IRISH WIT AND HUMOUR.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 59, 13 June 1874, Page 12

IRISH WIT AND HUMOUR.

Th« Hon. S. 8. Cox, of Richmond, Virginia, delivered a lecture in New York some Bhort time since, selecting the above as his subject. The proceeds of the evening were devoted to ihe charities of the city, and realised a considerable sum, the hall being crowded in every part. After a brief disquisition of the difference between wit and humour, to which latter the Irish were more inclined from the geniality of their nature, the lecturer said :—: —

Wendell Phillips bat said, with the usual exaggeration : *' When we would map the Continent with 80,000 miles of railroad, we barfed five million* of Irishmen under the sleepers." Aside from his statistics, it will be conceded that many millions of Irish people hare been xninglrd, if not buried, in our midst. They are in every other family. They have been the nursei of our children, and the architects of oar enterprises. They help to form, enliven, and elevate our society. Is it surprising that the indigenous humour, -which is found in the verr bogs of Ireland, should here flourish ? What if the " head and harp " on the old Irish coin has been rubbed or disfigured by abrasion with the selfish surface of our society ; enough remains to see that the ♦' head " on the coin wags with its strange conceits, and the " harp " is redolent of its old music. Enough remain! to distinguish the Irish idiosyncracy. Even our patriotism ha* its odd admixture in the tnott«, " Etin go unum c pluribui'braah" Every one can see in the American idea that " Every man is as good as another," the Irish gleam when there is added, " and a good dtal better too." But it is not my purpose to compare American with Irish humour. You cannot compare Lever with Mark Twain, nor Sheridan with any one! I do not, however, purpose to limit my Analysis of Irish humour by the fun we have from them in America. The Irish are best judged at horne — in groups — even in their mysery. An exotic Irishman may show his native flower and fruit, but it is not as consummate as his indigenous humour. Go we then to Ireland. Examine her genealogy. Tiew the wondrous vicisitudes and the bewildering contrasts of her society, from her earliest infancy. Thus may we find the stock of that tree, whose foliage has shed its pleasant shadow over so many nations. Even England — sombre, savage, and sour— hacking away at ; the tree for centuries— finds that, like the sandal-wood, it gives even to the axe of the Saxon Tandal its fragrance and unction. In the changeful vicissitudes of Ireland's history is found her rare humour and rare pathos. Ireland! how suggestive the name, with her darkly-chequered annals ; her years of oppression drawing the lineaments of sorrow, yet not effacing the wrinkles of mirth ; the wild recklessness of those who have little at stake bursting out fitfully in gleams of gaiety. In rags and poverty their cheerfulness danoes like their sun upon Easter Day. And their rows and fairs, with potheen jig and shillelagh — in the hedge-school, in courting and wedding, in the dock or the witness-box, at the bar or in the senate; in the turbulence of popular agitation, or in the madness of famine, there is a constant flow of incandeicent humour, which no condition can cool, and no oppression repress. It is said that in drowning or hanging rave colours flicker on the vision. Ireland seems to have had this satisfaction, at least, in her calamities. As from the black mud over which the river sleep?, the water-lily arises, arrayed beyond the glory of Solomon, and with a perfume sweeter than the roses of Cashmere — so from the bogs, huts, hedges, and miseries of Ireland arise the beauty and aroma of her mirth. How it softens the rugged inequalities of life, bridges over the space which separates the lord in his hall from the lowly peasant in his hut. How it wreathes around* the seething waters of Hate, the Iris of Hope ! How it hallows aud glides into the heart ; how fondly it feels for infirmity ; how it insinuates its tickling fingers of fun, slowly, slyly, snugly, into the ribs of death, the skeleton, until laughter feels the flesh growing again under her magio manipulation. Having thus shown the cause of Irish humour, let us trace the source from which, and the medium through which, it flows. First, her literature. From what we have seen of Irish life, we can readily infer the character of Irish literature. It would be strange if, in the ardour of Irish nature, her literature should be logical in form or in substance. Hence, with her, humour predominates over wit. Humour is of earlier growth than nit, and hus more affinity with the poetic quality. Wit is more nearly allied to the ratiocinative intellect. Humour draws from situations and contrasts ; wit seizes on unexpected and complex relations, and deals with the essential qualities of things. Well might Lord Bacon say, " that Ireland, civilised, would be Inr more dangerous than Ireland savage ; " for when her Burke rises in invective, Hastings trembles; when Sheridan flashes his falchion, Ounces wince; when Swift lets fly his arrow, let the antidote for its venom be ready ; when Steele uses the rattan, let the victim procure a double epidermis ; when Sir Philip Francis — the substance of the shadowy Junius — clicks his unerring rifle from his covert, let lords, commons, and kings take shelter ; and even when her G-oldsmith smiles or her Moore chirps — Irish humour becomes condensed into the curt energy and brilliant reason of wit. When Sheridan says, with studied -intithesis, " the honorable gentleman depends on his memory for his jests, and on his imagination for hia facts," the shining shaft sticks up to the feather, which tickles as the barb wounds. But it was in Sheri kii'a unstudied convivial, Irish mood — that he earned the couplet -

Good at a fight, but better at a play ; God-like in giving, but the devil to pay. To him ia acror led the honor of making the best speech and writing the best c medj in the English tongue. No one dares to rival his "School for Scandal," eicept one of his own countrymen Goldsmith, with his comedy of "She Stoops to Conquer." Swift woa an Irishman only in birth, as wns Lord Wellington. He had for Iceland no sympathy; not even when he poured out the vitriol of his sardonic wit on his oppressors. His humour is uncongenial, because iroiiiiil. He wreathes his dagger in roses, nnd mocks liis victim with fiemli )i atrocity. Mephiatopheles might have written Swift's modest pu |.iml for preventing the children ot'the Irish poor trow, becoming ah < U n, and for making them beneficial to the public.

In recommending the eating of children under six years as food, he gives the preference to the landlords in their consumption. As they had already devoured the parents, they had the be»t right to the children. Oliver Cromwell did not butcher the Irish for the glory of God, with a more solemn sense of duty, than Swift seems to enter upon thit economio question. How different from Goldsmith's evanescent glee. There ia another class of Irish authors, who do not display their their own humour, except as they paint that of their countrymen. Miss Kdgeworth pioneered the way into their peasant homes. How full of graphic fidelity are her pictures, lifting the veil with a woman's smooth and ethereal grace, to show the rare contrasts of pathos and I jollity, which Walter Scott confesses were the inspiration of hie Scottish tales. With the same kindliness and forco have Mrs Hall, Lady Morgan, and Carleton opened to an all-embracing sunshine and warmth, the Irish views of Irish drollery, and, with it, mingled their geuial sadness. To these. Lever and Lover have added their fun* drunken exaggerations. The novelists of Ireland have had for their work all the grotesqueness and oddity of a most unnatural state of politics and society. But were there no literature in Ireland, the Attic' salt of her orators, at the bar, on the hustings, and in the Senate, would preserve the fame of her fun. Phillips, Cur ran, Qrattan, Plunk«tt,' Burke, O'Connell, Shiel, and exiled " Young Ireland " — all stars differing in glory ! Curran whose wit was .lightning, and whose eloquence was intellectual thunder ; and O'o'onnell, whose scorn was only equalled by his heartiness. How he lashed the enemies of Ireland! With what ridicule did he drive out of Ireland the " gutter Commissioner " of the 'Times'— as he called him— while Conciliation Hall roared •gain. Three colonels representing SU4O, Armagh, and Lincoln ia Parliament ; they 'lid not march to O'Connell's music of agitation. The firtt two were smooth faced and whiskerless, the other, Colonel Sibthorpe, was " bearded like a pard ; " O'Connell demolished the trio in a pasquinade, amid a general roar :—: — Throe ooloueli ia three distant oonntriM born, Sligo, Armagh, and Lincoln did adorn : The first ii. matchless impudence suppausd, The next in bigotry— in both the last. The force of nature could no further gn, To beard the third she shaved the other two. But the fertile source of Irish humour is in the common people. . This is the fountain to which the authors and orators of Erin repair with their golden urns, to draw light and lightsomeneaa. A quick sense of the ludicrous, and its apt and timely expression, is as indigenous to Ireland as its opposite is to England. It springs from their ultimate free-hearteduess. The same liberality which sends, in gratuities, from America to Ireland, bo many millions of dollars per year ; and which thus speaks of a blessed and blessing sympathy beyond all praise, prompts the quick, odd reason, the insinuating flattery, the whimsical cunning, the nimble retort, the cool impudence, the tall hyperbole, the grotesque figure, the blunder of au expression though brilliant in idea, and clasps in a zone of cheerful grace every mother's son and daughter of Erin, and turns them into something beautiful and joyful forever. All the thunders of England have been rolled over Ireland because she was not prosperous ; because she did not speculate and rust in selfishness. Her poverty and potatoes, her brogue and bulls, are the gibe of ' Punch,' and the theme of many a poor blockhead (in England) who Wisely rests content with sober wnse, Nor makes to dangerous wit a vaiu pretence. Let Ireland forget her love of home—- children, parents of Ireland — her care of widow and orphan ; let her countenance freeze to all the approaches of fun ; her heart close to all but the approaches of avarice ; let her light langh be echoed by the gripe of gain j let her soil be drained of its moisture, and her blood of its humor; let St. Patrick be stricken from the calendar, and St. Mammon be (airly installed ; let the Ifnglish Medusa rear her heal where the crest of a reptile is never roared, and chill to stone all who turn to look on the fashionable curls of her snaky hair ; then, oh ! Ireland will become what England may praise, aud her glory be measured bj the length of her fob and the lankaess of her feeling ! If in her impetuous warmth Ireland lacks the analytic criticism which obtains with other nations, she may, nevertheless, be proud » of a genuine humor, which floods the inward soul with a rich sense of delight, peoples it with forms whose faces shine, and whose eyes twinkle, who tumble about in the delirium of drollery, and revel in a loud, ringing hilarity, until the soul runs over in a " sunlit stream of jubilant laughter." In blending this rarest of humor with our own, Ireland gives a cheer to our society, whose healthful and moral influences are needed in the meditation, turmoil, and toil of our busy life. Ireland has lost the nationaUy of her home, but not of the spirit which ennobled it, when Curolan harped and Grattan spoke. She goes to a strange land, but she bears the ark of her covenant, in which is enshrined her songs, her traditions, her humor, aud her faith. Her old harp is newly strung for the strains of freedom in a new hemisphere. The hope of her resurrection whichjarose in the Crimean war, out of the red btorm on the Euxiue. where the battling hosts of Europe were contending, may again dawn. What a vision was that which her exiled orator, Thomas Francis Moagher, painted then, so effulgent and inspiring ! What a vision it was! It deserved a realisation. Oh ! that God, in his retributive Providence, should so order vii uprising among vhe nations, that when the " Marseillaise " shall again thunder fioro the barricades, whilst in Italy the youth and gallant priesthood shall rear to victory a cross more radiant than that of Constantino; while Hungary shall again launch her stately chivalry on the tide of war ; while along the Lluine the German youths shall buckle on their basket hilted broadswords, and, ousting aside their dreamful pipes, shall go forth to the camp, and with the songs of Koerner aud Freiligrath, awake the superb, though sombre, genius of thoir antique homes; then and there, in the grand chorus and gathering of the nations, shall Ireland appear at the feast of freedom, and sit down ia the fulness of her pride, and iv the joy of her radiant mirth.