Originally published in Howitt's Journal (William Lovett) vol.1 #17 (24 Apr 1847).
The Irish Priest; or, What for Ireland? London: Longman and Co. 1847.
A beautiful little volume, written in a beautiful spirit. It purports to be the work of a village doctor, who has seen much of the real life of the people in Ireland; or, rather, the autobiography of a priest published by the doctor. We are much mistaken if it be not the production of a lady. We think we feel throughout it the delicacy of a lady's touch—the pure and affectionate spirit of the woman. It is written in a nobly conciliatory spirit, and is a fervent appeal in the history of every-day life to union amongst all classes in Ireland, whether Protestant or Catholic. It presents a picture of the struggles of the Catholie¢ priest with the unnatural position in which he finds himself; and the ordinary events of Irish existence, amid a poor and perishing mass; the hard landlord, who lives but to squeeze the soul out of all around him; the good landlord, who commences in the enthusiasm of his youth a career of improvement, and is murdered in the midst of beneficent deeds in mistake for the tyrant. There is the misery by day, and the attack of the proprietor's hall by night. The noble sentiment of this little volume, and the author's views of what is necessary on the part of the landlords for the regeneration of the country, ma be seen by some extracts from the chapter called "The Labourer's Hope." A young landlord is:—
"There shall be no such estate in Ireland," said he, "as mine. Never a child, however humble, but shall receive the most careful fostering. Perish the baseness that would lay prostrate the soul of man, and leave incult the principles of our common nature! There shall be schools, with every desirable accessory—food for both body and mind; for it would be beutal to expect starving infants to learn. Clothing also to those in need of it, enforcing cleanliness and self-respect by every available means.
"Religious education, so termed, I would leave to the clergy; as to secular culture, it were essential that each child should be intimately acquainted with its mother-tongue; with natural science in all its branches—from the plant in the field to the pebble on the shore—astronomy, botany, mineralogy, natural history, natural philosophy, and designing; also with an insight into the structure of language, and into the constitution of the human mind.
"The meanest, poorest, most abortive essay should be carefully encouraged. Consider, it is the groundwork of an immortal soul. The utmost kindness and firmness should be used, associating toil with pleasure, till these children had been snatched from the bondage of apathy, ignorance, and want of thought, for ever. Competent, well-salaried teachers, male and female, should be appointed from the first; and, as soon as possible, assistants of both sexes, from the most deserving of the pupils.
"Each child should be impressed with the sacred claims of labour, and the incumbency under which he is born to be serviceable to his kind, Half his time would, therefore, be fitly devoted to study, half to industrial occupation. Exclusive of workshops, there should be attached to each school a farm and garden, effectually tilled; for manual dexterity opens fresh resources, and constitutes an important branch of mental development. Occasionally the young people, the teachers presiding, should have a little feast, the preparation of which, along with that of ordinary meals, would initiate the girls into the culinary art, winding up the whole with the graceful and humanizing dance.
"Select vocal music should be sedulously cultivated, while business should open and close with hymns of praise and thankfulness to God. The children should learn the compositions of the great masters—those so precious transcripts of the music of nature—God's music, that infinite solace and forecast of Heaven. Loving sentiments, garbed in gracious melodies, are calculated to reform the world. Whom would they not benefit—for who is wholly free from the plague spots of error and sin? It would recall the lullabies of infancy—the low, sweet voices on a mother's knee. The haven of rest, and of a blessed eternity, albeit dim and distant, would open again; while, swelling, gently swelling on the elemental air, floods of glorious harmony would waft the regenerate soul to Heaven once more!
"But should we neglect the parent, while we fostered the child? That were not well. For every peasant I would construct, and maintain in substantial repair, a well-built cottage. There should be poultry, a cow, and the peasant's wealth—a swine, with large enclosed garden, the whole at an acreable rental. I would supply each family with seeds, plants, cuttings, free of cost; and, further, allow one day in the week, without deduction of wages, for the culture of the little spot. I should, moreover; maintain a model farm and garden, accessible to all; and in cases of sickness or accident, send some one to look after the poor man's affairs.
"The estate should be drained and trenched at my own expense; while I advised the general adoption of spade labour, with house-fed cattle, my draught oxen should be at the service of the tenants in all agricultural straits. 1 would follow the best system of alternate husbandry, and, both by precept and example, do what I could to extend all the advantages that I enjoyed. Encouragement should be given to those who kept the neatest houses and most comfortably-attired families, as well as prizes for superior stock and corn. And every mouth my butcher should slaughter, by the humane and almost painless method of pithing, abundant sheep, swine, oxen, on which occasions well-cured joints and fresh meats should find their way to every householder.
"I would maintain decked vessels for the deep-sea fishery, and nets for drawing along the shore," etc.
Will there ever be a soul created under the ribs of death? Will the landlords of Ireland ever discern that this is the way to cure all the ills of that country—that there is a more glorious scene than the club-house or the gaming-table—a more genuine happiness than in empty splendour and dissipation!—that to cultivate their estates, and to raise at the same time the condition of their neighbours, have in them sources of wealth and of enjoyment, to which all that they now know of has no comparison? As we have travelled in Ireland, how often have we taken up on our car some poor ragged boy, trudging to some distant town or village, and become filled with wonder at the clear intellect—clear as a bell—the vivid feeling, and the very graceful and refined manner of this little tattered, barefooted urchin, who has been taught in some hedge-school. How often have we seen the boys and girls going to or returning from school, full of health and spirit, and often fine young creatures, and have sighed to think of the misery and hardship that would clog them through life; with a noble land as their birthright, and souls full of power to raise it into a paradise—now a desert, and the tomb of enterprise! How often have we thought, "There go the future countrymen of Goldsmith, of Grattan, of Burke, of Sheridan, and Moore, the future countrywomen of Mrs. Tighe, of Maria Edgeworth, of Lady Morgan, and Anna Maria Hall;" and yet, over them, and millions of them, how soon shall the bright morning, that looks not into the future, overcast; and the spirit of the patriot, the poet, and the happy household men and women, be trodden by contumely and oppression into something as barren as those black wastes of peat, or be roused into the sullen fire of murderous revenge.
Is this never to be changed? In the beautiful language of this little book,—
"Why should toiling, striving men be linked to misery for ever? Labour of head and hand, believe me, is man's best estate and earthly destiny; but it is at the bottom, instead of the top, of the scale. Yet the time is drawing nigh—a little bird whispers it in my ear—when the labourer, the working man, no longer ignorant, brutalized, debased, shall rise, without impeachment of the claims of any, to the highest, best elevation of nature's aristocracy. Shall he not dwell in palaces, who raises palaces? Shall she not go in rich attire, whose fingers wind the silk of the toiling worm? Shall the ruby, the diamond, and the red, red gold, not glitter on the miner's manly breast, or deck the fingers of his wife and child? Shall she not wear who spinsP—he eat who sows? Shall the purple juice recruit no more the fainting vine-dresser? or pictures deck, or choicest harmony cheer, the dwellings of the poor? Yes, by the living God shall they! By the very Majesty of Heaven, man—man himself—shall waken from the trance of ages; and the producer and the consumer, the creator of enjoyments and he who revels in them, shall be one and indivisible once more. Nature's glad voices shall breathe out peacefully again. The carolling birds, the whispering winds, the gorgeous clouds, and perfumed flowers, the sunny earth, the mighty ocean, man's glorious beauty, speak seraph-toned his ineffable destiny, the faint foreshadowings of his final home!"
There is one other argument, besides its intrinsic beauty, for the purchase of this little volume—the profits of it are to be given to the relief of the Irish poor.
The Parlour Library. Vol. 1.—The Black Prophet; a Tale of Irish Famine. By William Carleton, Author of Traits and Stories of Irish Peasantry, etc. Belfast: Simms and Macintyre.
Messrs. Simms and Macintyre, the spirited publishers of Belfast, have chosen wisely by commencing their new serial publication with a work of such intense interest and great power, as William Carleton's "Black Prophet." A tale of Irish famine is well timed at this moment; and this story, though referring to a former period of distress, is equally applicable to this; for the sorrows of Ireland are not the growth of yesterday, they are the old festering wounds of oppression and misgovernment breaking out into plague spots of greater or less intensity, owing to the casualties of seasons or other temporary circumstances.
Of all men who have written of Irish life and manners, none have done it with so masterly a hand as William Carleton. A man of the people himself, he understands them thoroughly; he knows their feelings, their wants, and their miseries; and he depicts their life and their character, because he is deeply familiar with both, and knows the causes, whether remote or immediate, which have made them what they are. Besides this, Carleton is a man of genius; his writings possess a dramatic power, and the plot of his story is always such as to rivet the reader's attention. He is possessed of every requisite for a master in fiction, for this simple and apparently paradoxical reason, that he never deals with anything but truth.
This tale of Irish famine is appropriately enough dedicated to Lord John Russell, because the writer says, "As it is the first tale of Irish famine that was ever dedicated to an English Prime Minister, he trusts that his lordship's enlarged and enlightened policy will put it out of the power of any succeeding author ever to write another." We hope it may.
Famine is not by any means a new thing in Ireland. Every year has seen something of it more or less; but the warnings were lost on landlords and governors, and it was not till a general desolation of that unhappy country roused the national heart of England, that the calamity was thought even real. Carleton's story refers to the year 1817.—
"The whole summer had been sunless and wet; one, in fact, of ceaseless rain, which fell day after day, week after week, and month after month, until the sorrowful consciousness had arrived that any change for the better must now come too late, and that nothing was certain but the terrible union of famine, disease, and death, which was to follow. The season, owing to the causes specified, was necessarily late, and such of the crops as were ripe had a sickly and unthriving look. * * * Low meadows were in a state of inundation, and on alluvial soils the ravages of the floods were visible in layers of sand and gravel that were deposited over many of the prostrate corn-fields. The peat turf lay in oozy and neglected heaps, for there had not been sun enough to dry it sufficiently for use, so that the poor had want of fuel and cold to feel as well as want of food itself. Indeed the appearance of the country, in consequence of this wetness in the firing, was singularly dreary and depressing. Owing to the difficulty with which it burned, or rather wasted away, without light or heat, the eye, in addition to the sombre hue which the absence of the sun cast over all things, was forced to dwell upon the long black masses of smoke which trailed slowly over the whole country, or hung, during the thick, sweltering calms, in broad columns that gave to the face of nature an aspect strikingly dark and disastrous, when associated, as it was, with the destitution and suffering of the great body of the people. The general appearance of the crops was indeed deplorable. In some parts the grain was beaten down by the rain; in airier situations it lay cut, but unsaved, and scattered over the fields, awaiting an occasional glimpse of feeble sunshine; and in other and richer soils, whole fields, deplorably hedged, were green with the destructive exuberance of a second growth. The season, though wet, was warm; and it is unnecessary to say, that the luxuriance of all weeds and unprofitable productions was rank and strong, whilst an unhealthy fermentation pervaded every thing which was destined for food. A brooding stillness, too, lay over all nature; cheerfulness had disappeared, even the groves and hedges were silent, for the very birds had ceased to sing, and the earth seemed as if it mourned for the approaching calamity, as well as for that which had been already felt. The whole country, in fact, was weltering and surging with the wet formed by the incessant overflow of rivers; whilst the falling cataracts, joined to a low monotonous hiss, or what the Scotch term sugh, poured their faint but dismal murmurs on the gloomy silence which otherwise prevailed around."
Such is the scene of this melancholy story, in which the Black Prophet, an artful villain and murderer, who gained great influence over the people by his pretended gift of prophecy; and his daughter, a wild, passionate, but beautiful girl; and old Darby Skinadre, the dealer in meal, the miser, the hypocrite, and the blood-sucker; and many another figure—some meek and patient, others driven into passionate despair; move to and fro, as in a dreary phantasmagoria. And, perhaps, the saddest and most appalling part of the whole is that it is true; that not a feeble skeleton, with shrivelled skin and glassy eyes, and consuming fever at its heart, passes before us, but has its thousand-fold counterpart at this very moment, in that same land where it seems to have been the object of all who had power, no matter however obtained, to turn the blessings of God into a desolating curse.
We wish not only that Lord John Russell, but that every man who has a voice in making laws for Ireland, could read this book and deeply ponder on its momentous truths. Our space is very limited, but we must be permitted to make one extract more, for there is much in it.
"The whole country was in a state of dull but frantic tumult; and the wild crowds, as they came and went in the perpetration of their melancholy outrages, were worn down by such startling evidences of general poverty and suffering, as were enough to fill the heart with fear as well as pity. Their cadaverous and emaciated aspects had something in them so wild and wolfish, and the fire of famine blazed so savagely in their hollow eyes, that many of them looked like creatures changed from their very humanity by some judicial plague that had been sent down from Heaven to punish and desolate the land. And, in truth, there is no doubt whatever that the intensity of their sufferings, and the natural panic which was occasioned by the united ravages of disease and famine, had weakened the powers of their understanding, and impressed upon their bearing and features an expression which seemed partly the wild excitement of temporary frenzy, and partly the dull, hopeless apathy of fatuity—a state to which it is well known that misery, sickness, and hunger, all together, had brought down the strong intellect and reason of the famishing multitudes. * * * To no other principle than this can we attribute the wanton and irrational outrages of many of the people. Every one acquainted with such awful visitations must know that their terrific realities cause them, by wild influences that run through whole masses, to forget all the decencies and restraints of ordinary life; until fear, and shame, and the becoming respect for order, all of which constitute the moral safety of society, are thrown aside, or resolved into the great tyrannical instinct of self-preservation, which, when thus stimulated, becomes what may be termed the insanity of desolation."
In conclusion, we would remark that the Parlour Library appears to be the cheapest serial publication of the day. The extent of three ordinary volumes for one shilling! it is well got up, and is, in all respects, deserving of the public favour.