The Wild IrishmanCrosland, T. W. H. (Thomas William Hodgson)
History
The Wild Irishman
Crosland, T. W. H. (Thomas William Hodgson)
National characteristics, Irish
is the seventh night you’ve come home in the morning,” observed an Irish
lady to her spouse, “the next time you go out, you’ll stay at home and
open the door for yourself.” The following advertisement is said to have
appeared in a Dublin newspaper: “Whereas John Hall has fraudulently taken
away several articles of wearing apparel, without my knowledge, this is
to inform him that if he does not forthwith return the same his name
shall be made public.” An Irishman who accidentally came across another
Irishman who had failed to meet him after a challenge addressed him in
these words: “Well, sir, I met you this morning and you did not turn up;
however I am determined to meet you to-morrow morning, whether you come
or not.” “Dhrunk!” said a man, speaking of his neighbor, “he was that
dhrunk that he made ten halves of ivry word.” A man who was employed as a
hod-carrier was told that he must always carry up fourteen bricks in his
hod. One morning the supply of bricks ran short, and the man could find
but thirteen to put in his hod. In answer to a loud yell from the street
one of the masons on top of the scaffolding called out: “What do you
want?” “T’row me down wan brick,” bawled Pat, pointing to his hod, “to
make me number good.”
Of course, the great and abiding glory of Ireland in the way of
bull-makers was the never-to-be-forgotten Sir Boyle Roche. This worthy
knight once charged a political opponent with being “an enemy to both
kingdoms who wishes to diminish the brotherly affection of the two
sister countries.” He also said that “a man differs from a bird in not
being able to be in two places at once,” and that “the Irish people were
living from hand to mouth, like the birds of the air.” A petition of
the citizens of Belfast in favor of Catholic emancipation he stigmatized
as “an airy fabric based upon a sandy foundation,” and he expressed his
willingness “to give up, not only a part, but, if necessary, even the
whole of our constitution to preserve the remainder.” In one of his most
famous speeches there occurs the appended passage: “Mr. Speaker, if we
once permitted the villainous French Masons to meddle with the buttresses
and walls of our ancient constitution, they would never stop, nor stay,
sir, until they brought the foundation stones tumbling down about the
ears of the nation. If these Gallican villains should invade us, ’tis on
that table maybe those honorable members might see their own destinies
lying in heaps atop of one another. Here, perhaps, sir, the murderous
crew would break in and cut us to pieces, and throw our bleeding heads
upon that table to stare us in the face.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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