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mother, was so passionately attached to her infant that no force or entreaties could separate her from it even for a moment. She was totally ignorant of the person of her betrayer, but from the hour of the birth of her child, a marked dread and abhorrence of the whole male race was visible in her conduct. She would wander into the fields, and cull wild flowers, with which she used to cover the child, and then nearly devour it with kisses, talk to it, press it to her heart, and weep over it, when the cold or rain incommoded it. Her gentleness in touching it, modulating her voice almost to a whisper, when addressing it, and her agony when it cried, proved that all the maternal feelings existed in the greatest force in the heart of this poor idiot. The infant lived only a few months, and the mother for many days after its death believed that it slept, nor could the putrid corpse be removed from her breast but by force. Her frantic cries were appalling. She refused food or consolation, and lingered a fortnight, still repeating "My baby, my baby!" when death relieved her from a life no longer supportable. Hear this, ye mothers, who callously consign your offspring to hirelings, and say whether reason and civilization increase or weaken the force of maternal affection.

And now, in illustration of the beautiful lines on Irish character, by Ireland's best poet-I need not quote his name, and I grieve to say that I forget the verses-let us, "like the bird that sings in the sunshine, shaking the cold shower from its wings," turn from this sad strain of recollection into one of a less painful kind.

The housekeeper of the parish priest had a son, who was one of these debatable examples of semi-rationality. His head never had room for more than one idea at a time; nor could his memory well retain more than one sentence, and that a short one, and he found even that of very difficult utterance. He was, nevertheless, frequently employed by his mother to go on errands. She was one day making hog's puddings; and wanting pepper and allspice to season the ingredients, she desired her son to go to the grocer's, in the neighbouring village, and bring her back a supply of both. "Be sure you don't forget," said she; and not being skilled in calligraphy, she had no means left for security but to make him repeat the words over and over again, and to desire him to continue to do so unceasingly until he arrived at the grocer's. Poor Thady accordingly set off, at a brisk trot, repeating to himself, as he went along, "pepper and allspice-pepper and allspice-pepper and allspice," until, having overlooked a stone which lay in his path, he tripped against it, lost his equilibrium, and measured his length on the ground. He arose in a minute; but the shock had been enough to dislodge the recollection of his commission. Scratching his head, he tried to recall the words; but there was no clue to the dark and dismal labyrinth within. Every thing there was at random: but a shake of the mental kaleidoscope brought a new formation to life, and "pitch and rosin " were the two words that suggested themselves. These he continued to repeat as industriously as he had done the others, until he entered the grocer's shop, where he muttered, by way of explanation, "Mammyhog's pudding-pitch and rosin." The grocer, with marvellous perception for matter-of-fact, and knowing the freaks of poor Thady's fancy, guessed what he wanted, and sent back the articles at haphazard. In a short time after, the priest's shepherd was about to mark his fleecy flock, and he desired Thady to go to the same shop, in search of pitch and

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rosin for the operation. And sure enough Thady trotted off, repeating the two words, until, having met a person who detained him a moment on the road in conversation, he, of course, forgot them; and, by the occult trickeries of idiot association, he now began repeating pepper and allspice-pepper and allspice," which he demanded at the shop, in conjunction with some imperfect mention of the priest's sheep. And here again his mistake was rectified by the intelligent shopman, who sent back the requisite materials; but so completely was the confusion of hogs and sheep established in poor Thady's cranium, that from that day he could never comprehend the distinction between black puddings and mutton chops.

An idea prevails in Ireland that the real swinish multitude, like many of their too-resembling biped brethren, by analogy so called, are much benefited by immersion in the sea; and when "the salt water," as it is poetically called in our country, cannot be conveniently reached, the river is held to be "convanient." The pigs of the priest aforesaid were one day driven forth by the housekeeper, faithfully assisted by Thady, and, albeit unwilling to encounter the liquid element, were, nolentes volentes, driven into the gently-flowing Barrow. But one of the most rotund and sleek was selected by Madame Mère as a fit sacrifice to her cupidity, and she ordered Thady to keep its head under water, until suffocation ensued, telling him it was to make the pig sleep. In a short time after, Thady entered a cottage by the river's bank, and the good wife, having to prepare her husband's dinner, requested Thady to rock the cradle of her crying child. He obeyed her orders for some time, but finding the urchin inconveniently insomnolent, he ran to the mother, and, by a mixture of words and signs, contrived to tell her that he knew of a certain mode of making it quiet, which was to dip it in the river, and hold its head under water; und, added he, with a knowing wink, "Salt it and eat it-salt it and eat it-like mammy and me-mammy and me with the priest's pig-with the priest's pig." This led to a discovery of the trick and the theft practised by the housekeeper, who was in consequence discharged from the Priory, and who, ever after, declared "there was no one so 'cute as a fool.".

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The frequent recurrence of such horrors as I alluded to in the case of Larry Henessey, made country residences, in the part of Leinster where the rebellion raged, quite untenable, except as literal garrisons. The district became desolate; smoking walls and blazing haggards were almost the only evidence of the late hospitable and happy homes from which many families were driven. Nearly the whole of the gentry, great and small, fled to the towns. We, like the rest, took refuge in one of those crowded and comfortless depositaries of "suffering loyalty." But, however irksome the removal might be to the seniors of families, the younger branches found ample consolation in the variety afforded by the change. The eternal parades, patrols, and alarms of regulars, militia, and yeomanry; the buzz, the bustle, and the idleness were ample recompense to children for privations so atoned for.

The first thing that struck my attention in our place of refuge and future residence, was the amazing disproportion of the evident fools to the questionable quantity of rational beings, composing the population. The symptoms of the first were positive; the latter were but problematical; but I forget exactly the conclusion drawn on that occasion by my childish logic. I was amazingly pleased with those town-fools-they

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were such funny fellows. There was little of the utter "innocency about them which was so drearily amusing in unfortunate Larry Henessey and his like. These beings had, besides the vacant air common to the whole genus, a peculiar tinge of quaint cunning, more or less displayed, which marked them of a species quite distinct. They all appeared to have an object in view, and that appeared to be gain. made an actual study of several of those individuals for several years, without being conscious that I was studying, and little thinking it was but an indication of my favourite natural pursuit--puzzling myself with that insolvable enigma, the human mind.

The fools of a country town are widely different from the pastoral idiots of the mere champaign. Even the domestic omadthauns of " the hall," or " the park," or "the lodge," formerly spoken of, had a singleness of character, if we may call it so, that marked them to be truly genuine unsophisticated asses. But the very instinct which leads a fool to live in a town proves him to be tainted with the corruption of good sense; not one of the “innocents" could breathe in the atmosphere of a city. Who ever saw a genuine fool within the bills of mortality? Civilization is the very Herod of our days. There was a queer look, a half-open leer, a glance of business, about all the creatures I now treat of, which seemed to say, as plainly as the exquisite animal of "The Twelfth Night," "Well, God gives them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools, let them use their talents!" And when their object was gained, when the piece of money fell into the ready palm, and they turned away with a grin, or a stare, or a scowl, of downright covetousness, every feature seemed to express, "Marry, Sir, lullaby to your bounty-till I come again!"

Chief among the crowd of these beings were some half-dozen, who bore the following names and titles:-Brodigan the Pump-borer, Coppernosed Jack, Dancing Denny, Bill Woods, John King, and Paddy Puss.

The first of these was a fellow who had his leg broken, and his skull cracked, in a row with the faction of the Tuomys, when a young man, and who carried lameness and that spurious sort of idiotcy I have endeavoured to describe, far into middle life, at which stage of his existence I first saw him. He was an awful object to look at—squalid, hairy, and wild, with a vacant gaze of desperation, as if the memory of the fight still haunted, like a spectre, the ruins of the mind it had destroyed. He did nothing from morn till night but swagger up and down the middle of the street, throwing his curved leg out as if in defiance, growling and cursing, and brandishing a blackthorn stick over his head with one hand, while with the other he swept up the ragged tail of the loose great-coat which floated round him-his only rational words being, "Five pound for a Tuomy! Tin pound for a Tuomy! Brodigan a boo! Whoop!" Every penny he received was immediately expended in whiskey; bu the great quantity he drank seemed to do him neither good nor harm.

How Copper-nosed Jack acquired his nick-name I really do not know. The particular feature in question was an eagle-beak, and the eyes above it were of a glassy consistency, but they had no need to be transparent, as there was nothing to be seen within them. This was a biped of most extraordinary activity, a harmless fellow, who either had no more lungs than a fish, or as much as would have filled a church organ-for he would set off at full speed for Dublin, of a summer's morning, with a letter that required haste, and, beating the mail to the capital, (thirtyJan.-VOL. XL. NO. CLVII.

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two Irish miles,) bring back the answer the same night. This activity and industry showed nothing of absolute folly to a common observer; but a keen one could see it to be plainly such, when he marked poor Jack's fellow-fools thrive even better than he did, in the ample indulgence of sloth.

Dancing Denny was a mere automaton, who comprehended but one word besides his own name; and if it were not spoken beside it, even that, perhaps, would have been beyond his capacity. "Dance, Dinny!" was all his best friends ever said to him. And no sooner were the words said, than away he went, like a puppet on wires, but less naturally, pattering in the same spot with his splay feet, frowning at you all the while from a bushy pair of white eyebrows, and matted hair, falling thick over his face. His countenance never changed from its lubberly inexpressiveness. He held one hand out for the money. He would dance (as it was called) till he dropped, ever until he felt the coin on his palm. Then, "like Mimosa at the touch of mortality," he shrank into himself, wheeled away, and went off in whatever direction chance pointed to, till some fresh amateur called out "Dance, Dinny!" when he began again, and so worked away from dawn till dusk, nourished on whatever scraps were offered him, and going off to his father and mother, who lived in a cabin by the river's side, and who, drinking whiskey to the whole amount of Denny's receipts, drove him adrift again in the morning, to earn his title to the next night's lodging.

Bill Woods was certainly intended by Nature for a hero. He was a perfect block in point of feeling. All his tastes were military, and he delighted in destruction. He was of a good size, had tolerable features, and would have been good-looking, but for his air of folly. His teeth were brilliantly white; but his most disagreeable peculiarity was an everlasting chuckle and simper, which would have been an absolute grin, had he had understanding enough to enjoy a laugh. He had an undefinable look of feline cruelty-an air of human mousing, if it may be so expressed; was constant in his attendance on all the picketings, floggings, and executions that took place. He always marched at the head of the yeomanry corps, dressed in a tattered military suit, with an old cocked hat, streaming with faded orange ribbons, a huge cavalry sabre in his hand, and the iron scabbard trailing along the pavement beside him. I have been told that wretches whose torture he witnessed have declared that "they could bear the cat-o'-nine-tails better nor Bill Woods's grin ;"—and I can understand the feeling.

But that living libel upon mirth or enjoyment was destined to a scene of more revolting exhibition. With a hideous violation of all decency, which I hope could find no parallel out of Ireland, or even there, except in those degrading days, which, for the honour of human nature, are gone by, Bill Woods, the fool, was actually appointed to the office of hangman, in a neighbouring county town. Public feeling, however, could not stand the outrage of this miserable being performing openly the last offices to the victims of offended law and gross misgovernment; and, in the way usual in Ireland when the executioner needs concealment, Bill Woods was enveloped in a blanket whenever he appeared on the scaffold. Two holes for seeing and one for breathing were cut in this covering; and I can well imagine the horror excited in the dying men, by the sight of those twinkling eyes and that simpering mouth, while his senseless chuckle mixed with their death-prayer, as if some fiend was mowing and chattering, in mockery of their agony.

Paddy Puss was a loathsome excrescence of nature. The wise purposes which gave him birth and allowed him to exist to old age, are far beyond my scrutiny or conjecture. He was aged when I saw him first t; but his thick flaxen hair looked like boyhood. He had no sense to thin, nor no sorrow to blanch it. He was, nevertheless, as miserable in appearance as if he had understood and felt for his degradation. He seemed to have an instinct of filth in him. He preferred wallowing on a dunghill to sleeping on clean straw. If the parish beadle had not forced him to keep a rope well tied round his middle, the bundle of rags that covered him would have many a time walked away. He had a huge head and face, and a perpetual swelling on one side of it. He constantly muttered some unspeakable sounds from his twisted mouth; and shuffled along sideways from house to house, mumbling a demand for alms—an awful monument of human possibilities.

The many instances of that mixture of madness and folly depending on the influence of drink, and to be judged of by the phases of the whisky-bottle, cannot be noticed legitimately here. These natural

offsprings of Irish excess would fill a large volume of detail. How I could increase and multiply these, from the recollections of my own experience! From Brennan, the house-painter and poet, who used to reel about as the draggle-tailed blackguards pursued him, volleying forth with a hoarse laugh, such couplets as

Rin, ye spalpeens! or 'tis Brinnin 'll scather ye,
An larn ye the differ 'twixt 'salt and batthery!

down to Sam Long, the slater, a lineal descendant from one of Cromwell's trumpeters, (most of the intervening ancestors having been hanged,) who roared at times through the streets, in the red-hot fervour of Orangism, "A Papish! a Papish! my hod and trowel for a Papish! Let me teer him an' ait him! an bile him, an brile him! a Papish, that I may swally him, body an' bones !"

I trust, however, that the great measure of national wisdom which has passed, and a rational adaptation of the poor-laws, with the establishment of houses of refuge for the truly desolate, will in time relieve Ireland from such disgusting evidences of bigotry and idiotcy.

Poor John King, whom I have reserved for the last of these sketches, because I think his portrait may form a relief to the others, was the most amiable, and, I may say, the most interesting of fools. He was a young man of middle size, regular features, and dark complexion; and the expression of his countenance was so unequivocally good, that he won one's pity and sympathy at once. The glazed look of timid kindliness, which his face always wore, seemed to have been, as it were, frozen on it by some sudden chill, that had fixed, but could not ruffle the sentiment it had stolen on by surprise. Poor John King's story was a sad and painful one. Many persons used to take a pleasure in leading him on to tell it himself. This used to be done by a regular train of questions put by rule, and answered by rote: and, when Ï call to mind the unmoved listlessness with which he performed his part of the colloquy, I am satisfied there was no wanton sporting with sensibility in putting him on this trial. He repeated his oft-rehearsed task as coldly as a trained witness, pocketed the donation of the curious or the charitable, without another word—and walked away.*

* His story was told, under the title of "The Love Draught," in the "Literary Souvenir" for 1830.

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