The Irish Penny Journal, Vol. 1 No. 47, May 22, 1841

THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL.

NUMBER 47. SATURDAY, MAY 22, 1841. VOLUME I.

“A merry morning to Father Connellan! Well, I dare north, south, east, and west, of our sweet county of Wexford, to produce such another comfortable domicile as this of your reverence; and the proof that it is so in every respect, is, that master, man, dog, cat, cow, and horse, have the same sleek sides and sleek looks. I wish I could say as much for some of the poor parsons.” “Alack! alack!” sighed Father Connellan in a lachrymose tone, “you speak of what we were rather than what we are. Poor things! neither biped nor quadruped here carries the same port as formerly. Now, how can you speak of sleek sides and sleek cheeks to me?--to me? Take another glance at me: fancy me with a pink jacket and black cap, and am I not just the cut, weight, and girth for a jockey? ‘Ah! what a falling off is here,’” pointing to a paunch that he asserted, with serio-comic phiz, was lamentably diminished.

“Oh, most lamentably!” cried I, entering into his humour. “Bless me! what is the matter? Oh, thou poor, poor disciple of holy mother church! black was the fast indeed that hath reduced thee to this pickle!”

“_Black_ it has been more than once, sure enough,” returned the priest, laughing; “and as I am a christianable man, this strict Lent has been for the sins and follies of others, and not for my own. But you shall know all.” Then raising his voice, he called, “Jimmy! Jimmy Delany!”

Thrice he shouted, and was still unanswered. “Ay,” continued his reverence, shaking his head and turning up his eyes, “this is the cut! Job’s boils and blisters were nothing to this! I may call and call, and have nothing but the echo of my own voice for my pains. Once more I’ll try, and if he doesn’t come then”---- and, placing his mouth close to the wall, he sang out, “Jimmy Delany!” so tremendously loud, that the delinquent must have heard it at half a mile’s distance. At this fourth summons, shuffling, lagging steps faltered up the hall, the parlour door opened, and the anatomy of a man presented itself--

So faint, so spiritless. So dull, so dead in look, so woe begone.

While gazing on him, I thought that if such a man were to “draw my curtains in the dead of night,” he need not cry out “fire!” to appal me.

“Well, Misther Delany,” began Father Connellan, “since you have condescended to appear--(why don’t you make your obeisance, sirrah?--draw back your shovel foot, bob forward your great mop-head, and bow to the lady--soh, that will do)--be plaised to explain how and why I, your spiritual pastor and lawful master, am reduced to half my natural dimensions, ‘clipt of my fair proportions.’ As some one says”----

But ere the priest could proceed with his quotation, I broke in with an exclamation of amazement.

“_That_ spectre--plump, grinning, mutton-headed Jimmy Delany! who used to wish for a gold chain but long enough to encircle the disc of his face twice, and it would be as long as the chain of my lord mayor of Dublin? Impossible! No, no! Reverend father, you may make me believe much; you are a man of mystery and mirth, potent and pleasant; but you will hardly bring me to believe that that shadow represents my plump and good-humoured old acquaintance Jimmy Delany.” “I have my doubts too,” said his reverence.

All this time the ghost-like subject of our observations stood mute and motionless, gazing at me with lack-lustre eyes, in which there was no beam of recognition. Indeed, he seemed dubious of his own identity; for when I refused to acknowledge him, he passed his hand deliberately and cautiously over his face and person, much in the way a blind man would do; and it was a considerable time before he ventured to assert “that he was Jimmy Delany still--if not in flesh and blood, at laist in skin and bone.”

“Alas! and has it come to this with thee, Jimmy? I recognise thy voice, though somewhat tremulous and less stentorian than of old, and I would fain inquire for what unheard of crime has this severe penance been imposed upon thee?--the direst that the dire church can inflict, it must have been! Hast thou made a pilgrimage with unboiled peas in your shoes, my poor, poor Jimmy?”

“Speak, sirrah!” cried the priest.

“Must I tell the thruth, sur?” asked the spectre, reddening, and scratching his head in a dilemma.

At this juncture I perceived that the person appealed to could hardly command gravity to answer the important query addressed to him, and, but that a fit of coughing came to his aid, alas for the decorum of Father Connellan!

“You are a good boy, Jimmy,” said his reverence with becoming sedateness, when the teasing cough had subsided; “a very good boy to apply to me ere you answered a question under circumstances which induce you to conceal the truth if you could. But, my poor, poor fellow, as I have said and thundered forth a hundred times from the pulpit, TRUTH should be spoken at all times, however painful to us; and it is especially necessary on this occasion, as I perceive a something like a fling at the discipline of our church; because, forsooth, you have dwindled from a mould four to a farthing candle! Tell the truth and shame the devil.”

Thus admonished, with a desperate effort poor Jimmy proceeded to inform me that the cause of all his woe and waste of flesh was “Betsy Kelly, an’ the urchint”---- Here he stuck fast, and I waited in vain for the finishing of the sentence. I next looked to the merry priest for an explanation, but I found that it was equally fruitless to expect one from him then. He had fallen back in his chair, in a fit of (to me inexplicable) laughter; and the confused Delany, still more confounded, took the opportunity to escape from the room, saying, as he retreated, “I’ll lave it all to his rivirince!--let him tell what he will--I won’t deny it.” “A fair stage for a fertile imagination, Father Connellan?” said I.

“Egad, there is no occasion for a fertile imagination in this case,” he replied. “Too true it is that the drama of every-day life surpasses that exhibited on the stage. Now, here is my poor Jimmy--_fiddle-string_ I may call him, because I play upon him daily, and he is almost reduced to one. If an actor ever so clever were to show off his blunders and absurdities on the stage, he’d be pelted to a mummy, or hooted into a coal-hole for the rest of his days, for attempting (mind) to impose on a discerning public with an outrageous caricature of nature.

Baithershin! let them come to Father Connellan’s cabin for a week, and I’ll promise them more amusement for nothing than they could get at the theatre in a year, and pay dearly for it. But the farce is drawing to a conclusion now.”

“_Farce_, call you it? My good sir, to look at poor Jimmy, I should suppose he has been enacting a very deep tragedy indeed, and that the bowl or dagger must end it.”

“Or a marl-hole, or his garters,” said his reverence laughing! “But is it possible,” continued he, “that you have not dived into the mystery yet? Is it possible that I, a poor secluded priest, dead to the world these twenty years, minding nothing but my breviary, the souls of my flock, the Pope’s bulls, and--and an occasional beef-steak and glass of punch, was up to the secret in a trice, while you, a gay member of society, are still in the dark? What direful, by me unmentionable disease, doth these four ugly, sinful capitals spell, L, O, V, E?”

“Love!--Ha! ha! ha! So Jimmy, poor Jimmy, is a lover! ‘Oh, Cupid, thou urchint,’ as thy woe-begone disciple calls thee, thou wert not blind, but blind-folded; thou stolest a peep, and the barbed dart that rankles in the heart of poor Jimmy was directed with laughter-loving malice! Pray tell me, reverend Father, was the heroine--for heroine she must have been, to have achieved such a victory over dullness--a living woman? or did she smite him through the pages of a book? for I recollect his reading mania at one time.”

“Arm yourself with the seven-fold fence of patience for half an hour, and I shall tell you all I know of the matter. But I must begin with the beginning, according to the method of all story-tellers. Now, a pinch of Lundy, a preliminary hem! and here goes:--

“About five years come Michaelmas, I buried my old house-keeper Nell Gray--I was going to say with military honours, for she was quite a trooper of a woman--but with the honours due to a faithful deserving servant which she was, and a treasure in a family, especially for dressing beef-steaks. But as I saw even in her a good deal of the tricks of the sex (excuse me), I was determined to have no more womenkind about me. I therefore set about searching for a good, quiet lad, who would be tractable enough to learn to do all the ordinary work of the house; and my wishes being made known to my flock, boys of all ages and sizes soon clustered about me like sparrows round a wheat stack. Out of twenty-five ’cute-looking chaps, I chose our friend Jimmy Delany, to the rapturous delight of his mother, a widow, who, as she brought her precious son to me, with a shining Sunday face, and a clean shirt--or at least a collar--assured me that though ‘her Jimmy was the laist taste slow at takin’ up the larnin’, yit wanst he got a hoult ov it, it was he that would take the hoult in airnest!’

‘Very well,’ said I, ‘he is slow, but sure; the very sort I want. Your quick people forget as soon as they learn.’

Well, Jimmy entered on his service, and, egad, ere the first day closed, I found that his mother had told truth to the letter! He was ‘slow,’ sure enough, and it was equally true that the hoult he took was a ‘hoult in airnest;’ but the pertinacious ‘hoult’ was a hold of any eatable that fell in his way, for he was a furious eater--God bless us! By and bye, I found out more of Jimmy’s perfections, and I lauded my sagacity in having discovered and appropriated such a treasure. ‘Happy old parish priest!’ ejaculated I in an ecstacy, ‘thou hast but one servitor in this teeming world, and the head of that chosen attendant admits but of one isolated idea for a time, which ‘idea,’ be it never so extravagant, rules his brains, words, and actions, as certainly and despotically as the moon rules the tides!’

Into that head, by dint of hammering at it day and night, his mother had instilled the ‘idea’ that he was to renounce his old habits, playmates, and plays, as surely as he was to fling away his old clothes, and henceforth to think of nothing but of being a faithful diligent man-of-all-works to his reverence the priest. In fine, in words suited to his capacity, he was told that he was to forget the idle gorsoon, and to put on the sarvint boy. For a week this song was sung to him in a variety of tones, without producing any other effect on Jimmy than causing a grin. At last, ‘Ov all works, mother?’ quoth he. ‘Bedad I thinks I’ll have somethin’ to do. Howsomdever, since I must be a sarvint, why it’s best to begin.’ And thenceforward he laid his whole soul to the task; and so earnest and anxious was he, that in little more than three months he could do a few things decently without having me perpetually pinned to his tail, and in a year he went through the routine of household affairs without a blunder, not one thought or wish interfering with his business. Like the churning-horse of my neighbour Giles, he plodded over the dull ground allotted for him without grumbling, and without being conscious that any other mode of life might produce equal happiness. Happy being! contented, stolid Jimmy Delany!