resolved to have my tay breakfast. There are geese, and turkeys, and pullets enough about the yard, and I am bent on accomplishing myself in the art of carving them. I'm not the man now to be placed among the other riff-raff' of the family over a basket of potatoes, wid a black clerical coat upon me, and a noggin of milk under my arm! I tell you the system must be changed: the schoolmaster is abroad, and I'll tolerate such vulgarity no longer. Now saddle the horse till I ride across the bog to Pether Rafferty's Station, where I'm to sarve mass; plase heaven, I'll soon be able to say one myself, and give you all a lift in spirituals--ehem!"

"Throth, Dinny, I b'lieve you're right, avick; and----"

"Vick me no longer, father--that's another thing I forgot. It's full time that I should be sirred; and if my own relations won't call me Sir instead of Dinny, it's hardly to be expected that strangers will do it. I wish to goodness you had never stigmatized me wid so vulgar an epithet as Dinny. The proper word is Dionysius; and, in future, I'll expect to be called Misther Dionysius."

"Sure, I or your mother needn't be sirrin' you, Dinny?"

"I haven't made up my mind as to whether I'll demand that proof of my respectability from you and my mother, or not; but on this I'm immovable, that instead of Dinny, you must, as I said, designate me Dionysius."

"Well, well, avourneen, I suppose only it's right you wouldn't be axin' us; but I'm sure your poor mother will never be able to get her tongue about Dionnisis, it's so long and larned a word."

"It is a larned word, no doubt; but she must persevere until she's able to masther it. I wouldn't for three tenpennies that the priest would hear one of you call me Dinny; it would degradate me very much in his estimation. At all events, if my mother cannot manage the orthography of Dionysius, let it be Denis, or anything but that signature of vulgarity, Dinny. Now, father, you won't neglect to revale what I've ordered to the family?"

"No, indeed, I will not, avick--I mane--Dionnisis, avourneen--I'll tell them everything as you ordhered; but as to Dionnisis, I'm cock sure that poor Mave will never be able to get her ould tongue about so newfangled a piece of larnin' as that is. Well, well, this knowledge bates the world!"

When the horse was saddled, and Dionysius on his way with all due pomp to the Station, old Denis broke the matter to his wife.

"Mave, achora," said,he, "I have sthrange news to tell you: sure Dionnisis is goin' to make himself a gintleman."

"Sure what?"

"Dionnisis, our son Dionnisis, is goin' to make himself a gintleman; he'll ate no longer widout a knife and fork."

"Saints about us!" exclaimed Mave, rising and looking with alarm into her husband's face--"saints about us, Denis, what is it ails you? Sure there would be nothin' wrong wid you about the head, Denis? or maybe it's a touch of a faver you've got, out riddling that corn bare-headed, yistherday? I remimber the time my Aunt Bridget tuck the scarlet faver, she begun to rave and spake foolish in the same way."

"Why, woman, if your Aunt Bridget had a faver made up of all the colors in the rainbow, I tell you I'm spakin' sinse! Our son Dionnisis proved himself a gintleman out in the garden wid me about an hour ago."

"I suppose so, Denis," she replied, humoring' him, for she was still doubly convinced that he labored under some incipient malady, if not under actual insanity; "an' what son is this, Dinny? I've never heard of him before."

"Our son Denis, woman alive! You must know he's not to be called Dinny or Dinis any more, but Dionnisis; he's to begin atin' wid a knife an' fork to-morrow; we must get him beef and mutton, and a tay breakfast. He say's it's not fair play in any one that's so deep read in the larnin' as he is, to ate like a vulgarian, or to peel his phaties wid his fingers, an' him knows so much Latin an' Greek; an' my sowl to happiness but he'll stick to the gintlemanly way of livin', so far as the beef, an' mutton, and tay is consamed."

"He will! An', Dinis O'Shaughnessy, who has a betther right to turn gintleman, nor the gorsoon that studied for that! Isn't it proud you ought to be that he has the spirit to think of sich things?"

"I'll engage, Mave, on that point you'll find him spirited enough; for my part, I don't begrudge him what he wants; but I heard the people say, that no man's a gintleman who's not College-bred; and you know he's not that yet."

"You forget that he has gentle blood in his veins, Denis. There was a day when my family, the Magennises, held their heads up; and Kolumkill says that the same time is to come back agin to all the ould families. Who knows if it's altogether from himself he's takin' to the beef an' mutton, but from prophecy; he knows what he's about, I'll warrant him. For our part, it's not right for us to cross him in it; it's for the good of the church, no doubt, an' we might lose more by a blast upon the corn or the cattle, than he'd ate the other way. That's my dhrame out that I had last night about him. I thought we were all gother somewhere that I can't rightly remimber; but anyhow there was a great sight of people in it, an' high doin's goin' an in the atin' way. I looked about me, an' seen ever so many priests dressed all like the Protestant clargy; our Dinis was at the head of them, wid a three-cocked hat, an' a wig upon him; he was cuttin' up beef an' mutton at the rate of a weddin', an' dhrinkin' wine in metherfuls."

"'Musha, Dinis,' says myself, 'what's all this for?'

"'Why,' says he, 'it's all for the good of the church an' the faithful. I'm now Archbishop of the county,' says he; 'the Protestants are all banished, an' we are in their place.'

"The sorra one o' myself all this time but thought he was a priest still; so says I, 'Dinny, you're a wantin' to anoint Paddy Diarmud, who's given over, an' if you don't I make haste, you won't overtake him?'

"'He must wait then till mornin',' says Dinny; 'or if he chooses to die against my will, an' the will o' the church, let him take the quensequences. Were wealthy now.'

"I was so much frightened at the kind of voice that he spoke to me in, that I awoke; an' sure enough, the first thing I heard was the fizzin' o' bacon on the pan. I wondered! who could be up so early, an' puttin' my head through the door, there was Dinny busy at it, wid an ould knife in one hand, an' an iron skiver in the other imitatin' a fork.

"'What are you doin' so early, Dinny?' says I.

"'I'm practisin',' says he.

"'What for?' says I.

"'Oh, I'm practisin',' says he, back again, 'go to bed; I'm practisin' for the church, an' the Station that's to be in Pether Rafferty's to-day.'

"Now, Dinny, between you an' me, that dhrame didn't come for nothin'. So give the gorsoon his way, an' if he chooses to be a gintleman, why let him; he'll be the more honor to thim that reared him."

"Thrue for you, indeed,--Mave; he always had a high spirit ever since he was intinded for the robes, and would have his own way and will in whatever he took into his head, right or wrong, as cleverly as if he had the authority for it."

"An' so he ought, seein' he wasn't to be slavin' at the spade, like the rest o' the family. The ways o' them that have great larnin' as he has, isn't like other people's ways--they must be humored, and have their own will, otherwise what 'ud they be betther than their neighbors?"

The other arrangements laid down by Denis, touching his determination not to be addressed so familiarly by his brothers and sisters, were next discussed in this conversation, and, of course, the same prejudice in his favor was manifested by his indulgent parents. The whole code of his injunctions was subsequently disclosed to the family in all its extent and rigor. Some of them heard it with surprise, and other with that kind of dogged indignation evinced by those who are in some degree prepared for the nature of the communication about to be laid before them. Altogether, the circumstances in which it placed them were peculiar and embarrassing. The Irish peasant can seldom bear to have the tenderness of domestic affection tampered with, whether from pride, caprice, or any other motive not related to his prejudices. In this instance the strongest feelings of the O'Shaughnessys were brunted, as it were, in hostile array against each other; and although the moral force on each side was nearly equal, still the painful revulsion produced by Denis's pride, as undervaluing their affection, and substituting the cold forms of artificial life for the warmth of honest hearts like theirs, was, in the first burst of natural fervor, strongly, and somewhat indignantly expressed.

Denis had been their pride, the privileged person among them--the individual whose talents were to throw lustre upon a nameless and unknown family; the future priest--the embryo preacher of eminence--the resistless controversialist--the holy father confessor--and, perhaps, for with that vivacity of imagination peculiar to the Irish, they could scarcely limit his exaltation--perhaps the bishop of a whole diocese. Had not the Lord Primate himself been the son of as humble a man? "And who knows," said his youngest and fairest sister, who of all the family was most devoted to him, "but Dinny might yet be a primate?" And as she spoke, the tear of affection, pride, and enthusiasm glistened in her eye. Denis, therefore, had been much, even in his youth, to their simple hearts, and far more to their hopes and expectations, than he was in all the pride of his petty polemics; but when he, before whose merits, both real and imaginary, every heart among them bowed as before the shrine of a tutelar saint, turned round, ere the destined eminence he aimed at was half attained, and laid upon their fervent affection the icy chain of pride and worldly etiquette--the act was felt keenly and unexpectedly as the acute spasm of some sudden malady. The father and mother, however, both, defended him with great warmth; and by placing his motives in that point of view which agreed best with their children's prejudices, they eventually succeeded in reconciling his brothers and sisters in some degree to the necessity of adopting the phraseology he proposed--that they might treat him with suitable respect in the eye of the world.

"It's proud of him we ought to be," said his father, "and delighted that he has sich a risin' spirit; an' sure the more respect is paid to him the greater credit he will be to ourselves."

"But, sure he has no right," said his eldest brother, "to be settin' up for a gentleman till he's priested. I'm willin' enough to sir him, only that it cuts me more than I'll say, to think that I must be callin' the boy that I'd spill the dhrop of my blood for, afther I the manner of a sthranger; and besides," he added, "I'm not clear but the neighbors will be passin' remarks upon us, as they did when you and he used to be arguin'."

"I'd like to see them that 'ud turn it into a joke," said his father; "I would let them know that Dinis O'Shaughnessy's dog is neither to be made or meddled wid in a disrespectful manner, let alone his son. We are not widout friends and connections that 'ud take our quarrel upon them in his defince, if there was a needcessity for it; but there will not, for didn't my heart lep the other day to my throat wid delight, when I saw Larry Neil put his hand to his hat to him, comin' up the Esker upon the mare; and may I never do an ill turn, if he didn't answer the bow to Larry, as if he was the priest of the parish already. It's the wondher of the world how he picks up a jinteel thing any how, an' ever did, since he was the hoith o' that."

"Why," said the mother, "what a norration yez rise about thratin' the boy as every one like him ought to be thrated. Wait till ye see him a parish priest, and then yell be comin' round him to get your daughters to keep house for him, and your sons edicated and made priests of; but now that the child takes a ginteel relish for beef and mutton, and wants to be respected, ye are mane an' low spirited enough to grumble about it."

"No mother," said his youngest sister, bursting into tears, "I'd beg it for him, sooner nor he should want; but I can't bear to be callin' my brother Dinny--sir--like a stranger. It looks as if I didn't love him, or as if he was forgettin' us, or carin' less about us nor he used to do."

This, in fact, was the root and ground of the opposition which Denis's plan received at the hands of his relations; it repressed the cordial and affectionate intercourse which had hitherto subsisted between them; but the pride of life, and, what is more, the pride of an office which ought always to be associated with humility, had got into his heart; the vanity of learning, too, thin and shallow though it was, inflated him; and the effect of both was a gradual induration of feeling--an habitual sense of his own importance, and a notion of supreme contempt for all who were more ignorant than himself.

After the first impression of pain and mortification had passed away from the minds of his brothers and sisters, it was, however, unanimously admitted that he was right; and ere long, no other feeling than one of good-humor, mingled with drollery, could be perceived among them. They were clearly convinced, that he claimed no more from strangers than was due to him; but they certainly were not prepared to hear that he had brought the exactions of personal respect so completely and unexpectedly home to themselves as he had done. The thing, too, along with being unreasonable, was awkward and embarrassing in the extreme; for there is a kind of feeling among brothers and sisters, which, though it cannot be described, is very trying to their delicacy and shamefacedness under circumstances of a similar nature. In humble life you will see a married woman who cannot call her husband after his Christian name; or a husband, who, from some extraordinary restraint, cannot address his wife, except in that distant manner which the principle I allude to dictates, and habit confirms.

Denis, however, had overcome this modesty, and felt not a whit too shamefaced to arrogate to his own learning and character the most unhesitating manifestation of their deference and respect, and they soon scrupled not to pay it. _

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