IRISH WIT AND HUMOUR.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 11046, 25 February 1898, Page 6

IRISH WIT AND HUMOUR.

It'may here be pointed out that " humour * is one of the few words in which the initial <lh" is>, after the-French fashion, still.muted in Ireland, the Irish herein upholding -a custom which until recently obtained all over England, and in the days of great Elizabeth led to Beu Jonson's famous play of "Every Man in His Humour", being mentioned in a work of some,note as "The Umera." The new fashion of not pronouncing the " h '■' in " humour," largely but uoti universally accepted in England, led an Irishman to say lately, "The English would do better to sound some other h's that' they do not Bound, the ti's following w's, for instance.". To pro? nounce " which " like "witch" is deplorable, and so it is to pronounce " whig "like" wig," and here is a story about pronouncing. " whet" like " wet." I have it from the boy who blacks my shoes, and I will give it to you in his own words. " Says a young English gent to me once, 'Where will I wet (meaoin' mhel) me knife, Larry V' ' I,; in auswer to him, with a face as grave as this, Wet it betune y'r lips, sir.'"

This kind of wit,' which the victims of it term "sauce," as Romeo did the wit '■• of MsrcuUo—" Thy. wit," 'said the serious Montague to his friend, "is a very bitter sweeting ;itis a most sharp sauce " —is, a species * which naturally nourishes in green Erin,: where all the talk, or most of it, is snip, snap/; quick, and horns. It was once my good for- - tune to ba present when an Englishwoman in,Ireland gave directions to an Irish girl in har, service to heat some milk, but first to wash the pan clean. The word " clean "was &ig r nificantly emphasised, this rousing the indignation of Bridget, who vented her wrath in the sarcastic comment made to a fellow servant: "Pan, for milk! Wno ever heard the. likes o' that, now ? Tney fry. the milk in Engr land." ■.;'.'

No^Scotch or Irish persons will want to be i told that a pan among the Celts of Britain is.; a vessel for frying only, as it probably was ■ in England in those old days when the Saxons there rimed of " pots and pans,"' and called, one doubts not, the vessels in which they boiled their milk, not pans, bnfc pots. I can remember, as a little girl, asking of an English cousin, with what I considered to be well-assumed artlessneas, if' they talked; of a tea-pan and a mustard-pan, in England. .■•■-». . ; , \ .".''

Among a people more famous for its wit than its discretion, ill-timedwitis naturally not a thioc unknown. Among the many lectures which I have heard given at different times on the subject of this, the following by an' aged Irishwoman has impressed itself on my memtry. said the wise lady, addressing a young girl,,"is.like gunpowder,; my dear. i^lt has "its uses to him'who Knows how to avail himself of them. He who does/ not"—Here a, significant pause—" would do" well to do what certain savages once did... Having come into the possession of a bag of gunpowder, they carefully preserved it itill the. springtime, when they planted it with their corn. It did not burst forth'when the corn burst forth—so much the better for the sowers. That gunpowder was very safely deposited. Much wit might with; equal advantage be kept till thS*spring, and then planted with the t corn. Take my advice, and plant yours then." /'■'

If happy illustration constitute wit, the

above sermon was not devoid of the spice, and while itf clay-cold writing it may seem rather English than Irish in. wording-, as uttered it was typically Hibernian. Very much is in the living speech. An Irishman,'

still more perhaps an .Irishwoman, plays

upon that instrument, the voice, in a manner which is very extraordinary. Now the1 loud pedal is used and then the soft,.again the loud.again the soft. There is perhaps too; !much use of the peda-ls^nevertheless the music produced is of a kind which has given ; much pleasure, which is peculiar to the; country, and iB as inimitable as it is indescribable. Let an English person try. to say the word "Nonsense" as an Irishman saysthis word when he meang to say "Is.that .possible?" and he will concede the truth of the statement here made. Much again is in the facial'expression which accompanies the verbal one. Je3t or earnest may be in a look, how much jest he best can realise who does not hear for the firat time that "jest "and .".gesture." are etymologically one word. . It has.been said.above that thsre exists a type of Irishman who cannot make and-can-not take a joke. There even exists, alack, a :type of Irishman who cannot see a joke: as, if rumour be true, there exists such a type of Scotchman. One could, however,.with diffi-' culty : foejjrougbt to believe that among the few^millions of Irishmen in Ireland and the many millions of Irishmen all the world over, there exists more than one in a thousand who' does not come under the heading of men who in Dryden's phrasing " can sea a jest further off than other men." Not only that, bnt the Irishman is perhaps singular among the world's men in being able to see the heart of fan that there is sometimes in grim earnest. This faculty it is that makes him dub his poverty with a smile. "Irish plinty." That is of course an appeal to your charity, O England but it is an appeal to your charity in the second degree; in the first degree it is an appeal to your sense of humour. Before yon note his poverty you are to note what Pat himself calls his " tendency to jocosity." Irish plinftf; we mußt go to Shakespeare to find a beading under which to put this species of

wit, and we find it in the phrase "jerks pf^ invention." Pat has invited a new name for* poverty, and it comes out with a jerk, because there is a lump in his throat, and with, the smile there is the tear in his eye which marks him true son of Erin.— Elsa D'Estebbk Keeling, in the Leisure Hoar,

— An ingenious hatter of Paris constructed a house of felt made out of 24,000 old hats. ' This house consisted of parlour, .dining room, and bedroom, also a kitchen. It was erected upon a. platform upon the plaiu of St. Denis, aud could be transported from place to.place. — No trustee may legally invest money in bonds of the City of London, since the act of 1893, while permitting trustees to invest in the debt of any borough haviDg 50,000 inhabitants, does not specifically mention London, and as the census takes into account only the ni^bfe population, the city has fewer than the 50,000 ■ inhabitants required. — During his recent visit to Paris King Khoulalonkoro,' of Siatn, was, of course, taken to the National Library. Not without a good deal of satisfaction the librarian exhibited among the valuable documents and manuscripts in foreign languages a Siamese record, which indeed contained the King's own signature. Cautiously the French official added that no one had as yet been able to decipher tbis interesting and rare paper. Khoulalonkorn, catting a glance on the " preciouß paper," broke into laughter, telling the perplexed librarian that it was a fire insurance policy .drawn up with a Chinese company by some Siamese firm. — It is not generally known that the body of King Alphonso XII, although all the full honours of the church were conceded thereto at the time of his demise, still remains above ground awaiting final interment. This is in accordance with the statutes of the royal house of Spain, which prescribes that after his death the remains of each king shall be laid on a stone slab in one of the caves of the great pile of rocks upon which the gloomy Escurial Palace is built. There it gradually undergoes a kind of natural drying process, snd when entirely reduced to the mummy form it is placed in tto omb prepared for it.